Fraser immediately became the object of Beatrix' whole
attention. FRONTISPIECE. See page [192].

SCANDAL

A NOVEL

BY

COSMO HAMILTON

AUTHOR OF
SINS OF THE CHILDREN, ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
RICHARD CULTER

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1917,
BY COSMO HAMILTON.

All rights reserved

"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,

And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),

Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—

How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."

ROBERT BROWNING.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Fraser immediately became the object of Beatrix' whole attention] . . . Frontispiece

["Don't you think we make a charming picture of connubial felicity?"]

["It won't be many days before we find scandal rearing its head at us"]

[In this picture stood the vital figures of Beatrix and Franklin, hand in hand]

SCANDAL

I

"By Jove, there's Beatrix Vanderdyke!"

"Why not?"

"What on earth is she doing in New York at this time of year?"

There was a laugh and a shrug. "If it comes to that, my dear fellow, what on earth are we doing in New York at this time of year? Anyway, I'm not interested."

"I am. She's with that unpleasant brute, Sutherland York again. I wish to Heaven she wouldn't go about with a second-rate portrait painter who only gets commissions by licking people's boots, or any other man, for the matter of that, at this time of night."

Pelham Franklin laughed. "I'm sorry I can't squeeze up any interest in Miss Vanderdyke," he said. "I've seen her going into York's studio round about midnight several times, but it's her life. She has to lead it. There's no accounting for tastes, you know. You and I, for instance, have a penchant for the Ziegfeld Follies. I vote we walk, it's a little cooler now."

And as the only son of the famous millionaire Franklin, sauntered away with his friend, Sutherland York, the "unpleasant brute," followed Miss Vanderdyke into the elevator.

York had cultivated a peculiar habit of looking at a woman as though she were the only one alive, and by doing so had achieved a list of clients which made the mouth of every other portrait painter in New York water with envy. He also had a way, which amounted to a gift, of running his eyes over women which made them feel that they had nothing on. It caused some to shudder, some to preen themselves, and some—the coarser, indelicate type—to feel a pleasant thrill of excitement. Like many men who paint portraits for a living, Sutherland York had discovered that in order to pay the rent of a very expensive apartment, keep a man, dress to perfection and dine frequently at Sherry's and the Ritz, it is necessary to know something more than how to paint. Women were his clients. They provided him with his butter as well as his bread, and he catered to them with artfulness rather than with art. Miss Vanderdyke came in for all this man's eye-play in the elevator, but without a flicker of a lash bore up against it.

The city had baked beneath a hot June sun that day. The night was airless and oppressive. Beatrix dropped her cloak and went over to one of the open windows and stood there with the discreet lights showing up the smooth whiteness of her shoulders, arms and back. Her dress was one of those so-called smart things that one sees in the windows of fashionable shops which affect French names. It left very little to the imagination and was as short as it was low. In between it was ugly and foolish, and required a very beautiful young body to live it down and put a check on the ribald laughter of sane people. On the other side of Fifth Avenue the Plaza, with its multitudinous windows all gleaming, reared its head up to the clear sky. Along the glistening street below intermittent automobiles glided like black beetles. The incessant hum of the city came like music to the girl's ears. She preferred that sound to the God-sent quietude of the country from which she had just come.

While a bottle of champagne was opened and cigarettes were placed on the table, York stood with his back against a heavily carved oak armoire in an attitude of carefully considered gracefulness and watched the girl with a sense of extreme triumph. The fact that she was young—very young,—not very much more than twenty,—and was generally acknowledged as having been the most beautiful débutante who had come out in New York society in many years, did not matter. He had painted her portrait and had quieted his numerous trades-people with a certain portion of the very substantial cheque which he had received, but that also did not matter. What did matter was the fact that he, himself, had proved attractive to a Vanderdyke—to the only daughter of the man whose name was known all over the world as the head of one of the richest and certainly the most exclusive family in the United States, whose house on Fifth Avenue contained art treasures which made it more notable than the houses of European royalty, and whose country places with their racing stables, their kennels, their swimming pools and tennis courts, golf courses and polo grounds were the pride of all the little eager people who write society paragraphs. It meant a good deal to the son of the man who had kept a dusty-looking antique shop with dirty windows on Fourth Avenue to be able to assure himself that he exercised enough attraction over this girl to make her run the risk of gossip in order to spend a few stolen hours from time to time in his company alone. With the use of consummate tact, his well-practiced flattery, and at the right moment a sudden outburst of passionate words culled from the works of Byron and Swinburne, what might he not achieve!

As these thoughts ran through his brain he turned to the oval glass in an Italian frame that hung on the wall and looked at himself with close examination. He certainly wore his forty-seven years admirably well. His dark, thick, wavy hair was all the more picturesque for its sprinkling of white. His high forehead lent him an air of intellectuality which was most misleading. His straight, black eyebrows and large, almond-shaped eyes gave him a Latin touch which seemed to indicate temperament. His nose, he told himself, was undoubtedly aristocratic, and his moustache—scrupulously lifted away from his lip—added to the effect of a well-shaped mouth and large white, regular teeth. There was a slit in his chin of which he had always been proud. Striking was the word that he applied to himself, and handsome was the one which he knew was generally used about him. The touch of humor which was his saving grace made him very well aware of the fact that with any clothes less well cut and carefully considered he might easily fall in line with the glossy villain of melodrama or with the conventional desperado so necessary to the producers of moving pictures.

With fingers as expert as those of a woman he smoothed his hair here and there, made a quick sign to his man to get out, and moved across the expensively rugged studio to the window. "I was on the point of going out to supper," he said, "when you called me up. It was very kind of you."

Beatrix turned towards him with the most disconcerting air of candor. Not for the first time he was astonished at her perfect finish, her audacious self-possession. This baby was a complete woman of the world. "No, it wasn't," she said. "I was bored. I only got to town at half-past eight and the mere thought of spending the evening with a garrulous companion—a sort of toothless watch-dog—in a house among Holland covers and the persistent smell of camphor was more than I could stand. I had no intention of being kind. Do we smoke?"

"Oh, please!" he said.

She followed him across the large, lofty room to the refectory table which had stood in the back room of the shop on Fourth Avenue for so many years, there acquiring all the age of which it could boast. A silver Jacobean box was open and in it there were Russian cigarettes upon which York's imaginary crest had been stamped. He had himself designed it.

"Thank you. How is it that you're here? The last time I saw you, you said you were going to Gloucester for the summer."

York put his face as near to the girl's round shoulder as he dared. "I went there," he said, "on the last of April, but I had to come back last week to see the architects of a new theatre. They've asked me to paint a series of panels for the foyer. It's a nuisance; but—although I dare say it's never occurred to you—there are some people in the world who must work to live." He raised his glass, adopted an expression of adoration in which there was a mixture of humbleness and confidence, and added: "I'd have come from the ends of the earth for the pleasure of seeing you to-night."

Beatrix looked at him with a smile of amused appreciation. "How well you do that sort of thing," she said. "Better than any man I know. Was it born in you, or did you achieve it?"

York placed what purported to be a Wolsey chair just out of the line of light thrown by a lamp on the table, and metaphorically hauled himself up for having gone a little too far. This imperious girl, as spoiled as a Royal Princess, who had been brought up in the belief that all she had to do was to put her finger on a bell to bring the moon and the sun and the stars to her service, needed more careful handling than a thoroughbred yearling. So York, whose business had taught him far more than the rudiments of psychology, hastened to become general again. Like the filibuster who starts out on an expedition to find hidden treasure, he had always before him the vague, exciting hope that some day he might stand towards this girl in a very different relationship. "How long are you to be in the city?"

"I must go back the day after to-morrow," said Beatrix. "I've only come in to see about a costume for a Shakespeare Pastoral that mother has arranged to give in the Queen Anne gardens. It's going to be produced by one of the long-haired tribe, and the house-party's to be assisted by a sprinkling of professionals. As it'll break the monotony of country life I'm looking forward to it, especially as I'm going to play opposite,—I think that's the word,—to a matinée idol whose profile is Grecian, though his accent is Broadway. You must come and see us."

"I should love to," said York. His interest in pastorals was infinitesimal, but his desire to be included in one of Mrs. Vanderdyke's house-parties was as keen as that of any woman whose whole life is devoted to the difficult gymnastic feat of climbing into society. "When d'you begin rehearsing?"

"The day after to-morrow. The people who are at home at present scattered to-day and the new lot, or many of them, will probably go by train on Wednesday. Pelham Franklin is to be there. D'you know him?"

"Very slightly," said York. "He lives in the twin studio to this, on the other side, but as he is mostly away, either in Europe or big game hunting, there has been very little opportunity for us to meet. I caught sight of him just now leaving the house. He's a good-looking fellow, isn't he?"

"Is he? Yes, I suppose he is. I've met him once or twice and danced with him, but it struck me that he needed some sort of crisis in his life to shake him into becoming a man. At present he's a sort of undergraduate, skimming through life with his feet above the earth. I believe mother entertains secret hopes that he'll one day ask me to marry him." She laughed. "I hear her talking about the union of the two families as though they were the only two families in the world. Aunt Honoria is all in favor of it, too. The question of my marriage seems to affect them as though I were the daughter of King George or someone. Who would suppose that we live in a democracy? It's a joke, isn't it? Probably I shall run away with a good-looking chauffeur with kinky hair, regular teeth, a straight nose and a vocabulary which would put even George Ade to shame. Or, I may fall in love with the matinée idol and fly off with him in a motor-car at midnight, and so be in the fashion. My romantic-minded companion, Mrs. Lester Keene, who lives on novels, cherishes the idea that I'm going to elope with you."

"My God!" cried York. "If only such a thing could come true!"

The passion in the man's voice, the sudden flame in his eyes and the sort of picturesque hunger which suddenly pervaded him filled the girl with interest. She had always regarded him as a sort of Shaw play,—a mixture of easy cynicism, self-conscious cleverness and an obvious pose. She had been leading a quiet life since the season in town had ended, riding and playing tennis and swimming in the pool. She had had no opportunity of trying her powers upon any man who had been worth while. Her parents' friends were all rather pompous, responsible people who talked politics gravely and whose wealth had taken the sting of joy and effort out of life. It was good to be able to play with fire again. It exercised her wits. So she seized the opportunity of leading on this handsome person with whom so many married women had been in love, to see what he would do.

"Is that how you feel?" she asked, instinctively going into the light so that her slim triumphant beauty and bewitching youth should be in full challenging view.

York lost his head. His inherent conceit led him to believe that there was encouragement in the girl's voice and attitude. "You know it is. You know that ever since you came here to sit for me, from the very first instant that I caught sight of you I've been drunk with love. You've revolutionized my life—almost ruined me as painter—because to paint any other woman is sacrilege." He caught her hands and kissed them hotly.

It was all very well done. His words carried most amazing sincerity. His attitude was extremely graceful, and his simulated passion lent a temporary youthfulness to his face and tall, tightly compressed figure. He managed to look the complete lover. The stage had lost a great actor in him.

Beatrix rescued her hands and stood up very straight. This transpontine outburst was foolish. She had merely hoped for a witty passage of arms. "My dear Mr. York," she said, "you and I are very good friends. Please don't run away with the idea that I'm a young married woman in search of adventure."

York was angry. He knew that he had made a fool of himself. He hated to look a fool at any time and he was not sufficiently master of himself to recover his ground by making a well-turned apology. "Women don't come here to be friends," he said thickly. "They certainly don't come alone at this time of night to talk ethics. You've no right to snub me—to lead me on and then cover me with ice-cold water. I'm not the man to stand that sort of thing."

"Your cigarettes are very nice," said Beatrix. "May I have another?"

He held out the box and struck a match. He stood so close to the girl that the fragrance of her hair and the gleam of her white flesh went to his brain. All the sensuality of the man was churned up and stirred and his veneer fell from him like dry plaster. He really did forget for the moment that she was the daughter of one of America's richest men and was not simply the most exquisite young thing that he had ever seen during his long career. He bent down and put his lips on her shoulder, with a hoarse, inarticulate murmur. He had always been very successful in his love-making. The type of woman with whom he came most in contact couldn't resist the primeval. He must have imagined that this unbridled and daring outbreak would carry the girl off her feet. It had happened before.

He was mistaken. Beatrix was as completely mistress of herself as though she were talking to a hairdresser.

"That's a pity," she said. "I'm afraid it puts an end to my coming here. I'm sorry, because I liked the atmosphere of your studio and it broke the monotony of my gilded exclusiveness to indulge in this sort of mild Bohemianism, although I thought that you were clever. Will you please let me have my wrap?"

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes."

York obeyed. He saw that he had completely spoiled his very remote chance. Also it was obvious that his name would not now be included among Mrs. Vanderdyke's list of guests. "You fool!" he said to himself. "You damned infernal fool. This girl's an aristocrat—an autocrat—a hot-house plant. You've treated her like the wife of a Wall Street broker from the Middle West." He put the wrap about the girl's shoulders and stood back endeavoring to assume a dignity that he did not feel.

That kiss on her shoulder was like the touch of a slug on the petal of a rose. Beatrix resented it from the bottom of her soul, but her training, her breeding and her inherent pluck gave her the power to hide her feelings and maintain an air of undisturbed indifference. Her knowledge of men, already great, made her very well aware of the fact that the least show of temper might bring about a most unpleasant scuffle. She dropped her cigarette into a silver bowl. "I shall look forward to seeing your panels in the new theatre with great interest," she said. "Will you come down with me to the car?"

Realizing that he was no match for this young privileged person and cowed by her superbly unconscious sense of quality, York led the way across his elaborate studio in which suits of armor gleamed dully and massive pieces of oak reflected the light, to the door. He rang the bell of the elevator and stood silently waiting for it to come up. Nothing else was said, except by Beatrix, who gave him the one cool word "Good-bye," as he shut the door of the limousine.

York's man-servant, of whom he was so inordinately proud, had gone to bed. Otherwise, he would have been astonished to hear the sound of smashing china. The portrait painter took it out on a Dresden bowl which, in his impotent rage, he dashed with a characteristically coarse oath to the polished floor of the room in which most of his love episodes had ended with peculiar success.

II

The Vanderdyke house on Fifth Avenue faced the Park.

It aroused the admiration of most people not because it was an accurate reproduction of the famous De la Rochefoucauld mansion in Paris, but because on one side of it enough space upon which to build a high apartment house was given up to a stilted garden behind a high arrangement of wrought iron. It did not require a trained real-estate mind to know how valuable was such "waste" ground.

The suite of rooms belonging to Beatrix overlooked this large, square patch, with its well-nursed lawn, its elaborate stonework and its particular sparrows. In the spring, what appeared to be the same tulips suddenly and regularly appeared, standing erect in exact circles, and lilacs broke into almost regal bloom every year about the time that the family left town. A line of balloon-shaped bay trees always stood on the terrace and, whatever the weather, a nude maiden of mature charms watched over a marble fountain in an attitude of resentful modesty.

When her windows were open, as they mostly were, Beatrix and her English companion could hear the pathetic whimpers of the poor caged beasts in the Zoo in front of the house, and the raucous cries of the Semitic-looking parrots above the ceaseless cantata of motor traffic.

The morning after her lucky escape from York's studio, Beatrix slept late. Mrs. Lester Keene had breakfasted alone with the Times, saving Town Topics for her final cup of coffee. She had heard her charge, whom she made no effort to manage, return comparatively early the night before, and could hardly contain her curiosity to know what had happened. It was obvious that something had taken place, because, as a rule, Beatrix came back anywhere between one and two from her visits to the portrait painter. From a sense of duty and a fear of losing her comfortable position, Mrs. Lester Keene forced herself to remain awake on these occasions, sitting over a novel in a Jaeger dressing-gown or writing a long, rambling letter to a friend in London, in which, with tearful pride in her former independence, she wallowed in reminiscence.

Mrs. Lester Keene was the widow of a man of excellent family who had devoted all the best years of his life to the easy and too-well-paid pursuit of winding and unwinding "red tape" in a government office in London. He had died of it before he could retire to a stucco house at Brighton on a pension, and Amelia Keene had found herself in the tragic position of being alone in the world in the middle forties with nothing to bless herself with but an aged pomeranian, her undisputed respectability and the small sum paid to her on her husband's life policy. This, with the laudable and optimistic idea of placing herself forever out of the reach of the lean hand of penury, she had entrusted to the care of a glib city shark whom she had met in a boarding-house and who guaranteed that he would get her in on the ground floor of a new company exploiting the Eldorado Copper Mine and bring her in a regular three hundred and fifty-five per cent. on her capital. With this neat sum and others, however, the expert philanthropist with the waxed moustache and white spats paid his first-class fare to the Argentine and set up a matrimonial bureau for temperamental South Americans. Poor Amelia Keene sold her modest jewels and applied for work at the Employment Agency for Impoverished Gentlewomen, in George Street, Hanover Square.

It so happened that Mr. and Mrs. Vanderdyke were in London at that time and in need of a refined companion for their only daughter. Mrs. Lester Keene was one of the several dozen applicants and had the great good fortune to secure the much coveted post owing to the fact that her hair was grey, her complexion her own and her accent irreproachably Kensington. As Mrs. Vanderdyke intended to be the only made-up woman in any of her numerous houses, the other applicants were naturally turned down.

Like most English people the new companion had never been farther away from her native land than Boulogne. She thrilled with excitement, fright and the spirit of adventure when she joined the Vanderdyke entourage on board the Olympic. To be five or six days at sea was in itself an almost unbelievable exploit, full of hidden dangers and obvious terrors. The mere thought of shipwreck and the possibility of floating for days on a raft, in perhaps most unconventional attire, appalled her. But the thing that filled her nightly dreams with phantasmagoria was the knowledge that she was, God and the elements willing, to live in the United States,—a great wild country in which, she had been led to believe, men shot each other in the fashionable restaurants, broncho busters galloped madly along the principal streets of the big cities and lassoed helpless virgins, murderers in masks held up trains, black men were hanged to lamp-posts, as a matter of course, and comic creatures with large feet hammered people on the head with mallets. She had arrived at this point of view from several visits to the moving picture theatres in London, where American films do much to prejudice untravelled Europeans against the United States. Her astonishment when finally she arrived in New York and found herself in what she described to her friends at home as the Vanderdyke Palace, was almost childish.

In no sense of the word was she a companion to Beatrix. Her narrow and insular point of view, her characteristic English method of clinging to shibboleths and rococo ideas, and her complete and triumphant ignorance of all fundamental things made her, to Beatrix, more of a curiosity, like an early Victorian stuffed canary in a glass case, than a useful and helpful person. Beatrix had been born sophisticated. As a child and a young girl her arresting and palpable beauty had made her an irresistible mark for boys and young men, and one or two only of her early episodes, nearly all of which began well enough but ended in sometimes very rough attempts at seduction, would have crowded out of Mrs. Lester Keene's whole humdrum, drone-like life every incident that she could recall. Beatrix at once became her companion's guide, philosopher, friend and guardian, and derived constant amusement from the little garrulous, plump, hen-like woman, who knew no more about life than the average dramatist knows about people, and who, though completely dazzled by the hard, almost casual magnificence of her present surroundings, delighted to live in the past, telling long and pointless stories of "my house in Clanricarde Gardens, you know," "Mrs. Billings, my cook," "The summer when Algernon and I took the Edward Jones's house at Bognor," "My drawing-room was always crowded every second and fourth Thursday, quite a Salon, in fact," and so on, in a glorification of the commonplace that was as pathetic as it was tiresome.

Before Mrs. Keene had waded through the first few pages of her favorite weekly paper, a maid disturbed her. "Miss Vanderdyke would be glad to see you," she said, conveying the kindly but nevertheless royal command with full appreciation.

Mrs. Lester Keene was glad to obey. Even if dear Beatrix had nothing exciting to tell her, she had a very curious piece of news to impart to dear Beatrix. So she gathered herself together, rather in the same way as her prototype, the barnyard hen rising from a bath of sun-baked earth, and made her way along a wide passage hung with the priceless old prints which had overflowed from the lower rooms, to the bedroom of the daughter of the house.

Beatrix was sitting on the edge of a four-post bed, in a pink, transparent nightgown, her little feet in heelless slippers. On a table at her elbow there was a just placed breakfast tray and a new copy of Town and Country. Fresh from sleep, with her fair hair all about her shoulders, Beatrix, the one alive and exquisite thing in that too-large, too-lofty, pompous room, looked like a single rosebud in a geometrically designed garden.

"Come along, Brownie," she said, stretching herself with catlike grace, "and talk to me while I feed."

"You'll put something on, dear, won't you?"

"No, dear Brownie, I won't. No one can spy into the room and there isn't a single portrait of a man on the walls. So please don't fuss. It's far too hot for a dressing-gown and in my case why should I hide my charms from you?" She laughed at her wholly justified conceit, gave herself a very friendly nod in a pier-glass in the distance and poured out a cup of coffee.

Amelia Keene could never at any time, even in her isolated spinster days in the heart of the country, have brought herself to wear such an excuse for a nightgown. Flannel was her wear. She was, as usual, more than a little uneasy at the all-conquering individualism and supreme naturalness of the girl to whom she utterly subjected herself. With the slightest shrug of her shoulders,—she dared to do nothing further,—she put the dressing-gown that she had offered back in its place, and sat down. At any rate she could assure herself that she had endeavored to do her duty.

"You came in earlier than I expected last night, dear," she said, throwing the obvious bait of her insatiable curiosity.

Beatrix laughed again. "Why don't you say that you're dying to know what happened and lay awake all night making up exciting stories, Brownie?"

Mrs. Keene almost succeeded in looking dignified. "You know that I'm very, very much against these late visits to bachelor rooms," she said, "and have always done my best to dissuade you from making them. Therefore I can truly say that I'm far from being curious and am unable to feel any sort of excitement."

Beatrix bent forward and touched her companion's cheek with an affectionate hand. "Good for you, dear old wise-acre. You'll never have to take any blame for my blazing indiscretions, so don't worry, and as you don't feel any interest in my adventures I won't bother you with them."

Keen disappointment took the place of dignity. "I hope the time will never come," said Mrs. Keene, "when you'll cease to make me your confidante, dear."

Feeling that she had teased the little, naïve, narrow-minded, well-meaning and very human woman enough, Beatrix finished her coffee and lit a cigarette. "Last night, Sutherland York dropped his pose," she said. "I hadn't ever taken the trouble to analyze the reason why I went to his studio, but thinking it over now I see that it was because I knew that sooner or later his assumption of super-refined Bohemianism would break down and I wanted to be there to see the smash. Well, dear Brownie, I saw it. I also heard it and, to go into the exact details, I felt it,—on my shoulder." She put her right hand on the spot as though the touch of his sensual lips still stung her.

Amelia Keene gasped. "You don't mean that he kissed——"

"Yes, I do. Just here. I think of consulting a specialist on the matter."

"My dear!"

Beatrix got up, walked across the wide room and stood in front of the pier-glass. Through her thin, clinging nightgown she could see the lines of her slim, lithe, deliciously young form. For a moment she stood in frank and open admiration of it. She had a keenly appreciative eye for beautiful things. Then she walked about the room, like a young Diana, her heels rapping as she went. "It wasn't so amusing as I hoped it might be," she added. "Scratch a gentleman and you find the man. Break the veneer of a cad and you discover the beast. D'you think that Pond's Extract is strong enough to cleanse the spot?"

"He dared to kiss you!—— I can hardly believe it." Mrs. Keene looked like a pricked balloon. "Surely you'll never go near him again now."

"Only if I can get a policeman to go with me, or an inspector of nuisances. Brownie, dear, my occasional evenings with art and old armor are over. I must find some other excuse for breaking all the rules that hedge round the life of an ex-débutante."

"Thank Heaven!" said Mrs. Keene. "I've only seen that man once and he reminded me of a person who used to go down the area of my London house and try and persuade the maids to buy imitation jewelry on the instalment plan."

Beatrix burst into a ripple of laughter. "Well done, Brownie. That's perfect,—perfect." But again her hand went up to her shoulder.

And then the hen-like lady gathered her scattered wits together and came up to her own little surprise. "It's quite time that episode is at an end, my dear," she said. "Only about ten minutes after you drove away last night,—I was having a sandwich and a glass of port wine before going to my room,—your Aunt Honoria bore down upon me. May I say that without giving offense?"

Beatrix drew up short. "Aunt Honoria!"

"Yes; she came straight up to these apartments, looking more like a beautiful eagle than ever,—my heart fell straight into my boots,—and asked, or rather demanded to see you."

"Aunt Honoria! But yesterday she was staying with the Mordens at Morristown."

Mrs. Keene was delighted to find that she held a full hand. "I said that you were out. My dear, she didn't take my word for it. She marched, or rather sailed along the passage to your room and stabbed your empty bed with her long, thin fingers. Of course I followed. Then she turned to me and said: 'Where is she?' I'm sure she didn't add 'woman,' but she as good as did. She always does. I was terrified. I felt like a shop-lifter before the Lord Chief Justice. She always reminds me of a great legal dignitary with her snow-white hair and aquiline nose and the cold, direct gaze."

"Thank you, Brownie, dear, for your very charming literary touch, but please go on." Beatrix was really interested and curious. Her Aunt Honoria Vanderdyke, the outstanding figure in New York's most exclusive society, at whose entrance into her box at the opera the whole house very nearly rose to its feet, did nothing without a very strong motive.

"I tried to tell a lie—I did indeed—but somehow it stuck in my throat. Under those two mind-searching eyes I had to say that you had driven away with Mr. Sutherland York."

"Well, this is interesting!"

"'Ah!' she said. 'Indeed! And how often has Miss Vanderdyke stained herself with the paint of that mountebank?' 'I really do not know,' I replied. 'Thank you,' she said. 'That will do,' and went, or rather floated out of your bedroom and along the passage. I watched her from the gallery as she went down-stairs and through the door and away. A wonderful woman! If only Queen Elizabeth had been a lady she might have looked like her. I honestly confess, my dear——"

Beatrix held up one pink-nailed finger. "Brownie," she said, "I feel in my bones that there is going to be a row in the family. I've been seen going into York's studio, Aunt Honoria has been informed! She heard that I had come to town,—came to spy——"

"Oh, not spy, dear. She could never spy!"

"No, that's true. Inquire first hand, then,—and has now gone home to——"

The telephone bell rang. Beatrix's eyes gleamed with fun and a sort of impish amusement. "Brownie, I'll bet you any money you like that that's mother!"

Mrs. Keene rose. "Oh, no, my dear. Why should it be? It's the dressmaker, of course." All the same she hesitated apprehensively.

"Well, I'll bet you. The row is simmering."

Mrs. Keene nearly dropped the receiver. "It is your mother," she said. "She asks for you. And, oh dear me, how icy her voice is!"

Before going to the telephone, Beatrix lit another cigarette, gave a tilt to a comfortable arm-chair that stood near the little table, sat down, crossed one round leg over the other in a most leisurely way and took up the instrument. She looked like a water-color by Van Beers come to life.

"Good morning, Mamma! How sweet of you to call me up—I shall be glad to get away from the glare of the streets and reek of gasoline, but I can't leave until to-morrow. I must try on my costume twice before then—I'm very sorry, Mamma, darling, but—Well, give father my love and tell him that he simply must curb his impatience to see me, because it's absolutely necessary—Aunt Honoria! Is Aunt Honoria there?" She shot a wink at Amelia Keene, who stood in an attitude of piteous trepidation. "My very best love to Aunt Honoria. But it will be impossible for me to leave town at once. Well, then, expect to see me at tea to-morrow. Au revoir, Mamma. I wish I could stay for a longer chat, but I'm just on my way out, with so much to do."

She rang off and burst out laughing. "A very good thing you were not betting, Brownie."

"Did Mrs. Vanderdyke sound——?"

"Angry? Yes, in a white heat. Every word was like a grain of Cayenne pepper."

"And is it about last night?"

"Yes, obviously, and probably the others. There has been a family council, that's easy to guess. Scandal has been at work. Isn't it absurd?"

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" cried Mrs. Keene, who dreaded disturbances, would do anything in her power to keep trouble away from her charge, to whom she was genuinely attached, and saw starvation facing her if she were to lose her position. "How very unfortunate and distressing all this is! And, oh, my dear, how could you talk to your mother like that?"

"My dear good Brownie," said Beatrix, tipping off the end of her cigarette, "what's the use of belonging to this generation if I can't keep my parents in their place?"

She was just the least little bit disappointed that her companion failed to catch her touch of satirical humor.

III

At the moment when her maid was getting a bath ready for Beatrix and was waiting in a white marble room filled with the pleasant aroma of scented bath salts, Pelham Franklin wandered into the dining room of his studio apartment with his friend, Malcolm Fraser. Both men were in pajamas, and even then welcomed the occasional soft puff of air that came through the open window. Another hot day had fallen upon the city and a blistering sun was already high in a cloudless sky.

The dining room, like the studio and the passages, was filled with antlered heads and stuffed tarpon, and the skins of bear and tiger and wild-cat. There was something finely and healthily inartistic about the whole place, which more nearly resembled the work-rooms of a naturalist than anything else. The same note was struck by Franklin, who, with his broad shoulders and deep chest, his six feet of wiry body and small head, was obviously nothing but a man and not one who had ever been accused of being handsome either. He shuddered at the word except when it was applied to the royal mate of a fallow deer. All the same, he caught all discriminating eyes for the shortness of his thick, dark hair, the cleanness and humor of his grey, deep-set eyes, the rather aggressive squareness of his jaw, the small, soldierly moustache that covered a short upper lip and the strong, white teeth that gleamed beneath it when he laughed or was very angry. He had the look, too, of a man who mostly sleeps out under the sky, and the sun-baked skin of one who is not chained to a city or doomed to the petty slavery of the social push.

"This damned city," he said. "This time eight days ago we were well out to sea. If I hadn't been ass enough to put the yacht back for another stock of tobacco the mail would have waited and grown stale. Rotten bad luck, eh?"

Fraser grinned ironically. "If it was a question of my having to chuck a few fish and give up two or three weeks of the open sea to come to the city to see about adding a million or two to my capital, d'you think I'd grumble?"

"But you're such a mercenary brute. You think of nothing but money."

"Yes, and the only reason you're not mercenary is that you don't have to think about it. Thanks, I'll have a sausage. What are you going to do to-day?"

Franklin groaned. "Sign deeds and things most of the morning at the lawyer's, having tried to make out what the devil they mean, and after lunch I'm going to buy a Rolls Royce. Say why?"

"I was going to say why."

"Well, I say why not?"

"But you've got five cars already. You don't want another."

"My dear chap, don't rub it in. I can't help being one of those unlucky beggars who's got so much, through no fault of his own, that he doesn't want anything else. Don't heave bricks at me when I wake up with a mild desire for something I don't need. Encourage me. Help me to work up an interest in an expensive toy. Tempt me into getting rid of some of my superfluous cash. It helps some other feller, y'know, and anyway the only thing I've never done is to desire a Rolls Royce, and I dreamt about it all night. Will you come and let me see if I can break your neck?"

"All right! A good way of getting it in shape for to-morrow. You'll drive out to Greenwich, won't you?"

Franklin looked up quickly from the plate which had been occupying his close attention. "Greenwich? Why Greenwich?"

Fraser grinned again. He seemed to find a lot of grim amusement in Franklin. "You read me a telegram that you sent off from the yacht accepting Mrs. Vanderdyke's invitation for the Pastoral house-party."

"Oh, my God, yes!"

"But perhaps you'll have to undergo a slight operation or sit by the bedside of a sick relative, or something."

"No; I shall go. I promised Ida Larpent I'd meet her there."

"Oh!" said Fraser, dryly. "I see." He hoped to draw further details.

But Franklin let it go. There were so many far more vital things to talk about than women.

"By Jove!" said Fraser, going off at a tangent. "I envy you this house-party. You'll be able to talk to Beatrix."

"Well, that won't worry me much." Franklin had passed from sausages to Virginia ham and was still going strong.

"Maybe not. Your attention is occupied. It would worry me a whole lot, though. That girl has a strange effect on me. Always has, ever since I met her. That was before she left this country to be put to school in England. I only have to catch her eyes to begin to tremble at the knees. Ever had that queer sensation?"

"Twice," said Franklin, taking another cup of coffee.

"Who were they?"

"One was a tiger in the Indian bush, and the other a crazy Chinaman running amuck in San Francisco. They both made my knees waggle."

Fraser lit a cigarette, inhaled a mouthful of smoke and let it dribble through his nostrils. The first cigarette is worth going through breakfast to achieve. "Well," he said, without any of the self-consciousness that generally goes with the pulling down of the fourth wall, "I don't mind telling you, Pel, old man, but I'd give ten years of my life to marry Beatrix Vanderdyke."

"An expensive hobby," said Franklin.

"Yes, quite. But I knew her when she was a little bit of a slip of a thing, before she realized what it meant to bear that dollar-weighted name. She was the sweetest kid I ever saw. She might have been left behind by the fairies. I watched the gradual change take place in her and the disastrous effect of governesses who licked the blacking off her boots and the army of servants who treated her as though she were the First National Bank come to life. I was one of the people, almost unnoticed, who stood on the pier and watched her sail for England with her mother and father and their retinue. Since her return and during the time that she was a débutante and every newspaper in the country knelt at her feet I have met her perhaps a dozen times—the opera, the horse show, the races, and so on. She has given me two fingers and half a smile. She has been utterly and absolutely spoiled. She doesn't seem to be even distantly related to the little girl with the fairy face with whom I used to play in the country. And that's why I should like to marry her, and would make a huge sacrifice to do it. You may laugh and call me all sorts of a fool, but I should like to make it my business to chip off the outer layer of artificiality and affectation which has been plastered all over by her training and atmosphere. I would willingly die in hefty middle-age in order to bring back into that girl's eyes once more the look that she used to have as a child, so help me God!"

With extreme surprise Franklin watched his usually unemotional friend get up and walk over to the window. His voice had shaken with deep feeling and there was a sincerity so profound in the sudden disclosure of his soul that it put him outside the region of chaff. And so Franklin left him alone and swallowed the badinage which he had intended to throw at him. "Ye gods!" he thought. "I wonder if I shall ever meet a woman who will make me think such things as that, or go the eighth of an inch out of my way. I rather wish I could." He possessed enough humor and imagination to know that he was not unlike the girl under discussion; that he, like her, had been born in surroundings that were peculiarly artificial and altogether unlike those of the average man; that the enormous wealth to which he had succeeded made any sort of effort unnecessary, and left him without the urgent incentive for the good and glorious grapple for a place in the sun, which made most of his countrymen prove themselves and their worth.

He led the way into the studio where all that his life could show hung on the walls. Each head and each stuffed fish and every one of the skins had its interest, but as he looked round the huge room he told himself that they all came to very little and proved that he was a fine example of a man who had done nothing but play games. His toys were very empty and meaningless. A new and curious impatience with himself came over him. He was rather annoyed with Fraser for having shown him the quivering nerve of his hitherto hidden sincerity. "My God!" he thought. "I wonder when I shall begin to live!"

IV

It was twelve o'clock before Beatrix left the house with Mrs. Lester Keene and walked down to Fifty-seventh Street. To the relief of the gasping city, a phalanx of dark clouds had put out the sun. A storm which had burst with great violence over Westchester County was bearing slowly down. The air was heavy and windless, and the gasoline vapor from all motor traffic hung like an oily veil everywhere. The seats in the Park were filled with listless people. Men sat on the tops of busses with their coats off. The very trees looked tired and sapless.

"I wonder how soon we shall get the storm," said Beatrix.

Mrs. Keene fanned herself with an envelope. "The sooner the better. This heat is unbearable. Don't you think, dear, that you can leave town to-night? I'm longing to get back to the country."

Beatrix crossed the street. The only cool figure in the city was that of the rather too plump young woman who stood naked and unashamed over the fountain in the geometrical open space in front of the Plaza. "Oh, yes, I could, of course," she said, "but if you can put up with another night here, I won't. I'm not going to allow mother and father and Aunt Honoria to imagine that I'm awed by them—that would be weak. For the sake of the whole of the younger generation I must maintain my attitude of complete independence." She glanced at the line of automobiles which were drawn up outside the famous shop in Fifty-seventh Street. "The Dames from Virginia seem to be keeping Raoul fairly busy. I rather hope that Tubby will be here to-day. She is such fun."

"Tubby" was the nickname which had been given to the astute woman who had started her dressmaking business in London and extended it to New York,—a woman who had married an Italian Count and who, with consummate art and the assistance of an imaginative press agent, ran herself as though she were an actor-manager and her shops as though they were theatres. By charging enormous prices and calling her frocks by poetical names she had bluffed the gullible public into believing that she was the last word—the very acme of fashion. Like most charlatans who succeed, she had grown to believe that she was what she said she was,—an artist who had been sent into the world not for the purpose of making money or any such vulgar and banal proceeding, but in order to design coverings for female forms which would leave as much of them as possible open to the gaze without causing the arrest of the wearer.

At the first sight of Beatrix there was a stir and a rustle among a collection of tall, willowy and rather insolent young women who were lolling about, and a whisper of "Miss Vanderdyke" was passed from one to the other. Tubby's deputy wabbled forward,—herself a lady of very generous proportions who shone, like a fat seal, in very shiny satin. "Oh, good morning, Miss Vanderdyke!" she said, deferentially. "Your costume is well advanced. Will you be good enough to step upstairs?"

Beatrix nodded. "Is Tubby here to-day?" she asked.

The seal-like lady looked as though she had received a prod from a sharp fork. "No," she said, "the Countess is feeling the strain of an even more than usually busy season. She is undergoing a rest cure. As you know, she's very high-strung."

"I'm sorry," said Beatrix.

Followed by Mrs. Keene, she went up a wide staircase painted white and arrived at what Tubby invariably called the "atelier," on the first floor. Here the Southerners, to whom Beatrix had referred, were undergoing the apparently exciting process of being tried on. There were perhaps a dozen women in the large airy room, and each one was surrounded by fitters sticking pins into various parts of them and paying no sort of attention to the suggestions or the protests of their victims.

A very special girl came forward with the Shakesperian costume that was being carried out, or "created," as Tubby would say, for Beatrix. It was a sort of Titania costume, white, loose and airy, with a shimmer here and there of silver, which could very easily have been made at home for a mere nothing. The special girl, with a quiet "If you will allow me," unhooked Beatrix's frock, murmuring one or two well-turned compliments as to her figure, and helped her into the robe that was to cause a sensation in the Queen Anne gardens of the Vanderdyke country house.

Utterly unconscious of the other women in the room, Beatrix swept up to the astonished Mrs. Keene, and in a high clear voice, cried out: "Set your heart at rest; the fairy land buys not the child of me. His mother was a votaress of my order; and in the spiced Indian air, by night, full often hath she gossip'd by my side; and sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, marking the embarked traders on the flood; when we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind——"

"Oh, my dear!" cried Mrs. Keene. "Do you remember that there are people present. That may be Shakespeare, but really his choice of words is very shocking."

Beatrix burst out laughing. "You should have waited for the next few lines, Brownie. Even I am going to blush when I spout them under the trees. Yes," she said to the girl, "I think this costume will do quite well. Don't forget to let me have a wand. The wreath I'll make myself of real flowers. Shall I have to come again?"

"No, Miss Vanderdyke, there's nothing to do now except the silver belt, and we needn't trouble you as to that."

"Well," said Beatrix, "I shall leave town to-morrow directly after lunch. Be sure you send the dress round to my house in good time. Thank you. Good morning."

Mrs. Keene gave a little cry. "Oh, you've forgotten to put on your frock, dear," she said.

"Have I? It's so hot it didn't seem necessary."

Beatrix came back. She had already arrived half-way towards the staircase in what was a most bewitching undress. She never could resist the temptation of putting Mrs. Keene on tenter-hooks. She stepped into her frock and submitted to being hooked up. She noticed that the girl who had tried her on looked very pale and tired. "Aren't you going away?" she asked.

A rather wan smile passed over the girl's pretty face. "No, Miss Vanderdyke, not this year."

"What, you aren't going to take any holiday at all?"

The girl shook her head. "My mother has been very ill, and doctor's bills——"

"I'm so sorry," said Beatrix. "What's your name?"

"Mary Nicholson."

Beatrix went over to Mrs. Keene, who was examining a Paris model between the windows. She opened a bag which hung on the elderly lady's arm and took out a cheque-book. Armed with this she made her way over to a desk, sat down and wrote a cheque for five hundred dollars, payable to the girl whom she had seen constantly on duty since the previous October. This she slipped into an envelope and wrote on it, "Please take a little holiday to oblige me?" And having returned the cheque-book to the ample bag in which Mrs. Keene kept enough necessities to provide against shipwreck or other likely accidents, slipped the envelope into the girl's hand and said "Good-bye. Let me know about your mother."

On the way down stairs the first crash of thunder broke over the city and heavy rain beat against the window. "We shall have to drive home," said Beatrix. "Will you ask them to call up a taxi?"

Her ladyship's deputy came forward. "I hope you found the costume to your liking, Miss Vanderdyke."

"Oh, yes," said Beatrix. "It'll do very well. I shall have to be very careful how I'm photographed, because if I stand against the light there'll be very little left to the imagination."

"This's an artistic age," replied Madame, with a sly smile.

Beatrix joined her companion under the shop's awning, from the corners of which the rain came down in long streams. The uniformed man, with "Raoul" on his hat, was making frantic endeavors to obtain a cab, but without success. The line of taxis outside the Great Northern Hotel had been taken.

"I'm afraid we shall have to wait," said Mrs. Keene.

"I don't mind the rain," said Beatrix. "Let's walk."

"I'd so much rather not, dear," said Mrs. Keene. "Getting wet always brings on my rheumatism, and will absolutely spoil my dress. Have patience for at least five minutes."

"D'you think I can?" asked Beatrix. "Five minutes is a long time."

Two men drove by in a new and beautiful limousine. The one who was not driving turned round and saw the two ladies standing under the awning. The car slowed down, turned and came smoothly up to Raoul's. Fraser jumped out and stood bare-headed in front of Beatrix.

"How d'you do?" he said. "Pretty bad storm this. Can we drive you anywhere?"

"Oh, hello!" said Beatrix. "I thought it must be you. Yes, it'll be awfully kind of you to give us a lift. Taxis seem to be at a premium. Mrs. Lester Keene—Mr. Malcolm Fraser."

"How d'you do," said Mrs. Keene, the thought of rheumatism and a spoiled dress at the back of her cordiality. "It is very kind of you to come to our rescue."

Fraser beamed at Beatrix. His whole whimsical, sincere and honest personality paid deference to her loveliness. "You owe me nothing," he said. "I wish you did. I only happened to see you standing here. It's Franklin's car."

Beatrix smiled back at him. He still seemed to her to be the self-constituted brother—the round-faced serious boy who used to look after her sled and carry her skates and make himself generally and generously useful. "You have a gift for happening to see people when they need you, Malcolm," she said, and he was amply rewarded.

Franklin got out of the car and came to meet Beatrix as she led the way under the rain-splashed awning.

"How are we to thank you, Mr. Franklin?" Beatrix held out a most gracious hand. "You come just at the moment when I was going to plough through all this wet."

"You'd have been soaked to the skin in about a minute," he said. "It's tropical." He held open the door of the limousine.

He showed a touch of reproof at her impatience which Beatrix was quick to catch. She remembered that invariably when she had met him there had been a suggestion of antagonism in his manner. For some reason she was not, she knew, altogether to his liking. It amused her. "I'll ride in front, if I may," she said, with the mischievous intention of seeing whether he would try to coerce her as he had done once before, "but I'll wait until you get in."

He, too, remembered the incident at a dance the year before when he had told her that she was sitting in a dangerous draught and asked her to move, and she had declined. He stood up to her. This spoiled, wilful girl needed a master. He felt an impish desire to prevent her from getting her own way. "I'd rather you rode inside," he replied. "Then there'll be no chance of your getting wet."

"Please let me ride in front," said Beatrix, and a bewitching smile and a little upward look of appeal settled the matter.

Franklin returned to his seat and, when Beatrix was in, made a long arm over her knees and shut the door with a bang. "What a girl!" he said to himself. "As pretty as paint; but, ye gods, how she needs the spurs."

As sick as a dog that Beatrix was not with him, Fraser handed Mrs. Keene in and yelled, through another crash of thunder: "Go ahead, Pel!"

"Where may I drive you?"

"Anywhere you like," said Beatrix, airily. "I've nothing to do."

The rain was running in streams along the gutters and the day had gone as dark as though it were late evening. The sidewalks were deserted and people who had been caught were huddling under doorways. A clean, fresh smell had taken the place of stale gasoline.

Franklin was nonplussed. He looked round and saw the girl's delicately-cut profile with its short nose blunted at the tip, its rather full, red lips and round chin. She was sitting with her shoulders back, her head held high, and an air of supreme unconcern. In no part of the world, under any sort of sky, under any kind of condition had he seen a girl so delightful to the eye and so irritating to the temper. He and Fraser were on their way home and two men were going to lunch with them. It didn't matter to her whether he were on his way to a wedding or a funeral. She had nothing to do.

He sent the car forward, turned it into Fifth Avenue and drove up to the Vanderdyke house. Its great doors were boarded up and no footman was ready to spring out with a huge umbrella.

"I'm quite happy," said Beatrix. "May I sit here until this downpour relaxes a little? It's a very nice car."

Franklin sent out a big laugh. This young woman took the biscuit. It might go on pouring for an hour. But she was quite happy, she had nothing to do and therefore he must cry a halt to life and its obligations and engagements and be content, and even thankful, to sit at her side until such time as it pleased her and the storm to make a move.

"Please sit here as long as you like," he said. "Fraser and I have some men coming to lunch at one o'clock. Will you excuse me if we get out and leave you?"

"Of course," said Beatrix, without allowing him to see the remotest inkling of the fact that she knew how much he would love to treat her as though she were an unbroken colt. "Before you have to go, tell me about to-morrow. You'll drive, I suppose? I saw your name on mother's list for the Pastoral house-party, and she told me that you had agreed to play a small part."

"Yes, I shall drive," said Franklin, running his eyes over her curiously, thinking how beautiful she was and how badly she stood in need of coming up against love or grief. "Fraser's an old friend of yours, it appears," he added, looking at his watch.

"Indeed, yes. But mother doesn't know my old friends."

"I see." He knew that this implied question as to why Fraser was not included in the house-party was answered. This girl might have served as First Secretary to an Ambassador, or have been a leader of society for twenty years.

Then he opened the door of the car and stood bareheaded in the downpour. "I hope you won't be obliged to sit here long," he said. "I'll send a man along to look after the car. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Beatrix, with a perfectly straight face, but laughing at him with her eyes. "Thank you so much for rescuing and looking after two lone females."

"Come on, Malcolm," said Franklin, shortly.

And Fraser, wondering what sort of madness had attacked his friend, murmured things to the equally amazed elderly lady, bowed to the calm, slight, alluring figure in the front of the car and went.

Beatrix watched them duck their heads against the slanting rain which bounced up from the pavement and hurry away. "I like him for that," she thought. "I didn't think he would do it." Then she picked up the speaking tube and called out: "Brownie, so that you sha'n't get rheumatism and spoil your dress we're going to enjoy this shelter until the rain stops. And, by the way, I think the house-party's going to be fairly interesting after all."

V

The Vanderdyke house at Greenwich was built upon a point which jutted out into the Sound. It was not merely a house, it was an edifice,—a great florid, stiff, stone building which might easily have been a town hall, a public library, a museum, a lunatic asylum or a hospital. It had a peculiar green roof and many turrets, and it formed a landmark which could be seen for miles from all parts of the country.

A long drive through beautifully wooded gardens ablaze with lilac and rhododendron, and wide lawns bespattered with uncountable groups of erect tulips did much to soften the angular pomposity of the barrack which had been built by Beatrix's grandfather. Stone pergolas covered with climbing roses on the point of bursting into bloom shot out from the house and hid the ample stables and garages. An inspiring and invigorating view of the Sound caught the eye through the trees. There had been a belated spring, after a long and cantankerous winter, but now tree and shrub vied with one another and the first fresh green of them all was almost dazzling. The chestnuts, especially, were prodigal with bloom and looked like great Christmas trees thickly covered with bunches of white candles, and everywhere birds sang and went merrily about the little business of their lives.

The car in which Beatrix and Mrs. Lester Keene drove up was followed closely by Franklin's new Rolls Royce, in the body of which all his baggage was stacked. Franklin, who had been driving, sprang out and opened the door of the other car. "I've been dogging your heels," he said, "and incidentally getting all your dust. How d'you do?"

"Don't blame me for the dust," said Beatrix. "Why didn't you overtake us and finish the journey in bright conversation with the two grateful and admiring females to whom you behaved like a knight errant yesterday? You and I always seem to have a great deal to talk about, don't we?"

Franklin knew that she was pulling his leg. Hitherto, during their occasional meetings, their conversation had been more or less monosyllabic. He felt tempted to say that he preferred driving to talking to women, but held his peace. There would perhaps be plenty of opportunities of getting his own back.

They passed a double line of men-servants and went into the large hall together. Mrs. Keene gave one quick glance round and, imitating a rabbit which hears the approach of enemy, scuttled across to the elaborate staircase and hurried away. Mrs. Vanderdyke,—a very finished, rather too tall, insistently slight woman who never raised her voice and seldom laughed and seemed to be continually watching herself in a mental looking-glass,—met them. Her dark hair was dressed as carefully as a salad. Her perfectly correct and well-balanced face was as well painted as the cover of a magazine, and without any undue compression she wore a white frock which might have been made for a girl of twenty-four. She gave her left hand to Beatrix and placed a mere suggestion of a kiss on her left ear. "So you've come," she said. Her right hand she gave to Franklin, to whom she added, "You are very welcome."

"Thanks," said Franklin. "I'm delighted to be here."

And then Miss Honoria Vanderdyke sailed forward. With her white hair, thin, thoroughbred face, rather frail, tall figure and old-fashioned dress she might have stepped out of one of Jane Austen's books. Without any attempt to act the part, she looked every inch the great lady and stood frankly and proudly for all that was best of the generation which is scoffingly referred to as mid-Victorian. She, too, gave Beatrix a perfunctory greeting and the merest peck on the cheek, and turned with the utmost graciousness to Franklin. "I'm very glad to see you," she said. "Your father and I were old friends. I hope that we may know each other better."

Franklin bowed over her hand. In all his travels he had rarely seen a woman who so well lived up to his ideas of dignity and beauty grown old gracefully. "Thank you very much," he said. "You're very kind."

Then Mr. Vanderdyke made his appearance—the mere husk of a man—uneager, hypochondriacal, melancholy-looking, grey-headed, with a white moustache every hair of which seemed to be in a state of utter depression. Completely ignoring his daughter, he gave a limp hand to Franklin. "I'm glad to see you," he said, without any warmth, and then backed away and began to look at Beatrix with an expression of such pained surprise that she almost burst out laughing.

Her whole reception by the family proved to her that she was now regarded by them as the prodigal daughter. There was obviously going to be a scene presently. Well, she didn't care. She could hold her own against all of them. She almost wished that there was enough in her relations with Sutherland York to warrant their disturbed feelings. It was like eating an egg without salt to proceed into a row without a cause.

"I dare say that you'd like to go up to your room at once," said Mrs. Vanderdyke.

Franklin bowed, smiled and followed the footman upstairs.

Through the French windows Beatrix caught sight of a number of people having tea on one of the terraces. She made no effort to join them, but sat on the edge of a long, narrow table with bulbous legs and selected a magazine. Beneath her short frock rather more than two delicate ankles showed themselves. She saw no reason why they shouldn't, knowing that they were worth infinite admiration. Her father irritably acknowledged that he had never seen her so lovely, so cool, so self-possessed or more utterly desirable in her first sweet flush of beauty and youth. She seemed to say: "Come on, all of you, and get it over, and then let there be peace."

Her challenge was eagerly accepted by her mother, who looked round to see that the hall was deserted of guests and servants, and closed down upon Beatrix with more anger in her eyes than the girl had ever before seen in them.

"I don't quite know what's to be done with you," she said.

"I thought it was agreed that I shall play 'Titania,'" replied Beatrix, glancing up with an air of mild surprise. "I've brought a charming costume with me."

Aunt Honoria joined in. "In my opinion the moment is ill-chosen for this unpleasant business. It might better have been reserved until our guests are changing for dinner. However, there's every excuse for your mother's impatience, Beatrix, and as the matter is one about which we all feel very deeply it will be well for you to take it seriously."

Beatrix gave a little bow.

"In the history of the family," said Mr. Vanderdyke, with more feeling than anyone had ever seen him display, "never before has one of its women been connected with a scandal."

Beatrix laid down the magazine. "Somebody said that scandal comes from the mouth of Ananias." She gave them all the epigram for what it was worth.

Her mother spoke again. "Aunt Honoria has had a letter from a friend of hers telling her that you've been seen going into the apartment of a portrait painter, called Sutherland York, late at night."

"And coming out," added her father.

"I should naturally come out," said Beatrix, smiling at him as though he had said an unintentionally comic thing.

"It has been reported to me," said Aunt Honoria, "that as often as once a week during the winter and spring you've visited this man alone at night. You don't deny that?"

"Oh, no."

"Good God!" said Mr. Vanderdyke.

"And you don't deny that you were there last night?"

"The night before last," said Beatrix quietly.

Mrs. Vanderdyke almost raised her voice. "What you could see in a flamboyant creature of that type——"

"That isn't the point," said Aunt Honoria. "We are not concerned as to whether Beatrix has developed vulgar tastes and has found this painter attractive. We are concerned with the fact that for some utterly inadequate and inexcusable reason, she has surrounded our name with a net-work of vulgar gossip which, inevitably, will find its way into the scurrilous paragraphs of the carrion press."

"For the first time in history!" Mr. Vanderdyke almost wailed.

"We're very jealous of our good name," continued Aunt Honoria. "We've endeavored to set an example to society. It's inconceivable to us that it should have been left to you, old enough as you are to appreciate the truth of things, to put a slur upon us and with an obvious disregard for our reputation the subject of smoke-room gossip. I don't think that even you could make me believe that you've played the fool with this picturesque person, who, I hear, makes professional love to the silly wives of men with more money than sense. I can see that you've been merely indulging your latent sense of adventure or trying to persuade yourself that you've been playing the heroine's part in a romance."

"I wonder," said Mrs. Vanderdyke.

Beatrix gave her a quick look. The implication of those two words hit her hard. But she said nothing, and gave the white-haired lady another little bow.

"A portrait-painting charlatan!" said Mr. Vanderdyke.

Aunt Honoria paid very little attention to these interruptions. "That's my firm belief. Please God, I'm justified. You were asked to return last night, so that this most unfortunate business might be gone into quietly. You exercised the right of modern youth to tell us that we might go to the devil. Let me assure you, my dear Beatrix, now that you've chosen to come, that we do not intend to be relegated to that person, even to oblige you. On the contrary, the point that has been gone into during your absence is the place to which we are going to relegate you."

"I don't quite understand," said Beatrix.

Her mother put in "probably not," to the peculiar discussion which was being conducted, on the face of it, as though its subject were politics,—without outward heat, angry gesture or raised voices, but with an intensity of feeling that made the air vibrate all round these four ultra-civilized people.

"And I am very far from well," said Mr. Vanderdyke, with curious irrelevance.

Beatrix very nearly laughed. "Dear old Daddy," she said to herself, "how funny he can be."

"We came to a decision this morning," said Aunt Honoria, "in which I think you'll be interested. Your attitude over the telephone on top of my very inconvenient visit to New York the night before last,—of which, naturally, your companion told you,—was a pretty conclusive proof that you're quite callous of what has been and will be said about you and that you show no inclination to accept our demands, requests or pleadings to tone down your supreme individualism to a normal level and give up playing the ostrich in town. In short, my dear Beatrix, we realize that unless we assert our authority this once and make it impossible for you to get us all into a deeper scandal, you'll continue to 'carry on,'—I quote the expression from the language of the servants' hall,—either with York or some other equally impossible member of the long-haired brigade."

"I'm old enough to take care of myself, I think," said Beatrix.

"We don't," said her mother.

"Nor of us and the family reputation," added Aunt Honoria, "which, as I've said already, is the point. You'll go through with the pastoral,—that'll avoid comment,—then you'll see a doctor and it'll be given out that your constitution needs an entire change of air and scene. About a week after the present house-party has broken up you'll join me on a visit to my cottage in Maine, and there you'll spend a quiet, thoughtful year learning how to live from nature, with my devoted assistance."

Mrs. Vanderdyke punctuated this sentence of banishment with an inaudible comment.

A sort of groan came from Mr. Vanderdyke. He adored his only child.

With a supreme effort of will, Beatrix controlled an almost overwhelming desire to scream at what was, to her way of thinking, a form of punishment quite barbarian in its severity. She remained, instead, in an attitude of polite patience, determining to die rather than to show how awful the very thought of such an excommunication was to her, who was only really happy when in the whirl of town life. Her inherent honesty made her confess to herself that, little as she realized it at the time,—never having stopped in her impetuous desire to go her own way and carry out her own wishes,—she had laid herself open to every charge brought against her. She owned that her indiscretion had been colossal, and instantly dismissed all idea of giving her family a picture of the utter harmlessness of her relations with York. She disliked and regretted having brought the family name into the mouth of gossipers as much as the three people who stood over her and knew perfectly well that they fully intended to carry the punishment out to its bitter end. But,—and here her fertile mind began to work,—was there a single living person so foolish as to believe that she was made of the feeble stuff that knuckled down to the loss of one whole exciting season in town for the lack of a brain wave? Had she ever yet, either in the nursery or in school, so wanted in courage or in wit as not to have been able to carry out a quick and effective counterstroke against authority? Not she!

She looked up, avoided the eyes of her father, mother and aunt, and saw Pelham Franklin in the gallery that ran round the hall. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at a portrait of the Vanderdyke who had come over from Holland to lay the foundations of a great fortune. A sudden impish and daring idea took possession of her. She would use this man, as she had hitherto used any other likely person, to triumph over her present quandary, and trust to her invariable good luck to see her through. It was the legitimate outcome of her autocratic upbringing, the fact that she had had it instilled into her from babyhood that she had only to raise her finger to obtain her own way. Acting, as usual, on impulse and not stopping to give a second's thought to the complications that might be caused by it, she turned back to the three people who stood waiting for her to speak with a very sweet smile, and the glorious knowledge that she could turn the tables upon them and become top-dog again. She was going to fight for that season in town with all her strength, never mind who paid for her success.

"I'm very sorry about all this," she said, "and I want you to believe that I had no intention of inspiring unpleasant remarks or putting you to all this pain. But you'll be glad to hear that this story about my visits to Sutherland York is only half true,—like most stories of the kind. It hasn't occurred to you, has it, that more than one man may live in York's apartment house and that I may have been going to see him?" She saw, with a quicker action of her heart, that Franklin was coming downstairs.

"It makes no difference whether the man you went to see was York or another," said Aunt Honoria, in her most incisive way. "The fact remains that everyone is talking about your visits to some man, alone at night."

Franklin caught the words, gave a quick, sympathetic glance at Beatrix, whom he rather pitied,—he detested family rows,—and drew up to examine another picture, with well-simulated interest.

Beatrix began to enjoy herself. A wave of exhilaration swept over her. She had a surprise in store for her family that would transfer her from the position of a prodigal daughter to that of a Joan of Arc, a Grace Darling, a Florence Nightingale. Never mind who paid!

She raised her voice so that Franklin should hear her. "I would willingly and without any argument be sent to the backwoods for a year if I'd made a fool of myself with a man like Sutherland York. He was never anything more to me than a poseur and a freak, and as such he amused me. But what will you and all these people with nasty minds say if I tell you that I had every right to pay midnight visits to the man who lived in the studio opposite to York's, and if there is anything attaching to our name it is not scandal, but romance?"

Franklin wheeled round. What on earth was the girl trying to suggest to save her skin?

An amazing change came over the three accusers. They all knew that Franklin's rooms were in the same building as York's,—Franklin, the man whom they would rather see married into their family than anyone alive.

"W-what d'you mean?" cried Mr. Vanderdyke, stammering in his eagerness.

Mrs. Vanderdyke lost her perfect reserve for once and grasped her daughter's arm. "Tell us! Tell us!" she cried.

Over Aunt Honoria's face the beginning of a new understanding came. "What is this right, Beatrix?" she asked. "What is it?"

Beatrix came to the jump, rose to it and cleared it at a bound, with every drop of blood in her lovely body tingling with excitement and a glorious sense of being alive, being beautiful, being able to carry everything before her. She was leaping from one scrape to another, but in this one she was dealing with a sportsman who would help her somehow.

"The right," she said, throwing up her head, "of a girl who goes to see the man to whom she has been secretly married."

She rose, and with exquisite shyness and her fair skin touched with the color that nature paints upon the petals of apple blossoms, went across to Franklin and ran her hand through his arm.

VI

In her relief at being able to put a stop to the ugly story which coupled the names of Beatrix Vanderdyke and Sutherland York, Aunt Honoria,—who invariably took the lead in all matters relating to her family,—not only at once gave out to the house-party the news of the romantic marriage of her niece and Pelham Franklin, but, with her characteristic thoroughness, called up the editor of the New York Times and gave it to him for immediate publication. In her mind's eye she saw the front page of the next day's issue setting forth under big headlines, with photographs of the happy couple, an elaborate account of the wealth and importance of the families of Vanderdyke and Franklin. This would be taken up and spun out by all the other papers in the country, and then, she rejoiced to know, would be killed the insidious scandal with which the family name had been connected to the horror and pain of all who bore it.

Neither she, nor any of the members of the house party, stopped to ask a single question. They had swallowed the story of Beatrix and Sutherland York whole. They now swallowed the news of the secret marriage with the same appetite. It is the human way. The details mattered nothing. The motive which led to so unusual a proceeding as a secret marriage, the place and date of the ceremony, mattered nothing. They had all believed without corroboration that Beatrix had fallen a victim to the picturesque attractions of the much-advertised portrait painter. In the same way they accepted the new and much more exciting fact and hastened to congratulate their hostess and the two young people concerned.

Beatrix found herself, as she knew that she would, the heroine of the family. Her mother smiled upon her during the remainder of the day and frequently placed her usually unemotional hand on her daughter's shoulder and said: "My dear, dear child," or "dear Beatrix."

Her father,—that rather pathetic figure, a man who had never done a stroke of work since his birth—whose immense wealth had utterly deprived him of the initiative to do things, conquer things or achieve things, and who found himself in late middle-age without having discovered the master-secret of life—how to live,—came out of his almost settled melancholia for the time being and behaved at dinner like any ordinary healthy, normal man, laughing frequently and cracking little jokes with his guests.. Whenever he caught his daughter's eyes he gave her the most tender and appreciative smile, and came so far out of his shell as to raise his glass to Franklin, who responded with a very queer smile.

As for Aunt Honoria,—a past-mistress in the art of graciousness,—so proud and happy was she that her pet ambition of a union between her family and Franklin's had been fulfilled, that she readily forgave the unconventional behavior of the two young people, the lack of a wonderful wedding and a great society function, and beamed upon them both. She caught Beatrix as she was about to dash upstairs to change for dinner and folded her arms about the girl, whose eyes danced with the spirit of mischief and the sheer fun of it all. "My darling," she said, "you've made me very happy. No wonder you came home to-day defiant and with a high head. You held a royal flush. You've won the love of a man, my dear. Honor and respect it, and may God bless you!"

Upstairs in her room, whose windows gave a view of the Sound that was indescribably charming, Beatrix had a brief, almost breathless talk with Mrs. Lester Keene, to whom the story of the secret marriage had come as a frightful shock. This amiable, weak woman, hide-bound in her ideas of right and wrong, met her with nerves unstrung, and incoherent in her terror of being implicated in what she knew to be a lie.

But Beatrix waved her stammering reproaches aside. "Brownie," she cried, at the top of her form, "whatever happens you're safe, so don't worry. I've jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, but I'm an excellent jumper and I believe in luck. I dare not think where the next spring will land me, so I'm not going to think. Sufficient unto the day, you know, and Franklin is a sportsman. All I know is that at this moment I'm the little pet of all the world; that I had the unspeakable delight of turning the tables on my people and that I feel as beautiful as I look,—and that's saying a good deal. Now run away and tell Helene to come and dress me as befits a young wife still on her honeymoon." She gave the elderly, disturbed lady a kiss on both her cheeks, shooed her out of the room and broke into song.

Only once during dinner did she permit herself to meet Franklin's eyes and then, for the first time since she had sprung her suddenly conceived surprise upon her irate family, she received a momentary shock which ran through her body like that of electricity, leaving her tingling and frightened. But with her abounding capacity for recovery and her all-conquering belief in herself and her gift for getting out of scrapes she shook the feeling off and went through the rest of the evening in the highest spirits. No one had ever seen her looking so brilliantly or so exquisitely beautiful. Her eyes shone like stars, her dimples came and went and came again. She was the life of the house, moving from group to group like a young Helen—a wood nymph—the very spirit of joy and laughter. Not for the ninety-ninth part of a second did she permit herself to pull up and wonder what she had done; where her impetuous, hare-brained, autocratic desire for self-preservation might lead. Never for an instant, or the fraction of an instant, did she give a thought to the appalling difficult position into which her spur-of-the-moment scheme had placed Franklin. What she had done she had done, and there, for the time being, was the end of it. Somehow or other everything would come right, as it always did. Why else was she who she was? Why else had she been led to believe that the earth, the sun and the moon were hers. It was all the natural correlation of her training since she had been brought into the world.

Franklin allowed Beatrix to avoid a talk with him until many of the guests had gone to bed. Between the moment when she had slipped her arm through his and made that urgent and almost childlike appeal which had carried him off his feet and left him without caution and sanity, and the one when he stalked across the pompous hall to her side and drew her into an alcove, he had done some peculiar thinking. He was a straight-going, honest fellow, who, like Beatrix, had gone through life having his own way. No living soul had ever before coerced him from the path that he had chosen. He was in no sense of the word a lady's man, and he had no idea of marrying and settling down until he had had enough of hunting and camping.

He had watched Beatrix closely. He had seen her reinstated into the family favor, taking the congratulations that were poured upon her by them and their friends with a charming dignity that took his breath away. He guessed, of course, that he had been "used" by Beatrix to save herself from punishment, because he had been obliged to overhear the last part of the family attack. But he expected from moment to moment that she would either permit him to deny the story of the secret marriage or do so herself. It was inconceivable to him that this lie was to be allowed to get them both deeper and deeper into a most deplorable tangle.

He was blazing with anger when at last he found her alone for a moment, and he made no attempt to hide it. "I want a word with you," he said shortly.

Beatrix tried to escape. "A little later," she said.

"No, now."

"I'm so sorry——"

Franklin took her arm and led her into the quiet corner. "Sit down," he said.

There was something so new and refreshing in receiving orders, that Beatrix gave a little laugh and obeyed.

Franklin took a seat at her side. Their knees almost touched.

"You evidently take me for many kinds of a fool," he said.

"Not at all. May I trouble you for a cushion?" She bent slightly forward.

He placed one behind her back. "Whether you do or not, you've made me one,—the most colossal example of a damned idiot I've ever struck."

"Oh, please don't say that."

Franklin's eyes flicked. This girl could be flippant under such circumstances, could she? She could sit knee to knee with an angry man and remain as self-possessed and undisturbed as though she were resting between dances. Well, he would show her with whom she was dealing!

"Before your mother goes to bed," he said, "I'm going to put my foot through this yarn of yours and give the game away."

"Oh, no," replied Beatrix, "you'll certainly not do that."

"Why not?"

"Because, in addition to many other attributes, you happen to be a sportsman."

"But how long d'you imagine I'm to let this thing go on?"

"I haven't thought about it."

"Don't you see that you'd better begin to think pretty quickly?"

"No. Everything is going very well. Why disturb it?"

"But look at it from my point of view."

"To tell you the truth—I usually do tell the truth—to-day has been the exception that proves the rule,—I'm only able at present to look at it from mine."

"You realize that every hour makes the whole thing more impossible. It'll all be in the papers to-morrow."

"Isn't that exciting? I hope they'll be able to get an attractive photograph of you." Her heart was beating more and more quickly.

Franklin began to pull his short moustache. He hardly dared to trust to his choice of words. Yesterday he had told himself that this girl wanted the spurs. The thought came back to him as he sat racking his brain for some way out of the ghastly mess into which she had placed him. He saw that it was no earthly use to endeavor to talk sensibly to her and that she had made up her mind to hold him to the mad plan of escape into which she had dragged him. Very good. He would show her that sportsmen were also very human men.

He raised his finger to a footman who was crossing the hall. "Have my things taken at once from my room to Mrs. Franklin's," he said, and, as the man bowed and went, put his hand under the elbow of the girl—who had turned as white as the gardenia at her waist—and added: "Let's go and say good night, darling. It's time for bed."

Beatrix turned upon him and wrenched her arm away. "You don't know what you're saying," she said.

"Oh, yes, I do. You've had your way to-day, I'm going to have mine to-night. Two can play your game, you know, and I'm going to show you how completely I can play it when I choose."

He took her hand in a grip of iron and led her to where Mrs. Vanderdyke was standing with Aunt Honoria. He looked the loving husband to the life. "Good night," he said. "Bee and I are rather tired after an exciting day."

Mrs. Vanderdyke gave him her hand, with her best smile. "And to-morrow we begin rehearsing and shall all be very busy. Good night."

"You look quite tired, my darling," said Aunt Honoria tenderly.

Beatrix received the kiss, tried to return the smile and to find even one word to say, but her heart was trembling, and her hand was held so tight that her fingers were crushed together. She heard other remarks as though they were spoken a long way off, felt herself guided and controlled up the wide stairway as if she were walking in a dream, and found herself standing in the gallery.

"Which is your room!"

It was not a question. It was an order, sharp and short.

She pointed to the door, shaking like a frightened deer.

But when she stood inside her room, heard the door shut and locked, and saw Franklin with his white teeth gleaming under his moustache, her voice came back and she clasped her hands together in a very ecstasy of appeal.

"Let me off! Please, please let me off!"

Franklin shot out a laugh. "Not I. You've told everybody that you're my wife. Good. Live up to it."

He took the key out of the lock and put it in his pocket. Then he sat down and crossed one leg over the other. "How long will you be?" he asked.

This girl needed the spurs. He intended to use them.

VII

The sound of the key turning in the lock of her door had an instant and peculiar effect on Beatrix. It awoke in her the same primeval spirit which had carried Franklin into her bedroom on the wave of an infuriated impulse. It made her realize that the time for protest was over; that the moment when she could appeal (with any hope of success) to this man's sense of honor had passed. It was through her own action, and she knew it, that she had cracked the skin-deep veneer of civilization and rendered Franklin the mere savage which most men become under the influence of one or other of the passions.

Self-preservation was the instinct which was now uppermost in her mind. Alone, without help, with only her native wit to fall back on, she had to save herself from the almost unbelievable crisis that she had so lightly brought about. She grasped this fact quickly enough. One look at Franklin's face made it plain,—his blazing eyes, his set mouth, the squareness of his jaw.

It was characteristic of her, however, that while still under the first shock of his threat, his presence and the knowledge that he intended to carry out his purpose with all the cold-bloodedness and cruelty which comes from wounded vanity, the thought of the fight which faced her filled her with a sort of mental delight. Here, if you like, was something new upon which she could bend her whole ingenuity—something which sent the monotony of her all-too-complete existence flying as before a cyclone. Her blood danced. Her spirits rose. Her eyes sparkled like those of the mountaineer who stands at the foot of a summit which has hitherto been unclimbed. She gave a little laugh as all these things flashed through her brain. She thrilled with the sense of adventure which had always been latent in her character and which was the cause of the amazing position in which she now found herself. Like a superb young animal brought to bay, she turned to defend herself, strung up to fight with every atom of her mental and physical strength for that which counted for more than life. That she regarded her antagonist with respect surprised her a little, but she was glad to make the discovery, because it made the fight all the more worth while. She recognized in this tall, wiry, dark-haired man, who looked in the very pink of condition and bore on his well-cut young face the tan of sun and wind, someone who had in him every single one of her own faults, whose training and environment were the same as her own, who had been made as impatient of control from the possession of excessive wealth as she was, and whose capacity for becoming untamed the very moment that the thin layer of culture which education gives falls in front of passionate resentment was similar in every way to that which had made her lie to her family.

It was with the feeling that she was leading lady in an extremely daring society drama, that she took what she inwardly called the stage, as much mistress of herself as she had been in the rooms of the portrait painter. When she turned up the shaded lights on her dressing-table and over the fireplace she did so with the rhythmic movement and the sense of time which would have been hers had she rehearsed the scene and been now playing it to a crowded house on the first night of a metropolitan production. She seemed to hear the diminuendo of the orchestra and to feel that curious nervous exhilaration that comes from the knowledge of being focused by thousands of unseen eyes. It was surely an almost uncanny sense of humor which allowed her to stand outside herself in this way and watch all her movements as though they were those of another person. But,—she knew her part. She had the confidence of one who has completely memorized her lines. Her triumph would be complete when she succeeded in making Franklin put the key back into the lock of her door and remove himself from her presence.

As Franklin examined the room in which he never imagined that he would find himself and had no desire to be his determination to get even with the spoiled girl who had used him to get herself out of a family fracas grew stronger and stronger. It seemed to him that the room,—almost insolent in its evidences of wealth,—was symbolic. It was not, he saw, the room of a young, healthy, normal girl so much as of a woman of the world, a highly finished, highly fastidious mondaine, who had won the right to live in an atmosphere of priceless tapestries, historic furniture, and a luxury that was quite Roman. He ran his eyes scornfully about and scoffed at the four-poster bed in which a French queen might have received, and probably did receive, the satellites and flatterers of her court; and saw through an open door not a mere bathroom, but a pool, marble-lined, with florid Byzantine decorations, discreetly lit. This thing angered him. It stood, he thought, as the reason for this girl's distorted idea of life—of her myopic point of view. It stood for many thousands of misplaced dollars which would, if sanely used, have provided much-needed beds for the accident wards of a hospital.

Not for the first time in his life, Franklin staggered at the sight of the abnormality of excessive wealth, and felt that he himself, like Beatrix, was nearer to lunacy than the ordinary human being because of the possession of it. The queer paradox of his having been made the instrument to bring this girl down from the false pedestal upon which she had stood ever since she was born, also struck him. He had never been much given to self-analysis or to the psychological examination of social conditions; but as he sat there in that large, lofty and extravagant, almost grotesquely furnished bedroom, more closely resembling that of one or other of the great courtezans than of an American girl in the first exquisite flush of youth, he came to the conclusion, with a savage sense of justice, that he would be doing something for civilization by bringing this millionaire's daughter face to face with the grim truth of things.

It was Beatrix who broke a silence which had only lasted a few minutes. "There are cigarettes at your elbow," she said. "Won't you smoke?"

Franklin looked up. The note of camaraderie in her voice surprised him. The last time he had heard her speak it was in a tone of agonized appeal. "No, thanks," he replied, "I've smoked enough."

"In training for one of your much-paragraphed athletic feats, perhaps," she said, a quizzical smile playing round her lips.

"I am," said Franklin. "Though I doubt whether this one will be as much advertised as the others." He looked steadily at her as he said this thing, caught the merest flick of her eyes and marked up to his credit the fact that she understood his meaning.

For several seconds these two eyed each other deliberately, like contestants in a prize ring. They measured each other up calculatingly without any attempt to hide the fact. It was with unwilling admiration that Franklin noted the girl's return to courage. He had to confess to himself that the fearless tilt of her chin and the superb grace of her attitude, which was as far from being self-conscious as though she were standing in the corner of a crowded drawing-room, pleased him. It was to be a fight, then. That was evident. The spirit of the huntsman rose in him as he realized this.

"Will you ring the bell for your maid?" he asked, making the first attack, "or shall I?"

She shook her head. "Pray don't trouble, there's plenty of time."

"I don't agree with you."

"Does that matter?"

"I think so."

"It's a free country."

She sat down in a chair which Louis XIV was popularly supposed to have used. The yellow light of a lamp on a silver pedestal fell upon her white shoulders.

Franklin got up. His blood raced through his veins. He didn't intend to stand any nonsense. He was going to show her precisely what it meant to be at the mercy of an impatient man. He went across to the door at the far end of the room and opened it. It disclosed a large and elaborate dressing-room lined with full-length mirrors, lighted like a theatre, and with a table covered with implements with tortoise-shell backs. There was another door beyond it. He turned the handle and threw it open. This was apparently a workroom, but much of it was in shadow. He saw a young, dark-haired woman kneeling on a chair with her shoulders rounded over a magazine spread out on a table. One black slipper had fallen off and lay on its side on the rug. A half-empty box of candies was near to her elbow. "Mrs. Franklin is ready for you," he said, and marched back again to his chair.

The maid, obviously French and with the characteristic Breton good-looks, followed him out, unable to disguise her amazement. She stood waiting for orders, with her hands clasped in front of her, in an attitude of rather serf-like humility,—a quiet, slight, black figure, touched with white at the collar and cuffs. Beatrix crossed her legs and settled herself more comfortably into her chair. "You may go back, Helene," she said. "I will call you presently."

The girl bowed and slipped quietly away. Then Beatrix turned to Franklin, with a most tantalizing air of intimacy. "I'm not tired," she said, "and although you are very thoughtful,—more so than most husbands, which is perfectly charming,—I'm all for a little bright conversation. I was rather bored during dinner and afterwards. Don't you think you might amuse me? You seem to be a very amusing person."

Franklin showed his teeth in a silent laugh. "You think so?"

"Well, the indications point to it."

"You have a very vivid imagination, my child."

"A man doesn't call his wife a child until he's been married to her at least ten years, and then is quarreling over her extravagances."

"You may be right," said Franklin, shortly. "You'll oblige me by ceasing to play the fool. I'm not in a mood for it. I'll do the maid's job if you don't want that girl in here."

He got up again and stood over her, apparently the very acme of importunity.

Beatrix only showed her fright by a slight distention of her nostrils. She burst out laughing. "Among your other achievements, then, you know how to unhook a frock."

"I do," said Franklin. "Stand up, will you, please?"

"My dear Mr. Franklin," she said, drawling ever so little, "I forget your Christian name,—isn't there something just a trifle Oriental in your tone?"

"Very likely," said Franklin.

Beatrix sat back and put up a smiling face. "How old are you?" she asked.

"Does that matter?"

"Oh, yes. I think so. I'm trying to piece you together like one of those picture puzzles that children and septuagenarians play with. It seems to me that you must have spent a certain number of years among the black races. When you speak I seem to hear the distant hollow noise of the tomtom and the quaint semi-religious nasal voices of half-clothed savages who stand cowed before you. Am I right, sir?" She laughed again, disguising her trepidation with the expertness of a finished actress.

Franklin turned away and helped himself to a cigarette. "You said that I could smoke."

"Of course."

With almost impish glee, Beatrix told herself that she had won the first round.

When a man pauses to smoke it is usually a sign either that he is tired or that he needs something to keep his nerves under control. Franklin lit a cigarette for the latter purpose. The girl's assumption of utter coolness made him want to take her roughly by the shoulders and shake her as he would a naughty child. Her air of enjoyment and mischief made him all the more determined to see the thing through to the logical end of it. He could see that she imagined she could mark time and possibly wear him out by the use of her wits, but that it did not occur to her how at any moment brute force might come into the argument. Ever since he had been old enough to go to school Franklin had resented being made a fool of, and any boy who had had the temerity to attempt to do so paid for it. He saw red on those occasions and could remember each one of them in every detail. He began to see red now. Not only had this young, wilful, uncontrolled child of wealth already made a most colossal fool of him, but there she was, calmer than he had ever seen her, treating him as though he were a green and callow youth, playing with him in order to break the monotony of a dull evening. His temper grew hotter.

"Listen!" he said. "It doesn't appear to be any use to treat you as an ordinary girl."

"Have you only just come to that conclusion?"

"I have broken in many thoroughbreds in my time, and unless you conform pretty quickly to the rules of the game that you have forced me to play, I shall have to use horse-breaking methods with you. Do you want me to put it plainer than that?"

"Before we go any further," said Beatrix, showing a most tantalizing flash of white teeth, "don't you think you ought to tell me what your Christian name is? I can't keep on saying 'My dear Mr. Franklin,' under these unconventional circumstances. It's so formal." She knew well enough, and he knew it.

"Get up!" said Franklin, thickly, keeping his hands off her with the greatest difficulty. "Either go to your maid, or call her in. I'm through."

With a little bow, Beatrix rose. It was perfectly evident to her that Franklin was rapidly becoming dangerous and that at any moment he might let himself go. What could she do? According to her family, this man was her husband and, as such, had the right to be in her room. To scream would only make her look ridiculous, unless she intended to give herself away, and this she was not prepared to do under any circumstances. She might be able to fence with Franklin a little longer and, as a last resource, to pursue the ordinary tactics of a woman cornered and throw herself on his mercy, with tears. Humiliation,—that was the thing she hated most. And as she faced Franklin again, with these things running rapidly through her mind, she felt once more a renewed sense of admiration for his grim determination to punish. She owned to herself with perfect frankness that this odd and neurotic fight was between the two most spoiled children of her country. The sense of humor which was her saving grace gave her the power to see it in the light of something which was not without value and meaning in her life. If she had actually to fight like a wild-cat, she intended that the morning should find her as she was at that moment.

"Will you call Helene, then?" she said.

Franklin went across the room to the door of the maid's cubby-hole and rapped.

Beatrix, seized with a new idea, followed Franklin and with a touch of masterly audacity stood at his side with her hand on his arm. "Don't you think we make a charming picture of connubial felicity?"

"Don't you think we make a charming picture of connubial felicity?"

"My God!" said Franklin.

The maid came out, and as she did so, Beatrix made a dart into her room. She had suddenly remembered that she could escape through it into the main part of the house, and that if she could get away and find shelter in the arms of her fluttering companion she would be safe for that night at any rate.

But Franklin was too quick for her. He caught her by the arm just as she was about to win the first round.

"Oh, no, you don't," he said, and picked her up in his arms, carried her back into the bedroom and dumped her down on a divan as though she were a bundle of feathers.

Then he turned to the maid. "Just lock your door and bring me the key." And when in a moment it was timidly handed to him, he added, sharply: "Now get Mrs. Franklin ready for the night."

Beatrix stopped the girl as she padded softly over to the dressing-room. "Wait a minute, Helene," she said, and turned towards Franklin. "This is the hour when I drink a glass of hot milk, oh, my lord and master! Have I your gracious permission to continue the habit to-night? If so, will you permit my handmaiden to go below and get it for me?"

Franklin held out the key. Helene took it, and he turned on his heel.

With an eel-like movement Beatrix slipped from the divan, made a dart at the French girl and in a quick whisper told her to go and fetch Mrs. Lester Keene at once. Whereupon, under the firm belief that this new manoeuvre made her top-dog, all her audacity and self-assurance returned. With Brownie there to protect her she could really begin to enjoy herself and make Franklin wish, not only that he had never entered her room, but that he had never been born. She could play with him as a cat plays with a mouse. She could make him sting and smart under her badinage, She could make him see that he had placed himself in a position in which he would look the most egregious idiot, and eventually rout him from the scene with her laughter ringing in his ears. "It will take a better man than Mr. Pelham Franklin," she told herself, "to break me in."

She began her new tactics at once. She strolled over to where Franklin was standing and sat on the arm of a chair. Her color had come back and her eyes were sparkling. She looked like one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' pictures of Lady Hamilton come to life. "Tell me," she said, "what's your opinion of York? We may as well have a little bright conversation while Helene has gone on her domestic errand, don't you think so?"

Franklin looked at the girl with a sort of analytical examination. He admitted her courage and her spirit. He admitted her overwhelming beauty and her inherited assurance. But he began to wonder whether,—in spite of the little piteous appeal which had come involuntarily from her lips when she found herself alone with him,—there was not a streak of callousness in her nature which put her well up among some of the almost degenerate young women of her class.

"I only know York by sight," he said. "That was enough."

"Don't you think you take things too seriously? His fur coat, Italian moustache and flamboyant tie do put one off, of course, but he's one of the comics of the city and, as such, well worth knowing. I wonder you haven't dropped in to see him sometimes. He's conveniently near to you,—luckily for me." She gave a low laugh as she added the last words.

Franklin stood with his back against one of the carved bed-posts, with his hands in his pockets. In various parts of the world he had met all sorts and conditions of women, from the red-cheeked coquettish daughters of mountaineers to the glum squaws of dilapidated Indian chiefs. Also he had come in contact with the rather cold and quizzical society women of England, the great ladies of Paris who have made immobility a fine art, the notorious cocottes of all nationalities and many of those unconsciously pathetic but perfectly happy little women who, as artists' models of the Latin quarter, live with exquisite though temporary morality in an atmosphere in which morals are as scarce as carpets and as little needed. His acquaintanceship with all these various types had been casual, but he had been interested enough in them to study their characteristics, their mannerisms and their tricks. But here, in Beatrix Vanderdyke, was a girl who didn't come under any of the six types of women. She didn't conform in any one way either to his preconceived ideas of herself. Even his brutality hadn't disturbed her. She was still as unruffled as a white fan-tailed pigeon. Her eyes still gleamed with mocking laughter and there was not one single sign of fear, or even of nervousness, in her easiness and grace. His interest in her grew with every moment of delay and her desirability became more and more obvious with every moment that passed. He might have been inclined to let her off had she shown any weakness. His anger might have grown cold had she let him see anything of outraged maidenly modesty. But her present attitude egged him on, added fuel to his fire and doubled his desire to break her will.

"What do you propose to do to-morrow and the day after?" she asked, as though she had been married to him for some time and wanted to make her plans.

The question startled Franklin. "Sufficient for the night," he said.

Beatrix gave one of the tantalizing little bows which were so annoying to her mother. "I see! Probably I shall take my estimable, but rather irritating companion to Europe by the first possible boat. As Mrs. Franklin, I shall be doubly welcomed in English society. The combined and much-paragraphed wealth of our two families will make me a very romantic figure even in England, where blood is wrongly supposed to weigh more than money-bags. It will be very refreshing to be a free agent at last. I wonder what sort of thrill you'll get when you see my face in the Sketch and Tatler among actresses and cabinet ministers' wives and trans-Atlantic duchesses! By this time, of course, the epoch-making news of our alliance,—as Aunt Honoria calls it,—will have been flashed to the far ends of the earth. What'll you do if any legal person asks to see our marriage lines?"

The sheer impertinence of this young woman left him wordless, until, followed by the French maid, Mrs. Lester Keene,—hastily dressed in a discreet Jaeger dressing-gown,—fluttered tremulously in, hurried over to the girl who was popularly supposed to be in her charge, and put her arms dramatically around her shoulders. Then he cursed ripely beneath his breath.

Mrs. Lester Keene was one of those numerous women whose sense of the romantic, whose belief in the lowness of human nature and whose relish for melodrama were the result of having lived a placid, uneventful, incompetent and wholly protected life. Like a boy who is a constant attendant at the movies and carries home with him a keen desire to murder his baby brother and brain his little friends with his father's wood-chopper, Amelia Keene had derived a distorted view of the life and people beyond her horizon from an absolutely quenchless thirst for sensational novels, which she drank in, firmly believing that they gave true pictures of men, women and events.

To Beatrix, who knew this kindly, ineffectual, ordinary little woman through and through, it was funny to see the manner in which she "believed the worst,"—to use one of her own favorite phrases,—of what she saw from a first quick glance. The lofty, museum-like chamber so little suggested the bedroom of a young girl or of any woman except a painted harridan who was accustomed to being surrounded, even in her most intimate moments with grotesque acquaintances, that the presence of Franklin there might have meant nothing. It was conceivable that he and Beatrix, who had the same royal way of disdaining the laws of convention if it suited their purpose to do so, might have arranged to meet there in order to be out of the family eye and to discuss the chaos in which they both stood. It was as unromantic a meeting place as the great echoing hall of the Grand Central Station or the foyer of the Metropolitan Opera House. But Amelia Keene, whose excitement since her few minutes' conversation with Beatrix before dinner had churned her into a condition almost approaching apoplexy, seized with instant avidity at the chance of adding drama to the scene in which she had been called upon to take a part.

"Oh, my darling! My darling!" she cried. "Thank God you sent for me! Am I in time?"

This was altogether too much for Beatrix. She threw one look at her unruffled reflection in the mirror and another at Franklin, the very epitome of self-control, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of a burst of laughter which left her utterly weak. Even Franklin, who was in no mood for hilarity, smiled at the obvious inanity of the remark.

Mrs. Lester Keene turned from one to the other with an air of comical indignation. She saw nothing to laugh at. If there had been any fun in all this, why had she been sent for? Her age and her position in that house gave her the right to protect her untamable charge. The mere fact, if such a fact could be mere, that a man was in the bedroom of this young girl was in itself a frightful shock to all her inherited ideas of propriety. To her, novel-fed as she was, Franklin could not be anything but a desperate character, a menace to virtue, a man of the world. He and Beatrix might look at it from the callous modern angle, but she had made up her mind that she was called upon to perform a great rescue and to stand as the representative of Chastity and Moral Goodness,—and like all the women of her type she consciously dignified these terms with capital letters. The only thing that she regretted was that she had done her hair for the night and had not given herself time to touch her face with a powder-puff.

As soon as Beatrix had recovered herself and was able to speak again, she unlaced herself from Mrs. Keene's plump, well-meaning arms and pushed her gently to the nearest chair. "Pull yourself together, Brownie dear," she said. "I hope I sha'n't have to keep you out of bed longer than a few minutes. I sent for you because you had very little opportunity of speaking to Mr. Franklin to-day and he's in a particularly brilliant mood. As you know, I like you to share my pleasures, Brownie, dear." She threw a look of triumph at Franklin, which said as plainly as spoken words, "My game, my friend!"

Franklin caught her meaning. He shot out a laugh and answered her aloud. "Don't you believe it. I have all night at my disposal." And after trying several chairs he sat down in one that had arms and a slanting back, made himself completely comfortable and eyed the newcomer with such interest that she bristled beneath his gaze.

Summing up the state of the game,—it was still in this way that she regarded this amazing episode inconceivable except when conducted by these two products of a social system peculiar to America,—Beatrix didn't like the look of things. It had seemed to her that the entrance of Mrs. Keene would reduce the position to one of such absurdity that Franklin would be only too glad to take himself off with as much dignity as he could muster up. His tenacity took her breath away. What sort of a man was this who intended to stick to his point even in the face of a witness?

Not having been endowed with as much humor as would slip through a sugar-sifter, Mrs. Lester Keene had the faculty of jumping in where angels fear to tread. Her love and admiration for Beatrix were the biggest things in her life,—far bigger than her nebulous marriage and her occasional social triumphs in suburban London. It gave her a sort of false courage and carried her over all conventional bunkers which her provincial up-bringing had erected between herself and the truth. There was therefore a touch of heroism in the way in which she turned upon Franklin. "How long have you been here?" she demanded.

"I'm not sure," said Franklin.

"Time flies when one is interested," said Beatrix, with a charming smile.

"What right have you to be here at all?"

"Ask my wife," said Franklin, drily.

"She isn't your wife, and you know it."

"I am the only man who does," said Franklin.

"And for that reason your behavior is inexcusable and unforgivable. It is not that of a gentleman. I am astounded that a man who bears such a name as yours could descend to these depths."

She had never spoken to anyone like this before, not even to the little servant who, far away in the past, had brushed her hair and mislaid her hair-pins. She was surprised at herself. She felt, with a thrill of curious excitement, that she was rising bravely to a great occasion. Franklin remained patient. He felt sorry for this obviously weak woman who was notoriously no more able to cope with Beatrix than could a canvas screen with a fifty-mile gale. She was doing her best and he respected her. It was not so much her fault as her misfortune that the result was farcical. He caught a look of amusement in the eyes of his antagonist, and waiving all feeling of enmity in a moment of sympathy, smiled back at her. He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, and so Mrs. Keene, now oiled up, started off again.

"It doesn't require any imagination to know what your intentions are," she said, her choice of words becoming more and more high-flown and her rather fat chin quivering under her emotion. "You seek to take advantage of a young girl who has placed herself in a most dangerous position. I have no words in which to say how despicable—" Her voice broke.

Beatrix patted her shoulder. "There, there, Brownie dear! There, there! Don't take it so much to heart. The last half-an-hour has been full of fun and I've enjoyed it all enormously, and presently when Mr. Franklin comes to the conclusion that after all this is the twentieth century, he'll recover his chivalry and find some other way in which to pay me out."

"Then all I've got to say is this," said Mrs. Lester Keene: "the sooner he comes to that conclusion the better. You, my dear, ought to be in bed and asleep. And after my recent attack of lumbago, I don't think anyone has the right to keep me out of bed as late as this."

Franklin got up and held out his right arm. "I'm so sorry. Allow me to escort you to the door," he said.

"And you intend to go to your own room?"

Beatrix held her breath. On the answer to that question everything that she could see in the future depended.

"This is my room," said Franklin. And when the little lady drew back he went behind her chair, put his hands gently under her elbows, lifted her up and ran her, a perfect mass of impotent protest, to and through the door of the maid's room, which he locked. He knew that Mrs. Keene dared not make a fuss, and returned to face Beatrix once more, with a curious smile, "All square at the turn," he said.

"Well played, sir," replied Beatrix, generously.

A lugubrious clock that was somewhere in that unsuitable room struck twelve. Through the open windows came the raucous enthusiasm of the frogs on a close-by pond. Their imitation of the mechanical noises made by a factory in full blast was more exact than usual. A local cock flung out his throaty challenge to other barn-yard sheiks and was answered from near and far. A full moon in a sky that was very mosaic of stars laid a magic light upon the earth and water.

Beatrix heaved a little sigh. She was beginning to feel tired. Excitement was burning low, and Nature, whom she was in the habit of ignoring with characteristic imperiousness, demanded sleep. Franklin was not to be beaten by tricks, it seemed, or turned off by sarcasm. She must change her tactics and see how honesty would work.

"You'll go now, won't you?" she said quietly, with an offer of friendship that was usually irresistible.

Franklin shook his head and stood firm.

"No? Oh, I think so. There isn't any need to carry your strong man performance any farther. You've quite convinced me that education and all the advantages of civilization mean nothing to me. I'll take it for granted that they mean just as little to you. In a word, I'll own myself punished and give you the game. Will that do?"

"No," said Franklin. "That's not good enough."

Beatrix stood thoughtfully in front of him, with her hands behind her back, drooping a little like a flower in the evening. Her new and utter naturalness made her seem startlingly young and immature and different. Franklin hardly recognized in this Beatrix the brilliant, sparkling, insolent, triumphant creature who had turned the tables on her family and claimed his help as a sportsman without one iota of consideration for him or the future. But he refused to weaken. He realized that if he allowed himself to drift even into the approach of sympathy she would twist him round her little finger. She deserved no mercy. He would give her none. She had had the temerity to place him high up among the world's fools and she must pay the full price for the privilege.

"Perhaps you don't know," she said, "how much it costs me to retire from any sort of contest until the result is hopelessly against me. I've only done it once before, and that was in a tennis tournament at Palm Beach last winter, when I went on playing, with a sprained ankle, and fainted. I don't intend to faint now, but I'm very, very tired. Won't you let me give up?"

Franklin shook his head again. "This is not anything like the little games that you kill time with," he said. "I'm not Sutherland York, nor am I one of the green youths who help you to get through monotonous days. I have been just as spoiled as you have and this can't end until my vanity has been healed. You know that as well as I do."

"Oh, yes," she said frankly, "I understand. If I stood in your shoes I should feel as you do and be just as brutal in my desire for revenge. But put yourself in mine for a minute. You can if you will. You have imagination. The mere fact that you've been in my room for an hour and made me undergo the worst sort of humiliation before my maid and my companion ought to be sufficient to heal any ordinary type of vanity, however severe the wound. Come, now. I don't ask you to be fair. I don't deserve that. But be big and get off that awfully high horse. What d'you say? Shall I cry quits?" She held out her hand with the charming smile which had never failed since the time when she was the little queen of her big nursery.

Franklin compelled himself to ignore it. "No," he said. "I'm here to make you feel the spurs for the first time in your life, and I shall stay."

In a flash Beatrix changed back to the personality behind which she hid her best and undiscovered self. She threw back her head and squared her shoulders and brought her exquisite slim young body into an attitude of audacious challenge and ran her eyes over Franklin with an expression in which there was contempt and amusement.

"Then you may make up your mind to a long and arduous job," she said. "It'll take a better man than you to break me in."

"We'll see about that," he said.

She burst into a derisive laugh. Her blood was up. This man had frightened her, amused her, interested her. He had won her admiration, even a little of her sympathy. Now he bored her. He had stayed too long, harped on one subject too steadily. She might consent to play at something else, but this game was threadbare. She refused to entertain the possibility of his attempting to carry out his threat beyond taking possession of her room, which, in itself, was impertinent enough.

"What precisely do you imagine that you can do?" she asked, with the very essence of scorn.

Franklin's patience had almost run out, too. "I don't imagine that I can do anything. I know exactly what I'm going to do."

"Is that so? Do tell me."

"Conform in detail to the right you've given me," he said, "without any further argument."

"Beginning how, pray?"

"By tearing that frock off your back, unless you have your maid in right away."

"You wouldn't dare!" she said, scoffing at him.

That was the worst word she could have chosen. To dare Franklin to do a thing was to guarantee that it was done. With the blood in his head he laid instant hands on her and ripped the chiffon from one soft white shoulder.

There was an inarticulate cry, a brief, breathless struggle, and the next instant he received a blow on the face that made him see stars.

"You little tyrant!" he said, with a short laugh. "That's your spirit, is it?"

He made for her again, angrier than he had ever been in his life. But she darted away like a beautiful fish, and with her round shoulder gleaming in the moonlight stood close to an open window, her breasts rising and falling, her nostrils distended, her eyes like two great stars, her face as white as the feathers of a white dove.

"Touch me again and I'll jump out of this window!"

"I don't believe you," he said, but remained standing.

"I swear to God I will!"

He knew that she meant it. "You'd break every bone in your body," he said.

"That would be better than having your hands on me again."

He made a spring and caught her by the wrists. "Now jump!"

"Oh, very clever," she said, with superb sarcasm. "You've evidently made a hobby of fighting with women."

That stung Franklin. "I don't call you a woman," he blurted out. "There's been nothing of the woman in you since the day you knew enough words to order one of your nurses about. You're a hybrid, the production of a mixture of two species,—labor and wealth. The labor in you, inherited from the man who made your first millions, is tainted with revolt, the wealth with the damned despotism that creates it. You're no more a woman than this barrack is a home, or this absurd place a bedroom. You're a grotesque who has been brought up in a nightmare. You walk on a world that is too small for your feet. You're out of drawing like a woman in a fashion-plate. You're a sort of female Gulliver on an earth peopled with pigmies. You almost believe that you're Almighty and that when you raise your finger life must be reset like a chess-board. And you're perfectly right. It can and is and will be so long as money counts. I know it and do it, for you and I hold a piece each of the same wand. But you're up against me now, and you've used me as you might have used a trained servant, or an eager parasite, ready and willing to lick the blacking off your boots for the sake of what may fall unnoticed from your purse, and, by God, you're not going to get away with it."

He controlled her across to the door of the maid's room and pushed it open with his foot. "Come out," he said, "and get Mrs. Franklin ready for the night." Then he marched Beatrix to and into the dressing-room, followed by Helene. Reflected in the mirrors there were not three, but thirty people. "I'll give you fifteen minutes," he continued, "and for the sake of all concerned don't be longer. Is that agreed?"

Beatrix met his eyes. Her spirit was unbroken, her chin at the same tilt, her attitude not one whit less contemptuously assured, but he saw in the slight inclination of her golden head the acknowledgment that he held all the cards.

He turned on his heel and left the room, went over to an open window and drew in long breaths of air.

He and she, children of the same nightmare, as he had called it, had both used the word vanity about the thing which impelled him to punish. But as he looked out into the sane night, magic only from the moon's touch, it came to him that to dismiss it as vanity was to slur over the true meaning of that before which he was urged. It was the labor in him, the revolt against the despotism of wealth that had come back again in his fight with his fellow-hybrid, and once more labor was top-dog. How would he use his power?

For fifteen minutes he stood there with his heart thumping, his hands hot, the exhilaration of success running through his blood like alcohol. And then, to the second, came the sweet diaphanous figure, which, with the dignity of a brave but conquered enemy, crossed to the foolish bed.

Franklin watched her go, her gleaming hair all about her like a bridal veil, her head held high, her lovely face untouched by fear. He watched her pause while the maid opened up the bed, and then slip in. He called the French girl, gave her the key to her door and waited until she had gone. Then he walked to the foot of the bed and stood there silently until Beatrix raised her eyes.

"If you and I," he said, with extreme distinctness, "were the only two living people on a desert island and there was not the faintest hope of our ever being taken back to the world, I would build you a hut at the farthest end of it and treat you as a man."

He wheeled round, unlocked the door, went out into the passage and away.

Only by having seen the expression on Beatrix's face after he had gone would he have known how tremendously well he had revenged himself.

VIII

Franklin's bare statement to Malcolm Fraser that he was going to the Vanderdyke pastoral party merely to meet Ida Larpent left his friend interested and speculative. The lady's name was as familiar to Fraser as to the other men who dined at houses a little to the east and rather less than that to the west of Fifth Avenue. The lady's arresting face had often stirred his dormant sense of psychology, but he never had had the opportunity of saying more than "How do you do?" or "Good-bye" to her. He so obviously didn't count in the scheme of things as they appealed to Mrs. Larpent.

According to the Social Register, however, Mrs. Larpent lived in East Fifty-sixth Street and was the widow of Captain Claude Elcho Larpent of the 21st Lancers, a nephew of Field Marshal Viscount Risborough. That was all. If this precious volume, which is the vade-mecum of so many people who murmur the word society with a hiss that can be heard from one end of the town to the other, had attempted to do justice to the beautiful Ida, at least one-half of the volume would have been devoted to the story of her antecedents and career. Born at Paterson, New Jersey, the only daughter of a pushing and energetic little chemist named McKenna, who had married in a moment of the wildest kind of romance a little, slight, white-faced Russian girl who had left her country among a batch of unsavory emigrants and found employment in a button factory, Ida,—who can tell why?—was marked out from her tiniest years for the oldest profession in the world. One would have thought, to look at her parents,—the father a pugnacious, industrious, thrifty, red-headed Scotch-American, the mother a wistful, grateful, self-effacing little woman who, if there were any justice in this world, would several times have received the distinguished service order for her many acts of unnoticed heroism,—she would have been a bright, brave, practical and perhaps even pretty little girl. Instead of which, to everyone's astonishment and to the utter confusion of the chemist and his wife, Ida resembled nothing so much as a child of the aristocracy. She was thoroughbred from head to foot, perfectly made, with a small oval face and large wide-apart eyes, tiny wrists and ankles and black hair as fine as silk. The paradox of her having been born in the small common-place quarters above a second-rate store, amidst all the untidiness of a place in which the mother did her own housework, was not lost on the parents. They were proud of this fairy-like baby, but they were also frightened of her. They realized that she was in the nature of a freak. It seemed to them that she had come by accident; that, as a matter of fact, they had no right to her. They almost persuaded themselves into the belief, as the child grew up, that she was a changeling; that an unseen hand must have stolen their own sturdy, freckled and rampagious infant, and for some unaccountable reason slipped this exquisite little thing into her place.

There was, as time passed, an element of tragedy about this miracle or accident or mistake,—these words and others were used,—especially when Ida began to find her tongue and her feet. More and more she seemed to be an indignant hot-house plant in a little cabbage-patch. Her parents, poor souls, grew more and more awkward and unhappy in her presence. They had the uncanny feeling always that she was criticising them and their mode of speech and their slummachy way of life. The affection and love which they had been only too willing to give her after the shock of her early appearance wore away, turned into reluctant deference and a constant self-conscious desire to make their apartment and themselves more tidy for her. Even at the age of ten she turned her mother into a maid, quietly insisted that her hair should be brushed every night and saw to it that she was dressed and undressed, manicured and shampooed. She demanded bath salts and scent from the store and the best of soaps and powders. "Do this! Do that!" she would say, and if they were not done she raised her voice and stamped her foot, while a sort of flame seemed to come from her eyes. No one had ever seen her cry after she had learned to walk.

The McKenna circle of friends, consisting of fellow-storekeepers and the Austro-Hungarian musician who was the leader of the little orchestra at the Paterson Theatre, watched Ida's early years with almost breathless astonishment and a kind of disbelief. They accepted her much in the same way as they would, under the pressure of warm friendship, have accepted a pet marmoset or a cursing parrot or a dog with a cat's tail. They noticed, with many comments, that she grew up altogether without filial affection; that she treated her parents as though they were paid attendants, calling her father "Sandy," as his particular friends did, and her mother "Alla," and with the most startling self-assurance making them conform to all her wishes. It was most uncanny. Michlikoff, the bird's-nest-headed musician, who had a sneaking belief in the occult and who read up all that he could find on the subject of transmigration of souls, endeavored to persuade his friends, in voluble broken English, that Ida was a princess born again. With all those who came from places other than Missouri, he succeeded.

It was a perturbed and constrained household in which this unexpected child grew up,—a household that, to the little bandy Scot's never-quite-hidden disgust, was the subject of steady gossip in the town. His first ambition naturally was to see the list of his customers swell, but not at the expense of his pride and self-respect. Those two things, frequently mentioned, were very dear to him. It seemed to him, too, that the family affairs of a man who kept a drug-store should be out of the region of gossip. He and his still pretty wife were glad, infinitely glad, when the time arrived for their daughter to attend the public school. It was only while she was out of the apartment that the mother could go about her work in comfort and without being constantly called away from her domestic duties. The freckled, red-headed little chemist only felt happy when he saw this girl sail out with her books and turn down the street towards the school-house, with her chin held high and her astonishing eyes filled with a sort of scorn for all the passers-by. At school she was not a success. She didn't mix well. The other children held aloof from her. She was obviously out of place amongst them and they resented her presence in the class-rooms. The boys admired her from a distance, fell into self-conscious silence when she approached and whispered about her when she passed by. The girls were antagonistic. They were jealous of her pretty clothes, awed by her lofty silences and surprised at her proficiency with her books. On her seventeenth birthday Ida went to New York, saying that she would be back to supper. But with supper came a cold-blooded note which ran like this:

"Dear Sandy and Alla:

"I'm through with your one-eyed town and the drug-store and provincialism. I'm going to begin to live and dress as I ought to, and there's only one way to do it,—the easiest way. I applied for a job in the chorus of the Winter Garden for the new show and got it. It was easy. I looked very nice in my Sunday clothes and the stage manager said I was a peach. Rehearsals start to-morrow and I shall stay at a boarding-house with some of the other girls. So please send me thirty dollars to go on with and the rest of my things. The address is 302 West 46th Street. I will let you know when to send me more money. You will both be glad to get rid of me, but not so glad as I am to be out of Paterson. I am starting on the bottom rung of the ladder and I am going to climb to the top, whatever I have to pay for it. Judging from the way the men in the office look at me they will have to do most of the paying.

"IDA."

This was read by Mr. and Mrs. McKenna in horrified silence, but with a mutual deep sigh of relief, and put away in a secret place. The only time they ever saw her again was once when they made a pilgrimage to Manhattan and watched her from the balcony of what was once a show ring in Broadway, and saw her, almost nude, flitting like a butterfly in the glare of light.

One other note they received from this curious person, and this, enclosing a cheque for two hundred dollars, contained the news that Ida was going to England with a musical comedy company in which she was playing a small part. And that was the last they ever heard of her. She had come like a stranger and like a stranger she departed. The cheque they never used. With an odd sensation of having been insulted by it they put it in a drawer among receipts and specimens of patent medicines and left it there. And then, happy again, they returned to their habitual untidiness and the daily routine of hard work and endeavored to forget. They regarded it as a blessing that nature had punished them only once. And when eventually they removed themselves to a larger and more pretentious store they left a photograph of a little wide-eyed girl among their debris and felt as though a weight had been lifted from their shoulders.

If they had been able to watch the London newspapers, especially the Sketch and Tatler, they would have quivered at the sight of this strange girl in many graceful attitudes and in the scantiest of costumes as she appeared in almost weekly photographic studies, and they would have gasped if they had presently read the glowing accounts of the marriage of Ida McKenna to Captain Claude Elcho Larpent, nephew of Field Marshal Viscount Risborough, at St. George's, Hanover Square. The headings of these paragraphs had it that Society had once more made an alliance with the stage, but the gushing paragraphs that came beneath stated (how amazed the chemist would have been) that the bride came of one of the best American families, her father being a famous scientist whose country house was at Paterson, New Jersey, and her mother a distant connection of the Russian Chancellor.

Ida Larpent took her place in English society as though to the manner born. She became the beautiful Mrs. Larpent without turning a hair. She ran a little house in Mayfair on her husband's excellent income as though Mayfair had been her playground since childhood. She entertained the younger set and a sprinkling of duchesses with all the insouciance of minor royalty, and plunged her husband into debt in the same cold-blooded way that she had run up bills in her native town, from which on clear days one can see the Simelike unbelievable buildings of the great city.

Claude Larpent was passionately in love with his beautiful and expensive wife. With all the careless pride of a mere boy of twenty-six he gave her the reins, and so long as she made some return for his love never grumbled at her recklessness or her intimacy with men whom he, before marriage, would not have touched with the end of a barge-pole. He trusted her. She was his wife. She had chosen him from among all the men who would eagerly have knelt at her feet. In his weakness he stood lovingly by while she relentlessly ran him on the rocks and into bankruptcy. But it was not until one bad night when he discovered by accident that she had sold herself for diamonds to a most atrocious vieux marcheur that he confessed himself broken, exchanged from his crack regiment to the Houssa Police and disappeared to the West Coast of Africa, the white man's grave. It was exactly three years after the bells of St. George's had rung their merry peal that the obituary notice in the London papers contained a few lines to the effect that Claude Elcho Larpent had fallen a victim to black water fever. The truth was that this foolish young man had died of whisky and a broken heart, and had been buried in the bush mourned and respected by the sturdy little men whom he had treated with that mixture of firmness and camaraderie characteristic of the English officer. His widow, still in the first flush of youth and beauty, was left penniless, but bejewelled, and in the ordinary course of events,—men being awake to the fact that they need not marry her,—came under the protection of a wealthy railway man who planted her temporarily in a pleasant portion of Mayfair, rather sarcastically named Green Street, Berkeley Square. The beautiful Mrs. Larpent thereupon lost a certain amount of caste, but not very much. Duchesses dropped her, but semi-society drank her wines without a twinge and enjoyed many week-ends at her beautiful house on the banks of the Thames near Henley. Younger sons and the stage herded about her, accepting gladly enough her lavish hospitality. The only thing that Ida Larpent had inherited from her father was thrift. And before the railway magnate disappeared from his surroundings in an apoplectic fit, she had managed to put by a large enough sum of money to bring her in somewhere about six hundred pounds a year, and upon that, feeling the need of a change of air and surroundings, she returned to America.

When Franklin met her first, during one of his brief visits to New York, he found her very cosily ensconced in a tiny apartment, gracefully furnished, over a dressmaker's shop in East Fifty-sixth Street, from which, clothed to perfection, she drove forth nightly in her limousine to dine at the best houses. She had come to the United States to catch a husband. Her experience had taught her that a husband is a more permanent institution than a protector. She was determined to marry money. The need of it, in bulk, was essential to her comfort and peace of mind. In order to do so, she lived on her capital, thus conveying the impression that she was very well off. Time after time she could have marched fairly rich young men off to church by their ears, but she was very fastidious,—not so much in regard to them, as men, as to their bank accounts. She didn't intend to make a second mistake. Then she met Pelham Franklin at that sort of sham Bohemian supper at which all the women wear diamonds and all the men are clean and civilized. She fell in love with him before she found out who he was. His brown face and outdoor manner and the air he had about him of not carrying a superfluous ounce of flesh, his utter incompetency as a drawing-room man, which was proved by his not paying her a single compliment or saying anything personal, delighted her. She was sick of those others who all looked alike and said the same things and counted for nothing. Franklin came as a change. His masculinity appealed to her. For the first time in her life passion stirred and her self-complacency was shaken. Before the night was out she heard his name and gave thanks to all her gods for putting him in her way. He came at the moment when her money was running out and the greater part of her morning mail consisted of demands for payment from impatient and long-suffering trades-people. During the fortnight that Franklin remained in town she concentrated upon him, using all her wiles to bring him up to the scratch. Malcolm Fraser was not in town at that time, nor were any of the other men with whom Franklin was on terms of intimate friendship. Feeling lonely and at a rather loose end he saw a good deal more of Mrs. Larpent, under those circumstances, than he would have done in normal conditions. He took her to dinner at Sherry's and the Ritz, night after night, and was delighted at her readiness to do the theatres with him. It was too cold-blooded a business to see the plays alone. Several times, too, he spent a late hour after supper in her charming little drawing-room smoking and chatting. They knew many of the same people in London and Paris. He flirted a little with her—certainly. Why not? Her beauty was unique, her way of expressing herself quite brilliant and amusing, and that air of regal mystery that was all about her piqued curiosity. He had never the least intention of doing more than merely flirt, and not being a lady's man and being therefore without conceit it never occurred to him that his quick friendship could be misconstrued or his frank admiration could possibly lead her to believe that he nourished even the germ of an idea of following these pleasant evenings up with anything serious. He went away under the impression that he would be forgotten as quickly as he had been taken up, and was utterly and blissfully unaware of the fact that Mrs. Larpent had fallen in love with him. He would have roared with incredulous laughter at the mere suggestion.

Thus things had been left when Franklin felt the call of the sea and took Malcolm Fraser for a cruise in the yacht on which he spent the best hours of his life. He wrote a little letter to Mrs. Larpent on the morning he went out of town and thanked her warmly for her kindness and "looked forward tremendously to seeing her directly he got back." Into these few rather boyish and certainly sincere words Ida, making a most uncharacteristic blunder in psychology, read what she most wanted to read,—love, and, of course, eventually marriage. During his absence she marked time impatiently, but with a new smile on her red lips and a gentler manner towards those about her, keeping her tradesmen in a good temper by throwing out tiny hints of impending good fortune. It was solely to meet Franklin again that this sophisticated, ambitious, luxury-loving, unscrupulous woman became a member of the Vanderdyke house-party,—to see again the man who, alone among men, had touched her heart and awakened her passion. Like a girl from a Convent school, young and sweet and inarticulate, she went. Imagine her anger and distress at finding on her arrival at the Vanderdyke barrack that she was asked to add her congratulations to those of the family and their friends on the marriage of Franklin and that "damn girl," as she called her. Imagine it! The shock, the disappointment, the shattering of her one good dream——

IX

When Franklin left the bedroom in which he had gone through the strangest hour of his life, he went into the room which had been allotted to him and from which some of his things had been taken, and stood for a little while at an open window taking in long, deep breaths. His mind was in too chaotic a state to permit him to think patiently of going to sleep, and in the back of it, now that his anger had cooled, there was a growing feeling of self-disgust at the way in which he had treated Beatrix Vanderdyke. He was sorry that he had allowed himself to be carried in front of a wave of extreme indignation and he told himself, a little ruefully, that after all it wasn't for him to take the law into his own hands. He called himself, with unusual sarcasm, an egotist, an individualist, and cursed his vanity which rose up whenever anyone attempted to make a fool of him, and was aghast to discover how very little it took to make a man lose the effects and influence of civilization.

And when he endeavored to look into the future that was staring him in the face—the future all disturbed and upset by the unexpected entrance into his life of the girl who had treated him merely as a pawn upon her lightly considered chess-board, he found himself wholly unable to see through the maze that stretched out in front of him. He was no longer in the splendid position of a free lance. He was no longer able to pass through his days unencumbered with any sort of responsibility. He saw that he was to pay the full price for that moment of aberration during which he had permitted himself to fall in with Beatrix's daringly manufactured lie. It was with a feeling that gave him back something of his self-respect that he realized that it was impossible to give Beatrix away until he had her permission to do so. She had appealed to him as a sportsman and it was as a sportsman, as a man who stuck to the rules of whatever game he played, that he endeavored to report daily to the particular god that he worshipped.

Sick of himself, sick of his room, sick of everything, he went out presently into the passage,—a wide, dimly lit passage hung with old masters and carpeted with Persian rugs which were beautiful and rare enough to hang upon the walls of an art gallery,—and went slowly down-stairs into the hall. For some moments he paced up and down this deserted place asking himself how he was to kill the night. He had no patience for books,—he very rarely read anything except technical things on hunting and fishing,—but eventually he made his way to the library, the nicest and most reasonable room in that uncomfortable, luxurious house. He was aware immediately of the presence of someone standing at the window. The moonlight fell on a dark head and a tall, graceful figure. He turned up the lights and found himself looking into the reproachful and rather sarcastic eyes of Ida Larpent.

She was still in the noticeably simple and very perfect dress that she had worn at dinner,—a soft, black thing not cut slavishly to the existing fashion, but made to suit her peculiar beauty and slender, hipless lines. Cut down to the waist at the back, it seemed to retain its place in front by a miracle. One large, star-shaped brooch studded as closely with diamonds as a clear sky with stars was fastened between her breasts, and jet beads glinted here and there about the graceful skirt that hid her feet. A band of small pearls was placed like an aureola round her head, from which hung one large insolent diamond just where her hair was parted on her low forehead. She wore no rings.

She moved away from the window and leaned lightly against one of the pillars, running her eyes slowly up and down Franklin's tall, wiry figure. She might easily have been standing for an artist as the modern representation of Lucretia Borgia.

"Well!" she said, with a just perceptible upward inflection of her bell-like voice.

To Franklin she seemed to be symbolical of his lost freedom, the unconscious reminder of the good days when he could go and come at will, answer immediately to a whim and move to a fancy as a sail to a breeze. During the course of that afternoon and evening he had not attempted to do more than pass the time of day with her, and had forgotten, in the sudden whirlpool into which he had been dragged by Beatrix, that he had arranged to meet her under that roof to renew a very charming friendship. It was now easy enough to see from her expression and manner that he was to undergo a bad quarter-of-an-hour for his lack of attention. He deeply regretted to have hurt her feelings but was not sorry that he had gone into the room. If there was anything unpleasant to be faced it was his habit to face it and get it over. He did not suffer from moral cowardice.

"Well!" he said.

"I've just finished writing you a letter."

"That's very nice of you."

There was a kind of laugh. "I hope you'll think so after you've read it."

"I'll read it now, if I may," Said Franklin, holding out his hand.

"You may as well." But she tore the letter into small pieces and dropped them at her feet. "No. Why should I give you the pleasure of seeing how much you've made me suffer?"

The word suffer and the unconcealed break in the woman's voice puzzled and surprised Franklin. Was she acting? He saw no reason why she should. It never entered into the very recesses of his mind that there could be any sentiment on her part. Why should there be? "That wouldn't give me any pleasure," he said, with a sort of boyish sincerity.

She looked at him a little eagerly, saw that there was nothing in his eyes that she needed, nodded two or three times and shrugged her shoulders. It was a hard thing to be made to confess that this man who was so desirable had merely passed a few hours with her for the lack of a friend. A new thing, too, after her wide experience of men. Nevertheless, she had run through the last of her remaining money. This was no hour for pride. She stood in dire and urgent need of funds. It was impossible for him to be her husband, but well within the range of her ability to see that he became her banker.

"Did you know that I was in the library?" she asked, making one more effort to prove herself wrong in her quick intuition. This was probably, she told herself, a marriage of convenience.

"No."

"You just came in by accident?"

"Yes."

"I see. Well, then, as we're here and we're both obviously in no mood for sleep, shall we while away the time with a little discussion on the short memories of men,—some men?"

"Why not?" replied Franklin, and drew up a chair for her.

But Mrs. Larpent gave a sharp, eloquent gesture. The chair ought rightly to have wheeled itself into the darkest corner. "I'll stand, thanks. Oddly enough I feel volcanic like most women at the end of their tether who have been chucked."

The abrupt, descriptive colloquialism came strangely from her. She was so finished, so apparently fastidious. Also she spoke with the slight drawl and affectation that some English people acquire after much practice, and imagine to be smart.

"Chucked?" he echoed. "How? By whom?"

This gave Mrs. Larpent a double opportunity to get rid of her spleen and chagrin in an outburst of hysteria and to work on Franklin's sympathies by letting him see that she must have money or sell her jewels. It didn't matter to her what he thought of her now.

"By you! By you!" she said, her voice all broken with emotion. "You came into my life when I was most lonely, most in need of tenderness and kind treatment and on the very edge of a crumbling cliff. I didn't believe that you were playing the usual game with me. You didn't seem to be that kind of man. I thought,—yes, even I, who have grappled with life and am without much faith in human nature,—that you saw all that is good and decent in me and answered to the love that you had set alight in my heart. Why else, I asked myself, did you come day after day and night after night, in a city reeking with people who would have been eager to amuse you, and claim me in a loneliness that was almost equal to mine? Why else did you let me see the best of yourself and treat me with the respect that a man only shows to the woman whom he is going to ask to be his wife? Most of the men I meet are different. They only see in me an unattached woman living on a shoe-string, willing enough to sell her beauty for cash. But in you I thought I saw honesty and sincerity and chivalry, and whether you knew it or not you let me wander into a fool's paradise and dream of a home and a great love and peace. And on the strength of the little note you wrote before you sailed I saw the promise of security from dunning creditors and hope rising over my unhappy horizon. I blurt all this out now only because I'm still suffering from the shock of finding you married. You must forgive me."

She turned abruptly on her heel, with her hands over her face, and stood once more in the window silvered by the moon. Even with those tears on her face and that pain in her heart she was able to congratulate herself on having made the speech of her life.

Franklin was appalled. His knowledge of women was as small as that of most men whose lives are spent in the open. Of the Larpent type he was wholly ignorant. He believed that she was telling the truth and her confession, made with trembling lips and streaming eyes and a broken voice, hurt him. He had never listened to anything so painful or so horribly embarrassing. What could he do or say? How could he possibly explain that her beauty had only made a skin-deep impression and that he had only regarded her as a most delightful companion. And so he said nothing. It was too difficult. He just remained standing with his shoulders squared and his hands behind his back and willed that woman, for God's sake, to stop crying and tell him what he could do to make things easier for her. And the thing that he wished with all his soul was that he was back on his yacht, with the clean night air brushing across his face and the laughter of his intimate pals ringing in his ears.

During the curious, uneasy moments that followed he let his eyes wander about the huge room with its pseudo-Gothic ceiling and pillars, its book-lined walls and its numerous cases of old Bibles and first editions, collections of rare and wonderful bindings, and the assortment of deep arm-chairs and silky rugs which gave it the appearance of a room in a public library rescued from its cold formality by a lover of books, who saw no reason why they should not be enjoyed in comfort. Only one end of it was lit, and the rest was in shadow except for a shaft of silver light that pierced one of the high windows and spilt itself on the plinth of a pillar. He wondered what Mrs. Larpent would say next. He hadn't missed her hint of the need of money. He felt more than ever unhappy and uncomfortable. But on that point, at any rate, she could count on his help, difficult as it would be to put it into practice.

Mrs. Larpent gave another curious little laugh, turned and came back. Franklin glanced quickly at her. She moved closer and there was something about her mouth and nostrils that showed him that he was right in thinking that she had read his thoughts.

"What are you going to do about it?" she asked, taking advantage of the light so that the softness and whiteness of her body should not be lost. One of her smiles had never failed. She adopted it then. Even she retained her optimism.

"What you say goes," said Franklin.

"You mean that, Pelham?" Two or three steps took her within arm's reach. The light remained upon her. If this was merely a marriage of convenience he might make a suggestion that would, at any rate, give her a brief happiness.

"Of course. I only want you to—to tell me what I can do."

Optimism could not live under that suggestion, however generously meant and delicately put, of payment by cheque. Nevertheless, Ida Larpent sat down. It was bitter to see that her love was not to be returned, but good to feel that her diminished bank account was likely to be substantially refreshed. She felt like a woman who had swum out of her depth, lost her nerve, made a mighty effort and feels at last the sand against her knees. Metaphorically she drew herself wearily out of the water and with a renewed sense of confidence felt the warm sun upon her limbs.

There was something detestably cold-blooded in all this, and Franklin hated it. He had hitherto managed to keep himself free from women. They interfered with his pursuits. Why fate should have gone suddenly out of its way to plunge him into the midst of this woman stuff, as he impatiently called it, was more than he could understand.

He looked down at Ida Larpent. She was sitting in a low, red-leather chair,—the sort of thing that is supposed to belong to a room inhabited by men. Her amazing hair, as black as the wing of a crow, had been touched here and there with the tongs. It framed a face as white as marble,—a curiously small oval face,—with eyes remarkably wide apart and large and luminous; a small aristocratic nose, with sensitive nostrils which indicated passion as well as impatience, and a mouth whose lips were full and artificially red. Her small round white shoulders were more daringly bare than those of any woman he had seen, and her two fine hands looked like those in the old French pictures which hang in those houses in Paris that were spared by the Sans-Culottes. Indeed, the whole figure, from head to foot, looked like an oil painting of a period in French history when aristocracy had reached its acme. As a companion for a man of enforced leisure and unlimited means and no ties she had everything in her favor, physically and mentally. As Franklin stood looking at her, however, with all the admiration that was due to her, he found himself unconsciously comparing her,—this exotic—this most exquisite of rare orchids,—with the fresh, buoyant, healthy, clean, proud, spoilt girl who called herself his wife.

"Will you be honest with me?" she asked.

"I haven't got much to bless myself with except that," he answered.

"Were you married when you came to my apartment in March?"

"No."

"Well, that's something," she said. "When were you married?"

"Does that matter?"

"Perhaps not. The fact remains. I'm naturally interested and curious, so tell me this: Was it a sudden infatuation for that child who rules the roost here,—a sudden burst of sentimentality that doesn't seem part of you, or—what? I think I have the right to ask."

"You have," said Franklin. "It was all very sudden. That's all I can tell you about it."

"I see. And now that you are tied up and more than ever under the microscopic eye of the public—what?"

"Well—what?"

"Are you going to be a little careless in the matter of marriage vows, or carry them out to the letter?" She stretched herself a little and smiled up at him, still fighting for the dream that had made her for a little while so young and gentle and unworldly.

"I asked you to believe that I am honest," said Franklin, who had never in his life been so puzzled as to a choice of words.

And then Mrs. Larpent got up. "I see," she said, and held out her hand. "Well, I, at any rate, have not beaten about the bush, and you have spared my feelings with very real kindness. And so good night!"

"Good night!" said Franklin.

"You can think of nothing else that you would like to say?"

Franklin had something else to say,—the question of a certain sum of money. But, like a horse brought nose up to a high jump, he refused, shook his head, and immediately added, "Yes. I'm awfully sorry about all this. Please accept my humble apologies."

Mrs. Larpent bowed, but the gracious smile on her lips was contradicted by her eyes. They were full of pain and anger. And while she still held Franklin's hand she registered an oath that she would leave no stone unturned to make him forget his honesty before many months had passed and lead her willingly into a new and beautiful dream.

"How long are you staying here?" he asked.

"I'm leaving to-morrow," she said. "It isn't awfully amusing to go through the jealous agonies of hell."

"I'll write to your apartment," said Franklin, stumbling a little over the words.

"Thank you." She took his meaning and was certain of his generosity.

He watched her go, moving with a sort of medieval dignity, an almost uncanny suggestion of having stepped out of an old frame to return to it before the finger of dawn began to rub away the night.

X

It was eleven o'clock before Beatrix opened her eyes to a new day. For two hours Mrs. Lester Keene had hovered about the room like an elderly beetle, settling here and there for a moment or two and then continuing her aimless and irresolute flitting. Two or three times she had stood over the sleeping girl and gazed with a sort of amazement at a face that looked strangely childlike, with long lashes like fans upon her cheeks and lips a little parted. Then she would take a magazine to one of the windows, read a few lines here and there without taking in their meaning and gaze at the illustrations intently without knowing what they intended to represent. The truth was that the loyal and well-meaning lady was not herself. Her constitution, not of a very sound order, had been almost shattered by her experience the night before. She had kept watch and had seen Franklin leave the bedroom shortly after he had evicted her from it, and then, with inexpressible relief and thankfulness, gone to bed, but the terrible anxiety had told upon her. Hitherto she had never been called upon to undergo more nerve-strain than is endured by a hen in a well-regulated chicken run, seeing life and adventure and passion only through the eyes of her favorite novelists. She had, however, slept very little and given orders that she should be called at half-past seven, so that she might go early to Beatrix and give her the benefit of her advice. She still remained under the impression, poor little lady, that her advice was of the greatest assistance to the wilful, headstrong girl, even though she never made the merest pretence to follow it.

Beatrix awoke, finally, as a flower opens to the sun. "Oh! Hello, Brownie," she said, "ever-faithful! Heigh-ho! I've had such a lovely sleep. All in one piece without a dream. I feel about fifteen." She stretched herself lazily and put her arms behind her head. "Will you please tell Helene that I want a cup of tea at once,—at once, Brownie. If it doesn't come in five minutes it won't be of any use to me. You're a dear old thing to bother." She gave a little musical yawn as the fluffy-minded woman hurried to the maid's room and gave the order with that sort of mysterious urgency which is connected with embassies in moments of national crises and theatres during a dress rehearsal.

When she returned, which she did at once,—her mind being all astir with curiosity,—she saw that Beatrix was sitting up in bed with her hands clasped about her knees, her eyebrows meeting in a frown, her lips set tightly and her eyes full of anger. Mrs. Keene had never seen this expression on the girl's face before. If she had heard Franklin's parting remark she would have known the reason for it.

"It's very late, dear," said Mrs. Keene; "after eleven, and all the people have been rehearsing in the gardens for an hour."

"Oh, well, it's a charming morning. It will do them good. I wonder if the matinée idol has shaved himself! I understand that they don't do that thing until about four o'clock in the afternoon." And then she began to laugh, more to hide her feelings than anything else.

Not even to Brownie did she intend to show what she felt about the episode of the previous night, or how deeply she resented the humiliation to which Franklin had subjected her. Never in all her life would she forget that, or forgive,—never.

"We certainly may be said to be living on the top of a volcano, Brownie. No monotony about life just now, is there?" And then she suddenly slipped out of bed, alert and full of a new idea, "Go down and see what's happening," she added. "Be my secret agent and come back with a full report of what Franklin has been doing since breakfast. Be very discreet and smile,—smile all the time, bearing in mind that you are the closest friend of a girl who has just been happily married."

"Oh, my dear," cried Mrs. Keene, "don't talk like that! Please, please don't!"

Just for one instant Beatrix allowed her companion to get a glimpse of the strain under which she was laboring. "How else should I talk?" she said, sharply. "Do you think I'm going about with my tail down like a whipped dog——? Run along, Brownie, run along like a good little soul and do this thing for me. In the meantime I'll get up. I feel in my bones that things are going to happen to-day. Thank Heaven I'm on the top of my form, ready for anything and everybody, even Franklin. We do manage to live, you and I, don't we?"

She escorted the amiable, fluttering woman to the door and closed it upon her, quite certain that she would return with full information. If there was one thing in which Mrs. Lester Keene was really proficient it was in spying out the lay of the land.

While bathing in the pool whose hideous Byzantine decorations were never more inappropriate than when they made a background for that sweet, slim form, Beatrix ran her mind over the position. She felt convinced that Franklin, angry and disgusted as he was, would continue to play up until he had her permission to give away the game. She knew a sportsman when she saw one. But she knew also, instinctively, that he was a poor liar, and if,—as was quite likely,—Aunt Honoria and her mother had been pumping him during the morning as to when the marriage took place and for the other details of this great romance, he had probably made a very poor showing. There might have been inconvenient questions asked by her father as to settlements, and so forth. If so, she could imagine how badly Franklin had come out without her at his side to prompt and evade and put tangents into the conversation. She was anxious and owned to it.

When Mrs. Lester Keene returned to the bedroom, slipping into it with an air of almost comic mystery, she was surprised to find Beatrix fully dressed and swinging up and down the room impatiently like a boy.

"What news on the Rialto?" she cried, with a touch of burlesque in her voice.

There was a very serious and even scared look on Brownie's face. "My dear," she said, "listen! I fear that the worst has happened." In a sort of way, Mrs. Keene reveled in the drama of it all. "Mr. Franklin was the first guest in the breakfast-room. He was very quiet and short with the servants. He drank two cups of coffee and ate hardly anything. He was joined on the veranda by your father and they walked up and down together talking earnestly for thirty-six minutes. They were then sent for by Aunt Honoria. They have been closeted——"

"Closeted is excellent," said Beatrix. "Well done, Brownie! I thought so," she added mentally, with a sharp intake of breath.

"They have been in Miss Honoria's room,—your mother was there too,—until about ten minutes ago, when Mr. Franklin came out alone, hurried downstairs and out on the veranda, kicking one of the cane chairs on his way into the garden. My dear, God only knows what took place in that interview! Your father, Aunt Honoria and your mother are still talking. I don't understand—I really utterly fail to comprehend how you can stand there with that smile on your face, being in the midst of what seems to me to be a very terrible situation."

Beatrix whistled a little tune to keep up her courage, sat on the edge of a heavily carved table and swung her legs. "Well, what would you have me do?" she asked, with consummate coolness. "Stand on my head, wail like one of the fat ladies in Tristan and Isolde, or sink back on the sofa in an attitude of Early Victorian despair?" She got up and walked to one of the open windows and stood for a moment in the sun as though to get a little necessary warmth and sympathy. Then she went back to the table and looked rather eagerly and girlishly at her altogether useless but very faithful friend. "What d'you think it all means, Brownie dear?"

Mrs. Lester Keene gave the question her serious consideration. She was one of those women who looked most ludicrous when most worried. "If you ask me," she said, "I believe that Mr. Franklin has given you away and told the truth."

This answer came as rather a shock to Beatrix, but only for a moment. "Well, I don't," she said. "Shall I tell you why?"

"Indeed I wish you would."

"If Franklin had given me away he wouldn't have kicked that cane chair."

Brownie gave another gesture of despair. "If only you had it in you to take things seriously."

"Seriously! You dear old thing, I'm most serious. I have every reason to be. But that was a fine piece of deduction and my spirits have gone up with a rush. I'm now going to find Franklin, and I'll bet you a diamond bracelet that he has stood by me like a Trojan and is as angry as a caged hawk. Now, the all-important point is this: What hat shall I wear,—a simple, naïve, garden thing, or this sophisticated effort? I must please his eye."

"Wear the smart hat," said Mrs. Keene.

Beatrix wore the other. That almost went without saying.

She sang on her way down-stairs. She chose Santuzza's song from Cavalleria, which she ragged in the most masterly manner. She did this to give the impression, to anyone who might hear her, of light-heartedness. Her lithe, young, white-clad figure was reflected by many mirrors as she passed. She made sure that none of her people were in the hall, and then darted out to the veranda to look for Franklin. The members of the house-party had dispersed to pass the morning away in tennis and with the rehearsals for the pastoral. She could see a number of people under the trees to the left. She swung round the veranda, walking on the balls of her feet like a young Diana, singing as she went, but darting quick, anxious glances to the right and left. There was no sign of Franklin. She was about to make her way through the Dutch garden, all aflame with flowers, to the summer-house which overlooked the Sound shining beneath the sun, when a footman came out carrying one of her mother's petulant spaniels.

"Do you happen to know where Mr. Franklin is?" she asked, pulling up short.

"Yes, madam."

The word made her heart pump. "Well,—where?"

"Mr. Franklin ordered his car round ten minutes ago, madam, and has driven off to New York."

New York! Then he had given her away, after all, and left her in the lurch. What on earth was she going to do now?

XI

It was twenty minutes to one when Franklin brought his car to a stop at the Willow Tree Club in West Fifty-seventh Street. Malcolm usually dropped in to this rendezvous of writing men, artists and good fellows generally to read the papers, about midday. There was more than a chance that he might be lunching there.

The city lay weltering under a pall of humidity. As about a great hive the people moved like tired bees. Flags lay comatose around their posts, striped awnings hung limply above the windows of those unhappy souls who could not get away, and the buildings which reared their heads up to the sky seemed to perspire.

Franklin enquired for his friend at the office, was told that he had been in but had left half an hour before, murmured a mere second-grade oath, and being a member of the club himself, went into the reading room. He remembered that he needed certain things from Spaldings', especially flies, and knowing from long experience that he had better not trust to his memory, decided to write a brief letter, then and there.

A pale man was sitting within easy reach of the long magazine table. He looked up with the slightly antagonistic expression characteristic of men in clubs who have had a room to themselves, and wondered what sort of lucky creature the interloper was who could afford to achieve such a superb tan in a world of work and effort.

Franklin caught his eye, registered the fact that he had never seen him before and didn't much care if he never did again, and sat down at a writing table behind a book-case in the corner of the room.

After a few moments he was aware of the entrance of someone else because the pale man sang out a greeting, but he had concentrated on his list and what was said didn't reach him. He searched his brain for everything that he needed in the way of flies and tackle, endeavored to make his writing more legible than it usually was and was about to address the envelope when he caught the name of Vanderdyke. It was not so much the mention of the name that made him prick up his ears as the rather ribald tone in which it was said.

"I was surprised to read all that glorification in this morning's papers," he heard. "Gossip had it that you were very much in the running, York."

"I? Oh, no, my dear fellow. I had never entered in the matrimonial stakes for that girl."

"Why not? Beatrix Vanderdyke was worth winning, surely? Money to burn, beauty, youth,—what else do you want?"

"I'm not a marrying man. As they will be pretty certain to say in my obituary notices, I am 'wedded to my art.' Besides, my dear fellow, I have the fortunate knack of getting what I want without the consent of the parson." There was the kind of snigger that only comes from men who belong to the lady-killer tribe.

That, and the gross innuendo that preceded it, carried Franklin to his feet. The lust to hit had seized him. He stalked round the book-case into the middle of the room. His hands were clenched and he was breathing deeply like a man who had been running. He recognized in the tall, red-tied, flamboyant person the man with whom he had seen Beatrix that night when he had left the apartment house with Malcolm Fraser.

"I was luckily in a position to overhear your remark," he said quietly. "I'm Franklin. Miss Vanderdyke is my wife."

The pale man drew in his breath, and a look of excitement and pleasure flashed into his eyes. The one thing that made him feel that he had any blood was a fight.

Sutherland York recovered himself quickly. But for the slight suggestion of whiteness about his mouth he seemed to be perfectly at ease and nonchalant. "I'm glad that you're glad," he said, with a polite smile. "Permit me to offer my congratulations upon your very sudden and romantic marriage."

Franklin went a step or two nearer. "If you were not such a fat, unmuscular brute," he said, slowly, and with the most careful distinctness, "if I shouldn't be laying myself open to a charge of cruelty to animals, I'd thrash you until you blubbered for mercy." He put his hands in his pockets. "Even if I did, it would have very little effect, except to send you to the dentist and the beauty doctor. Your sort of liar is never properly cured."

He waited for a moment, obviously to give the famous artist a chance to revenge himself in some way for the insult that he had deliberately made as strong as he could.

And the pale man eyed York expectantly, eagerly.

But York still smiled, although the whites of his eyes took on a strange yellow tinge. "I regret that I do not possess the gift," he said, with a little bow, "of making suitable tu quoque to cave-men."

Whereupon Franklin burst into a laugh, turned and went out.

The pale man flung his magazine away. He resented being done out of legitimate excitement.

"A curiously uncivilized person," said York, putting a shaky hand up to his vivid tie. "Come to lunch, my dear fellow."

"Thanks, no; I'm lunching at the Biltmore," said the pale man, shortly.

It was when the portrait painter found himself alone that the veneer fell from him like the silver paper from a cheap cigar. His face swelled and grew red. "Curse these two autocrats," he cried inwardly. "I owed her something. Now he's added to the debt. Married, are they? By God, we'll see about that. Scandal? Ah, that's where I come in."

Franklin drove home, and gave his goggles to the chauffeur.

"Keep the car here," he said. "I shall probably want her again. But come up and get something to eat."

It was something to drink that O'Connor wanted, but he showed his excellent teeth in appreciation of the thought and made things ship-shape.

The over-uniformed elevator man in the hall of the apartment-house, which couldn't have been more pompous and imposing if it had been that of an embassy or a moving-picture palace, gave an exclamation of surprise at the sight of Franklin. "Didn't expect to see you here, sir," he said, with that nice touch of deferential camaraderie that is characteristic of all elevator men in apartment houses where rents are so prohibitive that they can boast of a waiting list.

"I didn't expect to be here," said Franklin.

"No, I s'pose not. Well, is this hot enough for you, sir?"

"I don't mind it. Do you know if Mr. Fraser is in?"

"Mr. Fraser? Yes, sir. I took him up awhile ago. He went out early."

Franklin nodded, got out and rang the bell. He had forgotten his latch-key as usual. The elevator man stood hesitating for a moment. His smile was so beaming that instinctively Franklin knew that if his door wasn't opened quickly he would be obliged to reply to very much undesired congratulations. The thing was all over the earth by that time, of course. The door opened at the psychological moment, however, and Franklin was spared. All the same, he turned before he went in, gave the man a nod, said, "Thanks, all the same," and exchanged a very human smile. Good fellows, both.

The man who opened the door was unable to refrain from raising his well-trained eyebrows, and his lips, too, shaped themselves for felicitations. But Franklin gave him his hat and said: "Tell Mrs. Romanes that I shall want lunch." And then let out a loud and ringing shout of "Who's aboard?"

Malcolm Fraser, who was sitting under an electric fan in a suit of white duck, sprang to his feet. "Good Lord!" he said to himself, "what the——"

Franklin turned at the door. "And, Johnson," he called out, "bring me a claret and seltzer! Sharp's the word." He glanced at the evening paper in Fraser's hand and gave a snort. There it was. Oh, Lord, yes! In huge letters half-way down the front page. Far bigger than would have been given to an ordinary war, or the discovery of a genuine cure for consumption. Photographs of bride and bridegroom, too, of course, twined together with flourishing lines and love-knots and orange blossoms.

Fraser shaped his lips.

"Now, look here, Malcolm," said Franklin, grimly, "if you say it,—one word of it,—I'll heave this chair at your head. All the same, I'm darned glad you're in, old man. I never needed your level head so much on earth."

An anxious look came into Fraser's blue and palpably incorruptible eyes. "Why? There's nothing wrong, is there?" he asked.

"Nothing wrong!"

But Johnson, who had dropped his usual heavy dignity in the excitement of the moment and really moved, came in with the claret and seltzer and Franklin cut his remark short, took the refreshing-looking drink and gave the glass back.

With his scrupulously clean-shaven and almost clerical face wreathed in smiles, Johnson spoke: "Will you allow me, sir, to offer you——"

Franklin jumped in quickly. "Yes, thank you, Johnson. Very much obliged. Leave the tray here."

"Very good, sir." Johnson was hurt. He had framed what he considered to be a fine flowing sentence. It seemed a pity that he should not have been permitted to give it full utterance. On his way to the door he resumed his usual iciness.

Franklin put two chairs close to the window. "Sit down, old man," he said, "and listen to this."

XII

Beatrix had courage. Instead of shutting herself up in her suite of rooms and hiding behind the excuse of a headache until her family disclosed to her the present condition of affairs, she took her place in the rehearsals for the pastoral, was highly entertained by the airs of the matinée idol, and presently met her mother and father and Aunt Honoria at luncheon, with her head as high as ever and laughter dancing in her eyes.

Imagine her relief when she found her mother cordial, her father affectionate and Aunt Honoria peculiarly gracious. Obviously Franklin had not given her away. She was still the heroine of this family drama. Up went her spirits. Optimism came back like the sun after a storm, and living once more for the moment and leaving the immediate future on the knees of the gods she became the life and soul of the house-party, teasing the matinée idol, complimenting the producer, saying little deferential things to her aunt, and playing the game of badinage with the guests with all the finish and daring of a champion.

Reaction set in early in the afternoon. She was tired. The strain of living over a mine began to tell. Mrs. Lester Keene's continual questions as to where Franklin was and why he had gone to town got on her nerves. And so, leaving Brownie on the veranda as a spy, she went to her rooms, gave orders that she was not to be disturbed and composed herself to sleep like a crown princess of a fictitious kingdom.

It was a little after four o'clock when Mrs. Keene fluttered in, in a high state of excitement. She found Beatrix half-awake and half-asleep lying on her pompous bed in the most charming dishabille, with a little flush on her lovely face like the pink of apple blossoms.

"My dear, my dear!" said Mrs. Keene, bending over her. "Mr. Franklin has just come back."

"Who has just come back, Brownie?"

"Mr. Franklin,—who else?" Sometimes this patient woman held that she had every right to show a touch of exasperation.

"Oh, yes,—Franklin, the sportsman," said Beatrix. "Heigh-ho! I've been dreaming of dancing. I invented a new fox-trot and I danced it with Maurice for an hour. The band was perfect."

"Mr. Franklin glared at me and went up to his room. I didn't like the expression on his face at all. Do please get up, dear. Now, please do!"

Beatrix heaved a sigh, sat up, remained thinking for several moments with her hands clasped about her knees, and then sprang out of bed. "Action!" she said. "Action! Call Helene, please, Brownie. I'm seized with an insatiable curiosity to find out what's happened. Really and truly, if I had consulted a specialist in the art of providing amusement for blasé people he couldn't possibly have devised a more wonderful scheme than mine for making life worth living. Now, Helene, pull yourself together. Brownie dear, ring down for a cup of tea. All hands clear for action!"

They did so to such good purpose,—Mrs. Keene bustling herself into a state of hysterical agitation, and Helene into breathlessness,—that barely half-an-hour later Beatrix, in a new and delicious frock, sailed downstairs, was told that Mr. Franklin had gone to the summer-house and followed him, humming a little tune. She came upon him standing with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his eyes on the horizon.

"I knew I should find you here," she said, in a ringing voice. "Good afternoon! How d'you do?"

Franklin turned and looked at her, and as he did so Malcolm Fraser's outburst came back into his mind. What a charming child she must have been before the spoiling process had had time to take its full effect! What a high-spirited, insolent, beautiful, untamed thing she was now with the world at her feet. "Good afternoon!" he answered, with a curious quickening of his pulse.

"Don't you love the view here? It's wonderful. I always come and drink it in when I feel the need of being soothed."

"That's why you've come now, I suppose," said Franklin, drily.

"No. I'm utterly unruffled and at peace with the world."

"May I say 'I don't believe you' without hurting your feelings?"

"Surely," said Beatrix. "Say anything you like. It's a free country,—a little too free perhaps." She bent down and picked a rose-bud and put it to her lips.

"Very good. Then I'll add this at once. I haven't wasted time since I saw you last."

"Oh, how pleasant to think that I've had a good effect upon you," she said, with a mischievous smile. "You have the reputation of being a past-master in the art of wasting time."

Franklin ignored the remark, although he noticed that she had two of the most ravishing dimples he had ever seen. "You may not know it, but this morning I went through a pretty bad hour with your people. I didn't actually lie to them, but I managed with a great effort not to tell them anything that was true."

"Then I win my bet," said Beatrix.

"I don't know what you mean."

"It doesn't matter. Tell me more. You interest me."

"That's good," said Franklin, with a sort of laugh. "After that,—and I dare say this is also news to you,—I drove to town to get advice. The end of it all is that there's only one way in which you and I can bring this farce to an end."

"No, no!" cried Beatrix, with mock horror at the word, "not farce,—comedy, please."

Franklin would have given nearly all he possessed for the pleasure of spanking that young woman until she cried for mercy. As it was, he pitched away his cigarette, waited until the echo of her voice had died away, and faced her up. "Now listen!" he said, sharply, "and if you are capable of it give some consideration to me and my life and to the gravity of my position and yours."

Beatrix waved her hand.

"We've got to go off at once," said Franklin, giving each word its full importance,—"somewhere or other, I don't know where,—and get married."

Beatrix almost jumped out of her skin.

Franklin went on quickly. "For this reason: I saw Sutherland York this morning at the club. It was perfectly obvious that he intends to make you pay fully for something that you did to him. From his manner and his infernal cheek I gathered that he has seen through the whole of this business, and he's going to spread it about that this is a bluff. He knows how to do this sort of thing better than most men, I judge, and it won't be many days before we find scandal rearing its head at us. Therefore, we must become at once what you said we were,—married. I'm sorry, but there's no way out. That over, you will go your way and I mine, and from the moment that we separate I will proceed to do that disgusting thing which the laws make necessary for a man who wishes to be divorced from his wife. You will please be good enough to make your plans to leave here not later than to-morrow. Some other girl must take your part in the pastoral."

"It won't be many days before we find scandal rearing its head at us."

"Impossible," said Beatrix, quietly.

"Why?"

"Simply because it is. I'm going to play that part and I'm going to look very nice in the clothes. Also, I'm looking forward to a great deal of fun with the matinée idol, shaved or unshaved."

Franklin whipped round upon her. "It isn't for you to say what you'll do or not do. For your sake, as well as for mine, I must take charge of this business, and you'll please carry out my orders."

"Orders!" She threw up her head. "That's a word that isn't and never will be contained in my dictionary."

"You're wrong. I've just added it to that volume," he said.

Beatrix gave a big laugh and stood up to him with her chin tilted, her eyes dancing and a look of triumph all over her lovely face. "Take charge—you!" she cried. "Think again. The whip is in my hand now and I shall use it. You dare not give me away. You're afraid of the laughter that will follow you wherever you go. I think you're right. But,—as to being your wife, not in this world, my good sir, for any reason that you can name. I'd rather die."

And then she turned on her heel and swung away, with the roses seeming to bend towards her as she went.

Franklin watched her, with his hands clenched and his mouth set. "By God," he said to himself, "we'll see about that!" And he would have added more angry words, thickly, to his mental outburst, if a new feeling,—bewildering, painful, intoxicating,—had not welled up to his heart. All round him, as he stood there in amazement, the air seemed to be filled with the song of birds. Then it came to him,—the answer to the question he had put to himself impatiently and jealously in his apartment in New York after Malcolm Fraser's little story. "I'm going to begin to live—I've met the woman who can make me give up freedom and peace of mind, take me to Heaven or draw me down into Hell!"

XIII

That rather charming haphazard air that is characteristic of afternoon tea in an English country house, to which young people from the tennis courts and golf links slack in just as they are and find the hostess presiding at a substantial table, assisted by all the younger men who are born to carry cups and cake—they always dance and generally play the piano—was missing from the West Terrace of the Vanderdyke mansion. Mrs. Vanderdyke "dressed" for tea. Her costume was a very beautiful and pompous affair, not cut low enough for dinner or for breakfast but quite low enough for the theatre, and she wore a considerable quantity of jewels. Brilliantly made up, she sat under the awning with her back to the sun chatting with royal condescension and studied charm. It was one of the best things that she did. It was also her first public appearance of the day, most of which had been devoted to a hard, stern and successful fight against Anno Domini.

She was surrounded by members of the house party who took themselves and her seriously and she, and they, were under the expert attention of several footmen. Carefully chosen for their height and gravity and truth to type, these men wore a very distinguished livery with knee breeches and black silk stockings, and they hovered from person to person with a rather soothing quietude, moved by invisible machinery.

The vivacious little Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves who talked continuously of "my daughter Lady Bramshaw and that sweet old place in Hampshire" was purring under the attentions of Admiral De Forrest Wontner. Although a grandmother, an event of which she spoke as if it were rather a malicious lie, Mrs. Reeves looked like a very young, blond, motion picture star who tames cave-men and broncho-busters with just one quick upward glance. Her laughter bubbled like boiling water and at odd moments she clapped her hands and opened her blue eyes very wide and pursed up her little red mouth. Of her tiny ankles she was very proud and hardly ever forgot to expose them. She underlined most of her words with gushing emphasis and everything, from a sunset to a new soap, was "perfectly wonderful." Wontner and she had been engaged to be married after a dance at Annapolis somewhere in the seventies, but while he was at sea on his first commission, Ettie Stanton met, danced and ran away with young E. L. Reeves of Baltimore and remained "terribly crazy" about him to the day of his death. It was indeed a peculiarly happy marriage, blessed with three fine manly boys and a girl who was always being mistaken for her mother. And now the retired sea-dog, celebrated for his early Victorian gallantry, one of the few remaining bucks in the country and a man of wit, chivalry and golden heart, carried on a St. Martin's summer flirtation with his former sweetheart, the very sight of whom dispelled his accumulation of years as the sun scatters the dew. Most people were amused at the affair and several were sympathetic.

Talking to Mrs. Vanderdyke, or rather listening to Mrs. Vanderdyke, who either talked or went into a trance, was handsome Percy Campbell, the man who drank a bottle of whiskey before breakfast and played golf all day in order to drink another before going to bed. He owned three streets in New York; he had never done anything more serious than learn to play the violin, about which he talked to everybody. He was now dangerously near fifty-three but since passing out of Harvard he had not found time to practise more than a dozen times. He carried three beautiful Strads wherever he went, however, and whenever he became genuinely fuddled motored to the nearest town, day or night, to buy a new stack of strings and rosin. His wife went with him as well as his violins and received much less consideration although many more cases. They were popular people and Campbell's shooting box in Scotland near Cupar, Fife, from which his remote ancestors strayed, was always full. No altogether Scot could compete with him in his devotion to the national beverage.

Then there were Mrs. Lucas D. Osterpath, in mourning for her son who had just married a Folly from the New Amsterdam Theatre roof; the William Bannermans, recently remarried after a most amusing divorce; Philip Kawbro in his inevitable blue and white striped collar and yellow waistcoat; Regina Westerhaus, as regal as her name, but still a spinster at the end of three seasons, and the Hon. Mrs. Claude Larpent, the centre of attraction for those three vieux marcheurs, Major Thresher, Roger Peek and Courtney Borner.

The young people avoided this function and got whatever refreshment they needed from the bachelors' house.

It was to this terrace that Beatrix made her way after flinging her triumphant refusal at Franklin. All the elation of a victor ran through her veins. What did she care about the possibility either of being blackmailed or shown up by Sutherland York? Why should she give the smallest consideration to Pelham Franklin or join him in any plan to save his name from scandal? He had said an unforgivable thing to her in her bedroom that memorable night, the sting of which still made her smart. She gloried in having been able to make him pay something on account of that huge debt and with characteristic high-handedness turned a Nelsonian eye to the black cloud that was moving up over the horizon. She had always taken chances. It was part and parcel of her nature. With a growing sense of exhilaration and the feeling that she was merely at the beginning of a great adventure she took a chance again. If the storm was fated to burst and Franklin gave her away to her parents, well, let it burst. There would be an epoch-making family row, and unless her wits protected her again she would be sent into the back of beyond. That was an appalling prospect which, however, she pushed aside. She trusted to her usual luck to carry her out of this tangle, if only by the skin of her teeth. The great point at the moment was that she had scored over Franklin and left him impotent. But for that parting remark of his before he left her room she might have considered the possibility of falling in with his plan. The humiliation of being made to obey his orders might have been lived down, greatly as she resented humiliation. But when it came to such a deliberate attack upon her vanity—that was altogether different.

Miss Honoria Vanderdyke, who had been hard at work with a secretary all the afternoon organizing a new society to look after women released from penitentiaries, came out as Beatrix was passing. The graceful, white-haired woman put her arm round the girl's shoulders. "I've never seen you look so happy, dear child," she said, with an unusual touch of tenderness.

Beatrix smiled at her and in her mind's eye saw Franklin's expression as he stood outside the summer-house with her refusal in his face. "I have every reason to be happy, Aunt Honoria," she answered, in a ringing voice. "Life has great compensations."

They fell into step on their way to tea—the elder woman a little envious of what appeared to be her niece's romantic love affair, because her own had ended tragically and left her with a broken heart. Must a woman necessarily break her heart before she will devote her life to the relief of other people's sufferings? An old philosopher, who must have been something of a misogynist, once defined woman's happiness "as that state in which all their immediate desires were gratified, a self-satisfaction which left them blind to the fact that other people littered the earth." Maybe he was right.

Aunt Honoria looked rather searchingly at the beautiful girl at her side who, alone among all the human beings that she knew, possessed the magic carpet. "Why do you talk of compensations?" she asked. "At your age, in your position? You puzzle me, child."

Beatrix laughed the question off. "Oh, that's a long story. One of these fine days, when I am overmastered by a desire to confess, I'll tell you all about it. Look, isn't mother wonderful? It's almost absurd for me to call her by anything but her Christian name."

Aunt Honoria smiled a little dryly. "My dear," she said, "all women could be as unnaturally young as your mother is if they gave up as much time to it. Tell me about that very striking person who is completely hemmed in by old men."

"Mrs. Larpent? Isn't she attractive? Isn't she exactly like one's idea of a favorite in the Court of Louis Quinze? I don't know anything about her yet. Wait until to-night and I will give you my impressions." She kissed her hand to her aunt, touched her arm with an affectionate and respectful finger and crossed the terrace to Ida Larpent's chair. "May I join your admirers?" she asked.

With a curious smile Mrs. Larpent drew closer the chair out of which Courtney Borner had done his best to spring. "I should like nothing so much," she said. It might be most useful to become the friend of the wife of the man who had stirred her calculating heart to love. Who could tell?

In the meantime having immediately gained Mrs. Vanderdyke's permission to ask a friend of his to dine and sleep, Franklin shut himself up in the telephone room, asked for the number of his apartment in New York and told Johnson to call Malcolm Fraser.

"Old man," he said, when his friend's voice came rather anxiously over the wire, "will you do something for me? Will you get a car at once and pack your things for dinner and sleeping and rattle down here as quick as you can? I can't say anything now except that I need you worse than ever.... Thanks. I knew you would. So long."

In a secret corner of his staunch heart Fraser had locked up his love for Beatrix. He was now to be consulted again as to how to put things right between her and his best pal. It's a queer world and full of paradox.

XIV

A few minutes later Franklin was exuberantly welcomed to tea by little Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves. "I'm terribly glad to see you," she cried. "Come and tell me all about everything. I was distracted when I heard that you had gone to town. Admiral, have you ever seen such an intriguing tie as the boy's wearing?"

Poor little comic lady! She had much the same effect on Franklin as that diabolical machine that drills holes in steel girders. He sat down at her side and made ready to endure the continual tapping of her uncontrollable tongue because he could see Beatrix with the sun on her hair and the nape of her neck. He didn't quite know why, but he was queerly disconcerted and annoyed to see that she was in animated conversation with Ida Larpent and the fact that he received an enigmatical glance through the latter lady's half-closed eyes did much to add to this uncomfortable feeling.

"I've been talking to Mrs. Vanderdyke about your unconventional behavior, Mr. Franklin," continued Mrs. Reeves.

"Unconventional," echoed Franklin, listening with half an ear. "In what way?"

"Well, isn't it the usual thing for two young people to enjoy a honeymoon after they are married, especially such young people?"

The word honeymoon came strangely to Franklin. If it had been mentioned the day before in connection with this extraordinary business it would have caused him to scoff inwardly and do his best to pass it over with a forced smile. As it was, on top of his sudden realization that in Beatrix was the woman who called him to live bigly and love to distraction, but who had refused with utter scorn even to go through the form of marriage with him, it acted like the sting of a knife.

But the word also gave him an idea and Mrs. Reeves' remark about having spoken to Mrs. Vanderdyke a new plan. For some little time he remained where he sat while the little woman babbled, going from subject to subject in her characteristically unconcentrated way. He nodded where he thought that a nod was due, smiled frequently and threw in a yes or no as it seemed necessary. Finally he got up, when the Admiral drew his old sweetheart's attention once more to himself, and went over to Aunt Honoria.

"May I take you for a little exercise in the garden?" he asked.

"With great pleasure," she said, rising at once. "I have been trying to catch your eye for some minutes. I want your advice."

As they passed Beatrix she had the audacity to throw at Franklin a most connubial smile. It gave the elderly lady a thrill and very nearly threw Franklin off his feet. He heard the contralto of Mrs. Larpent's voice and Beatrix's ringing reply: "Yes, he's a darling." Ye gods, but this girl must surely be a surprise to Nature herself.

Miss Vanderdyke refrained from saying a word until she was out of earshot of the cheerful group. Then she drew up at the top of the Italian steps that led into the geometrical gardens. "I want you to listen to this extraordinary epistle, Pelham," she said. "It was sent to my sister-in-law before she left her rooms this afternoon." She drew it out of its envelope and read it in her clear, incisive voice.

"Dear Mrs. Vanderdyke,

"I have just received a telegram from a leading motion picture concern in Los Angeles offering me very big money to leave to-night to do a picture for them. Business before pleasure, you know, so I have just time before making a train to New York to write these few lines. I am sorry for the pastoral, but doubtless you will be able to find a substitute for me, though not, I fear, with an equal sense of rommance. Thanking you for your kindness and asuring you that I shall not require any fee for rehearsals.

"Sinceerely,

"BRIAN YOUNG."

"Good Lord!" said Franklin. "Pretty cool piece of impertinence."

"I thought so. And look, he spells romance with two 'm's,' and assuring with one 's.' He also makes the inappropriate word, sincerely, look even quainter by a superfluous 'e' in the middle. Are all matinée idols quite so illiterate, I wonder?"

"Hardly," said Franklin. "What's to be done?"

Aunt Honoria shrugged her shoulders. "Your mother-in-law and I, after consultation with my brother, who showed even less than his usual interest in the matter, have decided to cancel the pastoral, especially as we have all been discussing the advisability of your taking Beatrix away."

"For a honeymoon?" asked Franklin involuntarily.

"Exactly," Aunt Honoria gave a little laugh. "Because you two young despots have broken the conventions by this secret marriage, I think it follows that you should do something to stop gossip and comment by conforming to an old custom. What do you say, my friend?"

Franklin put a curb upon his eagerness. To get Beatrix to sea on his yacht—that was the thing. It would give him a chance, just a chance, to win his way to Beatrix's untouched and wilful heart, and go far to show York that his intuition and cunning reasoning were wrong.

"If you think so," he said, "I am perfectly willing to fall in with your wishes."

"That's extremely nice of you!"

Franklin showed his excellent teeth and gave a little bow. But not being a lady's man he failed to produce an Elizabethan compliment or one that might have proved that there is gallantry even in these careless days.

Aunt Honoria took the word for the deed, and Franklin's arm down the steps. The sun was dipping into the Sound and the whole panorama of sky was striped and splashed with red. Young voices drifted toward them from the tennis courts and a flock of wild ducks high up in a wide V flew rapidly above their heads. The scent of flowers rose up to them as they walked and a very golden day slipped gently into evening.

"I don't know what Beatrix will have to say about it," said Franklin.

There was a rather dry laugh. "Oh, I had not forgotten that Beatrix, although happily married, is a factor to be consulted."

Franklin laughed too. "No," he said, with several memories very clear in his mind, "one could hardly forget that."

And then the tall, white-haired, dignified woman, about whom there was an intellectual humanity very rarely met with, did an unexpected thing. She stopped suddenly and stood in front of Franklin, eye to eye with him. "My dear Pelham," she said, with a touch of propheticism, "you will not find the woman in Beatrix, nor will she have discovered the woman in herself, until that precious moment when, quite conscious of her abdication of a mock throne, she falls in with your wishes like a simple trusting child. When that moment comes, if ever it does, I shall give praise to God, because the woman in Beatrix will be very sweet and beautiful."

And then they continued on their way through the sleepy gardens.

"So shall I," said Franklin quietly.

"The fact that the pastoral will not be given will help us considerably. Beatrix, who, by the way, has taken small part in the rehearsals, will turn for amusement to something else. Her father and mother both desire that she shall put an end to gossip and give our good friends no further excuse to hold her up as the most unconventional girl of the day. That sort of reputation so rightly belongs to young women of the stage whose success depends far more on advertisement than talent. Where is your yacht?"

"Lying in the river, fully commissioned."

"Oh, well, then everything is easy! Surely nothing could be more delightful for Beatrix than to make a cruise under these romantic circumstances. Leave it all to me, my dear boy. I'll see that you get your wife to yourself, never fear."

Beatrix ran her arm round Aunt Honoria's waist. "Well," she said, with the smile that she always used when it was urgently necessary to win a heart, "am I to be allowed in this conference, or am I a back number in the family now?" She had watched this intimate talk between Miss Vanderdyke and Franklin with growing uneasiness. Finally, in the middle of one of Ida Larpent's best stories, she had sprung up, made short work of the distance between herself and them and broken into the conversation.

"We were talking about you, my dear," said Aunt Honoria.

"No!" cried Beatrix. "Impossible!"

Franklin caught her mocking glance and dug his heels into the path.

"We were making plans for you, charming plans, honeymoon plans as a matter of fact, and as the pastoral is cancelled you will no doubt fall in with them with enthusiasm."

"The pastoral cancelled? Why?" The girl's voice was incredulous. "But I've been to all the trouble of getting a special costume, nearly all the younger people in the house-party have been chosen on purpose."

"Our friend the matinée idol has flown away to pick up a bigger seed elsewhere."

A flush of anger colored Beatrix's face and her eyes glinted. "He said something to me this morning about motion pictures. I thought he was endeavoring to advertise himself. I never dreamed he would have the impertinence to chuck us!"

"Well, his withdrawal simplified things, my dear, as I will tell you later. Come to my room ten minutes before dinner and I will give you the latest family plan. In the meantime, two's company, and I will get a few words with my old friend, the Admiral, who is wandering about like a lost soul." Aunt Honoria nodded and with her shoulders as square as those of a well-drilled man, went gracefully to where the septuagenarian lover was either chewing the cud of bitter reflection or recovering from a long bout of exaggerated and over-emphasized commonplaces.

And then Beatrix turned sharply to Franklin. "Be good enough to tell me what all this means," she said.

Franklin showed his teeth in his peculiar silent laugh. "Why put a pin through Miss Vanderdyke's little surprise?"

Beatrix intended to know. Her curiosity was alight. It was so obvious that she had been under discussion and as the family was to be dragged in, so certain that she was going to be coerced into something totally against her wishes. But she changed her tactics.

"Oh, look," she cried, "isn't that sail perfectly charming against the sky?"

"Corking," said Franklin, not looking at it, but at her. By Jupiter, how lovely, how desirable, but how amazingly perverse she was! A man would have not lived for nothing who could break her and make her, even if she never returned his love.

"It's a good world," she said, with a little sigh, waiting to catch Franklin on the hop. "Sometimes I'm consumed with a longing to be right away in the middle of the sea—to get even with things."

She caught him. It was uncanny. "The chance is yours," he said, easily beaten. "It has been decided that we go for our honeymoon on the Galatea."

She whipped around. "Oh, so that's it, is it? You've been working up a conspiracy to get me on your yacht so that you may escape from gossip? I see. Quite clever to enrol my family against me, but my answer to you this afternoon holds good."

For all the love that had come upon him so suddenly, Franklin lost patience. He put his hand on her arm and held her in a close grip. "Let it hold good," he said. "Stand out against being my wife until you see sense and learn that others deserve consideration besides yourself. But conform now to your people's wishes and put York off the scent. That's all you're required to do at the moment."

"Take your hand away," said Beatrix icily. "This is not a woman's bedroom. I can call for help here remember."

Franklin retained his grip. He was very angry. "You fool," he said, too completely out of control to choose his words. "Look at this thing sanely. Come out of your house of cards and play the game like a grown woman. The scandal that drove you into taking advantage of me will be ten thousand times worse if York gets to work."

"That doesn't worry me," said Beatrix calmly. "I'll thank you for my arm."

"You don't count," said Franklin. "Consideration must be given to your people and to me."

"I'm perfectly willing and even anxious to protect my people, but"—and she gave him two fearless eyes—"I see no reason why I should worry about you."

"Why not? Where would you be now but for my having come to the rescue?"

Beatrix gave a most tantalizing laugh. "When you learned to play the trumpet you were a good pupil, Mr. Franklin. Any other man would have done as well, you know."

Franklin dropped her arm. "Good God," he said, "you beat me. I can't compete with you. I might just as well try to drive sense into a lunatic."

It was good, it was worth being alive to Beatrix to see this man, this fine, strong, clean-built, square-shouldered man, who had dared to conceive the remote possibility of humbling her for what she had done, who had had the sublime audacity to believe that he could teach her a lesson, standing impotent before her, self-confessedly her inferior, when it came to wits. She showed it in her smile, in her almost bland and child-like glee, in her frank pleasure. He had said a thing to her that no man should ever have said to a woman and expect to be forgiven. She would remember it as long as she lived and make him pay for it and pay and pay again.

"Even lunatics have their sane moments," she said. "Mine come whenever I think about you. Isn't that Malcolm Fraser on the terrace? How delightful. Suppose we go back now, after yet another of our little wrangles, shall we?"

She stood silhouetted against the darkening sky, with her hands behind her back, her head held high, the very epitome of utter carelessness, the last word in individualism, the thoughtless and selfish enjoyment of the moment and of life generally so long as it was without responsibility, concentration, or a call to do anything for anybody but herself.

"Count me out, please," said Franklin. "You must get out of this business in your own way. I shall leave here to-night and go to sea. I wish you luck."

He bowed, turned on his heel and walked away, and as he went, he hoped that he might never see that girl again.

XV

"Now, old man," said Franklin when at last he found himself with Malcolm Fraser, "let's get out of earshot of this chattering crowd and come up to things."

"The sooner the better," said Fraser.

They left the hall and passed the ball-room, to which everyone with a sense of rhythm, even if with no ear for music, had been drawn by the irresistible syncopation of a large banjo band of colored musicians. The drummer was already committing demented acts upon a scavenger collection of tins, boxes, and whistles. They went out into the moonlight and through the gardens to the summer house.

The dynamic energy which radiated from Franklin did much, so far as Fraser was concerned, to spoil the exquisite peace and lassitude of the night. All the poet in him gave him the keys with which to open some of the unnoticed doors to Nature's storehouses of beauty and called him to stand very still and fill his brain and soul with the sight that met his eyes. He had never felt prouder of his country than when he revelled in the picture of the moon-touched Sound, magic with the reflection of a multitude of stars, and ran his eyes along the dim outline of shore to his right and caught the bright eyes of thousands of cheerful lights. It seemed to him that Nature, with the proud consciousness of her genius as an artist, had outdone herself in setting a scene for the human comedy in which he had been cast for the second male part. Water and moon and stars, the mystery of night, the feeling of illimitable space, the scent of sleeping flowers, the whisper of fairies, all as old and even older than the hills—surely this was an appropriate setting for the working out of the ancient and inevitable drama, the ever-recurring clash, between a man and a woman.

"Go ahead, Pel," he said. "This morning in New York you left this strange story of yours at the point where the entrance of York into it made you decide to marry Beatrix. I have not got the novelist's brain so I can't for the life of me see what can have happened in the chapter that has been begun since then."

"My dear chap," said Franklin, flinging the end of a cigarette over the wall, "don't you know that more impossible things are done every hour in life than ever find their way into books?"

"Yes, I know that."

"Well, the thing that I should have thought the very limit of impossibility happened here, on this very spot, this afternoon when I got back. Take a guess."

Fraser's answer came quickly. "Beatrix loves you."

There was no mirth in Franklin's laugh. "Guess again."

"You love Beatrix."

"A precious clever fellow, aren't you? What the devil made you get to love so quickly? I expected you to flounder through a dozen guesses and then be wide of the mark."

"A man and a woman and love," said Fraser. "Why hire a detective to make a mystery of that? It's any poet's job."

Franklin kicked the wall viciously. "There's nothing for a poet in this," he said. "I do love this girl. I wish to God I didn't. I'd give ten years of my life if she left me as cold as a flapping fish. You know what we talked over this morning. We decided that there was only one way for me to get out honestly of that fool maze in which I'd been caught. The reasons were pretty obvious. My family and the Vanderdykes were at the mercy of that glossy charlatan and because of the ungovernable impulses of this ... this—what in thunder is the right word for Beatrix? I give it up."

"Undiscovered girl. Will that do?"

"No," said Franklin. "Not a bit like it."

"Well, then, dollar-ruined, misnamed victim of a false civilization. How's that?"

"Too long and too pedantic. I wanted one word. However, let it go. What's it matter? It's a waste of words to describe her and a waste of time to consider her. When I put things to her plainly and bluntly, she told me to go to the devil. I sent for you to use your influence, hoping, as of course you can see, that she might come down to solid things and see sense,—hoping too that, married, I might be able to force my way into her heart, if she's got one."

"Oh, yes, she's got one."

"I doubt it. Very highly finished watch works is all the heart she's got. However, since that first talk we've had another and that's made your kindness in coming here utterly useless."

Fraser turned eagerly towards his friend. He had no hope of ever being any more to Beatrix than an art student can be to a very perfect Gainsborough at which he gazes from behind a rail. He could neither buy her nor win her. She was completely out of his reach. Not able to marry her himself, he would rather see her married to Franklin than any living man. "Why?" he asked.

"Because I'm off. I'm out. I'm through. I'm not an expert in love. As a matter of fact I'm a boob in the business. It's new to me. But it's hit me good and hard, old son, and with any encouragement or with half a chance, I'd go for it with everything decent that's in me."

"Go for it," said Fraser, with an odd thrill in his voice. "You have all the luck."

Franklin shook his head. "No. I've done. She has no use for me. She mocks me, twists me round her finger, holds me up by the scruff of the neck, gets more fun out of me than if I were a red-nosed comedian and nearly drives me to murder. I just have to get away. I'm going to-night."

"To-night? But my dear old Pel, you—you only found out that you loved her a few hours ago."

"Quite long enough."

"But, good Lord, you must let me see what I can do. When we were kids I used to have some influence with her. That is, once or twice she did things for my sake. To chuck the whole thing now, when it looks far more serious than ever,—why Pel, my dear man, talk about ungovernable impulses——"

"Oh, I know," growled Franklin. "We're both tarred with the same brush. We're both money-maniacs. However, in perfectly cold blood, standing here to-night, I assure you that I am better out of her way. I can't help her. She won't be helped. She doesn't give a red cent for anything that may happen. All she cares about is just to go laughing through the moment. Well, let her. But she'll have to go alone. I love her in the sort of way that makes me want to choke her when she starts her tricks. That's the truth. I'm sorry. I don't want to be unsporting and all that but, Malcolm, she isn't safe with me." His voice shook as he said this thing.

"Wait until the morning," said Fraser urgently. "Let me show her the mess she's in."

"Can't be done," said Franklin. "I've told Albert to put my things in the car and I'm off to town right away. I shall go aboard in the morning and weigh anchor at two o'clock. I'll wait for you till then and not a second later." He laid his hand on Fraser's shoulder. "Get your things and come now. There's nothing to do here, worse luck."

"In any case," said Fraser, "I want to have a bit of a talk with Beatrix now that I'm here."

"All right. Well, then, so long, Malcolm. It was mighty good of you to come. Don't fail to be in time to-morrow." He turned and went, walking quickly and waking all the flowers with his energy.

Fraser watched him go,—his tall, wiry, square-shouldered, muscular figure thrown out against the moon-silvered stone-work of the terrace. Then he turned back to the scene that filled his brain with imagery and that inarticulate worship which is offered by all good students to the Master for the perfection of His work. The silence sang. Many of the shore lights had gone out. But the moon rode high and the stars were at their brightest. The faint breeze had fallen away. Fraser raised his hand above his head in a sort of salute and then wheeled round and followed Franklin toward the elephantine house that made a huge black patch against the transparent sky. As he got nearer to it the music of a Hula-Hula thing came to him,—a fascinating, hip-moving mixture that suggested both Hawaii and Broadway and he could see the dancers flitting past the open windows of the ball-room. Among them was Beatrix, in the arms of one of those spineless semi-professional dancing men, a new, curious and uncomfortable breed that has developed in New York since the craze carried it on to its feet. Her mouth was open and her teeth gleaming and her young body moving with exquisite grace and ease.

Fraser went up to one of the windows and watched her until the tune came to an end. Every man has a dream. Somewhere or other in the life of men, all men, there is one precious, priceless thing tucked away in the secret drawer of the heart. Beatrix, as a little, frank, fearless girl, lived and was glorified, for Fraser.

He allowed himself just one short sigh. "And now," he said to himself, "to show for the first time in history that a poet can be a man of action for the sake of a friend. If I fail, I'll, yes, I'll eat and drink my self-filling pen."

It was one o'clock the next day when Franklin left the chart-room of the Galatea, where he had been planning out a cruise with the skipper. He went on deck. All hands had been busily at work since early morning, cleaning and polishing. The yacht looked like a beautiful woman, fresh from the hands of manicure and maid.

There was a shout of "Galatea ahoy" from the port side. Franklin took no notice. It was probably the arrival of the last boat-load of stores. He stood with his arms behind him and his mind back in the Vanderdyke gardens with the afternoon sun aslant upon them, and as he watched the retreating figure of the imperious girl to whom he was less than the dust, a mere pawn to be moved when it was necessary in her game, the amazing thrill which had discovered to him the love that was to be the greatest thing in his life, ran all over him again, and shook him with its strength and passion.

Well, he was bolting from her, bolting because he was afraid. It was the act of a coward, perhaps, but that girl had the power of making queer creatures of men. And he did not intend to be one of them. That was all.

A laugh, taken up by the breeze and thrown past his ear like the petal of a flower, turned him round. Unable to believe his eyes, he saw Beatrix, Ida Larpent and Malcolm Fraser, standing on deck, while luggage was being piled about them. Fraser waved his hand triumphantly. Mrs. Larpent gave one of her slow smiles and Beatrix, with the expression of an angel and a touch of timidity and even humbleness that Franklin had never seen before, came forward. "Come aboard, sir," she said, with a very proper salute. "Malcolm showed me the error of my ways last night and like a good and faithful wife I am going on my honeymoon."

And then the old Beatrix returned and a mocking smile turned Franklin's heart to ice.

XVI

Franklin was a man who inherited a horror of scenes. If he saw a crowd in the street reinforced by running figures he turned on his heel and went the other way. Anything in the nature of an argument sent him out into the street. He was at any time perfectly willing to fight, either for the sake of the exercise or to punish an offender, but he shied at a fracas, a domestic wrangle or the remote possibility of placing himself in a position of being surrounded by many people all talking at the same time. He had camped in solitary places, and communed with nature in her forest cathedrals. He liked the silences.

The moment that this amazing boat-load came aboard the Galatea he saw himself plunged into a scene, if ever there was one. Malcolm Fraser was bursting with information and explanations. Mrs. Larpent gave every indication of the fact that she felt that some justification for her presence was required, and behind Beatrix's impish laugh there was a high-spirited story waiting to be told.

Just for one moment Franklin stood bare-headed in front of Beatrix completely and utterly nonplussed. She was the last person on earth whom he had expected to see on the yacht. He had, indeed, made up his mind never to see her again.—to cut and run from the pain of her, the allurement, the overwhelming attraction. He gazed at her as if she had fallen from the clouds. He had been treated like a child again, "used" once more, and he was angry, but as he took in her charming appearance, the calm audacity of her expression, the indescribable loveliness of her face, he rejoiced. Then he pulled himself together and tried to perform the operation of smiling as a new husband should. "You're in excellent time," he said, and gave a shout, caught the eye of the mate and beckoned him to come forward. "Get everything ready for Mrs. Franklin and Mrs. Larpent. Look alive and have Mr. Fraser's things taken down to his stateroom at once."

The mate was English. "Aye! Aye, sir!" He was also young and sandy and somewhat precocious, and from the tail-end of his eye there came a look of deep admiration for the owner's wife, whom he now saw for the first time.

"Stop a minute," said Franklin. "I don't see anything of your maid, Beatrix. You'll never be able to get along without her."

"You're very thoughtful," said Beatrix, graciously. "Anyone would think you had been on a honeymoon before." And then she laughed. "For some reason or other Helene is very much afraid of you. I brought her, but evidently she's hidden behind something,—the baggage probably." She called "Helene," and the pretty face and compact figure of the young Breton appeared reluctantly from behind several huge innovation trunks, hat-boxes, boot-cases, cabin-trunks, and the Lord knows what besides,—enough, as it seemed to Franklin, to supply half a dozen wives with unnecessaries.

"Perhaps you'll go below with Mr. Jones and make your own arrangements. Otherwise, I'm afraid you won't be very comfortable."

Beatrix smiled in her best social manner. "It's too bad to put you to all this inconvenience and worry," she said. "I'm so sorry, but I dare say we shall all fit in with perfect ease and comfort. More like a young liner than a yacht, isn't she? And who named her the Galatea? So terribly suitable, as little Mrs. Reeves would say. Lead the way, Mr. Jones."

There was a touch of almost navy etiquette about the way in which the mate saluted and obeyed.

Beatrix beckoned to Helene, who was as frightened as a rabbit at sight of dogs, and the little party went below. Franklin watched her go, saw her look about her with a touch of perfectly simple excitement, envied the sun as she put up her face to catch it and the friendly smile with which she rewarded the mate. "If only," he said to himself, "if only——"

And then Mrs. Larpent came forward. There was a most curious little smile round her very red lips and wide nostrils, and a whole dictionary of meaning in her eyes. "You must be a little surprised to see——"

Franklin cut her short. "Not at all. Delighted!" he said, bluntly. "Would you be good enough to follow Beatrix and take your choice of staterooms? I will endeavor to get a stewardess for you before we sail."

"Thanks, so much!" said Ida Larpent, making no attempt to disguise her sense of triumph at being on the yacht. "How delightful it will be to get away from the land and its people for a time. I congratulate you on the Galatea."

Franklin waited until she had disappeared and then strode over to Malcolm Fraser, who was watching the arriving baggage, took his arm and marched him out of ear-shot of the crew. "What the devil have you done? You call yourself a friend and land me in this mess!" His voice was thick with anger.

Fraser looked as astonished as he felt. "But you called me down to the Vanderdykes to do this very thing," he said. "I've done it. What's the trouble?"

"You colossal idiot!" said Franklin. "Haven't you imagination enough to see it for yourself? Have you forgotten every blessed thing that I told you last night? You haven't persuaded this girl to come aboard to oblige her people or to keep my name out of the papers. She doesn't give a solitary curse whether hers is in them or not. She's come just to have the satisfaction of playing with fire, and has brought Ida Larpent because she knows instinctively that she is the last woman on earth I care to see her with or have on the Galatea."

All the way back to town, Fraser had been congratulating himself on having achieved the impossible. He opened his mouth to speak.

"I think you'd better dry up," said Franklin, "and give me time to cool down. At this moment I feel like pitching you overboard." He turned on his heel, went forward and stood, with his hands thrust into his pockets, gazing down the river.

Like all poets, Malcolm Fraser was a very sensitive person. He was deeply hurt at the way in which his efforts were received by the man for whom he had a very deep regard. Like all poets,—even those who confine themselves to gloomy verses, to graves and broken hearts and wind in the trees,—he was an optimist. He had made up his mind that he had only to get Beatrix away to sea with Franklin to bring romance into their very strange, exotic story. He held the belief,—shared by many philosophers,—that in most cases love is the outcome of propinquity,—especially at sea. He didn't possess much, but he would give it all to watch the girl he loved become a woman and find herself for love of his friend. He threw a sympathetic glance at the square shoulders of his friend, and went below to his own familiar stateroom. From this he could hear Beatrix's merry laugh. She, at any rate, seemed to be happy, and that was something. He could not for the life of him understand,—with his friend's confession still warm in his memory,—why, he, too, was not in the seventh heaven of delight at the fulfilment of what had yesterday seemed to be a dream. To the amazing unconventionality of the whole affair he gave no thought. He was an artist.

Finally, and with a huge effort to master his anger and amazement, joy and sense of impending trouble, Franklin summed things up to the best of his ability: "Here's Beatrix," he said to himself, "not married to me,—supposedly on our honeymoon. I love her like an idiotic school-boy—she loathes me like the devil. Here's Ida Larpent, out for everything that she can get, playing her own hand with all the cunning of a card-sharp. Here's Fraser, one of the very best, a man with a heart of gold to whom friendship means loyalty, with a love for Beatrix which has outlasted his boyhood. And almost in sight of us all is the open sea. Great Scott, what a mess!"

And then Captain McBean stood at his elbow. "Orders stand, sir?"

"Of course," said Franklin. "But before we put off do what you can to get a stewardess aboard for Mrs. Larpent. You had better send Jones ashore. He has a wide smile and does things pretty quick, and,—wait a second, Captain,—let him bring back all the latest novels that he can find. We shall need something to keep the ladies busy."

The Captain chuckled. He had been married twice.

XVII

The Galatea was under way at two o'clock,—a clear, bright, sparkling afternoon with a hot sun, a transparent sky and hardly a puff of wind. Built on thorough sea-going lines, newly painted and in apple-pie order and carrying a crew of forty men she was, as well she might be, the envy of passing craft. Men who knew, ran their eyes along her graceful lines with admiration and took pleasure in her swan-like movement. Others on tugboats, shifting a quid, made rough guesses as to her daily cost in the manner of women talking over the clothes, jewels and spendings of a distinguished leader of society.

About one-thirty two things happened,—the first of them comic, the other not without a touch of pathos. The sandy-headed mate, Horatio Jones, whose middle name of Nelson was dropped by him with a sneaking sense of its unfitness, had used his wide smile and glib tongue to some purpose and returned to the yacht with Mrs. O'Dowd after a busy thirty minutes. The young Irish, childless, wife of a sea-faring friend of his, she was not above earning good wages as stewardess and taking a look at the world, her husband being away. Also he brought with him a heterogeneous box full of what the book-seller had called the latest novels, but some of them had been out six months and so were in ripe old age. There was no time to make much of a choice, but Jones had, as usual, looked after himself by seeing that his collection included Rex Beach, Jack London, Irvin Cobb, Robert Chambers, Gene Stratton-Porter and Sinclair Lewis. It was simply to make up weight that he threw in Wells, Walpole, Dunsany, Lucas Malet, Conrad, Galsworthy, and other drawing-room "geezers," as he called them. They meant nothing to him. He handed Mrs. O'Dowd over to the chief steward and with an air of pride and satisfaction followed the case down to the library and arranged its pristine contents in a long alluring line on the centre table. It seemed to him that the hardly-ever read sporting and technical volumes behind the glass of all the cases turned up their noses in contempt.

The pathetic incident was the unexpected arrival of little Mrs. Lester Keene, who came on board with the air of a moving picture heroine chased by at least six desperate and obviously made up villains armed to the teeth. A little bag into which she had placed all her small items of jewelry and other treasures was clutched in one agitated hand and she carried an umbrella in the other. She was one of those women who regard an umbrella as the patent of respectability rather than as a weapon of service. She took it with her walking or driving,—wet or fine. It was a fetish, an institution. Deprived of her umbrella she would have felt like an actor without his daily advertisement or an Oxford Don caught naked by a chambermaid. She was assisted aboard, with many gasps, by a deck hand, and drew up, expecting apparently to see pirates and the skull and cross bones. Franklin turned and saw her and smiled a welcome.

For some reason which he didn't endeavor to define he was glad to see the admirable little woman who had won his complete respect and admiration in her endeavor to put up a fight in Beatrix's bedroom that memorable night. "My dear Mrs. Keene," he said, holding out his hand, "I'm delighted to see you. Welcome to the Galatea! I was wondering how it was that my wife came to leave you behind."

Mrs. Keene bridled with indignation. "Your wife?" she said. "Well, this is really a most extraordinary country."

"I beg your pardon," said Franklin, "I should have said Miss Vanderdyke." It had seemed to him quite natural to use the word "wife."

"That's why I have come," said Mrs. Keene, her rather loose skin wabbling nervously. "Need I say more?"

"Nothing more, but I must ask you at once to oblige me by remembering that everybody on this yacht believes, and must continue to believe, that Miss Vanderdyke is Mrs. Franklin. You know why as well as I do. That is understood, of course." His question, behind which there was very palpably the suggestion of a drastic course of action, achieved a bow from Mrs. Keene. He then pointed to a small suit-case. "Is that all you've brought?"

"I had no time to pack anything else," she said. "Where is Beatrix?"

"Below, settling for the cruise."

"The cruise? Is this to be a cruise? Can nothing prevent this rash act?"

Franklin shook his head. "You know Beatrix, Mrs. Keene."

The little woman, who had great grit and even heroism beneath her indecisive and fluttering exterior, drew herself up. "Very good," she said, "I shall do what I conceive to be my duty." All the same she threw an anxious glance about her. It was quite obvious that she was looking for life-belts, life-boats, rafts and all the other paraphernalia of shipwrecks. No one could guess, nor did she herself quite realize, the immensity of her triumph of mind over matter in trusting herself at sea or the extent of the damage to her sense of propriety that was made by her being obliged to lend her countenance to a quite indescribable proceeding. If she had imagined that she would ever find herself a companion to a young woman who went for a honeymoon with a man to whom she had not been married she would willingly have starved in London or taken a position as a waitress in an A.B.C. shop.

"I was not well last night," she said, with a quiver in her voice. "I had one of my most severe attacks of neuralgia. I overslept myself this morning. I can only think that Beatrix left me behind because she was too thoughtful to disturb me. Mr. Franklin, I am not very strong. I have had a terrible time to get here. You must please forgive my agitation."

Franklin felt thoroughly inclined to put his arm round the tremulous lady's shoulder and say, "There, there!" as Beatrix always did, and soothe her with soft words. It seemed to him that she was, with her pedantic and old-fashioned ideas, rather like the Dodo in the century to which he belonged, or that she resembled a faded stuffed canary under a glass case in a room furnished and painted by cubists. "You will find your stateroom very comfortable," he said, "and I will do all that I can to make you happy and contented. I'm very glad you've come."

"Thank you! You are kinder than my former experience led me to expect. And now, please, where are the stairs?"

Franklin smothered his laugh. He was glad for her sake that the mate was not in earshot. He called up one of the deck boys. "Take Mrs. Lester Keene below," he said, "and tell the chief steward to look after her."

It so happened that Mrs. Keene was immediately seen by Beatrix, and before Franklin moved away he heard her high, clear voice. "Brownie, you darling! Fancy seeing you here. I left you with red flannel round your face. You must have come by aeroplane." And then he heard the sound of someone bursting into tears and moved away.

It was not until the Galatea had left her mooring well behind her that Malcolm Fraser screwed up his courage to face his friend. He found Franklin forward with his arms folded and a pipe between his teeth, watching the amazing skyline of the receding city, and running his eyes over the great docks that lined the banks of the river, the gigantic ferries, the impertinent tugs and a transatlantic liner being edged inch by inch into her berth, her portside all a-flutter with waving handkerchiefs.

For several minutes Fraser stood shoulder to shoulder with his best pal, waiting for him to turn. He would have waited for an hour without a word because he had the rare gift of imagination and therefore of sympathy. The two are twins. But presently Franklin turned and there was an irresistible twinkle in his eyes. "Now then," he said, as though continuing a conversation, "how the blazes did you do it?"

To Fraser that twinkle was worth a great deal. "Do you want to know the details, old man?"

"'Course I do. Women aren't the only curious animals on earth, y' know."

"After you had left," said Fraser gravely, "I tackled Beatrix. I had to wait until the dance was over and most of the people had gone to bed. Oddly enough I caught her at a moment when she was more like the little simple girl with whom I used to play games as a kid than I've seen her for years. Perhaps it was due to the moon or the stars,—or both. Anyway she took my arm and we wandered into the garden and for quite a long time we talked of the old days and some of the things that she used to dream about. I think the fairies must have been dancing somewhere near. Then I switched things round to the present and told her, pretty plainly, what I conceived it to be her duty to do to retrieve herself. I spoke to her honestly and bluntly, like a brother, and she was very patient and listened to me without a word. I didn't exaggerate things at all. I didn't see how I could. They've gone to the whole lengths of exaggeration already. I talked about her family and their wholesome desire to avoid scandal, and I painted a picture of what York could do to put the name of Vanderdyke, which stands so high, into the kitchen, the garage and the reeking saloon. I pointed out that if, for the first time in her life, she didn't do something all against the grain she would jeopardize the noble efforts of Aunt Honoria and outrage all the endeavors of her father and mother to build up an aristocracy in this country. I believe I must have talked for half an hour and all the time she sat with her hands clasped together and the moonlight on her face, more beautiful than I have ever seen her look and more like the child that she used to be before she discovered the intolerance of wealth and had been spoiled by the obsequiousness of everybody round her. Just when I thought that I had won my point and was beginning to feel the warm glow of triumph, she got up. 'My dear old Malcolm, no wonder you write poetry,' she said. 'You are a sort of cherub, my dear. You have a head—a very nice head—and two wings, and that's all. All the same there is much heart in your eloquence and an immense amount of common sense. The only thing is, I don't intend to marry Pelham Franklin under any circumstances whatever, so God bless you, old boy, and good night.' And with that she turned away, sang a little song and foxtrotted through the gardens on to the terrace and into the house. Presently I saw a light in her window, gave the whole thing up and went off to bed with my tail between my legs. Imagine my surprise when about eight o'clock this morning a discreet man-servant brought me a letter from her. Here it is." He slipped it out of his pocket and read it aloud:

"Dear Poet:

"I have altered my mind just to prove to you that I am a woman after all, little as you think so. Also,—two reasons are better than one,—because I am bored stiff and have decided to take a cruise on the Galatea. But you must come, because we shall need a fourth at bridge,—make that an absolute stipulation,—and Mrs. Larpent will make the third. Pack your little trunk, dear Malcolm, and be ready immediately after breakfast. Heigh-ho, for the wind and the sea."

"H'm," said Franklin, "she beats me."

XVIII

As he sat down to dinner that night in the admirable saloon, wholly devoid of the frills and furbelows which are so dear to the hearts of incurable landlubbers, Franklin threw an amused glance at Malcolm Fraser, who read it, laughed and signalled back. "Yes, by Jove, a very different table from the one we're used to! How about compensations?"

Franklin looked from one guest to another, with close scrutiny. He caught the meaning of Fraser's mental question. Compensation?

Beatrix Vanderdyke, dressed as though she were a woman of thirty bound for the opera,—in the highest spirits, her laugh ringing out frequently; Mrs. Claude Larpent, with her irresistible touch of Paris, her fingers gleaming with rings and a queer Oriental stone which might have been the eye of some skeptical god watching everyone from her hair; and Mrs. Lester Keene, the very epitome of the Kensington of Thackeray's time, her nondescript hair, much touched with grey, scrupulously drawn back from her forehead, her mouse-colored dress lightened by a lace thing round her shoulders which might easily have been an anti-macassar.

Malcolm Fraser also ran his eye round the table at which he had hitherto seen the open, healthy faces and square shoulders of Franklin's sporting friends. He was not at all sure,—perhaps because he was a poet,—that this new sight was not more pleasant to him than the old one. There was, however, one question that he asked himself again. "Why Mrs. Larpent?" He was not in any sense of the word a man of the world. He believed that all women were chaste and devoid of guile, but there was something about Mrs. Larpent which made him a little sorry to see her in the company of Beatrix,—he didn't know why. The portholes were open, as the night was hot. They framed round patches of a sky pitted with stars. The steady conscientious pulse of the engines and the slight swing of the yacht were the only indications of her activity. An excellent dinner was being served by four expert stewards who had devoted the most minute care in the decoration of the table in honor of "Mrs. Franklin." In the gallery a string quartette with piano was playing Bohême, almost to perfection. There was just the slightest inclination on the part of the pianist to syncopate the music. The poor wretch had been doomed to a cabaret for two seasons.

Franklin, partly recovered from his shock, was determined to make the best of things. The sight of Beatrix in all the glory of her youth was a delight to him. It filled him with joy and pride to see her sitting in that yacht of his, which he regarded as home. His blood danced every time that her laugh rang out. She added something to the atmosphere of the saloon which he had always subconsciously missed and desired. Nevertheless he told himself, and believed it to be true, that he had routed out of his mind every thought of making her his wife, even in name. Her dislike of him, expressed very definitely, and now shown by the aloof but perfectly courteous way in which she included him in the conversation, made the mere idea of such a thing impossible and absurd. She was on board to please herself, to carry out a whim and an impulse to do something new and different, and she had taken care to surround herself with a body guard in order to protect her. He saw all that and shrugged his shoulders. He said, as he had said over and over again, "She beats me. I can't compete with her. I give it up. She must have her head. At any rate all this will do something to put York off the scent, so what's the use of worrying? I bow the knee to autocracy." That was the mood of the man who had never hitherto allowed himself to be beaten by men or beasts. Women were not included in this list for the simple reason that they had never been permitted to interfere with his way of life.

As for Beatrix, she was not thinking, dissecting or going to the mental bother of introspection. She was enjoying a new sensation, delighting in the thrill of a dangerous and what would be to most girls an inconceivable adventure. She looked upon the whole thing as merely an episode, an act in the drama of her life, and with enough sense of excitement to spur her on played her part of Franklin's wife with one appreciative eye on herself. She believed that York would carry out his threat, knowing the man as well as she did, and she knew that as soon as the whole house of cards fell flat, as it was bound to do, her family, headed by Aunt Honoria, would punish severely. They would spoil her life at least for a year. She had gone on the cruise because the word "yacht" had filled her with the desire to smell the sea and try a new form of amusement. That was all. Franklin, either as a man or an enemy, or as one who had come to her rescue, counted for nothing. He meant no more to her than Captain McBean or Mr. Horatio Jones. He was merely the means of providing her with the antidote against boredom. She was out to enjoy a new experience at his expense. Hurrah for the open sea! Sufficient for the day, so long as the day was fine and the people in it kept her merry.

When it came to Ida Larpent and the way in which she regarded her totally unexpected presence on the Galatea, the mental processes of her mind were as busily at work as the mechanical appliances of the ship's engine. This was no mere joy-ride for her. It was a business trip, the chances of which had been grasped eagerly with all the cunning of a woman who had lived on her wits and brought individualism to a fine art. She was going to use every moment to her own ultimate advantage. The fact that Beatrix had placed her among her favorites was an admirable step forward. She was clever enough to know that the sunshine of the beautiful young autocrat's smile might at any moment cloud over,—that her reign as a favorite was most ephemeral. But she had already watched things closely and had come to the conclusion that the marriage which had caused so much rejoicing among the Vanderdykes, romantic as it seemed, was an empty and hollow affair. She saw very plainly that the heart of Beatrix was utterly untouched. She had yet to discover precisely how Franklin had been affected. She was no optimist, but it seemed to her that Franklin was as cool as Beatrix. He had, however, a way of hiding his feelings that would make it necessary for her to put him under her microscope. As things appeared on the surface, at any rate, everything was in her favor. She measured herself against Beatrix without egotism. The girl had all the advantage of youth and,—as her knowledge of men told her,—many of the disadvantages. She was going to set herself with the utmost calculation to stir up Franklin's passion. It seemed to her that the propinquity forced upon them all by living aboard a yacht would make that easy. She had examined herself in the mirror of her stateroom and come to the conclusion that she had never looked more beautiful or so completely feminine. Without any sense of loyalty to Beatrix, to whom she was indebted for this chance, she had made up her mind to attract Franklin with all the arts that she possessed. To become his mistress meant absolute freedom from money troubles, and that would be excellent. To become his wife,—well, why not? The laws of the country were all in her favor. Divorce was a hobby, an institution, and Beatrix was a worshipper at the altar of Something New.

When it came to Malcolm Fraser, whom Beatrix had called the fourth of the party,—he was usually the fourth of every party,—what was he but simply a man who could do no more than enjoy the glamour of the impossible—a sort of star-gazer! His love for Beatrix dominated his secret life and he knew that he could show it only in one way,—by being her friend. He had no pain in his heart. He had no right to possess a heart at all where she was concerned, but no one could prevent him from placing her in the throne of it and locking her in. And so he just revelled in her presence and was happy.

There remained little Mrs. Lester Keene, the last member of this strange ill-assorted party, and she, who took everything seriously, and whose god was convention, was undergoing very genuine suffering. To be herself a party to any arrangement so unabashed in its smashing of all the rules of life was bad enough. Her self-respect, which meant so much to her, was deeply wounded, and when she thought of the girl who seemed to her to be a sort of queen and for whose beauty and purity she had the most intense admiration and regard, her perturbation became painful, even tragical. She suspected Franklin. Like all women who have gone through life looking at the truth through a key-hole, herself hidden, she believed no good of men. They were all wolves in sheep's clothing. They were the enemies of women. She conceived Franklin to be no different from those worldly creatures of whom she had read so frequently in her favorite novels, most of which had been written in the period of her youth by women. She was, therefore, most unhappy. She was also dreading sea-sickness. Poor little lady, what a combination of mental disquiet!

XIX

Franklin and Fraser left the dining saloon after a brief talk and joined the ladies in the little used drawing-room. They found that the orchestra, which was as much a part of the yacht as the engines and invariably played Franklin's favorite melodies during and after dinner, had been dismissed. The Victrola was at work instead and the voluptuous strains of a more than usually saccharine Viennese waltz filled the charming room.

Franklin drew up short at the door and put his hand on Fraser's arm. "Look," he said, quietly.

With absolute lack of self-consciousness and a nymph-like grace, her lips wearing the smile of a child, Beatrix was dancing and winding her way between the chairs and little tables. With her white arms outstretched and her hands moving like the wings of a bird she seemed to bring the music to life and to give it a sense of youth and beauty that turned the room into a moon-struck wood of thin trees.

The two men watched her until the tune ran out and in the hearts of both were love and desire.

Franklin went quickly to the Victrola, wound it up and started the record again.

"What a pity you don't dance, Malcolm," said Beatrix, panting a little.

"But I do," said Franklin, and took her in his arms. He didn't imagine himself to be a fine dancer. He had a healthy contempt of the dancing man breed,—those anæmic creatures who try so hard to look immaculate and treat all women with a tedious mixture of familiarity and condescension. He waltzed well, all the same, with a perfectly straight back, an excellent sense of time and a steady left arm. In fact he danced like a civilized man who had achieved the art of not being noticed in a crowd.

From her deep and comfortable chair under the reading lamp Ida Larpent, with a determined exposure of lace stocking, watched this little scene with quiet amusement. It seemed to her that those two danced like people who had been married for years. They said nothing. They didn't look at each other. They were as much two people as though they were at opposite ends of the earth. The almost grim expression on Franklin's face made jealousy impossible. So also did the slight air of social martyrdom that was all about Beatrix. Anyone less expert as a psychologist than Ida Larpent could have told that Beatrix merely performed a duty. It would, however, have taken a quite microscopic eye to have seen the riotous blaze in Franklin's mind.

To Mrs. Lester Keene's mid-Victorian way of thinking, this "exhibition," as she inwardly called it, watching from behind the new number of Vogue, was singularly bad form. If she had known the expressive word "stunt" she would have applied it with all her British horror of such a thing.

"And now," said Beatrix, when once more the popular tune arrived at its inevitable and hackneyed conclusion, "for bridge. Don't you think so?"

Franklin rang for a steward. The blood was in his head. The intoxication of the girl's fragrance was all about his brain. "Good God," he said to himself, "how am I going to go through this and come out sane?"

"Splendid," said Mrs. Larpent, putting down "The Dark Flower." "I'd love a rubber or two."

"And I," said Fraser,—"that is if you don't want to play, Mrs. Keene."

"Thank you, but I never touch cards." The little lady returned to her astonished examination of the drawings of wispy girls in freak garments. She invariably waxed almost hectic over the bi-monthly issues of her favorite journal, every word of which she read with minute care. It was to her rather like the thing at which a dog barks consistently and with a very fever of rage but wouldn't avoid on any account.

A steward appeared. "The card table," said Franklin.

"But before we play," said Beatrix, lighting a cigarette, "perhaps you'll tell us the geography of the yacht. Pelham, I won't sleep peacefully unless my curiosity is satisfied. I asked Malcolm at dinner but he's apparently as much of a landlubber as I am." She knew instinctively that this was the very best way to please Franklin and she felt that she owed him something for her unsocial manner in the dining saloon. She intended to enjoy the cruise and therefore it would be tactful, to say the least of it, to keep him in a good temper.

Franklin was obviously pleased. The Galatea was his favorite toy. He picked up a photograph album, laid it open on a table and pointed to an admirable picture of the yacht lying at anchor in the Biscayne Bay.

Beatrix bent over it. Her dress left very little to the imagination.

"I bought her after the death of her first owner," he said. "He was an eccentric invalid, as you will see when I explain certain things. She was built in the Clyde about eight years ago. Her tonnage is sixteen hundred and seven, length all over three hundred and sixteen feet, beam thirty-five feet six and she carries a crew of forty, all told. You can see how beautiful her lines are. To my mind she has nothing of her class to compete against. It's true that some sailors carp at one thing in her appearance,—the way her bridge is placed. Do you see? Instead of being well forward as it usually is, you will notice that it's away aft,—only a few feet from the funnel."

"Why?" asked Beatrix, not even mildly interested.

"To prevent anyone from walking over the library. A cranky idea of the old man I told you about. In fact the Galatea was designed to meet his peculiar notions."

"Why not?" said Beatrix. "He had the money."

"Quite," said Franklin drily. "Well, this, where my finger is, is the flush deck, running from the bows to the stern, broken here by a well between the forecastle head and the fore part of the bridge."

Beatrix laughed. "You're a regular sailor, aren't you?"

Franklin went on. It was good to be so near to this bewitching girl. He would have liked to absorb her attention for the whole evening. "Running aft from the bridge to within forty feet or so of the stern are all the deck houses. Do you see? Here's the library. Abaft, here, the dining saloon. Continuing aft, on the port side, here, the pantry, the enclosed space over the engine-room, and on the starboard side a passage leading to this room and the writing-room."

"And I don't believe you ever use either," said Beatrix.

"I don't. Now look. The roof and sides of this line of deck houses run out a few feet beyond the aftermost room. Do you notice that?"

"So that your malade imaginaire could have a little sheltered nook to enjoy forty winks in out of the wind?"

"Yes, that was the idea. Very jolly it is too. Here's the promenade, about nine feet broad and smooth as a billiard ball. It continues across the forepart of the library and across the afterpart of the line of deck houses, see? So that there's an oblong track round most of the yacht, covered overhead with a thick awning."

"Ah! I see myself taking exercise there morning, noon and night."

"We all do," said Malcolm.

"Well, about thirty feet from the stern, here, there's a double canvas screen running thwartships from one side to the other, shutting off a good space for the use of the crew. Under the forecastle head, on the main deck, are the officers' and petty officers' quarters, very comfortable and excellent. Under the library is my sitting-room, which runs the whole breadth of the ship. This is where we usually foregather,—I mean on the bachelor cruises."

"Which are now things of the past," said Beatrix imperturbably. "Are we to be permitted to peek into this sanctum some day?"

"Of course." Franklin's heart pumped a little.

And then, rising with her peculiar feline grace, Mrs. Larpent joined the group round the table. "All these technicalities are Greek to me," she said. "I want to know how many guest rooms there are, how many bathrooms, whether the mirrors are full length, whether you bought all the rugs from the same place and if so whether you got them cheaper and, in fact, all those human details that I can understand,—poor, untechnical me!"

Franklin gave a short laugh but was obviously thrown out. His description of the Galatea was in the only language that he knew. He was unable to translate it into woman's talk.

Beatrix was quick to notice his quandary. Nearly everything that he had said was altogether beyond her too and gave her no more intimate a picture of the yacht than she would have obtained from a quick glance at a blue-print, but, after all, she intended to explore in the morning, so what did it matter? Her pricking conscience had alone brought the matter up. "Never mind about the furniture," she said. "Go on from where your finger is, Pelham. I'm following you with keen intelligence and boundless interest."

Franklin gave her a grateful smile. "Well, the windows, here, abaft of my room on the port side are the cabins of the major-domo, the Captain, the head steward, the chief engineer, the purser, an officers' mess room, the ship's galley, a steward's mess room and other cabins. Over here on the starboard side are the guest rooms and suites,—twenty all told. The lower-deck is given up to stores, coal bunkers, the engine room, the stoke-hold, a stack of electric accumulators which keep the electric lights going when the engines aren't working, and the gymnasium. The engines are designed not for speed but for smooth running. We can whack up to twelve knots an hour but our average is eight. Finally we carry an ample supply of boats as well as two steam launches, one burning coal, the other oil." He bowed and laughed and said "I thank you" in imitation of the professional guide, closed the album and put it away, having thoroughly enjoyed himself.

"And this very beautiful and complete toy," thought Ida Larpent, looking after the owner of it with calculating envy and admiration, "costs as much to run per annum as would make an admirable capital for a little lonely woman. My dear, you will be throwing away the opportunity of a life-time if you don't make yourself very precious to this indecently wealthy young man."

Then they sat down to bridge.

XX

The third day out, the semblance of peace and contentment reigning on board, the Galatea ran into bad weather. The barometer had fallen sharply during the night and the day broke behind a dull grey curtain to windward which blotted out the horizon and brought heavy rain as it came over. Capricious shifts of wind in puffy spells made the awnings rattle and the sea agitated. The Captain stuck to his course until the squall caught him, and then, in deference to the ladies, ran with the sea astern. Before four o'clock in the afternoon, however, the wind fell away and the sky cleared and the sun came out again to the immense relief of Mrs. Lester Keene, who had given way to seasickness and to thoughts of disaster and death.

The weather, like nearly everything else, had not affected Beatrix. With Mrs. Larpent and Malcolm Fraser as spectators, she spent most of the morning in the gymnasium exercising her limbs and her lungs,—the former on the bars and rings and the electrically-worked horse, the latter by frequent bursts of merry laughter and constant talking. The newness of her surroundings had not yet worn off. The sense of being the heroine of a most daring adventure was still upon her. Then too, she found her new friend, whose peculiar beauty had attracted her, entertaining and, better still, interesting, and her old one as eager to fetch and carry and as willing to pay her deference as ever. So far as Franklin was concerned he remained the man who had said an unforgivable thing and who was, by accident, her host. He counted only as such.

But that night, having laid a restraining hand upon herself, Nature, who does not appear to be happy unless she can exert her power in some way, churned up a storm on the yacht. She brought about two incidents which, both quite unnecessary, did much to make this so-called honeymoon cruise lose its outward peacefulness. It is her invariable way.

The first happened before dinner, the second after, and both were led up to by the clash of temperament. The return of the sun had something to do with the first. Its warmth and brightness sent Beatrix's spirits, already high, up to set-fair. Tea was served on deck. To Franklin's inward rage Fraser immediately became the object of Beatrix's whole attention. She called him "Mally," talked almost tenderly about the old days, drew him out on the subject of books and life and then, utterly ignoring the others, paced up and down with her arm through his, listening with the rapt wonder of a little girl while he recited his recent verses to her.

It was when he had run his not very retentive memory down that she began to talk about herself. "Mally," she said suddenly, "do you remember a dream I told you about one spring morning when we were sitting on a log at the edge of those dear old woods? You had been ill, I think, and your mother had sent for you from school to feed you up."

"I remember," said Malcolm. "You were eight or so, and I had just struck fifteen and was consumed with the idea that I was a man. I had just introduced myself to a razor. Oh, a great moment in the male career!"

"Don't talk so much, Mally dear. This is my innings. I told you that I had dreamed that father had lost all his money, every cent of it, and was broken and helpless and that mother,—how queerly right it was,—had gone to bed permanently from the shock, and then I blossomed into a Joan of Arc because the night before that funny little French governess, Mademoiselle Hannebigue, had been reading to me about her, and I went out into the world,—it was New York, of course,—to build up a new fortune for my unfortunate parents."

"What became of Miss Hannebigue, by the way?"

"That doesn't matter. Don't drag red herrings across our path. I became a great artist in about a minute and painted a picture that caused such a sensation that I sold it to a gorgeous person with a golden beard and blue eyes for oh, millions and millions of dollars. And just before some vandal woke me up,—not Hannebigue because she was in mortal terror of me,—I was carrying it all up to father in a big brown bag. Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember. Why?"

Beatrix said nothing for a moment, and as Malcolm looked at her beautiful face and long fine lashes and the little wistful smile on her lips he saw the fallen log again, and the young birches just broken into leaf; the little big-eyed girl who had ordered him about and the pair of new brown shoes that he had put on that day and which hurt him very much.

"Mally, I never read about Joan of Arc now," she said. "I'm ashamed. Never again, as long as I live, shall I ever have a chance to do big things, and sometimes,—not very often,—but just for a minute when I hear a wonderful piece of music or see the sun go down as it did last night,—I wish that father had really lost all his money and I was an artist or something working for him. Oh, Mally, old thing, I'm not really much good these days and I might have been,—I really might have been. You're a poet. You get closer to the angels than ordinary mortals. What can I do? How shall I become something? Is there no way for me to justify having once been able to carry that funny old bulging bag up to father?"

It was Malcolm's turn to say nothing for a moment. From where they stood he could see Franklin's clean-cut profile as he sat with his chin on his fist looking out to sea. And the man who was his friend and whose story he knew, seemed to look awfully alone and hurt. And then he spoke, eagerly, with a great and God-sent unselfishness. "Dear girl," he said, "my dear little girl, open your heart to Pel. That's the way."

The next instant the warm young arm was pulled sharply away from his own and a scoffing laugh was carried off like a bird. "Not in this world," she cried. "Not in this world!"

And then, with a little devil on her shoulder, the same little devil that had made her do all her foolish, impulsive, inconsistent things, she went over to where Franklin was sitting and stood with one foot on the deck chair vacated by Ida Larpent, who had found it difficult to get any attention. The girl's brain was suddenly filled with an impish desire to flick her host's apparent imperturbability with the whip of sarcasm.

"Well," she said, putting a note of bonhomie into her voice that Franklin had never heard before, and liked. "Thinking,—for a change?"

He got up and stood with his back to one of the iron supports. "Why for a change?" Good Heavens, what a picture she made, standing there!

"I've always been under the impression that sportsmen never think."

Franklin laughed. What did he care what she said so that she spoke to him, and he saw the flash of her teeth, the gleam of her dimples, the play of her astounding eyes? "You mean, being a sportsman, I don't need and have not been given, the necessary machinery for thinking?"

"I wouldn't for a moment go so far as that," she said, with a curiously expressive gesture which completely contradicted her remark. "You spend most of your time on the Galatea, don't you?"

"Yes, as much as I can."

"I don't wonder. I'm beginning to understand that there must be something very satisfying in being the Czar of this little Kingdom,—it's really the only way to feel the full power of wealth, unless you work and control great interests and feed your vanity like that Democracies worship the monied man, I know, but there is really a touch of the old feudal system in life on a yacht like this. Officers and men, forty of them, are your slaves. It's "Yes, sir; No, sir; Come aboard, sir; I'll make it so, sir," all day long, and, unlike a mere world, the very yacht can be ordered to change her course, put in or put out, at your imperial command. Yes, I begin to feel the fascination of the life you've chosen."

She said all this thoughtfully, disguising the rank impertinence of it under a sort of naïve admiration.

It puzzled Franklin. He was too simple and direct to get her point of view and not willing to believe that he was being gratuitously "cheeked." "You've got me wrong," he said. "I live on the sea because I like it and because I hate cities and society and newspapers and their gross publicity. That's all."

She knew that he was speaking the truth. She knew also that her elaborate sarcasm had missed fire. She tried again. The little devil was still on her shoulder. "Oh, I see," she said, acting astonishment. "You're like the little boy who builds a hut in the back yard and forces himself to believe that he's hundreds of thousands of miles away from home. You come to sea to dodge the responsibilities of real life. You float lazily about on the water like a sportsman and leave the earth to be run by mere men. Well, I daresay there's something in it. Hullo, there goes the first bugle. I must go and dress."

She nodded and slipped away chortling, perfectly certain that she had let Franklin see how very little she thought of him, and on the way down to her suite she flung the little devil away and paid her companion a visit with all the sympathy and tenderness of a young Madonna.

She was right. Franklin felt the cut of her whip on his conscience. Many times recently, during lonely hours, he had cursed himself as a waster of time and opportunity and wondered how much longer he was going to be content to be numbered amongst the drones. All the same he bitterly resented being flicked by this girl, herself the queen of drones, who, of all the women alive, had good reason to thank her stars for his sportsmanship. And he went below angry, dissatisfied and indignant. By jove, he would get one back for this.

His chance came after dinner. He left Malcolm in the drawing-room waiting for the bridge table to be set, heard the Victrola on deck and went out to find Beatrix all alone, dancing like the spirit of spring. Ida Larpent, seeing something in his eyes that drew her out of her chair, followed him and hid. He went up to Beatrix. "Dance with me," he said and took her rather roughly in his arms. He felt the urge of holding her as he had never felt it before. His very anger fired his passion. He would show this unbroken thoroughbred that he was a man as well as a sportsman. And so he held her tight, mad with the gleam of her shoulders and the scent of her hair, danced her breathless and, as the music stopped, imprisoned her in his arms and kissed her lips again and again.

Ida Larpent nearly screamed. The pain of her jealousy was unbearable.

Beatrix fought herself free and stood panting against the rail. And as she stood there with heaving breasts and her hand on her mouth, that unforgivable sentence which had burned itself on her vanity seemed to stand out in letters of fire on the deck house. "If you and I were the only two living people on a desert island and there was not the faintest hope of our ever being taken back to the world, I would build you a hut at the farthest end of it and treat you as a man." This assault, this attack, was all the more nauseating because of its apparent cold-bloodedness, because it was made by the man who had dared to say those words to her. For a moment, with the blood in her head, she was overcome with a desire to cry out for servants and order them to kill that man. All that was imperious in her nature craved for instant punishment. Then, looking at the blaze in Franklin's eyes and mistaking it for the beast in him, she mastered herself and turned cold.

"Just now," she said, "I called you a Czar. I was wrong. You're a polished gun-man."

Franklin laughed. He was still drunk with the taste of her lips. "Can't a man kiss his wife on their honeymoon if he feels like it?"

Beatrix put out both hands to keep him away. She was as white as moonlight and her eyes shone like stars.

Ida Larpent almost left her place to catch every word.

"Wife! Thank God you will never be able to call me that."

Franklin went nearer,—within an inch of those two sentinel hands. "I didn't begin calling you that. You chose the word, not I." The way she had of putting him in the wrong always, of making him a brute who had tricked her into this impossible position was mighty difficult to bear.

Holding her breath, amazed and delighted at her sudden and unexpected insight into this marriage business which had always puzzled her, Ida Larpent watched these two young people as a cat watches mice,—the girl standing out against the dark background of sky in all the pride of youth, her bare shoulders outlined by the moonlight; the man, tall, wiry and amazingly vital, bending slightly forward, with his hands clenched; the silence hardly broken by the regular pulse of the engines, the humming of the breeze and the soft swish of the sea.

"This is the end," said Beatrix.

"The end,—how?"

"You will put me ashore."

"Where?"

"I don't care. Anywhere."

"Why?"

"Because, I tell you, this is the end."

"You're wrong. This is the beginning."

"I don't intend to argue. I state as a fact that you will put me ashore to-morrow. Whatever happens I am not going to live this lie any longer. Now let me pass."

Franklin went closer. The two hands were against his chest. "You amuse me," he said. "It isn't for you to give orders here. I'm Czar of this Kingdom, remember. You chose to come aboard and you'll stay aboard as long as it suits me."

"You're an optimist," she said, scoffingly.

"Very likely. I'm also human and I'm on my honeymoon." He caught her by the wrists and before he could control himself, kissed her again, threw her hands away and stood back. He was afraid of what he might do next.

Beatrix suppressed a cry, and drew the back of her hand across her mouth. "Once more I'm wrong," she said. "You're not a gun-man. You're a prize-fighter. May I be allowed to go now?"

"To the devil for all I care," said Franklin.

"Thank you. I prefer the bridge table." And he watched her go, walking like a young Diana.

Ida Larpent, with the tumult of a new chance in her queer heart, dodged away.

Then Franklin turned his face to the stars. He was angry, sore,—and ashamed. But as he stood there, face to face with Nature, he said to himself, "One day I'll make that girl ache for my kisses as badly as I ache for hers to-night,—so help me God!"

XXI

Ida Larpent was responsible for the second incident.

With an amount of self-control that under the circumstances seemed to Franklin to be almost inconceivable, Beatrix played bridge until after midnight. She went into the drawing-room with a high head and a radiant smile and began by saying "Mally dear, you will be my partner, and we will play together until sunrise, if you like." And as every hand was dealt for the remainder of the sitting she babbled and laughed and said little witty things that set the poet chuckling and won admiration from the woman of the world. And all the while she smoked, telling Mrs. Lester Keene, when that uncompanionable-companion ventured to remonstrate, that she was no longer a débutante and if she wanted to set up a smoker's heart, well, she could. Every now and then, too, perhaps to prove the fact to Franklin that at any rate there was one man aboard who could be trusted, she leant across the table and touched Malcolm's hand. It made him very happy. He was proud to be treated like a brother.

At eleven o'clock Mrs. Keene sighed, began to arrange the magazines on the table at her elbow and said "Dear me, how very late it is," several times, and finally got up and wandered aimlessly about the room. She hadn't the courage to say frankly and honestly "Now, dear Beatrix, it's time you went to bed. You've played enough and smoked enough and you need all the sleep you can get," but in the inevitable manner of all weak people she endeavored to get her point by a series of the kind of nerve-wracking, unspoken hints which are generally rewarded by a few sharp and even unkind words. Not so from Beatrix. Noticing the worthy woman's restlessness and recognizing her intention she cried out, "Brownie, you really ought to have a nurse. Eleven o'clock and still up,—and you haven't got over that bad attack! Run along to bed, dear, and if I'm not too late I'll peep in for a word or two."

Malcolm, not unsympathetic, smiled a little to see the reluctant way in which the poor little rotund soul obeyed the command of her princess.

It was a quarter past twelve when Beatrix drew away from the table as a rubber ended. "Thank you," she said, "that sees me through. Good night, Ida, sleep well. Good night, Mally dear. For a poet you play a wonderfully sound game." And then, with an exquisite touch of shyness that took Mrs. Larpent's breath away, staggered Malcolm and nearly made Franklin jump out of his skin, she looked up at him and added, "I won't say good night to you," and went out singing a little song beneath her breath.

It was so well done, with an art so true, an inflection so full of meaning, that for an instant Mrs. Larpent asked herself if the angry and definite words which she had recently overheard had ever been said.

They left Malcolm dazed. Was she, after all, married to his old friend? They were the words of a wife.

The first shock over, Franklin understood. She had let him see that he was a creature to whom she did not bid good night disguised in the soft voice and inviting manner that was intended to keep Mrs. Larpent ignorant of the true state of affairs.

"I'll go over the score in the morning," he said, "and we can settle then. Malcolm, I'm going to write a few letters to-night, so——"

"All right, old man. I'll turn in right away." He wondered if he did not look a little like the woman at whom he had smiled earlier in the evening.

"So will I," said Mrs. Larpent. "This is all very delightful. I sleep better in this gently-rocking cradle than I've ever done before. Well, good night." She divided a smile between the two men and glided away, as graceful and as silky as a panther.

Franklin let out his foot and kicked a box of matches, that had fallen on the floor, into the chest of a sleepy-eyed young steward, who was already packing up the bridge table. "I'm sorry," he said. If he had had his way at that moment, he would have kicked the earth into the limbo of forgotten things and tumbled after it over the edge.

Malcolm followed him out. He could see what was going on in the mind of the man he knew so well,—the man into whose life no woman had come to torture and disturb till then. "Old man," he said, "if I can be of any——"

Franklin wheeled 'round and put his hand on Malcolm's shoulder. "No, no, my dear chap. You can't help, not even you. Damned fools always pay for their mistakes. So long."

He had been in his room for ten minutes,—walking, walking, with his hands clenched and the fever of love boiling his blood, all alive to the fact that the girl who called herself his wife was, figuratively speaking, in reach of his hungry hand, when someone knocked softly on the door.

"Who is it?"

"I," said Ida Larpent. She shut the door softly behind her. "I want to speak to you."

It was not the first time that she had been in Franklin's own particular room, but heretofore she had seen it with daylight streaming through the portholes. It seemed to be warmer and more intimate and far more suited for her purpose at that quiet hour, lit only by one shaded reading lamp.

There was a curious confidence in her manner which puzzled even Franklin, unversed in the ways and moods of women as he was. She took it for granted that she was welcome, and deliberately looked about for the most comfortable chair in the manner of one who had the right to his room at any time.

"Where would you advise me to sit?" she asked. "I don't mean to criticise or carp when I say that this Holy of Holies of yours is more like the smoking room in a man's club than anything else. It fits your character like a glove, Pelham. But,—I need soft things and cushions, you know. Do what you can for me."

Franklin cleared a sofa of lines of fishing tackle and a double-barrelled gun and collected his only two cushions. "How will this do?" he said, showing no signs of his irritation and impatience at the sight of her.

She placed herself full stretch, worked the cushions into place with her white shoulders and heaved a little sigh of content.

She was too pleased with her lace stockings to hide them.

"May I smoke?"

"I beg your pardon," said Franklin. Good Lord, was she there for the night!

For some few moments she sat in silence looking interestedly about her, with a quiet air of proprietorship. She inhaled two or three mouthfuls of smoke and let it trickle out of her slightly Oriental nostrils. In her dark hair, that was drawn tightly across her forehead, the strange stone glittered. She made an attractive, if somewhat erotic, picture sitting there, so slight and so feminine in her white satin dress cut with impish ability to the very limit of decency. Then she turned amused eyes on Franklin, who was standing watching her, trying to discover what was behind this obviously well-planned visit.

"All men are liars, saith the prophet, and you, my dear Pelham, very palpably hold a diploma in class A." She laughed quietly, rather pleased with her way of breaking the ice.

"Think so?" What on earth did the woman mean?

"You undemonstrative, self-contained men lie far more unsuccessfully than the Latins. One looks for a certain amount of duplicity from them. Their wine and climate and the quickness of their wits makes truthfulness almost impolite. Much the same point of view is held of the Irish, who have an inherent disbelief in the mere truth. The strong streak of Anglo-Saxon in you which gives you a horror of pulling down the fourth wall behind which you hide your sentimentality puts one off. What one takes for honest inarticulation and shyness is really a well-thought-out pose, isn't it? You manage admirably to give the impression of rather aloof integrity, an unexpressed contempt for dodgers. It is historical, all the same, how artfully you can live a double life and achieve a statue in the market-place."

This wordiness bored Franklin. He hated phrase-making. Also it was late and he wanted to go to bed to sleep and be healthy. "The prophet said another good thing," he replied. "Cut the cackle and come to the 'osses. Did you ever hear that?"

She laughed again. "You know that I have a horse or two then?"

"Would you be here if you hadn't?"

"Why shouldn't I have come for the pleasure of being with you, alone?"

"It's very kind of you to put it like that."

Mrs. Larpent flecked away the ash of her cigarette. "Sarcasm doesn't suit you," she said sharply. "If you mean to imply that I am here for money, you are wrong."

"I didn't mean to imply that," said Franklin. "On my honor."

"Thank you," she said, and was silent again. The conscientious beat of the engines made a sort of tune. Then she got up and faced him, dropping artificiality. "Why did you tell me you were married?"

"Ah!" thought Franklin, "it is that, then." He said nothing. He was no match for women.

"Couldn't you have been honest with me, of all people? You know my feelings for you. I was above board. Whatever the reason for hatching this extraordinary story I wouldn't have given you away. I would have helped you."

"I can't discuss this with you," said Franklin, "you were at the Vanderdykes. You saw the papers. Beatrix is on the yacht. There it is. I can't see any reason why you should say that she and I are not married."

"Can't you? Haven't I seen you together for the last three days? Wouldn't my eyes be the first to notice any sign of love or affection between you, or even toleration? I came on the yacht expecting to be made to suffer the jealous agony of the damned and I find,—it's easy enough,—that this honeymoon is a farce. You are a bachelor entertaining two duly chaperoned women."

What could Franklin do but lie? "Beatrix is my wife," he said, "and the way in which we treat each other is our affair."

"Oh, no, believe me," said Mrs. Larpent quickly. "That's where you're wrong. I am in this. You were on the verge of loving me before Beatrix cropped up. You may decline to accept this as a fact but I tell you that you were, and I know. You stand there looking at me in amazement because I am not afraid or ashamed to tell the truth. Women are more or less a mystery to you and you've got a rooted idea that we must go through life hiding our souls behind light laughter and lace veils. And so we do until the inevitable hour when we come out into the open to fight for love. This is my hour, Pelham, and I stand in front of you as common and as human as a peasant woman or a squaw."

Her voice shook with emotion and she seemed to Franklin to be taller and more beautiful and more dignified than he had ever seen her. All the same he wished to Heaven that both these women had never come into his life, that he were still a free agent, a mere sportsman, as Beatrix called him so scornfully, the captain of his fate.

"I don't like your talking like this," he said, with a curiously boyish bluntness and awkwardness. "It isn't fair to yourself—or me."

"I'm not thinking altogether about you to-night, my dear. I said that this is my hour, my fight, the moment when I let you see me as I am. Now listen. I overheard your quarrel with Beatrix on deck this afternoon. I deliberately eavesdropped. I don't want to know why you and she are playing this queer game. It doesn't interest me. From the way you kissed her, without loving her in the very least, I saw that what you want is what I want. You are free. I am free. We neither of us owe allegiance to a living creature. I love you. You are the first man who has made me understand the pain and ache of love. I make no bargain. I ask for no bond. I just want you. Take me."

She held out her white arms, with her head thrown back and her lips slightly parted and her eyes half closed. There was something utterly simple and in a way fine about her. It wasn't so much an appeal that she made as an offer of fellowship. Nature spoke in her voice and stood alluring in her presence.

Perhaps because of the subtle sense of isolation that the open sea gives, or of the wonderful silence of the night, or of the overwhelming strength of her desire, Ida Larpent was nearer sincerity in what she said than she had ever been. It wasn't only because she saw a chance to catch Franklin on the rebound that she had gone into his room. She had argued in cold blood that by becoming his mistress she would strengthen her position, put a claim upon his sense of honor and win her way to independence. But under the stress of genuine emotion these sordid calculations lifted like hawks and left her a woman in love, a very woman.

Franklin proved that he was very much of a man. To him love and its rewards were only good if they were won by fighting. They were the spoils of the chase. This inversion of the old right way was distressing, chilling and rather indecent. What to say and how to say it left him wordless. He would rather have found himself facing a lion with two empty barrels. Then he told the truth. "You're very kind," he said. "But I love Beatrix and I'm going to be true to that."

Ida Larpent dropped her arms. Just for an instant the supreme mortification of being turned down put a red mist in front of her eyes. She could have fallen upon Franklin and struck him again and again. Then the sense of self-preservation came to her rescue. Her cunning returned and with it the vista of a doubtful and tricky future. She hid her disappointment and humiliation and impatience behind a perfect piece of acting and told herself that, after all, Franklin was difficult and different because he was a sportsman. She held out her hand and said, in a very sweet voice, "I love you. You know where to find me when you need a friend," and went away quickly before she might be moved to spoil the effect of her lack of drama. She believed that in this way she would win a warm place in Franklin's esteem,—the first step to the goal that she intended to gain by hook or crook,—and she was right.

XXII

Beatrix slept too late the following morning to take her usual exercise in the gymnasium. She was called at eight-thirty by Helene, who dared not give her less than half an hour in which to get ready for breakfast at the luxurious hour of nine. It was a delicious morning, with the sea in a very gracious mood, the sky blue and cloudless and a gentle breeze which brought the taste of salt to the lips.

Waking after a dreamless night, Beatrix found the sun pouring through the portholes of her state-room, caught the infection of health and high spirits, sprang out of bed, gave the sturdy Breton a cheery word, went into the bathroom and alternately sang and whistled one of Jerome Kern's catchy little tunes,—while the French girl gave thanks. The world was worth living in when her mercurial-mistress found it so—otherwise death held many charms.

It was an easy matter to dress Beatrix for the morning,—a white silk shirt with a turned down collar, a grey-blue jersey cloth skirt with stockings to match, white shoes with brown strips and a man's tie of blue and white. In these she stood in front of a glass and turned about in careful examination before throwing a little smile of congratulation at herself and her handmaiden. "I don't give a single whoop what the fool fashions may ordain, Helene," she said, "the too short skirt is for Coney Island only and makes women look either comic or pathetic, according to their weight. See that I never have anything shorter than this, won't you?"

Murmuring a suitable reply and blessing her patron saint for the good day, Helene opened the door and Beatrix passed out, touching the girl's cheek with the tips of kindly fingers. "We go ashore to-day," she said, "I will let you know when to pack."