A FOUNTAIN SEALED

by

ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK

(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt)

Author of 'The Little French Girl, ' 'Franklin Winslow Kane, ' 'Tante, ' etc. 

I

Three people were sitting in a small drawing-room, the windows of whichlooked out upon a wintry Boston street. It was a room rather empty andundecorated, but the idea of austerity was banished by a temperatureso nearly tropical. There were rows of books on white shelves, a paleDonatello cast on the wall, and two fine bronze vases filled with roses onthe mantelpiece. Over the roses hung a portrait in oils, very sleek andvery accurate, of a commanding old gentleman in uniform, painted by awell-known German painter, and all about the room were photographs of youngwomen, most of them young mothers, with smooth heads and earnest faces, holding babies. Outside, the snow was heaped high along the pavementsand thickly ridged the roofs and lintels. After the blizzard the sun wasshining and all the white glittered. The national colors, to a patrioticimagination, were pleasingly represented by the red, white and blue of thebrick houses, the snow, and the vivid sky above. 

The three people who talked, with many intimate pauses of silence, were allBostonians, though of widely different types. The hostess, sitting in aneasy chair and engaged with some sewing, was a girl of about twenty-six. She wore a brown skirt of an ugly cut and shade and a white silk shirt, adorned with a high linen collar, a brown tie and an old-fashioned goldwatch-chain. Her forehead was too large, her nose too short; but her lipswere full and pleasant and when she smiled she showed charming teeth. Theblack-rimmed glasses she wore emphasized the clearness and candor of hereyes. Her thick, fair hair was firmly fastened in a group of knobs down theback of her head. There was an element of the grotesque in her appearanceand in her careful, clumsy movements, yet, with it, a quality almostgraceful, that suggested homely and wholesome analogies, --freshly-bakedbread; fair, sweet linen; the safety and content of evening firesides. Thiswas Mary Colton. 

The girl who sat near the window, her furs thrown back from her shoulders, a huge muff dangling from her hand, was a few years younger and exceedinglypretty. Her skin was unusually white, her hair unusually black, her velvetyeyes unusually large and dark. In. Her attitude, lounging, graceful, indifferent, in her delicate face, the straight, sulky brows, the coldlyclosed lips, the coldly observant eyes, a sort of permanent discontent wasexpressed, as though she could find, neither in herself nor in the world, any adequate satisfaction. This was Rose Packer. 

The other guest, sitting sidewise on a stiff chair, his hand hanging overthe back, his long legs crossed, was a young man, graceful, lean andshabby. He was clean-shaven, with brown skin and golden hair, an unrulylock lying athwart his forehead. His face, intent, alert, was veiled inan indolent nonchalance. He looked earnest, yet capricious, staunch, yetsensitive, and one felt that, conscious of these weaknesses, he tried tomaster or to hide them. 

These three had known one another since childhood. Jack's family was oldand rich; Mary's old and poor; Rose Packer's new and of fantastic wealth. Rose was a young woman of fashion and her whole aspect seemed to repudiateany closeness of tie between herself and Mary, who passed her time incaring for General Colton, her invalid father, attending committees, and, as a diversion, going to "sewing-circles" and symphony concerts; but shewas fonder of Mary than of any one else in the world. Rose, who had, asit were, been brought up all over the world, divided her time now betweentwo continents and quaintly diversified her dancing, hunting, yachtingexistence by the arduous study of biology. Jack, in appearance moreambiguous than either, looked neither useful nor ornamental; but, in pointof fact, he was a much occupied person. He painted very seriously, wassomething of a scholar and devoted much of his time and most of his largefortune to intricate benevolences. His shabby clothes were assumed, likethe air of indolence; his wealth irked him and, full of a democratictranscendentalism, he longed to efface all the signs that separated himfrom the average toiler. While Rose was quite ignorant of her own countrywest of the Atlantic seaboard, Jack had wandered North, South, West. Asfor Mary, she had hardly left Boston in her life, except to go to theMassachusetts coast in summer and to pay a rare visit now and then to NewYork. It was of such a visit that she had been talking to them and of thefriend who, since her own return home only a few days before, had suffereda sudden bereavement in the death of her father. Jack Pennington, also anear friend of Imogen Upton's, had just come from New York, where he hadbeen with her during the mournful ceremonies of death, and Mary Colton, after a little pause, had said, "I suppose she was very wonderful throughit all. "

"She bore up very well, " said Jack Pennington. "There would never beanything selfish in her grief. "

"Never. And when one thinks what a grief it is. She is wonderful, " saidMary. 

"You think every one wonderful, Molly, " Rose Packer remarked, not at allaggressively, but with her air of quiet ill-temper. 

"Mary's enthusiasm has hit the mark this time, " said Pennington, casting aglance more scrutinizing than severe upon the girl. 

"I really can't see it. Of course Imogen Upton is pretty--remarkablypretty--though I've always thought her nose too small; and she is certainlyclever; but why should she be called wonderful?"

"I think it is her goodness, Rose, " said Mary, with an air of gentlewillingness to explain. "It's her radiant goodness. I know that Imogen hasmastered philosophies, literatures, sciences--in so far as a young and verybusy girl can master them, and that very wise men are glad to talk to her;but it's not of that one thinks--nor of her great beauty, either. Both seemtaken up, absorbed in that selflessness, that loving-kindness, that's likea higher kind of cleverness--almost like a genius. "

"She's not nearly so good as you are, Molly. And after all, what does shedo, anyway?"

Mary kept her look of leniency, as if over the half-playful naughtinessesof a child. "She organizes and supports all sorts of charities, all sortsof reforms; she is the wisest, sweetest of hostesses; she takes care of herbrother; she took care of her father;--she takes care of anybody who is inneed or unhappy. "

"Was Mr. Upton so unhappy? He certainly looked gloomy;--I hardly knew him;Eddy, however, I do know, very well; he isn't in the least unhappy. Hedoesn't need help. "

"I think we all need help, dear. As for Mr. Upton, --you know, " Mary spokevery gravely now, "you know about Mrs. Upton. "

"Of course I do, and what's better, I know her herself a little. _Elle estcharmeuse_. "

"I have never seen her, " said Mary, "but I don't understand how you cancall a frivolous and heartless woman, who practically deserted her husbandand children, _charmeuse_;--but perhaps that is all that one can call her. "

"I like frivolous people, " said Rose, "and most women would have desertedMr. Upton, if what I've heard of him was true. "

"What have you heard of him?"

"That he was a bombastic prig. "

At this Mary's pale cheek colored. "Try to remember, Rose, that he diedonly a week ago. "

"Oh, he may be different now, of course. "

"I can't bear to hear you speak so, Rose. I did know him. I saw a greatdeal of him during this last year. He was a very big person indeed. "

"Of course I'm a pig to talk like this, if you really liked him, Molly. "

But Mary was not to be turned aside by such ambiguous apology. "You see, you don't know, Rose. The pleasure-seeking, worldly people among whom youlive could hardly understand a man like Mr. Upton. Simply what he did forcivic reform, --worked himself to death over it. And his books on ethics, politics. It isn't a question of my liking him. I don't know that I everthought of my feeling for him in those terms. It was reverence, rather, andgratitude for his being what he was. "

"Well, dear, I do remember hearing men, and not worldly men, as you callthem, either, say that his work for civic reform amounted to very littleand that his books were thin and unoriginal. As for that community place hefounded at, where was it?--Clackville? He meddled that out of life. "

"He may have been Utopian, he may have been in some ways ineffectual; buthe was a good man, a wonderful, yes, Rose, a wonderful man, "

"And do you think that Molly has hit the mark in this, too?" Rose asked, turning her eyes on Pennington. He had been listening with an air of lightinattention and now he answered tersely, as if conquering some innerreluctance by over-emphasis, "Couldn't abide him. "

Rose laughed out, though with some surprise in her triumph; and Mary, redder than before, rejoined in a low voice, "I didn't expect you, Jack, tolet personal tastes interfere with fair judgment. "

"Oh, I'm not judging him, " said Jack. 

"But do you feel with me, " said Rose, "that it's no wonder that Mrs. Uptonleft him. "

"Not in the least, " Pennington replied, glad, evidently, to make clear hisdisagreement. "I don't know of any reason that Mrs. Upton had for desertingnot only her husband but her children. "

"But have they been left? Isn't it merely that they prefer to stay?"

"Prefer to live in their own country? among their own people? Certainly. "

"But she spends part of every year with them. There was never any openbreach. "

"Everybody knew that she would not live with her husband and everybody knewwhy, " Mary said. "It has nearly broken Imogen's heart. She left him becausehe wouldn't lead the kind of life she wanted to lead--the kind of life sheleads in England--one of mere pleasure and self-indulgent ease. She hasn'tthe faintest conception of duty or of patriotism. She couldn't help herhusband in any way, and she wouldn't let him help her. All she cares for isfashion, admiration and pretty clothes. "

"Stuff and nonsense, my dear! She doesn't think one bit more about herclothes than Imogen does. It requires more thought to look like a saint invelvet than to go to the best dressmaker and order a trousseau. I wonderhow long it took Imogen to find out that way of doing her hair. "

"Rose!--I must beg of you--I love her. "

"But I'm saying nothing against her!"

"When I think of what she is suffering now, what you say sounds cruellyirreverent. Jack, I know, feels as I do. "

"Yes, he does, " said the young man. He got up now and stood, very tall, inthe middle of the room looking down at Mary. "I must be off. I'll bringyou those books to-morrow afternoon--though I don't see much good in yourreading d'Annunzio. "

"Why, if you do, Jack?" said Mary, with some wonder. And the degree ofintimate equality in the relations of these young people may be gaged bythe fact that he appeared to receive her rejoinder as conclusive. 

"Well, he's interesting, of course, and if one wants to understand moderndecadence in an all-round way--"

"I want to understand everything, " said Mary. "And please bring your bestItalian dictionary with them. "

"Before you go, Jack, " said Rose, "pray shut the register. It's quitestifling in here. "

"Far too hot, " said Jack, showing his impartiality of spirit by hisseconding of Rose's complaint, for it was evident she had much displeasedhim. "I've often told you, Mary, how bad it was for you. That's why you areso pale. "

"I'm so sorry. Have you been feeling it much? Leave the door into the hallopen. "

"And do cast one glance, if only of disapprobation, upon me, Jack, " Rosepleaded in mock distress. 

"You are a very amusing child, Rose, sometimes, " was Pennington's onlyanswer. 

"He's evidently very cross with me, " said Rose, when he was gone. "Whileyou are not--you who have every right to be, angelic Molly. "

"I hope you didn't realize, Rose, how you were hurting him. "

"I?" Rose opened wide eyes. "How, pray?"

"Don't you know that he is devoted to Imogen Upton?"

"Why, who isn't devoted to her, except wicked me?"

"Devoted in particular--in love with her, I think, " said Mary. 

Rose's face took on a more acutely discontented look, after the pause inwhich she seemed, though unrepentantly, to acquiesce in a conviction ofineptitude. "Really in love with her?"

"I think so; I hope so. "

"How foolish of him, " said Rose. Mary, at this, rested a gaze so long andso reproachful upon her that the discontent gave way to an affectionatecompunction. "The truth is, Mary, that I'm jealous; I'm petty; I'm horrid. I don't like sharing you. I like you to like me most, and not to find otherpeople wonderful. "

"If you own that you are naughty, Rose, dear, and that you try hard to benaughtier than you really are, I can't be angry with you. But it does hurtme, for your own sake, to see you--really malicious, dear. "

"Oh, dear! Am I that?"

"Really you are. "

"Because I called Imogen Upton a saint in velvet?--and like her mother somuch, much more?"

"Yes, because of that--and all the rest. As for jealousy, one doesn't lovepeople more because they are wonderful. One is glad of them and one longsto share them. It's one of my dearest hopes that you may come to care forImogen as I do--and as Jack does. "

Rose listened, her head bent forward, her eyes, ambiguous in theirhalf-ironic, half-tender, meaning, on her friend; but she only said, "_I_shall remain in love with you, Mary. " She didn't say again, though she wasthinking it, that Jack was very foolish. 

II

"Darling, darling Mother:

"I know too well what you have been feeling since the cable reached you;and first of all I want to help you to bear it by telling you at once thatyou could not have reached him in time. You must not reproach yourself forthat. 

"I am shattered by this long day. Father died early this morning, but Imust hold what strength I have, firmly, for you, and tell you all that youwill want to hear. He would have wished that; you know how he felt about aselfish yielding to grief. 

"He seemed quite well until the beginning of this week--five days ago--buthe was never strong; the long struggle that life must always mean to thosewho face life as he did, wore on him more and more; for others' sakes heoften assumed a buoyancy of manner that, I am sure, --one feels these thingsby intuition of those one loves--often hid suffering and intense weariness. It was just a case of the sword wearing out the scabbard. A case of, 'Yes, uphill to the very end. ' I know that you did not guess how fragile thescabbard had become, and you must not reproach yourself, darling, for thateither. We are hardly masters of the intuitions that warn us of thesethings. Death teaches us so much, and, beside him, looking at his quietface, so wonderful in its peace and triumph, I have learned many lessons. He has seemed to teach me, in his silence, the gentler, deeper sympathywith temperament. You couldn't help it, darling, I seem to understand thatmore and more. You weren't at the place, so to speak, where he could helpyou. Oh, I want to be so tender with you, my mother, --and to help you towise, strong tenderness toward yourself. 

"On Tuesday he worked, as usual, all morning; he had thrown himself heartand soul, as you know, into our great fight with civic corruption--what aworker he was, what a fighter! He was so wonderful at lunch, I remember. I had my dear little Mary Colton with me and he held us both spellbound, talking, with all his enthusiasm and ardor, of politics, art, life and theliving of life. Mary said, when she left me that day, that to know him hadbeen one of the greatest things in her experience. In the afternoon he wentto a committee meeting at the Citizens' Union. It was bitterly cold andthough I begged him to be selfish for once and take a cab, he wouldn't--youremember his Spartan contempt of costly comforts--and I can see him now, going down the steps, smiling, shaking his head, waving his hand, andsaying with that half-sad, half-quizzical, smile of his, 'Plenty of peoplewho need bread a good deal more than I need cabs, little daughter. ' So, inthe icy wind, he walked to the cable-car, with its over-heated atmosphere. He got back late, only in time to dress for dinner. Several interesting mencame and we had a splendid evening, really wonderful talk, _constructive_talk, vitalizing, inspiring, of the world and the work to be done for it. Inoticed that father seemed flushed, but thought it merely the interest ofthe discussion. He did not come down to breakfast next morning and when Iwent to him I found him very feverish. He confessed then that he had caughta bad chill the day before. I sent for the doctor at once, and for a littlewhile had no anxiety. But the fever became higher and higher and that nightthe doctor said that it was pneumonia. 

"Dearest, dearest mother, these last days are still too much with me for meto feel able to make you see them clearly. It is all a tragic confusion inmy mind. Everything that could be done was done to save him. He had nursesand consultations--all the aids of science and love. I wired for Eddy atonce, and dear Jack Pennington was with me, too, so helpful with his deepsympathy and friendship. I needed help, mother, for it was like having myheart torn from me to see him go. He was very calm and brave, though I amsure he knew, and once, when I sat beside him, just put out his hand tomine and said: 'Don't grieve overmuch, little daughter; I trust you to turnall your sorrow to noble uses. ' He spoke only once of you, dear mother, but then it was to say: 'Tell her--I forgive. Tell her not to reproachherself. ' And then--it was the saddest, sweetest summing up, and it willcomfort you--'She was like a child. ' At the end he simply went--sleeping, unconscious. Oh, mother, mother!--forgive these tears, I am weak.... Helies now, up-stairs, looking so beautiful--like that boyish portrait, youremember, with the uplifted, solemn gaze--only deeper, more peaceful andwithout the ardor.... 

"Darling mother, don't bother a bit about me. Eddy and Jack will help me ineverything, all our friends are wonderful to us. --Day after to-morrow weare to carry him to his rest. --After that, when I feel a little stronger, Iwill write again. Eddy goes to you directly after the funeral. If you needme, cable for me at once. I have many ties and many claims here, but I willleave them all to spend the winter with you, if you need me. For you maynot feel that you care to come to us, and perhaps it will be easier for youto bear it over there, where you have so many friends and have made yourlife. So if I can be of any help, any comfort, don't hesitate, mother dear. 

"And--oh, I want to say it so lovingly, my arms around you--don't fearthat I have any hardness in my heart toward you. I loved him--with allmy soul--as you know; but if, sometimes, seeing his patient pain, I havejudged you, perhaps, with youth's over-severity, --all that is gone now. Ionly feel our human weakness, our human need, our human sorrow. Remember, darling, that our very faults, our very mistakes, are the things that mayhelp us to grow higher. Don't sink into a useless self-reproach. 'Turn yoursorrow to noble uses. ' Use the past to light you to the future. Build onthe ruins, dear one. You have Eddy and me to live for, and we love you. Godbless you, my darling mother. 

"IMOGEN. "

This letter, written in a large, graceful and very legible hand, was beingread for the third time by the bereaved wife as she sat in the drawing-roomof a small house in Surrey on a cold November evening. The room was one ofthe most finished comfort, comfort its main intention, but so thoroughlyattained that beauty had resulted as if unconsciously. The tea-table, thefire, the wide windows, their chintz curtains now drawn, were the pointsaround which the room had so delightfully arranged itself. It was a rooma trifle overcrowded, but one wouldn't have wanted anything taken away, the graceful confusion, on a background of almost austere order, gave thehappiest sense of adaptability to a variety of human needs and whims. Mrs. Upton had finished her own tea, but the flame still burned in waiting underthe silver urn; books and reviews lay in reach of a lazy hand; lamps, candle-light and flowers made a soft radiance; a small _griffon_ dozedbefore the fire. The decoration of the room consisted mainly in Frenchengravings from Watteau and Chardin, in one or two fine black lacquercabinets and in a number of jars and vases of Chinese porcelain, somestanding on the floor and some on shelves, the neutral-tinted walls abackground to their bright, delicate colors. 

Mrs. Upton was an appropriate center to so much ease and beauty. In deepblack though she was, her still girlish figure stretched out in a lowchair, her knees crossed, one foot held to the fire, she did not seemto express woe or the poignancy of regret. The delicate appointments ofher dress, the freshness of her skin, her eyes, bright and unfatigued, suggested nothing less than a widow plunged in remorseful grief. Hereyes, indeed, were thoughtful, her lips, as she read her daughter'scommunication, grave, but there was much discrepancy between her own aspectand the letter's tone, and, letting it drop at last, she seemed herselfaware of it, sighing, glancing about her at the Chinese porcelain, thetea-table, the dozing dog. She didn't look stricken, nor did she feel so. The first fact only vaguely crossed her mind; the latter stayed and herface became graver, sadder, in contemplating it. She contemplated it for along time, going over a retrospect in which her dead husband's figure andher own were seen, steadily, sadly, but without severity for either. 

Since the shock of the announcement, conveyed in a long, tender cable overa week ago, she had had no time, as it were, to cast up these accounts withthe past. Her mind had known only a confused pain, a confused pity, forherself and for the man whom she once had loved. The death, so long ago, ofthat young love seemed more with her than her husband's death, which tookon the visionary, picture aspect of any tragedy seen from a distance, notlived through. But now, in this long, firelit leisure, that was the finalsumming of it all. She was grave, she was sad; but she could feel noseverity for herself, and, long ago, she had ceased to feel any for poorEverard. They had been greatly mistaken in fancying themselves made foreach other, two creatures could hardly have been less so; but Everard hadbeen a good man and she, --she was a harmless woman. Both of them had meantwell. Of course Everard had always, and for everything, meant a great dealmore than she, in the sense of an intentional shaping of courses. She hadalways owned that, had always given his intentions full credit; only, whathe had meant had bored her--she could not find it in herself now to fix onany more self-exonerating term. After the first perplexed and painful yearsof adjustment to fundamental disappointment she had at last seen the factsclearly and not at all unkindly, and it seemed to her that, as far as herhusband went, she had made the best of them. It was rather odious of her, no doubt, to think it now, but it seemed the truth, and, seen in its light, poor little Imogen's exhortations and consolations were misplaced. Once ortwice in reading the letter she had felt an inclination to smile, aninclination that had swiftly passed into compunction and self-reproach. 

Yes, there it was; she could find very little of self-reproach within herin regard to her husband; but in regard to Imogen her conscience was noteasy, and as her thoughts passed to her, her face grew still sadder andstill graver. She saw Imogen, in the long retrospect, --it was alwaysImogen, Eddy had never counted as a problem--first as a child whom shecould take abroad with her for French, German, Italian educationalexperiences; then as a young girl, very determined to form her owncharacter, and sure, with her father to second her assurance, thatboarding-school was the proper place to form it. Eddy was also at school, and Mrs. Upton, with the alternative of flight or an unbroken tête-à-têtewith her husband before her, chose the former. There was no breach, nocrash; any such disturbances had taken place long before; she simply slidaway, and her prolonged absences seemed symbols of fundamental and longrecognized divisions. She came home for the children's holidays; built, indeed, the little house among the Vermont hills, so that she might, as itwere, be her husband's hostess there. She hoped, through the ambiguousyears, for Imogen's young-womanhood; looking forward to taking her placebeside her when the time came for her first steps in the world. But here, again, Imogen's clear-cut choice interfered. Imogen considered girlishfrivolities a foolish waste of time; she would take her place in the worldwhen she was fully equipped for the encounter; she was not yet equipped toher liking and she declared herself resolved on a college course. 

Imogen had been out of college for three years now, but the routine of Mrs. Upton's life was unchanged. The rut had been made too deep for her to climbout of it. It had become impossible to think of reentering her husband'shome as a permanent part of it. Eddy was constantly with her in Englandin the intervals of his undergraduate life; but how urge upon Imogen morefrequent meetings when her absence would leave the father desolate? Thesummers had come to be their only times of reunion and Mrs. Upton had moreand more come to look forward to them with an inward tremor of uncertaintyand discomfort. For, under everything, above everything, was the fact, andshe felt herself now to be looking it hard in the face, that Imogen hadalways, obviously, emphatically, been fondest of her father. It had beenfrom the child's earliest days, this more than fondness, this placidpartizanship. In looking back it seemed to her that Imogen had alwaysdisapproved of her, had always shown her disapproval, gently, eventenderly, but with a sad firmness. Her liberation from her husband'sstandard was all very well; she cared nothing for Imogen's standard either, in so far as it was an echo, a reflection; only, for her daughter not tocare for her, to disapprove of her, to be willing that she should go out ofher life, --there was the rub; and the fact that she should be consideringit over a tea-table in Surrey while Imogen was battling with all the somberaccompaniments of grief in New York, challenged her not to deny someessential defect in her own maternity. She was an honest woman, and afterher hour of thought she could not deny it, though she could not see clearlywhere it lay; but the recognition was but a step to the owning that shemust try to right herself. And at this point, --she had drawn a deep breathover it, straightening herself in her chair, --her friends came in fromtheir drive and put an end to her solitude. 

For the first years of her semi-detached life Mrs. Upton had been as gay asa very decorous young grass-widow can be. Her whole existence, until hermarriage, which had dropped, or lifted, her to graver levels, had beenpassed among elaborate social conditions, and wherever she might go shefound the protection of a recognized background. She had multitudes ofacquaintances and these surrounding nebulæ condensed, here and there, intothe fixed stars of friendship. Not that such condensations were swift orfrequent. Mrs. Upton was not easily intimate. Her very graces, her verykindnesses, her sympathy and sweetness, were, in a manner, outposts aboutan inner citadel and one might for years remain, hospitably entertained, yet kept at a distance. But the stars, when they did form, were very fixed. Of such were the two friends who now came in eager for tea, after theirnipping drive: Mrs. Pakenham, English, mother of a large family, wife ofa hard-worked M. P. And landowner; energetically interested in hunting, philanthropy, books and people; slender and vigorous, with a delicate, emaciated face, weather-beaten to a pale, crisp red, her eyes as blue asporcelain, her hair still gold, her smile of the kindest, and Mrs. Wake, American, rosy, rather stout, rather shabby, and extremely placid ofmien. Mrs. Pakenham, after her drive, was beautifully tidy, furred as toshoulders and netted as to hair; Mrs. Wake was much disarranged and camein, smiling patiently, while she put back the disheveled locks from herbrow. She was childless, a widow, very poor; eking out her insufficientincome by novel-writing; unpopular novels that dealt, usually, with gloomythemes of monotonous and disappointed lives. She was, herself, anything butgloomy. 

She gave her friend, now, swift, short glances, while, standing beforeher, her back to the fire, she put her hair behind her ears. She hadknown Valerie Upton from childhood, when they had both been the indulgeddaughters of wealthy homes, and through all the catastrophes andachievements of their lives they had kept in close touch with each other. Mrs. Wake's glances, now, were fond, but slightly quizzical, perhapsslightly critical. They took in her friend, her attitude, her beautifully"done" hair, her fresh, sweet face, so little faded, even her polishedfinger-nails, and they took in, very unobtrusively, the American letter onher lap. It was Mrs. Pakenham who spoke of the letter. 

"You have heard, then, dear?"

"Yes, from Imogen. "

Both had seen her stunned, undemonstrative pain in the first days of thebereavement; the cables had supplied all essential information. Her quiet, now, seemed to intimate that the letter contained no harrowing details. 

"The poor child is well, I hope?"

"Yes, I think so; she doesn't speak much of herself; she is very brave. "

Mrs. Pakenham, a friend of more recent date, had not known Mr. Upton, norhad she ever met Imogen. 

"Eddy was with her, of course, " said Mrs. Wake. 

"Yes, and this young Mr. Pennington, who seems to have become a greatfriend. May Smith and Julia Halliwell, of course, must have helped herthrough it all. She says that people are very kind. " Mrs. Upton spokequietly. She did not offer to show the letter. 

"Jack Pennington. Imogen met him when she went last year to Boston. Youremember old Miss Pennington, his great-aunt, Valerie. "

"Very well. But this Jack I've never met. "

"He is, I hear, devoted to Imogen. "

"So I infer. "

"And the very nicest kind of young man, though over-serious. "

"I inferred that, too. "

"And now, " said Mrs. Wake, "Eddy will be here on Saturday; but what ofImogen?"

"Imogen says that she will come over at once, if I want her. "

"Far the best plan. She will live with you here--until she marries Mr. Pennington, or some other devotee, " said Mrs. Pakenham comfortably. 

Mrs. Upton looked up at her. "No, I shall go to her, until she marries Mr. Pennington or some other devotee. "

There was after this a slight pause, and it was Mrs. Pakenham who broke itwith undiminished cheerfulness. "Perhaps, on the whole, that will be best, for the present. Of course it's a pity to have to shut up your home, justas you are so nicely installed for the winter. But, you mustn't let herdelay, my dear, in getting married. You can't wait over there indefinitely, you know. "

"Ah, it's just that that I must do, " said Mrs. Upton. 

There was, again, silence at this, perhaps over a further sense of fitness, but in it Mrs. Pakenham's eyes met Mrs. Wake's in a long interchange. Mrs. Upton, in the event of Imogen "delaying, " would not stay; that was what, plainly, it intimated. 

"Of course, " said Mrs. Pakenham, after some moments of this silentacquiescence and silent skepticism, "that will make it very evident why youdidn't stay before. "

"Not necessarily. Imogen has no one with her now; my preferences as to ahome would naturally go down before such an obvious duty. "

"So that you will simply take up all the threads, yours and hers?"

"I shall try to. "

"You think she'll like that?" Mrs. Pakenham inquired. 

"Like what?" Mrs. Upton rather quickly asked. 

"That you should take up her threads. Isn't she very self-reliant? Hasn'ther life, the odd situation, made her so?"

At this Mrs. Upton, her eyes on the fire, blushed; faintly, yet thedeepening of color was evident, and Mrs. Pakenham, leaning impulsivelyforward, put her hand on hers, saying, "Dear Valerie, I don't mean thatyou're responsible!"

"But I am responsible. " Mrs. Upton did not look at her friend, though herhand closed gently on hers. 

"For nothing with which you can reproach yourself, which you can evenregret, then. It's well, altogether well, that a girl should beself-reliant and have her own threads. "

"Not well, though, " said Mrs. Wake, folding the much-entangled veil she hadremoved, "that a daughter should get on so perfectly without her mother. "

"Really, I don't know about that"--Mrs. Pakenham was eager in generoustheories--"not well for us poor mothers, perhaps, who find it difficult tobelieve that we are such background creatures. "

"Not well for the daughter, " Mrs. Wake rejoined. "In this case I think thatImogen has been more harmed than Valerie. "

"Harmed!" Mrs. Pakenham exclaimed, while Valerie Upton's eyes remainedfixed on the fire. "How can she have been harmed? From all I hear of hershe is the pink of perfection. "

"She is a good girl. "

"You mean that she's suffered?"

"No, I don't think that she has suffered. "

Mrs. Wake was evidently determined to remain enigmatical; but Valerie Uptonquietly drew aside her reserves. "That is the trouble, you think; shehasn't. "

"That is a symptom of the trouble. She doesn't suffer; she judges. It'svery harmful for a young girl to sit in judgment. "

"But Valerie has seen her so much!" Mrs. Pakenham cried, a little shockedat the other's ruthlessness. "Three months of every year--almost. "

"Three months when they played hostess to each other. It was really Valeriewho was the guest in the house when Imogen and her father were there. Therelation was never normal. Now that poor Everard is gone, the necessaryartificiality can cease. Valerie can try her hand at being a mother, not aguest. It will do both her and Imogen good. "

"That's just the conclusion I had come to. That's just how I had beenseeing it. " The fresh tea-pot was brought in at this juncture, and, as shespoke, Valerie roused herself to measure in the tea and pour on the boilingwater. She showed them, thus, more fully, the grace, the freshness, thelook of latent buoyancy that made her so young, that made her, even now, inher black dress and with her gravity, remind one of a flower, submerged, momentarily, in deep water, its color hardly blurred, its petals delicatelycrisp, its fragrance only needing air and sunlight to diffuse itself. Forall the youthfulness, a quality of indolent magic was about her, a softhaze, as it were, woven of matured experience, of detachment from youth'sself-absorption, of the observer's kindly, yet ironic, insight. Her figurewas supple; her nut-brown hair, splendidly folded at the back of her head, was hardly touched with white; her quickly glancing, deliberately pausing, eyes were as clear, as pensive, as a child's; with almost a child's candorof surprise in the upturning of their lashes. A brunette duskiness in therose of lips and cheeks, in the black brows, in the fruit-like softness ofoutline, was like a veil drawn across and dimming the fairness that paledto a pearly white at throat and temples. Her upper lip was ever so faintlyshadowed with a brunette penciling of down, and three _grains de beauté_, like tiny patches of velvet, seemed applied with a pretty coquetry, one onher lip and two high on her cheek, where they emphasized and lent a touchof the Japanese to her smile. Even her physical aspect carried out theanalogy of something vivid and veiled. She was clear as day, yet melting, merged, elusive, like the night; and in her glance, in her voice, was thatmingled brightness and shadow. When she had given them their tea she lefther friends, taking her toasted little dog, languid and yawning, under herarm, and, at a sharp yelp from this petted individual, his paw struck bythe opening of the door, they heard her exclaiming in contrition over him, "Darling lamb! did his wicked mother hurt him!"

Mrs. Pakenham and Mrs. Wake sipped their tea for some time in silence, andit was Mrs. Pakenham who voiced at last the thought uppermost for both ofthem, "I wonder how Sir Basil will take it. "

"Everard's death, you mean, or her going off?"

"Both. "

"It's obvious, I think, that if he doesn't follow her at once it will onlybe because he thinks that now his chance has come he will make it surer bywaiting. "

"It's rather odious of me to think about it at all, I suppose, " Mrs. Pakenham mused, "but one can't help it, having seen it all; having seenmore than either of them have, I'm quite sure, poor, lovely dears. "

"No, one certainly can't help it, " Mrs. Wake acquiesced. "Though I, perhaps, should have been too prudish to own to it just now--with poorEverard hardly in his grave. But that's the comfort of being with a frank, unscrupulous person like you; one gets it all out and need take noresponsibility. "

Mrs. Pakenham smiled over her friend's self-exposure and helped her togreater comfort with a still more crude, "It will be perfect, you know, ifhe does succeed. I suppose there's no doubt that he will. "

"I don't know; I really don't know, " Mrs. Wake mused. 

"One knows well enough that she's tremendously fond of him, --it's just thatthat she has taken her stand on so beautifully, so gracefully. "

"Yes, so beautifully and so gracefully that while one does know that, onecan't know more--he least of all. He, I'm pretty sure, knows not a scrapmore, "

"But, after all, now that she's free, that is enough. "

"Yes--except--". 

"Really, my dear, I see no exception. He is a delightful creature, assound, as strong, as true; and if he isn't very clever, Valerie is far tooclever herself to mind that, far too clever not to care for how much morethan clever he is. "

"Oh, it's not that she doesn't care--"

"What is it, then, you carping, skeptical creature? It's all perfect. Anuncongenial, tiresome husband--and she need have no self-reproach abouthim, either--finally out of the way; a reverential adorer at hand; youthstill theirs; money; a delightful place--what more could one ask?"

"Ah, " Mrs. Wake sighed a little, "I don't know. It's not, perhaps, that onewould ask more, but less. It's too pretty, too easy, too _à propos_; somuch so that it frightens me a little. Valerie has, you see, made a mess ofit. She has, you see, spoiled her life, in that aspect of it. To mend itnow, so completely, to start fresh at--how old is she?--at forty-six, it'sjust a little glib. Somehow one doesn't get off so easily as that. Onecan't start so happily at forty-six. Perhaps one is wiser not to try. "

"Oh, nonsense, my dear! It's very American, that, you know, that picking ofholes in excellent material, furbishing up your consciences, running afteryour motives as if you were ferrets in a rat-hole. If all you have to sayagainst it is that it's too perfect, too happy, --why, then I keep to my ownconviction. She'll be peacefully married and back among us in a year. "

Mrs. Wake seemed to acquiesce, yet still to have her reserves. "There'sImogen, you know. Imogen has to be counted with. "

"Counted with! Valerie, I hope, is clever enough to manage that youngperson. It would be a little too much if the daughter spoiled the end ofher life as the husband spoiled the beginning. "

"You are a bit hard on Everard, you know, from mere partizanship. Valeriewas by no means a misused wife and his friends may well have thought him amisused husband; Imogen does, I'm sure. She has, perhaps, a right to feelthat, as her father's representative, her mother owes her something in theway of atonement. "

"It does vex me, my dear, to have you argue like that against your ownconvictions. It was all his fault, --one only has to know her to be sure ofit. He made things unbearable for her. "

"It was hardly his fault. He couldn't help being unbearable. "

"Well--certainly _she_ couldn't help it!" cried Mrs. Pakenham, laughingas if this settled it. She rose, putting her hands on the mantelpiece andwarming her foot preparatory to her departure; and, summing up her cheerfulconvictions, she added: "I'm sorry for the poor man, of course; but, afterall, he seems to have done very much what he liked with his life. And Ican't help being very glad that he didn't succeed in quite spoiling hers. Good luck to Sir Basil is what I say. "

III

Mrs. Upton was in the drawing-room next morning when Sir Basil Thremdonwas announced. She had not seen this old friend and neighbor since thenews of her bereavement had reached her, and now, rising to meet him, aconsciousness of all that had changed for her, a consciousness, perhapsmore keen, of all that had changed for him, showed in a deepening of hercolor. 

Sir Basil was a tall, spare, stalwart man of fifty, the limpid innocence ofhis blue eyes contrasting with his lean, aquiline countenance. His hair andmustache were bleached by years to a light fawn-color and his skin tannedby a hardy life to a deep russet; and these tints of fawn and russetpredominated throughout his garments with a pleasing harmony, so that inhis rough tweeds and riding-gaiters he seemed as much a product of thenature outside as any bird or beast. The air of a delightfully civilizedrurality was upon him, an air of landowning, law-dispensing, sportingefficiency; and if, in the fitness of his coloring, he made one think of afox or a pheasant, in character he suggested nothing so much as one of thedeep-rooted oaks of his own park. His very simplicity and uncomplexity ofconsciousness was as fresh, as wholesome, as genially encompassing, as fullsummer foliage. One rested in his shade. 

He was an inarticulate person and his eyes, now, in their almost searedsolicitude, spoke more of sympathy and tenderness than his halting tongue. He ended by repeating a good many times that he hoped she wasn't toofrightfully pulled down. Mrs. Upton said that she was really feeling verywell, though conscious that her sincerity might somewhat bewilder herfriend in his conceptions of fitness, and they sat down side by side on asmall sofa near the window. 

We have said that for the first years of her freedom Mrs. Upton had beenvery gay. Of late years the claims on her resources from the family acrossthe Atlantic had a good deal clipped her wings, and, though she made around of spring and of autumn visits, she spent her time for the most partin her little Surrey house, engaged desultorily in gardening, study, andthe entertainment of the friend or two always with her. She had not foundit difficult to fold her wings and find contentment in the more nest-likeenvironment. She had never been a woman to seek, accepting only, happily, whatever gifts life brought her; and it seemed as natural to her thatthings should be taken as that things should be given. But with therenouncement of more various outlooks this autumnal quietness, too, hadbrought its gift, discreet, delicate, a whispered sentence, as it were, that one could only listen to blindfolded, but that, once heard, gave onethe knowledge of a hidden treasure. Sir Basil had been one of the reasons, the greatest reason, for her happiness in the Surrey nest. It was sincecoming there to live that she had grown to know him so well, with theslow-developing, deep-rooted intimacy of country life. The meadows andparks of Thremdon Hall encompassed all about the heath where ValerieUpton's cottage stood among its trees. They were Sir Basil's woods that randown to her garden walls and Sir Basil's lanes that, at the back of thecottage, led up, through the heather, to the little village, a mile or soaway. She had met Sir Basil before coming to live there, once or twice inLondon, and once or twice for week-ends at country-houses; but he was not aperson whom one came really to know in drawing-room conditions; indeed, atthe country-houses one hardly saw him except at breakfast and dinner; hewas always hunting, golfing, or playing billiards, and in the interludes tothese occupations one found him a trifle somnolent. It was after settlingquite under his wing--and that she was under it she had discovered onlyafter falling in love with the little white cottage and rushing eagerlyinto tenancy--that she had found out what a perfect neighbor he was; thencome to feel him as a near friend; then, as those other friends had termedit, to care for him. 

Valerie Upton, herself, had never called it by any other name, this feelingabout Sir Basil; though it was inevitable, in a woman of her clearness ofvision, that she should very soon recognize a more definite quality in SirBasil's feeling about her. That she had always kept him from naming it moredefinitely was a feat for which, she well knew it, she could allow herselfsome credit. Not only had it needed, at some moments, dexterity; it hadneeded, at others, self-control. Self-control, however, was habitualto her. She had long since schooled herself into the acceptance of herstupidly maimed life, seeing herself in no pathetic similes at all, but, rather, as a foolish, unformed creature who, partly through blindness, partly through recklessness, had managed badly to cripple herself at theoutset of life's walk, and who must make the best of a hop-skip-and-jumpgait for the rest of it. She had felt, when she decided that she had aright to live away from Everard, that she had no right to ask more offortune than that escape, that freedom. One paid for such freedom bylimiting one's possibilities, and she had never hesitated to pay. Never toindulge herself in sentimental repinings or in sentimental musings, neverto indulge others in sentimental relationships, had been the most obvioussort of payment; and if, in regard to Sir Basil, the payment had sometimesbeen difficult, the reward had been that sense of unblemished peace, thatsense of composure and gaiety. It was enough to know, as a justificationof her success, that she made him happy, not unhappy. It was enough toknow that she could own freely to herself how much she cared for him, somuch that, finding him funny, dear, and dull, she was far fonder of hisfunniness, of his dullness, than of other people's cleverness. He madeher feel as if, on that maimed, that rather hot and jaded walk, she hadcome upon the great oak-tree and sat down to rest in its peaceful shadow, hearing it rustle happily over her and knowing that it was secure strengthshe leaned against, knowing that the happy rustle was for her, because shewas there, peaceful and confident. So it had all been like a gift, a sad, sweet secret that one must not listen to except with blindfolded eyes. Shehad never allowed the gift to become a burden or a peril. And now, to-day, for the first time, it was as though she could raise the bandage and lookat him. 

She sat beside him in her widow's enfranchising blackness and she couldn'tbut seer at last, how deep was that upwelling, inevitable fondness. Sodeep that, gazing, as if with new and dazzled eyes, she wondered a littlegiddily over the long self-mastery; so deep that she almost felt it as astrange, unreal tribute to trivial circumstance that, without delay, sheshould not lean her head against the dear oak and tell it, at last, thatits shelter was all that she asked of life. It was necessary to banishthe vision by the firm turning to that other, that dark one, of her deadhusband, her grief-stricken child, and, in looking, she knew that while itwas so near she could not dwell on the possibilities of freedom. So shetalked with her friend, able to smile, able, once or twice, to use towardhim her more intimate tone of affectionate playfulness. 

"But you are coming back--directly!" Sir Basil exclaimed, when she told himthat she expected her boy in a few days and that they would sail for NewYork together. 

Not directly, she answered. Before very long, she hoped. So many thingsdepended on Imogen. 

"But she will live with you now, over here. "

"I don't think that she will want to leave America, " said Valerie. "I don'tthink, even, that I want her to. "

"But this is your home, now, " Sir Basil protested, looking about, as thoughfor evidences of the assertion, at the intimate comforts of the room. "Youknow that you are more at home here than there. "

"Not now. My home, now, is Imogen's. "

Sir Basil appeared to reflect, and then to put aside reflection as, afterall, inapplicable, as yet, to the situation. 

"Well, I must pay America a visit, " he said with an unemphatic smile. "I'venot been there for twenty years, you know. I'll like seeing it again, andseeing you--in Miss Imogen's home. "

Valerie again flushed a little. In some matters Sir Basil was anything butdull, and his throwing, now, of the bridge was most tactfully done. Heintended that she should see it solidly spanning the distance between themand only time was needed, she knew, to give him his right of walking overit, and her right--but that was one of the visions she must not look at. A great many things lay between now and then, confused, anxious, perhapspainful, things. The figure of Imogen so filled the immediate future thatthe place where Sir Basil should take up his thread was blotted into analmost melancholy haze of distance. But it was good to feel the bridgethere, to know him so swift and so sure. 

"She is very clever, your girl, isn't she? I've always felt it from whatyou've told me, " he said, defining for himself, as she saw, the futurewhere they were to meet. 

"Very, I think. "

"Very learned and artistic. I'm afraid she'll find me an awful Philistine. You must stand up for me with her. "

"I will, " Valerie smiled, adding, "but Imogen is very pretty, too, youknow. "

"Yes, I know; one can see that in the photographs, " said Sir Basil. Therewere several of these standing about the room and he get up to look atthem, one after the other--Imogen in evening, in day dress, all showing hererect slenderness, her crown of hair, her large, calm eyes. 

"She looks kind but very cool, you know, " he commented. "She would take onein at a great rate; not find much use for an every-day person like me. "

"Oh, you won't be an every-day person to Imogen. And her great point, Ithink, is her finding a use for everybody. "

"Making them useful to her?"

"No--to themselves--to the world in general. "

"Improving them, do you mean?"

"Well, yes, I should say that was more it. She likes to give people alift. "

"But--she's so very young. How does she manage it?" Sir Basil queried overthe photograph, whose eyes dwelt on him while he spoke, "Oh, you'll see, " Valerie smiled a little at his pertinacity. "I've nodoubt that she will improve you. "

"Well, " said Sir Basil, recognizing her jocund intention, "she's welcometo try. As long as you are there to see that she isn't too hard on me. " Hedismissed Imogen, then, from his sight and thoughts, replacing her on thewriting-table and suggesting that Mrs. Upton should take a little walk withhim. His horse had been put into the stable and he could come back for him. Mrs. Upton said that when they came back he must stay to lunch and that becould ride home afterward, and this was agreed on; so that in ten minutes'time Mrs. Pakenham and Mrs. Wake, from their respective windows, were ableto watch their widowed friend walking away across the heather with SirBasil beside her. 

Neither spoke much as they wended their way along the little paths ofsilvery sand that intersected the common. The day was clear, with a milky, blue-streaked sky; the distant foldings of the hills were of a deep, hyacinthine blue. 

From time to time Sir Basil glanced at the face beside him, thoughtful tosadness, its dusky fairness set in black, but attentive, as always, to thesights and sounds of the well-loved country about her. He liked to watchthe quick glancing, the clear gazing, of her eyes; everything she looked atbecame at once more significant to him--the tangle of tenacious roots thatthrust through the greensand soil of the lane they entered, the suave, graycolumns of the beeches above, the blurred mauves and russets of the woods, the swift, awkward flight of a pheasant that crossed their way with acreaking whir of wings, the amethyst stars of a bush of Michaelmas daisies, showing over a whitewashed cottage wall, the far blue distance before them, framed in the tracery of the beech-boughs. He knew that she loved it allfrom the way she looked at it and, almost indignantly, as though againstsome foolish threat, he felt himself asseverating, "It _is_ her home--sheknows it--the place she loves like that. " And when they had made their wideround, down the lane, up a grassy dell, into his park, where he had to showher some trees that must come down; when they had skirted the park, alongits mossy, fern-grown wall, and under its overhanging branches, until, oncemore, they were on the common and the white of Valerie's cottage glimmeredbefore them, he voiced this protest, saying to her, as he watched her eyes, dwell on the dear little place, "You could never bear to leave all this forgood--even if, even if we let you; you know you couldn't. "

Valerie looked round at him, and in his face, against its high backgroundof milk-streaked blue, she saw the embodiment of his words; it was that, not the hyacinthine hills, not the beech-woods, not the heathery common, not even the dear cottage, that she could not bear to leave for good. Butsince this couldn't be said, she consented to the symbol of it that he putbefore her, that "all this, " and answered, as he had hoped, "No, indeed; Icouldn't think of leaving it all, for good. "

IV

It was an icy, sunny day, and Imogen Upton and Jack Pennington were walkingup and down the gaunt wharf, not caring to take refuge from the cold in thestifling waiting-rooms. The early morning sky was still pink. The waters ofthe vast harbor were whitened by blocks and sheets of ice. The great city, drawn delicately on the pink in white and pearl, marched its fantasticranges of "sky-scrapers"--an army of giants--down to the water's edge. And, among all the rose and gold and white, the ocean-liner, a glitteringimmensity of helpless strength, was being hauled and butted into her dock, like some harpooned sea-monster, by a swarm of blunt-nosed, agile littletugs. 

Jack Pennington thought that he had never seen Imogen looking so"wonderful" as on this morning. The occasion, to him, was brimming overwith significance. He had not expected to share it, but Imogen had spokenwith such sweetness of the help that he would give her if he could be withher in her long, cold waiting, that, with touched delight, he found himselfin the position of a friend so trusted, so leaned upon, that he couldwitness what there must be of pain and fear for her in this meeting of hernew life. The old life was with them both. Her black armed her in it, as itwere, made her valiant to meet the new. And for him that old life, the lifemenaced, though so trivially, by the arriving presence, seemed embodied inthe free spaces of the great harbor, the soaring sky of frosty rose, thegrotesque splendor of the giant city, the glory, the ugliness of thecountry he loved, the country that made giant-like, grotesque cities, andthat made Imogens. 

She was the flower of it all--the flower and the so much more than flower. He didn't care a fig, so he told himself, about the mere fact of her beingbeautiful, finished, in her long black furs, her face so white, her hair sogold under her little hat. She wasn't to be picked and placed high, abovethe swarming ugliness. No, and that was why he cared for her when he hadceased to care for so many pretty girls--her roots were deep; she sharedher loveliness; she gave; she opened; she did not shut away. She was thepromise for many rather than the guerdon of the few. Jack's democracy wasthe ripe fruit of an ancestry of high endeavor and high responsibility. Theservice of impersonal ends was in his blood, and no meaner task had everbeen asked of him or of a long line of forebears. He had never in his ownperson experienced ugliness; it remained a picture, seen but not felt byhim, so that it was not difficult for him to see it with the eyes of faithas glorified and uplifted. It constituted a splendid burden, an ennoblingduty, for those who possessed beauty, and without that grave and happyright to serve, beauty itself would lose all meaning. He often talked aboutdemocracy to Imogen. She understood what he felt about it more firmly, moresurely, than he himself did; for, where he sometimes suspected himself oftheory, she acted. She, too, rejoiced in the fundamental sameness of thehuman family that banded it together in, essentially, the same greatadventure--the adventure of the soul. 

Imogen understood; Imogen rejoiced; Imogen was bound on that adventure--notonly with him, but, and it was this that gave those wide wings to hisfeeling for her, with _them_--with all the vast brotherhood of humanity. Now and then, to be sure, faint echoes in her of her father, touches ofyouthful assurance, youthful grandiloquence, stirred the young man's senseof humor; but it was quickly quelled by an irradiating tenderness thatshowed her limitations as symptoms of an influence that, in its foolishaspects, he would not have had her too clearly recognize; her beautiful, filial devotion more than compensated for her filial blindness--nay, sanctified it; and her heavenly face had but to turn on him for him toenvelop all her little solemnities and importances in a comprehendingreverence. Jack thought Imogen's face very heavenly. He was an artist byprofession, as we have said, taking himself rather seriously, too, but theartistic perception was so strongly colored by ethical and intellectualpreoccupations that the spontaneous satisfaction in the Eternal Now of merebeauty was rarely his. Certainly he saw the flower-like texture of Imogen'sskin; the way in which the light azured its whiteness and slid upon itschild-like surfaces. He saw the long oval of the face, the firm and gentlelips, drawn with a delicate amplitude, the broad hazel eyes set undera level sweep of dark eyebrow and outlined, not shadowed, so clear, sowide they were, by the dark lashes. But all the fresh loveliness of line, surface, color, remained an intellectual appreciation; while what touched, what penetrated, were the analogies she suggested, the lovely soul that thelovely face vouched for. The oval of her face and the charming squaringof her eyes, so candid, so unmysterious, made him think of a BotticelliMadonna; and her long, narrow hands, with their square finger-tips, mighthave been the hands of a Botticelli angel holding a votive offering offruit and flowers. His mind seldom rested in her beauty, passing at oncethrough it to what it expressed of purity, strength and serenity. Itexpressed so much of these that he had never paused at the portals, as itwere, to feel the defects of her face. Imogen's nose was too small; neatrather than beautiful. Her eyes, with the porcelain-like quality of theirwhite, the jewel-like color of their irises, were over-large; and whenshe smiled, which she did often, though with more gentleness than gaiety, she showed an over-spacious expanse of large white teeth. For the rest, Imogen's figure was that of the typical well-groomed, well-trained, American girl, long-limbed, slender, rounded; in her carriage a girlishair of consciousness; the poise of her broad shoulders and slender hipsexpressing at once hygienic and fashionable ideals that reproved slackgaits and outlines. As they walked, as they talked, watching the slowadvance of the great steamer; as their eyes rested calmly and intelligentlyon each other, one could see that the girl's relation to this dear friendwas untouched by any trace of coquetry and that his feeling for her, ifdeep, was under most perfect control. 

"It's over a year, now, since I saw mama, " Imogen was saying, as theyturned again from a long scrutiny of the crowded decks--the distance was asyet too great for individual recognition. "She didn't come over this summeras usual, --poor dear, how bitterly she must regret that now, though it washardly her fault, papa and I fixed on our Western trip for the summer. Itseems a very long time to me. "

"And to me, " said Jack. "It's only a year since I came really to know you;but how much longer it seems than that. "

"It's strange that we should know each other so well and yet that you havenever seen my mother, " said Imogen. "Is that she? No, she is not so tall. Poor darling, how tired and sad she must be. "

"You are tired and sad, too, " said Jack. 

"Ah, but I am young--youth can bear so much better. And, besides, I don'tthink that my sadness would ever be like mama's. You see, in a way, I haveso much more in my life. I should never sit down in my sadness and let itoverwhelm me. I should use it, always. It is strange that grief should sooften make people selfish. It ought, rather, to open doors for us and giveus wider visions. "

He was so sure that it had performed these offices for her, looking, as henow looked, at her delicate profile, turned from him while she gazed towardthe ship, that he was barely conscious of the little tremor of amusementthat went through him for the triteness of her speech. Such triteness wasbeautiful when it expressed such reality. 

"I suppose that you will count for more, now, in your mother's life, " hesaid, --that Imogen should, seemingly, have counted for so little had beenthe frequent subject of his indignant broodings. "She will make you herobject. "

Imogen smiled a little. "Isn't it more likely that I shall make her mine?one of mine? But you don't know mama yet. She is, in a way, verylovely--but so much of a child. So much younger--it seems funny to say it, but it's true--than I am. "

"Littler, " Jack amended, "not younger. "

But Imogen, while accepting the amendment, wouldn't accept the negation. 

"Both, I'm afraid, " she sighed. 

"Will she like it over here?" Jack mused more than questioned. 

"Hardly, since she has always lived as little here as she could manage. "

"Perhaps she will want to take you back to England, " he surmised, conscious, while he spoke the almost humorous words, of a very firmdetermination that she shouldn't do so. 

Imogen paused in her walk at this, fixing upon him eyes very grave indeed. "Take me back to England? Do you really think that I would consent to that?Surely you know me better, Jack?"

"I think I do. Only you might yield against your will, if she insisted. "

"Surely you know me well enough to know that I would never yield against mywill, if I knew that my will was right. I might sacrifice a great deal formama--I am prepared to--but never that; Never, " Imogen repeated. "There aresome things that one must not sacrifice. Her living in England is a whim;my living in my own country is part of my religion. "

"I know, of course, dear Imogen. But, " Jack was argumentative, "as tosacrifice, say that it was asked of you, by right. Say, for instance, thatyou married a man who had to take you out of your own country?"

She smiled a little at the stupid surmise. "That hardly applies. Besides, Iwould never marry a man who was not one of my own people, who was not apart--as I am a part--of the Whole I live for. My life is here, all itsmeaning is here--you know it--just as yours is. "

"I love to know it--I was only teasing you. "

He loved to know it, of course. Yet, while it answered to all his owntheories that the person should be so much less to her than the idea theperson lived for, he couldn't but feel at times, with a rueful sense ofunworthiness, that this rare capacity in her might apply in most unwelcomefashion to his own case. In Jack, the deep wells of feeling and emotionwere barred and bolted over by a whole complicated system of reticences;by a careful sense of responsibility, not only toward others, but towardhimself; by a disciplined self-control that was a second nature. But, hecould see it well enough, if such, deep wells there were in Imogen, they, as yet, were in no need of barring and bolting. Her eyes could show a quietacceptance of homage, a placid conviction of power, a tender sympathy, butthe depth and trouble of emotion was not yet in them. He often suspectedthat he was nearer to her when he talked to her of causes than when heventured, now and then, to talk about his feelings. There was always theuncomfortable surmise that the man who could offer a more equipped facultyfor the adventure of the soul, might altogether outdistance him withImogen. By any emotion, any appeal or passion that he might show, she wouldremain, so his intuition at moments told him, quite unbiased; while sheweighed simply worth against worth, and weight--in the sense of strength ofsoul--against weight. And it was this intuition that made self-control andreticence easier than they might otherwise have been. His theories mightassure him that such integrity of purpose was magnificent; his manlycommon-sense told him that in a wife one wanted to be sure of the taint ofpersonal preference; so that, while he knew that he would never need toweigh Imogen's worth against anybody else's, he watched and waited untilsome unawakened capacity in her should be able happily to respond to themore human aspects of life. Meanwhile the steamer had softly glided intothe dock and the two young people at last descried upon the crowded decksthe tall, familiar figure of Eddy Upton, like Imogen in his fairness, clearness, but with a more masculine jut of nose and chin, sharper lines ofbrow and cheek and lip. And beside Eddy--Jack hardly needed the controlledquiet of Imogen's "There's mama" to identify the figure in black. 

She leaned there, high and far, on the deck of the great steamer thatloomed above their heads, almost ominous in its gigantic bulk and darkness;she leaned there against the rosy sky, her face intent, searching, bentupon the fluttering, shouting throng beneath; and for Jack, in this firstimpression of her, before she had yet found Imogen, there was somethingpathetic in the earnestness of her searching gaze, something that softenedthe rigors of his disapprobation. But, already, too, he fancied that hecaught the expected note of the frivolous in the outline of her fur-linedcoat, in the grace of her little hat. 

Still she sought, her face pale and grave, while, with an imperceptiblemovement, the steamer glided forward, and now, as Imogen raised her muffin a long, steady wave, her eyes at last found her daughter and, smiling, smiling eagerly down upon them, she leaned far over the deck to wave heranswer. She put her hand on her son's arm, pointing them out to him, andEddy, also finding them, smiled too, but with his rather cool kindness, raising his hat and giving Jack a recognizing nod. It was then as if heintroduced Jack. Jack saw her question, saw him assent, and her smile wentfrom Imogen to him enveloping him with its mild radiance. 

"She is very lovely, your mother, as you say, " Jack commented, feeling alittle breathless over this silent meeting of forces that he must think ofas hostile, and finding nothing better to say. 

Imogen, who had continued steadily to wave her muff, welcoming, but for herpart unsmiling, answered, "Yes. "

"I hope that she won't mind my being here, in the way, after a fashion, "said Jack. 

"She won't mind, " said Imogen. 

He knew the significance of her voice; displeasure was in its gentleness, a quiet endurance of distress. It struck him then, in a moment, that itwas rather out of place for Mrs. Upton to smile so radiantly at such ahome-coming. Not that the smile had been a gay one. It had shone out afterher search for her daughter's face; for the finding of it and for him ithad continued to shine. It was like sunlight on a sad white day of mist; itdid not dispel mournfulness, it seemed only to irradiate it. But--to havesmiled at all. With Imogen's eyes he saw, suddenly, that tears would havebeen the more appropriate greeting and, in looking back at the girl oncemore, he saw that her own, as if in vicarious atonement, were running downher cheeks. She, then, felt a doubled suffering and his heart hardenedagainst the woman who had caused it. 

The two travelers had disappeared and the decks were filled with thejostling hurry of final departure. Jack and Imogen moved to take theirplaces by the long gangway that slanted up from the dock. 

He said nothing to her of her tears, silent before this subtle grief;perhaps, for all his love and sympathy, a little disconcerted by itsdemonstration, and it was Imogen who spoke, murmuring, as they stoodtogether, looking up, "Poor, poor papa. "

Yes, that had been the hurt, to see her dead put aside, almost forgotten, in the mother's over-facile smile. 

The passengers came trooping down the gangway, with an odd buoyancy of stepcaused by the steep incline, and Jack, for all his expectancy, had eyes, appreciative and critical, for the procession of his country-people. Stout, short men, embodying purely economic functions, with rudimentary features, slightly embossed, as it were, upon pouch-like faces. Thin, young men, whose lean countenances had somewhat the aspect of steely machinery, aptfor swift, ruthless, utilitarian processes. Bloodless old men, many ofwhom looked like withered, weary children adorned with whitened hair. The average manhood of America, with its general air of cheap and hastygrowth, but varied here and there by a higher type; an athletic collegian, auspiciously Grecian in length of limb, width of brow, deep placidityof eye; varied by a massive senatorial head or so, tolerant, humorous, sagacious; varied by a stalwart Westerner, and by the weedier scholar, sensitive, self-conscious, too much of the spiritual and too little of theanimal in the meager body and over-intelligent face. 

There was a certain discrepancy, in dress and bodily well-being, betweenthe feminine and the masculine portion of the procession; many of the heavymatrons, wide-hipped, well-corseted, benignant and commanding of mien, wereominously suggestive, followed as they were by their fragile husbands, of the female spider and her doomed, inferior, though necessary, mate. The young girls of the happier type resembled Imogen Upton in grace, instrength, in calm and in assurance; the less fortunate were sharp, sallow, anxious-eyed; and the children were either rosy, well-mannered, andconfident, or ill-mannered, over-mature, but also, always, confident. 

Highly equipped with every graceful quality of his race, not a touch of themale spider about him, Eddy's head appeared at last, proud, delicate andstrong. His mother, carrying a small dog, was on his arm, and, as sheemerged before the eyes that watched for her, she was smiling again atsomething that Eddy had said to her. Then her eyes found them, Jack andImogen, so near now, sentinels before the old life, that her smile, heraspect, her very loveliness, seemed to menace, and Jack felt that shecaught a new gravity from the stern gentleness of Imogen's gaze; thatshe adjusted her features to meet it; that, with a little shock, sherecognized the traces of weeping on her daughter's face and saw, in his ownintentionally hardened look, that she had tuned herself to a wrong pitchand had been, all unconsciously, jarring. 

He couldn't but own that her readjustment, if readjustment it was, was verybeautifully done. Tears rose in her eyes, too. He saw, as she neared them, that her face was pale and weary; it looked ever so gently, ever so sadly, perhaps almost timidly, at her daughter, and as she came to them she putout her hand to Imogen, laid hold on her and held her without speakingwhile they all moved away together. 

The tears of quick sympathy had risen to Jack's own eyes and he stood apartwhile the mother and daughter kissed. After that, and when they had goneon a little before him and Eddy, Mrs. Upton turned to him, and if shereadjusted herself she didn't, as it were, retract, for the smile againrested on him while Eddy presented him to her. He saw then that she hadsuffered, though with a suffering different from any that he would havethought of as obvious. How or what she had suffered he could not tell, butthe pale, weary features, for all their smile, reassured him. She wasn't, at all events, a heartless, a flippant woman. 

Eddy and Mrs. Upton's maid remained behind to do battle with thecustom-house, and Jack, with Imogen and her mother, got into the capaciouscab that was waiting for them. 

The streets in this mean quarter were deep in mud. The snow everywhere hadbeen trampled into liquid blackness, and the gaunt horses that gallopedalong the wharfs dragging noisy vans and carts were splashed all over. Itmight have been some sordid quarter of an Italian town that they drovethrough, so oddly foreign were the disheveled houses, their predominantcolor a heavy, glaring red. Men in white uniforms were shoveling snow fromthe pavements. The many negro countenances in the hurrying crowds showedblue tints in the bitter air. Coming suddenly to a wide, mean avenue, whenthe carriage lurched and swayed on the street-car tracks, they heard, mingled in an inconceivably ugly uproar, the crash and whine of thecable-cars about them, and the thunder of the elevated-railway above theirheads. 

Jack, sensitive to others' impressions, wondered if this tumultuousugliness made more dreary to Mrs. Upton the dreary circumstances of herhome-coming. There was no mitigation of dreariness to be hoped for fromImogen, who was probably absorbed in her own bitter reflections. She gazedsteadily out of the window, replying only with quiet monosyllables to hermother's tentative questions; her face keeping its look of endurance. Onecould infer from it that had she not so controlled herself she must havewept, and sitting before the mother and daughter Jack felt much awkwardnessin his position. If their meeting were not to be one with more conventionalsurface he really ought not to have been invited to share it. Imogen, poordarling, had all his sympathy; she hadn't reckoned with the difficulties;she hadn't reckoned with that hurting smile, with the sharp reawakening ofthe vicarious sense of wrong; but, all the same, before her look, hersilence, he could but feel for her mother, and feel, too, a keenerdiscomfort from the fact that his inopportune presence must make Mrs. Upton's discomfort the greater. 

Mrs. Upton stroked her tiny dog, who, fulfilling all Jack's conceptions ofcostly frivolity, was wrapped in a well-cut coat, in spite of which he wasshivering, from excitement as much as from cold, and her bright, soft gazewent from him to Imogen. She didn't acquiesce for long in the silence. Leaning forward to him presently she began to ask him questions aboutBoston, the dear old great-aunt; to make comments, some reminiscent, some interrogative, upon the scenes they passed through; to lead him sotactfully into talk that he found himself answering and assenting almostas fluently as if Imogen in her corner had not kept those large, sad eyesfixed on the passing houses. So mercifully did her interest and her easelift him from discomfort that, with a sharp twinge of self-reproach, hemore than once asked himself if Imogen found something a little disloyalin his willingness to be helped. One couldn't, all the same, remain atthe dreadful depth where her silence plunged them; such depths were toointimate. Mrs. Upton had felt that. It was because she was not intimatethat she smiled upon him; it was because she intended to hold them bothfirmly on the surface that she was so kind. He watched her face withwonder, and a little fear, for which he was angry with himself. He notedthe three _grains de beauté_ and the smile that seemed to break high onher cheek, in a small nick, like that on the cheek of a Japanese doll. She frightened him, made him feel shy, yet made him feel at ease, too, as though her own were contagious; and his impression of her was softlypermeated with the breath of violets. Jack disapproved of perfumes; but hereally couldn't tell whether it wasn't Mrs. Upton's gaze only, the sweetoddity of her smile, that, by some trick of association, suggested thefaint haze of fragrance. 

They reached the long, far sweep of Fifth Avenue, piled high withsnow--dazzling in white, blue, gold--on either side, and they turnedpresently into a street of brownstone houses, houses pleasant, peaceful, with an air of happy domesticity. 

Mrs. Upton's eyes, while the cab advanced with many jolts among the heapsof snow, fixed themselves on one of these houses, and Jack fancied that hesaw in her glance a whole army of alarmed memories forcibly beaten back. Here she had come as a bride and from here, not three weeks ago, her deadhusband had gone with only his children beside him. Now, if ever, sheshould feel remorse. Whether she did or not he could not tell, but the eyeswith which she greeted her old home were not happy. 

Imogen, as they alighted, spoke at last, asking him to stay to lunch. Herecognized magnanimity in her glance. He had seemed to ignore her hurt, andshe forgave him, understanding his helplessness. But though her motherseconded her invitation with, "Do, you must be so tired and hungry, afterall these hours, " Jack excused himself. Already he thought, a woman withsuch a manner as Mrs. Upton's--if manner were indeed the word for such agliding simplicity--must wonder what in the name of heaven he did there. She was simple, she was gliding; but she was not near. 

"May I come in soon and see you?" he said to Imogen while they paused atthe foot of the stone steps. And, with at last her own smile, sad butsweet, for him, she answered, "As soon as you will, dear Jack. You know howmuch of strength and comfort you mean to me. "

V

Jack, however, did not go for three or four days, giving them plenty oftime, as he told himself, to get used to each other's excesses or lacks ofgrief. And as he waited for Imogen in the long drawing-room that had beenthe setting of so many of their communings, he wondered what adjustment themother and daughter had come to. 

The aspect of the drawing-room was unchanged; changelessness had alwaysbeen for him its characteristic mark; in essentials, he felt sure, it hadnot changed since the days of old Mrs. Upton, the present Mrs. Upton's longdeceased mother-in-law. Only a touch here and there showed the passage oftime. It was continuous with the dining-room, so that it was but one longroom that crossed all the depth of the house, tall windows at the back, heavily draped, echoing dimly the windows of the front that looked outupon the snowy, glittering street. The inner half could be shut away byfolding-doors, and its highly polished sideboard, chairs, table, a silverépergne towering upon it, glimmered in a dusky element that relegatedit, when not illuminated for use, to a mere ghostly decorativeness. By contrast, the drawing-room was vivid. Its fringed and buttonedfurniture, --crimson brocade set in a dark carved wood, the dangling lustersof the huge chandelier, the elaborate Sèvres vases on the mantelpiece, flanking a bronze clock portentously gloomy, expressed old Mrs. Upton'srichly solid ideals; but these permanent uglinesses distressed Jack lessthan the pompous and complacent taste of the later additions. A pretentiouscabinet of late Italian Renaissance work stood in a corner; the dark marblemantelpiece, that looked like a sarcophagus, was incongruously draped withan embroidered Italian cope, and a pseudo-Correggio Madonna, encompassedwith a wilderness of gilt frame, smiled a pseudo-smile from the embossedpaper of the walls. It was one of Jack's little trials to hear Imogen referto this trophy with placid conviction. 

Yet, for all its solemn stupidity, the room was not altogether unpleasing;it signified something, were it only an indifference to fashion, It was, funnily, almost Spartan, for all the carving, the cushioning, the crimson, so little concession did it make to other people's standards or to small, happy minor uses. Mr. Upton and his daughter had not changed it becausethey had other things to think of; and they thought of these things not inthe drawing-room but in the large library up-stairs. There one could findthe personal touches, that, but for the cope, the cabinet, the Correggio, were lacking below. There the many photographs from the Italian primitives, the many gracious Donatello and Delia Robbia bas-reliefs, expressedsomething of Imogen, too, though Jack always felt that Imogen's esthetic;side expressed what was not very essential in her. 

While he waited now, he had paused at last before two portraits. He hadoften so paused while waiting for Imogen. To-night it was with a newcuriosity. 

They hung opposite the Correggio and on either side of the great mirrorthat rose from the mantelpiece to the cornice. One was of a young mandressed in the fashion of twenty-five years before, dressed with a ratherself-conscious negligence. He was pale, earnest, handsome, though his nosewas too small and his eyes too large. A touch of the histrionic was inhis attitude, in his dark hair, tossed carelessly, in the unnecessarilyweighty and steady look of his dark eyes, even in the slight smile ofhis firm, full lips, a smile too well-adapted, as it were, to the needsof any interlocutor. Beneath his arm was a book; a long, distinguishedhand hanging slackly. Jack turned away with a familiar impatience. Intwenty-five years Mr. Upton had changed very little. It was much the sameface that he had known; in especial, the slack, self-conscious hand, thesmile--always so much more for himself than for you--were familiar. Thehand, the necktie, the smile, so deep, so dark, so empty, were all, Jackwas inclined to suspect, that there had ever been of Mr. Upton. 

The other portrait, painted with the sleek convention of that earlierepoch, was of a woman in a ball-dress. The portrait was by a French masterand under his brush the sitter had taken on the look of a Feuillet heroine. She was gay, languid, sentimental, and extraordinarily pretty. Her hair wasdressed in a bygone fashion, drawn smoothly up from the little ears, coiledhigh and falling across her forehead in a light, straight fringe. Herwonderful white shoulders rose from a wonderfully low white bodice; abracelet of emeralds was on her arm, a spray of jasmine in her fingers;she was evidently a girl, yet in her apparel was a delicate splendor, inher gaze a candid assurance, that marked her as an American girl. And sheexpressed charmingly, with sincerity as it were, a frivolous convention. This was Miss Cray, a year or so before her marriage with Mr. Upton. Theportrait had been painted in Paris, where, orphaned, lovely, but notlargely dowered, she had, under the wing of an aunt domiciled in Francefor many years and bearing one of its oldest names, failed to make thebrilliant match that had been hoped for her. This touch of France ingirlhood echoed an earlier impress. Imogen had told him that her motherhad been educated for some years in a French convent, deposited thereby pleasure-loving parents during European wanderings, and Imogen hadintimated that her mother's frequent returns to her native land had neverquite effaced alien and regrettable points of view. Before this portrait, Jack was accustomed, not to impatience, but to a gaze of rather ironiccomprehension. It had always explained to him so much. But to-night hefound himself looking at it with an intentness in which was a touchedcuriosity; in which, also, and once more he was vexed with himself forfeeling it, was an anxiety, almost a fear. Of course it hadn't been like, even then, he was surer than ever of that to-night, with his memory of thepale face smiling down at him and at Imogen from the deck of the greatsteamer. The painter had seen the mask only; even then there had been moreto see. And sure, as he had never been before, of all that there must havebeen besides to see, he wondered with a new wonder how she had come tomarry Mr. Upton. 

He glanced back at him. Handsome? Yes. Distinguished? Yes; there was notrace of the shoddy in his spiritual histrionics. He had been fired bylove, no doubt, far beyond his own chill complacency. Such a butterflygirl, falling with, perhaps, bruised wings from the high, hard glare ofworldly ambitions, more of others for her than her own for herself--of thathe felt, also quite newly sure to-night--such a girl had thought Mr. Upton, no doubt, a very noble creature and herself happy and fortunate. And shehad been very young. 

He was still looking up at Miss Cray when Imogen came in. He felt sure, from his first glance at her, that nothing had happened, during theinterval of his abstention, to deepen her distress. In her falling andfolding black she was serene and the look of untroubled force he knew sowell was in her eyes. She had taken the measure of the grown-up butterflyand found it easy of management. He felt with relief that the mother couldhave threatened none of the things they held dear. And, indeed, in hisimagination, her spirit seemed to flutter over them in the solid, solemnroom, reassuring through its very lightness and purposelessness. 

"I am so glad to see you, " Imogen said, after she had shaken his hand andthey had seated themselves on the sofa that stretched along the wall underthe Correggio. "I have been sorry about the other day. "

"Oh!" he answered vaguely, not quite sure for what the regret was. 

"I ought to have mastered myself; been more able to play the trivial part, as you did; that was such real kindness in you, Jack, dear. I couldn't havepretended gaiety, but I didn't intend to cast a gloom. It only became that, I suppose, when I was--so hurt. "

He understood now. "By there not being gloom enough?"

"If you like to put it so. To see her smile like that!"

Jack was sorry for her, yet, at the same time, sorry for the butterfly. 

"Yes, I know how you must have felt. But, it was natural, you know. Onesmiles involuntarily at a meeting, however sad its background. I believethat _you_ would have smiled if she hadn't. "

Imogen's clear eyes were upon him while he thus shared with her his senseof mitigations and she answered without a pause: "Yes, I could have smiledat her. That would have been different. "

"You mean--that you had a right to smile?"

"I can't see how she _could_, " said Imogen in a low voice, not answeringhis question; thinking, probably, that it answered itself. And she went on:"I was ready, you know, to help her to bear it all, with my whole strength;but, and it is that that still hurts me so, she doesn't seem to know thatshe needs help. She doesn't seem to be bearing anything. "

Jack was silent, feeling here that they skirted too closely ground uponwhich, with Imogen, he never ventured. He had brought from his study of theportraits a keener sense of how much Mrs. Upton had to bear no longer. 

"But, " Imogen continued, oddly echoing his own sense of deeper insights, "Ialready understand her so much better than I've ever done. I've never comeso near. Never seen so clearly how little there is to see. She's stillessentially that, you know, " and she pointed to the French portrait that, with softly, prettily mournful eyes, gazed out at them. 

"The butterfly thing, " Jack suggested rather than acquiesced. 

"The butterfly thing, " she accepted. 

But Jack went on: "Not only that, though. There is, I'm very sure, more tosee. She is so--so sensible. "

"Sensible?" again Imogen accepted. "Well, isn't that portrait sensible?Doesn't that lovely, luxurious girl see and want all the happy, the easythings of life? It is sensible, of course, clearly to know what they are, and firmly to make for them. That's just what I recognize now in her, thatall she wants is to make things easy, to _glisser_. "

"Yes, I can believe that, " he murmured, a little dazed by her cleardecisiveness; he often felt Imogen to be so much more clear-sighted, somuch more clever than himself when it came to judgments and insights, thathe could only at the moment acquiesce, through helplessness. "I supposethat is the essential--the desire of ease. "

"And it hurts you that I should be able to see it, to say it, of mymother. " Her eyes, with no hardness, no reproach, probed him, too. Shealmost made him feel unworthy of the trust she showed him. 

"No, " he said, smiling at her, "because I know that it's only to a friendwho so understands you, who so cares for all that comes into your life. "

"Only to such a friend, indeed, " she returned gently. 

"Have they been hard, these days?" he asked her, atoning to himself for themomentary shrinking that she had detected. 

"Yes, they have, " she answered, "and the more so from my seeing all herefforts to keep them soft; as if it was ease _I_ wanted! But I have facedit all. "

"What else has there been to face?"

She said nothing for some moments, looking at him with a thoughtfulopenness that, he felt, was almost marital in its sharing of silence. 

"She's against everything, everything, " she said at last. 

"You mean in the way we feared?--that she'll try to change things?"

"She'll not seem to try. She'll seem to accept. But she's against mycountry; against my life; against me. "

"Well, if she accepts, or seems to, that will make it easy for you. Therewill be nothing to fight, to oppose. "

"Don't use her word, Jack. She will make it easy on the surface; but it'sthat that will be so hard for me to bear; the surface ease over the hiddendiscord. "

"You may resolve the discord. Give her time to grow her roots. How can youexpect anything but effort now, in this soil that she can't but associatewith mistakes and sorrows?"

"The mistakes and sorrows were in her, not in the soil, " said Imogen; "butdon't think that though I find it hard, I don't face it; don't think thatthrough it all I haven't my faith. That is just what I am going to do: giveher time, and help her to grow with all the strength and love there is inme. "

Something naughty, something rebellious and dissatisfied in him was vaguelystirring and muttering; he feared that she might see into him again andgive it a name, although he could only have given it the old name ofa humorous impatience with her assured rightness. Really, she was soover-right that she almost irked and irritated him, dear and beloved as shewas. One could only call it over-rightness, for wasn't what she said thesimple truth, just as he had always seen it, just as she had always knownthat, with her, he saw it? She had this queer, light burden suddenly on herhands, so much more of a burden for being so light, and if her own weightand wisdom became a little too emphatic in dealing with it, how could hereproach her? He didn't reproach her, of course; but he was afraid lest sheshould see that he found her, well, a little funny. 

"What does she do with herself?" he asked, turning hastily from hisconsciousness of amusement. 

Imogen's pearly face, bent on him with such confidence, made him, oncemore, ashamed of himself. 

"She has seen a good many of her friends. We have had quite a stream offashionable, furbelowed dames trooping up the steps; very few of thempeople that papa and I cared to keep in touch with; you know his dislikefor the merely pleasure-seeking side of life. And she has seen the dearDelancy Pottses, too, and was very nice to them, one of the cases ofseeming to accept; I saw well enough that they were no more to her thanquaint insects she must do her duty by. And she has been very busy withbusiness, closeted every day with Mr. Haliwell. And she takes a walk withme when I can spare the time, and for the rest of the day she sits in herroom dressed in a wonderful tea-gown and reads French memoirs, just as sheused always to do. "

Jack was smiling, amused, now, in no way that needed hiding, by her smoothflow of description. "You must take her down to the girls' club some day, "he suggested, "and to see your cripples and all the rest of it. Get herinterested, you know; give her something else to think of besides Frenchmemoirs. "

"Indeed, I'm going to try to. Though among my girls I'm not sure that shewould be a very wise experiment. Such an _ondulée_, _parfumée_, polished person with such fashionable mourning would be, perhaps, a littleresented. "

"You dress very charmingly, yourself, my dear Imogen. "

"Oh, but quite differently. Mamma's is fashion at its very flower of subtlediscretion. My clothes, why, they are of any time you will. " She sweptaside her wing-like sleeves to show the Madonna-like lines of her dress. "Afactory girl could wear just the same shape if she wanted to. "

"And she doesn't want to, foolish girl? She wants to wear your mother'skind instead?"

"She would dimly recognize it as the unattainable perfection of what shewants. It would pierce. "

"Make for envy, you think?"

"Well, I can't see that she would do them any _good_, " said Imogen, nowaltogether in her lighter, happier mood, "but since they may do _her_ goodI must, I think, take her there some day. "

"And am I to do her some good? Am I to see her to-night?" Jack asked, feeling that though her humor a little jarred on him he could do nothingbetter than echo it. Imogen, now, had one of her frankest, prettiest looks. 

"Do you know, she is almost too discreet, poor dear, " she said. "She wantsme to see that she perfectly understands and sympathizes with the Americanfreedom as to friendships between men and women, so that she vacatesthe drawing-room for my people just as a farmer's wife would do for herdaughter's young men. She hasn't asked me even a question about you, Jack!"

Her gaiety so lifted and warmed him that he was prompted to say that Mrs. Upton would have to, very soon, if the answer to a certain question that hewanted to ask Imogen were what he hoped for. But the jocund atmosphere oftheir talk seemed unfit for such a grave allusion and he repressed thesally. 

VI

When Jack went away, after tea, Imogen remained sitting on the sofa, looking up from time to time at the two portraits, while thoughts, quietand mournful, but not distressing, passed through her mind. An interviewwith Jack usually left her lapped about with a warm sense of security; shecouldn't feel desolate, even with the greatness of her loss so upon her, when such devotion surrounded her. One deep need of her was gone, butanother was there. Life, as she felt it, would have little meaning for herif it had not brought to her deep needs that she, and she alone, couldsatisfy. With Jack's devotion and Jack's need to sustain her, it wasn'tdifficult to bear with a butterfly. One had only to stand serenely in one'splace and watch it hover. It was, after all, as if she had strung herselfto an attitude of strength only to find that no weight was to come crushingdown upon her. The pain was that of feeling her mother so light. 

"Poor papa, " Imogen murmured more than once, as she gazed up into thesteady eyes; "what a fate it was for you--to be hurt all your life by abutterfly. " But he had been far, far too big to let it spoil anything. Heturned all pain to spiritual uses. What sorrow there was had always been, most of all, for her. 

And then--and here was the balm that had perfumed all her grief withits sacred aroma--she, Imogen, had been there to fill the emptiness forhim. She had always been there, it seemed to her, as, in her quiet, sadretrospect, she looked back, now, to the very beginnings of consciousness. From the first she had felt that her place was by his side; that, togetherthey stood for something and against somebody. In this very room, sounchanged--she could even remember the same dull thump of the bronze clock, the blazing fire, the crimson curtains drawn on a snowy street, --hadhappened the earliest of the episodes that her memory recalled as havingso placed her, so defined her attitude, even for her almost babyishapprehension. She had brought down her dolls from her nursery, after tea, and ranged them on the sofa, while her father walked up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, his head thrown back, reciting something tohimself, some poem, or stately fragment of antique oratory. He paused nowand then as he passed her and laid his hand upon her head and smiled downat her. Then the lovely lady of the portrait, --just like the portraitin Imogen's recollection, --had come, all in white, with wonderful whiteshoulders, holding a fan and long white gloves in her hand, and, lookinground from her dolls, small Imogen had known in a moment that displeasurewas in the air. "You are not dressed!" Those had been her mother's firstwords as she paused on the threshold; and then, echoing her father's wordswith amazement and anger, "You are not coming!"

The dialogue that followed, vivid on her mother's side as sparks struckfrom steel, mild as milk on her father's, had been lost upon her; butthrough it all she had felt that he must be right, in his gentleness, andthat she, in her vividness, must be wrong. She felt that for herself, evenbefore, turning as if from an unseemly contest, her father said, lookingdown at her with a smile that had a twinge of tension, "_You_ would rathergo and see sick and sorry people who wanted you, than the selfish, thefoolish, the overfed, --wouldn't you, beautiful little one?"

She had answered quickly, "Yes, papa, " and had kept her eyes on him, notlooking at her mother, knowing in her childish soul that in so answering, so looking, she shared some triumph with him. 

"I'll say you're suddenly ill, then?" had come her mother's voice, but witha deadened note, as though she knew herself defeated. 

"Lie? No. I must ask you, Valerie, never to lie for me. Say the truth, thatI must go to a friend who needs me; the truth won't hurt them. "

"But it's unbelievable, your breaking a dinner engagement, at the lasthour, for such a reason, " the wife had said. 

"Unbelievable, I've no doubt, to the foolish, the selfish, the over-fed. Social conventions and social ideals will always go down for me, Valerie, before realities, such realities as brotherhood and the need of a lonelyhuman soul. "

While he spoke he had lifted, gently, Imogen's long, fair curls, andsmoothed her head, his eyes still holding her eyes, and when her motherturned sharply and swept out of the room, the sense of united triumphhad made him bend down to her and made her stretch her arms tip to him, so that, in their long embrace, he seemed to consecrate her to those"realities" that the pretty, foolish mother flouted. That had been herinitiation and her consecration. 

After that, it could not have been many years after, though she had broughtto it a far more understanding observation, the next scene that came up forher was a wrangle at lunch one day, over the Delancy Pottses--if wrangle itcould be called when one was so light and the other so softly stern. Imogenby this time had been old enough to know for what the Pottses counted. Theywere discoveries of her father's, Mr. Potts a valuable henchman in thatfight for realities to which her father's life was dedicated. Mr. Pottswrote articles in ethical reviews about her father's books--they neverseemed to be noticed anywhere else--and about his many projects for reformand philanthropy. Both he and Mrs. Potts adored her father. He lent them, indeed, all their significance; they were there, as it were, only forthe purpose of crystallizing around his magnetic center. And of thesegood people her mother had said, in her crisp, merry voice, "I hate'em, "--disposing of the whole question of value, flipping the Pottses awayinto space, as it were, and separating herself from any interest in them. Even then little Imogen had comprehendingly shared her father's stillindignation for such levity. Hate the excellent Pottses, who wrote sobeautifully of her father's books, so worshiped all that he was and did, so tenderly cherished her small self? Imogen felt the old reprobation assharply as ever, though the Pottses had become, to her mature insight, rather burdensome, the poor, good, dull, pretentious dears, and would bemore so, now that their only brilliant function, that of punctually, coruscatingly, and in the public press, adoring her father, had been takenfrom them. One need have no illusion as to the quality of their note;it lacked distinction, serving only, in its unmodulated vehemence, thedrum-like purpose of calling attention to great matters, of reverberating, so one hoped, through lethargic consciousness. 

But Imogen loved the Pottses, so she told herself. To be sure of lovingthe Pottses was a sort of pulse by which one tested one's moral health. She still went religiously at least twice in every winter to theirreceptions--funny, funny affairs, she had to own it--with a kindly smileand a pleasant sense of benign onlooking at oddity. One met there younggirls dressed in the strangest ways and affecting the manners of buddingMargaret Fullers--young writers or musicians or social workers, and funnyfrowsy, solemn young men who talked, usually with defective accents, aboutsocialism and the larger life over ample platefuls of ice-cream. Sweetnessand light, as Mrs. Potts told Imogen, was the note she tried for in herreunions, and high endeavor and brotherly love. 

Mrs. Potts was a small, stout woman, who held herself very straight indeed;her hands, on festive occasions, folded on a lace handkerchief before her. She had smooth, black hair, parted and coiled behind, and a fat face, palefawn-color in tint, encompassing with waste of cheek and chin such a smallgroup of features--the small, straight nose, the small, sharp eyes, thesmall, smiling mouth--all placed too high, and spanned, held together, asit were, by a _pince-nez_ firmly planted, like a bow-shaped ornamentpinning a cluster of minute trinkets on a large cushion. 

Mr. Delancy Potts was tall, limp, blond, and, from years of only dubiousrecognition, rather querulous. He had a solemn eye under a fringe ofwhitened eyebrow, a long nose, that his wife often fondly alluded to as"aristocratic" (they were keen on "blood, " the Delancy Pottses), and a veryretreating chin that one saw sometimes in disastrous silhouette against thelight. Draped in the flowing fullness of hair and beard, his face showed apseudo-dignity. 

Imogen saw the Pottses with a very candid eye, and her mind drifted fromthat distant disposal of them to the contrast of the recent meeting, recalling their gestures and postures as they sat, with an uneasyassumption of ease, before her mother, of whom, for so many years, they haddisapproved more, almost, than they disapproved of municipal corruption and"the smart set. " As onlooker she had been forced to own that her mother'smanner toward them had been quite perfect. She had accepted them as herhusband's mourners; had accepted them as Imogen's friends; had, indeed, sothoroughly accepted them, in whatever capacity they were offered to her, that Imogen felt that a slight enlightenment would be necessary, and thather mother must be made to feel that her own, even her father's acceptanceof the Pottses, had had always its reservations. 

And some acceptances, some atonements, came too late. The Pottses had notbeen the only members of the little circle gathered about her father whohad called forth her mother's wounding levity. She had taken refuge on manyother occasions in the half-playful, half-decisive, "I hate 'em, " as ifto throw up the final barrier of her own perversity before pursuit. Notthat she hadn't been decent enough in her actual treatment, it was ratherthat she would never take the Pottses, or any of the others--oddities sheevidently considered them-seriously; it was, most of all, that she wouldnever let them come near enough to try to take her seriously. She heldherself aloof, not disdainful, but indifferently gay, from her father'sinstruments, her father's friends, her father's aims. 

Later on, as Imogen grew into girlhood, her mother lost most of the gaietyand all of the levity. Imogen guessed that storms, more violent than anyshe was allowed to witness, intervened between young rebellion and thecautious peace, the hostility that no longer laughed and no longer lostits temper, but that, quiet, kind, observant, went its own way, leavingher father to go his. The last memory that came up for her was of what hadfollowed such a storm. It seemed to mark an epoch, to close the chapter ofstruggle and initiate that of acceptance. What the contest had been shenever knew, but she remembered in every detail its sequel, remembered lyingin bed in her placid, fire-lit room and hearing in her mother's room nexthers the sound of violent sobbing. 

Imogen had felt, while she listened, a vague, alarmed pity, a pitymingled with condemnation. Her father never lost his self-control and hadtaught her that to do so was selfish; so that, as she listened to theundisciplined grief, and thought that it might be well for her to go in toher mother and console her, she thought, too, of the line that, tenderly, she would say to her--for Imogen, now, was fourteen years old, with anexcellent taste in poetry:

 "The gods approve The depth, but not the tumult, of the soul. "

It was a line her father often quoted to her and she always thought of himwhen she thought of it. 

But, just as she was rising to go on this errand of mercy, her fatherhimself had come in. He sat down in silence by her bed and put out his handto hers and then she seemed to understand all from the very contrast thathis silence made. The sobs they listened to were those of a passionate, apunished child, of a child, too, who could use unchildlike weapons, couldcut, could pierce; she must not leave her father to go to it. After alittle while the sobs were still and, as her father, without speaking, saton, stroking her hair and hand, the door softly opened and her mother camein. Imogen could see her, in her long white dressing-gown, with her widebraids falling on either side, all the traces of weeping carefully effaced. She often came in so to kiss Imogen good-night, gently, and with a slighttouch of shyness, as though she knew herself shut away from the innerchamber of the child's heart, and the moment was their tenderest, forImogen, understanding, though powerless to respond, never felt so sorryor so fond as then. But to-night her mother, seeing them there togetherhand in hand, seeing that they must have listened to her own intemperategrief, --their eyes gravely, unitedly judging her told her that, --seeingthat her husband, as at the very beginning, had found at once his ally, drew back quickly and went away without a word. Whatever the cause ofcontest, Imogen knew that in this silent confrontation of each other in herpresence was the final severance. After that her mother had acquiesced. 

She acquiesced, but she yielded nothing, confessed nothing. One couldn'ttell whether she, too, judged, but one suspected it, and the dim senseof an alien standard placed over against them more and more closely drewImogen and her father together for mutual sustainment. If, however, hermother judged, she never expressed judgment; and if she felt the need ofsustainment, she never claimed it. It would, indeed, have been ratherfruitless to claim it from the fourth member of the family group. Eddyseemed so little to belong to the group. As far as he went, to be sure, he went always with her and against his father, but then Eddy never wentfar enough to form any sort of a bulwark. A cheerful, smiling, hard youngpagan, Eddy, frankly bored by his father, coolly fond of his mother, avoiding the one, but capable of little effective demonstration toward theother. Eddy liked achievement, exactitude, a serene, smiling outlook, andwas happily absorbed in his own interests. 

So it had all gone on, --Imogen traced it, sitting there in her quietcorner, holding balances in fair, firm hands, --her mother drifting into aplace of mere conventionality in the family life; and Imogen, even now, could not see quite clearly whether it had been she who had judged andabandoned her husband, or he who had judged and put her aside. In eithercase she could sum it up, her eyes lifted once more to the portrait'ssteady eyes, with, "Poor, wonderful papa. "

He was gone, the dear, the wonderful one, and she was left single-handedto carry on his work. What this work was loomed largely, though vaguely, for her. The three slender volumes, literary and ethical, were the onlypermanent testament that her father had given to the world; and dealing, asin the main they did, with ultimate problems, their keynote an illumineddemocracy that saw in most of the results as yet achieved by his country abase travesty of the doctrine, the largeness of their grasp was perhaps atrifle loose. Imogen did not see it. Her appreciation was more of aims thanof achievements; but she felt that her father's writings were the body, only, of his message; its spirit lived--lived in herself and in all thosewith whom he had come in fruitful--contact. It was to hand on the meaningof that spirit that she felt herself dedicated. Perfect, unflinching truth;the unfaltering bearing witness to all men of his conception of right;the seeing of her own personality as but an instrument in the service ofgood--these were the chief words of the gospel. Life in its realest sensemeant only this dedication. To serve, to love, to be the truth. Her eyeson her father's pictured eyes, Imogen smiled into them, promising him andherself that she would not fail. 

VII

It was in the library next morning that Valerie asked Imogen to join her, and the girl, who had come into the room with her light, soft step, pausedto kiss her mother's forehead before going to the opposite seat. 

"Deep in ways and means, mamma dear?" she asked her. "Why, you are quitea business woman. " "Quite, " Valerie replied. "I have been going overthings with Mr. Haliwell, you know. " She smiled thoughtfully at Imogen, preoccupied, as the girl could see, by what she had to say. 

Imogen was slightly ruffled by the flavor of assurance that she felt inher mother, as of someone who, after gently and vaguely fumbling about fora clue to her own meaning in new conditions, had suddenly found somethingto which she held very firmly. Imogen was rejoiced for her that sheshould find a field of real usefulness-were it only that of housekeepingand seeing to weekly bills; but there was certainly a touch of theinappropriate, perhaps of the grotesque, in any assumption on her mother'spart of maturity and competence. She therefore smiled back at her withmuch the same tolerantly interested smile that a parent might bestow on achild's brick-building of a castle. 

"I'm so glad that you have that to give yourself to, mama dear, " she said. "You shall most certainly be our business woman and add figures and keepan eye on investment to your heart's content. I know absolutely nothing ofthe technical side of money--I've thought of it only as an instrument, aresponsibility, a power given me in trust for others. "

Valerie, whose warmth of tint and softness of outline seemed dimmed andsharpened, as though by a controlled anxiety, glanced at her daughter, gravely and a little timidly. And as, in silence, she lightly dotted herpen over the paper under her hand, uncertain, apparently, with what wordsto approach the subject, it was Imogen, again, who spoke, kindly, but witha touch of impatience. 

"We mustn't be too long over our talk, dear. I must meet Miss Bocock attwelve. "

"Miss Bocock?" Valerie was vague. "Have I met her?"

"Not yet. She is a _protégée_ of mine--English--a Newnham woman--afolk-lorist. I heard of her from some Boston friends, read her books, andinduced her to come over and lecture to us this winter. We are arrangingabout the lectures now. I've got up a big class for her--when I say 'I, ' Imean, of course, with the help of all my dear, good friends who are alwaysso ready to back me up in my undertakings. She is an immensely interestingwoman; ugly, dresses tastelessly; but one doesn't think of that when one islistening to her. She has a wonderful mind; strong, disciplined, stimulating. I'm very happy that I've been able to give America to her andher to America. "

"She must be very interesting, " said Valerie. "I shall like hearing her. Wewill get through our business as soon as possible so that you may keep yourappointment. " And now, after this digression, she seemed to find it easierto plunge. "You knew that your father had left very little money, Imogen. "

Imogen, her hands lightly folded in her lap, sat across the table, all mildattention. 

"No, I didn't, mama. We never talked about money, he and I. "

"No; still--you spent it. "

"Papa considered himself only a steward for what he had. He used his money, he did not hoard it, mama dear. Indeed, I know that his feeling againstaccumulations of capital, against all private property, unless used for thebenefit of all, was very strong. "

"Yes, " said Valerie, after a slight pause, in which she did not raise hereyes from the paper where her pen now drew a few neat lines. "Yes. Buthe has left very little for Eddy, very little for you; it was that I wasthinking of. "

At this Imogen's face from gentle grew very grave. 

"Mama dear, I don't think that you and papa would have agreed about theupbringing of a man. You have the European standpoint; we don't hold withthat over here. We believe in equipping the man, giving him power forindependence, and we expect him to make his own way. Papa would rather havehad Eddy work on the roads for his bread than turn him into a _fainéant_. "

Valerie drew her lines into a square before saying, "I, you know, with Mr. Haliwell, am one of your trustees. He tells me that your father gave you agreat deal. "

"Whatever I asked. He had perfect trust in me. Our aims were the same. "

"And how did you spend it? Don't imagine that I'm finding fault. "

"Oh, I know that you couldn't well do that!" said Imogen with a smile alittle bitter. "I spent very little on myself. " And she continued, withsomewhat the manner of humoring an exacting child: "You see, I helped agreat many people; I sent two girls to college; I sent a boy--such a dear, fine boy--for three years' art-study in Paris; he is getting on so well. There is my girls' club on the East side, my girls' club in Vermont; thereis the Crippled Children's Home, --quite numberless charities I'm interestedin. It's been one thing after another, money has not lacked, --but time has, to answer all the claims upon me. And then, " here Imogen smiled again, "I believe in the claims of the self, too, when they are disciplinedand harmonized into a larger experience. There has been music to keepup; friends to see and to make things nice for; flowers to send to sickfriends; concerts to send poor friends to; dinners and lunches to give sothat friends may meet--all the thousand and one little things that a large, rich life demands of one. "

"Yes, yes, " said Valerie, who had nodded at intervals during the list. "I quite see all that. You are a dear, generous child and love to givepleasure; and your father refused you nothing. It's my fault, too. My moremercenary mind should have been near to keep watch. Because, as a, result, there's very little, dear, very, very little. "

"Oh, your being here would not have changed our ideas as to the right wayto spend money, mama. Don't blame yourself for that. We should have bled_you_, too!"

"Oh, no, you wouldn't, " Valerie said quickly. "I've too much of theinstinctive, selfish mother-thing in me to have allowed myself to be bledfor cripples and clubs and artistic boys. I don't care about them a bitcompared to you and Eddy. But this is all beside the mark. The question nowis, What are we to do? Because that generous, expensive life of yours hascome to an end, for the present at all events. "

Imogen at this sat silent for some moments, fixing eyes of deep, andsomewhat confused, cogitation upon her mother's face. 

"Why--but--I supposed that you _had_ minded for Eddy and me, mama, " shesaid at last. 

"I have very little money, Imogen. "

Imogen hesitated, blushing a little, before saying, "Surely you were quiterich when papa married you. "

"Hardly rich; but, yes, quite well off. "

"And you spent it all--on yourself?"

Valerie's color, too, had faintly risen. "Not so much on myself, Imogen, though I wish now that I had been more economical; but I was ignorantof your father's rather reckless expenditure. In the first years of mymarriage, before the selfish mother-thing was developed in me, I handed agood deal of my capital over to him, for his work, his various projects; inorder to leave him as free for these projects as possible, I educated youand Eddy--that, too, came out of my capital. And the building of the housein Vermont swallowed a good deal of money. "

Imogen's blush had deepened. "Of course, " she said, "there is no morereckless expenditure possible--since you use the term, mama--than keepingup two establishments for one family; that, of course, was your own choice. But, putting that aside, you must surely, still, have a good deal left. Seehow you live; see how you are taken care of, with a maid, --I've never hada maid, papa, as you know, thought them self-indulgences, --see how youdress, " she cast a glance upon the refinements of her mother's black. 

"How I dress, my child! May I ask what that dress you have on cost you?"

"I believe only in getting the best. This, for the best, was inexpensive. One hundred dollars. "

"Twenty pounds, " Valerie translated, as if to impress the sum more fully onher mind. "I know that clothes over here are ruinous. Now mine cost onlyeight pounds and was made by a very little woman in London. "

Imogen cast another glance, now of some helpless wonder, at the dress. 

"Of course you are so clever about such things; I shouldn't wish to spendmy thought--and I couldn't spend my time--on clothes. And then the standardof wages is so scandalously low in Europe; I confess that I would rathernot profit by it. "

"I am a very economical woman, Imogen, " said Valerie, with some brisknessof utterance. "My cottage in Surrey costs me fifty pounds a year. I keeptwo maids, my own maid, a cook, a gardener; there's a pony and trap and astable-boy. I have friends with me constantly and pay a good many visits. Yet my income is only eight hundred pounds a year. "

"Eight hundred--four thousand dollars, " Imogen translated, a note of sharpalarm in her voice. "That, of course, would not be nearly enough for all ofus. "

"Not living as you have, certainly, dear. "

"But papa? Surely papa has left something! He must have made money at hislegal practice. "

"Never much. His profession was always a by-issue with him. I find that hisaffairs are a good deal involved; when all the encumbrances are clearedoff, we think, Mr. Haliwell and I, that we may secure an amount that willbring our whole income to about five thousand dollars a year. If we go onliving in New York it will require the greatest care to be comfortable onthat. We must find a flat somewhere, unless you cared to live in England, where we could be very comfortable indeed, without effort, on what wehave. "

Imogen was keeping a quiet face, but her mother, with a pang of helplesspity and compunction, saw tears near the surface, and that, to controlthem, she fixed herself on the meaning of the last words. "Live out of myown country! Never!"

"No, dear, I didn't think that you would want to; I didn't want it for you, either; I only suggested it so that you might see clearly just where westand, and in case you might prefer it, with our limited means. "

Imogen's next words broke out even more vehemently. "I can't leave thishouse! I _can't_! It is my home. " The tears ran down her face. 

"My poor darling!" her mother exclaimed. She rose quickly and came roundthe table to her, putting her arm around her and trying to draw her near. 

But Imogen, covering her eyes with one hand, held her off. "It's wrong. It's unfair. I should have been told before. "

"Imogen, _I_ did not know. I was not admitted to your father's confidence. I used to speak to you sometimes, you must remember, about being careful. "

"I never thought about it. I thought he made a great deal--I thought youhad a great deal of money, " Imogen sobbed. 

"It _is_ my fault, in one sense, I know, " her mother said, still standingbeside her, her hand on her shoulder. "If I had been here I could haveprevented some of it. But--it has seemed so inevitable. " The tears rose inValerie's eyes also; she looked away to conquer them. "Don't blame me toomuch, dear. I shall try to do my best now. And then, after all, it's not ofsuch tragic importance, is it? We can be very happy with what we have. "

Imogen wept on: "Leave my home!"

"There, there. Don't cry so. We won't leave it. We will manage somehow. Wewill stay on here, for a time at least--until you marry, Imogen. You willprobably marry, " and Valerie attempted a softly rallying smile, "before sovery long. "

But the attempt was an unfortunately timed one. "Oh, mama!don't--don't--bring your horrible European point of view into _that_, too!"cried Imogen. 

"What point of view? Indeed, indeed, dear, I didn't mean to hurt you, to beindiscreet--"

"The economic, materialistic, worldly point of view--that money problemscan be solved by a thing that is sacred, sacred!" Imogen passionatelydeclared, her face still hidden. 

Her mother now guessed that the self-abandonment was over and that, withrecovered control, she found it difficult to pick up her usual dignity. Theinsight added to her tenderness. She touched the girl's hair softly, said, in a soothing voice, that she had meant nothing, nothing gross orunfeeling, and, seeing that her nearness was not, at the moment, welcome, returned to her own place at the other end of the table. 

Imogen now dried her eyes. In the consternation that her mother'sstatements had caused her there had, indeed, almost at once, arisen theconsoling figure of Jack Pennington, and she did not know whether she werethe more humiliated by her own grief, for such a mercenary cause, or bythis stilling of it, this swift realization that the cramped life needlast no longer, for herself, than she chose. To feel so keenly the need ofescape was to feel herself imprisoned by the new conditions; for never, never for one moment, must the need of escape weigh with her in herdecision as to Jack's place in her life. She must accept the burden, notknowing that it would ever be lifted, and with this acceptance the sense ofhumiliation left her, so that she could more clearly see that she had had aright to her dismay. Her crippled life would hurt not only herself, but allthat she meant to others--her beneficence, her radiance, her loving power;so hurt it, that, for one dark moment, had come just a dart of severitytoward her father. The memory of her mother's implied criticism hadrepulsed it; dear, wonderful, transcendentalist, she must be worthy of himand not allow her thoughts, in their coward panic, to sink to the mother'slevel. This was the deepest call upon her courage that had ever come toher. Calls to courage were the very breath of the spiritual life. Imogenlifted her heart to the realm of spirit, where strength was to be found, and, though her mother, with those implied criticisms, had pierced her, shecould now, with her recovered tranquility of soul, be very patient withher. In a voice slightly muffled and uncertain, but very gentle, she saidthat she thought it best to live on in the dear home. "We must retrench inother places, mama. I would rather give up almost anything than this. _He_is here to me. " Her tears rose again, but they were no longer tears ofbitterness. "It would be like leaving him. "

"Yes, dear, yes; that shall be as you wish, " said Valerie, who was deeplyconsidering what these retrenchments should be. She, too, was knowing aqualm of humiliation over self-revelations. She had not expected that itwould be really so painful, in such trivial matters, to adjust herself tothe most ordinary maternal sacrifices. It only showed her the more plainlyhow fatal, how almost fatal, it was to the right impulses, to live awayfrom family ties; so that at their first pressure upon her, in a place thatsharply pinched, she found herself rueful. 

For the first retrenchment, of course, must be the sending back toEngland of her dear, staunch Felkin, who had taken such care of her forso many years. Her heart was heavy with the thought. She was very fondof Felkin, and to part with her would be, in a chill, almost an ominousway, like parting with the last link that bound her to "over there. "Besides, --Valerie was a luxurious woman, --unpleasant visions went throughher mind of mud to be brushed off and braid to be put on the bottoms ofskirts; stockings to darn-she was sure that it was loathsome to darnstockings; buttons to keep in their places; all the thousand and one littlerudiments of life, to which one had never had to give a thought, looming, suddenly, in the foreground of one's consciousness. And how very tiresometo do one's own hair. Well, it couldn't be helped. She accepted theaccompanying humiliation, finding no refuge in Imogen's spiritualconsolations. 

"Eddy leaves Harvard this spring and goes into Mr. Haliwell's office. Hewill live with us here, then. And we can be very economical about food andclothes; I can help little dressmakers with yours, you know, " she said, smiling at her child. 

"Everything, mama, everything must be done, rather than leave this house. "

"We mustn't let the girls' clubs suffer, either, " Valerie attempted furtherto lighten the other's gloomy resolution. "That's one of the first claims. "

"I must balance all claims, with justice. I have many other calls upon me, dear, and it will need earnest thought to know which to eliminate. "

"Well, the ones you care about most are the ones we'll try to fit in. "

"My caring is not the standard, mama. The ones that need me most are theones I shall fit in. "

Imogen rose, drawing a long, sighing breath. Under her new and heavyburden, her mother, in these suggestions for the disposal of her life, was glib, assured. But the necessity for tenderness and forbearance wasstrongly with her. She went round the table to Valerie, pressed her head toher breast and kissed her forehead, saying, "Forgive me if I have seemedhard, darling. "

"No, dear, no; I quite understood all you felt, " Valerie said, returningthe kiss. But, after Imogen had left her, she sat for a long time, verystill, her hand only moving, as she traced squares and circles on herpaper. 

VIII

Jack thought that he had never seen Imogen looking graver than on thatnight when he came again. Her face seemed calm only because she socompressed and controlled all sorts of agitating things. Her mother waswith her in the lamp-lit library and he guessed already that, in any case, Imogen, before her mother, would rarely show gaiety and playfulness. Gaietyand playfulness would seem to condone the fact that her mother found solittle need of help in "bearing" the burden of her regret and of herself-reproach. But, allowing for that fact, Imogen's gravity was more thannegative. It confronted him like a solemn finger laid on firmly patientlips; he felt it dwell upon him like solemn eyes while he shook hands withMrs. Upton, whom he had not seen since the morning of her arrival. 

Mrs. Upton, too, was grave, after a fashion; but her whole demeanor mightbe decidedly irritating to a consciousness so burdened with a sense ofchange as Imogen 'a evidently was. Even before that finger, those eyes, into which he had symbolized Imogen's manner, Mrs. Upton's gravity couldbreak into a smile quite undisturbed, apparently, by any inappropriateness. She sat near the lamp crocheting; soft, white wool sliding through herfingers and wave after wave of cloudy substance lengthening a tiny baby'sjacket, so very small a jacket that Jack surmised it to be a gift for anexpectant mother. He further surmised that Mrs. Upton would be very nice toexpectant mothers; that they would like to have her abound. 

Mrs. Upton would not curb her smile on account of Imogen's manner, norwould she recognize it to the extent of tacitly excluding her from theconversation. She seemed, indeed, to pass him on, in all she said, toImogen, and Jack, once more, found his situation between them a littledifficult, for if Mrs. Upton passed him on, Imogen was in no hurry toreceive him. He had, once or twice, the sensation of being stranded, andit was always Mrs. Upton who felt his need and who pushed him off into theease of fresh questions. 

He was going back to Boston the next day and asked Imogen if he could takeany message to Mary Osborne. 

"Thank you, Jack, " said Imogen, "but I write to Mary, always, twice a week. She depends on my letters. "

"When is she coming to you again?"

"I am afraid she is not to come at all, now. "

"You're not going away?" the young man asked sharply, for her voice of sadacceptance implied something quite as sorrowful. 

"Oh, no!" Imogen answered, "but mama does not feel that I can have myfriend here now. "

Jack, stranded indeed, looked his discomfort and, glancing at Mrs. Upton, he saw it echoed, though with, a veiled echo. She laid down her work; shelooked at her daughter as though to probe the significance of her speech, and, not finding her clue, she sat rather helplessly silent. 

"Well, " said Jack, with attempted lightness, "I hope that I'm not exiled, too. "

"Oh, Jack, how can you!" said Imogen. "It is only that we have discoveredthat we are very, very poor, and one's hospitable impulses are shackled. Mama has been so brave about it, and I don't want to put any burdens uponher, especially burdens that would be so uncongenial to her as dear, funnyMary. Mama could hardly care for that typical New England thing. Don't mindJack, mama; he is such a near friend that I can talk quite frankly beforehim. "

For Mrs. Upton was now gathering up her innocent work, preparatory, it wasevident, to departure. 

"You are not displeased, dear!" Imogen protested as she rose, not angry, not injured--Jack was trying to make it out--but full of a soft withdrawal. "Please don't go. I so want you and Jack to see something of each other. "

"I will come back presently, " said Mrs. Upton. And so she left them. Jack'sthin face had flushed. 

"She means that _she_ won't talk quite frankly before you, you see, " saidImogen. "Don't mind, dear Jack, she is full of these foolish littleconventionalities; she cares so tremendously about the forms of things; Isimply pay no attention; that's the best way. But it's quite true, Jack; Idon't know that I can afford to have my friends come and stay with me anymore. Apparently mama and papa, in their so different ways, have been veryextravagant; and I, too, Jack, have been extravagant. I never knew that Imustn't be. The money was given to me as I asked for it--and there wereso many, so many claims, --oh, I can't say that I'm sorry that it is goneas it went. 'But now that we are very poor, I want it to be my pleasures, rather than hers, that are cut off; she depends so upon her pleasures, hercomforts. She depends more upon her maid, for instance, than I do even uponmy friends. To go without Mary this winter will be hard, of course, but ourlove is founded on deeper things than seeing and speaking; and mama wouldfeel it tragic, I'm quite sure, to have to do up her own hair. "

"Good heaven, my dear Imogen! if you are so poor, surely she can learn todo up her own hair!" Jack burst out, the more vehemently from the factthat Mrs. Upton's unprotesting, unexplanatory departure had, to his ownconsciousness, involved him with Imogen in a companionship of crudityand inappropriateness. She would not interfere with their frankness, butshe would not be frank with them. She didn't care a penny for what hisimpression of her might be. Imogen might fit as many responsibilities uponher shoulders as she liked and, with her long training in a school ofreticences and composures, she would remain placid and indifferent. So Jackworked it out, and he resented, for Imogen and for himself, such tact andsuch evasion. He wished that they had been more crude, more inappropriate. Thank heaven for crudeness if morality as opposed to manners made onecrude. He entrenched himself in that morality now, open-eyed to itsseeming priggishness, to say, "And it's a bigger question than that of herpleasures and yours, Imogen. It's a question of right and wrong. Mary needsyou. Your mother ought not to keep a maid if other people's needs are to besacrificed to her luxuries. "

Imogen was looking thoughtfully into the fire, her calmness now not theresult of mastery; her own serene assurance was with her. 

"I've thought of all that, Jack; I've weighed it, and though I feel it, asyou do, a question of right and wrong, I don't feel that I can force itupon her. It would be like taking its favorite doll from a child. She istrying, I do believe, to atone; she is trying to do her duty by making, asit were, _une acte de présence_; one wants to be very gentle with her; onedoesn't want to make things more difficult than they must already seem. Poor, dear little mama. But as for me, Jack, it's more than pleasures thatI have to give up. I have to say no to some of those claims that I've givenmy life to. It's like cutting into my heart to do it. "

She turned away her head to hide the quiet tears that rose involuntarily, and by the sight of her noble distress, by the realization, too, of suchmagnanimity toward the trivial little mother, Jack's inner emotion waspushed, suddenly, past all the bolts and barriers. Turning a little pale, he leaned forward and took her hand, stammering as he said: "Dear, dearestImogen, you know--you know what I want to ask--whenever you will let mespeak; you know the right I want to claim--"

It had come, the moment of avowal; but they had glided so quietly upon itthat he felt himself unprepared for his own declaration. It wad Imogen'stranquil acceptance, rather than his own eagerness, that made the situationseem real. 

"I know, dear Jack, of course I know, " she said. "It has been a deep, apeaceful joy for a long time to feel that I was first with you. Let it restthere, for the present, dear Jack. "

"I've not made anything less joyful or less peaceful for you by speaking?"

"No, no, dear. It's only that I couldn't think of it, for some time yet. "

"You promise me that, meanwhile, you will think of me, as your friend, justas happily as before?"

"Just as happily, dear Jack; I could never, as long as you are you and Iam I, think of you in any other way. " And she went on, with her tranquilradiance of aspect, "I have always meant, you know, to make something of mylife before I chose what to do with it. "

Jack, too, thought Imogen's life a flower so precious that it must beplaced where it could best bloom; but, feeling in her dispassionateness ahurt to his hope that it would best bloom in his care, he asked: "Mightn'tthe making something of it come after the choice, dear?"

Very clear as to what was her own meaning, Imogen shook her lovely, unconfused head. "No, only the real need could rightly choose, and one canonly know the real need when one has made the real self. "

These were Jack's own views, but, hearing them from her lips, they chilled. 

"It seems to me that your self, already, is very real, " he said, smilinga little ruefully. And Imogen now, though firm, was very wonderful, for, leaning to him, she put for a moment her hand on his and said, smiling backwith the tranquil tenderness: "Not yet, not quite yet, Jack; but we trusteach other's truth, and we can't but trust, --I do, dear Jack, with all myheart, --that it can never part us. "

He kissed her hand at that, and promised to trust and to be patient, andImogen presently lifted matters back into their accustomed place, sayingthat he must help her with her project for building a country home for hercrippled children. She had laid the papers before him and they were deep inways and means when a sharp, imperious scratching at the door interruptedthem. 

Imogen's face, as she raised it, showed a touch of weary impatience. "Mamma's dog, " she said. "He can't find her. Let him scratch. He will goaway when no one answers. "

"Oh, let's satisfy him that she isn't here, " said Jack, who was full of amild, though alien, consideration for animals. 

"Can you feel any fondness for such wisps of sentimentality and greedinessas that?" Imogen asked, as the tiny _griffon_ darted into the room and ranabout, sniffing with interrogative anxiety. 

"Not fondness, perhaps, but amused liking. "

"There, now you see he will whine and bark to be let out again. He is asarrogant and as troublesome as a spoilt child. "

"I'll hold him until she comes, " said Jack. "I say, he is a nice littlebeast--full of gratitude; see him lick my hand. " He had picked up the dogand come back to her. 

"I really disapprove of such absurd creatures, " said Imogen. "Their veryexistence seems a wrong to themselves and to the world. "

"Well, I don't know. " Theoretically Jack agreed with her as to theextravagant folly of such morsels of frivolity; but, holding the_griffon_ as he was, meeting its merry, yet melancholy, eyes, evadingits affectionate, caressing leaps toward his cheek, he couldn't echo herreasonable rigor. "They take something the place of flowers in life, Isuppose. "

"What takes the place of flowers?" Mrs. Upton asked. She had come in whilethey spoke and her tone of kind, mild inquiry slightly soothed Jack'sruffled sensibilities. 

"This, " said he, holding out her possession to her. 

"Oh, Tison! How good of you to take care of him. He was looking for me, poor pet. "

"Imogen was wondering as to the uses of such creatures and I placed them inthe decorative category, " Jack went on, determined to hold his own firmlyagainst any unjustifiable claims of either Tison or his mistress. Heaccused himself of a tendency to soften under her glance when it was sokindly and so consciously bent upon him. Her indifference cut him and madehim hostile, and both softness and hostility were, as he told himself, symptoms of a silly sensitiveness. The proper attitude was one of firmnessand humor. 

"I am afraid that you don't care for dogs, " Mrs. Upton said. She had goneback to her seat, taking up her work and passing her hand over Tison'ssilky back as he established himself in her lap. 

"Oh yes, I do; I care for flowers, too, " said Jack, folding his arms andleaning back against the table, while Imogen sat before her papers, observant of the little encounter. 

"But they are not at all in the same category. And surely, " Mrs. Uptoncontinued, smiling up at him, "one doesn't justify one's fondness for acreature by its uses. "

"I think one really must, you know, " our ethical young man objected, feeling that he must grasp his latent severity when Mrs. Upton's vaguesweetness of regard was affecting him somewhat as her dog's caressinglittle tongue had done. "If a fondness is one we have a right to, wecan justify it, --and it can only be justified by its utility, actual orpotential, to the world we are a part of. "

Mrs. Upton continued to smile as though she did not suspect him of wishingto be taken seriously. "One doesn't reason like that before one allowsoneself to become fond. "

"There are lots of things we must reason about to get rid of, " Jack smiledback. 

"That sounds very chilly and uncomfortable. Besides, something loving, pretty, responsive--something that one can make very happy--is useful toone. "

"But only that, " Imogen now intervened, coming to her friend's assistancewith decision. "It serves only one's own pleasure;--that is its only use. And when I think, mama darling, of all the cold, hungry, unhappy childrenin this great town to-night, --of all the suffering children, such as thosethat Jack and I have been trying to help, --I can't but feel that yourpetted little dog there robs some one. "

Mrs. Upton, looking down at her dog, now asleep in a profound content, continued to stroke him in silence. 

Jack felt that Imogen's tone was perhaps a little too rigorous for theoccasion. "Not that we want you to turn Tison out into the streets, " hesaid jocosely. 

"No; you mustn't ask that of me, " Valerie answered, her tone less lightthan before. "It seems to me that there is a place for dear unreasonablethings in the world. All that Tison is made for is to be petted. A child isa different problem. "

"And a problem that it needs all our time, all our strength, all our loveand faith to deal with, " Imogen returned, with gentle sadness. "You _are_robbing some one, mama dear. "

"Apparently we are a naughty couple, you and I, Tison, " Mrs. Upton said, "but I am too old and you too eternally young to mend. "

She had begun to crochet again; but, though she resumed all her lightness, her mildness, Jack fancied that she was a little angry. 

When he was gone, Mrs. Upton said, looking up at her daughter: "Of courseyou must have Mary Osborne to stay with you, Imogen, "

Imogen had gone to the fire and was gazing into it. She was full of a deepcontentment. By her attitude toward Jack this evening, her reception of hisavowal, she had completely vindicated herself. Peace of mind was impossibleto Imogen unless her conscience were clear of any cloud, and now themorning's humiliating fear was more than atoned for. She was not the womanto clutch at safety when pain threatened; she had spoken to him exactly asshe would have spoken yesterday, before knowing that she was poor. And, under this satisfaction, was the serene gladness of knowing him so surelyhers. 

Her face, as she turned it toward her mother, adjusted itself to a task ofloving severity. "I cannot think of having her, mama. "

"Why not? She will add almost nothing to our expenses. I never for a momentdreamed of your not having her. I don't know why you thought it my wish. "

Imogen looked steadily at her: "Not your wish, mama? After what you told methis morning?"

"I only said that we must be economical and careful. "

"To have one's friends to stay with one is a luxury, is not to beeconomical and careful. I don't forget what you said of my expensive modeof life, of my clothes--a reproof that I am very sure was well deserved; Ishould not have been so thoughtless. But it is not fair, mama, really it isnot fair--you must see that--to reproach me, and my father--by implication, even if not openly--with our reckless charities, and then refuse to takethe responsibility for my awakening. "

Imogen, though she spoke with emotion, spoke without haste. Her mother satwith downcast eyes, working on, and a deep color rose to her cheeks. 

"I do want things to be open and honest between us, mama, " Imogen went on. "We are so very different in temperament, in outlook, in conviction, thatto be happy together we must be very true with each other. I want youalways to say just what you mean, so that I may understand what you reallywant of me and may clearly see whether I can do it or not. I have such ahorror of any ambiguity in human relations, I believe so in the mostperfect truth. "

Valerie was still silent for some moments after this. When she did speak itwas only of the practical matter that they had begun with. "I do want youto have your friends with you, Imogen. It will not be a luxury. I will seethat we can afford it. "

"I shall be very, very glad of that, dear. I wish I had understood before. You see, just now, before Jack, I felt that you were hurt, displeased, bymy inference from our talk this morning. You made me feel by your wholemanner that you found me graceless, tasteless, to blame in someway--perhaps for speaking about it to Jack. Jack is very near me, mama. "

"But not near me. "

"Ah, you made me feel that, too; and that you reproached me with having, asit were, forced an intimacy upon you. "

Valerie was drawing her dark brows together, as though her clue had indeedescaped her. Imogen's mind slipped from link to link of the trivial, yetsignificant, matter with an ease and certainty of purpose that was like themovement of her own sleek needle, drawing loop after loop of wool into apattern; but what Imogen's pattern was she could hardly tell. She abandonedthe wish to make clear her own interpretation, looking up presently with afaint smile. "I'm sorry, dear. I meant nothing of all that, I assure you. And as to 'Jack, ' it was only that I did not care to seem to justify myselfbefore him--at your expense it might seem. "

"Oh, mama dear!" Imogen laughed out. "You thought me so wrong, then, thatyou were afraid of harming his devotion to me by letting him see how verywrong it was! Jack's devotion is very clear-sighted. It's a devotion that, if it saw wrongs in me, would only ask to show them to me, too, and tostand shoulder to shoulder with me in fighting them. "

"He must be a remarkable young man, " said Valerie, quite without irony. 

"He is like most _real_ people in this country, mama, " said Imogen, on agraver note. "We have, I think, evolved a new standard of devotion. Wedon't want to have dexterous mamas throwing powder in the eyes of the menwho care for us and sacrificing their very conception of right on the altarof false maternal duty. The duty we owe to any one _is_ our truth. There isno higher duty than that. Had I been as ungenerous, as unkind, as you, I'mafraid, imagined me this evening, it would still have been your duty, tohim, to me, to bring the truth fearlessly to the light. I would have beenamused, hadn't I been so hurt, to see you, as you fancied, shielding me!Please never forget, dear, in the future, that Jack and I aretruth-lovers. "

Looking slightly bewildered by this cascade of smooth fluency, Valerie, still with her deepened color, here murmured that she, too, cared for thetruth, but the current bore her on. "I don't think you _see_ it, mama, elseyou could hardly have hurt me so. "

"Did I hurt you so?"

"Why, mama, don't you imagine that I am made of flesh and blood? It wasdreadful to me, your leaving me like that, with the situation on my hands. "

Valerie, after another little silence, now repeated, "I'm sorry, dear, "and, as if accepting contrition, Imogen stooped and kissed her tenderly. 

IX

Mary's visit took place about six weeks later, when Jack Pennington wasagain in New York, and Mrs. Wake, returned from Europe, had been for sometime established in her little flat not very far away in Washington Square. 

The retrenchments in the Upton household had taken place and Mary foundher friend putting her shoulder to the wheel with melancholy courage. Thekeeping up of old beneficences meant redoubled labor and, as she said toMary, with the smile that Mary found so wonderful: "It seems to me now thatwhenever I put my hand out to help, it gets caught and pinched. " Mary, helper and admirer, said to Jack that the way in which Imogen had gatheredup her threads, allowing hardly one to snap, was too beautiful. These youngpeople, like the minor characters in a play, met often in the drawing-roomwhile Imogen was busy up-stairs or gone out upon some important errand. Just now, Miss Bocock's lectures having been set going, the organizationof a performance to be given for the crippled children's country home wasengaging all her time. Tableaux from the Greek drama had been fixed on, thePottses were full of eagerness, and Jack had been pressed into service asstage-manager. The distribution of rôles, the grouping of the pictures, thedressing and the scenery were in his hands. 

"It's really extraordinary, the way in which, amidst her grief, she goesthrough all this business, all this organization, getting people togetherfor her committee, securing the theater, " said Mary. "Isn't it too bad thatshe can't be in the tableaux herself? She would have been the loveliest ofall. "

Jack, rather weary, after an encounter with a band of dissatisfiedperformers in the library, said: "One could have put one's heart intomaking an Antigone of her; that's what I wanted--the filial Antigone, leading Oedipus through the olive groves of Colonus. It's bitter, insteadof that, to have to rig Mrs. Scott out as Cassandra; will you believe it, Mary, she insists on being Cassandra--with that figure, that nose! And shehas fixed her heart on the scene where Cassandra stands in the car outsidethe house of Agamemnon. She fancies that she is a tragic, ominous type. "

"She has nice arms, you know, " said the kindly Mary. 

"Don't I know!" said Jack. "Well, it's through them that I shall circumventher. Her arms shall be fully displayed and her face turned away from theaudience. "

"Jack, dear, you mustn't be spiteful, " Mary shook her head a little at him. "I've thought that I felt just a touch of--of, well--flippancy in you onceor twice lately. You mustn't deceive poor Mrs. Scott. It's that that is sowonderful about Imogen. I really believe that she could make her give upthe part, if she set herself to it; she might even tell her that her nosewas too snub for it--and she would not wound her. It's extraordinary herpower over people. They feel, I think, the tenderness, thedisinterestedness, that lies beneath the truth. "

"I suppose there's no hope of persuading her to be Antigone?"

"Don't suggest it again, Jack. The idea hurt her so. "

"I won't. I understand. When is Rose coming?"

"In a day or two. She is to spend the rest of the winter with the Langleys. What do you think of for her?"

"Helen appearing between the soldiers, before Hecuba and Menelaus. I onlywish that Imogen had more influence over Rose. Your theory about her powerdoesn't hold good there. "

"Ah, even there, I don't give up hope. Rose doesn't really know Imogen. Andthen Rose is a child in many ways, a dear, but a spoiled, child. "

"What do you think of Mrs. Upton, now that you see something of her?" Jackasked abruptly. 

"She is very sweet and kind, Jack. She is working so hard for all of us. She is going to make my robe. She is addressing envelopes now--and you knowhow dull that is. I am sure I used to misjudge her. But, she is very queer, Jack. "

"Queer? In what way queer?" Jack asked, placing himself on the sofa, hislegs stretched out before him, his hands in his pockets. 

"I hardly know how to express it. She is so light, yet so deep; and I can'tmake out why or where she is deep; it's there that the queerness comes in. I feel it in her smile, the way she looks at you; I believe I feel it morethan she does. She doesn't know she's deep. "

"Not really found herself yet, you think?" Jack questioned; the phrase wasone often in use between these young people. 

Mary mused. "Somehow that doesn't apply to her--I don't believe she'll everlook for herself. "

"You think it's you she finds, " Jack suggested; voicing a dim suspicionthat had come to him once or twice of late. 

"What do you mean, exactly, Jack?"

"I'm sure I don't know, " he laughed a little. "So you like her?" hequestioned. 

"I think I do; against my judgment, against my will, as it were. But thatdoesn't imply that one approves of her. "

"Why not?"

"Why, Jack, you know the way _you_ felt about it, the day you and I andRose talked it over. "

"But we hadn't seen her then. What I want to know is just what _you_ feel, now that you have seen her. "

Mary had another conscientious pause. "How can one approve of her whileImogen is there?" she said at last. 

"You mean that Imogen makes one remember everything?"

"Yes. And Imogen is everything she isn't. "

"So that, by contrast, she loses. "

"Yes, and do you know, Jack, " Mary lowered her voice while she glanced upat Mrs. Upton's portrait, "I can hardly believe that she has suffered, really suffered, about him, at all. She is so unlike a widow. "

"I suppose she felt herself a widow long ago. "

"She had no right to feel it, Jack. His death should cast a deeper shadowon her. "

As Jack, shamefully, could see Mr. Upton as shadow removed, he only said, after a slight pause: "Perhaps that's another of the things she doesn'tobviously show--suffering, I mean. "

"I'm afraid that she's incapable of feeling any conviction of sin, " saidMary, "and that wise, old-fashioned phrase expresses just what I mean as toa lack in her. On the other hand, in a warmhearted, pagan sort of way, sheis, I'm quite sure, one of the kindest of people. Her maid, when she wentback to England the other day, cried dreadfully at leaving her, and Mrs. Upton cried too. I happened to find them together just before Felkin went. Now I had imagined, in my narrow way, that a spoilt beauty was always atyrant to her maid. "

"Oh, so her maid's gone! How does she do her hair, then?"

"Do her hair, Jack? What a funny question. As we all do, of course, withher wits and her hands, I suppose. Any one with common-sense can do theirhair. "

Jack kept silence, reflecting on the picture that Imogen had drawn forhim--the child bereft of its toy. Had it given it up willingly, or had itbeen forced to relinquish it by the pressure of circumstance? Rememberinghis own stringent words, he felt a qualm of compunction. Had he armedImogen for this ruthlessness?

The lustrous folds of Mrs. Upton's hair, at lunch, reassured him as to herfitness to do without Felkin in that particular, but his mind still dwelton the picture of the crying child and he asked Imogen, when he was nextalone with her, how the departure of Felkin had been effected. 

"You couldn't manage to let her keep the toy, then?"

"The toy?" Imogen was blank. 

He enlightened her. "Her maid, you know, who had to do her hair. "

"Oh, Felkin! No, " Imogen's face was a little quizzical, "it couldn't bemanaged. I thought it over, what you said about sacrificing other people'sneeds to her luxuries, and felt that you were right. So I put it to her, very, very gently, of course, very tactfully, so that I believe that shethinks that it was she who initiated the idea. Perhaps she _had_ intendedfrom the first to send her back; it was so obvious that a woman as poor asshe is ought not to have a maid. All the same, I felt that she was a littlevexed with me, poor dear. But, apart from the economical question, I'm gladI insisted. It's so much better for her not to be so dependent on anotherwoman. It's a little degrading for both of them, I think. "

Jack, who theoretically disapproved of all such undemocratic gauds, wassure that Mrs. Upton was much better off without her maid; yet something ofthe pathos of that image remained with him--the child deprived of its toy;something, too, of discomfort over that echo of her father that he now andthen detected in Imogen's serene sense of rightness. 

This discomfort, this uneasy sense of echoes, returned more than oncein the days that followed. Mrs. Upton seemed, as yet, to have made verylittle difference in the situation; she had glided into it smoothly, unobtrusively--a silken shadow; when she was among them it was of that shemade him think; and in her shadowed quietness, as of a tranquil mist atevening or at dawn, he more and more came to feel a peace and sweetness. But it was always in this sweetness and this peace that the contrastingthrob of restlessness stirred. 

He saw her at the meals he frequently attended, meals where theconversation, for the most part, was carried on by Imogen. Mrs. Wake, alsoa frequent guest, was a very silent one, and Mary an earnest listener. 

If Imogen's talk had ceased to be very interesting to Jack, that was onlybecause he knew it so well. He knew it so well that, while she talked, quietly, fluently, dominatingly, he was able to remain the dispassionateobserver and to wonder how it impressed her mother. Jack watched Mrs. Upton, while Imogen talked, leaning her head on her hand and raisingcontemplative eyes to her daughter. Those soft, dark eyes, eyes almostsomnolent under their dusky brows and half-drooped lashes, --how differentthey were from Imogen's, as different as dusk from daylight. And theywere not really sad, not really sleepy, eyes; that was the surprise ofthem when, after the downcast mystery, they raised to one suddenly theirpenetrating intelligence. The poetry of their aspect was constantlycontradicted by the prose of their glance. But she did more than turn herown poetry into prose, so he told himself; she turned other people's intoprose, too. Her glance became to him a running translation into sane, almost merry, commonplace, of Imogen's soarings. He knew that she made thetranslation and he knew that it was a prose one, but its meaning she keptfor herself. It was when, now and then, he felt that he had hit upon aword, a phrase, that the discomfort, the bewilderment, came; and he wouldthen turn resolutely to Imogen and grasp firmly his own conception of heressential meaning, a meaning that could bear any amount of renderings. 

She was so beautiful, sitting there, the girl he loved, her pearly faceand throat, her coronet of pale, bright gold, rising from the patheticblackness, that it might well be that the mother felt only his own joy inher loveliness and could spare no margin of consciousness for criticalcomment. She was so lovely, so young, so good; so jaded, too, with allthe labor, the giving of herself, the long thoughts for others; whyshouldn't she be dominant and assured? Why shouldn't she even be didacticand slightly complacent? If there was sometimes a triteness in herpronouncements, a lack of humor, of spontaneity, in her enthusiasms, surelyno one who loved her could recognize them with any but the tenderest ofsmiles. He felt quite sure that Mrs. Upton recognized them with nothingelse. He felt quite sure that the "deepest" thing in Mrs. Upton was themost intense interest in Imogen; but he felt sure, too, that the thingabove it, the thing that gazed so quietly, so dispassionately, was completeindifference as to what Imogen might be saying. Didn't her prose, with itsunemphatic evenness, imply that some enthusiasms went quite without sayingand that some questions were quite disposed of for talk just because theywere so firmly established for action? When he had reached this pointof query, Jack felt rising within him that former sense of irritationon Imogen's behalf, and on his own. After all, youthful triteness andenthusiasm were preferable to indifference. In the stress of thisirritation he felt, at moments, a shock of keen sympathy for the departedMr. Upton, who had, no doubt, often felt that disconcerting mingling ofinterest and indifference weigh upon his dithyrambic ardors. He often feltvery sorry for Mr. Upton as he looked at his widow. It was better to feelthat than to feel sorry for her while he listened to Imogen. It did not doto realize too keenly, through Imogen's echo, what it must have been tolisten to Mr. Upton for a lifetime. When, on rare occasions, he had Mrs. Upton to himself, his impulse always was to "draw her out, " to extract fromher what were her impressions of things in general and what her attitudetoward life. She must really, by this time, have enough accepted him asone of themselves to feel his right to hear all sorts of impressions. Hewas used to talking things over, talking them, indeed, over and over;turning them, surveying them, making the very most of all their possiblesignificance, with men and women to whom his relationship was halfbrotherly and wholly comradely, and whom, in the small, fresh, clear world, where he had spent his life, he had known since boyhood. It was a veryethical and intellectual little world, this of Jack's, where impressionspassed from each to each, as if by right, where some suspicion was felt forthose that could not be shared, and where to keep anything so worth whileto oneself was almost to rob a whole circle. Reticence had the distinctflavor of selfishness and uncertainty of mind, the flavor of laxity. If onewere earnest and ardent and disciplined one either knew what one thought, and shared it, or one knew what one wanted to think, and one sought it. Jack suspected Mrs. Upton of being neither earnest, nor ardent, nordisciplined; but he found it difficult to believe that, as a new inmate ofhis world, she couldn't be, if only she would make the effort, as clear asthe rest of it, and that she wasn't as ready, if manipulated with tact andsympathy, to give and to receive. 

Wandering about the drawing-room, while, as usual in her leisure moments, she crocheted a small jacket, Tison in her lap, he wondered, for instance, what she thought of the drawing-room. He knew that it was very differentfrom the drawing-room in her Surrey cottage, and very different from thedrawing-rooms with which, as he had heard from Imogen, she was familiar inthe capitals of Europe. Mrs. Upton was, to-day, crocheting a blue border aspeacefully as though she had faced pseudo-Correggios and crimson brocadeand embossed wall-paper all her life, so that either her tastes shared theindifference of her intelligence or else her power of self-control wascommendably complete. 

"I hope that you are coming to Boston some day, " he said to her on thisoccasion, the occasion of the blue border. "I'd like so much to show you mystudio there, and my work. I'm not such an idler as you might imagine. "

Mrs. Upton replied that she should never for a moment imagine him an idlerand that since she was going to Boston to stay with his great-aunt, a dearbut too infrequently seen friend of hers, she hoped soon for the pleasureof seeing his work. "I hear that you are very talented, " she added. 

Jack, who considered that he was, did not protest with a false modesty, but went on to talk of the field of art in general, and questioning her, skeptical as to her statement that her artistic tastes were a mere medley, he put together by degrees a conception of vague dislikes and sharppreferences. But, in spite of his persistence in keeping her to Chardin andJapanese prints, she would pass on from herself to Imogen, emphasizing hersatisfaction in Imogen's great interest in art. "It's such a delightfulbond between people, " And Mrs. Upton, with her more than American parentaldiscretion, smiled her approval of such bonds. 

Jack reflected some moments before saying that Imogen knew, perhaps, morethan she cared. He didn't think that Imogen had, exactly, the esthetictemperament. And that there was no confidential flavor in these remarks hedemonstrated by adding that it was a point he and Imogen often discussed;he had often told her that she should try to feel more and to think less, so that Valerie might amusedly have recalled Imogen's explanation to herof the fundamental frankness that made lovers in America such "remarkableyoung men. " Jack's frankness, evidently, would be restrained by neitherdiffidence nor affection. She received his diagnosis of her daughter's casewithout comment, saying only, after a moment, while she turned a corner ofher jacket, "And you are of the artistic temperament, I suppose?"

"Well, yes, " he owned, "in a sense; though not in that in which the wordhas been so often misused. I don't see the artist as a performing acrobatnor as an anarchist in ethics, either. I think that art is one of the bigaspects of life and that through it one gets hold of a big part ofreality. "

Mrs. Upton, mildly intent on her corner, looked acquiescent. 

"I think, " Jack went on, "that, like everything else in life worth having, it's a harmony only attained by discipline and by sacrifice. And it'sessentially a social, not a selfish attainment; it widens our boundaries ofcomprehension and sympathy; it reveals brotherhood. The artist's is a highform of service. "

He suspected Mrs. Upton, while he spoke, of disagreement; he suspected her, also, of finding him sententious; but she continued to look interested, sothat, quite conscious of his didactic purpose and amused by all the thingshe saw in their situation, he unfolded to her his conception of theartist's place in the social organism. 

She said, finally, "I should have thought that art was much more of an endin itself. "

"Ah, there we come to the philosophy of it, " said Jack. "It _is_, ofcourse, a sort of mysticism. One lays hold of something eternal in allachievement; but then, you see, one finds out that the eternal isn't cut upinto sections, as it were--art here, ethics there--intellect yonder; onefinds out that all that is eternal is bound up with the whole, so that youcan't separate beauty from goodness and truth any more than you can dividea man's moral sense from his artistic and rational interests. "

"Still, it's in sections for us, surely? What very horrid people can begreat artists, " Mrs. Upton half questioned, half mused. 

"Ah, I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" Jack broke out. "You'll finda flaw in his art, if you find a moral chaos in him. It must be a harmony!"

The corner was long since turned, and on a simple stretch of blue Mrs. Upton now looked up at him with a smile that showed him that whether sheliked what he said or not, she certainly liked him. It was here that theslight bewilderment came in, to feel that he had been upholding someunmoral doctrine she would have smiled in just the same way; and thebewilderment was greater on feeling how much he liked her to like him. Overthe didactic intentions, a boyish, an answering, smile irradiated his face. 

"I'm not much of a thinker, but I suppose that it does all come together, somehow, " she said. 

"I'm sure that you make a great deal of beauty, wherever you are, " Jackanswered irrelevantly. "I've heard that your cottage in England is socharming. Mrs. Wake was telling me about it. "

"It is a dear little place. "

He remembered, suddenly, that the room where they talked contradicted hisassertion, and, glancing about it furtively, his eye traversed the highlyglazed surface of the Correggio. Mrs. Upton's glance followed his. "I don'tthink I ever cared, so seriously, about beauty, " she said, smiling quietly. "I lived, you see, for a good many years in this room, just as it is. "There was no pathos in her voice. Jack brought it out for her. 

"I am sure you hated it!"

"I thought it ugly, of course; but I didn't mind so much as all that. Ididn't mind, really, so much as you would. "

"Not enough to try to have it right?"

He was marching his ethics into it, and, with his question, he felt nowthat he had brought Mr. Upton right down from the wall and between them. Mr. Upton had not minded the room at all, or had minded only in the sensethat he made it a matter of conscience not to mind. And aspects of it Mr. Upton had thought beautiful. And that Mrs. Upton felt all this he was surefrom the very vagueness of her answer. 

"That would have meant caring more for beauty than for more importantthings in life. "

He knew that it was in horribly bad taste, but he couldn't help having itout, now that he had, involuntarily, gone so far. "If you like Chardin, I'msure that that hurts you, " and he indicated the pseudo-Correggio, this timeopenly. 

She followed his gesture with brows of mildly lifted inquiry, "You meanit's not genuine?"

"That, and a great deal more. It's imitation, and it's bad imitation; and, anyway, the original would be out of place here--on that wall-paper. "

But Mrs. Upton wouldn't be clear; wouldn't be drawn; wouldn't, simply, share. She shook her head; she smiled, as though he must accept from herher lack of proper feeling, repeating, "I didn't like it, but, really, Inever minded much. " And he had to extract what satisfaction he could fromher final, vague summing-up. "It went with the chairs--and all the rest. "

X

"Mama, " said Imogen, "who is Sir Basil?" She had picked up a letter fromthe hall table as she and Jack passed on their way up-stairs after theirwalk, and she carried it into the library with the question. 

Mrs. Upton was making tea beside the fire, Mrs. Wake and Mary with her, and as Imogen held out the letter with its English stamp and masculinehandwriting a dusky rose-color mounted to her face. Indeed, in taking theletter from her daughter's hand, her blush was so obvious that a slightsilence of recognized and shared embarrassment made itself felt. 

It was Jack who felt it most. After his swiftly averted glance at Mrs. Upton his own cheeks had flamed in ignorant sympathy. He was able, in amoment, to see that it might have been the fire, or the tea, or the meresuddenness of an unexpected question that had caused the look of helplessgirlishness, but the memory stayed with him, a tenderness and a solicitudein it. 

Imogen had apparently seen nothing. She went on, pulling off her gloves, taking off her hat, glancing at her radiant white and rose in the glasswhile she questioned. "I remember him in your letters, but remember him solittle--a dull, kind old country squire, the impression, I think. But whatdoes a dull, kind old country squire find to write about so often?"

If Mrs. Upton couldn't control her cheeks she could perfectly controlher manner, and though Jack's sympathy guessed at some pretty decisiveirritation under it, he could but feel that its calm disposed of any absurdinterpretations that the blush might have aroused. 

"Yes, I have often, I think, mentioned him in my letters, Imogen, thoughnot in those terms. He is a neighbor of mine in Surrey and a friend. "

"Is he clever?" Imogen asked, ignoring the coolness in her mother's voice. 

"Not particularly. "

"What does he do, mama?"

"He takes care of his property. "

"Sport and feudal philanthropy, I suppose, " Imogen smiled. 

"Very much just that, " Mrs. Upton answered, pouring out her daughter's tea. 

Jack, who almost expected to see Imogen's brow darken with reprobation forthe type of existence so described, was relieved, and at the same timeperturbed, to observe that the humorous kindliness of her manner remainedunclouded. No doubt she found the subject too trivial and too remote forgravity. Jack himself had a general idea that serious friendships betweenman and woman were adapted only to the young and the unmated. Aftermarriage, according to this conception, the sexes became, even in socialintercourse, monogamous, and he couldn't feel the bond between Mrs. Uptonand a feudal country squire as a matter of much importance. But, on theother hand, Mrs. Upton had said "friend" with decision, and though theword, for her, could not mean what it meant to people like himself andImogen--a grave, a beautiful bond of mutual help, mutual endeavor, mutualrejoicing in the wonder and splendor of life--even a trivial relationshipwas not a fit subject for playful patronage. It was with sharpdisapprobation that he heard Imogen go on to say, "I should like to meet aman like that--really to know. One imagines that they are as extinct as thedodo, and suddenly, if one goes to England, one finds them swarming. Happy, decorative, empty people; perfectly kind, perfectly contented, perfectlyuseless. Oh, I don't mean your Sir Basil a bit, mama darling. I'm quitesure, since you like him, that he is a more interesting variation of thetype. Only I can't help wondering what he _does_ find to write about. "

"I think, as I am wondering myself, I will ask you all to excuse me ifI open my letter, " said Mrs. Upton, and, making no offer of satisfyingImogen's curiosity, she unfolded two stout sheets of paper and proceededto read them. 

Imogen did not lose her look of lightness, but Jack fancied in thesteadiness of the gaze that she bent upon her mother a controlled anger. 

"One may be useful, Imogen, without wearing any badge of usefulness, " Mrs. Wake now observed. Her bonnet, as usual, on one side, and her hair muchdisarranged, she had listened to the colloquy in silence. 

Imogen was always very sweet with Mrs. Wake. She had the air of a full, deep river benignly willing to receive without a ripple any number of suchtossed pebbles, to engulf and flow over them. She had told Jack that Mrs. Wake's dry aggressiveness did not blind her for a moment to Mrs. Wake'snoble qualities. Mrs. Wake was a brave, a splendid person, and she had thegreatest admiration for her; but, beneath these appreciations, a completeindifference as to Mrs. Wake's opinions and personality showed always inher demeanor toward her. She was a splendid person, but she was of noimportance to Imogen whatever. 

"I don't think that one can be useful unless one is actively helping on theworld's work, dear Mrs. Wake, " she now said. "Mary, we have tickets forCarnegie Hall to-morrow night; won't that be a treat? I long for a deepdraft of music. "

"One does help it on, " said Mrs. Wake, skipping, as it were, anotherpebble, "if one fills one's place in life and does one's duty. "

Imogen now gave her a more undivided attention. "Precisely. And one mustgrow all the time to do that. One's place in life is a growing thing, Itdoesn't remain fixed and changeless--as English conservatism usuallyimplies. Are you a friend of Sir Basil's, too?"

"I met him while I was with your mother, and I thought it a pity we didn'tproduce more men like him over here--simple, unselfconscious men, contentedto be themselves and to do the duty that is nearest them. "

"Anglomaniac!" Imogen smiled, sugaring her second cup of tea. 

Mrs. Wake flushed slightly. "Because I see the good qualities of anothercountry?"

"Because you see its defects with a glamour over them. "

"Is it a defect to do well by instinct what we have not yet learned to dowithout effort!"

"Ah, --but the danger there is--" Jack here broke in, much interested, "thedanger there is that you merge the individual in the function. Whenfunction becomes instinctive it atrophies unless it can grow into higherforms of function. Imogen's right, you know. "

"In a sense, no doubt. But all the same our defect is that we have solittle interest except as individuals. "

"What more interest can any one have than that?"

"In older civilizations people may have all the accumulated interest of thedeep background, the long past, that, quite unconsciously, they embody. "

"We have the interest of the future. "

"I don't think so, quite; for the individual, the future doesn't seem tocount. The individual is sacrificed to the future, but the past is, in asense, sacrificed for the individual; in the right sort it's allthere--summed up. "

Imogen had listened, still with her steady smile, to these heresies and toJack's over-lenient dealing with them. She picked up a review, turning thepages and glancing through it while she said, ever so lightly and gently:

"I think that you would find most aristocrats against you in our country, dear Mrs. Wake. With all the depth of our background, the length of ourpast, you would find, in Jack and Mary and me, for instance, that it's oursense of the future, of our own purposes for it, that makes our truestreality. "

Jack was rather pleased with this apt summing-up, too pleased, in hismasculine ingenuousness, to feel that for Mrs. Wake, with no ancestry atall to speak of, such a summing could not be very gratifying. He didn't seethis at all until Mrs. Upton, folding her letter, came into the slightlyawkward silence that followed Imogen's speech, with the decisiveness thathad subtly animated her manner since Imogen's entrance. She remarked thatthe past, in that sense of hereditary tradition handed on by hereditarypower, didn't exist at all in America; it was just that fact that madeAmerica so different and so interesting; its aristocrats so often had theshallowest of backgrounds. And in her gliding to a change of subject, inher addressing of an entirely foreign question to Mrs. Wake, Jack guessedat a little flare of resentment on her friend's behalf. 

Imogen kept her calm, and while her mother talked to Mrs. Wake she talkedto Mary; but that the calm was assumed she showed him presently when theywere left alone. She then showed him, indeed, that she was frankly angry. 

"One doesn't mind Mrs. Wake, " she said; "it's that type among us, thetype without background, without traditions, that is so influenced bythe European thing; you saw the little sop mama threw to her--she anaristocrat!--because of a generation of great wealth; that could be heronly claim; but to have mama so dead to all we mean!"

Jack, rather embarrassed by the pressure of his enlightenments, said thathe hadn't felt that; it seemed to him that she did see what they meant, itwas their future that counted, in the main. 

"A rootless future, according to her!"

"Why, we have our past; it's the way we possess it that's new in the world;that's what she meant. Any little advantage that you or I may have in ourhalf-dozen or so generations of respectability and responsibility, is oursonly to share, to make us _tell_ more in the general uplifting, "

"You think that you need say that to _me_, Jack! As for respectability, that homespun word hardly applies; we do have lineage here, and in theEuropean sense, even if without the European power. But that's no matter. It's the pressing down on me of this alien standard, whether expressed ornot, that stifles me. I could feel mama's hostility in every word, everyglance. "

"Hardly hostility, Imogen. Perhaps a touch of vexation on Mrs. Wake'saccount. You didn't mean it, of course, but it might have hurt, what yousaid. "

"That! That was a mere opportunity. Didn't you feel and see that it was!"

Jack's aspect now took on its air of serious and reasonable demonstration. 

"Well, you know, Imogen, you were a little tactless about herfriendship--about this Sir Basil. "

He expected wonder and denial, but, on the contrary, after going to thewindow and looking out silently for some moments, Imogen, without turning, said, "It's not a friendship I care about. "

"Why not?" Jack asked, taken aback. 

"I don't like it, " Imogen repeated. 

"Why under the sun should you dislike it? What do you know about it, anyway?"

Imogen still gazed from the window. "Jack, I don't believe that mama is atall the woman to have friends, as we understand the word. I don't believethat it is simply a friendship. Yes, you may well look surprised, "--shehad turned to him now--"I've never told you. It seemed unfair to her. Butagain and again I've caught her whispers, hints, about the sentimentalattachments mama inspires. You may imagine how I've felt, living here with_him_, in his loneliness. I don't say, I don't believe, that mama was evera flirt; she is too dignified, too distinguished a woman for that; but thefact remains that whispers of this sort do attach themselves to her name, and a woman is always to blame, in some sense, for that. "

Jack, looking as startled as she had hoped he would, gazed now withfrowning intentness on the ground and made no reply. 

"As for this Sir Basil, " Imogen went on, "I used to wonder if he wereanother of these triflers with the sanctity of love, and of late I'vewondered more. He writes to her constantly. What can the bond between mamaand a man of that type be unless it's a sentimental one? And didn't you seeher blush to-day?"

Jack now raised his eyes to her and she saw that he, at all events, wasblushing. "I can't bear to hear you talk like this, Imogen, " he said. 

Imogen's own cheeks flamed at the implied reproach. "Do you mean that Imust lock everything, everything I have to suffer, into my own heart? Ithought that to you, Jack, I could say anything. "

"Of course, of course, dear. Only don't _think_ in this way. "

"I accuse her of nothing but accepting this sort of homage. "

"I know; of course, --only not even to me. They are friends. We have noright to spy upon them; it's almost as if you had laid a trap for her andthen pointed her out to me in it. Oh, I know that you didn't mean it so. "

"Spy on her! I only wanted to know!"

"But your tone was, well, rather offensively--humorous. "

"Can you feel that a friendship to be taken seriously? The very kindestthing is to treat it lightly, humorously, as I did. She ought to be laughedout of tolerating such an unbecoming relationship. A woman of her age oughtnot to be able to blush like that. "

Looking down again, still with his deep flush, Jack said, "Really, Imogen, I think that you take too much upon yourself. "

Imogen felt her cheeks whiten. She fixed her eyes hard on his downcastface. 

"It will be the last touch to all I have to bear, Jack, if mama bringsa misunderstanding between you and me. If you can feel it fitting, appropriate, that a widow of barely four months should encourage theinfatuation of a stupid old Englishman, then I have no more to say. Wehave different conceptions of right and wrong, that is all. " Imogen's lipstrembled slightly in pronouncing the words. 

"I should agree with you if that were the case, Imogen. I don't believethat it is. "

"Very well. Wait and see if it isn't the case, " said Imogen. 

It was Jack who broached another subject, asking her about some concertsshe had gone to recently; but, turned from him again and looking out intothe evening, her answers were so vague and chill, that presently, casting aglance half mournful and half alarmed upon her, he bade her good-by andleft her. 

Imogen stood looking out unseeingly, a sense of indignation and of fearweighing upon her. Jack had never before left her like this. But she couldnot yield to the impulse to call out to him, run after him, beg him not togo with a misunderstanding unresolved between them, for she was right andhe was wrong. She had told him to wait and see if it wasn't the case, whatshe had said; and now they must wait. She believed that it was the case, and the thought filled her with a sense of personal humiliation. 

Since her summing up of the situation in the library, not three months ago, that first quiet sense of mastery had been much shaken, and now for weeksthere had been with her constantly a strange gliding of new realizations. This one seemed the last touch to her mother's wrongness--a wrongness thathad threatened nothing, had crushed down on nothing, and that yet pervadedmore and more the whole of life--that she should bring back to her olddeserted home not a touch of penitence and the incense of absurd devotions. Friends of that sort, middle-aged, dull Englishmen, didn't, Imogen hadwisely surmised, write to one every week. It wasn't as if they had unitinginterests to bind them. Even a literary, a political, a philanthropic, correspondence Imogen would have felt as something of an affront to herfather's memory, now, at this time; such links with the life that hadalways been a sore upon their family dignity should have been laid asidewhile the official mourning lasted, so to speak. But Sir Basil, she feltsure, had no mitigating interests to write about, and the large, squareenvelope that lay so often on the hall-table seemed to her like a pert, placid face gazing in at the house of mourning. To-day, yes, she had wantedto know, to see, and suspicions and resentments from dim had become keen. 

And now, to complete it all, Jack did not understand. Jack thought herunfair, unkind. He had left her with that unresolved discord between them. A sense of bereavement, foreboding, and desolation filled her heart. On thetable beside her stood a tall vase of lilies that he had sent her, and asshe stood, thinking sad and bitter thoughts, she passed her hand over themfrom time to time, bending her face to them, till, suddenly, the tears roseand fell and, closing her eyes, holding the flowers against her cheek, shebegan to cry. 

That was what she had meant to be like, the pure, sweet aroma of theseflowers, filling all the lives about her with a spiritual fragrance. Shedid so want to be good and lovely, to make goodness and loveliness growabout her. It was hard, hard, when that was what she wanted--all that shewanted--to receive these buffets from loved hands, to see loved eyes lookat her with trouble and severity. It was nothing, indeed, --it was, indeed, only to be expected, --that her mother should not recognize the spiritualfragrance; that Jack should be so insensible to it pierced her. And feelingherself alone in a blind and hostile world, she sobbed and sobbed, findinga sad relief in tears. She was able to think, while she wept, that thoughit was a relief she mustn't let it become a weakness; mustn't let herselfslide into the danger of allowing grief and desolation to blur outlines forher. That others were blind mustn't blind her; that others did not see heras good and lovely must not make her, with cowardly complaisance, forswearher own clear consciousness of right. She was thinking this, and her sobswere becoming a little quieter, when her mother, now in her eveningtea-gown, came back into the room. 

Imogen was not displeased that her grief should have this particularwitness. Besides all the deep, unspoken wrongs, her mother must beconscious of smaller wrongs against her this afternoon, must know that shehad--well--tried to put her, as it were, in her place, first about theletter and then about Mrs. Wake's lack of aristocratic instinct. She mustknow this and must know that Imogen knew it. These were trivial matters, not to be recognized between them; and how completely indifferent theywere to her her present grief would demonstrate. Such tears fell only forgreat sorrows. Holding the flowers to her cheek, she wept on, turning herface away. She knew that her mother had paused, startled, at a loss; and, gravely, without one word, she intended, in a moment, unless her mothershould think it becoming to withdraw, to leave the room, still weeping. Butshe had not time to carry this resolution into effect. Suddenly, and muchto her dismay, she felt her mother's arms around her, while her mother'svoice, alarmed, tender, tearful, came to her: "Poor darling, my poordarling, what is it? Please tell me. "

Physical demonstrations were never pleasing to Imogen, who, indeed, disliked being touched; and now, though she submitted to having her headdrawn down to her mother's shoulder, she could not feel that the physicalcontact in any way bridged the chasm between them. She felt, presently, from her mother's inarticulate murmurs of compunction and pity, that thiswas, apparently, what she had hoped for. It was evidently with difficulty, before her child's unresponsive silence, that she found words. 

"Is it anything that I've done?" she questioned. "Have I seemed cross thisafternoon? I _was_ a little cross, I know. Do forgive me, dear. "

Enveloped as she was in her mother's arms, so near that she could feel thewarmth and smoothness of her shoulder through the fine texture of her gown, so near that a fresh fragrance, like that from a bank of violets, seemedto breathe upon her, Imogen found it a little difficult to control thediscomfort that the contact aroused in her. "Of course I forgive you, dearmama, " she said, in a voice that had regained its composure. "But, ohno!--it was not at all for that--I hardly noticed it. It's nothing that youcan help, dear. "

"But I can't bear to have you cry and not know what's the matter. "

"Your knowing wouldn't help me, would it?" said Imogen, with a faint smile, lifting her hand to press her handkerchief to her eyes. 

"No, of course not; but it would help _me_--for my sake, then. "

"Then, if it helps you, it was papa I was thinking of. I miss him so. " Andwith the words, that placed before her suddenly a picture of her owndesolation, a great sob again shook her. "I'm so lonely now, so lonely. "Her mother held her, not speaking, though Imogen now felt that she, too, wept, and a greater bitterness rose in her at the thought that it was notfor her dead father that the tears fell but in pure weak sympathy andhelplessness. She, herself, was the only lonely one. She alone, remembered. She alone longed for him. In this sharpened realization of her own sorrowshe forgot that it had not been the actual cause of her grief. 

"Poor darling; poor child, " her mother said at last. "Imogen, I know thatI've failed, in so much. But I want so to make up for things, if I can; tobe near you; to fill the loneliness a little; to have you love me, too, with time. "

"Love you, my dear mother? Why, I am full of love for you. Haven't you feltthat?" Imogen drew herself away to look her grieved wonder into hermother's eyes. "Oh, mama, how little you know me!"

Valerie, flushed, the tears on her cheeks, oddly shaken from her usualserenity, still clasped her daughter's hands and still spoke on. "I know, Iknow, --but it's not in the way it ought to be. It's not your fault, Imogen;it's mine; it must be the mother's fault if she can't make herself needed. Only you can't know how it all began, from so far back--that sense that youdidn't need me. But I shirked; I know that I shirked. Things seemed toohard for me--I didn't know how to bear them. Perhaps you might have comealmost to hate me, if I had stayed, as things were. I'm not making anyappeal. I'm not trying to force anything. But I so want you to know how Ilong to have my chance--to begin all over again. I so want you to help. "

Imogen, troubled and confused by her mother's soft yet almost passionateeagerness, that seemed to pull her down to some childish, inferiorplace, just as her mother's arms had drawn down her head to an attitudeincongruous with its own benignant loftiness, had yet been able, while shespoke, to gather her thoughts into a keen, moral concentration upon heractual words. She was accustomed, in moments of moral stress, to a quicklifting of her heart and mind for help and insight toward the highest thatshe knew, and she felt herself pray now, "Help me to be true, to her, forher. " The prayer seemed to raise her from some threatened abasement, andfrom her regained height she spoke with a sense of assured revelation. "We can't have things by merely _wanting_, them. To gain anything we must_work_ for it. You left us. We didn't shut you out. You weredifferent. --You _are_ different. "

But her mother's vehemence was still too great to be thrown back bysalutary truths. 

"Yes; that's just it; we were different. It was that that seemed to shut meout. You were with him--against me. And I'm not asking for any change inyou; I don't think that I expect any change in myself, --I am not asking forany place in your heart that is his, dear child; I know that that can't be, should not be. But people can be different, and yet near. They can bedifferent and yet love each other very much. That's all I want--that youshould see how I care for you and trust me. "

"I do trust you, darling mama. I do see that you are warm-hearted, full ofkind impulses. But I think that your life is confused, uncertain of anygoal. If you are to be near me in the way you crave, you must change. Andwe _can_, dear, with faith and effort. When you have found yourself, founda goal, I shall feel you near. "

"Ah, but don't be so over-logical, dear child. You're my goal!" Valeriesmiled and appealed at once. 

Imogen, though smiling gravely too, shook her head. "I'm afraid that I'monly your last toy, mama darling. You have come over here to see if you canmake me happy, just as if you were refurnishing a house. But, you see, myhappiness doesn't depend on you. "

"You are hard on me, Imogen. "

"No; no; I mean to be so gentle. It's such a dangerous view of life--thatcentering it on some one else, making them an end. I feel so differentlyabout life. I think that our love for others is only sound and true when ithelps them to power of service to some shared ideal. Your love for me isn'tlike that. It's only an instinctive craving. Forgive me if I seem ruthless. I only want to help you to see clearly, dear. "

Valerie, still holding her daughter's hands, looked away from her andaround the room with a glance at once vague and a little wild. 

"I don't know what to say to you, " she murmured. "You make all that I meanwither. " She was sad; her ardor had dropped from her. She was not at allconvicted of error; indeed, she was trying, so it seemed, to convict her, Imogen, of one. 

Imogen felt a cold resistance rising within her to meet thismisinterpretation. "On the contrary, dear, " she said, "it is just thepoetry, the reality of life, in all its stern glory, --because it is andmust be stern if it is to be spiritual, --it is just that, it seems to me, that you are trying to reduce to a sort of pretty, facile lyric. "

Valerie still held the girl's hands very tightly, as though grasping hardsome dying hope. And looking down upon the ground she stood silent for somemoments. Presently she said, not raising her eyes, "I have won no right, Isuppose, to be seen more significantly by you. Only, I want you tounderstand that I don't see myself like that. "

Again Imogen felt the unpleasant sensation of being made to seem youngand inexperienced. Her mother's very quiet before exhortation; her sadrelapse into grave kindliness, a kindliness, too, not without its touch ofseverity, showed that she possessed, or thought that she possessed, someinner assurance for which Imogen could find no ground. In answering her shegrasped at all her own. 

"I'm very sure you don't, " she said, "for I don't for one moment misjudgeyour sincerity. And what I want you to believe, my dear mother, is that Ilong for the time when any strength and insight I may have gained throughmy long fight, by _his_ side, may be of use to you. _Trust_ your own bestvision of yourself and it will some day realize itself. I will trust ittoo, indeed, indeed, I will. We must grow if we keep a vision, "

Mrs. Upton now raised her eyes and looked swiftly but deeply at herdaughter. It was a look that left many hopes behind it. It was a lookthat armed other, and quite selfless, hopes, with its grave and watchfulunderstanding. The understanding would not have been so clear had it notbeen fed by all the springs of baffled tenderness that only so could findtheir uses. Giving her daughter's hands a final shake, as if over somecompact, perhaps over that of growth, she turned away. Tison, who hadfollowed her into the room and had stood for long looking up at thecolloquy that ignored him, jumped against her dress and she stooped andpicked him up, pressing her cheek against his silken side. 

"You had better dress now, Imogen, " she said, in tones of astonishingcommonplace. "You've only time. I've kept you so long. " And holding Tisonagainst her cheek she went to the window. 

XI

The tableaux were not to come off until the end of April, and Jack, havingset things in motion, was in Boston at the beginning of the month. It wasat this time that Mrs. Upton, too, was in Boston, with her old friend andhis great-aunt, and it was at this time that he came, as he phrased it tohimself, really into touch with her. 

Jack's aunt lived in a spacious, peaceful house on the hill, and thewindows of Jack's large flat, near by, looked over the Common, the Gardens, the Charles River, a cheerful, bird's-eye view of the tranquil city, breathed upon now by the first, faint green of spring. 

Jack was pleased that Mrs. Upton and his aunt--a mild, blanched old ladywith silvery side-curls under the arch of an old-fashioned bonnet-shouldoften come to tea with him, for in the arrangement of his rooms-thatlooked so unarranged--he felt sure that she must recognize a taste as fineand fastidious as her own. He suspected Mrs. Upton of finding him merelyethical and he was eager that she should see that his grasp on life waslarger than she might imagine. His taste was fine and fastidious; it wasalso disciplined and gracefully vagrant; she must see that in the few butperfect pictures and mezzotints on his walls; the collection of old whiteChinese porcelain standing about the room on black carved stands; in hiswonderful black lacquer cabinets and in all the charming medley of the rareand the appropriate. 

Certainly, whatever was Mrs. Upton's impression of him, she frequentlyexpressed herself as delighted with his rooms, and as they sat in the deepwindow-seat, which commanded the view of the city, he felt more and moresure that whatever that impression of him might be, it rested upon anessential liking. It was pleasant to Jack to feel sure of this, little ashe might be able to justify to himself his gratification. Somehow, withMrs. Upton, he didn't find himself occupied with justifying things. Theease that she had always made for him shone out, now, uninterruptedly, andas they talked, while the dear old aunt sat near, turning the leaves of abook, joining in with a word now and then, it was, in the main, the soft, sweet sense of ease, like the breath of violets in the air, that surroundedhim. They talked of all sorts of things, or rather, as he said to himself, they babbled, for real talk could hardly be so discursive, so aimless, so merely merry. She made him think of a child playing with a lapful offlowers; that was what her talk was like. She would spread them out informal rows, arrange them in pretty, intricate posies, or, suddenly, gatherthem into generous handfuls which she gave you with a pleased glance andlaugh. It was queer to find a person who took all "talk" so lightly and whoyet, he felt quite sure, took some things hard. It was like the contrastbetween her indolent face and her clear, unbiased gaze, that would notflinch or deceive itself from or about anything that it met. Apparentlymost of the things that it met she didn't take solemnly. The world, as faras he could guess, was for her mainly made up of rather trivial things, whether hours or people; but, with his new sense of enlightenment, hemore and more came to realize that it might be so made up and yet, to herapprehension, be very bad, very sad, and very worth while too. And afterseeing her as a child playing with flowers he could imagine her in somesuddenly heroic rôle--as one of the softly nurtured women of the FrenchRevolution, for instance, a creature made up of little gaieties, littlegriefs; of sprigged silk and gossamer, powder and patches; blossoming, among the horrors of a hopeless prison, into courageous graces. She wouldsmile, talk, play cards with them, those doomed ones, she herself doomed;she would make life's last day livable, in every exquisite sense of theword. And he could see her in the tumbril, her arm round a terrified girl;he could see her mounting the steps of the guillotine, perhaps with noupward glance to heaven, but with a composure as resolute and as serene asany saint's. 

These were strange visions to cross his mind as they sat and talked, whileshe made posies for him, and even when they did not hover he often foundhimself dwelling with a sort of touched tenderness upon something vaguelypathetic in her. Perhaps it was only that he found it pathetic to see herlook so young when, measured beside his own contrasted youth, he felt howold she was. It was pathetic that eyes so clear should fade, that a cheekso rounded should wither, that the bloom and softness and freshness thather whole being expressed should be evanescent. Jack was not given to suchmeditations, having a robust, transcendental indifference to earthly gaudsunless he could fit them into ethical significances. It was, indeed, nobeauty such as Imogen's that he felt in Mrs. Upton. He was not consciouslyaware that her loveliness was of a subtler, finer quality than herdaughter's. She did not remind him of a Madonna nor of anything to do witha temple. But the very fact that he couldn't tabulate and pigeon-hole herwith some uplifting analogy made her appeal the most direct that he hadever experienced. The dimness of her lashes; the Japanese-like oddity ofher smile; the very way in which her hair turned up from her neck with aneddy of escaping tendrils, --these things pervaded his consciousness. Hedidn't like to think of her being hurt and unhappy, and he often wonderedif she wasn't bound to be both. He wondered about her a great deal. Hereceived, on every day they met, hints and illuminations, but never theclear revealment that he hoped for. The thing that grew surer and surerfor him was her essential liking, and the thing that became sweeter andsweeter, though the old perplexity mingled with it, was the superficialamusement he caused her. One of the things that, he began to see, amusedher a little was the catholicity of taste displayed in the books scatteredabout his rooms, the volumes of French and Italian that the great-auntwould take up while they talked. They were books that she felt, he wasquite sure, as funnily incongruous with his whole significance, and thattheir presence there meant none of the things that in another environmentthey would have stood for; neither cosmopolitanism nor an unbiasedconnoisseurship interested in all the flowers--_du mal_ among the rest--ofthe human intelligence. That they meant for him his own omniscientappreciation, unshakenly sure of the ethical category into which he couldplace each fruit, however ominous its tainted ripeness; each flower, however freaked with perverse tints, left her mildly skeptical; sothat he felt, with just a flicker of his old irritation, that the veryplentifulness of esthetic corruption that he could display to her testifiedfor her to his essential guilelessness, and, perhaps, to a blandness andnarrowness of nature that lacked even the capacity for infection. Jack hadto own to himself that, though he strove to make it rigorously esthetic, his seeing of d'Annunzio--to take at random one of the _fleurs du mal_--wasas a shining, a luridly splendid warning of what happened to decadentpeople in unpleasant Latin countries. Such lurid splendor was as far fromhim as the horrors of the Orestean Trilogy. In Mrs. Upton's eyes thisdistance, though a distinct advantage for him, was the result of no choiceor conflict, but of environment merely, and she probably thought that theproblems of Nietzschean ethics were not to be solved and disposed of bypeople whom they could never touch. But all the same, and it was here thatthe atoning softness came in, he felt that she liked him the better forbeing able to see a _fleur du mal_ only as if it were a weird pressedproduct under a glass case. And if he amused her it was not because ofany sense of superior wisdom; she didn't deny her consciousness of widercontrasts, but she made no claim at all for deeper insight;--the very wayin which she talked over the sinister people with him showed that, --askinghim his opinion about this or that and opening a volume here and there toread out in her exquisite French or Italian some passage whose full beautyhe had never before so realized. Any criticism or comment that she offeredwas, evidently, of the slightest weight in her own estimation; but, thereagain one must remember, so many things seemed light to Mrs. Upton, solight, indeed, that he had often with her a sense of pressures removed andan easier world altogether. 

"The trouble with him--with all his cleverness and beauty--is that hispicture isn't true, " Mrs. Upton said of d'Annunzio, standing with a volumein her hand in the clear afternoon light. 

"True to him, " Jack amended, alert for the displayal of his owncomprehension. 

"I can't think it. Life is always, for everybody, so much more commonplacethan he dares make it. He is afraid of the commonplace; he won't face it;and the revenge life takes on people who do that, people who are reallyafraid, people who attitudinize, is to infect them in some subtle, mockingway with the very thing they are trying to escape. "

"Well, but he isn't commonplace. "

"No; worse; he's silly. " She had put down the book and taken up another, an older one. "Clough, --how far one must travel from d'Annunzio to come tohim. 

 'It fortifies my soul to know That though I perish, Truth is so. '"

She meditated the Stoic flavor. 

"The last word of heroism, of faith, " Jack said, thinking of the tumbril. But Valerie turned the leaf a little petulantly. "Heroism? Why?"

"Why, "--as usual he was glad to show her that, if she really wanted to seeclearly, he could show her where clearness, of the best sort, lay, --"why, the man who can say that is free. He has abdicated every selfish claim tothe Highest. "

"Highest? Why should it fortify my soul to know that truth is 'so' if 'so'happens to be some man-devouring dragon of a world-power?"

"Clough assumed, of course, that the truth was high--as it might be, evenif it devoured one. "

"I've no use for a truth that would have no better use for me, " smiledValerie, and on this he tried to draw her on, from her rejection of suchheroism, to some exposal of her own conception of truth, her own opinionsabout life, a venture in which he always failed. Not that she purposelyeluded. She listened, grave, interested, but, when the time came for her tomake her contribution, fingering about, metaphorically, in a purse, which, though not at all empty, contained, apparently, a confused medley ofcoinage. If she could have found the right coin, she would have tenderedit gladly; but she seemed to consider a vague chink as all that could bereally desired of her, to take it for granted that he knew that he had lostnothing of any value. 

 * * * * *

Sometimes he and Mrs. Upton, Tison trotting at their heels, took walkstogether, passing down the steep old streets, austere and cheerful, to thegardens and along the wide avenue with its lines of trees and broad stripof turf, on and out to the bridge that spanned the river. They enjoyedtogether the view of the pale expanse of water, placidly flowing in thewindless sunshine, and, when they turned to come back, their favoriteaspect of the town. They could see it, then, silhouetted in the vague graysand reds of its old houses, climbing from the purplish maze of tree-tops inthe Common, climbing with a soft, jostling irregularity, to where the dimgold bubble of the State House dome rounded on the sky. It almost made onethink, so silhouetted, of a Dürer etching. 

"Dear place, " Mrs. Upton would sigh restfully, and that she was resting inall her stay here, resting from the demands, the adjustments, of her newlife, he was acutely aware. Resting from Imogen. Yes, why shouldn't he verysimply face that fact? He, too, felt, for the first time, that Imogen hadrather tired him and that he was glad of this interlude before taking upagain the unresolved discord where they had left it. Imogen's last wordabout her mother had been that very ominous "Wait and see, " and Jack feltthat the discord had grown, more complicated from the fact that, quitewithout waiting, he saw a great deal that Imogen, apparently, did not. Hehad seen so much that he was willing to wait for whatever else he was tosee with very little perturbation of mind, and that, in the meanwhile, asmany Sir Basils as it pleased Mrs. Upton to have write to her should do so. 

But Mrs. Upton talked a great deal about Imogen, so much that he cameto suspect her of adjusting the conversation to some supposed cravingin himself. She had never asked a question about his relations with herdaughter, accepting merely with interest any signs they might choose togive her, but insinuating no hint of an appeal for more than they mightchoose to give. She probably took for granted what was the truth of thesituation, that it rested with Imogen to make it a definite one. Shedid not treat him as an accepted lover, nor yet as a rejected one; shediscriminated with the nicest delicacy. What she allowed herself to see, the ground she went upon, was his deep interest, his deep attachment. Inthat light he was admitted by degrees to an intimacy that he knew he couldhardly have won so soon on his own merits. She had observed him; she hadthought him over; she liked him for himself; but, far more than this, sheliked him for Imogen. He often guessed, from a word or look, at a deep coreof feeling in her where her repressed, unemphatic, yet vigilant, maternityburned steadily. From her growing fondness for him he could gage how fondshe must be of Imogen. The nearness that this made for them was whollydelightful to Jack, were it not embittered by the familiar sense, sharperthan ever now, of self-questioning and restlessness. A year ago, six monthsago--no, three months only, just before her own coming--how exquisitelysuch sympathy, such understanding would have fitted into all his needs. Hecould have talked to her, then, by the hour, frankly, freely, joyously, about Imogen. And the restlessness now was to feel that it was justbecause of her coming, because of the soft clear light that she had sounconsciously, so revealingly, diffused, that things had, in some odd way, taken on a new color, so that the whole world, so that Imogen especially, looked different, so that he couldn't any longer be frank, altogether. Itwould have been part of the joy, three months ago, to talk over his lovingperception of Imogen's little foibles and childishnesses, to laugh, witha loving listener, over her little complacencies and pomposities. He hadtaken them as lightly as that, then. They had really counted for nothing. Now they had come to count for so much, and all because of that clear, soft light, that he really couldn't laugh at them. He couldn't laugh atthem, and since he couldn't do that he must keep silence over them, andas a result the talks about Imogen with Imogen's mother were, for hisconsciousness, a little random and at sea. Imogen's mother confidentlybased their community on a shared vision, and that he kept back his realimpression of what he saw was made all the worse by his intuition that she, too, kept back hers, that she talked from his supposed point of view, asit were, and didn't give him a glimmer of her own. She loved Imogen, or, perhaps, rather, she loved her daughter; but what did she think of Imogen?That was the question that had grown so sharp. 

 * * * * *

On the day before he and Mrs. Upton went back together to New York, Jackgave a little tea that was almost a family affair. Cambridge had been oneof their expeditions, in Rose Packer's motor-car, and there Eddy Upton hadgiven them tea in his room overlooking the elms of the "Yard" at Harvard. Jack's tea was in some sort a return, for Eddy and Rose both were there andthat Rose, in Eddy's eyes, didn't count as an outsider was now an acceptedfact. 

Eddy had taken the sudden revelation of his poverty with great coolness, and Jack admired the grim resolution with which he had cut down expenseswhile relaxing in no whit his hold on the nonchalant beauty. Poverty would, to a certain extent, bar him out from Rose's sumptuous world, and Rose didnot seem to take him very seriously as a suitor; but it was evident thatEddy did not intend to remain poor any longer than he could possibly helpit and evident, too, that his assurance in regard to sentimental ambitionshad its attractions for her. They chaffed and sparred with each other andunder the flippant duel there flashed now and then the encounters of a realone. Rose denied the possession of a heart, but Eddy's wary steel mightstrike one day to a defenceless tenderness. She liked him, among manyothers, very much. And she was, as she frequently declared, in love withhis mother. Jack never took Rose seriously; she remained for him a pretty, trivial, malicious child; but to-day he was pleased by the evidences of herdevotion. 

The little occasion, presided over by Valerie, bloomed for him. Everybodytossed nosegays, everybody seemed happy; and it was Rose, sitting in alow chair beside Mrs. Upton's sofa, who summed it up for him with theexclamation, "I do so love being with you, Mrs. Upton! What is it you doto make people so comfortable?"

"She doesn't do anything, people who do things make one uncomfortable, "remarked Eddy, lounging in his chair and eating sandwiches. "She is, that'sall. "

"What is she then, " Rose queried, her eyes fixed with a fond effrontery onValerie's face. "She's like everything nice, I know; nice things to lookat, to hear, to taste, to smell, to touch. Let us do her portrait, Eddy, you know the analogy game. What flower does she remind you of? and whatfood? Acacia; raspberries and cream. What musical instrument? What animal?Help me, Jack. "

"The musical instrument is a chime of silver bells, " said Jack, whileValerie looked from one to the other with amused interest. "And the animalis, I think, a bird; a bright, soft-eyed bird, that flits and poises ontall grasses. "

"Yes; that does. And now we will do you, Jack. You are like a very nervous, very brave dog. "

"And like a Christmas rose, " said Valerie, "and like a flute. "

"And the food he reminds me of, " finished Eddy, "is baked beans. "

"Good, " said Rose. "Now, Imogen. What flower is she like? Jack, you willtell us. "

Jack looked suddenly like the nervous dog, and Rose handsomely started theportrait with, "Calla lily. "

"That's it, " Eddy agreed. "And the food she's like is cold lemon-shape, youknow the stuff I mean; and her animal, --there is no animal for Imogen; sheis too loftily human. "

"Her instrument is the organ, " Rose finished, as if to end as handsomely asshe had begun; "the organ playing the Pilgrims' March from 'Tannhäuser. '"

"Excellent, " said Eddy. 

These young people had done the portrait without help and after the slightpause with which their analogies were received Jack swiftly summed up Roseas _Pâte-de-foie-gras_, gardenia, a piano, and a toy Pomeranian. 

"Thanks, " Rose bowed; "I enjoy playing impudence to your dignity. "

"What's Imogen up to just now?" Eddy asked, quite unruffled by Jack'sreflections on his beloved. "When did you see her last, Jack?"

"I went down for a dress-rehearsal the day before yesterday. " Jack hadstill the air of the nervous dog, walking cautiously, the hair of its backstanding upright. 

"Oh, the Cripple-Hellenic affair. How Imogen loves running a show. "

"And how well she does it, " said Rose. "What a perfect queen she would havemade. She would have laid corner-stones; opened bazaars; visited hospitals, and bowed so beautifully from a carriage--with such a sense ofresponsibility in the quality of her smile. "

"How inane you are, Rose, " said Jack. "Nothing less queen-like, in thatdecorative sense, than Imogen, can be imagined. She works day and night forthis thing in which you pretty young people get all the sixpences and sheall the kicks. To bear the burden is all she does, or asks to do. "

"Why, my dear Jack, " Rose opened widely candid eyes, "queens have to worklike fun, I can tell you. And who under the sun would think of kickingImogen?"

"Besides, " said Eddy, rising to saunter about the room, his hands in hispockets, "Imogen isn't so superhuman as your fond imagination paints her, my dear Jack. She knows that the most decorative rôle of all is just that, the weary, patient Atlas, bearing the happy world on his shoulders. "

Mrs. Upton, in her corner of the sofa, had been turning the leaves of arare old edition, glancing up quietly at the speakers while the innocentripples slid on from the afternoon's first sunny shallows to theseambiguous depths. It was now in a voice that Jack had never heard from herbefore that she said, still continuing to turn, her eyes downcast:

"How excessively unkind and untrue, Eddy. "

If conscious of unkindness, Eddy, at all events, didn't resort to artificeas Rose, --Jack still smarted from it, --had done. He continued to smile, taking, up a small, milky vase to examine it, while he answered in hischill, cheerful tones: "Don't be up in arms, mama, because one of yourswans gives the other a fraternal peck. Imogen and I always peck at eachother; it's not behind her back alone that I do it. And I'm saying nothingnasty. It's only people like Imogen who get the good works of the worlddone at all. If they didn't love it, just; if they didn't feel the delightin it that an artist feels in his work, or that Rose feels in dancingbetter and looking prettier than any girl in a ball-room, --that any onefeels in self-realization, --why, the cripples would die off like anything. "

"It's a very different order of self-realization"; Mrs. Upton continued toturn her leaves. 

Jack knew that she was deeply displeased, and mingled with his own baffledvexation was the relief of feeling himself at one with her, altogetherat one, in opposition to this implied criticism of Imogen. Together theyshared the conviction--was it the only one they shared about Imogen?--thatshe simply cared about being good more than about anything else in theworld; together they recognized such a purpose and such a longing as a highand an ennobling one. 

The tone of her last remark had been final. The talk passed at once awayfrom Imogen and turned on Jack's last acquisitions in white porcelain andon his last piece of work, just returned from a winter exhibition. Eddywent with him into the studio to see it and Mrs. Upton and Rose were leftalone. It was then that Mrs. Upton, touching the other's shoulder so thatshe looked up from the fur she was fastening, said, "You are not a nicelittle girl, Rose. "

The "little girl" stared. Anything so suave yet so firmly intended asunpleasant had never been addressed to her. For once in her life she was ata loss; and after the stare she flushed scarlet, the tears rushing to hereyes. 

"Oh, Mrs. Upton, " she faltered, "what do you mean?"

"Hitting in the dark isn't a nice thing to do. "

"Hitting in the dark?"

"Yes. You know quite well. "

"Oh, but really, really, --I didn't mean--" Rose almost wailed. There was noescape from those clear eyes. They didn't look sad or angry; they merelypenetrated, spreading dismay within her. 

Mrs. Upton now took the flushed face between her hands and gravelyconsidered it. "_Didn't_ you?" she asked. 

Rose could look back no longer. Before that gaze a sense of utter darknessdescended upon her. She felt, helplessly, like a naughty, cowering child. Her eyes dropped and the tears rolled down her cheeks. 

"Please, please forgive me. I didn't dream you'd understand. I didn't meananybody to understand, except, perhaps, Eddy. I don't know why, it's odiousof me--but Imogen does irritate me, just a little, just because she is sogood, you know--so lovely. "

But this, too, Mrs. Upton penetrated. "Whether Imogen is so good and lovelythat she irritates you is another matter. But, whatever you may think ofher, don't, "--and here she paused a little over the proper expressing ofRose's misdeed, --"don't call her a calla lily, " she found. And shefinished, "Especially not before her mother, who is not so blind to yourmeaning as we must hope that Jack is. "

Poor Rose looked now like the naughty child after a deserved chastisement. 

"Oh, I am so miserable"; this statement of smarting fact was all she foundto say. "And I do care for you so. I would rather please you than anyone. --Can't you forgive me?"

But at this point the darkness was lifted, for Mrs. Upton, smiling at last, put her arms around her, kissed her, and said, "Be a nice little girl. "

XII

Imogen, during this fortnight of her mother's absence, had time tocontemplate her impressions of change. 

Their last little scene together had emphasized her consciousness of themany things that lay beneath it. 

Her mother had felt that the tears on that occasion were in part a resultof the day's earlier encounter, muffled though it was, over Sir Basil, andhad attempted, on ground of her own choosing, to lure her child away fromthe seeing, not only of Sir Basil--he was a mere symbol--but of all thethings where she must know that Imogen saw her as wrong. 

"She wanted to blur my reason with instinct; to mesh me in the blind filialthing, " Imogen reflected. In looking back she could feel with satisfactionthat her reason had dominated the scene as a lighthouse beacon shinessteadily over tossing and ambiguous waters. Satisfaction was in the vision;the deep content of having, as she would have expressed it, "been true toher light. " But it was only in this vision of her own stability of soulthat satisfaction lay. 

In Jack's absence, and in her mother's, she could gage more accurately whather mother had done to Jack. She had long felt it, that something differentgrowing vaguely in him--so vaguely that it was like nothing with a definiteedge or shape, resembling, rather, a shadow of the encompassing gloom, ashadow that only her own far-reaching beams revealed. As the light hoverson the confines of the dark she had felt--a silence. 

He was silent--he watched. That was the summing up of the change. He reallyseemed to convey to her through his silence that he understood her now, or was coming to, better than he had ever done before, better than sheunderstood herself. And with the new understanding it was exactly as if hehad found that his focus was misdirected. He no longer looked up; Imogenknew that by the fact that when, metaphorically, her eyes were cast downto meet with approbation and sweet encouragement his upturned admiration, vacancy, only, met their gaze. He no longer--so her beam pierced furtherand further--looked at her on a level, with the frankness of mere mutualneed and trust. No; such silence, such watchfulness implied superiority. The last verge of shadow was reached when she could make out that helooked at her from an affectionate, a paternal, --oh, yes, still a verylover-like, --height, not less watchful for being tender; not less steadyfor being, still, rather puzzled. Beyond that she couldn't pierce. It wasindeed a limit denoting a silent revolution in their relationship. When shecame to the realization, Imogen, starting back, indignant through all herbeing, promised herself that if he looked down she, at all events, wouldnever lend herself to the preposterous topsy-turvydom by looking up. Shewould firmly ignore that shift of focus. She would look straight beforeher; she would look, as she spoke, the truth. She "followed her gleam. " Shestood beside her beacon. And she told herself that her truth, her holdingto it, might cost her a great deal. 

It was not that she feared to lose him, --if she chose to keep him; but itmight be that there were terms on which she would not care to keep him. If, it was still an almost unimaginable "if, " he could not, would not come oncemore to see clearly, then, as lover, he must be put aside, and even asfriend learn that she had little use for a friendship so warped from itsold attitude. 

Under this stoic resolve there was growing in poor Imogen a tossing ofconfused pain and alarm. She could see change so clearly, but causes wereuntraceable, an impalpable tangle. 

Why was it so? What had happened? What, above all, had her mother done toJack?

It was all about her mother that change centered, from her that it came. It was a web, a complexity of airy filaments that met her scrutiny. Herehovered her mother's smile, here her thoughtful, observant silences. ThereSir Basil's letter; Felkin's departure; all the blurred medley of thetimes when she had talked to Jack and Mary and her mother had listened. Adimness, a haze, was over all, and she only escaped it, broke through it, when, fighting her way out to her own secure air and sunlight, she toldherself, --as, at all events, the nearest truth to hand, --that it was aboutJack, over him, that the web had been spun: the web of a smile that claimednothing, yet that chained men; the web of a vague, sweet silence, thatjudged nothing, yet softly blighted, through its own indifference, allother people's enthusiasms. And again and again, during these days ofadjustment to the clear and the confused vision, Imogen felt the salt hottears burning in her throat and eyes. 

When Jack and her mother were both back again and he and she united in themechanical interests of the tableaux, now imminent, the strangestloneliness lay in the fact that she could no longer share her grief, herfear, her anger, with Jack, He was there, near her; but he was, far, faraway; and she must control any impulse that would draw him near. 

She put him to the test; she measured his worth by his power ofrecognition, his power of discrimination between her mother's instinctiveallurements and her own high demand. But while with her mind and soul, asshe told herself, she thus held him away, she was conscious of the innerwail of loneliness and unconscious that, under the steady resolution, everyfaculty, every charm she possessed, was spinning and stretching itself outto surround and hold him. 

She made no appeal, but he would feel her quiet sadness weigh upon him;she made no reproach, but she knew that he could but be full of pity forher weariness, of love for her devotedness, when her pale profile bent bylamplight over all the tedious work of the tableaux; knew that her patient"Good-night, dear Jack, --I'm too tired to stay and talk, " must smite himwith compunction and uneasiness. 

It was no direct communication; she used symbols to convey to him thesignificance that he seemed to be forgetting. She took him to one of MissBocock's lectures, gently disowning praise for her part in their success. She took him to the hospital for cripple children, where the nurses smiledat her and the children clambered, crutches and all, into her lap, --sheknew how lovely she must look, enfolding cripple children. She took bothher mother and him to her Girls' Club on the East side, where they saw hersurrounded by adoring gratitude and enthusiasm, where she sat hand in handwith her "girls, " all sympathy, all tenderness, all interest, --all thethings that Jack had loved her for and that he still, of course, loved herfor. Here she must seem to him like a sister of charity, carrying highher lamp of love among these dark lives. And she was careful that theirreflected light should shine back upon her. "I want you to know a dearfriend of mine, Jack, Miss Mc-Ginty; and this, Evangeline, is my friend, Mr. Pennington, "--so she would lead him up to one of the girls, boldand gay of eye, highly decorated of person. She knew that she left herreputation in safe hands with Evangeline. "Are you a friend of MissUpton's? She's _fine_. We're all just crazy about her. " She had, as shewent from them, the satisfaction of hearing so much of Evangeline's crudebut sincere pæon; they were all "just crazy" about her. 

And a further shining of light suggested itself to her. 

"Mamma darling, " she said, as they were going home in the clashing, clattering "elevated, " "you mustn't think me naughty, but I had to askthem--my own particular girls--to go with us to the Philharmonic. They arebecoming so interested in their music and it will be a treat for them, willreally mean something in their lives, will really live for them, _in_them. "

Mrs. Upton leaned forward to listen in the mingled uproar of banging doorsand vociferous announcements from the conductor. A look of uncertaintycrossed her face and Imogen hastened to add: "No, it's not the extravaganceyou think. I had a splendid idea. I'm going to sell that old ring thatGrandmamma Cray left me. Rose told me once that I could get a lot of moneyfor it. "

Swiftly flushing, her brows knitted, the din about them evidently adding toher perturbation, Mrs. Upton, with a sharpness of utterance that Jack hadnever heard from her, said: "Your sapphire ring? Your grandmother's ring?Indeed, indeed, Imogen, I must ask you not to do that!"

"Why, mama dear, why?" Imogen's surprise was genuine and an answeringseverity was checked by Jack's presence. 

"It was my mother's ring. "

"But what better use could I make of it, mama? I rarely wear any ring butthe beautiful pearl that papa gave me. "

"I couldn't bear to have you sell it. "

"But, mama dear, why? I must ask it. How can I sacrifice so much for a merewhim?"

"I must ask you to yield to a mere whim, then. Pray give up the thought. Wewill find the money in some other way. "

"Of course, mama, if you insist, I must yield, " Imogen said, sinkingback in her seat beside the attentive Jack, and hoping that her mournfulacquiescence might show in its true light to him, even if her mother'ssentimental selfishness didn't. And later, when he very prettily insistedon himself entertaining the club-girls at the Philharmonic, she felt that, after all, no one but her mother had lost in the encounter. The girls wereto have their concert (though they might have had many such, had not hermother so robbed them, there was still that wound) and she was to keep herring; and she was not sorry for that, for it did go well with the pearl. Above all, Jack must have appreciated both her generous intention and herrelinquishing of it. Yet she had just to test his appreciation. 

"Indeed I do accept, Jack. I can't bear to have them disappointed for achildish fancy, like that of poor mama's, and we have no right to afford itby any other means. Isn't it strange that any one should care more for acolored bit of stone than for some high and shining hours in those girls'gray lives?"

But Jack said: "Oh, I perfectly understand what she felt about it. It washer mother's ring. She probably remembers seeing it on her mother's hand. "So Imogen had, again, to recognize the edge of the shadow. 

They, all of them, Jack, Mary, and her mother, went with her and her girlsto the concert. Jack had taken two boxes in the semicircle that sweepsround Carnegie Hall, overhanging the level sea of heads below. Rose Packer, just come to town, was next them, with the friends she was visiting in NewYork, two pretty, elaborately dressed girls, frothing with youthful highspirits, and their mother, an abundant, skilfully-girthed matron. TheLangleys were very fashionable and very wealthy; their houses in America, England, Italy, their yachts and motorcars, their dances and dinners, furnished matter for constant and uplifted discourse in the society columnsof the English-speaking press all over the world. Every one of Imogen'sfactory girls knew them by name and a stir of whispers and nudges announcedtheir recognition. 

Mrs. Langley leaned over the low partition to clasp Mrs. Upton'shand, --they had known each other since girlhood, --and to smile benignlyupon Imogen, casting a glance upon the self-conscious, staring girls, whoseclothing was a travesty of her own consummate modishness as their mannersat once attempted to echo her sweetness and suavity. 

"What a nice idea, " she murmured to Imogen; "and to have them hear it inthe best way possible, too. Not crowded into cheap, stuffy seats. "

"That would hardly have been possible, since I do not myself care to hearmusic in cheap seats. What is not good enough for me is not good enough formy friends. To-day we all owe our pleasure to Mr. Pennington. "

Mrs. Langley, blandly interested in this creditable enlightenment, turnedto Jack with questioning about the tableaux. 

"We are all so much interested in Imogen's interests, aren't we? It's suchan excellent idea. My girls are so sorry that they can't be in them. Rosetells me, Imogen, that there was some idea of your doing Antigone. "

"None whatever, " said Imogen, with no abatement of frigidity. Shedisapproved of leaders of fashion. 

"I only meant, " Rose leaned forward, "that we wanted you to, so much, "

"And can't you persuade her? You would look so well, my dear child. Talkher over, Valerie, you and Mr. Pennington. " Mrs. Langley looked back at herfriend. 

"It would hardly do just now, I think, " Valerie answered. 

"But for a charity--" Mrs. Langley urged her mitigation with a smile thatexpressed, to Imogen's irritated sensibilities, all the trite conformity ofthe mammon-server. 

"I don't think it would do, " Valerie repeated. 

"Pray don't think my motive in refusing a conventional one, " said Imogen, with an irrepressible severity that included her mother as well as Rose andMrs. Langley. These two sank back in their seats and the symphony began. 

Resting her cheek on her hand, her elbow on her knee, Imogen leanedforward, as if out of the perplexing, weary world into the sphere ofthe soul. She smiled deeply at one of her girls while she fell into thelistening harmony of attitude, and her delicate face took on a look of raptexaltation. 

Jack was watching her, she knew; though she did not know that her ownconsciousness of the fact effectually prevented her from receiving as morethan a blurred sensation the sounds that fell upon her ear. 

She adjusted her face, her attitude, as a painter expresses an idea throughthe medium of form, and her idea was to look as though feeling the noblestthings that one can feel. And at the end of the first movement, the vaguelyheard harmony without responding to the harmony of this inner purpose, themusic's tragic acceptance of doom echoing her own deep sense of loneliness, the strange new sorrow tangling her life, tears rose beautifully to hereyes; a tear slid down her cheek. 

She put up her handkerchief quietly and dried it, glancing now at Jackbeside her. He was making a neat entry in a note-book, technicallyinterested in the rendering by a new conductor. The sight struck throughher and brought her soaring sadness to earth. Anger, deep and gnawing, filled her. He had not seen her tears, or, if he had, did not care thatshe was sad. It was little consolation for her hurt to see good Mary'seyes fixed on her with wide solicitude. She smiled, ever so gravely andtenderly, at Mary, and turned her eyes away. 

A babble of silly enthusiasm had begun in the Langley box and Rose hadjust effected a change of seat that brought her next to her adored Mrs. Upton and nearer her dear Mary. Imogen almost felt that hostile forces hadclustered behind her back, especially as Jack turned in his chair to talkto Mary and her mother. 

"Just too lovely!" exclaimed one of the younger Miss Langleys, in much thesame vernacular as that used by Imogen's _protégées_. 

She looked round at these to see one yawning cavernously, on the cessationof uncomprehended sound; while another's eyes, drowsed as if by somenarcotic, sought the relief of visual interest in the late-comers who filedin below. A third sat in an attitude of sodden preoccupation, breathingheavily and gazing at the Langleys and at Rose, who wore to-day a wonderfuldress. Only a rounded little Jewess, with eyes of black lacquer set in afat, acquiline face, quite Imogen's least favorite of her girls, showed aproper appreciation. She was as intent and as preoccupied as Jack had been. 

The second movement began, a movement hurrying, dissatisfied, rising inappeal and aspiration, beaten back; turning upon itself continually, continually to rise again, --baffled, frustrated, yet indomitable. And asImogen listened her features took on a mask-like look of gloom. How aloneshe was among them all. 

She was glad in the third movement, her mind in its knotted concentrationcatching but one passage, and that given with a new rendering, to emphasizeher displeasure by a little shudder and frown. An uproar of enthusiasmarose after the movement and Imogen heard one of the factory girls behindher, in answer to a question from her mother, ejaculate "_Fine!_"

When her mother leaned to her, with the same "Wasn't it splendid?" Imogenfound relief in answering firmly, "I thought it insolent. "

"Insolent? That adagio bit?"--Jack, evidently, had seen her symptoms ofdistress. --"Why, I thought it a most exquisite interpretation. "

"So did I, " said Mrs. Upton rather sadly from behind. 

"It hurt me, mama dear, " said Imogen. "But then I know this symphony sowell, love it so much, that I perhaps feel intolerantly toward newreadings. "

As the next, and last, movement began, she heard Rose under her breath yetquite loud enough, murmur, "Bunkum!" The ejaculation was nicely modulatedto reach her own ears alone. 

With a deepened sense of alienation, Imogen sat enveloped by the unheardthunders of the final movement. Yes, Rose would hide her impertinence fromothers' ears. Imogen had noted the growing tenderness, light and playful, between her mother and the girl. Behind her, presently, she rustled in allher silks as she leaned to whisper something to Mrs. Upton--"You will comeand have tea with me, --at Sherry's, --all by ourselves?" Imogen caught. 

Her mother was not the initiator, but her acquiescence was an offense, andto Imogen, acutely conscious of the whispered colloquy, each murmur ranneedles of anger into her stretched and vibrating nerves. At last sheturned eyes portentously widened and a prolonged "Ss-s-s-h" upon them. 

"People _oughtn't_ to whisper, " Jack smiled comprehendingly at her, whenthey reached the end of the symphony; the rest of the movement having beenoccupied, for Imogen, with a sense of indignant injury. 

She had caught his attention, then, with her reproof. There was sudden balmin his sympathy. The memory of the unnoticed tear still rankled in her, butshe was able to smile back. "Some people will always be the money-lendersin the temple. "

At once the balm was embittered. She had trusted too much to his sympathy. He flushed his quick, facile flush, and she was again at the confines ofthe shadow. Really, it was coming to a pass when she could venture no leastcriticism, even by implication, of her mother. 

But, keeping up her smile, she went on: "You don't feel that? To me, music is a temple, the cathedral of my soul. And the chink of money, thebartering of social trivialities, jars on me like a sacrilege. "

He looked away, still with the flush. "Aren't we all, more or less, worshipers or money-lenders by turn? My mind often strays. "

"Not to the glitter of common coin, " she insisted, urging with mildness hisown better self upon him; for, yes, rather than judge her mother he wouldlower his own ideal. All the more reason, then, for her to hold fast to herown truth, and see its light place him where it must. If he now thought herpriggish, --well, that _did_ place him. 

"Oh, yes, it does, often, " he rejoined; but now he smiled at her as thoughher very solemnity, her very lack of humor, touched him; it was once morethe looking down of the shifted focus. Then he appealed a little. 

"You mustn't be too hard on people for not feeling as you do--all thetime. "

Consistency did not permit her an answer, for the next piece had begun. 

When the concert was over, Mrs. Langley offered the hospitality of herelectric brougham to three of them. Rose and her girls were going to a teaclose by. Imogen said that she preferred walking and Jack said that hewould go with her; so Mary and Mrs. Upton departed with Mrs. Langley and, the factory girls dispatched to their distances by subway, the young couplestarted on their way down crowded Fifth Avenue. 

It was a bright, reverberating day, dry and cloudless, and, as theywalked shoulder to shoulder, their heels rang metallically on the frostypavements. Above the sloping canon of the avenue, the sky stretched, a longstrip of scintillating blue. The "Flat-Iron" building towered appallinglyinto the middle distance like the ship prow of some giant invasion. Thesignificance of the scene was of nothing nobly permanent, but it wasexhilarating in its expression of inquisitive, adventurous life, shapingits facile ideals in vast, fluent forms. 

Imogen's face, bathed in the late sunlight, showed its usual calm;inwardly, she was drawn tight and tense as an arrow to the bow-head, in atingling readiness to shoot far and free at any challenge. 

A surface constraint was manifested in Jack's nervous features, but sheguessed that his consciousness had not reached the pitch of her ownacuteness, and made him only aware of a difference as yet unadjustedbetween them. Indeed, with a quiet interest that she knew was not assumed, he presently commented to her on the odd disproportion between thestreaming humanity and its enormous frame. 

"If one looks at it as a whole it's as inharmonious as a high, huge stagewith its tiny figures before the footlights. It's quite out of scale as asetting for the human form. It's awfully ugly, and yet it's rathersplendid, too. "

Imogen assented. 

"We are still juggling with our possibilities, " said Jack, and he continuedto talk on of the American people and their possibilities--his favoritetopic--so quietly, so happily, even, that Imogen felt suddenly a relaxationof the miserable mood that had held her during all the afternoon. 

His comradely tone brought her the sensation of their old, their so recent, relation, complete, unflawed, once more. An impulse of recovery rose inher, and, her mind busy with the sweet imagination, she said presently, reflectively, "I think I will do your Antigone after all. "

Completely without coquetry, and sincerely innocent of feminine wiles, Imogen had always known, sub-consciously as it were, for the matter seldomassumed the least significance for her, that Jack delighted in her personalappearance. She saw herself, suddenly, in all the appealing youth andbeauty of the Grecian heroine, stamping on his heart, by means of the outermanifestation, that inner reality to which he had become so strangelyblind. It was to this revelation of reality that her thought clung, and anadded impulse of mere tenderness had helped to bring the words to her lips. In her essential childishness where emotion and the drama of the senseswere concerned, she could not have guessed that the impulse, with itstender mask, was the primitive one of conquest, the cruel female instinctfor holding even where one might not care to keep. At the bottom of herheart, a realm never visited by her unspotted thoughts, was a yearning, strangely mingled, to be adored, and to wreak vengeance for the falteringin adoration that she had felt. Ah, to bind him!--to bind him, helpless, toher! That was the mingled cry. 

Jack looked round at her, as unconscious as she of these pathetic andtigerish depths, but though his eye lighted with the artist's delight inthe vision that he had relinquished reluctantly, she saw, in anothermoment, that he hesitated. 

"That would be splendid, dear, --but, can you go back on what you said?"

"Why not? If I have found reason to reconsider my first decision?"

"What reason? You mustn't do it just to please me, you know; though it'ssweet of you, if that is the reason. Your mother, you see, agreed with you. I hadn't realized that she would mind. You know what she said, just now. "

Jack had flushed in placing his objection, and Imogen, keeping grave, sunlit eyes upon him, felt a flush rise to her own cheeks. 

"Do you feel her minding, minding in such a way, any barrier?" She was ableto control the pain, the anger, that his hesitation gave her, the quickhumiliation, too, and she went on with only a deepening of voice:

"Perhaps that minding of hers is part of my reason. I have no right, I seethat clearly now, to withhold what I can do for our cause from any selfishshrinking. I felt, in that moment when she and Mrs. Langley debated on theconventional aspect of the matter, that I would be glad, yes, glad, to givemyself, since my refusal is seen in the same category as any paltry, socialscruple. It was as if a deep and sacred thing of one's heart were suddenlydragged out and exhibited like a thickness of black at the edge of one'snote-paper. 

"Will you understand me, Jack, when I say that I feel that I can in no wayso atone to that sacred memory for the interpretation that was an insult;in no way keep it so safe, as by making it this offering of myself. It isfor papa that I shall do it. He would have wished it. I shall think of himas I stand there, of him and of the children that we are helping. "

She spoke with her deliberate volubility, neither hesitating nor hurrying, her meaning, for all its grandiloquence of setting, very definite, and Jacklooked a little dazed, as though from the superabundance of meaning. 

"Yes, I see, --yes, you are quite right, " he said. He paused for a moment, going over her chain of cause and effect, seeking the particular link thatthe new loyalty in him had resented. And then, after the pause, finding it:"But I don't believe your mother meant it like that, " he added. 

His eyes met Imogen's as he said it, and he almost fancied that somethingswordlike clashed against his glance, something that she swiftly withdrewand sheathed. It was earnest gentleness alone that answered him. 

"What do you think she did mean then, Jack? Please help me to see if I'munfair. I only long to be perfectly fair. How can I do for her, unless Iam?"

His smoldering resentment was quenched by a sense of compunction and arising hope. 

"That's dear of you, Imogen, " he said. "You _are_, I think, unfair attimes. It's difficult to lay one's finger on it. "

"But please _do_ lay your finger on it--as heavily as you can, dear Jack. "

"Well, the simile will do for my impression. The finger you lay on _her_ istoo heavy. You exaggerate things in her--over-emphasize things. "

She was holding herself, forcing herself to look calmly at this road hepointed out to her, the only road, perhaps, that would lead her back to herold place with him. "Admirable things, you think, if one saw them truly?"

"I don't know about admirable; but warm, sweet--at the worst, harmless. I'm sure, to-day, that she only meant it for you, for what she felt mustbe your shrinking. Of course she had her sense of fitness, too, a fitnessthat we may, as you feel, overlook when we see the larger fitness. Buther intention was perfectly, "--he paused, seeking an expression for theintention and repeated, --"Sweet, warm, harmless. "

Imogen felt that she was holding herself as she had never held herself. 

"Don't you think I see all that, Jack?"

"Well, I only meant that I, since coming to know her, really know her, inBoston, see it most of all. "

"And you can't see, too, how it must stab me to have papa--papa--put, through her trivial words, into the category of black-edged paper?"

Her voice had now the note of tears. 

"But she _doesn't_, " he protested. 

"Can you deny that, for her, he counts for little more than the merequestion of convention?"

Jack at this was, perforce, silent. No, he couldn't altogether deny it, andthough it did not seem to him a particularly relevant truth he could butown that to Imogen it might well appear so. He did not answer her, andthere the incident seemed to end. But it left them both with the sense offrustrated hope, and over and above that Jack had felt, sharper than everbefore, the old shoot of weariness for "papa" as the touchstone for suchvexed questions. 

XIII

Mrs. Upton expressed no displeasure, although she could not controlsurprise, when she was informed of Imogen's change of decision, and Jack, watching her as usual, felt bound, after the little scene of her quietacquiescence, to return with Imogen, for a moment, to the subject of theirdispute. Imogen had asked him to help her to see and however hopeless hemight feel of any fundamental seeing on her part, he mustn't abandon hopewhile there was a stone unturned. 

"That's what it really was, " he said to her. "You _do_ see, don't you?--torespond to whatever she felt you wanted. "

Imogen stared a little. "Of what are you talking, Jack?"

"Of your mother Antigone--the black edge. It wasn't the black edge. "

She had understood in a moment and was all there, as fully equipped withforbearing opposition as ever. 

"It wasn't _even_ the black edge, you mean? Even that homage to his memorywas unreal?"

"Of course not. I mean that she wanted to do what you wanted. "

"And does she think, do you think, it's _that_ I want, --a suave adaptationto ideals she doesn't even understand? No doubt she attributes my changeto girlish vanity, the wish to shine among the others. If that was what Iwanted, that would be what she would want, too. "

"Aren't you getting away from the point a little?" he asked, baffled andconfused, as he often was, by her measured decisiveness. 

"It seems to me that I am _on_ the point. --The point is that she cared solittle about _him_--in either way. "

This was what he had foreseen that she would think. 

"The point is that she cares so much for you, " he ventured his conviction, fixing his eyes, oddly deepened with this, his deepest appeal, upon her. 

But Imogen, as though it were a bait thrown out and powerless to allure, slid past it. 

"To gain things we must _work_ for them. It's not by merely caring, yielding, that one wins one's rights. Mama is a very 'sweet, warm, harmless' person; I see that as well as you do, Jack. " So she put him inhis place and he could only wonder if he had any right to feel so angry. 

The preparations for the new tableau were at once begun and a few daysafter their last uncomfortable encounter, Jack and Imogen were againtogether, in happier circumstances it seemed, for Imogen, standing inthe library while her mother adjusted her folds and draperies, could butdelight a lover's eye. Mary, also on view, in her handmaiden array, --Mary'spart was a small one in the picture of the restored Alcestis, --sat gazingin admiration, and Jack walked about mother and daughter with suggestionand comment. 

"It's perfect, quite perfect, " he declared, "that warm, soft white; andyou have done it most beautifully, Mrs. Upton. You are a wonderful_costumière_. "

"Isn't my chlamys a darling?" said Valerie happily from below, where sheknelt to turn a hem. 

"Mama won't let us forget that chlamys, " Imogen said, casting a look ofamusement upon her mother. "She is so deliciously vain about it. " Imogenwas feeling a thrill of confidence and hope. Jack's eyes, as they restedupon her, had shown the fondest admiration. She was in the humor, so rarewith her of late, of gaiety and light assurance. And she thirsted for wordsof praise and delight from Jack. 

"No wonder that she is vain, " Jack returned. "It has just the look of thatheavenly garment that blows back from the Victory of Samothrace. The hair, too, with those fillets, you did that, I suppose. "

"Yes, I did. I do think it's an achievement. It has the carven look thatone wants. Imogen's hair lends itself wonderfully to those long, sweepinglines. "

But, Jack, once having expressed his admiration for Imogen, seemedtactlessly bent on emphasizing his admiration for the mere craftswoman ofthe occasion. 

"Well, it's as if you had formed the image into which I'm to blow thebreath of life. I'm really uncertain, yet, as to the best attitude. " Imogenwas listening to this with some gravity of gaze. "Do take that lastposition we decided upon, Imogen. And do you, Mary, take the place of thefaltering old Oedipus for a moment. Look down, Imogen; yes, a strong, brooding tenderness of look. "

"Ah, she gets it wonderfully, " said Valerie, still at her hem. 

"Not quite deep or still enough, " Jack objected. "Stand back, Mary, please, while we work at the expression. No, that's not it yet. "

"But it's lovely, so. You would have found fault with Antigone herself, Jack, " Mrs. Upton protested. 

"Jack is quite right, mama, pray don't laugh at his suggestions. Iunderstand perfectly what he means. " Imogen glanced at herself in themirror with a grave effort to assume the expression demanded of her. "Isthis better, Jack?"

"Yes--no;--no, you can't get at all what I mean, " the young man returned, so almost pettishly that Valerie glanced up at him with a quick flush. 

Imogen's resentment, if she felt any, did not become apparent. She acceptedcondemnation with dignified patience. 

"I'm afraid that is the best I can do now, though I'll try. Perhaps on theday of the actual performance it will come more deeply to me. There, mamadarling, that will do; it's quite right now. I can't put myself intoit while you sew down there. I can hardly think that I'm brooding overmy tragic father while I see your pins and needles. Now, Jack, is thisbetter?" With perfect composure she once more took the suggested attitudeand expression. 

Mrs. Upton, her dusky flush deepened, rose, stumbling a little from herlong stooping, and, steadying herself with her hand on a table, looked atthe new effort. 

"No, --it's worse. It's complacent--self-conscious, " burst from Jack. "Youlook as if you were thinking far more about your own brooding than aboutyour father. Antigone is self-forgetting; absolutely self-forgetting. " Sohis rising irritation found impulsive, helpless expression. In the slightsilence that followed his words he was aware of the discord that he hadcrashed into an apparent harmony. He glanced almost furtively at Mrs. Upton. Had she seen--did she guess--the anger, for her, that had brokeninto these peevish words? She met his eyes with her penetrating depth ofgaze, and Imogen, turning to them, saw the interchange; saw Jack abashedand humble, not before her own forbearance but before her mother's wonderand severity. 

Resentment had been in her, keen and sharp, from his first criticism; nay, from his first ignoring of her claim to praise. It rose now to a flood ofrighteous indignation. Sweeping round upon them in her white draperies, casting aside--as in a flash she saw it--petty subterfuge and petty fear, coldly, firmly, she questioned him:

"I must ask you whether this is mere ill-temper, Jack, or whether youintentionally wish to wound me. Pray let me have the truth. "

Speechless, confused, Jack gazed at her. 

She went on, gaining, as she spoke, her usual relentless fluency. 

"If you would rather that some one else did the Antigone, pray say sofrankly. It will be a relief to me to give up my part. I am very tired. I have a great deal to do. You know why I took up the added burden. Mymotives make me quite indifferent to petty, personal considerations. All that, from the first, I have had in mind, was to help, to the bestof my poor ability. Whom would you rather have? Rose?--Mary?--ClaraBartlett?--Why not mama? I will gladly help any one of them with all that Ihave learnt from you as to dress and pose. But I cannot, myself, go on withthe part if such malignant dissatisfaction is to be wreaked upon me. "

Jack felt his head rise at last from the submerging flood. 

"But, Imogen, indeed, --I do beg your pardon. It was odious of me to speakso. No one can do the part but you. "

"Why say that, Jack, when you have just told me that I do it worse andworse?"

"It was only a momentary impression. Really, I'm ashamed of myself. "

"But it's your impression that is the standard in those tableaux. How can Ido the part if I contradict your conception?"

"You can't. I was in a bad temper. "

"And why, may I ask, were you in a bad temper?"

The gaze from her serene yet awful brows was bent upon him, but under it, in a sudden reaction from its very serenity, its very awfulness, a firmdetermination rose in him to meet it. Turning very red but eyeing Imogenvery straight: "I thought you inconsiderate, ungrateful, to your mother, asyou often are, " he said. 

For a long moment Imogen was silent, glancing presently at Mary--scarletwith dismay, her hastily adjusted eye-glasses in odd contrast to herclassic draperies--and then turning her eyes upon her mother who, stillstanding near the table, was frowning and looking down. 

"Well, mama dear, " she asked, "what have you to say to this piece ofinformation? Have I, all unconsciously, been unkind? Have I beenungrateful? Do you share Jack's sense of injury?"

Mrs. Upton looked up as though from painful and puzzling reflection. "My dear Imogen, " she said, "I think that you and Jack are ratherself-righteous young people, far too prone to discussing yourselves. Ithink that you were a little inconsiderate; but Jack has no call to take upmy defense or to express any opinion as to our relations. Of course youwill do the Antigone, and of course, when he recovers his temper, --and Ibelieve he has already, --he will be very glad that you should. And nowlet's have no more of this foolish affair. "

None of them had ever heard her make such a measured, and, as it were, such a considered speech before, and the unexpectedness of it so wroughtupon them that it reduced not only Jack but even the voluble Antigone tosilence. But in Jack's silence was an odd satisfaction, even an elation. He didn't mind his own humiliation--that of an officious little boy put ina corner--one bit; for there in the corner opposite was Imogen, actuallyImogen, and the sight of it gave him a shameful pleasure. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Upton calmly resumed her work at the hem, finished it, turned her daughter about and pronounced it all quite right. 

"Now get into warmer clothes and come down to tea, which will be heredirectly, " she said. 

Imogen, by now, was recovered from the torpor of her astonishment. 

"Mary, will you come with me, I'll want your help. " And then, as Mary, whomalone she could count as an ally, joined her, she paused before departure, gathering her chlamys about her. "If I am silent, mama, pray don't imaginethat it is you who have silenced me, " she said. "I certainly could notthink of defending myself to you. My character, with all its many faults, speaks for itself with those who understand me and what I aim at. All I askof you, mama, is not to imagine, for a moment, that you are one of those. "

So Antigone, white, smiling, wrathful, swept away, Mary behind her, round-eyed and aghast, and Valerie was left confronting the overwhelmedJack. 

He could find not one word to say, and for some moments Valerie, too, stoodsilent, slipping her needle back and forth in her fingers and looking hardat the carpet. 

"It's all my fault!" Jack burst out suddenly. "Blundering, silly fool thatI am! Do say that you forgive me. "

She did not look at him, but, still slipping her needle with the minute, monotonous gesture back and forth, she nodded. 

"But say it, " Jack protested. "Scold me as much as you please. It's alltrue; I'm a prig, I know. But say that you forgive me. "

A smile quivered on her cheek, and putting out her hand she answered:"There's nothing to forgive, Jack. I lost my temper, too. And it's all merenonsense. "

He seized her hand, and then, only then, realized from something in thequiver of the smile, something muffled in the lightness of her voice, thatshe was crying. 

"Oh!" broke from him; "oh! what brutes we are!"

She had drawn her hand from his in a moment, had turned from him while sheswiftly put her handkerchief to her eyes, and after the passage of thescudding rain-cloud she confronted him clearly once more. 

"Why, it's all my fault, --don't you know, --from the beginning, " she said. 

He understood her perfectly. She had never been so near him. 

"You _know_ that's not true, " he said. And then, at last, his eyes, widelyupon her, told her on which side his sympathies were enlisted in thelong-drawn contest between, --not between poor Imogen and herself, that wasa mere result--but between herself and her husband. 

And that she understood his understanding became at once apparent to him. He had never seen her blush as she blushed then, and when the deep glow hadpassed she became very white and looked very weary, almost old. 

"No, I don't know it, Jack, " she said. "And you, certainly, do not. Andnow, dear Jack, don't let us speak of this any more. Will you help me toclear this table for the tea-things. "

 * * * * *

So this, for Imogen, was the result of her loving impulse during the frostywalk down Fifth Avenue. All her sweet, wordless appeals had been in vain. Jack had admired her as he might have admired a marionette; her beauty hadmeant less to him than her mother's dressmaking; and as she sat alone inher room on that afternoon, having gently and firmly sent Mary down to teawith the ominous message that she cared for none, she saw that the shadowbetween her and Jack loomed close upon them now, the shadow that would blotout all their future, as a future together. And Imogen was frightened, badly frightened, at the prospect of that empty future. 

Her fragrant branch of life that had bloomed so fully and freshly in herhand, a scepter and a fairy wand of beneficence, had withered to a thornyscourge for her own shoulders. She looked about her, before her. Sherealized with a new, a cutting keenness, that Jack was very rich and shevery poor. The chill of poverty had hardly reached her as yet, the warmcertainty of its cessation had wrapped her round too closely; but itreached her now, and the thought of that poverty, unrelieved, perhaps, forall her life, the thought of the comparative obscurity to which it wouldconsign her, filled her with a real panic; and, as before, the worst partof the panic was that she should feel it, she, the scorner of materialthings. Suppose, just suppose, that no one else came. Everything grew grayat the thought. Charities, friends, admiration, these were poor substitutesfor the happy power and pride that as a rich man's adored wife would havebeen hers. And the fact that had transformed her blossoming branch into thethorny scourge was that Jack's adored wife she would never be. His humbled, his submissive, his chastened and penitent wife, --yes, on those terms; yes, she could see it, the future, like a sunny garden which one could onlyreach by squeezing oneself through some painfully narrow aperture. Thefountains, the flowers, the lawns were still hers--if she would stoop andcrawl; and for Imogen the mere imagining of herself in such a posturebrought a hot blush to her forehead. Not only would she have scorned suchmeans of reaching the life of ample ease and rich benevolence, but theywere impossible to her nature. A garden that one must crouch to enter wasa prison. Better, far better, her barren, dusty, lonely life than suchhumiliation; such apostasy. 

She faced it all often, the future, the panic, during the last days ofpreparation for the tableaux, days during which, with a still magnanimity, she fulfilled the tasks that she had undertaken. She would not throw up herpart because her mother and Jack had so cruelly injured her; it was now forher father and for the crippled children alone that she did it. 

Sitting in her bedroom with its many books and photographs, the big framedone of her father over her bed, she promised him, her eyes on his, thatshe would have strength to face it all, for all her life if necessary. "Itwas too easy, I see that now, " she whispered to him. "I had made no realsacrifices for _our_ thing. The drop of black blood had never yet beencrushed out of my heart, --for when you died, it was submission that wasasked of me, not sacrifice. It was easy, dear, to give myself to the workwe believed in--to be tired, and strong, and glad for it--to live outbravely into the world--when you were beside me and when all the means ofwork were in my hand. But now I must relinquish something that I couldonly keep by being false to myself--to you--to the right. And I must gouphill--'yes, uphill to the very end'--accepting poverty, loneliness, thegreat need of love, unanswered. But I won't falter or forget, darlingfather. As long as I live I will fight our fight. Even if the way isthrough great darkness, I carry the light in my heart. "

The noble pathos of such soliloquies brought her to tears, but the tears, she felt, were strengthening and purifying. After drying them, afterreading some of the deeply marked passages in the poets that he andshe, --and, oh, alas! alas! she and Jack, lost Jack--had so often readtogether, she would go down-stairs, descend into the dusty, thorny arenaagain, feeling herself uplifted, feeling a halo of sorrowful benignityabout her head. And this feeling was so assured that those who saw her atthese moments were forced, to some extent, to share it. 

Toward her mother, toward Jack, she showed a gentle, a distant courtesy;to Mary a heartbreaking sweetness. Mary, perhaps, needed to have pettierimpressions effaced, and certain memories could but fade before Imogen'saugust head and unfaltering eyes. 

If she had been wrong in that strange little scene of the Antigone, Marywas convinced that her intention had been high. Jack had hurt her too much;that was it; and, besides, how could she know what had gone on behindthe scenes, passages between mother and daughter that had made Imogen'sattitude inevitable. So Mary argued with herself, sadly troubled. "Oh, Imogen, please tell me, " she burst forth one day, the day before thetableaux, when she was sitting with Imogen in the latter's room; "what isit that makes you so sad? Why are you so displeased with Jack? You haven'tgiven him up, Imogen!"

Imogen passed her hand softly over Mary's hair, recalling, as she did so, that the gesture was a favorite one with her father. 

"Won't you, can't you tell me?" Mary pleaded. 

"It is so difficult, dear. Given him up? No, I never do that with people Ihave cared for; but he is no longer the Jack I cared for. He is changed, Mary. "

"He adores you as much as ever, --of course I've always known how he adoredyou; it made me so happy, loving you both as I do; and he still adores youI'm sure. He is always watching you. He changes color when you come intothe room. "

"He, too, knows and feels what ominous destinies are hanging over us, Mary. " The deeply marked passages had been in Maeterlinck that day. "We areparted, perhaps forever, because he sees at last that I will not stoop. When one has grown up, all one's life, straight, facing the sunrise, onecannot bend and look down. "

"_You_ stoop! Why it's that that he would never let you do!"

"No? You think that, after the other day? _He_ has stooped, Mary, to otherlevels. He breathes a different air from mine now. I cannot follow him intohis new world. "

"You mean?--you mean?--" Mary faltered. 

Imogen's clear eyes told her what she meant; it did not need the slowacquiescence of her head nor the articulated, "Yes, I mean mama. --Poormama. A little person can make great sorrows, Mary. "

But now Mary's good, limpid eyes, unfaltering and candid as a child's, dwelt on her with a new hope. "But, Imogen, it's just that: _is_ she solittle? She isn't like you, of course. She can't lift and sustain, as youcan. She doesn't stand for great things, as you do and as your father did. But I seem to feel more and more how much she could be to you. --It onlyneeds-more _understanding_; and, if that's all, I really believe, Imogendarling, that you and Jack will be all right again. Perhaps, " Mary wenton with a terrible unconsciousness, "perhaps he has come to understand, already, better than you do, --I thought that, really, the other day, --andit's that that makes the sense of division. You are at different places ofunderstanding. And he hasn't to remember, and get over, all the mistakes, the faults in her past; and perhaps it's because of that that he sees thepresent reality more clearly than you do. Jack is such a wonderful personfor seeing the _real_ self of people. "

Imogen's steady gaze, during this speech, continued to rest unwaveringlyupon her; Mary felt no warning in it and, when she had done, waited eagerlyfor some echo to her faith. 

But when Imogen spoke, it was in a voice that revealed to her her profoundmiscalculation. 

"_You_ do not understand, Mary. _You_ see nothing. Her present self is herpast self, unchanged, unashamed, unatoned for. It is her mistakes, herfaults, that Jack now stands for. It is her mistakes and faults that _I_must stand for, if I am to be beside him again. That would be the stoopingthat I meant. I fear that not only Jack but you are blinded, Mary. I fearthat it is not only Jack but you that she is taking from me. " Her voice wascalm, but the steely edge of an accusation was in it. 

Mary sat aghast. "Taking me from you! Oh, Imogen, you don't mean that youwon't care for me if I get fond of her!"

The crudely simple interpretation brought the blood to Imogen's cheeks. "Imean that you can hardly be fond of us both. It is not _I_ who will ceaseto care. " Under the accusation was now an added note of pain and of appeal. All Mary's faiths rallied to that appeal. 

"Imogen!" she said, timidly, like the wrong-doer she felt herself tobe, taking the other's hand; "dear, brave, wonderful Imogen, --how _can_you--how _can_ you say it! Why there is hardly any one in the world who hascounted to me as you have. Why, your mother is like a sweet child besideyou! She hasn't faiths; she hasn't that healing, strengthening thing thatI've always so felt in you. She could never _mean_ what you do. Oh, Imogen!you won't think such dreadful things, will you? You do forgive me if I haveblundered and hurt you?"

Imogen drew in the fragrant incense with long breaths; it revived her, filled her veins with new courage, new hope. The two girls kissed solemnly. They were going out together and they presently went down-stairs hand inhand. But as an after-flavor there lingered for Imogen, like a faint, flatbitterness after the incense, a suspicion that Mary, in wafting her censerwith such energy, had been seeking to fill her own nostrils, also, with thesacred old aroma, to find, as well as give, the intoxication of faith. 

XIV

"Sir Basil!" Valeria exclaimed. 

She rose from the tea-table, where she and Jack and Mrs. Wake were sitting, to meet the unexpected new-comer. 

A gladness that Jack had never seen in her seemed to inundate her face, her figure, her outstretched hands; she looked young, she looked almostchildlike, as she smiled at her friend over their clasp, and Jack saw, bythe light of that transfiguration, how gray these last months must havebeen to her, how strangely bereft of response and admiration, how withoutsavor or sweetness. He saw, and with the insight came a sharp stir ofbitterness against the new-comer, who threw them all like this into a dullbackground, and, at the same time, a real echo of her gladness, that sheshould have it. 

He actually, in the sharp, swift twist of feeling, hardly rememberedImogen's forecasts and warnings, hardly remembered that Mrs. Upton'sgladness and Sir Basil's beaming gaze put Imogen quite dreadfully in theright. He did not think of Imogen at all, nor of the desecration of thehouse of mourning by this gladness, so absorbed was he in watching it, insharing it, and in being hurt by it. 

"Mrs. Wake, of course, is an old friend, " Valerie said, leading Sir Basilup to the tea-table; "and here is a new one--Jack Pennington, whom you mustquite know already, I've written so much about him. Sit down here. Tell meall about everything. Why this sudden appearance? Why no hint of it? Is itmeant as a surprise for us?"

"Well, Frances and Tom were coming over, you knew that--"

"Of course. I wrote Frances a steamer letter the day before yesterday. Yougot in this morning with them then? They said not a word of your comingwhen I last heard from them. "

"I only decided to join them at the last minute. I thought that it would begood fun to drop upon you like this, so I didn't write. It _is_ good to seeyou again. " Sir Basil, while his beam seemed to include the room and itsinmates, included them unseeingly; he had eyes, it was evident, only forher. He went on to give her messages from the Pakenhams, in New York butfor a week on their way to Canada and eager to see her at once. They wouldhave come with him had they not been rather knocked up by the early rise onthe steamer and by the long wait at the custom-house. 

"You must all come with me to-morrow to our tableaux, " said Valerie. "Imogen is in them. She is out this afternoon, so you will see her for thefirst time at her loveliest. She is to be Antigone. "

"Oh, so I sha'n't see her till to-morrow. I've always been a bit afraid ofMiss Upton, you know, " said Sir Basil, with a smile at Jack. 

"Well, the first impression will be a reassuring one, " said Valerie. "Antigone is the least alarming of heroines. "

"I don't know about that, " Sir Basil objected, folding a slice of bread andbutter, "A bit gruesome, don't you think?"

"Gruesome?"

"She stuck so to her own ideas, didn't she? Awfully rough on the poorfellow who wanted to marry her, insisting like that on burying herbrothers. "

Valerie laughed. "Well, but that sense of duty is hardly gruesome; it wouldhave been horridly gruesome to have left her brothers unburied. "

"You'll worst me in an argument, of course, " Sir Basil replied, lookingfondly at her; "but I maintain that she's a dreary young lady. Of course Idon't mean to say that she wasn't an exceedingly good girl, and all thatsort of thing, but a bit of a prig, you must allow. "

Jack listened to the bantering colloquy. This man, so hard, yet so kindly, so innocent, yet so mature, was making him feel by every tone, gesture, glance, oddly boyish and unformed. He was quite sure that he himself was agreat deal cleverer, a great deal more conscious, than Sir Basil; but theseadvantages somehow assumed the aspect of schoolboy badges of good conductbeside a grown-up standard. And, as he listened, he began to understand farmore deeply all sorts of things about Valerie; to see what vacancies shehad had to put up with, to see what fullness she must have missed. And hebegan to understand what Imogen, Cassandra-like, had declared, that theunseasonable fragrance of devotions hovered about her widowed mother; toremember the ominous "Wait and see. "

It showed how far he had traveled when he could recall these words withimpatience: could answer them with: "Well, what of it? Doesn't she deservesome compensation?"--could quietly place Sir Basil as a no longer hopelessadorer and feel a thrill of satisfaction, in the realization. Yes, sittinghere here in the house of mourning he could think these things. 

But if he was so wide, so tolerant, the very expansion of his sympathiesbrought them a finer sensitiveness. Only a tendril-like fineness couldpenetrate the complexities of that deeper vision. He began to think ofImogen, and with a new pity, a new tenderness. How she would be hurt, and how, more than all, she would be hurt by seeing that he, whileunderstanding, while sympathizing, should, helplessly, inevitably, be gladthat Sir Basil had come. Poor Imogen, --and poor himself; for where did hestand among all these shiftings of the scene? He, too, knew the driftingloneliness and desolation, and though his heart ached for the old nearnesshe could not put out his hand to her nor take a step toward her. Inhimself, in her, was the change, or the mere fate, that held them parted. The wrench had come slowly upon them, but, while he ached with the painof it, he could already look upon it as accomplished. Only one questionremained to be asked:--Would nothing, no change, no fate, draw them againtogether?

For all answer a deep, settled sadness descended upon him. 

Sir Basil took himself off before Mrs. Wake seemed to think it tactful todepart, and since, soon after, she too went, Jack and Valerie were leftalone together. 

She turned her bright, soft eyes upon the young man and he recognized inthem the unseeing quality that he had found in Sir Basil's--that happypreoccupation with inner gladness. She made him think of the bird alightedto sing on the swaying blade; and she made him think of a fountain releasedfrom winter and springing through sunlight in a murmur and sparkle ofecstasy. She was young, very young; he almost felt her as young in hergladness as he in his loneliness and pain. Smiling a trifle nervously, hesaid that he was glad, at last, to see something of her old life. "Of yourreal life, " he added. 

"My real life?" she repeated, and her look became more aware of him. 

"Yes. Of course, in a sense, all this is something outlived, cast aside, for you. You've only taken it up for a bit while you felt that it had aclaim upon you; but, once you have settled things, you would, --you wouldleave us, of course, " said Jack, still smiling. 

She was thinking of him now, no longer of herself and of Sir Basil, andperhaps, as she looked at him, at the thin brown face, the light, deepeyes, she guessed at a stir of tears under the smile. It was then as if thefountain sank from its own happy solitude and became a running brook ofsweetness, sad, yet merry. She didn't contradict him. She was sorry thatshe couldn't, yet glad that his statement should be so obviously true. 

"You mean that I'll go back to my little Surrey cottage, when I settlethings?" she said. "Perhaps, yes. And you will miss me? I will miss youtoo, dear Jack. But we will often see each other. And then it may take along time to settle all you young people. "

Her confidence so startled him, so touched him with pity for its blindness, that, swiftly, he took refuge in ambiguity. 

"Oh, you'll settle us!" he said, wondering in what that settling wouldconsist, wondering what would happen if Imogen, definitely casting him off, to put the final settling in that form, were left on her mother's hands. She would have to settle Imogen in America and what, in the meanwhile, would become of her "real" life?

But from the mother's confidence, her radiance, that accepted his speechin its happiest meaning, he guessed that she didn't foresee such acontingency; he even guessed that, were she brought face to face with it, she wouldn't accept its unsettling of her own joy as final. The fountainwas too strong to heed such obstacles. It would find its way to thesunlight. Imogen, in time, would have to accept a step-father. 

XV

Jack did not witness the revelation to Imogen of the ominous arrival, butfrom her demeanor at lunch next day he could guess at how it had impressedher. He felt in her an intense, a guarded, excitement, and knew that thenews had fallen upon her with a tingling concussion. The sound of thethunder-bolt must reverberate all the louder in Imogen's ears from herconsciousness that to Mary's it was soundless, Mary, who had been theonly spectator of its falling. Her mother, too, was unconscious of suchreverberations, so that it must seem to her a ghost-like subjectivewarning, putting into audible form all her old hauntings. 

That she at once sought in him evidences of the same experience, Jackfelt, and all through the early lunch, where they assembled prior to hisdeparture with the two girls for the theater, he avoided meeting Imogen'seyes. He was too sure that she felt their mutual knowledge as a bond overthe recent chasm. The knowledge in his own eyes was far too deep for him toallow her to wade into it; she would simply drown. He was rather ashamed ofhimself, but he resolutely feigned a cheerful unconsciousness. 

"You are going with your friends, later?" he asked Valerie, who, he wasquite sure, also feigning something, said that since Imogen and Marydressed each other so well, and since he would be there to see that everydetail was right, she, with the Pakenhams and Sir Basil, would get herimpression from the stalls. Afterward, they would all meet here for tea. 

"It was a surprise, you know, their coming, " Imogen put in suddenly, fromher end of the table, fixing strangely sparkling eyes upon Jack. 

"No, " said her mother, in tones of leisurely correction, "I expected thePakenhams, as I told you. "

"Oh, yes; it was only Sir Basil's surprise. You didn't expect him. Does helike playing surprises on people, mama?"

"I don't know that he does. "

"He only plays them on you. "

"I knew that he was coming, at some time. "

"Ah, but you didn't tell me that; it was, in the main, _my_ surprise, then;but not so soon, I suppose. "

"So soon? So soon for what?"

Imogen, at this, allowed her badly adjusted mask of lightness to fall and asudden solemnity overspread her features. 

"Don't you feel it rather soon for friends to play pranks, mama?"

The words seemed to erect a catafalque before their eyes, but, facing thenodding blackness with a calm in which Jack detected the glint of steel, Valerie answered: "I am not aware that they have been playing pranks. "

For all the way to the theater Imogen again assumed the mask, talkingexclusively to Mary. She talked of these friends of her mother's, of SirBasil, Mr. And Mrs. Pakenham, what she had heard of them; holding up, as iffor poor, frightened Mary's delectation, an impartial gaily sketched littleportrait of their oddities. It was as if she felt it her duty to atoneto Mary by her lightness and gaiety for the gloom that had overspread thelunch; as if she wished to assure Mary that she wouldn't allow her tosuffer for other people's ill-temper, --Mrs. Upton had certainly been verysilent for the rest of that uncomfortable meal, --as if it were for Mary'ssake that she were assuming the mask, behind which, as Jack must know, shewas in torture. 

"I'm glad you're to see them, Mary darling; they will amuse you. From yourstandpoint of reality, the standpoint of Puritan civilization--the deepestcivilization the world has yet produced; the civilization that judges bythe soul--you will be able to judge and place them as few of our peopleare, as yet, developed enough to do. They are of that funny English type, Mary, the leisured; their business in life that of pleasure seeking; theirsocial service consisting in benevolent domination over the servile classesbeneath them. Oh, they have their political business, too; we mustn't beunfair; though that consists, in the main, for people of their type, inmaintaining their own place as donors and in keeping other people in theplace of recipients. In their own eyes, I'm quite sure, they are useful, as upholding the structure of English civilization. You'll find themabsolutely simple, absolutely self-assured, absolutely indifferent, quitecharming, --there's no reason why they shouldn't be; but their good mannersare for themselves, not for you, --one must never forget that with theEnglish. Do study them, Mary. We need to keep the fact of them clearlybefore us, for what they represent is a menace to us and to what we mean. I sometimes think that the future of the world depends upon which idealis to win, ours or the English. We must arm ourselves with completecomprehension. Already they have infected the cruder types among us. "

These were all sentiments that in the past, Mary felt sure, Jack must haveacquiesced in and approved of, and yet she felt surer that Imogen's mannerof enunciating them was making Jack very angry. She herself did not findthem as inspiring as she might have expected, and looking very muchfrightened and flurried she murmured that as she was to go back to Bostonnext day she would not have much opportunity for all this observation. "Besides--I don't believe that I'm so--so wise--so civilized, you know, asto be able to see it all. "

"Oh, Imogen will tell you what to see!" said Jack. 

"It's very kind of her, I'm sure, " poor Mary faltered. She could have burstinto tears. These two!--these beloved two!

Meanwhile, at a little later hour, Valerie and Mrs. Wake made their way tothe theater, there to meet the group of friends from whom they had partedin England six months before. 

The Pakenhams, full of question and comment, were intelligently amassingwell-assorted impressions of the country that was new to them. Sir Basil, though cheerfully pleased with all to which his attention was drawn, showedno particular interest in his surroundings. His concentration was entirelyfor his regained friend. 

After her welcoming radiance of the day before, Valerie looked pale andweary, and when, with solicitude, he asked her whether she were not tired, she confessed to having slept badly. 

"She's changed, you know, " Sir Basil said to Mrs. Pakenham, when they weresettled in their seats, and Valerie, beside him, was engaged in pointingout people to Tom Pakenham. "It's been frightfully hard on her, all this, I'm sure. "

"She's as charming as ever, " said Mrs. Pakenham. 

"Oh, well, that could never change. But what a shame that she should havehad, all along, such a lot to go through. " Sir Basil, as a matter ofcourse, had the deepest antipathy for the late Mr. Upton. 

The tableaux struck at once the note of success. Saved by Jack's skill fromany hint of waxwork or pantomime, their subtle color and tranquil lightmade each picture a vision of past time, an evocation of Hellenic beautyand dignity. 

Cassandra in her car--her face (oh, artful Jack!) turned away, --awfulbefore the door of Agamemnon; Iphigenia, sleeping, on her way to thesacrifice; Helen, before her husband and Hecuba; Alcestis, returning fromthe grave, and Deianira with the robe. The old world of beauty and sorrow, austere and lovely in its doom, passed before modern eyes against itsbackground of sky, grove, and palace steps. 

"And now, " said Valerie, when the lights sprang out for the interval, "nowfor your introduction to Imogen. They have made her the climax, you see. "

"He did, you mean. The young man. "

"Yes, Jack arranged it all. "

"He's the one you wrote of, of course, who admires her so tremendously. "

"He is the one. "

"In fact he'll carry her off from you some day, soon, eh?" Sir Basilventured with satisfaction in his own assurance. He, too, felt that Imogenmust be "settled. "

"I suppose so, " said Valerie. "I couldn't trust her to any one morehappily. He understands her and cares for her absolutely. "

Sir Basil at this ventured a little further, voicing both satisfaction andanxiety with: "So, then, you'll come back--to--to Surrey. "

"Yes, then, I think, I can come back to Surrey, " Valerie replied. 

The heart of her feeling had always remained for him a mystery, and heracquiescence now might mean a great deal, everything, in fact, or it mightmean only her gliding composure before a situation that she had power toform as she would. He could observe that her color rose. He knew that sheblushed easily. He knew, too, that his own feeling was not hidden from herand that the blush might be for her recognition only; yet he was occupiedwith the most hopeful interpretations when the curtain rose. A moment afterits rising Valerie heard him softly ejaculate, "I say!" She could haveechoed the helplessly rudimentary, phrase. She, too, gazed, in a stuporof delight; a primitive emotion in it. The white creature standing therebefore them, with her forward poise, her downcast yet upgazing face, washer child. Valerie, since her return to her home, had given little timeto analysis of her own feeling, the stress of her situation had been toointense for leisurely self-observation. But in the upwelling of a strange, a selfless, joy she knew, now, how often she had feared that all the joy ofmaternity was dead in her; killed, killed by Imogen. 

The joy now was a passing ray. The happy confusion of admiration, wonder, and pride was blotted out by the falling gloom of reality. It was herchild who stood there, but the bond between them seemed, but for the acheof rejected maternity at her heart, a pictorial one merely. Tears ofbitterness involuntarily filled her eyes as she looked, and Imogen's formseemed to waver in a dim, an alien atmosphere. 

When the curtain fell on the Antigone who kept her pose without a tremor, the uproar of applause was so great that it had to rise, not only twice, but three times. At the last, a faint wavering shook slightly theAntigone's sculptured stillness and poor old Oedipus rocked obviously uponhis feet. 

"What a shame to make her keep it up for so long!" murmured Sir Basil, hisface suffused with sympathy. The symptom of human weakness was a finaltouch to the enchantment. 

"Well, it makes one selfish, such loveliness!" said Mrs. Pakenham, flushedwith her clapping. "Valerie, dear, she is quite too lovely!"

"Extraordinarily Greek, the whole thing, " said Tom Pakenham; "thecomparative insignificance of facial expression and the immensesignificance of attitude and outline. "

"But the face!" Sir Basil turned an unseeing eye upon him, still wrapped, it was evident, in the vision that, at last, had disappeared. "The figureis perfect; but the face, --I never saw anything so heavenly. "

Indeed, in its slightly downcast pose, the trivial lines of Imogen's noseand chin had been lost; the up-gazing eyes, the sweep of brow and hair, haddominated and transfigured her somewhat tamely perfect countenance. 

"Do you know, I'm more afraid of her than ever, " said Sir Basil to Valerieon their way home to tea, in the cab. "I wasn't really afraid before. Icould have borne up very well; but now--it's like knowing that one is tohave tea with a seraph. "

Jack, Imogen, and Mary were not yet arrived when they reached the house;but by the time the tea was on the table and Valerie in her place behindthe urn, they heard the cab drive up and the feet of the young people onthe stairs. 

Jack entered alone, saying that Mary and Imogen were gone to take off theirwraps. Yes, he assured Valerie, they had promised to keep on their Grecianrobes for tea. 

Valerie introduced him to the Pakenhams and led the congratulations on histriumph. "For it really is yours, Jack, as much as if you had painted thewhole series of pictures. "

Jack, looking shy, turned from one to the other as they seconded herenthusiasm, --Mrs. Pakenham, with her elaborately formal head and china-blueeyes; her husband, robust and heavy; Sir Basil, still with his benignant, unseeing quality. Among them all, in spite of Mrs. Wake's keen, familiarvisage, in spite of Valerie's soft glow, he felt himself a stranger. Heeven felt, with a little stab of ill-temper, that there had been truthin Imogen's diagnosis. They were kindly, but they were tremendouslyindifferent. They didn't at all expect you to be interested in them; butthat hardly atoned for the fact that they weren't interested in you. ForJack, life was made up of vigilant, unceasing interest, in himself and ineverybody else. 

"Ah, were they all taken from your pictures?" Sir Basil asked him, strolling up to the mantelpiece to examine a photograph of Imogen thatstood there. 

Jack explained that he could claim no such gallery of achievement. He hadmade a few sketches for each tableau; his work had been, in the main, thatof stage-manager. 

"Oh, I see, " said Sir Basil, not at all abashed by his blunder. "Nicer thanlay figures to work with, eh? all those pretty young women. "

"I don't use lay figures, at any time. I'm a landscape painter, " Jackexplained, somewhat stiffly. He surmised that had he been introduced asVelasquez Sir Basil would have been quite as unmoved, just as he would havebeen quite as genially inclined had he been introduced as a scene-painter. 

"I used to think I'd go in for something of that sort in my young days, "said Sir Basil, holding Imogen's photograph; "and I dabbled a bit inwater-color for a time. Do you remember that little sketch of the Hall, done from the beech avenue, Mrs. Upton? Not so bad, was it?"

"Not at all bad, " said Valerie; "but we can't use such negatives for Jack'swork. It's very seriously good, you know. It's anything but dabbling. "

"Oh, yes; I know that you are a real artist, " Sir Basil smiled at Jack fromthe photograph. "This doesn't do her justice, does it?"

"Imogen? No; it's a frightful thing, " said Jack over-emphatically. 

Mrs. Pakenham asked to see it and pronounced that, for her part, shethought it excellent. 

"You ought to paint her portrait, " Sir Basil continued, looking at Jack, who had, once more, to explain that landscape was his only subject. Heguessed from the something at once benign and faintly quizzical in SirBasil's regard, that to all these people he was significant, in the main, as Imogen's lover, and the intuition vexed him still further. 

Imogen's entrance, startling in its splendid incongruity, put an end to hisself-consciousness and absorbed him in contemplation. 

Imogen revealed herself newly, even to him, to-day. It wasn't the oldImogen of stateliness, graciousness, placidity, nor the later one of gloomand anger. This Imogen, lovely, with her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, was deeply excited, deeply self-forgetful. She, too, was absorbed in herintense curiosity, her feverish watchfulness. 

She said nothing while her mother introduced her to the new-comers, who alllooked a little taken aback, as though the resuscitated Grecian heroinewere indeed among them, and stood silently alert near the tea-table, handing the cups of tea, the cakes and scones, for Jack and Sir Basilto pass round. Her arms were bare and her slender bare feet, laced withgold-clasped fastenings, showed on her white sandals. Jack saw that SirBasil's eyes were fixed on her with an expression of wonder. 

He asked her, as he took the last cup from her, if she were not cold, and, gentle, though unsmiling, Imogen replied, "Oh, no!" glancing at the roaringwood fire, that illuminated her whiteness as if with a sacrificial glow. 

"Do sit down and have your tea, Imogen; you must be very tired, " her mothersaid, with something of the chill that the scene at the lunch-table haddiffused still in her voice. 

"Not very, thanks, mama dear, " said Imogen; and, more incongruous inloveliness than before, she sat down in a high-backed chair at some littledistance from the tea-table. Sir Basil, as if with a sort of helplessness, remained beside her. 

"Yes, it was a great success, wasn't it?" Jack heard her replyingpresently, while she drank the tea with which Sir Basil had eagerlysupplied her. "I'm so glad. "

"You liked doing it, didn't you? You couldn't have done it, likethat--looked like that, if you hadn't cared a lot about it, " Sir Basilpursued. 

Imogen smiled a little and said that she didn't know that she had likeddoing her part particularly, --it was of her crippled children that she wasthinking. "We'll be able to get the Home now, " she said. 

"It was for cripple children?"

"Didn't you know? I should have thought mama would have told you. Yes, itall meant that, only that, to me. We gave the tableaux to get enough moneyto buy a country home for them. "

"You go in a lot for good works, I know, " said Sir Basil, and Imogen, smiling again, with the lightness rooted in excitement, answered: "They goin for me, rather. All the appeals of suffering seem to come to one andseize one, don't they? One never needs to seek causes. "

Jack watched them talk, Imogen, the daughter of the dead, rejected husband, and Sir Basil, her mother's suitor. 

Mary had come in now, late from changing her dress, which at the lastmoment she had felt too shy to appear in. She was talking to Mrs. Wake andthe Pakenhams. 

Standing, a somewhat brooding onlooker, becoming conscious, indeed, of thesense, stronger than ever, of loneliness and bereavement, he heard Mrs. Upton near him say, "Sit down here, Jack. "

She showed him a chair beside her, in the corner, between her tea-table, the window, and the fire. She, too, was for the moment isolated; she, too, no doubt, had been watching; and now she talked to him, not at all as ifshe had felt that he were lonely and were making it up to him, but, oncemore, like the child happily gathering and holding out nosegays to anotherchild. 

A controlled excitement was in her, too; and he felt still that slightstrain of the lunch-table, as if Imogen's catafalque had marred sometoo-trustful assurance; but a growing warmth was diffused through it, and, as her eyes turned once or twice on Imogen and Sir Basil, he saw the cause. 

The possibility that her daughter might make friends with her suitor, thesolvent, soothing possibility that, if realized, would so smooth her path, had come to her. And in their quiet fire-lit corner, shut the closer intotheir isolation by the talk that made only a confused murmur about them, hefelt a new frankness in her, as though the hope of the hour effaced ominousmemories and melted her reserves and discretions, making it wholly naturalto draw near him in the implied avowal of shared outlooks. 

"I believe that Imogen and Sir Basil are going to get on together, " shesaid; "I believe that she likes him already. I so want them to be friends. He is such a friend of mine. "

"They look friendly, " said Jack; "I think I can always tell when Imogen isgoing to like people. " He did not add that, with his new insight aboutImogen, he had observed that it was people over whom she had power thatImogen liked. And already he seemed to see that Imogen would have some sortof power over Sir Basil. 

"And I can always tell when he is going to like people. He thinks herwonderful, " said Valerie. She exchanged her knowledge with him; it wastouching, the way in which, blind to deep change in him, she took forgranted his greater claim to the interpretation of Imogen. She added: "Itis a very propitious beginning, I think. "

"How long is Sir Basil going to stay here?" Jack asked. 

"All summer. He goes to Canada with the Pakenhams, and out to the West, fora glimpse of the changes since he was here years and years ago; and then Iwant him to come to Vermont, to us. You and Imogen will both get to knowhim well there. Of course you are coming; Imogen told me that she asked youlong ago. "

"Yes; I shall enjoy that immensely, " the young man answered, with, for hisown consciousness, a touch of irrepressible gloom. He didn't look forwardto the continuation of the drama, to his own lame and merely negative partin it, at the close quarters of a house-party among the Vermont hills. 

And as if Valerie bad felt the inner doubt she added suddenly, on adifferent key, "You really will enjoy it, won't you?"

He looked up at her. Her face, illuminated by the firelight, though dimmedagainst the evening blue outside, was turned on him with its suddenintentness and penetration of gaze. 

"Why, of course, " he almost stammered, confused by the unexpected scrutiny. 

"I shall love having you, you know, " she said. 

"I shall love being with you, " he answered, now without a single innerreserve. 

Her intentness seemed to soften, there was solicitude and a sort ofpersuasiveness in it. "And you will have a much better chance of reallyadjusting things there--your friendship with Imogen, I mean. The countrysmoothes things out. Things get sweet and simple. "

He didn't know what to say. Her mistake, if it were one, was so inevitable. 

"Imogen will have taken her bearings by then, " she went on. "She has had somuch to get accustomed to, to bear with, poor child; her great bereavement, and--and a mother who, in some ways, must always be a trial to her. "

"Oh, a trial!"--Jack lamely murmured. 

"I recognize it, Jack. I think that you do. But when she makes up her mindto me, and discovers that, at all events, I don't interfere with anythingthat she really cares about, she will be able to take up all her oldthreads again. "

"I--I suppose so, " Jack murmured. 

He had dropped his eyes, for he knew that hers were on him. And now, in alowered voice, he heard her say, "Jack, I hope that you will help me withImogen. "

"Help you? How do you mean?" startled, he looked up. 

"You know. Interpret me to her now and then, when you can, with kindliness. You understand me so much more kindly than she does. "

His eyes fixed on hers, deeply flushing--"Oh, but, "--he breathed out withalmost a long sigh, --"that's what I have done, you see, ever since--"

"Ever since what?"

"Since I came to understand you so much better than she does. "

There was a long pause now and, the firelight flickering low, he couldhardly see her face. But he recognized change in her voice as she said:"You have? I don't mean, you know, taking my side in disputes. "

"I know; I don't mean that, either, though, perhaps, I can't help doing it;for, " said Jack, "it's on your side that I am, you know. "

The change in her voice, but controlled, kept down, she answered quickly, "Ah, but, dear Jack, I don't want to have a side. It's that that I want herto realize. I want her to feel that my side is hers. I want you to help mein making her feel it. "

"But she'll never feel it!" Jack breathed out again. Behind the barrierof the tea-table, in the flickering dimness, they were speaking suddenlywith a murmuring, yet so sharp a confidence; a confidence that in broaddaylight, or in complete solitude, might have seemed impossible. All sortsof things must steal out in that persuasive, that peopled yet solitary, twilight. 

He knew that Valerie's eyes dwelt on him with anxiety and that it was witha faint, forced smile that she asked him: "She doesn't think that I'll everreach her side?"

"_I_ don't believe you ever will, " said Jack. Then, for he couldn't bearthat she should misunderstand him for another moment, misunderstandingwhen they had come so far was too unendurable, he went on in a hurriedundertone: "You aren't on her side, really. You can never be on her side. You can never be like her, or see like her. And I don't want you to. It'syou who see clearly, not she. It's you who are all right. "

Her long silence, after this, seemed to him like the hovering of hands uponhim; as though, in darkness, she sought by touch to recognize some strangeobject put before her. 

"But then, --" she, too, only breathed it out at last, --"but then, --you arenot on _her_ side. "

"That's just it, " said Jack. He did not look at her and she was silent oncemore before his confession. 

"But, " she again took up the search, "that is terrible for her, if shefeels it. "

"And for me, too, isn't it?" he questioned, as if he turned the surfaces ofthe object beneath her fingers. 

The soft, frightened hover seemed to go all over it, to recognize itfinally, and to draw back, terrified, from recognition. 

"Most terrible of all for me, if I have come between you, " she said. 

Her pain pierced him so, that he put out his hand and took hers. Don'tthink that; you mustn't think that, not for a moment. It's not that youcame between us. It's only that, because of you, I began to see things--asI hadn't seen them. It was just, --well, just like seeing one color changewhen another is put beside it. Imogen's blue, now that your gold has come, is turned to green; that's all that has happened. "

"All that has happened! Do you know what you are saying, Jack! If my goldwere gone, would the blue come back again?"

"The blue will never come back, " said Jack. 

He felt, as her hand tightened on his, that he would have liked to put hishead down on her knees and sob like a little boy; but when she said, "Andthe green you cannot care for?" his own hand tightened as if they clutchedsome secret together, some secret that neither must dare look at. "Youmustn't think that--you mustn't. And I mustn't. " He said it with all therevolt and all the strength of his will and loyalty; with all his longing, too. "The real truth is that the green can't care for me unless I will seeit back to blue again--and as I can't do that, and as it won't accept mypresent vision, there is a sort of dead-lock. "

For a long moment her hand continued to grasp his, before, as if taking inthe ambiguous comfort of his final definiteness, it relaxed and she drew itaway. 

"Perhaps she will care enough, " she said. 

"To accept my vision? To forego blue? To consent that I shall see her asgreen?"

"Yes, when she has taken up all the threads. "

"Perhaps she will, " said Jack. 

XVI

It was a few days after this, just before Jack's return to Boston--and theparting now was to be until they met in Vermont--that he and Imogen hadanother walk, another talk together. 

The mid-May had become seasonably mild and, at Jack's suggestion, they hadtaken the elevated cars up to Central Park for the purpose of there seeingthe wistaria in its full bloom. 

They strolled in the sunlight under arbors rippling all over with theexquisite purple, dark and pale, the thin fine leaves of a strangeolive-green, the delicate tendrils; they passed into open spaces where, on gray rocks, it streamed like the tresses of a cascade; it climbed andheaped itself on wayside trellises and ran nimbly, in a shower of fragilecolor, up the trunks, along the branches, of the trees. Jack alwaysafterward associated the soft, falling purple, the soft, languorousfragrance, the almost uncanny beauty of the wistaria, with melancholy andpresage. 

Imogen, for the first time since her father's death, showed a concession tothe year's revival in a transparent band of white at her neck and wrists. Her little hat, too, was of transparent black, its crape put aside. But, though she and the day shared in bloom and youthfulness, Jack had neverseen her look more heavily bodeful; had never seen her eyes more fixed, herlips more cold and stern. The excitement that he had felt in her was gone. Her curiosity, her watchfulness, had been satisfied, and grimly rewarded. She faced sinister facts. Jack felt himself ready to face them, too. 

They had spoken little in the clattering car, and for a long time afterthey reached the park and walked hither and thither among its paths, following at random the beckoning purple of the wistaria, neither spokeof anything but commonplaces; indicating points of view, or assenting toappreciations. But Imogen said at last, and he knew that with the words sheled him up to those facts: "Do you remember, Jack, the day we met mama, youand I, on the docks?"

Jack replied that he did. 

"What a different day from this, " said Imogen, "with its frosty glory, itschallenge, its strength. "

"Very different. "

"And how different our lives are, " said Imogen. 

He did not reply for some moments, and it was then to say gently that hehoped they were not so different as, perhaps, they seemed. 

"It is not I who have changed, Jack, " said Imogen, looking before her. Andgoing on, as though she wished to hear no reply to this: "Do you rememberhow we felt as the steamer came in? We determined that _she_ should changenothing, that we wouldn't yield to any menace of the things we were thenunited in holding dear. It's strange, isn't it, to see how subtly she haschanged everything? It's as if our frosty, sparkling landscape, all windand vigor and discipline, were suddenly transformed to this, --" Imogenlooked about her at the limpid day, --"to soft yielding, soft color, softperfume, --it's like mama, that fragrance of the wistaria, --to somethingsmiling, languid, alluring. This is the sort of day on which one drifts. Our past day was a day of steering. "

As much as for the meaning of her careful words, Jack felt rising in him ananger against the sense of a readiness prepared beforehand. "You describeit all very prettily, Imogen, " he answered, mastering the anger. "But Idon't agree with you. "

"You seldom do now, Jack. Perhaps it's because I've remained in my ownclimate while you have been borne by the 'warm, sweet, harmless' currentinto this one. "

"I am not conscious of any tendency to drift, Imogen. I still steer. Iintend, very firmly, always to steer. "

"To what, may I ask?"

He was silent for a moment; then said, lifting eyes in which she readall that new steeliness of opposition, with, yet, in it, through it, thesadness of hopeless appeal: "I believe in all our ideals--just as I usedto. "

To this Imogen made no rejoinder. 

"Do you like Sir Basil?" she asked presently, after, for some time, theyhad turned along the windings of a long path in a heavy silence. 

"I've hardly seen him. " Jack's voice had a forced lightness, as though forrelief at the change of subject; but he guessed that the change was onlyapparent. "He is very nice; very delightful looking. "

"Yes; very delightful looking. Do you happen to remember what I said to youabout him, long ago, in the winter? About him and mama?"

"Yes"; Jack flushed; "I remember. "

"I told you to wait. "

"Yes; you told me to wait. "

"You will own now, I hope, that I was right. "

"Right in thinking that he--that they were more than friends?"

"Right in thinking that he was in love with her; that she allowed it. "

"I suppose you were right. "

"I was right. And it's more than that now. I have every reason to believethat she intends to marry him. "

He ignored her portentous pause and drop of the voice, walking on withdowncast eyes. "You mean, it's an accepted thing?"

"Oh, no! not yet accepted. Mama respects the black edge, you know. But Iheard Mrs. Wake and Mrs. Pakenham talking about it. "

"Heard? How could you have heard?" Jack's eyes, stern with accusation, werenow upon her. 

It was impossible for Imogen to lie consciously, and though she had not, in her eagerness that he should own her right and share her reprobation, foreseen this confrontation, she held, before it, all the dignity of fullsincerity. 

"You are changed, indeed, Jack, when you can suspect me of eavesdropping! Iwas asleep on the sofa in the library, worn out with work, and I woke tohear them talking in the next room, with the door ajar. I did not realize, for some moments, what was being said. And then they went out. "

"Of course I don't suspect you; of course I don't think that you wouldeavesdrop; though I do hate--hearing, " Jack muttered. 

"I hope you realize that I share your hatred, " said Imogen. "But youropinion of me is not, here, to the point. I only wish to put before youwhat I have now to bear, Mrs. Pakenham said that she wagered that beforethe year was out Sir Basil would have married mama. " Imogen paused, breathing deeply. 

Jack walked on beside her, not knowing what to say. "I think so, too, andwish her joy, " would have been the truest rendering of his feeling. 

He curbed it to ask cautiously, "And you mind so much?"

"Mind!" she repeated, a thunderous echo. 

"You dislike it so?"

"Dislike? You use strangely inapt words. "

He had another parenthetic shoot of impatience with her dreadfularticulateness; had Imogen always talked so much like the heroine of anovel with a purpose?

"I only meant--can't you put up with it?"

"Put up with it? Can I do anything else? What power have I over her?You don't seem to understand. I have passed beyond caring that shemakes herself petty, ridiculous; as a woman of her age must in marryingagain--the clutch of fading life at the happiness it has forfeited. Lether clutch if she chooses; let her marry if she chooses, whom she chooses, yes, when she chooses. But don't you see how it shatters my every hope ofher, --my every ideal of her? And don't you see how my heart is pierced bythe presence of that man in my father's house, the house that she abandonedand cast a shadow upon? How filled with bitter shame and anguish I am whenI see him there, in that house, sacred to my grief and to mymemories--making love to my mother?"

No, really, never, never had he heard Imogen so fluent and so dramaticallytelling; and never had he been so unmoved by the feeling under the fluency. It was as if he could believe in none. 

He remained silent and Imogen continued: "When she came back, I believedthat it was with an impulse of penitence; with the wish, shallow though Iknew that it must be in such a nature, to atone to me for the ruin that shehad made in his life. I was all tenderness and sympathy for her, all alonging to help and sustain her--as you must remember. But now! It fulfilsall that I had feared and suspected in her--and more than all! She leftEngland, she came here, that the conventions might be observed; and, considering them observed enough for her purpose, she receives her suitor, eight months after my father's lonely death, -in the house where _my_ heartbreaks and bleeds for him, where _I_ mourn for him, where _I_--alone, itseems--feel him flouted and betrayed! And she talks of her love for me!"

Jack was wondering that her coherent passion did not beat him into helplessacquiescence; but, instead, he found himself at once replying, "You don'tsee fairly. You exaggerate it all. She was unhappy with your father. Foryears he made her unhappy. And now, if she can care for a man who can makeher happy, she has a right, a perfect right, to take her happiness. As forher loving you, I don't believe that any one loves you more truly. It'syour chance, now, to show your love for her. "

Imogen stood still and looked at him from the black disk of her parasol. 

"I think I've suspected this of you, too, Jack, " she said. "Yes, I'vesuspected, in dreadful moments of revelation, how far your undermining hasgone. And you say you are not changed!"

"Would you ask your mother never to marry again?"

"I would--if she were in any way to redeem her image in my eyes. But, granting to the full that one must make concessions to such creatures ofthe senses, I would ask her, at the very least, to have waited. "

"Creatures of the senses!" Jack repeated in a helpless gasp; such words, intheir austere vocabulary, were hardly credible. "Do you know what you aresaying, you arrogant, you heartless girl?"

Her face seemed to flash at him like lightning from a black cloud, and withthe lightning a reality that had lacked before to leap to her voice:

"Ah! At last--at last you are saying what you have felt for a long time!At last I know what you think of me! So be it! I don't retract one jot ortittle of what I say. Mama is a perfectly moral woman, if you actuallyimagine some base imputation; but she lives for the pleasant, the pretty, the easy. She doesn't love this man's soul--nor care if he has one. Her love for him is a parody of the love that my father taught me tounderstand and to hold sacred. She loves his love for her; his 'delightful'appearance. She loves his place and name and all the power and leisure ofthe life he can give her. She loves the world--in him; and in that I meanand repeat that she is a creature of the senses. And if, for this, youthink me arrogant and heartless, you do not trouble in one whit my visionof myself, but you do, forever, mar my vision of you. "

They stood face to face in the soft sweet air under an arch of wistaria; itseemed a place to plight a troth, not to break one; but Jack knew that, ifhe would, he could not have kept the truth from her. It held him, lookedfrom him; he was, at last, inevitably, to speak it. 

"Imogen, " he said, "I don't want to talk to you about your mother; I don'twant to defend her to you; I'm past that. I'll say nothing of your summingup of her character, --it's grotesque, it's piteous, such assurance! ButI do tell you straight what I've come to feel of you--that you are acold-blooded, self-righteous, self-centered girl. And I'll say more: Ithink that your bringing-up, the artificiality, the complacent theory ofit, is your best excuse; and I think that you'll never find any one sogenerous and so understanding of you as your mother. If this mars me inyour eyes, I can't help it. "

For a moment, in her deep anger, --horror running through it, too, as thoughthe very bottom had dropped out of things and she saw emptiness beneathher, --she thought that she would tell him to leave her there, forever. ButImogen's intelligence was at times a fairly efficacious substitute fordeeper promptings; and humiliation, instead of enwrapping her mind in aflare of passionate vanity, seemed, when such intellectual apprehensionaccompanied it, to clarify, to steady her thoughts. She saw, now, in thesudden uncanny illumination, that in all her vehemence of this afternoonthere had been something fictitious. The sorrow, the resentment on herfather's account, she had, indeed, long felt; too long to feel keenly. Her disapproval of the second marriage was already tinctured by a certainsatisfaction; it would free her of a thorn in the flesh, for such hermother's presence in her life had become, and it would justify forever hersense of superiority. It was all the clearest cause for indignation thather mother had given her, and, seeing it as such, she had longed to makeJack share her secure reprobation; but she hadn't, really, been able tofeel it as she saw it. It solved too many problems and salved too manyhurts. So now, standing there under the arch of wistaria, she saw throughherself; saw, at the very basis of her impulse, the dislocation thathad made its demonstration dramatic and unconvincing. Dreadful as thehumiliation was, her lips growing parched, her throat hot and dry with it, her intelligence saw its cause too clearly for her to resent it as shewould have resented one less justified. There was, perhaps, something tobe said for Jack, disastrously wrong though he was; and, with all heressential Tightness, there was, perhaps, something to be said against her. She could not break, without further reflection, the threads that stillheld them together. 

So, at the moment of their deepest hostility, Jack was to have his sweetestimpression of her. She didn't order him away in tragic tones, as he almostexpected; she didn't overwhelm him with an icy torrent of reproach andargument. Instead, as she stood there against her halo of black, the longregard of her white face fixed on him, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She didn't acquiesce for a moment, or, for a moment, imply him anything butmiserably, pitiably wrong; but in a voice from which every trace of angerhad faded she said: "Oh Jack, how you hurt me!"

The shock of his surprise was so great that his cheeks flamed as though shehad struck him. Answering tears sprang to his eyes. He stammered, could notspeak at first, then got out: "Forgive me. I'd no business to say it. It'slovely of you, Imogen, not just to send me off. "

She felt her triumph, her half-triumph, at once. "Why, Jack, if you thinkit, why should I forgive you for saying what, to you, seems the truth? Youhave forgotten me, Jack, almost altogether; but don't forget that truth isthe thing that I care most for. If you must think these things of me--andnot only of me, of a dearer self, for I understand all that you meant--Imust accept the sorrow and pain of it. When we care for people we mustaccept suffering because of them. Perhaps, in time, you may come to seedifferently. "

He knew, though she made him feel so abashed, that he could take back noneof the "things" he thought; but as she had smiled faintly at him heanswered with a wavering smile, putting out his hand to hers and holding itwhile he said: "Shall we agree, then, to say nothing more about it! To beas good friends--as the truth will let us?"

He had never hurt her as at that moment of gentleness, compunction, andinflexibility, and thought, for a moment, was obscured by a rush of bitterpain that could almost have cast her upon his breast, weeping and suppliantfor all that his words shut the door on--perhaps forever. 

But such impulses were swiftly mastered in poor Imogen. Gravely pressinghis hand, she accepted the cutting compact, and, over her breathless senseof loss, held firm to the spiritual advantage of magnanimity and courage. He judged himself, not her, in letting her go, if he was really lettingher go; and she must see him wander away into the darkness, alone, leavingher alone. It was tragic; it was nearly unendurable; but this was one oflife's hard lessons; her father had so often told her that they must beunflinchingly faced, unflinchingly conquered. So she triumphed over theweak crying out of human need. 

They walked on slowly again, both feeling a little "done. " Neither spokeuntil, at the entrance of the park, and just before leaving its poetry forthe screaming prose of the great city, Imogen said: "One thing I want totell you, Jack, and that is that you may trust mama to me. Whatever I maythink of this happiness that she is reaching out for, I shall not make itdifficult or painful for her to take it. My pain shall cast no shadow onher gladness. "

Jack's face still showed its flush and his voice had all the steadiness ofhis own interpretation, the steadiness of his refusal to accept hers, as heanswered, "Thanks, Imogen; that's very right of you. "

XVII

Imogen and Sir Basil were walking down a woodland path under the sky ofAmerican summer, a vast, high, cloudless dome of blue. Trees, tall anddelicate, in early June foliage, grew closely on the hillside; the grass ofthe open glades was thick with wild Solomon's-seal, and fragile clusters ofwild columbine grew in the niches and crannies of the rocks, their pale-redchalices filled with fantastically fretted gold. 

Imogen, dressed in thin black lawn, fine plaitings of white at throat andwrists, her golden head uncovered, walked a little before Sir Basil withher long, light, deliberate step. She had an errand in the village twomiles away, and her mother had suggested that Sir Basil should go with herand have some first impressions of rural New England. He had only arrivedthe night before. Miss Bocock and the Pottses were expected this afternoon, and Mrs. Wake had been for a fortnight established in her tiny cottage onthe opposite hillside. 

"Tell me about your village here, " Sir Basil had said, and Imogen, withpunctual courtesy and kindness, the carrying out of her promise to Jack, had rejoined: "It would be rather uneventful annals that I should have totell you. The people are palely prosperous. They lead monotonous lives. They look forward for variety and interest, I think, to the summer, whenall of us are here. One does all one can, then, to make some color forthem. I have organized a kindergarten for the tiny children, and a girls'club for debates and reading; it will help to an awakening I believe. I'mgoing to the club this afternoon. I'm very grateful to my girls for helpingme as they do to be of use to them. It's quite wonderful what they havedone already. Our village life is in no sense like yours in England, youknow; these people are all very proud and independent. It's as a friend, not as a Lady Bountiful, that I go among them. "

"I see, " said Sir Basil, with interest, "that's awfully nice all round. I wish we could get rid of a lot of stupid ways of thought at home. I'llsee something of these friends of yours at the house, then. I'm immenselyinterested in all these differences, you know. "

"You won't see them at the house. Our relation is friendly, not social. That is a froth that doesn't count. "

"Oh! and they don't mind that--not having the social relation, I mean--ifthey are friends?"

"Why should they? I am not hurt because they do not ask me to their picnicsand parties, nor are they because I don't ask them to my dinners and teas. We both understand that all that is a matter of manner and accident; thatin essentials we are equal. "

"I see; but, " Sir Basil still queried, "you wouldn't care about theirparties, I suppose, and don't you think they might like your dinners? Atleast that's the way it would work out, I'm afraid, at home. "

"Ah, it doesn't here. They are too civilized for that. Neither of us wouldfeel fitted to the superficial aspects of the others' lives. "

"We have that sort of thing in England, too, you know; only perhaps welook at it more from the other side, and recognize difference rather thansameness. "

"Very much more, I think, " said Imogen with a slight smile. "I shouldthink that there was very little resemblance. Your social structure isa wholesome, natural growth, embodying ideals that, in the main, areunconscious. We started from that and have been building ever since towardconscious ideals. "

"Well, "--Sir Basil passed over this simile, a little perplexed, --"it's verywonderful that they shouldn't feel--inferior, you know, in our ugly senseof the word, if they only get one side of friendship and not the other. Nowthat's how we manage in England, you see; but then I'm afraid it doesn'twork out as you say it does here; I'm afraid they do feel inferior, after afashion. "

"Only the truly inferior could feel inferiority, since they get the realside of friendship, " said Imogen, with gentle authority. "And I can't thinkthat, in our sense of the word, the real side is given with you. There isconscious condescension, conscious adaptation to a standard supposedlower. "

"I see; I see"; Sir Basil murmured, looking, while still perplexed, ratherconscience-stricken; "yes, I suppose you're right. "

Imogen looked as though she more than supposed it, and, feeling himselfquite worsted, Sir Basil went on to ask her further questions about theclub and kindergarten. 

"What a lot of work it must all mean for you, " he said. 

"That, I think, is one's only right to the advantages one has--education, taste, inherited traditions, " said Imogen, willing to enlighten thischarmingly civilized, yet spiritually barbarous, interlocutor who followedher, tall, in his delightfully outdoor-looking garments, his tie and thetilt of his Panama hat answering her nicest sense of fitness, and hishandsome brown face, quizzical, yet very attentive, meeting her eyes onits leafy background whenever she turned her head. "If they are not madeinstruments to use for others they rust in our hands and poison us, " shesaid. "That's the only real significance of an aristocracy, a class fittedto serve, with the highest service, the needs of all. Of course, much ofour best and deepest thought about these things is English; don't imagineme ungrateful to the noble thinkers of your--of my--race, --they havemoulded and inspired us; but, there is the strange paradox of yourcivilization, your thought reacts so little on your life. Your idealistsand seers count only for your culture, and even in your culture affect solittle the automatic existence of your people. They form a little isolatedclass, a leaven that lies outside the lump. Now, with us, thought rises, works, ferments through every section of our common life. "

Quite without fire, almost indolently, she spoke; very simply, too, glancing round at him, as though she could not expect much understandingfrom such an alien listener. 

"I'm awfully glad, you know, to get you to talk to me like this, " said SirBasil, after a meditative pause; "I saw a good bit of you in New York, butyou never talked much with me. "

"You had mama to talk to. "

"But I want to talk to you, too. You do a lot of thinking, I can see that. "

"I try to"; she smiled a little at his _naïveté_. 

"Your mother told me so much about you that I'm tremendously eager to knowyou for myself. "

"Well, I hope that you may come to, for mama's pictures of me are notlikely to be accurate, " said Imogen mildly. "We don't think in the same wayor see things in the same way and, though we are so fond of each other, weare not interested in the same things. Perhaps that is why I don't interesther particular friends. They would not find much in common between mama andme"; but her smile was now a little humorous and she was quite prepared forhis "Oh, but, I assure you, I am interested in you. "

Already, with her unerring instinct for power, Imogen knew that Sir Basilwas interested in her. There was only, to be sure, a languid pleasure inthe sense of power over a person already, as it were, so bespoken, so inbondage to other altars; but, though without a trace of coquetry, the smilequietly claimed him as a partial, a damaged convert. Imogen always knewwhen people were capable of being, as she expressed it to herself, "Hers. "She made small effort for those who were without the capacity. She nevermisdirected such smiles upon Rose, or Miss Bocock, or Mrs. Wake. And now, as Sir Basil went on to asseverate, just behind her shoulder, his pleasanttones quite touched with eagerness, that the more he saw of her the moreinterested he became, she allowed him to draw her into a playful argumenton the subject. 

"Yes, I quite believe that you would like me--if you came to know me"--shewas willing to concede at last; "but, no, indeed no, I don't think that youwould ever feel much interest in me. "

"You mean because I'm not sufficiently interesting myself? Is that it, eh?"Sir Basil acutely asked, reflecting that he had never seen a girl walk sobeautifully or dress so exquisitely. The sunlight glittered in her hair. 

"I don't mean that at all, " said Imogen; "although I don't fancy that youare interested so deeply, and in so many things, as I am. "

"Now, really! Why not? You haven't given me a chance to show you. Of courseI'm not clever. "

"I meant nothing petty, like cleverness. "

"You mean that I don't take life seriously enough to please you?"

"Not that, exactly. It's that we face in opposite directions, as it were. Life isn't to you what it is to me, it isn't to you such a big, beautifulthing, with so many wonderful vistas in it--such far, high peaks. "

She was very grave now, and the gravity, the assurance, and, with them, thesweetness, of this young girl were charming and perplexing to Sir Basil. Girls so assured he had found harsh, disagreeable and, almost always, ugly;they had been the sort of girl one avoided. And girls so lovely had usuallybeen coy and foolish. This girl walked like a queen, looked at one like aphilosopher, smiled at one like an angel. He fixed his mind on her lastwords, rallying his sense of quizzical paternity to meet such disconcertingstatements. 

"Well, but you are very young; life looks like that--peaks, you know, andvistas, and all the rest--when one is young. You've not had time to find itout, to be disappointed, " said Sir Basil. 

Imogen's calm eye rested upon him, and even before she spoke he knew thathe had made a very false step. It was as if, sunken to the knees in hisfoolish bog, he stood before her while she replied:

"Ah, it's that that is shallow in you, or, let us say, undeveloped, stillto be able to think of life in those terms. They are the thoughts of anunawakened person, and some people, I know, go all through life withoutawaking. You imagine, I suppose, that I think of life as something thatis going to give me happiness, to fulfil sentimental, girlish dreams. Youare mistaken. I have known bitter disappointments, bitter losses, bittershatterings of hope. But life is wonderful and beautiful to me becausewe can be our best and do our best in it, and for it, if we try. It's animmense adventure of the soul, an adventure that can disappoint only in thefrivolous sense you were thinking of. Such joys are not the objects of ourquest. One is disappointed with oneself, often, for falling so short ofone's vision, and people whom we love and trust may fail us and give uspiercing pain; but life, in all its oneness, is good and beautiful if wewake to its deepest reality and give our hearts to the highest that weknow. "

She spoke sadly, softly, surely, thinking of her own deep wounds, and tospeak such words was almost like repeating a familiar lesson, --how oftenshe had heard them on her father's lips, --and Sir Basil listened, while helooked at the golden head, at the white hand stretched out now and then toput aside a branch or sapling--listened with an amazement half baffled andwholly admiring. He had never heard a girl talk like that. He had heardsuch words before, often, of course, but they had never sounded like this;they seemed fresh, and sparkling with a heavenly dew, spoken so quietly, with such indifference to their effect, such calmness of conviction. Thefirst impression of her, that always hovered near, grew more strongly uponhim. There was something heavenly about this girl. It was as though he hadheard an angel singing in the woods, and a feeling of humility stole overhim. It was usual for Sir Basil, who rarely thought about himself, to feelmodest, but very unusual for him to feel humble. 

"You make me believe it, when you say it, " he murmured. "I'm afraid youthink me a dreadfully earthy, commonplace person. "

Imogen, at the change of note in his voice, looked round at him, morereally aware of him than she had been at all, and when she met his glancethe prophet's calm fervor rose in her to answer the faith that she felt inhim. She paused, letting him come abreast of her in the narrow path, andthey both stood still, looking at each other. 

"You are not earthy; you are not commonplace, " said Imogen, then, as aresult of her contemplation. "I believe that you are a very big person, SirBasil. "

"A big person? How do you mean?" He absolutely flushed, half abashed, halfdelighted. 

Imogen continued to gaze, clearly and deeply. "There are all sorts ofpossibilities in you. "

"Oh, come now! At my age! Why, any possibilities are over, except for acheerful kind of vegetating. "

"You have vegetated all your life, I can see that. No one has ever wakedyou. You have hardly _used_ your soul at all. It's with you as it is withyour country, whose life is built strongly and sanely with body and brainbut who has not felt nationally, as a whole, its spirit. Like it, you havea spirit; like it, you are full of possibilities. "

"Miss Upton, you aren't like anybody I've ever known. What sort ofpossibilities?"

She walked on now, feeling his thrill echo in herself, symptomatic of thepassing forth of power and its return as enrichment of life and inspirationto helpfulness. "Of service, " she said. "Of devotion to great needs;courage in great causes. I don't think that you have ever had a chance. "

Sir Basil, keeping his eyes on her straight, pale profile, groping andconfused in this new flood of light, wondered if he had. 

"You are an extraordinary young woman, " he said at last. "You make mebelieve in everything you say, though it's so awfully queer, you know, tothink in that way about myself. If you talk to me often like this, aboutneeds and causes, will it give me more of a chance, do you think?"

"We must all win to the light for ourselves, " said Imogen very gently, "butwe can help one another. "

They had come now to the edge of the wood and out upon the white road thatcurved from the village up to the blue of the hills they had descended. Atiny brook ran with a sharp, silvery tinkle on its farther edge and it wasbordered by a light barrier of white railing. Beyond were spacious, half-cultivated meadows, stretched out for miles in the lap of low-lyinghills. 

Serene yet inhuman the landscape looked, a background to the thinnest ofhistories, significant only of its own dreaming solitude; and the village, among its elms, a little farther on, suggested the barest past, the mostbarren future. The road led on into its main street, where the elms madea stately avenue, arching over scattered frame houses of buff and grayand white. Imogen told Sir Basil that some of these houses were old, andpointed out an austere classic façade with pediment and pillars; explainedto him, too, the pathetic condition of so much of abandoned New England. Sir Basil was thinking more of her last words in the woods than of localcolor, but he had, while he listened, a fairly definite impression ofpinchbeck shops; of shabby awnings slanting in the sunlight over heaps oftumbled fruit and vegetables; of "buggies, " slip-shod, with dust-whitenedwheels, the long-tailed, long-maned, slightly harnessed horses hitched toposts along the pavements. The faces that passed were indolent yet eager. The jaws of many worked mechanically at some unappeasing task ofmastication. 

Sir Basil had traveled since his arrival in America, had seen the luxuriesof the Atlantic seacoast, the purposeful energy of Chicago, California'sEden-like abundance, and had seen other New England villages where beautywas cherished and made permanent. He hardly needed Imogen's furthercomments to establish his sense of contrast. 

"This was always a poor enough little place. Any people who made it countleft it long ago. But even here, " she went on, "even in its stagnation, onecan find some of the things we care for in our country, some of the thingswe live for. "

Some of these things seemed personified in the figure of the young womanwho met them in the girls' club, among the shelves of books and thenumerous framed photographs from the old masters. Imogen introducedSir Basil to her and he watched her with interest while she and Imogendiscussed some business matters. She was slender and upright, perhaps tooupright; she was, in manner, unaffected and assured, perhaps too assured, but that Sir Basil did not observe. He found her voice unpleasant and herpronunciation faulty, but thought that she expressed herself with greatforce and fluency. Her eyes were bright, her skin sallow, she smiledgravely, and her calmness and her smile reminded Sir Basil a little ofImogen; perhaps they were racial. She was dressed in a simple gray cottonfrock with neat lawn collar and cuffs, and her hair was raised in alustrous "pompadour, " a wide comb traversing it behind and combs at thesides of her head upholding it in front. Toward Sir Basil she behaved withgracious stateliness of demeanor, so that he wondered anew at the anomaliesof a country of ideals where a young person so well-appearing should not beasked to dinner. 

Several other girls came in while they were there, and they all surroundedImogen with eager familiarity of manner; all displayed toward himself, ashe was introduced, variations of Miss Hickson's stateliness. He thoughtit most delightful and interesting and the young women very remarkablepersons. One discordant note, only, was struck in the harmony, andthat discord was barely discerned by his untrained ear. While Imogenwas talking, a girl appeared in the doorway, hesitated, then, with anindifferent and forbidding manner, strolled across the room to thebook-shelves, where she selected a book, strolling out again with thebarest nod of sullen recognition. She was a swarthy girl, robust and ampleof form, with black eyes and dusky cheeks. Her torn red blouse and untidyhair marked her out from the sleek and social group. Sir Basil thought hervery interesting looking. He asked Imogen, as they walked away under theelms, who she was. "That artistic young person, with the dark hair. "

"Artistic? Do you mean Mattie Smith?--the girl with the bad manners?" askedImogen, smiling tolerantly. 

"Yes, she looked like a clever young person. She belongs to the club?"

"She hardly counts as one of its members, though we welcome everyone, and, like all the girls of the village, she enjoys the use of our library. Sheis not clever, however. She is an envious and a rather ill-tempered girl, with very little of the spirit of sisterhood in her. And she nurses herdefect of isolation and self-sufficiency. I hope that we may win her overto wider, sweeter outlooks some day. "

Mattie Smith, however, was one of the people upon whom Imogen wasted nosmiles. On the Uptons first coming to spend their summers near Hamborough, Imogen had found this indolent yet forcible personality barring her pathof benignant activity. Mattie Smith, unaided, undirected, ignorant of theTime Spirit's high demands upon the individual, had already formed a clubof sorts, a tawdry little room hung with bright bunting and adorned withcolored pictures from the cheaper magazines, pictures of over-elegant, amorously inclined young couples in ball-rooms or on yachts and beaches. Here the girls read poor literature, played games, made candy over thestove and gossiped about their young men. Imogen deeply disapproved of theplace; its ventilation was atrocious and its moral influence harmful; itrelaxed and did not discipline, --so she had expressed it to her father. Itsoon withered under her rival beams. Mattie Smith's members drifted bydegrees into the more advantageous alliance. Mattie Smith had resented thistriumphant placing of the higher standard and took pains, as Imogen, withthe calm displeasure of the successful, observed, to make difficultiesfor her and to treat her with ostentatious disregard. Imogen guessed veryaccurately at the seething of anger and jealousy that bubbled in MattieSmith's breast; it was typical of so much of the lamentable spiritdisplayed by rudimentary natures when feeling the pressure of an ideal theydid not share or when brought into contact with a more finished manner oflife from which they were excluded. Imogen, too, could not have borne arival ascendancy; but she was ascendant through right divine, and, while soacutely understanding Mattie Smith's state of mind, she could not recognizea certain sameness of nature. She hoped that Mattie Smith would "grow, " butshe felt that, essentially, she was not of the sort from which "hers" weremade. 

XVIII

It was almost four o'clock by the time that Imogen and Sir Basil reachedthe summit of one of the lower hills, and, among the trees, came upon thewhite glimmer of the Upton's summer home. It stood in a wide clearingsurrounded on three sides by the woods, the higher ranges rising about it, its lawn running down to slopes of long grass, thick with tall daisiesand buttercups. Farther on was an orchard, and then, beyond the dip of avalley, the blue, undulating distance, bathed in a crystalline quivering. The house, of rough white stucco, had lintels and window-frames of darkwood, a roof of gray shingles, and bright green shutters. A wide verandaran around it, wreathed in vines and creepers, and borders of flowersgrew to the edges of the woods. Sir Basil thought that he had never seenanything prettier. Valerie, dressed in thin black, was sitting on theveranda, and beside her Miss Bocock, still in traveling dress, lookedincongruously ungraceful. She had arrived an hour before with the Pottses, who had gone to their rooms, and said, in answer to Imogen's kindlyqueries, that the journey hadn't been bad, though the train was verystuffy. Then it appeared that Miss Bocock and Sir Basil were acquainted;they recollected each other, shook hands heartily, and asked and answeredlocal questions. Miss Bocock's people lived not so many miles from ThremdonHall, and, though she had been little at home of late years, she and SirBasil had country memories in common. She said presently that she, too, would like to tidy for the tea, and Imogen, taking her to her room, satwith her while she smoothed out one section of her hair and tonged theother, and while she put on a very stiff holland skirt and a blousedistressing to Imogen's sensitive taste, a crude pink blouse, irrelevantlyadorned about the shoulders with a deep frill of imitation lace. While shedressed she talked, in her high-pitched, cheerful voice, of the recent verysuccessful lectures she had given in Boston and the acquaintances she hadmade there. 

"I hope that my letters of introduction proved useful, " said Imogen. Sheconsidered Miss Bocock her _protégée_, but Miss Bocock, very vexatiously, seemed always oblivious of that fact; so that Imogen, though feeling thatshe had secured a guest who conferred luster, couldn't resist, now andthen, trying to bring her to a slightly clearer sense of obligation. 

Miss Bocock said that, yes, they had been very useful, and Imogen watchedher select from the graceful nosegay on her dressing-table two red roseswhich she pinned to her pink blouse with a heavy silver broochrepresenting, in an encircling bough, a mother bird hovering withoutstretched wings over a precariously placed nest. 

"Let me get you a white rose, " Imogen suggested; but Miss Bocock said, no, thanks, she was very fond of that shade of red. 

"So you know Sir Basil, " said Imogen, repressing her sense of irritation. 

"Know him? Yes, of course. Everybody in the county knows him. He is the bigman thereabouts, you see. The old squire, his father, was very fond of myfather, and we go to a garden-party at the hall once a year or so. It's anice old place. "

Imogen felt some perplexity. "But if your father and his were such friendswhy don't you see more of each other?"

Miss Bocock looked cheerfully at her. "Why, because he is big and wearen't. We are middle-class and he very much upper; it's a very old family, the Thremdons, --I forget for how many generations they have been in Surrey. Now my dear old dad was only a country doctor, " Miss Bocock went on, seatedin a rocking-chair--she liked rocking-chairs--with her knees crossed, herhorribly shaped patent-leather shoes displayed and her clear eyes, throughtheir glasses, fixed on Imogen while she made these unshrinking statements;"and a country doctor's family hasn't much to do with county people. "

"What an ugly thing, " said Imogen, while, swiftly, her mind adjusted itselfto this new seeing of Miss Bocock. By its illumination Miss Bocock'sassurance toward herself grew more irritating than before, and the factthat Miss Bocock's flavor was very different from Sir Basil's becameapparent. 

"Not at all, " said Miss Bocock. "It's a natural crystallization. You areworking toward the same sort of thing over here--only not in such awholesome way, I think. "

Imogen flushed a little. "Our crystallizations, when they aren'tartificially brought about by apings of your civilization, take placethrough real superiority and fitness. A woman of your intellectual abilityis anybody's equal in America. "

"Oh, as far as that goes, in that sense, I'm anybody's equal in England, too, " said Miss Bocock, unperturbed and unimpressed. 

Imogen rather wished she could make her feel that, since crystallizationswere a fact, the Uptons, in that sense, were as much above her as theThremdons. Idealist democrat as she counted herself, she had these quickglances at a standard kept, as it were, for private use; as if, from underan altar in the temple of humanity, its priest were to draw out for somepersonal reassurance a hidden yard-measure. 

Tea, when they went down again, was served on the veranda and Imogen couldobserve, during its progress, that Miss Bocock showed none of thedisposition to fawn on Sir Basil that one might have expected from a personof the middle-class. She contradicted him as cheerfully as she did Imogenherself. 

Mr. And Mrs. Potts had gone for a little ramble in the lower woods, but they soon appeared, Mr. Potts seating himself limply on the stepsand fanning himself with his broad straw hat--a hat that in its verylargeness and looseness seemed to express the inflexible ideals ofnon-conformity--while Mrs. Potts, very firmly busked and bridled, her headvery sleek, her smile very tight, took a chair between Mrs. Upton and SirBasil, and soon showed, in her whole demeanor, a consciousness of thelatter's small titular decoration that placed her more definitely forImogen's eye than she had ever been placed before. The Pottses weremiddle-class with a vengeance. Imogen's irritation grew as she watchedthese limpet-like friends, one sprawling and ill-at-ease for all hiscareful languor, the other quite dreadfully well-mannered, sipping hertea, arching her brows and assuming all sorts of perilous elegancies ofpronunciation that Imogen had never before heard her attempt. It was anadditional vexation to have them display toward herself, with even moreexaggeration than usual, their tenacious tenderness; listening, with agrave turning of head and eye when she spoke, and receiving each remarkwith an over-emphasis of feeling on their over-mobile features. 

There was, indeed, an odd irony in the Pottses being there at all. Theyhad, in her father's lifetime, only been asked with a horde of their kind, the whole uplifted batch thus worked off together, and Imogen had reallynot expected her mother to agree to her suggestion that they should beinvited to pay the annual visit during Sir Basil's stay. She would not ownto herself that her suggestion had been made from a vague wish to put hermother to a test, to force her into a definite declaration against theincongruous guests; she had thought of the suggestion, rather, as anupholding of her father's banner before the oncoming betrayal; but, insteadof refusal, she had met with an instant, happy acquiescence, and it was nowsurely the climax of irony to see how her mother, for her sake, bore withthem. More than for her sake, perhaps. Imogen detected in those seeminglyindolent, yet so observant, eyes a keen reading of the Pottses' perturbedcondition, and in her manner, so easy and so apt, the sweetest, lightestkindness. She turned corners and drew veils for them, spread a warm hazeof interest and serenity about their clumsy and obtruding personalities. Imogen could even see that the Pottses were reconsidering, with someconfusion of mind, their old verdict on her mother. 

This realization brought to her brooding thoughts a sudden pang ofself-reproach. It wouldn't do for the Pottses to find in her mother thecordiality they might miss in herself. She confessed that, for a moment, she had allowed the banner to trail in the dust of worldly thoughts, thebanner to which the Pottses, poor dears, had rallied for so many loyalyears. She summoned once more all her funds of spiritual appreciation andpatience. As for Miss Bocock, she made not the slightest attempt to talkto the Pottses. She had come up with them from the station, --they had notfound each other on the train, --and she had probably had her fill of themin that time. Once or twice, in the act of helping herself plentifully tocake, she paused to listen to them, and after that looked away, over theirheads or through them, as if she finally dismissed them from the field ofher attention. Mrs. Potts was questioning Sir Basil about his possibleknowledge of her own English ancestry. "We came over in the _Mayflower_, you know, " she said. 

"Really, " said Sir Basil, all courteous interest. 

"The Claremonts, you know, " said Mrs. Potts, modestly, yet firmly, too. "Myfather was in direct descent; we have it all worked out in our familytree. "

"Oh, really, " said Sir Basil again. 

"I've no doubt, " said Mrs. Potts, "that your forebears and mine, Sir Basil, were friends and comrades in the spacious times of good Queen Bess. "

Imogen, at this, glanced swiftly at her mother; but she caught no trace ofwavering on that mild countenance. 

"Oh, well, no, " Sir Basil answered. "My people were very little countrysquires in those days; we didn't have much to do with the Dukes ofClaremont. We only began to go up, you see, a good bit after you were onthe top. "

Imogen fixed a calm but a very cold eye upon Mrs. Potts. She had heardof the Dukes of Claremont for many years; so had everybody who knew Mrs. Potts; they were an innocent, an ingrained illusion of the good lady's, butto-day they seemed less innocent and more irritating than usual. Imogenfelt that she could have boxed Mrs. Potts's silly ears. In Sir Basil'spleasant disclaimers, too, there was an echo of Miss Bocock'smatter-of-fact acknowledgments that seemed to set them both leagues awayfrom the Pottses and to make their likeness greater than their difference. 

"Well, of course, " Mrs. Potts was going on, her _pince-nez_ and all hersmall features mingled, as it were, in the vividest glitter, "for me, Iconfess, it's blood, above all and beyond all, that counts; and you and I, Sir Basil, know that it is in the squirearchy that some of the best bloodin England is found. We don't recognize an aristocracy in our country, SirBasil, but, though not recognized, it rules, --blood must rule; one often, in a democracy, feels that as one's problem. "

"It's only through service that it rules, " Mr. Potts suddenly ejaculatedfrom where he sat doubled on the steps looking with a gloomy gaze into thedistance. "Service; service--that's our watchword. Lend a hand. "

Imogen saw a latent boredom piercing Sir Basil's affability. Great truthsuttered by some lips might be made to seem very unefficacious. She proposedto him that she should show him the wonderful display of mountain-laurelthat grew higher up among the pine-woods. He rose with alacrity, but Mrs. Potts rose too. Imogen could hardly control her vexation when, nipping thecrumbs from her lap and smoothing the folds at her waist, she declared thatshe was just in the humor for a walk and must see the laurel with them. 

"You mustn't tire yourself. Wouldn't you rather stay and have another cupof tea and talk to me?" Mrs. Upton interposed, so that Imogen felt a dartof keen gratitude for such comprehension; but Mrs. Potts was not to beturned aside from her purpose. "Thank you so much, dear Mrs. Upton, " sheanswered; "we must have many, many talks indeed; but I do want to see myprecious Imogen, and to see the laurel with her. You are one of those rarebeings, darling Imogen, with whom one can _share_ nature. Will you come, too, Delancy, dear?" she asked her husband, "or will you stay and talk toMrs. Upton and Miss Bocock? I'm sure that they will be eager to hear ofthis new peace committee of ours and zestful to help on the cause. "

Mr. Potts rather sulkily said that he would stay and talk to Mrs. Upton andMiss Bocock about the committee, and Imogen felt that it was in a manner ofatonement to him for her monopolization of a lustrous past that Mrs. Pottspresently, as they began the steep ascent along a winding, mossy path, toldSir Basil that her husband, too, knew the responsibility and burden of"blood. " And as, for a moment, they went before her, Imogen fancied thatshe heard the murmur of quite a new great name casting its ægis about Mr. Potts. Very spiritual people could, she reflected, become strangelymendacious when borne along on the wings of ardor and exaltation. 

Mrs. Potts's presence was really quite intolerable, and, as she walkedbehind her and listened to her murmur, Imogen bethought her of an amusing, though rather ruthless, plan of elimination. Imogen was very capable ofruthlessness when circumstances demanded it. Turning, therefore, suddenlyto the right, she led them into a steep and rocky path that, as she wellknew, would eventually prove impassable to Mrs. Potts's short legs andstiff, fat person. Indeed, Mrs. Potts soon began to pant and sigh. Herrecital of the family annals became disconnected; she paused to take offand rub her eyeglasses and presently asked, in extenuated tones, if thiswere the usual path to the laurel. 

"It's the one I always take, dear Mrs. Potts; it's the one I wanted SirBasil to see, it's so far the lovelier. One gets the most wonderful, steepviews down into far depths of blue, " Imogen, perched like a slenderValkyrie on the summit of a crag above, thus addressed her perturbedfriend. 

She couldn't really but be amused by Mrs. Potts's pertinacity, for, notyet relinquishing her purpose, she continued, in silence now, her lipscompressed, her forehead beaded with moisture, to scale the difficult way, showing a resolute nimbleness amazing in one so ill-formed for feats ofagility. Sir Basil gave her a succoring hand while Imogen soared ahead, confident of the moment when Mrs. Potts, perforce, must fall back. 

"Tiresome woman!" she thought, but she couldn't help smiling while shethought it, and heard Mrs. Potts's deep breath laboring up behind her. Itwas, perhaps, rather a shame to balk her in this way; but, after all, shewas to have a full fortnight of Sir Basil and she, Imogen, felt thaton this day, the day of a new friendship, Sir Basil's claim on her wasparamount. She had something for him, a light, a strengthening, and shemust keep the hour sacred to that stir of awakening. Among the pines andlaurels she would say a few more words of help to him. So that Mrs. Pottsmust be made to go. 

The moment came. A shoulder of rock overhung the way and the only passagewas over its almost perpendicular surface. Imogen, as if unconscious ofdifficulty, with a stride, a leap, a swift clutch of her firm white hand, was at the top, smiling down at them and saying: "Now here the view is ourvery loveliest. One looks down for miles. "

"But--my dear Imogen--is there no other way, round it, perhaps?" Mrs. Pottslooked desperately into the thick underbrush on either side. 

"No other way, " said Imogen. "But you can manage it. This is only thebeginning, --there's some real climbing farther on. Put your foot where Idid--no, higher--near the little fern--your hand here, look, do you see?Take a firm hold of that--then a good spring--and here you are. "

Poor Mrs. Potts laid a faltering hand on the high ledge that was only afirst stage in the chamois-like feat, and Imogen saw unwillingrelinquishment in her eye. 

"I don't see as I can do it, " she murmured, relapsing, in her distress, into a helpless vernacular. 

"Oh, yes, this is nothing. Sir Basil will give you a push. I'll pull youand he will push you, " Imogen, with kindest solicitude, suggested. 

"Oh, I don't see as I _can_, " Mrs. Potts repeated, looking rather wild atthe vision of such a push. She didn't at all lend herself to pushes, andyet, facing even the indignities of that method, she did, though faltering, place herself in position; did lay a desperate hold of the high ledge, place her small, fat, tightly buttoned foot high beside the fern; allow SirBasil, with a hand under each armpit, to kindly count "One-two-three--nowfor it!"--did even, at the word of command, make a passionate jump, only tolose hold, scrape lamentably down the surface of the rock, and collapseinto his arms. 

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" said Imogen, looking down upon them while Sir Basilplaced Mrs. Potts upon her feet, and while Mrs. Potts, angered almost totears, rubbed with her handkerchief at the damage done to her dress. "I'mso _very_ sorry, dear Mrs. Potts. I see that it is a little too steep foryou. And I did so want you to see this view. "

"I shall have to go back. I am very tired, quite exhausted, " said Mrs. Potts, in a voice that slightly shook. "I wish you had taken the usualpath. I never dreamed that we were setting out on such a--such a violentexpedition. "

"But this is my usual path, " said Imogen, opening her eyes. "I've neverfound it hard. And I wanted you and Sir Basil to see my view. But, dearMrs. Potts, let me go back with you. Sir Basil won't mind finding his wayalone, I'm sure. "

"Oh, no, thanks! No, I couldn't think of spoiling your walk. No, I will goback, " and Mrs. Potts, turning away, began to retrace her steps. 

"Be sure and lie down and rest; take a little nap before dinner, " Imogencalled after her. 

Mrs. Potts disappeared, and Imogen, when she and Sir Basil stood togetheron the fortunate obstacle, said: "Poor, excellent creature. I _am_ sorry. She is displeased with me. I ought to have remembered that this was toorough for her and taken the other path. " Indeed, she had felt rather guiltyas Mrs. Potts's back, the ridge of its high stays strongly marked by theslanting sunlight, descended among the sylvan scenery. 

"Yes, and she did so want to come, awfully keen on it, " said Sir Basil;"but I hope you won't think me very brutal if I confess that _I'm_ notsorry. I want to talk to you, you see, " Sir Basil beamed. 

"I would rather talk to you, too, " Imogen smiled. "My good old friend canbe very wearisome. But it was thoughtless of me to have brought her on thisway. "

They rested for a little while on their rock, looking down into thedistance that was, indeed, worth any amount of climbing. And afterward, when they reached the fairyland where the laurel drifted through the pinewoods, and as she quoted "Wood-Notes" to him and pointed out to him thedelicate splendors of the polished green, the clear, cold pink, on abackground of gray rock, Imogen could but feel her little naughtiness welljustified. It was delightful to be there in solitude with Sir Basil, andthe sense of sympathy that grew between her and this supplanter of herfather's was strange, but not unsweet. It wasn't only that she could helphim, and that that was always a claim to which one must respond, but sheliked helping him. 

On the downward way, a little tired from the rapidity of her ascent, sheoften gave her hand to Sir Basil as she leaped from rock to rock, and theysmiled at each other without speaking, already like the best of friends. 

That evening, as she was going down to dinner, Imogen met her mother on thestairs. They spoke little to each other during these days. Imogen felt thather neutrality of attitude could best be maintained by silence. 

"Mrs. Potts came back, " her mother said, smiling a little, and, Imogenfancied, with the old touch of timidity that she remembered in her. "Shesaid that you took her on a most fearful climb. "

"What foolishness, poor dear Mrs. Potts! I took her along the upper path. "

"The upper path! Is there an upper path?" Mrs. Upton descended beside herdaughter. "I thought that it was the usual path that had proved too muchfor her. "

"I wanted them to see the view from the rock, " said Imogen; "I forgot thatpoor Mrs. Potts would find it too difficult a climb. "

"Oh, I remember, now, the rock! That is a difficult climb, " said Mrs. Upton. 

Imogen wondered if her mother guessed at why Mrs. Potts had been taken onit. She must feel it of good augury, if she did, that her daughter shouldalready like Sir Basil enough to indulge in such an uncharitable freak. Imogen felt her color rise a little as she suspected herself and hermotives revealed. It was not that she wasn't quite ready to own to afriendship with Sir Basil; but she didn't want friendship to be confusedwith condonation, and she didn't like her mother to guess that she coulduse Mrs. Potts uncharitably. 

XIX

Her magnanimity toward Jack--so Imogen more and more clearly saw it to havebeen--at the time of their parting, had made it inevitable that he shouldhold to his engagement to visit them that summer, and even because of thatmagnanimity, she felt, in thinking over again and again the things thatJack had said of her and to her, a deepening of the cold indignation thatthe magnanimity had quelled at the moment of his speaking them. Minglingwith the sense of snapped and bleeding ties was a longing, irrepressible, profound, violent, that he might be humiliated, punished, brought to hisknees in penitence and abasement. 

Her friendship with Sir Basil, his devotion to her, must be, though by nomeans humiliating, something of a coal of fire laid on Jack's traitoroushead; and she saw at once that he was pleased, touched, but perplexed, bywhat must seem to him an unforeseen smoothing of her mother's path. He wasthere, she guessed, far more to see that her mother's path was made smooththan to try and straighten out their own twisted and separate ways. He hadcome for her mother, not for her; and Imogen did not know whether it wasmore pain or anger that the realization gave her. 

What puzzled him, what must have puzzled her mother, must puzzle, indeed, anyone who perceived it, --except, no doubt, the innocent Sir Basilhimself, --was that this friendship took up most of Sir Basil's time. 

To Sir Basil she stood for something lofty and exquisite that did not, of course, clash with more rudimentary, if deeper, affections, but that, perforce, made them stand aside for the little interlude where it soaredand sang. There was, for Imogen, a sharp sweetness in this fact and inJack's bewildered appreciation of it, though for her own consciousnessthe triumph was no satisfying one. After all, of what use was it to soarand sing if Sir Basil were to drop to earth so inevitably and so soon?Outwardly, at all events, this unforeseen change in the situation gave herall the advantage in her meeting with Jack. She was not the reproved andisolated creature that he might have expected to find. She was not thehelpless girl, subjugated by an alien mother and cast off by a faithlesslover. No; calm, benignant, lovely, she had turned to other needs; one wasnot helpless while one helped; not small when others looked up to one. 

Under her calm was the lament; under her unfaltering smile, the lonelinessand the burning of that bitter indignation; but Jack could not guess atthat, and if both felt difficulty in the neatly balanced friendship pledgedunder the wisteria, if there was a breathlessness for both in thetight-rope performance, --where one false step might topple one over intoopen hostility, or else, who knew, into complete surrender, --it was Imogenwho gained composure from Jack's nervousness, and while he walked the ropewith a fluttering breath and an anxious eye she herself could show the mostgraceful slides and posturings in midair. 

It was evident enough to everybody that the relation was a changed, aprecarious one, but all the seeming danger was Jack's alone. 

Imogen, while she swung and balanced, often found her mother's eye fixedon her with a deep preoccupation, and guessed that it was owing to hermother's tactics that most of her _tête-à-têtes_ with Jack were due. Herpoor mother might imagine that she thus secured the solid foundation ofthe earth for their footsteps, but Imogen knew that never was the rope sodizzily swung as when she and Jack were thus gently coerced into solitudetogether. 

It was, however, a few days after Jack's arrival, and a few days beforethe Pottses' departure, that an interest came to her of such an absorbingnature that it wrapped her mind away from the chill or scorching senseof her own wrongs. It was with the Pottses that the plan originated, andthough the Pottses were proving more trying than they had ever been, theycaught some of the radiance of their own proposal. As instruments in agreat purpose, she could look upon them more patiently, though, more thanever, it would need tact to prevent them from shadowing the brightness thatthey offered. The plan, apparently, had been with them for some time, itsdisclosure delayed until the moment suited to its seriousness and sanctity, and it was then, between the three, mapped out and discussed carefullybefore they felt it ripe for further publicity. Then it was Imogen who toldthem that the time had come for the unfolding to her mother, and Imogen wholed them, on a sunny afternoon, into her mother's little sitting-room whereshe sat writing at her desk. 

Jack was there, reading near the window that opened upon the veranda, buthis presence was not one to make the occasion less intimate, and Imogen wasglad of it. It was well that he should be a witness to what she felt to bea confession of faith, a confession that needed explicit defining, and of afaith that he and all the others, by common consent, seemed banded togetherto ignore. 

So, with something of the air of a lovely verger, she led her primed pairinto the room and pointed out two chairs to them. 

Valerie, in her thin black draperies, looked pale and jaded. She turnedfrom her desk, keeping her pen in her hand, and Imogen detected in her eye, as it rested upon the Pottses, a certain impatience. 

Tison, suddenly awakening, broke into passionate barking; he had from themoment of Mr. Potts's arrival shown toward him a pronounced aversion, and, backed under the safe refuge of his mistress's chair, his sharp hostilitydisturbed the ceremonious entrance. 

"Please put the dog out, Jack, " said Imogen; "we have a very serious matterto talk over with mama. " But Valerie, stooping, caught him up, keeping asoothing hand on his still defiant head, while Mr. Potts unfolded the planbefore her. 

The wonderful purpose, the wonderful project, was that Mr. Potts, aided byImogen, should write the life of the late Mr. Upton; and as the curtain wasdrawn from before the shrined intention, Imogen saw that her mother flusheddeeply. 

"His name must not be allowed to die from among us, Mrs. Upton. His idealsmust become more widely the ideals of his countrymen. " Mr. Potts, crossinghis knees and throwing back his shoulders, wrapped one hand, while hespoke, in a turn of his flowing beard. "They are in crying need of such amessage, now, when the tides of social materialism and political corruptionare at their height. We may well say, to paraphrase the great poet'swords: 'Upton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; New York hath need ofthee. ' And this need is one that it is our duty, and our high privilege, to satisfy. " Mr. Potts's eye, heavy with its responsibility, dwelt onValerie's downcast face. "No one, I may say it frankly, Mrs. Upton, ismore fitted than I to satisfy that need and to hand on that message. Noone had more opportunity than I for understanding that radiant personalityin its public aspects. No one can feel more deeply than I that duty andthat privilege. Every American child should know the name of Upton;every American man and woman should count him among the prophets of hisgeneration. He did not ask for fame, and we, his followers, ask none forhim. No marble temple, no effulgent light of stained glass;--no. But theviolets and lilies of childhood laid upon his grave; the tearful, yetjoyous whisper of those who come to share his spirit:--'I, too, am of hisrace. I, too, can with him strive and with him achieve. '" Mr. Potts's voicehad risen, and Tison, once more, gave a couple of hoarse, smothered barks. 

Imogen, though reared on verbal bombast, had found some difficulty inmaintaining her expression of uplifted approbation while Mr. Potts'srhetoric rolled; her willingness that Mr. Potts should serve the cause didnot blind her to his inadequacy unless kept under the most careful control;and now, though incensed by Tison's interjection, she felt it as somethingof a relief, seizing the opportunity of Mr. Potts's momentary confusionto suggest, in a gentle and guarded voice:--"You might tell mama now, Mr. Potts, how we want her to help us. "

"I am coming to that, Miss Imogen, " said Mr. Potts, with a drop fromsonority to dryness;--"I was approaching that point when the doginterrupted me"; and Mr. Potts cast a very venomous glance upon Tison. 

"Had not the dog better be removed, Mrs. Upton?" Mrs. Potts, under herbreath, murmured, leaning, as if in a pew and above prayer books, forwardin her chair. But Mrs. Upton seemed deaf to the suggestion. 

Mr. Potts cleared his throat and resumed somewhat tersely:--"This is ourproject, Mrs. Upton, and we have come this afternoon to ask you for yourfurtherance of it. You, of course, can provide me and Miss Imogen withmany materials, inaccessible otherwise, for this our work of love. Earlyletters, to you;--early photographs;--reminiscences of his younger days, and so on. Any suggestion as to the form and scope of the book we will beglad, very glad, to consider. "

Valerie had listened without a word or gesture, her pen still held in onehand, Tison pressed to her by the other, as she sat sideways to thewriting-table. Imogen read in her face a mingled embarrassment anddispleasure. 

"I am sure we must all be very grateful to Mr. Potts for this great idea ofhis, mama dear, " she said. "I thought of it, of course, as soon as papadied; I knew that we all owed it to him, and to the country that he lovedand served so well; but I did not see my way, and have not seen it tillnow. I've so little technical knowledge. But now I shall contribute alittle memoir to the biography and, in any other way, give Mr. Potts allthe aid I can. And we hope that you will, too. Papa's name is one that mustnot be allowed to fade. "

"I would rather talk of this at some other time, and with Mr. Potts alone, "Valerie now said, not raising her eyes. 

"But mama, this is my work, too. I must be present when it is talked of. "

"No, Jack, don't go, " said Valerie, looking up at the young man, who hadmade a gesture of rising. "You and I, Imogen, will speak of this together, and I will find an hour, later, when I will be free to talk to Mr. Potts. "

"Mama darling, " said Imogen, masking her rising anger in patientplayfulness, "you are a lazy, postponing person. You are not a bit busy, and this is just the time to talk it over with us all. Of course Jack muststay; we want his advice, too, severe critic as we know him to be. Come, dear, put down that pen. " She bent over her and drew the pen from her handwhile Mr. Potts watched the little scene, old suspicions clouding hiscountenance. 

"My time is limited, Mrs. Upton, " he observed; "Mrs. Potts and I take ourdeparture to-morrow and, if I have heard aright, you expect acquaintancesto dinner. Therefore, if you will pardon me, I must ask you to let us havethe benefit, here and now, of your suggestions. "

Valerie had not responded by any smile to Imogen's rather balefullightness, nor did she, by any penitence of look, respond to Mr. Potts'surgency. She sat silent for a moment, and when she spoke it was in achanged voice, dulled, monotonous. "If you insist on my speaking, now--andopenly, --I must say to you that I altogether disapprove of your project. You will never, " said Valerie, with a rising color, "gain my consent toit. "

A heavy silence followed her words, the only sound that of Tison's faintsniffings, as, his nose outstretched and moving from side to side, hecautiously savored the air in Mr. Potts's direction. Mrs. Potts stirredslightly, and uttered a sharp, "Tht--tht. " Mr. Potts, his hand still stayedin his beard, gazed from under the fringed penthouse of his brows with anarrested, bovine look. 

It was Imogen who broke the silence. Standing beside her mother she hadfelt the shock of a curious fulfilment go through her, as if she had almostexpected to hear what she now heard. She mastered her voice to ask:--"Wemust demand your reasons for this--this very strange attitude, mama. "

Her mother did not raise her eyes. "I don't think that your father was aman of sufficient distinction to justify the publishing of his biography. "

At this Mr. Potts breathed a deep, indignant volume of sound, louder than asigh, less articulate than a groan, through the forests of his beard. 

"Sufficient distinction, Mrs. Upton! Sufficient distinction! You evidentlyare quite ignorant of how great was the distinction of your late husband. Ask us what that distinction was--ask any of his large circle of friends. It was a distinction not of mind only, nor of birth and breeding--thoughthat was of the highest that this country has fostered--but it was adistinction also of soul and spirit. Your husband, Mrs. Upton, fought withspeech and pen the iniquities of his country, the country that, as MissImogen has said, he loved and served. He served, he loved, with mind andheart and hand. He was the moving spirit in all the great causes of hisday, the vitalizing influence that poured faith and will-power into them. He founded the cooperative community of Clackville; he organized thesociety of the 'Doers' among our young men;--he was a patron of the arts;talent was fostered, cheered on its way by him;--I can speak personallyof three young friends of mine--noble boys--whom he sent to Paris at hisown expense for the study of music and painting; when the great Americanpicture is painted, the great American symphony composed, it will be, inall probability, to your husband that the country will owe the unveilingof its power. And above all, Mrs. Upton, above all, "--Mr. Potts's voicedropped to a thunderous solemnity, --"his character, his personality, hisspirit, were as a light shining in darkness to all who had the good fortuneto know him, and that light cannot, shall not, be cribbed, cabined andconfined to a merely private capacity. It is a public possession andbelongs to his country and to his age. "

Tison, all unheeded now, had leapt to the floor and, during this address, had stood directly in front of the speaker, barking furiously until Imogen, her lips compressed, her forehead flushed, stooped, picked him up, andflung him out of the room. 

Mrs. Upton had sat quite motionless, only lifting her glance now and thento Mr. Potts's shaking beard and flashing eye. And, after another pause, in which only Mr. Potts's deep breathing was heard, --and the desperatescratching at the door of the banished Tison, --she said in sombertones:--"I think you forget, Mr. Potts, that I was never one of myhusband's appreciators. I am sorry to be forced to recall this fact to yourmemory. "

It had been in all their memories, of course, a vague, hoveringuncertainty, a dark suspicion that one put aside and would not look at. Butto have it now placed before them, and in these cold, these somber tones, was to receive an icy douche of reality, to be convicted of over-readyhope, over-generous confidence. 

It was Imogen, again, who found words for the indignant deputation: "Isthat lamentable fact any reason why those who do appreciate him should notshare their knowledge with others?"

"I think it is;--I hope so, Imogen, " her mother replied, not raising hereyes to her. 

"You tell us that your own ignorance and blindness is to prevent us fromwriting my father's life?"

"My opinion of your father's relative insignificance is, I think, asufficient reason. "

"Do you quite realize the arrogance of that attitude?"

"I accept all its responsibility, Imogen. "

"But _we_ cannot accept it in you, " said Imogen, her voice sinking to thehard quiver of reality that Jack well knew;--"_we_ can't fail in our dutyto him because you have always failed in yours. _We_ are in no way bound toconsider you-who never considered him. "

"Imogen, " said her mother, raising her eyes with a look of command; "youforget yourself. Be still. "

Imogen's face froze to stone. Such words, such a look, she had never metbefore. She stood silent, helpless, rage and despair at her heart. 

But Mr. Potts did not lag behind his duty. His hand still wrapped, Moses-like, in his beard, his eyes bent in holy wrath upon his hostess, herose to his feet, and Mrs. Potts, in recounting the scene--one of the mostthrilling of her life--always said that never had she seen Delancy sosuperbly _true_, never had she seen blood so _tell_. 

"I must say to you, Mrs. Upton, with the deepest pain, " he said, "that Iagree with Miss Imogen. I must inform you, Mrs. Upton, that you have noright, legal or moral, to bind us by your own shortcoming. Miss Imogen andI may do our duty without your help or consent. "

"I have nothing more to say to you, Mr. Potts, " Valerie replied. She had, unseeingly, taken up her pen again and, with a gesture habitual to her, wasdrawing squares and crosses on the blotter under her hand. The linestrembled. The angles of the squares would not meet. 

"But I have still something to say to you, Mrs. Upton, " said Mr. Potts; "Ihave still to say to you that, much as you have shocked and pained us inthe past, you have never so shocked and pained us as now. We had hoped forbetter things in you, --wider lights, deeper insights, the unsealing of youreyes to error and wrong in yourself; we had hoped that sorrow would workits sacred discipline and that, with your daughter's hand to guide you, youwere preparing to follow, from however far a distance, in the footstepsof him who is gone. This must count for us, always, as a dark day oflife, when we have seen a human soul turn wilfully from the good held outto it and choose deliberately the evil. I speak for myself and for Mrs. Potts--and in sorrow rather than in wrath, Mrs. Upton. I say nothing ofyour daughter; I bow my head before that sacred filial grief. I--"

But here, suddenly, quiet, swift, irresistible as a flame, Jack rose fromhis place. It seemed one suave, unbroken motion, that by which he laid ahand on Mr. Potts's shoulder, a hand on Mrs. Potts's shoulder--she hadrisen in wonder and alarm at the menacing descent upon her lord--laid ahand on each, swept them to the door, opened it, swept them out, and shutthe door upon them. Then he turned and leaned upon it, his arms folded. 

"Perhaps, Jack, you wish to put me out, too, " said Imogen in a voice of iceand fire. "Your arguments are conclusive. I hope that mama approves herchampion. "

Valerie now seemed to lean heavily on the table; she rested her forehead onher hand, covering her eyes. 

"Have you anything to say to me, mama, before Jack executes his justice onme?" Imogen asked. 

"Spare me, Imogen, " her mother answered. 

"Have you spared _me_?" said Imogen. "Have you spared my father? What righthave you to ask for mercy? You are a cruel, a shallow, a selfish woman, andyou break my heart as you broke his. Now Jack, you need not put me out. Iwill go of myself. "

When Jack had closed the door on her, he still stood leaning against it ata distance from Valerie. He saw that she wept, bitterly and uncontrollably;but, at first, awed by her grief, he did not dare approach her. It was onlywhen the sobs were quieted that he went and stood near her. 

"You were right, right, " he almost whispered. 

She did not answer, and wept on as if there could be no consolation for herin such rightness. 

"It had to come, " said Jack; "she had to be made to understand. And--youare right. "

She was not thinking of herself. "Oh, Jack Jack, " she spoke at last, putting out her hand to his and grasping it tightly "How I have hurt her. Poor Imogen;--my poor, poor child. "

XX

Imogen hardly knew where she went, or how, when she left her mother--hermother and Jack--and darted from the house on the wings of a supremeindignation, a supreme despair. Her sense of fitness was not that of Mr. Potts, and she knew that her father's biography was doomed. Against hermother's wish it could not, with any grace, any dignity, be published. Mr. Potts would put forth appreciation of his departed chief in the small, grandiloquent review to which he contributed--he had only delayed becauseof the greater project--but such a tribute would be a sealing of publicfailure rather than the kindling of public recognition. Already her father, by that larger public, was forgotten--forgotten; Mr. Potts would not makehim remembered. 

The word "forgotten" seemed like the beat of dark, tragic wings, bearingher on and on. The fire of a bitter wrong burned in her. And it was not thesense of personal wrong--though that was fierce, --that made her flight soblind and headlong--not her mother's cruelty nor Jack's sinister espousalof the cause he saw as evil; it was this final, this culminating wrong toher father. His face rose before her, while she fled, the deep, dark eyesdwelling with persistence on her as though they asked, --she seemed to hearthe very words and in his very voice:--"What have they done to me, littledaughter? Did I deserve this heaping of dust upon my name;--and from herhands?"

For it was that. Dust, the dust of indifferent time, of cold-heartedoblivion, was drifting over him, hiding his smile, his eyes, his tears. It seemed to mount, to suffocate her, as she ran, this dust, strewn byher mother's hand. Even in her own heart she had known the parching ofits drifting fall, known that crouching doubts--not of him, never ofhim--but of his greatness, had lurked in ambush since her mother had comehome;--known that the Pottses and their fitness had never before been soclearly seen for the little that they were since her mother--and all thather mother had brought--had come into her life. And, before this driftingof dust upon her faith in her father's greatness, her heart, all that wasdeepest in it, broke into a greater trust, a greater love, sobs beneath it. He was not great, perhaps, as the world counted greatness; but he was good, good, --he was sorrowful and patient. He loved her as no one had ever lovedher. His ideals were hers and her love was his. Dust might lie on his tomb;but never, never, in her heart. 

"Ah, it's cruel! cruel! cruel!" she panted, as she ran, ran, up the rocky, woodland path, leaping from ledge to ledge, slipping on the silky moss, falling now and then on hands and knees, but not pausing or faltering untilshe reached the murmuring pine-woods, the grassy, aromatic glades where themountain-laurel grew. 

Pallid, disheveled, with tragic, unseeing eyes and parted lips--thehollowed eyes, the sorrowful lips of a classic mask--she rushed from theshadows of the mountain--path into this place of sunlight and solitude. Adoomed, distraught Antigone. 

And so she looked to Sir Basil, who, his back against a warm rock, acigarette in one lazy hand, was outstretched there before her on the moss, a bush of flowering laurel at his head, and, at his feet, beyond tree-tops, the steep, far blue of the lower world. He was gazing placidly at thisview, empty of thought and even of conscious appreciation, wrapped in abalmy contentment, when, with the long, deep breath of a hunted deer, Imogen leaped from darkness into light, and her face announced suchdisaster that, casting aside the cigarette, springing to his feet, heseized her by the arms, thinking that she might fall before him. Andindeed she would have cast herself face downward on the grass had he notbeen there; and she leaned forward on his supporting hands, speechless, breathing heavily, borne down by the impetus of her headlong run. Then, herface hidden from him as she leaned, she burst into sobs. 

"Miss Upton!--Imogen!--My dear child!--" said Sir Basil, in a crescendo ofdistress and solicitude. 

She leaned there on his hands weeping so bitterly and so helplessly that hefinished his phrase by putting an arm around her, and so more effectuallysupporting her, so satisfying, also, his own desire to comfort and caressher. 

The human touch, the human tenderness--though him she hardly realized--drewher grief to articulateness. "Oh--my father!--my father!--Oh--what havethey done to you!" she gasped, leaning her forehead against Sir Basil'sshoulder. 

"Your father?" Sir Basil repeated soothingly, since this departedpersonality seemed a menace that might easily be dealt with, "What is it?What have they done? How can I help you? My dear child, do treat me as afriend. Do tell me what is the matter. "

"It's mama! mama!--she has broken my heart--as she broke his, " sobbedImogen, finding her former words. Already, such was the amazing irony ofevents, Sir Basil seemed, more than anyone in the world, to take thatdead father's place, to help her in her grief over him. The puzzle of itinflicted a deeper pang. "I can't tell you, " she sobbed. "But I can never, never forgive her!"

"Forgive your mother?" Sir Basil repeated, shocked. "Don't, I beg of you, speak so. It's some misunderstanding. "

"No!--No!--It is understanding--it is the whole understanding! It has comeout at last--the truth--the dreadful truth. "

"But can't you tell me? can't you explain?"

She lifted her face and drew away from him as she said, pressing herhandkerchief to her eyes: "You never knew him. You cannot care for him--noone who cares, as much as you do, for her, --can ever care for him. "

Sir Basil had deeply flushed. He led her to the sunny rock and made hersit down on a low ledge, where she leaned forward, her face in her hands, long sighs of exhaustion succeeding her tears. "I know nothing about yourfather, as you say, and I do care, very much, for your mother, " said SirBasil after a little while. "But I care for you, very much, too. "

"Ah, but you could never care for me so much as to think her wrong. "

"I don't know about that. Why not?--if she is wrong. One often thinkspeople one is fond of very wrong. Do you know, " and Sir Basil now sat downbeside her, a little lower, on the moss, "do you know you'll make me quitewretched if you won't have confidence in me. I really can't stand seeingyou suffer and not know what it's about. I don't--I can't feel myself sucha stranger as that. Won't you think of me, " he took one of her hands andheld it as he said this, "won't you think of me as, well, as a sort ofaffectionate old brother, you know? I want to be trusted, and to see if Ican't help you. Don't be afraid, " he added, "of being disloyal--of makingme care less, you know, for your mother, by anything you say; for youwouldn't. "

Leaning there, her face hidden, while she half heard him, it struck hersuddenly, a shaft of light in darkness, that, indeed, he might help her. She dropped her hand to look at him and, with all its tear-staineddisfigurement, he thought that he had never seen anything more heavenlythan that look. It sought, it sounded him, pleaded with and caressed him. And, with all its solemnity, there dawned in it a tenderness deeper thanany that he had ever seen in her. 

"I do trust you, " she said. "I think of you as a near, a dear friend. And, since you promise me that it will change you in nothing, I will tell you. Ibelieve that perhaps you can help us, --my father and me. You must count mewith him, you know, always. We want to write a life of him, Mr. Potts andI. Mr. Potts--you may have seen it--is an ordinary person, ordinary butfor one thing, one great and beautiful thing that papa and I always feltin him, --and that beautiful thing is his depth of unselfish devotion togreat causes and to good people. He worked for my father like a faithful, loving dog. He had an accurate knowledge of all the activities that papa'slife was given to--all the ideals it aimed at and attained--yes, yes, attained, --whatever they may say. He has a very skilful pen, and is intouch with the public press. So, though I would, of course, have wished fora more adequate biographer, I was glad and proud to accept his offer; and Iwould have overlooked, revised, everything. We felt, --and by we, I mean notonly Mr. And Mrs. Potts, but all his many, many friends, all those whoselives he loved and helped and lifted--that we owed it to the world heserved not to let his name fade from among us. You cannot dream, Sir Basil, of what sort of man my father was. His life was one long devotion to thehighest things, one long service of the weak and oppressed, one long battlewith the wrong. Those who are incapable of following him to the heights cangive you no true picture of him. I will say nothing, in this respect, ofmama, except that she could not follow him, --and that she made him very, very unhappy, and with him, me. For I shared all his griefs. She left us;she laughed at all the things we cared and worked for. My father neverspoke bitterly of her; his last words, almost, were for her, words oftenderness and pity and forgiveness. He had the capacity that only greatsouls have, of love for littler natures. I say this much so that you mayknow that any idea that you may have gathered of my father is, perforce, agarbled, a false one. He was a noble, a wonderful man. Everything I am Iowe to him. "

Imogen had straightened herself, the traces of weeping almost gone, her ownfluency, as was usual with her, quieting her emotion, even while her ownand her father's wrongs, thus objectivized in careful phrases, madeindignation at once colder and deeper. Her very effort to quellindignation, to command her voice to an even justice of tone before thislover of her mother's, gave it a resonant quality, curiously impressive. And, as she looked before her, down into the blue profundities, the senseof her own sincerity seemed to pulse back to her from her silent listener, and filled her with a growing consciousness of power over him. 

"This morning, " she took up her theme on that resonant note, deepened to atragic pitch, "we went to mama--Mr. Potts and I--to tell her of our projectof commemoration, to ask her coöperation. We wanted to be very generouswith her, to take her help and her sympathy for granted. I should havefelt it an insult to my mother had I told Mr. Potts that we must carry onour work without consulting her. She received us with cold indifference. She tried not to listen, when she heard what our errand was. And herindifference became hostility, when she understood. All her old hatred forwhat he was and meant, all her fundamental antagonism to the purpose of hislife--and to him--came at last, openly, to the light. She was forced toreveal herself. Not only has she no love, no reverence for him, but shecannot bear that others should learn to love him and to reverence him. She sneered at his claim to distinction; she refused her consent to ourproject. It is a terrible thing for me to say--but I must--and you willunderstand me--you who will not care less for her because she is sowrong--what I feel most of all in her attitude is a childish, yet a cruel, jealousy. She cannot endure that she should be so put into the dark by thespreading of his light. The greater his radiance is shown to be, the morein the wrong will all her life be proved;--it is that that she will nothear of. She _wants_ him to be obscure, undistinguished, negligible, because it's that that she has always thought him. "

Sir Basil, while she spoke, had kept his eyes fixed on the hand heheld, a beautiful hand, white, curiously narrow, with pointed, upturnedfinger-tips. Once or twice a dull color rose to his sunburned cheek, but inhis well-balanced mind was a steady perception of what the filial grief andpain must be from which certain words came. He could not resent them; itwas inevitable that a child who had so loved her father should so think andfeel. And her self-control, her accurate fluency, answered with him for hersincerity as emotion could not have done. Passion would never carry thisnoble girl into overstatement. Fairness constrained him to admit, while helistened, that dark color in his cheek, that her view of her father wasmore likely to be right than her mother's view. An unhappily married womanwas seldom fair. Mrs. Upton had never mentioned her husband to him, neveralluded to him except in most formal terms; but the facts of her flightfrom the marital hearth, the fact that he had made her so unhappy, had beento him sufficient evidence of Mr. Upton's general unworthiness. Now, thoughImogen's tragic ardor did not communicate any of her faith in her father'swonder or nobility, it did convince him of past unfairness toward, nodoubt, a most worthy man. Incompatibility, that had been the trouble; heone of these reformer people, very much in earnest; and Mrs. Upton, dearand lovely though she was, with not a trace of such enthusiasm in her moralmake-up. 

So, when Imogen had finished, though he sat silent for a little while, though beneath the steady survey of what she put before him was a stirringof trouble, it was in a tone of quiet acceptance that he at last said, looking up at her, "Yes; I quite see what you feel about it. To you, ofcourse, they must look like that, your mother's reasons. They must lookvery differently to her, that goes without saying. We can't really make outthese things, you know, these fundamental antagonisms; I never knew it wentas far as that. But I quite see. Poor child. I'm very sorry. It is mostawfully hard on you. "

"Don't think of me!" Imogen breathed out on a note of pain. "It's not ofmyself I'm thinking, not of my humiliation and despair--but of him!--ofhim!--Is it _right_ that I should submit? _Ought_ a project like ours to beabandoned for such a reason?"

Again Sir Basil was silent for some moments, considering the narrow whitehands. "Perhaps she'll come round, --think better of it. "

"Ah!--" it was now on a note of deep, of tremulous hope that she breathedit out, looking into his eyes with the profound, searching look so movingto him; "Ah!--it's there, it's there, that you could help me. She wouldnever yield to me. She might to you. "

"Oh, I don't think that likely, " Sir Basil protested, the flush darkening. 

"Yes, yes, " said Imogen, leaning toward him above his clasp of her hand. "Yes, if anything is likely that is so. If hope is anywhere, it's there. Don't you see, in her eyes I stand for _him_. To yield to me would be likeyielding to him, would be his triumph. That's what she can't forgive inme--that I do stand for him, that I live by all that she rejected. Shewould never yield to me, --but she might yield _for_ you. "

"Shall I speak to her about it?" Sir Basil asked abruptly, after anothermoment in which Imogen's hand grasped his tightly, its soft, warm fingersmore potent in appeal than even her eyes had been. And now, again, she leaned toward him, her eyes inundating him with radiant trust andgratitude, her hands drawing his hand to her breast and holding it there, so clasped. 

"Will you?--Oh, will you?--dear Sir Basil. "

Sir Basil stammered a little. "I'll have a try--It's hard on you, I think. I don't see why you shouldn't have your heart's desire. It's an awfullyqueer thing to do, --but, for your sake, I'll have a try--put it to her, youknow. "

"Ah, I _knew_ that you were big, " said Imogen. 

He looked at her, his hand between her hands. The flowering laurel wasbehind her head. The pine-forest murmured about them. The sky was blueabove them, and the deep blue of the distance lay at their feet. Suddenly, as they looked into each other's eyes, it dawned in the consciousness ofboth that something was happening. 

It was to Sir Basil that it was happening. Imogen's was but theconsciousness of his experience. Such a thing could hardly happen toImogen. Neither her senses, nor her emotions, nor her imagination playedany dominant part in her nature. She was incapable of falling in love inthe helpless, headlong, human fashion that the term implies. But thoughsuch feeling lacked, the perception of it in others was swift, and whileshe leaned to Sir Basil in the sunlight, while she clasped his hand to herbreast, while their eyes dwelt deeply on each other, she seemed to hear, like a rising chime of wonder and delight, the ringing of herald bells thatsang: "Mine--mine--mine--if I choose to take him. "

Wonderful indeed it was to feel this influx of certain power. Sunlight, like that about them, seemed to rise, slowly, softly, within her, like theupwelling of a spring of joy. 

It was happening, it had happened to him, his eyes told her that; butwhether he knew as she did she doubted and, for the beautiful moment, itadded a last touch of charm to her exultation to know that, while she wassure, she could leave that light veil of his wonder shimmering betweenthem. 

With the vision of the unveiling her mind leaped to the thought of hermother and of Jack, and with that thought came a swift pulse of vengefulgladness. So she would make answer to them both--the scorner--the rejector. Not for a moment must she listen to the voices of petty doubts and pities. This love, that lay like a bauble in her mother's hand--an unfit ornamentfor her years--would shine on her own head like a diadem. Unasked, undreamed of, it had turned to her; it was her highest duty to keep andwear it. It was far, far more than her duty to herself; it was her duty tothis man, finished, mature, yet full of unawakened possibility; it was herduty to that large, vague world that his life touched, a world where heryoung faiths and vigors would bring a light such as her mother's gay littletaper could never spread. These thoughts, and others, flashed throughImogen's mind, with the swiftness and exactitude of a drowning vision. Yet, after the long moment of vivid realization, it was at its height that aqualm, a sinking overtook her. The gift had come; of that she was sure. Butits triumphant displayal might be delayed--nay, might be jeopardized. Someperverse loyalty in his nature, some terrified decisiveness of action onher mother's part, and the golden reality might even be made to crumble. For one moment, as the qualm seized her, she saw herself--and the thoughtwas like a flying flame that scorched her lips as it passed--she sawherself sweeping aside the veil, sinking upon his breast, with tears thatwould reveal him to himself and her to him. 

But it was impossible for Imogen to yield open-eyed to temptation thatcould not be sanctified. Her strong sense of personal dignity held her fromthe impulse, and a quick recognition, too, that it might lower her starryaltitude in his eyes. She must stand still, stand perfectly still, and hewould come to her. She could protect him from her mother's clinging--thisshe recognized as a strange yet an insistent duty--but between him and herthere must not be a shadow, an ambiguity. 

The radiance of the renunciation, the resolve, was in her face as shegently released his hand, gently rose, standing smiling, with a strange, rapt smile, above him. 

Sir Basil rose, too, silent, and looking hard at her. She guessed at theturmoil, the wonder of his honest soul, his fear lest she did guess it, and, with the fear, the irrepressible hope that, in some sense, it wasechoed. 

"My dear, dear friend, " she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, as though with the gesture she dubbed him her knight, "my more thanfriend--shall it be elder brother?--I believe that you will be able tohelp me and my father. And if you fail--my gratitude to you will be nonethe less great. I can't tell you how I trust you, how I care for you. "

From his face she looked up at the sky above them; and in the sunlighther innocent, uplifted smile made her like a heavenly child. "Isn't itwonderful?--beautiful?--" she said, almost conquering her inner fear bythe seeming what she wished to be. "Look up, Sir Basil!--Doesn't it seemto heal everything, --to glorify everything, --to promise everything?"

He looked up at the sky, still speechless. Her face, her smile--the skyabove it--did it not heal, glorify, promise in its innocence? If a greatthing claims one suddenly, must not the lesser things inevitably go?--Couldone hold them?--Ought one to try to hold them? There was tumult in poor SirBasil's soul, the tumult of partings and meetings. 

But when everything culminated in the longing to seize this heavenlychild--this heavenly woman--to seize and kiss her--a sturdy sense ofhonesty warned him that not so could he, with honor, go forward. He mustsee his way more clearly than that. Strange that he had been so blind, tillnow, of where all ways, since his coming to Vermont, had been leading him. He could see them now, plainly enough. 

Taking Imogen's hand once more, he pressed it, dropped it, looked into hereyes and said, as they turned to the descent: "That was swearing eternalfriendship, wasn't it!"

XXI

Violent emotions, in highly civilized surroundings, may wonderfully beeffaced by the common effort of those who have learned how to live. Ofthese there were, perhaps, not many in our little group; but the guidanceof such a past mistress of the art as Imogen's mother steered the socialcraft, on this occasion, past the reefs and breakers into a tolerablysmooth sea. 

With an ally as facile, despite his personal perturbations, as Sir Basil, a friend like Mrs. Wake at hand--a friend to whom one had never to makeexplanations, yet who always understood what was wanted of her, --witha presence so propitious as the calm and unconscious Miss Bocock, thesickening plunges of explanation and recrimination that accompany unwaryseafaring and unskilful seamanship were quite avoided in the time thatpassed between Valerie's appearance at the tea-table--where she dispensedrefreshment to Mrs. Wake, Miss Bocock, and Jack only--and the meeting ofall the ship's crew at dinner. 

Valerie, in that ominous interlude, even when Sir Basil appeared on theveranda, alone, but saying that he had been for a walk with Miss Upton, whowas tired and had gone to her room to rest, even when she observed thatthe Pottses had decided upon maintaining a splendid isolation in theirown chambers, did not permit the ship to turn for one moment in such adirection. She had tea sent up to Imogen and tea sent up to the Pottses;but no messages of any sort accompanied either perfectly appointed tray, and when the dinner hour arrived she faced the Pottses' speechless dignityand Imogen's _mater dolorosa_ eyelids with perfect composure. She seemed, on meeting the Pottses, neither to ignore nor to recall. 

She seemed to understand speechlessness, yet to take it lightly, as if ontheir account. She talked at them, through them, with them, really, in sucha manner that they were drawn helplessly into her shuttle and woven intothe gracefully gliding pattern of social convention in spite of themselves. In fact, she preserved appearances with such success that everyone, to eachone's surprise, was able to make an excellent dinner. 

After high emotions, as after high seas, the appetite is capricious, shrinking to the shudder of repulsion or rising to whetted keenness. Valerie had the satisfaction of seeing that her crew, as they assuredthemselves--or, rather, as she assured them--that the waters were silkenin their calm, showed the reaction from moral stress in wholesome sensuousgratification. Even Mrs. And Mr. Potts, even Imogen, were hungry. 

She herself had still too strongly upon her the qualm of imminent shipwreckto do more than seem to join them; but it was only natural that thecaptain, who alone was conscious of just how near the reefs were and ofjust how threatening the horizon loomed, should lack the appetite that hisreassuring presence evoked. Jack noticed that she ate nothing, but he alonenoticed it. 

It was perhaps Jack who noticed most universally at that wonderful littledinner, where the shaded candle-light seemed to isolate them in its soft, diffused circle of radiance and the windows, with their faintly stirringmuslin curtains, to open on a warm, mysterious ocean of darkness. Theothers were too much occupied with their own particular miseries and intheir own particular reliefs to notice how the captain fared. 

Mrs. Wake must, no doubt, guess that something was up, but she couldn'tin the least guess how much. She watched, but her observation, herwatchfulness, could be in no sense like his own. Miss Bocock, in a low-cutblouse of guipure and pale-blue satin, her favorite red roses pinned onher shoulder, her fringe freshly and crisply curled above her eyeglasses, was the only quite unconscious presence, and so innocent was herunconsciousness that it could not well be observant. Indeed, in one sinkingmoment, she leaned forward, with unwonted kindliness, to ask the stony Mrs. Potts if her headache was better, a question received with a sphinx-likebow. Apart, however, from the one or two blunders of unconsciousness, Jacksaw that Miss Bocock was very useful to Valerie; more useful than himself, on whom, he felt, her eye did not venture to rest for any length of time. Too tragic a consciousness would rise between them if their glances toodeeply intermingled. 

Miss Bocock's gaze, behind its crystal medium, was a smooth surface fromwhich the light balls of dialogue rebounded easily. Miss Bocock thoughtthat she had never talked so well upon her own topics as on this occasion, and from the intentness of the glances turned upon her she might well havebeen misled as to her effectiveness. The company seemed to thirst for everydetail as to her theory of the rise of the Mycenean civilization. Mrs. Wake, for all her tact, was too wary, too observant, to fill so perfectlythe part of buffer-state as was Miss Bocock. 

If one wanted pure amusement, with but the faintest tincture of pity tocolor it, the countenances of the Pottses were worth close study. Thattheir silence was not for one moment allowed to become awkward, tothemselves, or to others, Jack recognized as one of Valerie's miracles thatnight, and when he considered that the Pottses might not guess to whom theyowed their ease, he could hardly pity them. That their eyes should not meethis, except for a heavy stare or two, was natural. After this meeting inthe mirage-like oasis that Valerie made bloom for them all, he knew thatfor the Pottses he would be relegated to the sightless, soundless Saharasof a burning remembrance. It was but a small part of his attention that wasspared to the consciousness that Mr. Potts was very uplifted, that Mrs. Potts was very tense, and that Mrs. Potts's dress, as if in protest againstany form of relaxation and condonation, was very, very high and tight. Indeed, Mrs. Potts, in her room, before the descent, had said to herhusband, in the mutual tones of their great situation, laying aside withresolution the half-high bodice that, till then, had marked her concessionto fashionable standards, "Never, never again, in her house. Let her bareher bosom if she will. I shall protest against her by every symbol. "

Mr. Potts, with somber justice, as though he exonerated an Agrippina fromone of many crimes, had remarked that the bosom, as far as he had observedit, had been slightly veiled; but:--"I understand those tuckers, " Mrs. Potts had replied with a withering smile, presenting her back for herhusband to hook, a marital office that usually left Mr. Potts in anexhausted condition. 

So Mrs. Potts this evening seemed at once to mourn, to protest and toaccuse, covered to her chin with a relentless black. 

But, though Jack saw all this, he was not in the humor for more than asuperficial sense of amusement. With his excited sense of mirth was adeeper sense of disaster, and the poor Pottses were at once too grotesqueand too insignificant to satisfy it. 

It was upon Imogen and Sir Basil that his eye most frequently turned. Valerie had put them together, separated from herself by the whole lengthof the table; Mr. Potts was on Imogen's other hand; Miss Bocock sat betweenMr. Potts and Valerie, and Jack, Mrs. Wake and Mrs. Potts brought thecircle round to Sir Basil, a neat gradation of affinities. 

Jack, in a glance, had seen that Imogen had been passionately weeping; hecould well imagine that grief. But before her pallid face and sunken eyeshe knew that his heart was hardened. Never, judged from a dispassionatestandard, had Imogen been so right, and her rightness left him indifferent. If she had been wrong; if she had been, in some sense guilty, if herconsciousness had not been so supremely spotless, he would have beensorrier for her. It was the woman beside him whose motives he could notpenetrate, whose action to-day had seemed to him mistaken, it was for herthat his heart ached. Imogen he seemed to survey from across a far, widechasm of alienation. 

Sir Basil was evidently as bent on helping her as was her mother. He talkedvery gaily, tossing back all Valerie's balls. He rallied Miss Bocock onher radical tendencies, and engaged in a humorous dispute with Mrs. Wakein defense of racing. Imogen, when he spoke, turned her eyes on him andlistened gravely. When her mother spoke, she looked down at her plate. Butonce or twice Jack caught her eye, while her mother's attention was engagedelsewhere, resting upon her with a curious, a piercing intentness. Such acold glitter, as of steel, was in the glance, that, instinctively, his ownturned on Valerie, as if he had felt her threatened. 

This instinct of protection was oddly on the watch to-night. Underthe sense of mirth and disaster a deeper thing throbbed in him, someinarticulate sorrow, greater than the apparent causes warranted, thatmourned with and for her. In the illumination of this intuition Valerie, hethought, had never been so lovely as to-night. It seemed to him that herbody, with its indolence of aspect, expressed an almost superhuman courage. She was soft and fragile and weary, leaning there in her transparent black, her cheek in her hand, her elbow, in, its loose sleeve, resting on thetable; but she made him think of a reed: that the tempest could not break. 

Her face was pale, he had never seen it so drained of its dusky rose. Therewas something inexpressibly touching in the flicker of her smile on thewhite, white cheek, in the innocent gaiety of the dimple placed high andrecalling Japanese suggestions, vague as the scent of sandal-wood. She, too, had wept, as he well knew; and his heart ached, dully, as he thoughtof that bitter weeping, those tears, of humility and pain. Her eyelids, strangely discolored, were like the petals of a melancholy flower, and hereyes were heavy and gentle. 

A vague, absurdly alarming sense of presage grew upon him as his eyes wentfrom this face to Imogen's--so still, so cold, so unanswering, lightened, as if from a vail of heavy cloud, by that stealthy, baleful, illuminatingglance. In Imogen's whole bearing he read renouncement, but renouncement, in her hand, would assuredly prove a scourge for her mother's shoulders. For the time that they must be together, she and her mother, her sense ofher own proved rightness would be relentless, as inflexible as and asrelentless as her sense of bitter wrong. 

Valerie's shoulders were bared and bowed. She was ready to take it all. Butit was here, for Jack, that the deep instinct of protection centered atlast in a clear decision; it was here that he felt himself rush in with theonly solution, the only salvation. At the thought of it, that one solution, his heart ached more sharply, but it ached for himself alone. For she mustgo away; yes, that was the only escape; she must go away at once, with SirBasil. She had failed. She had said it to him that morning in a few brokensentences before relinquishing the hand she grasped. 

"I've done more than fail. I've wrecked things"; and she had smiledpiteously upon him and left him. 

He knew of what she spoke, of the disaster that, as she had seen, finallyand irrevocably had overtaken his love for her child. 

And it was true, of course. She had failed. She had wrecked things; but inhis eyes, the failure she bore, the destruction she brought, made othersdark, not her. She must accept the irony of things, --it was not on her thatits shadow rested, and she must go, back to her own place, back to her ownserene, if saddened, sunlight, where she could breathe again and be safefrom scourgings. Thank heaven for Sir Basil, was Jack's thought, over thatsharpened ache. And it was with this thought that, for Jack, came the firstsinister whisper, the whisper that, as suddenly as the hiss of a vipertrodden upon in the grass, warned him of the fulfilment, clear, startling, unimaginable, of all dim presages. 

He always remembered, ludicrously, that they had reached the sweet when thewhisper came, and with his recollection of its import there mingled for himalways the incongruous association of sliced peaches and iced cream. He hadjust helped himself to this dish when, raising his eyes, he saw Sir Basillooking at Imogen. 

It was, apparently, a calm, a thoughtful look, and as Imogen's eyes weredowncast to her fruit and cream, which she was eating with much appetite, she did not then meet it. But it was a look a little off guard;--hisperception of that was the first low sibilant that reached him;--it was alook full of gentle solicitude, full of brooding, absorbed intentness; andpresently, when Imogen, as if aware of it, glanced up and met it, Sir Basildeeply flushed and turned his eyes away. 

This passage was a small enough cause to make one suddenly grow verychilly; Jack tried to tell himself that, as he mechanically went on eating. Perhaps Imogen had confided in Sir Basil; perhaps he agreed with her, wassorry, sympathetic, and embarrassed by a sympathy that set him against thewoman he loved; perhaps he already felt a protecting, paternal affectionfor Imogen, just as he himself, in the absurd inversions of theirsituation, felt a protecting filial affection for Valerie. But at thatthought--as if the weak links of his chain of possibilities had snapped andleft him at the verge of a chasm, a sudden echo in himself revealed depthsof disastrous analogy. It was revelation that came to Jack, rather thanself-revelation; the instinct that flamed up in him at this moment was likea torch in a twilit cavern. He might have seen the looming shapes fairlywell without it, but, by its illumination, every uncertainty started outinto vivid light and dark. The fact that his own feeling was so far otherthan filial did not detain him. His light was not turned upon himself; ofhimself he only knew, in that dazzling moment, that he was armed as herknight, armed for her battle as a son could not have been; it was upon SirBasil, upon Imogen, that the torch-light rested. 

He looked presently from them to Valerie. Did she know at all what was herperil? Had she seen at all what threatened her? Her face told him nothing. She was talking to Miss Bocock, and her serenity, as of mellow moonlight, cooled and calmed him a little so that he could wonder whether the perilwas very imminent. Even if the unbelievable had happened;--even if Imogenhad ensnared Sir Basil--Jack's thoughts, in dealing with poor Imogen, passed in their ruthlessness beyond the facts--even if she had ensnaredhim, surely, surely, she could not keep him. The glamour would pass fromhim. He would be the first to fight clear of it were he fully aware of whatit signified. For Imogen knew, --the torch-light had revealed that toJack, --Imogen knew, he and Imogen, alone, knew. Sir Basil didn't andValerie didn't. Single-handed he might save them both. Save them both fromImogen. 

To this strange landing-place had his long voyage, away from old ports, oldlandmarks, brought him; and on its rocks he stepped to-night, bound on aperilous quest in an unknown country. It seemed almost like the coast ofanother planet, so desolate, so lonely. But beyond the frowning headlineshe imagined that he would find, far inland, quiet green stretches where hewould rest, and think of her. The landing was bathed in a light sadder, butsweeter far than the sunlight of other countries. Here he was to fight, notfor himself, but for her. 

The first move of strategy was made directly after dinner. He asked Imogento come out and see the moonlight with him. 

A word to the wise was a word to Mrs. Wake, who safely cornered Miss Bocockand the Pottses over a game of cards. Jack saw Valerie and Sir Basilestablished on the veranda, and then led Imogen away, drew her from herquarry, along the winding path in the woods. 

XXII

Valerie, on sinking into the low wicker chair, and drawing her chuddahabout her shoulders, drawing it closely, although the evening was not coolhad expected to find Jack, or Mrs. Wake, or Miss Bocock presently besideher. 

She had watched, as they wandered, all of them, into the drawing-room, thehovering, long since familiar to her, of Sir Basil. She had seen that hiseye was as much on Imogen as on herself. She had seen Imogen's eye meet hiswith a deep insistence. What it commanded, this eye, Valerie did not know, but she had grown accustomed to seeing such glances obeyed and she expectedto watch, presently, Imogen's and Sir Basil's departure into the moonlitwoods. 

It was, therefore, with surprise that she looked up to see Sir Basil's formdarken against the sky. He asked if he might smoke his cigar beside her, and the intelligent smile he knew so well rested upon him as he took thechair next hers. 

In the slight pause that followed, both were thinking that, since theirparting in England they had really been very seldom alone together, and inSir Basil's mind was a wonder, very disquieting, as to what, really, hadbeen the understanding under the parting. 

He was well aware that any vagueness as to understanding had been owingentirely to Valerie, well aware that had she not always kept about them theatmosphere of sunny frankness and gay friendship, he would without doubthave entangled himself and her in the complications of an avowed devotion, and that long before her husband's death. For how she had charmed him, thisgay, this deep-hearted friend, descending suddenly on his monotonous lifewith a flutter of wings, a flash of color, a liquid pulse of song, likesome strange, bright bird. Charm had grown to affection and to trustfulneed, and then to the restlessness and pain and sadness of his hiddenpassion. He would have spoken, he knew it very well, were it not that shehad never given him the faintest chance to speak, the faintest excuse forspeaking. She had kept him from any avowal so completely that he mightwell, now, wonder if his self-control had not been owing far more to theintuition of hopelessness than to mere submission. Could she have kept himso silent, had she been the least little bit in love with him? He had, ofcourse, been tremendously in love with her--it was bewildering to use thepast tense, indeed--and she, of course, clever creature that she was, musthave known it; but hadn't he been very fatuous in imagining that beneathher fond, playful friendship lay the possibility of a deeper response?

Since seeing her again, in her effaced, maternal rôle, he had realized thatshe was more middle-aged than he had ever thought her, and since comingto Vermont there had been a new emphasis in this cool, gray quality thatremoved her the more from associations with youth and passion. So was hebrought, by the dizzy turn of events, to hoping that loyalty to his ownpast love was, for him, the only question, since loyalty to her, in thatrespect, had never been expected of him. 

Yet, as he took his place beside her and looked at her sitting there in thegolden light, wrapped round in white, very wan and pale, despite her smile, he felt the strangest, twisted pang of divided desire. 

She was wan and she was pale, but she was not cool, she was not gray; hefelt in her, as strongly as in far-off days, the warmth and fragrance, andknew that it was Imogen who had so cast her into a shadow. Her image hadgrown dim on that very first time of seeing Imogen standing as Antigone inthe rapt, hushed theater. That dawn had culminated to-day in theover-mastering, all-revealing burst of noon, and from its radiance the pasthad been hardly visible except as shadow. But now he sat in the moonlight, the past personified in the quiet presence beside him, and the memory ofnoonday itself became mirage-like and uncertain. He almost felt as if hehad been having a wild dream, and that Valerie's glance was the awakeningfrom it. 

To think of Imogen's filial grief and of his promise to her, --a promisedeeply recalled to him by the message of her tear-worn eyes, --to steady hismind to the task of friendly helpfulness, was to put aside the accompanyingmemory of eyes, lips, gold hair on a background of flowering laurel, was to re-enter, through sane, kind altruism, his old, normal state ofconsciousness, and to shut the door on something very sweet and wonderful, to shut the door--in Imogen's phraseology--on his soul, but, in doing that, to be loyal to the older hope. 

Perhaps, he reflected, looking at Valerie through the silvery circles ofsmoke, it depended on her as to whether the door should remain shut onall the high visions of the last weeks. After all, it had always dependedon her, tremendously, as to where he should find himself. Certainly hecouldn't regard her as the antithesis of soul, though he didn't associateher with its radiant demonstration, yet he felt that, if she so willed it, she could lock the door on visions and keep him sanely, safely, sweetlybeside her for the future. If she really did care. Poor Sir Basil, sittingthere in his faint cloud of smoke, while clouds of doubt and perplexity--asimpalpable drifted through his mind, really couldn't for the life of himhave told which solution he most hoped for. 

He plunged from the rather humiliating pause of self-contemplation intothe more congenial field of action, with a last swift thought--mostilluminating of all--as he plunged--that in the results of action he wouldfind his test. If she cared for him--really cared--she would grant hisrequest; and if she cared, why then, not only reawakened loyalty, but somevery deep acquiescence in his own nature, would keep him beside her, andto-night would see them as affianced lovers. It would be a pity to have letone's new-found soul go; but, after all, it was so very new that the pangof parting would soon be over; that was a good point about middle-age, onesoon got over pangs, soon forgot visions. 

"I want to talk to you about something. I'm going to ask you to be kinderto me, even, than you've ever been, "--so he approached the subject, whilethe mingled peace and bitterness of the last thoughts lingered with him. "I'm going to ask you to let me be very indiscreet, very intimate. It'sabout something very personal. "

Valerie no longer smiled, but she looked even more gentle and even moreintelligent. "I will be as kind as you can possibly want me to be, " sheanswered. 

"It's about--about Miss Upton. "

"About Imogen? Don't you call her Imogen yet? You must. "

"I will. I've just begun"; and with this avowal Sir Basil turned away hiseyes for a moment, and even in the moonlight showed his flush. "I had along talk with her this afternoon. "

"Yes. I supposed that you had. You may be perfectly frank with me, " saidValerie, her eyes on his averted face. 

"She was most dreadfully cut up, you know. She came rushing up to the pinewoods--I was smoking there--rushing up as if she were running for herlife--crying, --exhausted, --in a dreadful state. "

"Yes. I know. "

"Yes, of course you do. What don't you know and what don't you understand, "said Sir Basil gratefully, his eyes coming back to hers. "So I needn't goover it all--what she feels about it. I realize very well that you feel forher as much as I do. "

"Oh, yes, you must realize that, " said Valerie, a little faintly. 

"She was in such a state that one simply had to try to comfort her, --if onecould, --and we have come to be such friends;--so she told me everything. "

"Yes. Of course. "

"Well that's just it. What I want to ask you is--can't you, for her sake, quite apart from your own feelings--give in about it?" So spoke Sir Basil, sitting in the moonlight, the spark of his cigar waning as, in the longpause that followed, he held it, forgotten, in an expectant, arrestedhand. Her voice had helped and followed him with such gentleness, suchunderstanding that, though the pause grew, he hardly thought that it neededthe added, "I do beg it of you, " that he brought out presently to make heracquiescence more sure; and his shock of disappointment was sharpened bysurprise to a quick displeasure when, her eyes passing from his face andresting for long on the shadowy woods, she said in a deadened voice, avoice strangely lacking in feeling:--"I can't. "

He couldn't conceal the disappointment nor, quite, the displeasure. "Youcan't? Really you can't?--Forgive me, but don't you think she's a right tohave it written, her father's life, you know, if she feels so deeply aboutit?"

"I can't. I will never give my consent, " Valerie repeated. 

"But, she's breaking her heart over it, " Sir Basil deeply protested; andbefore the quality of the protestation she paused again, as though to giveherself time to hide something. 

"I know that it is hard for her, " was all she said at last. 

Protestation gave way to wonder, deep and sad. "And for her sake--for _my_sake, let me put it--you can't let bygones be bygones?--You can't give herher heart's desire?--My dear friend, it's such a little thing. "

"I know that. But it's for his sake that I can't, " said Valerie. 

Sir Basil, at this, was silent, for a long time. Perplexity mingled withhis displeasure, and the pain of failure, the strangely complex pain. 

She did not care for him enough; and she was wrong, and she was fantasticin her wrongness. For his sake?--the dead husband, whom, after all, she hadabandoned and made unhappy?--Imogen's words came crowding upon him likea host of warning angel visages. She actually told him that this cruelthwarting of her child was for the sake of the child's father?

It was strange and pitiful that a woman so sweet, so lovely, should sogrotesquely deceive herself as to her motives for refusing to see barejustice done. 

"May I ask why for him?--I don't understand, " he said. 

Valerie now turned her eyes once more on his face. With his words, with thetone, courteous yet cold, in which they were spoken, she recognized areached landmark. For a long time she had caught glimpses of it, ominouslyglimmering ahead of her, through the sunny mists of hope, across the widestretches of trust. And here it was at last, but so suddenly, for all herpresages, that she almost lost her breath for a moment in looking at it andwhat it marked. Here, unless she grasped, paths might part. Here, unlessshe pleaded, something might be slain. Here, above all, something mightturn its back on her for ever, unless she were disloyal to her own strangetrust. 

A good many things had been happening to Valerie of late, but this wasreally the worst, and as she looked at the landmark it grew to be theheadstone of a grave, and she saw that under it might lie her youth. 

"I don't believe that you could understand, ever, " she said at last in anunaltered voice, a voice, to her own consciousness, like the wrapping ofa shroud about her. "It's only I who could feel it, so deeply as to go sofar. All that I can say to you is this; my husband was a mediocre man, anda pretentious one. I once loved him. I was always sorry for him. I mustguard him now. I cannot have him exposed. I cannot have his mediocrity andpretentiousness displayed to the people there are in the world who wouldsee him as he was, and whose opinion counts. "

She knew, as she said it, as she folded the shroud, that he would not beone of those. Her husband's pretentiousness and mediocrity would not beapparent to the ingenuous and uncomplex mind beside her. She knew that mindtoo well and had watched it, of late, receiving with wondering admirationfrom her daughter's lips, echoes of her husband's fatuities. She loved himfor his incapacity to see sad and ugly and foolish facts as she saw them. She loved his manliness and his childishness. As she had guarded the other, once loved, man from revealment she would have guarded this one from ironicand complex visions. But the lack that endeared him to her might lose himto her. He could never see as she saw and her fidelity to her own lightcould in his eyes be but perversity. Besides, she could guess at theinterpretations that loomed in his mind; could guess at what Imogen hadtold him; it hardly needed his next words to let her know. 

"But was he so mediocre, so pretentious?" he suggested, with the touchof timidity that comes from a deeper hostility than one can openlyavow. --"Aren't you a little over-critical--through being disappointed inhim--personally? Can you be so sure of your own verdict as all that? Otherpeople, who loved him--who always loved him I mean--are sure the other wayround, " said Sir Basil. 

To prove herself faithful, not perverse, whom must she show to him asunfaithful in very ardor for rightness? In the midst of all the wrenchingof her hidden passion came a pang of maternal pity. Imogen's figure, bereaved of her father, of her lover, desolate, amazed, rose before herand, behind it, the hovering, retributory gaze of her husband. 

This, then, was what she must pay for having failed, for having wrecked. The money that she handed out must be her love, her deep love, for thislover of her fading years, and she knew that she paid the price, foreverything paid the price, above all, for her right to her own complexfidelity, when she said:

"I am quite sure of my own verdict. I take all the responsibility. I thinkother people wrong. And you must think me wrong, if it looks to you likethat. "

"But, it's almost impossible for me to think you wrong, " said Sir Basil, feeling that a chill far frostier than the seeming situation warranted hadcrept upon them. "Even if you are--why we all are, of course, most of thetime, I suppose. It's only--it's only that I can't see clear. That youshould be so sure of an opinion, a mere opinion, when it hurts someoneelse, so abominably;--it's there I don't seem to _see_ you, you know. "

"Can't you trust me?" Valerie asked. It was her last chance, her last throwof the dice. She knew that her heart was suffocating her, with its heavythrobbing, but to Sir Basil's ear her voice was still the deadened, theunchanged voice. "Can't you believe in my sincerity when I give you myreasons? Can't you, knowing me as you do, for so long, believe that I ammore likely to be right, in my judgment of my husband, than--other people?"

Her eyes, dark and deep in the moonlight, were steadily upon him. And now, probed to the depths, he, too, was conscious of a parting of the ways Itwas a choice of loyalties, and he remembered those other eyes, sunlit, limpid, uplifted, that lifted him, too, with their heavenly, upward gaze. He stammered; he grew very red; but he, too, was faithful to his own light. 

"Of course I know, my dear friend, that you are sincere. But, as to yourbeing right;--in these things, one can't help seeing crookedly, sometimes, when personal dislike has entered into a, --a near relationship. One reallycan hardly help it, can one?--" he almost pleaded. 

Valerie's eyes rested deeply and darkly upon him and, as they rested, hefelt, strangely and irresistibly, that they let him go. Let him go to sinkor to soar--that depended on which vision were the truer. 

He knew that after his flush he had become very pale. His cigar had goneout;--he looked at it with a nervous gesture. The moonlight was coldand Valerie had turned away her eyes. But as she suddenly rose, he saw, glancing from his dismal survey of the dead cigar, that she was smilingagain. It was a smile that healed even while it made things hazy to him. Nothing was hazy to her, he was very sure of that; but she would makeeverything as easy as possible to him--even the pain of finding her sowrong, even the pain of seeing that she didn't care enough, the complexpain of being set free to seize the new happiness--he was surer of thatthan ever. 

He, too, got up, grateful, troubled, but warm once more. 

The moonlight was bright and golden, and the shadows of the vines thatstirred against the sky wavered all over her as she stood before him. Sostrangely did the light and shade move upon her, that it seemed as if sheglided through the ripples of some liquid, mysterious element, not air norlight nor water, but a magical mingling of the three. He had just time tofeel, vaguely, for everything was blurred, this sense of strangeness and ofsweetness, too, when she gave him her hand. 

"Friends, as ever, all the same--are we not?" she said. 

Sir Basil, knowing that if he glided it was only because she took him withher, grasped it tightly, the warm, tangible comfort. "Well _rather_!" hesaid with school-boy emphasis. 

Be she as wrong as she would, dear creature of light, of shade, of mystery, it was indeed "well _rather_. " Never had he known how much till now. 

Holding the hand, he wondered, gazing at her, how much such a friendship, new yet old, counted for. In revealing it so fully, she had set wide thedoor, she had set him free to claim his soul; yet so wonderfully didthey glide that no gross thought of escape touched him for a moment, sobeautifully did she smile that he seemed rather to be gaining somethingthan to be giving something up. 

XXIII

Imogen always looked back to her moonlight walk with Jack as one of the fewoccurrences in her life that, at the time, she had not understood. Sheunderstood well enough afterward, with retrospective vexation for her soludicrous, yet, after all, so natural innocence. At the time she hadn'teven seen that Jack had jockeyed her out of a communing with Sir Basil. She had actually thought that Jack might have some word of penitence orexculpation to say to her after his behavior that morning. As a matter offact she could easily have forgiven him had his lack of sympathy been forher instruments only and not rather for her project. Really, except forthe triumph it had seemed to give to her mother, the humiliation that ithad seemed, vicariously, to inflict upon herself, she hadn't been able todefend herself from a queer sense of pleasure in witnessing the ejection ofthe Pottses. With the tension that had come into the scene they had been inthe way; she, as keenly as Jack, had felt the sense of unfitness, thoughshe had been willing to endure it, and as keenly as Jack she had felt Mr. Potts as insufferably presuming. She had been glad that his presumptionshould wreak punishment upon her mother, but glad, too, that when theweapon had served its purpose, it should be removed. 

So her feelings toward Jack, as he led her down the woodland path, where, not so many days ago--but how far off they seemed--she had led Sir Basil, were not so bitter as they might have been. Bitterness was in abeyance. Shewaited to hear what he might have to say for himself and about her--aboutthis new disaster that had befallen her, and with the thought of theretribution that she held, almost, within her grasp, came something of asoftening to sadness and regret over Jack. In spite of that glorious momentof the pine woods, with its wide vistas into the future, some torn fiber ofher heart would go on aching when she thought of Jack and his lost love;and when he led her away among the woods, thick with trembling lights andshadows, she really, for a little while, expected to hear him say that, sympathize as he might with her mother, reprobate as he might her ownattitude toward her, there were needs in him deeper than sympathies orblame; she almost expected him to tell her that, above all, he loved herand couldn't get on without her. Else why had he asked her to come and seethe moonlight in the woods?

A vagueness hovered for her over her own attitude in case of such anavowal, a vagueness connected with the veil that still hung between herunavowed lover and herself, and even as she walked away with Jack she felta mingled pang of eagerness for what he might have to say to her and ofanxiety for what, more than his petition on her behalf, Sir Basil might bedrawn into saying to her mother on the veranda. She didn't crudely tellherself that she would not quite abandon Jack until the veil were drawnaside and triumph securely attained; she only saw herself, as far as shesaw herself at all, as pausing between two choices, pausing to weigh whichwas the greater of the appealing needs and which the deeper of theproffered loves. She knew that the balance inclined to Sir Basil's side, but she saw herself, for this evening, sadly listening, but withholding, inits full definiteness, the sad rejection of Jack's tardy appeal. 

With this background of interpretation it was, therefore, with a growingperplexity that she heard Jack, beside her, or a little before, so thathe might hold back the dewy branches from her way, talk on persistently, fluently, cheerfully, in just the same manner, with the same alert voiceand pleasant, though watchful, eye, that he had talked at dinner. Hermother might have been walking beside them for all the difference therewas. Jack, the shy, the abrupt, the often awkward, seemed infected with hermother's social skill. The moonlit woods were as much a mere background formaneuvers as the candle-lit dinner-table had been. Not a word of themorning's disaster; not a word of sympathy or inquiry; not a word ofself-defence or self-exposition; not even a word of expostulation orreproach. 

As for entreaty, tenderness, the drawing near once more, the drop to lovingneed after the climax of alienation, she saw, by degrees, how illusoryhad been any such imagining; she saw at last, with a sharpness thatqueerly chilled her blood, that Jack was abdicating the lover's rôle moredecisively than even before. Verbal definiteness left hazes of possibilitycompared to this dreadfully competent reticence. It was more than evasion, more than reticence, more than abdication that she felt in Jack; it was adeep hostility, it was the steady burning of that flame that she had seenin his eye that morning when she had told her mother that she was crueland shallow and selfish. This was an enemy who walked beside her and, after perplexity, after the folly of soft imaginings, the folly of havingallowed her heart to yearn over him a little, and, perhaps, over herself, indignation rushed upon her, and humiliation, and then the passionatelonging for vengeance. 

He thought himself very cool and competent, this skilful Jack, leadingher down in the illumined, dewy woods, talking on and on, talking--thefool--for so, with a bitter smile, her inner commentary dubbed him--ofManet, of Monet, of Whistler, of the decomposition of light, the vibrationof color. 

From the heat of fierce anger Imogen reached a contemptuous coolness. Shemade no attempt to stay his volubility; she answered, quietly, accurately, with chill interest, all he said. They might really have met for the firsttime at dinner that night, were it not that Jack's competence was a littlefeverish, were it not that her own courtesy was a little edged. But theswing from tender sadness to perplexity, to fury, to contempt, was soviolent that not until they turned to retrace their steps did a verypertinent question begin to make itself felt. It made itself felt with thesudden leap to fear of that underlying anxiety as to what was happening onthe veranda, and the fear lit the question with a lurid, though, as yet, not a revealing flicker. For why had he done it? That was what she askedherself as they faced the moonlight and saw the woods all dark on abackground of mystic gold. What fatuous complacency had made him take somuch trouble just to show her how little he cared for what she might befeeling, for what he had himself once felt?

Imogen pondered, striding before him with her long, light step, urged nowby the inner pressure of fear as to the exchange that her absence had madepossible between her mother and Sir Basil. It had been foolish of herto leave him for so long, exposed and helpless. Instinctively her stephastened as she went and, Jack following closely, they almost ran at last, silent and breathing quickly. Imogen had, indeed, the uncanny sensation ofbeing pursued, tracked, kept in sight by her follower. From the last thinscreen of branches she emerged, finally, into the grassy clearing. 

There was a flicker of white on the veranda. In the shadow of the creepersstood two figures, clasping hands. Her mother and Sir Basil. 

Fear beat suddenly, suffocatingly, in Imogen's throat. A tide ofhumiliation, like the towering of a gigantic wave above her head, seemed torise and encompass her round about. She had counted too soon upon gladness, upon vengeance. Everything was stripped from her, if--if Jack and hermother had succeeded. With lightning-like rapidity her mind grasped itssuspicion. She looked back at Jack. His eyes, too, were fixed on theveranda, and suspicion was struck to certainty by what she read in them. Hewas tense; he was white; he was triumphant. Too soon triumphant! In anothermoment the imminence of her terror passed by. The clasp was not that of aplighting. It was over; it denoted some lesser compact, one that meant, perhaps, success for her almost forgotten hope. But in Jack's eye she hadread what was her danger. 

Imogen paused but for a moment to draw the breath of a mingled reliefand realization. Her knowledge was the only weapon left in her hand, andstrength, safety, the mere semblance of dignity, lay in its concealment. Ifhe guessed that Sir Basil needed guarding, he should never guess that shedid. Already her headlong speed might have jeopardized her secret. 

"What a pretty setting for our elderly lovers, isn't it?" she said. 

That her voice should slightly tremble was only natural; he must know thateven from full unconsciousness such a speech must be for her a forced andpainful one. 

Jack looked her full in the eye, as steadily as she looked at him. 

"Isn't it?" he said. 

XXIV

She had seen through him and she continued to see through him. 

She had little opportunity for more than this passive part on the next day, a day of goings and comings, when the Pottses went, and Rose, Mary, andEddy, arrived. 

He was guarding her mother's lover for her, guarding him from theallurement of her own young loveliness; that was the way Jack saw it. Hewas very skilful, very competent, she had to own that as she watched him;but he was not quite so omniscient as he imagined himself to be, for hedid not know that she saw. That was Imogen's one clue in those two orthree days of fear and confusion, days when, actually, Jack did succeed inkeeping her and Sir Basil apart. And she must make no endeavor to thwarthis watchfulness; she must yield with apparent unconsciousness to hiscombinations, combinations that always separated her and Sir Basil; shemust see him drive off with Sir Basil to meet the new-comers; must see himlead Sir Basil away with himself and Eddy for a masculine smoke and talk;must see him, after dinner, fix them all, irrevocably, at bridge for therest of the evening, --and not stir a finger;--for he did not know that shesaw and he did not know that she, as well as Sir Basil, needed guarding. Itwas here that Imogen's intuition failed her, and that her blindness madeJack's task the easier. 

Imogen, in these days, had little time for self-observation. She seemedliving in some dark, fierce region of her nature, unknown to her till now, where she found only fear and fury and the deep determination not to bedefeated and bereft. So supremely real were will and instinct, that, seenfrom their dominion, conscience, reason, all the spiritual tests she hadlived by, looked like far, pale clouds floating over some somber, burninglandscape, where, among flames and darkness, she was running for herlife. Reason, conscience, were still with her, but turned to the task ofself-preservation. "He is mine. I know it. I felt it. They shall not takehim from me. It is my right, my duty, to keep him, for he is all that Ihave left in life. " The last veil descended upon her soul when, her frostyyoung nature fired by the fierceness of her resolution, she felt herself tobe passionately in love with Sir Basil. 

On the third day, the third day of her _vita nuova_--so she named it--Jackhad organized a picnic. They were to drive ten miles to a mountain lakeamong pine woods, and, thrilling all through with rage, Imogen saw SirBasil safely maneuvered into the carriage with her mother, Rose, and Eddy, while she was assigned to Jack, Miss Bocock, and Mary. 

She heard herself talk sweetly and fluently during the long, sunny, breezydrive, heard Jack answering and assenting with a fluency, a sweetness asapt. Mary was very silent, but Miss Bocock, no doubt, found nothing amissin the tone of their interchange. Arrived at the beautiful spot fixed on, sunlight drifting over glades of fern, the shadowy woods encircling a lakeof blue and silver, she could say, with just the right emphasis of helplessadmiration: "Wonderful--wonderful;"--could quote a line of Wordsworth, while her eye passed over the figure of Sir Basil, talking to Rose at alittle distance, and over Jack's figure, near at hand. 

Jack and Eddy had driven, and the moment came when they were occupied withtheir horses. She joined the others, and, presently, she was able to drawSir Basil a little aside, and then still a little further, until, among therosy aisles, she had him to herself. Stooping to gather a tiny cone shesaid to him in a low voice:--"Well?--well?--What did she say?"

Sir Basil, too, lowered his voice:--"I've wanted a chance to tell you aboutit. My dear child, I'm so very sorry, but I've been a failure. She won'thear of it. You'll have to give it up. "

"She utterly refused?" How far this matter of her father was from herthoughts--as far as the pale clouds above the fierce, dark landscape. 

"Utterly. "

"You asked for your sake, as well as for mine?"

"I asked for both our sakes. "

"And, " still stooping, her face hidden from him, she pierced to find thesignificance of that moonlight hand-clasp, --"and--she made you agree withher?"

"Agree with, her?--I was most dreadfully disappointed, and I had to tellher so. --How could I agree with her?"

"She might have made you. "

"She didn't make me;--didn't try to, I'm bound to say. "

"But, "--her voice breathed up to him now with a new gentleness, --agentleness that, he well might think, covered heart-brokenness, --"but--youhaven't quarreled with her, --on my account? I couldn't bear her tolose things, on my account. She thinks of you as a friend--values yourfriendship;--I know it, --I am sure of it, --even though she would not dothis for you. Some hatreds are too deep to yield to any appeal; but it isfriendship I know;--and I love her--in spite of everything. "

She had murmured on and on, parting the ferns with her delicate hand, finding here and there a little cone, and as Sir Basil looked down at thegolden hair, the pure line of the cheek, a great wave of thanksgiving forthe surety of his freedom rose in him. 

"Dear, sweet child, " he said, "this is just what I would expect of you. Butdon't let that thought trouble you for one moment. I do think her wrong, but we are perhaps better friends than ever. You and I will always care forher"--Sir Basil's voice faltered a little as, to himself, the significanceof these last words was borne in upon him, and Imogen, hearing the falter, rose, feeling that she must see as well as hear. 

And as she faced him they heard Jack's cheery call:

"Sir Basil--I say, Sir Basil!--You are wanted. You must help with thehampers. "

Imogen controlled every least sign of exasperation; it was the easier, since she had gained something from this snatched interview. Her mother hadin no way harmed her in Sir Basil's eyes, and this avowal of friendshipmight include an abdication of nearer claims. And so she walked back besidehim--telling him that her cones were for her little cripples. "You arealways thinking about some one else's happiness, " said Sir Basil--witha tranquillity less feigned than it had been of late. Nothing was lost, nothing really desperate yet. But, during the rest of the afternoon, whilethey made tea, spread viands, sat about on the moss and rocks laughing, talking, eating, the sense of risk did not leave her. Nothing was lost, yet, but it was just possible that what she had, in her folly, expected tohappen the other night to her and Jack, might really happen to Sir Basiland her mother; in the extremity of alienation they might find the depthsof need. He thought her wrong, but he also thought her charming. 

Sitting a little above them all, on a higher rock, watching them whileseeming not to watch, she felt that her sense of peril strangely isolatedher from the thoughtless group. She could guess at nothing from hermother's face. She had not spoken with her mother since the day ofthe disaster--and of the dawn. It was probable that, like her own sadbenignity, her mother's placidity was nothing but a veil, but she could notbelieve that it veiled a sense of peril. Under her white straw hat, withbroad black ribbons tying beneath the chin, it was very pale--but that wasusual of late--and very worn, too, as it should be; but it was more fullof charm than it had any right to be. Her mother--oh! despite pallor andfading--was a woman to be loved; and that she believed herself a womanloved, Imogen, with a deep stirring of indignation and antagonism, suspected. Yes, she counted upon Sir Basil, of that Imogen was sure, but what she couldn't make out was whether her mother guessed that herconfidence was threatened. Did she at all see where Sir Basil's heart hadturned, as Jack had seen? Was her mother, too, capable of Jack's maneuvers?

From her mother she looked at Sir Basil, looked with eyes marvelouslyserene. He lounged delightfully. His clothes were delightfully right; theyseemed as much a part of his personality as the cones were of the pines, the ferns of the long glades. Rightness--exquisite, unconscious rightness, was what he expressed. Not the rightness of warfare and effort that Imogenbelieved in and stood for, but a rightness that had come to him as a gift, not as a conquest, just as the cones had come to the pine-trees. The wayhe tilted his Panama hat over his eyes so that only his chin and crisplytwisted mustache were unshadowed, the way in which he held his cigarette ina hand so brown that the gold of the seal ring upon it looked pale, eventhe way in which he wagged, now and then, his foot in its shapely tanshoe, --were all as delightful as his limpid smile up at her mother, as hisvoice, deep, decisive, and limpid, too. 

Imogen was not aware of these appreciations in herself as she watched himwith that serene covertness, not at all aware that her senses were lendingher a hand in her struggle for possession and ascendancy, and giving toher hold on the new and threatened belonging a peculiar tenacity. But shedid tell herself, again and again, with pride and pain, that this at lastwas love, a love that justified anything, and that cast all lesser thingsaside. And, with this thought of rejection, Imogen found her eyes turningto Jack. She looked at Jack as serenely as she had at Sir Basil, and at himshe could trust herself to look more fixedly. 

Jack's rightnesses were not a bit like those of nature. He was hesitant, unfinished, beside Sir Basil. His voice was meager, his form was meager, his very glance lacked the full, untroubled assurance of the other's. Asfor his clothes, with a sly little pleasure Imogen noted, point by point, how they just missed easy perfection. Very certainly this man who hadfailed her was a trophy not comparable to the man who now cared. Shetold herself that very often, emphasizing the unfavorable contrast. For, strangely enough, it was now, at the full distance of her separationfrom Jack, an irrevocable separation, that she needed the support ofsuch emphasis. In Jack's absent stare at the lake, his nervous featurescomposed to momentary unconsciousness, she could but feel a quality that, helplessly, she must appreciate. There was in the young man's face apurity, a bravery, a capacity of subtle spiritual choice that made it, essentially, one of the most civilized she had ever known. Sir Basil'sbrain, if it came to comparison, lacked one or two convolutions that Jack'sundoubtedly possessed. 

And, appreciating the lost lover, as, through her own sharpness ofintelligence she was bound to do, poor Imogen knew again the twisted pangof divided desire. Was it the higher that she had lost, or the higherthat she so strangely struggled for? Her eyes, turning again on SirBasil, stayed themselves on the assurances of his charm, his ease, his rightnesses; but the worst bitterness of all lurked under theseconsolations; for, though one was lost, the other was not securely gained. 

Imogen, that night, made another dash for the open, only, again, to befoiled. Her mother and Miss Bocock were safely on the veranda in themoonlight, the others safely talking in the drawing-room; Sir Basil, only, was not to be seen, and Imogen presently detected the spark of his cigarwandering among the flower-borders. She could venture on boldness, thoughshe skirted about the house to join him. What if Jack did see themtogether? It was only natural that, if she were unconscious, she should nowand then seek out her paternal friend. But hardly had she emerged from theshadow of the house, hardly had Sir Basil become aware of her approach, when, with laughter and chattering outcries the whole intolerable hordewas upon her. It was Rose who voiced the associated proposal, a moonlightramble; it was Rose who seized upon Sir Basil with her hateful air ofindifferent yet assured coquetry; but Imogen guessed that she was a tool, even if an ignorant one, in the hands of Jack. Miss Bocock and her motherhad not joined them and, in a last desperate hope, Imogen said, --"Mama, too, and Miss Bocock, --we mustn't leave them. Sir Basil, won't you go andfetch them?" And then, Sir Basil detached from Rose, on his way, shemurmured, --"I must see that she doesn't forget her shawl, " and darted afterhim. Once more get him to herself and, in the obscurity of the woods, theymight elude the others yet. But, as they approached the veranda, she foundthat Jack was beside them. 

Neither Valerie nor Miss Bocock cared to join the expedition; and Valerie, cryptically, for her daughter's understanding, said: "Do you really wantmore scenery, Sir Basil? You and Imogen had much better keep us companyhere. We have earned a lazy evening. "

"Oh, no, but Rose has claimed Sir Basil as her cavalier, " Jack, astonishingly, cut in. "It's all her idea, so that she could have a talkwith him. Do you come, too, " Jack urged. "It's only a little walk and themoonlight is wonderful among the woods. "

Mrs. Upton's eye rested fixedly upon him for a moment. Imogen saw that, butcould not know whether her mother shared her own astonishment for Jack'sdevelopment or whether the look were of the nature of an interchange. Sheshook her head, however. 

"No, thanks, I am too tired. Be sure and show Sir Basil the view from therustic seat, Imogen. And, oh, Imogen, do you and Sir Basil go to the pantryand ask Selma for some cakes. You will like something to eat. "

"I'll come, too, " said Jack cheerfully. "I must get my stick. "

And thus it was that Sir Basil remained standing beside Mrs. Upton, whilethe young couple, in absolute silence, accomplished their mission. 

Imogen only wondered, as they went, side by side, swiftly, round to thepantry, if Jack did not hear the deep, indignant breaths she vainlytried to master. The rest of the evening repeated the indignities of theafternoon. She was watched, guarded, baffled. Proudly she relinquishedevery attempt to checkmate; and her mother was not there; for the momentthere was no anxiety on that score. But the sense of deep breathing did notleave her. What _wouldn't_ Jack do? She was quite sure that he would lie, if, technically, he had not lied already. The stick had been in the hallnear the pantry. If it hadn't;--well, with her consciousness of whistlingspeed, of a neck-to-neck race, she really would not have had time for apause of wonder and condemnation. 

XXV

She woke next morning to that fierce consciousness of a race. And the goalmust now be near, defeat or victory imminent. 

It was early and she dressed quickly. She couldn't boldly rap at SirBasil's door and call him to join her in the garden for a dewy walk beforebreakfast, for Jack's was the room next his; but, outside, as she driftedback and forth over the lawn, in full view of his window, she sang toherself, so that he could hear, sang sweetly, loudly, sadly, a strain ofWagner. It happened, indeed, to be the Pilgrim's March from Tannhäuser thatshe fixed upon for her _aubade_. Jack would never suspect such singing, andSir Basil must surely seize its opportunity. But he did not appear. Shesurmised that he was not yet up and that it might be wiser to wait for himin the dining-room. 

As she crossed the veranda she heard voices around the corner, a snatch oftalk from two other early risers sitting outside the drawing-room windows. Mary and Rose; she placed them, as she paused. 

"But Jack himself often talks in just that way, " Mary was saying, pained itwas evident, and puzzled, too, by some imputation, that she hadn't beenable to deny. 

"Yes, dear old Jack, " Rose rejoined; "he does talk in a very tiresome waysometimes; so do you, Mary my darling;--you are all tarred with the samesolemn brush; but, you see, it's just that; one may talk like a prig andyet not be one. Jack, behind the big words, means them all, is them all, really. Whereas Imogen;--why she's little--little--little. Even Jack hasfound that out at last. "

"Rose! Rose! Don't--It's not true. I can't believe it! I won't believe it!"broke from Mary. Her chair was pushed back impetuously, and Imogen dartedinto the dining-room and from there into the hall to find herself, at last, face to face with Sir Basil. 

"I hoped I'd find you. I heard you singing in the garden. What is thatthing, --Gounod, isn't it? Do let's have a turn in the garden. "

But even as he said it, holding her hand, the fatal chink of theapproaching breakfast tray told them that the opportunity had come toolate. Rose and Mary already were greeting them, Jack and Miss Bocock calledmorning wishes from above. 

Valerie was a late riser; and Imogen, behind the tea-pot and coffee, was always conscious of offering a crisp and charming contrast to laxself-indulgence. But this morning, as they all hemmed her in, fixed herin her rightful place, her cheeks irrepressibly burned with vexation anddisappointment. The overheard insolence, too, had been like a sudden slap. She mastered herself sufficiently to kiss Mary's cheek and to take Rose'shand with a gaze of pure unconsciousness, a gaze that should have been as acoal of fire laid upon her venomous head. 

But Rose showed no symptom of scorching. She trailed to her place, in amorning-gown all lace and ribbons, smiling nonchalantly at Jack and saucilyat Sir Basil, with whom she had established relations of chaffing coquetry;she told Imogen to remember that she liked her coffee half-and-half with alot of cream and three lumps of sugar. She looked as guiltless as poor Marylooked guilty. 

"Eddy's late as usual, I suppose, " she said. 

"He inherits laziness from mama, " Imogen smiled, putting in four lumps, atrivial vengeance she could not resist. 

"Some of her charms he has inherited, it's true. " Rose, in the absence ofher worshiped hostess gave herself extreme license in guileless prods andthrusts. "I only wish he had inherited more. Here you are, Eddy, afterall, falsifying my hopes of you. We are talking about your hereditary goodpoints, Eddy;--in what others, except morning laziness, do you resembleyour mother?"

"Well, I hate strings of milk in my coffee, " said Eddy, bending over hissister to put a perfunctory kiss upon her brow, "and as I observe one inthat cup I hope it's not intended for me. Imogen, why won't you use thestrainer?"

With admirable patience, as if humoring two spoiled children, Imogen filledanother cup with greater care. 

"Mama feels just as I do about strings in coffee, " said Eddy, bearing awayhis cup. "We are both of us very highly organized. "

"You mustn't be over-sensitive, you know, " said Imogen, "else you willunfit yourself for life. There are so many strings in one's coffee inlife. "

"The fit avoid them, " said Eddy, "as I do. "

"You inherit that, too, from mama, " said Imogen, "the avoidance ofdifficulties. Do try some of our pop-overs, Miss Bocock; it's a nationaldish. "

"What are you going to do this morning, Imogen?" Jack asked, and she feltthat his eye braved hers. "It's your Girls' Club morning, isn't it? Thatwill do beautifully for you, Miss Bocock. I've been telling Miss Bocockabout it; she is very much interested. "

"Very much indeed. I am on the committee of such a club in England, " saidMiss Bocock; "I should like to go over it with you. "

Imogen smiled assent, while inwardly she muttered "Snake!" Her morning, already, was done for, unless, indeed, she could annex Sir Basil as a thirdto the party and, with him, evade Miss Bocock for a few brief moments. Butbrief moments could do nothing for them. They needed long sunny or moonlitsolitudes. 

"We must be alone together, under the stars, for our souls to _see_, "Imogen said to herself, while she poured the coffee, while she met Jack'seye, while, beneath this highest thought, the lesser comment of "Snake!"made itself heard. 

"What's become of that interesting girl who had the rival club, Imogen?"Rose asked. "The one you squashed. "

"We make her very welcome when she comes to ours. " Imogen did not descendto self-exculpation. She spoke gently and gravely, casting only a glance atSir Basil, as if calling him to witness her pained magnanimity. 

"It would be fun, you know, to help her to start a new one, " saidRose;--"something rebellious and anarchic. Will you help me if I do, Eddy?Come, let's sow discord in Imogen's Eden, like a couple of serpents. "

Reptilian analogies seemed uppermost this morning; Imogen felt theirfitness while, smiling on, she answered: "I don't think that mererebellion--not only against Eden but against the Tree of Knowledge aswell--would carry you far, Rose. Your membership would be of three--Mattieand the two serpents. "

Sir Basil laughed out at the retort. 

"You evidently don't know the club and all those delightful young women, "he said to Rose. 

"Oh, yes, indeed I do. Every one sees Imogen's clubs. I don't think themdelightful. Women in crowds are always horrid. We are only tolerable inisolation. "

"You hand over to us, then, "--it was Jack who spoke, and with his usualimpatience when bending to Rose's folly, --"all the civic virtues, all thevirtues of fraternity?"

"With pleasure; they are becoming to nobody, for that matter. But I'm quitesure that men are brothers. Women never are sisters, however, unless, sometimes, we are sisters to you, " Rose added demurely, at which Sir Basilgave a loud laugh. 

Imogen, though incensed, was willing that on this low ground of sillyflippancy Rose should make her little triumphs. She kept her smile. "Idon't think that those of us who are capable of another sisterhood willagree with you, " and her smile turned on Mary another coal of fire, forshe suspected Mary of apostasy. "I don't think that the women whose aimin life is--well--to make brothers of men in Rose's sense, can understandsisterhood at all, as, for instance, Mary and I do. "

"Oh, you and Mary!"--Rose tapped her eggshell and salted her egg. "That'snot sisterhood;--that's prophetess and proselyte. You're an anarchistto the bone, Imogen, like the rest of us;--you couldn't bear to shareanything--It's like children playing games:--If I can't be the driver, Iwon't play horses. "

"Oh, Rose!" came in distressed tones from Mary; but Imogen did not flinchfrom her serenity. 

Outside on the veranda, where they all wandered after breakfast, hermoment came at last. Jack had walked away with Mary; Miss Bocock, with anewspaper, stood in the shade at a little distance. Rose and Eddy werewandering among the flowers. 

Imogen knew, as she found herself alone with Sir Basil, that the impulsethat rose in her was the crude one of simply snatching. She controlled itsdemonstration so that only a certain breathlessness was in her voice, acertain brilliancy in her eye, as she said to him, rapidly:--

"He will never let you see me! Never!"

"He? Who?--What do you mean?" Sir Basil, startled, stared at her. 

"Jack! Jack! Haven't you noticed?"

"Oh, I see. Yes, I see. " His glance became illuminated. In a voice as lowas her own he asked: "What does it mean?--I never can get a word withyou. He's always there. He's very devoted to you, I know; but, I supposedthat--well, that his chance was over. "

His hesitation, the appeal of his glance, were lightning-flashes ofassurance for Imogen, opening her path for her. 

"It is over;--it is over;--but it's false that he is devoted to me, " shewhispered. "He hates me. He is my enemy. "

"Oh, I say!" gasped Sir Basil. 

"And since he failed to win me--Don't you see--It's through sheerspite--sheer hatred. "

Her brilliant eyes were on him and a further "Oh!" came from Sir Basil ashe received this long ray of illumination. And it was so dazzling, althoughImogen, after her speech, had cast down her eyes, revealing nothing more, that he murmured hastily:--"Can't I see you, Imogen, alone;--can't youarrange it in some way?"

Imogen's eyes were still cast down, while, the purpose that was like apossession, once attained, her thoughts rushed in, accused, exculpated, awild confusion that, in another moment had built for her self-respect theshelter of a theory that, really, quite solidly sustained the statement soastounding to herself when it had risen to her lips. Hatred, spite; yes, these were motives, too, in Jack's treachery; she hadn't spoken falsely, though it had been with the blindness of the overmastering purpose. And herdignity was untarnished in Sir Basil's eyes, for, she had seen it at last, her path was open; she had only to enter it. 

Her heart seemed to flutter in her throat as she said on the lowest, most incisive note: "Yes, --I, too, want to see you, Sir Basil. I am solonely;--you are the only one who cares, who understands, who is near me. There must be real truth between us. This morning--he has prevented that. But to-night, after we have all gone up-stairs, come out again, by thelittle door at the back, and meet me--meet me--" her voice wavereda little, "at the rustic bench, up in the woods, where we went lastnight. There we can talk. " And catching suddenly at all the nobility, sothreatened in her own eyes, remembering her love for him, her great love, and his need, his great need, of her, she smiled deeply, proudly at him andsaid:

"We will see each other, at last, and each other's truth, under God'sstars. "

XXVI

Jack had drawn Mary aside, around the sunny veranda, and, out of ear-shotof everybody, a curious intentness in his demeanor, he asked her to runup to Mrs. Upton's room and ask her if she wouldn't take a drive with himthat morning. Since the Uptons' impoverishment their little stable was, perforce, empty; and it was Jack who ordered the buggy from the village andtreated the company in turn to daily drives. 

Mary departed on her errand, hearing Jack telephoning to the livery-stableas she went up-stairs. 

She had to own to herself that the charm had grown on her, and the fact ofher increasing fondness for Imogen's mother made the clearer to her all thenew, vague pain in regard to Imogen. Imogen, to Mary's delicate perceptionof moral atmosphere, was different; she had felt it from the moment of herarrival. No one had as yet enlightened her as to the Potts's catastrophe, but even by its interpretation she would have found the change hard tounderstand. Perhaps it was merely that she, Mary, was selfish and feltherself to be of less importance to Imogen. Mary was always consciousof relief when she could fix responsibility upon herself, and she wasadjusting all sorts of burdens on her conscience as she knocked at Mrs. Upton's door. 

The post had just arrived, and Valerie, standing near her dressing-table, was reading her letters as Mary came in. Mary had never so helplessly feltthe sense of charm as this morning. 

She wore a long white dressing-gown, of frilled lawn, tied with blackribbons at throat and wrists. Her abundant chestnut hair, delicately veinedwith white, was braided into two broad plaits that hung below her waist, and her face, curiously childlike so seen, was framed in the banded masses. Mary could suddenly see what she had looked like as a little girl. Somoved was she by the charm that, Puritan as she was, she found herselfinvoluntarily saying:--"Oh, Mrs. Upton, what beautiful hair you have. "

"It is nice, isn't it?" said Valerie, looking more than ever like a child, a pleased child; "I love my hair. "

Mary had taken one braid and was crunching it softly, like spun silk, inher hand. She couldn't help laughing out at the happy acceptance of heradmiring speech; the charm was about her; she understood; it wasn't vanity, but something flower-like. 

"You have heaps, too, " said Valerie. 

"Oh, but it's sand-colored. And I do it so horribly. It is so heavy andpulls back so. "

"I know; that's the difficulty with heaps of hair. But I had a very clevermaid, and she taught me how to manage it. Sand-color is a lovely color as abackground to the face, you know. "

Valerie rarely made personal remarks and rarely paid compliments. She hadnone of the winning allurements of the siren; Mary had realized that andwas now realizing that genuine interest, even if reticent, may be the mostfragrant of compliments. 

"I wish you would let me show you how to do it, " Valerie added. 

Mary blushed. There had always been to her, in her ruthless hair-dressing, an element of severe candor, the recognition of charmlessness, a sortof homage paid to wholesome if bitter fact. Mrs. Upton was not, in herflower-like satisfaction, one bit vain; but Mary suspected herself offeeling a real thrill of tempted vanity. The form of the temptation was, however, too sweet to be rejected, and Mrs. Upton's hair was so simplydone, too, though, she suspected, done with a guileful simplicity. Itwouldn't look vain to do it like that; but, on the other hand, it wouldprobably take three times as long to do; there was always the question ofone's right to employ precious moments in personal adornment. "How kindof you, " she murmured. "I am so stupid though. Could I really learn? Andwouldn't it take up a good deal of my time every morning?"

Valerie smiled. "Well, it's a nice way of spending one's time, don't youthink?"

This was, somehow, quite unanswerable, and Mary had never thought of it inthat light. She sat down before Valerie's pretty, tipped mirror and lookedwith some excitement at the rows of glittering toilet utensils set outbefore her. She was sure that Mrs. Upton found it nice to spend a greatdeal of time before her mirror. 

"It is so kind of you, " she repeated. "And it will be so interesting to seehow you do it. And, oh, I am forgetting the thing I came for--how stupid, how wrong of me. It's a message from Jack. He wants to know if you willdrive with him. "

"And what are all the plans for to-day?" Mrs. Upton asked irrelevantly, unpinning the clustered knobs at the back of Mary's head and softly shakingout the stringently twisted locks as she uncoiled them. 

"It is _so_ kind of you;--but oughtn't I to take Jack his answer first?"

"The answer will wait. He has his letters to see to now. What are they alldoing?"

"Well, let me see; Rose is in the hammock and Eddy is talking to her. Imogen is going to take Miss Bocock to see her club. "

"Oh, it is Imogen's club day, is it? She asked Miss Bocock?"

"Miss Bocock asked her, or, rather, Jack told her that he had been tellingMiss Bocock about it; it was Jack who asked. He knew, of course, that shewould be interested in it;--a big, fine person like Miss Bocock would bebound to be. "

"Um, " Valerie seemed vaguely to consider as she passed the comb down thelong tresses. "I don't think that I can let Imogen carry off MissBocock;--Miss Bocock can go to the club another day; I want to do somegardening with her this morning; she's a very clever gardener, did youknow?--So I shall be selfish. Imogen can take Sir Basil; he likes walks. "

Mrs. Upton was now brushing, and very dexterously; but Mary, glancing ather with a little anxiety for the avowed selfishness, fancied that she wasnot thinking much about the hair. Mary could not quite interpret the changeshe felt in the lovely face. Something hard, something controlled wasthere. 

"But Jack?"--she questioned. 

"Well, Jack can take you on the drive. You and he have seen very little ofeach other since you've come; such old friends as you are, too. "

"Yes, we are, " said Mary, gazing abstractedly at her own face, now, in themirror, and forgetting both her own transformation and the face that bentabove her. A familiar cloud of pain gathered within her and, suddenly, shefound herself bursting out with:--"Oh, Mrs. Upton--I am so unhappy aboutJack!"

Valerie, in the mirror, gave her a keen, quick glance. "I am, too, Mary, "she said. 

Mary, at this, turned in her chair to look up at her:--"You see, you feelit, too!"

"That _he_ is unhappy? Yes, I see and feel it. "

"And you care;--I am sure that you care. "

"I care very much. I love Jack very much. "

Mary seized her hand and tears filled her eyes. "Oh, you _are_ a dear!--Onemust love him when one really knows him, mustn't one?--Mrs. Upton, I'veknown Jack all my life and he is simply one of the noblest, deepest, realest people in the whole world. "

"I am sure of that. "

"Well, then, can't you help him?" Mary cried. 

"How can I help him?--In what way?" Valerie asked, her grave smile fading. 

"With Imogen. It's that, you see, their alienation, that's breaking hisheart. 

"Of course you've seen it all more clearly than I have, " Mary went on, her hair about her face, her hand clasping Valerie's;--"Of course youunderstand it, and everything that has happened to them. I love Imogen, too--please don't doubt that;--but, but, I can't but feel that it's _her_mistake, _her_ blindness that has been the cause. She couldn't accept it, you see, that he should--stand for a new thing, and be loyal to the oldthing at the same time. "

Valerie, now, had sunken into a chair near Mary's, and one hand was stillin Mary's hand, and in the other she still held a tress of Mary's hair. Shelooked down at this tress while she said:--"But Imogen was right, quiteright. He couldn't stand for the new thing and be loyal to the old. "

Mary's eyes widened: "You mean, --Mrs. Upton?--"

"Just what you do. That _I_ am the cause. "

She raised her eyes to Mary's and the girl became scarlet. 

"Oh, --you do see it all, " she breathed. 

"All, all, Mary. To Imogen I stand, I must stand, for the wrong; toJack--though he can't think of me very well as 'standing' for anything, I'm not altogether in that category. So that his championship of me judgeshim in Imogen's eyes. Imogen has had a great deal to bear. Have you heardof the last thing? She has not told you? I have refused my consent to herhaving a biography of her father written. She had set her heart on it. "

"Oh, I hadn't heard anything. You wouldn't consent? Oh, poor Imogen!"

"It is, poor Imogen. In this, too, she has found no sympathy in Jack. Allhis sympathy is with me. It has been the end, for both of them. And it isinevitable, Mary. "

"Oh, Mrs. Upton, what can I say--what can I think?--I don't seem to be ableto see who is right and who is wrong!" Mary covered the confusion of herthoughts by burying her face in her hands. 

"No; one can't see. That's what one finds out. "

"Of course, I have always thought Mr. Upton a very wonderful person, " Marymurmured from behind her hands, her Puritan instinct warning her thatnow, when it gave her such pain, was the time above all others for a"testifying, " a "bearing witness. "--"But I know that Jack never felt aboutthat as I did. Of course I, too, think that the biography ought to bewritten. "

Valerie was silent, and her silence, Mary felt, was definitive. 

She wouldn't explain herself; she wouldn't seek self-exculpation; andwhile, with all her humility, Mary felt that as a little stinging, she feltit, also, as something of a relief. Mrs. Upton, no doubt, was indifferentas to her opinion of her rightness and her wrongness, and Mrs. Upton--therewas the comfort of it, --was a person whom one must put on one side whenit came to judgments. She didn't seem to belong to any of the usualcategories. One didn't want to judge her. One was thankful for the haze shemade about herself and her motives. That Jack understood her was, Mary feltsure, the result of some peculiar perspicacity of Jack's, for she didn'tbelieve that Mrs. Upton had ever explained or exculpated herself to Jack, either. It even dawned on her that his perspicacity perhaps consistedmainly in the sense of trust that she herself was experiencing. She trustedMrs. Upton, were she right, or were she wrong, and there was an end of it. With that final realization she uncovered her eyes and met her hostess'seyes again, eyes so soft, so clear, but with, in them, a look of suffering. Childlike, her hair folding behind her cheek and neck, she was faded, touched with age; Mary had never seen it so clearly. Somehow it made hereven sorrier than the suffering she recognized. 

"Oh, but it's been hard for you, too, " she exclaimed, shyly butirrepressibly, "everything, all of it. Just let me say that. "

Valerie had blushed her infrequent, vivid blush. She rose and came behindMary's chair again, gathering up the abandoned tresses. But before shebegan to comb and coil she said, "Thanks, " leaning forward and, verylightly, kissing the girl's forehead. 

After that there was silence between them while the work of hair-dressingwent on. Valerie did not speak again until, softly forming the contour ofthe transfigured head, she said, looking at Mary's reflection with an airof quiet triumph;--"Now, is not that charming?"

"Charming; perfectly charming, " Mary replied, vaguely; the tears were nearher eyes. 

"You must come again, to-morrow, and do it under my supervision. It onlyneeds this, now. " She thrust two heavy tortoise-shell pins into the coilson either side of Mary's head. 

"Those beautiful pins! I am afraid I shall lose them!"

"But they are yours, --mementoes of the new era in hair-dressing. I haveseveral of them. There, you are quite as I would have you, --as far as yourhead goes. "

"Not as far as the rest of me goes, I'm afraid, " said Mary, laughing inspite of herself, and lured from sadness. 

"I wish you'd let me make the rest of you to match, " said Valerie. "I'vealways loved dressing people up. I loved dressing my dolls when I was achild. That stiff shirt doesn't go with your head. "

"No, it doesn't. I really don't see, " said Mary tentatively, "why oneshouldn't regard dressing as a form of art; I mean, of course, as long asone keeps it in its proper place, as it were. "

"To get it in its proper place is to dress well, don't you think. I foundsuch a pretty lawn dress of mine in a trunkful of things put away here;it's a little too juvenile for me, now, and, besides, I'm in mourning. MayI put you into it?"

"But I should feel so odd, so frivolous. I'm such a staid, solemn person. "

"But the dress is staid, too, --a dear little austerity of a dress;--it'sjust as much you as that way of doing your hair is. Don't imagine that Iwould commit such a solecism as to dress you frivolously. Look; will youput this on at once, --to please me?"

She had drawn the delicate thing, all falls and plaitings of palest blue, from a closet, and, shaking it out, looked up with quite serious eyesof supplication. It was impossible not to yield. Laughing, frightened, charmed, Mary allowed Mrs. Upton to dress her, and then surveyed herselfin the long mirror with astonishment. She couldn't but own that it washerself, though such a transfigured self. She didn't feel out of place, though she felt new and strange. 

"Now, Mary, go down to them and see to it that they all do as I say, "Valerie insisted. "Imogen is to take Sir Basil to the club;--Miss Bocockis to garden with me--tell her particularly that I count upon her. Jack isto take you for a drive. And, Mary, " she put her hand for a moment on thegirl's shoulder, grave for all her recovered lightness;--"you are not totalk of sad things to Jack. You must help me about Jack. You must cheerhim;--make him forget. You must talk of all the things you used to talk ofbefore--before either I or Imogen came. "

They were all on the veranda when Mary went down; all, that is, but Roseand Eddy. Sir Basil and Miss Bocock were deep in letters. Imogen, seatedon a step, the sunlight playing over her fluttering black, endured--it wasevident that enjoyment made no part of her feeling--a vivid and emphaticaccount from Jack of some recent political occurrence. He was even reading, here and there, bits from the newspaper he held, and Mary fancied thatthere was an unnatural excitement in his voice, an unusual eagerness in hiseye, with neither of which had he in the least infected Imogen. 

On seeing Mary appear he dropped the newspaper and joined her in the hall, drawing her from there into the little library. "Well?--Well?--" hequestioned keenly. 

He had no eyes for her transformation, Mary noted that, although Imogen, inthe instant of her appearance, had fixed grave and astonished eyes uponher. She repeated her message. 

"Well, do you know, " said Jack, "we can't obey her. I'm so sorry;--I shouldhave liked the drive with you, Mary, of all things; but it turns out thatI can't take anybody this morning, I've some letters, just come, that mustbe answered by return. But, Mary, see here, " his voice dropped and hiskeenness became more acute;--"help me about it. See that she goes. Sheneeds it. "

"Needs it?"

"Don't you see that she's worn out?"

"Jack, only this morning, I've begun to suspect it;--what is the matter?"

"Everything. Everything is the matter. So, she mustn't be allowed to takeall the drudgery on her hands. Miss Bocock may go to the club with Imogen;she's just ready to go, she wants to go;--and Mrs. Upton must have thedrive with Sir Basil. He'd far rather drive with her than walk withImogen, " said Jack brazenly. 

"I suppose so, they are such great friends;--only;--drudgery?--She likesMiss Bocock. She likes gardening, "--Mary's breath was almost taken away byhis tense decisiveness. 

"She likes Sir Basil better"; Jack said it in the freest manner, a mannerthat left untouched any deeper knowledge that they might both be inpossession of. "Imogen likes him better, too. It's for that, so that Imogenmay have the best of it, that she's taking Miss Bocock off Imogen'shands;--you see, I see that you do. So, you just stay here and keep stillabout your counter-demands, while I manage it. "

"But Jack, --you bewilder me!--I ought to give my message. I hate managing. "

"I'll see that your message is given. "

"But how can you?--Jack--what _are_ you planning?"

He was going and, with almost an impatience of her Puritan scruples, hepaused at the door to reply:--"Don't bother. I'm all right. I won't manageit. I'll simply _have_ it so. "

Half an hour later Valerie came down-stairs wearing her white hat with itsblack ribbons and drawing on her gardening gloves. And in the large, coolhall, holding his serviceable letters, Jack awaited her. 

"I hope you won't mind, " he announced, but in the easiest tones; "we can'tobey you this morning. Miss Bocock's gone off to the club with Imogen, andSir Basil is going to take you for a drive. "

Valerie, standing on the last step of the stair, a little above him, pausedin the act of adjusting her glove, to stare at him. Easy as his tone was hecouldn't hide from her that he wore a mask. 

"Was Mary too late to give my message?"

"Yes;--that is, no, not exactly; but the club had been arranged and MissBocock was eager about it and knew you wouldn't mind, especially as SirBasil set his heart on the drive with you, when he heard that I couldn'tgo. "

"That you couldn't go?--but you sent Mary to ask me. "

"I had to waive my claim, --I've just had these letters"; he held them up. "Very important; they must be answered at once; it will take all mymorning, and, of course, when Sir Basil heard that, he jumped at hischance. "

Valerie was still on the step above him, fully illuminated, and, as, withthat careful ease, he urged Sir Basil's eagerness upon her, he saw--withwhat a throb of the heart, for her, for himself--that her deep flush rose. 

Oh, she loved him. She couldn't conceal it, not from the eyes that watchedher now. And was she glad of an unasked-for help, or did her pride suspecthelp and resent it? Above all did she know how in need of help she was?

He hadn't been able to prevent his eyes from turning from the blush; theyavowed, he feared, the consciousness that he would hide; but, after alittle moment, in the same voice of determined, though cautiouspenetration, Valerie questioned: "Is Imogen just gone?"

"She has been gone these fifteen minutes, " said Jack, striving to concealtriumph. 

"And Mary?"

"Mary?"

"Yes; where is Mary? Is she left out of all your combinations?"

She did probe, then, though her voice was so mild, the voice, only, of theslightly severe, slightly displeased hostess who finds her looms entangled. 

"Mary always has a lot to do. "

"Sir Basil shall take Mary, " said Valerie cheerfully, as though she pickedup the thread and found a way out of the silly chaos of his making. 

And at this crisis, this check from the goddess who wouldn't be served, Jack's new skill rose to an almost sinister height. Without a flaw in theirapparent candor, his eyes met hers while he said:--"Please don't upset mylittle personal combination. It's very selfish of me, I know;--but I wantedto keep Mary for myself this morning. I've seen so little of her of late;and I need her to talk over my letters with; they're about things we areboth interested in. "

Valerie looked fixedly at him while he made this statement, and hecouldn't tell what her look meant. But, evidently, she yielded to hiscounter-stratagem, feeling it, no doubt, unavoidable, for the buggy justthen drew up before the door, and the figure of Sir Basil appeared above. 

"I _am_ in luck!" said Sir Basil. Excitement as well as eagerness wasvisible in him. Valerie did not look up at him, though she smiled vaguely, coming down from her step and selecting a parasol on her way to the door. Jack was beside her, and he saw that the flush still stayed. He seemed tosee, too, that she was excited and eager, but, more than all, that she wasfrightened. Yet she kept, for him, her quiet voice. 

Before Sir Basil joined them she had time to say:--"You are rathermysterious, Jack. If you have deep-laid plans, I would rather you paid methe compliment of showing me the deepest one at once. I am not being nastyto you, " she smiled faintly. "Find Mary at once, you must have wasted a lotof time already in getting to those letters. "

Jack stood in the doorway while they drove off. Valerie, though now verypale, in the shadow of her hat, showed all her gay tranquillity, and shewas very lovely. Sir Basil must see that. He must see that, and all theother things, that, perhaps, he had forgotten for a foolish moment. 

Jack felt himself, this morning, in a category where he had never thoughtit possible that he should find himself. It was difficult to avoid theconviction that he had, simply, lied two or three times in order to sendMrs. Upton and Sir Basil off together in their long, swaying, sunnysolitude. Jack had never imagined it possible that he should lie. But, observing, as he was forced to, the blot on his neat, clean conscience, hefound himself considering it without a qualm. His only qualm was for itssuccess. The drive would justify him. He almost swore it to himself, asValerie's parasol disappeared among the trees. The drive would justify him, and reinstate Sir Basil. Unless Sir Basil were a fool, what he had done waswell done. 

Yet, when they had disappeared, it was with the saddest drop to anxious, tognawing uncertainty, that Jack turned back into the house. An echo of thefear that he had felt in Valerie seemed to float back to him. It was as if, in some strange way, he had handed her over to pain rather than to joy, tosacrifice rather than to attainment. 

XXVII

Jack's morning was not a happy one. It was bad enough to have told so manyfibs, or, at all events, to have invented so many opportune truths, and itwas worse to have to go on inventing more of them to Mary, now that hisdexterities had linked him to her. 

Mary looked, as was only too natural, much surprised, when he told her thathis letters required her help. She looked still more so when she found howinadequate were their contents to account for such a claim. 

Indeed there was, apparently, but one letter upon which her advice could beof the least significance, and after she had given him all the informationshe had to give in regard to the charity for which it appealed, there wasreally nothing more for them to do. 

"But--the letters that required the immediate answers?" she asked. 

Jack's excited, plausible manner had dropped from him. Mary felt itdifficult to be severe when his look of dejection was piercing her heart;still, she felt that she owed it to him as well as to herself, she must seea little more clearly into how he had "had things so. "

He replied, his eye neither braving nor evading hers, that he had alreadyanswered them; and Mary, after a little pause, in which she studied herfriend's face, said:--"I don't understand you this morning, Jack. "

"I'm afraid you'll understand me less when I make you a confession. Ididn't give your message this morning, Mary. "

"Didn't give Mrs. Upton's message, to Miss Bocock, to Sir Basil?"

"No, " said Jack, but with more mildness and sadness than compunction;--"Iwant to be straight with you, at all events. So I'd rather tell you. All Idid was to say to Sir Basil that I found I couldn't take Mrs. Upton for thedrive I'd promised, so that if he wanted to take my place, he was welcometo the buggy. He wanted to, of course. That went without saying. "

"Why, Jack Pennington!"

"Miss Bocock, luckily, was on the other side of the veranda, so that Ihad only to go round to her afterward and tell her that Mrs. Upton hadsuggested their gardening, but that since she was going to drive with SirBasil she could go off to the club, at once, too, with Imogen. "

"But, Jack!--what did you mean by it?"--Mary, quite aghast, stared at herMachiavellian friend. 

"Why, that Sir Basil should take her. That's all I meant from thebeginning, when I proposed going myself. Do forgive me, you dear old brick. You see, I'm so awfully set on her not being done out of things. "

"Done out of things?"

"Oh, little things, if you like, young things. She's young, and she oughtto have them. Say you forgive me. "

"Of course, Jack dear, I forgive you, though I don't understand you. Butthat's not the point. Everything seems so queer, so twisted; every oneseems different. And to find _you_ not straight is worst of all. "

"I promise you, it's my last sin, " said Jack. 

Mary, though shaking her bewildered head, had to smile a little, and, thesmile encouraging him to lightness, he remarked on her changed aspect. 

"So do forgive and forget. I had to confess, when I'd not been true to you. Really, my nature isn't warped. What an extremely becoming dress that isMary;--and what have you done to your hair?"

"It's _she_, " said Mary, flushing with pleasure. 

"Mrs. Upton?"

"Yes, she did my hair and gave me the dress. She was so sweet and dear. "

Jack lightly touched a plaited ruffle of the wide sleeve, and Mary feltthat he had never less thought of her than when he so touched her dress. She put aside the deep little pang that gave her to say: "It's true, Jack, she ought to have young things, just because they are going from her; onefeels that: She oughtn't to be standing back, and giving up things, yet. Isee a little what you mean. _Isn't_ it pretty?" Still, with an absent hand, he lightly touched, here and there, a ruffle of her sleeve. "But it's likeher. I hardly feel myself in it. "

"You've never so looked yourself, " said Jack. "That's what she does, bringsout people's real selves. "

Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil did not come back to lunch, and Imogen's face wassomber indeed as she faced her guests at the table. Jack, vigilant andpitiless, guessed at the turmoil of her soul. 

She asked him, with an icy sweetness, how his letters had prospered. "Didyou get them all off?"

Jack said that he had, and Mary, casting a wavering glance at him, sawthat if he intended to sin no more, he showed, at all events, a sinfulguilelessness of demeanor. She herself began to blush so helplessly andso furiously that Imogen's attention was drawn to her. Imogen, also, wasvigilant. 

"And what have you been doing, Mary dear?" she asked. 

"I--oh"--poor Mary looked the sinful one;--"I--helped Jack a little. "

"Helped Jack?--Oh, yes, he had heaps of letters, hadn't he? What were theyall about, Mary?"

"Oh, charities. "

"Charities?--What charities? How many charities?--I'm interested in that, you know--I'm rather hurt that you didn't ask my advice, too, " and Imogensmiled her ominous smile. "What were the charities?"

Mary, crimson to the brow, her eyes on her plate, now did her duty. 

"There was only one. "

"One--and that of such consequence that Jack had to give up his drivebecause of it?--what an interesting letter. "

"There were other letters, of course, " Jack, in aid of his innocentaccomplice, struck in. "None that would have particularly interested you, Imogen. I only needed advice about the one, a local Boston affair. "

"There were others, Mary, " said Imogen, laughing a little, "You needn'tlook so guilty on Jack's account. " Mary gave her a wide, startled stare. 

"You see, Mary, " said Rose, after lunch in the drawing-room, "saints cansting. "

"What was the matter!" Mary murmured, her head still seemed to buzz, asthough from a violent box on the ear. "I never heard Imogen speak likethat. To _hurt_ one!"

"I fancy she'd been getting thwarted in some way, " said Rose comfortably;"saints do sting, then, sometimes, the first thing that happens to be athand. How Jack and she hate each other!"

Mary went away to her room and cried. 

Meanwhile Jack wandered about in the woods until, quite late in theafternoon, he saw from the rustic bench, where, finally, he had casthimself, the returning buggy climbing up through the lower woodlands. 

He felt that his heart throbbed heavily as he watched it, just catchingglimpses, among the trees, of the white bubble of Valerie's parasolslanting against the sun. Yet there was a dullness in his excitement. Itwas over, at all events. He was sure that the last die was cast. And hisown trivial and somewhat indecorous part, of shifter of scenes and pullerof strings, was, he felt sure, a thing put by forever. He could help herno longer. And in a sort of apathy, he sat out there in the sunny green, hardly thinking, hardly wondering, conscious only of a hope that had becomea mere physical sense of oppression and of an underlying sadness that hadbecome, almost, a physical sense of pain. 

He had just consulted his watch and, seeing it wanted but ten minutes totea-time, had got up and was moving away, when a sudden rustle near him, apause, a quick, evasive footstep, warned him of some presence as anxiousfor solitude as himself. 

He stood still for a moment, uncertain as to his own best means of retreat, but his stillness misled, for, in another moment, Valerie appeared beforehim from among the branches of a narrow side path. 

She had come up to the woods directly; he saw that, for she still wore herhat; she had come to be alone and to weep; and, as she saw Jack, her paleface was convulsed, with the effort to control her weeping, into a strangerigor of pain and confusion. 

"Oh"--he stammered. "Forgive me. I didn't know you were here. " He wasturning to flee, as if from a sacrilege, when she recalled him. 

"Don't--without me. I must go back, too, " she said. 

She stepped on to the broader path and joined him, and he guessed that shetested, on him, her power to face the others. But, after they had gone afew steps together, she stopped suddenly and put her hands before her face, standing quite still. 

And Jack understood that she was helpless and that he must say nothing. Shestood so for a long moment, not trusting herself to move or speak. Then, uncovering her face, she showed him strange eyes from which the tears hadbeen crushed back. 

"And--I can do nothing?--" he said at last, on the lowest breath, as theywalked on. 

"Nothing, dear Jack. "

"When you are suffering like that!"

"I have no right to such suffering. I must hide it. Help me to hide it, Jack. Do I look fairly decent?" She turned her face to him, with, hethought, the most valorous smile he had ever seen. 

Only a thin screen of leaves was between them and the open. 

"You look--beautiful, " said Jack. She smiled on, as though that satisfiedher, and he added, "Can I know nothing?--See nothing?"

"I think already, " said Valerie, "that you see more than I ever meant anyone to see. "

"I?--I see nothing, now, " he almost moaned. 

"You shall. I'll talk to you later. "

"You will? If only you knew how I cared!"

"I do, dear Jack. "

"Not how much, not how much. You can't know that. It almost gives me myright, you know, to see. When will you talk to me?"

"Some time to-night, when we can have a quiet moment. I'll tell you aboutthe things that have happened--nothing to make you sad, I hope. And I'llask you some questions, too, Jack, about your very odd behavior!"

Really she was wonderful; it was almost her own gaiety, flickering likepale sunlight upon her face, that she had regained, and, as they wenttogether over the lawn to where the tea-table was laid in the shade, he sawthat she could face them all. No one would know. And her last words hadgiven him heart, had lifted, a little, the heavy weight of foreboding. Perhaps, perhaps, her grief wasn't for herself. "Oh, but I can't be candidtill you are, " he said, the new hope shining in his eyes. 

"Oh, yes, you will be, " she returned. "You won't ask me to be candid. You'll give and not ask to get back. I know you, Jack. "

No one could guess; Sir Basil least of all. That was apparent to Jack ashe watched them all sitting at tea under the apple-trees. Sir Basil hadnever looked so radiant, so innocent of any connection with suffering. Heexclaimed over the beauties of their long drive. They had crossed hill anddale; they had lost their way; they had had lunch at a village hotel, anamusing lunch, ending with ice-cream and pie, and, from the undiminishedreflection of his contentment on Valerie's features, Jack knew that anyfaintest hint of the pale, stricken anguish of the woodlands had never foran instant hovered during the drive. This was the face that Sir Basil hadseen for all the happy, sunny, picnic day, this face of gay tranquillity. 

Sir Basil and Mrs. Upton, indeed, expressed what gaiety there was amongthe group. Mary, in her blue lawn, looked very dreary. Rose and Eddy wereill-tempered, their day, plainly, having ended in a quarrel. As for Imogen, Jack had felt her heavy eye rest upon him and her mother as they cametogether over the lawn, and felt it rest upon her mother and Sir Basilsteadily and somberly, while they sat about the tea-table. The long drive, Sir Basil's radiance, her mother's serenity, how must they look to Imogen?Jack could conjecture, though knowing, for his own bitter mystification, that what they looked like was perhaps not what they meant. Imogen mustbe truly at bay, and he felt a cruel satisfaction in the thought of herhidden, her gnawing anxiety. He was aware of every ring of falsity in herplacid voice and of every flash of fierceness under the steeled calmnessof her eye. He noticed, too, for the rest of the day, that, whateverImogen's desperation, she made no effort to see Sir Basil alone. Almostostentatiously she went away to her room after tea, saying that she had hadbad news of an invalid _protégé_ and must write to her. She paused, as shewent, to lean over Mary, a caressing hand upon her shoulder, and to speakto her in a low tone. Mary grew very red, stammered, and said nothing. 

"Miss Upton overworks, I think, " observed Miss Bocock. "I've thought thatshe seemed overstrained all day. "

Mary had risen too, and as she wandered away into the flower garden, Jackfollowed her. 

"See here, " he said, "has Imogen been hurting you again?"

"No, Jack, oh no;--I'm sure she doesn't mean to hurt. "

"What did she say to you just now?"

"Well, Jack, you did bring it upon yourself, and upon me"--

"What was it?"

"She said that she couldn't bear to see her white flower--that's I, youknow, "--Mary blushed even deeper in repeating the metaphor--"used forunworthy ends. She meant, of course, I see that, --she meant that what shesaid at lunch was for you and not for me. I'm sure that Imogen _means_ tobe kind--always. "

"I believe she does. "

"I'm glad that you feel that, too, Jack. It is so horrible to see oneselfas--oh, really disloyal sometimes. "

"You need never feel that, Mary. "

"Oh, but I do. And now, when everything, every one, seems turning againstImogen! And she has seemed different;--yet for two years she has been arevelation of everything noble to me. "

"You only saw her in noble circumstances. "

"Oh, Jack, " Mary's eyes were full of tears as she looked at him now, "that's the worst of all; that you have come to speak of her like that. "

XXVIII

Even Valerie couldn't dispel the encompassing cloud of gloom at dinner. Onecouldn't do much in such a fog but drift with it. And Jack saw that she wasfit for no more decisive action. 

Imogen, pale, and almost altogether silent, said that she was very tired, and went up-stairs early. Rose and Eddy, in a shaded corner of thedrawing-room, engaged in a long altercation. The others talked, indesultory fashion, till bedtime. No one seemed fit for more than drifting. 

It was hardly eleven when Jack was left alone with Mrs. Upton. 

"You are tired, too, " he said to her; "dreadfully tired. I mustn't ask forour talk. "

"I should like a little stroll in the moonlight. " Valerie, at the openwindow, was looking out. "In a night or two it will be too late for us tosee. We'll have our walk and our talk, Jack. "

She rang for her white chuddah, told the maid to put out the lamps, andthat she and Mr. Pennington would shut the house when they came in. Fromthe darkened house they stepped into the warm, pale night. They went insilence over the lawn and, with no sense of choice, took the mossy paththat led to the rustic bench where they had met that afternoon. 

It was not until they were lost in the obscurity of the woods that Valeriesaid, very quietly: "Do you remember our talk, Jack, on that evening in NewYork, after the tableaux?"

He had followed along the path just behind her; but now he came to her sideso that he could see her shadowy face. "Yes;--the evening in which we sawthat Imogen and Sir Basil were going to be friends. "

"And the evening, " said Valerie, "when you showed me plainly, at last, thatbecause I seemed gold to you, Imogen's blue had turned to green. "

"Yes;--I remember. "

"It has faded further and further away, her blue, hasn't it?"

"Yes, " he confessed. 

"So that you are hardly friends, Jack?"

He paused for a moment, and then completed his confession:--"We are notfriends. "

Valerie stood still, breathing as if with a little difficulty after thegradual ascent. The tall trees about them were dark and full of mystery onthe pale mysterious sky. Through the branches they could see the glint ofthe moon's diminished disk. 

"That is terrible, you know, " said Valerie, after they had stood in silencefor some moments. 

"I know it. "

"For both of you. "

"Worse for me, because I cared more, really cared more. "

"No, worse for her, for it is you who have judged and rejected her. "

"She thinks that it is she who has judged and rejected me. "

"She tries to think it; she does not always succeed. It has been bitter, ithas been cruel for her. "

"Oh, yes, bitter and cruel, " he assented. 

"Don't try to minimize her pain, Jack. "

"You feel that I can't care, much?"

"It is horrible for me to feel it. Think of her when I came, so secure, socalm, so surrounded by love and appreciation. And now"--Valerie walked on, as if urged to motion by the controlled force of her own insistence. Was itan appeal to him that Imogen, dispossessed of the new love, might findagain the old love opening to her? He clung to the hope, though with asickening suspicion of its folly. 

"By my coming, I have robbed her of everything, " Valerie was saying, walking swiftly up the path and breathing as if with that slightdifficulty--the sound of her breaths affected him with an almostintolerable sense of expectancy. "She isn't secure;--she isn't calm. She iswarped;--her faiths are warped. Her friends are changed to her. She haslost you. It's as if I had shattered her life. "

"Everything that wasn't real you have shattered. "

The rustic bench was reached and they paused there, though with no eyes forthe shaft of mystic distance that opened before them. Jack's eyes were onher and he was conscious of a rising insistence in himself that matched andopposed her own. 

"But you must be sorry for her pain, " said Valerie, and now, with eyesalmost stern in their demand, she gazed at him;--"you must be sorry thatshe has had to lose so much. And you would be glad, would you not, to thinkthat real things, a new life, were to come to her?"

He understood; even before the words, his fear, his presage, leaped forwardto this crashing together of all his hopes. And it seemed to him that aflame passed through him, shriveling in its ardent wrath all tritereticences and decorums. 

"No; no, I should not be glad, " he answered. His voice was violent; theeyes he fixed on her were violent. His words struck Imogen out of his lifefor ever. 

"Why are you so cruel?" she faltered. 

"I am cruel for _you_. I know what you want to do. You are going to giveher _your_ life. "

Quick as a flash she answered--it was like a rapier parrying hisstroke:--"Give?--what have I to do with it, if it comes to her?"

"Everything! Everything!" he cried. 

"Nothing. You are mistaken. "

"Ah, --you could keep it, you could keep it--if you tried. " And now his eyespleaded--pleaded with her, for her own life's sake, to keep what was hers. "You have only to _show_ her to him, as you did to me. "

"You think--I could do that!--to my child!"--Through the darkness her whiteface looked a wild reproach at him. 

He seized her hands:--"It's to do her no wrong!--It's only to be true, consciously, to him, as you were true, unconsciously, to me. It's only, notto let her rob you--not to let her rob him. "

"Jack, " she breathed heavily, "these are things that cannot be said. "

"They must--they must--now, between us. I have my right. I've caredenough--to do anything, so that she should not rob you!" Jack groaned. 

"She has not robbed me. It left me;--it went to her;--I saw it all. Even ifI had been base enough, even if I had tried to keep it by showing her tohim--as you say so horribly, --even then I should not have kept it. He wouldnot have seen. Don't you understand;--he is not that sort of man. She willalways be blue to him, and I will always be gold--though perhaps, now, alittle tarnished. That's what is so beautiful in him--and so stupid. Hedoesn't see colors, as you and I do, Jack. That's what makes me sure thatthis is the happiest of fortunes for them both. "

He had held her hands, gazing at her downcast face, its strength speakingfrom the shadow, its pain hidden from him, and now, before her resolutionand her gentleness, he bent his head upon the hands he held. "Oh, but _you, you, you_!--It's _you_ whose life is shattered!" broke from him with a sob. 

For a long while she stood silent above him, her hands enfolding his, asthough she comforted his grief. He found himself at length kissing thegentle hands, with tears, and then, caressing his bent head with a lighttouch, she said: "Don't you see that the time has come for me to acceptshatterings as in the order of things, dear Jack?--My mistake has been tobelieve that life can begin over again. It can't. One uses it up--merely bywaiting. I've been an incurable girl till now;--and now, I've crashed fromgirlhood to middle-age in a week! It's been a crash, of course; the sort ofcrash one never mends of; but after to-day, after you sent me off with him, Jack, and I allowed myself, in spite of all my dread, my pride, myrelinquishment, just one flicker of girlish hope, --after all this, I thinkthat I must put on caps to show that I am really old at last. "

He lifted his head and looked at her. Her face was lovely, with the silverdisk of the moon above it and, about it, the mystery and sadness of thetranquil woods. So lovely, so young, with almost the trembling touch of atender mockery, like the trembling of moonlit water, upon it. And all thathe found to say at last was:--"What a fool he is. "

She really smiled then, though tears sprang to her eyes with hercomprehension of all that the helpless, boyish words struggled to subdue. 

"Thanks for that, dear Jack, --and for all the other mistakes, " she said. 

There seemed nothing more to say, no questions to ask, or to answer. Hemust accept from her that her plight was irrevocable. It was as if he hadseen a great stone rolled over the quivering, springing, shining fountain, sealing it, stilling it for ever. And, for his part, her word covered all. His "mistakes" needed no further revealing. 

They had turned and, in silence, were moving down the path again, when theyheard, suddenly, the sound of light, swift footsteps approaching them. Theypaused, exchanging a glance of wonder; and Jack thought that he saw fear inValerie's eyes. The day, already, had held overmuch of endurance for her, and it was not yet ended. In another moment, tall and illumined, Imogenappeared before them in the path. 

Jack knew, in thinking it over afterward, that Imogen at her most balefulhad been Imogen at her most beautiful. She had looked, as she emerged fromshadow into light, like a virgin saint bent on some wild errand through thenight, an errand brought to a proud pause, in which was no fear and nohesitancy, as her path was crossed by the spirits of an evil world. Thatwas really just what she looked like, standing there before them, bathed inlight, her eyes profound and stern, her hair crowning her with a glory oftransmuted gold, her head uplifted with a high, unfaltering purpose. Thatthe shock of finding them there before her was great, one saw at once; andone could gage the strength of her purpose from her instantaneoussurmounting of the shock. 

And it was strange, in looking back, to remember how the time of colorlesslight and colorless shadow had seemed to divest them all of dailyconventions and daily seemings. They might have been three disembodiedsouls met there in the moonlit woods and speaking the direct, unimpededlanguage of souls, for whom all concealments are useless. 

"Oh--it is _you_, " was what Imogen said; much as the virgin saint mighthave greeted the familiar demons who opposed her quest. _You_, meant bothof them. She put them together into one category of evil, saw them as onein their enmity to her and to good. And she seemed to accept them as verymuch what a saint might expect to find on such a nocturnal errand. 

Involuntarily Valerie had fallen back, and she had put her hand on Jack'sshoulder in confusion more than in fear. Yet, feeling a menace in thewhite, shining presence, her voice faltered as she asked: "Imogen, what areyou doing here?"

And it was at this point that Imogen reached, really, her own culmination. Whatever shame, whatever hesitation, whatever impulsion to deceive whendeception was so easy, she may have felt; to lie, when a lie would be soeasily convincing, she rejected and triumphed over. Jack knew from heruplifted look that the moment would count with her always as one of hergreat ones one of the moments in which--as she had used to say to himsometimes in the days that were gone forever--one knew that one had "beatdown Satan under one's feet. "

"You have no right to ask me that, " she said, "but I choose to answer you. I have come here to meet Sir Basil. "

"Meet him?" It was in pure bewilderment that Valerie questioned, helplessly, without reproach. 

"Meet him. Yes. What have you to say to it?"

"But why meet him?--Why now?" The wonder on Valerie's face had broken toalmost merriment. "Did he ask you to?--Really, really, he oughtn't to. Really, my child, I can't have you meeting Sir Basil in the woods atmidnight. "

"You can't have me meeting him in the woods at midnight?" Imogen repeated, an ominous cadence, holding her head high and taking long breaths. "You saythat, dare say it, when you well know that I can meet him nowhere else andin no other way. It was _I_ who asked him to meet me here and it is here, confronted with you, if you so choose; it is here, before you and underGod's stars, that I shall know the truth from him. I am not ashamed; I amproud to say it;--I love him. And though you scheme, and stoop and striveto take him from me--you, with Jack to help you--Jack to lie for you--as hedid this morning, --I know, I know in my heart and soul that he loves me, that he is mine. "

"Jack!--Jack!" Valerie cried. She caught him back, for he started forwardto seize, to gag her daughter; "Jack--remember, remember!--She doesn'tunderstand!"

"Oh, he may strike me if he wills. " Imogen had stood quite still, notflinching. 

"I don't want to strike you--you--you idiot!"--Jack was gasping. "I want toforce you to your knees, before your mother--who loves you--as no one elsewho knows you will ever love you!" And, helplessly, his old words, sotrite, so inadequate, came back to him. "You self-centered, youself-righteous, you cold-hearted girl!"

Valerie still held his arm with both hands, leaning upon him. 

"Imogen, " she said, speaking quickly, "you needn't meet Sir Basil in thisway;--there is nothing to prevent you from seeing him where and when youwill. You are right in believing that he loves you. He asked me thismorning for your hand. And I gave him my consent. "

From a virgin saint Imogen, as if with the wave of a wand, saw herselfturned into a rather foolish genie, so transformed and then, ever soswiftly, run into a bottle;--it was surely the graceful seal firmly affixedthereto when she heard these words of conformity to the traditions ofdignified betrothal. And for once in her life, so bottled and so sealed, she looked, as if through the magic crystal of her mother's words, absolutely, helplessly foolish. It is difficult for a genie in a bottle tolook contrite or stricken with anything deeper than astonishment; nor is itpracticable in such a situation to fall upon one's knees, --if a genie wereto feel such an impulse of self-abasement. It was perhaps a comfort to allconcerned, including a new-comer, that Imogen should be reduced to thesilence of sheer stupefaction; and as Sir Basil appeared among them it wasnot at him, after her first wide glance, that she looked, but, still as ifthrough the crystal bottle, at her mother, and the look was, at all events, a confession of utter inadequacy to deal with the situation in which shefound herself. 

It was Valerie, once more, who steered them all past the giddy whirlpool. Jack, beside her, his heart and brain turning in dizzy circles, marveled ather steadiness of eye, her clearness of voice. He would have liked to leanagainst a tree and get his breath; but this delicate creature, rising fromher rack, could move forward to her place beside the helm, and smile!

"Sir Basil, " she said, and she put out her hand to him so mildly that SirBasil may well have thought his rather uncomfortable _rendezvous_ redeemedinto happiest convention, "here we all are waiting for you, and here we aregoing to leave you, you and Imogen, to take a walk and to say some of allthe things you will have to say to each other. Give me your hand, Imogen. There, dear friend, I think that it is yours, and I trust her life to youwith, my blessing. Now take your walk, I will wait for you, as late as youlike, in the drawing-room. "

So was the bottled genie released, so did it resume once more the figure ofa girl, hardly humbled, yet, it must be granted, deeply confused. Inperfect silence Imogen walked away beside her suitor, and it may be saidthat she never told him of the little episode that had preceded hisarrival. Jack and Valerie went slowly on toward the house. Now that she hadgrasped the helm through the whirlpool he almost expected that she wouldfall upon the deck. But, silently, she walked beside him, not taking hisarm, wrapped closely in her shawl, and, once more inside the darkdrawing-room, she proceeded to light the candles on the mantel-piece, saying that she would wait there until the others came in, smiling veryfaintly as she added:--"That everything may be done properly and in order. "Jack walked up and down the room, his hands deeply thrust into the pocketsof his dining-jacket. 

"As for you, you had better go to bed, " Valerie went on after a moment. Shehad placed the candles on a table, taken a chair near them and chosen areview. She turned the pages while she spoke. 

At this, he, too, being disposed of, he stopped before her. "And you wantedme to be glad!"

Her eyes on the unseen print, she turned her pages, and now that they wereout of the woods and surrounded by walls and furniture and everydaysymbols, he saw that the pressure of his presence was heavier, and that sheblushed a deep, weary blush. But she was able and willing quite to disposeof him. "I want you to be glad, " she answered. 

"For her!"--For that creature!--his words implied. 

"It was natural, what she thought, " said Valerie after a moment, though notlooking up. 

"Natural!--To suspect you!"--

"Of what you wanted me to do?" Valerie asked. "Yes, it was quite natural, Ithink, and partly because of your manoeuvers, my poor Jack. I understand itall now. But the cause you espoused was already a doomed one, you see. "

"Oh!" he almost groaned. "_You_ doomed it! Don't you feel any pity for_him_?"

Valerie continued to look at her page, silently, for a moment, and it wasnow indeed as though his question found some reverberating echo in herself. But, in the silent moment, she thought it out swiftly and surely, graspingold clues. 

"No, Jack, " she said, and she was giving herself, as well as him, the finalanswer, "I don't pity him. He will never see Imogen baffled, warped, atbay, --as we have. He will always see her crowned, successful, radiant. Shewill count tremendously over there, far more than I ever would, becauseshe's so different, because she cares such a lot. And Imogen must count tobe radiant. She will help him in all sorts of ways, give him a new life;she will help everybody. Do you remember what Eddy said of her, that if itweren't for people of the Imogen type the cripples would die off likeanything!--That was true. She is one of the people who make the wheels ofthe world go round. And it's a revival for a man like Sir Basil to livewith such a person. With me he would have faded back into the onlooker atlife; with Imogen he will live. And then, above all, quite above all, he isin love with her. I think that he fell in love with her at first sight, asAntigone, at her loveliest, except for to-night; to-night was her veryloveliest--because it was so real;--she would have claimed him fromme--before me--if he had come then; and her belief in herself, didn't yousee, Jack, how it illumined her?--And then, Jack, and this I'm afraid youare forgetting, Imogen is a good girl, a very good girl. I can trust him toher, you know. Her object in life will be to love him in the mostmagnificent way possible. His happiness will be as much of an end to her asher own. "

It was, perhaps, the culminating symptom of his initiation, of histransformation, when Jack, who had considered her while she spoke, standingperfectly still, his hands in his pockets, his head bent, his eyes steadilyon her, now, finding nothing better to do than obey her first suggestionand go to bed, took her hand before going, put it to his lips--and hisglance, as he kissed her hand, brought the tears, again, to Valerie'seyes--and said: "Damn goodness. "

XXIX

Imogen was, indeed, crowned and radiant. And, safe on her eminence, recovered from the breathlessness of her rather unbecoming vigorous ascent, she found her old serenity, her old benignity, safely enfolded her oncemore. In looking down upon the dusty lowlands, where she had been blind andbitter, she could afford to smile over herself, even to shake her head alittle over the vehemence of her own fear and courage. It was to havelacked faith, to have lacked wisdom, the showing of such vehemence; yet, who knew, without it, perhaps, she might not have escaped the nets that hadbeen laid for her feet, for Basil's feet, too, his strong and simple naturemaking him helpless before sly ambushes. Jack, in declaring himself herenemy, had effectually killed the last faint wailing that had so piteously, so magnanimously, sounded on for him in her heart. He had, by histrickster's dexterity, proved to her, if she needed proof, that she hadchosen the higher. A man who could so stoop--to lies--was not the man forher. To say nothing of his iniquity, his folly was apparent. For Jack hadbehaved like a fool, he must see that himself, in his espousal of a lostcause. 

Jack as delinquent stood plain, and she would accuse no one else. In thebottom of Imogen's heart lingered, however, the suspicion that only whenher mother had seen the cause as lost, the contest as useless, had shehastily assumed the dignified attitude that, for the dizzy, moonlit moment, had, so humiliatingly, sealed her, Imogen, into the magic bottle. Imogensuspected that she hadn't been so wrong, nor her mother so magnanimous ashad then appeared, and this secret suspicion made it the easier for her toaccept the seeming, since to do that was to show herself anybody's equal inmagnanimity. She was quite sure that her mother, in her shallow way, hadcared for Basil, and not at all sure that she had relinquished her hope atthe first symptom of his change of heart. But, though one couldn't but feelstern at the thought, one couldn't, also, repress something of pity for themiscalculation of the defeated love. To feel pity, moreover, was to showherself anybody's equal in heart;--Jack's accusations rankled. 

Yes; considering all things, and in spite of the things that, she mustalways suspect, were hidden, her mother had behaved extremely well. 

"And above all, " Imogen thought, summing it up in terms at once generousand apt, "she has behaved like the gentlewoman that she is. With all herlittlenesses, all her lacks, mama is essentially that. " And the sweetestmoments of self-justification were those in which her heart really ached alittle for "poor mama, " moments in which she wondered whether the love thathad come to her, in her great sorrow, high among the pine woods, had everbeen her mother's to lose. The wonder made her doubly secure and her motherreally piteous. 

It was easy, her heart stayed on such heights, to suffer very tolerantlythe little stings that flew up to her from the buzzing, startled world. Jack she did not see again, until the day of her wedding, only a monthlater, and then his face, showing vaguely among the shimmering crowd, seemed but an empty mask of the past. Jack departed early on the morningafter her betrothal, and it was only lesser wonders that she had to face. Mary's was the one that teased most, and Imogen might have felt someirritation had that not now been so inappropriate a sensation, beforeMary's stare, a stare that seemed to resume and take in, in the moment ofstupefaction, a world of new impressions. The memory of Mary staring, withher hair done in a new and becoming way, was to remain for Imogen as asymbol of the vexatious and altered, perhaps the corrupted life, that shewas, after all, leaving for good in leaving her native land. 

"Sir Basil!--You are going to marry Sir Basil, Imogen!" said Mary. 

"Yes, dear. Does that surprise you? Haven't you, really, seen itcoming?--We fancied that everyone must be guessing, while we were findingit out for ourselves, " Imogen answered, ever so gently. 

"No, I never saw it, never dreamed of it. "

"It seemed so impossible? Why, Mary dear?"

"I don't know;--he is so much older;--he isn't an American;--you won't livein your own country;--I never imagined you marrying anyone but anAmerican. "

The deepest wonder, Imogen knew it very well, was the one she could notexpress:--I thought that he was in love with your mother. 

Imogen smiled over the simplicity of the spoken surprises. "I don't thinkthat the question of years separates people so at one as Basil and I, " shesaid. "You would find how little such things meant, Mary mine, if your calmlittle New England heart ever came to know what a great love is. As for mycountry, my country will be my husband's country, but that will not make melove my old home the less, nor make me forget all the things that life hastaught me here, any more than I shall be the less myself for being a biggerand better self as his wife. " And Imogen looked so uplifted in saying itthat poor, bewildered Mary felt that Mrs. Upton, after all, was right, onecouldn't tell where rightness was. Such love as Imogen's couldn't be wrong. All the same, she was not sorry that Imogen, all transfigured as sheundoubtedly was, should be going very far away. Mary did not feel happywith Imogen any longer. 

Rose took the tidings in a very unpleasant manner; but then Rose didn'tcount; in any circumstances her effrontery went without saying. One simplylooked over it, as in this case, when it took the form of an absolutesilence, a white, smiling silence. 

Oddly enough, from the extreme of Rose's anger, came Eddy's chance. Shedidn't tell Eddy that she saw his mother as robbed and that, in silence, her heart bled for her; but she did say to him, several days after Imogen'sannouncement, that, yes, she would. 

"I know that I should be bound to take you some day, and I'd rather do itjust now when your mother has quite enough bothers to see to without havingyour anxieties on her mind! I'll never understand anyone so well as I doyou, or quarrel with anyone so comfortably;--and besides, " Rose added withcharacteristic impertinence, "the truth is, my dear, that I want to be yourmother's daughter. It's that that has done it. I want to show her how nicea daughter can be to her. I want to take Imogen's place. I'll be anextremely bad wife, Eddy, but a good daughter-in-law. I adore your motherso much that for her sake I'll put up with you. "

Eddy said that she might adore any one as much as she liked so long as sheallowed him to put up with her for a lifetime. They did understand eachother, these two, and Valerie, though a little troubled by the somethinghard and bright in their warring courtship, something that, she feared, would make their path, though always illuminated, often rough, couldwelcome her new daughter with real gladness. 

"I know that you'll never care for me, as I do for you, " said Rose, "andthat you will often scold me; but your scoldings will be my religion. Don'tspare them. You are my ideal, you know. "

This speech, made in her presence, was, Imogen knew, intended as a cut atherself. She heard it serenely. But Rose was more vexatious than Mary inthat she wasn't leaving her behind. Rose was already sparring with Eddy asto when he would take her over to England for a season of hunting. Eddyfirmly held himself before her as a poor man, and when Rose dangled her ownwealth before him remarked that she could, of course, go without him, ifshe liked. It was evident, in spite of sparring and hardness, that Rosewouldn't like at all; and evident, too, that Eddy would often be wheedledinto a costly holiday. Imogen had to foresee a future of tolerance towardRose. Their worlds would not do more than merge here and there. 

Imogen had, already, very distinct ideas as to her new world. It hovered asimportant and political; the business of Rose's world would be itsrelaxation only. For Imogen would never change colors, and her frown formere fashion would be as sad as ever. She was not to change, she was onlyto intensify, to become "bigger and better. " And this essential stabilitywas not contradicted by the fact that, in one or two instances, she foundherself developing. She was glad, and in the presence of Mrs. Wake, gravelyto renounce past errors as to the English people. Since coming to knowBasil, typical of his race, its flower, as he was, she had come to see howfar deeper in many respects, how far more evolved that English characterwas than their own, --"their, " now, signifying "your. " "You really saw thatbefore I did, dear Mrs. Wake, " said Imogen. 

Already Imogen identified herself with her future husband so that thedefects of the younger civilization seemed no longer her affair, except inso far as her understanding of them, her love of her dear country, and hernew enlightenments, made her the more eager to help. And then they were allof the same race; she was very insistent on that; it was merely that thebranch to which she now belonged was a "bigger and better branch. " Imogenwas none the less a good American for becoming so devoutly English. Fromher knowledge of the younger, more ardent, civilization, her long trainingin its noblest school, she could help the old in many ways. England, inthese respects, was like her Basil, before she had wakened him. Imogen feltthat England, too, needed her. And there was undoubtedly a satisfaction inflashing that new world of hers, so large, so in need of her, --in flashingit, like a bright, and, it was to be hoped, a somewhat dazzling object, before the vexatiously imperturbable eyes of Mrs. Wake. Mrs. Wake's drysmile of congratulation had been almost as unpleasant as Rose's silence. 

From Miss Bocock there was neither smile, nor sting, nor silence to endure. Miss Bocock had suspected nothing, either on the mother's side or on thedaughter's, and took the announcement very placidly. "Indeed. Really. Howvery nice. Accept my congratulations, " were her comments. Imogen at onceasked her to spend a week-end at Thremdon Hall next Spring, and Miss Bocockin the same way said: "Thanks. That will be very nice. I've never stayedthere. " There was still a subtle irritation in the fact that while MissBocock now accepted her, in the order of things, as one of the "countypeople, " as the gracious mistress of Thremdon Hall, as very much above acountry doctor's family, she didn't seem to regard her with any moreinterest or respect as an individual. 

These, after all, were the superficialities of the situation; its deeperaspects were, Imogen felt, as yet unfaced. Her mother seemed quite contentto let Imogen's silence stand for apology and retractation, quite willingto go on, for the little further that they had to go together, in anambiguous relation. This was, indeed, Imogen felt, her mother's strength;she could, apparently, put up with any amount of ambiguity and probablylooked upon it as an essential part of life. Perhaps, and here Imogen wasconscious of a twinge of anxiety, she put up with it so quietly because shedidn't recognize it in herself, in her own motives and actions; and thisthought teased at Imogen until she determined that she must stand forth inthe light and show her mother that she, too, was self-assured and she, too, magnanimous. 

She armed herself for the task by a little talk with Sir Basil, the nearestapproach they ever allowed themselves to the delicate complexities in whichthey had come to recognize each other and out of which, to a certainextent, they had had to fight their way to the present harmony. She waswith him, again, among the laurels, a favorite place with them, and Imogensat on her former ledge of sunny rock and Sir Basil was extended beside heron the moss. She had been reading Emerson to him, and when the essay wasfinished and she had talked to him a little about the "over-soul, "--dearBasil's recollections of metaphysics were very confused, --she presentlysaid to him, letting her hand slide into his while she spoke:--"Basil, dearest, --I want to ask you something, and you must answer very truly, foryou need never fear that I would flinch from any truth. Tell me, --did youever, --ever care for mama?"

Sir Basil, his hat tilted over his eyes, grew very red and looked down atthe moss for some moments without replying. 

"Of course I know that, in some sense, you did care, " said Imogen, a fainttremble in her voice, a tremble that, in its sweet acquiescence tosomething that was hurting her, touched him infinitely. "I know, too, thatthere are loves and loves. I know that anything you may have felt for mamais as different from what you feel for me as lamplight is from daylight. Iwon't speak of it, ever, again, dear Basil; but for this once let me seeclearly what was in your past. "

"I did care for her, " Sir Basil jerked out at that;--"quite tremendously, until I saw you. She will always be a dear friend, one of the dearest, mostcharming people I've ever known. And, no, it wasn't like lamplight, youknow";--something in that analogy was so hurting Sir Basil that it madehim, for a moment, forget his darling's hurt;--"that wasn't it. Though, it's quite true, you're like daylight. "

"And--and--she?"--Imogen accepted the restatement, though her voicetrembled a little more. 

He now looked up at her, a clear, blue ray from his honest eyes. "Well, there, you know, it _has_ been a relief. I could never tell, in the past;she showed me nothing, except that friendship; but since she has been free, since I've seen her over here, she has shown me quite clearly, that it was, on her side, only that. "

Imogen was silent for a long time. She didn't "know" at all. And there wasa great deal to accept; more, oddly enough, than she had ever faced. Shehad always believed that it had been like lamplight to daylight. But, whatever it had been, the day had conquered it. And how dear, how noble ofher lover to show, so unfalteringly, his loyalty to the past. It was with asigh made up of many satisfactions that she said at last:--"Dear mama;--Iam so glad that I took nothing she cared for from her. "

It was on that afternoon that she found her time for "standing forth in thelight" before her mother. 

She didn't want it to be indoors; she felt, vaguely, that four walls wouldmake them too intimate, as it were; shut them into their mutualconsciousness too closely. So that when she saw her mother, after tea, watering and gathering her flowers at the edge of the wood, she went out toher, across the grass, sweet and mild in the long white dress that she hadworn since joy had come to her. 

She wished to be very direct, very simple, very sweet. 

"Mama, darling, " she said, standing there beside her while Valerie, after aquiet glance up at her, continued to cut her roses;--"I want to saysomething to you. This seems such a beautiful time to say deep, gravethings in, doesn't it, this late afternoon hour? I've wanted to say itsince the other night when, through poor Jack's folly of revenge andblindness, we were all put into such an ugly muddle, at such uglycross-purposes. " She paused here and Valerie, giving neither assent nornegation, said: "Yes, Imogen?"

"I want to say to you that I am sorry, mama dear";--Imogen spoke gravelyand with emphasis;--"sorry, in the first place, that I should so havemisjudged you as to imagine that--at your time of life and after yoursobering experience of life--you were involved in a love affair. I see, now, what a wrong that was to do to you--to your dignity, your sense ofright and fitness. And I'm sorrier that I should have thought you capableof seconding Jack's attempts to keep from me a love that had drawn to me asa magnet to the north. The first mistake led to the second. I had heardyour friends conjecturing as to your feeling for Basil, and the pain ofsuspecting that of you--my father's new-made widow--led me astray. I thinkthat in any great new experience one's whole nature is perhaps a littleoff-balance, confused. I had suffered so much, in so many ways;--_his_death;--Jack's unworthiness;--this fear for you;--and then, in these lastdays, for what you know, mama, for _him_, because of _him_--my father, asuffering that no joy will ever efface, that I was made, I think, for alittle time, a stranger to myself. And then came love--wonderful love--andit shook my nature to its depths. I was dazzled, torn, tempest-tossed;--Idid not see clearly. Let that be my excuse. "

Valerie still stopped over her roses, her fingers delicately, accuratelybusy, and her face, under the broad brim of her hat, hidden. 

Again Imogen paused, the rhythm of her words, like an echo of his voice inher own, bringing a sudden sharp, sweet, reminiscence of her father, sothat the tears had risen to her eyes in hearing herself. And again, for allreply, her mother once more said only: "Yes, Imogen. "

It was not the reply she had expected, not the reply that she had a rightto expect, and, even out there, with the flowers, so impersonally lovely, about them, the late radiance softly bathing them, as if in rays offorgiveness and mild pity, even with the tears, evidences of sorrow andmagnanimity, in her eyes, Imogen felt a little at a loss, a littleconfused. 

"That is, all, mama, " she said;--"just that I am sorry, and that I want youto feel, in spite of all the sad, the tragic things that there have beenbetween us, that my deep love for you is there, and that you must trust italways. "

And now there was another silence. Valerie stooping to her flowers, mysterious, ambiguous indeed, in her shadow, her silence. 

Imogen, for all the glory of her mood, felt a thrill of anger, and thereminiscence that came to her now was of her father's pain, his familiarpain, for such shadows, such silences, such blights cast upon his highestimpulses. "I hope, mama, that you will always trust my love, " she said, mastering the rising of her resentment. 

And once more came the monotonous answer, but given this time with a newnote:--"Yes, Imogen, " her mother replied, "you may always trust my love. "

She rose at that, and her eyes passed swiftly across her daughter's face, swiftly and calmly. She was a little flushed, but that might have been fromthe long bending over the flowers, and if it was a juggling dexterity thatshe used, she had used it indeed so dexterously that it seemed impossibleto say anything more. Imogen could find no words in which to set the turnedtables straight. 

She had imagined their little scene ending very beautifully in a graveembrace and kiss; but no opportunity was given her for this finaldemonstration of her spirit of charity. Her mother gathered up herscissors, her watering-pot, her trowel, and handing Imogen the filledbasket of roses said, "Will you carry these for me, my dear?"

The tone of quiet, everyday kindness dispelled all glory, and set a lowerstandard. Here, at this place, very much on the earth, Imogen would alwaysfind her, it seemed to say. It said nothing else. 

Yet Imogen knew, as she walked back beside her mother, knew quite as wellas if her mother had spoken the words, that her proffered love had not beentrusted, that she had been penetrated, judged, and, in some irresistibleway, a way that brought no punishment and no reproof, nor even anylessening of affection, condemned. Her mother still loved her, that was thehelpless conviction that settled upon her; but it was as a child, not as apersonality, that she was loved, --very much as Miss Bocock respected her asthe mistress of Thremdon Hall and not at all on her own account; but hermother, too, for all her quiet, and all her kindness, thought her"self-centered, self-righteous, cold-hearted, " and--Imogen, in a sharp pangof insight, saw it all--because of that would not attempt any soul-stirringappeal or arraignment. She knew too well with what arms of spiritualassurance she would be met. 

It was in silence, while they walked side by side, the basket of rosesbetween them, that Imogen fiercely seized these arms, fiercely parried theunuttered arraignment, and, more fiercely, the unuttered love. 

She could claim no verbal victory, she had had to endure no verbal defeat;it was she herself who had forced this issue upon a situation that hermother would have been content to leave undefined. Her mother would neverfix blame; her mother would never humiliate; but, she had found it to herown cost, --though the cost was as light as her mother could make it--shewould not consent to be placed where Imogen had wished to place her. Let itbe so, then, let it end on this note of seeming harmony and of silentdiscord; it was her mother's act, not her own. Truth was in her and hadmade once more its appeal; once more deep had called to deep only to findshallowness. For spiritual shallowness there must be where an appeal suchas hers could be so misunderstood and so rejected. 

She was angry, sore, vindictive, though her sharp insight did not reach sofar as to tell her this; it did, however, tell her that she was wounded tothe quick. But the final refuge was in the thought that she was soon toleave such judgments and such loves behind her for ever. 

XXX

It was on a late October day that Jack Pennington rode over the hills toValerie's summer home. 

Two months were gone since Imogen's reporter-haunted nuptials had beencelebrated in the bland little country church that raised its white steeplefrom the woodlands. Jack had been present at them; decency had made thatnecessary, and a certain grimness in his aspect was easily to beinterpreted in a dismal, defeated rival. It was as such, he knew, that hewas seen there. 

It had been a funny wedding, --to apply none of the other terms that laydeeper in him. In watching it from the white-wreathed chancel he hadthought of Valerie's summing-up: "Imogen is one of the people who make theworld go round. " The world in every phase had been there, from the Britishambassador and the Langleys to the East Side club girls--brought up fromNew York in the special train--and a flourishing consignment of cripplesand nurses. Here and there in her path Imogen might meet the blankness of aMiss Bocock, the irony of a Mrs. Wake, a disillusion like Mary's, aninsight like his own; but the great world, in its aspect of power andsimplicity, would be with her always. He had realized as never beforeImogen's capacity, when he saw the cohorts of her friends and followersoverflow the church. 

She had been a fitting center to it all; though the center, for Jack, wasValerie, exquisite, mildly radiant, not a hint on her of dispossession orof doom; but Imogen, white and rapt and grave, had looked almost aswonderful as on the day when she had first dawned upon Sir Basil's vision. 

Jack, watching her uplifted profile as she stood at the altar-rail, foundhimself trivially, spitefully, irrelevantly murmuring:--"Her nose _is_ toosmall. " And yet she looked more than ever like a Botticelli Madonna. 

Rose and Eddy were to be married that winter in New York, a giganticopportunity for the newspapers, for already half the world seemed troopingto the festivities. Afterward, with old-fashioned Americanism, they wouldlive in quite a little house and try to forget about Rose's fortune untilEddy made his. 

Valerie was to have none of the bother of this wedding. Mrs. Packer, amournful, jeweled, faded little beauty, was well fitted to cope with suchemergencies. Her secretaries sat already with pens poised. 

Imogen's wedding had kept her mother working like a galley-slave, so Rosetold Jack, with the familiarity that was now justifiable in one who wasalmost of the family, and that Eddy had told her, with much disgust ofdemeanor, that its financing had eaten pretty deeply into his mother'sshrunken means. Rose made no open denunciation; she, no more than anyoneelse, could guess from Jack's silence what his feeling about Imogen mightreally be. But she was sure that he was well _over_ her, and that, aboveall, he was one of the elect who _saw_ Mrs. Upton; she could allow herselfa musing survey of all that the mother had done for the daughter, adding, and it was really with a wish for strict justice: "Of course Imogen neverhad any idea of money, and she'll never realize what she cost. " In anotherand a deeper sense it might be that that was the kindest as well as thetruest thing to say of Imogen. 

Since the wedding he knew that Valerie had been quietly at the little houseamong the hills, alone for the most part, though Mrs. Wake was often withher and the Pakenhams had paid her a visit on their way back to England. Now Mrs. Wake was gone back to New York, and her own departure was to takeplace in a few days. Jack, spending a week-end with friends not beyondriding distance, felt that he must see her again in the surroundings wherehe had come to know her so well and to know himself as so changed. 

He rode over the crests of hills in the flaming, aromatic woods. The fallenleaves paved his way with gold. In the deep distances, before him a still, blue haze, like the bloom on ripe grape-clusters, lay over the purples ofthe lower ranges. Above, about, before him was the blue sky of thewonderful American "fall, " high, clear, crystalline. The air was like anelixir. Jack's eyes were for all this beauty, --"the vast, unconsciousscenery of my land, " the line that drifted in his thoughts, --his ownconsciousness, taken up into his contemplation, seeming as vast and asunperplexed. But under his calm, his happy sadness, that, too, seemed apart of the day, ran, like the inner echo to the air's intoxication, astream of deep, still excitement. 

He did not think directly of Valerie, but vague pictures passed, phantom-like, before his mind. He saw her in her garden, gathering lateflowers; he saw her reading under the fringe of vine-leaves and tendrils;he saw her again in the wintry New York of snow, sunlight, white, gold andblue, or smiling down from the high-decked steamer against a sky of frostyrose; he saw her on all possible and adequate backgrounds of the land he soloved. But, --oh, it was here that the under-current, the stream ofexcitement seemed to rise, foaming, circling, submerging him, choking him, with tides of grief and desolation, --seeing her, too, in that land sheloved;--not in the Surrey garden, no, no, --that was shut to her forever;--but in some other, some distant garden, high-walled, the pale goldand gray of an autumnal sunset over its purpling bricks, or on aflower-dappled common in spring, or in spring woods filled with wildhyacinths and primroses. How he could see her, place her, over there, far, far away, from his country--and from him. 

It was, after the last sharp trot, the last leisurely uphill canter, on thebordering, leaf-strewn grass of the winding road, where the white walls andgray roof of the little house showed among the trees, that all theundercurrent seemed to center in a knot of suffocating expectancy and pain. 

And Valerie, while Jack so rode, so approached her, was fulfilling one ofhis visions. She had spent the afternoon in her garden, digging, planting, "messing" as she expressed it, very happily among her borders, where lateflowers, purple and white and gold, still bloomed. She was planning allsorts of things for her garden, a row of double-cherry-trees to stand atthe edges of the woods and be symbols of paradise in spring, with theirdeep upon deep of miraculous white. Little almond-trees, too, frail spraysof pink on a spring sky, and quince-trees that would show in autumn amongample foliage the pale gold of their softly-furred fruit. She wanted springflowers to run back far into the woods, the climbing roses and honeysuckleto make summer delicious among the vines of the veranda. The afternoon, full of such projects, passed pleasantly, and when she came in and dressedfor her solitary tea, she felt pleasantly tired. She walked up and down thedrawing-room, its white walls warm with the reflections of outer sunlight, listening vaguely to the long trail of her black tea-gown behind her, looking vaguely from the open windows at the purple distances set in theirnearer waves of flame. 

At the end of the room, before the austere little mantelpiece, she pausedpresently to look at herself in the austere little mirror with itscompartments of old gilt; at herself, the illuminated white of the roombehind her reflection. A narrow crystal vase mirrored itself beside herleaning arm, and its one tall rose, set among green leaves and russet stemsand thorns, spread depths of color near her cheek. Valerie's eyes went fromher face to the rose. The rose was fresh, glowing, perfect. Her face, lovely still, was faded. 

She stood there, leaning beside the flower, the fingers of her supportinghand sunken deep in the chestnut masses of her hair, and noted, gravely, earnestly, the delicate signs and seals of stealing age. 

Never, never again would her face be like the rose, young, fresh, perfect. And she herself was no longer young; in her heart she knew the stillness, the droop, the peace--almost the peace--of softly-falling petals. 

How young she had been, how lovely, how full of sweetness. That was thethought that pierced her suddenly, the thought of wasted sweetness, unrecorded beauty, unnoted, unloved, all to go, to pass away for ever. Itseemed hardly for herself she grieved, but for the doom of all youth andloveliness; for the fleeting, the impermanence of all life. The vision ofherself passed to a vision of the other roses, the drooping, the doomed, scattering their petals in the chill breeze of coming winter. 

"Poor things, " was her thought, --her own self-pity had part only in itsinclusiveness, --"summer is over for all of us. "

And with the thought, girlishly, still girlishly, she hid her face upon herarms as she stood there, murmuring:--"Ah, I hate, I hate getting old. "

A step at the door roused her. She turned to see Jack entering. 

Jack looked very nice in the tans and russets of his riding-tweeds andgaiters. The chill air had brought a clear color to his cheeks; the palegold of his hair, --one unruly lock, as usual, over-long, lying across hisforehead, --shone like sunlight; his gray eyes looked as deep and limpid asa mountain pool. 

Valerie was very, very glad to see him. He embodied the elixir, the color, the freshness of the world to-day: and oh how young--how young--howfortunately, beautifully young he looked;--that was the thought that methim from the contrast of the mirror. 

She gave him her hands in welcome, and they sat down near a window wherethe sunlight fell upon them and the breeze blew in upon them, she on alittle sofa, among chintz cushions, he on a low chair beside her; and whilethey talked, that excitement, that pain and expectancy grew in Jack. 

The summer was over and, soon, it must be, she would go. With a wave ofsadness that sucked him back and swept him forward in a long, sure ache, came the knowledge, deeper than before, of his own desolation. But, sittingthere beside her in the October sunlight; feeling, with the instinct, soquick, so sensitive in him, that it was in sadness he had found her, thedesolation wasn't so much for himself as for her, what she represented andstood for. He, too, seeing her face with the blooming rose beside it, hadknown her piercing thought. 

She was going; but in other senses, too. She had begun to go; and all thesacrifices, the relinquishments, the acceptances of the summer, were thefirst steps of departure. She had done with things and he, who had not yetdone with them, was left behind. Already the signs of distance were uponher--he saw them as she had seen them--her distance from the world ofyouth, of hope, of effort. 

A thin veil, like the sad-sweet haze over the purpling hills, seemed towaver between them; the veil that, for all its melting elusiveness, partsimplacably one generation from another. Its dimness seemed to rest on herbright hair and to hover in her bright eyes; to soften, as with a faintmelancholy, the brightness of her smile. And it was as if he saw her, witha little sigh, unclasp her hands, that had clung to what she fancied to bestill her share of life, --unclasp her hands, look round her with a slightamaze at the changed season where she found herself, and, after thesoundless pause of recognition, bend her head consentingly to the quiet, obliterating snows of age. And once more his own change, his own initiationto subtler standards, was marked by the fact that when the old, ethicalself, still over-glib with its assurances, tried to urge upon him that allwas for the best in a wonderful world, ventured to murmur an axiom or so asto the grace, the dignity, the added spiritual significance of old age, thenew self, awakened to tragedy, turned angry eyes upon that vision of therose in the devastated garden, and once more muttered, in silence:--"Damn!"

They had talked of the past and of the coming marriage, very superficially, in their outer aspects; they had talked of his summer wanderings and of thePakenhams' visit to Vermont. She had given him tea and she had told him ofher plans for the winter;--she had given up the New York house, and hadtaken a little flat near Mrs. Wake's, that she was going to move to in afew days from now. And Jack said at last, feeling that with the words hedived from shallows into deeps:--"And--when are you going back?--back toEngland?"

"Going back?"--She repeated his words with vagueness. 

"Yes; to where you've always liked to live. "

"Yes; I liked living there, " said Valerie, still with vagueness in hercontemplative "yes. "

"And still like it. "

She seemed to consider. "Things have changed, you know. It was change Iused to want, I looked for it, perhaps mistakenly. Now it has come ofitself. And I feel a great unwillingness to move on again. "

The poignant vision of something bruised, dimmed, listless, was with him, and it was odd to hear himself urging:--"But in the meantime, you, too, have changed. The whole thing over here, the thing we so care for, isn'tyours. You don't really care about it much, if at all. It doesn't reallyplease you. It gives you with effort what you can get with ease, overthere, and it must jar on you, often. We are young; crude; all theover-obvious things that are always said of us; our enthusiasms are toofacile; our standards of achievement, in the things you care for, rathersecond-rate; oh, you know well enough what I mean. We are not crystallizedyet into a shape that's really comfortable for a person like you:--perhapswe never shall be; perhaps I hope that we never shall be. So why shouldn'tyou go to a place where you can have all the things you like?"

She listened to him in silence, with, at the end, a slight smile for theexactitude of his: "Perhaps I hope that we never shall be;"--and she pausednow as if his portrayal of her own wants required consideration. "Perhaps, "she said at length, "perhaps I never cared so much about all those things. "

"Oh, but you do, " said Jack with conviction. 

"You mean, I suppose, all the things people over here go away so much toget. No, I don't think so. It was never really that. I don't think"--andshe seemed to be thinking it out for herself as well as for him--"that I'veever been so conscious of standards--crystallizations--the relative valuesand forms of things. What I wanted was freedom. Not that I was everoppressed or ill-treated, far from it;--but I was too--uncomfortable. I waslike a bird forced to live like a fish, or perhaps we had better say, likea fish forced to live like a bird. That was why I went. I couldn't breathe. And, yes, I like the life over there. It's very easy and gliding; itprotects you from jars; it gives you beauty for the asking;--here we haveto make it as a rule. I like the people, too, and their unconsciousness. One likes us, you know, Jack, for what is conscious in us--and it's so muchthat there's hardly a bit of us that isn't conscious. We know our way allover ourselves, as it were, and can put all of ourselves into the window ifwe want someone else to know us. One often likes them for theirunconsciousness, for all the things behind the window, all the things theyknow nothing at all about, the things that are instinctive, backgroundthings. It makes a more peaceful feeling. One can wander about dim rooms, as it were, and rest in them; one doesn't have to recognize, and respond somuch. Yes, I shall miss it all, in a great many ways. But I like it here, too. For one thing, there is a great deal more to do. "

Jack, in some bewilderment, was grasping at clues. One was that, as he hadlong ago learned of her, she was incapable of phrases, even when they weresincere, incapable of dramatizing herself, even if her situation lentitself to tragic interpretations. Uncomfortable?--was that all that shefound to say of her life, her suffocating life, among the fishes? She couldput it aside with that. And as for the rest, he realized suddenly, with anew illumination--at what a late date it was for him to reach it; he, whohad thought that he knew her so well!--that she cared less, in reality, forall those "things" lacking in the life of her native land than the bulk ofher conscious, anxious countrymen. Cared not enough, his old self ofjudgment and moral appraisement would have pronounced. She wasn'tintellectual, nor was she esthetic; that was the funny part of it, about aperson whose whole being diffused a sense of completeness that was like aperfume. Art, culture, a complicated social life, being on the top ofthings, as it were, were not the objects of her concentration. It wasindeed her indifference to them, her independence of them, that made her, for his wider consciousness, oddly un-American. 

In the midst of bewilderment and illumination one thing stood clear, atrembling joy; he had to make assurance doubly sure. "If you are not goingaway, what _will_ you do?"

"I don't know";--he would, once, have rebuked the smile with which she saidit as indolent;--"I wasn't thinking of anything definite, for myself. I'llwatch other people do--you, for instance, Jack. I shall spend most of mytime here in the country; New York is so expensive; I shall garden--waittill you see what I make of this in a few years' time; I shall look afterRose and Eddy--at a tactful distance. "

"But your wider life? Your many friends, over there?" Jack still protested, fearing that he saw more clearly than she to what a widow with a tiny, crippled fortune was consigning herself in this country of the young andstriving. "You need gaiety, brilliancy, big, bright vistas. " It was strangeto hear himself urging his thought for her against that inner throb. Againshe gave him her grave, brief smile. "You forget, Jack, that I'm--cured. I'm quite old enough not to mind giving up. "

The warm, consoling assurance was with him, of her presence near his life;but under it the excitement, the pain, had so risen that he wondered if shedid not read them in his eyes. 

The evening was growing late; the sky had turned to a pale, translucentgold, streaked, over the horizon, by thin, cold, lilac-colored clouds. Hemust go, leaving her there, alone, and, in so doing, he would leavesomething else behind him forever. For it was now, as the veil fell uponher, as the evening fell over the wide earth, it was now or never that hecould receive the last illumination. He hardly saw clearly what that mightbe; it wavered like a hovering light behind the mist. 

He rose and walked up and down the room a little; pausing to look from thewindows at the golden sky; pausing to look, now and then, at her, sittingthere in her long, black dress, vaguely shadowed on the outer light, smiling, tranquil, yet sad, so sad. 

"So, our summer is at an end, " he said, turning at last from the window. "The air has a frosty tang already. I suppose I must be off. I shall notsee you again until New York. I'm glad--I'm glad that you are to be there";and now he stammered suddenly, a little--"more glad than I can say. "

"Thanks, Jack, " she answered, her eyes fondly dwelling on him. "You are oneof the things I would not like to leave. "

Again he walked up and down, and seemed to hear the steady flow of thatstill, deep excitement. Why, above it, should he say silly, meaninglesswords, that were like a bridge thrown over it to lead him from her?

"I want to tell you one thing, just one, before I go, " he said. He knewthat, with his sudden resolution, his voice had changed and, to quiethimself, he stood before her and put both hands on the back of a chair thatwas between them. He couldn't go on building that bridge. He must daresomething, even if something else he must not dare--unless, unless she lethim. "I must tell you that you are the most enchanting person I have everknown. "

She looked at him quietly, though she was startled, not quiteunderstanding, and she said a little sadly: "Only that, Jack?"

"Yes, only that, for you, because you don't need the trite, obvious labelsthat one affixes to other people. You don't need me to say that you aregood or true or brave;--it's like a delicate seal that comprises andexpresses everything, --the trite things and the strange, lovelythings--when I say that you are enchanting. " He held his mind, soconscious, under the words, of what he must not say, to the intellectualpreoccupation of making her see, at all events, just what the words hecould say meant. 

But as his voice rang, tense, vibrant as a tightened cord in the stillroom, as his eyes sank into hers, Valerie felt in her own dying youth thesudden echo to all he dared not say. 

She had never seen, quick as she was to see the meaning behind words andlooks. She suspected that he, also, had never seen it clearly till now. 

Other claims had dropped from them; the world was gone; they were alone, his eyes on hers; and between them was the magic of life. 

Yes, she had it still, the gift, the compelling charm. His eyes in theiryoung strength and fear and adoration called to her life, and with a touch, a look, she could bring to it this renewal and this solace. And, behind hersorrow, her veil, her relinquishment, Valerie was deeply thrilled. 

The thrill went through her, but even while she knew it, it hardly movedher. No; the relinquishment had been too deep. She had lost forever, inlosing the other. That had been to turn her back on life, or, rather, tosee it turn its back on her, forever. Not without an ugly crash of inner, twisted discord could she step once more from the place of snow, or holdout her hand to love. 

All his life was before him, but for her--; for her it was finished. And asshe mastered the thrill, as she turned from the vision of what his eyesbesought and promised, a flow of pity, pity for his youth and pain and forall the long way he was yet to go, filled her, bringing peace, even whilethe sweetness of the unsought, undreamed of offering made her smile again, a trembling smile. 

"Dear Jack, thank you, " she said. 

Suddenly, before her smile, her look, he flushed deeply, taking from hereyes what his own full meaning had been. Already it was in the past, thestill-born hope; it was dead before he gazed upon it; but he must hear thedeath-warrant from her lips, it was not enough to see it, so gentle, sopitiful, so loving, in her eyes, and he heard himself stammering:--"You--you haven't anything else you can say to me?"

She had found her answer in a moment, and now indeed she was at the helm, steering them both past white shores, set in such depths of magical blue, white shores where sirens sang. Never could they land there, never listento the song. And already she seemed to hear it, as if from a far distance, ringing, sharp and strange with the swiftness of their flight, as shereplied: "Nothing else, dear Jack, except that I wish you were my son. "

The enchanted island had sunk below the horizon. They were landed, and onthe safest, sanest, shores. She knew that she had achieved her own place, and that from it, secure, above him, the veil between them, her smile wasthe smile of motherhood. To smile so was to put before him finally the factthat her enchantment contradicted and helplessly lured him to forget. Shewould never forget it now, nor could he. She was Imogen's mother, and shewas old enough to be his. 

From her smile, her eyes, common-sense flooded Jack, kind, yet stinging, too, savoring of a rescue from some hidden danger, --not his--not his--hiswas none of the common-sense, --but hers. He might had she let him, have sodislocated her life. 

He was scarlet, stammering. He knew that he hid nothing from her now, thathe didn't want or need to hide anything. Those benign, maternal eyes wouldunderstand. And he smiled, too, but also with a trembling smile, as hereached out to her hand, holding it tightly and saying, gazing at her:--"Ilove you so. "

Her hand held his, in farewell now, but her look up at him promisedeverything, everything for the future, --except the one now shrouded thing. "And I love you, dear Jack, " she said. "You have taken the place of--almosteverything. "

And then, for she saw the tears in his eyes, and knew that his heart wasbleeding, not for himself alone, she rose and took his head between herhands, and, like a mother, kissed him above his eyes. 

 * * * * *

When he had left her, --and they said no further word, --Valerie did notagain relapse into a despondent attitude. 

The sky was like a deep rose, soft, dim, dying, and the color of theafterglow filled the room. 

Standing at the window she breathed in the keen, sweet air, and looked fromthe dying day down to her garden. 

She had watched Jack disappear among the trees, waving to him, and herheart followed his aching heart with comprehending pity. But, from herconquest of the thrill, a clear, contemplative insight was left with her, so that, looking out over the lives she was to watch, she felt herself, forall her sadness, a merry, if a serious fate, mingling the threads ofothers' fortunes with a benignant hand. 

Imogen's threads had snapped off very sharply. Imogen would be the betterpleased that the Surrey cottage should know her no more. The pang for thewrecking of all maternal hope passed strangely into a deeper pang for allthat the Surrey cottage stood for in her life, all the things that she hadleft to come to Imogen. She remembered. And, for a moment, the old vortexof whirling anguish almost engulfed her. Only long years could deaden thepang of that parting. She would not dwell on that. Eddy and Rose; to turnto them was to feel almost gay. Jack and Mary;--yes, on these last namesher thoughts lingered and her gaze for them held tender presages. That mustbe. 

Jack would not know how her maternal solicitude was to encompass him andmold his way. If the benignant fate saw clearly, Jack and Mary were tomarry. Strange that it should not be from anything of her own that thedeepest call upon her fostering tenderness came. She wasn't needed byanything of her own. This was the tragedy of her life that, more than youthpassed and love renounced, seemed to drift snows upon her. 

But, beyond the personal pang and failure, she could look down at hergarden and out at the quiet, evening vistas. The very flowers seemed tosmile gentle promises to her, and to murmur that, after all, rather thanbitterness, failure was to bring humble peace. 

Leaning her head against the window, where in the breeze the curtain softlyflapped, she looked out at the tranquil twilight, contented to be sad. 

"I will have friends with me, " she said to herself; "I will garden andlearn a new language. I will read a great many books. " And, with a sense ofhappy daring, not rebuked by reason, she could add, thinking of the mingledthreads:--"I will have them often here to stay with me, and, perhaps, theywill let me spoil the babies. "