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 HUNGRY HEART 
 
 i |jHit. Of CALIF. LIBRARY. LO ANGEtt
 
 .V
 
 The 
 Hungry Heart 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF 
 JOSHUA CRAIG, OLD WIVES FOR NEW 
 THE SECOND GENERATION, ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 Published September, 1909 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 COURTSHIP and honeymoon of Richard Vaughan and 
 Courtney Benedict are told accurately enough by a thou- 
 sand chroniclers of love's fairy tales and dreams. Where 
 such romances end in a rosily vague " And they lived hap- 
 pily ever after/' there this history begins. Richard and 
 Courtney have returned from Arcady to reality, to central 
 Indiana and the Vaughan homestead, across the narrow 
 width of Wenona the lake from Wenona the town. 
 
 The homecoming was late in a June evening, with a per- 
 fumed coolness descending upon the young lovers from the 
 grand old trees, round the Vaughan house like his body- 
 guard round a king. Next morning toward eight Courtney, 
 still half asleep, reached out hazily. Her hand met only 
 the rumpled linen on Richard's side of the huge fourposter. 
 She started up, brushed back the heavy wave of auburn hair 
 fallen over her brow, gazed down at his pillow. The dent 
 of his head, but not he. Her eyes searched the dimness. 
 The big room contained only a few large pieces of old ma- 
 hogany ; at a glance she saw into every corner. Alone in the 
 room. Her eyes, large and anxious now, regarded the half- 
 open door of the dressing room to the rear. 
 
 " Dick ! " she called hopefully. 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Dick ! " she repeated, a note of doubt in her voice. 
 1 
 
 2132089
 
 Silence. 
 
 " Dick ! " she repeated reproachfully. It was the first 
 morning she had awakened without the sense of his near- 
 ness that had become so dear, so necessary. It was the first 
 morning in this house strange to her in this new life they 
 were to make beautiful and happy together. She gave a 
 forlorn sigh like a disappointed child, drew up her knees, 
 rested her elbows upon them, and her small head upon her 
 hands. Sitting there in the midst of that bed big enough 
 for half a dozen as small as she, she suggested a butterfly 
 poised motionless with folded wings. A moment and she 
 lifted her drooped head. How considerate of him not to 
 wake her when the three days and nights on train had been 
 so wearing! 
 
 Swift and light as a butterfly she sprang from the bed, 
 flung open the shutters of the lake-front windows. In 
 poured summer like gay cavalcade through breach in 
 gloomy walls summer in full panoply of perfume and soft 
 air and sparkling sunshine. She almost laughed aloud for 
 joy at this timely rescue. She gazed away across the lake 
 to the town where she was born and bred. " Home ! " she 
 cried. " And so happy so utterly happy ! " Her ex- 
 pression, her whole manner, her quick movements gave 
 the impression of the impulsive self-unconsciousness of a 
 child. 
 
 It was a radiant figure, small and perfect like a sun 
 sprite, that issued from the room three quarters of an hour 
 later to flit along the polished oak hall, to descend a stair- 
 way glistening like hall above and wider and loftier hall 
 below. With hair piled high on her small head, with tail 
 of matinee over her arm and tall heels clicking merrily on 
 the steps, she whistled as she went. Some people women 
 criticised that laughter-loving mouth of hers as too wide
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 for so small a face. It certainly did not suggest a button- 
 hole. But no one could have found fault with the shape 
 of the mouth or with the coloring, whether of the lips or 
 within, or with her teeth, pearl white and seeming the 
 whiter for the rose bronze of her skin the shade that seems 
 to be of the essence of youth, health, and summer. Her nose 
 was rather large, but slender and well shaped. It was the 
 nose of mobility, of sensitiveness, of intelligence, not at all 
 of repose. And there were her eyes, of a strange soft 
 emerald, with long dark lashes; the brows long also and 
 only slightly curved, and slender yet distinct. These eyes 
 were her greatest beauty greater even than her skin. It 
 would have been difficult to say whether in them or in her 
 mouth lay her greatest charm, for charm is not always 
 beauty, and beauty often wholly lacks charm. 
 
 But woman feels that figure determines the woman 
 " the woman " meaning, of course, efficiency as a man 
 catcher. It was upon Courtney's flawless figure that the 
 sour glance of old Nanny, the head servant, rested old 
 Nanny, whose puritanism aggravated for her by suppression 
 all the damned charms of " the flesh." Nanny had reigned 
 supreme in that house ever since Dick Vaughan was left 
 alone; so from the first news of the engagement she had 
 been hating Courtney, whom she regarded as her sup- 
 planter. As Courtney entered the dining room, stiff and 
 dim and chilly, like all the rooms in that house, old Nanny 
 was superintending fat, subdued Mazie at work at the 
 breakfast table. It occupied the exact center of the room, 
 formal as for a state banquet. 
 
 " Good morning," cried Courtney in her charming man- 
 ner of bright friendliness. " Good morning, Mazie. Am 
 I late ? Where's Richard ? " Her voice was deeper than 
 one would have expected, but low and musical. 
 
 3
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Mazie smiled a welcome, then cast a frightened glance 
 of apology at Nanny, who did not smile. " Mr. Richard's 
 down to the Smoke House/' said she. 
 
 The Smoke House was the laboratory Dick's grand- 
 father, Achilles Vaughan, had built for him on the site 
 of the smoke house of the pioneer Vaughan, settler there 
 when Wenona was a trading post in New France. " Of 
 course ! " said Courtney. " I might have known. He 
 wanted to go last night, but I wouldn't let him." 
 
 Nanny scowled at this innocent, laughing " I wouldn't 
 let him." She turned on Mazie, who was gazing open- 
 mouthed at Courtney's simple, fresh finery. " What'r ye 
 gawkin' here fur, with your mouth hangin' like a chicken 
 with the gaps? " she demanded in a fierce aside. Mazie 
 lumbered through the door into the kitchen. " As I was 
 saying," continued Nanny to her new mistress, " he's put 
 in most nigh all his time down to that there smoke house 
 day and night ever since his aunt, Miss Eudosia, died. 
 Yes, an' before that, while Colonel 'Kill, his grandfather, 
 was still alive. He's got sleeping rooms and everything 
 in the upstairs. He often don't come here even to meals 
 for weeks. Mazie or Jimmie carry 'em to him." 
 
 Courtney nodded. " A regular hermit. It was the 
 merest chance that we happened to meet." 
 
 " You was the first young woman he'd laid an eye on 
 in a long time." 
 
 Nanny's tone was colorless. Only a very stupid woman 
 puts both barb and poison on a shaft when either is enough. 
 Courtney, who understood and felt remorseful about the 
 old woman's jealous anger, answered with good-humored 
 gentleness : " I guess that was why I got him. But he'll 
 not be a hermit any more." 
 
 " He's begun already," said Nanny.
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " We mustn't allow it," replied Courtney, not quite so 
 good-humoredly. The old woman's steady bearing down 
 was having its effect. 
 
 " There's no goin' agin nature. The Vaughan men 
 ain't ever bothered much about women. They don't let 
 foolishness detain 'em long. And this one's his gran'pr.w 
 over agin. When he gits at his work, he's like a dog after 
 a rabbit." 
 
 " It seems a little chilly and damp in here," said Court- 
 ney. " Do help me open the windows. I love sun and 
 air." 
 
 " Miss Eudosia " began Nanny, and checked herself 
 with a considerable shortening of the distance between chin 
 and end of nose. 
 
 Courtney understood what that beginning meant. But 
 she ignored. " And," she went on, busying herself with 
 curtains and fastenings, " we'll move the table in front of 
 this big window. I like breakfast near the window in 
 summer, near the fire in winter." 
 
 Nanny lowered upon the small straight young figure, so 
 bright and graceful. " Miss Eudosia " she began fiercely. 
 Again she checked herself, but it was to say with bitterness, 
 " But then she's dead and forgot." 
 
 "No, indeed!" protested Courtney. "You'd have 
 thought she'd gone only a few months ago instead of four 
 years if you'd heard Richard talking about her yesterday. 
 And I'm sure she'd have done what I'm suggesting if she'd 
 happened to think of it." Then with a look that might 
 have softened any but a woman resolved to hate another 
 woman: " Do try to humor me in little things, Nanny. I'll 
 be very meek about things that do matter. I've had no 
 experience in keeping house. You'll teach me, won't you? " 
 
 Nanny stood inflexible, her wrinkled hands folded 
 5
 
 tightly at the waist line of her black alpaca. She could 
 not help Courtney displace that table from its ancient site. 
 It was as if this frivolous, whistling, useless chit of an 
 ornamental wife were violating the sacred Eudosia's coffin 
 the graves of all the Vaughans for traditions are graves, 
 and Nanny, like all who live by tradition, lived among 
 graves. After a time Courtney, more nervous under those 
 angry eyes than she showed, got the table at the open win- 
 dow. The room was livable now, and after she had rear- 
 ranged the dishes the table looked invitingly human. But her 
 buoyant young enthusiasm had oozed away. With wistful 
 gaze out over prim lawns and flower beds, stiff and staid as 
 Sunday, she said: " I guess I'll bring Richard to breakfast." 
 
 " He et before he went." 
 
 " Oh ! " Courtney's tone showed that she was hurt. 
 But she instantly brightened. " I'll get him to come and 
 sit with me while I have breakfast." 
 
 A covert sneering smile in the depths of Nanny's eyes 
 made her flush angrily. " If I was you I wouldn't inter- 
 rupt him," said the old woman. " He don't allow it." 
 
 " How absurd ! " cried Courtney. But straightway she 
 was amazed and shocked at herself on this her first morn- 
 ing in the new and beautiful life, to be drawn nearer a 
 vulgar squabble than in all her nineteen years and with 
 an old woman toward whom it would be cowardice not to 
 be forbearing. " I'm cross because I'm hungry," she said 
 contritely. " While breakfast's coming I'll run down for 
 him." 
 
 " He's set in his ways," said Nanny. 
 
 " He'll not mind me this once." And she took up her 
 train and went by the long French window to the broad 
 veranda with its big fluted pillars. At the end steps she 
 paused. Yes, it was summer in the Vaughan grounds as 
 
 6
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 elsewhere. But that prodigal wanton had there been 
 caught, had had her tresses sleeked and bound, her lux- 
 uriant figure corseted and clad in the most repellant 
 classical severity. Courtney, of the eyes keen for color 
 and form and fitness of things, felt rebuked and subdued 
 once more. She glanced farther round, saw Nanny's 
 parchment face and sinister gaze watching and hating her. 
 There is a limit beyond which youth refuses to be sup- 
 pressed and compressed, and defiantly expands in more 
 than its natural gay audacity. This climax of Nanny, rep- 
 resentative of Vaughans not so rigid in death as they had 
 been in life, was just the necessary little-too-much. With 
 a laugh and a toss of the head, she swung her skirts very 
 high indeed above her pretty ankles and ran like a young 
 antelope across the lawn, and into and along the path 
 leading away toward the eastern part of the grounds. 
 Through a carefully artificial thicket of lilacs, elders, and 
 snowballs she sped, then through a small wood with not a 
 spray of underbrush anywhere. She came out in a clear- 
 ing at the water's edge. Before her, one of its walls ris- 
 ing sheer from the retaining wall of the lake, stood the 
 laboratory. 
 
 She paused astonished. She had expected a temporary 
 sort of structure. Before her rose a fitting temple for the 
 mysteries of the " black art." It was a long two-story 
 building of stone and brick, not visible from the lake proper 
 because it stood upon the bank of a deep, narrow inlet. 
 The weather had stained its walls into the semblance of 
 age wherever they showed through the heavy mantle of 
 bitter-sweet that overspread even the roof. Around the 
 place hung an air of aloofness and seclusion, of mystery, 
 that appealed to her young instinct for the romantic. The 
 brick path divided into two. One went to what was ob- 
 
 7
 
 viously the entrance to the second-story bachelor suite; the 
 other turned to the left, rounded the corner of the house, 
 ended at the massive iron door of the laboratory proper. 
 
 This door was wide open. Courtney stood upon the 
 threshold like a bright bird peering from the sunshine into 
 the entrance to a cave. The air that came out was heavy 
 with the odors of chemicals, but not sharp or especially 
 unpleasant. Besides, in high school and college she had 
 done a good deal at chemistry, enough to be seized of its 
 fascination. She stood gazing into a big high-ceilinged 
 room, filled with a bewildering variety of unusual articles 
 gigantic bottles, cylinders, vials, jars of glass, of stone, 
 of metal; huge retorts with coils of pipe, lead and rub- 
 ber; lamps and balances and mortars; tiers on tiers of 
 crowded shelves of glass and porcelain and iron; drying 
 ovens, distilling apparatus, condensers and generators, 
 crushers and pulverizers, cupels and cupel trays, calorime- 
 ters and crucibles and microscopes; floor all but filled with 
 batteries and engines and machines of gold and platinum, 
 of aluminum and copper, of brass and steel and glass and 
 nickel. A thousand articles, in the orderly confusion that 
 indicates constant use. 
 
 She was more and more amazed as she stared and re- 
 flected. " He works with all these things ! " thought she, 
 depressed for no clear reason. " I had no idea no idea ! " 
 
 She ventured a step farther. In a twinkling her ex- 
 pression of wonder and vague pain vanished before a love 
 light that seemed to stream not from her face only, but 
 from her whole body, with those rare eyes of hers as radi- 
 ating centers. She was seeing Richard near a window, so 
 standing that his long high-bred face was in profile to 
 her. He was tall, well above six feet; his careless flan- 
 nels revealed the strong, slender, narrow form of the pio- 
 
 8
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 neers and their pure-blooded descendants. His fairish 
 hair was thick and wavy " Thank Heaven, not curly ! " 
 thought Courtney. 
 
 She did not interrupt. She preferred to watch him, 
 to let her glance caress him, all unconscious of her pres- 
 ence. In one hand he was balancing a huge bottle; the 
 other held a long test tube. He was slowly dropping the 
 bottle's contents of quiet colorless liquid into the test tube, 
 which was half full of a liquid, also quiet and colorless. 
 Each drop as it touched the surface of the liquid dissolved 
 into black steam. It was this steam that gave off the 
 pungent odor. As she watched, there came a slow tighten- 
 ing at her throat, at her heart. 
 
 " I never saw him look like this," thought she. No, 
 it wasn't his serious intentness; one of the things she had 
 first noted about him, and best loved, was the seriousness 
 of his deep-set dark gray eyes the look of the man who 
 " amounts to something," and would prove it before he 
 got through. No, it was the kind of seriousness. She felt 
 she was seeing a Richard Vaughan she did not know at all. 
 " But, then," she reflected, " there's a side of me he doesn't 
 know about either." This, however, did not satisfy her. 
 The man she was now seeing disquietingly suggested that 
 the Richard Vaughan she had been knowing and loving and 
 had been loved by was not the real man at all, but only 
 one of his moods. " I thought he just amused himself 
 with chemistry. Instead Nanny is about right." A 
 pang shot through her; she would have recognized it as 
 jealousy, had she stopped to think. But at nineteen one 
 does not stop to think. " I do believe he cares almost as 
 much for this as he does for me." 
 
 He lowered the bottle to the table. As he straightened 
 up, he caught sight of her. His expression changed; but 
 
 9
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 the change was not nearly enough either in degree or in 
 kind to satisfy her. " Hello ! " cried he carelessly. " Good 
 morning." 
 
 She got ready to be kissed. But, instead of coming 
 toward her, he half turned away, to hold the test tube up 
 between his eyes and the light. " Um um," he grumbled, 
 shaking it again and again, and each time looking disap- 
 pointedly at the unchanged liquid. 
 
 Like all American girls of the classes that shelter their 
 women, she had been brought up to accept as genuine the 
 pretense of superhuman respect and deference the Ameri- 
 can man usually in all honesty affects toward woman 
 until he marries her, or for whatever reason becomes tired 
 and truthful. She had been confirmed in these ideas of 
 man as woman's incessant courtier, almost servant, by re- 
 ceiving for the last five lively years the admiration, exag- 
 gerated and ardent, which physical charm, so long as it 
 is potent, exacts from the male. No more than other 
 women of her age or than older women or than the men 
 had she penetrated the deceptive surface of things and 
 discovered beneath " chivalry's " smug meaningless profes- 
 sions the reality, the forbearance of " strength " with 
 " weakness," the graciousness of superior for inferior. 
 Thus, such treatment as this of Dick's would have been 
 humiliating from a casual man, on a casual occasion. From 
 her husband, her lover, the man she had just been gar- 
 landing with all the fairest flowers of her ardent young 
 heart from him, and on this " first " morning, this uncon- 
 cern, which Nanny's talk enabled her to understand, was 
 worse than stab into feminine vanity; it was stab straight 
 into her inmost self, the seat of her life. 
 
 She dared not admit the wound not to her own secret 
 thought. Bravely she struggled until her voice and manner 
 
 10
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 were under control. " I've come to take you to breakfast/' 
 said she. It seemed to her that her tone was gratifying 
 evidence of triumph of strength of character over " silly 
 supersensitiveness as if Dick could mean to hurt me I " 
 
 " Breakfast," repeated he. His gaze was discontent- 
 edly upon the bottle whose contents had acted disappoint- 
 ingly. " Breakfast Oh, yes Don't wait on me. I 
 had coffee before I came down here. I'll be along in a 
 few minutes." He took up the bottle again, resumed the 
 cautious pouring. 
 
 The tears sprang to her eyes; her lip quivered. But 
 sweet reasonableness conquered again, and she perched on 
 a high stool near the door. She gazed round, tried to 
 interest herself in the certainly extraordinary exhibits on 
 floor and tables and shelves. She recalled the uses of the 
 instruments she recognized, tried to guess the uses of those 
 that were new to her. But her mind refused to wander 
 from the one object that really interested her in that room. 
 Perhaps ten minutes passed, she watching him, he watch- 
 ing the unchanged liquid in the test tube. 
 
 She had been born in her father's and mother's prime. 
 She had been taught to use her brain. Thus, underneath 
 the romantic and idealizing upper strata of her character 
 there was the bedrock of good common sense, to resist and 
 to survive any and all shocks. As she sat watching her 
 engrossed husband her love, her fairness, and her good 
 sense pleaded for him, or, rather, protested against her sen- 
 sitiveness. What a dear he was ! And how natural that 
 he should be absorbed in these experiments, after having 
 been away so long. What right had she to demand that his 
 mood should be the same as hers? What a silly child she 
 had shown herself, expecting him to continue to act as if 
 love making were the whole of life. If he were to be, and 
 
 11
 
 HUNGRY HEART 
 
 to do exactly as she wished, would she not soon grow sick 
 of him, as of the other men, who had thought to win her 
 by inviting her to walk on them? Her eyes were sweet 
 and tender when Dick, happening to glance seeingly in 
 her direction, saw her ensconced, chin on hand, elbow on 
 knee. " Hello," said he half absently. " Good morning." 
 
 There was no room for doubt; he had completely for- 
 gotten her. As her skin was not white, but of delicate pale 
 yet rosy bronze, it did not readily betray change of emotion. 
 But such a shock had he given her sensitive young heart, in 
 just the mood of love and longing to be most easily bruised, 
 that even his abstraction was penetrated. He set the bottle 
 down. " Didn't I speak to you " he began, and then 
 remembered. " I beg your pardon," he said, contrite and 
 amused. 
 
 Pride always hides a real wound. She smiled. " I'm 
 waiting to take you to breakfast," she said. 
 
 He looked uncertainly at the bottle and the tube. 
 
 A wave of remorse for her thoughts swept over her. 
 " Also," she went on, and she was radiant again, " I'm 
 waiting to be kissed." 
 
 He laughed, gazed lovingly at her. " What a beauty 
 she is, this morning," he cried. " Like the flowers the 
 roses the finest rose that every grew in a dream of 
 roses." 
 
 Her eyes at once showed that his negligence was for- 
 gotten. Their lips met in a lingering kiss. He drew 
 away, threw back his head, gazed at her. " Was there 
 ever woman so lovely and fresh and pure ? " he said. With 
 impulsive daring she overcame her virginal shyness, flung 
 her arms round his neck, and kissed him. " I love you," 
 she murmured, blushing. " When I woke up and found 
 you gone it was dreadfully lonely." She had dropped
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 into the somewhat babyish manner natural to any affec- 
 tionate nature in certain moods and circumstances. It 
 seemed especially natural to her, on account of her size 
 and her exuberant gayety; and she had been assuming it 
 with him in all its charming variations from the beginning 
 of their engagement because it was the manner that 
 pleased him best. " Next time, you'll wake me and take 
 me along won't you ? " 
 
 He patted her. "Bless the baby! A lot of work I'd 
 do." 
 
 " I'm going to help you. I can soon learn." 
 
 He shook his head in smiling negative. " You're going 
 to be the clearest, sweetest wife a man ever had," said he. 
 " And always your womanly self." 
 
 " But," she persisted with an effort, " I can help. I'm 
 sure I can." There was no trace of the " baby " in her ex- 
 pression now; on the contrary, her face and her voice were 
 those of an extremely intelligent young woman, serious 
 without the dreary, posed solemnity that passes current 
 for seriousness, but is mere humorless asininity. " I really 
 know something about chemistry," she went on. " I liked 
 it, and took the courses both at high school and at college. 
 Last winter I won a prize for original work." His smile 
 made her color. " I don't say that," she hastened to ex- 
 plain, " because I think I'm a wonderful chemist, but just 
 to prove to you that I do know a little something enough 
 to be able to help in a humble sort of way." 
 
 His expression was still that of grown people when 
 laughing at the antics of children, and concealing amuse- 
 ment behind a thin pretense of grave admiration. " Yes, 
 I've no doubt you're clever at it," said he. " But a refined 
 woman oughtn't to try to do the man sort of thing." 
 
 " But, dear, I'm not so superfine as you seem to think 
 2 13
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and not altogether foolish." She glanced round the labora- 
 tory. " You don't know how at home I feel here. What 
 a wonderful, beautiful equipment you have! Everything 
 of the best and so well taken care of! Dick, I want to 
 be your wife. As I watched you I realized I've got to 
 fit myself for it. That is of course, I always knew I'd 
 have to do that but now I know just what I must do." 
 
 " What a serious child it is ! " he cried, pinching her 
 cheek. It was delightful, this baby playing at " grown-up." 
 
 She laughed because she loved him and loved laughter; 
 but she persisted. " Being wife to a man means a great 
 deal more than looking pretty and making love." 
 
 " That's very dear and sweet," said he, in the same pet- 
 ting, patronizing way. " I'm content with you as you are. 
 I don't want anything more." And he set about putting 
 things away and locking up. 
 
 Quiet on her high stool, she struggled against a feel- 
 ing of resentment, of depression. Her instinct was, as 
 always, to hide her hurt; but it seemed to her that if she 
 did, it would not get well, would get worse. " Dick," she 
 began at last. 
 
 " Yes ? " said he absently. " Come along, dear." And 
 he lifted her down with a kiss. 
 
 She went out, waited for him while he locked the door. 
 " Dick," she began again, as they walked along the path, 
 " I don't want to be shut out of any part of your life, least 
 of all out of the realest part. I Avant to be truly your 
 wife." 
 
 No answer. She glanced up at him; obviously his 
 thoughts were far away. 
 
 She slipped her arms through his. " Tell me what 
 you're thinking about, dear." 
 
 " About that test I was making." 
 U
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " What was it ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing. Is the house satisfactory? How do you 
 like old Nanny? " As she did not answer, he looked down 
 at her. " Why, what's the matter with my little sweet- 
 heart ? Such a discontented expression ! " 
 
 " Nothing nothing at all," replied she, forcing a smile 
 and steadying her quivering lip. 
 
 " I'm afraid those two days on the train " 
 
 " Yes," she interrupted eagerly. " And I guess I'm 
 hungry, too. That's very upsetting." 
 
 With a little forcing she kept up the semblance of good 
 spirits through breakfast and until he was off to the labora- 
 tory again. Then she gave way to her mood for it could 
 be only a mood. With old Nanny as guide, she went 
 through the house, through all its spacious solidly and 
 stiffly furnished rooms. At every step Nanny had some- 
 thing to say of Miss Eudosia how good Miss Eudosia 
 had been, how Miss Eudosia kept everything as her mother 
 had it before her, how particular Miss Eudosia had been. 
 And when it wasn't Miss Eudosia it was Colonel 'Kill 
 that splendid-looking, terrible-looking old Achilles Vaugh- 
 an ; as a child she had decided that the awful god the fam- 
 ily worshiped must look like Achilles Vaughan. Nanny 
 talked on and on; Courtney's spirits went down and down. 
 In one respect the house should have appealed to her in 
 its perfect order. For she had inherited from her mother 
 a passion for order an instinct that would have a neatly 
 kept ribbon box almost as soon as she could talk, and had 
 prompted her, long before she could talk distinctly, to cry 
 if they tried to put on her a dress the least bit mussed 
 or a stocking with a hole in it. But there is the order that 
 is of life, and there is the order that is of death. This 
 Vaughan order seemed to her to be of death. She felt 
 
 15
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 surrounded, hemmed in, menaced by a throng of the 
 Vaughan women of past generations those women of the 
 old-fashioned kind, thoughtless, mindless, cool, and correct 
 and inane the kind of women the Vaughan men liked the 
 kind Richard liked " No no. He does not like that 
 kind!" 
 
 Assisted by Nanny and Mazie, she unpacked the trunks 
 into drawers and closets. When the last box was empty, 
 Jimmie took them down to the cellar. She was established 
 was at home. She and Dick were to have the same bed- 
 room; he would use the big spare bedroom directly across 
 the hall and its bath for dressing. It was all most con- 
 venient, most comfortable. But she could not get inter- 
 ested, could not banish the feeling that she would soon be 
 flitting, that she was stranger, intruder here. And the last 
 sweet days of the honeymoon kept recurring in pictured 
 glimpses of their happiness of various kinds, all centering 
 about love. How tender he had been, how absorbed in 
 their romance that wonderful romance which began ideal- 
 ly in a chance meeting and love at first sight. And now, 
 just as she was getting over her deep-down shyness with 
 him, was feeling the beginnings of the courage to be 
 wholly her natural self, to show him her inmost thoughts, 
 to release the tenderness, the demonstrativeness that had 
 been pent up in her all her life just as the climax of hap- 
 piness was at hand here was this shadow, this relegat- 
 ing her to the chill isolation and self-suppression and self- 
 concealment of a pedestaled Vaughan wife. " He acts as 
 if a woman were not like a man as if I had no sense 
 because I'm not tall, and don't go about in a frown and 
 spectacles." And it depressed her still further to recall 
 that his attitude had been the same throughout court- 
 ship and honeymoon treating her as a baby, a pet, some- 
 
 16
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 thing to protect and shield, something of which nothing 
 but lover's small talk was expected. She had liked it then ; 
 it seemed to fit in with the holiday spirit. " I gave him 
 a false impression. It's my fault." To pretend to be 
 infantile for purposes of a holiday of love-making is one 
 thing; to have one's pretense taken as an actual and per- 
 manent reality that was vastly different, and wearisome, 
 and humiliating, and not to be permitted. " But," she re- 
 flected, " it's altogether my fault. And the thing for me 
 to do is not to talk about it to him, but just quietly 
 to go to work and make myself his wife fit myself for 
 it." A wonderful man she thought him; and it thrilled 
 her, this high and loving ambition to be worthy of him, 
 and not mere pendant and parasite as so many wives were 
 content to be. 
 
 They were to go the scant half mile across the lake 
 in the motor boat at noon and lunch at her old home. She 
 was ready a few minutes before time, and started toward 
 the Smoke House. Halfway she stopped and turned back. 
 No, she could not interrupt him there again. His man- 
 ner, unconscious, more impressive than any deliberate look 
 or word, made her feel that the Smoke House was set in 
 an enchanted wood which she could not penetrate until 
 She smiled tenderly. 
 
 At half past twelve he came on the run. " Why didn't 
 you telephone?" exclaimed he. "We'll be scandalously 
 late. I'm so sorry. When I get to work down there I 
 forget everything. I even forgot I was married." 
 
 She busied herself with the buttons of her glove, and 
 the brim of her hat hid her face. And such a few hours 
 ago he and she were all in all to each other! 
 
 " Do you forgive me? " 
 
 She thought she was forgiving him; the hurt would 
 17
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 soon pass. So she gave him a look that passed muster 
 with his unobservant eyes. " Don't worry. We'll soon 
 be there." 
 
 They got under way, he at the motor, she watching 
 his back. On impulse she moved nearer. " Dick/' she 
 said. " Don't turn round. I want to say something to 
 you that's very hard to say. ... I feel I ought to warn 
 you. At college the girls called it one of my worst traits. 
 When anyone I care for hurts me, I don't say anything 
 I even hide it. And they don't realize and keep on hurt- 
 ing until Oh, I've lost several friends that way. For 
 the time comes I don't let on, and it gets to be too 
 late and I don't care any more." 
 
 " You mean about my keeping you waiting? " 
 
 " No not that not that alone. Not any one thing. 
 Not anything at all yet but a kind of a shadow. Just 
 you've made me feel as if I weren't to be part of you 
 of your life. No, I don't say it right. I've felt as if I 
 were to be part of you, but that you weren't to be part 
 of me." 
 
 He began to laugh, believing that the proper way to 
 dispel a mood so unreal. But glancing at her he saw 
 she was shrinking and literally quivering with pain. His 
 face sobered. He reminded himself that women could not 
 be dealt with on a basis of reason and sense, since they 
 had those qualities only in rudimentary form. As his hands 
 were occupied, he was puzzled how to treat this his first 
 experience with feminine sweet unreasonableness in her. 
 All he could do toward pacifying was to say soothingly, as 
 to a sensitive child: "I understand, sweetheart. I must be 
 very very careful." 
 
 " Not at all ! " she cried, ready to weep with vexation 
 at her complete failure to make him understand. " I'm 
 
 18
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 not a silly, sensitive thing, always trailing my feelings for 
 some one to step on." 
 
 " No, dearest of course not," said he in the same tone 
 as before. " If there weren't so many sail boats about, I'd 
 show you how penitent I am." 
 
 " But I don't want you to be penitent." 
 
 " Then what do you want? " 
 
 " I want you to I want us to be comrades." 
 
 " What a child it is ! You girls are brought up to play 
 all the time. But you can't expect a man to be like that. 
 Of course we'll play together. I'd not have wanted to 
 marry you if I hadn't needed you." 
 
 " But what am / to do when you can't play ? " she 
 asked. " And I'm afraid you won't play very often. 
 That is, I know you won't and I'm glad you won't 
 for I'd not care as I do if you were that kind. I 
 didn't realize until this morning. But I do realize 
 now, and Dick, you don't think of me as just to 
 play with? " 
 
 Facing her earnestness, he would not have dared con- 
 fess the truth. " No, indeed ! " said he. " Your head's 
 full of notions to-day. You're not at all like your sweet 
 loving self." 
 
 She felt instantly altogether in the wrong. " It's the 
 strangeness, I guess," she said penitently. 
 
 " That's it, exactly. But in a few days you'll be all 
 right and as happy as a bird on a bough." 
 
 As they were about to land she mustered all her cour- 
 age, and with heightened color said : " You'll let me come 
 down and try to help, won't you? I'll promise not to be 
 in the way not for a minute. And if I am, I'll never come 
 again. I can at least wash out test tubes and bring you 
 things you need." 
 
 19
 
 " Oh, if you really want to come/' began he, with good- 
 humored tolerance. 
 
 " Thank you thank you," she interrupted, eager and 
 radiant. 
 
 " Not right away," he hastened to add. " Just at pres- 
 ent I'm clearing things up." 
 
 " I understand. You'll tell me when the time comes." 
 
 " Yes, I'll tell you."
 
 II 
 
 IN late July, after he had not appeared either at din- 
 ner or at supper for four days, she said to him, " You're 
 becoming a stranger." 
 
 The idea of reproaching him was not in her mind. 
 She had been most respectful of what she compelled her- 
 self to regard as his rights, had been most careful not to 
 intrude or interrupt or in any way annoy. The remark 
 was simply an embarrassed attempt to open conversation 
 not an easy matter with a man so absorbed and silent as 
 he had become. But he was feeling rather guilty; also, 
 he had not recovered from the failure of an elaborate ex- 
 periment from which he had expected great things in ad- 
 Dancing him toward his ultimate goal the discovery of a 
 cheap, universal substitute for all known fuels. " You 
 know, my dear," said he, " in the sort of work I'm trying 
 to do a man can't control his hours." 
 
 " I know," she hastened to apologize, feeling offense in 
 his tone, and instantly accusing herself of lack of tact. 
 " I'm too anxious for you to succeed to want you ever to 
 think I'm expecting j'ou. I've been busy myself and a 
 lot of people have been calling." 
 
 This, though bravely said, somehow did not lessen his 
 sense of guilt. "You're not lonely, are you?" he asked 
 gently. And he gave her a searching, self-reproachful look. 
 
 " No, indeed ! " laughed she. " I'm not one of the kind 
 that get hysterical if they're left alone for a few minutes." 
 Her tone and expression were calculated to reassure, and 
 they did reassure.
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Really, you ought to have married a fellow who was 
 fond of society and had time for it. I know how you love 
 dancing and all that." This, with arms about her and an 
 expression which suggested how dreary life would have 
 been if she had marz-ied that more suitable other fellow. 
 
 " I used to like those things/' said she. " But I found 
 they were all simply makeshifts, to pass the time until you 
 came." 
 
 " We are happy aren't we ? " 
 
 "And just think!" she cried. "How happy we'll be 
 when our real life begins." 
 
 " Yes," said he vaguely. 
 
 He looked confused and puzzled, but she was too intent 
 upon her dream to note it. " When do you think you'll 
 get time to teach me the ropes ? " asked she. 
 
 After a little groping he understood. He had forgot- 
 ten all about that fantastic plan of hers to potter at the 
 laboratory. And she had been serious had been waiting 
 for him to ask her down ! A glance at her face warned 
 him that she was far too much in earnest to be laughed at. 
 " Oh, I don't know exactly when," said he. " Probably 
 not for some time. Don't bother about it." 
 
 " Of course, I'll not bother you about it," replied she. 
 " But naturally I can't help thinking. It won't be long? " 
 
 He detested liars and lies. Yet, looking on her as a 
 sort of child and it's no harm to humor a child he said, 
 " I hope not." 
 
 He blushed as he said it, though his conscience was 
 assuring him there was absolutely nothing wrong in this 
 kind of playful deception with woman the whimsical, the 
 irrational. " Certainly not," thought he. " She'll soon 
 forget all about it. I don't see how she happened to re- 
 member so long as this." Still, it was not pleasant to tell
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 even the whitest of white lies, facing eyes so earnest and 
 so trusting as were hers just then. He changed the sub- 
 ject inquired who had been calling. She did not return 
 to it. She was content; his long hours and his complete 
 absorption were proof of his eagerness to hasten the day 
 when they should be together. " Of course/' thought she, 
 " he likes what he's doing likes it for itself. But the 
 reason is ' us.' " And some day soon he would surprise 
 her and they would begin to lead the life of true lovers 
 the life she had dreamed and planned as a girl the life 
 she had begun to realize during courtship and 'honey- 
 moon the life of which, even in these days of aloneness 
 and waiting, she had occasional foretastes when overpow- 
 ing impulse for a " lighter hour " brought him back to her 
 for a little while. 
 
 She had been puzzled when in those hours he some- 
 times called her " temptress." The word was tenderly 
 spoken, but she felt an accent of what was somehow sug- 
 gestion of reproach and of rebuke. Now she thought she 
 understood. He meant she stimulated in him the same deep 
 longings that incessantly possessed her; and when those 
 longings were stimulated, it was hard for him to keep his 
 mind on the work he was hastening with all his energy 
 the work that must be done before their happiness could 
 begin. " I must be careful not to tempt him," thought 
 she. 
 
 From this she went on to feel she understood another 
 matter that had puzzled her, had at times disquieted her. 
 She had noticed that his moods of caressing tenderness, of 
 longing for the outward evidences of love seemed to be 
 satisfied, and to cease just when her own delight in them 
 was swelling to its fullness. Why should what roused her 
 quiet him? This had been the puzzle; now she felt she
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 had solved it: He had greater self-control than she; he 
 would not let his feelings master him, when they would 
 certainly interfere with the work that must be done to 
 clear their way of the last obstacles to perfect happiness; 
 so he withdrew into himself and fought down the long- 
 ings for more and ever more love that were no doubt as 
 strong in him as in her. 
 
 Thus she, in her faith and her inexperience, reasoned it 
 all out to her satisfaction and to his glory. She had not 
 the faintest notion of the abysmal difference between her 
 idea of love and his. With her the caresses had their 
 chief value as symbols as the only means by which the 
 love within could convey news of its existence. With 
 Dick, the caresses were not symbols at all, not means to 
 an end, but the end in themselves. Of love such as she 
 dreamed and expected he knew nothing; for it he felt no 
 more need than the usual busy, ambitious man. His work, 
 his struggle to wrest from nature close-guarded secrets, 
 filled his mind and his heart. 
 
 He soon assumed she had forgotten her fantastic whim, 
 and forgot it himself. She often wished he would talk 
 to her about his work, would not be quite so discouraging 
 when she timidly tried to talk with him about it. And in 
 spite of herself she could not but be uneasy at times over 
 his growing silence, his habitual absentmindedness. But 
 she accepted it all, as loving inexperience will accept any- 
 thing and everything until the shock of disillusion comes. 
 So stupefying is habit, there were times when her dream 
 became vague, when she drifted along, leading, as if it 
 were to be permanent, the ordinary life of the modern 
 married woman whose husband is a busy man. She was 
 learning a great deal about that life from her young mar- 
 ried friends of the neighborhood and of Wenona. Many of
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 them in fact, most of them were husbanded much like 
 herself. But they were restless, unhappy, and for the best 
 of reasons because they had no aim, no future. She pitied 
 them profoundly, felt more and more grateful for her own 
 happier lot. For she Dick's wife had a future, bright 
 and beautiful. Surely it could not be much longer before 
 he would have the way clear for the life in common, the 
 life together! 
 
 She fell to talking, in a less light vein than she usually 
 permitted herself with him, about these friends of hers 
 to him one evening as they walked up and down the 
 veranda after supper. She described with some humor, 
 but an underlying seriousness, their lives their amusing, 
 but also pitiful, efforts to kill time their steady decline 
 toward inanity. " I don't see what they married for," said 
 she. " They really care nothing about their husbands or 
 their husbands about them. The men seem to be contented. 
 But the women aren't, though they pretend to be pretend 
 to their husbands! Isn't it all sad and horrible? " 
 
 " Indeed it is," he replied. He had been only half 
 listening, but had caught the drift of what she was saying. 
 ' It's hard to believe decent women can be like that." 
 
 "And the men they're worse," said she; " for they're 
 satisfied." 
 
 "Why shouldn't they be?" said Dick. "They don't 
 know what kind of wives they've got." 
 
 " I I don't think you quite understood me." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; you said the wives were dissatisfied. They've 
 got good homes and contented husbands. What right have 
 they to be dissatisfied ? What more do they want ? " 
 
 " What we've got," said she tenderly. " Love." 
 
 " But they've got love. Didn't you say their husbands 
 were contented? When a man's contented it means that 
 
 25
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 he loves his wife. And a good woman always loves her 
 husband." 
 
 She laughed. He often amused her with his funny 
 old-style notions about women. " You can't understand 
 people who live and feel as they do, dear," said she. " Of 
 course, you and I seem to be living much like them just 
 now. But you know we'd never be contented if we had to 
 go on and on this way." 
 
 With not a recollection of the " whim," he stopped 
 short in astonishment. " What way ? " he asked. " Aren't 
 we happy? " 
 
 She smiled radiantly up at him in the clear, gentle 
 evening light. " But not so happy as we shall be, when 
 you get things straightened out and take me into part- 
 nership." 
 
 " Partnership ? " he demanded blankly. " What do you 
 mean? " 
 
 " I call it partnership. I suppose you'd call it work- 
 ing for you. I suppose I shall be pretty poor at first. 
 But I'll surprise you before I've been down there many 
 weeks. I've been brushing up my chemistry, as well as I 
 could, with only books." 
 
 It came to him what she was talking about and it 
 overwhelmed him with confusion. " Yes certainly. I 
 I supposed you'd forgotten." 
 
 She gazed at him in dismay. " Forgotten ! " Then 
 she brightened. " Oh, you're teasing me." 
 
 He began to be irritated. " You mustn't fret me about 
 that," he said. 
 
 " I didn't even mean to speak of it," she protested, her 
 supersensitive dread of intrusion alert. " I know j'ou're 
 doing the best you can. But I couldn't help dreaming of 
 the time when I'll have you back again. . . . Now, don't 
 
 26
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 look so distressed ! Meanwhile, we'll have what we can. 
 And that's something isn't it? " 
 
 What queer, irrational creatures women werej To per- 
 sist in a foolish, fanciful notion such as this ! Why couldn't 
 she play at keeping house and enjoy herself as it was in- 
 tended women should? A woman's trying to do anything 
 serious, a woman's thinking it was like a parrot's talk- 
 ing an imitation, and not a good one. But the " whim " 
 and his " harmless deception " became the same sort of 
 irritation in his conscience that a grain of dust is on the 
 eyeball. He was forced to debate whether he should not 
 make a slight concession. After all, where would be the 
 harm in letting her come to the laboratory? She'd soon 
 get enough. Yes, that would be the wise course. Humor 
 a woman or a child in an innocent folly, and you effect a 
 cure. Yes if she brought the matter up again, and no 
 other way out suggested, he would let her come. It amused 
 him to think of her, delicate as a flower, made for the hot- 
 house, for protection and guidance and the most careful 
 sheltering, trying to adapt herself to serious work call- 
 ing for thought and concentration. " But she'd be a nuis- 
 ance after a day or so. A man's sense of humor even his 
 love soon wears thin when his work's interfered with." 
 Still, she'd be glad enough to quit, probably after a sin- 
 gle morning of the kind of thing he'd give her to discour- 
 age her. " Really, all a woman wants is the feeling she's 
 having her own way." 
 
 This decision laid the ghost. As slie said no more, the 
 whole thing passed to the dark recesses of his memory. 
 One evening in late September, when he was taking a 
 walk alone on the veranda, she came out and joined him. 
 After a few silent turns she said, " Let's sit on the steps." 
 She made him sit a step lower than she, which brought 
 
 27
 
 their eyes upon a level. The moon was shining full upon 
 them. The expression of her face, as she looked intently 
 at him, was such that he instinctively said, " What is it, 
 dear? " and reached for her hand. 
 
 He had given the subject of children the possibilities, 
 probabilities about as little thought as a young married 
 man well could. There are some women who instantly and 
 always suggest to men the idea motherhood; there are 
 others, and Courtney was of them, in connection with whom 
 the idea baby seems remote, even incongruous. But as she 
 continued to look steadily at him, without speaking, his 
 mind began to grope about, and somehow soon laid hold 
 of this idea. His expression must have told her that he 
 understood, for she nodded slowly. 
 
 " Do you mean " he began in an awe-stricken voice, 
 but did not finish. 
 
 " Yes. I've suspected for some time. To-day the doc- 
 tor told me it was so." 
 
 Her hand nestled more closely into his, and he held it 
 more tightly. A great awe filled him. It seemed very still 
 and vast, this moonlight night. He gazed out over the 
 lake. He could not speak. She continued to look at him. 
 Presently she began in a low, quiet voice, full of the mel- 
 ody of those soft, deep notes that were so strange and 
 thrilling, coming from such slim, delicate smallness of body 
 and of face: " I can't remember the time when I wasn't 
 longing for a baby. When I was still a baby myself I used 
 to ask the most embarrassing questions and they couldn't 
 stop me When could I have a baby? How soon? How 
 many? And when I finally learned that I mustn't talk 
 about it, I only thought the more. I never rested till I 
 found out all about it. I came very near marrying the first 
 
 man that asked me because " 
 
 28
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 He was looking at her with strong disapproval. 
 
 She smiled tenderly. " I know you hate for me to be 
 frank and natural," she said with the gentlest raillery. 
 " But, please, let me just this once. I must tell you ex- 
 actly what's in my head my foolish, feminine head, as 
 your grandfather would have said." 
 
 " Go on, dear. But you couldn't convince me you 
 weren't always innocent and pure minded." 
 
 " You a chemist a scientist, talking about knowledge 
 being wicked! But I'll not discuss those things with you. 
 I never have and I never shall." She drew closer to him, 
 put one arm round his neck. " Now do listen, dear," she 
 went on. " Then you came into my life. It's very 
 queer I don't understand why at least not clearly but 
 from the moment I loved you I never thought of baby 
 again except to think I didn't want one." 
 
 " My dear ! " he exclaimed. He drew away to look at 
 her. " Courtney ! That's very unnatural. You're quite 
 mistaken." 
 
 As she did not know men, it seemed to her a unique 
 and profoundly mysterious case, this of him so broad- 
 minded, scandalously broadminded most Wenona people 
 thought, yet in the one direction a puritan of puritans. 
 With a wisdom deeper than she realized she said smilingly: 
 " Dear dear Dick ! I guess the reason you men think 
 women irrational is because you're irrational on the sub- 
 ject of women yourselves. To a crazy person the whole 
 world seems crazy." 
 
 He did not respond to her pleasantry. She sighed, 
 drew his arm round her, went on : " Well anyhow, it's 
 true. And, do you know, I think that whenever a woman 
 really loves a man, cares for just him, she doesn't want 
 a baby." 
 
 3 29
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " You're quite mistaken," he assured her gravely. 
 " It's natural for a woman to want children. You want 
 them." 
 
 "Do you?" 
 
 "I? I've never given it much thought." 
 
 " I did hope you'd say no," said she, half in j est 
 " Now honestly, doesn't it seem reasonable that when two 
 people love each other they shouldn't want any any in- 
 truder? " 
 
 He looked at her with more than a trace of severity in 
 his expression. " Where did you get these unnatural 
 ideas? I don't like you to say such things even in joke. 
 They're most unwomanly." 
 
 She felt rebuked and showed it, but persisted, " You 
 must admit it'll interfere." 
 
 " Interfere with what ? " 
 
 " With the life we've been looking forward to with 
 my helping you." 
 
 " Oh yes " he stammered. Again that exasperating 
 ghost! What possessed her to persist in such nonsense? 
 
 " You know it would interfere would put off our hap- 
 piness for a year or two. A year or two ! Oh, Dick ! " 
 
 When she had the child, thought he, the ghost would 
 be laid forever. " Well we'll do the best we can," he 
 said. His tone and manner of regret were as sincere as 
 ever mother used in assuring her child of the reality of 
 Santa Claus. And Courtney believed and was reconciled. 
 
 " I do want the baby," she now admitted. " But I want 
 you love more, oh, so much more. I'm glad your life 
 work is something I naturally care about. Still, I sup- 
 pose, when a woman loves a man, she cares about whatever 
 he is and does, and fits herself to be part of it." 
 
 He smiled with patronizing tenderness, as he often 
 30
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 did, always evidently quite sure she'd not understand. If 
 we could but realize it, how our mismeasurements of others 
 would enable us to study as in a mirror our own limitations ! 
 " Wait till you have the baby," said he. 
 
 " Do you think that with me love for a baby could 
 ever take the place of need for love grown-up love? 
 You're always making me feel as if you didn't know me at 
 all, Dick." 
 
 He laughed and kissed her. " You don't know yourself. 
 Wait till you have a baby, and you'll be content to be just a 
 woman." 
 
 " But I'm content to be that now." 
 
 " Well let's not argue."
 
 Ill 
 
 EXCEPT courtship and honeymoon never had she been 
 so happy as in the last two months before the baby came. 
 " Every-one is spoiling me," she said, dazzled by the reve- 
 lations of thoughtfulness and affection. Her friends, her 
 acquaintances, showered attentions upon her. Even her 
 mother, austere and cold, unbent. Her father, the shy, the 
 silent, betrayed where she had got her silent, shy, intense 
 longing for love. The two sour old-maid sisters were all 
 tenderness and chaste excitement. As for Dick, he actually 
 neglected his career. Again and again he would stop in 
 the midst of an experiment to dash up to the house and 
 inquire what he could do for her this when there was a 
 private telephone at his elbow. 
 
 She was intelligent about diet and exercise; so she suf- 
 fered hardly at all. As for the baby, he came into the 
 world positively shrieking with health. Finally, she had 
 none of the petty vanity that leads many a first-time mother 
 into fancying and acting as if maternity were a unique 
 achievement, original with herself. Thus the agitation 
 quickly died away, and life resumed its former course, 
 except that she had a baby to take care of. At first it was 
 great fun. Dick helped her, forgot his chemistry, seemed 
 in the way to become a father of unprecedented devotion. 
 But this did not last long. He loved playthings and 
 played with them; but the call of his career was the strong 
 force in his life, and he went back to the laboratory. She 
 might have given the baby over to a nurse, as all the other 
 women were doing. But it seemed to her that, as she was
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 responsible for the coming of this frisky helplessness, she 
 could not do less than guard him until he was able to look 
 out for himself. " When he can talk and tell me exactly 
 how's he treated when I'm not around," said she, " why, 
 perhaps I'll trust him to a nurse if he needs one. But 
 until then I'll be nurse myself." 
 
 Many and many a time in the next eighteen months she 
 wished she had not committed herself openly and posi- 
 tively. She loved her baby as much as any mother could 
 and a good-humored lovable baby he was, fat and hand- 
 some, and showing signs of being well bred while still a 
 speechless animal. But, except in romances and make- 
 believe life, the deepest love wearies of sacrifices, though it 
 gladly makes them. This baby Benedict they named him, 
 but he changed it to Winchie as soon as he could this 
 baby made a slave of her. She understood why so many 
 women retrograde after the birth of the first child. The 
 temptation to go to seed is powerful enough in the most 
 favorable circumstances, once a woman has caught a hus- 
 band and secured a living for life. A baby, she soon saw, 
 made that temptation tenfold stronger. She wondered 
 what it was in her that compelled her to fight unyieldingly 
 against being demoralized. 
 
 Dick was deep in a series of experiments that forbade 
 him a thought for anything else. He did occasionally 
 spend a few moments in mechanical dalliance with his two 
 playthings ; but that interrupted his thoughts little if at all. 
 By the slow, unnoted day-to-day action that plays the only 
 really important part in human intimacies of all kinds, she 
 had grown too shy and strange with him to ask his help 
 or even to think of expecting it. She did not judge him 
 at least, not consciously. She assumed he was doing the 
 best he could, the best anyone could, the best 'possible. 
 
 33
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 To have complained, even in thought, would have seemed 
 to her as futile as railing against any fundamental of life 
 against being unable to fly instead of walk. She made 
 occupation for herself, as will presently appear. But, after 
 all, it was Winchie who saved her. But for him she, with 
 no taste for " chasing about," would have withdrawn within 
 herself, would have become silent, cold, ever more and 
 more like her mother, with barren cynicism in place of 
 Mrs. Benedict's equally barren religiosity. Winchie's 
 spirits of overflowing health, his newcomer's delight in 
 life were infectious and stimulating. In keeping him in 
 perfect health outdoors, winter and summer, and always 
 active, she made her own health so perfect that the cheer- 
 ful and hopeful side of things was rarely so much as 
 obscured. 
 
 One evening after supper Richard, moved by the inter- 
 mittent impulse to amuse himself, sought her in her sit- 
 ting room, where she was reading. She always sat there 
 in the evenings because she could hear Winchie if he be- 
 came restless. He never did, but that fact no more freed 
 her to go off duty than the absence of burglars the police- 
 man. Dick gave her the kind of kiss that was always his 
 signal for a " lighter hour." She merely glanced up, gave 
 him the smile that is a matrimonial convention like " my 
 dear," and went on with her book. Theretofore, whenever 
 he had shown the least desire to take an hour off from that 
 career of his, she had instantly responded. She assumed 
 this readiness meant love; in fact, love had no part in it. 
 She responded for two reasons, both unsuspected by her: 
 because she did not know him well enough to have moods 
 with him and to show them, and because refusal would have 
 been admission of the truth of indifference to him which 
 she had not yet discovered. That evening, for the first 
 
 34
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 time, she did not respond. It was unconscious on her part, 
 unnoted by him; yet it was the most significant event in 
 their married life since the wedding ceremony two years 
 and a half before. 
 
 He stood behind her and began gliding his fingers over 
 the soft down at the nape of her neck. It has become 
 second nature to women to repress their active emotions, no 
 matter how strong, and to wait upon the man an evidence 
 of inferior status that is crudely but sufficiently disguised 
 as " womanly delicacy and reserve." In response to the 
 signal of those caressing fingers Courtney mechanically put 
 up her hand and patted his. Her gesture was genuinely 
 affectionate but there had been a time when it would not 
 have been mechanical. She did not lift her eyes from the 
 page. 
 
 " Is that a good love story ? " asked he. " As good as 
 ours?" 
 
 A tender little smile of half absent appreciation played 
 round her lips. But her glance remained upon her read- 
 ing. " It isn't a novel," replied she. " It's a treatise." 
 
 "A treatise?" mocked he. "Gracious me! What a 
 wise fairy it is ! Put it away, and let's go on the balcony. 
 There'll not be many more sit-out nights." 
 
 He moved to pick her up in his arms. But she smil- 
 ingly pushed him away. " I want to finish this chapter," 
 said she. 
 
 " All right. I'll go out and smoke. Don't be long." 
 
 And he sauntered through the window door. After 
 perhaps a quarter of an hour she joined him in the ham- 
 mock. Matrimony is a curious fabric of set phrases, set 
 thoughts, and set actions. It was their habit, in such cir- 
 cumstances, for her to snuggle up to him and for him to 
 put his arm round her. The habit was on this occasion 
 
 35
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 observed. It was her habit to assume that she was happy 
 and she now so assumed. He began the conversation. 
 " I've been watching you as I sat here," said he lazily. 
 " What are all those books on the table ? They look serious 
 businesslike." 
 
 " Let's not talk about anything serious. You always 
 laugh at me or get absent-minded." 
 
 " But you seemed so absorbed. What was it? " 
 
 " Oh, I've been doing a little reading and thinking and 
 studying for the past year. You see, when a woman takes 
 care of a baby, she's got to look out or she'll become one 
 herself." 
 
 " But you are a baby." And there followed the usual 
 caresses. 
 
 " Not a real baby," said she. " We both act like 
 children at times very little children. But we'd not 
 care for each other as we do if either of us were real- 
 ly infantile. It takes a grown person to play baby at- 
 tractively." 
 
 " Baby," he insisted fondly. He was smiling with the 
 masculinely patronizing tolerance to which she had grown 
 so used that she never noted it. He appreciated that she 
 was clever with the woman sort of cleverness bright, 
 witty, sometimes saying remarkably keen things. But, 
 being a man, he knew that man mind and woman mind are 
 entirely different never so different as when woman mind 
 seems to be like man mind just as purely instinctive ac- 
 tions of animals seem to display profound reasoning power. 
 " And what was the baby wrinkling its brow over, in there ? 
 The care and feeding of infants ? " 
 
 " Dear me, no," replied she with perfect good humor. 
 " I went into that before Winchie came. You think it's 
 all a joke my reading and studying. But the real joke 
 
 36
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 is your thinking so. You must remember I can't afford to 
 let myself go, as you do." 
 
 He had been chiefly absorbed in caresses and caressing 
 thoughts. At this last remark he laughed. " Now, what 
 does that mean ? " he inquired. 
 
 " You've given up everything for chemistry. Haven't 
 you noticed that we can hardly talk to each other that 
 you can hardly talk to anybody? " 
 
 " I never did have much talent for small talk." 
 
 " But I didn't mean small talk. You care only for 
 chemistry, know only chemistry. You never did know or 
 care much about literature or art or music or any of the 
 worth-while things except just your own specialty. And 
 you can afford to be that way. It's your career, and also 
 you're not a woman and a mother." 
 
 He had stopped caressing her. " I confess I don't 
 understand," said he stiffly. 
 
 " A man can afford to be narrow not to know life or 
 the world. But a mother if she's the right sort has to 
 try to know everything. She's got to bring up children 
 and how can she hope to teach and train successfully if she 
 doesn't know? " 
 
 " I don't agree with you," said he, a certain curtness in 
 his voice. " A woman must be pure, innocent, womanly 
 as you are. Nature didn't make her to be learned or wise 
 to think. She has her instincts to keep her straight, and a 
 father or a husband " 
 
 "Dick Dick!" she cried, patting him on the cheek. 
 " What an old fogey it is ! You talk like like an ordinary 
 man. How bored you'd be if you had that kind of wife 
 one who couldn't be comrade and companion, and didn't 
 want to be one who was merely a mistress." 
 
 Vaughan was sitting bolt upright now. " Those books 
 37
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 in there Courtney, you're not reading impure, upset- 
 ting books ? " 
 
 She laughed delightedly. 
 
 " What are those books ? " he insisted. 
 
 " They're now, Dickey dear, please don't be shocked 
 they're on landscape gardening and interior decoration." 
 She looked up at him mischievously in the starlight. " Are 
 they womanly enough to suit you ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said he heartily. " But I might have 
 known you'd not read anything a good woman oughtn't. I 
 love you as you are and I'd hate to see you changed, my 
 spotless little angel." 
 
 She submitted to his caresses. And presently, in that 
 brain which he would have thought it absurd to look into 
 except for the very lightest kind of amusement, there formed 
 the first really disloyal thought she had ever permitted to be 
 born. The thought was : " Dick certainly does take himself 
 terribly seriously. If it weren't Dick, I'd say he was get- 
 ting to be a prig." She was instantly shocked at herself, as 
 one always is at the first impulse to doubt the idol one has 
 set up for blind worship. She felt there was but one way 
 to prevent the recurrence of such perilous blasphemy. Af- 
 ter a brief silence she said in a constrained voice: "Dick, 
 I was not a stupid, incurious fool as a girl, and I went to 
 college, and I'm a wife and a mother. If by innocence 
 you mean ignorance, I'm anything but innocent." 
 
 She saw that he was highly amused. 
 
 " Women," she went on earnestly, " always tell each 
 other that before men it's wise to pretend to be ignorant 
 and too refined to know life, and to be shocked at every- 
 thing. They say it pleases men. But I'm sure you're not 
 that sort of man. Anyhow, I can't be a hypocrite." 
 
 " That's right, dear," said he, nodding approvingly, the 
 38
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 amused smile lingering. " Go on with your interior deco- 
 ration and landscape gardening. You can't learn too 
 much about them." He was leaning back again, secure, 
 comfortable, happy, enjoying the sensation of caressing 
 her. 
 
 She gave it up, as she always did when she found her- 
 self being ruffled by that strange antiquated prejudice of 
 his. It would yield in time. Besides, what did it really 
 matter? since they loved each, other, and would be happy 
 once their real life got under way. " I'd have taken up 
 chemistry," she continued, " but one can't go far alone in 
 that, with only books. And you wouldn't help me. I'm 
 afraid you'll find me very rusty when I come down to the 
 laboratory next spring." 
 
 His lips were open to inquire what she meant, when he 
 was unpleasantly spared the necessity. Out of a dark 
 recess of memory sprang the ghost the " whim." He was 
 astounded, irritated, alarmed. He had supposed he had 
 heard the last of that silly notion about helping him; she 
 hadn't spoken of it in nearly two years. Now here it 
 was again ! 
 
 " Dick," she was saying, her hand clasping his, " I've 
 appreciated your not speaking of it, or even talking about 
 what you were doing. If you had, the delay 'd have been 
 much harder to bear. For, as long as Winchie needs me, 
 I simply can't come." 
 
 " I understand, dear," said he, much relieved. 
 
 " It's a dreadfully long delay, isn't it? " she went on, 
 dreamily gazing up into the great quiet sky. " The more 
 I see of married people, and the more I think about married 
 life, the clearer I see that two must have a common inter- 
 est, a common career, or they drift apart, and usually the 
 woman sinks down and down into a gadabout or a fat 
 
 39
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 frump or a professional minder of other people's business 
 a gossip or a charity worker." 
 
 If she had been looking, even in that faint light she 
 could have seen his expression of gathering displeasure. 
 
 " Or else," she went on, " she seeks love elsewhere. 
 Isn't it strange, Dick, how in unhappy marriages the 
 so-called good women are the bad ones, and the so-called 
 bad ones good? I mean, when a weak woman finds herself 
 married wrong she accepts it and gently rots, and people 
 say she's a good soul, when she's really degrading her- 
 self and rotting everybody round her. While a strong 
 woman one that's worth while refuses to be crushed, and 
 people call her bad. But then I've begun to think life's 
 like one of those exhibitions where some cut-up slips 
 round and changes the labels so that everything's named 
 wrong." 
 
 She was talking along lightly, talking what seemed to 
 her the plainest common sense, and was all unconscious that 
 she had brought him and herself where both were almost 
 peering into the abyss between them. He was sitting up, 
 was getting ready to deliver himself. Her next remark 
 checked him. " Thank Heaven, Dick, you and I are going 
 to have the interest that makes two lives one makes it 
 impossible to grow apart. It seems to me I can't wait for 
 Winchie to release me so that I may come and work with 
 you. Aren't you glad I really, naturally, like chemistry, 
 and already know something about it? " 
 
 He winced, and instead of speaking, put his cigar be- 
 tween his opened lips. 
 
 She leaned her head affectionately against his arm. " I 
 feel close to you to-night feel that we're in perfect sym- 
 pathy. Sometimes I I don't feel quite that way. Of 
 course I know it's all right, but I .get afraid. It's such 
 
 40
 
 a long, long delay and your work absorbs you and we 
 almost never talk as we're talking to-night. There have 
 been times when I've almost been afraid we were drift- 
 ing apart." 
 
 " What nonsense ! " he cried sharply. " How could 
 that be? Do you suppose I don't know you're a good 
 v/oman? You talk foolishly at times things you've picked 
 up from loose people. But you are a lady and a good 
 woman." 
 
 She saw he was for some unknown reason irritated. 
 She swiftly changed the subject. " Anyhow, dearest, we 
 shan't be in danger much longer. We're nearly to the end 
 of the life we've been leading ever since we got back from 
 our wedding trip. Just think ever since then ! How time 
 has gone ! " 
 
 He stirred uncomfortably, ventured: "We've been 
 happy, and, even if things were to go on just as they are, 
 we'd continue to be happy." 
 
 " Of course, you've had your work and I've had Win- 
 chie, and once in a while we have each other. But most 
 of the happiness has been in looking forward, hasn't it? " 
 
 She assumed that his silence was assent. 
 
 " But don't think, dear," she said, " that I've been con- 
 tent just to wait. As soon as I saw it was going to be a 
 long time before I could come to the laboratory " 
 
 He rose abruptly, under the pretense of lighting a fresh 
 cigar. 
 
 " I made another occupation for myself. It'll be 
 next spring at the earliest before I can come to you. And 
 even then I'll be able to spend only part of the day. 
 Winchie'll have to be looked after when he's not at the 
 kindergarten. Now that he's talking and understanding, 
 it's more necessary than ever to watch over him. I've had 
 
 41
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 to watch only his body. Now it's both his body and his 
 mind; for, if any harm came to either, it'd be our fault, 
 wouldn't it? " 
 
 " There's no doubt of that/' said Dick with strong em- 
 phasis, as he seated himself in a chair opposite her. He 
 thought this remark of hers opened the way out of his per- 
 plexity. " I don't see how you can come to the laboratory 
 at all." 
 
 " Oh, yes. It's not so bad as that. If it were, I don't 
 know what I'd do. It'd be choice between losing you and 
 neglecting him." 
 
 " Trash ! " exclaimed Dick impatiently. There seemed 
 something essentially immoral in her whole attitude, an 
 odor of immorality exuding from everything she said. It 
 exasperated him that he could not locate it and use it as 
 the text for the lecture he felt she greatly needed. " Your 
 good sense must tell you there's not the slightest danger of 
 your losing me." 
 
 She laughed with raillery. " Oh, I know you're far too 
 busy with your chemistry to wander. But that isn't what 
 I meant. You understand." Her eyes shone upon him. 
 " Sometimes when we're holding each other tight and 
 your lips are on mine I can scarcely keep from crying. 
 It seems to me we're like two held apart and trying to be 
 one and trying in vain. It's as if we touched only at the 
 surface, and our bodies were keeping us from each other. 
 But all that will soon end now, and we'll be really one. 
 Closer and closer, day by day 
 
 She sat on his lap, and he clasped her in his arms. He 
 felt ashamed somehow, and in awe of this emotion that was 
 beyond him. " How wonderful a pure woman is ! " he 
 thought. 
 
 After a pause she sat up, went back to the hammock, 
 42
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 seated herself, leaning toward him. " But I started to 
 tell you my plans." 
 
 " What plans ? " he asked, in high good humor with her 
 again and overflowing with " lighter-hour " tenderness. 
 " Tell me quick and we'll go in. It's getting late." He 
 moved to seat himself beside her. 
 
 " No," she said, laughingly. " Sit where you are. I 
 want you to listen. It isn't often I can get you to listen. 
 As I said, I've got to have something worth while to fill 
 in as I look after Winchie when he's not at kindergarten. 
 I've been getting ready for a year, and it has given me 
 occupation when he was sleeping or playing, for I taught 
 him to amuse himself and not to look to me for everything. 
 That was good for him and saved me. Well, I studied 
 gardening and interior decoration." 
 
 " What a fuss you do make," said he, amused. " Why 
 not just settle down and be a plain woman? " 
 
 " Shame on you ! Tempting me to go to pieces." 
 
 " You'll not improve on the good old-fashioned woman, 
 my dear." 
 
 " You deserve to be married to one of them." 
 
 " I am," declared he. " Your whims don't deceive me. 
 I know you. Let's go in, dear." 
 
 She shook her head in smiling reproach. " Then you 
 don't care to hear my plans ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. What are they? " 
 
 " I've got everything ready to make those changes we 
 discussed on our honeymoon." 
 
 " Rer.lly ! " exclaimed he, seeing that enthusiasm was 
 expected, though he hadn't the remotest idea what she was 
 talking about. 
 
 " Of course, I'm going slowly at first, as I want to be 
 sure, and mustn't be extravagant. I've been very careful. 
 
 43
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 I've made drawings and even water colors, for I thought 
 I ought to see how things would look." 
 
 He was puzzled and alarmed. " I don't believe I know 
 which scheme you mean," he said. " We discussed so many 
 things on that trip." 
 
 " I mean, to change the house and grounds/' explained 
 she with bright enthusiasm. " They'll not be ugly and stiff 
 and cold looking much longer." 
 
 He started up. " Courtney, what are you talking 
 about? " he demanded. 
 
 " Why, Dick ! Don't you remember ? I told you some 
 of my ideas .on gardens and interiors, and you said " 
 
 " I don't know what careless, unthinking remark I may 
 have dropped," interrupted he angrily. " I certainly never 
 intended to let you tear things up and make a mess." He 
 walked up and down. " What possesses you anyhow ? " he 
 cried. " Why can't you behave yourself like a woman ? I 
 never heard of such nonsense ! I want you to stop med- 
 dling in things that are beyond you. I want you to do 
 your duty as a wife and a mother. I want you to stop 
 annoying me. I didn't marry a blue-stocking, an unsexed 
 thinking woman. I married a sweet, loving wife." 
 
 She sat on the edge of the hammock, perfectly still. It 
 was as if he had struck her unconscious so suddenly that 
 she had not yet fallen over. 
 
 "What devil keeps nagging at you?" he demanded, 
 pausing in his angry stride to face her. " It must be some 
 woman's having a bad influence on you. I'll not have it. 
 I'll not have my home upset and my wife spoiled. Who is 
 it, Courtney? " 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 " Answer me ! " 
 
 " It's myself," replied she in a quiet, dumb way. 
 44
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " It's not yourself. You are womanly." 
 
 " I've got to have something to do something worth 
 while or I can't live." 
 
 " Attend to your house and your baby, like all true 
 women." 
 
 " It isn't enough/' replied she in the same monotonous, 
 stupefied way. " It isn't enough for me, any more than it'd 
 be for you." 
 
 " Nonsense," said he, with the man's feeling that he 
 had thereby answered her. 
 
 She said dazedly: " You didn't mean it. No, you didn't 
 mean it." 
 
 "Mean what?" 
 
 " All my plans my year's work and such a beautiful 
 house and place I'll make." She started up, clasped her 
 hands round his arm. " O Dick don't be narrow and 
 so distrustful of me. I know I can do it. Let me show 
 you my plans my sketches " 
 
 He took her hands, and said with gentle, firm earnest- 
 ness, for he was ashamed of having lost his temper with 
 a woman: " Courtney, I cannot have it. I will not let you 
 disturb the place my grandfather gave his best thought to." 
 
 " But you don't like it, dear," she pleaded. 
 
 " I respect my grandfather's memory." 
 
 " But on our wedding trip you said " 
 
 " Now, don't argue with me ! " 
 
 " It's because you think I couldn't do it? " 
 
 " I know you couldn't if you must have the truth." 
 
 " Let me show you my sketches and paintings," she 
 pleaded, in a queer kind of quiet hysteria. " Let me ex- 
 plain my plans. I'm sure you'll " 
 
 "Now, Courtney! I've told you my decision. I want 
 to hear no more about it." 
 
 4 45
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 She looked up into his face searchingly. He was like 
 the portrait of his unbending grandfather that made the 
 library uncomfortable. Her arms fell to her sides. She 
 went to the balcony rail, gazed out into the black masses 
 of foliage. Taken completely by surprise, she could not 
 at once realize any part, much less all, of what those words 
 of his involved; but she felt in her heart the chill of a 
 great fear the fear of what she would think, of what she 
 would know, when she did realize. 
 
 His voice interrupted. " While you're on the unpleas- 
 ant subject of these notions of yours," he said, with an at- 
 tempt at lightness in his embarrassed tone, " we might as 
 well finish it get it out of the way forever. I want you 
 to stop thinking about the laboratory." 
 
 She turned, swift as a swallow. 
 
 " I admit I've been at fault encouraging you to im- 
 agine I'd consent. But I thought you'd forget about it. 
 Apparently you haven't." 
 
 A long silence. 
 
 " I repeat, I'm sorry I misled you. It seemed to me 
 a trifling deception." 
 
 She did not speak, did not move. 
 
 " When you think it over, you'll see that I'm right 
 that we're much happier as we are." 
 
 After a long silence, which somehow alarmed him, 
 though he told himself such a feeling was absurd, she 
 crossed the balcony to the window. As she paused there, 
 not looking toward him, the profile of those sweet, irregu- 
 lar features of hers stood out clearly. That expression, 
 though it was quiet, increased his absurd alarm. " It's 
 getting late," she said, and her tone was gentle, apologetic. 
 " I think I'll go in." 
 
 you angry, Courtney ? " 
 46
 
 " No/' slie replied. " I don't think so." 
 
 " Why are you silent ? " 
 
 " I don't know/' she said slowly. " I seem to have 
 stopped inside." 
 
 He went and put his arms round her. She was passive 
 as a doll. " Why, you're quite cold, child ! " 
 
 " I must go in. Good night." 
 
 " I'll join you in a few minutes." 
 
 She shivered. " No," she said. " Good night." 
 
 He was somewhat disconcerted. Then he reflected that 
 she could hardly be expected to give up her whims without 
 a little struggling. " It shows how sweet and good she 
 is," thought he, " that she took it so quietly." And he went 
 to bed in the room across the hall the room he had been 
 occupying most of the time since three months before 
 Winchie came. As he fell asleep he felt that he ha<3. laid 
 " the ghost " and had settled all his domestic affairs upon 
 the proper basis. He slept, but she lay awake the whole 
 night, watching, tearless, beside her dead.
 
 IV 
 
 NEXT morning, after her usual breakfast alone, she took 
 Winchie and went across in the motor boat to her father's. 
 If she had been led blindfold into that house she would 
 have known, from the instant of the opening of the door, 
 that she was at home. Every home has its individual odor. 
 Hers had a clean, comfortable perfume suggestive of lav- 
 ender. She inhaled it deeply now as she paused a moment 
 in the front hall inhaled it with a sudden sense of peace, 
 of sorrow shut out securely. She left the baby in the 
 sitting room with her sister Lai, and sought out her mother 
 in the pleasant old-fashioned back parlor with its outlook 
 on the hollyhocks and sunflowers of the kitchen garden. 
 Mrs. Benedict, a model of judicial sternness, as her hus- 
 band was of judicial gentleness, sat reading a pious book 
 by the open window. She glanced up as her daughter 
 entered, and prepared her cold-looking cheek for the con- 
 ventional salute. But Courtney was in no mood for conven- 
 tions. She seated herself on the roll of the horsehair sofa. 
 " Mother," she said, " I want to talk to you about Richard." 
 
 The tone was a forewarning an ominous forewarning 
 because it was calm. Mrs. Benedict, for all her resolute 
 unworldliness, had been unable to live sixty-seven years 
 without there having been forced upon her an amount of 
 wisdom sufficient to store to bursting the mind of any 
 woman half her age. She closed the heavy-looking book 
 in her lap, leaving her glasses to mark the place. " I don't 
 think I need tell a daughter of mine that she cannot dis- 
 cuss her husband with anyone." 
 
 48
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Courtney flushed. " That's just it/' replied she. " He 
 is no longer rny husband." 
 
 She was astonished at her mother's composure. An 
 announcement about the weather could not have been less 
 excitedly received. She did not realize how plainly she 
 was showing, in her changed countenance, in stern eyes 
 and resolute chin, the evidences a mother could hardly 
 fail to read evidences of a mood a sensible mother would 
 not aggravate by agitation. " I cannot live with him," she 
 went on. " I've brought Winchie and come home." 
 
 Her words startled herself. In this imperturbable, se- 
 verely sensible presence they sounded hysterical, theatrical, 
 though she had thought out the idea they conveyed with 
 what she felt sure was the utmost deliberation. Her 
 mother's gray-green eyes looked at her simply looked. 
 
 " I know you don't believe in divorce, mother. But he 
 and I have never been really married. He's entirely dif- 
 ferent from the man I loved. And he What he feels 
 for me isn't love at all. He doesn't know me and doesn't 
 want to know me." 
 
 " Has he sent you away? " 
 
 " Oh, no. He's satisfied." 
 
 Mrs. Benedict folded her ladylike hands upon the pious 
 book, said coldly and calmly: " Then you will go back to 
 him." 
 
 " Never. I refuse to live with a man who classes me 
 with the lower animals. I " 
 
 Her mother's stern, calm voice interrupted. " Don't say 
 things you will have to take back. You will return because 
 there is no place else for you." 
 
 " Mother ! Do you refuse to take me and Winchie ? 
 Oh, you don't understand. You who believe in religion 
 
 you couldn't let me " 
 
 49
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Your father/' interrupted her mother in the same cold, 
 placid way, " is not to be made judge again. We shall 
 have to give up this house and retire to the farm. We have 
 nothing but the farm. It will take every cent we can rake 
 and scrape to pay the insurance premiums. The insurance 
 premiums must be paid. The insurance is for your sisters. 
 They have no husbands." And with these few bald state- 
 ments she stopped, for she knew that under her daughter's 
 youthful idealism there was the solid rock of common sense, 
 that behind her impetuosity there was her father's own in- 
 stinct for justice. 
 
 " The farm," said Courtney, stunned. " The farm." 
 Twenty miles back in the wilderness a living death 
 burial alive. " Oh, mother ! " And the girl flung herself 
 down beside the old woman and clasped her round the 
 waist. " You shan't go there ! I'll go back to Richard 
 and we'll see that you and father and Lai and Ann stay 
 on here." 
 
 Her mother was as rigid as the old-fashioned straight- 
 back chair in which she sat. The blood burned brightly in 
 the center of each of her white cheeks, but her voice was 
 distinctly softer as she said: "You will go back. But we 
 accept nothing from anybody." 
 
 Courtney hung her head. " Of course not," she said, 
 hurried and confused. " I spoke on impulse." 
 
 " You'd better sit in a chair," said Mrs. Benedict. " You 
 are rumpling your dress." 
 
 But Courtney was not hurt. She had an instinct why 
 her mother wished her to sit at a distance. " Very well, 
 mother," said she meekly, and obeyed. 
 
 After a pause Mrs. Benedict spoke : " I was not sur- 
 prised when you told me. I suppose there is not one 
 woman in ten thousand who doesn't at least once in the 
 
 50
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 first five years of her married life resolve to leave her 
 husband." 
 
 " But it's different with me. I must have something 
 and I have nothing." 
 
 " You have your home and Winchie." 
 
 " That house those prim, dressed-up looking grounds 
 they've always oppressed me. And I hate them now 
 that " She checked herself. How futile to relate and 
 to rail. " As for Winchie, he's not enough." 
 
 " There will be others presently." 
 
 Courtney gave her mother a horrified look. 
 
 " You will do your duty as a wife, and the children will 
 be your reward." 
 
 Courtney could not discuss this; discussion would be 
 both useless and painful. " There may be some women who 
 could be content with looking after a house and the wants 
 of children," said she. " But I'm not one of them, and I 
 never saw or heard of a worth-while woman who was. 
 How am I to spend the time? I'm like you I don't care 
 for running about doing inane things. I can't just read 
 and read, with no purpose, no sympathy. It seems to me 
 I could do almost anything with love almost nothing with- 
 out it. ... Brought up and educated like a man, and then 
 condemned to the old-fashioned life for women a life no 
 man would endure ! " 
 
 Her mother was looking out through the window, a 
 strange expression about her stern mouth the expression 
 of one who, old and in a far, cold land, thinks of home and 
 youth when the sun warmed the blood and the heart. 
 
 " What shall I do if I go back ? " repeated Courtney. 
 " But why ask that? I've simply got to go back. As you 
 say, there's no place else for me." A flush of shame over- 
 spread her cheeks. " Oh, it's so degrading ! " 
 
 51
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " You forget Winchie," said her mother, and her tone 
 was gentle. 
 
 " No, I thought of that excuse. But I was ashamed 
 to speak it. It seemed like hypocrisy. Of course, I've got 
 to go back for his sake. But if I hadn't him I'd go back 
 just the same. Mother, you ought to have had me educated 
 more or else less. If I knew less I could be content with 
 the sort of life women used to think was the summit of 
 earthly bliss. If I knew more I could make my own life. 
 I could be independent. I begin to understand why women 
 are restless nowadays. We're neither the one thing nor 
 the other." 
 
 Up to a certain point Mrs. Benedict could understand 
 her daughter, could sympathize. She could even have sup- 
 plemented Courtney's forebodings as to the future with 
 drearier actualities of experience. But beyond that point 
 the two women were hopelessly apart. " You are warring 
 with God," she rebuked. " He has ordained woman's posi- 
 tion." And to her mind that settled everything. 
 
 " It isn't God," replied Courtney. " It's just igno- 
 rance." 
 
 " It is God," declared her mother, in the fanatic tone 
 that told Courtney her mind was closed. 
 
 The mother and daughter belonged to two different gen- 
 erations the two that are perhaps further apart than any 
 two in all human history. Courtney saw how far apart 
 she and her mother were, thought she understood why her 
 mother could sympathize with her restlessness in woman's 
 ancient bondage, but could only say " sacrilege " when the 
 younger and better educated woman went on from vague 
 restlesmcis to open revolt. 
 
 " God has seen fit to make the lot of woman hard," 
 said the mother. 
 
 52
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " If that is God/' cried the daughter, " then the less 
 said about Him the better." 
 
 " Courtney, your sinful heart will bring you to grief." 
 
 " Is it a sin to think? " 
 
 " I sometimes believe it is for a woman," replied the 
 mother, with the kind of bitter irony into which the most 
 reverent devotee is sometimes goaded by the whimsical 
 cruelties of his deity. 
 
 Courtney had long since learned to be unargumentative 
 before her mother's somber and savage religion, so logical 
 yet so inhuman. She had dimly felt that if she ever inves- 
 tigated religion, the misery of the world would compel her 
 to choose between believing in her mother's devil god and 
 believing nothing. So she left religion aside in her scheme 
 of life, like so many of the men and women of her gen- 
 eration. 
 
 " I ought to have had more education or less," she re- 
 peated. " I ought to have had more, for it wouldn't have 
 been fair to give me less than the rest of the girls have." 
 
 She fancied it was her formal education of the college 
 th^t had made her think and feel as she did. In fact, that 
 liad little, perhaps nothing, to do with it; for colleges, 
 except the as yet few scientific schools stupefy or stunt 
 more minds than they stimulate. She was simply a child 
 of her own generation, and the forces that were stirring 
 her to restlessness were part of its universal atmosphere 
 the atmosphere all who live in it must breathe, the " spirit 
 of the time " that makes the very yokel with his eyes upon 
 the clod see things in it his yokel father never saw. 
 
 She knew her mother would gladly help her, but she 
 realized she might as hopefully appeal to Winchie. All 
 her mother could say would be : " Yes, it is sad. But the 
 only thing to do is to return and pretend to be the old- 
 
 53
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 fashioned wife, and perhaps custom will make the harness 
 cease to gall." Well, perhaps her mother was right; per- 
 haps there was no solution, no self-respecting hopeful solu- 
 tion. Certainly she could not support herself, except in 
 some menial and meager way that would more surely kill 
 all that was aspiring in her than would submission to the 
 lot which universal custom made abject only in theory. She 
 could not support herself and there was Winchie, too. 
 Winchie had his rights rights to the advantages his 
 father's position and fortune gave. Dick had made it clear 
 that he did not and would not have the kind of love, the 
 kind of relationship, she believed in. She must go on his 
 terms or not at all. 
 
 She ended the long silence, during which her mother 
 sat motionless in an attitude of patient waiting for the 
 inevitable. " I will go," she said. " And I will try to be 
 to him the kind of wife he wants." 
 
 Mrs. Benedict looked at her daughter; there were tears 
 6f pride in her eyes. " That is right," she said, and they 
 talked of it no more. 
 
 But on the way back in the motor boat, and for the rest 
 of that day, and for a good part of many a day and many 
 a night thereafter, Courtney Vaughan's mind was storm- 
 ily busy. It teemed with the thoughts that in this age of 
 the break-up of the old-fashioned institution of the family 
 force themselves early or late upon every woman endowed 
 with the intelligence to have, or to dream of, self-respect. 
 
 Thenceforth Dick Vaughan, if he had thought about 
 it at all, would have congratulated himself on his wise and 
 thorough adjustment of his threatened domestic affairs. But 
 he gave no more thought to it than does the next human
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 being. We do not annoy ourselves with what is going on in 
 the heads of those around us. We look only at results. And 
 usually this plan works well; for, no matter what the aver- 
 age human being may have in mind, the habit of a routine of 
 action ultimately determines his or her real self. Once in 
 a while, however, circumstances interfere, encourage the 
 latent revolt against action's routine apparently so placidly 
 pursued. But this is rare. 
 
 The weeks, the months went by; and Courtney seemed, 
 and thought herself, a typical " settled " wife and mother. 
 That is, as " settled " as an intelligent, energetic, and 
 young woman, restless in mind and body, could be. She 
 did not attempt to come to a definite verbal understanding 
 with him. What would be the use? There was nothing to 
 change except herself. There was nothing to explain. 
 She understood him. He did not understand her, did not 
 wish to, could not on account of his prejudices, however 
 carefully she might explain. " No," thought she, " the 
 only thing is for me to accept my position as woman and 
 adapt myself to it, since I haven't the right, or the cour- 
 age, or the whatever it is I lack, to do as I'd like." The 
 only outward difference in their relations was that she 
 rarely talked with him, and when he was about, fell into 
 his habit of abstraction. 
 
 That winter he became extremely irregular about com- 
 ing to dinner, and as the days lengthened with the spring 
 he often worked on through supper time also. In late 
 May or early June he began to note that when he did come 
 up to the house for supper, his wife was sometimes there 
 and sometimes not. Gradually her absence made an im- 
 pression on him, and her always answering his inquiry 
 with, " I was over at the club." As that meant the Outing 
 Club, established and supported and frequented by the 
 
 55
 
 young people of Wenona and its suburbs, he was entirely 
 satisfied. This, until about midsummer. One evening, 
 when she returned in the dusk from supper at the club, 
 she found him seated on the bench at the landing stage, 
 smoking moodily. He was scantily civil to Shirley Drum- 
 mond, who had brought her in the club launch. When 
 Shirley was well on the way back to the north shore, Court- 
 ney, who had seated herself beside her husband, spoke of 
 the heat and unwound the chiffon scarf about her bare neck 
 and shoulders. Dick glanced round. In some moods he 
 would not have seen at all. In other moods those slender 
 shoulders, that graceful throat, and the small head with 
 its lightly borne masses of auburn hair would have appealed 
 to his pride and joy of possession. But things had gone 
 Wrong at " the shop," and he was in the mood that could 
 readily either turn him to her for the consolation of a 
 " lighter hour " or set him off in a rage. He frowned upon 
 the exposed shoulders. 
 
 " Where did you get that dress ? " he demanded. 
 
 She heard simply the question. Her thoughts were on 
 the events of the evening at the club. " Had it made here," 
 said she, unconscious of his mood. " It's something like 
 one I saw in a fashion picture from Paris. Like it? " 
 
 To her amazement he replied angrily: " I do not. I've 
 never seen a dress I disapproved of so thoroughly. Don't 
 wear it again, and please be careful how you adopt a fash- 
 ion you get that way. French fashions are set by a class 
 of women I couldn't speak to you about. Respectable 
 women have to alter them greatly." 
 
 " Why, what's the matter with the dress ? " exclaimed 
 she. " Everyone admired it at the club." 
 
 " It isn't decent," replied he. " I know you are so 
 innocent that you don't think of those things. But it's my 
 
 56
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 duty to protect you. I won't have men commenting on my 
 wife's person." 
 
 " But, Dick," protested she, " this isn't a low-cut dress. 
 It's higher than those I usually wear. It has bands across 
 the shoulders and a real back " 
 
 " Then change all your dresses. You must not make 
 yourself conspicuous." 
 
 " Conspicuous ! The other women wear much lower-cut 
 dresses than I do." 
 
 " I know about such things,'/ said he peremptorily. 
 " I don't believe in low-neck dresses anyhow. What 
 business has a good woman flaunting her charms rousing 
 in other men thoughts she ought to rouse in her husband 
 only ? " 
 
 " Don't you think it's all a matter of custom? " she said 
 persuasively. She was not convinced, or even shaken. But 
 she admired the shrewdness of his argument. The reason 
 she had never grown to dislike him was that even in his 
 prejudices he was always plausible, and not in his nar- 
 rowest narrowness was he ever petty. " Now really, Dick, 
 if that were carried out logically, a woman'd have to cover 
 her face and not speak, for often it's a woman's voice that 
 charms a man " with a little laugh " and once in a long 
 while what she says." 
 
 " I would carry it out logically," replied he promptly, 
 " if I had my way. That reminds me. You're away from 
 home very often these days, I notice. You're over at the 
 club a great deal." 
 
 " The weather's been so fine, everybody goes." 
 
 " I've no objection to your going occasionally. But af- 
 ter all the place for a good woman is at home." 
 
 She thought so too, as a general principle; home un- 
 doubtedly was the place for a good woman, or any sort 
 
 57
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 of woman, or for a man; that was to her mind the mean- 
 ing of home the most attractive, the most magnetic spot 
 on earth. However, the Vaughan place was not " home." 
 She could not discuss this with him, so she simply an- 
 swered, " But I get bored here alone and with nothing 
 to do. And nobody '11 come at this time of year, with 
 something on at the club every day and evening." 
 
 " You don't even stay home to meals." 
 
 " Neither do you." 
 
 " But I haven't Winchie to look after." 
 
 " He plays with the other children at the kindergarten. 
 And Miss Brockholst can keep a child amused as I couldn't. 
 When I stay out to supper I see that Nanny or Lizzie 
 brings him home and puts him to bed. And I'm not out to 
 supper often." 
 
 " I don't like it," said Dick imperiously. 
 
 " You ought to come with me," rej oined she. " But you 
 never will." 
 
 " I've no time for foolishness. And I'm sure you haven't 
 either." 
 
 " What ought I to do with myself? " 
 
 " What other good women do. Our mothers didn't hang 
 about clubs." 
 
 " No. But these aren't pioneer times. Things are en- 
 tirely different nowadays. That was why " She did not 
 finish. She did not wish to remind him how he had re- 
 fused to let her either share his life or make a life of her 
 own. She refrained because the subject might be un- 
 pleasant to him. It was no longer unpleasant to her; she 
 now had not the least desire to share his life, was in a way 
 content to drift aimlessly along with the rest of the aimless 
 women. 
 
 " Yes, many of the women are different nowadays," 
 58
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 said he. " The more reason for my wife's conducting her- 
 self as a woman should." 
 
 She flushed with sudden anger. " Why can't you ac- 
 cept a woman as a human being?" exclaimed she. "Oh, 
 you men tempting compelling us to be hypocrites 
 and making our natural impulses rot into vices because 
 they have to be hid away in the dark." 
 
 " We will not quarrel," said he, in the calm superior 
 tone he always took when their talk touched on the two 
 sexes. " I simply say I will not tolerate my wife's being 
 a club lounger." 
 
 To have answered would have been to say what must 
 precipitate a furious and futile quarrel. She kept silent, 
 with less effort than many women would have to make in 
 the circumstances. She had had the conventional feminine 
 training in self-suppression, that so often gives women the 
 seeming of duplicity and only too often imperceptibly leads 
 them into forming the habit of duplicity. She had also had 
 special training in self-concealment through having been 
 brought up austerely. She kept silent, and made up her 
 mind to obey. She had heard much talk among the women 
 at the club about the "rights of a wife"; but it had not 
 convinced her. She could not see that she, or any other 
 of the women married as was she, contributed to the family 
 anything that entitled her to oppose the husband's will as 
 to how it should be conducted. And she would have 
 scorned to get by cajolery what she could not have got 
 honestly. She was thus the good wife, not through fear of 
 him, for she was not a coward and he was not the sort of 
 small tyrant that makes the women and the children trem- 
 ble; nor was it because she was faithful to her marriage 
 vows, for she never thought of them. Her submissiveness 
 was entirely due to the agreement she had tacitly signed 
 
 59
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 the day she went back to him, after the talk with her 
 mother. In return for shelter and support she would be, 
 so far as she could, the kind of wife he wanted. 
 
 She kept away from the club, stayed at home; and soon 
 the telephone bell was ringing, and pleading voices were 
 giving the flattering proof that in her abrupt divorce from 
 the social life of the town the sense of loss was by no means 
 altogether on her side. And presently over came Sarah 
 Carpenter escorted by her big handsome brother, Shirley 
 Drummond, " as a committee of two," so Sarah put it, " to 
 investigate and report on your cruel and inhuman treat- 
 ment of us." It was dull, frightfully dull, at the club 
 house, she went on to explain. They did nothing but sit 
 round and try to guess why Courtney Vaughan had dropped 
 them. " And have you forgotten the flower show you were 
 planning? and the play you were going to organize? and 
 the Venetian fete ? " 
 
 " Oh, that was just talk," replied Courtney. " It's far 
 too hot. I'm resting, and looking after my boy. I'll be 
 over some afternoon soon." 
 
 Sarah pleaded and coaxed. Shirley took no part, but 
 sat on the veranda rail, his long legs swinging, his eyes on 
 the interior of the stravr hat he was turning round and 
 round between his hands. When Sarah realized that there 
 was unalterable resolution under Courtney's light and gay 
 laughing off of her entreaties, she bade Shirley wait there 
 for her and went to call on Molly Donaldson. Courtney 
 looked admiringly after Sarah's long willowy figure and 
 striking costume sunshade and hat, dress and stock- 
 ings and ties, all of various cool, harmonious shades 
 of red. 
 
 " Your sister always was pretty," said Courtney. " But 
 60
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 since she's married it seems to me she gets prettier all the 
 time." 
 
 " Marriage does bring out those women that don't go to 
 pieces/' said he. " I guess it's because they get the cour- 
 age to be more like themselves. Girls are such hypocrites 
 always posing. You were the only one I ever liked. You 
 weren't a hypocrite. Where you didn't dare be yourself 
 you simply kept quiet." 
 
 " I like your impudence attacking women for being 
 what you men compel." 
 
 " Maybe so," said he absently. " But I didn't come over 
 here in the hot sun to talk generalities. Look here, Court- 
 ney, there's something I've got to say to you." His good- 
 humored commonplace face was even redder than the heat 
 and his bulk for he wasn't a thin man warranted. His 
 voice was low and confused, yet suggested a man talking 
 against a mob and determined to be heard. " I've got to 
 tell you that I care for you and have ever since we used 
 to walk from high school together whenever some other 
 fellow didn't slip in ahead of me." 
 
 Courtney, puzzled, rapidly reviewed her conduct toward 
 Shirley the past two months since he came home from 
 Harvard Law School. She recalled nothing that could 
 have given him encouragement to this speech. " I should 
 hope you did like me," she said carelessly. " Of course, 
 we're good friends, as always." She rose. " Let's go over 
 to Donaldson's." Her tone and manner contained the sub- 
 tle warning to desist that reaches through the thickest skin 
 into the dullest brain. 
 
 " You know what I mean," said Shirley doggedly. 
 
 " Now listen to me while I make a proposition. You're 
 
 a sensible, up-to-date woman, and this is the twentieth 
 
 century, not the dark ages. I'm not as clever as some, 
 
 5 61
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 but neither am I as much the muttonhead as maybe you 
 think. Anyhow, I appreciate you." 
 
 " Drop it," said Courtney. 
 
 " I want you to get a divorce and marry me." 
 
 He spoke as tranquilly as if they were at a dance and 
 he were asking her for the next two-step. She stared. 
 " Well, I never did ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " I see you're surprised," said he. " I've thought about 
 it so much that I've got used to it." 
 
 " This is something new a woman getting proposals 
 after she's married, just as if she wasn't." She was laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 "Why not?" retorted he, unruffled. "Nobody looks 
 on marriage as the finish any more. I don't think you love 
 me not for a minute. You've got better brains than I 
 have a lot better, for I'll admit I'm pretty slow. But 
 you've tried brains and you see they don't amount to much 
 when it comes down to solid living. You don't love me 
 now. But, Courtney, if you'll marry me, I'll guarantee to 
 treat you and the youngster so that you'll simply have to 
 love me." 
 
 She was slowly recovering from her utter amazement, 
 when he spoke those last words in his simple, honest way 
 with his love in his voice, in his eyes love that makes 
 bright the dullest face, quickens into bloom the barrenest 
 fancy, puts sweet music in the most tedious voice. Her 
 words of rebuke dropped back unsaid, her throat choked 
 up and tears welled into her eyes. While she was still 
 trying to control this sudden treachery of her hungry heart, 
 he went on: "I was away to college when I heard you 
 were engaged. I cut exams, and everything and rustled 
 out here. But I saw you were dead in love. It nearly 
 knocked me out. Then it occurred to me that marrying's 
 
 62
 
 onh r a trial go and that in a few years I might get you and 
 you'd be all the better for the experience." 
 
 What he said did not shock her. But she was shocked 
 that she was not shocked. Still, it isn't easy to meet a 
 wholly new form of attack; and less easy is it to be stiff 
 and stern with a person one has known always and liked 
 always a person one knows to be through and through 
 sincere and profoundly respectful. " Shirley/' said she, 
 " you mean well and you are slow so, you don't realize 
 that what you've said is perfectly outrageous." 
 
 "Why?" demanded he. " Is it an insult to a woman 
 to tell her you love her? Is it a crime to let her know that, 
 if she isn't suited, there's some one waiting to try to help 
 her get suited ? Where's the outrage ? " 
 
 " I don't know just where," admitted she. " But I 
 feel that it is an outrage that you've taken advantage of 
 our friendship." 
 
 " On the contrary, I've shown I am your friend ; ready 
 to stand by you. I haven't laid a finger on you, and, so 
 help me God, Courtney, I couldn't try. I'm that old fogey, 
 at least. And I haven't tried to wheedle or win you 
 have I? I just made a plain statement that if you want me, 
 I'm waiting and eager. I've seen how things are with 
 you " 
 
 " You've seen nothing of the kind ! " Her pride and 
 her loyalty were in arms now. 
 
 He looked at her with eyes that were as honest as an 
 open sky. " You don't love your husband, nor he you," 
 he said. " If you did, you'd not see as little of each other 
 as you do." 
 
 " Shirley, it's cowardly to say those things," she began 
 angrily. 
 
 " Oh, I'd say 'em to him, if it wasn't that I'm afraid 
 63
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 you'd have to suffer for it. You needn't get mad. I've 
 been so damn miserable this past week, not seeing you, 
 that I don't care what happens to me. I know why you 
 don't come over any more. He's shut you up here. I saw 
 it in his face that night." 
 
 " It was about time he stopped me, I see," said she 
 quickly. " Evidently lie understood better than I did. But 
 you mustn't go away thinking I'm obeying a jailer. Do 
 you suppose I'd stay here at the request of a man unless 
 I cared for him ? " 
 
 " Certainly," replied he. " A right sort woman'll put 
 up with most anything to avoid a row. You needn't try 
 to fool me, Courtney. I know everyone knows the 
 truth." 
 
 " The truth ! " cried Courtney. " How dare you sit 
 there insulting me ! " 
 
 " Now, Courtney ! " begged he. 
 
 " Go join your sister and take her back without com- 
 ing here." 
 
 She felt she ought to leave him; but her hungry heart 
 would not let her go. She lingered, looking at him angrily, 
 watching the utter love in his countenance and enjoying 
 it. He slowly dropped from the veranda rail and faced 
 her. His look was that same mingling of gentle and fierce 
 qualities that makes a bulldog's face fascinating. " If 
 I've said anything I shouldn't, I beg your pardon," said 
 he. " But I stick to my proposition. You can take it or 
 leave it now, or next year or whenever you like. It's you 
 or nobody for me." He put out his hand. 
 
 She clasped her hands behind her. But she had to lower 
 her head that he might not see " and misunderstand " 
 her swimming eyes, her trembling lip. 
 
 " Please shake hands," he begged. 
 64
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " That hurts/' said he shakily, and she turned hastily 
 away. " But," he added, " I'm used to hurts." 
 
 He lingered, embarrassed. At length, with a huge sigh, 
 he descended from the veranda and plodded across the lawn 
 toward the hedge. She darted upstairs and shut herself 
 in her room and cried, lying on the bed face down. She 
 felt guilty; would not the right sort of woman have been 
 able to meet such talk from a man, even a Shirley Drum- 
 mond, with effective fiery resentment? But she knew it 
 was not her guilt that she was weeping for. No, her tears 
 were flowing from the wounds in her heart the wounds 
 she had thought healed. She had not the faintest feeling 
 in the least akin to love for Shirley Drummond. She never 
 could love him. She had always avoided him as far as her 
 instinct against hurting people's feelings permitted. His 
 grotesque proposal, in itself, appealed only to her sense of 
 humor. But at the mere sound of loving words, words of 
 considerate tenderness, how her whole being vibrated ! It 
 terrified her, this heart of hers suddenly and fiercely in- 
 surgent. 
 
 The next evening after supper she interrupted Dick in 
 the library. " Richard," she said gravely, " I want you to 
 come upstairs with me a few minutes." 
 
 " Certainly," said he. " Directly." And he worked 
 on and would have continued to work until bedtime had 
 she not insisted. 
 
 " No. Right away, please." 
 
 Pie glanced up. Her eyes prevented him from return- 
 ing to his calculations. " All right," said he. 
 
 Her sitting room was changed into a painting and draw- 
 ing exhibition. On the walls, on tables, on sofas and chairs, 
 
 65
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and leaning against the baseboard were pictures and plans 
 of interiors and of gardens, many in colors, more in black 
 and white, most of all in ground-plan drawings. 
 
 " What's this? " said he. 
 
 " You were right about my going to the club too much/' 
 replied she. " I shall stay at home more. But I must have 
 something to occupy me. These are my plans for making 
 over the house and grounds. Please don't try to stop me. 
 I am going to explain it all to you, and I ask you to be 
 considerate and polite enough to listen." 
 
 Her manner was compelling; the exhibit was interest- 
 ing. And he looked and listened as she talked, rapidly, 
 intensely, yet clearly and calmly, describing the whole 
 scheme in minutest detail, not forgetting expense which 
 she demonstrated would be small. He asked several ques- 
 tions enough to show that he was giving his attention. 
 When she finished she was trembling all over. He continued 
 to inspect the water colors that showed how things would 
 look when the changes had been made. After a while he 
 smiled and nodded at her. " Very clever," he said. " Real- 
 ly, I had no idea you could do anything like this." 
 
 Her mouth and throat were dry; her eyes gleamed. 
 She was giving out the force that flows from a soul in des- 
 perate earnest the force that sweeps away any opposition 
 not already aggressive, before it has a chance to gather. 
 " I may try it? " she asked. 
 
 " That's another matter," reflected he aloud. " I 
 ought to say no, for I'm sure you'll be disappointed and 
 your mistakes'll nave to be covered up." Now that he was 
 reminded of it he was ashamed of the curt ill-humored way 
 he had issued his orders about her going to the club. 
 " But you can only learn by trying. So, I've no objections 
 to your making a start" He laid his hands on her shoul- 
 
 66
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ders. " A little at a time remember ! " he cautioned. " A 
 very little." 
 
 With that unconsciousness of her being intelligent 
 enough to see his thoughts in his expression an uncon- 
 sciousness to which she had long since got used, but never 
 hardened he was showing that he wished to refuse her, 
 but that, being taken by surprise, he in his kindness of 
 heart could not frame a pretext. His manner took from her 
 all desire or ability to thank him. " I'll be careful," said 
 she. 
 
 The smile in his eyes was like a parent's at a precocious 
 child. He kissed her, patted her cheek, went back to his 
 work. He had read the anthropologies, all written by 
 men. Anthropology being out of his line, he accepted as 
 exact science the prejudice and baseless assertion and mis- 
 leading " statistics " there set down as " laws." Nature 
 had made man active, woman passive ; thus, action in woman 
 was contrary to nature, was inevitably abortive and whim- 
 sical, was never, except by rare accident, valuable. " She's 
 clever," thought he, by way of finis to the subject. " But 
 she'll soon tire of this thing and drop it. Well, I suppose 
 a few more years '11 wash away the smatter she got at 
 college, and this restlessness of hers will yield to nature, 
 and she'll be content and happy in her womanhood. A few 
 more children would have an excellent effect. She's suffer- 
 ing from the storing up of the energy that ought to have 
 outlet in childbearing. As grandfather often said, it's a 
 dreadful mistake, educating women beyond their sphere. 
 But it hasn't done the dear child any permanent harm. 
 She's far too womanly."
 
 BY the time Winchie was four years old and in looks 
 and health, in truthfulness and self-reliance a credit to her 
 she had about completed the transformation of house 
 and grounds. The Vaughan place was no longer an exam- 
 ple of those distressing attempts to divorce beauty from 
 its supreme quality, use, that are the delight of the un- 
 fortunates whose esthetic faculty has been paralyzed by 
 the mediaeval monastic education still blighting the modern 
 world. It was, throughout, beauty applied to use, use 
 achieved in beauty. She had no theory in doing this; she 
 followed the leadings of a courageous and unspoiled taste 
 which was thoroughly practical, as practical as that of the 
 artists of the age of Pericles, a taste which abhorred the 
 bizarre and the blatant. The results would not have 
 pleased Colonel Achilles; they would not have stirred the 
 enthusiasm of anyone who has been enslaved by false edu- 
 cation to admire only what has been approved by tradi- 
 tion. But charm no one could have denied. Winter and 
 summer the house, livable and restful in every corner, 
 bloomed within for over no other part of nature is man's 
 dominion so complete as over the plant kingdom. From 
 early spring through the last warm days of autumn the 
 grounds were delightful to behold; it was as if summer 
 were living there freely and at ease, with no restraint 
 upon her except keeping her clear of the restraint of her 
 own profuse and careless litter. In winter the lawns and 
 clumps and hedges were by no means dead or filled only 
 with evergreen's mortuary suggestions; there are rpany 
 
 68
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 plants that bloom with bright berries and leaves in the 
 midst of snow and ice, and Courtney knew about them. 
 Winter indoors seemed a millennium in which winter and 
 summer lived amicably together. There were snows and 
 icy storms without, huge open fires within ; the windows 
 were gay with blossoming plants, and from a conservatory 
 she built and stocked at surprisingly small cost there 
 came cut flowers for vases and bowls as well as plants that 
 replaced those which had done service and needed rest. 
 Courtney was one of those for whom things grow; her own 
 vivid life seemed to radiate throughout her surroundings 
 and infect all things with the passion to live vividly. With 
 the flowers, as with Winchie, she was patient, intelligent, 
 understanding never expecting too much, always encour- 
 aging to the least disposition to develop. 
 
 All this wonder of transformation was not wrought in 
 a day, nor by dreaming. It came as the result of tireless 
 and incessant labor of brain and hand. She had dreamed 
 her dream; she was determined that it should be realized. 
 Failure did not daunt her; it taught her. Nor was she 
 halted by her sense, rather than experience, of a latent 
 reluctance in Richard about giving her money he wanted 
 for the laboratory; for, as his work there expanded, its 
 expenses grew rapidly heavier. She did not ask him for 
 the money; she did not let him know she needed it; she 
 got along without it. In such work as she was doing it 
 takes a vast deal of thought, of planning and contriving, 
 to take the place of money. She did that necessary think- 
 ing. When she could get a little money, she spent it to 
 amazing advantage; when she could not, she went on with- 
 out it. Some of her most satisfying results came through 
 the work made necessary by lack of money. Very power- 
 ful, too, was the influence of this upon her character in 
 
 G9
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 developing self-reliance and self-respect which come only 
 through successful independent action. 
 
 Now, after nearly three years of days of toil that was 
 also play, since she loved it, she saw, but a short distance 
 ahead, a time when she would have little to do beyond 
 taking care that Jimmie and Bill kept the grounds up, and 
 that Nanny and Mazie and Lizzie did their work prop- 
 erly in the house. There would be minor changes, new 
 features; but the task as a task was almost done. And, 
 in spite of Nanny's opposition, she had put the household 
 on a systematic basis, so that with a little daily attention 
 every part of the routine went smoothly, each servant 
 doing his or her share of the work in the same way always 
 and at the same time. She was about to have many hours 
 each day liberated and this, in a quiet place, where time 
 refuses to take wings, but insists upon being definitely 
 employed every moment of it. 
 
 What should she do next? She had grown through her 
 work. She had educated her originality and her instinctive 
 good taste, had educated them so intelligently that origi- 
 nality had not lost its courage nor good taste its breadth. 
 It had not " settled " her to make a home, as it " settles " 
 a human or lower animal that acts largely from instinct 
 and example and that conceives a home to be chiefly a place 
 to eat and sleep. On the contrary, it had unsettled her 
 the more. Her character had not changed. Character 
 never does change; it simply develops, responding to its 
 environment like any other growing thing. Her character 
 had developed. 
 
 What next? What should she do to occupy hand and 
 brain, now grown far more skillful? What should she do 
 with heart? It was now grown far bolder in its dreams 
 and longings; and from time to time it was giving ever 
 
 70
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 more imperious notice that not much longer would it be 
 content with solicitude about a child and makeshift inter- 
 est in interior decoration and landscape gardening, but 
 would demand its right to the fullness of experience. She 
 temporized with these ominous threatenings. She hoped 
 there would be more children for children would com- 
 pel her. From Richard, the absorbed, the well pleased 
 with his " settled, womanly wife," she expected nothing 
 and wished nothing. The routine of matrimony had be- 
 come as unconscious as breathing or winking. Her sense 
 of moral obligation to him was also automatic; she felt 
 its restraint not definitely as the wife of a certain Richard 
 Vaughan, but generally as a woman of the married estate. 
 She knew little about him beyond what he thought of her, 
 of marriage and that knowledge killed all further inter- 
 est in him. Ke knew nothing whatever about her beyond 
 the surface her physical charm, enhanced by good taste 
 in dress. The comfort of his home and its order, the sur- 
 prising success of her " tinkerings " with house and 
 grounds made small impression upon him. The changes 
 had come about gradually; and he was absorbed at the 
 Smoke House. Before the next change was made he had 
 got used to the one preceding, and had come to regard it 
 as something that had always existed. And she was not 
 one of those who see to it that they get full credit by pre- 
 ceding, accompanying, and following every act with blast 
 of trumpets. She did things because she liked to do them, 
 just as she learned because she liked to know. She worked 
 without friction or bluster. Also, having dismissed him 
 from her inner, her real life, as he had dismissed her from 
 his, it never occurred to her to talk to him about herself 
 and her work was herself. 
 
 What next? She often asked the question as she 
 71
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 paused to look about her and saw so short a distance ahead 
 the end of her task. But she was not troubled because 
 she could not answer the question. She waited with a 
 certain confident tranquillity until an answer should be 
 imperative. Meanwhile One look at her was enough 
 to convince that her lot had been better than the lot of the 
 gay, discontented young married women of Wenona society 
 who pitied her because of her solitude. They did not 
 realize that not only were they unhappy, but also were 
 without the capacity to enjoy happiness if it should offer, 
 had lost the capacity as utterly as a deaf man the capacity 
 to enjoy music. One may abuse intellect or heart with 
 impunity no more than body. Transgression and punish- 
 ment are simply cause and effect. There were times when 
 Courtney wished she could be gayer; but at least she was 
 never bored, never did the things that do not amuse in 
 the doing, and have an aftermath of disgust. She had 
 an intense, ever intenser desire to live life to its utter- 
 most limits of interest and joy; but that did not seem to 
 Iher to mean changing her clothes many times a day, rush- 
 ing from house to house, from party to party, gossiping, 
 eating indigestible sauces and desserts, and playing bridge. 
 She knew what she did not want. She did not know what 
 she wanted did not dare inquire. She feared life was a 
 good deal of a cheat not altogether a cheat, not by any 
 means but still a raiser of longings it had no way to sat- 
 isfy, of expectations it had no way to fulfill. 
 
 She fancied herself little changed since her marriage. 
 And she was hardly changed at all physically. But in 
 mind she was a woman full grown a rarity indeed in our 
 civilization which tends to make odalisques and parasites 
 out of the women it does not crush under toil. She was 
 ready for a strong part in life, should opportunity offer. 
 
 72
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Meanwhile, she was living her placid routine with the 
 originality and interest with which intelligence can invest 
 the humblest, the most usual acts. 
 
 She wrote in her commonplace book this sentence: 
 " Love is a tune we whistle in the dark of our alone- 
 ness to keep up our courage." 
 
 In Winchie's fourth year, in the spring, Judge Bene- 
 dict had an illness so severe that Courtney went to the 
 farm, taking Winchie with her to stay until the crisis 
 passed. It was nearly three weeks before decision for life 
 was rendered and she could return home. 
 
 She had been gone during what ought to have been 
 her busiest season. She rather expected to find the place 
 in some confusion. Instead, so far advanced toward com- 
 pletion were her plans, and so thoroughly had she trained 
 Jimmie and his son Bill and the house servants, everything 
 was well under way. All her instructions, both those given 
 before she left and those written to Jimmie from her 
 father's had been carried out exactly. They had worked 
 as hard as if she had been there, had done it because they 
 loved her for only love can arouse and inspire the slug- 
 gish energies of those who serve. The lawns were trim 
 and freshly green, the walks were covered with new tan- 
 bark ; and its red brown harmonized with the colors of lawn 
 and trees as its odor harmonized with the odors from the 
 grass and the foliage, from the brilliant flowers in great 
 beds at either side of the house. All the windows were gay 
 with boxes of blooming plants. Railings of verandas and 
 balconies were draped with mats of budding creepers. 
 The gardens the beds in the lawns and along the veran- 
 das the edges of walks and drives the thickets and 
 
 73
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 trellises all were blossoming and odorous. Lovely con- 
 trasts of light and shade, delicious perfumes, birds flash- 
 ing to and fro, singing in the trees and bushes the 
 Vaughan place illustrated what Pope meant when he called 
 landscape gardening nature plus a soul. The soul that 
 had given form to nature's color and perfume was Court- 
 ney's. 
 
 As the carriage drove down the deeply shaded main 
 drive from highway to drive-front porch, she gazed round 
 with a creator's pride and joy and love. She had two 
 children Winchie and this lovely place. All the serv- 
 ants gathered to welcome her all except old Nanny, who 
 had never forgiven and who resented the changes as sacri- 
 lege. They watched eagerly for signs of approval. Her 
 expression, as she looked at what they had done, then at 
 them, the unsteady voice in which she said " Beautiful 
 beautiful " went straight to their hearts. Within the house, 
 everywhere open wide to June's enchantment, there was 
 evidence of the same creative impulse order without stiff- 
 ness, art without any trace of art's labor. 
 
 Winchie would go straightway to look at his rabbits; 
 she went upstairs alone to bathe and change after the 
 dust}' journey, telling Lizzie to bring him as soon as he 
 had satisfied himself that his rabbits were all right. The 
 door of the bedroom immediately across the hall from hers 
 stood open, and with the thorough housekeeper's instinct 
 she glanced in. It was the room Dick usually occupied. 
 Instead of Dick's belongings she saw, spread about, toilet 
 articles and clothing strange to her. She entered. On the 
 bureau she instantly noted a pair of tasteful silver and 
 ebony brushes ; the monogram was " B. G." She opened 
 a drawer; neckties, more attractive than any she had ever 
 seen, filled two compartments to overflowing with their 
 
 74
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 patterned silks and linens. In the third compartment sev- 
 eral dozen fine handkerchiefs; the monogram on them was 
 again " B. G." 
 
 She opened the nearest closet. On forms hung perhaps 
 a dozen coats; she recognized the cut and materials as 
 foreign. Beneath was a long row of boots, shoes, pumps, 
 slippers, all of the kind a woman, of taste at once knows 
 and appreciates. As she was closing the door there swung 
 out from the hook high up a suit of beautiful striped linen 
 pajamas monogramed in gray and faintly perfumed with 
 lavendar. She v/ent on into the adjoining front room the 
 room Dick had used as a study. Obviously, he no longer 
 used it. The books of fiction and poetry the big silver 
 cigarette box the gaudily trimmed silk dressing gown 
 flung carelessly on a chair none of these belonged to him 
 or suggested his studious and rather Spartan temperament. 
 
 In the hall she saw Lizzie just come with Winchie. 
 " Who's in these rooms ? " asked she. 
 
 " Mr. Gallatin," replied Lizzie. " Mr. Vaughan put 
 him in here and moved down to the suite at the Smoke 
 House." 
 
 Lizzie's tone indicated that she was assuming Courtney 
 knew all about Mr. Gallatin. That tone put her on guard. 
 " When did he come ? " asked she, feeling her way. 
 
 " Two weeks ago yesterday. He's very nice. He's as 
 particular as you about his things, but it's a pleasure to 
 look after them." 
 
 Had Richard forgotten to tell her he expected this Mr. 
 Gallatin? Or had she, fallen long since into his absent- 
 minded habit, failed to hear as he told her? Was it a 
 chance visit from some college or scientific acquaintance? 
 The character of the stranger's installation the quantity 
 of clothing did not speak for a brief chance visit. The 
 
 75
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 quality of the clothing, the taste, the care, the worldly in- 
 terest and knowledge it suggested, were all against the 
 idea of " B. G.'s " being a devotee of science. At least, 
 if there were such scientists, this was the first she had 
 known of it. After she had changed for the evening, and 
 had given Winchie his supper and sent him to bed, she 
 went into the stranger's quarters again. These personal 
 belongings of his attracted her; they so clearly revealed 
 taste and refinement, a refinement unusual in a man; they 
 so strongly hinted a personality more in sympathy with 
 her own passionate joy in life than with Richard's intel- 
 lectual abstractions. In the early days of their married life 
 Richard had been rather particular about himself; but he 
 had got more and more indifferent, no longer shaved every 
 day, was at times distinctly slovenly. " B. G. is a bach- 
 elor/' thought she. " Married men except those that are 
 at heart bachelors soon lose this sort of gloss." Usually 
 she had not the faintest interest in anything concerning 
 Richard. But this man interested her. 
 
 She was in the sitting room downstairs, playing and 
 singing in an undertone when Richard came. " Hello," 
 said he. And he kissed the cheek she turned to a reachable 
 angle. His manner was as casual as hers. It was their 
 habitual manner, and long had been. The difference be- 
 tween his habit and hers was that his yielded from time to 
 time to the intermittent gusts of desire, while hers remained 
 always tranquilly cool. " Your father's quite all right 
 again? " was his careless first question. 
 " I hope so. I think so." 
 
 He was not merely looking at her now, he was seeing 
 her. His eyes lighted up and into his voice came the woo- 
 ing note. " Glad you've not dropped into my sloppy ways/' 
 said he. He was admiring her pale-green chiffon dress 
 
 76
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 that left the slender column of her throat bare and her 
 forearms, but almost concealed her shoulders. " Gallatin 
 won't think we're altogether barbarians here. He dresses 
 for supper. He's at it now." 
 
 His eyes showed that he was not thinking at all of 
 Gallatin, but of her thoughts which did not leave her en- 
 tirely indifferent, but gave her an unwonted sense of vague 
 distaste, after her long absence and complete freedom. 
 As he moved toward her she said: "There's time for you 
 to dress. And you need a shave badly. Is he from the 
 East? " 
 
 " From Philadelphia by way of Pittsburg. He's been 
 doing a little chemistry in his amateurish way in the mills 
 there. I'd not have him about if I didn't need his money." 
 
 Dick was coming on toward her again. " The bell will 
 ring in ten minutes," she reminded him. Perhaps through 
 perverseness, the impulse to evade was a little stronger. 
 
 But he came, put his arms round her, kissed her again, 
 this time with undivided attention. She lost the impulse 
 to evade, submitted, smiled amicably, and, to extricate her- 
 self, rose. The lines of her dress brought out the perfec- 
 tion of her small, slim figure; its color harmonized with 
 her deep-sea eyes and with the delicate bronze of her skin. 
 " What a beauty you are ! " he exclaimed. " No wonder 
 I'm so proud of you." 
 
 Usually she was indifferent, without being conscious of 
 it ; this evening of her return from freedom to married life 
 she felt her indifference. She said coldly, " If you're going 
 to dress " 
 
 " A shave'll be enough," protested Dick. " Your 
 finery '11 more than make up for my absence of it. Bach- 
 elors like Gallatin have to sleek themselves up. They've 
 still got their brides to win." 
 6 77
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " You'll be late." 
 
 " I want you to be extra civil to Gallatin. He's likely 
 to get bored in this quiet place after a few months. He's 
 rather gay, I imagine. At least he used to be. And I don't 
 want him to pull out." 
 
 " After a few months," repeated Courtney, interested. 
 " Why, how long is he to stay ? " 
 
 " A year or so perhaps longer." 
 
 " Here in the house ! " 
 
 " I can't put him down at the laboratory, so near my 
 secrets. I'm not going to let him in on everything. That's 
 part of our bargain. We're partners, you understand." 
 
 " Here in the house ! " exclaimed Courtney again. The 
 very idea of an outsider as spectator at what was going 
 on there made her acutely conscious of it, all in an in- 
 stant. 
 
 " Oh, you'll like him at least, you must for my sake. 
 He doesn't amount to much, but he's agreeable well man- 
 nered good family entertaining in a light way." 
 
 " There goes the bell." 
 
 Dick rushed away to shave. He had been gone but a 
 few moments when Courtney was roused from her agitated 
 reverie by the sense of some one in the room. Near the 
 threshold stood the newcomer, who was to be a factor in 
 her intimate life, a spectator of it, whether she willed or 
 no, for " a year or so perhaps longer." He was a blond 
 young man, fair and smooth of skin, his hair almost golden. 
 He certainly was not handsome; only his coloring and a 
 pair of frank gray eyes saved him from downright home- 
 liness. As their eyes met, his heavy, conventional face was 
 suddenly transformed by as charming a smile as she had 
 ever seen. He was of about the medium height, his figure 
 neither powerful nor weak. He wore a dinner suit of dark 
 
 78
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 gray, fashionably draped upon him, pumps, gray socks 
 that matched his gray silk tie, a plaited French shirt, an 
 unusually tall, perfectly fitting collar. If he had not been 
 so well and so tastefuly dressed, he would have attracted 
 no attention anywhere unless he had smiled. That smile 
 meant a frank nature, a kind and generous heart rarities 
 to make their possessor distinguished in whatever company. 
 
 Courtney, with woman's swift grasp of surface details, 
 noted all this and more while she was advancing with ex- 
 tended hand and saying, " Mr. Gallatin, is it not? " 
 
 He was obviously confused and embarrassed. Her natu- 
 ral, self-unconscious manner encouraged him candidly to 
 explain. " I feel very shy," said he, speaking with a strong 
 Eastern accent, " and very guilty. Shy because, before I 
 came, I had somehow got the impression Vaughan was not 
 married and that we were to keep bachelor hall. I was 
 astonished to find he had a wife." His eyes added with- 
 out impertinence that he was amazed and dazzled now that 
 he saw the wife. " I feel guilty," he went on, " because I 
 seem to be thrusting myself in upon you. But Vaughan 
 assured me I'd not be intruding." 
 
 " You needn't trouble yourself about that," said she. 
 She liked his accent; it was pleasant as a novelty, and 
 rather amusing. She liked his manners. They were of 
 the best type of conventional manners, the type affected 
 by fashionable people everywhere, the type that is excelled 
 only by the kind of manners of which it is an artful and 
 insincere imitation the simple manners of those rare self- 
 unconscious people who have the courage or, rather, the 
 lack of fear to be natural and spontaneous. " We'll not 
 wait for Richard," she said, as the supper bell rang. " He's 
 got a great deal to do before he can come." 
 
 She had just finished the sentence when he entered, ex- 
 79
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 actly as he was when he went out. " I forgot I'd taken all 
 my razors down to the laboratory/' he explained. 
 
 During supper he and Gallatin talked chemistry; that 
 is, he talked and Gallatin listened listened and ate. 
 Courtney noted with increased liking for him that he 
 had a vigorous appetite and that he liked the things they 
 had to eat. But her thoughts soon wandered away to 
 her gardening, to retouching her plans for bringing the 
 grounds a little nearer her ideal than they had been the 
 summer before. When the men lighted cigars, she went 
 to the veranda to stroll up and down in the moonlight. She 
 forgot everything unpleasant in the delight of being home 
 again. As she looked about her, her heart was singing 
 the nightingale's song. She was startled and her heart's 
 song was stopped by the newcomer's voice. " Vaughan's 
 gone to the library," said Gallatin. " Do you mind if I 
 walk with you? " 
 
 She did mind very much indeed. She had somehow 
 lost interest in him as soon as he ceased to be the mystery 
 B. G. She liked him well enough, admired his manners, 
 his really delicate tact in what must have been for him an 
 extremely difficult position. But she had got the impres- 
 sion that Dick was right in estimating him as a " don't- 
 amount- to-much." And just now he was distinctly a kill- 
 joy. However, she acquiesced courteously, though with, 
 no unnecessary cordiality. She felt that now was the time 
 to get him in the habit of respecting her privacy; she could 
 establish a barrier now, where an attempt to establish it 
 later on would offend him. At best, the barrier would be 
 a poor enough makeshift; he would be bound to see, to 
 make her feel uncomfortable about things she had been able 
 to keep unconscious of or indifferent to. Still, she was far 
 too generous to blame him. 
 
 80
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Do you have much spare time? " she asked, her man- 
 ner more cordial than if she had not been wishing him out 
 of the house. 
 
 " A great deal. Vaughan realizes I'm only an ama- 
 teur." 
 
 " I'll take you over to the club and introduce you. 
 You'll find some very agreeable people." 
 
 " Thank you. It has been rather dull these two weeks 
 especially of evenings." 
 
 " I don't see how you had the courage to come." 
 
 " I had to," said he, in the curt way in which a young 
 man gives himself the pleasure of hinting a secret he can- 
 not with good taste give himself the pleasure of telling. 
 
 She glanced across the lake at the twinkling lamps of 
 the town. " The women over there will fill every minute 
 you give them," said she. " You see, most of our men are 
 busy all day and tired in the evening. You'll be a lion." 
 
 " That sounds attractive. I'm amazed at the West. I 
 had no idea civilization was so advanced." 
 
 The implied condescension in this amused her. But 
 she merely said: " Oh, I guess the same sort of people are 
 much alike the world over." 
 
 The conversation languished through a to her tiresome 
 discussion of differences of accent, dress, manners, and such 
 trifles until he happened to say: " This place of yours here 
 was a revelation to me. I've been talking to Vaughan 
 abovit it admiring it. He tells me his grandfather's re- 
 sponsible for it. He must have been an extraordinary 
 Plan." 
 
 " He was," said Courtney, in a queer voice. She glanced 
 o^t over her creation and the blood burned in her cheeks. 
 
 " He'd certainly be proud of the way you keep it up." 
 
 Her sense of humor had come to the rescue; besides, 
 81
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 vanity was not a dominating emotion with her who had too 
 much else to think about to have much time for thought of 
 self. " I'm fond of gardening/' was her placid noncom- 
 mittal reply to his compliment. 
 
 " Yes, Vaughan's grandfather must have been n won- 
 der," Gallatin went on reflectively. He had paused, was 
 leaning on the rail, looking out over the lawns and gar- 
 dens. " I don't mind confessing to you if you'll not tell 
 your husband that I'm a chemist only by profession, with 
 landscape gardening as my real passion." 
 
 Courtney glanced at him with interested eyes. 
 
 " I know a little something about it," he continued. 
 " I learned long ago in a general way that a personality 
 is always revealed in any work, and I at once looked for 
 the personality in this place. That old man must have been 
 an artist. ... I can't reconcile these grounds with the por- 
 trait of him in the library." 
 
 Courtney was smiling to herself. A thrill of pride and 
 pleasure was running through her. She began to like Basil 
 Gallatin, to feel that he was by no means commonplace, but 
 a man of breadth and artistic instinct, something at least 
 of the man of the big world, not merely the man of the 
 little world of well-cut manners and clothes. 
 
 " That portrait is of a stern, narrow man strong but 
 conventional," he went on, confirming her more sympathetic 
 judgment of him. " This place the house as well as the 
 grounds shows a very different individuality. It's femi- 
 nine and sensuous and poetical. Yes, it's distinctly femi- 
 nine and delightfully disdainful of the conventional of 
 everything and anything ' cut and dried.' I don't mean 
 the details the things you're probably responsible for 
 and they're very charming. But I mean the whole concep- 
 tion so free, so daring, and so lovely. Yet Vaughan tells 
 
 82
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 me that the old gentleman made the plans himself and su- 
 perintended their carrying out. It's very curious. Don't 
 you think so ? " 
 
 " I hadn't thought about it." 
 
 " You're not interested ? " 
 
 " Why do you say so ? " 
 
 " Your tone. I suppose a man is tedious when he gets 
 on his hobby. I noticed you were bored when we were 
 talking chemistry at supper." 
 
 " I wasn't bored. I simply wasn't listening." 
 
 " You don't like chemistry? " 
 
 " I did. But my enthusiasm cooled as I got interested 
 in other things." 
 
 Again the conversation languished. She suspected that 
 his opinion of her was rapidly declining. But some 
 instinct withheld her from making any effort whatever 
 to rehabilitate herself. Finally he said: "Well, I guess 
 I've disturbed you long enough. I'll go to my room and 
 read." 
 
 " I'm going up myself after I've had a little talk with 
 Nanny about the house." 
 
 As soon as he disappeared, she dismissed him from mind 
 with a few pleasant and friendly thoughts " he may not 
 have any great amount of brains or force, but he certainly 
 has good taste. He will be a distinct addition." When 
 she ascended to her sitting room, perhaps an hour later, she 
 halted on the threshold, coloring with anger. Dick was 
 seated at her center table reading a newspaper; Gallatin 
 was inspecting the books in one of her cases. Dick saw 
 her and said: " Come in. Don't mind us." 
 
 Courtney, struggling against her anger at this climax 
 to the impudent intrusion upon her privacy, remained upon 
 the threshold. 
 
 83
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Dick's eyes had dropped to his paper. " Gallatin," he 
 went on, "was complaining that the books in the library 
 were too old and solemn. So I brought him here. I knew 
 you'd laid in a stock of the frivolous kinds that grandfather 
 wouldn't have tolerated. Finding what you want, old 
 man ? " 
 
 When Dick's speaking warned him that Courtney had 
 come, Gallatin had startled guiltily and had hastily put 
 away the book he was examining. But he didn't turn 
 round until Richard directly addressed him. His face was 
 red and his eyes were down. " I feel sleepy," said he 
 awkwardly. " I'll look again some other time if Mrs. 
 Vaughan will let me." 
 
 " Certainly/' said Courtney, cold as a flower blooming 
 in the heart of a block of ice. 
 
 The case into which Gallatin had been delving was 
 filled with works on landscape gardening and interior deco- 
 ration modern works. As he almost stumbled from the 
 room he cast a further glance round at the walls walls cov- 
 ered with the original plans, sketches, and paintings Court- 
 ney had made for her revolution in house and grounds 
 very modern-looking drawings all, and unmistakably femi- 
 nine. She knew that the newcomer had her secret all 
 of it not merely the secret of her authorship, but also, 
 through it, the secret of this loveless married life in which 
 the husband had not the remotest idea who his wife wss 
 or what she had done. In passing her on his way out, 
 Gallatin visibly shrank and grew as white as he had been 
 red. She went to the window to compose herself, for her 
 blood was boiling in the greatest rage of her life. 
 
 Richard went to close the door after Gallatin, then 
 turned on her. " My dear," said he in his " grandfather " 
 tone, which sometimes amused and sometimes angered her, 
 
 84
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " you are so cold by nature that you don't realize it, but 
 you were almost insulting to Gallatin." 
 
 " I hope so ! " cried she, facing him. " How dared 
 you bring him in here without my permission? There are 
 not many women who would have accepted quietly your 
 bringing him to this house to live without a word to me. 
 I wish you to understand you cannot thrust him upon my 
 privacy. I don't allow anyone in this room without my 
 consent. It must not occur again." 
 
 " Now now my dear," said Dick soothingly. " All 
 that is very unreasonable. Of course, I have the right to 
 do as I please in my own house, and you're too good and 
 too sensible a wife to dispute it." 
 
 "I do dispute it!" she cried, her bosom heaving. 
 " This room is me I " 
 
 " What a tempest in a teapot ! Child, what has made 
 you take such a sudden dislike to him and so violent? He 
 isn't worth it an amiable, well-meaning, commonplace 
 chap. Really, you mustn't act this way. I've told you I 
 need him, and you must be polite to him." 
 
 " The impertinent, prying " 
 
 " I brought him here, Courtney," lie interrupted, mag- 
 isterially. " And I repeat, I had the right to do so." 
 
 Like most people of sweet and even temperament, she 
 lost all control of herself in this unprecedented rage, where 
 those in the habit of raging learn a sort of etiquette of bad 
 temper. " You had not the right ! " she declared, her eyes 
 blazing into his. " And if you ever do such a thing again, 
 I'll make it impossible for him to remain here. Do you 
 understand? " 
 
 " I do not quarrel," said Richard with gentle superior- 
 ity, " especially not with women with my wife." 
 
 "And why not? You call it chivalry. I call it con- 
 85
 
 tempt. And I detest it. If you could appreciate how ab- 
 surd you are, with your antiquated notions of superior and 
 inferior sex, of rights and duties, and all such nonsense ! " 
 
 Richard was in full armor of masculine patience against 
 feminine folly. " You are beside yourself, my dear. I'll 
 leave you until you are calm and courteous." And he added, 
 as if he were meting out severe but just punishment, " I 
 shall occupy the spare room." 
 
 Courtney gave a strange laugh. He turned away, went 
 into her bedroom. Presently he reappeared exclaiming: 
 " Why, where are my pajamas? I told Lizzie to put them 
 in there." 
 
 Courtney's smile was of the same quality of strange- 
 ness as her laugh of the moment before. " They are in the 
 spare room," said she. " I put them there before I came 
 in here." 
 
 He looked puzzled, vaguely discomfited. " Oh very 
 well." He glanced inquiringly at her, decided against the 
 trivial question he had been about to ask. " Good night." 
 He was again puzzled when what he heard about the loca- 
 tion of the pajamas was recalled and made vivid by the 
 sight of them on the turned-down bed in the spare room. 
 But for an instant only. He dismissed the trifle and went 
 to bed and to sleep. Husbands do not bother their heads 
 about the petty feminine eccentricities of wives. The mys- 
 tery of these transposed pajamas was too petty to detain a 
 masculine mind.
 
 VI 
 
 SHE did not go down to breakfast next morning until 
 Richard and his guest would surely be gone. Her anger 
 against the guest had evaporated because it was clearly 
 unjust. Her anger against Richard was subsiding because 
 it was clearly futile and also because she hadn't it in her 
 to foster harsh feeling. But there remained a dislike and 
 dread of Gallatin because he had her secret. She could 
 not think with composure of facing him, intolerably her 
 partner in a secret she was ashamed of, was hiding from 
 her husband, was trying to hide from herself. She would 
 be unable to look at him, to remember his existence even, 
 without at the same time having it thrust at her that her 
 married life was a sham, a hypocrisy. 
 
 Half an hour before dinner Richard came to her in the 
 big greenhouse she had built back of the library. As the 
 day was warm, all its doors and sashes were open. Rich- 
 ard sent Jimmie's son Bill away and said with agitated 
 abruptness : " Courtney, Gallatin seems determined to take 
 rooms over at the hotel." 
 
 " I'm glad of that," replied she. " It's much better." 
 She had not paused in her delicate task of extricating plants 
 from their winter bed and arranging them in a basket for 
 taking into the garden. 
 
 " But it's the first step toward going away. He'll 
 never put up with the hotel's discomforts." Her indiffer- 
 ence, her inattention made him impatient. " My dear, 
 you don't understand. I need him. I've branched out on 
 the strength of the capital he's supplying and has prom- 
 
 87
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ised to supply. If he leaves, I'll be in a hole. We'll have 
 to cut down in every direction, for I simply can't abandon 
 my new plans." 
 
 " I don't like him," said Courtney. She had abruptly 
 stopped work, was leaning against the frame facing him. 
 " I want him out of the house." 
 
 Dick took the tone of gentle, forbearing remonstrance. 
 " It's too late to change him to the Smoke House. He 
 feels your dislike is eager to get away. If there were 
 any ground for dislike, I'd say nothing. As it is, I I 
 don't like to assert authority, but your frivolous whimsical- 
 ity makes it necessary. I want you at once to convince 
 him that you wish him to stay." 
 
 " But I don't." Her voice showed that those brief 
 words were all she could trust to it. 
 
 " You do, since I wish it." 
 
 " Why should I consider what you wish ? When have 
 you considered what I wish ? " 
 
 " When have I been inconsiderate of what was for 
 your good? " 
 
 She was silent silenced, he thought. His handsome 
 face and his voice were gentle; but underneath there was 
 sternness in both as he said : " You'll not oppose me in this. 
 It'd be a very severe strain upon my love for you, if I 
 found you so contemptuous of my interests. I'm sure 
 you'll not risk that strain." 
 
 She saw into what an impossible position her anger 
 had hurried her. Usually women, through playing upon 
 the husband's passions and weaknesses generally, get 
 enough control over him to be able to maintain with only 
 an occasional slight lapse the pleasant fiction that they 
 are of full human rank. They take care to avoid such 
 crises as was this. Courtney, by long keeping away from 
 
 88
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 the bars of her cage, had been lured into believing her pre- 
 tense that they were not there. She now found herself 
 bleeding and exhausted against them. " Very well," said 
 she, after a moment's silence. It had taken her quick mind 
 only a moment to see the alternatives submission or a 
 clash in which she could not but be defeated. " I'll try 
 to get him to stay." Her voice was low and broken, but 
 not from anger. Deeper than the sense of Richard's 
 tyranny burned the humiliating sense of her servitude. 
 In fact, her own plight so mortified her that she had no 
 emotional capacity for raging against him as the author of 
 it. She felt, as always in these sex conflicts, that the fault 
 was not his, but fate's; he was simply playing his part as 
 man, she her part as woman. 
 
 " That's a good girl," cried her approving husband, 
 kissing her brow. It did not occur to him, the deep-down 
 reason of sordidness that enabled him to compel; but she 
 could think of nothing else. " Be sweet to him," Dick 
 went on, in an amiable, petting tone. " And you may rest 
 assured, dear, I'll get rid of him as soon as I can. I don't 
 like intruders into our happiness any more than you do." 
 
 Her cheeks flushed, and she turned again to the frame, 
 to resume her digging. Her whole body to her finger tips 
 was in a tremor. 
 
 Through dinner she was silent and cold; Gallatin hardly 
 lifted his gaze from his plate. Whenever Richard could 
 catch her eye, he frowned and glanced significantly at 
 Gallatin. But her eyes met his hints with a vacant look 
 that made him twitch in his chair with nervousness and 
 exasperation. As soon as Gallatin in politeness could, he 
 excused himself and left the family of three alone. 
 
 Richard, unmindful of Winchie, burst out, " What's the 
 meaning of this? " 
 
 89
 
 " You must let me humble myself in ray own way/' said 
 Courtney coldly. " Come, Whichie." And the two went 
 out on the lawn. 
 
 As Gallatin a few minutes later issued from the front 
 door with Richard, she called : " Oh, Mr. Gallatin, I want 
 to speak to you a moment." 
 
 He halted. The color flared into his face. Richard 
 said, " I'll go on. You needn't hurry," and strode along 
 the path into the eastern shrubbery. Gallatin hesitatingly 
 crossed the grass. Winchie, who had on first sight taken 
 an instinctive dislike to him, held a fold of Courtney's 
 walking skirt and glowered like a small but very fierce 
 storm. 
 
 " Go to the veranda, Winchie," said his mother. 
 
 The boy released his hold and reluctantly obeyed. 
 Gallatin stood before her like a prisoner arraigned for sen- 
 tence. " Richard tells me you're talking of moving to the 
 hotel over in town," said she. 
 
 " Yes, I'm going to-morrow." 
 
 " Because you feel I want you out of the house ? " 
 
 " I think a man in my position couldn't help being an 
 intruder." 
 
 " I want you to stay." 
 
 His fair skin paled. " I thank you," said he, " but I 
 must go." 
 
 " I want you to stay. I ask you to stay." 
 
 " That's very kind. I appreciate it. But I really 
 must go." 
 
 " I did wish you to go. But now I sincerely wish you 
 to stay." 
 
 Their eyes met. She was as pale as her bronze com- 
 plexion permitted. She went on, her deep, clear voice 
 steady, " If you go, you'll put me in a very painful position." 
 
 90
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Gallatin looked at her, flushed, looked hastily away. 
 In a voice of intense embarrassment he said: " I've an- 
 other reason for wishing to go. It's even stronger than the 
 knowledge that you're very naturally displeased at my 
 being forced upon you." 
 
 " Oh," said Courtney, baffled. Then, " Please tell 
 Richard what it is." 
 
 " I cannot." His gaze was on the ground now. 
 
 Somehow Courtney was liking him better. As he 
 glanced up, her eyes met his. " Be frank with me," she 
 urged winningly. " Is it because you dislike it here? " 
 
 " No." His gaze was wandering again. " No, in- 
 deed." 
 
 " I'm glad of that," said she. " Do you believe me 
 when I say I wish you to stay? " 
 
 He lowered his eyes, remained silent. 
 
 " If I were free to choose, I would wish you to go," 
 she went on, speaking with the utmost deliberation. " I am 
 not free. So, I wish you to stay because it will be most 
 unpleasant for me if you persist in going. I venture to 
 ask you, if it is not too great a sacrifice, to stay on at 
 least, for the present. But if you still say you must go, 
 I shall not misjudge." 
 
 " I'll stay," was his prompt response. " Gladly." And 
 his tone and eyes were sincere. 
 
 " Thank you," said she simply. 
 
 He looked at her with an appeal that was very engag- 
 ing. " I know you'll hate me for having created this situ- 
 ation." 
 
 " I thought I did a few minutes ago," replied she. 
 " Now, I feel I don't. I feel I'd like to be friends with 
 you Her small, sweet face lit up with a faint smile 
 " since we can't be enemies." 
 
 91
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 "You mean that?" he asked with an eagerness that 
 sounded only the more eager for his effort to restrain it. 
 
 " Indeed,, I do/' replied she. " Will you help me with 
 the gardening when you have time ? " 
 
 " There's nothing I'd like so well." 
 
 "Then it's all settled?" 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 They smiled gravely; they shook hands; they laughed. 
 " And a little while ago I was thinking I never could for- 
 give you ! " exclaimed she gayly. " Now I'm wondering 
 what on earth there was to forgive." And she felt and 
 looked very well acquainted with him. It was part of her 
 upright-downright nature either to like thoroughly or to 
 be so indifferent that she was little short of oblivious. 
 
 Before her generous friendliness the laughter died out 
 of his face. " I'll try to be worthy of your friendship and 
 your trust," said he gravely. 
 
 " That sounds mysterious somehow." 
 
 " Does it? ... When may I help you? " 
 
 " Whenever you can get off. Soon? " 
 
 " To-morrow, I think." 
 
 " That's good." 
 
 " I'll join Vaughan." He hesitated, blushed. " He 
 knows you were to ask me to stay ? " 
 
 " Yes. But not how," was her calm answer. 
 
 " I understand." Their eyes met. He colored ; but 
 her expression, sweet and grave, did not change. As he 
 went Winchie, seated morosely afar off on the veranda 
 steps, scowled at his back. 
 
 That evening Richard said : " Well, I think he's going 
 to stay. How did you manage it? " 
 
 " I've asked him to help me with the gardening. He's 
 fond of it." 
 
 92
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " A good idea/' approved Richard. " I'll back you up." 
 She gazed silently out over the unruffled lake, so peace- 
 ful, so suggestive of peace unchanging, endless the lazy, 
 graceful sails beyond, the town among its trees, lights 
 coming out as the dusk gathered. 
 
 But their friendship, thus auspiciously begun, did not 
 prosper. Gallatin almost pointedly avoided her. He 
 helped her only when Richard, disturbed from time to 
 time by his unrelaxed reserve, urged him to take a day or 
 an afternoon off " and amuse yourself with the flowers, 
 since you like that sort of thing." If it had not been 
 that occasionally in talking or working at the gardening 
 he seemed to forget his solemn and formal pose and 
 showed unmistakable enthusiasm, she would have thought 
 his profession of interest a pretense. She had a peculiar 
 horror of gloom doubtless born of the austerity of her 
 bringing up. There was in her circumstances only too 
 much to discourage her natural brightness, and she had 
 within herself a struggle as incessant as that against weeds 
 and destructive insects in her gardens. She had no desire 
 to make this struggle harder; so she saw as little of him 
 as she in courtesy could the only course open to her, 
 since she did not know him well enough to try to help him. 
 
 " What's the matter with Gallatin ? " Richard asked 
 her one day. " He says he likes it here and is going to 
 stay, yet he acts as if he were revolving something different. 
 He used to be full of fun and life. Now he's enough to 
 give anyone the blues." 
 
 " He is rather heavy," admitted Courtney. 
 
 " I wonder if it's the booze," said Richard reflectively. 
 
 " The booze? " 
 
 " He always drank a lot more than was good for him. 
 7 93
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 And there in Pittsburg he got to lapping it up like the get- 
 ricli-quick crowd he traveled in. That was why he wanted 
 to come here to break off and take a fresh start. I sup- 
 pose he's gloomy because he's fighting his taste for rum." 
 
 " Probably," said Courtney. 
 
 Drink was a vice she could not comprehend and we 
 always are unsympathetic toward the vices we do not com- 
 prehend. She associated drinking and stupidity; the 
 Wenona men who drank to excess were the dull ones, like 
 Shirley Drummond. When Richard thus disclosed to her 
 what Gallatin had meant by his mysterious hint as to his 
 reason for coming to Wenona, she lost the interest in him 
 started by his fine frank way of meeting her advances and 
 his appreciation of her work. She recalled his other mys- 
 terious hint about there being a hidden reason for hia 
 wishing to go. " No doubt," thought she, " he meant he's 
 finding it hard to keep straight here, where it's so quiet. 
 I wish now that he'd gone though, when a man can give 
 way to such a dull, dirty habit as drunkenness, he'd find 
 excuse anywhere." 
 
 As the mail came in the middle of the morning and the 
 middle of the afternoon, she saw it first. Thus, she noted 
 that about once a week there was for him a foreign letter 
 so heavy that it carried several stamps. These letters were 
 from the same person, the same woman. And as the writ- 
 ing was large, rapid, and affectedly angular, she more than 
 suspected that the woman was young. Somewhat tardily 
 these facts, obvious though their leading was, wove together 
 in her mind, incurious about other people's affairs; she 
 knew that there was traveling abroad a young woman who 
 was taking the trouble to write their guest regularly and 
 
 94
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 at great length. But when she happened to recall that 
 he had a young married sister, she assumed the letters were 
 from her. 
 
 One day he casually said that his sister had taken a 
 house at Bar Harbor for the summer. The moment he 
 said this, she for some unknown reason, or for no reason 
 at all, jumped to the conclusion that his depressed state 
 was due to the lady of the letters to her being so far away 
 perhaps to some difficulty in their love the objection of 
 her parents to his drinking habit. 
 
 All was now clear to her. And thenceforth she looked 
 at him with deep sympathy. He was not handsome; his 
 mouth, for example, was so heavy that it flatly gave the 
 lie to his idealist, poetic eyes. His nose was not good, was 
 too small for a man's face. Somewhere there lurked a sug- 
 gestion of weakness, and this was not lessened by his 
 attention to dress though she liked his clothes and his 
 way of wearing them. He was far from her ideal of a 
 man. But the longer one knew him, the better one thought 
 of him, chiefly because the more confidence one had in his 
 essential generosity and kindness. And she felt that he 
 had capacity for tenderness of a very manly sort, and for 
 appreciation of love and of all the beautiful things; just 
 the kind of nature fate seemed to delight in making the 
 sport of its maliciousness. 
 
 One night, in the pensive mood to which she sometimes 
 yielded for an hour, she was at the piano softly playing 
 and singing that saddest of sad love's songs: 
 
 " Alas for lovers ! Pair by pair 
 
 The wind has swept them all away 
 
 The young, the yare; the fresh, the fair 
 
 Where are the snows of yesterday ? " 
 
 95
 
 THE HUNGRY HEAET 
 
 Through the window she saw him leaning against a 
 pillar of the veranda. His profile was outlined clear against 
 the luminous dusk. Its expression made her voice die alto- 
 gether in a sob. She forgot her own sense of fleeting wast- 
 ing youth, of supreme joy forever denied, of love never to 
 be hers. This sorrow before her in those profiled features 
 they were strong features now was no vague dream, but 
 a living reality. She longed to go to him and try to con- 
 sole him; and at the same time, no matter how well she 
 had known him, she could not have gone for in that 
 unsuspected strength of his there was the hopelessness that 
 is beyond consolation. From that time he was the fore- 
 most figure in her thoughts; and her fancy put its own 
 color into everything he said and did. If he had begun to 
 drink she would have been only the more sympathetic; for, 
 she could comprehend how unhappy love might drive its 
 victim to any excess were not her own longings, for three 
 years now latent except for an occasional outburst, once 
 more throbbing and aching day and night? 
 
 It was part of her routine to make a careful tour every 
 day to see that everything was up to the mark. One day, 
 in their guest's sitting room, she happened to see half 
 fallen from the stationery rack a letter from his foreign 
 correspondent. It was apparently unopened. The shock 
 of this made her take a second look before she realized how 
 she was intruding upon his sacred privacy. But she had 
 seen; the letter was indeed unopened. And she knew that 
 the last come of these letters had been at least three days in 
 his possession. 
 
 Her heart ached for him; she felt she understood. His 
 love affair had been going more and more badly his 
 
 96
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 increasing silence and sadness made that certain. And this 
 letter must contain some news he dared not read some 
 words that meant the burial of his dead hope. She went 
 downstairs with a heavy heart, and out into the sunshine 
 out to the rose garden in the western part of the grounds. 
 She had been dreaming all along that this romance of which 
 she was unsuspected, deeply moved spectator would surely 
 " come out all right." Life did not always mock the story 
 books. Love was not always sad, not always mere de- 
 ceptive echo of one's own heart call echo that flitted mock- 
 ingly on as one pursued. No; this love that meant so much 
 to him would prove real. Such had been her dream. 
 Now The flowers, their perfume, the gay birds, the sun- 
 beams all the sights and sounds she loved seemed tricks of 
 a black enchanter. She remembered the day they buried 
 her little brother. There had been just such radiant glory 
 as this. She remembered the day she had seen that her 
 own dream of love was dead. There had been just such 
 sunshine and music and perfume. How could anyone with 
 a human heart even for a moment laugh, jest? To be light 
 was to make oneself party to this cruel levity of bird and 
 flower and sunbeam. Laugh, when loved ones were dying 
 somewhere and the living were bending over dead faces 
 with cracking hearts? Jest, when the winds of time and 
 change were blowing love and lovers all away? 
 
 She caught her breath in a kind of terror when, on her 
 return to the house, Lizzie told her that Mr. Gallatin had 
 dashed in, had packed a bag, and had rushed off to Chi- 
 cago. " He has business there," Richard explained at din- 
 ner. " And I've asked him to buy some stuff for the 
 laboratory." She was uneasy, at times unhappy, through- 
 out the following week, as she thought of him trying to 
 
 97
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 rid himself of his toe heavy burden. Probably he was 
 dissipating she hoped he was, if it would give him relief. 
 She began to debate whether she ought not to tell Richard 
 what she had accidentally discovered, and suggest that 
 he go to Chicago to help his friend, who might have fallen 
 ill or worse. At dinner and at supper, even at breakfast, 
 where she had seen him only occasionally, she positively 
 missed Gallatin. Until he came, the time spent at table 
 had been the stupidest part of each day Richard and she 
 in silence or abstraction, or exchanging disconnected com- 
 monplaces about the weather, the food, their friends. While 
 Gallatin was far from lively, still he and she had talked 
 usually about gardening and plants, the difficulties and 
 mysteries of inducing things to grow, the comparative mer- 
 its of various species for flowering and for hardiness not 
 exciting conversation, but interesting, a relief to a monot- 
 ony the dreariness of which she did not appreciate until he 
 came and went. 
 
 On the eighth day, as they were at supper, he appeared 
 unexpectedly on the threshold. There was no forcing in 
 the cordiality of her smile. At first glance, she suspected 
 that he was in much better spirits. And this impression 
 was soon confirmed. Certainly good news the best 
 must have reached him in Chicago. Otherwise he could not 
 sit there eating heartily, laughing, making amusing re- 
 marks, telling funny incidents of the trip. Courtney tried 
 to continue to feel delighted that he had found surcease 
 from sorrow. But her spirits went steadily down. She 
 felt horribly alone. She had been company for him in his 
 unhappiness though he did not know it. Now, she quite 
 unreasonably felt as if he had deserted her. She was 
 
 98
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ashamed of this, so ungenerous, so selfish, but she could 
 not help it. 
 
 After supper Richard left them alone; they went out 
 on the veranda out where the full beauty of that place, 
 now at summer's climax, could be seen in the soft sunset 
 light. She stood watching a belated bird, a tall white sail 
 listening to the faint sounds of the town that came 
 tinkling across the water. But she was thinking of the man 
 beside her. " You've been enjoying yourself in Chicago," 
 said she. 
 
 " No," was his unexpected answer. " I've been impa- 
 tient to get back." He glanced round at trees and lawns, 
 gardens and shrubbery, with delighted eyes. " I had to 
 go away, to appreciate how well off I was." He went to 
 the edge of the veranda to get a broader sweep. He seemed 
 to be noting, reveling in, every detail. He drew a deep 
 breath, returned to the big lounge chair, and lit a cigarette. 
 " Yes," continued he. " Yes I didn't dream it, or im- 
 agine it. It's all true. It's all here." Without looking 
 at her: " And you happen to be wearing the same 
 dress you had on the evening I came. Now, don't tell 
 me you made it as you've made those gardens and these 
 rooms." 
 
 " I superintend," said Courtney, thinking him a pleas- 
 ant and agreeable, if deplorably shallow person. " I'm 
 not one of those dreadful original women who get up their 
 own awful costumes, and think they're individual because 
 they're different." 
 
 "If you lived in Paris, you'd set the styles," declared 
 he. " And you're equally good at gardening and decorat- 
 ing houses." 
 
 " That's laid on with the trowel," laughed she. " But 
 I like it." She returned to the subject that fitted her 
 
 99
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 thoughts. " You're much livelier than when you went 
 away; I'm sure you've had good news." 
 
 " No nothing. I simply took myself in hand." He 
 reflected in silence, then lifted his head and looked at her 
 with a boyish simplicity and candor. " You see," he pro- 
 ceeded to explain, " I've had something on my mind ever 
 since I came that is, almost ever since something that 
 was nay own affair entirely. And I let it prey on me 
 made myself a nuisance and a bore, I've no doubt." 
 
 There was a gleam of mischievous humor in her eyes as 
 she nodded assent and said : " You were solemner than I 
 thought a human being could be." 
 
 " Precisely. Well, that's over. As I said before, I 
 didn't realize how well off I was, how mnch I had to be 
 thankful for, as the pious people say. I do realize it. 
 And I'm going to behave myself." 
 
 Courtney felt she ought to be scandalized by this van- 
 ishing of the last solemn tatters of the tragic romance she 
 had woven about him; for it was clear as the lake that he 
 had gotten over his bereavement in that one brief week, 
 had gotten over it entirely. But somehow she was not 
 scandalized; was, on the contrary, taking quite cheerfully 
 this confirmation of his fickleness, of his incapacity for 
 deep emotion. After all, wasn't that the best way to be? 
 Wasn't he perhaps philosopher rather than shallow change- 
 ling? Wasn't he simply exemplifying the truth that fire 
 burns out, that the dead are forgotten, that life leans 
 always at the bow of the ship, never at the stern? She, 
 eager to escape from her own shadows and thorns, slipped 
 easily into his mood. " I should say you did have a lot 
 to be thankful for ! " answered she. " And you'll soon for- 
 get her." She colored at her slip. " I assume it was a 
 love affair," she hastened to add. " We women always do." 
 
 100
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Yes, it was." 
 
 " You'll get over it." 
 
 " I do not wish to get over it." He was not smiling 
 back at her. She felt his thoughts traveling over land and 
 sea, into Europe, whence came those letters there were 
 two of them waiting on his desk upstairs. " I do not wish 
 to get over it," he repeated. " I've learned " His voice, 
 full of earnest young seriousness, sounded as if he were 
 thinking aloud rather than talking to her " I've learned 
 there's a love deeper than the love that demands a love 
 that appreciates where it dares not aspire a love that 
 asks nothing but just silently to love." 
 
 There was a long silence, broken by the snapping of 
 the match, as he lit a cigarette. She startled, rose, and 
 leaned against a pillar. With eyes half veiled by her long 
 lashes she watched the gardens wane dreamily in the even- 
 ing light. She inhaled the odors of rose, of lilac, of jas- 
 mine, of honeysuckle perfumes so sweet that they were 
 sad. How cruelly she had misjudged him! She felt a 
 kind of reverence for him now, him with this nobility of 
 soul so unconscious, so lofty. Here was a man worth a 
 woman's while. " Why couldn't I have had such a love 
 as he is giving? " she thought. " Oh, if she had learned 
 what I've learned ! " 
 
 " Come into the sitting room, Gallatin," called Richard 
 from that direction. 
 
 Gallatin went, and for a few minutes Courtney heard, 
 in intervals between lier thoughts, snatches of the talk 
 between the two men about the shopping Gallatin had done 
 for the laboratory talk about a new crusher, about a prom- 
 ising bomb calorimeter. After a while came in Vaughan's 
 voice, " Courtney, what do you think of that? " 
 
 She stood in the window with an inquiring glance. 
 101
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I've been telling Gallatin you're going to introduce 
 him round among the Wenona girls. And he says he has 
 no use for women." 
 
 " I ! " exclaimed Basil. " On the contrary, I think 
 women a woman the most important element in a man's 
 life." 
 
 Richard laughed. " Why, the man's in love ! " cried he. 
 
 Courtney saw Gallatin wince as his wound was struck 
 by this careless, jovial hand. 
 
 " Only a lover," proceeded Dick, " would exaggerate 
 woman in that frenzied fashion. To live isn't to love. It's 
 to do to achieve." 
 
 " I don't agree with you," said Gallatin. " Love's the 
 center the mainspring the purpose the meaning." 
 
 " You ought to have been a woman." 
 
 " Why not ? " retorted Gallatin. Courtney saw that 
 Dick had irritated him. " In one respect I envy women. 
 A woman knows whether or not a man loves her. A man 
 can only hope and believe." And he glanced swiftly at her. 
 
 He looked confused, frightened, as her expression 
 showed that she, the married woman, the lovelessly married 
 woman, understood. She turned away abruptly, two bright 
 red spots burning in her cheeks. 
 
 " Well," said the unobserving Richard to Gallatin, " I 
 confess I don't grasp your meaning. But it doesn't mat- 
 ter. A good woman loves her husband, and he knows it. 
 The rest's of no consequence. We must get him a wife, 
 Courtney. He'd make an ideal husband, don't you think? " 
 
 " A good wife does not think," said Courtney. 
 
 Richard was amused. " But if she did? " he persisted. 
 
 " Then she'd probably think it fortunate for husbands 
 that wives aren't independent." 
 
 Vaughan again looked puzzled. " That sounds as ir- 
 102
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 relevant as what Gallatin said a minute ago. Now will 
 you tell us, what has it to do with what we were talking 
 about? " 
 
 " I don't know," replied she. And she did not. She 
 was astonished before this apparition of a thought she had 
 not been conscious of having definitely in mind since that 
 conversation with her mother long ago; and here it was 
 popping up as if it were her constant companion. " It 
 just came into my head/' she went smilingly on. " You 
 know we women are irresponsible, irrational beings, and 
 so we don't think straight or talk connectedly." 
 
 She said good night, went up to her apartment. She 
 was wishing now that Gallatin had not told her about this 
 love of his for the woman across the seas. It had made 
 her discontented unhappy. It had compelled her to think 
 what a patchwork of makeshifts her own life was. " Yet 
 I ought to be contented. Haven't I Winchie? And I can't 
 even complain of poor health or discomfort of any kind. 
 I don't deserve my good fortune. Other women would 
 envy me." No, they would not. She saw in remembered 
 faces of women friends the same discontent she was hiding 
 in her heart. A woman a woman grown craved more 
 than material comfort could give, more than work or play, 
 however interesting, more than motherhood could give 
 craved that grown-up, equal love without which life was 
 like a wonderful watch with a broken mainspring. She 
 thought of Basil Gallatin again. At least she was more 
 fortunate than he. Suppose she, like him, loved and it 
 were not returned. Then indeed would her heart ache. 
 
 When she saw him alone next day, she said shyly and 
 with color high: " It seems to me you can't have told her 
 told her as you told me. Won't you go to her not write, 
 but go and try again? Believe me, Mr. Gallatin, women 
 
 103
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 appreciate love at least, any woman who could inspire the 
 love you give her. And if she knew, she'd love you she 
 couldn't hejp it." 
 
 She feared she had intruded. But when he at last 
 spoke, his tone was not the tone of one who is offended. 
 " Thank you, thank you," he stammered. " But I assure 
 you it's hopeless. She is not for me." 
 
 " Oh ! " Courtney shrank. " She cares for some one 
 else. I I'm so sorry I spoke. I " 
 
 "No no," he said; "it 'was friendly. It was like 
 you." 
 
 This began their real friendship. And she needed 
 friendship just then. What he had told her put her in a 
 mood where all her occupations were in vain, and all the 
 wisdom she had gathered from books and from thinking 
 about things as they are, and all the patiently, slowly ac- 
 quired stoicism of the matrimonial routine. Her heart was 
 clamoring as it had not since those first months of her dis- 
 covery that love was delusion and that she must learn to live 
 without it. She wished Gallatin had not told her; she 
 wished he had never come. And at the same time she felt 
 that through the sadness he had brought there had come 
 into her life a pleasure she would not wish to give up 
 the sympathy between him and her, based on their knowl- 
 edge each of the other's secret. She felt very proud of his 
 confidence, of his friendship. Also, there was the fascina- 
 tion that always issues from a great emotion, even though 
 it be seen but in mimic on the stage. This great emotion 
 of his was a vivid actuality. It made a smile upon his 
 features heroism; it made a look of sadness tragedy. 
 
 He helped her in the gardens often now. Richard, mak- 
 ing some secret experiments, did not want him at the 
 laboratory. Sometimes he and she worked together at 
 
 104
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 changing color schemes or improving mass effects or vis- 
 tas. Again each worked alone, perhaps at some surprise 
 for the other. It was after a morning of hard labor in 
 opposite ends of the grounds that she said when they met 
 at the house : " Richard's not coming up, so Nanny has 
 to take him his dinner. And Lizzie's away and Mazie not 
 well. I'll wait on you." 
 
 " Let's have a picnic," suggested he, " out under that 
 big elm." 
 
 And with Winchie helping they carried everything to 
 the rustic table and proceeded to have one of those happy- 
 go-lucky meals that make the blue devils put their tails 
 between their legs and fly away on their forks. Winchie, 
 let eat what he pleased, forgot his dislike of Gallatin at 
 least so far that he only frowned occasionally as Gallatin 
 and Courtney talked the most hopeless nonsense with the 
 keenest pleasure. When Basil's face was animated it was 
 never homely; when he smiled it was always handsome. 
 For the first time since he came he lost all constraint, and 
 the sparkle of girlhood came back to her. They stayed out 
 there nearly three hours, and it seemed no time at all. 
 Nanny, sour and scowling at the impropriety of such con- 
 duct in a married woman one married into the ancient and 
 rigid house of Vaughan took away the dishes and linen. 
 But the hint so plain in her dour looks went unnoted. 
 It was a shower that broke up the party, sent them 
 scurrying to the house, he carrying furious and protest- 
 ing Winchie. She punished Winchie for his rudeness by 
 sending him up to his bedroom to sit alone and think down 
 his temper. 
 
 " You oughtn't to have done that," said Basil, when the 
 boy, defiant even in obedience, disappeared. 
 
 " It's the only way to make him remember. And I 
 105
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 can't whip him. I'm too selfish, even if I didn't know it 
 was equally degrading to him." 
 
 " He can't help not liking me," persisted Basil. 
 " We're not to blame for our likes and dislikes." 
 
 " No. But we are to blame for giving way to them." 
 She was arranging freshly cut flowers in vases and jars in 
 the sitting room. 
 
 " Yes, for giving way to them," said Basil thought- 
 fully, after a long time. 
 
 " To what? " asked Courtney, who had forgotten. 
 
 " Our feelings." 
 
 " Oh, I remember." 
 
 " You're right about that." Basil was speaking with 
 an effort. " For example, if a man were to to fall in love 
 with a married woman, he'd be a miserable cur if he told 
 her." Those last few words came explosively. 
 
 " Gracious ! " Courtney beamed mischievously at him 
 from behind a gorgeous spread of half blown roses. " You 
 are fierce ! Well, that's settled. If he heard you, he'd never 
 dare tell her." 
 
 She saw his face, and it flashed over her that it was a 
 married woman he loved. Yes, of course! Why had she 
 not guessed it at once ! And he was saying these harsh 
 things to make it impossible for himself to yield to the 
 impulse. The smile left her eyes. He was at the window 
 with his back to her. She looked tender sympathy. " Poor 
 boy ! " she thought. " And I saw to-day how happy he 
 could be, and how happy he could make a woman. . . . 
 Perhaps she does love him. What a sorrow that would be ! 
 And utterly hopeless ! " 
 
 He turned abruptly. " Will you be my friend ? " 
 
 She came straight up to him, put out her hand. " In- 
 deed I will/' she said. 
 
 106
 
 He took her hand, pressed it. Then he drew back with 
 his hands behind him. " You are a good woman," he said. 
 " Good through and through. I want you to help me fight 
 a battle I'm having just now. I thought I'd won it. I 
 haven't. But I will ! " 
 
 " I understand, I think. It is hard. But you are 
 strong and honorable. You The woman She is al- 
 ready " She paused, looked at him inquiringly. 
 
 " Yes God help me ! " he cried, turning away. 
 
 His cry could not have reached a more responsive heart. 
 After a pause she said: "If she doesn't love you, it'd be 
 useless to tell her." 
 
 " Worse ! It would mean I was a cur." 
 
 " And if she does love you, it'd be wicked to tell her 
 to add to her unhappiness." 
 
 " If you were in my place Suppose I could be with 
 her could go and live near her " 
 
 " Oh, no; you oughtn't to do that! You ought to spare 
 yourself and her that." 
 
 " But suppose," he urged eagerly, " suppose she didn't 
 care for me never would and I could keep my secret " 
 
 " But you couldn't ! And she might grow to care." 
 
 He sat in a big chair by the window, stared moodily at 
 the floor. " It seems to me I can't do that ! " he said at 
 last. " I don't love her as men usually love. She means 
 infinitely more to me than that. And, loving her as I do, 
 I'm in no danger of telling her. And it would make me 
 almost happy so much of the time, and a better man yes, 
 a better man to be near her. What you say I ought to 
 do it's like turning a man out into the desert without food 
 or drink to wander on and on " 
 
 " I know, I know," she interrupted, her small, sweet 
 face all tenderness and distress. " Oh, I'm not competent 
 
 107
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 to advise. You mustn't ask anyone. You must do what 
 you think is right." 
 
 " Right ! " he echoed forlornly. 
 
 She who had eaten of the husks that went by the name 
 of right hadn't the heart to urge them on him. She re- 
 turned to the table, to the arranging of the flowers. With- 
 out looking up he went on : "I haven't told you quite all. 
 There's another thing. I I'm engaged." 
 
 "Engaged!" 
 
 " Don't look at me that way. I can feel it, though I'm 
 not seeing. You can't think less of me than I think of 
 myself. But let me tell you. The girl's a distant cousin 
 of mine. And her grandfather, who was crazy about fami- 
 lies, left her a fortune on condition that she married me. 
 He left an equal sum to me on condition that I marry her. 
 But there's this difference: What he left her is all she'd 
 have every cent. I've got enough without his legacy 
 to me." 
 
 " And you Oh, it's dreadful, isn't it? " 
 
 " We're not in love not in the least. But I've given 
 her my promise, and she'd be penniless if I broke it. She's 
 nineteen. We've got till she's twenty-one. She's abroad 
 now." 
 
 " The letters I've seen in the mail they're from her? " 
 
 " From her," replied he. " How can I marry when I 
 love another woman? " 
 
 " I see," said Courtney. She was sitting now, her hands 
 full of roses and listless in her lap. " Then you've no more 
 right to love this woman than she has to love you. . . . Oh, 
 I don't know what to say ! " 
 
 " Don't think I'm trying to shift part of my burden 
 to you. I'm not. But I felt if I could talk it out loud 
 with some one who was sympathetic I'd see the way better. 
 
 108
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 And I do." The expression of his eyes thrilled her; it was 
 so manly, so honest, so resolved. 
 
 " What have you decided if you don't mind telling 
 me?" 
 
 " To go to Starky that's my cousin her real name's 
 Estelle, but she detests it I'll go to her and we'll marry." 
 
 " No no ! " cried Courtney. " Whatever 's right, that 
 isn't. Oh, you don't know. She has a right to love. 
 You're cheating her cheating her ! " 
 
 " But I can never give her that." 
 
 " You may " 
 
 "Never!" 
 
 Courtney shook her head slowly, lifted the roses, buried 
 her face in them, inhaled their perfume deeply. " Then 
 you mustn't marry her," she said. 
 
 " You don't know her. She cares for money the things 
 money buys more than for anything else in the world. 
 It's the way we bring 'em up in the East." 
 
 " Believe me," cried Courtney, solemn in her earnest- 
 ness, " that's not true. There isn't any woman anywhere 
 who doesn't put love first. Go to your cousin yes. But 
 go and try to love her." 
 
 His eyes suddenly blazed upon her. " Love her 
 after " he began impetuously. He reddened, his head 
 sank. " After the woman I " He muttered confusedly, 
 " I can't talk about it," and hastily left the room by the 
 door-window nearest him. 
 
 She sighed sympathetically, rose, moved slowly toward 
 the vase she had only half finished. Midway she halted. 
 That look of his had just penetrated to her. " Oh!" she 
 gasped. And she wheeled round and stared with blanching 
 cheeks, as if he were still standing there before her with 
 his secret betrayed in his eyes. " Oh ! " she repeated under 
 8 109
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 her breath. How her mistaken romancings about his sad- 
 ness had misled her woman's instinct! For now, like steel 
 filings round a magnet, a swarm of happenings since he 
 came ranged round that telltale look of his where they 
 belonged.
 
 VII 
 
 BASIL was last in to supper, came with his nervousness 
 plain in his features. His uneasy glance at her met a 
 smile of mgenuous friendliness that could not but reassure. 
 Richard was there, absent-minded as usual, and uncon- 
 scious of them both. They were unconscious of him also, 
 Basil no less so than she, for he had long since acquired the 
 habit of the household. No one spoke until Richard, having 
 finished, lighted a cigarette and fell to explaining to Basil 
 an experiment he had made that day. He was full of it, 
 illustrated his points with diagrams drawn on the yellow 
 pad which was never far from his hand. Courtney, relieved 
 of the necessity of trying to look natural before Basil, was 
 abie to turn her thoughts again to the subject that had 
 been occupying her steadily from the moment she discov- 
 ered his secret. 
 
 If Gallatin could have seen into her mind, he would 
 have been as nearly scandalized as it is possible for an 
 infatuated, unsatisfied lover to be. For even where a man 
 feels he himself has the right to revolt against exasper- 
 ating musts and must nots of conventional morality, he is 
 unusual indeed if he honestly approves any such revolt, 
 however timid, in a woman. Man is the author and guard- 
 ian of that morality; in the division of labor he has im- 
 posed upon woman the duty of being its exemplar. Thus, 
 though human, she must pretend not to be; she must stifle 
 if possible, conceal at any cost, her human fondness for the 
 free and the frank. For Courtney there was double attrac- 
 tion in this love of Basil's because it was love for her and 
 
 111
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 because she was lonely how lonely she had never realized 
 until now. There is the loneliness of physical solitude, the 
 loneliness for company and a great unhappiness it is, 
 especially to those who approach the lower animals in 
 lack of resources within themselves. Courtney had never 
 suffered from this; she had never cared for "just people." 
 Then there is the loneliness of soul solitude, the loneliness 
 for comradeship and who suffers from this suffers torment. 
 It may lull, but it will surely rage again, and it will never 
 cease until it is satisfied or the heart itself ceases to beat. 
 This was the loneliness of Courtney Vaughan. " If he," 
 thought she, "were bad, and I, too no, perhaps not ex- 
 actly bad, but well, different less less conscientious 
 how happy we might be ! That is, of course, if I cared for 
 him or could make myself believe I did which is impos- 
 sible." She lingered over this impossible supposition as 
 over a sweet, fantastic dream. She dropped it and turned 
 away, only to return to it. And thinking of it filled her 
 with the same tender sadness she got from love stories 
 and love songs. " I would not if I could, I could not if 
 I would, but " Love ! Into the silence of that void in 
 her life had come a sound. It was the right word, but not 
 the right voice. Still, there was joy in the right word. 
 And she would not have been human had she bent other 
 than kindly eyes and kindly thoughts upon the man who 
 pronounced that word of words. Long since from her 
 first notion that he was hiding a romantic secret his real 
 self had begun to receive from her imagination the trans- 
 figuring veil of illusion. The discovery that she herself 
 was the secret certainly did not make the veil thinner. A 
 strong imagination flings out this beautiful, trouble-making 
 drapery always; not quite so eagerly if there has been sad 
 warning experience, but none the less inevitably. It would 
 
 112
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 be many a day, if ever, before Courtney could again see 
 Basil Gallatin as he was in reality. 
 
 As she sat there, silent, all but oblivious of her imme- 
 diate surroundings, she was awakened by hearing him say, 
 in reply to something from Richard: "But I'm afraid 
 I'll have to to change my plans and go away." It 
 was said hesitatingly, with much effort. 
 
 " Go away ! " cried Richard. Courtney could not have 
 spoken. 
 
 " I'm afraid so." 
 
 "Not for good?" 
 
 " Probably in fact, almost certainly." 
 
 " Why, man, you can't do that ! " protested Dick. " You 
 can't leave me in the lurch." 
 
 " Oh, I want to keep my interest. It's simply that I 
 can't sta}* on, myself." 
 
 " But I need you now as much as I need the capital. 
 Why, it'd upset everything for a year perhaps longer. 
 I couldn't easily find a competent man I could trust," 
 
 Basil repeated in a final, dogged way, " It's impossible 
 for me to stay." 
 
 " Is there anything unsatisfactory in " 
 
 " No no indeed. My own affairs entirely, I assure 
 you." 
 
 As he had finished supper, Vaughan took him out on 
 the veranda, where Courtney heard them or, rather, heard 
 Dick arguing and protesting. Presently she drifted into 
 the sitting room, sat at the piano, let her fingers wander 
 soundlessly over the keys. What should she do? What 
 was best for him for her " and there's Richard, too, who 
 needs him." Why should he go? How would it help 
 matters? True, she had declared that to be the right 
 course; but then she was merely theorizing, merely talking 
 
 113
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 the conventional thing. This was no theory, but actuality, 
 calling for good common sense. It was not the first time 
 she had found the facts of life making mockery of the 
 most convincing theories about it. Presently she felt that 
 Basil was in the window farthest from her, was watching 
 her probably with the same loving, despairing expres- 
 sion she had often seen without a suspicion that it was for 
 her. 
 
 " Where's Richard ? " inquired she, not looking in his 
 direction. 
 
 " In the library." 
 
 " You've upset him dreadfully." 
 
 " I'm sorry. But things will soon adjust themselves." 
 He advanced a step, was visible now in the half darkness, 
 looked pallidly handsome in his becoming dinner suit. " A 
 few weeks at most," he went on, somewhat huskily, " and 
 I'll be the vaguest sort of a memory here." 
 
 She was glad her back was toward him and that the 
 twilight had darkened into dusk. Of course, he did not 
 really love her. It was simply another case of a man's 
 being isolated with a woman and his head getting full of 
 sentimental fancies. Still While his love was not real, 
 and therefore its pain largely imaginary, the pain no doubt 
 seemed real, and the love, too. So she was sad for him 
 very sad. As soon as she felt sure of her voice, she said: 
 "Won't you please light the big lamp for me? I 
 wore a negligee this evening because I wanted to sew. 
 I'm making a suit for Winchie like one I saw in a French 
 magazine." 
 
 He lit the lamp beside the table where she worked in 
 the evenings when she did not go to her own room. " Any- 
 thing else ? " he asked. 
 
 " Only sit and talk to me." 
 114
 
 " I couldn't talk this evening." 
 
 " Then sit and smoke." 
 
 She began her work, he smoking in the deep shadow 
 near the window. She could hardly see him; he could see 
 every wave and ripple in her lovely hair, every shift of the 
 sweeping dark lashes, every change in that sweet, small 
 face, in the wide wistful mouth. Even better than playing 
 on the piano, sewing brings out the charm of delicate, 
 skillful fingers. She did not need to look at him to feel 
 his gaze, its longing, its hopelessness. And never before 
 had she thought of him in such a partial, personal way 
 the way a woman must feel toward the man she knows 
 loves her, even though she only likes him. 
 
 She had made up her mind what to do, how to deal 
 practically with this situation. But she had to struggle 
 with her timidity before she could set about the audacious 
 experiment she had planned and resolved. She had long 
 had the frankness of thought that is inseparable from intel- 
 ligence. The courage to speak her thoughts was as yet in 
 the bud. " Do you mind my speaking again of what you 
 were saying this afternoon? " said she as she sewed indus- 
 triously. 
 
 " No," said he. 
 
 " I've been thinking about it. At first I was startled 
 very much startled. But I soon began to look at it sensibly. 
 I want you to stay. Richard wants you to stay. There's 
 no reason why you shouldn't stay and conquer your 
 delusion." 
 
 " It's no delusion." 
 
 " Real love is always mutual. So yours must be 
 delusion." She was pointing a thread for the eye of the 
 needle. " You've led a very very man sort of life, haven't 
 you?" 
 
 115
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 He shifted uncomfortably, then confessed : " You 
 know the standards for men are different from those for 
 women." 
 
 She smiled, threaded the needle. " Yes, I know. I 
 don't understand, but I know. You needn't explain. 
 I don't want to understand. It doesn't interest me. 
 As I was about to say " Her courage failed her, and 
 she sewed a while in silence. At last she dared. It was 
 with no sign of inward disturbance, but the contrary, that 
 she went on : " You've been shut in here too long. Go 
 to your old haunts for a few days. You'll come back 
 cured." 
 
 She had practiced saying it, this advice which she be- 
 lieved wise and necessary in the circumstances. She said it 
 in calm, matter-of-fact fashion; and it was the less difficult 
 for her to do so because, in thought at least, she had long 
 since emancipated herself from what she regarded as the 
 hypocrisies of modesty, and had taught herself to look at 
 all things rationally and humanly. She knew her frank- 
 ness would not please him; so she was not surprised when 
 after a pause he said roughly, " I don't like to hear you 
 say that sort of thing." 
 
 She laughed pleasantly, put quite at ease by his im- 
 pertinence. " And I don't in the least care whether you 
 approve of me or not. You men seem to think you've got 
 a sort of general roving commission to superintend the 
 propriety of women." 
 
 " I beg your pardon." 
 
 " Certainly. Give me that pair of scissors on the 
 stand in the corner." 
 
 He rose, issued from the deep shadow. She could now 
 see into what confusion her words had thrown him. The 
 hand that held out the scissors was trembling. He moved 
 
 116
 
 to go upon the -veranda. " Please," said she. " I'm not 
 nearly done. Won't you sit down? " 
 
 He seated himself. 
 
 " You see," she went on lightly, busy with her hem 
 again, " I know your awful secret." 
 
 " You've no right to laugh at me," muttered he. 
 
 " I'm not laughing at you. . . . I'm only looking at it 
 in a friendly, practical way. ... I want to help you. . . . 
 Why are you going away? " 
 
 She sewed on, feeling his emotion gather behind his 
 self-control. The stillness was unbroken. A light breeze, 
 cool and scented, came fluttering in at the open windows 
 to play with the soft brilliant hair that grew so beautifully 
 round her temples. In a low voice, so low that she scarcely 
 heard, his answer at last came : " Because I love you. I 
 love you and I am not a cur." 
 
 Her needle missed its way into the cloth, pierced her 
 finger. She put the wounded finger in her mouth. W T hen 
 she looked toward him she was smiling. " Still you've not 
 answered my question. Because you think you care for 
 me that's no reason why you should go." 
 
 " I can't control myself. I " He made a gesture of 
 helplessness. " I can't think of you as as married. You 
 seem like a girl to me free. I keep forgetting." 
 
 " It doesn't seem to occur to you that / might be trusted 
 to remember." 
 
 " I know," said he humbly. 
 
 She held the garment at arms' length, eyeing the hem 
 critically. " No, you don't. You're like all the men. You 
 fancy weak woman can always be overborne by man, big 
 and strong and superior." 
 
 " You wrong me." 
 
 " W T hy else should you talk of going away? " 
 117
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Because it's torment to me to be near you to 
 
 She stopped sewing, looked at him with anger in her 
 deep green eyes. " Then your feeling is just what I 
 thought." 
 
 "It is not ! It is love ! " 
 
 Again she sewed a long time in silence. It was very 
 calm there, in that quiet room with its flowers and taste- 
 ful, gracefully arranged furniture, and the single lamp like 
 a jewel shedding all its radiances upon her small indus- 
 trious figure. " Then tell me," she said in her sweet, 
 gentle way, without looking up or pausing, " what do you 
 want that you cannot have? You can see me as much 
 as you like. You can talk as freely as you like. You can 
 count on sympathy, on friendship. And, if you want to, 
 you can keep right on loving me in that exalted way you 
 profess. Nobody's going to hinder you." 
 
 She sewed on in silence, he motionless watching her, 
 perplexity in his honest, rather boyish face. After a while 
 her voice broke the silence. " Love ! " She laughed with 
 raillery that did not sting. " My dear friend, don't you 
 see I was right? Go away for a few days and " 
 
 " For God's sake, don't suggest that again." 
 
 " Then don't say it's love that makes you want to leave 
 and upset everything." She put the needles, thread, and 
 thimble into her workbox, rolled up the little suit, rose. 
 " It's always the same story," she said, sad rather than 
 bitter. " A woman means only one thing to a man. Yes, 
 I think you had best go." 
 
 " You're too severe," he cried. " It's true there's such 
 a thing as passion without love. And I'll admit that I, like 
 all men, have felt it often have lied to myself as well as 
 to the woman and have called it love. But it's also true 
 that there's no love without some passion at least, you 
 
 118
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 couldn't hope to inspire it. And though in your innocence 
 you may think so, you'd not want to have less than all love 
 has to give if you loved." 
 
 Her eyes, large and softly brilliant, were burning into 
 the darkness beyond the open window. " I'm not inno- 
 cent," she said. " And I try not to be a hypocrite. If I 
 loved, I'd want all." 
 
 There was a long silence, she at the window gazing out 
 into the gathering night. Then he said : " You were right. 
 It was not love that made me feel like flight. I can con- 
 quer that feeling. Will you let me stay ? " 
 
 She turned slowly. In the look she fixed on him there 
 was doubt, hesitation. " You've made me a little uneasy 
 a little afraid." 
 
 In his eagerness he sprang up. " Don't ! " he cried. 
 " Don't send me away. I'll never speak of love again. 
 You've taught me my lesson." 
 
 " I do want you to stay," said she. " It'd seem very 
 lonely here with you gone. For I've come to depend on 
 you as a friend. It hurts to find you seeking your own 
 selfish pleasure under the pretense of a feeling for me." 
 
 He winced not because he felt scandalized by her can- 
 dor, but because he felt convicted by it. " How well you 
 understand men ! " he exclaimed. " Better than they un- 
 derstand themselves." 
 
 " In that one way I do," was her reply, an arresting 
 hardness in the deep voice that was usually altogether 
 sweet. These last few days she was understanding a great 
 many things about the relations of men and women or, 
 perhaps, was letting herself realize that she understood 
 them. 
 
 He lowered his eyes, that he might not read her 
 thoughts, that she might not read the same thoughts in 
 
 119
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 his own mind. " You often make me think of the lake 
 out there," said he. " There's the surface one sees at a 
 glance. Then there's a little distance below the surface, 
 that one sees when he looks intently straight down. And 
 then there's fathoms on fathoms where all sorts of strange 
 things strange thoughts and feelings lie hid. Some- 
 times for an instant one of them shows or almost 
 shows at the surface." 
 
 " When one lives alone a great deal, one gets the habit 
 of living within oneself don't you think? " 
 
 " I suppose that's it partly. A brook couldn't hide 
 very much and most people are like brooks or ponds. 
 The ones that seem to have depth seem so simply because 
 the water's muddy." 
 
 She looked admiringly at him; and her admiration of 
 his originality and insight did not lessen when he added, 
 " At least, so a friend of mine used to say." He returned 
 to the subject. "Then I may stay?" 
 
 Her face brightened. In her eyes as they looked at 
 him a smile slowly dawned. Quickly all her features were 
 responding, especially that wide, expressive fascinating 
 mouth. " I hope you will. But no more dreariness ! " 
 
 " I hate gloom as much as you do." He glanced round 
 the room at the harmonies of woodwork and walls and 
 furnishing, with here and there bright flowers always in 
 the restraint of those of gentle hue. " As much as you 
 do," repeated he. " And that's saying a great deal. How 
 do you manage it! house and garden, always gay yet 
 never gaudy and such variety! Is there no end to your 
 variety ? " 
 
 " Oh, one's a new person every day, isn't one ? and 
 different." 
 
 " You certainly are. But no one else I ever saw." He 
 120
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 colored furiously at his finding himself, without intending 
 it, upon the forbidden ground. She had turned away, and 
 was leaving the room the safest course, since it enabled 
 her to hide her pleasure in the compliment that peculiarly 
 appealed to her, and also seemed to give him a sufficient 
 yet not harsh rebuke. 
 
 Her aversion to restraint was perhaps stronger than is 
 the average woman's certainly had more courage. She 
 had been too thoroughly trained in the conventionalities 
 not to have the familiar timidity as to action, so strong 
 in all conventionally bred people, so dominant over women. 
 But the " unhand-me " spirit of her time was finding out- 
 let in thought and feeling. Reflecting much in her alone- 
 ness, she had reached many audacious conclusions about 
 life and the true meaning of its comedy drama that mean- 
 ing so different from what we pretend, from what usually 
 passes as truth in history, philosophy, and literature, based 
 as they are upon man's cheap hankering for idealistic strut. 
 The audacities of thought that occasionally showed at her 
 surface in speech or commentary of smiling eyes and lips 
 were conventional in comparison with whole schools of 
 deep-swimming ideas and fancies that kept hours of alone- 
 ness from being hours of loneliness. Physically, her pas- 
 sion for freedom showed itself in her dislike of tight or 
 stuffy garments. She could pass her hand round her waist 
 inside her closest-fitting corset. Her liking for few clothes 
 and for as little yoke and sleeves as custom allowed came 
 not from the thought for the other sex that often explains 
 this taste, but from aversion to restraint. 
 
 As usual, the first thing she did that night, when she 
 was alone in her rooms, was to rid herself of all her cloth- 
 ing and put on the thinnest of thin white nightgowns, 
 almost sleeveless, and cut out at the neck. She thrust her 
 
 121
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 feet into bedroom slippers, braided her long hair with its 
 strands of red almost brown, with its strands of brown 
 almost gold. She turned out the light, threw open all the 
 long shutters screening her windows, to let her bedroom 
 fill with warm, perfumed freshness from lake and gardens. 
 She stepped out on the balcony to take the breathing ex- 
 ercises that kept her body straight, her chest high, her 
 bosom firm as a girl's, and her form slim and supple. 
 The fireflies were floating and darting in the creepers and 
 the near-hanging boughs. The slight agitations of the 
 air stole among the folds of her gown and over her neck 
 and arms like charmed fingers. There was no moon; but 
 she did not miss it in the dim splendor of the thronging 
 stars. 
 
 " Aren't you about ready to come in ? " 
 
 She startled, suppressed a scream. She turned. Rich- 
 ard was standing in the window. Her blood which had 
 rushed to her heart surged out again and into her brain 
 in an angry wave. She hated to be taken by surprise. 
 It was on the tip of her tongue to cry furiously, " I detest 
 being spied upon." But she had resolved soon after 
 Winchie was born never to speak angrily to him, never to 
 let him hear her speak angrily. The habit restrained her 
 now, as it had scores of times. Instead, she said : " Why, 
 how did you get in? I'm sure I locked my door." 
 
 " So you did," replied Dick in the cheerful unconscious 
 way that so irritated her in certain moods. Not always 
 could she bear with composure his masculine assumption 
 that whatever pleased him must delight his wife. " So you 
 did," said he. " And it's still locked. But there was the 
 window from the front balcony into your sitting room 
 and the door from your sitting room to this room. You 
 see, I was determined to find you."
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 His tone of laughing tenderness helped her half to 
 guess, half to make out his expression. Usually she ac- 
 cepted without a protesting thought the whole of the 
 routine of married life. But to-night she grew hot with 
 a burning blush of imperiled modesty as he advanced 
 toward her. " Don't/' she said; " I'm doing my exercises." 
 
 " No you were dreaming. Of what ? " Then, with- 
 out waiting for an answer about a matter of so little impor- 
 tance, " Gallatin tells me he has decided to stay on if he 
 can arrange it and he seems to think he can. So I'm 
 feeling fine. You don't know what a jolt he gave me at 
 supper. Did you talk with him about it? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Urged him to stay? " 
 
 " I tried to show him he ought to stay." 
 
 " Ever so much obliged." 
 
 She stopped in her exercises to say quickly : " Oh, 1 
 didn't do it for you. I did it for myself." 
 
 " Why, you dislike him." 
 
 " He's some one to talk with some one that listens and 
 answers. And I don't dislike him." 
 
 Richard laughed. " That's right. Try to make the 
 best of it. Well, if you're not coming in " 
 
 " Not for an hour or longer." 
 
 " Then good night. I must be up early. I think I'll 
 sleep down at the Smoke House. I'm so glad about Galla- 
 tin just as much obliged as if you'd done it for me. 
 And I believe you did." He put his arms round her to 
 kiss her good night. As soon as his lips touched her cheek 
 she drew away, disengaged herself. " What's the matter, 
 Courtney? " She had long since learned that for all his 
 absent-mindedness and ignoring of things that didn't direct- 
 ly interest him, he became as sensitive and as accurate 
 
 123
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 as photographic plate to light, the instant his attention 
 happened to be caught. "What's the matter? Why do 
 you draw away ? " 
 
 " I don't know/' replied she truthfully, yet with a 
 sense of being untruthful. " I seem not to like to be 
 touched to-night." 
 
 " I don't remember you being that way before." 
 She went on with her exercises; he yawned and de- 
 parted.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE morning after Courtney and Basil came to this 
 clear and promising understanding, she got down to the 
 seven-o'clock breakfast perhaps ten minutes late. She ex- 
 pected to find the two men and Winchie there, and was 
 thinking of asking Gallatin to go to town with her and 
 Winchie. When she entered the dining room, there was 
 the table in its usual morning place, in the wide-flung door 
 windows to the east, and at it sat Winchie only, sunbeams 
 sifting through the trellised morning glories to dance upon 
 his shock of tawny hair. 
 
 " Where are the others ? " she asked. 
 
 Winchie, forgetful of his teaching, had his mouth full, 
 far too full for immediate speech unless he gulped it 
 empty, and that would have been breaking another rule. 
 So Lizzie, who was just entering from the kitchen hall, 
 answered : " Mr. Richard telephoned up at half past six, 
 and made me wake Mr. Gallatin. They had breakfast down 
 at the Smoke House long ago." 
 
 Winchie had climbed from his high chair and had come 
 round to kiss his mother good morning. He was dressed 
 for the trip to town all white except dark blue edging 
 round his wide collar, and a dark blue belt. His features 
 suggested his father's and his mother's, yet were those of 
 neither. That morning their usual suggestions of will and 
 character were lost in a general expression of sweet good 
 humor. He looked a sturdy bronzed cherub. After search- 
 ing his mother's face with those inquiring, seeing eyes of 
 9 125
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 his, he said: " Mamma's happy this morning/' and resumed 
 breakfast. 
 
 " Indeed she is ! " exclaimed Courtney. 
 
 She drew the bowl of yellow daisies and pink-white 
 mountain holly from the center of the table, and fell to 
 rearranging them. Each blossom seemed to glide into just 
 its right position, as if there were magic in her fingers. 
 She could not remember when she had felt quite so con- 
 tent and hopeful. And her spirits rose as the day ad- 
 vanced. On the way to town she stopped at the Vauglian 
 farm across the highroad to inquire into a slight falling 
 off in quality of butter and milk. She had never seen the 
 farm so fascinating. The very dock weed and dog fennel 
 carpeting the barnyard had an air and a charm. And 
 the road to town, as she and Winchie sped along in 
 the runabout what a shady lane through Paradise it 
 was ! In town everyone seemed so agreeable, so glad 
 to see her. After lunch with Sarah Carpenter, she 
 shopped, made several calls. They did not start home 
 until late, and supper was on the table when they ar- 
 rived. At the table always in the middle of the room 
 for the evening meal, and formally set at the table was 
 Richard, alone, eating and figuring on his everlasting yel- 
 low pad. 
 
 " Hello ! " said he, with barely a glance away from 
 his pencil point. " Glad to have company." 
 
 " Where's Mr. Gallatin ? " asked Winchie. 
 
 " Gone," was Dick's curt answer in the tone of an 
 interrupted man. " I sent him away." 
 
 Courtnej-, crossing the room, halted. A moment of 
 horrible silence. " Gone ! " she echoed hoarsely, her eyes 
 wide, as if a monster had suddenly appeared open-jawed 
 in her very face. " You sent him away ! " 
 
 126
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Vaughan, without looking up, said: " Vr'hat did you 
 say? " 
 
 With her hand on her heart, " I thought I understood 
 you to say Mr. Gallatin had gone." 
 
 " So he has. For a few days." 
 
 "Oh!" Courtney drew a vast breath of relief. She 
 felt a tugging at her skirt, glanced down. It was Winchie, 
 looking up at her with an expression of terror; and she 
 knew she must have revealed herself in her face. Her 
 pale cheeks flooded with color. She sank into her chair 
 opposite her husband. She could lie to herself, cheat her- 
 self, no longer. " How much Basil means to me ! " she 
 muttered. Then, in terror, she glanced round, for she felt 
 as if she had shouted it. But Vaughan was at his unend- 
 ing calculations. Only Winchie saw. Only Winchie! 
 There was a look in his great gray-green eyes, a look of 
 the accusing angel, that made her hang her head while the 
 dark red burned upon her whole body. 
 
 " He'll be back Thursday or Friday," continued 
 Vaughan, tossing the pad into the window seat, a dozen 
 feet away. 
 
 " You sent him on business ? " inquired she, to make 
 conversation. 
 
 " He wanted to go to Pittsburg, so he told me. I guess 
 it's some girl. I suspect our ' dressy ' friend of being a 
 ladies' man. He takes too much trouble about his clothes 
 and silk underclothes ! Anyhow, I let him go." 
 
 She sat there, the food untouched, her blood pounding 
 at her temples, at her finger ends. For she was remem- 
 bering her advice to Basil when she was trying both to 
 persuade him to stay and to deceive herself as to why she 
 intensely wished him to stay. And now, on her advice 
 on the advice of the woman who loved him he was jour- 
 
 127
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 neying even as she sat quietly there at supper in re- 
 spectable calm he was journeying to his " old haunts " 
 to some woman he who belonged to her ! Such a wild 
 tempest raged in her that she wondered how she could 
 sit motionless, why she was not walking the floor and 
 crying out. With another woman ! Oh, the vileness of 
 men ! " And I was beginning to care for him ! " she 
 said to herself. " He's like the rest worse than most. 
 How many men are there who'd dare talk of love to 
 a woman like me, and then go jauntily away to a low 
 woman ? " 
 
 She went upstairs immediately after supper, shut her- 
 self in. She moved calmly about; she took her exercises; 
 she read for several hours before turning out her light. 
 But beneath a surface that could have been no more tran- 
 quil had she been observed and on guard, chaos reigned. 
 One tempest succeeded another anger against Basil, 
 against herself disgust, scorn, jealousy and, before she 
 slept, she had seen that in reality all these moods were 
 jealousy under different forms. The following morning, 
 when the coast was clear, she slipped into his room, knelt 
 by his untouched bed, cried upon its pillosw. This humil- 
 ity soon wept itself out, however; she flung herself into her 
 work. " Nonsense ! I don't care for him. It's simply 
 pique and outraged friendship. How coarse men are ! " 
 
 " What's the matter, mamma ? " said Winchie, who was 
 following her about the garden, looking after insects and 
 dead leaves. Than his there never was a keener eye for 
 signs of the red spider. 
 
 " Why, dear? " 
 
 " You treat the flowers as if you wanted to hurt them." 
 
 " Your mamma is in a very naughty humor this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 128
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " And you were so happy yesterday. Is it because 
 Mr. Gallatin's gone away? " 
 
 Courtney, flushing deeply, looked hastily round. " Sh ! 
 You mustn't say those things ! " 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Already she was teaching the boy to conceal ! " I didn't 
 mean that, Winchie," said she. " You are to say whatever 
 you please as always." 
 
 " I don't want you to like Mr. Gallatin. I don't like 
 him." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because he likes you." 
 
 " You wouldn't want anybody not to like your mamma, 
 would you? " 
 
 " No." A long silence. Then: " But he looks at you 
 exactly like papa does when he's really seeing you." 
 
 Courtney's skin burned. The same story always the 
 same! "Well dear I'll not like him." 
 
 " I hope he won't come back." 
 
 The suggestion set her heart to aching with loneliness. 
 " I have no shame and no pride," she said to herself. 
 " What a contemptible creature a woman is ! " But these 
 sneers availed her nothing. As she sat at table dinner and 
 supper his vacant place gave her a sense of bereavement 
 not unlike death itself. 
 
 Another night of wakefulness and of the subtle and 
 varied torments known only to those blessed and cursed 
 with vivid imagination. What if he should not come 
 back ! That was the final and cruelcst twist of the rack. 
 Next day, it was all day long as if the silence and darkness 
 of the night were still suffocating her. The house, the 
 grounds seemed a desolation of despair. What if he 
 should not come back! A drizzling rain fell, and she sat 
 
 129
 
 miserably by tlie window, unable to sew, unable to read. 
 And at the first sound from the piano the melancholy 
 notes her fingers instinctively struck she sprang away as 
 if a hateful ghost had breathed on her. It was only 
 Wednesday; he would not be home until the next day 
 probably not until Friday perhaps not then. 
 
 She put fresh flowers in vases in all the rooms every 
 day. That day she filled the vases in his sitting room 
 with the best. And she lingered among his belongings, 
 that promised his return. In the drawers, his nne tasteful 
 shirts and ties; in the closets, those attractive suits, silk 
 lined, agreeable to the touch, varied and always tasteful 
 in pattern. She went back to his books to the poetry, 
 of which he was particularly fond. The volumes fell open 
 naturally at poems that glorified the lofty, the spiritual 
 side of love. Then, like a scorpion, scuttled across the 
 page of Browning's " Last Ride " what Winchie had said 
 " He looks at you like papa does." She shuddered, was 
 all dread and foreboding again. Was there no such thing 
 in man as love for woman, but only its coarse and lying 
 counterfeit ? 
 
 She heard an outside door open noisily. She darted 
 along the hall and down to the angle of the stairway, to 
 the landing from which the drive-front entrance could be 
 seen. She leaned over the balustrade, looked. She drew 
 back, stopping the glad cry that rose to her lips; for it 
 was Basil. With features composed she leaned forward 
 again. His soft hat and his rain coat were dripping; 
 evidently, in his eagerness to arrive, he had crossed the 
 lake in an open boat, instead of coming round by the road 
 in a closed carriage. He was gazing toward the sitting- 
 room door with an expression that thrilled her and at 
 the same time gave her the courage to treat him as her 
 
 ISO
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 self-respect and her ideas of decency in a man 
 dictated. 
 
 " Back already? " said she in a pleasant, indifferent 
 tone. 
 
 He turned, looked up at her, his face alight. " How 
 are you? " he cried. " It seems an age." 
 
 " We didn't expect you for several days yet," she went 
 on, descending. When she reached the hall, he was wait- 
 ing with extended hand. " It is good to be here again ! " 
 said he. " It was worth going, for the pleasure of getting 
 back." 
 
 She shook hands, smiled friendlily, continued on her 
 way to the sitting room. He hesitated, an uneasy look 
 in his eyes that did not escape her. He put his hat and 
 coat on the rack, followed her. " I am glad to be back ! " 
 said he. 
 
 She laughed, friendlily enough, but her baffling manner 
 only increased his uneasiness. " We're glad to have you," 
 was her polite reply. "If you want to go to your room 
 before supper, you'd better hurry." 
 
 " I've been doing a great deal of thinking while I was 
 away." 
 
 " Really? That's good." 
 
 " I see you've changed your mind as I felt you would, 
 when I thought it ever. Your first impulse was to be 
 lenient. But when you fully realized what a dishonorable 
 thing it was for me to do to " 
 
 "Don't you think you'd better go up before supper?" 
 
 " Not till I've said one thing," replied he doggedly. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I want you to know thr.t you can trust me never to 
 repeat my offense. I'd go to Vaughan and tell him and 
 
 ppologize " 
 
 131
 
 THE HU NGRY HEART 
 
 "And, pray, what has Richard to do with it?" in- 
 quired she coldly. 
 
 " I understand/' he hastened to protest. " I'm not 
 going to speak of it to him. It might put unjust suspicion 
 of you in his head - " 
 
 There she laughed outright at him. " You are making 
 yourself perfectly absurd," she said, and turned away to 
 go into the dining room. 
 
 When he came down, the others were at table. Dick, 
 figuring on his yellow pad, glanced up, rose, greeted him 
 with unprecedented cordiality. " Why, when did you blow 
 in ? " he exclaimed. 
 
 " A few minutes ago." Gallatin glanced at Courtney. 
 The quiet mockery of her absent gaze made him red and 
 awkward. " I I got through so I came," he ex- 
 plained with stammering lameness. 
 
 " Naturally," said Dick. He had taken up his pencil. 
 " Make yourself at home." 
 
 Gallatin's glance fell on Winchie frowning at him. 
 "Howdy, Winchie?" said he. 
 
 The boy made a curt bow, resumed his supper. He 
 was permitted or, rather, under Courtney's system of 
 training him to think and act for himself, he permitted 
 himself to eat only certain simple things, and very little 
 of them and he was wonderfully sensible about it. When 
 he finished he kissed his mother good night, made his salute 
 to his father and, almost imperceptibly, to Gallatin, and 
 went upstairs. Gallatin nerved himself to several efforts 
 at beginning conversation with Courtney. Each time, as he 
 glanced up, he was checked and flung back into embar- 
 rassed silence by seeing in her absent eyes the same discon- 
 certing mockery. After supper, Richard hurried away to 
 the library. When she showed that she was going upstairs, 
 
 132
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Gallatin detained her. " One moment, please," he pleaded 
 humbly. " What have I done to offend you? " 
 
 Courtney flushed. But the raillery came back instant- 
 ly. " I'm not offended. I'm amused." 
 
 "At what? " 
 
 " At you." The smile broadened charmingly. " So 
 you've had a successful trip?" 
 
 " Yes in a way." 
 
 " And have come back completely cured." 
 
 " I want you to be my friend if you will. I repeat, 
 you can trust me now." 
 
 Her eyes sparkled dangerously. " It's fortunate I un- 
 derstand men and have a sense of humor." 
 
 " I know I deserve any punishment you choose to give," 
 said he. " And I'll take it. Only I want to stay on here 
 and to have your friendship." 
 
 She studied him critically. Her expression would have 
 been trying enough in its penetrating judicial intelligence 
 for the least self-conscious of men. It utterly disconcerted 
 Basil, bred in the fashionable world's incessant conscious- 
 ness of self. But in his desperation he withstood her look, 
 returned it with eyes that were appealing yet not abject. 
 It pleased her that he was not abject. " After all, you 
 went on my advice, didn't you? " said she in a friendlier 
 tone. " And you've been most manlike have shown your- 
 self to be just what I thought you. So I'm really unrea- 
 sonable." She gave him her hand. " Yes, let us be 
 friends." 
 
 " And you forgive me ? " 
 
 She smiled queerly. " That's asking too much. I may 
 in time. Just at present you've made me feel horribly 
 cheap and common." 
 
 He hung his head. " If you knew how I've suffered 
 133
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 for it/' he said. " I was afraid you'd send me away 
 would never see me again." 
 
 " Let's not talk about it/' cried she, angry at her own 
 weakness in not meting out to him what he apparently ex- 
 pected and certainly deserved. But she was not so angry 
 that she held to her purpose of going upstairs. Instead, 
 she sat at the piano and began to dash off the noisiest 
 pieces she knew.
 
 IX 
 
 THE friendship now throve like Courtney's best-placed 
 flower bed. She had always been healthy ; so she had not a 
 touch of " temperament " which is the misleading roman- 
 tic name for internal physical conditions anything but 
 romantic. Most of those who have mentality have also 
 imperfect health through neglect of physical needs ; and 
 tire sorcberer shades, the grays and blue blacks, made the 
 more melancholy by imagination, usually canopy their lives. 
 But with her it was not so. Always healthy in body and 
 in mind, she now irradiated perfume and color like the rose 
 that is getting just the right sun and rain. 
 
 Late in that summer there were several weeks when one 
 perfect day followed another like a child's dream of fairy- 
 land. Vaughan wished to work alone, dropped completely 
 out of their life, was forgotten. Every day, all day long, 
 she and Basil were together, he helping her at the pas- 
 time that kept house and grounds beautiful. She was one 
 of those human beings who abhor disorder; if anything 
 went wrong it was righted at once. If a knob came off a 
 door or a plant withered, she could not rest until the im- 
 perfection was remedied. It kept her incessantly occupied, 
 but the results were worth the pains they cost. Her imag- 
 ination, stimulated by Basil, planned many changes in 
 grounds and gardens, changes that would bring the place 
 still nearer the landscape artist's three ideals contrast, 
 variety, bounds concealed. And she and Basil together 
 carried out these alterations. 
 
 Then there were the leisure hours, as full as the hours 
 135
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 of toil. They with Winchie strolled in the woods on 
 the farm, across the highway, and picnicked under the trees 
 beside the brook, or in the shadow of some gigantic fern- 
 covered rock left on a hillside by the retreating glaciers 
 of the ice age. Or, they went out on the lake, Winchie 
 fishing, she and Gallatin talking in low tones or happy in 
 sympathetic silence, with the boat moving languidly where 
 the shadows of the great weeping willows were deepest, 
 its keel troubling the dark clear waters hardly more than 
 a floating leaf. 
 
 She was fond of talking, he of listenirig. And she had 
 so many things to say the things that had been accumu- 
 lating in those five years when she had said little, had read 
 and thought much. When Basil did talk it was usually 
 of what he had experienced in his wanderings over Europe 
 and Asia. And, as she had been everywhere in fancy 
 through her reading, she drew him out with questions that 
 made it hard for him to believe she had not actually viewed 
 with her own eyes. He seemed a wonderful person to her, 
 he who had lived in the world's half dozen great capitals, 
 had wandered all over the earth and had seen everything. 
 Her comments astonished him, made him ashamed, and 
 privately reverent of her " woman's intutition. No won- 
 der it's considered better than brains." 
 
 " I wish I'd had some one like you along when I was 
 chasing about," said he. " It was usually horribly dull, 
 and I went on at it chiefly because I was always hoping 
 something interesting would turn up. Now, I see it was 
 turning up all the time. You have a light way of looking 
 at things. A man sees only the serious side." 
 
 " Oh, it couldn't be dull not anywhere on earth," in- 
 sisted she. 
 
 " No not with that is, with somebody like you 
 136
 
 along." An awkward silence; then, "and I don't see how 
 you ever learned so much without having experience." 
 
 " I don't really know things/' confessed she. " I just 
 seem to know. As a matter of fact, I'm frightfully inno- 
 cent." 
 
 " That's the beautiful part of it," said he with enthu- 
 siasm. 
 
 " I hate it ! " she cried. 
 
 " Oh, no," protested he. 
 
 " Yes, hate it," she insisted. The chief pleasure in this 
 friendship with him was that it gave her freedom to be 
 herself, to be frank. She would not let him spoil it for 
 her, as Richard had in their early married days spoiled 
 even the times of closest intimacy with formalism and re- 
 straint. " I want to know I want to live," she went on, 
 with glowing, eager face. " I've always felt proud it was 
 the woman who had the sense to eat the apple. I detest 
 innocence. I love life \ " 
 
 " Oh, you don't mean exactly that." 
 
 " Just that." 
 
 "Even sin? " This, not an inquiry, but an argument 
 proving her beyond question in the wrong. 
 
 But she replied undauntedly: " It seems to me, the only 
 way to learn is by doing things. And doesn't that mean 
 making mistakes sins, as you call it? Life's a good deal 
 like gardening. You have to do it wrong first in order to 
 learn how to do it right." 
 
 " That's all very well for a man. But " 
 
 She was giving him one of those disconcerting eerie 
 glances from the mysterious eyes. " I've got to live, and 
 in the same world you have. Also, I've got to bring up a 
 boy to live in it." 
 
 " I must say," confessed he, " I don't see just how to 
 137
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 meet that." And she accepted the answer as evidence 
 of his broad-minded sympathy. She did not realize that 
 he was anything but convinced, but was simply admitting 
 the " light cleverness " of her reply and was too eager 
 about standing well with her to combat her " queer ideas." 
 
 The interruption to the delights of this friendship came 
 before she had nearly exhausted his novelty, and while she 
 was still as uncritical of him as a starving man of the cook- 
 ing. However, in any circumstances it would have been 
 long before she could have made any accurate judgment 
 of him. She had become his partisan; and a generous 
 nature takes the most favorable, the always too favora- 
 ble, view of a personality to which it is attracted. 
 
 Until that summer Richard had been, for a young man, 
 remarkably careful about regularity and exercise. At the 
 very outset of his task, away back at Johns Hopkins, seven 
 years before, he had realized that he was in for an investi- 
 gation of all known elements in every possible combina- 
 tion that is, for a long and hard struggle for about the 
 most jealously guarded of nature's secrets the origin of 
 heat. And he knew that, if he was to win any victory 
 worth while, he must resist the temptation to overwork, 
 and must make health his first consideration. And al- 
 though he had small liking for physical exercise and was 
 as little fond of the grind of regularity as the next man, 
 he had kept to his rules for himself with the same inflex- 
 ible firmness that characterized him in all his serious pur- 
 poses. But Basil's coming with the additional money he 
 had needed, and the help, too, tempted him beyond his 
 resistance. In exercise, as in everything else, there is sys- 
 tem or there is nothing. Before Basil had been there a 
 month Richard was breaking his rules; and soon the whole 
 
 138
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 system went by the board. All summer he had not exer- 
 cised, and he ate at any hours or not at all. Such a re- 
 versal of a long-established routine could not but create 
 an immediate internal commotion. There were no physical 
 surface signs; he looked the same as always; but his tem- 
 per became uncertain. Where he had been simply absent- 
 minded he was now irascible in it. Without reason ex- 
 cept the internal physical turmoil he himself did not feel 
 or suspect he would burst from abstraction to attack Gal- 
 latin or Courtney or Winchie or one of the servants, or to 
 rave against everything and everybody. And this new 
 Richard appeared at just the time when it would stand 
 out in sharpest, most odious relief most dangerous con- 
 trast to the even temper of Basil Gallatin. Under the stim- 
 ulus of her friendship with Gallatin, Courtney had got 
 back much of her former gayety. Again she was overflow- 
 ing with jest and laughter, with the joy she seemed to 
 have absorbed from the bright things that grew or flitted 
 and flew in her gardens. 
 
 The change in Richard came rapidly, yet was so grad- 
 ual that its cause escaped them all. It is not in human 
 nature to be inexhaustibly patient even with the vagaries 
 of an obvious invalid. Where the illness is unsuspected, 
 patience with its victim soon turns to gall. This new de- 
 velopment in Richard's character for Courtney and all 
 the others assumed it was character changed her passive, 
 almost unsuspected resentment and indifference into dislike 
 that could easily deepen into aversion. 
 
 He was disagreeably reminding her of his existence; he 
 was saying in effect " Look at me ! " She looked. She 
 had bowed to fate, had accepted a loveless life of duty. 
 She 'had done her part loyally. She had made a home, had 
 kept it in order, had submitted whenever his physical neces- 
 
 139
 
 sities began to distract him from his work. Yes, she had 
 accepted all the degradation without a murmur. And when 
 love had come to her unsought, had tempted her, she had 
 put the temptation aside. In order that his plans might 
 not be upset, she had taken the hard instead of the easy 
 way to combat this temptation, had let Basil Gallatin stay 
 on. And what was her reward ? Whenever Richard spoke, 
 it was to say something disagreeable, to be as nearly in- 
 sulting as a well-bred man could become. 
 
 " It's perhaps fortunate for Richard," reflected she, 
 " that Basil showed the true nature of his love in that 
 trip to Pittsburg. For what do I owe Richard Vaughan? 
 Is there any woman anywhere who does not in her heart 
 feel she'd be justified in doing anything, when her hus- 
 band has treated her as mine has treated me ? " And the 
 obvious answer that her husband was the normal husband, 
 that it was she who, expecting what the conventional and 
 customary marriage relation did not contemplate and did 
 not provide, was in the wrong this answer seemed to her 
 no answer at all, but an insult to her intelligence and her 
 self-respect. 
 
 Because of Vaughan's rages Gallatin got into the habit 
 of rising from the table as soon as he finished and leaving 
 the Vaughans to themselves. Courtney, with the sex charm 
 subtly seducing her to seek and exaggerate merits in Basil, 
 was deeply moved by this thoughtfulness ; for it increased 
 her humiliation to have him there when Richard lost con- 
 trol of himself. One evening, as they finished supper, 
 Vaughan was suddenly infuriated by the stealthy fiend of 
 indigestion that is the chief cause of humanity's faults of 
 temperament, from morbidness to acute mania. He burst 
 out at Gallatin sprang from absent-mindedness with ffam-. 
 ing eyes like a madman from ambush. " You messed every- 
 
 140
 
 thing to-day ! " cried this unsuspected and unconscious in- 
 valid, sicker far than many a one in bed with doctors and 
 nurses. " You simply raised the devil. Another day or 
 so like it, and I'll not let you come into the shop." 
 
 Gallatin made no reply. 
 
 " I suppose you're cursing me," fumed Richard. 
 " That's the way it always is. The whole world's mad on 
 the subject of self-excuse. Somebody else is always to 
 blame, and criticism is always an outrage." 
 
 " Not at all," said Gallatin, and Courtney knew his 
 self-control was wholly for her sake. " I was stupid to- 
 day, Vaughan. It was wholly my fault. I know I came 
 near blowing up the shop and sending us both to kingdom 
 come " 
 
 An exclamation of terror from Courtney halted him. 
 She was pale, was looking with frightened, questioning eyes 
 from one man to the other. 
 
 Vaughan blazed again. " There you go ! " cried he to 
 Gallatin. " Now, she'll think I'm at something as dan- 
 gerous as a powder factory when, in fact 
 
 " Yes, indeed, Mrs. Vaughan," interrupted Gallatin. 
 " It was my stupidity that made all the danger. Really, 
 we do nothing that ought to be dangerous." 
 
 " That's not true," said Courtney quietly. " I know 
 the truth now. And I never thought of it before ! " She 
 could not understand how she had been so unthinking; it 
 was another, an unexpected measure of the cleavage be- 
 tween Richard's life and hers. 
 
 " You'd better confine your attention to things you un- 
 derstand," said Vaughan. " It was all Gallatin's folly, I 
 assure you." 
 
 " That's the truth, Mrs. Vaughan," said Gallatin ear- 
 nestly. " The whole truth." 
 10
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 She said no more, but her face showed she did not 
 believe him. Gallatin, depressed and remorseful, went out 
 on the veranda, strolled down toward the lake. Vaughan 
 sat on, pulling savagely at his cigar. He was enraged be- 
 cause his outburst had caused the disclosure of the secret 
 he had intended to keep from her, had given her a false 
 idea which, as she was a woman, a creature of notions and 
 whirns, nothing could ever correct. He forgot his fine 
 philosophy about self-excuse, and turned his rage from him- 
 self to her. " It's really all your fault," he exclaimed, 
 glowering at her. 
 
 Winchie, seated between his father and mother, took 
 up his knife and raised it threateningly against his father, 
 his gray-green eyes ablaze. 
 
 In another mood Vaughan would have been secretly de- 
 lighted, would have gravely accepted the rebuke and made 
 apology to the boy and to Courtney. But the devil the 
 realest devil that torments spirit through flesh was in 
 him that night, was on the prowl. He pointed his cigar 
 at the infuriated child. "What's the meaning of this?" 
 he demanded. 
 
 " Winchie," said Courtney, in a low, firm voice. 
 
 The boy's eyes shifted from father to mother. 
 
 " Put down that knife, go upstairs and go to bed." 
 
 Son and mother looked at each other fully ten sec- 
 onds; the boy lowered the knife, laid it on the table, de- 
 scended from his chair, marched haughtily from the room. 
 When he was gone Vaughan said: " You should have made 
 him apologize to me." 
 
 Courtney did not reply. She was pulling out the bows 
 of the flowing tie she was wearing under the loose collar 
 of her shirt waist. 
 
 " I'll have Lizzie bring him back,"
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " No," said Courtney, and her eyes met his. " You 
 will not interfere with Winchie. I do not interfere with 
 your work." 
 
 " But you do ! " Richard burst out. " It's your inter- 
 fering that's making Gallatin so worthless." 
 
 She shrank back in her chair, hastily veiled her eyes. 
 Now it was the cuffs of the shirt waist that were engag- 
 ing her attention. 
 
 " You dislike him, I know," Vaughan went on. " But 
 why do you treat him so badly ? " 
 
 No ansAver. She could hardly believe that it had been 
 so long since Richard had noted her and Basil. Besides, 
 when had she ever treated him in a way that could be called 
 badly? 
 
 " I am sure you treat him badly. Why ? " 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " I asked you a question. Politeness would sug- 
 gest " 
 
 " Not in this family," said Courtney, cold and calm, 
 her slim fingers touching her hair here and there. 
 
 " All I've got to say is, it's no wonder Gallatin's 
 becoming useless at the shop. He must feel his posi- 
 tion acutely. I can conceive of no reason why you 
 should subject a gentleman and my guest to such in- 
 dignity." 
 
 Courtney looked as if she were sitting quietly alone. 
 
 " Has he been making love to you ? " demanded 
 Vaughan. 
 
 Her eyelids fluttered, but it was the only sign she 
 gave. 
 
 " Some time ago I observed he had a way of looking 
 at you that was most loverlike." 
 
 Still no answer, and no sign. 
 143
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Even so, you could deal with him tactfully. He is a 
 gentleman." 
 
 " You said that before/' observed she, elbows on the 
 table, her chin on the backs of her intertwined fingers, her 
 gaze upon the bowl of old-fashioned yellow roses in the 
 center of the table. 
 
 He glowered at her. " So I did," said he. " Now I 
 say it again, and perhaps you will be able to grasp it. 
 And I want you to treat him as a gentleman should be 
 treated. So long as he is my guest, so long as he conducts 
 himself like a gentleman, you must be courteous to him." 
 
 No answer; no change. 
 
 " Do you hear, Courtney ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What do you intend to do ? " 
 
 Up went the long lashes and the deep green eyes burned 
 coldly at him. " As I choose," said she. " And I may add, 
 I will not put up with your bad temper any longer. At the 
 next outburst from you, Winchie and I leave this house. I 
 will not be insulted, and will not have my boy ruined by 
 his father's bad example." 
 
 Richard's eyes softened; he lowered them, the red 
 mounted. After a silence he said " Excuse me " without 
 looking at her, rose and went to the veranda. When she 
 finished giving directions for the next day to Nanny and 
 was going upstairs, he was still walking up and down, head 
 bent, hands behind his back, sternness in that long aris- 
 tocratic profile. An hour later, as she sat at her desk in 
 her own sitting room upstairs, she heard his voice at the 
 door into the hall. 
 
 " May I come in ? " he asked. 
 
 " Certainly," replied she. Her back was toward the 
 door. 
 
 144
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I want to beg your pardon." 
 
 " Very well," said she, her voice cold and even. She 
 did not realize how much this meant from a man who had 
 not the apologizing spirit or habit. And if she had real- 
 ized, she would have been no more appreciative. 
 
 " You do not accept it? " said he, ruffled at once, and 
 feeling that she was now the one in the wrong. 
 
 "I do not care anything about it, one way or the 
 other." 
 
 He was silent for a moment, then: " I hardly blame 
 you," said he, with a great air of generous concession. 
 " I've been out of temper, rude disgracefully so for 
 some time. I'm sorry." And he stood looking at her ex- 
 pectantly, more complacent than penitent. 
 
 " I see you think a few words are enough to make up 
 for all you've done." 
 
 " What more can I do ? It's not a bit like you, Court- 
 ney, to 
 
 " And what do you know about me ? " inquired she, 
 turning half round and looking calmly at him over her 
 shoulder. " It's quite true," she went on, " that I have no 
 means of support but what I earn here as your housekeeper 
 and wife. But, I " 
 
 " Courtney ! " he cried in a tone of imperative rebuke. 
 
 " A few plain words of truth seem to shock you more 
 than your own conduct." 
 
 " Such language from you ! But you did not realize 
 what you were saying." 
 
 " I did. I meant just what I said." 
 
 " That is not language for a wife to use to a hus- 
 band." 
 
 She rose from the desk and, without looking at him, 
 went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 She was working in the garden beneath the west win- 
 dows. She moved among the flowers, as restless and grace- 
 ful as any other of the elves always hovering about bloom- 
 ing things bees, humming birds, butterflies. It was a rare 
 chance to study the marvels of pose of which the human 
 body is capable. Now she was stooping, now kneeling; 
 bending forward, backward, to one side; or, erect and 
 stretching upward, to relieve a tall rosebush of a dead 
 leaf or spray. And the lines of her figure, ever changing, 
 were ever alluring. Her arms, too and her neck how 
 smooth and slenderly round, and how intensely alive ! Her 
 whole skin seemed aureoled with invisible, tremulous, mag- 
 netic waves. She was wearing a big pale-green garden 
 hat; her hair was perfectly done, as always as if it had 
 taken no time or trouble, yet so that it formed a delightful 
 frame for her small, delicate face, and splintered and re- 
 flected every stray of sunlight that dodged in under the 
 brim. Her short skirt revealed slim, tapering ankles and 
 small feet. There are feet that are merely short; then 
 there are feet such as hers exquisitely small not useless 
 looking, but the reverse. The same quality of the exquisite 
 was in her figure. She was small, but she was not short. 
 Her smallness enabled a perfection nature never gets in 
 the long or the large. She made largeness suggest coarse- 
 ness. Women of her form send thrilling through their 
 lovers the feeling of being able completely to enfold and 
 to possess. 
 
 All alone and thinking only of the flowers, she entered 
 one of the narrow paths that led toward the veranda. She 
 stretched upward to re-curl a refractory tendril. Both arms 
 were extended, her head thrown back, the rosy bronze 
 face upturned pathetic, yet laughter-loving mouth, eyes 
 of deep, deep green. Like one awakening from a pro- 
 
 146
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 found sleep she slowly became conscious that she and Basil 
 Gallatin were gazing into each other's eyes with only the 
 trellised creeper between. And his look made her heart 
 leap. She straightened herself, colored, paled, stood trem- 
 bling. The next thing she distinctly knew, he had come 
 round to the lawn at the edge of the garden in which she 
 was working. 
 
 " How you startled me ! " she said, in a careless, casual 
 tone. 
 
 As he did not answer, she glanced at him. He was 
 standing with eyes down. And his look made her vaguely 
 afraid. 
 
 "Are you going to help me to-day?" she asked, re- 
 solved to brave it through. 
 
 " I can't stand it ! " he cried, his voice trembling with 
 passion. " I love you. I must go. I shall go as soon as 
 Vnughan comes back. Until then I'll keep to the other part 
 of tLe grounds." 
 
 " Why not just do it, and not talk so much? " she de- 
 manded, suddenly angry. 
 
 "If you had ever loved," said he humbly, " you'd un- 
 derstand. But I didn't intend to say these things. I came 
 to tell you Vaughan's away. They telegraphed for him to 
 hurry to Washington something about the duties on a lot 
 of new instruments." 
 
 " How long will he be ? " 
 
 " Several weeks, perhaps. He's going afterwards to 
 Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia and New York. He 
 left word with Jimmie about sending a trunk after him. 
 He had just time to catch the express. He asked me to 
 explain to you." 
 
 Nanny appeared at the drive-front corner of the house. 
 He said to her: " Oh Nanny. I've been upstairs packing 
 
 147
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 a few of my belongings. Will you have them taken to 
 Mr. Vaughan's apartment at the shop ? " 
 
 " Jimmie says Mr. Vaughan locked everything up down 
 there, and took the keys, and said no one was to go near it 
 while he was away." 
 
 Basil hesitated, but only for an instant. " How forget- 
 ful he is ! " he exclaimed with a smile. " Of course I've 
 got to sleep there as watchman. Well, I'll force the 
 stairway door. You can telephone over for a locksmith 
 this afternoon or to-morrow. He'll make a new lock and 
 key." 
 
 Nanny departed, muttering. She did not like disobedi- 
 ence to the head of the house of Vaughan ; but, on the other 
 hand, she would have liked it much less had Gallatin stayed 
 on at the house with Mr. Richard not there. Gallatin 
 turned to Courtney. " Would it be too much trouble to 
 send my meals to the shop ? " he asked, in a constrained, 
 formal tone that deeply offended her. 
 
 " Nanny will attend to that," replied she, eyes cold as 
 winter seas. 
 
 " Thank you. If you should need anyone there's the 
 telephone to the shop. I'll re-connect it." 
 
 " You needn't bother." 
 
 " There have been several robberies round here of late, 
 and " 
 
 " As you please. . . . Thank you." 
 
 He looked at her as wistfully as a prisoner at the fields 
 of freedom beyond his cell window. She seemed impatient 
 to resume work; he went reluctantly away. She stood gaz- 
 ing after him until he disappeared in the shrubbery at the 
 far eastern edge of the lawns. Then she sighed and 
 glanced at the unblemished sky as if she thought it was 
 clouding. 
 
 148
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Three uneasy, tedious days and two wakeful nights. 
 In the third night, toward one o'clock, she tossed away her 
 book, put out her light, and opened all her shutters as 
 usual, to air the rooms. " If I opened his door and win- 
 dow, I might get a breeze," she said to herself. " It's 
 terribly close." She crossed the hall, entered the room Gal- 
 latin had occupied, raised a window, and leaned upon the 
 sill it was the small window beyond the end of the bal- 
 cony, and so did not extend to the floor. The sky was 
 clear; the moon was hidden by the house. Stillness peace 
 beauty beauty of view and of odor -the lake with its 
 dark banks, trees tossing up into the blue-black sky and 
 shimmering with moonlight perfumes of foliage and flow- 
 ers and of the fresh-cut grass in the meadows beyond the 
 highroad. 
 
 " It's as if everybody in the world were dead except 
 me," she murmured. She listened again to get the weird 
 effect of utter absence of sound. This time she heard the 
 faint plaint of a cricket, appealing for company in its 
 blindness and solitude. Then her nerves became tense. 
 From the balcony, which ended just a few feet to her left, 
 came a stealthy sound like a step. Softly she crossed the 
 room the hall her own room, to the high-boy. She took 
 from its top drawer her pistol. She returned to Gallatin's 
 bedroom noiselessly unlocked the shutters over one pair 
 of the long windows opening on the balcony unbolted one 
 of them and held it ajar. Yes, there was some one on that 
 balcony. Several of the neighbors had been robbed; now, 
 it was their turn. The pistol was self-cocking. Taking 
 it in her right hand, she drew back the window with her 
 left, stepped out. She thrust the pistol into the very face 
 of the man. 
 
 He sprang back. She saw what looked like a knife in 
 149
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 one hand nothing, apparently, in the other. At the same 
 instant she heard him cry " Courtney ! " 
 
 The pistol dropped from her nerveless hand to the 
 balcony floor. 
 
 " It's I ! " Gallatin exclaimed. " I heard a second-story 
 window go up very softly I was walking and smoking in 
 the path. I came climbed a pillar and " 
 
 " O God ! God ! " she sobbed. Down she sank to the 
 floor, her face buried in her hands. " My love ! My love ! 
 And I almost killed you ! " 
 
 He knelt beside her. " Dearest " He put his arm 
 round her. Instantly he drew away and sprang to his 
 feet. Up she started, gazing wildly round. " What is 
 it?" she exclaimed. "Where?" 
 
 " Nothing nothing," was his confused answer. But 
 already she had felt a thrill from where his arm, his hand 
 had been, and understood. 
 
 A stifling silence. He said: "I must go now. I'm 
 sorry to have disturbed you." And with his conventional- 
 ity that was of instinct he lifted his hat and made a dig- 
 nified bow. In her hysterical state, she did not miss the 
 grotesque humor of this; she burst out laughing. She 
 ler.ned against the window frame and laughed until she 
 had to wipe away the flowing tears. He stood staring 
 blankly at her, with rising offense, as he, always sensitive 
 about himself, suspected she was laughing at him. For 
 his sense of humor was not nearly so keen as she had 
 been deceived into thinking by his store of jokes and 
 songs, of odds and ends of amusing cleverness, all en- 
 tirely new to her, and therefore seeming practically original 
 with him. 
 
 " What is it? " he said stiffly, when she was somewhat 
 calm. " I should like to laugh, too." It seemed to him 
 
 150
 
 THE nUNGEY HEART 
 
 characteristic indeed, but most untimely, this display of 
 her utter incapacity for seriousness. 
 
 " Hysteria reaction and your everlasting good man- 
 ners," replied she. " Is there anything on earth that 
 would make you forget you are a gentleman from Phila- 
 delphia? " 
 
 " Nothing but you," answered he bitterly. " Good 
 night." 
 
 " Wait a second please," she pleaded. And why, she 
 could not have told she went on, to her own surprise, 
 " The other day you said you had changed your mind and 
 were going." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Isn't that cruel? I've learned to to depend on 
 your friendship." 
 
 He did not answer immediately. When he did, his 
 voice betrayed his agitation. " I'm going because my man- 
 hood demands it. It may be weakness, but if I stayed I 
 should should go all to pieces." 
 
 " I can't argue against that. But there's one thing: 
 As you're going, I want to be able to feel that there's no 
 blot on our friendship. I've been condemning you unheard. 
 Tell me " 
 
 She paused. He felt how embarrassed she was. 
 "What?" he asked gently. "Anything you wish to 
 know? " 
 
 " Did you go to to Pittsburg because because I sent 
 you? " 
 
 He did not answer; it was too dark to make out his 
 expression. 
 
 " I told you," she went on, speaking rapidly, as soldiers 
 advance at a double quick, where if they advanced at ordi- 
 nary pace they would have time to think, to be afraid, to 
 
 151
 
 turn and fly, " I told you to go back to your old haunts 
 and cure yourself of of your fancy for me. . . . You 
 went? " 
 
 " You could suspect that ! " 
 
 "If you did, don't lie to me. Say so, and I'll never 
 think of it again. I'd understand. I'd I'd forgive." 
 
 " There is no woman for me but you," he answered, 
 drawing a step farther from her and putting his hands be- 
 hind his back. " I went because my aunt telegraphed for 
 me. I came as soon as I could get away." 
 
 She clasped her hands and pressed them against her 
 bosom. She leaned toward him, eyes like two of the few 
 large stars in that summer night sky. " I am so glad," she 
 murmured. 
 
 "Why did you suspect? How could you? Why did 
 you care ? " 
 
 "I was jealous." The confession was almost in- 
 audible. 
 
 " Courtney ! " His arms impulsively extended. 
 
 She waved him back. " Go go ! I am upset hysteri- 
 cal. Forget what I said. We are friends again. There is 
 jealousy in friendship, too. Good night." 
 
 He hesitated. There she stood, all in that flimsy white 
 her coils of soft fine hair about her small head her arms, 
 her throat, her face tantalizingly half revealed in the dim- 
 ness. " Courtney do you love me ? " 
 
 " No no not that," answered she, softly, hurriedly, 
 pleadingly. " But I like you and I'm a woman and-- 
 and that tells the whole story. Good night, Mr. Basil." 
 She held out her hand. 
 
 He did not take it. " I dare not touch you to-night," 
 he said. " I can't be trusted nor can you." 
 
 " No," she assented, letting her hand drop. She drew 
 152
 
 a long, deep breath, and he also a draught of that in- 
 toxicating air, surcharged with perfume and moonbeams and 
 the freedom of the midnight outdoors. 
 
 " We are friends through and through? " 
 
 " Yes." His reply was in the same low, hushed voice 
 as her question. 
 
 " That is so much so much." Their nerves like their 
 voices were tense from the restraint of the passionate emo- 
 tions damming up higher and higher within. 
 
 " And I'll see you at breakfast and thank you for com- 
 ing. . . . Good night, Mr. Basil." 
 
 He bared his head. She did not feel like laughing now 
 at his " everlasting good manners," but was shivering, with 
 hot tears in her eyes. He said " Good night, Mrs. Court- 
 ney." 
 
 Slowly she went in at the window of his room. Just 
 as she was about to push the bolt, she opened it again. 
 " You must come in this way," she said. " I'll let you out 
 at the front door." 
 
 " No, I'll go as I came." 
 
 " Nonsense! " 
 
 " If any of the servants " 
 
 " You make me feel guilty when I'm not. Come ! " 
 
 He entered the room. Both began to close the win- 
 dow. Their hands touched, hesitated, clasped. She was 
 in his arms, his lips were upon hers. A long kiss. Her 
 form relaxed; she drew her lips away to murmur, "Hold 
 me. I'm faint." Again their lips met, and he clasped 
 her to him until he could feel the wild pulsing of her blood 
 against his face, against his chest, against his arms could 
 feel it in every part of that small form, so utterly within 
 his embrace. " Don't," she gasped. " It is too much too 
 much." 
 
 153
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I love you I love you. You are mine yes, you are, 
 Courtney ! There is nothing but love." 
 
 She gently released herself, swayed, leaned against the 
 casement, looked up into the summer starlight. Again he 
 seized her, and again his lips found hers. Her head 
 dropped upon his shoulder. A sound one of those creak- 
 ings that haunt the stillness of a house in the night hours. 
 She startled, stiffened, shut her teeth upon a scream. 
 
 " It was nothing," he said. He, too, was rigid, with 
 every. sense alert for danger. 
 
 " What have we done ! " she exclaimed. They stood 
 silent, facing each other, overcome with shame, burning 
 with longing. " Oh Basil ! " 
 
 He took her in his arms. But she pushed him resolutely 
 away. " No not again," she said. He looked at her ; she 
 gazed up into the sky. " Love ! " she murmured. " Love ! 
 And I must not." 
 
 " I forgot forgot ! " he cried. " O God Courtney 
 I love you more than honor." And he opened the other 
 of the door windows, rushed past her, vanished round 
 the corner of the house. She sighed, shivered, stepped out 
 upon the balcony, stood at the rail until she saw a dark 
 form rapidly cross the lawns toward the shrubbery densely 
 inclosing the Smoke House. She looked all round sky 
 lake woods. " It is so lonely," she sobbed. " So lonely ! "
 
 TEN minutes before breakfast time a knock at the hall 
 door into her bedroom. She knew who it was that could 
 not reach above the lower panels. " Come in! " she cried. 
 Winchie entered stopped short on the threshold. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Benedict Vaughan," said she, 
 nodding at him by way of the mirror before which she was 
 arranging her blouse at the neck. And he knew she was 
 in a particularly fine humor. 
 
 " Have we got company ? Who ? " he asked. 
 
 "No. Why?" 
 
 " Aren't you going to take me for a walk after break- 
 fast?" 
 
 "Of course. Don't we always go?" 
 
 " But it's raining." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 "Wouldn't it spoil that dress?" 
 
 " One'd think you had a sloven for a mother. Don't I 
 always dress? " 
 
 " But that's a long skirt. And you're not putting on a 
 
 : waist." 
 
 " I'll change after breakfast." 
 
 " Oh." This, however, contented him for a moment 
 only. He eyed her critically as she made one insignifi- 
 cant little change after another, displaying a fussiness 
 quite unusual. " I guess we're to have company maybe." 
 
 " Not at all. "We never have people to breakfast. 
 What are you puzzling about? " 
 
 155
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Why didn't you put on the rain dress ? " 
 
 Courtney's delicate skin was showing more than its 
 normal color. She shook her head laughingly at him 
 this child whose questions were forcing her to see a truth 
 she was striving might and main to hide from herself. 
 " You don't like this dress ? " 
 
 " Yes, I like 'em all. It isn't the dress, exactly." 
 
 "Then what is it?" 
 
 " I don't know. It's something. It made me think 
 company right away." The bar of music from the gong 
 came floating up from below. " There's breakfast ! " he 
 exclaimed. "Are you 'most ready?" 
 
 " Quite," replied she, with a last look at profile, back 
 hair and back of skirt with the aid of a hand glass. 
 
 " Maybe there'll be company," said Winchie as they 
 started. 
 
 " I'm sure there'll be corn muffins," said she. " I smell 
 them." 
 
 " If there's hash, may I have a little? " 
 
 "A little." 
 
 The descent was slow as Winchie's legs were short. She 
 listened at every step, but could hear no sound of the kind 
 she hoped. At the sitting-room door she glanced round. 
 He was not there. " He's in the dining room," she said 
 half to herself. 
 
 "Who, mamma?" 
 
 Courtney startled, flushed. "What is it, dear?" she 
 stammered guiltily. 
 
 " Has papa come? " 
 
 " No, I was thinking of Mr. Gallatin." 
 
 Winchie drew his hand from hers. But she did not 
 note it; for they were at the threshold of the dining room, 
 and no one was there but Lizzie. She and Winchie sat, 
 
 156
 
 but she did not begin. A moment and she went to the 
 telephone in the hall, took down the receiver of the private 
 wire. Soon she heard in Basil's voice, " Hello. What 
 is it? " 
 
 " It's I." 
 
 " Oh." Then silence. 
 
 " Did you hurt yourself last night? " 
 
 " No, not at all thank you." 
 
 In a constrained voice: " I thought you were coming 
 to breakfast." 
 
 " I felt it was better not to." 
 
 " Oh ! good-by." And she hung up the receiver. 
 
 Back in the dining room, uneasy under Winchie's seri- 
 ous steady gaze, she winced at his first remark: " Mr. 
 Gallatin's company. There's you and me and the rest's 
 company." After a pause, doubtfully : " Except papa. 
 He's not quite company, I guess." 
 
 " Do you want some of the hash ? " 
 
 " You said there wasn't to be company." 
 
 " Please ! Please ! " she cried. " You'll give me the 
 headache." 
 
 " You said I was always to say what I had in my 
 brains." 
 
 She bent over and kissed his hand. " And so you must." 
 
 " Do you say everything that's in your brains ? " 
 
 She reddened again. " Everything Winchie'd under- 
 stand," replied she. " After a while, when you grow up, 
 you'll find a lot of things in your mind that it'd be of 
 no use to say because nobody would understand a lot of 
 things you won't understand yourself." 
 
 " There is those in, already," said he solemnly. 
 
 She laughed. " No doubt." 
 
 As she did not encourage him, he addressed himself 
 11 157
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 to the hash, which was the kind he liked brown and not 
 too dry, and with the potatoes in little cubes. She poured 
 her coffee, just touched one of Mazie's famous corn muf- 
 fins as she slowly drank it, and gave herself up to the clear 
 and calm daylight reflections that make comment so cynical 
 and so severe upon what we do and say and think under 
 the spell of night. She put on a waterproof hat and suit, 
 leggings and boots, and issued forth for a two-hours' 
 tramp with Winchie, who was dressed in the same fashion. 
 When they got back at ten, she felt she was not the same 
 woman as the one who had the adventure with the burglar 
 on the balcony. She saw Winchie into dry clothes and 
 settled at his rainy-day games then out she went again. 
 She walked rapidly along the path to the Smoke House; 
 was soon rapping at the heavy iron door of the laboratory. 
 She rapped again and again, turned away angry, was al- 
 most back at the edge of the shrubbery when she remem- 
 bered that Richard had locked the laboratory, that Basil 
 could not possibly be there. 
 
 She hesitated, returned to the Smoke House, knocked 
 at the door of the stairway leading up to the suite. No 
 answer. She opened it, went upstairs. At the top she 
 paused, called, " Anybody here ? " 
 
 Basil appeared in the doorway of the sitting room. He 
 was in a dark-blue summer house suit, a cigarette in the 
 corner of his mouth. His face was very red; his eyes did 
 not meet hers. " Lizzie straightened up and left about 
 half an hour ago," said he. 
 
 " I came for a look round," explained she, admiring, 
 without seeming to do so, his elegant and fashionable suit, 
 the harmony of its color with his soft negligee shirt and 
 flowing artist's tie. But then she always liked the way 
 he dressed, the way he wore his clothes. " I come once 
 
 158
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 a week in the morning to keep Lizzie up to the mark," 
 she went on. " You're down in the laboratory at that time, 
 so you haven't known what a model housekeeper I am." 
 
 He did not stand aside for her to enter. 
 
 " I also had another reason," pursued she. " Please 
 don't choke up the doorway. I'm coming in." 
 
 He bowed, stood aside. She entered, glanced round the 
 sober but not somber room with its walls, ceilings, floor, 
 and furniture of walnut. It was a comfortable place and 
 beautifully clean. " Jimmie attends to the floors ? " 
 
 " Every week."" 
 
 She glanced into the adjoining room kalsomined 
 walls and ceiling, a white oak floor, a big chest of drawers, 
 a big mirror, a big table and chair, a roomy brass bedstead. 
 " Any complaints ? " 
 
 " Everything perfectly satisfactory," he assured her. 
 
 " Now for my other business my real business," said 
 she, disposing herself in one of the window seats. " You 
 may continue to stand, if you prefer; but it would please 
 me better if you sat." 
 
 He seated himself stiffly at the table desk. Her eyes 
 were dancing with amusement at his overelaborated for- 
 mality. It made him seem such a boy, made her feel vastly 
 wiser and stronger and older than he. 
 
 " Why didn't you come to breakfast ? " she inquired in 
 a most businesslike tone. 
 
 " I made up my mind not to see you again until 
 Vaughan returned." 
 
 " And then, to go away? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I prefer not to answer that." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 159
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " It's true Vaughan and I are not exactly friends. 
 Still, I've been disloyal. I shall be so no more." 
 
 She clasped her hands round one knee, looked at him 
 with half closed eyes. " I do not like to be regarded as 
 part of some one's else belongings/' said she. " I belong 
 to myself." 
 
 " I wish to God you did ! " 
 
 " You attach too much importance to what a woman 
 says and does on impulse. I was much upset last night. 
 I said and did things that seem absurd to me in daylight." 
 
 " I am just as absurd, as you call It, in daylight as I 
 was in moonlight." 
 
 She flinched, controlled herself, made an impatient ges- 
 ture. " Don't say those things, or you'll spoil everything," 
 she half pleaded, half commanded. 
 
 He strode to a window across the room from that in 
 which she was sitting. " Everything is spoiled. I've sim- 
 ply got to go." 
 
 " No." She shook her head slowly. " You will stay, 
 and we'll be friends again, as before." 
 
 " If I could only wipe out last night ! " he cried, and 
 he wheeled upon her. 
 
 She caught her breath. " Do you mean that? " she 
 asked impulsively. 
 
 He stopped short, faced her, but his eyes were down. 
 " No, I don't," replied he. " And that's the devil of it." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " If I honestly regretted last night, I could stay." 
 
 " Why do you lie to yourself? " she asked, crossing the 
 room toward him. " You have no real intention of going." 
 
 His gaze sank. " I shall try to go," he muttered. 
 
 She laughed after she had returned to the safer dis- 
 tance of the window seat. " What a passion for hypocrisy 
 
 160
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 you men have. ' I shall try.' You hope that last tiny rag 
 of a remnant will cover your real purpose." 
 
 " You think I am a dishonorable dog. I don't wonder 
 at it." 
 
 " No, I don't. But I do think you are taking yourself 
 entirely too seriously. You don't want to go, do you ? And 
 I don't wish you to go. And Richard doesn't want you 
 to go." 
 
 " He'd compel it if he knew." 
 
 " But he doesn't know. Maybe, if I knew some things 
 about you, I'd want you to go. Maybe, if you knew me 
 thoroughly, you'd be eager to go. As it is, we all want 
 things to stay as they are." 
 
 " Last night was a warning." 
 
 " Yes," she hastened to assent. " Let's heed it. Let's 
 go back to friendship and not wander. My friend, you're 
 letting your mind hang over just one subject, just one side 
 of the relations of men and women. Isn't there more to me 
 than that ? " 
 
 " Courtney ! " he protested. 
 
 " Then let's be friends. Let's put aside what we can't 
 have. Let's take and enjoy what we can. Let's not talk 
 or think about about love any more than one frets about 
 not being able to visit the moon. We've been finding life 
 happy these last few weeks, with that subject never men- 
 tioned. Why not again? Are you too weak? Am I too 
 uninteresting? " 
 
 " I tried once before and failed." 
 
 " But now that we've looked the situation straight in the 
 face now that we're both on guard don't you think we 
 can do better ? " 
 
 " I don't know," he confessed. " I'm afraid to try - 
 aren't you? " 
 
 161
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Her eyes held him, they were so mysterious. " Not so 
 much as I'm afraid not to try/' replied she slowly. 
 
 He dropped into his chair again, sat staring at the blot- 
 ting pad on the desk. 
 
 " Had you thought," she went on, " what would happen 
 if we owned ourselves beaten and fled from each other ? " 
 
 He presently lifted his eyes, looked at her in wonder. 
 " And that never occurred to me ! " he cried. " Why, our 
 only chance now is to stay here and fight it out. If we 
 shirked and tried to escape " He paused. 
 
 She nodded gravely. 
 
 " If I went away, it'd only be to come back desperate. 
 And you " 
 
 He did not finish his sentence. They sat silent a long 
 time. " It would be horribly lonely with you gone," said 
 she in an absent, impersonal way. " And loneliness breeds 
 such wild longings." 
 
 A long silence. Then she rose. " Come up to the 
 house and help me with those plans for a kitchen garden 
 under glass," she suggested. 
 
 He nodded without looking at her, as if to show her that 
 he understood all and accepted what was beyond question 
 the less dangerous of their alternatives. " As scon as I 
 dress, I'll be there," said he. 
 
 " I forgot. I must change, too. In an hour? " 
 
 " Less." 
 
 They shook hands in an emphatically comradely fashion, 
 and she went. The former conditions were restored. They 
 would not permit them to be interrupted again. They 
 would demonstrate that, with a thousand, thousand other 
 things, interesting, amusing, to talk and to think about, they 
 could bar out love and keep it out. 
 
 An hour over the plans, then they had dinner, laughing 
 163
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and joking together like two children. They did not heed 
 or even note the gloom of Winchie and old Nanny she was 
 waiting, as it was Lizzie's day out. Winchie sat mum and 
 glum, eating in the deliberate way Courtney had taught him 
 and never lifting his jealous eyes from his plate. Nanny 
 middle-aged, homely, prim with the added sourness of 
 those who have never had the least temptation to be other- 
 wise Nanny glowered at Gallatin every time she came into 
 the room. She had disapproved of him from the outset and 
 had made no secret of it. This gayety of his, in the absence 
 of the head of the house of Vaughan, changed that din- 
 ner for her into a Babylonish revel. She was shocked 
 at Courtney's taking part, but was not surprised. What 
 was to be expected of the weak and frivolous younger 
 generation of her own sex, mad about adorning the body, 
 scornful of the idea of " settling," and incredulous as to 
 hell fire? Her anger concentrated on Gallatin. He was 
 a man; he seemed a serious, moral man. Yet here he 
 was, leading on the vain, weak woman he a guest of Mr. 
 Vaughan's trusted by him put upon his honor. " It's 
 enough to bring Colonel 'Kill back a-harntin'," muttered 
 she into the oven. . . . Early in the afternoon it cleared 
 gloriously. Outdoors, the two trespassers upon ancient 
 propriety giddied into still higher spirits. And after sup- 
 per ! They banged on the piano and sang " coon " songs 
 and became so hilarious " that you'd think the settin' room 
 was full," said Jimmie to his aunt. 
 
 Nanny scowled at the blue yarn sock she was knitting 
 with wrinkled, rheumatism-knotted fingers. " Such goings- 
 on ! " she growled. 
 
 "Why not?" demanded Jimmie. " Where's the harm? 
 And I reckon Mrs. V. knows how to take care of herself." 
 
 "Who said she didn't?" snapped Nanny. 
 163
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Toward nine Courtney and Basil went out on the 
 veranda. It was a perfect August night. The honey- 
 suckle in great masses upon the rail was giving forth an 
 odor that quieted them like pensive music. Under the 
 trees and among the bushes the now pale, now bright lamps 
 of the " lightning bugs " shone by scores and hundreds. 
 There was a moon, sailing high and almost full. She 
 thought she had never been so happy in her life. At 
 former happy times there was in her no such capacity 
 to appreciate and enjoy as experience had now given her. 
 And what an ideal companion Basil was so much the 
 man of the world, wise, experienced, yet simple and amaz- 
 ingly modest. And how marvelously they fitted into each 
 other's moods! She had never thought to find a human 
 being with just the right combination of qualities one 
 who could be serious always in an interesting way and 
 also as light as the lightest. 
 
 " Look at those elder blossoms," said Basil in a low 
 voice, as if louder tones might break the spell and dis- 
 solve the beauty, delicate, fragile, unreal. 
 
 Elder bushes were the outer wall of the eastern shrub- 
 bery ; their flowers, soft, feathery mats, deliciously sweet to 
 smell, looked at that distance and in that light like a wall 
 of snow. Courtney and Basil descended from the veranda, 
 strolled across the lawn. She lifted her head, seemed to 
 drink in the beauty with her whole face, and to exhale it in 
 a newer, subtler loveliness and perfume. 
 
 " How sweet the boxwood hedge is after to-day's rain." 
 
 As they neared the water's edge, all other perfumes 
 yielded to the powerful, heavy, sensuous odor of the locust 
 blossoms, in white clusters above the bench on which they 
 presently sat. They were silent, gazing across the lake 
 where, in contrast to the darkness and silence of their 
 
 164;
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 shore, lay the town, a shimmer of light, a murmur of 
 confused sounds mingling pleasantly. Down the lake, far 
 out beyond the edge of the heavy shadow flung by the trees, 
 a boat was coming, the man rowing, the girl playing the 
 mandolin and singing. The tinkling of the mandolin and 
 the fresh young voice floated over the waters to Courtney 
 and Basil. She drew in her breath sharply, with a sense 
 of alluring danger hovering. The boat drew nearer; the 
 sounds were clearer clearer, more tender, more moving. 
 The mandolin tinkled. The free, sweet young voice sang: 
 " I want you ma honey ! yes I do ! I want you I 
 want you " 
 
 She clasped, clinched her hands in her lap. Basil 
 started up. " I can't bear it ! " he cried. " I can't ! " 
 
 " No no ! " she exclaimed, and her strange look sug- 
 gested a soul drowning. " Go go quickly ! " And draw- 
 ing her white shawl about her shoulders, she fled into the 
 house.
 
 XI 
 
 "WHERE'S Mr. Gallatin? " asked Winchie, as he and 
 his mother were finishing breakfast next morning. 
 
 " At the Smoke House, I guess," replied she. There 
 was a far-away look in her eyes, and their lids were heavy. 
 Although Lizzie had been unusually unsuccessful in arrang- 
 ing the flowers, she left the bowl untouched in the center 
 of the table a solid mass of carnations which she could 
 have changed into a miracle of lightness and grace. 
 
 " Is he coming to breakfast? " asked Winchie. 
 
 " No at least, I suppose not. How'd you like to go 
 to grandpa's ? " 
 
 "Will Mr. Gallatin go?" 
 
 Courtney's cheeks flushed. " No," she said. 
 
 " Then I'd like it for -a while." 
 
 " We are going to-morrow," said Courtney. " To-mor- 
 row morning." 
 
 " Is grandpa sick? " 
 
 " No. Nobody is sick." 
 
 "Then why?" 
 
 Courtney's face wore a queer smile. " We'll help 
 grandma and Aunt Lai and Aunt Ann put up fruit and 
 jam and preserves." 
 
 " Will we stay long? " inquired the boy anxiously. 
 
 " Until until your father gets back." 
 
 Winchie looked much downcast. " Why ? " he asked. 
 
 "Why not?" said Courtney. "And now, you'll help 
 me pack and I'll help you." 
 
 It was a busy day, as there were many things to ar- 
 166
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 range besides the packing. Gallatin did not appear at the 
 house all day, and Courtney did not expect him. Toward 
 ten that night the packing was finished and everything 
 ready for an early departure. Courtney went downstairs 
 and out across the moonlit lawn. Slowly, with gaze 
 straight ahead, she strolled toward the lake, toward the 
 summer house in the copse at the western edge of the 
 grounds. She entered, curled herself up on the broad 
 seat, her elbow upon the rail, her hand supporting her 
 chin. She watched the moonlight in the ripples along 
 the middle of the lake. From time to time, she lifted her 
 head, strained her eyes into the encircling shadows, then 
 resumed her attitude, mental as well as physical, of for- 
 lorn abstraction. Something less than half an hour, and 
 when she lifted herself to glance round for the third or 
 fourth time, she did not sink back, but slowly straightened, 
 her breath coming quickly. 
 
 "Who's there?" she called softly, addressing the deep 
 shadows over the path by which she had come. 
 
 No answer but the chorus of tiny creatures murmur- 
 ing excitedly in every crevice and beneath every blade 
 and leaf. 
 
 " Who is it ? " she demanded, but not loudly or nerv- 
 ously. She stood up. 
 
 " Only I," came in Basil's voice, and he advanced 
 and stood between the entrance pillars of the open rustic 
 pavilion. 
 
 " Oh ! " said she. And she resumed gazing over the 
 water, but did not resume her seat. 
 
 " I saw you cross the lawn," he explained. " And I 
 was afraid some one might intrude." 
 
 " Thank you," said she gratefully. 
 
 " You knew it was I didn't you ? " he went on. 
 167
 
 HUNGRY HEART 
 
 A brief silence, then " Yes/' she admitted, and gave 
 a little laugh. 
 
 " Why do you laugh ? " 
 
 " Because I just realized that I was expecting you 
 that I came here hoping to see you. How one does lie 
 to oneself ! " 
 
 " Do you wish me to leave you? " 
 
 " No. . . . What a beautiful night it is ! " 
 
 " The loveliest I ever saw." 
 
 " These locust blossoms The perfume makes me feel 
 languid but not sleepy." 
 
 " I guess it is the locusts," he said. " I feel that way, 
 too." 
 
 " I'm taking Winchie to my father's for a visit in the 
 morning." 
 
 " So Jimmie said." 
 
 " We'll stay until Richard comes back." 
 
 " I supposed so." 
 
 A silence. Then she : " I must go in soon/' and an 
 instant later, without realizing it, seated herself. 
 
 " I wrote to Starky Estelle to-day. ... To ask her 
 to fix Uie date for the marriage." 
 
 She shivered. 
 
 " I decided it was best for me to commit myself." 
 
 She buried her face in her hands. 
 
 " And," he went on, " you know I shall always love 
 you always! ... I say that because in a few minutes 
 flow we'll part, and never see each other again." 
 
 With her face between her hands, she gazed at the 
 Jancing surface of the watery highway of moonlight, and 
 repeated monotonously " never see each other again." 
 Then., after a moment, " How heavy the perfume of the 
 locusts is'' 
 
 168
 
 THE PIUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Yes," replied lie, " but so sweet." 
 
 Then the thin film of surface over their emotions sud- 
 denly burst. " Never again oh, my Courtney ! " he cried 
 between set teeth. Both had thought all day that they 
 were calm and resigned. They knew now how they had 
 been deceiving themselves. He flung away from her. 
 Both knew what was coming, knew it was too late to 
 save themselves, felt the wild reckless thrill of terror and 
 rapture that precedes the breaking down of all barriers, 
 the breaking up of all foundations, the free sweep of 
 unfettered passion. So young so young with such a 
 long stretch of empty years and they never to see each 
 other again ! 
 
 "How can I live on, without you to help me?" she 
 said. 
 
 " It'll be easier for you than for me. You have your 
 boy. I have nothing." He sat down, away from her, 
 stared into the blackness of the copse. " Nothing," he 
 repeated. He was holding his breath and waiting for 
 the inevitable storm to break. 
 
 " Basil ! " she cried, and in impulsive sympathy reached 
 out and touched him. " Won't it be something to know 
 that you have my heart my love ? " 
 
 She felt him trembling, and there was a sob in his 
 voice as he answered : "But when your arms ache with 
 emptiness, you can put them round Winchie. While I 
 Courtney, how can I touch another woman, when it's you 
 you you " And his groping hand met hers, clasped 
 it. He bent his head, kissed her hand the back, the palm, 
 then the fingers one by one. And they softly touched his 
 cheek. " Basil ! " she sighed. 
 
 The faint wind agitated the clusters of locust blooms; 
 their perfume descended in heavy voluptuous waves. He 
 
 169
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 pressed his hands one against each of her cheeks. " Court- 
 ney," he murmured. " My love my dear love ! " Their 
 lips met. 
 
 " We must not ! " she pleaded, her arms about his neck. 
 
 " After to-night," he reminded her, " we, who love, will 
 never see each other again." 
 
 " Never again ! " she moaned. 
 
 It was the signal both were unconsciously, yet delib- 
 erately, awaiting. He gave an inarticulate cry, caught her 
 up as a strong wind a flower. " I've had enough of right 
 and wrong," cried he. " You are mine ! I will not let 
 you go. I love you I love you I love you ! " And he 
 showered kisses upon her until she, dizzy and fainting, 
 yet never so alive, was clinging to him, was calling him 
 endearing names, was laughing and sobbing. And in that 
 darkness and mad frenzy of longing and despair they 
 could pretend to themselves that it was all as unreal as a 
 dream was, in fact, a dream, or at worst, impulse irre- 
 sistible, irresponsible. 
 
 He felt her heart flutter, halt in its steady, strong beat 
 within her breast close against his. She raised her head 
 from his shoulder, listened. "What is it?" he whispered. 
 
 " Listen." 
 
 A bird broke from the copse and with a great noise 
 of wings against leaves blundered away to another and 
 higher place. "A bird that was all," said he. 
 
 " Sh h ! No. They never stir so suddenly at night 
 without cause." She was cold, was shivering. They 
 looked at each other, tingling with guilty alarm. 
 
 " I'll go see." 
 
 " Yes do." 
 
 He disengaged himself lingeringly, with a parting 
 170
 
 caress of his lips along her cheek. " It's cold/' she mur- 
 mured. " And I'm I'm afraid." Never before in all 
 her life had she been afraid. 
 
 He went softly along the path until the shadows hid 
 him. After a moment he returned to the entrance. " I 
 see nothing," said he. 
 
 " And I hear nothing any more/' replied she. " You 
 don't know what a queer, creepy sensation I had. It was 
 was as if some one were near us." 
 
 He did not seat himself by her again. " Isn't it 
 very very late ? " he said hesitatingly. 
 
 " Perhaps. But come, dear. Let's forget. It was 
 nothing. Oh, I was so happy and now Basil, I'm cold." 
 
 Instead of sitting and taking her in his arms he drew 
 her to her feet. " I saw your front door open," he said. 
 " I think you'd better go." 
 
 She flung herself into his arms. " No no ! " she 
 cried. " Not yet." 
 
 He held her closely, but soon released her. " You had 
 better go," urged he, and she felt nervousness and con- 
 straint in his tone, in his touch. 
 
 She laughed quietly. "What are you afraid of?" 
 
 " Nothing ! " he retorted stoutly. " Still, the door is 
 open, and some one might " 
 
 " Why, you're quite cold! , . . Basil, what is it? " 
 
 " Nothing nothing at all," replied he, his arms round 
 her again, his lips upon hers. 
 
 Presently she said : " I thought you were neglecting 
 me rather long. It's a habit men have after after a 
 woman is entirely theirs." 
 
 " Don't say those things, even in joke," he begged, so 
 seriously that it jarred on her overwrought nerves. 
 
 "If you take that sort of remarks in earnest/' said 
 
 171
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 she, a trace of resentment in her tone, " I'll be likely to 
 believe there's something in it." 
 
 " It was so so frank," apologized he. 
 
 "Why not speak frankly?" said she. "One of the 
 joys of loving you is that we'll be entirely frank with 
 each other. I'll never be afraid to show you how much 
 I love you, or to say whatever thought comes into my mind. 
 And you must feel that you can be your natural self always, 
 can speak out any thought you may have, no matter what it 
 is. All that doesn't mean much to you. But to me " 
 She drew a long, deep breath. " You a man couldn't 
 possibly know how delicious it is to a woman to be able to 
 be her her naked self! . . . You're not listening. You 
 don't hold me tightly. Are you shocked? " 
 
 " No," answered he with constraint. " I keep thinking 
 of of that door." 
 
 She was silent, offended. 
 
 " I wasn't quite frank with you a moment ago." 
 
 "Already!" she sighed. Then, repentantly: "I know 
 I'm silly. But it means so much to me to feel that we 
 you and I can stand before each other, just as we are. 
 Oh, I've hidden myself so long, Basil. Your love the 
 great temptation of it was that it meant freedom. If I 
 were your wife, you'd expect all sorts of conventional things 
 of me. If you were my husband, I'd feel and you'd feel 
 we had to live up to standards and do customary things. 
 As it is, our love's free free ! " 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 " Basil, don't you feel that way ? " 
 
 " Yes, dear," he answered absently. " But I must 
 tell you. When I went out a while ago to look, I saw 
 Nanny on the porch." 
 
 Even in that dimness he saw the terror in her face. 
 
 ra
 
 " On the porch ! " she gasped. She sprang up. " Why 
 didn't you tell me before?" she cried angrily. 
 
 " I I thought it might alarm you foolishly." 
 
 " I'm not a hysterical fool. Please don't forget that 
 again." 
 
 " Courtney ! " 
 
 " Oh, forgive me my love." When they had em- 
 braced: "Yes I must go at once. . . . Why can't you 
 come with me? Start as soon as you see I'm at the door. 
 But you mustn't cross the lawn. You must go round by 
 the shadows. It would be quite safe. You needn't go 
 back to the shop." 
 
 " Impossible! " 
 
 She was silent, waiting for him to feel how hurt she 
 was and to reassure her. But he stood aloof, and pres- 
 ently asked in a constrained voice, " How long will you 
 be at your father's ? " 
 
 " At my father's ! " she exclaimed. " Why, I shall 
 not go ! " 
 
 " You must," he insisted. " You've made all the ar- 
 rangements." 
 
 " You can send me away now? " 
 
 "Please dear. Don't be unreasonable. If you 
 changed your plan everybody 'd think it strange." 
 
 " Everybody who? " 
 
 " Nanny, for instance." 
 
 " Nanny ? Why should I care what Nanny thinks ? My 
 first scare was only guilty conscience. Basil, why are 
 you so queer so absent and distant? Tell me just 
 what it is in your mind? " 
 
 She rested her hands pleadingly on his shoulders and 
 looked up at him. In her eyes, as in his, shone the fever 
 of their delirium. He took her hands, kissed her. " Don't 
 13 173
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 be foolish," he said, trying to laugh. " I guess I am a 
 little bit unnerved." 
 
 But she was not satisfied. " Basil do you regret ? " 
 
 " Courtney ! Courtney ! " he pleaded. " That's the 
 way to tear our happiness down, stone by stone, till noth- 
 ing's left but ruins. You must not be suspicious." He 
 patted her reassuringly on the shoulder with an air of 
 possession. " Of course I love you, more than ever." 
 
 " You say it in a tone that that sounds like superior 
 to inferior." She sighed. " Is nothing in the world up 
 to its promise? Here, I thought we'd be perfectly happy 
 two pariahs together two lost souls but accepting our 
 punishment of secret shame and hypocrisy accepting it 
 gladly, as it was the price we had to pay for freedom 
 and each other. And already, in the first hour, we're 
 almost quarreling. It must not be, Basil." 
 
 " No, dearest," he cried. " And it will not be. We 
 will be happy. Trust me. I'm unstrung and maybe 
 you, too. But you know I love you more than I ever 
 thought. And really you ought to go in the morning 
 really, dearest! You need stay only two days. You can 
 come home the second day. Don't you see we must 
 must must be careful? Now that there's something to 
 conceal, we can't act any longer as we did." 
 
 She laid her clasped hand on her breast, looked wist- 
 fully up at him. " We can't ever be free and unafraid 
 again, can we?" said she. "It isn't just one act of 
 of concealment is it? and freedom and openness after- 
 wards. I see lies and lies and yet more lies stretch- 
 ing away away until She shuddered, hid her face 
 in his shoulder. " Oh, my love ! " 
 
 " I'd tell all the lies in the world to have you." He 
 embraced her almost roughly. " All all ! And care not 
 
 174
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 a rap. You you are my god and my morality. To love 
 you, to have you, to keep you that's all. The rest is 
 trash." 
 
 " Yes yes," echoed she feverishly. " The rest is trash. 
 We've got the best. Love ! " 
 
 " And we'll hold on to it always ! " 
 
 " Must I go in the morning, when life has just be- 
 gun? How can I? No no don't answer. I know 
 you're right. I'll go and . . . Good by!" 
 
 She flung her arms about him. He caught up her small, 
 warm body with its soft curves and its radiations of vivid, 
 perfumed life. Their lips clung together. They sepa- 
 rated, laughed dizzily. She waved her arm and darted up 
 the path. From the shadows he watched her cross the 
 lawn, like some creation of the summer and the moon- 
 light. In the doorway she paused, waved to him once 
 more; the door closed. Then he, like a thief, sneaked 
 along the retaining walls at the lake shore now stooping 
 to keep in the deep shadow, out of sight of anyone who 
 might be watching from the house now advancing erect 
 with stealthy swiftness until he was able to strike into 
 the darkness of the path to the Smoke House. 
 
 Midway in undressing his eyes chanced upon her pic- 
 ture, framed and hanging opposite the foot of the bed a 
 large photograph, with Winchie, a tiny baby, against her 
 shoulder, his fat cheek pressing upon hers. Basil stood 
 before the picture, his expression a very human and mov- 
 ing mingling of awe and adoration and passion. Sud- 
 denly he remembered to whom that picture belonged. " But 
 not she! " he said aloud defiantly. Nevertheless, he flushed, 
 hung his head, switched off the light, and sought his bed. 
 "How can I ever face him?" he muttered. Then: " Slie 
 
 175
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 is mine! She never was really his. I take nothing that 
 belongs to him. I take nothing she could give, or ever did 
 give, to him." 
 
 He fell immediately into a sound sleep the exhaustion 
 of nerves so long on fierce tension. But about two in the 
 morning he started up, listened. Yes, some one was mov- 
 ing beneath the window. He went to it, looked down. 
 There was Courtney, swathed in a long, dark cloak. He 
 thrust his feet into slippers, drew on a big dressing gown, 
 descended, and opened the door. He stretched out his 
 arms. 
 
 She flung herself against his breast. " I couldn't go 
 without seeing you again," she panted. " After I left 
 you, and got into bed, I began to think all sorts of dread- 
 ful things about you. You acted so strangely. And then 
 I felt ashamed of myself, felt I must come and beg your 
 pardon. And and here I am. Are you glad ? " 
 
 His laugh was answer enough. He took her in his 
 arms, carried her up to the sitting room, set her down on 
 the sofa. " How light you are ! " he cried. " But how 
 strong I've seen you swing Winchie to your shoulder as 
 if he were nothing at all. Now please won't you let 
 your hair down? There never was such hair as yours." 
 
 She sat up, let the cloak fall away. The moon was 
 flooding the room. As she sat there, with eyes sparkling 
 and small,- sensitive face shy-bold, she looked as if she 
 had sprung to mortal life from an old folk song about 
 loreleis and nymphs and enchanted princesses. " You 
 floated in on the moonbeams," he declared. " I'm afraid, 
 if I don't shut the window, you'll flit away." 
 
 " That'd not stop me," laughed she. And she began 
 to take her hair down. Just as it was about to unroll, she 
 paused. " Wouldn't you like to take it down yourself ? " 
 
 176
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 He went round behind her, drew out the hairpins one 
 by one, fumbling softly, lingeringly for them, keeping 
 them carefully. Her hair loosened, uncoiled, fell about her 
 in a shimmering veil. "Oh, my love!" he cried. "My 
 beautiful Courtney ! " And he took the soft, perfumed 
 veil in his hands, kissed it again and again, buried his face 
 in it, wrapped her head and his together in it. 
 
 She laughed delightedly, then drew away, looking at 
 him with mock severity. " And where, sir, did you learn 
 how to make a woman so happy ? " 
 
 "What things you do say!" he laughed, just a little 
 bit scandalized. " I might ask the same question of you." 
 
 " And I can answer it " with a mocking smile 
 " without evasion. Imagination. I've so often thought 
 and thought and thought what I would be to a man I 
 freely loved one I wasn't afraid of scandalizing. Oh, I 
 know I shock you for there's a great deal you've yet to 
 learn about women that they're human, just like men. 
 But you'll learn and then I think you'll see I'm good 
 for I am. I couldn't be bad hate anyone play mean 
 tricks, say or do mean things. Don't you wish I were tall 
 wish there were more of me ? " 
 
 " I couldn't live through it." 
 
 " And you really really love me ? " 
 
 He held her tightly by the shoulders, gazed into her 
 eyes. " So much that, if you were untrue to me, I'd kill 
 you." 
 
 " Now, what made you think of that? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 Thoughtfully: " I guess it is because I'm giving my- 
 self to you when I am am Now, there you go, shocked 
 again." 
 
 He laughed recklessly. " Give me time," said he, " and 
 177
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 I'll get used to it. You say you'd rather I showed just 
 how I felt than locked it away and pretended." 
 
 " Yes yes a thousand times ! I don't mind your be- 
 ing shocked not really." With a queer little laugh, " I'm 
 shocked myself. Somehow I seem to delight in shocking 
 myself and you. Loving you is all sorts of pleasures 
 and pains. I want them all ! " 
 
 " All ! " he echoed. " Yes all ! " 
 
 Midway in her embrace she stopped him, pushed him 
 laughingly away with, " But you weren't quite frank a 
 while ago." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " There at the lake." 
 
 " Why do you think so ? " 
 
 " Did you ever see one of those little toy spaniels 
 how they quiver and shiver all the time? I'm just as 
 sensitive as that. You mustn't try to deceive me ever ! 
 You mustn't say or act any of those hypocrisies of what 
 some people call good taste, either. They're not necessary 
 with me. They'd make me feel deceived. I might not 
 confess I knew and then ' The little rift within the 
 lute.' " 
 
 " I guess I'll tell you," he said, for the moment deeply 
 impressed. " Yes, I will." 
 
 " Tell me everything everything. There mustn't be 
 any concealment anything to lie hid away in the depths 
 of some dark closet to rot and rot and infect the whole 
 house." She suddenly lowered her 'head; and, as the full 
 meaning of her words, the meaning she had not foreseen, 
 reached him, he, too, became ill at ease. 
 
 Presently he said: " I didn't want to frighten you need- 
 lessly. When I saw Nanny she was just going up the 
 steps of the porch." 
 
 178
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Courtney's eyes widened and her face blanched. " You 
 think " she began when she could find voice. 
 
 " I couldn't tell which direction she hc.d come from," he 
 replied. " But it's no matter. She couldn't know." 
 
 Courtney remembered the darkness how grateful she 
 had been for its friendly aid. " No," said she resolutely. 
 " She couldn't know." 
 
 " Certainly not," echoed he, as if the idea that she 
 could were absurd. " But it made me realize how care- 
 ful we must be." 
 
 " Yes," replied she thoughtfully. " Yes." And she 
 was clinging to him, was sobbing. " Oh, my love my 
 love I don't care what comes, if only it does not sepa- 
 rate us. . . . Look ! Look ! " she cried, pointing out into 
 the sky. " Dawn ! I must fly. Where are my slippers ! " 
 
 He found them for her, put them on, bundled her into 
 her cloak, picked her up, and hurried downstairs with her. 
 " I'm not so little," said she. " It's because you're so big 
 and strong. One kiss quick ! " 
 
 He kissed her on the lips and, as she turned to go, 
 again on the nape of the neck. " Day after to-morrow ! " 
 he cried. 
 
 " Yes, I'll come here at nine, rain or shine." 
 
 And she ran along the path. The moon had set; it 
 was intensely dark. Arriving within sight of the house 
 she stopped short. There were lights, upstairs and down, 
 shadows of moving figures on the curtains. " God ! " she 
 ejaculated. "What shall I do!" And for the first time 
 the great fear the fear a woman has when she thinks she 
 has lost her reputation buried its talons in her throat 
 and its beak in her heart. Do? Face it! She lifted her 
 head high, gathered herself together, advanced boldly. As 
 she entered the front door she ran into Nanny. 
 
 179
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " What's the meaning of this ? " she demanded. In 
 the same instant her courage fled and she leaned faint 
 against the wall. " Winchie i " she gasped. " Has some- 
 thing happened to him? " 
 
 Nanny was standing stiffly with eyes down a sullen 
 figure, accusing, contemptuous. But she answered respect- 
 fully enough if surlily: "Winchie missed you and came 
 up and waked me and Mazie just now." 
 
 Down the stairs came the boy, sobbing, shouting, 
 " Mamma ! Mamma ! I lost you." 
 
 Courtney caught him up, hugged him, kissed him. 
 " You silly baby ! " she cried, laughing. " What a fuss 
 about nothing. Put out the lights, Nannie." Halfway 
 up the stairs she hesitated. Would it be more natural 
 to make an explanation or to say nothing? She decided 
 it was best, more like her usual self, to say nothing. " Put 
 out the lights and go to bed," she repeated.
 
 XII 
 
 SHE had said nine o'clock, but it was not quite half 
 past eight, the next evening but one, when she appeared 
 at the edge of the clearing. He was seated in the en- 
 trance to the upper story, his gaze fixed on the opening 
 in the trees where the path emerged. At first glimpse 
 of her in the long dark cloak, he flung away his cigarette 
 and rushed toward her. He embraced her, then held her 
 off as if to reassure himself that it was really she. " Do 
 you still love me? " he asked. " Are you sure? " 
 
 The emerald eyes flashed up at him. Her face, re- 
 vealed in the starlight, was gravely earnest and sweet. 
 But beneath her calm, as beneath his, there was evidently 
 still raging the hysteria that had whirled both clean out 
 of the realm of vanity and sense the fever that keeps 
 whirling the soul it seizes from pinnacle to abyss and 
 back again. " Ever since we separated/' said she, " I've 
 been imagining I was struggling to give up our love. But 
 as the time for me to come got nearer and nearer, I real- 
 ized what a fraud I was." 
 
 " Do you love me? " 
 
 " I am here." 
 
 They sat side by side in the entrance. " May I 
 smoke? " he asked. 
 
 " Do." As he opened his cigarette case, " Let me have 
 one." 
 
 " I didn't know you smoked." 
 
 " Oh a little at college. We girls used to do it, for 
 181
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 the sensation of being devilish. Wouldn't you like me to 
 smoke ? " 
 
 " If you wish to." 
 
 " You don't approve ? " 
 
 " Well I don't exactly like for women to smoke or use 
 slang. Those things seem sort of unsexing. Of course, 
 it's only an idea." 
 
 She smiled indulgently, rolling the cigarette to loosen 
 the tobacco, as Basil did, with a great air of being an old 
 hand at it. " I'm afraid you're narrow." 
 
 " I guess I am." 
 
 " Gracious ! What you must be thinking of me ! " 
 
 As she said it, she gave that little audacious laugh of 
 delight in her freedom to be frank. But he became grave, 
 and it was with deep earnestness that he answered, " I 
 love you." 
 
 She, too, was grave and thoughtful now. " What a 
 difference that does make ! Then everything anything 
 seems all right." 
 
 " And is ! " 
 
 She put her arm through his. " Here, take your cigar- 
 ette. I'll not distress you." 
 
 " No do smoke." 
 
 " I'll confess the real reason. It makes such a nasty 
 taste in my mouth." 
 
 He tossed his cigarette into the grass. His every ges- 
 ture and hers betrayed what a strain they were under- 
 going, how deceptive was their appearance of sanity. 
 
 " Now, what did you do that for ? " exclaimed she. 
 
 " I oughtn't to smoke when I'm going to kiss you." 
 
 She put her cigarette to his lips. " Please," she urged. 
 " I like you to smoke. Don't you know a woman likes 
 everything, even the unpleasant things, that make a man 
 
 182
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 different from her? . . . Smoke, and tell me what you've 
 been doing. It's forty hours since we were together." 
 
 " I've been conscious of pretty nearly every one of 
 them," said he. " I've done nothing but think of you." 
 
 " Sad thoughts ? " 
 
 " Very. But I'll not do that again. What's the use, 
 Courtney? We've got to have each other. What's the use 
 of struggling against it? " 
 
 " I can't realize it I can't," said she absently. " Last 
 night out at father's I got up in the middle of the night 
 and ran and looked at myself in the glass. And " She 
 paused. 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 " I could look myself straight in the eyes and tell 
 myself what I had been to you, and not feel like hiding. 
 Is it that I'm not doing anything bad or that I'm so bad 
 I don't know good from bad? " 
 
 " It's love," declared he gloomily. 
 
 " I can look back now and see that from the begin- 
 ning from the day I saw you cared I've been coming 
 straight to you. I was lying to myself." 
 
 " I, too," he confessed. " Courtney, we've been and 
 are in the clutch of a force that's stronger than we." 
 
 " I don't know," said she slowly. Then, with her 
 arms round his neck, " and I don't care. If conscience 
 tolls its ugly bell, I'll shout ' Love ! Love ! ' so loud that 
 it'll be drowned. I must have love I will have love. 
 And how can I help loving you, who are so altogether 
 wonderful in every way? You've only kissed me once 
 since I came." 
 
 " Twice." 
 
 "And what's twice?" 
 
 For answer he gathered her into his arms, carried her 
 183
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 up to the sitting room. With all of her within his arms, 
 he sat in the big armchair. " Now ! " he exclaimed. " We'll 
 be happy ! " 
 
 " Yes. Oh, what a scare when I was here before ! " 
 She sat up and told him about Winchie's raising the hue 
 and cry for her. He listened with a somber countenance. 
 When she had finished he said, " And where's Winchie 
 now ! " 
 
 " In bed asleep." 
 
 " But if he wakes ! " 
 
 " Why, he'll lie perfectly quiet till he sleeps again. 
 I told him never to repeat that escapade." 
 
 " But he may get frightened " 
 
 " You forget, sir," said she smilingly, " he's my child. 
 He could not be afraid. . . . What a mournful face ! " 
 
 " I'm horribly jealous of him." 
 
 " If Winchie didn't keep us apart, he never could push 
 us apart now." 
 
 " I'm very selfish," he said despondently. " I want all 
 all ! " 
 
 " Here we are sad again." 
 
 He sighed. " And in a few minutes you'll have to go." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " You can't stay away from the house. Something 
 might happen." 
 
 " Croak ! Croak ! " 
 
 He passed his hand impatiently over his face. " I'm 
 a fool ! " he exclaimed. " I must learn to be content with 
 what I have when it's so much so vastly more than I 
 ever dared hope or " He stared out into the darkness. 
 The ducks among the reeds close inshore were quacking 
 discontented forebodings of rain. " I trifle with my good 
 fortune."
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 "What's the matter, dear?" she asked, her cheek 
 against his. 
 
 " Nothing. Nothing." 
 
 " What have you been thinking while I was away ? . . . 
 Look at me, Basil." 
 
 " It seems to me I can't ever look anyone in the face 
 again." 
 
 She understood who " anyone " was. She pressed closer 
 to him, said caressingly: " Except me. You can always 
 look at me, and I at you. And what more do we want? " 
 
 He did not echo her tender reckless laugh, with its 
 threat of a storm of hysterical tears. " You have good 
 excuse for what you've done. But there's no excuse 
 for me." 
 
 She seemed to be shrinking within herself. He gently 
 put her on the arm of the chair, went to the window, stood 
 there with his back to her. " The truth is, I've been in 
 hell since you left, Courtney a hell of remorse ! " 
 
 "Remorse! Excuse!" Her bosom heaved; her eyes 
 flashed. " Oh, you men ! What hypocrites you are ! . . . 
 Tell me, do you wish to give me up ? " 
 
 He faced her. " I cannot give you up," was his in- 
 flexible reply. 
 
 " Then dismiss all these gloomy ideas," urged she. 
 " Excuse ? You think I have the excuse of of his indif- 
 ference, of his tyranny and bad temper of his " 
 
 " For God's sake, Courtney, don't say those things ! " 
 
 " I think them you think them. Why not say 
 them?" 
 
 " Yes you are right. I am a hypocrite." 
 
 " How easily we hurt each other," she sighed. Then, 
 " But how easily it heals, too." She went on : " We were 
 talking of excuses. Anyone can find an excuse for any- 
 
 185
 
 THE H UNGRY HEART 
 
 thing. Only weak people look for excuses." She ele- 
 vated her head proudly. " I want no excuse for what I 
 did, for what I'm doing. I need no excuse. Do I not 
 own my heart, my self? I have the right of my youth, 
 of my love. Isn't that enough? " 
 
 " The right of our love ! " he exclaimed, as gay and 
 confident as he had been depressed and doubtful. " We're 
 wasting time. Let's talk and think only of love." And 
 he drew her down into the chair, into his arms. " Court- 
 ney when he does come promise me you will not will 
 not " 
 
 There he halted, for the wave that passed over her as 
 she lay in his arms told him that she understood. " You 
 know I will not," she said. " I belong to you, now." 
 
 " But he may " 
 
 She laid her fingers on his lips. " Trust me," she 
 said. " I've planned it all. Only, that's the one thing 
 we mustn't ever talk about." She laughed, with desper- 
 ate straining to be audacious. " There is honor, even in 
 the dishonorable." 
 
 "You dishonorable? I, perhaps yes, certainly. 
 But you you belong to yourself. It is I who will play 
 the part of dishonor. You can be as cold and distant as 
 you like. I must smile and pretend to be a friend." He 
 shrugged his shoulders, laughed unpleasantly. 
 
 " That's manly ! " exclaimed she, nerves instantly un- 
 strung. 
 
 " What can you expect of of me? " he replied, so 
 down that she straightway relented. 
 
 "Let's drop this subject, dear," she pleaded. "Let's 
 never speak of it again and think of it as little as possi- 
 ble. It's one of the conditions of our life. We will admit 
 it and ignore it." 
 
 186
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " How can we drop a subject that crops out, comes to 
 the tips of our tongues, every time we look at each other? 
 But be patient, dear. I shall grow hardened " 
 
 " Oh, but you must not, Basil ! " she cried in dismay. 
 " We must not. That's our danger, and we must fight it. 
 . . . Isn't it pitiful! If we were two coarse people, mere 
 animals, merely the ordinary man and woman, why, we'd 
 be happy and never give remorse a thought." 
 
 "If we suffer more, we enjoy more," said he, clasping 
 her as if some power had tried to snatch her away. " When 
 I feel ashamed, Courtney, all I have to do is to remem- 
 ber your hair, to feel again its soft splendor on my face, 
 between my fingers and I am delirious." 
 
 " Love always love ! " she murmured. " No price too 
 great to pay for it." 
 
 They heard steps stealthy steps upon the walk, just 
 under the bedroom window. " Yes, yes, I hear," he whis- 
 pered, as in the darkness she clutched his arm. He went 
 to the open window, she sitting up, rigid, wide-eyed, with 
 bated breath. Keeping in the shadow, he glanced down. 
 He saw a man, half hidden in the shrubbery. A moment 
 and his eyes focused so that he saw the outline of the man's 
 face, the angle of his head saw that the man was peer- 
 ing up toward that very window. He went softly back to 
 her. " Go into the sitting room," he said. " I think it's 
 one of those prowlers." 
 
 "Sh-h!" she warned. "Listen On the stairs." 
 Both stopped breathing and listened. It was the faint- 
 est of sounds, but unmistakable. Yes, it was a robber. He 
 was ascending the stairway slowly, silently, steadily, up 
 and up, step by step. Now they would miss the sound 
 altogether; then it would come again nearer, softer. 
 
 187
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Their hands were clasped were like ice, but without a. 
 tremor. 
 
 " How did he get in ? " she breathed. 
 
 " Don't you remember ? I left the outside door un- 
 locked wide open." 
 
 " Sh-h ! " 
 
 " Go back into the sitting room," he whispered. 
 
 " No I stay here with you." 
 
 The awful sound, so faint, so relentless, was in the 
 hall. " Go ! " he commanded. " You'd be in my way, 
 dear. If I need you, I'll- call." 
 
 She saw that he was right that at least he must not 
 feel hampered. She pressed his hand, glided into the 
 sitting room. Suddenly she almost cried out. " Is the 
 bedroom door locked? " she called in a hoarse under- 
 tone. 
 
 He made a silent dash for it, to lock it. Too late. 
 It opened. He could see nothing in the black hall. He 
 made a forward leap, right hand clinched, left hand open 
 and ready to inclose a throat. His fist thrust past the 
 man's head, but his left fingers closed upon the throat, 
 and his weight bore the man to the floor. But the prowler 
 was not taken wholly by surprise. Basil instantly realized 
 how fortunate it was that he had got the initial advantage. 
 The two grappled; a short, sharp struggle and Gal- 
 latin felt the form under him relax. He took an even 
 stronger hold on the throat, planted his knee squarely in 
 the chest. "I've got him!" he cried to Courtney. "Go! 
 Go!" 
 
 But he triumphed too soon. With a tremendous effort 
 the prowler tore Gallatin's fingers from his throat. " Good 
 God, Gallatin is it you? " he gasped. 
 
 " Vaughan ! " 
 
 188
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Gallatin dropped all to pieces. But Courtney was in- 
 stantly herself and more. On went the lights, and she 
 burst out laughing. Gallatin rose, staggered over to the 
 window seat. Vaughan, not without difficulty, picked him- 
 self up from the floor, gazed savagely from Gallatin to 
 his wife. She kept on laughing, more and more wildly, 
 laughed until she fell into a chair, sat there laughing, with 
 the tears rolling down her cheeks. " Was ever anything 
 so ridiculous ! " she gasped. And she looked from one to 
 the other, and went off again. 
 
 Vaughan, straightening his collar and coat and waist- 
 coat, appealed to Gallatin. " What's the meaning of this? " 
 he demanded. 
 
 By way of reply Gallatin stared at him, as if debat- 
 ing whether or not to renew the attack. 
 
 " What does this mean, Courtney ? " Vaughan said to 
 her sharply. 
 
 " That's what we'd like to know," replied she. 
 
 "Why did Gallatin 
 
 " Serves you right," interrupted Courtney. " Why did 
 you come prowling round here? Why didn't you go 
 home ? " 
 
 Vaughan looked sheepish. " Well, I wanted to make 
 sure everything was all right here." 
 
 Courtney smiled with resentment in her raillery. " You 
 iwere more anxious about your workshop than about your 
 wife and child." 
 
 Vaughan reddened. " Oh, I knew everything was all 
 right at the house," he stammered. His glance fell upon 
 the tumbled bed. " Why ! " he exclaimed. " Some one's 
 living here ! " 
 
 Gallatin, startled, was standing up with his hands 
 clinched. But she had no fear. She did not feel guilty 
 13 189
 
 toward this man, who was nothing real to her; and she 
 knew enough about him to know that his absolute belief 
 that good women were good, and could not stray even in 
 thought, made it impossible to tax his credulity. All that 
 was necessary was boldness. " Mr. Gallatin is living here," 
 said she composedly. 
 
 " Gallatin ! " exclaimed Vaughan. " Why, I locked the 
 whole place up." He wheeled on Basil. " How did you 
 get in here? " he asked. " Didn't I make it plain to you 
 from the outset didn't we have a distinct understand- 
 ing " 
 
 " Richard ! " interrupted Courtney sharply. " Mr. Gal- 
 latin is here because I sent him here." 
 
 Richard concentrated his angry attention upon her. 
 " You ! What right had you " 
 
 " You will not address me in that tone," said she 
 haughtily. " You come back home, like a thief in the 
 night. You give me a fright. You half kill Mr. Gallatin, 
 and then you begin to quarrel. I repeat, Mr. Gallatin is 
 here because I sent him." 
 
 " I thought it best to live here while you were away," 
 said Gallatin stiffly. He did not wish to throw upon Court- 
 ney the whole burden, yet he hardly dared speak, as he 
 could not see how she hoped to extricate herself and him. 
 In his guilt, in his ignorance of such a character as Rich- 
 ard's, he was amazed at her having hope. He thought her 
 courage superhuman. 
 
 Vaughan glanced, half amused, half disdainful, from 
 one to the other. " Are you two still disliking each other ? 
 I had forgotten that." 
 
 " You are misaken," said Gallatin. " I do not dislike 
 Mrs. Vaughan." 
 
 But Vaughan did not hear. " What on earth " he 
 190
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 suddenly ejaculated, staring at Gallatin, then at Court- 
 ney " What on earth were you two doing here in the 
 dark?" 
 
 Gallatin grew white as chalk. But Vaughan was look- 
 ing at Courtney. " We weren't in the dark," said she, 
 with never a tremor of eye or voice. " We were in the 
 sitting room." As she spoke she threw open the door be- 
 tween the two rooms. Gallatin gazed into the sitting 
 room like a man seeing a miracle. The lights there were 
 all bright. The instant she had heard her husband's out- 
 cry, she had turned on the lights in both rooms, the but- 
 tons being on either side of the same wall just beyond 
 the door frame; and she had closed the sitting-room door 
 before the two rose from the floor. 
 
 " Come in here/' she said, leading the way. " I kept 
 getting more and more afraid at the house," she went 
 on in rapid, easy explanation. " It was very lonesome 
 there were several robberies in the neighborhood and 
 Nanny and Lizzie and Mazie sleep so far away from my 
 rooms. I took Winchie and went home for a couple of 
 days, but it wasn't convenient for me to stay there and 
 so dull! I came back to-night, and strolled down here 
 after dinner to make my peace with Basil " Here she 
 made a mocking bow to him " and to ask him to please 
 come up and guard the house. How well you're looking, 
 Richard ! " 
 
 " I do feel bang up," said Vaughan, " except here " 
 He touched his throat where Gallatin's fingers had closed 
 in. " The trip was just what I needed. I went to a 
 specialist in New York, and I serve notice on both of you 
 that I've turned over a new leaf. I'll take regular exer- 
 cise again and stop grinding away all day and all even- 
 ing. The great discovery of the fuel that will make it 
 
 191
 
 as cheap to be warm as to be cold can wait. Perhaps it'll 
 come the sooner if I keep in condition." 
 
 " That's sensible/' said Courtney. " And you must live 
 at home, and let Mr. Gallatin stay on here." 
 
 " It's good advice. I'll take it," assented Vaughan 
 promptly. " Being here tempts me to work when I ought 
 to be resting." He threw a good-humored look at Galla- 
 tin. " I guess you're not likely to succumb to that temp- 
 tation, old man." 
 
 " Not I" said Basil, with the first sickly hint of a 
 smile. 
 
 " Gad, it's good to be home ! " Vaughan was gazing 
 at Courtney now, in his eyes the proprietorial look, bold, 
 amorous. " She's looking well eh Gallatin? " 
 
 Basil did not answer. He was glowering at Vaughan, 
 and biting his lip, and his fingers were twitching. 
 
 Courtney rose. " Let's all go up to the house/' pro- 
 posed she: "You'll come, won't you, Mr. beg pardon 
 Basil?" 
 
 Gallatin stared coldly at her. Her " superhuman cour- 
 age " now seemed sheer brazenness to him. " Thanks 
 no," said he in a suffocating voice. 
 
 " Hope I didn't damage you, Gallatin," said Vaughan 
 with the rather careless solicitude of man for man. 
 
 " Not in the least," replied Gallatin curtly. 
 
 " Oh, come now, old man," cried Richard. " Look at 
 my throat." He inspected it himself in the mirror rue- 
 fully. "If I can forgive you, you ought to forgive me. 
 Come along, Courtney." 
 
 He took her bj r the arm, smiling at her, she mustering 
 a return smile. Basil was looking intently at her, with 
 an expression of cold fury. When he caught her eye he 
 sneered. She, already at the breaking pitch, could not 
 
 192
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 endure that contempt. She looked piteously at him, gave 
 a low cry, sank upon the sofa, fell over in a dead faint. 
 
 Basil gazed stupidly at her. Vaughan dashed into the 
 bath room, reappeared with a wet towel, rubbed her tem- 
 ples and her wrists with it. She opened her eyes, looked 
 round saw Basil. " Take me away ! " she sobbed. " Take 
 me away! " 
 
 Her husband gathered her into his arms as if she were 
 a tired child. " Good night, Gallatin. See you in the 
 morning," he said, and strode out with her. 
 
 Gallatin fell into one of those futile rages that are 
 the steam of the strife between a man's desire and his 
 courage. " It's my love for her," he assured himself, 
 " that keeps me from following him and taking her from 
 him." Pie found small comfort in this, however; for, he 
 suspected it was only part a minor part of a truth, the 
 rest of which was altogether to his discredit. He sat, 
 he leaned, he stood at the bedroom window overlooking the 
 path. Again and again he fancied he saw her, a new 
 and deeper shadow in the shadows beneath the trees. 
 Whenever the wind stirred a bush there, his fanciful hope 
 made it her cloak. He knew it was impossible for her 
 to return; but he could not give up. He did not leave 
 the window until dawn. Then, he lay on the bed, ex- 
 hausted, wretched, burning with hate for Richard, with 
 rage against her, with contempt for himself.
 
 XIII 
 
 TOWARD eight o'clock came Vaughan, in high spirits. 
 Basil, stiff and sore, was still lying on the bed. 
 
 " Sure you don't want breakfast ? " said Richard. 
 Then, getting a view of his partner's face: "You are a 
 sight! I beg pardon, old man. I've got a few marks, 
 myself. But You must have the doctor." 
 
 " No, thanks," was Basil's surly answer. " I'm all 
 right." 
 
 " But you ought to do something for that eye and that 
 cheek. I sure did give you some hard punches." As this 
 sounded as if it were and was not without a certain 
 pride, he added : " The worst you gave me are hidden by 
 my clothes except these finger marks. What a stupid 
 thing for me to do! And poor Courtney's quite done up 
 this morning. Really, old man, you'd better let me send 
 for the doctor." 
 
 " I'll telephone for him," said Basil. " I want to be 
 left alone." 
 
 " Beg pardon. I've done nothing but apologize ever 
 since I got home. Well, I'll go to work. Don't bother 
 to come down to-day. I shan't need you." 
 
 Gallatin muttered " Selfish beast," as soon as Dick was 
 clear of the room. And it was undeniable that Dick's 
 pretense of sympathy had been rather more offhand than 
 sucn pretenses usually are. He had never had to con- 
 ciliate and cultivate his fellow beings in getting a living, 
 and had been brought up indulgently by Colonel 'Kill and 
 
 194
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Eudosia. Thus he was candid in his selfishness, often 
 appeared worse than would a man who was in reality 
 more selfish, but was through fear or training, less self- 
 revealing. However, Basil was not one with the right 
 in any circumstances to be censorious of such undiplo- 
 matic conduct; for he, too, had been born and bred to 
 wealth and security, and had been " spoiled " by a wor- 
 shipful family. 
 
 Not for a week did he dare show his face. Dick 
 called twice a day did all the talking always about 
 the chemistry into which he had plunged with freshened 
 energy and enthusiasm. Usually he apologized for 
 Courtney's not coming " She still feels weak and up- 
 set," he would say, " and wants me to make her ex- 
 cuses. I tell her you'd refuse to see her even if she 
 could come." 
 
 When Basil's face and complexion were once more 
 about normal, he waited until Richard was at work down- 
 stairs, then adventured the path to the house. He found 
 Courtney in the sitting room, in a negligee, sewing; 
 Winchie was building a lofty house of blocks on the 
 veranda just outside for her to admire. He scowled at 
 Winchie; Winchie scowled at him and, when his back was 
 turned, made a face at him. " Good morning, Mrs. Vaugh- 
 an," said he coldly. " I've come to pack my traps." In 
 a lower tone that was menacing, he added, " I want to 
 see you." 
 
 She laid aside her sewing, a strained expression in the 
 eyes that shone wistfully in her pallid face. The boy 
 dropped the block he was putting into place and stood 
 up. " Go on with the house, Winchie," said she. Then 
 to Basil, " You may come right upstairs." 
 
 She preceded him into the study on the left of the 
 195
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 upper hall the study that had been his, and was now 
 Kichard's. He, following, closed the door, advanced 
 toward her with lowering brow and angry eyes. 
 
 " It's very imprudent to close the door," said she, 
 calmly returning his gaze. " Nanny is at work across the 
 hall." 
 
 " Did you break your promise to me that night ? " he 
 demanded. 
 
 " I'll answer no question not even from you, Basil 
 when it's in that tone." 
 
 " First you want me to open the door, so that I can't 
 speak out," sneered he. " Now you evade. . . . You admit 
 your degradation. I knew why you were keeping away 
 from me." 
 
 " That was not my reason," she stammered, with low- 
 ered head. 
 
 " You lie ! You are doubly false. You have no shame. 
 Now I understand why you said those bold things why 
 you acted so free as no innocent woman could. You 
 expert! " 
 
 Her eyes were milky like a tortured sea; her face be- 
 came ghastly; she trembled so that she had to steady her- 
 self at the back of a chair. " Basil ! " she exclaimed. " No, 
 it's not you. What we've suffered since he came has driven 
 you mad. It has almost crazed me." 
 
 " Answer me ! " he commanded fiercely. " Did you or 
 did you not break your promise to me ? " 
 
 Suddenly she drew herself up, and with the sad dig- 
 nity of guilt that has been expiated she said : " I ask you 
 to pity me." And she stood there, pale and haggard, a 
 statue of wretchedness. 
 
 His fury could not hold against that spectacle and 
 she, the proud, asking for pity ! " It's I who should be 
 
 196
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ashamed/' he cried. " How I have suffered ! What a 
 coward what a cur I am ! " 
 
 She rushed to him. " Oh, my love ! What we've been 
 suffering has only made you dearer to me, dearer than ever ! 
 There's no bond like suffering." 
 
 He was about to take her outstretched hands when 
 suspicion flamed into his eyes again. " How easily you 
 twist me round your finger ! " he said roughly. " Now, 
 there's your making me move down to the shop. Why 
 should you want to get me out of the house when, if I 
 were here, we could see each other all the time ? " 
 
 She showed no resentment, felt none. " It's natural 
 you should suspect me," said she. " I'd suspect you in 
 the same circumstances. I see now how absurd it was to 
 dream of happiness founded on lies. No happiness for us 
 not even joy now and then. If we didn't love each 
 other, we might be happy. But we do love, and misery 
 is all we can expect. I'll tell you why I wanted you down 
 there." She paused, went on with veiled eyes and bright 
 red in her cheeks. " As I said to you, even dishonor has 
 its honor. I didn't want us meeting here with my boy 
 and his so near." 
 
 Basil looked as if he were about to sink down under 
 his shame and self-contempt. " Forgive me. What a hound 
 I am ! " he muttered. 
 
 " As for my free actions and free speech " 
 
 " Courtney ! " he begged, seizing her hands. " Don't 
 speak of that." 
 
 " I must explain," she insisted gently, freeing herself. 
 " I'll always explain everything to you. As I told you, 
 I wanted to be free with you, perfectly free. So I said 
 and did the things any woman who loved would think and 
 feel, but most women hold back for fear of spoiling a 
 
 197
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 lover's ideal. I didn't want you to idealize me, but to love 
 me just as I was, just for what I am." 
 
 " And I do I do ! " he cried, trying to draw her into 
 his arms. 
 
 " Yes, you do, I believe," answered she, insistently 
 drawing back. " I know you truly love, and you know I 
 truly love. I know you are a man any woman would be 
 proud to have love her, and you know I'm not a low or 
 a bad woman. Yet, see how it turns out. . . . Basil, we 
 must give it up ! " 
 
 " Give it up ! " He was bristling with suspicion at 
 once. 
 
 " You must go away." 
 
 He laughed scornfully. " That is your kind, consid- 
 erate way of dismissing me. What vanity! I shall suffer 
 no more than you." 
 
 " Not so much," she answered sadly. 
 
 " I shall go away and marry." 
 
 " You can't make me jealous now, Basil. Not after 
 what you've been to me. I mean just what I say. You 
 must go, and I'll try to be to my husband all a wife should 
 be. If you'd been through what I've been through that 
 night and since you'd understand. Basil, do you remem- 
 ber how I lied, how I laughed and cheated like an ' ex- 
 pert,' as you say. Oh, you must have despised me! If 
 you hr.d done what I did, had done it as fluently, I'd have 
 loathed you." 
 
 "And what about me? Didn't I stand there, a con- 
 temptible coward, and let him take you away ? " 
 
 " What else could you have done ? " 
 
 " Shown myself a man ! " 
 
 " And ruined me and my child ? Oh, no, dear. You 
 love me too well for that." She startled, listened. " He's 
 
 198
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 coming/' she warned,, flying to the door. She opened it 
 softly to its full width, advanced composedly into the hall, 
 saying in her usual voice, " Then Jimmie'll take your things 
 down about four o'clock." 
 
 Richard, on his way up, had reached the head of the 
 stairs. " Oh ! " he exclaimed. " Here you are ! I asked 
 Winchie where you were, and he said he didn't know. So 
 I've been hunting all over the place for you. I want you 
 to take a walk with me." 
 
 " Certainly," said she tranquilly. " I'm talking busi- 
 ness with Basil. Go down and help Winchie finish his 
 house, and we'll take him along. I'll come in a few min- 
 utes." 
 
 " All right ! " said Dick cheerfully. He shouted out, 
 " Hey, Gallatin, how's your grouch ? " and descended the 
 stairs, laughing as he went. 
 
 As she reentered the sitting room, she said, with the 
 quietness of the emotions that are too deep and too ter- 
 rible for tumult, " Am I not ' expert ' ? How long do you 
 think we could keep this sort of thing up without becom- 
 ing I tell you, Basil, looking within myself as I've lain 
 in the dark, I've realized it takes decent people people 
 with nerves and imaginations and sense of right and wrong 
 to become frightful, if they once get on the down grade. 
 Did you hear what he said about Winchie? " 
 
 " Yes," muttered Basil. He was at the desk, his elbows 
 on it, his hands supporting his head. 
 
 " Winchie knew where I was. Why did he lie to his 
 father ? Already a liar ! " 
 
 " I must go. You are right But, Courtney you 
 must get a divorce." 
 
 " I've thought of that. On what ground? And how- 
 can I leave him alone take Winchie away from him? " 
 
 199
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " You must get a divorce." 
 
 " I think so, too," assented she. " But I will not lie to 
 do it. I'm done with lies. I'll tell him." 
 
 " No let's go to him together." Basil's face lighted 
 up, his manner became enthusiastic. He thought he saw a 
 way to redeem his manhood put in pawn for this sin so 
 dear yet so detestable. " Together ! " he exclaimed. " He 
 is generous and broadminded." 
 
 She shook her head. " Men are not generous and 
 broadminded where women are concerned the women they 
 look on as theirs." 
 
 He colored and glanced guiltily at her. But it was 
 plain that she had not in mind his own exhibition of the 
 male attitude toward the female. His memory of it helped 
 him to appreciate the folly of his proposal. But he would 
 not give in at once. " I'd not suggest it, if he really loved 
 you. But " 
 
 " If he really loved me, he'd have felt the truth long 
 ago. If he really loved me, he'd wish me to be happy 
 would give me up. But then if he had really loved me, 
 none of this would ever have happened. No, Basil, it's be- 
 cause he doesn't love me, because it's only passion that takes 
 and gives nothing, that uses and doesn't think or care about 
 the feelings of its creature " 
 
 Basil, horror-stricken by this bald candor, ashamed for 
 her, stopped her. " Let's not talk about it," he pleaded. 
 " As for the divorce, I leave it to you. You know best how 
 to deal with him." 
 
 His manner and its cause had not escaped her, with 
 nerves keyed up to the snapping point. Once again he had 
 raised in her heart the dread lest their love would not mean 
 the perfect frankness, the perfect oneness of which she had 
 dreamed. Did a man always demand and compel conceal- 
 
 200
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ment and pretense in the woman? But she thrust out the 
 doubt. " I'll do what seems best/' she said to him, avoid- 
 ing his eyes and speaking with constraint. " I don't know 
 Richard very well. You see, we never got acquainted. 
 He's like most men. They don't want the woman, but 
 only the outside. . . . He's so wrapped up in his work 
 that I think I can free myself." 
 
 He took her hands, gazed into her eyes. " Yes," he 
 said, " you do love me. You feel that we belong to each 
 other, just as I do. So when I'm away I'll know you are 
 coming as soon as you can." 
 
 " As soon as I can," she replied. And the expression 
 of her eyes, meeting his steadfastly, and the deep notes 
 in her sweet voice thrilled him with a new sense of her 
 love and of her constancy. This woman had not given in 
 whim; she would not change in whim. 
 
 " I will go to-morrow," he said. " The sooner I go, 
 the sooner I shall have you. Will you come to-night to 
 say good-by? " 
 
 " Don't ask it, dear. I mustn't ever again until I'm 
 free." 
 
 " In the summer house, then. For a few minutes. We 
 can't part like this." 
 
 " Yes, I'll come." 
 
 Along the hall from the foot of the stairs sounded 
 Richard's imperious, impatient voice. " I say, Courtney ! 
 Do hurry ! " 
 
 " I can't go for a walk with him now," she said, half to 
 herself. " I'll make some excuse." She looked at Basil, he 
 at her. In their eyes was a sadness beyond words and tears. 
 And what would it be when he was really gone? " I mustn't 
 linger here I mustn't ! " she cried. " And don't come near 
 me when he's around. I can't control myself." 
 
 201
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 They clung together for an instant, then she fled. 
 
 She made vague household matters her excuse for not 
 taking the walk. She did not see Richard alone until late 
 that afternoon. She was in her and Winchie's big bath- 
 room, which she also used as a dressing room. As she sat 
 at the dressing table there, in petticoat and corset cover, 
 doing her finger nails, he walked in. " May I come? " 
 said he, already in the middle of the room. 
 
 She glanced at him, or, rather, in his direction, by \*-ay 
 of the mirror and went on with her polishing. But she was 
 not resentful of the scant courtesy of this intrusion. In the 
 beginning of their married life she, through love, had 
 confirmed him in his life-long habit of considering only 
 himself and of expecting himself to be considered first. 
 Now, indifference was making her as compliant as love 
 had made her. And it was just as well. An attempt to 
 assert herself would have seemed to him a revolt which 
 pride and duty made it imperative for him to put down. 
 The man a woman has spoiled through love, or the woman 
 a man has spoiled, must be born again to be got back within 
 bounds. 
 
 " You don't ask how I happen to be home so early 
 nearly an hour before supper," said he. 
 
 " It is early," replied she absently. 
 
 " I've made up my mind not to kill myself with work 
 and no exercise, and to give more time to my family. I 
 had a chance to look at myself at my way of life from 
 the outside while I was in the East. And I'm going to 
 try to live a more human life, though it'll not be easy to 
 work less, when Gallatin's leaving me." 
 
 Until he spoke Gallatin's name she had not heard a 
 word. We are all surrounded at all times in our custom- 
 ary haunts by a multitude of unchanging objects, ani- 
 
 202
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 mate and inanimate. We become practically unconscious 
 of them so long as they maintain the same relative posi- 
 tion toward us. We notice only changes, only those changes 
 that are radical. Richard had long been to Courtney a 
 mere familiar part of her environment as she of his. She 
 could look at him without seeing him, could answer him 
 without having really heard. She could submit to his ca- 
 resses without any sense of them. This unconsciousness 
 was not deliberate; it was far deeper, it was habitual. At 
 Gallatin's name, however, she began to listen. 
 
 " Yes, he's going," said Richard. 
 
 She inspected the nail of her right little finger. " Is 
 he? " she asked, head on one side critically and emery slip 
 poised. 
 
 " For good. And I'm not sorry. He's of less and less 
 use to me at the laboratory. His mind isn't on it." There 
 Richard laughed. 
 
 " I thought you felt you couldn't get on without him," 
 said she, searching in a box for an orange-wood stick. 
 
 " That was some time ago. I suppose you're glad he's 
 going." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I know you don't like him. You've been very good 
 about it, and I appreciate your being polite to him. But 
 I can see that you dislike him." 
 
 She glanced in the mirror, arranged a stray of hair. 
 " You are mistaken." 
 
 " No, I'm not. You've got the good woman's instinct 
 to please her husband, and you think you've conquered 
 your dislike. But you haven't." 
 
 " How you understand women," said she placidly. 
 " But then there isn't much to understand about a woman 
 a good woman." 
 
 203
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Oh, you underestimate yourself," said he generously. 
 " You're a very clever little lady in your own charming 
 feminine way. I often admire it." 
 
 A ghost of a smile flitted about her lips ; but she seemed 
 more intent upon her nails than upon his half-absent com- 
 pliment. 
 
 " To confess the honest truth," he went on, " I've never 
 liked Gallatin myself. I know he's a good sort But 
 Well, he has no depth. He has a stock of education and 
 a stock of manners, just as he has a stock of clothes. But 
 it's all of some one else's make; nothing of his own, except 
 a pleasant, amiable disposition. And he lacks purpose. 
 However, all these things especially lack of purpose 
 iwould only recommend him to a woman. Women are so 
 frivolously 'constituted that purpose is a bore to them." 
 
 " Any more of a bore than it is to most men ? " inquired 
 Courtney. 
 
 Vaughan laughed acknowledgment. " Anyhow, I 
 couldn't warm up to him. He's going, but he keeps his 
 partnership at least, for the present." 
 
 " Has he gone ? " 
 
 "Of course not! He'd hardly be so rude as not to 
 say good-by to you. Do you know why I think he's 
 going? " 
 
 " Didn't he tell you? " 
 
 " He says a business letter came at noon to-day. And 
 no doubt it had something to do with it. But mere busi- 
 ness would hardly take him off in such a rush. At first I 
 thought it was a hurry call from some idle female for him 
 to come and amuse her. All bachelors get them, and Gal- 
 latin's just the sort of gander to respond. But on second 
 thought I suspected he's flying because he's in love with 
 you." 
 
 204
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Courtney, conscious that his eyes were on her face, 
 smiled. 
 
 " It's natural that you, being a good woman, shouldn't 
 notice it." 
 
 " Women sometimes think a man's in love with them 
 when he isn't," said she. " But the woman never lived 
 good, bad, or both who didn't know when a man was in 
 love with her." 
 
 " Well, I may be mistaken. But he had a queer way 
 of acting. Why, only this morning he was lowering at me 
 like a demon." Vaughan laughed. " Poor Gallatin. But 
 he'll pull through all right." 
 
 " No doubt," said Courtney. 
 
 " Sometimes now and then a man or woman in love, 
 and staying in some dull place, where there's nothing to do 
 but brood, does go under, with love one among the con- 
 tributing causes," pursued Richard. " But not a city per- 
 son. And Gallatin's going to New York." Something in 
 her expression made him hasten to say: " Now, please don't 
 get angry. I apologize. I admit my joking was somewhat 
 coarse. Naturally it grated qn your modesty. Really, I 
 was only joking. I know he's going for business reasons. 
 Then, too, he has a grouch for me because of the fearful 
 punch I gave him. No, he any man who has led a free 
 life as long as he has could no more appreciate a good 
 woman a woman like you than than a drunkard could 
 appreciate a glass of pure, clear, sparkling spring water." 
 
 Courtney gathered her manicure set together, swept it 
 noisily into the drawer. " Go out, and let me finish dress- 
 ing," said she in a low voice between her set teeth. 
 
 And he departed, saying: "What a relief it'll be to 
 have Gallatin off the place to have it to ourselves again." 
 
 She sat motionless with her eyes down. Presently she 
 14 205
 
 lifted them, saw her reflection in the mirror. She gazed 
 in horror. She had relaxed the instant he left her alone, 
 and now all her anguish was in her features. " A little 
 more of this/' said she, " and I'd be an old woman." She 
 passed her hands over her face, looked into her eyes. 
 " Spring water " flashed to her mind. Her eyes wavered 
 and sank; her skin burned. But her hungry heart clam- 
 ored defiantly. 
 
 When she reached the dining room her husband and 
 Basil and Winchie were already at the supper table. As 
 they rose, Basil did not lift his eyes; her husband gave 
 her a glance of greeting. But Richard, the married man 
 of five years, did not really see her face as it then was, 
 but the face that had long been fixed in his mind as hers. 
 To have seen her as she was, he would have had to be 
 startled out of matrimonial myopia by some shock. There 
 was no arresting change flaunted in Courtney's features; 
 youth has no wrinkles and hollows in which the shadows 
 of emotion can gather thick and linger. She simply looked 
 tired and not well. Her eyes were veiled; but in her skin 
 there was a lack of the ruddy tinge beneath the bronze, 
 and in her hair, which was with her an unfailing index to 
 health or to spirits, there was a suggestion of the lifeless- 
 ness that is in the last wan autumn leaves the dreary winds 
 of November spurn. In tones that seemed to them more 
 unnatural than they were, she and Basil exchanged the 
 commonplaces necessary on such an occasion. Winchie 
 watched her sympathetically. Presently he dropped down 
 from his chair, came round to her. He put his arm about 
 her neck, drew her head toward him, kissed her tenderly, 
 and whispered, " Mamma is sick." 
 
 She kissed him, whispered : " Yes, dear, but you mustn't 
 say anything." 
 
 206
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Winchie went back to his place. The conversation was 
 wholly between the two men, the subject being, of course, 
 chemistry. After supper Courtney pleaded a headache and, 
 having uttered the formulas prescribed for the parting and 
 having heard from him the formulas embodying his part 
 in such an exchange, withdrew. Instead of being agitated, 
 she was in truth as calm as she seemed outwardly and 
 numb. She saw Winchie to bed, occupied herself mechan- 
 ically for an hour, then sat at one of the windows of her 
 front room looking out toward the lake. When she thought 
 at all, it was of trifles; most of the time, during those two 
 hours of waiting, she did not think, but listened to the 
 beating of her blood as it made the ringing in the ears that 
 climaxes the oppression of an intense silence. 
 
 At length Richard came up. He glanced in at her. 
 "How's the headache?" he inquired, laying a caressing 
 hand on her shoulder. 
 
 She moved ; his hand fell away. " No better," replied 
 she. " Good night." 
 
 " You'll feel all right in the morning," he said. He 
 kissed her crown of hair and departed toward his own 
 rooms those that had been Basil's. 
 
 She heard him stirring about, first in his study just 
 across the hall, then in his bedroom. Half an hour, and she 
 went on the balcony, to the corner of the house, to see if 
 j his lights still showed. All his windows were dark. She 
 returned, listened at his door. No sound. She stole down 
 the stairs, unlatched the lake-front door, went out. She 
 strolled across the lawn, in full view for the moon was 
 rising. At the edge of the shadows made by the bushes 
 round the summer house, she halted. 
 
 " Basil ! " she called softly. 
 
 He came from the summer house and stood before her. 
 207
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " It's safer to stay here," she said. " We can watch the 
 house." 
 
 He made no protest. He took her hands, drew her to 
 his breast. Never before had he touched her without feel- 
 ing the glow and surge of passion; now he had no sense 
 of her physical beauty, of her physical charm, only sense 
 of the being he loved. 
 
 " Forgive me the horrible things I said, Courtney," he 
 murmured. " It wasn't I that was speaking. It was the 
 beginnings of what I was fast becoming." 
 
 " I know, I know," she answered. " Kiss me, dear." 
 
 Their lips met in a caress of tenderness. When she 
 spoke again she said: "Dear love, I never felt before how 
 much you care." 
 
 " I never realized before. I'm beginning to realize. 
 You won't be long about arranging the divorce? " 
 
 " You must not get impatient or misunderstand if 
 I'm longer than you expect." 
 
 " I'll not misunderstand." 
 
 " There's Winchie, you know. I must have Winchie." 
 
 " Yes, indeed. You'll accomplish it," he said confi- 
 dently. " Be careful not to tell him too much. Even if 
 he doesn't really love you, there's his vanity. And that's 
 often stronger in a man than anything else." 
 
 " I'll not forget what's at stake. . . . He suspects that 
 you love me." 
 
 " I was afraid so, and this evening I told him I was 
 engaged. He looked astounded." 
 
 " I can tell him that I love you, and he will think - 
 No no what am I saying? Lies, always lies! . . . I'll 
 do the best I can, Basil." 
 
 " I know you will." 
 
 "You see now I was right in feeling you must go?" 
 208
 
 " I felt it, Courtney, the moment we three stood to- 
 gether there in my room though I wouldn't admit it to 
 myself. If I stayed, there'd be a crime, or a scandal 
 that'd spatter you with mud and brand you with shame. 
 It simply could not be otherwise." 
 
 " I haven't told you the real deep-down reason why 
 I felt you must go." 
 
 " No," he said. " Your real reason was the same as 
 mine." 
 
 " Because it was all so vulgar and and cheap? " 
 
 " Cheap that's it ! " he exclaimed. " Cheap ! " 
 
 " I could stand it," she went on, " to commit and to 
 have you commit, big, bold sins, scarlet and black. I might 
 even glory in it. I wasn't a bit ashamed that first night. 
 I think I even got a sort of joy out of defying all I'd 
 been brought up to believe was moral and right and lady- 
 like. But Not when we stood there, like two caught 
 sneak thieves." 
 
 " That was it, Courtney," eagerly assented he. And 
 he went on, in a tone in which a less love-blinded woman 
 might have detected an accent of repentance for masculine 
 thoughts of disrespect: "No wonder I love you! How 
 happy we shall be, when you're free. How good and pure 
 you are and innocent. It needn't be long in this State 
 need it? " 
 
 " I think not," she laughed. " Being a judge's daugh- 
 ter, I ought to know. But I don't." 
 
 " Look there ! " he exclaimed, gazing toward the house. 
 
 She turned, saw a figure at the east corner of the house, 
 apparently looking toward where they were standing. The 
 figure moved. " Nanny," she said under her breath. " I 
 must go." 
 
 He caught her to his breast; for an instant they clung 
 209
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 together, then with a last lingering handclasp, she left him, 
 to emerge from the deep shadow of the trees and stroll 
 back across the lawn. Presently she pretended to catch 
 sight of Nanny, halted, changed her course, went toward 
 her. " What is it, Nanny ? " she asked. 
 
 Nanny turned without a word, started to go back toward 
 her kitchen. 
 
 " Nanny ! " said she sharply. 
 
 The old woman stopped, turned. 
 
 " What do you mean by not answering me when I speak 
 to you ? " 
 
 " I didn't know as you expected an answer," replied 
 Nanny, sullen and cowed, but insolent underneath. 
 
 " I asked you what you were doing here? " 
 
 The two women looked straight into each other's eyes. 
 " I just came out to get a breath of air like you," said 
 Nanny. " I don't see as there's any harm in that." 
 
 " Certainly not," said Courtney. And she resumed her 
 stroll, back and forth across the lawn for three quarters 
 of an hour. 
 
 She did not come down to breakfast. About nine o'clock 
 Richard, at the Smoke House, called her on the telephone. 
 " Gallatin cleared out on the midnight express," said he. 
 " Now, what do you think of that ? " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " He left a note saying good-by and explaining that 
 he found he could make better time." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Don't you think it a little queer ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Anyhow, he's gone. I feel better already. Don't 
 you ? " 
 
 210
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I can't say I do." 
 
 "Well I'll see' you at dinner." 
 
 " Yes good-by." 
 
 She returned to her sitting room, all in a glow. Basil 
 had gone because he, sensitive and honorable, wished to 
 spare himself the hypocrisy of a farewell handshake with 
 Richard " and to end the suspense/' she added. " The 
 suspense ! " And she struck her hands against her throb- 
 ing temples. 
 
 A few days and there came from New York a crate of 
 orchids, with only his card. " That's what I call decent 
 and very handsome," declared Vaughan, roused to enthu- 
 siasm by this attention. " I must say I rather miss Basil, 
 now that he's really gone. Don't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Courtney. 
 
 " Which means no. Don't even these orchids soften your 
 heart? Think how he used to let you work him. Oh, 
 women ! women ! Orchids cost a lot of money, don't they? " 
 
 " Some kinds." 
 
 " When you write thanking him, do put cordiality and 
 friendliness into the note." 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 She sent eighteen closely written pages a line about 
 the orchids, the rest an outpouring of love and longing 
 a sad letter, yet hopeful and ending with the injunction 
 that it be left unanswered. " You must not write until you 
 hear from me," she said. " And that will be soon soon, 
 my love, my Basil ! " 
 
 Next day Dick asked, " Have you thanked Basil for 
 those flowers ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " I wish you had let me see the letter. I'll bet you
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 made it all frost. You don't know how cold you are, Court- 
 ney. Sometimes you chill even me, well as I know you. 
 ... I guess I'll write Basil a note, too and let him see 
 that we did appreciate his thoughtfulness." 
 " As you please."
 
 XIV 
 
 FIVE days since the letter to Basil, a fortnight since 
 he went, and the first move toward freedom not yet made. 
 
 Each day added its strength of loneliness and longing 
 to the resolve that became the guiding purpose of her life 
 when she sent him away. But she must restrain her eager- 
 ness, must compel herself to wait upon opportunity upon 
 the favorable gust of event or emotion. To be tactless and 
 abrupt would mean defeat ; for, hard though it was to real- 
 ize, she must keep ever in mind that Richard had legal 
 right over Winchie. Moral right she denied not only be- 
 cause he was as much a stranger to Winchie as to herself, 
 but chiefly because a child belonged to its mother. Indeed, 
 if she had not been brought up in a legal family it would 
 not have occurred to her that in any circumstances she 
 need disturb herself about having Winchie. There was 
 nothing of pose or effusiveness about her love for him; 
 it was that deep and utter love which is not conscious of 
 itself, but simply is. She and the boy were as much part 
 of each other as when his being was still hidden within 
 hers. She knew that she and Winchie were one; but she 
 also knew the man-made law. So in seeking her freedom 
 she must move carefully. Sometimes she felt she must be 
 dreaming; it simply could not be possible that in arrang- 
 ing her life she must take into account a person so utterly 
 alien and apart as this nominal husband of hers. 
 
 She had rarely seen him since Basil left. He was ex- 
 ercising walking or rowing on the lake very early in 
 the mornings. But he spent the whole day at his work. 
 
 213
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 When he occasionally came to dinner or supper, he was 
 deep in his problems, was as unconscious of his wife and 
 child as his child was of him. Courtney was no longer 
 unconscious of him. As before, she did not see him when 
 she looked at him, did not listen when he talked, answered, 
 if answer was necessary, by a sort of reflex mental action 
 that never involved her real mind. But she had the sense 
 of his presence as keen when he was out of sight as 
 when he sat working or in a deep abstraction before her 
 eyes. And she was constantly revolving how to begin the 
 revolt for she saw more and more clearly that it would 
 be regarded by him as a revolt against womanliness, against 
 duty, against honor, against decency, would burst upon him 
 like thunder from clear sky, no matter how adroitly she 
 might begin. Until then his ideas of woman had im- 
 pressed her only in a vague, general way. She had 
 avoided thinking them out or hearing them from his own 
 lips because she knew definite knowledge would only make 
 the struggle to be a wife to him as far as she might the 
 more painful, the more humiliating. But now, piece by 
 piece, his conception of womanhood and woman's place 
 fitted itself together in her mind from stray sentences 
 dropped by him from time to time in their five years. 
 Every day she recalled some forgotten or ignored remark 
 that added to the completeness of the record and to its 
 discouragement. As to the position of woman in the scheme 
 of things, he was untouched of any modern idea. He was 
 just where his grandfather had been; and Colonel Achilles 
 Vaughan had been where the whole world had been since 
 the Oriental contempt for women reconquered Europe under 
 the banner of the Cross. 
 
 In one of the last warm days she half sat, half lay 
 in the hammock on the lake-front veranda, apparently idle, 
 
 214.
 
 really with a brain as industrious as a beehive. Gradually, 
 however, the beauty of the scene summer dying like a 
 lovely woman whose mortal disease only enhances loveli- 
 ness stole in upon her and won her for the moment. She 
 looked at the wonderful colors far and near, she drank 
 in the last potent draughts of summer's perfume. And sud- 
 denly she thought, " I would be divorcing all this, too ! " 
 These gardens that she had created; the house that she had 
 made over. Why, these things were part of her very soul. 
 The same life throbbed in them that throbbed in her boy 
 and in herself her own life blood ! The place was in 
 Richard Vaughan's name just as she herself was, just as 
 Winchie was. But it was not his; it all that made it 
 individual was hers! 
 
 Most of us pass through the world, leaving little more 
 trace of our individuality than a traveler leaves in a hotel 
 room. But Courtney had the creative instinct powerfully de- 
 veloped. She even never dressed in exactly the same way, 
 no matter how simple her costume or how often she wore 
 it; and her clothes were so individual that Richard the 
 absent spoke of hats and dresses she had worn several years 
 back. And this place it was like the picture the artist 
 keeps by him and touches and retouches. Also, she now 
 realized for the first time how profoundly domestic she was 
 by nature. Not by chance had she avoided the life of the 
 gadabout and meddler which is chosen by so many women 
 when they find themselves mismated, and so, without hope 
 of the normal life. She had always classed herself with 
 the flyabout sort of women rather than with the domestic 
 sort; she had fallen into the common error of taking as 
 representative of the domestic type those dreary rotters 
 who sit at home inert and slovenly simply because it re- 
 quires less effort to stay at home than to dress and issue 
 
 215
 
 forth. Now she saw that she was domestic, was a home- 
 maker and a home-lover; and she understood a deeper 
 depth of her unhappiness the unhappiness that comes 
 from being cheated out of one's dearest desires ; for how 
 incomplete must be any home without love of husband and 
 wife. And she understood why, as she made her surround- 
 ings more and more like her dreams, her longing for love 
 had grown apace ; she was like the bird that builds its nest, 
 and has nothing to put in it. 
 
 She had built this nest; now she must abandon it. 
 Heavier and heavier grew her heart, as she thought of 
 the years of thought and toil she had invested, as she looked 
 about at the results. She rebuked herself almost fiercely 
 in terror of the weakness to which these lamentings might 
 tempt her; in shame at the disloyalty to Basil. " I'm 
 utterly selfish," she said to herself. " I'm shrinking from 
 making gftiy sacrifice at all." There she stopped short in 
 a kind of terror. " Sacrifice " what a strange word to use 
 what an ominous word and how clearly it warned her 
 that delay was eating out courage, was strengthening her 
 natural woman's inertia. Sacrifice! She began to pic- 
 ture what the new life would be perfect sympathy, com- 
 panionship ever closer and closer, how she would grow 
 and expand, how Winchie would thrive in an atmosphere 
 of ideal love and Basil and she would together create a 
 place, a home which would be incomparably lovelier than 
 this. ..." Yes, I must establish my life on its perma- 
 nent basis." Her life must be straightened out, must be 
 settled right. Until it was based right, nothing could be 
 right; mind and heart would always be uneasy, and from 
 time to time in a turmoil. " Nothing is settled," her father 
 often used to quote, " until it's settled right." He was 
 thinking of large affairs, but the thing was just as true
 
 of the affairs of private life. Her and Richard's relations, 
 her and Basil's relations, and therefore her and Winehie's 
 relations, were awry, all awry. There had been successive 
 adjustments; they had one after the other fallen to pieces 
 because " nothing is settled until it's settled right." 
 
 That very evening, it so happened, for the first time 
 Richard made a remark that gave her an opening. " Why 
 don't you stay down in the evenings ? " said he. " It 
 doesn't disturb me for you to play and sing in the sitting 
 room when I'm in the library." 
 
 " The last few times I did it," replied she, " you slipped 
 away to the shop." 
 
 He reddened, laughed guiltily. "Did I ? Well per- 
 haps in certain moods " 
 
 " Oh, I'm not complaining," she assured him. " I've 
 got used to our leading separate lives long ago. ... I 
 like it as much as you do." 
 
 " Separate lives," said he reflectively. " It's true, we 
 don't see much of each other. Husbands and wives rarely 
 do, when the man amounts to anything, or is trying to 
 amount to anything." 
 
 " Unless they work together." 
 
 " And that's impossible where people are of our sta- 
 tion." 
 
 Our station ! Her lip curled and her heart protested. 
 How could a human being with a human heart talk of a 
 station too high for love love that was the soul of life. 
 
 " Also," continued he, reflective and absent, " it's out 
 of the question where the husband is pursuing an intellec- 
 tual occupation." Even had he not been merely thinking 
 aloud, it would not have occurred to him that there was any 
 slur in a statement of an elementary axiom as to the dif- 
 ferent spheres of the two sexes. " And/' he went on, 
 
 217
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " it's unnecessary to married happiness, as we've proved. 
 You had an idea once do you remember? " 
 
 " Yes I remember." 
 
 " If I'd let you have your foolish, impulsive, romantic 
 way, and you'd been at my elbow down at the shop, where 
 I get irritable and cranky we'd not have made our pres- 
 ent record would we? " 
 
 She shivered. " No," she said faintly. 
 
 " Five years with hardly a misunderstanding, and not 
 one quarrel." 
 
 His words, his manner complacent, content calmly 
 possessive dried up her courage and her hope. But she 
 held to her purpose. She said, " We're not interested 
 enough in each other to quarrel." 
 
 He laughed, assuming she was jesting. " That's it! 
 That's exactly it." 
 
 " I was speaking seriously. It's the truth. We care 
 nothing about each other." 
 
 " Courtney ! " he admonished. " Aren't you carrying 
 the joke too far? I don't think you realize how that 
 sounds." 
 
 " I realize how it is." 
 
 He looked at her curiously. " Why, I thought you were 
 joking." 
 
 " Not in the least." 
 
 " How pale your face is. And what a strange expres- 
 sion round the mouth and your eyes are circled. Are you 
 ill, dear? " 
 
 " Absolutely well. It's the strain of getting ready to 
 say these things to you." She saw he was observing her 
 like a physician studying a patient. " No, I'm not insane, 
 either," said she good-humoredly. 
 
 " What's happened to upset you? " 
 218
 
 THE HUN GEY HEART 
 
 She put one knee in a chair, leaned toward him over its 
 back, her elbows upon it. Said she, " It isn't a matter of 
 to-day, but of five years or, rather, of four years." 
 
 He straightened up in his chair. She imagined that his 
 grandfather, old Colonel Achilles, must have looked like that 
 at the same age. " What are you talking about? " he de- 
 rnaiided. 
 
 " About our failure as a married couple," replied she, 
 meeting his gaze with calm courage. 
 
 " Failure ! " exclaimed he. " Why, our married life is 
 ideal. I wouldn't have it changed in the least particular." 
 He nodded his handsome, powerful head. " Not in the 
 least particular." 
 
 She had expected him to say something like this. But 
 the actual words, spoken with sincerity and conviction, 
 stopped her. Her road had ended against the face of a 
 cliff with a precipice on either side. 
 
 " I want to be free," she said desperately. " I must 
 be free ! " 
 
 " Free ? You are free." 
 
 " I mean free from marriage," explained she gently, 
 " free to make my own life." 
 
 He reflected, looked at her, reflected again. She saw, 
 as plainly as if his thoughts were print before her eyes, that 
 he had decided she was a spoiled child in a pet, that he was 
 trying to find some kindly, effective way of humoring her. 
 But to take her words seriously, to meet her on a plane of 
 equality the idea had not occurred to the grandson of 
 Achilles Vaughan, and could not occur to him. Anger 
 boiled up in her, evaporated. She laughed. 
 
 He glanced at her quickly. "Oh, you were joking!" 
 said he in a relieved tone. 
 
 " That wasn't why I laughed. It was to save myself 
 219
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 from doing something ridiculous shouting out, or upsetting 
 the table, or running amuck." 
 
 " No matter. It's clear to me that you're not yourself 
 this evening not at all." 
 
 " Richard," said she slowly, " I know it's hard for you 
 to believe a woman's not a fool. I don't expect you to 
 credit me with intelligence. Perhaps you might if I were 
 a big, fat woman with a loud voice. But I'm not. So, 
 assume I'm as silly a fool as as most women pretend to 
 be, to catch husbands and to use them after they're caught. 
 But please assume also that, whatever I am or am not, I 
 want my freedom. And try to realize that we women are 
 living in the twentieth century as well as you men and not 
 in the tenth or fifteenth." 
 
 His expression was serious and respectful; he was not 
 one to fail in polite consideration for the feminine the 
 wayward, capricious, irrational feminine with which stronger 
 and rational man should ever be patient and gentle. But 
 she saw that he was in reality about as much impressed as 
 he would have been by a demand for the open cage door 
 from a canary born and bred to captivity and helplessness. 
 He came round the table, put his hands tenderly on her 
 shoulders, pressed his lips in a husbandly caress upon the 
 coil of auburn hair that crowned her small head. " You're 
 tired and nervous to-night, dear," said he with grave kind- 
 ness. " So we'll not talk about it any more. Go to bed, 
 and get a good night's sleep. Then " 
 
 She rose, found herself at a disadvantage standing be- 
 fore one so much taller, sat down in another chair. " Yes, 
 I am tired and I am nervous. But I'm also in earnest. 
 Why, if we weren't strangers, you'd realize. You'd have 
 felt it long ago. Can't you see I'm nothing to you or you 
 to me that is, nothing especial nothing that ought to 
 
 220
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 satisfy either of us ? " She was trying to speak with serious 
 calmness; the very effort overstrained her. And his face 
 its expression was so hopeless ! She was speaking a lan- 
 guage he did not understand, was speaking of matters of 
 which he had not the faintest glimmer of knowledge. Her 
 voice broke; she steadied it. It broke again. She began to 
 sob. " This life of ours is a degradation. It's like a stag- 
 nant pool it's death in life. I can't stand it. I want 
 love want to give love and get it! My whole being cries 
 out for love! I'm dying here of the empty heart. I must 
 go. I ask you to be just to give me my right my free- 
 dom " 
 
 It was his expression that stopped her. He was not lis- 
 tening to her words at all. He was simply waiting for her 
 to talk out her hysteria, as he thought it, so that he could 
 begin to soothe the agitated child. She threw out her arms 
 in despair. 
 
 " Go on, dear," he urged. " Say all you want. You'll 
 feel better for it." 
 
 The cliff, with choice between turning back and leaping 
 over one of the precipices on either side the precipice of 
 flight to Basil in secrecy and dishonor, with Winchie, or 
 the precipice of a divorce with Winchie taken away from 
 her. She buried her face in her arms and burst into wild 
 sobs. With Winchie taken away from her! If she fled, he 
 would follow, would take Winchie. If she divorced him, 
 he would take Winchie. It was hopeless hopeless. There 
 was no escape. Sobbing, she ran round and round her pris- 
 on's outer court to which she had penetrated. It had no 
 gates none ! He waited until she was quiet, except that 
 her shoulders heaved occasionally. " Poor dear ! " he said 
 tenderly. " Poor child ! " And he took her in his arms. 
 She felt physically and morally too weak for the least 
 15
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 struggle. She lay passive against his breast, her heart- 
 ache throbbing dully. He carried her upstairs, laid her 
 gently on the sofa at the foot of her bed. " Now you feel 
 better, don't you? " said he, bending over her and smiling 
 sympathetically down. 
 
 She gazed at him with forlorn, hopeless eyes, then rested 
 her head weakly against the cushions in the corner of the 
 sofa. 
 
 " Of course, I understood that what you were saying a 
 while ago was only a nervous mood. But it gave me a shock, 
 too. I know now what was the matter." 
 
 She grew cold, rigid. Did he suspect? Would he take 
 Winchie ? 
 
 " I admit I've been neglecting you lately. Gallatin's 
 leaving put a lot of work on me. And, too, I read an article 
 that gave me a silly scare made me afraid I'd be antici- 
 pated in one of my discoveries if I didn't push things. But 
 even if I was negligent, I can't see how you could get the 
 notion in your head that you weren't loved any more." He 
 sat down by her on the sofa, kissed the nape of her neck. 
 " I'll make up for it," he murmured. " Why, it'd be as 
 impossible for me to stop loving you as for you, a good 
 woman, to stop loving your husband. The idea of you talk- 
 ing divorce ! " He laughed boyishly. " You and I di- 
 vorced ! What a naughty child it was ! It seems dreadful 
 that those pure lips could be sullied by such a word. But 
 it never was in your heart. A woman like you, a woman I 
 trust my honor to, and trust my boy to, couldn't think such 
 things." 
 
 His words and manner, all tenderness, were for her re- 
 minders of the Vaughan prejudice and the Vaughan will 
 and the Vaughan pride that lay behind; the clang of iron 
 doors, the grate of brass keys in steel locks. She, back in 
 
 222
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 her cell and prostrate on its floor, felt she must indeed have 
 been driven out of her senses by heart hunger to imagine 
 she could get freedom and Winchie from Richard Vaughan. 
 How love and hope had tricked her ! 
 
 " Asleep, dear ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You don't doubt my love any longer, do you? " 
 
 She moved restlessly. 
 
 " Still cross ? " Ke took her in his arms in spite of her 
 struggles, began to caress her. And she who had never 
 resisted did not know how to resist now did not dare to 
 resist, so cowed was she by fear of losing Winchie, so 
 utterly was she despising herself " nothing but a woman." 
 She endured till reaction stung her into crying out in an- 
 guish : " For God's sake, Richard ! I am so miserable ! " 
 
 " I'm sorry," he said contritely. " I thought you wanted 
 it." He rose at once. " Would you like to be left alone ? " 
 
 " Please." 
 
 " You forgive me for neglecting you? " 
 
 "Anything!" she cried. "Only go. If you don't, I 
 shall " She pressed her lips together tightly and drew 
 all her nerves and muscles tense to keep back the avowal 
 that was fighting for exit. 
 
 " I'll give up my work until you feel better." 
 
 " No no. I don't want Go please go ! For 
 Winchie's sake for mine for your own." 
 
 He did not attach enough importance to her words to 
 note them and inquire. When the door closed behind him, 
 she drew a long breath not so much relief that she was 
 alone, as relief that, before seeing how useless it was to try 
 to escape, she had not burst out with the whole truth. A 
 turn of the wind of emotion before he spoke of Winchie, 
 and she would have told all ! Even after he had reminded 
 
 223
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 her yes, even until the door closed between them, she 
 might still have been goaded by her despair or by his man- 
 ner into precipitating the cataclysm 
 
 " For he'd never have let me see Winchie again ! " And 
 what else would he have done ? what would he not have 
 done? She put out her lights and, without drawing aside 
 the portiere, softly opened Winchie's door and entered. 
 She dropped down by his bed, slipped her hand under the 
 cover, delicately warm from his healthy young body. Her 
 fingers rested upon his breast over his heart. That calm, 
 regular throb of young life beat upon her spirit like the 
 soft, insistent rain that soothes the storm-racked sea. 
 
 Winchie! If she had lost him! If she had brought 
 disgrace upon him ! She drew her hand away lest its trem- 
 bling should waken him. The room was pitch dark, but 
 she could see him lying there, his tumbled fair hair against 
 the white pillow, his round cheeks flushed with healthy 
 sleep. She sat on the floor beside the bed, listening to his 
 breathing. She had gone down to the gates of the world 
 and had led him through them into life. Claim upon him 
 she had none for he owed her nothing, and if his lot were 
 not happy he would have the right to blame her. No, he 
 owed her nothing; but his claim upon her was for the last 
 moment of her time, for the last thought of her brain, for 
 the last drop of her blood. 
 
 " If it were not for Winchie," she said to herself, " I'd 
 go to Basil. I'd leave here to-night. I owe nothing to 
 Dick. While his way of looking at life is not his fault, 
 neither is it mine. And as it's his way, not mine, he should 
 suffer for it, not I. But for Winchie I must stay and live 
 and make this house a home." 
 
 Never again would there be the least danger of her 
 being goaded into telling Richard and defying and compell- 
 
 224
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ing him. No delirium, not even a fever like a maniac loose 
 in the brain and hurling all its tenant thoughts helter-skelter 
 through the lips, could dislodge that secret. It was sealed 
 with the great seal of a mother's love. 
 
 When she came down to breakfast, Dick was at one of 
 the long windows, back to the room, hands deep in trousers' 
 pockets. At her " Good morning," he turned quickly. Be- 
 fore he answered, he noted her expression, and his face 
 brightened. He kissed the cheek she turned for him as 
 usual, and they seated themselves. In came Mazie with the 
 coffee; it had the delicious fragrance that proclaims fine 
 coffee well made, the fragrance that will put the grouchiest 
 riser into an amiable frame of mind. Then she brought the 
 spoon bread and an omelette not the heavy, solid, yellow- 
 brown substantiality that passes for omelette with the gen- 
 eral, but a light and airy, delicately colored thing of beauty 
 such as a skilled cook can beat up from eggs the hens have 
 laid within the hour. 
 
 " Feeling all right this morning? " asked Dick when 
 Mazie had gone out. 
 
 " Perfectly," replied Courtney, her smiling eyes like the 
 dark green of moss round where the spring bubbles up. 
 She was rearranging the flowers in the bowl. 
 
 " Sleep well? " 
 
 She had not slept at all. She evaded his question by 
 saying: " I was very much upset last night, wasn't I? " 
 
 Dick made a gesture of generous dismissal. " Oh, I 
 knew it was only a passing mood," said he, helping himself 
 liberally to the omelette. " Everybody has moods. Do give 
 me some of that coffee." 
 
 Strange indeed was the expression of that small, quiet 
 face. What a chaos a few blundering words from her a 
 
 225
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 few hours ago would have put in place of this domestic con- 
 tent of his ! " I want to say one thing more/' said she, 
 " and then we'll never speak of last night or what led up 
 to it" 
 
 "Yes, dear?" 
 
 " We talked a lot about ourselves and I was thinking 
 altogether of myself, I find. But the truth is, Winchie's 
 the only important fact in our lives. We don't belong to 
 ourselves. We belong to him." 
 
 " That's not exactly the way I'd put it," said he hesi- 
 tatingly. " Do try this spoon bread. Mazie's a wonder at 
 making it. Do try it." 
 
 " Not just now," said she. " No, I know you wouldn't 
 put it that way. Put it any way you like. But it must be 
 Winchie first, last, and all the time. We must see to it that 
 he has the right sort of example from you from me 
 from us both." 
 
 Dick nodded approvingly, and when his mouth was 
 empty, said: " There's no disputing that. Where is he, by 
 the way? " 
 
 " He'll be down in a minute," replied Courtney; then 
 went on unruffled: " If you and I had had love before our 
 eyes in our homes when we were children 
 
 " But I did. And I'm sure your father and mother were 
 an equally fine example " 
 
 " No matter/' interrupted Courtney. Then she said, in 
 a tone that revealed for the first time how profoundly moved 
 she was : " The point is I want you to help me make a home 
 of love for Winchie." 
 
 " By all means ! " exclaimed Dick heartily. 
 
 He stirred his coffee thoughtfully, looked at her with 
 puzzled eyes; and she saw that his keen, analytic mind, 
 usually reserved wholly for his work, was curiously inspect- 
 
 226
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ing her words and her manner for the meaning that must 
 be beneath so much earnestness about a passing anger over 
 a few days of neglect. She said no more and was glad 
 when Winchie came rushing in to turn the current of his 
 thoughts. As he was leaving for the shop, he hunted her 
 out in the library to kiss her good-by a thing he had not 
 done in several years. 
 
 She colored, made an effort, kissed him. 
 
 " I'm sorry for my negligence since Basil left me in 
 the lurch," said he cheerfully. " And you're sorry you 
 flew into such a fury about it. And it's all settled and 
 forgotten ? " 
 
 " We make a fresh start," replied she. 
 
 " I'll come and take a walk with you before dinner." 
 
 " No no. Please don't. You mustn't change abrupt- 
 ly." She stopped, confused to find herself already shrink- 
 ing from the new course she had so highly resolved. " Yes 
 do come," said she. 
 
 " Oh I forgot. There's one thing I simply must 
 attend to to-day." 
 
 " Then to-morrow." 
 
 " Yes to-morrow we'll make the start the fresh 
 start." 
 
 " Very well," said she, relieved for she felt she had 
 done her duty. 
 
 Instead of going out immediately for a walk with 
 Winchie, as was the habit, she lingered about the house, 
 keeping herself busily occupied. She must write Basil. 
 What she said must be final, for she owed him the truth. 
 And she must not say much; a long letter would give him 
 hope, no matter what words she used, and would harrow 
 him in the reading and her in the writing. At last she 
 put on hat and even gloves for the walk, sat hastily down 
 
 227
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 at her desk, wrote: " I cannot. I belong to my boy, not 
 to myself." She wished to add, " I shall try to forget. So 
 must you, for my sake " and also some word of love. But 
 with the two sentence she halted her pen. She read what 
 she had written " I cannot. I belong to my boy not to 
 myself." She folded the sheet, sealed it in an envelope, 
 addressed it. As she reached for the stamp she called 
 Winchie. They went out together, and she mailed the let- 
 ter in the box at the edge of town. Well, it was settled 
 once more. Was this final? " Nothing is settled until it's 
 settled right." And she said to herself that this settle- 
 ment was undoubtedly right that is, as nearly right as 
 anything ever is. Yes, it was settled but her father's 
 uncompromising axiom continued to reiterate its clear-cut, 
 unqualified assertion. 
 
 " Why did you sigh, mamma ? " asked the boy. 
 
 " Did I sigh? " said she, trying to smile as she looked 
 down at him. 
 
 " Yes and you haven't been listening as we came along. 
 You didn't hear what I said about the dead whip-poor-will 
 I found on the lawn did you? " 
 
 " No," she confessed. " But I'll listen now." 
 
 She found herself wondering at her calmness. " Per- 
 haps," reflected she, " my fright about Winchie conquered 
 my love. And how deep the roots of my life are sunk into 
 the soil of this place! Still I don't understand it It 
 doesn't seem natural I should be calm." There flashed 
 before her mind a picture herself flying disheveled com- 
 ing forward with laughter and jest and lie with the 
 sting of forbidden kisses still upon her face the thrill of 
 forbidden caresses And she flushed crimson as the au- 
 tumnal maples above her head, and glanced guiltily down at 
 Winchie and saw that he was trying to pretend not to see. 
 
 228
 
 XV 
 
 LONG before Dick got caught up with the particular 
 piece of work that postponed their " fresh start/' Court- 
 ney's " queer mood " and his own resolution were shelved 
 in one of those back closets of his memory where reposed 
 in darkness and dust matters relating to his family. He 
 forgot nothing; his was not the forgetting kind of mind. 
 Everything was stored away somewhere, under its proper 
 heading, ready for him if he should happen to need it. But 
 for that especial matter there came no demand. His happy 
 married life had resumed its unrippled course. He worked, 
 with allowance for exercise usually a long walk or a row 
 on the lake in the very early morning, before breakfast. 
 Courtney occupied herself with house and garden. She 
 was building a vegetable greenhouse with a small legacy 
 from an aunt; also, there was the household routine of a 
 multitude of time-filling, thought-filling, not to be neg- 
 lected details for keeping things smooth and orderly and 
 there were reading and painting and music and there 
 were callers and visits. She even began to be philosoph- 
 ical about the almost daily evidences that her husband 
 regarded her as an inferior. All men felt that way toward 
 women. The very men who never made a move without 
 consulting their wives thought themselves superior intelli- 
 gences, and their wives mere possessors of a crafty instinct, 
 in common with the lower animals, an instinct that was 
 worth availing themselves of, as long as it was right there 
 in the house. No, she was a silly supersensitive, she told 
 herself, to be disturbed by such a ridiculous universal mas- 
 
 229
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 culine weakness of vanity. As husbands went, Richard 
 was about as good as any better than most. 
 
 The evenings they spent together. A charming picture 
 of family life they made each evening during that rare, 
 exquisite September. The big log fire in the sitting room; 
 he at the desk, she reading or sewing, or, less frequently, 
 playing and singing softly. She had never been lovelier. 
 The slightly haggard look was becoming to her young face, 
 and the weariness of the eyelids also, and the pathos of 
 her mouth so eager to smile, and the milky emerald of the 
 eyes, like seas troubled so deep down that the surface was 
 only clouded, but not ruffled. Sometimes she let Winchie 
 stay with them an hour or so. Then the picture was com- 
 plete the boy playing on the floor before the fire, making 
 what he called drawings at the table, always between his 
 father and his mother, always nearer his mother, near 
 enough to put out his hand and touch her and make quite 
 sure of the reality of her lovely presence. Yes, she assured 
 herself many times each day, the struggle was over; the 
 pain would grow less and less, would pass for the 
 question of her life relations was settled " and settled 
 right." 
 
 This until mid-October, when the bleak rains inaugu- 
 rated what promised to be a worse than the previous win- 
 ter. On the fourth successive day indoors, as she sat at 
 a drawing table in the upstairs sitting room, she sud- 
 denly lifted her head, thrust back the table, flung down 
 the pencil, and rushed to the window. The lawns were 
 flooded. Bushes and trees were drearily fluttering the last 
 wet faded tatters of autumnal finery. Decay desolation 
 death " Will he never come ! Will he never write ! " 
 And the secret of her calm, so carefully guarded from her- 
 self, was a secret from her no longer. 
 
 230
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 It had been a farce the six weeks of resignation. One 
 of self-deception's familiar farces; those farces that finally 
 make old people cynical in spite of themselves about the 
 reality of disinterested goodness, of self-sacrifice, of any- 
 thing except selfishness. A farce nothing more. That 
 was why she could write a brief farewell and send it off 
 with merely a pang and a sigh. And ever since she had 
 been confidently waiting for something to happen. Some- 
 thing? What but his coming coming to give her again 
 the love that was life and light to her, the love she could 
 no more refuse than a drowning man can withhold his 
 hand from clutching the rope though the devil himself toss 
 it. And once more her father's maxim, " Nothing is set- 
 tled until it's settled right," began to thrust itself at her 
 mockingly now, as if deriding her self-deceiving at- 
 tempts to found her life upon conditions to which mind 
 and conscience had agreed, but not heart. And heart, the 
 most powerful of the trinity that must harmonize within 
 a human being or there is no peace heart had suddenly 
 torn up the treaty of peace and declared war. And Avar 
 there was. 
 
 About seven that evening Dick knocked at her bedroom 
 door. " May I come? " he called. 
 
 " Yes if you won't stay long," was her reply in a 
 listless tone. 
 
 He entered, looked surprised when he saw her propped 
 up in bed with her supper tray in her lap. " Are you 
 ill?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You didn't come down to supper." 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I don't think I ever knew you to do this before." 
 
 " No." 
 
 231
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Your voice sounds strange tired." 
 
 " I am." 
 
 ** You don't exercise enough, I guess. And there's little 
 for you to do about the house with Lizzie looking after 
 the flowers and Nanny such a good housekeeper and Mazie 
 such a splendid cook. We're getting the benefit of my 
 aunt's toil. She built up such a splendid system that it 
 runs itself and there's really not enough for you to do. 
 You ought to " 
 
 " Won't you take this tray take it down with you ? " 
 
 " Don't you want me to sit a while ? " 
 
 " Don't let me interfere with your work." 
 
 " Oh, there's no hurry." 
 
 " I'm sure you want to be at it." 
 
 He took the tray from her lap, put it on the floor beside 
 his chair. She reached for the book on the stand at her 
 elbow, opened it, seemed to be waiting for him to go. He 
 glanced round uncertainly. " What a charming room this 
 is," said he. " That pale brown paper with the panels 
 made by broad violet stripes Let me see was this one 
 of the rooms you did over ? " 
 
 She was reading. 
 
 " Yes of course. In my aunt's time You'd have 
 admired her, and she'd have been invaluable as a teacher. 
 But then she taught Nanny; and Nanny's been very good 
 about teaching you, hasn't she? " 
 
 No answer. 
 
 He laughed. " We've got a rather bad habit of not 
 listening haven't we ? " 
 
 " Oh I don't mind." 
 
 He glanced at the tray. " Why, you didn't eat any- 
 thing ! " 
 
 " No."
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 "Are you quite sure you're not ill?" 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 " Well, if there's anything I can " 
 
 " Nothing, thanks." 
 
 He went to the bed, bent over and kissed her. " Good 
 night." 
 
 "Good night." She was reading again; and his 
 thoughts returned to his work as he closed her bedroom 
 door behind him. If he had looked in on her an hour later, 
 he might have seen that she had not yet turned the page 
 she pretended to begin, to get rid of him or, rather, to 
 help him go where he really wished to be. And he would 
 have distrusted her assurance that she was not ill. For 
 her eyes, wide and circled and wretched, were staring into 
 space. She was indeed ill ill of loneliness, of heart-emp- 
 tiness, of that hope deferred which inaketh the heart sick. 
 And the rain streamed on and on. The sight of it by day 
 filled her with the despair that lowers and rages. The 
 sound of it monotonously pattering upon the balcony at 
 night changed her despair from active to passive, from vain 
 revolt to lying inert in the wash of inky waves under inky 
 sky. 
 
 The sympathy between her and Winchie was so close 
 that they were like one rather than like two. He had early 
 discovered her sensitiveness to the weather, but never be- 
 fore had he seen her frankly downhearted. He did not 
 annoy her. He watched her furtively, his little heart 
 aching. He spent most of his time near the west windows 
 of the upstairs sitting room. From them, now that the 
 trees were almost bare, he could see part of the Donald- 
 son's roof the part topped by a weather vane. He knew 
 that so long as the vane pointed east the rains would pour 
 down, and his mother's low spirits would continue that 
 
 233
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 when it should veer to the west the rain would cease and 
 the sky clear. 
 
 Day after day he watched, his hopes rising as the vane 
 veered now toward the north, now toward the south, and 
 falling again as, with a jerk, it flirted back into the eye 
 of the east. That vane was the last thing he saw as the 
 darkness closed down in the late afternoon; it was the first 
 thing he looked at in the morning, dashing to the window 
 the instant he awakened. The change came in the night, 
 when it finally did come. As he awakened, the difference 
 in the light, in the feel of the air told him that all was 
 well once more. But he made sure; he hurried to one of 
 his windows, turned the slats of a blind, looked at the 
 vane. Then, with a shout, he darted to her door, beat 
 upon it, crying: "Mamma! Mamma Courtney! The 
 wind's west the wind's west ! " 
 
 She understood, opened the door. She had made her 
 face bright. " Thank you thank you," she said, with a 
 catch in her voice, as she knelt and took him in her arms. 
 He put one of his small hands on each of her cheeks, kissed 
 her, then looked into her eyes. His face fell. She could 
 not deceive him; it had not been the rain. 
 
 The wind was in the west; her mood veered but to an- 
 other futility. She watched for the postman. She startled 
 and ran to the window at every crunch of wheels on the 
 drive. She was agitated whenever the telephone bell rang. 
 At night every suggestion of sound from the direction of 
 the window made her lift her head from the pillow to 
 listen; and often she would fly to open a shutter and lean 
 out into the darkness. She would not go to Wenona, lest 
 he should come while she was away. She never left the 
 house for a walk without telling the servants just where 
 she was going " and if anyone comes, send for me." 
 
 234
 
 Never before had she surrendered to the somber mood; 
 she had always met it by taking up some one of the things 
 at hand that interested her, and working at it until health 
 and youth and hope reasserted themselves. But this time 
 she could find nothing to build upon; it was all quick- 
 sand, slipping away and leaving her to sink. She no 
 longer cared about her surroundings. She had always seen 
 to it that the servants she had so thoroughly trained in 
 a modern system she had carefully worked out did their 
 duties, and did them well. Now she let the servants do as 
 they pleased and they soon pleased to do very poorly 
 as poorly as the average human being does, unless held 
 rigidly from his natural tendencies to slovenliness and 
 shirking. She had always done the buying for the kitchen, 
 and had herself selected at the farm the things to be sent 
 over. Now the good old days of Aunt Eudosia returned, 
 with the farmer sending whatever gave him or one of " the 
 hands " the least trouble, and with Nanny accepting from 
 the storekeepers what they chose at their own price. The 
 bills went up; yet the meat was often tough, the chickens 
 and game inferior, the butter and eggs only fair, instead 
 of the very best. Canned vegetables appeared on the table 
 when fresh vegetables were still to be had. The coffee was 
 capricious. The table itself was carelessly set; napkins 
 were used several times, instead of only once; tablecloths 
 did not always go into the wash with the first spot. Lizzie 
 and Mazie lost no opportunity to cut down the amount of 
 work they would have to do on wash and ironing days. 
 
 In the living rooms, upstairs as well as down, there was 
 no longer the beautiful order that had made the interior a 
 pleasure to the eye and so comfortable. A chair had only 
 three casters ; a door was losing its knob. A window cur- 
 tain had broken away from its rod at one corner and was 
 
 235
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 hanging down. Several cushions had rips in them that 
 would soon be rents. Winchie's ravages remained unre- 
 paired and unrebuked. The flowers in the vases were not 
 fresh every day, and were arranged by a servant's heavy 
 hands. Window gardens and baskets and hothouse suf- 
 fered from alterations of drought and deluge, and showed 
 it. The red spider was rarely interrupted in his ruinous 
 feasts. Where order has been perfect, brief neglect pro- 
 duces unsightly disorder. The house was becoming like 
 most houses indifferently looked after by women who 
 know little about housekeeping as an art and feel " above " 
 the endless petty details that must be attended to, no mat- 
 ter what the enterprise, if there is to be success. The work 
 of changing the library to a winter conservatory had, like 
 the vegetable greenhouse, been begun, and abandoned 
 midway. 
 
 From the house the blight spread to herself. It is well- 
 nigh impossible for a person who has been bred from 
 birth in personal order and cleanliness to become really 
 slovenly and dirty, unless beaten down into the hopeless 
 wretchedness of extreme poverty. But Courtney had lost 
 interest in herself, just as she had lost interest in the 
 house. She got herself together " any old way " in the 
 mornings, took to breakfasting in bed. Sometimes she 
 dressed for supper, and sometimes she came in working or 
 walking clothes or in the negligee she had been wearing 
 all day. Sometimes her blo'use was buttoned in the back, 
 oftener it was partly open. Wrinkled stockings had been 
 her especial abhorrence, as she was proud of her slim taper- 
 ing legs; now she habitually went the whole day without 
 garters. She read much, and always novels. Formerly 
 their pandering to " spirituality," to " culture," to all 
 the silly and enfeebling sentimentalisms had bored her. 
 
 236
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 They had offended her sense of what was truly ideal for, 
 even thus early in her development, she had a strong sus- 
 picion that " idealism " was not a mode of life but a strut, 
 and that " idealists " were not above but beneath useful- 
 ness. Now she took novels as a drug fiend his dope. Any- 
 thing to escape reality the ugly facts which her negli- 
 gence was making uglier day by day. 
 
 She was in the way trod by so many women who, mar- 
 ried and safe, cease to compete and deteriorate physically, 
 morally, and mentally. And she knew it. She had too 
 much intelligence to delude herself, as some women do. 
 Instead of being angered when evidence of her plight 
 thrust at her, she found bitter satisfaction in it. " I'll 
 soon be down to the level of those ' good ' women Dick 
 regards as models," thought she. And she read on at her 
 novels. 
 
 And still she continued to hope, though she constantly 
 assured herself that hope was dead and buried. It was 
 nearly Christmas ; he had been gone more than four months 
 a hundred and thirty days. No word from him, no sign. 
 " It's over," declared she. " It was just physical attrac- 
 tion, nothing more. And he got enough." This lash upon 
 pride and vanity stung. But the pain seemed to ease 
 another and fiercer pain, and she scourged on. " He got 
 enough. In New York he found fresh attraction not 
 hard for a man with money and free." Yes, he had 
 used her, despising her the while how she writhed as she 
 rubbed the coarse salt of these taunts into her wounds! 
 had used her, despising her the while, had cast her away, 
 like the butt of a smoked cigarette. " And why shouldn't 
 he use and despise and drop me? Could anyone have been 
 ' easier ' than I was I, poor fool, with my dreams of love, 
 and my loneliness and credulity? Well, anyhow he ought 
 16 237
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 to be grateful to fate for having given him a distraction in 
 this dull hole." . . . What vanity had been hers, to im- 
 agine she could win and hold such a man as he man of the 
 world, experienced, clever. What colossal vanity ! " Really, 
 I deserve all I've got. I'm just like the rest of the women 
 a vanity box, a mirror and a powder puff, silly and 
 empty a fool for men to flatter and wheedle and laugh 
 at. ... What a poor, dependent thing a woman is ! Dick's 
 right; we're worthless except as pastimes. Don't we always 
 despise and trample on a man who takes us seriously? We 
 feel he has dropped down to our level." 
 
 She dissected, one by one, the " good " women over in 
 the town and in the big houses along the south shore 
 their inane lives, their inane pastimes, their inane conver- 
 sation. What animal grossness concealed by manners and 
 a thin veneer of education, just as their costly clothes con- 
 cealed the truth about their neglected bodies. What lazy 
 ignorance beneath those pretentious fads for " culture " or 
 religion or charity. And the men, too through their pas- 
 sions dominated by these women. Not an idea not an as- 
 piration just hunting and money-making and eating and 
 drinking catering to crude appetites. Slavish conform- 
 ity to the soddening, mind-suffocating routine prescribed 
 by custom for the comfortable classes. Fit associates, 
 these men and their women. The nauseating hypocrisies 
 and self-cheating about virtue and piety and " pure fam- 
 ily life ! " A pigsty of a world, if one looked at it as 
 it was, instead of at its professions and pretenses. " I'd 
 rather be the dupe of my own honest folly than the dupe 
 of the world's cheap frauds. At least, I aspired. And 
 now that I've fallen back into the muck, all bruised and 
 broken, I don't lie to myself about its being muck. . . . 
 And what can I do for Winchie? If I teach him what he 
 
 238
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ought to be, I'll unfit him for life in the world. If I fit 
 him for life in the world, I must teach him to pretend, to 
 cheat, to lie, to trample and cringe. If I teach him the 
 truth about women, he'll become a rake. If I don't, he'll 
 become their dupe. If I teach him the truth about men, 
 he'll shun them. If I don't, they will debauch him." 
 
 A wound always constructs a cover, to protect itself 
 while it is healing. The wounded heart of an intelligent 
 man or woman usually protects itself with the scab of 
 cynicism. For the last few years Courtney had shared with 
 Wenona's few progressive, restless young married women 
 that reputation for thinking and saying startling things 
 which anyone at all free in thought and speech soon gets 
 among conventional people. Now she became a mild scan- 
 dal. Wenona appreciated that it was the fashion in these 
 degenerate days, the mark of the " upper class," to indulge 
 in audacities of every kind. Also, whatever a Benedict 
 and a Vaughan did must be just about right. But some- 
 times, when she was in a particularly insurgent mood, her 
 callers went away dazed. 
 
 They wondered what her husband thought of such dis- 
 belief in everything that men, themselves disbelieving, held 
 it imperative for women to believe women and children 
 and preachers. The fact was he knew nothing about it. 
 Conversation between him and his wife was confined to 
 the necessary routine matters, and never extended beyond 
 a few sentences. They saw each other at table only; then 
 Winchie did most of the talking, or it grew out of and 
 centered round things he had inquired about. Richard and 
 Courtney neither acted nor felt like strangers. That would 
 have meant strain. They ignored each other with the easy 
 unconsciousness that characterizes an intimate life in which 
 there is no sympathy, no common interest. When Richard 
 
 239
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 talked about his work, as he did occasionally, merely the 
 better to arrange his thoughts, Courtney did not listen. 
 When Courtney and Winchie talked together, Richard did 
 not listen. 
 
 " You saw the news in to-day's paper ? " said Richard 
 at supper a few days after Christmas. 
 
 As he continued to look expectantly at her, she roused 
 herself from her reverie, slowly grasped his question. " I 
 didn't read to-day's papers," answered she. 
 
 " Well, Gallatin's engagement's announced from Phil- 
 adelphia." 
 
 She nerved herself for the reaction of inward turmoil 
 which would, she felt, certainly follow such a blow. To 
 her amazement no reaction came. She felt as calm as if 
 the news had been about some one of whom she had never 
 heard. 
 
 " Why, you seem not to be interested." 
 
 " Oh, yes," replied she indifferently. 
 
 " I remember, you didn't like him." 
 
 It almost seemed true to her. Or, rather, that she had 
 never cared about him one way or the other. 
 
 " And he so mad about you," continued Richard with 
 raillery. " I'll never forget the looks he used to give you 
 or the ones he gave me, either. Well, it's all over now. 
 He's evidently cured." 
 
 " Evidently," said Courtney. She looked calmly at 
 him, shifted her gaze. It happened to fall upon Winchie. 
 The boy was frowning jealously into his plate. She col- 
 ored. She never had the slightest self-consciousness about 
 Basil with Richard, but only with the boy. However, the 
 reminder soon passed in marvel at her amazing tranquillity. 
 How could she be thus calm in face of such a blow? Had 
 
 240
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 she really conquered her love? Had this sudden, unex- 
 pected news of his perfidy killed it all in an instant? Had 
 she never loved him? 
 
 Richard had been talking, and she had been so absorbed 
 she had not heard. Now he was holding a letter across the 
 table toward her. Mechanically she reached out, took it, 
 fixed her eyes upon it. " And Mrs. Torrey says," Richard 
 was explaining, " that we ought to ask Cousin Helen here 
 for a few months at least until she gets over her 
 father's death." 
 
 " Wenona's no place for a girl in search of a husband." 
 
 " A husband ! " exclaimed Richard. " Who said any- 
 thing about a husband? " 
 
 " Now that her father's dead, with nothing but a small 
 life insurance, she's got to marry." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so." 
 
 " That's what Mrs. Torrey 's saying between these 
 lines." And she handed the letter back. 
 
 " Mrs. Torrey 's a fine, noble old lady. Such sordid 
 ideas never'd enter her head." 
 
 " Mrs. Torrey 's a woman." 
 
 " And a good one and so is Helen," maintained Rich- 
 ard. " Marrying's about the last idea in her head at pres- 
 ent." 
 
 " I believe that is the theory among men who know 
 nothing about women." 
 
 " She's doubtless almost prostrated with grief." 
 
 " With anxiety, perhaps. Not with grief. Not for a 
 worthless old drunkard." 
 
 " You forget, Courtney. He was her father." 
 
 Courtney lifted her eyebrows. " So much the more 
 certain she detested him. She had to live right up against 
 him."
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Richard leaned forward slightly, to add emphasis to 
 his rebuke. " I repeat, Helen is a good woman a woman 
 with a sense of duty. She must have loved him." 
 
 " Why repeat such twaddle ? " inquired Courtney, unim- 
 pressed. " What has duty to do with hearts? " 
 
 Dick looked strong disapproval. " What is the mat- 
 ter, my dear? You're not talking in the least like your- 
 self." 
 
 " You always make that same remark," observed Court- 
 ney, " whenever I say anything that does not suit you." 
 
 " Are you irritated by the prospect of Helen's com- 
 ing? If you don't want her " 
 
 " I am not irritated about anything. As for Helen, I 
 care not a rap one way or the other." 
 
 Winchie had finished. He kissed his father, then his 
 mother good night, and went upstairs. Richard came out 
 of a deep study to say, " It's a pity Gallatin isn't free and 
 here if Helen comes." 
 
 " It would have made a good match," said Courtney 
 judiciously. " A splendid living for Helen." 
 
 " I wasn't thinking of Gallatin's wealth," protested 
 Richard, reddening. Then he laughed, " At least, not alto- 
 gether." 
 
 " The living's the main point in marriage." 
 
 " What an unpleasant mood you're in." 
 
 " I ? I never felt more amiable." 
 
 " Have I said anything to offend you ? " 
 
 " Not a thing." She rose languidly. " You're still the 
 model not a single redeeming fault." 
 
 She stretched herself with slow, lazy grace. " But 
 you," said lie, " are a bundle of redeeming faults and 
 vagaries a bouquet of them." And he was about to 
 kiss her.
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 She flung away from him with flashing eyes. He 
 stared, amazed. " How you startled me! " she exclaimed, 
 quickly changing her expression from fury to half-laughing 
 irritation. 
 
 " Miss Caprice ! " And his gaze was soft and brilliant. 
 
 There was a virgin coldness in her manner that puz- 
 zled and abashed him. " How I hate this body of mine, 
 sometimes ! " said she. " An admiring look makes me 
 angry, and a kiss seems an insult. Come to me with your 
 love when I'm old and ugly. Then, perhaps, I'll be- 
 lieve it." 
 
 And she strolled out of the room and upstairs. The 
 instant she had her bedroom door locked, she knew why 
 she had come away knew she had been obeying an in- 
 stinct warning her secret self that she could not many 
 minutes longer endure the strain. " But really I am calm," 
 she insisted. In the same second her wound opened and 
 was aching and bleeding and throbbing, unhealed. " I can 
 never forget never ! " she cried. " Was it only this body 
 of mine he cared for? What does it matter? Even the 
 little he gave was more than I had to give. I ought 
 to have been more humble about giving I who had so 
 little. And what happiness he gave me in exchange ! No 
 not happiness, but more than happiness." Her eyes 
 strained into the night. It was so dreary so lonely. 
 "Basil! Basil! I'm dying for you dying from the 
 core out ! " 
 
 She flung her windows wide. The snow came whirl- 
 ing in. The wind was moaning among the branches. Some- 
 where, far away, a bell tolled. Silence, utter solitude, a 
 stretch of white snow under a black sky, and the chilling 
 cold. " Come to me ! " she cried. " I am so cold so 
 lonely so hungry! And I love you." 
 
 243
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Even where a woman cannot doubt that her lover has 
 forgotten, there are times when memory of his vows so 
 convincing, of his caresses that seemed the inspiration of 
 her charms alone makes her defy certainty and believe. 
 And Courtney had no real reason to think him either false 
 or forgetful. They had been torn apart when their love 
 was still hungry and thirsty, when even the long calm that 
 precedes satiety was still far in the future, when they were 
 so absorbed in loving that they had not yet had time to 
 begin to get acquainted with each other's real self. It was 
 doubt of him that was forced, belief in him that was natu- 
 ral. " If he were not so strong, so honorable! " she cried. 
 " Ah, if he were only where I could tempt him ! " 
 
 Even the thought of Winchie now lost all power to 
 check her; he was too much like part of herself. She 
 seemed as placid in her slender youthfulness as those hand- 
 some matronly women who suggest extinct volcanoes cov- 
 ered with flowers and smiling fields. Beneath her manner 
 of monotonous, emotionless calm she was battling with the 
 temptation to take her boy and fly from that cold desola- 
 tion of loveless loneliness, to fly to him. If Richard had 
 not been absolutely apart from her life, absolutely out of 
 her thoughts she would have hated him. As it was her 
 rage fretted at the impersonal barriers and bonds that held 
 her not Richard, but conventionality and, above all, lack 
 of money. " If only I had money ! " she cried again and 
 again. 
 
 But she had nothing her clothes, a few dollars that 
 must be paid out for expenses already incurred. " If I 
 went to him, it would be to become his dependent, just 
 as I am Richard's. Oh, the horror of being a woman ! 
 Bred to dependence; bred for the market; bred to tease
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 some man into undertaking her support for life. There is 
 the rotten spot in my whole life. If Richard had ever 
 deigned to speculate as to what was going on in my head, 
 he'd never have dared touch me. He'd have feared I was 
 his only for hire. But would he care? Doesn't he expect 
 me to be true because he supports me? Isn't that what 
 marriage means, beneath the cant and pretense? Yes, I'm 
 simply part of his property, and the pretenses that gloze 
 it over only make it the more revolting. Oh, if men had 
 sensibilities, and if they knew what women thought ! why 
 we smile and flatter and stay on, in spite of neglect and 
 insult ! " 
 
 She felt that, if she should go to Basil, the day would 
 come when their love would die of this poison exuding 
 from the basic fact of their relations his sense of his 
 rights because of her dependence; or, her fear of losing 
 or impairing her living; or, her feeling that since she took 
 bread she must give body all she had to pay with. Rich- 
 ard thought he could afford to be neglectful; and when it 
 suited him to give passing attention to his property again 
 to walk in his garden and eat a little fruit from his tree 
 he thought he had a perfect right to do so. If Richard 
 was thus, if all men believed thus, why fancy Basil an ex- 
 ception? Basil, in time, when passion cooled, would hold 
 her in the same light disesteem. If a man lost his virtue, 
 even hypocrisy did not go beyond a half smiling shake of 
 the head; if a woman lost her virtue, she was "ruined." 
 Ruined that is, a worthless wreck. " No, I shall not go 
 to Basil. No doubt, he still cares in a man's way of car- 
 ing. But he holds me, the unfaithful wife, cheap enough. 
 If I were to lose reputation also, were to be unable to give 
 him the pleasure of trespassing on another's property, were 
 to be merely a ruined woman, living off him, he'd soon treat 
 
 245
 
 me like the slave that I am. No, I'll not change owners. 
 ... If only I had money ! " 
 
 What, then? She had seen all along that she was like 
 one sinking in the ooze of a marsh softly, inevitably 
 toward suffocation. "If I stay on here, I'll become like 
 the rest of the settled, disillusioned married women. I'll 
 become a chronic sloven and as my disposition isn't 
 toward fat, squatted good nature a shrew. A slovenly 
 shrew ! " Why not ? What had she left to live for ? In a 
 few years Winchie would be away at school then in some 
 city at profession or business and married and out of her 
 life. " I might as well give up. Why not? " 
 
 There seemed to be no reason. But our conduct in its 
 main lines is not governed by reason, but by instincts that 
 impel us even against will. When Richard had failed her 
 at the outset of their married life, she had sunk; then her 
 temperament of hope and energy had forced her up again 
 in face of deepest discouragements. So now, while there 
 was no reason why she should cease to sink, should begin 
 to struggle, while Basil's announced engagement assuring 
 a speedy marriage seemed just the thing to make her sink 
 on, she began to rouse herself and to look about her. For 
 the second time her longings and energies had lost their 
 stimulus, their inspiration, their vitalizing center. And that 
 center is to an unselfish nature as necessary as queen bee 
 to swarm which clusters about her, labors for her, and re- 
 news through her. With human beings such as Courtney 
 Vaughan longings and energies rarely die upon the corpse 
 of their inspiration. After a while they fly upward, as did 
 hers, and begin to circle in search of a new clustering cen- 
 ter, a new reason for living and working on. " I can't stay 
 here," she kept repeating. " I must go somewhere. I must 
 do something. Where? What?" How settle her life 
 
 246
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 problem so that it would be " settled right/' and she could 
 have peace and happiness? She found no answer. But 
 she kept on thrusting the question at herself. It was as 
 significant of her character as of her trend of thought that 
 her cry " If only I had money! " changed to " If only I 
 I could make money ! "
 
 XVI 
 
 THEY were at supper, Dick reading the paper, Winchie 
 busy with bowl of rice and milk, Courtney listening to the 
 storm that shrieked in baffled rage after each vain assault 
 upon the house. Her whole being was quivering with the 
 pain that never pierced her more acutely than when she 
 was in the presence of Basil's vacant place at the table. 
 Winchie, without looking up, broke the silence : " We shan't 
 go, mamma, shall we, unless it clears up? " 
 
 Dick, turning the paper, happened to hear. " Go 
 where? " he asked. 
 
 " To grandfather's." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 Courtney said : " Winchie and I are going to-morrow." 
 
 " Impossible," said Dick. " They'd think you were 
 crazy." 
 
 " Perhaps I am," Courtney replied. " Anyhow, we're 
 going." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I need a change." 
 
 " Put it off till spring." And he resumed the newspaper 
 as if the matter were disposed of. 
 
 " No. To-morrow," said she, not in the least aggres- 
 sively; but her tone was of unalterable determination. 
 
 " Or, if you must go somewhere, why not Saint X ? You 
 can visit Pauline Scarborough or the Hargraves and bring 
 Helen March back with you." 
 
 " I prefer the farm." 
 
 He laid the paper down. " You're not serious ? " 
 248
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 " Now, my dear " he began. His tone was one he had 
 unconsciously adopted from his grandfather. He used it 
 whenever he, as head of the family, confronted an "irra- 
 tional, feminine caprice." 
 
 " What's the use of reasoning with me ? " interrupted 
 she. " Didn't your grandfather teach you that women can't 
 reason ? " 
 
 " I'm willing for you to go to Saint X. But " 
 
 She looked significantly toward Winchie. Dick took the 
 hint, went back to his reading until they were alone. Then 
 he resumed: "I'm sure you'll not persist now that I've 
 pointed out to you " 
 
 "If you wish me to keep my temper," interrupted she, 
 " you'll not use that wheedling tone. I'd feel I was de- 
 grading Winchie by speaking to him in a way that belittled 
 his intelligence." 
 
 Dick looked astonished. " I had no intention " 
 
 " I know I know," said she appealingly. " It doesn't 
 matter. I really don't care anything about it." 
 
 " But you'll not go when it's so clearly a folly to " 
 
 " I am going," said she. " You ought to be grateful 
 that I have such inexpensive whims. Most of us silly 
 women " She paused, with a lift of the long, slender 
 eyebrows. How absurd to gird at him whose opinions in- 
 terested her as little as hers interested him ! 
 
 He revolved what she had been saying, presently red- 
 dened. " I thought I had explained to you," said he, " that 
 the laboratory is very expensive. I know I don't give you 
 much. I've had to cut down the household allowance be- 
 cause I feel sure Gallatin will be withdrawing his capital. 
 But just as soon as I " 
 
 She was even of temper again. " You remind me of 
 249
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 old Hendricks," interrupted she pleasantly. " You know, 
 he made three people toil for him all their lives, with no 
 pay and mighty poor board and clothes on the promise of 
 a legacy and they died before he did." 
 
 But Dick was offended. " It seems to me," said he, 
 
 " in view of what I'm doing at the shop " 
 
 " Please don't," she cried. " You're trying to make me 
 out an ingrate, who doesn't appreciate how you're toiling 
 just for wife and child. Now, what's the fact? Isn't your 
 work your amusement? " 
 
 " Of course, I like it, but " 
 
 " Weren't you doing the same thing before you had a 
 family ? Wouldn't you be doing it if you should lose them ? 
 Isn't it your pride that you work solely for love of science? " 
 He looked disconcerted assent. 
 
 " Then the fact is, you spend most of your income on 
 your own amusement, as much as if you drank it." 
 
 He reflected. " That never occurred to me before," said 
 he. " Possibly I have viewed it too one-sidedly. I must 
 think it over and see." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. " Pray don't, on my 
 account." 
 
 He made no reply, put forward no further objections 
 to her going, though the next morning developed a driving 
 sleet. As she and Winchie were about to get into the car- 
 riage he asked : " How long will you be gone ? " 
 " Until I feel better." 
 
 " If you are ill, you must not go in this weather." 
 She looked at him strangely. " If I were dying I should 
 go," was her slow reply. 
 
 He hesitated, studied her small, resolute face, her fever- 
 bright eyes, with a puzzled expression. " I suppose it's 
 best to give a woman her way in her whims, so long as 
 
 250
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 they're harmless/' said he aloud, but to himself rather than 
 to her. She finished wrapping up the boy, went out to the 
 carriage, and got in. He lifted Winchie in, tucked them 
 both carefully, bade them a last good-by, his expression 
 grave and constrained. 
 
 In those fifteen miles through the searching cold, over 
 roads like fields deep plowed and frozen hard, she de- 
 bated how best to carry out her main purpose in going to 
 that dreary farm how to take her father partly, perhaps 
 wholly, into her confidence so that she might get his help 
 for help she must have. Her mother was now impossible 
 quite demented on the subject of religion latterly through 
 the long steeping of mind and heart in a theology whose 
 heaven was hardly less formidable as an eternal prospect 
 than its hell, and whose hell was a fiery sea canopied by 
 shriek and stench of burning multitude. The old maid sis- 
 ters had neither experience nor judgment, only bitterness. 
 To them it would be inconceivable that a married woman, 
 with a husband who supported her in comfort, could be 
 other than blissfully happy. But her father He had 
 been a man of affairs, judge. He had lived and read and 
 thought. She had heard her mother rebuke him for ex- 
 pressing " loose " opinions ; probably he was concealing 
 opinions even more liberal and enlightened and humane. 
 Perhaps he could give her practical advice or at least sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 But, arrived at the farmhouse, she had only to look into 
 those four countenances to see that she was among people 
 who knew no more of the life of the present day or indeed 
 of the real life of any day, even of what they themselves 
 actually believed and felt than deep-sea oysters in their 
 bed know of Alpine flowers. Even her father In this 
 
 251
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 remote desert he had lost what knowledge of life he for- 
 merly possessed. She was now developed enough to real- 
 ize that he in fact never did know much about life, that 
 his was a book education only. She had journeyed for 
 help in vain; she was still alone, dependent wholly upon 
 her own courage and resource. 
 
 " Don't you wish we hadn't come, mamma ? " said 
 Winchie when they were in the room assigned them. 
 
 " No," she replied truthfully. She was watching the 
 hickory flames in a calmer mood than she had known for 
 weeks; at least she had got away where she could think, 
 could get an outside point of view upon the posture of her 
 affairs. " No, indeed," she went on to Winchie leaning 
 against her knee and looking up at her. " No, I feel bet- 
 ter already." 
 
 " Then I guess I can stand it," said the boy with a sigh. 
 
 " You don't know about the hill where we can coast." 
 
 As he had never coasted, this did not lighten the im- 
 pression made on him by the gloomy farmhouse sitting room, 
 its walls and ceilings covered with somber paper, by the 
 shriveled grandparents, with deep-sunk, lack-luster eyes, by 
 the sharp, sour faces of the two old maids. But next day, 
 when the sun came out and the farmhands beat down a track 
 on the long hill, Winchie found the situation vastly im- 
 proved. Flat on her breast on a sled, with the boy breath- 
 less and happy upon her back, she initiated him into the 
 raptures of " belly-buster." 
 
 " Why, mamma, you look like a little girl, not a bit 
 grown up," cried he after they had been at it all morning 
 and were tugging up the hill for one last, magnificent rush 
 down before going home to dinner. And she did indeed 
 seem to be a sister of Winchie's, one hardly in her teens. 
 Of course, the short skirt and her smallness of stature 
 
 252
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 helped. Bat it was in her cheeks, in her eyes, in the curve 
 of her lips as she showed her white teeth in the happiest of 
 smiles. 
 
 " I am a little girl," declared she. And before starting 
 out with him after dinner she did her hair in two long braids 
 that hung below her waistline. 
 
 They coasted every day; they took long sleigh rides, 
 long romping walks; they hunted rabbits, went fishing 
 through the ice, were uproarious outside the house and in 
 the latter to the scandal of the three women of the family, 
 who regarded such goings-on as clearly forbidden in the 
 Scriptures. Even Sunday wasn't so bad as might have been 
 expected; for it snowed too violently for Mrs. Benedict to 
 take them to the church where her favorite doctrines were 
 expounded, and they slipped away to the glorious outdoors. 
 In a sheltered hollow under a shelf of rock they built an 
 enormous snow man, with a top hat of bark. Tkey ate what 
 Winchie regarded as the most wonderful meal of his life at 
 the cottage of one of the farmhands. Never before had he 
 seen such brown brownbread or such molassessy molasses 
 or eaten off such big, strong dishes that there wasn't the 
 least danger of breaking, no matter what you did to them. 
 And he was fascinated by the farmhand's wife and daugh- 
 ter, both acting their company best and eating with the 
 little finger of each hand stuck straight out. And in a box 
 in the corner of the room where they ate was a most excit- 
 ing brood of little chickens, chirping and squeaking. And 
 in the midst of dinner a huge, hairy, black dog suddenly 
 snatched a piece of meat from the farmhand's plate and 
 retired to the kitchen with it. " Ain't he a caution ? " said 
 the farmhand, and Winchie thought he certainly was. 
 
 Courtney was like those who put out to sea, leaving their 
 troubles at the one shore, not to think of them until they 
 17 253
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 touch the other. All around were the white hills, and there 
 seemed to be no beyond. She abandoned her plan of study- 
 ing her situation. She stopped thinking; she ate and slept, 
 and played with the boy, and pretended that she was the 
 little girl she looked, home from school for the holidays, 
 and half hoping somehow something would happen so that 
 there wouldn't be any school any more. She did not think, 
 but she hoped. How ? What ? Where ? She did not know ; 
 simply hope, that can burst the strongest grave despair 
 ever buried it in. 
 
 Well along in the second week, toward the middle of 
 the afternoon, she and Winchie were on the long "hill, round- 
 ing out one more happy day. She was as happy as he. 
 When all is lost save youth and health, what is really lost? 
 She on her breast on the sled and he sprawled along her 
 back, his arms round her neck, they shot down the steep 
 with shouts and screams. They stopped, all covered with 
 flying snow, in a soft bank beneath which the zigzag fence 
 was deep buried. They rolled in the snow, washed each 
 other's faces, stood up -were within a few feet of a man 
 in a fur-lined coat almost to his heels. They stared, as- 
 tounded. Then Winchie's face darkened and hers grew 
 more radiant still as the tears sprang to her eyes. 
 
 " Basil ! " she murmured, Winchie forgotten. " Oh 
 Basil! " And all in that instant the misery of those months 
 of despair was gloriously transformed into joy. 
 
 " Courtney ! " he cried. " How beautiful you are ! " 
 
 He was extraordinarily handsome himself at that mo- 
 ment. Love is a matchless beautifier ; and if ever love shone 
 from a human countenance, it was shining, irradiating from 
 his just then. With Winchie jealously watchful they shook 
 hands. " Aren't you and Winchie going to speak to each 
 other ? " she asked. And Basil, with reluctance and some
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 confusion held out a hand which the boy very hesitatingly 
 touched. 
 
 " I'll pull your sled to the top for you," Basil offered. 
 " Get on, Winchie." 
 
 The- boy planted his feet more firmly in the snow. " We 
 were going home/' said Courtney. 
 
 " Get on, Winchie," cried Basil friendlily. " I'll haul 
 you." 
 
 " I'm going to walk," replied the boy sullenly. 
 
 Courtney understood. " Get on, Winchie," said she. 
 " I'll pull it." 
 
 The boy obeyed. The rope was long, so Basil felt free 
 to speak in a lowered voice. " Seeing you hearing you 
 touching you O my darling ! my Courtney ! " 
 
 She forgot where she was, who she was, everything but 
 love. Love ! The road danced before her. The cry of the 
 chickadees, the twitter of the snowbirds, the call of Bob 
 White from the fence sounded like supernal music in her 
 ears. The blood tingled and dizzied her nerves. Love 
 again! " You care still? " she murmured. 
 
 " Care? There's only you for me in all the world." 
 
 She caught her breath, like the swinger at the long 
 swing's dizziest height when it halts to begin the delirious 
 descent. " Love ! " she murmured. " Love ! " 
 
 " And I know you love me," he went on. " I've never 
 doubted not once. I've tried to doubt, but I couldn't. Up 
 before me would come those dear eyes of yours, and 
 Courtney, there isn't a kiss or a caress hardly a touch 
 of the hands you and I have ever lived that I haven't felt 
 again and again." 
 
 " Don't ! " she pleaded, her eyes swimming. " Don't, or 
 I'll break down. My love my love!" 
 
 " I don't know what would have become of me," he went 
 255
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 on, " if I hadn't known you'd send for me yes in spite 
 of your note. I expected it, for I knew you wouldn't be 
 able to come. The more I thought, the clearer I saw. Not 
 to go any further, there was the boy." He glanced round 
 at Winchie ; the angry gray-green eyes were fixed upon him. 
 He glanced away, disconcerted. But he forgot Winchie 
 when his eyes returned to her. " Beautiful ! Beautiful 
 little girl," he murmured, his look sweeping her small, per- 
 fect figure to the edge of her short skirt. " I like your new 
 way of wearing your hair." 
 
 She blushed. " I did it to make me feel young. I've 
 been feeling so old old and tired and lonely." 
 
 " Thank God, you sent for me." 
 
 " Sent for you ! A hundred times a day in thought." 
 She laughed aloud, sparkling like the ice-cased boughs in 
 the late afternoon sun. " A thousand thousand times in 
 longing every time my heart beat." 
 
 " Oh, it is so good to be with you ! " He drew in a 
 huge draught of the clean, cold, vital air. " Does the sun 
 anywhere else shine on such happiness as this? But I've 
 been mad with happiness ever since the word came." 
 
 " The word ? What word ? " 
 
 " Vaughan's letter. I knew you got him to write it." 
 
 Courtney stopped short. " I ! " she exclaimed. " I don't 
 know what you mean." 
 
 " I got a letter from him three days ago. He asked me 
 to take another quarter interest in his work said he needed 
 the money, as he found he'd been using more of his own in 
 it than he could afford with justice to his family " 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Courtney sharply. 
 
 " What is it? " asked Basil. 
 
 She was looking straight ahead. " Nothing nothing. 
 Go on." And she started to walk again. 
 
 256
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Your cry sounded like pain." 
 
 " Did it? Go on." 
 
 " I assumed you had at last succeeded in making the 
 chance for me to come back. So, I telegraphed I'd accept, 
 provided he'd let me work with him again and that I'd be 
 on at once to talk things over. I took the first train and 
 here I am." 
 
 " Yes, here. That's another mystery to explain." 
 
 " Nothing simpler. The station man at Wenona told 
 me you were visiting your father. I jumped at the chance. 
 I can say I thought you all were here. Anything 
 more? " 
 
 " I saw the announcement of your engagement." 
 
 " It's broken. I couldn't marry her couldn't have done 
 it in any circumstances. So, I gave her what she was losing 
 by our not marrying. And I'm free. You want me to 
 stay ? " 
 
 He spoke indifferently about the money he had given 
 up, and he evidently felt indifferent. She would have been 
 hurt had he acted otherwise. At the same time it was a 
 measure of his generosity and of his love, a sordid but cer- 
 tain measure. She regarded that payment as a sort of ran- 
 som his ransom for the right to come to her. " That was 
 his price for the right," thought she. " He paid it without 
 a second thought would have paid any price. My price 
 for the right to be his may be harder. But I must pay, too 
 as generously as he." 
 
 He was watching her anxiously. " Courtney, I can't 
 go away ! " 
 
 " You mustn't," replied she. Then a reason the rea- 
 son the solution of her life problem came to her as if 
 by inspiration. " It's my only chance to be a good woman. 
 That sounds strange, doesn't it? " 
 
 257
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Not to me. I understand. If you hadn't sent for me 
 soon " he checked himself. 
 
 " What? " 
 
 " You didn't know that my coming here last spring 
 and loving you cured me of the drinking habit. I know, 
 it's stupid and disgusting. I used to loathe myself when I 
 gave way. But it's the only resort in loneliness. And if 
 I realized that you were lost to me, what would I care ? " 
 
 She nodded sympathetically. " I was going all to 
 pieces, in another way. I was sliding down as fast as 
 Winchie and I were coasting the hill back there. I was 
 going the way of all women who have no love grown-up 
 love in their lives. I know now, the reason I used to -keep 
 myself together and built myself up and looked after things 
 was because I was waiting and hoping for love, and was 
 expecting it. Love is all of a woman's life, as things are 
 run in this world at present." 
 
 " And quite enough it is, too," said he. 
 
 " No," disagreed she. " But let that pass. If I went 
 back to to that life alone, I'd be going to ruin. And 
 I'd probably drag him and Winchie down with me. A 
 woman of that unburied-dead sort drags down everybody 
 about her. . . . You've only to look round, in any station 
 of life, to see those women by the scores. Some few are 
 saved by children not many and they are of a different 
 nature from me from most women, I think. ... If I 
 don't go back, I either go to you disgraced, a shame to my 
 family, a lifelong stain on my boy here, a miserable, afraid 
 dependent of yours. . . . No, don't interrupt; I've thought 
 it all out. . . . Or, I'd plunge into a life of social dissipa- 
 tion. If possible, that sort of woman is worse for herself 
 and for her husband and children than the domestic rotter. 
 A chattering, card-playing gadabout. Possibly I might 
 
 258
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 remain true to my husband, but If the world weren't 
 the fool it is, it would have discovered long ago that there 
 are worse vices than As always when she forced her- 
 self to say frank, merciless things, she looked straight into 
 his eyes with defiant audacity " worse vices than ours." 
 
 " But " he began, shifting his gaze and coloring. 
 
 " Oh, yes, it is. Don't make any mistake about it. But 
 I know lots of ' good ' women liars, gossips, naggers, petty 
 swindlers of their husbands, envious, malicious, spiteful 
 lots and lots of so-called good women beside whom I'd feel 
 white as this snow." 
 
 " Rather ! " exclaimed Basil. 
 
 " So if you'll go with me I'm going home to make 
 it a home to be a good mother to give Richard at least 
 his money's worth in care and comfort and " She looked 
 at him with eyes suddenly solemn " and that is all, Basil 
 all. It's all I can give him, all he has the right to. ... 
 I'm going home to be a good woman, if you'll come and be 
 there too." 
 
 " There's only one life for me to be as near you as 
 you'll let me." 
 
 A long silence. Then she again, sadly : " I don't know 
 how it will work out. But what else is there for us? 
 We're not heroes. We're human. We must do the best we 
 can. Together we may survive. Apart, I at least will 
 perish and destroy those near me. I suppose I'm all 
 wrong. But " with a sigh " I'm doing the best I can." 
 
 Silence again. Then he, deeply moved: " I'll try to be 
 worthy of you, dear." 
 
 " Worthy of me? For God's sake, don't say those 
 things. There isn't any pedestal I wouldn't fall off of and 
 break to bits. . . . Basil " wistfully " you don't care for 
 me in j ust a physical way do you, dear ? " 
 
 259
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I care for you in every way," he answered. " Court- 
 ney, I never believed I could respect a woman as I respect 
 you. You know, men aren't brought up really to respect 
 women or themselves, for that matter." 
 
 " Then couldn't we try to " She lowered her head, 
 faltered " couldn't we live as if we were engaged only ? " 
 
 " Why should we? " he cried. 
 
 " I know it's only a fancy. But fancies count more 
 than facts. ... I'd feel less the " She faltered paused. 
 
 " Yes yes I understand. And Well, it doesn't do 
 a man any good to be pretending friendship and smiling in 
 another fellow's face, when all the time I'll try, Court- 
 ney But it won't be exactly easy." 
 
 Her gaze burned for an instant on his, then dropped. 
 " I should hope not ! " murmured she. 
 
 They, absorbed in each other, moved so slowly along the 
 road that Winchie, silent, motionless, sullen, upon the sled 
 they were trailing as far as the rope permitted, was stiff 
 with cold. But he did not murmur. By the time they 
 reached the door of the farmhouse, Courtney and Basil had 
 it all planned. He was to leave immediately after supper, 
 was to go at once to Vaughan, make the arrangements, re- 
 install himself. She was to come home in three or four 
 days unless Vaughan sent, asking her to come sooner. He 
 dined with the family at the farmhouse, made himself so 
 agreeable that they were all pleased with him even sister 
 Ann whose bitterness over her failure at what she secretly 
 regarded as woman's only excuse for being alive, took the 
 unoriginal disguise of aggressive man-hating. At six o'clock 
 he drove away in the starlight with a merry jingling of 
 sleigh bells that echoed in Courtney's happy heart. The 
 cold was intense; but she felt only warmth that delicious 
 warmth that comes from within. She stood on the litt.l*> 
 
 260
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 front porch, with the stars brilliant above and the snow 
 white and smooth over hill and valley. She watched the 
 swift dark sleigh listened to those laughing bells, their 
 music growing fainter and fainter but not in her heart. 
 She was so happy that the tears were in her eyes and the 
 sobs in her throat. It was for her one of those moments 
 in life when she asked nothing more, could imagine nothing 
 that would add to j oy. Love again ! and oh, what exalted 
 love, to warm the heart and fill it with light and joy, to 
 brighten every moment of life, to guide her up and ever up. 
 Winchie, standing beside her and looking up at her rapt 
 face, tugged angrily at her skirts.
 
 XVII 
 
 WHEN the mail cart on the third afternoon failed to 
 bring a letter from Richard, she decided that prudence had 
 been satisfied, that she need wait no longer. Toward four 
 she and Winchie set out, snuggled deep in furs and straw 
 in the rear of a huge country sleigh. The roads were per- 
 fect; the snow was like a strand at low tide, rolled smooth 
 and firm by the broad tires of high tide's billows. The 
 big horses, steaming as if they were engines, flew as if they 
 were a wind. But her impatient heart was always far ahead, 
 fretting at their laggard pace. 
 
 They dashed into the outskirts of Wenona. The jour- 
 ney was ended except the mile and a half round the curve 
 of the lake. She became all at once serenely calm. Life 
 her real life was now about to begin. It was far from 
 the life she would have chosen, had she been prearranging 
 her own fate. However who could live an ideal life in 
 such a topsy-turvy world? Nature and conventionality 
 ever at war; right and wrong, not two straight paths, one 
 up, the other down, but a tangle, a maze, a labyrinth. One 
 must often travel the path of the wrong in order to reach 
 the path of the right; and keeping to the path of the right 
 often meant arriving in a hopeless network of blind alleys 
 of the wrong. She was in the confused state about right 
 and wrong characteristic of this era of transition that has 
 seen the crumbling of the despotism of dogma, and has 
 not yet received, or created, a moral guidance to replace 
 it. " Life is a compromise, unless one lives alone and mis- 
 erably and uselessly," thought she. " My life's to be a 
 
 262
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 thistle with fig grafts. I'll do the best I can with it 
 Basil and I. With him to help me his strength and char- 
 acter and self-denying love with him to help, all may 
 go well. Is my compromise Basil's and mine worse than 
 those almost everyone has to make? If so, then they ought 
 to educate women differently, and change marriage." 
 
 And when the sleigh reached the drive-front porch, 
 making a dashing and musical arrival, she was in a mood 
 of moral exaltation that might have stirred the enthusiasm 
 of a saint that is, a saint ignorant of the foundations of 
 that mood or the processes by which it had reared itself 
 skyward. Saints who are wise in the ways of humanity 
 do not interrogate too closely the glitter and lift of moral 
 temples; they know humanity has only humble materials 
 with which to build. 
 
 The doors opened wide and, in a flood of bright warm 
 air, redolent of the perfume of flowers, out came Dick to 
 welcome them. " I am glad! " cried he. Because of the 
 peculiar relations long established between them relations 
 such as must exist in some degree between a husband and 
 a wife before the triangular situation can ever even threaten 
 because of these peculiar relations, she had not antici- 
 pated and did not feel the least embarrassment. She was 
 not defying or ignoring her husband; she had no husband* 
 After he swung Winchie to the porch he turned to do the 
 same service for her. But she had quickly disengaged 
 herself from the robes and was standing beside him. He 
 looked into her face, fully revealed by the pour of soft 
 light from the hall. " Your trip certainly has done you 
 good," said he. 
 
 " Thank you," replied she absently, presenting her left 
 cheek for the necessary formality of the occasion. Her 
 attention was wholly elsewhere. 
 
 263
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 In the hall before her there had appeared two people, 
 hanging back discreetly, so that they would not intrude 
 upon the family reunion. Basil, she expected. The woman 
 beside him so astonished her that she forgot to be glad to 
 see him. Who was she? This tall, slender girl with the 
 proud, regular features, the attractively done dark hair, 
 the big, honest brown eyes? She glanced at Basil, stand- 
 ing beside this lovely girl and making a laughing remark; 
 her feminine sight instantly noted how the remark was 
 received by the girl the flattering glance and smile a 
 marriageable woman rarely wastes upon anything from one 
 of her own sex or from an ineligible man. And through 
 Courtney shot a pang that dissolved her structure of 
 moral uplift as a needle thrust collapses a toy balloon. 
 Who was this woman? this young woman this tall 
 woman this handsome woman so pleased with Basil 
 Gallatin ? 
 
 " Aren't you surprised to find Helen March here ? " 
 Dick was now saying. 
 
 Helen March! So, that scrawny, raw-boned girl, all 
 freckles and pimples, and unable to manage her mouth, 
 the Helen March she had seen three years before and 
 had not seen since so, that prim and homely gawk had 
 developed into this stately creature! Prim, still unless 
 that expression was the familiar maidenly pose to attract 
 wife hunters. But certainly neither homely nor awkward. 
 She even dressed her hair well, and wore her clothes with 
 quite an air. All this Courtney saw and felt and thought 
 in a few twinklings of an eye for in such circumstances 
 a woman's mind works with the rapidity of genius, and 
 with genius's grasp of essential detail. Helen was ad- 
 vancing. 
 
 " Don't you recognize me, Courtney ? " she asked. The 
 264
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 voice was one of those honest, pleasant voices that disarm 
 the most cynical pessimists about human nature the voice 
 that makes the blase city man fall to dreaming of taking a 
 country girl to wife. 
 
 " Now I do, of course/' said Courtney sweetly. And 
 the two embraced and kissed. 
 
 To do this, Helen had to bend, as she was more than 
 a head the taller. She bent with not a suggestion of con- 
 descension in manner or in thought. Nevertheless Court- 
 ney, for the first time in her life painfully sensitive about 
 her stature, flamed and was resentful and in her scorn of 
 her own pettiness felt tinier within than without. True, 
 Helen's figure was commonplace, the bust too high and 
 ominously large for her age, the hips already faintly 
 menacing, the waist and arms somewhat too short for the 
 great length of leg. True, her own figure was certainly 
 better. Still, Helen had that advantage of height could 
 look at Basil level-eyed, could make her seem short ! And 
 this Helen here to stay indefinitely! 
 
 There was pathos in the slow, sweet smile Courtney 
 gave Basil as their trembling hands met in what seemed 
 to the others a formal greeting. She turned away with 
 a sigh. Just as she, the thirsty, the desert-bound, was all 
 ready to rush forward and drink the mirage vanished. 
 Was it to be always so? Was life to be ever a succession 
 of mirages, vanishing at approach, only to reappear and 
 revive hope and cheat again? Through her mind flashed 
 the memory of the first one an indelible memory, always 
 for her symbolic of vain expectation: A fourth of July 
 when she was a very small child how she awakened at 
 sunrise, rushed to the window to find sky clear and world 
 radiant and ready for the picnic that was to be her first 
 great positive joy; how she was dressed in her best, in 
 
 265
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 wonderful new white frock, in white stockings and shoes 
 and white bows covering the top buttons, shimmering sash 
 of pale green, and bows of pale green on her braids; how, 
 just as she descended in all her glory to issue forth, down 
 came the rain in floods and no picnic, nothing but stay 
 at home all day and weep and watch the downpour. " It 
 was my horoscope," thought she, as she stood there in the 
 hall too sad for bitterness over her spoiled home-coming. 
 " Is it fate ? Or, is it somehow my fault ? My fault, I 
 suppose. I must be asking of life something no one at 
 least, no woman has the right to expect." 
 
 She was near the library door, with Winchie on its 
 threshold staring round big-eyed and crying, " Oh, mamma 
 Courtney. Look ! " His eyes were no more wondering 
 than her own. She had been too disheartened to make the 
 library over into a conservatory that year; now, here it 
 was transformed into a conservatory the carpet up from 
 the hardwood floor, plants beautiful for bloom or for 
 foliage or for both in boxes, in jars, in pots everywhere. 
 A conservatory like that of former years, but more elabo- 
 rate. 
 
 The others were laughing and watching her face. So 
 she exclaimed " I am surprised ! " in the indefinite tone 
 the listener can easily adapt to his expectations. But she 
 was not pleased far from it. Another fierce pang of 
 jealousy. She, modest about her own abilities, did not 
 realize that the room lacked just the finishing touch of her 
 exquisite taste. To her it seemed better far than she 
 could have done. Why, she hadn't been needed, or missed 
 even ! Things went on as well in her absence as when she 
 was here. And near her, side by side, were Basil and 
 Helen how she could feel them! so well matched phys- 
 ically and he fair, she dark. And Courtney had not that 
 
 266
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 self-complacent, satisfied vanity which shelters so many of 
 us from any and all misgivings and doubts. 
 
 " Helen did most of it," explained Vaughan. " She's 
 a trump, you'll find. Look out, Helen, or we'll make you 
 do all the work." 
 
 ' r Cousin Dick proposed it and really carried it out," 
 protested Helen in her school-teacherish or collegiate 
 speech and manner. " And Mr. Gallatin was invaluable 
 in showing us how you had it last winter. We wanted to 
 get it exactly the same." 
 
 Courtney turned brilliant, grateful eyes on Basil. " So, 
 you remembered, did you? " she ventured to say, sure her 
 meaning and her tone would pass the others safely. 
 
 Basil flushed. " You can judge for yourself," said he. 
 
 " I'm so overcome I don't know what to say." Their 
 smiling, friendly faces, all bent upon her, made her natu- 
 ral generosity burst forth like April's unending green at 
 the first warmth of the sun. Her eyes filled. " Thank 
 you thank you all ! " she cried. " I am so so happy ! " 
 And she kissed Helen again, ashamed of her mean im- 
 pulses toward one whose aloneness and poverty commanded 
 kindness and consideration and help from another woman, 
 especially from a woman who had known the bitterness 
 of dependence and aloneness. 
 
 Good sense and decent instincts, having driven off jeal- 
 ousy, held the field not without occasional alarms and 
 excursions, but still decisively. It was the merriest party 
 that had gathered about the mahogany dining-room table 
 since Colonel 'Kill imported it from beyond the moun- 
 tains, along with sundry novelties in those parts, in that 
 early day carpets and curtains and window glass, wall 
 paper and carved beds and crystal chandeliers. In Colo- 
 nel 'Kill's time the atmosphere had been genial but austere;
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Aunt Eudosia, during her brief reign between his death and 
 her own, had maintained his traditions reverently; and 
 Courtney had struggled not altogether with success, though 
 bravely and resolutely, against the atmosphere that lingered 
 on after all her brightening changes. But that night, the 
 spell was broken. Dick put aside his chemistry; Basil and 
 Courtney forgot him and their burden of deceit. Helen 
 belied her mourning which, as Courtney had shrewdly 
 guessed, was mere formality anyhow. Everyone was gay, 
 even jealous little Winchie, devoting himself to Helen, de- 
 termined to make her love him. And Courtney was gayest 
 of all; was not that vacant place at the table filled once 
 more? Her heart overflowed with joy and her lips and 
 eyes with laughter each time she looked in that direction 
 and saw him! Everyone was gay except old Nanny, 
 listening sourly to the merriment that came through door 
 and hall into kitchen and sounded like a burst from a 
 ballroom whenever Lizzie was passing in or out. " Poor 
 young man ! " muttered Nanny to her dishes and pans. 
 " If he only knowed the whited sepulchre he's living amidst, 
 what a holocaust there'd be." She did not know what holo- 
 caust meant, having got merely its vague sense from a ser- 
 mon; thus, it gave her a conception of anarchy and chaos 
 far beyond the scope of words she understood. 
 
 Courtney's emerald eyes, dancing and laughing though 
 they were, scrutinized Basil. Not that she really sus- 
 pected him; she simply wished to fortify herself against 
 the folly and the unhappiness of suspicion as women look 
 under a bed before getting into it. Having fortified her- 
 self, she concentrated on Helen Helen, the homeless, the 
 unmarried, the eager to be married. There the results of her 
 scrutiny were not so satisfactory. Basil would have called 
 Helen's manner mere civility; and perhaps, in strict jus- 
 
 268
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 tice, it was nothing more. But Courtney the woman, judg- 
 ing Helen the woman, saw the hidden truth beneath the 
 surface truth saw that Helen was not without an instinct 
 for a possible customer for the virtue so carefully nurtured 
 against the coming of an opportunity for it to expand in 
 the garden of matrimony with the flower and leaf and fruit 
 of wife and mother. Courtney judged fairly, conceded that 
 Helen was the reverse of forward, was using no arts, no 
 subtleties. But the candidate for matrimony showed in 
 her charmingly receptive and appreciative attitude toward 
 the young man. The danger which Courtney foresaw and 
 feared lay in the fact that Basil and Helen were both 
 attractive. To Courtney it seemed a question of a very 
 brief time when, without any effort whatever on her part, 
 Helen must fall in love with him. What then? A well- 
 bred, pretty woman in love is always more and ever more 
 attractive to the man she centers upon. And Helen was 
 free and could be honorable throughout! 
 
 As Courtney undressed for bed, these reflections, so 
 forbidding of aspect, faced her whichever way she turned. 
 " I like Helen," she thought, " and it's decent and right 
 to give her a home. If I were what I ought to be ought 
 to try to be I'd give her every opportunity to win Basil. 
 She's got to have some one to support her. I'm provided 
 for. It's mean of me to stand in her way." She found 
 some cheer in the reflection that, while most women would 
 straight off hate Helen and look on her as an impudent 
 interloper, she herself had generosity enough to be just 
 in thought at least. " But I'm human," said she. " Helen 
 has got to go. She doesn't love him. I do. She doesn't 
 need him. I do. She's got to go ! " 
 
 It was her habit to sit on the rug before the fire in her 
 sitting room, and do her hair for the night; then she would 
 18 269
 
 sometimes stretch 'herself out flat upon her breast and read 
 by the fire light or watch it and dream or think. She was 
 lying that way, head pillowed upon a book and face toward 
 the fire, when Dick opened the door, glanced in, entered. 
 So absorbed was she that she did not know he was in the 
 room until he spoke. 
 
 " It's like what Nanny would call a special providence, 
 isn't it? " said he, seating himself on the sofa parallel 
 to the fireplace but well back from it. He had a long 
 dressing gown over his pajamas and was smoking a last 
 cigarette. 
 
 " Special providence ? What ? " inquired she without 
 turning her head. His entrance had not interrupted her 
 train of thought. Her answer was, as usual, a reflex action 
 from her surface mind. 
 
 " Why, Basil's coming back." 
 
 No reply. She was not thinking of Dick's statement 
 of Basil's return as coming from him but as if she had 
 herself begun to revolve it of her own accord. 
 
 " And Helen's being here." 
 
 A restless shiver. She was unconscious of Dick's pres- 
 ence. She was gazing absorbed at the proposition: Helen 
 is here. 
 
 " It's just as we wanted it," he went on. 
 
 The lithe, delicately formed body grew tense. " Speak 
 for yourself," she said curtly. 
 
 Richard received this rebuff in silence. " I know you 
 don't like Basil," said he at length. " And, it's true he 
 was a tank and a tear-about at college " 
 
 There he stopped, shamefaced. He forgot he had told 
 her about Basil; he felt it was undignified and unworthy 
 gossip now that he had matrimonial designs upon him. 
 " That slipped out," he said to her apologetically. " I 
 
 270
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 never intended to tell you. Anyhow, he has dropped all 
 that sort of thing, and I don't believe he' J l ever turn loose 
 again. ... I wonder why that girl broke the engagement. 
 He tells me he's free, and I suspect he wanted to come 
 back because he's pretty badly cut up. . . . You will be 
 nice to him, Courtney? and help him and Helen along? 
 They were intended for each other height contrast of 
 coloring " 
 
 Courtney sat up impatiently, turned her back to the fire 
 to warm it, clasped her knees in her arms. She was con- 
 scious of him now, vaguely, unpleasantly conscious, though 
 the ideas he had suggested still held most of her atten- 
 tion. Gradually she became uncomfortable; no, it was 
 not the cold. Her wandering glance happened upon Rich- 
 ard's face. His expression That was it! Not cold, 
 but the sense of being looked at by eyes that had not the 
 right. She blushed furiously from head to feet, had an 
 impulse to snatch the rug about her and dart from the 
 room. 
 
 " You are beautiful! " he exclaimed, rising. " I was 
 just contrasting you with Helen March this evening. She's 
 undoubtedly handsome. Has height, and go, and, for a 
 girl, really a surprising amount of " 
 
 Courtney was not listening. She was thinking of her 
 oversight in not locking her doors into the hall. 
 
 " Of charm aside from the freshness that's about all 
 there is to most girls, I imagine." 
 
 She must be careful not to irritate him, not to rouse 
 him to the vigilance that nothing can escape. What a 
 luckless beginning of a new life! 
 
 " And you're so well now so alive " 
 
 " I'm all but dead," she declared, pretending a yawn. 
 " I must go to bed." She sprang lightly up. " Good 
 
 271
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 night," she said. And to take away the sting for, his 
 slight wince showed her there was sting she stood on 
 tiptoe, hands behind her and face upturned. 
 
 His lips touched her cheek hesitatingly; fired by the 
 contact, he took her in his arms and kissed her. She did 
 not draw away; an instinct of prudence, not a deliberate 
 thought, restrained her. She flushed from head to foot, 
 her modesty wounded, her pride abased. " Good night," 
 said he, lingeringly. 
 
 " Good night," she echoed, turning away to screen the 
 fire. 
 
 Half an hour later all the lights in the house were out. 
 She had gone to bed, but not to sleep. She suddenly sat 
 up, gazed eagerly toward the window giving on the small 
 veranda. It was open for the night; the shutters were 
 latched, however, and through them came intensely cold 
 air and some faint light. She thought she heard a tap- 
 ping at the shutter that shutter she had so often thrown 
 wide in the hope that Basil had secretly returned. She 
 listened. After a long wait, again the tapping so soft 
 that only the attention of an expectant listener would have 
 been attracted. 
 
 " Basil ! " she murmured. " I must have been expecting 
 him." 
 
 She was about to dart to the window when there came 
 a thought like a blow in the face flinging her back and 
 making her cover her head. First the one man; now the 
 other. " God ! " she muttered. " How they will degrade 
 me, between them." 
 
 No, it should not be ! She grew angry with Basil. At 
 the first opportunity, breaking his promise, trying to tempt 
 her to become what he could not but despise. That was 
 what he called love! And how poorly he must think of 
 
 272
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 her ! . . . She uncovered her head, listened. No repeti- 
 tion of the sound. She ran to the window, opened the 
 shutter. No one ! Yes the snow on the rail had been 
 disturbed. She leaned out. Snow the black boughs the 
 biting midnight air stars the crescent moon with a 
 pendant planet the distant muffled sound of a horse stamp- 
 ing in its stall. She closed the shutter, went shivering 
 back to bed heartsick with disappointment.
 
 XVIII 
 
 WHEN she at last went to sleep it was like a ship going 
 down in a storm. But she slept nine hours without a 
 dream; and she awakened in that buoyant mood with which 
 perfect health of body will triumph over whatever heavi- 
 ness of soul. Her troubles seemed largely fanciful, were 
 certainly anticipatory; she would push steadily forward, 
 and all would be well. 
 
 When she descended, the two men had breakfasted and 
 gone, and Winchie was out on the lawn playing at snow 
 man with the Donaldson children and their governess. 
 Helen, still at table with coffee and newspaper, greeted 
 her so honest of eye and of voice that she was altogether 
 ashamed of her thoughts of evening and night before. 
 Also, Helen did not look especially well in the mornings. 
 Sleep swelled her face, her eyelids; her skin inclined to 
 be cloudy; her hair hung rather stringily about her brow. 
 And in negligee the defect of too much bust and too short 
 waist seemed worse than it was. " I must see that she 
 gets a proper corset," thought Courtney. " Like so many 
 women, she doesn't realize that corset is three fourths of 
 the battle for figure." She studied Helen with an artist's 
 eye and an artist's enthusiasm for bringing out the best, 
 the beautiful. " Yes," she said to herself, " Helen can 
 be made a perfect wonder for looks. I must try it." And 
 then she knew she had never really intended to send Helen 
 away. She who had suffered so much from the tyranny 
 of dependence it would be impossible for her to exercise 
 that tyranny over another. " I don't want to send her 
 
 274
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 away. But if I did want to, I couldn't, no matter what 
 happened. I might think I would, and try to compel my- 
 self to do it. But when it came to the pinch, I'd remember 
 and I couldn't. No other human being shall ever know v 
 through me the sort of humiliation I bear." 
 
 She was ashamed of her fears about Basil, too. " As 
 if he hadn't known lots of women. As if our love were 
 just the ordinary thing that passes for love. And Helen'll 
 help brighten things up this house must not and shall 
 not be gloomy." Then too and this idea she did not 
 definitely express to herself Helen would give her and 
 Basil more freedom by pairing off with Richard when 
 they were all together. 
 
 Still more cheering were the thoughts that came from 
 her mail. From the bank's monthly statement she learned 
 that Richard had for the first time fixed an allowance suf- 
 ficient for the position she was expected to maintain. 
 There is a minimum amount on which a family can live in 
 a certain style; every dollar below that means pinch, every 
 dollar above it luxury. Courtney had at times been hard 
 put to keep from going into debt. Many a woman, bred 
 as she had been, as most American women are with small 
 practical knowledge, with only the silly useless " educa- 
 tion " the usual school and college give, with no notion of 
 values or mistaken notions, with contempt for realities and 
 reverence for inanities has in the same circumstances be- 
 come hopelessly involved. But whatever the shortcomings 
 in Mrs. Benedict's system of bringing up her children, she 
 had certainly inculcated a horror of debt. And as human 
 life and character are grounded upon material things if 
 they have any substantial foundation at all, this dread of 
 debt had been and continued to be one of the main factors 
 in Courtney's development. It is amazing how far a sin- 
 
 275
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 gle cardinal real principle, such as a fixed aversion to debt, 
 will go toward keeping any human being straight, toward 
 bringing them back to sense of the just and the right, 
 when they have been swerved by emotion or irresistible 
 gale of circumstance. But in human affairs all the truly 
 great powers are forces so quiet and move so close to the 
 ground that their existence is unsuspected; or if pointed 
 out, it is denied and scouted, and some windy fake of 
 philosophy or politics or superstition is hailed as the god 
 in the machine. Instead of going into debt and playing 
 the " refined, cultured lady," Courtney had set about learn- 
 ing to economize without privation or meanness or tawdry 
 pretense, acquiring the supreme art of living the getting 
 of its full value for every dollar. It had been a hard 
 schooling; she began to realize how valuable, how inval- 
 uable. With this additional allowance Richard was now 
 making, she saw what wonders of improvement she could 
 work she who had been getting out of the smaller income 
 what many women in Wenona, spending four and five times 
 as much, had not got. Certainly, the sky was brightening. 
 
 " If you haven't taken a dislike to me," Helen was 
 saying, " and are going to let me stay a while, I'll make 
 myself useful. In fact, I'll not stay if I don't. I must 
 pay my way, and I can't pay in money." 
 
 " Whatever you like," said Courtney, " if you'll only 
 stay. We want you. We need you." 
 
 Helen never forgot the warmth that cordial genuine 
 tone sent through her. She didn't try to put her thanks 
 into words, for there are no words for such real and deep 
 feeling. She simply looked at Courtney a look that more 
 than rewarded her. After a moment she went on in an 
 unsteady voice, " I could help with Winchie. I took a 
 course in kindergarten work at Tecumseh and in house- 
 
 276
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 keeping, too. They really teach things real things there. 
 Then, I sew beautifully the finest kind of sewing." 
 
 " So I see," said Courtney, looking at the sacque Helen 
 was wearing. She did not like the sacque, because she did 
 not like flummery and elaboration and Helen had the 
 poor girl's weakness for both. But she did admire the 
 quality of the work that had been put into it. 
 
 " You must let me do some sewing for you. Do you 
 like fine underclothes ? " 
 
 " Crazy about them." 
 
 " I knew you were," said Helen who, judging by Court- 
 ney's dress and light way of talking, had already clearly 
 and finally made up her mind that the verdict of " serious 
 people " as to her cousin was just a sweet, light, pretty 
 creature, fond of dress and all the frivolities. " Just you 
 wait! Mrs. Hargrave up at our town brought back some 
 things from Paris perfectly wonderful ! All the women 
 were excited about them. Well, I know how to make them 
 and where the goods can be got. Not expensive, either." 
 
 " I'll get the material," said Courtney, " and you can 
 make some for both of us." 
 
 " Then I took a course in fitting. Don't judge by the 
 things I wear. I somehow can't fit myself." 
 
 " It's the corset," said Courtney. 
 
 " I suppose so. I could never afford to have them 
 made or to buy the best ready-made kind. But I can 
 do well for others. I can teach your dressmaker how to 
 behave herself. That'll save you a lot of time and worry, 
 won't it? " 
 
 " And work. Now, I have to remake most of my 
 things." 
 
 Courtney began to respect Helen. The evening before, 
 the girl, bent upon making a favorable impression, had
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 been a wholly different person. She had seemed to Court- 
 ney stuffed to bursting with the familiar, everj^where ad- 
 mired and nowhere admirable " idealism " that chokes 
 thought with cant and cumbers action with pretense. She 
 had displayed a disquieting fondness for the " cultured " 
 drivel about art and literature, about morals and manners, 
 that destroys sincerity and simplicity's strength, and cre- 
 ates the doleful dreary lack of individuality characteristic 
 of the so-called educated classes throughout the world. 
 Courtney had always had the courage to confess that these 
 honored frauds seemed to her ridiculous and wearisome. 
 She assumed that Richard's and Basil's admiring atten- 
 tion, as Helen " showed off " after the manner of young 
 girls, was politeness or tribute to Helen's good looks. 
 Now that she had discovered real virtues in Helen, she was 
 not alarmed; for, she had learned that men are not inter- 
 ested in such virtues in young women but only in surface 
 charms that stimulate their sex illusions. " It'd take a 
 man who had been married at least once to appreciate 
 Helen," thought she. 
 
 By the time Courtney finished breakfast, she had ex- 
 plained her plans and Helen had made many intelligent 
 suggestions. They lost no time in getting to work. The 
 morning flew, dinner was ready before they had given it 
 a thought. Yes, Helen was a genuine addition, was just 
 what she needed. " Yet I've no doubt Basil'll think her 
 stupid once he gets used to her beauty and her sweetly 
 pretty romantic pose for the matrimonal game." 
 
 Dick and Basil came, and the merry party of the night 
 before was repeated. Courtney noted with pleasure that 
 Dick and Helen had taken a fancy to each other. Without 
 her realizing it, this was a thorough test of her absolute 
 apartness from him; for, many a woman who is not in 
 
 218
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 love with her husband, who actively dislikes him, will yet 
 be furiously jealous of him and by no means entirely 
 from the sordid motive of fear lest his being attracted 
 elsewhere will end in lessening her own portion of the 
 income. Dick showed that he thought Helen, tall of stat- 
 ure and serious looking, an appreciative listener to his dis- 
 courses on chemistry; and Helen's manner was indeed well 
 calculated to deceive a man. After dinner Dick led her 
 up to his study further to explain some things they had 
 been discussing. Winchie hurried away to resume play 
 with the Donaldsons, their governess having come for him 
 and Courtney and Basil were free. 
 
 " It seems too good to be true," said Basil. " How 
 much better this is in every way than what we've been 
 condemning each other to. ... Courtney, I did a very 
 indiscreet thing last night. I came to your window 
 climbed up by a ladder Jimmie had forgotten to lock up 
 in the woodshed." 
 
 Courtney, rosy red, lowered her head. 
 
 " I don't wonder you're angry. I'll never do it again. 
 When we have such happiness as this, we must do noth- 
 ing nothing to endanger it. And I want to say, you 
 were right about about what's best for us. The very 
 resolve to try has made everything seem entirely different. 
 I'm not ashamed when I look at Richard. I can meet his 
 eyes. And with your help I think I can wait patiently 
 and hope ! . . . Don't you think it possible those two 
 might fall in love ? " 
 
 She was startled, then fascinated by the idea. " Why 
 not? If they only would! " 
 
 " It's just possible barely possible." They sat silent, 
 reflecting on this new hope. Presently Basil went on, 
 " They're both very serious minded. And Miss March 
 
 279
 
 would be a real companion for him. She's thoroughly in- 
 tellectual, has quite a remarkable mind more like a 
 man's." 
 
 At "intellectual" Courtney thought he was joking. 
 She began to smile, rather reluctantly for, she did not 
 like to laugh at so sweet and honest a girl as Helen, even 
 with one so near to her, so like another self. Then his 
 expression warned her that he was in earnest, that he 
 really regarded Helen's " cultured " conversation as an in- 
 dication of intelligence, did not see that it was merely edu- 
 cation of an elementary and commonplace sort the sort 
 the colleges, those wholesale dealers in ready-made mental 
 clothes, dressed out all minds in, so that usually one could 
 tell a college man just as one could tell a ready-made suit. 
 It was at her face to laugh at him. What an instance of 
 woman's good looks blinding susceptible man to the truth 
 '' about her internal furnishing, as different from the real 
 thing as a hotel parlor from the drawing-room of a per- 
 son of taste and individuality. But she did not laugh; 
 that would have seemed meanness toward Helen and 
 Courtney, no lenient critic of her own character, rather 
 suspected herself of a sly ungenerous envy of Helen's 
 stature. 
 
 " Yes," pursued Basil, " Miss March has a remarkable 
 mind. But I'm afraid there's no hope about her and him. 
 You see, she's not at all that sort of girl. She'd rather die 
 than commit any impropriety that is, I mean of course," 
 he stammered, " she's horribly prim." 
 
 Courtney would have thought nothing of it, had he 
 not stumbled and hastened on to explain. But that agi- 
 tated, apologetic embarrassment changed " she'd rather die 
 than commit any impropriety " from a commonplace into a 
 tribute to Helen which was a slur upon herself. For her 
 
 280
 
 THE HUNGRY HEAET 
 
 love's sake she resisted the temptation to pretend not to 
 have heard or felt. " You like that sort of thing in a 
 woman, don't you? " said she, with a lift of the eyebrows, 
 those deep notes in her voice ominous. 
 
 " In Miss March yes," blundered he. " That is, in a 
 young girl." He halted, burst out desperately, " You're 
 always suspecting me of not respecting you." 
 
 There began to gather in Courtney an emotion that 
 terrified her. It was not anger; it was not shame. It 
 seemed, rather, a sort of dread though of what she did 
 not know did not wish to know. " Please, no protests," 
 she said hurriedly. " Let's drop the subject." 
 
 " I do respect you," he said, doggedly. " But if I 
 didn't " there, he looked at her " I feel for you 
 something that's so much more than respect I love 
 you." 
 
 She drew in her breath sharply, and her eyes gleamed 
 and glistened as they opened wide. She had a way of open- 
 ing her eyes upon him that made him feel as if he were 
 standing on a high place and about to plunge dizzily into 
 the sea at the call of a mermaid. The silence that fol- 
 lowed was interrupted rudely it seemed to them by the 
 return of Helen and Dick. 
 
 " I need somebody in addition to you, Gallatin, to help 
 out down at the shop," said Dick, " and Helen is going 
 to try." 
 
 " If Cousin Courtney is willing," said Helen. " She 
 may need me here, as I told you." 
 
 Courtney had been standing with her fingers on the 
 edge of the chimney-piece, gazing between her arms into 
 the fire. She slowly turned and regarded Richard. Basil 
 and Helen working together! 
 
 " Oh, no, she doesn't need you here," asserted Vaughan. 
 281
 
 And catching Courtney's eye, he glanced from Basil to 
 Helen and winked. 
 
 Courtney seemed not to see. " Helen doesn't want to 
 go down there," said she. " Richard imagines, if people 
 listen politely to his talk about chemistry, that they're as 
 interested as he." 
 
 " Really I'd like it," said Helen, a good deal of nerv- 
 ousness in her enthusiasm. 
 
 " She could try it anyhow," urged Vaughan. " We 
 need some one don't we, Basil ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Basil. " You remember, I suggested you 
 ought to ask Mrs. Courtney to take a hand." 
 
 " Courtney ! " Vaughan laughed gayly. " She has no 
 fancy for anything serious. Now, Helen is masculine 
 minded." 
 
 " Not a bit," declared Helen, much agitated by such 
 an accusation, in presence of an eligible young man. " I'm 
 so much a woman that I'm what's called a woman's 
 woman." 
 
 " Helen prefers to stay here," said Courtney. " So, I 
 think I'll try." 
 
 Richard stared and frowned. 
 
 She smiled at Basil. " Richard is getting broad 
 minded," she went on slowly, selecting her words. " A short 
 time ago the idea of a woman in that laboratory of his 
 would have upset him quite. I remember, when we were 
 first married, I made the most desperate efforts to get him 
 to let me help. He was finally quite rude about it." She 
 spoke with no suggestion of resentment; and, indeed, that 
 time seemed so remote, so like a part of another life or 
 another person's life that she felt no resentment. 
 
 " I'm sure we'll both be glad to have you," stam- 
 mered Basil. He was confused before the instinct-born 
 
 282
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART * 
 
 thought that those few apparently simple words of hers, so 
 quietly and so good-humoredly spoken, were in fact the 
 story of the matrimonial ruin he had found when he came 
 and was profiting by. 
 
 " I'll come down to-morrow," Courtney went on. 
 " Helen can look after things here." 
 
 Helen could not conceal her relief; when the men were 
 gone she said: " I'm so glad you got me out of that. Dick 
 would have discovered what a stupid I am in about one 
 hour, and he'd have despised me. I'd hate that, as I think 
 he's wonderful. How proud you must be of him. Of 
 course, Basil is very sweet and such a gentleman and 
 how well he does dress ! But Dick They're not in the 
 same class." 
 
 " No," said Courtney. 
 
 Just then Vaughan came hurrying in. " I forgot some- 
 thing I wanted to say to you, my dear," he began. " Come 
 in here " 
 
 Helen took the hint and hastened away. Vaughan went 
 on, " Why on earth didn't you help me? " 
 
 Courtney looked interrogative. She felt a curious im- 
 personal anger against him for having blunderingly inter- 
 fered in her affairs. 
 
 " Didn't you see," explained Richard somewhat irrita- 
 bly, " I had it all fixed to bring those two together? " 
 
 " How dull of me! " 
 
 " It's not too late. All you have to do is back out and 
 send her." 
 
 " And have her exhibit herself before him at her worst. 
 And get him sick of the very sight of her." Richard began 
 to look foolish. Courtney went on in the same tone of light 
 mockery: " If you want a girl to marry a man, or a man 
 a girl, you mustn't let them see too much of each other. 
 
 283
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 If possible, make it hard for them to get at each other." 
 The emerald eyes were mockingly mirthful now. " No 
 such love-inducer in the world as holding two people apart. 
 And when two can see each other freely to their heart's 
 content and satiation why " She finished with a 
 shrug, her eyes looking straight into his. 
 
 " All right. You women know each other best," said 
 he, uncomfortable, without being able to locate the cause. 
 
 " Helen will stay at home, like the homebody she is," 
 pursued Courtney. " And I'll come to help you. I've had 
 it in mind for several days." 
 
 " You're not in earnest about that ! " cried Vaug'han in 
 alarm. " Why, what'd you do there ? You'd be in the 
 way." 
 
 " More than Helen ? " 
 
 " Frankly yes," said Richard bluntly. " As I said 
 before, serious things interest her. You know, I dislike 
 that sort of thing in a woman am glad to see that you've 
 gotten entirely over it, as I knew you would. But I could 
 have put up with it for a while to help Helen to a good 
 husband and Basil to a fine wife. It wouldn't have taken 
 long at least, I thought not. I admit I was probably 
 wrong, and you right." 
 
 " Well now that I've said I'd come, I'll come," said 
 Courtney. " Helen'll take most of the detail here off my 
 hands." 
 
 " If you really want to come " said Dick, reluctant. 
 " I suppose after what I've said Well, you can come 
 for a few days." 
 
 Courtney was looking into the fire. Not for a " few- 
 days " but for as long as Basil worked with those dan- 
 gerous chemicals. If anything happened they would be 
 together. Richard was looking at her; but he thought it 
 
 284
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 was tlie fire liglit that was giving her the strange, some- 
 how terrible expression which yet enhanced her beauty and 
 her charm. 
 
 " How serious you look," said he. " Really, quite tragic 
 in that light." 
 
 " Yes, it must be the way the light falls," replied she. 
 " Or is it because I've mislaid my pet powder rag? " 
 
 Next morning as soon as Courtney dispatched her house- 
 hold routine she went down to the Smoke House and ap- 
 peared before Richard in his laboratory for the first time 
 since that morning after the homecoming, long, long ago 
 in that other life. With a platinum rod he was slowly 
 stirring some fiery mixture of a dark purple color in a 
 big iron crucible. She saw that the fumes were poisonous, 
 as his nose and mouth were protected by a respirator. As 
 on the previous visit she stood silent in the doorway watch- 
 ing him. She had long since passed the stage of com- 
 parisons and contrasts; and her mind was altogether upon 
 the present and the future, as an intelligent young mind 
 is extremely apt to be. So, she was not thinking of that 
 previous visit, but was simply interested in what he was 
 doing in his work, which she had now resolved, with an 
 experienced woman's determination, to make her own work 
 also, no matter what opposition she might encounter. Her 
 achievements in house and gardens, in bringing up Winchie, 
 in breaking through the barriers of moral convention so 
 powerful round a woman born and bred as she liad been 
 these feats had wonderfully developed her will, had re- 
 placed shyness and timidity with quiet self-confidence. 
 
 When the contents of the crucible cooled and he took 
 off the respirator, she spoke. " I see you've run up a par- 
 tition." 
 
 He glanced at her with a frown not severe but irri- 
 19 285
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 tated, as at the persistent naughtiness of a sweet and 
 charming child. "Oh, you've come have you? . . . Yes 
 the partition gives Basil and me each his own shop. I 
 like to work alone, whenever it's possible." 
 
 She advanced calmly, indifferent to his unfriendliness. 
 " Then you don't want me to help you? " She put all her 
 diplomacy of tone and manner into that little speech. She 
 knew how much depended upon this " entering wedge " 
 this getting tolerated within those walls. 
 
 " What a whimsical creature you are ! " Dick was still 
 vexed, but half laughing, too. She was so delicate and 
 graceful, so fascinating to the eye; and she seemed to him 
 absurdly, quaintly out of place there. " Basil ! " he called. 
 "Gallatin!" 
 
 Gallatin, in a blouse, rubber apron and gloves appeared 
 from the other part of the shop. 
 
 " Well here's the the 'prentice," said Dick. " You're 
 not busy nowadays. Take charge of her." 
 
 " It'll be a great pleasure, I'm sure," he stammered. 
 He looked about as uncomfortable at sight of her as had 
 Richard. Demurely she followed him into his compart- 
 ment. As the partition did not extend to the ceiling, they 
 had to content themselves with an exchange of eloquent 
 glances. Then, taking the tone of gentleman chemist to 
 not overbright and densely ignorant lady visitor at a labora- 
 tory, he began to explain to her the names and uses of 
 things, and to demonstrate how to use them. 
 
 For the entire morning he talked and illustrated, thor- 
 oughly enjoying himself at making a fine impression with 
 his display of superior knowledge. He told her little she 
 did not already know. But she was not so tactless as to 
 spoil his pleasure or hurt his vanity. She listened and 
 tried; and when he complimented her on her quickness in 
 
 286
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 learning, she showed delight at being praised. In the 
 afternoon he allowed her to practice his teachings unas- 
 sisted set her at weighing a little nitrate of potassium 
 precipitate in the gold and ivory and aluminum balances. 
 She had done this sort of things a hundred times, but was 
 meek under his elaborations of cautioning and explaining. 
 
 " I worked a lot in laboratories at school," said she in- 
 genuously, when his guidance became a little tiresome. 
 " It's beginning to come back to me." 
 
 He smiled in a way that reminded her of Richard. 
 " All right. Do the best you can," said he. " We'll not 
 expect much of you for the present. I'm afraid you'll soon 
 give up." 
 
 She looked at him. " I'm here to stay," said she. 
 " You'll not get rid of me." 
 
 " But the work's very hard not at all feminine." 
 
 " That suits me. For, I'm not at all feminine, myself 
 what men mean by feminine." 
 
 He laughed, went about his own business. As she sat 
 at the balances, her whole mind on the needle she was 
 watching through the reading glass, she felt herself caught 
 from behind. She turned her laughing face upward and 
 backward, and they kissed. " Isn't it splendid ! " he ex- 
 claimed under his breath. " Yes you must stay." It had 
 been part of her plan of life that they should never caress. 
 Suddenly she realized how impossible this rule was and 
 how foolish. On occasions such occasions as this joy in 
 the unexpected kindness of fate the rule must be sus- 
 pended. 
 
 " How long it's been ! " he said in a low voice. " Not 
 since early September have I kissed you and this is almost 
 February." 
 
 She glanced warningly toward the top of the partition. 
 287
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Away at the other end/' Basil assured her, " and 
 doing something that can't be left an instant for an hour 
 or more." 
 
 " Well then " She blushed, hesitated, gave him a pas- 
 sionate, longing look. " One more kiss and we go to 
 work." 
 
 He seated himself and drew her to his lap. With their 
 heads close together, they talked of anything, of every- 
 thing, of nothing and hardly knew what they were say- 
 ing and cared not at all. " Oh, the happiness of it," she 
 murmured. " And we are to work side by side, too. It 
 seems a dream. I can't believe it." 
 
 " And soon it will be spring again, and we shall be a 
 little freer." 
 
 " Be patient until I get everything settled," she an- 
 swered, " and we shall be free almost all the time. I have 
 thought it out." 
 
 " You think of everything." 
 
 " I think of nothing but you always you," she an- 
 swered. "What have I but our love? I want to make 
 the house comfortable, your apartment comfortable, myself 
 attractive all, so that love will never begin to think of 
 taking flight." 
 
 " Flight ! " He laughed softly. " How absurd ! Can't 
 you feel that I'm just wrapped up in you? " 
 
 She touched his tight encircling arms. " I can feel 
 that I'm just wrapped up in you," she retorted. " Now, 
 let me go. I am not to keep you from the work or 
 you me." 
 
 " Not just yet" 
 
 " Yes " firmly. " You don't take me any more seri- 
 ously than Richard does. But I don't in the least care. 
 If I am serious, what does it matter whether anyone thinks
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 so or not?" She laughed a little. "And I'm feminine 
 enough, I'll admit, to want to be what the man who wants 
 me wants me to be." 
 
 He was not listening. He held her more tightly, and 
 she knew what was coming before he began to speak. 
 " Let me come to-night, Courtney. Just this once. I 
 simply want to be alone with you " 
 
 " Not yet," she replied. " Don't let's tempt each other 
 to risk years of happiness for a frightened moment." And, 
 afraid she would yield if he kept on urging, she abruptly 
 freed herself and sent him back to his seat. 
 
 An hour, and he came to her again. " I've been doing 
 nothing but watch you, and you haven't looked round 
 once." 
 
 " This work is interesting," replied she and it was 
 the simple truth. 
 
 " No not once ! " 
 
 " What a good example I'm setting you. I always 
 used to like chemistry. And I was a harum-scarum girl 
 then. Now, I see I'm going to be tremendously fond 
 of it." 
 
 " Courtney I can't stand our our compact. I sim- 
 ply can't. I feel as if you had thrust me out of your life. 
 And Have you no memory, sweetheart? Courtney, 
 we're only human beings, after all. And we've the right. 
 Aren't you my wife? " 
 
 " Don't tempt me, Basil," she answered with a sigh. 
 " Do you suppose I don't feel it? Sometimes I get to 
 thinking what might be But I will not! You do not 
 wish it." And she glanced meaningly at the partition. 
 
 " You are mine ! " he whispered, moved by the reminder 
 but not abashed. "If I had never known love in its full- 
 ness, I might be able to endure this cold, repellent pre- 
 289
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 tense of virtue for, it's nothing but a flimsy pretense. 
 Courtney, if you love me " 
 
 " Is your love only that! " 
 
 " If you loved me," he repeated, " you'd not calculate 
 so puritanically. If I weren't seeing you, dear, I could 
 bear it. But seeing you all the time touching you kiss- 
 ing you Courtney, Courtney, how can you make me, and 
 yourself too, suffer so needlessly? If you really love, how 
 can you keep me out of your inmost life as if I were not 
 everything to you? " 
 
 " I explained to you " 
 
 " Explained ! Explained ! " he said, impatiently. " We 
 explain and explain, but it's all sophistry. The truth is 
 what? That we are lovers. And, if our love is a sin, why 
 not take all its reward since we'll have to take all its pun- 
 ishment ? " 
 
 " Don't harass me now," she begged, agitated and 
 trembling. 
 
 " Harass you ! " He drew away offendedly. " I 
 thought I was pleading for you, as well as for myself. 
 If I am not, please forget what I said." 
 
 " I didn't mean that ! " 
 
 " Then I may come to-night or you to me ? " 
 
 She gave him a sad, pleading look. " Not to-night, 
 dear. Not just yet. We must wait till things are going 
 quietly in a routine." 
 
 " How easily you put us off ! " 
 
 "Basil! Please!" 
 
 He stared sulkily out of the window. " It does sting 
 my pride that you care so much less than I. It does make 
 me almost doubt." 
 
 " Not so loud ! " 
 
 " You don't realize how far away he is, and how ab- 
 290
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 sorbed. ... I take back all I said." And he straightened 
 himself coldly and went to his own part of the room. 
 
 A moment, and she followed him. " You are offended, 
 Basil." 
 
 " No hurt." 
 
 She sighed. " I will come to-night." 
 
 " You do not wish to come! " 
 
 " To be honest, no. I should feel " She hesitated. 
 She wished to be frank; but how could she be, when he 
 was in that mood of doubt? How could she explain again 
 that, in some respects, she loathed the memory of the times 
 they had been stealthily together the alarms, the narrow 
 escapes from discovery the commonness of it all like 
 those low intrigues that get into the newspapers, to make 
 coarse mouths water and vulgar eyes sparkle? If she tried 
 to tell him, he would misunderstand. " Not just yet," she 
 went on. " I'm in a queer mood not myself. You " 
 
 She was so tender, so loving, so deeply distressed that, 
 in shame and contrition, he embraced her. " I'm sorry I 
 said anything. But you'll understand. How can I help 
 longing for you? It's your own fault you beautiful, 
 wonderful woman! " 
 
 And their first clash ended in kisses, in serenity re- 
 stored, with him saying and thinking " How much 
 braver and better you are than I ! Yours is the love that 
 makes a man stronger and decenter." 
 
 Her look was eloquent of gratitude and happiness. But 
 the happiness in it was forced, at least in part, was rather 
 what she felt she ought to feel than what she actually did 
 feel as is so often the case. And she went back to work 
 with a certain heaviness of heart and a foreboding. The 
 slightest alarm, however fanciful, was enough to call up 
 the specter of those months of loneliness and despair after
 
 he left. That specter haunted her, was in her mind the 
 fixed idea that becomes an obsession. She knew that to 
 quiet it, she would if necessary stop at nothing. " I can 
 never give him up again. I'd do anything anything 
 rather than even risk it." Pride and self-respect were all 
 very well, but those who could put such things before love 
 had not loved. She hoped and prayed Basil would not 
 force her to the test. But if he did She sighed, and 
 bade herself wait until that situation arose before worrying 
 over it.
 
 XIX 
 
 Now that the throes of birth were over, their love bade 
 fair to be like those robust infants that almost kill mothers 
 in the bearing but thereafter give not a moment's anxiety. 
 Outdoors it was rivalling the previous winter; indoors 
 at the house and at the laboratory there reigned mid- 
 summer serenity. Nanny always a shadow, though very 
 faint indeed latterly had yielded before her arch enemy, 
 rheumatism, had been pensioned off, had gone to her 
 brother's, seventeen miles into the wilderness. She would 
 shadow them no more. Richard had come to another crisis 
 in his researches ; and a mind in the act of gestation is like 
 a hen on eggs solitary, brooding, best left utterly alone. 
 He was as unconscious of Courtney and Basil as of him- 
 self; all three were, for him, simply instruments to the 
 strange and terrible marvels of chemical action that were 
 unfolding. Soon Basil felt about him as did Courtney 
 that is, lost all sense of his being related to her or to the 
 life of the household. As they held to their compact, they 
 experienced none of passion's inevitable alternations of 
 rapture and revulsion. Habit is equally the friend of 
 virtue and of vice. It was not a matter of months but 
 of weeks when they were looking on their love as not only 
 moral but even exalted, since they were self-restrained. 
 
 The chief factor in the tranquillity was the work. 
 Courtney began at the laboratory solely that she and Basil 
 might be together. Soon she had another reason love of 
 the work itself. Everything worth while, whether for 
 achievement or for amusement, involves drudgery at the 
 
 293
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 outset tennis or bridge no less than a trade or an art. 
 Although Courtney had done at school the worst part of 
 the drudgery in acquiring chemistry, it was nearly a month 
 before she began to enjoy. Then came the first haunting 
 alluring glimpses of the elusive mystery which makes 
 chemistry the most fascinating of the sciences; and from 
 that hour forth she forgot the difficulties in the delights. 
 She often stole in to gaze longingly at Richard's work 
 for, he kept the main part of the great task of finding a 
 new and universal fuel altogether in his own hands and 
 used the other two as mere helpers. She would have liked 
 to work with him; and, as she understood better and better 
 what he was about, the temptation to try to bring her skill 
 and her knowledge to his attention became strong at times. 
 But she was afraid that if he began to think attentively 
 about her being there, he would send her away. No, it 
 was best to remain hidden behind Basil, to do nothing to 
 remind Richard of her existence. 
 
 At first Basil assumed she was toiling like another 
 Richard because she wished quickly to get knowledge 
 enough to make plausible her necessary pretense of inter- 
 est. But after a few weeks he saw she was in earnest, or 
 thought she was for, he could not believe one so pretty, 
 so charming, so light of spirit and of mind, could be deeply 
 in earnest about such a heavy, unwomanly matter as chem- 
 istry or about anything else, except of course love. He 
 was fond of chemistry; but it was in the fashion of most 
 men's fondness for serious effort to get excuse and appe- 
 tite for idling. However, partly through pride, partly be- 
 cause her enthusiasm was contagious, he buckled to and 
 worked as Richard had never been able to make him. 
 
 " Really, you needn't crowd yourself quite so hard," 
 said he to Courtney, when his own energy began to flag. 
 
 294
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I've got to choose between being a drag and a help. 
 Besides " She glanced down with the shy, subtle smile 
 he had learned to recognize as a cover for something she 
 meant very much indeed " don't you find that being oc- 
 cupied is a great aid? " 
 
 " I'd not have thought it possible to live as we're liv- 
 ing and be happy." 
 
 " You are happy ? " As she asked this, she scrutinized 
 his face in woman's familiar veiled fashion. She was al- 
 ways watching, watching, for the first faint dreaded sign 
 of discontent. 
 
 " So much so," answered he, earnestly, " that I'd be 
 afraid to change anything." 
 
 She saw that he meant it, that he felt it with all the 
 intensity of the fine side of his nature. And she breathed 
 a secret sigh of relief. She said: " Every day time and 
 again I say to myself, ' If only this will last! ' ' 
 
 " It will ! " declared he. 
 
 And, pessimist though she had been made by disap- 
 pointment on disappointment in small things and large her 
 whole life through, she began to hope that this would 
 last, that the worst of her life was perhaps over, that her 
 life problem was settling and settling right. The watch- 
 dogs of presentiment are like their much overrated ani- 
 mal prototypes. They bark at everything, that they 
 may get credit for usefulness if by chance they once do 
 happen to vent their nerve-racking warnings in advance 
 of a real peril. Even presentiment called its dogs off 
 duty. 
 
 She had been brought up among people who imagine 
 they see the operations of natural law in the artificial con- 
 ventions of morality that differ for every age and race 
 and creed, really for every individual. She had long dis- 
 
 295
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 carded as superstition the creed of her parents; but she 
 had not been able wholly to uproot all the ramifications of 
 beliefs dependent upon that creed for vitality. Thus, she 
 vaguely felt a relationship of effect and cause between her 
 sufferings in the autumn and early winter and those fear- 
 shadowed, shame-alloyed but ecstatic moments of joy in 
 the summer. And in the same vague way, there seemed 
 to her some sort of connection between their present hap- 
 piness and their self-restraint. She would have, quite hon- 
 estly, denied, had she been accused of harboring such a 
 " remnant of superstition." Nevertheless, it was the fact. 
 However, she did not analyze or reason about her happi- 
 ness. She simply accepted and enjoyed it and forgot the 
 foundations on which it rested. 
 
 And the days the long, long days that only people 
 who live in quiet places have moved tranquilly and hap- 
 pily by, swift yet slow. The weeks seemed to be flying, 
 and the days went very fast; but each hour presented its 
 full quota of sixty minutes for enjoyment. In those dread- 
 ful days of the previous fall she had wished every hour that 
 she was living in a city, because in the city a thousand 
 resolute intrusions compel distraction, make the moments 
 seem to fly, whether the heart is heavy or light. Now, she 
 was glad with all her heart that she was living and loving 
 where there were no distractions, where each moment could 
 be lived as a connoisseur drinks his glass of rare old wine 
 drop by drop. 
 
 One day late in April she and Richard, it so hap- 
 pened, were alone for a few minutes before supper. He 
 abruptly emerged from his abstraction to say, " Basil and 
 Helen are getting on famously." 
 
 296
 
 She startled, then lapsed into her usual isolation when 
 alone with him. 
 
 " I expect there'll be a marriage before the summer 
 is out." 
 
 " Yes ? " said Courtney, absently. 
 
 " Well, it's a good match. They're both comfortably 
 shallow. They're fond of the same kind of harmless pre- 
 tenses. They look well together. ... I hope they'll stay 
 on with us at least until the first baby comes." 
 
 She shivered, rose abruptly. " Supper must certainly 
 be ready," said she. 
 
 " Then," pursued Dick, intent upon his train of thought, 
 " they might get the Donaldson place. The Donaldsons 
 want to sell." 
 
 She smiled ironically. " I suppose you've spoken to 
 Donaldson about it." 
 
 " Not yet. But next time I see him, I'll give him a 
 hint. He might sell to some one else." 
 
 Basil now came in. " Sell what? " he asked, to join in 
 the conversation. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," answered Dick. " Courtney and I were 
 discussing the Donaldson place. Donaldson wants to 
 sell, and we thought we might get neighbors we didn't 
 
 like." 
 
 
 
 " Richard suggested," said Courtney, in her most in- 
 nocent manner, " that you might buy it." 
 
 Dick looked alarmed. Basil, with his eyes on Courtney, 
 promptly said: " Maybe I will. It's second only to this 
 place. And I shall always live here." 
 
 " Richard thought it would be a good idea for you to 
 settle there when you and Helen marry," said Courtney, 
 with a smile only Basil could understand. 
 
 If anything, Basil looked more confused and nervous 
 
 297
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 than did Richard; he laughed hysterically. " Really 
 really that's very attractive if " he stammered. 
 
 Just then Helen, out of hearing on the lake-front 
 veranda, happened to call, " Oh, Mr. Gallatin ! " 
 
 " Yes," he answered, and hastened out to join her. 
 Richard stared helplessly at his wife. " Now, rvhy did 
 you do that? " he demanded. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " You certainly are the most thoughtless, frivolous per- 
 son ! I never knew you to he serious about anything 
 except something that was of not the least importance. I 
 must remember to be always on guard when I speak before 
 you." 
 
 " Yes, you ought to be careful. I'm not intellectual, 
 like Helen. But I was forgetting; now you say she's shal- 
 low, too." 
 
 " All intellectual women are shallow," said Dick. He 
 was ashamed of his heat of the moment before. " And I 
 never said you were shallow. You ought to be glad you 
 have no intellectual tendencies, but are a bundle of in- 
 stincts and impulses, as a woman should be. I guess you 
 didn't spill the milk, after all. If Gallatin loves Helen, 
 a little break such as you made won't scare him off." 
 
 " No indeed. When a man's in love, the sight of the 
 net doesn't frighten him. He helps to hold it open so that 
 he can jump in deep." 
 
 Courtney intended to tease Basil, the next time they 
 were alone. But it slipped her mind until nearly a week 
 later. Basil had got into the habit of going out for a 
 stroll and a smoke every morning about ten. She never 
 went with him, because she did not wish to interrupt her 
 work to which she could give only the mornings, as the 
 time for gardens and growing things was at hand. One 
 
 298
 
 morning it so chanced that her task of the moment was 
 just finished when Basil moved toward the door. " I'll go 
 with you/' said she. 
 
 He hesitated, looked disconcerted. 
 
 " Oh, if you don't want me," laughed she. 
 
 " Indeed I do," he hastened to say. " Only usually 
 you don't." 
 
 They went out together, walked up and down the wide 
 retaining wall of the lake, beyond the Smoke House. Pres- 
 ently Helen appeared, on her way to the apartment over 
 the laboratory. Now that she had charge of the house- 
 keeping, it was part of her duties to look at the apartment 
 and see that Lizzie was keeping things clean and was 
 making Gallatin comfortable. At sight of Basil and Court- 
 ney, she stopped short, colored painfully. She answered 
 their greetings with embarrassment, went with awkward 
 haste in at the apartment entrance. 
 
 " Helen's extremely shy," said Courtney. 
 
 " She is difficult to get acquainted with," replied Basil. 
 His manner might have been either absent or constrained. 
 
 " I'm afraid I haven't given you much chance," said 
 Courtney, merely by way of saying something. 
 
 " Oh, I know her pretty well," Basil hastened to pro- 
 test. " There's a lot more to her than one sees at first." 
 
 " Indeed there is," said Courtney, warmly. " I've 
 grown very fond of her fonder than I ever thought I 
 could be of another woman. I don't care much for women. 
 They're so small toward each other because they're all 
 brought up to be cutthroat rivals in the same low business 
 husband-catching. But Helen isn't a bit small. She has 
 a real heart." 
 
 " And real intellect, too." 
 
 Courtney's smile was absolutely free from malice. 
 299
 
 " That's just what she has not/' she replied, for she talked 
 with perfect frankness to him, her other self. " I suppose 
 the man never lived who could judge a good-looking 
 woman. Women don't always misjudge men. But men 
 always fancy beauty means brains, if the woman's heavy 
 and serious and not downright imbecile." 
 
 " I shouldn't call Miss March imbecile/' said he. " Or 
 even heavy." 
 
 " Now don't be cross because I hinted that women could 
 fool you," teased Courtney. " And I didn't mean to sug- 
 gest that Helen is imbecile or heavy." 
 
 " She knows an awful lot," said Basil. " She often 
 corrects me in little slips about authors and poetry, and 
 so on." 
 
 Courtney could hardly keep from showing her amuse- 
 ment that Basil should be impressed by what was really 
 one of Helen's weaknesses. For Helen, like so many who 
 have small or very imperfect knowledge, attached as great 
 importance to trifles of worthless learning as a college 
 professor; she became agitated if anyone showed lack of 
 knowledge of some infinitesimal in etiquette or grammar or 
 what not, just as fashionable people sweat with mortifica- 
 tion or distend with vast inward derision if some one, 
 however intelligent, however capable, appears among 
 them in an out-of-style garment or uses an expression 
 not in their tiny vocabulary. Courtney was striving tact- 
 fully to open out a less ignorant point of view to Helen. 
 And here was Basil showing that Helen's weakness 
 was in reality a strength, highly useful in dealing with 
 men. 
 
 Courtney said : " Helen is a fine, sensible, capable girl 
 about the finest I ever knew. And she has genuine sweet- 
 ness and good taste." 
 
 300
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " She does dress well," said Basil warmly. " If she 
 had the means, she'd be stunning." 
 
 " Could be, but wouldn't be," replied Courtney, per- 
 fectly just and good humored, but perhaps a little weary 
 of hearing another young woman's praises in her lover's 
 voice. " She'd ' settle down ' if she married. She's reso- 
 lutely old fashioned hates to think or to exert herself. 
 She'll make a fine, old-fashioned wife for some man who 
 likes to be mildly bored at home and wants his fun else- 
 where. This reminds me. Richard has you and her mar- 
 ried wedding in the fall baby next spring." 
 
 Basil flushed at this teasing. 
 
 " You don't seem enthusiastic." 
 
 " I don't care to hear a good young girl spoken of so 
 lightly," said he, with some stiffness. 
 
 And now Courtney colored. After a moment she said, 
 apologetic without knowing why: " Perhaps I shouldn't 
 have done it. But I always feel free to speak out to you 
 any stray thought that drifts into my head without choos- 
 ing my words." 
 
 Helen now reappeared, cast a peculiar glance in their 
 direction, blushed rosily, hastened away toward the house. 
 " She'd better be careful how she blushes at sight of you," 
 said Courtney smiling, " or you'll be thinking she's in love 
 with you." 
 
 " Nonsense! " protested Basil, again unaccountably irri- 
 tated. 
 
 " How solemn you are to-day, dear. And, why shouldn't 
 she fall in love with you? I can see how a woman might." 
 
 He did not respond to her glance. He stared straight 
 ahead, answered awkwardly, " Helen and I are simply 
 good friends." 
 
 The phrase jarred upon her a little. " Simply good 
 20 301
 
 friends." As she repeated it, she remembered suddenly, 
 vividly, the beginning of their own love. They too had been 
 " simply good friends." The phrase kept recurring to 
 her, dinning disagreeably in her ears. She frowned on 
 herself; she laughed at herself. But it continued to ring 
 and to jar. " I certainly have a nasty jealous streak hid- 
 den away in my disposition," she said to herself. " I 
 mustn't encourage it." 
 
 During the next few days every time Helen and Basil 
 were together, she caught herself watching them for signs 
 "Signs of what?" she demanded of herself. But in 
 spite of herself she kept on watching. That specter of 
 the dreadful days without him that specter so easily 
 called up began to glide about in the background of 
 her thoughts, rousing those fears before which she was 
 abject coward. 
 
 Helen had the young girl's usual assortment of harm- 
 less little tricks. Her favorite was to note when a man 
 made a remark which she thought he regarded as clever, 
 to go back to it after a moment or so, and repeat it and 
 laugh or admire according as it had been intended to be 
 amusing or profound. She was constantly doing this 
 with Richard, with Basil, with every man she met. The 
 time came when the overworked trick began to get upon 
 Courtney's nerves, especially as Helen, being entirely 
 without humor and a close-to-shore wader in the waters of 
 thought, was not always happy in her selection of the 
 remark. Still, her intentions being of the best, Courtney 
 endured; and at times she got not a little secret amuse- 
 ment from seeing how Basil and even Richard were flat- 
 tered by the trick, never suspecting, even after Helen had 
 again and again laughed or admired effusively in quite the 
 wrong place. As she watched Helen and Basil now, the 
 
 302
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 only " sign " she saw was this clever-stupid subtlety of 
 Helen's for flattering male vanity Helen practicing it on. 
 Basil, Basil purring each time like a cat under the strok- 
 ing of an agreeable hand. This certainly was not serious. 
 She laughed at herself with a reproachful " You don't de- 
 serve happiness trying to poison it with contemptible sus- 
 picion." And the specter faded, and she no longer heard 
 the sound of rain beating, of rain drizzling, of rain drip- 
 ping through days and nights of aloneness and despair. 
 
 Spring was smiling from every twig. The birds, im- 
 patient at winter's reluctant leave-taking, had arrived be- 
 fore the young leaves were far enough advanced to cover 
 them. So, every tree was alive with them, plainly in view, 
 boldly about their courting and nesting, like lovers who, 
 despairing of finding a quiet place, march along the high- 
 way embracing in defiance of curious eyes. One morning, 
 half an hour after Basil went out for his habitual stroll 
 and cigarette, Courtney changed her mind and decided to 
 join him. She looked along the retaining wall. No Basil. 
 She walked up and down, noting, and feeling in her own 
 blood, the agitations of the mightiest force in the uni- 
 verse those agitations that in the springtime set all nature 
 to quivering. Ten minutes passed fifteen half an hour 
 nearly three quarters of an hour. Still no Basil. She 
 decided he must have gone up to his rooms and fallen 
 asleep. She resisted the temptation to go and waken him, 
 and went slowly toward the laboratory doors. Just as she 
 was about to jump from the wall, out of the apartment 
 entrance came Helen, her face aglow, her eyes sparkling, 
 all the austerity gone from her regular features. " Hovr 
 pretty she looks," thought Courtney. " I wonder what's 
 
 303
 
 THE HUNGRY. HEART 
 
 delighting her so. One'd think she was in love and was 
 loved. There never lived a sweeter, more unselfish girl. 
 Nothing petty in her. She even has a nice way of being 
 prudent about money." 
 
 Helen did not see her, went quickly up the path and 
 into the wood between the Smoke House and the lawns 
 round the house. Courtney resisted the impulse to call 
 because she had already been out of the laboratory too 
 long. As Helen disappeared among the trees, Courtney 
 was astounded to see appear at the apartment door Basil ! 
 On his face a contented pleased expression, as if he were 
 reflecting upon something highly agreeable Helen's face 
 his face Courtney stood for an instant like a flaming 
 torch planted upon that wall a torch with a white-hot 
 flame of hate. 
 
 As Basil was taking a last puff at his cigarette, she 
 darted into the laboratory and sat at her case. When he 
 entered, she was just where she had been at his going out. 
 " Still at work ! " he cried. 
 
 " Still at work ! " said she. She forced her lips to 
 smile, but she did not dare lift her fluttering eyelids. She 
 looked calm and, as always, sweet; but in those few min- 
 utes all the sweetness of her nature had transformed, as 
 the thunderstorm changes milk from food to poison. And 
 the remembered horror of those days of desolation goaded 
 her toward a very insanity of fear and jealousy. That 
 smile on Helen's face then on his. 
 
 He stood behind her. If she had had a knife she 
 would have whirled round and plunged it into his breast 
 and then into her own. But she had not; also, this 
 was twentieth-century and conventional life. She sat 
 rigid, intent upon the flame of the blast tube she was 
 using. 
 
 304
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 He bent and kissed her neck. " Sweetheart ! " he mur- 
 mured. 
 
 The fixed smile became a distortion, as she lowered her 
 head. 
 
 " The spring outdoors," he went on in the same low 
 caressing voice. " It's hard to bear. It seems so long 
 so long since " His pause finished the sentence better 
 than any words. 
 
 Long indeed, thought she; a singularly patient and re- 
 strained lover; strangely respectful. 
 
 " There are more kinds of happiness in love than I 
 imagined," he went on. " But do you never never " 
 
 " Please," she interrupted. She found her voice could 
 be trusted; she ventured to test her eyes. She looked up 
 at him, taking pleasure in veiling her hate behind a smile. 
 She strove to make the smile sweet and tender. She felt 
 that she was succeeding. " How homely he is," she 
 thought. " And I love him ugly and a traitor. I love 
 him, and I'll keep on loving him for, he's all there is 
 between me and misery." 
 
 Richard called them into the front compartment, and 
 the three worked together at the big retort the rest of the 
 morning. It was a strange hour and a half. She seemed 
 to be two distinct persons no, three. One was hating Basil 
 and Helen a being that seemed to concentrate all that is 
 venomous and malignant. One was watching with interest 
 and excitement the awful processes by which calm liquids 
 poured together suddenly became violent, colorless liquids 
 a marvelous radiance of exquisite color, heat became in- 
 finite cold and cold became heat that consumed hard metals 
 as if they were bits of fluff. The third personality within 
 her was aloof and calm, and watched her other two and 
 wondered at them. 
 
 305
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 At dinner time she and Richard walked to the house 
 together, Basil stopping at the apartment to tidy himself, 
 as usual. " Well, how do you think they are getting on ? " 
 she asked carelessly. 
 
 " I can't tell," replied Richard, " till I've got several 
 other reactions." 
 
 " Helen and Basil, I mean." 
 
 " How should I know ? All right, I suppose." 
 
 " Didn't you tell me, a week or so ago, you thought 
 it was a match ? " 
 
 " Of course it's a match," said he, as if there weren't 
 a doubt about it. 
 
 She quivered at this pressure upon the thorn that was 
 pricking and festering. " Why are you so positive ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " You know as much as I do. He goes out to meet her 
 every morning, doesn't he ? " 
 
 Every morning! To smoke! In a series of internal 
 explosions whose flames scorched her soul she traced the 
 progress of that smoking habit of his. With an outer 
 calmness that amazed her she pursued her inquiries. " Are 
 they affectionate when they're alone ? " she asked. 
 
 " How? " Richard's mind was back at his experiments. 
 
 She repeated her question in a voice that was under 
 still better control. 
 
 " I've never seen them but once one day when he was 
 helping her balance herself at the edge of the wall she 
 was pretending to look down into the water at something 
 the old trick." 
 
 Courtney laughed. " The old trick yes." She laughed 
 again. 
 
 " It's all settled, no doubt," declared Richard. " And 
 good business ! " 
 
 306
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Courtney hurled a glance of fury at him. " Unless he's 
 making a fool of her." 
 
 " Oh absurd. He's a gentleman." 
 
 " Gentleman. That sounds as if it meant a lot, but 
 does it? " 
 
 Richard wished to think of his work uninterrupted by 
 this trifle of a love affair. " Why not ask her about it? 
 She's no doubt dying to tell if you give her the excuse of 
 opening the subject." 
 
 Courtney went up to her balcony, seated herself in a 
 rocking-chair. She rocked and thought, thought, thought 
 getting nowhere, motion without progress, like that of her 
 chair. She did all the talking at dinner that day. She 
 took the relations of men and women for her subject and 
 shot arrows of wit at it. As Winchie was having dinner 
 next door with the Donaldson children, she did not need 
 to restrain herself. She was mocking, cynical, audacious. 
 Basil stopped laughing and stared at his plate. Helen, all 
 blushes, looked as if she would sink under the table. Rich- 
 ard remained calm he was not hearing a word. Basil's 
 gloom and Helen's shocked modesty delighted Courtney, 
 edged her on to further audacities. She looked from one 
 to the other, smiling, jeering at them and she rattled on 
 and on, because she felt that if she stopped scoffing and 
 laughing, she would spring at him or at her. She had the 
 longing to do physical violence, like one in the torment of 
 a toothache. 
 
 Richard and Basil had not been gone many minutes be- 
 fore she began on the unconscious Helen. A sigh gave her 
 the opening. " Unhappy? " she said. 
 
 " No, indeed," answered Helen. " If anything, too 
 happy. You know what this life here means to me." 
 
 " But you must find it lonely." 
 307
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Lonely ! Not for an instant." 
 
 " We've had almost no company this winter and spring. 
 I must hunt up some young men for you." 
 
 " I don't want them, as I've often told you." Courtney 
 remembered that she had, and muttered, " What a blind fool 
 I've been." Helen went sweetly on: " Beside such men as 
 Richard and Mr. Gallatin, the ordinary young man is any- 
 thing but interesting." 
 
 " Still, you must marry. And you've got the looks to 
 make a first-rate bargain." 
 
 Helen looked gently disapproving of this frank mode 
 of stating the case. " I could never marry for anything 
 but love." 
 
 " Of course. But, being a well-brought-up woman, 
 you'll not have difficulty in loving any proper candi- 
 date." 
 
 " I'm well content." 
 
 Courtney bent low over the scarlet and pink and white 
 tulips in one of the window boxes. Content! This woman 
 who was stealing her lover this woman who was thrusting 
 her back into the despair of those loveless, hopeless days 
 when Basil was gone and the icy rains poured on and on 
 upon her desolate life! She controlled herself, repeated 
 vaguely: " Content? Impossible unless you've got your eye 
 on a likely man. No single woman ever was since the world 
 began." 
 
 Helen blushed consciously. 
 
 " Who is he? " teased Courtney. She had seen the blush, 
 and her nerves were twitching. " Who is it? " she repeated 
 softly. "Basil?" 
 
 The blush deepened. 
 
 " I thought so ! " exclaimed Courtney with laughing tri- 
 umph. "You've yielded to his fascinations, have you?" 
 
 308
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Helen paled and her lip trembled. " Please don't/' she 
 faltered. " Don't joke me about about him." 
 
 Courtney turned hastily away to hide the devil that 
 gleamed from her eyes; for she felt that her worst sus- 
 picions were confirmed. " Tell me," she said, as soon as 
 she could find voice, and could make that voice gay with 
 good-humored raillery, " how long has this this idyll been 
 going on? " 
 
 " Really you're quite mistaken, dear," pleaded Helen. 
 
 " How long have you and he been keeping those 
 trysts ? " 
 
 " You're quite wrong. We've met by accident," pro- 
 tested Helen. "We just happen to meet." She hung her 
 head. " I'll admit I I arrange to go to look at the apart- 
 ment about the time I know he comes out to smoke." 
 
 Courtney was all smiles. " And he arranges to come 
 out to smoke about the time he knows you're going to the 
 apartment. How delicious ! " 
 
 " Do you think he does it deliberately? " inquired Helen 
 eagerly. 
 
 Courtney was amazed at the girl's skill in duplicity. 
 She began to wonder how far they had gone. But her face 
 was bright and innocent as a poison locust bloom when she 
 said : " You sly child ! What were you and he doing in his 
 apartment to-day ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Helen, covering her face with her hands. 
 
 Courtney's features were distorted with fear and fury; 
 the specter was stalking and leering. But her voice sounded 
 soft and seductive as she urged : " Go on, dear. You needn't 
 be afraid to tell me everything." 
 
 Helen lifted her flaming face. " There's nothing to 
 tell," cried she. " When you asked me that question, some- 
 thing in your tone made me feel as if I had done a a wick- 
 
 309
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 edly indiscreet thing. But it was all so harmless and acci- 
 dental. I came earlier than usual, and he was getting the 
 cigarette case he'd forgotten." 
 
 " Highly probable ! " exclaimed Courtney, apparently 
 much amused. " And so, you could make love to each other 
 at your ease." 
 
 " Courtney ! " Helen started up, horror-stricken. " Can 
 you think I'd let him lay the weight of his finger on me? " 
 And she burst into tears. " Oh, what have I done ! " she 
 sobbed. " And it seemed perfectly innocent." 
 
 Insane with jealousy though she was, Courtney could 
 not but be convinced. " Don't take it so to heart, my dear," 
 said she. " Tell me all about it." 
 
 "And you could suspect me! But I deserve it. If I'd 
 been really a good woman, I'd not have thought of him 
 until he had spoken to me." 
 
 " Dry your eyes," said Courtney, calm and practical. 
 " How far has this gone ? " 
 
 " Not at all," declared Helen. " We've never said a 
 word of love to each other." 
 
 "Is that the truth?" 
 
 "As God is my judge." 
 
 " Not a kiss no hand-holding? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 "Only looks?" 
 
 " Sometimes I've hoped from the way he looked ' 
 She sighed. " But I'm afraid he meant nothing." 
 
 Courtney studied her ingenuous face as a bank teller a 
 note that is under suspicion of being counterfeit. Yes 
 Helen was telling the truth. 
 
 " Do you think he cares? " asked Helen wistfully. " He 
 seems to like to talk with me. And he's very eloquent about 
 sentimental things. He talks and he acts like a man in 
 
 310
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 love. But at times I feel as if it were with another 
 woman." 
 
 Courtney buried her face in the urn of violets. And 
 next io her feeling of enormous relief at the clearing of 
 Basil from the worst charge against him was gratitude that 
 she would not have to try to play the tyrant try to send 
 Helen away. 
 
 " It may be some bad woman's gotten hold of him," 
 continued the girl reflectively. " He may be chained by a 
 love he's ashamed of." 
 
 " That sounds like a weekly story paper." 
 
 " I know there's some weight on his conscience," main- 
 tained Helen. 
 
 Courtney looked strangely at her and laughed. " When 
 people look and talk remorse, they're only boasting. He's 
 trying to make himself interesting, my dear. He wants to 
 thrill you with the story of his life some commonplace 
 adventure he exaggerates into an epic drama." She 
 laughed again, most unpleasantly. " Heaven deliver me 
 from these ' My God ! How she loves me ' men ! " 
 
 " He's not like that not at all," protested Helen. 
 *' But oh, I wish I knew whether he cared for me. I 
 don't know what to do! I've given him every opportu- 
 nity " She stopped short with such an expression of 
 horror at her slip that Courtney laughed outright. " I don't 
 mean I've done anything forward or unladylike " stam- 
 mered Helen. 
 
 " He's a man of the world." She pinched Helen's cheek. 
 " He reads that innocent little mind of yours like an electric 
 sign." 
 
 Helen was hysterical with dismay. " You think he's 
 laughing at me ? " 
 
 " And getting ready to to amuse himself." 
 311
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Courtney ! " 
 
 Courtney nodded and smiled. 
 
 " He never could think so lightly of me. Never ! " 
 
 " Lightly ? He sees you are in love with him. Why 
 should he suspect you of being calculating ? " 
 
 " Calculating? I don't understand." 
 
 " Unwilling to give except for an annuity for life 
 support." 
 
 Helen's honest brown eyes were big and round. " What 
 do you mean ? " 
 
 " What I say/' was Courtney's reply. And in a, to 
 Helen, appallingly matter-of-fact way, she went on to ex- 
 plain. " And what I say is simply the sense under all the 
 nonsense about marrying. You want to marry, don't you? 
 You're looking about for somebody to support you and your 
 children, aren't you? You say you love our homely, fas- 
 cinating, well-to-do friend Gallatin. But not enough to go 
 very far unless he'd sign a life contract. Didn't I hear 
 you say one day that you didn't think it proper for people 
 even to kiss until the preacher had dropped the flag? " 
 
 * Helen gazed at her with an expression of sheer horri- 
 fied amazement that delighted her. " How can as sweet 
 and pure a woman as you talk that way? " 
 
 Courtney laughed gayly. " Because she's neither svreet 
 nor pure. Because she's got intelligence and experience. 
 I just wanted to show you that while you were pretending 
 to think about love ideal, romantic, unselfish love, you 
 were really planning for food, clothing and shelter." 
 
 " But I don't want to hear such talk ! " cried Helen. 
 " If I'm deluded, why, let me stay so. You are so frivo- 
 lous, Courtney ! Don't you believe in love at all ? " 
 
 Courtney reflected. " I don't know whether I do or 
 not," she finally said.
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Helen looked at her with sad sympathy. " And I 
 thought you were happy ! " she sighed. 
 
 "I am/' rejoined Courtney. "And I purpose to re- 
 main so." 
 
 " But you are worried about me? You think Bas 
 Mr. Gallatin is not a fit man for me to marry? " The tone 
 betrayed her anxiety, the importance she attached to Court- 
 ney's judgment; for, while Helen's conventional mind told 
 her that Courtney was a " light-weight/' like all lively, 
 laughing persons, her instinct made her always consult her 
 before acting in any matter from a man to what hat to wear 
 with what dress. " You think he's not nice ? " 
 
 Courtney felt Helen's nearly breathless expectation; 
 she did not answer immediately. When she did it was from 
 the farther side of the room, with her attention apparently 
 on a window garden of hyacinths. " Be careful, my dear. 
 Remember, your primness is your chief asset. If he thought 
 or hoped you were loose " 
 
 " Loose ! " Helen trembled, looked as if she were about 
 to faint. 
 
 " It's ridiculous the way we women exaggerate the value 
 of our favors," philosophized Courtney. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't make that kind of of jests, 
 dear," pleaded Helen. " I know you don't mean a word of 
 it. You feel just as I do that a man couldn't do enough 
 to repay any good woman for giving herself to him." 
 
 " Or a woman do enough to repay a man for giving 
 himself to her," retorted Courtney. " The account's even, 
 or the whole thing's too low to talk about. Still you don't 
 understand you can't. And so long as men think a 
 woman the grander the more conceited and selfish she is, 
 you're as well off, believing as you do. ... As to Gal- 
 latin " 
 
 313
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 "I don't care anything about him!" cried Helen. 
 " What you've been saying has given me such a shock." 
 She paused, then went on in a low, awful tone, " Courtney, 
 I must tell you that I was alone with him in his sitting 
 room for over an hour ! " 
 
 "When?" asked Courtney, sharply. 
 
 " To-day what we were talking about." 
 
 " Only to-day ? " 
 
 " Never before ! " exclaimed Helen. " And never again." 
 
 " Then perhaps only perhaps, mind you," mocked 
 Courtney, " I'll put off speaking to Richard about it and 
 writing Mrs. Torrey." 
 
 Helen could not see any humor in the situation. " Do 
 you honestly believe, Courtney," she asked in deep distress, 
 " that he could have thought of me as if I were were a 
 a bad woman ? " 
 
 Courtney's eyes were most unpleasant. 
 
 " I see you're disgusted and angry with me, dear," said 
 Helen, in tears again. " I know it was unwomanly of me 
 to think of him when he'd said nothing. But I I couldn't 
 help it. I will help it, though ! " 
 
 " You think you can ? " 
 
 Helen showed she was astonished and hurt. " Do you 
 imagine 7 could care for a man whose way of caring for me 
 was an insult? " 
 
 Courtney counseled with a vase of jonquils. " No, I 
 suppose you couldn't," she replied. " You don't know about 
 wild, free fierce love Do you ? " 
 
 Helen's expression was of one appalled. " How can 
 you talk that way? " she asked. " You're very strange to- 
 day. You're not at all yourself." 
 
 " Self ! " exclaimed Courtney, scornfully. " What is my 
 self? What is your self? What is anybody's self? " 
 
 314
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 She no longer had the delusion of free will that makes 
 us talk about bettering the race by " changing human nature 
 from within " the delusion that the individual is respon- 
 sible, though obviously the social system and the other com- 
 pelling external conditions move the individual as the show- 
 man his puppet. She, helpless in the whirl of strong 
 emotions, was beginning to understand why, at the outset 
 of her married life, instinct had bade her arrange all the 
 circumstances round her and Richard so that they would 
 be compelled to live the life in common, the life of the single 
 common interest that holds love captive as the cage the bird. 
 She was beginning to realize how like water self is in the 
 grip of circumstances how self is mill pond or torrent, 
 pure or foul, or mixture of the two, according as circumstance 
 commands. These demon impulses they were not her self. 
 Self was amazed onlooker at its own strange doings was 
 like helpless occupant of the carriage behind the runaway 
 team. 
 
 When Helen spoke again, she showed that her thoughts 
 were still lingering longingly where they must not, if 
 Courtney was to be rid of the demons. " But if a man loves 
 a woman," said Helen, " why shouldn't he be glad to give 
 her honorable marriage ? " 
 
 Courtney hesitated, dared. " She might be already 
 married." 
 
 " Courtney ! " And her horrified eyes told Courtney 
 she had caught the intended hint that Basil was in love 
 with some married woman. " It isn't possible ! " 
 
 " Haven't such things happened? " 
 
 " Yes but No married woman a nice man would 
 notice would ever think of another man than her hus- 
 band." 
 
 " I don't know about a ' nice ' woman," said Courtney, 
 315
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 slowly. " But I can imagine that a human woman if 
 her husband neglected her, and chilled and killed her 
 love " 
 
 Helen was not listening, was not aware that she had 
 interrupted as she said, " Do you think Mr. Gallatin could 
 be in love with some married woman of of our class ? " 
 
 " I suspect so," replied Courtney, gazing calmly into 
 her eyes. 
 
 "I'll not believe it!" cried Helen. "I'll not be- 
 lieve it ! " 
 
 " You're like all girls. Because your own head's full 
 of marriage, you think every man who's polite to you, or 
 flirts a little to make the time pass more agreeably, is about 
 to send for the preacher. Now, frankly, has Basil ever 
 made love to you ? " 
 
 " No," admitted Helen. " But " She halted. 
 
 " But what? " came from Courtney sharp and arresting 
 as a shot. 
 
 " I feel he is fond of me," confessed Helen. 
 
 Courtney laughed harshly. " All men are fond of all 
 good-looking women especially in the spring. Don't be a 
 fool, Helen." 
 
 " But a married woman has no right to him ! " 
 
 Courtney flushed, and her eyes flashed. " And how do 
 you know? And what right have you to judge? Are you 
 God?" 
 
 " No, but " 
 
 " No ! " cried Courtney. " How do you know what he 
 his love may mean to her? How do you know but what 
 it may be the one thing between her and despair and ruin? 
 You, with your timid, proper calculating little love ! Why, 
 if the woman cared enough for him needed him so that 
 she sacrificed self-respect honor truth all all for 
 
 316
 
 love what could you give him to replace it? And what 
 are your needs beside hers ? " 
 
 Helen's face grew hard as these words that outraged 
 every principle of her training poured recklessly from 
 Courtney's lips. " I'm astounded at your defending a bad 
 woman," she said. " You're too generous, Courtney. You'd 
 feel differently if she were taking Richard away from you. 
 But, I'm not in love with Basil. I see you know things 
 about him. I I despise him. I pity him, of course, for 
 he might have been a nice man. But I couldn't love him. 
 I'm glad you told me. I might have engaged myself to 
 him." 
 
 Courtney's far from sane eyes twinkled at that last in- 
 genuous bit of maidenly vanity. Helen went about her 
 work, and she departed to the greenhouse. " She'll stop 
 loving him as easily as she began," said she to herself. 
 " What does her sort of women know about love? They're 
 faithful to whatever man they marry, as a dog's faithful to 
 whoever feeds and kennels it. ... Basil Gallatin is mine I 
 And no man nor no woman shall come between us." 
 
 She had not forgotten Basil's expression as he stood in 
 the apartment entrance, after his tete-a-tete with Helen. 
 " Now for what's in his heart," she said. " I must know 
 just where I stand." She recalled how she had used to 
 say, and to think, that if a man was not freely a woman's 
 freely inevitably without any need of being held by 
 feminine artifice no self-respecting woman could for an in- 
 stant wish to detain him. And here she was, ready to make 
 any sacrifice to hold this man. Truly, fate seemed deter- 
 mined to compel her to give the lie to everything she 
 had ever believed, to abase every instinct of pride that 
 had plumed or still plumed the haughty front of her 
 soul. 
 
 21 317
 
 Richard asked Helen up to his study after supper, to 
 take dictation of an article he was doing for a scientific 
 magazine; thus, Courtney had a chance to explore Basil. 
 She was seated beneath the tall lamp, a big hat frame on 
 her lap, ribbon and feathers on the small table. She knew 
 he was watching her over the top of a newspaper; and she 
 was not insensible to his extremely flattering expression- 
 nor, perhaps, to the advantages her occupation gave her in 
 the way of graceful gestures, effective posings of the head 
 and arms as she studied the effect of different arrangements 
 of ribbon and feathers. She glanced directly at him; he 
 glanced away, confused the frightened zigzag of a flushed 
 partridge. 
 
 "Well? " said she. She felt more lenient toward him, 
 now that she had discovered his innocence of overt treach- 
 ery, at least; and the way he was looking at her when he 
 fancied her quite unaware was certainly reassuring. Also, 
 she realized now that she herself was largely responsible 
 for these errant springtime thoughts of his she with her 
 struggling to keep both love and self-respect. "Well?" 
 she repeated, when he did not speak. " What guilty thought 
 did I almost surprise? " 
 
 " No guilty thought," replied he. " I was loving you 
 terribly just then. I was thinking how impossible it 
 would be for a man who loved you ever to wander." 
 
 " That's very nice," said she, with a mocking smile. 
 " So you have been looking over the fence ? " And she 
 went .on with bending the brim of the hat frame to a more 
 graceful curve. She was placid to all appearances; but 
 once more the great dread was obsessing her. 
 
 " Not at all," protested he. " What fence? At whom? " 
 
 " The fence of our compact perhaps." 
 
 He sighed impatiently. 
 
 318
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Ah well " She laughed, eying the result of her 
 shaping, the hat frame at one angle, her head at the oppo- 
 site angle " there's Helen." 
 
 He locked grave reproach at her, altogether absorbed 
 in trying a long plume against the frame in different 
 positions. " Do you think, dear, it's quite respectful to 
 Helen " 
 
 " Your thoughts couldn't harm her," interrupted she 
 that is, she interrupted him, but not her work. "If men's 
 thoughts smirched women, what an unsightly lot the attrac- 
 tive ones would be ! " 
 
 " Where did you get such ideas ? " he exclaimed, trying 
 to conceal how her frankness had scandalized him. 
 
 She worked on calmly. " By observing and reading 
 and thinking and feeling." 
 
 He drummed uneasily upon the arm of his chair with 
 the tips of his fingers. At length he said with some embar- 
 rassment, " It's hardly necessary for me to say that I have 
 the highest respect for Helen." 
 
 " Yes and I also know she's very very pretty." 
 
 " Yes, she is pretty." 
 
 " You respect her. You like to talk with her. You 
 think she is physically attractive." 
 
 Stiffly, " I have never thought about her in that last 
 way." 
 
 " Then, that's probably her chief charm for you," 
 observed Courtney, placid and reflective and industrious. 
 " When we think we don't think about things that are 
 worth thinking about, the chances are we really haven't 
 been thinking about anything else." With a smile and a 
 shake of the head that might have been for the plumes 
 which refused to please her, " I'm afraid you're falling 
 in love with Helen." 
 
 319
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " No," replied he judicially and how he would have 
 been startled if he had seen her veiled eyes ! shiny green 
 and cruel as those of a puma stretched in graceful ferocity 
 along the leafy limb that overhangs the path. " No, I'm 
 not the least in love with her. But I do like her. Her 
 seriousness is very pleasant, now and then. If I did not 
 love you, I perhaps might have grown to care for her, in 
 a way. But beside you, Helen is tame." 
 
 " I shouldn't call her tame " encouragingly. 
 
 " Well perhaps not. She sometimes suggests a per- 
 son who could be waked up." 
 
 " That's a temptation, isn't it? " she asked. And she 
 looked straight at him over the top of the plumes. She 
 wished to see all. 
 
 " No," said he, positively. " To be quite frank I'd never 
 give her as a woman a thought if I weren't " He stirred 
 uneasily, burst out in confession. " You were right a while 
 ago. Men often don't understand themselves. But we'll 
 not talk about that." 
 
 t There was such love and tenderness in the gaze meeting 
 hers that all the squalid thoughts her mind had been fouled 
 with the whole day washed away like the dust and dirt on 
 the leaves and petals of her flowers in a sudden rain. 
 
 He said with a gentle, manly earnestness that thrilled 
 her: " There's only the one woman for me. And I want 
 our love to be what you wish. And it shall be ! " 
 
 She lowered her head, the tears welling. The others 
 interrupted, and Helen sat beside her advising about the 
 hat. When it was finished, she made Helen try it on. They 
 all admired, and it certainly was becoming. " Now, you 
 try it on, dear," said Helen. 
 
 " No, don't take it off," Courtney answered. " It's for 
 you, of course." And she kissed her and, laughing away 
 
 320
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 her thanks, went upstairs. She sat down at her dressing 
 table and, with elbows resting on it and face supported by 
 her hands, gazed into her own eyes. " If you do not wish 
 to lose him," she said slowly aloud to her grave face imaged 
 in the glass, " you must take away from him temptation to 
 wander. A door is either open or shut. A man a man 
 worth while won't stand at the threshold long. He comes 
 in or he goes away. Basil does not realize it, but that other 
 side of his nature will compel him to go away unless " 
 Compel him to go away? She was hearing again the mo- 
 notonous fall of those icy rains, was feeling again the monot- 
 onous misery of those days without love and without hope. 
 She must choose. Choose? " The woman doesn't live 
 doesn't deserve to live who'd hesitate. There's no choice. 
 There's simply the one way." 
 
 Well since it must be so what would be the event? 
 Would she lose him anyhow? Would she merely be putting 
 off his going? Would her complete yielding end in dis- 
 aster of some kind, as she had feared? Or, wasn't it pos- 
 sible that, while most people were tangled and finally stran- 
 gled by the web of their own deceit, a skillful few could 
 use it dextrously to snare the bright birds of joy? . . . She 
 stood up, stretched her arms, swayed her slim supple figure 
 gently. " He shall have no reason for letting one single 
 thought wander. He shall be mine all mine! I'll take 
 no more risks." She continued to sway gently, her eyes 
 closed. A look of scorn, of disgust came into her face. 
 She shuddered. " How hideous it is to be a woman ! Al- 
 ways slave to some man ! Gold fetters cut as deep as iron, 
 and they're heavier." She stopped swaying. " I can see 
 how I might come to hate my master in trying to hold his 
 love. . . . Love ! To keep our love warm, we have to bury 
 it in the mire." 
 
 321
 
 XX 
 
 BECAUSE of the light the tables in the inner laboratory 
 were so placed that Courtney and Basil worked at opposite 
 sides of the room with their backs toward each other. As 
 ten o'clock approached her agitation increased ; but the only 
 outward sign was frequent stolen glances at the clock on 
 the wall between the windows. When the hands pointed 
 to ten, her heart fluttered; for, she heard him push back 
 his chair and knew he was rising from his case. He stood 
 at the window toward her side of the room. As he was 
 gazing out over the high sill, she was free to look at him 
 at his back, at the back of his head. She felt the struggle 
 raging in his mind. Her hand, blundering among the bu- 
 rettes and bottles on the glass shelves before her, tilted a 
 test tube from its support. It fell, broke with a crash on 
 the porcelain surface of the table. She gave a low scream 
 it would have been loud had she not, swifter than thought, 
 clenched her teeth and compressed her lips. He startled 
 violently. 
 
 " Good God ! " he cried and his tone showed that his 
 nerves were in the same state as hers. 
 
 " Beg your pardon," she murmured, mechanically apol- 
 ogetic. 
 
 If he heard, he gave no indication of it. He continued 
 to stand motionless at the window, staring out over the lake. 
 She tried furtively to get a glimpse of his profile, but could 
 not. At ten minutes past ten he moved. When she saw 
 him about to turn, she bent over her work pouring calcium 
 lactophosphate into a small agate mortar as if any relaxing 
 
 322
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 of attention would be calamitous. He was standing at the 
 end of her table, was looking down at her. It took all her 
 self-control to refrain from looking up to see what was in 
 his eyes. He was bending over her; his lips touched her 
 hair the crownlike coil of auburn on top of her head. She 
 tingled to her finger tips ; she knew she had won, knew he 
 had thought it all out and had seen that his meetings with 
 Helen were in the direction of disloyalty to the woman he 
 loved. She looked up at him now. At first his expression 
 was guilty and embarrassed, but the radiance of love and 
 trust in her eyes soon changed that. He became very pale 
 as his glance burned into hers; he turned away, and she 
 felt that it was because he feared lest in the rush of peni- 
 tent passion he would confess things it was unnecessary and 
 unwise to put into words. 
 
 " Why, it's ten o'clock," said she carelessly. " Aren't 
 you going out to smoke? " 
 
 A pause, then he answered " Not to-day " in a boyishly 
 ill-at-ease way that brought a secret tender smile to her 
 lips. She liked these evidences that it was impossible for 
 him to conceal himself from her because any attempt to do 
 so made him feel dishonorable. 
 
 " It's beautiful outdoors. I'll go with you." 
 
 " No, not just now, Courtney. I I that is, I think 
 I'd best finish. Vaughan may need all four of the sulphates 
 any moment." And he sat down before his case and began 
 to fuss with evaporating dishes and crucibles. 
 
 " This is the first day you've missed in I don't know 
 when," said she. It was just as well he should know she 
 had begun to take note of his habit ; that knowledge would 
 strengthen his resolve to avoid in the future appearance of 
 of evil and temptation thereto. " You've been very regular 
 for weeks." 
 
 323
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " It's a waste of time," he replied, after a pause. 
 " You're right, uninterrupted effort's the only kind that 
 counts." And both went to work. 
 
 But Courtney did not overestimate her triumph. Often 
 day completely reverses the night view of things. But 
 now, in the fancy-dispelling day more clearly than in the 
 fancy-breeding night, she saw she must remove the tempta- 
 tion. If she had been a small or a stupid woman or both, 
 for the two qualities usually go together she would have 
 laid all the blame upon Helen and would have sent her 
 away and in vanity as to her power over him would have 
 imagined herself once more perfectly secure. But the im- 
 pulse to blame Helen and to get rid of her did not survive 
 the second thought. It was not Helen's fault, or Basil's; 
 it was nature's. 
 
 Looking back on those months under the compact she 
 saw how she had let foolish vanity and still more foolish 
 hope befog and mislead her intelligence. To remove Helen 
 would avail her nothing. The law of his nature would con- 
 tinue to press him on; and sooner or later, in spite of love 
 for her, in spite of loyalty, in spite of constancy, he would 
 be swept away from her. The compact was a beautiful 
 ideal, but it was not life and, so, it must yield. " I must 
 be all to him, or I shall soon be nothing to him." And 
 that afternoon she fixed her resolution after thinking the 
 situation out sanely as sanely as she could think in those 
 days. For she, completely possessed by her need of Basil, 
 was like all the infatuated. That is, she was in a state not 
 unlike those demented persons who seem to be, and are, 
 quite sane and logical and self-possessed, once you get be- 
 yond the fixed delusion which determines the posture and 
 outlook of their entire being. 
 
 On the way to dress for supper she glanced in at Helen's 
 324
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 open door. The girl was sitting near a window giving upon 
 the small west balcony, her attitude so disconsolate that 
 Courtney was at once striving with a rising wave of pity 
 and self-reproach. " Helen will soon get over it," she re- 
 assured herself; and good sense reminded her that a young 
 girl has not the experience of love which teaches the expe- 
 rienced woman to value it and makes her unable to do with- 
 out it. " The love-sickness of a young girl, especially prim, 
 unimaginative girls like Helen, isn't really personal; it's 
 little more than a longing to be flattered and to get married 
 and settled." But such small progress as head was making 
 against heart was lost when Helen looked at her with a 
 pathetic attempt to smile. 
 
 " Where have you been all day ? " asked Courtney, eyes 
 sinking before Helen's. She felt a most uncomfortable 
 contempt for herself. 
 
 " In Wenona lunching and shopping with Bertha 
 Watrous." 
 
 Courtney entered, seated herself on the bed. Despite 
 her lovelorn condition, Helen winced. " You old maid, 
 you," laughed Courtney, rising. " I never saw any woman 
 anywhere, not even old Nanny, not even my sister Ann, so 
 opposed to sitting on the bed." 
 
 " I've been brought up to think it was wasn't right," 
 apologized Helen. 
 
 " Wasn't ladylike, you mean," said Courtney. She dis- 
 posed herself in the window seat. " What are you blue 
 about, dear?" She knew she was not intruding; Helen 
 liked to confide her troubles and people of that fortunate 
 temperament were cured by confiding. 
 
 " I'm not blue," declared Helen. " I've simply been 
 thinking of what you said, and if anything I'm angry." 
 
 "Oh Basil? Did you see him to-day?" 
 325
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I did not." Helen tossed her head. " I went 
 about my work as usual went to the apartment. If 
 he'd been lying in wait I was ready for him. But he 
 wasn't." 
 
 Courtney understood what this really meant, though 
 Helen didn't. Probably Helen would not have believed 
 she had in fact lain in wait for Basil, even had Courtney 
 pointed out to her the obvious meaning of her action. She 
 was of the large majority who do not know their own, 
 minds, who cannot explore them with a guide however 
 competent, who when shown their own motives hotly and 
 honestly deny. " Basil was busy to-day," Courtney ex- 
 plained. " Some sulphates Richard was in a hurry 
 for." 
 
 Helen looked relieved. But, still not in the least aware 
 of her own state of mind, she went on, with a toss of the 
 head: "Well whenever I do see him alone, I'll make him 
 realize I'm not the sort he thinks. The more I look at it, 
 Courtney, the more convinced I am that he was simply lead- 
 ing me on." 
 
 " Now, Helen ! " laughed Courtney. 
 
 Helen colored. " I admit," she said, shamefacedly, " I 
 got what I deserved for being so so forward." 
 
 " That's the truth you were forward." Courtney's 
 ione made this necessary thrusting home of the painful 
 truth gentle but not the less insistent. " We must never 
 fool ourselves, dear. We women can't afford to." 
 
 Studying Helen, so clearly fascinated still by the idea 
 of winning the young eligible from the East and redeeming 
 him, Courtney realized that if the girl was to stay on there 
 in peace she must be made to see the absolute uselessness of 
 angling. So long as she thought of Basil as a possibility, 
 however remote, so long would she be in danger of falling
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 utterly and miserably in love with him. Yes, Helen must 
 be cured but how? There was no way. Not until Basil 
 was married would Helen cease to hope. " For her own 
 sake, I ought to send her away," Courtney was thinking as 
 the two sat there in silence. But Helen had no other place 
 to go. True, she could go out and make her own living as 
 a teacher Courtney envied her the training and the cer- 
 tificate that were practically a guaranty of independence. 
 But Helen abhorred independence, looked on a woman's 
 working, away from the shelter of domesticity, as the Hindu 
 looks on loss of caste. No, Helen must stay on, might as 
 well stay on. . . . An impossible situation. And from this 
 unanticipated quarter came one more imperative reason 
 for making Basil wholly her own. He must be in such 
 a state of mind that he would do nothing to encourage 
 Helen's hope to put forth even the feeblest of its ready 
 sprouts. 
 
 Courtney rose and moved toward the door. " I must 
 dress." She leaned against the jamb, her cheek upon her 
 crossed hands. " Well, my dear, remember the rhyme about 
 the lady who went for a ride on a tiger, and how, when 
 they came back, he had the lady inside." 
 
 " You're laughing at me," reproached Helen. 
 
 Courtney's eyes were fixed dreamily upon vacancy, a 
 strange sad smile about her lips. " I am not laughing," 
 she said slowly. " Or, if I am, it is not at you. . . . Not 
 at you, but at She could not tell Helen that she was 
 drearily mocking her own entrapped and helpless self. 
 " Take my advice, child. Don't ever lead a tiger out for 
 an airing." 
 
 Yes, Helen should stay on, as long as she wished to 
 stay. " And hasn't she as much right here as I just tl>! 
 same right? " 
 
 327
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 At two o'clock that night, as Basil was leaving, he said 
 " You've hardly spoken since I came. Is it the dark- 
 ness ? " 
 
 " Yes the darkness/' she replied in the same under- 
 tone the doors were very thick, but instinct made them 
 careful about speech. 
 
 " I never knew you to be so silent or so strange, now 
 that I think of it." He held her by the shoulders. " Court- 
 ney, did you want me to come to-night? " 
 
 She clung to him. " Do you love me, my Basil ? " 
 
 " How queer your voice sounds. Are you frightened ? " 
 
 " No no, indeed." 
 
 " Dear, you're not telling me " 
 
 " It's nothing. Just a a notion. There won't be so 
 much of it next time. And still less the next time. And 
 soon I'll be quite accustomed." , 
 
 " Yes, I'm sure there's not the least danger," said he, 
 wholly misunderstanding.
 
 XXI 
 
 ONE afternoon she was reading in the hammock on the 
 balcony before the upper sitting-room windows the sitting 
 room she shared with Helen and Winchie. She heard some 
 one in the room, glanced up Richard was before her. 
 " Glad to find you alone," said he. " Do you realize it's 
 several weeks since we've exchanged so much as a single 
 word in private? " 
 
 " Something wrong at the shop ? " 
 
 " No. I came especially to talk with you. How'd you 
 like to go away for a week or so to the sea or the moun- 
 tains ? We might take that trip through the Great Lakes." 
 
 " I'll see." 
 
 " You've been working very hard down at the shop. 
 And by the way, you've caused an amazing improvement 
 in Basil's work. He doesn't make those stupid mistakes 
 any more. He used to make them every day. Yes 
 you've worked hard and well." 
 
 She had no pleasure in these incredible compliments 
 from Richard the difficult to please in chemistry. It was 
 too disquieting to have him thus watchful and interested. 
 
 " Let's start at once," he proposed. 
 
 " Oh, I couldn't do that. I hesitate to leave here 
 when everything's at its best. In the fall or next win- 
 
 " I see you don't want to go with me." 
 His tone compelled her to look at him. His eyes 
 grave, searching were fixed upon her. Instinct suddenly 
 
 329
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 warned her of danger what danger or where she could 
 not see, but the warning was imperative. " Indeed I do/' 
 protested she, with a deceptive show of interest, though 
 her skin burned as her fundamental and incurable honesty 
 cried shame upon her as it always did when she, com- 
 pelled by her circumstances, could not avoid the lie direct. 
 "But," she went on, "you can't expect a woman, with a 
 household like this on her mind, to drop everything and 
 fly at a few hours' notice." 
 
 He reflected, ncdded. " That's true. Though, really, 
 the servants are so experienced they'd go on just as well. 
 My dear old aunt was thorough." 
 
 There was a little bitterness of hurt vanity in her 
 smile of recognition at this ancient notion of Richard's 
 about her part in that household. She felt that the tete- 
 a-tete had already lasted too long. " Was Winchie in 
 there ? " she asked. 
 
 " I didn't see him," replied Dick. 
 
 She moved toward the nearest sitting-room window. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he cried, irritated. "Where 
 are you going? " 
 
 " After Winchie. I haven't thought of him for an hour. 
 Helen's away at the Foster picnic " 
 
 " The boy's all right. Sit down here and 
 
 But she was gone. She did not slacken her speed until 
 . she was safely clear of him. This new development of 
 ' his threatened to become an annoyance, thought she; how- 
 ever, it couldn't last much longer; she would continue to 
 keep out of his way; the laboratory would take *hold of 
 him and she would be once more forgotten and free. 
 Meanwhile, she would avoid him. 
 
 And soon he did become once more absorbed, and re- 
 sumed his accustomed shadowy place in her life seen yet
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 not seen, heard yet not heard, present yet absent; neither 
 liked nor disliked, but unknown and unheeded the place 
 of many and many a husband in a marriage that seems 
 happy and successful to the very servants in the house- 
 hold, to the husband and wife themselves. One evening he 
 abruptly left the table. She saw, but did not note, -his 
 departure. When supper was over and she and Helen and 
 Basil strolled into the sitting room, Basil took advantage- 
 cf Helen's being apart to say to Courtney, " What's wrong 
 with him? " 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know," replied she. " Nothing, I 
 guess." 
 
 " Didn't you notice? He was staring furiously at you, 
 and left in a rage." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. That night she was in 
 one of her reckless moods, was nervous, excited, with eyes 
 the more brilliant for the circles round them. Richard 
 appeared in the farthest of the long open windows. He 
 frowned at Basil, said sharply to his wife, " Courtney, I'd 
 like to speak to you out here a moment." 
 
 " It's chilly there," objected she. " Come in." And 
 she went toward the piano. 
 
 Dick entered. His long aristocratic face was stern 
 and his eyes glowed somberly. " Then let's go into the 
 library," said he, in a tone so positive that from him it 
 sounded like a command. 
 
 She hesitated, reflectively caressing one slim tapering 
 arm. " Very well," said she, and passed into the hall, he 
 standing formally aside at the doorway. In the library, 
 she faced him with eyes half closed and chin thrust up 
 and a little out. "Well?" she inquired. 
 
 As he looked at his sweet frivolous little child of a wife, 
 his manner softened toward that of one rebuking a child's 
 
 331
 
 trespass. " I want yon to go upstairs and wrap up your 
 shoulders or change your dress." 
 
 She glanced down. The bodice did not cover the upper 
 curve of her bosom, had no straps across the shoulders or 
 on the arms. In the back, it dipped almost to the waist 
 line. She looked at him with a quizzical expression. " I'm 
 quite warm enough, thanks." 
 
 " You understand me/' said he, more severely. 
 
 She gazed straight into his eyes before answering. 
 " Yes, I do. But I prefer to pretend not to." 
 
 " I've spoken to you about my wishes in this matter 
 before. Do you know what made me notice your your 
 nakedness? Pardon me for putting it that way, but I see 
 I must speak plainly." 
 
 Her face expressed faint, contemptuous indifference. 
 " I cannot talk with you. Your ideas of women ought to 
 be buried in the grave with your grandfather. I do not 
 dictate the cut of your clothes. You will not dictate mine." 
 And she moved toward the door. 
 
 He put himself between. " I saw Gallatin looking at 
 you with an expression He made a gesture of rage 
 a quiet gesture but significant. " I don't blame him. It's 
 your fault. You've no right to tease a man who can be 
 nothing to you. I speak frankly because " 
 
 " Gallatin has seen thousands of women in just such 
 dress as this," interrupted she. It enraged her to hear 
 her lover's feelings for her, in which flesh was mere medium 
 between spirit and spirit, thus leveled to the carnality of 
 his own passion. " You," she continued icily, " read your 
 own poisonous, provincial primness and and vulgarity 
 into his look, no doubt." 
 
 " You are an innocent, pure-minded woman, Courtney," 
 said Richard, with more gentleness. " You follow a fash- 
 
 332
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ion, thinking of it only as a fashion. I assure you, that 
 sort of fashion is devised in Paris by cocottes for the one 
 purpose. If you knew men better, you'd appreciate it." 
 
 She appreciated the penetration of this remark, punc- 
 turing the pretentious haughtiness of her protest. She 
 was surprised at his reasoning so shrewdly about a matter 
 she would not have suspected him of having given a thought. 
 But she must not let him interfere in her personal affairs. 
 " Whatever its origin/' said she, " it's the conventional fash- 
 ion for women. I shall continue to wear it." And she 
 looked into his eyes pleasantly. Now, it struck her as 
 amusing, the anger of this alien, about the exhibition to 
 others of what he regarded as his own private and per- 
 sonal treasure. Just one stage removed from the harem, 
 such an idea as his. " And," she went on, aloud, " if your 
 satrapship commands me to wear a veil over my face and 
 muffle my figure in a loose black bag, I shall make the 
 same reply. You can't realize it, but the old-fashioned 
 ideal of good, pure woman was really something to be 
 handled with tongs and disinfected." 
 
 " You're talking of things you, being a good woman, 
 know nothing about." 
 
 " At any rate I know a mind that ought to be quar- 
 antined when I smell it. v And she made a wry face 
 and started to leave the room. When she had got as far 
 as the threshold, he cried, " Courtney ! " and his tone told 
 her that he had caught sight of the reverse view of her 
 costume the unimpeded display of slender dimpled shoul- 
 ders and straight smooth back almost to the waist line. 
 She pretended not to hear, went on to the sitting room. 
 Yielding altogether now to the imp of the perverse, she 
 displaced Helen at the piano and sang the maddest, most 
 melting love songs she knew. Basil tried to keep to the 
 22 333
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 far part of the room; but gradually the enchantment com- 
 pelled. Forgetting Richard though he had seen him 
 glowering and fuming from the darkness of the veranda 
 he leaned upon the end of the grand piano. His eyes 
 were down, but his burning face and his trembling fingers 
 as he raised or lowered his cigarette proclaimed how the 
 deep passionate notes of her voice were vibrating through 
 him. 
 
 It was somewhat later than usual when she went up- 
 stairs. As she pressed the button just inside her bedroom 
 door and the light came on a soft pale violet light that 
 seemed to permeate rather than to shine she saw Rich- 
 ard in the window. His back was toward her and he was 
 smoking so that the odor and the smoke would not come 
 into the room. He threw the cigarette over the balcony 
 rail and turned. The instant she looked at him, little as 
 she knew of his character or noted his moods she saw she 
 had gone too far. But she held a calm, undaunted front. 
 " How you frightened me," said she, in a tone that had no 
 fright in it. " I'm horribly tired. I must stop eating des- 
 serts. They wear one out." She stifled a yawn, took the 
 small diamond sunburst from the front of her waist and 
 laid it on the bureau. She seemed all but unconscious of 
 his presence; in reality, by way of the bureau mirror, she 
 was watching him as a duelist an adversary. " I shall 
 fall asleep before I can get into bed." 
 
 " I shall detain you only a moment." His grave, ex- 
 aggerated politness did not decrease her inward agitation. 
 " I simply wish to tell you," he went on, " that, as you 
 seem determined to persist in your own mistaken way, I 
 shall be compelled to ask Gallatin to stay away from the 
 house in the evenings." 
 
 Her impulse was to smile disdain at the infantile futil- 
 334
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ity of this. And the smile did come to her lips, and lin- 
 gered there to mask the feelings that came surging with 
 the second thought. For she instantly realized how help- 
 less she was. This man had no part in her life nor she 
 in his; yet he' could impose his will upon her absolutely 
 because he could take Basil away from her not merely for 
 the unimportant evenings, but altogether. He could make 
 it impossible for Basil to remain could do it by a mere 
 word to him. And she who fancied she had provided 
 against every possible contingency had never even thought 
 of this, the most obvious peril, and the greatest! Faint, 
 she leaned upon the bureau, spreading her arms so that 
 she seemed to be merely at ease. " But why tell me about 
 it? " said she to him. " Why didn't you simply say it to 
 him ? " She smiled contemptuously. " And what will he 
 think ? " 
 
 Dick's calm vanished. " I don't care a damn what he 
 thinks," he cried. " At least, he'll not be sitting round 
 watching you half dressed." 
 
 She drew herself up haughtily. " Good night," said 
 she. 
 
 " I was out on the veranda," Dick rushed on. " I saw 
 him. He forgot Helen forgot decency honor every- 
 thing and leaned there, giving himself up to a debauch. 
 Yes, to a debauch ! And you are responsible. Not he 
 not at all. You, alone. At least, anger doesn't make me 
 unjust. And I will say too, you were innocent in the mat- 
 ter like a willful child. Good pure women don't appre- 
 ciate " 
 
 " But 7 do," interrupted she. " I'm not the imbecile 
 Aunt-Eudosia sort you admire so much." 
 
 " I tell you, the man's in love with you," cried Richard. 
 
 She all but staggered before the shock. 
 335
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Yes, in love with you. That's why he came back 
 here." 
 
 As steadily and indifferently as she could contrive she 
 went to the sofa, seated herself. " Why, you yourself told 
 me he was in love with Helen." 
 
 " I was mistaken. How could he be in love with her, 
 when you're about? A man always takes to the best-look- 
 ing woman." 
 
 She laughed with friendly conciliating coquetry. " I'm 
 afraid you're prejudiced." 
 
 " I saw it this evening. The way he was listening to 
 those love songs ! " 
 
 " Are you sure he was thinking of me? " 
 
 Richard did not answer. 
 
 " Perhaps Helen's equally sure he was thinking of 
 her." 
 
 Under cover of the talk she hardly knowing what she, 
 or he, was saying darted this way and that, seeking an 
 escape from the horror closing in upon her. She felt like 
 a hiding slave, hearing the distant bay of the bloodhounds. 
 How escape? How throw him off the scent? Was there 
 only the one way? 
 
 " No, he cares nothing about Helen," Richard was say- 
 ing. And clear and soft in his voice now was the note she 
 dreaded. " At least, he didn't this evening. How could 
 he when you were there? Courtney, you simply can't un- 
 derstand. You're modest and pure minded and inno- 
 cent " 
 
 "Then it was only this evening?" she interrupted. 
 " I was hoping you had real reason for flattering me." 
 
 " Flattering you ! " 
 
 " Certainly. Wouldn't it flatter you if I were to tell 
 you Helen was in love with you? She's in love with some- 
 
 336
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 body, by the way. It must be you how could she think 
 of any other man when you were about? " 
 
 Dick half smiled. 
 
 " And I must begin to tear my hair and foam at the 
 mouth, I suppose," continued she. She rose, stamped her 
 foot, in melodramatic imitation of jealous fury. " Helen 
 shall keep to her room in the evenings ! Do you hear, sir ? 
 When I think of the times I've let you take her up to your 
 study alone ! under pretense of working ! You with 
 your shirt sleeves rolled up and your collar open ! " 
 
 " You silly child ! " Dick was amused now. 
 
 " But I don't blame Helen. How could she help it 
 with you leading her on " 
 
 Dick laughed. " That's very shrewd," said he. " I 
 own up. I guess I was having a jealous fit. But you'd 
 understand if you could see yourself as I see you." And 
 he clasped her. 
 
 " No no! " she gasped. 
 
 Completely possessed by his mood he was too much 
 the man to have the power to see that her mood was dif- 
 ferent. Holding her tightly, he said: " I do believe you 
 acted that way this evening just to make me jealous. I 
 admit I seem neglectful. But I love you, just as I always 
 did." 
 
 She was struggling to escape as strongly as she dared 
 more strongly than her instinct of prudence approved 
 more strongly than her physical self desired, for she real- 
 ized with horror that his mood was hypnotizing her will. 
 
 " Listen, dear," he said. " I've got a confession to 
 make. While I was raging up and down on the veranda, 
 all sorts of devilish thoughts came to me suspicious " 
 
 She ceased struggling. 
 
 " I got to thinking how long we've been living apart 
 337
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and how, every time I made advances, you seemed to 
 
 evade " 
 
 * She felt herself growing cold. He must have felt it, 
 too, for he hastened on: " Please, little girl, don't get cross. 
 I didn't really suspect. I'm not so ridiculous. I know a 
 good woman could no more be false even in thought to her 
 husband than a nightingale could change into a snake." 
 
 It was pounding, pounding at the walls of her brain 
 that he was on the very verge of the discovery; that un- 
 consciously he was fighting against a suspicion which too 
 long-pent passion was thrusting at him ever more point- 
 edly. Another repulse, another jealous fit, and five lives 
 overwhelmed in ruin. 
 
 She lay quiet in his arms. 
 
 In those next few days she was whimsical, capricious, 
 fantastic. Richard, once more wholly the man of science, 
 was as unconscious as mountain peak of storms in the val- 
 leys far below. Basil and the others, but particularly 
 Basil, watched her with a kind of dread. " I need a change 
 in fact, I must have it," she announced at the supper 
 table. " Helen, let's go to Chicago and shop. The things 
 in Wenona are hideous this spring." 
 
 " I need a change too," Richard startled them all by 
 saying, " I'll go with you and Helen can take care of 
 the house and Basil and Winchie, if you'll leave him." 
 
 " I don't want to be left ! " cried Winchie. " You 
 wouldn't leave me, mamma ? " 
 
 Courtney did not hear. She was looking at Richard 
 as if his words jarred upon her savagely, goaded her to 
 the verge of outburst She had been feeling toward her 
 husband as she would have felt toward an inanimate object 
 which had bruised her when she by accident stumbled heav- 
 
 338
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ily against it. She did not seek the source of this feeling, 
 or let it disclose itself to her. She simply felt so; and 
 when he spoke of going, it seemed as unthinkable that she 
 should let him go as that she should leave Winchie behind. 
 When she had herself in hand, she said : " This is a shop- 
 ping trip. No men wanted or allowed." 
 
 " Not even me, mamma ? " pleaded Winchie. 
 
 " Except you," said she. 
 
 And the two women and Winchie went the following 
 day, to spend a busy fortnight in the Chicago shops buying 
 for all three and for the house. As Courtney had limited 
 means and exacting taste, the labor of shopping was hard 
 and tedious, especially in those vast modern stores. For 
 there the satisfaction of having everything under one roof 
 is balanced by the vexation of the search for the needle of 
 just what one wants and can afford through the mountain- 
 ous haystack of what one does not want or cannot afford. 
 The toil almost prostrated the two women and poor 
 Winchie who had to drag along since there was no one at 
 the hotel to whom Courtney would trust him. But she felt 
 more than repaid, not so much by her purchases, though 
 she was on the whole content with them, as by the complete 
 change in her point of view. 
 
 The atmosphere of the city is wholly different from that 
 of such a place as Wenona. In Wenonas, the individual is 
 important; the sky seems near, and its awful problems of 
 the eternal verities life and death, right and wrong 
 thrust at every one every moment of day and night. In 
 a city, the sky yields to brick and stone; men see each 
 other, not the universe; the eternal verities seem eternal 
 bores, and life, of the day, of the hour, tempts with its 
 " Since you are mere maggot in rotten cheese tiny mag- 
 got, one of billions tremendous cheese since you are to 
 
 339
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 die to-morrow and decay and be forgotten since you can 
 fret and fritter all your years away over life and death, 
 over right and wrong, without getting a hair's width nearer 
 solving them why not perk up amuse yourself do as 
 little harm as is consistent with getting what you need, 
 and have all the fun there is going? Don't take yourself 
 solemnly ! " The city's egotism is showy, but shallow ; the 
 country's, hidden but profound. 
 
 Viewed from Chicago, all the beauty, all the possibilities 
 of happiness in her life in that lovely place on the shore 
 of Wenona Lake stood out as in the landscape of a master 
 painter; and all that fretted and shamed her and shot her 
 joys with black thread of foreboding seemed the work of 
 her own tainted imagination. " I'm harming no one," she 
 now argued. " I'm free Richard freed me when he made 
 me realize I was to him not a wife but simply a carnal in- 
 cident. And I am helping to make life there peaceful and 
 eren happy. The trouble with me is I'm still under the 
 blight of my early training a training in how to die, not 
 in how to live. True, I do lead a double life. But how 
 few human beings do not lead double lives of one kind or 
 another? And where am I worse than thousands who long 
 but have not courage or chance? Isn't it better to live in 
 deceit with a man one loves than to live in deceit with a 
 man one loathes? " If she and Basil were found out, they 
 would be classed with the rest of the vulgar intriguers. 
 But that did not make them thus low; it was not their 
 fault that the world saw only coarseness for the same sort 
 of reason that a man in green spectacles saw everything 
 green. 
 
 She came back as much improved in mental health as 
 in dress and certainly the new clothes were a triumph. 
 Also, her sense of self-respect seemed to be restored " and 
 
 340
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 whether I'm right in my way of looking at things or am 
 deceiving myself, I'm certainly much the better for feeling 
 I'm right." 
 
 They brought part of the spoils of the city with them, 
 but most of it came by freight a week after their return. 
 Courtney and Helen were almost as excited as Winchie 
 and Winchie was quite beside himself when the great 
 packing cases and crates were opened, and the treasures of 
 dresses and underclothes and " stunning " hats and fasci- 
 nating shoes and slippers and parasols and blouses, and the 
 furniture and pictures came into view from endless wrap- 
 pings of paper and bagging and excelsior, of boxes round 
 and square, boxes small and large, boxes fancy and plain. 
 Everything, with not an exception, looked better than it 
 had in the shop when it was bought. " You are a wonder- 
 ful shopper, Courtney. These things seem as if they were 
 made especially for us," Helen asserted. And Winchie, lit- 
 erally pale with emotion, screamed, " Mamma Courtney, 
 let's go back and buy some more ! " 
 
 For several days the agitation continued. Indeed, it 
 was a month or longer before the last ripples died away, 
 and the normal calm was restored. Helen had new clothes 
 as well as Courtney and never had she looked so lovely. 
 Winchie was the most stylish person of his age in all that 
 region. The Donaldson children had theretofore been dis- 
 posed to feel somewhat superior because they had a real 
 imported French governess; they now paid court to him 
 and accepted his decisions about games as reverently as a 
 company of New York men accept the judgments of any 
 man with millions. And the new furniture and dishes, the 
 new wall paper, the new cooking utensils, the new con- 
 trivances for plants and for cut flowers, some of which, 
 Courtney had had made from her own designs, were as suc- 
 
 341
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 cessful as the clothes. Also, Courtney and Helen too 
 had, through the stimulus of the city, a multitude of new 
 ideas for house and grounds and gardens. These they 
 proceeded to carry out, Basil assisting whenever he could 
 get an afternoon away from the laboratory where Richard 
 had now buried himself, oblivious of her, of them all. Alto- 
 gether, May and June of that year made a new high- 
 water mark of happiness. And when Helen, going to 
 Saint X to visit and display her finery, returned in a self- 
 complacent state of mind that indicated a complete cure, 
 a complete restoration of her old-time content, Courtney 
 felt as if the last cloud had disappeared from her horizon. 
 Again and again during those tranquil, sparkling days she 
 told herself and almost believed that at last her life was 
 " settled right " as nearly " right " as a human life 
 could be. 
 
 One night when she had an appointment with Basil she 
 found Helen still up as she was about to descend and admit 
 him. Helen did not put out her light until nearly three 
 quarters of an hour after the time. When she opened the 
 lake- front door no one entered; not a sound. She looked 
 out. The veranda empty; the lawns dreaming undisturbed 
 in the moonlight ; wave on wave of the heavy perfume of 
 summer's flowers. But not anywhere Basil. Her trembling 
 ceased; she darted to the edge of the veranda, everything 
 forgotten but the supreme fact he was gone. Gone ! Why, 
 she could not doubt; for, from time to time she had seen 
 in his eyes the suspicion which, unjust though it was, she 
 dared not discuss with him. Where had he gone? She 
 must know, must know at once. 
 
 She gave not a thought to leaving the house the dan- 
 gers that made it impossible for them to meet at his apart- 
 ment. She sped across the lawn, along the path through 
 
 342
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 the pale splendor of the east flower garden and blossoming 
 shrubbery, into the dark wood. And with her sped her 
 old enemy the specter dread of losing him the ghost so 
 easily started from its unquiet grave. She flitted on until 
 she stood at the edge of the clearing, with wildly beating 
 heart., looking up at the solitary building, gloomy in its 
 creeper draperies. There was light from his bedroom 
 window. She gave a quick gasp of relief. At least he 
 was still within reach. The phantom beat of icy rains 
 falling, falling ceased to freeze her heart. 
 
 Panting from the tumult of her thoughts rather than 
 from the run, she knocked on the entrance door knocked 
 again, loudly a third time a fourth. She was shaking 
 from head to foot. No answer none. She tried the door; 
 it yielded. She darted up the stairway, her body now fire 
 and now ice. He was in his bedroom door, was watching 
 her. As the light came from behind him she could not 
 immediately see his expression; but she felt it was dark 
 and angry. She flung herself on his breast " My love 
 my love ! " she sobbed. 
 
 His arms hung at his sides. He stood rigid. 
 
 " Basil ! Put your arms round me. I'm cold and so 
 frightened." 
 
 He pushed her away. 
 
 She leaned against the door frame sobbing into her 
 hands. Her long plaits hung one over either shoulder. She 
 looked like a child, a broken-hearted child. " And you've 
 been pretending to love me ! " 
 
 " I do love you. That's the worst of it." 
 
 " Love ! " She turned upon him passionately. " You 
 call that love? No matter what I did, wouldn't you know 
 I'd done it for our love's sake? Yes, you know all that's I 
 is yours every thought every heart throb." She was 
 
 343
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 sobbing again, her arm on the door frame, her face against 
 it. She was thinking how unsympathetic he was, how 
 selfish and cruel was asking herself why she did not 
 hate him, cast him out of her life. But the very sug- 
 gestion, made her heartsick. Cast out him who was her 
 life! 
 
 " I didn't mean it," he pleaded. " I was crazed with 
 jealousy." 
 
 " Jealousy ! Basil Basil ! " 
 
 " I can't help it. I'm human." 
 
 ** But don't you know me? Oh, sweetheart don't take 
 from me all the self-respect I've got." 
 
 He seated himself, stared doggedly at the floor. There 
 was a long, a heavy silence which he finally broke. " Court- 
 ney," he said, " we're both going straight to hell." He 
 looked sternly at her. " We've got to get away from 
 here." 
 
 She saw the resolve in his eyes, trembled, grew still. 
 Then she remonstrated gently, " You'd forbid me to treat 
 Winchie so, if I wanted to." 
 
 He continued to look straight and stern at her. " Either 
 you go with me or I go alone." 
 
 Her knees grew weak. The room swam before her 
 eyes. The big wave in the picture on the opposite wall 
 swelled, lowered, seemed swooping down on her. " Oh, 
 no you wouldn't do that," she murmured. " No you 
 couldn't do that." 
 
 " I'll leave in the morning, unless you say you'll leave 
 with me the day after." 
 
 She watched him, relentless and utterly inconsiderate, 
 and her anger rose. " You've no right to go ! " she cried. 
 
 " I must," he replied. " Do you mean to say you'll let 
 me leave without you ? " 
 
 344
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Yes if you'd do it," replied she. " But you wouldn't. 
 You'd not leave me to bear the whole burden alone. You'd 
 not be a coward." 
 
 His florid face became crimson. He fought for self- 
 control, gave up the hopeless struggle, flung himself down 
 beside her. " I can't go I can't," he cried. " But how 
 can I stay? It's dragging us down down." He was 
 almost weeping. " Courtney, you must see it's dragging 
 us down." 
 
 For the first time she had the sense of strength in her- 
 self greater than his, of weakness in him. She caressed his 
 fair hair tenderly. " It's only a mood, dearest only a 
 mood. It'll pass and we'll help each other, and be strong. 
 We'll look forward to the end of this. For, in a few years 
 Winchie'll be off to school. Then I shall be free to make 
 my own life. I'll go away to visit stay on and on and 
 gradually " 
 
 " You must promise you will not live with him." 
 
 " I will do my best. But I must protect Winchie 
 and us." 
 
 He grew red, then pale, was silent for a time. Then 
 he said irritatedly, weakly, " But don't you see what a 
 position it puts me in ! " 
 
 " And me ? " She said it very quietly, with a certain 
 restrained pathos. But he sat glum and moody, thinking 
 of his own plight. 
 
 He roused himself. " All right," he cried, in a tone 
 of contempt for himself and for her. He embraced her 
 with a kind of insolent familiarity. " Then I'll stay. If 
 I went, I'd only come sneaking back. I'm no longer a 
 man. I'm a slave to you." And he held her at arms length 
 and eyed her with an expression that told her he was 
 making inventory of her charms. 
 
 345
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Please don't talk that way," she begged, offended and 
 wounded by that expression in his eyes more than she dared 
 admit to herself. " I know you don't mean it. I know 
 you love. I know " 
 
 " Love let's only talk of love/' he interrupted. 
 
 She fell to wondering whether, when they were together 
 in the dark, his unseen eyes had this look and why it 
 made his words and his caresses seem so different from 
 the words and caresses of the darkness. She had never 
 thought of it before; she hated to learn it then just then; 
 but she could not push away the monstrous truth that love 
 and lust have the same vocabulary, the same gestures, the 
 same tones, differ only in their eyes. 
 
 " What are you thinking about so solemnly ? " he asked. 
 
 " I wasn't thinking solemnly," she protested with a 
 hastily forced smile. " I was simply remembering how 
 rarely we've been together alone really alone except in 
 the dark, for a long long time." 
 
 " It's good to be able to see you," said he, and she felt 
 like hiding in shame from his eyes. " You streamer of 
 flame that's burning up my soul." 
 
 Her lips echoed his laugh. " What nonsense," she said. 
 
 " It's the truth," declared he. " But burn on ! I 
 can't live without it." 
 
 The smile left her lips it had not been in her eyes. 
 " If I thought you " 
 
 He stopped her mouth with a kiss. " Only love ! " he 
 commanded. " No thought." 
 
 " That's right," she cried eagerly. " No thought ! Just 
 feeling just love. We must not think. It's the cause of 
 our unhappiness." 
 
 And she tried to be as good as her word. " I do love 
 him, and he loves me," she rebuked herself. " I'm unstrung 
 
 34,6
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 hysterical full of crazy fancies. I mustn't mustn't 
 fret at his way of loving. I must always think, ' What 
 would become of me if I lost him ? ' ' And she pretended 
 to be in his mood; for the sake of a passion that had been, 
 she simulated a passion that was not.
 
 XXII 
 
 MASCULINE moral struggle is usually noisier than femi- 
 nine unless the woman is seeking to impress some man, 
 before yielding of her own free will what she wishes him 
 to fancy his superior charm and force and subtlety are 
 conquering. Thus, woman being by nature freer from the 
 footless kinds of hypocrisy than man, it was only in the 
 regular order that while Courtney quietly accepted the situ- 
 ation and conformed to it, Basil should accept it with much 
 moral bluster. He accused now his own wickedness, now 
 the wickedness of destiny, and again woman's sinful charms. 
 Still, the masculine conscience no less than the feminine is 
 bred to be an ultimately accommodating chaperon; and 
 Basil's conscience would soon have gone to sleep had it not 
 been kept awake and feverish by a contrasting presence. 
 That contrast was Helen's virginal beauty and virginal 
 purity both of which fascinated his overstimulated and de- 
 generating imagination. 
 
 Helen was, as Courtney had said, a girl of the old- 
 fashioned type. This does not mean that she was a rare 
 survival of an extinct type, but simply that she was the girl 
 of yesterday as distinguished from the girl of to-morrow, 
 and from the girl that is partly of yesterday, partly of to- 
 morrow all three of whom we have with us in this transi- 
 tional to-day. Helen had by inheritance and training all 
 woman's ancient instincts to be a possessed and protected 
 property. These instincts originated in the necessities and 
 the ignorance of former societies; but they are cultivated 
 and clung to because masculine vanity dotes on the superior 
 
 348
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 attitude, and because the female very humanly finds it more 
 comfortable to be looked after than to look after herself, 
 to have her thinking done for her than to think for herself, 
 to be supported than to support herself, to be strong through 
 weakness than to be strong through strength. The male 
 wants to pose as master. The female yields, since the usual 
 cost to her is merely putting up with airs of superiority at 
 which she can secretly laugh; at worst, the cost is only that 
 intangible thing, self-respect. So, why not? Self-respect 
 is purely subjective, unseen. It provides no comforts or 
 luxuries. Lack of it attracts no attention in a world that 
 sees only surfaces. So, why not sacrifice it, when it be- 
 comes inconvenient? Men do. Why shouldn't women? 
 
 Helen had no desire to be of full human stature to be 
 free. She wished to be a " true woman," meek servant of 
 a lord and master, and never under the painful necessity 
 of taking responsible thought for herself. Having no capac- 
 ity or desire for comradeship with men, she denounced it 
 as unwomanly. Her physical virtue " purity," she called 
 it she regarded as her chief glory. She was glad it was 
 still woman's chief asset in the struggle for existence; for, 
 she could not help knowing she had beauty, and it is beauty 
 that makes virtue valuable, though of course beauty adds 
 nothing to its glory. 
 
 Helen certainly had beauty, nearly as great beauty as 
 she imagined in that heart of hearts where our vanity feels 
 free to spread its tail to the last gaudy feather and to strut 
 as no peacock or gobbler ever dared. Her skin was white 
 as milk, her features were classically regular, and she was 
 now a shade taller than Basil, could almost look level-eyed 
 at Richard. Her dark hair was commonplace in color and 
 texture, was rather short, did not grow especially well about 
 her brow or behind the ears ; but it was thick and abundant, 
 23 349
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and the brow and the ears were charming in themselves. 
 Thanks to Courtney's skill in devising a corset, the defect 
 of waist too close to bust was no longer conspicuous. She 
 had sound teeth, good arms and legs, narrow hands and 
 feet. Her large brown eyes were of the kind that has been 
 regarded as ideal for woman from the days of Homer sing- 
 ing the ox-eyed Juno, down to our own day when intelli- 
 gence is trying to get a place among feminine virtues and 
 the look of intelligence among feminine beauties. She had 
 learned from Courtney who knew a great deal about 
 dress dress that all women talk, but only the rare excep- 
 tional woman knows. 
 
 Also, she had from her a practical training for what 
 she regarded as woman's only sphere, the home. Courtney 
 had taught her how to keep house with comfort, order and 
 system. As Courtney had none of the teacher's vanity but 
 used the method of suggestion, she fancied she had learned 
 and was learning from herself; the more so, since she in 
 defiance of daily experience could not credit a woman of 
 Courtney's lively and, because light, undoubtedly thought- 
 less and careless temperament, with enough seriousness to 
 be a good housekeeper. Helen there showed herself about 
 on a level with the human average; for all but incredible 
 is the stupidity of our misjudgments and mismeasurements 
 of our fellow beings. There was not in her the capacity 
 to reflect who thought out the new ideas that were constantly 
 being put into effect, who told her what to do and who 
 quietly and tactfully saw that she did it. 
 
 The most obvious improvement in Helen was through 
 her unconsciously acting on Courtney's advice of delicately 
 veiled suggestion and dropping the culture pose. She was 
 now patterning upon Courtney's naturalness so far as she 
 could. She had the handicap of an ingrained and incurable 
 
 350
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 passion for those innocuous little tricks of manner with the 
 men ; also, she was greatly hindered by a conventional assort- 
 ment of the so-called " lofty ideals." Still, she was letting 
 much of her own natural personality appear. She was only 
 slightly exaggerating her bent toward sweetness and sym- 
 pathy. She was not quite so strenuous in advocacy of fine 
 old-fashioned womanliness heart without mind, purity that 
 is mere strait j acketed carnality; virtue that, when it yields, 
 makes lofty pretense of yielding only in reluctant toler- 
 ance of man's coarseness and of nature's shameful way of 
 reproducing. At Tecumseh, when Dr. Madelene Ranger 
 delivered a course of lectures on the profession all young 
 women are candidates for that is, on matrimony to the 
 girls of the senior class of the college of liberal arts, Helen 
 was one of those who refused to attend and signed the 
 unheeded protest to the faculty. She was no longer so 
 proud of this as she had been, although she still thought 
 she had done what ought to be right though it rather seemed 
 foolish. 
 
 But the greatest improvement of all in Helen was the 
 subtlest. She had come there, expecting to be a dependent, 
 feeling and, in a sweet refined way, acting like the poor re- 
 lation, harbored on sufferance. Women, trained from the 
 outset to be dependents, easily degenerate into sycophants, 
 like men who have always looked to others for employment 
 and have lost self-confidence if they ever had it. But lack 
 of self-reliance, a vice in a man, is regarded as a virtue in 
 a woman ; so, women have absolutely no restraint upon their 
 abandoning even the forms of self-respect, once they get in 
 the way of degenerating. Thus, Helen's relations with 
 Courtney might easily have become what is usually seen 
 where there is intimacy between a poor woman and a woman 
 of means. But Courtney not deliberately but with the un- 
 
 351
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 consciousness of large natures made this degradation im- 
 possible. It was not merely that Helen had not been made 
 to feel a dependent; it was more far more. It was that 
 she had been made to feel independent, more independent 
 than Courtney herself felt. And this fine feeling, this erect- 
 ness of spirit, permeated to every part of her character, 
 would have made a full-statured human being of her, had 
 she had the mentality to shake off her early training as mere 
 conventional female. 
 
 Richard frankly declared her an ideal woman; Basil 
 secretly agreed with him. Helen became the constant re- 
 minder of his lost honor, of the heaven he had given up 
 for the forbidden delights. He reveled in Courtne}- the 
 tempest; but during the lulls his eyes turned yearningly to 
 Helen, the serene and pure calm. Courtney represented 
 sinful excess, Helen righteous restraint. Courtney's was 
 love the devastator; a love for Helen would be love the up- 
 lifter. He wanted Courtney; he felt that Helen was what 
 he ought to want. And in the lulls, with passion exhausted 
 and needing the stimulus of contrast he sometimes fan- 
 cied that, if he could somehow contrive to assert his man- 
 hood and escape from slavery to Courtney, he would be 
 happy with Helen, and once more noble and good. Like 
 many another, he flattered himself that he had an aspira- 
 tion to a better life when in reality he was making pretense 
 of virtuous longing merely to whet his appetite for vice. 
 He shut his eyes to the obvious but rarely seen or, rather, 
 rarely admitted truth that a man is as he does, not as he 
 pretends or dreams. 
 
 Before finally and fully condemning Basil or Court- 
 ney or anyone for anything he or she may have done 
 contrary to our views of propriety and morality, it would 
 be well to reflect upon the true nature of conscience to 
 
 352
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 which Basil and Courtney and all of us habitually refer all 
 moral questions for settlement. As we grow older we are 
 awed or amused rather than shocked and, unless we have 
 lived as the moles and the earthworms, are not astonished 
 at all by the wondrous ways in which our conscience ad- 
 justs itself to necessity or to what overwhelming inclina- 
 tion makes us believe to be necessity. But in unanalytic 
 youth such adjustments take place unconsciously to our- 
 selves; the mind, in the parts of itself hidden from us, 
 concocts the proof positive that what we desire is necessary 
 and right ; all we are conscious of is that we suddenly have 
 the mandate of necessity and the godspeed of conscience. 
 Thus, conscience in youth can be as flexible as occasion 
 may require, yet can, without hypocrisy, be for the conduct 
 of others a very Draco of a lawgiver, a very Brutus of a 
 judge. This, in youth only. But How many of us 
 ever do grow up? 
 
 The free-and-easy mode of life at the house made it 
 impossible for any two to be alone, except by stealth, with- 
 out ever3'one's knowing it. As a man who since early youth 
 had led the " man sort of life " he was thoroughly used to 
 associating the idea stealth with the relations of men and 
 Women. However, flexible though conventional " honor " is, 
 he had misgivings about bending it to the requirements of 
 desire in this particular case. But as his longing for such 
 a moral invigorator as Helen's innocent purity grew in in- 
 tensity, he began deliberately to revolve contriving to see 
 her alone again, and by stealth. His first success was acci- 
 dental callers occupying Courtney when he came seeking 
 her. As he turned away from the house he spied Helen, 
 seated under a maple tree sewing near where Winchie and 
 the older Donaldson boy were playing ball. She colored 
 faintly when he dropped to the grass near her and lit a 
 
 353
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 cigarette. He so placed himself that he commanded all 
 approaches from the house and could not be taken by sur- 
 prise. " Why is it," he began, " that I don't see you at all 
 any more except at the table ? " 
 
 The fact that he did not pursue when she began to avoid 
 had disappointed her keenly. But it had given her a better 
 opinion of him. It showed so she told herself, perhaps 
 by way of consolation to vanity that however bad he might 
 be he yet had redeeming reverence for purity. But she had 
 long been weary of the dutiful struggle against his charm 
 of the worldly and the rich for her the unworldly and the 
 poor. So, her manner was not wholly discouraging as she 
 said, in reply to his respectfully regretful question, " I've 
 been very much occupied." 
 
 He watched her swift white fingers a while, then stared 
 gloomily out toward the lake. She stole a pitying glance 
 at him. " Poor fellow ! " thoiight she. " He's suffering 
 terribly to-day. That dreadful woman ! How could Court- 
 ney, generous though she is, defend a creature who is sim- 
 ply wrecking his life?" As she had kept close watch on 
 him all these months, these signs of his sufferings were not 
 new to her. But never had she seen them so movingly plain. 
 " Poor fellow ! " thought she. 
 
 Presently he said: "Won't you talk to me? I feel like 
 a a damned soul to-day." 
 
 Helen thrilled. He looked so distinguished, was so ele- 
 gantly dressed in his simple manly way, had that gloss, 
 that sheen, which marks all the kinds and conditions of 
 anglers for the opposite sex. " What shall I talk about ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 Her sympathetic smile, showing her excellent teeth and 
 lighting up her dark eyes, changed for him her common- 
 place query into a stimulating exhibit of depth of soul. 
 
 354
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Anything anything," he said. " You've got such an 
 honest, sweet voice that whatever you say makes one feel 
 better." 
 
 " What is troubling you? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't want to talk about myself." 
 
 But her instinct told her he had brought his stained soul 
 to confessional. " It might help you/' she suggested, blush- 
 ing at her own boldness. 
 
 He looked gratefully at her and away. " It seems to 
 rne," said he, " you've been avoiding me. Is it so ? " 
 
 Helen bent her head low over her work. 
 
 " I suppose it was instinctive," he went on. " To you, 
 I'd seem Sometimes I feel that, if you and I had kept 
 on with those talks we were having last spring, things would 
 have been different with me. However, it's too late now." 
 
 Helen's eyes filled. " Oh, no. It's never too late," 
 said she. 
 
 He sighed and rose Courtney was coming toward them. 
 Helen took #10 part in the conversation that followed. She 
 was pondering the few meaningless and youthful phrases 
 he had uttered as if they were freighted with wisdom and 
 destiny. And she continued to ponder them after he and 
 Courtney and Winchie went away for a drive to Wenona. 
 The more meaningless a thing is, the more food for thought 
 to those incapable of thinking. When it is clear, it is 
 grasped at once and the incident closes ; but let it have no 
 meaning at all, and lives will be devoted to cogitating upon 
 it, and library shelves will groan with tomes of exegesis. 
 Helen found in Basil's words what she wished to find 
 found a plain mandate of duty to help him. He couldn't 
 be so very bad probably not so bad as Richard was in his 
 bachelor days, before chemistry and Courtney calmed him. 
 And look at Richard now ! 
 
 355
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 She did not know the very particular dangers for Basil 
 in drink. But she saw that he was taking a great deal more 
 whisky and water than formerly, and she felt that it had 
 to do with his obviously desperate depression. Her one 
 chance to see him, she knew, was when Courtney was occu- 
 pied; for, had she not led Courtney to think that she did 
 not wish to be left alone with him ever? She decided it 
 was best not to tell Courtney she had changed her mind 
 somewhat about him; Courtney would misjudge, would 
 think her careless about principle, weak, love-sick worst of 
 all, would probably advise against her talking with him. 
 Thus it came to pass that when Courtney was safely occu- 
 pied with callers, with Winchie, at sewing or painting or 
 dressing Helen put herself oftener and oftener in such a 
 position that Basil could find her if he chose. She did not 
 dream that he also wished to be stealthy; she thought the 
 stealth was all on her own side and he, seeing this, soon 
 pretended to himself that he thought so, too, and had not 
 the slightest sense of guilt toward Courtney. It did not 
 take him long to find a satisfying explanation for Helen's 
 'aversion to having it known that they met alone; here, de- 
 cided he, was another evidence of her modesty, her delicate 
 sensitiveness of the good woman who can't bear being talked 
 about lightly and, if they talked alone where others could 
 see, there would surely be joking and teasing and gossiping. 
 Once more habit gave illustration of its subtle grasping 
 of ever more and more power. Before either was aware of 
 it, they were meeting clandestinely with clocklike regular- 
 ity. And Helen's life filled with sunshine of the most de- 
 licious warmth and sparkle. And Basil, keeping steadily 
 on at his drinking, and never relaxing in his devotion to the 
 sweet sin of which Courtney was the scarlet altar, reveled 
 in those agonies of a sense of utter depravity that are about 
 
 356
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 the only charm of wickedness. " I am not fit to live," re- 
 flected he with comfortable gloom, as he sat in his apart- 
 ment alone drinking after an afternoon with Helen and a 
 late evening with Courtney. Here was excellent excuse for 
 drinking and gloriously damning himself. He did not go 
 to bed until he had finished the bottle and the last cigarette 
 in the big silver box on his table. Also, between spasms of 
 self-damning he had contrived to finish a novel of intrigue 
 that had as its villain-hero just such a devil of a fellow as 
 he felt he himself was or was in delightful danger of 
 becoming. 
 
 How it ever befell he never could remember. But the 
 day came when he, sitting with Helen in the summerhouse 
 the summerhouse ! found himself holding her hand. He 
 stared at the pretty white hand, large and capable yet femi- 
 nine in every curve. He noted that it was lying content- 
 edly, confidingly upon the brown of his palm. He lifted 
 his dazed eyes. Her lashes were down, her cheeks over- 
 spread with delicate color; her bosom, like a young Juno's, 
 rose and fell with agitated irregularity. It was not poi- 
 sonous mock morality, it was the decent human man under- 
 neath, that sent an honestly horrified " Good God ! " to his 
 lips. He laid her hand gently in her lap, stood up, thrust 
 his hands deep into his trousers pockets. His face was red 
 with real shame. 
 
 " I've often told you," said he, " that I'm no fit com- 
 panion for a pure woman that my life's ruined past re- 
 deeming " 
 
 " Don't say those things," she implored. " They hurt 
 me and they're not so. I know you." 
 
 " Past redeeming," he repeated. " It's the God's truth. 
 I must keep away from you. I've no right to see you to 
 
 357
 
 THE HUNGRY. HEART 
 
 care for you to tempt you to care for me. I can't tell 
 you but if you knew, you'd loathe me as I loathe myself." 
 
 " Do you do you ' Her voice faltered. But she had 
 wrought herself up to such a romantic pitch about him, and 
 his earnestness was so terrifying and so real to her, that 
 she dared to go on "Do you care for some one else?" 
 And she looked at him in all the beauty of her romance. 
 
 " I don't know I don't know," he answered, in great 
 agitation physical, though he of course fancied it moral. 
 " Not with the love I might have given a pure woman, if 
 fate and my own vile weakness hadn't conspired to ruin me. 
 . . . What am I saying? I can't talk to you about it. 
 Think me as bad as your imagination can picture and I'm 
 worse still." 
 
 She gave a low wail that came straight from her honest 
 romantic young heart and went straight to his heart. He 
 sat beside her, took her hand. " Be merciful to me," he 
 begged. " At least I'm not so bad that I don't know good- 
 ness when I see it. And you'll always be the ideal of good- 
 ness in my eyes all I once sought in love all I once 
 deluded myself into believing I had won." 
 
 She thrilled. Those words made her feel that he be- 
 longed to her. She laid her other hand on his. " Basil," 
 she appealed, " you are young, and brave, and noble. You 
 can free yourself save yourself " 
 
 He drew away, went to the rail of the pavilion, seated 
 himself there. " No," he said. " I'm past saving. And 
 we must not meet any more." 
 
 " Why? " she asked. 
 
 " Because I am not free and never shall be." 
 
 " Is that true ? " Her eyes looked loving incredulity. 
 
 " I am more tightly bound by honor and by by habit 
 than if I were married." 
 
 358
 
 She gave a long sigh of despair, she thought, but in 
 reality of hope, for, at least he was free. Marriage was 
 the only real bond. As for honor what honor could there 
 be in any tie not sanctioned by religion and society? 
 
 " What a cur I am ! " he exclaimed, put to shame by her 
 sigh and her forlorn expression. 
 
 " Please don't ! " she begged. " I understand as far 
 as a girl could understand such a thing. And I know it's 
 not your fault. And even if we can't be anything more 
 to each other, still I'm not sorry we've had what we've had. 
 I'm I'm glad! " 
 
 He felt the glory of her purity beaming upon him like 
 heaven's light on the bleak, black-hot peaks of hell. He 
 longed to linger, and talk on and on; bui ::is sense of honor 
 had reached the limit of its endurance for that day. Without 
 touching her hand he said good-by as if they were never 
 to see each other again and went as if his heart were broken. 
 
 Thenceforth Helen let her longing for romance centre in 
 him without concealing the fact from herself or from him. 
 And her castle-building had an energy it would never have 
 had, if she had not imagined she felt it was hopeless. Noth- 
 ing so dynamic as the hopelessness that hopes. Believing 
 that he loved her, that she was his one chance of redemp- 
 tion, she continued to give painstaking attention to her 
 toilet, to refresh her memory of those of his favorite poets 
 with whom she was acquainted, to learn lines from those 
 she knew less well, and to put herself in his way always 
 without forwardness. And he continued to drift held fast 
 to Courtney with senses so enchained that he would have 
 fought against release like an opium fiend for his drug; 
 fascinated also by the woman he could dream he ought to 
 have loved, and might have loved. Two restraints he laid 
 sternly upon himself. Not to talk of love in a tete-a-tete 
 
 359
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 with a woman that would be impossible. But he would 
 see that the talk was kept to the general, that it never ad- 
 ventured the particular. Also, he would never again so 
 much as touch Helen's hand when they were alone. Were 
 he bred to be as expert at moral truth as at moral sham, 
 he might have found a key to his true state of soul in the 
 tantalization this self-restraint caused him to suffer. There 
 were times when her physical contrast to Courtney was as 
 alluring to his keyed-up, supersensitized nerves as was her 
 moral contrast to his morbid moral sense. If he had had 
 the intelligence and concentration necessary to candid self- 
 analysis, he would have been startled perhaps benefited 
 by the discovery that he was in the way to become one of 
 those libertines who in all sincerity teach prayers to the 
 innocence they are plotting to debauch. 
 
 And all the time he was drinking more and more deeply 
 not for the moral reasons he fancied, but for the practical 
 physical reason that a disordered nervous system craves the 
 stimulants that will further aggravate its disorder. Helen's 
 father had carried his liquor badly; a little was enough to 
 upset him a great deal. Basil was one of those men who 
 are able to drink heavily without showing it, even to the 
 most watchful eyes. Often, when she had not the faintest 
 suspicion he was in liquor, he was in fact so far gone that 
 he had to keep his surface preternaturally solemn in order 
 to conceal the disorder of his mind. 
 
 The day did not long delay when, under the influence 
 of drink, he suddenly seized her and kissed her. She did 
 not resist; but the shock of the contact, instead of inflam- 
 ing him, instantly restored him to his senses. He was con- 
 science-stricken ; also he saw the impossible complications 
 he was precipitating. In shame and fright in fright more 
 than shame he fled from her presence. 
 
 360
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 So far as outward effect is concerned, the action is every- 
 thing, the motive nothing. But so far as inward effect is 
 concerned, the action is nothing, the motive everything. In 
 action Basil and Courtney were essentially the same equal 
 partners in intrigue. But her motive of seeking strength 
 through love availed to hold her steady, even to lift her up ; 
 while his motive of sensuality ever less and less refined and 
 redeemed by love was thrusting him down and down.
 
 XXIII 
 
 RICHARD and Courtney were walking up from the 
 laboratory together. In his abrupt fashion Richard broke 
 the silence with : " I wonder if it isn't Helen that's hanging 
 back and not Gallatin. She's innocent as a baby, but her 
 experience with her father must have taught her about that 
 one thing." 
 
 " What one thing? " asked Courtney, startled out of her 
 abstraction. 
 
 " Drinking. Helen must have noticed how Gallatin's 
 mopping it up these days." 
 
 " Nonsense/' said Courtney sharply. She was much 
 irritated as human beings are extremely apt to be, when 
 some matter they are making determined efforts to ignore is 
 forced on their attention. 
 
 " He was so drunk this morning that he had to go out 
 and take the air. That's what made me think of it." 
 
 Drunk ! She winced at that bald revolting word. She 
 flamed at what she tried to think was an injustice. " This 
 morning?" cried she. "Why, that's absurd. I'd have 
 noticed it." 
 
 " You're another innocent. He carries a package well 
 always did." There Richard laughed at memories of his 
 and Gallatin's " wild-oats " days of which he fancied Court- 
 ney knew nothing and he would have been panic-stricken 
 had he thought there was danger of her finding out about 
 them. " Yes," he went on, " Gallatin's been going some 
 for several weeks now. But this daytime drinking is a 
 new development." 
 
 362
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I'm sure you're mistaken," said Courtney, her irrita- 
 tion showing in her color now. " You both drink at supper." 
 
 " He about six to my two. I never take more than two. 
 And every once in a while I see Jimmie or Bill carrying a 
 case of bottles to or from his apartments. I can understand 
 a boy's doing that sort of thing. A boy wants to try every- 
 thing. But how a grown man can keep on at it is beyond 
 me. Still, he hasn't much mind. He never says or thinks 
 anything he hasn't got from somebody else. But women'd 
 never notice that." This last sentence half to himself, not 
 at all for her hearing. 
 
 Courtney was all a-quiver with anger. For, his shrewd 
 observation on Basil's mentality compelled her to admit to 
 herself another truth, indeed a whole swarm of truths, she 
 had been hiding from herself how Basil's conversation, 
 when they were all together and the subject was necessarily 
 other than love, no longer seemed brilliant or especially 
 interesting even; how at the shop he made an extremely 
 poor showing, was now pupil, and rather backward pupil, 
 to her who almost daily had to cover up his blunders ; how 
 in helping her with the gardening he never went beyond 
 either approving her ideas or offering suggestions already 
 stated in the books; how she was constantly coming across 
 things she had thought original with him only because she 
 happened not to have read the books that contained them 
 or to have known the phase of life in which they were 
 familiar commonplaces. Angry though an untruth about 
 anyone or anything we love makes us, that anger is as equa- 
 nimity itself beside the anger roused by a disagreeable 
 truth. 
 
 As they neared the house she quickened her pace, hur- 
 rying not so much from Richard as from her own thoughts 
 the thoughts his words had startled from unexpected 
 
 363
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 lurking places as a sudden light sets bats to whirling. 
 Courtney was loyal through and through; also, she clung 
 to Basil like a shipwrecked sailor to a life raft. The 
 stronger the waves of adverse destiny or of doubt, the 
 fiercer she clung to her life raft. In face of the clearest 
 proof from without against Basil, she would have shut her 
 eyes and held fast to him. Yet with devilish malice and 
 merciless persistence circumstances were now constantly tak- 
 ing her blind resolute loyalty by surprise and forcing upon 
 her exhibitions of him as a shallow and sensual person. A 
 proud, intelligent woman's love could reconcile itself to 
 either of these to a shallow man whose passion was simply 
 symbol of deep and sincere love ; or, to a sensual man whose 
 grossness was the coarse rich soil that sent up and nour- 
 ished high intelligence, fascinating and compelling. Bu'; no 
 woman worth while as a human being could continue to love 
 a shallow man treating her as mere " symbol of the sensual 
 side of life " because he was incapable of appreciating 
 any but physical qualities, and then simply as physical 
 qualities. 
 
 It was with a heart defiantly loving, defiantly loyal, 
 that she met Basil at eleven that night to admit him. He 
 had not appeared either at the house or at the laboratory 
 during the afternoon or for supper or afterwards. So, she 
 had not seen him siace Richard's " attack on him behind his 
 back " for, she had succeeded in convincing herself that 
 Richard's accusations were an outcropping of prejudice 
 against him. She felt humble toward him because she had 
 listened without bursting out in his defense this, though 
 to defend would have been the height of stupid imprudence. 
 As he entered the door she softly opened, he lurched against 
 her, stumbled over the rug, saved himself by catching hold 
 of her and almost bringing her down. A wave of suspicion, 
 
 364
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 of sickening fear and repulsion shuddered through her. 
 But she frowned herself down, took him firmly by the 
 arm. 
 
 " Be careful/' she whispered. " The floor was polished 
 only yesterday." 
 
 He mumbled something affectionate and without wait- 
 ing for her to close the door, embraced her. From him 
 exhaled the powerful odor of mixed tobacco and whisky 
 that proclaims the drunken man to the most inexperienced, 
 to those blindest of the blind the blind who dare not see. 
 She gently released herself. Several times of late he had 
 come to her in almost this condition; she had forced herself 
 to deny, to excuse, to minimize. Now, however, it was 
 impossible for her to risk admitting him ; and also, she sud- 
 denly realized she had reached the breaking point of her 
 courage to keep up her self-deception. " You must go at 
 once," she said. 
 
 " Why ? " he demanded in a hoarse whisper. His be- 
 fuddled mind reverted to Helen as if Courtney knew about 
 her. " What right have you got to be jealous, if I'm 
 not?" 
 
 She did not puzzle over this remark. " Basil, you must 
 go at once because you've been drinking too much." The 
 danger was too imminent to be trifled with in diplomatic 
 phrases. 
 
 He stood, swaying unsteadily, his head hanging. " If 
 you think so " he muttered. 
 
 She urged him gently toward the door. 
 
 " I I beg your pardon," he mumbled. " I I guess 
 you're right." 
 
 He backed two steps. As soon as he was clear of the 
 door she closed and locked it. Slowly she went upstairs, 
 dropped wearily into bed. She lay quiet a few minutes, 
 24 365
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 staring at the arc of the night lamp. Then on an impulse 
 from an instinct that could not be disobeyed, she rose, took 
 a dark dressing gown, wrapped it round her. She glided 
 along the hall, descended the stairs, opened the lake-front 
 door. Closing it behind her, she stood at the edge of the 
 veranda. The sky was black; a few drops of rain were 
 falling. She made an effort, ran down the steps, hurried 
 across the lawn and along the path to the Smoke House. 
 The entrance door to the apartment stairway was open. 
 She hesitated, slowly ascended. He did not appear at the 
 sound of her steps. His bedroom door was open. She 
 glanced in. His bed was turned down, his pajamas lay 
 ready upon the folded-over covers. But he was not there. 
 She went on to the door of his sitting room. It too was 
 open. At the table desk and facing the door he sat, half- 
 collapsed on the chair, one hand round a tall glass of 
 whisky and water, the bottle and a carafe at his elbow. 
 Though her mind was on him, her eyes took in and forced 
 upon her every tiny detail of the room; she had made it 
 over that his surroundings might always remind him of her. 
 He lifted his heavy head, blinked stupidly at her. She 
 noted his face with the same morbid acuteness to detail 
 his swollen eyes, his puffy lips, the veins in his forehead, 
 his brows knitted in a foolishly solemn expression. Never 
 had he seemed so homely, since her first glance at him when 
 he came there a stranger. 
 
 After a moment of dazed sodden staring at her, he re- 
 membered his manners, rose not without difficulty and stood, 
 stiff and unsteadily swaying. " Give me some of the 
 whisky," said she, advancing. " I feel sort of queer." She 
 dropped to the chair he had just left and took up his glass. 
 " May I have your drink ? " she asked, and without waiting 
 for a reply drank eagerly. Color returned to her cheeks, 
 
 366
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and her eyes became less heavy and dull. " I'm better 
 very much better," she declared, as she set the glass down 
 empty. 
 
 He had seated himself lumpishly on the sofa. They 
 remained silent, gazing out through the open window into 
 the darkness and hearing the soothing musical plash of 
 rain on lake. In upon them poured a freshness rather 
 than a breeze and the pleasant odor of drenching foli- 
 age. " As I lay there thinking," she said presently, " it 
 came to me that I mustn't let this night pass without 
 seeing you and making it smooth and straight between 
 us." 
 
 The shock of her appearing had for the moment beaten 
 down his intoxication. It was now boiling up again, heat- 
 ing his nerves and his imagination, though he seemed sober 
 and self-possessed. " All right," said he. " I know you 
 didn't mean to insult me, and I'll forget it." 
 
 She gazed quickly at him in amazement, started to 
 speak, checked herself. 
 
 " But I want to tell you," he went on, his tone and 
 gestures forcible- feeble, " I want to tell you this business 
 of my being shut out has got to stop. You must arrange 
 for Vaughan to come down here to live, and for me to 
 take his rooms up at the house." 
 
 This demand seemed to her as utterly unlike him as 
 the dictatorial tone in which it was made. To condemn 
 him no, more not to love him the more tenderly be- 
 cause he was in this mood of distracted desperation would 
 be unworthy of the love she professed. She crushed 
 down her sense of repulsion, went to him, la^d her cheek 
 against his hair. " My love," she murmured. " We 
 mustn't ever forget that we have only each other. We'll 
 never let any misunderstanding come between us, no mat- 
 
 367
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ter how blue we get." And she turned his head and kissed 
 him. 
 
 With an intoxicated man's fickleness, he switched 
 abruptly from anger to sentiment. His eyes became moist 
 and shiny. A sensual drunken smile played round his 
 heavy mouth. She saw though she was trying hard not 
 to see. He reached round and drew her toward his lap. 
 She gently resisted, while she was nerving herself to 
 submit would it not be a very poor sort of love that 
 would let itself be chilled by a mood a mood in which 
 all love's warmth, all love's gentleness were needed as 
 they are not needed when everything is pleasant and 
 easy? 
 
 The tears of self-pity welled into his eyes. " God, how 
 low I've sunk ! " He got himself on his uncertain legs, 
 arranged his features into a caricature of an expression of 
 dignified command. " I want you to send Helen Miss 
 March away," he said, waving his finger at her. " She's 
 a pure woman. She mustn't be contaminated." 
 
 She gazed at him in horror. " Basil ! " she gasped. 
 
 " Yes I mean it. Oh, you understand. I'm not fit to 
 'sociate with her and neither are you." 
 
 With a wild cry, she turned to fly. He lurched for- 
 ward, caught her by the arm. " But we're just about fit 
 for each other," he said. " And that's the truth if I am 
 drunk." He nodded at her. " I should say, ' That's the 
 truth because I am drunk.' It's giving me the courage 
 to speak out a few things that've been gnawing at my 
 insides for weeks." And his fingers clasped her arm like 
 steel nippers. 
 
 " Basil ! You're hurting me." 
 
 " That's what I feel like doing." And in his eyes as in 
 IMS fingers there was revealed the sheer sensual ferocity 
 
 368
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 that drink had freed of the shame which at other times 
 held it in restraint. 
 
 She hung her head. In a low voice she stammered, 
 " You're making me feel there isn't any love for me any- 
 where in your heart." 
 
 " Love ? " he said, swaying to and fro and opening and 
 closing his eyes stupidly. " Love. Oh, yes there is. Yes, 
 indeed. Sometimes I think not, but it isn't so. It's because 
 I love you that I go crazy at the thought that I'm sharing 
 you." 
 
 " Sharing me! " She wrenched herself free, put her 
 arm over her eyes as if she could thus hide from herself 
 the sight of his soul which in drunken abandon he had 
 completely unmasked. 
 
 " Don't be frightened," he maundered on. " I'm a man 
 of honor ' honor rooted in dishonor ' as Tennyson says. 
 I'll not go. I'll submit to it all right. Love gives a man 
 a stomach for anything." 
 
 She wished to fly, but her legs would not carry her. 
 She had to stay and listen. 
 
 "How I've been dragged down! How a woman can 
 drag a man down ! Not Helen no she's an angel. But 
 those good women never are as fascinating as you others. 
 . . . Love ? " He beamed upon her like a drunken satyr. 
 " Let's love and be happy. To hell with everything but 
 love." 
 
 As she listened and looked she, for the first time since 
 they had been lovers, felt that she had sinned had sinned 
 without justification. The judgment of guilt dazzled and 
 stunned her as the sun's full light eyes from which the 
 scales have just fallen. She stood paralyzed, yet won- 
 dering how she could remain erect under the weight of her 
 vileness for, her sin seemed as heavy and as vile as ever
 
 HUNGRY HEART 
 
 celibate fanatic asserted. When her lover moved to em- 
 brace her, she, with the motion of shrinking from him, 
 found she had strength and power to fly. She rushed from 
 the room, he stumbling after her, and crying " Courtney ! 
 Don't get jealous and go off mad "
 
 XXIV 
 
 SHE knew the truth at last the whole truth what he 
 was in mind and in heart, what his love was, what he in his 
 inmost soul thought about her, about himself. The man 
 who could believe he was sharing her could not but be 
 shallow indeed, stupid, and also incapable of understand- 
 ing the meaning of the word love; the man who could 
 keep on with a woman he believed he was " sharing," 
 must be sunk in a wallow of sensuality and as weak as 
 low. She knew the truth. Hearing she might have dis- 
 puted and in time denied. But there was, and would be, 
 no evading the records stamped clear and indelible upon 
 her memory by that sensual, maudlin face. To falsify those 
 records was beyond even a proud, lonely, loving woman's 
 all but limitless powers of self-deception in matters of the 
 heart. The coarseness of that self-revelation of his was 
 the liquor; but the revelation itself was the man. He did 
 not love; he lusted. He did not love; he despised her 
 and himself. He did not love and he never had loved. 
 
 There is in every one of us a chamber where vanity 
 and hope live and ever conspire to deceive, and if possible, 
 destroy us. From that secret chamber she now wrenched 
 an amazing secret. She discovered that from the begin- 
 ning yes, from the beginning she, determined to satisfy 
 the craving of elemental flesh and blood, had been lying to 
 herself about Basil Gallatin. Passion had taken sly ad- 
 vantage of her loneliness and her longing for sympathy and 
 companionship ; it had beguiled her imagination into ere- 
 
 371
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ating out of the very ordinary materials of his true per- 
 sonality the lover she had been adoring. One by one she 
 took out and reexamined all her memory plates of him. 
 Now, a memory plate is like any other photographic plate; 
 it has a surface picture and it also yields to a close scrutiny 
 a thousand details which do not appear upon the surface. 
 Long before she finished, she was realizing that she had 
 all along, with the deliberate craft of self-deception, been 
 hiding from herself the trick her feelings were practicing 
 upon her intelligence. Basil pleasing manners and dress, 
 amiable disposition, animalism agreeably disguised by edu- 
 cation Basil had been plausible enough to pass muster 
 with her, ready and eager to be deluded because of her 
 craving for love. True, he had posed to a certain extent. 
 But he was not really responsible for the fraud. The 
 blame was hers all hers. 
 
 But disillusion no more destroys a love longing than 
 lack of food and drink destroys hunger and thirst. High 
 above moans of shame over the pitiful collapse of her 
 romance rose the defiant clamors of hunger and thirst. 
 They had been lovers, he and she; and that fact in itself 
 was a bond which a woman, at least a woman of her tem- 
 perament of fidelity, could not easily break. She feared 
 when he, sober and a gentleman once more, sweet and win- 
 ning, came to her and pleaded for forgiveness she would 
 forgive would in her loneliness and heart hunger take 
 what she could get rather than have nothing and the ache 
 of nothingness. It is at least, it has been, up to and into 
 the present time second nature to woman to depend upon 
 a man, to select some one man, the best available, and stake 
 everything upon him. Basil Gallatin was that man for 
 her. And not in novels, but in life before any woman, 
 however high minded, goes away to utter aloneness from 
 
 372
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 a man who cares for her, he must have disclosed some 
 traits more abhorrent than any such human traits as those 
 of Basil. Yes human. Was it his fault that he had not 
 given her the kind of love she wanted? Was it not prob- 
 ably her fault that he had not been inspired to that kind 
 of love? Perhaps, too, the love of any man, could it be 
 seen in the nakedness of drunkenness, would be much like 
 Basil's. " I'm only a woman," she said. " I mustn't for- 
 get that. I've no right to expect much." And then she 
 shuddered; for in her very ears was the sound of those 
 cold rains falling day and night upon her loneliness and 
 despair. 
 
 She saw herself accepting; for, a great deal less than 
 half a loaf is better than no bread. And if she accepted, 
 she must adapt herself must force herself to acquire a 
 liking for what she must eat or go altogether hungry. She 
 saw herself wending down and down to the level at which 
 he had from the beginning thought her arrived. She 
 looked a\i around. Nothing no one to save her. For, 
 what could she hope from Richard? from any man? Was 
 not Basil giving about the best man had to offer woman 
 in the way of association? There was the Richard sort of 
 man an abstraction an impossibility. There was the 
 Shirley Drummond sort of man a human incarnation of 
 Old Dog Tray equally impossible. There was the third 
 sort of man the Basil sort, somewhere between the two 
 impossibilities. Life must be lived, and with human be- 
 ings. Of the three available kinds of associates, was not 
 the Basil sort the most livable? Rather Basil than 
 being frozen to death by a Richard or bored to death by 
 a Shirley. The conclusion seemed cynical; but there 
 was no cynicism in the sad woman who faced that con- 
 clusion. 
 
 373
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 She did not go down to breakfast; and Basil, she 
 learned, kept away also. When he did not appear at din- 
 ner she knew he had determined to wait until he should 
 surely see her alone. The emotion that stirred in her 
 because his place at the table was vacant gave her more 
 and sadder light upon how little the heart heeds the things 
 that impress the mind and the self-respect. About the 
 middle of the afternoon she was at the small antique desk 
 in the corner of her sitting room, trying to write a letter. 
 But the charm of the day, the beauty of full-foliaged trees, 
 of lake and cloudless sky seen through the creeper-framed 
 window, would not let her write. As she gazed, her unhap- 
 piness calmed and all her senses flooded with the joy that 
 laughs in sunbeams, in light and shadow floating on the 
 grass, in flight and song of birds, in grace and color and 
 perfume of flowers, the joy that mocks at moral struggle 
 and flutters alluringly the gay banner of the gospel of 
 eat, drink and be merry. 
 
 As she took her pen to go on with the letter, Lizzie 
 appeared in the hall doorway. " Mr. Vaughan asked me 
 to tell you," she said, " that he'd gone out and might not 
 be back for supper." 
 
 " Very well," said Courtney, not turning round. It 
 flitted across her mind that this was an extraordinary mes- 
 sage for Richard to send Richard who came and went 
 as he pleased and sent no word when he was not coming 
 to dinner or supper. " Where's he gone ? " she asked an 
 extraordinary question from her to match the extraordinary 
 message from him. 
 
 " He was in a hurry and didn't say," replied Lizzie. 
 " I'll find out." 
 
 " Oh, no. It doesn't matter." 
 
 Lizzie went, and in her dreaming and thinking Court- 
 374
 
 THEHUNGRY HEART 
 
 ney soon forgot the incident. Again Lizzie's voice inter- 
 rupted " Mr. Vaughan's gone to see old Nanny." 
 
 " Nanny ! " said Courtney. She never thought of 
 the old woman except as the memorandum of her pen- 
 sion check appeared every three months in the household 
 accounts. 
 
 " Yes. She's dying. She sent for him. Such dread- 
 ful roads too." 
 
 Courtney's pen halted on its way to the ink well. The 
 room seemed to her to have become terribly still. 
 
 " She sent him word/' Lizzie went carelessly on, and 
 her voice seemed to come from a distance, through a pro- 
 found hush, " that she had something on her conscience 
 and couldn't go without clearing it. I reckon she's gone 
 clean crazy." 
 
 It was not fear that made nerve and muscle tense. 
 It was not self-control that held her motionless. The peril 
 was upon her; there was no time to waste in emotion. All 
 along, she had pretended to herself that Nanny knew 
 nothing, had at worst a dim suspicion. Now, she realized 
 that she had always feared the old woman had seen and 
 had heard. And those words of Lizzie's made it impos- 
 sible for her to doubt what was about to occur. No time 
 for terror, for hysteria or fainting or futile moaning. Her 
 whole being concentrated on the one idea, What shall I do? 
 
 Calmly she said to Lizzie, " Has he gone ? " 
 
 " Ten minutes ago maybe fifteen." 
 
 " Did he take the motor ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. She's near dead. He went in a great 
 hurry." 
 
 Idle then to think of overtaking him, of bringing him 
 back with a story that Winchie was missing, was perhaps 
 drowned in the lake. Her mind it had never been clearer 
 
 375
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 or steadier gave Richard up for the moment, turned to 
 another phase. "Where is Mr. Gallatin?" she asked. 
 
 " Out on the lake. Winchie's with him fishing." 
 
 " When they come in, please tell him I wish to see him 
 at once." The events of last night were as if they had 
 not been. Wounds closed up like magic; once more it was 
 she and Basil her lover united against the whole world. 
 
 " I can call him from the wall/' suggested Lizzie. 
 
 " Yes please do." She dipped the pen as if about 
 to go on with the interrupted letter. Lizzie went. She 
 laid the pen down, leaned back in the chair, clasped her 
 hands behind her head, gazed unseeingly into the huge 
 tree almost directly before the window. The irony of it! 
 Through Nanny whom they had forgotten ! The blow was 
 about to fall utter ruin the end of love of life prob- 
 ably. A few hours and there would be a convulsion of the 
 most awful passions. She looked round. Everything calm, 
 bright, beautiful. Reason told her what was about to occur ; 
 but there are calamities which the imagination cannot pic- 
 ture, and this was one of them. . . . Should she tell Basil ? 
 " Nanny may be dead before Richard gets to her. If I 
 tell Basil and Richard comes, only suspicious Basil's 
 manner may confirm him." It was still more significant 
 that it did not enter her head as even a possibility that 
 Basil might be able to help her devise some plan to avert 
 or to mitigate the blow. ... In the midst of 'her debate 
 whether to tell him, she suddenly gave a terrible cry, sprang 
 to the window, her expression wildly disheveled. The 
 thought had flashed, "If Richard hears and believes, he 
 will kill Basil ! " 
 
 Before she reached the balcony rail, reason took her 
 by the shoulder, drew her back to her chair. " I must 
 keep my head!" she exclaimed aloud. And she fought 
 
 376
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 down and triumphed over the terror that had all but mas- 
 tered her. At Gallatin's step on the threshold she did not 
 turn. " Shut the door/' she said in her usual voice. Then, 
 after the sound of its closing, " Nanny, on her deathbed, 
 has sent for him to confess something. He's gone to 
 her." 
 
 She heard him slowly cross the room, knew he was 
 standing at the window. After a while she stole a glance 
 at him. His skin was gray, his profile set ; there were deep 
 lines round his mouth. She liked his face, it was so manly; 
 a wave of love surged out from her heart. " How long 
 shall we have to wait? " he asked. The voice, though 
 wholly unlike his own, had no note of cowardice in it. 
 
 " He's been gone about half an hour." 
 
 " Only half an hour ! " 
 
 She saw the sweat burst out upon his forehead. She 
 saw the muscles of his face trembling. There was agony 
 in his eyes not fear, but that horror of suspense 
 which makes the trapped soldier rush upon the bayonet, 
 makes the man on the scaffold assist the leisurely hang- 
 man. 
 
 Silence, except the chirping of the birds. A bumblebee 
 buzzed almost into his face ; he did not wince. A black-and- 
 gold butterfly fluttered in at the window on the other side 
 of the desk, hovered, settled upon the lid of the stationery 
 box, rested with wings together as one. She turned her 
 eyes from him to watch it, said absently: 
 
 " You will have to go at once." 
 
 She heard him turn full toward her. She was expect- 
 ing that quick movement, but she could not help shrinking 
 a little. However she went on evenly : " You can cross in 
 the motor boat, take a trap at Wenona, catch the four- 
 o'clock express at Fenton." 
 
 377
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I deserve that/' he said, and she knew he was re- 
 ferring to last night. 
 
 She hesitated, went straight at it. " I'd forgotten last 
 night since Lizzie told me about Nanny. It's wiped out. 
 So, you need think only of going." 
 
 "What are you talking about?" he exclaimed. "I 
 go?" 
 
 She was ready. She turned upon him a look of well- 
 simulated surprise. Then " Oh ! " she cried. " I've 
 been thinking it out, and you haven't. At first glance it 
 does look as if we ought to face it together. But as you 
 consider it you'll see you've simply got to go." 
 
 He seated himself, took out his cigarette case, lighted 
 a cigarette. "If I go anywhere it will be in his direction, 
 to shorten the wait." 
 
 " Listen," said she, leaning toward him, her forearms 
 on the desk, her hands clasped. " He'll have but one idea 
 to kill you. If you're here, the very sight of you will 
 set him wild. He'll kill you how can you defend your- 
 self? " 
 
 " I can't. Vaughan has the right to my life." 
 
 She winced at this unconscious ugly reminder of what 
 he really thought of their romance. She waved her hand 
 as if brushing something away. " No matter about that," 
 said she. " I'm thinking how to save Winchie from dis- 
 grace and my own life. If you're here, there's no hope. 
 If you're gone, he'll have the chance to reflect. And I 
 shall know what to say and how to say it." 
 
 " I don't believe she knew anything." 
 
 " Basil ! " His eyes shifted. " Don't you remember? " 
 
 Both were hearing the mad flapping of that frightened 
 bird in the copse round the summerhouse. She shivered; 
 he moved uneasily. " Even if she knew," he objected, 
 
 378
 
 " she may be dead or in the stupor of death before he gets 
 to her." 
 
 " Then he'll hear nothing, and there's no reason why 
 you shouldn't go. I'll say you got a telegram from your 
 mother " 
 
 "If he comes merely suspecting and uneasy, and I'm 
 gone " 
 
 " Still he'd not be sure," she interrupted. " And if he 
 were, he'd not have the sight of you to inflame him." She 
 rose. " There's no time to waste." 
 
 He settled himself. " I shall not go. We face him 
 together." 
 
 The clock on the chimney-piece struck. She gave a 
 cry, rushed to him. " Basil my love ! " she implored. 
 "If you love me, go go ! " 
 
 He pressed his hands to her cheeks tenderly, smiled 
 at her with the gentle tolerance of superior male for female. 
 " I understand, dear. This is like you. But my honor 
 will not let me go." 
 
 She released his hand, stood gazing at him. In the 
 beginning she had urged only because she had wished 
 to save him. But she had been convinced by her own 
 arguments; and it amazed her that he was refusing to see 
 what was so clear. " You will not go ? " she said. 
 
 " No, Courtney. I cannot." 
 
 She brushed the strays of hair from her brow. She 
 laughed scornfully, with a contemptuous shrug. " Whether 
 you two men kill each other or are only wounded, still 
 Winchie and I will be disgraced. You may be only wound- 
 ed may get over it in a week or so or you two may only 
 have a vulgar fight with the servants looking on. In any 
 case I am done for." 
 
 He was like a horse when the spur is bidding it advance 
 379
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and the curb is bidding it halt. " If I stay," lie cried, 
 " you'll despise me. If I go, you'll despise me." 
 
 " If you stay you destroy me. If you go, I can save 
 myself. Will you go or not ? Oh, after last night this on 
 top of that And, after last night, you can debate whether 
 or not I'll despise you! Go, I tell you! You couldn't 
 sink any lower than you have and you may redeem your- 
 self." They were facing each other, he white before her 
 scorn and fury. " But not," she went on, " if to what you 
 said and did then you add debating a point of cheap pose 
 when I and my child are at stake. What a shallow, vain 
 creature you are ! " 
 
 " Do you mean these things ? Or are you only pretend- 
 ing, to make me fly and save myself? " 
 
 " I mean every word. In spite of last night, of all it 
 taught me, I was still hoping or, trying to hope. But now 
 Thank God I had Winchie when I met you, and wasn't 
 free to make an utter fool of myself. A man who could 
 betray his friend for lust, and then betray his mistress for 
 vanity ! " 
 
 His eyes blazed mingled hate and passion at her. " But 
 you'll go with me now ! " he cried, in triumphant fury. 
 "Yes, we'll take that train together. The jig's up, and, 
 damn you, you witch, you've got to go with me." 
 
 She was shaking with fright. For the moment she 
 could think of no answer. She was under the spell of the 
 terrible expression of his eyes. 
 
 " If he comes looking for some one to kill, he'll kill 
 you if he can't get us both. So we go together, or die 
 together, as you please." 
 
 " Very well," said she, seating herself. " Oh, how like 
 you this is ! You know that if we fly, my boy is smirched 
 for life and I too. You know that if I stay, I may save 
 
 380
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 everything even your life. If we went, Richard would 
 never rest till he'd hunted us down and killed us." 
 
 " I've lost you," said he sullenly. " I don't care what 
 happens. I feel like killing you myself." He straight- 
 ened up. " Why not? " he cried. " Kill you, then myself 
 get it all over with." 
 
 The silence was broken by a shout from Winchie play- 
 ing with the neighbor's children on the lawn. That sound 
 compelled her to another effort. She went to Basil, laid 
 her hands gently on his shoulders. "Basil," she pleaded, 
 tears in her eyes, in her voice, " for my boy's sake for 
 my sake go ! Now that you think about it you can't but 
 see it's the decent, the honorable thing to do. Let's not 
 quarrel we who have been so much to each other. Go and 
 let us save everything." 
 
 He looked into her eyes, and she knew that if he had 
 drunk as much that day as he did the day before, he would 
 have killed her and himself. But she saw that he, sober, 
 was hesitating, was moved by her appeal to his generous, 
 kind nature, overflowing with sentimentality. " Dear," she 
 said, " you can row out on the lake. And if everything's 
 all right I'll hang something white on this shutter here. 
 Then you can come back. Even if he comes home sus- 
 picious he'll not think it strange that you're on the lake 
 late." 
 
 " But he may come to kill, and before I could get 
 back " 
 
 " But he will not kill me, I tell you. I'm ' only a 
 woman.' I know him. You know, too. And if he would, 
 how could you save me? Would I want to live disgraced? " 
 The clock struck again. She gave a scream, flung her 
 arms round his neck. " Save me, Basil ! Go quick ! 
 quick ! " 
 
 25 381
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 After the frightful things she had said to him and he 
 to her, there was left him only the choice between going 
 and killing her and himself. On the threshold he, with 
 tears in his eyes, embraced her and kissed her. " God help 
 me, I don't know what to do," he said. " I'll go. If it 
 turns out wrong, remember how you perplexed me and 
 try to forgive me, dear." 
 
 He was so genuine, so manly and loving and she felt 
 so grateful to him that her own eyes filled and she gave 
 him her lips with her heart in them. 
 
 She stood at the window; she walked up and down the 
 balcony. But she watched the lake in vain. Five minutes 
 ten fifteen, and no Basil Winchie came with his usual 
 rush, flung himself into the hammock. " What is it, 
 mamraa ? " he asked presently. 
 
 She startled, turned on him with eyes wild. " Oh ! " 
 she gasped, her hand on her heart. " I didn't know you 
 were there." 
 
 " Are you watching for Mr. Gallatin? " 
 
 " Why, dear ? " 
 
 " Because, if you are, he came in with me a long time 
 ago and isn't out there any more." 
 
 A silence, she trying to keep her gaze off the lake. 
 
 " I like him," the boy went on. " At least, some bet- 
 ter than I did. He knows a lot about fishing. When papa 
 blows himself up and never comes down any more, as 
 Jimmie says he will some day, I think I'll let Mr. Gallatin 
 stay on with us." 
 
 Courtney scarcely heard. She was grinding her palms 
 together and muttering incoherently when at last she saw 
 his boat pushing leisurely in the direction of Wenona. She 
 drew a long breath. But as the boat glided farther and 
 farther away, her sick heart failed her. She felt aban- 
 
 382
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 doned and afraid. For, she had not told the truth when 
 she said she knew Richard would not kill her. 
 
 Winchie stayed on, talking incessantly and no more dis- 
 turbed by her inattention than babbling brook or trilling 
 bird by lack of audience. His chatter fretted her like the 
 rapping of a branch on the window of an invalid. But 
 she would not send him away. If Richard should come, 
 Winchie's being there would halt him perhaps, just long 
 enough. After an hour Winchie grew tired of talking and 
 ran off to play. She did not detain him why, she did not 
 know probably, because to detain him would have been to 
 encourage a fear that must be defied if the coming battle 
 for Winchie and reputation and life was not to be lost 
 before it began. She must not seem to be afraid. That 
 would be fatal. And the sure way to seem unafraid was to 
 be unafraid. 
 
 She paced the floor. She watched the distant boat with 
 its single occupant. She sat and tried to finish her letter. 
 She roamed through the house. " I'll meet him in the 
 grounds," decided she and, compelling herself to walk 
 slowly, she paced the road between gates and house up 
 and down, up and down. Back to the house again, to her 
 room. " Yes, we'll not wait supper," she said, in answer 
 to Lizzie's inquiry. At supper, the sound of Helen's and 
 Winchie's voices rasped on her nerves. " Will he never 
 come? " she muttered. And without explanation, she left 
 the table, went again to her sitting room. 
 
 " Are you ill, dear ? " asked Helen, putting her head 
 in at the door. 
 
 " No," replied she, curtly. 
 
 Helen went, but Winchie came. " You must hear my 
 prayer, mamma." 
 
 " Helen taught it to you. Let her hear it." 
 383
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " No. She's busy downstairs, and I'm in a hurry to go 
 to sleep." 
 
 " Then just say it by yourself." 
 
 " It seems foolish to say it, with nobody to listen." 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 She sat on the floor beside his bed. He knelt before 
 her, eyes closed, hands folded as Helen had taught him. 
 She was listening listening listening. "If he came 
 now " thought she one of those sardonic fancies that leer 
 even from a coffin. She stayed on with the boy, getting 
 him to tell her stories, she the while listening, listening for 
 sounds on the drive, on the stairs and hearing only the 
 sound of the seconds splashing one by one into eternity. 
 Winchie fell asleep. She kissed him, fled from his 
 room with a choke in her throat. She composed her- 
 self, descended to the kitchen. Lizzie and Mazie were 
 there, and as she opened one door Jimmie entered by the 
 other. 
 
 She became suddenly weak, but contrived to say to him, 
 " Didn't you bring Mr. Vaughan back ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am an hour ago most. He got down at 
 the gate and went to the Smoke House. He wanted to see 
 Mr. Gallatin said for me to send him if he was up here. 
 But Mr. Gallatin's went out in a boat and ain't in yet. 
 Guess he's spending the evening over to Wenona." . 
 
 She closed the door, leaned weak and sick against the 
 wall of the passageway. Richard knew! Back to her 
 room. She walked, she sat, she lay down. She watched 
 the clock. The moments were aging her like years. Each 
 second was dropping into eternity with a boom that echoed 
 in her shuddering heart. She looked at herself in the 
 mirror. Skin ashen; lines round her mouth the gaunt- 
 ness of age peering ghastlily through 'her youth like a 
 
 384
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 skeleton with a fresh young mask over its face bones. A 
 black band all round each eye, the eyes blazing out fever- 
 ishly. " He must not see me like this/' she cried. She 
 -went down to the dining room, trembling and listening at 
 every step, like a thief. She drank a glass of brandy at 
 the sideboard, fled to her rooms again. She took the pitcher 
 of ice water into the bath room, emptied it into the bowl 
 of the stationary stand, bathed her face. She pressed a 
 lump of ice against her blue-black burning lids. " Why 
 don't I wake ? " she said, for throughout she had the sense 
 of unreality that attends but does not lessen an impending 
 horror. 
 
 Twelve o'clock " I'll go to bed. I'll take Winchie 
 into bed with me. Not because I'm afraid but because I'm 
 lonely." She felt a great longing to live. She felt young 
 and strong, and the look and the odor of life were delicious. 
 If only this crisis could be passed! No matter how no 
 matter how ! " I've the right to live ! " She lifted Winchie 
 gently from his bed, carried him to hers. The warmth of 
 his vivid young body stole sweet and sad through her thin 
 nightgown, through her flesh into her heart. He half 
 awakened, half put out his arms to embrace her, murmured 
 " Mamma " was asleep again. She sobbed a little in self- 
 pity, dried her tears for shame, lay down beside her boy, 
 nestled one hand under his body. 
 
 For a moment she felt better. Then up she rose, bore 
 him back to his own bed, returned. But as she was clos- 
 ing the door, she hesitated " It's not hiding behind him. 
 If I have him with me, it may save him from disgrace." 
 She was about to open the door, when she turned away 
 abruptly. " No ! If I did that, I'd deserve to die. Why 
 should I hide behind Winchie? Why should I hide, at all? 
 I may have done wrong, but I wronged myself, not Rich- 
 
 385
 
 ard. I may have done wrong. But I had the right to do 
 wrong." She put out the light, lay down again, somewhat 
 calmer. Suddenly she sat bolt upright in the darkness. 
 She had forgotten all about Basil! Had he rowed back, 
 had he and Richard met 
 
 The hall door of her bedroom opened softly she had 
 intentionally left it unlocked. She sank back against the 
 pillows. Her heart stooped beating as she listened. No 
 further sound. When she could endure no longer, she said, 
 "Who is it?" 
 
 Dick's voice, saying, " Oh, you aren't asleep." 
 
 "What time is it?" 
 
 "About half past one." It was Richard's voice, yet 
 not his. 
 
 A long silence. She could hear her heart beating the 
 ticking of the little clock on the night stand the murmur 
 of the breeze among the boughs and another sound she 
 thought it must be the beating of his heart. 
 
 Then he: " May I turn up the light just for a min- 
 ute? " 
 
 " I'll turn it up." She did so, and as she lay down 
 again saw with a swift furtive glance that his face 
 was haggard, that his eyes seemed deep sunk in black 
 pits, and that he was gazing at the floor. And still 
 she had the sense of unreality, of the dream that will 
 pass. 
 
 He advanced a step or two. She felt him intently look- 
 ing at her. Again that breathless silence. Then he gave 
 a great sigh, bent over her, gently kissed her hair. " What 
 glorious hair you have," he said. " And what a pure, inno- 
 cent face. It's only necessary to see your face, to know 
 you are good." 
 
 She wondered why her skin was not burning, why her 
 386
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 lips did not open and her voice cry out. " But when 
 this is past," she said to herself, " no more lies never 
 again ! " 
 
 " Good night," he was saying. 
 
 " Good night," she murmured, the sense of unreality, of 
 the passing dream, stronger than ever. 
 
 She heard him cross the room, heard the door close be- 
 hind him. She leaped from her bed to lock it. As she 
 was halfway across the room, the door opened. Mechan- 
 ically she snatched from the sofa a dark kimona, drew it 
 round her. " I forgot to turn out your light," he said. 
 " Oh it was the night-stand light, wasn't it? " Then she 
 had the sense of impending disaster and His whole 
 expression, body as well as face, changed. His eyes seemed 
 starting from his head. " You you " he stammered 
 " That night when I came home unexpectedly " He flung 
 out his arms, dropped heavily to the chair behind him. 
 " It's true ! " he gasped. " It's true! " 
 
 The kimona that had helped to remind him and to be- 
 tray her had dropped from her listless shoulders to the 
 floor. She seated herself on the edge of the bed, her hands 
 clasped loosely in her lap. She looked calmly at him. 
 She now felt as much her normal self as she had up to the 
 moment when Lizzie brought her the news that he had 
 gone to Nanny. She was glad the crisis had come. More 
 she was glad he knew the truth. " Now," she said to 
 herself, with dizzy elation, " I'll either die or begin to live. 
 ' Nothing is settled, till it's settled right.' My life will 
 be settled right, at last." 
 
 He made several attempts to look at her, could not lift 
 his eyes. As they sat there she seemed innocence and he 
 guilt. " Nanny told me," he said, as if feeling round for 
 a beginning. Then, after a long wait, " She said she 
 
 387
 
 couldn't die with it on her conscience. I thought her mind 
 was wandering but somehow I couldn't He broke 
 off. Another long wait. He ended it with the question she 
 had been expecting: " Where's he? " 
 
 " Gone." 
 
 Another pause, longer. " I'm stunned stunned." He 
 stared at the floor, his head between his hands, his elbows 
 on his knees. " So he ran away." 
 
 " I sent him." 
 
 " I am glad. I might have " He did not finish. 
 " I'm stunned," he muttered. 
 
 She clasped her hands round one knee a favorite atti- 
 tude of hers and waited. It was a time for her to be 
 silent, to watch, to wait. A word, any word, from her 
 might cause the explosion. 
 
 " Why did you send him away ? " he asked. It was 
 as if he were talking with a stranger about an indifferent 
 matter. 
 
 " Because he has nothing to do with this. It's between 
 you and me." 
 
 Their eyes met. " Nothing to do with this ? " he re- 
 peated, as if trying to understand. 
 
 " It's between you and me," she repeated. 
 
 His eyes turned away, as if he were reflecting upon 
 this. Silence again. Then he: "I don't know what to 
 do. I know it's so, but I can't believe it. It's not like you 
 not at all." He looked at her. She met his gaze stead- 
 ily. His eyes shifted. " Not at all," he repeated. He 
 was still talking as if to a stranger. She understood why ; 
 it would have been impossible for any force, even such a 
 discovery as this, to galvanize into a living personality, 
 iwith a mind to think and to will, the woman who had for 
 six years been mere incident in his busy life, " Not at all 
 
 388
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 like you/' he again repeated. " Yet why did I feel it was 
 true as soon as Nanny told me ? " 
 
 She remained silent and motionless. 
 
 " Why don't you speak? " he demanded, trying to rouse 
 himself to reality. "Why don't you defend yourself?" 
 
 So long as she did not defend, he could not attack. She 
 did not answer. 
 
 " You do not deny. You admit? " 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 " He is safe, so long as he keeps away. You need not 
 be afraid to confess that he took advantage of a moment 
 of weakness." It was an offer of a defense he would 
 accept. 
 
 She refused it instantly. " That is not true," she said. 
 
 " Yes, it is," he insisted. " He took advantage of my 
 absence " 
 
 " What I did," she interrupted, " was of my own free 
 will was what I felt I had the right to do." 
 
 His eyes lifted to hers in amazement. Again they 
 found her gaze steady and direct. " Don't you realize 
 what you've done ? " he exclaimed. Such an expression as 
 hers must mean either innocence or a shamelessness beyond 
 belief. 
 
 " Yes, I realize," she answered in the same calm color- 
 less tone in which she had spoken all her few words. 
 
 " How like a child you are," said he gently and child- 
 like she certainly looked, sitting there all in white, so small 
 and lovely and sweet, with her heavy braids twisted round 
 her little head, giving her appearance a touch of quaint- 
 ness, of precocious gravity. " A mere child. You don't 
 even understand what you're accused of. It simply can't 
 be true it ' He started up. " My God if only I 
 hadn't seen that room that night ! " And she knew he was 
 
 389
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 seeing what she was seeing Basil's disheveled room and 
 she in it, like it. " Courtney ! Courtney ! How could you 
 how could you ! " And down he sank with face buried 
 in his hands and shoulders heaving. 
 
 She hung her head in shame. In vain she reminded 
 herself how he had refused to treat her as a human being, 
 how he had spurned all her appeals, how he had refused 
 to let her live either with him or without him would give 
 her neither marriage nor divorce. All in vain. Before his 
 grief she could feel only her own deceit. It might be true 
 that he had not allowed her to be honest; it was also true 
 that she had not been honest. 
 
 When she looked at him again, she was fascinated by 
 the expression of his long aristocratic profile stern, in- 
 scrutable. " I realize," he presently said, " that I don't 
 know or understand you at all. But of one thing I'm cer- 
 tain that you are not a bad woman. I've been recalling 
 you from the beginning from our childhood even. You 
 never were bad. I can remember only sweet and beauti- 
 ful tilings about you." 
 
 She covered her face with her arm. " Don't ! " she 
 murmured. 
 
 " I wasn't saying that to make you ashamed," he 
 hastened to explain. " I can't help feeling that somehow 
 or other I am more to blame than you. But that's aside. 
 The main thing is, we must both do the best we can to 
 straighten things out. Isn't it so ? " 
 
 To straighten things out! Not to rave and curse and 
 kill not scandal on scandal, disgrace on disgrace but 
 " to straighten things out." She pressed both hands to her 
 face, flung herself upon the pillow and sobbed into it an 
 outburst like a long-pent volcano relieving itself of the 
 fiery monsters that have been tormenting its vitals. 
 
 390
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " We'll not talk of it," he went on, as the storm was 
 subsiding, " until we're both of us calmer." 
 
 A long pause, the silence broken by the sound of her 
 sobs which she strove in vain to suppress. Then she heard 
 his voice gently saying " Good night." And she was alone, 
 dazed and shamed before this incredible anticlimax to her 
 forebodings.
 
 XXV 
 
 AT nine the next morning she appeared at the labora- 
 tory as usual. As she was passing through Dick's room, 
 he glanced up. Their eyes did not meet. " Good morn- 
 ing," she said without pausing. She was in the rear room 
 and out of view when his cold answering " Good morning " 
 came. She went about her work, and several times she 
 carried in to him the things she finished. He was absorbed, 
 seemed as unconscious of his surroundings as had been his 
 wont. It was the rule there never to interrupt; she did 
 not break the rule. Toward noon the quiet was disturbed 
 by the telephone buzzer. She answered. In Lizzie's voice 
 came, " The grocery over to Wenona wants to speak to 
 you." She knew at once that it was Basil. " Ask them 
 to call up again about four," replied she and went back to 
 her table. At noon she stopped work and left for the 
 house. At the usual time Richard appeared, had dinner 
 with them all, sat calm and silent and aloof, acting much 
 as he always did. 
 
 In the warm part of the year, with the gardens to look 
 after, it was her habit to spend only the mornings at the 
 laboratory. She sent Helen to the Donaldsons with Winchie 
 about three. When the telephone bell rang she herself 
 answered. First came the voice of some clerk, then Basil's 
 " Is that you? " 
 
 " Yes," replied she. 
 
 " I'm at Fenton." 
 
 " Go to New York." 
 
 " Are you well ? " 
 
 392
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Never better. Some one may be listening along the 
 wire." 
 
 " I understand. You are sure all's well ? " 
 
 " Sure. Wait in New York." 
 
 " I understand. Good-by." 
 
 " Good-by." 
 
 As she hung up the receiver and turned round, she 
 startled guiltily. There was Richard, just stepping from 
 lawn to veranda, his eyes upon her. She felt as if she 
 had been caught violating in stealth an implied compact 
 not to communicate with Basil. Dick's expression told her 
 that he was reading in her eyes with whom she had been 
 talking. When they were face to face, he on the veranda, 
 she one step up in the doorway, she said: " He wanted to 
 reassure himself before starting East." 
 
 Dick's lips curled slightly. 
 
 " It isn't fair for me to let you think him a coward. 
 I made him see so clearly that " 
 
 " You were right," he interrupted. " I wish to hear 
 no more about it." 
 
 Her eyes flashed at his peremptory tone, reminiscent 
 of his habit of brushing her aside as merely woman. But 
 the thought of Winchie was a talisman against any attack 
 of temper. 
 
 " You said last night," he went on, " that this is be- 
 tween you and me only. You were right. So I've wiped 
 him off the slate." 
 
 As they crossed the lawn toward the water's edge, she 
 felt a fear of him deeper than any that physical force 
 could inspire. If he had threatened had reviled had 
 done her physical violence, she would have met him with 
 contempt, with a sense of her own superiority. But how 
 deal with this intelligence? She had always known it was 
 
 393
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 an intelligence; she was realizing that it was an intelli- 
 gence she did not understand, was therefore superior to 
 her own. When they reached the benches near the land- 
 ing and sat, she was so weak that she could not have 
 walked many steps farther. 
 
 " I think/' he began, a quiet sarcasm in his tone that 
 did not lessen her uneasiness, " you rather misunderstood 
 me last night. In such circumstances, I believe, a man is 
 expected to tear his hair and paw the ground and do vio- 
 lent things. I confess " He hesitated an instant before 
 going on " I've had that inclination several times since 
 I recovered from my stupor. Tradition and instinct and 
 vanity are strong. I'll have to ask you to be a little 
 careful what you say to me not for your own sake but for 
 mine. I have some emotional dynamite in my nature. I 
 don't wish it to be set off. To mention only one thing, 
 there's Winchie to be thought of. I have no desire to 
 punish you. I feel too human myself, to play the part of 
 judge or executioner. But, most of all, I'm determined that 
 Winchie shall never know which means that the world 
 must never know." 
 
 Her clenched hands relaxed as she drew the first free 
 breath since Lizzie told her where he had gone. Now, she 
 felt she could face him for the struggle for Winchie on less 
 unequal terms not on equal terms, for he had the power 
 to take Winchie away from her had the power and 
 How could she prevent his using it? 
 
 " But when you came into the laboratory this morning 
 as if nothing had happened," he proceeded, " you showed 
 that you misunderstood me." He looked away reflectively. 
 " I don't know just how I restrained myself." 
 
 " You were mistaken," said she. " I went because it's 
 been my habit to go. I went just as you did." 
 
 394
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 He fixed his gaze upon her, danger in it. " You count 
 too much on your success in deceiving me thus far," he 
 said. " I must ask you not to do so not to try to deceive 
 me. Do you suppose I don't know now why you've been 
 coming to the laboratory ? " 
 
 His menacing gaze did not daunt her. She met it 
 fearlessly. " That was the reason for a while at first. 
 But for a long time I've been going because I liked the 
 work." 
 
 He studied her with those eyes that saw into every- 
 thing, once they were focused properly. " I beg your par- 
 don," he said with formal courtesy. " It's true you couldn't 
 have worked so well if you hadn't liked the work." 
 
 " I've loved it." And her tone put her sincerity beyond 
 question. 
 
 He glanced away. After a pause he said, " To go to 
 the point the future. I thought at first that I'd decide 
 alone what should be done. Then it seemed to me I hadn't 
 the right to act about Winchie without at least finding 
 out what your ideas were." 
 
 He waited long; she did not speak. 
 
 " You feel, I suppose," he said gently, " that you've 
 forfeited the right to speak." 
 
 She did not venture to contradict him. Anything she 
 would say, however guarded, might anger him and Win- 
 chie was at stake. 
 
 " As I told you last night, I know you are somehow 
 not a bad woman. Until yesterday, I'd have said there 
 were just two classes of women the good and the bad. 
 But I'd also have said that I'd have killed both you and 
 him. I find I've got to revise many ideas I had. Just 
 how, I don't know. I'm realizing in regard to my grand- 
 father what I've long realized about everything else 
 
 395
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 that nothing from the past is trustworthy. The wis- 
 dom of yesterday is the folly of to-day." He roused 
 himself from his half abstraction, said, " So you 
 need not be afraid to speak out whatever is in your 
 mind." 
 
 On impulse of response to this breadth an impulse that 
 was yet, perhaps, not without quick feminine wit to see 
 and seize advantage she said, " You make me feel that I 
 can trust to your sense of justice." 
 
 He smiled satirically. " I see you still don't under- 
 stand. You fancy I'm more than human because I don't 
 act as if I were less than human. I know you are a woman, 
 but women have been given mind enough to distinguish 
 between right and wrong, between honor and dishonor. 
 And Is it necessary that I give its plain name to what 
 you've done to what you are ? " 
 
 " No," she said in a suffocating voice. Only her boy 
 was saving her from bursting out. 
 
 " Then don't try to cajole me with talk about my 
 sense of justice. What do you ask? " 
 
 All in an instant whether because her natural bent was 
 for the frank and courageous or because instinct told her 
 it was the only hopeful course with him she resolved to 
 act as she felt, to speak her thoughts. " What do I ask ? " 
 -she repeated. " First, that you stop posing." 
 
 He flushed. 
 
 "If you really mean," she hastened on, " that you're 
 acting as you have thus far because it's the right way to 
 act, because the way men usually act is wrong and de- 
 grades them, why, you'll stop trying to convince me that 
 you're giving a wonderful exhibition of gracious gener- 
 osity." 
 
 " I had no such intention." 
 396
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Then why do you treat me as if I were an object of 
 charity? " 
 
 " You can hardly expect me to treat you as if you had 
 done something noble." 
 
 " You say I'm not a bad woman." 
 
 They looked at each other in silence. " No, you are 
 not," he said. " You have acted like a bad woman, but you 
 are not a bad woman." 
 
 " Then," she went on slowly, never taking her grave, 
 earnest eyes from his, " I want you to ask yourself how 
 it happens that the girl who, you said last night, was good, 
 the girl who loved you when she married you, has become 
 the woman you are condemning? " 
 
 A long silence. He looked away, looked again and his 
 gaze remained fixed upon her face. Then, in a low, hesi- 
 tating voice : " Well how did it happen ? " 
 
 " Because you did not love me." 
 
 " You know better than that," he cried. " I've never 
 given any woman but you a thought. I've never " He 
 broke off abruptly, grew angry. " But you're simply 
 trying to improve your position by putting me on 
 the defensive. And I ask you again not to goad 
 me ' 
 
 " Because you did not love me," she repeated. " Your 
 anger shows that you are trying to deny the truth to 
 yourself. You married me on an impulse of passion. Oh, 
 you had the usual romantic deceptive names for it the 
 words that make the man feel spiritual and tickle the girl's 
 vanity. But you've shown what it really was by giving 
 me only an incidental carnal thought now and then. 
 That's been our married life." 
 
 " Why did you not tell me you had these false, unjust 
 ideas ? " 
 
 26 397
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 "But they're not false, not unjust/' she rejoined. 
 " What do you know of me except my outside ? What's 
 my mind like? What's my heart like? What do I, a 
 human being like yourself, think and feel? You don't 
 know. You've lived on your grandfather's pompous cld- 
 fashioned ideal that lust is love, if the preacher has chris- 
 tened it that a woman's whole life is the good pleasure of 
 her husband's various appetites." 
 
 She paused for breath. She was not so carried away 
 by the tempest of her emotions that she did not note that 
 he was listening and thinking. He presently said : " Even, 
 so, how does that excuse you? you, the mother of 
 Winchie." 
 
 She paled, and her hands clasped convulsively in her 
 lap. But she went boldly on. " I had a heart and a mind, 
 like you. How could a human being live the life you 
 assigned me? When I pleaded for a share in your life 
 you refused. When I begged for freedom you refused. 
 What I did was my compromise between the woman and 
 the mother. A mother isn't less a woman, Richard, but 
 more." 
 
 He rose in his excitement; for, his keen mind pene- 
 trated to her purpose. " You want your freedom and you 
 want my son ! " he cried. 
 
 Her gaze was steady but her deep voice trembled as 
 she answered, " I want my freedom and I want my child 
 the child I brought into the world the child I've watched 
 over from birth. Be fair be just, Richard. What have 
 you done for him except provide the home the law would 
 have compelled ? You've amused yourself playing with him 
 a few minutes now and then. You've asked me to buy him 
 a present now and then. And never even inquired whether 
 I'd done it. Do you know his birthday? Do you know how 
 
 398
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 old he is? Do you know anything about him? Why then 
 do you call him your son ? " 
 
 He had been in such struggle with his fury that he was 
 unable to check her torrent of half-defiant half-piteous 
 appeal. He now mastered himself sufficiently to say, 
 " How dare you talk to me like this ? " 
 
 " Because/' replied she, quick as a flash, " I respect 
 your intelligence, even if you don't respect mine. You 
 asked me to speak freely. I've done it. Would you have 
 preferred me to lie to you? " 
 
 He walked away from her to the edge of the lake, im- 
 mediately returned and sat again at the other end of the 
 bench. He eyed her passive figure hands quiet in her lap, 
 gaze upon the town across the lake. Her face was quiet, 
 but all the intelligence and character which her gayety and 
 small stature and young loveliness veiled from unobservant 
 eyes were clearly revealed now. " It's a succession of blows, 
 these discoveries that you are so different from what I im- 
 agined," said he. With bitter reproach, " When I think 
 how I exalted, how I idealized you ! " 
 
 " Did I ask you to do it? Did I tempt you by hypoc- 
 risy? . . . Whenever I'd try to show you what I was, 
 didn't you stop me or refuse to listen ? And is it true that 
 you idealized me? Is woman as mere female mere flesh 
 an ideal? " 
 
 " I have told you " 
 
 " But," she interrupted appealingly, suddenly all ani- 
 mation, " you spoke without thinking. Think of me as 
 you'd think of one of your problems of chemistry. Don't 
 let your grandfather do your thinking or the hypocritical 
 world or the shallow people round us." 
 
 He was silent. Presently he rose to pace the retaining 
 wall. As she watched him there was no outward sign of 
 
 399
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 the dread that was licking at her heart like a flame at living 
 flesh. " And what of me ? " he said, wheeling abruptly 
 upon her. " You say it was my fault that you did what 
 you've done. Do you mean to tell me you think you're not 
 to blame at all? " 
 
 " No, I don't think that/' she answered. " If I'd been 
 brought up brave and independent, instead of to be a cow- 
 ardly dependent Oh, the crime of it ! To take a being 
 with a mind and a heart and, simply because it's female 
 instead of male, to bring it up so that it's unfit really to 
 live to forbid it to live to make it afraid to live ! If I'd 
 been brave I'd have spoken out frankly. I'd have demanded 
 my freedom I'd have taken it. As it was I broke my 
 marriage promises as you broke yours. It was chiefly 
 your fault." And she went on, with flushed cheeks and 
 accusing eyes : " I don't say it because I wish to shirk, but 
 because I must tell the whole truth so that you won't do a 
 cruel injustice. You promised me love and care and you 
 gave me lust and neglect. We were joined in equal mar- 
 riage. You treated me much as if I were a slave you'd 
 bought. And I had to submit. For, I really was a kind 
 of slave, and I hadn't the courage and the skill to go out 
 and make my own living and anyhow, you could and would 
 have taken Winchie away from me, if I'd tried to do it. 
 Isn't that so?" 
 
 She saw that he was impressed. Again he reflected a 
 long time pacing up and down the wall. When he turned 
 toward her once more he said: " But listen while I state 
 plainly what you ask. You ask me to reward your treach- 
 ery by letting you marry the man who betrayed me and 
 you cap it by asking me to let you make my son his ! " 
 
 ' No, Richard," she protested. " I simply ask you to 
 let me keep my child on any condition you make. I'll 
 
 400
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 promise not to see him. I'll take Winchie and live on the 
 farm with my people until he's old enough to go away to 
 school. I know the law puts me at your mercy. But I 
 don't believe you'll use your power to crush me." She was 
 choking, was fighting back the tears. 
 
 He turned to the retaining wall, gazed into the water 
 until she should fight down the evidences of weakness which 
 he could not but see she was ashamed of. When he joined 
 her again, it was to say in a voice that reassured her: " I 
 want to do what's best for us all especially for Winchie. 
 It's very difficult. . . . When I think of the misery I might 
 have caused, if I had believed Nanny and hadn't had time 
 to reflect I must not act until I've seen every side 
 Winchie's yours mine " 
 
 The sound of the supper gong came floating across the 
 lawn. Courtney rose mechanically and in silence they re- 
 turned to the house. Helen and Winchie had enjoyed them- 
 selves at the Donaldsons, and told all about it. The 
 strain between Dick and Courtney passed unnoticed. When 
 Winchie went up, Courtney accompanied him. Toward ten 
 she left the book she had been pretending to read and sat 
 in the hammock on the balcony. The moon, huge and ruddy 
 through an opening among the boughs, poured its flood of 
 elfin light over lake and lawns and gardens. The soft 
 shadows, the vague vistas, the overpowering perfume of 
 honeysuckle and jasmine and rose combined to beguile her 
 out of all sense of reality. " I've been dreaming dream- 
 ing," she murmured. And what an incredible dream! No 
 man least of all Richard, the prejudiced, the domineering 
 would have acted so in real life. " A dream a dream." 
 It was impossible, this experience of hers that belied all 
 she had read, all she had been taught, about the relations 
 of men and women. She, a married woman, had taken a 
 
 401
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 j -* 
 
 lover and, instead of its degrading her, it had made hex 
 better than she had been when she thrust love out of her 
 life and tried to live by rule of duty to husband. And now 
 instead of her husband's killing her or of her killing her- 
 self or of any of the various kinds of violence prescribed 
 for such situations, her husband had acted like a civilized 
 human being, gently, considerately, at the dictates of hu- 
 manity and not at the dictates of vanity. And instead of 
 abysm below abysm of disaster and death in punishment for 
 religion's scarlet sin of sins for woman, there was prospect 
 of a life in which she could profit by the experience she 
 had gained. " A dream a dream." Or, was a new world 
 dawning ? a new way of living that made the old way seem 
 a grotesque carnival of the beast in man? 
 
 As she was dressing next morning, in came Winchie. 
 " Has papa gone away ? " he asked at the threshold. 
 
 She paused with the eye of her belt at the prong of its 
 buckle. " Why ? " said she. 
 
 " I don't know whether I dreamed it. I thought it was 
 so. I thought I waked up and there was papa kissing me. 
 And I thought it made me sad. And he said, ' Good-by, 
 Winchie. Take care of your mother and do what she says, 
 and don't forget me.' And I kissed him and said, ' Can't 
 Mamma Courtney and I go too ? ' And he said, ' No, dear/ 
 And I said, ' All right. Bring me a gun, like Charlie Don- 
 aldson's.' And then I fell asleep again." 
 
 In the mirror she saw him run to the door into the hall, 
 pick up a letter which had evidently been thrust through 
 the crack. She turned and held out her hand. He brought 
 it to her, spelling out the " Courtney " written on it as he 
 came. " Go take Aunt Helen down to breakfast," she said. 
 When he was gone, she opened the envelope and read : 
 
 402
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 ** The important point is Winchie. I am going away to try 
 to think it out. However, one thing is certain. There must be 
 a divorce. In a few days I shall send you a formal notice of 
 abandonment, and you will begin an action at once. Until we 
 are free perhaps so long as you are alone it is best that 
 Winchie stay with you. I leave him on one condition that 
 you keep him here, carrying on everything exactly as usual. 
 He must see no sign of change. 
 
 " Please let me know whether you accept. A line, in care of 
 my lawyers, James & Vandegrift, will reach me. 
 
 "R. V." 
 
 " So long as you are alone." Courtney felt as if the 
 air had suddenly changed from the leaden oppressiveness 
 of before the storm to the buoyant freshness afterwards. 
 With the paralyzing dread about Winchie removed, she 
 could think of the rest of the situation. She read the letter 
 again and again. The regularity of line and word, the pre- 
 cision of phrasing indicated a carefully copied final draft. 
 There was not the faintest clue to the feelings of the 
 writer. She recalled those last two talks with him. At 
 both she was in no condition to observe him, so absorbed 
 was she in the things immediately at issue. But now, as 
 she went over his words, looks, manner, she saw a person- 
 ality wholly different from the Richard Vaughan she had 
 known or had fancied she knew. That Richard Vaughan 
 really had no personality beyond a chemical intelligence, 
 was an abstraction like an algebraic formula. This Richard 
 Vaughan was a flesh-and-blood man; but what sort of a 
 man ? And his conduct toward her, did it not mean that he 
 had eliminated her as one empties out a test tube when the 
 experiment ends in failure? Did it not mean supreme 
 indifference? Yes it must be so. Still, no ordinary man, 
 
 403
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 however indifferent to wife and child, could act in such 
 circumstances so absolutely without personal vanity, with 
 such obvious determination to do nothing small or revenge- 
 ful. On any theory, there must be behind those curiously 
 unemotional lines a character big, generous, incapable of 
 meanness. 
 
 She looked at this newly revealed large personality, with 
 a depressing sense of her own contrasting smallness. In 
 the last few years of widening intelligence her sex vanity, 
 so diligently fostered throughout her childhood and girl- 
 hood, had received many a rude shock from within as well 
 as from without. But none so rude, so demolishing as this. 
 " He's a man really worth while," thought she. " And 
 women are too insignificant either to be loved by such a 
 man or to love him." 
 
 She had been bred in and to the American feminine 
 ideal the woman graciously deigning to permit some man 
 to support her in idleness; the man more than repaid by 
 the honor of being allowed to support her; whatever fur- 
 ther he might get, a voluntary largess from his royal guest, 
 to be given or withdrawn at her good pleasure. This delu- 
 sion was a distorted tradition from a bygone era an era 
 of conditions around the relations of the sexes that are for- 
 ever past. In that " woman's paradise " women were scarce 
 and men plenty ; and there was the constancy that is natural 
 in a narrow life of severe toil, with the intelligence too 
 little developed to be restless or critical, with the passions 
 undisputedly in the ascendant. This feminine tradition had 
 been dying hard, as delusions flattering to vanity, encour- 
 aging to laziness, ever do. She had tried to keep on be- 
 lieving the lies she heard and read everywhere especially 
 novelists and preachers dependent on unthinking women for 
 a living the romantic exaltation of woman's love as of 
 
 404
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 value star spaces beyond the value of man's love. She had 
 tried to suppress her sense of humor and to be impressed 
 when she heard women speak of kissing a man in reward 
 for some service as if one of their kisses made an arch- 
 angel's diadem, in comparison, a cheap bauble. She had 
 tried not to see how intelligent men scarcely restrained the 
 grin of insincerity as they poured out extravagances to some 
 woman whom their whimsical passions chanced to covet. 
 She had struggled against the disillusionizing thoughts 
 about her own sex's private opinion of itself that would 
 arise as she noted how often women treated lightly 
 the man who took them seriously and all but offered 
 themselves to him who winked as he bought or passed 
 on untempted or cynically inquired for the inside 
 price. 
 
 Step by step she had been thrust out into the truth that 
 the whole feminist cult was a colossal fiction, that in the 
 actualities of the life of this new era woman's value was 
 precisely like man's the usefulness of the particular com- 
 bination of mind and heart, intellect and character, that 
 made up the personality. She began to suspect that wom- 
 an's ability to sway man through his passion was more often 
 a handicap to her, and to him, than a help to either. She 
 began to realize that learning how to use that ability wisely 
 was the supreme hard problem the life of to-day set for 
 woman to solve or perish. While passion sometimes had 
 made one man for a moment slave to some one woman, or 
 a few men slaves to any woman, it had through all time 
 made womankind slave to mankind. And in the new era, 
 while the slave was still willing, the master was becoming 
 weary, was demanding something less burdensome, more 
 companionable. 
 
 As she stood at the bureau, buckle still unfastened, eyes 
 405
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and mind upon those few calm, precisely penned lines of 
 Dick's, there came a thought that dealt a deathblow to her 
 long dying feminine folie de grandeur. While it was true 
 she had not sought nor wished Dick's interest of any kind, 
 the fact remained that he, after living in daily contact with 
 her for six years, had been so little affected by her per- 
 sonality that he was letting her go without any sign of emo- 
 tion. " But I am as indifferent to him as he to me," she 
 urged upon herself in hope of some slight consolation. She 
 instantly remembered that it was he, not she, who had be- 
 gun the indifference. And then came the stinging, blood- 
 heating recollection that he had used at his pleasure the 
 only part of her that had been able to impress him as valu- 
 able to a man of purpose and achievement. Nor could she 
 dismiss him with a contemptuous " low minded and un- 
 worthy," for she knew he was neither. Squirm how she 
 would, she could not get away from the humiliating fact 
 " six years of me, and not even enough physical value 
 to make his jealousy for a single moment triumph over 
 his sense of self-respect ! " 
 
 Winchie had finished breakfast and was playing with 
 his wagon on the veranda. Helen was still at table. " Has 
 Mr. Gallatin gone East with Dick? " she inquired, turning 
 rosy red. 
 
 " No," replied Courtney, not noting Helen's color. If 
 she had, she would have suspected nothing. When Helen 
 came home in good spirits from that visit to Saint X, after 
 the Chicago shopping trip, and was no longer ill at ease 
 with Basil, Courtney eager, as we all are, to seize the first 
 pretext to be relieved of a weight upon conscience assumed 
 that she had got completely over her fancy. As for Basil, 
 Courtney trusted him absolutely. 
 
 "But he's away, isn't he?" persisted Helen, after a 
 406
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 pause. " Lizzie tells me his rooms haven't been disturbed 
 for two nights." 
 
 " He went day before yesterday, I believe," said Court- 
 ney. "Did you see Richard this morning?" 
 
 " Just a minute. He was hurrying for the train when 
 I came down." 
 
 " I thought he didn't look very well, last night," pur- 
 sued Courtney. 
 
 Helen, absorbed in her own agitating thoughts, failed 
 to respond to this lead; so she put the question direct. 
 " How did he look this morning? " 
 
 " About as usual," replied Helen. " I didn't notice any 
 change. He had on that new gray suit. It's very becom- 
 ing. When's he coming back ? " 
 
 Courtney seemed not to have heard. " He forgot to 
 give me his address. Did he leave it with you ? " 
 
 " The Willard in Washington, then the Astor in New 
 York." 
 
 " It may be I'll want to write him or something." 
 
 " I should think so ! " cried Helen. " You and he write 
 every day, don't you ? " 
 
 " Not to each other/' said Courtney dryly. " We never 
 did establish the daily letter. That's one of the dreariest 
 farces in married life. It belongs to the kind of people 
 who think they're happy because they're too stupid or too 
 bored to quarrel." 
 
 When she had eaten the tip end of a roll and drunk a 
 little coffee, she went out on the veranda, sent Winchie to 
 the lawn and asked Helen to sit with her at the western 
 end where no one could hear or overhear. " You asked me 
 when Richard was coming back," she began. 
 
 " It was simply a chance question," apologized Helen. 
 
 " He's not coming back." 
 
 407
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Not corning back ! " echoed Helen. " You're going to 
 move East? " 
 
 The emerald eyes met Helen's excited glance placidly. 
 " We are going to get a divorce/' she said. 
 
 Helen's big brown eyes opened wide. With lips ajar 
 she stared at Courtney. Then she gave a little laugh that 
 sounded as if the shock had unbalanced her mind and re- 
 duced her to imbecility. " A divorce," she murmured 
 feebly. 
 
 " We both wish to be free," continued Courtney, talk- 
 ing in the matter-of-fact way that was the surest preven- 
 tive of hysteria in herself or in Helen. " So, he's gone 
 away. I'll stay here a while, then But I haven't made 
 any plans. There's plenty of time." 
 
 A long silence, Helen gazing at Courtney, at Winchie 
 racing along the paths with his red-striped wagon, at Court- 
 ney again, at trees and lake, as if she doubted the reality 
 of all things. " I don't know what to say ! " she exclaimed 
 at last. 
 
 " Naturally," replied Courtney, " since there's nothing 
 to say." 
 
 "I can't believe it!" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " There aren't two people better suited to each other. 
 Why, you never quarreled." 
 
 " That's it. I love contention. He wouldn't give it to 
 me. So pop goes the weasel." 
 
 " How can you ! When your heart must be breaking." 
 Helen put aside her stupefaction and brought the tears to 
 her soft brown eyes in tardy conformity to the etiquette for 
 nearest female friend on such occasions. 
 
 " Now, dear, please don't cry. You know that I know 
 how easy it is for women to cry, and how little it means." 
 
 408
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Helen hastily dried her eyes. " Oh, dear ! It must be 
 fixed up ! " she said in a more natural tone, genuinely sym- 
 pathetic and friendly. " He doesn't mean it. I'm sure he 
 doesn't." 
 
 Courtney laughed rather disagreeably. Helen was 
 confirming her own newly formed, anything but exalted 
 opinion of herself as a human value. " I suppose it'll never 
 for an instant occur to anyone that I might be the discon- 
 tented one." 
 
 " Well, you know, yourself, Courtney," stammered Hel- 
 en, " it doesn't seem likely a woman'd give up a good hus- 
 band and a good home " 
 
 Courtney's arresting smile was bitterly ironic. " Indeed 
 it doesn't," assented she. " Give up what she married for? 
 Not unless she was sure of a better living. Men think they 
 marry for love but it's really to I'm not equal to say- 
 ipg why men marry. You can find the reason in Ben Frank- 
 lin's autobiography, if you care to look it up. As for us 
 women it's the living." 
 
 " It's not true of me ! " cried Helen, who had in all its 
 amusing, or exasperating, efflorescence the universal fem- 
 inine passion for drawing everything down to the personal, 
 for seeking a compliment to herself or a reflection upon her- 
 self in any and every remark addressed to her by man or 
 woman. " Poor as I am, I'm 
 
 " Never mind, dear," said Courtney with good-humored 
 raillery. " At your age I was talking the same way. 
 You'll find out some day that the hardest person in the 
 world to get acquainted with is your real self. Why, there 
 isn't one human being in ten million who'd know his real 
 self if they met in the street." She rose to inspect the 
 thick mat of morning-glories trellised up the end of the 
 veranda. " And most of us, if we were introduced to our 
 
 409
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 real selves, would refuse to speak to such low creatures 
 especially the romantic people." 
 
 " I know I'd not marry for anything but love ! " 
 
 Courtney, her back to Helen, was busy with the morn- 
 ing-glories. " Of course," said she. " One may eat because 
 one is fond of the dinner of the dishes, of the way it's 
 served, of the company, and so on, and so on. But what's 
 the real reason ? " She turned on Helen with a mocking 
 smile. " Why, because to live one must eat. That makes 
 the rest incidental. A sensible person tries to take the most 
 favorable view of the food he has to eat or go without. A 
 sensible woman does her best to love the man that asks her." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't say that sort of things, Courtney," 
 Helen cried. " I know illusions are illusions, but I want to 
 keep them." 
 
 Courtney's expression changed abruptly. The deep- 
 green eyes looked dreamily away. " If only one could keep 
 them ! " she said. " But one can't." She shook her head 
 sadly. " One can't." Then her face brightened. " My 
 dear, it's better to throw them away oneself and get per- 
 haps something better certainly something truer in place 
 of them. Sooner or later life will snatch them away, any- 
 how and leave one quite naked." She turned sad, mysteri- 
 ous eyes on the girl. " You don't know," she went on, 
 " what it has cost me, this being bred in illusions. Illu- 
 sions everywhere! Illusions for and about everything and 
 everybody! Oh, Helen Helen that's what's the matter 
 with us women. That's why we're such poor creatures 
 why we make such bad marriages, why we're such imper- 
 fect wives and mothers. We don't think. We purr or 
 scratch." 
 
 A long pause, then Helen sighed. " And I believed you 
 and Richard were happy ! " 
 
 410
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " No," replied Courtney, her smile mocking, but pain 
 in her eyes. " But we're going to be if we can get over 
 what our illusions have cost us and can set our feet on the 
 solid earth. No more lies ! And the biggest lie of all is 
 that lying can ever bring real happiness." She was stand- 
 ing in the long, open window. She thought a moment, then 
 said with an energy that frightened the girl: "And I'm 
 sick sick sick of perfumes that end in a stench ! " 
 
 That afternoon she sent an acceptance of Richard's 
 proposition a " line " as he had suggested: " Winchie and 
 I will stay on here until the divorce and, if you so wish, 
 so long as I am alone. I will keep Helen here, too." On 
 the fourth morning after the dispatch of this, there came 
 a letter from James & Vandegrift, inclosing one, unsealed, 
 from Richard. She read the inclosure first: 
 
 "MADAM: From this date I cease to be your husband. 
 You may take such legal action as this may suggest. 
 
 " RICHARD VAUGHAN." 
 
 ' She understood that Dick was simply meeting the legal 
 requirements. But, these curt words made her tremble, 
 made her skin burn, made her eyes sink with shame, though 
 she was alone. A few moments and she glanced at the ac- 
 companying note from the lawyers. This sentence in it 
 caught her eye : " As two years is the legal period in this 
 State in actions on the ground of abandonment, you will 
 observe that the date of Mr. Vaughan's letter enables you 
 shortly to begin suit." She took up Dick's letter, looked 
 at the date August 17th, two years before. Then in a 
 few weeks she could sue ; in a few weeks more, she would be 
 free. Free ! That charmed word had no spell of exulta- 
 
 411
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 tion for her. She sank down by the window with heart 
 suddenly faint and terror-stricken. She had been looking 
 forward to a long time in which to plan about Winchie, 
 about her future, about Basil. And she would have only a 
 few weeks. A few weeks and her whole future to be de- 
 cided and she without experience, without anyone she could 
 rely upon or even consult, without resources. 
 
 August 17th why had he chosen that date? With so 
 many serious things to think of, her mind kept swinging 
 back to that triviality why August 17th? All at once it 
 flashed upon her. August 17th that was the date when 
 Nanny had spied on her and Basil at the summerhouse. 
 She covered her face, and the blood surged in hot billows 
 against her scorching skin. 
 
 Helen came, crying: " Oh, there you are. Winchie wants 
 ice cream for supper. Don't you think Why, Courtney, 
 how solemn you look ! " 
 
 " And you would, too," said Courtney, " if your hair 
 had been falling out the way mine has lately." 
 
 " Don't be so foolish," reassured Helen. " You could 
 lose half of what you've got, and still have more than most 
 women. . . . Perhaps it's worry that's making it fall ? " 
 
 " I worry ? How absurd." 
 
 " No, I don't believe you ever do." 
 
 " Let's have the ice cream. Chocolate. And I feel 
 just like jelly rolL"
 
 XXVI 
 
 THE pause before the first decisive step toward freedom 
 and perhaps away from Winchie had shrunk to a day 
 less than two weeks. 
 
 It is mercifully not in human nature vividly to antici- 
 pate catastrophe. Death is the absolute certainty; yet no 
 living being can imagine himself dead. And it was any- 
 thing but certain that Dick would ever assert his legal right 
 and take away her child. In her anxiety about Winchie, 
 she had been giving much thought to Dick's character, 
 which would be the deciding factor. And she was surprised 
 at the knowledge of it she had unconsciously absorbed. Ex- 
 cept among fools who, whether they look within or with- 
 out, see nothing it is a commonplace of experience to dis- 
 cover that what we fancied we thought about a certain per- 
 son, or thing is precisely the opposite of what we really 
 think when compelled to interrogate ourselves honestly. 
 That is why the whole world can live and die by formulas 
 in which it has not the least actual belief. These discover- 
 ies of our self-ignorance always astonish us, no matter how 
 often they occur. Courtney had got many surprises of this 
 kind in the past two years; yet this find her intimate 
 knowledge of her " abstract " husband's character seemed 
 incredible. 
 
 It wasn't strange that she should know how he took his 
 coffee, his favorite brand of cigarettes and of whisky, that 
 he detested cold baths and would not wear underclothes with 
 silk in them, or, if it could possibly be avoided, starched 
 shirts that he hated low shoes and high collars. As a 
 27 413
 
 " dutiful wife " she had made it her chief business, after 
 Winchie, to see to her legal husband's material comfort, 
 so far as he would permit it. But how had she come by a 
 deep conviction of his honesty, of his truthfulness, of his 
 incapacity for meanness of any kind? Where had she got 
 her confidence in his sense of justice he who had alienated 
 her by his stubborn and tyrannical injustices to her? Why 
 did she summarily dismiss as absurd the suggestion that 
 his recent conduct was dictated merely by indifference to 
 her or selfish consideration for his own comfort? These 
 high ideas of him certainly did not date from their court- 
 ship and honeymoon; for, then she had no more interest 
 or discrimination as to character than the next young per- 
 son. There was no accounting for it. She simply found 
 that these beliefs were immovably lodged under the opin- 
 ion of him she had supposed was hers the opinion that 
 had made her love for Basil seem as right as if she had been 
 a girl. So, while she feared he would take Winchie away 
 from her, with a fear dark enough to shadow her days and 
 make many a night uneasy, she was always saying to her- 
 self believingly, " He could not do anything unjust." 
 
 One evening she fell into a somber mood. It wasn't so 
 clear as usual that Dick would see the to her obvious injus- 
 tice of separating mother and child. She left Helen, went 
 up and stole in to sit by Winchie's bed a habit she had 
 formed lately. She got so low spirited that, when she heard 
 Helen go along the hall toward the upstairs sitting room, 
 she slipped downstairs and out into the air to wander among 
 the flowers and beneath the scented trees. There was a 
 thin moon and one of those faint, soft, intermittent breezes 
 that give the disquieting yet fascinating sense of spirit com- 
 panionship. She strolled to the edge of the lake ; the fire- 
 flies seemed the eyes of the breeze spirits that were whis-
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 paring and friendlily touching her. She saw a boat with 
 a single occupant a few yards down the lake, close in shore. 
 Even as she glanced, a low voice Basil's came from the 
 boat: " Courtney may I come? " 
 
 She was not startled. Before the voice she had thought, 
 " Basil will probably be trying to see me before long." 
 She answered in the same undertone, " Helen may be look- 
 ing this way." 
 
 "If you sit on the bench down here, I can come to you. 
 The shadow's deep enough." 
 
 She hesitated, went to the bench he indicated. The 
 press of the immediate had been all but keeping him out of 
 her mind. But whenever she did think of him it was as her 
 lover. With a nature as tenacious as hers habit is not de- 
 throned in a day or demolished all at once by any convul- 
 sion however violent. Also, the more she suffered and the 
 lonelier she felt not a soul about to whom she could speak 
 or hint any part of what was harassing her the more ten- 
 der grew her thoughts of the man in whom she had invested, 
 so much. Throwing good love after bad is not a rare hu- 
 man weakness and Courtney was by no means certain in 
 those depressed days that her investment had been bad, 
 as such investments go in a world of human beings. 
 
 He soon had his boat opposite the bench, made it fast. 
 He sprang to her, seized her hands and was kissing them. 
 " No no. You mustn't," she protested, drawing away. 
 
 " Tell me all about it ! " he cried. " How I suffered till 
 I heard your voice on the telephone ! I was watching the 
 house with a glass all afternoon until dark. I was in the 
 boat, lying a few rods up there all night. And from dawn 
 I was across the lake watching with the glass again. So, 
 I knew everything was quiet. But until your voice came, 
 I was mad with dread though I had seen you, just like 
 
 415
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 your usual self, in the grounds and on the veranda hours 
 before. But tell me all about it." 
 
 " There's nothing to tell," said she. His recital had 
 seemed to her as if it were of something in which she had 
 neither part nor interest. 
 " He knows, doesn't he ? " 
 
 " Yes he knows." And there she stopped because she 
 never had discussed and never would discuss with anyone 
 what happened between her and her husband. 
 " What is he going to do? " 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " But Don't keep me in suspense, dear. 1$ he 
 going to get a divorce? " 
 " No. I'm to get it." 
 
 " Your voice is very queer. Aren't you glad? " 
 " I'm afraid about Winchie." 
 
 " Oh of course. Does he threaten to " Basil halted. 
 " No. But Basil, you must go." 
 " Go ? It's perfectly safe here." 
 
 " Yes. But I've no right to see you, after the way 
 he has acted until I'm free." All true enough; yet she 
 could not make her voice sound right to herself. " It isn't 
 seise and it isn't honorable," she ended haltingly. 
 
 She saw, or rather felt, him eying her somberly. " When 
 will you be free? " he asked in a constrained tone. 
 " In a few months I think." 
 
 " And then we shall marry at once." He said it in the 
 tone a man uses when he wishes to convince himself and 
 another that what he is saying is the matter of course. 
 She did not answer. 
 
 He laughed unpleasantly. " You don't seem overjoyed 
 at the prospect." 
 
 " I'm thinking of Winchie." 
 416
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Oh ! " A pause ; then he asked, " As soon as you've 
 got Winchie safely, we'll marry ? " 
 
 This was a question she had not faced alone, yet. She 
 was far from ready to face it with him. She found one 
 of those phrases that come easily and naturally to women, 
 ever compelled to be diplomatic. " If we both wish it 
 then." Lightly, " You see, as I'm escaping with reputa- 
 tion intact, you're not bound to marry me." 
 
 " Bound? " he exclaimed. " Courtney, please don't joke 
 about this." 
 
 " I'm quite serious though I don't act as funereally 
 as you do when you think you're serious." 
 
 " We love each other, and " 
 
 "Do we?" An impulse of honesty, of impatience at 
 her own yielding to the temptation to temporize forced her 
 to say it, " Do we, Basil? " 
 
 " Courtney, have you changed ? Can't you forgive me 
 for " 
 
 " It isn't that," she interrupted, and she thought she 
 was telling the truth. " Let's never speak of that. No 
 it's Could anyone go through what we have without 
 being sobered? " 
 
 " That's true. It has made me love you more intensely, 
 more earnestly than ever. What we've suffered has made 
 us like like the two pieces of metal the fire fuses into 
 one." 
 
 " That sounds nice. But is it so ? " 
 
 " You know it is ! " he cried angrily. 
 
 " No, I don't," she replied, as if she were weighing 
 every word. " I've made up my mind not to tell any more 
 lies, especially to myself. I don't feel as I used to feel. 
 There's some one between us." 
 
 " Vaughan ? " 
 
 417
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Yes. I've a sense of obligation to him. If you had 
 seen what I saw how far above the little men who go in 
 for cheap theatricals or act like mad dogs 
 
 To his sensitiveness it seemed for an instant that she 
 was hitting at him, was slyly reminding him of his own 
 conduct. But he soon felt that he was mistaken that 
 there was another reason why her words stung him. "It 
 sounds as if you were falling in love with him," he said 
 in a grotesque attempt at a voice of raillery. 
 
 " No/' replied she, and her voice satisfied him. " That 
 part of my life is over. It could no more be brought back 
 than last year's summer." 
 
 " Winter," he corrected. 
 
 " It wasn't all winter, to be fair," said she, and changed 
 the subject with, " But remember, you are free free as 
 I am. We shan't see each other or hear from each other 
 for a long time. It may be that you'll fall in love with 
 somebody else " 
 
 " Courtney, do you love me? . . . Look at me. An- 
 swer." 
 
 She continued to gaze out over the lake. " Honestly, 
 I do not know. Sometimes I think I do. Again I won- 
 der, did I love you or was I only in love with love? It's 
 so easy to fool oneself when one wants anything as much as 
 I wanted love." 
 
 "If you knew how you were hurting me, you'd not 
 say these things." 
 
 "Would you rather I lied to you? " she asked gently. 
 
 " Yes ! For, I love you and I can't live without you. 
 You've made yourself necessary to me. We must marry 
 as soon as you are free and have Winchie." 
 
 " Yes w e will marry, I suppose. There isn't anybody 
 so near to me." 
 
 418
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Except Winchie." 
 
 " Winchie is me." 
 
 " I understand/' he said. " It's beautiful. Ah, Court- 
 ney, we must marry as soon as we can." 
 
 " No. I must " She paused. 
 
 " Go on, dear. What is it that's to keep us apart ? " 
 
 " I must be independent as well as free." The truth 
 was out at last the truth her nature as a woman of shel- 
 tered breeding was always dodging, but which her intelli- 
 gence and pride were forcing her to face. " I must be 
 independent." 
 
 " There couldn't be any question of that kind between 
 us." 
 
 " There shan't be," replied she with energy that startled 
 him. 
 
 " I'll settle any amount you say on you. I'll make 
 myself your dependent if you wish." 
 
 She laughed in a sweet, tender way. Whatever his 
 faults and failings, he certainly was generous. " Basil ! " 
 she murmured. Then : " As if that would help matters. 
 Why, anything I got from you would only increase my 
 dependence. No, I must be really free so neither of us 
 could think for an instant I was your wife because I had 
 to be supported or you were my husband because you felt 
 I was helpless. We women have got to stop being canary 
 birds if we're to get real self-respect or real considera- 
 tion." 
 
 " What queer notions you do get," said he with man's 
 tolerant amusement at the fantasies of the women and the 
 children. " Think of wasting such a night and our few 
 minutes together discussing theories and sordid ones ! " 
 
 " Sordid ! Basil, we're made out of earth and we've got 
 to live on the ground. I'm done forever with the kind of 
 
 419
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 romance and idealism we were brought up on. I'm going 
 to build as high as I can, but I'm going to build on the 
 ground. No more cloud castles that vanish when the wind 
 changes. I'm going to use romance for decoration not 
 for building stone, and cakes for dessert, not in place of 
 bread." 
 
 He laughed appreciatively. " How clever you are ! 
 We'll get on beautifully," he said. " You're the sort of 
 woman that never bores a man or makes him feel like look- 
 ing about." 
 
 " Are you the sort of man that never bores a woman 
 or makes her feel like looking about? " 
 
 " That's not for me to say," answered he with a care- 
 less laugh. 
 
 " It doesn't strike you as important what a woman 
 might think about such matters, does it? " said she, good- 
 humored in her mockery. 
 
 " Oh, yes if the woman's you. But let's not bother 
 about such things. It seems such a waste of time. One 
 kiss ? " 
 
 She shook her head. " Not with Richard looking on." 
 
 " Do you rvant me to kiss you dear ? " he said pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 With a nervous glance toward the house she rose. 
 " Please ! " she said, in vague entreaty. " You must go." 
 
 " You haven't told me anything yet." He cast hur- 
 riedly about for some way to detain her. " There are your 
 plans for being independent." 
 
 " I haven't any." 
 
 " Do sit down. I'll not touch you again." 
 
 " It isn't that, Basil. It's for the same reason that I 
 didn't write and can't Hasn't what he's done pledged us 
 both to " 
 
 420
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Don't say any more, Courtney/' he interrupted ; for 
 he saw how profoundly in earnest she was, and respected 
 her for it. " You're right. I'm going." He took her 
 hand, pressed it. " Dear," he said, " do you know what it 
 was that nearly drove me insane after you sent me away? 
 As soon as I thought about it, I knew no harm would come 
 to you. He's neither a coward nor a beast. But I was 
 afraid you'd kill yourself." 
 
 " I never thought of it," laughed she. " I'm too healthy. 
 You ought to build your romance round some lady with 
 the morbid ideas that go with addled insides the kind 
 they write novels about only they call it soul." 
 
 He was amused in spite of himself. " It's lucky for 
 you," said he, " that you look like a romance. If you 
 didn't, your way of talking would discourage terribly." 
 
 " Is lying the only romance ? " said she. " Can't you 
 enjoy the perfume of a flower unless you make a silly pre- 
 tense that perfume and flower are a fairy queen and her 
 breath ? " 
 
 She went with him to the retaining wall, gave him her 
 hand, tried to respond to his loving pressure. He got into 
 the boat. His expression in that odorous, enchantment- 
 like dimness thrilled her. The feeling that he was going 
 leaving her to face the lowering future alone saddened 
 her, moved her to an emotion very like the love that had 
 so often agitated her in these very shadows. And when 
 he murmured, " Soon my love ! " she echoed " Soon ! " in 
 a voice melodious with the meaningless, impulsive senti- 
 ment of the moment. It sent him away believing. He 
 pushed off. She watched the boat glide deeper and deeper 
 into the shadow. A few seconds and the darkness had 
 effaced it. She went slowly up the lawn. Before she 
 reached the house, Winchie was again uppermost in her 
 
 421
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 thoughts; to think of Basil involved puzzling over too many 
 problems she was not yet ready to face. 
 
 That was one of the years when the warm weather stays 
 on and on; goes for a night, only to return with the morn- 
 ing sun and change the hoar frost on the grass into dew; 
 then in late October or later drifts languorously south- 
 ward through the dreamy haze of Indian summer. On an 
 afternoon midway of this second and sweeter, if sadder, 
 summer Courtney came out of her sitting room to the bal- 
 cony to rest a moment and to watch the sun set a dull 
 red globe like a vast conflagration of which the autumnal 
 mists were the smoke and steam. Winchie and Helen were 
 playing ball on the lawn, with Helen making great pre- 
 tense of being unable to catch or to hold Winchie's curves 
 and hard straights. Winchie, about to throw, dropped the 
 ball, jumped up and down clapping his hands, made a 
 dash for the veranda, crying " Papa ! Papa ! " Next she 
 saw Helen, in confusion, turn and go in the same direction, 
 her delicate skin paling and flushing by turns. 
 
 In the upstairs sitting room was the seamstress who 
 made a local journal of society gossip unnecessary; as the 
 divorce suit had been begun and was the chief local topic, 
 the less she saw and heard, the more what she'd circulate 
 would sound like pure invention. Courtney went along the 
 balcony to the hall window and entered there. Winchie 
 had just reached the top of the stairs. " Oh, mamma " he 
 began, all out of breath. 
 
 " Yes, I know," said she, laying her finger on her lips. 
 " Let's go down." 
 
 And holding him by the hand she descended. Richard 
 and Helen were in the lake-front doorway, Richard talking, 
 
 422
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Helen obviously nervous. Courtney advanced, her hand 
 extended. "How do you do?" said she with easy friend- 
 liness. 
 
 " No need to ask you that," replied Dick. " Or the 
 boy, either, How he has shot up ! " 
 
 " We've had a great summer and fall for growing 
 things," said Courtney. Then to Helen: "Don't let us 
 interrupt your game." 
 
 " Yes of course Come, Winchie," stammered 
 Helen. 
 
 " Just watch me pitch, father," cried Winchie. " Jim- 
 mie's taught me to curve." 
 
 " You don't say ! " exclaimed Dick with an interest 
 whose exaggeration roused no suspicion in the boy's breast. 
 
 While Richard was watching the exhibition with such 
 exclamations as " fine " " that's a soaker " " look out or 
 you'll do up your catcher/' Courtney was watching him. 
 She found no trace of the weary, tragedy-torn misanthrope 
 of song and story. Evidently Dick had been too busy with 
 other things to bother about himself. Instead of travel 
 stains, there was neatness and care and not a little fashion 
 in his apparel. Never had she seen him so well dressed 
 and in admirable taste from collar and tie to well-cut 
 tan boots. His hair was short the way it was becoming 
 to his long, strong face and finely shaped head. The face 
 was not so gaunt as in those years of close application, 
 especially the last two years when indigestion was giving 
 him its look of hunger and sallow ill temper. The cheeks 
 had filled out, had bronzed, and the blood was pouring 
 healthily along underneath. It was distinctly a happier 
 face, too. The eyes following Winchie's elaborate contor- 
 tions in imitation of the famous pitcher of the Wenona 
 Grays had an expression of aliveness and alertness that 
 
 423
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 meant interest in the world about him. He had been one 
 of those men of no age, like monks and convicts and pro- 
 fessional students. He was now a young man and a 
 handsome young man. 
 
 . When he turned away from the ball game, they went 
 to the eastern end of the veranda. She sat in the ham- 
 mock, he leaned on the broad arm of a veranda chair. 
 " Well," said he, by way of a beginning, " you see I'm 
 back." 
 
 " You've been abroad haven't you ? " 
 
 " Paris and Switzerland. I had a grand time. Fell 
 in with some English people and we did three passes to- 
 gether, and then rested and amused ourselves at St. Moritz. 
 Then to Paris. I never thought I'd care about eating, 
 but the Ritz seduced me. I think of nothing else. Then 
 London, to get myself outfitted. I needed it badly." 
 
 What he said sounded strange enough from him, from 
 Richard the abstraction, the embodied chemistry. The way 
 he said it was stupefying. There was lightness ; there was 
 the sparkle that bubbles to the surface of every look and 
 phrase of a person with a keen sense of humor. Richard 
 had plainly come to life while he was away. Said Court- 
 ney: " I suspect you've not worked very hard this summer 
 and fall." 
 
 " Work? " replied he, with a laugi. " Not I ! It was 
 a hard pull at first, the habit had become so strong. But 
 I determined I'd freshen myself up. Once I got away 
 where I could take an impartial look at things, I saw I 
 was not only not getting the right results by such stolid, 
 stupid grinding but was actually destroying my mind 
 was getting old and stale. So, I locked up the laboratory 
 I carry round inside me, and set out to learn to live to 
 learn to have a good time." 
 
 424
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " And you did ? " 
 
 " Once I found congenial people. At first I was afraid 
 I'd been stupid so long that I'd lost the power to enjoy. 
 But it came back." 
 
 As he talked Courtney's spirits went down and down. 
 Just why, she could not have told. She certainly wished 
 Eichard well, had no desire that he should be miserable 
 at least, no active desire though, of course, she was 
 human and would have found some satisfaction of vanity 
 in a Richard hard hit by the discovery that his domestic 
 life was in ruins. Still, this vanity of desire to be taken 
 tragically was not with her the passion it is in most men 
 and women. She was far more puzzled than piqued. She 
 could not understand how so serious, so proud a man as he 
 could dismiss a cataclysm thus lightly, no matter how 
 little he cared for her. She had pictured him suffering, 
 suffering intensely; these pictures had given her many a 
 self-reproachful pang, and of real pain too. Now 
 Looking at this robust, handsome, cheerful person, well fed 
 and well dressed, she felt she had been making a fool of 
 herself. 
 
 " Now that I come to examine you," he was saying, 
 " you don't look at all well." 
 
 It was a truth of which she had been uncomfortably, 
 conscious from her first glance at him. " You ought to 
 have gone away somewhere," he went on. " It's a bad 
 idea to stay in the same place, revolving the same set of 
 ideas too long. Mrs. Leamington taught me that. You'd 
 like her. Your height much your figure fairer skin, 
 though that clear healthy dead white a lot of really 
 beautiful black hair the kind with the gloss that's not 
 greasy. She certainly was interesting. I didn't even mind 
 her. love of money. She simply had to have it needed it 
 
 425
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 in her business of being always wonderfully dressed and 
 groomed to the last hair and the last button." 
 
 Richard paused to enjoy contemplating the protrait he 
 had painted. Courtney wished to hear more. " She was 
 in your party ? " 
 
 " She made most of the interest. She cured me of my 
 insanity for work gave me a wider view made me stop 
 being a vain ass, thinking always about my own little 
 ambitions and worries. There's a lot that doesn't attract 
 me in women of the world. They're extremely petty at 
 bottom, I find. But at least they do come nearer the truth 
 with their cynicism than we quiet people with our pre- 
 posterous egotism of solemnity." 
 
 Once more her vanity winced that he should fancy he 
 had to go to Europe and learn of a cynical mercenary of 
 an English woman what she herself had made the law and 
 gospel of her life for years. How feeble her impression 
 upon him had been! True, the only chance one has to 
 make an impression is in the beginning of acquaintance- 
 ship; and in their beginning she had been too inexperi- 
 enced, too captivated with romance too youthful to have 
 developed much personality. Still, all that did not change 
 the central fact she had been futile. 
 
 " How's the divorce coming on? " he asked abruptly. 
 
 Courtney laughed perhaps not so genuinely as it 
 sounded, but still with real humorous appreciation. " The 
 beautiful English woman a long silence then the ques- 
 tion about the divorce that's significant/' she explained. 
 
 " She's not the marrying kind," replied he, easily 
 enough. " She'll stay free as long as her looks and her 
 money hold out. Then she'll marry some rich chap and 
 go in for society. . . . She was an interesting woman a 
 specimen, so to speak. And I owe her a great deal. She 
 
 426
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 taught me a few very important things about myself and 
 about women. . . . What a fraud this so-called education 
 is. One half of fitting a man for life is to teach him to 
 know men, the other half is to teach him to know women. 
 And we actually are taught only about things and mostly 
 trifles or falsehoods as to them." 
 
 His manner demolished her suspicion. There might 
 have been some sort of an affair between him and this 
 English woman perhaps had been. If so, it was a closed 
 incident. " You asked about the divorce/' said she: " The 
 suit was begun, but it has gone over till the next term of 
 court." 
 
 " Was it my fault ? " he asked, apologetically. " I've 
 missed my mail for nearly two months." 
 
 Her hands, clasped in her lap, were white at the 
 knuckles. Her eyes, meeting his, had deep down an ex- 
 pression that also belied her calm manner and even voice. 
 " I didn't want to take the last steps until we had decided 
 about Winchie." 
 
 " Winchie," he said thoughtfully, his glance wandering 
 to the lawn. The boy and Helen were resting now, seated 
 at the edge of the lake. " There's where marriage differs 
 from other business. When it goes bankrupt, children are 
 assets that can't be liquidated. . . . What do you think 
 ought to be done ? " 
 
 " I admit you've got a share in him," replied she. " But 
 you can't help seeing that he belongs with his mother." 
 
 " I do see it," he declared. " If I took him, what could 
 I do with him? Helen'll marry before long. Then 
 Could there be anything worse for him than trusting him 
 to the care of strangers? . . . As for his traveling back 
 and forth between his mother's house and his father's 
 that's a farce that could only end in some sort of calamity 
 
 427
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 to his character. ... I don' know what to say. I know 
 I could trust you absolutely to protect him from any 
 possible unfortunate influences but " And there he 
 halted. 
 
 She saw he was expecting her to realize that he meant 
 the disadvantages of Basil as a stepfather. It was stupefy- 
 ing simply stupefying this calm attitude of his toward 
 such terrible things at least, they were things he had al- 
 ways regarded as terrible. 
 
 " Don't be so gloomy about it," said he, as if reading 
 her thoughts. " I find I can think a great deal more 
 effectively when I'm not trying to act like the best exam- 
 ples from fiction but am simply human and natural. Court- 
 ney, the world at least, the intelligent people in it have 
 outgrown the old, ignorant, swashbuckling sort of thing. 
 Of course, it still survives, and ignorant people and vain 
 people still try to act on the prescriptions of yesterday 
 and all the literature still pretends that they are valid. 
 But the truth is, men and women are getting enlightened. 
 And we you and I are doing, not what looks best, but 
 what is best. Winchie isn't a problem in a novel or a poem. 
 He's an actuality. And I see plainly his chances are bet- 
 ter with you in any circumstances than with me." To 
 make sure that she should understand, he repeated, " In 
 any circumstances." 
 
 Her eyes were full of tears. " Thank you," she said 
 humbly. " Thank you." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. " For what? For not 
 being a fool? " He swung round into the chair and leaned 
 toward her. " There are some things we've got to say to 
 each other. I went away to put off the saying until I was 
 sure just where I stood. I am sure now. Do you Shall 
 we begin ? " 
 
 428
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I wish to Lear whatever you wish to say," replied she. 
 " But is it necessary to say anything? " 
 
 He leaned back, lighted a cigarette, smoked in silence. 
 She again studied him. That changed expression the 
 tense, concentrated strain gone a sense of life, of attractive 
 possibilities in it other than chemistry, gave him a human- 
 ness, a reality he had not had for her even in their first 
 months of married life. " Perhaps you're right," said he, 
 rousing himself. "Why mull over the past? And our 
 futures lie in different directions." He noted the queer, 
 intent look in her eyes. "What's the matter? You seem 
 puzzled." 
 
 " Nothing. I Nothing." 
 
 " It's the change in me in my point of view isn't 
 it?" 
 
 " Your your mind certainly seems to have changed." 
 
 " Dropped its prejudices, rather," was his reply. 
 " There's a difference. A man's mind's himself. His 
 prejudices are more or less external can be sloughed off, 
 like clothes." 
 
 That was it, she now saw. He had got rid of those 
 prejudices. The dead hand of his grandfather was no 
 longer heavy upon him. This man, seated there before 
 her in the vividness of youth, was the real Richard 
 Vaughan. 
 
 " You used to tell me the truth about myself," he 
 went on reflectively. " I had never seriously thought 
 about women about the relations of men and women. 
 I simply accepted my grandfather as gospel on those 
 subjects. My crisis forced me to do some thinking and 
 I believe you'll do me the justice of admitting I never 
 would be stupid enough to act in a crisis without try- 
 ing to use the best mind I had. Well when I got away 
 28 429
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and thought I saw that the whole business was my 
 fault." 
 
 " No," protested she. " There was where I wronged 
 you. I blamed you myself a little but you most. That 
 was unjust. But let's not talk about it. The past is the 
 past. I wish to drop all of it except its lessons. They'll 
 be useful in the future." 
 
 " One thing more/' he said. " I want to say I'm glad 
 of what has happened." 
 
 She simply stared at him. 
 
 " That would sound strange, I suppose, to the mob in 
 the treadmill of conventionality/' he went on, apparently 
 not noting her expression. " But I'm grateful to to 
 whatever it was fate or chance or what you please for 
 my awakening. But for it, what'd have become of me? 
 Like so many men who try to be masters of their profes- 
 sion or business, I had let it become master of me. A 
 little longer, and I'd have been a dust-dry, routine plodder, 
 getting more and more useless every day. No wonder the 
 world advances so slowly. Just look at the musty, narrow 
 rotters who do the work. They specialize. They soon lose 
 touch with the whole. And their minds dwindle as their 
 natures and interests narrow." 
 
 ".You're not thinking of giving up your work!" she 
 exclaimed in dismay. 
 
 " I'm here to begin again," replied he, with his fine 
 look of energy and persistence. " But not in the old way. 
 Not month in and month out, like a hermit but with some 
 sanity and, I'm sure, with better results. That brings 
 me to my real reason for calling. I wished to ask if you 
 had any objection to my living and working at the shop." 
 As the color flamed into her face, he hurried on, " I'll keep 
 an independent establishment in every way and bind myself 
 
 430
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 not to disturb you. If you like, Helen can bring Winchie 
 down to see me from time to time but not unless you like." 
 
 " I'll take Winchie and go to father's/' said she, pain- 
 fully embarrassed. " I'd not have stopped on here, but 
 you'll remember you made it a condition " 
 
 " If you leave, I leave also," he rejoined. His manner 
 was emphatic, final. " I've no intention of intruding. 
 Please forget I said anything." He rose to leave. " I'm 
 going to move my laboratory to Chicago or New York. 
 A few months sooner will make no difference." 
 
 She insisted that she would go that she preferred to 
 go that going was entirely agreeable to her. But in 
 the end he convinced her he really wished her to keep on 
 at the house, to make Winchie feel it was his home and 
 would leave if she even talked of leaving. " I'll arrange 
 with Gerster's wife over at the farm to feed me and keep 
 the apartment in order. So, everything will go on just as 
 if I were a thousand miles away." 
 
 When he went like a caller after a pleasant hour she 
 was glad because she wished to be alone, free to shut her- 
 self in her room with the many strange things he had given 
 her to think about the many startling things. But just 
 as she got the seamstress off for home, in came Helen, 
 hoping that Courtney would talk of the amazing call, deter- 
 mined to talk of it herself, anyhow. " Forgive me for 
 asking, Courtney," said she. " But I simply must. You've 
 decided to give up the divorce, haven't you ? " 
 
 The emerald eyes looked amused astonishment. 
 " Why ? " she asked. 
 
 " You and he are just just as you always were." 
 
 " Indeed we're not ! " exclaimed she. " Absolutely dif- 
 ferent." 
 
 " But I never saw two people friendlier " 
 
 431
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " That's it. That's precisely it. Now that we've freed 
 each other, I can like him and he can like me." 
 
 Helen was not hearing. Suddenly she burst out : " Oh, 
 Courtney! Courtney! What will become of you! You'll 
 have no money for you're not asking alimony. You'll 
 only have to marry again." Courtney frowned at this frank 
 statement of the problem she was putting off. " You know 
 you'll have to marry again," pursued Helen, " and it isn't 
 likely you'll do as well. Men don't care for widows of any 
 kind least of all, grass widows. They want a fresh, 
 unspoiled woman." 
 
 Courtney's eyes danced. " The truth from Helen at 
 last ! " 
 
 But Helen was unabashed. Because she was taller and 
 graver than Courtney, she felt older and wiser. And be- 
 cause she loved Courtney, she felt she must do all in her 
 power to avert the impending catastrophe through this 
 divorce madness. " I do believe you've got no common 
 sense at all ! " she cried. " You talk wise enough some- 
 times. But when it comes to acting Courtney, women 
 brought up as we've been simply have to be supported. 
 And it's our right ! " 
 
 " Is it? " said Courtney. 
 
 " Aren't we ladies ? But you've never been poor. You 
 don't realize what you've got to face. You don't realize 
 it's your position as Richard's wife that makes everybody 
 act so sweetly and respectfully toward you and that makes 
 you feel secure." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do," said Courtney gravely. " I realize 
 it so keenly that I'm afraid of myself afraid I'll be 
 tempted to do something contemptible. When I married, 
 I had the excuse that I believed I loved and was loved 
 and it's the custom for a man to throw in support 
 
 432
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 with his love. But if I married again feeling as I 
 do I'd " She flung out her arms. " I don't want to 
 think about it!" she cried. "I'll not do it! I'll not 
 do it ! " 
 
 Helen could not understand. And she was glad she 
 couldn't, for she felt that such ideas, whatever they were, 
 did not make for feminine comfort. She had listened im- 
 patiently to Courtney. She now brought the conversation 
 back to the only point worth considering. " But you've got 
 to marry," said she. 
 
 " No ! " Courtney had the expression of fire and pur- 
 pose that makes a small person seem tall. " There's an 
 alternative. I can do for myself." 
 
 " Do what? " demanded Helen. She waited for a 
 reply in vain then went on : " What- could you do that 
 anybody would pay for? Besides you, a lady, couldn't 
 ask for work. You don't know how I suffered when I 
 thought I was going to have to do it. And you'd suffer 
 even more having occupied the position you have. What 
 a come down ! " 
 
 "Don't!" commanded Courtney. "Helen, you are 
 tempting me." 
 
 " I'm talking the sense to you that you've so often talked 
 to me," Helen insisted. " Unless we women have got 
 money of our own or a man with an income back of us, 
 we're I'd hate to confess the truth even to another 
 woman." 
 
 Courtney nodded slowly several times, then asked, 
 " Don't you think it ought to be changed? " 
 
 ' Xo ! " cried Helen vehemently. " It's what God in- 
 tended. The penalty of being a man is to have to work. 
 The penalty of being a lady, and refined and dainty and 
 untouched by low, vulgar things, is to have to be a de- 
 
 433
 
 pendent. And it's not such a heavy penalty,, either. Even 
 if one doesn't care much about the man, one isn't inflicted 
 with him all the time." 
 
 At these plain truths wrenched by loving anxiety from 
 the deepest and securest of hiding places, Courtney's eyes 
 danced. She'd have laughed outright, had not Helen been 
 so terribly in earnest Helen without a sense of humor. 
 However she did venture to say : " The chief equipments 
 of a lady are a stone instead of a heart and a hide instead 
 of a skin is that it? " 
 
 But Helen did not see the ironic comment on her 
 philosophy. " Well," she went on in her serious, stolid 
 way, " I don't want responsibility. And I like to take my 
 ease and to have to do only things it doesn't much matter 
 if they go undone. We women are different from men. 
 Our self-respect's in a different direction. . . . Dear, can't 
 I do something to help you?" 
 
 Courtney kissed her penitently. She always felt 
 ashamed after poking fun at Helen whose heart was so 
 genuinely good and kind. " Nothing, thanks. The divorce 
 must go on. You don't understand, Helen. Believe me, 
 if I knew that sheer misery was waiting for me, as soon 
 as I was free, I'd still go on." 
 
 " Let me talk to Richard. I can do it tactfully." 
 
 In her alarm at this Courtney caught hold of Helen. 
 " If you did such a thing, you'd be doing me the greatest 
 possible injury." 
 
 " Don't be afraid, dear. I'd not meddle. But " She 
 looked appealingly at Courtney " please, dear do 
 let me ! " 
 
 " Richard and I would both resent it equally." 
 
 " But what mill become of you ! " 
 
 Her tone was so forlorn that Courtney had to laugh. 
 434
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Why, I'm barely twenty-five and I know a lot about 
 several things and could learn more." 
 
 " Don't talk that way ! " cried Helen, tearful. " It 
 makes me shiver. It sounds so coarse and common." She 
 looked at Courtney as if doubtful of her sanity. " I can't 
 make you out. It isn't natural for a lady bred and born, 
 as j T ou are, to say such things." 
 
 " You can't believe a real lady could have ideas of self- 
 respect? Well, I'll admit they do seem out of place in 
 my head and give me awful sinkings at the heart. And " 
 There was a mocking smile round Courtney's lips, a far- 
 away look in her eyes " Sometimes I'm haunted by a 
 horrible dread that I'm merely bluffing." 
 
 Helen saw only the smile. " I'm sure you are, you dear, 
 sweet, fascinating child ! " cried she, greatly consoled and 
 cheered. 
 
 " Don't be too sure ! " warned Courtney, the smile 
 fading. 
 
 But Helen was delighted to see that she said it half 
 heartedly that some effect had been produced by the grew- 
 some reminders of the difference between independence as 
 a dream or a vague longing and independence in the grisly 
 reality of the working out.
 
 XXVII 
 
 AFTER a few days Courtney asked Helen to take Win- 
 chie to the laboratory. " You can arrange with Richard as 
 to future visits," she said. " And in talking with him and 
 with me please remember he and I don't exist for each 
 other. I can trust you ? " 
 
 " Yes/' presently came from Helen in so reluctant a 
 tone that Courtney congratulated herself on having thought 
 to exact the promise. 
 
 Winchie said little about his father at the supper table, 
 but a great deal about a streak of light his father had made" 
 for him with an electrical apparatus " clear across the 
 room, mamma real lightning only there wasn't any thun- 
 der just noise like when Jimmie snaps the whip fast." 
 Several times in the next three or four weeks she discovered 
 evidence of visits to the laboratory in remarks Winchie let 
 drop; for he said nothing direct, having somehow divined 
 that the visits were not to be talked about. But he had not 
 the faintest suspicion there was anything wrong between 
 his father and his mother. He had always been used to 
 their leading separate lives; the mere surface cleavage was 
 too unimportant to affect him, all-observant though he was, 
 with his natural mind which Courtney had not spoiled by 
 false education. And the parents .of the only children he 
 played with those along the shore were exceeding dis- 
 creet in discussing the divorce in the family circle. 
 
 In the first winter storm one of the maples near the 
 edge of the lake, about the oldest and finest tree on the 
 place, blew down and in its fall destroyed the summer- 
 
 436
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 house. Courtney was awakened by the resounding crash. 
 Before breakfast she, in short skirt and close-fitting jacket, 
 went to see and to decide what should be done. As she 
 reached the scene Dick in shaggy ulster and cap came from 
 behind the towering mass of wreckage. She could not be 
 certain whether his ease, so superior to hers, was due to his 
 having seen her coming and having got ready, or to abso- 
 lute indifference. " Jimmie told me what happened," ex- 
 plained he. " I came early, thinking I'd not be caught 
 trespassing." He looked sadly at the great tree, with its 
 enormous boughs sprawled upon the frozen surface of the 
 lake. " Jimmie and I," said he, " used to have a swing in 
 it that went out over the water. We used to dive from the 
 seatboard." 
 
 Courtney could see the swing go up and up, high as the 
 tree itself, then a daring boy release his hold and shoot 
 through the air, slim and straight, to plunge into the lake. 
 " You'd almost touch bottom away out where it's deepest 
 wouldn't you? " she said, her eyes sparkling. 
 
 " I've brought up mud in my hands from where it's 
 twenty feet deep." 
 
 They stood in silence, in the presence of the fallen giant 
 whose life had begun when the Indians trapping and fish- 
 ing there were getting from the far coast beyond the moun- 
 tains the first rumors of the great winged boats and the 
 white man. " It was a grand tree," she sighed. " I'll miss 
 it as I'd not miss many people I'm more or less fond of. 
 ... I remember that swing." 
 
 "You do?" 
 
 " One day my mother brought me along when she was 
 calling here. I must have been about the age Winchie is 
 now. I had on red shoes I remember because they hurt 
 terribly and I didn't dare show a sign for fear they'd be 
 
 437
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 taken away. You lured me out to play and put me in 
 the swing and made it go the limit." 
 
 " I remember perfectly now. That was you was it? " 
 
 " It was. It was," replied she. " You despised little 
 girls and thought you'd scare me to death." 
 
 " But I remember you were game. You didn't scream." 
 
 " I guess I was too badly frightened. Do you remem- 
 ber how mother shrieked when she saw from the window 
 what you were up to? " 
 
 " Do I ? The whipping father gave me beat the whole 
 business into me forever. I wasn't game. How I did 
 howl ! " 
 
 " I wish I'd heard ! " She shivered laughingty. " I 
 feel now how I was suffering when the swing was out over 
 the water and high up among the boughs." 
 
 Richard was looking at her curiously. " So, that was 
 you? " he said in an abstracted way. " You certainly didn't 
 look scared. . . . Helen tells me you're planning to go 
 East in the spring and study landscape gardening. . . . 
 I see you don't like her having told me. I assure you it 
 was my fault. I asked her point blank. She told me sim- 
 ply the one fact." 
 
 " It's not a secret," said Courtney, and she went on to 
 explain, as to an acquaintance who knew nothing of her 
 life, " I used to go to college up at Battle Field with a 
 girl named Narcisse Siersdorf. She's made quite a repu- 
 tation as an architect. We were good friends, and it 
 occurred to me I might get advice from her. She's 
 been wonderfully kind took an interest right away. 
 We're negotiating. I don't know what'll come of it. 
 I've sent her an account of things I've done, and some 
 pictures." 
 
 He looked at the slight, strong figure, at the small and 
 438
 
 delicate face, at the eyes so feminine yet for all that full 
 of character. "Are you in earnest? " he asked. 
 
 " I've got to be," replied she. 
 
 His expression showed how he was touched by her 
 air of sad thoughtfulness as she gazed across the glisten- 
 ing level of ice. " Not at all," said he. " While noth- 
 ing's been said about it, you must know that as Winchie's 
 mother " 
 
 She interrupted him with a laugh that made the color 
 flare into his face. " So, you thought I was hinting, did 
 you? I don't suppose you ever will be able to understand 
 a woman. No I don't hint." 
 
 " I didn't suspect " 
 
 " Be honest ! " 
 
 He hung his head like a foolish boy. 
 
 " As I was saying," she went on, " I've got to do some- 
 thing because, when I'm free, I want to feel free. Maybe 
 I'm flying in the face of nature, but I've a hankering 
 for the same sort of independence a man has not the 
 same, but the same sort. ... It isn't a bit nice, being 
 a woman if one wakens to the fact that she's in the 
 same market if in a higher grade stall with ' those 
 others.' " 
 
 He looked up with a frown. " That's not the way to 
 look at it," he protested with more than a touch of his old- 
 time dictatorial manner. 
 
 " It's the way I look at it," replied she, quietly. That 
 reminder of his tyranny, added to his unconsciously con- 
 temptuous suspicion that she was hinting for alimony, had 
 stirred all her latterly latent antagonism to him made her 
 doubt the sincerity or, rather, the thoroughness of the 
 change in him. She began to move away. " I must go tell 
 Jimmie what to do about this tree." 
 
 439
 
 " Please not just yet/' he said, red and embarrassed. 
 " I beg your pardon for taking that tone. And I'll admit 
 you're right, though I'd like to be able to deny it. Still, 
 it's not your fault that you were brought up in the custom- 
 ary way " 
 
 " I don't want to be reminded of that," she interrupted, 
 rather bitterly. " In spite of all I've been through and 
 of the certainty that unless I free myself, I'll have to go 
 through it again I'm having a constant fight against my 
 cowardice." Her face changed in an instant from grave to 
 gay. " I'm saying and doing all sorts of things to make 
 it impossible for me to back down. I guess telling you was 
 one of them." 
 
 " You're not going to make any move until spring 
 toward this architect friend, I mean? " 
 
 " I've no reason to think at least not much reason 
 that she'll take me." 
 
 " Meanwhile why not perfect yourself in the trade you 
 already almost know? " 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 " I'm going to pay a man a hundred and fifty dollars 
 a month to help me at the laboratory exactly the work you 
 did and he'll do it no better, if as well." 
 
 Courtney flushed with pleasure at this praise. " Real- 
 ly? " she said. " You mean that? " 
 
 His expression forewarned her he was about to touch 
 on the impossible subject. " I can't comprehend, now that 
 it's over," said he, " how I was such an ass as to stick to 
 the notion that women haven't brains when I had, right 
 before me, proof to the contrary." 
 
 " Meaning me ? " said she with amused eyes. 
 
 " Meaning you," replied he with a laugh. Then seri- 
 ously, "And if you'll let me say so, the reason I blame 
 
 440
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 myself for everything is, I've seen that my stupid ignorance 
 of you was at the bottom of it all." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders indifferently. " We were 
 both brought up very stupidly for marriage. But then 
 who isn't? No wonder marriage is successful only by 
 accident." 
 
 " What a confession the proverb is," said he, " that 
 people have to be married once, before they're fit to be 
 married." 
 
 " Well," said she, " at least we've had our experience, 
 and can be glad we got it young enough for it to be useful. 
 But I must get to work." And she nodded and went briskly 
 up the snow-drifted lawns. Not until afternoon, while she 
 was overseeing the sawing up of the tree, did his unfin- 
 ished offer come back to her. Had he left it unfinished 
 because she had not encouraged him to go on or because he 
 had repented of the impulse ? Probably the latter, she de- 
 cided ; at any rate, even if he had urged, she could not have 
 accepted. " He'd be sure to misunderstand. Men and 
 women always do misunderstand each other " She smiled 
 at herself " that is, they don't. They learn by experience 
 that there's always the motive behind, in everything that 
 crosses the sex line. He'd not realize this was an excep- 
 tion." There she mocked herself again. " At least, I think 
 it'd be an exception. I'm not quite sure I'd not be doing 
 it out of cowardice to get him where I could recover him 
 if I lost my nerve and had to. Our dependence makes us so 
 poor spirited that, though we know we don't want a certain 
 man, we like to have him where we could use him, ' in 
 case.' " 
 
 Several stormy days, with no communication between 
 house and laboratory. On the first bright afternoon, she 
 
 441
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 and Winchie were entering the grounds after a walk to 
 Wenona and back, through the still, dry air, charged with 
 sunbeams, air like a still, dry champagne, strong and subtle. 
 They came upon Dick clearing the snow from the direct 
 path between laboratory and gates. His trousers were 
 tucked into high boots and he was in flannel shirt sleeves. 
 As they or, rather, as Winchie paused, he leaned on his 
 shovel and laughed at the fun that is merrier than any 
 joke the fun of being healthily alive from center to far- 
 thest tip. The sunshine was brilliant on the unsullied 
 surface of the snow, on the ice-encased branches, and 
 on those three health-flushed faces. " Just been to 
 the doctor's, I suppose ? " said he to the boy who was 
 as ruddy as a rooster's comb, as smooth and hard as 
 marble. 
 
 " No," declared Winchie, taking him seriously, " I never 
 had a doctor in my life." 
 
 This was a good enough excuse. Dick and Courtney 
 became hilarious over Winchie's earnestness. As Winchie 
 had begun to play with the snow his father's labor had 
 piled high on either side of the reappearing path, Courtney 
 did not resist Dick's overtures toward conversation about 
 the skating, the air, the healthfulness of a hard winter, the 
 ravages of the storm throughout the neighborhood. " I 
 see," said he, " the old maple's gone. You did clear it up 
 in a hurry. There's not a sign of its ever having been in 
 existence or the summerhouse either." 
 
 At that the color poured into her cheeks the deeper, 
 fierier red of acute embarrassment. When he realized what 
 he had said which he instantly did he did not color but 
 became pale. " I'm glad it was destroyed," he said, " glad 
 not a trace of it remains anywhere. If I believed in 
 omens I'd look on the whole incident as a good omen the 
 
 442
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 landmark of the Vaughan home that seemed so strong and 
 wasn't the summerhouse that was a constant reminder 
 both gone and the place where they were is clear is ready 
 for the new and better things." 
 
 She was listening with her head low. " Thank you," 
 she said, in a choked voice. " Sometimes I think there isn't 
 another man in the world who'd have helped me as you 
 have." 
 
 " Don't you believe it," cried he, cheerfully. " Human 
 nature's a lot better than it pretends. Thank God, very 
 few of us are despicable enough to live up to our creeds and 
 our conventions. . . . Winchie, you didn't know you came 
 very near losing your father yesterday. He almost blew 
 himself up." 
 
 Winchie's eyes grew big. " I'd like to have seen," said 
 he, excitedly. " Jimmie says, when you do go, it'll be 
 straight up through the roof and high as the moon." 
 
 " It all came of my working without an assistant," Dick 
 explained to Courtney. " I've got one coming from Balti- 
 more, as I think I told you the other day. But he can't 
 get away just yet. I wish you'd consider my offer." 
 
 She felt no embarrassment. His tone prevented; it was 
 businesslike, and polite rather than friendly. 
 
 " I need some one badly some one I shan't have to 
 teach. You like the work. You need the experience. A 
 few weeks of the sort of thing I'd put you at now would 
 fit you for a place in a first-class laboratory." A little 
 constrainedly " I know why you hesitate. But I assure 
 you, that's foolish. What I'm proposing will not interfere 
 with with our plans for freeing each other. It's purely 
 business and good business for you as well as for me." 
 
 She looked directly at him for the first time. " You're 
 quite sure you'd not misunderstand? " 
 
 443
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Quite/' he assured her. 
 
 She still hesitated. " I want to accept/' she confessed, 
 " for business reasons. But I've an instinct against it." 
 
 He smiled with good-humored mockery. " A vanity, 
 you mean." 
 
 She colored guiltily, though she also was smiling. Her 
 nervous fingers were pulling the ice from a branch of a bush. 
 
 He noted that Winchie, rolling up a huge snowball, had 
 got safely out of hearing. " Just a vanity," he went on. 
 " Well pitch it overboard. I make you a business propo- 
 sition. I need you. You need the experience. I hope 
 you'll accept. I can well afford to pay you what I'll pay 
 Carter. He's tied up until January perhaps a little later. 
 If you'll accept, I can accomplish a lot this winter. If not, 
 I'll be nearly helpless." 
 
 Thus it naturally and easily and sensibly came about 
 that, a few months later, at the very moment when Judge 
 Vanosdol was signing the decree of divorce, Dick and Court- 
 ney were in the laboratory, their heads touching as they 
 bent over a big retort, heedless of the strong fumes rising 
 from its boiling and hissing contents. The heat subsided. 
 The compound slowly cleared a beautiful shade of green 
 instead of the black they hoped for and confidently ex- 
 pected. They looked dejectedly at each other; she felt 
 like weeping for his chagrin. 
 
 " What the devil is the matter ? " demanded he, glow- 
 ering at her. " Sure you didn't make a mistake ? " 
 
 Her nerves were on edge, as were his. " That's right! " 
 she said, tears in her eyes. " Suspect me." 
 
 " I'm not suspecting you," he retorted angrily. " Don't 
 drag your sex into work. You're not a woman here. We've 
 no time for poodle-dog politeness." 
 
 444
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I don't want politeness," cried she. " What did I say 
 that could possibly make you think I did ? " 
 
 " It was what you didn't say," replied he. " Why 
 didn't you answer back? Or throw the ladle at me? " 
 
 " I will next time." 
 
 And there they both laughed. 
 
 Now, she was free absolutely free and with money 
 enough of her own earning to get her and Winchie to New 
 York and to keep them for quite a while. And Narcisse 
 Siersdorf had written most encouraging comments on the 
 account of her efforts at landscape gardening and on the 
 accompanying photographs, and had offered her a clerk- 
 ship at twenty-five dollars a week " as a starter." Also, 
 Richard, as an earnest of his belief and his interest, had got 
 her an offer of a trial position at twenty dollars a week in 
 the laboratories of the American Coal Products Company 
 at Chicago. She was not only free; she was independent. 
 
 The morning after Narcisse's letter came she saw Rich- 
 ard eying her curiously several times, as if he were puzzling 
 over something but hesitated to question her. The fourth 
 or fifth time she caught him at it, she said: " What do you 
 want to ask rne ? Have I made a mistake ? " 
 
 " No no, indeed," protested he. " You don't make 
 mistakes." 
 
 He had been extremely polite, no matter how severely 
 his temper was tried, ever since the day of the little flare-up 
 over the failed experiment. And every day it pleased her 
 through and through, pleased and thrilled her, that his rea- 
 son was fear lest she, perfectly free to go, should resign 
 and quit, if he did not behave. 
 
 " Then," she went on to him, " why do you look at me 
 inquiringly? " 
 
 29 445
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " It's your manner," replied he. " You're acting very 
 differently to-day from what you ever did before." 
 
 While he was saying it she divined the reason the let- 
 ter from Narcisse. The offer from the Coal Products Com- 
 pany had come several weeks before ; but that had been got 
 for her. This position in New York was of her own getting. 
 And for the first time in her life she felt like a full-grown 
 personality capable of taking care of herself. Uncon- 
 sciously her whole outlook upon life changed; the change 
 disclosed itself in her expression, in her voice, in her man- 
 ner. She handed Richard her patent of nobility, the letter 
 from Narcisse; she watched his face as he read. But she 
 got no clue to his thoughts. As he gave back the letter 
 without comment she said: " I'm in the way to get rid of 
 the reason for a woman's so often wishing she'd been born 
 a man." 
 
 " I understand," said he, and turned away to gaze re- 
 flectively out of the window. 
 
 She went into the rear room to work there. Half an 
 hour later she returned, to find him still staring out over 
 the lake. " I've given him something more to think about," 
 said she to herself, with a sly smile at his back. " And it'll 
 do him good, if ever he starts out to marry again." Yet 
 somehow she was not fully satisfied that her guess covered 
 the whole of what he was thinking. He was extremely 
 puzzling, this polite, appreciative, carefully businesslike 
 Richard. 
 
 She was impatient to be gone. She wished to try in 
 longer flight the new wings of freedom and independence 
 she had grown. She felt confident they would sustain her ; 
 but she could not be sure until she tried. She had decided 
 for the Siersdorf offer. She liked the chemistry chiefly- 
 because, working with Richard at the explorations of hydro- 
 
 446
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 gen and nitrogen, she was moving toward a definite high 
 accomplishment the discovery of a source of happiness to 
 millions a cheap substitute for coal and wood that would 
 banish that horror of horrors, cold, from the lives of the 
 poor. But it would be quite another thing to work at 
 fabricating new shades of color in dyes, new commercial 
 uses for the by-products of coal; she would be descending 
 from scientist's helper to plodder for a living, from lieu- 
 tenant of a Columbus to mate on a tramp steamer. Not 
 so, if she went into the Siersdorf office. 
 
 There she would remain artist, worker with the fine tools 
 of the imagination. Also Basil's tastes lay in that direc- 
 tion. Fancy is not the air plant that idealists pretend. Its 
 flowers may be spiritual but its roots strike deep into the 
 physical. It may need the sun and the air of heaven, but 
 it needs the soil even more. In the soil it is born; by the 
 soil it chiefly lives. Courtney's fancy was the fancy of a 
 normal human being in whom all the emotions are healthy, 
 ardent, fully developed. It had no long or difficult task in 
 blurring into vagueness whatever marred her memory of her 
 and Basil's romance or at least in making the blemishes 
 for the time seem unimportant in presence of the rosy, hori- 
 zon-filling peak moments of their happiness. Once more, 
 from the quiet of her long lonely evenings hardly the less 
 solitary for Helen's rather monotonous company arose the 
 longings, the visions, the thrills. She felt that, in her young 
 inexperience, she had been too arrogant in her demands 
 upon life; she had asked more than she could possibly ex- 
 pect from a human love, more than she had any right to 
 expect. But now she was chastened ; her point of view was 
 less wildly romantic. What would they not be to each 
 other! once they were together and free from all con- 
 straint of moral doubts and conventional dreads. It was 
 
 447
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 only natural that in their life of stress passion should have 
 been uppermost, should have become dominant. It was hu- 
 man for Basil to feel that he was contending for even 
 physical possession of her and until there is physical pos- 
 session, love has no substantial ground to build upon. 
 
 She was eager to be off for New York, to establish her 
 independence, and then to begin her real life on the endur- 
 ing foundation of equality and comradeship brightened by 
 passion as a tree is brightened by its blossoms and their 
 perfume. But, eager though she was, she could not deny 
 her obligation to remain until Dick's assistant came. She 
 knew now that he had spoken the literal truth when he said 
 he needed her badly. It would be a return for his broad- 
 minded humanity quite beneath her, to leave him in the 
 lurch especially when carrying on his particular line of 
 experiments meant danger if he had to do all the work 
 alone. She must stay until Carter came. And she was glad 
 of this opportunity to show him that she did appreciate 
 what he had done for her, even though he had done it not 
 for her sake but for his own in obedience to his sense of 
 the decent and the self-respecting. 
 
 So, she worked steadily and interestedly on, just as if 
 the divorce had not yet been entered upon the records of 
 the court as valid and final. She found an unexpected addi- 
 tional source of interest in studying her former husband as 
 an individuality. It is always a novel sensation for a woman 
 with any claim to physical charm to find herself regarded 
 impersonally sexlessly. That is usually anything but an 
 agreeable sensation ; every woman feels the chagrin of fail- 
 ure when she sees that her charms do not charm this, 
 though she might be disdainful of and resentful of overt 
 tribute to her physical self. Courtney, however, did not in 
 those peculiar circumstances feel sufficiently piqued to try 
 
 448
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 to assert woman's ancient right of dominion over the senses 
 of man. She could enjoy the novelty of being treated like 
 a man, and could study calmly the man who was thus un- 
 mindful of what is habitually uppermost in any strongly 
 masculine nature. 
 
 At work with Richard alone, she was at last getting 
 acquainted with him. From the beginning of each day at 
 the laboratory to the end, she was receiving a series of 
 vivid impressions of a really superior man competent, in- 
 telligent, resourceful. He thought about himself never; he 
 could not be daunted or baffled. His broad-mindedness was 
 no longer marred by the ser. narrowness that had made 
 appreciation of it impossible to her, to any woman of her 
 sort. He knew so much; he carried knowledge so lightly. 
 It seemed to her, after much experience of " learned " men, 
 that knowledge was chiefly power to bore. His knowledge 
 was like a rapier of finest steel skilfully used in his duel 
 with his mysterious masked combatant, the alchemist on 
 guard at nature's secretest laboratory. She felt that he was 
 a man out of a million ; yet she had no sense of embarrassed 
 inferiority. This general in the army of exact science, which 
 is the true army of progress, was a democrat, marched 
 with the soldiers afoot, was their equal. " If any woman 
 ever does fall in love with him," thought she, " she will 
 worship him. But he's too impersonal. We women 
 want something smaller not a sun star, but a fire on a 
 hearth." 
 
 Now that he was nothing but fellow worker to her, she 
 could look at him with the friendly impartiality of human 
 being for fellow being. Piecing together what she knew 
 of his masculine side and what she could now see latent in 
 those strong features, those intense nervous energies, she 
 felt that somewhere there might be a woman equal to con- 
 
 449
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 centrating upon herself what went altogether into the duel 
 for nature's secrets. " And unless she were a great woman, 
 he would hum her up like a match tossed into a furnace." 
 
 This latent capacity of his for love fascinated her. 
 There were even moments when it tempted her was like 
 a challenge taunting her womanhood as confessedly inef- 
 fectual. But at the laboratory she was too busy to linger 
 over such thoughts ; and in her other hours, there was house- 
 hold routine to compel her attention and the plans for the 
 great attempt. 
 
 At last Carter wrote that he would positively come in 
 two weeks. " You've been splendidly patient with me," 
 Dick said as he showed her the letter. " I've seen that you 
 were eager to be gone." As she murmured a polite denial, 
 he repeated, " Yes, eager but not in the way to make me 
 uncomfortable over my selfishness." 
 
 " I've rarely thought of it while I was down here," 
 said she, " It was only in the evenings and when I hap- 
 pened not to sleep very well." 
 
 " It was natural you should be upset," sympathized 
 Dick. " Who wouldn't be, standing on the edge of the icy 
 plunge so long? But you'll like it and everything'll come 
 out all right. I've discovered that you have a lot of com- 
 mon sense and that's more than I can say for most men 
 including myself." 
 
 Another month, at the farthest, and she would be in 
 New York, would have made the great beginning! . . . 
 Should she send Basil word as soon as she arrived? Should 
 she wait until she got her bearings ? She saw it would be 
 wiser to wait. Everything depended on beginnings right 
 beginnings and it would be the right beginning for Basil 
 to find her as obviously master of her own destiny, as free 
 to withhold or to give, as was he himself. Also Coming 
 
 450
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 from a small town in the West, she could not but feel 
 strange in New York, and look provincial. " Yes, I'll 
 wait," she decided, the instant this last reason dropped 
 into the balance. For, she had not the vanity that under- 
 estimates the matter of looks and neglects the fact that 
 everyone is at a distinct disadvantage in a strange envi- 
 ronment. 
 
 One morning, about a week later, there came a ring at 
 the telephone which was in Dick's part of the laboratory. 
 As these calls were always for her, she rose from her case 
 in the back room and went to answer. It was Mazie 
 " The hotel over to Fenton wants to speak to you, 
 ma'am." 
 
 " Connect them, please," said Courtney, hoping her 
 voice had betrayed and would betray nothing to the man 
 behind her. 
 
 Soon came an operator's voice, and then Basil's. " I 
 must see you ! " 
 
 " Yes," she said. " I'll come." 
 
 " In your auto runabout on the Fenton road to Tippe- 
 canoe at two this afternoon. Will that do ? " 
 
 " Yes. I'll be there. Good-by." And she rang off. 
 
 She turned from the telephone with a glance at Richard. 
 He was busy with the blowpipe no doubt had not even 
 heard. As she was leaving to go up to the house for din- 
 ner, she said to him: " I'll not be back this afternoon." 
 
 " All right," replied he. " I sha'n't need you till to- 
 morrow morning." 
 
 " I'll be here, then, of course." 
 
 He turned on the high stool. " You know," said he, with 
 only the faintest suggestion of the unusual in face and 
 voice, " there's no reason why you shouldn't see anyone you 
 wish, at your own house." 
 
 451
 
 She flushed guiltily. But her composure instantly re- 
 turned, and she went on toward the door, casting about for 
 a reply. 
 
 " I've no desire to interfere," continued he. " But 
 Jimmie went to Fenton on an errand yesterday, and he 
 happened to tell me he saw at a distance a man who looked 
 enough like Gallatin to be his twin. If you should be seen 
 you know how they gossip here. You could send the boy 
 and Helen over to Wenona for the afternoon. Pardon my 
 suggesting these things. It occurred to me you might not 
 realize how closely you're watched by everybody, since the 
 divorce." 
 
 She stood in the outer doorway, trying to conceal her 
 agitation and trying to reflect. 
 
 " I appreciate you'd rather see him elsewhere and I'd 
 prefer you did, too. But your son has his rights don't 
 you think ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Courtney. " I'll see him at the house." 
 
 " Thank you," said Richard. And he resumed his care- 
 ful mixing of two powders in a small brass mortar. 
 
 She went, returned, stood where she could see his profile. 
 " You give me your word of honor you'll not interfere with 
 him in any way ? " 
 
 Dick smiled without suspending work with the pestle. 
 " Certainly," said he. " On my honor I'll not leave this 
 room until you telephone me that I may." His smile broad- 
 ened into a laugh that made her extremely uncomfortable, 
 though it was pleasant enough. 
 
 " I didn't think you cared about me or him or any- 
 thing but your chemistry," she said in self-defense. " I 
 asked simply as a precaution. I felt I owed it to him and 
 to the boy." 
 
 " I laughed you'll pardon me because he's such a 
 452
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 shallow pup. I never think of you two that I don't think 
 of Titania and Nick." 
 
 As he tossed this lightly over his shoulder, she was 
 hopelessly at a disadvantage. She was scarlet and shaking 
 with anger. No return thrust occurring to her, she flung a 
 furious glance into his back and departed, with about all 
 the joy out of her anticipations of the meeting. Instead 
 of telephoning from the house, she ascended to the apart- 
 ment over the laboratory and by the direct wire there got 
 the Phibbs Hotel in Fenton. A few minutes, and Basil was 
 at the other end. " Come to the house here, instead," said 
 she. " At the same time two o'clock." 
 
 A silence, then his voice, " No. You come over." 
 
 " I can't do it. And I'd not ask you if I weren't sure. 
 I'll explain when I see you." 
 
 " There's an especial reason why I want you here," 
 urged he. 
 
 " And there's a more especial reason why I want you 
 here." 
 
 " And there's an even more especial reason why I must 
 see you here," insisted he. " It's very unsatisfactory, talk- 
 ing over the telephone, with people probably listening all 
 along the wire. I'll come to-morrow or late this after- 
 noon. But you come here first." 
 
 " No really, I mustn't," she declared. " Don't you 
 trust me? Don't you know I'd not ask it, if it weren't 
 perfectly all right ? " 
 
 " It isn't that, but I can't talk about it. ... I'll 
 come." And from his tone she knew he had been decided 
 by the fear that she'd think him afraid. And then she 
 realized that she had made her remark because she counted 
 on its appeal to his vanity and the thought acted upon her 
 enthusiasm not unlike a douche. 
 
 453
 
 XXVIII 
 
 SHE was on the drive-front porch with Lizzie, making 
 plausible pretense of rearranging the boxed evergreens. 
 She heard the carriage turn in at the gates, though they 
 were nearly a quarter of a mile from the house. As the 
 horses rounded the bend she looked. But she waited on 
 Lizzie, who was not slow to cry out with delighted sur- 
 prise, " Why, there's Mr. Gallatin ! " 
 
 Courtney said, " Do run in and see that the sitting 
 room's straight." Thus, she was alone when he descended. 
 She saw him through a mist and the hand she gave him 
 was cold, was trembling. In the doorway, she said hastily 
 in an undertone: " Helen and Winchie are at Wenona 
 Richard at the laboratory. You've stopped unexpectedly 
 on your way south for an hour or two." 
 
 " I understand," said he. " I can't trust myself to look 
 at you. My love ! My love ! " 
 
 She flashed up at him a glance radiant with 'her florid 
 fancies of anticipation. " Come into the house," she con- 
 trived to say in an ordinary tone. 
 
 As they went along the hall, side by side and talking 
 for effect on passible listeners, she saw that he had dressed 
 as carefully as a bridegroom. No more carefully than she 
 had dressed, so far as she dared; still, it struck her as 
 amusing as suggestive of hollowness. And the voice 
 ;which, as she heard it in fancy during those weeks of wait- 
 ing, had been so moving, so magical what a commonplace 
 yotce it was, and how very like affectation its Eastern in- 
 
 454
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 tonations sounded. " That nasty remark of Richard's ! " 
 she thought. " How weak of me to let such a fling affect 
 me." They entered the sitting room; he quickly closed 
 the door, caught her hands, looked at her from head to 
 foot. " Courtney ! " he murmured. " I love you ! I love 
 you ! " 
 
 She thrilled, lifted her eyes dropped them. A chill 
 stole over her. She had to resist an impulse to draw her 
 hands away. He looked really handsome, was outwardly 
 all her imagination had been picturing and more. Yet 
 What was the matter? What was lacking? Why could 
 she see only the weakness and coarseness the qualities that 
 had stood out the night he was drunk and the next after- 
 noon when she was battling against his vanity and jeal- 
 ousy? " It's my nerves," she decided. " I'm under a 
 greater strain than I realize." When he kissed her, she 
 turned her head so that his lips touched her cheek. And 
 immediately she released her hands. "We must be care- 
 ful," she apologized. 
 
 " Why ? You're free." 
 
 " Yes but " She paused. 
 
 " Why do you act so strange so distant ? " 
 
 " I don't know," she confessed. She felt ashamed of 
 herself that she was visiting on him the consequences of 
 her own folly in having let her imagination overleap all 
 the bounds of probability in forecast. " I don't know," 
 she repeated. " Nerves, I suppose. Or, perhaps it's a 
 bad cold. I've felt one coming on all day. This morning 
 I forgot to close the " 
 
 " Aren't you glad to see me ? " 
 
 " Yes yes, indeed," she protested. " Let's sit down." 
 
 She took a chair near the table. He was thus com- 
 pelled to the sofa, several feet away. " We ought to have 
 
 455
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 met where we first arranged/' said he, constrained, em- 
 barrassed. 
 
 " I have to be careful. You forget Winchie." 
 
 An uncomfortable silence, then he: " You've been free 
 thirty-nine days. Yet you have not written me." 
 
 " I explained to you " 
 
 " Didn't you feel like writing ? " 
 
 "Of course. But " 
 
 " But what? " 
 
 " I wanted to be independent as well as free." 
 
 He looked at her gloomily. " Is that what you call 
 love ? " 
 
 She forced a smile and nodded. 
 
 " Do you know what I've come for ? For you." 
 
 She felt herself drawing together, shrinking away from 
 him. " For me? " she echoed vaguely. 
 
 " To marry you." 
 
 She was not looking at him ; but she was seeing his face 
 as it was when swollen and distorted by drink. She an- 
 swered hastily, " Oh, I couldn't do that." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
 " I can't marry till till I'm independent. I've been 
 making a lot of plans. I'm going to work early next 
 month." 
 
 " What nonsense ! " he cried. " Courtney, do you real- 
 ize you've not yet said a single word of love? What is 
 the matter ? Is it our meeting in this house ? " 
 
 " Perhaps. I don't know. I don't understand it my- 
 self." Why was her mind so perverse ? Why did it thrust 
 at her the things it was unjust to remember, generous and 
 necessary to forget? Why was she critical, aloof, instead 
 of responsive and generously glad? She went on: " It may 
 
 be the cold. My nose feels queer, and " 
 
 456
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " We must marry, right away/' he insisted, frowning 
 upon her lack of seriousness. " We've been separated too 
 long already." 
 
 That seemed to her to explain. But it did not remove. 
 She said, " Not until I'm independent." 
 
 " But that means years years ! " 
 
 " Oh, no," protested she. " Not the kind of inde- 
 pendence I mean. I simply want to be sure I could earn 
 my living if it were necessary." 
 
 " But it isn't necessary. And life is so short, dearest. 
 And at most we'll have few enough years of happiness." 
 
 " I know," said she, surprised that these truths did 
 not move her in the least, nor his looks, his tones, so 
 charged with entreaty she such a short time ago would 
 have found irresistible. " But I've thought it out, and I 
 realize everything depends on my getting that feeling 
 of independence. I'll not risk again what I've been 
 through." 
 
 " You know very well, that couldn't happen. As for 
 your working, why, dear, unless a woman's been bred to 
 making a living, it's almost impossible for her." 
 
 " Nevertheless I must try." 
 
 "If you loved me, you'd not talk like this," cried he, 
 bitterly. 
 
 Instead of protesting, she became thoughtful. " Do 
 you really think so ? " she asked. " I wonder if that's 
 true." 
 
 " Certainly not " retreated he, alarmed. " We love each 
 other. But your way of acting and talking has upset me. 
 I ought not have come here. We should have met over 
 at Tippecanoe." 
 
 " You don't seem to see my point of view, Basil." 
 
 " I do, but it's a mere notion. A very fine notion," he 
 457
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 hastened to add, though he could not make his tone other 
 than grudging, " but foolish." 
 
 " It was my dependence that put me in such a fright- 
 ful position with Richard. And " 
 
 " Courtney," he interrupted, between anger and appeal, 
 " please don't repeat that comparison of what you were to 
 him and what you and I are to each other. It hurts me, 
 and it's not fair." 
 
 " Would you promise to love me always just as you 
 do now? " 
 
 " I certainly would. I shall." 
 
 She lowered her eyes. Her heart sank. 
 
 " Wouldn't you? " he asked. 
 
 " No," replied she. " How can I or anyone honestly 
 say how he or she'll feel about a person they don't know 
 through and through a month ahead let alone a year 
 ten years twenty? You know that's true, Basil. You're 
 not honest with yourself or with me." 
 
 He was silent, was watching her with sullen, suspicious 
 eyes. 
 
 " It seems to me," she went on, " that love real love 
 ought to make you careful. If we were a boy and a girl, 
 without experience or intelligence or anything -but hazy, 
 rosy emotions " 
 
 " You and I never will agree about love," he inter* 
 rupted, impatiently. " But that's a small matter. The 
 only point is that we love each other. Love's like a rose, 
 Courtney. Tear it apart to see what it's made of and you 
 lose the rose and have only withered petals." 
 
 " Yes one kind of love. But is it the kind to build 
 one's life upon ? " 
 
 " I'm not going to argue with you. Have your way, if 
 you will. You'll soon get enough of work of this fantastic 
 
 458
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 idea of independence, as you call it. As if I'd not be too 
 afraid of losing your love not to respect your rights and 
 consider you always and in every way." 
 
 " But suppose / ceased to love you and were depen- 
 dent on you " 
 
 " I know. I know. Don't let's argue it. Go on with 
 your plans. The sooner you begin, the sooner you'll see 
 how foolish you are. You don't appreciate what work 
 means especially for a woman the toil, the humiliations, 
 the downright miseries that cost youth and looks and 
 health." 
 
 It still further depressed her to see how swiftly his 
 words depressed her how appalling was the lift and 
 spread of the mountain she had been dreaming of remov- 
 ing with one shovel and one pair of feeble hands. " In- 
 stead of discouraging me," cried she with some anger in 
 her reproach, " you ought to be encouraging me. I should 
 think you'd be afraid to have a woman about who might be 
 your wife for the sake of a living might be making a 
 hypocrite of herself and a fool of you." 
 
 He winced ; she saw he was thinking of Richard. " That 
 could never happen with us! " cried he. 
 
 " Never is a long time." 
 
 He was squirming in irritation and impatience and 
 was obviously afraid she would suspect the thoughts he yet 
 could not conceal. " Please don't insist on discussing this, 
 Courtney. Go ahead. Try your scheme. Work! I never 
 heard of a woman at work who wouldn't do almost anything 
 to escape." . 
 
 She forced a laugh. " Then if I fail and send for you, 
 you'll know what it means and fly in the other direction." 
 
 " Not I," replied he with an overenergy that failed in 
 its purpose of hiding the discomfort her suggestion had 
 
 459
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 caused him. " I tell you, we love each other. That makes 
 everything different." He laughed. " Work ! Thank 
 God, you and I don't have to work. We can love." 
 
 She sat with eyes down and fingers idly matching the 
 corners of her little handkerchief. What a difference be- 
 tween work as a dream and work in the doing! between 
 imagining the glories of self-respecting independence and 
 making the coarse, cruel struggle step by step up to those 
 glories between work as a pastime and work as a neces- 
 sity. How unpractical she had been ! She sighed. " I 
 wish," said she, " I'd never realized that to be secure a 
 woman must be independent. But now that I've realized 
 it, I've got to go on." 
 
 He put on an expression of pretended deep and re- 
 spectful interest that made it hard for her to hide her 
 amusement. " What are your plans ? " he asked. 
 
 " I'll tell you sometime. I don't feel in the humor 
 now." 
 
 "Something vague eh?" And she saw that he as- 
 sumed she was only pretending, after all. A superior 
 man-to-woman smile had replaced his look of nervousness. 
 
 She waited until he had got himself comfortably set- 
 tled down into this agreeable assumption, then said tran- 
 quilly, " No. I have the place promised me." 
 
 He rose impatiently. If she had needed proof as to his 
 real opinion of women his conviction of their inferiority, 
 his expression would have given it. Yes, his opinion was 
 the same as Richard's always had been, as she could now 
 see, recalling remarks he had made from time to time. The 
 same prejudices as Richard; only, Basil had been less 
 courageous less honest. Those prejudices irritated her in 
 Richard; in Basil they seemed laughable. But he was get- 
 ting his impatience and scorn, his exasperation against her 
 
 460
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 poor womanish folly somewhat under control. " Now, 
 Courtney, can't you realize " he began in a teacher-to- 
 infant tone. Then, a new thought struck him. He broke 
 off abruptly. " No go ahead. It's just as well you 
 should have the lesson," said he. 
 
 " Should learn how dependent I am on some man ? " 
 " How unfitted you are to be anything but a lady." 
 " I know that already," replied she forlornly. " Or, 
 rather, I'm not fitted to be either dependent or inde- 
 pendent." 
 
 " Then why not be sensible, and marry me at once? " 
 She did not answer. She could not tell him the truth; 
 she would not tell him a lie. Anyhow, she wasn't sure what 
 she did think. 
 
 " You will won't you, dear ? You'll not waste time 
 that we might give to love and happiness ? " And he anx- 
 iously watched her face with its sweet feminineness that 
 gave him hope, its mystery and its resoluteness that made 
 him uneasy. 
 
 " It's a temptation," she said, absently. She saw herself 
 trying for independence and failing losing heart, self- 
 respect growing cynical through hardship marrying 
 Basil to escape Just there, she suddenly surprised her 
 elusive real self, saw deep into the inmost workings of 
 her own mind saw that she did not care for Basil Galla- 
 tin that she had really been pretending to herself that 
 she loved him because he was the alternative, the refuge, 
 should her try for independence fail! 
 
 " I'll tell you what let's do," she heard him saying. 
 " Let's get married. Then you can take that place, what- 
 ever it is. With your future secure no matter what hap- 
 pened, you'd work better and would be much more likely 
 to succeed." 
 
 30 461
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 The appeal of this subtle proposal awakened her to her 
 peril. It must be now or never ; she must speak the truth 
 now, or lose the courage and the strength to speak it. 
 " Basil," she said abruptly, " I don't love you." 
 
 He stared. 
 
 " I've been lying to myself and to you. I don't love 
 you." 
 
 " That's not true ! " 
 
 " I never did love you," she replied for, with the one 
 truth out, the other forged to the front and made its amaz- 
 ing self visible. " No I never did love you." How plain 
 it all was, now! How strange that she should for even an 
 infatuated moment have believed this was the man she 
 needed, the man who needed her not words alone, and 
 kisses and thrills, but real need for mind and heart and 
 body all that the three have to give and long to give and 
 to receive. 
 
 He stood before her, looking down in graciously smiling 
 remonstrance. " That's a little too much," he said tenderly. 
 " You can't have forgotten all we've been to each other 
 those hours of happiness those moments of ecstasy my 
 love my Courtney " 
 
 There was color in her cheeks, an answering tenderness 
 in the eyes that lifted to his. " No, I've not forgotten. 
 And as I had to learn and as there's no other way for 
 woman or man to learn but experience, I don't regret. But 
 we were both in love with love not with each other. And 
 what's more, we never could be." Now that she had flung 
 away pretense, its veil of illusion over her sight dropped; 
 she was seeing him as she looked at him not his qualities 
 that repelled, not his qualities that attracted, but the whole 
 man was seeing him as we see only those toward whom 
 we are amiably indifferent. She was thinking, " What a 
 
 462
 
 nice, well-bred man he is, but how small." Not bad, not 
 grossly sensual, not mean not at all mean, but the reverse. 
 Just small. 
 
 He began to recover from the stupefaction of the con- 
 vincing tones of her denial of love. He was hastily don- 
 ning the costume of pose that is correct for such occasions. 
 She beamed genially upon him and said, " Now, don't work 
 yourself up, my dear Basil. Sit down over there, and let's 
 talk quite quietly and naturally." 
 
 It is impossible for anyone with any sense of humor 
 whatever to indulge alone in paroxysms of emotion before 
 a tranquil spectator. Basil stopped rolling his eyes and 
 dilating his nostrils, and seated himself, in no very good 
 humor. Her tone was not pleasant. It would have been 
 perfectly proper for a man to use to a woman. It was 
 impertinent, in weaker sex to stronger. " Oh, I'm all 
 right," said he, crossly, as he seated himself. " But you'd 
 better look out about those ideas of yours. They have a 
 terribly unfeminizing effect on women." 
 
 " Yes I guess they do," replied she. A puzzling, 
 alluring combination of seriousness and humor she looked 
 as she sat there opposite him, her elbows on the arms of 
 the chair, her chin resting upon the backs of her linked 
 fingers, her eyes fixed gravely yet somehow quizzically 
 upon him. " Have you ever thought of our life together? " 
 asked she. " Of what we'd do between times ? " 
 
 " Between times? " 
 
 " No one not even the most ardent lovers can make 
 love all the time. There haven't been any ' between times ' 
 in our life heretofore, because of the circumstances. But 
 when we were together without interruption with no ex- 
 citement or interest of danger with no stimulus with just 
 ourselves what would we do ' between times ' ? and 
 
 463
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 there'd be more and more ' between times ' as we got used 
 to each other." 
 
 This uninviting but obviously truthful picture sobered 
 and exasperated him. " Haven't thought about it," he con- 
 fessed. " I haven't gone into details. But I know we'll 
 be happy. You'll step into the position you are entitled to 
 and I can see that you get." 
 
 " The social position, you mean ? " 
 
 " Certainly. And we'll enjoy ourselves." 
 
 He could not possibly have said anything that would 
 have shown more clearly the width and depth of the gap 
 between them how little he understood her, how little they 
 had in common. 
 
 " You'll be tremendously popular," he said with enthu- 
 siasm. 
 
 She shook her head slowly. " I don't think J could be 
 happy, wasting my life, scattering myself among ~a lot of 
 inane pastimes." She laughed a little. " You'd be hor- 
 ribly disappointed in me, Basil." 
 
 " I'll risk it. They'll be crazy about you in the East." 
 He nodded proud, confident, self-complacent encourage- 
 ment. "I'll risk it ! " 
 
 She met his look with a quiet final " But I'll not." In 
 another mood his proposal, his manner, his very poor sort 
 of pride in her would have amused her. But as she lis- 
 tened, she remembered all she had believed about this man, 
 all her idealizing of his mind and character. And she 
 grew sad and sick. This small man! 
 
 He planted himself firmly before her. " Now, look 
 here, Courtney. It's useless for you to talk that sort of 
 thing. You don't mean it. And I'm not going to give you 
 up. You're my wife, Courtney. The only possible excuse 
 for what you did was that you loved me." 
 
 464
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " On the contrary," replied she, " my only excuse is 
 that I was swept away by my craving for love for what 
 Richard in our brief honeymoon had taught me to 
 need " 
 
 " For God's sake ! " he cried. " How can you say such 
 things? " 
 
 " Because they are the truth," she answered with quiet 
 dignity; and he felt ashamed of himself without knowing 
 why. " Basil, you don't love me as I really am. You find 
 me shocking. And I don't love you as you really are. I 
 find you " She hesitated. 
 
 " Go on. Say it." 
 
 But what would be the use? The truth, all of it, any 
 literal part of it would only hurt him, would not awaken 
 him. By birth and by breeding and by the impassable 
 limitations of his mind he was incapable of learning or 
 appreciating the truth, was wedded forever to the morality 
 that makes truth a vice and lies a virtue. So, she evaded. 
 " I find you are like your dress," answered she, her eyes 
 and her light tone taking the sharp sting off her words. 
 " A charming style of your own but strictly conventional 
 withal." 
 
 He did not fully appreciate this faint hint of the truth, 
 but he understood enough to be irritated. " You've been 
 doing too much of what you women call thinking. And 
 you've become like all women who try to think." 
 
 " All women think," said she. " But very few of them 
 tell the man what they think until they've got him safely 
 married. You ought to thank me for being candid in ad- 
 vance." 
 
 He scowled at her smile. " I'm not going to give you 
 up," he said sullenly. " I know you better than you know 
 yourself. You'll come out of this mood. And dearest 
 
 465
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 remember that, in spite of your disdain, the old-fashioned 
 woman tender, simple, loving is far sweeter than these 
 thinkers gets more pleasure gives more." 
 
 " A baby's sweeter than a grown person," replied she, 
 refusing to be serious. " But, Basil, the time has about 
 passed when even a woman can stay on a baby though 
 most of the men and women pretend it isn't so, and a good 
 many of them like you and Helen get angry if the 
 truth's forced on you. At any rate, / can't be a baby any 
 more. . . . Do you know what would happen if I married 
 you? " 
 
 The look that accompanied her abrupt question was so 
 penetrating, so significant that he paled. " I don't want to 
 hear any more of your truths that aren't true at all," he 
 cried. 
 
 " I see you know what would happen. The same thing 
 again." 
 
 " Courtney ! Good God ! " 
 
 " The same thing again. As long as my craving for 
 real companionship was unsatisfied, I couldn't be content. 
 The same delusion that made me fancy I loved you would 
 trap me again or, perhaps it wouldn't be delusion but 
 really the man I needed the man who needed me. A 
 mirage isn't a delusion, you know. It's an actuality that 
 we mislocate. I'd hunt on and on through the desert for 
 my oasis until I found it." 
 
 He had not taken his fascinated gaze from her 
 dreamy face, her eyes of unfathomable emerald. " Do 
 you mean that? " he said huskily. " No you can't. 
 But you must not say those things, Courtney 
 you really mustn't. You'll make me afraid of you. 
 As it is, I fear I'll have a hard time making myself 
 forget" 
 
 466
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " I don't want you to forget. And I've told you the 
 exact truth because I want you to realize how unsuited 
 we are to each other." 
 
 He walked up and down in violent agitation. " I don't 
 understand it," he muttered. " Has some one Courtney, 
 do you love some other man?" 
 
 " I do not. I've seen no one practically but Richard." 
 
 He halted with a jerk. "Richard!" His eyes nar- 
 rowed with jealous suspicion. " Has he been trying to win 
 you back? " 
 
 She smiled at the idea, so at variance with the facts. 
 " He treats me like another man." 
 
 " Then you see him ? " 
 
 " Every day. I work at the laboratory with him." 
 
 " What! " Basil stared, dropped to the nearest chair 
 dumfounded. 
 
 " Why not? . . . Don't be so pitifully conventional, 
 Basil. This is the twentieth century, not the Dark Ages. 
 He knows you're here now asked me to see you here rather 
 than where it might cause gossip." 
 
 As he recovered, his mind, seen clearly in his features, 
 slowly took fire. " And you pretended you were telling 
 me the truth ! " he cried, starting up. Everything else 
 doubt of her doubt of himself all was forgotten in the 
 torrent rush of jealousy. " And I, poor fool, believed you! 
 But I'll tell you what the truth is. You've lost your nerve. 
 You love me as you did. But you haven't the courage to 
 break off here. And you're sinking back to what you were 
 when I found you. I might have known ! A woman always 
 belongs to the nearest man." He was raging up and down 
 the room. " I've come for you. I'll not go without you. 
 You're mine not his. I'll show you! I'll show you!" 
 And he snatched his hat from the sofa and rushed out. 
 
 467
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 For the moment motion was beyond her power. She 
 saw him dart along the veranda, past the windows, take the 
 path to the Smoke House. Terror galvanized her. She 
 flew to the private telephone, rang long and vigorously, put 
 the receiver to her ear. A pause; she was about to ring 
 again when Richard's voice came: " Yes what is it? " 
 
 " He's coming to you, Richard," she gasped. " I an- 
 gered him. He's wild with rage. Promise you won't let 
 him in." 
 
 " I can't do that." Richard's voice was calm and 
 natural. 
 
 " Your promise to me ! " 
 
 " Don't be alarmed. He doesn't amount to much, if 
 you'll pardon my saying so." 
 
 " I'm coming as quickly as I can. Don't see him, 
 Richard. Remember Winchie ! " 
 
 " Come if you like. But I suspect you'll only aggra*- 
 vate him. Believe me, I can take care of him. Here he 
 is now " 
 
 She dropped the receiver, ran out of the house and 
 along the path.
 
 XXIX 
 
 As Vaughan hung up the receiver and turned, Gallatin 
 flung open the door on which he had just rapped a loud 
 challenge. He scowled at Vaughan; Vaughan eyed him 
 with the expression that simply looks and waits. It was 
 evident Basil expected immediate combat, was ready for 
 it therefore altogether unready for the form of encounter 
 less easy. Dick's tranquillity completely disconcerted him. 
 He advanced a step, with an aggressive, " Well, here I am." 
 
 " So I see," replied Dick. 
 
 " You've been thinking it was cowardice that made me 
 go away. But it wasn't. And I've come to face it out 
 with you. You had your chance for her. You lost her. 
 I purpose to keep her." 
 
 " Very well," said Dick. " She's free. Her affairs are 
 none of my business." And he sat down at the long table 
 under the windows, glanced at the electric furnace as if 
 about to resume work. 
 
 " But she isn't free ! " cried Gallatin. " You've not 
 freed her, though she has the right to it. You're holding 
 on to her through the boy." 
 
 Dick bent over the white crystals in the platinum tray 
 on the shelf of the furnace. 
 
 Gallatin, exasperated, waved his fists. " I demand that 
 you free her ! If she were free, she'd come with me, for 
 she loves me." 
 
 Dick took a metal rod from the case and began push- 
 ing the crystals this way and that carefully. 
 
 " She loves me, I tell you ! " 
 469
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Without pausing or looking round Dick said: " If you 
 say that again I'll begin to believe it isn't so. There's 
 no accounting for tastes especially for tastes feminine. 
 But " He did not finish; over his face drifted a slight 
 smile more eloquent against Basil's deficiencies than the 
 fiercest stream of epithet. 
 
 " I've won her," taunted Gallatin, in wild fury, yet as 
 if restrained by an invisible leash. " I've got her heart. 
 You might as well release the rest." As Dick seemed now 
 quite absorbed and unconscious of his presence, he advanced 
 still nearer. " By God, you shall ! " he cried. " She be- 
 longs to me, and I'm here to maintain my rights at any 
 cost." 
 
 Vaughan laid down the long rod with a gesture of de- 
 liberate precision and care, turned slowly toward him. His 
 long handsome face was of a curious transparent pallor. 
 His rather deep-set gray-blue eyes looked coldly and 
 cruelly at his one-time guest and partner. " You evi- 
 dently don't understand," said he. " There are times when 
 one must either ignore or kill." 
 
 Basil sneered, " Well ? " said he, with intent to 
 draw on. 
 
 " I have been choosing to ignore. At first it would 
 have given me the greatest pleasure to kill you. Now 
 you are to me much like the cur that barks and snaps at 
 passers by." He rose. " You've come here to try to make 
 a vulgar scandal. You'll not succeed. You have nothing 
 to lose. I can't give you your deserts without hurting my 
 son. So " Dick paused, seemed to be reflecting. 
 
 "You hide behind him do you? " sneered Basil. In 
 his frenzy he felt that one or the other must die then and 
 there or he himself would be forever dishonored. 
 
 Dick apparently had not heard. In an abstracted way 
 470
 
 THE HUNGRY HEA&T 
 
 Le said, to himself, not to Gallatin, " Yes, I think that will 
 do." Again there was a pause, he thinking, Gallatin held 
 silent and expectant by his expression. Suddenly Dick said 
 sharply, " Yes that will do." He moved the ladder to 
 the south wall, mounted; he took from the high top shelf 
 a jar of heavy glass, about one third full of dark red pow- 
 der; he descended with it. " Close that door and lock it," 
 he ordered. 
 
 Basil, from habit of association with him as assistant, 
 moved to obey. Hand on knob and about to swing the 
 door, he hesitated, turned. " What are you going to do? " 
 he demanded. 
 
 " When you lock that door," replied Dick, " I shall 
 empty what's in this jar into the bowl of water there, and 
 in a few seconds we shall both be dead." 
 
 Basil shrank; a shudder ran visibily over his frame. 
 
 " I could kill you without killing myself," continued 
 Dick, " and cover the scandal with the pretense of accident. 
 It would serve you right, but somehow it strikes me as 
 cowardly. So lock the door." 
 
 Basil was no coward; but he had grown yellow with 
 fear. His hand now dropped nervously from the knob. 
 
 " Lock the door," said Dick sharply. " There's no 
 time to lose. I think she's on the way here." 
 
 " She'll understand and kill herself." 
 
 "Why not? Helen will take care of Winchie." 
 
 Basil's gaze wandered round, in search of another ex- 
 cuse. He braced himself, cried defiantly, " I refuse ! " 
 
 " Very well." Dick set the jar on the table. " Then 
 
 g-" 
 
 " You think I'm a coward. But it's not that." 
 Dick shrugged his shoulders. " I know you're a cow- 
 ard. Everyone is. I'm as well pleased that you don't 
 
 471
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 accept. I've no wish to die, particularly for such an ab- 
 surd, stagy notion of honor. But I will not have a scan- 
 dal " 
 
 Just there Courtney dashed in, her expression so dis- 
 heveled that it gave her the air of being disheveled in 
 dress. Her glance darted from Richard leaning calmly 
 against the table and, in blouse and cap, looking like a 
 handsome workingman, to Basil in his fashionable English 
 tweeds, standing shamefaced and irresolute near the door 
 so near that she had brushed him as she entered. On 
 Basil her gaze rested like a withering blight. Her eyes 
 flashed green fire; her every feature hurled at him the 
 scorn that despises. " You shabby coward ! " she said, her 
 voice low and threatening to break under the weight of its 
 burden of fury. " You who come here and try to ruin 
 my child and me for your vanity ! " 
 
 " Courtney ! " he pleaded, not daring to lift his eyes. 
 " I love you. I cannot give you up." 
 
 " Love ! You don't know what it means ! You weak 
 vain thing! You found you couldn't have me on equal 
 terms. So you thought you'd degrade me compel me." 
 She turned on Richard. " And you, too ! " she blazed. 
 " If you were a man you'd kill him you'd kill us both 
 with some of your chemicals there and protect Winchie 
 by saying it was an accident." 
 
 " Absurd," said Vaughan with an indifferent shrug. His 
 arms were folded upon his broad chest. 
 
 Trembling and blazing, she went up to him. " Look at 
 me ! " she cried, her hands on her surging bosom, her eyes 
 glittering insanely up at him. Every instinct of prudence, 
 the instinct of self-preservation itself had succumbed under 
 the surge of elemental passion, of frenzied shame that she 
 should have lowered herself to such a man as this Basil 
 
 472
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Gallatin. " This body of mine," she said in a voice of ter- 
 rible calm, " it's been his that thing's do you hear? He 
 has had me in his arms me your wife the mother of 
 your boy he that creature quaking there. And I have 
 kissed him and caressed him and trembled with passion 
 for him as I never did for you. . . . Now, will you kill 
 us?" 
 
 He did not move. But slowly the veins and muscles of 
 his face tightened, pushed up against, strained against the 
 ghastly whiteness of his skin. And slowly his eyes lighted 
 with the fires of a demoniac fury that made hers seem like 
 a child's weak hysteria. She gazed at him, fascinated. 
 Then, with a gasp, she braced herself and waited for the 
 frightful death that look of his signaled. But she did not 
 flinch, nor shift her gaze from his. To Gallatin, paralyzed, 
 watching them with eyes starting and lips ajar, it seemed 
 an eternity while they stood thus facing each other in 
 silence. Then, as slowly as that expression on Richard's 
 face had come it departed, like a fiend fighting inch by 
 inch against being flung back into the hell from which it 
 had issued at the call of her dreadful taunts. The face 
 remained deathly white ; but those were Richard Vaughan's 
 own eyes that gazed down at the small, delicate face of the 
 woman, in them a look that filled her with awe, made her 
 ashamed, gave her the impulse to sink down at his feet 
 and burst into tears. 
 
 " No, Courtney," Richard said, infinite gentleness in his 
 tone. " I'm neither god nor devil. I all three of us 
 will do to-day what to-morrow we'll be glad we did. One 
 can always die. But living again, once one's dead that's 
 not so simple." 
 
 There fell silence. She stood before him, bosom still 
 heaving but eyes down. Vaughan turned to Gallatin with 
 
 473
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 a courtly politeness like his grandfather's. " Don't you 
 think you'd better go for the present at least ? " 
 
 Gallatin, who had been awed also, hesitated. He looked 
 at Courtney; his jaws clenched and he fixed sullen, de- 
 vouring eyes on her. " I want to talk to her alone," said 
 he aggressively. 
 
 " That's for her to decide/' said Richard. 
 
 Courtney lifted her head to refuse. Then it occurred 
 to her that, by talking with Basil, she might settle the 
 whole business for good and all. With a curious deference 
 she looked inquiringly at Richard. He shrugged his shoul- 
 ders, began pushing the tray into the furnace. She let her 
 eyes rest on Basil, said " Yes that's best. Come on." 
 She went out of the laboratory, Basil following her. Rich- 
 ard closed the door behind them. At the edge of the clear- 
 ing she halted, wheeled upon him. " Well ! " she began, 
 her voice as merciless as her eyes. 
 
 He was a pitiful spectacle. His feature were working 
 in a ferment of many unattractive emotiops jealousy, 
 pique, fear that he was ridiculous, wounded vanity, desire 
 to regain with her the ground he felt he must have lost. 
 " You see now, Courtney/' he said, aggressive yet plead- 
 ing, too, " he doesn't care a rap about you." 
 
 " Well ? " she repeated. Her tone was much softer ; 
 her nerves were calming, and her temper was yielding to 
 her sense of proportions. Also, the man looked weak and 
 shallow and ridiculous not worth the while of a great emo- 
 tion. Just small. "What of it?" she asked. 
 
 He scowled in angry embarrassment at her expres- 
 sion which neither suggested nor encouraged tragedy. 
 " I never heard of people acting as we've acted to-day ! " 
 he cried. 
 
 " But no doubt they often do," replied she. " Every- 
 474
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 body doesn't act all the time as if he were in a novel 
 or a play, or thought he was." 
 
 " You can respect him after this ? " 
 
 Her eyes had the expression a man least likes to see 
 in a woman's when she is looking at him. " Don't you? " 
 said she. 
 
 He reddened, and his eyes shifted. Presently he said 
 humbly, " I I am sorry for what I did, I was crazy with 
 jealousy. I'm not myself not at all." 
 
 She felt the truth of this at once. " And I'm sorry for 
 the tilings I said to you and to him. I was crazy with 
 rage." 
 
 He lifted his head eagerly. " I knew you didn't mean 
 them, dear." 
 
 Her brow darkened. It was annoying that the man 
 couldn't realize; for such as she now knew him to be to as- 
 pire to her seemed impertinence. " Basil," she said, " it's all 
 over between us. Don't let your vanity deceive you. And 
 don't force me to tell you what I think of you. Be content 
 with knowing what I don't think." 
 
 " Be careful ! " he cried angrily. " I'm not the man 
 to stand and beg even for you." 
 
 " That's good," said she pleasantly. " Then we can 
 part here and now." She glanced up at the windows of 
 the apartment. " You've got your traps up there still. 
 Hadn't you better let me send Jimmie to help you pack 
 them? " 
 
 " Thank you," replied he, haughtily. " I'll be obliged 
 if you will." 
 
 She put out her hand. " Good-by, Basil." 
 
 He clinched his fists in vanity's boyish anger. " You 
 can think of that apartment, and have no feeling? " he ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 475
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " None," declared she. 
 
 " I'll not believe it. You couldn't be so unwomanly." 
 
 Her look forecast a sarcasm. But before she spoke it 
 changed to one that was soft and considerate. She felt 
 that she was responsible. True he had posed as some- 
 thing far superior to his reality; but it was an honest 
 fraud, deceiving himself first and most of all. She felt to 
 blame for having been taken in felt repentant and apolo- 
 getic toward him. " Let's not quarrel/' she urged. " Don't 
 be harsh with me. I know you'll find love and make some 
 woman very, very happy one that is sympathetic and 
 comes up to your ideals of womanhood." She put out her 
 hand again, and friendly and winning was the smile round 
 her wide mouth, in the eyes under the long, slender brows. 
 " Please, Basil." He hesitated. " Don't be harsh. You 
 know you don't love me any more than I love you. What's 
 the use of pretenses ? Why not part sincerely ? . . . Please, 
 Basil." 
 
 His hand just touched hers and his angry eyes avoided 
 her pleading glance. "If you'll send Jimmie," he said. 
 And with a stiff bow he moved in great dignity along the 
 path to the apartment entrance. He went even more slowly 
 than dignity required, for he confidently expected she 
 would come to her senses when she saw he had indeed 
 reached the limit of endurance of her trifling. Richard had 
 shown he wouldn't take her back cared nothing for her. 
 Where then could she turn but to him? And all that 
 vaporing about independence was just vaporing. A 
 woman was a woman, and he knew women. So, he walked 
 slowly to give her a good chance. But no call came not 
 though he lingered over opening the door and made a long 
 pause elaborately to wipe his clean boots on the mat. He 
 did not look until he could do so from the security of the 
 
 476
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 sitting-room windows. She was not in sight. Had she 
 followed him softly? He went into the hall, glanced down 
 the stairs. Not there ! She had gone ! . . . She meant 
 what she said; she had cast him off. There was no room 
 for doubt she jhad cast him off. . . . He heard a step, 
 rushed to the door. It was Jimmie, come bringing his 
 overcoat and gloves, and prepared to do the packing. She 
 had really cast him off. 
 
 " God ! " he muttered. " What a contemptible position 
 that puts me in ! " And, for the moment at least, he hated 
 her. If he could only revenge himself in some perfectly 
 gentlemanly way, of course. Once that day vanity had 
 lured him clean over the line into most ungentlemanly con- 
 duct; his face burned from the sting of her remembered 
 denunciations the sting of truth in them. If he could 
 devise a gentlemanly way something that would convince 
 her he had made all that agitation simply because he 
 felt that, as a gentleman, he in the circumstances must 
 go to any lengths to keep faith with her. Yes, that 
 would be a handsome revenge and would save his face, 
 too. 
 
 He gave Jimmie the necessary directions and resumed 
 his brooding. He searched his brain in vain. He could 
 contrive no way of escape; he would have to leave that 
 place like a whipped dog yes, a whipped dog. Spurned 
 by Vaughan spurned by Courtney 
 
 A step, and the rustle of a skirt. His eyes gleamed. 
 "I thought not!" he muttered exultantly. "Well, I'll 
 teach her a lesson she'll never forget." 
 
 He turned his back to the door, stood at the window, 
 looking out and puffing nonchalantly at his cigarette. The 
 step, the rustic were on the threshold. " I beg your par- 
 don, Mr. Gallatin " 
 
 31 477
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 He wheeled to face Helen. His confusion was equal to 
 hers. " Ah Miss Helen I I " he stammered. 
 
 "Am I intruding?" she asked. There was a charm- 
 ing blush in her sweet, beautiful face, and her honest 
 dark eyes showed how perturbed she was. 
 
 " No indeed no indeed," he protested. 
 
 " Courtney sent me " 
 
 " Courtney sent you ! " he exclaimed in amazement. 
 
 " She told me all about it," Helen hastened on. " She 
 asked me to let you know that she had told me how you 
 and Richard have had a bitter falling out over the work 
 and that you're going away, not to come back." 
 
 One look into those eyes was convincing; Helen believed 
 what she was saying. 
 
 " She thought perhaps I might be able to help you about 
 the packing. Can I ? " 
 
 " No, but I'd be glad if you'd stop while Jimmie is 
 doing it. I don't want to leave without saying good-by 
 to you." 
 
 All the roses fled from Helen's cheeks. " Yes cer- 
 tainly," she murmured. 
 
 "You'll excuse my being somewhat confused? The 
 truth is I'm very much upset." 
 
 " I can't tell you how dreadfully I feel," said Helen. 
 " Are you sure you and Richard " She paused. Her 
 glance stirred him like an angel face in a drunkard's 
 dream her face earnest, grieved, sympathetic, unable 
 to credit anything so dreadful, so wicked as a parting in 
 hate. 
 
 " Quite sure. It's final. Please, let's not talk about 
 it. It's all so so revolting." 
 
 In presence of those clear, noble eyes of hers, the sor- 
 didness of his " romance " now once more began to stand 
 
 478
 
 out. What a mess! No wonder he had taken to drink. If 
 it had been Helen and the kind of love she inspired 
 "But you and I will always be friends won't we?" he 
 said to her. 
 
 Her eyelids dropped and he saw her bosom fluttering. 
 " I hope so," she said so low he scarcely heard. She was 
 pale now, and drooping. " Though I'm afraid when you 
 get away off there, you'll forget me very soon." 
 
 His heart smote him as he looked at that tall, voluptuous 
 figure, at that lovely face, so regular, so pure. Here was a 
 woman, a real woman, and she would have loved him per- 
 haps did love him. " I know I'm unworthy of a thought 
 from you who are so good and pure," he said. " But your 
 kindness to me has helped me. And God knows, I shall 
 need help." Oh, that it had been his lot to anchor to this 
 strong, white soul ! How much nobler than the finest pas- 
 sion was a love centering about the sweet, old-fashioned 
 ideals. What a haven those arms, that bosom would be ! 
 He felt dissolute and sin-scarred as only a vain young man 
 can feel those dread but delightful depravities. 
 
 " You must not despair, Basil," came in Helen's soft 
 voice, like oil upon his wounds. And it touched him to see 
 how, maidenly shy though she was, she yet could not resist 
 the appeal of this opportunity to try to do good. She 
 went on, " It's always darkest before dawn, and the more 
 rain falls the less there is to fall." 
 
 These words seemed like heavenly wisdom delivered by 
 a messenger of light. He sighed. 
 
 " You'll come out all right and will escape from that 
 that whatever it is " Helen's cheeks modestly colored 
 " and be happy with some good woman who is worthy 
 of you." 
 
 She looked so sad, so beautiful that before he knew it 
 479
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 he, ever sympathetic with women, had said, " Some woman 
 like you, Helen." 
 
 She turned away. He saw that her emotions were mak- 
 ing her tremble. How she loved him! What a prize such 
 a love would be and how chagrined Courtney would feel 
 Courtney the vampire woman who had tried to destroy 
 him, and thought she had succeeded and was gloating over 
 his misery. "If we'd had the chance, Helen, how happy we 
 could have made each other ! But I mustn't talk of that." 
 
 " Why not ? " said she, with bold shyness. " I know 
 that for some reason we can never be anything more to 
 each other. But it's been a happiness " earnestl}", with 
 tears in her eyes of the Homeric Juno and in her voice 
 young and honest and sympathetic " a real happiness to 
 feel that the best of you the part that's really you found 
 something to like in me." 
 
 He thrilled. Here was a woman! And a woman who 
 appreciated him. He wondered how he could have lingered 
 under a malign spell when such beauty of soul and body, 
 too was his for the asking. " Helen ! " he cried. And 
 all his wounded heart's longing and all his wounded vanity's 
 suffering gave energy to his cry. He took her hand; he 
 put his arm round her. Her cheek touched his. How cool 
 yet warm she was ! How lovely and sweet ! And the un- 
 sullied, untouched down! How fresh! Except her male 
 relatives, no doubt no man but himself had ever kissed her 
 " Helen Helen ! God forgive me, but I can't refuse this 
 moment of pure happiness." 
 
 She gently drew away. " Oh, Basil," she sobbed. 
 " And I had said no man should ever kiss me until But 
 you it seems different. You are so noble so pure 
 minded." Her eyes gazed into his with a trustful adora- 
 tion that thrilled him. 
 
 480
 
 " Helen do you love me? " he cried. 
 
 Her honest eyes opened wider. " Would I have let yom 
 touch me if I didn't? " 
 
 " Yes I know that ! " he exclaimed. " How pure you 
 are! It's like heaven after hell." 
 
 She gazed on into his eyes. A faint flush overspread 
 her pale cheeks. She kissed him. " I love you, Basil," 
 she said, gravely. Then all at once the color surged wave 
 on wave over her brow, her cheeks, her neck. She hung 
 her head, slowly drew away from his detaining vibrating 
 arms. There is a time for lighting a fire; there is a time 
 for leaving it to burn of itself. Helen had by the guidance 
 of feminine instinct hit upon exactly the right instant for 
 drawing back. She released herself, avoided his touch just 
 when passion having captured his imagination swept oa 
 to the conquest of the flesh. At the edges of her lowered 
 eyes appeared two tears to hang glistening in the lashes. 
 From her bosom rose a sigh, soft, suppressed but heart- 
 breaking. 
 
 The bright flame was leaping in his eyes. " You noble, 
 splendid woman ! " he cried, as his glance leaped from 
 charm to charm from delicate, regular features to sump- 
 tuous yet girlish figure. " What a jewel in what a 
 casket ! You appeal to the best there is in me only to the 
 best. If I become a man again, it will be through you." 
 And sincerity rang in his voice; for, the fire of high re- 
 solve to be a good man, to be worthy of this exalted woman- 
 hood, was burning in his blood. " Helen will you help 
 me? I've sinned you never will know how dreadfully. 
 But I love you." 
 
 Her answer was a beautiful shaft of the love light from 
 her now wonderful eyes. 
 
 " Helen will you marry me ? " 
 481
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 From head to foot she trembled. All her color fled, 
 leaving her face whiter than the milk-white skin of her 
 voluptuous neck and shoulders. " I love you," she said 
 simply. 
 
 " Then you will? Say you will, Helen. I cannot trust 
 myself to go away without your strength to help me." 
 
 " I will, Basil." 
 
 There were tears in his eyes as in hers as he rever- 
 ently kissed her hands. He had a sense of peace, of sin 
 forgiven, of joyous return to the fold of honor and re- 
 spectability. And her heart was overflowing with love, with 
 gratitude to him and to God.
 
 XXX 
 
 RETURNING to the house after full two hours, she burst 
 excitedly in upon Courtney, who was at her easel in the up- 
 stairs sitting room. Courtney had by much experimenting 
 found that of her several possible indoor occupations paint- 
 ing was far the best sedative for mind and nerves. The 
 girl's face, exultant with pride, exalted with love, gave her 
 a shock; for, only complete triumph could have so roused 
 those regular, chastely cool features from their wonted re- 
 pose. She had on impulse sent Helen to Basil in vague 
 hope that they, admirably suited because each needed just 
 what the other had to give, possibly might somehow get a 
 start in the direction of making a match of it. She had the 
 most convincing of reasons for believing that the heart in 
 need of balm is the most susceptible to it. But she did not 
 believe that Basil's heart was, at least latterly, involved; 
 and, as she had not a glimmer of a suspicion of his stolen 
 draughts of " moral tonic," she could not credit the story 
 so clearly written upon those radiant features. 
 
 " You don't mean you got him ! " she exclaimed, laying 
 her brush on the rest and leaning back. And in her amaze- 
 ment and excitement over this sudden freakish prank of 
 fate, out of her mind flew all the wretched thoughts over 
 which she had been brooding thoughts centering about her 
 own ugly part in that scene at the laboratory. 
 
 Helen, undisturbed by this frankness of woman to 
 woman friend, when there are no listeners, flung ecstatic 
 arms about her and kissed her on either cheek. " I'm so 
 happy ! " she cried. " And I owe it all to you." 
 
 483
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Engaged ? " inquired Courtney, the utter impossibility 
 of the thing down-facing the clear evidence of its actuality. 
 
 Helen held up her left hand, displaying the old-fash- 
 ioned diamond rin^g Basil had always worn on his little 
 finger. " It was his mother's," she said, regarding it with 
 an expression in the big brown eyes that would have thrilled 
 him, had he seen. It thrilled Courtney; and no further 
 proof of the absolute passing of Basil was needed than the 
 unalloyed pleasure Helen's happiness gave her. " En- 
 gaged," said Helen, softly, dreamily. " And the day set 
 the second of June." 
 
 " Splendid ! " Helen, she felt, was secure ; for, Basil 
 had the highest respect for his given word. 
 
 " And if you hadn't sent me down there, I do believe 
 it'd never have happened. Just think ! though we've loved 
 each other practically from the first meeting. He says it 
 was his feeling about me that started him to struggling 
 against that bad woman. Do you remember " 
 
 " Yes, I remember," said Courtney. How dead it all 
 was! dead with the death that leaves no scar upon the 
 heart, only a lesson in the memory. How could it ever 
 have seemed living ? and immortal ! 
 
 " Oh of course you remember. You knew about her." 
 
 " Not much about her," replied Courtney. Pensively, 
 " Really, nothing at all." 
 
 " I'm sure I don't want to know anything. The less a 
 good woman knows about evil, the better. ... I think re- 
 cently he must have almost succeeded in breaking away; 
 for, to-day I'm sure he was hesitating at the parting of the 
 ways whether to go back to her or not. And my coming 
 there decided him. Isn't it beautiful? " 
 
 " Like a fairy tale," said Courtney, taking up her brush 
 and eying critically the little landscape to which she was 
 
 484
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 giving the finishing touches. " But, my dear, I don't think 
 you ought to tell me these things." 
 
 She felt selfish in saying this; Helen had inexperienced 
 youth's irresistible craving to confide, and was simply burst- 
 ing with simple and innocent vanity over having achieved 
 the double triumph of both spiritual and worldly advan- 
 tage. But Helen was not to be suppressed or even discour- 
 aged. " Oh, yes," replied she. " He asked me to tell you 
 we are engaged. I think he knows you've heard about that 
 woman who was dragging him down, and thought you could 
 advise me whether he was a fit man for me to marry. You 
 see he feels he's been very bad." 
 
 " Men always like to think that," said Courtney. " But 
 as long as they think so, they're not. No, he isn't bad, as 
 men go. He wants to settle down. And he will settle 
 down with you." She was looking at the landscape but 
 her quizzical eyes were seeing the pair of them a few years 
 hence, contentedly yawning at each other, leading the con- 
 ventional life of the well-to-do that swathes them body and 
 mind in soft, indolent fat. 
 
 Helen had only half listened to Courtney, as she cared 
 as little as the next woman about her lover's past, and knew 
 for herself that he was high-minded and of the noblest in- 
 stincts. She halted her own and Courtney's musings with 
 an absent, " I feel that way about it, too." She moved 
 nervously about the room, from time to time casting an 
 appealing glance at her absorbed friend. Finally she burst 
 out desperately : " There's something I want your advice 
 about. I don't know whether I've done right or not." 
 
 " Yes ? " said Courtney, encouragingly. 
 
 " I hadn't told you but the fact is while I was on 
 that visit to Saint X, I I became engaged to Will Arbuth- 
 not." 
 
 485
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Courtney looked laughingly at her over the suspended 
 brush. " Oh, Helen Helen ! " 
 
 " But let me explain, dear," begged Helen, cheeks scar- 
 let and eyes down. " When I went up there and until 
 just a few minutes ago I thought " Her faltering voice 
 died away altogether. 
 
 " Thought there was no hope of getting Basil/' said 
 Courtney, with no censure, with only sympathy. She re- 
 sumed touching up the picture to ease Helen's embarrass- 
 ment. " Go on." 
 
 " I thought he was hopelessly in the power of that 
 bad woman. So, I put my feeling for him out of my 
 heart. ... I know you're laughing at me. You're so 
 cynical, Courtney. But a girl has got to do the best she 
 can. And it's getting harder and harder for a poor girl 
 to marry that is, to marry a man with anything. And 
 brought up as I've been I have to have nice surroundings. 
 I want a good home and and children and they 
 must be educated properly and able to keep their place 
 in our station of life." 
 
 " Certainly," reassured Courtney. " You did the prac- 
 tical, sensible thing." 
 
 " I know, what I did seems to bear out your ideas. 
 You're always teasing me about my ideals being mostly 
 pretense. Well, perhaps they are. It does look like it 
 doesn't it? " 
 
 " Everybody's are," said Courtney, squinting at the 
 picture. " Ideals are paste pearls. One can wear much 
 bigger and finer ones than of the real and nobody knows 
 they're paste or need ever know if one's careful to avoid 
 their being tested. I'm glad, dear, you weren't so foolish 
 as you always insisted you'd be." 
 
 Helen looked as if her soul were freed of a huge 
 486
 
 weight. " I will say, Courtney, that I'd never think of 
 confiding in any person who believes like me, while I 
 always feel safe in confiding in you." 
 
 " Thank you," said Courtney with genuine gratitude. 
 " You don't know what a flattering compliment that is. 
 . . . So, you're engaged to Will Arbuthnot? " 
 
 " Yes that is, up at Saint X Will asked me to marry 
 him. He's a nice, clean, thoroughly good fellow. And 
 when Basil went away I supposed he'd gone to that 
 bad " 
 
 " I understand," interrupted Courtney. " Never mind 
 about her." 
 
 " I felt I could grow to like Will, and I put Basil out 
 of my heart." There she fluttered a guiltily uneasy glance 
 at Courtney. 
 
 " And now," teased Courtney, " you give the naughty 
 man the preference over the nice one." 
 
 " That's just it! " exclaimed Helen in triumph. " Basil 
 needs me. I did hesitate at least, I tried to until he 
 begged me to strengthen him by saying yes. Then I felt 
 it was clearly my duty." Helen took Courtney's amused 
 nod at her landscape as approval. " And while I hated 
 to do a thing that in a way might seem deceitful 
 still, Basil has such an exalted opinion of me and 
 it helps him, to feel that way and if he had found 
 out that I hadn't loved him all along or if I'd asked 
 him to wait I might have lost all chance to help him 
 to be the noble, good man Don't smile that way, 
 Courtney." 
 
 And Courtney instantly changed her smile to one of 
 tenderness. " I know you're good and sweet, dear and 
 beautifully sincere," said she. with perfect honesty ; for, ex- 
 perience had left in her little of the familiar self-com- 
 
 487
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 placence that condemns human beings for human traits. 
 " Much too good for Basil." 
 
 " Of course/' said Helen, beaming, " a woman who has 
 kept herself pure is superior to a man who has not been 
 clean and nice." 
 
 " Always make Basil feel that," advised Courtney. 
 " He's the kind of man that can behave only when he's on 
 his knees and you're the kind of woman that prefers 
 worship to love. ... I suppose you'll live in the East." 
 
 " In New York, I think," replied Helen, reflectively. 
 " He talks of the country. But I've had enough of that. 
 I'm sure he'd be better contented in a city." 
 
 Courtney laughed gayly. " What a dear you are ! " she 
 exclaimed, looking at her friend tenderly. " And so abso- 
 lutely unconscious of it." 
 
 Helen returned her gaze in unaffected surprise. " I 
 don't know what you mean. Why do you laugh ? " 
 
 " Nothing." Courtney was painting again. " What 
 are you going to do about Will Arbuthnot ? " 
 
 " Why, be perfectly honest with him," cried Helen, in- 
 jured and reproachful. " I simply couldn't be deceitful." 
 
 " Tell him you've found you can make a better matcli ? 
 Oh, you mustn't do that." 
 
 " I should think not ! " exclaimed Helen, horrified. 
 " That wouldn't be the truth. No, I'll tell him I find 
 I don't love him as a woman should love the man she's to 
 give herself to. You know I've got the old-fashioned ideals 
 that is, ideas of the sacredness of womanhood. He'll 
 understand." 
 
 " Yes," said Courtney gravely, though her eyes were 
 dancing, " he'll have a deeper reverence for true woman- 
 hood. . . . Well, the men deserve it. They're responsible 
 for our not daring to be our natural human selves." 
 
 488
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " But I am natural, dear/' remonstrated Helen warmly. 
 
 Courtney was busily trying for a shade of brown on her 
 palette. " You're sure Basil won't hear of your other en- 
 gagement? Remember, he knows several Saint X people." 
 
 " I made an agreement with Will that we'd keep it a 
 secret until we got ready to marry." Courtney laughed 
 again; it was so obvious what lingering longing and hope 
 had prompted this precaution. " What are you laughing at 
 now? " asked Helen. 
 
 " I wouldn't spoil your innocence by telling you/' re- 
 plied Courtney. And she rose and, palette in one hand, 
 brush in the other, .kissed her affectionately. " I'm glad 
 you're happy and I'm sure you'll always be happy." 
 
 " Indeed I shall. And he'll be happy too. As he 
 said, he's lived in an atmosphere of deceit and false- 
 hood, and he needs to be lifted up into purity and love 
 and and all that makes a good home and life on a high 
 plane." 
 
 Courtney was smiling strangely into her color box. 
 " You'll be married in Saint X at Mrs. Torrey's, I sup- 
 pose? " 
 
 Helen began her answer in a place so remote that Court- 
 ney, used as she was to the complexities of feminine 
 thought, was completely baffled. Said Helen: "Will 
 Cousin Richard think me disloyal, marrying a man he's at 
 outs with? " 
 
 Courtney reflected. " I don't know what he'll think," 
 she said. " But you've got to consider yourself first and 
 Basil." 
 
 " Yes, certainly " Again Helen was only half listen- 
 ing. " About the wedding," she presently said. " I was 
 thinking it out, while Basil and I were talking " 
 
 " Helen Helen ! " And the small head with its au- 
 489
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 burn crown shook in mock disapproval. " Not while he 
 was making his first love to you? " 
 
 Helen reddened. " I had to think about things. You 
 know, a woman can't afford to let herself loose like a man. 
 And I decided it'd be best for us not to announce the en- 
 gagement, but just to marry. And not at Saint X. I'll 
 go up to Aunt Lida's in Laporte. What is it, dear? Why 
 do you look so queer? " 
 
 " Nothing nothing." Courtney had no desire indeed, 
 what would have been the use? to tell her thoughts as 
 she viewed the swamp of deceit and double dealing into 
 which Helen and Basil were dragging each other in pursuit 
 of those will-o'-the-wisp ideals. Ideals ! But Courtney's 
 lip did not curl in scorn as it would have curled a few 
 months before. She had learned that supreme lesson of 
 tolerance even when you are sure you are right, not to 
 fancy that what is right for you is right for anyone else. 
 
 " No," Helen was saying, " I'll not tell Richard. It 
 would annoy him and do no good. Oh, I ought to be 
 ashamed of myself, to be so happy when you are un- 
 happy." 
 
 " I unhappy ? " 
 
 " I know you conceal it, dear. You're brave and self- 
 reliant. But Isn't there anything I could do to bring 
 you and Dick together again? You're a woman, dear. 
 You simply have to be taken care of, and " 
 
 " Don't shadow your romance with worry about rae," 
 said Courtney nervously. She was all confusion and rest- 
 lessness. 
 
 " But I can't help it," pleaded Helen. " I know Rich- 
 ard was neglectful. And he's not an attractive man to a 
 woman, as Basil is isn't livable and lovable like Basil " 
 
 Helen went on and on contrasting the two men, to 
 490
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 Richard's disadvantage at every point. In former days 
 she had been too much " afraid Richard'll find out how 
 foolish I am and how little I know " to get in the least 
 acquainted with him ; since the divorce they had talked only 
 constrained commonplaces, when she took Winchie to him. 
 Thus, the comparison was grotesque distortion of Richard. 
 But Courtney was not tempted to try to set her right. 
 Helen, of small mentality and in love with Basil, would 
 not appreciate, would not be convinced, would simply be 
 irritated would probably misunderstand and be encour- 
 aged to pursue her absurd scheme for bringing them to- 
 gether. But parallel with Helen's talk there was in Court- 
 ney's mind a juster contrasting of the two men the one 
 strong, the other weak; the one real, the other idealist; 
 the one simple, the other a poseur; the one intelligent, 
 the other merely conceited; the one master of his emotions, 
 the other their slave; the one an original, the other a pat- 
 tern, an identical sample of thousands turned out by the 
 " best families " and the " best colleges " and the " best 
 society." And then it came to her why she had estimated 
 Basil quickly and accurately, once she began it that it 
 was because in Richard she for the first time had a measure 
 to do her measuring with. The mists of his abstraction 
 had completely hid his personality from her, as from 
 everybody. Those mists had blown away in the cyclone of 
 the disruption of their marriage, and he had stood revealed 
 and Basil also Basil, the dwarf beside the giant. She 
 could see how the lesser man had made what was, in the 
 circumstances, irresistible appeal to the imperious craving 
 that must be satisfied before the need of heart for sym- 
 pathy and of mind for comradeship could gain a hearing, 
 the craving that in gaining its ends will compel the imagi- 
 nation to play any necessary sorry trick upon the intelli- 
 
 4-91
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 gence. She could see this ; and she could also see how sorry 
 the trick upon intelligence had been how absurd was her 
 dream of founding a life-long content and happiness upon 
 what Basil could give her and she Basil. 
 
 " I'm sure," Helen was saying, " with a little manage- 
 ment you could get Richard back." 
 
 These words fell upon Courtney's ears just as into her 
 mind again came that scene between her and Richard at 
 the laboratory the childish, the coarse taunts she had 
 hurled at him, and how he had met them. She was hot 
 with the shame of it when Helen spoke. The suggestion 
 that Richard could be got back overwhelmed her with a 
 crushing, stinging sense of how in contempt he must hold 
 her now. The red of her skin flamed up into scarlet. 
 " Don't speak of those things," she commanded harshly. 
 Then, instantly ashamed of this misdirected outburst of 
 temper, she put on her most careless, frivolous air put it 
 on well enough to deceive Helen. " Let's talk trousseau," 
 said she. " You haven't much time, you know. June's 
 very near." 
 
 But Helen was too curious about the trouble that had 
 so abruptly changed a friendship into hatred. " It must 
 have been exciting that quarrel between them," she hinted 
 encouragingly. "You were there, weren't you?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Tell me, Courtney." 
 
 " It cured my cold," said Courtney. " I'd been feeling 
 queer in the nose and eyes " 
 
 " How can you be so light ! " exclaimed Helen. " Well 
 let's talk trousseau." She felt that she had done her 
 duty, that it was a waste of time to try to induce Courtney 
 to be serious " She never will have any sense of respon- 
 sibility or of the graver side of life." And with a clear 
 
 492
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 conscience she took up trousseau and thought and talked 
 dress steadily the rest of the afternoon, straight through 
 until the supper gong sounded. And she asked so many 
 questions, so much minute advice about every little detail 
 that Courtney's attention could not wander. 
 
 At supper Courtney got a real pleasure from Helen's 
 rapt, tenderly smiling countenance they could not talk 
 before Lizzie as the engagement was to be kept secret. 
 Also, she got pleasure mingled with amusement out of 
 Helen's delightful swift assumption of the ways of a mar- 
 ried woman, and out of her immense satisfaction as shown 
 in a certain sweet and loving condescension to Courtney 
 over Basil's superiority as a catch. Helen was in fancy 
 already married and installed in grandeur. But after 
 supper, when Helen went up to write her first love letter 
 (those to Will Arbuthnot didn't count) Courtney made 
 no attempt to save herself from the attack of the blues that 
 had been threatening ever since she calmed sufficiently to 
 recall what she had said to Dick at the laboratory. She 
 sat at the piano playing softly. Helen's face was haunting 
 her that expression telling of dreams she understood so 
 well so well! Would Helen's dream fade too? Prob- 
 ably yes, certainly for, the Helen sort of woman soon 
 discouraged love in a man, and the Basil sort of man 
 looked askance at love as tainted of that devil whom no 
 one believed in. any more yet everyone feared. Fade 
 wither die. And she herself would she seek on and on, 
 deceived always by hopes and longings as she had been 
 twice already the second time worse deceived than the 
 first 
 
 Into her thoughts came an image of Richard. The 
 image grew stronger. Very gradually she realized that 
 32 493
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 he was actually before her, was the tall figure in the door- 
 way of the sitting room 
 
 " I didn't dare interrupt/' he said. " It would have 
 been like disturbing a funeral." 
 
 " Not quite so bad as that/' replied she witli an at- 
 tempt to smile. Though her rose-bronze coloring enabled 
 her to blush deeply without detection, had the corner where 
 she was sitting been less dim he must have seen into what 
 shamefaced confusion his corning threw her. 
 
 She went on playing; he seated himself at some distance 
 from her to gaze into the fire and smoke. She was on the 
 grill of humiliating thoughts about herself what she had 
 said and done that afternoon. She did not lift her eyes 
 until she had made sure by several furtive glances that 
 she could look at him in safety. She watched him the 
 cigarette gracefully between the long first and second 
 fingers of his hand of the aristocrat and the artist the 
 poise of his curiously long head so well proportioned the 
 long, sensitive, mobile features that indescribable look 
 which proclaims at a glance the man of high intelligence 
 the man of the finely organized nervous system. Then 
 she observed that he was in evening half dress one more 
 reason for his looking unusually handsome and distin- 
 guished. But all the time she was seeing those two ex- 
 pressions which had transformed him that afternoon had 
 transformed him and had made her feel mean and poor 
 beside him. A man who could be such a wild hot blast 
 of primeval passion; the man who could be stronger 
 than passion, even such passion there was indeed a man ! 
 And what must he think of her ! " But no worse than I 
 deserve." 
 
 To break the current of her own thoughts, she inter- 
 rupted his with a trivial " You are dressed this evening." 
 
 494
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 " Because I've come to call," he replied, rousing him- 
 self from his reverie. 
 
 " I'll tell Helen." 
 
 " I want to talk to you if you'll listen." She stopped 
 the soft wandering of her fingers over the keys. " No, go 
 on playing, please." 
 
 She resumed. Now her eyes were on the keyboard, 
 and she was having no easy task of it finding the right 
 keys and striking the right chords, all the time conscious 
 of his steady penetrating gaze. " It's nearing the time 
 you fixed for going East," he began. 
 
 She nodded slowly in time to the music. He was so 
 seated that the piano prevented his seeing any of her but 
 her bare shoulders and graceful head with its masses of 
 auburn hair, against a background of palms and ferns. 
 "I'm glad the spring is so backward this year," she said; 
 for, she had learned not to fear his misunderstanding, if 
 she spoke out her thoughts. " If it were really spring with 
 the grounds all in bloom and the windows wide It makes 
 me sad to think of that." 
 
 She had thought she might perhaps soften his contempt 
 by reminding him that there was another and a less repel- 
 lant side to her character. But as soon as the words were 
 out, she wished she had not spoken; it was useless to try 
 to make him think well of her. He was probably regretting 
 that he had let her have Winchie. She looked appeal- 
 ingly toward him, hoping he would speak say any- 
 thing no matter what, so long as it broke that silence 
 of painful suspense. When she could endure it no 
 longer, she suddenly burst out : " You've come to ask me 
 to leave at once. You are right. I'll go as soon as I 
 can pack." 
 
 " On the contrary," said he, eyes still intent upon the 
 495
 
 tall shafts of flame leaping toward the cavernous blackness 
 of the chimney. " I've come to ask you not to go at all." 
 
 His tone was calm and self-controlled. It contained no 
 suggestion of ominous meaning; nor did his face. 
 
 " I I don't understand/' she ventured, nervously. 
 
 " I want to propose," explained he, in the same delib- 
 erate way, " that we give each other another trial." 
 
 There was no mistaking his meaning. In the sudden 
 reversal from all she had been expecting and fearing, her 
 thoughts became mere chaos. Hands resting upon the keys, 
 she sat silent, rigid waiting. 
 
 He turned his chair, leaned toward her, his elbows on 
 his knees. " Is the idea is it distasteful to you ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 Carefully, with her tapering fingers she measured 
 chords without striking them. " Not distasteful," said she. 
 
 " You do not dislike me now? " 
 
 " I never have, except for a few minutes now and then 
 when you said or did tyrannical things." Painfully em- 
 barrassed, she was trying to regain control of herself under 
 cover of arranging the chiffon round the edge of the bosom 
 of her dress. 
 
 " Courtney, I'm a different man from what I was." 
 
 " Yes," she assented, without reserve. " Very differ- 
 ent. But " 
 
 " Don't, please," he said, before she could begin to ex- 
 plain. " When you've heard my reasons for asking you 
 to stay, you may think well of them. If not, why you 
 at least can refuse more intelligently. This afternoon, 
 when Gallatin was down at the laboratory making an ass 
 of himself, you whirled upon me with some very vivid 
 reminders of what you had been to him." 
 
 " I was insane with rage not that it wasn't all true 
 496
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 only I it was She hung her head " Oh, I'm so 
 ashamed ! so ashamed ! " she cried. 
 
 " I'm glad you did," interrupted he, heartily. " You 
 thought to infuriate me. And you did, for a moment. 
 Then I was astonished to find myself quite calm. Do 
 you know why? " 
 
 " Yes. Because you care nothing about me." 
 
 " Because I care nothing about him. Because I know 
 you've ceased to think you care about him care, you never 
 did. Since I've come to my senses, I've been getting ac- 
 quainted with you. And I know you do not and never did 
 and never could love Basil Gallatin. That is, the woman 
 you are now the only one that interests either of us never 
 did and never could." 
 
 The deep green eyes glanced gratefully toward him. 
 " That's true." 
 
 " It was simply what you and I went through with 
 when we first met and became engaged and got mar- 
 ried." 
 
 " Yes," said she. " Much the same. But " Her eyes 
 met his fully. " It wouldn't be honest if I didn't say too 
 that I do not regret about him. I suppose there's some- 
 thing wrong with me, but somehow I don't seem able to 
 regret anything I do even the things I'm ashamed of 
 like what I said this afternoon. It all seems part of ex- 
 perience. It seems necessary. That experience with him 
 it helped me toward learning to live." 
 
 She expected that he would be offended by her frank- 
 ness. But he was not. " It helped you toward learning 
 to live," he assented, like one stating an indisputable truth. 
 " And it helped me. No, more than that. It taught me. 
 ... I wish the lesson could have been got in some some 
 other way. Perhaps you do, too." She nodded, gazing 
 
 497
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 thoughtfully across the piano into the fire. " But," he 
 went on, " fate doesn't let us choose our way or, per- 
 haps, there's no nice, refined way of getting one's full 
 growth, any more than there is for a tree. It's simply got 
 to stand outdoors in all weathers, and learn to survive and 
 grow strong, no matter what comes." 
 
 " And the things that seem to hinder, often help most 
 and those that look like helps are enemies." 
 
 She saw his understanding, appreciative look, though 
 her eyes were gazing past him; and she liked it. " We've 
 both learned," said he. " And we've both been put in the 
 way of learning more. Now why shouldn't you and I use 
 our experience to the best advantage ? " 
 
 " I intend to try," said she. 
 
 " Then it's simply a question of what is the best advan- 
 tage. Isn't it for us both to stay on here ? " 
 
 " I don't think so," was her slow reply. " Not for 
 either of us." 
 
 " But you'll listen to my reasons ? Really listen, I 
 mean. You know, you caught my bad habit of not listen- 
 ing." 
 
 " Yes," she said with a forced, uneasy smile. " I'll 
 listen." 
 
 " Well first, there's this place. You like it, don't you ? 
 You must, since you made it. I've found that out, too." 
 
 " I love it," she answered. " But " She shook her 
 head. 
 
 ' Now, do try to be patient with me. You must consider 
 all three of my reasons together. That was only number 
 one. Number two is Winchie." 
 
 She searched his face with swift terrified eyes. 
 
 He smiled a frank and winning reassurance that in- 
 stantly convinced her. " Please put that kind of thoughts 
 
 498
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 about me out of your mind forever," he urged. " I've 
 learned my lesson that the beginning of fear is the end 
 of trust. The boy's yours. You've got the right to him; 
 he's got the right to you. Even if I could do for him, it'd 
 be my duty But I didn't come here this evening to talk 
 about duty. That's a rotten hypocrisy." 
 
 "Is this Richard Vaughan?" she cried laughingly. 
 
 " The same minus his grandfather," replied he, eyes 
 and voice echoing her laugh. " Xo more duty for me. 
 When anybody talks about doing his duty, he'd better be 
 watched. If he boasts of having done his duty he'd better 
 be locked up while they find out what mischief he's been 
 at. No, I'm out for honest, selfish inclination only. That 
 brings me to my third reason. I want you to stay. But 
 for very selfisn sensible reasons I want you to want to stay. 
 I've gotten acquainted with you. I need you. There's 
 nobody who could take your place." 
 
 She smiled at what seemed to her the extravagant kind- 
 ness of this. 
 
 " I mean just that," he went on. It wasn't the words 
 he was saying; it never is a matter of words. It was the 
 way he said it the force behind the words, like the force 
 behind the projectile. " I need you. Don't you think 
 you could learn to need me? A man needs a woman. A 
 woman needs a man. We've never given each other a fair 
 trial. Why shouldn't we? Now that you've taught me, 
 I don't want you to abandon me. And why should you 
 begin all over again with another man?" 
 
 She sat motionless, hardly breathing, it seemed, from 
 the stillness of her bosom. He waited long but no answer 
 came. He went to the big old-fashioned chimneypiece, 
 stood with his back to the logs ; a look of somberness came 
 into his face. " Well," he said, " I've said my say." There 
 
 499
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 was silence in the room. He drew a long breath. " What 
 do you think ? " 
 
 She lifted her head. With flushed face and reproachful, 
 almost resentful eyes she cried : " You've no right to come 
 at me that way. You make it hard for me to do as I wish." 
 
 "You wish to go? Then it's settled." He turned his 
 face to the fire, and she could not see it. " We'll not ' 
 speak of this again." His voice seemed natural; but there 
 must have been some subtle quality in it that set her nerves 
 to vibrating. 
 
 " And you," she cried, " are thinking ' How mean and 
 ungrateful she is after my generosity to refuse to 
 
 " Not so ! " he protested sharply, wheeling round. 
 " I've not been generous. When I told you the fault was 
 chiefly mine, I meant it." 
 
 " When a man treats a woman as if she were a human 
 being, it's generosity, as the world goes," insisted she. And 
 then the words began to pour from her as if they had sud- 
 denly found an outlet. " You make me feel small and 
 mean in refusing. Oh, I'm grateful for the way you've 
 treated me but I hate myself for being grateful and I'm 
 ashamed that it is hateful. But I can't be different. 
 Your generosity your forgiveness hurt my pride. They 
 make me feel I'm your inferior and I am. But I mustn't 
 stay where I'd feel humble. You make me ashamed to go, 
 but I know I've the right to go and that I ought to go. 
 I must ! " 
 
 " Then you are going/' was his unhesitating reply. 
 " I don't want you to stay. I see you don't believe me 
 don't understand me and no wonder. It'd be useless to 
 try again, unless we were both determined with all our 
 hearts to make a success if success was at all possible." 
 
 " And it couldn't be a success," said she, a touching 
 500
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 melancholy in her voice, in her deep, mysterious eyes. 
 " For, a man doesn't want an equal woman but a dependent 
 wants his woman to be like his dog. Oh, what a world 
 it is! where everybody cants about self-respect, and 
 everybody prefers cringers to friends, fear to love ! " 
 
 " Not I," said Vaughan, in the quiet forceful manner 
 that fitted so well his air of reserve power, of strength with- 
 out strenuosity. " And that's why I want you. Courtney, 
 don't you see that you're free and independent here, now? 
 Don't you see it'd be a waste of time, a waste of energy, 
 for you to go away? You may not need me, but I need 
 you in every way. You can get along without me. But 
 how can I get along without you? Where would I find a 
 woman who could take your place ? " 
 
 Her bosom was rising and falling stormily. Her eyes 
 wandered, as if she were desperately seeking a way of 
 escape and had scant hope of finding it. 
 
 " Can't you give ' us ' another trial? " he asked, with 
 proud humility. 
 
 " I cannot," she cried, starting up in her agitation. " I 
 cannot! I must go. There's everything here but the one 
 thing I must have what you never could give me, after all 
 that's happened and then, there's what I said to you this 
 afternoon. We never could look at each other without my 
 feeling that you Oh, let's not talk about it. I must go 
 I must ! I cannot live without love equal love. I must 
 seek until I find it find some one who needs me all of 
 me all I have to give and must give." 
 
 He left the hearth and faced her with the length of 
 the piano between them. " Could you love me? " he asked. 
 
 His voice set to vibrating nerves she had thought would 
 never again respond to him. She trembled, and her eyes 
 sank. " Even if I could you couldn't love me. You could 
 
 501
 
 THE HUNGRY HEART 
 
 forgive could be generous and kind. But you couldn't 
 love." 
 
 " But I do love you," he said. And she, looking at him 
 in wonder, thought there had never shone eyes so near to 
 being the very soul itself. " I began to love you when you 
 sent Gallatin away and faced me alone and did not lie. I 
 came back because You were like the air to me, Court- 
 ney. One isn't conscious of the air unless he hasn't it, and 
 can't breathe. I've loved you more and more, day by day, 
 ever since. And I shall love you more and more need 
 you more and more every day until I die. Courtney 
 can't you forgive me? I am sorry for what I did and 
 I love you." 
 
 She sank upon the piano seat, flung her slim white arms 
 along the keyboad, buried her face in them. " I've found 
 it! " she sobbed. " I've found it! " 
 
 Several discoveries in chemistry give Richard Vaughan 
 fame, and Courtney shares it. But they value it all at 
 nothing beside the discovery which gives them happiness: 
 That the wise make of their mistakes a ladder, the foolish 
 a grave. 
 
 (6) 
 THE END
 
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