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Title: The talkers

Author: Robert W. Chambers

Release date: December 18, 2025 [eBook #77500]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77500

Credits: Tom Trussel, Tim Lindell, Holy Family University and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALKERS ***

THE TALKERS

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

THE TALKERS

BY

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

AUTHOR OF “THE FLAMING JEWEL,” “THE SLAYER

OF SOULS,” “THE COMMON LAW,” “IN

SECRET,” “LORRAINE,” ETC.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1923,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1921,

BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY

THE TALKERS. I

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

MY FRIEND

ROBERT H. DAVIS

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

Transcriber’s Note

THE TALKERS

CHAPTER I

Sadoul’s only experiences in love had been gross. The cynic in him admitted nothing better.

Saturnine, without delusions, he went about his business in life, doing no particular good, and with a capacity for harm limited only by his talents.

He had been a little of everything, and always clever—art student, medical student, reporter, critic, writer—intelligent, adroit.

His was a mordant pen and brilliant; and it was for sale.

The query, “Have you read Sadoul’s article in the Wasp?” or in the View Point, or in some one of many irregular publications, was not an uncommon question in the metropolis.

Sadoul on this or that had become fairly familiar to a talkative public. He had something to say about everything and anything. His personal convictions made no difference. And he always was interesting.

The second year after the war ended he went to France again. At the University of Paris he took courses in psychology and philology: in the Ecole de Médecine he attended lectures. Clinics where hypnosis induced supplanted anesthesia in minor operations fascinated him.

But life, there, taught him nothing nobler to expect of a world already proven sordid by personal experience.

He entertained no delusions concerning mankind, its friendship, or its love; he neither expected nor desired anything of it except the saturnine amusement which he extracted from it, and which was his principal form of pleasure.

Then Chance tripped him up. Needing an English stenographer one day, the American firm on the rue Colchas sent him a girl equipped to take dictation.

It appeared that she was equipped for more than that. Sadoul silently went mad about her.

A sort of still terror also took possession of the girl—the hopeless immobility of a doomed thing, conscious of menace, apparently unable to escape.

Resistance seemed to hold only along certain lines.

Otherwise there was no defence. She had stepped from reality into a dream.

At his inquiry she told him her story. She did not wish to do so.

There was a ball in the Latin Quarter given by Julian’s that evening. Sadoul took her. She wore pale, lunar green; which went with her red hair and deep green eyes.

She had little to say to Sadoul’s friends. So reticent, so dazed she seemed that some, troubled and perplexed by her youth and beauty, suspected her of an addiction to drugs.

As for Sadoul, he had gone completely mad over her. He became her shadow everywhere. And, save only for certain lines of resistance, he seemed to have utterly mastered her.

But those occult lines held. The conflict almost crazed him—so pliant, so yielding she seemed, so obedient had he made her in all excepting certain lines. His dark face greyed at times under the strain. He abased himself and begged; he grinned and told her what to expect if she ever tricked him. The lines held.

His impression upon her had already been made; he could stamp it no deeper; the girl was not in love with him. She never would be. And he knew it.

She seemed to be a passionless little thing, her beauty a golden chrysalis containing nothing—the Psyche within aborted.

In the Latin Quarter, lack of animation is unpopular. There was about her that innocent detachment one notices in the preoccupation of a nun. Invited, at first she went everywhere with Sadoul.

After a while they were seldom invited where pleasure was noisy and untrammelled.

Early in spring a cabled offer from New York brought Sadoul’s affairs to a climax.

For three days Sadoul beat at her very soul to club it into submission. Then he crawled and wept. The lines held.

Again he battered her with his implacable will till her bruised, stupefied mind gave up. But the lines held.

She was in a daze when the civil ceremony was performed. He cabled to New York, giving up his quarters at the Fireside Club, and requesting his friend Pockman to secure for him a furnished housekeeping apartment on Riverside Drive.

He was having his way with her—or tried to believe he was having it.

And then Destiny pulled an ugly face at him. For the girl utterly refused to submit to the religious ceremony. And the old lines still held.

Early summer in Paris is paradise. But it had become a hell to Sadoul. He walked the earth like a damned soul chained to its victim.

In July he secured passage for them both.

CHAPTER II

George Derring, Julian Fairless, and Harry Stayr organized the Fireside Club in New York to gratify the instincts of the slovenly well-to-do. Limited membership and a long waiting-list told its successful story.

Derring also had financed the big new building on 57th Street, where the Fireside occupied the entire second floor.

The remainder of the building harboured members in apartments of one to three rooms. Some apartments had studios attached.

The Fireside Club was the common meeting-ground. Members could sprawl there in evening dress or bath-robe and slippers, all day and all night if they liked.

Men with an inclination to conversation and a disinclination for work seemed to compose the bulk of membership. Which gave to the Fireside that intellectual allure so impressive among the mindless millions.

The glamour of genius played about the Fireside like St. Anthony’s fire; its Thinkers and its Talkers found its exclusive luxury a paradise.

But a few common and irreverent folk characterised it as an intellectual doldrums where talent lay becalmed; or a maelstrom of talk where creative energy was sucked under and ultimately engulfed.

In midsummer a majority of the Fireside wandered far and wide in that restless quest for satisfaction characteristic of those who talk much and do little.

But always a sprinkling remained to loaf about the club. From which retreat, having dined well, the dusky tropic brilliancy of Manhattan’s streets lured them into endless wanderings through a thousand and one Metropolitan Nights.

Early in spring Sadoul had cabled from Paris that he was giving up his apartment there on May first. So somebody else moved in on that date.

Derring returned in June from a gastronomic tour of European Ritz’s. He mentioned meeting Julian Fairless in Paris, but had not seen Sadoul.

Before Sadoul returned, Julian Fairless brought back a budget of gossip, including news of him. Only a small percentage of Talkers are doers. Fairless was industriously both.

To a question from Stayr he replied that Paris, the Latin Quarter, and Julian’s were about the same as ever. A similar and dingy crowd infested the schools; similar masters gave similar instruction. All the unkempt ruck and reek of the atelier was there; massiers, models, blague, noise—nothing had changed except the individuals composing the mess.

Fairless, an incessant Talker, gossiped on without encouragement. Which is the instinct of the true Talker.

So-and-so was dead—killed at Verdun; so-and-so goes on crutches; old Clifford has a studio in the Court of the Dragon; Rowden died at Mons; Creed, now wealthy, lives in the Parc Monçeau and paints no more; the Beaux Arts is below par this year, and “our men” appear to be the pick; etc., etc. So Fairless chattered on and on, talking the talk of the Talkers.

He was still at breakfast, eating a soft-boiled egg out of its own shell, in the rather dirty English fashion.

“I sold several pictures to profiteers,” he continued; “Paris is lousy with nouveau riche. Derring bought two from me——”

Stayr remonstrated: “Derring isn’t nouveau riche.”

“Oh, no, but he played about with them. He wanted to see Julian’s. I took him over. He was disgusted with the models. Besides, he kept his hat on and they bawled him out.”

Fairless wallowed in a finger-bowl, dried his celebrated scarab ring:

“I saw quite a lot of Casimir Sadoul. He was doing philology at the University, but he associated mostly with Julian men.... He had a girl; went about everywhere with her. That’s a new idea for him, eh?”

“I suppose Sadoul did not wish to be conspicuous in the Quarter,” suggested Mortimer Lyken.

“This affair was conspicuous. Fancy the contrast!—that big, blackish, beetle-browed ruffian hooked up to a red-headed slip of a thing, so bashful that you got no more out of her than yes and no.”

“Did she really belong to Sadoul?” asked Stayr.

“Apparently. He behaved savagely if you looked at her. Somebody told me he got her by hypnotising her.”

“He knows how,” remarked Pockman. “He’s done it for me.”

“Bunk,” murmured Stayr, “—wasn’t it?”

“Well,” returned Pockman with his pallid smirk and hunching up his wide, bony shoulders, “I’ve performed minor operations on patients with Sadoul’s aid, inducing hypnosis instead of anesthesia.”

“The devil!” exclaimed Lyken. “That was Charcot’s graft.”

Fairless chattered on: “All the fellows concluded that Sadoul had some sort of hold on her. She seemed too pretty and refined to fall for a big, swarthy brute like Sadoul. She really was an exquisite little thing, Harry—such features, such skin, such hands and hair—-and the fellows all wild to paint her—and old Sadoul foxy and sardonic.... They say the souls of the damned cast no shadows. I fancy Sadoul’s girl still has a chance: he certainly was her shadow—always at her heels, always on the job.... Somebody said he had threatened to kill her if she ever fooled him. But I think Sadoul’s more likely to beat up the man in the case.”

Fairless got up from the table.

“Now, if you fellows care to see what I brought back——”

A few of the other men rose and followed Fairless upstairs to his studio where Angelo, his factotum, had already placed the first picture upon an easel.

As usual, all the elements of popularity were apparent in the picture—a typical Julian Fairless canvas, full of that obvious charm so attractive to an obvious public, so acceptable to the professional critic.

Fairless lit a cigarette and sat down to chat with Sidney Pockman, who didn’t care for pictures.

“Where did Sadoul get that girl you mentioned?” he inquired, the smirk still stamped on his flat, colourless face.

“In Paris.”

“How did she happen to be there?”

“Oh, a story of sorts. She and mama were living in London when the Huns dropped bombs. Mama was blown into unpleasant gobs all over the house. Then it was canteen work in Paris. Then no job. Then Sadoul ran into her. That’s the story.”

“She’s English?”

“American, I believe. I couldn’t tell by her speech. She’s a dumb youngster.”

“What’s he going to do with her? Marry her?”

“Well, I don’t know, Pockman. I fancy it’s high time—if he means to do it at all.”

“Oh, that sort?”

“She doesn’t look it. She’s so dumb she seems almost drugged. Maybe it’s true he’s obtained some sort of hold on her. I don’t know.”

“I had a letter from Sadoul last week,” said Pockman. “He must be on his way back here by this time.”

Fairless nodded inattentively, motioning Angelo to take away the picture and replace it by another.

Pockman seemed to grin at the new picture—or perhaps his pallid smirk was habitual.

“What do you get for that kind of painting?” he inquired.

“Five thousand.”

“Did it take you very long?”

“Two mornings.”

Pockman laughed: “Yours is a soft graft, Julian.”

“So is yours, you pill-rolling fakir!”

“Not very soft, so far. But it ought to be when I succeed in grafting the nymphalic gland to a corpse and break fifty-fifty with the New Testament.”

“Isn’t Voronoff grafting glands and things?”

“Some glands; not the nymphalic. And that’s the whole problem, because it governs——” Pockman hesitated, shrugged: “—Well, adios, Julian! Much obliged for a view of your new pictures. Hope you sting the profiteers.”

“You bet,” nodded Fairless complacently.

But July is too late for an “exhibition.” Besides, the great American profiteer had been rolling in art since the war ended, and, now satiated after an orgy of antique-buying during the past winter and spring, had begun to build bungalows. October or the middle of November would see the town crawling again with newly rich. There was plenty of time to prepare pasture for absent cattle—ample time for Julian Fairless to plan his show. Besides, he desired a vacation at Greenwich, in the vicinity of Veronica Weld.

It was there, early in August, that Fairless again ran across Pockman entering the railroad station.

Among other items of gossip he learned that Sadoul had returned to New York, bringing with him his red-headed companion, and, furthermore, that the red-headed one had suddenly disappeared within the first week.

“Sadoul’s a bad actor if you do things to him,” added Pockman. “He’s as vindictive as hell. I’m wondering what will happen if he ever finds a man with her.... Or finds her again, even alone.”

“What’s Sadoul doing?” inquired Fairless, pleasantly entertained with the account of another man’s misfortune.

“Oh, he’s writing his free-lance stuff, as usual, and hanging around my laboratory.”

“Grouching?”

“No; he’s rather quiet. I wouldn’t care to be the Johnny in the case.... Or the girl, either.”

Fairless shrugged; then, inattentive: “Where are you bound for? Town?”

“I came up here to get a gland.”

“A what?”

“That young fellow who was killed here yesterday in the motor accident.... You heard? Well, he proved a healthy subject, and his nymphalic gland was of no further use to him. So I came up to get it.”

“What good is a dead man’s gland?” demanded Fairless.

“The gland isn’t dead.”

“What!”

“Not at all. I’ve got it in this grip packed in ice. I can keep it alive for weeks in a refrigerator.”

“What for?”

“Graft it on some senile subject and add twenty years to his life.”

“It’s rather a loathsome business, yours,” said Fairless frankly.

“Not at all. You’ll need a new gland yourself some day. When you do, give me a ring.”

Pockman smirked at the disgusted painter, picked up his satchel, and stalked off at a stiff, crazy gait characteristic of him. Stayr always said it reminded him of Holbein’s Dance of Death.

When Pockman reached New York he telephoned Sadoul from his laboratory:

“Come on over; I’ve got a lively nymphalic on ice. Some gland, believe me, Sadoul.”

But Sadoul seemed incurious and morose, and Pockman could not persuade him.

So the latter continued to examine and caress his rather ghastly acquisition, and Sadoul’s powerful, bony fingers drove his pen through a mordant article destined to stimulate a moribund periodical in the senile stage, kept alive only by Derring’s money.

Sadoul’s and Pockman’s remedies for inanition were, after all, similar: gall and gland to stimulate the decrepit and delay ultimate dissolution.

Derring, financing The Revolt to please a rather handsome woman with bobbed hair, had found himself let in for a deal of trouble.

She of the bobbed hair suggested that Sadoul “put a kick into the damn thing.” Derring, at Newport, wired assent.

Sadoul, in seething silence, gave himself to the job with a fierce persistence which made The Revolt smoke enough to attract attention.

But it was all smoke: the fire itself smouldered in Sadoul, not in the magazine. All that long summer and autumn Sadoul watched and waited and burned. His olive skin and black eyes grew more shadowy; one noticed his teeth under the crisp beard when he smiled.

He was usually at the Fireside Club in the evenings, but he lived elsewhere—in a big, handsome housekeeping apartment, according to Julian Fairless, taken, probably, on account of the red-headed one, now vanished.

Twice, already, since her disappearance, Sadoul mistook others with auburn tresses for the slender runaway for whom his smouldering gaze was always searching amid the multitudes by night and day.

The third time there was no mistake. They met face to face on Fifth Avenue, the red-headed one and Casimir Sadoul.

“Where have you been?” said Sadoul, smiling and offering his hand. But his dark skin had turned greyish.

After the first startled glance, reassured by his smile and offered hand, the girl seemed inclined to meet the issue with laughing and youthful defiance.

She told him frankly that she had been bored; that she desired to enjoy herself like a modern girl, and meant to do so.

“The modern girl,” said Sadoul, laughing, “is one who is determined to have a good time in the world, no matter at what cost.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she conceded. “The trouble is that I don’t know how to begin.”

“Haven’t you begun in all these months?” he inquired, fixing his black eyes on her.

She laughed, made a childish face at him, mocked him in friendly fashion.

“I’m not going to let you resume your way with me,” she said.

“Will you let me lunch with you, Gilda?”

“Why, yes. It’s nearly one, now. It’s quite agreeable to see you again. I’ve sometimes wondered how it would seem....”

The Ritz was only a block away.

She was a piquant figure in her furs; and the touch of turquoise to her hat made her red hair redder and her white skin whiter as she faced the November east-wind beside Sadoul.

The raw air smelled of snow, but no flakes fell.

“So—you’re having a good time,” said Sadoul, showing his teeth in a sudden smile.

“I told you I haven’t learned how, yet.”

“Will you let me try again?”

“Not—that way,” she said, colouring.

“No; that was a mistake, Gilda.”

She laughed in surprise and relief: “So you admit it?” she cried.

“I’ve got to, haven’t I? You left me flat.”

“I had to.”

She was animated and friendly at luncheon—perfectly frank as always heretofore, not untruthful, not evasive, but gaily declining information concerning her recent career and her present domicile.

“It’s none of your business,” she said decisively. “I can always find you if I care to.”

This attitude seemed to amuse him. He appeared to her to be very much changed, and decidedly for the better.

He said: “George Derring is giving a dance at his studio apartment tonight. If you care to come you’ll have one of those ‘good times’ you’re always wishing for.”

“Who is George Derring?”

“An intellectual panhandler.”

“What?”

“A beggar begs food from door to door; Derring, brainless and resourceless, begs his daily modicum of amusement from friend to friend.... He’s very rich. He has to be.”

“That sounds more like you,” she said with an uneasy smile.

“Oh, no; I’m off that stuff. Gilda, you’d better come to Derring’s dance. It will be gay—a masked affair. All the men dress as kings; all the women as queens. You have that wonderful green costume you wore at the Julian ball, haven’t you?”

She nodded. Her eyes, which were emerald green, widened.

“I’d like to go,” she said.

“Very well. But where am I to call for you?”

At that she laughed outright. “I’ll take a taxi and drive to your apartment. But I shall not go in.”

He made no attempt to persuade her. They fixed the hour amicably; she told him in her frank way that if he followed her and attempted to spy on her, she’d move elsewhere.

So, when luncheon ended, he lifted his hat and turned away, leaving her to find her own taxi. Which she did, and drove to the matinée for which she had a ticket, but where, alas! nobody awaited her.

For, even after all these months alone, and free to seek pleasure where she wished, the acme, so far, of the “good time” so ardently desired by her was a matinée; and the most delirious dissipation a drive on Fifth Avenue all alone in a small limousine car hired and steered entirely by herself.

Sadoul’s face was ghastly when he entered Pockman’s laboratory, and the latter noticed it and commented.

“Gilda Greenway is coming to Derring’s party with me,” he said.

“Oh, is she back?”

“No. I met her on the street.”

Pockman cast a stealthy glance at Sadoul, then continued to filter the contents of one test-tube into another.

“You were—er—glad to see her?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Pockman, “you have a funny way of showing it. I’d run if I met you in a dark alley.... Hand me that smeared slide, will you—and that bowl of Reakirt’s solution——”

CHAPTER III

A masked figure followed them noiselessly upstairs and slipped behind the portières to observe them.

Sutton, face to face with his first real adventure, was fascinated by the little Queen in Green—not prepared, perhaps, to encounter such youthful shyness at Derring’s. And now he attempted to discover her identity, rather roughly, but she evaded his curiosity and ardent advances, and coaxed him to show her Derring’s quarters.

The masked man watched them out of narrow eye-slits. They visited the further rooms; then, having satisfied her curiosity, the Queen in Green turned on her dainty heel.

As the two retraced their steps, she prettily avoided Sutton’s love-making. It was only after he unmasked, and they had stopped by the portières—so close that the man behind them could have stabbed them—that the girl turned impulsively to Sutton, put her arms around his neck, and took his kiss as passionately as he gave it.

It lasted but a second. She stepped back against the portières. Both seemed hotly embarrassed.

A second later the Queen in Green was readjusting her gilt crown and laughing at some light jest he had made—he could not recall what it was afterward.

Below, the orchestra had begun again. He looked at her; she nodded. They waited to catch the beat of the music. She was still laughing when she placed her smooth little hand in his. But as he encircled her waist she drew a swift, agonised breath and lurched forward against him.

He reeled under the sudden impact; her silk-clad body sagged, her masked head fell backward, and then, as he caught her, the Queen in Green collapsed in his arms.

He half dragged her to an armchair. One of her slippers dropped off.

For a moment he stood helpless, looking down at her; then, anxious, and having had no experience with people who faint, he hurried downstairs, perplexed, to find Sadoul, who had brought the girl to the party.

After-supper-dancing was beginning again in the studio, and the music seemed unusually noisy. He tried to discover Sadoul, shouted his name, but everybody was still masked and Sutton hunted for him in vain.

Finally he continued on through the studio into the supper room to get a glass of ice-water, and saw Harry Stayr still browsing there.

As Sutton left the table, carrying the water, he said to Stayr in a worried voice:

“That Queen in Green—the one Sadoul brought—has fainted in Derring’s quarters.”

“Is she soused?” inquired Stayr, busy with food.

“No.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know. She wears a green mask. Casimir Sadoul brought her. If you see him tell him she’s ill upstairs.”

“Put some ice down her back,” advised Stayr, reaching for the salad.

Sutton hastened on upstairs, hoping to find the lady better.

The Queen in Green lay face upward on the floor—a crumpled heap of pale green silks. Her ruddy hair was dishevelled; her gilt crown had rolled across the rug.

There was a day-bed beside the rose-shaded lamp. Sutton carried her to it, laid her there and smoothed her clothing.

Under the mask her lips and skin were livid, but through the eye-slits she seemed to be watching him.

He flushed, spoke to her, waited, then stripped off the green silk mask. It shocked him to discover that her eyes were open.

“That’s a funny way to faint,” he thought. And he lifted the glass and tipped it, spilling ice-water over the upturned face.

The water washed off some cosmetic but produced no other effect.

Scared, Sutton tried to find her pulse, and failed; tried to locate her heart and couldn’t. There was nothing to loosen. He opened a window and came back to her. Then he went out to the gallery and shouted down through the clatter and music:

“Sadoul! Sadoul! Come up here!”

A masked figure in crown and crimson robes detached itself and came forward under the gallery, looking up.

“Is that you, Sadoul?”

“Yes. What’s the trouble?”

“Your girl—the girl you brought with you—has fainted. She’s up here. Bring Pockman, too.”

“What do you mean, my girl?” inquired Sadoul.

“The Queen in Green. You brought her, didn’t you?”

“Oh! That girl? What’s the matter with her?”

“I don’t know. You’d better find Pockman and come up. I don’t know what ails her.”

Sutton went back to the day-bed and gazed nervously at the Queen in Green. Robes, stockings, slippers, jewels, all were green. Even her strangely open eyes seemed golden green as a cat’s.

Sadoul and Pockman, in gorgeous costumes but unmasked, entered together in a few moments.

“She doesn’t seem to be breathing, and I can’t find any pulse,” explained Sutton. “What on earth is the matter with her?”

Pockman bent over; Sadoul and Sutton watched him. She wore no stays—there was not much to her bodice, anyway—only a trifle more of her body visible when Pockman stripped off her waist than the waist had already revealed.

The two men watched him; the leisurely certainty of everything he was doing preoccupied Sutton.

“Why, she’s dead,” said Pockman coolly.

Sutton stared aghast.

Sadoul said: “Well, of all rotten luck!—What the devil was the matter with her?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You mean—mean to say that this girl is dead!” faltered Sutton.

“She’s been dead for more than twenty minutes.... I don’t know what killed her——”

Sadoul glanced up at Pockman, who was staring intently at him.

Sutton said miserably: “Is there anything possible to do—any other and surer test to be made?”

“This girl is dead,” repeated Pockman, still looking significantly at Sadoul. Then he shrugged his bony shoulders, went over to the telephone and called his laboratory. While waiting, he said to Sadoul: “Here’s my chance, by God! It will take about three hours,” he added, “—and half an hour more——” His connection interrupted; he asked for somebody named Stent, got him immediately, talked to him unhurriedly.

When he came back he asked Sutton to go into Derring’s bedroom and get a sheet from the bed.

Sutton brought it; Pockman covered the recumbent figure decently, concealing the face also.

He said to Sutton: “Sadoul and I realise that this is a good opportunity for me to try something I am interested in.... It can’t harm her, anyway——”

“Do you mean that there is any chance of reviving her?” asked Sutton, his voice still hoarse from shock.

“Well—she’s dead.... Figure it out for yourself, Sutton.” And to Sadoul: “This is a damned unpleasant episode for old Derring and his party——”

... “Who was that girl?” interrupted Sutton, harshly.

“Her name was Gilda Greenway,” replied Sadoul, with composure; but his long fingers were working at the gilt fringe on his robe.

“Has she any family?” inquired Pockman.

“No, I believe not——”

“Well—what the devil!—She had a home somewhere, I suppose!”

Sadoul shook his head: “Possibly. I don’t know where she lived.”

Sutton opened the telephone directory. There were only two Greenways in the book. He called them up. Neither knew anything of Gilda Greenway.

Pockman turned to Sutton: “What were you doing with her up here?” he enquired with one of his pallid smirks.

“We were dancing—or going to. She wanted to look down at the floor from the gallery when they began throwing confetti.”

“Oh, sure,” said Pockman, but his pasty, flat features bore no trace of the sneer in his voice.

“We came up to the gallery,” continued Sutton, “and watched the battle of confetti and flowers. Then she peeped into Derring’s quarters and desired to inspect them.

“It was harmless curiosity—no matter what you’re thinking, Pockman. She looked the place over; we were standing over there by the portières. She was laughing; and then the music began downstairs—and we were starting to dance up here.... And then—good God!——”

“Just like that,” nodded Pockman, softly.

There was something subtly horrible about the vernacular as he used it in the dim room where death was. But death had become an old story to Pockman, and there were for him neither thrills nor shocks in the spectacle of human dissolution—nothing to awe or subdue or arouse emotion—only a fact of routine interest to a student preoccupied by original research.

He had a pale, flat, fat face, smoothly shaven; washed-out eyes; a tall, ill-made figure with very wide, square shoulders, and scanty, untidy hair of a faded hue.

He looked almost stealthily at Sutton, now, who, quite overcome by the tragedy, sat staring at the sheeted figure of the girl he had been laughing with half an hour ago.

“If you don’t feel like dancing,” said Pockman pleasantly, “stay here until my man Stent arrives. Sadoul and I are going down.”

“You don’t mean you are going to dance?”

“Sure,” replied Pockman, adjusting his mask. “Why not?”

Sadoul said nothing. After a moment he slowly put on his mask.

“Aren’t you going to tell Derring?” demanded Sutton.

“I’m no crape-hanger,” replied Pockman. “Why spoil Derring’s party? If you insist on staying here until Stent comes, you’d better lock the door or some of those fair young things downstairs will get the shock of their variegated lives.”

He started downstairs in his crown and fluttering yellow robes. Sadoul, in flamboyant crimson, followed him. After a moment Sutton got up and locked the door behind them, stood by it, looking back over his shoulder at the form on the day-bed, then he slowly returned to his chair.

The decency that kept him beside a dead stranger was purely emotional.

He gazed miserably at the shrouded figure. After a long while he rose, picked up her gilded crown and the little green slipper. The silken crescent which had masked her still lay beside her bed. This also he recovered, and then reseated himself, holding her toys in his lap, his boyish eyes full of tears.

It was all very well for a graduate physician like Pockman to exhibit callousness—and for the saturnine Sadoul—he of the long, horse face and black eyes and Vandyke—he of the murderous, mocking pen—the literary vivisectionist and jester at all lovable human frailties—it was well enough for him to remain obtuse.

But a plain young man, like Sutton, continues to be emotional, whatever garments of experience still clothe him.

He was horribly, profoundly upset.

Several times an unseen clock in a farther room struck a treble note in the stillness.

Faintly, too, came music and tumult from the gaiety below. Even the odour of roses penetrated the locked room.

Sutton, staring at the covered form, was thinking it rotten hard luck to be dead so young. He wondered who she could have been; who were her people, her friends; what hearts were going to break for such an ending as this.

He wondered whether she had been respectable—was fiercely inclined to believe so—wondered why she had consented to come to Derring’s party with Sadoul.

When again the silvery treble of the unseen clock sounded twice, Sutton glanced at his own timepiece. It lacked a few minutes of two o’clock. Gilda Greenway had been dead three hours and a half.

He rose and lifted a corner of the sheet. Her lower jaw had dropped. Horrified, he covered the dead face and went back to his chair, trembling.

CHAPTER IV

Somebody knocked at the door; Sutton rose nervously, unlocked and opened it, dazzled by the outer lights.

Figures in brilliant silks entered—Pockman, Sadoul, a man and a young woman in street clothes, carrying valises, and George Derring wearing violet royal robes and tinsel crown, his vizard pushed up over his bald forehead, a monocle shining in his pallid face.

“What the devil is all this?” he demanded. “If the girl is actually dead she can’t remain in my place. The thing to do is to call up the proper authorities——”

“Keep your shirt on,” interrupted Pockman calmly. “Come on in, Miss Cross. You can change your dress in the next bedroom. Come over here, Stent. Unpack your things on that table——”

“Is—this girl—dead?” faltered Derring, peering at the sheeted shape through his monocle.

Pockman consulted his watch: “She’s been dead for three hours and forty minutes, George.”

“Why didn’t you t-tell me?” stammered Derring. “What are you going to do to her? This isn’t a morgue. It isn’t a place for autopsies——”

Sadoul drew the stammering man aside: “If you’ll keep your mouth shut, Pockman will see to it that this affair is kept out of the newspapers. Go downstairs, George, and when your party breaks up, come back here and we’ll fix it up for you so there’ll be no notoriety or scandal.”

Derring, white and inclined to tremble, suffered himself to be led to the door and thrust out. Sadoul turned the key with a grimace and came back to where Pockman stood aiding his assistant, Stent, to unpack the valises.

A case of surgical instruments was laid on the table. Beside this Stent placed a miniature porcelain refrigerator, several basins, packets of sterilized gauze, other objects unfamiliar to Sutton.

The young woman whom Pockman had addressed as Miss Cross came back from the further bedroom clad in the white garb of a hospital nurse. She seemed to know what was to be done with the several packages from the valises and became exceedingly busy.

Pockman and Sadoul, carrying other packets, went away together toward the bathroom, leaving Sutton standing alone by the table.

The efficient Miss Cross paid him no attention. She first unrolled a rubber sheet and then began to undress the dead girl.

Sutton pivoted in his tracks and went slowly toward the bathroom, where Pockman and Sadoul, their masquerade finery discarded, were dressing in the white robes of operating surgeons. A smell of disinfectants pervaded the place.

“What are you preparing to do?” asked Sutton.

“Stick around and see,” replied Pockman flippantly. His white robes and flat, fat face made a most unpleasant impression upon Sutton.

Sadoul, also, was ready now; they returned to the room of death.

“If you’re squeamish,” remarked Sadoul, with his odd, shadowy smile, “you’d better leave the room, Sutton.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I? Nothing. Pockman, however, is going to try something.”

“If she’s already dead, what more is there to try?” asked the other huskily.

“Stand over here and watch. We shan’t be long.”

“Is—is this sort of thing legal, Sadoul?”

“Certainly. At least there’s no law forbidding it. Pockman is a graduate physician. There are no laws forbidding a qualified physician, who has been called in to do his best, from doing his best. And this is Pockman’s one best bet.”

“But—after death—what is there a physician can do?”

“What is death?” asked Sadoul, with his dark and shadowy smile.

There ensued a silence while the washing of the unclothed body was accomplished and the corpse laid face downward. One by one Pockman took certain sterilized instruments from Miss Cross, employed each with incredible deftness. Sutton had averted his head as Pockman made a tiny, deep incision at the nape of the girl’s neck. The hemorrhage was slight; Sadoul opened the drawer of the miniature refrigerator, Miss Cross took from it something that she carefully placed in a vessel filled with liquid. Twice she tested the temperature of the liquid.

“Ready,” she said in her low, pleasant voice.

With his forceps Pockman picked out from the liquid in the vessel something that seemed to resemble a small oviform body—like a lump of animal tissue, and inserted it in the incision which he had made at the nape of the dead girl’s neck.

Deftly the wound was closed, sterilized, covered with a film of transparent liquid which instantly hardened. A few drops of blood had flowed freely.

“All right,” murmured Pockman, “turn her over.”

He cast another brief glance at the dead girl, then walked back to the bathroom to wash.

Sadoul followed him, wiping his dark, bony hands on a bit of gauze. Sutton, feeling slightly nauseated, turned away from the body which Miss Cross was now swathing in a sterilized sheet.

He stood at one of the darkened and dripping windows, staring out. It was raining, but a few large snowflakes slanted through the downpour.

The odours in the room—the taint of death—were becoming insufferable; he went to the door, drew the bolt, and stepped outside onto the balcony.

The ball was over, the music gone. The last of the maskers were leaving the studio—a loud-voiced group lingering in the supper room, another near the entrance hall.

Old Derring, in his rumpled royal robes, his crown on the back of his ruddy, bald head, stood nervously receiving the adieux and noisy gratitude of his guests. The air reeked with perfume of roses and scent of wine; the floor was littered with débris of finery and confetti.

When at length Sutton returned to the room, the daybed was empty; Stent had already repacked both valises and was putting his hat on and buttoning his overcoat. Pockman, Sadoul, and Miss Cross had gone into the farther bedroom, where a light burned. Sutton could see them through the vista of the connecting rooms, moving quietly about, dressed now in their street clothing—excepting Miss Cross, who still wore her nurse’s garb.

When he went in to the chamber where they were gathered he discovered that the dead girl had been laid in Derring’s guest-room bed.

She seemed asleep there on the pillow; her eyes were decently closed, the bed sheets drawn to her throat. Only her wax-like skin betrayed her condition.

As Sutton entered the room, Pockman turned toward him:

“Your views concerning the dignity and tragedy of death,” he said, with that ever present undertone of irony, “are the popular and accepted views. So if you don’t think it very charitable to leave this lady all alone here during the night, why not sit up with her until I return in the morning?”

Sutton flushed. “Somebody ought to remain here out of mere decency,” he said slowly.

“All right. It’s up to you. Miss Cross is to stay for another hour; and I’d really be obliged to you if you’d stand guard here tonight and keep old Derring from making a fuss. Will you?”

After a silence: “What was it you did to her?” enquired Sutton in a constrained voice, not yet under full control.

“Nothing illegal. I am within my rights. Ask Miss Cross. If nothing happens it won’t make any difference, anyway. If anything should happen, why, I don’t care how much it’s talked about. Do you, Sadoul?”

“Rather not,” said Sadoul, with that almost imperceptible smile on his dark face, that waned and waxed like a shadow.

“What could happen?” demanded Sutton. “Death is death—isn’t it?”

Pockman shrugged, gathered up his discarded carnival robes, went over and gazed at the dead girl with a sort of mockery in his washed-out eyes—yet his silent scrutiny was sufficiently intent to reveal some graver motive—something deeper seated than sardonic indifference. Presently he turned away, with a characteristic hunching of his shoulders.

Sadoul followed him; Miss Cross went to the door with them and there they remained in low-voiced consultation until interrupted by the nervous entrance of Derring, still tremulous from shock but beginning to choke with indignation.

And his anger knew no bounds when he learned what disposition had been made of the dead girl; only a threat of newspaper notoriety hinted by Pockman checked his rush to the telephone.

“If she’s dead,” he kept repeating, “what the hell do you fellows mean by keeping her here in my apartment? It isn’t done, dammit all——”

“You go to the Ritz tonight,” counselled Sadoul. “She’ll be taken away tomorrow morning without any fuss or scandal. Tell your man to pack a bag—there’s a good fellow. Be a sport, Derring. Pockman is trying something he never had a chance to try——”

“Confound him, are there no hospitals and morgues? What does he mean by using my place to try his ghastly experiments——”

“Oh, shut up,” said Sadoul, and shoved the master of the house through the door.

A fat man-servant arrived at his shrill summons, went into his master’s bedroom, packed a suitcase, and carried it out again, breathing laboriously. Sadoul and Pockman also put on their hats and went out. Presently the front grille clanged distantly. Miss Cross closed and locked the apartment door and came back to the chamber of death, where Sutton was standing, fumbling with a rose-bud which he had found in a silver vase.

“Yes,” said Miss Cross encouragingly, “lay it on her chest if you choose.”

He dried the stem with his handkerchief and laid the blossom on the white coverlet close to her snowy chin.

Miss Cross hovered over the dead girl, touched the bright hair here and there, deftly curled and brought a saucy, wandering tendril under graver discipline, more suitable to the circumstances.

“She was very pretty, wasn’t she?” remarked Miss Cross in her low, pleasant voice, “—a very lovely young thing, physically—really quite perfect, I should say.”

“What—what was it Pockman did to her in the other room?” enquired Sutton in a strained voice.

Miss Cross had taken a chair. She was a healthy, vigourous young woman, with black eyes and hair, a rosy and cheerful mouth, and a tip-tilted nose.

Replying to Sutton’s question, she said: “If I answer you, I don’t believe you’ll entirely understand.”

“Was it a precautionary test?”

“Oh, no. We all knew she was quite dead. Dr. Pockman desired to try something never before attempted——” She looked up at Sutton, hesitated. “—Why don’t you smoke?” she suggested. “You are dreadfully nervous. It’s no disrespect to her. Seat yourself, Mr. Sutton, and light a cigarette. I’m sure if she could speak she’d tell you to do so too, poor lamb.”

CHAPTER V

Sutton sat in an armchair, a cigarette between his fingers, but he could not bring himself to light it.

Miss Cross was seated rather nearer the bed. Behind them a small Chinese lamp burned, casting a topaz tinted light over the dead girl’s folded hands.

“Poor baby,” repeated Miss Cross, leaning forward and stroking the clasped fingers with a caressing touch. “Rigour has not yet set in,” she added, “nor is there any discolouration of the skin.... Aren’t you going to light your cigarette, Mr. Sutton?”

“I’d rather not, I think.”

Miss Cross bent lower and looked wistfully into the girl’s face. “You pathetic little thing,” she murmured. “I wish you could open your eyes.”

She resumed her position in her chair presently, and sat silently smoothing out her white clothing.

“Haven’t you any idea what it was that Dr. Pockman attempted to do?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Would you care to have me explain it as well as I am able? I’m not very clear at explanations, but it will help pass away the time.”

She settled herself back for her narrative.

“First of all—I am not a graduate nurse, Mr. Sutton. I was merely a probationer at St. Stephen’s. Dr. Pockman suggested that I assist in his research work. Microscope mostly. That’s what I’ve been doing. Dr. Pockman is a most remarkable man.”

Sutton’s acquiescent nod was a very slight one. He did not care for Pockman personally.

The nurse continued.

“What Metchnikoff began, what Claude Bernard continued, what Martens, Beyer, and Voronoff did, and are doing, Sidney Pockman is continuing. But all this means very little to a layman, I suppose?” she added amiably.

“I’ve heard of Metchnikoff,” he said.

“Let us go farther back than Metchnikoff—farther back than any man, living or dead—farther back, even, than mankind itself—millions of years back,” said Miss Cross, smiling.

“I’ll tell you nothing about the origin of life—the first glimmer of life on this planet. Nobody can do more than speculate concerning the birth of life.

“But the living thing which most closely approaches that form of life which first appeared on earth is a tiny, microscopic being composed of a soft mass and a nucleus; and is in the shape of a cell.

“It is called an amœba; it divides itself—reproduces swarms of its fellows by means of perpetual division. And it never dies.”

Sutton seemed dully astonished.

“It’s true,” she said. “The amœba never dies. Voronoff himself says decisively: ‘The breath of life which for the first time gave animation to matter, held nothing but life. Nature, at that time, knew nothing of death.’”

Miss Cross leaned over toward Sutton, resting her elbows on her knees, and laid one forefinger across the palm of the other hand.

“It’s this way,” she explained; “the human body is not an individual entity; it is an ensemble composed of billions of cells of different sorts, each cell alive, each cell invested with its own special but limited functions and duties, and each cell busy night and day.

“The human body is a society, a state, a republic of living cells, ruled by the delicate cells that compose the brain.

“The primitive type of cell is the protozoan. Our body’s various and highly organized cells are all derived from the elements of the initial cell.

“The initial cell is deathless. But its highly sensitive and more complicated descendants which compose our tissues have been greatly modified, and their life depends upon the assent and good will of all of the cells of our body.... I wonder if I am making it clear to you, Mr. Sutton?”

“Perfectly.”

“Well, then, among all these billions of living and highly specialized workers called cells, which compose that beehive, or anthill community we call the human body, are many primitive cells without business or profession, and they reproduce themselves continually. These are the white blood corpuscles and the conjunctive cells; and they are always at war with the more highly developed cells.

“When they win that war, as they always do in the end, we die.”

“What use are these conjunctive cells, then?” asked Sutton, mildly interested.

“They are the regular army of the body-republic, and they fight and slay foreign microbes which invade us. When they become unruly, insurgent, and a powerful majority, they attack their own fellow citizens. Then the body-republic falls. That is death, Mr. Sutton.”

He said nothing, but the nurse saw he was more or less interested. She said:

“What controls and keeps in order these billions of citizen-cells in our body-republic are fluids from certain vital glands. If these glands are removed, the cells go crazy and murder one another, and we die.”

“What are these vital glands?” he enquired.

“The thyroid in the throat; four small para-thyroid glands no bigger than a needle’s eye near it; the two small supra-renal glands; the little pituitary gland under the brain; the pineal gland in the middle brain, which, a million years ago, was perhaps a third eye; and the gland called the metathoracic or nymphalic gland, which lies deep in the nape of the neck and which means instant death if injured or removed.... And that, Mr. Sutton, was what caused this poor child’s death.”

“What?”

“You were not watching closely, were you, when Dr. Pockman operated?”

“Not—closely, no.”

“You did not see him draw a long, gold-headed steel pin from where it was imbedded in the back of her neck?”

“Good God! I didn’t see that!”

“It had been, probably, in her hair—to hold on her crown, perhaps, and had become dislodged. If she threw back her head suddenly it might have driven the pin deep into her neck.... Well, there it was, under the soft, bright hair at the nape of her neck. Death must have been instantaneous.”

“Did Pockman tell you I was dancing with her at the time—or about to—I already had placed my arm around her. She was laughing at something I said.... I remember, now, that she threw back her head and laughed.... And crumpled up in my arms.... It is horrible—horrible beyond words!——”

Miss Cross nodded. “Yes, Dr. Pockman told me. No wonder you are upset.... I really wish you’d light your cigarette.” But he shook his head.

After a moment he looked up at the nurse in pallid inquiry.

She nodded. “Now I’ll try to explain what Dr. Pockman did,” she said in her cheerful voice. “He telephoned for Mr. Stent and me. You saw that miniature refrigerator?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, Mr. Sutton. Death stops the heart and produces functional discord of the organs. The individual is dead then. Very well. But the several tissues composing that individual’s body are not dead yet. Not at all. Hair continues to grow; the skin is alive; the bones retain vitality; the brain, the glands, almost all the organs still remain alive as long as eighteen hours.

“And if these organs are removed from the body before their own individual death, they may be kept alive for weeks if preserved in a zero temperature. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Yes, they retain all their vital energy for weeks.”

There was a silence.

“Shall I tell you what Dr. Pockman accomplished?”

“Please.”

“Dr. Pockman’s original research is in the direction of gland grafting. Today a girl died at St. Stephen’s, of a fractured skull. Dr. Pockman is externe there. He operated but could not save her. However, finding the nymphalic gland uninjured and alive, he removed it in a jar of Ringer’s liquid maintained at a temperature of some forty degrees.

“I preserved this living gland in the refrigerator you saw. When he telephoned, Mr. Stent and I brought it here. You saw us place it in Ringer’s liquid again, didn’t you?”

“Yes—I suppose so.”

“You saw Dr. Pockman make the incision, remove the injured gland, and graft this living gland in its place.”

“Was that what he did?”

“That was what he did, Mr. Sutton.”

After a tense silence: “Why did Pockman do it?” demanded Sutton hoarsely. “Had he any hope—any idea that—that death is not finality?”

She replied frankly: “He desired to know what effect on the cells the secretions of this living gland might produce under these conditions. Nobody knows. It never has been tried before. Theoretically it ought to restrain the conjunctive cells in their onslaught against the nobler cells, and invigorate and stiffen the resistance of these latter in the increasing anarchy now running riot.”

“How long before any conclusion can be reached?”

“By morning, perhaps. If there is anything to be noticed, four to five hours will show it.... Meanwhile, I must get some sleep.” She rose. “If you think—if you feel that somebody ought to watch here tonight,” she added, “why, you may remain, of course. But really it is not necessary, I assure you.”

“I think I’ll remain until Pockman arrives.”

“That is nice of you, Mr. Sutton.”

She left the room. After a while she returned wearing hat and street costume and carrying her satchel.

For a few moments she bent silently over the bed, then, pausing to offer a firm, cool hand to Sutton, went away with a nod and a slight smile. The outer grille clanged. Sutton and the dead were alone.

CHAPTER VI

Sutton was too much wrought up to fall asleep, although reaction from shock now weighted him with physical weariness. Still dazed and depressed by the swift tragedy of his first romance, the memory of it both confused and accused him. In his anguished mind he reviewed it; their chance encounter in the throng; a dance together; other dances; the engaging shyness of the girl; her evident inexperience; something vaguely disturbing in the girlish fragrance of her. Then the lovely revelation of a youthful heart caught off its guard—and, suddenly, the swift blaze of impulse flaming to a kiss!—and the silent confusion of two disordered minds—to remember it overwhelmed him anew; even now a dull glow kindled through his veins.

He lifted his heavy head from the armchair and gazed at her folded hands, so still—so terribly still—

He was at that psychological period of general revolt when youth is most pitifully at the mercy of The Talkers—the period when faith becomes clouded and old beliefs grow obscure. He had heard The Talkers prove that there is no future existence. But now, gazing at the dead, he felt that there ought to be some compensation.

After a while he got up heavily, went to the bed and dropped on his knees.

Prayer, which The Talkers had proven to be a survival of gross superstition, and to which he had been, lately, unaccustomed, now proved difficult. He was ashamed to pray only in emergency. Confused, weary, he strove to think and to behave unemotionally; tried to ask in her behalf merely an equity in abstract justice.

In his boy’s heart, as in all hearts, there still remained fragments of that temple builded to “the unknown God,” which men call Hope.

His prayer was primitive enough—to the “Power responsible for the source of life”—asking decent compensation for this young death. It took long to formulate; left him on his knees with his head resting against the bed, very tired.

And, after a time, and still on his knees, he fell into a troubled doze.

Only when the clock again was striking did he become conscious. Stiff, benumbed, he stumbled to his feet. Recollection returned in horror; realisation frightened him.

He dragged himself to the curtained window. It was still dark outside, but the rain had ceased and snow covered the sill. He looked at his watch. It was nearly six o’clock in the morning.

For a little while he stood gazing into darkness, dreading to move. Then, very slowly he turned and went to the silent bedside.

And noticed that her clasped hands had fallen apart.

Lethargy still fettered mind and body; dully he noticed; dully attempted to account. Then the shock came. For her right hand clutched his rose-bud. And her fingers were stirring now—the hand almost imperceptibly creeping across the counterpane.

At that instant the girl opened her eyes.

There was no recognition in her gaze, no consciousness of environment. But consciousness was dawning. It came with a spasm of pain.

Suddenly she sat up.

“I want to get out of bed!” she said in a frightened voice, struggling to free her body of the sheets. Already she was touching the floor with one foot, when, half senseless himself, he restrained her, forcing her back to her pillow with shaking hands.

And now recognition dawned in her terrified eyes.

“Help me,” she said faintly. “Such—such a pain!—in my neck—deep inside. Could I have a drink of water?”

He brought it, trembling. She propped herself on one elbow, set her burning lips to the glass, draining it.

She asked for more; he brought it.

“Where is Casimir Sadoul?” she asked. “How long have I been here?”

“All night.” But she seemed not to comprehend him.

“My neck burns me so!” she whimpered. “Where are my clothes? I must have been very ill.”

“Yes, very ill,” he said thickly.

“I can’t see—clearly—” she murmured. “I can’t hear the music, either. Where is my green gown and my crown? Where are my clothes? I can’t stay here. I want to go!”

“Wait a little while——”

“Oh, goodness—goodness!” she whimpered, resting on one arm and gazing piteously around the room. “I must have been very, very ill. But I am well now. I want to get up——”

Her nervously moving hands encountered the rose-bud again. She looked at it stupidly, already half-blinded by a rush of tears.

“I—I want to go,” she sobbed, bowing her ruddy head and covering her face with desperate white hands.

His stupefaction was vanishing in the overwhelming surge of rising excitement. He brought her clothing to the bedside, drew her hands from her convulsed face:

“I want you to be careful,” he said. “You’ve been unconscious for six hours. There is a wound at the back of your neck. Do you understand?”

“Is that what burns me?” she asked tremulously, touching her neck with one finger.

“For God’s sake be careful!”

“It isn’t bleeding,” she said, looking at her finger.

Then she drew the sheets closer about her shoulders and bowed her head on her knees.

“Please let me dress,” she whispered.

“Are you strong enough?”

“I’ll call if I need you.”

He went out, drugged with excitement, incapable of reasoning—unable to realise—not daring to think—knowing only that the horror of that night was over, the frightful nightmare ended.

It was very dark outside; no hint of dawn above the chimneys opposite. Snow lay everywhere, dim but unsullied. Familiar sounds of the living world, however, now broke the wintry morning stillness. Once, to the westward, an elevated train roared past; two trams clanged and clattered south along Sixth Avenue; toward Broadway a taxi became audible.

When she called to him the sound of her voice almost stopped his heart. She had contrived to dress herself in her ball gown, and was twisting up her hair with her back to the mirror as he entered the room. Her features were painfully flushed; traces of tears marred her features.

“Could you find my masquerade costume for me?” she asked. “—And one of my green slippers is missing——”

He brought the golden-green robes of royalty and the missing slipper.

“Are you in much pain?” he ventured.

“I deserve it. What did they do to my neck?”

“That long, steel pin you wore wounded it. A physician cared for you.”

“What pin do you mean? These?” She displayed a bronze hairpin for his inspection and then passed it through a thick, ruddy strand that clustered over one ear.

“I think it had a gold hilt. You wore it to hold on your crown, didn’t you?”

“Oh. That was a ‘misericorde.’ My father gave it to me .... You don’t know how deathly strange I feel,” she murmured. “I had horrible dreams .... We fought.”

“Who fought?”

“Another woman and I. Ugh! It was too ghastly!... What time is it?”

“Half past six in the morning. You had better put on your costume, too. It’s cold out doors.”

“I have a fur coat in the cloak room downstairs.... I am ready if you are.”

He made a bundle of his own costume and they went out of Derring’s living quarters, leaving the lamps burning; and so, slowly, down the studio stairs to the littered ball-room, where the stale air stank of rotting flowers.

He discovered her fur coat. When she was well wrapped in it, they went through the hall to the grille and let themselves out. Dawn already grayed the street. A battered taxi, returning to headquarters, stopped for them. She gave Sutton her address; he directed the driver and they drove away over the snow, as yet unsoiled by traffic.

Lamp posts still remained lighted as they turned east into Thirty-fifth Street and drew up along the curb. Looking out, Sutton saw a line of darkened shops. Over them, the row of old-time brick houses evidently had been converted into apartments.

In silence he aided her to descend.

“Are you still in pain?” he asked.

“Not in pain.... No.”

“I think I’d better help you up the stairs.”

“If you will, please.”

He told the driver to wait, supported the girl to the swinging street door which was open, and aided her to mount a dark, uncarpeted stairway.

At the top of this was a narrow landing, a shop on the second floor, to the left, and another swinging door to the right, also open, revealing a shorter flight of carpeted stairs.

She was slow in mounting, rested on the landing of the third floor, supporting herself against the old-fashioned banisters. From the pocket of her fur coat she drew a gold-mesh bag and handed it to him. Among its varied contents he discovered keys. She indicated the right one; he fitted it and opened the door.

In a narrow hallway an electric bulb burned. To the right was a dim dining-room, to the left a living-room, where a lighted lamp stood on a piano.

He turned and closed the hallway door and led the girl into the large, square, lamp-lit room. Her bedroom opened out of it.

“Have you a maid?” he asked.

“She doesn’t sleep here.”

He drew off her fur coat, disembarrassed her of her masquerade robes, seated her in an upholstered armchair, and turned on the ceiling chandelier, which flooded everything with brilliant light. The room seemed very cold.

“Let me look at your injury,” he said. And she bent her head and remained so, resting her face between both hands.

The tiny vertical scar was purple, the area indurated but only slightly swelled.

“Does it pain very much?”

She shook her head.

“Shall I try to get a physician?”

“No, please.”

“What time does your maid arrive?”

“After ten. But I need nobody.”

After a silence: “Have you a telephone?... I should like to call you later to inquire how you are.”

She gave him her private number and he tore the margin from an evening paper and wrote it.

That seemed to be all there was to say. He picked up his hat; she extended her hand. He retained it for a moment, but neither spoke until he turned and opened the hallway door.

“I think you’re all right,” he said. “I’ll call up to be sure.”

“Yes, call me.”

And that was all.

CHAPTER VII

Sutton slept late. The telephone beside his bed rang repeatedly but did not awaken him. He was still stupid with sleep when he opened his eyes. From habit he rang for coffee and a newspaper. And he was preparing for further sleep when he remembered what had happened the night before.

Instantly his startled brain cleared; he snatched his coat from the chair, discovered the slip bearing the telephone number, seized the receiver, and called her.

Only when he recognised her voice did he realise what a panic possessed him. Intense relief rendered him inarticulate for the moment.

“Yes?” she repeated; but her voice was almost a whisper.

“This is Stuart Sutton speaking,” he managed to say.

After a pause “Yes, Mr. Sutton?”

“I am very anxious to know how you are today?”

“I am—well.”

“Do you feel any ill effects?”

“None.”

“No pain?”

“None.”

“Have you heard from Sadoul?”

“No,” she replied in a ghost of a voice.

“Do you expect to?”

“No.”

Her brevity disconcerted him. He said: “I should like to see you again. Would you be at home at five?”

There was a pause. Then her voice again almost inaudible: “I did not imagine you would wish to see me again.”

“Why not?”

“The inconvenience—annoyance I put you to——”

“Good heavens! Could you help being ill? Let me come down——”

“I’m ashamed—I could not face you—I haven’t the—the assurance—Mr. Sutton——”

“I’m coming to see you at five,” he interrupted confidently.

Waiting for a reply, after a little while he heard it very faintly: “Good-bye, then.”

A servant brought his breakfast and usual Sunday newspaper, a swollen bundle of coloured print. He got back into bed and took the tray on his knees. Coffee, clear, was all he could tolerate. Nor did the bloated Sunday paper appeal to any need in him.

For now, all the confused emotions of the night before were astir again. Vivid recollections, both poignant and charming, flared in succession—his encounter with Gilda Greenway; his gay, irresponsible courtship, her shyness; then her sudden response and swift embrace; and then the swifter tragedy—all the horror of it—every circumstance—the warm scent of roses in the room, the distant laughter, music, the girl’s dead eyes fixed on him through her slitted mask, death stamped on the pallid, upturned face, his fear and horror!——

And suddenly he remembered his demand for justice—saw himself again, scared, half stunned, down beside her bed—heard again his own plea to the Source of Life—to “The Unknown God.”

And now remembered that God and gods were easily proven to be myths where The Talkers gather to explain all things to all men, and play at God one with another.

Had the Unknown God answered his demand? Was this a resurrection? A miracle? A reply? Had the girl really died who now was alive?

He wished to believe so. His recent fright had left him receptive, humble—grateful, too, to somebody.

He lay back on his pillow, willing, anxious to be reassured, inviting memories long dormant—recollections of quieter years—safe years—the years when problems were simple—when the Source of Life was God—a God who protected, who took the heavy responsibility of the world from a boy’s shoulders.

Lying there with his arms crossed behind his crisp, blond head, he tried to remember whose daughter it was who had been raised from the dead.

A sinister and forbidding legend of the Old Testament kept intruding among his thoughts; but it was not of Jephthah’s daughter he had been thinking—not of pagan sacrifice and bloody altars, but of the still brightness shining from Christ.... And of a little dead girl whom he made alive again....

The Talkers had explained it, offering several solutions so that a wistful world, reproved and disillusioned, might take its choice:

The episode was a myth; or, whosesoever daughter it was had not been dead at all but in a coma; or, the account was not to be taken literally because it was merely metaphor, Oriental imagery—all Orientals being fond of extravagant analogy—etc., etc.

Sutton was becoming perplexed and troubled, wavering between a boyish need and a boy’s respect for The Talkers—“The Talkers who talk of the Beginning and the End.”

He got up heavily, looked at his watch. By half past four he had completed his toilet, and was already leaving the room when the telephone rang.

It was Sadoul’s voice, strained, scarcely controlled:

“Sutton? Are you crazy? I’ve been trying to find you all day——”

“What’s on your mind, Sadoul?” he interrupted.

“Where did you send that body?” demanded Sadoul harshly. “I’ve called the morgue and the hospitals——”

“Nonsense! The girl woke up and went home.”

“Good God! You tell me she’s—alive!”

“Rather. Your friend Pockman made a fool of himself. It looks like malpractice to me——”

“Do you mean—mean to tell me that she got up and—and went away?”

“I do. She was quite all right—except where that ass Pockman jabbed her in the neck.”

“Where did she go?” demanded Sadoul in a strangled voice.

“Home, I believe.”

Sadoul’s voice had become almost a whisper: “Where does she live, Sutton?”

“You ought to know; you brought her to Derring’s.”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“Why do you ask me?”

“You know where she lives, don’t you?”

“Possibly. Does that ass Pockman want to experiment further with her?”

Sadoul’s voice became harsher: “Sutton, she was dead! Absolutely dead! She had been dead three hours when Pockman operated. He knows she was dead. So does Miss Cross. If she is actually alive now, it is Sidney Pockman who put life into a corpse! And it is Pockman’s right to know where to find her. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Not entirely.”

“Well, understand this, then: Gilda Greenway is a friend of mine. I have known her for years. She is alone in New York——”

“You left her alone, too, when you thought her dead, Sadoul.”

“Will you tell me where she is?” demanded Sadoul, violently.

“Why do you assume that I know?”

“Because everybody saw how you behaved with her last night. You’re headed for trouble if you continue.”

“Trouble with you?”

“Perhaps. Now, are you going to tell me where she lives, or not?”

“Probably—not,” drawled Sutton.

“Will you tell Pockman where to find her?”

“I’ll consider that matter.”

“Are you trying to make an enemy of me, Sutton?”

“I’m not trying to, Sadoul.”

“Then tell me where Gilda Greenway lives.”

“I’ll tell her that you inquired. Then it will be up to her.”

“You promise to tell her?”

“Yes,” said the other curtly.

“Will you ask her to communicate with me? And tell her it’s vitally important——”

“I’ll tell her that you say it is.”

“When do you expect to see her?”

“At her convenience, Sadoul.”

There was a pause; then: “Very well, Sutton.” And Casimir Sadoul was off the wire, leaving a most disagreeable impression on Sutton.

Presently it occurred to him that he might even be spied upon and followed if he lingered. He took his hat, overcoat and stick, went out and down in the lift, stopped a taxi, and directed the chauffeur to drive toward the Park.

He was surprised at himself for his disinclination to reveal Gilda Greenway’s whereabouts to Sadoul; more surprised, still, that Sadoul should be ignorant of her address.

It had begun to snow again; the air was hazy with fine particles but not very cold.

The Sunday traffic on Fifth Avenue was not heavy; but by the time his taxi reached the Plaza it was time to turn around.

He alighted before the row of basement shops on Thirty-fifth Street, exactly at five o’clock.

A moment later, on the second landing, Gilda Greenway herself opened her door to him.

“How d’you do?” she murmured, in flushed confusion. “My maid takes Sundays out, but I’ve made tea—if you care for it——”

She lingered shyly while he disposed of overcoat, hat and stick, then led the way into her living room, where a tea-tray stood beside a wood fire.

“It’s amazing to me,” he said, “that you seem to feel so perfectly well. You look wonderfully fit, too.”

“Why, it was only a very little wound,” she protested. “I’m disgusted with myself——”

“May I look at it?”

She bent her head obediently. Like many people with red hair, her skin was that dazzling, snowy white which flushes easily; and now a swift, shell-pink stain deepened and waned as he examined the closed wound.

“It’s healing perfectly,” he said. “This is absolutely astonishing.”

She straightened herself, turned and poured tea, the colour still vivid in her cheeks.

“It was so absurd of me to faint,” she said, “—so humiliating——”

“I’d scarcely call it that. It was tragic. Did you know that you were unconscious for six hours?”

“How ghastly!”

“Rather. We thought you dead, you know.”

For an instant she failed to grasp the startling import of what he had said; then, looking quickly around at him:

“Are you serious, Mr. Sutton?”

He decided to enlighten her; and he told her as much as he himself understood of the affair, speaking gravely enough to impress without frightening her.

Gilda Greenway’s gaze never left his face. There was no fear in her eyes, only growing astonishment.

When he had ended his narrative, her first comment startled him:

“How perfectly awful for you, Mr. Sutton!”

“For me!”

“Your horrid situation—if I had really died!”

There was a silence. Her face had become very grave and she shuddered slightly once.

Presently she said: “You were more than kind to me. I—hadn’t realized——”

“I did nothing——”

“You sat there all night because you thought me dead. Is that nothing?”

“One doesn’t leave the dead alone all night—” he muttered.

“The others did. Even Sadoul.”

He was silent.

“So they all thought me dead,” she murmured. “And they all went away—even Casimir Sadoul——”

Reminded suddenly of Sadoul’s message, he gave it to her.

“I don’t want Sadoul to know where I live,” she said quickly. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“I’ve known him for some time. He’s very clever and amusing, when he chooses.”

“Yes, I know,” she said in a low voice, “I know Sadoul.”

There was a silence, then they spoke of other things. She had become diffident, almost unresponsive. Unless he spoke of the night before, conversation seemed difficult; for these two had no real knowledge of each other—no knowledge at all save for that brief flash of passion amid the mocking unreality of masquerade.

“I am wondering how you happened to go to Derring’s party with Sadoul?” he ventured at last.

The girl blushed scarlet. “I—I met him quite by chance on the street two weeks ago. I hadn’t seen him for—months. We talked. I lunched with him. He asked me to go with him to Mr. Derring’s party, and he described the costumes to be worn. I wanted to go. I had to have a dinner gown anyway, this winter—or thought I had to have one.... Last night I put on my costume here and drove in a taxi to the St. Regis, where Sadoul was waiting under the porte cochère.... That is how it happened.”

They were busied with their tea for a while before he ventured a lighter tone.

“I am considering the eccentric capers of Fate,” he said.

She looked up at him.

“When your mask slipped as we passed,” he went on, “it was Fate that loosened it. Do you doubt it?”

Her lowered face was all surging with colour now; she bent over her cup, motionless.

That the girl dreaded further reminiscences was pathetically plain to him. And again her shyness puzzled him as it had the night before. Because one scarcely expected to meet a novice at one of Derring’s parties.

Again he became conscious of the subtle charm of her—felt the faint, sweet warmth of her presence invading him.

“It would have been a jolly party if—” he stopped short, aware already of his mistake.

She sat with head averted, but he suspected tears. After a little while she crumpled her handkerchief, nervously, touched her eyes with it.

“You are still under the strain,” he said in a low voice. “No wonder. But it came out all right, thank God——”

“I—I can’t—bear——” She shrank back against the sofa and hid her face in her arms.

“There’s nothing to feel that way about,” he said, reassuringly. “Everything is all right now——”

“I—I can’t bear it!—what happened. I can’t endure the thought of—of what they m-must have done to me——”

He reddened but said coolly: “There was nothing unusual—when one is desperately ill——”

“They treated me as—as the dead are treated——”

“The physician and the nurse——”

“Sadoul was there.... Were you?”

“No,” he said, lying.

After a while he ventured to unclasp the desperate fingers from their clutch on the sofa—ventured to raise her to a sitting posture.

“Come,” he repeated confidently, “it’s all over. You’re behaving like a kid,” he added, forcing her to turn her head.

The glimmering eyes opened on him, closed quickly, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.

“It’s all over,” he insisted; “isn’t it?”

He held both her hands. She released them. “Yes,” she whispered, “it is all over—all of it—all, all!...” She slowly straightened her shoulders, slowly dried her cheeks, still sitting there with closed eyes. And speaking so:

“It’s the end.... And a new beginning.... I think the girl you knew really did die last night.... I am not that girl.”

“Oh, yes, you are, Gilda Greenway,” he said cheerfully; “you are that very same and very delightful Queen in Green!”

“Do you think so?”

Her eyes unclosed. She considered him curiously, her gaze wandering over him almost absently.

The room had grown dusky. She reached behind her and lighted the lamp on the piano.

“That’s jolly,” he said. “I wonder if you feel like playing something.”

“Would you like it?”

She stood up mechanically, moved to the piano and seated herself.

After a moment a deadened chord or two broke the stillness. Then the old and well-known melody of Schubert grew more softly ominous in the demi-light, lingered in deep, velvety pulsations, slowly expired. Silence absorbed the last muffled chord. The girl’s hands drooped motionless; she lifted her deep green eyes and looked across the piano at Sutton. Her face was partly masked by the transverse shadow of the lampshade.

“What was it you played?” he asked.

“‘The Young Girl and Death.’”

“That’s a cheerful jazz,” he remarked, getting up. He took an uncertain step or two, looked at her irresolutely, then went over to the piano and leaned on both elbows.

“We mustn’t turn morbid,” he said. “We’ve had the shock of our lives, but it won’t do to brood on it.... I want you to be as you were last night.”

She looked up at him, her hands still resting on the keys.

“You were so jolly—such a bashful, charming kid,” he added.

Something suddenly glimmered in her shadowed eyes.

“Are you smiling?” he asked.

“I think I—am.”

“Well, it’s about time! I’m trying to remember what it was I said that made you laugh, just before you—you were taken ill.”

She could not seem to recall it; absently ran a scale or two; rested.

“We were beginning to have such a gay evening together—weren’t we?” he insisted.

“Yes.... I enjoyed it.”

“The fact is,” he went on, “I kidnapped you, didn’t I?”

“Kidnapped? Are you really so old?” In her shadowy eyes the glimmer appeared again.

“No, I’m not very aged, but Sadoul—I stole you from him, you know.”

“Did you find it—difficult?”

She moved as she spoke, and the lamp-light fell full across her face.

Again he was conscious of warmth in his veins—of a heart quickening a little in the shy revelation of her smile.

And again he tried to account for her presence at Derring’s party, where there was more pulchritude than bashfulness, and more experience than both.

About Gilda Greenway there seemed always a hint of wistful inexperience—a sort of unchastened innocence, which was not without its provocation, too.

In his rather brief career, Sutton had never encountered what is called “danger” among women within his own caste or outside of it. Only the male ass need dread the “vamp”; but he never does.

As for all the subtler species known as dangerous, from cradle-snatcher to the married-but-misunderstood, few had floated within his social ken where, on the Hudson, ancient respectability in substantial estates maintained colonial tradition in summer, and modest but grim town houses in winter.

Smiling at the girl, now—wondering a little concerning her—and curious, too—he asked her whether, like most of the others at Derring’s, she was on the stage.

It seemed she was not.

“Nor in pictures?”

“No.”

Her reserve was a smiling one, yet not encouraging him to further inquiry.

“You dance so delightfully,” he said, “that I thought—perhaps——”

“No; I don’t do anything, Mr. Sutton.”

He dissented and tapped the piano as emphasis.

“Oh, I play a little.”

The bench she was seated upon was long and narrow. He stepped around the piano; she laughed and made room for him.

“Tell me about all your accomplishments,” he insisted.

“They are too numerous to catalogue. I can cook if I have to; make a bed, wash windows, read, write, add and subtract——”

“Are you American, Gilda?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve lived elsewhere?”

“Abroad.”

It was plain that she had little inclination to speak of herself.

He wondered why she was living alone in New York. Suddenly he desired to ask her other questions—from whom she inherited her delicate beauty and shy manners—her cultivated speech, her pretty green eyes.

“Don’t you want to tell me anything about yourself?” he asked.

“It isn’t necessary, is it?”

He laughed. “There is no necessity about the matter, you funny child!”

She seemed relieved for a moment, then a little troubled.

“What worries you, Gilda?” he demanded, still smiling.

“Nothing.... Would it be impertinent for me to ask your advice before we really know each other?”

“Nonsense! What is it?”

“There are several things I would like to ask you—if I might——”

“For example?” he inquired, much amused.

“Well, one thing is that I have some money. I’d like to ask you how to invest it.”

“Good heavens!” he said. “You don’t know anything about me! I might be the King of the Crooks, for all you——”

She did not seem to notice what he was saying, for she went on very seriously:

“—Also, I’d like to have you recommend to me a lawyer whom you believe trustworthy——”

“Enter crook number two! All right, Gilda. What else?”

“Quite a number of things—when we begin to know each other—a little——”

“Haven’t we even begun to know each other?”

“Why, no,” she said, surprised.

“Then isn’t it rather rash of you to ask me about investments?”

She smiled at him. It was her charming answer—as pretty a compliment as ever was paid a man.

“Gilda Greenway,” he said with youthful rashness, “ask me anything and I’ll do my best! You seem to know I will, too; but how you guessed it, I don’t know.”

He got up, took a short turn or two, stood looking at nothing for a few moments.

“Don’t tell Sadoul where I live,” she said in a low voice.

He swung around: the girl’s expression had changed and her face seemed shadowy and pale.

“No,” he said, “I shall not tell Sadoul.... Are you feeling ill?”

“Not ill——”

She rose abruptly, and again her changed expression struck him. It seemed almost as though her features had altered subtly—as though something familiar was fading, something he had forgotten in her face was becoming vaguely visible.

“I want you to go, please,” she said in a dazed way.

“If you are feeling ill——”

“No, not ill.... You must go.”

“But, Gilda, don’t you want me to come again?”

“Yes.... Telephone me.... But you must go!—oh, please!—please!——”

The strangeness of her face silenced him.

She followed to the little hall, waited for his departure, her face averted. To his perplexed and troubled adieux her response was inaudible.

The next moment the door closed behind him and he stood alone in the wintry dusk of the shabby corridor.

CHAPTER VIII

The intimacy between Sidney Pockman and Casimir Sadoul was a companionship rather than a friendship—a personal association based on similar tastes, similar inclinations, and a common lack of scruple.

This mutual accord seemed to be sincere; stood the usual strains to which real friendship is subject; and, so far, had remained unimpaired.

But when, that night at Derring’s, Pockman raised his pale gaze from the dead girl and rested it on Sadoul, Sadoul realised instantly that he had never trusted Sidney Pockman. And for the first time in his life he knew what it was to be afraid.

The following afternoon, closeted in the private office of the laboratory with Pockman, and having recounted his telephone conversation with Sutton, he awaited Pockman’s comment with a mind already darkly on its guard.

The first unhealthy colour of excitement had faded from Pockman’s flat features; he was taking the astounding news coolly enough. Even a slight smirk returned as he looked up at Sadoul, who still wore his faded soft hat and brown overcoat.

“You’ll have to find her for me,” he said.

“I don’t have to do anything for you,” retorted Sadoul softly.

After a silence Pockman stole a stealthy glance at him, and learned nothing. However, he was already convinced.

“Don’t you think it’s up to you to find Gilda Greenway?”

“I’m not certain it’s up to me, Pockman.”

“Who is to do it, then?”

“There’s Sutton. And if he refuses, then there are confidential agencies——”

“Hadn’t we better cover this affair between ourselves?” inquired Pockman. “It’s safer for—everybody—I imagine.”

The slight menace was not lost on Sadoul, but he coolly chose to misinterpret it.

“You’re a little worried about the irregularity of what you did, I suppose.”

“Not the irregularity of what—I did,” retorted Pockman, smirking.

“What’s bothering you, then?”

Pockman opened a desk drawer, flicked a blue-print toward Sadoul.

“What’s this?” asked the other.

“Finger-prints. They were on the gold-headed pin—or dirk—or stiletto—whatever you call it,” he added with a slight snicker.

Sadoul studied the blue-print. Then he glanced up inquiringly.

“Whose?” he asked.

“Yours, Sadoul.”

Sadoul continued to examine the whorls with detached interest.

“Well?” he inquired finally. “What’s the idea?”

“Nothing,” said Pockman; “you needn’t worry—only—lay off on that stuff, Sadoul.... Because I happen to need your girl in my business. That’s all there will be to it—as far as I’m concerned.... Let me have that blue-print.”

Sadoul passed it back to him across the desk, thoughtfully:

“Do you really think I killed her?” he asked, with his shadowy smile. “Or are you facetious?”

“I’m not speculating.... She isn’t dead, anyway.... And I mean to see that she remains alive and kicking. That’s all.... So——” He smirked, dropped the blue-print into the drawer, locked it, and pocketed the key.

“In my safe-deposit box there’s a duplicate print,” he remarked. “Also a statement.... I want to observe this girl for a while. I don’t want anything to happen to her. When I’m through with her—you can have the finger-prints back if you like.... And the—weapon. Is it understood?”

Sadoul, apparently preoccupied, and sitting motionless in his chair, made no reply. But his brain was a flaming hell.

Impulse after impulse flashed up and raged through him, tearing at self-control. For the first terrified instinct of self-preservation had instantly become a violent desire to end forever the danger threatening him. His powerful frame was tense with purpose. Yet, a trace of reason remained. And he seemed to realise that, even if he could bring himself to do it—and devise a way—it would not help matters to kill Pockman. It was too late. He understood that. But his burning brain raged on.

Sadoul had never before planned murder. He had never even thought of it as a solution for any problem until he saw Gilda Greenway in Sutton’s arms. Then he went mad.

But, even then, had she not been so close—the warm fragrance of her very body in his nostrils—and a weapon at hand, dangling from her perfumed hair——

His swarthy face grayed a little: he got up from his chair, as though very tired, and put on his shabby hat.

“Whatever you think,” he said in an altered voice, “you have no business to threaten me.... Gilda is perfectly safe—you have my word of honour, if you wish. But you must let me have those—blue-prints.”

Pockman was looking at him with intense curiosity. In his gaze there was, also, a sort of half-fearful respect which the habitual smirk intensified.

“My God, Sadoul,” he murmured, “I never even dreamed that sort of thing was in you.”

Sadoul picked up his worn portfolio, slowly buttoned his overcoat, stood so with head lowered.

“I must have the prints,” he repeated in a low voice. Then he raised his smouldering eyes.

After a silence: “Do you give me your solemn promise to let her alone?” demanded Pockman.

“I promise not to—harm her.”

“I want you to keep away from her.”

Sadoul thought for a few moments: “Pockman,” he said calmly, “I shan’t interfere with you if you desire to keep her under professional observation. But, otherwise—I tolerate no other man.”

The unhealthy flush made Pockman’s face a livid pink again.

“My interest in your damned girl is purely professional,” he said.

“Let it remain so. Because my interest is slightly different.”

“What’s your interest in her? I thought you were through,” sneered Pockman.

“I’m still—interested.”

“That girl is turning you crazy!” burst out Pockman. “You’d better look out or you’ll find yourself on the front page some morning——”

Sadoul turned on him, baring every tooth: “Tomorrow morning!—if you don’t get those prints for me. And you’ll be there, too.”

“Get out of my office, you crazy bum!” shouted Pockman.

“Do you really mean that?”

There was a long and tense silence.

Presently Pockman found his voice, weakly: “What in Christ’s name has got into you, anyway!” he demanded.

Sadoul shook his sombre head: “I don’t know.... I don’t know, Pockman.... I can’t manage to forget her—and I can’t go on this way—always——”

Pockman ventured to lay one hand, fearfully, on Sadoul’s shoulder—he had to force himself to do it.

“I wasn’t serious. Hell! I’ll get those things for you. Then you’d better go away somewhere and rid yourself of this fool obsession before it kills you—or somebody——”

“All right.... Thanks.”

After a moment he opened the door and went out, moving as though fatigued, his shabby portfolio hanging from one bony hand.

CHAPTER IX

Sadoul went home. His thoughts were not very clear. The interview at the laboratory seemed unreal; the day itself like one that had not dawned. He remembered little of what they said in the office—except that Pockman had called him a crazy bum.

The large apartment which he had furnished for two, but which he alone inhabited awaiting the expiration of the lease, appeared unusually dreary and unreal.

The two canaries he had bought, the black cat, the potted flowers, furniture, books—everything had taken on a misty, wavering aspect. He had a numb sensation in his head, and he seated himself in the living room, his hat and coat still on.

The only sound that broke the silence was the interminable seed-cracking of the canaries.

In the dull aftermath of fear, lethargy drugged his nerves and clouded thought.

He was tired to his very bones, tired, benumbed. And so, rested all alone there in the gray daylight.

The cat came in, and, passing his chair, paused to look up at him. Then went on, noiselessly, without further notice.

About one o’clock his Japanese servant announced luncheon.

Sadoul awoke, rid himself slowly of coat and hat, went to the dining room, and ate what was offered.

After that he sought his study, where some manuscripts lay in various untidy stages.

After all, he had to keep going—he had to eat and clothe himself and go on living—or—did he have to go on at all?

He seemed, finally, to come to that conclusion, pulled a pad toward him, inked his pen.

He had been writing for two hours or more when his servant came and announced a lady.

“Who?” demanded Sadoul.

“She no name, sir.”

“All right—in a minute.”

The Jap retired; Sadoul went on writing—was still writing when something moved at his doorway; and he raised his head. Gilda Greenway stood there.

Sadoul’s visage turned a clay grey; Gilda’s face, too, was very white, framed in her dark furs.

“Sadoul,” she said in a low voice, “what have you done to me?”

He sat as though paralysed for a while. Finally the shock passed; he got up, rested against his desk, and after a moment found his voice:

“Are you coming back?” he asked, somewhat indistinctly.

“No. Answer me; what is it you have done to me?” she repeated.

He moistened his lips, staring at her:

“I don’t know what you mean, Gilda.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Sit down and tell me what you—think I have done to you.”

“Very well.” She seated herself. He took his desk chair, his eyes never leaving her.

“Now,” she said, “tell me what you have done to me.”

“Nothing. You fainted at Derring’s. Pockman brought you around——”

“You thought me dead!”

“Did Stuart Sutton say so?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Did he tell you what Pockman did to—revive you?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. A gold-headed pin got loose from your hair and pierced a vital spot in the nape of your neck.... That was our theory. Sutton came to me; I got Pockman; he operated. That’s all.”

“You thought me dead. So did Dr. Pockman.”

“We were mistaken. What of it?”

“But you did think I was dead!”

“What of it?” he repeated, now in full control of his voice and himself.

She leaned a little toward him: “Were you alone with me—after you thought me dead?”

“No.”

“That is a lie, Sadoul.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I know it’s a lie. You were alone with me after you thought me dead. I saw you!”

He made no reply, waiting.

“That is all I remember,” she said, “—lying dead on a chair and looking at you.... I was dead. I didn’t know it until now—until this very instant. But I know it, absolutely, now.”

His sombre eyes regarded her without expression and in silence.

She was watching them, too; and now she drew her white-gloved hand from her muff and rested it on her knee, clenched tightly.

“You once told me,” she said, “that I never could escape you, even by dying.

“You told me that while Charcot was interested only in paralysing the body by inducing hypnosis, there was no reason why the indestructible life-principle itself could not be caught and controlled at the moment of death.... Did you tell me that?”

“Yes.”

“What did you mean by the indestructible life-principle? The escaping soul?”

“You can call it that if you like.”

She clenched her gloved hand tighter:

“You told me that, at death, the life-principle has been seen and even photographed. Is that true? Or is it one of your psychic lies?”

“It is faintly luminous and has been photographed in the dark,” he said patiently, and now quite prepared for whatever else she had to say to him.

“What happened when I died?” she demanded, her childlike face whiter than ever.

“If you insist that you really died—I regret to say I was not present——”

“I saw you!”

His shadowy smile flickered a moment.

“Sadoul!”

“Well, Gilda?”

“Did you try to stop my soul from leaving me?”

“No; I wouldn’t have been such a blithering fool. Where do you get that stuff?” he added with his sneering laugh. “I told you, once, that photographs had been made in a dark death-chamber, which did really show a nebulous something apparently freeing itself from the dead and assuming something like a human shape.”

“Yes, you told me that.”

“I certainly did. Also, I may have told you that psychic materialisations also have been photographed, exuding in rather unpleasant and luminous convolutions from the medium.

“All students of psychology are interested. I am. Psychic phenomena in their relation to hypnosis also interest me——”

“Yes. That is how you destroyed me.”

After a silence: “There was no destruction,” he said in a low voice.

“What do you call it then, Sadoul? You caught my soul—spirit—or whatever you call my tenant—outside my body. You hypnotised it, paralysed it, left my body for days without a tenant!... And once, when you released me, and I returned, I found a new tenant in possession.... Since that time I have had to turn her out a thousand times!... When I—died—she was there, waiting. We struggled for possession. And she is still waiting her opportunity to slip in—always watching—always near.... Last evening, suddenly, she got possession of me—I was tired—off my guard. She locked me out——”

Gilda’s face began to flush and her gloved hands crisped and beat against her muff, crushing and scattering the bunch of violets:

“That’s what you did to me!” she cried, “—you tried to catch my soul outside of me and kill it, or something—so you could let in that other one! You’ve always tried to—always, always! You wanted my body, not caring what tenant it had! And you’ve tried to drive me out and let the other in!—you tried it even when I was dead!”

She sat striking her muff hysterically with her little, gloved fists, her green eyes alight and the pretty mouth distorted with a rage she had never known until that instant.

“I’ve wanted to live rightly,” she said; “but this Other One interferes! There was no other one until you let her in. She comes, now, before I know it.... When I am almost happy—thinking no wrong, God knows——”

She sprang up, trembling: “Can’t you let me alone?” she said. “I never liked you; I never shall live with you.”

Sadoul’s eyes glowed, and he slowly got up from his chair:

“If you won’t live with me, you’ll live with no other man,” he said.

“I don’t want to! I couldn’t, anyway—with the memory of that civil ceremony rising like a nightmare to frighten me——”

“You had better remember it ... when such men as Sutton are dangling around you,” he said with his alarming smile.

Gilda’s face flushed scarlet.

“I shall remember it,” she said.... “It’s the Other One who—who frightens me——”

She took up her muff, abruptly, walked swiftly to the door, turned, trembling, blinded with tears:

“Now, do you understand what you have done to me!” she said in a choking voice. “Even the Other One cares nothing for you! Even if she ever manages to destroy me, it gains you nothing! And that’s what you’ve done to me and to yourself!”

He followed her to the hall and detained her on the landing.

“Remember,” he said, “I tolerate no other man.”

“There is no other man.”

“There may be.”

She pushed by him and pressed the elevator bell.

“My God!” he whispered—“My God! Can’t you be even half human, Gilda?”

“That’s the trouble. I’m not more than that, now, I suppose.”

He kept on saying under his breath, “My God, my God! I can’t go on this way! I can’t go on without you——”

The ascending cage interrupted.

She nodded adieu.

“Let me know where you are,” he said.

The cage dropped. She made no reply. He stood still for a moment, dragging at his lips with bony fingers, then he snatched his hat and ran down the spiral iron stairway.

But he was too late at the street door; and the porter had not noticed which way her taxi turned.

CHAPTER X

Gilda was in a hurry to get home, and this was the reason:

A telephone call from Sutton had awakened her that morning; she had been glad to hear his voice again; the incident had made the beginning of a grey day very delightful.

Bathed, dressed, and having breakfasted, and still agreeably conscious of her waking pleasure, Gilda had gone lightly about her morning duties.

First there came a consultation with her maid-of-all-work concerning marketing. Then dish-washing. Then sweeping, dusting, airing, and bed-making, in which Gilda aided. Then accounts—Gilda crouched over her desk, very intent upon the few bills and advertisements which alone composed any morning’s mail.

Mending was next in order. Then preparation for a walk, including shopping. After that, luncheon, the leisurely pleasure of a book, or a lazy needle embroidering towels—with contented glances at the comfortable and pretty things surrounding her.

Her bedroom, in blue, was an austere and rather dim place, with an etching or two on the wall, and a slim bed and chair patterned after some prim model of the 18th century.

But Gilda’s living room was done in sunny hues which tinted it with a summery light, even on sour, grey days. And here amid upholstered furniture, a piano, old gilt mirror, a few mezzotints, hyacinths growing in a yellow bowl, a shelf of books, Gilda Greenway lived and had her highly complex being.

Earlier that afternoon she had been embroidering a doiley with buttercups, sewing light-heartedly, with recollections of her pleasant waking to the sound of Sutton’s voice.

She had ventured to ask him to tea; but he couldn’t come until after six. But with this in agreeable prospect the winter day was passing tranquilly. Old, unhappy memories were being lulled by the soothing rhythm of her silken-threaded needle; old sorrows faded; her slowly moving hand at last ceased and lay idle on her knee.

After a while she no longer guided thought, but followed where it strayed.

Very stealthily Thought betrayed her.

It led her into a labyrinth and abandoned her there. Presently, into that magic labyrinth there glided the phantom of him she had followed thither; and, mentally, she went to him as she had that tragic night—yielded again to his swift embrace—to his lips—offering her own——

And awoke to find herself on her feet and every startled instinct striving to arouse her sleeping senses.

Still partly dazed, throbbing with fear and shame, her confused mind was offering no aid. With stiffened limbs and clenched hands she stood blindly facing what threatened her.

Desperately she strove to warn her mind against the warm, sweet impulse invading it—to free her excited heart of that which quickened it—to bar all ingress to that Other One—the invader—now gliding nearer.

As she struggled against the enchantment, she realised that the Other One had surprised her—that sensual thing which Sadoul had summoned, offering her as its abiding place——

Suddenly her anger blazed white. In raging silence she tore the shadowy intruder out of her, drove it forth, barred the citadel of her soul against it.

Flaming, breathless, still bewildered by the battle, she strove to think what must be done. Then fear came—the old dread began to creep upon her—old griefs stirred—the spectre of Sadoul took shape, menacing her with destruction.

Scarcely knowing what she was doing, she ran to her bedroom closet, pulled on her hat and fur coat, and took her muff to which the morning’s violets were still pinned.

Then she went out into the city to seek Sadoul.

Thus it was that she had found him, had accused him, and demanded of him an answer. And, even as she demanded, a flash of clairvoyance answered her own question.

He had lied to her, but she already knew the truth.

So she had left him—hurrying because it was already late.

And now, driving east through the Park, where already electric lights sparkled amid naked trees, only one clear thought remained and persisted unconfused through all the tumult and bewilderment of mind—the calm recollection of her engagement with Sutton.

It was only five when she arrived—time enough to regain composure, change her gown, and make disposition of the few flowers which she had ordered that morning and which had been delivered while she was out.

Aglow from her bath, and a vigourous struggle with her thick, burnished hair, action already was driving from her mind the hateful shadow haunting it. Her maid came from the kitchen, wiped her efficient hands, and got Gilda into her gown.

Her mistress had never had a guest to dinner, so Freda made no inquiry concerning an improbable contingency; nor did Gilda even think of such a possibility.

She went into the sitting-room, examined herself approvingly at full length in the long gilt mirror, pirouetted, and immediately concerned herself with the flowers and the two glass vases destined for them. The carnations she placed on the piano, the roses on the tea-table. Then she lightly made the tour of the room, poked the fire, dusted the hearth, straightened pictures which the interminable jar of street traffic always left askew again.

She crossed to the piano, and, standing, ran scales nervously; then went over to her desk, seated herself, opened a drawer and consulted her bank-book.

She must ask Sutton to advise her. Something must be done with her money.

Delectable aromas from the kitchen reminded her agreeably that dinner was preparing—then, horrified, she rose and opened both windows, calling upon Freda to keep the kitchen door shut.

While the place was airing, she roamed about, casting frequent glances at the clock which had struck six some time ago, and was now preparing to announce the half hour.

An abrupt thought that Sutton might not come almost hurt. She gazed rather piteously around at her preparations—the prim sofa cushions in a row, the straightened pictures, the two vases full of flowers. She was realising how happily she had counted on his coming.

The half hour sounded. She felt she would have scarcely any time at all with him, dinner being so nearly ready.

She went slowly to the windows, closed them, drew the curtains. Her heart was becoming heavy.

Five minutes later she was giving him up.

At a quarter to seven she gave him up.

Confused, hurt, and innocently surprised at the hurt—and with an effort to believe that the disappointment was trivial—she heard seven o’clock strike and turned to nod to Freda, who came to announce her dinner.

“Those yoong yentleman do not come tonight?” inquired Freda.

“No, I think not.”

Gilda walked slowly into her tiny dining room. Appetite had left her.

As she seated herself, her door-bell rang.

CHAPTER XI

Sutton, always debonair, came in gaily:

“Awfully sorry to be so late,” he said, gracefully saluting and retaining her hand. “I suppose you’ll put me out bodily, as you did before——” He checked his breezy loquacity as the lighted dining room and table caught his eye.

“Oh, Lord! I didn’t know I was that late!” he exclaimed. “Forgive me, Gilda, and let me come tomorrow——”

“No; stay, please.”

“But this is rotten of me——”

“Please stay. I hadn’t thought of your remaining to dinner, but I’d be happy if you would.”

“You charitable girl!—you really don’t want me——”

“I do.”

He hesitated; he even had the grace to blush; then he disembarrassed himself of hat and overcoat, ashamed of himself for doing it.

Gilda ran into her bath-room, selected her best towels, combed out her silver brush, dusted the powder from the toilet table, and returned to Sutton.

“I’m a beastly bore,” he said, “and you know it! Yet, now you propose to curry-comb me and feed me. Oh, Gilda!”

Her heart was blithe as she danced away to the kitchen door:

“Oh, Freda, Mr. Sutton will dine with me. There’s enough, isn’t there?”

Freda proved adequate to the emergency; a place was ready at table for Sutton when he reappeared.

There was a fragrant oyster stew, two chops and a baked potato apiece, half an artichoke with wonderful dressing, a cherry tart divided, camembert, coffee, cigarettes.

Sutton appeared to be enchanted. He had an easy way of seeming so, but he really was, this time.

Gilda was happy; her appetite had returned, and between them they ate everything.

She broke off a rose-bud and gave it to Sutton for his button-hole. Then they took their cigarettes and coffee into the living room, and sat down side by side on the wide sofa where Gilda had placed the row of prim cushions in pleasant anticipation of such an event.

Sutton was in high spirits, very sensible to the girl’s beauty, very much the opportunist in any such situation.

“Why did you eject me so suddenly the other evening?” he asked in his gay, bantering way. “First you bowled me over, Gilda, then you threw me out!”

She turned shy at that, offering no reply, and addressed herself to her Minton coffee cup.

“Didn’t I behave properly?” he insisted, laughing. But he could extract no comment from her, and her uncertain smile baffled him.

“Are you quite all right again?” he inquired. “You look so wonderfully fit that I didn’t even ask you.”

She said, diffidently, that she was perfectly recovered; and, at his request, suffered him to examine the nape of her neck.

“Amazing!” he exclaimed. “Have you heard from any of them—Pockman—Sadoul?——”

“I saw Sadoul.”

“Really! When?”

“Today.”

“Oh. What did he have to say about that rather ghastly affair?”

“He said I really died.”

Sutton shrugged. He no longer believed it. “Death is death,” he observed. “There is no remedy for death, and there never was——” Something seemed to check him; he hesitated—“Not since Christ, anyway,” he added.

“I did die,” she said in a low voice.

Her tranquil finality silenced him for a moment. He took her empty coffee cup and set it aside with his own.

“Gilda,” he said, “I’ve a lot of very friendly curiosity about you—no use pretending I haven’t. Am I impertinent?”

She remained mute, not looking at him, her slender and very white little hands clasped loosely in her lap.

He said: “The other evening you asked me to advise you in regard to investments, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“Well, then,” he went on, “don’t you think I’d better tell you something about myself?”

“If you care to.”

“All right. I’m twenty-eight; I’m in the lumber business. That’s what made me so late this evening—one of our men arrived unexpectedly from up-state. I had to talk to him. We’re reforesting on a big scale—we’re driven to do it. Everybody has got to come down to cases in our business, now, because the end of the standing timber is in sight, and there’ll be no more lumber unless we lumbermen begin to grow some. But you’re not interested in that——”

“I might be. I don’t know anything about lumber.”

“It’s an interesting business, really—if you’ll let me tell you sometime. But now, in regard to any advice from me—it being your money and not mine—all I could say to you would be on old-fashioned lines: buy for investment only; buy only what is absolutely safe.”

“Is that what you would do if it were your money?”

“I’d probably speculate,” he admitted with a grin.

“I’ll do it if you advise it.”

“I don’t! Good heavens! I shouldn’t want anything like that on my conscience.... Anyway, I know nothing about your circumstances——”

She told him very frankly and simply how much money she had. He pointed out that, even in spite of the income tax, safe investments in conservative securities would give her an income adequate to the needs and even the little luxuries required by any young girl living alone in New York.

She nodded: “I’ll tell you a little more about myself. My father and mother did not live together. I grew up in boarding schools, here and in France. I never had seen my father. He wrote to me once a month. My mother sometimes visited me.... Then war came. My father suddenly sent for me and I went to London. That was the first time I ever saw him.... And the last.

“Troops were leaving; he was an officer.... I might have liked him.... But he went away.... Before he left, he made provision for me.... And that is the money I now have.”

“What else happened?” asked Sutton gently.

“My father was killed in Asia.”

“I see....”

“Mother arrived in London.... There was legal trouble.... I wanted her to have half, but my father’s solicitors would not permit it. I was trying to devise a way to divide with her when the German airships came over.... Mother was killed ... in Regent Street.... They found her gold-mesh bag.... Nothing else.”

Sutton waited gravely. Gilda sat with head lowered, her clasped hands lying loosely in her lap, her brooding gaze remote.

“What happened to you then?” he asked.

“I thought I ought to learn how to support myself in case the Germans overran the world and ruined everybody.”

“It nearly came to that,” he remarked.

“Yes.... So I hastened to learn shorthand and typing. When I was fairly efficient, there happened to be a demand in Paris for English stenographers who understood French.... So I took a position they offered with an English firm of stenographers in the rue Colchas.” ... She sat very still for a few moments, then, averting her head: “—That is all, Mr. Sutton.”

Of course it was not all; she had not spoken of Sadoul nor of the period in her life wherein he had been a factor. However, it was, evidently, all she cared to tell him about herself.

He glanced sideways at her; she sat very still, gazing straight in front of her. The pretty, childish contours seemed altered, somehow—less youthful, sharper where shadow fell, accenting a profile almost nobly traced. He watched her furtively, curiously, interested in the detached sadness of a face so young, in its pale preoccupation with things beyond his ken.

The opportunist in him, too, had become subdued in the gravity of her altered mood.

The world always accepts you as you present yourself. So Sutton now found himself inclined to view Gilda Greenway more seriously than he had ever expected to. Usually he reserved for this sort of pretty girl those gay, casual, amiable, irresponsible qualities usually expected of a man by such girls.

She had not invited them, even at Derring’s. Apparently she did not expect them.

Was she one of the impossible kind who supposed a man didn’t know the difference?... Or—was there, possibly, not as much difference as he naturally had supposed—meeting her sans façon at Derring’s—and finding her so pliant in the end——

He had, of course, placed her, generally, but not at all definitely. There seemed to be nothing specific about her—with her freshness and youth and oddly winsome shyness.

Yet, there was Derring’s anything but exclusive party; and there was Sadoul.... Certainly, he thought, there are all sorts in the world; and of new kinds there is no ending.

He was first to break the long silence with a banality: “Some day, Gilda, will you tell me more about yourself?”

She turned her head, faintly surprised: “No; I don’t think so.”

He took his snub with such unfeigned and flushed chagrin that she, also, blushed.

“I didn’t mean it unkindly,” she murmured. “It sounds so. I’m sorry.”

Her concern was so candid, so unconsciously sweet, that he recovered much too quickly. Such young men do. That’s the trouble with candour and inexperience.

He told her, impulsively, how deeply interested in her he was becoming. He took her passive little hands in his and told her again, with enough emotion in his voice to charm and trouble her.

The emotion was quite genuine. It always is in young men. The only trouble is that they have an unlimited capacity for it—if only the girl involved be fair to look upon.

But now, in hopeful recollection of an episode altogether charming, this young man was slightly surprised when Gilda’s supple body stiffened, and her firm, cool hand removed his enterprising arm.

“Please,” she said under her breath, “—I had rather not.”

“You didn’t say that at Derring’s——”

Her lips tightened and she closed her eyes more tightly still, as though chagrined at the remembrance.

“Are you really sorry, Gilda?”

“Yes.... I mean I don’t know whether I am.... I had rather you didn’t kiss me—again——”

“I won’t, if you don’t wish it——”

“No.”

He took it amiably enough—even a trifle anxiously, afraid of offending a girl who was beginning to pique his curiosity—that overwhelming symptom of masculine egotism ever latent in young men.

“Of course,” he said gaily, “it was carnival time at Derring’s.... I didn’t mistake you for a moment.... I really like you tremendously, Gilda.... You are such a lovely thing, anyway—don’t be too severe with me.”

“Not severe—with you.... No. It isn’t that.” ... She drew a deep breath, smiled uneasily at him.

“I do like you.... I want to be friends.... Will you try always to remember that?”

“Yes, you charming girl!——”

“—Because—you may not think so, sometimes.... I may do things you will not understand.... It won’t be because I don’t—don’t like you.”

She rose; he stood up, too. She said slowly:

“I want you to go, now.... Will you still believe that I like you, very much, if I—I ask you to say good-night to me?”

“Of course!... You’re the most winsome girl, Gilda—the most delightful!—I do care a lot for you——”

“Telephone me—soon.”

“Rather!” ... He had his coat on, now.... “I’ll call you tomorrow, if I may.”

She nodded and opened the door for him. He wanted her hand again and got it.

“You like me a little, don’t you, Gilda?”

Her tightly held hand began to tremble in his, and she loosened it with a sudden nervous movement.

“I want you to go,” she whispered.

There was a strange, uncontrolled note in her voice—and he looked at her green eyes in the demi-light.

“I’ll tell you—sometime,” she said breathlessly.... “I do care for you.... We must help each other—not destroy——”

“What frightens you?”

“Please go, if you care for me at all!”

He stepped back in silence; the door closed smartly, and he heard her bolt it. And, listening, he became aware of another sound in the stillness—a murmur, broken, incoherent, as though inside the door the girl were whispering to herself, and whimpering all alone.

CHAPTER XII

What was known concerning the extraordinary case of Gilda Greenway was being man-handled, daily, at the Fireside Club—old George Derring having gabbled widely to the fierce annoyance of Sadoul.

Pockman, also vastly annoyed, made the best of it—made no bones about it, in fact.

Badgered, disgusted, but at bay, he was perhaps too cynical, too indifferent, or possibly too confident of himself to lie or to evade newspaper publicity—the terror of all reputable physicians.

“Well, what astonishes you?” he retorted to the veiled gibes from his tormentors at the Fireside. “I’ve killed rats and done the same thing to them.”

“Do you mean to tell us,” demanded Harry Stayr, “that you’ve resurrected dead rats by grafting glands on their necks?”

“One gland—the nymphalic.”

“Oh! Have rats got that gland, too?”

“All vertebrates have it.”

“And those rats really were dead?”

“They were not only dead,” said Pockman wearily, “but I’d had them in cold storage at zero for three months.”

“And when you thawed ’em out and operated they came to and squealed their thanks,” suggested Stayr, grinning.

“They became lively enough in a few hours.”

“And squealed?”

“That’s what they did, Harry.”

“Did little Miss Greenway become gratefully demonstrative when you brought her back from the Pearly Gates,” inquired Julian Fairless, “or did she cry for her harp and halo?”

“When she came to life she dressed and went home in a taxi, I believe,” replied Pockman drily.

“Where’s Sadoul’s girl to prove it?” demanded Sam Warne. “I’d like to ask her what she saw up aloft after she died.”

“So you believe in the survival of the soul, do you, Sam?” said Fairless languidly.

“Well—Pockman says so——”

“I did not say so,” interrupted Pockman. “I said that I have proven survival of the life principle in certain glands; and that, after what we call death occurs, a state of anarchy prevails in the cadaver. All the organs are still alive; the cells which compose them are engaged in civil war.”

“What is your theory, then?”

“A very simple one—that the secretions of the nymphalic gland control every one of the trillions of cells in the human body. I assume that ultimate dissolution begins with atrophy of this gland. I believe that, by grafting a new and young and living nymphalic gland upon a dead human body, the organs of that body can be revived, rejuvenated, and persuaded to resume their natural functions. And I am now absolutely satisfied that I have proven this theory to be a fact.”

“Won’t this make a considerable splash in the medical puddle?” asked Fairless.

“Not if the newspapers get hold of it,” replied Pockman. “As Shakespeare says, ‘Publicity doth make monkeys of us all’!” He glanced about him almost wistfully: “If you fellows would be reticent and decent and permit me to go on for a year or two, and then, when I’m ready, let me make my own announcement through proper channels——” He looked around again at The Talkers; then the habitual and glassy smirk disfigured him, and he shrugged his shoulders:

“What’s the use?” he concluded. “You’re born to talk and you’ll do it. So I’ll get the dirty end of the stick for awhile—I’ll get what’s coming to me from the newspapers. I’ll get hell from my profession. You fellows couldn’t hold your tongues if you wanted to.”

“Matters discussed in a gentleman’s club are sacred,” observed somebody heavily.

“Sure,” sneered Pockman; “—I’ve been a victim of gentlemen’s agreements.” His pale eyes rested mockingly on Derring, flickered, travelled on impartially.

“It’s the dinner table that undoes you,” he added, “—when it’s not your best girl—in ‘strictest confidence.’ Yes—I know.”

“That’s a nasty thing to say about any member of this club,” protested Julian Fairless. “I haven’t the slightest desire to gossip, and your damned glands don’t interest me.”

“A nasty insinuation and a nasty subject,” broke out Derring, in his high, shrill voice. “I’m sure I had enough of it when they put a corpse into my spare bed and performed autopsies all over my apartment——”

“Do you object to our talking to Sutton and Sadoul about it?” inquired Harry Stayr. “I promise you it won’t get outside this club——”

But Pockman had no illusions: “Talk your damned heads off if you like,” he said, getting out of his arm-chair and striding away in that ungainly, rickety gait which, Stayr insisted, always made him think of Holbein’s “Dance of Death.”

Death continued to be the topic of The Talkers gathered around the grate at the Fireside Club that snowy evening.

Sadoul, looking ill, wandered in later and joined the circle, but sullenly refused information regarding the episode in question, and stretched himself out on a lounge, his sombre eyes veiled in indifference. Only when Mortimer Lyken strolled in was the surgical aspect of the affair revived—Dr. Lyken’s researches having associated him for years with the work of that shadowy personage generally known as The State Electrician.

But Sing Sing autopsies, not the grafting of glands, were Lyken’s specialties, and he had nothing new to contribute to the talk of The Talkers.

So The Talkers, who loved to talk of The Beginning and of The End, fell, presently, to discussing the soul—the same old soul which so often they had proved non-existent, and merely a component part of the exploded God-myth.

Said Stayr, whose articles on “The God-myth and Its Origin” were known everywhere that Talkers talked:

“If some of you millionaires like George Derring will back me, I’ll post a standing offer to perform any miracle mentioned in the New Testament or forfeit the stakes.”

Somebody objected to treating such a matter as a sporting proposition.

“Why not?” insisted Stayr. “It’s the way to exterminate the God-myth and Christ-superstition.”

Sutton, who had come in unnoticed and seated himself by the fire, touched Stayr on the arm:

“Where does it get you, Harry, to prove there is no God?”

“Get me? What do you mean? Don’t you want the truth?”

“Yes.... But are you authorised to dispense it?”

“Oh, well,” said Stayr, “—if you want to take that tone you’d better stick to the God of your forefathers, Stuart.”

“But where does it get you?” persisted Sutton, “if you convince people that there is no Divinity, no resurrection, no survival? The world is a wolf at heart. What’s to control it if you destroy its belief in spiritual survival?”

“Self-interest. The good will continue to be good, not for any sordid reward hereafter, but because being good is good business. The bad will be canned for the same reason.”

“You think the world could remain sane if it believed death meant spiritual annihilation?”

“Isn’t the immortality of the cell enough?” inquired Lyken.

“He’s an authority on cells,” piped up old Derring:

“Sing a song of Sing-Sing

To see a poor guy die—”

His shrill doggerel ended in a cackle and he slapped his knee, convulsed. It was George Derring at his most brilliant. But he gave parties.

Lyken forced a smile: “You are composed of several billion cells that never can die, George. Ultimately these cells will reunite, form a new republic, and develop into another living being. Isn’t that enough immortality for you?”

“That’s all there is to this soul business, anyway,” added Stayr. “There’s no survival of individual personality after death.”

“You seem to differ with Sir Oliver, Sir William, and Sir Conan,” said Fairless, “—not to mention a few million other educated folk.”

“I’ll do that, too, if Derring will stake me,” retorted Stayr. “I’ll move tables, produce raps, report progress from celestial regions, and materialise spirits. I’ll talk the jargon to you, too—all about psychic forces and planes and controls—the whole bunch of bunk!”

Sadoul sat up on his couch and peered through the firelight at Stayr.

“As long as the world can depend on your omnipotence, Harry,” he sneered, “it won’t miss God.”

“What’s worrying you?” retorted Stayr. “Do you believe in spiritual survival?”

Sadoul gazed about him. Half of his face was painted an infernal red by the firelight, half remained in shadow. His lambent gaze rested on Sutton, shifted from one man to the next, returned finally to Stayr.

“The life-principle survives after death,” he said in a dull voice.

“Yes, several billions of ’em,” rejoined Stayr, “—separately.”

“No; there is personal survival—call it vital-principle life-origin”—he shrugged—“call it soul, spirit—anything you choose.... But it is indestructible; and it isn’t one of a billion cells, or any of them, or all of them—the thing I speak of—it’s you yourself; it’s your individual, personal survival in form, feature, and intelligence.”

“In other words, the same old orthodox soul we’ve canned so often,” nodded Stayr. “But up it pops like jack-in-the-box, every time you psycho-hypnotic gentlemen wave your hands and murmur ‘abracadabra.’”

Fairless said politely: “Perhaps Sadoul has proven his theory of individual spiritual survival.”

“Pockman proved his theory of physical survival,” added Warne, “—according to his own deposition.”

“Do a hypnotic or psychic stunt for us,” urged Derring shrilly. “Go ahead, Sadoul. Seeing is believing, you know,” he added, cackling.

Sadoul glanced at him disdainfully.

Sutton said: “If seeing were believing, there had been no crucifixion.”

“I’ll believe what I see,” piped Derring. “But you’ve got to show me, Sadoul.”

Sadoul’s sombre gaze returned to Derring. He looked at him intently for a moment; then, measuring his words:

“Very—well—Derring. I’ll—show—you. But—you—can—never—see; never—understand. You—only—look—but—you—see—nothing. You—hear—but—you—understand—nothing.... Stand—up—you—old—ass.”

Everybody had turned to stare at Derring. They saw him rise, obediently.

That he was under the control of Sadoul was evident to every man present. Nobody questioned that; nobody exclaimed.

“That’s very clever of you, Sadoul,” said Stayr, putting on his eye-glasses. “How did you pick him for a sure-fire subject?” He tried to speak easily.

“Can you make him turn a hand-spring?” asked Fairless.

“Don’t make a monkey of him,” said Sutton sharply.

Derring’s faded, frivolous features remained fixed and rigid.

“Sit down,” said Sadoul, contemptuously. Derring obediently resumed his chair.

Seated there, full in the firelight, there was something grotesquely revolting about this carefully preserved, empty-headed, garrulous bon-viveur, with all his shrill chatter shut off, all his fidgety initiative paralysed—nothing left except an inhabited suit of evening clothes and a foolish old face above a winged-collar——

“For heaven’s sake,” said Sutton, “wake him up, Sadoul.”

“Wake up, Derring,” said Sadoul carelessly.

Derring’s eyes had been open. Now he moved in his chair, glanced about him, then looked at Sadoul.

“Well,” he said shrilly, “seeing is believing. You’ve got to show me, Sadoul; I’m from——”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” snarled Stayr, and spat into the fire. Then, looking at Sadoul: “Do you expect a thing like that to survive?”

“Expect what?” piped Derring. “What are you talking about? I missed something somebody said——”

Fairless interrupted, speaking across the fire to Sadoul:

“Clean stuff,” he said, “—very professional.... And can a surgeon operate under such conditions?”

“One first induces a more profound hypnosis.... After that—yes.”

“Major operations?”

“Certainly.”

“Treatment by suggestion, also, I suppose,” ventured Sutton.

“Yes.”

“Well,” admitted Stayr, “you called a bluff very cleverly, Sadoul. I admit it. Now if you’ll show us a soul or two——”

“I showed one to Derring,” returned Sadoul with a slight sneer.

“Hey? Showed me? What do you mean?” cried Derring. “What did you show me? I didn’t see anything——”

“I didn’t say you did. I said you looked at something.”

“God bless me, what the devil did I look at?” exclaimed Derring. “Come, now, Sadoul; that won’t do, you know. That’s all bunk, d’you see? I’ve been sitting here all the time and I didn’t see anything unusual, nor did anybody else, I’ll wager!”

Sam Warne laughed. Stayr, always bored and never amused by Derring’s obvious antics, turned to Sadoul:

“Come on,” he said impatiently. “Show me something I can’t account for and I’ll hand it to your orthodox God and go out of business.”

“Why should I? I don’t care what you believe,” retorted Sadoul wearily.

“Don’t you care if I believe you a fakir?”

“No.”

“Well, then, as a sporting proposition?”

“No.”

“Not even for the pleasure of making a monkey of me and putting me out of business?”

“If I showed you—something—you wouldn’t believe you saw it.”

Fairless asked Sadoul if it were necessary for him to go into a trance to materialise anything. Sadoul shook his head, but his sombre eyes remained fixed on Sutton.

“What a fakir you are, Sadoul,” observed Stayr.

Sadoul, not noticing him, said to Sutton: “I can show you something.”

“What?”

“Something you’ll be up against unless you keep away from a certain person of whom I have already warned you.... Shall I show you?”

“I don’t quite get you——”

“Very well. Look!”

Almost at the same moment Sutton saw something on the lounge beside Sadoul—a greyish figure that became more distinct as he stared at it—the figure of a girl—her face already assuming the contour and hue of life.

He realised it was Gilda he was staring at—yet a Gilda he had never seen in living shape—this sensuous young thing with softly rounded body, a trifle too heavy, with lips too full, too scarlet—this unknown Gilda with her languid eyes—her smiling lips scarce parted——

Swiftly the thing turned grey, faded—was no longer there.... Sutton got up; Sadoul rose, also.

“Did you see anything?” asked Sadoul grimly.

“Yes.”

“Well—that’s what the cat brought back!... You wouldn’t like it, Sutton.... But I do.... So keep away or there’ll be trouble——”

Stayr, who had risen, took Sadoul by the elbow.

“Very clever,” he said harshly, forcing his voice to steady it; “—very neat and professional, Sadoul. I saw a grey thing, resembling a human figure, seated on the lounge beside you.... You hypnotised me, of course——”

“I told you that you wouldn’t believe what you saw,” sneered Sadoul, shoving past him and striding toward the door.

“Did you see anything?” demanded Fairless, pulling Stayr’s sleeve. “I didn’t.”

The latter glanced around at the others with an annoyed expression, yet slightly foolish, too.

Nobody else, it appeared, had noticed anything unusual, but everybody was curious to hear what Stayr had seen.

“That fellow, Sadoul,” said Stayr, “is a fakir.... I thought I saw something.... I guess he got in some of his hypnotic bunk on me when I was off my guard.... Something like that.... Isn’t that about how it hit you, Sutton?”

“Perhaps.”

“You did see something, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know—I guess so,” he said vaguely.

“Don’t you want to talk about it?” asked Stayr uneasily.

Sutton shook his head and walked slowly toward the cloak-room.

CHAPTER XIII

Sutton’s daily programme was characteristic of young men of his sort.

He rose early enough in the morning to bolt a cup of coffee by nine o’clock, and be at his office by half-past nine.

In New York, workmen rise early; business men late—a custom that had better change before it is changed.

Sutton’s business, in common with the business of most reputable people, had suffered under the eight years’ blight of a mindless administration.

Even from the beginning, the grotesqueries of a comic-opera cabinet had alarmed the business world. Now, through eight incredible years, amid the ape-like leaps and capers of a contemptible Congress and the din of the demagogues in authority, a faint glimmer appeared in the grey obscurity.

Monstrous policies, infamous measures were nearing a climax; social unrest was approaching a boiling point; all the national and local scum from those eight miserable years was coming to the surface.

There it floated in its filth, stupidity, arrogance, incompetency—there seethed the dregs, too—national humiliation, sectional ruthlessness, class hatred, bitter consciousness of the world’s amused contempt.

There were the poisonous precipitations, too, in this hellbroth wherein the nation was stewing—enmities sown recklessly abroad; at home, the most infamous tax laws ever imposed since the day of the German King of England, George III.

And then the grotesqueries—the fanatic, rampant and victorious, imposing his will as ruthlessly as the Holy Office had dealt with any who opposed its dogmas—an entire people indicted as drunkards, and laws made to discipline everybody—laws contemplated, advocated, to regulate a people’s religious beliefs, devotional observances, spiritual requirements, minds—every inherent liberty which was theirs!

Everywhere the bigot, the despot, the mental pervert, were lifting hydra heads out of the accumulations of the last eight years. And, on this rotting culture, the crack-brain fed and battened—the parlour socialist; the ragged—and far more to be respected—anarchist; the miserable scribbler of seditious articles; the half-crazed intellectual, writing in praise of human equality—to which he must aspire in vain; the terrorist screaming in red print; the half-educated millionaire, with his mischievous efforts to start a religious pogrom; Congressmen of the “poor white” variety, appealing to sectionalism; and then the vast genus of Grafter—the contractor with his “code of practice”; the politician getting “his”; the walking delegate; the “leaders” who make the very name of “labour” a nauseating stink.

Now, in this grey, unhealthy obscurity befogging a nation, and gradually thickening during the last eight years, men’s minds and thoughts became dull and greyish, too.

Dull minds ruled and dictated the “trend of modern thought,” the cult of the commonplace made the average person duller, the stupid stupider, the intellectual morose.

It was an era of joyless dulness in literature and in art; creative work by the dull for the dull offered only what was negative and dreary. Solemnity reigned. The misty moroseness of Scandinavia and of Russia settled like a cloud over the country, clogging inspiration, tarnishing all brightness, reproving exuberance, so that in modern fiction there remained no buoyancy, no charm, no beauty, no tender frailty, nor any hint of sun and blue sky—nothing of human aspiration—no heart, no blood—only a monotony of all that is sordid, colourless, and passionless in human life.

In art, too, the plodding pedant spread the accentless cult of the commonplace, or of ugliness, physical and spiritual. That tour de force of degraded taste, The Faun, symbolised horribly the mental decadence of a sickened world.

The human-cow-school flourished: in every studio and art gallery cow-like human females suckled babies or dangled large bronze hands or marble feet over meaningless pedestals.

Architects beautified such squares as The Plaza with chunks of Indiana limestone and a series of superimposed cheeses for a fountain to face a gilded General, whose steed was led recklessly down town by a barefooted servant-girl wearing wings.

The ugliness that was New York’s!—the ugliness that was the nation’s!—physical, mental, spiritual, affronting a Creator who created nothing unlovely since the first nebulæ floated incandescent on the ocean of the night.

CHAPTER XIV

The only sign to indicate the suite of offices was a bronze and marble tablet between elevators:

SUTTON AND SON

(INC. 1809)

LUMBER

According to custom, the senior Sutton always retired upon arriving at the age of sixty, and turned over the business to his sons.

Stuart was the only son of the present generation.

So his father, Charles Edward Stuart Sutton, conforming to the custom of methodical forebears, strolled out of the flower-bedecked private office on his sixtieth birthday, wearing a white rose in his buttonhole, and a bland expression on his handsome features.

Which troubled mightily his son and heir.

“For heaven’s sake, dad,” he remonstrated, “you’re not going to leave me flat like that, are you?”

“You bet,” returned Sutton senior; “I’ve had enough. So hoist your own flag, Stuart, and lay your own course. Your mother and I propose to saunter through the remainder of our lives.”

“But if I signal for a pilot——”

“Certainly. Set signals if you need me. But unless you’re really in a pickle, be a good sport, Stuart.”

They exchanged a handshake; Sutton senior strolled on; son, considerably sobered, stood motionless in the familiar private office, staring at the masses of flowers, feeling uncomfortably modest and slightly alarmed.

He had supposed that he had already discounted the inevitable retirement of his guide, prop, and mentor. He really had. This painful modesty was due to the sentimental shock that now stirred up his boyish emotions.

The normal boy experiences it at the moment his father leaves him at his first boarding school. All bumptiousness disappears. He needs his daddy.

The next day Sutton junior arrived alone at the office and was received respectfully as the head of the firm.

There were fresh flowers for him. The entire office force presented congratulations individually.

That ceremony over, Stuart closed the door, poked up the coal fire in the grate, went to his desk and laid violent hands on a formidable morning mail.

Until noon he dictated letters. He lunched at the Foresters Club—a luxurious place on top of the newest skyscraper.

All that rainy afternoon he remained busy with his secretary, Miss Tower, or with business callers, or with officers and clerks of his own entourage.

He left rather late, and was too late to dress for dinner, finding his father and mother already at table.

“Did you get along all right?” asked his father, carelessly.

“Well, yes, I think so. You know there’s one thing you inaugurated, about which I don’t know anything——”

“Our land reclamation policy?”

“That’s it. I’d better go up and look over the new pineries.”

“They’re mostly under snow, now. But I think you better go in the spring.”

His mother said: “It’s all like a dream. I can’t realize that your father has retired and that you are ‘Sutton and Son.’”

“Well, I realise it,” remarked the husband. “I’ve been trying to decide between California, the West Indies, and the Riviera. I can’t. Can you, Helen?”

The mother smiled and looked at the son. She was loath to put such distances between them.

“If Stuart would only learn to take care of himself——”

“For heaven’s sake, mother!”

“You won’t go to a doctor when you take cold!” retorted his mother. “You smoke too much, you don’t eat properly, you sit up too late. I shall worry if I go away.”

Her son had passed the resentful age; some glimmer of understanding mitigated masculine impatience under maternal solicitude.

“I haven’t had a cold this winter; or needed a pill, either. Go ahead and gallivant with dad.”

Sutton senior and his wife were going to the opera, and the car had already arrived.

They lingered over coffee in the library, listening to Stuart’s description of his first day down town as head of the firm.

Maternal pride struggled with eternal solicitude: “You’ll stand by him at first, won’t you, Charles? Stuart’s shoulders must be gradually accustomed to such a burden. Before arriving at any vital decision he ought always to consult you; etc., etc.”

Theirs was that solid respectability that maintains ancestral estates on the Hudson and a grim brownstone or brick foothold not too far from the Marble Arch.

That section of society known as the Zoo recognized them, mechanically; but there was no foregathering. Even the fat and formidable ring-mistress of the Zoo, now in her dotage, but still socially formidable—and whose only remaining pleasure was in making lists of people she did not want to know—had not cared to write off such folk as the Charles Edward Stuart Suttons.

The snob-sets were tolerantly aware of them; the intellectuals, the nomads, the scores of social whirlpools and puddles in which swam the contents of Blue Book and Register, all were politely conscious of that rather placid and dowdy circle born of the Hudson and rooted amid the rocks of old Manhattan since he of the wooden leg marched out and the red ensign shot up over old Fort George.

“They do anything they damn please, but ignore you if you do the same,” was a complaint not unknown in New York regarding such folk as foregathered with the Suttons.

This was true. They made no bones about doing as they pleased within their circle or outside it. But in one respect they were beyond reproach; they seldom made an undignified marriage. Where other sets had been diluted by frequent mésalliances, they married and propagated their own sort. No obscure beauty born in outer barbarism, no frail and lovely meteor from the Follies, no charming daughter of the nouveau riche, had penetrated, matrimonially, those dull and dowdy mansions which gazed complacently upon the Hudson—frequently through dirty windows.

A rather frowsy maid in limp black came to announce the family bus—a limousine of pre-war excellence and dignity, and not to be discarded in deference to fashion.

For six years it had rolled majestically over New York asphalt and the Boston Post Road, and had borne the Suttons between the town house on Ninth Street and Heron Nest, the ancestral Hudson home.

Now it was solidly ready to bear them unto the temple of music, and thence homeward ere it was solemnly put to bed.

Going, his mother fulfilled the ceremony of the family kiss:

“Good night, Stuart. Don’t sit up late; you won’t feel well in the morning.... I forgot to say there was a girl called you on the telephone about six o’clock—I should say a well-bred person from her voice. Her name was Greenway. But I don’t seem to remember any Greenways——”

“There were the Courtland Greenways——” remarked Sutton senior, giving his son the family handshake.

Descending the stairs, his wife reminded him that the Courtland Greenways were in London.

As the front door closed below, Stuart unhooked the telephone receiver and called Gilda Greenway’s number.

He waited a long while. He could hear the operator ringing.

At last came the final nasal verdict: “The party doesn’t answer.”

He hung up, drew the evening paper toward him, hesitated.

Gilda’s maid had gone home; Gilda had gone out.... He wondered where.... It was odd, but he hadn’t thought of her as having friends—going about in the evenings.... Still, he had first seen her at Derring’s.... Derring’s.... Was that the sort of thing she had gone to?... With whom?... With Sadoul?

He spread his newspaper with decision, read the headlines successively—read on for a while ... sat thinking with the paper across his knees.

That saturnine mountebank, Sadoul!... Clever, always; but always a charlatan.... Yet not entirely a fakir.... Derring had been clay in Sadoul’s hands that evening at the Fireside Club.... And as for the—whatever it was—vision, or image—the shape he saw—thought he saw.... Of course that was some sort of mental suggestion—hypnotic suggestion—something of that sort——

An impertinent thing for Sadoul to do.... Clever, of course—a trick.... But outrageous to evoke—project—materialise—or rather, mentally suggest, to him such an aspect of Gilda.... That sensual, wanton-eyed, languid girl with her heavier limbs and her thick red lips——

He picked up his newspaper, tried hard to read it, flung it onto the sofa, and went to the telephone.

Her number did not answer.

CHAPTER XV

The firm of Sutton & Son, while solvent, had been hard hit. All honest business was in the same pickle or in a worse one.

Through a murk of business despair the miserable year approached its end. The national administrative body, too, like a dying rat, was now nearing dissolution—with kicks and jerks and spasms from the intellectual tatterdemalions who composed the vital parts of it.

Distant, still, loomed the incoming administration. It was too early to expect—perhaps even too early to hope—that the scandalous inequality of taxation might be remedied—that economical decency might prevail, founded upon a budget system—that universal service, military and civil, might unify the nation and make it secure and self-respecting—that an international tribunal, reserving national self-determination, and backed by proper means to enforce its verdicts, might be erected upon the ruins of the ridiculous league which the nation had repudiated.

Perhaps such a programme was too much to hope for, judging from the congressional scum still stagnating in what had become the national disposal plant.

And New York was depressed with the approach of a blue Christmas, a bluer New Year, and prospects of the very bluest blue.

And, among others, Sutton & Son paid the fourth quarter of its income tax and found that it had nothing left to lay aside.

So the Year of Graft was closing amid a mess of scandals—municipal, industrial—all the old symptoms of corruption, and a few new ones.

A good man is a good thing; and the American people, who love good things, gorge themselves, over-eat, spew it up, and blame the good thing.

So went the greatest modern American; so went the best modern mayor of Gotham; and the American people turned gratefully to their swill again.

Stuart had come uptown early, aghast at the future taxes to be faced, terribly depressed by a long consultation with his bankers and the utter impossibility of obtaining sufficient financial aid.

But he had no intention of carrying such a face home. He continued on uptown, trying to walk himself into a glow of cheerfulness.

But the crowds on Fifth Avenue lent him no countenance; it was a noticeably subdued throng, in spite of the late sunshine—not the bustling, cheery, complacent crowd that, in former years, stimulated already by the distant prospect of Christmas, surged gaily north and south along acres of gilded grilles and plate glass.

He thought he would go as far as The Province Club—that dull oasis of social respectability usually avoided by its members—but the sight of it annoyed him and he kept on.

Sunset still reddened the western wastes of Jersey as he entered the Park.

But there the sheer dreariness of everything halted him.

A first and sure symptom of hidden corruption is municipal neglect of the Park.

Dead trees stood everywhere. The long row of elms stretching up Fifth Avenue, decimated, had been replaced by wretched little elms, instead of the only tree suitable—the sycamore.

Untidy scraps of paper fluttered over path and grass; untidy employees slouched and dawdled and puttered among eroded hillocks and crippled vegetation.

High in the sunset sky sea-gulls passed over toward the reservoirs and North River; and across dead grass starlings walked and chilly sparrows hopped and quarrelled.

Stuart turned back again into the shabbiest metropolis in the world—but a good enough city for its fool inhabitants—and, not knowing where to take such a solemn face as he wore, walked on at hazard, infinitely depressed by the dinginess of life.

With the crowd he waited while the glare in the traffic-towers died out and a crimson lens and a green one signalled cross-street vehicles to move. Then, as the white flare played out once more over the Avenue, he walked on mechanically, a prey to sinister reflections, noticing no passing face, no lighted window, nothing specific in the moving swarm or in the glass corridors through which it poured.

At Forty-second Street, traffic having halted, he turned to cross to the west side of the Avenue. Somebody, crossing eastward, nodded, passing him. As he took off his hat and turned to identify her, she also looked back.

“Gilda!” he exclaimed, retracing his steps to join her.

She was in black and white and wore silver-fox and violets—a slender, elegant figure of Gotham type indigenous nowhere else on earth.

“Are you shopping?” he asked, “or are you homeward bound—or elsewhere?”

“I’m homeward bound, Mr. Sutton. Will you walk with me?”

“If I may.”

“Of course.... It’s two weeks since I have heard a single word from you.”

“Two weeks ago tonight I telephoned you,” he retorted bluntly.

She frowned, considering, trying to recollect. “Two weeks ago today?” Suddenly she remembered, with a rush of vivid colour to her cheeks.

“I called you at eight-thirty, and again at ten,” he went on; “but your house did not answer.”

“I’m sorry.... My maid sleeps out....”

“You also must have been out.”

“Yes.” She offered no further information. Her affairs were, obviously, none of his business; yet once more he felt that slight resentment, as though some explanation were due him.

At the corner of Thirty-fifth Street she stopped in the glare of the show windows.

After a moment’s hesitation, she offered her white-gloved hand.

“Are you dismissing me?” he asked good-humouredly.

“Why, no,” she said with a quick blush, “—if you care to—remain with me——”

“Shall we dine somewhere and go to a show, Gilda?”

“I’d love to; only, you see ... my maid already is preparing dinner.” There was a pause: she looked away from him, hesitated, added shyly: “Would you care to dine with me?”

“Do you really want me again?” he laughed.

She looked up, smiling: “I’m dying to have you,” she said. “You know it.”

The winning candour of the girl enchanted him, quickening the dull mind and heart he had carried about with him all day long.

“You’re charmingly generous,” he said, walking on beside her; “it hasn’t been a very gay day down town and I’m not in extravagantly high spirits.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ll try—try to——”

“——To put me in boisterous humour?” he inquired.

They both laughed as they climbed the dusky stairway to her apartment.

“I’ll try to be cheerful anyway,” she said, unlocking her door.

They went in.

She left him to look after himself and continued on toward the kitchen. Her maid presently appeared, turned up the lights, smiled at Sutton, and offered conveniences to enable him to rid himself of the accumulated grime of Gotham.

Later, when he was seated on the sofa with the evening paper, the maid reappeared and closed Gilda’s bedroom door.

He glanced at the financial columns; and gloom returned. There was more unpleasantness on the front page, with its scare-heads recording graft, violence, greed, at home and abroad.

Gilda took the usual three evening papers—the one popularly supposed to make vice attractive, the one notorious for making virtue odious, and the third unpopularly known as “pink and punk.”

There was nothing of merit in any of them. The same clowns conducted special sections as vehicles for a sort of mother-wit; the same critics devoted the same space to exploitation of their own idiosyncrasies, offering the reader nothing of value concerning the books and plays which they pretended to discuss.

An incredible meanness seemed to characterise these modern papers; there was in them nothing generous, nothing just, nothing honest—nothing, in fact, except the dreary evidence of uneducated contributors and of vulgar intelligences furtively directing them.

Stuart’s depression had now returned with a vengeance. He got up and began to walk about, nervously inspecting Gilda’s household gods—the few inexpensive mezzotints, the orange-tinted curtains and upholstery; the silvery-green carpet, the desk of sycamore and tulip wood painted with tiny flowers, where lay writing materials, wax, seal, and a silver-gilt candlestick bearing a yellow taper.

Except for the Adam desk, the English mirror, and a couple of old Sceaux figures on the mantel, there was nothing either antique or valuable in the room. Yet taste and colour charm were everywhere evident—in the yellow Japanese bowl where flowers were growing, in the lamp shades, draperies, pictures.

He went to the shelf of books and looked at their titles. All were standard works in French or English—dramatists, essayists, poets, historians, haphazard memoirs—Saint-Simon, Fanny Burney, Lady Russell, Cardinal Retz, Evelyn, Pepys—a sprinkling of dictionaries and reference books—all of Tennyson, all of Shakespeare, volumes of Coleridge, Keats, Robert Browning, the Laus Veneris—all of Molière, some of Racine, Musset, Hugo—but nothing modern save Rostand and Maeterlinck.

And among all there was not one unused volume, nor one doubtful or unhealthy or degenerate book—no fiction later than Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Hugo and Dumas, except the Belgian mystic and the great French poet.

The whole place, in fact, gave Stuart an odd sensation of having seen such a room somewhere else.

He said so when Gilda’s door opened and she came forward in a black dinner gown, smiling inquiringly as though to ask him how he had spent the time awaiting her.

“It’s so comfortable—all this——” he indicated the ensemble.

“It’s cheerful, isn’t it?” she assented, pivoting to review the familiar place.... “There was a room in my father’s house in London—— ... I tried to make this look a little like it.”

“That’s probably what I feel,” he nodded; “——it’s like a room in an English home.... And as for you, Gilda, you are very beautiful in black; do you know it?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “I don’t.”

All men like feminine youthfulness in black, but feminine youthfulness usually avoids black until it becomes inadvisable to wear it.

“You’re lovely,” he repeated. “I once thought you very fetching in green, but you’re adorable in black.”

She gave him a demure glance to see if he were in earnest, and, seeing that he was, turned happily to nod to Freda, then took his offered arm lightly, with exaggerated ceremony.

“We’re to dine on last night’s turkey, my poor friend; do you mind?” she explained gaily, as Freda set the better part of a fine roasted bird in front of Stuart.

“The wonder to me is that anybody can afford turkey,” he remarked, preparing to carve.

“Oh, this bird was a present. It’s a wild turkey. I have some mallard ducks, too, in the ice chest, and several quail.”

Always it seemed to surprise him to discover that Gilda had other friends than himself. He wondered who had sent her the game—a man, of course, and, of course, a wealthy one. Always, too, the slightest sense of uneasiness accompanied such discovery—perhaps with the memory of Derring’s party in mind—the memory of Sadoul, too, and of Pockman, and all that irresponsible, over-accented crew of irregulars from which, sooner or later, are recruited the frail battalions of Cytherea.

Yet why he should make it a personal matter at all was not clear to him: it was none of his concern what friends this young girl had—this girl whose status had seemed more or less obvious when he first met her, and afterward anything but obvious.

For since then he had come to realise that he knew absolutely nothing about her—that he never had encountered any prototype with which to compare her.

Only one thing seemed evident; she didn’t belong to Sadoul; she didn’t belong in the Cytherean element where he had found her. He simply couldn’t determine what might be her proper habitat, or to what genus to assign her.

Gilda was gaily animated during dinner—having discovered that shooting interested her somewhat subdued guest.

And presently Stuart warmed up, stimulated by her tactful questions; and he began to tell her all about the game club in Virginia of which he and his father were members, and about the upland and water shooting to be had there—the live decoys and how they were cared for, handled, and bred; the kennels, and how promising pups were trained—all the gossip and lore of masculine haunts whither man repairs to shoot and drink and gamble and sprawl and gossip with his brother man.

After dinner she was still the interested hostess whose light, swift response to the voluble mood she had evoked in him gave him no interval for gloomy reaction.

But reaction was inevitable; it was coming now. Aware of it, she went to the piano and started midway in one of those vivid, impetuous Hungarian fragments, wild as a Tzigane’s frolic where the flashing skirts reveal a knife in every garter.

He leaned moodily on the piano, passing his fingers through his crisp, blond hair, his gaze absently following her flying hands hovering like white moths above the keys.

Stopping capriciously, she rose and reached over for a pile of tattered music; but his hand checked hers; held it.

“I want to talk to you, Gilda.”

She nodded, came from behind the piano: “Please don’t look so worried, Mr. Sutton. Can’t I make you forget for a while?”

They had seated themselves on the lounge where her prim cushions stood in a tidy row.

“Anyway,” she said, “your troubles can not be really vital.”

He looked at her with sudden curiosity:

“No, they are not vital. Are yours?”

“Mine?... I have no troubles.”

After a silence she said lightly, but with an effort: “Anyway, we are not going to compare troubles this evening, I hope. Otherwise, I’m a miserable failure at amusing you.”

“I’m not thinking of my own troubles, Gilda.”

“I have not asked you to concern yourself with mine,” she said coolly.

“Is that a snub?”

She flushed: “Do you think I could afford to snub my only friend in New York?”

“You have other friends, haven’t you?”

She shrugged her shoulders and her head remained lowered.

“You never speak of your friends to me, Gilda,” he added.

“Do you speak of yours to me, Mr. Sutton?”

Naturally he had not. There had been no reason to—no point of contact or of interest, of course, between the people he knew and a girl he had picked up at Derring’s.

She lifted her head and looked at him gravely:

“I am not interested in your friends. As for the people I know, I do not believe they would interest you. They scarcely even interest me,” she added with a ghost of a smile.

“Do I interest you, Gilda?”

“Do I interest you, Mr. Sutton?”

“More than—than I can find words to tell you,” he blurted.

“Oh.... There’s a dictionary in my bookcase—if you require words——”

He turned very red.

“To aid your limited vocabulary,” she explained, already uneasy at her own badinage. But the next second he was laughing, and she seemed much relieved.

Her unexpected and delicate impertinence, and now her confused smile, enchanted him.

“I don’t need your dictionary,” he said, “to say you’re the most charming girl I ever knew—and that’s how much you interest me!”

He took one of her hands. She suffered it to remain in his possession but gave him a sweet, confused look, utterly irresistible to sentimental youth.

Like the majority of young men under similar circumstances, he had no particular intentions when he drew her forward into his arms and kissed her. She shook her head, averted her face; but he tipped her head back against him; and she remained so, restless, unresponsive, silent.

A little flame flickered in the boy’s heart and stole through his veins, hurrying the rhythm of every pulse. The faint, warm scent of her restless head—the softness of her body—were thrilling him; but he tried to speak lightly:

“——There was once a little Queen in Green who returned a kiss I gave her——”

“I can’t—any more.”

“Why?”

She was silent.

“Why?” he urged.

“Because there is somebody else to consider!”

Chilled, he released her. She drew away slowly.

“You didn’t understand me,” she said, not looking at him.

“You meant that there is another man to consider, didn’t you?”

“I meant that I must consider myself.... Indiscretion is a temptation when I’m with you.”

He drew a swift breath of delight and relief: “But, Gilda dear, there is nothing to be afraid of with me!”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s nothing rotten about me——”

“How do you know there isn’t about me?”

“What!” he cried incredulously; and caught her in his arms, laughing, drawing her closer.

“Now,” he said gaily, holding her imprisoned, “are you afraid any more?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t afraid at Derring’s.”

“No.... But—that was before I—I died.”

“What do you mean, Gilda?” he demanded.

She said almost fiercely: “Because I do care for you, I’ve got to tell you everything, I suppose!... I wasn’t afraid for myself that night at Derring’s.... I was merely bashful and stupid about it. But now, I’m afraid.... Because I—I am not that same girl you kissed at Derring’s. That girl died.”

“What! Do you actually believe you died that night?”

“I know I died.... And when my soul—or whatever it is called—tried to reënter my body she found another occupant there!”

“Another—soul?”

“Yes, a stranger. My own soul drove her out! I saw that other one. She was a sly, supple, beastly thing; and she struggled to stay.... I might as well tell you, too, that she often comes back, slinking around, lurking about to get possession.... I suppose you’ll think me insane to tell you this. But—I like you—so much—that I had to tell you.... And that’s why I’m afraid—to let you—touch—me——”

“Good heavens, Gilda,” he said, “this is a sort of waking nightmare—an obsession——”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.... Ask Sadoul, then——”

“Sadoul!” And all at once he remembered the shadow-shape he saw on the lounge beside Sadoul that night at the Fireside.

A sudden, raging curiosity seized him, overwhelmed him, to learn more—if there was more to learn—if, indeed, there was anything at all real and coherent in this wild absurdity he had listened to.

He said: “Sadoul is a clever fakir—I suppose he hypnotised me—for he once showed me something that vaguely resembled you—parodied you, Gilda, in a rather dreadful way——”

“When?” she whispered.

He told her everything briefly. “If that’s the thing you’re afraid of,” he added, “make yourself easy, Gilda, for it’s not real; it’s not a spirit; it’s nothing but a rather beastly brain-figment shaped by Sadoul’s mind. By hypnotic suggestion he made me see it, too. That’s all there was to that affair.”

She sat white, drooping, silent—not resisting when he drew her to him.

“You mustn’t be afraid,” he said. “You didn’t really die, of course. Nothing threatens your soul, or mine.”

She looked up, still very white; he put one hand behind her head, but she turned her cheek to his kiss, shivering in his arms.

“I tell you,” she said in a low, hurried voice, “that the Other One is watching us. I’ve got to be on my guard——”

“You darling. You need not be——”

“Stuart!—for God’s sake—listen——”

“Are you afraid to let me kiss you, you adorable child?”

“Yes! And I’m afraid to tell you—tell you what I’ve got to tell you, now—that it was not I who called you on the telephone two weeks ago. It was the Other One! It was—it was that thing you—you saw seated beside Sadoul!”

“Are you mad?”

She said desperately: “I’m trying to tell you something terrible that has happened to me. I’m trying to tell you that my own soul had been driven out of me when I telephoned you, and that the Other was in possession!

“And—and not finding you, that Other One called Sadoul.”

“Sadoul!”

“My God, yes! But only to mock and torment him—not for the reason that I—that it called you.... I want you to listen to me, Stuart.... Sadoul came here that evening. I was waiting and ready, burning, the very devil in me. We dined at the Palais Royal—danced. Then there were other places.... And later a party at Harry Stayr’s.... I drank enough to terrify myself.... It was daylight before the dance ended. I don’t know what I said to the men there or the women. Women still call me up every day. Men send flowers and ask me to dinner. One of them sent me that game from the South.... And that’s what I did!—God knows why!... Now, do you want to kiss me? Do you want to touch me? Do you care to chance what might happen if the other caught us off our guard?”

His face had become ghastly. He got up from the sofa, took an uncertain step toward the door; looked back at her in horror; and saw her eyes blinded with welling tears.

“I had to tell you,” she said.... “You won’t care to—to see me again, will you?... Because I told you I was afraid—if you kiss me—you might find the—the Other One in your arms——”

He came back to her in a sudden passion:

“I’d better look after you, I think, if you’re likely to make another night of it!”

“Stuart—do you care?”

“Of course, damn it! You don’t belong on Broadway. You don’t belong at Derring’s or at Harry Stayr’s! I don’t know what this crazy obsession of yours amounts to.... It can’t be true. There are no such things as malign spirits watching to possess and destroy anybody.... And God knows I shan’t ever harm you—Gilda—Gilda!——”

CHAPTER XVI

When Stuart Sutton told Gilda Greenway that he intended to keep an eye on her, he meant it.

Her own account of her behaviour surprised and disconcerted him. He hadn’t supposed she was likely to do that sort of thing; yet, after all there was no reason for him to think otherwise.

Somehow, his boyish egotism persuaded him that he had become a factor in Gilda’s career. He had airily taken it for granted that, since their encounter at Derring’s, the girl had lost interest in other parties and other men.

Her description of her conduct had jarred, disappointed, even irritated him, although he realised it was none of his business.

However, all that was one thing; and her amazing belief in her spiritual peril was another.

Undoubtedly the girl’s dread was genuine. There could be no question that she believed herself to be threatened by what she called the Other One.

Sutton had heard The Talkers talk about “possession”—the temporary but repeated seizure of the human body by mischievous disincarnate intelligences, when that human body was in a defenceless state due to physical insensibility, either healthy or morbid.

Science recognised the phenomenon, examples of which varied. The personalities of the subjects “possessed” were as far apart as Mr. Hyde and Sir William Crooke’s pretty little helpmeet in her teens.

Hypnotic and psychic phenomena, in their sensational aspects, interest everybody.

Stuart Sutton had read a little—and superficially—concerning the latter subject. He had heard The Talkers arguing about it. It was the fashion to take it seriously. Stuart so took it.

Like the majority of people, he also concluded that individual survival after death, even if not scientifically proven, was safely to be assumed as a fact. He had really never doubted anything about it except its orthodoxy. The indestructibility of that living, individual intelligence we call the soul is a belief necessary to the world’s moral health.

But to Stuart, as to the majority, the soul is a widely different thing from the physically living being which harbours it.

Modern scientific investigators, however, seem to think otherwise. Among these were Sidney Pockman and Casimir Sadoul.

Stuart came into the Fireside Club for dinner one wet, windy night, tired from a bad day down town, where the banks cared to lend little money and everybody wore long faces and stocks had tumbled from seven to ten points at closing.

The boy was nervous, depressed, needed a cheerful face and voice, and found neither. He had called Gilda on the telephone but her maid said she was dining out—another disconcerting item in the long day’s list.

His father and mother had gone to California; he dreaded a solitary dinner alone; the dull, pompous atmosphere of the Province Club repelled him; it lay between the Harvard and the Fireside; and he chose the latter.

He noticed Sadoul and Pockman dining together at a small table, and it relieved him to know that Gilda was dining with neither.

He exchanged nods with them. Pockman looked as unhealthy as usual. Sadoul’s long, dark visage seemed thinner and more shadowy, and his eyes smouldered like a man’s sick with fever.

Derring was there in evening dress with Julian Fairless; Lyken wore a dressing gown and slippers, and was talking animatedly to Harry Stayr over a chafing-dish full of shrimps and whitebait.

“There’s no doubt,” he was saying, “that consciousness remains in the brain for an appreciable time after death. A swiftly severed head is perfectly conscious of its own ghastly predicament—the guillotine experiments have suggested that—and now it has been proven in our research laboratories.”

“Well,” said Stayr, busy with his food, as always, “what happens to the wretched boob in the chair at Sing Sing when the State Electrician pulls the lever? Does he know he’s dead?”

“The mind knows.”

“What? With all those volts tearing tissues to pulp and vapour?”

“You can’t kill the indestructible,” insisted Lyken. “You can kill the body, all right; but it takes time for the ‘soul’ to leave it.... Sometimes quite a long time even when bodily death is instantaneous.”

Stuart, listening to the cheerless conversation, finished his dinner gloomily and went into the great main room to smoke.

Here, by the fire, The Talkers, as usual, had gathered to “tell the world.”

There seemed to be nothing they did not know. And there was nothing anybody else knew. They were there to persuade, to explain, to controvert. They were The Talkers, and they were there to talk.

Yet, before these men joined the Ancient and Unmitigated Order of Talkers, many among them had promised brilliancy in their several professions—science, art, literature, medicine, the law.

But talk is a stealthy and subtle malady which, discounting initiative, infects talent and ability, gradually renders them sterile, paralyses action, and ultimately atrophies all functions except the vocal.

Stuart listened to The Talkers for a while; but action down town had already satiated him. He got up and went slowly into another room, where a cannel-coal fire burned in a smoke-blackened grate. Nobody else was there. He dropped into a deep leather armchair, as though very tired.

He may have fallen into a light sleep. Something caused him to open his eyes. A cake of fat coal had crumbled, blazing with a sort of frying-crackle as the flames set shadows dancing on the wall.

One of these shadows seemed to detach itself—a shape seated in sombre silhouette before the fire. And, as Sutton looked, he saw it was Sadoul’s dark head resting against his hand, redly edged with firelight.

Stuart broke the silence: “I’ve been asleep, I think. When did you come in?”

“Not long ago.”

Neither spoke for some minutes. Then Sadoul turned slightly in his armchair:

“Do you want to talk, Sutton?”

“All right.”

“There’s a person who seems to cause some little feeling between you and me. I suppose you guess who I mean.”

“Little Miss Greenway?”

“Yes. I thought I’d speak of her——” Sadoul half rose from the depths of his chair and turned full on Stuart: “I thought I’d be circumspect—beat about the bush—convey, intimate—as well bred men handle such matters—that possibly you are seeing Gilda Greenway oftener than might be good for her.”

Stuart bade him go to the devil in a low voice.

Sadoul slowly shook his head.

“No,” he said, “that gets us nowhere. And I’m not going about the matter politely, either: I’m going to speak quite plainly if you’ll listen. Will you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try. It’s better to understand each other. May I speak?”

“Go on.”

“Then, there’s no use in telling you that I’ve been in love with Gilda Greenway from the moment I laid eyes on her——”

“You left her lying alone in Derring’s bed when you thought she was dead.”

“I know what you think——”

“You went downstairs to dance!”

“I went downstairs to—kill myself.”

Sutton sat up and shot an incredulous look at Sadoul.

“I went into the wash-room,” said the latter quietly. “I had a gun—and there was a convenient mirror there.... Pockman stopped me and tried to take my gun. We discussed the chances of gland grafting. I’d seen him resurrect dead rats. So I thought I’d wait and see.... After the operation Pockman discovered my gun in my overcoat pocket, and he took it and drove to his laboratory.

“When I found the gun was missing, I suspected Pockman and I took a taxi after him. All I wanted was the gun. I was willing to go back to Gilda and wait the limit before killing myself. I didn’t want to die if she was coming back. But Pockman tricked me into his dark room and turned the key on me.... That’s the story. Ask Pockman if you care to.”

Sutton listened sullenly, not doubting the explanation, and not much pleased with it, either.

“Well, what else?” he asked bluntly. “I’m not concerned with your morbid emotions, Sadoul.”

“I suppose not. It was merely to make the case clearer. I want to clarify it still more. You speak of morbid emotions. My emotions are normal. I’m terribly in love.

“And I want to tell you a little about Gilda——”

“I don’t want to hear anything that does not concern me——”

“It does concern you——”

“Or anything of a private nature in any way reflecting on her——”

“I don’t lie about women. I don’t even tell the truth if it’s unsavory,” said Sadoul coolly.

That was his reputation.

Sutton shrugged acquiescence, muttering something about lack of interest. But his boy’s mind was flaming with interest if not with a curiosity more vulgar.

Sadoul said: “The instant I set eyes on her I was in love. I couldn’t help it. I wanted her or I didn’t want to live.

“I couldn’t help the nature of my passion. It suffocated me. I strove to involve her, to envelop her in it—not conscious, so help me God, that it was hypnosis, mostly, that caught and held her.

“Only by degrees did I realise it was mostly hypnosis that made her so exquisitely pliant, so docile. I tell you I had not consciously exercised any such power, in the beginning.

“The awakening was for me. It was not—pleasant.... It was less agreeable when I did use that force to awake the child to normal life.... My God, Sutton, when I discovered that the real Gilda cared nothing for me——”

He sat twisting his lank limbs and bony fingers like some living gargoyle in torment.

“My God,” he said, “my God!... Well—I used the hypnotic force that was in me. I sent her back into the negative state.... And she was pliant again—in a way.... We were together.... I know she likes my mind. I’m intelligent. We went about together all the time.... She was amused.

“Then came a time when she had to go to England. A matter of property—attorneys to consult.... And I meant to tell you, every day or so there were terrible scenes if I let her slip back to normal even for a minute....

“After she returned from England I did everything desperation suggested to an unscrupulous man crazed with passion. I threw the hypnotic switch wide open. I gave her every volt I could control.... Because there is no other woman for me. Never will be. It’s Gilda or none.”

He sat in silence for a very long time. Then he rose stiffly, his shoulders sagging.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it does not take long to die. But it always takes time for the indestructible life-principle to disengage itself from the body. If you think I speak at random, I can show you photographs of the process. It’s a curious affair—not resembling the escape of the moth from its chrysalis—not a metamorphosis——”

“Are you trying to make me understand that the soul has been photographed while leaving the body?” demanded Sutton.

“Many times, recently; photographed, and also seen.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Several times.”

“You talk very carelessly about seeing that which the world is longing to believe exists.”

“If the world saw it the world would not believe it.... I showed you something, once. Today you do not believe you saw it.”

Sutton flushed: “I don’t understand such things.”

“Nor does the world.”

“Didn’t you suggest to me what I saw?”

“No. But it became visible to you through both hypnosis and suggestion.”

“Well, what I saw—thought I saw—was not Gilda Greenway.”

“Not—yet.” Sadoul seated himself. Suddenly he swung his long, dark head toward Sutton with a movement noticeable in powerful animals turning ugly. His eyes were wells of depthless shadow.

“The bond between a corpse and its leisurely escaping soul,” he said, “is not more essential than the occult bond which knots my being to Gilda Greenway.

“Do you know that a faintly luminous umbilical cord unites the escaping soul to the body? When it is finally severed the body really dies—that is, the brain becomes empty of its deathless principle, though the various organs of the body continue living for a day or so....

“That is what will happen to me if Gilda goes out of my life completely. The tenuous bond will dissolve. I shall be dead—here!——” He covered his forehead with his hand.... “Sutton, is it worth while for a casual young man to interfere, wantonly?”

He sat with his hand still covering his forehead, gazing vacantly in front of him. After a moment the stare faded to a darker glimmer, and he looked directly at Sutton.

“I’ve told you as much as suits me—not all. I’ll tell you one thing more: When Gilda’s body was dead, I tried to hold back her escaping soul-principle long enough for Pockman to operate. But it got clear of her body except for the umbilical cord. And, no sooner was the new nymphalic gland in place, than another disincarnate intelligence drew near and stood watching us.

“I recognised it, yet never before had seen it. Astronomers know that unseen stars exist. I knew this Other One existed. And now I encouraged it to seize Gilda’s body for its habitation. That was the figure you saw seated on the lounge near me. That’s what I wanted. And I aided it—tried to.... I wanted it to possess Gilda’s body, and drive out the tenant that stood near her head, vaguely luminous, still attached by the umbilical cord to the corpse.... Do you think I have encouraged that Other One for the pleasure of any man except myself?... Do you think I have started a spiritual conflict in Gilda Greenway for your ultimate gratification, damn you?”

Sadoul’s voice had become a whisper; his hand fell from his forehead. He got to his feet again, a bent, grotesque phantom against the drifting glare of flame-tinged dusk.

“I—thought I’d say this,” he muttered in an odd, querulous voice not like his own, but older, and with a sort of senile quaver.

Sutton got up, too:

“I don’t quite see your object in telling me these things, Sadoul.”

“I think you’ll see it when you reflect.... There are other women, Sutton.... I mean for you. I hope you’ll see it that way.... There are so many other women to play with. There are some even to fall in love with.... I hope you’ll see it that way, Sutton.... So—good-night to you.”

Sadoul went out through the ruddy shadows, passed without a sound across the velvet carpet, loomed for an instant, a wavering shape framed by the doorway, and was lost somewhere in the vista of uncertain light beyond.

CHAPTER XVII

At the office one afternoon Stuart discovered among his letters a note from Gilda Greenway:

“Dear Mr. Sutton:

Freda told me that you telephoned. I’m so sorry I was out. I haven’t heard from you since. Are you discouraged? I thought you threatened to keep an eye on me. Empty threat!

GILDA.”

He really hadn’t missed her, except when he chanced to remember her. Romance abhors a busy man.

But her note stirred him. He went to the inner office and called her.

“Is it really you?” she asked in the gayest of voices.

“Certainly. Are you all right?”

“Certainly,” she mimicked him; “are you?”

“You sound very frivolous.”

“I am—being no longer in dread of that threatened eye.”

“Have you been going to parties?”

“Now and then.”

“Have you seen Sadoul?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“I supposed you weren’t going to.”

“Why did you suppose that?”

“On account of his—influence——”

“Oh,” she said carelessly, “that is of no use to him. Besides, it’s worn out. I’ve grown up. On one of my minds he has no longer any influence; and he’s afraid of my other mind.”

“I suppose you know what you mean,” he said curtly.

“Isn’t that a trifle impertinent, Mr. Sutton?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.... But it’s over now. What a wonderful day it is—the bluest sky and the air like champagne. I’m riding this afternoon. I wish you were.”

“Have you a horse?” he asked, surprised.

“Oh, no, just an Academy nag. Could you ride with me?”

“I’m nailed down here at the office until six.”

She waited. He said no more.

“Well,” she said, “if you care to see me, sometime, you’ll do it, I suppose.”

“Do you care?”

“I do. But I’ve concluded that your Guardian Eye is otherwise occupied. There are so many girls in the world! To keep watch on all his friends, a modern young man ought to have more eyes than Argus——”

“Are you going home after your gallop?”

“Veronica Weld asked me to tea.”

“I didn’t know you knew her.”

“I met her at Katherine Ashley’s.”

“The devil! Do you know her, too?”

“You speak as though you didn’t consider me presentable.”

“Nonsense. I didn’t know you went about with those people; that’s all.”

“One must go where one is asked or remain a recluse.”

“I suppose Derring and Warne and Fairless—all that crowd—will be there.”

“Where?”

“At your confounded tea.”

“Will you come and get me?—unless you are otherwise engaged——”

“I’ll be there at six-thirty to keep an eye on you, as I threatened.”

“Shall we dine—at—home?”

Her charming yet diffident acknowledgment of intimacy surprised and touched him. He began to realise how impatient he was becoming to see her again.

“That will be fine!” he exclaimed, with all his former enthusiasm. “I have missed you, Gilda.”

“You’re not obliged to say that merely because I have happened to miss you.”

“Have you really? What an engaging child you can be——”

“Very full of engagements this afternoon. I’ve a taxi, now, spinning money down in the street. Will you really come to Veronica Weld’s for me at six-thirty?”

“You bet——”

“Au revoir, donc—-”

At six he left the office and departed for home in the family limousine. All the way uptown he thought of Gilda, sentimentally.

In high spirits, he took a red-hot bath and then an icy one; got into fresh linen and a dinner coat, and drove to Central Park, West, where dwelt Veronica Weld in a studio apartment overlooking the park.

Veronica, always fair, and now becoming plump, had stepped from the Winter Garden to the hymeneal altar with the button-headed scion of a wealthy New York family.

Scion lasted three months; then Family bought him back. And Veronica maintained herself agreeably upon the net profit of the transaction.

She always had a penchant for intellectuals—which cast a raw light upon the scion episode—and she preferred mind to matter when she could afford it.

A tarnished residue of Talkers was apparent when Stuart entered the salon of Veronica Weld. Fashion, too, was represented in a few chicken-headed youths, a few rickety old sports of the Derring type, a woman or two who haunted the outer edges of things. As for Beauty, it was there, also—Katharine Ashley of the Filmy Films Studios; Eve Ferral (born O’Farrel), made famous overnight as Godiva in the great spectacle of that name at the Palisades Palace; and there were Gilda Greenway, and Frances Hazlet, the brown-eyed dancer, and other specimens of pulchritude, all enveloped in cigarette smoke, intellectual atmosphere, and pretty gowns.

Cups clattered, glasses tinkled accenting the tumult of The Talkers; Derring’s falsetto titter added tintinabulation to the general jingle, in the midst of which Stuart made his bow to Veronica and received her tapering hand heavy with rings.

“Toujours rondelette?” he murmured with debonaire impudence, saluting the most expensive ring.

“Old stuff, my dear,” returned Veronica, unruffled; “the squelette is démodé.”

“You’re prettier than ever, Nika; the struggle with mighty intellects agrees with you.”

She opened her fan and said confidentially: “Take it from me, Stuart, it’s the baby-doll that’s crazy for knowledge, not the girl born to Miss Spence’s. No Johnny believes that, but it’s true seven times in ten.”

He smiled incredulously, declined the offered tea-cup, spoke to one or two people near him, stepped aside and gazed about him to discover Gilda.

There she was, cornered by Stayr with a plate of cake, and otherwise hemmed in by Pockman and Fairless, with Sadoul looming darkly in the background.

She wore black and white and her silver fox with somebody’s orchids. She caught his eye, smiled and made a slight gesture of recognition.

When he came up and spoke to her, Stayr said: “You’re as popular as a rattlesnake, Stuart. Aren’t there any other girls in the room?”

Pockman said to Gilda: “Good-bye, then, and don’t forget your promise. It means a lot to a poor devil of a doctor.”

Frances Hazlet drifted by, shook hands vigorously with Stuart, and drifted on with Stayr and Julian Fairless in tow.

As Pockman left, Sadoul crossed over, nodded to Stuart and said to Gilda in a low voice: “I’ve a table at the Palais des Miroirs and theatre tickets—if you are free, Gilda.”

“I’m sorry——”

“You’re busy?”

“Yes.”

He stood a moment, then turned on his heel without a glance at Stuart. The latter followed him with his eyes and saw him seat himself near the door, beside Katharine Ashley, where departing guests were within his range of vision.

Stuart shrugged and looked at Gilda, who understood his glance:

“Does it matter?” she said carelessly.

“Not to me.”

They smiled.

“I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,” he said, “——or do you really grow more lovely during my absence?”

This commonplace seemed to make her happy; she gave him one of those shy, disconcerted little laughs, but managed to sustain his gaze.

“Advanced thinkers,” she ventured, “say that beauty is a necessity.... You don’t seem to agree.”

“Because I’ve remained away from you, and you are Beauty?”

“It was my deduction from your premises.”

They laughed.

“Do you want more tea, more atmosphere, more talk,” he inquired, “——or shall we go?”

“Don’t you desire to converse with some of these interesting people?” She adjusted her furs as she spoke, seeming to expect no answer. There was a slight flush on her face as she went with Stuart to make adieux to Veronica.

“Don’t forget you’re dining with me Thursday,” said the latter to Gilda, as they turned away.

Sadoul’s sombre eyes avoided them as they passed him.

Stuart wondered whether he really might turn unpleasant some day, and the surmise aroused a vague anger in him.

His car was waiting.

“Oh, is it yours?” asked Gilda curiously.

“The family bus,” he nodded; gave directions to the chauffeur, got in and pulled the fur robe over Gilda.

Probably the Sutton bus had never had so lovely an occupant since its ponderous wheels first turned on Gotham asphalt.

CHAPTER XVIII

By the middle of December there was some talk among The Talkers of Stuart Sutton and little Miss Greenway.

“She plays her game quietly,” remarked Julian Fairless. “I haven’t anything on her. She looks straight.”

“Wasn’t she Sadoul’s girl?” asked Sam Warne.

“You never can tell whose girl any girl was.”

Stayr said: “It’s usually somebody you never heard of. Possibly she once made a monkey of Sadoul. Probably she’s making another of Stuart Sutton. Certainly there has been, is, and will be a simian somewhere cherished by her.”

“If it’s true that there are two kinds of women,” observed Fairless, “no man can guess which is which unless they tell you.”

“There’s only one kind,” said Stayr.

“You mean potentially, I hope.”

“Does it matter?” sneered Stayr. “If you marry you’re stung; if you don’t you’re stung just the same. It’s fifty-fifty however you play ’em or however they play you.”

“Yours is not an amiable philosophy,” said Warne, laughing.

“Listen, old sport, here’s the true and only solution: take ’em easy when they come; give ’em three cheers when they go. The man who makes of woman anything more than an agreeable incident belongs to the era of the Dodo. Don’t try to understand her. There’s nothing to understand. You have only to observe her. She’s utterly obvious. A protozoan is subtle compared to her.

“She has only one imperative function—so has a cat that fills a basket full of kittens. All her habits have their origin in that single necessity.”

Thus talked The Talkers, whose necessity is to talk, and who can no more escape functional destiny than can the female cat.

Gilda was forming a habit of going about with Stuart more or less, traversing a lively but limited orbit the centre of which was a semi-intellectual coterie of unclassified modernists who knew no law except inclination.

All were opportunists, but lived up to that creed only lazily. For the inclination of the majority was to think idly, live idly, follow lines of least resistance, and balance the account with talk.

Gilda went with Stuart to various teas, dances, restaurants, theatres, exhibitions, lectures, conferences, and parties of sorts. He dined at her apartment now and then. Their preference for each other was discussed and the intimacy criticised with varying degrees of charity and cruelty.

What perplexed people was the absence of sentimental symptoms, none, so far, being apparent even to the most malicious scrutiny.

As though, in the banquet of youth, these two had begun at the wrong end with the dessert, and now were progressing tranquilly backward toward the hors d’oeuvres.

Even the smouldering gaze of Sadoul detected nothing to serve as fuel to feed inward fires. And Stayr, utterly gross, observed them uneasily, disturbed that any theory of his should be punctured with impunity.

“The trouble,” snickered Pockman, “is with Sutton. He’s one of those congenital celibates. The girl really is a little devil.”

“What’s the trouble then?” demanded Stayr. “Any girl ought to land any saint.”

“The trouble,” said Pockman, “is that she knows she’s a devil, and watches herself.”

“If she’s a devil she’ll behave like one some day. Otherwise, what’s the fun in being one?”

“There you are, Harry. Sometimes a girl like that gets more pleasure out of martyrdom. And I think that’s the case with Gilda Greenway.”

“Isn’t there any question of morals involved?” inquired Warne. “Some people have ’em, in spite of what you say.”

“None. Chastity is an heirloom in some families—like the Hudson River Suttons. There are certain things such cattle won’t do. As for the girl—well, maybe it’s a moral kink—I guess she was born with the usual virginal instinct—but she’s had a brand new fight on her hands ever since she died——”

He smirked and cast a stealthy glance at the men about him. Although a doer, in spite of professional fears Pockman was also a born Talker. He couldn’t help it. But every indulgence in garrulous dissipation brought him remorse. Even now he knew he would regret what he was going to say. But he said it:

“I gave Gilda Greenway a new nymphalic gland and started her machinery again. Sadoul tried to give her a new ego. But the original ego came back, too; and now, I fancy, there’s mental hell to pay at times.”

“Do you, a reputable physician, believe that?” yawned Stayr in utter disgust.

“I’m telling you what Sadoul tried to do to her. I express no personal opinion concerning psycho-hypnosis. I entertain none concerning any psychic phenomena—not even when I see examples.”

“What have you seen?”

“I saw Sadoul photograph the exuding ego from a cadaver in St. Stephen’s Hospital.”

“A soul?”

“Call it that.”

“What did it look like?”

“It began to exude as a tenuous vapour, very faintly luminous. After forty-eight minutes and some fraction it commenced to assume human shape. An umbilical cord was visible.... The process continued for several hours.”

“Sadoul photographed it?”

“He did. And when the cord dissolved and the formed ego was ready to depart, Sadoul actually halted it through what seemed to be hypnotic control.... My God,” muttered Pockman, suddenly sweating at the recollection, “we had that damned thing in the death-chamber for hours, under Sadoul’s control, and subject to his every suggestion.... I don’t scare easily. But I got sick with—well—with superstitious fright, I suppose.... I believe I’d have gone crazy if Sadoul hadn’t let the thing go.”

Pockman’s flat, livid features had become viscous with unhealthy sweat. He wiped his face, hunched his shoulders, and started to move away at his rickety “Holbein” gait.

“Go on and tell us more about those stunts!” called Sam Warne after him.

“Go to the devil,” retorted Pockman. “I’m sorry I told you fellows anything. You’re all mouth and ears and there’s nothing else to you except intestines!”

There wasn’t much else—merely a matter of degree. Stayr was a greater feeder than Derring; the latter had the larger ear area; Fairless more loquacity, etc., etc.

CHAPTER XIX

It was likely to be a dull evening at the Fireside. Frances Hazlet was giving a birthday party—or, rather, some kind gentleman was giving one for her, and had taken Fantozzi’s drab, demure private mansion on Lexington Avenue.

Sutton had gone home from the office to dress. He was rather restless because he had not been able to get Gilda on the telephone. He dined alone at the Province Club, finally, but continued to haunt the telephone between courses.

Something in Freda’s placid responses hatched suspicion in his mind. He began to wonder if Gilda was really at home and wouldn’t come to the telephone. He had vaguely suspected this on other occasions, but always concluded there could be no reason for such behaviour, and was ashamed to mention it to her.

However, the odd suspicion returned, now, to haunt him; and, the Province Club palling on him, he sent for a taxi and drove to the Fireside.

Seeing Sadoul reading in a corner relieved him, although Sadoul also was in evening dress and, moreover, wore a camelia. They exchanged nods but no words. Sadoul calmly turned a page in his book. Sutton sat down by the log fire to smoke a cigar.

Toward eleven Pockman came rocking in with his coattails flying, an opera hat crammed over his prominent ears. Sadoul laid aside his book, got up and went downstairs with him.

After that there was a gradual exodus from the club toward Fantozzi’s. Warne went, Lyken, other men.

Sutton tried to read; couldn’t; grew irritable; decided to go home; decided not to; tried Gilda’s house again, but nobody answered, not even Freda.

His watch seemed to have gone wrong; he discredited what it reported. So he went downstairs and looked at the standard clock in the lobby; and discovered it was long after midnight.

Where could Gilda be? It was none of his business, which made him the madder. She had decided not to go to Frances Hazlet’s party. She declined his guidance thither. Had she changed her mind?

Harry Stayr strolled into the cloak-room to reconstruct his white evening tie.

“Going to Fantozzi’s?” he inquired, looking at Sutton in the mirror.

“No,” said Stuart shortly.

Stayr turned, took him by the elbow; but Sutton demurred, saying he didn’t feel like dancing.

“One can always eat and drink,” observed Stayr. “Come on, like a sport. That Esthonian Prince and his suite are there, and it’s likely to turn lively by this time. Besides, don’t you want to pay homage to concentrated pulchritude?”

“I’m not in the humour——”

“You’re going with me, old dick! Get into your bonnet!”

“It’s one o’clock—nearly half past one, Harry——”

“Those night-blooming blossoms will be in the fuller bloom! Allons! Houp! Come into the garden, friend. There’s many a nosegay to gather at Fantozzi’s.”

When they descended from their taxi there was not a gleam of light visible about the house; all shades were drawn; Fantozzi’s had the aspect of a private mansion fast asleep.

They ascended the brownstone steps and rang. The door opened.

Into a dim vestibule they stepped; the outer door closed; then an inner grille clicked and they stepped into a glaring inferno of heat and noise.

Fantozzi’s fairly seethed with colour and turmoil; the rooms to the right were swarming with dancers whirling through tobacco haze, amid a deafening outcrash from the energetic orchestra.

Upstairs, downstairs, on the stairs, everywhere were pretty faces—flushed, laughing, eager faces vis-a-vis masculine and ardent youth—lank youth, fat youth, chuckleheaded youth, handsome youth—and middle age, too, bearded and saturnine like Sadoul, with a half sneer on his features—dapper and bald like George Derring yonder, capering with Nikka Weld, whose bobbed hair bobbed as she danced.

And there was his Serene Highness of Esthonia footing it enthusiastically with Frances Hazlet. He and his suite looked like Ritz waiters—having no backs to their heads—but they were tenderly cherished by beauty, and seemed to be having a magnificent time.

Already the party had become a trifle rough. There was a girl there whose partner had lifted her off the floor, and was swinging her in circles, her body and legs nearly horizontal.

Sutton eluded collision with this pair of flying feet and backed into the hallway.

Here a girl he had never before beheld seized him and danced with him. Here, later, he encountered Frances Hazlet, who kissed him boisterously in return for birthday wishes.

About that time an Esthonian fell downstairs; and Freedom was preparing to shriek, but he landed uninjured on the back part of his skull which wasn’t there.

The heat and noise were bewildering. Stayr beckoned Sutton to the punch bowl, where his Serene Highness, encouraged by Katharine Ashley, was bobbing for floating strawberries, amid shouts of laughter. He lifted a dripping muzzle in triumph and bolted a berry.

“Nasty beast,” muttered Stayr, tucking several bottles of champagne under his arm and picking up a silver ice-bucket. “Come on upstairs, Stuart, and we’ll crack a quart like gentlemen.”

There was tumult, too, above stairs; laughter and singing at the supper tables; a negro banjo trio hammering stridently; sporadic dancing and a riotous tendency to throw flowers and sweet-meats at all new arrivals.

Sutton received a heavy handful of flowers full in the face; then the girl in the white dinner gown, who had hurled them, rose straight up among the gay and disorderly group surrounding her, pushed her way violently through the throng, gained the hall, and already had started running downstairs, when Sutton caught her by the waist.

Both were breathing irregularly and fast when they confronted each other. Her cheeks burned crimson, and there was a scent of wine in her breath.

“I thought you weren’t coming here,” he said. “You told me so.”

“You said you weren’t coming!”

“Is that why you came?”

No answer.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“Yes, it is,” she panted, “——if you’ve got to know! Please, may I pass you——”

“One moment, Gilda. Where are you going?”

“I’m going home.”

“Then I’ll take you——”

“I don’t wish you to!”

“Is somebody else——”

“Yes, Sadoul!—if you’ve got to know.”

The shock left him white and silent; the girl released herself, started to pass him, saw his ghastly face, stopped, stood motionless and mute with her green eyes fixed on him.

After a moment she shivered as though chilled. “I’m safe with Sadoul,” she said. “Can’t you understand that I’m safe with Sadoul when I’m this way?”

“Have you had too much wine?”

She shook her head, set one foot on the stair below, descended another step, laid her left hand on the banister, halted, looked back and upward.

“I’m better off with Sadoul,” she said again.

He made no answer.

Suddenly she turned, sprang up the stairs and came close to him where he stood on the step above her:

“You are not to care what I do!” she cried. “Let me go home! You don’t know what you’re doing to me!”

“I’m not holding you,” he said, astonished.

Her fingers tightened on the banisters. All at once her eyes were glittering with tears.

“Take me home,” she whispered. “I can’t stand this.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes! Yes! Can’t you see I do?... Only—I was safer with Sadoul.... When this happens—when I’m this way—I’m safe with anybody except you.”

She took his hands, strained them convulsively between her own. Cheeks, eyes, lips were burning; the column of her white throat was stretched up toward him. For the second time in their lives she threw both arms around his neck and returned his kiss as passionately as he gave it.

But now the hallway was invaded by a noisy company ascending the stairs. The girl clung tightly to his arm as he started downward with her through the increasing tumult and disorder.

She was tearful, excited, incoherent, when they entered the taxi; almost hysterical when they ran up the dark stairway, unlocked her door, and entered.

“I want you to go,” she wailed. “I’m not myself tonight—not the girl you know—not even friendly——”

“Don’t be frightened. Has Sadoul tried any of his beastly tricks——”

“Don’t you understand what I mean!” she cried. “Can’t you see it’s not I who stand here? It’s that damned Other One!

“It’s the thing you saw!... She’ll tear my heart out for this! She’ll tear my soul out! I’m trying to tell you that we’re not safe with her.... I’m asking—you—to go——”

She turned with a tragic gesture and caught her quivering face in both hands. He stared. After a moment she dropped her snowy, naked arms, moved her lovely head until her eyes met his.

“I suppose you know I’m in love with you,” she said.

When he could find his voice he said: “Do you know that I am in love with you, also?”

“I knew it tonight, on the stairs.”

Neither stirred for the moment, but the boy was all a-quiver now; swept by his first overwhelming surge of passionate love.

She came to him and rested both white hands on his shoulders.

“What are we going to do about it?” she asked.

He gazed blindly into her altered face. All the flushed and sensuous stigmata were there. He felt the heavy sweetness of her body; the languour of her eyes invaded him.

Suddenly the clamour of the telephone filled his ears. She paid no heed to it; her gaze lost in his, searched deeper; her red lips, too full, trembled.

But the monotonous shrilling of the telephone had partly aroused him to some consciousness of the world about him—to self-consciousness, too. And, with this confused resurrection of submerged senses, came mental awakening—a glimmering recognition of facts.... Of indestructible facts which never change.... Old, old facts which never can be ignored, never altered....

There were two things which a man of his race did not do. One of these he was about to do now.

He took the girl into his arms and held her close, not kissing her.

“I’m in love with you, Gilda,” he said unsteadily.

“I want you to be.”

There was a brief and breathless silence, filled suddenly by the racket of the telephone bell. The metallic outburst cleared his brain, but it seemed to madden hers.

She flung wide her bare arms in a sort of childish rage, her lovely mouth distorted.

“Do you hear that telephone?” she cried. “That’s Sadoul! And this is where his damned cleverness is urging me—not into his arms—into yours!——” And she clasped him fiercely, strained him to her with a little cry:

“It’s you, not Sadoul! It’s you! only you! Shall I prove I love you better than my soul?”

The boy turned scarlet: “I want—want you to marry me,” he stammered.

“What!” she exclaimed in flushed astonishment.

“Didn’t you understand?” he demanded.

“M-marry you?” she faltered. “Darling! What are you saying? Don’t you know I can’t marry?”

“Why not?”

“Because I am married.”

He gazed at her aghast.

“Darling! I married Sadoul in Paris ten months ago. Didn’t anybody ever tell you?”

He seemed stupefied.

“I thought you knew it,” she repeated in a bewildered voice. “That’s why I ask you what are we to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said vacantly;.... “I’d better leave you alone, I suppose——”

She caught his lips with hers to silence him; clung closer in a passion of fear until again he drew her to him.

She was trembling all over now, imprisoned in his arms. After a while the boy dropped his blond head beside hers, pressing his face against her hot cheek.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, “——it isn’t in me—it isn’t in any of my race—to love—lawlessly....”

The girl was crying silently. But when he lifted his head she looked up at him through her tears:

“I didn’t ever want you to see me when I am this way,” she said tremulously. “That’s why I always try to escape being with you when—when the Other One is in possession—and I seem to be what I am not——”

“Do you mean that this other—this intruder, this strange, depraved intelligence—is in possession of you now!” he demanded hoarsely.

“Can’t you see? Look at me, Stuart. Can’t you see that tonight I am the—the thing Sadoul showed you?”

But already he knew it was true; knew that he was in love with her even as he saw her now—even with this depraved intruder gazing out at him through Gilda’s lovely eyes.

Exasperated, well nigh beside himself, he took the girl by her bare shoulders, violently:

“You’ve got to free yourself,” he cried; “You’ve got to rid yourself of this obsession—this waking nightmare. You’ve got to divorce Sadoul——”

“He won’t let me, Stuart. What can I expect from a man who trapped my soul when I lay dead and sent this other shameless thing into me, hoping it would prove a friend to him?”

“Can’t your own soul drive it out?”

“It is fighting now.... By tomorrow, I hope——”

“But your mind is still your own, Gilda.”

“My own soul controls that, always. It’s the senses that the Other seizes.”

He looked at her fearfully, unloosed his clasp from her waist, stepped backward, passing one hand heavily across his eyes.

“This is incredible,” he muttered. “If it’s true, it’s too monstrous to be without remedy.... After all, God lives—somewhere——”

He pressed his hand, tight, over his eyes again.

“Stuart?”

“Yes,” he said harshly.

“Shall I attempt to make it clearer to you? I think I can.”

“How?”

She thought a moment: “Dearest, I am going to try to show you more than Sadoul once showed you. I want you to know exactly what happens to me. Come.”

She took his hand, led him across the room, and opened her chamber door.

There was a bright ceiling lamp burning in her bedroom. She lighted the rose-shaded night lamp also, then pointed toward the lounge.

He seated himself. She said in a low voice: “I think God will let me show you.... I pray that He will.... Don’t touch me—afterward. Don’t even speak. Just turn out both lights and go home very quietly. Do you promise?”

He nodded.

The girl went over to the bed and lay down on the lace counterpane, extending her slender figure so that she rested on her left side. Her left arm lay extended; her eyes were covered by her right hand.

For a second or so she moved a little, adjusting herself; then she lay unstirring under the brilliant ceiling light.

Minutes passed. He scarcely stirred, watching her motionless form. But into his memory crowded poignant recollections of another night, when he had sat beside a dead girl until, unable to endure it, he had dropped on his knees beside her to ask an “Unknown God” for equity and justice.

Thinking of God now, and his eyes fixed upon the still form on the bed, he was suddenly aware of another person in the room—a girl, standing near the fireplace.

Over his neck and back and thighs slow chills crawled.

She was like Gilda; lovelier, possibly. The brilliancy of her complexion under the ceiling light—the exquisite, nameless grace of her somehow seemed to still the surging fear in him—quiet his pulse’s panic.

In the flood of light where she stood there was absolutely nothing unreal about her. And had Gilda not been lying there on the bed he would have believed this girl was she.

Then, to his astonishment, she looked at him smilingly; came to him and rested a light hand on his shoulder. He could feel the warmth of it; he looked up into her face, and felt the fragrance of her breath.

This was no phantom. Scarcely knowing what he did, he started to rise, and was arrested by the pressure of her hand gently resisting.

“You promised,” she said, smiling. The sweetness of the low voice was indescribable.

“Are you real?” he asked, under his breath.

She laughed silently. “Oh, very,” she said. “Touch me.”

Her arms and body were warm and firm. She took his hand and placed it over her heart. Under it he felt the steady beating.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“I am Gilda.”

“Then—then what is that on the bed?”

“My home. There is an intruder in it.... Look! Do you see her lying there, watching us?”

And now, beside the motionless shape on the bed, he saw another figure lying, half hidden, peering stealthily at him over the naked shoulder of the unstirring form.

Slowly, furtively, its head lifted; and he recognised the sensual features of the thing that Sadoul had made him see—the languorous eyes, the scarlet lips, the neck too white and thick, the limbs, marble fair, heavy, marvellous——

The thing rose on the bed, supported by one naked arm to prop it. Suddenly it leaped lightly to the carpet—a living creature, breathing, palpable, utterly real.

The girl on the bed stirred slightly and a deep sigh escaped her.

The figure beside Stuart bent down and whispered to him to put out the lights and go.

He rose. The Other One laughed at him; touched his face with her soft pink fingers as he passed her to extinguish the rose-shaded night lamp.

Before he put out the ceiling light he paused, his hand on the electric button, and looked at the three he was leaving in the bedroom—leaving in darkness there.

He looked at the motionless form on the lace counterpane; he looked at the Other One in all her flagrant beauty; he looked at his first and loveliest visitor, who returned his gaze sweetly, tranquilly, reassuringly.

Then he switched off the light.

CHAPTER XX

It being Saturday, and a half day down town, Stuart went to the Fireside on pretense of lunching, but particularly to find Casimir Sadoul.

From his office he had tried to get Gilda on the telephone, but she was still asleep. Then he called up Sadoul at his apartment and at the offices of one or two periodicals, without finding him.

Now, at the Fireside, he learned that Pockman and Sadoul, much the worse for wear, had breakfasted there about noon and had gone away together.

He had left word for Gilda to call him when she awoke. She had not done so. After lunch he telephoned again. Freda informed him that her mistress was still asleep.

Stuart had had no sleep, having arrived home only in time to bathe and change for the office.

But it was the nerve-shattering experience with Gilda which so disorganized him that he could scarcely hold a fork or lift a glass of water to his lips.

“Where do you suppose I could find Sadoul?” he asked Dr. Lyken, later, in the cloak-room.

“He’s usually at Pockman’s research laboratory in the afternoon. Have you ever been there, Sutton?”

“No.”

“Some laboratory! You know what they’re up to, don’t you?”

“I know, vaguely, what Pockman is doing.”

“Glands. And Sadoul has taken the other end, now. He writes his vitriolic stuff in the morning, and investigates psychic phenomena all the afternoon. Pockman staked him.”

“Staked him?”

“Yes. Pockman has given Sadoul several rooms in the laboratory and has fitted them up. He must believe in such things, or he wouldn’t have spent all that money on quarters and apparatus for that clever fakir, Sadoul. Why don’t you go over and take a slant at the place?”

“Where is it?”

“Over toward Fifty-seventh Street and the East River. Of course, I can’t bring myself to subscribe to such theories and procedure, although, like the majority of scientific men, I’m on the fence and ready to be convinced.... I couldn’t tell you whether there is anything in it or not. I don’t mean Pockman’s work: that’s sound; I mean Sadoul’s psycho-physical research.... If you’re going over, I’m walking that way as far as Third Avenue.”

They turned east at Fifty-seventh Street.

“It’s quite a laboratory, Sadoul’s,” continued Lyken. “He’s got one machine there invented, I understand, by Sir Oliver Lodge. It’s an amazingly delicate affair. It keeps a record of all muscular effort on the part of a medium during tests. Any loss of weight, any addition, is accurately noted. It gives a continuous chart of temperature, pulse, breathing. It notes all mental activity; it even photographs visualisation when concentration is sufficient——”

“That’s impossible!” ejaculated Stuart.

“No, it really isn’t,” said the other. “Sensitized plates wrapped in opaque coverings have been tried out. When the subject concentrates on any object there is a very good photograph of it on the plate. Which seems to prove that thought-waves are really projected——”

“Have you seen any?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Made by Sadoul?”

“Yes.”

After a silence, Lyken went on:

“Sadoul uses ultra-violet rays and quartz lenses when he takes a movie of any psychic proceedings.

“He’s well equipped with x-ray apparatus, radium tubes—the latest and most delicate instruments.... You know you can’t help respecting a man who is so patiently trying out evidence.”

Sutton walked along in silence beside the garrulous Lyken, understanding little of what the latter was saying.

“I’m on the fence,” repeated Lyken, “but I’m no bigot, and I’m quite in favour of research experiments along those lines—if anybody has the time and the courage.”

“I suppose experimenters are ridiculed.”

“Not so much, now. Too many great names are associated with the investigations—Lodge, Wallace, Crookes, Edison, Imoda, Van Zeist, Matla, Zaalberg—too many tremendous names to scoff at.”

“What do they want to do?”

“Here’s their programme: experiments in, and investigation of, clairvoyance, materialization, dual projection, levitation, soul photography, subconscious mind, human polarity——”

“I don’t know what those are,” interrupted Stuart bluntly.

“Nobody does. We don’t even know what the electric fluid is; we know only that it’s there.”

“At least we can see it.”

“We can see one phase of it. The vast, overwhelming forces—energy and its sources—are invisible. We know them only by their results. I don’t see why these tremendous psychic forces should be visible, either. One thing is certain: they’re there, and we know it because of their results. The thing to do is to find out what these forces really are—physical or psychical—manifestations of the psychical ego, the mental, or the spiritual.”

They paused at Third Avenue.

“I’m taking the Elevated,” remarked Lyken. “Are you going to swap yarns with Sadoul?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with Sadoul,” returned Stuart unsmilingly.

Pockman’s laboratory consisted of several shabby old houses converted into a single rambling structure facing the river.

A young woman in nurse’s uniform admitted him and showed him to a dingy waiting-room. Pockman presently appeared in white operating costume, which became him as cerements become a corpse.

“Glad to see you,” he smirked. “What the hell put it into your blond head to come over here?”

“I’m looking for Sadoul,” replied Stuart.

“He’s in his own section. I’ll send him in——”

“Pockman—just a second.... I want to ask you something—and I don’t know how to put it.... Is there any actual—any scientific basis—anything to be taken seriously in these psycho-hypnotic tricks that Sadoul does?”

Pockman hunched his bony shoulders and began to walk about the room in his jerky, cockroach way.

“I don’t know how he does the things he does,” he said. “Maybe he’s faking; I can’t tell.... But there seem to be phenomena along those lines worth investigating.... I’ve given him a place of his own in the next house.... If you want to talk to him——”

“Yes, I mean to talk to him.... But you’re a graduate physician, Pockman—a specialist in certain lines of research—and your standing is high, according to all I hear about you.

“And so I desire to ask such a man as yourself about these disquieting and somewhat unpleasant performances of Sadoul’s——”

“Which one in particular?”

“In particular I’m thinking of his meddling with little Miss Greenway.”

“I supposed you had her in mind.” Pockman cracked his knuckles, resumed his pacing, arms dangling and jerking: “She’s a morbid subject,” he said. “Otherwise he couldn’t have snapped her up over there.... God knows what one human mind can do to another, Sutton. No use asking me; I can’t tell you.... We don’t know anything yet. You tell ’em! We don’t know the alphabet of life. We don’t know what life is, how, where, when it originated.... But we’re going to know. You tell ’em that, too!”

He burst into a harsh twitter and went racking on around the room like some spavined thing, his arms jerking.

“I want to ask you,” said Stuart in a low voice, “do you think Sadoul really has any psychic control over Miss Greenway?”

“Well, by God, I don’t know!” almost shouted Pockman, coming to a stop in front of Sutton, his long arms flying about uncertainly:

“Here’s a theory: we all have dual personalities—many of us have multiple. Personality is that indestructible identity which persists after bodily death. Call it a soul. It’s a short word.

“Now, take little Miss Greenway’s case. That girl’s body died and remained physically dead for hours. No doubt about it, Sutton.

“But what happened to her soul I don’t know of my own knowledge. That indestructible identity which was Gilda Greenway certainly returned as her body’s tenant; but whether it found another lodger in possession and has had to put up a continual fight, as Miss Greenway says——”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Yes, she told me.”

“When?”

“She speaks of it every time she comes here——”

“Here? Does Gilda come here?”

Pockman’s flat face was all glistening with sweat; he wiped it, but the ghastly smirk remained.

“Say,” he said, “you and Sadoul and Derring and Harry Stayr do nothing but camp on that kid’s trail.

“I’m trying to keep tabs on her, and she’s decent enough to see the scientific importance of submitting to daily observation. But you’re all chasing her and keeping her excited and nervous, and where the hell do I come in?”

Sutton, astonished and troubled, said nothing; Pockman flourished his flail-like arms:

“I’m trying to keep a record of the only case on record. My God, can’t you fellows show some decency and self-control—you, taking her about town at all hours and driving Sadoul insane with jealousy—Gilda claiming that Sadoul is having her shadowed by a disincarnate, homeless and malicious soul that has no morals and wants to drive out her own soul and get in—Sadoul, licking his chops as though it were true, and hopeful that there might be something for him with a new tenant in possession of Gilda’s pretty body—and all those other johnnies chasing about, sending her flowers and fruit from Florida and ducks from——”

He went rocking and teetering around the room again, shaking his bony hands above his head:

“How am I going to observe the results of transplanting a nymphalic gland into a corpse with all this feverish hullabaloo going on in that child’s life? What do you suppose it does to her?—all this excitement——”

“Wait a moment!” said Stuart, detaining him as he rambled past, and holding him by one flapping arm: “All I want you to tell me is whether, in your opinion, it is scientifically possible for Sadoul to meddle spiritually—or in any occult way—with what you call that indestructible identity which is Gilda Greenway’s soul?”

“I’m telling you I don’t know!” shouted Pockman. “He seems to be able to do things to identities. He materializes them, weighs them, takes their pulses, temperatures, blood-pressure—he photographs them, measures them, listens to their lung action—— There seems to be no end to what we are learning about those disincarnate personalities vulgarly known as ‘spirits’ and so long exploited by psychic crooks and fake ‘mejums.’”

He wiped his unhealthy skin with the sleeve of his operating robe.

“That’s all very fine,” he said. “Let others go to it. The nymphalic gland is my job——”

“You haven’t answered my question, Pockman.”

“Which one? Oh! Do I think it possible for Sadoul to encourage some homeless but more sensual spirit to enter little Miss Greenway and ultimately drive out her real identity?”

“That’s what I asked you.”

“Sutton, I don’t know. I know he has always tried to arouse in the girl some response to his own morbid, lovesick importunities. Normally the girl always seems to have been fascinated by his brilliant intellectual equipment—seems, in a way, to have fallen a victim to it—probably aided by hypnosis.

“But for the rest—I guess not. No—I’ve studied her. She isn’t that kind. The girl is, when let alone, perfectly normal in everything.

“The new nymphalic has put her in superb physical condition—a magnificent young animal!—that’s what the girl is.... And as far as I can see she has, normally, a vigourous, healthy mind to control her every emotion.... And yet, she does break loose—like the other night at Fantozzi’s.... But that’s exuberance—letting off steam——”

“Do you call that normal, Pockman?”

“Well, no, I don’t.... And she tells me—with some very wild and breathless tears—that it isn’t natural for her to kick over the traces and raise the devil in that fashion.”

“It would almost look, then, as though——” Stuart hesitated, his haunted eyes fixed on Pockman.

The latter said:

“Well, she claims it’s what she calls the Other One that creeps in when she’s asleep, or off her guard—at some psychological moment when her subconscious self is off duty.... I don’t know. We’ve read ‘Jekyll and Hyde,’ and ‘Peter Ibbetson,’ and ‘The Brushwood Boy’—and a score of other clever tales. This business of Gilda Greenway sounds like another volume of the same series.... And then, again”—he shrugged his bony shoulders—“the story of Gilda Greenway may be as true as anything in the world.... The world itself being only a big lie told to amuse a lot of gods—somewhere yonder—beyond the outer stars—and all laughing like hell——”

He stood rocking on heels and toes with the irresponsible movement of something inanimate swept by tempests.

“No,” he muttered, wiping his clammy visage, “we don’t know anything, so far.... My God, no.... Are you going in to talk to Sadoul?”

“Another time.”

“Oh! From your face I thought you were looking for him to kill him.”

“I’m not the killing sort, Pockman.”

“Oh! Well, he is. It’s a tip—if you ever mean to mix it with Casimir Sadoul.”

Stuart looked neither interested nor surprised.

“I haven’t yet decided what I want of Sadoul,” he said without a trace of threat, yet with a simplicity that seemed to make no question of getting whatever he might wish for.

Pockman looked at him long out of fishy eyes. Then he snickered.

“Some day,” he said, “if you and little Miss Greenway are good to me and let me observe her in peace, I’ll tell you both something about Sadoul that will make it easier for you to put a crimp in him.”

“No, thanks,” said Stuart coldly.

“As you choose, Sutton.... Drop in again and look over my assortment of glands—all alive and guaranteed to start any corpse two-stepping....”

CHAPTER XXI

Often in those days, working with his secretary, or, in the little inner office, working alone, something approaching realisation of the problems in which he was being involved would suddenly confront Stuart, leaving him dismayed.

The simpler of the problems was less disturbing. Their solution, if they were to be solved, was obvious: he could ignore the traditions of his race and drift on with little Miss Greenway as his mistress; he could challenge those traditions and marry her—after her case had been pulled through some legal knot-hole or other.

He was now aware that he had only to choose. Either choice lay outside the customs and habits of his race. The Suttons had never condescended to irregular love affairs; the Suttons did not marry ineligible women.

The basic question, however, was yet to be solved—whether this impassioned preference for little Miss Greenway was actually love. It had several of love’s ominous symptoms—all its impulse, restlessness and fever, all the familiar sieges, alarums, and excursions incident to the oldest story in the world—older even than death.

Not to see her for a day was endurable. And it was always during the first day’s separation that he doubted the genuineness of his passion. A second day brought restlessness, and time lost in freeing his thoughts of her so that other matters might be pursued with a free mind.

Then, before the third day, his vague unease became a longing. The desire to see her set in like a tide—as passionless but as inevitable as some immemorial custom of nature obeying its law.

It was this phase that made him aware of depths within himself unstirred heretofore—blind, unplumbed depths, profoundly in motion.

Always their reunion quieted these deeps in him—even in that strange phase of her when her soul seemed helplessly entangled in obscurity and her over-flushed and altered beauty warned him of the dark transition.

For he found her, sometimes, during those unreal and shadowy moments when another intelligence possessed her.

In that lovely and tragic transfiguration she no longer attempted to avoid him. On the contrary, she now called him, her changed voice alone being sufficient warning.

For they had talked it over together, sadly, in fear, consulting each other what was safest for them while the shadow of the Other One possessed her.

The boy had laid down the law, furiously. She was to call on him; never again to face this obsession recklessly out of bounds.

No more parties where, unafraid and maliciously immune, she could watch Sadoul, undaunted, and taunt him with the very lips he had altered for his own desire. No more escapades. The fever must burn itself out behind doors that opened only to him.

He was to take the brunt of it—though, in tears, she bade him remember and beware of treachery within herself—warned him that she must prove a false ally in that occult crisis—in the burning obscurity of her obsessed mind; in the faithless intent of a subtle and uncaged heart.

“There is no other way, dearest,” he said. “If there’s ever a débâcle then we crash down together.”

“And when I awake, Stuart?”

“Had you rather awake in any other arms?”

“No.... But I don’t want ever to awake that way.... Even in your arms.... What was it you told me about one of those Western states?”

“It’s necessary to establish a residence.”

“How?”

He went over it with her again—details that he spoke of with difficulty—the whole sordid legal procedure so utterly repugnant to them both, yet which held for them a miserable fascination. Also, there was Sadoul, and they did not know what he might do to fight divorce—she very certain that he would follow her—he aware that Sadoul could close her road to complete freedom and make it a drawn game.

One dark afternoon toward Christmas-tide, they had been speaking of it—an odd time to revert to so miserable a subject, for Gilda was going to have a tree for them both, and they had been dressing it.

Now she knelt beside the tree with yards of tinsel trailing from her hand, watching Stuart winding the electric wire, with its rows of tiny coloured bulbs, among the branches.

“I don’t know,” she murmured—“I think the only way is to go on as we are. Don’t you, Stuart?”

He muttered something inaudible, twisted a strand of bulb-set wire through a fragrant green branch.

“We are anything but unhappy,” she ventured. And, as he said nothing, busy with his wire among the branches: “I wonder why you care to marry me. It would not be agreeable to your family.”

He turned around: “Why do you assume that?”

“I don’t assume it, Stuart. Sadoul told me.”

“What damned business is it of Sadoul’s——”

“Please! The conversation had become general; Veronica was giving us tea; George Derring talked snobbishly about old families and social traditions. Somebody mentioned you. Sadoul etched one of his vivid portraits—a sort of composite portrait of a Sutton.... You know Sadoul is a master of trenchant English—a word is a phrase with him.... Your race lived for a hundred years when he spoke.... I was quite scared.... Then I realized that what he said was sneeringly meant for me.... That was all, Stuart.”

After a silence he resumed his task among the branches:

“A man marries to please himself,” he said in a slightly sullen voice.

“Men of your race marry within their family’s approbation.”

“Good heavens, Gilda! That dreary, stilted era is as dead as Mrs. Grundy!”

“Sadoul says its traditions never die out among such families as yours.”

That was true. He knew it. Even within himself, to his impatience and annoyance, the musty old precepts remained alive, surprising him at inopportune moments by their ridiculous virility.

“Well, Gilda,” he said, “if there remain in us absurdities, narrowness, traces of the priggish Victorian, we’re not utterly antediluvian. I do not believe for a moment that the attitude of my family would be anything but cordial to the girl I marry.”

She drew the shining strands of tinsel slowly through her slender fingers, still kneeling, not looking up.

“I was not thinking of myself,” she said.

“Of whom, then?”

“You, of course.... I would not have your pride suffer through me.”

“How do you mean?”

The girl sighed lightly. “There are so many ways—situated as you are.... I know a little about the traditions of old and conservative families.... Their traditions are part of them. They are not to be suppressed or removed. They are as much part of them as heart and lungs: they last till death.”

“You speak with familiar authority on such things,” he said, smiling.

She looked up.

“Yes,” she said. “I am a victim of tradition.”

He came over and knelt down on the floor, facing her.

“How do you mean, Gilda?” he asked curiously.

She was sorry she had spoken; that seemed evident. She said, reluctantly: “I am not yet twenty, Stuart.... I am living here in New York quite alone. Nobody related to me is visible. There seems to be nobody to vouch for me.... Do you imagine it always was so?”

“Dear, I don’t suppose so. But you never have spoken to me of these things——”

She shook her head: “No; there’s no reason to.”

“But if we should ever marry——”

“Yes, there would be a reason then.... I would not wish you to think me less than I am.”

The boy put both arms around her:

“I could not think more of you, dearest. I don’t care what were your circumstances——”

“That’s the darling thing about you, Stuart,” she said, flushing and drawing his face to hers impulsively. “You know something about me. You know vaguely about Sadoul—that once he was part of my life——But what part you don’t know, you never ask; you are just sweet and kind to me, Stuart, and I fell in love with you before I knew it—before I meant to—wanted to——”

Her fresh lips rested on his; she looked deep into his eyes.

“I didn’t think there was any future for us when I fell in love,” she said. “I didn’t think of anything. If I had I’d have been frightened.... Because, if the world had not gone so wrong with me, I ought to have met you on your own level—if destiny intended us to meet.”

“I’ve always thought that,” he said.

“Have you? You’re such a darling, Stuart. And you are not wrong.... I’d rather not talk about it—unless it ever should come true that we marry. Just believe that I am not—not less than you would wish me.... Not in any way, Stuart.”

“Can’t you tell me now?”

“I can’t bring myself—please—you see there are—others to remember—shelter—unless I were married to you—when their honour becomes yours also——”

“I understand, Gilda.”

“Do you? I am speaking of my father and mother. Unless I were married to you their tragedy could not be made a confidence between us to be guarded with our own honour by both of us.”

He nodded gravely.

“It’s as though,” she explained wistfully, “there were such a tragedy in your own family. If I were less than your wife you could not permit me to take my share in it and help guard the common honour.”

“Of course.... That I am in love with you is not enough.”

“No, dear; not even if you were my lover.”

“That’s the only thing that would ever make me doubt your quality, Gilda—that you ever could consider such a thing possible——”

“Oh, Stuart, that is the peril to me when the Other One is in possession. Because you and I are of the same sort—and there is no condescension—only the common fault—to share between equals——”

“If Sadoul really gave that Other right of way into your heart, he’s a devil incarnate,” said Stuart, slowly.

“He did it because he wanted me at any cost. And it has cost him his last chance.... But you, Stuart!—you know that I’d be miserable, humiliated, heartbroken, if I were your mistress—no matter how much I was in love? It’s only when the Other One is in possession——” She dropped her face on his breast, clung so, closely.

“I trust you so,” she whispered, “—even when the dark transition comes—even when I am in your arms and the Other One looks at you out of my eyes——”

A quick little sob cut her short; she rested one hand on his shoulder, sprang to her feet, whisked away a tear, laughed uncertainly.

“Are we going to dress our tree? Or make each other unhappy——”

“We’re going to dress this jolly little tree,” he said, getting to his feet.

She brought a big pasteboard box full of brilliant, flimsy things—stars, globes, shining shapes of various patterns to dangle from the branches. He hung them subject to her approval, and they became very busy again.

“Tell me,” he said, “what do you do over there at Pockman’s laboratory when you go?”

“Oh, it’s a nuisance, Stuart. Pockman fusses around. He has a lot of charts—I don’t understand them. It seems that it’s important, scientifically, for him to keep me under observation for a while. He takes measurements, pressures, all sorts of records—do you know I’ve grown a quarter of an inch since you first met me?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“I have! Also, I’m informed that I’m superbly healthy, and—if you please, monsieur—rather unusually symmetrical. Now, may I expect a more respectful attitude from you?”

“Am I lacking dear?”

“You never ask leave to kiss me.”

He started toward her; she fled around the tree; taunted him; consented at last to kiss him through the branches; and came around to join him with her box of baubles.

“It’s going to be charming!” she exclaimed, surveying the glistening boughs laden with glittering objects and striped canes of candy. “Stuart, there’s only one thing I want you to give me for Christmas.”

“What’s that, darling?”

“A doll.”

“All right. I’ll give you a hum-dinger——”

“No! I want an old-fashioned French doll of wax. I want her eyes to open and shut. I should like to have her say ‘Ma-ma!’ in a squeaky voice when her tummy is gently indented. Will you give me that kind?”

“You bet, sweetheart!”

“Thank you. What do you wish, Stuart?” she added. “If you say anything sentimental I’ll throw this green globe at you!”

“Well, then”—he meditated for a moment—“give me a toy shovel and pail so I can transplant little pine trees this spring.”

“Shovel and pail,” she repeated, making a mental note. The dressing of the tree was resumed. Presently she said: “When do you expect to go North?”

“Not until the ground thaws.”

“It must be very lovely up there where all your tiny new forests are growing.”

“It’s pretty except where it’s been lumbered. We’re planting that by degrees. And the standing timber, of course, is beautiful.”

“It must be,” she said, with an unconscious sigh.

“Would you like to come with me?” he said.

“Darling!” she protested with an enchanting smile.

“You mean the Grundy?”

“I do. You said she was dead, but I knew you were mistaken.”

“Would you really like to come?”

“I’d adore it. But how?”

“There’s Veronica——”

“Oh, Stuart, that wouldn’t be wise. You know what they’d all think—Katharine Ashley, Frances Hazlet—and then the men——”

“Of course,” he said, “we’ve got to care what is said about you.... If we could get into my car and just beat it some day, nobody would be the wiser; and you and I know we’re all right——”

“That,” she said quite seriously, “is the nuisance of not being married. And—oh, Stuart!—if ever you wanted to marry me afterward and your family found out!”

“Awkward,” he admitted.

“What a perfectly beastly nuisance not to be married!” exclaimed the girl. “Think of the things we could do, Stuart. Have you any idea how my heart sinks when you have to go home, and I lock the door and come back here alone—thinking of a million things I forgot to tell you——”

“Do you, dear?”

“Yes. Don’t you feel that way? Or are you pig enough not to?”

“Don’t you suppose I miss you as much as you do me?”

“I don’t know.... I want you desperately, sometimes. A woman’s different, I suppose.... I don’t think any woman in love is absolutely self-sufficient.... A man in love, I fancy, is not so dependent.... A girl admits a companion to her mind and heart for the first time in her life when she falls in love.... A man has other comradeships which stave off loneliness of mind—of heart, too, perhaps.... It’s curious—and rather sad.... No woman ever completely filled her lover’s mind. No lover but completely fills the mental and sentimental life of any girl who really loves.”

The boy hung the last specimen of papier-maché fruit upon the tree, came around and took the girl’s idle hands in his.

“Do you think I’m in love with you, Gilda?”

“I—think so.”

“Are you in love with me?”

“Yes, I know it. You see, Stuart, it’s merely the difference between knowledge and belief—the fundamental difference between our sexes. Belief satisfies us; knowledge alone satisfies you.” She laughed, rested her lips lightly on his chin. “So—we both are satisfied.”

They stood smiling at each other.

“I’ll go home and dress and we’ll dine at——”

“Dear! Freda has such a nice dinner!”

“Don’t you want to see a show——”

“No!”

“Don’t you want——”

“No. Are you tired of me?”

“You lovely little thing——”

“Let’s stay with our tree. I adore it. I’ll play for you, after dinner.... And we can read more of those vapid, egotistical memoirs——”

“That impossible woman!”

“Do you know,” said Gilda, thoughtfully, “she really is not impossible. She’s quite nice and human—even sweet to people she likes.”

“You speak as if you knew her,” he said.

“I do——” The girl flushed as though recollecting herself, gave him a confused look.

“You know the Countess of Wyvern, Gilda?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. There was a silence. She lifted distressed eyes to his, looked elsewhere, stood nervously twisting her fingers.

“Lady Wyvern is—a relative,” she murmured.

She had turned partly away. Now she went to the mantel and stood looking at the clock.

“If you have anything to do before dinner,” she said over her shoulder—“I think I had better see what Freda is about——”

She turned on her boudoir and bathroom lights for him and continued on through the dining-room toward the kitchen.

CHAPTER XXII

The week had been a clear and joyous one for Gilda. Not a shadow disturbed it.

Christmas Eve she was like a little girl, trotting about the apartment with ropes of evergreen, filling every vase with holly, hanging wreaths at every window, tying up dozens of little packages—inexpensive gifts all destined for Stuart.

That young man came in after dusk, his arms full of packages, and Gilda flew to him, on fire with curiosity, touching the brilliant Christmas ribbons with exploring forefinger.

“Everything is to be placed at the base of the tree,” she explained breathlessly, “—yours are all there, Stuart—I wonder what is in this big box! Darling—shall I take one little look? Oh, no; it wouldn’t do, would it?”

“Keep your lovely little hands off those packages,” he warned her, laying aside his hat and overcoat.

They went into the living room and she stood watching him in youthful excitement as he squatted down and laid packet after packet around the base of the tree.

“It’s the most real Christmas I ever had. It’s a storybook Christmas. All mine were in schools and most uninteresting. Isn’t our tree lovely? No, we must not light it until after dinner. Positively, dearest! And oh, Stuart, did you bring a stocking to hang up?”

He gravely unrolled and displayed the desired hosiery. Hers already hung from the mantel, daintily empty; and she hung his beside it, stepped back to view the effect, clasped her hands with a swift intake of breath.

“Don’t they look perfectly darling together!” she said as he drew her head back against his shoulder. The next instant she wriggled free, pinned a twig of holly to each stocking.

“Poke the fire, Stuart. I want to see the sparks. There! Isn’t it enchanting?”

Everything was “enchanting” or “adorable” or “darling” that Christmas Eve; the dinner, too, with its roast goose—reconnoitered with difficulty by an unskilled carver—its egg flip and mulled spiced wine, and its very British plum-pudding—that over-praised and soggy sham—which blazed gaily under its burning sauce, and exhaled the only appetising ingredient in it—its odour.

They stood up and drank to each other, almost unsmilingly, almost awkward in a seriousness unpremeditated.

That was in flip. He got up again later, and offered their “love everlasting” in a cup of mulled wine.

An odd shyness overcame her; she was able to reply only with a smile; but as she lifted her silver cup, a swift mist glimmered in her eyes.

She closed her eyes and kissed the rim of her goblet; they exchanged cups, drank to love in silence.

Very soon they were at their ease again with each other.

“A Christmas goose,” he commented, “is very English.”

“They always sent me one.”

He looked up interrogatively.

“To school—wherever I happened to be—in Belgium, or France. There came always a Christmas box from my father—always.”

He nodded gravely.

“Mother also sent me my Nöel,” she added.

“That helped,” he ventured.

“Yes.... Convent schools are not gay at Christmas-tide.... Isn’t this a most enchanting Christmas?”

He thought: “You pathetic kid!” But he said it was truly an old fashioned and genuine Christmas Eve.

As they left the table she said a trifle bashfully to the boy:

“I don’t know what Christmas bowl we should drink after dinner. I’ve looked all through Dickens and his stories are full of steaming bowls, but he doesn’t say how they’re made——”

Stuart shouted with laughter, and they went on gaily to the piano.

For a while she sang in her clear, childish voice the quaint French carols—the Nöel of the peasants, or its sweet and sophisticated modern equivalents—charming chorals of convent days.

She drifted to a familiar hymn. He leaned beside her, sang with her.

Her white hands hung listlessly on the keys; her cheek touched his.

Hesitatingly she mentioned her own faith; waited for some response. In the wistful silence his boy’s heart grew heavy. The Talkers had left in him little with which to meet her appeal.

“Have you no God?” she asked in a low voice.

“I would—would like to have one. Children are better off.”

“You are only a boy, Stuart. You still need God.”

He nodded. Presently he said: “I needed Him when you died that night. I asked Him to be fair to you.”

“You prayed for me?”

“I asked justice. I was over-wrought, overwhelmed. I suppose I reached out instinctively for help—my mind confused with memories of Christ—of miracles—and the little dead girl He made alive again——”

“Jairus’ daughter.”

“I remember now.... You seemed such a little girl to be dead....”

She said, seriously: “Do you think it was Christ—or what Pockman did?”

“I want to think that what Pockman did was by grace of Christ.... I don’t see why a modern mind may not believe that.... Except....”

“What, Stuart?”

“Oh, I don’t know.... There is so much to think of ... so much science and logic—and the wisdom of modern thinkers to consider. The trend of thought is not toward Christ as the ultimate solution of the world’s problems.”

The girl sat very still, her cheek pressed against his shoulder.

She said: “How can modern science admit spiritual survival and deny Christ?”

“Spiritual survival is being proven.”

After a pause: “I didn’t think I was at liberty to tell,” she said in a voice that was nearly a whisper, “but I saw Christ’s shadow, once.”

He turned slowly to look at her.

“When I lay dead in the chair.... You laid me there. Then you went away.... Shall I tell you?”

He scarcely nodded.

“I lay there, dead. Sadoul came from behind the portières. My soul was already leaving me. Sadoul saw it.

“God only knows what he meant to do—but suddenly the white shadow of Christ passed between Sadoul and me!... I saw His shadow on the air, and knew it. And that is all I knew until I opened my eyes and saw you beside my bed——”

She pressed her face convulsively against him.

The boy caressed her passionately, in silence, trembling to remember.

What she had told him was the delirium of a dying brain. But he did not say so. All he did say was:

“Sadoul did not come from behind the portières. I was alone with you when you died.”

“Sadoul was there.”

“No, dear——”

“I tell you he was behind the curtains, Stuart!”

“But I went down stairs to find him——”

“You went down and did not find him. When you returned he was gone. But he was there. I saw him.”

She sat upon the piano bench beside him and patted her bright hair into better order. He gave her a vague, incredulous look. Then an odd mental flash stilled his heart for an instant—a mere glimmer—a phantom thought scarce formed.

“Behind the curtains,” he repeated, mechanically.

She nodded, still busy with her hair.

“Stuart,” she said, “it is all passed and happily ended by the grace of God. I died: God heard your prayer and gave me my soul again. Pockman was only the instrument He chose——”

She turned and took his hand impulsively:

“Darling, can’t you believe that Christ made me alive again?”

“Yes, I can—in a way——”

“Believe it this Christmas Eve. That would be the most wonderful gift for us—your new faith. Because you saw. What more does anybody ask? What clearer proof had the publican, Jairus? He asked aid. Christ answered and raised his child from the dead. You asked God to help me——” She threw wide her arms—“here I am, alive!” And she flung her arms around his neck.

She touched the keys again. He sat humbly beside her, silent, while she sang in her lovely, child’s voice the nobler hymns, or, sometimes, only played them.

And very soon it was time to light the magic tree. But first she banished him to her bedroom, closed the door, then ran to her desk and took out the gaily beribboned little gifts for his stocking.

When it was filled and bulging, she called to him and, in turn, submitted to banishment, and he drew from his overcoat pocket the gifts destined for her slim stocking, filling it from toe to knee.

It lacked a few minutes to midnight when they lighted the tree. She cried out in delight and caught his hand.

They stood so until the clock struck.

At the last stroke she turned and wished him an excited Christmas greeting, and:

“Oh, Stuart!” she cried, “I want to see what is in that large box!——”

It was her old-fashioned French doll of wax. It opened and shut its eyes. It bleated “Ma-ma” when its tummy was discreetly pressed.

She clung to it through all the heavenly excitement of that Christmas morn. A slim hoop of diamonds glittered on her wrist; there were some beautiful handkerchiefs, stockings, a garnished suitcase, boxes of gloves, books, bon-bons—and then the foolish little gifts, odd, pretty, dainty things without value. But amid all she clutched her doll to her breast in a passion of half laughing, half childish possession—the strange instinct that persists so often despite self-mockery, pretense, and denial—the little girl deathless in the adolescent—the heart’s eternal youth till it beats its own requiem to the last faint throb—the Feminine, immutable, imperious, imperishable.

CHAPTER XXIII

They had expected to spend New Year’s Eve together. She telephoned him at the office that morning, asking him to come uptown early. Something in her voice made him uneasy, and she admitted she was feeling a little restless, but did not seem apprehensive.

When he returned from lunching at the Forester’s Club he learned that she had called him again but had left no message.

Vaguely disturbed, he hastened to conclude business affairs for the day and arrange for everything over the holidays.

He was longer than he expected; some final stock transactions calculated to mitigate taxes were not completed; the closing for a few days of such a business required precaution and careful attention to every detail in the machinery.

However, after five, he wished everybody a happy New Year and sped uptown in his car.

He did not find Gilda at home, but he found a vaguely worded note from her saying merely that she was too nervous to see him that evening, and had gone out with friends.

A hot flush of anger carried him to the Fireside Club; but anxiety chilled it. Few men were in the club; the stillness was unusual; the Talkers ceased because they were few; silence remained unbroken save when there came distantly out of the dark city a dull rumour of tumult from the “Roaring Forties.”

Apprehension lay a dead weight on his heart; he made a pretense of eating; then, for an hour or two, he haunted the telephone booths below. But Freda had left by that time and there was no response.

Where Gilda had gone and with whom he dared not surmise. If her uneasiness of the morning had been caused by any occult apprehension—any premonition that the Other One threatened her with possession, she had not intimated as much. And it had been understood that, in such crises, she was to call him to bear the brunt of the dark obsession.

Stuart went home about eleven. His taxi skirted the Forties; far flashes from a river of fire revealed Broadway.

Before he fell asleep the vast droning of whistles penetrated his breezy bedroom. The miserable year was ending in folly amid the empty howling of a mindless people.

Freda answered his morning inquiry saying that her mistress was still sleeping.

He didn’t bother to ring up again, and his resentment had not cooled any when he had dressed, breakfasted, and was on his way to call her to account.

Freda said that her mistress was not well—not even dressed. Stuart flung his coat and hat on the hall chair and went into the living room.

The curtains were still drawn. A chill demi-light revealed the shadowy Christmas tree still standing.

On the lounge lay Gilda’s evening cloak and gloves, flung at random. It was cold in the grey obscurity of the place. As he turned he set his foot on something limp and slippery—a matted cluster of dead orchids—and he kicked them aside and went across to her bedroom.

The door hung ajar. The girl was sitting on her bed huddled in a grey wool wrapper, clasping her doll.

Her hair, loosened, fell in a coppery cascade; her little bare feet, slipperless, hung limp above the fur rug. She scarcely looked up when he opened the door.

“Where the devil have you been?” he asked harshly—suddenly reacting from the tension.

“Where—the devil—I don’t know.... I don’t know ....” she said vaguely.

There was a silence; she drew the big wax doll closer, giving the boy a vacant look.

“Are you ill?” he asked bluntly.

“Ill? Yes—quite ill. The world slipped away—somewhere.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I called you.... You were too far away.... Too far.”

“With whom were you?”

“The night was squirming with faces.... I am sick of faces. There was no shelter.”

“Was Sadoul there?”

“Yes.... There was no shelter in that glare.... I am withered.”

“So you spent the eve of the New Year with Sadoul in riot,” he said fiercely.

“In hell,” she repeated in a ghost of a voice. “The blaze has burned me out—burned out my mind—blackened me....”

She looked up out of the burnished disorder of her hair, and he saw in her eyes that the Other One was still in possession.

“Drive out that damned thing!” he cried in an ungovernable rage.

But the Other looked out of her eyes at him in dangerous beauty: “If we burn—together—our ashes will be clean.... Do you love me?”

“Get into that bed!” he said in a strangled voice; went to her, pushed her back among the pillows, and covered her to the face.

He stared at her for a moment—at her dangerous eyes looking at him, shadowed by her hair—at the vacant visage of the doll at her breast, its wax eyes closed.

He looked around him at the disorder—stockings, underclothing trailing from the sofa or underfoot—a painted horn, a fancy paper cap on the mantel——

An indescribable anger seized him; he went to the bed again, leaned over:

“You poor little devil,” he said in a strangled voice, “—you poor, miserable little devil——”

Always her eyes watched him,—depthless wells of peril.

“Don’t get up. I want you to wait for me here. I’ll be back this afternoon. Call Freda when you are able to eat. Do you promise, Gilda?”

She lifted both arms in the wool sleeves, rested them on his shoulders and lay looking at him, her red lips parted.

“Do you promise?” he repeated.

“Yes.... I am so in love—Stuart——”

“So am I. But not with the beastly thing in command of you now.”

“If you are in love with me, don’t go,” she breathed.

“Because I am, I’m going—loosen your arms!——”

He used force; she lay on the pillows again, flushed, her eyes veiled with tears.

At the door he looked back. She had bowed her head against the blond head of the doll, burying both in the disordered glory of her hair.

CHAPTER XXIV

He went to the Fireside Club but neither Pockman nor Sadoul were there.

He called a taxi and drove to the laboratory. It being New Year’s Day, the place was closed; but a very dirty old man, who said he was the engineer, answered the bell.

It seemed that, although the laboratory was closed and the employees absent, Dr. Pockman had come in. Probably he was in one of the research rooms.

Stuart climbed the iron stairs, knocked at the private office. Nobody answered; he went in. A flat, suspicious, morgue-like odour pervaded everything. Stuart opened the connecting door on a room full of jars and chemicals and unknown apparatus. A grey chill possessed the place and the sweetish odour hung heavily, horribly, as though it disguised a stench more foul.

The place was dusky and empty, but he heard a scuffling in the room beyond and went in.

In the dim, chilly light he saw Pockman running round and round after a crippled rat which had escaped. Along the wall hobbled and scrambled the hump-backed thing, trailing paralysed hind legs, dodging the bony grasp of Pockman in pursuit, who was capering about like Death gone crazy.

He caught the creature, which shrieked, and he held it up, twisting and trying to bite.

“Where the hell did you come from?” he demanded, seeing Stuart.

The latter was experiencing a slight sense of nausea.

“I’m looking for Sadoul,” he managed to say.

Pockman held up the squirming rat. He had it by the back of the neck. Then he ambled over and thrust it into a wire-faced hutch.

“I gave it a shot of the nymphalic,” he explained, wiping the sweat away. “It’s an old rat on its last legs, and it’s going crazy with a rush of youth. Look here; I want to show you a few creatures under observation——”

“I can’t wait, now. Is Sadoul in the building?”

“I don’t know. That was a rough night last night. You weren’t along, were you, Sutton?”

“No.”

“Your girl was. Didn’t Eve Ferral ask you?”

“Yes. Was it her party?”

“Hers and Katharine Ashley’s. The whole ‘Godiva’ company showed up. It was large, Sutton—very noisy and very large.... I haven’t had any breakfast. You ought to have come; Gilda let go last night——”

Stuart’s bloodless face checked him.

After a moment: “What part of the building does Sadoul occupy?” asked the boy.

“You can go through that door, follow the corridor.... He may not be there; I haven’t seen him——”

Stuart had already passed through the door. A whitewashed corridor, full of the evil odour, led him to an iron door. He opened without knocking; and saw a small room with a lounge in it. Sadoul lay on the lounge. His eyes were open. He looked at Sutton as he entered, but made no motion to rise.

Neither spoke for a few moments, but a sneer etched itself on Sadoul’s dark features. Sutton came slowly toward him.

“Sadoul,” he said, “will you tell me the truth?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.”

“Have you really anything to do with these periodic outbreaks of Gilda Greenway?”

Sadoul disdained to evade the issue.

“I suppose so.”

“How?”

“Well, if you want to know, I suppose I put some badly needed animation into her, widened her vision, stimulated a natural capacity for pleasure. She needed a liberal education. She got it.”

“How did you do this?” asked Stuart curiously; but his clenched hand was quivering and he dropped it into his overcoat pocket.

“I used what skill I had,” replied Sadoul, coolly.

“How? Psychically?”

“Possibly.”

“Hypno-psychic suggestion?”

“A very interesting subject,” sneered Sadoul.

“Yes.... You think, then, that Gilda’s periodic outbreaks”—he moistened his lips—“these sudden alterations in her character—the total change——” He could not go on for a moment or two. Sadoul lay watching him out of smouldering, sardonic eyes.

“You believe you are responsible for these things?” he managed to say at last.

“Does Gilda think so?”

“Yes.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Sadoul,” said the other slowly, “if it is true that you are responsible—that you have been able to call in another and sinister intelligence to combat her own self—break down in her all that instinct and education have made her—can you, who have done this to her, drive out this intruder—this enemy you called in?”

“Does it concern you, Sutton?”

“Yes.”

“You are mistaken. It doesn’t. But I’ll tell you that I wouldn’t undo anything I’ve done if I could.”

“Can you?”

“I don’t know. Possibly. Probably. I have not tried. I don’t intend to try.”

“But you could free her of this if you tried, couldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How? Through hypno-psychic suggestion?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Is there any other way?” asked Sutton, very white.

The two men looked hard at each other.

“If you died—for example,” added Sutton in a scarcely audible voice. And he saw in Sadoul’s burning eyes that Gilda’s freedom lay that way.

“Sadoul,” he said, “you had better free her of this obsession if you can. Because, if you do not, I’m going to do it for her.”

Sadoul slowly raised himself to a sitting posture. There was murder in his eyes and his dark face sharpened.

Sutton nodded: “That’s it, Sadoul. You understand. If you don’t free her, I’m going to kill you. I’ll give you time to do it. I’ll give you reasonable time. I’ll wait as long as I think proper. Then I’ll set her free in my own way.”

Sadoul got up, his eyes ablaze.

“So that’s a threat, is it, Sutton?”

“Not all of it. What were you doing behind the curtain the night that Gilda Greenway died in my arms?”

Sadoul’s whole figure froze; a pallour swept the blood out of every feature.

“I don’t know how big a blackguard you were,” said Stuart in a curiously still voice. “You may have killed her. You had a chance—with that misericordia. You look capable of it. I don’t suppose we’ll ever really know.

“But I know you’ve tried to kill her soul—you and that shadowy devil that you let into her.

“Now, take your shadow-devil and get out. Get out of her life; or I’ll put you out of this life.

“That’s all, Sadoul.”

CHAPTER XXV

When Sutton came out on Fifty-seventh Street a raw wind was blowing from the river. Whether from this or from reaction the boy was shivering in his overcoat; and he turned up the collar around his pinched and bloodless face.

There was no vehicle to be seen; he walked westward along the wide, dreary street, bisected at intervals by filthy, rusting elevated structures and by desolate avenues through which dust whirled. Swarms of dingy people, shabby and purposeless as dirty, wind-driven leaves, eddied about the streets.

Half-frozen children, their faces masked or smeared with rouge and charcoal, drifted hither and thither, whining and begging for New Year’s alms.

He hailed a taxi, at last, and drove to Thirty-fifth Street. Freda opened the door and went back to her kitchen. The place was still dusky, shades lowered, curtains drawn.

Again he passed by the ghostly Christmas tree, with its festoons of tinsel and its unlighted bulbs, and knocked at her bedroom door.

He heard her stir, heard a faint response, went in. She sat up sleepily, gave him a confused glance, stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.

But, in her clearing consciousness, now, he saw her own self looking at him out of sweetly disconcerted eyes.

“Stuart,” she said, “this is rather casual of us, isn’t it?——” But already she was remembering; the humourously uneasy expression faded from her features. She pushed aside her hair, gazed at him, then her face flushed to her throat, and her furtive gaze stole fearfully around the disordered room.

“Oh, my God!” she whispered to herself, and took her face between her snowy hands.

She remained so in the chill of the semi-dusk, her knees drawn up to her chin, her face dropped between her hands, unstirring, silent.

There was some wood by the hearth, kindling, last evening’s paper still folded.

He built a fire, went into the bath-room and turned the hot water into the tub.

When he came out he stood looking at her for a moment.

“We’ll talk it over when you are ready, Gilda. Don’t worry; we’ll fix it. You must never go through this again.”

He went out, closing the bedroom door, rid himself of hat and overcoat, walked into the kitchen.

“Could we have breakfast in an hour?” he asked. “That’s fine, Freda. We’ll have it on a card-table in the living-room.”

The living-room, evidently, had been swept and dusted, and Gilda’s derelict evening garments removed.

He raised the shades and drew the curtains. A gleam of wintry sunshine struck the wall.

The fire being laid, he set a match to it, seated himself to collect his thoughts.

Reaction had brought that weariness for which rest seems to be no balm. His tired mind seemed like some infernal machine which went on running after all else had run down.

It continued hatching out thought—no use trying to stop it, quiet it, ignore the hellish monotony of its functioning. He had to follow the record of the machinery, endlessly committing the same words, the same scenes to the custody of his tired brain.

The mantel clock timed the wearying reiteration; the flames on the hearth asked the same questions and answered them softly, lightly, inexorably. To what had his chance encounter with this girl brought him? It had now brought him to the verge of murder.

Because he loved her? Yes, evidently. Because he loved her enough to lay down his own life for her happiness? Evidently. Then he really loved her? It seemed so. If there was no other way to help her he was going to kill a man for her sake. And pay the penalty.... And permit his father and mother to share the penalty?

Thought went on burrowing through his brain to find a way out of it. There was no way out, if he killed Sadoul.

There was no way out for Gilda, either, unless Sadoul held his hand—unless he should be able and willing to undo what he had done toward her spiritual destruction.

The boy stared, hot-eyed, at the flames.

Freda opened and placed a card table on wabbly legs. In a few minutes she brought breakfast. Gilda entered, fresh from the bath, her skin all roses and snow and her red-gold hair in two braids.

She stole a shamed look at Stuart as he set a chair for her by the hearth. They had little appetite, pretended to none. Freda took away table and tray and closed the door.

The girl sank back in her deep chair, rested her chin on one hand and looked steadily at the fire. The silk sleeve of her boudoir wrap fell to the elbow.

“Tell me, Gilda,” said the boy in a low voice.

“Yes.” Her gaze never left the fire. “I’ll tell you, Stuart.... I hadn’t slept well. I was a little restless; but I didn’t think it was because of the Other One. Still, I wanted you—I wanted you to come early.... Because it didn’t seem as though I—I could endure my love for you, alone.

“You were in my mind, in every breath I drew, in every heart-beat.... It seemed to become so overwhelming.... Then that strange buoyancy came over me; contact, touch of earth, consciousness of material ebbed.... That flame-like lightness was all there seemed to be of me.... Even then it all seemed too heavenly to fear.... I was lying on the couch.... I think my soul stood a little way from me. Over by the second window.... It’s hard to remember. I can’t remember, in fact.... Only my heart had been looking out of that second window from where it would be possible to see your taxi when you arrived....”

Her bright head dropped on her hand, and her eyes grew tragic.

“When I realised that the Other was in possession I got up in a dazed way. My heart was already in her control—I felt the fire stealing through my veins. But I thought my mind was still clear. I tried to pray.... And sat up laughing, reckless, blind, deaf to everything——”

She fell silent, dropped her hands in her lap and fell to turning a black pearl ring that she sometimes wore.

“Shall I tell you where I went?” she asked, intent on her ring.

“I have heard.”

She gave him a startled glance.

“Pockman told me,” he said in a dull voice.

The hot colour stained her to the forehead. Twisting her slim fingers, fighting to control her voice, she said:

“If a girl can become so depraved is—is it worth your while to try to hold her?”

“Are you depraved, Gilda?”

“Not utterly ... so far.”

“Were you intoxicated?”

“Yes.”

The boy’s face had gone very white.

“What happened?”

“Nothing I dare not tell you.”

He looked into her eyes.

“There are two ways out of this for you,” he said. “Either Sadoul must undo what he has done to you, or——”

After a pause: “He will not help me. What is the other way?” she asked. And suddenly understood what he meant.

Presently she fell to shivering, placed her feet on the fender. His eyes rested on them. They were very white in the sandals.

“What good would it do me?” she asked, trembling. “Would it help if you destroyed yourself and your father and mother? There are other ways.”

“What ways?”

“One, anyhow. Do you think I’d let you destroy yourself to save me? I’d rather give myself to you, innocence, evil, and all, and take the consequences!”

“Do you think it makes a difference how your spiritual destruction is wrought?” he demanded hotly.

“Yes! The difference is that it’s you, not Sadoul. I’d rather kill myself.... I shall, if you talk that way——”

“Gilda——”

“I shall, I tell you. My physical virtue and bodily purity are not worth murder, if my mind is right. And my mind is right—my real mind. You cannot make it more upright by shooting Sadoul and ruining yourself and your family’s honour.”

“What do you expect me to do?” he said with an ugly light in his eyes, “—sit by complacently and see you go to hell?”

“Do you want to go, too, and leave your people to die under the disgrace?”

The boy gave her an agonized look, and she gave him a white and terrible look in return.

“There’s another way,” she said harshly. “You can step out of my life—or I can step out of yours.”

His visage grew ghastly.

“Either that, or I become your mistress.... Or, if you’re afraid I’d be too unhappy, I’ll go away, or kill myself——”

She leaned forward, twisting her fingers convulsively, her voice scarcely controlled:

“If you think you are in love, I’ll prove I love you better. If your conscience resents me, unmarried to you, send me away. I’ll go. It’ll hurt you. But you’ll get well and marry somebody——”

“Don’t!—Gilda——”

“Well, then, what? What? Tell me! It’s your agony. You can’t go on—can’t continue. Killing Sadoul won’t help. I’m trying to find something to help you. Don’t you understand? I’m trying to think of something to take away pain from you!”

“It isn’t that——”

“It is! I can stand anything. When a girl loves as I love she can stand anything. It’s love that keeps one dauntless. If you were dead, it would keep my head up. If you were my lover—and my pride agonising within me—it would keep my head high, and my heart in my eyes for you to see where love dwells!——”

She got up, flushed, trembling, excited, took a step or two past the tree, turned and came back to confront him.

“I don’t ask you to look out for me,” she said. “I can do that. It is you who need aid, who need counsel, education in the courage of love. If you want me you shall have me. If it would help you to have me go, I’ll go. It’s for you to find out and tell me what to do for you.”

He got up, dumb, crimson to his temples, confused and scorched by the girl’s fiery outburst. Something in his face excited her compassion, and she went on recklessly, feeling the tears in her eyes and throat:

“You have said to me that men of your race are not accustomed to defy convention. You must not think that I would defy it, lightly. What do you suppose brought me here to New York, friendless, alone? Defiance of age-old law. But not by me.

“That is why I never had a home. All the misery of my childhood and youth arose from that. And do you think I would defy lightly the law that still revenges itself on a girl because the dead are beyond its punishment?”

The boy leaned heavily on the mantel, his face buried on his arm.

“There’s no way out of it,” he said.

“The way out of it is what you choose to have me do.” She came nearer, almost blinded by tears:

“There remains the last hope of all—to ask the Christ, who gave me resurrection, to stand by us, now.... If you wouldn’t mind praying beside my bed—with me——”

He looked up; she could scarcely see, holding out one hand toward him.

They went into her room together, settled to their knees beside each other. Her low, trembling voice drove all other thought out of his mind.

“O God,” she whispered, “let Stuart be my husband, somehow—so that if I misbehave it will be with him—and let me marry him—unless it would make him unhappy and ashamed, or alienate him from his parents.... Amen.”

CHAPTER XXVI

It was Life’s first hurricane for Stuart Sutton. It had arisen in fury out of nothing; caught him unprepared. Where was it driving him? On what unknown shore would it wreck him; in what maelstrom engulf him?

In the first hour he had ever set eyes on Gilda Greenway the tempest began to gather. With incredible swiftness it had burst within that hour.

Then, for the first time in his life, he had seen Death in the midst of Life. He had known its stupefaction, its horror; had struggled against it in anguished incredulity.

Bewildered, almost hysterical, he had demanded justice and equity of the Unknown God. Justice had been accorded—by somebody—something—somehow or other. The horror had dissolved overnight; daylight ended the dream of evil. But the tempest was still blowing, imperceptibly gathering force; storm clouds thickened, writhing around this woman and himself.

Suddenly out of the whirling, infernal light burst love, in flames, already full grown, fully armed, dangerous.

Beyond, a desolate vista opened through grey years, and endless, purposeless, hopeless as ages born of hell——

Out of nothing had been hatched this hurricane—born of a green disguise, a smile, a little mask half lifted—a kiss given; passionately forgiven.

All, instantly, became part of the boy’s life. Death also entered, lingered, lightly withdrew.

But now the boy was learning that Death had left behind that which is stronger than Death—a lovely and defenceless tenement haunted of shadows—a young girl’s body for a battle-ground—a sanctuary where victim and assassin lurked, watching each other behind the temple of the mind.

Where was the tempest driving him? Shallows of passion, deeps of love—over these he had been hurried, blindly, without choice; and suddenly, low on the horizon, leered the red smear of murder.

So far had the tempest hurled him.

There came an hour, late on a winter afternoon, when the last clerk had left his office, the last letter had been signed, and he remained alone at his desk, determined now to face the apparition of the future.

Into a life which had been so accentless, so methodical, so pre-ordered as his own, had stepped from outer bournes a girl in pale silks and a pale green mask.

What was he to do with her?

He was trying, now, to think what to do. Distant doors closing alerted him of departing stenographers, clerks, heads of departments. Now and then he could hear the muffled stir in adjoining offices, the slam of roll-top desks, murmur of voices, a distant laugh.

Behind him the coal fire burned low. He rose, stirred the coals, stood irresolutely looking at his overcoat, then walked to the window.

Outside the pinnacles of Manhattan glittered like cliffs and peaks of solid jewels. There was a young moon in the southwest—a mere tracery in the sky—then the towered masses of light, huge standing shapes of shadow—bridges with necklaces of gems festooned above an unseen river—and the deep, interminable roaring rumour from below—New York aspiring to the stars, growling in its caverns—New York monstrously breathing, pulsing, gigantically, vulgarly vital, exhaling its false aura under the stars.

He looked up at that little immemorial virgin, the moon, thin-edged, sly, spinster-like, malicious—like all who endure aborted.

In that glimmering magic framed by his window there seemed nothing friendly. He turned, instinctively, to the fire.

What was he to do? Letters from his mother were in his pocket. California was warm, and sunny with ripe oranges.... And his father played golf.

There were other letters in his pocket—some stacked up on his desk—to be acknowledged, answered somehow.

A familiar, inherited social routine had been disrupted almost without explanation since he had met Gilda Greenway.

He had been, practically, nowhere in that limited world reserved as a matter of course for young men of his particular genus.

Dinners, dances, theatres, country parties—the usual succession of events in which youth of his race mechanically participated—he had avoided since he had known Gilda.

It was not a sudden distaste, not even inertia, not indifference. Except for the civilised routine required in avoiding them the boy had become oblivious to any social responsibility.

To be forgotten overnight in New York is inevitable unless one employs effort to avert personal annihilation.

Stuart made no effort. Possibly, in the back of his crisp, blond head, he realised that it is easy for such men as he to reappear.

But for some time, now, the clubs, the society, the amusements he chose were not those familiar to his parents or to people composing those interlinked circles wherein the Suttons were accustomed to consider themselves at home.

What should he do about it?

Here was a girl he couldn’t marry. Her world was utterly alien to his own; her little circle peopled by garish imitations of the real—by painted shadows on the screen of Life—Veronica, Eve, Katharine, Frances—by monstrous mouths—The Talkers—those who think they do life’s work with wagging jaws—and by darker phantoms—by Sadoul, and Pockman, with his spasm-like smirk, and Lyken, handler of lightning—blasted cadavers—Harry Stayr, sensualist, grossly feeding a swathe through life; Julian Fairless, nimble painter in thin colours, nimble-witted as a thimble-rigger whose public pays for the living he claims it owes him; Derring, empty as his own falsetto voice, fussing in the wake of noisy youth, sniffing its perfumed pleasures, a high-pitched titter amid its noisy gossip.

What was he to do? What was he becoming? Where was the end? Was there no end? By stepping out, the whole unreal pageant would pass like a dream. All this—all these tinted marionettes would go jerkily by him, on and on, dwindling into toy perspective—somewhere—wherever they came from.

All would pass on along a preordained path—all this grotesque Noah’s Ark—men, women, beasts—Nika, Eve, Pockman, Stayr—the pickled things in jars, the crippled rats and shreds of human flesh—the Monstrous Mouths—all Talkers—and the phantoms, too—Sadoul, Gilda——

What was happening to him? What was happening to the safe, familiar world about him? Once, death had been death—irrevocable, definite, an end. Now it was no longer an end. There was no end to life; not even any orthodox conclusion.

The world was peopled with deathless shapes—it swarmed with shadows—some malignant, like the wanton thing that haunted Gilda—that sensuous, red-lipped shape that sometimes hid within her and looked at him out of her dear eyes——

“I don’t know what to do,” he said aloud, staring vacantly at the coals. “I thought we were protected from such things—that such things never had existed.... I supposed God was in absolute control over evil——”

He became silent as though somebody had spoken. Listening, he seemed to hear the words again: “Deliver us from Evil.”

It was his own mind answering him.

“But deliver us from evil,” he repeated. And sat thinking for a while.

Were, then, such wandering, disincarnate intelligences—such indestructible and sinister individual survivals—a form of evil hitherto unrecognised—or not recognised since the gross superstitions of former days peopled the earth with malignant phantoms?

“Deliver us from evil.” Was prayer the remedy? Was it a weapon? Was it the whine of a coward for protection to a dull, monstrous, tyrannical God, or was it a call to arms to an ally against a common enemy?

The boy stared at the whitening ashes. He did not know what to think, what to do, whether he loved enough, or loved rightly. There seemed to be no outlook, no solution, no help.

As he got up and took his overcoat from the peg, his desk telephone rang.

“Is it you, Gilda?” he said, happily.

“What in the world are you thinking of, darling? It’s after eight and poor Freda is frantic about the dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but his face had cleared and his voice was joyous, “—I’m so sorry, dear. Tell me, are you all right?”

“Of course I am. Are you?”

“Yes—now. I’ll come uptown immediately——”

“Don’t dare stop to dress, Stuart!”

“No. Are you particularly and enchantingly gowned?”

“I hope you’ll think so.”

“Had you rather I ate in the kitchen?”

“You silly thing!”

“Which are you hungriest for, dinner or me?”

“If I survive till you arrive I’ll tell you. Hurry, dear, I’m starving!”

CHAPTER XXVII

Sadoul came into the laboratory where Pockman was taking a tray of frozen rats out of a refrigerator.

Sadoul looked thin and stooped; his clothes flapped on him. He glanced at the rows of frozen rats with a wizened sneer:

“I feel like one of those, sometimes.”

“Sometimes you look like one,” returned Pockman. He tittered and carried the tray to a porcelain table. First he sponged off the table with some pale yellow solution, then he placed three frozen rats on it. The vermin were rigidly congealed. They lay there stiff as bits of metal, discoloured teeth and naked feet exposed.

“Is Gilda Greenway here?” inquired Sadoul.

“Not yet. Why?”

“I wanted to see her after you had made your observations.”

“She’s late,” said Pockman, absently. He counted out three more rats, laid them on top of a wire-screened box, then returned the tray with the remainder of the rats to the refrigerator.

Sadoul looked into the box. On a bed of sand lay several rat-snakes coiled together for warmth. Pockman took a frozen rat by the tail, opened the lid of the box, and dropped the rodent. A slow head stirred in the composite snaky mass. There was no other movement.

“They won’t take it that way,” said Pockman. “The trouble is that I’ve got to be careful they don’t bite me.”

“They’re not poisonous snakes.”

“All ophidians are more or less poisonous.”

“You think so?” asked Sadoul.

“I’ve yet to find one from which I couldn’t extract venom of one sort or another. It’s not always poisonous to man.”

Pockman took the frozen rat by the tail and began to draw it across the sand. Like lightning the stroke came from the snaky mass—a rat-snake had the rodent by the head. The next instant Pockman jerked away the rat by the tail and tossed it onto the porcelain table.

“That’s all I wanted,” he snickered. “Now we’ll try to find out what a gland will do to that virus.”

He immersed the rat in a dark solution which was warming in a porcelain basin over a low-turned lamp.

“They can eat the others,” he said, taking the two remaining rats by the tails and dragging them across the sand.

Instantly a snake struck. After a few moments the snake’s jaws widened spasmodically and a gush of saliva wet the frozen fur. Pockman went back to his simmering rodent; Sadoul watched the revolting process in the box.

The other snake took more time—less hungry perhaps—and held the rat crossways as a pickerel holds a minnow before bolting it by the head.

Pockman, busy with his four rats, and using a gland macerated to pulp for grafting, heard Sadoul cough now and then.

“If I had that bark I’d take it to Arizona,” he said. “Why the hell don’t you get your sputum analyzed?”

Sadoul dropped the wire lid and came over to the table.

“Pockman,” he said, “did you ever tell anybody about those blueprints?”

“No. Why?”

“Sutton once said something to me.”

“I’ve never uttered a word. What did Sutton say?”

“Nothing definite. He asked me why I was standing behind those curtains at Derring’s that night.”

After a moment Pockman leered at him sideways:

“Were you?”

“Whether I were or were not,” returned Sadoul calmly, “he had no knowledge of it.”

Pockman worked on, using a syringe. Presently:

“I’ll tell you something, Sadoul. When little Miss Greenway lay dead on the chair where Sutton had propped her, with the misericordia imbedded in the nape of her neck, she—that is, her still living mind—saw you come out from behind those curtains.”

“She told you that?”

“She did. Probably she has told Sutton. Is that an explanation?”

Sadoul slowly nodded.

“How long,” he asked, “does consciousness persist in the brain after death?”

“For some appreciable time. It varies.”

“If I had been there could she have been conscious of it?”

“Certainly,” snickered Pockman.

“For how long?”

“I tell you the time varies. The process of death is, as you know, a slow and gradual detachment of the indestructible or etheric body from the corpse. There is resistance, sometimes. Some people die hard. There seems usually to be some difficulty.”

“What is the average length of time it takes to detach the etheric body from the cadaver?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think we’ve struck any average, yet. You are as familiar as I am with the process.

“In a quick and easy death the cold creeps upward from the extremities to the brain. You and I have observed the procedure of the etheric body as it detaches itself from the physically dying body.

“Something—some occult energy—seems to shake the etheric body, or soul—loosen it, so to speak. When this lateral movement ceases, millions of gentle vibrations begin, from the soles of the feet, upward. The indestructible soul-principle begins to withdraw from the extremities, upward, toward the head. Life slowly fades at the knees, the thighs, the hips, the chest.... You and I have seen that faint brilliancy gathering around the head. That, I fancy, is where the delay usually occurs.”

“I think the brain dies hard,” said Sadoul.... “I wonder how long it takes.”

Pockman shrugged and continued to wrap up his rats in sterilised cheese-cloth and deposit each one in a sort of incubator.

Sadoul roamed about the place; Pockman had finished washing and drying his hands when the door opened and Gilda Greenway came in.

The cold had made her pink; her furs accented the exquisite colour. Under her toque the gold-red hair edged her cheeks with burnished flame.

“How do you do, Dr. Pockman?” she said cheerfully. “——I’m sorry I am so late——” She caught sight of Sadoul. “Oh, I didn’t know you were here!”

Her face altered, yet still remained smiling—an odd little smile, slightly humorous, slightly guarded, faintly sarcastic, and entirely devoid of fear.

He offered to shake hands with her, and she accepted with the hint of a shrug.

To Pockman she said: “Aren’t you nearly finished investigating me? You must have volumes already on the history of my case.”

Pockman tittered, smirked, hitched his shoulders, started jerkily for his private office. The girl turned, nodded to Sadoul, her gloved hand on the door.

“Could I see you when you’ve finished with Pockman?” asked Sadoul.

“If you like.”

“I’ll be in my end of the place.”

“Very well.”

She went out; Pockman teetered after her. Sadoul’s shadowy visage still remained red from the encounter. He had joined his bony hands and was twisting them as though to subdue physical pain. His sunken eyes seemed filmy, unseeing, as he turned his head with the curious, nosing motion of a blind thing caged, striving to realise its limits.

After a patient examination, Miss Cross being present to record all observations, Gilda drew a quick breath of relief, smiled whimsically at Miss Cross, picked up her muff.

“You’re destined to be a very celebrated young lady,” said Miss Cross, smiling, “——if you permit Dr. Pockman to use your name in this report.”

Gilda laughed. “He has agreed to mention me as Miss X. I don’t wish to be celebrated as a pathological prodigy.”

“You’re a prodigy all right,” snickered Pockman. “I am given to understand that you’re even a more amazing girl than you appear to be to me.”

“What do you mean, Dr. Pockman?”

“Psychically. I understand that you have an extraordinary potentiality. It’s rather a pity you don’t like Sadoul.”

“I don’t dislike him,” she said quietly.

“I thought you did.”

“I do not like some things about him. Otherwise, I have always been rather fascinated by his cleverness and intelligence. He can be an extraordinarily agreeable companion.”

Pockman said in a low voice: “I never supposed you had any use for Sadoul except to torment him—even,” he added, “when you let him take you to parties.”

The girl flushed and glanced at Miss Cross. The latter, however, was beyond earshot; and left the room the next moment.

“That’s what I hate about Sadoul,” said Gilda, quickly, “——the material side of him. It angers me. It arouses cruelty. I have a contempt for that side of him, and he knows it!”

Pockman held no brief for Sadoul, but the girl’s scorn seemed to pepper his sex generally.

“After all,” he remarked, “he’s only in love with you.”

“Physically,” she retorted, reddening.

“Well—my God——” began Pockman, thinking in terms of glands, but the girl interrupted:

“That’s part of it, I suppose. In fact, I know it, now. And I don’t wish to know any more about it—not from him—not from anybody.... What has he to say to me? Do you know, Dr. Pockman?”

“Well, I rather suspect it’s something concerning your unusual psychic possibilities.”

“Do you mean his?”

“I mean yours, Gilda.”

“I didn’t know I had any—independent of Sadoul’s.”

“His amount to little compared to yours,” said Pockman.

She gazed at him incredulously; he smirked at her. “Tehee,” he tittered, “how do you suppose you’ve fought him off?”

“With mind and will.”

“I mean in subconscious conditions—in successive periods of hypnosis—even in phases of obsession—how do you suppose you have held him off?”

“My soul is captain of my mind—whatever else invades my body to betray it!”

“How did you know that?”

“I don’t know. My soul seems to know.”

“And so you fight it out, between soul and body?”

“At times.”

Pockman snickered, but his pale eyes were intent on her:

“Soul always comes out top dog, I suppose,” he said. “There are no drawn battles, Gilda——”

“Yes, there are,” she said, crimsoning at her own honesty.

“No drawn battles in which Sadoul figures? Hey?”

“No.”

“Another man?”

“Yes.”

“And the other man has only to chip in to turn the tide of war one way or the other?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know this?”

“Yes. He stands as ally to my real self. Our minds are comrades.”

“You’re at his mercy then?”

“When the dark change comes, I am.”

“Thin ice,” tittered Pockman. “A man’s a man. He’s likely to change his battle-hymn to a Cytherean rag.” Again judgment, conclusion were arrived at in terms of glands. Why not? The world’s work is done through them. The world’s Talk continues for lack of them.

“Cats and kittens,” snickered Pockman. “It all filters out finally to these. You needn’t fear Sadoul. You know it.... Of course, I don’t see why you need fear anything. But folk-ways rule the world of folk. Taboo remains tyrant. Always will. However, there’ll always be kittens.”

Gilda turned aside and looked out of the window.

“Nice girl,” said Pockman. “Morals are fashions. Always keep up with the latest creations. Smartness wins.”

“Are you on Sadoul’s side?” she asked, her face still averted.

“On the contrary. The biggest lie ever hatched is that all the world loves a lover. Half the world is masculine. The only lovers they love are themselves.... No; I’m not on Sadoul’s side. I’m not on any man’s side.”

Gilda continued to gaze out of the window. What she looked at was rusty chimney pots against a heavenly blue sky. What the girl saw is another thing—for her eyes were as remote as the skies.

After a little while: “Is there anything abnormal about me, Dr. Pockman?” she asked, turning her head.

“No, Gilda.... No, not in a morbid sense, anyway.”

At that she slowly faced around:

“You speak with reserve.”

He hesitated; an unhealthy colour came into his flat face.

“It is possible,” he said, “that, transplanting a brand new and very vigorous young nymphalic gland may have—have over-stimulated you a little—added powerfully, perhaps, to a naturally ardent physique.”

Under his twitching smirk the girl lowered her eyes. She stood looking at her muff, pinching the fur with white-gloved fingers, smoothing it out.

“There is nothing to distress you in what I said,” insisted Pockman. “You’ve doubled your natural vitality, that’s all. You’ve doubled your years of youth, probably. You’re to be envied, Gilda.”

“I don’t know. I may find life too long.... I was thinking that, the other day.”

He looked at her keenly: “I suppose you can’t get rid of Sadoul,” he said in a lower voice. “He won’t stand for it, will he?”

She shook her head.

“Can’t have you himself and won’t let any other man,” commented Pockman with a subdued snigger. “Well, that’s man—except in novels.... Or among the glandless. A Talker will talk himself into anything. Words are all he lives. If you’d been married to a Talker, now, he’d have done a lot of fine phrasing—talked himself into a thousand attitudes—but he’d have let you go.... Sadoul won’t. He’ll follow. He’ll fight. I don’t know what else he might do.”

“Nor I,” she said absently. “I think he is capable of killing me.”

Pockman stole a look at the door.

“You obsessed him from the first. I think his mental balance isn’t what it once was. I’m always noticing. He’s suspicious—difficult to observe. I’d walk pussy-foot for the time being. After all, you’ve got time. You’ve more time coming to you than he has. He was handicapped anyway before I gave you a new gland. That man has no chance. Play the lady Fabian. That’s where he loses. He can’t wait. He can’t stand the pace of Time. It’s your make as the cards lie. Take your time.”

She said in a low voice: “It’s a ghastly game. It’s cruel, revolting.... And he is so clever, so interesting—fascinating intellectually.... And has winning qualities. To subdue me, bend me to his will—dominate and direct my inclination—this is a tragic madness with him. All else is sane, likable, attractive. I ask no more amusing comrade, no more stimulating companion.... Only—underlying everything is the pitiable tragedy of a man sane on all subjects excepting one. And on that, ruthless, brutal, inexorable.”

“Idée fixe,” muttered Pockman. “You may expect anything from that egg.... Are you going in to see him?”

She nodded; he opened the door for her.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The room which Gilda peeped into resembled a chemical laboratory in a way. There was some equipment for physical research, also, an X-ray machine, a camera, electrical apparatus, dry batteries, arc lights, incandescent lights, Hewett-tubes, other paraphernalia less familiar. There was also a bare table and several uncomfortable chairs. A dark cabinet adjoined, hung with black velvet draperies.

Sadoul was seated on one of the small chairs, his thin elbows on his knees, his shadowy face framed in both hands. He got up as though fatigued when she came forward.

“Gilda,” he said in a peculiarly agreeable voice, without any taint of the habitual sneer, “you are doing a lot of things to help Sidney Pockman. He’s building future fame on your kindness. Submitting yourself to his observations means everything in the world to him.”

“I’d be disgustingly selfish not to help him,” she said, seating herself. “Whatever I am,” she added lightly, “I’m not ungrateful.” She rested her muff on the table and looked amiably, almost wistfully, at Sadoul.

He dropped both elbows on the same table, propping his chin on inter-linked fingers—the pale, bony fingers of a sick man.

“I wondered,” he said, “whether if I asked you’d be willing to help me a step or two toward fame and fortune.” Irony in his voice was faint but it was there.

“Always,” she said, “——reasonably.”

“Would you lend yourself to an experiment or two?”

“Of what nature?”

“Psychic.”

“Am I psychic, independently of you?”

“Unusually so.”

“What do you wish me to do for you?”

“I want you to give me a chance to study your two selves at close range, with every paraphernalia, every equipment, every condition favourable to exhaustive observation.”

A slight flush mounted to her cheeks: they looked intently at each other across the table.

“I have only one self—excepting the intruder you let in,” she said curtly.

“There are always two selves, Gilda. What you call the Other One belonged to you. You say I called her in. She was already in attendance. She always has been. She’s part of you—not the stranger you think—not an intruder from outer regions.”

“She is not part of me!” cried the girl, blushing.

“She is and always has been,” he repeated calmly; “——but she always had remained aloof—outside—during your waking hours. When you slept she crept in and slept, also. All I did was to awake her before it was time. And when you died, and your other self resisted her entrance, I gave her ingress. That is all I did; I aroused her before the—the conventional hour for her awakening had arrived. And when you fought to evict her, and bar yourself against her, I merely let her in.”

He bent his cadaverous head; one hand shaded his eyes.

“I’m sorry I meddled,” he said. “She has proved no friend to me.”

Gilda fixed her eyes on her locked fingers.

She said slowly and without resentment: “It was a devilish thing to do to a girl.”

She looked up, saw in his fixed gaze regret—not for what he had done, but because it had failed.

“You were willing to carry me to hell with you,” she said.

“If there were no other way. Besides, there is no hell, except what I’m in now.”

“Sadoul?”

“Yes, Gilda.”

“How did you happen to be behind that curtain?”

He denied his presence, pleasantly.

“I was thinking,” she said, “if you could do such a devilish thing as you did to me, perhaps you killed me.”

“Tu mihi solus eras. I did not kill you, Gilda.”

“With a misericordia?”

“Why?” he asked, patiently good humoured.

She dropped her head, thinking of Stuart and their first kiss. Then, vague eyed, she regarded Sadoul.

Strange scenes in her long resistance against this man took shape and faded in her mind. It seemed odd that she hated him so little—and only one phase of him. It seemed strange how much of sorrow, of pity, of wistfulness tempered her resentment—how much attraction remained, inclination to overlook, understand, forgive, this blazing, ruthless mind which had failed to subdue hers.

She looked sadly at his features, marred and worn and sunken by the sickness of aborted passion.

Undaunted, his deep set, smouldering eyes returned her gaze. Within that great, bony frame the dull fire burned on, stealthily devouring him. In his ravaged features she marked its devastation. And it would burn on, consuming all—even his mind in the end. She could not look at him unmoved.

Impulsively she placed a slim, gloved hand on his. She saw that her own cause was hopeless, appeal useless. But she was not thinking of herself.

“I am not your enemy,” she said. “I’ll help you if I can.”

“You trust me?” he asked.

“No, Sadoul.”

“You are afraid?”

She laughed miserably: “Oh, no, I’m not afraid. I never was. I’m so sorry you never understood that.”

“I did understand. I knew it. The fear was mine alone. Fear! The most terrible thing in the world. Fear is the real Slayer; Death the gentle, grave physician who assists at the birth of souls. Death—the world’s family doctor—wise, kind, faithful, always on time. He shuts the door against Fear and locks it. He delivers the soul, patiently, skilfully. He severs the natal cord. A new birth is tenderly accomplished.”

“What have you feared, Sadoul?”

“To live without you.”

Tears flooded her eyes: “I couldn’t—under God——” she faltered. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t, Sadoul——”

She buried her face between her arms. Sadoul looked at her in silence; gazed, burned on.

After a little while she got up, found a handkerchief in her muff.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She remained busy with her handkerchief for a few moments. Then:

“You’ll have to show me what you wish me to do.... When shall I come?”

He suggested a day; asked her if she were free. She nodded. After a short silence she turned and walked toward the door.

He opened it for her. After she had gone he stood so, for a long while, peering down the empty corridor and nosing the silence like a great beast blinded, bereft, confused by its unutterable isolation.

CHAPTER XXIX

It being Saturday, Sutton came uptown early and found Gilda lying on the couch before the fire, still clad in a loose Chinese lounging robe and slippers.

“You’re outrageously late,” she said. “I’ve had no breakfast.”

“Why didn’t you wake up?”

“The bed was warm and I lazy. It doesn’t excuse you for keeping breakfast waiting. You annoy me, Stuart.”

He came over to her but she refused to kiss him, lay warm and spineless in his arms, half lifted from the couch.

“Darling, I’m sorry,” he said. “I can feel that you’ve lost several pounds. You’re wasting away!”

Her face remained averted but he could see she was smiling. Then, gradually her arms encircled his neck; she looked up at him, tenderly humorous, pretending defiance.

“You bully me,” she said. “Kindly remove that blond head!”

“You’re holding it.”

“Am I? Well, it’s mine. I don’t know what to do with it either.”

She considered him, searched him with hostile eyes, then with a swift sigh relented and gave him her lips.

Freda brought the card-table and spread it. Gilda, on the couch, one knee crossed over the other, glanced absently through the morning paper, pausing between pages to reach out her pretty hand to Stuart.

“Bosh,” she said, “listen to this, Stuart: ‘In response to cheers the President doffed his hat.’ Did you ever hear anything as vulgarly expressed? A gentleman lifts his hat; an old gaffer ‘doffs’ it. Can you imagine the American newspaper as an educational influence? Or a schoolmaster using double negatives?”

Stuart laughed: “The Great American Boob doesn’t know the difference. His native tongue, properly written, perplexes and annoys him. Like Mr. Lillyvick he doesn’t ‘like the langwidge.’ Besides, it is he who is writing our newspapers and our novels for us; and he likes what he writes; he likes it fine, Gilda. He would doff his hat. What does he know about other people? Don’t ever be afraid of anarchy. The terrifying part of the social revolution in America was accomplished long ago.”

The girl swung her slippered foot and laughed, carelessly turning the pages of the great New York daily.

“I thought you were a good republican,” she said. “Are you doomed to the guillotine, too?”

He smiled: “I love my country passionately,” he said. “The people in it are its only defects.”

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “I can see where our heads are going to fall some day. Mine always did fall every time the blade dropped in the Place de la Revolution.”

“I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“How should you know how a girl feels whom you picked up at Derring’s? Dame Theroigne was a natural inference——”

“Good heavens,” he protested, “——stop that baby chatter——”

“Didn’t you pick me up?”

“Are you serious?”

“No, darling. You can’t tell where you’ll find a lost diamond, or why the setting wore out. They’re even found in sewers, you know——”

“What the deuce,” he exclaimed, irritated by her wayward humour.

“You sweet thing,” she said, “I’m bad tempered because I’m hungry. You know I don’t belong in a sewer. So do I. Where on earth is Freda?” She jerked the paper open again, swung her foot with the nervous grace of a kitten switching its tail.

“I’m cross,” she remarked, “because I haven’t a vocation.”

“Do you want one, dear?”

“No, I don’t.”

They both laughed and she flung the paper at him.

“I don’t want to do anything except be your wife,” she said, swinging her slim foot to and fro and clasping her knee with both hands.

“I want children, too,” she said with a rebellious little kick. Her slipper flew. He got up and replaced it, touching her instep with his lips.

“All that,” he said, “is a vocation to which no other can compare.”

“I don’t believe you want me for your wife, Stuart.”

“You believe it utterly.”

She turned to him, searched his face. Slowly the smile dawned, deep-eyed, heavenly. She rested her cheek on her shoulder and watched him; abandoned her hand to him, her eyes, vaguely sweet, following his still caresses.

Freda came with breakfast, but they scarcely took the trouble to separate.

However, the grossly material perfume of hot muffins aroused Gilda from ethereal bowers, and she sat up hungrily surveying the tray.

During breakfast she told him about her promise to Sadoul, explained what was wanted of her.

He was hearing this for the first time, could not comprehend, was not at all edified.

“You darling,” she said, vigorously occupied with bacon and coffee, “do you suppose I’d do anything I shouldn’t?”

“I can’t see how you can endure that man——”

“Nonsense! I always shall find him interesting. Whatever he did to me has wrecked him, not me.... And it may seem strange to you—to a man—but a woman is sorry.... If she really has been loved, she can’t hate utterly. Sad indifference, regret for a man fiercely wasted, unhappy solicitude for mad perversity which brings only agony and disaster—these all generous women feel.... Once, on a lonely mountain, my collie dog went crazy and attacked me. Chasing me he fell into an abandoned well. I went back and saw the dog swimming around and ’round in the bottom of the well. There was no ladder, no rope, no way to save him. It tore my breast to look at him. I wanted to go away—but the creature had seen me, and kept up a horrible sort of screaming as it struggled.... I thought it did not want to die entirely alone.... It almost killed me to remain. But I—I talked to him—until the end.”

“Where was this?”

“In Wales, when I was a child.”

“It’s like you, Gilda.”

“It’s like any woman—if a thing once loved her.”

“You are willing to help Sadoul in his research work?”

“I am helping Dr. Pockman. I couldn’t refuse Sadoul. He’s not very successful. His books are partial failures. Outside of the free-lance press nobody reads him, nobody hears of Sadoul. Besides, I am not—untouched—by his unhappiness.”

She lifted her lovely, honest eyes to Stuart:

“Out of your own abundance,” she said, “give something to this man.”

“You are giving.”

“Not without permission.”

“Dearest,” he said, deeply stirred, “what you choose to do is my choice always.”

“I knew it. Your will is mine, also.” She smiled at him.

“What time are you due there?” he asked without enthusiasm.

“At three. But you are coming with me, of course.”

“That may not please Sadoul.”

“That,” she remarked, “is of no consequence whatever. I never intended to go without you.”

He drew a sharp breath of relief. “All right,” he said.

CHAPTER XXX

At the laboratory they were shown into the small reception room. There was nothing there except a wired crate marked “Cobra. Do not handle.”

“That’s amusing,” remarked Stuart. “What does Pockman want of a cobra?”

Miss Cross, in her neat uniform, came in. She remembered Sutton, gave him a quick look, clear, interested, but without conclusion concerning their appearance together for the second time within her personal experience.

She shook hands smilingly with Gilda, turned to Stuart, quizzical, amused:

“A more agreeable reunion than our first association, Mr. Sutton.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was pretty badly scared.”

“You were the most tragic young man I ever beheld. You wouldn’t smoke.”

“You were very nice to me,” he said, forcing a rather painful smile.

“I was sorry for you——” She looked at Gilda, “sorrier for you, dear. But it turned into a happy miracle.” She smiled, looking from one to the other, the invisible and delicate antennæ of feminine intuition exploring the situation without comprehension, until Gilda looked at Stuart, and the boy returned the fleeting glance.

Miss Cross knew, then. But that was all she knew.

Gilda inquired for a dressing room; Miss Cross took her away to hers. Stuart started to pace the narrow floor, but a door opened and Sadoul came in.

He was prepared to see Sutton; Gilda had averted him by telephone, tersely, hanging up as he began to demur.

“Come in, Sadoul,” said Stuart coolly. “I’m rather relieved at the opportunity to tell you that I spoke thoughtlessly the other day.”

“Oh, no,” said Sadoul, “you’d thought it all out.”

Sutton reddened. “Yes, I had. And I came here to say what I did say.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

“Yes; I shan’t ever kill you. It’s one solution, but not a satisfactory one.”

Sadoul laughed. “You mean not a respectable one. I’d die only once, but the Hudson River Suttons would die every day that they lived——” A fit of coughing interrupted him.

The colour in Stuart’s face deepened.

“Undoubtedly. That’s the only reason it’s no solution for our problem.”

“The problem’s yours,” remarked Sadoul, “not mine. As for Gilda, she belongs to me—whatever you and she choose to do about it. But I don’t worry. The Gods of the Mountain—the Holy Catskills—will hold you to respectability. As for Gilda, her chastity is—more—admirable——”

Another fit of convulsive coughing shook his bony frame. He wiped his face, looked sneeringly at Stuart:

“What a gift of God is a truly good young man,” he said. “But a respectable young man is a pearl without price——” Another access of coughing seized him. The crisis passed. He leered at Stuart, unable to speak.

The rushing, confused impulse to kill this man surged, ebbed, passed, leaving the boy dazed and pale.

“I thought you’d do it,” panted Sadoul; “it would have been worth it to me to make a clean sweep of all Suttons. You got rather white. But respectability is a sheet-anchor and the Highlands of the Hudson a firm fortress——”

The words choked in his throat: a thin stream of bright blood squirted from his mouth—gushed over his chin.

Moments of silence, terribly significant: Sadoul, eyes closed, sopping his mouth with crimsoned handkerchief, the boy staring.

Sadoul opened his eyes, red with hell. His shoulders sagged, his gaunt chest heaved, he leaned trembling against the wall like a horse, sinking by the withers.

“Can I do anything, Sadoul?” ventured the boy in a ghostly voice.

Sadoul nodded: “Yes, mind your business.”

“I don’t care what you say to me.”

“I don’t either.” Sadoul sat down, rested for a while, got up.

“Are you all right?” asked Stuart.

Their eyes met. Both knew now it was only a waiting game. And, with this astounding knowledge, the boy softened.

“You ought to go away,” he said. “I’ll play square.”

“Arizona and a clean shirt?” sneered Sadoul. He looked at his wet handkerchief, at his stained hands.

“Play square, eh?” he repeated. “Well, that’s a little more than being respectable. That’s emotional. Respectability doesn’t admit of any except prescribed and predigested emotions. Be prudent, Sutton, or your ancestors will squirm underground.”

Stuart said: “Well, whatever you do I’ll play square, Sadoul. I think I’d do it on my own account. But Gilda likes you——”

Sadoul, on his way out, paused at the door.

“You’re never going to have her,” he said. “So don’t lie awake on my account.”

He went out, leaving the door ajar. Sutton heard him in the wash-room.

A little later Gilda returned alone, noticed his expression, came to him, questioningly.

“It’s nothing. Sadoul was here. We always upset each other.”

“I know it. I hated to ask you to come.”

Pockman came in at his crazy gait, arms jerking and dangling and his face glistening with sweat.

“All ready,” he said. “Lyken is in there with an electrician and camera man. I hope we’ll get something. How do you feel, Miss Greenway?”

She smiled and said she felt very well indeed.

“Is Sutton expected to be present?” he asked with a smirk.

“Certainly,” she said, “——if I am.”

“Oh, sure!” He cast a stealthy glance at Stuart, then led the way out.

It was the same room in which she had last seen Sadoul. Except that the various machines were ready to go into action, and a lot of flowers about, the room was the same.

Dr. Lyken shook hands with her; the electrician and camera-man bowed.

Miss Cross came in with another young woman in uniform—a Miss Parry, who seated herself prepared to make stenographic records and fill in charts.

The electrician took up his station; to control and direct the delicate gradation of light was one of his jobs. The camera-man’s assistant entered. A few minutes later Sadoul appeared, went immediately to Gilda. She removed her hat. Miss Cross took it. They consulted in quiet voices for a while, then she went with Sadoul into the dark cabinet.

Almost immediately Sadoul came out alone and nodded to Pockman. Lyken and Stuart also followed. The interior of the cabinet was very dark. Pockman flashed an electric torch.

Gilda lay on a fur rug on the floor, partly resting on her right side, her legs a little drawn up. Both hands covered her face. She did not stir. Her breathing was regular and quiet. Temperature, pulse, heart action, blood-pressure, all proved normal.

“Nothing morbid in that trance,” said Pockman in a cautious tone.

They returned to their chairs near the table. Lights faded to a discreet twilight. Miss Parry withdrew to a corner where a shaded bulb hung low.

“Is that camera ready?” asked Sadoul.

Lyken whispered to Stuart: “He’s using a quartz lens. They’ll flood the room with violet rays when they shoot.”

Pockman, on the other side of him, said: “The only thing to do is to settle the question definitely one way or another: whether these forces that ‘sensitives’ possess, and which induce psychical phenomena, are merely forces of nature at present unknown to us, or forces exerted by living identities which have survived physical death.”

Sadoul, speaking in a natural voice, said to Lyken: “I’ve used a microscope on the body exudations from a highly sensitized medium. It disclosed living cells of a type not found in the human body.”

“Was there a nucleus to each cell?”

“Positively.”

Lyken seemed startled. “What are we to expect, now, from little Miss Greenway?” he inquired of Pockman.

“Dual projection, I believe.”

“Materialization?”

“Yes,” said Sadoul.

At that moment the vague dark draperies of the cabinet were flung aside and a young girl in white stepped out.

From somewhere a cool breeze stirred in the room, blowing the perfume of the cut flowers.

“Camera!” said Sadoul quietly. And, to the electrician: “Violet, please.”

The figure in white came forward tranquilly, unembarrassed. As she neared the table a book lying there caught her eye, and she paused, turned the pages curiously, as though interested.

“It’s Einstein’s book,” whispered Lyken. “If she can understand that she’s better than I am.”

The figure raised its head, smiling, as though she had overheard the remark.

She was a trifle shorter than Gilda, like her in a celestial way, with a more dazzling skin.

“Are you Gilda?” asked Sadoul.

“Yes,” she said quietly. Her voice was like Gilda’s, with another indefinable quality—something exquisitely lark-like, unsullied as pure song showered down from skies.

“Look at the Other!” exclaimed Lyken.

Sadoul called to the electrician: “Flood!” And to the camera-man, “Go on shooting. Get them both together!”

Stuart sat rigid in his chair, gripping it. He saw the Other One advancing, brilliant in white, exquisitely indolent, every movement gracefully sensuous, and her mouth a red flower in the demi-light.

She paused beside the table, leaned on it, bending her face to the flowers.

“Are you Gilda?” asked Sadoul unsteadily.

She looked up and laughed. Stuart saw her clearly for the first time, and trembled a little, so lovely she was.

The other figure leaned there beside her, too, near-smiling, fresh, exquisite, unsullied.

“Sadoul,” said the Other One, “why do you try to create dissension between us?” She encircled the other’s waist. The latter looked seriously at Sadoul: “We are in harmony. Why do you try to separate us? Why try to distinguish between us? If you separate us you make us self-conscious. You offer us violence, Sadoul.”

Sadoul got up from his chair. Both figures laid their hands on his. He drew them a little way aside.

“God,” said Pockman, sweating, “that’s going some! For Christ’s sake keep on grinding that camera, you——”

Sadoul held the two white figures by their right hands resting between his own.

He said: “Is that why there is no hope for me? I didn’t understand.”

The Other One said: “You sow dissension between us who are twins. Didn’t you understand that we really are one?”

“No.... That is the reason, then.”

They nodded: “That is the reason, Sadoul.”

He stood for a little while with dark head lowered, retaining their hands. The Other One seemed impatient; her companion drew a stem of frisia from the vase on the table and laid it in Sadoul’s hand where her own had been lying.

Then she leisurely crossed the room, passing so close to Sutton that her white garment touched him, and he felt the breathing warmth of her body.

“Gilda,” he whispered.

She paused, looked down at him.

“That’s no ghost,” said Lyken, nervously. “Ask her if she’ll let you take her in your arms.”

The figure looked uncertainly at Sutton as he rose.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered.

“Be very gentle,” she said. “She is asleep in the cabinet and you could easily hurt her.”

She came into his arms, rested against him, a warm young creature, a living, breathing shape.

“Is she real?” demanded Lyken.

“Absolutely.”

“Then somebody had better look into that cabinet,” he said, almost violently. “Reason is reason and a joke’s a joke, God da——”

The Other One, passing near, closed his mouth with her slim hand, and Lyken nearly fainted on his chair.

“Get out if you can’t control yourself,” said Sadoul coldly. And, to Pockman: “Take their pulse and temperature.”

The slender figure in Sutton’s embrace released herself, rested one hand on his arm and leaned down to re-open the book. The page that interested her was printed solid with mathematics.

“Do you understand that?” whispered Sutton.

“Yes. How simple and interesting.”

Pockman came with a clinical thermometer and Sutton stepped back.

He watched nervously the procedure—the tests made with this radiant being—the weighing, the stethoscope, the vial for saliva, a microscopic paring from a finger-nail, a few red-gold hairs, a tear duct excited and the secretion caught and bottled while the lovely creature laughed.

Pockman and Sadoul, camera-man and electrician, and the stenographer, Miss Parry, were busy for hours, it seemed to Sutton.

Gradually the lights had been increased to an intensity where photography required nothing else to aid it.

Lyken, inert on his chair, slack-jawed and pop-eyed, merely stared and stared, utterly valueless as any assistance.

The Other One, who had come curiously to look at Sutton once or twice, and who did not seem very friendly toward him, now smiled at him for the first time, rather shyly.

“I am glad you did not touch me,” she said. “Some day, perhaps. We are going now. Good-bye.”

Sadoul turned from the camera: “Have you got to go?”

They nodded smilingly.

“I want to ask one more thing of you,” he said, following the two figures toward the cabinet. “I beg you to let us see you both, with Gilda lying asleep at your feet. Will you do this?”

They seemed uncertain, whispered together for a moment. Then the Other One nodded.

Pockman and Sutton joined them; Lyken lurched up from his chair and stumbled toward the cabinet.

It was very dark inside.

Sadoul reached up and turned on a flood of light.

Gilda lay as they had left her, her face in her hands. Beside her the two white figures looked down at her, gravely.

“Camera!” said Sadoul, with an effort. “Pull that curtain wide, Sutton!”

In the silence they heard behind them the grinding of the machine.

“Turn off the light,” said the Other One to Sadoul.

“Must I?”

“Yes.”

He closed and bolted the door, lifted a bony arm and plunged the cabinet into darkness. Nobody moved for a few minutes except Lyken, swaying on legs that scarce supported him. Then Sadoul turned on the light. Both white figures were gone.

On the rug at their feet Gilda sighed and stirred and opened her eyes.

CHAPTER XXXI

The daily grind down town was beginning to wear on young Sutton. It was not the routine of business, not the new responsibility that dragged him; it was the constant depression, the interminable whining. Gloom possessed the cañons of the district like a dirty fog from the bay. Nobody did anything except snivel about the rottenness exposed by the several investigating committees, Civil, State, and Federal.

The interminable jeremiad set men’s nerves on edge; nothing was to be looked for from the moribund Administration and only mischief came from it—the last spiteful and convulsive clawing at the people who had done it to death.

Pygmy wrath, miserable bunkum, sullen inertia—these were to be endured until March. Then the rat-pit would be empty and ready for fumigation.

Meanwhile, those joyless bacteria which feed and propagate on gloom became noisier in their bigoted zeal, boasting of their ability to blackmail a cowardly Congress. Paul Pry was at the keyhole; Mrs. Grundy at her window; Torquemada junior, an itinerant advance-agent, notifying a half-educated people from the Gulf to the Lakes that the incredibly cruel and stupid old god of Sabbath had come back to burn all heretics.

“Believe as I believe or I’ll roast you,” bawled Torquemada junior. “It pleases me to twiddle my thumbs on Sunday; and you’d better twiddle yours or I’ll know the reason why!”

Time’s great pendulum was being swung by fools too violently and too far forward. The backward swing was nearly due. A patient people, mostly ignorant or semi-educated, looked on, confused by the din of the fools and the Talkers.

But they were the people who had suddenly arisen in spite of the Administration and battered the face of Destiny out of all recognition.

The people who had burned for a space, transfigured in the blazing beauty of their Flaming Sword. And had dulled to a cinder, and returned to their millions of wallows, grunting of grandeur—the wonder, laughter, and sorrow of the world they saved for the sake of Jesus Christ.

The lumber business, in common with all affairs, remained in the doldrums.

Financing anything through old and accustomed channels was now the idlest of dreams.

Also an open winter in the Northland did not help. There was little snow. Logs were difficult to move. And when, late in January, arctic cold settled over a naked North, it was not good for forests.

Stuart Sutton worried a great deal. He worried about logs; he feared for the new plantations unprotected by snow. They sent him reports of depredations by deer—miles of browse—balsam, hemlock, Norway spruce cleaned out.

Slashings and danger of fire in reforested regions were ever in his mind; the weevil was a nightmare, too. But most terrifying of all to him was the white-pine blight—that dreadful, leprous thing out of the Orient. And he turned the ledger pages devoted to extirpation of wild and cultivated currant and gooseberry, and figured out the cost of saving from extinction the noblest tree that ever grew in North America.

Only less noble was the chestnut, now, from another leprous blight, almost extinct. And upon the lumber-men of the land lay the responsibility for the survival of the white pine.

Letters from his father and mother in California were a trifle disturbing, too. They had heard that their son and heir infrequently decorated those social circles wherein, since Colonial days, the Hudson River Suttons were accustomed to gyrate. They confidently laid it to the exactions of business, fatigue from overwork. And cautioned him against it.

Which tender admonition hurt his Sutton conscience; in a rush of remorse he accepted a number of invitations; reappeared among his kind for a few weeks, bored and impatient at losing all that time away from Gilda; and then dropped out again—Gilda and the lumber business being all he could possibly attend to in life.

Suspecting this state of affairs, the girl chided him.

“You mustn’t give up your family’s friends,” she said. “Such ties are generations in making. They are worth something, mean something. If one has an undisputed place in the social fabric, one should not vacate it without a reason. I know how that is,” she added with a light, unconscious sigh.

They were seated before the fire in her living room. He reached over and rested one hand on hers.

“Do you care to tell me a little, dear?” he asked.

She did not misunderstand him, though not prepared for a demand of confidence so intimate.

After a short silence, and absently caressing his hand where it lay on her lap:

“There was domestic unhappiness when I was a child. My parents separated. Mortification made my father a recluse. My mother spent the remainder of her life in Europe—until the tragic end.”

She took his hand between both of hers, pressed it, clung a little:

“The courts,” she said, “left me under joint control.... I understand, now, that my father’s attitude toward me was not aversion; it was that the sight of me made his shame and grief unendurable.

“My mother was much younger. She cared for gaiety and the brightness of things. She was very pretty; she had ample means, friends ... a position, once.... And still a position on the Continent.... It was obvious that my place was in boarding school. Under the court’s ruling I could not remain more than a fortnight with my mother. I could have gone home to father, but he did not want me.

“So—you see what position in the world we had was vacated. There was no longer any circle; no longer a family; nor family friends.

“There were—and are—relatives. They write to me, still. They are very kind.... But I prefer liberty—the liberty of reserving my parents’ affairs for my own private attention. Kinship can be a burden.... I could never endure being accounted for, explained ... at the expense of family privacy ... and the domestic misfortune of two dead people who gave me birth ... and whose sorrow is no concern of strangers.”

Presently he said: “It is for you to decide, of course. And yet, presentable relatives mean almost anything to a girl alone.”

The Hudson River Suttons who spoke out of his mouth were right. Perhaps Gilda Greenway was righter.

“I can’t, Stuart. I am not very discreet, not even cautious. You know that. I’m not fastidious. You know how we met. But whatever else I do—whatever I condescend to, unworthy perhaps—I can’t go back and let my relatives account for me at the expense of my father and mother.”

He made no attempt to discuss the matter. Perhaps he felt that, when the time came, it would smooth their way with his own relatives and friends if Gilda had somebody presentable to account for her.

However, he said nothing further on the subject, nor did she.

Also, it was time to change her gown, for she had persuaded him to go to a reception at the Creative Arts Association with her—the girl refusing to neglect any opportunity to enlarge the pathetically small and badly mixed circle wherein she had her only social exercise.

It was a tea in aid of a drive to provide the starving inhabitants of Roumelia with fezzes.

Stuart usually lent himself to this sort of thing when she asked him, speculating uneasily at times upon his own future and unaided ability to lead her into a duller, more respectable circle—the sacred water-hole, trodden deep, hatched up, and trampled by generations of social pachyderms and gazelles.

“Or we’ll make our own wallow,” he concluded. But the alternative caused him a slight pang when he remembered the family corral on the Hudson, the old-time gardens, the ancient domain, tradition, tenantry, dirty window-panes and all.

They arrived at the Creative Arts Association in Sutton’s car.

The function was in full blast; the Talkers were talking; big lions, little lions, fat lions, meagre lions, mangy lions, all were roaring. Potential pup-lions, pathetic, lovable adolescents, yapped shyly when noticed and patronised. There was the Fifth Avenue matron with a home on the Hudson and stringy hair, who condescended for charity’s sake. Other fashionables were there, gracious, profusely democratic, patiently ready to endure, for the sake of Roumelia and half a million red fezzes.

The Creative Arts were there, physically hungry, mentally ravenous to filch material, but mostly bursting with necessity for vocal self expression.

Listeners were few, Talkers dominated. Here an intimidated world was told where it got off sixty times every minute.

On the edge of this milling mess of mouths Gilda stood, unconsciously holding tight to Stuart, who good humouredly identified for her the fauna:

Mrs. Marmot de Grasse, prominent at Newport and in Greenwich Village. Her Article in The Post, “Should an Art Student Pay $10,000 for a Studio?” was shaking Fourth Street to its profoundest cabarets.

Miss Smith-Durian, the wealthiest maiden lady in Tuxedo, had offered a prize of $300 annually for the best novel by a New Yorker. The novel to remain the property of Miss Smith-Durian.

Harry Stayr came up grinning like Silenus, and shook hands with Gilda.

“Heavens,” he said, “what food. All squashy; and a fake punch to add the classic insult.”

“It’s so interesting,” said Gilda, “——and one doesn’t think of food.”

“One does!” retorted Stayr with a grimace. “Mrs. Bazelius Grandcourt swindled me into coming, promising booze. I gave up ten bones. You’re stung, too, I suppose.”

“Mr. Derring sent me tickets,” said Gilda. “Who is that preparing to sing, Harry?”

It proved to be the lovely Farrar, immortally young, always generous in charity.

The Talkers ceased for a while: Heaven opened; then the celestial transformation faded, drowned by the “noise of the storks.”

Julian Fairless presented himself, saluted Gilda’s hand, turned to interpret and identify at her eager request:

“They’re all there. That’s the new novelist, Theodore Howard Belper—small-town stuff, you know—wrote ‘The Town Pump’—the last word in rube stuff.”

“Why do you suppose he wrote it?” she asked with a distressed smile.

“Small towns want small-town stuff.”

“But New York reads it.”

“New York’s the smallest of ’em all, only it doesn’t know it,” sneered Stayr. “That solemn guy, Gilda, is Horatio McPhoon, the sculptor. He has submitted a plan to make a bronze statue of the President a mile high, and erect it on top of Pikers Peak.”

“Oh, dear,” she said unhappily.

Fairless pointed out to her in rapid succession the bald, wide-eared editor of the Daily Pillar; Montgomery Skippy, the great publisher and platitudinarian; young Rawmore, the romantic actor, idol of the metropolis; Fitz-William Paunder, patron, director, founder, life-member of everything corporate in Gotham; Mrs. Charles Gilderling, a beauty once, socially formidable, and mother of several already notorious young Gilderlings.

And there were the Talkers, Leopold Pouncing, the critic; old Hunkerson, book-reviewer, brilliant as a spitting cat in the dark; his confrère, the ponderous gabbler on the Daily Forum, Seth Hawver; Scratchowsky, the Polish etcher; Sir Daniel Brunderby of the Embassy, worn and perplexed by Yankee and Sinn Fein alike, but talking hands-across, God bless him!—the only Talker of them all who had a word to say worth hearing.

Mrs. Gillately Gray fluttered up, always bright and birdish: and “How d’you do, Mr. Stayr, Mr. Fairless, Mr. Sutton—isn’t it too wonderful for poor Roumelia?—How d’you do, Miss Greenway!——” fluttering to the presentation, toujours oiseau, preening the nearest feather, her own or another’s—vrai tête de linotte.

After migration, Stayr said: “Oiseau de flamme et bec de gaz! Brrr! What a humming-bird!”

Fairless said to Gilda: “She has the social importance conferred by the social column. Her opera box drips diamonds. There’s nothing else to her.”

“Oh, come,” said Sutton; “she’s civil and anxious to please. Why the devil do you knock everybody, Julian?”

“You don’t have to,” retorted Fairless. “But your boosting is as snobbish as my knocking. I don’t know which is the more sickening, after all——”

The greatest of living pianists began to play. It was an artistic mistake; the place was unsuitable; but it was a charitable success. Roumelia could be proud of her fezzes.

“If you’ll shake this and come around to my place I’ll shake something in a shaker that would shake a Shaker to——”

Julian’s elbow in his stomach silenced him.

The most famous of string-quartettes was deliciously beginning.

But this, too, like all happiness, came to its own enchanting end. Again the place was clamorous with the talk of the Talkers.

Sutton whispered in Gilda’s ear: “Who would you care to meet, darling?”

She ventured a preference or two, shyly. The men he went after, rounded up, and fetched. To the women he took Gilda, casually secure in his own self assurance.

And Gilda was too lovely to suspect—until she had gone—when the inevitable feminine reaction occurs, and any man is under suspicion who presents one woman to another.

She had enjoyed every moment. She said so to Stuart.

“I know where you belong,” he said glumly. “And you’re going there some day.”

He meant, of course, the sacred water-hole.

Gilda surmised it, looked at him tenderly, humorously, inclined to laugh, wholly inclined to adore him and his funny social instincts.

To certain English people there are no particular social distinctions to be expected in America. The only difference they notice is between those who are amusing and those who are not.

Perhaps Gilda’s parents might have entertained some such idea—if they ever had troubled their heads about it at all.

They were going to the theatre that evening.

He took her home, went back to dress, returned to take her to dinner at the Ritz. And found her in her black evening gown, flushed, feverish from weeping.

But when, surprised and troubled, he took her to his breast, she wound her arms around him, strained him to her, kissed him, sobbing, stammering, warning him to beware. And gazing intently into her tear-wet eyes he saw the dark change coming, mirrored there in peril, trembling on her reddening lips, fragrant in her breath.

She turned, covering her quivering face with both desperate hands, sank down on the sofa.

He laid aside his overcoat and hat, seated himself near, and turned his altered face to watch her, grimly determined to see it through.

Freda had gone. But there was food in the refrigerator—a cold pheasant, salad, a bottle of claret.

When she heard him in the kitchen she rose and went out.

“I’ll do all that,” she said humbly.... “Do you really mean to stay with me?”

“Do you think I want you to call up Sadoul?” he said bitterly.

She had laid the cloth; she stood now, with a handful of silver, gazing at him. The Other One was rapidly possessing her. She gave him a lovely, flushed look.

“It is always one kind of hell for Sadoul,” she said. “It will be another kind for you if you stay.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, reddening with anger at the maddening hopelessness of it all.

She laid the knives and forks on the cloth and came close to him.

“You had better let me call up Sadoul,” she said. “I am safe with him.”

“You are safe with me,” he said with an oath.

They both reddened painfully. He caught her hand, asking pardon—but released the burning palm.

“It is destruction for you to stay.... I still know what I’m saying.”

“I’m going to stay. We’ll have to win out together, Gilda.... Do you understand?”

She made no reply. And, looking at her, he realised that she no longer understood.

Toward morning the girl had cried herself to sleep, lying flung across the bed, face buried in her dishevelled hair, and one little hand so convulsively linked in his that the boy could scarcely manage to release himself.

He sat on the chair beside the bed for a while, gazing at her out of haggard eyes. Then, when he saw the dark change fading from her burning cheeks he got up, took his hat and coat and went out into the grey light of a foggy morning.

CHAPTER XXXII

Sadoul, playing with his cobra—or rather tormenting it—said to Pockman:

“Take the case mentioned by Chevreuil among scores of others. It is certain that the ‘sensitive’ experiences terror and anguish when any materialisation in which he or she has been concerned is subjected to brutal handling.”

Pockman looked around from his microscope at Sadoul, then at the cobra in its glass-faced double hutch. It was a black cobra, not a spectacled one.

Sadoul ran his gaunt forefinger up and down the glass. Inside, the snake, erect in its coils, followed every movement.

Sadoul said: “The sensitive seems to be physiologically anæmic. It is her own substance of which the phantom is composed. There are other cells, too, but the structural emanation is from the sensitive. And when anything excites or shocks, the sensitive begins to recover her own cells.

“What’s your deduction?” inquired Pockman.

“This: that any common identity of sensitive and phantom is largely material; that this mutual sharing of substance accounts for bodily and mental injury to the sensitive if the materialisation be injured.”

“Logically argued,” nodded Pockman. “If one knew how to sever the natal cord between medium and phantom, the former would die, probably.”

Sadoul stood absently teasing the cobra. “Yes,” he said. “But in a case of dual projection, what?”

“A case of Siamese twins, I suppose.”

“I wonder.”

“You have in mind the case of Gilda Greenway?” Pockman spoke, leering into his microscope.

Sadoul no longer cared what Pockman thought—no longer took the trouble to conceal motive or purpose. He said, coolly:

“I’ve concluded it would endanger her if I attempted to rid her of one of these phantoms.”

“Rid yourself, you mean—don’t you?” tittered the other.

Sadoul’s silent glance, full of effrontery and contempt, measured Pockman from head to foot.

“Yes, rid myself,” he said. “But I don’t know how.”

“Your cobra was a premature investment,” remarked Pockman, agitated with a sort of whispering laughter which hunched his shoulders to his ears.

“No,” said Sadoul, “I got the snake too late, I’m afraid.”

“What do you do with your hypodermics full of venom?”

“Try them on sputum.”

“Whose?”

“Mine.”

Pockman looked up incredulously. “That’s a new one, isn’t it?” he asked with a ghastly smirk.

“Quite new.”

“Does it do the business?”

“Absolutely.”

“I see. You mean to attenuate it, gradually attempt to render yourself immune. Then—what? Inject it?”

“That’s the idea,” said Sadoul tranquilly.

Pockman skeptical, disdainful of any amateur, yet intelligent enough to be interested, stared at the other in silence.

Sadoul’s hand, moving rhythmically on the glass, seemed to hypnotise the snake which, towering from its coils, hood dilated, swayed gently with the moving hand.

Suddenly Sadoul made an abrupt pass; the cobra struck like lightning; a stream of venom clouded the glass and ran down inside.

The cobra seemed to collapse like a punctured rubber tube, falling limp in a flattened coil.

Sadoul took a bamboo rod, went to the rear of the hutch, opened a small panel, and, with the rod, flung the snake into the adjoining hutch and lowered the dividing screen of glass.

Then he opened the entire back of the hutch, stepped in and filled a small syringe from the cloudy pool gathering in the cup-shaped glass sill.

Pockman watched the proceedings with a sort of horrid, mocking intentness. To play with death was part of his profession. To watch an amateur do so approached the levity of a sport. Here was a man who might easily have abrasions on his skin, handling without rubber gloves the most deadly and rapid poison known to man—a poison for which no known antidote exists.

“Keep the damn thing away from me,” he said as Sadoul came toward him with his syringe. “If you get any of it in your skin it’s going to act like lightning.”

Sadoul made no comment, and Pockman realised that perhaps he didn’t care very much what happened. Which discovery did not particularly affect Pockman, except that if Sadoul died he might as well die a victim to research as die a jackass.

He said as much with a hunch and a shrug, but the other replied with a sneer: “Quand même, on ne meurt pas; on s’addresse, tranquilment, gentilement, au pays de l’ombre.”

“If you want to, you can stop that murderous cough,” said Pockman. “And if you’re so fond of snakes there are plenty in Arizona and New Mexico.”

Sadoul laughed: “You think I’ll leave those two together?”

“Better than to leave them together permanently. You had another hemorrhage this morning——”

“You lie, Pockman.”

“Why, you damned lunger,” shouted Pockman, “I saw you in the wash-room. Don’t tell me I lie or I’ll fire you out of my place.”

“You’d better not try,” said Sadoul, his indifferent eyes on the angry man.

He went away presently, to his own quarters, carrying the syringe carelessly in one hand.

At the further end of the two rooms which Pockman had allotted to him for his experiments, was a third and smaller room. This he had fitted up as a combination of bedroom and study, and here he now did his writing.

To this place he had removed various articles from his apartment—some books, clothing, photographs of Gilda taken abroad, small personal possessions, letter-files, private papers, even the canary birds that never sang, for some reason or other, and that hopped and hopped and cracked seeds all day long in the tarnished tinsel cage.

As for the big, lonely apartment which he had taken nearly a year ago, he went there rarely. The Japanese servant remained as guardian of the furniture—all the dreary accumulations necessary to equip a housekeeping apartment for married people—furnishings for living-room, bedrooms, dining-room, kitchen—pictures, mirrors, curtains, linen, carpets, silver, glass, china, batterie-de-cuisine—the whole appalling outfit.

That apartment had become a horror to him; there were no recollections connected with it except painful ones; no phantoms haunted those dusky rooms to evoke in him even the wistful pleasures of sadness; no memories clung to the unused, desolate place.

Except by a tuner the piano never had been touched; the brocaded chairs had never known the caress of her slender body; no lovely ghost looked out from the dim depths of gilded mirrors; there was nothing anywhere of her for whom, because of whom, he had cabled to Pockman to lease a home.

He might have sub-let it for the remainder of the year, but, sullenly determined upon her return, he had hung on.

Now it was not worth while; storage charges would more than balance any advantage of sub-letting. So he let it go with a final auction vaguely in mind, and established himself here on the East River. It was less lonely. He could sit, when feeling ill, and gaze out on the grey stream; on barge, schooner, steamer; on the forbidding prison in mid-stream; on the vast and dreary bridge overhead.

Here, when very tired—perhaps with a towel wetted crimson in his clutch—he could lie in a morris-chair and follow the gulls in their interminable flight; or mark the mile-long convolutions of smoke from some lofty chimney, tinged with sombre sunset hues, or see the diamond blaze of light flash out across the bridges as the red west smouldered through thickening mists.

And, lying here, he could ponder the eternal problem—the only problem that preoccupied him since he first laid eyes on Gilda Greenway. Ways, means, methods, chances, how to win her, hold her, dominate, possess—always the dull fierce searching in his fevered mind—always the fixed idea, sleepless, burning, eternal.

All else was but an incident in the unaltered problem—the aborted marriage, the domestic débâcle, the advent of Sutton—even the girl’s death—all were merely incident to the main never-changing, never-ending problem.

His own physical condition, so long and sullenly unrecognised and unadmitted, merely enraged him with impatience. Yet, far in the sombre depths of his mind he was conscious of an ominous mental stillness.

It was the stillness of fear, awakening to the advent of the Future—trying to estimate its approaching speed—watching in a sort of stunned apathy the swift coming of something which had not existed yesterday.

Along with his daily free-lance work—always in demand, always profitable and to be depended upon to give him competence—he carried his psycho-hypnotic research. There was a road, that way, leading toward something—recognition, perhaps, authority, fame, as much of Fortune as the jade carries in her stuffed purse, perhaps.

Also, it was something to do—food to feed fever—possibly a key to unlock the Problem—the only problem existing for him.

He filled a phial with his cobra venom, washed the syringe without precaution, pocketed it, sealed his phial, stood for a while staring absently about him; then, very tired, lay down by the window and crossed his arms behind his dark head.

Presently his thoughts began to hover around death—but not his own—like grey dusk-moths round a ghostly blossom.

Long since satisfied of the incidental unimportance of human dissolution, he had left that conclusion as a starting point for research; for speculation, too.

For the exploring mind, impatient of proof, wanders on out of bounds. And Sadoul’s idler thoughts roamed at hazard among scenes peopled by surviving identities—entered vast regions thickly inhabited, stirring with colour and energy and life in its every and illimitable aspect.

And now, finally, he thought of himself. How would it be with him and her? His passion must survive if he died.... Would her indifference survive with her? Was the pursuit endless as a star’s course in orbit—endless as the drift of the universe?

If it must be, it must be. Eternal or not, it was a part of the scheme of things, irrevocable, inalienable, eternal.

A fog gathered on the river. Tall masts passed like shrouded spectres; the deep vibrations of the fog-horns grew in the thickening stillness; dock lights burned from every pier; long rows of windows glittered dimly in Astoria; a melancholy bell tolled incessantly.

Sadoul closed his heavy-lidded eyes, then opened them with an effort.

River whistles were blowing; the hour struck on some phantom ship; one by one the giant bridges festooned themselves with gems, veiled in the cerements of the fog.

A chill sweat grew on Sadoul’s forehead, dampening his thick black hair, but in his hollow cheeks dull fire burned.

He awoke in the dark, coughing, ensanguined, wet to the skin with icy sweat.

CHAPTER XXXIII

There had come into Stuart’s voice a hint of anxiety in these days when he greeted Gilda over the telephone. It was always the same eager, boyish question: “Are you all right, dear?” And a swift breath of relief when reassured.

The girl had taken up her music again, vocal and piano, and, three times a week, she had an Italian lesson as corollary to vocal cultivation.

A visit with Stuart to an exquisite loan exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum gave birth to an artistic impulse in the girl. The needle-work on the French renaissance furniture thrilled her; she ardently desired to learn the art; and she discovered a place on Fifth Avenue where instruction was given in gros point and petit point—where canvas was supplied, designs furnished and stamped.

Often, now, she sat by the window, her oval frame on her knees, an array of rainbow tinted skeins of silk at her elbow, embroidering with dull-tipped needle.

It was slow, minute, painstaking work, but Gilda, quite mad about it already, nourished a plan to tell in petit point the deathless story of Eros and Psyche.

The girl had copied designs filched bodily from every available source; and, determined upon covering two chairs, a sofa, and a footstool—none of these period pieces yet acquired—regarded her dismaying programme with mingled excitement and despair.

“After all,” she ventured to Stuart, “we have a whole lifetime before us. Princesses used to sit in turrets and peg away at a lifetime’s work without impatience.”

She showed him the designs she had copied and tinted—delicate panels from the industrious Angelica, from Fuseli via Bartolozzi, even from Flaxman transposed into Bartolozzian terms—lovely, pastel tinted designs in regulation cartouches.

“You’re terrifyingly clever,” he said. “I wonder,” he added, smilingly uneasy, “what you ever saw in a lumber merchant to attract you.”

“Don’t be silly, Stuart.”

“I’m not going to be. But I’m wondering a little——”

“Piffle, darling. I was taught to draw by various teachers in various convents. That’s where I learned to play, also. No girl could escape. Whether one wished it or not one was compelled to produce designs, tint them with watercolours. I could have learned petit point from the sisters; I did learn ordinary embroidery, crochet, the simple tapestry stitch. I don’t want you to think me talented.”

“Well,” he said, “music, design—any artistic manual dexterity is utterly beyond me—any creative talent or any interpretive one.”

“What I do is nothing,” she said, smilingly occupied with her needle.

“You’re better read than I am, too,” he went on. “You’ve read more widely in standard literature. You’re familiar with things I’ve merely heard of. I don’t know what the devil I learned at Harvard. I’ve brought nothing away with me.”

“You’ve brought away an unspoiled boy—with a blond head—and the perfect equipment of all that is ideal in manhood,” she said, keeping her eyes on her embroidery.

He bent and kissed her where, at the nape of the neck, the hair grew soft as pale red-gold.

“I’d better read up on art and things,” he said, “or there’ll be silences at the breakfast table some of these days.”

“I hope there’ll be too many children for that,” she murmured, intent on her needle.

The boy laughed and she flushed at her temerity, but the former, thrilled by the picture, took her small, smooth hand and rested his lips on it.

“All the same,” he said, “I don’t want to be the only dumb creature at breakfast, Gilda. You are far more cultivated than I and it worries me now and then.”

She laughed: “I’m glad of it. I don’t wish you to be too sure of me. You made me love you far too easily to suit my feminine complacency.”

“Wasn’t it inevitable, dear?” he asked, so seriously that the girl laughed again.

“Of course, blaming destiny softens the shameful fact that I no sooner beheld you than I seized you.”

Her eyes sparkled, her colour glowed, her hair seemed a living flame enveloping the dainty head lowered above her embroidery, where the needle flashed in her white fingers.

Presently her expression altered; she said gravely:

“Love,” she said, “necessarily originates in propinquity. But I do not believe I ever could have loved any other man.”

Then, with a swift upward glance, and laughing again: “So you see, dear, lumber merchant or prince of the blood, it made no difference in my destiny. It was to be you. It is you. And I think you’d better tell me something about your pine trees and your business so that I may enjoy it with you.”

He remained silent and preoccupied for a while, then: “Gilda, I’ve got to go to Heron Nest for a few days. Will you come as my guest?”

“Darling! I couldn’t, in your parents’ absence.”

“Aren’t we engaged?” he insisted stubbornly.

“How can we be when I’m already married?”

“I don’t see why you can’t come.”

“It wouldn’t be well for me if I ever marry you. It isn’t going to be easy, anyway. I realise that.”

He shrugged his indifference and impatience. The least conceited of men thinks himself sufficient compensation for troubles shared.

The girl looked at him sweetly but very soberly, her needle idle: the boy, boy-like, was busy thinking how he could have his way.

“It isn’t your house, yet; it’s your father’s and mother’s,” she reminded him.

“And I’m going to marry you! What of it? If I wait a million years I’m going to marry you.”

She shook her head: “It doesn’t alter things.”

“I want you to see the place——”

“I want to see it.”

“Really, Gilda, it’s rather nice in its way—nothing very grand, you know—but homelike. All my childhood, boyhood, was centered there.... Oh, come on up! There are only a few snuffy old servants at Heron Nest——”

“I’ll go up with you if you like, but it wouldn’t do for me to stay overnight.”

“Why not! Good Lord, if we’d wanted to get into mischief——”

“I know. But I shall not sleep at Heron Nest until the master of the house asks me.... Even if I were unmarried I ought not to. But probably I would,” she added.

“Do you mean to leave me there and come back alone to town?”

“There is nothing else for me to do, dear.”

“I wonder,” he mused, “if I hadn’t better telegraph dad and mother that I’m engaged to you——”

“Can’t you remember that I’m married!” she exclaimed in dismay.

“Oh, the devil! Well——” he drew a long, unhappy breath; “Well then, Gilda, I’ll wire Heron Nest to expect us for lunch——”

“No, no, no! I won’t touch your father’s bread and salt in his absence and without his knowledge. Don’t ask me, Stuart. A roof means something definitely personal to me.... My father’s roof meant it.... The roofs of relatives offered to me as shelter mean more to me than I am willing to give for offered sanctuary. No! I’ll go anywhere else with you. If it’s indiscreet, reckless, nevertheless I’m not afraid. But eat and sleep, unasked, under your father’s roof, I will not.”

Again he remained silent, busy with another train of ideas.

“All right, Gilda. I know what we’ll do. We’ll go to Heron Nest, look over things, take the train that same evening for our timber lands, and have a wonderful two weeks together in the wilds!”

The girl gazed at him amazed and disconcerted, but enthusiasm was firing him; he was ravished by the idea, and he painted an enchanted picture of the trip.

“Why not?” he exclaimed. “I’ve got to go anyway. We know we’re quite all right together. Nobody can misunderstand us because there’ll be nobody there except lumber-jacks, bosses, river-drivers—a lot of Indians, Kanucks, native mountaineers.

“I tell you it will be heavenly,” he cried, “—just you and I, Gilda, and the forest. I’ll choose your outfit for you; I’ll wire ahead and make arrangements. I’ll have Leggett put up a brand new log camp for us and stock it from the store.”

“You are inviting me to disappear with you?” she asked, bewildered.

“For ten days, dearest. Can you stand me ten days?”

The girl nodded. “It isn’t that I don’t want to go. I do. I’m going with you. I’m just trying to comprehend our doing it.”

“It is like an enchanting dream, isn’t it?” he said, delighted. “I’ve been dreading it—not the work, but being away from you. It never occurred to me to ask you to go.”

“Probably,” she said, with faint sarcasm, “it would have occurred to me. All our improprieties seem to originate with me——”

He caught her in his arms.

“They do,” she insisted, breathlessly. “So I’m rather glad that this imprudence originated in your own blond head.... Darling, be careful of my needle——”

It was something new to wait for, to plan for as the winter drew toward its end.

On Saturday afternoons they haunted those fascinating shops on Fifth Avenue and Madison which are devoted to sporting outfits—new and wondrous sources of delight to Gilda, who stood in ecstasy before racks full of skis and snow-shoes, hung over glass cases brilliant with troutflies, glittering with reels and lures of metal and mother-of-pearl.

With Stuart she pored over the mechanism of guns, or compared fashions in hunting knives, or switched delicate rods of lance-wood or split-cane to test their stiffness, limberness, resiliency.

They looked at everything whether needed by them or not—at saddles, stirrups, polo mallets, golf-clubs. And as for sport clothes, he would have given her more costumes than the Empress of India, so adorable was she in knickers, in rough kilts and sleeveless jackets, in the hundred and one delightful confections invented for the outdoor convenience and adornment of healthy girlhood.

Those were sparkling, halcyon afternoons when he came uptown early and met her at the Ritz for luncheon.

Nothing untoward marred them; of weather they were scarcely conscious, and it might rain or snow, or the sun might shine for all those two noticed such eccentricities of Mama Nature.

In those days late in winter another matter became apparent—more so every day they dared believe. And finally it became certain that longer and longer periods of time were elapsing between those dreaded hours when the dark change came over the girl and all the old unreal terror and bewilderment and despair overwhelmed them and left them exhausted, crushed, spiritually prostrate under the vast menace of destruction.

Such trouble seldom threatened them now. And, thinking of it, half fearfully, sometimes the boy wondered whether the grim vitality, now burning low in Sadoul, had anything to do with its infrequency—whether the will to suggest was becoming impaired.

For it was plain to him that Sadoul was ill. Even had he not witnessed that scene in the laboratory earlier in the winter, the physical alteration in Sadoul’s features had now become sufficiently ominous.

Gilda noticed it, but attributed it to Sadoul’s habits, not surmising the truth. She expressed her concern to Sadoul in a guarded, aloof way, never certain that her sympathy might not be mistaken by him and his ever smouldering and passionate tyranny blaze out anew.

But in these days she found Sadoul unusually silent, less saturnine, and frequently so tired that the weariness in voice and manner seemed a sort of gentleness which she was scarcely able to associate with the man.

But she soon learned of her mistake when she ventured an appeal to his generosity in behalf of their common and unhappy marital situation. For instantly the old passion flamed in his ravaged face and he swore that he would tolerate no legal separation, no other man as far as she ever could be concerned.

“You will come back to me some day,” he said. “There is no other destiny for you. It matters nothing if we die. Ultimately you will come back.... Or I’ll fetch you.”

“You never had me, Sadoul.”

“I shall have you absolutely. You’ll come of your own accord or I’ll go and get you.... Wherever you are.... Wherever I am.”

“I am sorry you believe that,” she said gently.

He muttered unintelligibly. He seemed suddenly fatigued. She had been writing automatically for him, sheet after sheet of matter which proved meaningless to her in a normal state.

For half an hour or more she had been sitting there at his desk in the part of the laboratory reserved for him, her head resting on a pillow laid on the desk, her right hand flying over the pad from which he removed each sheet as it was covered.

He, now that she was awake, had been reading over what she had written, striving to identify the controlling intelligence, certain that the written matter never originated in her or in himself.

Gilda never displayed any curiosity concerning what her subconscious self did for him. She displayed none now, tranquilly satisfied that she had helped him in accumulating data for future research.

Resting in her chair, idly playing with her pencil, she looked at the changed face of the man rather sadly. Already he was growing gray at the temples; his face, always thin, had grown unpleasantly bony; and his waxen hands were the hands of a big skeleton under a drawn membrane of colourless skin.

He continued to look over the sheets she had written, making marginal notes now and then. His under lip sagged. Noticing it, she also saw a fleck of blood on it.

Catching her eye, made suspicious perhaps, he wiped his mouth with a handkerchief already spotted with dark stains.

“Have you hurt yourself?” she asked.

He said he had bitten his lip, and went on reading, holding the handkerchief to his face.

Gilda consulted her wrist watch.

“I have a vocal lesson in half an hour,” she said, rising.

“You mean an engagement with Sutton,” he sneered.

“I mean a lesson,” she retorted, disdainfully.

“A love-lesson?”

“No. But suppose I had,” she said with cold resentment.

“It wouldn’t do you any good. Or him. You’re married and he’s a snob.”

“I am wondering,” she said, exasperated, “whether I shall trouble myself any further to help your research work.... I need not sacrifice my time by coming here and enduring your bad temper. I don’t know why I do it, either.”

“I do. You belong to me and you know it.”

The very devil gleamed in her eyes:

“I know to whom I belong,” she said in a sort of whisper, “and he can have me any time—a word, a touch—a look from him is enough.... I don’t know why I have any pity left for you, any feeling except indifference.”

“You feel the tie,” he said.

“That civil ceremony—when you confused me, used your power of suggestion on a bewildered, subconscious mind? Do you think that mockery of a marriage ceremony is any tie?”

“It is one strand in the occult bond.”

“There is no bond!” she said violently, “—no accord, no sympathy, not a wisp or shred to tie me to you except brief memories of a brilliant mind perverted—rare intervals of mental pleasure—pity for you who might have been a friend and who so ruthlessly plotted my destruction!”

She turned and went to the door. He sat looking at her.

“I am deeply sorry for you,” she said. “Good-bye.”

He said in a weary voice: “So you must go to your love-lesson.”

“That will be later, I hope,” she flashed.

He nodded: “Later. Much later.... After you and I are dead.... Then, the first lesson. A lesson in love.... Our first.... Good-night, Gilda.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

The Talkers were talking at the Fireside Club. The Talkers were talking of women. Fairless quoted Lombroso, Kraft-Ebbing, and Havelock-Ellis. Harry Stayr, who had been for years “half-way” in a “new novel,” and who, like all Talkers, was taking out the remaining “half” in talk, laid down axioms, hard boiled, for his listeners to digest at leisure.

“Si duo sunt idem,” he insisted in dog-Latin, “non sunt idem. But it’s only in detail they differ,” he added, “—finger-prints are still the prints of fingers. Like abhors like. There always is a latent antipathy between women. It is not so between men. Toward men women unconsciously but always cherish sex antipathy. There is no such fundamental instinct in men.

“Woman is a poor specimen of the species—if, indeed, she be not a sub-species. She is perfectly equipped to be the worst possible comrade for man. The normal woman is originally conservative, practically passionless. That is why it became necessary to invent the convention of marriage. That is why men are polygamous.

“In marriage she remains the congenital egotist. Necessity for beauty having passed, she becomes a slut. Like all animals she nourishes her young; fights for them. So do rats.

“What in God’s name is there admirable about a woman except her beauty?

“Because she is soft, graceful, fine skinned, delicately limbed, men ascribe to her a sensitiveness which she is absolutely without.

“She is less sensitive physically than men; bears pain more easily.

“She suffers less spiritually than men. She has less capacity for real emotion, less mental potentiality, less physical sensibility.

“I’m sick listening to the cant of poets and novelists. They describe themselves and their own sensations when they try to write realistically about women. They ascribe qualities to her of which she is ignorant, virtues of which, constitutionally, she is utterly incapable; vices to which she is too lazy and indifferent to fall a victim.

“I tell you she’s a tenth rate imitation of man, and man is a bum chromo of Christ.

“Now, go and tell that to the Great American Boob! Tell it to the American Aunty. Tell it to the Demagogue, the sissy sentimentalist, the pastoral crape-hanger, the national hypocrite, the dog-town fanatic!”

“Why don’t you tell ’em yourself in your great novel, Harry?” asked Fairless.

Sam Warne said: “If you’d stop stuffing yourself, Harry, you’d reverse your argument. Your perversely sordid theories originate in that paté-de-fois-gras which you think is your liver.”

The shrill cackle of Derring left Stayr with his mouth opening to speak.

“That’s it,” he said, “—livers talk, not brains! If you’d ever had a dear old mother you couldn’t talk that way. Even a guy in Sing-Sing will admit that. Ask Lyken what they say when they’re bumped off! Every damned one of ’em cries for his dear old mother. Isn’t she a woman? Aren’t there billions of mothers? Almost every man has had one. You ought to be ashamed, Harry——”

“Can’t you love a thing that’s imperfect?” growled Stayr. “It’s the only thing man can love. If you’re crazy about a girl it’s because, in the back of your head, you know she’s imperfect.”

“Why don’t the damned novelists say so?”

“Who cares,” sneered Pockman, “what a novelist says? It never matters.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, old Holbein,” retorted Stayr. “Look what these slops have done to the country! Look what the ‘good woman’ stuff has done to the Middle West. Why, they’re a race of chipmunks out there. ‘The good woman’ is running the country, knocking cigarettes out of your mouth, scaring a poltroon nation into prohibition, planning blue laws, re-gilding the old god Bunk to trot him out and scare a boob republic into Sabbath superstition again. That’s what your women-praising novelists are doing. That’s why the fanatics are raising the slogan of Christ and Kansas! Can you beat the blasphemous vulgarity? No, nor anybody else, including a Hottentot!”

Sutton, rather red, got up and started for the door.

“Am I right, Stuart?” cried Stayr. “Is there any difference in chickens except the colour of their feathers?”

Sutton said: “If we men really believed what you say, Harry, I think the decent ones among us would blow out our brains.”

After he had gone, Stayr said: “What can you expect? He’s acting up to the little Greenway girl as though he meant to marry her. He’s the sort that would. There’s your congenital celibate. There’s your woman-worshiper for you! Why, Joseph was a lounge-lizard compared to that hick! Hell! He’s spoiled as good a little sport as ever danced at Derring’s!”

Sutton, nauseated with talk, and now, for the first time, utterly loathing the Talkers, shook the dust of the Fireside from his heels and drew in a lung-full of outside air.

All the pretense, tinsel logic, shabby intellectuality, pseudo-deduction—all the squalid impotence of these men who created nothing, produced nothing, meant nothing to the world, was becoming apparent to a young man who knew no more of modernism than to wish to be a decent member of the human family.

What was fundamentally right and what was wrong concerned him less than tradition regarding right and wrong—the tradition which had preserved the world through its development—the tradition which had proved wholesome to the human race, which had safeguarded his country, his family.

Whoever had framed the Decalogue, God or man, was the father of men. The records of the New Testament were chronicles of a God and his archangels, human or immortal.

Gradually he had been sickening of the Talkers. Now he was utterly sickened. Pockman had said they were mostly mouth and the remainder only an intestine.

More clearly, now, this boy whose business in life was to grow, cut, and sell timber, began to understand that there are only two kinds of men—Talkers and Doers. Some Doers are talkative; no Talkers ever do anything.

This great gabbling Mouth was the plague of the working world. It was the parasite of the people, a hook-worm to energy, a louse to humanity, breeding bacteria that poisoned all mankind.

He wondered, now, how the Talkers of the world had contrived to loosen his grip on Truth; how they had managed to emasculate his belief in God. Why, what pitiable imitations they were!—what mental dwarfs! And he thought of Vathek, and the “noise of the storks and the dwarfs.” And he thought of the little daughter of Jairus, too. And of Gilda lying dead in her green mask.

The long, open New York winter had come to end. In the Park the grass was intensely green. Grackle and starling walked amid dandelions; thorns were white, yellow bell-flowers in bloom; some trees in sunny hollows and along the east wall were exquisitely green.

The gilded bronze General now rode his delivery-wagon nag behind a limestone balustrade—which he, his horse, and the winged servant-girl would be obliged to leap if they insisted on continuing down Fifth Avenue.

Proudly the expensive marble buildings looked down upon a new limestone quarry. Saucily the naked bronze jade across the way inspected the grim old warrior—who knew a pretty lass when he saw one, they say, and must have been bored to death with the winged domestic at his stirrup.

Sutton glanced up at the most classically uninteresting mansion in Manhattan, soon to be converted to business uses. Opposite, another and interesting commercial structure was rising almost over night. Farther down, the most beautiful private residence in Gotham, doomed to pay tribute to Hermes, flanked the most lovely of all metropolitan churches—cool, calm, silver-grey façades in the feverish riot of architecture roystering away southward toward the tawdry horrors of Broadway.

What a city! What would it become if Faith died within its grotesque walls; on its crazy heights? What would these milling swarms turn into if belief withered—if conformation to custom, trust in tradition, perished?

If it were true, as Stayr said, that there are only two parties in the world—Conservatives, who are women; Liberals, who are men; then the salvation of the world is due to its conservatism—to woman, the perfect egotist, born respecter of custom and tradition—and not to Liberal man whose atavistic instinct is for an informality that would bring the temples of the earth crashing about his ears.

Stuart turned into Thirty-fifth Street. He was thinking: “The thing to do, the thing to believe, is what your father did, and what he believed. And his father. And his.... Not, of course, going too far back.... When they burnt witches....”

He ascended the stairs, stood a moment at Gilda’s door.

“The thing to do,” he concluded, “is to take what’s coming to you within the law. Or fight it.... But always fight inside the law. You stand no show out of bounds.”

Freda admitted him. He found Gilda pale, silent, seated at her satin-wood desk, a few sheets of scored music-paper before her—some task in transposition set her; the ink still wet on the heavily penned sixteenth notes.

“Are you all right, dear?” he asked uneasily.

She nodded, lifted her childish face; the long line of the neck so lovely that he kissed her throat.

“I have our transportation,” he said happily. “Your luggage is checked and so is mine. Leggett wires that our shanty is ready——” He hesitated, looking at her. “What is the matter, Gilda? You are all right, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am all right.”

“Anything to worry you?”

“No.”

“You haven’t had any unpleasant experience with Sadoul?”

“Not recently.... He’s been decent since I relented and went back to help him. He looks so ill, Stuart—so emaciated.”

The boy kept his counsel, sombrely, playing square with the man who was slowly losing out. For a while he sat gazing absently at the sheets of ruled paper, darkly lost in a mental maze. After a little he looked up; regarded her more intently:

“Gilda, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing serious. I’m silly to be upset.... The surprise ... unexpected ... kindly intended, no doubt——”

He waited, perplexed.

She leaned over and blotted the wet score: “Fancy,” she said. “I was in my bedroom—combing out my hair, I believe—when Freda came with her card!”

“Whose card?”

“A—woman’s. A relative of mine.”

Gilda drummed on the desk with nervous fingers.

“I supposed she was in England. I didn’t know she was coming. And there she was.... In this room!”

“Was it not agreeable to have her come to see you?”

“I hadn’t asked her. I have declined to visit her. Or any of them. I reply to their letters. I am civil. That seemed sufficient.”

“Why does it upset you?”

“I don’t know why it does.... For one thing, your sport-coat and stick were on the lounge where you left them this morning.”

“Oh, Lord!” he said.

“It was all right. Being British she took them for mine. It wasn’t that.”

“What, then?”

“Oh, everything, Stuart. It was all well meant, you see, but I’d avoided it.... Didn’t I once tell you that I couldn’t endure being accounted for by my respectable relatives? Well, she is one of them and that was it.”

“What did she wish of you?”

“She desired me to accept the respectable shelter of herself and the common family tree.... It’s full enough of foliage without me. Also, she’d have to explain me.... No, no, no! A thousand, thousand times no! To explain me is to reflect on my parents. The British are not reticent in family matters. If they don’t like anybody in their own family they don’t hesitate to say so. I know how they regarded my mother. It’s no use; they have nothing to offer that I could accept.”

“She wished to take you back to England?” he asked, worried.

“To California first. She’s travelling.”

“And afterward?”

“She goes to Italy. Constantinople, too; and China and India, I believe. Ultimately to England. I couldn’t endure it.” She looked up at the boy: “Not that she’s not presentable. I didn’t mean it that way. There’s nothing queer about her. You’d probably like her—” she smiled faintly—“your parents would quite approve, Stuart.”

“That’s just it,” he said seriously. “It would make things so easy for us——”

“But darling! Can’t you ever recollect that I’m married? I’d have to tell my relatives and your parents. How could I account for you to my aunt? How could you account for me to your mother?”

“Isn’t it rotten luck?” he said fiercely.

“Yes, but listen, dear. Even if there were any prospects for my freedom, do you imagine my aunt and your mother would tolerate our companionship until the law unmarried me?”

“I suppose not,” he said.

“Your supposition is painfully correct, monsieur.... I fancy that your people are rather conservative. My relatives are quite as rigid. They’ve had their nets and lines out angling for me from the day my father died. I thought they’d never notice me again when, after fulfilling legal requirements in London, I refused to remain to be cherished and explained.

“But my father was their idol. He died in battle. They continue writing to my dead father’s only child—as in duty bound—or bound, perhaps, by something that may be more vital still to such gentle-folk as they.”

“I can understand,” said the boy.

“That is why I mentioned it—because you can understand.”

An odd consciousness of the subtle but complete reversal of roles preoccupied him. This girl was, unconsciously, accounting to herself for him, a Hudson River Sutton. Evidently she expected, ultimately, to account to her relatives for him.

And what had always caused him anxiety for the future was that he must account for her to a family and a circle which was entirely equipped to make them miserable at will.

It seemed funny. He smiled, then looked worried.

“How long does your aunt remain in New York?”

“Oh, she left this afternoon for Denver.”

“Then it won’t make any difference about your going to the Forest?”

“No, darling. I said I’d go.”

“But if you think——”

“I don’t think! I won’t think. There’s no harm in it if we’re not caught. I want to go; and I’m going to marry you sometime, anyway. And, oh! my beautiful sportclothes, and my trout-rod, and you—you—O wonderful clairvoyant who looked into a muddy crystal and saw love on his knees to you!”

She looked at him humourously, tenderly, studying his features with the enigmatical smile hovering on her lips.

“At first,” she said, “you naturally thought me depraved. I was merely queer. Not as queer as you very reasonably supposed. Not wanton. When you comprehended that you were sweet. Then I scared you.... And myself.... And went to pieces. You picked them up. You glued me together. I’m almost as good as new. I’ll be quite new when we marry.... Your brand new toy.”

After a moment he asked her if she had told Pockman and Sadoul that she was going away.

“Yes,” she said, “I had to. Of course, I did not say I was going with you.”

“Did they object?”

“Dr. Pockman grumbled. But I told him very gently that I didn’t expect to be under observation indefinitely.”

“Was Sadoul unpleasant?”

“No. He merely asked me to let him know when I returned.”

“That’s not like him, is it?”

“It’s made me a little uneasy,” she admitted. “But what could he do to us?”

Freda appeared to announce dinner.

It was late when the boy took his coat and stick, walked with his arm around Gilda to the hall, took her into his arms, then with a happy good-night put on his hat and went out.

She waited till she heard the upper door slam, then locked herself in for the night.

Stuart crossed the lower landing. The place was rather dark. Half way down the stairs a tall shadow detached itself from the wall. The boy halted, instinctively. There was a moment’s silence.

“Sadoul!” he said sharply.

Sadoul’s first shot deafened him; then the pistol crashed again; but Stuart was already jerking the weapon upward, wrenching it free.

The bitter smoke strangled them both; he hurled Sadoul at the lower door, kicked him through it, kicked him across the sidewalk, saw him stumble, collapse, roll over on the asphalt.

He stood looking on as Sadoul got up on hands and knees, then staggered to his feet. His chin and collar and shirt were all over blood.

Stuart was still breathing hard. “Go home, you lunatic!” he managed to say. “Do you want a cop to butt in?”

Sadoul stood swaying slightly, fumbling toward his handkerchief. A passing taxi slowed up, interested. Stuart took Sadoul by the arm and looked into his deathly face.

“Where do you want to go?” he said in an altered voice. “Home?”

“Yes,” whispered Sadoul.

To the driver: “This gentleman has fallen and hurt himself.”

“I get you,” returned the driver.

“Hadn’t I better go with you?” asked the boy.

Sadoul, lying back in the cab, shook his head.

“I think I’d better see you safe, Sadoul. That was a nasty fall.”

He got into the cab. It started with a buck and a jerk, ran skittishly to Fifth Avenue, rolled rapidly uptown.

Sadoul seemed exhausted, but when they arrived at the laboratory he descended from the cab without aid.

At the door of the building Stuart took the pistol out of his pocket, pulled out and threw away the clip, and handed the weapon to Sadoul.

“Here’s your gun,” he said in a low voice. “It wouldn’t have solved our problem.”

“Where are you going with her?” whispered Sadoul hoarsely.

“Only to look over our Forest. I’m playing square with you both, Sadoul.”

“You’ll bring her back?”

“Of course.”

“When?”

“Oh, in a week or ten days.”

Sadoul touched his bloody lips with his handkerchief:

“In—in ten days?”

“Not longer.”

“No.... Don’t stay longer.... I am—ill, Sutton.”

He went up the steps, his shoulders sagging, carrying the empty pistol in his hand.

“What the hell did you hand that guy?” inquired the driver as Sutton went slowly back to the cab.

“What do you think it was, a ham sandwich? Drive back to Thirty-fifth Street and step on the tack!”

CHAPTER XXXV

It was the most wonderful week in Gilda’s life.

They had stopped for an hour at Heron Nest. She would not cross the threshold; but inspected the big, dowdy old mansion from every outside angle, and the poor boy pointed out to her endless unwashed windows, describing eagerly what lay behind each. His room, his mother’s, his father’s, all were identified by windows; library, dining room, the two parlours—he spared her not a square inch of his natal roof.

But the girl adored it, tenderly desirous of making up for his disappointment at her refusal to enter the abode of the Suttons.

However, she went through the gardens with him, finding them quaint and lovely in the fresh brilliance of spring flowers.

Some young fruit trees still remained in blossom; hedges wore unsullied green, the warm aroma of newly turned earth where gardeners were working blended deliciously with the perfume of new blossoms.

There was an acre of glass. She went with him into two or three greenhouses, the grapery, melon shed—glimpsed the carnations, now in the sere and withered finis, accepted the violets that a gardener brought her, and then walked to the low, grey wall which overlooked the valley and its famous river.

Far below a train rushed by toward the metropolis, leaving writhing coils of smoke in the green ravine. Beyond, the Hudson sparkled under a blinding sun. Haze veiled the rolling heights to westward. Lagoon-like backwaters and bays were brimming with the flood-tide. From the south came a grey Destroyer speeding upstream.

The boy had possession of the girl’s hand. He had a story to tell her of every inch of ground along the grey stone wall.

Here he had shot his first hawk; in yonder oak his first squirrel; among the distant reeds across that inlet he had pursued black duck and coots in a punt.

If she sighted along his levelled arm she could see a great blue heron wading out there in the shallows.

She laid her soft cheek against his shoulder and took aim with beguiling eyes. When, finally, she had discovered the dignified wader, she softly kissed her lover’s sleeve. He touched her hair with his lips.

A squirrel derided them from the fatal oak.

That was her confused recollection of Heron Nest—the scent of spring, a squirrel shrilling in a lofty tree, miles of sunlit river, and her lover’s cheek against her own.

And now they were on their way northward once more, thundering through short tunnels, roaring along rock-ribbed cuts, out into blinding sunshine again with the river a blinding waste of light quivering away into the magic North.

Sunset reddened the cars at Albany; starlight silvered their berths at Utica.

The boy lay awake, too thrilled to sleep. The girl, in her berth opposite, slept dreamlessly in supreme surrender to a destiny no longer questioned.

At ten o’clock the next morning the train stopped on signal at Fisher-cat Dam.

Dan Leggett, planting superintendent, awaited them in a Ford.

The road was awful; the flivver crawled as a dog negotiates an unsteady bridge, on its belly.

Pink-cheeked, glad of her fur coat, astonished to find the springtime just beginning here, excited by the heady air and the aroma of the pines, Gilda clung to Stuart and gazed fearfully from the pitching car.

She was full of breathless exclamations—now enchanted by a tumbling mountain brook, now in ecstasy as the blue view widened away over acres of forests accented by ridges of hard wood and set with steep little tree-clad hills.

Once, ahead in the bed of the brook which Leggett spoke of as “the road,” a burly woodchuck scrambled over the stones and out of sight. And Gilda’s excitement knew no bounds.

She stood straight up in the car when a ruffed grouse, “dusting,” got up, leisurely, and walked on ahead with an irritated, reproachful air.

Wild birds called wistfully from thin depths of newborn foliage; pale blossoms starred the woods, clotted the twigs of slim grey shrubs.

In Gilda’s breath the wine of the pines sweetened, intoxicating her; in her veins the fire of youth ran moulten. Solitude, and her lover! There was nothing else in the world. Nothing more to desire, beyond.

And all the while Stuart was talking—explaining trees, identifying pine, hemlock, spruce, and balsam, instructing her in the differences characterising each species, estimating “markets,” guessing at “calipers,” pointing out “ripe” growths, “cruising” in his mind’s eyes as the creaking flivver crawled upward.

She only heard his voice as a celestial melody without words. Clinging to him in their lurching craft, her girl’s eyes were as remotely lost as the rim of misty blue-green mountains on the horizon.

Once, in a gorge below, a stony river leaped into sight. But the river-driving was ended; the run of log was over. A few lay stranded here and there, or, caught between boulders crossways in mid-stream, lay massive and black, drenched with snowy spray.

A haze filled one valley where men were sawing. The wicked whine of the steam-saw came thinly to their ears.

Beyond, men were busy with slashings, preparing lumbered areas for reforestation.

After a while they began to pass panels of red pine and Norway spruce—the trees in various panels varying from eighteen inches to ten feet in height.

Acres of beautiful silvery grey-green trees were in sight, now—Scotch pines, soft as pyramids of moss to the eye, and prickly as briers to the touch.

He told her all about it. The weevil, curse of white pine and Norway spruce, also attacked these Scotch pines. It remained to be seen whether they were worth the planting.

Acres of emerald green, bushy, broom-like young evergreens clothed the hills ahead.

“Red pines,” he explained, “immune to weevil and blister.”

“So far,” drawled Leggett.

“So far,” echoed Stuart gloomily.

Gilda dreamed on blissfully, their voices vague as in a trance. A heavenly rapture possessed her through which her soul floated, drifted, slumbered on the wing, or swept the green earth below like the shadow of a sky-lark.

The sun’s heat, waxing intense, distilled aromatic nectar from every stem and leaf and blossom, and delicate wild perfumes arose from black mould and rotting leaves.

“Hey, Mike!” shouted Leggett, as the car rattled across a log bridge.

Gilda opened bewildered eyes. Stuart was laughing at her.

On the edge of a flashing stream she saw twin log houses, and a faded man in formless, faded garments standing between them.

On a board over the door of one was painted Villa Gilda; over the other, Hotel Sutton.

In her ears was the golden melody of the stream; in her eyes the glory of the sun.

Eden!

“This is Mike Hanford, Gilda, who is going to look out for us. He tosses the finest flap-jack in the North Woods.”

Mr. Hanford removed his cap and scratched his head to atone for such servility.

“Reckon you’ll eat a snack,” he surmised. And spat to readjust social conditions throughout the earth.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Never had Gilda known such delight.

Their Eden was guarded by two sign-boards on the wood-road a hundred yards north and south of the log bridge.

The signs were painted and erected by Mr. Hanford. One read: “Keep offn this here privut rode. Ladies presunt.” The other: “Don’t go into them woods; there is ladies loose.”

A cordon of infantry with machine guns might have failed to impress the sauntering timber-cruiser and lowly lumber-jack. But these signs routed them. Only the squirrel and the grouse invaded their leafy solitude.

The weather was perfect. The wonder-days waxed and waned.

Neither dawn nor the wild birds’ choral awoke these two.

But when the sun gold-plated their glazed windows the boy and the girl stirred and awoke, and heard the fire roaring in the sheet-iron stoves behind the closed door of the only other room.

In bathing-dress, blanket-coated, they hailed each other from windows opposite. Gilda came out of her shanty, Stuart emerged from his. Hands touching they picked their way to the edge of the brook where Mike had dammed it.

Here spread a long, green, transparent pool—“ungodly cold,” they agreed—but if it was hell to go into it, it was heaven the next minute.

The thickets of bank ferns trembled under the rain of spray they dashed into the air. Outraged squirrels protested overhead; blue-jays exchanged malicious gossip regarding these shameless intruders; the affrighted trout fled upstream.

The girl’s laughter echoed through the woods; distant wild birds answered. The boy dived and dived like a halcyon.

Then they ran glowing and dripping to their shanties, continuing conversation through open windows while preparing for the day.

When Gilda was ready, Stuart went out and dingled a cow-bell. Mr. Hanford, lurking within earshot, presently rambled into sight, bearing food.

“Mornin’, ma’am. Mornin’, Mr. Sutton. I jess heard some’n a-dribblin’ onto a cow-bell, so, thinks I, I’ll jess run over a spell an’ help cook breakfast—if I’m wanted.”

He always said this; always appeared uncertain that he was needed, always belittled his own culinary efforts, and hinted darkly of metropolitan gastronomic orgies in which, doubtless, they were daily accustomed to indulge.

Thus spake Mr. Hanford while tossing flap-jacks and frying brook-trout.

But he was secretly aghast at their capacity, and never before had two people compelled him to toss flap-jacks so fast.

His summons to breakfast was, “Coffee’s bilin’, ma’am.” And that was the signal for him to toss with all his agility and skill against the rapid inroads on the brown and fragrant stack of cakes.

“My conscience,” he said to Leggett, “I’ve seen feedin’ in Kanuck lumber camps but I hain’t never seen nothin’ like them two.” He added irrelevantly: “Ain’t she pretty, Dan? Say, when she sets curled up on the moss eatin’ onto a hunk o’ fried fish, I never seen nothin’ prettier. She’s cunnin’ as a suckin’ caaf, she is.”

Halcyon days!—ecstatic hours along the stream, struggling to lift fat, heavy, lustily resisting trout from icy, foaming deeps; hours on the broader river with silk lines whistling out across pool and shallow, and the virgin wind blowing, and the fat trout splashing with a glint of rose and silver.

All day, all night the interminable song of the pines filled their ears.

In a depthless blue vault the sun glittered; stars jewelled the dark; and always the endless anthem of the pines.

She accompanied him when he went on tours of inspection. Everything in this utterly new world enchanted her.

She wandered through the seedling nursery, where rows and rows of oblong beds, raised and rounded above the trodden paths, bloomed like delicately tinted mosses. This flower-bed covered with pale blue velvet contained thousands of Coster’s seedling spruces. This blue-green moss was composed of thousands of seedling white pines. Here were panels of silver-grey-green Scotch pines, panels of leafgreen red pines, misty stretches of spruce.

She saw acres of one year, two year, three years’ transplants; acres of three foot, four, five, six foot trees; acres of new forests, ten foot trees, thirty foot trees.

Over the plowed “rides” she plodded, her hand on Stuart’s arm. Once, dizzy, but trusting to him, she climbed a fire-tower, where the stolid look-out sat chewing tobacco and nursing a telescope.

She went afield with him after weevils, and saw the green terminal shoots ominously a-droop, or still upright clotted with white, or rusty and bent.

He peeled for her a terminal shoot and showed her the fat grey-white larvae in the heart of it, packed like cartridges in a rod-magazine.

Everywhere in some plantations men were severing and burning infected shoots. She heard Stuart swearing under his breath.

Another day she went with him on a graver errand.

No “blister” had appeared in the Sutton forests, and Stuart was determined that the leprous curse should never gain a foothold in the domain of his forebears. Yet, across the border, New England festered with it in certain districts.

She saw men in the woods working with grub-hoe, pick, and bush-hook; saw green fires burning.

Stuart showed her a sneaking growth of wild currant—tested the infernal toughness and resistance of the wretched shrub, turned the coarse leaves to search for the deadly rusty spores, and thanked God that he discovered none.

So she learned that the leprosy called “pine blister” begins as a rusty stain on the under side of a currant or gooseberry leaf. It can not originate on the doomed pine itself; it must have its loathsome birth on currant or gooseberry.

Winds or birds carry it to a pine. But the hellish spores must work quickly because ten minutes is their span of life unless they reach a white pine tree.

When they do the tree is as good as dead. Yet the diseased tree can not infect others of its species. Only spores from currant or gooseberry can do that.

Days came when Stuart remained in seemingly incessant consultation with Mr. Leggett. There were maps and deeds to consult, letter files to inspect—a never-ending mass of detail.

Gilda desired to listen, was gratefully encouraged by Stuart, understood as well as anybody could who had not been conversant with the operations of Sutton & Company for the last decade.

But there were intervals when clerical details formed the subject under discussion. And at such times the girl literally took to the tall timber.

The wild flowers of the Northland were a never-ending surprise and delight to her. She picked few, but was on her knees to every one—to the pink moccasin flowers on tall, slender stalks, to the white trilliums, to the violets, blue, white, yellow; to the scented wild lilies-of-the-valley, like patches of snowy foam in the woods.

Everywhere spread carpets of bloom, straw-yellow, purple, green-white.

The dull strawberry red of another trillium clotted the still places with an odour of death and decay—gloomy, unlovely flowers which drew carrion flies.

But the silvery shad-bush was in flower; witch-hopple, viburnum, squaw-berry, moss and fern were gay and lovely in their resurrection.

Into sunny glades flitted the Beauty of Camberwell on cream-edged brown-velvet wings, embroidered with violet-blue. Comma butterflies flashed to a resting spot on treetrunks glowing like dull spots of fire; green-clouded swallowtails in floppy but rapid flight winnowed the dusk through wet woods.

She lay by the stream in grey shirt and knickers, pillowing her head on both arms crossed behind, and looked up through new leaves into a sky as blue as a cat-bird’s egg; and saw squirrels in tiny silhouette, running along highways of tangled branches.

She rolled over on her stomach and looked down into amber water where trout lay stemming the current, their tails all waving like wind-blown banners above the golden bottom-gravel.

Strange little bluish grey birds creeked and cheeped and whined as they crept up and down mossy tree-trunks; chickadees found her and lingered, conversing with her in friendly levity; near by, low in the sky, two hawks mewed querulously, and their broad shadows swept the trees.

But there were not many hours alone, for Gilda Greenway. Her lover was never far away, and he never left her long in solitude—if the forest silence could be called that—for forest solitude is in the soul, not in the still places of the earth—never in wilderness or desert or upon the grey waste of waters until man brings it with him into the silent places.

A week was gone before they realised it had fairly begun.

It worried them both. Gilda was washing out underclothes below the dam. Her full yet slender hands bore scratches where the little Ladies of the Briers had caressed her, and they were tanned to a creamy tint—which seemed to be the limit of sunburn on skins like hers.

They had mentioned the horrifying speed of Time that morning, surprised and disgusted that day and night should have played them so treacherous a trick.

Now, soberly soaping her intimate attire, Gilda felt inclined to mingle a tear or two with the suds as she watched the iridescent bubbles dance away on the amber current.

Never, never had she been so happy and free from care. Never for an instant had the dark change threatened her; never had the shadow of the Other One stirred in sunlight or lamplight or in the witch-light of the stars. Care slept; memory was kind; life an enchanted vision through which days burned like fire and every second was a flaming jewel.

She lived and moved in a sort of passionless ecstasy; the forest, the sunlight, her lover were impersonal miracles; and she herself a blessed, unreal, unfamiliar thing, born of the magic that enveloped all.

She had spread her wet and immaculate attire on bushes in the sun. Then she got up, slim as a boy and graceful as a girl in her shirt and knickers; and was carrying the soap to her cabin when Stuart came across the bridge waving a telegram.

“I’ve got to stay here!” he cried joyously. “They sent in a runner from Fisher-cat Dam. The office wires me that our deal has gone through; we take over the Lamsden tract; the lawyers are to meet at Chazy, and the surveyors are leaving Utica tonight!”

She flung the soap upon the moss and her wet arms around his neck.

“Oh, how divine!” she cried. “I never want to go back!—never, never. Tell me how long we have?”

“Nearly three more weeks. Can your linen stand it?”

“If it doesn’t, I’ll play Eve,” she said, kissing him with abandon. Then she freed her sagging hair of the last pin, flung it wide and flashing, and danced away over the log bridge.

“Good-bye,” she called, waving one hand behind her. “I’m going to dance through the woods until I fall down! Good-bye—good-bye—good-bye!”

He was after her now; she dodged like a squirrel; and off she sped, a glimmering shape among the trees. He caught her at last and tossed her up into his arms, where she lay panting—her face a pink flower in a shower of gold-red hair.

And so he carried her back to Gilda’s Villa, slowly through the wood, his blond head bent, his lips resting on hers.

CHAPTER XXXVII

The hemlock wore its honey-pale tassels; the white pine its waxen candelabra; the spruce its tender terminals; the balsam was veiled in misty blue. June had begun magnificently in the forest; but the dweller in the Villa Gilda and the boy with the blond head had taken their last dip in Mr. Hanford’s pool, swallowed the last mound of Mr. Hanford’s flap-jacks.

The only fishers in the pools were mink and otter; the only frolickers in the forest the red squirrels. In the Villa Gilda, wood-mice prepared to nest; a porcupine promenaded the porch of the Hotel Sutton.

They had come for a week and had remained a month. Not one shadow had fallen across their Eden. Yet, in that month the girl had learned definitely what manner of man she had to deal with; the youth began to discover in the girl her genius for comradeship.

She found that she had to do with the average American man, inartistic, unimaginative, capable, chaste by habit, law-abiding through custom, kind by inclination, brave through heredity.

There was no glimmer about him. The qualities he had, shone. To her they formed a steady aureole. His instinctive cleanliness of mind and person fascinated her. He was 28 but utterly a boy. Only the restlessly intellectual mature and age early, not this average, crisp-blond type with little imagination to worry it, no excesses to over-ripen it, nothing morbid to regret.

The boy-man was normal. He knew his mate when he saw her. And she knew hers. Subtler than he, she had realised it at their first encounter. Perhaps that was why, conscious of non-fulfilment, she had passionately returned his kiss.

Well, their destiny was clear to her now. Earth held for her only this man.

As for Stuart, her unfeigned interest in what interested him was a thrilling revelation.

Timber, the growing of timber, its cutting, its selling—these things had been the principal, the vital interest in his family for generations. It was his principal interest. He wished it to be his son’s. And now, when his lips rested on this young girl’s soft hand, he felt that it would be.

Mentally, to her, he accredited all that was to be intellectually sensitive and imaginatively fine in the visionary family which he so vaguely evoked.

Hers the aspiration of talent and cultivation. She the source of mental exhilaration, the medium through which he was to understand and care for those things of the mind to which he had been unresponsive.

But even so, what a stimulating and delicious comrade had he found to walk with him on his own plane, listen to him, understand him, labour with him, play with him upon the common playground of the average man.

Men of his race loved but once, married fairly early or never. There was no other woman for him. There had been none before her. His ability to love could not survive her. His only chance was this girl. And he must take that chance if it lasted a lifetime.

Thus their mutual conclusion after a month together.

But their journey back to town was not entirely a gay one. There was reaction, defiant, pleasurable, piqued by a sort of indefinable apprehension.

That they had shattered all canons of convention had something to do with their rather excited state of mind, no doubt. That they had nothing else to regret ought to have been a balm.

She said, laughingly, when they reached the Mohawk Valley: “I have a plaguey premonition that we’re going to hear from this escapade.”

“I don’t see how,” he said, forcing a smile but feeling a trifle uncomfortable.

“I don’t, either. Gossip can’t travel through a wilderness. Anyway, those nice men thought no harm of us.”

“Fancy Leggett or Mike thinking scandal,” he said, smiling at her.

“And there wasn’t any,” she added.

They ought to have been mutually reassured.

“I don’t suppose your aunt came back to town?” he ventured.

“I don’t imagine so. But she’ll be coming very soon. She sails from New York.... I never thought to speak to Freda. Do you suppose that woman would tell anybody that I went away for a month with you?”

“Good heavens, no,” he said, a little startled.

Gilda remained silent, her eyes gravely absent.

“What is on your mind, dear?” he inquired uneasily.

“Nothing. I was wondering, for the first time, what that woman really thinks of us.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“I suppose not.... Still, if she’s got a mind she thinks with it.... I’ve had to write her. I’ve had to send her wages.... I wasn’t concerned at the time but I suppose it would have been more sensible if we hadn’t had the expressman check our hand-luggage from my apartment.”

“Nothing will happen,” he said, more carelessly than he felt.

“No.... Your people are not in town, are they, Stuart?”

“They’re on their way back, I believe——”

A white clad negro bent ceremoniously beside her: “Dinner is served in the dining car, madam,” he murmured; bowed again to Stuart, and continued his ceremonious progress through the car.

They arrived in town at noon on a cloudless day in early June.

Gilda had telegraphed Freda to prepare luncheon for two. No trace of uneasiness remained to cloud the gay excitement of their home-coming. Red-caps piled their taxi with luggage; their vehicle swung into Madison Avenue. It was but a five-minute drive.

Stuart and the driver carried up the baggage. Freda welcomed them with a pale Scandinavian smile.

“Oh, Stuart!” cried the girl, “it does look nice!”

She stood by the piled luggage in the sitting-room, unpinning her hat and looking happily about at the familiar place.

“It looks jolly comfortable,” he admitted, tossing hat and light coat on the sofa. Gilda flung her hat after them, caught his hand, and walked him slowly about the apartment.

“Why shouldn’t we like it?” she murmured. “You told me you loved me in this room. Every thing means you, here.”

They looked soberly at the four walls which had witnessed already so much that had been happy and tragic in their brief existence together. They walked into her bedroom and she seated herself before her mirror and began to unpin her ruddy hair.

“Scrub first, if you like, darling,” she said; “and try to remember which tooth-brush is yours.”

At luncheon it was arranged that he should go down town to the office, stop at his own house on the way back and dress, call for her and take her to the Ritz for dinner.

“I’ll leave my luggage now, and carry it home tonight,” he said. “I’m going to take the subway to the office.... You look wonderfully fit, Gilda,” he added, lingering sentimentally.

“I’ll have a fit if you don’t go,” she said. “I’ve simply got to look over my wardrobe if you expect me to dine out with you, darling.”

But when he opened the door to go she detained him, wound her arms tightly around his neck.

“You have given me the most beautiful month in my life,” she said. “I hope God will let me make it up to you—a year for every day of happiness you gave me....”

At the office of Sutton & Sons he nodded smilingly right and left in return for greetings.

In the outer office Miss Tower smiled primly upon him.

“Mr. Sutton senior is here,” she said.

“What!” he exclaimed.

“Your father is here, Mr. Stuart.”

“Where?”

“In the private office, sir.”

He found his father there talking with Mr. Connolly, department chief. Amenities were exchanged; Mr. Connolly left.

“Well, for heaven’s sake, dad! I didn’t expect you and mother until Thursday.”

“We came on. We got here day before yesterday. When did you arrive from the forest, Stuart?”

“Just now. We—I got in about noon.”

“Oh. You lunched at home.”

“No——”

“Oh. You haven’t seen your mother?”

“I had no idea she was home.”

“She’ll know you are by your luggage,” remarked his father.

Stuart reddened violently, went over to his desk and fumbled the mail.

“Well,” said his father, “you put over the new deal, I hear.”

“I did. How did you hear, dad?”

“One of their surveyors from Chazy was in here a little while ago.”

“Which?” asked the boy involuntarily.

“Anderson.”

Stuart’s face pulsated with hot, surging colour as he bent lower over the papers on the desk. His father, twirling his eyeglasses by the silk cord, was looking out of the window.

“Did you and mother have a good time in California?” the boy managed to inquire.

“Very.... Who did you take to the Forest, Stuart?”

“What?”

“Who was it you had up there?” repeated his father, not looking at him.

“I’m not quite sure I understand you,” said the boy.

“Didn’t you have some people as guests up there?” inquired Sutton senior, glancing casually at his only son.

“Yes.”

“Do you mind saying who they were?”

“There was only one.”

“Oh. I thought you had a girl or two in the party.”

Silence was too nearly a lie. The boy said: “There was a girl.”

“So I heard from Jock Anderson. Is she anybody your mother and I know?”

“No.”

His father said carelessly: “All right. No doubt she was well looked after.”

Silence, again, was conniving at untruth.

“There was nobody else,” said the boy, “—no other woman.”

After a silence:

“Well, old chap, wasn’t that rather idiotic?” suggested his father calmly.

“It really wasn’t, dad.”

“It really was,” retorted Sutton senior. “Do you care to talk about it, Stuart?”

“Yes.... Not now.”

“At your convenience, my son.”

He got up: “Glad to see you back, Stuart. Glad to be back. Heron Nest must be charming. I think your mother and I will go up this week. Will you be home to dinner?”

“I’ll see mother. I’m dining out.”

“Come in for tea then. We have a guest. It would be civil to speak to her.”

“All right, dad; I’ll be home by five.”

They shook hands—his father dropped one hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Don’t ever be afraid of me, Stuart.”

“No.... Besides, dad, I have nothing to be afraid of.... I was going to tell you all about it anyway ... when the proper time arrived.... I’m all right, you know.”

“Yes, I do know.... And if you’d been an ass, you’re my son.... Also, you are Sutton & Son.... You talk to me when you’re ready. That’s what I’m for.”

“You’re a corker, dad.... What did Anderson say?”

“Well, to be plain, he said you had a very pretty girl up there named Miss Greenway, occupying the shanty next to yours.”

“It sounds rather awful, doesn’t it?” said the boy.

“Well——”

“Don’t mention it to mother, will you?”

“I didn’t intend to,” replied his father drily.

“I’ll tell her myself some day. It’ll be all right. Don’t worry, dad.”

They exchanged a hand-grip. His father went out.

Stuart tried to read his mail, but couldn’t. This business was going to worry Gilda. Not that it could matter, ultimately. But there had been obstacles enough without adding this one.

There seemed to be no point in telephoning her about the episode. They’d dine, then he’d tell her.

He turned again to his letters but the depression persisted. He was sorry his father had first learned about Gilda in that way. He felt a hot animosity toward Anderson. Probably the fool meant no mischief—yet he might have, too. He was just one of the vast brotherhood of Talkers—low in the scale because he had only petty gossip to detail—low enough to be stupid—too low to know, instinctively, when to hold his gabbling tongue.

He went up town about five and walked across to his own house, using his latch-key to enter.

From the east drawing-room came social noises—modulated voices, the clink of the tea cup.

He laid his hat on the console and walked in.

There were a number of people there. He kissed his mother, paid his compliments to her friends. One woman he had not met, but approached in his friendly, boyish way.

“My son, Stuart,” said his mother, smilingly; and, to him: “Lady Glyndale, Stuart, with whom we came East.”

He took a cup of tea beside Lady Glyndale.

“Do you like California?” he asked politely.

“Yes, excepting the natives,” she replied with British frankness.

“I thought them rather nice,” he said, smiling.

“I daresay there are few nice ones. The natives are a poor lot, poor farmers, slothful, stupid. The Japanese are far more interesting, better farmers, better tenants. It’s rather extraordinary your wishing to get rid of them.”

“I don’t know very much about the squabble between California and Japan,” he admitted.

“You should,” she remarked.

Which was perfectly true, and the young man winced.

He talked to others, exchanged a few words with his mother, when opportunity offered.

Sideways he inspected Lady Glyndale and found her typical—arched eyebrows and small, flat feet; high bridged nose and little gouty hands; high-coloured and flat as a board at the back; and with that indefinable something that slightly irritates, slightly amuses, and wholly commands respect—the unmistakable aura of race and breeding.

He thought: “Whatever you think of them you can count on them every time.”

He asked her if she’d had any tuna fishing at Catalina.

She did not warm but became seriously animated. They discussed tuna and tarpon.

Then, having to dress, he made his adieux, regretted his inability to dine at home, and expressed his pleasure that Lady Glyndale was to be their guest.

“You shall tell me more about your tuna,” she said. “I read late in your climate. I don’t know how anybody sleeps at all in your American air.”

When he was dressed he went out into the June evening and hailed a taxi. All the western streets were bathed in the rosy glory of the setting sun.

In dinner coat and straw hat he felt the happy relaxation of informal summer; lay back in the open vehicle to savour a cigarette and gaze at the familiar streets in their new June setting.

At the door of Gilda’s abode he got out and told the driver to wait.

Freda admitted him. He caught sight of Gilda on the sofa, and went to her. She gave him a rather pale smile and a listless hand.

“Are you all right, dear?” came his invariable and anxious question.

“Yes.... Sit here near me.” She took his hand again, absently, the faint smile still on her lips.

“You’re tired from the journey,” he concluded.

“No.... My aunt came in somewhat unexpectedly.”

“When?”

“About two o’clock.”

There was a silence.

“Well—did it upset you?” he asked.

“A little.... Our luggage lay there where we left it. Your overcoat, too.”

“Oh, Lord!”

She touched his palm, lightly, reflectively, with each finger-tip in turn.

“It was awkward.... I had a bath. I was still in my bath-robe. The bell rang and I heard Freda go.... It was too late to instruct her.

“She showed my aunt in and brought me her card.... So I got into a boudoir robe.... There she sat—with all that damning luggage under her very nose—and your overcoat and stick.... I’d forgotten it. I turned scarlet-hot to my toes.”

“What happened?” he asked, miserably.

“Nothing much. She’d arrived here three days ago. She’d been here every day. Freda forgot to mention it. But yesterday she told my aunt that a telegram had come and I was to arrive today.”

“What did your aunt say?”

“She asked me where I’d been.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Yes. But I didn’t go into details.”

“What did she say about the luggage?”

“Nothing. But I knew she had noticed it.... Stuart, she wants me to sail with her on the 6th.”

He forced a smile: “Are you going to?”

“I was wondering.... I’d like to consult an attorney.”

“Why?”

“About securing my freedom.... If it would help any for me to go abroad——”

The telephone rang on the table beside her. She picked up the receiver.

“Yes?... Yes, this is Miss Greenway.... Oh, I didn’t recognise your voice, Dr. Pockman.... Yes, I have been away nearly a month.... What?.... No, I had no means of knowing it.... Is he seriously ill?... Do you mean he is not going to recover!!!”

For a full minute she sat with the receiver pressed to her ear, terribly intent on what she heard. Then:

“Yes, I’ll come.... Who?... Did he ask for him?... He is here now.... You had better speak to him yourself, Dr. Pockman.”

She passed the receiver to Stuart. Her hand trembled slightly.

“Sadoul is dying,” she said.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

They had gone to the laboratory as they were, not delaying to dine, Gilda in her black dinner-gown, Stuart wearing his dinner jacket. For Pockman had advised haste.

They both were a little dazed—even Sutton, who knew what Gilda had not known. But he had looked for nothing like this—nothing swift—even nothing deadly, perhaps.

“Why does he want me,” he said, partly to himself. “I can understand that he would desire to see you.”

Her ungloved hand crept into his but she remained silent.

The June night was cool and spangled with big stars. It was deliciously cool near the river where a breeze was blowing from the Sound.

As they descended, Stuart said to the driver: “We will be here for some time. Don’t go.”

Miss Cross met them in the hall. She took Gilda’s hand and caressed it; spoke pleasantly to Stuart.

“He’s in his own room. The doctor is there, expecting you.”

They followed her. Pockman rose and came forward in the subdued lamplight.

Sadoul, lying on his bed near the open window, did not open his eyes.

Pockman said to Gilda: “I’ve called up your house every day for a week.”

“When did this happen?” she asked.

At the sound of her voice Sadoul’s eyes unclosed.

“Is that you, Gilda?”

“Yes.” She went forward, slowly; laid one slender hand on the bed-clothes over his chest.

They looked at each other for a little while in silence.

“If you don’t come back to me, I’ll have to go after you,” he murmured.

He closed his sunken eyes, opened them presently, looked up at her.

“Gilda, t’en souviens tu?——

‘—Et quand, dernier témoin de ces scènes funèbres,

Entouré du chaos, de la mort, des ténèbres,

Seul, je serais debout; seul malgré mon effroi,

Etre infaillible et bon, j’espérerais en toi,

Et, certain du retour de l’éternelle aurore,

Sur les mondes détruits je t’attendrais—encore—’”

His breath came harsh, laboriously, obstructing the voice.

“Gilda, Gilda,” he sighed.

She said nothing. He stared at her out of burning eyes, then, as his gaze wandered, he caught sight of Sutton.

“You damned liar,” he said in a stronger voice.

“Is that what you wished to say to me, Sadoul?”

“It’s one of the things. You told me you’d remain away only a week or ten days. You’ve been gone long enough to find me dying.”

“I’m sorry.... I expected nothing like this. Business detained me longer than I expected.”

“The business of making love to another man’s wife,” said Sadoul. And, to Gilda: “Well, what do you think of my marksmanship with an automatic, Gilda?”

“What?”

“My endeavours to—shoot up—your young man,” he gasped, suddenly husky and shaken by his laboured breathing.

“What?” she repeated, bewildered.

“Do you mean to say he didn’t tell you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Sadoul.”

Sadoul looked at Sutton: “Didn’t you tell her?” he barked.

“No.”

The sick man lay gasping and fumbling at the covers, his fevered eyes roving from Gilda to Sutton.

“I guess you didn’t mean to lie about coming back,” he panted. “Sit down. I once showed you something. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll show you something better than that. You’ll be surprised.” To Gilda: “Sit down. Are you in a hurry?”

“No.”

“Have you a little time?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I want to show Sutton something. But you’ll have to make him see it.”

“What is it you wish him to see?” she asked gently.

“I’m going to die,” he panted, “and I want him to see me do it.”

Pockman approached and looked down at him with a reassuring smirk: “While there’s life there’s——”

“Tell it to Sweeny,” whispered Sadoul with a pallid sneer. “You know damned well I’m dying.”

Pockman laughed: “You’ve plenty of vitality yet, I notice——”

“You tell ’em,” barked Sadoul. And, to Gilda, with an effort: “I’m going after you when the time comes, if you don’t come back of your own accord.” To Sutton: “I want you to see what you’ll be up against—some day——”

A terrible spasm of coughing overwhelmed him. Pockman and Miss Cross, beside him, supported his head. The nurse, presently, carried basin and towels away.

Pockman seated himself and placed his hand on Sadoul’s pulse.

For a long while the room was very quiet. A river breeze blew the curtains. Stars looked in.

“Gilda,” whispered the dying man.

“I am here, Sadoul.”

“Is he here, too?”

“Yes.”

“I want him to see. Will you let him?”

“See—what?” she faltered.

Sadoul’s voice burst from him with startling violence: “I want you to let him see what you are going to see.... What you’ll both have to reckon with some day.... The indestructible I! The surviving identity which is I myself!... And always will be—eternal, deathless——”

He struggled to sit up, his eyes glittering with fever: “Will you do that last thing for me, Gilda?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, deathly pale. And to her lover: “He asks me to let you see his soul, when it leaves him.”

“Sutton! Are you afraid to look!” gasped Sadoul.

“Not if you wish it.”

Sadoul’s glazing eyes were fixed on him: “I—want you to see—for yourself—what you’ll be up against—some day—” ...The hemorrhage was strangling him.... “On ne—meurt—pas—” he whispered.... “Je ne fais que—mon début——”

His voice failed; Miss Cross eased him back to the stained pillow. After a silence, Pockman turned partly around, his hand still on Sadoul’s wrist.

“He’s going,” he said in a low voice.

After ten minutes: “He’s nearly gone.... It isn’t his lungs, either. It’s that cobra serum.... I told him so. Hell! Cobra virus will kill Koch’s bacilli. So will dynamite. So will jumping off the Woolworth building.”

He released the pulse; laid his hand on Sadoul’s heart. Miss Cross handed him a mirror and turned up the lights.

“He’s gone,” said Pockman.

Gilda, very pale, rose, walked to the bedside, sank to her knees.

After a while she averted her head, covered both eyes with her handkerchief, held out one hand, blindly, to her lover.

He lifted her, drew her back to their seats by the wall, retaining her hand.

Pockman drew the sheet over the dead man’s face, nodded dismissal to Miss Cross, turned out all lights, teetered over to an arm-chair and sat down.

“Do you want a couch?” he asked Gilda.

“No.”

“All right. Can you include me in this affair?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.... Whenever you are ready.”

The girl turned, rested her right hand on her lover’s shoulder, palm upward; laid her cheek in the hollowed hand.

Sutton gazed at the bed. Over Sadoul’s shadowy, sheeted face a faint light shone—starlight, he supposed.

After a few minutes he realised it was not starlight.

He gazed at the bony outline of Sadoul’s face beneath the sheet, remembering what this dead man had said concerning the post-mortem persistence of consciousness.

Was Sadoul lying there dead, still conscious? The brain died last of all. Was Sadoul’s brain still alive? What was that pale light, imperceptibly increasing above the shrouded head?

The girl resting on his shoulder was now breathing softly, regularly as a sleeping child.

He dared not stir; his eyes were fixed upon the outlined figure on the bed.

Suddenly the covered head became visible in silhouette, as though an electric bulb had been turned on under the bed sheet.

Steadily the glow spread to a radio-activity so intense that Sadoul’s head itself seemed translucent, revealing the shadowy cerebrum and cerebellum slowly expanding within the skull.

The Senate of the body was preparing to adjourn sine die.

Now, the preparations for the spirit’s departure from its worn out tenement were fully completed. The intense brilliancy of the head began to fade. A softly luminous atmosphere grew above the covered head, slowly assuming the contours of another head.

This new head developed more and more distinctly, more compactly, indescribably brilliant.

All around it spread a luminous atmosphere, seemingly in great commotion. This agitated pool of light penetrated like the white fire of an aurora; but, as the new head became more perfect, it waned, faded, disappeared.

Steadily, harmoniously, the neck, shoulders, chest, were developed in their natural progressive order.

The etheric body was slowly rising over the head and at right angles to the deserted body.

Now, about the feet of the etheric shape, a blinding vital light played like electricity, linking it with the sheeted head. For a few minutes this lasted, then the natal cord grew thin, fine as a luminous thread, parted.

All light died out on the dark bed. In the starlight a tall, greyish shape stood beside the dead—a figure like Sadoul, not quite as tall, with no mark of sickness on body or face; younger, tranquil of carriage, with vague, untroubled eyes that rested on the living without emotion, without surprise.

Leisurely, without effort, the figure moved to the open window and stood there gazing out into the starlight for a while. Then, turning, it passed Pockman, noticing him; passed before Gilda, sleeping on Sutton’s shoulder, quietly observant, moved on to the open door, into the corridor beyond, where lights were burning on the whitewashed wall.

Here it became perfectly distinct, differing in no way from a living being.

The street door was open; the aged door-keeper sat in his box reading an evening paper.

Sadoul looked at him as he passed, smiled, and went out into the street.

In the death chamber Pockman got up on his rickety legs, pulled out his watch.

“Two hours, thirty-three minutes, nine and a fraction seconds,” he said; smirked, wiped his sweating features, picked up a pencil and wrote down his observation on the chart.

On Stuart’s shoulder Gilda was stirring. Presently she sighed lightly, opened her eyes, drew a deeper breath, sat upright.

For a few moments she sat gazing at the bed, her left hand still resting on her lover’s shoulder.

Pockman came teetering across the room, holding out something that glittered in the dim radiance of the stars.

“He wanted me to give you this,” he said with a sort of ghostly snigger.

She took the shining object. It was the gold-hilted misericordia.

The girl slowly stood up. There was a white rose at her sash. She drew it out, walked to the bed and placed it on Sadoul’s breast. Beside it she laid the misericordia.

“Bury these with him,” she said to Pockman. And to the still figure under the sheet: “Good-bye, Sadoul.”

Pockman accompanied them to the street door, his arms twitching and jerking, the vague, habitual grin stamped on his flat and pallid face.

“He could have euchred old man Death in New Mexico or Arizona,” he said with a mechanical snicker. “He preferred to take a chance with that snake. Hell!”

Sutton guided Gilda down the battered steps.

“I think,” he said in a low voice, “that we’d better drive to the house and see my father and mother. I think we ought to set matters straight without delay.”

“If you think it best.... What time is it?”

“A quarter to ten.”

She stood for a moment close against him. He could feel her whole body trembling. Then she slowly moved forward, leaning on his arm.

He gave the driver directions, stepped into the taxi behind her and drew her icy hands into his.

The girl’s eyes were glimmering with unshed tears.

Pockman, in his own lamplit study, touched the bell on his desk.

To an orderly who appeared, he said: “Send that damned snake to the Bronx tomorrow.”

After the orderly had retired he sat thinking, mopping up the perspiration that drenched his hair. Then he opened a locked drawer in his desk, drew out a packet of blue-prints, examined them one by one, and, one by one, tore each into minute pieces.

There was a handful of these. He sat sifting them from one hand to the other for a long while. Finally he rose, went to the open window and scattered them in the pale lustre of the stars.

CHAPTER XXXIX

There were lights in both drawing-rooms when Stuart let in Gilda and himself with his latch-key. She let slip her evening wrap; he laid it on a chair by the console, with his hat and stick.

There were no traces of tears on Gilda’s face, but she was rather colourless.

“It’s dreadfully late,” she whispered to Stuart; “do you think you should have brought me?”

“Father knows there was a girl with me as my guest in the Forest. That ass Anderson—do you remember I introduced him when we walked over to Fisher-cat Dam? Well, he’s here and he mentioned my being there with a ‘pretty girl.’ That’s why I don’t care to lose any time about it.”

Gilda’s colour came back quickly. “No,” she said, “it’s better not to delay.”

“I’m sorry I had to tell you,” he said. “I hope it won’t disconcert you.”

She seemed a trifle surprised that the prospect of meeting his family under any circumstances should disconcert her.

“They’re really not formidable,” he added, seriously.

She regarded him blankly, suddenly melted into a bewitching smile.

“You’re so sweet,” she murmured, “and so entirely all that you should be. Take me to your parents and explain me, darling, and I’ll try to be scared to death.”

He was too nervous himself to notice her adorable but saucy levity. He glanced into the west drawing-room and saw his mother there alone, playing solitaire.

“Is it you, Stuart?” she said, busy with her cards. “I thought I heard your key in the door.”

He took Gilda’s soft hand and went in. When his mother raised her abstracted eyes she saw them standing before her in an odd, faintly smiling silence.

“Mother,” he said, “this is Gilda Greenway. I’m madly in love with her. She has consented to marry me. We haven’t thought much about the date—in fact, we haven’t talked about it—but if she is willing I can’t see any use in waiting——”

The flushed astonishment on his mother’s face checked his nervous eloquence.

His mother arose. The manners of all the Suttons were perfect when they chose.

She held out a gemmed hand to Gilda. When the girl laid her own on it: “My child, what is this young man of mine trying to tell me?” asked his mother.

Under the calm scrutiny the girl’s colour heightened to a lovely tint, but she smiled.

“He’s trying to say to you that we are very much in love, Mrs. Sutton. We met this last winter. I’m sure it was love at sight with me.”

She bent her charming head, hesitated:

“We have been spending the evening together. Stuart thought that perhaps this was the best way——”

“Mother,” said the boy earnestly, “she’s a perfect darling!——”

This is the moment in the lives of two young people when what is said and done by parents determines the future relations of all concerned.

These children did not know it, but the boy’s mother did. She knew she could lose her son to this girl by a word or look—lose him in bitterness which never could be entirely forgotten. Every instinct in her was antagonistic to this departure from rule-of-thumb, from immemorial routine, from inherited conformation to convention.

Slowly she looked from her only son to this stranger. The girl was lovely to look upon.

She started to speak, waited to control her voice—the tremor of sudden tears in her throat—a throat all a-quiver with the protest of offended pride—of resentment, revolt indescribable.

But all the time she realised what this moment would mean to her and to her son, and to their future relationship.

She had her voice under control. She said to Gilda:

“If you love as I do, you understand Stuart’s mother at this moment better than he can.”

Gilda’s face became beautifully grave.

“I do understand. It wasn’t fair for me to come—I didn’t realise how unfair, until now——”

She turned impulsively toward her lover, but his mother retained her hand:

“Don’t go. My son’s guests are welcome.... I think you would be welcome anyway. And if he is to marry you, this is your proper place, my child.”

Gilda’s eyes became suddenly misty: she averted them, turned her head slightly:

“It was not the thing to do,” she said. “It was your right to be told, first—to talk to your son undisturbed. I—I’ve made a rather ghastly faux pas——”

“I have!” said Stuart. “I dragged you here——”

His eyes fell on his father who, hearing voices, had come from a game of chess in the other drawing-room.

With Sutton senior was his chess-antagonist, Lady Glyndale, wearing the complacent expression of the victor.

But when Lady Glyndale’s satisfied gaze encountered Gilda, it altered radically.

Stuart, nervously retaining command of the situation, or supposing he commanded it, had already presented his father and Gilda to each other, and had begun in a determined voice:

“Lady Glyndale, my fiancée, Miss Greenway——” when his affianced interrupted calmly:

“Lady Glyndale is my aunt, Stuart. And how on earth we’ve managed to encounter each other here——”

“Are you engaged to be married, Gilda?” demanded Lady Glyndale grimly.

“Yes, I am, Aunt Constance.... If—I am—approved——” She looked at Sutton senior in a bewildered way—turned to Stuart’s mother with the naïve, involuntary impulse of a child seeking refuge.

In an overwhelming rush of relief that lady fully retained her aplomb.

“It appears,” she said to Lady Glyndale, “that your niece and my son have chosen to surprise us.”

She looked at Gilda. The girl went to her, took both her hands, pressing them convulsively.

“You odd, sweet child,” murmured her lover’s mother. “It’s perfectly clear to me that this absurd, rattle-headed son of mine is to blame.”

Lady Glyndale, looking at Gilda, said grimly: “So that’s the reason you have declined to travel with me. Why didn’t you say so?”

The girl’s lips were quivering: “I don’t know, Aunt Constance.... I seem to be a—a mindless sort——”

“You’ve no monopoly of mindlessness,” said Sutton senior, staring hard at Sutton junior.

“For heaven’s sake, dad——”

“Yes, for heaven’s sake,” said his father.

There was a silence. Then the boy’s mother drew the girl to her, and the girl’s red head dropped on her shoulder.

Sutton senior walked over, obviously pulling himself together.

“I’d like to have a look at my own daughter-in-law,” he said to Gilda. “I’d like to see her smile, once——”

“Don’t bother the child now,” said his wife.

But Gilda lifted her head smiling, with wet lashes, and held out her hand.

“Good girl,” said Sutton senior, and shook it gravely. And turned and shook the hand of his only son:

“It’s easy to see she’s much too good for you.”

“Thank you, dad.”

His mother smiled at him. He drew a swift, happy breath, went over to Lady Glyndale.

That lady was in two minds about this business:

“Your mother and father are charming people,” she said frankly. “I hope you are.”

The boy laughed: “I hope I am,” he said, “and I’m sure you can be if you care to, Lady Glyndale.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m not at all sure. It quite depends, you see. Come and talk to me tomorrow.”

“I shall, indeed,” he said, fervently pressing her half-extended hand.

Then Lady Glyndale went over and resolutely kissed Gilda.

“Don’t you think,” she inquired with some sarcasm, “that you could find a few moments to talk over matters with me before I sail?”

“Yes, Aunt Constance,” said the girl meekly.

Lady Glyndale took a brief, comprehensive sweep of the situation, the people, their environment. And into her absolutely British visage came an expression which seemed to mean: “Most certainly this is America and nowhere else, because these things never happen anywhere else on earth.”

But aloud she said amiably: “Good night. I’m going to bed.”

The men accompanied her to the lift. She graciously declined further politeness, got into the lift, started it, and hoisted herself bedward.

Sutton senior and Stuart exchanged an unpremeditated and crushing grip.

“Isn’t Gilda wonderful?” said the boy.

“Absolutely,” replied his father with every symptom of conviction. “So are you, by the way.”

They laughed. Stuart went back to the west drawing-room. Gilda saw him, would have stepped back, but his mother retained her by the hand.

To her son she said: “Dear, I’m so glad you’re happy.” And held him wistfully a moment after they had kissed.

Then, smiling, she kissed Gilda, and went leisurely from the room, leaving her boy to his new love as must all mothers who bear a man-child in pain and travail and gratitude to God.

THE END

Novels by ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

- THE TALKERS

- ERIS

- THE FLAMING JEWEL

- THE LITTLE RED FOOT

- THE SLAYER OF SOULS

- THE CRIMSON TIDE

- THE LAUGHING GIRL

- THE RESTLESS SEX

- BARBARIANS

- THE DARK STAR

- THE GIRL PHILIPPA

- WHO GOES THERE!

- ATHALIE

- THE BUSINESS OF LIFE

- THE GAY REBELLION

- THE STREETS OF ASCALON

- THE COMMON LAW

- THE FIGHTING CHANCE

- THE YOUNGER SET

- THE DANGER MARK

- THE FIRING LINE

- JAPONETTE

- QUICK ACTION

- THE ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN

- ANNE’S BRIDGE

- BETWEEN FRIENDS

- THE BETTER MAN

- POLICE!!!

- SOME LADIES IN HASTE

- THE TREE OF HEAVEN

- THE MOONLIT WAY

- IN SECRET

- CARDIGAN

- THE RECKONING

- THE MAID-AT-ARMS

- AILSA PAIGE

- SPECIAL MESSENGER

- THE HAUNTS OF MEN

- LORRAINE

- MAIDS OF PARADISE

- ASHES OF EMPIRE

- THE RED REPUBLIC

- BLUE-BIRD WEATHER

- A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY

- THE GREEN MOUSE

- IOLE

- THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE

- THE CAMBRIC MASK

- THE MAKER OF MOONS

- THE KING IN YELLOW

- IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN

- THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS

- THE CONSPIRATORS

- A KING AND A FEW DUKES

- THE HIDDEN CHILDREN

- IN THE QUARTER

- OUTSIDERS

Transcriber’s Note:

Punctuation errors have been silently fixed. Archaic forms and minor inconsistencies in hyphenation and spelling have been retained as printed.

The list of novels by Robert W. Chambers has been moved to the end of the book.

A table of contents has been added to this version.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

The following changes have been made:

On page 218: current to currant

On page 274: a to are

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Table of Contents

THE TALKERS

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

Transcriber’s Note:

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