GLORY OF
YOUTH

BY

TEMPLE BAILEY

AUTHOR OF
CONTRARY MARY

ILLUSTRATED BY
HENRY HUTT and C. S. CORSON

COPYRIGHT
1913 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY

First printing, August, 1913
Second printing, February, 1916
Third printing February, 1917
Fourth printing August, 1919

Manufacturing Plant
Camden, N. J.

To
My Mother

Contents

Glory of Youth

CHAPTER I

BETTINA

The girl knelt on the floor, feverishly packing a shabby little trunk.

Outside was a streaming April storm, and the rain, rushing against the square, small-paned windows, shut out the view of the sea, shut out the light, and finally brought such darkness that the girl stood up with a sigh, brushed off her black dress with thin white hands, and groped her way to the door.

Beyond the door was the blackness of an upper hall in a tall century-old house. A spiral stairway descended into a well of gloom. An ancient iron lantern, attached to a chain, hung from the low ceiling.

The girl lighted the lantern, and the faint illumination made deeper the shadows below.

And from the shadows came a man's voice.

"May I come up?"

As the girl bent over the railing, the glow of the lantern made of her hair a shining halo. "Oh," she cried, radiantly, "I'm so glad you've come. I—I was afraid——"

The thunder rolled, the waves pounded on the rocks, and the darkness grew more dense, but now the girl did not heed, for what mattered a mere storm, when, ascending the stairs, was one who knew fear neither of life nor of death, nor of the things which come after death?

When at last her visitor emerged from the gloom, he showed himself beyond youthful years, with hair slightly touched with gray, not tall, but of a commanding presence, with clear, keen blue eyes, and with cheeks which were tanned by out-of-door exercise, and reddened by the prevailing weather.

"I just had to come," he said, as he took her hand. "I knew you'd be frightened."

"Yes," she said, "Miss Matthews is at school, and I am alone——"

"And unhappy?"

Her lips quivered, but she drew her hand from his, and went on into the shabby room, where she lighted a candle in a brass holder, and touched a match to a fire which was laid in the blackened brick fireplace.

The doctor's quick eye noted the preparations for departure.

"What does that mean?" he asked, and pointed to the trunk.

"I—I am going away——"

"Away?"

"Yes," nervously; "I—I can't stay here, doctor."

"Why not?"

"Oh," tremulously, "it was all right when I had mother, because she was so sick that I was too busy to realize how deadly lonely it was here. I knew she needed the sea air, and she could get it better in the top of this old house than anywhere else. But now that she's gone—I can't stand it. I'm young, and Miss Matthews is away all day teaching—and when she comes home at night we have nothing in common, and there's the money left from the insurance—and so—I'm going away."

He looked at her, with her red-gold hair in high relief against the worn leather of the chair in which she sat, at the flower-like face, the slender figure, the tiny feet in childish strapped slippers.

"You aren't fit to fight the world," he said; "you aren't fit."

"Perhaps it won't be such a fight," she said. "I could get something to do in the city, and——"

He shook his head. "You don't know—you can't know——" Then he broke off to ask, "What would you do with your furniture?"

"Miss Matthews would be glad to take the rooms just as they are. She was delighted when you asked her to stay with me after mother died. She loves our old things, the mahogany and the banjo clock, and the embroidered peacocks, and the Venetian heirlooms that belonged to Dad's family. But I hate them."

"Hate them—why?"

"Because, oh, you know, because Dad treated mother so dreadfully. He broke her heart."

His practiced eye saw that she was speaking tensely.

"I wish you'd get me a cup of tea," he said, suddenly. "I'm just from the sanatorium. I operated on a bad case—and, well, that's sufficient excuse, isn't it, for me to want to drink a cup of tea with you?"

She was busy in a moment with her hospitality.

"Oh, why didn't you tell me? And you're wet." Her hand touched his coat lightly as she passed him.

"The rain came so suddenly that I couldn't get the window of my car closed; it's an awful storm.

"And now," he said, when she had brought the tea on an old Sheffield tray, and had set it on a little folding table which he placed between them on the hearth, "and now let's talk about it."

"Please don't try to make me stay——"

"Why not?"

"Because, oh, because you can't know what I suffer here; it isn't just because I've lost mother, but the people—they all know about her and about Dad, and they aren't nice to me."

"My dear child!"

"Perhaps it's because father was a singer and an Italian, and mother came of good old Puritan stock. They seem to think she lowered herself by marrying him. They can't understand that though he was unkind to her, he belonged to an aristocratic Venetian family——"

"It's from those wonderful women of Venice, then, that you get that hair. Do you remember Browning's:

"'Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.'"

There was no response to his thought in her young eyes.

"I've never read Browning," she said, negligently, "and I hate to think of 'dear dead women.' I want to think of live things, of bright things, of gay things. It seems sometimes as if I should die here among the shadows."

She was sobbing now, with her head on the table.

"Bettina," the doctor bent over her, "poor child, poor little child."

"Please let me go," she whispered.

"I can't keep you, of course. I wish I knew what to do. I wish Diana were here."

"Diana?"

"I forgot that you did not know her. She has been away for two years. She's rather wonderful, Bettina."

The girl raised her head. The man was gazing straight into the fire. All the eager light that had made his face seem young had gone, and he looked worn and tired. Bettina had no worldly intuitions to teach her the reason for the change a woman's name had wrought, and so absorbed was she in her own trouble that she viewed the transformation with unseeing eyes.

"What could she do if she were here?" she asked with childish directness.

"She would find some way out of it—she is very wise." He spoke with some hesitation, as a man speaks who holds a subject sacred. "She has had to decide things for herself all her life—her father and mother died when she was a little girl; now she is over thirty and the mistress of a large fortune. She spends her winters in the city and her summers down here by the sea—but for the past two years she has been staying in Europe with a widowed friend who was a schoolmate of hers in Berlin."

"When is she coming back?"

Out of a long silence, he answered, "I am not sure that she will come back. Her engagement was announced last fall—to a German, Ulric Van Rosen—she is to be married in June."

The fact, to him so pregnant of woeful possibilities, meant little to Bettina.

"Of course if she's not here, she can't do anything—and anyhow most people don't care to do practical things to help, do they?"

She looked so childish, so appealing, so altogether exquisite and young in her black-robed slenderness, that he answered her as he would have answered a child.

"It's too bad that the world should hurt you."

"But I'm going to do wonderful things in the city."

"Wonderful things—poor little girl——"

As he brought his eyes back from the fire to her face, he seemed to bring his thoughts back from an uneasy reverie.

"You ought," he said, "to marry——"

The color flamed into the girl's cheeks. "Mother was always saying that, in those last days. But I hated to have her; it seemed so dreadful to talk of marriage—without love. I know she didn't mean it that way, poor darling! She married for love and her life was such a failure. But I couldn't—not just to get married, could I—not just to have some one take care of me?"

He stood up, and thrust his hands in his pockets. "No," he agreed bluffly, "you couldn't, of course."

"And there's never been any one in love with me," was her naive confession, "and I've never been in love, not really——"

He was looking down at her with smiling eyes. "There's plenty of time."

"Yes—that's what I always told mother—but she dreaded to think of me—alone."

The eager, dying woman had said the same thing to the doctor, and it had seemed to him, sometimes, that her burning eyes had begged of him a favor which he could not grant.

For there had always been—Diana!

He straightened his shoulders. "I'm going to ask you to stay here," he said, "instead of going to the city. I haven't any real right to keep you, for I'm not legally your guardian, but I promised your mother to look after you. I can find work for you. We need some one at the sanatorium to look after the office——"

For a moment she set her will against his. "But I'd rather go to the city."

He put his strong hands on her shoulders. "Little child, look at me," he said, and when she flashed up at him a startled glance, he went on, gently, "Your mother wanted me to take care of you—to keep you from harm. In the city you'll be too far away. I want you to stay here. Will you?"

And presently she whispered, "I will stay."

Outside the rain was rushing and the wind was blowing, and plain little Miss Matthews battled with the storm. Miss Matthews, who, every day in the year, taught a class of tumultuous children, and whose life dealt always with the commonplace. And it was plain little Miss Matthews who, having weathered the storm and climbed the winding stairs, came in, rain-coated and soft-hatted, to find by the fire the doctor drawing on his gloves and Bettina hovering about him like a gold-tipped butterfly.

"It's a dreadful storm," said Miss Matthews, superfluously, as Bettina went to get boiling water. "There's a young man down-stairs who wants to speak to you, Dr. Blake. He said that he couldn't find you at the sanatorium. He saw your car in front of the house and knew you were here. But the bell wouldn't ring, and so he waited. I told him the bell was broken and that you'd come down at once. He's hurt his hand."

"They would have fixed him up at the sanatorium."

"He said he wanted you, and nobody else, and that he came into the hall because he was like a pussy cat and hated the rain. He is a queer looking creature in a leather cap and leather leggins."

The doctor gave an amused laugh. "That's Justin Ford," he said; "the pussy-cat speech sounds like him, and he wears the leather costume when he flies."

Bettina, coming back with fresh tea for Miss Matthews, asked, "How does he fly?"

"In an aeroplane. He's to try out his hydro-aeroplane to-morrow. He's probably been at work on the machinery and hurt his hand."

Bettina sparkled. "Think of a man who can fly," she said. "Doesn't it sound incredible?"

"It's the most marvelous thing in the world," said the big-hearted surgeon, not knowing that he, as a man of healing, was more marvelous, for he had to do with the mechanics of flesh and blood, while Justin had to do only with steel and aluminum and canvas, which are, at best, unimportant things when compared with nerves and ligaments and bones.

"Would you mind if Ford came up?" the doctor asked. "I've got to go straight to my old man with the pneumonia after I leave here, and I could look at his hand."

Bettina shivered. "Shall I have to look at it?" she asked in a little voice.

He laughed. "Of course not. You can go in the other room."

But when the young man, who had answered the doctors call, entered, she did not go, for the face which was framed by the leather cap was that of a youth whose beauty matched her own, and whose mocking eyes, as he acknowledged the introduction, seemed to beat against the door of her maiden heart and demand admission.

CHAPTER II

IN THE SHADOWY ROOM

The injury to Justin's hand proved to be one of strain and sprain.

"A bandage for a few days," the doctor pronounced, "and then a little carefulness, and you'll be all right."

Justin lingered. The little fire was like a heart of gold in the shadowy room. Plain little Miss Matthews sipped her tea, with her feet on the fender. Bettina, during the doctor's examination of Justin's hand, had seated herself in her low chair on the hearth, and now her eyes were fixed steadily on the flames.

"It's a shivery, shaky sort of day," said Justin, surveying the teapot longingly, and Anthony laughed. "He wants his tea, Bettina," he said, "and a place by your fire. It's another of his pussy-cat traits—so if you'll be good to him, I'll have another cup, and he shall tell us about his hydro-aeroplane."

Justin, standing in front of the fire, was like a young god fresh from Olympus. His nose was straight, his mocking eyes a golden-brown, and, with his cap off, his upstanding shock of hair showed glittering lights. In deference to the prevailing fashion, his fair little mustache was slightly upturned at the corners. He had doffed his rain coat, and appeared in a brown Norfolk suit with leather leggins that reached his knees.

"I'm afraid I've intruded upon your hospitality," he said to Bettina, as she handed him a steaming cup, "but I'm always falling into pleasant things—and I haven't the will power to get out when I should, truly I haven't. But it isn't my fault—it's just a part of my pussy-cat inheritance."

"He can afford to say such things," Anthony remarked; "he's really more like a bird than a pussy cat. You should see him up in the air."

Justin's eyes flashed. "You should see me coming down on the water after a flight. By Jove, Anthony, that's the most wonderful little machine. I've called her 'The Gray Gull' because she not only flies but swims—cuts through the water like a motor boat."

As he talked his eyes were on Bettina. "You beauty, you beauty," was the thought which thrilled him.

When, at last, he stood up, he apologized somewhat formally. "I've stayed too long," he said, "but Anthony must make my excuses. I was down there in Purgatory—and he showed me—Paradise."

The doctor looked at him sharply. He knew Justin as a man of the world—gay, irresponsible—and Bettina had no one to watch over her.

"I'll take you as far as the shops," he said, crisply, "and then I must get at once to my old man with the pneumonia."

As the two men rode away in the doctor's small covered car, Justin asked, "Where did you discover her?" Anthony, his eyes fixed on the muddy road ahead of them, gave a brief outline: "Professionally. The mother died in those rooms. The girl is alone, except for Miss Matthews and the old Lane sisters who own the house and live in the lower part. I have constituted myself a sort of guardian for Bettina—the mother requested it, and I couldn't refuse."

"I see." Justin asked no more questions, but settled himself back in a cushioned corner, and as the two men rode on in silence, their thoughts were centered on the single vision of a shadowy room, and of a slender golden-haired, black-robed figure against a background of glowing flame.

All that night and the next day the doctor battled with Death, and came out triumphant. By four o'clock in the afternoon the old man with pneumonia showed signs of holding his own.

Worn out, Anthony drove back toward the sanatorium. The rain was over, but a heavy fog had rolled in, so that the doctor's little car seemed to float in a sea of cloud. Now and then another car passed him, specter-like amid the grayness. Silent figures, magnified by the mist, came and went like shadow pictures on a screen. From the far distance sounded the incessant moan of fog-horns.

Anthony stopped his car in front of a small shop, whose lights struggled faintly against the gloom.

Crossing the threshold, he went from a world of dampness and chill into the warmth and cheer of an old-fashioned fish house.

For fifty years there had been no change in Lillibridge's. The floor of the main room was bare and clean, and, in the middle, a round black stove radiated comfort on cold days. Along one side of the room ran three stalls, in which were placed tables for such patrons as might desire partial privacy. On the spick and span counter were set forth various condiments and plates of crackers. A card, tacked up on the wall, tempted the appetite with its list of sea foods.

Anthony wanted nothing to eat. He ordered coffee, and went into one of the stalls to drink it.

But a man at one of the tables in the main part of the room wanted more than coffee. He was a little man in a blue reefer, but he had, evidently, more than a little appetite. As Anthony sat down, he was just finishing a bowl of chowder, and was gazing with eyes of hungry appreciation upon various dishes of fried fish and fried potatoes, of hot rolls and pickles which were being set before him.

"You'd better have some, doctor," was his hoarse invitation.

"Too tired," said Anthony. "I'll wait till I've had a bath and rub-down before I eat——"

"What you need," said the little man, between large mouthfuls, "is a good day's fishin'. You come out to-morrow morning, and we'll catch some cod."

The doctor's tired eyes brightened. "There's nothing that I'd like better, captain, but I've got an old man ill of pneumonia, and there's a girl with appendicitis."

"There you go," said the little man; "if it wasn't a girl with appendicitis, it would be a kid with the colic, or a lady with a claim to heart trouble. What you've got to do, doctor, is to cut it all out and come with me."

Anthony shook his head. "Suppose some one had said to you when you sailed the seas that you could leave the ship——?"

"I shouldn't have left," said the little man, "but I didn't have such a look as you've got in your eyes. What you need is a good night's sleep, and a day's fishin'. And you need it now."

Having eaten presently his last morsel, he ordered a piece of pie. "There's nothing like sea air to blow your brains clear," he stated. "And when this fog lifts, it'll be fine fishin' weather."

Again the doctor shook his head. "I'd like it, more than a little, but I've got to stick to my post."

Captain Stubbs began on his pie, and remarked, "The trouble with you is that you're mixed up with too many wimmen."

Anthony's head went up. "What do you mean?"

"Wimmen," said the little captain, "are bad enough anyhow. But when you have to handle a lot of wimmen with nerves, then the Lord help you."

He said it so solemnly that Anthony threw back his head and laughed.

"Now, up at that sannytarium of yours," said the captain, "there's about ten of them that need to be dipped into the good salt sea and hung up in the sun to dry, and that's all they need, no coddling and medicine and operations—but just a cold shock and a warm-up—and a day's fishin'."

And now Anthony did not laugh. "By Jove," he said, "I believe you're right. I'm going to try some personally conducted parties, and you shall take them out, captain——"

"Me——?" the captain demanded, incredulously. "Me take those wimmen out fishin'?"

Anthony nodded. "Yes, once a week. Is it a bargain?"

The captain stood up. "No, it ain't," he said, firmly. "I'll take you and gladly. But not any of that nervous bunch."

He settled his cap firmly on his head, and went toward the door. Then he turned. "Some day," he said, "I'm going to ask that Betty child to go out in my boat."

"Bettina?" Anthony's mind went swiftly to the shadowed room.

"Yes. She's lonesome, and so was her mother. I used to take fish up to them, and I showed the Betty child how to make chowder."

"She told me," said Anthony. "You're one of her best friends, captain."

"Well, goodness only knows she needs friends," said the little captain, adding with a significant emphasis which escaped the preoccupied Anthony, "She needs somebody to take care of her."

Receiving no response, the little man lighted his pipe, buttoned his coat, and, remarking genially, "Well, you let me know about that day's fishin'," he steamed out.

After his departure Anthony sat for some time in the deserted room. He knew that rest and refreshment were waiting for him and he knew that he needed them, but his mind was weighed down by the problem of that helpless child in the old house. All through the night as he had battled for the life of his patient, he had thought of her, who must battle with the world. He could get her work, of course, but he shrank from the thought of her pale loveliness set to sordid uses.

With a sudden gesture of resolution, he stood up and drew on his gloves.

Ten minutes later he was climbing the winding stairway, where the iron lantern again illumined the darkness.

There had been no response to his call from below, and when he reached the upper landing he found the door shut. He knocked and presently Bettina came. He saw at a glance that she had been crying.

"I can stay only a minute," he said. "I haven't had much sleep since I saw you yesterday."

"I'll make you some tea," she offered, but he stopped her with a quick, "No, no,—I've just had coffee, and I must get home."

They sat down, somewhat stiffly, on opposite sides of the hearth.

"What made you cry?" he asked, with his keen eyes on her downcast face.

"Everything—the rain yesterday—the fog to-day. I wish the sun would shine—I wish—I were—dead——"

With a sharp exclamation, he stood up. "You're too young to say such things—there's all of life before you."

"Yes," she said dully, "there's all of life——"

To him she was a most appealing figure. Her weakness seemed to stand out against the background of his strength. Suddenly he held out his hands to her. "Come here, Betty child," he said, using, unconsciously, the little captain's name for her, "come here."

Some new note in his voice made her cheeks flame, but she obeyed him. He took both of her hands in his. "I've been thinking of you, and your future. Somehow I can't see you, a little slip of a thing like you, being beaten and bruised by the hard things of life. The world is cruel and you are so—sweet. You need some one to take care of you——"

"Yes," she whispered; "but there isn't any one."

"Except me. And I'm such an old fellow—years too old for you. But I'm alone, and you're alone. Could I make you happy, Betty child?"

She stared at him, all the bright color gone from her face.

"Why, how?" Her voice fluttered and died.

"As my wife. There's the big house on the rocks that I am building."

He faltered. The great house had been built for Diana, on a sudden hopeful impulse that when it was finished she would consent to be its mistress.

"There's the big house," he went on, after a moment, "and there's money enough and to spare. Not that I want you to marry me for that, but I think I could comfort you in your loneliness, Bettina."

In her secluded girlhood there had been no opportunity for masculine adoration; hence there seemed nothing lacking when this man of men, whose coming during her mother's illness had made the one bright spot in her day, whose sympathy had comforted her in her sorrow, whose friendship had sustained her in the months which had followed her great loss, when he spoke of marriage with never a word of love.

"But I'm not wise enough or good enough," she said, with a quick catch of her breath.

He drew her to him, holding her gently.

"Would you like," he asked, "would you like to think that all your life I should take care of you?"

She lay quietly, not answering for a while, then she whispered, "Do you really want me?"

Perhaps his arm relaxed a little, but his voice was very steady. "I really want to make you happy."

"And you'll let me love you with all my heart?" Her eyes were hidden.

He put his hand against the softness of her hair, turning her face up toward him. "I shall hope that you may love me with all your heart, and that I may be worthy of it."

Her hand crept up and touched his cheek. "Kiss me," she whispered, like a child.

He would have been less than a man if his heart had not leaped a little, if he had not responded to the love call of this wistful white and gold woman creature.

"My dear," he said, brokenly, and bent his head.

On the foggy streets below men and women passed and repassed like ghosts in the stillness. Little Miss Matthews, meeting Captain Stubbs on a street corner, was unconscious of his nearness until the little captain, guided by that sixth sense, which is given to sailors for their protection at sea, hailed her.

"You needn't hurry home," he told her; "that Betty child don't want you. Dr. Blake is there. That's his car."

"He was there yesterday," said Miss Matthews, disturbed by the doctor's departure from his usual routine.

"And he'll probably be there to-morrow; he's getting sweet on that Betty child, Miss Mattie."

"Oh, dear, no," said the shocked Miss Matthews. "Why, he's in love with Diana Gregory."

The captain gazed at her blankly. "You don't mean it," he protested.

"Yes, I do," said Miss Matthews; "they've known each other all their lives. But she doesn't want to settle down."

"Well, she'd better look out," said the little captain; "men won't wait forever."

"Men like Anthony Blake," returned Miss Matthews with conviction, "will. And as for Bettina, she's nothing but a child!"

The little captain carried the conversation over, tactfully, to his favorite topic. "I want you and that Betty child to go with me for a day's fishin' soon," he said; "you just name the day."

Little Miss Matthews hated the sea, with the hatred of a woman whose ancestors had made their living on the Banks and had been drowned in storms. But she liked the captain. "I am sure you are very kind," she said, primly, "but it will have to be Saturday when there isn't any school."

"All right," said the captain,—"make it a week from Saturday, and we'll probably have clearing weather."

The doctor, going down, met little Miss Matthews. Bettina, leaning over the rail, greeted the little lady somewhat self-consciously. "I'll make your tea in a minute," she said; "the doctor didn't want any."

When Anthony reached the bottom of the stair, he looked up. The faint light of the lantern drew a circle of radiance about Bettina's head.

"Wait," she called softly, and came down to him, and in the darkness whispered that she was happy, so very happy—and would she see him soon?

"To-morrow," he promised, and went away with his pulses pounding.

All the way home he thought of her. She had been charming. He felt like an adventuring knight, who, having killed all the dragons, rescues the captive princess from her tower. She was a dear child. A dear—child.

At the sanatorium he had a bath and a good dinner, and made his rounds. One little woman, when he had passed, spoke to another of his smile. "It is as if he were happy in his heart," she said, quaintly; "before this his eyes have been sad."

Later the doctor found time to read his mail. On the top of the pile of letters was a thick one in a gray envelope addressed in feminine script. He opened it and read eagerly. Then he sat very still, trying, amid all the beating agony of emotion, to grasp the truth as she had told it. Diana was free. Her engagement was broken. She was coming back to America. "I am coming home to the big house—and to you—Anthony." And she would be there in just ten days!

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH DIANA REAPS

All the way down in the train Diana kept saying to her friend, "I am so glad you are going to see my house, Sophie. You can't imagine how lovely it is."

But even then Mrs. Martens was not prepared. She was given a room on the third floor from which glass doors opened on a little balcony which overhung the harbor. It was like the upper deck of a ship with the open sea to the right and left, and with a strip of green peninsula cutting into it beyond the causeway.

"That's the Neck," Diana explained; "the yacht clubs are over there and some hotels and big houses. But I like it on this side, in the town. It's so quaint and lovely. I'll show you some of it to-morrow morning."

"I'm not going anywhere to-morrow morning. I am going to sleep until noon."

Diana bent and kissed her. "Poor thing, is she tired?"

"Dead."

"Well, I won't wake you. But I am going to be up with the dawn, Sophie."

Mrs. Martens turned and looked at her. "Is Anthony here?"

"Yes."

Diana caught her breath as she said it, and the two friends stood, silently, looking over the harbor.

The twilight was taking the blue out of the water, but the beauty was still there—with the lights on the anchored boats twinkling like stars in the grayness, and the lighthouse making a great moon above them.

"When will you see him, Diana?"

"To-night."

"Then I'm going to bed."

"You're not—I want you to meet him, Sophie."

"You want him every bit for yourself. Don't be a hypocrite, Diana."

Diana laid her hands on Sophie's shoulders and shook her a little, laughing.

"Sophie, do you ever feel so young that you are almost wild with it—as if there hadn't been any years since you wore pinafores and pigtails?"

"No—I'm thirty-five, Diana."

"Don't shout it from the housetops. I'm a very few years behind. What a lot of wasted years, Sophie."

"It's your own fault, Diana."

"But I wanted to be free——"

"And now you are longing for your prison——"

"With Anthony—yes."

"You'd better go down and dress, dear. Put on that pale blue, with your pearls, Diana. It fits in with the moonlight."

"Then you won't come down?"

"No. I'll have Peter for company."

Peter Pan was Diana's cat. He was as yellow as a harvest moon, he was fed on fish, and was of a prodigious fatness. During Diana's sojourn abroad he had been looked after by Delia Hobbs.

Delia was Diana's housekeeper. She had a lame hip and a lovely mind. She went up to Mrs. Martens' room after Diana had left to see if the little lady was comfortable for the night.

She eyed Peter Pan, who was in the middle of the big bed.

"Peter," she said, severely, "that's no place for you."

Peter rolled over, and clawed the lace spread luxuriously.

"Shall I take him off, ma'am?" Delia asked.

"It's nice to have him here," said Mrs. Martens, doubtfully, "but perhaps I ought not to let him stay. You know best, Delia."

Delia, a little flattered by such deference, hesitated. "I might bring his basket up here," she said; "he isn't a bit of trouble. He just goes to sleep and doesn't wake up until morning."

As Delia opened the door to go down, the rippling measures of "The Spring Song," played softly, came up to them. Sophie had a vision of Diana in her shimmering gown, waiting in the moonlight for Anthony.

Delia came back with the basket. It was of brown wicker with brown cushions. Peter, curled up in it, made a sunflower combination.

"You are sure you're all right, Miss Sophie?" Delia asked as she stood on the threshold. "If you don't want the electric light, there's a candle on your table, and if you like the air straight from the sea you can open the door on the porch. Miss Diana used to like to lie and look at the moonlight."

The whole world seemed obsessed by the moonlight. Its white radiance, when Mrs. Martens at last turned off the glaring bulbs, seemed to cast a spell over sea and land. She stepped out on the porch, and was awed by the beauty of the wide sweep of shining sky and sea. Then, far below on the hidden road, she heard the beat of a motor.

The sound ceased and a man's quick step came up the path. There was the whirr of an electric bell, and she knew that Anthony had come.

Well, Diana had her Anthony—and she had—Peter! She laughed a little to stifle a sigh. Diana had the substance—she her shadowy memories.

A faint breeze had sprung up. The yachts tugged at their moorings as the tide turned. Far to the southeast Minot's light blinked its one-four-three—"I-warn-you"—message to the ships. Diana had once said of it, "The sweethearts off the coast translate it differently—'I-love-you.' That's what Anthony told me."

How she had always quoted him! Even when for a brief time she had drifted toward that other, she had clung to her belief in Anthony's faith and goodness—and when she had shaken herself free she had flown back to him.

And now—in the dim room below Diana was coming at last into her own!

The little lady crept into bed, shivering—perhaps with the chill of the spring night, perhaps with the thought of the happiness from which she was left out.

Presently she heard again the beat of the motor. Beginning in front of the house, it grew fainter in the distance; then silence, and at last a soft step on the stairs.

"Sophie," there was that in Diana's voice which made her sit up and listen, "Sophie, are you asleep?"

Mrs. Martens lighted the bedside candle with shaking hands. Diana came forward into the circle of light. Diana—with all of youth gone from her. Diana stripped of joy. Diana with the shimmering blue gown seeming to mock the tragedy in her face.

She came up to the bed and stood looking down at her friend.

"Listen, Sophie," she said, brokenly, "see what I've done. Anthony is engaged, Sophie. Engaged to another girl!"

Peter, in his basket, slept soundly all night. But Sophie slept not at all. And early in the morning she went down to her friend.

Diana had taken the room which had been her mother's. She had kept the carved canopy bed and other massive pieces, but she had changed the hangings and the wall covering from mauve to rose-color.

"You see, Sophie," she had explained one day in Berlin, "there comes a time in the life of every woman when she needs rose-color to counteract the gray of her existence. If you put blue with gray you get gray. But if you put pink with gray you get rose-color. Perhaps you didn't know that before, Sophie, but now you do. And you'll know also that when I dare wear a blue gown I am feeling positively infantile."

Diana, in négligé, had always made Mrs. Martens think of a rose in bloom. She had a fashion of swathing her head, cap-fashion, in wide pink ribbon, and her crêpe kimonos always reflected the same enchanting hue.

But this morning it was a white rose which lay back on the pillows. Diana's loose brown braids hung straight down on each side of her pale face. There were shadows under her eyes.

"Don't look at me that way, Sophie," she said, sharply, as Mrs. Martens came up to the bed. "I—I'm not going into a decline—or break my heart—or——"

She broke off and said in a changed voice, "You're a dear." Then with a pitiful little laugh, "It wouldn't be so hard—but she's so young, Sophie."

"Eighteen—poor Anthony!"

"Do you think he is really unhappy, Sophie?"

The night before when she had lain in Mrs. Martens' comforting arms, she had thought only of her own misery. For a time she had been just a little sobbing child to be consoled. All her poise, all her self-restraint had gone down under the force of the overwhelming shock.

But now a wild hope sprang up in her breast. Why should two people suffer for the sake of one? And the other girl was so young—she would get over it.

Yet, remembering Anthony's face as he had left her, she had little hope.

"I wish you might have been prepared for this," he had said. "I wrote a letter, but it must have missed you. Perhaps it has been best to talk it out—that's why I came. May I still come, sometimes, Diana?"

Then her pride had risen to meet the crisis.

"As if anything could spoil our friendship, Anthony," she had told him bravely. "I want you to come—and some day you must bring—the Girl."

"You will like her," he had said, eagerly, with a man's blundering confidence, "and you can help her. She is very lonely, Diana—and I was lonely——"

That had been the one shred of apology which he had vouchsafed for the act which had spoiled their lives.

When he had first entered the moonlighted room, she had turned from the piano and had held out her hands to him.

He had taken them, and had stood looking down at her, with eyes which spoke what his lips would not say.

And at last he had asked, "Why didn't you marry that fellow in Berlin, Di?"

"Because I didn't love him, Anthony. I found out just in time—and I found out, too, just in time that—it was you—Anthony."

Then he had said, "Hush," and had dropped her hands, and after a long time, he had spoken. "Di, I've asked another woman to marry me, and she has said, 'Yes.'"

Out of a stunned silence she had whispered. "How—did it happen?"

"Don't ask me—it is done—and it can't be undone—we have made a mess of things, Diana——"

He gave the bare details; of the sick mother who had crept back after years of absence to die in her own town, of the girl and her loneliness, of her child-like faith in him.

When he had finished, she had laid her hand on his arm. "But do you love her, do you really love her, Anthony?" had been her desolate demand.

He had drawn back, and not meeting her eyes, had said, very low, "You haven't the right to ask that question, Di, or I to answer it——"

And in that moment she had realized that the barrier which separated herself and Anthony was high enough to shut out happiness.

"Oh—oh." As Diana's thoughts came back to the present, she sat up in bed and wept helplessly. "Oh, I don't know what I am going to do, Sophie. I've always been so self-sufficient, and now it seems as if my whole world revolves about one man——"

Never before had Diana, self-contained Diana, talked to her friend of the things which lay deep beneath the surface, but now she revealed her soul to the little woman who had known love in all its fulfilment, and who, having lost that love, still lived.

"What you must do," said Sophie, softly, "is to face it. You've got to look at the thing squarely, dearest-dear. It is because you and Anthony forgot to keep burning the sacred fires that this trouble has come upon you."

"What do you mean, Sophie?"

"When two people love each other," said Sophie, slowly, "it is a wonderful thing, a sacred thing, Diana. What you gave Ulric was not love—you were fascinated for the moment, and when you found him disappointing, you let him go lightly, yet all the time, deep in your heart, was this great Anthony—is it not so, my Diana?"

"Yes," the other whispered, with her face hidden.

"And Anthony, when he thought he had lost you, took this little girl to fill your place—and she can never fill it, and so because each of you has made of love a light thing, you must have your punishment. We must reap what we sow, Diana.

"Don't think I am not sympathetic, liebchen," she went on, "but, oh, Diana, I'd rather see you this way than with Ulric Van Rosen as your lover."

She knelt by the bed with her arms about her friend. Two years before Diana had comforted Sophie when death had claimed the great-hearted husband who had made the little woman's life complete. Since then they had clung together, and there had developed in Sophie an almost maternal devotion for the brilliant girl who had hitherto moved through life triumphant and serene.

Delia, at the door, presented a worried face. "I've got some milk toast for Miss Diana," she explained, "and your breakfast is waiting for you, Miss Sophie——"

"Breakfast," Diana pushed back the brown brightness of her hair and laughed hysterically; "is that the way the world must go on for me now, Sophie? You know—for you've been through it—must I eat and drink and be merry when my heart is—broken——?"