BACILLUS
OF
BEAUTY

A Romance of To-day

BY

HARRIET STARK

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

Book I: The Broken Chrysalis:

I. [THE METAMORPHOSIS]
II. [THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD]
III. [THE HORNETS' NEST]
IV. [THE GODDESS AND THE MOB]
V. [A HIGH-CLASS CONCERT]

Book II: The Birth of the Butterfly:

I. [THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT]
II. [A SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON]
III. [THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE]
IV. [GIRL BACHELOR AND BIOLOGIST]
V. [THE FINDING OF THE BACILLUS]
VI. [THE GREAT CHANGE]
VII. [THE COMING OF THE LOVER]

Book III: The Joy of the Sunshine:

I. [CHRISTMAS]
II. [A LOOKING OVER BY THE PACK]
III. [SNARLING AT THE COUNCIL ROCK]
IV. [IN THE INTERESTS OF MUSIC]
V. [A PLAGUE OF REPORTERS]
VI. [LOVE IS NOTHING]
VII. [LOVE IS ALL]
VIII. [A LITTLE BELTED EARL]

BOOK IV: The Bruising of the Wings:

I. [THE KISS THAT LIED]
II. [THE IRONY OF LIFE]
III. [THE SUDDENNESS OF DEATH]
IV. [SOME REMARKS ABOUT CATS]
V. [THE LOVE OF LORD STRATHAY]
VI. [LITTLE BROWN PARTRIDGES]
VII. [LETTERS AND SCIENCE]
VIII. [A CHAPERON ON A CATTLE TRAIN]
IX. [A BURST OF SUNLIGHT]
X. [PLIGHTED TROTH]

BOOK V: The End of the Beginning:

I. [THE DEEDS OF THE FARM]
II. [CADGE'S ASSIGNMENT]
III. ["P.P.C."]

BOOK I.

THE BROKEN CHRYSALIS.

(From the Shorthand Notes of John Burke.)

THE BACILLUS OF BEAUTY

CHAPTER I.

THE METAMORPHOSIS.

NEW YORK, Sunday, Dec. 16.

I am going to set down as calmly and fully as I can a plain statement of all that has happened since I came to New York.

I shall not trim details, nor soften the facts to humour my own amazement, nor try to explain the marvel that I do not pretend to understand.

I begin at the beginning—at the plunge into fairy tale and miracle that I made, after living twenty-five years of baldest prose, when I met Helen Winship here.

Why, I had dragged her to school on a sled when she was a child. I watched her grow up. For years I saw her nearly every day at the State University in the West that already seems so unreal, so far away, I loved her.

Man, I knew her face better than I knew my own! Yet when I met her here—when I saw my promised wife, who had kissed me good-by only last June—I did not recognise her. I looked full into her great eyes and thought she was a stranger; hesitated even when she called my name. It's a miracle! Or a lie, or a wild dream; or I am going crazy. The thing will not be believed. And yet it's true.

This is my calmness! If I could but think it might be a tremendous blunder out of which I would sometime wake into verity! But there has been no mistake; I have not been dreaming unless I am dreaming now.

As distinctly as I see the ugly street below, I remember everything that has befallen me since my train pulled into Jersey City last Thursday morning. I remember as one does who is served by sharpened senses. Only once in a fellow's lifetime can he look upon New York for the first time—and to me New York meant Helen. Everything was vividly impressed upon my mind.

I crossed the Cortlandt Street ferry and walked up Broadway, wondering what Helen would say if I called before breakfast. I could scarcely wait. I stopped in front of St. Paul's Church, gaping up at a twenty-six story building opposite; a monstrous shaft with a gouge out of its south side as if lightning had rived off a sliver. I went over to it and saw that I had come to Ann Street, where Barnum's museum used to stand. The Post Office, the City Hall, the restaurant where I ate breakfast, studying upon the wall the bible texts and signs bidding me watch my hat and overcoat; the Tribune building, just as it looks on the almanac cover—all these made an instant, deep impression. Not in the least like a dream.

By the statue of Horace Greeley I stood a moment irresolute. I knew that, before I could reach her, Helen would have left her rooms for Barnard College; breakfast had been a mistake. Then I noticed that Nassau Street was just opposite; and, in spite of my impatience to be at her door, I constrained myself to look up Judge Baker.

Between its Babel towers narrow Nassau Street was like a canyon. The pavements were wet, for folks had just finished washing windows, though it was eight o'clock in the forenoon. Bicycles zipped past and from somewhere north a freshet of people flooded the sidewalk and roadway.

Down a steep little hill and up another—both thronged past belief—and in a great marble maze of lawyers' offices I found the sign of Baker & Magoun.

The boy who alone represented the firm said that I might have to wait some minutes, and turned me loose to browse in the big, high-ceiled outer room or library of the place where I am to work. After the dim corridors it was a blaze of light. On all sides were massive bookshelves; the doorways gave glimpses of other rooms, fine with rugs and pictures and heavy desks, different enough from the plain fittings of the country lawyers' workshops I had known. The carpet sank under my feet as I went to the window.

I stood looking at the Jersey hills, blue and fair in the distance, and dreaming of Helen, who was to bless and crown my good fortune, when I heard a step at the door and a young man came in—a tall, blonde, supple fellow not much older than I. Then the Judge appeared, ponderous, slow of tread, immaculate of dress; the same, unless his iron-gray locks have retreated yet farther from his wall of a brow, that I have remembered him from boyhood.

"Burke!" he said, "I am glad to see you. Welcome to New York and to this office, my boy!"

The grasp of his big warm hand was as good as the words and the eyes beneath his heavy gray brows were full of kindness as, holding both my hands in his, he drew me toward the young man who had preceded him. With a winning smile the latter turned.

"Hynes," said the Judge, with a heartiness that made one forget his formal manner, "you have heard me speak of Burke's father, the boyhood companion with whom, when the finny tribes were eager, I sometimes strayed from the strait and narrow path that led to school. Burke, Hynes is the sportsman here—our tiger-slayer. He beards in their lairs those Tammany ornaments of the bench whom the flippant term 'necessity Judges,' because of their slender acquaintance with the law."

"Glad to see you, Burke," said Hynes, as dutifully we laughed together at the time-honoured jest.

I knew from the look of him that he was a good fellow, and he had an honest grip; though out where I come from we might call him a dude. All New Yorkers seem to dress pretty well.

Presently Managing Clerk Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusque and mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few words with them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a great lump rose in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank him for all his great kindness.

"Consider, if it pleases you," he said, to put me quite at my ease, "that I have proposed our arrangement, not so much on your own account as because I loved your father and must rely upon his son. It brings back my youth to speak his name—your name, Johnny Burke!"

Yes, I remember the words, I remember the tremour in the kind voice and the mist of unshed tears through which he looked at me. I'm not dreaming; sometimes I wish I were, almost.

When I left the Judge, of course I pasted right up to Union Square, though I felt sure that Helen would be at college. No. 2 proved to be a dingy brick building with wigs and armour and old uniforms and grimy pictures in the windows, and above them the signs of a "dental parlour" and a school for theatrical dancing.

It seemed an odd place in which to look for Nelly, but I pounded up the worn stairs—dressmakers' advertisements on every riser—until I reached the top floor, where a meal-bag of a woman whose head was tied up in a coloured handkerchief confronted me with dustpan and broom.

"I'm the new leddy scrubwoman, and not afther knowin' th' names av th' tinants," she said, "but av ut's a gir-rul ye're seekin', sure they's two av thim in there, an' both out, I'm thinkin'."

I pushed a note for Nelly under the door she indicated—it bore the cards of "Miss Helen Winship" and "Miss Kathryn Reid"—and hurried away to look up this gem of a hall bedroom where I am writing; you could wear it on a watch chain, but I pay $3 a week for it. The landlady would board me for $8, but regular dinners at restaurants are only twenty-five cents; good, too. And anybody can breakfast for fifteen.

Then I went back to Union Square, where I hung about, looking at the statues. Once I walked as far as Tammany Hall and rushed back again to watch Helen's door. Finally I sat down on a bench from which I could see her windows; and there in the brief December sunlight, with the little oasis around me green even in winter, and the roar of Dead Man's Curve just far enough away, I suppose I spent almost the happiest moments of my life.

I was looking at Nelly's picture, taken in cap and gown just before she graduated last June. My Nelly! Nelly as she used to be before this strange thing happened; eager-eyed, thin with over-study and rapid growth. Nelly, whose bright face, swept by so many lights and shadows of expression, sensitive to so many shifting moods, I loved and yearned for. Nearly six months we'd been apart, but at last I had followed to New York to claim her. As I sat smiling at the dream pictures the dear face evoked, my brain was busy with thoughts of the new home we would together build. I'd hoard every penny, I planned; I'd walk to save car-fare, practice all economies—

Wasn't that a face at her window?

I reached the top landing again, three steps at a time; but the voice that said "Come!" was not Helen's and the figure that turned from pulling at the shades was short and rolypoly and crowned by flaming red hair.

"Miss Winship?" said the voice, as its owner seated herself at a big table. "Can't imagine what's, keeping her. Are you the John Burke I've heard so much about? And—perhaps Helen has written to you of Kitty Reid?"

Without waiting for a reply, she bent over the table, scratching with a knife at a sheet of bold drawings of bears.

"You won't mind my keeping right on?" she queried briskly, lifting a rosy, freckled face. "This is the animal page of the Sunday Star and Cadge is in a hurry for it, to do the obbligato."

I suppose I must have looked the puzzlement I felt, for she added hastily:—

"The text, you know; a little cool rill of it to trickle down through the page like a fine, thin strain of music that—that helps out the song—tee-e-e-um; tee-e-e-um—" She lifted her arm, sawing with a long ruler at a violin of air,—"but you don't have to listen unless you wish—to the obbligato, you know."

"Doesn't the writer think the pictures the unobtrusive embroidery of the violin, and the writing the magic melody one cannot choose but hear?"

I thought that rather neat for my first day in New York, but the shrewd blue eyes opened wide at the heresy.

"Why, no; of course Cadge knows it's the pictures that count; everybody knows that."

A writing-table jutted into the room from a second window, backing against Miss Reid's. On its flap lay German volumes on biology and a little treatise in English about "Advanced Methods of Imbedding, Sectioning and Staining." The window ledge held a vase of willow and alder twigs, whose buds appeared to be swelling. Beside it was a glass of water in which seeds were sprouting on a floating island of cotton wool.

"Admiring Helen's forest?" came the voice from the desk. "I'm afraid there's only second growth timber left; she carried away the great redwoods and all the giants of the wilderness this morning. Are you interested in zoology? Sometimes, since I have been living with Helen, I have wished more than anything else to find out, What is protoplasm? Do you happen to know?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Neither does Helen—nor any one else."

Miss Reid's merry ways are infectious. I'm glad Helen is rooming with a nice girl.

The place was shabby enough, with cracked and broken ceiling, marred woodwork and stained wall paper; but etchings, foreign photographs, sketches put up with thumb tacks and bright hangings made it odd and attractive. On a low couch piled with cushions lay Helen's mandolin and a banjo. A plaster cast of some queer animal roosted on the mantel, craning its neck down towards the fireplace.

"That's the Notre Dame devil," Miss Reid said, following my glance; "the other is the Lincoln Cathedral devil." She nodded at a wide-mouthed imp, clawing at a door-top. "Don't you just adore gargoyles?"

"Yes; that is—very much," I stammered, wandering back to Helen's desk. And then!

And then I heard quick steps outside. They reached the door and paused. I looked up eagerly. "There's Helen now," said Miss Reid; "or else Cadge."

A tall girl burst into the room, dropping an armful of books, and sprang to Miss Reid.

"Kitty! Kitty!" she cried, in a voice of wonderful music. "Two camera fiends! One in front of the college, the other by the elevated station; waiting for me to pass, I do believe! And such crowds! They followed me! Look! Look! Down in the Square!"

CHAPTER II.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD.

Both girls ran to the window. Miss Reid laughed teasingly. "I see nobody—or all the world; it's much the same," she said; "but you have a caller."

I rose from behind the desk with some confused, trivial thought that I ought to have spent part of the afternoon getting my hair cut.

I had had but a glimpse of the new comer in her flight across the floor; I knew she had scarlet lips and shining eyes; that youth and joy and unimagined beauty had entered with her like a burst of sunlight and flooded the room. I felt, rather than saw, that she had turned from the window and was looking at me, curiously at first, then smiling. Her smile had bewildered me when she opened the door; it was a soft, flashing light that shone from her face and blessed the air. She seemed surrounded by an aureole.

But she—how could this wonderful girl know me?—she surely was smiling! She was coming towards me. She was putting out her hands. That glorious voice was speaking.

"John! Is it you? I'm so glad!" it said.

Had I read about her? Had I seen her picture? Had Helen described her in a letter? Was she Cadge? No; not altogether a stranger; somewhere before I had seen—or dreamed—

"John," she persisted. "Why didn't you write? I thought you were coming next week. Did you plan to surprise me?"

Miss Reid must have made a mistake, I felt; I must explain that I was waiting for Helen. But I could not speak; I could only gape, choking and giddy. I did not speak when the bright vision seemed to take the hands I had not offered. I could feel the blood beat in my neck. I could not think; and yet I knew that a real woman stood before me, albeit unlike all the other women that ever lived in the world; and that something surprised and perplexed her. The smile still curved her lips; I felt myself grin in idiotic imitation.

"What is the matter?" the radiant stranger persisted. "You act as if—"

The smile grew sunnier; it rippled to a laugh that was merriment set to music.

"John! John Burke!" she said, giving my hands a little, impatient shake, just as Nelly used to do. "It isn't possible! Don't you—why, you goose! Don't you know me?"

"Helen!"

Of course! I had known her from the beginning! A man couldn't be in the same room with Nelly Winship and feel just as if she were any other girl. But she was not Helen at all—that radiant impossibility! And yet she was. Or she said so, and my heart agreed. But when I would have drawn her to me, she stepped back in lovely confusion, with a fluttered question:—

"How long have you been here, John?"

That voice! Sweet, fresh; full of exquisite cadences such as one might hear in dreams and ever after yearn for—from the first it had baffled me more than the beautiful face. It was not Helen's. What a blunder!

I gazed at her, still giddy. Who was she? I could not trust the astounding recognition. She returned the look, bending towards me, seeking as eagerly, I saw with confused wonderment, to read my thought as I to fathom hers. Then, as some half knowledge grew to certainty, the light of her beauty became a glory; she seemed transfigured by a mighty joy such as no other woman could ever have felt.

An instant she stood motionless, the sunshine of her eyes still on me. Then, drawing a long breath, she turned away, pulling the pins out of her feathered hat with hands that trembled.

I watched the process with the strained attention one gives at crucial moments to nothings. I laughed out of sheer inanity; every pulse in my body was throbbing. She lifted the hat from her shining head. She put it down. She unfastened her coat. In a minute she would turn again, and I should once more see that face imbued with light and fire. I waited for her voice.

"I'm sure of it!" she cried, wheeling about of a sudden, with a laugh like caressing music, and confronting me again. "You didn't know me, John; did you?"

"Why didn't I know you?" I gasped. "Why are you glad I don't know you? What does it all mean, Helen?"

Instead of answering she laughed again. It was the happiest joy-song in the world. A mirthful goddess might have trilled it—a laugh like sunshine and flowers and chasing cloud shadows on waving grass.

"Helen Winship, stop it! Stop this masquerade!" I shouted, not knowing what I did.

"But I—I'm afraid I can't, John."

The glorious face brimmed with mischief. In vain the Woman Perfect struggled to subdue her mirth to penitence.

"I—I'm so glad to see you, John. Won't you—won't you sit down and let Kitty give you some tea?"

Tea! At that moment!

Clattering little blue and white cups and saucers, Miss Reid recalled herself to my remembrance. I had forgotten that she was in the room. I suspect that she dared not lift her head for fear I might see the laughter in her eyes.

"I've made it extra strong, Mr. Burke," she managed to say, "because I'm starting for the Star office to find the photo-engravers routing the noses and toeses off all my best beastesses."

"Kitty thinks all photo-engravers the embodiment of original sin," said the Shining One. "They clip her bears' claws."

"Well," returned Miss Reid, making a flat parcel of her drawings, "this is the den of Beauty and the beasts, and the beasts must be worthy of Beauty. Mr. Burke, don't you know from what county of fairyland Helen hails? Is she the Maiden Snow-white—but no; see her blush—or the Princess Marvel? And if she's Cinderella, can't we have a peep at the fairy godmother? Cadge will call her nothing but 'H. the M.'—short for 'Helen the Magnificent.' And—and—oh, isn't she!"

"Kathryn!"

Before that grieved organ-tone of reproach, Kitty's eyes filled. I could have wept at the greatness and the beauty of it, but the little artist laughed through her tears.

"Helen Eliza, I repent," she said. "Time to be good, Mr. Burke, when she says 'Kathryn.'"

Adjusting her hat before a glass, Kitty hummed with a voice that tried not quaver:—

"Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Am I most beautiful of all?

"Queen, thou art not the fairest now;
Snow-white over the mountain's brow
A thousand times fairer is than thou.

"Poor Queen; poor all of us. I'm good, Helen," she repeated, whisking out of the room.

"Such a chatterbox!" the goddess said. "But, John, am I really so much altered? Is it true that—just at first, you know, of course—you didn't know me?"

She bent on me the breathless look I had seen before. In her eagerness, it was as if the halo of joy that surrounded her were quivering.

"I know you now; you are my Helen!"

Again I would have caught her in my arms; but she moved uneasily.

"Wait—I—you haven't told me," she stammered; "I—I want to talk to you, John."

She put out a hand as if to fend me off, then let it fall. A sudden heart sickness came upon me. It was not her words, not the movement that chilled me, but the paling of the wonderful light of her face, the look that crept over it, as if I had startled a nymph to flight. I was angry with my clumsy self that I should have caused that look, and yet—from my own Helen, not this lovely, poising creature that hardly seemed to touch the earth—I should have had a different greeting!

I gazed at her from where I stood, then I turned to the window. The rattle of street cars came up from below. A child was sitting on the bench where I had sat and feasted my eyes upon the flutter of Helen's curtains. My numb brain vaguely speculated whether that child could see me. The sun had gone, the square was wintry.

After a long minute Helen followed me.

"John," she said, "I am so glad to see you; but I—I want to tell you. Everything here is so new, I—I don't—"

It must all be true; I remember her exact words. They came slowly, hesitated, stopped.

"Are you—what do you mean, Helen?"

"Let me tell you; let me think. Don't—please don't be angry."

Through the fog that enveloped me I felt her distress and smarted from the wrong I did so beautiful a creature.

"I—I didn't expect you so soon," the music sighed pleadingly. "I—we mustn't hurry about—what we used to talk of. New York is so different!—Oh, but it isn't that! How shall I make you understand?"

"I understand enough," I said dully; "or rather—Great Heavens!—I understand nothing; nothing but that—you are taking back your promise, aren't you? Or Helen's promise; whose was it?"

I could not feel as if I were speaking to my sweetheart. The figure before me wore her pearl-set Kappa key—the badge of her college fraternity; it wore, too, a trim, dark blue dress—Helen's favourite colour and mine—but there resemblance seemed to stop.

Confused as I still was by the glory I gazed on, I began painfully comparing the Nelly I remembered and the Helen I had found. My Helen was not quite so tall, but at twenty girls grow. She did not sway with the yielding grace of a young white birch; but she was slim and straight, and girlish angles round easily to curves. Though I felt a subtle and wondrous change, I could not trace or track the miracle.

My Helen had blue-gray eyes; this Helen's eyes might, in some lights, be blue-gray; they seemed of as many tints as the sea. They were dark, luminous and velvet soft as they watched my struggle. A few minutes earlier they had been of extraordinary brilliancy.

My Helen had soft brown hair, like and how unlike these fragrant locks that lay in glinting waves with life and sparkle in every thread!

My Helen's face was expressive, piquantly irregular. The face into which I looked lured me at moments with a haunting resemblance; but the brow was lower and wider, the nose straighter, the mouth more subtly modelled. It was a face Greek in its perfection, brightened by western force and softened by some flitting touch of sensuousness and mysticism.

My Helen blushed easily, but otherwise had little colour. This Helen had a baby's delicate skin, with rose-flushed cheeks and red, red lips. When she spoke or smiled, she seemed to glow with an inner radiance that had nothing to do with colour. And, oh, how beautiful! How beautiful!

I don't know how long I gazed.

I was trying to study the girl before me as if she had been merely a fact—a statue, a picture. But here was none of the calm certainty of art; I was in the grip of a power, a living charm as mighty as elusive, no more to be fixed in words than are the splendours of sunset. Yet I saw the vital harmonies of her figure, the grace of every exquisite curve—the firm, strong line of her white throat, the gracious poise of her head, her sweeping lashes.

I looked down at her hands; they were of marvellous shape and tint, but I missed a little sickle-shaped scar from the joint of the left thumb. I knew the story of that scar. I had seen the child Nelly run to her mother when the knife slipped while she was paring a piece of cocoanut for the Saturday pie-baking. That scar was part of Helen; I loved it. I felt a sudden revolt against this goddess who usurped little Nelly's place, and said that she had changed. Why was she looking at me? What did she want?

"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said a choked voice that I hardly recognised as my own.

Instantly the joy light shone again from her face, bathing me in its sunshine, and the world was fair. She started forward impulsively, holding out her hands.

"Then it's true! Oh, it's true!" she cried. "How can I believe it? I—Nelly Winship—am I really—"

"Ah—you are Nelly! My Nelly!"

What happened is past telling!

With that jubilant outburst, as naive as a child's, she was my own love again, but dearer a thousand times. Would I have given her up if her hair were blanched by pain or sorrow, her cheeks furrowed, her face grown pale in illness? Need I look upon her coldly because she had become radiant, compellingly lovely? Why, she was enchanting!

And she was Helen. A miracle had been worked, but Helen's self was looking at me out of that goddess-like face as unmistakably as from an unfamiliar dress. It was seeing her in a marvellous new garb of flesh.

"Oh, I'm so happy! I'm the happiest girl on earth; I'm—am I really beautiful?"

The rich, low, brooding, wondering voice was not Helen's, but in every sentence some note or inflection was as familiar as were her tricks of manner, her impulsive gestures. Yes, she was Helen; warm-breathing, flushed with joy of her own loveliness, her perfect womanhood—the girl I adored, the loveliest thing alive!

I seized the hands she gave me; I drew her nearer.

"Helen," I cried, "you are indeed the most beautiful being God ever created, and—last June you kissed me—"

"I didn't!"

"—Or I kissed you, which is the same thing—after the Commencement reception, by the maple trees, in front of the chapter house; and——"

"And thence in an east-southeasterly direction; with all the hereditaments and appurtenances—Oh, you funny Old Preciseness!"

"And now I'm going to——" The words were brave, but there was something in the pose and poise of her—the wonder of her beauty, the majesty—perhaps the slightest withdrawal, the start of surprise—that awed me. Lamely enough the sentence ended:

"Helen, kiss me!" I begged, hoarsely.

For just a fraction of a second she hesitated. Then the merriment of coquetry again sparkled in her smile.

"Ah, but I'm afraid—" she mocked.

Her eyes danced with mischief as she drew away from me.

"I'm afraid of a man who's going to be a great city lawyer. And then—oh, listen!"

Hurried, ostentatiously heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. They stopped at the door, and some one fumbled noisily at the knob. There was a stage cough, and Kitty plunged into the room, carefully unnoticing.

"Such an idea for—a hippopotamus comic," she panted; "a darling! Sent drawings down—messenger—rushed back to sketch—"

Here she paused to take breath.

"—lest I forget."

Snatching off her gloves she resumed her place at the big table, and began making wild strokes with a crayon on a great sheet of cardboard.

"I just had to do it," said she apologetically over her shoulder; "but—don't mind me."

CHAPTER III.

THE HORNETS' NEST.

It was dusk when I left Helen. My head was buzzing.

Out of her presence what I had seen was unthinkable, unbelievable. I could do nothing but walk, walk—a man in a dream.

I rushed ahead, jostling people in silly haste; I dawdled. I carefully set my feet across the joinings of paving blocks; I zigzagged; I turned corners aimlessly. Once a policeman touched me as I blinked into the roaring torches of a street-repairing gang. Once I found myself on Brooklyn Bridge, looking down at big boats shaped like pumpkin seeds, with lights streaking from every window. Once I woke behind a noisy group under the coloured lights of a Bowery museum.

It rained, for horses were rubber-blanketed, and umbrellas dripped on me as I passed. I was hungry, for I smelled the coffee a sodden woman drank at the side of a night lunch wagon. But how could I believe myself awake or sane?

Again and again I found my way back to the bench on Union Square, from which I could gaze at Helen's window, now dark and forbidding. Across an open space was a garish saloon. When the door swung open, I saw the towels hanging from the bar. Two men reeled across the street and sat down by me.

"Oo-oo!" one gurgled.

"Dan's goin' t' kill 'imself 'cause 'is wife's gone," blubbered the other. "Tell 'm not ter, can't ye, matey? Tell 'im' t's 'nough fer one t' die!"

"Oo-oo!" bellowed Dan.

I walked away in the darkness, but I felt better. Drunkenness was no miracle: I was awake and sane, sane and awake in a homely world of sorrow and folly and love and mystery.

I went to bed thinking of Cleopatra, "brow-bound with burning gold"; of Fair Rosamond; Vivien, who won Merlin's secret; of Lilith and strange, shining women—not one of them like the goddess the glory of whose smile had dazzled me. At last I slept, late and heavily.

Next morning I was again first at the office; and by daylight in the bustling city, things took a different complexion. I had gone to my sweetheart tired by a long journey, and I felt sure, or tried to feel sure, that my impressions of change in her were fantastic and exaggerated.

Judge Baker, on his arrival, installed me in Hynes's room, behind the library, between the corridor and one of the courts that light the inner offices. In his own room, to the left, he detained me for some business talk, after which he said, carefully rubbing his glasses:

"I trust that you will not find yourself altogether a stranger in the city. My wife will wish to see you, and my sister, Miss Baker, cherishes pleasant recollections of your mother. I believe you are already acquainted with Mrs. Baker's young cousin, Miss Winship. You know that, since graduation, she has come to New York for the purpose of pursuing post-graduate studies in Barnard?"

"Yes."

I drew a breath of relief. There was nothing in the Judge's manner to give significance to his mention of Helen. I must have deceived myself.

"A most charming young lady."

He glanced at the letters on his desk and methodically cut open an envelope. Then he dropped the paper knife, raising his bushy brows, a gesture that indicates his most genial humour, as he continued with more than usual deliberateness:—

"You knew her, no doubt, as an intelligent student; you may be surprised to learn that she has developed extraordinary—the word is not too strong—extraordinary beauty."

"Always a lovely girl," I muttered.

"From her childhood Nelly has been a favourite with me;" the Judge leaned back in his big chair, seeming to commit himself to an utterance; "but her attractions were rather those of mind and heart, I should have said, than of personal appearance. The change to which I have alluded is more than the not uncommon budding of a plain girl into the evanescent beauty of early womanhood; it is the most remarkable thing that has ever come under my observation. I am getting to be an elderly man, Burke, and I have been a respectful admirer of many, many fair women, but I have never seen a girl like Miss Winship; she is phenomenal."

"You—you think so?"

It was true, then!

"I have ceased to think; I am nonplussed. Witchcraft, though not in the older sense of the word, is still no doubt exercised by young ladies, and there are certain improvement commissions that undertake, for a suitable consideration, the—ah—redecoration of feminine architecture, or even the partial restoration of human antiques. But this is a different matter."

"I saw Miss Winship yesterday."

"You will not then accuse me of overstatement?"

"She is indeed beautiful."

The restraint with which I spoke evidently puzzled him. He continued to look at me curiously, as he said slowly:—

"From a young man I should have expected more enthusiasm. At times I suspect that the youth of today are less susceptible than were those of twenty-five years ago. But this affair has perhaps occupied my thoughts more than otherwise it might, because Helen is in a measure my ward during her stay in the East, and because of my daughters' affection—"

"Judge, I had supposed you aware of an engagement between Helen and myself."

"Ah, that accounts for much. To you, no doubt, she is little altered. Your eyes have seen the budding of that beauty which but now becomes visible to those less partial. I believe Mrs. Baker did hint at something between you, but it had escaped my mind."

The Judge's bright eyes that contradict so pleasantly the heavy cast of his features began to twinkle. Little lines of geniality formed at their corners and rayed out over his cheeks. He beamed kindliness, as he continued:—

"Accept my congratulations. A most excellent family. Mrs. Winship is Mrs. Baker's cousin. Ah, time flies; time flies! It seems but yesterday that my little girls were running about with Nelly, pigtailed, during their visits in the West."

"Does Mrs. Baker also think Nelly—changed?"

"Only on Tuesday my wife returned from nursing an ailing relative. She has not seen Helen in some time. I believe we are to have her with us at Christmas. We must have you also. But I cannot altogether admit that the change is a matter of my opinion. It has been commented upon by my daughters in terms of utmost emphasis."

"She is the most beautiful woman in the world!"

"There we shall not disagree. To Nelly herself the riddle of nature that we seek to read is doubtless also a mystery, but one for whose unraveling she is happy to wait. My daughters have a picture of her, taken at the age, possibly, of six, which gives inartistic prominence to 'Grandpa Winship's ears'—the left larger than the right. You know the family peculiarity owned by the eldest child in each generation? The loss of this inheritance may not be, to a young lady, matter for regret; but as a mark of identification and descent, the Winship ears might have entitled her to rank among the Revolutionary Daughters. However, she is a poor woman who has not a club to spare."

"Judge, how long is it since this—transformation took place? You speak of it as recent."

"Nelly comes to me," said the Judge, "with—ah—natural punctuality for monthly remittances from her father. In November I was struck with the fact that New York agreed with her; yet even then I did not miss the family nose—a compromise of pug and Roman. But ten days ago, when I saw her last, I recognised her with difficulty. For more precise information you must ask my daughters."

"Then it was only ten days ago that you saw anything wrong—?"

"Wrong! My dear young friend, if Nelly's case obtained publicity, would not the world, which loves beauty, be divided between a howling New York and a wilderness?"

The Judge glanced up at me, slipping his paper knife end over end through his fingers.

"I have spoken of myself as nonplussed," he said more seriously, "and I am. I was never more so; but I see no occasion for anxiety. Since when has it been thought necessary to call priest or physician because of a young lady's growing charm? Confronted by an ugly duckling, we must congratulate the swan."

"Judge, how much money does one need to marry on in New York?"

"All that a man has; all that he can get; often more. But—ah—is the question imminent? Nelly is in school; you have come out of the West, as I understand it, to attack New York. Conquer it, Sir; conquer New York before you speak of marriage to a New York woman."

"Helen is not a New York woman."

"We naturalize them at the docks and stations."

"But you—" I repressed a movement of impatience. "Didn't you marry young?"

"Mrs. Baker and I began our married life in one room; cooked over the gas jet, in tin pails. And if little Nelly is the equal of other women of her family—but that is practice versus principle, my young friend; practice versus principle."

He turned again to his letters, and I understood that the interview was closed.

Right after lunch I started for Barnard. Helen has written so much about the college that as soon as I struck the Boulevard I knew the solid brick building with its trimmings of stone fasces. I turned into the cloistered court on One Hundred and Nineteenth Street and paused a minute, looking up at its Ionic porticoes and high window lettered "Millbank Hall."

Then I entered, and a page, small, meek and blue-uniformed, trotted ahead of me through a beautiful hall, white with marble columns and mosaics, sumptuous with golden ceiling, dazzling with light and green with palms, to the curtained entrance of a dainty reception room.

"Stop a minute, Mercury," I said as he turned to leave; "where is Miss Winship?"

He reappeared from an office beyond, replying:—

"Biol'gy lab'r'tory. What name?"

Instead of waiting until Nelly could be summoned, I followed the mildly disapproving boy up a great, white stairway, past groups of girls, some in bright silk waists and some in college gowns. Even in the farthest corner remote from the hubbub, a musical echo blent of gay talk and laughter filled the air; a light body of sound that the walls held and gave out as a continuous murmur.

A second time piping, "What name, Sir?" Mercury opened the door of a large room with many windows. At the far corner my eyes sought out Helen in conversation with a keen-eyed, weazened little man, at sight of whom the boy took to his heels.

Three women besides Helen were in the room, bunched at a table that ran along two sides under the windows. They wore big checked aprons, and one of them squinted into her microscope under a fur cap. Wide-mouthed jars, empty or holding dirty water, stood on other tables ranged up and down the middle of the room, and there was a litter of porcelain-lined trays, test tubes, pipettes, glass stirring-rods and racks for microscope slides.

Against the wall to the left were cabinets with sliding doors, showing retorts, apparatus, bottles of drugs, jars of specimens and large, coloured models of flowers and of the lower marine forms. Against the right hand wall were sinks, an incubator and, beyond, a door leading into a drug closet. There was the usual laboratory smell, in which the penetrating fume of alcohol, the smokiness of creosote and carbolic acid, the pungency of oil of clove and the aroma of Canada balsam struggled for the mastery.

In her college gown Helen looked more like herself than the day before and less so, the familiar dress accentuating every difference. Against the flowing black her loveliness shone fair and delicate as a cameo, I thought of the Princess Ida,

Liker to the inhabitant
Of some far planet close upon the sun
Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head,
And so much grace and power—
Lived through her to the tips of her long hands
And to her feet.

She had not noticed my entrance, but as I stepped forward, she turned, and I was again lost in wonder at her marvellous grace. Her beauty seemed a harmony so vitally perfect that the sight of it was a joy approaching pain.

I had not been mistaken! She was the rarest thing in human form on this earth. I was awed and frightened anew at her perfection.

"Why, how did you find your way out here?" she asked with girlish directness. "I'm not quite ready to go; I must finish my sections for Prof. Darmstetter."

The Professor—I had guessed his identity—joined us, glancing at me inquisitively. His spare figure seemed restless as a squirrel's, but around the pupils of his eyes appeared the faint, white rim of age.

"You are friendt of Mees Veensheep?" he asked. "Looks she not vell? New York has agreed vit' her; not so?"

At my awkward, guarded assent, I thought that something of the same surprise Judge Baker had voiced at my moderation flitted over the old man's face.

"I find you kvite right; kvite right," he said, "New York has done Mees Veensheep goot; she looks fery vell."

He whisked into the drug closet, and Helen seated herself before a microscope next that of the fur-capped woman.

"Do you care for slides?" she said. "I'll get another microscope and while I draw you may look at any on my rack. But be careful; most of the things are only temporarily mounted—just in glycerine. Here is the sweetest longitudinal section of the tentacle of an Actinia, and here—look at these lovely transverse sections of the plumule of a pea; you can see the primary groups of spiral vessels. They've taken the carmine stain wonderfully! But my work is not advanced; I wish you could see that of the other girls."

"I mustn't interfere with your task; I'll look about until you are ready."

Her shining head was already bent over the microscope; her pencil was moving, glad to respond to the touch of that lovely hand.

I picked up a book, the same little volume I had noticed the day before, on "Imbedding, Sectioning and Staining." Near it lay a treatise on histology. I opened to the first chapter, on "Protoplasm and the Cell," but I couldn't fix my thoughts on Bathybius or the Protomoeba. I walked toward an aquarium, flanking which stood a jar half-filled with water in which floated what seemed a big cup-shaped flower of bright brown jelly with waving petals of white and rose colour.

While I looked, thinking only of the curve of Helen's lips and the dancing light in her eyes, and the glowing colour of her soft flesh, Prof. Darmstetter's thin, high-pitched voice grated almost at my ear.

"T'at is Actinia—sea anemone."

"I come from the West; I have never seen the sea forms living," I answered with an effort, fearing that he meant to show me about the laboratory.

"It is fery goot sea anemone; fery strong, fery perfect; a goot organism."

He bent over the jar, rubbing his hands. His parchment face crackled with an almost tender complacency. For a full minute he seemed to gloat over the flower-like animal.

"Very pretty," I said, carelessly.

"Fery pretty, you call it? T'e prettiness is t'e sign of t'e gootness, t'e strengt', t'e perfection. You know t'at?"

To his challenging question, in which I saw the manner of a teacher with his pupils, I replied:

"In your estimation goodness and beauty go together?"

"T'ey are t'e same; how not? See t'is way."

He shook his lean, reproving forefinger at a shapeless, melting mass that lay at the bottom of a second jar, exuding an ooze of viscid strings.

"T'at,"—he spat the word out—"is also sea anemone. It is diseased; it is an ugly animal."

"The poor thing's dying," said Helen, coming to his side. "There ought to have been some of the green seaweed, Ulva, in the water. Wouldn't that have saved it?"

"Ugliness,"—Darmstetter disregarded the question—"is disease; it is bat organism; t'e von makes t'e ot'er. T'e ugly plant or animal is diseased, or else it is botched, inferior plant or animal. It is t'e same vit' man and voman; t'ey are animals. T'e ugly man or voman is veak, diseased or inferior. On t'e ot'er hand,"—I felt what was coming by the sudden oiling of his squeak—"t'e goot man or voman, t'e goot human organism, mus' haf beauty. Not so?" Again he rubbed his hands.

Helen glanced mischievously at me, as a half-repressed snort interrupted his dissertation.

The woman in the fur cap, who might have been a teacher improving odd hours, had knocked up the barrel of her microscope; she gazed through the window at the dazzling Hudson. Next her a thin, sallow girl, whose dark complexion contrasted almost weirdly with her yellow hair, slashed at a cake of paraffine, her deep-set eyes emitting a spark at every fall of the razor. The other student, a young woman with the heavy figure of middle age, went steadily on, dropping paraffine shavings into some fluid in a watch crystal. With a long-handled pin she fished out minute somethings left by the dissolving substance, dropping these upon other crystals—some holding coloured fluids—and finally upon glass slides. She worked as if for dear life, but every quiver of her back told that she was listening.

"You agree vit' me?"

"It seems reasonable; the subject is one that you have deeply studied."

"Ach so! T'e perfect organism must haf t'e perfect beauty. T'e vorld has nefer seen a perfectly beautiful man or voman. Vat vould it say to von, t'ink you? But perfection, you vill tell me, is far to seek," he went on, without waiting for a reply. "Yet people haf learned t'at many diseases are crimes. By-and-by, we may teach t'em t'at bat organism is t'e vorst of crimes; beautiful organism t'e first duty. V'at do you say?"

The fur-capped girl pushed back her chair.

"Prof. Darmstetter," she said, "will you be good enough to look at my sections?"

"He's stirred up the hornets' nest," whispered Helen. "But come; perhaps they will show us. Those girls are so clever; they're sure to have something interesting."

CHAPTER IV.

THE GODDESS AND THE MOB.

As we descended the stairway and passed groups of students in front of the bulletin boards in the hall, Helen said:—

"I am afraid you shouldn't have called for me. It isn't usual here."

"We'll introduce the custom. How could I help coming—after yesterday? Helen—"

"Have you seen Grant's tomb?" she inquired hastily. "It's just beyond the college buildings, hidden by them. You mustn't miss it, after coming so far."

We had issued on the Boulevard, and a few steps brought us in view of the stately white shrine on Claremont Heights. But I looked instead at her brilliant face against the velvety background of black hat and feather boa.

The sun's rays, striking across the river, played hide-and-seek in her shimmering hair, warming it to gold and touching the rose of her cheeks to a clear radiance. Her eyes were scintillant with changing, flashing lights.

"Well?" she challenged at last, half daring, half afraid. "You know me to-day?"

"You are a sun goddess. Helen, what does it mean?"

"New York agrees vit' me," Her laugh was irresistible—low and sweet, a laugh that made the glad day brighter. "How not? It is vun fine large city."

We laughed together to the memory of Actinia.

"I am a goot organism. T'e bat organisms vish to scratch me; but t'ey are not so fery bat. In time ve may teach t'em gootness."

"If Darmstetter doesn't think you a perfect organism, he must be hard to satisfy. He's a peculiar organism himself. Has he true loves among sand stars or jelly fish, or does he confine his affections to sea anemones?"

"Prof. Darmstetter is a great biologist. It's a shame he has to teach. Don't you think such a man should be free to devote himself to original work? He might in England, you know, if he were a fellow of a University. But we're proud of him at Barnard; and the laboratory—oh, it's the most fascinating place!"

We came slowly down the Boulevard, looking out at the sweep of the Hudson, while she talked of her studies and her college mates, trying, I thought, to keep me from other topics.

I scarcely noticed her words; her voice was in my ears, fresh and musical. The new grace of her shining head and wondrous, swaying figure, the beauty and spirit of her carriage, filled my consciousness. A schooner with a deck load of wood drifted with the tide, her sails flapping; I saw her in a blur. When I turned from the sheen of the river, the bicyclists whizzing past left streaks of light. A man cutting brush in a vacant lot leaned on his axe to look after us. The sudden stopping of his "chop, chop"—he too was staring at the vision of beauty before his eyes—brought me out of my revery.

"Nelly," I said, "your father will expect a letter from me. What shall I say?"

"Tell him I am studying hard and like the city."

"But about us—about you and me?"

"Must we talk of that here—on the street?"

She spoke almost pleadingly, with the same soft clouding of her loveliness that I had seen the day before?

"But I must speak," I said. "You were right yesterday, I won't ask anything of you until I have made a start; but I must know that you still love me; that will be enough. I can wait. I won't hurry you. That is all, Helen. Everything shall be as you wish; but—you do love me?"

"Oh, you great tease! Why, I suppose I do; but—so much has happened, I don't know myself now; you didn't know me when you first saw me here. Why can't you wait and—don't you hope New York vill agree vit' you?"

She laughed with tantalizing roguery. "You do love me!" I cried. "And we shall be so happy with all our dreams come true—happy to be together and here! If you knew how I have looked forward to coming, and now—yesterday I thought myself insane, but I wasn't! You are the most marvellous—"

"Am I? Oh, I'm glad! So glad!"

I was confused, overjoyed at her sudden sparkle; the soft, flashing light of her was fire and dew. She made visible nature sympathize with her moods. The sky smiled and was pensive with her.

"But see," she cried with another of her bewildering changes; "we're at Columbia."

We had left the Boulevard, and were approaching the white-domed library.

"Look at the inscription," Helen said, as students carrying notebooks began to pass us. "'KING'S COLLEGE FOUNDED UNDER GEORGE II.' Doesn't that seem old after the State University? Ours, I mean."

Our inspection was brief. Before the open admiration of the students Helen seemed, like a poising creature of air and sunshine, fairly to take wing for flight.

"Tell me about yourself," she commanded, when we were beyond the flights of terraced steps. "You are really in Judge Baker's office? You—you won't say anything more?"

"You—darling! You have almost said you love me; do you know that? Well, I'll be considerate. I will work and I will wait and I will believe—no, I'll be certain that some day a woman more beautiful than the Greeks imagined when they dreamed of goddesses who loved mortal men will come to me and, because it is true, will quite say 'I love you.' But I may not always be patient; for you do. After all, you are Nelly!"

I was almost faint with love of her and wonder; I adored her the more for the earnestness with which she lifted her flushed, smiling, innocent face to say:

"But tell me about the office, please. You wouldn't want me to say—would you, if I wasn't sure? Isn't the Judge the most delightful man? So—not pompous, you know; but so good. Don't you like Judge Baker?"

"I love you! Oh, yes, the Judge says, 'if we are confronted with an ugly duckling we must congratulate the swan.' Were you ever an ugly duckling? I'm sure you love me, Helen."

"Did he say that? Well, even when I last saw him why that was nearly two weeks ago—I—oh, I was an ugly duckling!"

We laughed like children. In the sunshine of her joy-lit eyes I forgot the miracle of it, forgot everything except that I had reached New York and Nelly, and that the world was beautiful when she looked upon it.

We came down from Cathedral Heights; and as we boarded a train on the elevated, eyes peered around newspapers. An old gentleman wiped his glasses and readjusted them, his lips forming the words, "most extraordinary," and again, "most extraordinary!" A thin, transparent-looking woman followed the direction of his glance and querulously touched his elbow. Two slender girls looked and whispered.

I thought at first that city folks had no manners, but presently began to wonder that Helen escaped so easily. She had drawn down a scrap of a veil that scarcely obscured her glow and colour and, as the train gathered headway, our neighbours settled in their places almost as unconcernedly as if no marvel of beauty and youth were present. Indeed, most of them had never looked up. The two young girls continued to eye Helen with envy; and I was conscious of an absurd feeling of resentment that they were the only ones. I wanted to get up and cry out: "Don't you people know that this car contains a miracle?"

Why, when Helen lifted to her knee a child that tugged at the skirts of the stout German hausfrau in the next seat, the mother vouchsafed hardly a glance.

"How old are you?" asked Helen.

"Sechs yahre," was the shy answer.

"Such a big girl for six!"

"So grosse! So grosse!"

The little thing measured her height by touching her forehead.

"Shump down," admonished the mother stolidly, while Helen bent over the child, wasting upon her the most wonderful smile of the everlasting years.

"It was long ago, wasn't it," Nelly asked, when the child had slid from her lap, "that Uncle promised to take you into his office?"

"Yes," I said. "When Father died, the Judge told me that when I had practised three years—long enough to admit me to the New York bar—he'd have a place for me. It was because the three years were nearly up, you know, that I dared last June to ask you—"

"You'd dare anything," she interrupted hastily. "Remember how, when I was a Freshman, you raced a theologue down the church aisle one Sunday night after service, and slammed the door from the outside? 'Miss Winship,' you said—I had sat near the door and was already in the entry—'may I see you home?'—"

"The theologue and the congregation didn't get out till you said yes, I remember! They howled and hammered at the door in most unchristian rage?"

"I had to say yes; why, I had to walk with you even when we quarrelled; it would have made talk for either of us to be seen alone."

She breathed a sigh that ended in rippling laughter.

"You'll have to say yes again."

But at that she changed the subject, and we talked about her work at Barnard until we left the train at Fourteenth Street, where we met the flood tide of Christmas surging into the shops and piling up against gaily decked show windows.

Street hawkers jingled toy harnesses, shouted the prices of bright truck for tree ornaments, and pushed through the crowd, offering holly and mistletoe. Circles formed around men exhibiting mechanical turtles or boxing monkeys. From a furry sledge above a shop door, Santa Claus bowed and gesticulated, shaking the lines above his prancing reindeer. I had never seen such a spectacle.

"What a jam!" cried Helen, her cheeks flooded with colour. "Come, let's hurry!"

Indeed, as we threaded our way in and out among the throng, her beauty made an instant impression.

"There she goes!"

"Where? Where? I don't see her."

"There! The tall one, with the veil—walking with that jay!"

Not only did I hear such comments; I felt them. Yet even here there were many who did not notice; and again I sensed that odd displeasure that people could pass without seeing my darling.

It was a relief to leave the neighbourhood of Sixth Avenue and cross to the open space of Union Square.

The east side of the little park was quiet.

"All right?" I asked.

"All right."

Her breath came quickly as if she had been frightened.

"But see," she said a moment later, "there comes Kitty trundling her bicycle down Madison Avenue. You'd better come in, and be on your best behaviour; yesterday Kitty thought we were quarrelling."

"Sorry I'm wanted only to vindicate—is it your character or mine that would stand clearing? And will you tell me——"

A little old Frenchman, with a wooden leg, who was singing the "Marseillaise" from door to door, approached, holding out his hat.

"Merci, M'sieu', Madame," he said, carelessly pocketing a nickel; then, as he fairly caught sight of the face that Helen of old might have envied, he started back in amazement, slowly whispering:—

"Pardon! Mon dieu! Une Ange!"

We left him muttering and staring after us.

"I'll really have to get a thicker veil," said Helen hastily; "stuffy thing! I like to breathe and see. At first it was—oh, delightful to be looked at like that—or almost delightful; for if no had one noticed, how was I to be sure that—that New York was agreeing vit' me? But now they begin to——"

"Then New York hasn't always agreed vit' you? Aren't you going to tell me——"

"Oh, I've been well," she interrupted, "ever since I came. But here's Kitty. Any adventures, Goldilocks?"

"A minute ago a tandem cuffed my back wheel," said Miss Reid, coming up. "My heart jumped into my mouth and—and I'm nibbling little scallops out of it right now."

And then we trooped upstairs together.

CHAPTER V.

A HIGH-CLASS CONCERT.

I stayed for supper, over which Kitty's big Angora cat presided; Kitty herself, her red curls in disorder, whimsical, shrewd, dipping from jest to earnest, teased Helen and waited on her, wholly affectionate and, I guessed, half afraid.

The little den was cosy by the light of an open fire—for it seemed to be one function of the tall, pink-petticoated lamp to make much darkness visible; and Nelly was almost like the Nelly I had known, with her eager talk of home folks and familiar scenes.

She asked about my mother's illness and death that had held me so long in the West, and her great eyes grew dim and soft with tears, and she looked at me like a Goddess grieving; until, sweet as was her sympathy, I forced myself to speak of other topics. And then we grew merry again, talking of college mates and the days when I first knew her, when I was a Sophomore teaching in Hannibal and she was my best scholar—only twelve years old, but she spelled down all the big, husky boys.

"I didn't know what I was doing, did I," I said, "when your father used to say: 'Bright gal, ain't she? I never see the beat of Helen Lizy;' and I would tell him you ought to go to the State University?"

"Think of it!" cried Helen. "If I hadn't gone to college, I shouldn't have come to New York, and, oh, if—but how you must have worked, teaching and doubling college and law school! Why, you were already through two years of law when I entered, only three years later."

"Well, it's been easy enough since, even with tutoring and shorthanding; six lawyers to every case—"

"Wasn't tutoring Helen your main occupation?" asked Kitty Reid audaciously. "I have somehow inferred that—"

But there was a sound of hurrying feet on the stairs, and she sprang to the door, crying:—

"Cadge and Pros.! They said they were coming."

On the threshold appeared a lank girl with shining black hair and quick, keen, good-humoured eyes.

"Howdy?" she asked with brisk cordiality; "angel children, hope I see you well."

In her wake was a tall, quiet-looking young man with a reddish-brown beard.

"Salute; salaam," he said; "all serene, Kitty? And you, Miss Winship?"

Then as the two became accustomed to the light, I saw what I had nervously expected. There was a little start, an odd moment of embarrassment. They gazed at Helen with quick wonder at her loveliness, then turned away to hide their surprise.

It was as if in the few days since they had seen her—for the new comers were Kitty's brother and the Miss Bryant of whom everyone speaks as "Cadge"—Helen's beauty had so blossomed that at fresh sight of her they struggled with incredulous amazement almost as a stranger might have done.

Talking rapidly to mask embarrassment, they joined us round the fire, Reid dropped a slouch hat and an overcoat that seemed all pockets bulging with papers, while Miss Bryant and Kitty began a rapid fire of talk about "copy," "cuts," "the black," "the colour" and other mysteries.

"Wish you could have got me a proof of the animal page," said Kitty finally; "if they hurry the etching again, before my poor dear little bears have been half an hour on the presses, they'll fill with ink and print gray. I'll—I'll leave money in my will to prosecute photo-engravers."

"Oh, don't fret," said Miss Bryant. "Magazine'll look well this week. Big Tom's the greatest Sunday editor that ever happened; and I've got in some good stuff, too."

"Of course your obbligato'll be all right," Kitty sighed; "but—oh, those etchers and——Yes, Big Tom'll do; I never see him fretting the Art Department, like the editor before last, to sketch a one-column earthquake curdling a cup of cream."

"How could anybody do that?" cried Helen.

"Just what the artist said."

Miss Bryant looked slightly older than Helen; in spite of her brusque, careless sentences, I suspected that she was a girl of some knowledge, vast energy and strength of will. And suspicion grew to certainty that she and Reid were lovers.

I might have read it in his tone when in the course of the evening he asked her to sing.

"Then give me a baton," she responded, springing to her feet.

Rolling up a newspaper and seizing a bit of charcoal from the drawing table, she beat time with both hands, launching suddenly into an air which she rendered with dramatic expression as rare as her abandon.

"Applaud! Applaud!" she cried, clapping her own hands at the end of a brilliant passage, her colourless, irregular face alive with enthusiasm, her black eyes snapping. "If you don't applaud, how do you expect me to sing? Vos plaudite!"

"I'll applaud when you've surely stopped," said Kitty Reid demurely; "but before we begin an evening of grand opera, I want you to hear the Princess. Helen, you know you promised."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Helen, colouring at the title, "I can't sing before Cadge; but if you like, I'll play for you. See if I'm not improving in my tremolo."

Helen did not sing in the old days, so that I was not surprised at her refusal. Taking her mandolin, she tinkled an air that I have often heard her play, but neither I nor any one else had ears for it, so absorbed was the sense of sight.

Her long lashes swept her cheeks as she bent forward in the firelight, her vivid colouring subdued by the soft, playing glow to an elusive charm. At one moment, as the flames flickered into stronger life, her beauty seemed to grow fuller and to have an oriental softness and warmth; the next, the light would die away, and in the cooler, grayer, fainter radiance, her perfect grace of classic outline made her seem a statue—Galatea just coming to life, more beautiful than the daughters of men, her great loveliness delicately spiritualized.

If I were a beautiful woman, I'd learn to play a mandolin.

"Sing, Helen," begged Kitty in a whisper.

In a voice that began tremulously, low and faltering, and slowly gained courage, she sang the ballad she had been playing. It was easy to see that she was not a musician; but, as she forgot her listeners, we forgot everything but her.

Miss Bryant put down the compasses and scale rule she had been restlessly fingering, and her keen eyes softened and dilated. Kitty dropped on the floor at Helen's feet; the hush in the room was breathless. Reid sat in the dark, still as a statue; I clenched my hands and held silence.

The words were as simple as the air. But the voice, so clear, so sweet, so joyous, like Helen's own loveliness—to hear it was an ecstasy. We were listening to the rarest notes that ever had fallen on human ears—unless the tale of the sirens be history.

As the last note died, the fire leaped, dropped and left us in dusk and silence. Kitty buried her face against Helen's dress. My heart was pounding until in my own ears it sounded like an anvil chorus. I don't know whether I was very happy or very miserable. I would have died to hear that voice again. It is the truth!

With a sudden sob and a sniffing that told of tears unashamed, Miss Bryant found frivolous words to veil our emotion.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she quavered, "this is a high-class concert; three dollars each for tickets, please. Helen, you don't know how to sing, but—don't learn! Come Pros."—the big drops ran down her cheeks; "I've got to look up a story in the morning."

"Wait a minute," said Reid, his long, delicately shaped fingers trembling. "Let me recover on something."

Picking up Kitty's banjo, he smote the strings uncertainly and half sang, half declaimed:—

"'With my Hya! Heeya! Heeya! Hullah! Haul!
Oh, the green that thunders aft along the deck!
Are you sick of towns and men? You must sign and sail again,
For it's Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek!'

"By Jove! Kipling's right; nothing like a banjo, is there? Now then, Young Person, I'm with you. Good night; good night!"

While his voice was still echoing down the stairway, Miss Bryant came running up again.

"Say, got a photograph of yourself, Helen?" she asked.

She had apparently quite recovered from her emotion, and her tone expressed an odd mixture of business and affection.

"I believe if I showed Big Tom a picture of you," she explained, "he'd run a story—there's your science, you know, and your music—on the Society page, maybe."

"But I haven't any picture; at least, any that you'd want—only a few taken months ago, for my father."

"Show me those; why won't they do?"

"Oh, they aren't good; they—they don't look like me. Besides, I really couldn't let you print my picture, Cadge."

"All right. Good night, then; good night, Kitty."

"Perhaps I was just the least bit homesick; I'm glad you've come," Helen said to me at good-by.

She did not withdraw the hand I pressed. She was still under the excitement of the music; the song had left on her face a dreamy tenderness.

"Don't you like Cadge?" she asked, checking with shy evasiveness the words I would have spoken. "She can do anything—sing, talk modern Greek and Chinese—Cadge is wonderful."

"I know some one more wonderful. Helen, when did you begin to sing?"

"I don't sing; to-night was the first time I ever tried before any one but Kitty. Did I sing well?"

"I can't believe you're real! I can't—"

"Don't! Don't!" she laughed. "Remember your promise."

And with that she ran away from the door where I stood, and I came directly home. Home, to set down these notes; to wonder; to doubt; to pinch myself and try to believe that I am alive.

I am alive. This that I have written is the truth! This is what I have seen and heard since a common, puffing railroad train brought me from the West and set me down in the land of miracles.

It is the truth; but out of that magic presence I cannot—I am as powerless to believe as I am powerless to doubt.

God help me—it is the truth!

BOOK II.

THE BIRTH OF THE BUTTERFLY.

(From the Autobiography of Helen Winship.)

CHAPTER I

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT

No. 2 Union Square, December 14.

I am the most beautiful woman in the world!

I feel like a daughter of the gods. Bewildered, amazed, at times incredulous of my good fortune—but happy, happy, happy!

There is no joy in heaven or earth like the joy of being beautiful—incomparably beautiful! It's such a never-ending surprise and delight that I come out of my musings with a start, a dozen times a day, and shudder to think: "What if it were only a dream!"

Happy? I have no faith in the old wives' fables that we are most miserable when we get what we want. It isn't true that the weak and poor are to be envied beyond the powerful. Ask the fortunate if they would change! I wouldn't; not for the Klondike?

I'm so happy! I want to take into my confidence the whole world of women. I want them to know how the gift was gained that they are some day to share. I want them to know that there are still good fairies in the world; and how I was fated to meet one, how he waved his wand over me and how my imperfections fled. Every woman will read the story of my life with rapt attention because of the Secret. I shall tell that last of all. Now it's my own.

Is it true that I have longed for beauty more passionately than most women; or is it only that I know myself, not the others? I can remember the time, away back, when the longing began—when I was——

Incredible! Was I ever an ugly little girl, careless of my appearance, happiest in a torn and dirty dress; and homely, homely, homely? Oh, miracle! The miracle!

They say all girls begin life thus heedless of beauty; but none get far along the road before they meet the need of it. So it was with me; and now I love to recall every pitiful detail of the beginning of the Quest of Beauty, the funny little tragedy of childhood that changed the current of my life—and of your lives, all you women who read.

It was one day after school, in the old life that has closed forever—after the prairie school, dull, sordid, uninspiring, away in the West—that a playmate, Billy Reynolds, was testing upon me his powers of teasing. I remember the grin of pleasure in his cruelty that wrinkled his round, red face when at last he found the dart that stung. His words—ah, they are no dream! They were the awakening, the prelude of to-day.

"Janey's prettier'n what you be," he said; and of a sudden I knew that it was true, and felt that the knowledge nearly broke my heart.

But could there be any doubt of the proper reply?

"Huh!" I said, shrugging my lean shoulders. "I don't care!"

The day before it would have been true, but that day it was a lie. I did care; the brave words blistered my throat, sudden tears burned my eyeballs, and to hide them I turned my back upon my tormentor.

It was not that I was jealous. I cared no more for Billy than for a dozen other playmates. It was just the fact that hurt. I was homely! Not that the idea was new to me, either. Dear me, no! Why, from my earliest years I had been accustomed to think of myself as plain, and had not cared. My earliest recollection, almost, is of two women who one day talked about me in my presence, not thinking that I would understand.

"Ain't she humbly?" said one.

"Dretful! It's a pity. Looks means so much more to a gal."

"But she's smart."

By these words—you can see that I was young—I was exalted, not cast down. And for five years, remembering them, I had been proud of being "smart." But now, in the moment of revelation, the law of sex was laid upon me, and the thought failed to bring its accustomed comfort. Smart? Perhaps. But—homely!

With feet as light as my heart was heavy because of Billy's taunt, I flew home and ran up to my room. I had there a tiny mirror, about two-thirds of which had fallen from its frame. I may before that day have taken in it brief, uncritical glimpses at my face, but they had not led to self-analysis. Now, with beating heart and solemn earnestness, I balanced a chair against the door—there was no lock—and looked long and unlovingly at my reflected image.

I saw many freckles, a nose too small, ears too big, honest eyes, hair which was an undecided brown; in short, an ordinary wind-blown little prairie girl. Perhaps I was not so ill-looking, nor Janey so pretty, as Billy affected to think, but no such comforting conclusion then came to me. Sorrow fronted me in the glass.

The broken mirror gave no hint of my figure, but I know that I was lean and angular, with long legs forever thrusting themselves below the hem of my dress; the kind of girl for whose growth careful mothers provide skirts with tucks that can be let out to keep pace with their increasing stature.

Yes, I was homely! I could not dispute the evidence of the bit of shivered glass.

My heart was swelling with grief as I slowly went down stairs, where my mother was getting supper for the hired men. I think it must have been early spring, for prairie schools need not expect boy pupils in seeding time; I know that the door was open and the weather warm.

"Ma," I said as I entered the dining room, "will I ever be pretty?"

"Sakes alive! What will the child think of next?"

"But will I, Ma?"

"'Han'some is as han'some does,' you know, Nelly," my mother responded, as she set on the table two big plates piled high with slices of bread. Then she went into the buttery and brought out a loaf of temperance cake, a plate of doughnuts and a great dish of butter.

"Oh, come now, Ma; please tell me," I wheedled, not content with a proverb.

"Why, Nelly, I don't know; the' ain't nobody does know. I was well-favoured at your age, but your pa wan't much on looks. But Pa had a sister who was reel good-lookin', an' some says you've got her eyes. Maybe you'll take after her. But land! You can't never tell. I've seen some of the prettiest babies grow up peaked and pindlin' an' plain as a potato; whilst, on the other hand, reel homely children sometimes come up an' fill out rosy-cheeked an' bright-eyed as you please. There was my half-sister Rachel, now, eight years younger'n me. I remember well how folks said she was the homeliest baby they ever see; an' she grew up homely, too, just a lean critter with big eyes an' tousled hair; but she got to be reel pretty 'fore she died. Then there's my own Cousin Francie, she that married Tim'thy Baker an' went to New York to live. She's a bright, nice-lookin' woman, almost han'some; an' her little girls are, too; about your age they be. An'—"

I suppose the lonely prairie life had made Ma fond of talking, without much regard for her audience. Often have I heard her for an hour at a time steadily whispering away to herself. Now she had forgotten her only auditor, a wide-eyed little girl, and was fairly launched upon monologue, the subject answering as well as another her imperious need.

"Which of Pa's sisters, Ma?" I asked, interrupting.

"W'ich of his sisters—w'at? Wat you talkin' 'bout now?"

"Which is the good-looking one?"

"Oh, your Aunt Em'ly, o' course. Nobody ain't ever accused S'renie or Keren-Happuch o' bein' sinfully beautiful, fur's I know."

My Aunt Em'ly was invested for me with a new interest. Perhaps some day I might take after her and grow equally well-favoured. I did not remember having noticed that she was beautiful, and resolved to study her at the first opportunity.

CHAPTER II.

A SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON.

Going to church was a good old New England custom that in our family had borne transplanting to the West. Sunday was almost the pleasantest day in the week to me—not elbowing school-less Saturday from its throne; not of course even comparing with the bliss of Friday just after school, but easily surpassing the procession of four dull, dreaded, droning days the ogre Monday led.

The beauty and fragrance of the summer Sabbath began in the early morning, when I went out into the garden, before putting on my Sunday frock, and picked a quantity of the old-fashioned flowers that grew there. I arranged them in two flat bouquets, with tall gladiolus stalks behind and smaller growths ranging down in front so that they might see and be seen, peeping over each other's heads, when placed against the wall in church.

Then after the great toilet-making of the week we were off. The drive over the prairie in the democrat wagon behind our smartest pair of plough horses was a pleasure that never grew tame from repetition. Arriving at the church, I would give my bouquets to the old stoop-shouldered sexton and watch him anxiously as he ambled down the aisle with them. Perhaps my flowers—yes, the very flowers that I had dashed the dew from that morning—would be placed on the pulpit itself, not on the table below, nor yet about the gallery where sat the choir. Then indeed I felt honoured. But wherever they might be, I could watch them all through the services, perhaps catch their fragrance from some favouring breeze, and feel that they were own folks from home.

Even sermon time did not seem long. After I had noted the text to prepare for catechism at home, I was free to dream as I chose until the rustle of relief at the close of the speaking. And the droning of bees and buzzing of flies, or the sudden clamour of a hen somewhere near would come floating in through the open window, and the odour of the flowers and the twigs of the "ellum" tree tapping at the pane helped to make the little church a haven of restfulness.

But on the Sunday following my awakening I had no care for sounds outside, no eyes for my bouquets, though they stood at either hand of the pulpit; I got permission to sit in Aunt Keren's pew, where I could see Aunt Em'ly's face; and all through the sermon I studied it with big, round eyes.

Yes, and with sorrow growing leaden in my heart.

For I was not old enough to see in her face what it had been, nor to appreciate the fine profile that remained. Hers was not the pink-and-white of rosy girlhood, the only beauty I could understand; and wherein her toil-set features differed from those of the other drudging farmers' wives or the shut-in women of the little village, I could not see.

A lump rose in my throat; this wrinkled and aging person was the beautiful woman I might take after!

I'm afraid I returned from church that day without the consolations of religion.

There followed an anxious time of experimenting. Some one had told me that lemon juice would exorcise freckles, and surreptitiously I tried it. How my face smarted after the heroic treatment, and how red and inflamed it looked! But then in a little while back came the freckles again and they stayed, too, until—but how they went, I am to tell you.

I wheedled from mother the privilege of daily wearing my coral beads—the ones my cousins Milly and Ethel Baker had sent me from New York—and had an angry fit of crying when one day, while we children were racing for the schoolhouse door at the end of recess, the string broke and they were nearly all trampled upon before I could pick them up.

Youth is buoyant. Next I begged the sheet lead linings of tea chests from the man who kept the general store, and cut them into little strips that I folded into hair-curlers, covering them with paper so that the edges should not cut. I would go to sleep at night with my short, dampened hair twisted around these contrivances, and in the morning comb it out and admire it as it stood about my head in a bushy mass, like the Circassian girl's at the circus.

Thus beautified, I happened one day to meet our white-headed old pastor! How he stared!

"Stand still a minute, Nelly, child, and let's look at you," he commanded. "Why, what have you been doing to yourself?"

The good man's accent wasn't admiring; sadly I realised the failure of my attempt to compel beauty. When I reached home I sternly soaked the curl out of my hair, brushed it flat and braided it into two exceedingly tight pig-tails. Ah, me! It's easy—afterwards—to laugh at the silent sorrows of childhood, bravely endured alone. At least, it's easy for me, now!

I began to worry Ma about my clothes. I grew ashamed of red-and-black, pin-checked woollen frocks, and sighed for prettier things. One of the girls wore at a Sunday school concert a gray and blue dress with many small ruffles, that seemed to me as elegant as a duchess could want. The children whispered that it had cost $20, and I wondered if I should ever again see raiment so wonderful. I knew that it was useless to ask for such a dress for myself; I should be told that I was not old enough for fine feathers.

It was our Sabbath day custom to pass directly from the church services to those of Sunday school, and drive home after these. One stormy day I was the only scholar in my class, and when we had finished the Bible Lesson Leaflets and I was watching the long rows of bobbing heads, flaxen and dark, in the pews full of restless, wriggling children, I turned to the teacher with a question that I had long been meditating.

"Miss Coleman," I began desperately, "ain't there any way to get pretty?"

"I wish there were a way and I knew it," she responded with a smile. "But you should say 'isn't,' you know."

"Oh, but you are pretty," I cried, not with the intent of compliment, but as merely stating a fact.

I do not now think that it was a fact. Miss Coleman's features were irregular, her nose prominent, her forehead too high; but she had a fair, pure complexion and fine eyes, and somehow reminded me of the calla lilly that Ma was always fussing about in our sitting room.

And she was good and wise. I have often thought how different my life might have been if her orbit had not briefly threaded mine. If I had asked that question of some simpering girl a few years older than I—the average Sunday school teacher—she would have replied, from under the flower-burdened hat that had cost her so much thought, that all flesh was grass and beauty vain; and I should have known that she didn't believe it.

"For that matter," said Miss Coleman, after a little pause in which she seemed considering her words with more than usual care, "there are ways of growing beautiful; and, so far as she can, it is a woman's duty to seek them; would you like to know how?"

A duty to be beautiful! Here was novel doctrine.

I gazed with eyes and mouth wide open as she continued: "For one with good lungs and a sound body, the first law of beauty is to be healthy; and health is not just luck. To get it and keep it seek constant exercise in the open air. Middle-aged women lose their looks because they stay in too constantly; when they were girls and played out-of-doors they had roses in their cheeks. Most handsome women of sixty are those who go among people and keep their interest in what is going on.

"And the second law is intelligence. For thinking gives the eyes expression. A foolish girl may be fair and rosy, yet far from beautiful. Many of the world's famous beauties have suffered serious blemishes; but they have all had wit or spirit to give their faces charm. You have planted flowers?"

"I guess so; yes'm." I didn't see the connection.

"You know then that if you kept digging them to see if they had sprouted, they never would sprout. So it is not well to think too much about growth in beauty. Don't be impatient. It is a work of years. But the method is certain, within limits. I should think that by exercise for the body and study for the mind you might easily become a beautiful woman. Another thing; don't slouch."

I sat up straight as a grenadier, my shoulders absurdly stiff.

"No, nevermind your shoulders," said Miss Coleman, smiling; "they'll take care of themselves if you keep your head right. Practise sitting and standing erect. And never wear a corset. If the Almighty had meant woman to be corset-shaped, He'd have made her so."

The superintendent's bell, tinkling for the closing hymn, and the rustle of the leaves of singing books broke in upon our talk; for the first time I failed to welcome the interruption.

"Why, I've delivered quite a lecture upon beauty," Miss Coleman said. "Now just a word more. Try to remember that by making yourself a good and wise woman you will also make yourself more beautiful."

"Oh, I'll remember; I will!" I cried.

And I have done so! Every word! And if Miss Coleman could only see me now! How could I forget?

I was silent all the way home. At the dinner table, as my father was tucking his napkin under his chin, he said: "Well, Nelly, w'at was Mr. Stoddard's text?"

"I—I guess it was something about the children of Israel."

"Yes, prob'ly it was something about 'em," Pa assented with a chuckle.

But Ma spoke more sharply: "I guess you won't get let to set in Aunt Keren-Happuch's pew again right away, Helen 'Lizy." For before my lesson I had once more been studying Aunt Em'ly's face.

I didn't mind the prohibition the least bit. I had a new idea and a new hope. The idea was exaggerated, the hope vain.—Was vain? Ah, it has been more than realised, as you shall hear; realised in a way that amazes me the more, the more I think upon it. Realised as yours shall be, some day, through me!

Realised! Great Heavens! It is a miracle!

CHAPTER III.

THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE.

Our district schoolhouse was a shadeless, unpainted box. Within, whittled desks, staring windows and broken plastering made it a fit prison for the boys, whose rough ways were proof of the refining influence of their daily intercourse with the hired men. I wonder such places are tolerated. What a contrast to Barnard's white and gold!

John Burke was our teacher the following winter. He was only seventeen then, but already tall and well grown, in appearance quite a man. He was a student working his way to an education, and his example was a help to me. For I no longer hated lessons. Miss Coleman's talk had filled me with such zeal for knowledge that I became, before the term was over, the phenomenon of the school. Mr. Burke boarded at our house and he would bring home shining tales of my prowess, and often I would listen open-mouthed as we sat about the table at night and he told stories of the State University and the students and the merry life they led.

Every one was amazed at my industry. I played as heartily as I worked, but I studied with a will, too, and passed a score of mates. That was easy enough, for home study was never dreamed of by most of them, and leisure hours in school were passed in marking "tit-tat-to" upon slates or eating apples under the friendly shelter of the desks.

At the end of the term I received a prize—a highly coloured print of "Washington Crossing the Delaware," which Pa and Ma used long after to bring out and exhibit with pride. It is still somewhere in the old house—hung up in Ma's bedroom, I think, along with the blue-and-tinseled crown, marked "Charity" in gilt letters across the front, which I wore in the exciting dialogue of "Faith, Hope and Charity" at a Sunday school exhibition.

But more than any prize I valued the help and friendship of John Burke and the consciousness that he considered me his most promising pupil. Upborne by new ideals, I resolved to study through the vacation that followed, and to my surprise this was not an infliction but a pleasure, now that I was my own task-mistress.

Next term the "girl teacher"—for economy's sake we had them in summer when there were no big boys to thrash—was astonished at my industry and wisdom, and as I could see, a little afraid of them. At the end of the first week I went home bursting with an idea that in secret I had long cherished. Aunt Keren was at tea, I remember, and the talk fell upon my work in school, giving me my opportunity.

"Who'd a thought a mischeevious little tyke like her would ha' turned out a first-rate learner, after all?" queried Auntie, beaming upon me good-naturedly from behind her gold-bowed spectacles. "I al'ays tol' ye, Ezry, ye'd be proud o' her some day."

"I guess Sue Arkwright's a famous good teacher; that's one thing," said Ma, amiably. "Sis never done near so well before; at least, not till last term."

"I never thought Sue was anythin' remarkable," Pa broke in. "How is that, Sis? Is she a good teacher?"

"No, she ain't," I responded, with quickened beating of the heart. Criticism of teachers was admissible in my code of ethics, but justification must follow; there must be proof—or reproof.

"What's that?" said Pa, looking at me curiously. "Ever ketch her in a mistake?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Bring the book."

I ran and fetched a well-thumbed book from the sewing machine and turned to the definitions of familiar foreign words.

"There," said I, spreading the speller flat on the table and pointing with my finger. "French word for 'Mister.' Teacher called it 'Monshure,' just as they all do. But that's wrong. To-day I showed her how it is. See, the book says it's pronounced 'm-o-s-s-e-r' and that little mark means an accent on the last syllable and it's 'long e.' 'Mosseer' is right. But when I showed it to teacher, she looked at it awhile, and then she wrinkled up her eye-brows, and whispered it once or twice and said: 'Oh, yes; "mosser."' And she made us call it 'mosser' all the rest of the day, too," I ended triumphantly.

"Why, o' course that ain't right; 'mosser' ain't it!" volunteered one of the hired men, who had lingered to hear the discussion. "I've heerd that word a thousan' times; right way seems like 'M'shoo.' Shucks! Can't get my tongue 'round it, nohow."

"Yes, I know", said Pa "you go call Frenchy."

Joe Lavigne, summoned from the barn, came, followed by all the rest, curious to see what was wanted—a rough, kindly gang of men in blue overalls and big, clumping boots.

"Joe," said Pa; "you say 'Mister' in French."

"Ya-a-as, M'sieu' Weensheep, so I call heem: M'sieu'; M'sieu'; M'sieu'."

Very carefully Frenchy pronounced the clipped word.

"That's all, Joe; I s'pose book French is a good deal diff'rent from ord'nary Kanuck. 'Mosseer' is right anyhow, for the book says so. Teacher had ought to know enough to go by the book, I sh' think."

"Tain't her fault, Pa," I said, relenting. "She never went to any good school. I want to go somewhere where the teachers know a real lot; not just a little bit more than me. I want to go"—I paused to gain courage—"I want to go to the University, like—like Mr. Burke."

"The State University!" Pa repeated, in a tone of awe; "Thunder! Don't believe we could manage that, Sis."

"W'y, yes, y'can, too, Ezry," Aunt Keren argued, "seems to me you're forehanded enough, to do for an only child. 'Tain't 's if you was like me 'n' Ab., with our four chunies."

"She'd have to go to an academy first to get fitten for it," said Ma. "She couldn't go to the Univers'ty for three or four years yet."

"Of course not," I answered; "but you might write to Mr. Burke to send me a catalogue to find out how much I'd have to know to get taken in. Then I could study at home till I got pretty near ready, and then take a year at the Academy."

The words flowed easily, eagerly; I had so often gone over the plan.

"Good idee," said Pa, nodding his head, relieved to find that I wasn't seeking to leave home at once; and so it was arranged.

Isn't it wonderful? Plain and bald and homely the house, unpretending the surroundings, simple and primitive the life, that sent forth the world's first beautiful woman, the Woman of the Secret! I have tried to set it all down exactly as it happened—the quaint, old-fashioned dialect, the homely ways, the bearded, booted men. For this place, just as it was, was the birthplace of the new glory; out of this homely simplicity dawned the new era of beauty that is to make the whole world glad.

A catalogue was sent for, books were bought and I set to work unaided, though Mr. Stoddard took an interest in my studies and often helped me out of difficulties. I chose the classical course, undeterred by parental demonstrations of the "plum uselessness" of Latin and Greek; I had for the choice no better reason than that it was more difficult. I no longer went to the little red schoolhouse.

All this time I had almost forgotten Billy, to whom I owed such a debt of gratitude for sending me upon the Quest. Once I met him on the road.

"Ain't ye never comin' to school no more?" he queried.

"No, I am never going again; I am preparing for the State University; I shall take a classical course," I answered with hauteur, looking down upon him as I spoke. Only that morning Ma had let out another tuck in my gown.

"I'm aw'fly sorry," Billy murmured with a foolish, embarrassed grin. "Guess I'll walk along of ye, if ye don't care."

My triumph found me cold. The sting of Billy's words yet rankled, and perhaps I was not so grateful to the little wretch as he deserved. It was about a quarter of a mile to our house; we walked the distance in unbroken silence. Once there, Billy rallied.

"Good-by, Miss Winship," he said, holding open the gate for me. It was the first time that any one had addressed me by that grown-up title.

"Good-by, Billy."

And that was the end of the beginning of the Quest.

In blizzard time and through the fierce heat of summer I toiled at self-set tasks in our ugly, comfortable home. During the blessed intervals when we could induce "girl help" to stay with us I had scarcely any housework to do. Fairly regular exercise came to be a habit and I worried admiring relatives into thinking me a candidate for an early grave by taking a cold bath every morning. In the end I managed, with a single year in a cheerless boarding house near a village academy, where I studied greedily, devouring my books, to enter the State University with a scholarship to my credit.

I took half the examination in Spring and read extra Virgil and Ovid all summer. Then in August, when the long vacation was nearly over, came the village dressmaker. Ma had promised me two new dresses, and I would sit hemming towels or poring over Greek and Roman history while they turned the leaves of fashion magazines and discussed materials and trimmings.

I secretly hoped for a silk, but Mother, to whom I suppose I am even now—now!—a little girl, vetoed that as too showy, and the dressmaker added her plea for good, durable things. The choice fell upon a golf suiting for school and a black cashmere for church.

I begged hard to have the cashmere touch the ground, but both women smiled at the folly of the child who forgot the many re-bindings a long skirt would call for. There was a comic side to my disappointment, for I guessed that the widow Trask could not make the designs I coveted, nor anything of which she could not buy a paper pattern.

But when I went up to the University and became entitled to join in the cry:—

S!——U!
We're——a——few!
S!——T!——A—T—E!
U!——ni——ver—si—tee!
Wow!——Wow!——Wow!

—I found that I compared favourably enough with my mates. Dress played little part in every day college life, and for such occasions as socials or Friday night debating society I soon learned from upper class girls to mitigate ugly gowns with pretty ribbons. And I congratulated myself upon the fact that I was not by any means the plainest girl in my class. My face was hopeless, but my hard-won fight for an erect posture had given me a bearing that seemed almost distinguished. And—well, even my face wasn't so bad, I thought then!

We were a jolly set; most of us poor as church mice, and caring little. Making rather a boast of it, indeed. John Burke's roommate, Jim Reeder, cooked his own meals—mostly oatmeal—in his room and lived on less than a dollar a week until fairly starved. I suppose they'll call him "old Hoss" to his dying day. Until his mother moved to town, John was almost as ill-fed. He was just completing his law course when I was a Freshman, and used to make brave jests at poverty, even after his admission to the bar.

Of course I was glad to meet him again, and, though I was puzzled just at first, to see how little older than I my former teacher was, yet afterwards—why, I haven't answered his last—I don't know how many letters; I simply must remember to write to him!

I think the best part of the teaching wasn't in the books. Some of the students were queer and uncouth when they came, the boys eating with their knives in the fashion of the farm; some of the brightest girls in ill-fitting clothes—perfect guys they'd be thought in the city. But there were others of quite different manner, and from them and from professors who had seen the world, we learned a little—a very little—of its ways. And perhaps we were not unfavourable specimens of young republicanism, with our merry, hopeful outlook upon life, and our future governors and senators all in the raw—yes, and our countesses and vice-reines!

CHAPTER IV

GIRL BACHELOR AND BIOLOGIST

Merrily flew the years and almost before I realised it came graduation. In the leafy dark of the village street, in the calm of a perfect June night, John Burke told me that he loved me, and I plighted my troth to him.

We laid plans as we bade each other good-by, to meet again—perhaps—in New York in the fall; and even that little separation seemed so long. We did not guess that the weeks would grow to months, and—oh, dear, what will he think of me when he gets here? And what—now—shall I say to him?

Father for the first time visited college to see me graduate. Between his pride in my standing at the head of my class and his discomfort in a starched collar, he was a prey to conflicting emotions all Commencement week, and heaved a great sigh of relief when at last the train that bore us home pulled out of the station. But as we approached our own he again grew uneasy, and kept peering out at the car window as if on the watch for something.

At length we descended in front of the long yellow box we called the "deepo." And there was Joe Lavigne to meet us, not with the democrat wagon, but with a very new and shiny top buggy.

When we reached the farmhouse, I saw proofs of a loving conspiracy. The addition of a broad veranda and a big bay window, with the softening effect of the young trees that had grown up all around the place, made it look much more homelike than the bare box that had sheltered my childhood. A new hammock swung between two of the trees.

Mother met me at the door with more emotion than I had ever before detected upon her thin face. Then I saw that the dear people had been at work within the house as well. Cosey corners and modern wall paper and fittings such as I had seen at the professors' houses and had described at home to auditors apparently slightly interested, had been remembered and treasured up and here attempted, to make my homecoming a festivity. The house had been transformed, and if not always in the best of taste, love shone through the blunders.

"Oh, Father," I cried, "now I am surprised! How much wheat it must have cost!"

"Well, I guess we can stand it," he said, grimly pleased and proud and anxious all at once. "We wanted to make it kind o' pleasant for ye, Sis; an'—an' homelike."

There was something so soft and tremulous in his voice that it struck me with a great pang of contrition that I had left him for so many years, that already I was eager to go away again—to the great city where John was soon to be.

I turned quickly away and went from room to room admiring the changes, but after supper, when we were all gathered about the sitting room table, Father returned to the subject most upon his mind. He had seen me with John during Commencement week, and must have understood matters.

"Ready t' stay hum now, I s'pose, ain't ye?" he asked with a note in his voice of cheery assurance that perhaps he did not feel, tilting back and forth in his old-fashioned rocking chair, as I had so often seen him do, with closed eyes and open mouth, his face steeled against expression. And the slow jog, jog, jog of the chair reminded me how his silent evening vigils had worn away the rockers until they stood flat upon the floor, making every movement a clacking complaint.

To-night—to-night, he is rocking just the same, in silence, in loneliness. Poor, dear Pa!

"I'm glad to get home, of course," I said; "but—I wanted to speak with you. But not to-night."

"Why, ye're through school."

"Yes, but I—I wish I could go on studying; if I may."

The words tripped over each other in my embarrassment.

The jog, jog of the chair paused suddenly, leaving for a moment only the ticking of the clock to break the silence.

"Not goin' to put up 'ith us an' stay right alon', eh?" he asked; and rocked twice, then stopped again, in suspense for the answer.

"Why, Father," I stammered, "of course I don't want to do anything unless you're willing, but I had thought I'd like—I did want to go and study in the city—I think—or somewhere."

"Dear me! Dear me!" he mused, his voice very low and even; "an' you just through the University; 'way up to the top, too. Can't ye—seems as if ye better stop alon' of us an' study home, same's you used to? Mebbe—mebbe 'twon't be good for ye, studyin' so much."

"Of course I can, you dear old Dad," I cried; and horribly guilty I felt as I looked at the kindly, weather-beaten face. "I shall do just whatever you say. But oh, I wish I could go to the city! Don't you suppose I could?"

"Chicago, mebbe?"

"I had thought of a post-graduate course in Barnard College—that's in New York, you know."

Father knew John's plans. I blushed hotly. In the pause that followed I knew that he was thinking of a well-thumbed map in my old school geography; of the long, long journey to Chicago, and the thousand weary miles that stretched beyond. Hastily I went on:—

"But I know how you have saved for me and worked for me and pinched; and I'd be ashamed to be a burden upon you any longer; I can teach to get money to go on with."

"No;" said Pa, sitting up straight and striking the arm of the chair with his clenched fist a blow that gave some hint of the excitement that moved him. "Guess a child o' mine don't need to teach an' get all dragged out, alon' of a passel o' wild children! No, no, Helen 'Lizy;" he added more softly, sinking back into the old attitude and once more closing his eyes; "if the's so much more to learn, an' you want to go ahead an' learn it, just you go an' get it done with. I'm right sorry to have ye go so fur away; I did think—but it's nat'ral, child; it's nat'ral. I s'pose John Burke's goin' to the city, too, and you kinder—I s'pose young folks likes to be together."

"I—I—we have talked of it."

Talked about it! John and I had talked of nothing else for a week. I sat very still, my eyes on the carpet.

"Guess John Burke'll have all he cares to do for one while, gittin' started in the law office, 'thout runnin' round with Nelly," said Ma. "Ye seem bent on spoilin' the child, Ezry. Al'ays the same way, ever sin' she's a little girl."

Her lips were compressed, the outward symbol of a life of silent hours and self restraint.

"There, there, Ma," said Father, jogging his chair again. "Don't ye worry no more 'bout that. What's ourn is hern in the long run, an' she may as well have some of it now when she wants it, an' it'll do her some good. I s'pose Frank Baker—she that's your mother's cousin an' married Tim'thy Baker an's gone to New York to live—I s'pose she might look after you; but it's a long way off, New York—seems like a dretful long way off. What ye goin' to learn, Sis, if ye should go t' the city?"

"Well, I was good in chemistry; Prof. Meade advised me—I might study medicine; I don't know. And I want to know more about books and pictures and the things that people talk about, out in the world, though I can hardly call that a study, I suppose."

The words somehow disappointed me when uttered. They didn't sound convincing. Such pursuits seemed less serious, there in the old farm-house that spoke of so much painful toil, than when John and I had discussed them on the sunny campus.

"I—I don't know yet, just what to do; there's all summer to plan; but I want—somehow—to make the very most and the best of myself," I added earnestly.

It was true, and the nearest I could come to the exact truth; that love urged me yet more eagerly upon the Quest, and that with all my heart I longed to become a wise and brilliant woman, for John's sake, and as a step towards beauty, according to Miss Coleman's words.

"I don't hold with women bein' doctors," said Ma, as she energetically knitted into the middle of her needle before looking up. "I don't know what we're comin' to, these days."

"There, there, Ma, I don't know why women shouldn't be doctors, if they want to. They make better nusses'n men. Mebbe—mebbe Sis'll be gettin' married some day, an' I tell ye a little doctorin' know-how is mighty handy in a house. A doctor an' a lawyer, now, would be a gret team, right in the fambly, like. Well, Sis, we'll see; we'll see."

I knew that the matter was practically settled; and there was little sleep for me, or for any one, that night in the old farm-house.

I stayed at home until September, and then one morning Father drove me again to the little yellow station whose door opens wide upon all the world.

"Well, good-by, Helen 'Lizy," he said.

"Good-by, Father."

For weeks I had been eager to be off, but as the train began to move and I looked back at his patient figure—he made no more show of his deep emotion than if the parting were for a day—a big lump rose in my throat at leaving him and Ma—old before their time with toil and privation and planning and striving for me.

I knew how lonely it would be in the sitting room that night without me. Father with closed eyes jogging away in his chair, Mother bolt upright and thin and prim, forever at her knitting or sewing; no sound but the chair and the ticking clock upon the shelf—that night and every night. And the early bedtime and the early morning and the long, long day—what a contrast to this!

I pressed my face against the window, but a rush of tears blurred all the dear, familiar landmarks—Barzillai Foote's red barn, the grain elevator at the siding, the Hartsville road trailing off over the prairie; I would have given worlds to be in the top buggy again, moving homeward, instead of going swiftly out, out, alone, into the world. Three months ago! I did not dream what miracles were in store!

And so one day I reached the New York I had dreamed about. It wasn't as a shrine of learning that it appealed to me, altogether; but as a wonderful place, beautiful, glittering, feverish with motion, abounding with gayety, thronged with people, bubbling with life.

How it fascinated me!

Just at first of course I was lonely because John had not yet come, and Mrs. Baker, mother's cousin, was away from home. But I soon made friends with my cousins, Ethel and Milly; shy, nice girls, twins and precisely alike, except, that Ethel is slightly lame. And at my boarding place I made the acquaintance of an art student from Cincinnati three or four years older than I, who proposed that we should become girl bachelors and live in a studio.

"But I didn't know people ever lived in studios," I objected.

"Oh, you dear goose!" said Kathryn Reid—it's really her name, though of course I call her Kitty—"Live in studios? Bless you, child, everybody does it. And I know a beyewtiful studio that we can have cheap, because we're such superior young persons; also because it's ever so many stories up and no elevator. Can you cook a little? Can you wash dishes, or not mind if they're not washed? You got the blessed bump of disorder? You good at don't care? Then live with me and be my love. You've no idea the money you'll save."

That's just the way Kitty talks. You can't induce her to be serious for three minutes at a time—I suppose it's the artistic temperament. But she's shrewd; studio life is better than the kind of boarding house we escaped from. And so jolly! Kitty has more chums than I, of course. Her brother, Prosper K., and Caroline Bryant—"Cadge," for short—a queer girl who does newspaper work and sings like an angel, are the ones I see most. Though for that matter the city's full of girls from the country, earning or partly earning their living. One will be studying music, another art; one "boning" at medicine, another selling stories to the newspapers and living in hope of one day writing a great American play or novel. Such nice girls—so brave and jolly.

My new home is in a building on Union Square. And I like it—the place, the people, the glimpse of the wintry Square, the roaring city life under my window. I'm sure I don't want a quiet room. It's such fun, just like playing house, to be by ourselves and independent of all the world. I think it's an intoxicating thing, just at first, for a girl to be really independent. Boys think nothing of it; it's what they've been brought up to expect.

Well, I tore myself away from the dear place to get at my work. I really mean to work hard and justify Father's sacrifices. I tried to take singing lessons, because John is so fond of music, but there I made a dismal failure; I had, three months ago, neither ear nor voice. The day before the fall semester opened, I climbed the long hill to Barnard College, fell in love with its gleaming white and gold, so different from the State University, and arranged for a course in biology. Then I began physical culture in a gymnasium.

I couldn't have made a queerer or a better combination. For it was in the Barnard laboratory that I met Prof. Darmstetter; and it was my bearing, my unending practice of the West Point setting-up drill, my Delsarte, my "harmonic poise" and evident health that drew his attention to me.

How well I remember the day I made his acquaintance! I had entered the laboratory without knowing what manner of man he was, for all my arrangements about my course had been made with clerks. So it was with genuine surprise that I turned from an inspection of the apparatus to answer when a squeaking voice at my elbow suddenly saluted me:—

"Mees Veenship, not so?"

The owner of the voice was a little old fellow, whose dry, weazened face gave no hint of his years. I guessed that he was probably seventy, though he might as easily be much younger. His skin was parchment-coloured and cross-hatched by a thousand wrinkles and the hair under his skull-cap was as white as snow, but he was as bright of eye and brisk of manner as a youth of twenty.

"Yes, sir," I replied rather awkwardly; "I am Miss Winship."

"V'at for you study biology?" was his surprising query, uttered in a tone between a squeak, a snarl, and a grunt.

"Because I wish to learn," I replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"No, mine vriendt," he snapped, "you do not vish to learn. You care not'ing for science. You are romantic, you grope, you change, you are unformed. In a vord, you are a voman. You haf industry—mine Gott, yes!—and you vill learn of me because I am a man and because you haf not'ing better to do. And by-and-by behold Prince Charming—and you vill meet and marry and forget science. V'at for I vaste my time vit' you? Eh? I do not know any voman who becomes a great scientist. Not so? T'ose young vomen, t'ey vaste t'eir time and t'ey vaste mine."

I followed his gesture and saw two or three nice-looking girls in big checked aprons amiably grinning at me. One of them by a solemn wink conveyed the hint that such hazing of new arrivals was not unusual.

"You're paid to waste your time on me," I answered hotly. "I'm here to work and to listen to you; my plans are my own affair, and if I never become a great scientist, I don't see what difference that makes to you."

The meekest looking girl gasped, wide eyed at my temerity. But Prof. Darmstetter's shrewd little eyes twinkled with reassuring good-nature.

"Vell, vell, ve shall see," said he, wagging his head; "maybe I find some use for you. I vatch you. Maybe I find for you some use t'at you don't expect, eh? Ve shall see."

So he walked away, shrugging his shoulders and snapping his fingers and muttering to himself: "Ve shall see; we shall see." And at times throughout the session he chuckled as if he had heard of an excellent joke.

"Good gracious!" I whispered to one of the aproned girls that had watched the encounter—students like myself—"that's an encouraging reception, isn't it?"

"It is," she gravely replied. "We're all jealous of you. You are evidently destined to become Prof. Darmstetter's favourite pupil. I know I cried half the night at the way he greeted me. We were all watching you and you got off easy. Brought an apron? I can lend you one, if you didn't. It's pretty mussy here."

"Thank you," I said, "but really I can't get my mind off Prof. Darmstetter, all in a minute so. What sort of a man is he?"

"Oh, irritating sometimes, but a genius; I suppose his treatment of the girls is a sample of his Early Teutonic ideas of civility. He likes better to teach the Columbia boys—says their work in future years'll do him more credit. But we get used to him and don't mind it, we who were here last year. And he's a great scientist; has a world-wide reputation. He almost lives in the laboratory, here and at Columbia; has no home life or friends or relatives. And oh, it's such a privilege," she said with a sudden change of tone, a schoolmistressly manner, looking upon me more austerely, "to study under such a man. He is a Master."

The Master! She little knew how true was the word! To-morrow, if his secret and mine were known, the world would hail him as its lord. He would be a greater man than has yet lived on the earth. Armies would fight for his favour at the bidding of queens—to get what I have! And to think that chance led me from two thousand miles away, straight to him.

From the first he seemed to take an interest in my doings. He never troubled himself to be polite, but he watched me; always he watched me. I often saw him chuckling and rubbing his hands as if in approbation. But of what? Not of my work, for of that he never took the slightest notice, except when I compelled him to do so by some question.

Then, in quick-flung sentences, he would condense the results of a lifetime of study into phrases filled with meaning, that seemed to cast light upon principles, not facts, and make wonderfully clear the very purpose of Nature. Then indeed he almost forgot that we were women, and talked with kindling enthusiasm of his pet subject. I ceased to wonder that he held such high rank in college.

Under such conditions I made rapid progress. I thoroughly enjoyed the work, though I was not absorbed in it, like most of my companions; but I was quick enough to keep pace with them and to make occasional shrewd suggestions that pleased Prof. Darmstetter not half so much as some sudden display of spirit. He did not seem to care whether I became a student. And always he watched me, for what purpose I could not determine.

My home life—if existence in a studio can be so called—was merry. I was learning the ways of the world. I liked the life. I wrote to John almost every day. The freedom of the den, the change from rote lessons to post-graduate work was pleasant. I was happy.

Happy? I must have dreamed it.

What I thought happiness was nothing to what I now know happiness can be.

CHAPTER V.

THE FINDING OF THE BACILLUS.

If I have dwelt so long upon the laboratory and its master, it is because there the great blessing came that has glorified my whole existence. This was the way of it.

One day I asked Prof. Darmstetter some question about the preparation of a microscopic slide from a bit of a frog's lung.

"Vait!" he snapped, "I vill speak vit' you aftervards."

The girls prophesied the terrible things that were to happen, as they lingered in the cloak room, waiting their turn on the threadbare spot in the rug which a rich girl had bought to cover the threadbare spot in the carpet in front of the mirror. "Now you'll catch it!" the last one said, as she carefully put her hat straight with both hands and ran out of the room.

When I returned to the laboratory Prof. Darmstetter motioned me to a chair and took one opposite, from which he fixed his keen eyes upon my face. Again he seemed weighing, judging, considering me with uncanny, impersonal scrutiny.

"How I despise t'ose vomen!" he said at last, throwing up his hands with an impatient gesture.

Used to his ways, I waited in silence.

"I teach t'ose vomen, yes; but I despise t'em," he added.

"If you do, you ought to be ashamed of it," I retorted hotly. "But I don't believe you really despise them. Such a bright lot of girls—why, some of them are bound to be heard from in science some day!"

"In science? Bah!"

"Why not? There was Mary Somerville and—and—and Caroline Herschel and—well, I can't think of their names all in a minute, but I'm proud to be one of the girls here anyway."

"You are not one of t'em," he cried angrily. "T'ey are life failures. You fancy t'ey are selected examples, but t'ey are not; t'ey are t'e rejected. T'ey stood in t'e market place and no man vanted t'em; or else t'ey are fools as vell as failures and sent t'e men avay. You know me. I am biologist, not true? I hate t'e vord. I am physiologist, student of t'e nature of life—all kinds of life, t'e ocean of life of v'ich man is but a petty incident."

"You were speaking about—"

"Ach, so! Almost t'ou has t'e scientific mind t'at reasons and remembers. I said, I am physiologist. I study v'at Nature is, v'at she means to do. V'en Nature—Gott, if you vant a shorter name—makes a mistake, Gott says: 'Poor material; spoiled in shaping, wrong in t'e vorks; all failures; t'row t'em avay. Ve haf plenty more to go on vit'. You know. You study Nature, also, a little. You know she is law, she is power. To t'e indifidual pitiless, she mofes vit' blind, discompassionate majesty ofer millions of mangled organisms to t'e greater glory of Pan, of Kosmos, of t'e Universe. She vastes life. And how not? Her best vork lives a little v'ile and produces its kind, and t'e vorst does not, and t'ey go down t'e dark vay toget'er and Nature neit'er veeps nor relents Kosmos is greater t'an t'e indifidual and a million years are short.

"T'ose young vomen—Nature meant t'em to desire beauty and dream of lofe. Vat is lofe? It is Nature's machinery. T'ose vomen are old enough for lofe, but t'ey haf it not. So t'ey die. T'ey do not reproduce t'eir kind, not'ing lifing comes from t'em, to go on lifing, on and on, better and better—or vorse, as Nature planned—vit' efery generation. If a voman haf t'e desire of lofe and of beauty, and lofe and beauty come not to her, t'en I pity her, because I am less vise and resolute to vit'hold pity t'an Nature is. Efen if she haf not lofe, but only t'e ambition of power or learning or vealt', I might pity her vit' equal injustice, but I cannot. She vill not let me. She does not know t'at she is a failure. She prides herself upon being so mis-made. She cannot help t'at; neit'er can I help despising her. Such vomen are abnormal, monstrous, in a vord, failures. Let t'em die! You, I t'ink, are not so. You study to bide t'e time. You haf a fine carriage. You comb t'e hair, you haf pretty ribbons, you make t'e body strong and supple, you look in t'e glass and vish for more beauty. Not so?"

"Of course I do," I cried angrily, wondering for the moment if he had lost his senses. It seemed as if he knew little about women for a man who professed to make all life his study. If there were one of his despised girls who lacked the desire of beauty and the dream of love, I am much mistaken. But I came to see afterward that he understood them as well as myself.

"I t'ought so," he mused, his eyes still upon my face. "And you are not too beautiful now; t'ey could not doubt. Yes; I vatch you, I study you. Seldom I make t'e mistake; but it is fery important. So I vatch you a little v'ile longer yet. T'en I say to myelf: 'Here is t'e voman; yes, she is found.'"

And he chuckled and rubbed his lean hands together as I had so often seen him do.

The thought flashed across my mind that this extraordinary man meditated a proposal of marriage, but I dismissed the notion as ridiculous.

The Professor leaned forward and, fixing me with his eye, spoke in a hoarse whisper, tense with excitement:—

"Mees Veenship, I am a biologist; you are a voman, creature of Nature, yearning for perfection after your kind. I—I can gife it you. You can trust me; I am ready. I can gif you your vish, t'e vish of efery normal voman. Science—t'at is I—can make you t'e most beautiful being in t'e vorld!"

Another Sunday school lesson! Miss Coleman and her unforgotten lecture upon beauty flashed upon my mind. But this man was promising me more than she had done, and his every word was measured. What was the mystery? What had he to say to me?

"T'e most beautiful—voman—in t'e vorld," he went on in a slow, cadenced whisper. "Do you vish it?"

His glittering eyes held mine again. No, he was not jesting at my expense; rather he seemed waiting with anxiety for me to make some decision upon which much depended. He was in very serious earnest.

But was ever a question more absurd? Who of women would not wish it? But to get the wish—ah, there's a different matter! I thought he must be crazed by over-study, and I could only sit and stare at him, open-mouthed.

"Listen!" he went on more rapidly, as if to forestall objection. "You are scholar, too, a little. You know how Nature vorks, how men aid her in her business. Man puts t'e mot'er of vinegar into sweet cider and it is vinegar. T'e fermenting germs of t'e brewery chemist go in vit' vater and hops and malt, and t'ere is beer. T'e bacilli of bread, t'e yeast, svarming vit millions of millions of little spores, go into t'e housevife's dough, and it is bad bread; but t'at is not t'e fault of t'e bacilli—mein Gott, no!—for vit' t'e bacilli t'e baker makes goot bread. T'e bacilli of butter, of cheese—you haf studied t'em. T'e experimenter puts t'e germs of good butter into bad cream and it becomes goot. It ripens. It is educated, led in t'e right vay. Tradition vaits for years to ripen vine and make it perfect. Science finds t'e bacillus of t'e perfect vine and puts it in t'e cask of fresh grape juice, and soon t'e vine drinkers of t'e vorld svear it is t'e rare old vintage. T'e bacillus, inconceivably tiny, svarming vit' life, reproducing itself a billion from one, t'at is Nature's tool. And t'e physiologist helps Nature.

"See now," continued Prof. Darmstetter. "I haf a vonderful discofery made. I must experiment vit' it—experimentum in corpore vili! Impossible, for the subject is mankind. I must haf a voman—a voman like you, healt'y, strong, young—all t'e conditions most favourable. She must haf intelligence—t'at is you. She should know somet'ing of biology, and be fery brave, so t'at she may not be frightened, but may understand how t'e vonderful gift is to come to her; and t'at is you. She should not be already beautiful, lest t'e change be less convincing. Yes, you are t'e voman for t'e test. You may become more famous in history fan Cleopatra or Ninon, and outshine t'em and all t'e ot'er beauties t'at efer lifed. Do you vant triumphs? Here t'ey are. Riches? You shall command t'em. Fame? Power? I haf t'em for you. You shall be t'e first. Aftervard, v'en beauty is common as ugliness is now—ah, I do not know. Efen t'en it vill be a blessing. But to be t'e first is fame and all t'e ot'er t'ings I promise you. Now do you trust me? Now do you beliefe me? Vill you make t'e experiment? I haf—let me tell you!—I haf discofered—"

Cautiously Prof. Darmstetter looked about the room. Then he leaned toward me again and added in a hoarse whisper:—

"I haf discofered t'e Bacillus of Beauty."

CHAPTER VI.

THE GREAT CHANGE.

The Bacillus of Beauty! Was the poor man insane? Had much study made of him a monomaniac babbling in a dream of absurdities? Do you wonder that I doubted?

And yet—the thought flashed through my mind that things almost as strange have become the commonplace. I had seen the bones of my own hand through the veiling flesh. I had listened to a voice a thousand miles away. I had seen insects cut in two, grafted together, head of one and tail of another, and living. I had seen many, many marvels which science has wrought along the lines of evolution. And yet—

My dream; my desire always! If it could be!

As I stared open-mouthed at the Professor, he began once more:—

"T'e danger, t'e risk—t'ere is none. You shall see. It is as harmless as—"

"Never mind about that!" I interrupted. "How would I look? Would it change me totally? Would I really be the most beautiful?—"

I stopped, blushing at my own eagerness.

"Absolutely; I svear it. T'e most perfectly beautiful voman in t'e vorld. Mein Gott, yes. How not? Never vas t'ere yet a perfectly beautiful voman. Not von. All have defects; none fulfills t'e ideal. You? You vill look like yourself. I do not miracles. T'e same soul vill look out of your eyes. You vill be perfect, but of your type. T'e same eyes, more bright; t'e same hair, more lustrous and abundant; t'e same complexion clear and pure; t'e same voman as she might have been if t'e race had gone on defeloping a hundred t'ousand years. Look you. Some admire blondes; some brunettes. You are not a Svede to be white, an Italian to be black. You are a brown American. You shall be t'e most beautiful brown American t'at efer lifed. And you shall be first. Vit' you as an example we shall convince t'e vorld. Ve shall accomplish in t'ree generations t'e vork of a hundred t'ousand years of defelopment. How vill humanity bless us if we can raise, out of t'e slums and squalor, out of t'e crooked and blind and degraded, out of t'e hospitals and prisons, t'e spawning dregs of humanity and make t'em perfect! T'ey shall valk t'e eart' like gods, rejoicing in t'eir strengt'. No more failures, no more abnormalities. Nature's vork hastened by science, aeons of veary vaiting and slow efolution forestalled by—by me!"

The little Professor stood erect, his eye fixed on mine, his mien commanding. I had never looked on man so transfigured.

The thought was intoxicating me, driving me wild. I tried to think, to struggle against the tide that was sweeping me away. He seemed to be hypnotizing me with his grave, uncanny eye. I could not move, I could not speak.

"You may ask," Darmstetter went on—though I had not thought of asking—"if t'e beauty vould be hereditable; if as an acquired characteristic, it vould pass to descendants, or, if each child vill not haf to be treated anew. I believe no. It is true t'at acquired traits are not hereditable. T'ere Weissmann is right, v'atefer doubters may say. You know t'e t'eory. T'e blacksmit's muscles are not transmitted to his son t'e clerk; but t'e black hair t'at he got from his fat'er. Only after fery many generations of blacksmit's could a boy be born who vould grow up as a clerk vit' blacksmit' muscles. Efolution shapes t'e vorld, yes; but t'e process is so slow, so slow! So education, modification, must begin afresh vit' each generation and continue forefer. But t'is bacillus does not add ornament to t'e outside. It is not like t'e masseuse, vit' her unguents and kneading. It changes all t'e nature. It is like compressing a million years of education by natural selection into von lifetime. T'at is my t'eory. I do not know—it is not yet tried—but how ot'ervise? Ve but hasten t'e process, as t'e chemist hastens fermentation; Nature constructs, she does not adapt or alter or modify. Ve produce beauty by Nature's own met'od. V'y not hereditary?"

I had made up my mind.

"I'll do it," I cried, no longer able to resist, for the fever of it was in my blood. "You shall make your attempt on me! It can do no harm. I do not see how it can accomplish all you claim, but if you think—it's an experiment full of possibilities—in the interests of science—"

"Interest of humbug!" snapped Prof. Darmstetter, his own sarcastic self again. "You consent because you vant to be beautiful. You care not'ing for science. I can trust you vit' my secret. You need svear no oat's not to reveal it. You vant to be t'e only perfect voman in t'e vorld, and so you shall be, for some time. T'at is right. T'at is your revard."

My cheeks flushed at his injustice. I do care for others. I am not selfish—not more than everybody. And yet—at that moment I feared him and his knowledge; I shuddered at nameless terrors.

Really, I often wonder that I ever had the courage to try. And oh, I am so glad!

Now there is no more fear. Darmstetter is my servant, if I will it. As for his marvellous power, I shall bless it and reverence it all my life. I thank God for letting me know this man. It is too wonderful—too wonderful for words!

The transformation was slow at first. The beginning—such an anxious time. Every day I studied myself and watched and waited for the first sign of growing grace, for the dawning glory. Sometimes I thought I could see the change already under way, and then again the same plain Nelly Winship looked at me from the uncomplimentary glass, and away flew all my hopes.

It was the fading of a little scar on my thumb that first let me know the blessed truth. Now I can scarcely see the place where it was, and I'm sure no one else would notice it. It will never go away entirely. Prof. Darmstetter says I am not proof against wounds and old age, because these are a part of Nature's great plan. But it faded, faded!

And my ears! How I used to hate their prominence! But soon they snuggled closer to my beautiful, beautiful face—and I'm in sure I don't blame them. Every morning when I woke, my shining eyes and the bloom of my cheeks told me I was growing perfect, just as he said I must do. Though I'm not yet quite perfect.

I could sit at my glass and look for hours at my reflected image—if it weren't for Kitty—and—

Why, it seems like another girl, and such a girl as never the world saw before—not me, but Her. Sometimes times I fear Her; but oftener and oftener, as I get used to the lovely vision, I want to hug Her right out of the cold mirror and kiss Her and pat Her smooth cheek like a child's, and put pretty clothes upon Her, as if she were a doll.

And then I try to realise that Her is Me, my own self, and I just cannot believe it! I look from the reflected image to a little photograph of the Helen Winship I once knew, and back again to the glass, and wonder, and thank God, and shudder with awe of my own loveliness. I luxuriate in it, I joy in it, I feel it in every fibre of my being. I am as happy as a queen. I am a queen—or She is.

I am but slightly taller. My form is more rounded and of better mould, but I am still slender. My face is the same face but—how can I express it? A Venus with the—the expression of a Western schoolgirl pursuing special studies in New York, looks at me with Her eyes. They are the eyes of Helen Winship, but larger and fuller orbed and more lustrous, with an appeal that makes me fall in love with myself, as I look. The nose is longer and straighter, the cheeks fuller and fairer, the chin daintier, the neck—ah, well, why shouldn't I be frank? I am beautiful!

And the complexion—still so strange I do not say "my complexion"—clear, fair, rosy all in one, with the fineness and purity of a baby's; it is the most indescribable of all the marvels that glow in my glass. Before, I had the rather sallow, powder-excusing skin of so many Western girls. Now it is perfect. I love to gaze by the hour at my own beauty. I should be renamed Narcissa.

My voice, too, is glorious. I have to school myself not to start at the sound of it when I speak. And most of all, what most impresses me when I try to consider myself fairly—candidly—critically—is the appearance of strength, of health, of unbounded power and deathless youth—as if the blood of generations of athletic girls and free, Viking men ran in my veins. I am, I believe, the only perfectly healthy woman on earth.

Will the gods smite me for my happiness? Are they jealous? Ah, well, I have never lived until now, and if I can stay a little while like this, I shall be satisfied; I shall be ready to die. If only beauty does not vanish as suddenly as it came! If it did, I should kill myself.

There are disadvantages. Such a time as I'm having with my clothes! Money to buy new is not so plenty as I could wish, though the $75 a month that Father sends was more than enough until the change. I'm saving to buy a microscope—a better one than those loaned to students at the laboratory; so I have to let out and contrive—I who so hate a needle!

And the staring admiration that is lavished on me everywhere! I suppose I'll get used to it; but it's a new experience. I like to be looked at, too, much as it embarrasses me. My loveliness is like a beautiful new dress; one is delighted to have it, but terribly shy about wearing it, at first.

Admiration! Why, the mystified music master is ready to go down on his knees to me, the janitor and the page boys are puzzled. I wonder—I wonder what John will say, I almost dread to think of his seeing me so; yet it will be the greatest test. Test! I need none!

The girls in the laboratory are divided between awe and envy, and Kitty Reid—poor Kitty! She began by being puzzled, then grew panic stricken.

The first time she noticed—I shall always remember it—was when I came in from the college one day, still skeptical of change, yet hoping it might be so.

"Why, you've a new way of doing your hair—no; same old pug—but somehow—you're looking uncommon fit to-day," she said glancing up from her drawings.

My heart leaped for joy. It was true then! It was true! But remembering Miss Coleman, I forced myself to reply as quietly as I could:—

"My genius must be beginning to sprout."

A little later Kitty was in constant mystification.

"How do you do it?" she would demand. "What have you got? Can't you let me into the secret? I just think you might introduce me to the fairy godmother."

If I were to tell any one, it would be Kitty, of course. Such a dear little red-headed angel she would make! But it would not be fair to Prof. Darmstetter. He is not ready yet. So I can only sham ignorance and joke with her about milk baths and cold cream and rain water. Now that she has reached the stage of fright, I have great fun with her.

"The age of miracles has come again," she says a hundred times a day. "I can't believe my eyes! How is it that you are growing so beautiful? Is it witchcraft?"

"Am I better looking?" I inquire languidly. "Well, I'm glad of it. I had an aunt who was well-favoured when she was young; it's high time I took after her, if I'm ever going to."

"No living aunt ever looked as you do now," Kitty will mutter, shaking her head. "I don't know what to think. I'm half afraid of you."

To tell the truth, she's more than half afraid of me, and I delight in mystifying her all I can.

But the strangest thing of all, the most ridiculous thing, considering his age, the oddest thing when one remembers that he himself is its creator—Professor Darmstetter is half in love with the beauty he has made; he would be, if he might, the gray and withered Pygmalion of my Galatea!

CHAPTER VII.

THE COMING OF THE LOVER.

December 15.

Really, I don't know which is the more aggravating, John Burke or Kitty. Such a battle as I've had with them to-day!

I had quite stopped fretting over John's absence. Indeed, though of course I wished to see him, I dreaded it; I was so happy, just as I was, and I had so many things to think about, so many dreams to dream and plans to make.

I liked John when he taught the little prairie school and praised me to my wondering relatives. All through my college course I was proud of his regard, because every one respected him; and last June I promised to marry him.

We said then that our love wasn't just a "co-ed. flirtation," because he was a grown man and not a student any more. But—but—but last June I wasn't—

Why, I've but just come to possess the gift that I wouldn't exchange for the proudest throne on earth, and I mean to make it my throne in the great world. I haven't yet had time to think things out or realise my fairy fortune; but John and I mustn't do anything foolish. Wise love can wait.

He came while I was at school.

When I found him here, he actually didn't know me.

He stared as if I were a stranger whose face drew, yet puzzled him. Then he was attracted by my beauty, then for a moment dismayed, and then—why, he was really so much in love that I—I—he gazed at me as if I were not quite real; with reverence. His eyes mirrored my power; the wonder of the new Me, the glory and the radiance of me shone in them. He worships me and—well, of course nobody could help liking that.

He was just as he has always been, but somehow, here in the city, I couldn't help finding him bigger, stronger, more bucolic. His clothes looked coarse. His collar was low for the mode, his gloveless hands were red. There was something almost clerical in his schoolmasterly garb, but his bold dark eyes and short hair aggressively brushed to a standstill, as he used to say, looked anything but ministerial. It was plain that he was a man of sense and spirit, one to be proud of; plain that he was a countryman, too.

I couldn't help seeing his thick shoes any more than I could his hurt face when I was distant and his ardour the moment I grew kind; and I was so ashamed—thinking of his looks and picking flaws, when three months ago I was a country girl myself—that I know—I don't know what I should have done, if Kitty hadn't returned.

I was so relieved to see her, for John has been writing of marriage soon and of a home, in one room if need be; and we have too much to accomplish, with beauty and woman's wit and brain and strength, for that. It is my duty to think for both, if he's too much in love—the dear, absurd fellow! And yet—

As soon as he was gone, Kitty jumped up from the drawing table. She was on pins and needles for anxiety, her eyes dancing.

"Well, when's the wedding?" she cried.

"What wedding?"

I was vexed and puzzled, and distressed, too, after sending John away as I had done. I wanted to be alone and have a chance to think quietly.

"Oh, any old wedding; will it be here, in the den? You going to invite us all?" asked Kitty.

"Isn't going to be any wedding."

"I'm sorry; I always did lot on weddings."

"You'll have to be the bride, then. Honest, Kitty, I don't like jokes on such subjects. Mr. Burke and I haven't an idea of being married, not for centuries."

Kitty went white all in a minute. She is so quick tempered.

"Oh," said she, "you're going to throw him over. I thought as much! You were always writing to him when you first came to the city, and talking about him, at night when we brushed our hair; but lately you haven't spoken of him at all. You used to look happier when the postman brought you something from him. And you had his picture—"

"The postman's?" I interrupted, but Kitty kept on as if she were wound up:—

"—on the mantel-piece, in a white-and-gold frame with your own. You hid 'em both when you began to grow beautiful. I suppose you think you're too good for him. But don't go and break his heart; please don't, Princess; there's a dear."

"Goose! I haven't the least notion of breaking his heart. I—why can't you let me alone? I'm—I'm very fond of him—if you will insist on talking about it."

"Oh, I can see! If you'd noticed the poor fellow's face—"

"'Poor fellow!' If you'd seen him before you came! He doesn't need your pity. Why, it seems to have been with you a case of love at first sight," I said mockingly. "He was rude to you, too; he never even noticed that you were in the room, after I came."

"I don't care. I don't expect a man to notice me when he meets his sweetheart for the first time in ever so long; and such a sweetheart! But you—you—oh, I'm afraid of you! I'm afraid of you! What is this mystery? What is it? Why have you grown so grand and terrible? What has become of my chum?"

She sat down flat on the floor and burst into passionate weeping.

"Get up!" I cried.

"I won't!"

A sense of great loneliness came over me and I threw myself down beside her.

"Oh, Kitty," I said, "why aren't you old and wise and sensible instead of being just a silly girl like myself? Then you wouldn't sit here howling, but you'd kiss me and cuddle me and comfort me and tell me what to do."

"I'm afraid of you! I'm afraid of you! It's—it's no' canny."

"Kitty, Kitty! Why aren't you my fairy godmother, so that you could show me in a magic glass what to do, instead of scolding me, when I'm wretched enough already?"

"Wretched! You!" Her eyes fairly blazed. "I wouldn't ever—ever be wretched if I looked like you—not ever in this world!"

"Yes, you would. You'd be so puzzled about things; and bad girls would scold you, and there wouldn't be a single soul within two thousand miles to rely upon. And you'd be awkward and shy when folks looked at you. And then you'd—you'd—you'd cry."

Afterwards we both wiped our eyes and made it all up; and I told her again that I really was fond of John.

Well, folks must eat. I went out to get some chops, a half dozen oranges and the other things for supper—we have lunch and supper, no dinner—and though I started so blue and wretched, I simply couldn't stay melancholy long, people stared at me and admired me so much. They crowded after me into the little corner grocery, and the room was so full that some one upset a tub of pickles and there they stood around in the vinegar to look at me.

It was frightful! But it was nice too; though I was so embarrassed that I wanted to run away. I'll get used to it; but—why, my own mother wouldn't know me! It's no wonder Kitty is frightened.

I wish I could see Ma. But she couldn't advise me. I ought to have a home, though, and some one older than Kitty to look after me. I must leave the den; but where to go? Suppose I burned myself broiling chops or beefsteak, or blistered my face with steam from the kettle! That would be frightful, now. It's the least I can do for Prof. Darmstetter to keep free from harm the beauty he gives me. And besides,—I never before was afraid, but now I go scurrying through the halls and up and down the stairs like a wild thing; the place is so public, so many people notice me.

I wonder if I couldn't talk to Mrs. Baker. She's at home now. Or there's the Judge's sister, Miss Marcia, the dearest old maid. I've only seen her once or twice, but I believe she'd be good to know.

I have too many problems to stay here. I must make some settled plan, now that my life means so much to all the women in the world. And—how to deal with a headstrong young man who won't take "no" for an answer or "wait" for wisdom I simply don't know. If he would only give me time to make my own acquaintance! There are so many things to think of. A great world is open to me. I have the key and I am going to live the most beautiful life.

I must think and plan and learn how not to be frightened at my own face in the mirror; I must—I simply must have time.

* * * * *

Dec. 17.

I have just seen John again; he came up to Barnard, which won't do at all. And he came home with me, and—how he loves me!

But I can manage him. Indeed, he was more reasonable to-day.

BOOK III.

THE JOY OF THE SUNSHINE.

CHAPTER I.

CHRISTMAS.

No. — East 72d Street, Dec. 28.

Milly and I have just come from a run in the Park, and here I am this shining white morning scribbling away in my own cosey room.

My very own room—for the most delightful thing has happened; I'm visiting Mrs. Baker—Aunt Frank I am to call her, though she is really Ma's cousin—and she has asked me to spend the rest of the winter here.

So I've really left the den. And I didn't deserve it. Why, when Mrs. Baker invited me to dinner on Christmas day, I dreaded the visit. I hadn't seen her since I came from the West, and I wondered what she'd think of me, and what she'd write to Mother. If Pa and Ma could see me now, would they say their little Nelly'd "filled out well-favoured?"

What would they say to me?

Why, Christmas morning, when I read the home letters, I felt as if I had betrayed my parents' confidence, as if I'd robbed them of their child by changing into such a lovely creature. Then I laughed; they won't mind my getting rid of freckles and a pug nose. And then I cried, almost, and felt so lonely, for even Kitty had gone off with Pros.; and so far away and so happy, and a good deal troubled with it all; for John had sent me some roses and a ring, and I knew I should find him at my Aunt's, eager to see whether I wore them.

John's such a problem. All that day I sat alone in the den, trying to think, and trying to let down the hem of my waterproof, for it was snowing and I have only one good dress; and every few minutes I would slip on the ring and pull it off, watching the rainbow lights that flashed and paled in the heart of the stone, and smiling because John had chosen an opal; I wonder if he knows it's the gem of the beautiful woman.

In the end I let it stay on my hand, of course, for, after all, I suppose I am betrothed to him.

So it happened that I was almost late for dinner at the Bakers', and quite late when I really got inside the house; for I walked past the door two or three times before I could muster up courage to ring the bell. When I finally ran up the steps, my umbrella was powdered white, and snow and water were dripping off my skirts. My heart was beating fast with dread and expectation; I was sure no one would know me.

"I—I'm too wet for the parlour," I said to the maid who came to let me in; and after a single startled, puzzled look, she went to tell some one of my arrival. There I stood in my shabby mackintosh, looking at a huge, gilt-framed picture of the Judge, until a plump little robin of a woman, in a black dress with a dash of red at the throat, came trotting out to meet me.

That was Aunt; in spite of my fright and self-consciousness I wanted to laugh to see her bright eyes look at me in amazement that grew almost to panic. She didn't know me; the servant could not have caught my name.

"Did you—wish to see me?" she finally managed to say.

"I'm Helen Winship—" I faltered. I felt as if I had done something very wrong.

"Nelly!" she cried, clutching my hands and almost lifting herself on tiptoe, as she blinked into my eyes in the uncertain light of the outer hall. "This isn't—can't be—not our Helen Winship—oh, it's some message from her—some—"

Her voice died away in incoherent mutterings. She drew me into a big hall like a sitting room behind the small parlour.

"Come into the light, child, whoever you are. I want to look at you," she said.

An open fire was burning in the grate, and in the room were Milly and Ethel and white-haired Miss Marcia and a tall, blonde young man.

All rose to their feet, then stopped. There was an awkward pause, the answering thrill of tense amazement shot from mind to mind like lightning. They stood as if frozen, gazing. The room was for a moment so still that I could hear my own quick breathing and the hammering of my heart. I was grateful for some far shout upon the street that drowned the noise.

"But—you—but—I thought—" Milly began in a half-hushed, awe-struck whisper; she never finished the sentence, but continued to gaze at me with big, round eyes, her lips parted, her breath quick and tremulous.

I was transported with joy and fright; I almost wished I might sink into the floor, but just then down the stair came the Judge with John behind him, and little Joy perched on his shoulder. I think the others were as grateful as I for the interruption.

"Put me down! Put me down!" screamed Joy as she saw me sprinkled with sleet. "Mamma, ith that Mithith Thanta Clauth?"

At the welcome laugh that helped to break the ice she ran with a flirt of her short skirts to hide her head against her father's knee.

"Helen!" repeated Mrs. Baker, only half recovering from her stupefaction, "this isn't—why, it can't be you!"

"I—oh, I'm afraid I'm late," I stammered.

Miss Marcia began to unbutton my raincoat, and her kindness somewhat relieved my embarrassment, though I don't know how I managed to respond to the hubbub of greetings, especially when Mr. Hynes, the stranger, was presented.

He had been looking at me more intently than he knew, with dark blue brilliant eyes, and he flushed as he touched my hand, until I was glad to take refuge with Joy, who hovered about, eying me as if she still suspected some ruse on the part of Santa Claus.

"Joy, you know Cousin Nelly?" I said; and at sound of my voice, they all looked again at each other and then at me.

"Why, I can't believe my eyes, though Bake here said you'd altered. Altered!" twittered Aunt Frank. She turned indignantly upon the Judge, who wisely attempted no defense. "I didn't dream—Bake, here, never can tell a story straight. Have you—what is it? Nelly, dear, it's two years since I've seen you; of course you've—grown!"

But no amazement could long curb her hospitable instincts. Her incoherence vanished as she grasped at a practical consideration.

"But let Milly take you up stairs and get your things off," she said with an air as of one who solves problems.

"Are you truly Cothin Nelly?" Joy lisped. "All wight; come thee my twee."

Though she couldn't recognise me as the cousin of a few weeks earlier, the child was eager to claim me as a new friend. So I escaped with her and Milly to the nursery, where I stayed as long as I dared, letting my cheeks cool.

"The twee ith mine and Mamma'th," said Joy; "we're the only oneth young enough to have Christhmath twees, Papa thayth."

"Hoh, guess I'm younger'n Mamma, ain't I?" scoffed my other little cousin who had been sent to inquire into our delay. He is perhaps a dozen years old, is called "Boy" officially, and Timothy, Jr., in the family records, and—like Joy—wasn't in the least afraid of me, after five minutes' acquaintance.

Boy led me down to the others, but dinner was nearly over before I felt at ease. I'm not used to having at my back a statuesque servant—though this one was not too statuesque to be surprised by my appearance almost out of decorum. And I couldn't help knowing that every one wanted to look at me all the time, which was delicious, but embarrassing. I blushed and gave stupid answers when addressed, and even feared that I might show myself at fault in the etiquette of a city table. It was strange to have forks in so many cases where I've always used spoons. And, though of course I knew what the finger bowls were, I wasn't quite sure how to use them.

No one was more puzzled by my appearance than Uncle Timothy himself. As he looked at me—and this he did through most of the meal—certain long gray hairs in his eyebrows seemed to wave up and down, as I had often noticed with the frightened curiosity of a child, like the questioning antennae of an insect.

"And what is the school work now?" he asked when the dessert came. "The last time I had the very real pleasure of seeing you, it was—perhaps animalculae?"

"The cell," I replied, relieved at the introduction of a topic that I could talk about, "and the cell wall. Protoplasmic movements, you know, and unicellular plants and animals. I'd been making sketches that day of the common amoeba of standing water."

"I am not familiar with the—ah—with the amoeba; but doubtless its habits are interesting. And when do the school days end? A young lady looks forward with pleasure, I fancy, to release from—"

"Is the amoeba a—some horrid bug, I suppose?" interrupted Aunt Frank; "and you—er—do things to it in that laboratory? How can you? The very thought of such a place! It makes me shiver!"

"Oh, but you should see it, so clean and bright; the laboratory's simply beautiful!"

"But this is your first winter in the city, and you ought to be enjoying concerts and theatres, meeting people, seeing things."

"Oh, I only keep such hours as I elect, being a post graduate; and I've been to several theatres," I said; "Kitty and I get seats in the top gallery."

"The—the top gallery?"

"At matinees," I hastily explained, "and not—not lately."

And then I felt more confused than ever, for Mr. Hynes was watching me. John was looking at me, too, with that great light in his face that had been there ever since my arrival, when he first saw the opal gleaming on my finger; and I—oh, how could I have hinted that I don't dare go where so many people might look at me? But it's the truth. And though the truth may be inconvenient, it's wonderfully sweet!

After dinner we passed into the big drawing room behind the hall. Joy did some clumsy little dances in her short white frock—she is really too chubby to caper nimbly—and Ethel and Milly played and sang neither well nor ill.

I think they were more afraid of me than I had been of the servants at dinner. They are not very pretty, with their light, wavy hair and pale flower faces, though I'm afraid I set my standard too high now—now that I know what is possible.

I went to the piano myself afterwards and played. Played! It was terrible! Never would I have believed that I could make such a mess of it. I didn't sing until they began trying carols. I didn't mean to do so then, but I chimed in before I thought, when they sang:—

He set a star up in the sky
Full broad and bright and fair.

"That song was taken from the Ormulum," said the Judge; "a poem of the thirteenth century—"

"Nelly! Was that you?" cried Aunt Frank, interrupting.

The music of the new, fresh, vibrant voice had thrilled them all—all except the unconscious Judge—and there they sat, spellbound. But as they shook off the witchery, there was all at once a babble of voices, and before I quite knew what had happened, I was at the piano again, singing "The King in Thule:"

There was a king in Thule
True even to the grave
To whom his mistress, dying,
A golden goblet gave.

Perhaps it wasn't very appropriate to Christmas, but Cadge had drilled me upon it. In the middle of the first stanza I happened to glance up, and noticed that Mr. Hynes was again looking at me with an absorbed, indrawing gaze, colouring with amazed pleasure. It woke in me a flutter of consternation and delight, for he has the sensitive face of a musician; but my presence of mind was gone, and for one horrible instant I thought I was going to break down, and just sat there, gasping and blushing. My heart sank and my voice dwindled to a quavering, unfamiliar whisper. I couldn't remember the words; but then I seized hold of my courage and sang and sang and sang, better than I had ever done before.

I didn't look up again until I had finished; then somehow I got away from the piano, and shyly slipped into a chair near Miss Baker. Of course there was a clamour that I should sing again, but I couldn't. The flaming of my cheeks made me ashamed.

Perhaps some time I shall learn the city way of not seeming to care very much about anything.

Aunt must have had it at her tongue's end all the evening to invite me to come to her; and when she was bidding me good-night she could wait no longer.

"You're living right on Union Square?" she said; "in the same building with—with—"

"A milliner, a dentist, a school for theatrical dancing," I enumerated, laughing happily. I knew that it was I myself, and not my mode of life, that bewildered her.

"But—is it—nice?"

"Better than a boarding-house. Two or three other girls lodge there, the housekeeper is obliging, and the experience—well, at least it's enlightening."

"I wish you'd come here. Why don't you?"

"Oh, could I?" I cried with sudden frankness. "You can't think how glad I'd be! The studio was awfully nice at first, and I've made the best of it, but I know Ma—Mother and Father would be pleased. If it wouldn't be too much trouble—"

And so easily it was all arranged. Of course after she had seen me, heard me, felt the charm of me—of Her—Aunt Frank couldn't leave Her in the studio!

I'd have been glad to avoid the journey back to Union Square with John; for the evening, with all its perplexities, had been paradise, and I dreaded to have him bring me back to earth with words of love. I ought to be more than usually tender towards John now, when he has just lost his mother; but when the Bakers' door had closed behind us, and we stood together under the crispy starlight—for it had cleared and turned cold during the evening—I talked feverishly of things that neither of us cared about, and kept it up all the way home.

John scarcely seemed to listen to my chatter. He was as if under a spell, and his dark, strong face glowed with the magic of it. As we approached the Square, he looked down at me, and slipped my hand from his arm into the clasp of his warm fingers. Through my glove he felt the ring, and gave the hand a little, almost timid pressure.

"Am I doing right? Ought I to wear it?" I cried. "Won't you help me think, just as if you didn't—didn't care? This isn't like last summer. We are different; I am very different. You must have seen to-night, that I am not at all the same girl. I've told you that I can't be certain; I am dazed."

"I shall remember everything—all you told me when I came, and now," he said. "But you are doing right—darling!"

He held my hands when we parted and looked into my eyes, and I saw that his own were shining. His love seemed too deep for any outburst of passion, or else he feared to alarm me; and yet he seemed so sure.

I wish—I wish—oh, I don't know what I wish; I ought not to be bound to any one; but I suppose I love John.

CHAPTER II.

A LOOKING OVER BY THE PACK.

Jan. 2.

If women are not meant to study, Prof. Darmstetter should be pleased with me. Instead of working up my laboratory notebooks, I have sat until midnight, dreaming.

"Go to bed early and get your beauty sleep," says Aunt, but I push open the window and lean upon the sash and let the cold air blow over me. I'd like to dance a thousand miles in the moonlight; I'm so young, and so strong, and such glorious things are coming!

To-morrow I shall have a foretaste of the future; I shall know what other people—not John and my relatives—think of me. Ah, there's only one thing they can think! To-morrow'll be the beginning of the world to me.

To-morrow! To-morrow! Aunt Frank has sent out cards for an "At Home." And it's to-morrow!

Oh, I'm glad I came here! I revel in the new home.

I like the house; it looks so big and solid. I like my cousins—quiet little creatures. They wait upon me, anticipate my smallest wish, and defer to my opinions as if I were a white star queen dropped from the ether; all but Boy, and even he respects me because I can construe Caesar.

I like my Aunt—devoted to clubs and committees, though she's forgotten them now in her eagerness to introduce me. Ah, to-morrow! Blessed to-morrow! And I like Aunt Marcia Baker. I wonder if, when I am older, I too shall be serene and stately, with a face that seems to have outlived sorrow; I can hardly believe now that I shall care to live at all when people's eyes have ceased to follow my beauty. When for me there are no more to-morrows.

I think I shall like Mr. Hynes; he's almost one of the family, for he is betrothed to Milly, and I'm glad—ah, so glad I'm not she! What a life she looks forward to—each day exactly like its fellows; a droning, monotonous existence, keeping house, overseeing the cooking—perhaps doing it herself; for he's only a young lawyer, just starting in life!

But I like his face, so full of impulse and imagination. I believe he's a man who might go far and achieve much. Why should he handicap himself with an early marriage?

It's well enough for Milly; she doesn't understand her limitations. Why, she's almost as eager over to-morrow as if it could mean to her what it does to me; and that is an outlook into a life so glad, so wonderful!

Dear, good Aunt Frank proposed the tea before my trunks were fairly unpacked.

"Won't your Professor give you a holiday from—is it microbes you study?" she inquired. "Sure they're not dangerous?"

"The afternoon tea bacillus is not wholly innocuous," suggested Uncle, pinching her cheek.

It was good to see the loving look that reproved and repaid him.

"Why, Bake," she protested, "tea never hurt anybody."

"Oh, I've time enough," I said; "I have no regular days for going to Prof. Darmstetter, and the other studies—"

It was on my tongue to add: "and the other studies don't matter," but I checked the words.

"Well, you'll find it takes time," Aunt reminded me. "How about clothes, now? Suppose you show me what you brought."

And in a few minutes we were all chattering at once in discussion of my modest little wardrobe. I could feel, as each new dress was shaken from its folds, that Aunt was more dissatisfied than she would confess.

"Everything's pretty and tasteful," she conceded at last; "but—for a tea—if you could—"

If she had dared, she'd have offered to get me a dress herself.

"Oh, of course I'll need something new," I said hurriedly; "I meant to ask your advice. Nothing very costly," I was reluctantly adding. But at that moment an inspiration came to lighten the gloom.

The very thing! I'd use the money I'd saved for the microscope! I don't need one the least bit.

So I was able to add with some philosophy:—

"I never did have a nice dress, and I'd like something pretty good this time. Why, I haven't nearly spent all my allowance," I cried with kindling enthusiasm, jumping up to pace the floor. "Tell me what I ought to have—just exactly what is most suitable. I don't know much about teas, but I'd like something—fine!"

Aunt's face glowed with excitement. I think she saw in imagination fifty Helens dancing before he eyes in a kaleidoscopic assortment of dresses.

"You're right. We'll get—oh, what shall we—what shall we get that'll be good enough for you?" she cried in a flutter. "Something simple of course, you're so young; but—I'll tell you: We'll go right to Mrs. Edgar!"

Perhaps my own face burned, too.

"Who's she? Some one on the Avenue?"

"No; no one knows her, but—she's a marvel! It'd mean the world and all to her to please some one sure to be noticed, like you. She's a widow; has two children."

So to Mrs. Edgar we went. Her eyes devoured me. She is a mite of a woman, young, white-faced, vivacious.

"For a tea?" she asked. "A—a large one?"

She spoke with forced calmness, but her hands had the artist's flutter, the enthusiast's eagerness to be doing.

"I'll get samples," she went on; "there's not a minute to be lost; not—one—moment! I'll work all night rather than fail her. You will not wish"—she dismissed us abruptly—"to go with me to the shops?"

"No; Miss Winship attracts too much attention."

Alas, it's true! It has become an ordeal for me to venture into a shop. But what a blessed thing if my beauty should bring success and ease to this poor, struggling little widow—just by my wearing a dress she has made! Oh, she'll not be the only one! What if Kitty sometime wins fame by painting my picture, or Cadge by writing of me in her "Recollections?" Why shouldn't I inspire great poems and noble deeds and fine songs, like the famous beauties Miss Coleman told about? Yes, even more than they; there was not one of them all like me!

Next evening when Aunt brought the samples upstairs, I was reading to the Judge in the library, and the others were listening as if stocks and bonds were more fascinating than romances.

"Shall we pray for a second Joshua, arresting the sun, pending deliberation?" asked Uncle, displeased at the interruption.

"Why, Bake, there's scarcely ten days, and how we'd feel if Nelly didn't look well!" cried Aunt Frank; and we all broke out laughing at the bare idea of my looking ill!

"I never saw any one to whom dress mattered so little," Aunt Marcia said, as she folded up her silk knitting. "But Mrs. Edgar insists upon her four fittings like any Shylock haggling for his pound of flesh; it is written in the bond."

When she had trotted away home with her prim elderly maid, like a pair out of "Cranford," Ethel made an impressive announcement:—

"The General will pour."

"Returned hero from the Philippines?"

"Oh, dear, no. Meg Van Dam could face Mausers, but a Red Cross bazaar was as near as she got to the war. We call her the General because—oh, you'll find out. Meg is Mrs. Robert Van Dam."

"Oh, I think I've seen that name in the papers. Aren't they grand people?"

"Why, yes; rather; we don't know the Van Dams; Meg's only just married. You might have read about her mother-in-law, Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam, or her aunt-in-law, Mrs. Henry Van Dam, or Mrs. Henry's daughters; the family's a tribe. But Meg, why, we went to school with Meg; she's just the General."

My dress came home to-night—white and dainty. Ah, at last I've something to wear that's not "good" and "plain" and "durable"! But there was an outcry, as there has been at every fitting, because I won't wear stays. Eccentric, they call me; as if Nature and beauty were abnormal!

When I was arrayed in it, Aunt and Ethel led me to the library for Uncle's inspection.

"Is to-morrow the day set to exhibit to Helen other aspects of New York than the scholastic?" he asked, looking up from his paper. "The first appearances of a young girl in modern society are said to be comparable with a 'Looking Over by the Pack,' as described by Mr. Kipling. May Mrs. Baloo and Mrs. Bagheera and Mrs. Shere Khan have good hunting to-night, and be kind to-morrow to our womanling."

"Why, Bake, you know just as well as I do there aren't any such people coming. I believe it's just one of your jokes," sputtered Aunt. "Nelly, dear, turn slowly round."

She had dropped on her knees beside me, busy with pins and folds, and Joy was lisping the caution, born perhaps of experience, "Don't you thoil it, Cothin Nelly, or Nurthey'll vip you," when Milly came into the library; and with her was Mr. Hynes.

"Lovely! Isn't it, Ned?" cried Milly. "It's for to-morrow."

Mr. Hynes scarcely glanced at the dress, then looked away again, with indifference that somehow hurt me.

"Very pretty," he said languidly. "Classic, isn't it? By the way, Judge, I think you'd be interested—"

And then he began to tell Judge Baker about some horrid auction sale of old books!

I was surprised. I couldn't account for it. To hide my disappointment—for I do want to look my best to-morrow, and then everybody has taken so much pains—-I bent over Joy, tying and untying the ribbons that held the rings of soft hair in front of her ears.

"Thop, Cothin Nelly; you hurt!" she screamed.

As soon as I could, I ran to take off the dress. How could Aunt so parade me? Of course the women Mr. Hynes knows must have all their dresses from city dressmakers.

But I believe, after all, he did notice, for I saw him colour before he turned sharply away. To please Milly, he might at least—

He called the dress classic; it's just long, soft folds without messy trimmings; and, oh, it's not vanity to peep at myself again and again and to dream of to-morrow. I'm gloriously, gloriously beautiful! If John comes to-morrow, I do hope he'll wear gloves. He has good hands, too; well-shaped—

Why, of course; Mr. Hynes must admire me.

CHAPTER III.

SNARLING AT THE COUNCIL ROCK.

Jan. 10.

To-day has been heaven!

There was a famous lawyer among Aunt's guests and a United States Senator and a real author, a woman who has written books; but people brushed past them all for a word with me!

And I'm going to the Opera! I shall sit in a box. Mrs. Van Dam says I'll make the sensation of the season! I'm going to the Opera!

When men came this morning with palms and flowers to decorate the house, I ran off to the Park. I did almost run, really. There was a song at my lips: "Gladdest, oh, gladdest, most beautiful in the world; blessed, most blessed, most beautiful in the world!" and the "tap-tap" of horses' feet on the asphalt, the "b-r-r-r-rp" of the cable cars and the rattle of elevated trains kept time, until all the city seemed ringing with my joy.

I know it's foolish; if I had been beautiful from my childhood; if I could have grown up to think of it as a matter of course; if I had been used to the awe of men and women's envy, I might think less about it, might even fancy that I would have preferred learning or wealth—for we all love what we have not. But now—it is so new, so marvellous!

I had plenty of things to think about when I could calm myself. Only yesterday I'd had a long talk with Prof. Darmstetter.

"The experiment is not yet complete," he declared. He had asked me to stay for—but that is a part of the secret which is to pass with this record from me to all women.

"You are beautiful," he said; "mein Gott, yes! More beautiful t'an any ot'er voman since t'e appearance of man on eart'. But perfectly beautiful? I do not know; I t'ink not yet. Who can tell for v'at ultimate perfection Nature destined t'e human body? But we shall see. T'at perfection you shall reach. In a veek, a mont', t'ree mont's—I cannot tell. Ve must vait and experiment and still vait, but success is assured—absolute success. I shall gif it. I do not know if t'e human type is t'e highest t'at eart' is capable of supporting, but it is t'e highest present type, and it shall be my vork to gif it t'at for v'ich it has hungered and t'irsted, and towards v'ich slowly it has groped its vay; it shall be my vork to gif humanity beauty and perfection."

The light that illumined his yellow, wrinkled face made me cry out:—

"All the world will bless you! All women will be grateful as I am grateful—"

"Ach!" he snapped with a sudden change of countenance. "I shall be von more name and date to make harter t'e student's lessons and longer t'e tables—t'at is gratitude! Vit' t'e vorld we haf at present no concern. For t'is, indeed, you bless me—t'at I am not a quack to make public an incomplete discofery, for ot'er quacks to do mischief. You are glad t'at it is vit' you alone I concern myself. But you are not grateful; you are happy because I say t'at you shall be yet more beautiful; t'at is not gratitude. You might—"

At the eager shrillness of his voice I drew a step away.

"Indeed I'm grateful, whether you believe it or not!" I cried. "You think all women so selfish! Of course I'm glad that I alone am in the secret, but you proposed it yourself, and I rejoice as much as you do that some day—by and by—other women will be happy as I am happy—"

"Yes—by and by! You emphasize t'at," he snapped mockingly, but then he recovered himself and his queer new deference. "And you haf t'e right; I vish you to rechoice in your own lofeliness. Ve haf engaged toget'er in t'is great vork, and it is vell t'at we bot' haf our revards—I t'at I aggomblish somet'ing for t'e benefit of my kind, and you—since vomen cannot lofe t'eir kind, but only intifiduals—you haf t'e happy lofe t'at is necessary to a voman."

His eyes rested on my ring.

I couldn't tell him—proud as I am of it—that John had loved me before I ever heard of the Bacillus. But I could punish his gibes.

"Oh, by the way—I'm not coming to-morrow," I said. "My Aunt is to give a tea."

Strange to see him struggle with his disappointment like a grieving child! But he bravely rallied.

"T'at is goot," he said, "you shall tell me v'at people t'ink of you. You vish to go about—to be admired; you vish to gif up science; not so?"

"Oh, no! I couldn't be a doll, for men to look at and then tire of me. I must study the harder—to be worthy—"

The look of his face, of the thin, straight-lipped mouth, the keen old eyes, stopped me.

"You vill not gif up study now, at least," he sneered; "not until you haf t'e perfect beauty. You haf need of me."

Prof. Darmstetter is so irritating! Why, he has just as much need of me! He himself said I was the best subject he could find for the experiment. But even if he had finished his work with the Bacillus, he'd rather teach me, a despised woman, all the science I could master than develop the budding talent of the brightest Columbia boy. The sight of my beauty is a joy to him. Really, I pity the poor man. He makes the great discovery when he's himself too old to profit by it; the Bacillus will not work against Nature. It has brought him only a hopeless longing—

But I shall study. He shall see! Not in the laboratory, of course; that is hardly fitting now. I wouldn't go there again except for the lure of promised beauty—can more loveliness be possible? But I do feel the responsibility of beauty. The wisest and best will crowd about me, and they must find my words worthy the lips that shape them and the voice that utters. And I shall learn from their wisdom.

"There was Hypatia; she was both beautiful and learned," I found myself confiding to a gray squirrel in the Park, and then I laughed and ran home to make my last preparations.

Ethel arranged my hair to-day, though I could hardly yield her the delight of its shining, long undulations. Then she did Milly's as nearly like mine as possible, and Milly did hers. The girls wore white like me, and my aunt was in black. The house was full of flowers; as if it had plunged into seas of them, it dripped with an odourous rosy foam. John sent a box—the extravagant boy!—and there were big American Beauty roses, with stems as long as walking sticks from Pros. and Cadge. Milly had flowers, too, from Mr. Hynes.

At first I wasn't a bit afraid, while acquaintances were dropping in one by one—Mrs. Magoun, Mrs. Crosby, the wife of the managing clerk in Uncle's office, Aunt Marcia—all allies.

Then there came a stir at the door, the magnetic thrill that foreruns a Somebody. And there upon the threshold stood a tall, dashing girl, superbly turned out; not handsome, but fine-looking, dark, decisive, vital—a creature born to command.

I knew her at the first glance. She was the General!

I was for a moment surprised to see her so young and girlish, though I might have known; for she was Milly's schoolmate. I doubt if she's two years my senior, but in social arts and finesse—ah, the difference!

The house seemed to belong to her from the moment she entered. She moved like a whirlwind—a well-mannered and exquisitely dressed whirlwind, of course—with an air of abounding vigour and vitality, up to where we stood, and there stopped short.

"How d'y'do?" she said, in the clipped New York fashion, looking at me with the confidence of one who is never at a loss—and then—

Oh, the joy! For all her savoir faire, it was her turn to be confused. For a moment she peered at me with a short-sighted squint; then after a little hesitation, she put up her lorgnette, making an impatient gesture, as if to say: "I can't help it; I must"—and stared.

Her eyes grew big as she gazed; but at last she drew a long breath, and put down the quizzing-glass with an effect of self-denial. When she spoke there was little to remind me of her momentary loss of self-command.

"Are you enjoying New York?" she demanded.

"Milly tells me you've never been in the city before; that you are studying at Barnard."

"Yes."

I knew that I had impressed this strong, splendid woman, but I was a little afraid of her.

Quite herself again, she began asking questions about myself, my home, my studies; quick, probing, confusing questions, while in my cheeks the awkward colour came and went. But it would never have occurred to me to parry her queries. I could not help liking her, though when at last she left me and began a progress through the rooms, I drew a breath of relief, like one who has passed with credit a stiff examination.

At the door of the dining-room she paused again, judging through her glass the table and its dainty decorations.

"Those flowers are rather high," she declared, and calling upon Milly for help, she began rearranging the roses, and laying the twigs of holly upon the cloth in bolder patterns. She seemed to take charge, to adopt me with the house, to accept and audit and vouch for us.

Then people began coming all at once, all together, and I had to take my place beside Mrs. Baker and Aunt Marcia in the reception room.

I can't tell anything about the next hour; it's a blur. But I wouldn't have missed a minute. I had never before seen a reception, except at the University where sometimes I used to serve as an usher, pouncing upon people as they entered and leading them up to the row of Professors and Professors' wives backed against the wall. But now I had to stand up myself and meet people. And oh, that was different!

At first two or three women would approach, putting out their hands at an absurd height, and start to say: "How d' you—" or "I'm so—"

And Aunt would make some excited, half-coherent remark and look at me, anxiously but proudly, and say my name.

But they never heard her! As they really saw me, each in turn would start, and, wide-eyed, look again. And as the awe and wonder grew in their faces—as there came the little stop, the gasp, that told how their reserve was for once overthrown, then, to the utmost, I tasted the sweet of power and felt the thrill of ecstasy.

Red spots burned in Aunt's cheeks; she talked fast in her company voice, and somehow the lace at her throat got awry. Aunt Marcia was as calm and stately in her soft black velvet as if nothing were happening. And really there was little to disturb one's composure. New Yorkers aren't like our whole-souled, emotional Western folks. Not one of these women but would have suffered torture rather than betray her surprise beyond that first irrepressible gasp of amazement. After that one victory of human nature, they would make talk about the weather, or the newest book, and then get away to discuss me in undertones in the hall or drawing room.

Quickly the sixth sense of a strange agitation went through the house. I knew what they were all talking about, thinking about. Subtle waves of thought seemed to catch up each new comer so that she felt, without being told, that something extraordinary was happening. Women now approached not unprepared; but for all their bracing against the shock, not one could be quite nonchalant at the first sight of my superb, compelling beauty.

My eyes flashed, my pulse rioted as I felt the vibrant excitement of the gathering, the tiptoe eagerness to reach our neighbourhood, the hush that fell upon the circle immediately around me, the reaction of overgay laugh and chatter in the far corners.

Oh, it was lovely, lovely! No girl could have been quite unmoved to feel that all those soft lights were glowing in her honour, those masses of flowers blooming, all that warmth and perfume of elegance and luxury wafted as incense to her nostrils. And the undercurrent of suppressed excitement, the sensation of Her!

At times I grew impatient of conventionality. How was it possible for these people to look so quietly, eye to eye, upon the most vitally perfect of living beings? How could they turn from me to orange frappé or salted almonds?

Once or twice I caught some faint echo of the talk about us.

"Where is she?" asked one voice, made by curiosity more penetrating than its owner realised.

"Julia's seen her; she's talked and talked till I had to come."

"And she's still studying?"—Another voice—"How can she? Great beauty and great scientist—bizarre combination!"

How that would amuse Prof. Darmstetter!

By and by I saw John towering above the others while he bobbed about helplessly in the sea of women's heads that filled the rooms and even rose upon the "bleachers," as he calls the stairs. There were not really so very many people, but he didn't know how to reach us, he is so awkward. When he had steered his course among the women and had spoken to my Aunt, his face was radiant as he turned to me.

"I knew you wouldn't fail us, Mr. Burke," Aunt said hurriedly. "Mrs. Marshall—so glad—this is—Nelly, dear—"

Behind John was a lady waiting to meet me.

"—So glad you've come," I said to him; and the words sounded curiously to me because in my excitement I also had spoken in my "company voice."

But I had no time to say another word to him, as I turned to greet Mrs. Marshall.

He mumbled something, flushing, while his eyes devoured my beauty in one dumb, worshipping look. Then he dropped quickly out of our group. I was sorry, but he'll understand that I was flurried. He ought to learn self-control, though; he shouldn't look at me before so many people with all his heart in his eyes.

And I was so vexed about his clothes, too! His old, long, black coat, such as lawyers wear in the West, would have been pretty nearly right—something like what the other men wore—but he seemed to think it was not good enough, and had put on a brand new business suit. Of course there wasn't another man there so clad, but he never seemed to notice how absurd he was.

The Viewing of the Pack didn't last long. Before my cheeks had ceased flaming, before I had grown used to standing there to be looked at, people seemed to go, all at once, as suddenly as they had arrived.

Just as the last ones were leaving, some instinct told me that Mr. Hynes had come. Before I saw him, I felt his gaze upon me, a wondering, glad look, as if I were Eve, the first and only woman.

Milly brought him to me and left us together, but at first he was almost curt in his effort to hide his sensibility to my beauty—as if that were a weakness!—and I was furiously shy, and felt somehow that I must hold him at still greater distance.

"Am I never again to hear you sing?" he asked. "Sweet sounds that have given a new definition to music are still vibrating in my memory."

I knew he was thinking of Christmas!

"I don't often sing, except for Joy," I mumbled; "I've had so few lessons."

"Joy doesn't know her joys; but—wouldn't she share them?"

"Sometime—perhaps—"

I couldn't answer him, for hot and cold waves of shyness and pleasure were running over me. Oh, I hope, for Milly's sake, he doesn't dislike me. He seems to feel so intensely, to be so alive!

When he had gone, I went to the dining-room with Aunt Marcia, and found there Ethel and the General and Peggy Van Dam, the General's cousin, a pale girl, all eyes and teeth. Kitty was with them, and she darted towards me, but Mrs. Van Dam was before her.

"Sit down, both of you," she commanded.

She fairly put us into chairs, and brought us cups of something—I don't know what.

Aunt Marcia breathed a little sigh of relief.

"Helen," she said, "you haven't been standing too long?"

"It wasn't an instant! I could stand all day!"

Mrs. Van Dam smiled, and I felt gauche, like a schoolgirl. I am so impulsive!

"It was all delightful!" cried Kitty; "and yet—while you were my chum, Helen, I did think you rather good-looking!"

"You find yourself mistaken?" the General inquired.

"Oh, no-o-o; not exactly; a beautiful girl, certainly; but—oh, I could have made pincushions of some of those pudgy women, nibbling wafers, and delivering themselves of lukewarm appreciations! 'Too tall'—'too short'—'too dark'—'too light'; 'I like your height bettah, my deah.' Helen, you dairymaid, powder! Plaster over that 'essentially improbable' colour."

Mrs. Van Dam broke out laughing at Kitty's mimicry. I wish the child wouldn't let her hair straggle in front of her ears and look so harum-scarum.

"I doubt if we have had many harsh critics," said Miss Baker.

"Not a thing to criticise," cried Aunt Frank, entering just then and catching the last word. "Everybody so interested in Nelly! Bake, if you'd only come earlier, I'd have been perfectly satisfied."

They say that Uncle Timothy can never be coaxed home to one of his wife's receptions, but he answered with great solemnity, as he loomed up behind the little woman:—

"I am privileged to be here, even at the eleventh hour. I could not wholly deny myself the sight of so much youth and bloom."

"Don't be hypocritical, Judge," said the General reprovingly. "You're too big and honest to achieve graceful deceit. But before I go—I've seats for the Opera Monday night in Mother's box. Miss Winship must come, and—" her glance deliberated briefly—"and Milly."

Milly cried, "How delightful, Meg!" But my tongue tripped and my cheeks flamed as I tried to say that I had never seen an opera and to thank my new friend.

Little she heeded my lack of words. Gazing at me once again as she had upon first seeing me, she exclaimed:—

"You great, glorious creature! They sha'n't hive you in a schoolroom; you must come out and show yourself; why, you'll set New York in a furore!"

I think she's splendid.

No sooner was she gone than I was summoned to the reception-room, and Cadge rushed to meet me. She looked much smarter than Kitty, with her black hair curled and her keen eyes shining with excitement.

"All over but the shouting?" she asked. "Meant to get here in season to see you knock 'em in the Old Kent Road, but woman proposes, Big Tom disposes. Shall I turn in a paragraph? Just—did you have music? What's your dress—in the Sunday society slush, of course, not the daily; 'fraid the Star won't take over a stick—. Greek a little bit? M-m-m—not modistic exactly, but—but—."

Her abrupt sentences grew slower, paused, dropped to an awestruck whisper, as she looked upon me. She added in her gravest manner: "Say, you're the loveliest ever happened! The—very—limit!"

But awe and Cadge could not long live together. In a moment her mouth took a comically benevolent quirk.

"And 'among those present'—" she asked; "who was that leaving just as I got here?"

"Mrs. Robert Van Dam, schoolmate of my cousins. But you're not writing me up, Cadge?"

Cadge whistled.

"Van Dam! How calmly the giddy child says it! Does your youngest cousin make mud pies with duchesses? Say, she comes pretty near being one of the '400.' But I'm off; a grist of copy to grind—talk of raving beauties, you'll be the only one that won't rave!"

Of course Cadge wouldn't have talked just like that before the others, if she had come earlier.

At bedtime Milly and Ethel ran to my room to talk things over, and my Aunt came to shoo them off to bed, but she stayed and talked, too; and I've no business to be writing at this shocking time of night, except, of course I couldn't sleep and so I might as well.

"Everybody thinks you resemble your cousins," Aunt said; "and really there is a family likeness."

Poor Aunt! Ethel and Milly are washed out copies of me, in dress and hair, if that constitutes resemblance; and they imitate even my mannerisms.

I should think Mr. Hynes would be too critical to admire Milly.

I had a partial engagement for Monday with John; but he'll let me off, to go to the Opera.

CHAPTER IV.