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 THE DAUGHTER OF A STOIC
 
 THE 
 
 DAUGHTER OF A STOIC 
 
 BY 
 
 CORNELIA ATWOOD PRATT 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1896 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1896, 
 BY MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 NottoooU 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
 
 THE DAUGHTER OF A STOIC 
 
 I 
 
 WHEN Marion James had drunk from 
 the cup of life her full portion of poverty 
 and illness and anguish of spirit, she died, 
 leaving to the half-brother with whom she 
 had quarrelled on her marriage the doubt 
 fully desirable legacy of her little daughter. 
 
 She wrote him on her death-bed a 
 letter which was chiefly remarkable for 
 the things it did not say. He had not 
 heard from her for twelve years. 
 
 " Dear Roger," the letter ran, " I am 
 ill, and the doctors tell me that I shall 
 not recover. Will you look after Arria? 
 She is self-willed ; there is no reason to 
 
 2212577
 
 2 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 suppose that she will reward your care 
 with any more consideration than I 
 showed. But if, for the sake of the 
 family, you will see that she gets a 
 modern education which will fit her to 
 earn her own living in a few years, it 
 will be a merciful thing to do, and in 
 time she may even be able to repay 
 you. I am leaving her a little more 
 than enough to clothe her." Here the 
 writing wavered and grew faint. The 
 signature was barely legible. 
 
 " I should think Marion would have 
 wished to say more to me after being 
 silent for so many years," complained 
 Major Roger Woolsey. 
 
 " Perhaps she did not have the strength," 
 suggested his wife gently. " She was a 
 dying woman. This was her last effort." 
 
 The Major stretched out his hands to 
 the fire, and his long upper lip trembled.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 3 
 
 His small eyes and purplish face showed 
 a convulsive agitation. 
 
 " My only sister, Elizabeth, my only 
 sister," he said in his expansive after- 
 dinner voice. 
 
 Mrs. Woolsey came and stood by her 
 husband s chair, dropping a light, caress 
 ing hand upon his shoulder. Beside his 
 portly, somewhat shapeless bulk, her slight 
 figure seemed even more delicate and girl 
 ish in outline than its wont. With her 
 translucent skin, pink cheeks and early 
 whitened hair she was still very pretty 
 the figure of a gentlewoman in Dresden 
 ware. 
 
 " But she left you the child, Roger." 
 
 " Naturally. There was no one else to 
 leave it to." 
 
 " We will do our best to give her the 
 sort of training that your sister would 
 have wished."
 
 4 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " She will want the Higher Education 
 college and all that sort of thing," said 
 the Major ruefully. The Major was not 
 in sympathy with the ideals of the modern 
 woman, and winced at the thought of 
 having a possible exponent of them in 
 the family. 
 
 " Oh ! " said his wife dubiously. " But 
 I am sure the way in which I was brought 
 up is the better, the more lady-like, way 
 to educate a girl." 
 
 " It is not so financially advantageous 
 if she is to be a worker. The bloom on 
 the grape has no market value." 
 
 " I do hope," said Mrs. Woolsey, with 
 an accession of energy, " that Florence 
 will not grow up strong-minded and 
 have erroneous views about things. It 
 would be such grief to me. Perhaps it 
 is just as well that Arria is four or five 
 years younger than Florence. Otherwise
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 5 
 
 it would seem natural to educate them 
 together. But these new ideas seem to 
 me so mistaken, so subversive of of 
 everything. I could never consent to 
 train Florence in that way." 
 
 " Certainly not," said the Major prompt 
 ly. " I trust Florence will be such another 
 woman as her mother." 
 
 Mrs. Woolsey looked down at the top 
 of her husband s head which was bare, 
 polished, and pinkish with an adoring 
 smile. It was the same smile that had 
 fascinated him when she was twenty, 
 and its potency was still immense. 
 
 " Sometimes I feel very sorry," she 
 said regretfully, "for the women of to 
 day. They are bartering their birthright 
 for a mess of pottage, and they do not 
 know what they have lost. They seem 
 indifferent to the finer, more imaginative 
 aspects of their position in the world.
 
 6 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 Comradeship pleases them as well as 
 courtesy. I hate to think the old ideas 
 are dying out." 
 
 The word courtesy reminded the Major 
 tardily that his wife was standing. He 
 rose with a palpable effort, and ponder 
 ously wheeled forward another chair to 
 the fire. Then he lifted her fragile 
 blue-veined hand to his yellow-white 
 moustache. 
 
 " The old ideas, please God," he said, 
 " will never die out so long as there is 
 left on earth a man s breast fit to harbour 
 them ! "
 
 II 
 
 AT twenty-two Arria James had an 
 interesting face, a level head, and con 
 fidence in the universe. Also, and not 
 unjustly, a certain degree of confidence 
 in Arria James. 
 
 I say an interesting face, because that 
 was the first impression which it gave 
 you. Only when her features were in 
 repose did you perceive that they were 
 finely cut, and that their harmony pro 
 duced the satisfying effect men call 
 beauty. For the rest, her eyes were 
 blue, with long black lashes that matched 
 her irrepressibly wavy hair. Her smile, 
 which might almost be catalogued as a 
 feature, broke the tinted roundness of 
 7
 
 8 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 her cheeks with dimples, yet was not 
 merry. It had both fixidity and subtle 
 ness, and came and went with the tide 
 of her thought, quite unrelated to any 
 external excitation to mirth. It had been 
 compared to the smile of the Mona Lisa; 
 one of her professors had also called it 
 Assyrian. However one regarded it, its 
 charm was undeniable. 
 
 When she emerged from her college 
 for the last time, her uncle s family still 
 lingered in Washington, where they had 
 spent the spring, and Arria went forth 
 with to Rosehedges, the family home near 
 Skanseewan, to await their coming. After 
 their arrival there was to be a family 
 council. She was to tell them what she 
 wanted to do with her life, and her 
 future plans were to be discussed. 
 
 Fresh from four years of perfectly in 
 dependent existence, she chafed a little
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 9 
 
 at the necessity of submitting her projects 
 to any one, but as the obligation was 
 chiefly one of courtesy, it bound her 
 with a double chain. In the meanwhile, 
 she found Rosehedges very delightful. 
 
 " Oh no, thank you," she said to Rod 
 erick Kirke when he came over from 
 the next place with his invalid mother s 
 compliments and request to know if she 
 could do anything to make Miss James s 
 period of waiting less tedious. " There 
 is nothing. The servants have made me 
 perfectly comfortable, and I have enjoyed 
 these three days immensely. I expect 
 the family to-morrow, and I almost re 
 gret it. I have been having such a 
 delicious, solitary time. Of course I am 
 anxious to see them," she hesitated 
 a second before going on " especially 
 Florence. It is really six years since I 
 have seen anything of her. She was
 
 io The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 abroad so long, you know. I hear she 
 is very brilliant and beautiful." 
 
 The young man smiled with a satisfied 
 air which suggested that the words were, 
 in some sort, a tribute to himself. 
 
 " She is almost too brilliant to be 
 popular," he observed. " A man said to 
 me once, Miss Woolsey is too clever to 
 be real. I always feel as if she were a 
 wonderful talking doll, not flesh and 
 blood at all. " 
 
 Arria opened her eyes rather widely. 
 
 " He must have been a stupid man," 
 she said with conviction, "for in the first 
 place there can t be too much clever 
 ness, and in the second, I can t imagine 
 Florence as being anything but graciously 
 human." 
 
 Mr. Kirke smiled to himself again. 
 
 " Then you like Rosehedges ? " he re 
 marked, with a total lack of relevance.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 1 1 
 
 They were on the western verandah, 
 which looked out across the lawn and 
 over the tips of the shrubbery climbing 
 up the bluff, to the broad, shining river, 
 silver in the June sun. The pink mists 
 of morning had hardly faded from the 
 nearer hills across the river. Still beyond 
 and northward, the Catskills were blue 
 in the distance. 
 
 " There is so much beauty here that 
 it possesses me entirely. I forget that 
 there are such things as tenement-houses 
 and sweaters shops and squalid city 
 streets and maltreated children. It makes 
 vice seem impossible and virtue wholly 
 inadequate," said Arria slowly, striving 
 to put her impression into words. " It 
 makes life seem more dignified, more of 
 an opportunity, than any other prospect 
 I ever saw. I have not spent a summer 
 here for several years, and I feel as if I
 
 12 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 ought to acquire manners of the sky 
 if I am to remain. One of my friends 
 once wrote me from Switzerland that 
 she had seen beauty enough to make 
 an angel weep he had to stay in heaven. 
 This view seems to me like that." 
 
 " There are those, you know," sug 
 gested Mr. Kirke, with a strictly imper 
 sonal manner, " who think it would take 
 more than that to reconcile a mortal to 
 remaining on earth." 
 
 Arria hesitated. The one conversa 
 tional temptation she found it difficult 
 to resist was the taking of a short cut 
 from light to serious talk. 
 
 " Pessimism like that is so unintelli 
 gent, so stupid," she now said eagerly. 
 "Surely that is not your own view?" 
 
 " You know Punch s answer to Is 
 life worth living ? " he began languidly. 
 
 Miss James nodded. Her red lip
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 13 
 
 curled scornfully. Was this his idea of 
 intelligent conversation ? 
 
 "Well, I don t agree with it. It de 
 pends upon the mind. Given a keen 
 intelligence, and everything, even suffer 
 ing or sorrow, is worth while, because 
 through it all one has the sense of 
 being on the track of hidden things, of 
 coming close to the secrets of creation." 
 
 Arria s eyes sparkled. She wished she 
 had said that herself. 
 
 The man rose. June mornings are 
 warm for abstract conversation, even 
 when one is talking to a very pretty 
 girl. 
 
 " By the way, Miss James, I nearly 
 forgot one-half my errand. My mother 
 would be very glad if, since she is un 
 able to come to you, you would come 
 in quite informally some morning to see 
 her. She knew your mother very well,
 
 14 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 and is anxious to make the acquaint 
 ance of her daughter." 
 
 As he took himself off across the 
 lawn, Arria watched him with eyes of 
 approval. 
 
 " He has a nice soul ! " she said joy 
 ously. " And he is going to marry 
 Florence. I m sure I don t know why, 
 but I never expected to find Florence 
 engaged to a man with a soul! " 
 
 Such are the limitations of twenty-two 
 years that it did not occur to Arria this 
 was not an adequate characterization of 
 the tall young man with the soft, indif 
 ferent voice, keen blue eyes, and inter 
 ested manner. Where youth can idealize 
 it seldom analyzes, and Roderick s char 
 acter took on for her that morning a 
 certain luminous indistinctness which, 
 when you think of it, is the quality a 
 halo has that it never afterwards lost.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 15 
 
 "Well, Roderick," demanded Mrs. 
 Kirke half an hour later, as her son 
 wheeled her big chair carefully along 
 the terrace, " and what is Marion Wool- 
 sey s little girl like?" 
 
 " Nice girl," said Roderick concisely. 
 " Quite our sort. You ll like her. Very 
 pretty, with attentive Irish-blue eyes, and 
 an extraordinary smile that comes and 
 goes without, so to speak, paying any 
 attention to the audience. Very keen 
 after ideas. I suspect she has a good 
 many. Not very good, nor very new, 
 probably. Just the same old things, 
 but her personal zest in them would 
 give life to theories exploded before the 
 flood." 
 
 " She s not at all Florence s style ? " 
 
 " My dear mother ! Florence and I 
 are withered flowers in comparison. 
 She is young and fresh in spirit. The
 
 1 6 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 innocent blasphemy of her years is at 
 tractive. She looks at the world as she 
 might look into a shop window full of 
 spring bonnets. It is all before her 
 where to choose. And her verdict still 
 coincides with the Creator s. It is very 
 good. There is nothing in this life 
 more refreshing to jaded people like our 
 selves than just her type. She will be 
 none the less delightful from the fact 
 that she will occasionally be ludicrous, 
 as people who are very much in earnest 
 often are. I expect to enjoy her society 
 immensely. Decidedly, she is our sort."
 
 Ill 
 
 ARRIA S ambitions in life were varied. 
 She intended to study for a Ph. D. and 
 become a learned professor; but then 
 she also wanted to see something of a 
 more frivolous society than usually falls 
 in the way of very, very learned ladies, 
 and she was well aware that of these 
 two projects the first was the one which 
 could be deferred with the least danger 
 to its ultimate realization. 
 
 Accordingly, after arguing the subject 
 with the Major and Mrs. Woolsey for 
 two hours, she consented to postpone 
 her further studies for a year and remain 
 with them. 
 
 The Major called her to his side, and 
 kissed her with much solemnity, 
 c 17
 
 1 8 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " Your docility gives me much pleasure, 
 my child," he said. 
 
 " Am I docile ? " asked Arria, with 
 surprise. " I was afraid I had seemed 
 particularly obstinate." 
 
 " Compared with your mother " be 
 gan the Major, then checked himself, 
 and Mrs. Woolsey -filled the gap with a 
 gentle murmurous expression of her pleas 
 ure in Arria s acquiescence. 
 
 The years of Arria s school-days had 
 not greatly altered the Major and Mrs. 
 Woolsey. She was, if anything, a trifle 
 more fragile and fairy-like, while he was 
 perceptibly more ponderous ; the colour 
 had deepened a shade in his face, the 
 skin had grown flabbier, the cheeks 
 more pendulous. 
 
 " But they are quite the same people," 
 thought Arria, as she went to her room, 
 having said good-night. " Quite the same,"
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 19 
 
 and she shivered a little. To think that 
 ten whole years of living could pass over 
 one s head, and make so little difference ! 
 " Oh I hope," thought the girl, clasping 
 her hands, "that I may be born into some 
 new appreciation of life, at least, every 
 two years. What is the use of it else?" 
 
 In her own room she found Florence, 
 in a picturesque dressing-gown, sitting 
 by the eastern window in the faint 
 moonlight, waiting for her. 
 
 Arria was conscious of a sensation of 
 pleased surprise. She had felt herself on 
 trial with this new Florence, who at 
 twenty-six was not at all the Florence 
 she had known at twenty, when they 
 last spent a summer together. This was 
 the first token that the probation had 
 ended in approval. 
 
 " This is dear of you," said Arria 
 warmly.
 
 2O The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " How did the debate end, Arria ? 
 Are you going to stay with us ? " 
 
 The younger girl drew a hassock 
 toward the window and sat down at her 
 cousin s feet, leaning her head against 
 the window frame, her eyes on Florence s 
 face. 
 
 " It was not a fair fight. I was on 
 the other side all the while. I want to 
 stay very much, but it seems to me I 
 should be about my business in life." 
 
 " Your business in life is to have a 
 good time," said her cousin promptly. 
 
 " I admit that," said Arria, with an un 
 expected intensity. " That is my own 
 theory exactly, but I have some other 
 things to do, too. My mother trusted 
 me to become self-supporting, and repay 
 Uncle Roger for my education, and that 
 is one of the things I must see to, you 
 know."
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 21 
 
 Florence scrutinized the charming 
 girlish face upturned to hers in the 
 moonlight. 
 
 " Do you know that you are very 
 pretty ? " she asked, with a certain ex 
 citement of manner. 
 
 " I am glad you think so," answered 
 Arria. " You will like better having me 
 about. But I am not a circumstance 
 compared to you." 
 
 In fact, Florence was attractive, not 
 with an ordered, classical loveliness, but 
 with the beauty belonging to whatever is 
 alert, intense, alive. All eyes were drawn 
 to her in her presence as they are drawn 
 toward leaping flame. A slender figure, a 
 mass of red-brown hair waving away from 
 a white forehead, great red-brown eyes 
 with exquisitely pencilled brows, an al 
 most colourless skin, and fine-cut scarlet 
 lips were some of the physical details of
 
 22 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 a personality whose whole effect was 
 delicately dazzling, so vivid was the im 
 pression it conveyed of life and interest. 
 The lines of her mouth seemed to say 
 that her interest was dashed now and 
 again by cynicism. She looked, perhaps, 
 not too old, but too experienced for her 
 twenty-six years. 
 
 " Oh, I am pass ee" said Florence care 
 lessly. " What did you mean just now, 
 Arria, about a good time being your 
 theory too ? " 
 
 Arria hesitated. " It s rather a long 
 story," she said slowly. " It involves 
 so much of my life. Are you sure it 
 wouldn t bore you ? I should hate to 
 bore you the first evening you came in 
 to see me like this. You might never 
 come again." 
 
 Florence laughed and settled herself 
 more comfortably to listen. " I never
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 23 
 
 permit myself to be bored," she said, 
 " and you have been uncommonly enter 
 taining up to this time. As they say of 
 novels, the interest is well sustained. 
 Now go on." 
 
 " I prefer to tell you. It is a question 
 of one of my working principles, and if 
 it should ever lead me, as it might, to 
 do strange or selfish things, I would 
 rather you knew beforehand why I did 
 them. You would be less shocked. Do 
 you know very much about my mother ? " 
 
 Florence shook her head. 
 
 "She was a saint and a martyr. You 
 know she had only a very little money 
 of her own, about the five hundred a 
 year that I have now. The fortune came 
 from Uncle Roger s mother and reverted 
 to him when our grandfather died. And 
 mamma quarrelled with Uncle Roger 
 when she married I believe he did not
 
 24 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 approve of my father and wanted her to 
 marry some one else and so, though he 
 tried to give her an income, she would 
 not have it, but went off and never wrote 
 to him. And she and my father were 
 wretchedly poor. Papa was ill almost 
 always, and he ought to have gone South, 
 and there was no money to send him, 
 and I was a cross baby and kept him 
 awake at night, and they got into debt, 
 and oh, everything! They had almost 
 all the miseries that people can have. 
 But my mother always said that it was 
 no matter that she did not mind. What 
 she meant was that she loved my father 
 so much that nothing hurt not illness, 
 nor poverty, nor cross babies, nor even 
 seeing him suffer, so long as he was 
 alive and they were together. And she 
 has told me he felt in the same way. 
 But I hardly believe that. I have noticed
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 25 
 
 that men always think things hurt, even 
 very little things. I don t think they can 
 bear as much as we can. 
 
 " She began to train me to bear things 
 very early. She was afraid for me, afraid 
 that I might not be strong and brave 
 enough to live my life. Since I have 
 grown older, I have learned to measure 
 her own suffering by the fear she felt 
 for me. I never saw her cry but once. 
 It was just before my father died, and I 
 was seven years old, but I remember 
 perfectly how she sat with me in her 
 arms beside his bed talking about my 
 future. You are going, and I shall go 
 too, I heard her say. She must stand 
 on her own feet. And who knows what 
 unkind things the years will do to her? 
 She must be strong. I must make her 
 strong. O my baby, my baby ! and 
 then she broke down, and I slipped
 
 26 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 away from her and crept miserably off 
 into a corner, trying to think what it 
 could mean. 
 
 " So my training began early. If pre 
 cepts could make a philosopher, I should 
 have been a Stoic from my cradle. She 
 had named me for the Roman Arria, and 
 as soon as I was old enough not to 
 understand, but to be impressed she 
 told me the story " 
 
 " What is it ? I have forgotten," her 
 cousin interrupted. 
 
 "Oh, don t you know? She was the 
 wife of a noble, who, being condemned 
 to death, had the right of his class to 
 execute the sentence with his own hand. 
 But he had not the courage until, visit 
 ing him in his cell one day, his wife 
 plunged a dagger into her own heart, and 
 drawing it out handed it to him with 
 a smile, saying only, It does not hurt.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 27 
 
 " My mother tried to teach me to say 
 that of all my woes. When I grew a 
 little older, she taught me Marcus Aure- 
 lius. I have a writing-case she gave 
 me the year before she died, with the 
 sentences she quoted oftenest and was 
 fondest of written upon the back of the 
 blotter leaf. See here," and rising, Arria 
 made a light and took a quaintly em 
 broidered little case from her table. Flor 
 ence bent over it eagerly. In a bold, 
 clear hand, blurred here and there as 
 though at some time tears had been 
 shed upon it, were written the cheerless 
 precepts the mother had chosen for her 
 child. 
 
 " Everything is fruit to me which thy 
 seasons bring, O Nature / " 
 
 " Nothing happens to a man which he 
 is not fitted by nature to bear? 
 
 " // is a shame for the soul to be first
 
 28 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 to give way in this life when the body 
 does not give way" 
 
 "Unhappy am I because this has hap 
 pened to me? Not so, but happy ant /, 
 though this has happened to me . . . 
 neither crushed by the present nor fear 
 ing the future? 
 
 " Let it make no difference to thee 
 whether thoii art cold or warm if thou 
 art doing thy duty ; and whether thou 
 art drowsy or satisfied with sleep ; and 
 whether ill-spoken of or praised ; and 
 whether dying or doing something else. 
 For it is one of the acts of life, this act 
 by which we die ; it is sufficient then in 
 this act also to do well what we have in 
 hand? 
 
 Arria took the little case and replaced 
 it, turned out the glaring gas-jet, and came 
 to sit down again at her cousin s feet. 
 
 " She died that way- as she had tried
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 29 
 
 to live. But, child as I was, I was not 
 deceived. Her stoicism was unreal. It 
 was only a form of endurance, something 
 that helped her to be silent. Even I 
 could see that after my father s death 
 life was a long agony to her, and not 
 even the thought of leaving me could 
 make the end unwelcome. 
 
 " Of course I revolted from her teach 
 ing. It seemed to me very early that 
 the way to be comfortable was not to 
 say of bruises that they did not hurt, 
 but to get no bruises. I thought I knew 
 what I wanted then. I am sure I do 
 now. I mean to be comfortable. I in 
 tend to enjoy. I will not be poor and 
 miserable. I am not going to let life 
 hurt me as it hurt her. In short," said 
 Arria, with a sudden change to a lighter 
 manner, "I propose to have a good time. 
 Of course, I hope my ideas of what
 
 30 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 makes a good time are not cheap nor 
 common." 
 
 Florence smiled down at her with an 
 expression Arria did not comprehend. 
 
 " How young you are!" she sighed half 
 regretfully. " How do you suppose you 
 are going to escape the common lot? 
 What would you do if love called you 
 where unhappiness was ? " 
 
 " I should not go. I don t know any 
 thing about love. But I do not imagine 
 it can be as as strong as I am," said 
 the girl fearlessly, although there was 
 something in the strenuousness of the 
 other s tone which filled her with a vao;ue 
 
 O 
 
 discomfort. The accent of the great pas 
 sions was as unfamiliar to Arria s ear as 
 their grip to her heart, but the proximity 
 of a commanding emotion is quick to 
 make itself felt. 
 
 Miss Woolsey clasped her small hands
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 31 
 
 meditatively about her knees and then 
 unclasped them. 
 
 " To say college is evidently quite 
 the same thing as saying cloister, " she 
 observed. " The one obviously affords 
 no more advantages than the other for 
 seeing the world. Seeing the world, my 
 dear, for a woman, means making the 
 acquaintance of Man." 
 
 Arria was silent an instant. She was 
 quite sure Florence was brilliant, but 
 for the moment she doubted her good 
 taste. 
 
 " I find a great many other things 
 worth studying," she declared with seri 
 ousness. 
 
 " You are delightful," averred Miss 
 Woolsey. " It must be that you are a 
 type. How wide-awake you are men 
 tally, and how totally undeveloped emo 
 tionally ! The creed you declare is a
 
 32 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 man s creed, not a woman s. No woman 
 was ever consistently selfish enough to 
 live up to it. Wait until you begin to 
 feel things. You probably regard feel 
 ings now as pretty toys, inferior to ideas, 
 but still interesting. You have no con 
 ception of what it is to feel." 
 
 " I don t know what you mean," said 
 Arria coldly, her suspicions of bad taste 
 confirmed. " I feel things now." 
 
 Her cousin laughed. 
 
 "Feeling, my dear, again for a 
 woman, means only one thing. I refer 
 to the emotional capabilities whose activ 
 ity makes us the wives and mothers of 
 the race. Don t begin to feel before 
 you must. You are as refreshing as a 
 glass of spring-water now." 
 
 Arria rose and leaned against the 
 window-frame, looking down at her 
 cousin.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 33 
 
 " Is feeling the miracle that changes 
 the water into wine ? " she asked gravely. 
 
 Florence sprang up and kissed her 
 with a laugh. " That is exactly it ! 
 Good-night." 
 
 " Florence ! You think my creed is 
 impracticable for a woman. What is 
 yours ? " 
 
 Miss Woolsey, trailing the silk and 
 lace of her negligee across the room, 
 hesitated. She often received confi 
 dences, yet seldom gave. But just now 
 she was stirred by their talk, which had 
 interested her, and she yielded to the 
 wish to answer. 
 
 " I don t know why I should not tell 
 you," she answered. " I am proud of 
 it. But, like yours, it requires a little 
 preamble. I began life with a consider 
 able stock of credulities, for mamma had 
 tried to make me into something like
 
 34 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 herself. I adore my mother. I could 
 worship the ground she walks on. She 
 is everything that is sweet and simple 
 and good and charming. But you sim 
 ply cannot make a gentlewoman of the 
 last generation out of a nowadays girl. 
 There is something in the air that pre 
 vents it. I console myself for the loss 
 of my illusions by protecting hers. By 
 the way, I don t want her to hear your 
 creed. I suppose I have grown a trifle 
 cynical. When you have been with us 
 a year, and lived my life, you will under 
 stand some of the reasons. 
 
 " It happened after I had experimented 
 with most things and was tired of them, 
 that I came to know well a high-souled 
 Pagan gentleman who who satisfied 
 me. Because he was tolerant toward all 
 the failings of humanity, alike to those he 
 did and did not share, men called him a
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 35 
 
 child of this world, and because he was 
 also fine and loyal, and loved life bravely 
 without succumbing to it, women esteemed 
 him as only a little lower than the angels. 
 And I was one of the women who thought 
 him so. I don t know why it seemed to 
 him that my presence in his life would 
 make it richer, but I thank the gods 
 hourly that he did think so. 
 
 " And so to my disbeliefs in all the 
 things earth has to offer, I added a be 
 lief in one the one whose strength you 
 doubt."
 
 IV 
 
 " WE are always very quiet in sum 
 mer," said Mrs. Woolsey. " This has 
 never been a gay neighbourhood, still 
 we have some very pleasant people 
 hereabouts whom I want you to know 
 as soon as possible. It is too warm for 
 a large dinner, but the moonlight on the 
 terrace is so divine this week that I think 
 I must ask Roderick and Mr. Sefton and 
 perhaps the Lawrences to dine infor 
 mally with us some evening soon." 
 
 " Who are the Lawrences ? " asked 
 Arria. 
 
 " Brother and sister. A perfectly 
 harmless pair. Athletics and piety," 
 denned Florence briefly. 
 36
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 37 
 
 "And Mr. Sefton?" 
 
 " A self-made man. He is just what 
 a new man ought to be, fresh, direct, 
 and powerful. If I were creating men, 
 they should be like that, for the world s 
 sake. Personally I prefer the more 
 effete specimens. They are more amus 
 ing if less reliable. But Mr. Sefton is 
 sometimes amusing too. His serious 
 ness edifies me as much as most men s 
 levity. He is like you, willing to talk 
 about the Causes of Things between 
 the acts of a farce-comedy. He is ab 
 surdly rich, so rich that if we did not 
 like him, we should say it was vulgar to 
 have so much money. As it is, we 
 offer him suggestions about spending it. 
 He bought the Ostrander manor after 
 Petrus Ostrander and his wife were 
 divorced, and built a new house there, 
 and has bored himself by trying to live
 
 38 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 in it since. It is rather tiresome to be 
 a virtuous multimillionaire." 
 
 " I don t know much about multi 
 millionaires." 
 
 " They are a good deal alike. There 
 are only a few things that are expensive 
 enough for them to do. Almost all of 
 them want a big house. After that 
 they may have a fad for yachts, or 
 horses, or collecting things, or all three. 
 Occasionally they go in for philan 
 thropy, more rarely for dissipation. It 
 isn t often that the man who has the 
 self-restraint necessary to accumulate 
 millions has also the abandon needful 
 for squandering them. Mr. Sefton is 
 working out his aesthetic salvation just 
 now. He collects pictures, and very 
 good ones. His gallery is much too 
 fine to be buried in a country neighbour 
 hood. He has excellent specimens of
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 39 
 
 some of the great names. One of his 
 two Corots is the most enchanting I 
 have ever seen. It is small, but so 
 beautiful ! " 
 
 Arria listened with parted lips. 
 
 " Fancy owning a Corot ! " she said. 
 " Money is exquisite. One can do such 
 wonderful things with it that I think 
 only the good and the noble and the 
 fine ought to be allowed to have much." 
 
 " Providence doesn t agree with you, 
 my dear," returned Florence. " He fre 
 quently shows what he thinks of it by 
 giving it to quite another class. But Mr. 
 Sefton is really fine, especially if you care 
 for tremendous things like Niagara Falls, 
 or Walt Whitman s poetry, or the can 
 yons of the Colorado. Mamma has taken 
 him up because he gives her the sensa 
 tion of energy. It is a nice sensation 
 -when you can take it vicariously."
 
 4O The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " Florence is talking nonsense, dear, 
 as she often does," said Mrs. Woolsey. 
 " There has to be new blood in society 
 occasionally. And it is lonely in the 
 country if one does not like one s neigh 
 bours. Mr. Sefton may be a little heavy 
 at times, but he is a man whom I thor 
 oughly respect. I shall invite them for 
 Thursday." 
 
 On Thursday evening accordingly Ar- 
 ria found herself placed at dinner beside 
 a personage whom she had previously 
 inspected in the drawing-room with the 
 frankest interest. 
 
 Mr. Sefton was a powerfully built man 
 of middle size and middle age. He was 
 an inconspicuous person, but when your 
 eye fell upon him you perceived that 
 his very quietude, like the immobility of 
 Barye s bronzes, conveyed an intimation 
 of elemental force. His hair was iron-
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 41 
 
 gray. His keen eyes were gray too. 
 The lines of his mouth were so firm it 
 seemed impossible that they could be 
 moulded of such facile stuff as flesh 
 and blood. 
 
 Arria glanced at the other men in 
 critical comparison. It had long seemed 
 to her that Major Woolsey was too 
 palpably a creature of flesh and blood. 
 The thought was disloyal, but there were 
 certainly hours when he looked distinctly 
 earthy. The hour of dining was one of 
 these. She turned toward Kirke with a 
 breath of relief. There are people who 
 so answer to our vague unformulated 
 demands that before we know we have 
 a certain ideal we find that they fulfil it. 
 Looking at Roderick Kirke, it seemed 
 to Arria that he looked as a man 
 should. 
 
 " To continue what we were saying,
 
 42 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 Miss James," began Mr. Sefton, putting 
 down his soup spoon. Arria started 
 and dimpled attentively. She had just 
 been observing to herself that such a 
 totally unconscious air of distinction as 
 Roderick possessed was not so fre 
 quently the result of inherited good- 
 breeding and position as of a good 
 figure and a philosophical cast of 
 thought. 
 
 Mr. Sefton was fond of conversation. 
 He talked with the unconscious energy 
 and directness of a man who has ideas of 
 which he wishes to rid himself. 
 
 " I think you are mistaken," he was re 
 marking, " in saying that bad taste is the 
 natural birthright of man. I believe that 
 most of us know and love a good thing 
 when we see it. But we see good things 
 so seldom that we do not know that we 
 love them. There must be a kind of
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 43 
 
 acquired familiarity with them first. The 
 child loves its parents naturally, but it is 
 years before it knows that it loves, and 
 years more before it knows what love is. 
 I admit the process is a long one. I 
 should like to convince the good people 
 down yonder in the town that they love 
 beauty. I open my picture-gallery to them 
 two days in a week. It is the most con 
 vincing argument I have at hand. What 
 is the result ? A travelling circus comes 
 to town on one of my afternoons. There 
 are three thousand people at the circus 
 and not one in my gallery. It will be a 
 long day more than my life-time, per 
 haps before ten per cent of those people 
 will prefer the pictures. But the time will 
 come. And meantime the gallery stays 
 open." 
 
 Arria brightened as she listened. Here 
 was another man with a soul. At this
 
 44 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 rate Rosehedges would soon become 
 Paradise ! 
 
 " But that gives them only one form of 
 beauty," she suggested. 
 
 " Two. Colour and line. But more than 
 that, it teaches them to see. What we 
 acquire from the great artists is more than 
 a momentary sensation of pleasure in 
 being shown a given scene from their point 
 of view. We learn from them their way of 
 looking at things. I remember that after 
 I first saw a collection of Rousseaus, for 
 weeks I saw Rousseaus in nature every 
 where. I had never noticed them before. 
 Now I can never overlook them." 
 
 " A great man might be defined as one 
 who can make clear his point of view," 
 said Arria. "But," timidly, "the the 
 people who do not come to the gallery, 
 you know, the ones who are more amused 
 by the circus. Do you suppose it would
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 45 
 
 be a real amelioration of life to them if 
 they did come ? " 
 
 Mr. Sefton s brows met over his keen 
 eyes. She had touched a tender point. 
 
 " Yes," he said rather too earnestly. 
 "Why, Miss James," his closed hand 
 touched the table lightly, "I believe it is 
 the best amelioration of life, possibly the 
 only real one. Our favourite American 
 panacea is education of the mind. Look 
 here, does such education make people 
 happier ? I don t believe it does. In so 
 far as it enables a man to improve his 
 material condition it is a benefit doubt 
 less. But after that what does it do ? It 
 makes for restlessness, for discontent. 
 Even in its highest phases how does it 
 work? I hear you are a graduate of a 
 young ladies college. You ought to be 
 able to tell me." 
 
 " One of our professors said she was
 
 46 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 going to write a tract for the girls entitled 
 How to be Happy, though Educated, " 
 said Arria. 
 
 " Exactly ! Either the education of our 
 young people is so superficial that it does 
 not educate, or else so thorough that it 
 brings them under the torturing lash of 
 an intellect too completely awakened. 
 Did you ever notice that while we are 
 all after new ideas, they never satisfy 
 when found ? We are impelled to push 
 on to find others, to be as little satisfied 
 by them in turn. I tell you the solution 
 of the problem of happiness is not more 
 knowledge, but more loveliness. The 
 answer to hideousness is beauty. It is 
 the only thing that fills, that rests, that 
 satisfies. Knowledge cannot, for know 
 ledge is only relative. Beauty is absolute. 
 What makes the charm of Europe for us 
 restless Americans but the fact that those
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 47 
 
 older civilizations have learned this and 
 embodied it in the monuments they left 
 to their descendants ? Coming to a new 
 country, we were cheated of our proper 
 heritage of beauty, especially in the archi 
 tectural line. We had no legacy from the 
 past to educate us unconsciously as we 
 walked our streets. The duty of the 
 present," said Mr. Sefton, checking him 
 self as if just aware that he had been rid 
 ing his hobby violently, " is to create such 
 legacies for the future. That, I take it, 
 is the ultimate use of a rich man in our 
 country if there is any use for him." 
 
 " Sefton is in clover," said Roderick 
 Kirke to his fiancee, under his breath. 
 " Your cousin is listening to him with 
 her soul in her eyes. It is a long day 
 since he has expounded his art ideas to 
 such an auditor." 
 
 " Yes, they are nice eyes," said Florence.
 
 48 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " But Arria always listens as if she had 
 never heard human speech before. It s 
 a flattering habit she has." 
 
 " Once there was country life in Amer 
 ica, North as well as South," the Major 
 was saying explosively at his end of the 
 table. " My father and grandfather were 
 content to live right here. Rosehedges 
 was good enough for them. Why not 
 for me ? Why is it supposed that I ought 
 to have another house in the city and 
 rent a cottage at the shore, and go here 
 in summer and go there in winter? It 
 is all demoralizing nonsense, sir, all non 
 sense." 
 
 " It is the advancement of the women, 
 papa," suggested his daughter promptly. 
 " That is what does all the mischief, you 
 know. Rosehedges is good enough for 
 you, but not for mamma and me. So 
 we travel to find a place that is."
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 49 
 
 " I have sometimes thought that was 
 the cause of the international marriage," 
 said Miss Lawrence, a languid little 
 woman with a sweet voice, " that effort 
 of the American girl to find a place 
 good enough for her. I wish some one 
 would collect statistics about the com 
 parative comfort of the frying-pan and 
 the fire. There is Lady Bertie Brett, 
 you know, whose marriage is always 
 cited as such a conspicuous example of 
 the thoroughly successful English-Amer 
 ican match. Even her path has had 
 perhaps not thorns, but certainly little 
 briars in it. The last time I was in 
 London I saw at the New Gallery such 
 an excellent picture of her, a high-bred, 
 spirited, beautiful head. I admired it 
 very much, but while I still lingered 
 before it a very fat old lady with an air 
 of consequence came rolling by. She
 
 50 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 fumbled at her lorgnette first, then fum 
 bled at her catalogue. Oh ! I heard 
 her remark to her companion, Lady 
 Bertie Brett ! I thought it was some 
 one, but I see it isn t ! 
 
 " What a pity she could not have 
 heard that remark herself ! " said Florence. 
 " Even as a girl her glance had a certain 
 disintegrating quality. I have seen very 
 composed people go to pieces before it. 
 It might have disconcerted even a Brit 
 ish matron." 
 
 "Oh no!" murmured Roderick languidly. 
 " It is some time since you have been in 
 London. You forget." 
 
 " What I have heard about Lady 
 Bertie Brett," struck in Mr. Lawrence, 
 "was that she is good-hearted. Me II- 
 vaine tells a story about why the Bretts 
 changed their hotel when they were in St. 
 Augustine shortly after their marriage.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 51 
 
 Lady Bertie had a dressmaker of genius 
 and good looks, who did some work on 
 her trousseau, and shortly after was mar 
 ried herself to a Californian of some 
 wealth and consequence, and she and 
 her husband turned up on the wedding 
 tour at the same hotel where the Bretts 
 were stopping. Lady Bertie said the 
 frocks she wanted to wear just then were 
 precisely the ones which that dressmaker 
 had done for her, but she couldn t help 
 feeling it would be bad taste and incon 
 siderate on her part to flaunt them be 
 fore the happy bride. So she and Lord 
 Bertie just quietly went away to another 
 hotel for the rest of their stay. That, 
 now, is what I call consideration ! " 
 
 At the end of the dinner coffee was 
 served on the terrace. The men did not 
 linger long in the dining-room. When 
 Roderick came out, he discovered Arria
 
 52 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 a little apart from the rest. She was 
 bending over a rose-tree white with blos 
 soms, and it seemed in the moonlight 
 that her lips moved. She straightened 
 herself at his approach, and lifted to his 
 a brilliant, excited face. They had be 
 come friends and allies already. He 
 found a certain champagne-like zest, 
 which was almost intoxicating, in the 
 froth and bubble of her young ideas. 
 As for Arria, although she felt a certain 
 lofty disapproval of a young man who 
 apparently treated his profession for 
 Roderick had a law office in Skansee- 
 wan as a pastime, and his pastimes as 
 professions, she had nevertheless discov 
 ered and come to rely upon that fund of 
 ready sympathy, that generous apprecia 
 tion of every one s point of view, which 
 was at once Roderick Kirke s weakness 
 and his strength.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 53 
 
 " I have had such a good time ! " she 
 said. " Do you know, I believe I was 
 very near a prayer just now. Why should 
 it be incongruous to return thanks for a 
 dinner-party ? I was very much inter 
 ested and amused, and then to come out 
 into this heavenly night and smell the 
 roses ! It is more than I can bear. It 
 turns my head." 
 
 " What would the prayer have been if 
 you had reached it?" asked Roderick ap 
 preciatively, though smothering a smile. 
 
 " I think," said the girl reflectively, 
 " that I was on the point of saying, Help 
 me to do justice to life. It is so beauti 
 fulso beautiful!"
 
 V 
 
 " MR. SEFTON, for you, miss," said Mary, 
 the maid, to Arria. 
 
 The girl started up impatiently. It 
 was an afternoon in late July, and she 
 was sitting under the big elms eastward 
 of the house with Florence and Roderick 
 Kirke, and enjoying herself extremely, for 
 Florence had been ridding her mind of 
 a large number of perfectly irresponsible 
 ideas about life, death, and marriage. In 
 the six summer weeks Arria had been at 
 Rosehedges Mr. Sefton s calls had cer 
 tainly been as frequent as Roderick s 
 own, but never before had he asked for 
 her and her only. She thought it tire 
 some as well as unusual that he had 
 
 54
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 55 
 
 done so now, and planned as she went, 
 to bring him out of doors where that fas 
 cinating pair were lounging under the 
 elms. 
 
 Sefton was leaning on the mantel in 
 the shaded drawing-room, pulling at his 
 gloves. He came forward quickly as she 
 appeared at the door, a slender white 
 figure invading the green gloom. Her 
 dress was covered with a hundred curly 
 little ruffles, edged with lace, and they 
 moved ceaselessly with her movements, 
 as the rising and falling spray drifts 
 about a rock. She had never looked 
 more remote, more unapproachable, nor 
 in his eyes more beautiful, and his 
 heart sank. 
 
 He took her offered hand in an im 
 petuous, close clasp, and quite forgot 
 to drop it. She felt that his own hand 
 trembled, and looked up quickly to as-
 
 56 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 certain the meaning of such a phenom 
 enon. His eyes met hers and held them 
 in a gaze she could not fathom. He 
 spoke without preamble. 
 
 " I am afraid," he said deliberately, " I 
 am afraid that I love you." 
 
 " Why afraid ? " she said hastily, and 
 immediately recognized that she could 
 not have made a more foolish speech. 
 
 " Because it seems most unlikely that 
 you can care for me," he answered quietly, 
 " and yet I shall be miserable if you 
 cannot." 
 
 " I like you very much," she protested, 
 then perceived hopelessly that this also 
 was a futile observation. She withdrew 
 her hand irresolutely, wondering why he 
 seemed to expect to keep it. 
 
 " Could you possibly imagine intrusting 
 your life to my keeping ? " he begged. 
 
 His questions were singularly difficult
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 57 
 
 to answer in an unfavourable way. One 
 can imagine so many things ! 
 
 " You know I think you trustworthy. 
 You are a man on whom one relies. . . 
 I suppose that is not exactly what you 
 want." 
 
 " I am glad," he answered, in a voice 
 that moved her in spite of herself, " to 
 seem anything that is good in your eyes. 
 But even if you would, I should be sorry 
 to have you give your life into my hands 
 as some women might because I 
 could care for it fittingly." 
 
 " That is not it at all," she cried with 
 a sudden anger that restored her self- 
 possession, stepping back and seating 
 herself as she spoke. " Money of course 
 is I do not know what it is, except that 
 we all want it. But it is yourself that 
 gives one confidence," she said, with head 
 erect and eyes alight disdainfully.
 
 58 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " Arria," he urged eagerly, " I know 
 that I am a great deal older than you, 
 and that there is no reason in myself 
 why you should care for me. You know 
 my life, but you cannot possibly imagine 
 how barren, how futile, how devoid of 
 everything that should make life worth 
 living, it has seemed to me since I met 
 you. When I went to my own house 
 that first night, it turned my heart sick 
 as I drove through the gates and saw 
 it looming in front of me, big, empty, 
 dead. And I said to myself, It is a 
 beautiful place ; it represents a part of 
 my life s work, but it is just so much 
 stone and wood and mortar wasted. It 
 is not a home And I knew almost 
 at once what it needed to make it alive 
 and beautiful. I want to make you 
 see it as I do. Do you understand, 
 Arria dearest sweetest? I love you
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 59 
 
 and I want you to help me make a 
 home." 
 
 The girl looked up at his face, his strong, 
 furrowed face, working with an emotion 
 which she found incomprehensible. 
 
 " I do not love any one," she said re 
 gretfully. 
 
 That touching confidence of man in 
 feminine docility which has been respon 
 sible for many an inapt marriage sprang 
 up in his heart. Could he not teach her 
 to love him then ? 
 
 " You will care for some one, some 
 time. Why should it not be I, and 
 now? " he urged. 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 " I don t know what to think, what to 
 believe," she said slowly. " I feel like a 
 blind person groping." 
 
 He held his breath and waited. She 
 went on slowly and painfully.
 
 60 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " Don t you see how hard it is ? One 
 doesn t believe the novels, and I never 
 knew any one intimately but Florence 
 who oh well! I don t think I could 
 make you understand. It is only that I 
 lack convictions about the frame of mind 
 in which one should marry. There isn t 
 I am afraid you will laugh at this 
 but there isn t any reliable body of doc 
 trine on the subject ! I like you. I like 
 you very much. I would sooner confide 
 my life to you than to any one I ever 
 knew. Its seems a reasonable idea. One 
 trusts you so. But I suppose that is not 
 exactly what you want." 
 
 " I am going to take what I can get," 
 said Sefton, a little hoarsely, " and ask the 
 Lord for more. I know the romances 
 are against me ; but Arria, life is on 
 my side. I dare swear that if you trust 
 me with yourself you will not regret it.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 61 
 
 You will be happy. I know you will. 
 And I- 
 
 There was a sudden flush about his 
 eyes ; something very like a tear made its 
 way tortuously down his cheek. Arria 
 watched it, wondering. 
 
 " You will trust me, then ? " he said 
 tensely. " You will let me try to teach 
 you to love me a little. I am sure 
 sure that you can learn." 
 
 He loomed at her side, large and insis 
 tent. She felt herself stirred by his 
 strenuousness, his obvious devotion, and 
 driven by the silent impelling of his will. 
 
 " I I will try," she faltered. He bent 
 above her as if he would have taken her 
 in his arms, but her calm eyes uncon 
 sciously repulsed him, and with a breath 
 that was half a sigh, he laid his lips to 
 her forehead. 
 
 When he was gone she felt a sense of
 
 62 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 vague relief. The proximity of a strong 
 feeling which she did not understand had 
 disturbed her. 
 
 But she quite understood the serene 
 elation she began to feel. It was because 
 life was very simple, very easy, in spite of 
 all she herself had said to the contrary. 
 You had only to choose your line, to say 
 I will that my existence be thus and so, 
 and forthwith supposing you a person 
 of character opportunities arose and 
 events grouped themselves smilingly on 
 either hand to mark your progress down 
 the years. And they were the very events 
 you would have chosen if you had con 
 descended to choose ! 
 
 She had meant to put poverty and 
 misery out of her life, and now even the 
 remote possibility of them had vanished 
 like a mist before the sun, in the flood of 
 affluence and affection that rolled across
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 63 
 
 her path. Life looked sunny and intelli 
 gible to her, and she was sure that she 
 had done the right and appointed thing, 
 as she went slowly out to join the two 
 beneath the trees, who had meanwhile 
 been indulging in sundry speculations. 
 
 " Do you suppose your cousin knows 
 what is happening ? " asked Roderick, 
 looking after her as she crossed the grass 
 toward the house. There was the suspi 
 cion of an irritable inflexion in his voice. 
 He, as well as Arrja, had been enjoying 
 the afternoon. 
 
 " It is impossible to say. My own 
 theory is that she does not know. There 
 is so much of life and experience that 
 does not come within Arria s range of 
 vision. She knows some extraordinary 
 things, but it is almost always safe to as 
 sume that she is ignorant of the obvious." 
 
 " Do you think she will marry him ? "
 
 64 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " My dear Roderick ! Why don t you 
 ask me to calculate the next eclipse of 
 the moon off-hand, or some easy little 
 thing like that ? Girls have married 
 middle-aged millionaires before now. It 
 is not unusual." 
 
 " That seems to me one reason the 
 more why your cousin should not do it. 
 She is not fond of the usual," urged 
 Roderick. 
 
 " She likes security. There is some 
 thing very safe and restful about the idea 
 of marrying Mr. Sefton. He is a favour 
 able specimen of his class." 
 
 " He is a thoroughly good fellow," ad 
 mitted Roderick. " And I fancy he is 
 hard hit." 
 
 " He told me but that was when they 
 first met that he admired her because 
 she knew how to think. He has not yet 
 learned what a dubious merit that is in a
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 65 
 
 wife. Suppose she does not think as her 
 husband does ! Mr. Sefton and Arria 
 would be a thousand times more likely to 
 differ about everything in the world than 
 you and I, for instance." 
 
 " Ah ! That is another matter," said 
 Roderick. " Do you know, we are such 
 good comrades that it is often a pleasant 
 surprise to me when I remember that we 
 are also engaged." 
 
 Florence was silent, but the slow colour 
 climbed her cheeks. She lifted her eyes 
 to Roderick s face with a look that was an 
 entreaty, but he was cheerfully uncon 
 scious that he had said an atrocious 
 thing. 
 
 Their world often said how well Flor 
 ence and Roderick were suited to one 
 another. It had never yet had occasion 
 to remark upon their mutual infatuation. 
 She believed in their suitability thor-
 
 66 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 oughly. But she knew in the depths of a 
 soul rebellious at the knowledge that it 
 was her wit, her philosophy, her cynicism 
 even, which suited him not her heart. 
 At the beginning of their engagement she 
 had sometimes resented intensely the 
 gentle, pleased manner in which he re 
 garded the situation, but she had been 
 wise enough to coin her own less placid 
 satisfaction into epigrams, a proceeding 
 which delighted Roderick as her ardour 
 never could have done. 
 
 " Mr. Sefton will take Arria into his 
 gallery some day and say, All this shall 
 be yours, if you will suffer me to fall 
 down and worship you, " she now re 
 marked irrelevantly. " It will be a very 
 tempting situation for a girl of her 
 tastes." 
 
 " I suppose it is all right," said Rod 
 erick discontentedly, " but he is too old,
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 67 
 
 or, rather, she is too preposterously young. 
 Her mind may be mature, but the rest 
 of her nature is in pinafores, and I don t 
 believe Sefton is the man to develop it. 
 It isn t the ideal marriage for her." 
 
 " Ideal things are not meant to be 
 done. They are only to look at, like 
 the red-cheeked candy apples we used to 
 have when we were children. I never 
 did succeed in understanding why such 
 beautiful fruit was not to be eaten." 
 
 " Your cousin does not regard ideals 
 in that light. She asks for the absolute 
 as serenely as if the relative did not 
 exist. The audacity of her demand on 
 life is so splendid that it entitles her to 
 get what she wants. The on-looker feels 
 as if he wanted to help her to it." 
 
 " That is probably what Mr. Sefton 
 feels," said Florence, a little wearily, 
 " and what he thinks he is doing. And
 
 68 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 as the world goes, ten or fifteen millions 
 are the Absolute. What more does 
 a young woman of this generation 
 want?"
 
 VI 
 
 BECAUSE he had obtained his heart s 
 desire against his own belief, Sefton re 
 joiced unspeakably, but still doubting. 
 Happiness is a malady for which the 
 strong are not prepared. 
 
 He had always known that he should 
 be rich some day. It had been a con 
 viction, rather than a dream or a hope, 
 of his meagre boyhood in a Maine vil 
 lage. When he went West in his young 
 manhood, he found that for the wise and 
 prudent there was abundant opportunity 
 for realizing such prevision. A young 
 surveyor, he had gotten hold of some 
 timber lands first, which had proved very 
 profitable, and afterwards had invested 
 69
 
 70 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 in real estate on the edge of some grow 
 ing towns destined to become cities. 
 His success had been rapid and monot 
 onous. It had also been unsatisfactory, 
 though what it was that he wanted, he 
 did not know. Books did not tell him, 
 nor the crude, glittering prosperity of 
 the oxygenated life around him. 
 
 When first he went to Europe, the 
 older and mellower civilizations whis 
 pered to him the unthought-of tidings 
 that the word of salvation was beauty, 
 and he hailed the revelation. 
 
 Returning, he left the West and came 
 to Skanseewan. He had always desired 
 a country life, and here beside the gray, 
 old river-town he resolved to build him 
 self an abiding-place for his later years, 
 which should be a propaganda of his 
 new doctrine that those who ran might 
 read. His head was also full of ideas,
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 71 
 
 so quixotic that he did not talk of them, 
 for the better instruction of the people 
 of the town in the art of discerning the 
 admirable. 
 
 It was only on meeting Arria James 
 that he felt with a force which shook his 
 sturdy soul that for him also life had an 
 other word. What, after all, was beauty 
 but Love s handmaid ? 
 
 Incidentally, also, it was a pleasure to 
 the man whose busy, lonely life had given 
 small opportunity for the social inter 
 course in which he really delighted, to 
 be welded into the group of families of 
 whom the Woolseys and Kirkes were 
 chief. Most of his neighbours had been 
 cordial, but these had been kin as well 
 as kind. They were people to whom he 
 could talk. Inherited wealth without in 
 telligence bewildered this man s untutored 
 sense of the fitness of things.
 
 72 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 Arria s engagement had been received 
 faultlessly by the family. All dilated upon 
 Sefton s character, and his millions were al 
 lowed to sink into a glimmering golden 
 background, appreciated but unmentioned. 
 
 The Major gave her his blessing with 
 much solemnity, and then fell into remi 
 niscent anecdotes of the love affairs of 
 forty years ago, which were slightly in- 
 apropos, inasmuch as it would seem young 
 women then were more impetuous and 
 emotional, and irreproachable matches 
 which parents and guardians could bless 
 were less frequent than to-day. 
 
 " My dear," said Mrs. Woolsey, kissing 
 her, "I am so glad you are going to marry 
 a good man. I pray you may have as 
 happy a life as my own has been, and I 
 can t tell you how I rejoice that you are 
 to be near us always." 
 
 Florence said little. She was suffi-
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 73 
 
 ciently a daughter of to-day to appreciate 
 the advantages of such a marriage, but in 
 her secret soul she was sorry for Arria. 
 There was something more dazzling than 
 wealth, and her cousin had not found it. 
 She lifted her small head proudly and 
 had difficulty in keeping a patronizing 
 accent out of her congratulations. 
 
 Arria had never seen the house which 
 was to be her home save as she had 
 glimpsed it one day when they had vis 
 ited the pictures. She had expressed a 
 desire to do so. Accordingly Mr. Sefton 
 diffidently proffered his hospitality for an 
 afternoon to the ladies of Rosehedges. 
 
 The site of the place was even more 
 attractive than that of the Woolseys 
 home, for, standing on higher ground, it 
 commanded the faint blue hills in the 
 south as well as the river and the moun 
 tains to northward.
 
 74 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 The house itself, of gray uncut stone, 
 was Elizabethan in style. There is no 
 more piquant or interesting fa9ade, and 
 already the creepers had begun to thicken 
 on the walls, obliterating the look which 
 stamped it as of yesterday. 
 
 It was frankly English in design, inside 
 and out. Sefton averred that no other 
 nation on the face of the earth has so 
 thoroughly mastered the science of com 
 fortable living. 
 
 The master of the house received his 
 guests with nervous cordiality. He had 
 much to tell of the building of the struct 
 ure, as they passed from room to room. 
 He had meant to keep it simple, even 
 mediaeval in its simplicity. Most modern 
 houses were too elaborate, too rococo for 
 his taste. Did they care for carving? 
 There was a great deal of it it was 
 one of his hobbies. He had spent six
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 75 
 
 months in England with his architect, 
 who was out of health and required a 
 vacation, wandering from place to place, 
 choosing and sketching designs for it. 
 Those were months! Cathedral, college, 
 church, and hall had been laid under con 
 tribution for the work. Did they notice 
 the springing of that fan-tracery in the 
 ceiling of the dining-room oriel ? It was 
 the grim, grotesque head which occupies 
 the same position in the great dining-hall 
 of Christ s at Oxford. And that head, half 
 devil and half lion, repeated in the frieze, 
 that was a bit from Magdalen. For sim 
 plicity and strength surely the carving of 
 the best English period was unequalled. 
 He looked anxiously at Arria. Perhaps 
 she preferred designs in the Italian man 
 ner? It would be most unfortunate, for 
 hall, music-room, and dining-room were 
 panelled, ceiled, and carved in quite an-
 
 76 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 other taste. The drawing-room alone was 
 less massive and suggested France. 
 
 But Arria, it transpired, had fond mem 
 ories of playing in her childhood with the 
 ponderous and priceless tomes of Pugin s 
 Gothic Architecture, and she adored gro 
 tesques. He breathed more freely. 
 
 " What a delight," he said, in a low 
 voice, " you will find in travel. There 
 are so many things I want to show you ! 
 There is an old church porch I know 
 in France that you will like. A group 
 of saints and martyrs on the pillars are 
 lifting insipid, holy faces, while beneath 
 the feet of each one crouches a cower 
 ing devil, obviously overcome and de 
 feated. They have beaten down Satan 
 under their feet, and they are distinctly 
 less interesting from the fact that he 
 looks as if he could never rise again. Un 
 consciously the carver demonstrated that
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 77 
 
 life is struggle," and, without knowing it, 
 the self-made man squared his shoulders. 
 
 The housekeeper was summoned to 
 escort them through the upper apart 
 ments. At one of the smaller bed 
 chambers Florence paused to rhapsodize. 
 The room was finished in mahogany 
 and done in the dullest, softest blues, so 
 toned that the border-pieces of old tapes 
 try which were used for a dado above a 
 low wainscoting of the rich wood were 
 not thrown out of value by any cruder 
 colouring. The dressing-room was a 
 mere recess in which a length of the 
 same soft-toned tapestry, swinging aside, 
 revealed an antique ewer and bowl of 
 silver over whose curves Miss Woolsey 
 became enthusiastic. 
 
 " Those aren t to be picked up every 
 day ! I never saw but one at all like it. 
 It is scandalous that a mere man should
 
 78 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 have such good taste. Arria, how are 
 you going to live up to it ? " 
 
 The girl, who was leaning against the 
 door-way with a wearied air, looked up 
 indifferently. 
 
 "Yes," she said, almost resentfully, "it is 
 very charming. But they are only things, 
 after all. I have often wondered why so 
 clever a person as the devil used the king 
 doms of the world and the glory thereof 
 for a temptation. It is never the materi?! 
 things that tempt persons of taste." 
 
 "Oh, isn t it?" said her cousin. 
 
 Going down, they found that Rod 
 erick and the Major awaited them, and 
 that tea had been served upon the lawn 
 in English fashion. The service was of 
 old silver also, and a delight to the eye, 
 while all the other appointments were 
 equally flawless. 
 
 Roderick came presently to Florence s
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 79 
 
 side, where she sat in shaded comfort, 
 trifling with her tea. 
 
 "Well," he said, "and what of Sef- 
 ton s bibelots? Don t they make you 
 envious of the little cousin ? We shan t 
 have any such, you know." 
 
 " They are extraordinary, certainly. I 
 never saw such an original collection of 
 bric-a-brac. It is distinguished, different. 
 Some of his embroideries are marvellous, 
 and the way he has used them better yet. 
 I don t see how he came to have such 
 good taste. But as for envying any one, 
 Arria was just remarking superbly that 
 such like articles were, after all, of the 
 earth, and were not temptations to per 
 sons of discrimination. I am a person 
 of discrimination, and " her eyes chal 
 lenged his " the only mortal I can im 
 agine envying would be a woman who 
 could interest you more than I."
 
 8o The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " It is impossible," said Roderick, po 
 litely, " that any one could be more 
 interesting." 
 
 Florence rose abruptly. 
 
 " Look at Arria," she said. His glance 
 followed hers where the girl stood for 
 the moment apart. As they looked, her 
 gaze turned from the far, faint hills in 
 the north to the generous and gracious 
 structure behind them, then to the man 
 whose thought it was. Her expression 
 was critical, detached, dispassionate. 
 
 " There is a glittering chill about her 
 sometimes that makes me shiver. It 
 reminds me of what we read of polar 
 springs. They say the flowers the sun 
 wrests from the ice-cap are very beauti 
 ful, but one must go a-maying in furs. 
 She is weighing us all in the balance 
 now, particularly Mr. Sefton, and we 
 shall all be found wanting unless we
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 8 1 
 
 immediately make ourselves charming. 
 Come, let us talk to her." 
 
 Roderick found himself suddenly irri 
 tated, without knowing why. 
 
 " No," he said peremptorily, " let us 
 stay here ! I want to talk to you. And 
 we all let that girl absorb too much of 
 our attention. It is most absurd ! "
 
 VII 
 
 IT is not necessary to be good in 
 order to be unhappy. Major Woolsey 
 was acutely miserable. The Major s 
 happiness had never been more than an 
 orchid, for it was rooted in and nour 
 ished by his wife s belief in him ; that 
 gone, it had neither food nor foothold. 
 
 In his youth the Major had worshipped 
 his beautiful young wife with a romantic 
 affection. The other dewy enthusiasms 
 and beliefs of that far-off hour had van 
 ished beneath the scorching sun of 
 middle life, leaving this sole survivor. 
 The Major worshipped his wife still. 
 The fact was patent to the most careless 
 observer. Converse casually with the 
 82
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 83 
 
 Major, and he struck you but as that 
 commonplace wreckage of a man which 
 forty years of ease-loving and pleasure- 
 seeking will make of any fine young 
 fellow. Pulpy and unpleasant to the 
 spiritual touch as jelly-fish dissolving in 
 a beach-pool, such men are, but so en 
 tirely usual that you pass them without 
 comment. But mention Mrs. Woolsey, 
 and the Major s face melted, grew tender, 
 glowed with a curious exaltation. If it 
 was after dinner, his lip was likely to 
 quiver as he toasted you " Woman," in 
 his wine that last glass which he 
 should not have taken. 
 
 " Why, what a dear old boy he is," you 
 would say to yourself in surprise, and 
 go away pondering over this unexpected 
 revelation of an unsubmerged ideal. 
 
 But the Major s worship of his wife, 
 unaided, had not been efficacious for his
 
 84 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 preservation from the moral wear and 
 tear of existence. His virtues were old- 
 fashioned. His vices but the fashion 
 of the vices is unchangeable. Not being 
 equal to the task of lifting his conduct 
 to her standards, he had devoted him 
 self sedulously to concealing from her 
 eyes the schism between her precepts 
 and his practice. Having to do with a 
 gentlewoman of the old school who knew 
 little and cared less about the miasms 
 of existence, he was singularly suc 
 cessful. 
 
 A preference for looking into the most 
 flattering mirror in the house is but 
 human. Given the choice of seeing him 
 self through his own eyes or his wife s, 
 the Major preferred the latter. The 
 vision there indicated did not deceive, 
 but it comforted him. After all, there 
 surely must be something rather fine
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 85 
 
 about the man whose wife still thought 
 him, at past sixty, the ideal gentleman 
 of the school she had been trained to 
 admire. 
 
 But now all that was over. It does 
 not matter into which of the snares set 
 for humanity they are few in number, 
 yet many there be who fall therein 
 the Major, stepping too carelessly one 
 summer s day, tripped and went head 
 long for all the world to see. 
 
 The world s disapprobation the Major 
 could have endured. The world was a 
 hoary hypocrite, and he knew it. But 
 when he turned to Elizabeth s eyes, long 
 homes of adoration, and found them 
 blank, his soul was rent. For three days 
 he suffered silently, and then he spoke. 
 And destiny decreed that his niece should 
 hear him. 
 
 Arria had gone out on the eastern
 
 86 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 balcony, opening from her own room, 
 for an hour or two of serious medita 
 tion. Lying on a pile of cushions and 
 looking up through the feathery branches 
 of a locust-tree, which overshadowed her, 
 to the blue sky beyond, she had tried to 
 find out why her engagement no longer 
 seemed to her the satisfactory solution 
 of all her life which it had appeared at 
 first. Its privileges had ceased to enter 
 tain, and its responsibilities loomed near 
 and appalling. If one could only be 
 engaged comfortably without having 
 always at hand a middle-aged lover with 
 haunting eyes ! She had not bargained 
 for that hungry, absorbing quality of 
 glance which claimed and held the whole 
 of her. It was highly unnecessary. 
 She never looked at him like that ! 
 
 These meditations were engrossing, but 
 the drowsy August air and the drone of
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 87 
 
 the locusts prevailed against them, and 
 she fell asleep. 
 
 Waking after an hour or two, she 
 heard through the near window voices 
 from the room adjoining. Sleepily she 
 recognized that it must be her uncle who 
 spoke, but his voice came harshly. 
 
 " For God s sake, Elizabeth, say some 
 thing to me. Do you think I can bear 
 this?" 
 
 Silence. 
 
 " Elizabeth Elizabeth," the voice 
 thickened and quavered in absolute aban 
 donment, " I am not excusing nor deny 
 ing, nor acquitting myself of anything. 
 I have not led the kind of life you 
 thought I led. It may be you are 
 humiliated, hurt, disgusted but I ask 
 you, as the Lord is to judge you, what 
 of it?" 
 
 Arria sprang up silently. These things
 
 88 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 were not for her ears. She turned to 
 the window, but it had been closed while 
 she slept. She shook it. It was locked 
 as well ! 
 
 In heavy gusts the Major s voice went 
 on: 
 
 " You know, God knows, whatever my 
 failings, I love you. My sweet, think! 
 What other question is there between 
 you and me but that ? " 
 
 " Hush ! " a woman s voice cried tensely. 
 " I cannot bear it. I cannot understand 
 it. All other men but not my husband. 
 No, no, no!" 
 
 " You will never understand. You 
 will never see your way through it. 
 But if you can love me in spite of it, 
 what will it matter? Can t you feel that? 
 Elizabeth my wife ! " 
 
 A murmured answer. 
 
 "You can t mean that! Think! Why
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 89 
 
 Elizabeth, you kill me you kill me. I 
 have loved you forty years. Why . . . 
 Elizabeth, I must make you see it as I 
 do!" 
 
 Arria cowered against the window, 
 trembling in every nerve. The tearing 
 sound of a man s sobs, hoarse and terri 
 ble, was in her ears. She must get away 
 from it somehow. She must. She caught 
 up a book from the floor and with one 
 quick blow broke the glass above the 
 lock. The thick carpet drowned the 
 sound of the falling fragments. She 
 thrust her hand through the jagged hole, 
 and in a second was safe in her own 
 room. 
 
 She seized a handkerchief and hastily 
 wrapped it around her bleeding wrist, 
 still trembling. She must get out where 
 the blue sky was, and the familiar, friendly 
 sunshine, away from this atmosphere sur-
 
 QO The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 charged with the horror of an unknown 
 force. The very air she breathed seemed 
 to be electric with it, and she alone 
 walked unmoved and uncomprehending. 
 
 The spell was on them all. At least 
 all but Roderick. She had found 
 Florence s proximity volcanic from the 
 first ; then came her elderly lover to dis 
 turb her peace, and now this. And 
 this was worst of all. She had thought 
 her uncle beyond being moved by any 
 thing but a bad investment or a bad 
 dinner. It seemed the soul in him was 
 still quick. Did the heart live to the 
 grave s very verge ? Was love a word to 
 conjure with at sixty? 
 
 She hastened away from the house, 
 down the long approach, not thinking 
 where she went until, hearing the sound 
 of wheels, she looked up and saw Sefton 
 driving in at the gates. Perceiving her,
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 91 
 
 he threw the reins to his groom and 
 jumped down. The man drove on, and 
 Sefton turned to Arria, holding out both 
 hands with a boyish eagerness. 
 
 Usually she accepted his greeting pas 
 sively. Herself, she thought kissing a 
 somewhat senseless performance, but if it 
 was to his taste, very well. It was a lover s 
 traditional privilege. 
 
 To-day, however, for some reason, it 
 seemed sacrilegious as well as senseless. 
 She stamped her foot impatiently. 
 
 " O go away ! " she cried. " I really 
 cannot bear that sort of thing now." 
 
 Then, sitting down at the foot of a tree 
 by the drive, she burst into tears. 
 
 Sefton quietly sat down beside her, his 
 air of immobile intensity more in evidence 
 than usual. The glow had died out of 
 his face, and taking up her hand in a 
 matter-of-fact way he undid the blood-
 
 92 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 stained handkerchief and looked at the 
 cuts on her wrist. 
 
 " You have cut yourself severely," he 
 said. " How did that happen ? " 
 
 " I am not hurt. It is nothing," she 
 said impatiently, and tried to draw away 
 her hand, but he retained it, whereat she 
 began to shed tears again. 
 
 " You are nervous. Tell me what has 
 happened." 
 
 " I am not nervous. I never am. I 
 was just crying accidentally. I wish 
 you would not hold my hand. I am 
 not going to marry you. I am not 
 going to marry anybody. It is all so 
 irrevocable and horrible. One never gets 
 over it." 
 
 " No," said Sefton slowly, " one never 
 gets over it." He put her hand back in 
 her lap with a sigh. 
 
 " But that is not a reason why you
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 93 
 
 should throw me over. And you are 
 always reasonable," he said gravely. 
 
 A detestation of her own reasonable 
 ness sprang into life fullgrown in Arria s 
 soul. Why had she ever educated people, 
 herself included, to expect anything so 
 odious of her? 
 
 " I am not a marriageable person," 
 she said hastily, trying to remove the 
 traces of tears with her handkerchief. 
 
 " I differ with you there, you know." 
 
 " I do not " she gulped over the 
 objectionable term " love you." 
 
 " You promised to try to learn. What 
 has come between you and me ? " 
 
 What indeed ? Arria did not know. 
 She only felt that a world s diameter sepa 
 rated her from the girl who had accepted 
 with such serenity the enviable prospect 
 of becoming Mrs. Sefton. The one essen 
 tial thing just now was to get away and
 
 94 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 be free. It did not matter whom she 
 hurt, nor how. 
 
 She rose to her feet. 
 
 " I do not know. I do not want to 
 think about it. Let me go, please. I 
 want to to take a walk. I shall never 
 marry you never." 
 
 The dumb reproach of his eyes did not 
 hurt her, nor the helpless laxity of his 
 firm-cut mouth. She only rejoiced that 
 the conversation was drawing to an end. 
 He had risen and stood aside. 
 
 " You have no cause to shun me, child," 
 he said quietly. " I would not detain you 
 against your will. We will talk of this 
 some other day. And in the meantime, 
 if it makes you happier, consider that I 
 have released you for the present."
 
 VIII 
 
 A MAN may be an exemplary citizen 
 and yet it may not be easy to recognize 
 a portrait of him drawn by his fiancee. 
 If it is difficult for him to live up to his 
 own ideals, how hardly shall he compass 
 those of the woman who loves him ? 
 
 Roderick Kirke was walking along the 
 highway toward sunset of the day which 
 Arria had found so agitating. He moved 
 with a quick, easy stride, singing under 
 his breath as he went, but his thoughts 
 were serious, for, with that comprehen 
 sion of another s standpoint which was 
 one of his marked characteristics, he was 
 looking at .himself through Florence s 
 eyes, and the vision seemed ignoble. 
 95
 
 96 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 Even according to his own standards 
 he had observed certain defections in 
 himself of late. As yet they were en 
 tirely abstract in their character, and he 
 was not disposed to exaggerate their im 
 portance as a less robust nature might 
 have done. Rather, he would be thank 
 ful that he had discovered his derelict 
 tendencies while they were still formless 
 and void. There is nothing like taking 
 oneself in hand in time. He would stop 
 where he was, thanking God, as an honest 
 gentleman should, that no one was hurt 
 but himself. 
 
 Having reached this decision, and re 
 garding the matter as settled once for 
 all, he forgave himself in Florence s name 
 and lifted his eyes to note how far he had 
 progressed upon his homeward journey. 
 
 He was passing through a little ravine 
 whose sides were clothed with firs. Under
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 97 
 
 a tree half-way up the hill was a slender, 
 dejected figure in a white frock. Her 
 face was turned away from him, but the 
 big mull hat with its pink roses was a 
 familiar acquaintance. 
 
 He hesitated a second and made as if 
 he would go on, then swerved abruptly, 
 and throwing himself over the stone wall 
 strode up the slope. Stopping at the 
 girl s side, he took out his watch. 
 
 " Don t you know it is dinner-time at 
 your house ? " he said severely. " Why 
 are you not on your way to dinner ? " 
 
 Arria lifted her face to his joyously, as 
 a child might have done. Roderick was 
 such a good friend to her. If he would 
 but talk to her now, it would lift her, as 
 it always did, into a calm but happy 
 world. The sight of him comforted her. 
 Here, she felt, but knew not why, was 
 shelter and safety.
 
 98 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 "Do scold me!" she answered. "It is 
 so restful. I have been trying to scold 
 myself all the afternoon, and I simply 
 can t do it." 
 
 He scrutinized her face. The traces 
 of tears were still visible. 
 
 " Why is your doll temporarily stuffed 
 with sawdust ? " he demanded. " It is 
 only temporary, you know. Tell me 
 about it, if you can." 
 
 Arria s spirits rose unwarrantably. It 
 is good to be called to account by a sym 
 pathetic soul when one suspects that one 
 has made a mess of things. 
 
 " I have been breaking off my engage 
 ment with Mr. Sefton," she began obedi 
 ently. " I had no idea engagements were 
 so difficult to fracture. It it is not a 
 pleasant thing to do." 
 
 Roderick suppressed a movement of 
 surprise, then sat down beside her on
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 99 
 
 the rock and began to pull a daisy to 
 pieces with unnecessary violence. 
 
 " Outside of a humorous weekly, no," 
 he said drily. "Sefton is a good fellow. 
 Besides his more obvious advantages, he 
 is one of the few strong and honest men 
 the Lord has made. I am afraid you 
 have been hard on Sefton." 
 
 " I know he is good. And strong. 
 And reliable. I know all about his 
 obvious advantages," said Arria. " All 
 these things had great weight with me. 
 They have still. But somehow I simply 
 had to put an end to it. I don t know 
 why. He was so good he made me want 
 to hurt him. I must have been too self- 
 confident in the beginning. It was all a 
 mistake ! " 
 
 " How," Roderick heard himself asking, 
 his eyes fixed on the daisy, "did you 
 happen to find that out ? "
 
 ioo The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 Arria paused. Then, with that impulse 
 toward confidence which is in itself a 
 subtle intoxication, rendering its subject 
 momentarily irresponsible, she began her 
 little tale. 
 
 She told it rapidly and picturesquely, 
 sketching in lightly her sombre child 
 hood, and dwelling a little upon the re 
 actionary thirst for life and enjoyment 
 with which it had inspired her. Her 
 cheeks took a richer carmine as she 
 talked. Her deep eyes grew more alive. 
 She was absorbed in her subject, excited, 
 interested. Her auditor she seemed to 
 have forgotten. 
 
 " And so when Mr. Sefton came it 
 seemed as if all my life had simply been 
 leading up to that climax, and I accepted 
 it as the natural and fitting one. Why 
 not? Then, all at once, just as I sup 
 posed myself in port, arrived, I found I
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 101 
 
 was at sea and drifting. My content in 
 the situation was all gone. I could not 
 satisfy myself, nor him. Everything that 
 had seemed solid and substantial melted 
 away into mist. The beautiful and fitting 
 climax to my life suddenly turned hideous 
 and looked like something else. 
 
 " And then," she turned and faced him 
 with perplexed eyes, " people were always 
 disturbing me by saying things about 
 love and loving that I did not under 
 stand. Florence disturbs me. Even my 
 uncle and aunt " She stopped herself. 
 That story was not hers to tell. "Even 
 to them," she said hurriedly, " love is 
 very serious, and can still make life 
 tragic just think! on the very outer 
 edge of life. It seems almost incredible 
 to me, but since it is a fact, it must be 
 that there is something wrong with my 
 theories. Everything I have thought
 
 IO2 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 about it seems turned into nothingness. 
 . . . And so I thought my engagement 
 might as well turn to nothing too." 
 
 The dear, perplexed face was too near. 
 It was intolerable! Roderick rose im 
 petuously. 
 
 " Yes," he said brokenly, " it was an 
 easy solution to the problem of your life 
 
 but it was not the answer in the book. 
 And now " he broke off, looked down 
 at her, then set his teeth and hurried on. 
 " Now you want to begin again. You 
 want the real the eternal. You want 
 
 to love. Dear, let me show you how! " 
 She looked up wonderingly at his agi 
 tated face. 
 
 Roderick too? 
 
 His hands were stretched toward her. 
 How was it that without conscious voli 
 tion she was standing beside him, her 
 hands in his ?
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 103 
 
 And how came it that their lips met? 
 
 " Ah ! That," she cried sharply, trem 
 bling between wrath and tears, " that 
 was not a kiss ... it was an Event ! " 
 
 " Do you not wish," he asked in a 
 voice of tender triumph, " that there 
 should be such events in your life and 
 in mine ? " 
 
 " Certainly not ! " said Arria, stooping 
 to pick up her gloves and striving for 
 her composure. " I do not want events 
 in my life that have no place there." 
 
 " Do you doubt, then," he said so low 
 she scarcely heard, " to whom my kisses 
 belong?" 
 
 " To Florence," she cried in sharp pro 
 test. " She has everything. She must 
 have everything if honour is anything 
 but a name, if uprightness is, if we have 
 not been living in a world of moral mis 
 conceptions all our lives."
 
 104 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " I think," muttered Roderick beneath 
 his breath, " that honour is a theory too. 
 Nothing is true but this." 
 
 " This is not true if it would make us 
 false ! " 
 
 "You admit then, that even for you 
 this is ? " watching her with eyes whose 
 appeal she knew not how to evade. How 
 could she make him understand what 
 she herself had not yet begun to appre 
 hend ? 
 
 "I think " she began helplessly. 
 
 Roderick s face lit up. She could not 
 deny it, then ? 
 
 "Don t think! Ah, don t!" he said 
 almost gaily. " You admit that you have 
 made a failure of thinking. Let it alone 
 for a while. Feel. Thinking isn t a fit 
 occupation for an emotional being, any 
 how." 
 
 Arria made no answer. She turned
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 105 
 
 and went down the little slope. When 
 they were in the highway, " I must think," 
 she said, " of Florence." But she said it 
 mechanically and without conviction. It 
 was more than difficult just then to 
 think of anything but that new confus 
 ing tumult in her heart. " You are 
 
 O 
 
 engaged." 
 
 At this bald statement, Roderick 
 frowned. 
 
 " Engagements have been known to be 
 broken," he said with a touch of bitter 
 ness. " You, for instance, seem to have 
 had no difficulty in breaking one this 
 very afternoon. Such things happen and 
 people live on. Suppose we consider the 
 problem without that factor for a short 
 time. We will think of what we owe 
 other people later on. Just now Ar- 
 ria, I want you to think of me." 
 
 She shook her head. That was a
 
 io6 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 fatally easy thing to do, but she did not 
 mean to tell him so. 
 
 They walked in silence for a time. 
 
 " Those people," said Roderick at last, 
 speaking as one having authority, in a 
 deep voice she had begun to dread, "who 
 can never give up their beliefs for their 
 feelings should stay in the intellectual 
 world. It is where they belong. There 
 is not enough law and order and sequence 
 of things in the emotional life for them. 
 Its contrasts are too sharp, its reactions 
 are too violent, its results too causeless. 
 It is not theirs. But it is the only real 
 world just the same ! " 
 
 " I never meant," she said with quiver 
 ing lip, "to make any excursions in the 
 emotional world with you." 
 
 They had reached the gates of Rose- 
 hedges, where the great trees made per 
 petual dusk, and she turned to go in.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 107 
 
 With a swift, defiant gesture he caught 
 her in his arms and her lips trembled 
 beneath his. 
 
 " No," he said, " I did not mean it either. 
 But now that we have begun there shall 
 be no returning. We must go on to 
 gether to the end."
 
 IX 
 
 A NIGHT of reflection showed the events 
 of the day before in a lurid light to Arria. 
 
 Of reflection? Of action rather ! She 
 found it no passive thing to be called 
 upon to face the unbelievable, to down 
 the invincible, to acknowledge the su 
 preme. 
 
 Great surges of feeling caught her and 
 tossed her to and fro. She was horribly 
 wretched. She was incredibly happy. 
 In each mood the other seemed irra 
 tional. But what was it to be rational ? 
 Was it not to cede to the strongest logic? 
 There was in the sound of Roderick s 
 voice, the look of his eye, the touch of 
 his hand, a potency of argument she 
 108
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 109 
 
 had been unwilling heretofore to accord 
 even to pure reason. 
 
 Of one thing she was sure. These 
 were the main currents of life. Was it 
 not better to be drowned in stemming 
 them than to float in the shallows safely? 
 How strong they were! Heretofore the 
 assurance that she was a reasonable and 
 reasoning being had seemed sufficient 
 guarantee that she could win from the 
 crises of existence a subjective victory at 
 least. As well attempt the crossing of 
 torrents on cobwebs. 
 
 For one brief, perilous hour it seemed a 
 beautiful thing to be thus weak compared 
 to the strength of love. In such weak 
 ness she might well exult and be glad. 
 To drift was better than to strive with 
 the current that never has been stayed. 
 Why should she struggle ? She was but 
 drifting the way the great tides go.
 
 no The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 Life grew luminous before her sleepless 
 eyes. The end and all the way were plain. 
 She had looked forward unconsciously all 
 her young years for something supreme 
 to happen, for the hour of destiny to strike. 
 For her it had come, and it was this. 
 " I am on the down-hill side of life, now," 
 she thought, and shivered at the fancy. 
 
 Growing calmer, she fell to wondering. 
 If this was love, it was strangely simple. 
 Her strongest feeling was an overwhelm 
 ing sensation of home. Where Roderick 
 was, was her predestined abiding-place. It 
 must be so. There she belonged. There 
 was joy as well as peace. She exulted in 
 the thought. Why not? It made her 
 happy. It was so easy, so normal, to be 
 happy. 
 
 Then the inevitable reaction came with 
 frightful strength. The thought of Flor 
 ence stung her, scorched her, made her
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 1 1 1 
 
 hide her face even from the darkness. If 
 only it could have been some other 
 woman ! It was true, as Roderick had 
 said, engagements were easily broken. 
 So were some hearts. And Florence, 
 who believed in nothing, who cared for 
 nothing, who wanted nothing but just this 
 thing this which was Arria s own, hers 
 inalienably, it seemed, yet hers only as 
 the thief s booty is his own what of 
 Florence ? It was terrible, and yet 
 
 "It is very singular!" she said aloud. 
 " I am trying to despise myself. I cannot 
 yet I know I ought." 
 
 She had never conceived as possible 
 the appalling divorce of the reason and 
 the conscience which she presently per 
 ceived in the depths of her consciousness. 
 She thought herself incredibly base, yet 
 felt herself absolved from all hint of 
 wrong-doing.
 
 1 1 2 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " It is wrong, wrong, wrong ! " she said, 
 yet felt no wrong, and wondered help 
 lessly, not knowing she had stumbled into 
 the spiritual region of the magnetic pole, 
 where compasses are useless and the sea 
 farer steers by the stars alone. 
 
 When the day dawned it found her by 
 her window watching for it in weariness 
 of spirit. But there is a peace in exhaus 
 tion such as vigour does not know. And 
 with the coming of the light came also 
 illumination, not perhaps upon her duty, 
 but upon her intention. Duties are com 
 pulsory, and Arria felt strongly within 
 her the consciousness of choice. What 
 she meant to do was perhaps not neces 
 sary she did not dogmatize but it 
 was preferable. She chose it. She had 
 proved the philosophy of self-seeking a 
 mistake. She would try that of self-abne 
 gation. She knew she was stronger than
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 113 
 
 her cousin. Our strength is our most 
 exacting taskmaster. It demands for 
 itself stony roads to travel, heavy hills to 
 climb, burdens to bear. All this Arria 
 had never known before. Faintheartedly 
 she recognized it now, longing for that 
 weakness which is the happier lot. 
 
 Later in the day her intention took 
 shape in a letter her first love-letter. 
 
 " I am afraid," she wrote, " that you are 
 right. This must be love. It stirs me so. 
 
 "You think, or seem to think I can 
 not be sure, for you only showed me what 
 you felt, not what you thought at all 
 that it is an invincible thing, that it comes 
 and takes us and makes of us what it will. 
 But I seem to see very clearly that it is 
 what we make of it. It comes like any 
 other human experience, like life itself, 
 and we are free to make of it what we 
 will, a high thing or a low.
 
 H4 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " I do not choose to make an evil 
 thing of mine, false, selfish, base. I love 
 you too much already to love you 
 so. 
 
 " But I am not pretending for an in 
 stant that I like to be good if good 
 it is. I do not. I hate to give you up. 
 I do not know how to rid myself of 
 the thought of you. It is around me 
 like the atmosphere already. But I can 
 teach myself to bear that, I suppose ; 
 and by and by I am afraid it will take 
 years the thought of you will lose its 
 keenness, it will not hurt me so. And 
 I shall get interested in other things 
 there are lots of things in life worth 
 caring for, it is not as if I were Flor 
 ence and only cared for one and so 
 out of pain will come indifference, and 
 out of indifference quietness, and per 
 haps when I am forty I shall be able to
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 1 1 5 
 
 look forth on my soul and say, This is 
 the peace which springs from righteous 
 ness. I dare say I shall grow to be as 
 great a Pharisee as that ! 
 
 " I don t like to contemplate such an 
 ending. It would be easier to die at 
 once, and more beautiful. I wish I 
 could go away into another world where 
 I could hurt no one by cherishing you. 
 But that would be too easy. As you 
 said the other day, the easy answers 
 never are the right ones. 
 
 " I am quite sure this is the right 
 one. I know I can live without you, 
 and you will soon forget me, quite. It 
 would be impossible to be unhappy 
 where Florence was." 
 
 Armed with this document, which she 
 felt settled everything and would be as 
 final to Roderick as to herself, Arria set 
 forth that afternoon to meet him where
 
 1 1 6 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 they had encountered each other the 
 day before. She had promised to do 
 this on the ground that the situation 
 demanded candid consideration from them 
 both. It was her intention to put the 
 letter in his hands and then return at 
 once. She had written all that she 
 wished to say. What he might say, 
 she was resolutely determined not to 
 hear. 
 
 But Roderick took the letter and, 
 having bent to kiss the hands that gave 
 it, tore it in two without so much as 
 unfolding it. 
 
 " Don t you suppose," he demanded, 
 " that I know all that can possibly be 
 said against this? You cannot tell me 
 anything I have not thought of. I 
 know the arguments by heart, and they 
 do not convince. Now you must hear 
 mine."
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 117 
 
 " I wish," cried Arria petulantly, " you 
 would type-write those arguments or 
 let me hear them blind-fold and from 
 another room ! Your eyes are too elo 
 quent. It is not fair. How can I judge 
 justly when you look at me like that?" 
 
 " I need all the advantages that I 
 have," said Roderick inflexibly. " Listen, 
 Arria." 
 
 " You have no philosophy," she re 
 proached him wildly, " no fortitude." 
 
 " No, thank Heaven ! Philosophy be 
 hanged ! Life is a rack and we are 
 stretched upon it to be tortured. He is 
 the best philosopher who can say most 
 calmly as each different bone is dislo 
 cated, Ah, here is a fresh sensation ! 
 For my part I am willing not to be 
 one," cried Roderick hotly. " The only 
 epitaph I covet is When he breathed, 
 he was a man
 
 1 1 8 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " No one will deny it to you, I am 
 afraid. You are no saint." 
 
 " It is not one of my ambitions. I 
 have noticed that the paths which lead 
 to Heaven usually lead away from Para 
 dise. But all this is irrelevant." 
 
 " I despise you," she said desperately ; 
 "but," relenting as she saw his face, "if 
 somebody had to come to despise you, 
 I am glad it is I. I couldn t bear it, to 
 have any one else despise you as I do 
 just now." 
 
 He brushed her words aside. 
 
 " Ah, listen, Arria," he said, and this 
 time she found no interruption. 
 
 To have relieved one s mind of lofty 
 sentiments seems, somehow, at certain 
 crises the equivalent of a noble deed, 
 and produces in the same way that feel 
 ing of reaction through which we descend 
 painlessly to lower levels.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 119 
 
 Arria, conscious that her purpose, at 
 least, had satisfied her soul, relaxed her 
 spiritual tension and lingered. Once in 
 every man s life, it is given him to speak 
 as if indeed a coal from the sacred fire 
 had touched his lips. Arria listened to 
 Roderick s burning words with a hun 
 ger which grew by what it fed upon. 
 And when he grew more daring and 
 reinforced his arguments with action, 
 she did not shrink even from his kisses. 
 
 Then she returned to re-live the 
 conflict of the night before, to fight the 
 fight with keener reproach, with yet 
 more ecstatic joy.
 
 X 
 
 
 
 THE Major was ill. 
 
 " I can t understand what the doctor 
 means, dear," said Mrs. Woolsey, cling 
 ing to her daughter s hand, as they 
 stood watching the physician s carnage 
 drive away. " Yesterday he insisted 
 upon a nurse, and to-day he said some 
 thing about nervous prostration and 
 something about the danger of heart- 
 failure. What does he mean ? There is 
 nothing seriously wrong with your 
 father." 
 
 " Darling, he means papa is very ill." 
 
 " Very ill, Florence ? " 
 
 The girl bent and kissed her mother 
 silently. The elder woman turned away
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 1 2 1 
 
 and began to mount the stairs. Her 
 strength failed her, and she stood lean 
 ing against the rail. How long the way 
 was. Would she never get to the top ? 
 It seemed hours since Florence had 
 spoken. Heart-failure ? What if he 
 died before she reached him? The 
 world reeled darkening at the thought, 
 and she fell back upon the stair. 
 
 Meanwhile the Major lay upon his 
 weary bed and needed no telling to know 
 that the dear, warm human life he had 
 loved and lived so carelessly was slip 
 ping slipping from his nerveless fingers. 
 
 What a life it had been ! Keenly his 
 early years came back to him. The 
 irresponsible rapture of the boy in life 
 and sport was his again. How fine and 
 crisp the winters were. There were no 
 such winters now. What had been 
 white-and-gold jests with the blood of
 
 122 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 youth, were long, chill affronts to the 
 slow currents of later years. 
 
 And what a green glory had been 
 upon the winter wheat when May came 
 at last, and the level sun struck across 
 the fields and turned the perfumed, 
 whitening orchards into gold ! 
 
 He remembered the joy of his first 
 gun, and the awakening of the sports 
 man s instinct as he had followed his 
 father across the yellow stubble in the 
 ecstatic air. Ah, those were days, and 
 that was life, more satisfying, it seemed 
 now, than all the years that had come 
 between. 
 
 In and out of all his recollection ran 
 the river, a silver thread to bind the 
 years upon. Only those who have lived 
 beside it know how it has become the 
 river of their love. The Major had 
 lived beside it always.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 123 
 
 It was upon the river, he remembered, 
 in a gay party going down to the Point, 
 that he had first met Elizabeth, a stranger 
 from the South. 
 
 Across the years that sweet young 
 face smiled to him as it had smiled on 
 the day of their meeting ; as it had done 
 always since. 
 
 But now he lay dying, and she gave 
 no sign. Once it had almost seemed to 
 him that Elizabeth was strenuous and 
 devoted enough to impose her opinion 
 of him upon the Lord himself. Now 
 he wished that she might be brought to 
 share what he vaguely believed to be the 
 Creator s tolerance. 
 
 The Major was religious after a fashion. 
 Loyalty to the Church came after loy 
 alty to the State. The point of view 
 was hereditary with the Woolseys, and 
 to be respected. As to his personal
 
 1 24 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 relations with the Infinite, he felt a con 
 fidence that He who made man, knowing 
 him but dust, would overlook his en 
 trance into another life somewhat soiled 
 with the grime of earth. The old Per 
 sian had said it : 
 
 "ffe s a Good Fellow, and twill all be well. 11 
 The rough-and-ready righteousness of 
 the man who is his own worst enemy 
 was ample cloak for him. As for Hell, 
 it was where Elizabeth had been keep 
 ing him for the last week. When he 
 thought of it, it seemed to him that this, 
 and no other thing, was killing him. As 
 a matter of fact, he knew he had been 
 warned often enough to let stimulants 
 and nicotine alone that his heart would 
 not stand them but barring a few bad 
 turns which had not frightened him suf 
 ficiently he had gone on well enough 
 until the stress of the other day.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 125 
 
 Strange ! One might think it would 
 have been the fragile woman upon whom 
 all this would have told most heavily. It 
 was the kind of shock romances said killed 
 women. Instead, it was he whose pulses 
 were weakening hour by hour, as he lay 
 fretting at her absence and her coldness, 
 while she remained aloof, unmoved. 
 
 "She might forgive a dying man," 
 said the Major, with tears of self-pity in 
 his eyes. 
 
 While her husband thought these 
 things, Mrs. Woolsey sat in half-con 
 scious misery upon the stair until her 
 strength came back to her, and she 
 made her way to the little study at the 
 top of the flight. It was the Major s 
 den. His books and papers were there. 
 His dressing-gown, redolent of tobacco, 
 lay across the worn leather chair in 
 front of the desk. There she sat down
 
 126 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 and putting her head back against it, 
 strove to think. 
 
 She had been reared in the old school 
 of theology as well as of manners, and she 
 believed, not that the punishment of a 
 wasted life is here and now, but that it 
 lies in a dread hereafter. 
 
 " He is not good, and he is going to 
 die," she said slowly to herself. A dumb 
 terror stole over her at the thought. 
 How would it be with that poor soul, so 
 kin to earth, when he fared forth to the 
 Infinite ? She realized that she could 
 not imagine her husband in a spiritual 
 world, and a sickening revulsion to life 
 and death alike laid hold of her. The 
 dread of the Unknown tore her heart. 
 
 The terror which she felt for her hus 
 band fought with the resentment that 
 had been in her heart against him until 
 the struggle grew keen anguish.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 127 
 
 " O God ! " she said, " I cannot bear his 
 dying nor his living ! What shall I do ? 
 -what shall I do?" and then, "O God, 
 be merciful to him ! " 
 
 But the God whom she knew was a 
 God of justice, not of mercy. Who could 
 doubt what decree was registered in the 
 impenetrable fastnesses of that dark Will 
 against the man who, having all good 
 gifts, had wasted all, and faced old age 
 a spiritual pauper? 
 
 How long she sat there numb with the 
 horror of the thought she did not know, 
 but at last her soul flamed in revolt. Let 
 God be cruel if he must. It was no more 
 than just. But as for her, in the few 
 hours that remained to her of their long 
 comradeship, she would be merciful. Jus 
 tice was the attribute of gods, perhaps, 
 but not of women. And he, pitiful failure 
 that he was, was yet the best that earth
 
 128 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 had given her to answer to her young 
 ideals and still the hunger of her heart. 
 
 Rising, she went to his room. The 
 nurse withdrew. The Major and his wife 
 faced each other pallidly. She came for 
 ward to the bed and knelt down. She 
 had meant to be very quiet, very calm 
 a scene was the worst possible thing for 
 him but her sensitive face quivered, 
 and her voice was broken beyond her 
 control. 
 
 " I did not know that that you were 
 so ill, Roger," she stammered. 
 
 The Major lay back upon his pillows 
 and regarded her with the forced indiffer 
 ence of exhaustion. 
 
 " Pray do not agitate yourself, my dear," 
 he said courteously but feebly. " I have 
 already lived too long since I have out 
 lived your respect." 
 
 She caught his hands, already shrunken,
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 129 
 
 and her kisses and her tears fell upon 
 them fast. She spoke words that he did 
 not understand, that he was too weak to 
 try to understand, but among her con 
 fused and tender murmurs, this was clear : 
 " But not my love . . . but not my 
 love ! "
 
 XI 
 
 RODERICK KIRKE had gone through life 
 easily and uprightly. He did not think 
 overmuch about himself, but he had 
 always had a clear conviction that he was 
 a little too fine to be conformed to all the 
 manners and customs of this wicked 
 earth. His absorptions in life were chiefly 
 intellectual and aesthetic. Things vicious 
 and vulgar repelled him because they 
 were not sufficiently interesting to coun 
 terbalance their lack of beauty. Tem 
 perament had served him in the stead of 
 character, and it was his tacit assumption 
 that in conduct he would always choose 
 the higher course because he was himself. 
 
 He had seen men caught in the whirl- 
 130
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 1 3 1 
 
 wind of passionate emotion, and had 
 noted curiously that it seemed to make 
 no difference to them whether they were 
 victims to righteous or unrighteous loves. 
 Personally, he believed the ethical ele 
 ment necessary to the beauty of love, and 
 failed even to conceive of the possible 
 supremacy over himself of a feeling which 
 did not satisfy his sense of honour. 
 
 Sharp across these pleasing precon 
 ceptions swept the first vital emotion of 
 his self-centred life, making such havoc 
 as the hail makes in May among the 
 apple-blooms. He too was in the net. 
 How it had happened he did not know. 
 The great affections offer no explanation 
 of themselves. Theirs is the simple " I 
 am " of Jehovah. 
 
 He was honest in his resolve to say 
 nothing, but did a strong love ever yet 
 remain untold ? Circumstances league
 
 132 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 themselves against silence. All life is 
 on the side of speech. The voice of 
 honour grows faint and far away. Nearer, 
 sweeter, stronger voices drown its pro 
 test. " Have I not a right to my own ? " 
 asks the rebellious heart, and Nature an 
 swers " Yes." 
 
 But after a life-time spent in cultivat 
 ing a sense of duty in its more im 
 aginative aspects, one does not revert 
 to a cruder standard without difficulty. 
 Therefore the two days following his 
 interview with Arria were spent by 
 Roderick Kirke in hell. 
 
 There is one hell of half-hearted 
 struggle which has but a single pre 
 destined end, and another of mute ac 
 quiescence in a situation whose ignominy 
 the vanquished one feels as the victim 
 of the inquisition felt in his flesh the 
 spikes of the Iron Maid. The second of
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 133 
 
 these is the deeper damnation, and Rod 
 erick experienced its full bitterness. 
 
 The reflection that his self-scorn was 
 part of the price due to destiny for the 
 terrifying sweetness of this masterful 
 emotion helped him to bear it, but such 
 alleviation was not great. 
 
 Satiety in suffering comes soon to the 
 vigorous. At the end of two days Rod 
 erick fek a brief reaction. It was time 
 that he did something, even though ac 
 tion were ignoble. The process of put 
 ting an end to his engagement could 
 hardly be more intolerable than the 
 present situation. 
 
 " In the morning," he said to himself, 
 " I will go to Florence," and rested in 
 that decision. 
 
 The morning, when it dawned, proved 
 to usher in one of those incomparable 
 days of early September which seem to
 
 1 34 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 hallow all deeds done in them. Under 
 its influence Roderick went down to 
 his breakfast in a frame of mind which 
 was comparatively cheerful. Perhaps the 
 situation was not so tragic as he had 
 supposed. 
 
 But just at the close of the meal a 
 note was brought to him. 
 
 " DEAR RODERICK : Do you know you have not seen 
 us for three days ? My father is ill. I have not 
 dared to tell my mother how ill he is. I am fright 
 ened and I don t know what to do. 
 
 " FLORENCE." 
 
 He stared at the words protestingly. 
 
 "O God!" he said between his teeth, 
 as he grasped the full significance of the 
 situation. His mother, glancing up, caught 
 such a look of misery upon his face that 
 for the moment she believed herself 
 dreaming. Who had ever seen Roderick 
 look like that?
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 135 
 
 " Did you speak ? What is the mat 
 ter ? " she inquired. 
 
 He handed her the note. 
 
 " Florence is in trouble. I must go 
 over there," he said heavily. 
 
 " Oh, the poor girl ! I wish I could 
 do something. Pray go to her at once," 
 the mother urged. But when he had 
 left her it was not over her neighbour s 
 troubles that she knit her forehead anx 
 iously. 
 
 " The Major has outlived the comeli 
 ness of his life, and even Florence s 
 trouble would not make Roderick look 
 like that? she said. " My son suffers, 
 and I can neither know nor help," and 
 the blinding, bitter tears of a mother s 
 ignorance and helplessness came slowly 
 to her eyes. 
 
 Roderick meanwhile had gone away 
 sick at heart. There are limits even to
 
 136 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 the healthy fundamental selfishness of 
 youth and love. The difficult task had 
 become impossible. He could not with 
 hold from this daughter of a dying father 
 the help which she sought as her right. 
 
 Through the days that followed he 
 found many things to do at Rosehedges. 
 In those sharp hours when the proximity 
 of death draws closer together the souls 
 who must remain, no claim upon our 
 human tenderness is lightly disallowed. 
 Scorning himself for a hypocrite, yet 
 longing to help the two women in their 
 necessity, Roderick made himself helpful, 
 tender, strong, for the day of need. It 
 was to be done, but he never afterwards 
 remembered just how he had accomplished 
 it. The days were dreamlike and indis 
 tinct to him even as he moved through 
 them. One recollection only, of all that 
 time, possessed vividness and coherence.
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 137 
 
 He had prevailed upon Mrs. Woolsey, 
 who was nervous and exhausted, to go 
 out with him that morning for the air 
 and sunshine that she needed. The car 
 riage had come to the door, and he was 
 awaiting her in the morning-room, when 
 Arria, not knowing any one was there, 
 entered, singing softly to herself as she 
 came. 
 
 Roderick had seen nothing of her dur 
 ing the Major s illness, and the sight of 
 her now suddenly dispelled the clouds 
 that had been about him. He came for 
 ward silently with outstretched hands, re 
 membering only his need of her. She 
 looked at him an instant and drew back. 
 Her glance was visionary and remote, as 
 if she were looking from another world. 
 His own eyes were dogged, defiant, yet 
 beseeching, and his face was not hard to 
 read.
 
 1 38 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " Do you find," she said very gently, 
 " that engagements seem as easy to break 
 as they once did ? " 
 
 He bent his head an instant without 
 replying. It was her privilege to be 
 ironic if she found comfort so. He found 
 no comfort anywhere, but that did not 
 matter. Nothing mattered any longer, 
 since in the coil life had made around 
 him he could no longer pretend to stand 
 erect. 
 
 " Do you suppose," he said at last, "that 
 I love you less because I serve her more ? 
 Or that I should not be glad to keep my 
 self-respect, if I could ? It is not nec 
 essary for you to torture me to make 
 me understand my position ! " 
 
 She made a gesture of bewildered pro 
 test. 
 
 "Oh, no, no, no!" she said, "that is 
 not what I meant at all. I never thought
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 139 
 
 of reproaching you. It is only that 
 that I wanted you to confess how impos 
 sible anything is, for you and me. 
 Surely now you must see it as I see it." 
 
 " You only want me to surrender both 
 my love and my self-respect ! It will go 
 hard if I do not keep one of them ! " 
 
 " That is impossible," she said hastily. 
 
 " Nothing is impossible. I am willing 
 to pay the price. See here," and he 
 caught her roughly by the wrists, " if you 
 say the word, I am ready, ready, do 
 you understand? to tell her now, this 
 hour, that I can never marry her. Do 
 you wish it? Shall I do it?" 
 
 " Oh, no, no, no ! " she cried again. 
 " What a selfish, brutal, hideous idea ! " 
 
 "Then what do you want?" 
 
 Arria looked at him helplessly. That 
 men were restive and impracticable when 
 most it behooved them to be strong and
 
 140 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 controlled had not been one of her pre 
 conceptions about them. Recognizing 
 the fact, she bent before it, perceiving 
 that she had expected the impossible. 
 
 " You are not treating me well," he 
 went on, harshly, as it seemed to her. 
 
 " Men always say that when they are 
 behaving badly," cried the girl, general 
 izing from the instance before her in 
 self-defence. " I don t know what you 
 mean by treating you well. I am trying 
 to help you do what you ought to do. 
 I did not mean to hurt you." 
 
 He envisaged her dumbly, and in his 
 face she read all the pain and passion, 
 the revolt, and shame, and longing, of 
 his soul so clearly that it silenced her. 
 
 When she spoke again it was uncer 
 tainly and with timidity. 
 
 "Does it does it make it any easier 
 for you to know that I think the way you 
 comfort Florence is is adorable ? "
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 141 
 
 " No. It does not make it any easier." 
 
 " Is is there anything that I can 
 say" 
 
 Ah, those beseeching eyes ! 
 
 " But this is so selfish ! " she protested 
 faintly. 
 
 " So selfish and so beautiful," said 
 Roderick, as he drew her face to his. 
 
 She caught his hand and kissed it, 
 and turned quickly to leave the room. 
 Mrs. Woolsey was descending the stairs, 
 and Arria heard her step thankfully. 
 Obviously, further interviews between 
 herself and Roderick were out of the 
 question if they were always to end in 
 this way. 
 
 " It does not seem," she said to herself 
 wearily, as she climbed the stairs, " to be 
 of the slightest use to reason with a man. 
 Perhaps it isn t any use to reason with 
 myself."
 
 142 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 As she passed her cousin s door, Flor 
 ence called to her. She was lying down, 
 but lifted her head as Arria entered. 
 
 " Roderick was there, wasn t he ? " she 
 said. " I knew he had entered the house, 
 though I don t know how I knew it. I 
 hope Providence is laying up a reward 
 for Roderick. May Heaven particularly 
 bless him ! Arria, I should die these 
 days if it were not for him," and Florence 
 sat upright and tossed her tumbled hair 
 from her forehead restlessly. " Life looks 
 incomprehensible to me. It seems futile 
 and disgraceful, a long humiliation grow 
 ing bitterer year by year, ending at last 
 who knows? perhaps in extinction. 
 I should want to be done with it at 
 once if it were not for Roderick and the 
 things I can t help believing in when I 
 am with him. I believe in him most of 
 all. I am irreverent, I suppose, but I
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 143 
 
 sometimes wonder if the religious people 
 the real ones like my mother get as 
 much consolation out of their belief in 
 God." 
 
 " He does not make me feel things 
 like that," said Arria, looking down at 
 her with a playfulness that was obvious 
 and a seriousness that was hidden. 
 
 " Is that an intimation that my feelings 
 about Roderick depend upon subjective 
 causes ? " asked Florence. " My precious 
 child, what difference does it make? 
 They constitute the most beautiful ex 
 perience in my life, and I don t know 
 whence it comes. What if I may per 
 haps have attributed to him more virtues 
 than he has ? Other people cannot make 
 me think them more beautiful than they 
 are. It is all the same thing in the end. 
 I am happy and it is Roderick who 
 makes me so ! "
 
 XII 
 
 THE days went slowly by. Weakening 
 steadily, the Major lingered through the 
 golden September weather, as if loath to 
 leave such a beautiful and seductive 
 world, until at last the hour came when 
 he could stay no longer. 
 
 The hush of death wrapped the house, 
 and then, as even that stillness must, gave 
 way before the encroaching stir of life. 
 
 There were plans to be made, business 
 to be transacted. A thousand cares and 
 questions broke their life. Through all 
 the chequered days Roderick remained 
 Mrs. Woolsey s right hand, and Arria 
 avoided him with an almost prayerful 
 conscientiousness. 
 
 144
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 145 
 
 Death is an experience only less great 
 to those who remain than to those who 
 go. In those unreal days of its presence, 
 which yet seemed to hold Earth s only 
 verity, Arria, exhausted in body, but ex 
 alted in spirit, laid hold, or thought she 
 did, upon reality. 
 
 She had gone out in the early morn 
 ing when the air was cool and the 
 sun was shining through the diminished 
 screen of ripening leaves, and made her 
 way down across the thick undergrowth 
 of shrubbery which had been allowed to 
 climb up the bluff at its own will, until 
 she came to a quiet corner where she 
 had often been before. The river was in 
 sight, and beyond it the hills,, 
 
 She was harassed, perplexed, sad. That 
 careless self-confidence with which she 
 began the summer had quite vanished 
 now. The world loomed before her,
 
 146 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 great, difficult, cruel. What did it all 
 mean ? And what was she to do with 
 her poignant share of the tangles ex 
 istence had made for her? Was life 
 indeed, as Florence had said, futile and 
 disgraceful, a slow descent from the 
 heights of youth down a rough, shame 
 ful, ever^darkening road ? Did one cher 
 ish ideals only to relinquish them ? Was 
 it meant that each soul should seek and 
 take its own though at another s cost? 
 Was she like all the rest? Daily, re 
 nouncement grew more difficult. Should 
 she succumb at last? 
 
 Oh, no! She laughed at the thought 
 What did a few failures prove, or even 
 the failure of all mankind ? With the 
 morning sun upon the world, and the 
 crisp air that prophesied of frost against 
 her cheeks, she found a better answer. 
 She saw as she had never seen before
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 147 
 
 the verity of the axiom that life is a 
 struggle. Some must succeed in the con 
 flict. To accept life as it seems to be, 
 to take the destiny thrust upon us, to 
 yield to the outer world, is to cease to 
 live. Surely the immortal armies are 
 made up of those who have refused to 
 become plastic in the grasp of an ex 
 perience which would destroy their visions 
 of life and character. 
 
 Oh, kind, brave, friendly world ! It is 
 good to fight. The breath of life is 
 sweeter on our lips, existence is more 
 serious, even more noble, when we see that 
 it is warfare. We may war under false 
 banners, but it is essential that we fight. 
 
 For the first time in her life she was 
 conscious of the slackening of that de 
 mand for personal happiness which is the 
 slogan of the very young. Happiness 
 seemed for the moment of less value than
 
 148 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 steadfastness in whatever road she should 
 mark out to travel. 
 
 Across her soul there came with a rush 
 of tender reminiscence of that mother, 
 never so well understood as in this hour, 
 the words of one of those serene, chill 
 precepts she had heard so often in her 
 earliest years. 
 
 "Unhappy am I because this has hap 
 pened to me? Not so, bitt happy am 1 
 though this has happened to me . . . 
 neither crushed by the present nor fearing 
 the future^ 
 
 And what was that other sunnier say 
 ing ? Ah, yes, she remembered. 
 
 "Everything is fruit to me which thy 
 seasons bring, O Nature ! " 
 
 " My mother knew," said Arria to her 
 self. " It is the only way to live. We 
 are here to suffer and to say we do not 
 suffer, because suffering is worth while."
 
 T/ic Daughter of a Stoic 149 
 
 She bent her head in the consciousness 
 of that deep turning of the will which is 
 more an action than a prayer. " Dear 
 God," she said, " since I have chosen not 
 to be happy, let me be a little good." 
 
 When at last she rose to return to the 
 house, it was with a curious exultation in 
 her soul and her head full of plans for the 
 future. 
 
 Difficult as was rationality in her own 
 person, it was nothing compared to the task 
 of making Roderick reasonable. Reluc 
 tantly she renounced the effort. It would 
 be very beautiful to know that he saw the 
 situation as she saw it. The heights of re 
 nunciation are chilling and difficult to one 
 who climbs them uncompanioned. But 
 her expostulations with him in the past 
 had all terminated in one way, and she 
 had no reason to expect that a different 
 fortune would attend any fresh attempts.
 
 1 50 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 " But three kisses are not very many 
 when that is all one is ever going to take. 
 I think even Florence might forgive me 
 those if she knew. Three times or was 
 it four ? in a whole life ! " thought Arria. 
 
 The conversion of Roderick being 
 hopelessly out of the question, the 
 only thing left for her to do was to go 
 away. Her course was simplified by the 
 fact that the Major s will, made several 
 years before, left her an income of a 
 thousand dollars, which, added to her 
 own, made her a young person of inde 
 pendent means. In the scholastic world, 
 which she purposed to re-enter, fifteen 
 hundred a year is a very decent income. 
 
 Her old enthusiasm for the scholar s 
 existence, simple, refined, and strenuous 
 as it is, revived as she laid her plans, 
 which called for two or three years of 
 foreign study and the attainment of a
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 151 
 
 doctor s degree as a preliminary step. 
 The intellectual life looked a haven of 
 refuge after the stress of the last few 
 months. In it was safety, security, peace. 
 " I think it must require a very wise, 
 strong person to love and be loved as it 
 should be done," thought the girl deject 
 edly "somebody wiser than I, at least. 
 I am too stupid for anything but scholar 
 ship. It is far better that I should go 
 back to it."
 
 XIII 
 
 " BUT you must not go away from us, 
 dear," protested Mrs. Woolsey tenderly. 
 " I cannot think your uncle would have 
 approved." 
 
 She said this with an air of finality. 
 Love and death, the arch-deceivers, had 
 combined to beguile her into forgetfulness 
 of those bitter days when her idol had 
 tottered to its fall. The Major s opinion 
 was now, as formerly, the ultimate au 
 thority. 
 
 " If you needed me," said Arria, " if " 
 rather forlornly "any one needed me, 
 I should be very glad to stay. But no 
 one does. And we must all live our own 
 lives, you know."
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 153 
 
 Mrs. Woolsey did not know. The 
 sentiment had not been current when 
 she was twenty-two. When it was stated 
 as a self-evident truth, however, she felt 
 unequal to disproving it. 
 
 " You are too young," she urged, " to 
 be so far away from your natural 
 guardians. I can t think of you alone 
 in a foreign city with only another girl 
 of your own age for a companion. It is 
 impossible, dear child." 
 
 " But people do it every day. It is 
 different when you are known to be a 
 student And I must go." 
 
 However often this conversation was 
 repeated, and for a time it was a daily 
 dialogue between Arria and her aunt, 
 the end was always the same. The de 
 cisive, yet despairing ring of the girl s 
 voice as she urged that she must go was 
 not an argument. Yet it finally prevailed
 
 154 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 to win a reluctant and unconvinced recog 
 nition of her freedom to do as she saw 
 fit. Mrs. Woolsey was too just or too 
 gentle to reproach her niece for being 
 a modern girl, but she could and did 
 reproach modern life for the untoward 
 tendencies which spoiled a young person 
 who was otherwise fitted to have graced 
 the ranks of girlhood in a less perverse 
 generation. 
 
 The theory that we must all live 
 our own lives was one which Florence 
 comprehended better than her mother 
 could. 
 
 " I don t in the least think the dear 
 Lord intended you to live that sort of 
 life," she said with conviction. " I am 
 so sure of it I might almost say I am 
 in his confidence on the point. You are 
 too essentially attractive to sacrifice your 
 heart to your head. Still, if you must
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 155 
 
 make the experiment, you must. But I 
 prophesy it will not succeed." 
 
 " My other experiment did not suc 
 ceed," said Arria. " I cannot fail always, 
 in everything." 
 
 Florence hesitated. The broken en 
 gagement had been lost sight of in the 
 stress of the Major s illness, and the two 
 girls had never discussed the situation 
 freely. 
 
 " Your other experiment was prelimi 
 nary," Florence now said slowly. " The 
 first venture of a thinking being and 
 you are too much of one into the 
 emotional world is seldom a success. 
 The next time your fortune will be 
 happier. The world professes to dis 
 believe it, but feeling is an acquired 
 taste for those whose minds have been 
 trained while their hearts are idle. But, 
 like all such tastes, it is strong when
 
 156 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 once obtained. Have you seen Mr. 
 Sefton since ? " 
 
 " No," murmured Arria guiltily. " I 
 was afraid he would be too impressive a 
 spectacle. And it was not necessary. 
 He has only been here to make inquiries 
 about you and Aunt Elizabeth. I should 
 like to thank him for his solicitude, his 
 desire to do something for you, but on 
 my own account I would rather not see 
 him." 
 
 " You must have treated him very 
 badly," mused Florence. 
 
 " I was brutal," confessed Arria de 
 jectedly. 
 
 " Irreparable brutality is an unpleasant 
 thing to remember," said Florence. " I 
 am glad you are going to that friend of 
 yours, where there will be nothing to 
 remind you of your worries. You are 
 pale and thin. I asked Roderick if he
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 157 
 
 didn t think so, and he said he had not 
 seen you for so long he did not know. 
 I am afraid " she took her cousin s 
 hand affectionately " that in my own 
 troubles I have forgotten to look after 
 you. If I have been selfish, you must 
 forgive me, dear." 
 
 It was true that Roderick had not seen 
 Arria. She had avoided him pertina 
 ciously, but such a condition of things 
 could not last, and, recognizing its pre- 
 cariousness, Arria resolved to forestall 
 the end. It was now October, and Flor 
 ence and Mrs. Woolsey were about to 
 leave Rosehedges for two or three brac 
 ing weeks in the quietest village the 
 Green Mountains afford. Arria had 
 planned to go instead to a friend in 
 New Hampshire, and afterwards, as soon 
 as might be, she proposed to join a school 
 mate who was studying in Germany.
 
 158 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 Roderick heard these plans at second 
 hand from Florence with deepening im 
 patience and resentment. Why did not 
 Arria let him talk to her? He could 
 take no decisive step involving both of 
 them without seeing her. The false posi 
 tion in which he stood was wearing upon 
 him perceptibly. His nerves were be 
 coming fiddle-strings, and even Florence, 
 to whom he had striven to show only 
 his old debonair serenity, complained of 
 his fitful moods. 
 
 When Florence asked what he thought 
 of Arria s intentions, he responded that 
 they were grotesque; that she was about 
 as well adapted to the voluntary abnega 
 tion, loneliness, and hard work of the 
 scholar s life as a South Sea Islander to 
 an Arctic winter; she had cleverness, 
 doubtless, but not more than was needed 
 in the performance of the ordinary, duties
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 159 
 
 of feminine existence, and that she would 
 show better judgment if she confined her 
 self to the latter. 
 
 This outburst, of which he was rather 
 ashamed, was a momentary relief. After 
 it he wrote a brief note to Arria demand 
 ing an interview peremptorily. 
 
 He was compelled to go to New York 
 the following day upon some business he 
 had volunteered to arrange for Mrs. Wool- 
 sey, and was detained two days. Return 
 ing, he found upon his desk a letter in 
 Arria s hand, posted in a New Hamp 
 shire village. 
 
 She had striven hard to make it brief, 
 but without success. It seemed that the 
 making of a dictionary would be but a 
 slight task compared to compressing into 
 three pages of letter-paper the thousand 
 things that burningly demanded to be 
 said to him. Also, it is a difficult thing
 
 160 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 to utter only words of wisdom when one 
 is longing to speak those of tenderness. 
 The letter appeared cold and stiff to her 
 when finished, and she shed tears over 
 it, marvelling how anything written in 
 her heart s blood could be so pale. 
 This was what she wrote : 
 
 " MY DEAR RODERICK : I have no intention of 
 seeing you at present. I do not care to see you. I 
 am more than contented not to see you. Is this 
 definite enough? Your note asked for something 
 definite. 
 
 " I think Florence will take her mother to the 
 Carolinas after they come back from the mountains, 
 and I hope you will follow them there. I am tired, 
 and they do not need me. I have come to a school 
 friend for awhile. I have learned so much about life 
 this summer that it is absolutely necessary I should 
 take a rest from living and have time to think it over. 
 
 " My friend is a happy soul who lives in peace and 
 sunshine among her books, writes little songs, and re 
 gards this world as a Paradise. I think of a fly in 
 amber when I see her. I shall not stay here long. 
 Her atmosphere is too sweet for me. I like the
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 161 
 
 world, the real world, where the Flesh and the 
 Devil walk ravening, and the soul rights blindly be 
 tween them, better than any imitation heaven. 
 There will be time enough to be contented after 
 we get to the real one, if we do. Meanwhile I like 
 the discontent, the things that hurt, if hurt they 
 must, the hard work, the uncertainty, the unhappi- 
 ness even, all the things that we suppose distin 
 guish this world from the next. Life is glorious, 
 even when it isn t. 
 
 "As for my plans, I am going to take refuge in 
 the intellectual world (where you once told me I be 
 longed) from the stress of an emotional life which is 
 too much for me. I shall find a great many things 
 to do, and working I shall forget the things I ought 
 never to have known. 
 
 " And yet, for teaching me I thank you. I thank 
 God daily that I have seen the face of love. Though 
 I fought against believing it, my mother was right. 
 Non dolet is the seal with which we must sign all 
 earthly experiences. It does not hurt it never 
 hurts to know. 
 
 " And so, good-by. This is final, you know. 
 
 "ARRIA JAMES." 
 
 The young man put the letter down 
 upon the desk and eyed it drearily.
 
 1 62 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 He was tired too. The intolerable 
 strain of the situation had told upon 
 him, and he was ready to pay heavily 
 for peace, let it arrive in what shape it 
 might. 
 
 What came next ? Should he follow 
 Arria and extort from her heart, as he 
 believed he might, unwilling and em 
 bittered concessions which her spirit did 
 not, and never would endorse ? With 
 all her philosophy, she was a woman, 
 and therefore could be convinced, mo 
 mentarily at least, that there is no logic 
 but love s own. Or should he accept 
 the situation as it was, and gather from 
 the wreck such salvage as he could : 
 item, one much bruised but still service 
 able sense of honour ; item, a wife who 
 was one of the most piquant and inter 
 esting women in the world. 
 
 Either course looked for the moment
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 163 
 
 equally cheerless and distasteful. In his 
 depressed mood the whole situation 
 seemed squalid, and the best happiness 
 he dared hope for looked insufficient to 
 compensate for the torment already 
 suffered. 
 
 He picked the letter up and turned it 
 over. The low autumn sun came out 
 just then and sent a ray full across the 
 page, blurring his sight. The last sen 
 tence " This is final," seemed to detach 
 itself from the sheet and danced fantas 
 tically before his weary eyes in the 
 strong yellow radiance. 
 
 " So be it, then," he said, with one 
 long breath, and his head fell upon his 
 hands.
 
 XIV 
 
 So the summer was over at last. 
 
 The cab made its tortuous way through 
 the crowded streets, and the girl within 
 it looked out at the squalid procession 
 of the city s life with unheeding eyes. 
 She was thinking how curious a thing 
 it is that by an effort of the will, we 
 mortals, puny and irresolute as we are, 
 can actually bring things to pass. It 
 seemed strange and unreal that she 
 should be on her way to the steamer, 
 about to sail for Europe, leaving behind 
 her the people who in the last six 
 months had made life so vivid to her 
 that all the rest of her years seemed 
 remote and pale by comparison. Yet 
 164
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 165 
 
 she had willed to leave them, and her 
 frail resolve was about to become reality. 
 
 At this point her musings were inter 
 rupted. The cabman drove upon the 
 dock, announced that he could go no 
 further, and demanded two dollars. 
 Arria remembered distinctly that a car 
 riage to the steamer had been one of 
 the items on the hotel bill she had just 
 paid, and fumbled in her chatelaine bag 
 to find the receipted account. The cab 
 man waxed abusive and loud-voiced, while 
 Arria s cheeks grew hot. Certainly the 
 bill was there, but it eluded her fingers. 
 
 People jostled her in passing as she 
 stood there. A pair of snorting horses 
 almost ran her down. The din grew 
 confusing. Would she never find that 
 bill? 
 
 " Good-morning," said a man at her 
 elbow, lifting his hat. She turned with
 
 1 66 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 a start to recognize Mr. Sefton. His very 
 existence had passed out of her mind in 
 the last few weeks, but she was none 
 the less glad to see him in this small 
 emergency, which he seemed to under 
 stand by intuition. He assumed control 
 of the situation forthwith. The cabman 
 was disposed of, and Arria found herself 
 and her belongings transferred to the 
 steamer s deck without loss of time. 
 
 " Mrs. Woolsey wrote me from Aiken 
 the date of your sailing," he explained, in 
 a matter-of-fact voice which made the 
 relations of sentiment between them seem 
 infinitely remote, and put Arria at her 
 ease at once. " Are you sure that you 
 have everything you need? Rugs enough, 
 and all that? Where are the people you 
 are with ? You are not crossing alone, 
 surely ? " 
 
 " Oh, no. There is one of Aunt Eliza-
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 167 
 
 beth s friends on board. I am to share 
 her stateroom, and she has promised to 
 take care of me. A friend of my own 
 is to meet me on the other side. Aunt 
 Elizabeth would not let me go under any 
 other conditions and disapproved of these. 
 I just had to accept her disapproval, as one 
 does bad weather or any natural phenom 
 enon. She cannot help disapproving." 
 
 " You are going in for a career, I 
 understand." 
 
 Arria frowned. 
 
 " Career is such a vulgar, pretentious 
 sort of word," she said with deprecation. 
 " All I want is something to do." 
 
 The man looked down at her with 
 kindly, impenetrable eyes. 
 
 " Ah ! I hope you will get what you 
 want," he said quietly. " But your de 
 mands are not as modest as perhaps you 
 think them."
 
 1 68 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 The girl looked puzzled. 
 
 " They say there is not happiness 
 enough to go around," she said, " but 
 surely work is different. There must be 
 enough of that." 
 
 " Congenial work, labour that is really 
 fitted to our needs and our ability, is the 
 second in rank of earth s great blessings, 
 and it is almost as rare as the first." 
 
 " I cannot believe that," said Arria posi 
 tively. " You must be mistaken. I am 
 sure I am right. There is work for every 
 body. There is some for me, and I am 
 going to find it." 
 
 "You are young." 
 
 " What do you what does everybody 
 mean by saying that? What is it to be 
 young ? " 
 
 His face relaxed its seriousness a little 
 as he answered, " Youth is that uninterest 
 ing stage in life in which it still seems
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 169 
 
 comparatively easy to find and do one s 
 duty." 
 
 " Do you mean," she demanded, "that 
 duty gets harder and harder ? Don t we 
 ever accomplish, ever achieve ? In the 
 moral life is there no such thing as 
 arriving ? " 
 
 He smiled at her vehemence, as even 
 those who loved her usually smiled at 
 Arria s tempestuous earnestness about 
 abstract ideas. 
 
 " No," he answered, " we never arrive. 
 The rest of our life is spent in learning 
 over again and again the things we learn 
 before we are twenty-five. Ethical les 
 sons are to maturity what the multiplica 
 tion table is to the child. We conquer 
 them only by dint of a thousand repeti 
 tions. We are continually losing what 
 we think we have gained, and simply to 
 hold our ground is a perpetual struggle."
 
 1 70 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 She shook her head, profoundly un 
 convinced. 
 
 " You will know that and many other 
 things when we next meet," he said. " I 
 am afraid that signal meant that I must 
 leave you now. I hope you will have a 
 pleasant voyage and find your work all 
 you wish it to be. I spoke to the 
 deck-steward about bringing out your 
 chair. You will feel better to keep in 
 the air as much as possible, even during 
 a December passage. It is not as cold 
 as one would think, and if you are well 
 wrapped up, you can keep fairly comfort 
 able. Good-by." 
 
 "Thank you. I am sure to be all 
 right. It was very kind of you to see 
 me off. Good-by." 
 
 As she watched the resolute, familiar 
 figure go down the gang-plank, she was 
 conscious of a sudden tightening of the
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 171 
 
 heart-strings. He belonged to her brief 
 past, the life which she had rejected. 
 The life of her own choosing lay before 
 her, to do with it what she would. 
 
 As the steamer backed clumsily away 
 from the pier, swung out into clear water 
 amid faint cheers from the dock, and 
 moved down the bay, she still leaned upon 
 the rail, absorbed in her own thoughts. 
 
 She was lonely and wretched, yet not 
 afraid. Existence seemed to lie just 
 before her, vast, inchoate, and strange. 
 Its desolateness appalled her and its ap 
 parent contradictions confused, but she 
 clung to her young self-confidence. She 
 had done well to love, and well to leave 
 love behind. To these beliefs she held 
 with passion. And for the rest, there 
 was still work, and next to love, work 
 was the great enricher. 
 
 If Arria had not been her mother s
 
 172 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 daughter; if her reversion to the stoical 
 training of her childhood had been less 
 sincere, or her revulsion against her 
 temporary theory of self-indulgence less 
 strenuous; if love had come a little later 
 into her life, when the fierce idealism 
 with which it is the chief function of the 
 woman s college to endue its daughters, 
 had been tamed by contact with reality, 
 if any of these things had been other 
 wise, her story would have been a different 
 one. An older woman might well have 
 thought her title to happiness valid, since 
 the welfare of two legitimately outweighs 
 that of one; a woman less accustomed 
 to the reflection that denial is as rich 
 an experience as indulgence, might well 
 have shrunk from the pain involved in 
 renunciation. But inexperience is the 
 most valuable ally of idealism, and the 
 girl s resolution to put aside the cup
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 173 
 
 whose sweetness she had not begun to 
 know was fortified by her ignorance. So 
 she turned her young face confidently 
 toward the Old World and her new life, 
 and struggled to lift up her heart, while 
 the steamer plunged upon its way.
 
 POSTLUDE 
 
 THE midsummer sun had gone down 
 behind the hills, leaving in the sky a 
 rosy glory that the river caught and 
 made its own. Roderick Kirke, pacing 
 the terrace in front of his home and 
 smoking his after-dinner cigar, was com 
 fortably aware of the charm of the night 
 and of the wide and beautiful outlook 
 before his eyes. He was aware, too, 
 subconsciously, of the fertile reach of 
 his ancestral acres as they swept back 
 toward the hills, and of the placid, gen 
 erous dignity of the home of his fathers 
 where he dwelt. He was more acutely 
 conscious of the group in front of the 
 house. That, too, was his own his 
 mother, his wife, his child. The hour 
 174
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 175 
 
 and the scene were calculated to foster 
 peace of soul and the pride of possession 
 in any man. 
 
 " Take her away, nurse. She is getting 
 sleepy." Mrs. Roderick Kirke picked up 
 a minute but important bundle of flannel 
 and lace from her mother-in-law s lap and 
 handed it carefully to the functionary 
 waiting to receive it. Then she joined 
 her husband on the terrace, slipped a 
 hand in his arm, and began conversation 
 at once on the subject nearest her heart 
 just then. 
 
 " Roderick, it is absolutely necessary 
 that that child should be christened, but 
 it is impossible unless we decide upon a 
 name. The fact that your mother and 
 mine each insist that she shall be called 
 for the other, makes it difficult to give 
 her either name. This afternoon I had 
 an inspiration."
 
 1 76 The Daughter of a Stoic 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Let us call her Arria." 
 
 " Ah, yes. After your cousin, of 
 course. It is an unusual name," said Mr. 
 Kirke thoughtfully. 
 
 " I did not know whether you would 
 like it or not. You never seemed so 
 much interested in Arria after she broke 
 her engagement with Mr. Sefton." 
 
 "You cannot have better bread than 
 is made with wheat. Sefton was cer 
 tainly devoted to her and an excellent 
 fellow." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she could have made him 
 tremendously happy. But I suppose she 
 wanted to be happy herself. Perhaps 
 she is, out there in Germany, digging 
 away at the decaying roots of dead and 
 buried words. I had a letter from her 
 to-day. She is collecting all the participial 
 constructions from I forget where
 
 The Daughter of a Stoic 177 
 
 to prove I forget what. She says it is 
 very thrilling, and she enjoys it ex 
 tremely. But I wish she would give it 
 up, and come back to us! I never con 
 sidered Arria strong-minded or independ 
 ent. You can t ask a woman to marry 
 the wrong man in order to demonstrate 
 her attachment to the institution of mat 
 rimony." 
 
 " Didn t Sefton say he was going 
 abroad this summer ? " 
 
 " Yes. I suppose he will see her. 
 Arria is essentially just. I have always 
 hoped she would see her way some day 
 to atoning to that man for his shriv 
 elled life. The frost seemed to touch it 
 when she threw him over." 
 
 " Let us hope she will. It would be 
 a good thing all around." 
 
 " I want her to be happy," said Flor 
 ence, with sudden energy. " There is 
 
 N
 
 1 78 The Da^lghter of a Stoic 
 
 something very attaching about Arria. 
 I loved her. And while there are many 
 kinds of contentment, there is only one 
 kind of happiness namely, this kind ! 
 I want her to know it." 
 
 Roderick was silent, and after an 
 instant his wife went on, " I am happy, 
 so happy that I pity you sometimes for 
 having a more phlegmatic temperament 
 and taking life and joy more calmly. 
 When I see the wretchedness in other 
 people s lives, it seems impossible that 
 I should be exempt, and I probe myself 
 to see if I am not miserable too. But 
 I never find that I am." 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! What have you and 
 misery to do with one another?" said 
 Roderick quickly, looking down at her 
 with quiet tenderness. 
 
 " Nothing so long as you are happy! " 
 
 He stopped, but lifted her hand to
 
 77^6 Daughter of a Stoic 179 
 
 his lips. To his own bewilderment it 
 was true that he was happy. At least, 
 life was not ecstasy, perhaps, as he had 
 once dreamed it might be. Sometimes 
 the world seemed stupid and nothing 
 was worth while ; but such moods were 
 universal, and quite as likely to . attack 
 men who had never suffered reverse in 
 matters of the heart, as those who had. 
 On the whole, he had small complaint 
 against destiny. In all ways the world 
 was going well with him. The subtle 
 irony of the smile with which he an 
 swered her at last was directed not 
 against himself, but against existence. 
 
 " It is true," he said slowly, " that the 
 affections are the great source of human 
 happiness. But have you never thought 
 also that, in view of all the facts of life, 
 the mutability of human affection is its 
 happiest quality? "
 
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 MACMILLAN & CO., 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
 
 THE IRIS SERIES OF ILLUSTRATED NOVELS. 
 
 MAUREEN S FAIRING. 
 
 By JANE BARLOW, 
 
 Author of " Irish Idylls," etc. 
 Illustrated by BERTHA NEWCOMBE. i6mo. Cloth. 75 cents. 
 
 " It is doubtful if a more exquisite collection of stories of Irish 
 peasant life has ever been written." Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 " Nothing more delightfully fresh and unpretentious." 
 
 Clevelander. 
 
 " Like a cool shower on the face." Boston Courier. 
 " There is not a dull page in the book." 
 
 Christian Intelligencer. 
 
 " Keeps tears and laughter in close warfare from first to 
 last." Denver Republican. 
 
 A MODERN MAN. 
 
 By ELLA MACMAHON, 
 
 Author of " A New Note," etc. 
 Illustrated by IDA LOVERING. i6mo. Cloth. 75 cents. 
 
 "It is a simple story, but pleasingly told." Boston Times. 
 
 "The same general ingredients, mixed in different propor 
 tions, will make a variety of confections. The ingredients of 
 this novel are by no means new, but they are well mixed, and 
 the result is a readable book." New York Observer. 
 
 " It grows in movement and interest with each chapter." 
 
 Clevelander. 
 
 "The style is smooth, and the summer atmosphere of the 
 story very pleasing." Minneapolis Tribune. 
 
 " Will be read with unalloyed pleasure." 
 
 Boston Home Journal. 
 
 " It is all a charming story." Boston Courier. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
 
 THE IRIS SERIES OF ILLUSTRATED NOVELS. 
 
 A RINGBY LASS, 
 
 And Other Stories. 
 
 By MARY BEAUMONT. 
 
 Illustrated by J. WALTER WEST. i6mo. Cloth. 75 cents. 
 
 " A daintily choice collection, forming an exquisite literary 
 bouquet." Boston Courier. 
 
 "These tales have a sweet and enchanting simplicity and 
 pathos which win the heart of the reader." N. Y. Observer. 
 
 " Not only clear and bright, but also displays a perfectly 
 healthy and happy temperament." The Churchman. 
 
 " They are original, clearly told, and of unusual power." 
 
 Buffalo Express. 
 
 " Particularly pleasing, ... is full of charm and freshness." 
 
 St. Paul Pioneer Press. 
 
 WHERE HIGHWAYS CROSS. 
 
 By J. S. FLETCHER, 
 
 Author of "When Charles the First was King." 
 With illustrations. i6mo. Cloth. 75 cents. 
 
 " A most acceptable story, admirably sketched." 
 
 Boston Commonwealth. 
 
 " An honest, hearty, homely, healthy English tenant people s 
 story." Boston Courier. 
 
 " Abounds with vivid descriptions of events and persons. 
 The sentiment of the book is wholesome." Christian Register. 
 
 "The story is well told, and will easily rank with the best 
 fiction of the year." N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
 
 THE IRIS SERIES OF ILLUSTRATED NOVELS. 
 
 LIVES THAT CAME TO NOTHING, 
 
 By GARRET LEIGH, 
 
 Author of " The Burning Mist," etc. 
 With Illustrations by IDA LOVERINQ. i6mo. Cloth. 75 cents. 
 
 " The brightest story ... in wit and satire toned by literary 
 and musical culture and human feeling." Boston Globe. 
 
 CHRISTIAN AND LEAH, 
 
 and Other Ghetto Stories. 
 By LEOPOLD KOMPERT. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 ALFRED S. ARNOLD. F. HAMILTON JACKSON. 
 
 Cloth. Price 75 cents. 
 
 " This book contains those Jewish stories, which are extremely 
 simple, but full of the eloquence of truth and nature." 
 
 Ne~M York Observer. 
 
 " The portrayal of Jewish life in these stories is wonderfully 
 fine in detail and vivid in colouring, and not only in the de 
 lineation of character, but in the expression of the higher 
 ethical motives, does this book make its appeal to the sym 
 pathetic mind." The Beacon. 
 
 "The three tales form an exceptionally fine opinion of the 
 Ghetto realm of fiction, which has come into such wide favour 
 of late." Boston Courier. 
 
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 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
 
 MAD SIR UCHTRED OF THE HILLS, 
 
 By S. R. CROCKETT. 
 
 Author of "The Raiders," "The Stickit Minister," etc., etc. 
 i6mo. Buckram. $1.25. 
 
 " Mr. Crockett is surely the poet-laureate of Galloway. The 
 scene of his tale ( Mad Sir Uchtred ) is laid among the hills 
 with which we became familiar in The Raiders. The Lady 
 of Garthland makes a gracious and pathetic figure, and the wild 
 and terrible Uchtred, the wrong done him, the vengeance which 
 he did not take, all these things are narrated in a style of 
 exquisite clearness and beauty. Mr. Crockett need not fear 
 comparison with any of the young Scotsmen who are giving to 
 English literature just now so much that is fresh, and whole 
 some, and powerful." Boston Courier. 
 
 "The sort of romance that lifts the reader up into a purer 
 and nobler world." Evangelist. 
 
 " It is a picture of those lawless days when life was held 
 of but little account, and there is also a great charm in the style 
 of the narrative." Boston Times. 
 
 " The tale is forcibly told, and has humour as well as tragedy 
 in its make-up. Those who love good literature should not 
 fail to read this grewsome history. It is brief, but in its way a 
 masterpiece." Boston Beacon. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
 
 THE SILVER CHRIST and 
 A LEMON TREE. 
 
 By QUID A. 
 
 Author of " Under Two Flags," " Two Little Wooden 
 Shoes," etc., etc. 
 
 i6mo. Buckram. $1.25. 
 
 " Two charming stories by Ouida are included in a dainty 
 little volume ( The Silver Christ ; A Lemon Tree ). Compara 
 tively few persons so at least it seems to us appreciate this 
 writer at her true value. We have not the highest opinion of 
 much of her work; it is meretricious, and even vulgar. But at 
 her best she is capable of truly exquisite writing, and it is in 
 shorter tales, dealing with an episode, brief studies of charac 
 ter, that she is at her best." Boston Courier. 
 
 " It is a perfect love story, a melody couched in a minor key. 
 Both stories show exceeding power and directness. The literary 
 art is there." Neiv York Times. 
 
 "Of such simple elements, under the touch of an artist, is 
 painted a wonderfully vivid, pathetic little picture of life." 
 
 Illustrated Buffalo Express. 
 
 "It is pathetic, simple, and beautifully told, and those who 
 have classed Ouida among the forbidden fruits of literature, 
 should read it to understand what an artist with the pen she 
 is." Boston Times. 
 
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 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
 
 Ill 11 II " 
 
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