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Title: The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident

Author: Edgar Saltus

Release Date: July 20, 2010 [EBook #33207]

Language: English

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THE PERFUME OF EROS




By Mr Saltus

    IMPERIAL PURPLE
    THE POMPS OF SATAN
    MARY MAGDALEN
    A TRANSACTION IN HEARTS
    THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT
    THE PACE THAT KILLS
    THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION
    PURPLE AND FINE WOMEN
    MR. INCONT'S MISADVENTURE
    THE TRUTH ABOUT TRISTOEM VARICK
    LOVE AND LORE
    THE STORY WITHOUT A NAME
    EDEN

    In Preparation
    SCAFFOLDS AND ALTARS




    The

    Perfume of Eros

    A FIFTH AVENUE INCIDENT

    By
    EDGAR SALTUS

    New York

    A. WESSELS COMPANY

    1905




    Copyrighted 1905 by

    EDGAR SALTUS

    Printed October, 1905

    PRESS OF

    BRAUNWORTH & CO.

    BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS

    BROOKLYN, N. Y.




THE FACTS IN THE CASE




TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE FACTS IN THE CASE

  CHAPTER                                  PAGE

       I. A MAN OF FASHION                    9

      II. THE POCKET VENUS                   19

     III. THE EX-FIRST LADY                  32

      IV. ENCHANTMENT                        44

       V. MARIE CHANGES HER NAME             52

      VI. THE YELLOW FAY                     63

     VII. SWEET-AND-TWENTY                   71

    VIII. TWO IN A TURRET                    80

      IX. FANNY CHANGES HER CLOTHES          89

       X. A VICTIM                          101


THE GENERAL SESSIONS

  CHAPTER                                  PAGE

       I. DISENCHANTMENT                    111

      II. THE MOTE IN THE EYE               121

     III. THE GATES OF LIFE                 133

      IV. THE RETURN OF THE YELLOW FAY      144

       V. EXIT FANNY                        156

      VI. WHAT THE PAPERS SAID              166

     VII. HELD WITHOUT BAIL                 177

    VIII. THE DEFENDANT TO THE BAR          191

      IX. THE TWELFTH JUROR                 202

       X. THE VERDICT                       219




THE PERFUME OF EROS

CHAPTER I

A MAN OF FASHION


"Royal," said the man's mother that evening, "are you still thinking
of Fanny Price?"

It was in Gramercy Park. As you may or may not know, Gramercy Park is
the least noisy spot in the metropolitan Bedlam. Without being
unreasonably aristocratic it is sedate and what agents call exclusive.

The park itself is essentially that. Its design is rather English. The
use is restricted to adjoining residents. About it is a fence of high
iron. Within are trees, paths, grasses, benches, great vases and a
fountain. But none of the usual loungers, none of the leprous men,
rancid women, and epileptic children that swarm in other New York
squares. Yet these squares are open to all. To enter this park you
must have a key. By day it is a playground. Nurse-maids come there
with little boys and girls, the subdued, undemonstrative, beautifully
dressed children of the rich. At night it is empty as a vacant bier.

In a house that fronted the north side Royal Loftus lived with his
mother, a proud, arrogant woman socially known to all, but who
socially knew but few. Behind her, in the shade of the family tree,
was her dead lord, Royal's father and, more impressively still, the
latter's relatives, the entire Loftus contingent, a set of people
super-respectable, supernally rich. She too was rich. She wore a wig,
walked with a staff, spoke with a Mayfair intonation in a high-pitched
voice, and, in the amplitudes of widowhood and wealth, entertained
frequently but cared only for her son.

On this evening the two were seated together in a drawing-room that
faced the park. The walls, after a fashion of long ago, were frescoed.
The ceiling too was frescoed. The furniture belonged also to an
earlier day. The modern note in the room was the absence of
chandeliers and the appearance of Royal Loftus, who, in a Paris shirt
and London clothes, was contemplating his painted nails.

At his feet was an Ardebil rug which originally had cost a small
fortune and now was worth a big one. In allusion to it a girl to whom
he had handed out the usual "You don't care for me," had retorted,
"Not care for you! Why, Royal, I worship the rug you tread on."

That girl was Fanny Price.

"No," he answered in reply to his mother's question. The answer was
strangely truthful. Fanny Price had tantalized him greatly.
Semi-continuously he had thought of her for a long time. But not
matrimonially. To him matrimony meant always one woman more and
usually one man less. He had no wish to dwindle. When he was fifty he
might, perhaps, to make a finish, marry some girl who wanted to begin.
But that unselfishness was remote. He was quite young; what is worse,
he was abominably good-looking. Fancy Aramis in a Piccadilly coat.
That was the way he looked. His features were chiseled. On his lip was
a mustache so slight that it might have been made with a crayon. His
hair was black. His eyes were blue. Where they were not blue they were
white, very white. They were wonderful eyes. With them he had done a
great deal of execution.

At the time they rather haunted a young woman who moved in another
sphere and whose acquaintance he had made quite adventurously. The
name of this young woman was Marie Durand. It was of the latter, not
of Fanny Price, that he was thinking.

"No," he repeated. "But was it for Annandale that you asked her for
tonight?"

"How perfectly absurd of you, Royal. Have you forgotten that he is in
love with Sylvia? I asked her partly for you, partly for Orr."

"Is he coming too! Good Lord! it is going to be ghastly."

But at the side of the room a portière was being drawn and a servant
announced:

"Miss Waldron."

With the charming manner of the thoroughbred New York girl a young
woman entered. She was tall, willowy, with a face such as those one
used to see in keepsakes--delightful things which now, like so many
other delightful things, are seen no more.

As she approached Mrs. Loftus, who had risen to greet her, she made a
little courtesy.

"Sylvia, this is so dear of you. And is your mother very well?"

Again the portière was drawn. A voice announced:

"Miss Price."

Then there appeared a girl adorably constructed--constructed, too, to
be adored. She was slight and very fair. Her mouth resembled the red
pulp of some flower of flesh. Her eyes were pools of purple, her hair
a turban of gold.

Cannibalistically Loftus looked the delicious apparition up and down.
He could have eaten it.

"Mr. Annandale," the voice announced.

A man, big and blond, with a cavalry mustache and an amiable, aimless
air, strolled in.

"Mr. Melanchthon Orr."

On the heels of Annandale came a cousin of Miss Waldron, a lawyer by
trade, a man with a bulldog face that was positively attractive.

There were more how-do-you-do's, the usual platitudes, interrupted by
the opening of doors at the further end of the room, where a butler, a
squad of lackeys behind him, disclosed himself in silent announcement
of dinner.

After the general move which then ensued and hosts and guests were
seated at table, Orr created an immediate diversion by calling to
Fanny Price and telling her that shortly she was to marry.

"Yes," he continued, "and my cousin Sylvia is to marry also, though
not so soon; but either Annandale or Royal will never marry at all."

Bombarded by sudden questions Orr gazed calmly about.

"How do I know? Miranda told me. Miranda the spook. She charged five
dollars for the information. If you like to make it up to me, I shall
not mind in the least. On the contrary. You see, Mrs. Loftus," Orr
added, turning to his hostess, "I happened, when I went to her, to
have your very kind invitation for this evening in my pocket, and, as
she wanted something to psychometrize, I gave her that. She held it to
her forehead and said, 'I see you in the house of an elegant
lady'--that is you, Mrs. Loftus; yes, there is no doubt about it--'and
there are present two young ladies, one fair, one dark, and two
gentlemen; one of the gentlemen will never marry, but the dark young
lady will marry in two years and the fair young lady in one. Five
dollars. Thank you. Next.'"

"Did she say nothing about me except that I am an 'elegant lady'?"
Mrs. Loftus, with a pained laugh and a high voice, inquired.

"Did she say whom I am to marry?" Fanny Price asked, smiling, as she
spoke, at Royal.

"But, Melanchthon, surely you do not believe in these things?" said
Sylvia gravely.

"Of course he does not," Loftus exclaimed. "He does not believe in
anything. Do you, Orr?"

"I believe in a great many things," the lawyer replied. "I have
precisely three hundred and sixty-five beliefs--one for every day in
the year."

"When the twenty-ninth of February comes around how do you manage
then?" said Fanny.

"Yes," said Annandale, "and how about April first?"

Orr raised a finger. "Jest if you will. But beliefs are a great
comfort, or would be among people like you who have none except in
fashion, and there is the oddity of it, for belief in this sort of
thing is very fashionable now, particularly in London. Yes, indeed,
Lady Cloden--you remember her, she was Clara Hastings--well, she went
to a spook in Tottenham Court Road, and the spook told her that she
would have twins. Immediately she had herself insured. In London, you
know, you can be insured against anything. The twins appeared and she
got £5,000. Belief in this sort of thing is therefore not merely
fashionable but convenient."

In the ripple of laughter which followed the logic, Orr turned to Mrs.
Loftus, Annandale to Miss Waldron, Loftus to Fanny Price.

"You take very kindly to snubbing, don't you?" said the latter.

"I?"

"Oh, pooh! The other day I saw Mr. Royal Loftus trying to scrape
acquaintance with a young person in the street. I never laughed more
in my life. She would not look at you. Is that sort of thing amusing?
Why don't you take a girl of your size?"

Loftus looked into Fanny's eyes. "If you want to know, because you are
all so deuced prim."

"Ah!" and Fanny made a tantalizing little face, showing, as she did
so, the point of her tongue. "Now tell me, what makes you think so?"

Across the table Annandale was talking to Sylvia Waldron. His manner
was rather earnest, but his utterance had become a trifle thick.

"Oh, Arthur," the girl at last interrupted him. "Don't drink any more.
You have had five glasses of champagne already."

Heroically Annandale put his glass down. "Since you wish it, I won't.
But it does not hurt me. I can stand anything."

"I am afraid it may grow on you."

Annandale laughed. "Grow on me," he repeated. "I like that. Why, I am
cultivating it."

Miss Waldron laughed too. "Yes, but you know you must not. I won't let
you." Then at once, with that tact which was part of her, she changed
the subject. "Doesn't Fanny look well tonight?"

"Very. She is the prettiest girl in New York. But you are the best
and the dearest. What is more, you are an angel."

"To you I want to try to be."

"Only," resumed Annandale with a spark of the wit which is born of
champagne, "don't try to be a saint--it is a step backward."

"Yes, Mrs. Loftus," Orr was saying, "Miranda is fat, very fat. All
mediums are. The fatter they are the more confidence you may have."

Then there was more small talk. Courses succeeded each other. Sweets
came and went. Presently Mrs. Loftus looked circuitously about and
slowly arose. When she and the girls had gone and the men were
reseated Loftus turned to Orr.

"Did the spook say anything else?"

Orr was selecting a cigar from a cabinet on wheels which a servant
trundled about. He chose and lighted one before he replied. Then he
looked at Loftus.

"Yes, she told me that she saw--" Orr paused. The cigar had gone out.
He lighted it again. "She told me that she saw death hereabouts."

Loftus was also lighting a cigar. "Then I too am a spook," he replied.
"I foretold that you would say something ghastly."

"But, my dear fellow," Orr rejoined, "truth is always that. People
fancy that it is made of lace and pearls like a girl on her wedding
day. It is not that at all. It is just what you call it. It is
ghastly. Read history. Any reliable work is but a succession of
groans. The more reliable it is the more groans there will be."

Annandale, who had been helping himself to brandy, interrupted.
"Talking of reading things, I saw somewhere that after some dinner or
other, when the women had gone, a chap began on a rather--well, don't
you know, a sort of barnyard story and the host, who could not quite
stomach it, said: 'Suppose we continue the conversation in the
drawing-room?' So, Royal, what do you say? If Orr is going to shock
us, suppose we do."

Loftus with a painted finger-tip flipped the ashes from his cigar.

"I fear that I have lost the ability to be shocked, but not the
ability to be bored."

Yet presently, after another cigar and conscious perhaps that Fanny
Price, though often exasperating, never bored, he returned with his
guests to the drawing-room.




CHAPTER II

THE POCKET VENUS


"How do you like my hat?" said Fanny to Sylvia. Since the dinner a
week had gone. The two girls were in Irving Place.

Irving Place is south of Gramercy Park. To the west are the multiple
atrocities of Union Square, to the east are the nameless shames of
Third avenue. Between the two Irving Place lies, a survival of the
peace of old New York. At the lower end are the encroaching menaces of
trade, but at the upper end, from which you enter Gramercy Park, there
is a quiet, pervasive and almost provincial. It was here that Sylvia
Waldron lived.

People take a house for six months or an apartment for a year and call
it a home. That is a base use for a sacred word. A home is a place in
which you are born, in which your people die and your progeny emerge.
A home predicates the present, but particularly the past and with it
the future. Any other variety of residence may be agreeable or the
reverse, but it is not a home.

In Irving Place there are homes. Among them was the house in which
Sylvia Waldron lived. It had been in her family for sixty years. In
London a tenure such as that is common. In New York it is phenomenal.

To Sylvia the phenomenon was a matter of course. What amazed her were
the migrations of others. Of Fanny, for instance. Each autumn Sylvia
would say to her, "Where are you to be?" And Fanny, who at the time
might be lodged in a hotel, or camping with a relative, or visiting at
Tuxedo, or stopping in Westchester, never could tell. But by December
the girl and her mother would find quarters somewhere and there remain
until that acrobat, summer, turned handsprings into town and
frightened them off.

Summer had not yet come. But May had and, with it, an eager glitter,
skies of silk, all the caresses and surrenders of spring.

The season was becoming to Fanny. She fitted in it. She was a young
Venus in Paris clothes--Aphrodite a maiden, touched up by Doucet. In
her manner was a charm quite incandescent. In her voice were
intonations that conveyed the sensation of a kiss. Her eyes were very
loquacious. She could, when she chose, flood them with languors. She
could, too, charge them with rebuke. You never knew, though, just what
she would do. But you always did know what Sylvia would not.

Sylvia suggested the immateriality that the painters of long ago gave
to certain figures which they wished to represent as floating from the
canvas into space. You felt that her mind was clean as wholesome
fruit, that her speech could no more weary than could a star, that her
heart, like her house, was a home. She detained, but Fanny allured.

In spite of which or perhaps precisely because of their sheer
dissimilarity the two girls were friends. But association weaves
mysterious ties. It unites people who otherwise would come to blows.
Fanny and Sylvia had been brought up together. The mesh woven in
younger days was about them still, and on this particular noon in May
they made a picture which, while contrasting, was charmful.

"You really like my hat?"

The hat was gray. The girl's dress was gray. The skirt was of the
variety known as trotabout. The whole thing was severely plain, yet
astonishingly smart. Sylvia was also in street dress. The latter was
black.

They were in the parlor. For in New York there are still parlors. And
why not? A parlor--or parloir--is a talking-place. Yet in this
instance not a gay place. It was spacious, sombre, severe.

"And now," said Fanny, after the hat had been properly praised, "tell
me when it is to be?"

"When is what to be?"

"You and Arthur?"

"Next autumn."

"I shall send a fish knife," said Fanny, savorously. "A fish knife
always looks so big and costs so little. Though if I could I would
give you a diamond crown."

"Give me your promise to be bridesmaid, and you will have given me
what I want from you most."

"But what am I to wear? And oh, Sylvia, how am I to get it? I don't
dare any more to so much as look in on Annette, or Juliette, or
Marguerite. There are streets into which I can no longer go. I told
Loftus that, and he said--so sympathetically too--'Ah, is it memories
that prevent you?' 'Rubbish,' I told him, 'it's bills.'"

"Fanny! How could you? He might have offered to pay them."

"If he had only offered to owe them!" Fanny laughed as she spoke and
patted her perfect skirt.

"But he has other fish to fry. Do you know the other day I saw him--"

But what Fanny had seen was never told, or at least not then.
Annandale was invading the parlor.

"Conquering hero!" cried Fanny. "I am here congratulating Sylvia."

"I congratulate myself that you are. I have a motor at the door, and I
propose to take you both to Sherry's, afterward, if you like, to the
races. There you may congratulate me."

"What is this about Sherry's?" Again the parlor was invaded. This time
by Sylvia's mother. She had bright cheeks, bright eyes, bright hair.
In her voice was indulgence, in her manner ease. She gave a hand to
Fanny, the other to Annandale.

"In my day," she resumed, "girls did not go lunching without someone
to look after them."

"They certainly did not go to Sherry's," said Annandale. "There was no
Sherry's to go to. But why won't you come with us?"

"Thank you, Arthur. It is not because Fanny or Sylvia needs looking
after. But when I was their age anything of the sort would have been
thought so common. Yet then, what was common at that time seems to
have been accepted since. Now, there is a chance to call me
old-fashioned."

"I can do better than that," said Annandale, "I can call you grande
dame."

"Yes," Fanny threw in, "and that, don't you think, is so superior to
being merely--ahem--demned grand."

"Why, Fanny!" And Mrs. Waldron, at once amused at the jest and
startled at the expression, shook her finger at her.

But Annandale hastened to her rescue. "Fanny is quite right, Mrs.
Waldron. You meet women nowadays whose grandfathers, if they had any,
were paving the streets while your own were governing the country and
who, just because they happen to be beastly rich, put on airs that
would be comical in an empress. Now, won't you change your mind and
come with us? At Sherry's there are always some choice selections on
view."

"You are not very tempting, Arthur. But if the girls think otherwise,
take them. And don't forget. You dine with us tonight."

Thereat, presently, after a scurry through sunshine and streets,
Sherry's was reached.

There Annandale wanted to order a châteaubriand. The girls rebelled.
A maitre d'hôtel suggested melons and a suprème with a bombe to
follow.

Annandale turned to him severely. "Ferdinand, I object to your telling
me what you want me to eat."

"Let me order," said Sylvia. "Fanny, what would you like?"

"Cucumbers, asparagus, strawberries."

"Chicken?"

Fanny nodded.

"Yes," said Annandale to the chastened waiter, "order that and some
moselle, and I want a Scotch and soda. There's Orr," he interrupted
himself to announce. "I wonder what he is doing uptown? And there's
Loftus."

At the mention of Orr, Fanny, who had been eying an adjacent gown,
evinced no interest. But at the mention of Loftus she glanced about
the room.

It was large, high-ceiled, peopled with actresses and men-about-town,
smart women and stupid boys, young girls and old beaux. From a balcony
there dripped the twang of mandolins. In the air was the savor of
pineapple, the smell of orris, the odor of food and flowers.

On entering Sylvia had stopped to say a word at one table, Fanny had
loitered at another. Then in their trip to a table already reserved,
a trip conducted by the maitre d'hôtel whom Annandale had rebuked,
murmurs trailed after them, the echo of their names, observations
profoundly analytical. "That's Fanny Price, the great beauty." "That's
Miss Waldron, who is engaged to Arthur Annandale." "That is Annandale
there"--the usual subtleties of the small people of a big city. Now,
at the entrance, Orr and Loftus appeared.

"Shall I ask them to join us?" Annandale asked.

"Yes, do," said Fanny. "I like Mr. Orr so much."

But Loftus, who, with his hands in his pockets, a monocle in his eye,
had been looking about with an air of great contempt for everybody,
already with Orr was approaching. On reaching the table very little
urging was required to induce them to sit, and, when seated they were,
Loftus was next to Fanny.

"What are you doing uptown at this hour?" Annandale asked Orr, who had
got between Loftus and Sylvia. "I thought you lawyers were all so
infernally busy."

"Everybody ought to be," Orr replied. "Although an anarchist who had
managed to get himself locked up, and whom I succeeded in getting out,
confided to me that only imbeciles work. By way of exchange I had to
confide to him that it is only imbeciles that do not."

"Now that," said Annandale, who had never done a stroke of work in his
life, "is what I call a very dangerous theory."

"A theory that is not dangerous," Orr retorted, "can hardly be called
a theory at all."

With superior tact Sylvia intervened. "But what is anarchy,
Melanchthon? Socialism I know about, but anarchy--?"

"To put it vulgarly, I drink and you pay."

"But suppose I am an anarchist?"

"Then Sherry pays."

"But supposing he is an anarchist?"

"Then there is a row. And there will be one. The country is drifting
that way. It will, I think, be bloody, but I think, too, it will be
brief. Anarchists, you know, maintain that of all prejudices capital
and matrimony are the stupidest. What they demand is the free
circulation of money and women. As a nation, we are great at
entertaining, but we will never entertain that."

"Why, then, did you not let the beggar rot where he was?" Annandale
swiftly and severely inquired.

"Oh, you know, if I had not got him out someone else would have, and I
thought it better that the circulation of money should proceed
directly from his pocket to mine."

"You haven't any stupid prejudices yourself, that's clear," said
Annandale, helping himself as he spoke to more Scotch. "Sylvia," he
continued, "if I am ever up for murder I will retain Melanchthon Orr."

Orr laughed. "That retainer will never reach me. You would not hurt a
fly."

"Wouldn't I?" And Annandale assumed an expression of great ferocity.
"You don't know me. I can imagine circumstances in which I could wade
in gore. By the way, I have ordered a revolver."

"What!"

"Yes, a burglar got in my place the night before last and woke me up.
If he comes back and wakes me up again I'll blow his head off."

Sylvia looked at him much as she might at a boastful child. "Yes, yes,
Arthur, but please don't take so much of that whisky."

"I think I will have a drop of it, if I may," said Loftus, who
meanwhile had been talking to Fanny. In a moment he turned to her
anew.

"Where are you going this summer?"

"To Narragansett. It is cool and cheap. Why don't you come?"

"It is such a beastly hole."

"Well, perhaps. But do you think you would think so if I were there?"

"That would rather depend on how you treated me."

"You mean, don't you, that it would rather depend on how I let you
treat me?" Fanny, as she spoke, looked Loftus in the eyes and made a
face at him.

That face, Loftus, after a momentary interlude with knife and fork,
tried to mimic. "If a chap gave you the chance you would drive him to
the devil."

On Fanny's lips a smile bubbled. She shook her pretty head. "No, not
half so far. Not even so far as the other end of Fifth avenue, where I
saw you trying to scrape acquaintance with that girl. Apropos. You
might tell me. How are matters progressing? Has the castle
capitulated?"

"I haven't an idea what you are talking about."

"That's right. Assume a virtue though you have it not. It's a good
plan."

"It does not appear to be yours."

"Appearances may be deceptive."

"And even may not be."

Sylvia interrupted them. "What are you two quarreling about?"

"Mr. Loftus does not like my hat. Don't you like it, Mr. Orr?"

"I like everything about you, everything, from the crown of your head
to the soles of your feet."

"There!" exclaimed Fanny. "That is the way I like to have a man talk."

"It is dreadfully difficult," Loftus threw in.

"You seem to find it so," Fanny threw back.

Sylvia raised a finger. "Mr. Loftus, if you do not stop quarreling
with Fanny I will make you come and sit by me."

"If I am to look upon that as a punishment, Miss Waldron," Loftus with
negligent gallantry replied, "what would you have me regard as a
reward?"

"Arthur! Arthur!" Fanny cried. "Did you hear that? This man is making
up to Sylvia."

But Annandale did not seem in the least alarmed. He was looking about
for Ferdinand. "Here," he began, when at last the waiter appeared.
"You neglect us shamefully. We want some more moselle and more
Scotch."

"None for me," said Loftus rising. "I have an appointment."

"Appointment," Fanny announced, "is very good English for
_rendezvous_."

"And _taisez-vous, mademoiselle_, is very good French for I wish it
were with yourself."

"I have not a doubt of it."

"Fanny!" Sylvia objected. "You are impossible."

"Yes," Fanny indolently replied. "Yet then, to be impossible and seem
the reverse is the proper caper for a debutante. Heigho! I wish girls
smoked here. I would give a little of my small change for a cigarette.
Are you really off, Royal. Well, my love to the lady."




CHAPTER III

THE EX-FIRST LADY


Loftus, letting himself into a hansom, sailed away. At Morris Park
that afternoon there were to be races, and up the maelstrom of Fifth
avenue came scudding motors, fleeting traps.

As the hansom descended the current Loftus nodded to this acquaintance
and to that, occasionally raising his hat as women smiled and bowed.
Occasionally, too, he contemplated what he could of himself in the
little mirror at the side of the cab. He looked triumphant and
treacherous.

Fanny, he reflected, was ideal. But exacting, ambitious even. She had
a perfect mania for matrimony. There was another girl that he had in
mind whom he fancied more reasonable. This other was Marie Durand.

In just what way he had met her was never quite clear. Fanny, who had
witnessed the preliminary skirmish, always believed that he had
picked her up. Afterward, at the time of the trial, it was so
reported. The report was false in addition to being vulgar. Marie
Durand was not of that sort. There was nothing fast or flirtatious
about her. But she was a human being. She had eyes. She had a heart.
By nature she was sensitive. Moreover, she was but nineteen. Being
human, sensitive, and not very old, having eyes to see and a heart
that throbbed, she was impressionable and, to her misfortune, Loftus
impressed her.

Loftus was rather used to impressing people. He saw the girl on Fifth
avenue, followed her home, learned her name--or thought he did--and
sent her flowers every day until he saw her again, when he presumed to
accost her. At that impertinence Marie tilted her nose and trotted on,
distant, disdainful, demure.

But not indifferent. Not oblivious either. Often she had seen him.
Occasionally on a high drag behind a piebald four-in-hand. In crowded
Fifth avenue, drags, with or without piebalds, are infrequent. This
drag Marie had seen not merely tooling along the street but pictured
in the press. With, of course, full accounts of the driver. As a
consequence she knew who he was, knew that he was one of the rich
young men of New York and that he moved and had his being in the upper
circles.

Marie's own sphere of life was obscure. She lived with her father in
Gay street. Her father, a tailor by trade, was a naturalized
Frenchman, a gaunt Gaul, who had a sallow face, walked with a stoop,
complained of his heart and adored his daughter. To him she was a
pearl, a _perle_, rather. For though he had been long in New York and
spoke English well, he had never quite acquired the accent.

Marie spoke English without any accent whatever. She also spoke
French, sang in it, too, sang in Italian and, with a view to the lyric
stage, or, more exactly, with the hope of studying for it abroad, was,
at the time when this drama begins, taking lessons in what is termed
the _bel canto_.

But her aspirations, in so far as they concerned Europe, her father
was unable to gratify. He could not let her go alone and he could not
afford to throw up what he called his beesness. Here, then, was this
girl, pretty as a picture, with a lovely contralto voice, with
aspirations entirely worldly, with wings, you might say, cooped in Gay
street, spiritually and mentally starved there.

Gay street lies back of Jefferson Market. In shape a crescent, it
curves briefly in a lost and dismal way through a region which,
though but a block or two from Fifth avenue, is almost squalid. At one
end of its short curve is a saloon, at the other an apothecary.

It was from this apothecary that Loftus learned Marie's name--or
thought he did. For inadvertently the man got things mixed as his
drugs and supplied Loftus with the name of a young woman who lived in
a house next to the one in which Loftus had seen the girl enter.

What is more interesting is the fact that, though, while he was
following her there, she had looked neither to the right nor to the
left, or anywhere save straight ahead, she had been fully aware that
he was behind her. How? We cannot tell. It is one of the mysteries of
femininity. But once safely in, boldly she peeked out. Loftus was
crossing the street. Presently he entered the shop. For what, it did
not take Marie more than a minute to conjecture.

Later in the day a motor van appeared in that street. On it was the
name of a Broadway florist. Since the memory of man never before had
such a thing happened. From the van a groom had hopped and, if you
please, with roses. That, too, was phenomenal. Yet thereafter every
day for a week there was the motor, the groom and flowers at a dollar
and a half apiece. The recipient of these attentions was Miss Rebecca
Cohen, the daughter of Mr. Abraham Cohen, who also, like Marie's
father, was a tailor.

Marie saw the van, divined the mistake, and, being as full of fun as a
kitten, greatly enjoyed the continued humor of it. For still into that
sordid street the flowers poured. Every day, to the unhallowed
surprise of Mr. Cohen and to the equal bewilderment of his offspring,
a box of radiant roses was handed out.

In that surprise and bewilderment the neighborhood joined. Scandalized
at the scandal Cohen questioned the groom, questioned the chauffeur.
He might have saved himself the trouble. Then he inquired at the
florist's. But there no one could be found who knew anything at all
about anything whatever. Already he had questioned Rebecca. It seemed
to him that in spite of her protests she must be engaged in some
fathomless intrigue. But Rebecca, whose commercial instinct was
beautifully developed, not only protested but appeased. She told her
father that the roses were worth money. Furthermore, that which is
worth money can be sold. Thereupon sold they were. But quite as
inexplicably as the van had appeared so did its visits cease. When
that happened Mr. Cohen felt and declared that he was robbed. He had
come to regard the roses as assets.

Marie meanwhile, whom the humor of the situation had amused, ended by
worrying over it. She was a good girl, as such conscientious, and it
troubled her, at first only a little and then very much, to think that
Loftus must believe that she was knowingly accepting his flowers.
Moreover, her father had commented upon them; in commenting he had
wondered. Marie began to fear that Loftus might discover the mistake
and turn in and inundate her. She did not know quite what to do. She
thought of writing to him, very distantly, in the third person, or
else anonymously. But the letter did not seem to get itself framed.
Then, from thinking of that, she fell to thinking of him.

To see him she had only to close her eyes. Once he visited her in
dream. He came accompanied by butterflies that fluttered about her and
changed into kisses on her lips. Again she fancied him much sought
after by ladies and became hotly and unaccountably vexed at the idea.
It would be so lovely to really know him, she always decided. But she
did not see at all how that ever could come about.

Yet, of course, it did come about. It came about, moreover, in a
fashion as sordid as the street she lived in.

That street, though sordid, is relatively silent. It is beyond, in
Sixth avenue, that you get a sample of real New York noise. The
slam-bang of the trains overhead, the grinding grunt of the surface
cars, the demon draymen, the clanging motors, the ceaseless crowds,
collaborate in an uproar beside which a bombardment is restful. But
though the entire thoroughfare is appalling, Jefferson Market, behind
which Gay street squats, is infernal.

Loftus loathed it. Until he pursued the girl into its horrors never
before had he been there. Nor, save for her, would he have returned.
But return he did. For recompense he beheld her. She was strolling
along, a roll of music under her arm, in the direction of Fifth
avenue.

It was there he attempted to accost her. Without deigning to seem even
aware that he had presumed to do so, she passed on and, in passing,
turned into Washington Square, where, ascending the steps of a house,
she vanished. It was then three by the clock of a beautiful day in
April.

Loftus was as well able as another to put two and two together. He
knew that young girls do not stroll about with a music roll under
their arm for the fun of it. A music roll predicates lessons, and
there where lessons are must also be a teacher.

From that teacher he was unaware of any good and valid reason why he
should not himself take lessons. But fate is not unrelenting. Of such
toil he was spared. He spared himself too any further toil that day.
He felt that he had done enough. He had quarried the girl again,
stalked her to what was obviously a boarding-house. He turned on his
heel.

The next day he was back at that house, inquiring at the door. As a
result he was shown into a shabby back parlor where he made the
acquaintance of Mme. Machin, a tired old Frenchwoman, who, with rouge
on her yellow cheeks, powder on her pointed nose, confided to him that
she had been prima donna, though whether _assoluta_ or _dissoluta_ she
omitted to state.

But her antecedents, her possibilities as well, Loftus divined at a
glance and, while he was at it, divining too, that, personally, she
was no better, and, financially, no better off than the law allows,
asked point-blank about the Miss Cohen who had come there at three the
day before. Learning then from the ex-first lady that the girl's name
was not Cohen but Durand, he damned the apothecary and offered a
hundred dollars to be introduced. Poverty is not a crime. But it is
rumored to be an incentive. The crime which Loftus proposed to Mme.
Machin is one which the code does not specify and the law cannot
reach. Knowing which, the woman may have been guilty of it before and,
the opportunity occurring, was guilty again--salving her conscience,
if she had a conscience, with the convenient, "Mon Dieu, il faut
vivre!"

Anyway, at the offer she did not so much as blink. She smiled very
receptively and declared that she would be charmed.

When, therefore, two days later Marie re-entered that shabby back
parlor she found Loftus there. Generally the girl and the ex-first
lady got to work at once, sometimes with the brindisi from "Lucrezia
Borgia," sometimes with arias from "Aïda." Save themselves no one was
ever present.

Now at the unexpected spectacle of the man the cream of the girl's
delicate skin suffused. It was as though there were claret in it.
She had not an idea what to do and, before she could decide,
ceremoniously, with due regard for the pomps of etiquette, Loftus
had been introduced.

If abrupt, the introduction was at least conventional, and Marie, who
had not the remotest suspicion that it was all bought and paid for and
who, if consciously startled, subconsciously was pleased, attributing
the whole thing to accident and, flushing still, smiled and sat down.

"I think," said Loftus, "that I have had the pleasure of seeing you
before."

At this inanity Marie looked first at him, then at the carpet. She
did not know at all what he was saying. But in his voice was a
deference, in his manner a sorcery and in his bearing and appearance
something that went to her head. It was all very novel and delightful,
and she flushed again.

"Yes," Loftus resumed, "and when I did see you I committed a very
grave offense. Can you forgive me?"

For countenance sake the girl turned to Mme. Machin. But the ex-first
lady, pretexting a pretext, had gone.

"Can you?" Loftus requested. "Can you forgive?"

Forgive indeed! Had she not so forgiven that she had almost wished a
renewal of that grave offense? She did not answer. It was her face
that spoke for her. But the silence Loftus affected to misconstrue.

"Couldn't you try?"

"Yes." The monosyllable fell from her softly, almost inaudibly. Yet
for his purpose it sufficed.

"Thank you. I hoped that you would. But will you let me tell you now
how I came to behave as I did?"

To this, timorously, with the slightest movement of her pretty head,
the girl assented.

"Because I could not help myself. Because at the first sight of you I
knew that I loved you. Because I felt that I could never love anyone
else."

Marie started. She was crimson. Starting, she half got from her seat.
Loftus caught at her hand. She disengaged it. But he caught at it
again.

"I love you," he continued, burning her with his words, with the
contact of his fingers, that had intertwisted with hers. "Look at me,
I love your eyes. Speak to me, I love your voice."

But the door opened. Preceded by a precautionary roulade, the ex-first
lady reappeared.

"Allons!" she remarked to the ceiling. "Et maintenant, mademoiselle,
au travail."

Loftus stood up, took Marie's hand again, held it a second, nodded at
the woman. In a moment he had gone.

"Au revoir," the ex-first lady called after him. She turned to the
girl. "A gallant monsieur. And good to look at." Then seating herself
at the piano she attacked the brindisi from "Lucrezia." "Ah! the
segreto!" she interrupted herself to exclaim, "il segreto per esser
felice--the secret of happiness! Mais! There is but one! C'est
l'amour! And with a gallant monsieur like that! And rich! C'est le
rêve! N'est ce pas, mon enfant?"

"Je vous en prie, madame," said Marie severely, or rather as severely
as she could, for she was trembling with emotion, saturated with the
love that had been thrown at her head, drenched with it, frightened
too at the apperception of the secret which the aria that her teacher
was strumming revealed.




CHAPTER IV

ENCHANTMENT


Sailing in the hansom down Fifth avenue, Loftus thought of that first
interview with the girl, of the den in which it had occurred and of
his subsequent visits there. Since the introduction he had seen her
three times, seen, too, of course, that she was not up to Fanny, but
he had seen also that she was less ambitious, more tractable in every
way. Besides, one is not loved every afternoon. To him that was the
main point, and of that point he was now tolerably sure.

Suddenly the hansom tacked, veered and landed him at the ex-first
lady's door.

"Bonjour, mon beau seigneur," the woman began when, presently, he
reached her lair. "The little one will not delay."

"And then?"

"Be tranquil. I have other cats to whip."

Mme. Machin was hatted and gloved. Loftus stuck his hand in his
pocket. Mme. Machin was too genteel to notice. From the pocket he drew
a roll of yellow bills. Mme. Machin affected entire unconcern. The
bills he put in her paw. Mme. Machin was so entirely unconscious of
the liberty that she turned to the mantel, picked up a bag of bead,
opened it, took from it a little puff with which she dusted her nose.
Then the puff went back into the bag. With it went the bills.

"I run," she announced. She moved to the door. There, looking at
Loftus over her shoulder, she stopped. "You come again?"

For reply Loftus made a gesture.

"Yes," said the woman. "Naturally. It depends. But let me know. It is
more commodious. Pas de scandale, eh?"

To this Loftus made no reply whatever. But his expression was
translatable into "what do you take me for?"

"Allez!" the ex-first lady resumed. "I have confidence."

She opened the door and through it vanished. Loftus removed his
gloves, seated himself at the piano, ran his fingers over the keys,
struck a note which suggested another and attacked the waltz from
"Faust." The appropriateness of it appealed to him. As he played he
hummed. Then, passing upward with the score, he reached the "Salve
Dimora," Faust's salute to Marguerite's home. But in the den where he
sat the aria did not fit. He went back again to the waltz. Then,
precisely as on the stage Marguerite appears, Marie entered.

Loftus jumped up, went to her, took her hand. It was trembling. He led
her to a sofa, seating himself at her side, her hand still in his.

He looked at her. She had the prettiness and timidity of a kitten, a
kitten's grace as well. Like a kitten, she could not have been vulgar
or awkward had she tried. But association and environment had wrapped
about her one of the invisible yet obvious mantles that differentiate
class from class. Loftus was quite aware of that. He was, though,
equally aware that love is a famous costumer. There are few mantles
that it cannot remove and remake. That the girl loved him he knew. The
tremor of her hand assured him more surely than words.

None the less he asked her. It seemed to him only civil. But she did
not answer. The dinginess of the den oppressed him. It occurred to him
that it might be oppressing her. Again he inquired. Only the tremor of
the hand replied.

"Tell me," he repeated.

The girl disengaged her hand. She looked down and away.

"Won't you?" he insisted.

"I ought not to," she said at last.

"But why?"

With her parasol the girl poked at the carpet. "Because it is not
right. It is not right that I should." But at once, with a little
convulsive intake of the breath, she added, "Yet I do."

Then it seemed to her that the room was turning around, that the walls
had receded, that there was but blankness. His lips were on hers. In
their contact everything ceased to be save the consciousness of
something so poignant, so new, that to still the pain of the joy of it
she struggled to be free.

Kissing her again Loftus let her go. Dizzily she got from the sofa.
The parasol had fallen. Her hat was awry. To straighten it she moved
to a mirror. Her face was scarlet. Instantly fear possessed her, fear
not of him but of herself. With uncertain fingers she tried to adjust
the hat.

"I must go."

But Loftus came to her. Bending a bit he whispered in her ear: "Don't
go--don't go ever."

Do what she might she could not manage with her hat. In the glass it
was no longer that which she saw, nor her face, but an abyss, suddenly
precipitate, that had opened there.

"No, don't go," Loftus was saying. "I love you and you love me."

It was, though, not love that was emotionalizing her then. It was
fear. A fear of that abyss and of the lower depths beneath.

"Don't go," Loftus reiterated. "Don't, that is, if you do love me; and
if you do, tell me, will you be my wife?"

At this, before her, in abrupt enchantment, the abyss disappeared.
Where its depths had been were parterres of gems, slopes of asphodel,
the gleam and brilliance of the gates of paradise.

"Your wife!" The wonder of it was in her voice and marveling eyes.

"Come." Taking her hand, Loftus led her to their former seat.

"But----"

"But what?"

"How can I be your wife? I am nobody."

"You are perfect. There is only one thing I fear--" Loftus hesitated.
Nervously the girl looked at him.

"Only one," he continued. "I am not and never shall be half good
enough for you."

"Oh!"

"Never half enough."

"Oh! How can you say that? It is not true. Could I care for you if it
were?"

"And you do?"

"Don't you know it?"

"Then don't go, don't go from me ever."

"But----"

"Yes, I know. You are thinking of your father, of whom you have told
me; perhaps, too, of my mother, of whom I told you. When she knows you
and learns to love you, as she will, we can be married before all the
world. We could now were I not dependent on her. Yet then, am I not
dependent too on you? Come with me, and afterward----"

"I cannot," the girl cried; "it would kill my father."

"You have but to wire him that you have gone to be married, and it
will be the truth."

"I cannot," the girl repeated. "Oh, what are you asking me to do?"

"I am asking you to be my wife. What is the ceremony to you? What are
a few words mumbled by a hired priest? Love, love alone, is marriage."

"No, no. To you perhaps. But not to me."

"And the ceremony shall follow as soon as we can manage. Can you not
trust me for that?"

"But----"

"Will you not trust me? If you are to put your whole life into my
keeping you should at least begin by doing that."

The girl looked at the man and then away, at vistas he could not see,
the winding slopes of asphodel, the sudden and precipitate abyss. Yet
he spoke so fair, she told herself. Surely it was to the slopes he
meant to take her, not to that blackening pit.

"Yet if you won't," Loftus continued, "it is best for both that we
should part."

"For--for always?"

"Yes."

Just why he omitted to explain. But then there are explanations that
explain nothing. Yet to her, for a moment, the threat was like a flash
in darkness. For a moment she thought that she could not let him go.
About her swarmed her dreams. Through them his kisses pierced. For a
moment only. The flash had passed. She was in darkness again. Before
her was the precipitate abyss. Shudderingly she drew from it.

But Loftus was very resolute. "If you will you have my promise."

For answer she looked at him, looked into his eyes, peered into them,
deep down, striving to see what was there, trying to mirror her soul
in his own.

"Before God and man I swear you shall be my wife."

At that, suddenly within her, fear melted away. If she had not seen
his soul she had heard it. Where fear had been was faith. Dumb with
the enchantment of a dream come true, she half arose. But his arms
went about her and in them she lay like seaweed in the tide.




CHAPTER V

MARIE CHANGES HER NAME


Gay Street knew Marie no more. Twenty-second street made her
acquaintance. There, in the Arundel, an apartment house which is just
around the corner from Gramercy Park, Loftus secured quarters for her.

These quarters, convenient for him, to her were temporary. She
regarded them as a tent on the road to the slopes. Even in that light
they were attractive. Though small, they were fastidiously furnished
and formed what agents call a "bijou." Loftus, who had whims which the
girl thought poetic, preferred "aviary." He preferred, too, that she
should change her name. Durand seemed to him extremely plebeian.
Mentally he cast about. Leroy suggested itself. It had in it an echo
of France and also of old New York. As such it appealed to him and,
therefore, to her. There and then Marie became known as Miss Leroy
and, incidentally, very busy.

Every day Annette, Juliette and Marguerite had frocks for her to try
on. There were hats to go with those frocks. There was lingerie to be
selected, stuffs immaterial as moonbeams, cambrics that could be drawn
through a ring. In addition, there was Signor Tambourini, who was to
teach her how to handle her voice, and Baron Mesnilmontant, who was to
teach her to handle a horse. When she so desired she had but to
telephone and in five minutes there was a victoria at the door. For
her sitting-room the florist who had so disturbed Mr. Cohen fetched
flowers every other day.

In the flowers there were thorns, of course. Marie worried about many
things, yet mainly because Mrs. Loftus had not yet "seen and learned
to love her." Against that, though, there were difficulties. At first
Mrs. Loftus had a dreadful cold. Then she had gone out of town to
recuperate. This was very unfortunate, but like the quarters, only
temporary. Loftus assured her of that. What he said was gospel.

The position in which the girl was placed worried her nevertheless.
She knew it was wrong. But always she consoled herself with the belief
that shortly it would be righted. On that belief she would have staked
her soul. Had he not sworn it? Precisely how she would have acted had
she realized that he had lied like a thief one may surmise and never
know. The misery of life is the necessity of becoming accustomed to
certain things. There are natures that adapt themselves more readily
than others. There are also natures that cannot adapt themselves at
all. Had Marie realized the truth it may be that she would have beaten
her head against the walls. Yet it may also be that in the end
adaptability would have come. But not happiness. Happiness consists,
if it consists in anything, in being on good terms with oneself. Had
Marie known the truth never could she have been that. In the
circumstances it was considerate of Loftus to withhold it from her.
But Loftus was a very considerate person. He hated tears, and scenes
he frankly abominated.

Loftus, though considerate, was vain. It was regrettable to him that
he could not parade Marie about. But social New York is severe. Among
its members it refuses to countenance any open disregard for what's
what. Though what occurs behind its back it is too high-bred to
notice.

Loftus, unable to parade Marie about, paraded her in. To the aviary he
brought men, some of whom having otherwise nothing to do with this
drama need not delay its recital, but, among others, he brought
Annandale and Orr.

Annandale, who could not keep a thing from Sylvia, told her about it.
The story so shocked her that she first made a point of his not going
there again and then debated whether she ought to recognize Loftus any
more. In the process she confided the story to Fanny Price, who got
suddenly red--a phenomenon rare with her and which annoyed her very
much, so much that she bit her lip, desisting only through fear of
making it bleed. What is the use of spoiling one's looks?

Marie, meanwhile, rather liked Annandale. She also rather liked Orr.
One evening both were bidden to the aviary. At the bidding Annandale
had hesitated. He did not wish to offend Sylvia. But reflecting that
she need never know, that, anyway, it was none of her business and,
besides, what the deuce! he was not tied to her apron strings, was he?
he concluded to go.

To that conclusion he was assisted by a cocktail. At the time he was
in Madison Square, where on a ground floor he occupied a set of
chambers, a suite of long, large rooms, sumptuously but soberly
furnished with things massive and plain. Here he lived in much luxury
and entire peace, save recently when he had lost a retainer and found
a burglar. The memory of that intrusion recurring, he touched a bell.

A man appeared, smug and solemn, a new valet that he had got in to
replace an old family servant whom an accident had eliminated.

"Harris, I forgot to ask. Did you get the revolver I told you to buy?"

"Yes, sir. A 32 calibre. It is in the pantry, sir."

"Put it in the drawer of my dressing-table."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"And Harris, make me another cocktail." As the man was leaving
Annandale called after him, "Make two."

It was these that assisted Annandale to his decision. A man of means,
without immediate relatives, without ponderable cares, under their
influence he felt rather free to do as he saw fit. The bidding to the
aviary, telephoned for him to Harris, was for that evening. Yet that
evening he was also expected in Irving Place. But Marie's invitation
was for dinner, whereas he was not due at Sylvia's until later on.

It was not necessary, he told himself, to be in two places at once. He
could dovetail one with another. Then presently, having dressed, he
issued forth. But he had omitted to look at the evening papers. He was
interested in certain stocks, and to learn what they were doing he
stopped in at a neighboring club. There encountering men who asked him
to drink, he accepted--though how much he was on the morrow unable to
recall. Yet at the time the effect of the stuff, while insidious, was
not apparent. When ultimately he reached the aviary he was feeling
merely fit, a feeling which the dinner increased.

The dinner, perfect in itself, was perfectly served. The appointments
were superior and the table a delight. Loftus when he did things did
them well. Marie, in a creation of Paquin, imported by Annette, was a
pleasure to behold. She had Orr at her right, Annandale at her left.
Between them and Loftus were half a dozen other men. All were decorous
and beautifully behaved. Except for the absence of feminine guests and
one thing else, there was nothing to denote that they were not at the
house of some smart young married woman. There was not a word uttered
that could not have been bawled through a ballroom. There was not a
suggestion not eminently discreet. In this respect only did the dinner
differ from any other at which you might assist in the upper circles
of New York life.

During the preliminary courses stocks were the sole topic. There was a
boom on in the Street. Everybody was making money, including Marie,
for whom Loftus had bought a few hundred A. O. T.

Orr alone had sold. "You are all mad," he declared. "The whole city
is crazy. The country is on a debauch. Bulls cannot live forever. The
corridas of the Street are just like those of Spain. It is the climax
that differs. There the ring is swept by a supe, here it is struck by
a crisis. That crisis may come next week, next month, next year. But
it will come. It can no more desert the heavens of political economy
than the stars can deviate from their course. It is not here yet, the
bull is very lively, he is tossing everything sky high, but just when
he is at his best and fiercest, just when you are shouting yourselves
hoarse, the great espada, whose name is Time, with one swift thrust
will transfix him. That is the fate of bulls."

"We are to be transfixed, are we?" said Annandale.

Marie looked over at Loftus. "Had I not better sell?"

Orr turned to her. "No; hold on and lose. A loss, particularly a fist
loss, is always a good investment. Besides, if you will permit me to
say, you should have no heed of such things. No, Miss Leroy. You
should content yourself with continuing to be. A woman who does only
that acquires a charm almost supernatural. This was the occupation of
the young goddesses of old Greece. How delightful they were! The rose
was their model. They had learned the secret of its witchery. They
charmed and did nothing. To charm is never easy, but to do nothing is
the most difficult of all things, as it is, too, the most
intellectual. Yes," Orr added after a moment, "it is also a thing
which the rest of us sadly neglect."

"Oh, I say," Loftus threw in. "It is not so long ago that I heard you
maintaining that only imbeciles were idle, that everybody should have
something to do. You are rather contradictory, don't you think?"

"No, not a bit; and for the reason that then I was speaking of the
generality of people, and now of the exceptional few. The idleness of
the imbecile is always imbecilic, but the dreams of a poet have spells
that enthrall. Try to fancy a busy poet. You cannot. It is an anomaly
at which the imagination balks. By the same token you cannot fancy a
useful Venus. You cannot fancy Psyche occupied with anything but love.
Love is--or rather, should be--woman's sole occupation. The perfume of
Eros should be about them all."

"The perfume of Eros!" muttered Annandale, to whom the phrase
appealed. "The perfume of Eros!" he repeated and helped himself to
wine. "I say, Orr, what the dickens is that?"

"Only the motor force of the universe."

"What?"

"Yes, indeed. It is the sublimate of love. And love is the source of
human activity. It has no other. Without it civilization would
retrograde and society return to the woods. Love is the basis of
tragedy, the woof of romance, the incentive of commerce, of crime too,
of heroism as well."

"My!" said Marie, whom the brief deluge of words amazed. "My!"

"I must get that off," Annandale muttered. In the _sotto voce_ of
thought he added, "to Sylvia." Obviously, he had had his fill. He
stood up, making an excuse, imperceptibility lurching as he did so.

It was after ten. Long since coffee had been served. Orr, too, got up.
He thanked his hostess. The other men imitated him. Loftus and Marie
were alone.

Loftus went to a window. Then he turned. "Put on your hat, little
girl, and we will go out; though, after all, I do not see that you
need bother with a hat, unless you prefer."

"I will do as you wish, dear."

Presently they were in Lexington avenue, a moment more, in Gramercy
Park. Loftus, after fumbling for his key, opened one of the little
gates. Within was silence. Occasionally, from the pavement without
came the sound of footsteps.

Loftus and Marie seated themselves on a bench near the gate through
which they had entered. Loftus was smoking. A boy passed; stopped, and
sticking his nose through the railings, called: "Hi, mister, will you
give me a light?"

Loftus made no answer. The boy called again. "Will you? And a cigar
with it?"

Then he laughed and passed on. The silence increased. In the air was a
fragrance, the clinging odor of the honeysuckle, the clean smell of
fresh turf. Beyond, the great dim houses that front the park gave the
place and the hour an accent of their own.

"I like it here," said Marie, "it is so elegant."

"Never let me hear you use that word again. It is provincial, suburban
and, worse, it is shopgirl."

"Yes, dear."

"This evening I saw you eat an ice with a spoon. Never do that. Use a
fork."

"Yes, dear."

Appeased by this docility, Loftus condescended to agree in turn with
her. He, too, liked the park. At night, when the weather was decent,
always he sat there a bit quite by himself. He had done so for years.
He told her this, adding confidentially, "It is a habit."

To Marie the habit seemed most poetic. She said so, explaining that
she was very fond of poetry.

Loftus looked up at the stars. "The only real poetry is there. By the
way, do you believe in God?"

Marie, uncertain of her lover's creeds, hesitatingly glanced at him.
"Yes--in a way. But I won't, if you object."

This self-abnegation pleased Loftus. He twisted his mustache and
smiled. "But no, you little goose, I don't object in the least. On the
contrary. It is right and proper that you should."

Gratified at this encouraging indulgence the girl's hand stole into
his. Then for awhile they sat and talked about nothing whatever,
which, of all subjects, is, perhaps, the least disagreeable. Wearying
at last even of that, they got up to go.

At the gate Marie drew back. A man was passing, swaying uncertainly,
arguing with himself.

"Why! it is Mr. Annandale," the girl in a frightened whisper murmured.

"I wonder where he got all that liquor?" Loftus queried. "Not at
Sylvia Waldron's, I'll wager."

"Sylvia Waldron! What a sweet name," said Marie. "Who is she?"

"The girl he is engaged to."

"Is she pretty?"

"Oh, tall and dark, don't you know. Not at all my style."

But now night had swallowed Annandale. Loftus and Marie passed on.




CHAPTER VI

THE YELLOW FAY


At noon the next day Annandale was not awake nor was he asleep.
Through spaces in which memories met, entangled and sank, he was
groping in search of himself. In these spaces there were things, some
formless, others half-formed, that got between consciousness and
interfered with the search.

These things pulled at him, tripped him, shoved him down to the
memories that were sinking below. The spaces themselves were very
dark. But, in the deeper depths, where memories swooned, the darkness
was punctuated by slender flames the size of pins. They burned him.

Up and away he tried to rise. When he nearly succeeded, the things
above, the things half-formed and formless that were waiting there,
pushed him back. Again he tried. But the darkness was thick, the
depths were thunderous, the things above pounded on his head, the thin
flames lapped at him.

A force took and lifted him high, very high, and suddenly dropped him.
In the abrupt descent he clutched at the things, but he was whirled
through them to receding plains and up again, higher, still higher.
There a ray filtered, in the light of which a memory staggered. He saw
himself drinking in the rooms of that girl of Loftus. From there he
passed into blankness at the end of which stood Sylvia, her face white
and drawn. The vision vanished. Then it seemed to him that he was
drinking with a fat man who had prominent teeth which he took from his
mouth and changed into dice. But where? In hell, perhaps. Annandale
was uncertain. He knew merely that he had been beastly drunk and that
his head was simply splitting.

It continued to split. Hours later, sedatives and his servant aiding,
the splitting ceased. But the blanks did not fill and though behind
them he could not look, yet the subconscious self that registers and
retains everything we do and hear and say prompted him dumbly that
behind the blanks there lurked the dismal and, perhaps, the dire.

This foreboding he attributed to his nerves. As a matter of fact they
were rather shaky. But inaction was intolerable. He tried to write a
note to Sylvia, but his hand was insufficiently steady. Failing in
that he told Harris to get some flowers, take them to Miss Waldron,
and say that he would call that evening. When later the man returned
he brought no answer to the message.

"Was Miss Waldron out?" Annandale asked.

"I could not say, sir. I gave the flowers to the maid, and said as how
you would call this evening, sir. The maid came back and said Miss
Waldron would not be at 'ome."

At this Annandale flushed. It is true he was flushed already. But the
affront was a little more than he could stand. Was he not engaged to
her? What did she mean? Yet, then, too, what had he done? He wished to
the devil he could tell. Try, though, as he might, he could not recall
a thing except a vision of the girl's face, white, drawn and angered.
The rest was not blurred, it was blank. It was extremely unfortunate,
and Annandale decided that he was both unhappy and misused.

These meditations Harris interrupted.

"Mr. Orr, sir."

Annandale, who had been far away, looked up. Then he nodded.

A moment and Orr entered, eying Annandale curiously as he came.

"What a deuce of a chap you are," he began.

"Who? I? Why? Why do you say that?"

Orr looked about the room, contemplated a wide lounge of black
leather, selected a straight-backed chair instead and seated himself,
his hat and stick in his hand.

"You know well enough," he answered. "But there," he added at a
protest from Annandale, "I don't propose to scold you. My visit is
purely official. Sylvia has asked me to inform you that the engagement
is at an end."

Had any little dog which Annandale did not possess run out from
nowhere and bit him fiercely on the leg, he could not have started
more. He stared at Orr, who stared at him.

"But! It is impossible! What have I done?"

"It would be more to the point," Orr cheerfully replied, "to ask what
you have not done. Though just what you did do Sylvia omitted to
state. She said she could not."

"Could not tell you?"

"Could not or would not."

"Then I can't," said Annandale helplessly. "I went there last evening,
I remember that. I remember, too, that she was angry. But why I do
not know. Though, to be candid, she had cause to be. I was drunk."

"You seemed all right at the Arundel," Orr objected.

"At all events, drunk or sober, I cannot recall a thing. I have tried.
I have tried hard. It has gone."

"Does it happen to you often?"

"What?"

"To forget like that?"

Annandale shook his head. He stood up and stalked about. Orr eyed him.
He saw he was not shamming.

"You know, Annandale," he said at last, "you could not get many to
accept that. But I can and do. I have seen cases of the kind before.
Will you permit me to advise you?"

"Advise me? I wish to God you would."

"Littré, who was the wisest and ugliest of men, stated that
Hippocrates recommended everybody to get tight once a month, asserting
that it was hygienic, good for the system, that it relaxed the nerves.
Littré must have known what he was talking about. He put Hippocrates
in French, into ten volumes at that! But what is good for everybody is
bad for you. Don't drink, Annandale. It will get you into mischief."

"As if it had not? Look at the box I am in. But could you not get
Sylvia to reconsider the matter? If she will, I pledge my word never
to touch another drop. Of course, I apologize for everything I did. I
am only too anxious to. You must understand that I am profoundly
humiliated at the idea that I could have done anything she did not
like. Certainly I did not intend to. Won't you say that to her?"

"Oh, I appreciate your position," said Orr. "To me the essence of
crime is the intent. But, then, you see, I am a man. Now girls are
different, and my cousin is very different even from most girls. Her
views are very strict. Even otherwise, to any decent girl, a man in
his cups is not agreeable. But then, you know, it is not merely a
question of that. It is a question of matrimony. Matrimony generally
means children. It is on them that the sins of the father are visited.
There is the rub. Sylvia, I have not a doubt, will in the end forgive
you, but were she to marry you and her children have your sins visited
on them, never would she forgive herself. That I am sure you can
realize. Anyway, for the moment argument with her would be futile.
Besides, she has gone from town."

"Gone?"

"Yes, she left for Newport today. If I were you I would not attempt
to follow. But I will write. I will tell her what you say, and I will
tell you her reply."

Orr stood up. As he did so Annandale sat down. He cared for Sylvia
Waldron, absolutely, uniquely. He felt, too, that she had cared for
him. But while Orr had been speaking he told himself that her caring
had ceased. Had any affection remained she could not have gone. It was
his fault, though. He had shocked it out of existence. At the thought
of that he felt unutterably miserable. What he felt he looked.

Orr saw his dejection. "Annandale," he said, "I hardly suppose that it
will console you now to have me tell you that nothing earthly is of
any consequence, but, if you let the idea permeate you, ultimately
perhaps it may. By the way, that is a new man you have, isn't it?"

In the wreckage amid which Annandale was floundering the question was
like a rope; he caught at it and swam up.

"Who? Harris? Yes, the other poor devil I had was run over and died in
an ambulance."

Orr tapped at his foot with his stick. "I may be in error," he said,
"but I think I have seen him before."

"Then it must have been in London. He has been here only a short time.
He tells me he used to be with Catty."

Catty was a relative of Annandale, a New York girl who had married the
Duke of Kincardine.

"Possibly," said Orr. "Well," he added, reverting to the episode that
had brought him there, "I am sorry for all this. I know you are. I
will write to Sylvia and tell her so."

"Please do."

Annandale stood up and accompanied him to the door. When he turned
life seemed blank as the blanks of the night.




CHAPTER VII

SWEET-AND-TWENTY


What Sylvia replied to Orr's communication, whether indeed she replied
at all, Annandale was not informed. He himself wrote to her. The
letter was long; it was also abject. But he got no answer. He wrote
again. The result was the same.

Then both at her and at himself he rebelled. He had supped on
humiliations. He had no appetite for more. With some bravery, yet
without bravado, he tore a leaf from his life and on it wrote Finis.
The epitaph was figurative, but he thought it final. He thought that
he could dictate to Fate. It is a mistake that many make.

Presently it surprised him to find how laborious is the task of
putting people out of your life. If you have cared for them they will
come back. In the pages of a book, in the pauses of speech, suddenly
you behold them. In sleep they will not let you be. When you awake,
there they are. However detestable their behavior may have been, in
dream they visit and caress you. It takes time and vigilance; it takes
more, it takes other faces to disperse them.

In spite of the Finis, Sylvia Waldron declined to be dismissed. She
haunted Annandale. To memories of her he could not always show the
door. Sometimes they were masked. Occasionally they reproached him.
Again they seemed to say that did he but find out how, all might yet
be well between them. But usually they came and stood gazing at him in
love and grief eternal.

Then he would start. But what could he do? Besides, there was the
Finis.

June meanwhile had come and gone. Summer with a frenzy quasi-maniacal
had battened on the town. It is said that the hottest place in the
world is a port on the Persian Gulf. But it is wrong to believe
everything we hear. When New York decides to be hot, the temperature
of the Persian port must be agreeable by comparison.

One fetid noon Annandale fled. When he stopped it was at Narragansett.

Before August comes and with it the mob, Narragansett is charming.
There is a mile of empty hotels, a stretch of sand fine as face
powder, a heaving, heavenly desert of blue and an atmosphere charged
with ozone and desire.

In August the hotels are packed. The stretch of sand is a stage. Every
day a ballet is given there. The coryphées are the prettiest girls in
the world--girls from Baltimore, girls from Philadelphia, girls from
everywhere, girls with the Occident in their eyes and lips that say
"Drink me."

At high noon, from the greenroom of the bath-houses, Sweet-and-twenty
floats down, clasps the sea to the hum of harps, breasts the waves to
the laugh of brass and re-emerges to the sound of trumpets.

After the dip, other diversions. Primarily flirtations on the lawns;
later, polo at the Country Club; at night, dancing in the ballrooms,
more flirtations on the galleries of the Casino, supper on the terrace
below.

The terrace resembles, or, more exactly, on this particular summer did
resemble, a roof garden on the ground floor. From a kiosk a band of
Hungarians distributed selections of popular rot, sometimes their own
delirious czardas. There, circled by variegated lights, fanned by the
violins, girls and men sat beneath the high, wide, flowerful umbrellas
of Japan.

Sometimes some of them, wearying of that, wandered into silences and
shadows and lingered there, occupied with the crops, with strikes and
other subjects of national interest which young people always discuss
when holding hands in the dark.

To Newport, which squats disdainfully over the way, this is all too
free and easy. To Annandale, it was distressing. Everywhere there was
love, yet none for him. He had come to the Pier, as Narragansett is
locally termed, because of Newport's propinquity. If Sylvia so much as
signaled he could join her at once.

As yet no signaling was apparent. In its place was an influx of a
reflection of fashion. The influx made Annandale swear. He hated to be
seen stalking moodily about. He hated still more to have the rupture
of his engagement discussed. The ballet on the beach irritated him. He
told himself that he had come to the wrong shop. One day he thought of
joining friends in Canada. The next he thought of joining friends who
had gone abroad. The day after he thought that still he might be
signaled.

In these uncertainties he loitered, annoyed but sober. Since the visit
from Orr he had not touched a drop. Then, it so fell about that one
evening he looked in at a dance at the Casino. Madness was in the air.
The savors of the sea, the tonic of the dip, the stare of the harvest
moon, go to the head, stir the heart, excite the pulse in a manner
really Boccaccian.

Madness is contagious. It seemed particularly catching that night. The
hall was filled, the gallery flushed. On a stage, at the end of the
ballroom, musicians were tossing out in trailing rhythm the sorcery of
"Il Bacio," the invitation of the "Cent Vierges," the muffled riot of
"El Capitan."

To these incentives couples turned. Beneath the gallery where
Annandale stood there was a vision of white arms, bare necks, slender
waists circled by the blackness of men's sleeves. Three hundred girls
and men were waltzing together, interchanging partners, clasping
hands, gazing into each other's eyes.

Behind Annandale a group had gathered. They were talking, yet of what
he did not heed. But, presently, into the conversation filtered the
freshness of another voice.

"I quite believe, you know," the voice was saying, "that a girl who
stops here this summer will stop at nothing next."

At the jest Annandale turned. There, pretty as a peach but rather more
amusing, stood Fanny Price.

"Hamlet!" she exclaimed.

Annandale resembled the Dane as little as he did the devil. He was
fully aware of that. But he was equally aware that he must seem blue.
He straightened himself and smiled. Then at once it occurred to him
that Fanny might be a signal bearer.

"How do you do?" he said. "Don't you want to come and sit on the
terrace? When did you get here?"

"Just now. I am over from Newport. They told me there that I ought to
come in disguise. They call it slumming."

"Yes," Annandale inanely and eagerly replied. Of the little speech he
had caught but one word--Newport.

"Now, if I go with you, will you give me something pink, something
with raspberries in it?"

Fanny, as she spoke, disengaged herself from the people with whom she
had come.

"You saw Sylvia, didn't you?" he asked, when at last through coils of
girls and men they reached the terrace below.

Fanny nodded. "Suppose we sit here," she said, indicating a table from
which grew a big parasol.

"Did she say anything?"

Fanny sat down. Annandale seated himself by her. "You know? Don't
you----?"

"Oh, yes," Fanny interrupted. "But then----"

"Then what?"

"Nothing. Only it is so much better so, don't you think?"

"Better!" Annandale fiercely repeated.

"Why, yes. You and Sylvia were totally unsuited for each other. She is
the best and dearest girl in the world. But--here is the waiter. Will
you tell him to fetch me a lemon squash?"

Annandale gave the order.

"With raspberries in it," Fanny called at the waiter's retreating
back. "Aren't you going to take anything?"

In deep gloom Annandale shook his head.

Fanny laughed. "Drink delights you not; no, nor woman either."

"You see----"

"Yes, yes, yes. Of course I see. But why cannot you? Why can't you see
that you and Sylvia stood as much chance of hitting it off as though
you both spoke a different language? A break was bound to come."

But now the man appeared with the squash. Fanny looked at it. "Only
two raspberries," she cried. "And such little ones."

"Bring a dish of them," said Annandale. "I suppose," he resumed as the
waiter again retreated, "I suppose she will find somebody with whom
she can hit it off."

"Yes, of course. There is me and there are other girls. But the men
will be few. They will be elderly, I think, and I think, too, tame
enough to eat out of her hand."

"You think, then, that I am out of the running?"

Fanny did not answer. She was drinking the squash. When she put it
down she put with it the subject. It bored her.

"Are you going to be here long?" she asked. Until a moment before
Annandale had been wavering. But now his mind was made up. Or he
thought it was.

"No. I am off tomorrow."

"Where to?"

"The North Woods, perhaps. I am not sure."

"If you are not sure, you cannot be in any very tearing haste. Why not
stop a day or two longer and take me about?"

Annandale looked at her. In the look was surprise; inquiry, too.

"Yes. Why not?"

Annandale's look deepened into a stare.

"Now, don't be stupid," said Fanny, to whom such stares were familiar.
"I am not trying to get up a flirtation with you. But I must have
someone to talk to."

"I like to hear you talk."

"Yes; men always like nonsense."

"Only from a pretty girl, though."

"Do you know," said Fanny, rising from beneath the big parasol, "the
waiter didn't bring the raspberries. No matter now, though. I must go
and find mother. This is no place for her to be out alone."




CHAPTER VIII

TWO IN A TURRET


From a back gallery of the Casino a narrow stair leads to a tower. Up
that stair Annandale one afternoon invited Fanny Price.

A fortnight had gone, two weeks of dressing and undressing, of
dinners, dances and dips; a succession of mellow mornings; long, green
afternoons, dusks stabbed by sudden stars and nights lit by a moon
that painted the ocean, penetrated the shadows, checkered the
underbrush with silver spots.

But now, though the mornings were as mellow and the afternoons as
green, though in the air the same madness subsisted and the nights
were as languid as before, verandas were emptying, there were wide
spaces where once were thick crowds. The end of the season had come.

In the procession of these things Annandale had put the North Woods
from him; he had put, too, the thought of journeying abroad. With
them he had put also any hope that Sylvia would signal him back.

For awhile the hope had persisted, as the light of a candle persists.
Then it had dwindled, flickered and sunk. That is the way with hope.
Though sometimes it is snuffed. You are in darkness. But through that
darkness occasionally another light will be upheld. It may not,
perhaps, be intended for you, but it may enable you to see.

Aided by another light, Annandale had begun to discern his way. He
should, of course, have remained in darkness. To darkness, were this
fiction, he would be condemned. But this is not fiction. The drama
with which these pages deal is documented from life. It was Fanny who
held the light.

During the month that had gone he had been almost constantly at her
side. The fact that one light may be replaced by another had not at
first occurred to him. Presently the ease with which such substitution
can be effected had mystified him very much. He was not prepared for
anything of the kind. He had arranged to be a gloomy, disappointed
man. He kept telling himself that if Sylvia had stuck to him he would
have been true to her his whole life through. But she had not stuck to
him, and the withdrawal of herself had left existence so empty that,
unknown even to him, Nature had been filling the vacuum which she
abhors.

In this, Nature had been greatly aided. Fanny Price was a remarkably
fetching young girl. To a man out of court and consequently out of
sorts the companionship of a pocket Venus is tonifying in the extreme.
It is not merely that, it is recuperative. It banishes the blues. It
establishes a new court, and with it a new code of its own.

The censorious allege that this is all wrong. It may be that they are
right. But Nature is not censorious. Nature is not even ethical. She
has no standards of right, no canons of wrong. What she does have is
her way. A saint may defy her. Annandale was not that by a long shot.
He was simply a human being, one that had been punished, and, as he
thought, unjustly punished, for that which might have been condoned.
Injustice humiliates. Saints may welcome humiliation, but human beings
resent it.

Over the emptiness which Sylvia had created there brooded therefore
two things. One was darkness, the other pique. In the light which
Fanny upheld it seemed to Annandale that they might be dispersed. This
idea, which he regarded as his very own, and consequently as highly
original, was not his in the least. It was Nature prompting him to
fill the vacuum which she so dislikes.

Instigated by her, Annandale invited Fanny up a stair and into a
tower, a place remote, aloof, furnished with seats for just two.

Fanny had not been there before. She had heard, though, of its
aloofness; it was regarded as a dangerous spot. But Fanny was a brave
girl. Besides, Annandale was at his worst, and even at his best was
not very alarming.

The ascent effected, Fanny peeped from a casement. "Why," she
exclaimed, "you can see everywhere!" She looked about. "But no one can
see you."

Assured of that, she produced a little gold box. On the back were her
initials in jewels. She opened it, took a cigarette and lit it. "Will
you have one?" she asked.

"This is a deuced nice case," said Annandale.

Fanny puffed and smiled.

"A present, I suppose."

"Yes. But you must not ask from whom."

Annandale looked out at the landscape, then in at the girl. "There is
something else I want to ask."

So grave was his tone that Fanny deployed for action.

"Will you marry me?"

Though Fanny had deployed, the shot bowled her over. Into one of the
chairs she dropped. Already Annandale had captured the other.

"Will you?"

But Fanny was recovering. With an air of vexation in which there was
amusement, she puffed at her cigarette and then at him.

"Now, honestly, have I ever given you the slightest encouragement to
ask me that?" She hesitated a moment, puffed again and added: "We have
been friends, I think; let us remain so."

Annandale, who was in loose white flannels, contemplated his tight
white shoes. Then his eyes sought hers. "Are you interested in
Loftus?"

"That is none of your business," Fanny proudly and promptly replied.
As she spoke she got from her seat, approached the casement, gazed out
and away.

"I do not believe you are," Annandale announced to her slender waist.
"But if I am wrong, it is hardly disloyalty to him to say that he is
not good enough for you."

Beneath the tower was a tennis court. Fanny made a face at it. But the
face must have been insufficient. Looking over her shoulder at
Annandale, she showed her teeth.

"Do you fancy a girl cares for a man because he is or is not good
enough? When a girl cares she cares because she cannot help herself."

"I know that is the way with a man, or at least with me. I cannot help
caring for you."

"Nor could you help caring for Sylvia."

"She is so different."

"Yes," said Fanny dreamily, "and so are you." Though to whom she
referred she did not say, nor did Annandale ask. She gave him no
chance. "Next month you will not be able to help caring for some other
girl."

"Not if you would take me."

"But, you see, I don't care for you."

"But couldn't you?" Annandale persisted. "Couldn't you if you tried?
Of course, in saying that Loftus is not good enough for you I don't
mean that I am. But if you could try I would."

At this program Fanny laughed. "We should be a pair of Christian
Endeavorers, shouldn't we?"

To the levity of that Annandale found no immediate reply. Yet
presently, with an irrelevance more obvious than real, he threw out:
"He has gone abroad, you know."

"Who? Loftus?"

"Yes, for a year, I believe."

Fanny turned to the tennis court again. It was, though, not that which
she saw, but a hope that was slipping away, sinking away, sinking down
into death dishonored. For a moment she was very still. A movement of
Annandale's aroused her.

"Come," she said. "It is hot here. Let us go."

Gathering a fold of her skirt, Fanny descended the stair. Annandale
filed after. On a balcony below a lady with faded hair and gimlet eyes
pounced at her.

"I have been hunting for you everywhere," the lady exclaimed. "Aren't
you going to dress?" Then she nodded to Annandale.

Annandale touched his cap. "How do you do, Mrs. Price?"

He would have lingered, but Fanny dismissed him.

"Good-bye," she said. "I may see you this evening."

As he ambled off Mrs. Price returned to the charge. "Where have you
been?"

Fanny patted a yawn. "Listening to sweet nothings."

"From him? Why, he hasn't anything, has he? What did you do?"

Fanny patted another yawn or else another sigh. "I fell on his neck
and sobbed for joy."

"Nonsense. Has he anything, tell me?"

"Not enough to entertain on. Twenty-five thousand a year, I think."

"The impertinence of it!" said the lady.

Had her daughter been an heiress a duke would hardly have satisfied
her. As things were, or more exactly, since the girl began to grow in
beauty she had dreamed for her but one dream--a brilliant match. To
Mrs. Price there could be no brilliance if the party of the second
part had a dollar less than ten million.

"You might have had Loftus," she declared at last. "Where is he, do
you know?"

"Abroad, I hear."

"With that creature?"

Mrs. Price in common with many others had heard of Marie Leroy. But
though others in hearing had not heeded, Mrs. Price took it as a
personal affront.

"Then it is your fault," she snarled. "You could have had him if you
had wanted. Don't tell me. He was in love with you. I could see it."

Fanny was looking at the ocean. A white sail was fainting in the
distance. Like it, a hope she had had was fading away. She watched it
go. It had been very fair, very dear, more dear and fair than any she
had known. But it was going. It was out of reach and now out of
sight. She could not beckon to it.

"What are you staring at?" Mrs. Price asked.

"A sail out there," the girl answered.

Then presently mother and daughter passed into an adjoining corridor
where they had rooms.




CHAPTER IX

FANNY CHANGES HER CLOTHES


Fanny did not appear that evening. In search of her Annandale prowled
vainly around. But on the morrow he ran into her on the beach.

It was still as fine as powder. To have found elbow room there a few
days previous you would have had to go out to sea. Now, in and on it
children were making hillocks and holes. Near them a few groups of
older people loitered. But the coryphées that had danced there were
migrating. Already the Rockingham, a big hotel which faced the beach,
had closed. Sweet-and-twenty was packing her trunk.

The morning itself was of the quality which Lowell has catalogued as
from the Gulf adrift. In the air was a caress. Fanny, in a frock the
color of pale pastel pink, a wide hat in which that color was
repeated, her eyes blue as the sea and bluer, added to its charm.

As Annandale approached she smiled and gave him a finger. But at once
the smile fell from her. With the finger which he had released she
pointed at the big hotel. Annandale turned. Other people were turning.
Some were running. A child that had been at play in the sand jumped
and clapped his hands. About one side of the hotel a sheet of flame
was climbing, crackling in and out. A cry of "Fire!" caught up and
renewed, mounted in the crystalline air.

"Damn!" said Annandale. "If that goes----"

Fanny said nothing. Her eyes widened. Through the windows that front
the beach more flames were leaping. From the side the first flames
passed to shops over the way, passed back with fresh ones created and
joined the others beyond. Above was smoke. Higher yet the tender blue
of the sky. But below was a whirlwind of ochre, scarlet and gamboge, a
fierce yet compact tornado of oscillant hues, shot with green and
shuttled with black. Then suddenly, with a roar, the tornado doubled,
the roof had fallen. The child that had jumped and clapped his hands,
feebly now was beginning to cry.

"It is glorious," said Fanny.

"I am afraid--" Annandale muttered.

Fanny glanced at him. Yet at once she understood. On the other side of
the hotel, across the road, the Casino stood. Her mother, of course,
would be safe. But her clothes! At thought of them her hand went to
her throat.

"Do you think the Casino will catch?" she gasped.

Annandale nodded.

"Oh," she continued, "I shan't have a stitch, not one."

"Yes, you shall," Annandale heroically retorted. "I will see to them.
But I must run. Find your mother if you can and take her to the Inn."

The Inn, a hotel half a mile away, was where Annandale lodged. At once
he was off. Shortly, by a detour, he got to the other side of the
fire. As he swung about he saw that the Casino's ballroom had caught.
But that part of the place was of wood. The other end, where Fanny
lodged, was of wood also, but it was also partly of stone. To this
part as yet the flames had not reached.

As Annandale ran he told himself that he would have time to get in and
get out, but he told himself too that it was a ridiculous job. Fanny's
clothes a stroke of his pen could replace. But now the crowd impeded
him. Lines had formed. Buckets were being passed. There were throngs
of natives and resorters. Through them he pushed.

At the further entrance to the Casino, above which he knew the Prices
lodged, a fat policeman stood, blocking the way. Annandale shoved him
aside, sprang up the stairs, reached the room, fumbled with the door.
It was locked.

Annandale swore deeply, tried the door with his shoulder, kicked at it
till it cracked, kicked again, throwing himself against it with all
his weight, then, not the door, but the fastenings of the lock broke
and he went sprawling in. Through the open window he could see the
flames, he could hear them, he could hear too the cries of the crowd.
But he had no time to waste. He tore around the room.

In one corner was a deep closet, full of clothes. He took them and
threw them in armfuls on the bed. In another corner was a bureau, the
drawers packed with scented lingerie. These on the bed he emptied
also. What else did women wear? he wondered. Oh, yes, he remembered;
hats certainly and probably shoes. Around the room he tore again. But
already the bed was mountainous. He turned it all over on the floor,
gathered up as much as the coverlid would hold and made a hasty bundle
of it. Beneath was a blanket; he filled that, made a bundle of it
also, repeated the operation with a sheet. Into another sheet he threw
hats which meanwhile had loomed in boxes on a shelf, and dragging a
curtain down filled that with shoes which also he had found, changed
his mind and stuffed them into a pillow case, tossing in after them
articles from a dressing-table, brushes and combs, odds and ends,
helter skelter.

But in dragging the curtain from the window he had noticed a
writing-desk. After he had finished with the pillow case he returned
to it. Like the door it was locked. He kicked at it, kicked it open,
discovered in it loose money and trinkets, stuck them in his pockets,
grabbed at the bundles and dashed from the room just as with a roar
the flames leaped in.

In the corridor he tripped, but he was up again with the tightly tied
bundles and down the stair before the flames and the smoke of them
could catch him. Once on the road without he turned to look, but the
flames pirouetting in increasing size made it too hot to linger. Down
the road he went, not overweighted but impeded by the awkward bundles,
and staggered first into an engulfing, shouting crowd, then into a
convenient hack, in which he reached the Inn, minus his cap and
perspiring profusely.

The Prices as yet had not turned up. Annandale secured rooms for them,
had the bundles taken there, went to his own quarters, re-emerged
shortly fresh as paint, hungry as a wolf.

It was high noon. From beyond drifted the sound of cries, the smell
of smoke, the commotion of flight. The Rockingham had gone, the
adjacent shops and bath houses with it; the Casino had fallen.
Hurrying to the railway station beyond came people with handbags,
wagons with trunks. From the air the caress had passed. There was
panic in it.

But presently the flames showed less voluminous. After devouring all
that they conveniently could they were subsiding. It was apparent that
the worst was over. Then at last Fanny and her mother drove up.

From the veranda where he stood Annandale ran down to meet them. "I
have your things," he cried. "I have rooms for you also."

"Hobson is not in it with you," said Fanny, when the tale of the
bundles had been told. "I could kiss you. I would if mamma were not
here."

For that, ordinarily, Fanny would have been promptly sat upon. But
here was the exceptional. Mrs. Price recognized it or appeared to.
Instead of rebuking the girl and snubbing the man, Mrs. Price
condescended to tell Annandale that he was "too good."

This was very nice. Annandale felt over-rewarded. Then, shortly, the
midday meal ensuing, he conducted mother and daughter to the
restaurant, sat with them at table, ordered Ruinart cup and assumed
family airs. Later, in a motor, he took Fanny to view the ruins,
hummed her over the country and later still procured for her a lemon
squash with plenty of raspberries in it, which she consumed on the
porch, to the sound of the waves, by the light of the stars.

Meanwhile she had changed her pastel frock for another, which, if a
bit rumpled in transit, became her wonderfully well.

Annandale commented on it. "By the way," he suddenly interrupted
himself to remark, "I have more of your things. I stuffed them in my
pocket and forgot them entirely. I will go and fetch them now."

"Don't bother. Tomorrow will do. What are they, do you remember?"

"Money and jewelry. Rings and pins, I think. I am sure there were
pins. One of them stuck in me."

"Any clothes?"

"Clothes!" Annandale echoed in surprise. "Why, no, are any missing?"

"My mother's. They were in the room next to mine."

"The Lord forgive me, I never thought of it."

"It does not really matter. Only we will have to go to town tomorrow.
Mamma has not a stitch."

"The devil!" muttered Annandale in fierce self-reprobation. "Hang my
stupidity. I am a fool."

"You are nothing of the kind. If it were not for you I would not have
a stitch either."

"That is all very well. But I have bungled matters dreadfully. I don't
know what your mother can think of me. I do know, though, that I wish
she would let me replace the things which she has lost through my
fault."

In the sky a star was falling, swiftly, silently, like a drop of water
on a window-pane. Fanny watched it. She had been lolling back in a
chair. But at Annandale's suggestion she sat up. "That is absurd," she
announced.

"Well, then, it would be only nice and fair of you to put me in a
position where, without offense, I could do so."

But Fanny was rising. "It is late," she announced. "I must go."

Annandale caught at her. "Say 'Yes,'" he implored. "Or at least don't
say 'No.' Say something."

"Something, then. There, let me be."

At that Annandale, who still held her, held her yet tighter. "You are
the dearest girl in all the world."

Fanny gave him a little shove. "Don't do that, anyone might see you."

"Yes, and see too that you belong to me."

"I am not so sure."

"You shan't go then till you are." Annandale, as he spoke, planted
himself uncircuitously before her.

"Oh," said Fanny, in a little sugary, demure voice, "if you are going
to use brute force----"

"I am."

"Then I give in."

"For keeps?"

"Don't, there's my mother."

In the doorway beyond, Mrs. Price had loomed. Fanny joined her.
Annandale followed, denouncing himself to the lady for the oversight
that noon. Yet, whether because of that oversight of his or because of
some foresight of her own, so grim was Mrs. Price that Annandale,
concluding that it would be more cheerful elsewhere, turned tail,
ambled out to the road and across it to the sea wall, where he sat and
kicked his heels and told himself that he was engaged.

In the telling he lost himself in impossibilities and wondered how it
would fare with him and how with Sylvia could the past be mended and
the old plans mature. For though Fanny allured, Sylvia enchained.
Fanny was delicious. But he fancied that other men had found her so.
He fancied that her heart had been an inn, and he knew that Sylvia's
was a home. Yet from that he was barred. To those that lack homes
hotels are convenient.

Across the way meanwhile Mrs. Price was very busy. In looming on the
veranda it had seemed to her that her daughter and that man were
occupied with certain ceremonies. Regarding them she attacked the girl
at once.

"You have not taken him?" she began by way of reconnaissance.

That afternoon Fanny had visited ruins. There were others more
personal that she was viewing then, the ruins of fair things not dead
but destroyed.

"Answer me," Mrs. Price commanded.

The girl started. But she had been far away--in that lovely land where
dreams come true and then, it may be, turn into nightmares. Through
the dreams hand in hand with Loftus she had been strolling. Now she
must put them all away.

"Answer me," Mrs. Price repeated.

"I am afraid so."

Into a misty and deserted parlor of the Inn Mrs. Price pulled the girl
and there let fire.

"Afraid! You ought to be! What will your father say?"

The father here projected was a gentleman who resided abroad and who
seldom opened his mouth except to put something in it.

"And Fred!"

Fred was Fanny's brother, a young chap whose opinions were of no value
to anyone, himself included.

"And everybody!"

Everybody was the upper current of social life.

"And Sylvia!"

The earlier shots had not inflicted any visible damage, but this must
have told.

"I shall have to write to her," Fanny with unusual meekness replied.

"Yes, do. Do by all means. Tell her you have taken her leavings. And
why? Merciful heavens, why? If you were as staid and stiff as she I
could understand. But a girl like you, with your tastes, your
extravagances, a girl with a national reputation for beauty, to go and
accept twenty-five thousand a year is--is--sinful, that's what it is.
Your own father has that, and on it we are out at elbows. It is just
about enough for you to dress on. Oh, Fanny, Fanny!"

Hysterically the old lady waved her hands. "Oh, Fanny, I have so
prayed that you would make a brilliant match. I have scrimped and
saved that you might, and you go and take a blond beast of a pauper.
It is too cruel!"

Fanny winced. It was cruel. But the cruelty was not hers. It was
Fate's. She too had hoped for the very marriage her mother had so
ardently desired. But Loftus had not cared. Occupied elsewhere he had
sailed away. As well then Annandale as another.

"You see, you know," she said in a wretched effort at smoothing things
over, "he is quite a hero."

But this was too much. Mrs. Price shook her head like a battle horse
and fairly neighed.

"Because he saved your clothes? If it had been your life and you had
said 'Thank you' it would have been ample. But your clothes! Not mine;
the beast had not sense enough for that, but yours! I do hope you will
give that as an excuse to Sylvia!"




CHAPTER X

A VICTIM


Sylvia had gone from Newport. She was then at Lenox. It was there the
previous autumn that her interest in Annandale had begun. The interest
had so deepened that she gave him her heart. Never before had she
given that to anyone. Annandale had taken it and then, one night, he
had so bruised it that she thought it broken. He had written that he
had not meant to. His letter had been full of regrets, of
protestations, of bad grammar. Such things may palliate, but they do
not cure. Only time can do that.

Time is a strange emollient. In its mysterious potency it softens
without our knowledge. Suddenly a whisper, a breeze that passes, shows
that it has done its work. With Sylvia time was having its will.
Furtively she had found herself wondering, as Annandale had wondered,
how it should fare with her, and how with him, could the past be
effaced and the old days renewed. But those days were gone, she
decided. Though into that decision a doubt would creep, not indeed
concerning the departure, but concerning her attitude and the justice
of it.

Annandale had sinned. He had sinned wantonly, grievously. From an
atmosphere of vice--an atmosphere from which, under pain of her
displeasure, she had distinctly warned him--he had staggered to her,
its pollution about him, reeking with drink, talking abundantly about
nothing imaginable, and at her just remonstrance had become instantly
irritable, refusing almost to leave the house.

So had his condition and the spectacle of it shocked her that, for
awhile, memory of him and of it was repellent. In her own eyes she
felt degraded. That men drank, she knew. But in her sphere of life
they drank either moderately or else in haunts invisible to her. And
it was precisely from such a haunt he had come, a shameless haunt, one
that sullied her even to know of.

Yes, he had sinned, wantonly, grievously, almost unforgivably. Almost,
she reflected, but perhaps not quite. In his letter of protest and
regret he had told her that he remembered nothing, nothing whatever,
absolutely nothing at all, save one vague, brief vision of herself.
The rest, the beginning, the end, the inter-spaces were, he assured
her, blank. At first she had thought that sheer nonsense. But, later,
the earnest way in which it was put impressed her. Then on the heels
of that communication there had followed one from Orr, indorsing what
Annandale said, declaring that it was all quite possible, adding that,
in certain temperaments, memory when influenced by toxics will play
tricks stranger than the average mind can comfortably credit.

These letters she had not answered. Logically she could not admit the
validity of the statements which they contained. But the heart has
logic which logic does not know. Then, too, is there not that within
us that prompts us to believe less what we should than what we wish?
Sylvia's reason, guided by her inexperience, refused at first to
accept the idea that any sane man could act as Annandale had and
afterward be oblivious of it. That remorse there should be was only
natural, but that there should be no memory of anything whatever
seemed to her absurd.

But there was her cousin's assurance to the contrary. Then
imperceptibly, little by little, that assurance, filtering through the
saddened girl, took possession of her, insisting on recognition,
telling her that, though her lover had erred, yet, in erring, he was
more to be pitied than condemned. Dominated by drink, which, Orr
added, he had promised to renounce, he had gone to that haunt and,
contaminated there, knew not what he did. But she, instead of
realizing that, she who was to have been his in sickness and health,
for better, for worse, she, in her pride, had dismissed him.

He had erred, Sylvia told herself, deeply, grievously, but so, too,
had she. She had condemned when she should have condoned; she had
spurned him when it was her solicitude that he needed.

At the sure cognition of that, it was as though from her eyes a
bandage had fallen. Then at once in her tender conscience she beheld
herself, detestable in pride, a girl without a heart, one of whom he,
no doubt, was well rid of.

It was during the process of this awakening that the conflagration at
Narragansett Pier occurred. Sylvia read of it. She read, too, of
certain prowesses which the dismissed had displayed.

The account, very inexact as such accounts always are, was also highly
colored, spun out for space purposes for much more than the space was
worth. Had you not known better you would have taken it for granted
that the heroism of Annandale was on a par with that of Leonidas at
Thermopylæ and even of Roosevelt at San Juan. It quite stirred you.

It stirred Sylvia. The paper fell from her. But the past returned. At
once it seemed to her that it might be mended and the old days
renewed. The hero of whom the paper told she knew now that she had
wholly loved, and she knew, too, that wholly she still loved him.

Time had done its work ridiculously, inopportunely, yet effectively at
last. But the gates of life are double. On one stands written "Too
Soon." On the other "Too Late." It is unfortunate to get wedged
between them. Of that fact Sylvia became rapidly aware. On the morrow
she began a letter to Annandale. Before it was finished there came one
from Fanny, announcing that she was to be Annandale's wife.

In certain crises of the emotions there is a certain sense of
unreality. Even as Sylvia read what Fanny said she could not grasp it.
When presently she did, she could not believe it. But there it was.
Then immediately she experienced the agony which comes when we battle
in dream with the intangible and the dread, when we know it is dream
and yet feel it is death.

"It is all my fault," she cried. She found but that. At the moment she
was in that condition which precedes the great commotion of tears,
when the strangulation of agony is subsiding and contracted nerves
distend. But the tears did not come. The pain was infinite. There was
a weight which she felt not without but within, a weight so heavy that
she thought she could not bear it. It racked her. Only her mind was
active. "It is my fault," she repeated. Then she added, "And my
cross."

From a crisis such as this, in a nature such as hers, the soul issues
as from an orgy. It has supped on sorrow. It is fed. It ceases to look
back. It looks forward, marveling indeed that it should look at all,
yet looking. Life's burdens are more bearable than the despairful
think. Until the eyes are closed and the heart no longer beats, in
some way, somehow, they can be carried.

Sylvia took up her cross. It was leaden. But in the effort she was
aided. Pride helped her. The assistance of pride may be poor, yet is
it not better than none? To Sylvia it was useful. It enabled her to
answer Fanny's letter.

"You have my congratulations, Fanny dear," she wrote, "all of them, my
best and warmest, and so has Arthur too. Please say so to him and tell
him that, in marrying by dearest friend, he and I must be dear friends
also."

Then the tears did come, swiftly, like the ripple of the rain. On the
table where she sat she put her head down and sobbed, paroxysmally, as
sobs a child.




THE GENERAL SESSIONS

CHAPTER I

DISENCHANTMENT


"_Il segreto_----"

Marie's voice rang out, clear and fluid, scattering notes through the
room, filling it with them, charging the air with melody, then, like a
chorus entering a crypt, it sank in diminishing accords and, sinking,
died slowly away.

The _segreto_ indeed! The secret of happiness was remoter now than
when, under the teaching of the ex-first lady, she had first attacked
the score. But her voice had improved. It was fuller, more resonant
and ample.

Marie, too, had improved. In face and figure beauty had developed. Her
manner was securer, her eyes more grave, her smile less frequent. The
bud had blossomed.

In the process a year had gone. From high Norman downs she had watched
the summer pass. Autumn had met her in the Elysian Fields. There the
wolfish winter had approached. At the first bite there had been a
flight to Havre, the return to New York. Now it was spring again.
Through the open windows of the Arundel came the city's hum and with
it the subtleties and enticements of May.

A year had gone. But there are years that count double. There are
others so vast that in them you may have evolved a world, seen it glow
and subside. The solitudes of space appal. The solitudes of the heart
may be as endless as they. In those where Marie loitered a world had
had its birth and subsidence, a world with gem-like hopes for stars, a
world lighted by a sun so eager that its rays had made her blind.
There had been aspirations, gorgeous and tangental as comets are.
There had been the colorless ether of which dreams are made. For
cosmic matter there was love. A year had gone. In it, these wonders
had formed and fled.

Marie got from the piano. It had no secret to tell. But there was
another which the year had revealed, a secret which, at first opaque
and obscure, little by little had taken shape and changed from an
impossibility into a monstrous fact. Marie had begun by disavowing it.
She had disowned it, would have none of it. But disavowals cease. In
certain conditions we get used to monsters. The soul makes itself at
home with what it must. The monster to which Marie was accustoming
herself was the knowledge that her lover had lied.

In departing with him from the den of the ex-first lady it was not
merely with faith and trust, but with absolute certainty that
marriage, if delayed, was only postponed; that a week, a month at the
furthest, would see her his wife.

On the way she had stopped and wired to Gay street, telling her father
not to worry, that she had gone to be married, that she would write to
him soon.

Whether he had worried she could only surmise. But soon she had
written, inclosing a photograph of Loftus, one which she had colored,
an excellent likeness that displayed his chiseled features, wonderful
eyes and thin, black mustache with a perfection of precision that was
lifelike. Above it she wrote: "Marie's Husband." It would please her
father, she was sure, and in the letter she told him prettily, in a
little, cajoling way which he loved, that while, for the moment, he
must not know where she was, yet shortly she was planning to come and
surprise him--to surprise him more than he could ever imagine, and
show him that he could be very, very proud of her, but prouder still,
much, much prouder of the man she had married.

The plan, delightful to her, first the illness of her lover's mother,
then the lady's absence from town, prevented her from at once
effecting. Then, greatly to her uneasiness, she found that the plan
must be yet further delayed. Mrs. Loftus had gone to her manor on the
Hudson, where, her son declared, he could not take Marie "like that."
Financially it was stupid to rush things. Gradually his mother must be
prepared. Moreover, as preparation could be decently managed only in
town, to which she would not now return until autumn, it would be a
good idea to run over to Europe.

So spoke Royal Loftus. It was all false as an obituary. Financially he
was entirely independent of his mother, who, at the time, was not at
her manor, but just around the corner and never better in her life.
But Marie, wholly infatuated, quite willing to believe that the moon
was made of green cheese if only he took the trouble to so inform her,
accepted it all for gospel.

The delay, of course, was a deep disappointment. She felt it, and felt
it acutely. But in Europe she supposed that people would not know, and
would not care a rap if they did, Loftus hastened to assure her.

To his project, therefore, she yielded. Presently she was glad that
she had. The journey itself was a joy. At the Arundel he had come and
gone. Often she had been lonely. Often she had sat through hours that
limped themselves away, waiting for him, waiting fruitlessly. But
during the journey and after it, on the high Norman downs, always she
had him with her. Therein was the joy.

The places, new to her and fragrant, to which he took her interested
her very much, but very much, too, as accessories might. It was from
him that their real charm emanated. He also enjoyed himself, but less
rapturously, in a fashion more detached. He found time to busy himself
with the news of the world, with menus, with wines--occupations which
to her were extraordinary. Marie did not know what she ate; as for the
world, it was sublimated in him, a fact which she confided to him--of
which, if she had not, he would have been perfectly aware and which he
accepted at first as but a proper tribute to himself, but which ended
by boring him distinctly. An excess of anything disagrees with the
best.

The first symptoms of indigestion declared themselves in Paris. They
had there a large suite in a big hotel. So large was the suite that
frequently Marie could not find Loftus in it. He was off, returning
when he saw fit, refusing to be questioned, yawning at reproaches,
but otherwise perfectly civil, agreeing with her that it was not nice
to be left alone, yet leaving her alone whenever he felt like it.

On the Norman downs the fresh fragrance of life had put a higher color
on her cheeks, marking them with the flush of happiness and health.
But in this game of hide and nowhere to seek her face became pallid as
the curious white sky which in autumn stretches itself over Paris.
Then stealthily, like a wolf, winter approached. The cheerlessness of
it Loftus hated, as all New Yorkers do. To Marie, however, it was
welcome. It meant a return to the Arundel, where she felt that the
marriage so long delayed could not be further postponed.

The illusion was pleasant but not permanent. On re-emerging in the
noise and sunshine of New York Loftus ceased to bother himself with
the invention of excuses. He told Marie that his mother would not
listen to anything of the kind, a statement which, while frank, was
not exact. Mrs. Loftus had never heard of it, or for that matter, of
the girl, and Loftus saw no reason whatever why she should. Yet if not
frank, he was patient. Marie, on the other hand, took it all very
hard. Humiliation possessed her. By day it confronted her, spectrally.
At night it came to her, sat by her side, plucked at her sleeve, awoke
her. It was a thing she could not get away from, could not forget;
what is worse, she could not understand. It tortured her, and
concerning it she tormented him constantly, displaying a persistence
that was annoying and pathetic--the persistence of a child. It was as
such that he treated it with yawning indifference, quite as though it
were but a whim which, other things intervening, she would forget.

Other things did intervene. Among them was an adventure in Central
Park. One afternoon a brougham in which she was driving crossed a
victoria where sat a remarkably pretty woman with Loftus at her side.

Marie's eyes filled. Had he struck her he would have hurt her far
less. When next she saw him she told him so. The idea amused him. He
was not a ruffian, only a cad. Like the whim, he waved the little
tragedy away.

"That was Mrs. Annandale," he announced unabashedly, "a very old
friend of mine. I have known her all my life."

"Mrs. Annandale!" Marie exclaimed. "Not the wife of the Mr. Annandale
whom you brought here last year?"

Loftus stared at her. He did not understand. Yet then, neither did
she.

"Why," she continued, "you told me he was to marry a dark young lady."

"Yes," said Loftus, fumbling as he spoke for a cigarette. "But I told
you also not to use that expression. Say girl or young woman. If you
want to be fantastic, say young gentlewoman, but never young lady. You
are right, though. Annandale was to have married a Miss Waldron, but
she threw him over and he married somebody else."

To Marie all this was inexplicable. She did not understand how a man
thrown over by one girl could so speedily marry another. She did not
understand, either, what Loftus could be doing with her. To her mind
driving presupposed an intimacy which acquaintance might explain but
did not excuse. The matter perplexed her, and not unnaturally. It is
only through our own heart that it is possible to attempt to read the
heart of another. In her heart Marie knew that nothing earthly could
induce her to appear as intimate with a man as Loftus had with that
woman. Yet, though she knew that, she knew also that many of her
views, like many of her expressions, were not in tune with the tone of
the set in which Loftus moved.

None the less a fact remained. To her other men did not exist. To him
other women existed. However she tried to console herself with
difference in breeding, that fact, remaining, pricked. It pricked
perhaps the harder because of this particular woman's looks. The woman
herself was hateful. How, she wondered, could Loftus drive about with
her when, with herself, he would barely be seen.

And why wouldn't he? In those days Marie's whys were many. But at the
end of every one of them the answer which she always found was that it
was all because she was not his wife. Yet there always another why
recurred. Why was she not what he had sworn she should be?

The possible disinheritance which hitherto he had imaginatively
displayed had no terrors of any kind for her. On bread and kisses she
would have lived with him joyfully in a slum. To luxury she was
unused. That with which she was surrounded she would not have missed
in the least. On the contrary, it had grown odious to her; it
suggested a form of compensation the very thought of which was
sickening. It was not for this that she had left Gay street, but for
him and an honest name.

In the prolonged absence of the latter there were times when her soul
seemed to slink into the obscurities of her being and swoon there for
shame. There were times when she could not look at herself in the
glass. Quite as often she had found it difficult to look at her
servants.

After the episode in Central Park the increasing sense of degradation
affected her so deeply that with a weary idea of preserving such
self-respect as she might, summoning those servants she dismissed
them--securing, meanwhile, from an agency a woman able to do what
little was essential, a negress named Blanche who talked Irish.

When Loftus discovered what she had done he was for having the
servants immediately back. He liked to have the girl entertain for
him. He liked to have his friends come to the aviary and hear the bird
sing. But Marie, with an air of determination that was new to him,
refused.

"They do not respect me," she said. "I don't blame them for that. Nor
can you. When we are married it will be different.

"When we are," she added with slow scorn.




CHAPTER II

THE MOTE IN THE EYE


A philosopher has noted that at certain periods a great many stupid
people have a good deal of stupid money. This condition, describable
as plethora, is succeeded by another catalogued as panic.

The number of stupid people who at this time stalked the streets
unchecked was phenomenal. Among them was Annandale. It was not a
beggarly twenty-five thousand a year that he had, but fifty, with, in
addition, more to come. This, though measurably satisfactory, was not
brilliant. Not brilliant, that is, as Mrs. Price used that term. Still
it was sufficient to remove him from the menagerie of paupers in which
she had classed him. Assured whereof, Mrs. Price, pocketing further
objections, gave in. Two months by the clock after the episodes at
Narragansett she assisted at his marriage to her daughter. A little
later Annandale took a house in Gramercy Park.

This house, leased fully furnished from November to June, Fanny
selected. She liked the neighborhood. Annandale, whose bachelor
quarters had, of course, been given up, liked it too. It was
convenient. He had got an idea that he ought to have something to do.
The something which he hit on consisted in going downtown every day
and standing, in a broker's office, over a ticker. Such were the
quantities of stupid money afloat that the ticker was very loquacious.
It talked and talked, generally in jumps. As it jumped Annandale
bought. As it continued to jump, he made. Whereupon he regarded
himself as a born financier. It was an illusion which that year very
many men shared.

But the illusion was agreeable to him. It was equally so to Fanny. It
took him out of the way and induced pleasant dreams. He talked of
drags and yachts. On fifty thousand a year these things are
impossibilities. But Annandale, believing himself a born financier,
believed, too, that the day was not remote when they would solidify
into facts. Pending which, Fanny, from her own carriage, distributed
to Annette, Juliette and the rest of them such orders as she liked.

It was in this carriage that Marie had seen her with Loftus. Others
also saw her. Fanny being a little more than a bride and Loftus a good
deal more than a beau, the spectacle caused comment. There were,
though, other things that the future had in charge which were to cause
more. But among those who beheld the particular spectacle was Fanny's
husband.

Annandale was in a hansom with Mr. Skitt, the broker in whose office
he looked over the tape. As Fanny drove by, Annandale raised his hat,
then, with a mimic which he meant to be humorously indignant, he shook
his stick at Loftus much as though he were saying, "Aha! making up to
my wife!"

Loftus entering into the spirit of the jest, ducked his head in
feigned alarm.

"That's a deuced pretty woman," remarked Mr. Skitt when the carriage
had passed.

"It is Mrs. Annandale," his client returned with some hauteur.

"Oh, beg pardon, I didn't know."

"Yes," Annandale resumed, "and that was Loftus, an old friend of
mine."

"Any relation to _the_ Loftus?" Mr. Skitt, glad that the subject was
out of the way, inquired.

"He is _the_ Loftus," Annandale, now entirely mollified, replied.

Others, however, took the spectacle less lightly. To Marie it was
distressing. To Mrs. Price it was absurd. Mrs. Price had not seen it,
but she heard of it. To air a few views on the subject she pounced in
on Fanny the very next day. Loftus, however, was there at the time.
She had to wait until he was gone. Then she let drive.

"Do you fancy," she asked fiercely, "that this is London? Do you?" she
repeated and menacingly pulled off a glove. "Don't you know that you
cannot have men hanging about you, and of all men that man? Great
heavens, if you wanted him you should have taken him at the start."

Fanny lit a cigarette, made a ring of smoke, poked a finger through it
and in a sugary, demure little way which she sometimes affected,
answered serenely: "At the finish perhaps I may yet."

"What!" cried Mrs. Price.

But from the door a servant was announcing Miss Waldron. The girl swam
in. Necessarily, for the time being, the subject was dropped. Later
Mrs. Price got back to it, but without notable result, without
obtaining either any elucidation of Fanny's rather curious remark.

That though, with graver things, the future had in charge. Meanwhile
Fanny, with nine servants and a housekeeper to run them, led the life
of any other young society woman, the life of an _objet de luxe_.

This form of existence would have been quite to her liking if--Yet is
there not always an If? A poet declaimed on the subject two thousand
years ago. Times have changed, customs with them, but not the human
heart. Barring great wealth and its fanfares and accompaniments, Fanny
had enough to throw the average woman into stupors of envy, enough
also to even satisfy her, if only instead of one man she had married
another. Annandale was very nice. He had but one defect. But that
defect was fatal. He did not happen to be somebody else.

This defect Fanny had fancied that she could overlook. She was young,
therefore ignorant, and, in fancying that she could ignore that fatal
defect, fancied also that she had the ability to order herself about,
to command her nature and dictate to her heart. The fallacy is common.
Many of us have entertained it and kept at it too until the discovery
is made that the heart is a force which we must yield to or break.

Fanny became aware of this shortly after Loftus returned. There in her
existence was the If. As a consequence, although Annandale was quite
perfect to her, his perfection was as nothing to his one defect.

Of this defect Annandale was wholly unconscious. Yet, though he could
not see the mote in his own eye, there was one in Fanny's which,
though he saw, he was unable to define. It is true on the mote
question he was not an expert. A husband, particularly when he happens
to be big and blond, seldom is. Then, too, the effect of the mote was
odd. It affected Fanny's disposition. When he approached her he could
not but notice that she became elusive. He could not but perceive that
she was as afraid of a kiss as of a bee.

"What is the matter with you?" he inquired on one occasion when she
appeared even more tantalizingly intangible than he had seen her yet.

"Women are the very devil," he muttered as, without answering, she
moved yet further away.

The question, though, was very unreasonable. So at least Mrs. Price,
whom he tried to take into his confidence, assured him with fine
scorn. "The idea of a man asking his wife what is the matter with
her!" she exclaimed. "A man ought to know. If he doesn't, how in the
world can he expect her to?"

But that was before the episode with Loftus in the Park. Had Annandale
gone to Mrs. Price then she would have been quite capable of putting a
flea in his ear. That opportunity he neglected. Stocks were soaring.
On paper he was making money hand over fist. He had no time to bother
with women's whims. When men do have time for such things the time has
passed.

Even then it had gone. One night early in May Fanny had a few people
in, among whom were Loftus and Sylvia Waldron.

Sylvia, who long since had let bygones be bygones, was now as sisterly
as ever with Fanny, and with Annandale on terms friendly and frank, an
attitude which, as Fanny put it, "made it so easy, don't you know, all
around." Yet then in putting it in that way Fanny may have been
actuated by the fellow-feeling which makes us all so wondrous kind.
With Loftus she was rather friendly herself.

That, however, by the way. During the dinner a telegram was brought to
Annandale. It concerned the morrow's market and interested him
considerably. As soon as he decently could he got away to confer with
Skitt. Later the other guests began to go. But Loftus lingered.
Presently he and Fanny were alone.

"How is the lady?" Fanny negligently inquired.

Her arms and neck were bare. Her dress, immaterial as cobwebs, was of
starbeams' restful hue. About her throat was a string of opals. They
were colorful, though less so than her eyes and mouth.

She was seated on a sofa. Loftus was standing. As always, he was
superiorly sent out. Other men who got their things at the same places
that he got his never succeeded, however they tried, in appearing
half so well.

"Do you know," Fanny continued, "she has improved vastly since that
day when I saw you trying to pick her up. How did you ever manage?
Tell me."

Loftus, his hands in his pockets, shrugged a shoulder.

"And she is so delightfully disdainful," Fanny ran on. "In Central
Park this afternoon she turned up her nose at me. It is a very pretty
nose, Royal, did you know that?"

"I know that it is a bit out of joint," Loftus condescended at last to
reply.

"Dear me! Fancy that! But then the course of true love never did run
smooth."

Loftus assumed an air of great weariness. "Do drop it," he said. "You
know very well that I have never cared for anyone but you."

"Oh, of course," Fanny promptly and pleasantly retorted. "I may have
had a doubt or two about it. But when you put this lady in a flat
around the corner, then, naturally, you convinced me. It was a rather
circuitous way, though, to go at it, don't you think?"

Beside her on the sofa Loftus flopped. "Why do you always go back to
that?" he asked, with the same affectation of weariness.

Fanny turned from him. "I don't seem to be able to get away from it,"
she answered, but less promptly and pleasantly than before. Her fair
face had grown serious. From her eyes the bantering look had gone.
"Besides," she added after a moment, "you took her to Europe, and that
did seem a trifle steep."

"Would you like her to go back there?" Loftus tentatively inquired.

In and out from Fanny's skirt a white slipper, butterflied with gold,
moved restlessly. "I should have preferred that you had let her alone.
It was not nice of you. It was not nice at all."

From him she had turned to the carpet. She was looking at it still. "I
wonder," she presently resumed, "if you ever suspected how it hurt
me." Pausing a bit she looked up. "But you have been so dense, Royal."

Loftus was about to interrupt. She checked him. "The first time I saw
you I was just fifteen. That is eight years ago. Since then I can
honestly say that until I accepted Arthur I had never thought of
anyone but you. Never. Not once. Can you realize now how this affair
of yours affected me? It hurt. If it had not been for that, do you
suppose I would have taken the prince in the fairy tale? You were my
prince."

"But," Loftus protested, "this affair, as you call it, came about only
_faute de mieux, faute de toi_. Why cannot I--why cannot we----?"

Fanny checked him again. "No, we cannot. Two years ago you said the
same thing to me. I forgave you then because I loved you. For the same
reason I forgive you now. But, however I care for you, never will I be
your mistress."

"Fanny----"

"No, never. If, as again and again you have told me during the past
few months, you still care for me, either you must love me openly or I
will not permit you to love me at all."

At the sudden horizon Loftus bent to her. "Let us go, then. In Europe
we can love before all the world."

Fanny drew back. "Particularly before all the half-world," she
answered with a sniff. "No. You misunderstand me. Perhaps, too, I
misunderstand you. Let my hand be."

"Fanny, I will do anything----"

"It is rather late to say that. But if I were free now, what would you
do? Would you repeat the invitation you have made?"

Loftus, his wonderful eyes looking deep into hers, answered quickly
and sweetly, "I would beg you to be my wife."

Fanny straightened herself. "Then give that girl her congé, give her a
dot too, send her abroad and let her marry some count."

"Very good, I will do so."

"When you have," said Fanny, "I will ask Arthur for a divorce."

"What?" And Loftus, with those wonderful eyes, stared in surprise. He
was in for it, let in for it, was his first impression. Yet at once,
on looking back, he realized that Fanny was incapable of trick of any
kind. "But," he objected, "supposing he refuses?"

"Then I will apply."

"But you can't, you see. He is good as gold."

"Oh, I don't mean here. I mean out West."

For a moment Loftus said nothing. Even in the West, he reflected,
divorce took time. Yet then, reflecting, too, that it would be very
gentlemanly of Annandale were he to go there and leave the coast free
for him, he smiled and remarked, with what seemed astounding
inappositeness, "I have been selling short."

"Ah!" said Fanny longly. "And what of it?"

"Unless the market turns I shall be out, God knows how much!"

"But what of it?" Yet even as she spoke she understood.
"Fiddlesticks!" she exclaimed with a gesture of annoyance. "I sha'n't
care if you haven't two cents."

To this Loftus had no chance to reply. Annandale came lounging in.

"Do you know what I have done?" he collectively and blandly inquired.
"I told Skitt to buy me, at the opening, 1,000 Atchison and 1,000
Steel. Now I would like a quiet drink."

Loftus stood up. "I am going in the Park for a quiet smoke. But I
thought you had sworn off."

Annandale tugged at his cavalry mustache and laughed. "I haven't
touched a thing for nearly a year. But on a night like this, when the
whole town is mad, I think I might have a drop. Stop, dear boy, won't
you, and have one with me? No? Well--" And, accompanying Loftus to the
door, he whispered to him there, "My compliments to Miss Leroy."

"Don't forget, Royal," Fanny called after him, "that you dine with us
on the ninth."




CHAPTER III

THE GATES OF LIFE


In her sitting-room at the Arundel Marie sat. It was nearly midnight.
Hours before she had dined. Since then she had wandered from one room
to another, from one chair to another, wondering would Loftus come.
Sometimes he did. More often he did not. She never knew beforehand. It
was as it pleased him. Always the uncertainty irked her. But on this
evening it was particularly enervating. She had reached the gates of
her endurance. She could stand no more. She must pass through them,
pass or fall back, where she did not know, but somewhere, to some
plane, in which, though life forsook her, at least its degradation
would be foregone.

At first, in the old days, when he met her in the ex-first lady's den,
it had seemed to her that life would be incomplete without him. Then
it had seemed that with him it would be fulfilled to the tips.
Subsequently the long train of disenchantments had ensued. In Paris
he had pained her greatly. There, after a series of those things,
little in themselves, but which, when massed, become mountainous, she
had been forced to consider not her love for him but the nature of
such love as he had for her. In him there was a reticence which
perplexed, depths which she could not reach. At times his silence was
that of one to whom something has happened, who is suffering from some
constraint, from some pressure or from some long illness of which
traces remain. At others, it had exasperated her, it made her feel
like a piano, on which, a piece played, the cover is shut. She had
seemed to serve as a pastime, nothing more; a toy which now and then
he took up, but only because it was there, beneath his feet. Yet even
then she was not quite unhappy. Even then she had faith. She believed
in him still. Hope had not gone.

Hope has its braveries. Its outposts patrol our lives. Until death
annihilates it and us, always beyond is a sentry. The sentry which she
still discerned was the promise he had made. Latterly it had not been
much of a sentry. It had far more resembled a straw. But it was all
she had. She had clung to it. Hope indeed has its braveries, but it
has its cowardices as well.

This hope, ultimate and forlorn, she knew now was craven, mated to her
degradation, born of her shame. If it were to be realized the
realization must delay no more. She was at the gates. She must pass
through. On that she had decided. When Loftus came she would tell him
so. She would tell him that she would work for him, slave for him,
envelop him with her love, pillow him on her heart. Though he lost his
wretched money what would it matter to her and how should it matter to
him? She could sing him if not into affluence at least into ease.
Tambourini, with whom until recently she had studied, had told her not
once, out of politeness merely, but again and again that in her throat
was a volcano of gold. With Italian exaggeration he had called her
Pasta, Alboni, Malibran, predicting their triumphs for her. If Loftus
would make an honest woman of her those triumphs would be for him. But
as she told herself that she told herself too that such triumphs he
would prefer to avoid. He should have, though, the chance. If he
rejected it she would go. And of its rejection she had little manner
of doubt. But the chance he should have, yes, even though she knew
beforehand that with his usual civility--a civility which she had
learned to hate--he would hand it back. She could see him at it. She
could see his negligent smile. That smile she had learned too to hate.
Always she loved him to distraction, but sometime she hated him to the
death.

From Loftus for a moment her thoughts veered to Tambourini. The week
previous suddenly, without warning, he had told her torrentially that
he adored her. He was a good teacher. Yet, of course, after that she
had been obliged to let him go.

But now her thoughts were interrupted. At the table where she sat she
started, her head drawn abruptly in that attitude which deers have
when surprised. In the door without had come the fumble of a key and,
in the hall, she caught the almost noiseless tread of her lover. As he
entered she got from her seat. Loftus had his hat on. He took it off,
put it down on the table and taking a cigar from his pocket lit it at
the chimney of a lamp that was there.

At the conclusion of the operation he looked at her. Her dress was
canary. From the short loose sleeves lace fell that was repeated at
the neck. There a yellow sapphire had been pinned. As he looked at
her, she looked at him.

"I have something to say to you, Marie," he began.

With an uplift of the chin she answered: "And I, Royal, have something
to say to you."

"The usual thing, I suppose. Well, shy a teacup at me if you like, but
spare me a scene."

As he spoke he seated himself. "Marie," he at once resumed, "I shall
have to take my mother up the Hudson shortly----"

The girl interrupted him. "Does Mrs. Annandale go too?"

The man's cigar had gone out. He relighted it. "No," he replied, "the
last time I saw her she said something about going West."

"Ah!" Marie exclaimed, and immediately with that curious intuition
which women that really love possess she added, "to Dakota?"

"Perhaps," replied Loftus with a puff. The surety of the shot amazed
him, but of the amazement he gave no sign. "Perhaps, though I do not
remember that she said just where she did intend to go." He drew in a
large mouthful of smoke, which leisurely he blew forth. It circled
about her. She moved away. "Oh, excuse me," he said, "I did not
mean--" The girl made a gesture of indifference. "You see," he began
again, "the point is just here. My mother is not well. She rather
wants me with her this summer. In the circumstances I thought you
might like to go abroad."

Marie, through half-closed eyes, cautiously peered at him. "Without
you?" she asked.

Loftus nodded.

"For good?"

To this Loftus made no answer. Provided she went, though it were for
bad, he did not much care.

Marie, who had been standing, crossed the room and recrossed it. A
year before she had suggested the kitten. Where that had been the
leopard had come. In her movements were the same supple ease, the same
grace and alertness. Suddenly at the table where he sat she stopped,
rested a hand on it and bending a little looked him in the face.

"Liar," she muttered. "Liar! I know and so do you. Yes, I knew it
almost from the first, but, though I knew it, I tried as hard to
deceive myself as you did to deceive me. You never intended to marry
me, not for a moment, not even at the moment when you called God to
witness that you would."

Her hand had gone from the table, from it and him she turned away.

Loftus, who at the arraignment had retreated a full inch in his chair,
called after her. "It is untrue; what I said, I meant."

Marie turned back. "Then if you meant it, marry me this night. If you
have any honor, any whatever, a spark of it, you will; if not----"

She paused and looked at him. It was not this at all she had meant to
say. She had meant to entreat him, to picture what their life might
be, to tell him of her enveloping love, and that failing, to go, but
to go without words, without reproaches, without suffering that which
had been between them to be marred by vituperation and, so marred, to
descend to the level of some coarse intrigue. But something, his
manner, the manifest lie about his mother, the apparition of that
other woman, battening on nerves overwrought had irritated her into
entire forgetfulness of what she had meant to do and say.

The pause Loftus noticed. What was behind it he misconstrued. "Don't
mind me," he encouragingly interjected. "Threaten away. It is so nice
and well-bred. Yet I must be allowed to say that while I did intend to
marry you, the intention has been rather weakened through just such
scenes as this. Though, to be frank, it is not so much that I object
to scenes as it is that, if scenes there must be, I prefer to make
them myself."

At the humor of that Marie ran her nails into her hands, dug them in.
Without some such moxa it seemed to her that she might take and hurl
the lamp at him, fire the place and, fate favoring, be calcinated with
him there.

"And now that I have been frank," he went on, "let me be franker. You
and I have ceased to be able to hit it off. The blame for that I will,
if you like, assume."

Then he too paused. But not at all because he did not fully know what
he meant to do and say.

"Marie," he continued, putting a hand in a pocket as he spoke, "in the
past year we have been more than friends. Friends at least let us
remain. Friends do part, and for awhile we must. Your voice, like
yourself, is charming. If I may advise, go and study abroad. Though if
you prefer remain here. But, of course, whatever you do you will need
money. I have brought some."

In his hand now was a card case which he offered her. She took it,
looked at it, opened it, then moving to a window she raised the sash
and threw the card case into the night, yet so quickly and
unexpectedly that Loftus had no time to interfere.

"That is an agreeable way of getting rid of twelve thousand dollars,"
he remarked.

Yet, however lightly he affected to speak, the action annoyed him.
Like all men of large means he was close. It seemed to him beastly to
lose such a sum. He got up, went to the window and looked down. He
could not see the case and he much wanted to go and look for it. But
that for the moment Marie prevented.

"If it were twelve times twelve million," she exclaimed, "I would do
the same! Oh, Royal," she cried, "don't you know it is not your money
I want; don't you know it is you?"

Loftus did know, but he did not care. The flinging away of the money
was all he could think of. It was an act which he could not properly
qualify as plebeian, but which seemed to him crazily courtesanesque.
He returned to the table and picked up his hat. "I am going," he
announced.

Marie sprang at him. "Is that your answer?"

He brushed her aside. She saw that he was going, saw too, or thought
she saw, that he was going never to return, saw also that now at last
she was at the gates.

"My God!" she cried. "My God!"

So resonant was the cry that Loftus turned, not to her but to the
window. He closed it. But already the cry had passed elsewhere.

From regions beyond a fat negress waddled hurriedly in. Her eyes
rolled whitely from the girl to Loftus and then again to the girl.

"Are you sick, miss?"

"Go away," said Loftus, "there is nothing the matter."

"Nothing?" exclaimed Marie. "Nothing!" she repeated in a higher key.
"Nothing!" Then, visibly, anger enveloped her. "Do you call it nothing
to be cheated and decoyed? Nothing to have faith and love and be
gammoned of them by a living lie, by a perjury in flesh and blood? Is
that what you call nothing? Is it? Then tell me what something is?"

At the moment she stared at Loftus, her lips still moving, her breast
heaving, her small hands clenched, her face very white. And Loftus
stared at her. In the vehemence and contempt of her anger he did not
recognize at all the kitten of the year before. But it was very
vulgar, he decided.

That vulgarity Blanche complicated at once. "What has he done, miss?"
she asked, her hands on her hips.

"Done?" Marie echoed. "He has made me drink of shame. Now, tired of
that, he is going."

"Not to leave you, miss?"

"To leave me for another woman."

"Then hanging is too good for him."

Loftus gestured at the negress. "I say," he called. "Did you hear what
I told you? Go away and hold your tongue."

Blanche's eyes that had rolled whitely before were rolling now not
merely whitely but wildly.

"I won't go away, sir. I won't hold my tongue, sir. I am as good as
you, sir. I have a son that's better nor you, sir. He wouldn't treat a
lady as you have her, sir. Staying away from her as you have, sir.
Making her eat her heart out, sir. No, sir, I won't hold my tongue,
sir."

And Blanche, mounting in paroxysms of indignation, shouted: "For the
Lord's sake, sir. Hanging is too good for you, sir. You ought to have
your ghost kicked. Yes, sir."

"Oh, hell!" muttered Loftus between his teeth, and turning on his
heel, he stalked out, flecking from his sleeve as he went an imaginary
speck.




CHAPTER IV

THE RETURN OF THE YELLOW FAY


In Fanny's drawing-room the next evening, at six minutes after eight,
Loftus appeared. Although tolerably punctual, others had preceded him.
On a sofa with Fanny was Sylvia Waldron. On another sofa were Mrs.
Waldron and Melanchthon Orr. Annandale, who seemed to have lost flesh,
was standing in the middle of the floor.

"How are you?" he asked as Loftus entered.

"And you?"

"They did me," Annandale answered. "Atch., U. P., St. Paul, Steel, I
had the list." As he spoke he mopped himself. Then in confidential
aside, he added, "It has affected my stomach. It is as though I had a
hole there. Will you have a sherry and bitters?"

Loftus moved forward to where Sylvia and Fanny sat. Fanny gave him a
finger; Sylvia, a little distant nod. She was dressed in white. About
her neck was a string of pearls. Fanny was in a frock of tender
asparagus green fluttered with lace, very cool to the eye and cut
rather low.

"I hope Arthur isn't hurt much," said Loftus.

"Are you?" Fanny asked.

"No. I have been selling. Today I covered. It was not easy, though.
Everybody was crazy. I have never seen a panic before."

"It will be a generation before you see another," Orr, from across the
room, called out.

At the further end of the room Harris, Annandale's former valet, since
promoted to the position of butler, appeared, smug-faced and solemn,
in silent announcement of dinner.

For the time being the subject was abandoned, but presently when at
table all were seated it was resumed.

"It will cost the country $50,000,000," said Orr. He was at Fanny's
left. At her right was Loftus.

"Well," said Annandale, emptying a glass of Ruinart, "I am glad I
don't have to produce it." Emptying another glass he added, "I have
produced all I could."

"I think I do not quite understand," said Mrs. Waldron, who led a
highly unspeculative life and seldom saw the evening papers.

Orr and Annandale both hastened to enlighten her. Ever since the
Presidential election there had been a boom in the Street, a soaring
market in which the whole community, down to and including messenger
boys and chorus girls, had joined. On this, the ninth of May, it had,
in the slang of the Street, just "busted." Since the great black day
of a generation previous, never had there been such a crash, so many
landed gentry, so much paper profit sunk into such absolute loss.

In the flow of talk Fanny turned to Loftus.

"How is the lady?"

Loftus, whose mouth was full of jellied consommé, did not answer for a
moment. Then he made a slight gesture. "She has gone."

"Already?"

"I had your orders!"

Fanny looked at him wonderingly. "How did she take it?"

"What difference does it make? She has gone. Is not that sufficient?"

"For you, no doubt. But for her! No; really I am sorry. When you told
her that you loved her I am sure she thought you meant forever. I am
sure, too, that you meant for a week. It is a shame to treat a girl
like that and then turn her loose."

Loftus had begun to busy himself with some fish. He put his fork
down. "But, confound it, you told me to."

"Did I? I forgot. Besides, you are not usually so obedient."

Loftus turned to his fish. "It seems to me that there is rather a
change in the temperature. Isn't there?" he asked.

"But, Royal, I cannot help feeling sorry for that girl. I cannot help
feeling, too, that if you can get rid of her in this lively fashion
you might do the same with me."

"In that case it only shows what a simpleton you are. If I have had
anything to do with her at all it was only because I couldn't have
anything to do with you."

"Well, hardly in that way. But you could have asked me to marry you."

"I have since."

"Say, rather, I asked you."

"Anyway, the other evening it was settled. If now you have changed
your mind----"

"Regarding you my mind will never change. I shall speak to Arthur
tonight."

"What's that?" called Annandale who, from the other end of the table,
had caught the mention of his name. "What's that?"

"We were talking stocks," Loftus answered. "Do you know how money was
today?"

"I know it was beastly tight."

"And that seems to me," Fanny with one of her limpid smiles remarked,
"such a vulgar condition for money to be in."

"Did I hear you ask," Orr inquired, "how money was today? It was sixty
per cent."

"Dear me, Melanchthon," Mrs. Waldron exclaimed. "I think I must get
you to speak to the Trust Company. They only give me three. A mouse
could not live in New York on that."

"The time is not distant," said Orr, "when the population of New York
will be exclusively composed of mice and millionaires. Nobody but
plutocrats and paupers will be able to live here. Already it is little
more than a sordid hell with a blue sky. I can remember----"

Orr ran on. He had the table. In the impromptu which ensued other
conversation was swamped. But during it, for a second, Loftus had
Fanny's hand in his. It clasped it and in clasping thrilled. It was
the first time in her life that she had permitted herself--or
him--such a thing. It was the last.

Sylvia, happening at the moment to turn that way, could not help
seeing what was going on. She colored and looked at Annandale.

During Orr's impromptu he had been attempting with plentiful champagne
to fill the hole of which he had complained.

Later, the dinner at an end, the women gone, the hole still unfilled,
he called for whisky and soda and monologued plaintively on the
disasters of the day. As he talked he drank. But the monologue, which
was becoming tedious, Harris interrupted. Mrs. Waldron had sent in to
say that she and Miss Waldron were going, and would Mr. Orr be so good
as to see them home.

At this Annandale got up. With the others he made for the room beyond.
There, shortly, the guests of the evening departed; husband and wife
were alone.

"Do you know, Fanny, how much I have lost today?" that husband began.

"No, Arthur," that wife replied. "Nor do I know that I particularly
care. There is something more important to me than money just now. I
want a divorce."

"Eh?" Annandale had been walking up and down the room, but at this he
stopped short. He did not seem to have heard aright. "Eh?"

"Eh?" Fanny repeated in open mimic. "Yes, I want a divorce."

"A divorce?" Munching the syllables of the word, Annandale put a hand
to his shirt front. "From me?" Had Fanny asked him to make good the
fifty million loss to the country which Orr had mentioned his
bewilderment could not have been more sheer.

He stared at Fanny. She was nodding at him. Influenced by that motion
of her head, slowly, almost laboriously, he sat down. There the
disasters of the day fusing with the alcohol of the night blent with
the demand and bewildered him still more.

"What an odd thing to want," he said at last. Then rallying he added,
"You must be j-joking. Yes--really, for you know you can't tell me
why."

To this, Fanny who had been eyeing him narrowly, retorted severely: "I
wonder are you in a condition to have me tell you anything at all?"

At the imputation the poor chap, after the fashion of poor chaps in
similar shape, flared indignantly. "There is nothing the matter with
me," he protested. Though very much mixed, he managed for the moment
not to appear so. "Nothing," he reiterated.

"Then Arthur, to be quite frank, we are not suited to each other. If
you will give me a divorce it will be nice of you. If not I shall go
to Dakota and get one."

Annandale passed a hand over his forehead. He did not in the least
understand what all this was about. Then suddenly the fumes of wine
disclosed a retrospect of incidents garnered unconsciously, memories
of Fanny and Loftus, the sense of her increasing aloofness, the
knowledge of his constant presence. These things made pictures which
he saw and, seeing, inflamed. At once, in answer not to her but to
them, he got from his seat, pounded violently on an étagère and cried
with the viciousness of drink: "I'll shoot him! I'll shoot Royal
Loftus for the dog that he is!"

"Beg pardon, sir." Through the lateral entrance to the drawing-room
Harris emerged, a tray in his hand. "A necklace, sir. It was under the
dining-room table where Miss Waldron sat, sir."

Annandale strangled an oath. He glared at Fanny, glared at the man,
glared at the pearls, took the latter, thrust them in his pocket,
motioned to Harris, strode from the room, went upstairs, then down and
out from the house, slamming the door after him with a noise in which
there was the clatter of musketry and the din of oaths.

The night was black yet full of stars, the hour homicidal and serene.
Annandale strode on. Before him was the park, about it a fence of high
iron and within phantasmal peace. He did not notice it. He was
wondering angrily what he would do, how he should act.

Had he been sober he would have known at once. When in his sphere of
life a woman wants to go, it is a man's mere duty to open the doors,
open the windows, run ahead, get a divorce and bring it back to her on
a salver. Had he been sober he would have realized that. He would have
recognized too the propriety of Fanny's frank request. After little
more than five months of marriage it was perhaps precipitate. Yet
considered simply as a request it was, in the world in which he moved,
more common than the reverse.

Ordinarily he would have realized that. What is more, he would have
realized that what Fanny had said was true. They were not suited for
each other. When people are not so suited it is best that they should
separate. But people that have bowed when they met might just as well
bow when they part. In the life known as polite big words and little
threats have long since gone out of fashion.

All of which ordinarily Annandale would have known. He was essentially
urbane, of a nature far more inclined to inaction than anger.
Ordinarily, he would have accepted the situation, without joy, no
doubt, but certainly without raising the roof. Whereupon, having so
accepted it, he would have turned in and gone to bed.

But alcohol plays strange tricks. It affects manners and memories. It
affects, too, the imagination. Annandale was drunk. The Yellow Fay
that lurks in liquor awoke in him the manger dog. He told himself that
he was being robbed. And of what? The wife of his bosom! And by whom?
His nearest friend! The outrage and the villainy of that loomed, or
rather, the Yellow Fay aiding, seemed to loom so monstrously, that,
beside it, the disasters of the Street dwindled into nothing, lost in
the sense of this wrong.

It was damnable, he decided.

Putting a hand in a pocket his fingers encountered a string of pearls.
It was not that which he was seeking. Besides, he had forgotten them.
But finding them there it occurred to him that he ought to restore
them at once. Circling the park he entered Irving Place and rang at
Sylvia's door.

There, instead of the usual if brief delay, the door opened at once.
Orr was coming out. Beyond in the hall Sylvia stood. Orr looked at
Annandale, wondering what the dickens he was after. But Annandale
brushed by. Orr passed on. Annandale entered the hall.

As the door closed the light revealed to Sylvia what Orr in the
semi-obscurity of the stoop had not observed and which, had he
observed, would, in view of an anterior episode, have induced his
return.

But Sylvia saw. In face and manner his excitement was obvious. Mindful
of that episode she feared that he was again in his cups. Yet
immediately, though for a moment, a question which he asked reassured
her. She understood, or thought she did, why he had come.

"Did you know that you had lost your pearls?"

Instinctively the girl's hand went to her throat.

"Here they are. They were found somewhere. In the hall, I think."

"Thank you, Arthur. This is very good of you. But tomorrow would have
done."

She did not ask him in and this omission he did not appear to notice.
He looked about the hall and then at the girl. At the look her fear
returned.

"Did you know about Fanny and Loftus?" he suddenly asked. "They're
going to elope." As he spoke he leaned back heavily against the door.
"I shall kill him," he added thickly.

Sylvia wrung her hands. "Oh, Arthur, you have been drinking again. You
promised that you never would."

"I shall kill him," Annandale stubbornly repeated.

"Oh, don't say such things," the girl pleaded. "Don't say them. Go
home."

Annandale turned sullenly, opened the door and looking back, muttered,
"I have no home."

Closing the door after him he started down the steps. They were few
and wide, easy of descent. But they had become unaccountably steep. He
caught at a rail. It steadied him. He stood there a moment. Then, a
bit uncertainly, he zigzagged on.




CHAPTER V

EXIT FANNY


"Murder!"

On the morrow, through the thick streets newsboys were shouting the
word engagingly, as though it were something nice. For further
temptation they bawled, "In Gramercy Park!"

Orr was leaving his office. It was four o'clock. He was on his way
home. But the name detained him. Murder in Gramercy Park was a novelty
which no one aware of its sedateness could comfortably resist. He
bought an extra. There, for his penny, in leaded type it stood. In
ink, appropriately red, meagre details followed. As these sprang at
him, mentally he bolted. Other purchasers were absorbing them
pleasurably. A good old-fashioned crime is so rare! Then, too, of all
crimes murder in Gramercy Park is rarest. Yet when in addition the
victim is a man of fashion what more would you have for a cent?

To Orr the information was excessive. It concerned Royal Loftus, who,
the paper stated, had been found early that morning, near a bench in
the park, doubled in a heap, a bullet through his handsome head.

No clues, no arrests. That was all. But was it not enough? To Orr,
while excessive it was also incredible. Mechanically he read the
account again. On his way uptown he bought other papers, less colorful
but equally clear. Loftus had been identified. There was no mistake.

But the incredibility of it persisted. A man young, rich, handsome,
without apparently an enemy in the world or an idea in his head, to be
done for like that was a matter which Orr could not immediately
digest.

He tried, however. In the effort he reached his house. There a
telephone message awaited him. It asked would he please come to Irving
Place. Presumably it concerned the murder. He went at once.

In the sombre parlor Sylvia stood.

"You know, I suppose," he began. Seeing that she did he added, "It is
very odd."

Sylvia interrupted him. "There is worse."

"How worse? What do you mean?"

"Fanny was going to run off with him."

"With Loftus?"

Sylvia nodded. Her face, always pale, now was white.

"But," Orr expostulated, "you don't fancy that Annandale----?"

"No." The monosyllable fell longly from the girl. "No," she repeated.
"But others may."

"I don't see why. There is nothing to go on. Is there though?"

Sylvia did not directly reply. She looked down at her hands and then
at her cousin. "I think," she presently said, "that he must have
learned of it last evening after we went away. At dinner I am sure he
had no suspicions."

"Had you any?"

Sylvia raised her eyebrows. "I don't know," she remarked, "whether
when you were going from here you noticed him particularly, but in the
hall he had told her that he would shoot him."

Orr sniffed. "That is rather awkward."

"Then almost at once he went. But where?"

"Have you heard from him since?"

"No, and it is for that reason I sent for you. Won't you go to him and
let me know?"

But Orr did not like the errand. It seemed to him that Annandale might
be the man. "That, too, is rather awkward," he objected.

Against the objection Sylvia pleaded. Manifestly she was nervous. "If
you won't go," she said at last, "I shall."

"Oh, well, if you put it in that way," Orr reluctantly replied, "I
suppose I must."

"And you will come back?"

"As quickly as I can."

There is a line of Hugo descriptive of the earnestness with which
people gape at a wall behind which something has occurred. Orr
recalled it when he reached Gramercy Park. At one end of the park was
a great crowd staring at the high fence of iron. It was behind the
fence that Loftus had been found. The place itself was directly in
front of Annandale's house.

On entering that house Orr was shown into the drawing-room. Shortly,
from a room beyond, Annandale appeared.

"You have heard, have you not?" he asked. "But come in here."

Orr followed him to the other room. In it was a sideboard on which
decanters stood.

"Will you have something?"

Orr thanked him. Annandale helped himself to a liquor. As he did so
the decanter clicked against the glass and, as he raised the glass,
Orr saw that his hand shook.

"It is very strange," said Annandale, repeating almost the words which
Orr had used to Sylvia. "I had no cause to love the man, but----"

"I know," Orr interrupted. "My cousin told me. But if I were you I
would not talk of it. She seemed worried lest you might."

Annandale put down the glass. He was quite flushed. "But," he
exclaimed, "she does not suspect me!"

"Of course not. On the contrary. But then the fact suggests a motive
which, coupled with any threat you may have made, might, in the
absence of other clues, made a prima facie case, which to say the
least, don't you see, would be nasty."

"Damnably so!" Annandale muttered dumbly. Then, raising the glass
again, he threw out: "But what nonsense! A little after you had all
gone from here I went to your cousin's----"

"Yes. I know you did. I met you on the stoop."

"Did you?" said Annandale with marked surprise.

"Why, yes. Don't you remember?"

Annandale passed a hand across his face and sat down.

"Don't you remember?" Orr reiterated.

Annandale shook his head.

"But you remember where you went afterward, don't you? Did you come
directly here?"

Annandale made no answer.

"Can't you tell me?" Orr asked. "Or is it that you don't wish to?"

On a mantel opposite the sideboard a clock was ticking. For awhile in
the room only that ticking could be heard.

"Can't you?" Orr asked again.

Annandale stood up. It was as though the question had prodded him. He
moved to the sideboard. But Orr got in his way.

"Don't drink any more. Try to think."

"I can't," said Annandale. He moved back and sat down. In his face the
flush had deepened. It looked mottled. He himself looked ill.

Orr, a hand extended on the sideboard, beat on it a brief tattoo.

"This is rather tedious," he said at last. "It is only a little less
than a year ago that you had a similar lapse. Oddly enough, it began
as this has, at my cousin's house. But we must try to keep her out of
the matter. Were she asked what you said it might be embarrassing,
don't you think?"

"What I said? What did I say?"

Annandale as he spoke looked so abject that Orr feared that he might
go to pieces there and then. Humanely he changed the subject. "Of
course, whoever did it will be nabbed. Meanwhile, it is only to
prevent any stupid suspicions that I venture to advise. By the way,
have you any idea who could have done it?"

Annandale again ran his hand across his eyes; then, looking up at Orr,
he replied: "Not one--unless he did it himself."

"H'm. Well, yes. That might be. But what does Mrs. Annandale think?"

"She does not know. Or, at least, she did not at noon. I heard it then
from Harris. I told him not to say anything to her. Shortly after, as
I understood, she went out, to her mother's, I believe, though, of
course, since then----"

The sentence was not completed. Fanny was entering the room. Orr had
always admired her very much, but never so much as then. She was
dressed in black, which is becoming to blonds, and richly dressed, he
afterward thought, he could not be sure for he lacked the huckster's
eye. But his admiration was not on this occasion induced by her looks,
though a woman's looks, when she has any, are always notable if
unnoticed factors. His admiration was caused by the way she took
things.

With the air of one inquiring the time of day she glanced at Annandale
and asked, almost with a lisp: "Why didn't you shoot me?"

Orr turned to Annandale. He was rising. From his face the flush had
gone. He was lurid. The word lurid is used because it is more dramatic
than its synonym, ghastly. And here was drama, real drama, in real
life.

"Fanny, you don't think that I----"

Drama, real drama, is an enjoyable rarity. Orr longed to stay and see
it out. But, obviously, anything of the kind would have been worse
than indiscreet. He picked up his hat.

"Fanny," Annandale repeated, "you can't think----"

"Oh," she interrupted, "you see you made it quite unnecessary for me
to think at all. You told me beforehand. Wasn't it considerate?" she
added, turning to Orr.

"But I did not mean it," cried Annandale. "As God is my witness----"

"I am a witness," Fanny interjected, interrupting him again. But the
interruption was effected without abruptness, without apparent
emotion, sweetly, almost lispingly, with a modulation of the voice
that was restful to the ear. "And," she added, in the same sugary,
leisurely way, but raising now a slender finger gloved in white, "I
will swear to what you said."

At this Orr swam, or tried to swim, to the rescue. "Surely," he
protested, "you would not do that?"

"Wouldn't I?" she answered, addressing Orr and speaking in the same
smiling, seductive fashion that she had to Annandale. "Wouldn't I,
indeed! Really, believe me, you are quite in error."

Annandale fell back in the chair from which he had arisen. "Fanny," he
gasped, "I did not know a woman could hate like that."

Fanny smiled afresh. "No? Is it possible? But, then, perhaps, you
never knew how a woman could love."

She gave a little nod. It was as though she were adding, "Take that."

Orr was buttoning a glove, preparing to retreat. She turned to him:
"Don't go. Stay and have a drink with Arthur. He looks as though he
needed one."

She moved back.

"Yes, stay," she continued. "I am going." Once more the slender finger
gloved in white was raised. "Arthur Annandale, never willingly will I
see you again--except in court. For to court I shall go, if only to
see you sentenced."

At that, at the splendid ferocity of it, Orr looked at Annandale. When
he turned to look at Fanny, silently, no doubt smilingly, she had
gone.




CHAPTER VI

WHAT THE PAPERS SAID


There are occasions when speech is an intrusion and sympathy an
affront. An occasion of this kind coincided with Fanny's exit. On the
mantel the clock still ticked. Otherwise there was silence in that
room.

Orr, finishing with his glove, made for the door. "If I can be of
use," he said, "let me know."

Annandale stood up. "You can," he answered. For a moment he hesitated.
He seemed lost and dizzy. Then, with an effort, he got himself
together. "Tell Sylvia it is not true."

Orr passed out. But instead of returning at once to Irving Place he
went up the steps of an adjoining house. There he was told that Mrs.
Loftus could see no one. He had not expected to be received. But he
felt for her, felt, too, how she must feel.

That a Loftus should die would, he knew, be enough. But that a Loftus
should be murdered, and that Loftus be her son, there was something
which, Orr thought, might perhaps overwhelm her. And, as Orr afterward
learned, Mrs. Loftus was then sitting, her attendants about her,
absently and ceaselessly shaking her head. Nor did the motion of it
ever cease. She was palsied.

Before Orr learned of that other things supervened, primarily fresh
extras. These of course were indicated. The imagination of the public
had been stirred. Of all things mystery affects the imagination most.
Here was one agreeably heightened by subsequent editions announcing
the projection of the eternal feminine.

Then those that read these sheets felt that they were getting their
money's worth. But the feeling was accentuated when one of the papers
gratified them with a picture of a girl who they saw was an
exceedingly fetching young woman and who they were informed had
vanished from her residence, the Arundel, where she was known as Miss
Leroy.

Her connection with Loftus, a connection which the neighborhood
generally understood, was shown with reportorial ease. With the same
ease it was established that he had been with her the evening
preceding the night of his death. Bag and baggage the next morning she
had flown.

That fact in itself was prodigiously interesting. A young and pretty
assassin, what! It was quite like fiction. It was almost too good or
too bad to be true. Besides, the picture displayed a girl not merely
pretty but quasi-ideal, a face infinitely delicate, disdainful yet
sad.

Orr saw the picture and saw too that, while perhaps rather flattering,
it did not resemble Marie in the least. As a matter of fact it was an
art editor's fake. But that, of course, the public did not know and
being fed on fakes would not have cared if it had known.

Then more mystery followed. What were her antecedents? Who were her
people? Whence had she come? No one could say. What alone could be
said was that a year previous Loftus had taken for her an apartment at
the Arundel, where she had resided in a manner otherwise genteel,
though with, latterly, but one servant, a negress named Blanche.

At the time the police were as much interested in the servant as the
public in the girl. The latter in departing had had the forethought to
leave the former behind, and, from her, information relevant and
irrelevant was obtained.

To Mr. Peacock for instance, one of the district attorneys, Blanche
related that at dinner her mistress liked sweetbreads and sorrel
with, now and then, a chocolate souffle.

Mr. Peacock was a florid man with the face of a cupid, the guile of a
fox and the voice of an ogre. "I don't care for that," he told her.

"Nor I," Blanche agreeably replied.

"I mean," said Mr. Peacock, "that I don't care about her victuals. She
was in love with the dead man, wasn't she?"

"I guess so," Blanche with profound if unconscious psychology replied.
"She was always scrapping with him. She----"

"Tell me," Peacock interrupted, "what happened the last night he was
there."

"It was awful. He was trying to get rid of her. He wasn't much and I
told him so, but he was all she had. When I first came to her she said
she was an orphan, that she hadn't anybody anywhere, that they were
all dead."

"She may have meant," Peacock with even profounder psychology
interjected, "that she was dead to them."

But this insinuation Blanche resented. "She could be lively enough
when she liked."

"Who came to see her?"

"Mr. L."

"No one else?"

Blanche shook her head.

"Whom did she write to?"

"How do I know?"

"Didn't you ever see her write to anyone?"

"Well, the last night, after he had gone, she did write a letter and
gave it to me to post. When I came back----"

"Whom was it addressed to?"

Blanche shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, I can't read. When I
came back she was crying and getting a few duds together and I helped
her."

"Did she tell you where she was going?"

"Sure. To Europe. I saw her off the next day. She went in the
sewerage."

"In the steerage, do you mean?" asked Peacock. "But she hadn't any
money? Didn't Loftus give her any?"

"She wouldn't take his money, she threw it back at him. She would not
take anything he had given her. She left a room full of dresses and
jewelry. They are at the Arundel now. She told me----"

"Did you see her on board?"

Blanche nodded.

"Mightn't she have left the ship before it sailed?"

"Yes, if she had wanted. I wouldn't have stopped her. But I stood
there and as the ship went out she waved her little hand at me
and--and----"

"Do you remember the ship's name?"

But now Blanche was weeping profusely.

"No matter," said Peacock. "I can find out."

He did. He found out, too, that when Loftus was shot Marie Leroy was
on the high seas. And there he was without a clue. What is worse,
there was the eager public quite as deficient.

Yet though the clue which the girl represented was necessarily
abandoned, there remained a theory. There remained even two theories.
The first was robbery.

Loftus, when found, had about him not so much as a five-cent piece.
The wad of bills which men of means are supposed to carry, and which,
having credit everywhere, they never do, was absent. Absent too was
the customary watch. The precise use which a man of means and
particularly of leisure can have for a watch the police and press did
not stop to consider. The absence of watch and money suggested a
theory. That was enough.

The theory, however, like all theories, had its defects. Loftus had
been found within the park, a few feet from the fence. The shooting
might have occurred from without, but unless the assassin had a key
or a ladder or a balloon or wings he could not possibly have got in to
go through him. Eliminating ladder, balloon and wings, a key the
assassin could not have had unless he were a resident in the
neighborhood, the agent of a resident, or a caretaker of the park
itself. People of this order are as eliminable as balloons and wings.

The theory therefore had its defects. It had, though, this in its
favor--the lock of one of the gates might have been picked. It had
something else in its favor. It suited the Loftus clan.

Mrs. Loftus, though childless now, was not otherwise alone. Behind her
were all the Loftuses, a contingent of relatives socially eminent,
ponderable politically, super-respectable, synonymous with the best.
To them the death of Royal, however dismal, was not disgraceful--not
disgraceful, that is, assuming that it was a footpad's work. On their
escutcheon it put a mourning band but not a blackening blot. That blot
they feared. They had cause to. The dark, donjuanesque story about
Marie Leroy might have been followed by other stories darker still,
dirtier if possible, that would begrime them all.

The footpad theory they accepted therefore at once. Had they been
able, had circumstances favored them, had the man, for instance, been
shot in some way or in some place unknowable to the police, they
would have arranged to have had him die decorously, if suddenly, of
some genteel complaint, of appendicitis or pleuro-pneumonia. Then
there would have been no stories, no extras, no pictures, no
notoriety, no fear of that blot.

The fear subsisting, they accepted the footpad theory, glad to find it
ready-made, declining to consider any other, desisting from further
effort, hushing the matter as well as they could, refusing, though
urged, to offer a reward.

Yet, though the theory suited them it did not satisfy the public. It
was too tame. They demanded something else. That demand the press, as
was its duty, attempted to supply. Through methods unfathomably
vidocqesque, the young gentleman connected with the _Chronicle_--one
of the most enterprising sheets--discovered more about Loftus dead
than Loftus living could himself have known. They discovered that in
the panic he had dropped a bagatelle of five millions, and announced
that he had committed suicide. But while at the autopsy it was not
demonstrated that Loftus could not have shot himself, at the inquest
it was shown that the obligatory instrument had not been found. Even
to vidocqesque young gentlemen the suicide theory ceased then to
appeal.

But that only deepened the mystery. To dissipate it and, at the same
time, to display an endearing pro bono publicanism, the _Chronicle_
offered a reward of five thousand dollars for such information as
would lead to the arrest and conviction of the assassin.

Immediately there was a clue.

It was Harris who produced it. Under the guidance of a reporter he was
led to the office of the _Chronicle_, where the young gentleman turned
him over to the managing editor quite as though the clue were his own.

"Here, Mr. Digby, is a party that knows who shot Loftus."

Mr. Digby was a small man with a big beard, very well dressed,
remarkably civil.

"Yes," he said. "And who did?"

"Mr. Arthur Annandale."

Mr. Digby smiled. He did not believe it. But it stirred him
pleasurably. The _Chronicle_ stood for the people. Annandale
represented the predatory rich. Besides, it was in front of
Annandale's house that Loftus had been found. At once he saw scoops,
extras, headlines. Also the possible libel. Meanwhile at a glance he
had taken Harris in.

"You are in his employment?"

"Yes, sir," Harris, amazed at such perspicacity, replied. "I am the
butler."

"And you saw him do it?"

"No, sir, but I heard him say he would."

"When?"

"The night Mr. Loftus was shot."

"To whom did he say it? To you?"

"To Mrs. Annandale, sir."

"Oho! How was that?"

"It was after dinner, sir. I was in the dining-room. The second man
was with me cleaning up. On the floor under the table he found a
necklace. I took it in through the hall to the drawing-room. Mrs.
Annandale was there with Mr. Annandale. When I was just at the door I
heard him say, 'I'll kill Loftus.' I went in and gave him the
necklace."

"But why?" Mr. Digby interrupted. "What was he going to kill him for?
What was the motive?"

"Mr. Loftus had just gone, sir. He had been dining with us. He and
several others."

"Well?"

"Well, sir, when I was in the hall I heard Mrs. Annandale say as how
she wanted a divorce."

"Aha!" exclaimed Mr. Digby. "The plot thickens. Was she in love with
Loftus?"

"She was that, sir. Anyone could see it."

"Then what?"

"Mr. Annandale went upstairs, came down again and went out."

"Did you attach any importance to his going upstairs?"

"He went to get his pistol, sir."

"Oho! He had a pistol, had he?"

"Yes, sir. A 32-calibre. I bought it for him myself."

"That is a very good story," said Mr. Digby, who was a judge.




CHAPTER VII

HELD WITHOUT BAIL


The theories and clues in the now celebrated case Orr related to
Sylvia one after another as they reached him through different
channels. To the story of Marie Leroy she listened, her face averted,
without a word. The footpad theory she dismissed. It was absurd. But
the suicide theory impressed her. Even to her mind it was not logical.
Loftus was too cavalier, too supremely indifferent, to make it
plausible. On the other hand, it disposed of the whole matter.
Moreover, as she put it to Orr, what is suicide but the sinful end of
a sinful life? "Who knows," she asked, "what sudden remorse he may
have experienced that last night when he was alone there in the park?"

"Suicide," Orr had replied, "is assassination driven in. It is the
crisis of a pre-existing condition, a condition wholly pathological,
one which remorse may complicate but which it cannot directly induce.
There was nothing whatever the matter with Loftus. He may have been
sinful, as you express it, but he was sound. Besides, the man had no
more conscience than a tom cat."

Nevertheless Sylvia clung to the theory. She had no other. Hopelessly
she hoped that time would verify it. But she suffered acutely. Orr's
account of Fanny's attitude frightened her. What frightened her most
was the tale that Harris told. The latter she learned from the press.

Meanwhile she had gone to Mrs. Loftus. The old lady had not recognized
her, or, rather, had mistaken her for someone else. "My boy is away,
Fanny," she said, her head shaking as she spoke. "He is away. I don't
know where." She began to whimper.

Sylvia, too, had wept. It was pitiful. The proud, arrogant woman Fate
had reduced to a cowering crone.

Meanwhile also Sylvia had tried to see Fanny. But at the hotel where
Mrs. Price had been stopping she was informed that both were away. An
address was given her to which she wrote. For a time no answer came.
Finally from a different address Mrs. Price replied saying that Fanny
was ill and asking that their whereabouts be a secret. In spite of the
little threat Fanny was not anxious to be subpoenaed.

But that was much later, long after Harris had told the story which
Mr. Digby declared to be very good.

This opinion, editorial and offhand though it was, was immediately and
officially indorsed. For the story had a double merit. It supplied not
merely a clue but a case. A very clear case, too. There was the
antecedent threat, the opportunity, the instrument, everything even to
the motive which was reasonable enough. The inevitable ensued.
Annandale, arrested, was held without bail.

At the news of that Sylvia shuddered. Time touched her. Her eyes
ringed themselves with sudden circles. The shuddering passed, but the
rings remained. She became whiter, harder, more resolute, divining
dimly that somewhere, somehow, there was a duty to be performed. What
the duty was to be the press disclosed. Against Annandale was public
opinion. There he was convicted instanter. At the injustice, or what
seemed to her the injustice, of that she revolted.

But Orr, whom Annandale had immediately retained, dosed her with a
platitude. "Public opinion be hanged," he said. "What is it but the
stupidity of one multiplied by the stupidity of all. _Vox populi, vox
stulti._ The majority is always cocksure and dead wrong."

In spite, though, of general stupidity there were people sufficiently
indulgent to accord Annandale the benefit of extenuating
circumstances. The reputation of Loftus, which left rather a little to
be desired; the coupling of his name with that of Annandale's wife;
the report that for his sake the latter had been preparing to leave
her husband; the further report that for the convenience of both Marie
Leroy had been shipped abroad; these things reduced the case in the
minds of the indulgent to what the French call a _crime passionnel_,
and which, as such, is psychologically and even legally defensible.

But French views are not our views. Besides, admitting their validity,
that validity was impaired by the attitude which Annandale assumed. He
omitted to admit, and thereby for the time being waived the right to
plead, the circumstances advanced in his justification. When charged
had he said, "Oh, yes, I did it, and so would you or any other man,"
there, don't you see, might have been an excuse. But not a bit of it.
Up and down he denied that he was the culprit.

A denial such as that has, though, its merits. It puts on the
prosecution the burden of proof. Moreover, if you have done anything
you should not have it is only common sense to say that you have not
done it, to say it in spite of facts, in spite of evidence, in spite
of everything and everybody. For if you own up, there you are, while
if you don't then no matter what is advanced you may succeed in
raising a doubt and in planting it among the jury. But in this case
the denial was more serviceable than ordinarily it might have been for
the reason that thus far no one had been produced who could say they
had been about while Annandale was at it.

These points Orr set before Sylvia. The sophistry of them displeased
her. She did not like it, and said so.

"It will get him off, though," Orr confidently replied. "Unless," he
hastened to add, "a witness to the act itself should pop up. Then,
barring a miracle, he is a goner. But otherwise I will get him off. It
may take a year or two, but I'll do it."

"I don't want you to get him off," Sylvia scornfully retorted. "I want
him vindicated."

"You see, though," Orr with unruffleable calm continued, "if a witness
should pop up, a witness, let us say, whom I cannot discredit,
vindication will be difficult. It will be difficult to make twelve
imbeciles in a pen believe that when Annandale shot Loftus----"

"He never shot him," Sylvia cried.

"My dear cousin," Orr with the same unruffleable calm pursued, "the
beauty of your faith is wonderful. You must come to court and inject
it among the jury. Faith that used to move mountains may yet move men.
But I doubt it. I doubt that it could make them credit the incredible,
the fact patent to me as it should be to you, that though Annandale
shot Loftus he was, and for that matter still is, totally unconscious
of it."

"He never shot him."

"My dear Sylvia, forgive me. He did. Though what I can say for him
and, if needful, I shall say, is that he did not mean to. The intent
is the essence of crime. There was no intent here. Of his own free
will the man would not hurt a fly. But that night he was not a free
agent. He was not even a conscious agent. Of all the cells of his
brain but one was awake. In that cell was an incitement inciting him
to kill. When the other cells awoke that one cell fell asleep. It has
been dormant since then. Only through hypnosis could it awaken. In the
interim he knew no more than a somnambulist what he was about. His
condition, though, was not somnambulistic, it was a case of psychical
epilepsy, a malady superinducible in certain natures by various
poisons, of which anger is one and alcohol another."

Orr paused. He looked at his cousin. Incredulity, something else
besides, was in her face. He affected not to notice it. "Now," he ran
on, "go with a story like that to the average jury. Of course, if need
be, I shall have experts, the very best experts, to substantiate it.
But the prosecution will have other experts, experts who will be just
as good, to deny the possibility of any such thing. In that event it
will be only a pleasure to mix them up a bit and to show by their own
testimony that they know no more than the law--I don't say allows
but--pays them for. Do you mind if I smoke?"

They were seated in the sombre parlor in Irving Place. Meditatively
Orr lit a cigarette. Meditatively Sylvia contemplated him.

"Would it not be better," she presently asked, "to show that Loftus
committed suicide?"

"Yes, in the event that the pistol is found. It is rather late,
though, for that."

Sylvia bent forward. "Melanchthon," she said, "I have heard you
say--have I not--that everything is possible?"

"Indeed you have and you will hear me again."

"Then why not ask Miranda?"

Orr looked about for a _cendrier_; finding one he put his cigarette in
it. "You mean the medium. Do you know, I would in a minute, were it
not that it will be a long time, perhaps years, before she or any
other spook could call Loftus up. When a man is snuffed out as
abruptly as he was, he is so stunned and confused that it is quite a
while before he can sufficiently collect his wits to reply to any
communications from these latitudes. It is tedious that it should be
so. The spirit world needs remodeling. But there you are. By the way,
where are you to be this summer?"

Sylvia made a gesture. She did not know. It was then June. Fashion had
fled. Fifth avenue was empty. The town was an oven. In that oven the
girl would have preferred to remain. But at the preference her mother
had rebelled. Against Newport Sylvia had rebelled also. She was in no
mood for its gaiety. Finally a little place on Long Island suggested
itself. Ultimately there they went.

It was in this place that Sylvia heard from Mrs. Price of Fanny's
illness. Fanny had disappointed her exceedingly. That she could have
so much as contemplated the step which she had in view seemed to
Sylvia unspeakable. Her threat, too, in regard to testifying against
her husband was in the circumstances but a flagrant avowal of love for
the other man. Yet, for that love, how had she been punished! Perhaps
now she repented of it. Perhaps now in her illness she needed someone
to whom she could unburden her heart. At the thought of that Sylvia
wrote at once to Mrs. Price asking might she not come to her. But to
this Mrs. Price replied that Fanny after an attack of nervous
prostration was now down with typhoid, though with every prospect and
assurance of recovery. When she was up again, then, if Sylvia would
come, it would, Mrs. Price added, be nice of her.

There is a saying trite yet true that we should hasten to cherish
those whom we love lest they leave us forever before we have loved
them enough. There is another saying less true and more trite that of
those that do leave only good should be said. To Sylvia presently
these sayings recurred. Two days after the receipt of the letter from
Mrs. Price she read in the papers that Fanny was dead.

The paper fell from her. For an hour, which passed as only such hours
do pass, incomprehensibly, without consciousness of time, she sat,
still and stricken.

Through raveled skeins of thought of which the tangled threads refused
to wholly straighten, she blamed herself for all that had occurred.
Not indeed for Loftus. The man, his life, his death, everything
concerning him was abhorrent to her. Of him, other than that pity
which can mingle with disgust, she had no concern whatever. But when
she should have stood most steadfastly by Annandale she had turned
from him. Had he not implored her forgiveness, and did she not know
that all that God requires is that forgiveness be asked? But no. She
had been too proud and that pride she had nursed until it was too
late, until Annandale had married, with this double tragedy for
climax.

It was all her fault, Sylvia told herself. All her own. Had she not
abandoned Annandale he would have had no cause to threaten, Fanny
would have lived, there would have been no shock to debilitate her and
leave her a prey to disease. Fanny's death was at her door.

Companioned by these thoughts for an hour she sat, still and stricken.
When she aroused herself it seemed as though before her two figures
stood. One said "I am Duty," the other, "I am Grief."

A message from the latter she imparted to Mrs. Price. Many messages
not similar but cognate that lady received. Fanny had been very
popular. Her popularity the rumor connecting her with Loftus had
necessarily impaired. The arrest of her husband for shooting the man,
and for shooting him, as it was generally understood, on her account,
impaired it still more. In the upper circles the scandalous may be
relished, but it is not indorsed. Had Fanny lived, those circles would
have visited their displeasure in not visiting her at all. But death
is a peacemaker. It comes and where there was war is a truce. By the
worldly Fanny was immediately forgiven and by them as quickly forgot.

It was in July that she died. In September Sylvia returned to town. At
once she asked Orr to arrange for her a visit to Annandale in the
Tombs.

To that he objected. "You know," he said, "that you will have to
testify against him."

"Against him!" Sylvia repeated with an air of utter surprise.

"Why, yes. He was here that night. He has admitted it. You will be
asked to tell what he said."

In Sylvia's eyes both disdain and acquiescence surged. "And what of
it?"

"But," Orr exclaimed, "there is the threat. He made it in the presence
of Harris and repeated it in yours."

"He did nothing of the kind."

"But you told me so."

"You are mistaken. I know nothing of any threat whatever."

"Oh," said Orr with a bow, "this is magnificent."

But he meant heroic. In view of the girl's nature it was certainly
that. What is more, it was helpful. With Fanny out of the way, the
only one left that could testify to any threat was Harris, and
Annandale's word was quite as good as his, better even, for the value
of the servant's testimony would be weighed in scales in one of which
would be the _Chronicle's_ dollars.

Orr said as much to Sylvia, but apparently his views did not seem to
her very novel. It became obvious to him that she had thought it all
out for herself.

"Besides," she presently and irrelevantly continued, "I am to blame.
If I had not been stupid with him, there would have been nothing to
threaten about."

That, Orr thought, was rather putting the dots on the i's. But he did
not mind. He was pleased with her. His respect for her had increased.
Had she been the kind of a cousin to permit such a thing there and
then he would have kissed her.

Yet some reward he felt was her due. As a result the interview which
she asked he presently arranged. Under conditions which to her were as
tragic as they were humiliating she saw Annandale in the visitors'
room at the Tombs. The room itself was not absolutely appalling, and
though there was a keeper present, he was quite out of earshot, very
oblivious, extremely civil and, parenthetically, handsomely paid.

Orr awaited her at the door. When she rejoined him her eyes were wet.

Orr looked at her. A little tune occurred to him. "Sylvia, Sylvia, I'm
a-thinking--" But after all, he reflected, Fanny is dead.

Instantly the girl reddened and very distantly, her head in the air,
announced, "We are betrothed."

"Ah," said Orr, "ah, indeed! The engagement will be rather long, I
fear."

"Oh, Melanchthon, don't say that. Arthur is as innocent as you are. I
know you don't believe it, but----"

Orr interrupted her. "It is not a question of what I believe.
Independent of your interest in the man he is my client. I owe him a
duty. That duty is to get him off, or to do my best to."

"I know you will," Sylvia fervently replied; "I feel it. So does
Arthur. Besides, the only one we have to fear is Harris."

Orr smiled grimly. "Harris, I understand, is not very well."

"Not well? What do you mean?" the girl wonderingly inquired.

"I mean," he enigmatically answered, "that next week when I have him
on the stand I propose to give him a little medicine."

Then he smiled again, grimly as before, with an air of personal
satisfaction.




CHAPTER VIII

THE DEFENDANT TO THE BAR


"Hats off!"

Through the great white room the cry vibrated, followed instantly by
another:

"Hear ye, hear ye, all ye having business with the Court of the
General Sessions of the City and County of New York, draw near, give
attention and ye shall be heard."

Within the Bar, restless as hyenas awaiting their prey, roamed the
district attorneys. Against that Bar, crouching there, were Orr and
his associate counsel, restless too, but prepared to spring. To the
rear were reporters, the flower of newspaperdom, handsome young men
dressed to the ears in resplendent collars and astounding cravats.
Back of them were the spectators, a solid mass, ladies of every degree
except the high one and, with or without them, men whom you would
recognize as first-nighters, others whom you would not recognize at
all. To the right of the Bar were witnesses for the prosecution,
experts in various matters of which gastronomy evidently was one. To
the left was the jury, and above, beneath the amber panoply of the
Bench, the Recorder sat, an ascetic Solon.

The atmosphere of the room, high ceiled, close packed, was
Senegambian. Without you could see, within you could feel, the heat
and eagerness of the autumnal sun.

"Arthur Annandale to the Bar!"

Into the court, as though it were a theatre, the defendant strolled,
perfectly groomed, the Tombs pallor on his face but none of its dust
on his coat, an air of tranquil boredom about him. At his heels was a
keeper. He shook hands with Orr, sat down beside him, turned and gave
his hat to the keeper, turned again and looked over to a gated
inclosure at the right of the Bench where, in a sort of proscenium
box, Sylvia sat with her mother.

The entire settings were those of a play. With this difference, it was
real, a drama of mud and blood without orchestral accompaniment. After
months of preparation, after days of talesmen baiting, on this Indian
Summer forenoon the curtain was rising. The jury it had been a job to
get. A full hundred were examined, cross-questioned, challenged and
rejected before the dozen were boxed. When the last, the twelfth, a
cadaverous individual, was accepted the stage was set.

"May it please the Court; Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury."

With three bows and these rituals, Peacock opened for the State,
outlining the case of the People, describing the crime, detailing the
motive, summarizing the evidence, expressing the wish that the jury
would believe the defendant innocent until his guilt had been proved,
but declaring that, personally, for his own part, of that guilt he was
thoroughly convinced.

Before he had finished Orr was at him. "I object to the District
Attorney prejudicing the jury against this gentleman, my client."

That gentleman did not appear to heed. From Sylvia and her mother he
had turned to look at the spectators, from them to fabulous beasts
that climbed the fluted columns on the walls.

The objection was not sustained.

"And I object to Your Honor's ruling," Orr with a bulldog look threw
up at the Bench.

Peacock proceeded. "There, gentlemen, is the crime, there too, the
motive. To finish the picture evidence will be adduced."

He sat down. Then getting up, he called the first witness for the
People, the Gramercy Park caretaker, who had found the body. The
witness was succeeded by others, by the policeman on the beat, by the
coroner's physician, by experts and servants.

By turn Orr took them in hand. With some he was curiously perfunctory.
Of the caretaker, a meagre old man, with shifty eyes, who appeared
very uncomfortable, he asked but four questions.

"When you found the body what did you do?"

"Ran and got the policeman, sir."

"Where did you get him?"

"On Lexington avenue and Twenty-third street, sir."

"Did you find him at once?"

"No, sir, I had to hunt a bit."

"Between the time you found the body and the time you got back how
many minutes would you say had elapsed?"

"About ten or fifteen minutes, sir."

"That's all," said Orr.

It was not much. Yet with the policeman, a fat man with a red face and
a blue nose, he was even briefer.

"When you reached the park with the last witness, how did you get in?"

"Walked in, sir," the man answered with a grin.

"The gate was open was it?"

"Yes, sir."

"That will do," said Orr.

It was not much either. But with other witnesses, notably with the
experts, he fought, he fought with them, fought with Peacock, fought
with the Court, would have fought with more had there been more to
fight, fought pertinaciously, step by step, reducing testimony to
nothing.

Meanwhile the court-room shimmered with silks. Wanderers from Fifth
avenue who never in their lives had been in the General Sessions
before begged and badgered their way there. It is great fun to see a
man tried for his life. But when you have known him, when in addition
elements supersensational blend like a halo about him, what more could
be decently asked? Yet one thing disappointed. It was regrettable that
the prisoner was not in chains, that he could sit there and yawn with
every appearance of being at a matinee, a keeper for lackey behind
him.

Otherwise the fun, if not fast, was furious. Peacock would ask a
question, the lips of a witness would part but before more than a
fraction of a syllable could issue Orr would hold him up, hold up the
prosecution, hold up the Court. Generally he was overruled. But no
overruling abashed him. He arose from opposition refreshing. There
were times when Sylvia thought him bowed to the earth, utterly
routed, hushed for good. But not a bit of it. At the moment when his
ammunition seemed exhausted and his defeat assured, from an arsenal of
books before him he pulled weapons wherewith not merely to renew the
fight but to win.

In the course of one objection he was commanded by the Bench to sit
down. He protested. The Recorder declined to listen to him further,
reiterating the order that he be seated. Then with the air and manner
of a little boy sent for misbehavior from the room, Orr half turned,
hesitated, turned back, and through the exercise of guile unique and
his own, succeeded in re-engaging the Court in conversation,
protesting his respect, denying his contumacy and presently he was
continuing the very objection because of which he had been told to sit
down. He did sit down, but long after, when he was ready, when he had
succeeded in having his say and his way. Then when at last he did sit
down it was with an air of mastery that would have become Napoleon at
Marengo. At the moment he was not a lawyer merely, he was an actor,
quasi-Shakespearian, a compound of irony and good humor, Falstaff and
Mercutio in one.

All this, however, was, to vary the metaphor, but the preliminary
canter. That Loftus had been killed was shown and admitted. But it had
not been shown nor was it admitted that the defendant was the man.
This defect a star witness was to repair. The star was Harris.

Yet, though a star, he looked ghastly. Whether ill or not, he was at
least ill at ease. The smug, household-servant air had gone. He seemed
to have come from turmoils in Tatterdemalia. He was bruised, dirty,
unshorn. But the story which he had brought to the _Chronicle_ he
repeated, with embellishments at that. After retailing the tale,
precising the motive and elaborating on it, he declared that the love
of the defendant's wife for Loftus was common talk--evidence which,
though hearsay, Orr indifferently let pass.

Then, after identifying a pistol as the property of Annandale--an
exhibit marked A which Peacock had already tried but, held up by Orr,
had not wholly succeeded in fitting to the crime--Harris swore that on
the night of the murder, at five minutes after twelve, in the room
which he occupied at the top of Annandale's house and which overlooked
Gramercy Park, he heard a shot; that going to the window he looked
out, that he could distinguish nothing, but that going then to the
hall he heard someone coming in the house and looking down saw the
defendant enter.

"Ha!" said Orr, taking him in hand, or rather, by the throat. For he
made no attempt at ordinary amenities. He questioned him ferociously,
with an air of personal hatred, with an air of saying, "Damn you, I
have got it in for you now."

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Richard Harris, sir."

Orr pounded on the table in front of him. "Your name! Your name! I
want your name, not something that you have made up like the rest of
your rubbish. How many times have you been in jail? You were once
employed in Hill street, Berkeley Square, by the Duchess of
Kincardine. When you absconded from there, where was it that the
police caught you? Answer me."

From behind the rail objections exploded like shell. But through the
running fire of them Orr held his own, sandbagging the man with one
charge after another, charge of theft, charge of forgery, but
particularly of boasting the week before, in a Sixth avenue saloon
where grooms and footmen congregate, that he could testify to anything
that he was paid for.

From ghastly Harris turned vermilion. The flush retreating left him
livid. Had the fluted columns with their fabulous beasts fallen on him
he could not have been more limp. At one question he swayed like an
animal hit on the head. At another he hissed like a snake. There were
times when he tried to hide from view. It was a curious example of the
biter bit.

"That's all," said Orr with tigerish cheerfulness at last.

He had done him. He had given him the medicine. He had more in
reserve. Peacock meanwhile had once jumped at Orr, his fist raised.
Once he gave him the lie direct. Once he accused him of suborning. But
Orr in sandbagging the witness with one hand, had another free for the
prosecution. He was gluttonish, giving as good as was sent, very often
better.

The Recorder, dismayed at the slugging, protested. "A human being is
on trial for his life. I cannot try a case where only counsel are
heard."

Immediately Orr supplied him with a diversion. One after another
witness for the defense scaled the stand, sleuths from over seas,
experts and servants.

In his corner before them Orr prowled. At the witnesses for the
prosecution he had roared, sometimes he had bounded at the Bar,
sometimes when a move of his succeeded he raised his right hand and
looked at it as though surprised that it was not blood red. But now
with his own witnesses he was serene, entirely calm, refreshingly
civil.

That civility awoke in Peacock the hyena. The first witness Orr
produced, a man who, as it afterward appeared, had had a rough and
tumble with Harris that morning in the corridor, he partly devoured.
What was left of him he sent to the Tombs. As fast as witnesses could
be produced he ate them up. It was terrific. You could not help
feeling that there are safer places than the witness stand in a murder
trial, that you ran the risk of being killed yourself, talked to death
if nothing worse.

"Don't go at him like a common scold," Orr engagingly pleaded at one
stage of the game. "Why browbeat and bully a witness as you do?" he
expostulated at another. "That's all, my friend," he said to one
witness, "and let me apologize for the District Attorney's remarks."
From his tone and manner never in the world would you have thought him
the man who, but a little before, had so thoroughly sandbagged Harris.

Meanwhile questions coarse as oaths, answers frank as sword thrusts,
clashed and resounded. One and all Orr's charges were substantiated.
The testimony was damning to Harris, infecting everything he had said.
From behind the rail Peacock volleyed and thundered. But truth when
you get at it is a stubborn thing. So far as Harris was concerned
there it stood and there too, during the production of it, Orr stood,
quite like an Angora lapping milk. You could hear him purr. The eyes
of Sylvia glistened like mica. Now and again Annandale laughed
outright.

It is always insufficient to be innocent of a given charge. You must
appear so. Annandale did not. Alternately he was bored and buoyant.
But not dejected, never depressed. He did not seem to feel that his
life was at stake. That is the attitude of the habitual ruffian. But
sentiment was veering. Public opinion is a wave that thinks, thinks
again, changes its mind, volatile as a woman. At the opening everybody
knew that Annandale was guilty. Now nobody was quite so sure.

The Recorder caressed his beard. "I think," he announced, "that I will
give the jury a recess."




CHAPTER IX

THE TWELFTH JUROR


Tumultuously the session was resumed. At the door was a riot. There a
squad of police fought back surging nondescripts clamoring for
admission, fighting for entrance to the continuous show. A woman
fainted. Another had her gown torn off. One man retired with a
blackened eye.

During the recess Orr got for a moment with Sylvia and Mrs. Waldron.
"Aren't you hungry?" he asked.

Sylvia took his hand and pressed it. In her eyes was victory, in her
face delight. "I never knew before how Protean you are. You have won."

Orr tossed his head. "Not by a long shot. Besides, there is the jury.
Eleven look imbecile and the twelfth looks ill. There is no telling at
all what they will do or will not. But aren't you to eat anything?" He
turned to Mrs. Waldron. "Aren't you hungry?"

"Very," said the lady, "but I can't do a thing with Sylvia. I----"

She would have said more, but the jury had filed in. The judge was
entering, preceded by the cry "Hats off!"

Orr slipped back to his corner, to which Annandale, with his matinee
air and the keeper for usher, had already returned. For a moment Orr
bent to him, then to his associates but briefly. Bending again to
Annandale he told him to take the stand.

The move, wholly unexpected, unusual, almost exceptional in murder
cases, created an impression that was excellent, a sense of admiration
for the fearlessness of the defense. From the prosecution came low
growls of content. They were to be fed at last. In anticipation they
licked their chops.

But the excellence of the impression dwindled. In the direct,
Annandale denied, of course, that he had committed the murder, denied
that he had ever contemplated it, swearing that to the best of his
recollection he had made no threat at all.

"To the best of your recollection," Orr repeated after him. "Now
please tell me, had anything occurred that night to impair your memory
in any way?"

"Well--er--yes. Yes. I had been drinking."

"Had you any animosity toward the deceased?"

"Toward Loftus? None whatever. On the contrary, he was my best
friend."

Peacock jumped. "I ask that that be stricken out."

Quietly Orr continued: "Had you known Loftus long?"

"All my life."

"Was he a friend of yours?"

"An intimate friend."

Orr turned to Peacock. "Your witness."

Peacock jumped again. "You say that on the night of the murder you had
been drinking. Were you drunk?"

Paternally the Recorder looked over and down. "The witness need not
answer that unless----"

Annandale interrupted him. "I am much obliged to Your Honor, but
really I have nothing to conceal. I was drunk, deplorably so."

"Habit of yours, is it?" Peacock snapped.

Annandale took a monocle from a pocket, screwed it in his eye, looked
through it at Peacock, smiled at him, with an air of fathomless good
fellowship, answered: "Dear me, no. Is it one of yours?"

"Oho!" cried Peacock, pocketing the insult but pouncing at the point,
"you were drunk on this occasion only. Got drunk for it, did you?"

"No," Annandale blandly and confidentially replied. "You see, don't
you know, it was the day of the panic. I had dropped a good lot of
money--a good lot, I mean, for me--and, as the saying is, I tried to
drown my sorrows."

"But you found that they could swim, didn't you? Now, tell me, among
these sorrows was not the greatest the one to which your former butler
has testified, your late wife's desire for a divorce in order that she
might marry Loftus? Is it not a fact that she told you so, and that
you then said, 'I'll kill him, I'll kill Royal Loftus like the dog
that he is'?"

"I recall no such conversation."

"What, then, was the nature of the conversation that passed between
you and your wife on this particular evening?"

"I don't remember."

"The conversation and the threat to which your butler has sworn may
therefore have occurred without your now recalling it. Is that not
so?"

"Everything is possible, you know," Annandale answered with a phrase
unconsciously borrowed of Orr. "But I doubt it very much for the
reason----"

"Here," interrupted Peacock. "I don't want your doubts or your reasons
or your haha airs. I want answers from you, direct answers. Where did
you go and what did you do after your threat?"

To this Orr objected. A wrangle ensued. Orr was sustained. Peacock
reconstructed his question. Annandale answered that he had gone to
Miss Waldron's, but that he remembered nothing else.

"Is this yours?" Peacock suddenly asked, producing the pistol marked
exhibit A.

"Probably," said Annandale, looking, not at it, but at the ceiling.

"That's all."

Annandale got from the stand. Others succeeded him there, experts for
the defense, men who recited their qualities and degrees as though
they were eating truffles to the sound of trumpets. One after another
they testified that liquor can ablate memory partially, wholly; can
ablate it regarding events antecedent and subsequent to a rememorated
point between; can, moreover, leave the subject in a condition
apparently normal yet actually in a state of trance.

"Do you really regard these people as experts?" Peacock with pitying
contempt asked of Orr. Then at once in rebuttal were other experts,
equally pleased with themselves, humorously disposing of psychical
epilepsy, affecting to regard it as a medicolegal myth. Among the
spectators the usual jest circulated. The mendacious were subdivided
into liars, damned liars, expert witnesses. Yet there you were. But
not Orr. Tortuously he involved the deponents in helpful
contradictions, smiling at them, at Peacock and the jury, smiling
with an air of saying "You see what confounded idiots these imbeciles
are."

But the session was closing. One more witness remained to be called.

"Miss Waldron, will you take the stand?"

With the charming manner of the thoroughbred New York girl Sylvia
circled the room. It was refreshing to see her, refreshing to hear the
way in which she corroborated what Annandale had said.

"But," objected Peacock, "you had just gone from his house; what did
he go to yours for?"

"To restore a string of pearls."

"Did he repeat to you anything that he had said to his wife?"

"Had he attempted to I should have refused to listen."

"Was he drunk?"

"I cannot say. I have never seen anyone in that condition."

"Did he make any threats regarding Loftus?"

"A gentleman does not make threats."

"Miss Waldron, I will thank you to answer me directly. Did he or did
he not?"

"He did not."

"You swear to that?"

"I do."

It was perjury, of course. Yet if a girl may not perjure herself like
a lady for the man she loves things have come to a pretty pass. That
idea apparently struck Peacock.

"Prior to the defendant's marriage you were engaged to him, were you
not?"

"I was."

"Are you engaged to him now?"

Very prettily and gracefully, without embarrassment, rather with
pride, Sylvia answered: "I am."

"That's all," said Peacock. "The State rests." But as he said it he
looked at the jury and sighed, sighed audibly, much as were he adding,
"You may judge the value of her testimony from that."

The resting, however, was but figurative. In a moment the summing up
began, a summing which, at first passionless as algebra, dealt with
technical points.

"Gentlemen," said Peacock turning again to the jury, "the evidence in
this case is of the kind known to you perhaps as circumstantial.
Evidence of this nature can lead and often does lead to a conclusion
more satisfactory than direct evidence can produce. Circumstances
cannot lie any more than facts can. Unless we resort to them it is in
vain that we attempt to detect and to punish crime. Crime shuns the
light of day. It seeks darkness. It courts secrecy. The assassin
moves stealthily. He calls no witness to see him shoot his victim
down. If you wait for an eye-witness you grant impunity to crime. It
is true, and probably you will be so told by counsel for the defense,
that there are cases in which the innocent have been convicted. Yet if
men have been erroneously convicted on circumstantial evidence, so
have they been convicted on direct testimony also. That is not,
though, a reason for declining to accept such testimony. The
possibility of error exists alike. But because men may err do they
refuse to act? Because wheat may be blighted does the farmer refuse to
sow? No, gentlemen. Until we have means of knowledge beyond our
present faculties we must accept this kind of evidence or grant
practical immunity to crime."

The exordium concluded, Peacock warmed to his work. What he said he
seemed to literally tear from his mouth. It was an arraignment not
delivered but hurled, headlong, with the force and rush of a cavalry
charge. Before it Orr's points sank overwhelmed. To replace them with
others of his own Peacock made new ones, evolving them with a fire and
lucidity that was pyrotechnic. They were like bombs exploding before
the jury's eyes. He arraigned the defendant, arraigned the defense,
stampeded their tactics, denounced Annandale's manner, which he
declared to be that of a hardened criminal, and pictured him as a
jealous husband who, in accordance with a plot long premeditated, had
first lured his victim to his house, then following him thence had
murdered him in the darkness, but who now swore that he was drunk and
remembered nothing. "Assuming that he was drunk," Peacock shouted,
"his intoxication was a feigned disguise, assumed for the purpose and
legally an aggravation of his dastard crime."

Beneath, in the unlovely street, an organ was tossing a jig. The jolts
of it mounted to the court, fusing with Peacock's voice, adding their
vulgarity to his own, and it was to the wretchedness of them that he
said at last: "My duty is done."

He had scored points by the dozen. In as many seconds Orr had their
heads off by half.

"Harris, gentlemen, is the rock of the People's case. His hand
fashioned it. Without him it crumbles. Let me array for you Harris
against Harris."

Leisurely Orr began, showing the man's hand for what it was, not dirty
and disreputable merely, but discredited.

"Apart from that hand where is the promised evidence? Where is it?
Where is that evidence? Gentlemen, not a bit of evidence have you had,
not a molecule, not a minim, not a mite. At best or at worst any
evidence producible against this defendant would be circumstantial. In
telling you the value of such testimony the District Attorney has been
good enough to leave it to me to explain that testimony of this
character must, to be conclusive, exclude every other reasonable
hypothesis. The District Attorney has further told you that
circumstances cannot lie. Of all his statements that one and that one
alone is correct. Circumstances cannot lie. But witnesses can. It is
from them that circumstances are obtained. And though they furnish a
million circumstances, what are these circumstances worth if they
themselves are unsound? How unsound that reptile Harris is, you have,
I believe, been enabled to judge. But even otherwise, even though the
testimony of that saurian seem to you probable, I may remind you that
the most probable things often prove false, for the reason that if
they were exempt from falsity they would cease to be probable; they
would be certain.

"Now what certainty has the District Attorney brought you? Instead of
excluding every other reasonable hypothesis, he has opened the door to
a dozen hypotheses infinitely more reasonable than his own. Except
that the obligatory instrument does not appear to have been found, he
has adduced nothing to show that the deceased did not commit suicide.
He has adduced nothing to show that he was not robbed. The caretaker
has testified that he was away from the park ten or fifteen minutes.
The policeman who returned with him has testified that when he got
there the gate was open. In the interim anyone may have entered, gone
through the suicide, bagged his pistol for further booty and away.

"No, the District Attorney has not excluded these hypotheses, he has
confined himself to picturing this defendant as a husband jealous of
the deceased. But assuming that he was, how many other husbands may
not have been jealous of him also? The bullet in evidence, the bullet
extracted from the brain of the deceased, is one which, from a
calculation of its lands and grooves, may or may not have come from a
thirty-two calibre pistol. Anyway a thirty-two calibre pistol is among
the exhibits. But how many more such pistols are there in this great
city? The ownership of one is not a proof of crime. Nor is the fact
that the body of the deceased was found in front of this defendant's
residence proof either. On the contrary. The park wherein it lay is a
parallelogram, and a body in it would be practically in front of every
other house in the square. How many jealous husbands reside in these
houses I am not competent to say, but I am competent to tell you that
the prosecution might just as well have arraigned any other resident
there as this defendant; yes, and better, were it not for Harris."

Orr paused. "Reptile," he cried. "Knave, fraud, thief, liar----"

But the Court admonished him that his time was up. Without a murmur,
in the middle of a sentence, he sat down. It was another point that he
had scored.

"Gentlemen----"

The Recorder's charge to the jury followed, a charge clear,
undeclamatory, without literature or bias, in which they were
instructed regarding the law and left to determine the facts.

The jury filed out. The Recorder evaporated. Annandale sauntered away.
Into adjacent corridors the great room emptied itself.

Orr, stationing associates on guard, went over to Sylvia, urging her
to go.

But Sylvia refused at first to budge. The jury, she declared, would be
back in five minutes.

"It may be five hours," said Orr. "You had far better go home. No?
Well then I will take you to my offices and have something brought
in."

"Is it far?" Sylvia warily asked. But presently she assented,
stipulating however that Annandale should be brought there the moment
he was freed.

Orr tossed his head. "That may not be for years, until after an
appeal. I have not an idea what the jury will do. But I know one
thing: the last of the lot, the twelfth, looked at me during my
summing up with something that was a cross between a sneer and a
scowl."

"Yes," Mrs. Waldron interjected, "I noticed him. But it seemed to me
that he was not listening. It seemed to me that he was in pain. But
do, Sylvia, let us go. It is cruel of you. I am starving."

In Orr's neighborly offices shortly the lady was fed. Sylvia too ate
something. Orr himself would have bolted a bite, but he had to hurry
away, though promising as he did so everything that Sylvia asked,
promising to stand on his head if she wished it.

Once back in the court he found it still empty. In the corridors
reporters and idlers lounged, speculating on the verdict, prophesying
that the deliberations of the jury would be brief. But time limped. An
hour passed, two hours, three. Enervated and empty Orr went down and
out to a little restaurant across the street. Presently it was
reported that the jury were coming in. Orr hurried back, but however
he hurried, he was late. The court had refilled. As he entered he
heard someone say:

"Not guilty."

Abruptly the room hummed like a wasps' nest. There were raps for
order, commands for silence, threatened punishments for contempt.

The hubbub subsided, the Recorder thanked and dismissed the jury. He
turned to Peacock. "Are there any further charges against the
prisoner?"

"There are none, Your Honor."

The Recorder nodded at Annandale. "You are discharged."

Orr tried to get at him. But at that moment the crowd interfered. In
making a circuit to reach Annandale, he found himself among the
departing jury. They had all left the box, all save the twelfth, who
apparently had stumbled.

About them reporters circled. The foreman was relating that they had
been practically unanimous for conviction, but that one of them, the
twelfth, had insisted so obstinately on the poverty of the evidence
that with him finally they had voted to acquit.

"But where is he?" the foreman interrupted himself to ask. "Where is
the twelfth juror? Where is Durand?"

Then only was it seen that he was still in the box, crouching there,
his face ashen where it was not violet, a hand held to his side.

In a moment he was surrounded. To those nearest he looked and gasped.

"Give him some brandy," a reporter suggested. But now into the little
group Peacock had forced his way. Orr edged nearer.

The juror gasped again. "I am dying," he groaned. "It is my heart.
Send for a priest. I killed him. I am the man."

Skeptically Peacock sniffed. "You killed whom?"

"He is delirious," the reporter exclaimed.

"I killed him," Durand repeated.

"But whom? And why?" Peacock, bending a bit, impressed in spite of
himself, inquired.

Slowly, laboriously, painfully at that, Durand from a pocket drew a
picture.

"Curse him," he muttered. "There he is. He disgraced my _perle_, my
daughter Marie, but she wrote me where to find him and I did; I found
him in the park and I shot him there, through the head, through the
h-head," he stammered and clutched at his heart.

From his hand the picture had slipped. Orr edged closer, stooped for
it, recovered it, then in heightening wonder stared. The picture was a
colored photograph that displayed the chiseled features, wonderful
eyes and thin black mustache of one whom he had known. Above it was
written "Marie's Husband."

"It is Loftus," he exclaimed.

Peacock wheeled. "Loftus," he cried. Instantly to question further, he
turned to the juror again.

But even as he turned he saw that the trial was over. Spasmodically
the man's mouth had twitched, his head had fallen; before a higher
court he had gone.

Peacock, the marvel of it upon him, turned anew to Orr. Foes while the
battle was raging, the two men now were like the commandants of
opposing forces who, the conflict ended, meet and embrace.

Peacock rubbed his eyes. "What this confession means, Orr, you as well
as I appreciate." Instinctively his voice had sunk into that undertone
which Death, when it comes, exacts. "Yes," he continued, "Annandale is
not merely acquitted, he is cleared. For that, believe me, I am glad.
As for Loftus, he got from that dead father only what he deserved."

To this Orr, about whom the marvel of it all still also clung,
assented. "Justice," he replied, "is rarely human, but sometimes it is
divine."

He would have said more perhaps, but Annandale was approaching.
Obviously the latter was as yet wholly unaware of this new climax to
his case. He was looking doubtfully around.

"I can't find my hat," he announced. Then at once, detecting the
unusual in the attitude of those that stood about, his eyes followed
theirs to the box from which court officers, long trained to the
lugubrious, swiftly and silently were removing the corpse.

A keeper appeared. In his hand was the hat. Annandale took it, his
eyes still following the body that was being removed.

"There," said Orr abruptly, "there is the man that killed Loftus. But
come," he added. "Sylvia is waiting. Good-bye, Peacock. We have both
had a lesson in presumptive proof."

Astonishment lifted Annandale visibly like a flash. "What!" he
exclaimed. "What! What's all this?"

Then Orr, a hand on his arm, led him away, and as they passed from the
General Sessions, told him what had occurred.




CHAPTER X

THE VERDICT


In the days of the Doges there was a Gold Book in which the First
Families of Venice shone. In New York there is also a Gold Book,
unprinted but otherwise familiar. The names that appear there have
earned the cataloguing not from medieval prowess, but from money's
more modish might.

At the Metropolitan Opera House, two years and a fraction after the
trial, the Gold Bookers were on view--men who could have married the
Adriatic, dowered her too, whose signatures were potenter than kings.
There also were women fairer than the young empresses of old Rome,
maidens in thousand-dollar frocks, matrons coroneted and tiaraed. On
the grand tier they sat, a family-party air about them, nodding to
each other, exhaling orris, talking animatedly about nothing at all.
Into their boxes young men strolled, lolled awhile, sauntered away.

In one of these boxes was Sylvia, looking like an angel, only, of
course, much better dressed. Behind her was Annandale. They were quite
an old couple. They had been married fully a year. In the box with
them was Orr.

On the stage a festival was in progress, a festival for ear and eye,
the apogee of Italian art, a production of "Aïda." A quarter of a
century and more ago when that opera was first given in Cairo, there
was an accompanying splendor more lavish than it, or any other opera,
has had since. But it was difficult to fancy that even then there was
a better cast. Before the tenor had completed the opening romanza he
had enthralled the house. Good-looking, as tenors should be, stout as
tenors are, he suggested Mario resurrected and returned.

"Celeste Aïda!" he sang, and it was celestial. Then at once Amneris,
enacted by a debutante, appeared and the house was treated to what it
had not had since Scalchi was in her prime, a voice with a
conservatory in the upper register, a cavern in the lower and, strewn
between, rich loops of light, of opals, flowers, kisses and stars.

Princess she was and looked, yet, despite the glory of her raiment,
rather a princess in a drawing-room than the daughter of a Pharaoh in
a Memphian crypt. She seemed pleased, sure of her charm, and she
pleased and charmed at sight. The house, the most apathetic--save
Covent Garden--in the world, and, musically, the most ignorant as
well, rose to her.

Sylvia turned to Orr. In his gloved hand was a program. "What a dear!"
she murmured. "Who is she?"

Orr, before answering, looked at Annandale. The latter's eyes were on
the roof. He may have been drinking the song, unconscious of the
singer. But it is more probable that his thoughts were elsewhere,
though hardly in the Tombs, where, during his relatively brief
sojourn, he had lived at the relatively reasonable rate of a hundred
dollars a day.

"A debutante," Orr answered. "She is billed as Dellarandi."

The curtain fell. The box was invaded. Men indebted to Mrs. Annandale
for dinner, or who hoped to be, dropped in. Orr got up and went out.

The second act began. There was an alternating chorus. During it
Amneris sat mirroring her beauty in a glass. Presently her voice
mounted, mounting as mounts a bird and higher. She was joining in the
incomparable duo that ensues. It passed. A march, blown from Egyptian
trumpets, followed, preluding the dance of priestesses which precedes
the tenor's return. As that progressed the leader of the orchestra
shook like an epileptic. From his own musicians, from those on the
stage, from chorus and singers, he drew wave after wave of melody, a
full sea of transcendent accords that bathed Sylvia with harmony,
filtered through her, penetrating blissfully from fingertips to spine.

Delightedly she turned to Annandale. The visitors had gone. Orr was
entering. In his bulldog face was an expression vatic and amused.

"Yes," he resumed, seating himself at Sylvia's side, "she is billed as
Dellarandi, but I knew her as Marie Leroy."

Sylvia started, her lips half parted, her eyes dilated with surprise.

Annandale bent forward. "What is it?" he asked.

"Amneris, the contralto. Do you know who she is?"

"I know she is a devilish pretty woman. What about her?"

"She is the girl whose father was the twelfth juror in your case."

Annandale, who had been standing, literally dropped with astonishment
in a chair. But Sylvia was insatiable. She could not ask enough, she
could not get the answers quickly enough in reply. Orr, however, knew
very little, odds and ends merely that he gathered in the lobby,
summarily that the girl had married Tambourini, the music teacher, and
was regarded as destined to be one of the great queens of song.

So interested were all three that the third act was barely noticed. It
took the melting beauty of the final duo to distract them from the
debutante. But the witchery of that aria would distract a moribund. It
was with the bewildering loveliness of it in their ears that they
moved out from the box.

"Terra addio!" Orr repeated from it as they descended the stair.

"No, not addio," said Sylvia; "that poor girl may have said farewell
to many hopes, but there are other and better ones for her now. I feel
that she must have suffered terribly, and because of that suffering we
should acquit her of what she did."

"That is the verdict, is it?" said Orr.

"That is my verdict," Sylvia answered. Then touching Annandale's arm
she looked up at him and added, "It is yours, too, dear, is it not?"


THE END.


PUBLISHERS' NOTE

The publishers beg leave to state that The Perfume of Eros, in serial
form, was entitled The Yellow Fay.




Transcriber's Note:

Punctuation has been standardised. Changes have been made to the
original publication as follows:

    Page 40
    sometimes with arias from "Aida." _changed to_
    sometimes with arias from "Aïda."

    Page 131
    on looking back, her realized that _changed to_
    on looking back, he realized that

    Page 150
    Had Fanny asked him to made _changed to_
    Had Fanny asked him to make

    Page 171
    means are suppose to carry _changed to_
    means are supposed to carry





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