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Title: Ladies Must Live

Author: Alice Duer Miller

Release date: June 30, 2004 [eBook #12789]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2022

Language: English

Credits: Mary Meehan and the Project Gutenberg Online


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADIES MUST LIVE ***




LADIES MUST LIVE




[Illustration: She stopped with her hand on the banister, like
Louise of Prussia]




                         LADIES MUST LIVE

                                BY
                         ALICE DUER MILLER
             Author of “Come Out of the Kitchen,” etc.

                          ILLUSTRATED BY
                            PAUL MEYLAN


              [Illustration: (Publisher’s colophon)]


                             NEW YORK
                          THE CENTURY CO.
                               1917




                        Copyright, 1917, by
                          The Century Co.

                        Copyright, 1917, by
                    INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE CO.

                    _Published, October, 1917_




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                              PAGE

  She stopped with her hand on the banister, like
  Louise of Prussia                                 _Frontispiece_

  And then, with a clean towel, he deliberately
  dried her hands, finger by finger                             69

  “Isn’t that rather a reckless way for a man in
  your situation to talk?”                                      91

  “Well, heaven itself can’t save a fool,” said Mrs.
  Almar                                                        119

  It was arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to
  dine with them that evening                                  147

  He stood like a rock under her caress                        173

  “May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter
  you consider that you have?” Linburne pursued                199

  “Max,” she said, “I love you”                                241




CHAPTER I


Mrs. Ussher was having a small house party in the country over New
Year’s Day. This is equivalent to saying that the half dozen most
fashionable people in New York were out of town.

Certain human beings are admitted to have a genius for discrimination
in such matters as objects of art, pigs or stocks. Mrs. Ussher had
this same instinct in regard to fashion, especially where fashions
in people were concerned. She turned toward hidden social availability
very much as the douser’s hazel wand turns toward the hidden spring.
When she crossed the room to speak to some woman after dinner,
whatever that woman’s social position might formerly have been, you
could be sure that at present she was on the upward wing. When Mrs.
Ussher discovered extraordinary qualities of mind and sympathy in
some hitherto impossible man, you might be certain it was time to
begin to book him in advance.

Not that Mrs. Ussher was a kingmaker; she herself had no more
power over the situation than the barometer has over the weather.
She merely was able to foretell; she had the sense of approaching
social success.

She was unaware of her own powers, and really supposed that her
sudden and usually ephemeral friendships were based on mutual
attraction. The fact that for years her friends had been the small
group of the momentarily fashionable required, in her eyes, no
explanation. So simple was her creed that she believed people were
fashionable for the same reason that they were her friends, because
“they were so nice.”

During the short period of their existence, Mrs. Ussher gave to
these friendships the utmost loyalty and devotion. She agonized
over the financial, domestic and romantic troubles of her friends;
she sat up till the small hours, talking to them like a schoolgirl;
during the height of their careers she organized plots for their
assistance; and even when their stars were plainly on the decline,
she would often ask them to lunch, if she happened to be alone.

Many people, we know, are prone to make friends with the rich and
great. Mrs. Ussher’s genius consisted in having made friends with
them before they were either. When you hurried to her with some
account of a newly discovered treasure--a beauty or a conversable
young man--she would always say: “Oh, yes, I crossed with her two
years ago,” or “Isn’t he a dear?--he was once in Jack’s office.”
The strange thing was these statements were always true; the
subjects of them confessed with tears that “dear Mrs. Ussher” or
“darling Laura” was the kindest friend they had ever had.

Her house party was therefore likely to be notable.

First, there was of course Mrs. Almar--of course without her
husband. There is only one thing, or perhaps two, to be said for
Nancy Almar--that she was very handsome and that she was not a
hypocrite, no more than a pirate is a hypocrite who comes aboard
with his cutlass in his teeth. Mrs. Almar’s cutlass was always in
her teeth, when it was not in somebody’s vitals.

She had smooth, jet-black hair, done close to her pretty head,
a clear white-and-vermilion complexion, and a good figure, not
too tall. She said little, but everything she did say, she most
poignantly meant. If, while you were talking to her, she suddenly
cried out: “Ah, that’s really good!” there was no doubt you had had
the good fortune to amuse her; while if she yawned and left you in
the midst of a sentence there was no question that she was bored.

She hated her husband--not for the conventional reason that she had
married him. She hated him because he was a hypocrite, because he
was always placating and temporizing.

For instance, he had said to her as she was about to start for the
Usshers’:

“I hope you’ll explain to them why I could not come.”

There had never been the least question of Mr. Almar’s coming, and
she turned slowly and looked at him as she asked:

“You mean that I would not have gone if you had?”

He did not seem annoyed.

“No,” he said, “that I’m called South on business.”

“I shan’t tell them that,” she said, slowly wrapping her furs about
her throat; and then foreseeing a comic moment, she added, “but
I’ll tell them you say so, if you like.”

She was as good as her word--she usually was.

When the party was at tea about the drawing-room fire, she asked
without the slightest change of expression:

“Would any one like to hear Roland’s explanation of why he is not
with us?”

“Had it anything to do with his not being asked?” said a pale young
man; and as soon as he had spoken, he glanced hastily round the
circle to ascertain how his remark had succeeded.

So far as Mrs. Almar was concerned it had not succeeded at all, in
fact, though he did not know it, nothing he said would ever succeed
with her again, although a week before she had hung upon his every
word. He had been a new discovery, something unknown and Bohemian,
but alas, a day or two before, she had observed that underlying his
socialistic theories was an aching desire for social recognition.
He liked to tell his bejeweled hostesses about his friends the
car-drivers; but, oh, twenty times more, he would have liked to
tell the car-drivers about his friends the bejeweled hostesses. For
this reason Mrs. Almar despised him, and where she despised she
made no secret of the fact.

“Not asked, Mr. Wickham!” she said. “I assume my husband is asked
wherever I am,” and then turning to Laura Ussher she added with a
faint smile: “One’s husband is always asked, isn’t he?”

“Certainly, as long as you never allow him to come,” said another
speaker.

This was the other great beauty of the hour--or, since she was
blond and some years younger than Mrs. Almar, perhaps it would be
right to say that she was the beauty of the hour.

She was very tall, golden, fresh, smooth, yet with faint hollows in
her cheeks that kept her freshness from being insipid. Christine
Fenimer had another advantage--she was unmarried. In spite of the
truth of the observation that a married woman’s greatest charm is
her husband, he is also in the most practical sense a disadvantage;
he does sometimes stand across the road of advancement, even in a
land of easy divorce. Mrs. Almar, for instance, was regretfully
aware that she might have done much better than Roland Almar. The
great stakes were really open to the unmarried.

She was particularly aware of this fact at the moment, for the
party was understood to be awaiting a great stake. Mrs. Ussher had
discovered a cousin, a young man who, soon after graduating from
a technical college, had invented a process in the manufacture of
rubber that had brought him a fortune before he was thirty. He was
now engaged in spending it on aviation experiments. He was reckless
and successful. Besides which he was understood to be personally
attractive--his picture in a silver frame stood on a neighboring
table. He was of the lean type that Mrs. Almar admired.

Now it was perfectly clear to her why he was asked. Mrs. Ussher
adored Christine Fenimer. Of all girls in the world it was
essential that Christine should marry money. This man, Max Riatt,
new to the fashionable world, ought to be comparatively easy game.
The thing ought to go on wheels. But Mrs. Almar herself was not
indifferent to six feet of splendid masculinity; nor without her
own uses at the moment for a good-looking young man.

In other words, there was going to be a contest; in the full
sight of the little public that really mattered, the lists were
set. Nobody present, except perhaps Wickham, who was dangerously
ignorant of the world in which he was moving, doubted for one
moment that Miss Fenimer had resolved to marry Max Riatt, if, that
is, he turned out to be actually as per the recommendations of Mrs.
Ussher; nor was it less certain that Mrs. Almar intended that he
should be hers.

Of course if Mrs. Ussher had been absolutely single-minded, she
would not have invited Mrs. Almar to this party; but though a warm
friend to Christine Fenimer, Laura was not a fanatic, and the
piratical Nancy was her friend, too.

Mrs. Almar could have pleaded an additional reason for her wish to
interfere with this match, besides the natural one of not wishing
Miss Fenimer to attain any success; and that was the fact that
Edward Hickson, her brother, had wanted for several years to marry
Christine. Hickson was a dull, kindly, fairly well-to-do young
man--exactly the type you would like to see your rival marry.
Hickson had motored out with his sister, and had received some
excellent counsel on the way.

“Now, Ned,” she had said, “don’t cut your own throat by being an
adoring foil. Don’t let Christine grind your face in the dust, just
to show this new man that she can do it.”

“You don’t do Christine justice,” he had answered, “if you think
she would do that.”

His sister did not reply. She thought it would have been doing the
girl injustice to suppose that she would do anything else.

They were still sitting about the tea-table at a quarter to seven,
when Christine and Mrs. Almar rose simultaneously. It was almost
time for the arrival of Riatt, and neither had any fancy for
meeting him save at her best--in all the panoply of evening dress.

“We’re not dining till a quarter past eight, my dears,” said Mrs.
Ussher.

Both ladies thought they would lie down before dinner. And here
chance took a hand. Riatt’s train was late, whereas Christine’s
clock was fast. And so it happened that she came downstairs just as
he was coming up.

There had been no one to greet him. He was told by the butler
that Mrs. Ussher was dressing, that dinner would be in fifteen
minutes; he started to bound up the stairs, following the footman
with his bags, when suddenly looking up the broad flight he saw a
blond vision in white and pearls coming slowly down. He hoped that
his lower jaw hadn’t fallen, but she really was extraordinarily
beautiful; and he could not help slowing down a little. She
stopped, with her hand on the banisters, like Louise of Prussia.

“Oh, you’re Mr. Riatt,” she said, very gently. “You know you’re
most awfully late.”

“I wish,” he said, “that I were wise enough to be able to say: ‘Oh,
you’re Miss ----’”

“I might be a Mrs.”

“Oh, I hope not,” he answered. “Are you?”

She smiled.

“You’ll know as soon as you come down to dinner.”

“I shall be quick about dressing.”

He went on up, and she pursued her slow progress down. She felt
that her future had been settled by those few seconds on the stairs.

“He will do admirably,” she said to herself, and a smile like that
of a sleeping infant curved her lips. She felt calmly triumphant.
She had always said there was no reason why even a rich man should
be absolutely impossible. She recalled certain great fortunes with
repulsive owners, which some of her friends had accepted. For
herself she had always intended to have everything--love and money,
too. And here it was, almost in her hands. There had been moments
when she had been so discouraged that she had actually made up her
mind to marry Ned Hickson. How wise she had been to hold off!

She leant her arm on the mantel-piece and studied herself in the
mirror. It was a Chinese painted mirror, and the tint of the
glass was green and unbecoming, yet even this could not mar the
dazzling reflection. The only object on which she looked with
dissatisfaction was her string of pearls; they were imitation. She
thought she would have emeralds; and she heard clearly in her own
inner ear this sentence: “Yes, that is young Mrs. Max Riatt; is she
not very beautiful in her emeralds!”

Fortunately she did not say it aloud, for Mrs. Ussher came down
at this moment, and soon Hickson, and then in an incredibly short
space of time Riatt himself.

Undoubtedly he would do magnificently. He stood the test even of
evening clothes, though Christine fancied as she studied him that
she would alter his style of collars. They would be better higher.
Mrs. Ussher brought him over at once and introduced him.

“This is my cousin Max, Christine, about whom I’ve talked so much.
Max, this is Miss Fenimer.”

They smiled at each other with a common impulse not to confess that
earlier meeting on the stairs; and he was just about to settle down
beside her, when the door opened and, last of all, Mrs. Almar came
in. She was wearing her flame-color and lilac dress. Christine
knew she would have it on; knew that she saved it for the greatest
moments. She did not advance very far into the room, but stood
looking around her.

“Well,” she said, “where is Cousin Max?”

It must not be supposed from this question that she had not seen
him almost through the crack of the door as the butler opened it
for her; but by speaking just when and where she did, she forced
him to get up from Christine’s side, and come to where she was
to be introduced to her. Then as dinner was at the same instant
announced, she put her hand on his arm.

“Take me in to dinner, Cousin Max,” she said.

“I did not know he was _your_ cousin,” said Wickham, who suffered
from the fatal tendency in moments of doubt to say something.

Mrs. Almar looked at Riatt.

“Will you be a cousin to me?” she asked. “It commits you to
nothing.”

“I don’t consider that an advantage,” he returned, drawing his
elbow slightly inward, so that her hand, if not actually pressed,
was made to feel secure upon his arm. “There are some things I
wouldn’t a bit mind being committed to.”

Mrs. Almar moved her black head from side to side.

“You must be more specific,” she said, “or I shan’t understand you.”

“More specific in words?” he inquired gently. They were crossing
the hall, and had a sort of privacy for an instant.

“Dear me,” she returned, “you do move rather rapidly, don’t you?”

“I’m an aviator, you see,” he answered.

Across the table Christine was trying to be gracious and graceful
while she put up with Hickson, but she was feeling as any honest
captain feels at having a prize cut out from under his very nose.

Mrs. Ussher seeing this, decided that such methods as Nancy’s
ought not to prevail; she seated herself on Max’s other side, and
instantly engaged in conversation.

“Don’t you think my dear little Christine is an angel?” she said,
without any encumbering subtility.

“She certainly looks like one.”

“Who looks like what?” asked Mrs. Almar, from his other side. She
had had this sort of thing tried too often not to be on her guard.

Mrs. Ussher leant forward.

“Max was just saying that Christine looks like an angel.”

Nancy looked at him and made a very slight grimace.

“Are you so awfully strong for angels?” she said. He laughed.

“I never met one before.”

“You haven’t met one to-night.”

“You mean that you’re not an angel, Mrs. Almar?”

“I? Oh, I’m well and favorably known as the wickedest woman in New
York. I meant that Miss Fenimer is not an angel.”

“You don’t like her?”

“How you jump at conclusions! To say she isn’t an angel, doesn’t
mean dislike. As a matter of fact, I am eager to secure her as my
sister-in-law.”

Riatt glanced at Hickson and was aware of the faintest possible
pang. What qualities, he wondered, had a man like that.

“Oh,” he said, “is she engaged to your brother?”

“Certainly not,” answered Mrs. Almar. “But it is fairly well
understood by every one except my brother, that if she doesn’t find
anything better within the next few years she will put up with him.”

At this a slight feeling of disgust for both ladies took possession
of Riatt.

“I see,” he said rather coldly, and turned to Mrs. Ussher, but
Nancy was not so easily disposed of.

“You mean,” she went on, “that you see it is my duty as a sister
to prevent anything else turning up. Suppose, for example, that a
handsome, rich, attractive young man should suddenly appear upon
the scene and show an interest in the angelic Christine.” (By this
time Riatt had turned again to her, and she looked straight into
his eyes as she ran through her list of adjectives.) “Don’t you
think it would be my duty to distract his attention--to go almost
any length to distract his attention?”

“However personally disagreeable to you the process might be?”

“Probably if he were as I described him, the process would not be
so disagreeable.”

He smiled. There was no denying he found her amusing.

In the meantime, the couple across the table had reached a somewhat
similar point.

Hickson had said as they sat down:

“Well, and what do you think of this new fellow?”

Christine’s natural irritation appeared in her answer.

“I have hardly had an opportunity of judging,” she answered, “but,
watching your sister’s attentions to him, I would say he must be
extremely attractive.”

Hickson looked a little dashed.

“Oh,” he said, “Nancy does not mean anything when she goes on like
that.”

The only effect of this speech was to depress further Miss
Fenimer’s estimate of her companion’s intelligence, for in her
opinion Nancy’s whole life was one long black intention. Feeling
this, Ned went on:

“As a matter of fact, one reason why she’s so nice to him is to
keep him away from you and give me a chance.”

“Not very flattering to you, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“The assumption that the only way to make a woman take an interest
in you is to prevent her speaking to any other man.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that--” Hickson began, but she interrupted him.

“That, if anything, Ned.” And she turned to Wickham, who sat on her
other side.

Wickham was waiting for a little notice and began instantly.

“I have been taking the liberty of looking at your pearls, Miss
Fenimer, and indulging in such an interesting speculation. Here on
the one hand, you are wearing round your throat the equivalent of
life, health and virtue for half a hundred working girls, as young,
as human, as yourself. Are we to say this is wrong? Are we to say
that beautiful jewels worn by beautiful women are a crime against
society--”

“One moment, Mr. Wickham,” she said. “My pearls are imitation and
cost eight dollars and fifty cents without the clasp. But,” she
added cruelly, seeing his face fall, “you can say that same thing
to your friend Mrs. Almar, because hers are not artificial, though
I have heard her assert sometimes that they are,” and turning back
to Hickson, who was laboriously trying to carry on a conversation
with his host, she interrupted ruthlessly to say, hardly lowering
her voice:

“Why in the world, Ned, did Nancy bring this Wickham man here? He’s
perfectly impossible.”

“Nancy didn’t bring him,” answered her brother innocently. “I
motored out with her myself.”

“She said she wouldn’t come unless he were asked. Still I know the
answer. Nancy has always had a weakness for blond boys, and last
week she was crazy about this one. Now she has turned against him,
she wants to foist him off on us, but I for one don’t intend to
help her out--”

By this time Wickham, aware that he had been rebuffed, had found an
explanation for it. The girl was annoyed at having been forced to
admit her pearls were imitation. He decided to put everything right.

“Miss Fenimer,” he said, and she turned her head perhaps half an
inch in his direction, “I think you misunderstood me just now. My
standards are probably different from those of the men you are
accustomed to. To me the fact that your pearls are not real is an
added beauty. I’m glad they’re not--”

“Thank you,” said Christine, “but I’m not.” And this time he
understood that he had lost her for good.

After dinner, Mrs. Almar, knowing that her innings were over,
very effectively prevented Christine having hers, by insisting on
playing bridge. She had an excellent head for cards, and always
needed money. Christine allowed herself to be drawn in, supposing
that Riatt would be one of the players, and found herself seated
opposite to Hickson and next to Jack Ussher.

Wickham, feeling very much left out and desirous of showing how
well accustomed he was to the casual manners of polite society,
consoled himself with an evening paper. Laura Ussher led Riatt to a
comfortable corner out of earshot of the bridge-table.

“Now do tell me, Max,” she said, “what you think of them all.”

“I think, my dear Laura,” he answered, “that they are a very
playful band of cut-throats, and next time you ask me to stay, I
hope you and Jack will be entirely alone.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The servants in a household like the Usshers’ were subjected to
almost every strain, except that of early rising. No one dreamed of
coming down stairs before eleven, and most people not until lunch
time.

The next morning Riatt was among the first--that is to say he was
up early enough not to be able to escape a tour of inspection of
the place under the guidance of his host. He had seen the stables
and the new garage, and the sheet of snow beneath which lay the
garden, and the other totally different sheet of snow beneath which
was the soil in which Ussher intended next summer to plant a rose
garden. He had gone over, tree by tree, the plantation of firs,
and had noted how the tips of some were injured, and had given his
opinion as to whether or not it were likely that deer had stolen
down from the wild country near at hand and nibbled the young firs
in the night.

“It’s perfectly possible,” said Ussher. “I have five hundred acres
myself, and then the Club owns a huge tract, and then there’s
some state land. You see we have hardly any neighbors except the
Fenimers and they’re eight or nine miles away.”

“They live here?”

“In summer--and then only when Fred Fenimer is in funds, and that’s
not often. A precarious sort of existence, his--gambling in mining
stocks, almost always in wrong. Hard on the daughter--wish some
nice fellow would come along and marry her.”

“He probably will,” answered Riatt rather coldly. “It’s beginning
to snow again.”

Ussher had just had his pond swept so that his guests could skate,
and now couldn’t imagine what he should provide for them for the
afternoon, so that his thoughts were instantly and completely
turned from Christine’s problems to his own.

At the house they found every one waiting for lunch; Mrs. Almar and
Christine chattering together on a window-seat as if they were the
most intimate allies; Hickson reading his fourth morning paper, and
Mrs. Ussher paying the profoundest attention to something Wickham
was saying. She had suddenly wakened to the fact that he was
having a wretched time and that he was after all her guest. But he
interpreted her actions differently, and supposing that he was at
last being appreciated, he had launched fearlessly forth upon the
conversational sea. It was this spectacle that had drawn Christine
and Nancy together, in their whisperings and giggles in the window.

“This perhaps will illustrate my meaning,” he was saying rather
loudly: “this is the difference in our outlook on life. If you say
‘she dresses well,’ you intend a compliment, but to me it is just
the reverse. The idea is repellent to me that a woman wastes time,
thought, money on her vanity, on decking her body--”

“One on you, my dear,” whispered Christine.

“Isn’t he tiresome?” answered Nancy, shutting her eyes.

“I thought he was your selection.”

“Nobody’s infallible, my dear. Besides, I telegraphed him not to
accept the invitation, but he says he never got my message.”

“Why does he think you sent it?”

“Because I couldn’t trust myself--”

They grinned at each other.

With the entrance of Riatt and Ussher they went in to lunch, and
there manœuvering for places for the afternoon immediately began.

Hickson supposed that by starting early he could secure Christine’s
company. So he at once asked her what she was going to do, and
before she had time to answer he had suggested that she skate, take
a walk, or go sleighing with him. Ussher explained that the skating
was spoiled, and Christine under cover of this diversion managed to
avoid committing herself.

As a matter of fact her afternoon was arranged. She had told Laura
Ussher a pathetic story of having to go over to her father’s
house, and look up an old fur coat of his which had been left
behind when the house was shut for the winter. Mr. Fenimer was
known to be rather an irritable parent where questions of his own
comfort were concerned; it was not impossible that he would make
himself disagreeable if his orders were not carried out. Laura did
not inquire very closely, but she agreed that the best way for
Christine to traverse the distance would be for Riatt to drive her
over in the cutter. Riatt sat next to Laura at luncheon, and she
put it to him, when the general conversation was loudest.

“Would you mind awfully driving poor little Christine over to her
own place to get something or other for that horrid father of hers?”

Of course Riatt didn’t say he did mind; as a matter of fact he
didn’t. He might even have enjoyed the prospect, if it hadn’t been
for the slight hint of compulsion about it.

“It’s snowing, you know,” he said.

“It doesn’t amount to anything,” answered his cousin. “But surely,
Max, you’re not afraid of a little snow, if she isn’t!”

“Anything to oblige you, Laura,” he said.

She did not quite like his tone, but felt she might safely leave
the rest to Christine.

Mrs. Almar, unaware of these plots, settled down as soon as the
meal was over, on a comfortable sofa large enough for two, with a
box of cigarettes at her side and a current magazine that contained
a new article on flying. The bird-like objects in the huge page
of cloudy sky at once caught Max’s eye. He came and bent over it
and her, with his hands in his pockets. Still absorbed in it, she
half-unconsciously swept aside her skirts, and he sat down beside
her. She murmured a question--it was only about planes, and he
answered it. Their heads were close together when Christine came
down in her dark furs ready to go. The bells of Jack Ussher’s
fastest trotter were already to be heard tinkling at the door.

“Are you ready, Max?” said Laura, rather sharply.

“Laura expects every man to do his duty,” murmured Nancy, without
looking up.

Riatt expressed himself as entirely ready. Ussher lent him a fur
cap and heavy gloves, warned him about the charmingly uncertain
character of the horse; he and Christine were tucked into the
sleigh, and they were off.

The snow, as Laura had said, did not seem to amount to much, the
wind was behind them, the horse fast, the roads well packed. Riatt
glanced down at his lovely companion, and felt his spirits rising.
He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“I do hope you really feel like that,” she said, “not sorry, I
mean, to go on this expedition. Because it was extremely wicked of
me to forget my father’s coat, and this was obviously the occasion
to make amends, but there was no one to take me--”

“No one to take you?”

“Oh, I suppose one of the grooms might have driven me over, but I
should have hated that. There was no one else. Jack is much too
selfish, and I wouldn’t have gone with that Wickham person for
anything in the world, even if he had ever driven a sleigh, which I
am sure he hasn’t.”

“And how about Mr. Hickson?” Riatt asked. “Wasn’t he a possibility?”

“What has Nancy Almar told you about her brother and me?”

“Nothing but what he told me himself in every look and word--that
he loves you.”

Christine sighed.

He smiled at her.

“And you’re glad of it,” he said.

“You mean I care for him?”

“I don’t know anything about that, but you’re glad he cares for
you.”

“You’re utterly mistaken.”

“How would you feel if another woman came and took him away from
you to-morrow?”

“Took him away from me?” cried Christine, in a tone of surprise
that made Riatt laugh aloud.

“That’s the wonderful thing about the so-called weaker sex,” he
said. “Saying ‘no’ seems to have no terrors to them at all. The
timidest girl will refuse a man with no more trouble and anxiety
than she would expend on refusing a dinner invitation; whereas men,
with all their vaunted courage, are absolutely at the mercy of a
determined woman. I have a friend who has just married a girl--whom
he three times explicitly refused--only because she asked him to.”

Miss Fenimer looked at him thoughtfully.

“Surely you exaggerate,” she said.

He shook his head sadly.

“I wish I did,” he returned, “but I assure you that is the great
secret--that any man would rather marry any woman than refuse her
to her face. You see, no graceful way for a man to say ‘no’ has
ever been discovered.”

“Why, you poor defenseless creatures!” said Christine. “I’ll teach
you some ways immediately. I couldn’t bear to think of your going
about a prey to the first woman who proposed to you. Let us begin
our lessons immediately. Have I your attention?”

“Completely.”

“Let me see. In the first place there are several general types of
proposal. There is the calmly rational, the passionate whirlwind,
the dangerously controlled, or volcano under a sheet of ice--” she
broke off. “I don’t know how women do it,” she said. “I only know
about men.”

He smiled, “But you admit to knowing all about them, I gather?”

It would have been folly to deny it.

“And then there’s the meltingly pathetic,” she went on. “I imagine
that’s what women attempt oftenest. Let us begin with that. Now you
are to suppose that I, with tears streaming down my face, have just
confessed that I have always looked up to you as a sort of god,
that I hardly dare--”

“Wait, wait!” cried Riatt. “This is by far the most interesting
part of the lesson, and you go so fast. I have no imagination. I
don’t know how it would be, you must say all those things.”

“Do I have to cry?” said Christine.

Riatt debated the point.

“No,” he answered at length, “I can imagine the tears, but
everything else you must act out. Particularly that part about my
seeming like a god to you.”

“But how in the world can I teach you what to do, if I have to act
a part myself?”

“Well, before we begin, just give me a sketch of what I ought to
do.”

“You must be very cold and firm, and explain to me that though my
mistake is natural, you are really not a god at all; and then that
gives you an excuse to talk a great deal about yourself, and tell
how wicked and human and splendid you are, and that you are not
worthy of a simple, good girl like myself, and how you don’t love
me anyhow. And then the essential thing is to go away quickly, and
end the interview before I have a chance to begin all over again.”

He looked doubtfully at the snow.

“Must I get out and walk home?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I think that’s too complicated. We might try an
easier one to begin. Suppose we do the calmly rational first. I
explain to you that I have watched you from boyhood, and have come
to the conclusion that our tastes, our intellects, our--”

“Oh, no,” said Riatt, “there’s really no use in going on with that.
Even I should have no difficulty with any lady who approached me
in that way. But there was one of the others that sounded rather
promising and difficult. How about the passionate whirlwind? I say
to try that next.”

To her surprise, Christine found herself coloring a little.

“Ah,” she said, laying her hand on her lips and shaking her head,
“that’s very difficult, because you see, it really can’t be
imitated--”

“Can’t be imitated!” cried Max. “Why, what sort of a teacher are
you? I believe you don’t know your job. You are the sort of teacher
who would tell an arithmetic class that long division could not
be imitated. I believe the trouble with you is that you don’t
understand the passionate whirlwind yourself. I believe you’re a
fraud, and I shall have your license to teach taken away from you.
Can’t be imitated! Well, let me see you try, at least.”

Christine felt that he had the better of her, but she said firmly:

“Are you teaching this subject, or am I?”

“Certainly you can’t think _you_ are. But if you say so, I’ll have
a try.”

Not sorry to create a diversion, Christine looked about her, and
was more diverted from the subject in hand than she had expected to
be.

They were on the wrong road. What with the snow and the fact that
she had been so busy talking that she really had no idea how far
they had been, it took her a moment to orient herself anew. She
told him with a conscience-struck look.

“And you,” said Riatt, “who do not even know the road to your own
house, were volunteering to pilot me through an emotional crisis.”

Even a suggestion of adverse criticism was unpleasant to Miss
Fenimer. She was not accustomed to it; and she answered with some
sharpness:

“Yes, but the road is real, whereas I understand your embarrassment
through the attentions of ladies is purely fictitious.”

Riatt wondered how fictitious, but he turned the cutter about in
obedience to her commands. The horse started forward even more
gaily, under the impression that he was going home. But for the
drivers, the change was not so agreeable. A high wind had come up,
the snow was falling faster, and the light of the winter afternoon,
already beginning to fade, was obscured by high, dark, silver-edged
banks of clouds.

“Upon my word,” said Riatt, “I think we had better go back.”

“It’s only a little way from here,” Christine answered, trying hard
to think how far it really was. She did want to get her father’s
coat, but she was not indifferent to the triumph of making Riatt
late for dinner, and leaving Nancy Almar throughout the afternoon
with no companion but Wickham or Jack Ussher.

The wind cut their faces, the horse pulled and pranced, the gaiety
had gone out of their little expedition. They drove on a mile or
so, and then Riatt stopped the horse.

“We’ve got to go back, Miss Fenimer,” he said firmly.

“Oh, please not, Mr. Riatt; we are almost there, and,” she added
with a fine sense of filial obligation, “I really feel I must do as
my father asked me.”

Riatt felt inclined to point out that she, with her muff held up
to her face, was not making the greatest sacrifice to the ideal of
duty.

“Have you any very clear idea where your house is?” he asked. His
tone was not flattering, and Christine was quick to feel it.

“Do I know where I live five months of the year?” she returned. “Of
course I do. It’s just over this next hill.”

The afternoon was turning out so perversely that she would hardly
have been surprised to find that the house had disappeared from its
accustomed place. But as they came over the crest, there it was, in
a hollow between two hills, looking as summer houses do in winter,
like a forlorn toy left out in the snow.

“But it’s shut up,” said Riatt. “There’s no one in it.”

“I have the keys to the back door.”

He touched the horse for the first time with the whip, and they
went jingling down the slope, in between the almost completely
buried gateposts, and drew up before the kitchen door.

Miss Fenimer kicked her feet free from the rugs, jumped out, and
from the recesses of her muff produced a key which she inserted in
the lock.

“Now you won’t be long, will you?” said Riatt, with more of command
than persuasion in his tone.

It was a principle of life on the part of Christine that she never
allowed any man to bully her; or perhaps, it would be more nearly
just to say that she never intended to allow any man to do so until
she herself became persuaded that he could, and with this object
she always made the process look as difficult and dangerous as
possible at the very beginning.

She looked back at him and smiled with irritating calm.

“I shall be just as long as is necessary,” she replied, and so
saying, she turned, or rather attempted to turn, the key.

But disuse, or cold, or her own lack of strength prevented and
she was presently reduced to asking Riatt to help her. He did not
volunteer his assistance. She had definitely and directly to ask
for it. Then he was friendliness itself.

“Just stand by the horse’s head, will you?” he said, and when
he saw her stationed there, he sprang out, and with an almost
insulting ease opened the door.

Just as he did so, however, a gust of wind, fiercer than any other,
swept round the corner of the house and carried away Christine’s
hat. She made a quick gesture to catch it, and as she did so,
struck the horse under the chin. The animal reared, and Christine
jumped aside to avoid being struck by its hoofs; the next instant,
it had thrown its head in the air, and started at full speed down
the road, dragging the empty sleigh after it. Riatt, who had his
back turned, did not see the beginning of the incident, but a
cry from Christine soon roused his attention, and he started in
pursuit, calling to the animal to stop, in the hope that the human
voice might succeed when all other methods were quite obviously
useless. But the horse, now thoroughly excited by the hanging
reins, the bells, and the sense of its own power, went only faster
and faster, and finally disappeared at full speed.

Riatt came slowly back; he was sinking in the snow to his waist at
every step. Christine was watching him with some anxiety.

“Is there a telephone in the house?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“No, it’s disconnected when we leave in the autumn.”

There was a moment’s silence, then she said questioningly: “What
shall we do?”

“There’s only one thing we can do,” he returned; “go into the house
and light a fire.”

But Christine hesitated.

“I don’t think it will be wise to waste time doing that,” she said,
“if you have to go back on foot to the Usshers’--”

“Go back on foot!” Riatt interrupted. “My dear Miss Fenimer, that
is quite impossible. It must be every inch of ten miles, it’s dark,
a blizzard is blowing, I don’t know the way, and we haven’t passed
a house.”

“But, but,” said she, “suppose they don’t rescue us to-night?”

“They probably will to-morrow,” answered Riatt, and he walked past
her into the house.




CHAPTER II


Christine was glad to get out of the wind, but the damp chill of
the deserted house was not much of an improvement. Ahead of her in
the darkness, she could hear Riatt snapping electric switches which
produced nothing.

“Isn’t the light connected?” he called.

“I don’t know.”

“Aren’t there lamps in the house?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where could I find some candles?”

“What a tiresome man!” she thought; and for the third time she
answered: “I don’t know.”

A rather unappreciative grunt was his only reply, and then he
called back: “You’d better stay where you are, till I find
something to make a light.”

She asked nothing better. She was oppressed with a sense of crisis.
An inner voice seemed to be saying, in parody of Charles Francis
Adams’s historic words: “I need hardly point out to your ladyship
that this means marriage.”

She had thought, lightly enough, that everything was settled the
evening before on the stairs when she had made up her mind that he
would do. But with all her belief in herself, she was not unaware
even then that unforeseen obstacles might arise. He might be
secretly engaged for all she knew to the contrary. But now she felt
quite sure of him. With Fate playing into her hands like this--with
romance and adventure and the possibilities of an uninterrupted
tête-à-tête, she knew she could have him if she wanted him. And the
point was that she did. At least she supposed she did. She felt as
many a young man feels when he lands his first job--triumphant, but
conscious of lost freedoms.

Marriage, she knew, was the only possible solution of her problems.
Her life with her father was barely possible. As a matter of fact
they were but rarely together. The tiny apartment in New York
did not attract Fred Fenimer as a winter residence, when he had
an opportunity of going to Aiken or Florida or California at the
expense of some more fortunate friend. In summer it was much the
same. “My dear,” he would say to his daughter, “I really can’t
afford to open the house this summer.” And Christine would coldly
acquiesce, knowing that this statement only meant that he had
received an invitation that he preferred to a quiet summer with her.

Sometimes throughout the whole season father and daughter would
only meet by chance on some unexpected visit, or coming into a
harbor on different yachts.

“Isn’t that the _Sea-Mew’s_ flag?” Christine would say languidly.
“I rather think my father is on board.”

And then, perhaps, some amiable hostess in need of an extra man
would send the launch to the _Sea-Mew_ to bring Mr. Fenimer back
to dine; and he would come on board, very civil, very neat, very
punctilious on matters of yachting etiquette; and he and Christine
having exchanged greeting, would find that they had really nothing
whatsoever to say to each other.

Their only vital topic of conversation was money, and as this was
always disagreeable, both of them instinctively tried to avoid
it. Whenever Fenimer had money, he either speculated with it, or
immediately spent it on himself. So that he was always able to say
with perfect truth, whenever his daughter asked for it, that he
had none. The result of this was that she had easily drifted into
the simple custom of running up bills for whatever she needed, and
allowing the tradesmen to fight it out with her father.

Such a system does not tend to economy. Christine’s idea of what
was necessary, derived from the extravagant friends who offered her
the most opportunity for amusing herself, enlarged year by year.
Besides, she asked herself, why should she deny herself, in order
that her father might lose more money in copper stocks?

Sometimes during one of their casual meetings, he would say to
her under his breath: “Good Heavens, girl, do you know, I’ve just
had a bill of almost three thousand dollars from your infernal
dressmaker? How can I stop your running up such bills?” And she
would answer coolly: “By paying them every year or so.”

She knew--she had always known since she was a little girl--that
from this situation, only marriage could rescue her, and from the
worse situation that would follow her father’s death; for she
suspected that he was deeply in debt. Not having been brought up in
a sentimental school she was prepared to do her share in arranging
such a marriage. In the world in which she lived, competition was
severe. Already she had seen a possible husband carried off under
her nose by a little school-room mouse who had had the aid of an
efficient mother.

But now for the first time in her life, she saw that the game was
in her own hands. She had only to do the right thing--only perhaps
to avoid doing the wrong one--and her future was safe.

She heard Riatt calling and she followed him into the laundry,
where he had collected some candles: he was much engaged in
lighting a fire in the stove.

“But wouldn’t the kitchen range be better?” she asked.

“No water turned on,” he answered.

To her this answer was utterly unintelligible. What, she
wondered, was the connection between fire and water. But, rather
characteristically, she was disinclined to ask. She walked to the
sink, however, and turned the tap; a long husky cough came from it,
but no water.

After this burst of energy she sank into a chair, amused to watch
his arrangements. Thoroughly idle people--and there is not much
question that Miss Fenimer was idle--learn a variety of methods for
keeping other people at work, and probably the most effective of
these is flattery. Christine may have been ignorant of the feminine
arts of cooking and fire-making; but of the super-feminine art of
flattery she was a thorough mistress.

Now as Riatt finished building his fire, and began to bring in
buckets of snow to supply their need of water, the gentle flow of
her flattery soothed him as the sound of a hidden brook in the
leafy month of June. Nor, strangely enough, did the fact that he
dimly apprehended its purpose in the least interfere with his
enjoyment.

“If ever I’m thrown away on a desert island, I speak to be
thrown away with you,” she said. “There isn’t another man of
my acquaintance who could bring order out of these primitive
conditions.”

He laughed. “Well, you know,” he said, “this isn’t really what
you’d call primitive. I was snowed up in Alaska once.”

“Alaska! You’ve been snowed up in Alaska?” she echoed in the tone
of a child who says: was it a _black_ bear?

Oh, yes, it lightened his toil. Nevertheless, he asked for her
assistance in trying to find something to eat. She knew no more
about the kitchen than he did, but she advanced toward a door and
opened it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. It was the
kitchen closet. She opened a tin box.

“There is something here that looks like gravel,” she called. He
rushed to her side. It was cereal. He found other supplies, too, a
little salt, sugar, coffee, and a jar of bacon.

“How clever of you to know what they all are,” she murmured, and he
felt as if he had invented them out of thin air, like an Eastern
magician.

He carried them back to the kitchen. “I wonder if you’d get the
coffee grinder,” he said.

She hadn’t the faintest idea what a coffee grinder looked like, but
she went away to find it, and came back presently with an object
strange enough to serve any purpose.

“Is this it?” she asked.

“That’s a meat chopper,” he answered, and then laughed. “You’re not
a very good housekeeper, are you?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Did you ever know an agreeable woman
who was? Good housekeepers are always bores, because they can never
for an instant get their minds off the most tiresome things in the
world like bills, and how the servants are behaving. All clever
women are bad housekeepers, and so they always find some one like
you to take care of them.”

He was putting the cereal to boil, and answered only after a
second. “Perhaps you’ll think me old-fashioned, but I cannot help
respecting the art of housekeeping.”

“Oh, so do I in its place,” replied Miss Fenimer. “My maid does the
whole thing capitally. But let me give you a test. Think of the
very best housekeeper you ever met. Would you like to have her here
instead of me? You may be quite candid.”

Riatt stopped and considered an instant with his head on one side.
“She’d make me awfully comfortable,” he said.

Miss Fenimer nodded, as much as to say: yes, but even so--

“No,” he said at length, as if the decision had been close.
“No, after all I would rather do the work and have you. But it
isn’t because you are a poor housekeeper that I prefer you. It’s
because--”

Compliments upon her charms were platitudes to Christine, and
she cut him short. “Yes, it is. It’s because I’m so detached, and
don’t interfere, and let you do things your own way, and think you
so wonderful to be able to do them at all. Now if I knew how to do
them, too, I should be criticizing and suggesting all the time, and
you’d have no peace. You like me for _being a poor housekeeper_.”

He smiled. “On that ground I ought to like you very much then,” he
answered.

“Perhaps you do,” she said cheerfully. “Anyhow I’m sure you like
me better than that other girl you were thinking of--that good
housekeeper. Who is she?”

“I like her quite a lot.”

“I see--you think she’d make a good wife.”

“I think she’d make a good wife to any man who was fortunate
enough--”

“Oh, what a dreadful way to talk of the poor girl!”

“On the contrary, I admire her extremely.”

“I believe you are engaged to her.”

“Not as much as you are to Hickson.”

Christine laughed. “From the way you describe her,” she said, “I
believe she’d make a perfect wife for Ned.”

“Oh, she’s much too good for him.”

“Thank you. You seem to think I’ll do nicely for him.”

“Ah, but she’s much better than you are.”

“And yet you said you’d rather have me here than her.”

He smiled. “I think,” he said, and Christine rather waited for his
next words, “I think I shall go down and see if I can’t get the
furnace going.”

Nevertheless, she said to herself when he was gone, “I should not
feel at all easy about him, if I were the other girl.”

She knew there was no prospect of their being rescued that night.
When the sleigh arrived at the Usshers’, if it ever did arrive, its
empty shattered condition would suggest an accident. The Usshers
were at that moment probably searching for them in ditches, and
hedges. The marks of the sleigh would be quickly obliterated by the
storm. No, she thought comfortably, there was no escape from the
fact that their situation was compromising. The only question was
how could the matter be most tactfully called to his attention.
At the moment he seemed happily unaware that such things as the
proprieties existed.

At this his head appeared at the head of the cellar stairs.

“Watch the cereal, please,” he said, “and see that it doesn’t burn.”

“Like King Alfred?”

“Not too much like him, please, for that pitiful little dab of food
is about all we have to eat.”

When he was gone Christine advanced toward the stove and looked
at the cereal--looked at it closely, but it seemed to her to be
but little benefited by her attention. Presently she discovered
on a shelf beside the laundry clock a pinkish purple paper novel,
called: “The Crime of the Season.” Its cover depicted a man in a
check suit and side-whiskers looking on in astonishment at the
removal of a drowned lady in full evening dress from a very minute
pond. Christine opened it, and was so fortunate as to come full
upon the crime. She became as completely absorbed in it as the
laundress had been before her.

She was recalled to the more sordid but less criminal surroundings
of real life by a strong pungent smell. She sniffed, and then her
heart suddenly sank as she realized that the cereal was burning.
She recognized a peculiarly disagreeable flavor about which she had
often scolded the cook, thinking such carelessness on the part of
one of her employees to be absolutely inexcusable.

She ran to the head of the cellar stairs. “Mr. Riatt!” she called.

He was now shaking down the furnace, and the noise completely
drowned her voice. “Oh, dear, what a noisy man he is,” she thought
and when he had finished, she called again: “Mr. Riatt!”

This time he heard. “What is it?” he answered.

“Mr. Riatt, what shall I do? The cereal is burning terribly.”

“I should think it was,” he said. “I can smell it down here.” He
sprang up the stairs and snatched the pot from the stove. “You must
have stopped stirring it,” he said.

“Oh, I didn’t stir it!”

“What did you do?”

“You didn’t tell me to stir it.”

“I certainly did.”

“No, you said just to watch it.”

Riatt looked at her. “Well,” he said, “I’ve heard of glances
cutting like a knife, but never stirring like a spoon. If I were a
really just man,” he went on, “I’d make you eat that burnt mess for
your supper, but I’m so absurdly indulgent that I’ll share some of
my bacon and biscuits with you.”

His tone as well as his words were irritating to one not used to
criticism in any form.

“I don’t care for that sort of joke,” she said.

“I wasn’t aware of having made a joke.”

“I mean your attitude as if I were a child that had been naughty.”

“It wouldn’t be so bad if you were a child.”

“You consider me to blame because that wretched cereal chose to
burn?”

“Emphatically I do.”

“How perfectly preposterous,” said Christine, and a sense of bitter
injustice seethed within her. “Why in the world should _I_ be
expected to know how to cook?”

“I’m a little too busy at the moment to explain it to you,” Riatt
answered, “but I promise to take it up with you at a later date.”

There was something that sounded almost like a threat in this.
She turned away, and walking to the window stood staring out into
the darkness. He was really quite a disagreeable young man, she
thought. How true it was, that you couldn’t tell what people were
like when everything was going smoothly. She wondered if he would
always be like that--trying to keep one up to one’s duty and making
one feel stupid and ignorant about the merest trifles.

“Well, this rich meal is ready,” he said presently.

She turned around. The table was set--she couldn’t help wondering
where he had found the kitchen knives and forks--the bacon was
sizzling, the tin of biscuits open, and the coffee bubbling and
gurgling in its glass retort.

She sat down and began to eat in silence, but as she did so, she
studied him furtively. She was used to many different kinds of
masculine bad temper; her father’s irritability whenever anything
affected his personal comfort: and from other men all forms of
jealousy and hurt feelings. But this stern indifference to her as
a human being was something a little different. She decided on her
method.

“Oh, dear,” she said, “this meal couldn’t be much drearier if we
were married, could it?”

“Except,” he returned, unsmilingly, “that then it would be one of a
long series.”

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” she answered. “I should leave you on
account of your bad temper.”

“If I hadn’t first left you on account of--”

“Of burning the cereal?”

“Of being so infernally irresponsible about it.”

“Oh, that’s the trouble, is it?” she said. “That I did not seem to
care? Well, I assure you that I don’t like burnt food any better
than you do, but I have some self-control. I wouldn’t spoil a whole
evening just because--” A sudden inspiration came to her. Her voice
failed her, and she hid her face in her pocket handkerchief.

Riatt leant back in his chair and looked at her, looked at least at
the back of her long neck, and the twist of her golden hair and the
occasional heave of her shoulders.

The strange and the humiliating thing was that she had just as much
effect upon him when he quite obviously knew that she was insincere.

“Why,” he said gently, “are you crying? Or perhaps I ought to say,
why are you pretending to cry?”

She paid no attention to the latter part of his question.

“You’re so unkind,” she said, careful not to overdo a sob. “You
don’t seem to understand what a terrible situation this is for me.”

“In what way is it terrible?”

“Don’t you know that a story like this clings to a girl as long
as she lives? That among the people I know there will always be
gossip--”

“You’re not serious?”

She nodded, still behind her handkerchief, “Yes, I am. This will be
something I shall have to live down, as much as you would if you
had robbed a bank.”

She now raised her head, and wiping her eyes hard enough to make
them a little red, she glanced at him.

Really she thought it would save a great deal of time and trouble,
if he could just see the thing clearly and ask her to marry him now.

But apparently his mind did not work so quickly.

“Who will repeat it?” he said. “Not the Usshers--”

“Nancy Almar won’t let it pass. She’ll have found the evening dull
without you, and she’ll feel she has a right to compensation. And
that worm, Wickham; it will be his favorite anecdote for the rest
of his life. I was horrible to him last night at dinner.”

“Sorry you were?”

“Not a bit. I’d do it again, but I may as well face the fact that
he won’t be eager to conceal his own social triumphs for the sake
of my good name. Can’t you hear him, ‘Curious thing happened the
other day--at my friends the Usshers’. Know them? A lovely country
place--’--”

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “What a bore! Is there anything I
could do--”

“Well, there _is_ one thing.”

He looked up quickly. If ever terror flashed in a man’s eyes, she
saw it then in his. Her heart sank, but her mind worked none the
less well.

“It’s this,” she went on smoothly. “There’s a lodge, a sort of
tool-house, only about half a mile down the road. Couldn’t you take
a lantern, couldn’t you possibly spend the night there?”

“It isn’t by any chance,” he said, “that you’re afraid of having me
here?”

“Oh, no, not you,” she answered. “No, I should feel much safer with
you here than there.” (If he went her case was ruined, and she was
now actually afraid perhaps he would go.) “I should be terrified
in this great place all by myself. Still, I think you ought to go.
It’s not so very far. You go down the road a little way and then
turn to the right through the woods. I think you’ll find it. The
roof used to leak a little, but I dare say you won’t mind that.
There isn’t any fireplace, but you could take lots of blankets--”

“I tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “No one will come to rescue us
to-night. I’ll sleep here to-night, and to-morrow as soon as it’s
light, I’ll go to this cottage, and when they come, you can tell
them any story you please. Will that do?”

It did perfectly. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “How kind you are! And
you do forgive me, don’t you?”

“About the cereal? Oh, yes, on one condition.”

“What is that?” She was still meltingly sweet.

“That you wash these dishes.”

She felt inclined to box his ears. Had he seen through her all the
time?

“I never washed a dish in my life,” she observed thoughtfully.

“Have you ever done anything useful?”

She reflected, and after some thought she replied, not boastfully,
but as one who states an indisputable fact: “Never.”

He folded his arms, leant against the wall and looked down upon
her. “I wish,” he said, “if it isn’t too much trouble that you
would give me a detailed account of one of your average days.”

“You talk,” said she, “as if you were studying the manners and
customs of savages.”

“Let us say of an unknown tribe.”

She leant back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head.
“Well, let me see,” she said. “I wake up about nine or a little
after if I haven’t been up all night, and I ring for my maid. And
about eleven--”

“Don’t skip, please. You ring for your maid. What does she do for
you?”

Imagine any one’s not knowing! Miss Fenimer marveled. “Why, she
draws my bath and puts out my things, and while I’m taking my
bath, she straightens the room and lights the fire, if it’s cold,
and brings in my breakfast-tray and my letters. And by half past
ten, I’m finally dressed if no one has come in to delay me, only
some one always has. Last winter my time was immensely occupied
by two friends of mine who had both fallen in love with the same
man--one of them was married to him--and they used to come every
day and confide in me. You have no idea how amusing it was. He
behaved shockingly, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for
him. They were both such determined women. Finally I went to him,
and told him how it was I knew so much about his affairs, and said
I thought he ought to try and make up his mind which of them he
really did care for. And what do you think he said? That he had
always been in love with me.” She laughed. “How absurdly things
happen, don’t they?”

“Good Heavens!” said Riatt.

“But even at the worst, I’m generally out by noon, and get a walk.
I’m rather dependent on exercise, and then I lunch with some one or
other--”

“Men or women?”

“Either or both. And then after lunch I drive with some one, or go
to see pictures or hear music, and then I like to be at home by
tea time, because that’s, of course, the hour every one counts on
finding you; and then there’s dressing and going out to dinner, and
very often something afterwards.”

“Good Lord,” said Riatt again, and after a moment he added: “And
does that life amuse you?”

“No, but it doesn’t bore me as much as doing things that are more
trouble.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh, being on committees that you don’t really take any interest
in.” She rather enjoyed his amazement.

“Now tell me one thing more,” he said. “What would you do if you
had to earn your living?”

The true answer was that she would marry Edward Hickson, but,
though heretofore she had been fairly candid, she thought on this
point a little dissembling was permissible. “I should starve, I
suppose,” she returned gaily.

“And suppose you fell in love with a poor man?”

She grew grave at once. “Oh, that’s a dreadful thing to happen to
one,” she said. “I’ve had two friends who did that.” She almost
shuddered. “One actually married him.”

“And what happened to her?”

Miss Fenimer shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s living in the
suburbs somewhere. I haven’t seen her for ages.”

“And the other?”

“She was more practical. She married him to a rich widow ten years
older than he was. That provided for him, you see, at least. But it
turned out worse than the other case.”

“How?”

“Why, he fell in love with this other woman--”

“His wife, you mean?”

“Yes. Imagine it! Men are so fickle.”

“Do you know that you really shock me?”

“It’s better to appreciate the way things are.”

“It isn’t the way things are among decent normal human beings.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, I imagine it is,” she said, “only
they’re not honest enough to admit it.”

He continued to stare at her and, strangely enough, she had never
seemed to him more beautiful.

“And do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that people who have the
standards that you describe will attach the slightest importance to
an innocent little adventure like this of ours?”

“Of course. They are the very people who will.”

“Nonsense.”

“Yes, because they make a point of always believing the worst, or
at least of pretending to.”

“Why pretend?”

“Because it makes conversation so much more amusing. Sometimes,”
she added thoughtfully, “I have a terrible suspicion that there
really isn’t an atom of harm in any of them--that they all behave
perfectly well, and just excite themselves by talking as if they
didn’t.”

“And you call that suspicion terrible?”

“Well, it makes it all seem a little flat. But then sometimes,” she
went on brightly, “one does find out something absolutely hideous.”

“See here,” he said, “it’s a crime for a girl of your age to talk
like this. It’s a silly habit. I don’t believe you’re like that at
heart.”

“You talk,” said she, “like Edward Hickson.”

“In some communities that would be thought a fighting word,” he
returned. “But you haven’t yet answered my question. You’ve told me
what your friends have done; but what would you do yourself, if you
fell in love with a poor man?”

“In the first place, I never should. What makes a man attractive
to me is power, preëminence, being bowed down to. If I lived in a
military country, I’d love the greatest soldier; and if I lived in
a savage country, I’d love the strongest warrior; but here to-day,
the only form of power I see is money. It’s what makes you able to
have everything you want, and that’s a man’s greatest charm.”

“And it seems to me that the most tied-down creatures I ever saw
are the rich men I’ve met in the East.”

She was honestly surprised. “Why, what is there they can’t do?” she
asked.

He smiled. “They can’t do anything that might endanger their
property rights,” he answered, “and that seems to me to cut them
off from most forms of human endeavor. But no matter about that.
You say you would not be likely to fall in love with a poor man,
but suppose you _did_. Perhaps it has happened already?”

Miss Fenimer looked thoughtful. “I was trying to think,” she said.
“Yes, there was a young artist two years ago that I was rather
interested in. He was very nice looking, and Nancy Almar kept
telling me how much he was in love with her.”

“And that stimulated your interest?”

“Of course.”

“Just for the sake of information,” he said, “do you always want to
take away any man who is safely devoted to another woman?”

Christine seemed resolved to be accurate. “It depends,” she
answered, “whether or not I have anything else to do, but of course
the idea always pops into one’s head: I wonder if I couldn’t make
him like me best.”

“And do you always find you can?”

“Oh, there’s no rule about it; only as a newcomer one has the
advantage of novelty, and that’s something.”

“And what happened about this artist?”

Christine smiled reminiscently: “I found he wasn’t really in love
with Nancy at all: he just wanted to paint her portrait.”

“I should think he would have wanted to paint yours.”

“He did and gave it to me as a present, and then he behaved very
badly.” She sighed.

“What did he do?”

“Well,” she hesitated. “He did not really want to give me the
picture. He thought he wanted to keep it himself. It was much the
best thing he ever did. I had to persuade him a good deal, and in
persuading him, I may have given him the impression that I cared
about him more than I really did. Anyhow, after I actually had
the portrait hanging in my sitting-room, I told him I thought it
was better for us not to meet any more. Some men would have been
flattered to think I took them so seriously. But he was furious,
and one day when I was out he sent for the portrait and cut it all
to pieces. Wasn’t that horrible? My pretty portrait!”

“Horrible!” said Riatt. “It seems to me the one spark of spirit the
poor young man showed.”

She glanced at him under her lashes. “What would you have done?”

“I’d take you out to the plains for a year or so, and let you find
out a little about what life is like.”

“I don’t think it would be a success,” she returned. “I don’t
profit by discipline, I’m afraid. But,” she stood up, “I’m
perfectly open minded. I’ll make a beginning. I’ll wash the
dishes--just to please you.”

[Illustration: And then, with a clean towel, he deliberately dried
her hands, finger by finger]

He watched her go to the kitchen sink, and pour water from the
steaming kettle into a dish pan, saw her turn up her lace-frilled
cuffs, and begin with her long, slim, inefficient hands to take
up the dirty plates. Suddenly, much to his surprise, he found he
couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear to see the lace fall down again and
again, and her obvious shrinking from the task.

He crossed the room and took the plates from her, and then with a
clean towel, he deliberately dried her hands, finger by finger,
while she stood by like a docile child, looking up at him in wonder.

“Don’t you want to reform me?” she asked plaintively.

“No,” he answered shortly.

“Why not?”

“Because you would be too dangerous,” he returned. “Now you have
every charm except goodness. If you turned good and gentle you’d be
supreme.”

“I never thought goodness was a _charm_,” she objected.

“And that’s just what I hope you will never find out.”

She laughed. “I don’t believe there’s much danger,” she said. “I
think I shall go on being wicked and mercenary and selfish to the
day of my death, and probably getting everything I want.”

“I hope not. I mean I hope you won’t get what you want.”

“Oh, why are you so unkind?”

“Because I shall want to use you as a terrible example to my
grandchildren.”

“Do you think you will remember me as long as that?”

“I feel no doubt about it.”

She smiled. “It seems rather hard that I have to come to a bad end
just to oblige your horrid little grandchildren,” she said. “As a
matter of fact, I shall probably run them down in my motor as they
go to work with their little dinner-pails. And as I take their
mangled forms to the hospital, I’ll murmur: ‘Riatt, Riatt, I think
I once knew a half-hearted reformer of that name.’”

“You think you, too, will remember as long as that?”

“I have an excellent memory for trifles,” she returned, and rose
yawning. “And now I think I’ll go to bed--unless there’s anything
more you want to know about our tribal customs. Are you going to
write a nature book about us: ‘Head-hunting Among the Idle Rich’?”

“‘The Cannibals of the Atlantic Coast’ is the title,” he answered
as he gave her a candle. “I’ll leave your breakfast for you in the
morning before I go. And by the way, if some one comes to rescue
you, don’t go off and leave me in the tool-house, will you?”

“Oh, I’m not really as bad as that.”

He shook his head as if he didn’t feel sure.

She went away well satisfied with her evening’s work. There had
been something extremely flattering in his mingled horror and
amusement at her candid revelations. Holding up the candle she
looked at her own image in her mirror. “I wonder,” she thought, “if
that young man knows what a dangerous frame of mind he’s in?”

He had some suspicion, for as he dragged a mattress downstairs and
laid it before the kitchen fire, he kept repeating to himself, as
if in a last effort to rouse some moral enthusiasm: “What a band of
cut-throats they are!”

Christine woke the next morning to find the sun shining on an
unbroken sheet of snow. The storm had passed in the night. She
dressed quickly and went down to find the kitchen empty, and the
track of footsteps in the snow leading away in the direction of the
tool-house. Her coffee was bubbling and slices of bacon neatly laid
in the frying pan were ready for cooking. She thought he might have
stayed and cooked it for her.

“No one will come as early as this,” she thought, plaintively.

But hardly had she finished her simple meal, when the sound of
sleigh bells reached her ears, and running to the window she saw
that Ussher and Hickson in a two horse sleigh were driving down the
slope.

A moment later they were in the kitchen. And after the minimum time
had elapsed during which all three talked at once recounting their
own individual anxieties, Ussher asked:

“Where’s Max?”

Christine cast down her eyes with a sort of Paul-and-Virginia
expression, as she answered: “Oh, he is sleeping in the tool-house!”

“Well, I call that damned nonsense,” said Ussher. “Let a man freeze
to death! Upon my word, Christine, I thought you had more sense.”
And he strode away to the back door. “Yes, here are his tracks,
poor fellow.” Ussher went out after him, and Hickson turned back.

“But _you_ think I was right, don’t you, Edward?” said Christine,
for she had never failed to elicit commendation from Edward.

But now his brow was dark. “But, I say, Christine,” he said,
“there’s one thing I don’t understand. These tracks of his
footsteps in the snow.”

“He didn’t fly, Ned, even if he is an aviator.”

“Yes, but it didn’t stop snowing until four o’clock this morning.”

How irritating the weather always is, Christine thought. For though
she was willing to use scandal as a weapon over Riatt, she was not
sure that she wished to put it into Hickson’s hands.

She thought hard, and then said brightly:

“Oh, perhaps he came back for his breakfast before I was up.”

Hickson shook his head: “They only lead one way,” he said.

In the face of the tactlessness of hard facts, Christine decided to
create a diversion.

“I can’t stand here gossiping about the conduct of an aviator,”
she said, “when there’s so much to be done. Look at all these
dirty plates. What ought to be done with them, Edward, dear?” she
appealed to him as to a fountain of wisdom, and he did not fail her.

“They ought to be washed,” he said. “Give me a towel. I’ll do it.”
And he felt more than rewarded when, as she handed him a towel, her
hand touched his.

The many duties of which she had just spoken seemed suddenly to
have melted away, for she sat down quite idly and watched him.

“How well you do it, Edward,” she said, not quite honestly, for
she compared his slow gestures very unfavorably with Riatt’s deft
hands. “It’s quite as if you had washed dishes all your life.”

“Ah, Christine,” he answered, looking at her sentimentally over
a coffee-cup, “I shouldn’t ask anything better than to wash your
dishes for the rest of my life.”

“Thank you, Edward, but I think I should ask something a good deal
better,” she answered.

It was on this scene that Ussher and Riatt entered, and the eyes of
the latter twinkled.

“Engaged a kitchen-maid, I see,” he said in a low tone to Christine.

“I think it’s so good for people to do something useful now and
then, don’t you?”

“A form of education that you offer almost every one who comes near
you.”

Hickson did not hear everything, but he caught the idea, and said
severely:

“I don’t suppose any one would ask Miss Fenimer to wash dirty
dishes.”

Riatt laughed: “No one who had ever seen her try.”

Ussher, who had been fuming in the background, now broke out:

“Upon my word, Christine, that tool-house was like a vault. It was
madness to ask any one to spend the night in such a place.”

“Did you spend the night in the tool-house?” said Hickson with
unusual directness.

“There are worse places than the tool-house,” said Riatt, as he and
Ussher hurried down to the cellar to put out the furnace fire.

Hickson turned to Christine. “The fellow didn’t answer me,” he said.

“Perhaps he thought it was none of your business, Edward, my dear,”
she answered.

“Everything connected with you is my business,” he returned.

“Oh, Edward, what a dreary outlook for me!”

“Christine, answer me. Did or did not this man make advances to
you?”

“Edward, he did.”

“What happened?”

“He gave me a long, tiresome, moral lecture and, judging by you, my
dear, that is proof of affection.”

“You’re simply amusing yourself with me!”

“I’m not amusing myself very much, Edward, if that’s any comfort.”

“You drive me mad,” he said and stamped away from her so hard, that
Ussher came up from the cellar.

“What’s Edward doing?” he said.

“He says he’s going mad,” returned Christine, “but I thought he was
washing the dishes.”

“There’s no pleasing Edward,” said Ussher. “He was in my room at
six o’clock this morning trying to get me to start a rescuing party
(and I needn’t tell you, Christine, we none of us had much sleep
last night), and now that he is here and finds you safe, he seems
to be just as restless as ever.” And Ussher returned to the cellar
still grumbling.

“You know why I’m restless, Christine,” Hickson said when they were
again alone.

Christine seemed to wonder. “The artistic temperament is usually
given as the explanation, but somehow, in your case, Edward--”

He came and stood directly in front of her.

“Christine, what did happen last night?”

Although not a muscle of Miss Fenimer’s face moved, she knew very
well that this was a turning-point. She had the choice between
killing the scandal, or giving it such life and strength that
nothing but her marriage with Riatt would ever allay it. She
knew that a few sensible words would put Hickson straight, and
Hickson would be a powerful ally. On the other hand, if he came
back plainly weighted with a terrible doubt, no one would ask any
further evidence. The question was, how much would Riatt feel the
responsibility of such a situation. It was a fighting chance.
Themistocles when he burnt his ships must have argued in very much
the same way, but probably not so rapidly.

“There are some things, Edward,” Christine said in a low shaken
voice, “that I cannot discuss even with you.”

Hickson turned away with a groan.




CHAPTER III


Christine had been right when she told Riatt that Nancy Almar would
be resentful after a dull evening at the Usshers’.

The evening, as far as Nancy was concerned, had been very dull
indeed. To be bored, in her creed, was a confession of complete
failure; it indicated the most contemptible inefficiency, since
she designed the whole fabric of her life with the unique object
of keeping herself amused. Nothing bored her more than to have the
general attention centered on some one else, as all that evening
it had been focussed on the absent ones. Not only did she miss
the excitement of her contest with Christine over the possession
of Riatt, but she was positively wearied by the Usshers’ anxiety,
by her brother’s agony of jealousy and fear, and by Wickham’s
continual effort to strike an original thought from the dramatic
quality of the situation.

She was finally reduced to playing piquet with Wickham, and though
she won a good deal of money from him--more, that is, than he
could comfortably afford to lose--she still counted the evening a
failure, bad in the present, and extremely menacing to the future.
For with her habitual mental candor, she admitted that by this time
Christine, if not actually frozen to death--which after all one
could not exactly hope--had probably won the game. The chances were
that Riatt was captured.

“What is the matter, Ned?” she said to her brother, as he fidgeted
about the card-table, after a last futile expedition to the
telephone. “Can’t you decide whether you’d rather the lady of
your love were dead or subjected for twenty-four hours to the
fascinations of an irresistible young man?”

“What an interesting question that raises,” observed Wickham,
examining rather ruefully the three meager cards he had drawn. “A
modern Lady-or-the-Tiger idea. I am not of a jealous temperament
and should always prefer to see a woman happy with another man.”

“And often do, I dare say,” said Nancy. “I have a point of seven,
and fourteen aces.”

“I must own I can’t see Riatt’s irresistible quality,” said Hickson
irritably.

“Rich, nice looking and has his wits about him,” replied Mrs. Almar
succinctly.

“About as good-looking as a fence-rail.”

“And they say women are envious!” exclaimed his sister.

“Are you a feminist, Mrs. Almar?” inquired the irrepressible
Wickham.

“No, just a female, Mr. Wickham.”

“I never thought a big bony nose made a man a beauty,” grumbled
Hickson.

“Ah, how much wisdom there is in that reply of yours, Mrs. Almar,”
said Wickham. “Just a female. Your meaning is, if I interpret you
rightly, that you are content with the duties and charms which
Nature has bestowed upon your sex--”

“Until I can get something better,” replied Nancy briskly, drawing
the score toward her and beginning to add it up. “My idea is to let
the other women do the fighting; if they win, I shall profit; if
they lose, I’m no worse off. I believe I’ve rubiconed you again,
Mr. Wickham.”

“Well, I don’t understand women’s taste, anyhow,” said Hickson.

“You never spoke a truer word than that, my dear,” said Nancy.
“Seventy-four fifty, I think that makes it, Mr. Wickham,
subtracting the dollar and a half you made on the first game. Oh,
yes, a check will do perfectly. I’m less likely to lose it.”

“I never had a worse run of luck,” observed Wickham with an attempt
at indifference.

Mrs. Almar stood up yawning. “Doubtless you are on the brink of a
great amorous triumph,” she said languidly, and went off to bed.

Hickson did not attempt to sleep. He sat up for the remainder of
the night, in the hope that some sudden call might come, and at six
o’clock as Ussher had told Christine, he was ready for new efforts.

Rescued and rescuers reached the Usshers’ house about half past
ten the following morning. Nancy was not yet downstairs. Wickham
had not been able to judge what was the correct note to strike in
connection with the whole incident, and so did not dare to sound
any. The arrival was comparatively simple. Mrs. Ussher received
her beloved Christine with open arms; Riatt went noncommittally
upstairs to take a bath; Hickson had decided, in spite of his
depression of spirits, to try to make up a little of last night’s
lost sleep, when he received a summons from his sister. Her maid, a
clever, sallow little Frenchwoman, came down with her hands in her
apron pockets to say that Madame should like to speak to Monsieur
at once.

He found Nancy still in bed; her little black head looking blacker
than usual against the lace of the pillows and the coverlet and of
her own bed-jacket. The only color about her was the yellow covered
French novel she laid down as he entered, and the one enormous ruby
on her fourth finger.

“And now, Ned, my dear,” she said quite affectionately for her, “I
hear you have brought the wanderers safely home. Tell me all about
it.”

Hickson, to whom this summons had not come as a surprise, had
resolved that he would confide none of his anxieties to his sister
but, alas, as well might a pane of glass resolve to be opaque to a
ray of sunlight. Within ten minutes, Nancy knew not only all that
he knew, but such additional deductions as her sharper wits enabled
her to draw.

“I see,” she murmured, as he finished. “The only positive fact that
we have is that he did not leave the house until after five. How
very interesting!”

“Very terrible,” said Hickson.

“Terrible,” exclaimed Nancy, with the most genuine surprise. “Not
at all. From your point of view most encouraging. It can mean only
one thing. The young man very prudently ran away.”

Edward was really stirred to anger. “Nancy,” he said, “how do you
dare, even in fun--”

“Oh, my dear,” answered his sister, as one wearied by all the folly
in the world, “how can I be of any use to you if you will not open
your eyes? He ran away. We don’t know of course just from what; but
we do know this: Max Riatt is the best match that has yet presented
himself, and that Christine is the last girl in the world to ignore
that simple fact. Come, Ned, even if you do love her, you may as
well admit the girl is not a perfect fool. Fate, accident, or
possibly her own clever manœuvering put the game into her hands.
The question is, how did she play it? I know what I’d have done,
but I don’t believe she would. I think she probably tried to make
him believe that she was hopelessly compromised in the eyes of the
world, and that there was no course open to an honorable man but to
ask her to marry him.”

“I can’t imagine Christine playing such a part.”

“I tell you, you never do the poor girl justice. If she did
that--and the chances are she did--then his running away is most
encouraging. It means, in your own delightful language, that he did
not fall for it--did not want to run any risk of compromising her,
if marriage was the consequence.”

“But, Nancy, Christine almost admitted that--that he tried to make
love to her.”

“I can’t see what that has to do with it, or what difference it
makes,” replied Mrs. Almar. “However, too much importance should
not be attached to such admissions. I have sometimes made them
myself when the facts did not bear me out. No woman likes to
confess, especially to an old adorer like you, that she has spent
so many hours alone with a man and he has not made love to her.”

Hickson shook his head. “I’m not clever enough to be able to
explain it,” he said, “but I received the clearest impression from
her that she had been through some painful experience.”

“Good,” said Nancy. “Do you know the most painful experience she
could have been through?”

“No, what?”

“If he hadn’t paid the slightest attention to her; and that, my
dear brother, is what I am inclined to think took place. No, the
game is still on; only now she’ll have the Usshers to help her.
This is no time for me to lie in bed.”

Ned looked at her doubtfully. “I thought I’d try and sleep a
little,” he said.

“The best thing you can do,” she returned. “Lucie! Lucie! Where are
the bells in this house! What privations one suffers for staying
away from home! Oh, yes, here it is,” and she caught the atom
of enamel and gold dangling at the head of her bed, and rang it
without ceasing until the maid, who regarded her mistress with an
admiration quite untinctured by affection, appeared silently at the
doorway.

In an astonishingly short space of time, she was dressed and
downstairs, presenting her usual sleek and polished appearance.
Wickham was alone in the drawing-room, and a suggestion that they
should have another game of piquet quickly drove him to the writing
of some purely imaginary business letters.

The coast was thus clear, but Riatt was still absent.

Nancy’s methods were nothing if not direct. She rang the bell and
when the butler appeared she said:

“Where is Mr. Riatt?”

“In his room, madam.”

“Dressing?”

“No, madam, he is dressed. Resting, I should say.”

Nancy nodded her head once. “One moment,” she said; and going to
the writing table she sat down and wrote quickly:

    “I should like five minutes’ conversation with you. Strange
    to say my motive is altruistic--so altruistic that I feel
    I should sign myself ‘Pro Bono Publico,’ instead of Nancy
    Almar. There is no one down here in the drawing-room at the
    moment.”

She put this in an envelope, sealed it with sealing wax (to the
disgust of the butler who found it hard enough, as it was, to keep
up with all that went on in the house) and told the man to send it
at once to Mr. Riatt’s room.

She did not have long to wait. Riatt, with all the satisfaction in
his bearing of one who has just bathed, shaved and eaten, came down
to her at once.

“Good morning, Pro Bono Publico,” he said, just glancing about to
be sure he was not overheard. “It was not necessary to put this
interview on an altruistic basis. I should have been glad to come
to it, even if it had been as a favor to you.”

[Illustration: “Isn’t that rather a reckless way for a man in your
situation to talk?”]

She looked at him with her hard, dark eyes. “Isn’t that rather a
reckless way for a man in your situation to talk?”

“I was not aware that I was in a situation.”

This was exactly the expression that she had wanted from him. It
seemed to come spontaneously, and could only mean that at least he
was not newly engaged.

She relaxed the tension of her attitude. “Are you really under the
impression that you’re not?”

“I feel quite sure of it.”

“You poor, dear, innocent creature.”

“However,” he went on, sitting down beside her on the wide, low
sofa, “something tells me that I shall enjoy extremely having you
tell me all about it.”

Tucking one foot under her, as every girl is taught in the
school-room it is most unladylike to do, she turned and faced him.
“Mr. Riatt,” she said, “when I was a child I used to let the mice
out of the traps--not so much, I’m afraid, from tenderness for the
mice, as from dislike of my natural enemy, the cook. Since then I
have never been able to see a mouse in anybody’s trap but my own,
without a desire to release it.”

“And I am the mouse?”

She nodded. “And in rather a dangerous sort of trap, too.”

He smiled at the seriousness of her tone.

“Ah,” said she, “the self-confidence which your smile betrays is
one of the weaknesses by which nature has delivered your sex into
the hands of mine. I would explain it to you at length, but the
time is too short. The great offensive may begin at any moment. The
Usshers have made up their minds that you are to marry Christine
Fenimer. That was why you were asked here.”

“Innocent Westerner as I am,” he answered, “that idea--”

She interrupted him. “Yes, but don’t you see it’s entirely
different now. Now they really have a sort of hold on you. I don’t
know what Christine’s own attitude may be, but I can tell you this:
her position was so difficult that she was on the point of engaging
herself to Ned.”

“Oh, come,” said Riatt politely, “your brother is not so bad as you
seem to think.”

“He’s not bad at all, poor dear. He’s very good; but women do
not fall in love with him. You, on the contrary, are rich and
attractive. You’ll just have to take my word for that,” she added
without a trace of coquetry. “And so--and so--and so, if I were
you, my dear Cousin Max, I should give orders to have my bag packed
at once, and take a very slow, tiresome train that leaves here
at twelve-forty-something, and not even wait for the afternoon
express.”

There was that in her tone that would have made the blood of any
man run cold with terror, but he managed a smile. “In my place you
would run away?” he said.

She shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t run away myself, but I advise
you to. I shouldn’t be in any danger. Being a mere woman, I can be
cruel, cold and selfish when the occasion demands. But this is a
situation that requires all the qualities a man doesn’t possess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Does your heart become harder when a pretty woman cries? Is
your conscience unmoved by the responsibility of some one else’s
unhappiness? Can you be made love to without a haunting suspicion
that you brought it on yourself?”

“Good heavens, no!” cried Riatt from the heart.

“Then, run while there’s time.”

As the ox fears the gad-fly and the elephant the mouse, so does the
bravest of men fear the emotional entanglement of any making but
his own. For an instant Riatt felt himself swept by the frankest,
wildest panic. Misadventures among the clouds he had had many
times, and had looked a clean straight death in the face. He had
never felt anything like the terror that for an instant possessed
him. Then it passed and he said with conviction:

“Well, after all, there are certain things you can’t be made to do
against your will.”

“Certainly. But you are not referring to marriage, are you?”

“Yes, I was.”

“My poor, dear man! As if half the marriages in the world were not
made against the wish of one party or the other.”

His heart sank. “It’s perfectly true,” he said. “And yet one does
rather hate to run away.”

“Not so much as one hates afterward to think one might have.”

He laughed and she went on: “The moment is critical. Laura Ussher
and Christine have been closeted together for the better part of
two hours. Something is going to happen immediately. At any moment
Laura may appear and say with that wonderfully casual manner of
hers, ‘May I have a word with you, Max?’ And then you’ll be lost.”

“Oh, not quite as bad as that, I hope,” said Riatt.

“Lost,” she repeated, and leaning over she laid one polished finger
tip on the bell. “When the man comes, tell him to get you ready for
that early train.”

There was complete silence between them until the footman appeared
and Riatt had given the necessary orders.

“I wonder,” he said when they were again alone, “whether I shall be
angry at you for this advice, or grateful. It’s a dangerous thing,
you know, to advise a man to run away.”

“Dine with me in town on Wednesday, and you can tell me which it
is.”

“You don’t seem to be much afraid of my anger.”

“I think perhaps your gratitude might be the more dangerous of the
two.”

While he was struggling between a new-found prudence, and a natural
desire to inquire further into her meaning, a door upstairs was
heard to shut, and presently Laura Ussher came sauntering into the
room.

“You’re up early, Nancy,” she said pleasantly.

“I thought I ought to recognize the return of the wanderers in some
way--particularly, as I hear we are to lose one of them so soon.”

Mrs. Ussher glanced quickly at her cousin. “Are you leaving us,
Max?”

“I’m sorry to say I’ve just had word that I must, and I told the man
to make arrangements for me to get that twelve-something-or-other
train.”

Mrs. Ussher did not change a muscle. “I’m sorry you have to go,”
she said. “We shall all miss you. By the way, you won’t be able to
get anything before the four-eighteen. That midday train is taken
off in winter. Didn’t the footman tell you? Stupid young man; but
he’s new and has not learnt the trains yet, I suppose. Do you want
to send a telegram? They have to be telephoned here, but if you
write it out I’ll have it sent for you.”

“How wonderful you are, Laura,” murmured Mrs. Almar.

Mrs. Ussher looked vague. “In what way, dear?”

“In all ways, but I think it’s as a friend that I admire you most.”

Mrs. Ussher smiled. “Yes,” she said, “I’m very devoted to my
friends even when they don’t behave quite fairly to me. But I love
my relations, too,” she added. “Max, since I’m to lose you so soon,
I’d like to have a talk with you before lunch. Shall we go to my
little study?”

Nancy’s eyes danced. “No, Laura,” she said, “he will not. He has
just promised to teach me a new solitaire, and I won’t yield him to
any one.”

Riatt, terrified at this proof that Nancy’s prophecy was coming
true, resolved to cling to her.

“Sit down and learn the game, too, Laura,” he said. “It’s a very
good one.”

“I want to speak to you about a business matter, Max.”

“I never attend to business during church hours, Laura,” he
answered. “We’ll talk about it after lunch, if you like.”

Laura had learnt the art of yielding gracefully. “That will do just
as well,” she said, and sat down to watch the game.

Presently Wickham, seeing that Mrs. Almar seemed to be safely
engaged, ventured back. And they were all thus innocently occupied
when luncheon was announced.

Christine came down looking particularly lovely. It is a precaution
which a good-looking woman rarely fails to take in a crisis. She
was wearing a deep blue dress trimmed with fur, and only needed a
solid gold halo behind her head to make her look like a Byzantine
saint.

“Well, Miss Fenimer,” said Wickham, as they sat down. “You look
very blooming after your terrible experiences.”

Christine had come prepared for battle. “Oh, they weren’t so very
terrible, Mr. Wickham, thank you,” she said, and she leant her
elbow on the table and played with those imitation pearls which
she now hoped so soon to give to her maid. “Mr. Riatt is the most
wonderful provider--expert as a cook as well as a furnace-man.”

“It mayn’t have been terrible for you,” put in Ussher, who had a
habit of conversational reversion, “but I bet it was no joke in the
tool-house! How an intelligent woman like you, Christine, could
dream of making a man spend the night in that hole, just for the
sake of--”

“But I thought it was Mr. Riatt’s own choice,” said Nancy gently.

“You wouldn’t think so if you could have felt the place,” Ussher
continued. “And what difference did it make? Who was there to talk?
Every one knows that their being there was just an unavoidable
accident--”

“Oh, if it had been an accident!” said Nancy, and it was as if
a little venomous snake had suddenly wriggled itself into the
conversation. Every one turned toward her, and her brother asked
sternly:

“_If_, it had been an accident, Nancy? What the deuce do you mean
by _if_?”

Nancy shook her small head. “I express myself badly,” she said.
“English rhetoric was left out of my education.”

“You manage to convey your ideas, dear,” said Laura.

“I was trying to say that if poor, dear Christine had not been so
unfortunately the one to hit the horse in the head, and start him
off--”

Wickham pricked up his ears. “Oh, I say, Miss Fenimer,” he
exclaimed, “did you really hit the horse?”

“Certainly, I did, Mr. Wickham.”

“But what did you do that for?”

Christine did not trouble to answer this question. Hickson, who had
been suffering far more than any one, rushed to the rescue.

“Miss Fenimer did not do it on purpose, Wickham. She happened to be
standing--”

“Oh, is that what your sister meant?” said Christine, as if a
sudden light dawned on her. “Tell me, Nancy darling, do you really
think I hit the horse on purpose, so as to have an uninterrupted
evening with Mr. Riatt? How you do flatter men! It’s a great art.
I’m afraid I shall never learn it.”

For the first time, Riatt found himself looking at her with a
certain amount of genuine admiration. This was very straight
fighting. “They have the piratical virtues,” he thought, “courage,
and the ability to give and take hard blows.”

Mrs. Almar was not to be outdone. “Well,” she said, “I may as well
be honest. I can imagine myself doing it, for the right man. And we
should have had an amusing evening of it, which was more than we
had here, I can tell you. We were very dreary. Mr. Wickham tried to
relieve the monotony by a game of piquet, but I’m afraid he did not
really enjoy it, for he has not asked me to play since.” And she
cast a quick stimulating glance at Wickham, whose usual inability
to say nothing again betrayed him.

“Oh,” he said, “I enjoyed our game immensely.”

“Good,” answered Nancy. “We’ll have another this afternoon then.”

“Indeed, yes,” said Wickham, looking rather wan.

“After Mr. Riatt has gone,” said Nancy distinctly. She knew that
Laura had had no opportunity to convey this intelligence to
Christine, and it amused her to see how she would support the blow.
Christine’s expression did not change, but her blue eyes grew
suddenly a little darker. She turned slowly toward Riatt.

“And are you leaving us?” she asked.

“Sorry to say I am.”

“What a bore,” said Miss Fenimer politely. Hickson’s simple heart
bounded for joy. “She’s refused him,” he thought, “and that’s why
he’s rushing off like this.”

“Yes,” said Ussher, “I should think he would want to go home and
take some care of himself. It’s a wonder if he doesn’t develop
pneumonia.”

Christine smiled at Riatt across the table. “They make me feel as
if I had been very cruel, Mr. Riatt,” she said.

“Cruel, my dear,” cried Nancy. “Oh, I’m sure you weren’t _that_,”
and then intoxicated by her own success, she made her first
tactical error. She turned to Riatt and said: “Don’t forget that
you are dining with me on Wednesday evening.” She enjoyed this
exhibition of power. She saw Laura and Christine glance at each
other. But they were not dismayed; they saw at once that Max had
not been playing his hand alone; he was going not entirely on his
own initiative, and that was encouraging.

Riatt, who perfectly understood the public protectorate that was
thus established over him, resented it; in fact by the time they
rose from the table, he was thoroughly disgusted with all of
them--weary, as he said to himself of their hideous little games.
He hardened his heart even as Pharaoh did, and he felt not the
least hesitation in according Laura the promised interview, for the
reason that he felt no doubt of his own powers of resistance.

He permitted himself to be ostentatiously led away, upstairs to
her little private sitting-room, with its books, and fireplace,
and signed photographs, and he pretended not to see Nancy Almar’s
glance, which was almost a wink, and might have been occasioned by
the fact that she herself was at the same moment gently guiding
Wickham in the direction of a card-table.

Laura made her cousin very comfortable, in a long chair by the
fire, with his cigarettes and his coffee beside him on a little
table, and then she began murmuring:

“Isn’t it a pity Nancy Almar is so poisonous at times! She isn’t
really bad hearted, but anything connected with Christine has
always roused her jealousy--the old beauty and the new one, I
suppose.”

“I wonder,” said Riatt, “what is the difference, if any, between a
pirate and a bucaneer? Miss Fenimer and Mrs. Almar seem to me to
have many qualities in common.”

“Oh, Max, how can you say that? Christine is so much more gentle
and womanly, so much--”

“My dear Laura, we haven’t very much time, and I think you said you
wanted to talk to me on a business matter.”

Laura Ussher had the grace to hesitate, just an instant, before she
answered: “Oh, yes, but it’s your business I want to talk about.
I want to speak to you about this terrible situation in which
Christine finds herself. Do you realize that Nancy and Wickham
between them will spread this story everywhere, with all the
embellishments their fancy may dictate, particularly emphasizing
the fact that it was Christine who made the horse run away. It will
be in the papers within a week. You know, Max, just as well as I
do, that it wasn’t her fault. Is she to be so cruelly punished for
it? Can you permit that?”

“It’s not my fault either, Laura.”

“You can so easily save the situation.”

“How?”

“By asking her to marry you.”

“That I will not do.”

“Are you involved with some one else?”

“I might make you understand better if I said yes, but it would
not be true. I’m not in love with any individual, but I know
clearly the type of woman I could fall in love with, and it most
emphatically is not Miss Fenimer’s.”

“Yet so many men have fallen in love with her.”

“Oh, I see her beauty; I even feel her charm; but to marry her, no.”

“Think of the prestige her beauty and position--”

“My dear Laura, what position? Social position as represented by
the hectic triviality of the last few days? Thank you, no, again.”

“Dear Max,” said his cousin more seriously than she had hitherto
spoken, “you know I would not want you to do anything that I
thought would make you unhappy. But this wouldn’t. I know Christine
better than you do. I know that under all her worldliness and
hardness there is a vein of devotion and sweetness--”

“Very likely there is. But it would not be brought out by a
mercenary marriage with a man who cared nothing for her. If that
is all you have to say, Laura, let’s end an interview which hasn’t
been very pleasant for either of us.”

“Oh, Max, how can you abandon that lovely creature to some tragic
future?”

“You know quite well she is going to do nothing more tragic than to
marry Hickson.”

“And you are willing to sacrifice her to Hickson?”

“My dear Laura, I cannot prevent all the beautiful, dissatisfied
women in the world from marrying dull, kind-hearted young men who
adore them.”

Mrs. Ussher stared at him in baffled, unhappy silence, and in the
pause, the door quickly and silently opened and Christine herself
entered. She looked calm, almost Olympian, as she laid her hand on
Laura’s arm.

“Let me have just a word alone with Mr. Riatt,” she said; and
as Laura precipitately left the room, Christine turned to Riatt
with a reassuring smile. “Don’t be alarmed,” she said. “Your most
dangerous antagonist has just gone. I’ve really come to rescue
you.” She sank into a chair. “How exhausting scenes are. Let me
have a cigarette, will you?”

She smoked a moment in silence, while he stood erect and alert by
the mantel-piece. At last, glancing up at him, she said:

“I suppose Laura was suggesting that you marry me?”

He nodded.

“Laura’s a dear, but not always very wise. You see, she thinks we
are both so wonderful, she can’t believe we wouldn’t make each
other happy. And from her point of view, it is rather an obvious
solution. You see, she does not know about that paragon in the
Middle West.”

“She existed only in my imagination.”

“Oh, a dream-lady,” said Christine, and her eyes brightened a
little. “No wonder you thought her too good for Ned. Well, that
brings me to what I came to tell you. I have decided to marry
Edward Hickson.”

There was a blank and rather flat pause, during which Riatt took
his cigarette from his mouth and very carefully studied the ash,
but could think of nothing to say. The thought in his mind was that
Hickson was a dull dog.

“Have you told Hickson?” he asked after a moment.

She shook her head. “No, and I shan’t till I get more accustomed to
the idea myself. It isn’t exactly an easy idea to get accustomed
to. The prospect is not lively.”

“I dare say you will contrive to make it as lively as possible.”

She smiled drearily. “How very poorly you do think of me! I shan’t
make Ned a bad wife. He will be very happy, and Nancy and I will be
like sisters. By the way, you’re not in love with Nancy, are you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Good. They all say it’s a dog’s life.” She yawned. “Oh, isn’t
everything tiresome! If I had had any idea my filial deed in going
to find my father’s coat would have resulted in my having to marry
Ned, I never would have gone.”

Riatt struggled in silence. He wanted--any man would have
wanted--to ask her whether there wasn’t some other way out; but
knowing that he himself was the only other way, he refrained and
asked instead: “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“There is,” she responded promptly. “Rather a disagreeable thing,
too. But it will be all over in an instant, and you can take your
afternoon train and forget all about us. Will you do it?”

He hesitated, and she went on:

“Ah, cautious to the last! It’s just a demonstration, a _beau
geste_. It’s this: You see, the situation, as I have discovered
from a little talk with Ned, is more ugly than has yet appeared.
They are holding one thing up their sleeve. Ned, it seems, noticed
the track of your feet leaving the house, and it did not stop
snowing until the morning. That was rather careless of you, wasn’t
it? Nancy can make a good deal of that one little fact.”

“What people you are!”

“Rather horrid, aren’t we? Did Laura keep telling you what a
wonderful advantage it would be for you to be one of us? I wish I
could have seen your face.”

“Yes, she did say something of the advantages of belonging to a
group like this. Do you know what any man who married you ought to
do with you,” he added with sudden vigor. “He ought to take you
to the smallest, ugliest, deadest town he could find and keep you
there five years.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You have achieved the impossible. You have
made Ned seem quite exciting. Hitherto I have taken New York for
granted, but now I shall add it to his positive advantages. But you
haven’t heard yet what it is I want you to do.”

“What is it?”

“I want you to make me a well authenticated offer of marriage
before you go for good.”

“Miss Fenimer, I have the honor to ask you to marry me.”

“I regret so much, Mr. Riatt, that a previous attachment prevents
my accepting--but, my dear man, that isn’t at all what I mean. Do
you suppose Wickham and Nancy will believe me just because I walk
out of this room and say you asked me to marry you? No, we must
have some proof to offer.”

“Something in writing?”

She hesitated.

“No,” she said, “one really can’t go about with a framed proposal
like a college degree. I want a public demonstration.”

“Something with a band or a phonograph?”

She was evidently thinking it out--or wished to appear to be. “Not
quite that either. This would be more like it. Suppose I send for
Nancy to come here now and consult with me as to whether I shall
accept your offer or not. If I told her before you, she could
hardly refuse to believe it. And you would be safe, for there isn’t
the least doubt what advice she will give me.”

“You think she will advise you against me?”

Christine nodded. “She will try to save you from the awful fate she
is reserving for her brother.” She touched the bell. “Do you feel
nervous?”

“A trifle,” he answered, and indeed he did, for he knew better than
Christine could, how strange this coming interview would appear
to Mrs. Almar after the conversation before lunch. He consoled
himself, however, by the thought that train-time was drawing near,
“and then, please heaven,” he said to himself, “I need never see
any of them again.”

“Isn’t it strange,” began Miss Fenimer, and then as a servant
appeared in the doorway: “Oh, will you please ask Mrs. Almar to
come here for a few minutes and speak to me. Tell her it is very
important. Isn’t it strange,” she went on, when the man had gone,
“that I’m not a bit nervous, and yet I have so much more at stake
than you have.”

“You have a good deal clearer notion of your rôle than I.”

“Your rôle is easy. You confirm everything I say, and contrive to
look a little depressed at the end. Nothing could be simpler.”

He hesitated. “Simpler than to look depressed when you refuse me?”

“No one really likes to be refused,” she said. “Even I, hardened
as I am, felt a certain distaste for the idea that Laura had been
urging me on your reluctant acceptance. By the way, you did seem
able to say no, after all your talk on our unfortunate drive about
no man’s being able to refuse a woman.”

“Oh, a third party,” he answered. “That’s a very different thing.
Had it been you yourself, with streaming eyes--” He looked at her
sitting very cool and straight at a safe distance.

“I don’t think I could cry to save my life,” she observed.
“Certainly not to save my reputation.”

He did not answer. The situation had begun to seem like a game to
him, or some absurd farce in which he was only reading some regular
actor’s part; and when presently the door opened to admit Mrs.
Almar, he felt as if she had been waiting all the time in the wings.

Nancy stopped with a gesture of surprise, on finding that she was
interrupting a tête-à-tête. Christine ignored her astonishment.

“Nancy dear,” she said. “How nice of you to come, when I know how
busy you were teaching Wickham piquet. Sit down. This is the reason
I sent for you. As one of my best friends, I want your candid
advice about this horrid situation.”

“But Laura is one of your best friends, too,” said Mrs. Almar.

“You’ll see why I did not send for Laura. She is so ridiculously
prejudiced in favor of Mr. Riatt. There’s no question as to what
her advice would be. In fact,” said Christine with the frankest
laugh, “she’s advised it long ago--even before he asked me.”

At these sinister words, Mrs. Almar gave a glance like the jab of a
knife at Riatt.

“See here, Christine,” she said, “every minute I spend here is a
direct pecuniary loss to me. Let’s get to the point.”

“Of course. How selfish I am,” answered Miss Fenimer. “The point
is this. In view of the gossip and talk, and your own dear little
suggestion, darling, that I had frightened the horse on purpose,
Mr. Riatt has thought it necessary to ask me to marry him. I say he
has thought it necessary, because in spite of all his flattering
protestations, I can’t help feeling that he’s done it from a sense
of duty. But whatever his sentiments may be, I’ve been quite open
about mine. I’m not in love with him. In view of all this, Nancy,
do you think it advisable that I accept his offer?”

Mrs. Almar had never been considered particularly good-tempered.
Now she jumped to her feet with her eyes positively blazing. “Have
I been called away from the care of my depleted bank account to
take part in a farce like this?” she cried. “You ought to be
ashamed of yourself, Christine. You know just as well as I do that
that young man never even thought of asking you to marry him.”

Christine was quite unruffled. “Oh, Nancy dear,” she said, “how
helpful you always are. I see what you mean. You think no one will
believe that he ever did propose unless I accept him. I think
you’re perfectly right.”

“They won’t and I don’t,” said Nancy, and moved rapidly to the door.

“One moment, Mrs. Almar,” said Riatt, firmly. “You happen to be
mistaken. I did very definitely ask Miss Fenimer to marry me not
ten minutes ago.”

“And do you renew that request?” said Christine.

[Illustration: “Well, heaven itself can’t save a fool,” said Mrs.
Almar]

“I do.”

Christine held out her hand with the gesture of a queen. “And I
very gratefully accept your generous offer,” she said.

“Well, heaven itself can’t save a fool,” said Mrs. Almar, and she
went out of the room, and slammed the door after her.

As she went, Riatt actually flung the hand of his newly affianced
wife from him. “May I ask,” he said, “what you think you are doing?”

Christine had covered her face with her hands, and had sunk into a
chair. For an instant Riatt really thought that the strain of the
situation had been too much for her; but on closer inspection he
found that she was shaking with laughter.

“I can’t be sure which was funnier,” she gasped, “your face or
Nancy’s.”

Riatt did not seem to feel mirthful. “Do you take in,” he asked her
sternly, “that you have just broken your word.”

“I’ve just plighted it, haven’t I?”

“You promised to refuse me.”

She sprang up. “I did not. I never said a word like it. If a
stenographer had been here, the record would bear me out. You
inferred it, I dare say. Besides, what could I do? Even Nancy
herself told us no one would believe us unless I accepted you--at
least for a time.”

“For what time?”

“Oh, don’t let us cross bridges until we get to them. We are hardly
engaged yet--Max! I must practise calling you Max, mustn’t I?”
In attempting to repress an irrepressible smile she developed an
unknown dimple in her left cheek. The sight of it made his tone
particularly relentless as he answered:

“If by the fifteenth of this month you have not broken this
engagement, I’ll announce its termination myself.”

“And you,” she went on, as if he had not spoken, “must get into the
habit of calling me Christine.”

“Listen to me,” he said, and he took her by the shoulders with a
gesture that no one could have mistaken for a caress. “I do not
intend to marry you.”

“I see you feel no doubt of my wishes in the matter.”

“I wonder where I got the idea.”

“Be reassured,” she said, finding herself released. “My intentions
are honorable. I would not marry any really nice man absolutely
against his will. Although I did say to myself the very first time
I saw you, coming downstairs in that well-cut coat of yours--or
is it the shoulders?--I did say: ‘I could be happy with that man,
happier, that is, than with Ned.’ You may think it isn’t much of a
compliment, but Ned has a very nice disposition, nicer than yours.”

“And I should say it was the first requisite for your husband.”

She became suddenly plaintive. “Of course I can see,” she said,
“why any one shouldn’t want to be married, but I can’t see why you
object to being engaged to me for a few weeks.”

“How can I be sure you will keep your word?”

“I’ll give it to you in writing,” she returned. “Write: This is to
certify that I, Christine Fenimer, have enveigled the innocent and
unsuspecting youth--”

“I won’t,” said Riatt.

“I will then,” she answered, and sitting down she wrote:

    “This is to certify that I, Christine Fenimer, have
    speciously, feloniously and dishonorably induced Mr. Max
    Riatt to make me an offer of marriage, which I knew at the
    time he had no wish to fulfil, and I hereby solemnly vow
    and swear to release him from same on or before the first
    day of March of this year of grace. (Signed) CHRISTINE
    FENIMER.”

“There,” she said, “put that in your pocketbook, and for goodness’
sake don’t let your pocket be picked between now and the first of
March.”

He took it and put it very carefully away, observing as he did so:
“It’s a long time to the first of March.”

“It mayn’t seem as long as you think.”

“Are you by any chance supposing,” he asked with a directness he
had learnt from her own methods, “that by that time I may have
fallen in love with you?”

She did not hesitate at all. “Well, I think it is a possibility.”

“Oh, anything’s possible, but I can tell you this: Even if I were
in love with you, you are not the type of woman I should ever dream
of marrying.”

“What would you do?”

“If I saw the slightest chance of falling in love with you--which I
don’t--I should try all the harder to free myself.”

“I don’t see how you could try any harder than you have. You begin
to make me suspicious.”

“Miss Fenimer--”

“Christine, please.”

“Christine, I am not the least bit in love with you.”

“Quite sure that you’re not whistling to keep your courage up?”

“Quite sure.”

“Well,” she said, “just to show my fair spirit, I’ll tell you
that I entirely believe you. Shall I add it to the contract: And
I credit his repeated assertion that he is not and never will be
in the least in love with me? No, I think I’ll omit the ‘and never
will be’ clause.”

“And may I ask one other question,” he continued, ignoring her
last suggestion. “What did you mean when you told me that you had
decided to marry Hickson?”

“So I have. Don’t you see? He and I are really engaged, but he
doesn’t know it. You and I are not really engaged, and you _do_
know it.”

“I wish I did,” he returned gloomily.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “you know it and I know it, but the
dog--that’s Nancy--she doesn’t know it.”

He seemed unimpressed by the humor of the situation. He walked away
and put his hand on the knob.

“One thing more,” he said. “I would like to be sure that you
understand this. The weapons are all in my hands. The only strength
of your position lies in my good nature and willingness to keep up
appearances. Neither one is a rock of defense. I’m not, as you said
yourself, good-tempered, and I care very little for appearances.
The risk you run, if you don’t play absolutely fair, is of being
publicly jilted.”

“And I should hate that,” she answered candidly.

“I’m sure you would,” he answered. “And I don’t particularly enjoy
threatening you with such a possibility.”

“Really,” said she. “Now I rather like you when you talk like that.”

“Fortunate that you do,” he returned, “for you will probably hear a
good deal of it.”

She nodded with perfect acquiescence. “And now,” she said, “if you
have no more hateful things to say, let’s go and tell our friends
of the great happiness that has come into our lives.”




CHAPTER IV


As they went down the stairs--those same stairs on which only two
evenings before they had first met--toward the drawing-room where
their great announcement was to be made, Riatt stopped Christine in
her triumphal progress.

“You’re not going to have the supreme cruelty,” he said, “to let
poor Hickson think that our engagement is a genuine one?”

Christine paused. “I wonder,” she answered thoughtfully, “which in
the end would deceive him most--to make him think it was real or
fake?”

“You blood-curdling woman,” said Riatt. “I am not engaged to you.”

“Oh, yes, you are--until March first.”

“I am pretending to be until March first.”

She leant against the banisters, and regarded him critically.
“Isn’t it strange,” she remarked, “that you dislike so much the
idea of my trying to make you care for me? Some men would be crazy
about the process.”

“Oh, if I enjoyed the process, I should regard myself as lost.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure that this terror isn’t a more
significant confession of weakness. Who is it is most afraid of
high places? Those who feel a desire to jump off.”

“I’m not afraid,” he returned crossly. “I just don’t like it. I
don’t want to be made love to. That’s one of the mistakes women are
always making. They think all men want to be made love to by any
woman. We don’t.”

Christine sighed gently. “You’re getting disagreeable again,” she
said with the softest reproach in her tone. “Let’s go on.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Are you going to tell
Hickson the truth?”

“How can I? If I told him, Nancy would know at once, and the whole
aim of this plot is to deceive Nancy. However,” she added brightly,
“I shall do what I can to alleviate his sufferings. I shall tell
him that I am not in the least in love with you, that you have
never so much as kissed me, and that my present intention is that
you never shall.”

“And you may add that my intention is the same,” replied Riatt with
some sternness.

Christine smiled. “There’s no use in telling him that,” she
answered, “for he wouldn’t believe it.”

“Upon my word,” said he, “I think you’re the vainest woman I ever
met.”

“Candid, merely,” she returned, as she opened the door of the
drawing-room. The scene that greeted them was eminently suited
to their purpose. Laura and Ussher were standing at the table
watching the last bitter moments of the game between Nancy and the
unfortunate Wickham. Hickson was not there.

“Oh, Laura,” said Christine, “could I have just a word with you?”

Mrs. Ussher looked up startled. She had been deeply depressed by
her unsuccessful conversation with her cousin. He had seemed to her
absolutely immovable, but there was no mistaking the significant
bride-like modulations of Christine’s voice.

“With me?” she said, and in her eagerness she was already at the
door, before Christine stopped her.

“Really,” she said, “I don’t know why only with you. I know you are
all enough my friends to be interested--even Mr. Wickham. Max and
I wanted to tell you that we are engaged. Only, of course, it’s a
secret.”

Riatt had resolved that he would not look at Mrs. Almar, and he
didn’t. She was adding up the score, and her arithmetic did not
fail her. “And that makes 387, Mr. Wickham,” she said, and then
she looked up with her bright, piercing eyes, in time to see Laura
fling herself enthusiastically into Riatt’s arms. She got up with a
shrewd smile. “Let me congratulate you, too, Mr. Riatt,” she said.
“I always like to see people get what they deserve.”

“Oh, Nancy, I’m sure you think I’m getting far more than I
deserve,” said Christine.

“You haven’t actually got it yet, darling,” returned Mrs. Almar.

“That sounds almost like a threat, my dear.”

“More in the line of a prophecy.”

At this moment the footman created a diversion by announcing that
the sleigh was waiting to take Mr. Riatt to the train, and Riatt
explained that he had decided not to take the train that day. Then
Christine, on inquiring, found that Hickson was writing letters
in the library, and went away to talk to him. She had no fear of
leaving Max; she knew he was in safe hands; Laura would not allow
Nancy an instant alone with him. Nor, as a matter of fact, was
Riatt himself eager to subject himself to the cross-examination of
that keen and contemptuous intelligence. Indeed Nancy soon drifted
out of the room, and Riatt found himself committed to a long
tête-à-tête with Laura on the subject of Christine’s perfections,
and his supposed deceitfulness in pretending indifference. “Oh,
you protested too much, my dear Max,” Laura insisted with the most
irritating exuberance. “I knew when you began to say that she was
the last woman in the world you would fall in love with, that your
hour had come. No man ever lived who could resist Christine when
she chooses to make herself agreeable.”

Riatt felt he was looking rather grim for an accepted lover, as
he answered that it was a great comfort to feel one had succumbed
only to the irresistible. Before very long Christine came back, and
taking in what had been going on, managed to get rid of her friend.
Laura made it plain that she was only too glad to accord the lovers
a few blissful moments alone.

“I can’t describe to you,” he said crossly, “how intensely
disagreeable I find the situation.”

Christine laughed. “And did you look like that while Laura was
detailing my perfections? A judge about to pronounce the death
sentence is gay in comparison. Cheer up. I haven’t had a pleasant
fifteen minutes myself. I never thought myself kind-hearted, but I
assure you I really longed to tell Ned the truth. He is the nicest
person.”

“I believe he will make you an excellent husband.”

“Oh, dear, I’m afraid he will.” She sighed. “Safety first will be
a dull motto to go through life with. Do you want to know what I
told him? No? Well, I’m going to tell you anyhow. I said that you
had made me this magnificent offer, prompted, I felt sure, by the
purest chivalry; and that I felt I owed it to my family, my friends
and my reputation to accept it, but that you had left my heart
untouched, and that if he and you were both penniless, I should
prefer him to you. That wasn’t all perfectly true.”

Suddenly Riatt found himself smiling. “My innocent child,” he said,
“let me make one thing clear to you. Any effort on your part to
create an impression that you have fallen in love with me will not
be crowned with success.”

Christine was quite unabashed by his directness.

“I’m not a bit in love with you,” she said--“not any more than you
are with me, only I realize that there is a possibility for either
of us, and of the two,” she added maliciously, “I really think I’m
the more hard-hearted.”

“Perhaps you will think I am running away from danger,” he
answered, “when I tell you that as soon as I have seen your father,
got your ring, and fulfilled the immediate necessities of the
occasion, I shall go home.”

“Oh, you can’t do that!” cried Christine, in genuine alarm.

“You surely don’t expect me to neglect my legitimate business on
account of this ridiculous farce.”

For the first time a certain amount of real hostility crept in
their relation. They looked at each other steadily. Then Christine
said politely: “Well, we’ll see how things go.” He knew, however,
that she was as determined that he should stay as he was to leave,
and the knowledge made him all the firmer.

The evening was a stupid one, devoted largely to toasts, jokes,
congratulations and a few stabs from Nancy. Through it all poor
Hickson’s gloom was obvious.

The next day the party broke up. Wickham and Hickson taking an
early express; the others, even Nancy who abandoned her motor on
account of the snow, going in by a noonday train. Already, it
seemed to Riatt that the bonds of matrimony were closing about him
as he found himself delegated to look up Christine’s trunks, maid
and dressing-case.

Soon after the arrival of the train he had an appointment, made
by telephone, with Mr. Fenimer. The interview was to take place
at Mr. Fenimer’s club, a most discreet and elegant organization
of fashionable virility. Riatt was not kept waiting. Fenimer came
promptly to meet him.

He was a man of fifty, well made, and supremely well dressed.
He was tanned as befits a sportsman; on his face the absence of
furrows created by the absence of thought was made up for by the
fine wrinkles induced by poignant and continued anxiety about his
material comforts. In his figure the vigor of the athlete contended
with the comfortable stoutness of the epicure. He had left a
discussion in which all his highest faculties had been roused, a
discussion on the replenishing of the club’s cellar, and had come
to speak to his future son-in-law, with satisfaction but without
vital interest. His manner was a perfect blending of reserve and
cordiality.

“You will hardly expect a definite answer from me to-day, Mr.
Riatt,” he said. “You understand, I am sure, that knowing so
little of you--an only child, my daughter”--He waved his hand,
not manicured but most beautifully cared for. Riatt noticed that
in spite of these chilling sentences, Fenimer was soon composing
a paragraph for the press, and advocating the setting of the date
for the wedding early in April, as he himself was booked for a
fishing-trip later. He did this under the assumption that he was
yielding to Riatt’s irresistible eagerness. “You have an excellent
advocate in Christine. My daughter has always ruled me. And now in
my old age I am to lose her. I had a long letter from her by the
early mail, speaking of you in the highest terms.” He smiled. Riatt
rose, and allowed him to return to the question of the club’s wines.

Something about this interview was more shocking to him than the
cynicism of Nancy and Christine; Fenimer’s suave eagerness to hand
his daughter over to a total stranger, did not amuse him as the
women’s light talk had done. He felt sorry for Christine and a
little disgusted. He wondered what that letter had really said. Was
Fenimer a conspirator, too, or only a willing dupe?

From the club he went to the jeweler’s and selected the most
conspicuous diamond he could find. Her friends should not miss the
fact that she was engaged if a solitaire could prove it to them.
He ordered it sent to her, much to the surprise of the clerk, who
pointed out that it was usual to present such things in person.

After this he went to his hotel and found a pile of letters had
accumulated in his absence.

The first he opened was in a round childish hand with uncertain
margins, and a final “e” on the word Hotel.

    “Dear Cousin Max,” it said, “I do not know you, but Mamma
    says that you are going to marry Christine. I think you
    are very lucky, and am glad you are bringing her into our
    family. Victor and I love her. She comes to the nursery
    sometimes, but never stays long.

  “Your loving cousin,
  “MURIEL USSHER.”

Riatt laughed as he laid it down. “I bet she doesn’t stay long,” he
said. “How she does skim the cream!” And then with an exclamation
of surprise he tore open another envelope which had been left by
hand. It said:

  “Dear Max:

    “I hope you will be pleasantly surprised to find that
    Mother and I are staying in this hotel. I find New York
    more wonderful but more unfriendly than I had been told,
    and I want terribly to see a familiar face. Won’t you look
    us up as soon as you can?

  “Yours as ever,
  “DOROTHY.”

He went to the telephone, found that she was in and immediately
arranged that she should go out to lunch with him.

All the morning and some of the night, he had been engaged in the
composition of a letter to Dorothy Lane. Theirs was an old and
sentimental friendship, which adverse circumstances might have
ended, or favoring circumstances have changed into love. As things
were, it seemed to be tending toward their marriage without any
whirlwind rapidity.

There was no doubt he was very glad to see her, as he hurried her
into a taxicab, and told the man to drive to the restaurant of
the hour. She was very neatly and nicely dressed in a tailor-made
costume for which she had just paid twice as much as a native New
York woman would have paid. In fact she was an essentially neat
and nice little person. They talked both at once like two children
about all the people at home, until they were actually seated at
table, and lunch was ordered. Then Riatt made up his mind he must
take the plunge.

“Dolly,” he said, “do I look as if something tremendous had just
happened?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve invented a submarine, or something?”

“No, this is something of a more personal nature.”

“Oh, Max, you’ve fallen in love?”

A waiter rushing up with rolls and butter suggested that Madame
probably preferred fresh butter to salted, before Riatt answered:
“No, that is just what I haven’t done--and that’s the secret,
Dolly. I’m not a bit in love, but I am engaged to be married.”

“Max! But why if--”

“I’ll tell you on the second of March. It’s a good story. You’ll
enjoy it, but for the present, my dear, you must just accept the
fact that I am engaged, that I am neither wildly elated nor unduly
depressed.”

Miss Lane had grown extremely serious. “Who is she?” she asked.

“Her name is Christine Fenimer.”

“I’ve seen her name in the papers.”

“Who has not?” he returned bitterly.

“What is she like?”

Riatt felt some temptation to answer truthfully and say: “She is
designing, mercenary, hard-hearted and as beautiful as a goddess.”
But he did not, and, as he paused he saw the head waiter spring
forward from the doorway, smiling and holding up a pencil to
attract the attention of some underling, and then he saw that
Christine, Hickson and Mr. and Mrs. Linburne were being ushered in.
Christine approached, tall, beautiful, conspicuous, and as divinely
unconscious of it as Adam and Eve of their nakedness; she moved
between the tables, bowing here and there to people she knew, not
purposely ignoring all others, but seeming to find them invisible
as thin air. Riatt watched as if she were some great spectacle, and
was recalled only by hearing Dorothy’s voice saying:

“What a lovely creature!”

“That is Miss Fenimer.”

A sudden and deep flush spread over Miss Lane’s face.

“And you have been telling me of your indifference to her?” she
asked bitterly. “How could any man be indifferent!”

“Good Heavens,” cried Riatt fiercely. “All you women are alike!
Beauty isn’t the only thing in the world for a man to love. There
are such things as truth and honor--”

“Yes, and old friendship, too,” said Miss Lane, “but they don’t
always amount to much.”

“That is an unnecessary, unkind thing to say,” he answered. “My
friendship for you means a good deal more to me than my engagement
to her.”

“Max, I don’t need to be consoled or soothed about your engagement,”
said Miss Lane with a good deal of spirit. “As far as I am concerned
you are quite free not only to become engaged, but to have any
feeling you like for the lady you have chosen. I’m sure I
congratulate you very heartily.”

“You mean you don’t believe a word of what I have been trying to
tell you.”

“Oh, yes, I do. I believe you are engaged.”

Perhaps it was as well that at this instant, Christine’s eyes
fell upon her; she stared, then laughed, and pointed him out to
Hickson, who glanced at him coldly; he was evidently thinking that
he would not have taken another girl out to lunch the very day his
engagement was announced.

“I suppose I had better go and speak to them,” Max said.

“I should think so,” replied Dorothy tonelessly. “Who are the
others?”

Riatt, not sorry for a moment’s respite, entered into a detailed
account of Lee Linburne. He was the third generation of a great
fortune, augmenting rather than decreasing with years. He was but
little over thirty and had taken the whole field of amusement and
sports as his own. He played polo, had a racing stable and a racing
yacht, had gone in recently for flying (hence Riatt’s connection
with him), occasionally financed a theatrical show, and now and
then attended a directors’ meeting of some of his grandfather’s
companies. The result was that his name was as widely known through
the country as Abraham Lincoln’s. Dorothy knew as soon as she heard
his name, that he had married a girl from Pittsburg, and had gone
through her native city in a private car on his honeymoon three
years before, and had stopped, she rather thought, and had lunch
with the Governor of the State.

On Hickson, Max touched more briefly.

When at last he did cross the room, Christine received him with the
utmost cordiality.

“What luck to run across you, though of course this is the only
place in New York where one can get food that doesn’t actually
poison one. Last week--do you remember, Lee? We dined somewhere or
other with the Petermans and nothing from the beginning of dinner
to the end was fit to eat. But, bless them, they did not know. Have
you met Mrs. Linburne? Oh, she knows all about _us_. In fact every
one does, for I can’t resist wearing this.” She moved her left hand
on which his diamond shone like a swollen star. “How did you find
my father?”

“Most amiable,” answered Riatt rather poisonously, and regretted
the poison when he saw the Linburnes exchange an amused glance. Of
course every one knew that Mr. Fenimer would present no obstacles.

“Who are you lunching with, Max? Is that your little secretary?”

The tone, very civil and friendly, made Max furious, as if any one
that Christine did not know was hardly worth inquiring about.

“No, it’s Miss Lane--an old friend of mine. I think I must have
spoken to you about her.”

“Oh, the perfect provider? Is that really she?” Christine
craned her neck openly to stare at her. “Why, she’s rather nice
looking--for a good housekeeper, that is. You’re dining with me
to-night, aren’t you?”

“No,” answered Riatt, with a sudden inspiration of ill-humor. “I’m
dining with Miss Lane.”

“Bring her, too! Won’t she come?”

“I really can’t say.”

“You can ask her.”

“To your house?”

Christine always knew when she was really beaten. She got up with a
sigh. “Take me over,” she said to him, “and I’ll ask her myself.”
And she added to the Linburnes: “Out of town people are always so
fussy about little things.”

Riatt did not know if this slightly contemptuous observation were
meant to apply to him or to Miss Lane; he hoped in his heart
that Dorothy would refuse the invitation. But he under-estimated
Christine’s powers. No one could have been more persuasive, more
meltingly sweet, and compellingly cordial than she was, and it was
soon arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to dine that evening.

[Illustration: It was arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to dine
with them that evening]

When it was over, and he was back again in his own seat, he could
see, by glancing at Christine that she was engaged in a long
humorous account of the incident, for her own table; and he could
tell, even from that distance, when he was supposed to be speaking,
when Dorothy, and when Christine was repeating her own words.
Meanwhile Dorothy was saying:

“How charming and simple she is, Max. You always hear of these
people as being so artificial and elaborate.”

“Oh, they’re direct enough,” returned Riatt bitterly.

The bitterness was so apparent that Dorothy could not ignore it.
She looked up at him for an instant and then she said seriously: “I
believe I know what the trouble with you is, Max. You can’t believe
that she loves you for yourself. You’re haunted by the dread that
what you have has something to do with it. Isn’t that it?”

Max now made use of the well-known counter question as an escape
from a tight place.

“And what is your judgment on that point, Dolly?”

“She loves you,” said Miss Lane, with conviction, and a moment
afterward she sighed.

“Without disputing your opinion,” returned Riatt, “I should very
much like to know on what you base it.”

“Oh, on a hundred things--on her look, her manner, her being so
nice to me--on woman’s intuition in fact.”

Riatt thought to himself that he had never had much confidence in
the intuition theory and now he had none.

They did not part at the termination of lunch. It was almost a
duty, Riatt considered, to show a stranger a few of the sights.
Miss Lane, who was extremely well-informed on all questions of
art, suggested the Metropolitan Museum; and after that they took
a taxicab and drove along the river and watched the winter sunset
above the palisades; and then they went and had tea at the Plaza,
and by the time they returned to Mrs. Lane it was almost the hour
for dressing for dinner; and then Max sat gossiping with Mrs. Lane,
for whom he had always had the deepest affection, until he knew he
was going to be late.

They were late--a difficult thing to be in the Fenimer household.
The party, a small one, was waiting when Miss Lane and Mr. Riatt
were ushered in. Nancy was there, and Hickson, and Mr. Linburne
without his wife this time; and Mr. Fenimer himself, doing honor to
his future son-in-law by taking a meal at home.

Christine in a wonderful pink chiffon and lace tea-gown came
forward to greet Dorothy, rather than Max, to whom she gave merely
an understanding smile, while she held the girl’s hand an instant.

“Max says this is your first visit to New York,” she said, after
she had introduced her father and Nancy. “It is good of you to give
us an evening, when there are so many more amusing things to do,
but Max says we are as interesting as Bushmen or Hottentots. I hope
you’ll find us so.”

The hope seemed unlikely to be fulfilled, for while the presence
of Mr. Fenimer, who was rather a stickler for etiquette, prevented
the perfect freedom that had reigned at the Usshers’, the talk
turned on people whom Dorothy did not know, and it was so quick and
allusive that no outsider could have followed it. Hickson, soon
appreciating something in Miss Lane’s situation not utterly unlike
his own, was touched by her obvious isolation, and tried to make
up for the neglect of the others. Riatt, sitting between Nancy and
Christine, had little time left to him for observation of any one
else.

When dinner was over Christine instantly drew him away to her own
little sitting-room, on pretense of showing him some letter of
congratulation that she had received. But once there, she shut the
door, and standing before it, she said, with an air of the deepest
feeling:

“You’re in love with this girl.”

Riatt, who had sunk comfortably down on a sofa by the fire, looked
up in surprise.

“And if I am?” he answered.

“You need not humiliate me by making it so evident,” she retorted,
and almost stamped her foot. “Lunching with her in public, and
taking her to tea, as I was told, getting here so late for
dinner--I wish you could have heard the way Nancy and Lee Linburne
were goading me before dinner about it.”

“My dear Christine,” said Max, and he was amused to hear a tone
of real conjugal remonstrance in his voice, “you have lunched and
dined in one day with Hickson, and yet I don’t feel I have any
grounds of complaint.”

“Every one knows how little I care for Ned,” she answered, “but
people say you do care for this little Western mouse. I hate her.
She’s good and nice, and the kind of a girl men think it wise to
marry, and just as different from me as she can be. I do hate
her--and I hate myself too.” And she covered her face with her
hands.

“Come here, Christine,” said Riatt, without moving, and was rather
surprised when she obeyed. He made her sit down beside him, and
taking her hands from her face, was astonished to find that she was
really crying.

“Why, my dear child,” he said, in the most paternal manner he could
manage. “What is this all about?” And it was quite in the same note
that Christine wept a moment on his shoulder. Then she raised her
head, with a return of her old brisk manner.

“I’m jealous,” she said. “Oh, don’t suppose one can’t be jealous
of people one doesn’t care for. I could be jealous of any one when
Nancy begins teasing me and making fun of me. And I’m jealous too,
because I’m sure she’s a nice girl and I’ve made such a mess of my
life, and I deserve it all; but when you came in together, as if
you had just been happily married, and I looked at Ned and thought
how wretched I’m always going to be with him, and what silly things
I shall undoubtedly do before I die--”

“I hate to hear you talk like that.”

“Why should you care? _She’ll_ never do silly things--that’s clear.
Is that why you love her?”

“As a matter of fact I am not in love with Miss Lane.”

“My dear Max, there’s really no reason why you should deceive me
about it.”

“That’s just what she said about you.”

“You mean”--Christine sprang to her feet and gazed at him like an
outraged empress--“You mean that you told her that you didn’t love
me?”

“I most assuredly did.”

“Max, how could you be so low, so despicable, so false?”

Riatt laughed. “Well, it certainly was not false, Christine,” he
said. “It happens to be true, you know; and I felt I owed a measure
of truth to a very old and very real friendship. I told her nothing
more than that--I was engaged and not madly in love.”

Christine threw up her hands. “The game is up,” she said. “She’ll
tell everybody, of course.”

“She’ll tell absolutely no one.”

“Because she’s perfect, I suppose?”

“Because she didn’t for one moment believe me.”

“Didn’t believe we were engaged?”

“Didn’t believe that any one could be engaged to so beautiful and
charming a person as you are and not be in love with her.”

Christine’s manner softened slightly. “She thinks me charming?”

“She thinks you irresistible, almost as irresistible as Laura
thinks you; and she is trying to find out why I am so eager to
deceive her in the matter.”

Christine clapped her hands, and executed a few steps. “She’s
jealous, too,” she cried. “The perfect woman is jealous. I never
thought of her suffering, too.”

“She is not jealous, but I suppose it may hurt her feelings a
little that I shouldn’t--”

“Oh, nonsense, Max, she loves you. Do you think I could be deceived
on such a subject? She watches you all the time. She loves you.
And I think it would be very impertinent of her not to. I should
think very poorly of her if she didn’t. Imagine what she must be
undergoing at this moment, by our prolonged absence.”

“Perhaps, we’d better be going back,” said Riatt calmly.

Christine barred the door, spreading out both her arms.

“She thinks you’re making love to me, Max.”

“And yet, Christine, I’m not.”

“But she doesn’t know that; she doesn’t know what an immovable
iceberg you are.”

“No, indeed she doesn’t.”

Christine’s manner again changed utterly. All the playfulness
disappeared. “You mean,” she said, “that you’re not cold and
immovable with her?”

“What’s the use of my telling you anything, if you don’t believe
me?” The idea of teasing Christine had never occurred to him
before, but he thought highly of it. She came toward him at once.

“Oh, Max, my dear,” she said, “don’t be horrid, when I’m having
such a wretched time anyhow. Don’t you think you might _pretend_ to
care for me just a little?”

Riatt rose. “Yes, I do,” he said, “and so I shall, in public.”

Christine was all the gentle, wistful child immediately.

“Never when we’re alone?” she asked.

Max lit a cigarette briskly. “I don’t suppose we shall very often
be alone,” he returned. “After all, why should we?”

She looked at him like a wounded bird: “No reason if you don’t want
to.”

At this moment the door opened and her father came in.

“Come, come, my dear, this is no way to treat your guests,” he
said. “I must really insist that you go back to the drawing-room.
Upon my word, Riatt, you ought not to keep her like this.”

“It was a great temptation to have her a few minutes to myself, Mr.
Fenimer,” said Max, and Christine grinned gratefully at him behind
her father’s back.

“Very likely, very likely,” said Mr. Fenimer crossly, “but I want
to go to the club, and how can I, unless she goes back? You can’t
think only of yourself, my dear fellow.”

Riatt admitted that this was true and he and Christine went back to
the drawing-room.

Very soon afterwards, he gave Dorothy a keen prolonged look, which
she did not misunderstand. She got up at once and said good night.
In the taxicab, he questioned her at once as to her impressions.

“I didn’t like Mr. Linburne or Mrs. Almar at all, Max. She kept
asking me the greatest number of questions about you and the story
of your life. What interest has she in you, I wonder?”

“None,” answered Riatt, but added rather quickly, “And what did you
think of Linburne?”

“I couldn’t bear him, though I own he’s nice looking. But he told
Mrs. Almar a story--I could not help hearing--I never heard such a
story in my life.”

“I gather it did not shock Mrs. Almar.”

“She knew it already. ‘Lee,’ she said, ‘that story is so old that
even my husband knows it,’ and every one laughed.”

“I’m afraid you did not enjoy yourself.”

“I like Mr. Hickson very much. And I thought Miss Fenimer more
beautiful than before. He was telling me what a wonderful nature
she has. He said he had never seen her out of temper.”

“Yes, Hickson’s crazy about her,” said Riatt casually.

“Dear Max, why do you try to deceive yourself about your own
feeling for her?”

“Deceive myself,” he said angrily. “If you knew the truth, my dear
Dolly!” His heart stood still. Deceive himself! What an insulting
phrase. He repressed a strong impulse to propose on the instant to
Dolly. That would show her how indifferent he was to Christine. It
would assure him, too.

Instead he formed a plan to go home with her and her mother, when
they went.

“When are you going back, Dolly?”

“The day after to-morrow.”

“Any objections to my going, too?”

“Objections! Max, dear!”

He engaged his ticket at once at the hotel office. Having done so,
he felt tranquil and relieved, and perhaps the least little bit
dull. The clerk assured him he was fortunate to be able to get a
berth at such short notice. “Very fortunate,” he agreed and was
annoyed at a certain cold ring in his voice.

The next day, true to his promise to show Christine all attentions
that the public could expect, he sent her a box of flowers, and
at four he stopped for her and they went and took a long walk
together, hoping to meet as many people whom they knew as possible.

“We won’t walk in the Park,” said Christine. “No one sees you
there, though of course if they do, it makes an impression. But,
no; we’ll stick to Fifth Avenue, and study all the windows that
have clothes or furniture in them, as if our minds were entirely
taken up with trousseaux and house-furnishing.”

She was true to her word, and not squeamish. Riatt found it rather
amusing to wander at her side, dressing her in imagination in every
garment that the windows so frankly displayed, and answering with
real interest her constant inquiry: “Do you think that would become
me? Would you like me in that? Do you prefer silk to batiste?”

They were standing in front of a stocking shop in which on a row of
composition legs which might have made a chorus envious, “new ideas
in hosiery” were romantically displayed, when Riatt decided to tell
her of his approaching departure. He chose the street, because
he was well aware that she would not approve of his plan, and he
wished to avoid a repetition of last evening’s scene.

“I shall have to go away the day after to-morrow,” he said, and
glanced quickly down on her to see how she would take it.

She was studying the stockings, and she drew away with her head at
a critical angle.

“It’s a queer thing,” she said, “that certain stripes do make the
ankle look large. Theoretically they ought to make it look slim,
but you take my word for it, Max, they don’t.”

“Nothing could make your ankles look anything but slim, Christine,”
he replied politely.

“No, my ankles are rather good, aren’t they?” she replied, and then
as if she had now disposed of the more serious topic, she added:
“And so you are going home? Well, you mayn’t believe it, but I
shall really miss you a great deal. Oh, look at these jade flowers!
They’re really good.”

Riatt looked at the pale lilac and pink blossoms starting from
their icy green leaves, but he hardly saw them. He was disgusted at
the discovery of an unexpected perversity in his nature. He found
himself hardly pleased at the absence of protest with which his
announcement was greeted. All her attention was absorbed by the
jade.

“Wouldn’t it look well on our drawing-room mantel-piece?” she said.

“I’ll give it to you as a wedding present,” he answered. “That is,
if you think Hickson would like it.”

“I don’t think he’ll like anything you ever give me. He did not
even like my ring. He thinks the stone too large. By the way,
I never properly thanked you for the ring. It has been most
splendidly persuasive. Even Nancy grew pale when she saw the proof
of your sincerity.”

“Will it be sufficient even in the face of my continued absence?”
he asked, for it occurred to him that perhaps she had not
understood that he meant to remain in the West indefinitely.

“Oh, I think so,” she answered, pleasantly. “You might write to
me now and then, and I’ll show just a suitable paragraph here and
there to an intimate friend.”

A new idea suddenly occurred to him. Had she any motive for
desiring his absence? Had some unexpected possibility cropped up?
Did she want to get rid of him? Not, he added, that he minded if
she did, but it would be rather interesting to know.

“I’m going a little earlier than I expected,” he went on, “because
the Lanes are going, and I hate to make that long journey alone.”

She nodded understandingly. “It will be much nicer for you to have
them.”

He looked at her coldly. It seemed to him he had never known a
more callous nature. And to think that the evening before she had
actually shed tears, simply because he took another girl to lunch!
It caught his attention, he said to himself, just as a study in
human nature.

He did not see her the next day until evening. They were both to
dine at Nancy’s--(thus had the proposed dinner with Mrs. Almar
deteriorated) and go afterward to the opera. Nancy of course would
not have dreamed of crowding three women into her box, so the party
consisted of herself and Christine, Riatt, Roland Almar--a pale,
eager, little man, trying to placate the world with smiles, and
once again Linburne, whose handsome dark head, and curved mouth,
half cynical, half sensuous, began to weary Riatt inexpressibly.

After dinner he found that he and Mrs. Almar were to go in her tiny
coupé, and the four others in Linburne’s large car.

“And so,” she observed as soon as they started, “the mouse
preferred the trap after all?” And he could feel that she was
laughing at him in the shadow.

“But feels none the less grateful for the kind intention to rescue
him.”

“Oh, I don’t care much for the gratitude of a man in love with
another woman.”

“You judge me to be very much in love?”

This general conviction on the part of the ladies of his
acquaintance was growing monotonous. Nancy continued:

“But come back in two years, and we’ll talk of gratitude then. In
the meantime let us stick to the impersonal. What do you think of
Linburne?”

“I’ve had many opportunities of judging. I’ve been nowhere for two
days without meeting him.”

Mrs. Almar laughed with meaning.

“I wonder why that should be,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Riatt asked, but at that moment they drew up
before the Thirty-ninth Street entrance, and the doorman, opening
the motor’s door, shouted “Ten--Forty-five”--a cheerful lie he has
been telling four times a week for many years.

In the opera box, Riatt at once seated himself behind Christine.
There is no place like the opera for public devotion. Christine was
resplendent in black and gold with a huge black and gold fan that
made the fans of the temple dancers--the opera was “Aïda”--look
commonplace and ineffective.

Behind it she now murmured to Max:

“And what poisonous thing did dear Nancy tell you coming down?”

“Nothing--except what everyone has been telling me for the last few
days--that I seemed very much in love.”

“And that annoyed you, I suppose.”

“On the contrary. I was delighted to find I was such a good actor.”

“People who pretend to be asleep sometimes end by actually doing
it. Pretending is rather dangerous sometimes.”

“Yes, but you see I shan’t have to pretend after to-morrow.”

“Are you all packed and ready?”

“Mentally I am.”

In the _entr’acte_ which followed quickly after their entrance,
Christine dismissed him very politely. “There,” she said, “you
don’t have to stay on duty all the time. You can go and stretch
your legs, if you want.”

He rose at once, and as he did so, Linburne slipped into his place.

Riatt had caught sight of Laura Ussher across the house, and knew
his duty demanded that he should go and say a word to his exuberant
cousin who, he supposed, regarded herself as the artificer of his
happiness.

“Oh, my dear Max,” she began, hastily bundling out an old friend
who had been reminiscing about the days of the de Rezskes, and
waving Riatt into place, “every one is so delighted at the
engagement, and thinks you both so fortunate. How happy she is,
Max! She looks like a different person.”

“I thought she looked rather tired this evening,” answered Riatt,
who always found himself perverse in face of Laura’s enthusiasm.

Mrs. Ussher raised her opera glass and studied Christine’s profile,
bent slightly toward Linburne, who was talking with the immobility
of feature which many people use when saying things in public which
they don’t wish overheard. “Oh, well, she doesn’t look as brilliant
as she did when _you_ were with her. But isn’t that natural? I
wonder why Nancy asked Lee Linburne and where is that silly little
wife of his. Oh, don’t go, Max. It’s only the St. Anna attaché; we
met him on the coast last summer.”

But Riatt insisted on making way for the South American diplomat,
who was standing courteously in the back of the box.

He wandered out into the corridors, not enough interested in any of
his recent acquaintances to go and speak to them. Two men coming up
behind him were talking; he could not help hearing their dialogue:

“Who’s this fellow she’s engaged to?”

“No one knows--a Western chap with a lot of money.”

“Suppose she cares anything about him?”

“Oh, no, she’s telling every one she doesn’t. They say he’s mad
about her.”

“Ought to be, by Jove. I always thought the only man she ever cared
for--”

Riatt found himself straining his ears vainly to catch the name,
but it was drowned in other conversations that rose about him. He
understood now why Christine had been angry at his telling Dorothy
that he was not in love, for he found himself annoyed at the idea
of her having told everybody that she wasn’t. But, it’s a different
thing, he thought, to tell one intimate friend in confidence, or to
give the news to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Then the juster side of
his nature reasserted itself, and he saw that she was only laying
the trail for the breaking of her engagement. Yet this evidence of
her good faith did not entirely allay the irritation of his spirit.

When he went back to the box, Linburne was gone, and the man
who had replaced him, yielded to Riatt with the most submissive
promptness. But this time no easy interchange occurred between them.

About half past ten, Christine leaned over to her hostess, and
said: “Would you care at all if I deserted you, dear? I’m tired.”

“Mind when I have my Roland to keep me company?” said Nancy. “One
seems to take one’s husband to the opera this year.”

At this point Linburne, who had been standing in the back of the
box, came forward and said: “Won’t you take my car, Miss Fenimer?
I’ll go down and find it for you.”

A look that passed between them, a twinkle in Nancy’s eyes,
suddenly convinced Riatt that the scheme was for Linburne to take
Christine home. He did not stop to ask why this idea was repugnant
to him, but he said firmly:

“I have a car of my own downstairs, and I’ll take Miss Fenimer
home.” It was of course a lie, as the simple taxicab was his only
means of vehicular locomotion, but a taxi, thank heaven, can always
be obtained quickly at the Metropolitan. Christine consented.
Linburne stepped back.

They drove the few blocks in silence. He went up the steps of her
house, and when the door was opened he said: “May I come in for a
few minutes? I shan’t have time to-morrow probably.”

“Do,” said Christine. She went into the drawing-room and sank into
a chair. “Who ever heard of not saying good-by to one’s fiancée?”

He saw that she was in her most teasing mood, and somehow this made
him more serious.

“Perhaps,” he said rather stiffly, “you think I carry out your
instructions too exactly. Perhaps I show a more scrupulous devotion
in public than you meant.”

“Oh, no. It looked so well.”

“It would not have looked so well for Linburne to take you home.”

She clapped her hands. “Excellent,” she said, “but you know it is
not necessary to take that proprietary tone when we are alone.”

“Even as a mere acquaintance I might offer you some advice,” he
said.

“I’m rather sleepy as it is,” she returned, yawning slightly.

For the first time Riatt had a sense of crisis. He knew he must
either save her, or leave her. He could not give her a little sage
advice and abandon her. It would be like advising a starving man
not to steal and going away with your pockets full. He could not
say, “Have nothing to do with a selfish materialist like Linburne,”
when he knew better perhaps than any one how empty of any ideality
or hope her relation to Hickson was bound to be. Yet on the other
hand, he could not say, “Come to me, instead.” He despised her
method of life, distrusted her character, disliked her ideas, and
was under no illusion as to her feeling for himself. If he had
come to her without money she would have laughed in his face. What
chance would either of them have under such circumstances? It was
simple madness to consider it. And why was he considering it? Just
because she looked lovely and wan, sunk in a deep chair in all her
black and gold finery, just because her face had the lines of an
Italian saint and her voice had strange and moving tones in it.

“Good-by,” he said briefly.

She sprang up. “Good gracious,” she said, “and are you going just
like that? You know it is customary to extract a promise to write.
At least to beg for a lock of the hair.” (She drew out a golden
lock, and let it crinkle back into place again.) “Or do you think
you will remember me without it?”

[Illustration: He stood like a rock under her caress]

“I’m not so sure I want to remember you.”

“I hope you don’t. It’s the things you don’t want to remember that
you never can get out of your head.”

“Good-by,” he said again.

“Haven’t you one nice thing to say to me before you go?”

“Not one.”

“Wouldn’t you at least admit that I had enlarged your point of
view?”

“Aren’t you going to shake hands with me?” he said.

She shook her head, and began to approach him. He felt afterward
as if he had known exactly what she meant to do, and yet he seemed
to lack all power to prevent her--or perhaps it was will that was
lacking. She came up to him, very deliberately put her arms about
his neck, and, almost as tall as he, laid her head on his shoulder;
and then murmured under his chin: “But you must never, never come
back.”

He stood like a rock under her caress; he did not make any answer;
he did not attempt to undo the clasp of her arms. He was as
impassive as a hunted animal who, in some terrible danger, pretends
to be already dead.

It was a matter of only a few seconds. Then she dropped her arms,
and he went away.




CHAPTER V


Running away is seldom a becoming gesture, yet it is one that
should at least bring relief; but as Riatt went westward, he was
conscious of no relief whatsoever. The day was bitter and gray,
and, looking out of the window, he felt that he was about as flat
and dreary as the country through which he was passing.

He sat a little while with the Lanes in their compartment.

“I suppose you’ll be glad to get home and see George and Louise and
the children,” said Mrs. Lane, referring to some cousins of Riatt’s
about whom, it is to be feared, he had not thought for weeks.

Dorothy laughed. “What does he care for home-staying cousins when
he is leaving a lovely creature languishing for him in New York?”
she said.

“I doubt if Christine does much languishing,” he returned, though
the idea was not at all disagreeable to him.

“You two are the strangest lovers I ever knew,” said Miss Lane.

Riatt wondered if that were an accurate description of them--lovers,
though strange ones.

He left his old friends presently and went and sat in the
observation-car. What, he wondered, had Christine meant by her last
words, about never coming back? Never come back to annoy with his
critical attitude? Never come back to watch her deterioration as
Hickson’s wife? Or never come back to disturb her peace of mind and
heart by his mere presence? He debated all interpretations but the
last pleased him most.

A bride and groom were in the car. The girl was not in the least
like Christine. She was small and wore a pair of the most fantastic
gray and black boots that Riatt had ever seen; but she was very
blond and very much in love. Riatt hated both her and her husband.
“People ought not to be allowed to show their feelings like that,”
he said to himself, as he kicked open the door leading to the back
platform, with a violence that was utterly unnecessary.

Nor did things mend on his arrival at his home. His native town was
naturally interested in his engagement; it showed this interest by
keeping the idea continually before him. It assumed, of course,
that he was going to bring his bride home. The rising architect
of the community came to him with the assumption that he would
wish to build her a more suitable house than that of his father,
which, large and comfortable, had been constructed in the very
worst taste of the early “eighties.” No, Riatt found himself saying
with determination, his father’s house would be good enough for
his wife. He thought the sentiment sounded rather well, as he
pronounced it. But this did not solve his difficulties, for now
it was but too evident that he must at least redecorate the old
house; and he found himself, he never knew exactly how, actually
in process of doing over a bedroom, bathroom and boudoir for
Christine, just exactly as if he had expected her ever to lay eyes
on them.

Mrs. Lane came to him with the suggestion that he would wish
Christine to be one of the patronesses of the next winter’s dances.
The list was about to be printed. Max hesitated. “It would be a
little premature to put her down as Mrs. Riatt, wouldn’t it?” he
objected. Mrs. Lane thought this was merely superstitious, and
ordered the cards so printed without consulting him further.

Every one asked him what he heard from her, so that he actually
stooped once or twice to invent sentences from imaginary letters
of hers. He even went so far as to read the society columns of the
New York newspapers, so that he might not be caught in any absurd
error about her whereabouts. Such at least is the reason by which
he explained his conduct to himself.

He was shocked to find that he was restless and dissatisfied. The
only occupation that seemed to give any relief was gambling; or,
as a mine-owning friend of his expressed it, in making “a less
conservative and more remunerative investment of his capital.”
He spent hours every day hanging over the ticker in the office
of Burney, Manders and Company--and this young and eager firm of
brokers made more money in commissions during the first two weeks
of his return than they had during the whole year that preceded it.

On the whole he lost, and Welsley, his mining friend, seeing this
began to urge on him more and more the advisability of buying out
the majority of stock in a certain Spanish-American gold mine. At
first he always made the same answer: “You know as well as I do,
Welsley, I would never put a penny into any property I had not
inspected.”

But gradually a desire to inspect it grew up in his mind. What
would suit his plans better than a long trip, as soon as the
breaking of his engagement was announced? A week at sea, two or
three days on a river, and then sixty miles on mule-back over the
mountains--there at least he would not be troubled by accounts of
Christine’s wedding, or assertions that she had looked brilliant at
the opera.

He had been at home about two weeks, when her first letter came.
So far the only scrap of her handwriting that he possessed was the
formal release that she had given him the afternoon they became
engaged, and which, for safe keeping doubtless, he always carried
in his pocketbook, and which he sometimes found himself reading
over--not as a proof that he could get out of his engagement, but
rather in an attempt to verify the fact that he had ever got into
it.

However unfamiliar with her writing, he had not the least doubt
about the letter from the first instant that he saw it. No one else
could use such absurd faint blue and white paper and such large
square envelopes. As he took it up, he said to himself that it had
never occurred to him that she would write, and yet he saw without
any sense of inconsistency that he had looked for this letter in
every mail. And yet, so perverse is the nature of mankind, that he
opened it, not with pleasure, but with a sudden return of all his
old terror of being trapped.

    “Dear Max,” it said. “I have been pretending so often to
    write to you for the benefit of my inquiring friends, that
    I think I may as well do it as a tribute to truth.

    “How foolish that was--the night you went away! One gets
    carried away sometimes by the drama of a situation, without
    any relation to the facts, and the idea of parting forever
    from one’s fiancé is rather dramatic, isn’t it? I cried all
    night, and rather enjoyed it. Then in the morning when I
    woke up, everything seemed to have returned to the normal,
    and I could not understand what had made me so silly.

    “Don’t suppose that because you have gone, I am therefore
    freed from the disagreeable criticism of which you made
    such a speciality. Ned comes in almost every day to tell me
    that he does not approve of my conduct. I am not behaving,
    it appears, as an affianced bride should. Don’t you like
    to think of Ned so loyally protecting your interests in
    your absence? His criticisms are, I suppose, based on
    the attentions of a nice little boy just out of college,
    who calls me ‘Helen,’ and writes sonnets to me which are
    to appear in the most literary of weeklies. Look out for
    them. They are good, and may raise your low estimate of my
    charms. The best one begins:

      “When the blond wonder first on Paris dawned--

    “Isn’t that pretty?

    “Write to me. At least send me a blank envelope that I may
    leave ostentatiously on my desk.

  “Yours at the moment,
  “CHRISTINE.”

Riatt’s first thought on laying down the letter was: “Hickson
never in the world objected to any little poet just out of
college, and she knows it very well. It’s Linburne he is worried
about--Linburne, whose name she does not even mention.” And how
absurd to attempt to make him believe she had cried all night. That
was simply an untruth. Yet oddly enough, it came before his eyes in
a more vivid picture than many a scene he had actually witnessed.

A few minutes later he went to the club and looked up the literary
weekly of which she had spoken. There was no sonnet in it, but the
issue of the next week contained it. Riatt read it with an emotion
he could not mistake. It brought Christine like a visible presence
before him. Also it made him angry, to have to see her like this,
through another man’s eyes. “Little whelp,” he said, “to detail
a woman’s beauty in print like that! What does he know about it
anyhow? I don’t believe for one second she looked at him like that.”

The sonnet ended:

      She turned, a white embodiment of joy,
      And looking on him, sealed the doom of Troy.

He was roused by a friendly shout in his ear. “Ho, ho, Max, reading
poetry, are you? What love does for the worst of us!” It was
Welsley, who snatched the paper out of his hand, running over the
lines rapidly to himself: “Hem, hem, ‘carnation, alabaster, gold
and fire.’ Some queen, that, eh? Have you had your dinner? Well,
don’t be cross. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t read verse if
you like. And this young man is the latest thing. My wife says they
are going to import him here to speak to the Greek Study Club.”

“I shall be curious to hear him, if the Greek Club will ask me,”
said Max.

“Oh, you’ll be in the East getting married,” answered Welsley.

Strangely enough, it was with something like a pang that Max said
to himself that he wouldn’t be.

“Carnation, alabaster, gold and fire.”

It was not a bad line, he thought.

After dinner, he felt a little more amiable, and so he sat down and
wrote his first real letter to his fiancée.

    “If we were really engaged, my dear Christine,” he wrote,
    “you would have had a night letter long before this, asking
    you to explain to me just how it was that you did look on
    that amorous young poet. His verse is pretty enough, though
    I can’t say I exactly enjoyed it. However, my native town
    thinks very highly of him, and intends to ask him to come
    and address one of our local organizations. If so, I shall
    have an opportunity of questioning him on the subject of
    the sources of his inspiration. ‘Is Helen a real person?’ I
    shall ask. ‘Not so very,’ I can imagine his replying. Ah,
    what would we both give to know?

    “My friends here, stimulated by Dorothy Lane’s ravishing
    description of you, have asked many times to see your
    picture. I am ashamed of my own carelessness in having gone
    away without obtaining one for exhibition purposes. Will
    you send me one at once? One not already in circulation
    among poets and painters. I will set it on my writing
    table, and allow my eyes to stray sentimentally toward it
    whenever I have people to dinner.

    “By the way, the day I left New York I told a florist
    to send you flowers every day. We worked out quite an
    elaborate scheme for every day in the week. Did he ever do
    it?

    “Yours, at least in the sight of this company,

  “MAX RIATT.”

In answer to this, he was surprised by a telegram:

    “So sorry for absurd mistake. Entirely misunderstood source
    of the flowers. Enjoy them a great deal more now. Yes, they
    come regularly. A thousand thanks. Am sending photograph by
    mail.”

Riatt did not need to ask himself from whom she had imagined they
came. Not the poet, unless magazine rates were rising unduly.
Nor Hickson, who failed a little in such attentions. No, it was
Linburne--and evidently Linburne’s attentions were taken so much as
a matter of course, that she had not even thanked him, nor had he
noticed her omission.

He did not answer the telegram, nor did he acknowledge the
photograph but, true to his word, he established it at once on
his desk in a frame which he spent a long time in selecting.
The picture represented Christine at her most queenly and
unapproachable. She wore the black and gold dress, and the huge
feather fan was folded across her bare arms. Every time he looked
at it, he remembered how those same arms had been clasped round his
own stiff and unbending neck. And sometimes he found the thought
distracted his attention from important matters.

It was about the middle of February when he received one morning a
letter from Nancy Almar. He knew _her_ handwriting. She was always
sending him little notes of one kind or another. This one was very
brief.

“Clever mouse! So it knew a way to get out all the time!”

All day he speculated on the meaning of this strange message. Had
Nancy discovered some proof of the nature of his engagement? Had
Christine been moved by pity to tell Hickson the truth? On the
whole he inclined to think that this was the explanation.

The next day he knew he had been mistaken. He had a letter from
Laura Ussher--not the first in the series--urging him to come back
at once.

    “Max,” she wrote, with a haste that made her almost
    indecipherable, “you must come. What are you dreaming
    of--to leave a proud, beautiful, impressionable creature
    like Christine the prey to so finished a villain as
    Linburne? You are not so ignorant of the ways of the world
    as not to know his intentions. Most people are saying you
    deserve everything that is happening to you. I try to
    explain, but I know you saw enough while you were here to
    be put upon your guard. Why don’t you come? I must warn you
    that if you do not come at once you need not come at all.”

Riatt had just come in; it was late in the afternoon. The letters
were lying on his writing table; and as he finished this one, he
raised his eyes and looked at Christine’s picture.

He did not believe Laura’s over-wrought picture. Christine was no
fool, Linburne no villain. There was probably a little flirtation,
and a good deal of gossip. But that would all be put a stop to by
the announcement of Christine’s engagement to Hickson. He did not
even feel annoyed at his cousin’s suggestion that he did not know
his way about the world. He knew it rather better than she did, he
fancied.

And having so disposed of his mail, he took up the evening paper
which lay beneath it, and read the first headline:

    Mrs. Lee Linburne to seek divorce: Wife of well-known
    multimillionaire now at Reno--

As he read this a blind rage swept over Riatt. He did not stop to
inquire why if he were willing to give Christine up to Hickson he
was infuriated at the idea of Linburne’s marrying her; nor why, as
he had allowed himself to be made use of, he was angry to find that
he had been far more useful than he had supposed. He only knew that
he was angry, and with an anger that demanded instant action.

He looked at his watch. He had time to catch a train to Chicago.
He went upstairs and packed. He knew that what he was doing was
foolish, that he would poignantly regret it, but he never wavered
an instant in his intention.

He reached New York early in the afternoon. He had notified no one
of his departure, and he did not announce his arrival. He went
straight to the Fenimers’ house--not indeed expecting to find
Christine at home at that hour, but resolved to await her return.

The young man at the door, who had known Riatt before, appeared
confused, but was decided.

Miss Fenimer, he insisted, was out.

Glancing past him Riatt saw a hat and stick on the hall table. He
had no doubt as to their owner.

“I’ll wait then,” he said, coming in, and handing his own things to
the footman, who seemed more embarrassed still.

Taking pity on him, Riatt said:

“You mean Miss Fenimer is at home, but has given orders that she
won’t see any one?”

Such, the man admitted, was the case.

“She’ll see me,” Riatt answered, “take my name up.”

The footman, looking still more wretched, obeyed. Riatt heard him
go into the little drawing-room overhead, and then there was a long
pause. Once he thought he heard a voice raised in anger. As may be
imagined his own anger was not appeased by this reception.

While he was waiting, the door of a room next the front door opened
and Mr. Fenimer came out. His astonishment at seeing Riatt was so
great that with all his tact he could not repress an exclamation,
which somehow did not express pleasure.

“You here, my dear Riatt!” he said, grasping him cordially by the
hand. “Christine, I’m afraid--”

“I’ve sent up to see,” said Max, curtly.

“Ah, well, my dear fellow,” Mr. Fenimer went on easily, “come,
you know, a man really can’t go off in the casual way you did and
expect to find everything just as he likes when he comes back.
I have a word to say to you myself. Shall we walk as far as the
corner together?”

To receive his dismissal from Mr. Fenimer was something that Riatt
had never contemplated.

“I should prefer to wait until the footman comes down,” he answered.

“No use, no use,” said Mr. Fenimer, suddenly becoming jovial, “I
happen to know that Christine is out. Come back a little later--”

“And whose hat is that, then?” asked Max.

It had been carelessly left on its crown and the initials “L.L.”
were plainly visible.

Mr. Fenimer could not on the instant think of an answer, and Riatt
decided to go upstairs unannounced.

As he opened the drawing-room door he heard Christine’s voice
saying: “Thank you, I shall please myself, Lee, even without your
kind permission.”

The doors in the Fenimer house opened silently, so that though
Christine, who was facing the door, saw him at once, Linburne,
whose back was turned to it, was unaware of his presence, and
answered:

“You ought to have more pride than to want to see a fellow who has
made it so clear he doesn’t care sixpence about seeing you.”

Christine openly smiled at Max, as she answered: “Well, I do want
to see him,” and Linburne turning to see at what her smile was
directed found himself face to face with Riatt.

Max made a gesture to the footman, and shut the door behind his
hasty retreat, then he came slowly into the room.

“In one thing you are mistaken, Mr. Linburne,” he said. “I do care
whether or not I see Miss Fenimer.”

Linburne was angry at Christine, not only for insisting on seeing
Riatt, but for the lovely smile with which she had greeted him. He
was glad of an outlet for his feelings.

He almost shrugged his shoulders. “An outsider can only judge by
your conduct, Mr. Riatt,” he answered. “And I may tell you that you
have subjected Miss Fenimer to a good deal of disagreeable gossip
by your apparently caring so little.”

“And others by apparently caring so much,” said Max.

Christine was the only one who recognized at once the fact that
both men were angry; and she did not pour oil on the waters by
laughing gaily. “You can’t find any subject for argument there,”
she observed, “for you are both perfectly right. You have both made
me the subject of gossip; but don’t let it worry you, for my best
friends have long ago accustomed me to that.”

“I hope you won’t think I’m asking too much, Mr. Riatt,” said
Linburne, with a politeness that only accentuated his irritation,
“in suggesting that as your visit is, I believe, unexpected, and as
mine is an appointment of some standing, that you will go away and
let me finish my conversation with Miss Fenimer.”

Max smiled. “Oddly enough,” he said, “I was about to make the same
request to you. But I suppose we must let Miss Fenimer settle the
question.”

Christine smiled like an angel. “Can’t we have a nice time as we
are?” she asked.

This frivolous reply was properly ignored by both men, and Riatt
went on: “Don’t you think you ought to consider the fact that Miss
Fenimer and I are engaged?”

“Miss Fenimer assures me she does not intend to marry you.”

“And may I ask if you consider that she does intend to marry
you--that is if you should happen to become marriageable?”

“That is a question between her and me,” returned Linburne.

Riatt laughed. “I see,” he said. “The matrimonial plans of my
future wife are no affair of mine?” And for an instant he felt his
most proprietary rights were being invaded.

“Miss Fenimer is not your future wife.”

“Well, Mr. Linburne, I hear you say so.”

“You shall hear _her_ say so,” answered Linburne. “Christine,” he
added peremptorily, “tell Riatt what you have just been telling me.”

There was a long painful silence. Both men stood looking intently
at Christine, who sat with her head erect, staring ahead of her
like a sphinx, but saying nothing. After a moment she glanced up
at Max’s face, as if she expected to find there an answer to her
problem. She did not look at Linburne.

“Christine,” said Max very gently, “what have you told Mr.
Linburne?”

“She has told me everything,” answered Linburne impetuously, and
then seeing by the glance that the two others exchanged that such
was not the case, his temper got the best of him.

“Do you mean you’ve been lying to me?” he asked.

“Just what did you tell him, Christine?” said Riatt, finding it
easier and easier to be calm and protecting as his adversary grew
more violent.

Christine looked up at him with the innocence of a child. “I told
him that we did not love each other, and that our engagement was
really broken, but that no one was to know until March.”

“Why did you tell him that?”

“It’s the truth, Max--almost the truth.”

“Almost the truth!” cried Linburne. “Do you want me to think you
care something for this man after all?”

“In the simple section of the country from which I come,” observed
Riatt, “we often care a good deal for the people we marry.”

Linburne turned on him. “Really, Mr. Riatt,” he said, “you don’t
take an idea very quickly. You have just heard Miss Fenimer say
that she did not love you and that she considered your engagement
at an end.”

“I heard her say she had told you that.”

“You mean to imply that she said what was untrue?”

“I could answer your question better,” said Riatt, “if I understood
a little more clearly what your connection with this whole
situation is.”

“The connection of any old friend who does not care to see Miss
Fenimer neglected and humiliated,” answered Linburne, all the more
hotly because he knew it was an awkward question.

Perhaps the young poet had not been so wrong in attaching the name
of Helen to Miss Fenimer, for she sat now as calmly interested in
the conflict developing before her, as Helen when she sat on the
walls of Troy and designated the Greek heroes for the amusement of
her newer friends.

“May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter you consider that
you have?” Linburne pursued.

For Riatt, too, the question was an awkward one, but he had his
answer ready. “The rights,” he said, “of a man who certainly was
once engaged to Miss Fenimer, and who came East ignorant that the
engagement was already at an end.”

Christine laughed. “Very neatly put,” she said.

“Neatly put,” exclaimed Linburne. “You talk as if we were playing a
game.”

[Illustration: “May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter you
consider that you have?” Linburne pursued]

“You have the reputation of playing all games well, my dear Lee,”
she returned. The obvious fact that she was enjoying the interview,
made both men eager to end it--but, unfortunately, they wished to
end it in diametrically opposite ways.

“Christine,” said Linburne, “will you ask Mr. Riatt to be so kind
as to let me have ten minutes alone with you?”

Riatt spoke to her also. “I will do exactly as you say,” he said,
“but you understand that if I go now, I shall not come back.”

Christine smiled. “Is that a threat or a promise?” she asked, the
sweetness of her smile almost taking away the sting of her words.

Seeing that she hesitated, Riatt went on: “Since I have come more
than a thousand miles to see you, don’t you think you might suggest
to Mr. Linburne that he let me have my visit undisturbed?”

There was a long and rather terrible pause, terrible that is to the
two men. Christine probably enjoyed every second of it. There was
nothing in Linburne’s experience of life to make him think that any
woman whom he had honored with his preference was likely to prefer
another man to himself. So the pause was terrible to him, not
because he doubted what the climax would be, but because he felt
his dignity insulted by even an appearance of hesitation. Max, on
the other hand, was still a good deal in doubt as to her ultimate
intentions.

It was to him, finally, that she spoke.

“Max,” she said, “do you remember that while we were staying at the
Usshers’ we composed a certain document together?”

He nodded, and then as she did not continue, he opened his
pocketbook and took out the release.

She made no motion to take it; on the contrary, she leaned back and
crossed her hands in her lap.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s it. Well, you may stay, if you care to
burn that scrap of paper.”

It was now Max’s turn to hesitate, for the decision of freedom or
captivity was in his own hands; the crisis he had so recklessly
rushed to meet was now upon him.

“What is in that paper?” asked Linburne, as one who has a right to
question.

Christine was perfectly good-tempered as she answered: “Well, Lee,
it still belongs to Mr. Riatt; but if he decides not to burn it, I
promise to tell you all about it as we drink our tea.”

“Do you promise me that, Christine?”

“Most solemnly, Lee.” She looked up at Linburne, and before Max
knew what he was doing he found he had dropped the paper into the
fire.

Strangely enough, though the fire was hot, the paper did not catch
at once, but curled and rocked an instant in the heat, before it
disappeared in flame and smoke. Not until it was a black crisp did
Christine turn to Linburne, and hold out her hand.

“Good-by, Lee,” she said pleasantly. But he did not answer or take
her hand. He left the room in silence.

When the door had shut behind him, Christine glanced at her
remaining visitor. “And now,” she said, “I suppose you are wishing
you had not.”

“What sort of a woman are you?” Riatt exclaimed. “Will you take any
man that offers, me or Hickson, or Linburne or me again, just as
luck will have it?”

“I take the best that offers, Max--and that’s no lie.”

The implied compliment did not soften Riatt. He went on: “If you
and I are really to be married--”

“If, my dear Max! What could be more certain?”

“Since, then, we are to be married, you must tell me exactly what
has taken place between you and Linburne.”

“With pleasure. Won’t you sit down?” She pointed to a chair near
her own, but Riatt remained standing. “Shall we have tea first?”

“We’ll have the story.”

“Oh, it’s not much of a story. Lee and I have known each other
since we were children. I suppose I always had it in mind that I
might marry him--”

“You loved him?”

“Certainly not. He always had too high an opinion of himself,
and I used to enjoy taking it out of him--and making it up to
him afterwards, too. I used to enjoy that as well. Sometimes, of
course, he found the process too unbearable; and in one of his fits
of anger at me, just after he left college, he went and blundered
into this marriage with Pauline. She, you see, took him at his own
valuation. His marriage seemed to put an end to everything between
us--”

“You surprise me.”

Christine laughed. “Ah, I was younger then.”

“You kept on seeing him?”

“Naturally we met now and then. Sometimes he used to tell me how I
was the only woman--”

“That is your idea of putting an end to everything?”

“Oh, if one took seriously all the men who say that--I did not
think much about Lee’s feelings for me, until my engagement was
announced. Then it appeared that the notion of my marrying some one
else was intolerable to him.”

“A high order of affection,” exclaimed Riatt. “He was content
enough until there seemed some chance of your being happy.”

“Perhaps he did not consider that life with you would promise
absolute happiness, Max.”

“I don’t call that love. I call it jealousy.”

At this Christine laughed outright. “And what emotion, may I ask,
has just brought you here in such haste?”

The thrust went home. Riatt changed countenance.

“But I,” he said, “never pretended to love you.”

“Why then are you marrying me?”

“Heaven knows.”

“I know, too,” she answered, unperturbed by his rudeness, “and some
day if you’re good I’ll tell you.”

Her calm assumption that everything was well seemed to him
unbearable. “I don’t know that I feel very much inclined to chat,”
he said, turning toward the door. “I’ll see you sometime to-morrow.”

She said nothing to oppose him, and he left the room. Downstairs
the same footman was waiting to let him out. To him, at least,
Riatt seemed a triumphant lover, only as Linburne had long since
heavily subsidized him, even his admiration was tinctured with
regret.

As for Max, himself, he left the house even more restless and
dissatisfied than he had entered it.

To be honest, he had, he knew, sometimes imagined a moment when he
would take Christine in his arms and say: “Marry me anyhow.” Such
an action he knew would be reckless, but he had supposed it would
be pleasant. But now there was nothing but bitterness and jealousy
in his mood. What did he know or care for such people? he said to
himself. What did he know of their standards and their histories?
How much of Christine’s story about Linburne was to be believed?
What more natural than that they had always loved each other? Some
one knew the truth--every one, very likely, except himself. But
whom could he ask? He could have believed Nancy on one side as
little as Laura on the other.

And as he thought this, he saw coming down the street, Hickson--a
witness prejudiced, perhaps, but strictly honest.

For the first time in their short acquaintance, Hickson’s face
brightened at the sight of Riatt, and he called out with evident
sincerity: “I am glad to see you.”

“I came on rather unexpectedly.”

“I’m glad you did. Quite right.” Hickson stopped at this, and
looked at his companion with such wistful uncertainty, that it
seemed perfectly natural for Riatt, answering that look, to say:

“You may speak frankly to me, you know.”

Ned took a long breath. “I believe that I may,” he said. “I hope
so, anyhow. I haven’t had any one I could be frank with. Between
ourselves, Fenimer is no good at all.”

“What, my future father-in-law?”

“Is that what he is?” Hickson asked with, for him, unusual
directness.

Riatt’s affirmative was not very decided, and Ned went on:

“I can’t even talk to Nancy about it. She’s keen, but she does not
understand Christine. She attributes the most shocking motives to
her, and when I object, she says every one is like that, only I
haven’t sense enough to see it. Well, I never pretended to have as
much sense as Nancy, but I see some things that she doesn’t. I see,
for instance, that there’s something noble in Christine, in spite
of--I beg your pardon for talking to you like this, but you must
remember that I have known her a good deal longer than you have,
and that in a different way perhaps I care for her almost as much
as you do.”

“I told you to speak frankly,” answered Riatt. “What is it that
Mrs. Almar says of Christine?”

At first Hickson refused to answer, but the suffering and anxiety
he had been undergoing pushed him toward self-expression, and
Riatt did not have to be very skilful to extract the whole story.
Nancy had asserted that Christine had never intended for a minute
to marry Riatt--that she had just used him to excite Linburne’s
jealousy to such a point that he would arrange matters so that he
could marry her himself. For once Riatt found himself in accord
with Nancy.

“Do more people than your sister think that?”

Hickson was not without his reserves. “Oh, I dare say, but I don’t
care about that sort of gossip. It’s absurd to say she and Linburne
are engaged. How can a girl be engaged to a married man?”

“We must move with the times, my dear Hickson,” said Riatt bitterly.

“Linburne’s no good,” Ned went on, “not where women are concerned.
He wouldn’t treat her well if he did marry her. Why, Riatt,” he
added solemnly, “I’d far rather see her married to you than to him.”

If Max felt disposed to smile at this innocent endorsement, he
suppressed the inclination, and merely answered:

“You may have your wish.”

“I hope so,” said Ned. “But you mustn’t go off to kingdom-come, and
leave Linburne a clear field. He’s a man who knows how to talk to
women, and what with the infatuation she has always had for him--”

“You think she has always cared for him?” asked Max. He tried
to smooth his tone down to one of calm interest, but it alarmed
Hickson.

“I don’t know,” he returned hastily. “I used to think so, but I may
be wrong. I thought the same thing about you at the Usshers’. She
kept saying she wasn’t a bit in love with you, but it seemed to me
she was different with you from what she had ever been with any one
else. I suppose I oughtn’t to have said that either. Upon my word,
Riatt, it is awfully good of you to let me talk like this! I can
assure you it is a great relief to me.”

His companion could hardly have echoed this sentiment. As he walked
back alone to his hotel, he found that Hickson’s words had put the
last touches to his mental discomfort.

At first his own conduct had seemed inexplicable to him. Everything
had been going well, he had been just about to be free from the
whole entanglement, when an impulse of primitive jealousy and
fierce masculine egotism had suddenly brought him to New York and
bound him hand and foot. It had not been an agreeable prospect--to
live among people whose standards he did not understand, with
a woman whom he did not love. But, since his conversation with
Hickson, his eyes were opened, and he saw the situation in far more
tragic colors.

He _did_ love her. He did not believe in her or trust her; he
had no illusions as to her feeling for him, but his for her was
clear--he loved her, loved her with that strange mingling of
passion and hatred so often found and so rarely admitted.

He could imagine a man’s learning, even under the most suspicious
circumstances, to conquer jealousy of a woman who loved him. Or
he could imagine having confidence in a woman who did not pretend
love. But to be married to a woman whom you love, without a shred
of belief either in her principles or her affection, seemed to
Riatt about as terrible a prospect as could be offered to a human
being.

There was just one chance for him--that Christine might be willing
to release him. If she really loved Linburne, if there had been
some sort of understanding between them in the past, if his coming
had only precipitated a lovers’ quarrel, then certainly Christine
had too much intelligence to let such a chance slip through her
fingers just on the eve of Linburne’s divorce. Nor was she, he
thought bitterly, too proud to stoop to ask a man to reconsider;
nor did it seem likely, however deeply Linburne’s vanity had been
wounded, that he would refuse to listen.

With this in mind, as soon as he reached his hotel, he sat down and
wrote her a letter:

  “My dear Christine:

    “What was it, according to your idea, that happened this
    afternoon? I believed that for the first time I asked you
    to marry me, and that you, for the first time definitely
    accepted me. But as I think over your manner, I am led to
    think you supposed it was just a continuation of our old
    joke.

    “Did you accept me, Christine? And if so, why? Why
    commit yourself to a marriage without affection, at the
    psychological moment when a man for whom you have always
    cared is about to be free?

    “If you still need me in the game, I am ready enough to be
    of use, but I will not be bound to a relation unless you,
    too, consider it irrevocably binding.

  “Yours,
  “M. R.”

He told the messenger to wait for an answer, but he thought that
Christine would hardly be willing to commit herself on such short
notice, or without an interview with Linburne.

But, within a surprisingly short interval, her letter was in his
impatient hands.

  “Dear Max:

    “I will not be so cruel as to leave you one moment longer
    in the false hope that your little break for freedom may
    be successful. Face the fact, bravely, my dear. I am going
    to marry you. We are both irrevocably bound--at least as
    irrevocably as the marriage tie can bind nowadays. If
    this afternoon my manner seemed less portentous than you
    expected, that must have been because I have always counted
    on just this termination to our little adventure. You must
    do me the justice to confess that I have always told you
    so. As for Lee, in spite of Nancy (I suppose it was Nancy
    to whom you rushed for information from my very doorstep) I
    have never cared sixpence for him.

  “Yours till death us do part,
  “CHRISTINE.”

Max read the letter which was brought to him while he was at
dinner. He put it into his pocket, finished an excellent salad,
went to the theater, came back to the hotel and went to bed and
to sleep rather congratulating himself on the fact that he had
become callous to the whole situation, and that, so far as he was
concerned, the crisis was past.

But of course it wasn’t. With the rattle of the first milkcart,
which in a modern city has taken the place of the half-awakened
bird, he woke up, and if he had been in jail he could not have felt
a more choking sense of imprisonment. There was no escape for him,
no hope.

He got up and looked out at the city far below, all outlined like
a great electric sign that said nothing. There must be some way of
being free, besides jumping from the twelfth story window. He lit a
cigarette, and stood thinking. Men disappeared every day; it could
be done. What were the chances, he wondered, of being identified
if he shipped as steward, or engineer for that matter, on a South
American freighter?

It was full daylight before he found himself in possession of a
possible scheme. He remembered the legend of a certain Saint, told
him by his nurse in his early days. She had been beautiful, too
beautiful for her religious ideals; the number of her suitors was
distracting; so to one of them who had extravagantly admired her
eyes she sent them on a salver.

Riatt did not intend sending Christine his worldly goods, but
recognizing that they were the source of the whole trouble, he
decided to get rid of the major part. The problem was simply to
lose his money before the date set for the wedding. And that was
not so difficult, after all. There were a number of people in the
metropolis he thought who would give him every assistance.

The problem of getting it back again at some future time was more
complicated, but even that he thought he could accomplish. He had
made one fortune and he supposed he could some day make another.

The practical question was: What sum would make him impossible to
Christine as a husband? Twenty thousand a year would be out of the
question. But to be perfectly safe he decided to leave himself only
fifteen thousand. He would begin operation as soon as the exchange
opened in the morning. In the meantime what about that mine of
Welsley’s? There was an easy means of sinking almost any sum.

He took up the telephone and sent a telegram at once.

    “Plans for my wedding prevent trip to mine. Have, however,
    decided after minute investigation here to invest $500,000
    in it. Believe we shall make our fortunes.”

He stood an instant with the instrument still in his hand. “Suppose
the damned thing succeeds,” he thought, “I shall be worse off than
ever.”

Then his faith returned to him. “Nothing of Welsley’s ever did
succeed,” he thought; and with this conclusion he went back to bed
and slept like a child.




CHAPTER VI


With his definite decision and unalterable plan of action,
wonderful peace of mind had come to Riatt. He said to himself that
he was now to have a few weeks--whatever time it should take him to
lose his fortune decently--of being engaged to a woman whom, he now
acknowledged, he passionately loved. He intended to make the best
of it.

The next day as he walked up Fifth Avenue on his way to lunch with
her, another inspiration came to him; it was not necessary to
lose his money; spending it would be quite as effective. Acting
on this idea, he went into a celebrated jeweler’s shop, and with
astonishing celerity chose, paid for and pocketed a string of
brilliant pearls.

It was a present that might have made any man welcome--and
Christine had never been accused of not being able to express
herself when she wanted to--but Christine had already welcomed him
for his changed demeanor; his brilliant smile and unruffled brow
told her as soon as she saw him that he was a very different person
from the tortured and irritable creature who had left her the
preceding afternoon.

Never were two people more disposed to find each other and
themselves agreeable, and Riatt was in process of clasping the
pearls about Christine’s neck (for she had had some unaccountable
difficulty in doing it for herself) when the drawing-room door
opened and Nancy Almar strolled in.

Her jaw did not actually drop at the scene that met her eyes,
for that did not happen to be her method of expressing surprise,
but her manner conveyed none the less an astonishment not very
agreeable.

“Was I mistaken,” she said, “in thinking I was to stop and take you
to the Bentons’?”

“Quite right, my dear. Only Max’s return has put everything else
out of my head.”

“What, you didn’t ever expect him to come back?”

“You talk, Nancy, as if you had never heard that we were engaged.”

“If you really are, Christine, why are the Linburnes being
divorced?”

“Because they loathe each other, I imagine.”

“What a changeable creature you are, Christine! It seems only
the other day that you were crying your eyes out because Lee was
engaged.”

Without glancing at Max, Christine became aware that some of the
gaiety had gone from his expression.

“Have you seen my pearls, dear?” she said.

It was a complete answer, so far as Nancy was concerned, for she
was one of the women who can never harden herself to the sight of
another woman’s jewels.

“How beautiful, love,” she answered. “If they were only a trifle
larger they might be mistaken for your old imitation string.” Then
feeling that she could never better this, she took her departure.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Christine, “do you think I shall ever get so
superior that Nancy can’t tease me when she says things like that?”

“Did you really cry, Christine?”

“The night you went away?”

“When you first heard of Linburne’s engagement?”

She nodded at him, like a child who would like to lie its way out
of a scrape.

“But then I often cry over trifles,” she added.

“Like my going away?”

“Really, Max, you ought to be able to understand why I cried over
Lee’s engagement. It was Nancy who brought me the news, and she was
so triumphant over it. She said every one would think he had been
making a fool of me. You know she has the power of teasing me more
than any one in the world--except, perhaps, you.”

“I have a piece of news for you, Christine.”

“Good or bad?”

“Indifferent, I think you would say. It’s a scientific discovery.”

“An invention, Max? Could I understand it?”

“I think you can if you make an effort.”

“What is it?”

He put his arms suddenly about her. “I find I’m in love with you,”
he said, and added a moment later: “And just think that I’ve been
engaged to you so long and that’s the first time I’ve kissed you.”

Christine with her head still buried on his shoulders murmured,
“But it won’t be the last.”

Riatt’s expression changed. “Not absolutely the last, perhaps,” he
answered with something that just wasn’t a sigh.

She looked up at him. “That piece of indifferent news of yours--”
she began.

“Didn’t I describe it correctly?”

“It wasn’t news to me.”

“You mean you had already guessed that I loved you?”

“I’ve always known it.”

“Always?”

“You can’t think I would ever have let you go away at all, if I had
not felt sure. And if you hadn’t loved me, I couldn’t have brought
you back.”

“I came back because--”

“Because the Linburnes were getting a divorce, and because Laura
wrote you a letter. Do you fancy I had nothing to do with either of
those events?”

And Riatt found himself answering almost in the word of Cyrano:

    “_Non, non, mon cher amour, je ne vous aimais pas_.”

The days that followed were the happiest that Riatt had ever known.
Only those who have lived in a brief and agreeable present can
understand the fullness of joy that he was able to extract from
it. If he had been under sentence of death he could not have given
less thought to the future. He gave himself up wholly to the two
excitements of making love and losing money.

At first he prospered more at the former than the latter. For at
first, for some time after he had acquired the stock of the mine,
the reports from it grew more and more favorable and old friends
came to him and begged him to allow them to take up a little of it.
His curt refusal to all such propositions increased the impression
that he knew he had a very good thing and meant to keep it all for
himself.

But he did not have very long to wait for the turn of the tide.
Within a few weeks he received a letter from Welsley, alarming
only because its intention was so obviously to allay alarm. It
appeared that a liberal revolution was threatened; the concession
from the government then in power would not bear the scrutiny of an
impartial witness such as our own State Department. If, in other
words, the present government fell, the concession would fall, too.

    “However,” Welsley wrote cheerfully, “though the revolution
    has the support of the uneducated element of the
    population, which comprises most of the people, as they
    have neither arms, ammunition nor money, they can’t do
    much, unless some fool in the north is induced to finance
    them. You could help us a lot by looking about and seeing
    if there is any danger of such a thing.”

On receipt of this, Riatt instantly telegraphed to Welsley as
follows:

    “Count upon me. What is the name and address of the
    revolutionary agent here?”

The next day in a back bedroom of a down-town hotel, $10,000
changed hands between a slight, dark, very finished gentleman who
spoke English with the slightest possible accent, and a tall,
fine-looking young American whose name never appeared in the
transaction. Within a month a shipment of arms had been smuggled
into a certain South American country, with the result that the
revolution was completely successful--as indeed it deserved to
be. One of the first acts of the new government was to revoke the
iniquitous concession of the San Pedro gold mine, made to “a group
of greedy North American capitalists by the former corrupt and evil
administration.”

Riatt’s bearing during this unhappy experience was universally
praised. As he went in and out of his broker’s office, not a trace
of anxiety visible upon his countenance, men would nudge each other
and whisper, “Did you ever see such nerve? He stands to lose a
million.”

The only moment of regret that he suffered was when one day, when
things first began to look badly, he met Linburne and another
man in Wall Street, and there was something subtly insulting and
triumphant in the former’s manner of condoling with him about the
situation.

Rumors of it reached Christine. She liked the picture of Riatt’s
courage and calm, and hated the danger of his losing money.

“You’re not risking too much, are you, Max?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t you enjoy love in a cottage, Christine?” he answered.

She tried to make it clear to him how little such a prospect would
tempt her, and gathered from the fact that he hardly listened to
her reply that he felt confident there was no real danger.

With the success of the revolution, Riatt realized that his holiday
was over, that he must tell Christine the truth and then retire to
his old home and begin a new method of life on his decreased income.

It was now early April--a warm advanced spring--when he decided
that the next day should see the end of his little drama. But,
as we all know, it sometimes happens that those who set a mine
are the most startled by the explosion; and Riatt, at an early
breakfast (for he and Christine were going into the country for the
day), with a mind occupied with the phrases in which he should bid
her good-by and eyes lazily reading the newspaper, was suddenly
startled beyond words by a short paragraph on the financial page.
This stated in the baldest terms the failure of his brokers at home.

There was no country expedition for Riatt that day. He rushed
down-town, leaving a short message for Christine, and by night he
knew the worst, knew that the liabilities of the firm far exceeded
any possible assets, knew positively that the comfortable sum he
had intended to preserve for himself had been swept away, knew that
he now really had to begin life over.

That night when he came back to his hotel, he understood for the
first time that he had throughout been cherishing an unrecognized
hope; that he had not been honest with himself, and that all the
time beneath his great scheme had lain the belief that when the
truth was known Christine would prefer him and his moderate income
to Linburne and his wealth; that, in short, the great scheme had
been all the time not a method of freeing himself, but a test of
her affection.

Now any such possibility was over. Now he himself was facing the
problem of mere existence--at least he would be as soon as he had
collected his wits enough to face anything.

The next day, which was Sunday, he spent entirely with his lawyer.
When he came back to his hotel, between the entrance and the
elevator a figure rose in his path. It was Hickson.

“Riatt, I’m awfully sorry about this,” he said.

“Thank you, Hickson. It’s very decent of you to be,” Max answered
as cordially as he could, but he was tired and wanted to be let
alone, and there was not as much real gratitude in his heart as
there should have been. He did not ask Ned to sit down until he had
explained with his accustomed simplicity that he had something of
importance to say. Then Riatt let him lead the way to one of those
remote and stuffy sitting-rooms in which all hotels abound. He saw
at once that Hickson found it difficult to say what he had come to
say, but Riatt was in no humor this time to help him out.

“I’m awfully sorry this has happened,” Hickson went on, “not only
on your account, but on Christine’s. I mean that I did begin to
hope that life with you meant peace and happiness for her--”

To cut him short, Riatt said quickly: “Now, of course, the marriage
is out of the question.”

Hickson’s face brightened, as if the difficult words had been said
for him. “You do feel that?” he said, nodding a little as if to
encourage his friend.

Max did not answer at first in words; he laughed rather bitterly,
and then after a pause he said, “Yes, Hickson, I do.”

Ned was clearly relieved. “Of course,” he said, “I did not know
how that would be. But I own it did occur to me. The world is very
censorious of poor Christine. Every one will say that she is the
kind of woman who can’t stick to a man in adversity. Yes, I assure
you, Riatt, lots of these women who can’t put down one of their
motors without having nervous prostration will pillory Christine
for breaking her engagement, unless--” he paused.

“I don’t follow your idea, Ned.”

Hickson sighed. “Why, as long as you recognize the impossibility
of the marriage, couldn’t you in some way make it appear that the
breaking of the engagement came from you--as--if--”

“I see,” said Riatt. There was a short silence, and then he asked
in a tone that sounded perfectly calm to Hickson: “Is this a
message from Christine?”

“Oh, no. Not a message from Christine, though she has been trying
to communicate with you for two days. She can’t see why you won’t
even answer her letters. I told her I would find you--”

“In fact, it _is_ a message, or at least you are her messenger?”

“No, Riatt, at least not from her. I have a message for you, but
not from her.”

“From whom?”

“From Linburne. He has the greatest admiration for your power,
abilities, in spite of any differences you may have had. He wants
to offer you a position, only he felt awkward about doing it
himself after what has taken place. He asked me to speak to you.
It’s a good salary, only it means going to Manchuria, no--”

“One moment,” said Riatt. “These two messages, are they in any way
connected?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Linburne’s offer is not by any chance the reward for my giving
Christine a suitable release?”

Hickson was really shocked. “How can you think such a thing, Riatt?”

“Where did you see Linburne?”

Hickson hesitated, but confessed after some protest that it had
been at Christine’s house.

“But you don’t understand, you really don’t,” he said. “She has
been distracted by your reverses, and not hearing from you she has
turned to me, to Jack Ussher, to any one who could give her news
and help you, as she imagined--”

“I understand quite enough,” answered Riatt. “Thank Mr. Linburne
for his kind offer and say I have other plans; and tell Christine
she can have her absolution for nothing. I’ll give her a letter
that will put her right with every one.” And walking to a desk:

    “My dear Christine,” he wrote. “As you are aware, I have
    lost everything I have in the world, and though I know that
    to a spirit like your own poverty could not alter love, I
    must own that I, more experienced in privation, find that
    the situation has had a somewhat chilling effect upon my
    emotions. In short, my dear, I cannot begin life over again
    hampered by a wife. Thanking you for the loyalty with which
    you have stood by me in this crisis, and wishing you every
    happiness in the future, believe me

  “Sincerely yours,
  “R. M. RIATT.”

He handed the note to Hickson. “I think that, taken externally,
will effect a cure,” he said. “Good night, Hickson. I’m dead tired,
so you won’t mind my going to bed. Oh, and I’m off to-morrow, so I
shan’t see you again. Good-by.”

“Are you going home?” Hickson asked. But Max maintained a certain
vagueness as to his plans, which Hickson, having accomplished his
purpose, did not notice. He was very much pleased with the results
of his diplomacy. No one could say a word against Christine now. It
wasn’t her fault if the engagement was broken. Riatt was a noble
fellow--only, the noblest sometimes forgot these simple, practical
details.

The next day Riatt paid his bill at the hotel and went away without
leaving an address.

Few of us have driven past rows of suburban cottages, or through
streets lined by city flats, without considering how easy it would
be to sink one’s identity and become part of a new unknown life.
Riatt certainly had often thought of such a possibility and now he
put his plans into operation. He took no great precautions against
discovery, for he had no notion that any one would be particularly
interested in knowing his whereabouts. But he allowed those at home
to suppose he was working in New York, as he suggested to those in
New York that he had very naturally gone home.

As a matter of fact, he had taken a position with a new company
which was constructing aëroplanes for the market, into which in
past times he had put a little money. He hired a small flat in
Brooklyn, on the top floor, so that he had a glimpse of the harbor
from his sitting-room windows. He spent the last of his ready money
in buying out the dilapidated furniture of his predecessor; and
then with the assistance of the janitor’s wife, who gave him his
breakfast and did what she called “redding up the place,” he began
to live on the slim salary that his new job gave him.

Every afternoon he would take the new machines out and fly at
sunset over the sandy plains of Long Island, would dine cheaply at
some neighboring restaurant, and would return to his flat about
ten, go to bed early and be ready for work the next morning.

The only relaxation he allowed himself was the excitement of
hating Christine, to which he now devoted a great deal of time and
thought. It was the only thing that gave life any interest.

What was loss of money, after all, he said to himself, for an
able-bodied man? He could bear that well enough, if his life had
not been poisoned, if hope hadn’t been taken from him. She had
spoilt him for everything else. His success, if ever he should
succeed, would not bring him what most men wanted of success--a
companion and a home. He had nothing to work for, and yet nothing
to do except work. It was all his own fault, he said; and blamed
her all the more bitterly. He was glad, he thought, that he had
made it impossible for her to have a final interview with him; and
in his heart he could not forgive her for not having overcome the
obstacles to a meeting which he had set up in the last frenzied
days in New York.

“If I were of a revengeful disposition,” he said to himself, “I
should ask nothing better than that she should marry Linburne”; and
he concluded that he was not revengeful because he found he did not
want it. He made up his mind after the most prolonged consideration
that a woman such as Christine exercised the maximum influence for
evil; a thoroughly wicked woman could not help inspiring distrust,
but a nature like hers had enough good to attach you and yet left
you nothing to depend upon.

He read the papers, awaiting the announcement of her marriage, but
found no mention of her name except once, toward the end of May, a
short paragraph announcing that she had gone out of town for the
season.

It was soon after he had read this that he came home earlier than
usual and let himself into his little flat. The day had been
successful, a new device in the engine was working well and the
company had had a large order from abroad. And as usual, with the
prospect of success had come to him a bitter sense of the emptiness
of the future. He was thinking of Christine, and when he turned the
switch of the electric light, there she was. She was sitting in a
large shabby armchair, drawn close to the window, so that she could
look out at the river. She had taken off her hat, and her hair
shown particularly golden and her eyes looked brightly blue in the
sudden glare of light.

“You’re dreadfully late,” she said, quite as if she had charge of
his comings and goings. “I’ve been here hours and hours and hours.”

Now that he actually saw her before him, it was neither love nor
hate that he felt, but an undefinable and overmastering emotion
that seemed to petrify him, so that he stood there quite silent
with his hand on the switch.

“Well,” she went on, “aren’t you surprised to see me?”

He bent his head.

“Can you guess why I have come?”

He shook his head.

She looked a little distressed at this. “Then perhaps I’ve made a
mistake in coming.”

At this he spoke for the first time. “I should say that the chances
were that you had,” he said, and his tone was not agreeable.

The edge of his words seemed to give her back all her confidence.
“Now, how strange that you should not know why I’m here! I’ve come,
of course, to return your pearls.” He saw now, between the laces
of her summer dress that she was wearing them. “In common honesty
I could hardly keep them.” She put up her hands to the clasp, but
it did not yield at once to her touch, and she looked up at him. “I
think you’ll have to undo it for me,” she murmured, with bent head.

“I don’t want them,” he answered, with temper. “I never want to see
them again.”

“Nor me, either, perhaps?”

“Nor you either--perhaps.”

She rose and approached him. “I’ll keep them on one condition,
Max--that you take permanent charge of both of us.” Then seeing
that she had produced no change in his expression, she came very
close indeed. “There’s no use in looking like a stone image, Max.
It won’t save you.”

“Save me! And what is my danger?”

“I’m your danger, my dear.”

“Not any longer, Christine.”

“You mean you don’t love me any more?”

“Not a bit.”

At this she shifted her ground with admirable ease.

“In that case,” she said cheerfully, “we can talk the whole subject
over quite dispassionately.”

“Quite, if there were anything to talk over.”

“Only first,” she said, “aren’t you going to ask me to stay to
dinner? It’s very late, you know--”

“I don’t dine here,” he answered, “and I doubt if you would eat
very much at the restaurant where I take my meals.”

“Well, would you mind my going into the kitchen and making myself a
cup of tea?”

He gave his consent, but evinced no intention of accompanying
her. To see her like this, in his own home, where he had so often
imagined her being and where she would never be again, was torture
to him.

After an interval that seemed to him an eternity, she came back
flushed and triumphant, carrying a tray on which were tea, toast
and scrambled eggs.

“There,” she said, “don’t you think I’ve improved? Don’t you think
I’m rather a good housewife?”

The element of pathos in her self-satisfaction was too much for
him. “I’m afraid I’m not in the mood either for comedy or for
supper,” he said.

Her face fell. “I thought you’d be so hungry,” she observed gently.
“But no matter. Sit down and we’ll talk.”

“I know of nothing to talk about,” he returned, but he dropped
reluctantly into a hard, stiff chair opposite her.

“I’ll tell you what there is to talk about,” said Christine.
“Something that has never been mentioned in all the discussions
that have been taking place. And that is my feelings.”

“Your feelings,” Riatt began, rather contemptuously, but she
stopped him.

“No,” she said, “you shan’t say what you were going to. My
feelings, my feelings for you. You’ve told me that you did _not_
love me, that you despised me, that you _did_ love me, but you’ve
never asked how I felt to you.”

“But you’ve made it so clear. You felt that, in default of anything
else, I would do.”

She leaned across the table and looked at him gravely. “Max,” she
said, “I love you.”

He made no motion, not even one of contempt, and so she got up, and
coming round the table, she knelt down beside him and put her arms
tightly about him. Still he did not move, except that his hands,
which had been hanging at his sides, now gripped the edges of the
chair with the rigidity of iron, and he said in a voice which
sounded even in his own ears like that of a total stranger:

“What folly this is, Christine!”

“Why is it folly?”

“If you had said this six weeks ago, while I still had enough money
to--”

[Illustration: “Max,” she said, “I love you”]

“If I had said it then you wouldn’t have believed me.” He looked at
her; it was true.

“But now,” she went on rapidly, “you must believe me. If I come
now to live with you and work for you, no one can accuse me of
mercenary motives--not even you, Max. I shan’t get anything from
the bargain but you, and that is all I want.”

“This is madness,” said Riatt, trying not very sincerely to free
himself.

“Yes, of course it’s mad, like all really logical things,” she
answered. “But that’s the way it’s going to be. I love you, and I
am going to stay with you.”

“I couldn’t let you,” he said. “I couldn’t accept such a sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice, Max. That’s the first really stupid thing I ever
heard you say. It isn’t a sacrifice; it’s a result, a consequence
of the fact that I love you. It isn’t a question of my doing it,
or your letting me. It simply can’t be otherwise. The other things
I used to value--parties and pretty clothes and luxuries--they
were a sort of game I played because I did not know any other. But
only part of me was alive then. I was like a blind person; and
they were my stick; but now that I can see, the stick is just in
my way. It isn’t silly and romantic to believe in love, Max. The
hardest-headed, most practical people believe in it--every one who
has any sense really believes in it, when they find it. To be poor,
to be uncomfortable--it’s a price, but a small one to pay for love.
Isn’t that true--true, at least, as far as you’re concerned?”

“Oh, yes, as far as I’m concerned--”

“Then what right have you to think it’s not true to me? Don’t be
such a moral snob, Max. If love’s the best thing in the world for
you, it’s ever so much more so for me--I need it more.”

“Nobody could need it more than I do,” he answered, suddenly
clasping her to him.

“It’s the way it’s going to be, anyhow,” she murmured.

“I can’t let you go,” he said, as if arguing with an unseen auditor.

She nodded in a somewhat contracted space. “That’s it,” she
announced. “It has to be.”

It was only a few days later that Nancy Almar, driving past a
well-known house-furnishing shop on her way home to tea, was
surprised to observe her brother standing, with a salesman at
his elbow, in trancelike contemplation of a small white enameled
ice-box. With her customary decision, Nancy ordered her chauffeur
to stop, and entering the shop by another door she stood close
beside Hickson during his purchase of the following articles:
the ice-box, an improved coffee percolator and a complete set of
kitchen china of an extremely decorative pattern.

“Bless me, Ned,” she said suddenly in his ear, “might one ask when
you are going to housekeeping, and with whom?”

There was no denying that Ned’s start was guilty, and his manner
confused as he answered, “Oh, they’re not for me--”

The salesman who, perhaps, lacked tact, or possibly only wanted to
get away to wait on another customer, said at this point:

“And the address, sir? I have the name--Mrs. Max Riatt.”

“Riatt married!” cried Nancy. “But to whom? I thought he had
nothing left in the world.”

“He hasn’t,” answered Ned, hastily scribbling the address on a card
and handing it to the man.

“Oh, then he’s married some one who loves him for himself alone,
I know. That faithful sleek-headed girl from his home town. Won’t
Christine be angry when she hears it! She always likes her old
loves to pine a long time before they console themselves. Let us go
and tell her. Or is she away still?”

A rather sad smile lit up Hickson’s countenance as he followed his
sister to her motor. “I think she knows it,” he said.

Nancy put her hand on his arm. “Oh, dear, darling Ned,” she
said. “Get in and drive home with me and tell me all about it.
I knew he really never cared for Christine. She dazzled and
distressed him in about equal proportions. And yet I doubt if
Miss--Whatever-Her-Name-Was--will be very exciting--”

“It is not Miss Lane, who, by the way, I like and admire very
much,” said Ned, firmly.

“Who is it? Some one I know?”

“Yes, you know her.”

Something in his extreme solemnity transferred the idea to her.

“You don’t mean that Christine--”

He nodded. “I was at their wedding yesterday.”

“And where are they?”

“That’s it, Nancy. They’re living in a flat and they have no
servant--”

His sister leaned back and laughed heartily, and then composing
her countenance with an effort, she said: “My poor dear! But it’s
really all for the best. She won’t stay with him six months.”

“Nancy! She’ll stay with him forever.”

“Where is this flat?”

“I’ve promised not to tell. They don’t want to be bothered by all
of us.”

“They want to conceal their deplorable situation, of course. Well,
my dear, I can wait. Six months from now I’ll ask them to dine to
meet Linburne. Christine’s dresses will be a little out of fashion,
and they’ll come in a trolley car, and she’ll have a veil over her
head--”

“Six months from now Riatt may be on the way to making a nice
little sum. He has a very good thing, he thinks.”

“He’d better be quick about it. A flat in summer! Oh, the cinders
on the window-sill, and the sun on the roof, and the knowledge that
all of us are going out of town to lawns and lakes--He’d better be
quick, Ned.”

The motor had stopped before the door of Nancy’s little house which
was arrayed in its summer dress of red and white awnings, and red
and white window boxes. The footman had rung the bell, and was
waiting with his eye on the front door, so as to catch the right
second for opening the door of the motor.

“Nancy,” said her brother, with real horror in his tone, “you talk
as if you wanted her to fail.”

“I do. I do, of course.”

“Why? Do you hate her?”

Nancy nodded. “Yes, I hate her now. I didn’t used to.”

“It seems to me this is just the moment to admire her. It may be
foolish, but surely what she has done is noble, Nancy.”

The hall door opened and simultaneously the door of the motor, and
Nancy, putting out one foot, said over her shoulder:

“Oh, Ned, what a goose you are! Don’t you know any woman would have
done what she’s done, if she had the chance--the real chance?”

She ran up the steps and into her house, leaving her brother
staring after her in amazement.


THE END






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