THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 Oh!" she cried. "I had just come in and I thought I 
 thought it was my room.
 
 The Azure Rose 
 
 A Novel 
 
 BY 
 
 REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN 
 
 Author of "Jim," "The House of Bondage," 
 "The Mark of The Beast," "Our Navy at Work," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE MACAULAY COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 1919 
 BY THE MACAULAY Co.
 
 PS 
 
 3SZI 
 
 For 
 
 My Friend and Secretary, 
 LANCE-CORPORAL ARNOLD ROBSON, 
 
 No. 10864, "C" Company, Sixth Battalion, 
 Yorkshire Regiment "The Green Howards" 
 
 Who, Leading His Squad, Died for His Country 
 
 At Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, 21st August, 1915, 
 
 Aged Twenty. 
 
 2130783
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A novel about Paris that is not about the war 
 requires even now, I am told, some word of 
 explanation. Mine is brief: 
 
 This story was conceived before the war began. 
 I came to the task of putting it into its final shape 
 after nine months passed between the Western 
 Front and a Paris war-torn and war-darkened, 
 both physically and spiritually. Yet, though I 
 had found the old familiar places, and the ever 
 young and ever familiar people, wounded and sad, 
 I did not long have to seek for the Parisian brav-< 
 ery in pain and the Parisian smile shining, rain- 
 bowlike, through the tears. Nothing can conquer 
 France and nothing can lastingly hurt Paris, 
 They are, as a famous wit said of our own so dif 
 ferent Boston, a state of mind. Had the German 
 succeeded in the Autumn of 1914 or the Spring of 
 1918, France would have remained, and Paris. 
 What used to happen in the Land of Love and
 
 PREFACE 
 
 the City of Lights will happen there again and be 
 -always happening, so that my story is at once a 
 retrospect and a prophecy. 
 
 Realizing these things, I have found it a pleas 
 ure to make this book. A book without problems 
 and without horrors, its sole purpose is to give to 
 the reader some of that pleasure which went to its 
 making. Wars come and go; but for every man 
 the Door Opposite stands open beside the Seine, 
 the hurdy-gurdy plays "Annie Laurie" in the 
 Street of the Valley of Grace and a Lady of the 
 Rose is waiting. 
 
 R. W. K. 
 
 Columbia, Penna., 
 
 Christmas Day, 1918.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. IN WHICH, IF NOT LOVE, AT LEAST AN 
 GER, LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS . . 13 
 
 II. PROVIDING THE GENTLE READER WITH A 
 CARD OF ADMISSION TO THE NEST OF 
 THE Two DOVES .... 36 
 
 III. IN WHICH A FOOL AND His MONEY ARE 
 
 SOON PARTED .... 49 
 
 IV. A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS .... 64 
 
 V. WHICH TELLS How CARTARET RETURNED 
 TO THE RUE DU VAL-DE-GRACE, AND 
 WHAT HE FOUND THERE . . 84 
 
 VI. CARTARET SETS UP HOUSEKEEPING . . 102 
 
 f 
 
 VII. OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY, OF DAY-DREAMS, 
 AND OF A FAR COUNTRY AND ITS SOV 
 EREIGN LADY 118 
 
 VIII. CHIEFLY CONCERNING STRAWBERRIES . 144 
 
 IX. BEING THE TRUE REPORT OF A CHAP 
 ERONED DEJEUNER . . . .154 
 
 X. AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE AND A 
 FULL HEART, IN THE COURSE OF 
 WHICH THE AUTHOR BARELY ES 
 CAPES TELLING A VERY OLD STORY . 169 
 k
 
 x CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XI. TELLS How CARTARET S FORTUNE 
 TURNED TWICE IN A FEW HOURS 
 AND How HE FOUND ONE THING 
 AND LOST ANOTHER .... 192 
 
 XII. NARRATING How CARTARET BEGAN His 
 
 QUEST OF THE ROSE .... 206 
 
 XIII. FURTHER ADVENTURES OF AN AMATEUR 
 
 BOTANIST ...... 222 
 
 XIV. SOMETHING OR OTHER ABOUT TRADITIONS 253 
 
 XV. IN WHICH CARTARET TAKES PART IN THE 
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM . 273 
 
 XVI. AND LAST " . 300
 
 OUT OF ASHES 
 
 Paris as I knew her 
 
 In the days ere this 
 Paris, when I threw her 
 
 Many a careless kiss 
 Paris of my pleasure, 
 
 Bright of eye and brow, 
 Town of squandered treasure 
 
 Where s that Paris now? 
 
 Song had shunned her traces, 
 
 Care was on her track: 
 All my young girls faces 
 
 Pale in folds of black! 
 Half the hearts were broken, 
 
 All the mirth was fled; 
 Scarce a vow was spoken, 
 
 Save above the dead. . . . 
 
 h, but there s a spirit 
 
 Sorrow cannot kill! 
 Even now I hear it 
 
 Swear the great "I Will!" 
 Paris, at your portal 
 
 Taps the ancient truth, 
 Laughing and immortal: 
 
 Never-conquered Youth! 
 
 R. W. K.
 
 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH, IF NOT LOVE, AT LEAST ANGER, 
 LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 
 
 Je ne connais point la nature des anges, parce que je 
 ne suis qu homme; il n y a que les theologiens qui la 
 connaissent. Voltaire : Dictionnaire Philosophique. 
 
 HE did not know why he headed toward his 
 own room it could hold nothing that he guessed 
 of to welcome him, except further tokens of the 
 dejection and misery he carried in his heart but 
 thither he went, and, as he drew nearer, his step 
 quickened. By the time that he entered the rue 
 du Val de Grace, he was moving at something 
 close upon a run. 
 
 He hurried up the rising stairs and into the 
 dark hall, and, as he did so, was possessed by 
 
 the sense that somebody had as hurriedly ascended 
 
 13
 
 14 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 just ahead of him. The door to his room was 
 never locked, and now he flung it wide. 
 
 The last of the afterglow had all but faded 
 from the sky, and only the faintest twilight, a 
 rose-pink twilight, came into the studio. Rose- 
 pink : he thought of that at once and thought, too, 
 that these sky-roses had a sweeter scent than the 
 roses of earth, for there was about this once- 
 familiar place an odor more delicate and tender 
 than any he had ever known before. It was dim, 
 illusive ; it was like a musical poem in an unknown 
 tongue, and yet, unlike French scents and hot 
 house flowers, it subtly suggested open spaces and 
 mountain-peaks. Cartaret had a quick vision of 
 sunlight upon snow-crests. He wondered how 
 such a perfume could find its way through the 
 narrow, dirty streets of the Latin Quarter and 
 into his poor room. 
 
 And then, in the dim light, he saw a figure 
 standing there. 
 
 Cartaret stopped short. 
 
 An hour ago he had left the place empty. 
 Now, when he so wanted solitude, it had been
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 15 
 
 invaded. There was an intruder. It was 
 
 yes, the Lord have mercy on him, it was a girl! 
 
 "Who s there?" demanded Cartaret. 
 
 He was so startled that he asked the question 
 in English and with his native American accent. 
 The next moment, he was more startled when 
 the strange girl answered him in English, though 
 an English oddly precise. 
 
 "It is I," she said. 
 
 "It is I," was what she said first, and, as she 
 said it, Cartaret noted that her voice was a won 
 derfully soft contralto. What she next said was 
 uttered as he further discovered himself to her 
 by an involuntary movement that brought him 
 within the rear window s shaft of afterglow. It 
 was: 
 
 "What are you doing here?" 
 
 She spoke with patent amazement, and there 
 were, between the words, four perceptible 
 pauses. 
 
 What was he doing there? What was she? 
 What light there was came from behind her: he 
 could not at all make out her features; he had
 
 16 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 only her voice to go by only her voice and her 
 manner of regal possession and with neither was 
 he acquainted. Good Heavens, hadn t he a right 
 to come unannounced into the one place in Paris 
 that he might still call his own? It surely ivas 
 his own. He looked distractedly about him. 
 
 "I thought," said Cartaret, "that this was my 
 room." 
 
 His glance, bewildered as it was, nevertheless 
 assured him that he had not been mistaken. His 
 accustomed eye detected everything that the twi 
 light might hide from the eye of a stranger. 
 
 Here was all his student-litter. Here were the 
 good photographs of good pictures, bought second 
 hand; the bad copies of good pictures, made by 
 Cartaret himself during long mornings in the 
 Louvre, where impudent tourists, staring at his 
 work, jolted his elbow and craned their necks be 
 side his cheek; there were the plaster-casts on 
 brackets casts of antiques more mutilated than 
 the antiques themselves; and here, too, were the 
 rows of lost endeavors in the shape of discarded 
 canvases banked on the floor along the walls and
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 17 
 
 sometimes jutting far out into the room. Two or 
 three chairs were scattered about, one with a 
 broken leg he remembered the party at which 
 it was broken; across from the fire-place was Car- 
 taret s bed that a tarnished Oriental cover (made 
 in Lyons) converted by day into a divan; and 
 close beside the rear window, flanked by the 
 table on which he mixed his colors, stood, almost 
 at the elbow of this imperious intruder, Carta- 
 ret s own easel with a virgin canvas in position, 
 waiting to receive the successor to that picture 
 which he had sold for a song a few hours ago. 
 
 What was he doing here, indeed! He liked 
 that. 
 
 And she was still at it : 
 
 "How dare you think so*?" she persisted. 
 
 The slight pauses between her words lent them 
 more weight than, even in his ears, they other 
 wise would have possessed. She came a step 
 nearer, and Cartaret saw that she was breathing 
 quickly and that the bit of lace above her heart 
 rose and fell irregularly. 
 
 "How dare you*?" she repeated.
 
 i8 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 She was close enough now for him to decide 
 that she was quite the most striking girl he had 
 ever seen. Her figure, without a touch of exag 
 geration, was full and yet lithe: it moved with 
 the grace of the athlete. Her skin was rosy and 
 white the rose of health and the clear cream of 
 sane living. 
 
 It was, however, her manner that had led Car- 
 taret first to doubt his own senses, and then to 
 doubt hers. This girl spoke like a queen resent 
 ing a next-to-impossible familiarity. He had half 
 a mind to leave the place and allow her to dis 
 cover her own mistake, the nature of which 
 his room ran the length of the old house and half 
 its width, being separated from a similar room by 
 only a dark and draughty hallway now sud 
 denly revealed itself to him. He seriously con 
 sidered leaving her alone to the advent of her 
 humiliation. 
 
 Then he looked at her again. Her hair, in 
 sharp contrast to the tint of her face, was a shin 
 ing blue-black; though her features were almost 
 classical in their regularity, her mouth was gen-
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 19 
 
 erous and sensitive, and, under even black brows 
 and through long, curling lashes, her eyes shone 
 frank and blue. Cartaret decided to remain. 
 
 "You are an artist*?" he inquired. 
 
 "Leave this room!" She stamped a little foot. 
 "Leave this room instantly!" 
 
 Cartaret stooped to one of the canvases that 
 were piled against the wall nearest him. He 
 turned its face to her. 
 
 "And this is some of your work 1 ?" he asked. 
 
 He had meant to be only light and amusing, 
 but when he saw the effect of his action, he cursed 
 himself for a heavy-witted fool: the girl glanced 
 first at the picture and then wildly about her. 
 She had at last realized her mistake. 
 
 "Oh !" she cried. Her delicate hands went to 
 her face. "I had just come in and I thought 
 I thought it was my room !" 
 
 He registered a memorandum to kick himself 
 as soon as she had gone. He moved awkwardly 
 forward, still between her and the door. 
 
 "It s all right," he said. "Everybody drops in
 
 20 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 here at one time or another, and I never lock my 
 door." 
 
 "But you do not understand!" She was still 
 speaking through her unjeweled fingers: "Sir, 
 we moved into this house only this morning. I 
 went out for the first time ten minutes since. My 
 maid did not want me to go, but I would do it. 
 Our room I understand now that our room is 
 the other one: the one across the hallway. But 
 I came back hurriedly, a little frightened by the 
 streets, and I turned Oh-h !" she ended, "I must 
 go I must go immediately !" 
 
 She dropped her hands and darted forward, 
 turning to her right. Cartaret lost his head: 
 he turned to his right. Each saw the mistake 
 and sought the left; then darted to the right 
 again. 
 
 "Let me pass!" commanded the girl. 
 
 Cartaret, inwardly condemning his stupidity, 
 suddenly backed. He backed into the half open 
 door; it shut behind him with a sharp snap. 
 
 "I m not dancing," he said. "I know it looks 
 like it, but I m not truly."
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 21 
 
 "Then stand aside and let me pass." 
 
 He stood aside. 
 
 "Certainly," said he; "that is what I was try 
 ing to do." 
 
 With her head high, she walked by him to the 
 door and turned the knob: the door would not 
 open. 
 
 Than the scorn that she turned upon him then, 
 he had never seen anything more magnificent or 
 more beautiful. "What is this?" she asked. 
 
 He did not know. 
 
 "It s probably stuck," he suggested. She was 
 beginning to terrify him. "If you ll allow me 
 
 He bent to the knob, his hand just brushing 
 hers, which was quickly withdrawn. He pulled: 
 the door would not give. He took the knob in 
 both hands and raised it : no success. He bore all 
 his weight down upon the knob: the door re 
 mained shut. 
 
 He looked up at her attempting the smile of 
 apology, but her eyes, as soon as they encountered 
 his, were raised to a calm regard of the panel
 
 22 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 above his head. Cartaret s gaze returned to the 
 door and, presently, encountered the old dead- 
 latch that antedated his tenancy and that he had 
 never once used: it was a deadlatch of a type 
 antiquated even in the Latin Quarter, tough and 
 enduring; years ago it had been pushed back and 
 held open by a small catch; the knob whereby 
 it was originally worked from inside the room 
 had been broken off; and now the catch had 
 slipped, the spring-bolt had shot home and, the 
 knob being broken, the girl and Cartaret were as 
 much prisoners in the room as if the lock had 
 been on the other side of the door. 
 
 The American broke into a nervous laugh. 
 
 "What now*?" asked the girl, her eyes hard. 
 
 "We re caught," said Cartaret. 
 
 She could only repeat the word: 
 
 "Caught?" 
 
 "Yes. I m sorry. It was my stupidity ; I sup 
 pose I jolted the door rather hard when I bumped 
 into it, doing that tango just now. Anyhow, this 
 old lock s sprung into action and we re fastened 
 in."
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 23 
 
 The girl looked at him sharply. A difficult red 
 climbed her cheeks. 
 
 "Open that door," she ordered. 
 
 "But I can t not right away. I ll have to 
 try to " 
 
 "Open that door instantly." 
 
 "But I tell you I can t. Don t you see?" He 
 pointed to the offending deadlatch. In embar 
 rassed sentences, he explained the situation. 
 
 She did not appear to listen. She had the air 
 of one who has prejudged a case. 
 
 "You are trying to keep me in this room," she 
 said. 
 
 Her tone was steady, and her eyes were brave; 
 but it was evident that she quite believed her 
 statement. 
 
 Cartaret colored in his turn. 
 
 "Nonsense," said he. 
 
 "Then open the door." 
 
 "I tell you the lock has slipped." 
 
 "If that is so, use your key." 
 
 "I haven t any key," protested Cartaret. "And 
 even if I had "
 
 24 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "You have no key to your own room?" She 
 raised her eyes scornfully. "I understood you to 
 say very positively that I was trespassing in your 
 room/ 
 
 "Great Scott!" cried Cartaret. "Of course it s 
 my room. You make me wish it wasn t, but it 
 is. It is my room, but you can see for yourself 
 there s no keyhole to the confounded lock on this 
 side of the door, and never was. Look here." 
 Again he pointed to the deadlatch: "If you ll 
 only come a little nearer and look " 
 
 "Thank you," she said. "I shall remain where 
 I am." She had put her hand among the lace 
 over her breast; now the hand, withdrawn, held 
 an unsheathed knife. "And if you come one step 
 nearer to me," she calmly concluded, "I will kill 
 you." 
 
 It was the sole dream-touch needed to perfect 
 his sense of the entire episode s unreality. In 
 his poor room, a princess that he had never seen 
 before that, surely, he was not seeing now! 
 some royal figure out of a lost Hellenic tragedy; 
 her breast visibly cumbered by the heavy air of
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 25 
 
 modern Paris, her wonderful eyes burning with 
 the cold fire of resolution, she told him that she 
 would kill him if he approached her. And she 
 would do it; she would kill him with less com 
 punction than she would feel in crushing an of 
 fending moth! 
 
 Cartaret had instinctively jumped at the first 
 flash of the weapon. Now his laughter returned. 
 A vision could not be impeded by a sprung lock. 
 
 "But you re not here," he said. 
 
 She did not shift by so much as a hairbreadth 
 her position of defense, yet, ever so slightly, her 
 eyes widened. 
 
 "And I m not, either," he persisted. "Don t 
 you see 1 ? Things like this don t happen. One 
 of us is asleep and dreaming and I must be that 
 one." 
 
 Plainly she did not follow him, but his laugh 
 ter had been so boyishly innocent as to make her 
 patently doubtful of her own assumption. He 
 crowded that advantage. 
 
 "Honestly," he said, "I didn t mean any harm
 
 26 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "You at least place yourself in a strange posi 
 tion," the girl interrupted, though the hand that 
 held the knife was lowered to her side. 
 
 "But if you really doubt me," he continued, 
 "and don t want to wait until I pick this lock, let 
 me call from the window and get somebody in 
 the street to send up the concierge." 
 
 "The street? She evidently did not like this 
 idea. "No, not the street. Why do you not ring 
 for him?" 
 
 Cartaret s gesture included the four walls of 
 the room: 
 
 "There s no bell." 
 
 Still a little suspicious of him, ker blue eyes 
 scanned the room to confirm his statement. 
 
 "Then why not call him from the window in 
 the back?" 
 
 "Because his quarters are at the front of the 
 house, and he wouldn t hear." 
 
 "Would no one hear*?" 
 
 "There s nobody in the garden at this time of 
 day. You had really better let me call to the
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 27 
 
 first person that goes along the street. Somebody 
 is always going along, you know." 
 
 He made two strides toward the front window. 
 
 "Come back!" 
 
 He turned to find her with her face scarlet. 
 She had raised the knife. 
 
 "Break the iock," she said. 
 
 "But that will take time." 
 
 "Break the lock." 
 
 "All right; only why don t you want me to call 
 for help?" 
 
 "And humiliate me still further?" One small 
 foot, cased in an absurdly light patent-leather 
 slipper with a flashing buckle, tapped the floor 
 angrily. "I have been foolish, and your folly has 
 made me more foolish, but I will not have it 
 known to all the world how foolish I have been. 
 Break the lock at once now immediately." 
 
 Cartaret divined that this was eminently a time 
 for silence: she was alive, she was real, and she 
 was human. He opened a drawer in the table, 
 dived under the divan, plunged behind a curtain 
 in one corner, and at last found a shaky hammer
 
 28 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 and a nicked chisel with which he returned to the 
 locked door. 
 
 "I m not much of a carpenter," he said, by way 
 of preparatory apology. 
 
 The girl said nothing. 
 
 He was angry at himself for having appeared 
 to such heavy disadvantage. Consequently, he 
 was unsteady. His first blow missed. His 
 strength turned to mere violence, and he showered 
 futile blows upon the butt of the chisel. Then a 
 misdirected blow hit the thumb of his left hand. 
 He swore softly and, having sworn, heard her 
 laugh. 
 
 He looked up: the knife had disappeared. He 
 was pleased at the change to merriment that her 
 face discovered; but, as he looked, he realized 
 that her mirth was launched against his efforts, 
 and he was pleased no longer. His rage directed 
 itself from him to her. 
 
 "I m sorry you don t approve," he said sulkily. 
 "For my part, I am quite willing to stop, I assure 
 you." 
 
 If an imperious person may be said to have
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 29 
 
 tossed her head, then it should here be said that 
 this imperious person now tossed hers. 
 
 "Now, shall I go to the window and yell into 
 the street^" he savagely inquired. 
 
 Her high-tilted chin, her crimsoned cheeks and 
 the studiously managed lack of expression in her 
 eyes were proofs that she had heard him. Never 
 theless, she persisted in her disregard of his sug 
 gestion. 
 
 Cartaret s mood became more ugly. He re 
 solved to make her pay attention. 
 
 "I ll do it," he said, and turned away from 
 the door. 
 
 That brought the answer. She looked at him 
 in angry horror. 
 
 "And make us the laughing-stock of the neigh 
 borhood 4 ?" she cried. "Is it not enough that you 
 have shut me in here, that you have insulted me, 
 that " 
 
 "Insulted you 1 ?" He stood with the hammer 
 in one hand and the chisel in the other, a rather 
 unromantic figure of protest. "I never did any 
 thing of the sort."
 
 30 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 He made a flourish and dropped the hammer. 
 When he picked it up, he saw that she stood 
 there, looking over his bent head, with eyes sternly 
 kept serene; but he saw also that her cheeks re 
 mained aglow and that her breath came short. 
 
 "I never did anything of the sort," he went 
 on. "How could I?" 
 
 "How could you?" She clenched her hands. 
 
 "I don t mean that." He could have bit 
 ten out his tongue. He floundered in a marsh 
 of confusion. "I mean I mean Oh, I don t 
 know what I mean, except that I beg you to 
 believe I am incapable of the impudence you 
 charge! I came in here and found the most 
 beautiful woman " 
 
 She recoiled. 
 
 "You speak so to me?" 
 
 It was out: he had to go ahead MOW. He did 
 not at all recognize himself: this was not Ameri 
 can; it was wholly Gallic. 
 
 "I can t help it," he said, "you are." 
 
 "Go to work," said the girl. 
 
 "But I want you to understand "
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 31 
 
 Two tears, twin diamonds of mortification, 
 shone in her blue eyes. 
 
 "You have humiliated me, and mortified me, 
 and insulted me!" she persisted. Her white 
 throat swallowed the chagrin, and anger re 
 turned to take its place. "If you are what you 
 pretend to be, you will go back to your work of 
 opening that door. If I were the strong man 
 that you are, I should have broken it open long 
 ago." 
 
 She had a handsome ferocity. Cartaret put 
 one broad shoulder to the door and both hands 
 to the knob. There was a tremendous wrench 
 ing and splitting: the door swung open. He 
 turned and bowed. 
 
 "It s open," he said. 
 
 To his amazement, her mood had entirely 
 changed. Whether his action had served as 
 proof of his declared sincerity, or whether her 
 brief reflection on his words had itself served him 
 this good turn, he could not guess; but he saw 
 now that her eyes had softened and that her 
 iinderlip quivered.
 
 32 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Good afternoon," said Cartaret. 
 
 "Good-by," said she. 
 
 She moved toward the door, then stopped. 
 
 "I hope that you will pardon me," she said, 
 and she spoke as if she were not accustomed to 
 asking pardon. "I have been too quick and 
 very foolish. You must know that I am new to 
 Paris new to France new to cities and that 
 I have heard strange stories of Parisians and of 
 the men of the large towns." 
 
 Cartaret was more than mollified, but he took 
 a grip upon his emotions and resolved to pur 
 sue this advantage. 
 
 "At least," he said, "you should have seen 
 that I was your own sort." 
 
 "My own my own sort?" She did not seem 
 to comprehend. 
 
 "Well, of your own class, then." This girl 
 had an impish faculty for making him say things 
 that sounded priggish: "You should have seen 
 I was of your own class." 
 
 Again her eyes widened. Then she tossed her 
 head and laughed a little silvery laugh.
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 33 
 
 He fancied the laugh disdainful, and thought 
 so the more when she seemed to detect his sus 
 picion and tried to allay it by an alteration of 
 tone. 
 
 "I mean exactly that," he said. 
 
 She bit her red lip, and Cartaret noted that 
 her teeth were even and white. 
 
 "Forgive me," she begged. 
 
 She put out her hand so frankly that he 
 would have forgiven her anything. He took the 
 hand and, as it nestled softer than any satin in 
 his, he felt his heart hammer in his breast. 
 
 "Forgive me," she was repeating, 
 
 "I hope you ll forgive me" he muttered. "At 
 any rate, you can t forget me: you ll have to 
 remember me as the greatest boor you ever met." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "It was I that was foolish." 
 
 "Oh, but it wasn t! I " 
 
 He stopped, for her eyes had fallen from his 
 and rested on their clasped hands. He released 
 her instantly. 
 
 "Good-by," she said again.
 
 34 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Good But surely I m to see you once in 
 
 a while!" 
 
 "I do not know." 
 
 "Why, we re neighbors! You can t mean that 
 you won t let me " 
 
 "I do not know," she said. "Good-by." 
 
 She went out, drawing-to the shattered door 
 behind her. 
 
 Cartaret leaned against the panel and listened 
 shamelessly. 
 
 He heard her cross the hall and open the door 
 to the opposite room; he heard her suspiciously 
 greeted by another voice a voice that he gladly 
 recognized as feminine and in a language that 
 was wholly unfamiliar to him: a language that 
 sounded somehow Oriental. Then he heard the 
 other door shut, and he turned to the comfort 
 less gloom of his own quarters. 
 
 He sat down on the bed. He had forgotten a 
 riotous dinner that was to have been his final 
 Parisian folly, forgotten his poverty, forgotten 
 his day of disappointment and his desire to go 
 back to Ohio and the law. He remembered only
 
 ANGER LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 35 
 
 the events of the last quarter-hour and the girl 
 that had made them what they were. 
 
 As he sat there, there seemed to come again 
 into the silent room the perfume he had noticed 
 when he returned. It seemed to float in on the 
 twilight, still dimly pink behind the roofs of the 
 gray houses along the BouP Miche : subtle, haunt 
 ing, an odor more delicate and tender than any 
 he had ever known before. 
 
 He raised his head. He saw something white 
 lying on the floor lying where, a few moments 
 since, he had stood. He went forward and 
 picked it up. 
 
 It was a flower like a rose a white rose 
 but unlike any rose of which Cartaret had any 
 knowledge. It was small, but perfect, its pure 
 petals gathered tight against its heart, and from 
 its heart came the perfume that had seemed to 
 him like a musical poem in an unknown tongue. 
 
 For a second time Cartaret had that quick 
 vision of the sunlight upon snow-crests and the 
 virgin sheen of unattainable mountain tops. . . .
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PROVIDING THE GENTLE READER WITH A CARD 
 OF ADMISSION TO THE NEST OF THE TWO 
 DOVES 
 
 Dans ces questions de credit, il faut toujours frapper 
 1* imagination. L idee de genie, c est de prendre dans la 
 poche des gens 1 argent qui n y est pas encore. Zola: 
 
 L Argent. 
 
 UNTIL just before the appearance of Charlie 
 Cartaret s rosy vision, this had been a day of 
 darkness and wet. Rain a dull, hopeless, Feb 
 ruary rain fell with implacable monotony. It 
 descended in fine spray, as if too lazy to hurry, 
 yet too spiteful to stop. It made all Paris miser 
 able; but, as is the way with Parisian rains, 
 it was a great deal wetter on the Left Bank of 
 the Seine than on the Right. 
 
 No rain not even in those happy times be 
 fore the great war ever washed the Left Bank 
 
 clean, and this one only made it a marsh. A 
 
 36
 
 THE NEST OF THE TWO DOVES 37 
 
 curtain of fog fell sheer between the Isle de la 
 Cite and the Quai des Augustins; the twin 
 towers of St. Sulpice staggered up into a pall of 
 fog and were lost in it. The gray houses 
 hunched their shoulders, lowered their heads, 
 drew their mansard hats and gabled caps over 
 their noses and stood like rows of patient horses 
 at a cabstand under the gray downpour. Now 
 and again a real cab scuttled along the streets, 
 its skinny beast clop-clopping over the wooden 
 paving, or slipping among the cobbled ways, 
 its driver hidden under a mountainous pile of 
 woolen great-coat and rubber cape. Even the 
 taxis lacked the proud air with which they 
 habitually splash pedestrians, and such pedes 
 trians as business forced upon the early after 
 noon thoroughfares went with heads bowed like 
 the houses and umbrellas leveled like flying- 
 jibs. 
 
 In front of the little Cafe Des Deux Colom- 
 bes, the two marble-topped tables which occu 
 pied its scant frontage on the rue Jacob, were 
 deserted by all save their four iron-backed chairs
 
 38 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 with wet seats and their twin water-bottles into 
 which, with mathematical precision, water 
 dropped from a pair of holes in the sagging can 
 vas overhead. Inside, however, there were 
 lighted gas-jets, the proprietor and the pro 
 prietor s wife presumably the pair of doves for 
 whom the Cafe was named and a man that 
 was trying to look like a customer. 
 
 Gaston Francois Louis Pasbeaucoup had an 
 apron tied about his middle, and, standing be 
 fore the intended patron s table, leaned what 
 weight he had it was not much upon his 
 finger-tips. His mustache was fierce enough to 
 grace the upper lip of a deputy from the Bouches- 
 du-Rhone and generous enough to spare many 
 a contribution to the plat-du-jour; but his mus 
 tache was the only large thing about him al 
 ways excepting Madame his wife, who was ever 
 somewhere about him and who was just now, two 
 hundred and twenty pounds of evidence to the 
 good food of the Deux Colombes, stuffed into 
 a wire cage at one end of the bar, and bulging 
 out of it, her eyebrows meeting over her pug-
 
 THE NEST OF THE TWO DOVES 39 
 
 nose and the heap of hair leaping from her head 
 nearly to the ceiling, while her lips and fingers 
 were busy adding the bills from dejeuner. 
 
 "It would greatly pleasure me to accommodate 
 monsieur," Pasbeaucoup was whispering, "but 
 monsieur must know that already " 
 
 The sentence ended in a deprecating glance 
 over the speaker s shoulder in the general direc 
 tion of mighty Madame. 
 
 "Already*? Already what then?" demanded 
 the intending customer. 
 
 He was lounging on the wall-seat behind his 
 table, and he had an aristocratic air surprisingly 
 at variance with his garments. His black jacket 
 shone too highly at the elbows, and its short 
 sleeves betrayed an unnecessary length of red 
 wrist. His black boots gasped for repair; a soft 
 black hat, pushed to the back of his black hair, 
 still dripped from an unprotected voyage along 
 the rainy street, and his neckcloth, which was 
 also long and soft and black, showed a spot or 
 two not put there by its makers. These were 
 patently matters beyond their owner s command
 
 40 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 and beneath the dignity of his attention. Against 
 them one was compelled to set a manner truly 
 lofty, which was enhanced by a pair of burning, 
 deep-placed eyes, a thin white face and, sprout 
 ing from either side of his lower jaw, near the 
 chin, two wisps of ebon whisker. He frowned 
 majestically, and he smoked a caporal cigarette 
 as if it were a Havana cigar. 
 
 "Already what?" he loudly repeated. "If it 
 is possible! I patronize your cabbage of a cafe 
 for five years, and now you put me off with 
 your alreadys!" 
 
 Pasbeaucoup, his fingers still resting on the 
 table, danced in embarrassment and rolled his 
 eyes in a manner that plainly enough warned 
 monsieur not to let his voice reach the caged 
 lady. 
 
 "I was but about to say that monsieur already 
 owes us the trifling sum of " 
 
 "Sixty francs, twenty- five!" 
 
 The tone that announced these fateful nu 
 merals was so tremendous a contralto as to be
 
 THE NEST OF THE TWO DOVES 41 
 
 really bass. It came from the wire cage and 
 belonged to Madame. 
 
 Pasbeaucoup sank into the nearest chair. He 
 spread out his hands in a gesture that elo 
 quently said: 
 
 "Now you ve done it! I can t shield you 
 any longer!" 
 
 The debtor, albeit he was still a young man, 
 did not appear unduly impressed. The table 
 was across his knees, but he rose as far as it 
 would permit and removed his hat with a flour 
 ish that sent a spray of water directly over 
 Madame s monument of hair. Disregarding 
 the blatant fact that she was quite the most 
 remarkable feature of the room, he vowed that 
 he had not observed her upon entering, was 
 desolated because of his oversight and ravished 
 now to have the pleasure of once more behold 
 ing her in all her accustomed grace and charm. 
 
 Madame shrugged her shoulders higher than 
 the walls of the cage. 
 
 "Sixty francs, twenty-five," she said, without 
 looking up from her task.
 
 42 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 Ah, yes: his little account. Monsieur recalled 
 that: there was a little account; but, so truly as 
 his name was Seraphin and his passion Art, what 
 a marvelous head Madame had for figures. It 
 was of an exactitude magnificent! 
 
 When he paused, Madame said: 
 
 "Sixty francs, twenty-five." 
 
 "But surely, Madame " Seraphin Dieu- 
 
 donne was politely amazed; he did not desire to 
 credit her with an impoliteness, and yet she 
 seemed to imply that, unless he paid this ab 
 surdly little sum, there might be some delay in 
 serving him in this so excellent establishment. 
 
 "C est ga" said Madame. "The delay will 
 be entire." 
 
 "Incomprehensible!" Seraphin put a bony 
 hand to his heart. "Do you not know all the 
 world of the Quartier knows that I have, Ma 
 dame, but three days work more upon my mag 
 num opus a week at the utmost and that then 
 it can sell for not a sou less than fifteen thou 
 sand francs ?" 
 
 Madame s face never changed expression when
 
 THE NEST OF THE TWO DOVES 43 
 
 she talked; it always seemed set at the only angle 
 that would balance her monument of hair. She 
 now said: 
 
 "What all the world of the Quartier knows is 
 that your last magnum opus you sold to that 
 simpleton Fourget in the rue St. Andre des 
 Arts; that even from him you could squeeze but 
 a hundred francs for it; and that he has not yet 
 been able to find a customer." 
 
 At first Seraphin seemed slow to credit the 
 scorn that Madame was at such pains to reveal. 
 He made one valiant effort to overlook it, and 
 failed; then he made an effort no less valiant to 
 meet her with the ridiculous majesty in which 
 he habitually draped himself. It was as if, un 
 able to make her believe in him, he at least 
 wanted her to believe that his long struggle 
 with poverty and an indifferent public had served 
 only to increase his confidence in his own genius 
 and to rear between him and the world a wall 
 through which the arrows of the scornful could 
 hardly pass. But this attempt succeeded no 
 more than its predecessor: as he half stood, half
 
 44 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 bent before this landlady of a fifth-rate cafe, a 
 tardy pink crept up his white face and painted 
 the skin over his cheek-bones; his eyelids flut 
 tered, and his mouth worked. The man was 
 hungry. 
 
 "Madeleine!" whispered Pasbeaucoup, com 
 passion for the debtor almost overcoming fear 
 of the wife. 
 
 Seraphin wet his lips. 
 
 "Madame " he began. 
 
 "Sixty francs, twenty-five," said Madame. 
 "Ca y estr 
 
 As she said it, the door of the Deux Colombes 
 opened and another patron, at once evidently 
 a more welcome patron, presented himself. He 
 was a plump little man with hands that were 
 thinly at contrast with the rest of him. He 
 was fairly well dressed, but far better fed, and 
 so contented with his lot as to have no eye for 
 the evident lot of Seraphin. He was Maurice 
 Houdon, who had decided some day to be a 
 great composer and who meanwhile overcharged 
 a few English and American pupils for lessons
 
 THE NEST OF THE TWO DOVES ^ 
 
 on the piano and borrowed money from a&y 
 that would trust him. He stormed Dieudonne, 
 leaned over the intervening table and embraced 
 him. 
 
 "My dear friend !" he cried, his arms outflung, 
 his fingers rattling rapid arpeggios upon invisible 
 pianos. "You are indeed well found. I have 
 news such news!" He thrust back his head 
 and warbled a laugh worthy of the mad-scene 
 in Lucia. "Listen well." Again he embraced 
 the unresisting Seraphin. "This night we dine 
 here; we make a collation a symposium: we 
 feed both our bodies and our souls. I shall sit 
 at the head of the table in the little room on 
 the first floor, and you will sit at the foot. 
 Armand Gamier will read his new poem; De- 
 vignes will sing my latest song; Philippe Vara- 
 chon and you will discourse on your arts; and 
 I perhaps I shall let you persuade me to play 
 the fugue that I go to write for the death of the 
 President: it is all but ready against the day 
 that a president chooses to die."
 
 46 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 But Seraphin s thoughts were fixed on the 
 food for the body. 
 
 "You make no jest with me, Maurice*?" 
 
 "Jest with you? I jest with you? No, my 
 friend. I do not jest when I invite a guest to 
 dine with me." 
 
 "I comprehend," said Dieudonne; "but who 
 is to be the host?" 
 
 At that question, Pasbeaucoup rose from his 
 chair, and Madame, his wife, tried to thrust her 
 nose, which was too short to reach, through the 
 bars of her cage. The composer struck a chord 
 on his breast and bowed. 
 
 "True: the host," said he. "I had forgotten. 
 I have found a veritable patron of my art. He 
 has had the room above mine for two years, 
 and I did not once before suspect him. He is 
 an American of the United States." 
 
 Madame s contralto shook her prison bars: 
 
 "There is no American that can appreciate 
 art." 
 
 "True, Madame," admitted Houdon, bowing 
 profoundly; "there is no American that can ap-
 
 THE NEST OF THE TWO DOVES 47 
 
 preciate art, and there is no American mil 
 lionaire that can help patronizing it." 
 
 "Eh, he is a millionaire, then, this American? 
 demanded Madame, audibly mollified. 
 
 "He has that honor." 
 
 "And his name?" Madame wanted to make 
 a memorandum of that name. 
 
 Houdon struck another chord. It was as if 
 he were sounding a fanfare for the entrance of 
 his hero. 
 
 "Charles Cartaret." He pronounced the first 
 name in the French fashion and the second 
 name "Cartarette." 
 
 Seraphin s reply to this announcement rather 
 spoiled its effect. He laughed, and his laughter 
 was high and mocking. 
 
 "Cartaret !" he cried. "Charlie Cartaret! But 
 I know him well." 
 
 "Eh*?" The composer was reproachful 
 "And you never presented him to me?" 
 
 "It never happened that you were by." 
 
 "My faith! Why should I be? Am I not 
 Houdon? You should have brought him to me.
 
 48 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 Is it that you at the same time consider yourself 
 my friend and do not bring to me your mil 
 lionaire*?" 
 
 Seraphin s laughter waxed. 
 
 "But he is not my millionaire: he is your 
 millionaire only. I know well that he is as 
 poor as we are." 
 
 The musician s imaginary melody ceased: one 
 could almost hear it cease. He gazed at Sera- 
 phin as he might have gazed at a madman. 
 
 "But that room rents for a hundred francs 
 a month !" 
 
 "He is in debt for it." 
 
 "And his name is that of a rich American 
 well known." 
 
 "An uncle who does not like him." 
 
 "And he has offered to provide this collation." 
 
 Seraphin shrugged. 
 
 "M. Cartaret s credit," said he, with a glance 
 at Madame, "seems to be better than mine. I 
 tell you he is only a young art-student, enough 
 genteel, and the relation of a man enough rich, 
 but for himself poof! he is one of us."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 X 
 
 IN WHICH A FOOL AND HIS MONEY ARE SOON 
 PARTED 
 
 Money s the still sweet-singing nightingale. Herrick: 
 Hesperides. 
 
 SERAPHIN DIEUDONNE told the truth: at that 
 moment Charlie Cartaret for all this, remem 
 ber, preceded the coming of the Vision at 
 that moment Cartaret was seated in his room 
 in the rue du Val-de-Grace, wondering how he 
 was to find his next month s rent. His trouble 
 was that he had just sold a picture, for the first 
 time in his life, and, having sold it, he had 
 rashly engaged to celebrate that good fortune by a 
 feast which would leave him with only enough 
 to buy meals for the ensuing three weeks. 
 
 He was a rather fine-looking, upstanding 
 young fellow of a type essentially American. 
 In the days, not long distant, when the goal at 
 
 49
 
 50 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 the other end of the gridiron had been the only 
 goal of his ambition, he had put hard muscles 
 on his hardy frame ; later he had learned to shoot 
 in Arizona; and he even now would have 
 looked more at home along Broadway or Hal- 
 sted Street than he did in the rue St. Jacques 
 or the Boulevard St. Michel. He was tow- 
 haired and brown-eyed and clean-shaven; he 
 was generally hopeful, which is another way of 
 saying that he was still upon the flowered slope 
 of twenty-five. 
 
 Cartaret had inherited his excellent constitu 
 tion, but his family all suffered from one dis 
 ease: the disease of too much money on the 
 wrong side of the house. When oil was found 
 in Ohio, it was found in land belonging to his 
 father s brother, but Charlie s father remained 
 a poor lawyer to the end of his days. Uncle 
 Jack had children of his own and a deserved 
 reputation for holding on to his pennies. He 
 sent his niece to a finishing-school, where she 
 could be properly prepared for that state of life 
 to which it had not pleased Heaven to call her,
 
 A FOOL AND HIS MONEY 51 
 
 and he sent his nephew to college. When the 
 former child was finished, he found her a place 
 as companion to an ancient widow in Toledo 
 and dismissed her from his thoughts; when 
 Charlie was through with college which is to 
 say, when the faculty was through with him 
 for endeavoring to plant a fraternity in a plot 
 of academic soil that forbade the seed of Greek- 
 letter societies he asked him what he intended 
 to do now and asked it in a t;one that plainly 
 meant : 
 
 "What further disgrace are you planning to 
 bring upon our name*?" 
 
 Charlie replied that he wanted to be an artist. 
 
 "I might have guessed it," said his uncle. 
 "How long ll it take?" 
 
 Young Cartaret, knowing something about art, 
 had not the slightest idea. 
 
 "Well," said the by-product of petroleum, "if 
 you ve got to be an artist, be one as far away 
 from New York as you can. They say Paris is 
 the best place to learn the business." 
 
 "It is one of the best places," said Charlie.
 
 52 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 The elder Cartaret wrote a check. 
 
 "Take a boat to-morrow," he ordered. "I ll 
 pay your board and tuition for two years: that s 
 time enough to learn any business. After two 
 years you ll have to make out for yourself." 
 
 So Charlie had worked hard for two years. 
 That period ended a week ago, and his uncle s 
 checks ended with it. He had stayed on and 
 hoped. To-day he had carried a picture through 
 the rain to Seraphin s benefactor, the dealer 
 Fourget ; and the soft-hearted Fourget had bought 
 it. Cartaret, on his return, met Houdon in the 
 lower hall and before the American was well 
 aware of it, he was pledged to the feast of 
 which Maurice was bragging to Dieudonne. 
 
 Charlie dug into his pocket and fished out all 
 that was in it: a matter of two hundred and 
 ten francs. He counted it twice over. 
 
 "No use," he said. "I can t make it any 
 larger. I wonder if I ought to take a smaller 
 room." 
 
 Certainly there was more room here than he 
 wanted, but he had grown to love the place:
 
 A FOOL AND HIS MONEY 53 
 
 even then, when he had still to see it in the 
 rose-pink twilight of romance, in the afterglow 
 that was a dawn even then, before the appari 
 tion of the strange Lady he loved it as his 
 sort of man must love the scenes of those 
 struggles which have left him poor. Its front 
 windows opened upon the street full of student- 
 life and gossip, its rear windows looked on a 
 little garden that was pretty with the con 
 cierge s flowers all Summer long and merry with 
 the laughter of the concierge s children on every 
 fair day the whole year round. The light was 
 good enough, the location excellent; the service 
 was no worse than the service in any similar 
 house in Paris. 
 
 "But I have been a fool," said Cartaret. 
 
 He looked again at his money, and then he 
 looked again about the room. The difference 
 between a fool and a mere dilettante in folly is 
 this: that the latter knows his folly as he in 
 dulges it, whereas the former recognizes it, if 
 ever, only too late.
 
 54 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "If I d been able to study for only one year 
 more," he said. 
 
 It was the wail of retrospection that, sooner 
 or later, every man, each in his own way and 
 according to his chances and his character for 
 seizing them, is bound to utter. It was what 
 we all say and what, in saying, we each think 
 unique. Happy he that says it, and means it, 
 in time to profit! 
 
 "Yes," said Cartaret, "I ve been a fool. But 
 I won t be a quitter," he added. "I ll go and 
 order that dinner." 
 
 Thus Charles Cartaret in the afternoon. 
 
 He had put on a battered, broad-brimmed 
 hat of soft black felt, which was picturesquely 
 out of place above his American features, and a 
 still more battered English rain-coat, which did 
 not at all belong with the hat, and, thus forti 
 fied against the rain, he hurried into the hall. 
 As he closed the door of his studio behind him, 
 he fancied that he heard a sound from the 
 room across from his own, and so stood listen 
 ing, his hand upon the knob.
 
 A FOOL AND HIS MONEY 55 
 
 "That s queer," he reflected. "I thought that 
 room was still to let." 
 
 He listened a moment longer, but the sound, 
 if sound there had been, was not repeated, so 
 he pulled his hat-brim over his eyes and de 
 scended to the street. 
 
 The rain had lessened, but the fog held on, 
 and the thoroughfares were wet and dismal. 
 Cartaret cut down the rue du Val-de-Grace to 
 the Avenue de Luxembourg and through the 
 gardens with their dripping statues and around 
 the museum, whence he crossed to the sheltered 
 way between those bookstalls that cling like ivy 
 to the walls of the Odeon, and so, by the steep 
 descent of the rue de Tournon and the rue de Seine, 
 came to the rue Jacob and the Cafe Des Deux 
 Colombes. 
 
 Seraphin and Maurice were still there. They 
 received him as their separate natures dictated, 
 the former with a restrained dignity, the lat 
 ter with the dignity of a monarch so secure of 
 his title that he can afford to condescend to an 
 air of democracy. Seraphin bowed; Maurice
 
 56 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 embraced and, embracing, tapped the diatonic 
 scale along Cartaret s vertebrae. Pasbeaucoup, 
 in trembling obedience to a cryptic nod from 
 the caged Madame, hovered in the background. 
 
 "I have come," said Cartaret, whose French 
 was the easy and inaccurate French of the 
 American art-student, "to order that dinner." 
 He half turned to Pasbeaucoup, but Houdon 
 was before him. 
 
 "It is done," announced the musician, as if 
 announcing a favor performed. "I have re 
 lieved you of that tedium. We are to begin 
 with an hors-d oeuvre of anchovies and " 
 
 Madame had again nodded, this time less 
 cryptically and more violently, at her husband, 
 and Pasbeaucoup, between twin terrors, timidly 
 suggested : 
 
 "Monsieur Cartaret comprehends that it is 
 only because of the so high cost of necessities 
 that it is necessary for us to request " 
 
 He stopped there, but the voice from the 
 cage boomed courageously: 
 
 "The payment in advance!"
 
 A FOOL AND HIS MONEY 57 
 
 "A custom of the establishment," explained 
 Houdon grandly, but shooting a venomous glance 
 in the direction of Madame. 
 
 Seraphin came quietly from behind his table 
 and, slipping a thin arm through Cartaret s, 
 drew him, to the speechless amazement of the 
 other participants in this scene, toward the far 
 thest corner of the cafe. 
 
 "My friend," he whispered, "you must not do 
 it." 
 
 "Eh?" said Cartaret. "Why not? It s a 
 queer thing to be asked, but why shouldn t I 
 do it?" 
 
 Seraphin hesitated. Then, regaining the con 
 quest over self, he put his lips so close to the 
 American s ear that the Frenchman s wagging 
 wisps of whisker tickled his auditor s cheek. 
 
 "This Houdon is but a pleasant coqmn," he 
 confided. "He will suck from you the last sou s 
 worth of your blood." 
 
 Cartaret smiled grimly. 
 
 "He won t get a fortune by it," he said. 
 
 "That is why I do not wish him to do it:
 
 58 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 I know well that you cannot afford these little 
 dissipations. I do not wish to see my friend 
 swindled by false friendship. Houdon is a good 
 boy, but, Name of a Name, he has the conscience 
 of a pig!" 
 
 "All right," said Cartaret suddenly, for Sera- 
 phin was appealing to a sense of economy still 
 fresh enough to be sensitive, "since he s ordered 
 the dinner, we ll let him pay for it." 
 
 "Alas," declared Dieudonne, sadly shaking his 
 long hair, "poor Maurice has not the money." 
 
 "Oh!" A gleam of gratitude lighted Car- 
 taret s blue eyes "Then you are proposing that 
 you do it?" 
 
 "My friend," inquired Seraphin, flinging out 
 his arms as a man flings out his arms to invite 
 a search of his pockets, "you know me: how 
 can I?" 
 
 Cartaret blushed at his ineptitude. He knew 
 Dieudonne well enough to have been aware of 
 his poverty and liked him well enough to be 
 tender toward it. "But," he nevertheless pardon-
 
 A FOOL AND HIS MONEY 59 
 
 ably inquired, "if that s the way the thing stands, 
 who s to pay*? One of the other guests ?" 
 
 "We are all of the same financial ability." 
 
 "Then I don t see " 
 
 "Nor do I. And" Seraphin s high resolu 
 tion clattered suddenly about his ears "after 
 all, the dinner has been ordered, and I am very 
 hungry. My friend," he concluded with a happy 
 return of his dignity, "at least I have done you 
 this service: you will buy the dinner, but you 
 will not both buy it and be deceived." 
 
 Cartaret turned, with a smile no longer grim, 
 to the others. 
 
 "Seraphin," he said, "has persuaded me. 
 Madame, Vaddition^ if you please." 
 
 Pasbeaucoup trotted to the cage, bringing 
 back to Cartaret the long slip of paper that 
 Madame had ready for him. Cartaret glanced 
 at only the total and, though he flushed a little, 
 paid without comment. 
 
 "And now," suggested Houdon, "now let us 
 play a little game of dominoes." 
 
 Seraphin, from the musician s shoulder,
 
 60 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 frowned hard at Cartaret, but Cartaret was in 
 no mood to heed the warning. He was angry 
 at himself for his extravagance and decided that, 
 having been such a fool as to fling away a great 
 deal of his money, he might now as well be a 
 greater fool and fling it all away. Besides, he 
 might be able to win from Houdon, and, even 
 if Houdon could not pay, there would be the 
 satisfaction of revenge. So he sat down at one 
 of the marble-topped tables and began, with a 
 great clatter, to shuffle the dominoes that obse 
 quious Pasbeaucoup hurriedly fetched. Within 
 two hours, Seraphin was head over ears in the 
 musician s debt, and the American was paying 
 into Houdon s palm all but about ten francs 
 of the money that he had so recently earned. 
 He rose smilingly. 
 
 "You do not go*?" inquired Houdon. 
 
 Cartaret nodded. 
 
 "But the dinner 4 ?" 
 
 "Don t you worry; I ll be back for that 
 I don t know when I ll get another." 
 
 "Then permit me," Houdon condescended,
 
 A FOOL AND HIS MONEY 61 
 
 "to order a bock. For the three of us." He 
 generously included the hungry Seraphin. "Come, 
 we shall drink to your better fortune next 
 time." 
 
 But Cartaret excused himself. He said that 
 he had an engagement with a dealer, which was 
 not true, and which was understood to be false, 
 and he went into the street. 
 
 The last of the rain, unnoticed during Car- 
 taret s fevered play, had passed, and a red Feb 
 ruary sun was setting across the Seine, behind 
 the higher ground that lies between L Etoile and 
 the Place du Trocadero. The river was hidden 
 by the point of land that ends in the Quai 
 D Orsay, but, as Cartaret crossed the broad rue 
 de Vaugirard, he could see the golden after 
 glow and, silhouetted against it, the high fila 
 ments of the Eiffel Tower. 
 
 What an ass he had been, he bitterly re 
 flected, as he passed again through the Luxem 
 bourg Gardens, where now the statues glistened 
 in the fading light of the dying afternoon. What 
 a mad ass! If a single stroke of almost pa-
 
 02 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 thetically small good luck made such a fool of 
 him, it was as well that his uncle and not his 
 father had come into a fortune. 
 
 His thought went back with a new tender 
 ness to his father and to his own and his sister 
 Cora s early life in that small Ohio town. He 
 had hated the dull routine and narrow conven 
 tionality of the place. There the most daring 
 romance of youth had been to walk with the 
 daughter of a neighbor along the shaded streets 
 in the Summer evenings, and to hang over the 
 gate to the front yard of the house in which 
 she lived, tremblingly hinting at a delicious 
 tenderness, which one never dared more ade 
 quately to express, until a threatening parental 
 voice called the girl to shelter. His life, since 
 those days, had been more stirring, and some 
 times more to be regretted; but he had loved it 
 and thought it absurd sentiment on Cora s part 
 to insist that their tiny income go to keeping 
 up the little property the three-story brick 
 house and wide front and back-yard along Main 
 Street which had been their home. Yet now
 
 A FOOL AND HIS MONEY 63 
 
 he fek, and was half ashamed of feeling, a 
 strong desire to go back there, a pull at his 
 heartstrings for a return to all that he was once 
 so anxious to quit forever. 
 
 He wondered if it could be possible that he 
 was tired of Paris. He even wondered if it 
 were possible that he could not be a successful 
 artist he had never wanted to be a rich one 
 whether the sensible course would not be to 
 go home and study law while there was yet 
 time. . . . 
 
 And then 
 
 Then, in the rose-pink twilight, the beginning 
 of the Dream Wonderful: that scent of the 
 roses from the sky; that quick memory of sun 
 light upon snow-crests; that first revelation of 
 the celestial Lady transfiguring the earthly com 
 monplace of his room !
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 
 
 . . . .Adowne 
 
 They prayd him sit, and gave him for to feed. 
 Spenser : Faerie Queene. 
 
 CHARLIE CARTARET would have told you 
 indeed, he frequently did tell his friends that 
 the mere fact of a man being an artist was 
 no proof that he lacked in the uncommon sense 
 commonly known as common. Cartaret was 
 quite insistent upon this and, as evidence in 
 favor of his contention, he was accustomed to 
 point to C. Cartaret, Esq. He, said Cartaret, 
 was at once an artist and a practical man: it 
 was wholly impossible, for instance, to imagine 
 him capable of any silly romance. 
 
 Nevertheless, when left alone in his room by 
 the departure of the Lady on that February 
 
 evening, he sat for a long time with the strange 
 
 6 4
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 65 
 
 rose between his fingers and a strange look in his 
 eyes. He regarded the rose until the last ray of 
 light had altogether faded from the West. Only 
 then did he recall that he had invited sundry 
 persons to dine with him at the Cafe Des Deux 
 Colombes, and when he had made ready to go to 
 them, the rose was still in his reluctant hand. 
 
 Cartaret looked about him stealthily. He had 
 been in the room for some hours and he should 
 have been thoroughly aware that he was alone 
 in it; but he looked, as all guilty men do, to 
 right and left to make sure. Then, like a 
 naughty child, he turned his back to the street- 
 window. 
 
 He stood thus a bare instant, yet in that 
 instant his hand first raised something toward 
 his lips, and then bestowed that same some 
 thing somewhere inside his waistcoat, a consider 
 able distance from his heart, but directly over 
 the rib beneath which ill-informed people be 
 lieve the heart to be. This accomplished, he 
 exhibited a rigorously practical face to the room
 
 66 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 and swaggered out of it, ostentatiously humming 
 a misogynistic drinking-song: 
 
 "There s nothing, friend, twixt you and me 
 Except the best of company. 
 
 (There s just one bock twixt you and me, 
 
 and I ll catch up full soon!) 
 What woman s lips compare to this: 
 This sturdy seidel s frothy kiss " 
 
 Armand Gamier, one of the men that were 
 to dine with Cartaret to-night, had written the 
 words of which this is a free translation, and 
 Houdon had composed the air he composed it 
 impromptu for Devignes over an absinthe, after 
 laboring upon it in secret for an entire week 
 but Cartaret, when he reached the note that 
 stood for the last word here given, came to an 
 abrupt stop; he was facing the door of the room 
 opposite his own. He continued facing it for 
 quite a minute, but he heard nothing. 
 
 "M. Refrogne," he said, when he thrust his 
 head int the concierge s box downstairs, "if * 
 er if anybody should inquire for me this even-
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 67 
 
 ing, you will please tell them that I am dining at 
 the Cafe Des Deux Colombes." 
 
 Nothing could be seen in the concierge s box, 
 but from it came a grunt that might have been 
 either assent or dissent. 
 
 "Yes," said Cartaret, "in the rue Jacob." 
 
 Again the ambiguous grunt. 
 
 "Exactly," Cartaret agreed; "the Cafe Des 
 Deux Colombes, in the rue Jacob, close by the 
 rue Bonaparte. You you re quite sure you 
 won t forget? 
 
 The grunt changed to an ugly chuckle, and, 
 after the chuckle, an ugly voice said: 
 
 "Monsieur expects something unusual: he ex 
 pects an evening visitor 1 ?" 
 
 "Confound it, no!" snapped Cartaret. He 
 had been wildly hoping that perhaps The Girl 
 might need some aid or direction that evening 
 and might seek it of him. "Not at all," he 
 pursued, "but you see " 
 
 "How then*?" inquired the voice. 
 
 Cartaret s hand went to his pocket and drew
 
 68 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 forth one of the few franc-pieces that remained 
 there. 
 
 "Just, please, remember what I ve said," he 
 requested. 
 
 In the darkness of the box into which it was 
 extended, his hand was grasped by a larger 
 and rougher hand, and the franc was deftly 
 extracted. 
 
 "Merci, monsieur" 
 
 A barely appreciable softening of the tone en 
 couraged Cartaret. He balanced himself from 
 foot to foot and asked: 
 
 "Those people the ones, you understand, that 
 have rented the room opposite mine?" 
 
 Refrogne understood but truly. 
 
 "Well in short, who are they, monsieur?" 
 
 "Who knows?" asked Refrogne in the dark 
 ness. Cartaret could feel him shrug. 
 
 "I rather thought you might," he ventured. 
 
 The darkness was silent; a good concierge 
 answers questions, not general statements. 
 
 "Where don t you know where they come 
 from?"
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 69 
 
 There was speech once more. Refrogne, it 
 said, neither knew nor cared. In the rue du 
 Val de Grace people continually came and went 
 all manner of people from all manner of 
 places so long as they paid their rent, it was 
 no concern of Refrogne s. For all the informa 
 tion that he possessed, the two people of whom 
 monsieur inquired might be natives of Cochin- 
 China. Mademoiselle evidently wanted to be 
 an artist, as scores of other young women, and 
 Madame, her guardian and sole companion, evi 
 dently wanted Mademoiselle to be nothing at 
 all. There were but two of them, thank God! 
 The younger spoke much French with an accent 
 terrible; the elder understood French, but spoke 
 only some pig of a language that no civilized man 
 could comprehend. That was all that Refrogne 
 had to tell. 
 
 Cartaret went on toward the scene of his din 
 ner-party. He wished he did not have to go. 
 On the other hand, he was sure he had thrown 
 Refrogne a franc to no purpose : the Lady of the 
 Rose was little likely to seek him! He found
 
 70 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 the evening cold and his raincoat inadequate. 
 He began humming the drinking-song again. 
 
 They were singing it outright, in a full chorus, 
 when he entered the little room on the first floor 
 of the Cafe Des Deux Colombes. The table was 
 already spread, the feast already started. The 
 unventilated room was flooded with light and 
 full of the steam of hot viands. ^ 
 
 Maurice Houdon, his red cheeks shining, his 
 black mustache stiffly waxed, sat at the head 
 of the table as he had promised to do, perform 
 ing the honors with a regal grace and playing 
 imaginary themes with every flourish of address 
 to every guest: a different theme for each. On 
 his right was a vacant place, the sole apparent 
 reference to the host of the evening; on his left, 
 Armand Gamier, the poet, very thin and cadaver 
 ous, with long dank locks and tangled beard, his 
 skin waxen, his lantern-jaw emitting no words, 
 but working lustily upon the food. Next to Car- 
 taret s place bobbed the pear-shaped Devignes, 
 leading the chorus, as became the only profes 
 sional singer in the company. Across from him
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 71 
 
 was Philippe Varachon, the sculptor, whose nose 
 always reminded Carteret of an antique and long 
 lost bit of statuary, badly damaged in exhuma 
 tion; and at the foot Seraphin was seated, the 
 first to note Cartaret s arrival and the only one 
 to apologize for not having delayed the dinner. 
 
 He got up immediately, and his whiskers 
 tickled the American s cheek with the whisper: 
 
 "It was ready to serve, and Madame swore 
 that it would perish. My faith, what would 
 you?" 
 
 Pasbeaucoup was darting among the guests, 
 wiping fresh plates with a napkin and his drip 
 ping forehead with his bare hand. Cartaret felt 
 certain that the little man would soon confuse 
 the functions of the two. 
 
 "Ah-h-h!" cried Houdon. He rose from his 
 place and endeavored to restore order by beating 
 with a fork upon an empty tumbler, as an or 
 chestral conductor taps his baton at the same 
 time nodding fiercely at Pasbeaucoup to refill 
 the tumbler with red wine. He was the sole mem 
 ber of the company not long known to their host,
 
 72 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 but he said: "Messieurs, I have the happiness 
 to present to you our distinguished American 
 fellow-student, M. Charles Cartare/te. Be seated 
 among us, M. Cartarette," he graciously added; 
 "pray be seated." 
 
 Cartaret sat down in the place kindly reserved 
 for him, and the interruption of his appearance 
 was so politely forgotten that he wished he had 
 not been such a fool as to make it. The song 
 was resumed. It was not until the salad was 
 served and Pasbeaucoup had retired below-stairs 
 to assist in preparing the coffee, that Houdon 
 turned again to Cartaret and executed what was 
 clearly to be the Cartaret theme. 
 
 "We had despaired of your arrival, Monsieur," 
 said he. 
 
 Cartaret said he had observed signs of some 
 thing of the sort. 
 
 "Truly," nodded Houdon. His tongue rolled 
 a ball of salad into his cheek and out of the 
 track of speech. "Doubtless you had the one 
 living excuse, however." 
 
 "I don t follow you," said Cartaret.
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 73 
 
 Houdon leered. His fingers performed on the 
 table-cloth something that might have been the 
 motif of Isolde. 
 
 "I have heard," said he, "your American prov 
 erb that there are but two adequate excuses 
 for tardiness at dinner death and a lady 
 and I am charmed, monsieur, to observe that 
 you are altogether alive." 
 
 If Cartaret s glance indicated that he would 
 like to throttle the composer, Cartaret s glance 
 did not misinterpret. 
 
 "We won t discuss that, if you please," said 
 he. 
 
 But Houdon was incapable of understanding 
 such glances in such a connection. He tapped 
 for the attention of his orchestra and got it. 
 
 "Messieurs," he announced, "our good friend 
 of the America of the North has been having an 
 adventure." 
 
 Everybody looked at Cartaret and everybody 
 smiled. 
 
 "Delicious," squeaked Varachon through his 
 broken nose.
 
 74 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Superb," trilled the pear-shaped singer De- 
 vignes. 
 
 Garnier s lantern-jaws went on eating. Sera- 
 phin Dieudonne caught Cartaretfs glance im 
 ploringly and then shifted, in ineffectual warn 
 ing, to Houdon. 
 
 "But that was only what was to be expected, 
 my children," the musician continiied. "What 
 can we poor Frenchmen look for when a blond 
 Hercules of an American comes, rkh and hand 
 some, to our dear Paris *? Only to-day I observed, 
 renting an abode in the house that Monsieur and 
 I have the honor to share, a young mademoiselle, 
 the most gracious and beautiful, accompanied 
 by a tuteur, the most ferocious ; and I noted well 
 that they went to inhabit the room but across the 
 landing from that of M. Cartarette. Behold all ! 
 At once I said to myself: Alas, how long will 
 it be before this confiding 
 
 He stopped short and looked at Cartaret, for 
 Cartaret had grasped the performing hand of 
 the composer and, in a steady grip, forced it 
 quietly to the table.
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 75 
 
 "I tell you," said Cartaret, gently, "that I 
 don t care to have you talk in this strain." 
 
 "How then?" blustered the amazed musician. 
 
 "If you go on," Cartaret warned him, "you will 
 have to go on from the floor; I ll knock you 
 there." 
 
 "Maurice!" cried Seraphih, rising from his 
 chair. 
 
 "Messieurs!" piped Devignes. 
 
 Varachon growled at Houdon, and Gamier 
 reached for a water-bottle as the handiest weapon 
 of defense. Houdon and Cartaret were facing 
 each other, erect, each waiting for the other to 
 make a further move, the former red, the latter 
 white, with anger. There followed that flash 
 ing pause of quiet which is the precursor of 
 battle. 
 
 The battle, however, was not forthcoming. 
 Instead, through the silence, there came a roar 
 of voices that diverted the attention of even 
 the chief combatants. It was a roar of voices 
 from the cafe below: a heavy rumble that was 
 unmistakably Madame s and a clatter of unin-
 
 76 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 telligible shrieks and demands that were feminine 
 but unclassifiable. Now one voice shouted and 
 next the other. Then the two joined in a 
 mighty explosion, and little Pasbeaucoup was 
 shot up the stairs and among the diners as if 
 he were the first rock from the crater of an 
 emptying volcano. 
 
 He staggered against the table and jolted the 
 water-bottle out of the poet s hand. 
 
 "Name of a Name!" he gasped. "She is a 
 veritable tigress, that woman there!" 
 
 They had no time then to inquire whom he 
 referred to, though they knew that, however 
 justly he might think it, he would never, even 
 in terror like the present, say such a thing of 
 his wife. The words were no sooner free of his 
 lips than a larger rock was vomited from the 
 volcano, and a still larger, the largest rock of 
 the three, came immediately after. 
 
 Everybody was afoot now. They saw that 
 Pasbeaucoup cowered against the wall in a fear 
 terrible because it was greater than his fear for 
 Madame; they saw that Madame, who was the
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 77 
 
 third rock, was clinging to the apron-strings of 
 another woman, who was rock number two, and 
 they saw that this other woman was a stocky 
 figure, who carried in her hand a curious, wide 
 head-dress, and who wore a parti-colored apron 
 that began over her ample breasts and ended 
 by brushing against her equally ample boots, and 
 a black skirt of simple stuff and extravagant 
 puffs, surmounted by a short-skirted blouse or 
 basque of the same material. Her face was 
 round and wrinkled like a last winter s apple 
 on the kitchen-shelf; but her eyes shone red, 
 her hands beat the air vigorously, and from her 
 lips poured a lusty torrent of sounds that might 
 have been protestations, appeals or curses, yet 
 were certainly, considered as words, nothing 
 that any one present had ever heard before. 
 
 She ran forward; Madame ran forward. The 
 stranger shouldered Madame; Madame dragged 
 her back. The stranger cried out more of her 
 alien phrases; Madame shouted French denun 
 ciations. The Gallic diners formed a grinning 
 circle, eager to lose no detail of the sort of
 
 78 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 wrangle that a Frenchman loves best to watch: 
 a wrangle between women. 
 
 Cartaret made his way through the ring and 
 put his hand on the stranger s shoulder. She 
 seemed to understand, and relapsed into quiet, 
 attentive but alert. 
 
 "Now," said Cartaret, "one at a time, please. 
 Madame, what is the trouble 1 ?" 
 
 "Trouble 1 ?" roared Madame. Her face did 
 not change expression, but she held her arms 
 akimbo, pug-nose and strong chin poked defi 
 antly at the strange interloper. "You may well 
 say it, trouble!" 
 
 She put her position strongly and at length. 
 She had been in the caisse^ with no one of the 
 world in the cafe, when, crying barbarous 
 threats incomprehensible, this she-bandit, this 
 this anarchiste infdme, had burst in from the 
 street, disrupting the peace of the Deux Colom- 
 bes and endangering its well-known quiet repu 
 tation with the police. 
 
 That was the gist of it. When it was de 
 livered, Cartaret faced the stranger.
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 79 
 
 "And you, Madame"?" he asked, in French. 
 
 The stranger strode forward as a pugilist steps 
 from his corner for the round that he expects to 
 win the figfat for him. She clapped her wide 
 head-dress upon her head, where it settled itself 
 with a rakish tilt. 
 
 "Holy pipe!" cried Houdon. "In that I rec 
 ognize her. It is the ferocious tuteur!" 
 
 Cartaret s interest became tense. 
 
 "What did you want here?" he urged, still 
 speaking French. 
 
 The stranger said, twice over, something that 
 sounded like "Kar-kar-tay." 
 
 "She is mad," squeaked Varachon. 
 
 "She is worse; she is German," vowed Ma 
 dame. 
 
 Cartaret rateed his hand to silence these con 
 tentions. 
 
 "Do you understand me?" he urged. 
 
 The wide head-dress flapped a vehement as 
 sent. 
 
 "But you can t answer*?" 
 
 The head-dress fluttered a negative, and the
 
 8o THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 mouth mumbled a negative in a French so thick, 
 hesitant and broken as to be infinitely less ex 
 pressive than the shake of the head. 
 
 Cartaret remembered what the concierge Re- 
 frogne had told him. To the circle of curious 
 people he explained: 
 
 "She can understand a little French, but she 
 cannot speak it." 
 
 Madame snorted. "Why then does she come 
 to this place so respectable if she cannot talk 
 like a Christian?" 
 
 "Because," said Cartaret, "she evidently 
 thought she would be intelligently treated." 
 
 It was clear to him that she would not have 
 come had her need not been desperate. He 
 made another effort to discover her nationality. 
 
 "Who of you speaks something besides 
 French?" he asked of the company. 
 
 Not Madame; not Seraphin or Houdon: they 
 were ardent Parisians and of course knew no 
 language but their own. As for Gamier, as a 
 French poet and a native of the pure-tongued 
 Tours, he would not have soiled his lips with
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 81 
 
 any other speech had he known another. Vara- 
 chon, it turned out, was from the Jura, and 
 had picked up a little Swiss-German during a 
 youthful liaison at Pontarlier. He tried it now, 
 but the stranger only shook her head-dress at 
 him. 
 
 "She knows no German," said Varachon. 
 
 "Such German!" sniffed Houdon. 
 
 "Chut! This proves rather that she knows it 
 too well," grumbled Madame. "She but wishes 
 to conceal it; probably she is a German spy." 
 
 Devignes said he knew Italian, and he did 
 seem to know a sort of Opera-Italian, but it, too, 
 was useless. 
 
 Cartaret had an inspiration. 
 
 "Spanish !" he suggested. "Does any one know 
 any Spanish 4 ?" 
 
 Pasbeaucoup did; he knew two or three 
 phrases chiefly relating to prices on the menu 
 of the Deux Colombes but to him also the 
 awful woman only shook her head in ignorance. 
 
 Cartaret took up the French again.
 
 82 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Can you not tell me what you want here 1 ?" 
 he pleaded. 
 
 "Kar-kar-tay," said the stranger. 
 
 "Ah !" cried Seraphin, clapping his hands. 
 "Does not Houdon say that she makes her abode 
 in the same house that you make yours 1 ? She 
 seeks you, monsieur. Kar-kar-tay, it is her 
 manner of endeavoring to say Cartar^/te." 
 
 At the sound of that name, the stranger 
 nodded hard. 
 
 "Out, om!" she cried. 
 
 She understood that her chief inquisitor was 
 Cartaret, and it was indeed Cartaret that she 
 sought. She flung herself on her knees to him. 
 When he hurriedly raised her, she caught at 
 the skirt of his coat and nearly pulled it from 
 him in an attempt to drag him to the stairs. 
 
 Cartaret looked sharply at Houdon. The mu 
 sician having been so recently saved from the 
 wrath of his host, was momentarily discreet: 
 he hid his smile behind one of the thin bands 
 that contrasted so sharply with his plump cheeks.
 
 A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS 83 
 
 "Messieurs," said Cartaret, "I am going with 
 this lady." 
 
 They all edged forward. 
 
 "And I am going alone," added the Ameri 
 can. "I wish you good-night." 
 
 "You will be knifed in the street," said 
 Madame. Her tone implied: "And it will serve 
 you right." 
 
 None of the others seemed to mind his going; 
 the wrangle over, they were ready for their 
 coffee and liqueurs. Houdon was frankly re 
 lieved. Only Seraphin protested. 
 
 "And you will leave your dinner unfinished 1 ?" 
 he cried. 
 
 Cartaret was taking his hat and rain-coat 
 from the row of pegs on the wall where, among 
 the other guests , he had hung them when he en 
 tered. He nodded his answer to Seraphin s query. 
 
 "Leave your dinner?" said Seraphin. "But 
 my God, it is paid for!" 
 
 "Good-night," said Cartaret, and was plunged 
 down the stairs by the strangely-garbed woman 
 tugging at his hand.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WHICH TELLS HOW CARTARET RETURNED TO THE 
 RUE DU VAL-DE-GRACE, AND WHAT HE FOUND 
 THERE 
 
 La timidite cst un grand peche centre 1 amour. Ana- 
 tole France : La Rotisserie de la Reine Fed auque. 
 
 IF that strange old woman in the rakish head 
 dress was in a hurry, Cartaret, you may be 
 sure, was in no mood for tarrying by the way. 
 He left the Cafe des Deaux Colombes, pictur 
 ing The Girl of the Rose desperately ill, and 
 he was resolved not only to be the first to 
 come to her aid, but to have none of the res 
 taurant s suspicious company for a companion. 
 Then, no sooner had he passed through the 
 empty room on the ground-floor of Mme. Pas- 
 beaucoup s establishment and gone a few steps 
 toward the rue de Seine, than he began to fear 
 that perhaps the house to which he was ap 
 parently being conducted The Girl s house and 
 
 84
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 85 
 
 his own had taken fire; or that the cause of the 
 duenna s mission was some like misfortune which 
 would be better remedied, so far as The Girl s 
 interests were concerned, if there were more 
 rescuers than one. 
 
 "What is the matter*?" he begged his guide 
 to inform him, as they hurried through the dark 
 ened streets. 
 
 His guide lifted both hands to her face. 
 
 "Is mademoiselle ill?" 
 
 The duenna shook her head in an emphatic 
 negative. 
 
 "The place isn t on fire*?" His tone was one 
 of petition, as if, should he pray hard enough, 
 she might avert the catastrophe he now dreaded; 
 or as if, by touching her sympathies, he could 
 release some hidden spring of intelligible speech. 
 
 The old woman, however, only shook her head 
 again and hurried on. Cartaret was glad to 
 find that she possessed an agility impossible for 
 a city-bred woman of her apparent age, and 
 he was still more relieved when they reached 
 their lodging-house and discovered it in appa-
 
 86 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 rently the same condition as that in which he 
 had left it. 
 
 Their ascent of the stairs was like a race a 
 race ending in a dead-heat. At the landing, Car- 
 taret turned, of course, toward his neighbor s 
 door; to his amazement, the old woman pulled 
 him to his own. 
 
 He opened it and struck a match: the room 
 was empty. He held the match until it burnt 
 his fingers. 
 
 The old woman pushed him toward his table, 
 on which stood a battered lamp. She pointed 
 to the lamp. 
 
 "But your mistress*?" asked Cartaret. 
 
 The duenna pointed to the lamp. 
 
 "Shall I light it? 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 He lit the lamp. The flame grew until it 
 illuminated a small circle about the table. 
 
 "Now what 1 ?" Cartaret inquired. 
 
 Again that odd gesture toward the nose and 
 mouth. 
 
 "I don t understand," said Cartaret.
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 87 
 
 She picked up the lamp and made as if to 
 search the floor for something. Then she held 
 out the lamp to him. 
 
 "Oh" it began to drawn on Cartaret 
 "you ve lost something?" 
 
 "Out, ouir 
 
 He took the lamp, and they both fell on 
 their knees. Together they began a minute in 
 spection of the dusty floor. Cartaret s mind was 
 more easy now: at least his Lady suffered no 
 physical distress. 
 
 "It s like a sort of religious ceremony," mut 
 tered the American, as, foot by foot, they crawled 
 and groped over the grimy boards. 
 
 "Was it money you lost?" he inquired. 
 
 No, it was not money. 
 
 The search continued. Cartaret crawled under 
 the divan, while the duenna held the cover high 
 to admit the light. He blackened his hands in 
 the fire-place and transferred a little of the soot 
 to his few extra clothes that hung behind the 
 corner curtain but only a little ; most of the soot 
 preferred his hands.
 
 88 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "I never knew before that the room was so 
 large," he gasped. 
 
 They had covered two-thirds of the floor- 
 space when a new thought struck him. Still 
 crouching on his knees, he once more tried his 
 companion. 
 
 "I can t find it," he said; "but I d give a good 
 deal to know what I m looking for. What were 
 you doing in here when you lost it, anyway?" 
 
 She shook her head, with her hand on her 
 breast. Then she pointed to the door and 
 nodded. 
 
 "You mean your mistress lost it*?" 
 
 "Out." 
 
 "Well, then, let s get her. She can tell me 
 what I m after." 
 
 He half rose; but the woman seized his arm. 
 She broke into loud sounds, patently protesta 
 tions. 
 
 "Nonsense," said Cartaret. "Why not 1 ? Come 
 on; I ll knock at her door." 
 
 The duenna would not have her mistress dis 
 turbed. The ancient voice rose to a shriek.
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 89 
 
 "But I say yes." 
 
 The shriek grew louder. With amazing 
 strength, the old woman forced his unsuspecting 
 body back to its former position; she came near 
 to jolting the lamp from his hand. 
 
 It was then that Cartaret heard a lesser noise 
 behind them: a voice, the low sweet voice of 
 The Rose-Lady, asked, in the duenna s strange 
 tongue, a question from the doorway. Cartaret 
 turned his head. 
 
 She was standing there in the dim light, a 
 sort of kimono gathered about her, her sandaled 
 feet peeping from its lower folds, the lovely 
 arm that held the curious dressing-gown in place 
 bare to the elbow. She was smiling at the 
 answer that her guardian had already given her; 
 Cartaret thought her even more beautiful than 
 when he had seen her before. 
 
 The duenna had scuttled forward on her knees 
 and, amid a series of cries, was pressing the hem 
 of the kimono to her lips. The Girl s free hand 
 was raising the petitioner.
 
 90 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "I am sorry that you have been disturbed by 
 Chitta," she was saying. 
 
 Cartaret understood then that he was ad 
 dressed. Moreover, he became conscious that he 
 was by no means at his best on his knees, with 
 his clothes even more rumpled than usual, his 
 hands black and, probably, his face no better. 
 He scrambled to his feet. 
 
 "It s been no trouble," he said awkwardly. 
 
 "I should say that it had been a good deal," 
 said the Girl. "Chitta is so very superstitious. 
 Did you find it?" 
 
 "No," said Cartaret. "At least I don t think 
 so." 
 
 The Girl puckered her pretty brow. 
 
 "I mean," explained Cartaret, coming nearer, 
 but thankful that he had left the lamp on the 
 floor behind him, whence its light would least 
 reveal his soiled hands and face "I mean that 
 I haven t the least idea what I was looking 
 for." 
 
 The Girl burst into rippling laughter. 
 
 "Not the least," pursued the emboldened
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 91 
 
 American. "You see, I left word with Ref- 
 rogne that s the concierge that I was dining 
 with some friends at the Deux Colombes that s 
 a cafe when I went out; and I suppose she 
 I mean your your maid, isn t it"? made him 
 understand that she I mean your maid again 
 wanted me you know, I don t generally leave 
 word ; but this time I thought that perhaps you 
 I mean she or, anyhow, I had an idea " 
 
 He knew that he was making a fool of him 
 self, so he was glad when she came serenely to 
 his assistance and gallantly shifted the difficulty 
 to her own shoulders. 
 
 "It was too bad of Chitta to take you away 
 from your dinner." 
 
 Chitta had slunk into the shadows, but Car- 
 taret could descry her glaring at him. 
 
 "That was of no consequence," he said; he 
 had forgotten what the dinner cost him. 
 
 "But, sir, for a reason of so great an ab 
 surdity!" She put one hand on the table and 
 leaned on it. "I must tell you that there is 
 in my country a superstition "
 
 92 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 She hesitated. Cartaret, his heart leaping, 
 leaned forward. 
 
 "What is your country, mademoiselle*?" he 
 asked. 
 
 She did not seem to hear that. She went on: 
 
 "It is really a superstition so much absurd 
 that I am slow to speak to you of it. They 
 believe, our peasants, that it brings good luck 
 when they take it with them across our borders; 
 that only it can ensure their return, and that, 
 if it is lost, they will never come back to their 
 home-land." Her blue eyes met his gaze. They, 
 sir, love their home-land." 
 
 Cartaret was certain that the land which could 
 produce this presence, at once so human and so 
 spiritual, was well worth loving. He wanted to 
 say so, but another glance at her serene face 
 checked any impulse that might seem imper 
 tinent. 
 
 "I, too, love my country, although I am not 
 superstitious," the Girl pursued, "so I had brought 
 it with me from my country. I brought it with 
 me to Paris, and I lost it. We go early to
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 93 
 
 sleep, the people of my race; I had not missed 
 it when I went to bed; but then Chitta missed 
 it; and I told her that I thought that I had 
 perhaps dropped it here. She ran before I 
 could recall her and I fell straightway asleep. 
 She tells me that she had seen you go out, sir, 
 and that she went to the concierge, as you sup 
 posed, to discover where you had gone, for she 
 thought, she says, that your door was locked." 
 The corners of the Girl s mouth quivered in a 
 smile. "I trust that she would not have tres 
 passed when you were gone, even if your door 
 was open. Until I heard her shriek but now, I 
 had no idea that she would pursue you. I re 
 gret for your sake that she disturbed you, but I 
 also regret for her sake that it was not found." 
 
 Cartaret had guessed the answer to his ques 
 tion before he asked it. His cheeks burned for 
 the consequences, but he put the query : 
 
 "What was lost*?" he inquired. 
 
 "Ah, I thought that I had said it: a flower." 
 
 "A a rose?
 
 94 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 The hand that held her kimono pressed a lit 
 tle closer to her breast. 
 
 "Then you have found it*?" 
 
 Mountain-peaks and glaciers in the sun: Car- 
 taret, being a practical man, was distinctly 
 aware of not wanting her to know the present 
 whereabouts of that flower. He fenced for time. 
 
 "Was it a rose 1 ?" he repeated. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "the Azure Rose." 
 
 "What?" Perhaps, after all, he was wrong. 
 "I ve never heard of a blue rose." 
 
 "It is not blue," she said; "we call it the 
 azure rose as you, sir, would say the rose of 
 azure, or the rose of heaven. We call it the 
 azure rose because it grows only in our own 
 land, where the mountains are blue, and only 
 high, high up on those mountains, near to the 
 blue of the sky. It is a white rose." 
 
 "Yes. Of course," said Cartaret. "A white 
 rose." 
 
 He stood uncertainly before her. For a rea 
 son that he would have hesitated long to de 
 fine, he hated to part with that rose; for a
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 95 
 
 reason concerning which he was quite clear, he 
 did not want to produce it there and then. 
 
 "You have it?" asked The Girl. 
 
 "Er do you want it*?" countered Cartaret. 
 
 A shade of impatience crossed her face. She 
 tried to master it. 
 
 "I gather from your speech that you, sir, are 
 American, not English. You are the first Ameri 
 can that ever I have met, and I do not seem well 
 to understand the motives of all that you say, 
 although I do understand perfectly the words. 
 You ask do I want this rose. But of course I 
 want it! Have I not asked for it*? I want it 
 because Chitta will be distressed if we lose it, 
 but also I want it for myself, to whom it be 
 longs, since it is a souvenir already dear to me." 
 
 Her face was alight. Cartaret looked at it; 
 then his glance fell. 
 
 "I m sorry," he said. "I didn t mean to 
 offend you. I m forever putting my foot in 
 things." 
 
 "You have trodden on my rose?" Her voice 
 discover*^;! Ker dismay.
 
 96 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "No, no! I wouldn t I couldn t. I meant 
 that I was always making mistakes. This after 
 noon, for instance And now " 
 
 To the rescue of his embarrassment came the 
 thought that indeed he obviously could not tread 
 on the rose, unless he were a contortionist, be 
 cause the rose was 
 
 Among the smudges of black, his cheeks 
 burned a hot red. He thrust a hand between 
 his shirt and waistcoat and produced the coveted 
 flower: a snow-rose in the center of his grimy 
 palm. 
 
 Again the perfume, subtle, haunting. Again 
 the pure mountain-peaks. Again the music of 
 a poem in a tongue unknown. . . . 
 
 At first he did not dare to look at her; he 
 kept his gaze lowered. Had he looked, he would 
 have seen her wide eyes startle, then change to 
 amusement, and then to a doubting tenderness. 
 He felt her delicate fingers touch his palm and 
 he thrilled at the touch as she recaptured her 
 rose. He did not see that, in welcome to the 
 returned prodigal, she started to raise to her
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 97 
 
 own lips those petals, gathered so tight against 
 the flower s heart, which he had lately kissed. 
 When at last he glanced up, she had recovered 
 her poise and was again looking like some 
 sculptured Artemis that had wandered into his 
 lonely room from the gardens of the Luxembourg- 
 Then he saw a much more prosaic thing. He 
 saw the hand that held the rose and saw it 
 discolored. 
 
 "Will you ever forgive me?" he cried. 
 "You ve been leaning on my table, and I mix 
 my paints on it!" 
 
 The speech was not precisely pellucid, but she 
 followed his eyes to the hand and understood. 
 "The fault was mine," she said. 
 Cartaret was searching among the tubes and 
 bottles on the table. He searched so nervously 
 that he knocked some of them to the floor. 
 
 "If you ll just wait a minute." He found 
 the bottle he wanted. "And if you don t mind 
 the turpentine ... It smells terribly, but 
 it will evaporate soon, and it cleans you up 
 before you know it."
 
 98 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 He lifted one of the rags that lay about, and 
 then another. He discarded both as much too 
 soiled, hesitated, ran to the curtained corner 
 and returned with a clean towel. 
 
 She had hidden the flower. She extended her 
 hand. 
 
 "Do you mind? he asked. 
 
 "Do I object? No. You are kind." 
 
 He took the smudged hand took it with a 
 hand that trembled and bent his smudged face 
 so close to it that she must have felt his breath 
 beating on it, hot and quick. He made two 
 dabs with the end of the towel. 
 
 Chitta, whom they had both sadly neglected, 
 pounced upon them from her lair among the 
 shadows. She seized the hand and, jabbering 
 fifty words in the time for two, pushed Cartaret 
 from his work. 
 
 "I m not going to hurt anybody," said Car 
 taret. "Do, please, get away." 
 
 The Girl laughed. 
 
 "Ghitta trusts no foreigners," she explained.
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 99 
 
 She spoke to Chitta, but Chitta, glowering at 
 Cartaret, shook her head and grumbled. 
 
 "I do not any more desire to order her about," 
 said The Girl to Cartaret. "Already this even 
 ing I have wounded her feelings, I fear. She 
 says she will allow none but herself to minister 
 to me. You, sir, will forgive her? After all, 
 it is her duty." 
 
 Cartaret inwardly cursed Chitta s fidelity. 
 What he said was : "Of course." He knew that 
 just here he might say something gallant, and 
 that he would think of that something an hour 
 hence; but he could not think of it now. 
 
 The Girl touched the turpentine bottle. 
 
 "And may we take it to our room?" 
 
 "Eh? Oh, certainly," said Cartaret. 
 
 She held out her hand, the palm lowered. 
 
 "Good-night," she said. 
 
 Cartaret s heart bounded: this time she had 
 not said "Good-bye." He seized the hand. 
 Chitta growled, and he released it with a con 
 ventional handshake. 
 
 The Girl smiled.
 
 ioo THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Ah, yes," she said; "this afternoon it puzzled 
 me, but now I recollect: you Americans, sir, 
 shake one s hand, do you not 1 ?" 
 
 She was gone, and glowering Chitta with her, 
 before he could answer. 
 
 Cartaret stood where she had left him, his 
 brows knitted. He heard Chitta double-lock 
 the door to their rooms. He was thinking 
 thoughts that his brain was not accustomed to. 
 It was some time before they became more fa 
 miliar. Then he gasped: 
 
 "I wonder if my face is dirty!" 
 
 He took the lamp and sought the sole mirror 
 that his room boasted. His face was dirty. 
 
 "Damn!" said Cartaret. 
 
 Down in the narrow street, an uncertain chorus 
 was singing: 
 
 "There s nothing, friend, twixt you and me 
 Except the best of company. 
 
 (There s just one bock twixt you and me, 
 
 and I ll catch up full soon!) 
 What woman s lips compare to this : 
 This sturdy seidel s frothy kiss "
 
 HOW CARTARET RETURNED 101 
 
 His guests were coming to seek him. They 
 had remembered him at last. 
 
 Cartaret s mind, however, was busy with other 
 matters. He had not thought of the gallant 
 thing that he might have said to The Girl, but 
 he had thought of something equally surprising. 
 
 "Gee whiz!" he cried. "I understand now 
 it s probably the custom of her country: she 
 expected me to kiss her hand. Kiss her hand 
 and I missed the chance!"
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 CARTARET SETS UP HOUSEKEEPING 
 
 Que de f emmes il y a dans une femme ! Et c est bien 
 heureux. Dumas, Fils: La Dame Aux Perles. 
 
 CARTARET did not see the Lady of the Rose next 
 day, though his work suffered sadly through the 
 worker s jumping from before his easel at the 
 slightest sound on the landing, running to his 
 door, and sometimes himself going to the hall 
 and standing there for many minutes, trying, 
 and not succeeding, to look as if he had just 
 come in, or were just going out, on business of 
 the first importance. He concluded, for the 
 hundredth time, that he was a fool; but he per 
 severed in his folly. He asked himself why- 
 he should feel such an odd interest in an un 
 known girl practically alone in Paris; but he 
 found no satisfactory answer. He declared that 
 it was madness in him to suppose that she could 
 
 102
 
 CARTARET S HOUSEKEEPING 103 
 
 want ever to see him again, and madness to 
 suppose that a penniless failure had anything to 
 gain by seeing her; but he continued to try. 
 
 On the night following the first day of his 
 watch, Cartaret went to bed disappointed and 
 slept heavily. On the second night he went to 
 bed worried, and dreamed of scaling a terrible 
 mountain in quest of a flower, and of falling 
 into a hideous chasm just as the flower turned 
 into a beautiful woman and smiled at him. On 
 the third night, he surrendered to acute alarm 
 and believed that he did not sleep at all. 
 
 The morning of the fourth day found him 
 knocking on the panel of that magic door op 
 posite. Chitta opened the door a crack, growled, 
 and shut it in his face. 
 
 "I wonder," reflected Cartaret, "what would 
 be the best means of killing this old woman. I 
 wonder if the hyena would eat candy sent her 
 by mail." 
 
 He had been watching, all the previous day, 
 for the Lady of the Rose to go out, and she 
 did not leave her room. Now it occurred to him
 
 104 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 to watch for Chitta s exit on a forage foray and 
 to renew his attack during her absence. This he 
 accomplished. From a front window, he had no 
 sooner seen the duenna swing into the rue du 
 Val de Grace, with her headdress bobbing and 
 a shopping-net on her arm, than he was again 
 knocking at the door across the landing. 
 
 He knew now, did Cartaret, that, on whatever 
 landing of life he had lived, there was always 
 that door opposite, the handle of which he had 
 never dared to turn, the key to which he had 
 never yet found. He knew, on this morning 
 a clear, windy morning, for March had come in 
 like a lion that, for the door of every heart in 
 the world, or high or low, or cruel or tender, 
 there is a heart opposite with a door not in 
 accessible. 
 
 The pale yellow sun sang of it: Marvelous 
 Door Opposite! it seemed to sing how, when 
 they pass that portal, the commonplace becomes 
 the unusual and reality is turned into romance. 
 Lead becomes silver then, and copper gold. 
 Magical Door Opposite! All the possibilities of
 
 CARTARET S HOUSEKEEPING 
 
 life aye, and what is better, all life s impos 
 sibilities are behind you, and all life s fears 
 and hopes before. All our young dreams, our 
 mature ambitions, our old regrets, curl in incense 
 from our brains and struggle to pass that key 
 hole. Unhappy he for whom the door never 
 opens ; more unhappy, often, he for whom it does 
 open; but most unhappy he who never sees that 
 it is there: the Door across the Landing. 
 
 Cartaret knocked as if he were knocking at the 
 gate of Paradise, and, perhaps again as if he were 
 knocking at the gate of Paradise, he got no an 
 swer. He knocked a second time and heard the 
 rustle of a woman s skirt. 
 
 "Who is there 1 ?" She spoke in French now, 
 but he would have known her voice had she 
 talked the language of Grand Street. 
 
 "Cartaret," he answered. 
 
 She opened the door. A ray of light beat its 
 way through a grimy window in the hall to wel 
 come her Cartaret was sure that no light had 
 passed that window for years and years and
 
 io6 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 rested on the beauty of her pure face, her calm 
 eyes, her blue-black hair. 
 
 "Good morning," said the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 It sounded wonderful to him. When he re 
 plied "Good morning" and could think of 
 nothing else to say the phrase sounded less re 
 markable. 
 
 She waited a moment. She looked a little 
 doubtful. She said: 
 
 "You perhaps wanted Chitta?" 
 
 Were her eyes laughing"? Her lips were seri 
 ous, but he was uncertain of her eyes. 
 
 "Certainly not," said he. 
 
 "Oh, you wanted me 4 ?" 
 
 "Yes!" said Cartaret, and blushed at the ve 
 hemence of the monosyllable. 
 
 "Why 1 ?" 
 
 For what, indeed, had he come there ? He 
 vividly realized that he should have prepared 
 some excuse ; but, having prepared none, he could 
 offer only the truth or so much of it as seemed 
 expedient.
 
 CARTARET S HOUSEKEEPING 107 
 
 "I wanted to see if you were all right," he 
 said. 
 
 "But certainly," she smiled. "I thank you, 
 sir; but, yes, I am all right." 
 
 She said no more; Cartaret felt as if he could 
 never speak again. However, speak he must. 
 
 "Well, you know," he said, "I hadn t seen 
 you anywhere about, and I was rather worried." 
 
 "Chitta takes of me the best care." 
 
 "Yes, but, you see, I didn t know and I 
 Oh, yes: I wanted to see whether that turpen 
 tine worked." 
 
 "The turpentine!" All suspicion of amuse 
 ment fled her eyes: she was contrite. "I com 
 prehend. How careless of Chitta not at once 
 to have returned it to you." 
 
 Turpentine! What a nectar for romance! 
 Cartaret made a face that could not have been 
 worse had he swallowed some of the liquid. He 
 tried to protest, but she did not heed him. In 
 stead, she left him standing there while she 
 went to hunt for that accursed bottle. In five 
 minutes she had found it, returned it, thanked
 
 io8 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 him and sent him back to his own room, no 
 further advanced in her acquaintance than when 
 he knocked at her door. 
 
 She had laughed at him. He returned fiercely 
 to his work, convinced that she had been laugh 
 ing at him all the while. Very well: what did 
 he care? He would forget her. 
 
 He concentrated all his thoughts upon the 
 idea of forgetting the Lady of the Rose. In 
 order to assist his purpose, he set a new canvas 
 on his easel and fell to work to make a portrait 
 of her as she should be and was not. The con 
 trast would help him, and the plan was cheap, 
 because it needed no model. By the next after 
 noon he had completed the portrait of a beau 
 tiful woman with a white rose at her throat. It 
 was quite his best piece of work, and an excellent 
 likeness of the girl in the room opposite. 
 
 He saw that it was a likeness and thought of 
 painting it out, but it would be a pity to destroy 
 his best work, so he merely put it aside. He 
 decided to paint a purely imaginative figure. 
 He squeezed out some paints, almost at hap-
 
 CARTARET S HOUSEKEEPING 109 
 
 hazard, and began painting in that mood. After 
 forty-eight hours of this sort of thing, he had 
 produced another picture of the same woman in 
 another pose. 
 
 In more ways than one, Cartaret s position 
 was growing desperate. His money was almost 
 gone. He must paint something that Fourget, 
 or some equally kind-hearted dealer, would buy, 
 and these two portraits he would not offer for 
 sale. 
 
 Telling himself that it was only to end his 
 obsession, he tried twice again to see the Lady 
 of the Rose, who was now going out daily to 
 some master s class, and each time he gained 
 nothing by his attempt. First, she would not 
 answer his knock, though he could hear her mov 
 ing about and knew that she must have heard 
 him crossing the hall from his own room and 
 be aware of her caller s identity. On the next 
 occasion, he waited for her at the corner of the 
 Boul Miche when he knew that she would be 
 returning from the class, and was greeted by 
 nothing save a formal bow. So he had to force
 
 1 10 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 himself to potboilers by sheer determination, and 
 finally turned out something that then seemed 
 poor enough for Fourget to like. 
 
 Houdon came in and found him putting on 
 the finishing touches. The plump musician, 
 frightened by his impudence, had stopped below 
 at his own room on the night of the dinner 
 when the revelers at last came to seek their host. 
 Now it appeared that he was anxious to apolo 
 gize. He advanced with the dignity befitting 
 a monarch kindly disposed, and his gesturing 
 hands beat the score of the kettle-drums for the 
 march of the priests in A ida. 
 
 "My very dear Cartarette!" cried Houdon. 
 "Ah, but it is good again to see you! I so 
 regretted myself not to ascend with our friends 
 to call upon you the evening of our little col 
 lation." He sought to dismiss the subject with 
 a run on the invisible piano and the words : "But 
 I was slightly indisposed: without doubt our 
 good comrades informed you that I was slightly 
 indisposed. I am very sensitive, and these
 
 CARTARET S HOUSEKEEPING 111 
 
 munions of high thought are too much for my 
 delicate nerves." 
 
 His good comrades had told Cartaret that 
 Houdon was very drunk; but Cartaret decided 
 that to continue his quarrel would be an insult 
 to its cause. After all, he reflected, this was 
 Houdon s conception of an apology. Cartaret 
 looked at the composer, who was a walking 
 symbol of good feeding and iron nerves, and 
 replied: 
 
 "Don t bother to mention it." 
 
 Houdon seized both of Cartaret s hands and 
 pressed them fondly. 
 
 "My friend," said Houdon magnanimously, 
 "we shall permit ourselves to say no more about 
 it. What sings your sumblime poet, Henri 
 Wadsworth Longchap? I shall allow the de 
 composed past to bury her dead. Or do I mis 
 take: was it Whitman, hein?" 
 
 He gestured his way to Cartaret s easel, much 
 as if the air were water and he were swimming 
 there. He praised extravagantly the picture that 
 Cartaret now knew to be bad. Finally he be-
 
 112 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 gan to potter about the room with a pretense 
 of admiring the place and looking at its other 
 canvases, but all the while conveying the feel 
 ing that he was apprising the financial status 
 of its occupant. Cartaret saw him drawing 
 nearer and nearer to the two canvases that, 
 their faces toward the wall, bore the likeness 
 of the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 "I am just going out," said Cartaret. He 
 hurried to his visitor and took the fellow s arm. 
 "I must take that picture on the easel to the 
 rue St. Andre des Arts. Will you come along 1 ?" 
 
 Houdon seemed suspicious of this sudden 
 friendliness. He cast a curious glance at the 
 canvases he had been about to examine, but 
 his choice was obviously Hobson s. 
 
 "Gladly," he flourished. "To my ctier ami 
 Fourget, is it 4 ? But I know him well. Perhaps 
 my influence may assist you." 
 
 "Perhaps," said Cartaret. He doubted it, but 
 he hoped that something would assist him. 
 
 He held the picture, still wet of course, ex 
 posed for all the world of the Quarter to see,
 
 CARTARET S HOUSEKEEPING 113 
 
 hurried Houdon past the landing and could 
 have sworn that the composer s eyes lingered 
 at the sacred door. 
 
 "But it is an infamy," said Houdon, when 
 they had walked as far down the Boul Miche 
 as the Musee Cluny "it is an infamy to sell 
 at once such a superb work to such a little cow 
 of a dealer. Why then*?" 
 
 "Because I must," said Cartaret. 
 
 Houdon laughed and wagged his head. 
 
 "No, no," said he; "you deceive others: not 
 Houdon. I know well the disguised prince. 
 Come" he looked up and down the Boulevard 
 St. Germain before he ventured to cross it 
 "trust your friend Houdon, my dear Cartarette." 
 
 "I am quite honest with you." 
 
 "Bah! Have your own way, then. Pursue 
 your fancy of self-support for a time. It is 
 noble, that. But think not that I am deceived. 
 Me, Houdon: I know. Name of an oil-well, 
 you should send this masterpiece to the Salon!" 
 
 But just at the corner of the rue St. Andre 
 des Arts, the great composer thought that he saw
 
 114 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 ahead of him a friend with whom he had a press 
 ing engagement of five minutes. He excused 
 himself with such a wealth of detail that Car- 
 taret was convinced of the slightness of the 
 Fourget acquaintanceship, which Houdon had 
 not again referred to. 
 
 "I shall be finished and waiting at this cor 
 ner long ere you return," vowed Houdon. "Go, 
 my friend, and if that little dealer pays you 
 one third of what your picture is worth, my 
 faith, he will bankrupt himself." 
 
 So Cartaret went on alone, and was pres 
 ently glad that he was unaccompanied. 
 
 For Fourget would not buy the picture. It 
 was a silly sketch of a pretty boy pulling to 
 tatters the petals of a rose, and the gray-haired 
 dealer, although he had kindly eyes under his 
 bristling eyebrows, behind his glistening spect 
 acles, shook his head. 
 
 "I am sorry," he said : so many of these hope 
 ful young fellows brought him their loved work, 
 and he had so often, but never untruthfully, to 
 that he was sorry. "I am very sorry, but
 
 CARTARET S HOUSEKEEPING 115 
 
 this is not the real you, monsieur. The values 
 you know better than that. The composition 
 it is unworthy of you, M. Cartarette." 
 
 Cartaret was in no mood to try elsewhere. He 
 wanted to fling the thing into the Seine. He 
 certainly did not want Houdon to see him return 
 with it. Might he leave it with Fourget ? Per 
 haps some customer might see and care for it? 
 
 No, Fourget had his reputation to sustain; but 
 there was that rascal Lepoittevin across the 
 street 
 
 Cartaret went to the rascal, a most amiable 
 man, who would buy no more than would 
 Fourget. He was willing, however, to have the 
 picture left there on the bare chance of picking 
 up a sale and a commission and there Car 
 taret left it. 
 
 Houdon wormed the truth out of him as 
 easily as if Cartaret had come back carrying 
 the picture under his arm: the young American 
 was too disconsolate to hide his chagrin. Houdon 
 was at first incredulous and then overcome; he 
 asked his dear friend to purchase brandy for the
 
 n6 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 two of them at the Cafe Pantheon: such treat 
 ment of a veritable masterpiece was too much 
 for his sensitive nerves. 
 
 With some difficulty, Cartaret got rid of the 
 composer. On a bench in the Luxembourg 
 Gardens, he took account of his resources. They 
 were shockingly slender and, if they were to last 
 him any time at all, he must exercise the most 
 stringent economy. He must buy no more 
 brandy for musical geniuses. Indeed, he must 
 buy no more cafe dinners for himself. . . 
 
 It struck him, as a happy thought, that he 
 might save a little if he lived on such cold 
 solids as he could buy at the fruit-stand and 
 patisseries and such liquids as he might warm in 
 a tin-cup over his lamp. Better men than he 
 was had lived thus in the Quarter, and Cartaret, 
 as the thought took shape, rather enjoyed the 
 prospect: it made him feel as if he were another 
 martyr to Art, or as if though he was not 
 clear as to the logic of this he were another 
 martyr tc Love. He considered going to Pere 
 la Chaise and putting violets on the tomb of
 
 CARTARET S HOUSEKEEPING 117 
 
 Heloise and Abelard; but he decided that he 
 could not afford the tram-fare, and he was al 
 ready too tired to walk, so he made his scanty 
 purchases instead, and had rather a good time 
 doing it. 
 
 He passed Chitta on his way up the stairs to 
 his room, with his arms full of edibles, and he 
 thought that she frowned disapproval. He sup 
 posed she would tell her mistress scornfully, and 
 he hoped that her mistress would understand 
 and pity him. 
 
 He got a board and nailed it to the sill of 
 one of the rear windows. On that he stored 
 his food and, contemplating it, felt like a suc 
 cessful housekeeper.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY, OF DAY-DREAMS, AND 
 OF A FAR COUNTRY AND ITS SOVEREIGN LADY 
 
 L indiscretion d un de ces amis oificieux qui ne saraient 
 garder inedite la nouvelle susceptible de vous causer un 
 chagrin. Murger: Scenes de la Vie de Boheme. 
 
 You would have said that it behooved a man 
 in Charlie Cartaret s situation to devote his even 
 ings to a consideration of its difficulties and his 
 days to hard work; but Cartaret, though he did, 
 as you will see, try to work, devoted the first 
 evening of his new regime to thoughts that, if 
 they affected his situation at all, tended only 
 to complicate it. He thought, as he had so much 
 of late, and as he was to think so much more 
 in the future, of the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 Who was she ? Whence did she come ? What 
 was this native land of hers that she professed 
 to love so well? And, if she did love it so well, 
 why had she left it and come to Paris with a 
 
 118
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 119 
 
 companion that appeared to be some strange 
 compromise between guardian and servant"? 
 
 He wondered if she were some revolutionary 
 exile: Paris was always full of revolutionary 
 exiles. He wondered if she were a rightful 
 heiress, dispossessed of a foreign title. Perhaps 
 she was the lovely pretender to a throne. In 
 that mysterious home of hers, she must have 
 possessed some exalted position, or the right to 
 it, for Chitta had kneeled to her on the dusty 
 floor of this studio, and the Lady s manner, he 
 now recalled, was the manner of one accus 
 tomed to command. Her beauty was of a type 
 that he had read of as Irish the beauty of fair 
 skin, hair black and eyes of deepest blue; but 
 the speech was the English of a woman born 
 to another tongue. 
 
 What was her native speech"? Both her French 
 and her English were innocent of alien accent 
 he had heard at least a phrase or two of the 
 former yet both had a precision that betrayed 
 them as not her own and both had a foreign- 
 born construction. Her frequent use of the word
 
 120 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "sir" in addressing him was sufficiently peculiar. 
 She employed the word not as one that speaks 
 frequently to a superior, but rather as if she 
 were used to it in a formal language, or a grade 
 of life, in which it was a common courtesy. It 
 was something more usual than the French 
 "monsieur," even more usual than the Spanish 
 "senor." 
 
 Cartaret leaned from a window. The air was 
 still keen, but the night was clear. The rue du 
 Val de Grace was deserted, its houses dark and 
 silent. Overhead, in the narrow ribbon of indigo 
 sky, hung a pallid moon: a disk of yellow glass. 
 
 What indeed was she, this Lady of the 
 Rose? He pictured as hers a distant country 
 of deep valleys full of clamoring streams and 
 high mountains where white roses grew. He pic 
 tured her as that country s sovereign. Yet the 
 rose which she treasured had not yet faded on 
 the day of her arrival: she could not come from 
 anywhere so far away. 
 
 He was cold. He closed the window, shiver 
 ing. He was ridiculous: why, he had been in
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 121 
 
 danger of falling in love with a woman of whom 
 he knew nothing! He did not even know her 
 
 name. . . . 
 
 ***** 
 
 The passage of slow-footed time helped him, 
 however, not at all. He would sit for hours, 
 idle before his easel, listening for her light step 
 on the stair and afraid to go to meet her when 
 at last he heard it, for he was desperately poor 
 now, and poverty was making him the coward 
 that it will sooner or later make any man. 
 
 He had antagonized the concierge by prepar 
 ing his own coffee in the morning instead of 
 continuing to pay Mme. Refrogne for it. When 
 he had something to cook, he cooked badly; but 
 there were days when he had nothing, and lived 
 on pastry and bricks of chocolate, and others 
 when it seemed to him that such supplies as he 
 could buy and store on that shelf outside the 
 window were oddly short-lived. 
 
 For a while he called daily at the shop of M. 
 Lepoittevin, but that absurd picture of a boy 
 tearing a rose would not sell, and Cartaret soon
 
 122 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 grew ashamed of calling there ; Fourget he would 
 not face. He managed at first to dispose of one 
 or two sketches and so kept barely alive, yet, as 
 the days went by, his luck dwindled and his 
 greatest energy was expended in keeping up a 
 proud pretense of comfort to his friends of the 
 Quarter. 
 
 Pear-shaped Devignes was easy to deceive : the 
 opera-singer lived too well to want to believe 
 that anybody in the world could starve. Gar- 
 nier, the cadaverous poet, saved trouble, indulg 
 ing his dislike of other people s poverty by re 
 maining away from it; but Seraphin, who came 
 often and sat about the studio in a silence wholly 
 uncharacteristic, was difficult. Houdon, finally, 
 was frequent and expensive: he always foraged 
 about what he called Cartaret s "tempting win 
 dow-buffet," but he regarded the condition of 
 affairs as the passing foible of a young man 
 temporarily wearied by the pleasures of wealth. 
 
 "Ah," he snorted one day when he had come 
 in with Varachon, "you fail wholly to deceive 
 me, Cartarette. You say you are not well-to-do
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 123 
 
 so that we shall think that you are not, but I 
 know, I! Had you not your own income, you 
 would try to sell more pictures, and j^our pictures 
 are superb. They would fetch a pretty sum. 
 Believe not that because I have a great musical 
 genius I have no eye for painting. I know good 
 painting. All Arts are one, my brother." 
 
 He jabbed Cartaret s empty stomach and, 
 whistling a theme and twisting his little mus 
 tache, went to the window and took a huge 
 bite of the last apple there. 
 
 Cartaret watched the composer toss half the 
 apple into the concierge s garden. 
 
 Varachon, the sculptor, grunted through his 
 broken nose. 
 
 "Your work is bad," he whispered to Car 
 taret "very bad. You require a long rest. Go 
 to Nice for a month." 
 
 The weeks passed. Cartaret was underfed 
 and discouraged. He was too discouraged now 
 to attempt to renew his acquaintance with the 
 Lady of the Rose. He was pale and thin, and 
 this from reasons wholly physical.
 
 124 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 Meanwhile, through the scented dawns, April 
 was coming up to that city in which April is 
 most beautiful and most seductive. From the 
 spicy Mediterranean coasts, along the Valley of 
 the Rhone, Love was dancing upon Paris with 
 laughing Spring for his partner. Already the 
 trees had blossomed between the Place de La 
 Concorde and the Rond Point, and out in the 
 Bois the birds were singing to their mates. 
 
 One morning, when Cartaret, with unsteady 
 hand, drew back his curtain, rouge-gorges were 
 calling from the concierge s garden, and seemed 
 to be calling to him. 
 
 "Seize hold of love!" they chorused in that 
 garden. "Life is short; time flies, and love flies 
 with it. Love will pass you by. Take it, take 
 it, take it, while there still is time! Like us, it 
 is a bird that flies, but, unlike us, it never more re 
 turns. It is a rose that withers a white rose : take 
 it while it blooms. Take it, though it leave you 
 soon ; take it, though it scratch your fingers. Take 
 it, take it, take it now!" 
 
 On that day the annual siege of Paris ended,
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 125 
 
 the city fell before her invaders, and by the time 
 that Cartaret went into the streets, the army of 
 occupation was in possession. The Luxembourg 
 Gardens, the very benches along the Boul Miche 
 were full of lovers: he could not stir from the 
 house without encountering them. 
 
 From it, however, he had to go: the Spring 
 called him with a sad seductiveness that he could 
 no longer resist. He wandered aimlessly, trying 
 the impossible: trying to keep his eyes from the 
 couples that also wandered, but wandered hand 
 in hand, and trying to keep his thoughts from 
 roses and the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 He found himself before one of the riverside 
 bookstalls, fingering an old book, leather-bound. 
 The text, he realized, was English, or what once 
 was so: it was a volume of Maundeville, and 
 Cartaret was reading: 
 
 "Betwene the cytee and the chirche of Beth 
 lehem is the felde Floridus; that is to seyne, the 
 field florsched. For als moche as a fayre mayden 
 was blamed with wrong ... for whiche 
 cause sche was demed to the dethe, and to ke
 
 126 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 brent in that place, to the which she was ladd. 
 And, as the fyre began to brenne about hire, 
 she made her preyeres to cure Lord, that als 
 wissely as sche was not gylty . . . that he 
 would help hire, and make it to be knowen to 
 alle men of his mercyfulle grace. And, whanne 
 sche had thus seyd, sche entered into the fuyer; 
 and anon was the fuyer quenched and oute, and 
 the brondes that weren brennynge becomen white 
 roseres, full of roses; and theise werein the first 
 roseres and roses, both white and rede, that ever 
 ony man saughe. And thus was this mayden 
 saved by the grace of God." . . . 
 
 All that week while the contents of his win 
 dow-sideboard dwindled, he was sure, faster than 
 he ate from it he had tried to forget every 
 thing by painting heavily at potboilers. He had 
 begun with the aim of earning enough to resume 
 his studies; he had continued with the hope of 
 getting together enough to keep alive in Paris. 
 And yet, fleeing from that bookstall, he was 
 fool enough to walk all the way to Les Halles, 
 to walk into Les Halles, and to stop, fascinated
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 127 
 
 by a counter laden with boxes of strawberries, 
 odorous and red, the smallest box of which was 
 beyond the limits of his economy. 
 
 That was bad enough it was absurd that his 
 will should voluntarily play the Barmecide for 
 the torture of his unrewarded Shacabac of a 
 stomach but worse, without fault of his own, 
 was yet to follow this mere aggravation of his 
 baser appetites. Spring and Paris are an irre 
 sistible combination on the side of folly, and 
 that evening another sign of them presented 
 itself : there was a burst of music ; a hurdy-gurdy 
 was playing in the rue du Val de Grace, and 
 Cartaret, from his window, listened eagerly. It 
 has been intimated from the best of sources that 
 all love lives on music, and it is the common 
 experience that when any love cannot get the 
 best music, it takes what it can get: 
 
 "Her brow is like the snaw-drift; 
 
 Her throat is like the swan; 
 Her face it is the fairest 
 
 That e er the sun shone on
 
 128 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 That e er the sun shone on 
 And dark blue is her e e 
 
 That French hurdy-gurdy was playing "Annie 
 Laurie," and, since the lonely artist s heart ached 
 to hear the old, familiar melody, when the 
 bearded grinder looked aloft, Cartaret drew a 
 coin from his pocket. Anxious to pay for his 
 pain, as the human kind always is, he tossed 
 his last franc to that vendor of emotions in the 
 twilit street. 
 
 He was drunk at last with the wine that his 
 own misery distilled. He abandoned himself to 
 the admission that he was in love: he abandoned 
 himself to his dream of the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 Seraphin, in a wonderful new suit of clothes, 
 found him thus the next morning it was a 
 Friday and found him accordingly resentful of 
 intrusion. Cartaret was sitting before an empty 
 easel, his hands clasped in his lap, his eyes look 
 ing vacantly through the posts of the easel. 
 
 "Good-day," said Seraphin. 
 
 Cartaret said "Good-day" as if it were a form 
 of insult.
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 129 
 
 Seraphin s hands tugged at his two wisps of 
 whisker. 
 
 "You are not well, hein?" 
 
 "I was never better in my life," snapped Car- 
 taret, turning upon his friend a face that was 
 peeked and drawn. 
 
 The Frenchman came timidly nearer. 
 
 "My friend," he said, "I have completed my 
 magnum opus. It has not sold quite so well as I 
 hoped, not of course one thousandth of its value. 
 That is this Spanish cow of a world. But I have 
 three hundred francs. If you need " 
 
 "Go away," said Cartaret, looking at his 
 empty easel. "Can t you see I m trying to begin 
 work? 
 
 Seraphin himself had suffered. His dignity 
 was not offended : he kept it for only his creditors 
 and other foes. He guessed that Cartaret was 
 at last penniless, and he guessed rightly. 
 
 "Come, my friend," he began; "none shall 
 know. Will you not be so kind as to let me " 
 
 Cartaret got up and, for all his weakness,
 
 130 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 gripped the Frenchman s hand until Dieudonne 
 nearly screamed. 
 
 "I m a beast, Seraphin!" said Cartaret. Vl m 
 a beast to treat a friendly offer this way. For 
 give me. It s just that I feel a bit rocky this 
 morning. I drank too much champagne last 
 night. I do thank you, Seraphin. You re a 
 good fellow, the best of the lot, and a sight 
 better than I am. But I m not hard up; really 
 I m not. I m poor, but I m not a sou poorer 
 than I was this time last year." 
 
 It was a magnificent lie. Seraphin could only 
 shrug, pretend to believe it, and go away. 
 
 Cartaret scarcely heeded the departure. He 
 had relapsed into his day-dream. He took from 
 against the wall the two portraits that he had 
 painted of the Lady of the Rose and hung them, 
 now here, now there, trying them in various 
 lights. There were at least ten more sketches 
 of her by this time, and these, too, he hung in 
 first one light and then another. He studied 
 them and tried to be critical, and forgot to be. 
 
 His thoughts of her never took the shape of
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY ,131 
 
 conscious words he loved her too much to at 
 tempt to praise her but, as he looked at his 
 endeavors to portray her, his mind was busy 
 with his memories of all that loveliness and 
 passed from memories to day-dreams. He saw 
 her as something that might fade before his 
 touch. He saw her as a Princess, incognito, 
 learning his plight, buying his pictures secretly, 
 and, when she came to her throne, letting him 
 serve her and worship from afar. And then he 
 saw her even as a Galatea possible of miraculous 
 awakening. Why not*? Her eyes were the clear 
 eyes of a woman that has never yet loved, but 
 they were also, he felt, the eyes of one @f those 
 rare women who, when they love once, love for 
 ever. Cartaret dared, in his thoughts, to lift 
 the heavy plaits of her blue-black hair and, with 
 trembling fingers, again to touch that hand at 
 the recollection of touching which his own hand 
 tingled. 
 
 Why not, indeed? Already a stranger thing 
 had happened in his meeting her. Until that 
 year he had not guessed at her existence; oceans
 
 132 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 divided them; the barriers of alien race and 
 alien speech were raised high between them, and 
 all of these things had been in vain. The exis 
 tence was revealed, the ocean was crossed, the 
 bar of sundering speech was down. He was 
 here, close beside her, as if every event of his 
 life had been intended to bring him. Through 
 blind ways and up ascents misunderstood, unat- 
 tracted by the many and lonely among the 
 crowd, he had, somehow, always been making 
 his way toward Her. 
 
 Thus Cartaret dreamed while Seraphin made 
 a hurried journey to the rue St. Andre des Arts 
 and the shop of M. Fourget. 
 
 "But no, but no, but no!" Fourget s bushy 
 brows met in a frown. "It is out of the ques 
 tion. Something has happened to the boy. He 
 can no longer paint." 
 
 Oh, well, at least monsieur could go to the 
 boy s rooms and see what he had there. 
 
 "No. Am I then a silly philanthropist?" 
 
 Seraphin tried to produce his false dignity. 
 What he brought out was something genuine.
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 133 
 
 "I ask it from the heart," he pleaded. "Do 
 not I, my God, know what it is to be hungry*?" 
 
 "Hungry?" said the dealer. "Hungry! The 
 boy has an uncle famously rich. What is an 
 uncle for? Hungry? You make une betise. 
 Hungry." He called his clerk and took up his 
 hat. "I will not go," he vowed. "Hungry, par 
 example!" 
 
 "Truly you will not," smiled Seraphin. "And 
 
 do not tell him that I sent you: he is proud." 
 
 ***** 
 
 The sound of the door opening interrupted 
 Cartaret s dream. He turned, a little sheepish, 
 wholly annoyed. Spectacled Fourget stood there, 
 looking very severe. 
 
 "I was passing by," he explained. "I have 
 not come to purchase anything, but I grow old: 
 I was tired and I climbed your stairs to rest." 
 
 It was too late to hide those portraits. Car- 
 taret could only place for Fourget a chair with 
 its back to them. 
 
 "What have you been doing?" asked the 
 dealer.
 
 134 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 He swung round toward the portraits. 
 
 "Don t look at them!" said Cartaret. "They re 
 merely sketches." 
 
 But Fourget had already looked. He was on 
 his feet. He was bobbing from one to the 
 other, his lean hands adjusting his glasses, his 
 shoulders stooped, his nose thrust out. He was 
 uttering little cries of approval. 
 
 "But this is good! It is good, then. This is 
 first-rate. This is of an excellence! * 
 
 "They re not for sale," said Cartaret. 
 
 "Hein?" Fourget wheeled. "If they are not 
 for sale, they are for what, then 1 ?" 
 
 "They they are merely sketches, I tell you. 
 I was trying my hand at a new method; but 
 I find there is nothing in it." 
 
 Fourget was unbuttoning his short frock-coat. 
 He was reaching for his wallet. 
 
 "I tell you there is everything in it. There is 
 the sure touch in it, the clear vision, the sym 
 pathy. There is reputation in it. In fine, there 
 is money." 
 
 He had the wallet out as he concluded.
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 135 
 
 Cartaret shook his head. 
 
 "Oh," said Fourget, the dealer in him par 
 tially overcoming the lover of art, "not much 
 as yet; not a great deal of money. You have 
 still a long way to go; but you have found the 
 road, monsieur, and I want to help you on your 
 journey. Come, now." He nodded to the first 
 portrait. "What do you ask for that*?" 
 
 "I don t want to sell it." 
 
 "Poof! We shall not haggle. Tell Fourget 
 what you had thought of asking. Do not be 
 modest. Tell me and I will give you half." 
 
 He kept it up as long as he could; he tried 
 at last to buy the least of the preliminary 
 sketches of the Rose-Lady; he offered what, to 
 Cartaret, were dazzling prices; but Cartaret was 
 not to be shaken : these experiments were not for 
 sale. 
 
 Fourget was first disappointed, then puzzled. 
 His enthusiasm had been genuine; but could 
 it be possible that Dieudonne was mistaken? 
 Was Cartaret not starving? The old man was
 
 136 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 beginning to button his cpat when a new idea 
 struck him. 
 
 "Who was your model*?" he asked abruptly. 
 
 "I I had none," Cartaret stammered. 
 
 "Ah!" Fourget peered hard at him through 
 those glistening spectacles. "You painted them 
 from memory ?" 
 
 "Yes." Cartaret felt his face redden. "From 
 imagination, I mean." 
 
 Then Fourget understood. Perhaps he had 
 merely the typical Frenchman s love of romance, 
 which ceases only with the typical Frenchman s 
 life; or perhaps he remembered his own youth 
 in Besangon, when he, too, had wanted to be 
 an artist and when, among the vines on the 
 hillside, little Rosalie smiled at him and kissed 
 his ambition away little Rosalie Poullot, dust 
 and ashes these twenty years in the Cimetiere du 
 Mont Parnasse. . . . 
 
 He turned to a pile of pot-boilers. He took 
 one almost at random. 
 
 "This one," he said, "I should like to buy it."
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 137 
 
 It was the worst pot-boiler of the lot. Before 
 the portraits, it was hopeless. 
 
 Cartaret half understood. 
 
 "No," he said; "you don t really want it." 
 
 Seraphin had been right: the young man was 
 proud. "How then*?" demanded Fourget. "This 
 also did you paint not-to-sell?" 
 
 "I painted it to sell," said Cartaret miserably, 
 "but it doesn t deserve selling perhaps just be 
 cause I did paint it to sell." 
 
 To his surprise, Fourget came to him and put 
 an arm on his shoulder, a withered hand patting 
 the American s back. 
 
 "Ah, if but some more-famous artists felt as 
 you do! Come; let me have it. That is very 
 well. I shall sell it to a fool. Many fools are 
 my patrons. How else could I live? There 
 is not enough good art to meet all demands, or 
 there are not enough demands to meet all good 
 art. Who shall say? Suffice it there are de 
 mands of sorts. Daily I thank the good God 
 for His fools.
 
 138 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 Cartaret went to Les Halles and bought a 
 targe box of strawberries. 
 
 ***** 
 
 He had put them carefully on his window- 
 shelf and covered them with a copy of a last 
 week s Matin being an American, he of course 
 read the Matin for he was resolved that, now 
 he again had a little money, these strawberries 
 should be his final extravagance and should be 
 treasured accordingly he had just anchored the 
 paper against the gentle Spring breeze when he 
 became aware that he had another visitor. 
 
 Standing by his table, much as she had stood 
 there on the night of his second sight of her, was 
 the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 Cartaret thought that his eyes were playing 
 him tricks. He rubbed his eyes. 
 
 "It is I," she said. 
 
 He thought that again he could detect the 
 perfume of the Azure Rose. He again thought 
 that he could see white mountaavtops in the 
 sun. He could have sworn that, in the street, 
 a hurdy-gurdy was playing:
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 139 
 
 "Her brow is like the snaw-drift; 
 Her throat is like the swan " 
 
 "I came in," she was saying, "to see how you 
 were. I should have sent Chitta, but she was 
 so long coming back from an errand." 
 
 "Thank you," he said he was not yet cer 
 tain of himself "I m quite well. But I m very 
 glad you called." 
 
 "Yet you, sir, look pale, and your friend" 
 her forehead puckered "told me that you had 
 been ill." 
 
 "My friend^" He spoke as if he had none 
 in the world, though now he knew better. 
 
 "Yes: such a pleasant old gentlemjan with gray 
 hair and glasses. As I came in half an hour 
 ago, I met him on the stairs." 
 
 "Fourget!" 
 
 "Was that his name"? He seemed most anx 
 ious about you." 
 
 "He is my friend." 
 
 "I like him," said the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 "Then you understand him. I didn t under 
 stand him till this morning. He is an art-
 
 140 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 dealer: those that he won t buy from think him 
 hard; the friends of those that he buys from 
 think him a fool." 
 
 Although he had reassured her of his health, she 
 seemed charmingly willing to linger. Really, she 
 was looking at Cartaret s haggard cheeks with a 
 wonderful sympathy. 
 
 "So he bought from you?" 
 
 Cartaret nodded. 
 
 "Only I hope you won t think him a fool," 
 he said. 
 
 "I shall consider," she laughed. "I must first 
 see some of your work, sir." 
 
 She came farther into the room. She moved 
 with an easy dignity, her advance into the light 
 displaying the lines of her gracile figure, the 
 turn of her head discovering the young curve 
 of her throat; her eyes, as they moved about 
 his studio, were clear and starry. 
 
 In the presence of their original, Cartaret had 
 forgotten the portraits. Now she saw them and 
 turned scarlet. 
 
 It was a time for no more pride on the part
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 141 
 
 of the painter: already, head high in air, she 
 had turned to go. It was a time for honest 
 dealing. Cartaret barred her way. 
 
 "Forgive me!" he cried. "Won t you please 
 forgive me?" 
 
 She tried to pass him without a word. 
 
 "But listen. Only listen a minute! You 
 didn t think oh, you didn t think I d sold him 
 one of those? They were on the wall when he 
 came in, and I couldn t get them away in time. 
 I d put them up Well, I d put them up there 
 because I because I couldn t see you, so I 
 wanted to see them." 
 
 His voice trembled; he looked ill now: she 
 hesitated. 
 
 "What right had you, sir, to paint them 4 ?" 
 
 "I don t know. I hadn t any. Of course, I 
 hadn t any! But I wouldn t have sold them to 
 the Luxembourg." 
 
 What was it that Fourget had told her when 
 he met her on the stair 1 ? "Mademoiselle, you 
 will pardon an old man: that Young Cartarette 
 cannot paint pot-boilers, and in consequence he
 
 H2 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 starves. For more things than money, made- 
 moiselle. But because he cannot paint pot-boilers 
 and get money, he starves literally." Her heart 
 smote her now, but she could not refrain from 
 saying : 
 
 "Perhaps the Luxembourg did not offer in 
 the person of M. Fourget?" 
 
 The last vestige of his pride left CartareL 
 
 "He wanted to buy those portraits," he said. 
 "I know that my action loses by the telling of 
 it whatever virtue it might have had, but I d 
 rather have that happen than have you think 
 what you ve been thinking. He offered me more 
 for them than for all my other pictures to 
 gether, but I couldn t sell." 
 
 It was a mood not to be denied: she forgave 
 him. 
 
 "But you, sir, must take them all down," she 
 said, "and you must promise to paint no more 
 of them." 
 
 He would have promised anything: he prom 
 ised this, and he had an immediate reward.
 
 OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY 143 
 
 "To-morrow," she asked, "perhaps you will eat 
 dejeuner with Chitta and me*? 
 
 Would he! He did not know that she in 
 vited him because of Fourget s use of the phrase 
 "starving literally." He accepted, declaring that 
 he would never more call Friday unlucky. 
 
 "At eleven o clock*?" she asked. 
 
 "At eleven," he bowed. 
 
 When she was gone, Cartaret went again to 
 the window that looked on the concierge s garden. 
 The robins were still singing: 
 
 "Seize hold of love! It is a rose a white 
 rose. Take it take it take it now !"
 
 Theft in its simplicity however sharp and rude, yet 
 if frankly done, and bravely does not corrupt men s 
 souls; and they can, in a foolish, but quite vital and 
 faithful way, keep the feast of the Virgin Mary in the 
 midst of it. Ruskin : Fors Clavigera. 
 
 IT was quite true that he had resolved to be 
 careful of the money that old Fourget had paid 
 him for the pot-boiler. He still meant to be 
 careful of it. But he was to be a guest at 
 dejeuner next morning, and a man must not 
 breakfast with a Princess and wear a costume 
 that is really shockingly shabby. Cartaret there 
 fore set about devising some means of bettering 
 his wardrobe. 
 
 His impulse was to buy a new suit of clothes, 
 as Seraphin had done when he sold his picture. 
 Seraphin, however, had received a good deal 
 
 more money than Cartaret, and Cartaret was 
 
 144
 
 CONCERNING STRAWBERRIES 145 
 
 really in earnest about his economies: when he 
 had spent half the afternoon in the shops, and 
 found that most of the ready-made suits there 
 exposed for sale would cost him the bulk of his 
 new capital, he decided to sponge his present 
 suit, sew on a few buttons and then sleep with 
 it under his mattress by way of pressing it. A 
 new necktie was, nevertheless, imperative: he had 
 been absent-mindedly wiping his brushes on the 
 old, and it would not do to smell more of 
 turpentine than the exigencies of his suit made 
 necessary; the scent of turpentine is not ap 
 petizing. 
 
 If you have never been in love, you may sup 
 pose that the selection of so small a thing as a 
 necktie is trivial; otherwise, you will know that 
 there are occasions when it is no light matter, and 
 you will then understand why Cartaret found it 
 positively portentous. The first score of neck 
 ties that he looked at were impossible; so were 
 the second. In the third he found one that would 
 perhaps just do, and this he had laid aside for 
 him while he went on to another shop. He went
 
 146 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 to several other shops. Whereas he had at first 
 found too few possibilities, he was now embar 
 rassed by too many. There was a flowing marine- 
 blue affair with white fleur-de-lys that he thought 
 would do well for Seraphin and that he consid 
 ered for a moment on his own account. He went 
 back to the first shop and so through the lot 
 again. In the end, his American fear of anything 
 bright conquered, and he bought a gray "four- 
 in-hand" that might have been made in Philadel 
 phia. 
 
 On his return he went to the window to see 
 how his strawberries were doing. He remem 
 bered the anecdote about the good cleric, who 
 said that doubtless God could have made a bet 
 ter berry, but that doubtless God never did. Car- 
 taret wondered if it would be an impertinence 
 to offer his strawberries to the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 They were gone. 
 
 He went down the stairs in two jumps. He 
 thrust his head into the concierge s cavern. 
 
 "Who s been to my room 2" he shouted. He 
 was still weak, but anger lent him strength.
 
 CONCERNING STRAWBERRIES 147 
 
 Refrogne growled. 
 
 "Tell me!" insisted Cartaret. 
 
 "How should I know*?" the concierge countered. 
 
 "It s your business to know. You re respon 
 sible. Who s come in and gone out since I went 
 out?" 
 
 "Nobody." 
 
 "There must have been somebody ! Somebody 
 has been to my room and stolen something." 
 
 Thefts are not so far removed from the sphere 
 of a concierge s natural activities as unduly to 
 excite him. 
 
 "To rob it is not necessary that one eome in 
 from without," said he. 
 
 "You charge a tenant?" 
 
 "I charge nobody. It is you that charge, mon 
 sieur. I did not know that you possessed to be 
 stolen. A thief of a tenant? But certainly. One 
 cannot inquire the business of one s tenants. What 
 house is without a little thief?" 
 
 "I believe you did it !" said Cartaret. 
 
 Refrogne whistled, in the darkness, a bar of 
 "Margarita."
 
 148 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 Houdon was passing by. He made suave en 
 quiries. 
 
 "But not Refrogne," he assured Cartaret. "You 
 do an injustice to a worthy man, my dear friend. 
 Besides, what is a box of strawberries to you 9" 
 
 Cartaret felt that he was in danger of making 
 a mountain of a molehill ; he had the morbid fear, 
 common to his countrymen, of appearing ridicu 
 lous. It occurred to him that it would not have 
 been beyond Houdon to appropriate the ber 
 ries, if he had happened into the room and found 
 its master absent ; but to bother further was to be 
 once more absurd. 
 
 "I don t suppose it does matter," he said; "but 
 my supplies have been going pretty fast lately, 
 and if I was to catch the thief, I d hammer the 
 life out of him." 
 
 "Magnificent!" gurgled Houdon as he passed 
 gesturing into the street. 
 
 Cartaret returned toward his room. The dusk 
 had fallen and, if he had not known the way so 
 well, he would have had trouble in finding it. He 
 was tired, too, and so he went slowly. That he
 
 CONCERNING STRAWBERRIES 149 
 
 also went softly he did not realize until he gently 
 pushed open the door to his quarters. 
 
 A shadowy figure was silhouetted against the 
 window out of which Cartaret kept his supplies, 
 and the figure seemed to have some of them in its 
 hands. 
 
 Cartaret s anger was still hot. Now it flamed 
 to a sudden fury. He did not pause to consider 
 the personality, or even the garb, of the thief. 
 He saw nothing, thought nothing, save that he 
 was being robbed. He charged the dim figure; 
 tackled it as he once tackled runners on the foot 
 ball-field; fell with it much as he had fallen with 
 those runners in the days of old except that he 
 fell among a hail of food-stuffs and then found 
 himself tragically holding to the floor the duenna 
 Chitta. 
 
 It was a terrible thing, this battle with a fright 
 ened woman. Cartaret tried to rise, but she 
 gripped him fast. His amazement first, and next 
 his mortification, would have left him nerveless, 
 but Chitta was fighting like a tigress. His face 
 was scratched and one finger bitten, before he
 
 ijfo THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 could hold her quiet enough to say, in slow French : 
 
 "I did not know that it was you. You are 
 welcome to what you want. I am going to let 
 you go. Don t struggle. I shan t hurt you. Get 
 up." 
 
 He thanked Heaven that she understood at least 
 a little of the language. Shaken, he got to his 
 own feet; but Chitta, instead of rising, surpris 
 ingly knelt at his. 
 
 She spouted a long speech of infinite emotion. 
 She wept. She clasped and unclasped her hands. 
 She pointed to the room of her mistress ; then to 
 her mouth, and then rubbed that portion of her 
 figure over the spot where the appetite is appeased. 
 
 "Do you mean," gasped Cartaret "do you 
 mean that you and your mistress" this was ter 
 rible! "have been poor?" 
 
 Chitta had come to the room without her head 
 dress, and the subsequent battle had sent her hair 
 in dank coils about her shoulders. She nodded; 
 the shaken coils were like so many serpents. 
 
 "And that she has been hungry*? Hungry?" 
 
 A violent negative. Chitta bobbed toward Car-
 
 CONCERNING STRAWBERRIES 151 
 
 taret s rifled stores and then toward the street, as 
 if to include other stores in the same circle of 
 depredation. She was also plainly indignant at 
 the idea that she would permit her mistress to be 
 hungry. 
 
 "Oh," said Cartaret, "I see! You are a con 
 sistent thief." 
 
 This time Chitta s nod was a proud one; but 
 she pointed again to the other room and shook 
 her head violently; then to herself and nodded 
 once more. Words could not more plainly have 
 said that, although she had been supplementing 
 her provisions by petty thefts, her employer knew 
 nothing about them. 
 
 And she must not be told. Again Chitta began 
 to bob and moan and weep. She pointed across 
 the hallway, put a finger to her lips, shook her 
 old head and finally held out her clasped hands in 
 supplication. 
 
 Cartaret emptied his pockets. He wished he 
 had not been so extravagant as to buy that necktie. 
 He handed to Chitta all the money left from the
 
 152 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 price that Fourget had paid him, to the last five- 
 centime piece. 
 
 "Take this," he said, "and be sure you don t 
 ever let your mistress know where it came from. 
 I shan t tell anybody about you. When you want 
 more, come direct to me." He knew that he could 
 paint marketable pot-boilers now. 
 
 She wanted to kiss his hand, but he hurried 
 from the woman and left her groveling behind 
 him. . . . 
 
 "M. Refrogne," he said to the concierge, "I owe 
 you an apology. I am sorry for the way I spoke 
 to you a while ago. I have found those strawber 
 ries." 
 
 "Bah!" said Refrogne. He added, when Car- 
 taret had passed: "In his stomach, most likely." 
 
 Slowly the horror of having had to use physical 
 force against a woman left Cartaret. He started 
 for a long walk and thought many things. He 
 thought, as he trudged at last across L Etoile, how 
 the April starshine was turning the Arc de Triom- 
 phe to silver, and how the lovers on the benches at 
 the junction of the rue Lauriston and the avenue
 
 CONCERNING STRAWBERRIES 153 
 
 Kleber made Napoleon s arch in praise of war a 
 monument to softer passions. He thought, as he 
 strolled from the avenue d Eylan and across the 
 Place Victor Hugo, how the heart of that poet, 
 whose statue here represented him as so much the 
 politician, must grow warm when, as now, boys 
 and girls passed arm in arm about the pediment. 
 The night bore jonquils in her hands and wore a 
 spray of wisteria in her hair. Brocaded ghosts of 
 the old regime must be pacing a stately measure at 
 Ranelagh, and all the elves of Spring were danc 
 ing in the Bois. 
 
 The Princess was poor. That brought her 
 nearer to him : it gave him a chance to help her. 
 Cartaret found it hard to be sorry that she was 
 poor.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 BEING THE TRUE REPORT OF A CHAPERONED 
 DEJEUNER 
 
 For she hath breathed celestial air, 
 
 And heavenly food hath been her fare, 
 
 And heavenly thought and feelings give her face 
 
 That heavenly grace. 
 
 Southey: The Curse of Kehama. 
 
 SOMETIMES a mattress is doubtless as efficient 
 a means of pressing one s clothes as any other 
 means, but doubtless always a good deal depends 
 upon the mattress. By way of general rules, it 
 may be laid down, for instance, that the mattress 
 employed must not be too thin, must not be 
 stuffed with a material so gregarious as to gather 
 together in lumpy communities, and must not 
 sag in the middle. Cartaret s mattress failed to 
 meet these fundamental requirements, and when 
 he made his careful toilet on the morning that he 
 
 was to take dejeuner at the Room Across the 
 
 154
 
 A CHAPERONED DEJEUNER 155 
 
 Landing, he became uneasily aware that his clothes 
 betrayed certain evidences of what had happened 
 to them. He had been up half a dozen times in 
 the night to rearrange the garments, in fear of 
 just such a misfortune; but his activities were 
 badly repaid; the front of the suit bore a series of 
 peculiar wrinkles, rather like the complicated 
 hatchments on an ancient family s escutcheon ; he 
 could not see how, when the coat was on him, its 
 back looked, and he was afraid to speculate. With 
 his mirror now hung high and now standing on 
 the floor, he practiced before it until he happily 
 discovered that the wrinkles could be given a 
 more or less reasonable excuse if he could only re 
 member to adopt and assume a mildly Pre- 
 Raphaelite bearing. 
 
 Something else that his glass showed him gave 
 him more anxiety and appeared beyond conceal 
 ment: Chitta s claws had left two long scratches 
 across his right cheek. He had no powder and 
 no money to buy any. He did think of trying a 
 touch of his own paint, but he feared that oils 
 were not suited to the purpose and would only
 
 156 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 make the wound more noticeable. He would 
 simply have to let it go. 
 
 He had wakened with the first ray of sunlight 
 that set the birds to singing in the garden, and, 
 Chitta s fall of the previous evening having spilled 
 his coffee and devastated his supplies, he was 
 forced to go without a petit dejeuner. He found 
 a little tobacco in one of his coat-pockets and 
 smoked that until the bells of St. Sulpice, after an 
 unconscionable delay, rang the glad hour for which 
 he waited. 
 
 Chitta opened the door to his knock, and he 
 was at once aware of her mistress standing, in 
 white, behind her; but the old duenna was aware 
 of it too and ordered herself accordingly. Chitta 
 bowed low enough to appease the watchful Lady 
 of the Rose, but Chitta s eyes, as she lowered them, 
 glowered at him suspiciously. It was clear that 
 she by no means joined in the welcome that the 
 Lady immediately accorded him. 
 
 The Lady, in clinging muslin and with a black 
 lace scarf of delicate workmanship draped over 
 her black hair, gave him her hand, and this time
 
 A CHAPERONED DEJEUNER 157 
 
 Cartaret was not slow to kiss it. The action was 
 one to which he was scarcely accustomed, and he 
 hesitated between the fear of being discourteously 
 brief about it and the fear of being discourteously 
 long. He could be certain only of how cool and 
 firm her hand was and, as he looked up from it, 
 how pink and fresh her cheeks. 
 
 It was then that the Lady saw the scratches. 
 
 "Oh, but you have had an accident !" she cried. 
 
 Cartaret s hand went to his face. He looked 
 at Chitta : Chitta s returning glance was something 
 between an appeal and a threat, but a trifle nearer 
 the latter. 
 
 "I had a little fall," said Cartaret, "and I was 
 scratched in falling." 
 
 The room was bare, but clean and pleasant, 
 fresh from the constant application of Chitta s 
 mop and broom, fresher from the Spring breeze 
 that came in through the front windows, and 
 freshest from the presence of the Lady of the 
 Rose. Two curtained corners seemed to contain 
 beds. At the rear, behind a screen, there must 
 have been a gas-stove where Chitta could soon
 
 158 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 be heard at work upon the breakfast. What 
 furniture there was bore every evidence of be 
 ing Parisian, purchased in the Quarter; there was 
 none to indicate the nationality of the tenants; 
 and the bright little table, at which Cartaret was 
 presently seated so comfortably as to forget the 
 necessity of the Pre-Raphaelite pose, was Parisian 
 too. 
 
 "You must speak French," smiled the Lady 
 how very white her teeth were, and how very 
 red her lips ! as she looked at him across the cof 
 fee-urn: "that is the sole condition that, sir, I 
 impose upon you." 
 
 "Willingly," said Cartaret, in the language 
 thus imposed; "but why, when you speak English 
 so well 4 ?" 
 
 "Because" the Lady was half serious about 
 it "I had to promise Chitta that, under threat 
 of her leaving Paris ; and if she left Paris, I should 
 of course have to leave it, too. French she un- 
 derstaads a little, as you know, but not English, 
 and" the Lady s pink deepened "she says that 
 English is the one language of which she cannot
 
 A CHAPERONED DEJEUNER 159 
 
 even guess the meaning when she hears it, because 
 English is the one language that can be spoken 
 with the lips only, and spoken as if the speaker s 
 face were a mask." 
 
 He said he should have thought that Chitta 
 would pick it up from her. "Why," he said, "it 
 comes so readily to you: you answered in it in 
 stinctively that time when I first saw you. Don t 
 you remember*?" 
 
 "I remember. I was very frightened. Perhaps 
 I used it when you did because we had an English 
 governess at my home and speak it much in the 
 family. We speak it when we do not want the 
 servants to understand, and so we have kept it 
 from Chitta." She was pouring the coffee. "Tell 
 me truly: do I indeed speak it well*?" 
 
 "Excellently. Of course you are a little pre 
 cise." 
 
 "How precise?" 
 
 "Well, you said, that time, It is F; we gen 
 erally say It s me like the French, you under 
 stand."
 
 i6o THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 If Princesses could pout, he would have said 
 that she pouted. 
 
 "But I was right." 
 
 "Not entirely. You weren t colloquial." 
 
 "I was correct," she insisted. " It is P is cor 
 rect. My grammar says that the verb To be 
 takes the same case after it as before it. If the 
 Americans say something else, they do not speak 
 good English." 
 
 Cartaret laughed. 
 
 "The English say it, too." 
 
 "Then," said the Lady with an emphatic nod, 
 "the English also." 
 
 It was a simple breakfast, but excellently 
 cooked, and Cartaret had come to it with a 
 healthy hunger. Chitta was present only in the 
 capacity of servant ; but managed to be constantly 
 within ear-shot and generally to have hostess and 
 guest under her supervision. He felt her eyes 
 upon him when she brought in the highly-seasoned 
 omelette, when she replenished the coffee; fre 
 quently he even caught her peeping around the 
 screen that hid the stove. It was a marvel that
 
 A CHAPERONED DEJEUNER 161 
 
 she could cook so well, since she was forever de 
 serting her post. She made Cartaret blush with 
 the memory of his gift to her; she made him feel 
 that his gift had only increased her distrust ; when 
 he fell to talking about himself, he made light of 
 his poverty, so that, should Chitta s evident 
 scruples against him ever lead her to betray what 
 he had done, the Lady might not feel that he had 
 sacrificed too much in giving so little. 
 
 Nevertheless, Cartaret was in no mood for com 
 plaint: he was sitting opposite his Princess and 
 was happy. He told her of his life in America, 
 of football and of Broadway. It is a rare thing for 
 a lover to speak of his sister, but Cartaret even 
 mentioned Cora. 
 
 "Is she afraid of you, monsieur?" asked the 
 Lady. 
 
 "I can t imagine Cora being afraid of any mere 
 man." 
 
 "Ah," said the Lady; "then the American 
 brothers are different from brothers in my country. 
 I have a brother. I think he is the handsomest
 
 162 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 and bravest man in the world, and I love him. 
 But I fear him too. I fear him very much." 
 
 "Your own brother?" 
 
 The Lady was giving Cartaret some more ome 
 lette. Cartaret, holding his ready plate, saw her 
 glance toward the rear of the room and saw her 
 meet the eyes of Chitta, whose face was thrust 
 around the screen. 
 
 "Yes," said the Lady. 
 
 It struck Cartaret that she dropped her brother 
 rather quickly. She talked of other things. 
 
 "Your name," she said, "is English: the con 
 cierge gave it me. It is English, is it not*?" 
 
 She had made enquiries about him, then: Car 
 taret liked that. 
 
 "My people were English, long ago," he an 
 swered. He grew bold. He had been a fool not 
 to make enquiries about her, but now he would 
 make them at first hand. "I don t know your 
 name," he said. 
 
 He saw her glance again toward the rear of the 
 room, but when he looked he saw nobody. The 
 Lady was saying:
 
 A CHAPERONED DEJEUNER 163 
 
 "Urola." 
 
 It helped him very little. He said; 
 
 "That sounds Spanish." 
 
 Instantly her head went up. There was blue 
 fire in her eyes as she answered : 
 
 "I have not one drop of Spanish blood; not 
 one." 
 
 He had meant no offense, yet it was clear that 
 he came dangerously near one. He made haste to 
 apologize. 
 
 "You do not understand," she said, smiling a 
 little. "In my country we hate the Spaniard." 
 
 "What is your country?" 
 
 It was the most natural of questions he had 
 put it once before yet he had now no sooner 
 uttered it than he felt that he had committed an 
 other indiscretion. This time, when she glanced 
 at the rear of the room, he distinctly saw Chitta s 
 head disappearing behind the screen. 
 
 "It is a far country," said Mile. Urola. "It is 
 a wild country. We have no opportunities to 
 study art in my country. So I came to Paris." 
 
 After that there was nothing for him to do but
 
 164 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 to be interested in her studies, and of them she 
 told him willingly enough. She was very am 
 bitious; she worked hard, but she made, she said, 
 little progress. 
 
 "The people that have no feeling for any art I 
 pity," she said; "but, oh, I pity more those who 
 want to be some sort of artist and cannot be ! The 
 desire without the talent, that kills." 
 
 Chitta was coming back, bearing aloft a fresh 
 dish. She bore it with an air more haughty than 
 any she had yet assumed. Directing at Cartaret a 
 glance of pride and scorn, she set before her mis 
 tress Cartaret s strawberries. 
 
 The Lady clapped her pretty hands. She 
 laughed with delight. 
 
 "This," she said, "is a surprise! I had not 
 known that we were to have strawberries. It is 
 so like Chitta. She is so kind and thoughtful, 
 monsieur. Always she has for me some surprise 
 like this." 
 
 "It is a surprise," said Cartaret. "I m sure I ll 
 enjoy it. *
 
 A CHAPERONED DEJEUNER 165 
 
 She served the berries while Chitta stalked 
 away. 
 
 "I find," confessed the Lady in English, "that 
 they are not so good below as they seemed on 
 the top. You will not object?" 
 
 Oh, no: Cartaret wouldn t object. 
 
 "I suppose," said Mile. Urola, "that I should 
 reprimand her, for their quality is" she frowned 
 at the berries "inferior; but I have not the heart. 
 Not for the whole world could I hurt her feelings. 
 She is both so kind and so proud, and she is such 
 a marvel of economy. You, sir, would not guess 
 how well she makes me fare upon how small an 
 expense." 
 
 After breakfast, she showed him some examples 
 of her work. It had delicacy and feeling. An un- 
 prejudicd critic would have said that she had 
 much to learn in the way of technique, but to Car 
 taret every one of her sketches was a marvel. 
 
 "This," she said, again in English, as she pro 
 duced a drawing from the bottom of her bundle, 
 "does not compare with what you did, sir, but it
 
 166 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 is not the work of a flatterer, since it is my own 
 work. It is I." 
 
 It was a rapid sketch of herself and it was, as 
 she had said, the work of no flatterer. 
 
 "I like that least of all," declared Cartaret, in 
 the language to which she had returned; but he 
 wanted her to forget those portraits he had made. 
 He caught, consequently, at trifles. "Why don t 
 you say It s me ?" he asked. 
 
 She clasped her hands behind her and stood 
 looking up at him with her chin tilted and her un 
 conscious lips close to his. 
 
 "I say what is right, sir," she challenged. 
 
 He laughed, but shook his head. 
 
 "I know better," said he. 
 
 "No," she said. She was smiling, but serious. 
 "It is I that am right. And even if I learned that 
 I were wrong, I would now not change. It would 
 be a surrender to you." 
 
 Cartaret found his color high. His mind was 
 putting into her words a meaning he was afraid 
 she might see that he put there. 
 
 "Not to me," he said.
 
 A CHAPERONED DEJEUNER 167 
 
 "Yes, yes, to you!" 
 
 Surrender ! What a troublesome word she was 
 using ! 
 
 The ehin went higher ; the lips came nearer. 
 
 "A complete surrender, sir." Quickly she 
 stepped back. If she had read his face rightly, 
 her face gave no hint of it, but she was at once 
 her former self. "And that I will never do," she 
 said, reverting to French. 
 
 It was Cartaret s turn to want to change the 
 subject. He did it awkwardly. 
 
 "Have you been in the Bois*?" he asked. 
 
 No, she had not been in the Bois. She loved 
 nature too well to care for artificial scenery. 
 
 "But the Bois is the sort of art that improves 
 on nature," he protested; "at least, so the Parisian 
 will tell you ; and, really, it is beautiful now. You 
 ought to see it. I was there last night." 
 
 "You go alone into the Bois in the night? Is 
 not that dangerous*?" 
 
 He could not tell whether she was mocking him. 
 He said :
 
 i68 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "It isn t dangerous in the afternoons, at any 
 rate. Let me take you there." 
 
 She hesitated. Chitta was clattering dishes in 
 the improvised kitchen. 
 
 "Perhaps," said the Lady. 
 
 Cartaret s heart bounded. 
 
 "Now?" he asked. > 
 
 The dishes clattered mightily. 
 
 "How prompt you are!" she laughed. "No, 
 not now. I have my lessons." 
 
 "To-morrow, then?" 
 
 "Perhaps," said the Lady of the Rose. "Per 
 haps " 
 
 Cartaret s face brightened. 
 
 "That is," explained his hostess, "if you will 
 not try to teach me English, sir."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE AND A FULL 
 HEART, IN THE COURSE OF WHICH THE AU 
 THOR BARELY ESCAPES TELLING A VERY OLD 
 STORY 
 
 C est etat bizarre de folie tendre qui fait que nous 
 n avons plus de pensee que pour des actes d adoration. 
 On devient veritablement un possede que hante une 
 femme, et rien n existe plus pour nous a cote d elle. 
 De Maupassant: Un Soir, 
 
 THE Lady s "perhaps" meant "yes," it seemed, 
 for, when Cartaret called for her the next day, 
 he found her ready to go to the Bois, and not the 
 Lady only: hovering severely in the immediate 
 background, like a thunder-cloud over a Spring 
 landscape, was Chitta, wrapped in a shawl of 
 marvelous lace, doubtless from her own country, 
 and crowned with a brilliant bonnet unmistakably 
 procured at some second-hand shop off the rue St. 
 Jacques. The Lady noticed his expression of be 
 wilderment and appeared a little annoyed by it. 
 
 169
 
 170 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Of course," she said, "Chitta accompanies us." 
 
 Cartaret had to submit. 
 
 "Certainly," said he. 
 
 He proposed a taxi-cab to the Bois he had 
 visited the Mont de Piete but the Lady would 
 not hear of it; she was used to walking; she was a 
 good walker; she liked to walk. 
 
 "But it s miles," Cartaret protested. 
 
 "It is nothing," said she. 
 
 Her utmost concession was to go by tram to 
 the Arc. 
 
 It was a beautiful day in the Bois, with half 
 of Paris there: carriages from the Faubourg St. 
 Germain, motors of the smart set, hired convey 
 ances full of tourists. The trees were a tender 
 green; the footways crowded by the Parisian 
 bourgeois, making a day of it with his family. 
 Slim officers walked, in black jackets and red 
 trousers, the calves of their legs compressed in 
 patent-leather riding-leggings ; women of the half- 
 world showed brilliant toilettes that had been 
 copied by ladies of the haut monde, who, driven 
 past, wore them not quite so well. Grotesquely
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 171 
 
 clipped French poodles rode in the carriages, and 
 Belgian police-dogs in the automobiles ; thin-nosed 
 collies frolicked after their masters; here and 
 there a tailless English sheep-dog waddled by, 
 or a Russian boar-hound paced sedately; children 
 played on the grass and dashed across the paths 
 with a suddenness that threatened the safety of 
 the adult pedestrians. 
 
 Cartaret led the way into the less frequented 
 portions of the great park beyond the Lac In- 
 ferieur. The Lady was pleasantly beside him, 
 Chitta unpleasantly at his heels. 
 
 "Don t you admit it s worth coming to see?" 
 he began in English. "When I was here, under 
 the stars, the other night " 
 
 "You must speak French," the Lady smilingly 
 interrupted. "You must remember my promise 
 to Chitta." 
 
 Cartaret ground his teeth. He spoke thereafter 
 in French, but he lowered his voice so as to 
 be sure that Chitta could not understand him. 
 
 "I was thinking then that you ought to see 
 it." He took his courage in both hands. "I was
 
 172 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 wishing very much that you were with me." His 
 brown eyes sought hers steadily. "May I tell 
 you all that I was wishing*?" 
 
 "Not now," she said. 
 
 Her tone was conventional enough, but in her 
 face he read and he was sure that she had meant 
 him to read a something deeper. 
 
 He put it to her flatly : "When?" 
 
 She was looking now at the fresh green leaves 
 above them. When she looked down, she was 
 etill smiling, but her smile was wistful. 
 
 "When dreams come true, perhaps," she said. 
 "Do dreams ever come true in the American 
 United States, monsieur*?" 
 
 The spell of the Spring was dangerously upon 
 them both. Cartaret s breath came quickly. 
 
 "I wish I wish that you were franker with 
 me," he said. 
 
 "But am I ever anything except frank 4 ?" 
 
 "You re I know I haven t any right to expect 
 your confidence : you scarcely know me. But why 
 won t you tell me even where you come from and 
 who you are*?"
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 173 
 
 "You know my name." 
 
 "I know a part of it." 
 
 "My little name is it is Vitoria." 
 
 <<V-i-t-t-o-r-i-a? he spelled. 
 
 "Yes, but with one % " the Lady said. 
 
 "Vitoria Urola," he repeated. 
 
 She raised her even brows. 
 
 "Oh, yes; of course," said she. 
 
 Somehow it struck him that its sound was 
 scarcely familiar to her: 
 
 "Do I pronounce it badly?" 
 
 "No, no: you are quite correct." 
 
 "But not quite to be trusted?" 
 
 She looked at him doubtfully. She looked at 
 Chitta and gave her a quick order that sent the 
 duenna reluctantly ahead of them. Then the 
 Lady put her gloved hand on Cartaret s arm. 
 
 "I want you to be my friend," she said. 
 
 "I am your friend," he protested: "that is what 
 I want you to believe. That is why I ask you 
 to be frank with me. I want you to tell me just 
 enough to let me help to let me protect you. If 
 you are in danger, I want "
 
 174 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "You might be my danger." 
 
 "I 1 ?" 
 
 She bowed assent. 
 
 "No, do not ask me why. I shall not tell you. 
 I shall never tell you no more," she smiled, "than 
 I shall ever say for you it s me. It is very kind 
 of you to want to be my friend. I am alone here 
 in Paris, except for poor Chitta, and I shall be 
 glad if you will be my friend; but it will not be 
 very easy." 
 
 "It would be hard to be anything else." 
 
 "Not for you : you are too curious. My friend 
 must let me be just what I am here. All that I 
 was before I came to Paris, all that I may be 
 after I leave it, he must ask nothing about." 
 
 Cartaret looked long into her eyes. 
 
 "All right," he said at last. "I am glad to have 
 that much. And thank you." 
 
 He stuck to his side- of their agreement; not 
 only during that afternoon in the Bois, but during 
 the days that followed. He worked hard. He 
 turned out one really good picture, and he turned 
 out many successful pot-boilers. He would not
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 175 
 
 impose these on Fourget, because old Fourget had 
 already been too kind to him; but Lepoittevin 
 wanted such stuff, and Cartaret let him have it. 
 
 Cartaret worked gladly now, because he was, 
 however little she might guess it, working for 
 Vitoria. He had left for himself precisely enough 
 to keep him alive, but every third or fourth day 
 he would have the happiness of slipping a little 
 silver into China s horny palm: Chitta came 
 readily to the habit of waiting for him on the 
 stair. He grew happier day by day, and looked 
 as who does not*? the better for it. He sought 
 out Seraphin and Varachon; he bought brandy 
 for Houdon ; went to hear Devignes sing, and once 
 he had Armand Gamier to luncheon. He re 
 warded the hurdy-gurdy so splendidly that it was 
 a nightly visitor to the rue du Val de Grace: the 
 entire street was whistling "Annie Laurie." 
 
 Seraphin guessed the truth. 
 
 "Ah, my friend," he nodded, "that foolish one, 
 Houdon, says that you have again decided to 
 spend of your income : J know that you are some 
 how making largess with your heart."
 
 176 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 Cartaret took frequent walks with Vitoria, 
 Chitta always two feet behind, never closer, but 
 never farther away. Often he saw the Lady to 
 her classes, more frequently they walked to the 
 He Saint Louis, or between the old houses of the 
 rue des Francs Bourgeois; to the Jardin des 
 Plantes, or into the Cours de Dragon or St. Ger 
 main des Pres: Chitta s unsophisticated mind 
 should have been improved by a thorough knowl 
 edge of picturesque Paris. 
 
 He was guilty of trying to elude the guardian 
 guilty of some rather shabby tricks in that di 
 rection and he suffered the more in conscience be 
 cause they were almost uniformly unsuccessful. 
 More than once, however, he reached a state of 
 exaltation in which he forgot Chitta, cared noth 
 ing about Chitta, and then he felt nearer Heaven. 
 
 On one such occasion he was actually nearer 
 than the site usually ascribed to the Celestial City. 
 With Vitoria and her guardian he had climbed 
 it was at his own malign suggestion to Mont- 
 martre and, since Chitta feared the funicular, had 
 toiled up the last steep ascent into Notre Dame de
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 177 
 
 Sacre Coeur. Chitta s piety or her exhaustion 
 kept her long upon her knees in that Byzantine 
 nave, and the Lady and Cartaret had a likely 
 flying-start up the stairs to the tower. Cartaret 
 possessed the wit to say nothing, but he noticed 
 that Vitoria s blue eyes shone with a light of ad 
 venture, which tacitly approved of the escapade, 
 and that her step was as quick as his own when 
 Chitta s slower step, heavy breathing and mut 
 tered imprecations became audible below them. 
 
 "I m sure the old girl will have to rest on the 
 way up, for all her spryness," thought Cartaret. 
 "If we can only hold this pace, we ought to have 
 five minutes alone on the ramparts." 
 
 They had quite five minutes and, no other sight 
 seers being about, they were quite alone. Below 
 them, under a faintly blue haze, Paris lay like 
 an outspread map, with here and there a church 
 steeple rising above the level of the page. The 
 roof of the Opera, the gilt dome of Napoleon s 
 tomb and the pointing finger of the Tour Eifel 
 were immediately individualized, but all the rest 
 of the city merged into a common maze about the
 
 178 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 curving Seine with the red sun setting beyond the 
 He de Puteaux. 
 
 Vitoria leaned on the rampart. She was pant 
 ing a little from her climb; her cheeks were flushed, 
 and her whole face glowing. 
 
 "It is as if we were gods on some star," she said, 
 "looking down upon a world that is strange to us." 
 
 She was speaking in English. Cartaret bent 
 closer. Pledges of mere friendship ceased, for the 
 moment, to appear of primary importance: he 
 .wanted, suddenly, to make the most of a little 
 time. 
 
 "Am I never to see you alone?" he asked. 
 
 She forsook the view of Paris to give him a 
 second s glance. There was something roguish 
 in it. 
 
 "Chitta," she said, "has not yet arrived." 
 
 He felt himself a poor hand at love-making. 
 Its language was upon his tongue perhaps the 
 slower now because he so much meant what he 
 wanted to say. His jaw set, the lines at his mouth 
 deepened. 
 
 "I ve never thought much," he blundered,
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 179 
 
 "about some of the things that most fellows think 
 a lot about. I mean I ve never at least not till 
 lately thought much about love and " he 
 choked on the word "and marriage; but " 
 
 She cut him short. Her speech was slow and 
 deliberate. Her eyes were on his, and in them 
 he saw something at once firm and sad. 
 
 "Nor I, my friend," she was saying: "it is a 
 subject that I am forbidden to think about." 
 
 If she conveyed a command, he disobeyed it. 
 
 "Then," he said, "I wish you d think about it 
 now." 
 
 "I am forbidden to think about it," she con 
 tinued, "and I do not think about it because I 
 shall not marry any one at least not any one that 
 -that I " 
 
 Her voice dropped into silence. She turned 
 from him to the sunset over the gray city. 
 
 Cartaret s exaltation left him more suddenly 
 than it had come. 
 
 "Any one that you care for?" he asked in a 
 lowered tone. 
 
 Still facing the city, she bowed assent.
 
 i8o THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "But, in Heaven s name, whom else should you 
 marry except somebody that you care for*?" 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 "Look here," urged Cartaret, "you you re not 
 engaged, are you"?" 
 
 She faced him then, still with that something 
 at once firm and sad in her fine eyes. 
 
 "No," she said; but he must have shown a lit 
 tle of the hope he found in that monosyllable, for 
 she went on: "Yet I shall never marry any one 
 that I care for. That is all that I may tell you 
 my friend" 
 
 As a hurrying tug puffs up to the liner that it is 
 to tow safely into port, Chitta puffed up to her 
 mistress. She met a Cartaret, could she have 
 guessed it, as hopeless as she wanted him to be. 
 
 He did his best to put from him all desire to 
 unravel the mystery, and for some days he was 
 again content to remain Vitoria s unquestioning 
 friend. She had told him that she could not marry 
 him : nothing could have been plainer. What more 
 could he gain by further enquiry *? Did she mean 
 that she loved somebody else whom she could not
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 181 
 
 marry*? Or did she mean that she loved, but 
 could not marry him ? Cartaret highly resolved 
 to take what good the gods provided: to remain 
 her friend ; to work on, in secret, for her comfort, 
 and to be as happy as he could in so much of her 
 companionship as she permitted him. He would 
 never tell her that he loved her. 
 
 And then, very early on an evening in May, 
 Destiny, who had been somnolent under the soft 
 influence of Spring, awoke and once more took a 
 hand in Cartaret s affairs and those of the Lady 
 of the Rose. 
 
 Cartaret had just returned from a mission to Le- 
 poittevin s shop and, having there disposed of a 
 particularly bad picture, had put money in his 
 purse: Chitta was waiting on the stairs and ac 
 cepted the bulk of his earnings with her usual bad 
 grace. He went into his studio, leaving the door 
 ajar. The cool breeze of the Spring twilight flut 
 tered the curtains ; it bore upward the laughter of 
 the concierge s children, playing at diavolo in the 
 garden ; it brought the fainter notes of the hurdy-
 
 i82 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 gurdy, grinding out its music somewhere farther 
 down the street. 
 
 Somebody was tapping at the door. 
 
 "Who is it?" he called. 
 
 "It s 7," came the answer, with the least per 
 ceptible pause before the pronoun. "May I come 
 in?" 
 
 "Do," he said, and rose. 
 
 Before he could reach the door, Vitoria had 
 entered, closing it carefully behind her. He could 
 see that she was in her student s blouse; tendrils 
 of her hair, slightly disarrayed, curled about the 
 nape of her white neck; her delicate nostrils were 
 extended and her manner strangely quiet. 
 
 "This is good of you," he gratefully began. "I 
 didn t expect " 
 
 "What is this that you have been doing?" 
 
 Her tone, though low, was hasty. Cartaret be- 
 wilderedly realized that she was angry. Before 
 he could reply, she had repeated her question : 
 
 "Sir, what is this that you have been doing?" 
 
 "I don t understand." He had drawn away
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 1 83 
 
 from her, his face unmistakably expressive of his 
 puzzled pain. 
 
 "You have been oh, that I should live to 
 
 say it ! you have been giving money to my maid." 
 
 He drew back farther now. He was detected; 
 he was ashamed. 
 
 "Yes," he confessed; "I thought You see, she 
 gave me to understand that you were were poor." 
 
 "None of my family has ever taken charity of 
 any man!" 
 
 "Charity ?" He did not dare to look at her, but 
 he knew just how high she was holding her head 
 and just how her eyes were flashing. "It wasn t 
 that. Believe me please believe me when I say 
 it wasn t that. It never struck me in that way." 
 He was on the point of telling her how he had 
 caught Chitta red-handed in a theft, and how this 
 had led to his enlightenment; but he realized in 
 time that such an explanation would only deepen 
 the wound that he had inflicted on the Lady s 
 pride. "I merely thought," he concluded, "that it 
 was one comrade one neighbor helping an 
 other."
 
 184 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "How much have you given that wretched 
 woman ?" 
 
 "I haven t the least idea." 
 
 "You must know!" She stamped her foot. 
 "Or are you, after all, one of those rich Americans 
 that do not have to count their money, and that 
 are proud of insulting the people of older and 
 poorer countries by flinging it at them*?" 
 
 It was a bitter thing to say. He received it 
 with head still bent, and his answer was scarcely 
 a whisper : 
 
 "I am not quite rich." 
 
 "Then count. Recollect yourself, sir, and 
 count. Tell me, and you shall be repaid. Within 
 three days you shall be repaid." 
 
 It never occurred to him further to humiliate 
 her by seeking sympathy through a reference to his 
 own poverty. He looked up. In her clenched 
 hands and parted lips, in her hot eyes and face, he 
 saw the tokens of the blow that he had dealt her. 
 He came toward her with outstretched hands, pe 
 titioning. 
 
 "Can t you guess why I did this?" he asked her.
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 1 85 
 
 His amazement, even his sorrow, left him. In 
 their place was only the sublimation of a worthy 
 tenderness, the masterfulness of a firm resolve. 
 His face was tense. "Listen," he said: "I don t 
 want you to answer me; I wouldn t say this if I 
 were going to allow you to make any reply. I 
 don t want pity; I don t deserve it. Anything else 
 I wouldn t ask, because I don t deserve anything 
 else, either, and don t hope for it. I just want to 
 make my action clear to you. Perhaps I should 
 have done for any neighbor what I did for what 
 little I have been doing; I trust so; I don t know. 
 But the reason I did it in this case was a reason 
 that I ve never had in all my life before. Remem 
 ber, I m hopeless and I shan t let you reply to 
 me: I did this because" his unswerving glance 
 was on hers now "because I love you." 
 
 But she did reply. At first she seemed unable 
 to credit him, but then her face became scarlet 
 and her eyes blazed. 
 
 "Love me! And you do this 4 ? Yes, sir, insult 
 me by contributing and through my servant to 
 my support ! If I had not come back unexpectedly
 
 i86 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 but now and found her counting more silver than 
 I knew she could by right possess if I had not 
 frightened her into a confession it might have 
 gone on for months." The Lady stopped abrupt 
 ly. "How long has it been going on?" 
 
 "I tell you that I have no idea." 
 
 "But once, sir, was enough! You insult me 
 with your money, and when I ask you why you 
 do it, you answer that you love me. Love !" 
 
 She uttered the concluding word with an in 
 tensity of scorn that lashed him. She turned to 
 go, but, as on the occasion of their first meeting, 
 he stepped forward and barred the way. 
 
 "You have no right to put that construction on 
 what I say. Our points of view are different." 
 
 "Yes thank the Holy Saints they are dif 
 ferent!" 
 
 "I shall try to understand yours ; I beg you to 
 try to understand mine." 
 
 Their eyes met again. In his it was impossible 
 for her not to read the truth. Slowly she lowered 
 hers. 
 
 "In my country," she said, more softly now, but
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 187 
 
 still proudly, "love is another sort of thing. In 
 my country I should have said : If you respect me, 
 sir, you perhaps love me ; if you do not respect me, 
 it is out of the question that you should love me. 
 "Respect you?" This was a challenge to his 
 love that he could not leave unanswered. His 
 voice rose fresh and clear. He was no longer un 
 der the necessity of seeking words : they leaped, liv 
 ing, to his lips. "Respect you"? Good God, I ve 
 been worshiping the very thought of you from 
 the first glimpse of you I ever had. This miserable 
 room has been a holy place to me because you 
 have twice been in it. It s been a holy place, 
 because, from the moment I first found you here, 
 it has been a place where I dreamed of you. Night 
 and day I ve dreamed of you ; and yet have I ever 
 once knowingly done you any harm, trespassed or 
 presumed on your kindness? I ve seen no pure 
 morning without thinking of you, no beautiful 
 sunset without remembering you; you ve been the 
 harmony of every bar of music, of every bird- 
 song, that I ve heard. When you were gone, the 
 world was empty for me; when I was with you,
 
 i88 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 all the rest of the world was nothing, and less 
 than nothing. Respect you? Why, I should have 
 cut off my right hand before I let you even guess 
 what you ve discovered to-day !" 
 
 As he spoke, her whole attitude altered. Her 
 hands were still clenched at her sides, but clenched 
 now in another emotion. 
 
 "Is is this true?" she asked. Her voice was 
 very low. 
 
 "It is true," he answered. 
 
 "And yet" she seemed to be not so much ad 
 dressing him as trying to quiet an accuser in her 
 own heart "I never spoke one word that could 
 give you any hope." 
 
 "Not one," he gravely assented. "I never 
 asked for hope; I don t expect it now." 
 
 "And it is it is really true?" she murmured. 
 
 Again he spoke in answer to what she seemed 
 rather to address to her own heart : 
 
 "Because you found out what I d done, I wanted 
 you to know why I d done it and no more. If 
 you hadn t found out about Chitta, I would never 
 have told you this."
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 189 
 
 She tried to smile, but something caught the 
 smile and broke it. With a sudden movement, 
 she raised her white hands to her burning face. 
 
 "Oh," she whispered, "why did you tell me? 
 Why?" 
 
 "Because you accused me, because " He 
 
 could not stand there and see her suffer. "I ve 
 been a brute," he said; "I ve been a bungling 
 brute." 
 
 "No, no!" She refused to hear him. 
 
 He drew her hands from before her face and re 
 vealed it, the underlip indrawn, the blue eyes 
 swimming in hushed tears, all humbled in a wist 
 ful appeal. 
 
 "A brute!" he repeated. 
 
 "No, you are not!" Her fingers closed on his. 
 "You are splendid; you are fine; you are all that 
 I that I ever " 
 
 "Vitoria!" 
 
 Out in the rue du Val de Grace that rattletrap 
 French hurdy-gurdy struck up "Annie Laurie." 
 It played badly ; its time was uncertain and its con 
 ception of the tune was questionable ; yet Cartaret
 
 190 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 thought that, save for her voice, he had never 
 heard diviner melody. She was looking up at him, 
 her hands clasped in his over his pounding heart, 
 her eyes like altar-fires, her lips sacrosanct, and, 
 wreathing her upturned face, seeming to float 
 upon the twilight, hovered, fresh from sunlit 
 mountain-crests of virgin snow, the subtle and 
 haunting perfume that was like a poem in a tongue 
 unknown : the perfume of the Azure Rose. 
 
 "Vitoria!" he began again. "You don t mean 
 that you that you " 
 
 She interrupted him with a sharp cry. She 
 freed her hands. She went by him to the door. 
 
 Her voice, as she paused there, was broken, but 
 brave : 
 
 "You do not understand. How could you? 
 And I cannot tell you. Only only it must be 
 Good-by. Often I have wondered how Love 
 would come to me, and whether he would come 
 singing, as he comes to most, or with a sword, 
 as he comes to some." She opened the door and 
 stepped across the threshold. She was closing it
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF AN EMPTY PURSE 191 
 
 upon herself when she spoke, but she held it open 
 and kept her eyes on Cartaret until she ended. "I 
 know now, my beloved: he has come with a 
 sword."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 TELLS HOW CARTARET S FORTUNE TURNED TWICE 
 IN A FEW HOURS AND HOW HE FOUND ONE 
 THING AND LOST ANOTHER 
 
 A man is rich in proportion to the things he can 
 afford to let alone. Thoreau: Walden. 
 
 A GREAT deal has been said, to not much pur 
 pose, about the vagaries of the feminine heart; 
 but its masculine counterpart is equally mysteri 
 ous. The seat of Charlie Cartaret s emotions 
 furnishes a case in point. 
 
 Cartaret had resolved never to tell Vitoria that 
 he loved her, and he told her. Similarly, when 
 he told her, he sought to make it clear to her, quite 
 sincerely, that he nursed no hope of winning her 
 for his wife, and, now that she was gone, hope 
 took possession of his breast and brought with it 
 determination. Why not*? Had she not amaz 
 ingly confessed her love for him ? That left him, 
 
 192
 
 CARTARET S FORTUNE TURNED 193 
 
 as he saw it, no reason for abnegation; it made 
 sacrifice wrong for them both. The secret dif 
 ficulty at which she hinted became something that 
 it was now as much his duty, as it was his highest 
 desire, to remove. For the rest, though he could 
 now no more than previously consider offering her 
 a union with a man condemned to a lifelong 
 poverty, there remained for him no task save the 
 simple one of acquiring affluence. What could 
 seem easier for a young man in love? 
 
 The more he thought about it, the more obvious 
 his course became. During all his boyhood, art 
 had been his single passion; during all his resi 
 dence in Paris he had flung the best that was in 
 him upon the altar of his artistic ambition; but 
 now, without a single pang of regret, he resolved 
 to give up art forever. He would see Vitoria on 
 the morrow and come to a practical understand 
 ing with her: was he not always a practical man"? 
 Then he would reopen negotiation with his uncle 
 and ask for a place in the elder Cartaret s business. 
 Perhaps it would not even be necessary for him 
 to return to America : he had the brilliant idea that
 
 194 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 his uncle s business which was to say, the great 
 monopoly of which his uncle s holdings were a 
 small part had never been properly "pushed" 
 in France, and that Charles Cartaret was the man 
 of all men to push it. The mystery that dear 
 Vitoria made of some private obstacle ? That, of 
 course, was but the exaggeration of a sensitive 
 girl ; it was the long effect of some parental com 
 mand or childish vow. He had only to wrest 
 from her the statement of it in order to prove it so. 
 It was some unpractical fancy wholly beneath the 
 regard of a practical, and now wholly assured, 
 man of affairs. 
 
 By way of beginning a conservative business- 
 career, Charlie went to the front window and, as 
 he had done one day not long since, emptied his 
 pockets for the delight of the hurdy-gurdy grinder. 
 Then, singing under his breath, and inwardly 
 blessing every pair of lovers that he passed, he 
 went out for a long walk in the twilight. 
 
 He walked along the Quai D Orsay, beside 
 which the crowded little passenger-steamers were 
 tearing the silver waters of the Seine ; crossed the
 
 CARTARET S FORTUNE TURNED 195 
 
 white Pont de PAlma; struck through the Tro- 
 cadero gardens, and so, by the rue de Passy and 
 the shaded Avenue Ingrez, came to the railway 
 bridge, crossed it and strolled along the Allee des 
 Fortifications. He walked until the night over 
 took him, and only then turned back through 
 Auteuil and over the Pont Crenelle toward home. 
 
 Alike in the perfumed shadows beneath the 
 trees and under the yellow lamps of the Boulevard 
 de Mont Parnasse, he walked upon the clouds of 
 resolution. The city that has in her tender keep 
 ing the dust of many lovers, cradled him and 
 drew him forward. Her soft breath fanned his 
 cheek, her sweet voice whispered in his ears : 
 
 "Trust me and obey me ! Did I not know and 
 shelter Gabrielle d Estrees and her royal suitor 1 ? 
 Have I not had a care for DeMusset and for 
 Heine ? In that walled garden over there, Balzac 
 dreamed of Mme. Hanska. Along this street 
 Chopin wandered with George Sand." 
 
 That whisper followed him to his room, still 
 thrilling with Vitoria s visit. It charmed him 
 into a wonderful sense of her nearness, into a
 
 196 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 belief that he was keeping ward over her as long 
 as he sat by his windows and watched the stars 
 go down and the pink dawn climb the eastern 
 sky. It lulled him at last to sleep with his head 
 upon his arms and his arms upon the mottled 
 table. 
 
 He overslept. It must have been nearly noon 
 when he woke, and then he was wakened only by 
 a pounding at the door of his room. Fat Mme. 
 Ref rogne had brought him a cable-message. When 
 she had gone, he opened it, surprised at once by its 
 extravagant length. It was from Cora; a modern 
 miracle had happened : there was oil in the black 
 keeping of the plot of ground that only senti 
 ment had so long bade them retain in the little 
 Ohio town. Cartaret was rich. . . . 
 
 When the first force of the shock was over, 
 when he could realize, in some small measure, what 
 that message meant to him, Cartaret s earliest 
 thought was of the Lady of the Rose. Holding 
 the bit of paper as tightly as if it were itself his 
 riches and wanted to fly away on the wings that
 
 CARTARET S FORTUNE TURNED 197 
 
 had brought it, he staggered, like a drunken man, 
 to the door of the Room Opposite. 
 
 He knocked, but received no answer. A clock 
 struck mid-day. Vitoria had probably gone to 
 her class, and Chitta to her marketing. 
 
 A mad impulse to spread the good news pos 
 sessed him. It was as if telling the news were 
 recording a deed that there was only a brief time 
 to record : he must do it at once in order to secure 
 title. He knew that his friends, if they were in 
 funds, would soon be gathered at the Cafe Des 
 Deux Colombes. 
 
 When he passed the rue St. Andre Des Arts, he 
 remembered Fourget. Cartaret was ashamed that 
 his memory had been so tardy. Fourget had 
 helped him in his heavy need; Fourget should be 
 the first to know of his affluence. . . . 
 
 The old dealer, his bushy brows drawn tight to 
 gether, his spectacles gleaming, was trying to say 
 "No" to a lad with a picture under his arm a 
 crestfallen lad that was a stranger to Cataret. 
 
 "Let me see the picture," said Cartaret, with-
 
 198 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 out further preface. He put out a ready hand. 
 
 The boy blushed. Cartaret had been abrupt and 
 did not present the appearance of a possible pur 
 chaser. 
 
 "If you please," urged Cartaret. "I may care 
 to buy." 
 
 Fourget gaped. The boy turned up his can 
 vas an execrable daub. 
 
 "I ll buy that," said Cartaret. 
 
 "Are you mad 1 ?" asked Fourget. 
 
 "Bring back that picture to M. Fourget in half 
 an hour," pursued the heedless American, "and he 
 will give you for it two hundred francs that he 
 will have lent me and that I shall have left with 
 him." 
 
 He pushed the stammering lad out of the shop 
 and turned to Fourget. 
 
 "Are you drunk*?" asked the dealer, changing 
 the form of his suspicions. 
 
 "Fourget," cried Cartaret, clapping his friend 
 on the back, "I shall never be hungry again never 
 never never! Look at that." He produced 
 the precious cable-message. "That piece of pa-
 
 CARTARET S FORTUNE TURNED 199 
 
 per will feed me all my life long. It will buy me 
 houses, horses, motors, steamship-tickets. It looks 
 like paper, Fourget." He spread it under Four- 
 get s nose. "But it isn t; it s a dozen suits of 
 clothes a year; it s a watch-and-chain, a diamond 
 scarf-pin (if I d wear one!); it s a yacht. It s 
 an oil-well, Fourget and a godsend !" 
 
 Fourget took it in his blue-veined hands. His 
 hands trembled. 
 
 "Oh, I forgot," said Cartaret. "It is in English. 
 Let me translate." He translated. 
 
 When Charlie looked up from his reading, he 
 found Fourget busily engaged in polishing his 
 spectacles. Perhaps the old man s eyes were weak 
 and could not bear to be without their glasses: 
 they certainly were moist. 
 
 "I do not see so well as I once saw," the dealer 
 was explaining: his voice was very gruff indeed. 
 "You are wholly certain that this is no trick which 
 one plays upon you*?" 
 
 Cartaret was wholly certain. 
 
 Fourget made a valiant attempt at expressing 
 his congratulations in a mere Anglo-Saxon hand-
 
 200 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 shake. He found it quite inadequate, and this 
 annoyed him. 
 
 "The world," he growled, "loses a possibly fair 
 artist and gets an idle millionaire." 
 
 "You get a new shop," vowed Cartaret. "Don t 
 shake your head ! I ll make it a business proposi 
 tion: I ve had enough trouble by being suspected 
 of chanty. I m going to buy an interest, and I 
 shan t want my money sunk in anything dark 
 and unsanitary." 
 
 Fourget shook his gray head again. 
 
 "Thank you with all my heart, my friend," he 
 said; "but no. This little shop meets my little 
 needs and will last out my little remaining days. 
 I would not leave it for the largest establishment 
 on the boulevards." 
 
 They talked until Cartaret again bethought him 
 of the cafe in the rue Jacob. 
 
 "But you will lend me the two hundred francs," 
 he asked, "and give it to that boy for his picture*?" 
 How much a boy that boy seemed now: he was 
 just the boy that Cartaret had been in the long 
 ago time that was yesterday!
 
 CARTARET S FORTUNE TURNED 201 
 
 "Since you insist; but truly, my dear monsieur, 
 myself I was about to weaken and purchase the 
 terrible thing when you interrupted and saved 
 me." . . . 
 
 The money from Seraphin s latest magnum opus 
 not being yet exhausted, Seraphin s friends were 
 lunching at the Cafe Des Deux Colombes, with 
 little Pasbeaucoup fluttering between them and 
 the kitchen, and Madame, expressionless under 
 her mountain of hair, stuffed into the wire cage 
 and bulging out of it. The company rose when 
 they espied Cartaret, the cadaverous poet Gamier 
 picking up his plate of roast chicken so as not to 
 lose, in his welcoming, time that might be given 
 to eating. 
 
 Cartaret felt at first somewhat ashamed before 
 them. He felt the contrast between his changed 
 fortunes and their fortunes unchanged. At last, 
 however, the truth escaped him, and then he felt 
 more ashamed than ever, so unenvious were the 
 congratulations that they poured upon him. 
 
 Devigne s round belly shook with delight. 
 Gamier even stopped eating.
 
 202 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Now you may have the leisure for serious 
 work, which," squeaked Varachon through his 
 broken nose, "your art has so badly needed." 
 
 Seraphin said nothing, but put his hand on 
 Cartaret s shoulder and gripped it hard. 
 
 Houdon embraced the fortunate one. 
 
 "Did I not always tell you*?" he demanded of 
 Seraphin. "Did I not say he was a disguised 
 millionaire*?" 
 
 "But he has but now got his money," Seraphin 
 protested. 
 
 "Poof!" said Houdon, dismissing the argument 
 with a trill upon his invisible piano. "La-la-la !" 
 
 "Without doubt to mark the event you will 
 give a dinner?" suggested Gamier. 
 
 "Without doubt," said Houdon. 
 
 Cartaret said that he would give a dinner that 
 very evening if Pasbeaucoup would strain the 
 Median laws of the establishment so far as to 
 trust him for a few days, and Pasbeaucoup, re 
 ceiving the necessary nod from Madame, said that 
 they would be but too happy to trust M. Car-
 
 CARTARET S FORTUNE TURNED 203 
 
 tarette for any sum and for any length of time 
 that he might choose to name. 
 
 So Cartaret left them for a few hours and went 
 back to his room at the earliest possible moment 
 for finding Vitoria returned from her class. This 
 time he not only knocked: he tried, in his haste, 
 the knob of the door, and the door, swinging open, 
 revealed an empty room, stripped of even its 
 furniture. 
 
 He nearly fell downstairs to the cave of 
 Refrogne. 
 
 "Where are they*?" he demanded. 
 
 Had monsieur again been missing strawberries? 
 Where were what? 
 
 "Where is Mile. Urola where are the occu 
 pants of the room across from mine?" Cartaret s 
 frenzied tones implied that he would hold the 
 concierge personally responsible for whatever 
 might have happened to his neighbors. 
 
 "Likely they are occupying some other room by 
 this time," growled Refrogne. "I was unaware 
 that they were such great friends of monsieur." 
 
 They are. Where are they?"
 
 204 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "In that case, they must have told monsieur of 
 their contemplated departure." 
 
 "Do you mean they ve moved to another room 
 in this house?" 
 
 "But no." 
 
 "Then where. have they gone*?" 
 
 They had gone away. They had paid their 
 bill honestly, even the rent for the unconsumed 
 portion of the month, and gone away. That was 
 all it was an honest concierge s business to know. 
 
 "When did they go 1 ?" 
 
 "Early this morning." 
 
 "Didn t they leave any address*?" 
 
 "None. Why should they? Mademoiselle 
 never received letters." 
 
 Cartaret could bear no more. Even the man 
 that hauled away the furniture had only taken it 
 to the shop from which it had been leased. 
 Refrogne had seen the two women get into a cab 
 with their scanty luggage and had heard them or 
 der themselves driven to the Gare d Orsay. That 
 was the end of the trail. . . .
 
 CARTARET S FORTUNE TURNED 205 
 
 Cartaret climbed to his own room. Thrust 
 under the door, where he had missed it in the rush 
 of his hopeful exit that morning, was an envelope. 
 It did not hold the expected note of explanation. 
 It held only a pressed rose, yellow now, and dry 
 and odorless.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 NARRATING HOW CARTARET BEGAN HIS QUEST OF 
 THE ROSE 
 
 The power of herbs can other harms remove, 
 And find a cure for every ill, but love. 
 
 Gray: Elegy. I. 
 
 FOR a great while Cartaret remained as a man 
 stunned. It was only very slowly that there 
 came to him the full realization of his loss, and 
 then it came with all the agony with which a re 
 turn to life is said to come to one narrowly saved 
 from death by drowning. 
 
 Blindly his brain bashed itself against the 
 mysterious wall of Vitoria s flight. Why had she 
 gone? Where had she gone? Why had she left 
 no word? A thousand times that day these un 
 answerable questions whirled through his dizzy 
 consciousness. Had he offended her? He had 
 
 explained his one offense, and she had given no 
 
 206
 
 THE QUEST OF THE ROSE 207 
 
 sign of having taken any other hurt. Was she in 
 deed a revolutionist from some strange country, 
 summoned away, without a moment s warning, 
 by the inner council of her party"? Revolutionist 
 conspirators did not go to art-classes and do not 
 walk only under the chaperonage of an ancient 
 duenna. Was she, then, that claimant to power 
 that he had once imagined her, now gone to seize 
 her rights ? Things of that sort did not, Cartaret 
 knew, occur in these prosy days. Then why had 
 she gone, and where, and why had she left no 
 word for him*? Again these dreary questions 
 began their circle. 
 
 Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had 
 thought that money would resolve all his troubles. 
 Money ! Fervently he wished himself poor again 
 poor again, as yesterday, with Her across the 
 landing in the Room Opposite. 
 
 Somehow, he did not forget his friends and the 
 dinner he had promised them. He went to the 
 Deux Colombes and ordered the dinner. 
 
 "Say to them, Pasbeaucoup," he gave instruc 
 tions, "that I am indisposed and shall not be able
 
 208 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 to dine with them. Say that we shall all dine to 
 gether some other night very soon I hope. Say 
 that I am sorry." 
 
 He was bitter now against all the world. 
 "What will they care, as long as they have the 
 dinner*?" he reflected. 
 
 Pasbeaucoup cared. He expressed great con 
 cern for monsieur s health. 
 
 "That," thought Cartaret, "is because I m rich. 
 A month or two ago and they wouldn t trust me: 
 they d have let me starve." 
 
 He went back to his desolate room and to his 
 dreary questioning. He was there, with his head 
 in his hands, when Seraphin found him. 
 
 Seraphin s suit was still new, and it was evident 
 that he had dressed carefully his twin wisps of 
 whisker in honor of Cartaret s celebration. The 
 Frenchman s face was grave. 
 
 "Why aren t you dining?" sneered Cartaret. 
 
 Seraphin passed by the sneer. 
 
 "They told me that you were ill," he said, 
 simply. 
 
 "And you came to see if it was true?"
 
 THE QUEST OF THE ROSE 209 
 
 "I came to see if I could be of any assistance." 
 
 ("Ah," ran Cartaret s unjust thoughts, "it s very 
 evident you re rich now, Charlie!") 
 
 "Nobody else came with you," he said. 
 
 Seraphin hesitated. He twirled his soft hat in 
 his hands. 
 
 "They thought all but Houdon, who still per 
 sists that you have been rich always they thought 
 that, now that you were rich, you might prefer 
 other society." 
 
 "You didn t think it?" 
 
 "I did not." 
 
 It was said so frankly that even Cartaret s pres 
 ent mood could not resist its sincerity. Charlie 
 frowned and put both his hands on Seraphin s 
 shoulders. 
 
 "Dieudonne," he said, "I m in trouble." 
 
 "I feared it." 
 
 "Not money-trouble." 
 
 "I feared that it was not money-trouble." 
 
 "You understood? 
 
 "I guessed. You have been so happy of late, 
 while you were so poor, that to absent yourself
 
 210 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 from this gayety when you were rich -" An ex 
 pressive gesture finished the sentence. "Besides," 
 added Seraphin, "one cannot be happy long, and 
 when you told me that you had money, I feared 
 that you would lose something else." 
 
 Cartaret wrung the hand of his friend. 
 
 "Go back," he said. "Go back and tell them 
 that it s not pride. Tell them it s illness. I am 
 ill. It was good of you to come here, but there s 
 nothing you can do just now. To-morrow, or 
 next day, perhaps I can talk to you about it. 
 Perhaps. But not now. I couldn t talk to any 
 one now. Good-night." 
 
 He sat down again sat silent for many hours 
 after he had heard Seraphin s footsteps die away 
 down the stairs. He heard the hurdy-gurdy and 
 thought that he could not bear it. He heard the 
 other lodgers return. He heard the strange sounds 
 the creaking boards, the complaining stairway, 
 the whispering of curtains which are the night- 
 sounds of every house. In the ear of his mind, 
 he heard the voices of his distant guests:
 
 THE QUEST OF THE ROSE 211 
 
 "What woman s lips compare to this: 
 This sturdy seidel s frothy kiss? " 
 
 Because he grew afraid of the ghosts of doubt 
 that haunt the darkness, he lighted his lamp; 
 but for a long time the ghosts remained. 
 
 This was the very room in which he had told 
 her that he loved her; this desert place was once 
 the garden in which he had said that little of 
 what was so much. She had stood by that table 
 (so shabby now !) and made it a wonderful thing. 
 She had touched that curtain ; her fingers, at part 
 ing, had held that rattling handle of the shattered 
 door. He half thought that the door might open 
 and reveal her, even now. Memory joined hands 
 with love to make her poignantly present. Her 
 lightest word, her least action: his mind retained 
 them and rehearsed them every one. The music 
 of her laughtej, the melody of her grace, wove 
 spells in the lamplit room; but they ceased as 
 she had ceased ; they left the song unfinished, they 
 Stopped in the middle of a bar. 
 
 He wondered whether it must always remain 
 unfinished, this allegro of love in what, without it,
 
 212 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 would be the dull biographic symphony of his 
 life; whether he would grow to be an old man 
 with no memories but broken memories to warm 
 his heart; and whether even this memory would 
 become as the mere memory of a beautiful por 
 trait seen in youth, a Ghirlandaio s or a Guido 
 Reni s work, some other man s vision, a part of 
 the whole world s rich heritage, a portion of the 
 eternal riddle of existence. 
 
 "So short a time ago," crooned the ghosts 
 "and doubtless she has already forgotten you. 
 You have but touched her hands : how could you 
 hope that you had touched her heart 4 ? She will 
 be happy, though she knows that you are un 
 happy; glad, though you are desolate. You gave 
 her your dreams to keep, your hopes, your faith 
 in love and womankind : and this is what she did 
 with them! They are withered like that rose." 
 
 He had put the yellow thing against his heart, 
 where once he had put it when it was fresh and 
 pure. He drew it out now and looked at it. What 
 did it mean that message of the rose 4 ? That, 
 as she had once treasured the flower, so now she
 
 THE QUEST OF THE ROSE 213 
 
 would treasure in its place her memory of kirn? 
 
 "It means," chanted the ghosts, "that her 
 friendship is as dead as this dry flower!" 
 
 Did it? He would make one trial more. 
 
 Vivid as was her face in his mind, he brought 
 to the lamp his pictures of her. She had liked 
 those pictures; in spite of herself, she had shown 
 him that she liked them 
 
 (The ghosts were crooning: 
 
 "Though you had the brush of Diego Velasquez, 
 she would not heed you now!") 
 
 Had he painted her he had tried to as she 
 should have been? Or had he painted her as she 
 really was? 
 
 He searched the pictures. Her eyes seemed to 
 look at him with a long farewell in their blue- 
 black depths, the parted lips to tremble on a sob. 
 A light was born in the canvas the reflected light 
 of his own high faith revived. Whatever separated 
 them, it was by no will of hers. No, there was 
 no ghost in all the fields of night that he would 
 listen to again" : in that pictured face there was as 
 much of pride as there was of beauty, but there
 
 214 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 was nothing of either cruelty or deceit. Yes, he 
 had only touched her hand, but certainly hand had 
 never yet touched hand as his touched hers. He 
 was sure of it and sure of her. A short acquaintance 
 it had been long enough to prove her. A few 
 broken words in the twilight they were volumes. 
 The merest breath of feeling it would last them 
 to their graves. 
 
 He would move earth and Heaven to find 
 Vitoria: the wine of that resolution rang in his 
 ears and fired his heart. The sun, coming up 
 over the Pantheon in a glory of red and gold, sent 
 into Cartaret s room a shining messenger of royal 
 encouragement before whose sword the ghosts 
 forever fled. The lover was almost gay again: 
 here was new service for her; here, for him, was 
 work, the best surcease of sorrow. He felt like 
 an athlete trained to the minute and crouching 
 for the starter s pistol-shot. He believed in 
 Vitoria ! He believed in her, and so he could not 
 doubt his own ability to discover her in the face 
 of all hardships and to win her against all odds;
 
 THE QUEST OF THE ROSE 215 
 
 he believed in her and in himself, and so he could 
 not doubt God. 
 
 He understood something of the difficulties that 
 presented themselves. He knew scarcely anything 
 of the woman whom he sought; his only clews 
 were her name and the name of the rose ; he must 
 first find to what country those names belonged, 
 and to find that country he might have to seek 
 through all the world. He could not ask help of 
 the police; he would not summon to his assistance 
 those vile rats who call themselves private-detec 
 tives. It was a task for himself alone; it was a 
 task that must occupy his every working-hour ; but 
 it was a task that he would accomplish. 
 
 A second cable-message interrupted him at his 
 ablutions. It was from his uncle, and it read : 
 
 "Cora wires me received no reply from you. Do you 
 accept trust s offer stated in her cable? Advise you say 
 yes. Better come home and attend to business." 
 
 This brought Cartaret to the realization that 
 he was in a paradoxical position : he was a penni 
 less millionaire. He went to Fourget s and bor-
 
 216 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 rowed some money. Thence he went to the cable- 
 office in the Avenue de 1 Opera. There had been, 
 he now recalled, an offer a really dazzling offer 
 mentioned in his sister s message; but more 
 practical matters had driven it from his mind. He 
 therefore sent his uncle this: 
 
 "I accept trust s offer. Advise Cora to agree. Don t 
 worry: New York s not the only place for business. 
 There s business in Paris lots of it." 
 
 His uncle had been very annoying: Charlie 
 should have been at work at the Bibliotheque Na- 
 tionale a full half-hour ago. He had resolved 
 to begin with the floral clew. 
 
 He went there immediately and asked what 
 books they had about flowers; they told him that 
 they had many thousand. Cartaret narrowed his 
 field ; he said what he wanted was a book on roses, 
 and he was told that he might choose any of 
 hundreds that were at hand. In despair, he or 
 dered brought to him any one that began with an 
 "A" ; he would work through the alphabet. 
 
 By closing-time he had reached "Ac." He
 
 THE QUEST OF THE ROSE 217 
 
 hurried out into the fresh breeze that blew down 
 through the public square and the narrow rue 
 Colbert, and so cut across to the cable-office. 
 
 He wanted to send a message mentioning a lit 
 tle matter he had forgotten that morning. As it 
 happened, the operator had just received a mes 
 sage for Charlie. It was again from his uncle, 
 and said that the sale would be consummated 
 early next day. There was about it a brevity 
 more severe than even cables require: the elder 
 Cartaret patently disapproved of the communica 
 tion that his nephew had sent him. Still, the 
 sale seemed to be assured, and that was the main 
 thing, so Charlie put the word "Five" in place 
 of the word "One" in the message he was draft 
 ing, and sent it off: 
 
 **Cable me five thousand." 
 
 He interrupted his library-researches the next 
 day to make a sporadic raid upon florist-shops 
 along the boulevards, but found no florist that 
 had ever heard of the Azure Rose.
 
 218 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 The answer to his latest cable-message came 
 the next day at noon. He had resumed his search 
 at the Bibliotheque and instructed the cable-clerk 
 to hold all messages until he should call for them. 
 He called for this at lunch-time : 
 
 "Sale completed, thanks to power-of -attorney you left 
 me when sailing. Do you mean dollars?" 
 
 Cartaret groaned at this procrastination. 
 "And my uncle brags of his American hustle !" 
 he cried. 
 
 He filed his reply: 
 
 "Of course I meant dollars. What did you suppose 
 I meant? Francs? Pounds sterling? I mean dollars. 
 Hurry !" 
 
 "Be sure to put in the punctuation marks," he 
 admonished the pretty clerk. 
 
 He dashed back to the library. During the 
 next hundred and twenty hours, he divided his 
 time between botanical researches and one side 
 of the following cable-conversation: 
 
 "Come home."
 
 THE QUEST OF THE ROSE 219 
 
 "Can t." 
 
 "Why? 
 
 "Busy." 
 
 "How? 
 
 "Botanizing. But if you don t send me im 
 mediately that little bit of all that belongs to me, 
 I ll knock off work to find out the reason why." 
 
 The money arrived just as his credit in short- 
 credit Paris was everywhere close to the breaking- 
 point, and just as he gave up hope of ever finding 
 what he wanted at the great library, where he had 
 driven every sub and deputy librarian to the brink 
 of insanity. Money, however, brings resourceful 
 ness: Cartaret then remembered the Jardin des 
 Plantes, where he had once been with Vitoria. 
 
 No official knew anything about the Azure 
 Rose, but an old gardener (Cartaret was trying 
 them all) gave him hope. He was a little Gascon, 
 that gardener, with white hair and blue eyes, and 
 his long labor had bent him forward, as if the 
 earth in which he worked had one day laid hold of 
 his shoulders and never since let go. 
 
 "I had a brother once who was a faineant and
 
 220 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 so a great traveler. He spoke of such a rose," the 
 Gascon nodded; "but I cannot remember what 
 it was that he told me." 
 
 "Here are five francs to help you remember," 
 said Cartaret. 
 
 The old man took the money and thanked him. 
 
 "But I cannot remember what my brother told 
 me," he said, "except that the rose was found 
 nowhere but in the Basque provinces of Spain.". . . 
 
 A half-hour later Cartaret had bought his travel 
 ing-kit, which included a forty-five caliber auto 
 matic revolver. Forty minutes later he had paid 
 Refrogne ten months rent in advance, together 
 with a twenty-five franc tip, and directed that his 
 room be held against his return. An hour later he 
 was sheepishly handing Seraphin a bulky package, 
 evidently containing certain canvases, and saying 
 to him : 
 
 "These are something I wouldn t leave about 
 and couldn t bring myself to store, and you re 
 well, I think you ll understand." 
 
 At twelve o clock that night, from an opened 
 window in his compartment of a sleeping-car on
 
 THE QUEST OF THE ROSE 221 
 
 a southward-speeding train de luxe, Cartaret was 
 looking up at the yellow stars somewhere about 
 Tours. 
 
 "Good-night, Vitoria!" he was whispering. 
 Good-night, and God keep you!" 
 
 He was a very practical man.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FURTHER ADVENTURES OF AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 
 
 The happiness of the good old times is a mere dream 
 in every age; but to keep on the laws of the old times, 
 in preserving to reform, in reforming to preserve, is 
 the true life of a free people. 
 
 Freeman : The Norman Conquest. 
 
 "VITORIA," explained the guard, whom Car- 
 taret inveigled into conversation next morning, 
 "is the capital of the province of Alava." 
 
 "Eh"?" said Cartaret. "Then there s more than 
 one Vitoria, my friend. If I d only studied geog 
 raphy when I was at school, it might have saved 
 me a week now." 
 
 He tried to make talk with a hatless English 
 man in tweeds, who was smoking a briar-pipe in 
 the corridor. 
 
 "Vitoria," said the Englishman, "is one of the 
 places where Wellington beat the French under 
 
 222
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 223 
 
 Joseph Buonaparte and Jourdan, in the Penin 
 sular War." 
 
 "Didn t the Spanish help?" asked Cartaret. 
 
 "They thought they did," said the English 
 man. 
 
 Cartaret had had small time in Paris to learn 
 anything about the strange people and the strange 
 country for which he was bound; but, had he 
 had weeks for study, he would have learned lit 
 tle more. Centuries had availed almost nothing 
 to the scholars that sought to explain them. The 
 origin of their race and language still unknown, 
 the Basques, proud and wild, free and self-suf 
 ficient, have held to themselves their sea and moun 
 tain-fortresses from the dawn of recorded history. 
 The successive tides of the Suavi, the Franks and 
 the Goths have swept through those rugged val 
 leys, and left the Basque unmixed and untainted. 
 From the days of the Roman legions to those 
 of the Napoleonic armies, he has withstood the 
 onslaughts of every conqueror of Western Europe, 
 unconquered and unchanged. The rivers of his
 
 224 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 legends draw direct from the source of all 
 legends; the boundary of his customs is as un 
 alterable as the foundation of his Pyrenees. The 
 engines of imperial slaughter, the steady blows 
 of progress, the erosion of time itself, have left 
 him as they found him: the serene despair of the 
 philologist, the Sphynx of ethnology, the riddle 
 of the races of mankind. 
 
 Cartaret picked up the scanty threads of the 
 Basques known chronicle. He learned that these 
 Celtiberi had preserved an independence which 
 outlasted the Western Empire, gave no more than 
 a nominal allegiance to Leovigild, to Wamba 
 and to Charlemagne, cast their fortunes with the 
 Moors at Roncesvalles and, in the eleventh cen 
 tury, formed a free confederation of three separate 
 republics under a ruler of their own blood and 
 choice, whose tenure was dependent upon con 
 stitutional guarantees and whose power was wholly 
 executive. Even the yoke of Spain, hated as it 
 was, had failed materially to affect this form of 
 government and could be justly regarded as lit 
 tle save a name. The three provinces the Vas-
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 225 
 
 congadas as they were called : the sea-coast Viscaza 
 and Guipuzcoa and the inland Alava retained 
 their ancient identity. Somewhere among their 
 swift rivers and well-nigh inaccessible mountains 
 must be the house of her whom he sought. Be 
 cause of the name that she had given him, Cartaret 
 headed now for Vitoria. 
 
 Twice he had to change his train, each time for 
 a worse. From Bayonne he crossed the Spanish 
 border at Hendaya, whence the railway, after run 
 ning west along the rocky coast of the Bay of Bis 
 cay, turned southward toward the heights about 
 Tolosa. All afternoon the scenery was varied and 
 romantic. The hard-clay soil, cultivated with 
 painful care by young giants and graceful 
 amazons, gave place to pine-forests, to tree-cloaked 
 hills, to mountains dark with mystery. 
 
 Twilight fell, then night. Cartaret could now 
 see nothing of the landscape through which he 
 was jolted, but, from the puffing of the engine, 
 the slow advance, the frightful swinging about 
 curves, it was clear to him that he was being
 
 226 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 hauled, in a series of half-circles, up long and 
 steep ascents. 
 
 "What station is this*?" he asked a French- 
 speaking guard that passed his window at a stop 
 where the air was cool and sweet with the odor 
 of pine. The lantern showed only a good-natured 
 face in a world of darkness. 
 
 "Ormaiztegua, monsieur," said the guard. 
 
 "What 1 ?" said Cartaret. "Say it slow, please, 
 and say it plainly : I am a stranger and of tender 
 years." 
 
 The guard repeated that outlandish name. 
 
 "And now which way do we go*?" Cartaret in 
 quired. 
 
 "North again to Zumarraga." 
 
 "North again?" repeated Cartaret. "Look 
 here : I m in a hurry. Isn t there any more direct 
 route to Vitoria?" 
 
 "Evidently monsieur does not know the Pyre 
 nees." 
 
 From Zumarraga, the train bent yet again south 
 ward, out of Guipuzcoa across the Navarra line. 
 
 "Aren t we late 4 ?" asked Cartaret.
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 227 
 
 "But a little," the guard reassured Kim: 
 "scarcely two hours." 
 
 At last, when they had climbed that precipitous 
 spur of the Pyrenees which forms the northern 
 wall of Alava; after they had stopped once to 
 harness an extra locomotive, and stopped again to 
 unharness it; after they had descended again, as 
 cended again and once more descended this last 
 time for what seemed but a little way the train 
 came to the end of this stage of Cartaret s journey. 
 He alighted on a smoky platform only partially 
 illuminated by more smoky lamps and had him 
 self driven to the hotel that the first accessible 
 cabby recommended. 
 
 Vitoria is a curious city of nearly 150,000 in 
 habitants, situated on a hill overlooking the Plain 
 of Alava. Cartaret, waking with the sun, could 
 see from his window the Campillo, the oldest por 
 tion of the town, crowning the hill-crest, an almost 
 deserted jumble of ruined walls and ancient 
 towers, surrounded by public-gardens and topped 
 by the twelfth-century Cathedral of St. Mary, 
 the effect of its Gothic arches sadly lessened by
 
 228 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 ugly modern additions to the pile. Below, the 
 Vitoria Antigua clung to the hillside, a maze of 
 narrow, twisting streets; and still lower lay the 
 new town, a place of wide thoroughfares and 
 shady walks, among which was Cartaret s hotel. 
 
 He breakfasted early and, having no leisure for 
 sight-seeing, asked his way to the city s adminis 
 trative-offices. He passed rows of hardware- 
 factories, wine and wool warehouses, paper-mills 
 and tanneries, wide yards in which rows of 
 earthenware lay drying, and plazas where the 
 horse and mule trade flourished, and so came at 
 last to the arcaded market-place opposite which 
 was the building that he was in search of; the of 
 fices were not yet open for the day. 
 
 He sat down to wait at a table under an awning 
 and before a cafe that faced the market. The 
 market was full of country-folk, men and women, 
 all of great height and splendid physique, and 
 Cartaret saw at once that the latter wore the same 
 sort of peculiar headdress that, in Paris, had dis 
 tinguished Chitta. 
 
 A loquacious waiter, wholly unintelligible, was
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 229 
 
 accosting him. Cartaret, guessing that he was 
 expected to pay for his chair with an order for 
 drink, made signs to fit that conjecture, and the 
 waiter brought him a flask of the native chacoli. 
 It was a poor wine, and Cartaret did not care for 
 it, but he sat on, pretending to, watching the white 
 municipal building and looking, from time to time, 
 at the fanners from the market who passed into 
 the cafe and out of it. 
 
 He half expected to see Chitta among their 
 womenfolk: Chitta, of whom he would so lately 
 have said that he never wanted to see her again ! 
 The farmers all gravely bowed to him, and Car 
 taret, of course, bowed in return. Finally it oc 
 curred to him that he might get news from one 
 of them and so, one by one, he would stop them 
 with an inquiry as to whether they spoke French. 
 A dozen failures were convincing him of his folly, 
 when their result was ruined by the appearance 
 of a rosy-cheeked young man in a wide hat and 
 swathed legs, who appeared to be more prosper 
 ous than his neighbors and who replied to Car-
 
 230 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 taret in a French that the American could under 
 stand. 
 
 "Then do sit down and have a drink with me," 
 urged Cartaret. "I m a stranger here and I d be 
 greatly obliged to you if you would." 
 
 The young man agreed. He explained com 
 placently that the folk of Alava, though invari 
 ably hospitable, generally distrusted strangers, 
 but that he had had advantages, having been sent 
 to the Jesuit school in St. Jean Pied-de-Port. He 
 was the one chance in a thousand : he knew some 
 thing of what Cartaret wanted to learn. 
 
 Had he ever heard of a rose, a white rose, called 
 the Azure Rose? 
 
 Had he not heard ! It was one of the foolish 
 superstitions of the folk of Northern Alava, that 
 rose. His own mother, being from the North 
 God rest her soul had not been exempt : when he 
 was sent into France to school, she had pinned 
 an Azure Rose against his heart in order to insure 
 his return home. 
 
 "Then it grows in the North?" 
 
 "For the most part, yes, monsieur, and even
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 231 
 
 there it is something rare: that, without doubt, is 
 why it is esteemed so dearly by the common folk. 
 It grows only near the snows, the high snows. 
 There are but few white peaks there, and on them 
 a few such roses. The country beyond Alegria 
 is the place of all places for them. If monsieur 
 wants to find the Azure Rose, he should go to the 
 wild country beyond Alegria." 
 
 "Do you know that country 4 ?" asked Cartaret. 
 
 The young man shrugged. He ought to know 
 it: he had been brought up there. But it was no 
 place for strangers; it was very wild. 
 
 "I wonder," said Cartaret, hope shining in his 
 brown eyes "I wonder if you ever heard of a 
 family there by the name of Urola *?" 
 
 The farmer shook his head. Urola *? No, he 
 had never heard of Urola. But stay: there was 
 the great family, the Ethenard-Eskurola d Ale 
 gria. Eskurola was somewhat like Urola ; indeed, 
 Urola was part of Eskurola. Perhaps, mon 
 sieur 
 
 Cartaret was leaning far over the table.
 
 232 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Is there," he asked, "a young lady in that 
 family named Vitoria *?" 
 
 The farmer reflected. 
 
 "There was one daughter," he said; "a little 
 girl when I was a lad. She was the Lady Dolorez. 
 She had, however, many names: people of great 
 houses among us have many names, monsieur, and 
 Vitoria is not uncommonly among them. Vito 
 ria ? Yes, I think she was also called Vitoria." 
 
 "Did she speak English?" 
 
 "It was likely, monsieur." Nearly all of the 
 Ethenard-Eskurolas spoke English, because one 
 of their so numerous ancestors was the great Don 
 Miguel Ricardo d Alava, general under the Duke 
 of Wellington, who valued him above all his gen 
 erals in that Spanish campaign. Since then there 
 had always been English teachers for the chil 
 dren of the house. So much was common knowl 
 edge. 
 
 It was enough for Cartaret. Within the hour 
 he was summoning the proprietor of his hotel to 
 his assistance in arranging for an -expedition to 
 Alegria.
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 233 
 
 The hotel proprietor stroked a beard so bris 
 tling as to threaten his caressing fingers. 
 
 "It is a wild country," he remarked. 
 
 "That s what they all say," returned Carta- 
 ret. "When does the next train leave for it?" 
 
 "There is no train. Alegria is a little town 
 in the high Cantabrian Mountains, far from any 
 train." 
 
 "Then come along downtown and help me buy 
 a horse," said Cartaret. "I saw a lot of likely- 
 looking ones this morning." 
 
 "But, monsieur," expostulated the hotel pro 
 prietor, "nobody between here and Alegria speaks 
 French. Nobody in Alegria speaks French and 
 you do not speak Eskura." 
 
 "What s that?" 
 
 "It is how we Basques name our own tongue." 
 
 "Well, I don t care. Get me a guide." 
 
 "I fear I cannot, monsieur. The country peo 
 ple do not want Alava to become the prey of tour 
 ists, and they will be slow to allow a stranger." 
 
 "Have you got a road-map*?" 
 
 Yes, the proprietor had a road-map of sorts.
 
 234 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 It looked faulty, and Cartaret found later that 
 it was more faulty than it looked; but he re 
 solved to make it do, and that afternoon found 
 him in the saddle of a lean and hardy mare, ten 
 miles on his way. He had brought with him a 
 pair of English riding-breeches and leggings 
 purchased in Paris for no other reason than that 
 he had the money and used to love to ride his 
 reduced equipment was in saddle-bags, and the 
 road-map in his handiest pocket. 
 
 He put up at a little inn that night and rode 
 hard, east by south, all the next day. He rode 
 through fertile valleys where the fields were al 
 ready yellow with wheat and barley. He came 
 upon patches of Indian corn that made him think 
 of the country about his own Ohio home, and 
 upon flax-fields and fields of hemp. His way lay 
 steadily upward, and in the hills he met with 
 iron-banks and some lead and copper mines. 
 Queerly costumed peasants herded sheep and 
 goats along the roadside; but nobody that Car 
 taret addressed could understand a word of his 
 speech. The road-map was bad, indeed : twice he
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 235 
 
 lost his way by consulting it and once, he thought, 
 by failing to consult it. A road that the map in 
 formed him would lead straight to Alegria ended 
 in a marble-quarry. 
 
 Cartaret accosted the only workman in sight. 
 
 "Alegria?" he asked. 
 
 The man pointed back the way that Cartaret 
 had come. 
 
 He followed the direction thus indicated and 
 took a turning that he had missed before. He 
 passed through a countryside of small plains. 
 Then he began to climb again and left these for 
 stretches of bare heath and hills covered with 
 furze. From one hilltop he looked ahead to a 
 vast pile of mountains crowned by two white 
 peaks that shone in the sun like the lances of a 
 celestial guard. The farms were less and less in 
 size and farther and farther apart tiny farms 
 cultivated with antique implements. Apple-or 
 chards appeared and disappeared, and then, quite 
 suddenly, the hills became mountains, their bases 
 covered by great forests of straight chestnut-trees, 
 gigantic oaks and stately bushes whose limbs met
 
 236 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 in a dark canopy above the rider s head. At his 
 approach, rabbits scurried, white tails erect, across 
 the road; from one rare clearing a flock of 
 partridges whirred skyward, and once, in the dis 
 tance, he saw a grazing herd of wild deer. 
 
 Late in the afternoon, he came to a wide pla 
 teau, surrounded on three sides with mountain- 
 peaks. There was a lake in the center, with a 
 few cottages scattered along its shores, and at 
 one end of the lake a high-gabled, wide-eaved 
 inn, in front of which a short man, dark and 
 wiry and unlike the people of that country, 
 lounged in the sun. He proved to be the inn 
 keeper, a native of Navarre, and, to Cartaret s 
 delight, spoke French. 
 
 "Yes," he nodded, "I learned it years ago from 
 a French servant that they used to have at the 
 castle in the old lord s time." 
 
 "I ve come frctti Vitoria," Cartaret explained. 
 "Can you tell me now far it is to Alegria*?" 
 
 "If you have come from Vitoria," was the sus 
 picious answer, "you must have taken the wrong
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 237 
 
 road and come around Alegria. Alegria is a score 
 of miles behind you." 
 
 Cartaret swore softly at that road-map. He 
 was tired and stiff, however, and so he dismounted 
 and let the landlord attend to his mare and bring 
 him, at the inn-porch, some black bread and 
 cheese and a small pitcher of zaragua, the native 
 cider. 
 
 "These are a strange people here," he said as 
 the landlord took a chair opposite. 
 
 The landlord shook his swarthy head. 
 
 "I do not speak ill of them," said he. His 
 tone implied that such a course would be un 
 wise. "They call themselves," he went on after 
 a ruminative pause, "the direct descendants of 
 those Celtiberi whom the old Romans could never 
 conquer, and I can well believe it of them. How 
 ever, I know nothing: the lord at the castle 
 knows." 
 
 "They don t like the Spaniards ?" asked Car 
 taret. 
 
 "They hate us," said the innkeeper. 
 
 "Why?"
 
 238 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "I do not know. Perhaps because Spain rules 
 them so much as any power could. But I know 
 nothing: the lord at the castle knows." 
 
 "What s his name?" 
 
 The question fell thoughtlessly from the lips 
 of the American, but he had no sooner uttered it 
 than he surmised its answer: 
 
 "The Don Ricardo Ethenard-Eskurola d Ale- 
 gria." 
 
 Cartaret produced a gold-piece and spun it on 
 the rude table before him. 
 
 "An important man, isn t he*?" 
 
 The innkeeper was eyeing the money, but his 
 reply was cautious : 
 
 "How important ?" 
 
 "Rich?" 
 
 "The old lord lost much when there was the 
 great rising for Don Carlos. But an Ethenard- 
 Eskurola does not need riches." 
 
 "Then he s lucky. How does that happen?" 
 
 "Because his family is the most ancient and 
 powerful in all the Vascongadas. There is no 
 family older in Spain, nor any prouder." It was
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 239 
 
 plainly one subject of which this alien was per 
 mitted to know something. "They have been 
 lords of this land since before the time that men 
 made chronicles. The papers in the castle go 
 back to the Fifteenth Century to the time when 
 Eskura was first turned into an alphabet. They 
 were at Roncesvalles; they made pilgrimages to 
 Jerusalem and fought in the crusades. One of 
 them was Lord-Lieutenant of Jerusalem when 
 Godfrey de Bouillon was its King. There was 
 an Ethenard-Eskurola at La Isla de los Faisanes 
 when the French Louis XI arranged there with 
 our Henry the marriage of the Due de Guienne. 
 Always they have been lords and over-lords 
 always." 
 
 "I see," said Cartaret. "And the present lord 
 lives near here at the castle?" 
 
 "As all his fathers lived before him. At their 
 place and in their manner. What they did, he 
 does; what they believed, he believes. Monsieur, 
 even the ancient Basque traditions of hospital 
 ity are there a law infringeable. Were you his 
 bitterest blood-enemy and knocked at the castle-
 
 240 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 gate for a night s shelter, he himself, Ricardo 
 d Alegria, would greet you and wait upon you, 
 and keep you safe until morning." 
 
 "And then shoot my head off?" suggested Car- 
 taret. 
 
 The innkeeper smiled: "I know nothing; but 
 the lord at the castle knows." 
 
 "I suppose he hasn t a drop of any blood but 
 Basque blood in him?" 
 
 "Monsieur, there is but one way in which a 
 foreigner may marry even the humblest Basque, 
 and that is by some act that saves the Basque s 
 entire line. Thus even the humblest. As for 
 the grandee at the castle, if I so much as asked 
 him that question, so proud is he of his nationality 
 and family that likely he would kill me." 
 
 "He must be a pleasant neighbor," said the 
 American. "He lives alone*?" 
 
 "With his servants. He has, of course, many 
 servants." 
 
 "He is not married?" 
 
 Still eyeing the gold-piece, the landlord an 
 swered :
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 241 
 
 "No. There was something, once, long ago, 
 that men say but I know nothing. The Don 
 Ricardo is the last of his house. Unless he mar 
 ries, the Eskurolas will cease. However, he will 
 marry." 
 
 "You seem certain of it." 
 
 "Naturally, monsieur. He will marry in or 
 der that the Eskurolas do not cease." 
 
 "Yes-s-s." Cartaret hesitated before his next 
 question. "So he s alone up there 1 ? I mean I 
 mean there s no other member of his family with 
 him now*?" 
 
 Instantly the innkeeper s face became blank. 
 
 "I know nothing " he began. 
 
 "But the lord at the castle knows !" interrupted 
 Cartaret. "I said it first that time. The lord at 
 the castle must know everything." 
 
 "He does," said the landlord simply. 
 
 Cartaret rose. He pushed the gold-piece across 
 the table. 
 
 "That sentiment earns it," said he. "Bring 
 my mare, please. And you might point out the 
 way to this castle. I ve a mind to run up there."
 
 242 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 The innkeeper looked at him oddly, but, when 
 the mare had been brought around, pointed a 
 lean brown finger across the lake toward the 
 mountains that ended in twin white peaks: the 
 peaks that Cartaret had seen a few hours since 
 and that now seemed to him to be the crests of 
 which he had dreamed when first he saw the Azure 
 Rose. 
 
 "The road leads from the head of the lake, 
 monsieur," said the innkeeper: "you cannot lose 
 your way." 
 
 Cartaret followed the instructions thus con 
 veyed. After three miles riding, a curved ascent 
 had shut the lake and the cottages from view, had 
 shut from view every trace of human habitation. 
 He rode among scenery that, save for the grassy 
 bridle-path, was as wild as if it had never before 
 been known of man. 
 
 It was a ravishing country, a fairy-country of 
 blue skies and fleecy clouds; of acicular summits 
 and sharp-edged crags ; of mist-hung valleys shim 
 mering in the sun ; of black chasms dizzily bridged 
 by scarlet-flowered vines. The road ran along
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 243 
 
 the edges of precipices and wreathed the gray out 
 cropping rock; thick ropes of honeysuckle fes 
 tooned the limbs of ancient trees and perfumed 
 all the air. Here a blue cliff hid its distant face 
 behind a bridal-veil of descending spray, broken 
 by a dozen rainbows; there, down the terrifying 
 depths of a vertical wall, roared a white and 
 mighty cataract. The traveler s ears began to 
 listen for the song of the hamadryad from the 
 branches of the oak; his eyes to seek the flashing 
 limbs of a frightened nymph; here if anywhere 
 the gods of the elder-revelation still held sway. 
 
 Evening, which comes so suddenly in the Can- 
 tabrians, was falling before the luxuriant verdure 
 lessened and he came to a break in the forest. 
 Below him, billow upon billow, the foothills fell 
 away in rolling waves of green. Above, the 
 jagged circle of the horizon was a line of salient 
 , summits and tapering spires of every tint of blue 
 turquoise, indigo, mauve mounting up and 
 up like the seats in a Titanic amphitheater, to the 
 royal purple of the sky. 
 
 Cartaret had turned in his saddle to look at the
 
 244 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 magnificent panorama. Now, turning forward, 
 he saw, rising ahead of him ten miles or more 
 ahead, but so gigantic as to seem bending directly 
 above him and tottering to crush him and the 
 world at his feet one of the peaks that the inn 
 keeper had indicated. It was a mountain piled 
 upon the mountains, a sheer mountain of naked 
 chalcedonous rock, rising to a snow-topped pin 
 nacle; and, at its foot, almost at the extreme edge 
 of the timber-line, a broad, muricated natural gal 
 lery, stood a vast Gothic pile, a somber, rambling 
 mass of wall and tower: the castle of the Esku- 
 rolas. 
 
 Almost as Cartaret looked, the sun went down 
 behind that peak and wrapped the way in utter 
 darkness. The traveler regarded with something 
 like dismay the last faint glow that vanished from 
 the west. 
 
 "So sorry you had to go," he said, addressing 
 the departed lord of day. He tried to look about 
 him. "A nice fix I m in," he added. 
 
 He attempted to ride on in the dark, but, re 
 membering the precipices, dared not touch rein.
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 245* 
 
 He thought of trusting to the instinct of the mare, 
 but that soon failed him: the animal came to a 
 full stop. The stillness grew profound, the night 
 impenetrable. 
 
 Then, suddenly, there was a wild cacophony 
 from the forest on his left. It shook the air and 
 set the echoes clanging from cliff to cavern. The 
 mare reared and snorted. Lights danced among 
 the trees; the lights became leaping flames; the 
 noise was identifiable as the clatter of dogs and 
 the shouts of men. Cartaret subdued his mare 
 just as a torch-bearing party of picturesquely- 
 garbed hunters plunged into the road directly in 
 front of him and came, at sight of him, to a stand. 
 
 In the flickering light from a trio of burning 
 pine-knots, the sight was enough strange. There 
 were six men in all : three of them, in peasant cos 
 tume, bearing aloft the torches, and two more, 
 similarly dressed, holding leashes at which huge 
 boar-hounds tugged. A pair of torch-bearers car 
 ried a large bough from the shoulder of one to 
 the shoulder of the other, and suspended feet up 
 ward from this bough bending with the weight
 
 246 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 was a great, gray-black boar, its woolly hair red 
 with blood, the coarse bristles standing erect like 
 a comb along its spine, its two enormous tusks 
 prism-shaped and shining like prisms in the light 
 from the pine-knots. 
 
 A deep bass voice issued a challenge in Eskura. 
 It came from the sixth member of the party, un 
 mistakably in command. 
 
 He was one of the biggest men Cartaret had 
 ever seen. He must have stood six-feet-six in his 
 boots and was proportionately broad, deep-chest 
 ed and long-armed. In one hand he held an old- 
 fashioned boar-spear its blade was red as a 
 sportsman that scorns the safety of a boar-hunt 
 with a modern rifle.. 
 
 The torch-light, flickering over his tanned and 
 bearded face, showed features handsome and aqui 
 line, fashioned with a severe nobility. Instead of 
 a hat, a scarf of red silk was wrapped about his 
 black curls and knotted at one side. His eyes, 
 under eagle-brows, were fierce and gray. Cartaret 
 instinctively recalled his early ideas of a dark 
 Wotan in the Nibelung en-Lied.
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 247 
 
 The American dismounted. He said, in Eng 
 lish: 
 
 "You are the Don Ricardo Ethenard-Esku- 
 rola*?" 
 
 He had guessed rightly: the big man bowed 
 assent. 
 
 "I m an American," explained Cartaret. "The 
 innkeeper down in the valley told me your castle 
 was near here, so I thought that this was you. I m 
 rather caught here by the darkness. I wonder 
 
 if " He noted Eskurola s eye and did not 
 
 like it. "I wonder if there s another inn one 
 somewhere near here." 
 
 The Basque frowned. For a moment he said 
 nothing. When he did speak it was in the slow, 
 but precise, English that Cartaret had first heard 
 from the lips of the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 "You, sir, are upon my land " 
 
 "I m very sorry," said Cartaret. 
 
 "And," continued Don Ricardo, "I could not 
 permit to go to a mere inn any gentleman whom 
 darkness has overtaken upon the land of the Es- 
 kurolas. It is true: on my land merely, you are
 
 248 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 not my guest ; according to our customs, I am per 
 mitted to fight a duel, if need arises, with a gentle 
 man that is on my land." He smiled : he had, in 
 the torchlight, a fearsome smile. "But on my 
 land, you are in the way of becoming my guest. 
 Will you be so good as to accompany me to my 
 poor house and accept such entertainment as my 
 best can give you?" 
 
 Cartaret accepted, and, in the act, thought the 
 acceptance too ready. 
 
 "Pray remount," urged Eskurola. 
 
 But Cartaret said that he would walk with his 
 host, and so the still trembling mare was given to 
 an unencumbered torch-bearer to lead, and, by 
 the light of the pine-knots, the party began its 
 ten-mile climb. 
 
 The night air, at that altitude, was keen even 
 in Summer, and the way was dark. The Amer 
 ican had an uneasy sense that he was often toiling 
 along the edges of invisible abysses, and once or 
 twice, from the forest, he heard the scurry of a 
 fox and saw the green eyes of a lynx. He tried
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 249 
 
 to make conversation and, to his surprise, found 
 himself courteously met more than half way. 
 
 "I know very little of this part of Spain," he 
 said: "nothing, in fact, except what I ve learned 
 in the past few days and what the inn-keeper 
 down there told me." 
 
 "We Basques do not call this a part of Spain," 
 Eskurola corrected him in a voice patently striv 
 ing to be gentle; "and the inn-keeper knows little. 
 He is but a poor thing from Navarre." 
 
 "Yes," Cartaret agreed; "the staple of his talk 
 was the statement that he knew nothing at all." 
 
 Eskurola smiled. 
 
 "That is the truth," said he. 
 
 He went on to speak freely enough of his own 
 people. He explained something of their almost 
 Mongolian language: its genderless nouns; its 
 countless diminutives; its endless compounds 
 formed by mere juxtaposition and elision; its 
 staggering array of affixes to supply all ordinary 
 grammatical distinctions, doing away with our 
 need of periphrasis and making the ending of a 
 word determine its number and person and mood,
 
 250 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 the case and number of the object, and even the 
 rank, sex and number of the persons addressed. 
 
 He talked with a modesty so formed as really 
 to show his high pride in everything that was 
 Basque. When Cartaret pressed him, he told, 
 with only a pretense of doubt in his voice, how 
 the Celtiberi considered themselves descendants 
 of the ocean-engulfed Atalantes, and former own 
 ers of all the Spanish peninsula. Even now, h 
 insisted, they were the sole power over themselves 
 from the bold coast-line of Vizcaya to the borders 
 of Navarre and had so been long before Sancho 
 the Wise was forced to grant them a fuero. They 
 had always named their own governors and fixed 
 their own taxes by republican methods. The sign 
 of the Vascongadas, the three interlaced hands 
 with the motto Iruracacabat, signified three-in- 
 one, because delegates from their three parlia 
 ments met each year to care for the common inter 
 ests of all ; but there was no written pact between 
 them : the Basques were people of honor. 
 
 Spain? Don Ricardo disliked its mention. St. 
 Mary of Salvaterra! The Basque parliaments
 
 AN AMATEUR BOTANIST 251 
 
 named a deputation that negotiated with repre 
 sentatives of the Escorial and preserved Basque 
 liberties and law. If Madrid called that sover 
 eignty, it was welcome to the term. 
 
 "We remain untouched by Spain," he said, 
 "and untouched by the world. Our legends are 
 still Grecian, our customs are what the English 
 call iron-clad. Basque blood is Basque and so 
 remains. It never mixes. It could mix in only 
 one contingency." 
 
 Cartaret was glad that the darkness hid his 
 flushed cheek as he answered: 
 
 "I have recently heard of that contingency." 
 
 "It never occurs," said Eskurola quickly, "be 
 cause the Basque always chooses not to permit 
 himself to be saved. It is a traditional law among 
 us as strong as that against the disgrace of sui 
 cide." 
 
 Their feet were sounding over a bridge: the 
 bridge, as Cartaret reflected, to the castle s moat. 
 Through the light of the torches, the great gray 
 walls of the pile climbed above him and disap 
 peared into the night. A studded door, with
 
 252 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 mighty heaving of bolts, swung open before them, 
 and they passed through into a vaulted gateway. 
 The pine-knots cast dancing shadows on the 
 stones. 
 
 Into what medieval world was he being ad 
 mitted? Did Vitoria indeed inhabit it? And if 
 she did, what difficulties and dangers must he 
 overcome before ever he could take her thence"? 
 
 Don Ricardo was speaking. 
 
 "I welcome you to my poor home," he said. 
 
 Cartaret s heart beat high. He was ready for 
 any difficulty, for any danger. . . . 
 
 With a solemn boom the great gate swung shut 
 behind him. He felt that it had shut out the 
 Twentieth Century.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 .... Since we must part, down right 
 With happy day ; burdens well borne are light. 
 - Donne: Eleg. XIII. 
 
 CARTARET was lighted by his host himself to a 
 bedroom high up in the castle and deep within it 
 a bedroom big enough and dreary enough to 
 hold all the ghosts of Spain. An old man-servant 
 brought him a supper calculated to stay the hunger 
 of a shipwrecked merchant-crew. He lay down in 
 a great four-poster bed both canopied and cur 
 tained, and, in spite of his weariness, he tossed 
 for hours, wondering whether Vitoria was also 
 somewhere within those grim walls and what 
 course he was to pursue in regard to her. 
 
 The same uncertainty gripped him when break 
 fast was brought to his bedside in the early morn 
 ing. Was this, after all, Vitoria s home; and if it 
 
 253.
 
 254 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 was, had she returned to it*? Supposing an af 
 firmative answer to these questions, what was he 
 to say to her brother"? So far, thank Heaven, 
 Don Ricardo, though he had once or twice looked 
 queerly at the American, had been too polite to 
 make awkward inquiries, but such inquiries were 
 so natural that they were bound soon to be made ; 
 and Cartaret could not remain forever an unex 
 plained and self-invited guest in the castle of his 
 almost involuntary host. The guest recalled all 
 that he had heard of the national and family pride 
 and traditions of the Eskurolas, and only his na 
 tive hopefulness sustained him. 
 
 He found his own way down twisting stairs 
 and into a vast courtyard across which servants 
 were passing. The great gate was open, and he 
 stepped through it toward the battlemented ter 
 race that he saw beyond. 
 
 His first shock was there. The bridge that he 
 had crossed the night before was indeed a draw 
 bridge and did indeed span the castle-moat, but 
 the bridge was unrailed and that moat was a ter 
 rible thing. It was no pit of twenty or thirty
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 255 
 
 feet dug by the hand of man. The terrace to 
 which the castle clung was separated from that 
 to which climbed the steep approach by a natural 
 chasm of at least twelve yards across, with sheer 
 sides, like those of a glacial crevasse, shooting 
 downwards into black invisibility and echoing 
 upward the thunderous rush of unseen waters. 
 
 Leaning on the weather-worn wall that climbed 
 along the edge of this precipice and guarded a 
 broad promenade between it and the castle, Car- 
 taret looked with a new sensation at the marvel 
 ous scene about him. Behind rose the frowning 
 castle, a maze of parapets and towers, built 
 against that naked, snow-capped, chalcedonous 
 peak. In front, falling away through a hundred 
 gradations of green, a riot of luxuriant vegeta 
 tion, lay the now apparently uninhabited country 
 through which he had ridden, and beyond this, 
 circling it like the teeth of the celestial dragon 
 that the Chinese believe is to swallow the sun, 
 rose row on row of bare mountains, ridges and 
 pinnacles blue and gray. 
 
 A hand fell on Cartaret s shoulder. He turned
 
 256 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 to find Don Ricardo standing beside him. The 
 giant gave every appearance of having been up 
 and about for hours, and, despite his bulk, he had 
 approached his guest unheard. 
 
 "I trust that you, sir, have slept well in my 
 poor house." 
 
 Cartaret replied that he had slept like a top. 
 
 "And that you could eat of the little breakfast 
 which my servants provided*?" 
 
 "I made a wonderful breakfast," said Cartaret. 
 
 "It is good, sir. If you can bear with my house, 
 it is yours for so long as you care to honor it with 
 your presence." 
 
 Cartaret knew that this must be only an exag 
 gerated fashion of speech, but he chose to take it 
 literally. 
 
 "That s very good of you," he said. "I haven t 
 ridden for years and I m rather done up. If you 
 really don t mind, I think I will rest here over 
 another night." 
 
 Don Ricardo seemed unprepared for this, but 
 he checked a frown and bowed gravely. 
 
 "A year would be too short for me," he vowed.
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 257 
 
 They fell to talking, the host now trying to 
 turn the conversation into the valley, the guest 
 holding it fast to the castle-heights. 
 
 "It is a beautiful place," said Cartaret; "I don t 
 know when I ve seen anything to compare with 
 it; and yet I should think you d find it rather 
 lonely." 
 
 "Not lonely, sir," said the Basque. "The hunt 
 ing in the valley is a compensation. For exam 
 ple, where you see those oaks about the curve of 
 that river, I hunted, not ten days ago, a wolf as 
 large as those for which my ancestors paid the 
 wolf-money." 
 
 "Still," Cartaret persisted, "you do live here 
 quite alone, don t you*?" 
 
 He knew that he was impudent, and he felt 
 that only his host s reverence for the laws of hos 
 pitality prevented an open resentment. Never 
 theless, Cartaret was bound to find out what he 
 could, and this time he was rewarded. 
 
 "There is good enough to live with me," said 
 Don Ricardo stiffly, "my lady sister, the Dona
 
 258 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 Dolorez Eulalia Vitoria." He looked out across 
 the chasm. 
 
 Cartaret caught his breath. There was an awk 
 ward pause. Then, glancing up, he saw, coming 
 toward them along the terrace, the figure of a 
 woman-servant that seemed startlingly familiar. 
 
 It was Chitta. She was bent, no doubt, on 
 some household errand to her master, whose face 
 was luckily turned away luckily because, when 
 she caught sight of Cartaret, her jaw dropped and 
 her knees gave under her. 
 
 Cartaret had just time to knit his brows with 
 the most forbidding scowl he could assume. The 
 old woman clasped her hands in what was plainly 
 a prayer to him to be silent concerning all knowl 
 edge of her and her mistress. A moment more, 
 and Don Ricardo was giving her orders in the 
 Basque tongue. 
 
 "Our servants," he said apologetically when 
 she had gone, "are faithful, but stupid." His gray 
 eyes peered at Cartaret searchingly. "Very stu 
 pid, sir," he added. "For instance, you, sir, know 
 something of our customs; you know that cen-
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 259 
 
 turies-old tradition the best of laws makes it 
 the worst of social crimes for a Basque to marry 
 any save a Basque " 
 
 He stopped short, holding Cartaret with his 
 eyes. Cartaret nodded. 
 
 "Very well, sir," Ricardo continued: "one 
 time a lady of our house it was years upon years 
 ago, when Wellington and the English were here 
 fell in love, or thought that she did, with a 
 British officer. For an Englishman, his degree 
 was high, but had he been the English King it 
 would have served him nothing among us. Know 
 ing of course that the head of our house would 
 never consent to such a marriage, this lady com 
 manded her most loyal servant to assist in an 
 elopement. Now, the Basque servant must obey 
 her mistress, but also the Basque servant must 
 protect the honor of the house that she has the 
 privilege to serve. This one sought to do both 
 things. She assisted in the elopement and brought 
 the lady to the English camp. Then, thus having 
 been faithful to one duty, she was faithful to the 
 other: before the wedding, she killed both her
 
 260 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 mistress and herself." He turned quickly. "Sir, 
 I have pressing duties in the valley, and you are 
 too weary to ride with me: my poor house is at 
 your disposal." 
 
 Cartaret leaned against the parapet and, when 
 his host was out of earshot, whistled softly. 
 
 "What a delightful raconteur" he mused. "I 
 wonder if he meant me to draw any special moral 
 from that bit of family-history." 
 
 He waited until, a quarter of an hour later, he 
 saw Don Ricardo and two servants ride across the 
 drawbridge and wind their way toward the val 
 ley. He waited until the green forest engulfed 
 them. What he was going to do might be ques 
 tionable conduct in a guest, but there was no time 
 to waste over nice points of etiquette. He was 
 going to find Vitoria. 
 
 He started for the court-yard. His plan was 
 to accost the first servant that he encountered and 
 mention Chitta s name, but this trouble was saved 
 him. In the shadowy gateway, he found Chitta 
 crouching. 
 
 She glanced to right and left, saw that they
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 261 
 
 were unobserved, passed beyond a narrow door 
 that opened into the gate, and led Cartaret up a 
 spiral stone staircase to the entrance of a circular 
 room in one of the twin gate-towers. There she 
 turned and left him alone with Vitoria. 
 
 In the center of that bare room, standing beside 
 one of the bowmen s windows that commanded 
 the approach to the castle, the Lady of the Rose 
 awaited him. For an instant, he scarcely recog 
 nized her. She was gowned in a single-piece 
 Basque dress of embroidered silk, closely fitted 
 about her full lithe figure to below the hips, the 
 skirt widening and hanging loosely about her slim 
 ankles. A black silk scarf, in sharp contrast to 
 the embroidery, was sewn to the dress and drawn 
 tightly over the right shoulder, across the bust, 
 and then draped beneath the left hip. But the 
 glory of her blue-black hair was as he had first 
 seen it in the twilight of his far-off studio; the 
 creamy whiteness of her cheeks was just touched 
 with pink, and her blue eyes, under curling lashes, 
 seemed at first the frank eyes that he loved. 
 
 "Vitoria!" he cried.
 
 262 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 She drew back. She raised one hand, its pink 
 palm toward him. 
 
 "You should not have done this," she said in a 
 rapid whisper. "How did you find me*? How 
 did you come here*?" Her voice was kind, but 
 steady. 
 
 Cartaret stood still. This he had not looked 
 for. His cheeks were flushed, and the lines about 
 his mouth deepened, as they always did at mo 
 ments of crisis, and made his face very firm. 
 
 "Does it matter how?" he asked. "Not all 
 the width of the world could have kept me away. 
 There s something I ve got to know and know in 
 stantly." 
 
 "But you should not have come, and you must 
 go immediately ! Listen no, listen to me now ! 
 I am not Vitoria Urola in these mountains; 
 whether I want it or not, I have to be the Dona 
 Dolorez Ethenard-Eskurola. That would per 
 haps sound amusing in the rue du Val de Grace; 
 here it is a serious matter: the most serious mat 
 ter in this little mountain-world. You will have 
 to listen to me."
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 263 
 
 Cartaret folded his arms. 
 
 "Go on," he said. 
 
 "Last Winter," she continued, her face chal 
 lenging his, "I had a time of rebellion against all 
 these things amongst which I had been brought 
 up. I had never been farther away from this place 
 than Alegria, but I had had French and English 
 governesses, and I read books and dreamed dreams. 
 I loved to paint; I thought that I could learn 
 
 to be a real artist, but I knew that my brother 
 
 
 
 would think that a shame in an Eskurola and 
 would never permit his unmarried sister to go to 
 a foreign city to study. Nevertheless, I was hun 
 gry for the great world outside for the real 
 world and so I took poor Chitta, gathered what 
 jewels were my own and not family-jewels, and 
 ran away." 
 
 She looked from the window to the road that 
 led into the valley; but the road was still de 
 serted. 
 
 "Chitta sold the jewels," she presently went on. 
 "They brought very little; but to me, who had 
 never used money, it seemed much. We went to
 
 264 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 Paris: I and Chitta, who, because she had often 
 been so far as Vitoria before, became as much my 
 guardian as she was my servant and I was long 
 afraid to go but a little distance in the streets 
 without her: the streets terrified me, and, after 
 one fright, she made me promise to go nowhere 
 without her. So we took the room that you know 
 of. We were used to regarding my brother as 
 all-powerful; we feared that he would find us. 
 Therefore, we would let no one know who we were 
 or whence we came. Now that is over." Her 
 voice trembled a little. She made a hopeless 
 gesture. "It is all over, and we have come back 
 to our own people." She raised her head proudly ; 
 she had regained her self-control : to Cartaret, she 
 seemed to have regained an ancient pride. "I 
 have learned that I must be what I was born to 
 be." 
 
 He squared his jaw. 
 
 "A slave to your brother s will," he said. 
 
 "A creature," she answered with steady gaze 
 "a creature of the will of God." 
 
 "But this is nonsense!" He came forward.
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 265 
 
 "This sort of thing may have been all very well 
 in the Fourteenth Century; but we re living in the 
 Twentieth, and it doesn t go now. Oh," he 
 flung out a hand "I know all about your old 
 laws and traditions ! I dare say they re extremely 
 quaint and all that, and I dare say there was a 
 time when they had some reason in them ; but that 
 time isn t this time, and I refuse to hear any more 
 about them. I won t let them interfere with me." 
 
 She flashed crimson. 
 
 "You speak for yourself, sir: permit me to 
 speak for myself." 
 
 His answer was to seize her hands. 
 
 "Let me go!" she ordered. 
 
 "I ll never let you go," said he. 
 
 "Let me go. You are a brave man to restrain 
 a woman! Shall I call a servant?" 
 
 She struggled fiercely, panting. 
 
 "I ve got to make you understand me," he pro 
 tested, holding fast her hands. "I didn t mean 
 any harm to your traditions or your customs. 
 Whatever you love I ll try to love too just so 
 long as it doesn t hurt you. But this does hurt
 
 266 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 you. Tell me one thing: Why did you leave 
 Paris ? What was it made you change your 
 mind*?" He saw in her face the signs of an ef 
 fort to disregard the demand. "Tell me why you 
 left Paris," he repeated. 
 
 Her eyes wavered. The lids fluttered. 
 
 "That night," she began in an uneven tone, "I 
 gave you to understand, that night " 
 
 "You gave me to understand that you loved 
 me." 
 
 He said it fearlessly, and, on the edge of a sob, 
 she fearlessly answered him. She had ceased to 
 struggle. Her hands lay still and cold in his. 
 
 j 
 
 "I told you that love had brought me a sword." 
 "You ve changed. What has changed you 1 ?" 
 "I have not changed. I have only come back 
 to these unchangeable mountains, to this unchang 
 ing castle, to the ancient laws and customs of my 
 people their ancient and unalterable laws. I 
 had to come back to them," she said, "because I 
 realized that it was not in me to be false to all 
 that my fathers have for centuries been true to." 
 Cartaret leaned forward. He could not be-
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 267 
 
 lieve that this was her only reason; he could not 
 understand that the sway of any custom can be 
 so powerful. He held her hands tighter. His 
 eyes searched her quailing eyes. 
 
 "Do you love me? That s all I want to know, 
 and I ll attend to everything else. I ve no time 
 for sparring. I ve got to know if you love me. 
 I ve got to know that, right here and now." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Don t!" she whispered. 
 
 "Do you love me*?" he relentlessly persisted. 
 
 "To love in Paris is one thing: here I may not 
 love." 
 
 "You may not but do you*?" 
 
 "Don t. Please don t. Oh!" her red lips 
 parted, her breath came fast "if love were 
 all " 
 
 "It is all !" he declared. He slipped both her 
 cold hands into his right hand and put his freed 
 arm about her waist. "Vitoria," he whispered, 
 drawing her to him, "it is all. It s all that mat 
 ters, all that counts. It can mock all custom and 
 defy all law. I love you, Vitoria." Slowly her
 
 268 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 eyes closed; slowly she sank against his arm; 
 slowly her head drooped backward, and slowly he 
 
 bent toward its parted, unresisting lips "And 
 
 love s the one thing in the world worth living and 
 dying for." 
 
 At that word, she came to sudden life. With 
 one wrench, she had darted from his arms. In 
 stantly she had recovered self-control. 
 
 "No, no, no!" she cried. "Go away ! There is 
 danger here. Oh, go away !" 
 
 The suddenness of her action shattered his de 
 lirium. He read in her words only her reply to 
 the question that he had put to her. 
 
 Impossible as it would have seemed a moment 
 since, that negative meant a catastrophic denial of 
 any love for him. He glanced at the old walls 
 that surrounded them at all the expressions of a 
 remorseless elf in which he could have no part. 
 He felt, with a sudden certainty, that these things 
 were of her, and she of them that what she 
 meant by her distinction between herself in Paris 
 and this other self here was the vast difference 
 between a Byzantine empress breaking plebeian
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 269 
 
 hearts in the alleys of her capital and that same 
 woman on her throne, passionless and raised above 
 the reach of men s desires. 
 
 The most modest of young fellows is always a 
 little vain, and his vanity is always wounded; it 
 is ever seeking hurts, anxious to suffer: Cartaret 
 was no exception to human rules. He told his 
 heart that Vitoria s words meant but one thing: 
 She had entertained herself with him during an 
 incognito escapade and, now that the escapade was 
 finished, wanted no reminders. A Byzantine em 
 press ? This was worse : the empress gave, if only 
 to take away. What Vitoria must mean was that 
 even her momentary softening toward him on this 
 spot was no more than momentary. She was say 
 ing that, having had her amusement by making 
 him love her, she was now returned to her proper 
 station, where to love her was to insult her. He had 
 been her plaything, and now she was tired of it. 
 
 "Very well," he said, "if you think my love is 
 worth so little. If you can t brave one miserable 
 medieval superstition for it, then I ve got the an 
 swer to what I asked you, and you re right: I d
 
 270 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 better go." He turned to the narrow door at the 
 head of the spiral stairs. "I know," he said, as 
 if to the stone walls about them, "that I m not 
 worth much sacrifice ; but my love has been worth 
 a sacrifice. Some day you ll understand what 
 my love might have meant. Some day, when 
 you re old, you ll look from one of these windows 
 out over these valleys and mountains and think 
 of what could have happened what there was 
 once, just this one time, one chance for." He 
 half faced her. "Other men will love you, many 
 of them. They ll love your happiness and grace 
 and beauty as well, I dare say, as I do and al 
 ways will. But you ll remember one man that 
 loved your soul; you ll remember me " 
 
 Vitoria was swaying dizzily. Her recaptured 
 self-command visibly wavered. She leaned 
 against the rough wall. He leaped toward her, 
 but she had the strength left to warn him away. 
 
 "No, no, no!" she repeated. "I do not " 
 
 She raised her hands to the vaulted roof. By a 
 tremendous effort she became again mistress of
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT TRADITIONS 271 
 
 herself and of him. "Why will you not under 
 stand? I do not love you. Go!" 
 
 At that moment a cry rang out. It was a cry 
 from the gateway. It was the cry of Chitta, who 
 came bounding into the narrow room and hurled 
 herself at her mistress s feet. 
 
 Before any one of the trio could speak, there 
 was the clatter of a galloping horse on the road, 
 the thunder of hoofs over the drawbridge above 
 that frightful chasm. 
 
 "Go!" shrieked Vitoria. "Will you never go? 
 Do you not understand what this means? Do 
 you not know who is coming here?" 
 
 Chitta set up a loud wail. 
 
 "I don t care who s coming here," said Cartaret. 
 "If there s any danger " 
 
 Vitoria leaped over the prostrate servant and 
 began pushing Cartaret away. 
 
 "I hate you!" she cried. "Do you hear that? 
 / hate you! Now will you go?" 
 
 He looked at her, and his face hardened 
 
 "I ll go," ke said.
 
 272 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 He turned away. 
 "My brother!" gasped Vitoria. 
 Don Ricardo came in at the door of the tower- 
 room.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 IN WHICH CARTARET TAKES PART IN THE 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 
 
 La vieille humanite porte encore dans ses entrailles 
 la brutalite primitive ; un anthropoi de feroce survit en 
 chacun de nous. 
 
 Opinions a Repandre. 
 
 FOR a moment none moved. There was Chitta,, 
 groveling on the stone floor of the circular room, 
 her face hidden in her hands; there was Vitoria, 
 her arms outstretched, struck rigid in the act of 
 repulsing Cartaret ; and there were the two men 
 the American white, but determined and unafraid ; 
 the Basque with a dull red spreading on his tanned 
 cheeks facing each other as pugilists, entering 
 the ring, face each other at pause during the fleet 
 ing instant before they begin to circle for an 
 opening. Cartaret, with the eye that, in times of 
 high emotion, takes account of even trivial detail, 
 
 noted how Don Ricardo, who had been forced to 
 
 273
 
 274 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 stoop in order to pass the doorway, gradually 
 straightened himself with a slow, unconscious 
 expansion of the muscles such as a tiger might em 
 ploy. 
 
 Vitoria was the first to speak: she lowered her 
 arms and turned upon her brother a glance of 
 which the pride proved that her self-possession 
 was regained. She spoke in English, though 
 whether for Cartaret s comprehension, for the 
 servant s mystification, or as an added gibe at 
 Ricardo, the American was unable to determine. 
 
 "You came unannounced, brother," she said. 
 "I am not accustomed to such entrances." 
 
 The red deepened over Don Ricardo s high 
 cheek-bones, but he bit his lip and seemed to bite 
 down his rage. 
 
 "These are not your apartments, Dona Do- 
 lorez," he said, adopting, with visible repugnance, 
 the language she employed. "And I am the head 
 of your house." He bent his gray eyes on Car- 
 taret. "Be so good as to come with me, sir," he 
 said. He stood aside from the door. "I follow 
 after my guest."
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 275 
 
 Cartaret s heart had place only for the last 
 words that Vitoria had said to him. He would 
 not look at her again, and he cared little what 
 might happen to himself, so long as he could draw 
 this irate brother after him and away from the 
 endangered women. Vitoria had said that she 
 hated him: well, he would do what he could to 
 save her, and then leave Alava forever. He passed 
 through the door. . . . 
 
 "He is my guest," he heard Don Ricardo say 
 ing. "An Eskurola remembers the laws of hos 
 pitality." 
 
 Cartaret went on to the court-yard. There 
 his host followed him. 
 
 "Will you come to my offices ?" he asked. 
 
 He walked across to the north wing of the castle 
 and into a large room that looked upon the ter 
 race. The ceiling was a mass of blackened rafters ; 
 the walls, wainscoted in oak, were hung with 
 ancient arms and armor, with the antlers of deer 
 and the stuffed heads of tusked boar, and with 
 some rags of long-faded tapestry. There was a 
 yawning fire-place at one end, between high book-
 
 276 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 shelves filled with leather-bound folios, and, near 
 one of the windows, stood an open Seventeenth 
 Century desk massed with dusty papers. 
 
 Eskurola waved his guest to a stiff-backed chair. 
 Cartaret, seeing that Don Ricardo intended to 
 remain standing, merely stood beside it. 
 
 "Sir," began the Basque, "you have said that 
 you are a stranger to our country and its ways. 
 It is my duty to enlighten you in regard to some 
 details." 
 
 He towered nearly half a foot above Cartaret. 
 The nostrils of his beaked nose quivered above 
 his bristling beard, but he kept his voice rigorously 
 to the conversational pitch. 
 
 Cartaret, however, was in no mood to hear any 
 more exposition of Vascongada manners and cus 
 toms. He had had enough of them. 
 
 "There s no need of that," he said. "If I ve 
 done anything I shouldn t have done, I m sorry. 
 But I want you to understand that I m to blame : 
 I m to blame and nobody else." 
 
 Eskurola went on as if Cartaret had not spoken : 
 
 "It is not our custom to present to our ladies
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 277 
 
 such casual strangers as happen to ask shelter of 
 us; nor is it the custom of our ladies to permit 
 such presentations, still less to seek them. Of 
 that last fact, I say but one word more : the Dona 
 Dolorez has been lately from home, and I fear 
 that her contact with the outer world has tempo* 
 rarily dulled the edge of her native sensitiveness." 
 
 "Look here," said Cartaret, his hands clenched, 
 "if you mean to imply " 
 
 "Sir!" The Basque s eyes snapped. "I speak 
 of my sister." 
 
 "All right then. But you d better be told a 
 few facts, too. Paris isn t Alava. I met the 
 Dona Dolorez in Paris. We were neighbors. 
 What could be more natural, then, than that, 
 when I came here " 
 
 "Ah-h-h!" Eskurola softly interrupted. In 
 the meshes of his beard, his red lips were smiling 
 unpleasantly. "So that was it! How stupid of 
 me not to have guessed before, sir. I was sure 
 that there had been in Paris something beside 
 Art." 
 
 Cartaret s impulse was to fly at the man s throat.
 
 278 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 His reason, determined to protect the woman that 
 cared no more for him, dictated another course. 
 
 "I wanted," he said quietly, "to make your 
 sister my wife." 
 
 The effect of this statement was twofold. At 
 first a violent anger shook the Basque, and the 
 veins stood out in ridges along his neck and at 
 his temples, below the red cloth bound about his 
 head. Then, as quickly, the anger passed and was 
 succeeded by a look reminiscent, almost tender. 
 
 "You know that no alien can marry one of our 
 people," he said. "You know that now." 
 
 Cartaret thought again of Vitoria s parting 
 word to him,. 
 
 "I know it now" he said. 
 
 "You are my guest," Eskurola pursued. "I 
 shall tell you something. You have seen me only 
 as what must seem to you a strange and hard 
 man perhaps a fierce and cruel man. I am the 
 head of my ancient house; on me there depends 
 not only its honor, but also its continuance. Sir, 
 I exact of my relatives no less than I have already 
 exacted of myself."
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 279 
 
 Cartaret looked at him in amazement. Could 
 it be possible that there had ever been in this 
 medieval mind anything but ruthless pride of race ? 
 
 "Years ago but not so many years ago as you, 
 sir, might suppose there came to this house a 
 young lady. She came here as a governess for my 
 sister, but she was a lady, a person of birth. Also, 
 she spoke your language." He paused, and then 
 went on in a still gentler voice. "Sir, because of 
 her, your language, barbarous as it is, has always 
 been dear to me, and yet, still because of her, I 
 have ever since wanted not to speak it." 
 
 Cartaret looked at the floor. Even though this 
 confession of a past weakness was voluntary, it 
 seemed somehow unfair to watch, during it, the 
 man whose pride was so strong. 
 
 "And you sent her away?" he found himself 
 asking. 
 
 "She went when her work was finished. She 
 went without knowing." 
 
 Cartaret raised his eyes. There was no false 
 assumption in the man upon whom they rested : it
 
 280 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 was impossible to believe that, seeing him thus, a 
 woman would not love him. 
 
 "I ll go," said Cartaret. Eskurola s words had 
 assured him of Vitoria s safety. "I ll go now." 
 
 "I would not drive you away. You have said 
 that you would be my guest for another night ; you 
 may remain as long as you care to remain." 
 
 "I ll go," Cartaret repeated. "It isn t you 
 that s driving me. Will you please send up to my 
 room for my saddle-bags, and have my mare 
 brought around*?" 
 
 Don Ricardo bowed. He went out. 
 
 Cartaret stood for some time on the spot where 
 he had been standing throughout the talk with 
 his host. He was thinking of his ruined hopes and 
 of the woman that had ruined them. Once he 
 asked himself what had so changed her; but, when 
 he could find no answer to that question, he asked 
 what the cause could matter, since the effect was 
 so apparent. He walked to a window. He could 
 see that part of the terrace which lay between the 
 gate and the drawbridge, but he saw no sign of 
 his mare. What could Eskurola be doing"? He
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 281 
 
 seemed, whatever it was, to be a long time about 
 it. 
 
 The oaken door of the room opened and closed 
 with a bang. Don Ricardo stood before it. The 
 dull red had returned to his cheeks. 
 
 "Sir," said he, "I have just been having another 
 word with the Dona Dolorez : she informs me that 
 you have had the impertinence to tell her that you 
 love her." 
 
 Cartaret laughed bitterly. "In my country," 
 he said, "when a man wants to marry a woman it 
 is customary to say something of that kind." 
 
 "You are in Alava, sir, and you speak of a mem 
 ber of my family." 
 
 I was in Paris then." 
 
 "But this morning just now?" Eskurola 
 came a step forward. 
 
 "I won t talk any more about it," said Car 
 taret. "Please have my mare brought around at 
 once." 
 
 "No," Eskurola replied: "you shall talk no 
 more about it. Mr. Cartaret, you must fight me. 
 
 The American could not believe his ears. He
 
 282 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 recollected that when the Continental speaks of 
 fighting he does not refer to mere pugilism. 
 
 "You re crazy," said Cartaret. "I don t want 
 to fight you." 
 
 "So soon as you have passed that gate, you will 
 be my guest no longer. What, sir, you may then 
 want will not matter. You will have to fight me." 
 
 Cartaret sat down. He crossed his legs and 
 looked up at his host. 
 
 "Is this your little way of persuading me to 
 stay awhile*?" he asked. 
 
 "You cannot go too soon to please me." 
 
 "Then perhaps you ll be good enough to tell 
 me what it s all about." 
 
 Eskurola s giant figure bent forward. His eyes 
 blazed down in Cartaret s face. 
 
 "You came into this place, the place of my peo 
 ple, under false pretenses. I made you welcome; 
 you were my guest, sir. Yet you used your op 
 portunities to insult my sister." 
 
 Cartaret got slowly to his feet. He knew the 
 probable consequences of what he was about to
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 283 
 
 say, but, never shifting hL gaze from the Basque s, 
 he said it quietly: 
 
 "That s a lie." 
 
 Don Ricardo leaped backward. It was doubt 
 less the first time in his life that such a phrase 
 had been addressed to him, and he received it as 
 he might have received a blow. Both in mind 
 and body, he staggered. 
 
 "My sister has told me " he began. 
 
 "I don t want to hear any more, sefior. I ve 
 said all that I have to say." Cartaret thrust his 
 hands into the pockets of his riding-breeches and, 
 turning his back on Eskurola, looked out of the 
 window. 
 
 "Now," the Basque was saying, as his mental 
 balance reasserted itself "now we must indeed 
 fight." 
 
 Cartaret himself was thinking rapidly and by 
 no means clearly. To say that dueling was not 
 an American custom would avail him nothing 
 would be interpreted as cowardice; to fight with 
 a man bred as Don Ricardo was evidently bred 
 would be to walk out to death. Cartaret
 
 284 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 looked at the panorama of the mountains. Well, 
 why not death*? Less than an hour ago his 
 whole life had been mined, had been sent crash 
 ing about his head. The only thing that he 
 cared for in life was taken from him: Vitoria 
 had herself declared that she hated him. Nor 
 that alone the thought burned in his brain: she 
 had told this wild brother of hers that he, Car- 
 taret, had insulted her; she had incited Eskurola 
 to battle perhaps to save herself, perhaps to 
 salve some strange Basque conception of honor 
 or pride. So be it ; Cartaret could render her one 
 more service- the last: if he allowed himself to 
 be killed by this half-savage who so serenely 
 thought that he was better than all the rest of the 
 world, Don Ricardo s wounded honor would be 
 healed, and Vitoria now evidently herself in 
 danger or revengeful would be either safe or 
 pacified. The Twentieth Century had never en 
 tered these mountains, and Cartaret, entering 
 them, had left his own modernity behind. 
 
 "All right," said he, "since you re so con-
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 285 
 
 founded hungry for it, I ll fight you. Anything 
 to oblige." 
 
 He looked about to find Eskurola bowing grate 
 fully: the man s eyes seemed to be selecting the 
 spot on their enemy s body at which to inflict the 
 fatal wound. 
 
 "I am glad, sir, that you see reason," said Don 
 Ricardo. 
 
 "I m not sure that I see reason," said Cartaret, 
 "but I m going to fight you." 
 
 "I do not suppose that you can use a rapier, 
 Mr. Cartaret?" 
 
 It was clear that not to understand the rapier 
 was to be not quite a gentleman; but Cartaret 
 made the confession. "Not that it matters," he 
 reflected. 
 
 "But you can shoot?" 
 
 Cartaret remembered the boyish days when he 
 had taken prizes for his marksmanship with a re 
 volver. It was the one folly of his youth that he 
 had continued, and he found a certain satisfac 
 tion (so much did Eskurola s pride impress him)
 
 286 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 in admitting this, albeit he did not mean to use 
 the accomplishment now. 
 
 "I carry this with me," said he, producing his 
 automatic revolver. 
 
 Don Ricardo scarcely glanced at it. 
 
 "That is not the weapon for a marksman," he 
 said. "Nevertheless, let me see what you can 
 do. None will be disturbed; these walls are 
 sound-proof." He took a gold coin, an alfonso, 
 from his pocket and flung it into the air. "Shoot !" 
 he commanded. 
 
 Cartaret had expected nothing of the sort. He 
 fired and missed. The report roared through the 
 room; the acrid taste of the powder filled the air. 
 Eskurola caught the descending coin in his hand. 
 Cartaret saw that his failure had annoyed Don 
 Ricardo, and this in its turn annoyed the Amer 
 ican. 
 
 "I didn t know you were going to try me," he 
 said, "and I m not used to marking up the ceil 
 ings of my friends houses. Try again." 
 
 The Basque, without comment, flung up the 
 alfonso a second time, and a second time Car-
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 287 
 
 taret fired. Eskurola reached for the coin as be 
 fore, but this time it flew off at an angle and 
 struck the farther wall. When they picked it up, 
 they found that it had been hit close to the edge 
 of the disk. 
 
 "Not the center," said Don Ricardo. 
 
 "Indeed?" said Cartaret. What sort of shot 
 would please the man"? "Suppose you try." 
 
 Eskurola explained that he was not accustomed 
 to such a revolver, but he would not shirk the chal 
 lenge ; and there was no need for him to shirk it : 
 when Cartaret recovered the alfonso after Don 
 Ricardo had shot, there was a mark full in its 
 middle. 
 
 "So much for His Spanish Majesty," said the 
 Basque, as he glanced at the mark made by his 
 bullet in the face upon the coin. "We shall use 
 dueling-pistols. I have them here." He went to 
 the desk. 
 
 Cartaret had no doubt that Eskurola had them 
 there: he probably had a rack and thumbscrews 
 handy below-stairs.
 
 288 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "We shall have to dispense with the formality 
 of a surgeon," Don Ricardo was saying. 
 
 "It doesn t look as if one would be needed," 
 Cartaret smiled; "and it doesn t look as if we 
 were to have seconds, either/ 
 
 The Basque turned sharply. "We are the only 
 gentlemen within miles, and we cannot have serv 
 ants for witnesses. Moreover, an Eskurola needs 
 no seconds, either of his choosing to watch his 
 safety, or of his enemy s to suspect his honor." 
 
 He pressed a spring, released a secret drawer 
 in the desk and found what he was seeking: a 
 box of polished mahogany. Opening the lid, he 
 beckoned to Cartaret. There, on a purple velvet 
 lining, lay a beautifully kept pair of dueling- 
 pistols, muzzle-loaders of the Eighteenth Cen 
 tury pattern and of about .32 caliber, their long 
 octagonal barrels of shining dark blue steel, their 
 curved butts of ivory handsomely inlaid with a 
 Moorish design in gold. 
 
 "Listen," said Eskurola, "as we are to have no 
 
 seconds, I shall write a line to exculpate you in 
 
 case you survive me. Then" his gray eyes
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 289 
 
 shone; he seemed to take a satisfaction that was 
 close to delight in arranging these lethal details 
 "also as we are to have no seconds to give a 
 signal, we shall have but one true shot between us. 
 Certainly. Are we not men, we two? And we 
 have proved ourselves marksmen. You cannot 
 doubt me, but I have a man that speaks French, so 
 that you shall see that I do not trick you, sir." 
 
 He went to the door and called into the court 
 yard. Presently there answered him a man whom 
 Cartaret recognized as one of those who, the night 
 before, held the dogs in leash. 
 
 "Murillo Gomez," said Eskurola, in a French 
 more labored than his English, "in five minutes 
 this gentleman and I shall want the terrace to our 
 selves. You will close the gate when we go out. 
 You will remain on this side of it, and you will 
 permit none to pass. Answer me in French." 
 
 The servant s face showed no surprise. 
 
 "Out, senor" he said. 
 
 "Now you will take these pistols and bring them 
 back without delay. In the armory you will load 
 one with powder and shot, the other with powder
 
 290 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 only. Neither this gentleman nor I must know 
 which is which. You understand*?" 
 
 The servant s face was still impassive. 
 
 "O&z, senor." 
 
 "Go then. Also see that the Dona Dolorez re 
 mains in her own apartments. And hurry." 
 
 The servant disappeared with the pistols. 
 Eskurola, apologizing gravely, went to the desk 
 and wrote apparently the lines of which he had 
 spoken. He sanded them, folded the paper, lit a 
 candle and sealed the missive with an engraved 
 jade ring that he wore on the little finger of his 
 left hand. 
 
 "This is your first duel, sir?" he said to Car- 
 taret. He said it much as an Englishman at 
 luncheon might ask an American guest whether he 
 had ever eaten turbot. 
 
 "Yes," said Cartaret. 
 
 "Well, you may have what the gamblers of 
 London call beginner s luck/ 
 
 The servant knocked at the door. 
 
 "Will you be so good as to take the pistols?" 
 asked Don Ricardo in English of Cartaret. "It
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 291 
 
 appears better if I do not speak with him. Thank 
 you. And please to tell him in French that he may 
 have your mare and saddle-bags ready in the gate 
 way within five minutes, in case you should want 
 them." 
 
 Cartaret obeyed. 
 
 Eskurola again held the door for his guest to 
 pass. 
 
 "After you, sir," he said. 
 
 They crossed the court-yard leisurely and 
 shoulder to shoulder, for all the world as if they 
 were two friends going out to enjoy the view. 
 Any one observing them from the windows, had 
 there been any one, would have said that Don Ri- 
 cardo was pointing out to Cartaret the beauties 
 of the scene. In reality he was saying: 
 
 "With your agreement, we shall fix the distance 
 at ten paces, and I shall step it. There is no choice 
 for light, and the wind is at rest. Therefore, there 
 being no person to count for us, I shall ask you 
 to toss a coin again, this time that I may call it: 
 if I fail to do so, you fire first; if I succeed, I 
 fire first. Permit me to advise you, sir, that, if
 
 292 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 you are unaccustomed to the hair-trigger, it is as 
 well that you be careful lest you lose your shot." 
 
 Eskurola s manners were apparently never so 
 polished as when he was about to kill or be killed. 
 He measured off the ground and marked the stand 
 for each, always asking Cartaret s opinion. He 
 stood while Cartaret again tossed a glittering gold- 
 piece in the air. 
 
 "Tails!" cried Don Ricardo. "I always pre 
 fer," he explained, "to see this king with his face 
 in the dust. Let us look at him together, so that 
 there will be no mistake." 
 
 The piece lay with its face to the terrace. 
 
 "I win," said Eskurola. "I shoot first. It is 
 bad to begin well." 
 
 Cartaret smiled. With such a marksman as 
 this Basque to shoot at one, the speech became the 
 merest pleasantry. There was only the question 
 of the choice of the pistol, and as to that 
 
 "If you will open the box, I shall choose," 
 Eskurola was saying. Evidently the choice was 
 also to go to the winner of the toss. Cartaret 
 was certain this would not have been the case if
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 293 
 
 the toss had gone otherwise. "I must touch 
 neither until I have chosen, although the addi 
 tional powder in the blank pistol tends toward 
 making their weight equal." 
 
 Mechanically Cartaret opened the mahogany 
 box. Don Ricardo scarcely glanced at the pair 
 of beautiful and deadly weapons lying on the 
 purple velvet: he took the one farther from him. 
 
 "Pray remember the hair-trigger," he continued : 
 
 / 
 
 "you might easily wound yourself. Now, if you 
 please : to our places." 
 
 Each man took off his hat and coat and stood 
 at his post in his white shirt, his feet together, his 
 right side fronting his enemy, his pistol point 
 ing downwards from the hand against his right 
 thigh. 
 
 "Are you ready, sir?" asked Eskurola. 
 
 For a flashing instant Cartaret wanted to scream 
 with hysterical laughter: the whole proceeding 
 seemed so archaic, so grotesque, so useless. Then 
 he thought of how little he had to lose and of 
 whom he might serve in losing that little. . . . 
 
 "Ready, senor," he said.
 
 294 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 If only she could, for only that last moment, 
 love him! That last moment, for he made no 
 doubt of the end of this adventure. The Basque 
 had been too punctilious in all his arrangements: 
 from the first Cartaret had been sure that Don 
 Ricardo and the French-speaking servant had 
 played this tragic farce before, and that the master 
 so arranged matters as easily to choose the one 
 pistol that held death in its mouth. To convict 
 him was impossible, and, were it possible, would 
 be but to strike a fatal blow at the honor of that 
 family which Vitoria held so dear. How false his 
 vanity had played him! What was he that a 
 goddess should not cease to love him when she 
 chose? Enough and more that she had loved him 
 once; an ultimate blessing could she love him a 
 moment more. But once again, then: but that 
 one instant! To see her pitiful eyes upon him, 
 to hear her pure lips whisper the last good-by like 
 music in his dying ears! 
 
 He saw the arm of his enemy slowly slowly 
 rising, without speed and without hesitation, as
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 295 
 
 the paw of a great cat rises to strike, but with a 
 claw of shining steel. 
 
 Cartaret would look his last on the scene that 
 her eyes had known when she was a child, that 
 her eyes would know long after his so soon now ! 
 were closed forever. It was mid-morning; the 
 golden sun was half-way to the zenith. At Car- 
 taret s left, above the walls, the turrets and towers 
 of the Gothic castle, rose the sheer front of that 
 sheer chalcedonous peak. Its top was crowned 
 with the dazzling and eternal snow; its face was 
 waxen, almost translucent; its outcroppings of 
 cry pto-crystal line quartz, multi-toned by the wind 
 and rain of centuries, caught the sunlight and 
 flamed in every gradation of blue and yellow, of 
 onyx, carnelian and sard. To the right lay the 
 wide and peaceful valley, mass after mass of 
 foliage, silver-green and emerald, and, above that, 
 the ridges of the vast, scabrous amphitheater: 
 beetling peaks of gray, dark pectinated cones, 
 fusiform apexes, dancing lancets and swords 
 points, a hundred beetling crags and darting spires 
 under a turquoise sky.
 
 296 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 (Eskurola s arm was rising . . . rising. . . .) 
 
 Her face came before his eyes ; not the face of 
 the woman that sent him from the tower-room, 
 but the face of The Girl that had parted from him 
 in his shabby studio: the frame of blue-black 
 hair, the clear cheek touched with healthy pink, 
 the red lips and white teeth, the level brows, the 
 curling lashes and the frank violet eyes. . . . 
 Into his own eyes came a mist; it blotted out the 
 landscape. 
 
 He dragged his glance back to his executioner. 
 He must meet death face forward. A horrid fear 
 beset him that he had been tardy in this had 
 seemed ever so little to waver. 
 
 But Eskurola had observed no faltering, and 
 had not faltered: his arm still crept upward. It 
 must all have happened in the twinkling of an 
 eye, then : that impulse toward mad laughter, that 
 thought of what he had suffered, that realization 
 of the landscape, even the memory of her face 
 the Lady of the Rose. 
 
 Don Ricardo s arm had just risen a trifle above 
 his shoulder and then come back to its level.
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 297 
 
 It would come now the flash, the quick pang that 
 would outstrip and shut out the very sound of 
 the explosion come now and be over. 
 
 The man was taking an aim, careful, 
 deadly. . . . 
 
 But if everything else had been quick, this was 
 an eternity. Cartaret could feel the Basque s 
 eye, he could see that the leveled pistol-barrel 
 covered his throat directly below the ear. He 
 wanted to shout out to Eskurola to shoot ; to say, 
 "You ve got me !" He ground his teeth to enforce 
 his tongue to silence. And still he waited. Good 
 God, would the man never fire? 
 
 Don Ricardo was lowering his pistol, and his 
 pistol was smoking. He had fired. Moreover, he 
 had aimed truly. But he had chosen his weapon 
 honorably it was the one that did not hold a 
 bullet. 
 
 Cartaret was dazed, but knew instantly what 
 to do. As if it was the performance of an act 
 long since subconsciously decided upon, he raised 
 his own pistol slowly the death-laden pistol 
 and shot straight up into the air. . . .
 
 298 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 The smoke was still circling about the Ameri 
 can s head when he saw Eskurola striding toward 
 him. The Basque s face was a study of humilia 
 tion and dismay. 
 
 "What is this?" he demanded. "After I have 
 tried to kill you, you do not kill me ? You refuse 
 to kill me? You inflict the greatest insult and 
 the only one that I cannot resent?" 
 
 Cartaret threw down his pistol: it frightened 
 him now. "I don t know whether it s an insult to 
 let you live or not," he said, "and I don t care a 
 damn. Where s my mare?" 
 
 He went to the gate. It was opened by the 
 French-speaking servant, wide-eyed now, but with 
 his curiosity inarticulate. Cartaret mounted. His 
 hand trembled as he gathered up the reins. He 
 was angry at this and at the comedy that Fate had 
 made of his attempted heroism. Was there ever 
 before, he reflected, a duel the two principals of 
 which were angry because they survived? 
 
 Eskurola was standing at the edge of the un- 
 railed drawbridge that crossed the precipitous 
 abyss. It was evident even to Cartaret that the
 
 
 
 REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM 299 
 
 Basque was still too amazed to think, much less 
 speak, coherently ; that something beyond his com 
 prehension had occurred; that a phenomenon 
 hitherto unknown had wrecked his cosmos. 
 
 "Sir," he began, "will you not return first into 
 the castle and there " 
 
 "If you don t get out of my way," said Car- 
 taret, "I ll ride you into this chasm !" 
 
 Don Ricardo drew dumbly aside, and Cartaret 
 rode on. With Vitoria relentless and unattain 
 able, abjured by the woman he had loved, robbed 
 even of the chance to give his life for her, he was 
 riding anywhere to get away from Alava, was 
 fleeing from his sense of loss and failure. He rode 
 as fast as the steep descent permitted, and only 
 once, at a sharp twist of the way, a full mile down 
 the mountain, did he allow himself to turn in his 
 saddle and look back. 
 
 There was Eskurola, a silhouette against the 
 gray walls. Behind him rose the castle of his 
 fathers, and back of it the great peak towered, 
 through a hundred flashing colors, to its shining 
 crown of eternal snow.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 AND LAST 
 
 It must be a very dear and intimate reality for which 
 people will be content to give up a dream. 
 
 Hawthorne: The Marble Faun. 
 
 SUMMER held Paris in his arms when Cartaret 
 returned there held her, wearied from the dance 
 with Spring, in his warm arms, and was rocking 
 her to sleep. Romance had crowded commerce 
 from the boulevards; poets wrote their verses at 
 the marble-topped tables along the awninged pave 
 ments; the lesser streets were lovers lanes. 
 
 For Cartaret had not hurried. Once the Pyre 
 nees were behind him, he felt growing upon him 
 a dread of any return to the city in which he had 
 first met and loved the Lady of the Rose ; ajid only 
 the necessity of settling his affairs there of col 
 lecting his few possessions, paying two or three 
 
 remaining bills and bidding a last good-by to his 
 
 300
 
 AND LAST 301 
 
 friends drew him forward. He lingered at one 
 town after the other, caring nothing for what he 
 saw, but hating the thought of even a week in a 
 Paris without her. Vaguely he had decided to re 
 turn to America, though what of interest life could 
 hold there, or anywhere, for him he could not 
 imagine: some dull business routine, most likely 
 for he would never paint again and the duller 
 the better,. Thus he wasted a fortnight along the 
 Loire and among the chateaux of Touraine and 
 found himself at last leaving his train in the 
 Gare D Orsay at the end of a Summer afternoon. 
 He made for his own room with the objectless 
 hurry of a native American, his feet keeping time 
 to a remembered stanza of Andrew Lang: 
 
 "In dreams she grows not older 
 
 The lands of Dream among, 
 Though all the world wax colder, 
 
 Though all the songs be sung; 
 In dreams doth he behold her 
 
 Still fair and kind and young." 
 
 Taciturn Refrogne seemed no more surprised 
 to see him than if tye had gone out but an hour
 
 302 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 since: the trade of the Parisian concierge slays 
 surprise early. 
 
 "A letter for monsieur," said Refrogne. 
 
 Cartaret took it from the grimy paw that was 
 extended out of the concierge s cave. He went 
 on up the stairs. 
 
 The door of the magic Room Opposite in all 
 probability commonplace enough now stood 
 slightly ajar, and Cartaret felt a new pang as he 
 glanced at it. He passed on to his own room. 
 
 His own room ! It was precisely as he had seen 
 it last a little dustier, and far more dreary, but 
 with no other change. The table at which she had 
 leaned, the easel on which he had painted those 
 portraits of her, were just as when he had left 
 them. He went to the window at which he used 
 to store the provisions that Chitta looted, and 
 there he opened the envelope Refrogne had given 
 him. It contained only one piece of paper: A 
 Spanish draft on the Comptoir General for a hun 
 dred and twenty francs, and on the back, in a 
 labored English script, was written:
 
 AND LAST 303 
 
 "For repayment of the sum advanced to my servant, 
 Chitta Grekekora. 
 
 "Ricardo B. F. R. Ethenard-Eskurola (d Alegria)." 
 
 A limb of wisteria had climbed to the window 
 and hung a cluster of its purple flowers on the 
 sill. Below, Refrogne s lilacs were in full bloom, 
 and the laughter of Refrogne s children rose from 
 among them as piercing sweet as the scent of the 
 flowers. Cartaret took a match from his pocket, 
 struck it and set the bit of paper aflame. He 
 held it until the flame burnt his fingers, crushed it 
 in his palm and watched the ashes circle slowly 
 downward toward the lilac-trees. 
 
 The sun had set and, as Cartaret walked aim 
 lessly toward the front windows, the long shadows 
 of the twilight were deepening from wall to wall. 
 Summer was in all the air. 
 
 So much the same! He leaned forward and 
 looked down into the silent rue du Val-de-Grace. 
 He was thinking how she had once stood where 
 he was leaning now; thinking how he had leaned 
 there so often, looking for her return up that nar 
 row thoroughfare, waiting for the sound of her
 
 304 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 light footfall on the stair. So much the same, in 
 deed : the unchanged street outside, the unchanged 
 room within ; the room in which he had found her 
 on that February night. Here she had admitted 
 that she loved him, and here she had said the 
 good-by thai; he would not understand a few 
 short weeks ago. And now he was back back 
 after having heard her repudiate him, back after 
 losing her forever. 
 
 Fate works everywhere, but her favorite work 
 shop is Paris. Something was moving in the 
 deepest shadow in the room the shadow about 
 the doorway. Blue-black hair and long-lashed 
 eyes of violet, lips of red and cheeks of white 
 and pink; the incredible was realized, the miracle 
 had happened : Vitoria was here. 
 
 He was beside her in a single bound. He 
 thought that he cried her name aloud; in reality, 
 his lips moved without speech. 
 
 "Wait," she said. She drew away from him; 
 but the statues of the Greek gods in the Luxem 
 bourg gardens must have felt the thrill in the 
 evening air as she faced him. She was looking
 
 AND LAST 305 
 
 at him bravely with only the least tremor of her 
 lips. "Do you do you still love me?" she asked. 
 
 Her voice was like a violin; her words dazed 
 him. 
 
 "Love you*? I I can t tell you how much I 
 haven t the words to say " 
 
 He seized the hand with which she had checked 
 him and kissed its un jeweled fingers. 
 
 "What is it"? . . . Why did you say you hated 
 me? ... What has brought you back? ... Is 
 is true? Is it true?" 
 
 From Refrogne s garden came the last good 
 night-song of the birds. 
 
 "Love you? Why, from the day I left you 
 no, from that night I found you here, I ve 
 thought nothing but Vitoria, dreamed nothing 
 but Vitoria " 
 
 Now incoherent and afraid, then with hectic 
 eloquence and finally with a complete abandon, he 
 poured out his soul in libation to her. With the 
 first word of it, she saw that she was forgiven. 
 
 "I came," she said, "to to tell you this : You 
 know now that I ran away from Paris because I
 
 306 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 loved you and knew that I could not marry you; 
 but you do not know why I said that terrible thing 
 which I said in the tower-room. I was afraid of 
 what my brother might do to you. That is why I 
 would not take your kisses. To try to make you 
 leave before he found you, I sai3 what first came 
 to my mind as likely to drive you away. I said 
 it at what fearful cost! I blasphemed against 
 my love for you." 
 
 Cartaret was recovering himself. Love gives 
 all, but it demands everything : 
 
 Tr Your brother said that I had offered you some 
 insult. He said you d told him so. I thought 
 you d told him that in order to make him all the 
 angrier against me." 
 
 "Ever sinceChitta and I returned to our home, 
 he had been suspecting," she said. "He would 
 not forgive me for going away. Chitta he tor 
 tured, but she told him nothing. Me, he kept 
 almost a prisoner. When you came, I knew that 
 he would soon guess what was true, so I sent for 
 you that morning to send you away, and when that 
 failed and he found us together, I told him that
 
 AND LAST 307 
 
 we loved each other, because I hoped that he would 
 spare the man I loved, even though he would 
 never let me let me marry that man. I should 
 have known him too well to think that, but I was 
 too afraid to reason too afraid for your sake. 
 He was so proud that he would not repeat it to 
 you as I said it to him : he repeated it in the way 
 least hateful to him and after you had gone, I 
 found that all I had done served only to make 
 him try to kill you. Of this I knew nothing un 
 til hours later. Then then " 
 
 The birds had ceased their song, but the scent 
 of the lilacs still rose from the garden. 
 
 "Don t you understand now?" she asked, her 
 cheeks crimson in the fading light. "I guessed 
 you did not understand then ; but don t you under 
 stand now 1 ?" 
 
 He stood bewildered. She had to go through 
 with it. 
 
 "My brother had to live you made him live. 
 To kill himself is the worst disgrace that a Basque 
 can put upon his family. Besides, the thing was 
 done; you had fired into the air; nothing that he
 
 3o8 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 might do would undo that. At the bridge he 
 tried to tell you so, but you rode by. You know 
 my brother told it you that one reason which 
 allows a foreigner to marry a Basque. We Esku- 
 rolas pay our debts; to let you go a creditor for 
 that was to put a stain upon our house indelibly. 
 I would have accepted the disgrace and made my 
 brother continue to accept it, had you not now 
 said that you still loved me; but you have said 
 it. Oh, do do, please, understand!" She 
 stamped her foot. "My brother is the last man 
 of our name. In saving him, you saved the house 
 of Eskurola." 
 
 Cartaret was seized by the same impulse toward 
 hysteria that had seized him when he first faced 
 Don Ricardo s pistol. 
 
 "Was that what he tried to say at the bridge*? 
 What a fool I was not to listen ! If I had all the 
 world to give, I d give it to you !" 
 
 He tried to seize her hand again, but she drew 
 it away. 
 
 "And so," she said, with a crooked smile and a 
 flaming face, "since you say that you love me,
 
 AND LAST 309 
 
 I I have to pay the just debt of my house and 
 save its honor I must marry you whether I love 
 you or not." 
 
 He looked at her with fear renewed. 
 
 "Then you have changed?" he asked. 
 
 Suddenly she put her own right hand to her 
 lips and kissed the ringers on which his lips had 
 rested. 
 
 "You have all the world," she said. . . . "Give 
 it me." 
 
 He found both of her hands this time, but still 
 she kept him from her. The scent of the lilacs 
 mingled with another scent a scent that made 
 him see again the tall Cantabrians. . . . Sud 
 denly he realized that she was wearing her 
 student-blouse. 
 
 "You ve been here When did you come back 
 to Paris?" 
 
 "A week ago." 
 
 "To this house?" 
 
 "Of course I am living in this house as before, 
 and with your friend Chitta. You know that I 
 could not have lived anywhere else in Paris. I
 
 310 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 couldn t. So I took the old room the dear little 
 old room again." 
 
 "Before you knew that I still loved you !" She 
 hung her head. "But I ll surely never let you go 
 this time." He held her hands fast as if fearing 
 that she might escape him. "No custom no law 
 no force could take you now. Tell me: would 
 you have wanted to go back?" 
 
 She freed herself. That newer perfume filled 
 the purple twilight : the pure perfume of the Azure 
 Rose that the wandering Basque carries with 
 him abroad to bring him safely home. She drew 
 the rose from beneath her blouse and held it out 
 to him. Cartaret kissed it. She took it back, 
 kissed it too, went to the nearest window and, 
 tearing the flower petal from petal, dropped it into 
 the Paris street. 
 
 "No," she said softly when she had turned to 
 him again, "do not kiss me yet. I want you first 
 to understand me. I do love my own country, but 
 I cannot stay in it forever. I was being smothered 
 there by all the dust of those dead centuries; 
 I was being slowly crushed by the iron weight of
 
 AND LAST 311 
 
 their old customs and their old laws all hor 
 ribly alive when they should have been long ago 
 in their graves. There was nothing around me 
 that was not old: old walls and towers, ancient 
 tapestries and arms, musty rooms, yellowed manu 
 scripts. The age of the place, it seemed to become 
 a soul-in-itself. It seemed to get a consciousness 
 and to hate me because I was not as it was. There 
 was nothing that was not old and I was young." 
 As she remembered it, her face grew almost 
 sulky. "Even if it had not been for you, I be 
 lieve I should have come away again. I was so 
 angry at it all that I could even have put on a 
 Paquin gown if I had had a Paquin gown! 
 and worn it at dinner in the big dining-hall of 
 my ancestors." 
 
 He understood. He realized none better 
 the hunger and thirst for Paris : for the lights of 
 the boulevards, the clatter of the dominoes on the 
 cafe-tables, the procession of carriages and motors 
 along the Champs Elysees, the very cries and 
 hurry of the rue St. Honore by day or the BouP 
 Mich by night. Nevertheless, he had lately been
 
 312 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 an American headed for America, and so he said : 
 
 "Just wait till you see Broadway !" 
 
 Vitoria smiled, but she remained serious. 
 
 "I wanted you to know that first," she said: 
 "to know that I came away this second time in 
 large part because of you, but not wholly." 
 
 "I think," said Cartaret, "that I can manage 
 to forgive that." 
 
 "And then there is something else. You saw 
 my brother in a great castle and on a great es 
 tate, but he is not rich, and I am very poor." 
 
 Cartaret laughed. 
 
 "Was that what was on your mind*? My 
 dear, I m rich I m frightfully rich!" 
 
 "Rich*?" Her tone was all incredulity. 
 
 "It happened the day you left Paris. Oh, I 
 know I ought to have told you at the castle, but 
 I forgot it. You see, there was so little time to 
 talk to you and so many more important things to 
 say." 
 
 He told her all about it while the dusk slowly 
 deepened. Chitta should have a salary for re 
 maining in a cottage that he would give her in
 
 AND LAST 313 
 
 Alava and never leaving it. He would give his 
 friends that dinner now Houdon and Devignes, 
 Varachon and Gamier a dinner of celebration 
 at which the host would be present and to which 
 even Gaston Francois Louis Pasbeaucoup and the 
 elephantine Madame would sit down. There 
 would be bushels of strawberries. Seraphin would 
 be pensioned for life, so that he might paint only 
 the pictures that his heart demanded, and Four- 
 get yes, Cartaret would embrace dear old Four- 
 get like a true Gaul. In the Luxembourg Gardens 
 the statues of the old gods smiled and held their 
 peace. 
 
 "You you can study too," said Cartaret. 
 "You can have the best art-masters in the world, 
 and you shall have them." 
 
 But Vitoria shook her head. 
 
 "There," she said, "is another confession and 
 the last. I was the more ready to leave Paris 
 when I ran away from you, because I was dis 
 heartened: the master had told me that I could 
 never learn, and so I was afraid to face you."
 
 3H THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 "Then / // never paint again," vowed Cartaret. 
 "Pictures? I was successful only when I painted 
 pictures of you, and why should I paint them when 
 I have you?" 
 
 She looked at him gravely. 
 
 "I am glad," she said, "that you are rich, but 
 I am also glad that we have both been poor 
 together. Oh," she looked about the familiar 
 room "it needs but one thing more : if only the 
 street-organ were playing that Scotch song that 
 it used to play !" 
 
 "If it only were!" he agreed. "However, we 
 can t have everything, can we*?" 
 
 But lovers, if they only want it enough, can 
 have everything, and, somehow, the hurdy-gurdy 
 did, just at that moment, begin to play "Annie 
 Laurie" as it used to do, out in the rue du Val-de- 
 Grace. 
 
 Cartaret led her toward the darkened window, 
 but stopped half-way across the Foom. 
 
 "I will try to deserve you," he said. "I will 
 make myself what you want me to be."
 
 AND LAST 315 
 
 "You cure that," she answered, her face raised 
 toward his. "All that I ask is to have you with 
 me always as you are now." The clear contralto 
 of her voice ran like a refrain to the simple air 
 of the ballad. "I want you with me when you are 
 unhappy, so that I may comfort you; when you 
 are ill, so that I may nurse you; when you are 
 glad, so that I may be glad because you are. I 
 want to know you in every mood : I want to belong 
 to you." 
 
 High over the gleaming roofs, the moon, a disk 
 of yellow glass, swung out upon the indigo sky 
 and peeped in at that window. One silver beam 
 enveloped her. It bathed her lithe, firm figure; 
 it touched her pure face, her scarlet lips ; it made 
 a refulgent glory of her hair, and, out of it, the 
 splendor of her wonderful eyes was for him. 
 
 "Soon," he whispered, "in the chapel of Ste. 
 Jeanne D Arc at the church of St. Germain des 
 Pres." 
 
 "Good-night," she said. . . . "Good-night, my 
 love."
 
 3i6 THE AZURE ROSE 
 
 She raised her white hands to him and drew one 
 step nearer. Then she yielded herself to his arms 
 and, as they closed, strong and tight, about her, 
 her own arms circled his neck. 
 
 The scent of the Azure Rose returned with her 
 lips : a vision of mountain-peaks and sunlight upon 
 crests of snow, a perfume sweeter than the scent 
 of any rose in any garden, a poem in a language 
 that Cartaret at last could understand. 
 
 Her lips met his. . . . 
 
 "Oh," he whispered, "sweetheart, is it really, 
 really you?" 
 
 "Yes," said the lady of the Rose, "it is me!" 
 
 THE END. 

 
 AND LAST 317 
 
 ENVOI: THE SON OF JOEL. 
 
 The poet is a beggar blind 
 
 That sits beside a city gate, 
 The while the busy people wind 
 
 Their daily way, less fortunate. 
 
 The many pass with slavish speed; 
 The few remember this or that; 
 
 Some hear and jeer, some stop to heed 
 And some drop pennies in his hat. . . . < 
 
 0, you that pause and understand, 
 Though I may never see your face, 
 
 Across the years I touch your hand: 
 
 1 kiss you through the leagues of space/ 
 
 R. W. K.
 
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