THE MONSTE 
 
 GAR. SALT US 
 

 
THE MONSTER 
 
Copyright, 1912, 
 fty Edgar Salt us. 
 
The Monster 
 
 WHEN the clergyman had gone, the 
 bride turned. 
 Before her was an open win 
 dow before which was the open sea. In 
 the air was a tropical languor, a savour 
 of brine, the scent of lilies, the sound 
 of mandolins that are far away. Below, in the 
 garden, were masses of scarlet, high heaps of 
 geranium blooms. A bit beyond was the 
 Caprian blue of the San Diego Bay. There, 
 a yacht rode, white and spacious. The yacht 
 belonged to her husband who was beside her. 
 She turned again and as passionately he em 
 braced her; she coloured. 
 
 For the moment, as they stood there, they 
 seemed so sheerly dissimilar that they might 
 have come of alien races, from different zones. 
 He, with his fair hair, his fair skin, his resolute 
 and aggressive face, was typically Anglo- 
 Saxon. She, with her delicate features, her 
 dense black hair, and disquieting eyes, looked 
 
 M128566 
 
>8 THE MONSTER 
 
 like a Madrilene Madonna one of those 
 fascinating and slightly shocking creations of 
 seventeenth-century art that more nearly re 
 semble infantas serenaded by caballeros than 
 queens of the sky. There was a deeper con 
 trast. He appeared frankly material; she, 
 all soul. 
 
 Leisurely she freed herself. 
 
 "One might know/ she began, then paused. 
 A smile completed the sentence. 
 
 He smiled too. 
 
 "Yes, Leilah, one might know that however 
 I hold you to me, I never can hold you 
 enough." 
 
 "And I ! I could be held by you forever." 
 
 On the door came a tap, rapid and assured. 
 A page entered, the preoccupation of the tip 
 in his face, in his hand a platter of letters. 
 
 The man, taking the letters, dismissed him. 
 
 "Miss Ogston," he continued. "From your 
 father, confound him. It is the last time he 
 will address you in that fashion. Miss Og 
 ston," he repeated. "From the Silverstairs, I 
 fancy. Gulian Verplank. There is but one 
 for me." 
 
 He looked at his watch. "The launch from 
 the yacht will be here shortly." 
 
 "When do we start?" 
 
 "Whenever you like. The Marquesas will 
 
THE MONSTER 
 
 keep. Bora-Bora will be the same whenever 
 we get there. Only 
 
 "Only what?" 
 
 "I am in love with you, not with hotels." 
 
 "Let us go then. There will be a moon to 
 night?" 
 
 "A new one, a honeymoon, a honeymoon 
 begun." 
 
 "Gulian! As if it could end!" 
 
 In pronouncing the "u" in his name her 
 mouth made the sketch of a kiss. 
 
 "You would not wish it to?" he asked. 
 
 "When I die, perhaps, and even then only 
 to be continued hereafter. Heaven would not 
 be heaven without you." 
 
 She spoke slowly, with little pauses, in a 
 manner that differed from his own mode of 
 speech, which was quick and forceful. 
 
 Verplank turned to the letter that had been 
 addressed to him, and which he still held. 
 Without opening it, he tore it into long, thin 
 strips. It was, he knew from the imprint, a 
 communication of no importance; but, at the 
 moment, the action seemed a reply to her re 
 mark. It served to indicate his complete in 
 difference to everything and everyone save her 
 only. Afterward, with a regret that was to be 
 eternal, she wished he had done the same with 
 hers. 
 
10 THE MONSTER 
 
 Yet, pleased at the time, she smiled. 
 
 "Gulian, you do love me, but I wonder do 
 you love me as absolutely as I love you?" 
 
 Verplank, with a gesture that was familiar 
 to him, closed and opened a hand. 
 
 "I do not know. But while I think you can 
 not love me more wholly than I love you, I do 
 know that to me you are the unique." 
 
 Leilah moved to where he stood. 
 
 "Gulian, and you to me. You are the only 
 one." She moved closer. Raising her hands, 
 she put them on his shoulders. a Tell me, shall 
 you be long away?" 
 
 "An hour or two. Apropos, would you care 
 to leave before dinner?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "We will dine on board, then. Is there 
 anything in particular you would like?" 
 
 "Yes, lilies, plenty of lilies; and pineapples; 
 and the sound of your voice." 
 
 Lifting her hands from his shoulders to his 
 face, she drew it to her own. Their lips met 
 longly. With the savour of her about him, 
 Verplank passed out. 
 
 Idly Leilah turned. Before her the sea lay, 
 a desert of blue. Below, on the beach, it broke 
 with a boom in high white waves which, in re 
 treating, became faintly mauve. The specta 
 cle charmed her. But other scenes effaced it; 
 
THE MONSTER 11 
 
 sudden pictures of the Marquesas; the long 
 flight southward; the brief, bright days; the 
 nights that would be briefer still. Pleasurably 
 for a while these things detained her. Idly 
 again she turned. 
 
 On the table were the letters. One was 
 from an intimate friend. Violet Silverstairs, a 
 New York girl who had married an English 
 man, and who since then had resided abroad. 
 The other was or appeared to be from 
 MatlackOgston. 
 
 Matlack Ogston was Leilah s father. That 
 a father should write to a daughter is only 
 natural. But that this father should write 
 surprised her, as already it had surprised Ver- 
 plank. When he mentioned whom the letter 
 was from she had thought he must be in error. 
 Now, as she opened it, she found that he had 
 been. Her father had not written. The en 
 velope contained a second envelope addressed 
 to another person. This envelope had for 
 merly been sealed and since been opened. It 
 held three letters in an unknown hand. 
 
 She began at one of them. More exactly, 
 she began, as some women do begin, at the end. 
 The signature startled. At once, as she turned 
 to the initial sentences, she experienced the 
 curious and unenviable sensation of falling 
 from an inordinate height, and it was not with 
 
12 THE MONSTER 
 
 any idea that the sensation would cease, but 
 rather with the craving to know, which in 
 certain crises of the emotions becomes more 
 unendurable than any uncertainty can be, that 
 she read the rest of the first letter; after it, the 
 second letter, and the third. 
 
 Then, as truth stared at her and she at truth, 
 so monstrous was its aspect that, with one shud 
 dering intake. of the breath, life withered with 
 in her, light vanished without. 
 
 When ultimately, without knowing who she 
 was ; when, conscious only of an objective self 
 struggling in darkness with the intangible and 
 the void, when then life and light returned, 
 she was on the floor, the monster peering at 
 her. 
 
 She disowned it, disavowed it. But beside 
 her on the floor the letters lay. There was its 
 lair. It had sprung from them, and always 
 from them it would be peering at her, driving 
 her mad with its blighting eyes, unless 
 
 She got on her hands and knees, and from 
 them to her feet. Her body ached from the 
 fall, and her head was throbbing. With the 
 idea that smelling salts, or some cologne water 
 which she had, might help her, she went and 
 fetched them from an adjoining room. They 
 were not of much use, she found, though pres 
 ently she could think more clearly, and in a 
 
THE MONSTER 13 
 
 little while she was considering the possibility 
 that had loomed. 
 
 In certain conditions the soul gets used to 
 monsters. It makes itself at home with what 
 it must. Her soul, she thought, might also. 
 But even as she thought it, she knew she never 
 could. She knew that even were she able to 
 succeed in blinding herself to this thing by 
 day, at night it would crawl to her, sit at her 
 side, pluck at her sleeve, wake her, and cry: 
 "Behold me!" 
 
 It would cry it at her until she cried it at 
 him. Then inevitably it would kill her. 
 
 She had been seated, bathing her head with 
 cologne. Now fear, helplessness, the con 
 sciousness of both possessed her. They im 
 pelled her to act. She stood up. She looked 
 about the room. Filled with flowers and sun 
 shine, it said nothing. Beyond was the sea. It 
 called to her. It told her that in a rowboat 
 she could drift and be lost. It told her that 
 that night she could throw herself from the 
 yacht. The blue expanse, the high white 
 waves, the little mauve ripples invited. 
 
 The room, though, with its flowers and sun 
 shine, deterred. To throw herself from the 
 yacht meant that she would have to wait. It 
 meant more. It meant that she would have to 
 see him. It meant that she would have to 
 
14 THE MONSTER 
 
 feign and pretend. These things she could not 
 do. 
 
 There remained the rowboat. Yet, in some 
 way, now, the sea seemed less inviting. At the 
 thought of its embrace and of its depths she 
 shrank. To die, to cease any more to be, to 
 succumb like the heroines of the old tragedies 
 to fate, at the idea of that, her young soul re 
 volted. There must be some other course. 
 
 She looked from the window. Beneath, be 
 fore the ocean, a motor was passing. The 
 whirr of it prompting, flight occurred to her, 
 an escape to some spot that would engulf her 
 as surely as the waves. Hesitatingly she con 
 sidered it. But there was nothing else. More 
 over, if she were to go, she must go at once. 
 
 She turned, crossed the room, stooped, 
 gathered the letters, and seated herself at the 
 table. There she put the letters in another 
 envelope which she addressed to Verplank. 
 While writing his name, her hand trembled, 
 it shook on the paper drops of ink. These she 
 tried to blot, and made a smear. 
 
 Trembling still, she got up, went to the tele 
 phone, and attempted to speak. At first, too 
 overcome to do so, she leaned against the wall. 
 It did not seem possible that she could do this 
 thing. But she must, she knew. At last, with 
 an effort, she spoke. 
 
THE MONSTER 15 
 
 "When does the next train leave San Diego? 
 One moment. Have my. servants sent to 
 me; my servants, yes, and and order a 
 motor." 
 
 Again she leaned against the wall. The 
 room had become intolerable. Into the lan 
 guors of the air a suffocation had entered, and 
 it was unconsciously, in a condition semi-som 
 nambulistic that she found herself considering 
 the pink of the ceiling, then the rose-leaves 
 woven in the green of the carpet, the dull red 
 of the table-cover, the darker red of a tassel, 
 the tall vase that stood on the table and in 
 which were taller lilies. 
 
 There, beneath them was the monster. Its 
 vibrations, disseminating through the room, 
 were silhouetted on the walls. She could not 
 see them, but she could feel them. They 
 choked her. 
 
 But now her servants appeared. Nervously, 
 with an irritability so foreign to her, that they 
 eyed each other uncertainly, she gave them 
 hurried commands. These obeyed and the 
 porters summoned, she passed, choking still, 
 from this room, the secrets of which the walls 
 detained. 
 
 It was perhaps preordered that they should 
 do so. Long later, in looking back, she real 
 ised that destiny then was having its say with 
 
16 THE MONSTER 
 
 her, and realised also why. At the time, how 
 ever, she was ignorant of two incidents, which, 
 after the fashion of the apparently insignifi 
 cant, subsequently became the reverse. 
 
 One incident had the porters for agent; the 
 other was effected by a maid who supervened. 
 The porters, in removing the luggage, collided 
 with the table. The inkstand, the tall vase 
 with the taller lilies, were upset; the vase, 
 spilling water and flowers, fell broken on the 
 floor; from the stand, ink rippled on the red of 
 the cloth, on the darker red of the tassels, on 
 the envelope which Leilah had directed to 
 Verplank. These things, a maid, summoned 
 by the crash, removed. 
 
 When Verplank returned, the table was 
 bare. 
 
 He did not notice. What he alone noticed 
 was Leilah s absence. She is below, he told 
 himself. Then precisely as she had summoned 
 her servants, he summoned his. 
 
 "Roberts," he said presently to a man. 
 "Find Mrs: Verplank. Then get my things 
 together. We start at once." 
 
 For a moment the man considered the mas 
 ter. At once civilly but stolidly he spoke : 
 
 "Mrs. Verplank has gone, sir." 
 
 Verplank, who had turned on his heel, 
 turned back. 
 
THE MONSTER 17 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "The hotel is full of it, sir. When I found 
 that Mrs. Verplank was leaving, I 
 
 "What!" Verplank, in angry amazement, 
 repeated. 
 
 "Mrs. Verplank is taking the limited, sir. 
 It was the clerk who told me." 
 
 Then, for a moment, the master considered 
 the man. At the simple statement his mind 
 had become like a sea in a storm. A whirl 
 wind tossed his thoughts. 
 
 But Leilah was still too near, her caresses 
 were too recent for him to be able to realise 
 that she had actually gone, and the fact that he 
 could not realise it disclosed itself in those 
 words which all have uttered, all at least be 
 fore whom the inexplicable has sprung: 
 
 "It is impossible!" 
 
 "Yes, sir, it does seem most unusual." 
 
 Verplank had spoken less to the man than 
 to himself, and for a moment stood engrossed 
 in that futilest of human endeavours, the effort 
 to read a riddle of which the only GEdipus is 
 time. 
 
 At once all the imaginable causes that could 
 have contributed to it danced before him and 
 vanished. He told himself that Leilah s dis 
 appearance might be an attempt at some 
 hide-and-go-seek which shortly would end. 
 
18 THE MONSTER 
 
 But he knew her to be incapable of such non 
 sense. Immediately he decided that his serv 
 ant was in error, and that she was then on the 
 yacht. If not, then, clearly she had gone mad, 
 or else 
 
 But there are certain hypotheses which cer 
 tain intellects decline to stomach. Yet the let 
 ter from her father recurring to him, he did 
 consider the possibility that she might have 
 gone because of some secret of his bachelor 
 life. Anything may be distorted. Unfolded 
 by her father, these secrets, which in them 
 selves were not very dark, might be made to 
 look infernal, and could readily be so made by 
 this man who was not only just the one to do it, 
 but who would have an object in so doing. 
 Always he had been inimical to Verplank, and 
 this, the abandoned bridegroom then felt, not 
 on his account, but because of his father. 
 
 The latter, Effingham Verplank, had been a 
 great catch, and a great beau. His charm had 
 been myrrh and cassia and nightshade, as 
 well to many women, among others to an 
 aunt of Leilah, Hilda Hemingway, whose 
 husband had called him out, called him 
 abroad, rather, where the too charming Ver 
 plank waited until Hemingway fired, and then 
 shot in the air. He considered that the gen 
 tlemanly thing to do. He was, perhaps, cor- 
 
THE MONSTER 19 
 
 rect. But perhaps, too, it was hardly worth 
 while to go abroad to do it. Yet, however that 
 may be, the attitude of the injured husband, 
 while no doubt equally correct, was less debon 
 air. He obtained a divorce. 
 
 The matter created an enormous scandal, in 
 the sedater days when New York society was 
 a small and early family party and scandals 
 were passing rare. But, like everything else, 
 it was forgotten, even, and perhaps particu 
 larly by the parties directly concerned. Hem 
 ingway married again; the precarious Hilda 
 married also; the too charming Verplank va 
 cated the planet, and his widow went a great 
 deal into the world. 
 
 This lady had accepted the scandal, as she 
 had accepted many another, with a serenity 
 that was really beautiful. But, then, her se 
 ductive husband had always seemed to her so 
 perfectly irresistible, so created to conquer, 
 that as their son afterward found it neces 
 sary to explain it no more occurred to her to 
 sit in judgment on his victims, than it occurred 
 to her to sit on him. With not only philo 
 sophic wisdom, but in the true spirit of Chris 
 tian charity, she overlooked it all. 
 
 The culminant episode in the matter the 
 death of the volatile Verplank took place at 
 an hour when his son was too young to be more 
 
20 THE MONSTER 
 
 than aware that his father had been taken away 
 in a box. Leilah was even less advanced. It 
 was years before she learned of her aunt s de 
 linquencies. When she did, that lady had also 
 passed away, as had previously passed a child 
 of hers, one that, perhaps, did not belong to 
 her first husband, and, certainly not to her sec 
 ond, the result being that, in default of other 
 heirs, she left a fortune to Leilah, whose 
 mother had left her another. 
 
 When her mother died, Leilah was in the 
 nursery. Her father, who thereafter aban 
 doned her to servants and governesses, she sel 
 dom saw. When she did see him, he ignored 
 her completely. It was a way he had. He 
 ignored also and quite as completely the son of 
 the deadly Verplank. 
 
 To make up for it, or it may be to make 
 trouble, the boy s mother never regarded Lei 
 lah otherwise than with that smile of sweet 
 approbation with which she gratified all the 
 world all the world, that is, save those only 
 who were not in hers. Among the gratified 
 were the Arlington girls, two beauties, of 
 whom the elder, Violet, was Leilah s closest 
 friend. 
 
 It was at Newport, at Violet s wedding to 
 Silverstairs, a young Englishman who had 
 followed her from Europe, and who at once 
 
THE MONSTER 21 
 
 took her back there ; it was at this ceremony, in 
 which Leilah participated as bridesmaid, and 
 Verplank as best man, it was then that both 
 became aware of a joint desire. It seemed to 
 them that they were born to love each other, to 
 love always, forever. Forever! in a world 
 where all things must end, and do. But the 
 eagerness of it was upon them. Leilah wrote 
 to her father. Verplank wrote to him also. 
 
 Matlack Ogston ignored Verplank s letter 
 as invariably he had ignored Verplank. His 
 daughter s he promptly returned. Across it 
 was scrawled one word. That word was No. 
 
 Interests more commonplace had mean 
 while transported Verplank from Newport to 
 San Francisco. Informed of the veto, which 
 to Leilah was an incentive and to him an af 
 front, he had wired her to meet him at Coro- 
 nado, this resort in Southern California which 
 together they had been preparing to leave. 
 
 The night previous, on a yacht chartered at 
 the Golden Gate, Verplank had arrived. It 
 was by train, the next morning, that Leilah had 
 come. The wedding followed. Before them 
 lay a world of delight. 
 
 This was hardly an hour since. Now, like 
 a bubble, abruptly that world had burst. 
 
 Yet why? 
 
 In that query was the riddle which impo- 
 
22 THE MONSTER 
 
 tently Verplank was trying to solve. With a 
 clutch at a possible solution, he turned to his 
 servant: 
 
 "Roberts, get a motor. If Mrs. Verplank is 
 not on the yacht, I will take a special, and 
 follow her." 
 
 "Yes, sir. Shall you wish me to go with 
 you?" 
 
 "No, stay here until you hear from me. At 
 any moment Mrs. Verplank may return." 
 
 But Leilah did not return. Nor did the 
 special, in which Verplank followed, overtake 
 her. The first intelligence of her that reached 
 him was the announcement of her engagement 
 to another man. 
 
II 
 
 IN Paris, many moons later, an Englishman, 
 Howard Tempest, looked in, at the Opera, 
 on his cousin, Camille de Joyeuse. This 
 lady, connected by birth with Britannia s best, 
 and, through her husband, with the Bourbons, 
 delighted the eye, the ear, and the palate. In 
 appearance, she suggested certain designs of 
 Boucher; in colouring and in manner, the 
 Pompadour. Admirable in these respects, she 
 was admired also, for her gayety, her tireless 
 smile, and her chef. She had one of the best 
 cooks in Paris that is to say, in the world. 
 Her husband, the Due de Joyeuse, harmon 
 ised very perfectly with her. He had a head, 
 empty, but noble, an air vaguely Regence. A 
 year younger than herself, Time had had the 
 impertinence to whiten his hair. The duchess 
 w r as forty-two. Those unaware of the fact 
 fancied her twenty-eight. The error greatly 
 gratified this lady, who, familiarly, was 
 known as Muffins. 
 
 One evening in May, Tempest entered her 
 box, saluted her, examined the house, and, as, 
 in a crash of the orchestra, the curtain fell, 
 
24 THE MONSTER 
 
 seated himself, in response to a gesture, beside 
 her. 
 
 Camille de Joyeuse turned to him, and with 
 that smile of hers, said: "Do not fail to come 
 on Sunday, Howard. There is to be a Ma 
 dame BaroufTska, whom I want you to meet. 
 She was formerly a Mrs. Verplank. Barouff- 
 ski is Number Two." 
 
 "Verplank! Barouffski! What barbarous 
 names!" Tempest exclaimed. He had vivid 
 red hair, violent blue eyes, and a great scarlet 
 cicatrix that tore one side of his face. In spite 
 of the severity of his evening clothes, he looked 
 rather barbarous himself. "What was she, a 
 widow?" 
 
 "Yes, but with no tombstone to show. It 
 appears that she was in love with Verplank for 
 years, married him one minute and left him 
 the next." 
 
 Tempest stifled a yawn. "How extremely 
 fastidious!" 
 
 "She ran away, got a divorce, met BaroufT- 
 ski and married him." 
 
 "Very honourable of her, certainly. From 
 what pond did you fish her?" 
 
 "The Silverstairs . Violet Silverstairs is an 
 American you know 
 
 "Know! I should say I did know. Though, 
 if I did not, I would take my oath to it. It s 
 
THE MONSTER 25 
 
 got so a fellow can t stir without running into 
 one of them. How does Louis like her?" 
 
 Louis was the duke. 
 
 The duchess displayed her beautiful false 
 teeth. "Oddly enough, when he was in the 
 States, he went hunting with her Number 
 One." 
 
 "In the Rockies?" Tempest, with sudden in 
 terest, inquired. "In the Dakotas?" 
 
 "I fancy so. It was a place called, let me 
 see; yes, Long Island, I think. I remember, 
 he said it was very jolly." 
 
 Tempest tossed his red head. "Her Num 
 ber Two, I suppose, is that chap I have seen at 
 the Little Club. The Lord knows how he got 
 there. He looks like a thimblerigger." 
 
 The duchess raised her opera-glass. "Pos 
 sibly. Nowadays, so many men do, don t you 
 think? There is Marie de Fresnoy with the 
 Helley-Quetgens ! You will have her next to 
 you on Sunday, Howard. Do not lacerate her 
 tender heart." 
 
 At the suggestion, Tempest made a face. 
 His expression amused Camille de Joyeuse. 
 Indulgently she added: "To make up for it 
 you shall take Madame Barouffska out." 
 
 But now the curtain was rising. The clear 
 brilliance of the house faded into a golden 
 gloom. 
 
26 THE MONSTER 
 
 On the Sunday following, when Tempest 
 reached the Cours la Reine, in which his 
 cousin resided, there was a motor before the 
 perron, and from it a woman was alighting. 
 As rhythmically, with a grace that is rare in 
 women who are not ballerines, she mounted 
 the stair, Tempest had a vision of a figure, tall 
 and slight, of a mass of black hair, and of a 
 neck emerging from ermine. In the ante 
 room above, while a servant took from her her 
 cloak and another received Tempest s hat and 
 coat, he saw that she was extremely beautiful. 
 
 Immediately a footman, throwing open a 
 door, announced: "Madame la comtesse Ba- 
 roufTska!" He added at once: "Lord Howard 
 Tempest!" 
 
 In this marriage of their names they entered 
 a drawing room in which were the Joyeuses, 
 the Fresnoys, the Silverstairs; others, also, 
 who momentarily were indistinguishable. The 
 room large, wide, high-ceiled was decorat 
 ed gravely, with infinite taste. Beyond it, a 
 suite of salons extended. 
 
 Camille de Joyeuse, advancing to meet her 
 guests, presented Tempest to Mme. Baroufl- 
 ska. 
 
 In a voice which, if a trifle high, was fluted, 
 the duchess added: 
 
 "My dear, this cousin of mine has a terrible 
 
THE MONSTER 27 
 
 reputation, and that, I am sure, will commend 
 him to you." 
 
 With the semblance of a smile, Mme. Ba- 
 rouffska replied: 
 
 "You know I am never quite able to decide 
 just what construction to put on your re 
 marks." 
 
 Tut the worst, put the worst!" answered the 
 duchess, whose costume left her splendidly 
 nude. From a billowy corsage her shoulders 
 and bust emerged as though rising through 
 foam, while the light gold tissue of her gown 
 accentuated the royal outlines of her figure. 
 
 Leilah Barouffska, slenderer, taller, wholly 
 in white, contrasted etherially with her. 
 Turning to Tempest she said : 
 
 "Lord Howard, I have heard so much that 
 is interesting about you." 
 
 "Not from Muffins, then." 
 
 "Yes, but also from Silverstairs. He told 
 me that you are the best gentleman jockey in 
 England and a Sanskrit scholar besides." 
 
 "Oh, I can straddle a horse, if it comes to 
 that, but otherwise he exaggerates. He has 
 caught that from his wife unless it happens 
 to be from her sister." 
 
 At mention of the girl, Leilah, who had 
 been looking across the room, turned to Tem 
 pest again. In looking she saw this young 
 
28 THE MONSTER 
 
 woman whose allurements and possibilities- 
 were generally regarded as excessive. Recently 
 she had become engaged perhaps for the 
 tenth time. Coincidentally was the announce 
 ment that she was going in for light opera. 
 Now, in reference to her, Leilah said: 
 "You have met Aurelia, then?" 
 "I found it very difficult not to." 
 "And this young Lord Buttercups to whom 
 she is engaged, is he nice?" 
 
 Tempest adjusted his monocle. "Very. A 
 trifle wrong in the upper story. So was his 
 father. So was his grandfather. A fine old 
 English family." 
 
 Faintly, as before, Leilah smiled. "I 
 understand that Aurelia is studying for the 
 stage. Such a queer idea, don t you think 
 for an American heiress, I mean." 
 
 Tempest, extracting his eyeglass, nodded. 
 "Nowadays, unless an idea is queer, it can 
 hardly be called an idea at all. But I am glad 
 this young person is studying something. When 
 she went to school she must have been taught 
 everything which it is easiest to forget." 
 A servant announced : 
 "His Excellency, Mustim Pasha!" 
 The man who entered was short and stout. 
 He had a full black beard, and the appear 
 ance, slightly Hebraic, which Turks possess. 
 
THE MONSTER 29 
 
 After M. de Joyeuse had greeted him, he salut 
 ed the duchess. 
 
 Beyond, on a sofa, Violet Silverstairs sat 
 talking to the Baronne de Fresnoy, a young 
 woman who looked very much as might a 
 statuette of Tanagra, to which Grevin had 
 given two big blue circles for eyes, and a small 
 pink one for mouth, but a statuette articulated, 
 perhaps, by Eros, and costumed, certainly, by 
 the Rue de la Paix though a shade less artis 
 tically than Lady Silverstairs, who always 
 seemed to have just issued from some paradise 
 inhabited solely by poet-modistes, and who, in 
 addition, possessed what Mme. de Fresnoy 
 lacked, a face delicately and rarely patri 
 cian. 
 
 Adjacently was her sister, Aurelia, a girl 
 with a face like an opening rose, and a frock 
 of such astonishing simplicity that it looked 
 both virginal and ruinous. This young person 
 had the loveliest eyes imaginable. In them 
 and about an uncommonly bewitching mouth 
 was an expression quite ideally ingenue which, 
 when least expected, it amused her to trans 
 form into one of extreme effrontery. 
 
 On one side of her was Lord Buttercups, an 
 English youth, small, snubnosed, stupid. On 
 the other lounged a Roman, Prince Farnese, a 
 remarkably fine-looking pauper. 
 
30 THE MONSTER 
 
 Turning from the girl s sister to the Turk, 
 the young baroness called: 
 
 "Here, Musty, come and make love to us." 
 
 The Asiatic was about to abandon Mme. de 
 Joyeuse, when doors at the farther end of the 
 room were thrown open, and the duchess put 
 a hand on his arm. 
 
 At table, Tempest, who had taken Leilah 
 Barouffska out, found his seat indicated beside 
 her. At his left was Mme. de Fresnoy, whom 
 he detested. He turned to the American. At 
 the moment some preoccupation, a nostalgia or 
 a regret, contracted the angle of her mouth. 
 The contraction gave her the expression which 
 those display who have deeply suffered either 
 from some long malady or from some perilous 
 constraint. 
 
 Mechanically, Tempest considered a dish 
 which a footman, his hands gloved in silk, 
 was presenting. When he again turned to the 
 American, it was as though a curtain had fall 
 en or risen. Her face had lighted, and it was 
 with an entirely worldly air that she put be 
 fore him this unworldly question : 
 
 "Do you believe in fate?" 
 
 Tempest laughed. "Not on an empty 
 stomach. I believe then in nothing but vir 
 tue." 
 
 Leilah put down her spoon. "It seems to 
 
THE MONSTER 31 
 
 me that our lives are sketched in advance. It 
 may be that we have the power to amplify in 
 cidents or to curtail them, but the events them 
 selves remain unchanged. They are there in 
 our paths awaiting us. Though why they are 
 there- 
 
 As was usual with her, she spoke with little 
 pauses, in a voice that caressed the ear. Now 
 she stopped and raised the spoon, in which was 
 almond soup. 
 
 Tempest took a sip of Madeira. "A pal of 
 mine, a chap I never met for a number of 
 reasons, though particularly, I suppose, be 
 cause he died two thousand years ago, well, he 
 told me that we should wish things to be as 
 they are. I have no quarrel with fate. But 
 if you have, or do have 
 
 A maitre d hotel, after presenting a carp 
 that had been arranged as though swimming 
 in saffron, was supervising its service. 
 
 "Padapoulos," exclaimed the young Baron- 
 ne de Fresnoy, whom the sight of the fish 
 had, perhaps, excited, u Padapoulos told me 
 that he dined best on an orchid soup, a mousse 
 of aubergine, and the maxims of Confucius." 
 
 "Padapoulos," the legate of the Sublime 
 Porte gravely commented, "is a poet, and a 
 Greek. Add those two things together, and 
 you get you get 
 
THE MONSTER 
 
 "Nothing to eat!" the young baroness, with 
 an explosion of little laughs, threw at him. 
 " Musty !" she cried. "Whom were you with at 
 the Varietes last night? I saw you. Yes, I 
 did. Oh, Musty, who would have thought 
 that you would be unfaithful to me!" 
 
 "These Roumis!" the Turk mentally ex 
 claimed. "If a wife of mine talked in that 
 way I would have her impaled." 
 
 Beyond, across an opulent bosom, de Joy- 
 euse and Silverstairs were talking sport. They 
 delighted in things that men have always 
 loved, the pursuit of prey, the joy of killing, 
 the murderous serenity of the woods. 
 
 Farther up was Aurelia. As before, she had 
 Buttercups on one side, Farnese on the other. 
 She poked at the former. 
 
 "That horrid de Fresnoy woman is trying to 
 flirt with you, Parsnips. Now, don t deny it. 
 I don t blame her. You are too good-looking. 
 When we are married if we ever are I ll 
 make you wear a veil. You shaVt go out 
 except in a closed carriage. Yes, and with 
 some big, fat, strapping woman to look after 
 you. 
 
 Beatifically the youth considered her. 
 "Couldn t you do that?" 
 
 Delicately Aureiia raised a fork. "I shall 
 have my own affairs to attend to." For a sec- 
 
THE MONSTER 33 
 
 ond she nibbled. "I have a few on my hands 
 
 as it is." 
 
 Buttercups stabbed at his plate. "I, too, 
 may have business of my own." 
 
 "Business! Business!" The girl repeated. 
 "You are so commercial just like all the no 
 bility. If you were not a peer you would be 
 mistaken for one. It s quite painful." 
 
 "That may b-be," Buttercups spluttered. 
 "But this idea of yours of going on the stage is 
 quite as p-painful to me." 
 
 He hesitated, then, as though uttering a 
 great moral truth, threw out: 
 
 "It s so dreadful to have your name in the 
 papers!" 
 
 "And still more dreadful not to!" the girl 
 threw back. She turned to Farnese. "You 
 do nothing but eat!" 
 
 With large, melancholy, inconstant eyes the 
 Italian looked at her. "It is my one consola 
 tion since you became engaged to that imbe 
 cile." 
 
 Aurelia pecked at her food. "One always 
 feels quite safe with an imbecile, and that is so 
 restful. Try it and see." 
 
 "I d like to try it with you." 
 
 Aurelia put down her fork. "Am I your 
 idea of an imbecile? You are flattering, if 
 
 insincere." 
 
34 THE MONSTER 
 
 Again the Roman covered her with his 
 eyes. "It is rather difficult to be the one and 
 not the other. But I am perfectly sincere 
 in saying that you are my idea of per 
 fection." 
 
 "Thanks, but, then, you are not mine." 
 
 "And might one ask what yours is?" 
 
 Dreamily, with an air of innocence that was 
 infinite, Aurelia looked at him. "You will 
 think it childish of me, perhaps, but, like all 
 young girls like all young and inexperienced 
 girls I have an ideal. A mere maiden s fancy, 
 no doubt, and yet one which I cherish so. It 
 is a vision which at times I have of a blind 
 man, a deaf mute, a divine creature, invalid 
 and octogenarian, who would not know what I 
 did and would not care." 
 
 Pausing, she dropped her eyes and sadly 
 shook her head. "You will tell me that he 
 don t exist." 
 
 "He might be manufactured," Farnese 
 cheerfully replied. 
 
 Then he, too, paused, drank of the wine be 
 fore him, and, perhaps stimulated by it, whis 
 pered: 
 
 "Believe me, I feel as though I could cut 
 my throat for you." 
 
 Maliciously Aurelia looked up. "When a 
 man does not feel that way he has no feeling at 
 
THE MONSTER 35 
 
 all. One might even say that he is quite heart 
 less." 
 
 Across the table, Tempest, turning again to 
 Leilah, said: "Monsieur Barouffski is not 
 here to-night." 
 
 At the remark, instantly in her face its for 
 mer expression of constraint appeared. 
 
 "No, he is to join us later." 
 
 At the other end, where the duchess sat, 
 everybody was laughing. The lady had been 
 giving an account of a recent bankruptcy, that 
 of Lord Auld Reekie. 
 
 "Heavens!" Violet Silverstairs exclaimed. 
 "What will become of Bobbles!" 
 
 Bobbles was Lady Auld Reekie, a fair 
 young craft of light timber and many sails. 
 
 Camille de Joyeuse, summoning her dili 
 gent smile, replied: "She will go into the 
 hands of a receiver." 
 
 Another jest followed, and presently, in 
 the contagion of it almost the entire table 
 joined. 
 
 The delicately toxic fare, the slightly emo 
 tionalising wines, loosened tongues, robbing 
 them of discretion, and, before the servants, as 
 though the latter were deaf and dumb, hosts 
 and guests revealed their naked minds. 
 
 "It is rotten to talk in that way before these 
 men," Tempest exclaimed. "They get their 
 
36 THE MONSTER 
 
 wages with lessons in anarchy thrown in. It s 
 too much." 
 
 "I had not heard," Leilah replied. "I was 
 thinking of that friend of yours whom you 
 never met." 
 
 Tempest laughed. u The one who said we 
 should wish things to be as they are? Ah, 
 well! I am afraid I am not up to that yet." 
 
 "Nor I. But who was he, if one may ask? 
 Not Aristotle?" 
 
 "No, but, by the way, do you know whom 
 Aristotle is supposed to be, or rather to have 
 become? Herbert Spencer! An occultist 
 told me. He told me also such a curious story. 
 You have heard, have you not, of Apollonius 
 of Tyana? Then you may remember it is said 
 of him that he healed the sick, raised the dead, 
 knew all things save the caresses of women, 
 and spoke every language including that of 
 colours. Well, the occultist told me that Jesus 
 was a rabbi who surrendered his entity to the 
 Christ, and afterward reappeared here as 
 Apollonius. He said, too, that he was not 
 crucified. Crucifixion, you know, is merely 
 the symbol of initiation." 
 
 "And whom did he say was the Christ?" 
 
 "An envoy from a higher sphere." 
 
 Leilah inclined her head. "Yes, and there 
 
THE MONSTER 37 
 
 have, I believe, been others. From zeniths or 
 from nadirs unknown to us, from planes, let us 
 say, where all beatitudes are as usual as all 
 shames are common here, spirits commissioned 
 to regenerate the hearts of man pass into the 
 slums of space. Confident, with a crown of 
 light they come, only to return with one of 
 thorns." 
 
 Tempest turned squarely in his chair. "That 
 is a singularly beautiful idea!" 
 
 Again Leilah inclined her head. "It is 
 beautiful. It is beautiful to think that earth 
 ward from some chromatic star the soul of 
 Krishna may have sunk. But the idea is not 
 mine. I found it in the Vidya." 
 
 This last statement was lost. Mme. de 
 Fresnoy was insisting on Tempest s attention. 
 Meanwhile a cygnet, its plumage replaced, a 
 pond lily in its ochre beak, had been presented, 
 carved and served. A salad, known as Half- 
 Mourning, a composition of artichoke hearts 
 and Piedmontese truffles, had departed with it. 
 Now sweets had come, pastry light as a caress, 
 volatile as an essence, that pastry of which the 
 art is known only to the Oriental and the oc 
 casional cordon bleu. 
 
 Devoutly, with an air of invoking the 
 Prophet, the Turk was absorbing it. 
 
 The young Baronne de Fresnoy, abandon- 
 
38 THE MONSTER 
 
 ing Tempest, looked at him. With a wicked 
 glitter in her big blue eyes she called: 
 
 "Musty! Are you thinking of me?" 
 
 The pasha was framing a reply, a reply per 
 haps rather bald, when Camille de Joyeuse 
 also addressed him. Presently she stood up. 
 The others imitated her. The gayeties of the 
 table were abandoned for the brilliance of the 
 salons beyond. 
 
 Tempest, who had accompanied Leilah Bar- 
 ouffska said, as she seated herself: 
 
 "Are you to remain in Paris?" 
 
 Before answering, she looked up at him, for 
 he was standing. "Who can tell what one will 
 do? But I fancy so. We have taken a house 
 in the rue de la Pompe." 
 
 "In the rue de la Pompe!" Tempest ex 
 claimed. "That is where I live." He smiled. 
 The fact that they were neighbours seemed to 
 constitute a bond. "Whereabouts in the rue 
 de la Pompe?" 
 
 "Next to the church." 
 
 "Do you find it convenient?" 
 
 A servant announced: 
 
 "Monsieur and madame Spencer-Poole!" 
 
 "You mean," Leilah replied, "am I a Cath 
 olic? No, I am an Episcopalian. But my 
 views, I fear, are not orthodox. I have got 
 so far that I believe fully in the Vidya." 
 
THE MONSTER 39 
 
 She had cited the book at the dinner table 
 but, at the time, distracted by Marie de Fres- 
 noy, Tempest had not heard ; now he exclaim 
 ed at it. 
 
 "The Vidya! Of all things! Why not the 
 Upanishads?" 
 
 A servant announced: 
 
 "Madame la marquise de Charleroi!" 
 
 Leilah made a little gesture. "The Upan 
 ishads, too. I have great faith in them also. 
 Their conceptions seem to me the most per 
 fect that the human mind has evolved, that is, 
 if it were a human mind that evolved 
 them." 
 
 A servant announced: 
 
 "Madame la princesse Orlonna!" 
 
 "What particularly impressed you in 
 them?" Tempest asked. 
 
 "The demonstration that life is a laboratory 
 in which the strength of the soul is tried." 
 
 "And in the Vidya?" 
 
 "The fact that selfishness is the root of evil. 
 That impressed me very much, primarily I 
 suppose because it is true, but chiefly I think 
 because I had not realized it before." 
 
 Tempest nodded. Never had he heard a 
 mondaine cite the Upanishads. In no drawing 
 room had he ever heard the Vidya mentioned. 
 In his life he had not dreamed of having a 
 
40 THE MONSTER 
 
 digest of each produced in an atmosphere drip 
 ping with frivolities. As he nodded he re 
 considered this woman. From the first he had 
 realized that she differed from the ordinary 
 society type. Now he saw that she belonged to 
 a superior world. 
 
 "Do you not admire them, too?" Leilah, 
 who had also been considering him, inquired. 
 
 Tempest adjusted his monocle. "You see, 
 you know, the Self, the All-Self, the One, the 
 oneness of self with everything, the oneness 
 of all things with One, these minor motifs of 
 theirs I may admire but I do not grasp. On 
 the contrary, there is a certain voluminous 
 complexity about them that makes me gasp. 
 None the less they advance certain ideas which, 
 while curious to the few and to the many ab 
 surd, are yet so mathematically evident; the 
 fact for instance 
 
 A servant announced : 
 
 "His Highness monseigneur le prince Paul 
 de Montebianco!" 
 
 "Monsieur Harris!" 
 
 The salons were becoming filled. The floor 
 was swept by trains brief but brilliant. There 
 was a multiplication of black coats, a renewed 
 animation, a mounting murmur in which oc 
 casionally the name of a new arrival was lost 
 
 The servant announced : 
 
THE MONSTER 41 
 
 "Monsieur le vicomte and madame la vi- 
 comtesse de Helley-Quetgen!" 
 
 "Madame la princesse Zubaroff ! 
 
 "Monsieur d Arcy!" 
 
 "Monsieur le comte Barouffski!" 
 
 The last of these, a large man, very fair, 
 with grey-green eyes, had a studied manner 
 which, however, his voice relieved. As he 
 advanced and addressed Mme. de Joyeuse, it 
 sounded supple and silken, as indeed most 
 Slav voices do. 
 
 Already groups had formed. The corner 
 in which Tempest stood before Leilah de 
 veloped another. The Spencer-Pooles ap 
 proached. With them was d Arcy, a young 
 man abominably good looking, famous for the 
 prodigious variety of his affairs. 
 
 Tempest who had continued talking, who 
 had even been expounding and who now felt 
 that he had been holding forth, moved on. 
 He wanted to smoke and being an habitue of 
 the household, he knew where the smoking 
 room was. 
 
 There, before an open fire, his hands behind 
 his back, in that after-dinner attitude which 
 some men assume, M. de Joyeuse stood. He 
 was telling of a stag hunt that had been held 
 at Monplaisir, his estate. 
 
 The duke was not an impressionist, his des- 
 
42 THE MONSTER 
 
 cription lacked colour. But de Fresnoy, who 
 had been present, resaw it all; the sheen of the 
 horses, the green of the whippers-in, the pink 
 coats of the sportsmen, the blue dolmans of 
 the officers that had ridden over from a garri 
 son near by, the verdure of the forest s edge, 
 the view, the scramble, the run, the quarry, the 
 hallali of the huntsman, the leaping hounds, 
 the fastidious ceremonial of the death and the 
 sky of pale silk which draped with faint gold 
 the magnificent brutality of the scene. 
 
 "It was just my luck to have missed it," 
 Silverstairs threw in. 
 
 De Joyeuse turned to him. "We count on 
 you next autumn. And on you also, mon 
 vieux," he added to Tempest who had ap 
 proached. 
 
 Tempest nodded. He was lighting a cigar. 
 The operation concluded, he drew a chair be 
 side Silverstairs. "Now tell me all about 
 Madame B." 
 
 Silverstairs eyed him quizzingly. "She in 
 terests you?" 
 
 "Enormously." 
 
 "Then look out for Barouffski whom she 
 interests still more." 
 
 Tempest shrugged his shoulders. "Was it 
 her interest in Number One or Number One s 
 interest in her that declined?" 
 
THE MONSTER 43 
 
 "You mean Verplank?" 
 
 "I suppose I do. Anyway I mean her first 
 husband. Why were they divorced?" 
 
 "Why? But my dear Tempest, divorce in 
 the States is what racing is with us, a national 
 amusement. Everybody takes a hand in it." 
 
 "The right or the left?" 
 
 "Both I fancy. Though in the case of 
 Madame B. I have an idea that the right 
 turned out to be wrong." 
 
 Tempest flicked the ashes from his cigar. "I 
 may compliment you, Silverstairs. You have 
 a manner of expressing yourself which is high 
 ly cryptic. But now, to an every day sort of 
 chap like myself, would you mind being less 
 abstruse?" 
 
 "I should feel sordid if I refused. Ver 
 plank is a very good sort, whereas this Ba- 
 rouffski is a rotter." 
 
 Tempest bowed. "Thank you for descend 
 ing to my level. The long and short of it is 
 that she has made a mess of it. Well, most 
 people do. I don t wonder now that over the 
 soup she talked about fate." 
 
 "Oh, as for that, after certain experiences of 
 my own, with which, pray do not be alarmed, 
 I have no intention of boring you, I have 
 stopped wondering at anything at all." 
 
 "Silverstairs, in ceasing to be cryptic, do 
 
44 THE MONSTER 
 
 not become Spartan. My cousin told me that 
 Joyeuse hunted with this, with What s-his- 
 name, with er 
 
 "With Verplank?" 
 
 "Yes, that he had hunted with him in the 
 States. And that reminds me. What have 
 you decided about that horse?" 
 
 Silverstairs pulled at his straw-coloured 
 moustache. "I ll let you know to-morrow. 
 When are you to be at home?" 
 
 "Any time after two." 
 
 Silverstairs nodded. "Very good, I will drop 
 in on you." 
 
 From beyond, blue and vibrant, came the 
 upper notes of a violin. In the now crowded 
 salons a Roumanian, the rage of the season, 
 a youth, very pale, with melancholy eyes, 
 flowing hair and the waist of a girl, was execut 
 ing a fantasy of his own. 
 
 De Joyeuse flicked a speck from his sleeve, 
 threw back his noble and empty head, gave a 
 circular look of inquiry, a little gesture of in 
 vitation, and accompanied by his friends, 
 sauntered to the rooms without. 
 
 There, Barouffski after saluting Mme. de 
 Joyeuse had engaged her briefly in talk. But 
 her attention had been attracted rather than 
 claimed by the Montebiancan prince, a young 
 man extremely gentlemanly and equally 
 
THE MONSTER 45 
 
 modest who, with that diffidence which royals 
 and poets share, stood bashfully at her side. 
 
 Barouffski, bowing again, passed on. Dur 
 ing his s.hort and entirely fragmentary con 
 versation with Mme. de Joyeuse, his eyes had 
 rummaged the room. 
 
 Leilah, meanwhile, rising from the sofa 
 where she had been seated, moved with the 
 inflammatory d Arcy into the salon beyond. 
 
 Barouffski would have followed. But the 
 young Baronne de Fresnoy addressed him. 
 Perversely, with sudden glimpses of little 
 teeth and an expression of glee in her piquant 
 face, she asked : 
 
 "Was it you who performed that high act 
 of gallantry at Longchamps to-day?" 
 
 "Was it I who did what?" Barouffski sur- 
 prisedly exclaimed. 
 
 "What was it?" asked Aurelia, who with 
 Buttercups in tow, had approached. 
 
 But Mme. de Fresnoy waved at her. "Go 
 away my dear, it is not for an ingenue." 
 
 "Ah then, but you see," Aurelia indolently 
 interjected, "I am tired of being an ingenue. 
 An ingenue is supposed to be in a state of con 
 stant surprise and that is so exhausting." 
 
 None the less, with Buttercups still in tow 
 she betook herself to a corner where she was 
 promptly joined by Farnese. 
 
46 THE MONSTER 
 
 Then at once to Barouffski, to Mustim 
 Pasha, to the Helley-Quetgens, to others that 
 stood about, the young baroness related a 
 morsel of gossip, the report of which had been 
 brought her but a moment before, a story that 
 had one of the reigning demireps for heroine 
 and for hero a man unidentified by the ba- 
 ronne s informant, the tale of an assault com 
 mitted before all Paris, before all Paris that 
 is, that happened to be at the races that day; 
 an extravaganza in which the heroine, erupt 
 ing suddenly on the pelouse before the Grand 
 Stand, had, with her parasol, struck the hero 
 over the head and had been about to strike 
 him again, when he, pinioning her arms with 
 his own, had to the applause of everybody, pre 
 vented the second assault by kissing her 
 through her veil; after which releasing the 
 lady, he had raised his hat and strolled away. 
 
 "Was it you, Barouffski?" Mme. de Fres- 
 noy, the narrative at an end, inquired. "Was 
 it?" 
 
 "I? Nonsense! Why should you ask?" 
 
 "It would be just like you, you know. Be 
 sides, I hear that the man was tall and good- 
 looking." 
 
 "You are exceedingly complimentary. But 
 the world is peopled with tall, good-looking 
 
 men." 
 
THE MONSTER 47 
 
 "Pas tant que qa," laughed the baroness. 
 "Well, if it was not you, perhaps it was that 
 man who is just coming in." 
 
 Involuntarily Barouffski turned, while a 
 footman bawled: 
 
 "Monsieur Verplank!" 
 
Ill 
 
 It was in circumstances which, if not dra 
 matic, were, at least, uncommon, that Leilah 
 Verplank met Barouffski. 
 
 At Los Angeles, after her flight from 
 Coronado, she caught an express that would 
 have taken her East. Even so, it could not 
 take her from herself, it could not distance 
 memory, it could not annihilate the past. The 
 consciousness of that obsessed her. Each of 
 her thoughts became a separate throb. About 
 her head formed an iron band. Her body 
 ached. She felt hot and ill. She had a sense 
 of thirst, a sense, too, of fear. 
 
 In the compartment where she sat, a 
 stranger came. She hid her face, covering it 
 with her hands. The stranger sidled in be-, 
 tween them, looked her in the eyes, penetrated 
 them, permeated her, shook long shudders 
 through her, shrieked at her: "I am Fright!" 
 
 She cried aloud. No one heard. She got to 
 the door. 
 
 In the section immediately adjoining were 
 her women. Perplexed at the start by her un 
 accountable flight and, since then, alarmed by 
 
50 THE MONSTER 
 
 the abnormal excitability which she had dis 
 played, both, at the sight of her then, rushed to 
 her. 
 
 Salt Lake was the first possible asylum. 
 There, weeks later, Leilah arose from one of 
 those attacks, which, for lack of a better term, 
 has been called brain fever. 
 
 Like fire, fever may consume, it does not 
 necessarily obliterate. The past remained. 
 But in that lassitude which fever leaves, 
 Leilah was able to consider it with a wearied 
 certainty that no immediate effort could be 
 required of her then. 
 
 "Forget," some considerate and subliminal 
 self admonished. "Forget." 
 
 Even in sleep she could not always do that. 
 But though she could not forget the past, she 
 could, she believed, barricade herself against 
 it. The idea was suggested by the local sheet 
 in which she found an item about neighbourly 
 Nevada. The item hung a hammock for her 
 thoughts, rested her mentally, unrolled a 
 carpet for the returning steps of health. 
 
 Verplank, meanwhile, misdirected at Los 
 Angeles, reached San Francisco. Learning 
 there that a party of three women had, that 
 morning, at the last moment, embarked on 
 the Samoa packet; learning also that of these 
 women the central figure projected, or seemed 
 
THE MONSTER 51 
 
 to project, Leilah s silhouette, he wired for 
 his yacht and sailed away in pursuit. But an 
 accident supervening, the packet reached 
 Samoa before him. When Verplank got there 
 the boat was gone. Still in pursuit he started 
 for the austral seas. There, the mistake dis 
 covered, hope for the time abandoned him and 
 he landed in Melbourne, ignorant that the 
 supremely surgical court of Nevada was am 
 putating him from his wife. 
 
 In matters of this solemnity, the Nevada 
 statutes require that one of the parties to the 
 operation shall have resided for six months 
 within the state. But at Carson, the capital, a 
 town that has contrived to superpose the Puri 
 tan aspect of a New England village on the 
 vices of a Malay port, in this city Leilah 
 learned that statutes so severe were not enacted 
 for such as she. 
 
 The information, tolerably consoling, was 
 placed before her by a young Jew who, as she 
 alighted from the train, divined her errand, 
 addressed her with easy Western informality, 
 put a card in her hand, offered his services, 
 telling her as he did so that if she retained him 
 he would have her free in no time, in three 
 months, in less. It was a mere matter of 
 money, he explained, and, what he did not ex 
 plain, a mere matter of perjury as well, the 
 
52 THE MONSTER 
 
 perjury of local oafs ready to swear to what 
 ever they were paid for, ready to testify for 
 instance that they had known anybody for any 
 required length of time. But the Jew in di 
 vining Leilah s errand divined too her loyalty. 
 In speaking of fees, he kept manoeuvres and 
 methods to himself. 
 
 Leilah, repelled yet beguiled, succumbed. 
 The Jew was retained and in a wretched inn 
 her things were unpacked. At once a rain 
 of days began, long, loveless days in which 
 she tried to starve her thoughts into submis 
 sion and bear the cross that had been brought. 
 
 The effort was not very satisfactory. The 
 reason why she should have a cross and why 
 it should be borne had never even to her de 
 vout mind been adequately explained. Hither 
 to she had not required any explanation and 
 not unnaturally perhaps since she had had no 
 cross to bear. The dogma that she in common 
 with the rest of humanity must suffer because 
 of the natural propensities of beings that never 
 were, she had accepted as only such dogmas 
 can be accepted, on faith. But in the dismal 
 solitudes of Carson, faith faded, the dogma 
 seemed absurd. 
 
 Then suddenly that which in her ignorance 
 she took to be chance, supplied a superior view. 
 While waiting in a shop for a slovenly clerk to 
 
THE MONSTER 53 
 
 do up a package, she looked at a shelf on 
 which were some books frayed, bedrabbled, 
 second hand. Among them was a treatise on 
 metallurgy, another on horse-breeding, a 
 string of paper covered novels and the Vidya. 
 
 The title, which conveyed nothing, for that 
 reason attracted. At random she opened the 
 book. A paragraph sprang at her: 
 
 "From debility to strength, from strength to 
 power, from power to glory, from glory to perfec 
 tion, from plane to plane, in an evolution proceeding 
 from the outward to the inward, from the material 
 to the spiritual, from the spiritual to the divine, 
 such is the destiny of the soul." 
 
 Leilah turned a page. Another paragraph 
 leaped out. 
 
 "There is not an accident in our lives, not a 
 sorrow, a misfortune, a catastrophe, a happiness that 
 is not due to our own conduct in this existence 
 or in a previous one. In accordance with the 
 nature of our deeds there are thrown about us the 
 tentacles of pain or the arms of joy." 
 
 But the slovenly clerk was approaching. 
 Leilah closed the book, asked the price, paid 
 for it, paid for the other purchase and went 
 back to the inn where during the rest of the day 
 she read the drama of the soul, the story of its 
 emanation from the ineffable, of its surrender 
 
54 THE MONSTER 
 
 to desire, of its fall into matter, of its birth and 
 rebirth in the mansions of life which are death, 
 of the persistence there of its illusory joys, of 
 the recurrences of its unenlightening trials, 
 until, at last, some memory returning of what 
 it had been when it was other than what it had 
 become, it learns at last to conquer desire and 
 accomplish its own release. 
 
 The drama, however old, was new to Lei- 
 lah, and at first not very clear. But beneath 
 it was a chain of causality, the demonstration 
 that this life is the sum of many others, the 
 harvest after the sowing, and, joined to the 
 demonstration were corollaries and deductions 
 which showed that sorrow, when rightly 
 viewed, is not a cross but a gift, a boon granted 
 to the privileged. 
 
 It was a little before she mastered the idea. 
 When she had, the novelty of it impressed. At 
 the back of the Vidya was a list of rngn^te 
 works. She wired to San Francisco for them. 
 Shortly they came, and in their companionship 
 the rain of long, loveless days fell by. 
 
 Ultimately she sat on a high chair. An oaf 
 asked her questions. Others testified. On the 
 morrow a paper was brought her. It had on it 
 a large seal, the picture of a big building, 
 words that were engrossed, others in script. 
 
 She was free. 
 
THE MONSTER 55 
 
 The knowledge brought no exultation. It 
 was a hostage to joy, one of the many that she 
 was to give. 
 
 Meanwhile she had written to Violet Sil- 
 verstairs telling her that she had separated 
 from Verplank, and asking might she join her. 
 The answer, which was cabled, told her to 
 come. That day she started. 
 
 The town house of the Earls of Silverstairs 
 is in Belgrave Square. There are worse places. 
 But to the American countess the discomforts 
 of the residence were not to be endured. After 
 one season she declined to put up with them. 
 Pending an entire modernisation of the house, 
 she and Silverstairs migrated to Paris, where 
 they took an apartment, and a very charming 
 one, in the rue Francois Premier. 
 
 In this apartment Leilah was made to feel 
 that she was with friends, one of whom, how 
 ever, could not get over the fact that she could 
 not get at the facts in the matter. 
 
 "See here, Leilah," Violet Silverstairs said 
 aggrievedly, not once, but fifty times, "it is 
 downright mean of you to keep me in the dark. 
 What was it that he did? Tell me." 
 
 The lady had known Verplank, as she had 
 known Leilah, ever since she had known any 
 body. They had grown up together. Though 
 not related by blood, they were by choice, 
 
56 THE MONSTER 
 
 which is sometimes thicker. In the circum 
 stances it was perhaps but natural that she 
 should call it mean, perhaps but human that 
 she should be aggrieved. 
 
 The puzzle of the situation she put before 
 her husband. 
 
 "What do you suppose it can be?" she asked. 
 
 But Silverstairs had no surmises to hazard. 
 
 "It must be something quite too dreadful," 
 Violet continued. "One of those things, don t 
 you know, that are said to change your whole 
 life. She just sits about and reads queer 
 books." 
 
 "Queer books!" Silverstairs surprisedly re 
 peated. 
 
 "Yes, books that tell of planes and rounds 
 and cycles and chains of lives and rebirths and 
 redeaths. She believes in them, too. She told 
 me so." 
 
 Silverstairs tugged at his moustache. "She 
 might as well believe in the music of the 
 spheres." 
 
 Violet looked at her lord. She loved him 
 as certain delicately organized women do love 
 men who are merely robust. But her affec 
 tion did not warp her judgment. She know 
 that within his splendid physique was a spirit, 
 valiant perhaps, but obtuse. 
 
 "Well, why not?" she retorted. "Let a mi- 
 
THE MONSTER 57 
 
 crophone receive from a steel plate the reflec 
 tion of a star, and sounds are emitted, tones pe 
 culiar to the star itself. Those of the sun are 
 blatant. Those of Arcturus are like little bells. 
 Those of Sirius are as sobs from a zither. 
 Everybody knows that. Why shouldn t she 
 believe in the music of the spheres?" 
 
 "Gammon!" cried this man who at Eton and 
 Christ Church had abundantly acquired every 
 thing which is most useless. "I never heard 
 such rot." 
 
 "I dare say, but that is not the point. The 
 point is that it is no joke to her." 
 
 Nor was it. Leilah at first refused to go 
 anywhere, to see any one, to be present when 
 there were guests. But Violet, declaring that 
 she would have no moping in her diggings, 
 forced her. It was very reluctantly that Leilah 
 acceded. After a while she did so as a matter 
 of course. Finally, as was inevitable, she ac 
 cepted invitations elsewhere. 
 
 It was what Violet had aimed at, though not 
 at all at the result. Yet that, Leilah, who had 
 come to believe in karma, afterward regarded 
 as fate. 
 
 Presently, it so fell about that at one dinner 
 she had at her left a man whom she did not 
 know, whose name she had not caught and 
 with whom, during the preliminary courses, 
 
58 THE MONSTER 
 
 she had not exchanged a word. As the dinner 
 progressed, cigarettes were served. Twice she 
 refused them. The second time, as she turned 
 again to the man at her right, she heard a cry, 
 across the table she saw a face, the eyes star 
 ing, the features elongated. At once there was 
 an uproar, behind her there was a crash, she 
 was torn bodily from her chair, a piece of ta 
 pestry had been thrown about her and in it 
 she was rolled on the floor by the man whom 
 she did not know. 
 
 Probably, at no dinner, anywhere, had a 
 woman suffered such indignities. She was so 
 telling herself when she realised, as she imme 
 diately did realise, that the man and others 
 who had joined him, were but occupied in 
 saving her life. Her dress had caught fire 
 and it was in this flaming fashion, hurled on 
 the floor by a stranger and there brutalised by 
 him, that she made the acquaintance of Count 
 Kasimierz BaroufTski. 
 
 The sack of her costume forced her to return 
 to the rue Frangois Premier, where at five 
 o clock the next day, Barouffski appeared. He 
 appeared the day following, the day after, the 
 day after that. 
 
 These attentions Violet Silverstairs viewed 
 with suspicion. 
 
 "I verily believe," she said to Leilah, "that 
 
THE MONSTER 59 
 
 it was that polecat who set you on fire, and if he 
 did no one can convince me that he did not 
 do it on purpose." 
 
 " Violet!" 
 
 "That s right, fly at me. I thought you 
 would. Are you going to take him?" 
 
 In an elaborate drawing room in the rue 
 Francois Premier the two women were having 
 tea. Leilah, without replying, raised her cup. 
 
 Violet cocked an eye at her. "One would 
 have thought that you had had enough of 
 matrimony. But perhaps your intentions are 
 not honourable." 
 
 Leilah reddened. "Violet!" she again ex 
 claimed. 
 
 "My dear," Lady Silverstairs resumed, "re 
 member that you are no longer in the States. 
 England is the most hypocritical country in 
 Europe. America is the most hypocritical 
 country in the world. That is what we call 
 progress. But France being old-fashioned 
 and behind the times is not censorious. I 
 admit, I used to be. But I am not censorious 
 any longer. I am not because any such etat 
 d ame while advanced is not becoming. 
 
 "I am an old married woman," added the 
 lady who was not twenty-two. "But if I were 
 not, if for instance I were like you, free, inde 
 pendent and not a fright, and I had to choose 
 
60 THE MONSTER 
 
 between love and matrimony, it would not take 
 me a moment to decide. Not one." 
 
 Leilah put down her cup. "Of course it 
 would not. If you had it to do again you 
 would marry Silverstairs and you would 
 marry for love. That is over for me, over for 
 ever." 
 
 Narrowly, out of a corner of an eye, Violet 
 considered her. "He was such a brute, was 
 he?" 
 
 "Who? Gulian, do you mean?" 
 
 "I suppose so. There has been no other, 
 has there?" 
 
 "Violet!" 
 
 It was at this juncture, for the fiftieth time, 
 that Lady Silverstairs exclaimed: 
 
 "It is downright mean of you to keep me 
 in the dark. What was it that happened? 
 Make a soiled breast of it. Do !" 
 
 For the fiftieth time Leilah protested: 
 
 "Don t ask me. Don t. He knows and 
 that is enough. As for me I am trying to 
 forget." 
 
 "And you think Barouffski will help you. 
 But has it ever occurred to you that if you 
 were not very rich he might lack the incen 
 tive?" 
 
 To this Leilah assented. "He said he is 
 poor." 
 
THE MONSTER 61 
 
 "At least he does not exaggerate. I told 
 Silverstairs that he was after you for your 
 money and he said that was what he married 
 me for. So he did and I married him for his 
 title. It was a fair bargain. Now if we had 
 it to do over I would say I would say well, 
 I would say that it is better to have loved your 
 husband than never to have loved at all. But 
 six months hence, if you had it to do over, do 
 you think you could say as much or as little?" 
 
 "At least I could say that I did not marry 
 for a title." 
 
 "Well, hardly, particularly a Polish one, 
 though I daresay even that might be useful in 
 the servants hall. But what could you say you 
 married for? It isn t love?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Nor position?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then what on earth- 
 
 "Violet, how hard you make it for me. 
 Can t you see that if I do, it will be for pro 
 tection?" 
 
 "For protection! Merciful fathers! You 
 talk like a chorus girl! Protection against 
 what? Against whom? Verplank?" 
 
 "No." Leilah choking down something in 
 her throat, replied: "Against myself." 
 
 "I don t understand you," said Violet 
 
62 THE MONSTER 
 
 slowly. But she did or thought she did, and 
 that night told Silverstairs that Leilah was still 
 in love with her ex. 
 
 It was in these circumstances that Leilah 
 listened to the Count Kasimierz Barouffski, 
 who, in telling her that he was poor, omitted to 
 add that he had resources. These were women 
 and cards. It is a business like another. But 
 even to his nearest friends, to Tyszkiewicz, a 
 compatriot, and Palencia, a Corsican, he did 
 not boast of it. He had therefore some sense 
 of shame, but not of honour, though with 
 humour he was supplied. A man with some 
 sense of humour and no sense of honour may 
 go far. Barouffski intended to. After his 
 volcanic introduction to Leilah, he beheldMn 
 her not the woman but the opportunity which 
 chance had sent his way. To grasp that he 
 displayed every art of which the Slav is cap 
 able. He did more. He impressed her not 
 with the nobility of his name but of his nature. 
 He was a good actor and though at first un 
 successful he was not discouraged. It was an 
 axiom of his that among the dice of destin^ 
 there is always a golden six. It waspxrolrTadV 
 with him also that it is not tossed at onceT 
 To deserve it, one must wait. Barouffski 
 waited. Presently fate shook the box before 
 him. The golden six was his. 
 
THE MONSTER 63 
 
 But not the box. 
 
 To Leilah the mere idea of matrimony 
 was abhorrent. Yet she could not stop indefi 
 nitely with the Silverstairs. She had no rela 
 tives with whom she could reside. She felt 
 that it would be awkward and perhaps equivo 
 cal, for her to have an establishmenfrrf-ker 
 own. But these considerations were minor be 
 side another a sense, haunting and constant, 
 that the excursion to Nevada had been inade 
 quate, that the past needed a surer barri 
 cade. 
 
 It was not a husband that she wanted. Peace 
 and security were the flesh-pots that she craved. 
 These BaroufTski offered or seemed to and 
 it was these finally and these only that she 
 agreed to accept. 
 
 To the implied stipulation Barouffski con 
 sented with an air of high chivalry but also 
 with an ambiguous smile. Given the golden 
 six of her income, the box was a detail to him, 
 and it was in these circumstances that over the 
 perhaps insecurely locked door of her past, 
 this mask mounted guard. 
 
 The news of the engagement, filtering 
 through the press, was cabled to the States, to 
 gether with the fact that Leilah was then stop 
 ping in the rue Frangois Premier with Lady 
 Silverstairs, whose portrait, in addition to 
 
64 THE MONSTER 
 
 bogus presentments of the engaged couple, 
 were printed in the minor sheets that circulate 
 from Xew York to San Francisco. 
 
 On arriving from Australia at the latter city, 
 Verplank happened on a belated copy. Since 
 he had gone from Coronado, this, the first 
 news of his wife, was her engagement to an 
 other man. 
 
 In his amazement his thoughts stuttered. 
 Into his mind entered stretches of night. He 
 looked at the sheet without seeing it. But the 
 paragraph and the purport of it, already pho 
 tographed on the films of the brain, were 
 prompting him unconsciously, and it was with 
 out really knowing what he was saying that he 
 exclaimed: 
 
 "Leilah! My wife! In Paris! Engaged 
 to another man!" 
 
 The names, the words, the meaning of 
 them all, beat on his brain like blows of a 
 hammer. 
 
 "Leilah! My wife! In Paris! Engaged!" 
 
 Again he looked at the sheet. "What a 
 damned lie!" he ragingly cried, and, rumpling 
 the paper, threw it from him. 
 
 But now, the names, the words, the meaning 
 of them all, well beaten into him, readjusted 
 themselves, presenting a picture perfectly de 
 fined and possibly real. 
 
THE MONSTER 65 
 
 He stooped, gathered the paper, smoothed 
 it, read the account again. 
 
 After all, he reflected, it might be that she 
 was in Paris and, if there, it was natural that 
 she would be with Violet Silverstairs. These 
 two items were, therefore, not improbably cor 
 rect. That view reached, the deduction fol 
 lowed : If they are correct, the other may be. 
 Yet, in that case, he argued, obviously she must 
 think me dead. On the heels of this second de 
 duction an impression trod the ease and dis 
 patch with which she had become consoled. 
 
 Enraged at once, angered already by what 
 he had taken for a lie and thenjnfuriated by 
 what he took for truth, th&^[ntjti0r incidents 
 that had this supreme outrage for climax, 
 leaped at him. At the onslaught the primitive 
 passions flared, and it was with the impulse of 
 the homicide that he determined to seek and 
 ovenvhelm this w r oman who^acce^ted men and 
 matters with such entirexs^ans-g^jus? 
 
 On the morrow he left for New York. Be 
 fore going he sent a cablegram to the address 
 which the paper had supplied: 
 
 Am just apprised of the studied insult of 
 your engagement to some foreign cad. Leav 
 ing for Paris at once. 
 
 As he signed it, deeply, beneath the breath, 
 he swore. "That will show her," he added. 
 
66 THE MONSTER 
 
 It so happened that it showed her nothing. 
 Leilah was not then in the rue Frangois 
 Premier, but in the rue de la Pompe, where 
 the message followed, but only to be received 
 by Barouffski, who read it with a curious 
 smile. 
 
 Already he hated Verplank, who had not 
 yet acquired a hatred for him. But though 
 that hatred had not been acquired, it devel 
 oped tumultuously when, on arriving in New 
 York, he learned that not merely the report of 
 the engagement was true, but that the engage 
 ment had since resulted in a marriage, which 
 itself had been preceded by a Nevada divorce. 
 
 In comparison to all that had occurred, the 
 divorce seemed at the time almost negligible. 
 It was the crowning infamy of this marriage 
 which, in renewing the primitive passions, 
 aroused in Verplank a determination not 
 merely to seek and overwhelm the woman, but 
 to seek and destroy the man. The marriage, 
 he decided could be but the result of an an 
 terior affair, there was no other explanation of 
 it. The idea that had come to him at Coro- 
 nado, the possibility that she might have left 
 him because informed of some affair of his 
 own and which since then he had examined 
 again and again, fell utterly away. It was not 
 because of errors of his that she had gone, but 
 
THE MONSTER 67 
 
 of her own. Then to his anger 
 at her was added a hatred of Barouffski, whom 
 he had never seen, and who, without having 
 seen Verplank, hated him also, hated him re 
 trospectively and p respectively, hated him be 
 cause clearly Leilah had been his and where 
 women are concerned, all things being possible 
 might be again. 
 
 But though Barouffski hated Verplank ac 
 tively, he hated him vaguely, as one must when 
 one hates the unknown. It was the cablegram 
 which, in supplying the personal element, 
 made the hate concrete. 
 
 "Foreign cad, eh?" he repeated, with a curi 
 ous smile. "Eh bien, nous verrons, we shall 
 
 see." 
 
 Presently the opportunity occurred. For it 
 was in these circumstances, a fortnight after 
 the receipt of the cablegram, that, directed by 
 the young Baronne de Fresnoy, he turned and 
 saw Verplank entering the room where he 
 stood. 
 
IV 
 
 With the unerring instinct of the man of the 
 world, Verplank, on entering the crowded 
 salon, divined immediately, among all the 
 women present, the hostess whom he had never 
 seen. 
 
 As he bent over her hand, the duchess, who 
 had not an idea how he came there, said in her 
 fluted voice : 
 
 "This is really so nice of you. I did not 
 know you were in Paris." 
 
 "Nor did I until this moment," answered 
 Verplank, looking as he spoke into the eyes 
 of his hostess who, after thejmgimperceptible 
 glance with which the gafmd^mifr judges and 
 classifies, was wondering in what manner, this 
 man, with his virile face and impeccable pres 
 ence, had forced Leilah Barouffska to leave 
 him. 
 
 "But," he added, "Monsieur de Joyeuse 
 whom I saw this afternoon told me that you 
 would be at home, and assured me that I 
 might venture to present my homages." 
 
 The duchess displayed her tireless smile. 
 "I am only sorry not to have had them sooner." 
 
70 THE MONSTER 
 
 She paused. Between her smile, the edges of 
 her teeth showed, false but beautiful. "There 
 is Lady Silverstairs trying to get you to look 
 at her, and very well worth looking at she is." 
 
 Camille de Joyeuse turned for a moment 
 to the reticent young prince who in his diffi 
 dent way still lingered at her side. 
 
 Beyond, at the farther end of the room, 
 notes rippled. Standing near a grand piano, 
 the Roumanian with the flowing hair was 
 preluding a fantasy of his own. 
 
 In the hush that succeeded, Verplank moved 
 to where Violet sat. 
 
 Smilingly, without speaking, she gave him 
 her hand and indicated a seat beside her. 
 Then, raising a fan, she whispered : 
 
 "Demon! What have you done? Where 
 do you spring from? How long have you 
 been in Paris?" 
 
 Verplank, seating himself, answered: 
 
 "I got here this morning. Why am I a 
 demon?" 
 
 From behind the fan, Violet asked: 
 
 "What did you do to Leilah? Why did she 
 leave you?" 
 
 Verplank folded his gloved hands. "That 
 is what I am here to find out." 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me that you don t 
 know!" 
 
THE MONSTER 71 
 
 "I have not an idea unless it was because of 
 this Count Thingumagig." 
 
 Violet Silverstairs furled her fan, looked at 
 him, looked away, looked about the room. At 
 one end her husband, accompanied by de 
 Joyeuse, Tempest, de Fresnoy, and the others, 
 had entered. At the further end the Rouma 
 nian dominated. Supported en sounjjoe by 
 an accompanist, he massed sounds and dis 
 persed them, concentrating fuj j gurations of 
 notes from which echoing showers felT7~~Ffes- 
 ently, resuming an abandoned measure, he 
 caressed aj.argo^infinitely sweet, that swooned 
 in the languors of the finale. At once to a 
 murmur of bravos, the applause of gloved 
 hands and a cry of "Bis!" raising violin and 
 bow above his head, he bent double to the 
 duchess, his flowing hair falling like a veil 
 before him. 
 
 "He may play again," said Violet. "I want 
 to talk to you. Let us go into the next 
 
 room." 
 
 As Verplank rose at her bidding, others who 
 had been seated, rose also. Interrupted con 
 versations were more animatedly resumed. A 
 servant announced additional names. The first 
 salon now was thronged. The second, was 
 filled. Verplank and Violet passed on. 
 
 Beyond was a gallery. At the entrance 
 
72 THE MONSTER 
 
 stood a woman, her face averted, talking to a 
 man. As the others approached, she turned. 
 
 At sight of her and of the man, Violet would 
 have turned also. It was too late. 
 
 "Leilah!" Verplank exclaimed. 
 
 For a second, in tragic silence, two beings 
 whom love had joined and fate had separated, 
 stood, staring into each other s eyes. 
 
 For a second only. At once the man inter 
 posed himself between them. 
 
 "Monsieur!" he insolently threw out. "My 
 name is Barouffski." 
 
 With superior tact Lady Silverstairs inter 
 vened. "Good evening, Count. It never oc 
 curred to us that we were interrupting a tete-a- 
 tete." 
 
 She paused. Hostilely the two men were 
 measuring each other. In Verplank s face 
 there was a threat, in Barouffski s there was a 
 jeer, in Leilah s there was an expression of 
 absolute terror. Of the little group Violet 
 alone appeared at ease. 
 
 "Leilah," she added, "don t forget that 
 you are to have luncheon with me to 
 morrow. Good night, my dear. Silverstairs 
 and I will be going soon. Good night, 
 Barpuffski." 
 
 She smiled, nodded, took Verplank s arm, 
 took him away. But the arm beneath her hand 
 
THE MONSTER 73 
 
 was shaking and she realised that it shook 
 with rage. 
 
 Sympathetically she looked up at him. "I 
 thought they were in the other room and it 
 was just to avoid a thing of this sort that I 
 got you out of it. You won t do anything, 
 will you?" 
 
 Verplank now had got control of himself, 
 his arm no longer shook, and it was the smile 
 of a man of the world, the smile of one to 
 whom nothing is important and much absurd, 
 that he answered: 
 
 "Why, yes; it was very civil of this chap 
 to introduce himself. I shall leave a card on 
 him. Hello! Here s Silverstairs! I wonder 
 if he will introduce himself, too." 
 
 The young earl was advancing, his hand 
 outstretched. "I say! I saw a man march 
 ing off with the missis, but I had no idea it 
 was you. Where are you stopping? Will you 
 dine with us Tuesday?" 
 
 "Yes, do." Violet threw in. "Rue Frangois 
 Premier at eight." 
 
 "I shall be very glad to," Verplank an 
 swered. He turned to Silverstairs. "I am at 
 the Ritz. Stop by there to-morrow noon, 
 won t you, and let me take you somewhere for 
 luncheon?" 
 
 Lady Silverstairs laughed and employing a 
 
74 THE MONSTER 
 
 \4arkjisrxif said: "You don t say turkey to me. 
 There!" she exclaimed as Verplank was about 
 to protest. "I could not anyway." 
 
 From the salon beyond came a woman s 
 voice, clear and rich, rendering, in a lascive 
 contralto, a song of love and passion. 
 
 The Silverstairs and Verplank approached. 
 Meanwhile, from the diva s mouth, notes 
 darted like serpents on fire. In mounting 
 fervour the aria developed, trailing, as it 
 climbed, words such as amore, speranza, morir. 
 A breath of brutality passed. The atmosphere 
 became charged with emanations in which the 
 perfume of women mingled with the desires 
 of men. Still the aria mounted, it coloured 
 the air, projecting, like a magic lantern, visions 
 of delight, imperial and archaic, that ascended 
 in glittering scales. 
 
 Verplank, detaching himself from the Sil 
 verstairs, felt his dumb rage renewed. At the 
 moment he conceived an insane idea of going 
 below, waiting without until Barouffski and 
 Leilah appeared and he saw himself, confront 
 ing the man, tearing the woman from him, 
 carrying her off and making her his own. 
 
 The impulse fell from him. The rage that 
 he felt at the man deflected into rage at this 
 woman who had made his life a vacant house 
 and for what, good God! And why? 
 
THE MONSTER 75 
 
 In a cascade of flowers and flames the song 
 was ending. There was new applause, the 
 discreet approbation of worldly people, easily 
 pleased, as easily bored and with but one sure 
 creed : Not too much of anything. 
 
 Verplank must also have had enough. When 
 presently the Silverstairs looked about for him 
 he had gone. 
 
 Already Violet had summarised the situa 
 tion to her lord. Now, perplexed at Ver- 
 plank s abrupt disappearance, she said: 
 
 "You don t suppose that anything will hap 
 pen, do you?" 
 
 Silverstairs, bored by the entertainment, 
 anxious only to get away where he could have 
 a quiet drink, tugged at his moustache and 
 with unconscious reminiscence answered: 
 
 "I don t know and I don t care. I don t 
 care what happens as long as it doesn t happen 
 
 to me." 
 
"There are too many of us," Verplank, the 
 day following, found himself saying to Silver- 
 stairs. 
 
 The two men were lunching at Voisin s. 
 
 The charming resort which, since the pass 
 ing of Very, of Vefour and the Maison Doree, 
 has become the ultimate refuge of the high 
 gastronomic muse of Savarin and of Brisse 
 was, on this forenoon, filled with its usual 
 clientele: old men with pink cheeks, young 
 women with ravishing hats, cosmopolitan 
 sportsmen, ladies of both worlds, assortments 
 of what Paris calls High Life and pronounces 
 Hig Leaf. 
 
 Without, a fog draped the windows, blurred 
 the movement of the street, transforming it 
 into a cinematograph of misty silhouettes. But 
 within, the brilliant damask, the glittering 
 service, the studied excellence of everything, 
 produced an atmosphere of wealth and ease. 
 
 Silverstairs, after swallowing a glass of 
 Chablis, meditatively lit a cigar. But medita 
 tion was not his forte. The twentieth of his 
 name, he was tall and robust. He had straw- 
 
78 THE MONSTER 
 
 coloured hair, blue eyes, a skin of brick, and 
 an appearance of simple placidity. At the 
 moment he was mentally fondling certain 
 reminiscences of the Isis and certain bouts with 
 bargees there. 
 
 "You know," he said at last, "if I were you I 
 would just march up to him and knock him 
 down." 
 
 Verplank nodded. "I dare say. But not if 
 he had taken your wife." 
 
 The suggestion, penetrating the earl s pla 
 cidity, punctured it. He threw back his head. 
 "By George! If he had, I d kill him." 
 
 "There, you see!" 
 
 Silverstairs puffed at his cigar. His placid 
 ity now was reforming itself. 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "But then in taking 
 yours, he did it after she was divorced. You 
 can t have him out for that." 
 
 "All the same there are one too many of 
 
 us." 
 
 Silverstairs rilled his mouth with smoke. 
 Longly, with an air of considering the situa 
 tion he expelled it. Then he said : 
 
 "It is what I call damned awkward. But 
 what the deuce can you do?" 
 
 "What can I do?" Verplank with an uplift 
 of the chin repeated. "Why, if only for the 
 manner in which he acted last night 
 
THE MONSTER 79 
 
 "I know," Silverstairs interrupted. "The 
 missis told me. He behaved like a fidgety 
 Frenchman. I grant you that. But there were 
 no words, nothing that you could put a finger 
 
 on." 
 
 Through an adjacent door a man strolled in. 
 He had his hat on and in one gloved hand he 
 held a thin umbrella of which the handle was 
 studded with gold nails. With the other hand 
 he smoothed a black moustache. Through a 
 monocle he was surveying the room. He 
 looked careless and cynical. 
 
 Deferentially a maitre d hotel addressed 
 him. Ignoring the man he waved his um 
 brella at Silverstairs. 
 
 Silverstairs waved his hand. He turned to 
 Verplank. "Here s de Fresnoy. He can put 
 us straight. Let s ask him to join us." 
 
 Rising, he greeted the Parisian, invited him 
 to the table, introduced Verplank, speaking as 
 he did so in French, with an accent frankly 
 barbarous which de Fresnoy seemed to enjoy. 
 
 The latter raised his hat to Verplank, con 
 fided it to the maitre d hotel, gave him the 
 umbrella also, while another waiter drew up 
 for him a chair. 
 
 "Thanks," he said in an interval of these 
 operations. "I see you have breakfasted. If 
 you don t mind my eating while you smoke " 
 
80 THE MONSTER 
 
 Seating himself he turned to the waiter, a 
 man short and stout, completely bald, with 
 large dyed whiskers and an air of repressed 
 satisfaction. 
 
 "Listen, Leopold, and note Well what I say. 
 To begin with do not attempt to tell me what 
 you wish me to eat. You have heard? Good! 
 Listen again. A dozen Ostendes, an omelette, a 
 pear. Nothing else. Not a crumb. Yes, some 
 EaudeVals. Allez!" 
 
 Leopold bowed. "Perfectly, monsieur le 
 baron. I shall have the honour of serving 
 monsieur le baron with what he has been good 
 enough to be willing to desire." 
 
 Again the waiter bowed. But behind the 
 \kagmousnesp of his speech a severity had 
 entered, onewhich intimated that in this pre 
 serve of gastronomies such an order was un 
 worthy. 
 
 "These gentlemen?" he added, his eyes mov 
 ing from Verplank to Silverstairs. "Some 
 coffee? A liqueur?" 
 
 But now, in fluent French, Verplank was ad 
 dressing de Fresnoy. "Silverstairs and I have 
 been having an argument. In your quality of 
 Parisian, will you tell us whether a man can 
 have another out for looking impertinently at 
 him?" 
 
 De Fresnoy adjusted his collar, patted his 
 
THE MONSTER 81 
 
 neck-cloth. "But certainly, most assuredly. 
 To look impertinently at a man constitutes an 
 attack on his self esteem, which in itself is an 
 integral part of his moral wealth. To omit to 
 return a man s bow, to neglect to take his 
 proffered hand, to regard him in an offensive 
 manner, are one and all so many assaults on 
 his dignity." 
 
 Verplank, pleased with this view of things, 
 smiled. "Thanks. Mine has been assailed and 
 I was in doubt how to rebuke the aggressor." 
 
 "It is simple as Good day. You have only 
 to select two representatives and get them to 
 put themselves in communication with him. If 
 then he refuses to have friends of his meet 
 yours, or if, afterward, he will neither apolo 
 gise or fight, he is outlawed." 
 
 De Fresnoy, as he spoke, made a gesture, a 
 wide movement of the arm which indicated, or 
 was intended to indicate, the uttermost limits 
 of the world. 
 
 "It is Barouffski," Silverstairs, with some 
 idea that de Fresnoy might be aware of the 
 anterior complication, threw out. 
 
 "Barouffski!" de Fresnoy repeated, his head 
 held appreciatively a little to one side. "In a 
 bout he is very clever. Barring d Arcy, 
 Helley-Quetgen" and myself he was about to 
 add, but throwing the veil he desisted "I 
 
82 THE MONSTER 
 
 don t know his equal. How he is on the field, 
 personally I cannot say. But there, the absence 
 of buttons, the absence of masks, the inevitable 
 emotion, the sight of the other man, the con 
 sciousness of an injury to be maintained or 
 avenged, the consciousness too of the definite 
 character of any thrust you may give and par 
 ticularly of any thrust you may receive, these 
 things have such an effect that often the clever 
 est acts like a fool. On the boards, fencing is 
 an exercise, it is an amusement. On the field, 
 it is another man s blood or yours. Though, 
 after all, one is rarely killed except by one s 
 seconds." 
 
 He turned to Verplank. "You fence? Or 
 is it that you shoot?" 
 
 Verplank leaned back in his chair. "Oh, I 
 suppose I can fire a gun." 
 
 Silverstairs laughed. "I say now! You are 
 too modest by half." He looked at de Fres- 
 noy. "Verplank is one of the crack shots of 
 America." 
 
 De Fresnoy turned again to Verplank. 
 "You should demand pistols then. Barouffski 
 draws well, but at twenty paces he is less sure 
 of himself. Have you selected your seconds?" 
 
 "I suppose I may count on Silverstairs for 
 
 one " 
 
 The young earl nodded. "That s of course, 
 
THE MONSTER 83 
 
 and perhaps you, de Fresnoy, will act with 
 
 me." 
 
 The Parisian smoothed his moustache. 1 T 
 shall be much honoured. In that case, how 
 ever, as necessary preliminary, I shall have 
 to ask to be made acquainted with all the cir 
 cumstances." 
 
 But now Leopold, bearing a dish on which 
 were oysters green as stagnant scum, ap 
 proached and with an air of infinite tenderness, 
 much as though it were a baby, placed it before 
 de Fresnoy. 
 
 Leisurely he began to eat. 
 
 Verplank, who had been looking out of the 
 window, leaned forward. "The circumstances 
 are evangelical in their simplicity. Last even 
 ing I was about to speak to Madame Ba- 
 rouffska when he put himself between us and 
 eyed me in the manner which I have de 
 scribed." 
 
 De Fresnoy, considering him over an oyster, 
 said: 
 
 a You were at the Joyeuses then?" 
 
 Verplank nodded. 
 
 "And there Barouffski objected to your 
 speaking to his wife?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 De Fresnoy swallowed the oyster. "In that 
 case he was guilty not only of a grave offense 
 
84 THE MONSTER 
 
 to you, but to Madame de Joyeuse as well. 
 The duke would be the first to resent it." 
 
 With an idea of making it all very clear, 
 Silverstairs put an oar in: "Madame Barouff- 
 ska, you know, was formerly Madame Ver 
 plank." 
 
 De Fresnoy bent a little. It may be that 
 because of Silverstairs ultra English accent 
 he had not understood. "Pardon?" 
 
 But here Verplank intervened. "This lady 
 had been divorced from me before she mar 
 ried Barouffski." 
 
 De Fresnoy, over another oyster, turned to 
 him again. Yet any surprise he may have ex 
 perienced he was too civil to display. 
 
 "Ah, indeed!" he replied. He looked as 
 though he were about to add something, but 
 refraining, he paused. 
 
 Verplank helped him out. "You are think 
 ing perhaps that there may have been circum 
 stances that rendered further acquaintance be 
 tween us inadmissible. I may assure you that 
 there are none and, without wishing to intrude 
 my private affairs, I may assure you also that 
 to this hour I am unaware why the divorce was 
 obtained. This lady had no grievance of any 
 kind against me and I had none whatever 
 against her." 
 
 Pontificallyym his deepest note, Silverstairs 
 
THE MONSTER 85 
 
 threw out: "In the States they give you a 
 divorce for a Yes or a No." 
 
 "For married people," de Fresnoy remark 
 ed, yet so pleasantly that the sarcasm was lost, 
 "America is the coming country." 
 
 As he spoke, the fat w r aiter, after super 
 vising the removal of the first dish, produced, 
 with the air of a conjurer, another. It was an 
 omelette, golden without, frothy within. 
 
 De Fresnoy glanced up. "Countermand the 
 pear. Instead, bring me paper and ink." 
 
 "Perfectly, monsieur le baron." 
 
 Slowly de Fresnoy attacked the food. After 
 a mouthful he said to Silverstairs: 
 
 "When the writing materials come we can 
 get off a note to Barouffski. If he has any ex 
 planation he can advance it. Otherwise on 
 guard!" 
 
 After another mouthful he said to Ver- 
 plank: 
 
 "You have fought before?" 
 
 "I have not had the occasion." 
 
 "Nor I," interjected Silverstairs. "It is 
 against the law in England." 
 
 Gravely, as though he were receiving val 
 uable information de Fresnoy bowed. "So it 
 is here. But with us it is custom that rules, 
 not law. No jury would convict an honour 
 able man for fighting a fair fight. Besides, 
 
86 THE MONSTER 
 
 dueling is in our blood. It will not disappear 
 as chivalry has. It will last as long as there 
 are French men and French women. And 
 yet, in saying that chivalry has disappeared, I 
 am in error. Not later than the week before 
 last a cousin of mine, a young man truly 
 charming, married a monster." 
 
 He pushed aside his plate. "Well, then, 
 Leopold, am I to sit here the entire day?" 
 
 Serviceably, a buvard in his hand, the waiter 
 approached. "I have s^bventionedji new pen 
 for the use of monsieur Te baron. 77 
 
 "There, Leopold, your sins are remitted. 
 See at once if the sjias&eu^is free." 
 
 De Fresnoy looke d at Silverstairs. "With 
 your permission, in our joint names, I 
 write." 
 
 He looked at Verplank. "Will you pardon 
 me if I ask how your name is spelled?" 
 
 Verplank, getting at his case, extracted a 
 card. 
 
 De Fresnoy glanced at it. Then, taking that 
 new pen, he read, as he wrote, aloud. 
 
 M. le Comte Barouffski. 
 
 Monsieur: M. Verplank has requested the Earl of 
 Silverstairs and myself to arrive at an understanding 
 with two of your friends concerning an incident which 
 occurred last evening in the Av:nue Cours la Reine. 
 
 Lord Silverstairs and I ivill be obliged if, as soon as 
 
THE MONSTER 87 
 
 possible, you will ask one of your friends to appoint a 
 meeting at which we may deliberate. 
 
 Receive, Monsieur, the expression of my distinguished 
 sentiments. 
 
 Baron de Fresnoy 
 
 He looked over at Silverstairs. "Is that to 
 your liking? Good! We will send it to the 
 Little Club where the answer is to be left and 
 we will have a reply today. En attendant, 
 there are matters that claim me." 
 
 With a movement of the chin he summoned 
 the waiter. 
 
 A little byplay followed; the presentation 
 of the bill, the click of gold on porcelain, the 
 carelessly gathered change, the meagre tip, the 
 reappearance of the hat, the bowing waiters, 
 the craning necks, and the departure of de 
 Fresnoy, an umbrella under his arm, a cigar 
 between his teeth. 
 
 Verplank, emptying a glass of Chablis, 
 looked out of the window. A panorama was 
 forming. He saw the room at Coronado, 
 Leilah as she told him of her love, his brief 
 absence, his harrowing return, the hunt for 
 her that had extended over half the globe, a 
 hunt that divorce had not terminated, which 
 her re-marriage had not stopped and which, 
 had he not at last discovered her, nothing 
 could have stayed save his death or hers or the 
 
88 THE MONSTER 
 
 reason of the implacable Why. An obstacle 
 to the Why or, it might be, the incarnation of 
 it, was Barouffski, and Verplank saw himself 
 standing somewhere with Barouffski before 
 him. There was a command, the call of num 
 bers, a detonation and the sight of Barouffski 
 turning, swaying, falling down. 
 
 The panorama faded. A picture had ap 
 peared. Before the window, arrested by a 
 congestion of traffic, a motor was stopping. 
 In it and the mist was Leilah. 
 
 Verplank sprang to his feet. With the idea 
 of going out to her there and forcing an ex 
 planation, he looked about for his hat. 
 
 Silverstairs also got up. He had not seen. 
 He too was looking for his hat. Placidly he 
 remarked: 
 
 "I have an appointment with a chap named 
 Tempest. Will you come with me?" 
 
 But now, the congestion relieved, the motor 
 shot on. Verplank had the spectacle of a face 
 fading instantly in the fog and the future. 
 
 "Will you?" Silverstairs repeated. 
 
 "Will I what?" 
 
 "I have to see a man about a horse. He 
 lives just off the Bois de Boulogne, in the rue 
 de la Pompe. Will you come up there with 
 me?" 
 
 "Yes, if you will go on foot. In that case 
 
THE MONSTER 89 
 
 I ll leave you there and walk back. I need the 
 exercise. I feel like what you described as a 
 fidgety Frenchman." 
 
 Silverstairs pulled at his moustache. "It s 
 no end of a walk. But no matter, I ll go you." 
 
VI 
 
 That morning Leilah had two appointments, 
 one with a modist&p-the other with Violet 
 Silverstairs. ~~SrTe did not feel equal to either. 
 The episode of the previous evening had been 
 to her like the supreme torture which medieval 
 legislation devised. It was all she could bear 
 and more! 
 
 When, abruptly, she found herself face to 
 face with Verplank, it was as though she were 
 confronted by the dead. The sense of it numbed 
 her, and the numbness was heightened by a 
 horror that has no name. Into the seats of 
 thought there entered the realisation that, in 
 spite of all, she still loved him, that in spite 
 of all he still loved her. In the core of these 
 convictions fear entered, fear of him, fear of 
 herself, a sensation of common peril and 
 mutual perdition so blinding that Barouffski s 
 rudeness she barely noticed, and it was with a 
 look the damned may have that she saw 
 Verplank turn with Violet Silverstairs, 
 and go. 
 
 As they passed, Barouffski, with the air of 
 one commenting on a triviality, remarked : 
 
92 THE MONSTER 
 
 "How odd it is that the Joyeuses should care 
 to hobnob with demi-castors. Shall we go?" 
 
 That demi-castors meant bounders general 
 ly, and, in this instance, specifically, she would, 
 ordinarily, have been insufficiently familiar 
 with the slang of the boulevards to know. But 
 she did not hear. Moreover, the remark re 
 quired no reply. Even otherwise she was un 
 able to speak, and it was not until Barouffski 
 reiterated his suggestion that mechanically she 
 acceded to it with a movement of the head. 
 
 Her demeanor then in traversing the salons, 
 her leave-taking of the duchess, her bearing in 
 descending the stairs, were as mechanical as her 
 reply to Barouffski, and it was not until after 
 the motor had dropped him, as he had asked 
 that it should, at the door of the_ Little Club, 
 that, at last alone, the mental fi^cH^losis^ell by. 
 
 At once in a sort of retrograde vision, she 
 relived the past. There had been the flight 
 from Coronado, the halt at Salt Lake, the 
 descent into Nevada, the divorce, the journey 
 abroad, the platonic marriage to Barouffski. 
 These the succeeding episodes in the drama 
 of her life were so many hostages to joy, 
 barricades thrown one after another between 
 Verplank and herself, and unavailingly 
 thrown, since, with but a look, they were al 
 most destroyed. 
 
THE MONSTER 93 
 
 They had seemed wholly impregnable, but 
 she knew then that unless reinforced by surer 
 bars, they would one and all collapse. At the 
 foreknowledge of that she appreciated what 
 the heroines in the old tragedies endured, when 
 circled by the seven-times-twisted coil of fate. 
 Yet, though they had yielded, she would not 
 yield, and it was with this determination that 
 she alighted in the rue de la Pompe. 
 
 The house there had a church for neigh 
 bour, and stood between a court and a garden. 
 Before the court was a high, white wall. The 
 garden extended back to the parallel street, 
 where, also, was a wall. The entrance to the 
 court was a double doorway, the entrance to 
 the garden was an iron gate. Between the 
 gate and the house were large urns, a marble 
 bench, a marble chair, most noticeably the 
 kennels of two mastiffs, pets of Barouffski who, 
 at whatever hour he returned at night, had 
 them loosed. They were, he declared, a great 
 protection, as indeed they were for him. 
 Apart from the occasional barking of these 
 dogs, barring also occasional music from the 
 church, usually the garden was quiet. But 
 that was in the order of things. It lacked both 
 stable and garage. These had been secured 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Except for that detail, the arrangements gen- 
 
94 THE MONSTER 
 
 erally were satisfactory. The house was 
 commodious, agreeably furnished. On the 
 ground floor were the usual offices, beneath 
 which the servants slept. On the floor above 
 were the salons and dining hall. Above these 
 were the bedrooms. On this upper floor the 
 apartment which Barouffski occupied gave on 
 the street, while Leilah s overlooked the 
 garden. 
 
 Adjacent to her suite was a stairway de 
 signed for servants, but which, because of its 
 convenience, she occasionally used. It led 
 directly to the dining hall, and from there she 
 could descend into the garden. 
 
 It had a superior advantage. It enabled her 
 to avoid the hazards of the main stairway, 
 which was used by Barouffski, whom nearer 
 acquaintance had discovered to her without 
 the mask without one mask, that is for jiis^ 
 trion that he was, he had many, but the best, 
 7hlT"feigned nobility of noble pride, the as 
 sumed parage, had gone. 
 
 In its place was a smile, constant, equivo 
 cal, ambiguous, a smile such as the consciously 
 damned may display. It gave Leilah little 
 creeps. She dreaded it, dreaded him, dreaded 
 both, what is worse she dreaded instinctively, 
 without knowing why. The man was ami 
 able, serviceable, gallant. He wore his 
 
THE MONSTER 95 
 
 domino not faultlessly perhaps but with the 
 Tine air of a bravo who, when the time comes, 
 will knife you, yes, but who in so doing will 
 rather require that you admire the chasing on 
 the handle of the blade. As yet the knife was 
 concealed. But Leilah felt that it was there. 
 He knew it was. Occasionally he fingered the 
 point. 
 
 Hitherto he had lived by expedients. A 
 golden six had been tossed him. He had 
 pocketed it. For him the economic problem of 
 life was solved. He asked little else, merely 
 that the solution should endure and that his 
 dignity, of which he had a humorous concep 
 tion, be outwardly preserved. In addition to 
 his dignity, or to his idea of it, he had another 
 attribute. He was not exacting. It is a great 
 charm in any one. But with him it did not ex 
 tend to money. Freely he demanded it, freely 
 she gave and it was precisely when he demand 
 ed it that she felt, and he felt, too, the point 
 of the knife. 
 
 On this evening when, after the usual din at 
 the doors, the motor entered the court and she 
 alighted at the perron, two footmen busied 
 themselves in aiding her. 
 
 Leilah passed through the dining room to 
 the garden where for a while she walked along 
 the path that led from the house to the gate. 
 
96 THE MONSTER 
 
 The garden was cloistered, the night serene. 
 The influences of both affected her. The dark 
 ness put her thoughts into relief, the solitude 
 relaxed the tension of her nerves. 
 
 Another thing was helpful, the determina 
 tion which she had reached, though for that 
 determination to be maintained there must, 
 she saw, be further hostages, new barricades. 
 But what further hostages could she give she 
 wondered, what firmer barricades was it pos 
 sible to erect? Barring flight or an appeal to 
 Verplank, some message begging him to leave 
 Paris, she could not imagine any. Flight she 
 had already tried, but not flight to some one of 
 the world s far away places where any one may 
 be lost forever. It was a miserably dismal 
 thing to do, she reflected, a thing so dismal and 
 so miserable that she doubted her ability to do 
 it. 
 
 As she thought it over she wondered if in 
 some former existence she could have injured 
 Verplank and whether it were by way of 
 retribution that he had the power to tempt and 
 torture her now. Tenets of this character the 
 Vidya advanced and as she had told Tempest, 
 she had come to believe in that Scripture as 
 many do in the Bible, though as many also do 
 without being able to accept it entirely, with 
 out being able to accept for instance stories 
 
THE MONSTER 97 
 
 such as that of Jonah and the whale which none 
 the less all would accept were it known how 
 profound is the symbolism behind them. With 
 like reservations, Leilah accepted the Vidya. 
 She was very ignorant as women in her station 
 generally are and the reservations were due to 
 that ignorance and also to the demand which 
 the doctrine made on her imagination. But 
 though she was ignorant she was conscious of 
 it and consciousness of ignorance is usually the 
 condition precedent to enlightenment. 
 
 Now, in considering the episode of the even 
 ing, she asked herself whether she was war 
 ranted in accepting this creed of past lives. 
 At the Joyeuses, during the announcements of 
 resonant names, Tempest had said that un 
 less we swallow the ridiculous dogma of a 
 soul specially created at every birth and unless 
 too we are indecent enough to fancy the Deity 
 waiting for that purpose on the passions and 
 caprices of man, we have to accept it, have to 
 accept with it the corollary of past actions and 
 their consequences, have to accept, too, the de 
 duction that, in accordance with our past 
 actions, it is we who reward or punish our 
 selves, we who become avenging furies or an 
 gels of light. 
 
 Leilah wished that she could have discussed 
 the matter more fully with Tempest yet she felt 
 
98 THE MONSTER 
 
 that what he had said was logical, but if it 
 were true, then the parallel doctrine that all 
 misdeeds and with them all misfortunes spring 
 from desire must be true also, in which case, 
 before their consequences can be effaced, 
 all misdeeds must be atoned. But how can 
 they be atoned? she asked herself. Presently 
 she remembered. According to the Vidya, any 
 desire no matter what, desire for pleasure, for 
 gain, for attainments, for honours, even the 
 desire for spiritual perfection, even the desire 
 for the lack of desire, must be extinguished be 
 fore old scores are paid. That was the way 
 she saw, the only way. The debtor must sacri 
 fice himself to himself. 
 
 But, uncertain still, she went over the mat 
 ter again, putting to it little tests, passablyjjaif^ 
 yet serviceable to her. She had ardently de 
 sired to marry Verplank, then, desiring as ar 
 dently a barricade against him, she had mar 
 ried Barouffski. In the one case the result had 
 been catastrophic; in the other, calamitous. 
 Doubtless she had sinned in the past and these 
 disasters, brought about by her own desires, 
 were her punishment. There were other 
 things that she had desired. She had wanted to 
 be loved, she had wanted to be thought a 
 beauty, and not only her love had shamed her 
 but soon she might be ashamed to show her 
 
THE MONSTER 99 
 
 face. At the thought of these things she real 
 ised anew and more profoundly than ever that 
 selfish desire is the root of evil and that 
 only in its extirrjationjpay peace be had. But 
 coincidently she realised also that any such 
 extirpation was beyond her. Heredity, envi 
 ronment, the circumstances of her life, had 
 given an impetus to desire which she could not 
 arrest. She liked wealth, ease, pretty clothes, 
 becoming hats, the society of agreeable people. 
 She liked the world and in liking it she feared 
 that she liked also the flesh, it might be even 
 that she liked, too, the devil. Yet, she must not, 
 she knew. 
 
 In telling herself that, she thought of the 
 Church. The Church was so much more com 
 fortable. There you were not asked impossi 
 bilities, the one requirement was to throw 
 yourself in her arms and repent. As the 
 facile process occurred to her she recalled 
 George Moore s story of Evelyn Innes. That 
 masterwork seemed to tell her to do 
 as the heroine had done and go in a 
 convent. 
 
 Perhaps she might, she thought. Perhaps 
 she must. 
 
 Several times already she had crossed and 
 recrossed the garden. Now she found her 
 self at the farther end facing the iron gate. 
 
100 THE MONSTER 
 
 Leilah opened it, walked to the corner and 
 returned. 
 
 The little tentative evasion had been suc 
 cessful. At any time, unseen even by a servant, 
 she could leave the house, disappear utterly, 
 be forever ingulfed. But the knowledge that 
 she could escape into darkness and be lost 
 there, offered little more than a choice be 
 tween tears. It presented a form of suicide 
 which was superior only to actual death. She 
 hoped she might be spared it. She hoped an 
 appeal to Verplank would suffice, though in 
 what manner it could best reach him, or, for 
 that matter, reach him at all, she found it 
 difficult to decide. To make it personally was 
 impossible. To attempt it through Violet Sil- 
 verstairs would involve an explanation and 
 that was impossible also. The idea of em 
 ploying one of her women occurred to her. 
 There were manifest objections to such a 
 course, though the particular woman whom 
 she had in view she trusted entirely. 
 
 Slowly she returned to the house and went 
 to her room. There, when at last the servants 
 had gone and she was alone, she knelt on a rjrie-^ 
 dieu and, to the Watchers of the Seven 
 SpHeres, prayed for the earthly peace of her 
 soul and of his. She knew that no prayer could 
 affect them, she knew that they are not to be 
 
THE MONSTER 101 
 
 propitiated or coerced, but it soothed her as 
 prayer, in raising the vibrations, does soothe 
 the distressed. The prayer concluded she be 
 gan another. She prayed that sometime she 
 might be somewhere, on some plane, where 
 all things broken are made complete and found 
 again things vanished. 
 
 Then, the solace of it still upon her, sud 
 denly she saw by what the prayer had been 
 induced. The consciousness confused and pres 
 ently, in the melancholy sotto-voce of thought, 
 she told herself that to extinguish that desire, 
 she would have to be in Dharmakaya the 
 mystic state where there is oblivion of all 
 things here. 
 
 "Here!" she caught herself repeating. For, 
 at once, a passage from the Upanishads 
 prompting, she remembered that here means 
 Myalba, which is hell, the greatest of all hells 
 and, for those of this evolution, the only hell 
 there is. 
 
VII 
 
 It was on the morning succeeding these 
 incidents that Leilah felt unequal for the ap 
 pointments she had made. But however she 
 felt, she always did what she had planned. 
 In this instance nature punished her. On the 
 way to the first appointment, a malaise over 
 took her, enveloped her, beat at her and al 
 though, gradually, it fell by, she was still con 
 scious of it when, in the rue Cambon, the mo 
 tor stopped at the jnodiste s door. 
 
 "The fitting of madame la comtesse Ba- 
 rouffska!" a fair young girl in black imme 
 diately and authoritatively announced. 
 
 Before landscapes of silk, in the delight of 
 new modes, customers were sunning them 
 selves At the announcement they turned, 
 while Leilah, conducted by another girl who 
 had advanced to meet her, crossed the labora 
 tory of enchantments and entered an adjoining 
 room. 
 
 But, for the moment, the fitting was delayed. 
 The premiere was elsewhere occupied. When 
 presently she appeared she excitedly ex 
 claimed: 
 
104 THE MONSTER 
 
 "I hope I have not detained madame. I am 
 desolated if I have. But! But! If madame 
 knew! One is literally torn to pieces! All 
 day long it is nothing but Ernestine that 
 dress! Ernestine, that robe! Ernestine, that 
 costume! Ernestine this! Ernestine that! 
 Truly madame, there are moments when I 
 say I die! I go crazy!" 
 
 Abruptly dropping her voice, she added: 
 "But pardon, I monologue." 
 
 At once, indicating a gown which an assist 
 ant had brought, she exclaimed again: 
 
 "It will ravishingly become madame." 
 
 The gown, a work of the best Parisian art, 
 suggested something of the immateriality of a 
 moonbeam, and as the assistant, a girl with 
 a tired face and circled eyes, held it for in 
 spection, it gleamed. 
 
 Leilah looked at it, wondering the while 
 where she would wear it, whether indeed she 
 would wear it at all. Then, before a sheet 
 that had been placed on the floor and on which 
 the assistant arranged the gown in a circle 
 she proceeded to undress. 
 
 To the amateur in feminine beauty, there 
 are few spectacles more attractive than that of 
 an attractive woman clothed in lingerie and a 
 hat. This spectacle Leilah presented. 
 
 The premiere exclaimed at it. "Madame la 
 
THE MONSTER 105 
 
 comtesse has a figure truly divine. But! But! 
 Who could have laced her?" 
 
 "I was not very well this morning," Leilah 
 replied. "I told my women not to make me 
 too tight. But you can take me in I think 
 about an inch." 
 
 "Marguerite," said the premiere, "draw the 
 stays a little closer." 
 
 The girl with the tired face undid the cor 
 set and pulled at the strings. But she pulled 
 awkwardly, perhaps too suddenly. 
 
 Leilah gasped, turned, sat down and fell 
 forward. The premiere hurried to her. She 
 had fainted. 
 
 "The smelling salts!" the premiere cried. 
 "The smelling salts! Cognac! Get some 
 cognac!" 
 
 With one hand she was supporting Leilah, 
 with the other she gesticulated at Marguerite 
 who, hurriedly from the mantel, fetched a 
 vinaigrette which Ernestine then took and 
 sniffed at. 
 
 "She s coming to," said the assistant. 
 
 Ernestine waved the vinaigrette. "The 
 gods be praised!" 
 
 For Leilah now had opened her eyes. 
 Wearily she looked about, straightened herself 
 and sighed. 
 
 "I must have fainted." 
 
106 THE MONSTER 
 
 "It is nothing madame," Ernestine anxiously 
 protested. "Truly nothing and yet so modish. 
 Yesterday the Princesse de Solferino fainted. 
 The day before it was the turn of the young 
 Duchesse de Malakoff. Such a good augury 
 for these ladies! Like them madame is per- 
 haps- 
 
 But Leilah now was making an effort to rise. 
 
 Abandoning the vinaigrette Ernestine aided 
 her. 
 
 "Madame will perhaps wish the fitting post 
 poned. Yes, is it not? It might further fa 
 tigue madame. To-morrow no, to-morrow I 
 regret but in the afternoon I have three ap 
 pointments and in the morning there is the 
 trousseau of Miss Smith of New York who is 
 to marry an English lord. Marguerite!" she 
 interrupted herself to exclaim. "The costume 
 of madame!" 
 
 Then, as the assistant also assisted Leilah, 
 reflectively the premiere resumed : 
 
 "I hear that every New York young lady 
 loves a lord. But 
 
 She hesitated. Visibly the vision evoked, 
 confused. Yet, after a second s pause, rally 
 ing, she continued. 
 
 "Perhaps it is not every New York young 
 lady who has a lord to love. Perhaps many 
 of them love the same lord." 
 
THE MONSTER 107 
 
 Discreetly she smiled. "And that must be so 
 nice for him!" 
 
 Considering Leilah, she concluded: 
 
 "But another day 
 
 Of it all, Leilah heard but that. "Yes," she 
 answered, "another day." 
 
 Then, presently, after more attentions, the 
 premiere accompanied her to the door. 
 
 "Rue Frangois Premier," Leilah told the 
 groom. 
 
 The machine shot ahead. Arrested shortly 
 by a congestion of traffic, it halted before a 
 window behind which Verplank and Silver- 
 stairs sat. 
 
 Leilah, unconscious of their presence, gazed 
 at the murky cinematograph of the street, filled 
 at this hour with faces sordid, petulant, in 
 different, or frankly gay; with the passing 
 forms of workmen, idlers, shopgirls, vaga 
 bonds; the swarming Parisian crowd which 
 did not, she believed, contain one soul as miser 
 able as her own. 
 
 The congestion relieved, the motor shot on. 
 Leilah leaned back. It was not so long ago 
 that she was on her way from New York to 
 Coronado. She was happy then, happy with a 
 happiness so perfect that it lifted her into the 
 ultimate ecstasies which love and life comport. 
 It was not so long ago, only six short months, 
 
108 THE MONSTER 
 
 only that brief eternity of sorrow which, un- 
 ended yet, had been the damning penalty of 
 that joy. 
 
 "In this life ye shall have tribulation," the 
 Christ had said, and truly said, and as she 
 rememorated the significant menace, she won 
 dered whether for such as she, tribulation 
 ended here. But her creed assured her. From 
 the Vidya she had acquired faith in fate, the 
 belief rather that we make our own destiny, 
 that it is by our own hands that our lives are 
 cast in places pleasant or the reverse, that our 
 conduct in one life creates the conditions of 
 our existence in another, that anything experi 
 enced now is the effect of a cause set going in 
 the past, that happiness is the recompense of 
 beneficence, deformity the result of cruelty, 
 melancholy the penalty of evil thoughts. But 
 whether retribution pursued its victim into 
 future planes or abandoned them when they 
 died, depended, she also believed, on how they 
 faced it here, and it was in this idea that, dur 
 ing the unended sorrow, she had found the 
 strength to bear its coils. 
 
 The motor stopped. She told the groom to 
 wait. Presently she was among the subdued 
 tints and harmonised furnishings of the draw 
 ing room of her friend. 
 
 At once, clearly in her limpid voice, con- 
 
THE MONSTER 109 
 
 sidering her with brilliant eyes, Violet Silver- 
 stairs aimed and fired. 
 
 "You re a liar!" 
 
 At the shot Leilah attempted to smile, and 
 though she failed, it was not because she fan 
 cied there could be any reproach in the term, 
 but because latterly she had been unable to 
 smile at all. 
 
 "You re a liar," Violet repeated. "Also, 
 you are late." 
 
 "I know I am late and I am sorry," Leilah 
 withdrawing her gloves, replied. "But how 
 am I a liar?" 
 
 "Come to luncheon and you will precious 
 soon find out. I had some eggs for you, eggs 
 a 1 Aurore Boreale. I had a sweetbread. I 
 had I have forgotten what else. Now 
 I have nothing. Everything is spoiled." 
 
 Violet Silverstairs was perhaps imaginative. 
 There were eggs, very good eggs too, though 
 whether prepared in the Aurora Borealis 
 fashion is perhaps beside the issue. More 
 over there was a sweetbread, one that had been 
 germinated on salt meadows and which was 
 not spoiled in the least. In addition there were 
 the other things which she had forgotten and 
 all of them appetising in the extreme. It was 
 an excellent luncheon, perfectly served in a 
 beautiful room. But it was a luncheon for 
 
110 THE MONSTER 
 
 Sybarites, not for the suffering. After the 
 first morsel Leilah was unable to eat. 
 
 "Where is Silverstairs?" she asked when 
 that morsel had been consumed. 
 
 "With your ex." 
 
 Leilah put down her fork. "With Gulian?" 
 
 Violet laughed. "Have you more than one? 
 But it was just through him that your lie 
 cropped out. Last night he swore by bell, 
 book and candle that you had never told him 
 why you cut and ran." 
 
 It was at this juncture that Leilah found 
 herself unable to eat. Instantly her mind shot 
 back. She was at Coronado again, in the sun 
 shine and frippery of her sitting room. She 
 could see Verplank as he left it, see the letters 
 that had been brought, see herself as she 
 opened one of them, that one which with its 
 enclosures she had redirected and left for him. 
 The possibility never before conjectured, that 
 he had not received it girdled her with a 
 zone of ice. For a moment she looked fixedly 
 at one of the windows through which the pale 
 daylight fell. In the beautiful room, com 
 panioned by her nearest friend, she felt that 
 sense of utter loneliness which in the great 
 crises of life is experienced by all. Yet was it 
 true? 
 
 "Violet!" she cried. "You are jesting." 
 
THE MONSTER 111 
 
 But the lady, determined then or never to 
 learn the truth, cocked an eye at her. "I am 
 not, nor was he." 
 
 At that, Leilah felt the girdle of ice send 
 ing its shivers through her. The plan she had 
 made must, she saw, be foregone. If Verplank 
 did not know why she had separated from 
 him, never would he leave Paris until he did. 
 But what must he have thought, she agonised- 
 ly reflected, and what must he think! 
 
 Violet, who had been watching her, said: 
 
 "Why don t you tell me?" 
 
 Leilah taking up her fork again, tried for 
 countenance sake, to affect to eat. The effort 
 was beyond her. She put it down. 
 
 "I can t," she at last replied. 
 
 Violet, her brilliant eye still cocked, almost 
 winked. 
 
 "Yes, you said that before. But you see, 
 don t you know, that whether you can or can 
 not tell me, you will have to tell him and, in 
 the circumstances, would it not be best to have 
 me do it for you? To be sure, if you had taken 
 my advice and omitted to marry Barouffski, 
 I would say, have it out with him yourself. 
 But your marriage does not seem to have 
 simplified matters, which, so far as I can make 
 out, are now pretty thoroughly mixed." 
 
 The lady spoke better than she knew. Mat- 
 
112 THE MONSTER 
 
 ters were complicated though how profound 
 ly she had no idea, nor was Leilah aware that 
 the situation, already tortuous, was to become 
 even more intricately labyrinthine. 
 
 "Of course," Violet, in her bell-like voice, 
 threw out, " after running away, getting a di 
 vorce and marrying another man, I can fancy 
 that you don t much want to see him. But, 
 really, you owe it to yourself to give the 
 reason, particularly as it is he who is to blame." 
 
 At this, Leilah, who had been looking down 
 into her prison, looked up. "I never said so." 
 
 "No, but was it necessary? Even nowadays, 
 even in the States, a woman does not cut and 
 run because butter won t melt in her husband s 
 mouth. She does so because she has, or thinks 
 she has, a grievance and the man, if he is a 
 man, ought to be given an opportunity to 
 apologise, however imaginary the grievance 
 may be." 
 
 Leilah shook her head. "There can be no 
 apology here." 
 
 Violet laughed. "That is just what I would 
 say if I had gone and done it. Then it would 
 be for Silverstairs to try on his knees to get me 
 to listen to one provided, of course, that in 
 the interim I had not taken over another man, 
 for in that case I verily believe he would 
 wring my neck. But you need fear nothing of 
 
THE MONSTER 113 
 
 the sort from Verplank. He seemed anxious 
 only to wring Barouffski s." 
 
 Leilah made another futile effort with her 
 fork. Absently she answered : 
 
 "I don t believe he knew who he was." 
 
 "You don t! After his telling him! But, 
 apropos, what became of d Arcy? I thought 
 you and he were safely tucked away in a cor 
 ner, otherwise never in the world would I 
 have marched your Number One up to your 
 Number Two." 
 
 "D Arcy!" Leilah repeated. She had bare 
 ly heard. She scarcely knew what she was 
 saying, still less what was being said. 
 
 "Yes, le beau d Arcy. Marie de Fresnoy 
 told me that the other day at the races he 
 was about to pay a ragamuffin of a girl for a 
 flower, when she said: "I d rather you kissed 
 me." Fancy that! She told me too that a man 
 who had a husband s reasons for wanting to 
 kill him, was afraid to say a word. It ap 
 pears he is a dead shot. But it appears also 
 that your lovely Barouffski is one of the best 
 swordsmen here. Verplank had better look 
 out. To return though to our Chablis Mou- 
 tonne. What will you do?" 
 
 Leilah, her thoughts afar, made no reply. 
 
 "What will you do?" Violet repeated. 
 
 From afar the question floated, descended, 
 
114 THE MONSTER 
 
 trod among the tender places of Leilah s soul. 
 At the pain of it she winced. "God help me, 
 I do not know." 
 
 Violet, cocking an eye again, insinuated: 
 "Let me take a hand." She paused, then, for 
 clincher, threw out: "He dines here to 
 morrow." 
 
 "Here!" Leilah exclaimed, half rising, fear 
 ful now that at any moment he might appear. 
 "Here! With you?" 
 
 Violet nodded. "Why yes. Why not? If I 
 can t confess you, perhaps I can him. At any 
 rate I can try. You can t blame me for want 
 ing to, either. You abandoned him on your 
 honeymoon. You won t tell me why and he 
 says he don t know. But he must suspect. He 
 must have concluded that you left him for 
 this, that or the other. I want to find out what 
 his this, that and the other are and then make 
 my own selection. It is true he did say that 
 it was because of Barouffski. But that s all 
 gammon. You never saw Barouffski until you 
 got here. There is something else and what 
 that is I want to find out. No, you can t blame 
 me. It is the instinct of self-preservation. If 
 I don t get at the bottom of it soon, I shall 
 simply go mad." 
 
 A laugh, clear and musical, wound up 
 the lady s chatter. She had no more idea of 
 
THE MONSTER 115 
 
 going mad than she had of jumping out of the 
 window. But she wanted to know and that 
 was only human. 
 
 But now, Leilah, who a moment before had 
 half risen, stood up. "Violet, I am not well, 
 you must let me go. Yes," she added as the 
 lady remarked that on the morrow she might 
 appear in the rue de la Pompe. "Yes, yes." 
 
 She would have said yes to anything. Hur 
 riedly she got away. 
 
 Without the motor waited. 
 
 "Home," she told the groom. 
 
 A little before she had thought herself the 
 most miserable of beings. But however deep 
 the hell, there is always a deeper one. Add 
 uncertainty to distress and the sum of it is 
 sorrow multiplied by the infinite. That hell, 
 that sorrow was or seemed to be, hers. She 
 did not know where to go, what to do, to whom 
 to turn. 
 
 The pitiable plan of flight returned to her. 
 Again she put it aside. She could not adopt 
 it now. Besides, though she owed a duty to 
 herself, she owed another to Verplank. In 
 what manner he had failed to receive the let 
 ter, it was impossible for her to imagine, but 
 the fact that he had not received it, hurt her 
 doubly, hurt her for herself, hurt her for him. 
 Had it reached him, both would have been 
 
116 THE MONSTER 
 
 spared this pass. But it had not reached him 
 and since then what must he have thought of 
 her? What! 
 
 The query, which kept repeating itself, tor 
 tured her and on that torture was superposed 
 the precarious problem of his enlightenment. 
 See him she could not. To write was beyond 
 her ability. For there are things no pen 
 should write as there are others no tongue 
 should tell. None the less the truth she knew 
 must reach him and would do so best, she 
 thought, through some channel similar to that 
 from which the letter had proceeded, from a 
 source either indifferent or jjimical to them 
 both. 
 
 At the auto-suggestion, her thoughts flut 
 tered, scattered, grouped, then suddenly re 
 grouping, produced a name. Beneath her 
 breath she uttered it. 
 
 "Barouffski!" 
 
 It was not in provision of this that she had 
 married him. At the time no such possibility 
 had even impossibly loomed. But she had 
 married him precisely as she had obtained a 
 divorce, in order to barricade the future from 
 the past; in order also for the fleshpots which 
 she craved peace and security. She had not 
 had much of either. None the less, the pri 
 mary object which she had sought had, in its 
 
THE MONSTER 117 
 
 accomplishment, persisted. He was a barri 
 cade. He was her official and paid protector. 
 
 For the task therefore which she could not 
 perform, he seemed naturally indicated. What 
 alone gave her pause was the certainty that he 
 would enjoy it. She could see him, see his 
 ambiguous smile, see his green eyes aglow, 
 his cruel and sensual mouth distended. 
 
 From the picture she turned. Beyond was 
 a church, the frontal draped with black. The 
 motor had stopped. It had reached the house 
 in the rue de la Pompe and pending the open 
 ing of the doors, whirred as it blocked the side 
 walk. 
 
 It was then that she turned. Beside her, ar 
 rested by the car, stood Verplank. 
 
 After walking up from Voisin s with Silver- 
 stairs he had left him a moment earlier at 
 Tempest s. 
 
 But the great doors had opened. Before 
 Verplank could speak, the machine slid in. 
 As it entered the court, the doors closed 
 noisily. 
 
VIII 
 
 On alighting at the ^ejron, Leilah had as 
 always to endure the ceremonial of two foot 
 men assiduously assisting her. 
 
 "Emmanuel," she said to one of them. "Is 
 Monsieur Barouffski at home?" 
 
 "No, madame la comtesse." 
 
 Leilah passed on and up. For a moment, 
 in the hall above, she hesitated. Then, push 
 ing a portiire aside, she entered a salon, went 
 to the window, and looked out. Crossing the 
 court was Verplank. 
 
 Fear and the fear of it, the throttling sen 
 sation which children know when pursued, en 
 veloped her. With an idea of telling the ser 
 vants that she was out, that she was ill, that 
 she could see no one, she turned. On a table 
 near the entrance was a service of Sevres. Its 
 tender hues were repeated on the ceiling. Be 
 neath was the mirror of a waxed and polished 
 floor. On the glistening wood work her foot 
 slipped. She staggered, recovered herself, got 
 to the door. 
 
 Already Verplank had entered. She could 
 
120 THE MONSTER 
 
 hear him. He was not asking, he was de 
 manding to see her. The form of the order 
 mounted violently. 
 
 "Tell your mistress that I am here." 
 
 Even then, with the idea that she might still 
 deny herself, Leilah drew back into the room. 
 Mentally she was framing a phrase when 
 Emmanuel entered. 
 
 With that air domestics have when tidying 
 something objectionable, the footman recon 
 structed Verplank s command: 
 
 "There is a monsieur who inquires whether 
 madame la comtesse receives?" 
 
 "Tell him- 
 
 But the injunction, as yet not wholly formed, 
 was never completed. Verplank, brushing the 
 man aside, strode in. 
 
 Leilah, retreating before him, motioned at 
 Emmanuel, and the servant, with an affronted 
 air of personal grievance, vacated this room 
 that was charged now with the vibrations of 
 hostilities begun. 
 
 Retreating yet farther, her eyes on the 
 foe, Leilah stared at him, and, as she re 
 treated, Verplank, staring, too, advanced. In 
 his stare were threats so voluble that she 
 thought: "He will kill me." At the thought, 
 there appeared before her Death s liberating 
 face, the mysteriously consoling visage which 
 
THE MONSTER 121 
 
 it reveals to those alone who have reached the 
 depth of human woe. 
 
 Beyond, from the church, came the music of 
 an organ. A requiem was being held. Leilah 
 felt as though it were her own. 
 
 Verplank, his hands clenched, the look of 
 an executioner about him, threw at her: 
 
 "For six months I have been looking for 
 you. I am come to have you tell me why I 
 have had to look at all." 
 
 "Dies irae, dies ilia admirably, in a clear 
 contralto, a woman s voice rang out. 
 
 Neither heard it. At the menace of the 
 man, Leilah shrank, and in an effort at defense 
 cried pitiably: 
 
 "Gulian! I left a letter for you." 
 
 Angrily he tossed his head. 
 
 "I received none, nor did I need any to tell 
 me that there are women on the street, others 
 in jail, that are less vile than you." 
 
 "Teste David cum Sibylla" clearly and 
 beautifully the voice resumed. 
 
 "Gulian!" Leilah cried again. 
 
 With whips in his words, he added: 
 
 "No harlot could have acted more infa 
 mously than you." 
 
 At the lash of the outrage, Leilah, joining 
 her hands, held them to him. "Gulian! You 
 are killing me!" 
 
122 THE MONSTER 
 
 "It is what you deserve. There are no 
 penalties now for such turpitudes as yours. 
 But, when there were, women like you were 
 beaten with rods, they were lagrdated, stoned 
 to death, and death was too good for them; 
 they should have been made to go about, as 
 they afterward were, as you should be, in a 
 yellow wig, in a yellow gown, that even 
 children might point and cry: Shame! 
 
 The words, which he tore from his mouth, 
 he hurled at her. She cowered before them. 
 On a chair near by she had put her bag. Her 
 wrap had fallen from her. In the church now 
 the hymn had ceased. The ringing of the 
 Elevation was beginning. 
 
 "Gulian! As if shame had not cried at me! 
 Gulian, I have been scourged, I have been 
 stoned. If I live, it is to implore of you 
 mercy." 
 
 Her hands, still joined, were still extended, 
 and in her face was an expression of absolute 
 despair. But this martyr attitude seemed to 
 him the most abominable of hypocrisies, and 
 it was with anger refreshed that he lashed her 
 again. 
 
 "Mercy? Yes, you want mercy, you, who 
 were merciless in your treachery to me. A 
 sweep would have had more decency, a scul 
 lion more heart. I put in your hands my trust, 
 
THE MONSTER 123 
 
 my love, my honour, and you who want 
 mercy dragged them in dirt." 
 
 "Gulian!" Within her now was that in 
 vincible need of justice which impels the weak 
 est to protest against the savagery of wrong. 
 "Gulian ! When you know !" 
 
 "I do know. I know you and your lies, and 
 the infamy of them too well. At Coro 
 na do 
 
 "Gulian! You are not killing me merely, 
 you torture my very soul." 
 
 He sneered. 
 
 "Do I? Do I, indeed! No, you compli 
 ment yourself. It is what I want to do, but 
 you cheat me even there. No woman with a 
 soul could have done this soulless thing." 
 
 The brutality of the arraignment shook her. 
 She leaned against the chair for support. She 
 felt hopeless, helpless, defenseless, and it was 
 because the need for justice still impelled her, 
 that she protested anew. 
 
 "Gulian, if only you knew! If only you 
 had had that letter! Had it reached you, you 
 would know that there was no deceit, that I 
 left you for your sake as well as my own. Gu 
 lian, if I had not gone you would have seen and 
 made me tell you, and then it may be you 
 would have taken me and thrown me with you 
 from the yacht." 
 
124 THE MONSTER 
 
 There were tears in her words. With one 
 hand she held to the chair, the other she raised 
 to her head. It pained her. She felt bruised 
 and looked it. 
 
 "Ecce pants Angelorum 
 Factus cibus viatorum " 
 
 Beyond, sustained by the arpeggios of the 
 organ, the voice of a singer mounted sheerly 
 like a thread of gold. It lowered and height 
 ened. Presently, on a note, as if abruptly 
 snapped, it ceased. The organ continued. It 
 renewed the canticle. It projected a scale that 
 ascended slowly, as though upward and on 
 ward, over the limitless steps of eternity, it 
 were lifting the soul of the dead. 
 
 Leilah wished it were her own. Sadly she 
 added: 
 
 "God knows it would have been better. 
 Anything would be better than that you should 
 speak to me as you do." 
 
 There is an innocence that appeals, a sincer 
 ity that disarms, a candour that outfaces every 
 proof, and Verplank, who had been bent on 
 overwhelming this woman with a contempt 
 which he felt wholly deserved, was impressed, 
 in spite of himself, by the evident ingenuous 
 ness, by the evident wretchedness, too, of her 
 words. 
 
THE MONSTER 125 
 
 He moved back. 
 
 "You say I would have made you tell me?" 
 
 "Yes. Yes. You would have." 
 
 "But made you tell me what?" 
 
 Leilah, still holding one hand to her head, 
 raised the other from the chair, and with it 
 made a gesture slight, yet desolate. 
 
 "What was it?" he asked. 
 
 Before replying, she looked away. 
 
 "What I hid from you rather than repeat." 
 
 "But repeat what?" 
 
 Her face still turned from him, she an 
 swered: 
 
 "Something, my something Mr. Ogston 
 sent me." 
 
 "Mr. Ogston!" Verplank exclaimed. The 
 formality of the statement astounded him. 
 "Do you mean your father? What did he 
 send you?" 
 
 But Leilah would not or could not speak. 
 Her mouth contracted as though she were 
 choking, and she put a hand to her throat. 
 
 "Tell me," he insisted. 
 
 She turned, and beseechingly she looked at 
 him. 
 
 "Gulian, I cannot." 
 
 At that Verplank moved nearer, and so 
 dominatingly that again she extended her 
 hands. 
 
126 THE MONSTER 
 
 "Gulian, 1 will get some one else to tell 
 you. I had intended to. Believe me, it is bet 
 
 ter so." 
 
 "It concerns me?" 
 
 "Yes, you." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "Yes, both of us." 
 
 "Then you shall tell me, and tell me now. 
 Do you hear?" 
 
 "Gulian !" she cried. She raised her clasped 
 hands to him. "Gulian!" 
 
 But Verplank, his jaw ominously square, 
 confronted her. 
 
 "I say you shall." 
 
 "Don t look at me then," she pleaded. 
 "Bend your head, bend it lower. One second, 
 then I will. One second one. Ah, God! 
 I cannot." 
 
 Verplank, who at her bidding had stooped, 
 straightened himself, and caught at her. 
 
 "I say you shall." 
 
 "Gulian, a moment. Give me a moment. 
 Now bend your head again. One moment, 
 Gulian; your father, your father My 
 mother loved him." 
 
 "Your mother loved my father!" 
 
 "Gulian, I am his daughter." 
 
 "You are what?" 
 
 "I am your sister." 
 
THE MONSTER 127 
 
 As she whispered it, she covered her face. 
 Verplank started, straightened again, raised 
 his arm, and, with a gesture wide, elemental, 
 absurd, and human, struck at the empty air. 
 
 Savagely he turned to her. 
 
 "And you believe this?" 
 
 Leilah, her head bowed, her face covered, 
 shook with sobs. 
 
 "You believe it?" he repeated. 
 
 "There were letters," she stammered. 
 "Three letters. No one could read them and 
 not and not 
 
 "And it was for this you left me?" 
 
 A fresh access seized her. He could not see 
 her tears, he heard them. 
 
 "And it was for this you got a divorce?" 
 
 On the chair beside her was her bag. She 
 felt in it, and got out a handkerchief. 
 
 "And it was for this you took that cad?" 
 
 Slowly, with infinite hesitations, the bit of 
 cambric held to a face that was wet and white, 
 she turned to him. 
 
 "I thought you would forget. I thought 
 you would marry. I though you would be 
 happy. I hoped so that you would. But my 
 leaving you, the divorce, the marriage, these 
 things were done with no idea of happiness. 
 They were to serve as barriers between us." 
 
 Impotently he stamped a foot. He was fu- 
 
128 THE MONSTER 
 
 rious still. But his anger had deflected. He 
 wag; enraged less at her than at circumstances. 
 /""Rubbish! That s what your barriers are." 
 Leilah, wiping her eyes, turned from him. 
 The barriers, however fragile, were not rub 
 bish to her. 
 
 Violently he continued: 
 
 "As for Barouffski- 
 
 But Leilah, turning to him again, inter 
 rupted: 
 
 "Gulian, let me tell you. Last night I 
 planned to have some one ask you, for my 
 sake, to go away. Gulian, I thought you 
 would, but I determined if you would not 
 that I would go." 
 
 Verplank moved back. 
 
 "Go! Go where?" 
 
 "Ah! God knows! Anywhere. Wherever 
 I could hide myself. Wherever I could hide 
 my love for you." 
 
 Her eyes had been raised to his. At the 
 confession they lowered of themselves. Then 
 again she looked him in the face. 
 
 "Gulian, it is that which cried shame at me. 
 It is that which scourged me with rods bitterer 
 than those of which you spoke. You say the 
 barriers are nothing. Gulian, you are wrong. 
 To me they are eternal." 
 
 "Yes," he angrily retorted. "Yes, if your 
 
THE MONSTER 129 
 
 story were true. But it isn t. It s arrant non 
 
 sense." 
 
 In miserable protest, she half raised a hand. 
 
 "Gulian, when I read those letters my youth 
 died in me. Never since they reached me 
 have I had the heart to smile. If you had 
 seen them you would have felt the truth 
 in every line." i 
 
 "I would have felt nothing of the kind; the I 
 fact that you still care for me ought to show 
 you that they are false." 
 
 "Gulian, I tried to think that, too; but even 
 in trying I felt that I was pleading for my 
 self." 
 
 "Then, for the love of God, stop pleading 
 and act! Look at yourself, look at me! We 
 could not be more unlike if we came from 
 different planets." 
 
 She was making an effort to answer. He 
 stopped her. 
 
 "Listen to this. If you can t act, I shall. 
 My mother is in London. To-morrow she is 
 to be here. Probably she can tell me the truth. 
 If not, I will go to the States. There I will 
 see your father. When I return it will be with 
 proofs. I will bring them if I have to drag 
 that old scoundrel with me." 
 
 He paused. Though angry still, her story 
 had pacified him. He felt it to be false, none- 
 
130 THE MONSTER 
 
 theless she had believed it and the fact that 
 she had, absolved her of much that she had 
 done. However she had erred, she had at 
 least tried to do right. He closed and opened 
 a hand, looked at it and from it looked at 
 her. 
 
 "But first I will see my mother. In any 
 case I will be here to-morrow. Yes, that s 
 what I ll do. Why shouldn t I come. Why 
 not?" 
 
 Leilah did not answer. She did not be 
 lieve he would come, except to cause fresh 
 agony to them both there was no reason why 
 he should do so. The horror which she had 
 told him and to which incredulously he had 
 listened was gospel to her, an evil gospel, yes, 
 but nonetheless a true one. Besides if he did 
 come as, in any case, he said he would, he 
 might meet Barouffski, and affrightedly she 
 foresaw blows, afterwards a duel one which 
 she was unaware was then impending. 
 
 "Why not?" Verplank repeated, fumbling 
 her as he spoke with suspicious eyes and ap 
 pearing to divine and to resent her forecast. 
 
 She caught at a straw. Usually, between 
 four and seven, Barouffski was tabled at bac 
 carat, gambling with her money. That straw 
 she produced. 
 
 "Come at five." 
 
THE MONSTER 131 
 
 Verplank, appeased, nodded. "Very good, 
 at five then." 
 
 But at once she realised that other safe 
 guards were needful. She hesitated, looked 
 about her, looked at Verplank, gave him his 
 hat, motioned to him. Then, preceding him, 
 she passed into an adjoining salon, entered 
 the dining room and moved from it to the 
 garden below. 
 
 Passably mystified, he followed. 
 
 The air, freighted with fragrance, stirred by 
 music from the church, the dogs, at sight of 
 him, charged suddenly with menaces. Strain 
 ing at their chains, viciously they clamoured. 
 
 Indifferently Verplank glanced from them 
 to the gate beyond, to which Leilah was lead 
 ing him. 
 
 When both reached it, she opened it and 
 said: "Come this way to-morrow, will you?" 
 
 For a second he considered her. Her face 
 was as a book in which he could read the rea 
 son. In view of many things, particularly of 
 the duel, it seemed to him all very puerile. 
 
 But, replacing his hat, grimly he nodded. 
 "Before then I have rather an idea that there 
 may be a deficit among us." 
 
 This expression, in itself perhaps over pre 
 cise, was too much for her and the fact that 
 it was showed itself in her eyes. 
 
132 THE MONSTER 
 
 Without heeding their inquiry he nodded 
 again. "I will come this way but only that 
 together we may leave by the other." 
 
 Again he nodded. In a moment he had 
 gone. 
 
 Leilah, closing the gate behind him watched 
 him go. It was, she felt, her last earthly sight 
 of him. There would be no going away to 
 gether. He would never come back. Never. 
 His mother, if she knew the truth, could only 
 substantiate it. If she did not, another would. 
 Helplessly she held at the gate. A vagrant 
 passed, she did not see. A hawker called, she 
 did not hear. She was not only helpless, she 
 was hopeless. She wished that death really 
 were, that it could beneficently come, take her, 
 shroud her in blankness, in endless oblivion of 
 what was and of what might have been. Long 
 since the dogs, mollified by Verplank s exit, 
 had ceased to bark. Shrilly now from the 
 church came boys fresh voices. The music of 
 them stirred her a little and she turned. 
 
 Before her, framed in a window of the din 
 ing room, Barouffski stood. At sight of him 
 she started. Amiably he smiled. When she 
 looked again he had vanished. 
 
 But, in a moment, in the doorway beneath, 
 smiling still, he reappeared. 
 
 "What a beautiful day, is it not?" Oilily 
 
THE MONSTER 133 
 
 he rubbed his hands. "You have been having 
 visitors, cara mia?" 
 
 As he spoke he moved toward her. Urbanely 
 he continued! "And what did they have to 
 say?" 
 
 He was quite near her now and, with his 
 head held a trifle to one side he was regarding 
 her with affectionate indulgence, much as one 
 would regard a child. 
 
 "They told you nothing new, cara mia?" 
 
 Without looking at him, Leilah shook her 
 head. "Nothing. Nothing at least that I 
 did not know." 
 
 Smiling still, indulgent as before, Barouff- 
 ski plucked at his pointed beard. "And what 
 is that, cara mia?" 
 
 Remotely, in a voice without colour, as 
 though speaking not to him at all but only to 
 herself, she answered: 
 
 "That I am the most miserable woman in 
 the world." 
 
 Barouffski s smile broadened. "Bah! They 
 exaggerated, cara mia. It is the way of the 
 world. Mon Dieu, a qui se fier? You are 
 not at all what they said. You are how shall 
 I put it perhaps a bit indiscreet. That is it, 
 a bit indiscreet." He pointed to the bench. 
 "Will you not seat yourself?" 
 
 He was still smiling, but the smile wholly 
 
134 THE MONSTER 
 
 muscular, was one in which the eyes have no 
 part. The Visitors" whom he affected to 
 ridicule, alarmed him. They were, he knew, 
 quite capable of taking Leilah away. Her 
 presence or absence was quite one to him. Only 
 if she departed, so would her purse. 
 
 "Will you not?" he repeated. 
 
 "I am going in." 
 
 "Certainly, cara mia. It is as it pleases you. 
 But- 
 
 At this Leilah, who had passed him, turned. 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 "You see, cara mia, supposing I had visitors. 
 Supposing rather I had a visitor. We are only 
 supposing, are we not? Bon! Supposing this 
 visitor happened to be what we call an an- 
 cienne, an old flame, an inamorata of mine. 
 Supposing that were so. Do you know what 
 you could do?" 
 
 "No," Leilah from over her shoulder an 
 swered. "Nor do I care." 
 
 "Forgive me, cara mia. You mean that you 
 do not care to be informed. Yet you should 
 know, for you could if you wished have me 
 fined. Yes, that is what you could do. You 
 could have me fined. 
 
 "But I," he resumed. "Do you know in 
 similar circumstances what I could do? Do 
 you know rather what the law says I may do? 
 
THE MONSTER 135 
 
 Do you, cara mia? Do you? For really you 
 ought to." 
 
 But Leilah now was approaching the en 
 trance. 
 
 "What!" Barouffski exclaimed. "You are 
 not interested? You are really going?" 
 
 As he spoke, he bowed. "Bon, a ce soir, cara 
 mia. And a last word. If I may advise, do 
 not be led into indiscretions." 
 
 "Do not," he repeated, while shrilly from 
 the adjacent church came the voices of boys 
 chanting the final phrase of the Pater Noster: 
 
 "Sed lib era nos a malo" 
 
 "That is it," he called at Leilah s retreating 
 back. "Pray rather to be delivered of them. 
 Otherwise 
 
 But Leilah now had entered the house. 
 
 "Otherwise," he continued to himself and 
 moving to the kennels, patted the dogs, "other 
 wise a sojourn in Poland may improve you." 
 
IX 
 
 "The strawberries were delicious," Violet, 
 the following day, remarked to Leilah. 
 
 The two women were seated in the garden of 
 the house in the rue de la Pompe. It was just 
 after luncheon and between them was a table 
 on which coffee had been served. From with 
 out came the whirr of passing motors, the cries 
 of those hawkers who are never still. But the 
 garden itself was quiet, scented too and the 
 day superb. 
 
 Violet, patting a yawn, resumed: "One 
 never really gets strawberries except in Paris. 
 They are so big! And so expensive, aren t 
 they? I know that in a restaurant a man gave 
 one to the waiter for a tip." 
 
 She looked about her. "But, mercy! What 
 can have become of Aurelia? She was to have 
 stopped forme." 
 
 "Don t you think it unwise to let her go on 
 the stage?" Leilah, with an air of talking for 
 talk s sake, inquired. 
 
 "Let her! But she s got her head. I can t 
 prevent her. She ll never come to any harm 
 though. She isn t the kind to want to do any- 
 
138 THE MONSTER 
 
 thing she thought was wrong. No indeed. 
 She would never think anything wrong that 
 she wanted to do. But tell me. I could not 
 very well ask before the servants. What are 
 you going to do?" 
 
 For a moment Leilah did not answer. Then, 
 a bit resignedly, she folded her hands. 
 
 "I do not see that I have the ability to do 
 anything." 
 
 The pause, the gesture, the reply, angered 
 Violet. She bristled. 
 
 "Don t be so modest, you make me nervous !" 
 
 For a moment she also paused. Then, rumi- 
 nantly, as though in self communion, the lady 
 uttered these cryptic words : 
 
 "But perhaps- 
 
 Leilah, who had turned away, turned to her. 
 "Perhaps what?" 
 
 But Violet, compressing her lips, assumed 
 the appearance which a very worldly, exquis 
 itely gowned and beautiful Sphinx might pre 
 sent. 
 
 "Perhaps what?" Leilah, puzzled by the at 
 titude, repeated. 
 
 "Oh, nothing. That is, nothing in particu 
 lar. I was merely thinking from battle, mur 
 der and sudden death, Good Lord deliver us! 
 And yet " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
THE MONSTER 139 
 
 Violet looked her over. "I know I ought 
 not to tell and for that very reason I will. 
 Your two husbands are to fight to-day. They 
 may be at it now " 
 
 Abruptly she made a face, dropped her 
 voice and threw out: 
 
 "No such luck." 
 
 In the doorway Barouffski stood. 
 
 Leilah had not seen. Inwardly she had 
 shrivelled. To the sudden knowledge that the 
 two men were to fight, fear, as suddenly, su 
 perposed the conviction that Verplank would 
 be killed. It stirred in her a wholly animal 
 longing to get away from herself; to be rid, 
 however transiently, of that sense of horror 
 and helplessness which only the tortured 
 know. In an effort to shut out the pain of it, 
 she closed her eyes. 
 
 When she opened them, Barouffski was 
 before her. Affably he was addressing her 
 friend. 
 
 "Beautiful day, Lady Silverstairs. In Lon 
 don you do not often have such weather. I 
 hope Lord Silverstairs is planning to keep 
 you here a very long time." 
 
 "What? What?" Violet in a crescendo of 
 surprise, exclaimed. 
 
 Affably, smilingly, unperturbably, Barouff 
 ski reiterated the expression of his hope. 
 
140 THE MONSTER 
 
 Icily Violet cut him short. "With us it is 
 the woman who makes and unmakes plans." 
 
 Barouffski, unabashed and smiling, plucked 
 at his beard. "A most excellent custom. Yes. 
 For when has reason governed the world? It 
 is only by the heartstrings that men can be led 
 and women alone can lead them." 
 
 But now Violet with the air of an empress 
 had risen. "Leilah, my motor is at the door. 
 Let me take you for a turn in the Bois." 
 
 "Do," Barouffski exclaimed, looking as he 
 spoke at Leilah. "You are a trifle pale, cara 
 mia. A turn or two now in the Bois 
 
 With a gesture he signified, that is what 
 you need. 
 
 Turning to Violet he added: "So thought 
 ful of you, Lady Silverstairs." 
 
 In speaking he bowed for Violet now was 
 vacating the garden and Leilah who had risen 
 was following her. 
 
 Barouffski bowed again. "Cara mia, a 
 pleasant drive to you." 
 
 But, when both women had entered the 
 house, he sighed, sighed with relief, looked 
 about him, consulted his watch, looked again 
 about him, moved to the entrance, touched a 
 bell which presently a footman answered. 
 
 Barouffski indicated the table and chairs. 
 "Get all that out of here." 
 
THE MONSTER 141 
 
 "Perfectly, monsieur le comte," the man, 
 with marked deference, answered and started 
 to do as bidden. 
 
 BaroufTski checked him. "In five or ten 
 minutes some gentlemen will come by the 
 main entrance. Show them in the reception 
 room. About the same time others will come 
 by the gate. When they do, see that I am noti 
 fied at once." 
 
 "Perfectly, monsieur le comte." 
 
 "Afterward, when they are gone, come back 
 here and tidy up." 
 
 "Perfectly, monsieur le comte." 
 
 But now BaroufTski had turned, he was en 
 tering the house. The man stuck his tongue 
 out at him. "Canaille, va!" he muttered. 
 Raising his arms, he added: "Tidy up, eh? 
 Tidy up what? The remains of your con 
 versation, no doubt. Bah! That won t be 
 much." He laughed, took first the table, then 
 the chairs, vanished with them and reap 
 peared. 
 
 A bell at the gate had sounded, he hurried 
 there and bowing, admitted Aurelia and that 
 young person s young man. 
 
 The girl made straight for the kennels. 
 "Parsnips!" she delightedly exclaimed. 
 "Aren t those two big brutes simply dear?" 
 
 Swiftly Emmanuel intervened. "Pardon, 
 
142 THE MONSTER 
 
 they are very savage." Then, as the girl hesi 
 tated he added: "Will mademoiselle give 
 herself the trouble to pass into the salon?" 
 
 Aurelia tossed her pretty head. "No, I like 
 it here. Besides I hate suggestions. Tell 
 Madame BaroufTska that I have come on a 
 most unimportant matter which will probably 
 detain me a very long time." 
 
 "Yes," her companion rejoined as the foot 
 man retreated. "Yes, I often think that it is 
 only unimportant matters that are really mo 
 mentous." In his hand was a stick which neg 
 ligently he twirled. "What is this one, if I 
 may ask?" 
 
 "I have forgotten." 
 
 "Perhaps then it was really important." 
 
 Aurelia, who, with her delicious face and 
 delicate garments, looked like a wayward an 
 gel, lifted a finger. 
 
 "So it was! So it was! I remember now I 
 wanted to ask her how she likes matrimony." 
 
 "Caesar!" the youth exclaimed. "You are 
 not collecting data on the subject, are you?" 
 
 Meekly, with a treacherously innocent air, 
 the girl surveyed him. "You wouldn t wish 
 me to take leaps in the dark, would you?" 
 
 "Certainly I would. Certainly I do since 
 you are to take them with me." 
 
 With the same wicked look, Aurelia mois- 
 
THE MONSTER 143 
 
 tened her lips. "What a beautiful nature you 
 have!" 
 
 Pleased at this, the little lord nodded. 
 
 "I ll tell you what matrimony is, two souls 
 with but a single thought 
 
 "Yes," Aurelia interrupted. "Two souls 
 with half a thought apiece." Rapturously she 
 sighed. "There is real bliss!" 
 
 Buttercups snarled. "Oh come, now! If 
 you turn everything into ridicule- 
 Dreamily Aurelia continued. "I asked the 
 duchess, and she said 
 
 "The old harridan!" 
 
 "You know her manner" a manner 
 which Aurelia instantly made her own. "My 
 dear, matrimony is three months of adoration, 
 three months of introspection, thirty years of 
 toleration with the children to begin it all 
 over." 
 
 Buttercups frowned. "A rather volu 
 minous definition." 
 
 "Rather luminous, I should call it." 
 
 Frowning still, Buttercups threw out. 
 
 "While you were at it, it s a pity you did not 
 ask her what love is." 
 
 But the sarcasm, if sarcasm it were, con 
 vulsed Aurelia. "Parsnips!" she delightedly 
 exclaimed. "You ll never believe it! She 
 asked me!" 
 
144 THE MONSTER 
 
 "Mistook you for an expert," Buttercups, 
 glowering at the beautiful, laughing girl 
 snapped back. "What did you say?" 
 
 Aurelia, her eyes sparkling, her little white 
 teeth visible, her little pink tongue also, looked 
 about her, turned, went to the bench, got up 
 on it and there, solemnly now as though on a 
 platform, coughed. 
 
 "I said, that while from studies and sta 
 tistics I was inclined to believe that, theo 
 retically, love is a fermentation of the mole 
 cules of the imagination, actually it is the 
 affection of somebody else." 
 
 Blankly Buttercups stared. "I don t under 
 stand that." 
 
 Aurelia coughed again. "I added that 
 from the same studies and statistics I was also 
 inclined to believe that love is the tragedy of 
 those who lack it, the boredom of those who 
 don t." 
 
 "Eh?" Buttercups whined. "I don t under 
 stand that either." 
 
 "I further stated that love is a specific emo 
 tion, more or less exclusive in selection, more 
 or less permanent in duration and due to 
 a mental disturbance, in itself caused by a 
 law of attraction which somebody or other 
 said \vas the myth of happiness, invented by 
 the devil for man s despair." 
 
THE MONSTER 145 
 
 Helplessly Buttercups groaned. "I don t 
 understand that at all." 
 
 With birdlike ease Aurelia hopped from 
 the bench and with consoling delicacy nodded : 
 
 "Violet said she didn t either." 
 
 Buttercups brightened. "Now there s a 
 woman of sense." 
 
 Very sweetly Aurelia nodded again. "Lei- 
 lah Barouffska said she did understand, so I 
 may suppose that she is stupid." 
 
 At the shot which missed him Butter 
 cups tormented the tip of his nose. 
 
 "No doubt, she does seem to have made a 
 mess of things. Why now did she leave her 
 first husband?" 
 
 Aurelia looked down and away. 
 
 "It is not a thing I could mention." 
 
 Buttercups gave a little jump. "What?" 
 
 Perversely, her lovely eyes still lowered, 
 Aurelia added: 
 
 "She caught him in the act." 
 
 Buttercups jumped again. 
 
 Aurelia blushed or rather appeared to do 
 so. "With her own eyes she saw him eating 
 fish with his knife." 
 
 But Buttercups had rallied. "Now, Aure 
 lia," he protested, "I have heard too many lies 
 about myself, too many confounded lies, to 
 believe any such story." 
 
146 THE MONSTER 
 
 Superciliously, her delicate nose in the 
 air, Aurelia looked him over. "Ah, in 
 deed! But then you see sensible people 
 never object to the lies that are told about 
 them. What we do object to is the truth. 
 Now when we are married if we ever 
 
 are- 
 
 "Aurelia," the poor devil pathetically in 
 terrupted, "you never say when we are mar 
 ried without adding if we ever are!" 
 
 "That s to teach you not to take things for 
 granted. I have been engaged before and 
 may be again." 
 
 "B-before!" the flustered Buttercups stut 
 tered. "A-again!" 
 
 Frostily this ingenue considered the youth. 
 "Parsnips, don t look at me in that fashion, 
 you inflame me." 
 
 She cocked an ear. "What s that?" 
 
 At the gate the bell was ringing and un- 
 perceived by either Emmanuel had reap 
 peared. The footman was descending the gar 
 den. Midway he stopped. 
 
 "I have the honour to inform mademoiselle 
 that madame la comtesse is momentarily 
 awaited." 
 
 He bowed, moved on, opened the gate 
 through which then a brief procession passed: 
 S lverstairs, a green bag uader his arm; de 
 
THE MONSTER 147 
 
 Fresnoy, a stick under his ; an old man with 
 a small valise; finally Verplank. 
 
 Verplank, raising his hat, approach Aure- 
 lia. De Fresnoy, after saluting the young 
 woman, addressed the old man. 
 
 But Silverstairs, sidling up to Buttercups 
 and indicating Aurelia, whispered: 
 
 "Get her away, there s to be a fight." 
 
 "The deuce there is!" Buttercups exclaimed. 
 
 For a moment he looked helplessly about 
 and made a little futile gesture. "If I ask 
 her to go she ll stay." 
 
 Silverstairs pulled at his moustache. "Then 
 tell her to stay and she ll go." 
 
 But such strategy was needless. Aurelia 
 had no intention of loitering among these men, 
 not one of whom interested her remotely. 
 With a glimpse of her pretty teeth to Ver 
 plank and a nod at the others, she passed, fol 
 lowed by Buttercups, through the gate which 
 the footman held open. 
 
 Meanwhile the dogs were barking and, 
 from the house beyond, BaroufTski appeared. 
 With him were friends of his, Palencia, Tysz- 
 kiewicz ; also a young man with a serious face 
 who, like the old man, had with him a case 
 which gingerly he put on the ground. 
 
 Verplank glanced at them, went to the 
 bench and began removing his coat. 
 
148 THE MONSTER 
 
 The night before he had dreamed pleasur- 
 ably, as the great beasts of the jungles dream, 
 of blood and the joy of killing. He had 
 dreamed also and less agreeably that Leilah s 
 story was true. However he had denied it, he 
 did not know but that it might be. Nonethe 
 less he doubted. He doubted it for the most 
 human of reasons, because he wanted to. He 
 doubted it for another and a better reason, 
 because his intuitions so prompted. He had 
 yet another reason, one less valid perhaps but 
 cogent, the dissimilarity between Leilah and 
 himself. The contrast was so marked that they 
 might have come of alien races, from different 
 ^ones. 
 
 On leaving her house other differences 
 /had occurred to him, differences not physical 
 but moral. It is ridiculous, he had told him 
 self. Nonetheless he dreamed that the story 
 was true. 
 
 Meanwhile the parliamentaries had not been 
 entirely successful. The note dispatched from 
 Voisins had resulted that evening in a con 
 ference between Verplank s seconds and Ba- 
 rouffski s. These latter, Tyszkiewicz and Pa- 
 lencia, had begun by insisting that it was their 
 principal who was aggrieved, that Verplank, 
 in attempting to address a lady whom he knew 
 did not wish to speak to him, had been wholly 
 
THE MONSTER 149 
 
 at fault and was deprived in consequence of 
 the choice of weapons. 
 
 To this de Fresnoy had objected that Ver- 
 plank knew nothing of the kind, that in ad 
 dressing or in attempting to address the lady, 
 he had acted in accordance with the usages 
 of the world : moreover assuming him to have 
 been in error in thinking that the lady did not 
 object to being addressed, her slightest indi 
 cation to the contrary would have been super- 
 sufficient to make him desist, the result be 
 ing that Barouffski s intervention reflected on 
 his good-breeding and was therefore an 
 insult. 
 
 This view of the matter Barouffski s sec 
 onds refused to accept. They represented that 
 it were difficult for the lady to have more 
 punctiliously informed Verplank of her dis 
 inclination to be addressed by him than she 
 had already done in obtaining a divorce. 
 
 At the easy logic de Fresnoy laughed. Ac 
 cording to him, all that was beside the issue. 
 He declared that many divorced couples were 
 better friends afterward than they had found 
 it possible to be before. In support of the 
 statement he cited history: he cited the case of 
 Henri IV and the Reine Margot. He did 
 more than cite, he quoted the chronicles of 
 Pierre TEstoile, and he insisted that if his view 
 
150 THE MONSTER 
 
 were not accepted the conference must dis 
 solve and an arbiter be convened. 
 
 In face of these arguments advanced to pro 
 vincials by a Parisian, advanced too with that 
 tone of authority which only a man sure of his 
 ground or of his assurance may maintain and 
 advanced, moreover, to men not over sure of 
 their own, the latter hesitated. 
 
 Then, as though to demonstrate the truth of 
 the parodox of which de Fresnoy had deliv 
 ered himself at Voisins, the quip that a man 
 is rarely killed except by his seconds, Silver- 
 stairs who, thus far throughout the conference, 
 had smoked in placid silence, suddenly stuck 
 his oar in. 
 
 "Why not toss for it?" 
 
 , Tyszkiewicz and Palencia, hesitating still, 
 agreed. A coin was flipped, heads for Ver- 
 plank, tails for BaroufTski. Tails it was. Ba- 
 rouffski was accorded the choice of arms, foils 
 were designated by his seconds and the meeting 
 was arranged to be held in his garden, at two 
 the next day. 
 
 Verplank would have preferred pistols. 
 But, informed of the result, he dreamed pleas- 
 urably. The encounter was the main thing. 
 Presently sleep sank him deeper. Life and 
 death ceased to be. He became part of the in 
 choate and primordial. Then, from the voicte" 
 
THE MONSTER 1 51 
 
 in which he lay, lightly, delicately, imper 
 ceptibly, an artery reached and drew him. But 
 his scattered selves, the objective, subjective, 
 superjective, satisfied with their temporary de 
 centralisation, resisted. In the subtle struggle 
 a memory, catalogued Leilah, was aroused. 
 The syllables of the name resounded remotely, 
 like a damp drum beaten obscurely behind the 
 shelves of thought. They conveyed no mean 
 ing and, before they could suggest any, they 
 passed, drifted by the currents of unconscious 
 ness. But at once, those currents, barred by 
 assembling ideas broke to the murmur of the 
 vocables Leilah! Leilah! Other memories, 
 incidents, possibilities eddied among them and 
 the sleeper, awakening, found himself con 
 fronted by the tragic mystery which the name 
 revived. 
 
 Immediately the picture that had formed it 
 self before him at Voisins returned. From it 
 the Why had gone but the obstacle remained, 
 and, as he got from the bed, he promised him 
 self to demolish it. 
 
 Now, in the hostile enclosure, as the dogs 
 barked and BaroufTski appeared, Verplank re 
 moved his coat, undid his collar, rolled up his 
 sleeves. 
 
 Beside him, bending over a case, the old 
 man mumbled. He was a surgeon. The hour 
 
152 THE MONSTER 
 
 was not to his liking. He believed in duels, 
 they were a source of revenue to him, but he 
 believed in fighting on an empty stomach and, 
 in the afternoon, who had that? 
 
 He looked up at Verplank. "Monsieur, you 
 are young, you are brave, I doubt not you are 
 also adroit. But had I been you, when your 
 seconds asked, as I may suppose they asked: 
 Which shall it be, the pistol at twenty paces 
 or the sword? I would have said to them: 
 Give me the sword at twenty paces. Yes; 
 that is what I would have said." 
 
 Verplank ignored him utterly. In the cen 
 ter of the garden the seconds grouped to 
 gether, were concluding details. Beyond, near 
 the house, Barouffski stood. He also was now 
 bare-armed. Near him, emptying a case, was 
 the young man with the serious face. Beside 
 him, placed upright against a wall, were two 
 long green bags. From the street came the 
 usual rumble, the noise of motors, the cries of 
 hawkers, the snorting of stallions, the clatter 
 of hoofs. 
 
 Silverstairs, abandoning the others went 
 over to Verplank. 
 
 u De Fresnoy has been chosen director." 
 
 Verplank, from his trowsers pocket, had 
 taken a pair of gloves. The palm of one of 
 them, previously moistened, had been dusted 
 
THE MONSTER 153 
 
 with xQgjp Now, as he put it on, he looked 
 across at Barouffski who was looking at him. 
 The man s bare arms were hairy and the sight 
 of them was repugnant to Verplank. At once 
 all the jealousy, all the hate of the male, 
 mounted like wine to his head. He coloured, 
 his hand shook. Then, resolutely, he reacted. 
 In a moment he had again control of himself 
 and it was idly, with an air of indifference, 
 as he finished with his glove, that, in reference 
 to the dinner that evening, he said: 
 
 "Are you to have many people to-night?" 
 
 Silverstairs, delighted that Verplank, show 
 ing up in such form, should be so sure of the 
 result, laughed. "No, it is to be small and 
 early. Afterward we go on to a play. The 
 missis has a box for something, the Gymnase 
 I think." 
 
 Verplank bent over and turned up the ends 
 of his trowsers. A moment before he had been 
 considering methods of attack, in particular 
 a direct riposte after a certain parade and it 
 was springingly, as though delivering it, that 
 he straightened. 
 
 But now de Fresnoy approached. Silver- 
 stairs moved to one side where he was joined by 
 Tyszkiewicz, a thin, tall man with a prom 
 inent nose and an air vaguely pedagogic, and 
 by Palencia who, with great black eyebrows 
 
154 THE MONSTER 
 
 that met and a full black beard, looked like 
 Fra Diavolo disguised as a clubman. 
 
 From one of the long green bags de Fres- 
 noy had taken a pair of foils. These he of 
 fered, hilt foremost, to Verplank who grasped 
 one and then to gauge its temper, or his own, 
 lashed the air with it. The movement revealed 
 a suppleness of arm, a muscular ease, the 
 swelling biceps which training alone provides. 
 
 Save Barouffski, no one noticed. For a mo 
 ment his eyes shifted absently. It was as 
 though he too had meditated a coup and now 
 was meditating another. Meanwhile he also 
 had received a foil. 
 
 "Messieurs!" de Fresnoy called. He spoke 
 in a loud, clear voice. He had moved back and 
 stood at an angle to Barouffski and Verplank. 
 Opposite, at an equal angle were the seconds 
 and surgeons. All now were so stationed that 
 they formed a sort of cross. 
 
 "Messieurs, I do not need to remind you 
 of the common loyalty to be observed. What 
 I have to say is that the encounter will pro 
 ceed in engagements of three minutes, followed 
 each by three minutes of repose, until one of 
 you is incapacitated." 
 
 De Fresnoy looked from BaroufTski to 
 Verplank. At once in his loud, clear voice he 
 called: 
 
THE MONSTER 155 
 
 "On guard!" 
 
 The two men fell into position. De Fres- 
 noy moved forward, took in either hand the 
 foils at the points, drew them together until 
 they met, left them so and moved back. 
 
 "Allez, messieurs!" 
 
 At the word Allez, or, in English, go, and 
 without waiting for the term Messieurs that 
 followed, instantly Barouffski lunged. His foil 
 pierced Verplank in the cheek and touched the 
 upper jaw. 
 
 Verplank had a vision of a footman peering 
 from a window, a taste of something hot and 
 acrid in his mouth, a sense of pain, the sensa 
 tion of \aiip_erine fury. 
 
 De Fresnoy s face had grown red as his 
 neckcloth. He branished his stick. 
 
 "Monsieur!" he cried at Barouffski. "Your 
 conduct is odious. You shall answer to me 
 for it." 
 
 Barouffski bowed. "For the expression 
 which it has pleased you to employ, you shall 
 answer to me." 
 
 "Permit me! Permit me!" Tyszkiewicz in 
 terjected. "To what do you object?" 
 
 Angrily de Fresnoy turned at him. "Your 
 principal drew before the order. He 
 
 "Permit me! Permit me!" Tyszkiewicz in 
 terrupted. "The word Allez is an order. The 
 
156 THE MONSTER 
 
 moment it is uttered hostilities begin. The 
 term Messieurs is but a polite accessory, a 
 term which may or may not be employed." 
 
 Insolently de Fresnoy considered him. "I 
 have no lessons to receive from you." 
 
 "Permit me ! Permit me 
 
 But de Fresnoy had turned on his heel. Be 
 fore him Verplank stood, Silverstairs on one 
 side, the old surgeon on the other. The young 
 surgeon had joined them. Beyond, Barouff- 
 ski was examining the point of his foil. 
 
 From Verplank s mouth and face blood was 
 running. The wound had not improved his 
 appearance. The old surgeon, on tiptoes, was 
 staunching it. 
 
 "What I like," he confided, speaking the 
 while very, unctuously as though what he was 
 saying would be a comfort to Verplank; "what 
 I like is to attend to gentlemen whose wives 
 have deceived them. Outraged husbands, 
 monsieur, that is my specialty!" 
 
 Verplank brushed him aside, shook his foil, 
 and called at de Fresnoy. 
 
 "Are the three minutes up?" 
 
 "Monsieur!" the old surgeon protested. 
 
 The young surgeon intervened. 
 
 "But, monsieur 
 
 De Fresnoy motioned at them. 
 
 "Is he in a condition to continue?" 
 
THE MONSTER 157 
 
 "Why not?" Verplank scornfully replied. 
 
 He raised his left hand, and, with a gesture 
 of excuse, turned and spat. He looked up. 
 His mouth was on fire, his jaw burned, the 
 wound in his cheek was a flame. Yet these 
 things but added to the intensity of his eyes. 
 They blazed. There was blood on his face, 
 on his chin, on his shirt, on his feet. He 
 was hideous. But he was a man, and a mad 
 one. 
 
 "He ought to be horsewhipped," muttered 
 Silverstairs, glaring as he spoke at Barouffski, 
 who was talking to his seconds. 
 
 "On guard, then!" called de Fresnoy. 
 
 "Permit me, permit me," cried Tyszkiewicz. 
 "The point of my principal s sword is broken." 
 
 "Give him another then," de Fresnoy 
 roughly threw out. Insolently he added: 
 "And teach him how to use it." In a mo 
 ment, when from the other bag, a foil had 
 been got and measured, "On guard," he re 
 peated. 
 
 Again he united the foils. Again he gave 
 the command. 
 
 For a moment the weapons clashed. 
 
 Suddenly and excitedly Palencia cried: 
 "My principal is touched." 
 
 "Halt," de Fresnoy, intervening with raised 
 stick, commanded. 
 
158 THE MONSTER 
 
 Verplank moved back. "Damn him," he 
 muttered, "I haven t done with him yet." 
 
 About Barouffski now, Palencia and the 
 young man with the serious face had come. 
 The latter was examining Barouffski s right 
 arm. On it a thin red line was visible. Very 
 gravely the young man looked up. 
 
 "My client is disabled. Profound incision 
 in the region of the flexor digitorum sublimis 
 accompanied by a notable effusion of blood." 
 
 The old surgeon chuckled. Confidentially 
 as before he addressed Verplank. "I know 
 that term. It means a scratch. Those ladies 
 there, it must amuse even them." 
 
 As he spoke he indicated a window at which 
 Violet and Leilah had appeared, but from 
 which now Leilah was retreating. 
 
 Verplank did not hear, did not see. The 
 young surgeon, resuming, had announced him 
 self as opposed to a continuation of the encoun 
 ter. It was this that preoccupied Verplank. 
 
 Loudly and angrily he cried: "Let s have 
 pistols then. That man can use his left hand 
 and I ll do the same. 
 
 "Cristi! La jolie dame!" the old surgeon 
 muttered to himself. 
 
 In the doorway Leilah had come. Hur 
 riedly she moved to Verplank. As she did so 
 Barouffski tried to prevent her. 
 
THE MONSTER 159 
 
 "Cara mia, I must beg of you 
 
 He had got in her way but she eluded him, 
 while the other men looked curiously at this 
 woman who now agitatedly was addressing 
 Verplank. 
 
 "Don t fight any more, don t!" 
 
 Roughly Verplank answered: "I haven t 
 begun." 
 
 "Sir," cried BarourTski. "I can permit no 
 conversation with this lady." 
 
 Verplank ignoring BarourTski as utterly as 
 he had ignored the surgeon, looked at Leilah. 
 
 "That story of yours is 
 
 But whatever he may have intended to say, 
 BaroufTski interrupted. He was shouting at 
 Verplank, calling, too, at Leilah whom he 
 had got by the arm and whom he would have 
 drawn away, but this Verplank prevented. 
 Shifting his foil to his left hand, with his right 
 he seized BarourTski and with a twist which 
 separated him from Leilah, shoved him aside. 
 
 "To your shambles!" he called at him. 
 
 But already the others were intervening. 
 Tyszkiewicz with his eternal "Permit me," got 
 between the two men. Palencia held BaroufT- 
 ski by the shoulder. Silverstairs drew Ver 
 plank away, while de Fresnoy, viewing the 
 situation as hopeless, declared the duel at an 
 end. 
 
160 THE MONSTER 
 
 The actions of all were practically so si 
 multaneous that they were as one to Leilah 
 who, bewildered by the confusion which she 
 herself had caused, horrified by Verplank s 
 appearance and tortured by the riddle of his 
 interrupted words, now, over the heads of the 
 others, again called to him: 
 
 "You say that the story is 
 
 "At five!" Verplank threw back. 
 
 Barouffski, bursting with rage and impo 
 tence, shouted: 
 
 "I say this conversation must cease." 
 
 The old surgeon, nudging his colleague, 
 laughed: 
 
 "There is my specialty!" 
 
 Both surgeons then were occupied with their 
 bags. De Fresnoy, overhearing the remark, 
 could not but smile. To conceal it he turned 
 to the gate where he was joined by Silverstairs 
 and where at once, Palencia and Tyszkiewicz 
 followed, leaving in the center of the garden 
 Leilah and her two husbands, one of whom 
 with a shrug which for an American was 
 perhaps rather French, went to the bench 
 where his coat lay. 
 
 In this instance again the actions of all so 
 closely coincided that barely an instant inter 
 vened before Leilah was throwing after Ver 
 plank the two syllables he had thrown at her. 
 
THE MONSTER 161 
 
 "At five!" 
 
 Later she was unconscious of having done 
 so. But Barouffski heard and presently, when 
 the others had gone and in this garden those 
 two were alone, with angry suspicion he con 
 fronted her. 
 
 "Five! What is that? What does it mean?" 
 
 Leilah had turned to go. A bit unsteadily 
 she moved on, reached the entrance, leaned 
 there for support. 
 
 But Barouffski was at her heels. 
 
 "Five," he repeated. "He said it, you said 
 it, what does it mean?" 
 
 "It means that God willing some day I 
 may have peace." 
 
 She had half-turned. She turned again. In 
 a moment she had gone. 
 
 Menacingly Barouffski s eyes followed her. 
 "That s what five means, does it?" 
 
 Then he too turned. Nearby, on the mar 
 ble chair, were his coat and waistcoat. Slowly, 
 thoughtfully, he put them on. As he did so he 
 noticed the dogs. It may have seemed to him 
 then that they were his only friends. Longly 
 he looked their way. 
 
 Suddenly, as though illumination had come, 
 he touched a bell and looked up at Leilah s 
 window. 
 
 After a brief delay, Emmanuel appeared. 
 
162 THE MONSTER 
 
 "Shut the gate," BaroufTski ordered. 
 
 "Perfectly, monsieur le comte," the foot 
 man very deferentially replied and started to 
 do as bidden. 
 
 BaroufTski checked him. Indicating the 
 lower window, he added: 
 
 "At five or thereabouts be in there. I will 
 tell you then what to do. You hear me?" 
 
 "Perfectly, monsieur le comte." 
 
 Again BaroufTski glanced at the upper win 
 dow. As he glanced he smiled. 
 
 "Cara mia, five may mean more things than 
 you say, more even than you think." 
 
 He was still smiling but it was not a pleas 
 ant smile to see. 
 
 Beneath his breath, Emmanuel, who was 
 looking at him, muttered : 
 
 "Quelle gueule de maquereau!" 
 
X 
 
 "Gracious!" Violet exclaimed. She had 
 been smoking and now in putting a cigarette 
 in a cendrier she had succeeded in overturn 
 ing it. Undismayed she looked at a clock. 
 "Gracious!" she repeated. "Since that stupid 
 duel, I have sat here an hour." 
 
 Leisurely the lady arose. She was a glow 
 ing object in this room which, filled with costly 
 futilities and furnished in canary and black, 
 otherwise was Empire and brilliant. The 
 main entrance, hung with heavy portieres of 
 yellow damask had, opposite it, across the 
 room, a tapestry panel which masked a spiral 
 stairway that led below. To one side, at an 
 elaborate table, which now the overturned cen- 
 drierhad, strewn with ashes, Leilah was seatecT 
 SeTTTna her, through an open window, shone 
 the eager sun. Before her, rising from a sofa 
 was her friend. 
 
 Leilah wished that she would go, wished 
 too that she would stay, wished rather as at 
 times we all wish of those who are near us 
 that she were different, less mpjidaine perhaps, 
 more simple. To Violet, the spectacle in the 
 
164 THE MONSTER 
 
 garden had been tedious. To Leilah it was 
 horrible. Moreover the atmosphere of blood 
 and hate, the enigma of Verplank s words, the 
 menaces of Barouff ski s eyes, these things 
 frightened her, inducing a dread which 
 seemed to brood not in the mind but in the 
 body. She could have put a hand to her gir 
 dle and have said: "It is here." In addition 
 she felt as in every spiritual crisis we all do 
 alone. Of this she could not tell Violet. 
 She felt that she lacked the power to express 
 it and that Violet lacked the ability to under 
 stand. Pain has accents which only its grad 
 uates know. Violet, in all her brilliant life, 
 had never shed a poignant tear. 
 
 "What do you propose to do now?" the 
 lady was asking. 
 
 Cheerlessly Leilah replied: "My duty." 
 
 Here was something which Violet did un 
 derstand. Brightly she nodded. 
 
 "Yes, and I may tell you that it is your duty 
 to preserve your looks and avoid a scandal. I 
 did not at all like your fantasia in the garden. 
 A gentlewoman never does anything important 
 and that was an important thing. In no time 
 it will be all over the place. You can believe 
 that, can t you?" 
 
 "I don t know what to believe." 
 
 Violet laughed. "I always believe what I 
 
THE MONSTER 165 
 
 like. That I find so satisfactory. Apropos. 
 What was that story about which Verplank 
 was shouting? Mercy! I could have heard 
 him a mile away." 
 
 In weary protest Leilah shook her head. 
 "You know I can t tell you." 
 
 "The same old thing, was it? But how 
 antiquated you are! Really it is piteous. 
 There are no secrets any more. All that sort 
 of thing went out with hoopskirts. Private 
 life which used to be a sealed book has become 
 an open newspaper. It is plain for instance, 
 plain to everybody, plain as a pikestaff that 
 you are still in love with Verplank. What you 
 left him for the Lord in his infinite wisdom 
 and mercy only knows. That is a secret cer 
 tainly but only because you choose to make it 
 one. It is no secret to me though that you 
 are dying to go back to him. But don t you 
 know you can t? Don t you know it? Don t 
 you know that you can t budge an inch until 
 you have shipped Barouffski? Now how are 
 you going to do that? Tell me." 
 
 Leilah made a pass with a hand. It was as 
 though, in some rite known but to her, she were 
 consulting the lap of the invisible gods and, 
 in it, the equally invisible future. 
 
 "Then I will tell you. You have got to buy 
 him off. Listen to this. I will pack Silver- 
 
166 THE MONSTER 
 
 stairs straight to the Embassy. There he will 
 get all the law and most of the prophets. 
 Meanwhile promise that you ll keep your 
 head." 
 
 "I will try," Leilah, mechanically, her 
 thoughts afar, replied. 
 
 "There!" Violet exclaimed. "That s right. 
 When there is a divorce in the air it s so much 
 better to try than to be tried." 
 
 At the^aaaejest she laughed, embraced her 
 friend. In a moment she had gone, distribut 
 ing as she went a faint, sweet smell of orris. 
 
 Leilah who had risen moved to the win 
 dow and looked out at the gate through which 
 Verplank would come. It was as she had said : 
 She did not know what to believe and mutely 
 for a moment she prayed for guidance. 
 
 "O, Lords of Karma, Watchers of the Seven 
 Spheres, grant me so to live that, hereafter, I 
 may say, I have harmed no heart, I have made 
 no one weep. Out of your infinite bounty 
 grant that somewhere, sometime, there may be 
 peace to Gulian s soul and mine." 
 
 The prayer concluded she felt securer. Mo 
 mentarily the cancer of anxiety had ceased to 
 gnaw, the fascination of fear had departed. 
 In the respite she turned to the clock. It 
 was nearly five and she rang for one of her 
 women. 
 
THE MONSTER 167 
 
 "Parker," she began, when the servant ap 
 peared. 
 
 u Yes, my lady." 
 
 "Presently, in a few minutes, a gentleman 
 will come by the gate. Be there and bring him 
 here. Bring him through the dining room and 
 up the back way. If possible, I prefer that no 
 one should see him." 
 
 "Yes, my lady. Thank your ladyship." 
 
 At once, with that air which those acquire 
 who attended to delicate matters, the woman 
 drew aside the tapestry that masked the stair, 
 which then discreetly, almost atiptoe, she de 
 scended. 
 
 As the tapestry fell again, instantly there re 
 turned to Leilah the sense of evil and impend 
 ing ill. The brilliant room seemed full of ter 
 rors. In each bright corner a danger lurked. 
 So strong was the impression that she felt it 
 must be she was being warned, that she was 
 being visited by those obscure phenomena 
 which occultists call impacts from the astral, 
 and that these were urging her to go, to meet 
 Verplank without, in the garden, in the street, 
 anywhere except in this fastidiousness. 
 
 Coerced by the impression, she entered an 
 adjoining room, got there a fichu which she 
 put on her head, a light wrap which she drew 
 about her. Excited as she was, unaided as 
 
168 THE MONSTER 
 
 well, it took several minutes before she could 
 find these accouterments. When, at last equip 
 ped, she re-entered the sitting room, she 
 started. 
 
 Before her, his hat on, one side of his face 
 medallioned with courtplaster, stood Ver- 
 plank. 
 
 At sight of Leilah, he removed his hat which 
 he tossed on the sofa and said at once and sim 
 ply enough : 
 
 "That story of yours is false as Judas." 
 
 "Gulian!" At the moment it was all she 
 found, but then fancy a blind man dazzled. 
 
 Verplank nodded. "Yes. The letters you 
 received at Coronado there were three of 
 them, were there not? three written on gray 
 paper each signed Effingham Verplank? 
 well, my father wrote them, that s true 
 enough, but he wrote them to your aunt, your 
 mother s sister, Hilda Hemingway. Did you 
 never hear that the governor had an affair with 
 her? Did you?" 
 
 Leilah s face spoke for her. From the be 
 wilderment there, it was obvious that of it all 
 she was ignorant. 
 
 With an uplift of the chin Verplank consid 
 ered her. 
 
 "That s odd, girls generally only hear what 
 they ought not to. However, Hemingway be- 
 
THE MONSTER 169 
 
 came suspicious for very good reasons, no 
 doubt, or, if you prefer, for very bad ones 
 the result being that his wife turned the let 
 ters over for safe keeping to your mother. 
 When she died your father found them. He 
 did not stop there, he showed them to my 
 mother. My mother knew the facts, but she 
 said your father was so convinced of your 
 mother s infidelity that it seemed a pity to dis 
 abuse him. Those were her very words to me 
 to-day." 
 
 "Gulian!" Still Leilah found but that. 
 Visibly the light was there. As yet she could 
 not credit it. 
 
 Again, but now appreciatively, Verplank 
 nodded. "Yes. I know. It does seem queer. 
 But then my mother is not the ordinary wom 
 an. She thought the governor so created to 
 conquer that it no more occurred to her to sit 
 in judgment on his victims than it occurred to 
 her to sit on him. In the true spirit of Chris 
 tian charity she overlooked it all." 
 
 Verplank paused, opened and closed a hand. 
 "It was not matrimony perhaps, but it was 
 magnificent," he obliging resumed, forgetting 
 wholly that it was not in him to do likewise. 
 
 "Come," he added. From the start, Leilah s 
 apparel, the fichu and wrap, had made him 
 fancy that she was as ready to go as he was to 
 
170 THE MONSTER 
 
 take her and it all seemed very simple. "Come. 
 Let s be off. I have a cab for you." 
 
 But at the suggestion which was a command 
 she undid the lace, loosened the cloak. 
 
 "Gulian, I cannot." 
 
 "Cannot!" he angrily repeated. "Why 
 can t you? Have you not heard what I said. 
 You are not my sister, you are my wife. 
 Come." 
 
 "Gulian! You do not know what you ask!" 
 
 "I know perfectly well. If you hesitate it is 
 because you do not believe me. But would I 
 urge you if that malignity were true? Would 
 I?" 
 
 "Gulian, no, you would not." 
 
 "There! You see! You have to believe 
 me." 
 
 "It is not that." 
 
 "It is the divorce then ! But you are no more 
 married to that dismal cad than I am to one of 
 your maids. Except in Nevada the decree has 
 no effect whatever. But without bothering to 
 have it set aside, come with me and let this sau 
 rian get another." 
 
 "Gulian, yes, but for the moment surely you 
 can see that this is impossible." 
 
 "Impossible! There is nothing impossible. 
 Why do you say so? Why do you make so 
 many objections? You should not make any. 
 
THE MONSTER 171 
 
 You hear a cock-and-bull story, take it for gos 
 pel, run away, get a divorce, marry a damned 
 scoundrel and, when you find the story is a bru 
 tal lie, stick like a leech to him." 
 
 "Gulian, if you but knew. My position is 
 horrible- 
 She wanted to tell him that she was in a 
 prison replete with tortures, one from which 
 she was as eager to go as he was to take her, yet 
 one from which she could not escape through 
 the open door of sinning. 
 
 He gave her no time. Instantly he inter 
 rupted her. 
 
 "I know your position, it is all of your own 
 making, too. By God, you can make up your 
 mind to one thing. You ll come, if I have to 
 take you." 
 
 As he spoke he looked so brutal that she 
 shrank. 
 
 "Gulian, you will kill me. I thought so be 
 fore. I know it now 7 ." 
 
 "It is only what you deserve." 
 "Gulian! And you said you loved me!" 
 "Yes, but you make me doubt it." 
 The wrap which previously she had loos 
 ened she let fall on a chair beside her and put 
 the fichu on the table. 
 
 "Gulian, you must give me time." 
 
 The words were simple, plaintively uttered, 
 
172 THE MONSTER 
 
 but her action with the cloak and lace, gave 
 them an emphasis which added to his irrita 
 tion. 
 
 "Nonsense," he retorted. "You have had 
 time enough. Now you must act." Roughly 
 he considered her. "Anyone else might think 
 you cared for that 
 
 "Gulian, in all the world you know I love 
 but you." 
 
 Verplank raised the cloak, reached for the 
 fichu,, 
 
 "Put these on, then, and come." 
 
 But Leilah, with a gesture that was less of 
 resistance than of appeal, motioned them from 
 her. The gesture infuriated him. He threw 
 the cloak about her. 
 
 "By God ! You shall put them on. What s 
 more, you will come whether or not you want 
 to." 
 
 As he spoke he seized her, lifted her. 
 
 To Leilah it seemed as though she were 
 about to be carried off violently, like a prey. 
 Unresistingly she raised her face to his. 
 
 "Gulian, kill me. It will be better; it will 
 end it all." 
 
 Something, the words, the tone in which they 
 were uttered, the helplessness of them and of 
 her; but, more than anything else perhaps, the 
 fact that as he held her he felt her tremble, 
 
THE MONSTER 173 
 
 stayed him. He put her down. His arms fell 
 from her. 
 
 Catching again at the chair she steadied 
 herself, and added: 
 
 "But if I am to live and love you, be patient. 
 Gulian, if you would stop to think, to realise, 
 you would be patient, you- 
 
 He started from her. "You don t mean 
 
 At the question and its insinuation, hotly she 
 flushed. Verplank saw- but the flush. The 
 day previous she had told him that she had 
 taken BaroufTski to serve as a barricade be 
 tween them. Since then he had cajoled his 
 imagination with the idea that the creature 
 stood to her as husbands do on the stage, show 
 entities who, the role performed, cease other 
 wise to be husbands. Now the idea seemed to 
 him hideously na if. The flush refuted it. It 
 did more. It revealed not only other relations 
 but the result of them. Instantly he divined 
 that it was for this that she refused to go. At 
 once within him waked the primitive, the ab 
 original self that lurks always and, save in the 
 high crises of the emotions, sleeps always with 
 in us all. He was in that condition in which 
 men slay with bare hands and afterward con 
 sider them marvelingly, wondering at whose 
 command they could have worked. Perspira 
 tion came to his forehead, started about his 
 
174 THE MONSTER 
 
 nose and mouth. With the fichu which he 
 held he wiped them, but on the table from 
 which he had taken it was a layer of dust 
 and ashes, the refuse of the cendrier which 
 Violet had overturned. It streaked his 
 face, griming him with a mask comic and 
 sinister. 
 
 With that mask, he called at her. 
 
 "Then may you be forever damned." 
 
 The malediction passed from him, reached 
 her, shook her. She held to the chair for sup 
 port. Then indignantly she protested. 
 
 "Gulian!" 
 
 He did not hear. An idea had come to him, 
 one that had visited him in Melbourne, again 
 in New York, to desist from further effort, to 
 leave her where she was, behind the barriers 
 she had raised. At the moment he believed he 
 desired her no longer, loved her no more, had 
 never loved her at all. Occupied with the idea 
 he looked at this woman who had ruined her 
 life, ruined his own. 
 
 She had been saying something, what he did 
 not know nor, self-centered in his anger, did he 
 care. 
 
 In his pocket was a revolver. He felt of it 
 and infuriatedly cried: 
 
 "You ought to be shot." 
 
 "Gulian!" 
 
THE MONSTER 175 
 
 "You are on a par with the beast you took 
 up with." 
 
 "I took his name, Gulian, his name alone." 
 
 It was her turn to be angry. The flush had 
 gone, she was pale again and she had aban 
 doned the chair s support. She stood upright, 
 confronting him with that purity which was 
 hers. 
 
 "I have no more been his wife than I was 
 yours." 
 
 "What!" 
 
 This time he heard. But her words, 
 conflicting with his thoughts, rolled over 
 together. In this mental confusion he 
 stared. 
 
 "What!" 
 
 "It is as I tell you." 
 
 "You swear it?" 
 
 "Do I need to?" 
 
 Still he stared. Truth which acts on us and 
 in us like a chemical precipitate was disclosing 
 to him her whiteness and its own. 
 
 "Do I?" she repeated. 
 
 "No, by God, you don t. I believe you. I 
 can t help myself. It is in your eyes." 
 
 He paused and awkwardly added: 
 
 "Forgive me." 
 
 Faintly and sadly she smiled. 
 
 "Will you?" he asked. 
 
176 THE MONSTER 
 
 "Kiss me." 
 
 In the unique syllables of the words, which 
 in a woman s mouth are so fluid, there was a 
 forgiveness so entire and a love so great that 
 in passionate contrition he drew her to him. 
 Longly their lips met. She closed her eyes, 
 opened them, disengaged herself, moved back 
 a step and looked at him. For the first time 
 she noticed the grime on his face. It did not 
 astonish. It seemed natural after what they 
 had both been through and it occurred to her 
 that her own appearance might be equally 
 bizarre. 
 
 Briefly then, in this lull in the storm, she told 
 him what Violet had suggested the buying 
 and divorce of Barouflski. 
 
 "That will take time," he objected. "The 
 shortest way round is the quickest way out. If 
 you had not interfered in the garden 
 
 A gesture completed the sentence. 
 
 "No matter," he grimly added. "I haven t 
 done with him yet." 
 
 In speaking he had crossed the room, now 
 he recrossed it. 
 
 Imploringly Leilah approached him. 
 
 "Gulian, not that, not that! Don t fight with 
 him again. Don t, I beseech you. It is not 
 alone that anything of the kind is so horrible 
 but he is one of the trickiest swordsmen here. 
 
THE MONSTER 177 
 
 Think what that means! Think what would 
 become of me if if 
 
 From the pocket of his coat Verplank had 
 taken the revolver. He looked at it, looked at 
 her, replaced it. 
 
 "I am a trifle interested in the matter my 
 self. Besides, there are other weapons than the 
 foil. If I can shoot pigeons and I believe I 
 can I ought to be able to land a buzzard." 
 
 At sight of the revolver Leilah had winced. 
 Now she cried: 
 
 "Give it to me!" 
 
 Verplank, amused at her simplicity, smiled. 
 
 "That isn t a dueling pistol." 
 
 "But you never carried one before." 
 
 "In the States I did not need to. Here, in 
 Paris, particularly at night, the streets are sel 
 dom sure. I have this thing for protection." 
 
 "Promise me then 
 
 Verplank looked her over. 
 
 "Don t be a fool." 
 
 But as he looked, suddenly she started and 
 he saw that she was trembling. 
 
 "What the deuce is the matter?" 
 
 Trembling still, peeringly now she had turn 
 ed to the portieres. 
 
 "What is it?" he repeated. 
 
 "I am so frightened." 
 
 "Frightened? What at?" 
 
178 THE MONSTER 
 
 Uncertainly, her head drawn back as a 
 deer s is when surprised, she glanced about 
 her. Slowly then her eyes returned to his. 
 
 "I am so frightened!" 
 
 "Yes, but at what?" 
 
 She motioned at the room. "Before you 
 came there seemed to be something here, 
 something around me and just now " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I heard something." 
 
 "Your maid probably." 
 
 With an intake of the breath she raised a 
 finger and for a moment both were silent. 
 
 "There is no one," he presently told her. 
 "And what if there were!" 
 
 At the idea, he laughed. 
 
 The laugh, succeeding the silence, while in 
 tended to reassure her, did not wholly succeed. 
 She turned to him anew and in a low voice, 
 said: 
 
 "You must go. To-morrow come to Vio 
 let s." 
 
 "I dine there to-night." 
 
 "Yes, I know. Tell her that to-morrow, say 
 at three, we will both be with her. Then she 
 can tell us 
 
 But Verplank had drawn her to him. Again 
 her eyes closed. 
 
 "Go," she said at last. 
 
THE MONSTER 179 
 
 On the sofa was his hat. He reached for it. 
 While he did so, she moved to the tapestry, 
 raised it, disclosing the stair up which he had 
 come. 
 
 "To-morrow, then," he said, as he entered 
 there. 
 
 She nodded at him. u At three!" 
 
 Dropping the tapestry she turned, but very 
 quickly, for again she heard or thought she 
 heard a noise. 
 
 Across the room the portieres were parting. 
 Through them Barouffski appeared. 
 
 "I might have known it," she told herself, 
 and realising that he had been listening, she 
 realised also that the opportunity was as good 
 as another for making an offer which she had 
 in mind. 
 
 These ideas, instantaneous at sight of him, 
 were for the moment stayed. On turning she 
 had seen but the man. Now hastening toward 
 her was a creature with an expression so ven 
 omous that instinctively, in search of help, 
 with the idea of calling to Verplank, she 
 turned to the tapestry again. 
 
 Quicker than she, he caught and tossed her 
 spinning on the sofa. Then, running to the 
 open window, he shouted from it: 
 
 "Emmanuel! The dogs!" 
 
 Leilah, falling backward on the lounge, was 
 
180 THE MONSTER 
 
 too stunned to hear. But she steadied herself, 
 recovered, got to her feet and making again for 
 the stair, called at Barouffski : 
 
 "Free me from you and you shall have half 
 of what I have." 
 
 "Half!" he repeated. At once he was upon 
 her. "All," he cried. "I want it all, all of 
 yours and all of his." 
 
 As he spoke he struck her, shoved her aside, 
 raised the tapestry and vanished. For a second 
 she heard him hastening down, while at once 
 from without came the barking of dogs, the 
 jar of oaths, the sound of cries. 
 
 What it meant she did not know. Her head 
 was whirling. The fall, the blow, the indig 
 nity of both clouded and confused her. From 
 without the uproar mounted and suddenly, the 
 uproar prompting, into the turmoil that was 
 her mind, a gleam of understanding shot. At 
 the apperception of it she shrieked, ran to the 
 window where she shrieked again. The loos 
 ened dogs had sprung at Verplank, who, over 
 whelmed had fallen. 
 
 Again she shrieked. Answering the shriek, 
 mingling with it, were snarls, the gnashing of 
 fangs, the din of great hounds ferociously 
 struggling for blood, tearing vehemently at 
 flesh, at a flesh, though, that rebelled. 
 
 Verplank rose up between them. With a 
 
THE MONSTER 181 
 
 kick he sent one of them sprawling. But, in 
 the recoil, torn at by the other hound, he 
 stumbled. The dog was at his throat. In pro 
 tection he held his left arm against it. With 
 his right hand he got at the revolver in his 
 pocket, and, through the pocket, fired twice 
 into the brute. Gnashing still, it rolled away. 
 
 But now, from the other side, the second 
 hound was on him. He saw its eyes, felt its 
 breath, felt its fangs. Again he fired. As he 
 did so, his hand relaxed. He heard a woman 
 shrieking, the sound of hurrying feet. The 
 wall before him mounted. His senses scattered 
 into night. 
 
 Suddenly the garden was filled with people. 
 Through the gate, two sergents de ville had 
 come. These, forms furtive and uncertain fol 
 lowed. From the house, led by BaroufTski, 
 the footmen ran. Above, from the window, 
 still there issued a woman s shrieks. 
 
 BaroufTski stopped, and turned. He looked 
 up at the window. He smiled. With one hand 
 he tapped his breast, with the other he pointed 
 at Verplank. Then, in French, reassuringly, 
 he called: 
 
 "My dear! See! You may be tranquil. I, 
 I am unharmed. It is the robber." 
 
 At the ignominy of that flouting jeer, Leilah, 
 impelled by the impulse to do something, 
 
182 THE MONSTER 
 
 though it were but to beat her head against a 
 wall, rushed from the window, and, strangling 
 with spasms, fled out of the room and down the 
 stair, where horror so suffocatingly enveloped 
 her that in it her brain tipped, and she fell. 
 
XI 
 
 In the golden half light of the Opera, a 
 chorus, soprano voices on one side of the stage 
 alternating with contralto on the other, vapor 
 ised the subtle sensuality of the scene. 
 
 Violet Silverstairs, turning to her husband, 
 who was seated behind her, remarked : 
 
 "How much better the Italian school is than 
 the French." 
 
 Silverstairs, ignorant of either, and indiffer 
 ent to both, promenaded his glass about the 
 house. 
 
 "I wonder why Tempest doesn t show up? 
 There is Marie de Fresnoy! I saw de Fresnoy 
 to-day for the first time since his duel with 
 Barouffski. What a ridiculous affair that was ! 
 I suppose one of these days he will have an 
 other with d Arcy." 
 
 Violet turned to him again. 
 
 "Because of Marie? How absurd you are! 
 D Arcy doesn t interest her. No man could 
 unless he drove at her with a four-in-hand, 
 and d Arcy has nothing." 
 
 Silverstairs, still promenading his glass, ex 
 claimed: 
 
184 THE MONSTER 
 
 "There he is now!" 
 
 "Who? D Arcy?" 
 
 "Yes, with the Helley-Quetgens, in that box 
 between the columns. Isn t that your friend 
 Leilah whom he is talking to? By Jove, it is, 
 and BaroufTski is there, also." 
 
 Violet, who had also been promenading her 
 glass, put it down. 
 
 "Well, he ought to be. I do think she has 
 acted scandalously. What is said at the club?" 
 
 "About Verplank? It is forgotten already. 
 BaroufTski, you know, claimed that it was a 
 mistake, and as it appears that Verplank 
 agreed with him, as from neither the one nor 
 the other any charge was forthcoming, the 
 police could do nothing but get Verplank back 
 to the Ritz." 
 
 Impatiently Violet unfurled her fan. 
 
 "Yes, where she has been every day; every 
 day, that is, when she has not been with 
 d Arcy." 
 
 The statement was inexact. Leilah had in 
 deed been at the Ritz but d Arcy she had seen 
 but once, momentarily, by accident if there 
 be such a thing, in any event through one of 
 those seeming hazards which, however for 
 tuitous at first, afterward appear to have been 
 designed. It was a little, though, before Leilah 
 took that view of things. Meanwhile, when, 
 
THE MONSTER 185 
 
 on recovering from her swoon, she learned that 
 Verplank had also recovered she realised with 
 thanksgiving that Destiny which has its tyran 
 nies has its mercies as well. So soon then as 
 she could get from the bed into which the 
 horrors of the midspring nightmare had 
 thrown her, she went to the Ritz where she 
 found Verplank amply attended, abundant 
 ly bandaged, severely but not dangerously 
 hurt. 
 
 "One of the brutes nearly chewed my arm 
 off," he told her. "If the other omitted to eat 
 me entirely, it was not because he did not try. 
 I did for them, though," he added, and smiled 
 as he said it. After the manner of man, he 
 took comfort in the feat. 
 
 "But not for the worst brute," Leilah an 
 swered wishing in spite of herself, wishing in 
 stinctively and even ungrammatically that 
 some good fate might. 
 
 From beneath a bandage, Verplank 
 laughed: 
 
 "Bah! I ll do for him, too." 
 
 But Leilah did not hear. She was speaking 
 to the surgeon, whom with a bravery which 
 in itself was a little defiant, and which in any 
 event might have been more discreet there- 
 after, daily and openly, she supplied with that 
 which every surgeon wants, a nurse obedient, 
 
186 THE MONSTER 
 
 attentive, skilful, alert, and who, in addition 
 ministers for love. 
 
 Presently, Verplank was able to be up. The 
 surgeon said that in a day he would be able to 
 be out. Verplank, who knew as much without 
 being told, asked Leilah to go with him on the 
 morrow. 
 
 Leilah refused. Verplank, for an invalid, 
 became then surprisingly demoniac. The 
 demonism of him affected her less than a con 
 ception, feminine perhaps but erroneous, of 
 her own selfishness. If she went, she knew be 
 forehand that irremissibly she would be dis 
 honoured. But she knew also that any sense 
 of dishonour must, if it is to ashame, come 
 not from without but from within. If she 
 went, her conscience, she thought, would 
 acquit her. She thought that she would not 
 feel dishonoured, though she knew that she 
 would be disgraced. To refuse on that ac 
 count seemed to her selfish. As a result finally 
 she consented. Yet in consenting she made one 
 stipulation. Characteristic in itself, it was 
 that there must be nothing clandestine, that 
 he must come for her in the rue de la Pompe, 
 and that from there, her boxes put on whatever 
 vehicle he brought, they would leave for dark 
 ness by daylight. 
 
 The plan pleased Verplank. He agreed at 
 
THE MONSTER 187 
 
 once. He told her that he would come the 
 next day. 
 
 When he had, she added : "To-night I go to 
 the Opera; the Helley-Quetgens have asked 
 me. It is my last look at this world." 
 
 Then, shortly, the arrangements for the eva 
 sion completed, she left the hotel. 
 
 Without, her motor waited. She told the 
 groom to have it follow her. The air tempted, 
 though the sky was dirty. She thought of the 
 California glare, the eager glitter of New 
 York. She wondered would they go back 
 there. Perhaps, she told herself, we shall at 
 last see Bora-Bora. 
 
 Her walk took her through the arcades of 
 the rue de Rivoli to the fountains of the Place 
 de la Concorde. From there she was about to 
 enter the Champs Elysees when she became 
 conscious of being accosted. 
 
 "Chere madame," some one was saying, "I 
 precipitate myself to renew the expression of 
 my homage." 
 
 D Arcy, hat in hand, was before her. At 
 once, with a view to what the French agree 
 ably describe as the placing of landmarks 
 pour poser des jalons he asked to be per 
 mitted to accompany her. 
 
 Leilah smiled. 
 
 "Not for the world!" 
 
188 THE MONSTER 
 
 She motioned at the motor. Then, with that 
 graciousness which is natural to the mondaine, 
 with perhaps the desire also to attenuate what 
 ever there were of brusqueness in her reply, 
 she added, as she got in the car: 
 
 "I shall be at the Opera with the Helley- 
 Quetgens to-night. Could you not look in?" 
 
 D Arcy, habituated to the abruptest victo 
 ries, accustomed to inflame, with but a glance, 
 by the mere exhibition of his Olympian good 
 looks, and, therefore, indifferent when not 
 bored by the. celerity of his successes, but 
 piqued by the tranquil air with which this 
 woman had always regarded him, thanked her, 
 assured her that he would not fail to be there, 
 and replaced his hat. 
 
 Immediately he raised it again, straight 
 from the head, high in the air. Looking with 
 brilliant eyes from a brilliant brougham, 
 Violet Silverstairs was dashing by. 
 
 Coincidentally, unobserved but observant, 
 Barouffski was also passing that way. 
 
 Leilah s motor flew off and she sank back, 
 wondering at herself, wondering rather what 
 influence, malign and unhallowed, could pos 
 sibly have prompted her to ask this man, whom 
 she disliked as in spite of a theory to the 
 contrary honest women do dislike a man of 
 his type. But though, at the time, she could 
 
THE MONSTER 189 
 
 not understand what impelled her, later it 
 seemed to her that it must have been fate. 
 
 Barouffski had a different interpretation. 
 At the Joyeuses he had seen Leilah and 
 d Arcy together. Now, here they were again. 
 The circumstance, of which the fortuitousness 
 was unknown to him, irritated him for that 
 very cause. But he could imagine and did. 
 At once it was clear to him that the brute was 
 after the blue eyes of her bankbook. The de 
 duction, however erroneous, was easy. He was 
 viewing the matter, not, as he fancied, from 
 d Arcy s standpoint, but from his own. In 
 spite of which, or rather precisely on that ac 
 count, he told himself that d Arcy was a 
 damned scoundrel. The humour of this quite 
 escaped him. But that perhaps was in the 
 order of things. 
 
 Since the night at the Joyeuses, he had been 
 measuring himself solely against Verplank. 
 Twice he had failed with him, but he knew 
 that soon they would be at each other again 
 and for the next bout he had in view a coup 
 which, he felt, would do for him definitely. 
 Meanwhile, if in regard to Leilah he had 
 been led into certain vivacities, he felt that 
 with time, which is the great < emollient, her 
 memory of these vivacities wounTpass. Even 
 otherwise, the law was with him. He pro- 
 
190 THE MONSTER 
 
 posed to see to it that she was also she and 
 with her her purse. The one menace to both 
 had been Verplank. Here, now, apparently, 
 was another. Here was d Arcy with his 
 pseudo-fheidian air, that famous yet false 
 appearance of a young and dissolute Olympian 
 which made imbeciles turn and stare. Raging- 
 ly Barouffski reflected that Qanaillc_ though 
 d Arcy were, he carried a great many~guns, al 
 most as many as Verplank, who, worse luck, 
 had, in addition, the signal advantage of being 
 Leilah s first love that love to which it is 
 said one always returns. 
 
 But even as he sounded the stupidity of 
 that aphorism, vaguely, for a dim second, he 
 intercepted a gleam refracted from truth. The 
 danger with which he had to contend, Ver 
 plank did not personify or d Arcy either, it 
 was himself. When the golden six was tossed 
 him, had he but then known how to secure the 
 box, there would now be no danger at all. But 
 truth, when it does not console, confounds. 
 Barouffski put it from him. It was too ex 
 asperating. "Bah!" he told himself, "if her 
 attitude does not change, a sojourn in the soli 
 tudes of Lithuania may alter it." Angrily he 
 nodded. Things more surprising have oc 
 curred there. 
 
 On this day it was Leilah who surprised him. 
 
THE MONSTER 191 
 
 Since he had called to her from the garden, 
 she had encountered him only in the hazards 
 of entrances and halls. On such occasions she 
 had passed with an air of being unaware that 
 there were anything save chairs and tables 
 about. 
 
 In part, it was this attitude which he thought 
 certain solitudes might change. Oddly enough, 
 Leilah herself wished it altered. But to want 
 to do one thing and to do something else, hap 
 pens to all of us, even to the best. She des 
 pised BaroufTski and yet in despising him knew 
 that the one contemptible thing is contempt. 
 For what he had done, she felt that no punish 
 ment could be too severe, yet in so feeling she 
 knew that he was only the embodiment of past 
 misdeeds of her own. Physically he had struck 
 her. Spiritually, it was her own hand that had 
 dealt the blow. He had loosed the dogs on 
 Verplank and she had judged and condemned 
 him for it, though she knew that not only she 
 should not judge at all, but that never perhaps 
 do useless events occur. Clearly these events 
 were evil, but were not those which she 
 planned evil too? 
 
 In this dilemma there was some slight con 
 solation for her in the knowledge that it was 
 not her fault, at least not her present fault, that 
 she had been born with a nature so prob- 
 
192 THE MONSTER 
 
 lematic. But the Vidya, in teaching her that 
 whatever we suffer is derived from our past; 
 that the people who wrong us or seem to 
 are mere puppets come to claim karmic debts 
 which we owe ; the Vidya, in teaching her that 
 taught her also that every life we lead here is 
 but a day in school. Her schooling, she felt, 
 had as yet been insufficient. No doubt she 
 would know better when she came here again. 
 
 The thin gilt hope of that fortified her a 
 little on this day when, to BaroufTski s surprise, 
 she sent for him and then, her head raised, said 
 distantly: 
 
 "The Helley-Quetgens have asked us to 
 the Opera. I am going. You are free to do 
 as you like." 
 
 Here, obviously, was something new. At 
 it and at her Barouffski looked with shifting 
 eyes. Uncertainly he rubbed his hands. 
 
 "But how then! I am at your orders It is 
 a festival to be where you are." 
 
 But as he did nothing without an object, he 
 wondered what hers was. Obviously, there 
 was a reason. Yet, what? Could it be an olive 
 branch? He was too adroit to ask. Even 
 otherwise, he lacked the opportunity. Leilah 
 had gone from the room. 
 
 It was in these circumstances that, on this 
 night, she appeared at the Opera where Violet 
 
THE MONSTER 193 
 
 was complaining at having seen her with 
 d Arcy. 
 
 At the complaint, Silverstairs pulled at his 
 moustache. 
 
 "I did not know that she had taken up with 
 him." 
 
 "I don t know that she has either. But she 
 was with him to-day in the Champs Elysees." 
 
 u Oh, come now! Things haven t got to such 
 a pass that a woman can t be seen with a 
 man 
 
 "No, but no honest woman can be seen alone 
 with d Arcy. Leilah ought to know better. 
 She ought to know better too than to go to the 
 Ritz. As she does not appear to, I propose 
 to tell her." 
 
 "Do as you like," replied Silverstairs who 
 would have said the same thing no matter what 
 his wife had suggested. The lady had not en 
 tirely Americanised this Englishman but she 
 had at least made him realise the futility of 
 argument. 
 
 "Do as you like," he repeated. "There are 
 the Orlonnas. There are the Zubaroffs." 
 
 At once to the quick click of an oinrreuse s 
 key, the door opened and Tempest appeared, 
 a faulard showing above his coat. 
 
 While he removed these things Violet called 
 at him: 
 
194 THE MONSTER 
 
 "You re late." 
 
 Silverstairs laughed. "He always is. At 
 Christ Church he was known as the late Lord 
 Howard." 
 
 Tempest moved forward and sat down be 
 tween them. 
 
 But now, to the volatile sweetmeats of the 
 score, the curtain was falling. In the stalls 
 there was a movement. Men stood up, put 
 their hats on, turned their back to the stage or 
 set forth for a chat with the vestals in the green 
 room. 
 
 Silverstairs also stood up. 
 
 Violet turned to him : 
 
 "I do wish you would look in on the Helley- 
 Quetgens, and ask Leilah to come to luncheon 
 to-morrow. Say I have a bone to pick with her. 
 That may fetch her, if nothing else will." 
 
 Tempest ran a hand through his vivid hair. 
 
 "A bone over what, if I may ask? You 
 may not know it, but I greatly admire Mad 
 ame BaroufTska." 
 
 Violet smiled. 
 
 "She s a dear. But I saw her to-day with 
 d Arcy, and I propose to scold her for it." 
 
 Tempest showed his teeth. 
 
 "D Arcy is not a man s man, though he 
 certainly is a woman s. Yet, when you come 
 to that, not such a woman as Madame BaroufT- 
 
THE MONSTER 195 
 
 ska. What an odd thing that was about her 
 first husband!" 
 
 "You mean about the dogs?" 
 
 "Yes. I never got the rights of it. What 
 was he doing there? Is she living in the past?" 
 
 Violet raised her opera-glass. 
 
 "She would be very lucky if she could be; 
 living in the present is so expensive, don t you 
 think?" 
 
 Again there was a quick click. The door 
 opened. Silverstairs, filling the entrance with 
 his tall stature, reappeared. 
 
 "Violet," he began, "the Helley-Quetgens 
 are going on to some dance in the Faubourg, 
 and Leilah wants the three of us to sup with 
 her at Paillard s. What do you say?" 
 
 Violet laughed. "I say it will be just my 
 chance." She turned to Tempest. "You will 
 come?" 
 
 "Thanks, yes. Isn t that de Fresnoy with 
 the Zubaroffs?" 
 
 Silverstairs, without sitting down, raised his 
 glass. 
 
 "Yes, and I was just saying, this is the first 
 time since his duel that I have seen him. But 
 what an asinine affair that was ! He lunged at 
 BaroufT ski s neck, Barouffski knocked the foil 
 up and pricked himself on the chin with it. 
 Then BaroufT ski s surgeon stopped the fight on 
 
196 THE MONSTER 
 
 the ground that it might interfere with his 
 breathing. Fancy that! Afterward, in the ac 
 count given to the press, the surgeon described 
 the prick as an incisive wound in the hyoidian 
 region, accompanied by a notable flow of 
 blood. Anyone who did not know would have 
 thought that Barouffski had been nearly done 
 for. But that s a French duel for you a 
 funeral at which everybody giggles." 
 
 Tempest looked gravely up at his friend. 
 "What did you have for dinner?" 
 
 Suspiciously, Silverstairs considered him. 
 
 "Why do you ask?" 
 
 "You are so expansive and brilliant." 
 
 On the stage, the drama continued, poign 
 antly, beatifically, in a unison of violins and 
 voices fEaT^vas interrupted at last by the usual 
 stir in the stalls and boxes, by the haste to be 
 going, to be elsewhere, and a defile began; a 
 procession of silken robes, gorgeous cloaks, 
 jeweled headgear, black coats, white ties; a 
 procession that presently filled the subscribers 
 rotunda, from which, at sight of it, grooms 
 fled, then hurried back, touching their hats, 
 eager and zealous. 
 
 Between the columns groups loitered, re 
 garding each other with indulgence, with in 
 difference, at times with a loftiness that put 
 isolating zones about them; and women as- 
 
THE MONSTER 197 
 
 sumed that attitude which women alone can 
 assume, that attitude of being not only apart 
 from the crowd, but of being unaware of the 
 crowd s existence. 
 
 In the centre, Mme. Orlonna, an Italian 
 princess, with a slight moustache and an 
 ancestry that extended to the super- 
 Neronian days of Heliogabalus, stood, laugh 
 ing and talking, lisping Bonthoirs to 
 everybody. 
 
 Another princess, a Russian, Mme. Zubar- 
 ofT, with a young girl at her side, and an escort 
 of blond giants, passed, inclining her head to 
 the left, to the right, bowing with a grace me 
 chanical, but sovereign. 
 
 Beyond, Leilah appeared, d Arcy on one 
 side, Barouffski on the other. Her face, ordi 
 narily pale, was flushed, and her manner, 
 usually subdued, was animated. She was 
 laughing, not loudly, but noticeably. 
 
 Violet, accompanied by Tempest and Silver- 
 stairs, approached. As the men, after saluting 
 the women, greeted each other, Violet tapped 
 Leilah with her fan. 
 
 "My dear, I have a bone to pick with you." 
 
 Leilah, with a levity that was rare with her, 
 interrupted: 
 
 "It is just for that we are going to supper. 
 How will you have it, grilled or deviled?" 
 
198 THE MONSTER 
 
 "Her ladyship s carriage is at the door," a 
 groom announced, in English. 
 
 Another added, in French : "The motor of 
 madame la comtesse is advanced." 
 
 "Yes," Violet retorted. "But my bone be 
 longs to a different kettle of fish. Now, you 
 come with me." With a smile, she turned to 
 the others. "We will go in the brougham, and 
 you take the motor." 
 
 Stooping, she lifted her train, and the two 
 women, accompanied by the men, followed the 
 groom to the carriage. 
 
 There, after seeing them in, BaroufTski 
 called : 
 
 "To Paillard s, Chaussee d Antin." 
 
XII 
 
 At the glass door, which a chausseur opened, 
 Barouffski stopped, spoke to the man, gave 
 him an order. As the others, conducted by a 
 maitre d hotel, approached a table, a fat wo 
 man in a pulpit charged them, before they 
 were seated, with the use of the silver and the 
 cloth. 
 
 Beyond, a band of Bohemians, costumed in 
 crimson, were loosing, with nervous and dirty 
 fingers, whirlwinds of notes. The atmosphere, 
 filled with vibrations, fevered by the fury of 
 the violins, dripped with the scent of flowers, 
 with the bouquet of burgundies, the smell of 
 champagne, the odour of tobacco and food. 
 
 At adjacent tables were demi-reps and 
 foreigners, mondaines and clubmen, a sprinkle 
 of the cream of the venal, the exotic and the 
 ultra-chic, whom 6rtmibuses and waiters, 
 marshaled by maitres d hotel, served with the 
 same deference and zeal. 
 
 For the Barouffski party, these latter had 
 turned two tables into one, at which Violet 
 Silverstairs occupied one end, Leilah the other. 
 Violet had Barouffski at her right, Tempest at 
 
200 THE MONSTER 
 
 her left, while Leilah had Silverstairs at her 
 left and d Arcy at her right, a disposition 
 natural enough and otherwise fortuitous which 
 placed Tempest next to d Arcy, with Barouff- 
 ski and Silverstairs opposite. 
 
 In the rising storm of the music, Leilah 
 turned to d Arcy. What she was saying the 
 others could not hear and all, save Silverstairs, 
 who was munching a hors d oeuvre, addressed 
 themselves to Violet. 
 
 Presently, in a lull of the gale, Tempest 
 would have tried to talk to this woman who, in 
 abandoning her Madonna air had now the 
 merit of suggesting both the Chimera and the 
 Sphinx, but something in her attitude to 
 d Arcy prevented. It was not, to employ a 
 vulgarism, that she was making eyes at the 
 man, but she was obviously permitting him to 
 make eyes at her. 
 
 D Arcy was seated, his arms on the table, 
 talking in her face. His plate was empty. A 
 chaudfroid had been served. He had refused 
 it. A mousse had followed. He had refused 
 that also. Over the glasses at his side he had 
 put a hand, It seemed a pose of his not to eat 
 or to drink that he might do nothing but 
 talk. 
 
 Leilah herself had not eaten. But as soon 
 as champagne was served she had drunk of it, 
 
THE MONSTER 201 
 
 she had drunk since and in her manner, in the 
 way she held herself, in the inflection of her 
 voice, there had entered a trace of the excessive 
 which the mondaine avoids. It was this that 
 had deterred Tempest. Moreover she had been 
 laughing and that surprised Violet who, ex 
 cept a little earlier in the rotunda, never, since 
 Leilah reached Paris, had seen her laugh be 
 fore. 
 
 Now, her head drawn back, her eyes half 
 closed, she was gratifying d Arcy with that 
 look with which a woman can appear not to 
 listen merely but to drink the words, the up- 
 pearance even, of the man by whom she is ad 
 dressed. While perhaps flattering to him, it 
 was too marked for good taste. The others 
 noticed it, but, as is usual in such circum 
 stances, they acted as though they had not. 
 
 Barouffski conscious of the impression pro 
 duced, conscious also of the impressions of 
 the afternoon, leaned forward and said in 
 French: 
 
 "But, my dear! You eat nothing!" 
 
 Silverstairs, tugging at his moustache, 
 laughed inanely and addressing himself to 
 both Leilah and d Arcy, threw in: 
 
 "If this is a private conversation 
 
 "What nonsense!" Leilah threw back. 
 
 "I was about to say," Silverstairs resumed, 
 
202 THE MONSTER 
 
 "that if it is a private conversation, I d like to 
 hear it. If it is not, never mind." 
 
 BaroufTski, still leaning forward, continued: 
 
 "I pray you take a bit of the chaudfroid." 
 
 With a movement of impatience, yet other 
 wise ignoring him completely, Leilah turned 
 again to d Arcy. 
 
 Barouffski was not in a mood to be ignored. 
 The sight of d Arcy in the afternoon, the man s 
 unawaited advent at the Opera, his demeanour 
 to Leilah, her attitude to him, the hazards 
 which both seemed to suggest; yet chiefly the 
 precariousness of his own position, the con 
 stant effort to appear other than what he was, 
 the consciousness of danger ever present, the 
 obligation to cover irritation with calm, anxi 
 ety with banter, these things and the tension 
 of them, fevered and enraged. At the moment 
 he felt like a fiend and looked it. A moment 
 only. Reacting at once, he compressed his 
 lips, parted them and summoning his ambigu 
 ous smile, called out: 
 
 "If the chaudfroid says nothing to you, will 
 you not try the mousse?" 
 
 Leilah was raising a glass to her lips. She 
 looked over it at him and, much as though he 
 were a servant, said: 
 
 "Do me the favour to attend to your own 
 affairs." 
 
THE MONSTER 203 
 
 Barouff ski s smile evaporated. A man with 
 no sense of honour and some sense of humour 
 may go far, provided that he keep his temper. 
 Barouffski knew it but forgot it. With a tone 
 of authority which in the rue de la Pompe he 
 would have ordinarily avoided, angrily he 
 replied : 
 
 "Then do me the favour not to drink any 
 more." 
 
 Leilah, the glass at her lips, paused, looked 
 over it again, and very gently, almost sweetly, 
 with the pretty air of a spoiled child, nodded 
 at him. 
 
 "Only one sip." 
 
 She touched the glass with her lips, for a 
 moment held it there, then, offering it to 
 d Arcy, rather languorously she said: 
 
 "Beau sire, will you drink the rest?" 
 
 Instantly Violet intervened. "Leilah! Be 
 have yourself!" 
 
 "But with delight," d Arcy was saying. 
 
 From Leilah s extended hand he took the 
 glass, raised it, drained it, put it down, looked 
 at her. 
 
 Barouffski was looking at him. Quietly, 
 without emphasis, he asked: 
 
 "Will you drink mine, too?" 
 
 Half rising as he spoke, he had taken his 
 own glass in his hand and with a gesture 
 
204 THE MONSTER 
 
 which, even as he made it, he regretted, a ges 
 ture incited by vibrations which he was unable 
 to resist, he flung the contents at him. 
 
 "BaroufTski!" Violet indignantly ex 
 claimed. 
 
 She glanced about her. At her elbow an 
 omnibus, a lad undersized but stout, stood 
 gaping. Beyond, the Bohemians were storm 
 ing. At the adjacent table were demi-reps 
 and South Americans. They had not noticed. 
 At this table, Tempest, his teeth visible, was 
 contemplating his host. Silverstairs, tugging 
 at his moustache, was considering Leilah. The 
 latter was looking and with what a look! 
 at BaroufTski. But no one spoke. A spell 
 seemed to have settled on all. With the idea 
 of doing or of saying something that would 
 break it, Violet turned to d Arcy. 
 
 Delicately, with a coroneted handkerchief, 
 he had wiped his face and was then mopping 
 at his shirt. 
 
 Interrupting the operation, he looked up 
 and laughed. "Oh, la, la! The dangers that 
 may be avoided in remaining at home! These 
 are the accidents of restaurant life!" 
 
 He laughed again. The laugh humanised 
 and deformed the Pheidian beauty of his face. 
 He bowed to Leilah, bowed to Violet and col 
 lectively added : 
 
THE MONSTER 205 
 
 "Mesdames, I have ceased to be present 
 able. A thousand pardons. You will permit 
 me?" 
 
 In a moment, after another bow, circular 
 this time, a bow which while managing to 
 omit Barouffski, included the rest of the table, 
 he had gone. 
 
 "He looks like Keats," said Silverstairs ani 
 mated by an unconscious desire to second his 
 wife and break the spell which still persisted. 
 Ordinarily he would have taken her and gone. 
 The assault had been as much of an affront to 
 her as it had been to d Arcy. But to have left 
 the table would have been a reproof to Leilah, 
 whom, in the ridiculous way in which society 
 is organized, he was unable to disassociate 
 from Barouffski. 
 
 "Keats!" Tempest, coming to his aid, ex 
 claimed. "I ll lay a guinea you would not 
 know his picture if you saw it." 
 
 Amiably Silverstairs tugged at his mous 
 tache. "Well, perhaps not. What I meant 
 was that he looks like a poet." 
 
 "I don t agree with you," Tempest retorted. 
 "To begin with, there are not any. Besides, 
 latterly there have been but two Hugo, who 
 looked like a green-grocer, and Swinburne 
 who looked like a bookseller s assistant. More 
 over I hate poets, though, as someone said 
 
206 THE MONSTER 
 
 somewhere, an inability to write in verse can 
 hardly be regarded as constituting a special 
 talent. No, d Arcy does not look like a poet, 
 he looks like a poet s creation." 
 
 "Excuse me," Silverstairs with affected 
 meekness threw out. "And thanks for the lec 
 ture." 
 
 Tempest nodded. "You re entirely wel 
 come." 
 
 He turned to Violet. She was looking at 
 Leilah who was looking at BaroufTski. The 
 latter was looking at the fingers of his right 
 hand against which his thumb passed and re- 
 passed mechanically. But now, aroused from 
 his reflections by the entire cessation of talk, 
 he glanced about him, summoned a waiter, 
 settled the score. The Bohemians who mo 
 mentarily had been silent, abruptly striped 
 the air with spangles from their bows. 
 
 Violet and Leilah stood up, resumed their 
 wraps, passed on. The men, buttoning their 
 coats, putting their gloves on, followed. 
 
 At the door were the eager grooms. As one 
 of them touched his hat to Leilah, Violet 
 turned to her. 
 
 "My dear, I cannot thank you for a very 
 pleasant evening. But I will look in on you 
 to-morrow. That bone isn t picked and what s 
 more, now I ve got sauce for it." 
 
THE MONSTER 207 
 
 With Silverstairs and Tempest at her heels, 
 she went to her brougham. Leilah entered the 
 motor. 
 
 At the door of the latter Barouffski stood. 
 He raised his hat. Leilah looked at him. She 
 had had, she thought, her last glimpse of the 
 world and this was her last glimpse of him. 
 The sight was so repugnant that she almost 
 sickened and the nausea which she felt, her 
 face expressed. 
 
 Barouffski tried to smile but the uncon 
 cealed candour of her abhorrence made his 
 lips twitch. Now, though, the motor was 
 starting. As it whirred away, he drew his 
 coat closely about him, turned up the collar 
 and stuck his hands deep in the pockets. 
 There had come to him that odd sensation 
 which homely fancy attributes to someone 
 walking on your grave. 
 
XIII 
 
 The next day, Violet, entering the brilliant 
 room, gazed first about it and then at Leilah. 
 
 "Aurelia is not here? That s odd. She is 
 simply horrid but so reliable. You don t 
 mind my having told her to meet me?" 
 
 Leilah sighed. "I am getting so that soon 
 I shan t mind anything." 
 
 Violet, seating herself, nodded vivaciously. 
 
 "I call that very fine. But there is some 
 thing finer. Never mind anybody. Silver- 
 stairs now and as the lady spoke she 
 summoned a smile feline and Cheshire "he 
 fancied I would be a good, obedient little wife. 
 Instead of which he is a good, obedient big 
 husband." In entire self-appreciation she ex 
 hibited the tip of her tongue and moistened 
 her lips with it. "It takes us, doesn t it? But 
 forgive me, dear, us is perhaps an exaggera 
 tion. I am afraid you have made rather a 
 mess of things. Now what are you going 
 to do?" 
 
 Without replying, Leilah looked away. 
 During the night she had barely slept. The 
 incident in the restaurant, events that had pre- 
 
210 THE MONSTER 
 
 ceded it, anterior complications, subsequent 
 developments, these things, like the Bohemians 
 at Paillard s, had stormed at her, attacked her 
 fibres, wrenched her nerves, striating the dark 
 ness of her room with variations on the tragedy 
 of her life. 
 
 In what manner the affair in the restaurant 
 had terminated, she had no one to inform her 
 but she could readily fancy that shortly d Arcy 
 and Barouffski would go somewhere and fight, 
 or pretend to, and then return, none the worse 
 and none the better, but with honour satisfied 
 and their names in print. 
 
 The entire episode was shameful. But 
 though provoked by her she had not premedi 
 tated it. In offering d Arcy her glass, she had 
 wished solely to display her independence. 
 Subsequently, in going over the matter, she 
 had realised that the wish, while human, had 
 not been nice. Then, a bit conscience-stricken, 
 she had wondered how she could have be 
 haved as she had. 
 
 "I did it without thinking," was her im 
 mediate excuse. But that, she told herself was 
 untrue. Ever since the duel and the blow and 
 the nightmare that followed, some such wish 
 had been fermenting in her. The wish, rea 
 sonable in itself, though in her case unrea 
 soned, persisted, as in certain natures a wish 
 
THE MONSTER 211 
 
 will persist, until, after the fashion of a con 
 stantly recurring idea, the individual becomes 
 so saturated with it that, given the impulse, 
 given less than that, given a vibration, some 
 effect, perhaps wholly atmospheric, and sud 
 denly the idea has solidified into an act, an 
 act noble, degrading or merely banal, ac 
 cording to the influence that produced it, but 
 an act which, whatever its character, has then 
 become inevitable, even involuntary, its con 
 stant mental recurrence having exhausted the 
 ability to choose between it and another. 
 
 Leilah had thought of this and, in search of 
 comfort, had groped for another excuse. As 
 an Oriental will say: "My body is tired." 
 "My body is hungry," so Leilah decided: "It 
 was my nerves that did it." 
 
 But the sophistry displeased her. She 
 knew that she had judged and condemned Ba- 
 rouffski and she knew also that she had no 
 right to do either. The man was clearly a 
 cad, a scoundrel and a brute, yet even though 
 he were these things and worse and more be 
 sides, he so became in her eyes merely be 
 cause her consciousness had evolved to a point 
 higher than his own. Seen from a different 
 angle, she might appear only a shade less 
 reprehensible, and it might be, even equally 
 vile. Moreover, according to the Upanishads, 
 
212 THE MONSTER 
 
 this consciousness of hers and that conscious 
 ness of his were fundamentally one. Both had 
 come from the same source. To that source 
 both would ultimately return. They would 
 be fused there, as originally there they had 
 been merged. 
 
 At the apperception of that, the curious 
 lines which occur in the Book of Dzyan sug 
 gested themselves : 
 
 "Said the Flame to the Spark: I have 
 clothed myself in thee, thou art my image, my 
 body, until that day when thou shalt rebecome 
 myself and others, thyself and me! } 
 
 In the penetrating beauty of the allegory 
 Leilah told herself that she, Barouffski, Ver- 
 plank, the Silverstairs, the Helley-Quetgens, 
 everybody whom she knew, everyone whom 
 she did not know, all the fillers of space, were 
 sparks of one Flame, the Flame from which 
 they had been formerly emitted and into 
 which they would finally return. That, she 
 felt she must believe, if she were to believe 
 anything. But she felt too that though she 
 did believe it, she believed also that for the 
 present there were sparks better parted than 
 united, as there were also others better united 
 than apart. 
 
 On the table before her was a treatise on the 
 Paramitas which are The Blessed Things. 
 
THE MONSTER 213 
 
 She looked at it, knowing that what she had 
 done was wrong and what she was about to do 
 was evil. But she felt also that she could not 
 help herself. Whatever the penalty, it was 
 impossible for her to live with BaroufTski. 
 Whatever the punishment, it was impossible 
 for her not to live with Verplank. At the mo 
 ment it seemed to her as though the high 
 fates had set her in a circle from which she 
 could not escape except by the door of death 
 or that of further sinning. At this idea she 
 wondered about BaroufTski as, after Ver- 
 plank s eruption at the Joyeuses, she had 
 wondered about him. She wondered whether 
 in some former existence she had injured Ba 
 roufTski and whether it were for that reason 
 that she had been led into giving him the 
 power to injure her now. It might be so, she 
 told herself, in which case she ought to bear it. 
 But how could she know that it was so? Yet 
 even though it were and the fact were made 
 clear to her, even then, even too if the cer 
 tainty of a punishment more poignant than 
 any were shaken in her eyes, still she could not 
 bear it. 
 
 "But I ought to," she found herself say 
 ing. 
 
 These reflections Violet s advent had inter 
 rupted. 
 
214 THE MONSTER 
 
 "What are you going to do?" the lady was 
 asking. 
 
 Leilah, unfit at the moment for battle, felt 
 unable to tell. She looked away. 
 
 "Nothing, I suppose." 
 
 Violet, cocking a belligerent eye, threw out: 
 
 "You carry moderation to excess." 
 
 Leilah looked up. "What would you have 
 me do?" 
 
 "Divorce Barouffski." 
 
 "Because he threw champagne about? I 
 hardly fancy I could get a divorce for that." 
 
 Militantly Violet whipped off a glove. 
 "Frankly that creature is a criminal. Never, 
 in all my life, have I seen such an exhibition 
 of bad taste. But then, as they say here, bad 
 taste leads to crime to such vulgar forms of 
 it at that." 
 
 "Even so, I don t see how it helps me." 
 
 "But he struck you," Violet, more bellicose 
 than ever, exclaimed. "You told me so. 
 What more would you have. But aren t you 
 difficile to-day!" Suspiciously she considered 
 her friend. "YouVe got something up your 
 sleeve." 
 
 "If I have," Leilah, in an effort to parry the 
 thrust, replied, "at least it is not witnesses." 
 
 Cogently Violet nodded. "Come to me 
 is the mother-in-law of inven- 
 
THE MONSTER 215 
 
 tion. If you haven t any witnesses, I ll find 
 something else. I make a specialty of finding 
 things before they are lost." 
 
 This programme hardly suited Leilah s 
 book. Again she parried. "Last night and 
 what a night! I dreamed I was feasting with 
 the dead. It was so peaceful. It is that that I 
 want. It is peace the very fibres of my being 
 
 crave." 
 
 Here were heights or depths where Vio 
 let could not follow. With a smile she tacked. 
 
 "Before you dreamed your dream I noticed 
 that you wore a very ducky frock." 
 
 "It is stained. So am I. The champagne 
 Barouffski threw stained me within and with 
 
 out." 
 
 Here were other heights. Readily Violet 
 skirted them. 
 
 "I believe I got a drop or two myself. But 
 then I don t mind. It is true I am not a 
 theosjopjiist." 
 
 At this, in indignation at herself, Leilah pro 
 tested. 
 
 "Theosophy is primarily a school of good 
 manners. In giving d Arcy my glass, mine 
 were detestable." 
 
 Now they were on surer ground. Wickedly 
 Violet winked. 
 
 "Nobody has any manners any more or, 
 
216 THE MONSTER 
 
 when they do, they have them in plenty and 
 all of them bad." 
 
 "If I have an excuse," Leilah continued, "it 
 is that Gulian drove me nearly demented." 
 
 Now, Violet felt, they were getting at it. 
 Mentally she girded herself and with an en 
 gaging appearance of sympathy, exclaimed: 
 
 "A man never does that unless he loves a 
 woman to distraction." 
 
 The sympathy, however feigned, did its 
 work. After all, Leilah reflected, why should 
 she not tell what she was about to do? On 
 the impulse she turned. 
 
 "Violet, I offered Barouffski half my for 
 tune to free me. His reply was a blow. Apart 
 from that I have no grounds for a divorce, 
 none at least which I can show. Previously 
 there was something between Gulian and me. 
 It has gone. He cares for me still and I care 
 for him. Shortly he is to be here. For a long 
 time I hesitated. But after last night after 
 the nights and days that preceded it! it does 
 not seem to me that I need hesitate any more." 
 
 Pausing, she drew breath. "Violet, when 
 he comes I am to go with him. Is there a 
 reason why I should not?" 
 
 Violet, who had long suspected as much, 
 now at last had nailed it. Cautiously she 
 buckled to. 
 
THE MONSTER 217 
 
 "No. Not one. On the contrary. There 
 is every reason why you should. Every rea 
 son. Particularly as to greet you there will be 
 the disdainful eyes, the lifted skirts, the 
 averted heads, every one of the very slight and 
 very fiendish tortures that are visited on the 
 woman who has gone and done it." 
 
 For a second she too paused, then with a war 
 whoop added: 
 
 "But you can t do anything of the kind. I 
 won t let you." 
 
 "Would you turn from me also?" 
 
 "I! Merciful fathers! But I am not the 
 world. No matter what is done in private, 
 the world does not care. The world is very 
 well bred. It never sees anything that was not 
 intended for it. But on the open scandal of 
 scandalous conduct instantly it turns its well 
 bred back. It will turn it on you." 
 
 Indifferently Leilah assented. She had ex 
 amined this phase of the matter. It had not 
 seemed very important. 
 
 "No doubt," she replied. "Yet then destiny 
 seldom closes a door without opening another. 
 I told you of my dream. It was a dream of 
 peace. Here there can be none. It may be 
 my karma perhaps. But this," she continued, 
 motioning at the brilliant room, "this is my 
 prison." 
 
218 THE MONSTER 
 
 She hesitated and a bit lamely concluded : 
 
 "It is horrible to be in such a place." 
 
 "And worse to be nowhere at all," Violet 
 shot at her. In firing she had sat up. Now, 
 lolling back on the cushions, she enigmatically 
 resumed : "You may be right though. I dare 
 say it is dreadful to be in prison. I daresay it 
 is even worse than you think." 
 
 Enigmatic still, she smiled. With another 
 shot, with two at most, Leilah, she told her 
 self, would be routed. 
 
 "It is as though I were in a vortex," the 
 latter was saying. "It is as though I were 
 being torn from places where I do not wish 
 to be to others I may not like. But can one 
 argue with a vortex? It is idle even to strug 
 gle. Whether you will or you won t, you have 
 to let yourself go." 
 
 Lightly, in her most worldly manner, Violet 
 laughed. 
 
 "Never in the world! A woman should 
 never let herself go except in an aeroplane. 
 At a pinch a four-in-hand might do, but 
 
 At the moment the lady was thoroughly en 
 veine and, sure of victory, might have ban 
 tered on, but this, Aurelia, ushered by Parker, 
 prevented. 
 
 Sharply Violet threw at her : "Where have 
 you been?" 
 
THE MONSTER 219 
 
 Ignoring Violet, Aurelia nodded at Leilah. 
 
 "I was here the other day, did they tell 
 you?" 
 
 She turned and with blithe impertinence 
 looked her sister up and down. 
 
 "Don t be so ordinary as to ask a girl 
 where she has been. If you are inquisitive, 
 ask where she is going, and, if you 
 ask me, I ll tell you. I am going to 
 become 
 
 "Yes, yes." Violet impatiently interrupted. 
 "We ve heard all that. You re going to be 
 come a star. I know what kind too a fallen 
 star." 
 
 A fresher smile bubbled about Aurelia s 
 delicious mouth. 
 
 "It pleases your ladyship to jest. I am to 
 become the Princess Farnese!" 
 
 "Merciful heavens !" Violet exclaimed, turn 
 ing as she spoke to Leilah. "She ll go in to 
 dinner before me!" 
 
 But Leilah who, after a word of greeting to 
 Aurelia, had, from the table before her, taken 
 and reopened the Paramitas, perhaps did not 
 hear. 
 
 Violet turned again to her sister. "When 
 did he propose?" 
 
 With an air of amused contempt, again 
 Aurelia looked her up and down. 
 
220 THE MONSTER 
 
 "How antiquated you are ! Don t you know 
 that all that sort of thing has gone out?" 
 
 "Do you mean that he didn t propose?" 
 
 "Of course not. I proposed to him." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "He was so coy about it, too," Aurelia, quite 
 as though she were eating sweetmeats, re 
 sumed. "He asked me all about my finances, 
 what settlements I would make and whether 
 I would object if he kept a separate establish 
 ment. You can t really fancy how coy he was. 
 He quite blushed and stammered, the poor 
 thing." 
 
 "I should think he might." 
 
 "Yes, indeed. He asked me if I had spoken 
 to his mamma, and I told him that while it 
 was perhaps incorrect of me to speak to him 
 in the first instance, yet that there could be 
 no real love without a mutual misunderstand 
 ing, and now that we had one I would make 
 a formal demand of the old lady to-day." 
 
 Aurelia, executing a little pas, added: "I 
 have just seen her." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "She said: And so you want my little boy 
 for your husband. Partly that I told her, 
 but partly also I want you for mother-in-law. 
 You should have seen her lick her chops over 
 that. Then she asked me about my affections. 
 
THE MONSTER 221 
 
 I told her they were just like the fashions. 
 They came and went." 
 
 "She must have been delighted." 
 
 "She hugged me. Then, of course, I asked 
 about him. She told me that he has just been 
 named as co-respondent in the Kincardine di 
 vorce suit, and I said that that was perfectly 
 satisfactory." 
 
 "What!" 
 
 "Perfectly satisfactory. It appears that 
 the poor boy can t remember whether the 
 charge is true or false and that I think is so 
 dear of him." 
 
 Violet, rising, extended her arms. "Aure- 
 lia, I have been wrong, I have misjudged you. 
 Come to me." 
 
 But Aurelia, moving back, waved her 
 away. "You ll only muss me. Now I must 
 run. I must break the news to Parsnips. Will 
 you come, Vi?" 
 
 "In a moment." Violet answered. "Wait 
 for me in the brougham. There is something 
 I want to say to Leilah." 
 
 Endearingly the ingenue smiled. "Some 
 thing I ought not to hear, I suppose." In 
 speaking she made for the door. "The amount 
 of things I ought not to hear and do hear is 
 simply amazing." 
 
 As the portieres fell on her gracile back, 
 
222 THE MONSTER 
 
 Violet, with a gesture which, for so warlike a 
 lady, resembled defeat, reseating herself, ex 
 claimed: 
 
 "Frankly, she is impossible." 
 
 At once though, buckling anew for the fray, 
 she aimed at Leilah and fired. 
 
 "So are you." 
 
 Leilah, who had been considering the Para- 
 mitas, started at the attack which instantly was 
 followed up by another. 
 
 "Do you know anything about the code 
 here, the law code, I mean. Do you?" 
 
 Leilah, a bit bewildered, shook her head. 
 "No, that is, very little." 
 
 Violet s eyes fairly snapped. "I congratu 
 late you. A little is sometimes a great deal. 
 I also know a little and that little is, well, im 
 mense, so enormous even that because of it 
 I am in a position to tell you that if you go with 
 Verplank, Barouffski can, if he catches you, 
 have you jailed." 
 
 Gravely, with curious calm, Leilah looked at 
 her. 
 
 Annoyed that the shot had fallen short, Vio 
 let aimed again. 
 
 "Didn t you hear me? I said jailed. 
 J-a-i-1-e-d! Now I may add for two years. 
 That is what I meant when you spoke of your 
 prison. I agreed with you that it must be 
 
THE MONSTER 223 
 
 dreadful to be in one. I said I daresay it is 
 even worse than you think." 
 
 Leilah half raised a hand. "But 
 Unheedingly Violet continued. "Now, as 
 for Verplank, if Barouffski were to surprise 
 him here with you he could kill you both, yes, 
 and be acquitted. But you I have told you 
 what he can do. Moreover, if he so much as 
 suspects you, he can call the police. But ex 
 cuse me. You were saying?" 
 "Nothing of any moment." 
 But Violet persisted. "What was it?" 
 "Merely that during the Terror a woman 
 went to the guillotine smelling a rose." 
 
 At this flank movement Violet winced, but 
 she rallied. 
 
 "Yes and rehearsed the act beforehand. 
 They all did. The great ladies of the period 
 rehearsed for the guillotine that they might 
 die, as they had lived, with grace. Those were 
 the good old days. These are the bad new ones. 
 Anything of the kind would be ridiculous 
 
 now." 
 
 To this, gravely as before, Leilah assented. 
 "No doubt. But aren t you rather rambling 
 about the grounds? It seems to me that you 
 also have something up your sleeve." 
 
 Violet rose to the challenge. "Something! 
 I have the entire pharmacopoeia. ^In it is a 
 
224 THE MONSTER 
 
 remedy heroic but sovereign. If you ll take 
 it, it may maim but it will cure." 
 
 Leilah, well entrenched, braved her. "I may 
 not need it." 
 
 With a rush, then, the attack began. 
 
 "That s because you don t know. You think 
 you are sane and sound. Don t you now? Yes, 
 and you are neither. You have a high tem 
 perature complicated with nausea. The tem 
 perature is due to exposure, the nausea to in 
 digestion. You have been exposed to Ver- 
 plank and you have supped on Barouffski. 
 You fancy you can t be rid of the incubus. 
 That is an hallucination which the fever 
 has caused. You can be rid of it. You can 
 throw it up. I have an^eme_tic that will do 
 the trick. It may not be tasty but I ll war 
 rant it will make him gag far more than 
 you." 
 
 At the ferocity of the assault, Leilah quailed. 
 "Really, Violet, your language 
 
 But the lady was not be denied. "Aha! You 
 want me to be butter-fingered, don t you? Not 
 a bit of it. You shall have the dose whether 
 you like it or not and here it is for you. You 
 called this place a prison. Now who runs it? 
 You do. And on what? Your money. Sup 
 posing you hadn t any? Would Barouffski 
 supply it? He would pack in a jiffy. Couldn t 
 
THE MONSTER 225 
 
 you then sue for divorce? Of course you 
 could. Then there is the emetic. Verplank 
 has enough for you both, enough for an army. 
 All you have to do is to hold your nose, open 
 your mouth, give your money away and vomit 
 BaroufTski. Will you?" 
 
 It was Violet s last shot. With it she had 
 expected to bowl Leilah completely over. 
 Anxiously she looked to see the result. 
 
 "Will you?" she repeated. 
 
 With manifest exaltation Leilah answered: 
 "I had thought of it." 
 
 Surprisedly Violet stared, wondering could 
 all her ammunition have gone for nothing, 
 wondering too at the almost rapt expression 
 that had come into Leilah s face. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Yes, Violet, I had thought of it and of 
 other things also. While Aurelia was here, I 
 was reading a little book. It told me what I 
 once knew and had since forgotten. It told 
 me that if we have ideals we should live for 
 them, that it is only by living for them and 
 suffering for them that we can lift ourselves 
 above the brutes. Violet, it was sinful of me 
 to think of going with Gulian." 
 
 Dispassionately the now mollified lady 
 toned that phrase. 
 
 "It was not perhaps quite nice." 
 
226 THE MONSTER 
 
 "But I had not seen," Leilah continued. 
 "No, not that," she interrupted herself to ex 
 plain, "I had forgotten that this prison, all I 
 have endured, all I shall endure, these are my 
 debts to the Lords of Karma." 
 
 But that was a bit too strong. Violet 
 laughed. 
 
 "You mean the Lords of Gammon." 
 
 "I mean," Leilah, with heightening fervour, 
 replied, "that I have looked upon my prison 
 as a cross. It is not a cross, it is a boon one 
 of which I have not been worthy. For I for 
 got that any sorrow should be welcomed. I 
 forgot that it has been sent to make us nobler 
 than we are. But my sorrows I have not wel 
 comed. I have rebelled against them. I shall 
 rebel no more. They were my masters. They 
 shall be my servants now." 
 
 At these fine sentiments Violet sniffed. 
 
 "If that is theosophy I will believe in it 
 when I am old, fat and a German. But I am 
 glad it enabled you to reach a decision. Other 
 wise " 
 
 But what the lady may have intended to 
 say was never expressed or at least not then. 
 Through the yellow portieres, the delicate oval 
 of Aurelia s face appeared. 
 
 "Aren t you ever coming?" she called. 
 "What have you two been talking about?" 
 
THE MONSTER 227 
 
 As the ingenue spoke, she entered, strolled 
 to the mirror, considered herself. 
 
 "We have been discussing your engage 
 ment," Violet, in a very matter of fact way, re 
 plied. 
 
 Aurelia adjusted her hat, patted her hair, 
 and addressed the mirror. 
 
 "I fancied it must be something important. 
 Did I tell you what happened before I took 
 Farnese?" 
 
 Violet yawned. "I have forgotten." 
 
 Aurelia, still pluming herself, smiled. 
 
 "Then I didn t. Besides, it is so shocking." 
 
 Violet motioned at her. "Don t be tiresome. 
 I may have lost the ability to be shocked but 
 not the ability to be bored." 
 
 With an air of great satisfaction Aurelia 
 turned. 
 
 "Well, this morning, d Arcy called. He told 
 me about the gayeties last evening and it 
 seemed to me that he must have looked so sweet 
 with the champagne all over him that I could 
 hardly resist accepting him, too." 
 
 "Accepting him, three!" Violet exclaimed. 
 She raised her eyes as though calling heaven 
 to witness. "There s constancy for you!" 
 
 Aurelia gave another glance at her enticing 
 self. 
 
 "Do you know, I have always thought that 
 
228 THE MONSTER 
 
 constancy must be due either to a lack of imagi 
 nation or else of opportunity. That is what 
 you would call a moral standpoint, isn t it? 
 Though what morality itself is you never 
 deigned to explain. Personally I am inclined 
 to think that it must be a preference in a 
 choice of experiences." 
 
 Violet stood up. "One might suppose you 
 thought it consisted in being engaged to half 
 a dozen men at the same time." 
 
 Enthusiastically the girl regarded her. 
 "There! That s it! You ve struck it! There 
 is safety in numbers and \vhat a moral young 
 person I am!" 
 
 Violet nodded. "I never suspected it be 
 fore." 
 
 "Nor I," Aurelia contentedly replied. She 
 looked at Leilah. "By-by." 
 
 "Good-by," Violet added. 
 
 In a moment both had gone and Leilah, 
 again alone, reopened the little treatise on the 
 Paramitas. 
 
 The way was now clear and to that way the 
 pamphlet had pointed. It had done more. It 
 had brought the exaltation which such beati 
 tudes do bring to those in great distress. But 
 though it had exalted, suddenly the fervour fell 
 from her, for at once she foresaw the scene 
 which she would have with Verplank, when 
 
THE MONSTER 229 
 
 now, at the last moment, she had to tell him 
 that she could not go. The terror of it daunted 
 her. She could see him, demanding that she 
 tell him why that faltering why of hers 
 which would be gibberish to him and yet 
 which summarised her ideals. 
 
 For the moment she felt that she lacked 
 the strength for this, that it would be better to 
 write him and she was thinking what she 
 would say and how she would say it, when 
 something external, a noise from without, dis 
 tracted her. 
 
 She stood up and went to the window, from 
 which, since the day of the ambuscade, she 
 had had no heart to look. 
 
 Below, a footman in a canary coat and black 
 knee-breeches was walking, bareheaded, 
 straight on. At the gate he stopped, fumbled 
 with the latch, drew back the door, held it 
 open. 
 
 A man entered. Tall and broad-shouldered, 
 he had a rigid face, calm eyes, the air of a 
 judge. His beard, intensely black, the beard of 
 a Saracen, was close cut and pointed. He was 
 dressed in black. 
 
 Another man followed. Shorter, fairer, dis 
 tinctly fat, he had a box under his arm. About 
 the box were broad bands, sealed with red wax. 
 
 A third man appeared. Older than the 
 
230 THE MONSTER 
 
 others, he had gray hair, glasses rimmed with 
 tortoise-shell, and a bag. 
 
 All three were in black, all were grave, all 
 were silent, and as they stood before the gate 
 they partially concealed a fourth man, who, in 
 black also, wore white gloves. 
 
 What they had come for Leilah could not 
 imagine. Then, at once, she recalled what 
 Violet had said: the rigors of French justice, a 
 husband s ability to cage an erring wife, to put 
 her away, indefinitely, among the demented 
 and the depraved, and at the sight of these 
 men, at the thought of the Byzantine abysses 
 of Barouffski s nature, abysses perhaps un 
 sounded yet, dread shook her. She shuddered. 
 
 But now another procession appeared, one 
 that issued not from the gate, but from the 
 house, a procession also composed of four men, 
 also grave, also silent. One of them she vague 
 ly recalled, and her stumbling memory tried to 
 put a name on him, Dal, Mai, Pal-Palencia! 
 Another, too, she remembered, Tyszkiewicz. A 
 third also, and, to her cost, she knew. It was 
 Barouffski. 
 
 In the first procession there was now a fourth 
 acquaintance. The man with white gloves was 
 raising his hat. As he did so she recognised 
 d Arcy. Then at last she understood, and, 
 lest they should see her, drew back. 
 
THE MONSTER 231 
 
 Meanwhile the footman had disappeared. 
 From the first procession the man with the 
 umbrella and the man with the box detached 
 themselves. From the second, Palencia and 
 Tyszkiewicz advanced. 
 
 For a little, grouped together, they con 
 versed inaudibly, but amply with gestures and 
 movements that included the tossing of a coin. 
 
 A pantomime followed. Tyszkiewicz, Pa 
 lencia and the fat man moved to one side. The 
 man with the umbrella drew with the ferule of 
 it a line on the ground. Then, his head bent, 
 one foot put directly in front of the other, he 
 walked slowly until he had covered a space 
 equal apparently to about fifteen yards. There 
 he drew a second line, straightened himself, 
 turned to Barouffski, who went to that line, 
 while d Arcy stationed himself at the other. 
 
 Immediately the fat man handed his box to 
 Palencia. Palencia looked at the seals, broke 
 them, opened the box, and, going to where 
 d Arcy stood, presented it. D Arcy removed a 
 glove, removed his hat, which he put brim up 
 ward beside him, and taking a pistol from the 
 box, pointed it at the ground. 
 
 Palencia went back, restored the box to the 
 fat man, who presented it to Barouffski. An 
 other pistol was extracted. The fat man 
 moved to one side. The man with the um- 
 
232 THE MONSTER 
 
 brella placed himself at an angle to d Arcy and 
 BaroufTski. In front of him, at an equal angle, 
 Palencia, Tyszkiewicz and the fat man stood. 
 These the old man with the bag and the fourth 
 member of the BaroufTski party joined. The 
 man with the umbrella took out a watch, and 
 held it open in his hand. 
 
 "Attention 1" 
 
 The pantomime had ended. Leilah leaned 
 forward. Of BaroufTski she could see now but 
 the back of his head, the back of his tight-fit 
 ting coat. But d Arcy, who stood sideways, his 
 heels drawn together, might have been posing 
 for a photograph. 
 
 The sky was leaden. The shrubbery re 
 sembled it. From behind an urn a cat ap 
 peared. It meowed and vanished. For a 
 moment more there was silence. 
 
 The man with the umbrella looked from 
 d Arcy to BaroufTski. 
 
 "Messieurs, after I give the command Fire, 
 I will count from one to ten, leaving between 
 each number an interval of ten seconds. It is 
 unnecessary, but it is my duty to add, that to 
 fire before I have given the word, or after I 
 have counted ten, constitutes attempted assassi 
 nation and, should death ensue, murder." 
 
 He paused, looked at his watch, looked at 
 d Arcy, again at BaroufTski. 
 
THE MONSTER 233 
 
 "Fire!" 
 
 Simultaneously the two men raised and ex 
 tended their right arms, d Arcy in such a 
 manner that the forearm and butt of the pistol 
 masked the abnormal beauty of his face. The 
 hand was bare, but the left, which hung at his 
 side, was gloved. 
 
 "One! Two! Three!" 
 
 With the ridiculous noise of a firecracker a 
 pistol went off. D Arcy, lowering his right 
 hand, raised and shook the left. The delicate 
 material of the glove had reddened, and on the 
 ground specks of crimson dropped. 
 
 "Four! Five!" 
 
 D Arcy s left hand fell back. He raised the 
 right. 
 
 "Six! Seven! Eight!" 
 
 Measuredly, monotonously, but more loudly 
 than before, the final numbers were being 
 called. Infinitesimally the point of d Arcy s 
 pistol moved. His heels were no longer drawn 
 together. His right hand was held less high. 
 His left hand burned. Otherwise he was en 
 tirely at his ease. 
 
 He had withstood Barouffski s fire. It was 
 Barouffski s turn to withstand his. He had 
 time and to spare. Slowly, coolly, deliberately, 
 he was taking aim. 
 
 It was very agreeable. He was smiling. He 
 
234 THE MONSTER 
 
 was enjoying himself. He was enjoying Ba- 
 rouffski s presumable suspense. He was 
 savouring his equally presumable agitations. 
 The man s face had turned ashen. The fact 
 that it had, that he could see it had, delighted 
 him. He felt sure of himself, and his thoughts 
 were pleasant. 
 
 He was thinking: "That glass of wine of 
 yours was the last you will ever ask me or any 
 one else to drink." 
 
 He had become aware of Leilah s presence. 
 That, too, delighted him. If he had a regret, 
 it was that Tempest, the Silverstairs, all the 
 demi-mondaines and exotics of the night be 
 fore, the Bohemians to boot, the waiters 
 as well, were not present also. Though 
 in appearance divine, at heart he was 
 human. 
 
 Again, imperceptibly, the point of his pistol 
 moved. 
 
 "Nine!" 
 
 The trigger had been pulled. There was a 
 fresh detonation. D Arcy handed his pistol 
 to the fat man, bent over, took up his hat, put 
 it on, took it off, raised it straight upward, and 
 for a moment, before replacing it, held it high 
 in the air. 
 
 Leilah, without noticing the salute which 
 was intended for her, saw Barouffski turn com- 
 
THE MONSTER 235 
 
 pletely around, sink on his knees, press his 
 hands to his side, and pitch forward. 
 
 It was a feint, she thought, histrionics for 
 the gallery, perhaps for her. But now the old 
 man and his colleague were bending over him. 
 Behind them, Palencia, Tyszkiewicz and the 
 man with the umbrella leaned. Barouffski s 
 coat and waistcoat were opened, his shirt was 
 torn apart. 
 
 Leilah heard what to her was the meaning- 
 lessness of technical terms. She saw the men 
 who had been bending arise. She saw the 
 others remove their hats. At the significant 
 action she saw that the garden had been again 
 invaded, this time by Death. 
 
 She turned, clutching for support at the vel 
 vet of a curtain, overwhelmed at the knowl 
 edge that her prison had crumbled, that the 
 jailer was gone. 
 
 It had been her destiny to have sorrow spring 
 into her life, fell her, make her its own, and to 
 what end? Tearfully she had put that query 
 to walls as callous as fate. Tearfully she had 
 come to believe that she was damned in this 
 existence for sins committed in another. It is 
 this life that is hell she had told herself. But 
 now, abruptly, the malediction was lifted. 
 Still in hell, she was at the portals, the gates 
 were open, she was free! 
 
236 THE MONSTER 
 
 Yet was she? At the moment it seemed to 
 her that it was all a hallucination; that, if she 
 looked again into the accursed garden, she 
 would see Barouffski tapping his breast with 
 one hand, pointing to some prostrate form 
 with the other, and, with his ambiguous smile, 
 calling to her: 
 
 "See, my dear, I, I am unharmed." 
 
 So poignant was the impression that she did 
 look. A litter had been improvised, and on it 
 BaroufTski, an arm pendent, his head fallen 
 back, his face a gray green, was being put. 
 
 On the door behind her sounded the muf 
 fled tap of ringers furtive and discreet. She 
 turned. At the threshold was Parker. 
 
 "If you please, my lady. Will your ladyship 
 receive 
 
 "No," Leilah answered. She was about to 
 add that she was at home to no one. But she 
 caught herself. "Who is it?" 
 
 With that air which those acquire who at 
 tend to delicate matters, the woman answered : 
 "Mr. Verplank." 
 
 Leilah drew a long breath. She went to the 
 mirror. The curtain had disarranged her hair. 
 She readjusted it, and passed out and down in 
 to the slippery salon. 
 
 Verplank was leaning against the piano. 
 His left arm was in a sling, and the left side 
 
THE MONSTER 237 
 
 of his face from the nose to the ear was 
 bandaged. 
 
 Before either could speak there came from 
 the hall a murmur of voices, the sound of 
 lumbering feet, the noise of people labouring 
 upward. 
 
 Verplank looked at Leilah, and from her to 
 the door. 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 On and upward moved the steps, the noise 
 decreasing as they passed, the sound subsiding 
 with them. 
 
 "What is it?" Verplank asked again. 
 
 Leilah s under lip trembled. The deliver 
 ance from the vortex, the after-shudder that 
 comes when some great peril has been barely 
 escaped, the sensation of strength overtaxed, 
 these things fusing with the consciousness that 
 the last barricade had been taken, that there 
 were now no more hostages to joy, induced 
 in her one of the most curious of physical 
 phenomena. 
 
 With tears running down her cheeks, she 
 smiled. Then, sobbing and smiling still, she 
 answered him : 
 
 "The key of the prison." 
 
 Verplank nodded. He did not in the least 
 understand. But the singularity of her ap 
 pearance, joined to the singularity of her re 
 ply, aroused in him a great pity for this worn- 
 
238 THE MONSTER 
 
 an who had ruined her life, ruined his own, 
 and who then seemed to him demented. 
 
 "Pardon, madame la comtesse. Monsieur 
 Palencia and Monsieur Tyszkiewicz ask if 
 madame la comtesse will receive them?" 
 
 At the door, behind her, was Emmanuel. 
 
 At once another phenomenon occurred. 
 Galvanised by that instinct of form which, 
 when requisite, enables women of the world 
 to banish instantly any trace of emotion, Lei- 
 lah turned to the footman a face in which the 
 tears had been reabsorbed, and from which 
 the smile had gone. 
 
 "Say to these gentlemen that I appreciate 
 and thank them, but that I can see no one." 
 
 Emmanuel compressed his lips. He won 
 dered how she knew. There was a great deal 
 occurring in this house that perplexed him. 
 Moreover, Verplank s bandage and sling in 
 terested him very much. But, trained to his 
 calling, he bowed and withdrew. 
 
 "What do they want?" Verplank asked, 
 memories of his own duel surging at mention 
 of their names before him. 
 
 In Leilah s face the tears and smiles re 
 appearing, mingled. 
 
 "Barouffski is dead," she answered. 
 
 Verplank closed and opened a hand. His 
 mouth opened also. He was sure now that 
 she was crazy. 
 
THE MONSTER 239 
 
 "Dead! How? What do you mean?" 
 
 Leilah made a gesture. 
 
 "There, a moment ago, in the garden. 
 D Arcy shot him." 
 
 Verplank started. The definiteness of her 
 reply divested him of his idea concerning her, 
 but it produced another which was also, 
 though differently, disturbing. His eyes 
 blazed. The old scar, the scar on the right 
 side of his face, reddened. 
 
 "Who the devil is d Arcy?" 
 
 For a moment he stared. Then, angrily 
 snapping two fingers, he cried: 
 
 "In taking you from this damned house to 
 day, I had intended to leave a card for him, not 
 a p. p. c. either, one with our address on it 
 and the hours when I would be at home. If 
 there was any shooting going on, I intended 
 to be in it. Now some duffer must interfere." 
 
 With a rapid intake of the breath, he con 
 sidered her. At the moment, he doubted it 
 could be true. Yet her face, with its hysterical 
 blending of joy and sorrow, seemed to certify 
 that it was so. After all, he reflected, however 
 the odour may occur, always the smell of an 
 enemy s corpse is sweet. But, uncertain still, 
 he threw out for clincher: 
 
 "Is that what you meant by the key of the 
 prison?" 
 
 She moved to him. 
 
240 THE MONSTER 
 
 "Gulian, yes, and never can I be thankful 
 enough that it was not your hand that turned 
 it." 
 
 Verplank tossed his bandaged head. 
 
 "So this is the end!" 
 
 Leilah looked up at him. 
 
 "Gulian, no, not that. The end of the be 
 ginning, if you like. Hereafter we will be 
 beginning anew. Hereafter- 
 She paused. The word had been evocative. 
 Its repetition showed her that which she had 
 not yet had time to consider; the decencies of 
 life, the decencies, too, of death, the funeral, 
 the widow s weeds, the delay which the world 
 exacts; new hostages to joy, real though im 
 permanent. 
 
 She told him of them. 
 
 From the church next door the organ pealed, 
 and as they then remade their plans those 
 plans which mortals think they make, and 
 which always are unmade unless intended for 
 them a ray of sunshine entered; the organ 
 pealed louder, the beauty of the melody hushed 
 their voices, and for a moment, to the appog- 
 giatura of Stradella, on that shaft of light, 
 Leilah s thoughts, ascending, mounted into 
 realms where all things broken are made com 
 plete, and where are found again things van 
 ished. 
 
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