PIERRE VINTON
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 OF A SUPERFLUOUS HUSBAND 
 
 BY 
 EDWARD C. VENABLE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1915
 
 Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Song 
 
 Published October, 1914 
 Second Impression, March 16, 1915 
 
 Third Impression, May 29, 1915 
 Fourth Impression, September 23, 1915
 
 THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 
 DEDICATED TO 
 
 C. P. B. 
 
 THE HEADMASTER OF DE LANCEY SCHOOL 
 
 BY 
 A SORT OF PUPIL 
 
 2138769
 
 BOOK I
 
 \Y HAT a vast difference there is between an empty 
 teacup and an emptied teacup. To have no longer any 
 place in the Tray of Things, to be a little soiled by use, 
 and, with a little of the sweetness of the Past in the 
 depths of you, to belong only to the Out-of-the-Way, 
 is, as I see it, to be an emptied teacup. And I can think 
 of nothing else I so closely resemble at this hour. 
 
 When Marcella first spoke of divorce she referred, 
 I remember, to "fetters." It is curious that the same 
 circumstance should make me think of teacups. It is 
 probably another instance of the incompatibility be- 
 tween Marcella and me, which, they say, is the cause 
 of the whole matter. Of course, we must be incompati- 
 ble. The fact that we spent two years and a great deal 
 of money getting rid of each other proves that. We 
 could scarcely give further proof, I think, unless we 
 ^committed murder. We did not resort to any extreme, 
 
 3
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 ,A 
 
 however. We simply called the attention of the Law 
 of the Land to our incompatibility and asked for a 
 remedy. 
 
 In fact, we have been congratulated on our behavior. 
 At least, I have; and I suppose Marcella has also. One 
 person described the divorce as "refined." I asked 
 Lilly Axson what a refined divorce was. She explained 
 it as meaning that "nothing horrid" had been divulged. 
 "You were tired of Marcella, and she was tired of you, 
 and that was all there was to it," explained Lilly. 
 
 I am afraid there isn't even that much to it. I am not 
 at all sure that I am tired of Marcella. That Marcella 
 was tired of me is indisputable, and, of course, I did 
 not try to prove to her that she was not. She wrote me 
 a letter when I did not oppose her suit and thanked 
 me. She apparently thought I had acted like a gentle- 
 man. Every one else seems to think it, too. Indeed, the 
 only person who is not satisfied completely with the 
 whole affair is myself. I, however, believe that I was 
 not tired of Marcella. It is this fact alone that makes 
 me say that my marriage was a failure. We were cer- 
 tainly happy for three years, only mildly discontented 
 for two; then we separated, and now we are divorced. 
 From the point of view of Marcella who is satisfied 
 
 4
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 with the divorce, the marriage should be called a tre- 
 mendous success. It is only from my point of view 
 that it can be called a failure. 
 
 I cannot even describe my own condition as miser- 
 able. Perhaps I should say I am profoundly bored. 
 Matrimony is really an absorbing occupation. The 
 office required a great deal of attention, for Marcella 
 could spend more money innocently than any man 
 
 who has ever lived. In extenuation, if it is a fault in a 
 
 i 
 
 pretty woman to spend money, I can say I have never 
 
 seen her badly dressed not even when she had measles. 
 But I have largely given up the office. I have enough 
 money for my own use without its assistance. More 
 than enough, perhaps, for I haven't Marcella's gift 
 for spending money innocently. Besides the office I 
 had innumerable other conjugal duties more directly 
 connected with Marcella, taking her where she wanted 
 to be seen with a husband and keeping her from places 
 where she should not be seen at all. Altogether, run- 
 ning Marcella required an immense amount of thought 
 and energy; it is mortifying to think how much, now 
 when it has all proved useless. 
 
 That is always the end of any rational researches I 
 make into the matter that the marriage was a failure, 
 
 5
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 that I am an emptied teacup, and that Marcella will 
 probably marry somebody else. I invariably issue from 
 the maze at that exit, but I can never find the beginning 
 of the path I mean, the cause of the failure. Even the 
 true hah* of Lilly Axson's statement, that Marcella was 
 tired of me, so utterly fatigued that she preferred kick- 
 ing up all this row to going on living with me, is only 
 an effect. But Mrs. Axson refused to go any deeper. 
 She said she wasn't a "Dope Doctor," which is her 
 rather expressive way of stating her dislike of psy- 
 chology. 
 
 I had rather hoped the Reverend Bertrand Wither- 
 spoon would go deeper. He married us and wrote each 
 of us a letter of condolence when the decree was pub- 
 lished. That was a little more discerning than most 
 people, at any rate, although my letter was a very 
 guarded admission of the existence of any cause for 
 itself. Still, he evidently did not regard the divorce as 
 a successful coup, accomplished in a genteel manner. 
 I went to see him and asked him the question I had 
 asked Mrs. Axson. He said our marriage had lacked 
 spirituality. 
 
 "Your pleasure, your aims, your ambitions," he said, 
 "what were they? Purely material, you admit of 
 
 6
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 your own accord. Can such pleasure, such ambitions, 
 my dear friend, ever truly form a band of union be- 
 tween two souls? Do they cultivate the qualities that 
 make for union, unselfishness, broad-mindedness, ideal- 
 ism? Do they not, on the contrary, cultivate the op- 
 posite qualities selfishness, pettiness, materialism the 
 qualities of discord and strife?" 
 
 The rectory of Saint Stephen's is the gloomiest house 
 in America. The architecture is Gothic, to match the 
 church, and the windows are slits, through which a 
 man-at-arms might, if he were a good shot, have dis- 
 charged a crossbow five hundred years ago in another 
 hemisphere. The Reverend Bertrand Witherspoon, with 
 his long black coat, his heavy gold cross, and his neatly 
 trimmed "side burns," was impressive in the high, 
 gloomy, narrow room of fine acoustic properties. It 
 occurred to me that he had done what the window's 
 shape suggested, shot at me with a weapon of another 
 era and another hemisphere. I was a little stunned by 
 the discharge, still I felt that he wasn't quite fair to 
 either of us. It was greatly to my personal advantage 
 to keep Marcella from leaving me, as I've shown, and 
 it was equally to Marcella's similar advantage to stay 
 with me because I am rich and Marcella hasn't_a 
 
 7
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 penny in the world and refuses alimony. But I didn't 
 reveal these facts to the Reverend Bertrand. I felt that 
 he would only look over the arsenal and hit me with a 
 missile of a slightly different date. 
 
 "I greatly appreciate your coming to me,*' he said 
 as I rose from the mediaeval chair and took my hat 
 from the refectory table of a fifteenth-century mon- 
 astery. "It is the highest privilege of my order to 
 bring assistance in the daily ordering of private life." 
 
 I thanked him. After all, he may truly believe that 
 he has brought "assistance." 
 
 A few blocks above Saint Stephen's I met Mrs. 
 Axson, who drove me up-town. Even Mrs. Axson's 
 men friends admit that she is modern. After Saint 
 Stephen's rectory she seemed prophetic. I told her 
 where I had been. 
 
 "And what did he tell you?" asked Mrs. Axson. 
 
 "He divided two thousand syllables by five hundred 
 words," I answered. 
 
 "And what's the dividend?" 
 
 "That I am a narrow-minded, selfish materialist." 
 
 "Poor Marcella!" sighed Mrs. Axson. 
 
 "But Marcella is just as bad," I added. 
 
 This silenced Mrs. Axson. I judged by theexpres- 
 
 8
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 sion of her face that she was thinking of Father With- 
 erspoon. 
 
 "It isn't entirely his fault," I suggested. "It's partly 
 the architecture." 
 
 "You mean the Church?" she said. 
 
 "I don't," I disclaimed. I did not. I rent a pew at 
 Saint Stephen's. 
 
 She dropped me at the corner of my side street. 
 
 "Who are you going to ask now?" she said, leaning 
 in the window of the car and surveying me with an 
 indulgent smile. She often does this. I have heard her 
 express the opinion that I am "hah* cracked." 
 
 "I think I shall go to Mrs. Malory." I had not 
 thought of Mrs. Malory, but I felt compelled to deserve 
 the indulgent smile. 
 
 "I know exactly what she will tell you," answered 
 Mrs. Axson. 
 
 "What?" I asked. 
 
 "That you ought to have had a baby.*' 
 
 As a matter of fact, that is exactly what Mrs. Malory 
 did tell me. I was rather surprised at her frankness, 
 but I have noticed that there is nothing the average 
 mother is so immodest about as motherhood. (I have 
 heard them talk to Marcella until her face burned. 
 

 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 She was very shy in such matters.) And Mrs. Malory 
 is an average mother. She has three children, who come 
 in for cakes at tea and make curtsies to everybody in 
 the room. When they had come and curtsied and gone 
 and she and I were alone I asked Mrs. Malory what 
 I had asked Father Witherspoon and Mrs. Axson. 
 
 "Mrs. Malory," I said bluntly, "do you think that 
 I am capable of making any woman happy?" 
 
 She looked at me very sternly and put down her 
 work-bag. "Does this mean," she demanded, "that 
 you are thinking of being married ? " 
 
 "No," I explained. "I am thinking of being divorced." 
 
 "But," she insisted, "you are divorced." 
 
 "Yes, that is what I am thinking of. If I could 
 make any woman happy, I would have made Marcella 
 so, because I could never try so hard for any woman 
 as I did for Marcella." 
 
 Mrs. Malory took up her work again and started to 
 sew. "It is none of my business," she began after a 
 pause, during which I balanced expectantly on the 
 edge of the couch. 
 
 "But it is your business," I pointed out, "because 
 I asked you." 
 
 "But it is such a queer thing to say," she expostu- 
 10
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 lated, and blushed slightly. I understood then that 
 Mrs. Axson had prophesied truly, but I listened to 
 Mrs. Malory and thanked her warmly. When I took 
 my leave she held up something out of the work-bag 
 for me to look at. It was bifurcated. "They are 
 Joan's," she explained. 
 
 Joan is the youngest and is named for her. In some 
 ways Mrs. Malory is the most shameless mother I 
 know. 
 
 I cannot, after truly impartial reflection, be con- 
 vinced that Mrs. Malory has come any nearer the 
 heart of the matter than the Reverend Bertrand Wither- 
 spoon. I want to know why, wanting Marcella and 
 having had her, I have her no longer, and I do not see 
 that children explain any more than materialism. 
 Marcella didn't want children, and to me that settled 
 the question. I thought she ought to have control of the 
 matter because she would have to have the children. 
 And even after seeing Joan's underclothes, I still think 
 so. I was fairly indifferent. I didn't wish to adopt news- 
 boys, and yet I think children are rather jolly between 
 whiles. Would it be just to let that predilection out- 
 weigh Marcella's agony and a year of Marcella's lif e ? 
 Mrs. Malory thinks so. I fancy Witherspoon would 
 
 11
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 agree with her. Perhaps they don't include in their 
 calculations that at the time of the debate I was in 
 love with Marcella and would probably have under- 
 gone a capital operation rather than have had her 
 finger squeezed hard twice. Anyhow, it is impossible, 
 among the educated classes, to discuss motherhood. 
 With them is it either a joke or a fetich. It is a joke 
 with Mrs. Axson. It is a fetich with Mrs. Malory. 
 Houston Street looks the matter squarely in the face, 
 and I think Houston Street would call down blessings 
 on my head. 
 
 The truth of it is Mrs. Malory and the Reverend 
 Bertrand are primarily wrong. They have gone deep 
 enough, Heaven knows, but they have bored in the 
 wrong place. He probed an example of matrimony, 
 and she Marcella, and it is in me the secret lies. I am 
 not fault finding with divorce. I believe divorce is an 
 excellent institution. I also approve of matrimony and 
 of Marcella. It is I who have failed. A man, it seems to 
 me, should, above all things, keep his wife if he wants 
 her. I have lost mine, and I believe I have failed, 
 failed above all things, failed as a man in the essential 
 of manhood, and as a human being in the necessity of 
 humanity. I may marry again, I may even care for 
 
 12
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 another woman, but Marcella was my mate. Nature 
 intended me to keep Marcella, and I have done less 
 than Nature intended me to do. That, it seems to me, 
 is to fail completely. For I do not think Nature intended 
 any of us to do very much; to eat, and drink, and sleep, 
 and mate are all she demands. When we have eaten and 
 drunk and slept and mated, then supernature takes 
 charge over us. 
 
 I remember that at the time of my marriage I was 
 generally considered to be in love, rather too much so 
 for my dignity's sake, some of my friends thought. (I 
 was twenty-four at the time.) And it is useless to deny 
 my suspicion that I still am. This must knock my dig- 
 nity into a cocked hat, for if it is infra dig for an en- 
 gaged man to be in love with his fiancee, it can be little 
 short of farcical for a divorced man to be in love with 
 his ex-wife. This is very queer, for I am quite sure that 
 the only emotion that can ever lif t me higher will be 
 a love of God, and it is improbable that ever will, for 
 I don't know anything about a love of God. I am a 
 Protestant, and Protestantism is so greatly a matter 
 of behavior, which has nothing to do with the love of 
 God. No, that is not yet for me in the world. But there 
 are lesser heights that may be won. Passing over 
 
 13
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 these, we may come beyond them to the other. And it 
 was through love of Marcella my path led, and that 
 path has been stopped for me by the Supreme Court. 
 Sometimes, as at the present moment, I should like 
 to spank the Supreme Court.
 
 II 
 
 " Vr HAT," asks Saint-Simon, apropos of a banished 
 friend, "what is there to meddle with in Genoa?" 
 
 That is really a very important question concerning 
 any place. It is peculiarly important to me just now 
 about New York. The only thing I have found to med- 
 dle with in New York is Courtland Brown. There are 
 undoubtedly hundreds of human beings among these 
 five millions or more fellow townsmen of mine who 
 deserve and would welcome meddling. Courtland 
 Brown doesn't do either. He is a drunken bankrupt, who 
 has never passed a day in honest labor since his birth, 
 and who consents to live in my house because it costs 
 him nothing, as he told me himself once when he de- 
 tected, I suppose, that I was growing vain of his prefer- 
 ence. Yet, such as he is, he appeals to my perverted 
 philanthropy. I suppose one explanation is that I have 
 always known him. Another may be that his degrada- 
 tion was continually in my sight. My philanthropy, 
 apparently, is of the short-sighted sort, to specify one 
 of its infirmities. 
 
 15
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Brown reminds me forcibly of a poor fellow I saw 
 hurt in a football game, lying on the side-lines with 
 several substitutes sitting on him, raving and strug- 
 gling, giving signals, still playing the game, as it were, 
 in his delirium. Courty, too, has been playing the game 
 in delirium. He used to be a cotton broker and got 
 badly injured. He thought it was going to be a dry 
 June, whereas June turned out to be uncommonly wet, 
 or something of the sort, and he lost his money. (He 
 tells me the story so frequently that for his sake I try 
 to forget as much as possible of it between whiles.) Of 
 course, after losing his money, he ceased to be cotton 
 broker in reality, but in his delirium he failed to recog- 
 nize the fact and went on with the motions of playing 
 the game, watching at the ticker and drinking, drink- 
 ing disreputably. Now, I have got him to the side- 
 lines, and I am sitting on him as the substitutes sat 
 on the injured athlete. He struggles mightily, but so 
 far I am still on top. 
 
 He is quite inaccessible, I am afraid, to moral per- 
 suasion. If he were married, or even had an aged par- 
 ent, I might succeed better, but the only assistance of 
 this kind I can discover is an aunt in Duluth, and she 
 is quite useless as a stimulant of her nephew's con- 
 
 16
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 science, and I had to try appealing to his higher self, 
 a senseless phrase I must have picked out of a maga- 
 zine. The discussion of this higher self grew slightly 
 psychological, and he asked me what happened to the 
 higher self when he got drunk ? There I faced a rather 
 disagreeable dilemma, for I couldn't very well represent 
 my single ally as his boon companion on sprees, yet, 
 if I explained that the sublimated ego remained sober 
 on these occasions, he would probably have ruled that 
 person out of the discussion as an unconcerned spec- 
 tator. I let the discussion fall silent and there was no 
 good achieved, which doesn't surprise me very much. 
 The problem seems to me a much simpler one than 
 that of spiritual intoxication. If I can keep Courty 
 sober for a month or two and then get him some work 
 in the office, he may pull through yet. To keep him 
 sober it is necessary to keep him away from alcohol. 
 He has about as much will-power as a weeping willow. 
 I first thought of locking him up in the house, but, as 
 he himself pointed out, no one can turn a residence in 
 Fifty-third Street into a Bastile by means of a latch- 
 key. He is mildly interested in his own conversion, 
 though apparently quite hopeless of its consummation. 
 But I have solved this problem finally, and rather 
 
 17
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 neatly, I think. It is curious how these matters sim- 
 plify if you go about them without advice. The solu- 
 tion was suggested to me by the key of a motor-car. 
 I saw a man slip the key of his car into his waistcoat 
 pocket and walk off, leaving the car an inert, helpless 
 mass. The key of locomotion was removed. A pair of 
 horses was necessary to move the thing. It occurred to 
 me that what the man had done to his motor-car was 
 precisely the sort of thing I wanted to do to Court- 
 land Brown. I could only keep Courty in the house by 
 removing his key of locomotion. It is easily enough seen 
 that the key of masculine locomotion in civilized com- 
 munities is trousers. I removed Courty's trousers, and 
 I made Habliston, the butler, lock up mine and his 
 own, except those in actual use. Courty has a dressing- 
 gown which does very well for the house. If he were to 
 get out he would unquestionably be arrested within 
 half a block, and as his only excuse would be that he 
 was going for a drink, he would probably get a long 
 term in jail, which might be the best thing for him. 
 He is even more securely tied than the motor-car. I 
 don't believe a pair of horses could get him down the 
 street. 
 
 All this would produce inextinguishable laughter at 
 18
 
 iPIERRE VINTON 
 
 the club, where Courty's popularity was due to his wit. 
 He used to laugh at nearly everything in the world. 
 Now the jest is pointed against the scoffer, but it seems 
 to me a very bitter repartee that even the salvation of 
 his soul should be turned into a sort of low comedy 
 farce. 
 
 He said that of himself to-night, sitting across the 
 fireplace here. It is a bitter thing for a man to say of 
 himself. He went away immediately afterward, and I 
 saw by the twitching of his fingers that every little 
 nerve in his body was asking for whiskey, and that the 
 blue flannel dressing-gown was flopping around his 
 long legs. 
 
 I can't deny him either the humor or the bitterness 
 of the thing, still I fancy every one at some time hears 
 a tinkle of the "Laughter of the Gods" which I used 
 to construe so painfully at school. There is another 
 witticism being enacted in this house. Courtland 
 Brown has nothing to do with it. It is between Hablis- 
 ton, the butler, and me. He is a fat, bald, solemn, 
 little man, the shortest butler I have ever seen, and a 
 tremendous conservative. When Marcella went away, 
 I moved out of my accustomed room to the one over 
 the front door, and I have been trying to live there 
 
 19
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 ever since. Habliston, silently and efficiently, for some 
 reason, refuses to recognize the rearrangement. He has 
 given, somehow, an air of transiency to the room, so 
 I feel exactly as though I were spending a few days 
 at an hotel. There is a trunk, for example, in one corner. 
 He says this is necessary because of the scarcity of 
 presses. I don't believe him, but he knows infinitely 
 more about the matter than I do and triumphs in 
 every argument. For some other reason, I can have 
 only small, straight-backed chairs. In the end, I sup- 
 pose, he will have his way and I shall be moved back 
 where I came from. There are four other rooms I 
 might use, but I am sure he will be content with no 
 other. Meanwhile, Marcella is occupying her Uncle 
 Fred's one spare bedroom at Babylon. 
 
 This is the big and the little of Fate's jest with 
 Pierre Vinton, householder. It does not, however, 
 cause me inextinguishable laughter. 
 
 Shortly before I was married Mrs. Axson gave me 
 a pocketbook, in which were two letters, and, although 
 I lost the pocketbook long ago, I have kept the letters. 
 I don't believe the writer of them ever knew I had 
 them. I remember once quoting to her from one of them 
 
 20
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 a sentiment concerning a Miss Butcher, and she appar- 
 ently had no recollection of it at all. Thereafter, I never 
 mentioned the matter. I can remember the circum- 
 stances of the first letter very well. Marcella was eight- 
 een and I was twenty-one, and Goshen is in New 
 Hampshire. 
 
 " GOSHEN. 
 "DEAREST LILL: 
 
 "I do wish you were going to come back in Septem- 
 ber, so you could be one of Mae Tenafly's bridesmaids. 
 She is awfully cut up because you can't, and so am I. 
 The dresses are going to be yellow your color. 
 
 "This house-party is a howling success. We play 
 tennis, swim a lot, and sail a little, only the sailboat is 
 a frightful old tub, and nobody likes it very much. 
 There is a friend of yours here, that Pierre Vinton, 
 who used to live next you in the country. You know 
 his mother has just died, too, and he is living all alone 
 with an aunt, who is an awful snob, Mrs. Butler says. 
 So he is going to spend the summer here. He is a great 
 friend of Ted's, and they are going to have rooms to- 
 gether at Cambridge next year. 
 
 "I don't think he is very good-looking, but he has 
 awfully nice teeth. I think that fat Elsie Butcher is 
 
 21
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 trying to catch him, because he has lots of money. 
 She is very mercenary, I think, and not a bit attrac- 
 tive. She never lets him go for a minute. He seems to 
 like her rather, but I don't believe he could have any 
 
 respect for her. 
 
 "Lots of love, 
 
 "Devotedly, 
 
 "MARCELLA. 
 
 "P. S. I had to break off quick like that, because Mr. 
 Vinton came up and made me talk to him. He talks 
 about you all the time. I bet he used to be awfully 
 epris with you. I hope I have not said anything mean 
 about him. 
 
 "Did I tell you Mae's wedding is going to be yellow ? 
 Do try to make the family come over for it. Mr. Vin- 
 ton says so too." 
 
 How vividly that letter recalls Marcella. She was a 
 scant eighteen years that summer, little more than a 
 schoolgirl, and as brown as an autumn leaf brown- 
 haired, brown-eyed, brown-skinned sun-stained as an 
 Indian. All of us lived as much in the lake as on the 
 shores, but Marcella, I think, rather more. She used 
 to wear a khaki skirt and a big, soft-brimmed Panama
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 hat when she was out of the water, and a black silk 
 bathing suit and a red silk handkerchief when she was 
 in it. At least, that was the programme of the toilet, 
 I believe. As a matter of fact, she wore either indiffer- 
 ently, and, strange to say, neither was becoming to her. 
 It was not until I saw her in town in the autumn that 
 I realized how pretty she was. It was on a Sunday in 
 October, when I walked to church with her down on 
 Long Island, when she wore a big yellow hat. 
 
 But, no matter. This is rambling, and I had best 
 stick to the lake. Only, how these little things come 
 back! 
 
 She could beat me at swimming, also at paddling a 
 canoe, I remember; both mortifications I shall never 
 outlive. We used to go swimming together before 
 breakfast. It was so our peculiar intimacy began with 
 those before-breakfast baths in ice-cold blue waters. 
 We always felt we had, in more ways than one, got 
 a start on the others by the time we broke eggs next 
 one another at breakfast. She had always to wake me 
 for those plunges, rapping at my door and then open- 
 ing it a trifle and tossing in my bathing clothes, which 
 hung on the porch overnight to dry. Then I could hear 
 her outside whistling while I got into them. 
 
 23
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 It was the frankest, freest, most innocent friendship 
 a boy and girl ever played through up to love, and it 
 was Marcella who made it that way. I would not so 
 much call her innocent as uninterested in everything 
 except what was healthy and clean and out-of-doors. 
 One tiny incident gave me a vision of her that I can 
 never forget. She was reading that summer "Henry 
 Esmond." It was a trick of hers to pick out some long, 
 discursive tale and ponder over it for months at a 
 time. She was reading "Henry Esmond" when we 
 met, and she had not finished it when we married. 
 One afternoon, lying in a hammock on the porch, she 
 looked up at me from the page and asked: "What is 
 a bar sinister?" 
 
 I remember I was embarrassed, and tried to explain, 
 and succeeded very badly but sufficiently to give her 
 at least an idea of the phrase's meaning. She only nodded 
 for an answer and went on with the story. 
 
 It was more than two years later, when we were mar- 
 ried, and she was still reading "Henry Esmond." Once 
 again she looked up from the page, probably the same 
 page, and asked me: "Pierre, what is a bar sinister?" 
 
 I have known innocent women and pure women, a 
 plenty of both, but I have never known another for 
 
 24
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 whom a suggestion of that sort would have been quite 
 lost, in whose mind it would not have found some little 
 crevice to cling to, some little store of curiosity to feed 
 upon. But there was no such place of nourishment in 
 her consciousness. It is a minutely unimportant hap- 
 pening, but it has always seemed to me a tremendously 
 significant one. 
 This is the second letter: 
 
 "BABYLON. 
 
 "Yes, my dear, it is true. I told him to cable you. 
 
 "I don't wonder you were surprised. It was awfully 
 quick. I didn't want it to be so quick. I had made up 
 my mind, if he did say anything, that I would turn 
 him down hard, but I didn't. Oh, Lilly, I am an awfully 
 soft sort of person, after all, I am afraid. I am afraid 
 of all sorts of things these days. I am terribly afraid, 
 not of him exactly, but for him. Maybe, though, I am 
 afraid for me. I don't know what it is really. I am just 
 afraid, I suppose. 
 
 "What little liars we were, Lilly, when we used to 
 say that we didn't want to be married, only we sup- 
 posed we must, or every one would think us frumps. At 
 least, I was a liar, and I suppose you were, too. And 
 
 25
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 that scared me, too. Isn't it queer? I was never so 
 happy and never so scared before in all my life. 
 
 "I am sure of one thing, though. I care. I knew that 
 before I knew about him. It was up at Goshen. He had 
 gone away for two days' fishing, and all the second day, 
 before he came back, I couldn't keep his name out of 
 my mind. Lilly, my dear, I went around that whole 
 blessed day, saying to myself, * Peter, Peter, Peter,' 
 like a quail whistling. And that night when I went to 
 bed I didn't go to sleep for a long time. I got up and 
 sat at the window. I didn't think of him only, or of 
 anything particularly. But suddenly I said to myself, 
 right out of nothing: 'You love him.' 
 
 "I was so scared, I dropped down on my knees, and 
 said out loud, 'Oh, God! Oh, God!' and that woke 
 up Mae, and she asked me what was the matter, and 
 I said, 'Nothing.' Wasn't it awful to tell a lie like that 
 on my knees, praying ? But I couldn't help it." 
 
 The letter ended here at the bottom of the page. 
 There may have been more, with a signature, which 
 Mrs. Axson, for good reasons, did not send me. I 
 imagine there was. Marcella was not a spasmodic soul. 
 
 These two letters and one trunk are the only things of
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Marcella's left in my house now. Once I started to send 
 the trunk to her but decided to look into it first. When I 
 had looked into it I knew she didn't want it. In the 
 tray was some jewelry I had given her, all the jewelry I 
 had given her, pieces I had forgot the existence of. 
 I understood that. But the rest of the trunkful puzzled 
 me at first. It was a litter of old invitations, notes of 
 society such as every woman gets; scores of cards of 
 admission to all sorts of places, notifications of her 
 election to this or that society, requests of her patron- 
 age for charities, for balls, teas, plays; receipted bills, 
 and handfuls of cotillon favors, paper flowers, gim- 
 crack jewelry of all sorts. That was what she left. I 
 had given her all of them. Each thing had been given 
 to Mrs. Vinton. 
 
 After I looked carefully through all that rubbish I 
 put down the trunk lid and asked myself what else 
 I had given her? My own soul and body, I answered 
 boldly. What more could a woman want? Evidently 
 something, but as yet I know not what. 
 
 My Aunt Louise has returned to New York, and a 
 few days ago she sent for me. She is staying at the 
 Buckingham. I suppose the Buckingham represents to 
 
 27
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 her New York's best imitation of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain. Her mother, my grandmother Aunt Louise 
 is my maternal aunt was a De Meilhac, and, if all 
 Aunt Louise tells me of the De Meilhacs is true, Mile, 
 de Meilhac was guilty of a frightful mesalliance when 
 she married my grandfather. I remember when I 
 asked my father about this, he briefly replied: "The 
 less said about your grandmother, the better." Mrs. 
 Grandy says such a great deal about her, I am tempted 
 sometimes to repeat this to her. 
 
 I went to the Buckingham in some trepidation, being 
 uncertain of the attitude of the andenne noblesse to 
 divorce, and, when necessary, Aunt Louise can imitate 
 the grande dame very impressively. Sometimes, when 
 she tells me to be seated and points a long, slender 
 white finger at the very chair I am to occupy, I almost 
 believe in the De Meilhacs myself. I think her hair has 
 got whiter of late. It is the color of this paper now, and 
 her figure makes even Marcella envious. She was dressed 
 in black to receive me and looked, as usual, rather 
 care-worn and defiant in the dark, walnut-panelled 
 room. 
 
 She was very affectionate, however, and scarcely 
 spoke of Marcella, wherefor I was intensely grateful 
 
 28
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and concluded that the ancienne noblesse disapproves 
 of divorce. For once I am in sympathy with the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain. In my enthusiasm I reck- 
 lessly asked Aunt Louise to dinner. It was not until 
 she accepted that I remembered Courty, a piece of 
 monumental forgetfulness, which leaves me in a rather 
 disagreeable quandary. There is no chance of her con- 
 senting to a restaurant. She would only be offended by 
 the suggestion, and, of course, she would be more of- 
 fended at being taken in to dinner by a man without 
 his trousers, not altogether unnaturally, either. Poor 
 Courty must be either locked up for the evening or 
 else properly clothed. Either will be dangerous, I am 
 afraid. I tried to introduce him gently into the con- 
 versation, when she asked me if I was alone in the 
 house. I said: "Brown is living with me." 
 
 "Brown?" said my aunt. 
 
 As she said it, I confess it sounded vastly ple- 
 beian. 
 
 "Courtland Brown," I amended. 
 
 "Oh, Courtland Brown. Then he is a gentleman?" 
 
 "Aunt Louise," I remonstrated, "my guests are 
 always gentlemen." 
 
 "I mean," explained my aunt, "technically." 
 29
 
 PIERRE VINTON' 
 
 ^Technically," I answered, "Courtland Brown is a 
 Sansculotte." 
 
 My aunt looked hurt. She thought I was speaking 
 disrespectfully of the French Revolution. 
 
 At times Aunt Louise exasperates me. Her mind is 
 about as broad as her waist. She seemed very much 
 interested and asked me several more questions about 
 Courty, but I avoided them and changed the subject. 
 It is impossible to be confidential about a man like 
 Brown with a woman like my aunt. They could never 
 understand one another in a thousand years of intimacy. 
 
 I don't quite understand my aunt myself. She appar- 
 ently prefers the names of things to the things named. 
 This is not an eccentricity or an affectation; it is the 
 exact expression of her being, and a queerer being than 
 one that can be so expressed it is difficult, it seems to 
 me, to imagine. If the French government were to lay 
 waste the Jardin des Tuileries and paste botanical 
 labels on all the stumps, I can fancy Aunt Louise be- 
 coming an habituee of the place; I can picture her lost 
 in admiration before a label: Syringia Spiridis. 
 
 It rather takes your breath away to leave a person 
 of this sort and step out into New York at night. 
 Aunt Louise is one of the minor works of God, I think, 
 
 30
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and New York is one of the vastest works of man, and 
 the comparison is not very reverent. It fairly pounced 
 upon me last night what a flashing, vivid, marvellous 
 thing a city is at night the leagues of light and the 
 roaring of the wheels. It shrinks a little in the day, is 
 visibly measurable, a trifle tawdry, and not altogether 
 clean a small human thing surrounded by immensi- 
 ties. But at night these immensities are hidden. Nature 
 is asleep, as it were, and has left the place to men, and 
 it seems to me they fill it then pretty completely. 
 Their hand-made city seems gigantic, and their lights 
 dazzle me. It was the pale moon up over the housetops 
 which seemed feeble and theatrical. I have an awful 
 reverence for my fellow men when the world is thus 
 left to darkness and to them and me. 
 
 I can almost agree with Mrs. Malory at these times, 
 that my highest duty is to introduce as many others 
 as possible to the company of my fellow creatures. 
 Only there is another side of the picture, when I think, 
 for instance, of Father Witherspoon and his phantoms, 
 of Courty Brown wrestling on the edge of Erebus with 
 the devils he has painstakingly hatched out of his own 
 soul, and of Aunt Louise trying to galvanize the feudal 
 system. 
 
 81
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I want no fellowship with hypocrisy or devils or dead 
 things. With what, then, do I want fellowship ? for I 
 want it desperately with some one. With some one that 
 lives, I fancy, without even the spawn of such devils 
 in body or soul but has kept both clean-swept by health 
 and happiness and who cares no more for metaphysics 
 than for a burnt-out candle if there is such a person 
 in the world. 
 
 Of course, that is again Marcella, and she is to be 
 found at Babylon in Uncle Fred's one spare bedroom. 
 
 Oh, Marcella! Marcella! How am I going to live 
 without you? That I am to do so I see plainly, but as 
 yet I can make no beginning. The vision of you blocks 
 every vista whereby I look to see beyond this tangle 
 of daily life.
 
 Ill 
 
 THERE is a Love of God in the world, say the Theo- 
 logians; and that there is a Love of Woman is the 
 experience of Mankind. The Philanthropists claim 
 that there is also a Love of Man. I wonder ! 
 
 A love must be capable of filling a human life, or 
 else it is only an appetite. Can a man fill his life with 
 the love of his fellow creatures. In the face of all the 
 biographies, sacred and profane, again I say, I wonder ! 
 
 I wonder because this afternoon two comparative 
 strangers inspired me with inexplicable affection. Then 
 there is Courtland Brown, whom I pity, and those 
 loathsome tenements in Avenue X, of which I am 
 ashamed. Is it possible that I could fan these faintly 
 glowing embers into a life-sustaining blaze? I wonder. 
 
 Young Lawrence Hastings and a glorious blonde in 
 a black velvet hat met me as I climbed out of the 
 subway at Forty-second Street. The blonde was Bar- 
 bara Gilbert, though I did not know it immediately, 
 having never seen her quite so glorious before. There 
 
 S3
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 was a sunset flaring down Forty-second Street that 
 was trying to be the finest thing to be seen, but it 
 failed, I thought. In the phrase of Mrs. Axson, "the 
 sunset had nothing on Barbara." 
 
 "Halloo, Pete," hallooed Laurie. There is nothing of 
 interest in me to him. He merely wished to call atten- 
 tion to his own exuberance, like a rooster crowing. 
 
 Barbara clapped her hands and gave me one of them. 
 Barring the difference in sex, the greetings were pre- 
 cisely similar. 
 
 "Been to the matinee?" I asked. 
 
 "Do we look like we had been to a stuffy old thea- 
 tre?" asked Laurie. 
 
 "You look," I answered, "like you had been to 
 Paradise." 
 
 "We have been to the Bronx Zoo," put in Barbara, 
 blushing. 
 
 "Let's go to tea," I suggested. 
 
 We did. We went to Sherry's, and Barbara was the 
 prettiest woman there. I thought so, and I overheard 
 Laurie making the same criticism. But he is a worth- 
 less character, I am afraid. I noticed he knew the head 
 waiter. No young man of Laurie's income has any 
 business knowing head waiters. 
 
 34
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Did you ever go to the Bronx Zoo?" Barbara 
 asked me. 
 
 "You ought to go," said Laurie. "It is full of the 
 darndest, funniest old animals." 
 
 "Thanks," I answered, "I think I'll stick to the 
 club." 
 
 "Oh!" said Barbara, "that's rude. Papa is a mem- 
 ber." 
 
 He is, too a patient sort of trained seal, who runs 
 a trust company daytimes and plays lady's-maid to 
 his trainer at other times. 
 
 "Peter is a funny old animal himself," said Mr. 
 Hastings. 
 
 Barbara gave me a long look over the teapot. She 
 is about five thousand years older than he is. "Are 
 you the cream or lemon eating kind?" she asked. 
 
 I declined, and she supposed that we both wanted 
 whiskey, as I suppose we both did, but the supposi- 
 tion made us drink tea. Mine was the vilest drink I 
 can remember this side of the nursery. 
 
 "I didn't think you'd drink it, so I just put in hot 
 water," she explained. 
 
 "What did you think he would do with it?" asked 
 Laurie. "Give it to a cold policeman?" 
 
 35
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. What do men do generally when 
 they want something that isn't given them?" 
 
 "Beg, steal, or borrow," quoted Laurie. "That's 
 three ways." 
 
 "What do women do?" I asked. 
 
 "They just get it," said Barbara. "Men do, too. I 
 meet men every day who do. They don't deserve, they 
 don't earn, or beg, or steal, or borrow; they just get 
 what they want." 
 
 She looked at Laurie and Laurie winced. 
 
 Laurie wants her. How is he going to get her? That 
 is the question for those two. 
 
 It is a big stake for a man in Laurie's shoes to play 
 for, and Mrs. Gilbert will see to it that he has "no 
 favor." He is handicapped, too, by a father who made 
 away with a trust fund. And, most fatal of all, he 
 totally lacks audacity. Most men of my generation do. 
 They have impudence instead. For example, I doubt 
 if he kissed Barbara in the Bronx Park, which would 
 have been audacity, yet he called her "Old Sox" at 
 Sherry's, which was impudence. As I have never seen 
 the two combined, I am quite certain he lacks audacity. 
 Still, he is a nice boy, who smells of soap and keeps his 
 hair smooth. 
 
 86
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 He had no answer for that look of hers, except to 
 light a cigarette. "How is Brown?" he asked me. 
 
 "Who is Brown?" asked Barbara. 
 
 "The human latch-key of New York," answered 
 Laurie. 
 
 How Mrs. Gilbert must hate that boy. There is a 
 certain aptness in his remarks which would be excruci- 
 atingly irritating if you had any cause to dislike him. 
 
 I tried to put Brown's case a little more clearly be- 
 fore Barbara. She kept her eyes fixed thoughtfully on 
 mine the while. She has blue eyes, whose glances rest 
 o softly as to be unfelt. 
 
 "Do you do that sort of thing much?" she asked 
 me. 
 
 "What sort of thing?" 
 
 "Oh, pull people out of holes." 
 
 "Sure," put in Laurie. "He does it all the time. I 
 told you he was a queer old animal." 
 
 When she drew on her gloves she held out her hand 
 to me across the table. "Will you come to see me 
 sometime?" she said. "I know lots of people who have 
 got into holes." 
 
 "They always get out," I said. 
 
 "Do they?" she asked. 
 
 37
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Invariably." 
 
 "Thank you," she said. 
 
 She went home in a cab. I hoped Laurie would go 
 with her and make love violently for at least ten blocks, 
 but they had other plans. I suppose he was not to be 
 seen at the house. It was probably a stolen afternoon, 
 that afternoon up at the Bronx. 
 
 He walked home with me instead. He is a cheerful 
 youth. 
 
 "Barbara likes you," he told me. 
 
 I said I was flattered. 
 
 "Yes," he went on, "she likes you. To tell the truth, 
 you are about the only friend I've got she does like." 
 
 As I have talked to him perhaps a dozen times in 
 my life, I thought that even more flattering. 
 
 "Well, to tell you the truth, Laurie," I replied, 
 "she is about the only friend you have I like." 
 
 I don't know who the others are, but I took the 
 chance. 
 
 "Oh ! they are not half bad," he protested. 
 
 "Yes. But she is all right." 
 
 "Isn't she? Look here. Let me tell you something." 
 
 What he told me lasted four blocks in telling, and I 
 had known it all, of course, in four seconds on Forty- 
 
 38
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 second Street. Nevertheless, he left me, pledged to im- 
 mutable secrecy. 
 
 I liked them both. I enjoyed the party. I have talked 
 to Brown about it all the evening. Having wrecked my 
 own affair of this sort, I should like to try my hands on 
 some one else's. Is this love of man, or the love of 
 match-making. Am I beginning to be a meddler or a 
 philanthropist ? 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 It is curious to observe what an important part 
 trousers have come to play in human affairs. They have 
 not, I believe, been in general use a hundred years, 
 scarcely longer than steam-engines, but they are in- 
 finitely more influential. Courty, now, has been com- 
 pletely sober for more than a week. He has taken up 
 drawing again, and he has done some rather clever 
 things. I have one of them framed and hung in the 
 drawing-room. This would give Marcella a fit, but it 
 pleases Courty tremendously. Habliston, who is a paid 
 spy, tells me he frequently sees him stealing into the 
 drawing-room to look at it. I don't think Marcella 
 would object if she knew this. No. I can easier fancy 
 Marcella telling Courty it is a better likeness of me 
 it is a picture of me than the Helleu is of her. Some-
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 how, I can only picture her saying gracious things and 
 doing lovely actions nowadays, though I know very 
 well she can be very disagreeable when she chooses. 
 I am proud of the picture, too, though I can't say I 
 like to look at it. I regard it, in a way, as the child of 
 my brain. Carlyle has a great deal to say about Fox's 
 leather breeches that turned the tailor into a reformer. 
 I begin to share his enthusiasm for the garments, since 
 I have learned that they may turn a drunkard into an 
 artist. That seems to me a more desirable alteration 
 than Carlyle's. 
 
 * 
 
 I have been operated on by a psychologist. I have 
 been trifling with the business for several months in 
 an amateurish sort of way, trying my own hand on it 
 and trying Bertrand Witherspoon's too, and Mrs. 
 Malory's, and Mrs. Axson's. At last, I determined to 
 go to a professional and get it done with. He performed 
 very skilfully over a dinner-table and in about an hour's 
 time. 
 
 He was one of those damnable De Meilhacs. The 
 French Revolution was not, I am beginning to see, as 
 thorough an affair as Aunt Louise represents. Phillipe 
 de Meilhac is a very pale fellow with good manners 
 
 40
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and rather long, pale hair, a bloodless, thin, silken- 
 voiced cat fancier. Maltese cats is, I believe, his hobby, 
 or perhaps it is Angora cats. At any rate, they are ex- 
 tinct, and he is trying to regenerate them. He believes 
 in Bergson and enjoys Brieux; he drinks aperitifs, and 
 he reproduces extinct cats. Aunt Louise, as usual, 
 brought him over. We have known each other for 
 years, and our common aunt is apt to say that we "were 
 boys together." As a matter of fact, in boyhood, the 
 Atlantic Ocean was generally between us, and we saw 
 each other scarcely more than once in twelve months, 
 but in that lady's scheme of life it is not unusual to 
 ignore a circumstance like an ocean. Nowadays, Phil- 
 lipe and I exchange letters when either is visiting the 
 other's hemisphere, and when we meet the procedure 
 is always the same; the native puts the foreigner down 
 at a club and asks him to dinner, and then I ask for 
 his cats, and he asks me about my wife. But, to my 
 great surprise, the programme was not completed; he 
 did not ask for my wife. 
 
 "Why don't you ask for Marcella?" I inquired. 
 
 "Because," he answered, "I did not suppose you 
 knew anything about her." He speaks English perfectly. 
 The only lingual evidence he gives of foreign birth is 
 
 41
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 a trick of using antiquated slang. He apparently thinks 
 English slang is an immutable tongue. So, now, he 
 added: "She has, I believe, flown the coop." 
 
 "She has," I admitted. The slang was of question- 
 able age, but I must confess it was singularly apt. 
 Marcella, it seems to me, has done exactly that. She 
 has got out of a coop; she has spread the wings given 
 her to fly with and has flown. 
 
 "She was a most charming woman," said Phillipe. 
 "I should like very much to see her again." 
 
 "So should I," I answered. 
 
 He ceased salting his oysters and stared at me. 
 "Really? Then why did she?" 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders. Phillipe never shrugs his 
 shoulders. He is the bluntest, most phlegmatic fellow 
 in the world. 
 
 "I suppose," he suggested, "she was bored." 
 
 "I suppose so. I would give," I added, "a good deal 
 of money to know just why she was bored." 
 
 "I can explain," said Phillipe, continuing calmly to 
 eat oysters. "You amused her as a lover, because you 
 were rich and she was poor; but you bored her as a 
 husband." 
 
 "You touch," I said, "the very heart of the mat- 
 42
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 ter. I failed as a husband. What is a husband. 
 Phillipe?" 
 
 "The good God only knows," answered Phillipe 
 calmly. "He is a woman's nearest approach to a good 
 friend, perhaps. He is the precipitate in her cup of 
 life when the liquor of love has boiled away. That 
 would sound better in French," he added. 
 
 "Then say it in French," I advised. "It sounds like 
 a cooking recipe in English." 
 
 He laid down his fork. Then, very much as though 
 he were reading from previous notes, he detailed for 
 me my conjugal infirmities. He assured me that I 
 could not have prevented the state of affairs he de- 
 scribed. I was the victim of psychological conditions. 
 He pointed out to me that I bored Marcella, not the 
 marriage state or any other circumstance of Mar- 
 cella's particular marriage state. The only way I could 
 have prevented this, it seemed, was by falling in love 
 with Mrs. Axson, but he admitted that my being in 
 love with Marcella at the time was an impenetrable 
 obstacle. 
 
 I once got an artist at Atlantic City to draw my por- 
 trait for a half dollar, and for an extra twenty-five 
 cents he let me look over his shoulder while he did it. 
 
 43
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 The only difference between the two situations is that 
 I knew the grotesque figure on the drawing card was a 
 caricature, but there is a diabolical verisimilitude about 
 my cousin's portraiture that can't be ignored. When 
 he had finished my picture he started to portray Mar- 
 cella, but I put out my finger and stopped his pencil. 
 That was not, I felt, included in the hah* dollar. Even 
 the extra twenty-five cents did not cover that. 
 
 "You have drawn," I told him, "a most convincing 
 likeness of me. Your keenness of observation is beyond 
 praise. It shows scientific enthusiasm that will some 
 day accomplish the regeneration of the Maltese cat, 
 but still I feel that your skill will be baffled by Mar- 
 cella." 
 
 "I believe," said Phillipe, "in examining these 
 things frankly. By doing so we avoid making mistakes 
 and collect information." 
 
 I felt that I had collected all the information I 
 needed for the present and told him so. He went away 
 to fill an engagement somewhere, and I suppose made 
 a note of me before he slept, sandwiching me between 
 two interesting cats. 
 
 I fancy very few of the human race for the last four 
 or five thousand years have sincerely acknowledged 
 
 44
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 themselves to be bores, judging from my difficulty in 
 making this admission. It is a faculty almost atrophied 
 by desuetude. My aversion to the task is otherwise 
 incomprehensible. I realize frankly that I would rather 
 have driven Marcella away by cruelty or by flagrant 
 immorality. I prefer, apparently, being a brute, or 
 even a rake, to being a bore. This truly is incompre- 
 hensible, and shows what a lamentable condition in 
 this respect the human species has got into, if I am in 
 any way representative of the human species, and I 
 believe I am. 
 
 Such was the wisdom of Phillipe de Meilhac. It is 
 the common-sense view of the situation. Marcella 
 married me because she was poor, and then she di- 
 vorced me for being a bore. I can very nearly make it 
 rhyme, and when common sense rhymes it is generally 
 regarded as additional proof of its wisdom. When a 
 fool can prove his folly with a jingle he always feels 
 triumphant. If I failed Marcella as a husband it was 
 not because I bored her, but because I did not under- 
 stand her. I understood her body well enough, and I 
 tended that skilfully and satisfactorily, as Phillipe 
 says, but it was her soul speaking when I did not 
 understand. This is not common sense, and Phillipe 
 
 45
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 would roar with laughter. Her body wanted silk and 
 caviare and a lover, and I and Phillipe and the news- 
 papers all understood that. I wonder what the other 
 message was ? It was not a sordid comedy of greed and 
 stupidity we two played in marriage. It was a very 
 common tragedy of two inarticulate mites of immor- 
 tality groping for one another in the darkness and 
 never touching. Now we have gone separate ways, 
 and neither will ever know what the other would have 
 said. It is this spiritual inarticulateness, it seems to 
 me, which is at the bottom of most of the unhappiness 
 in the world, as it is at the bottom of mine. We are 
 deaf and dumb as beasts, for the most part of us. What 
 is a poet ? A man with a tongue in his soul. 
 
 Whereupon, I suppose, would come inextinguishable 
 laughter from Phillipe. Arguing with him is very like 
 playing tenpins. You set up the ideas, and he bowls 
 them down with the facts. It is rather amusing if you 
 did not care anything about the ideas, but I have a 
 liking for this one, so I never set that up. He left me 
 to fill an engagement somewhere, and I went to see 
 Mrs. Axson. She is the best diagnostician of my social 
 malady whom I know. 
 
 I have never appreciated Lilly Axson's beauty, I am 
 46
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 afraid. She was wearing a yellow tea-gown with a great 
 deal of lace about it, a few shades darker yellow than 
 the silk, and her hair was a lighter shade than either, 
 and her skin was paler than all. She was deliciously 
 toned. She made me think of a contralto voice. 
 
 "You will probably destroy my reputation by com- 
 ing at such an hour," she told me. 
 
 "I wish," I replied, "it could destroy my reputa- 
 tion." 
 
 "When did you get any such thing?" asked Mrs. 
 Axson. 
 
 "This evening," I answered, "from Phillipe de 
 Meilhac." 
 
 "Has that bore comevback again?" said LiUy. 
 
 Pale yellow is becoming to her. I drew my chair 
 closer to the fire and felt more comfortable. The fire 
 was built of logs ten inches long in a pretty tiled fire- 
 place with shining brass fire things and a shining 
 glass screen. 
 
 "Put on another log," said Lilly generously. 
 
 I lifted one of the logs between my thumb and finger 
 and laid it carefully athwart the irons. 
 
 "I couldn't," observed the author of the conflagra- 
 tion, "couldn't live without an open fire." 
 
 47
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Possibly she couldn't. The list of things she could 
 not live without is appallingly long. 
 
 "Why do you call Phillipe a bore?" 
 
 "Why do you call anybody a bore?" said Lilly. 
 
 "He called me a bore," I said. "And he explained 
 very exactly why and how." 
 
 "Who did he say you bored?'* 
 
 "Marcella," I answered. 
 
 "How funny!" said Mrs. Axson. "Perhaps you did. 
 I never thought of it." 
 
 "He said," I went on, "that I did nothing to in- 
 terest her. And he suggested that if I had made love 
 to you I might have interested her." 
 
 "If you had," interrupted Lilly, "I'd have smacked 
 you. I love Marcella." 
 
 "But it would all have been for Marcella's good," 
 I pointed out. "She would have liked me better, and 
 that would have made her happier." 
 
 Mrs. Axson smiled. "Well, it is too late now," she 
 answered. 
 
 "Is it?" I asked absently. 
 
 "What is the use of making Marcella jealous now?" 
 Lilly asked very sensibly. 
 
 "Oh, none on earth," I agreed. 
 48
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 It is very pleasant to talk in this way to a woman 
 like Lilly over a fire of that sort. The fire might con- 
 ceivably get out of hand and burn down the apart- 
 ment-house, and I might conceivably fall in love with 
 Mrs. Axson and play the deuce that way. The pos- 
 sibilities add a sporting flavor to the situation. 
 
 "What is M'sieu de Meilhac," asked Lilly after a 
 pause, "doing in New York?" 
 
 "I haven't," I admitted, "the very faintest idea. 
 Probably something about cats." 
 
 "What queer things," she observed, "men get in- 
 terested in." She stuck out her foot with a gilt slipper 
 dangling by the toe and swung it thoughtfully. "If I 
 were a man," she continued, "I would only be inter- 
 ested in women. I should make it my business to know 
 all about them, and then I should write books to in- 
 terest them on evenings when they don't go out to 
 dinner." 
 
 "That would be a delightful way of making a for- 
 tune," I agreed. 
 
 "I have often thought," she went on, "of taking 
 some man's name and writing such a book myself. I 
 know all about women, and I have plenty of tune, 
 that is, I could make plenty of time. If there was 
 
 49
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 something really interesting at home there are lots of 
 things I could give up doing outside." 
 
 I reflected that she had a husband and a son; but, 
 then, Tom is in the Mediterranean, and the son is in 
 the nursery asleep by seven every evening. Four times 
 a year Tom's attorney pays her five thousand dollars, 
 and about as many times a day the nurse brings little 
 Tom out of the nursery. That schedule unquestion- 
 ably leaves hours for idleness, as she observed. 
 
 "There are a great many evenings, you know, when 
 I don't go out to dinner. What do you do, Pierre, the 
 evenings you stay at home ? " 
 
 I thought it over. "Generally," I answered, "I play 
 double-dummy bridge with Brown." 
 
 "And I," said Lilly, "play idiot's delight with 
 myself." 
 
 For the first time in my life it occurred to me that 
 Mrs. Axson might regret her husband. It is one of 
 Fate's little ironies that Tom should be chiefly inter- 
 ested in the bottoms of oceans. He goes all over the 
 earth looking at them. Just now he is looking at 
 the bottom of the Mediterranean. Lilly's forte, on the 
 contrary, is keeping to the surface. Nevertheless, just 
 then, I wondered if she ever regretted Tom. 
 
 50
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Did he say you bored Marcella?" she asked, com- 
 ing suddenly out of a revery. 
 
 "Yes," I said, "he did. Confound him." 
 
 "Well, he's right. You did. Marcella was bored 
 just as I am bored. That is the trouble with us nowa- 
 days. We are all bored, and we are just beginning to 
 find it out. Do you suppose I like to play idiot's de- 
 light?" 
 
 "Sometimes," I confessed, "I, myself, detect the 
 inadequacy of double dummy." 
 
 "Then stop. You have other things to do. But we 
 haven't, you know. You have worked and saved and 
 invented and devised until you have devised us out of 
 all employment. We can't be having babies all the time, 
 you know, and that is about the only thing we are ac- 
 customed to do you have not found some machine 
 to do for us. And you didn't leave Marcella that. 
 Bored !" cried Mrs. Axson, "I wonder she did not die 
 of it!" 
 
 All this may or may not be true, but it was quite 
 beside the point; it was not at all the sort of boredom 
 Phillipe meant. So I told Lilly. To my surprise the re- 
 mark made her very angry. 
 
 "I don't care if it is beside the point. The point is 
 51
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I want to talk about it. I want to talk about the the 
 the general topic." 
 
 "But," I explained, "he was talking about me." 
 
 "And so, of course," she rejoined, "you want to 
 talk to me about yourself. I am not fit to be talked 
 to about anything else. Then, you can go home and 
 talk to Mr. Brown. Or play double dummy with him. 
 That is a good game for you both, double dummy 
 two dummies. Go home." 
 
 I rose with dignity and walked to the door. To my 
 surprise, she did not call me back. When I looked at 
 her I thought she was crying. 
 
 "What's the matter?" I asked, coming back. 
 
 "Go home," she said. "I mean it. Go home." 
 
 She did mean it. She was crying.
 
 IV 
 
 MY great-grandfather left France forever in '48 and 
 returned to Berne, where he died and where his 
 daughter, Louise Rene'e de Meilhac, married Theodore 
 Maltravers, my grandfather. Mrs. Maltravers, my 
 grandmother, brought with her to America, as her dot, 
 a considerable amount of personal jewelry. The history 
 of the treasure up to the time of its arrival in America 
 can be told only by her daughter, Mrs. Grandy, and 
 it takes her about three hours. The narrative is very 
 interesting and involves such peccadilloes on the part 
 of her revered ancestors as robbery, extortion, adul- 
 tery, and prostitution. Its history after its arrival in 
 America is brief. It was promptly sold by the Yankee 
 bridegroom, and the money invested in New York 
 City real estate. I have just been down to look at the 
 real estate. It was an unpleasant sight, Mademoiselle 
 Louise Ren6e de Meilhac's dot. 
 
 This is the history which it takes my aunt three 
 hours to recite. I shall try to condense it. A certain 
 
 53
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Madame la Comtesse de Meilhac was for a short time 
 the mistress of a son of a mistress of a king of France. 
 During her brief period of social distinction the lady 
 procured for her real lover (she had two, the vivacious 
 old lady), a simple Gascon gentleman, the privilege 
 of the "Grandes Entrees" and for herself a handful 
 of diamonds. But the distinction of the comtesse, my 
 great-great-grandmother, did not last very long. The 
 Due du Maine shortly got himself another mistress. 
 She lost her Gascon lover, too, and in '96 she lost her 
 head; of all her splendor the diamonds alone survived. 
 They, in the possession of the comtesse's descendants, 
 survived the Terror; they survived the emigration, 
 when they glittered feebly for a while in Strasburg, 
 and the First Empire, and at the Restoration they once 
 more shone in the salons of the Tuileries; and they even 
 survived the Revolution of July. It was not until the 
 old gentleman at Berne, despairing of his caste and his 
 king, gave his daughter to the Yankee that their light 
 went out forever, as far as the De Meilhacs were con- 
 cerned. Then they formed Mrs. Maltravers's dot, and 
 their price, properly invested, has formed the chief sup- 
 port of her descendants ever since. 
 Now, the diamonds may have looked very well upon 
 54
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 the neck of the Due du Maine's mistress, but the real 
 estate they bought is a blot upon the face of God's 
 earth. I viewed it, too, from the front and at night 
 when there was a light in every window and most of 
 the grime was invisible. Each light represented a 
 tenant and each tenant represents from ten to fifteen 
 dollars a month in my pocket. How much is left in the 
 pockets of the tenants afterward I have no idea. If I 
 had a social conscience doubtless I should find out, 
 but I haven't. I have only an idle mind. Therefore, I 
 stood under the elevated tracks and looked up at the 
 windows and tried to calculate just how much what I 
 looked at was worth to me in monthly payments. It 
 seemed impossible that the sum I arrived at could be 
 concealed in such a poverty-stricken quarter. Three 
 thousand dollars a month were somehow scraped to- 
 gether by the people who lived there and given to me. 
 I do not believe any one of them ever saw such a sum 
 in notes or coins. Yet every month that sum is got to- 
 gether by them and given me. This would all be very 
 disastrous to a social conscience, but it is very inter- 
 esting to an idle mind. What marvellous energy to 
 produce such wealth out of such squalor. The offices 
 of Vinton, Bragg, and Goadby are ten stories up with 
 
 55
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 mahogany furniture and a view over the bay. You 
 expect wealth amid those surroundings, but you do 
 not expect it amid the refuse cans of Avenue X. Yet 
 I find it much more easily in Avenue X. To an idle 
 mind divorced from a social conscience such energy 
 must be truly marvellous. Nor was the energy unpro- 
 ductive even then, although it was the hour of rest. 
 I saw a child selling papers on the corner. I saw men 
 and women coming and going by the doors of saloons. 
 I saw a street-walker disappear in a black doorway. 
 
 My idle mind was quite satisfied by these sights, 
 and I came home reassured as to the stability of my 
 investment. "Nous avons change tout cela," sang the 
 Red Caps from the Saint Antoine. That, it seems to 
 me, is only silly boasting. They broke the neck of the 
 Comtesse de Meilhac in the Place de la Concorde, but 
 I have her necklace safely hidden down in Avenue X. 
 They have not, so far as an idle mind can see, really 
 changed anything. 
 
 I sincerely believe that Avenue X is immutable. I 
 do not believe that it can ever be changed. If I had a 
 social conscience I should very probably hasten to get 
 rid of whatever share of responsibility I have in the 
 matter by selling Avenue X or by building there model 
 
 56
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 tenements with red geranium boxes on the window- 
 sills. But I have not such a spiritual attribute, and I 
 therefore see that to do either of these things is to 
 avail myself of an evasion. My model tenements would 
 be lived in by cleanly people or else they would soon 
 cease to be clean. The red geraniums would be tended 
 by people who loved flowers or they would soon die. 
 Wherefore I must needs get not only new tenements 
 but new tenants as well. The filth of Avenue X is not 
 in the gutters and bedrooms, it is in the hearts and 
 minds of the people who live there. I should like to 
 clean these, for I know very well it is out of the hearts 
 and minds of Avenue X my three thousand dollars a 
 month is got. It is these hearts and souls I really own 
 and not the land in fact, and I should like to clean 
 them up, should like to build model hearts and model 
 minds instead of tenements, and plant geraniums in 
 human souls. I know also that unless I can do this I 
 can do nothing. That to rebuild Avenue X would be 
 in reality to move it a block or one hundred blocks 
 east or north, or west or south. The spot is a taint in 
 the blood of the body politic and not merely a sore 
 on the skin. 
 
 Now, to do all or any part of these things it is neces- 
 57
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 sary to love Avenue X and there I am helpless. I could 
 no more love Avenue X than a straw rick. 
 
 Mrs. Malory says this is not so. She bases her 
 opinion on Courtland Brown. I was dining there and 
 Avenue X came into the conversation after dinner. 
 
 "Look at Courtland Brown," said Mrs. Malory. 
 "That proves you have a love for your fellow crea- 
 tures." 
 
 "It can only prove at best," I answered, "that I 
 am a specialist. Avenue X needs a general practi- 
 tioner." 
 
 "It is the same thing," said Mrs. Malory, looking 
 for thread in her work-box. "Even as you do it unto 
 the least of these," she quoted timidly. 
 
 This, it seems to me, fatally obscures the question. 
 And as Mrs. Malory proceeded the obscurity deepened. 
 To Mrs. Malory Avenue X is a means of "acquiring 
 merit," a sort of Buddhistic prayer box. Hers is the 
 point of view of the educated classes. Now, the point 
 of view of the political classes, so bitterly condemned, 
 takes Avenue X as a means of acquiring votes, and I 
 fail to see any vital difference between them. The 
 avenue, however, is not so impartial. It greatly pre- 
 fers the ward boss to the district nurse, I am told. 
 
 58
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I tried to explain this to Mrs. Malory, but I am very 
 much afraid I did not make myself clear, because she 
 said I was cynical, and there is in my comprehension 
 of the situation absolutely no room for cynicism. 
 
 "Look at Eleanor North," said Mrs. Malory. "She 
 bought a house in some horrible alley near Houston 
 Street and lived there. Can you compare a woman like 
 her to some drunken, vote-stealing politician? They 
 adored her, too. They called her 'The Angel.' ' 
 
 "They should have cut her wings," I suggested, "so 
 she couldn't fly away with the local doctor." 
 
 Mrs. Malory is a most unsatisfactory person to 
 argue with if you have any purpose of arriving at a 
 conclusion. 
 
 "I think," she answered, "that it was splendid of her 
 to marry the man she loved, no matter who he was." 
 
 Perhaps it was, but in the vicinity of Houston 
 Street it was doubtless regarded as human. I happen 
 to know that " The Angel " is now living within sight 
 of Central Park, while the vote-stealing politician is 
 doubtless still distributing "jobs" in the vicinity of 
 Houston Street. Knowing this, I cannot so severely 
 blame the neighborhood's preference as Mrs. Malory 
 does. 
 
 59
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Did you expect her to bring up her children," was 
 Mrs. Malory's protest, "in a place like that?" 
 
 When Mrs. Malory introduces children into the 
 conversation I do not believe in continuing it. Further- 
 more, I saw that she had got the better of me. Eleanor 
 North had, indeed, done all that could be expected. 
 To do more would have been to do wrong. It would 
 have been, it seems to me, very wrong of Eleanor 
 North to bring up her children in the gutter so that their 
 mother might continue to be an angel. As I view the 
 matter, Eleanor had determined to give up her life 
 for the privilege of being called an angel. As Mrs. 
 Malory views it, Eleanor had given it up for the bene- 
 fit of Houston Street. It does not, however, matter 
 the least in the world because Life has taken Eleanor 
 North by the shoulders and refuses to be given up at 
 all, totally disregarding both angels and Houston 
 Street. 
 
 "Don't go," said Malory, putting down his paper 
 as I rose; "I want to talk to you." 
 
 I confessed that I had been on the other side of his 
 newspaper all evening. 
 
 "I was reading," he explained, "until you and Kate 
 had finished talking rot." 
 
 60
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "We weren't talking rot," said Mrs. Kate. "Mr. 
 Vinton is very interesting, and it would be very much 
 better if everybody thought about such things." 
 
 "I wonder what would happen if we all did," asked 
 Malory. 
 
 I said I didn't know. 
 
 "Then I'll tell you," said he. 
 
 "Pray do," I replied with politeness. 
 
 I cannot remember precisely what it was he did 
 tell me, because I have heard it so often before. It 
 was indistinguishable, like noises to which we have 
 grown accustomed. The sum of it, however, was that 
 if people continued to talk about the sacred rights of 
 property the rights would cease to exist. This, it seems 
 to me, is improbable; but, if true, very unfortunate for 
 property, because sacred rights that cannot endure 
 discussion have the habit, apparently, of getting them- 
 selves discussed more than any other sorts of things 
 in the world, and, finally, of getting themselves talked 
 out of existence altogether. 
 
 When I told him something of the sort he got angry. 
 "Touch the right of property, and you touch the 
 corner-stone of civilization," said Malory. 
 
 "Perhaps. I don't care. I have no wish to touch it. 
 61
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 It seems to me ridiculous that progenital morality, 
 as in the case of the De Meilhacs, should entitle me to 
 so large a proportion of the earnings of those people, 
 and I no more believe in the eternal validity of the 
 parchment filed down-town in the record office which 
 gives it to me than in a dried palm-leaf blown about 
 the Sahara. To me, there is a prima-facie absurdity 
 about the idea which neither corner-stones nor sacred 
 rights nor all the customs of time can obscure." 
 
 "Honestly, Vinton," said Malory, "if I didn't know 
 that you were a sensible business man in the daytime 
 I would think you were crazy." 
 
 Thereupon I left. I was afraid I should tell Malory 
 what I thought of him in the daytime. There is a fable 
 about the world being supported on the backs of 
 elephants. In reality, it is borne on the backs of asses, 
 millions of asses, and Malory is one of them. Poor fel- 
 low ! He bears a pretty large proportion and stands 
 up bravely under his burden, and I have the highest 
 respect for him, but he is an ass, none the less. 
 
 Of course he would retort that all my genius can 
 suggest no better arrangement than the one he de- 
 fends, and assuredly it cannot. But, at least, it can 
 suggest a better method of discussion than one which 
 
 62
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 babbles of corner-stones and sacred rights, on the one 
 hand, and of millenniums and inherent rights on the 
 other a method which, discarding all four as im- 
 probabilities at best, would discuss instead without 
 sentimentality or political mumbo jumbo both the 
 inhabitants of Avenue X and their landlord. 
 
 Those inhabitants are found not weak if this method 
 is employed. On the contrary, their energy is amazing. 
 They are terribly powerful, and they are dirty in minds 
 and bodies, and they are unintelligent. That is a ter- 
 rifying combination dirt, ignorance, and energy and 
 it is fortunate that the energy is absorbed in a land- 
 lord and an employer or in anything that is not dirty 
 and ignorant, thus depriving the combination of its 
 dangerous factor and rendering it not dangerous at 
 all, only very, very pitiful. 
 
 Let us be truly and devoutly thankful, explains this 
 method, for those whose hearts feel the true pity of it 
 and try to wipe off the dirt and wipe out the ignorance 
 and hope that they will succeed in wiping out both 
 forever. But meanwhile the problem has gone with 
 the energy. What are those who are merely the re- 
 ceptacles of this waste energy, this excess of humanity's 
 wealth, doing with it? That's the question.
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Ay, there's the rub," too, for me. Mrs. Axson is 
 playing idiot's delight, and Pierre Vinton, Esquire, 
 is not doing very much more.
 
 ir 
 
 THERE is nothing genuinely worth while hating 
 except little things. For example, nobody who knew 
 anything about the subject, I fancy, ever really 
 hated the devil. Milton admired him; Goethe, at least, 
 admitted his charm. It is because he is too big for 
 hate. On account of this I can hate Stewart Dewar 
 with unimpaired self-respect. He is very little. 
 
 The basis of my animosity is, I suppose, if I were to 
 go into the matter, Dewar's complete civilization. 
 We admire men and women, at least I do, in propor- 
 tion to their power to resist civilization. Mrs. Mal- 
 ory makes the parlor-maid dust with meticulous 
 solicitude the tomahawk of Geronimo fastened to the 
 wall over Malory's desk in the library. So, again, my 
 dislike for Stewart Dewar is accounted for. He is 
 completely civilized. The most uncivilized thing I have 
 ever seen him do is to eat raw oysters. 
 
 He evidences this by his intrepidity. His remote 
 ancestors, I am told, feared everything a thunder- 
 
 85
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 clap, a leaf trembling in the forest. Dewar has lost 
 fear. For the tutelary divinities of his ancestors he 
 has substituted the police force. Yet he does not try 
 to propitiate his god. He defies and abuses him. For 
 the forest, whence the aboriginal Dewars derived their 
 meat, he has substituted the stock-market, and in the 
 wildest panic he sells and buys, advances, retreats, 
 comes, goes calmly, intrepidly, like a god, when com- 
 pared to his forefathers, skulking behind rocks and 
 tree boles. At one time it was a consolation to me that 
 he was afraid of sailboats; but since then he has 
 bought the fastest motor-boat on the South Shore, 
 and I now see that sailing did not frighten him; it 
 bored him; the only interruption of the monotony he 
 could anticipate was a cyclone. In his motor-boat a 
 loosened screw serves the purpose and is vastly more 
 probable. Hence he prefers the motor-boat. It is 
 always so in his universe, which is built of stone and 
 cement and ordered by electricity; a loosened bolt, an 
 inch of naked copper wire would extinguish him in- 
 stantly, and he rushes through it superbly calm with 
 the greatest possible speed. 
 
 He would be truly an admirable figure, almost worthy 
 of worship, if he were not utterly unintelligent. But he 
 
 66.
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 has no clearer sense of direction amid all this tre- 
 mendous output of energy than a speck of rust on the 
 fly-wheel of his motor-car. He cannot progress because 
 he has no direction. He has not even the desire to ac- 
 cumulate money. He spends more than he makes. He 
 is not even a miser. 
 
 I saw him yesterday driving his motor through the 
 park. He dashed about the place for over an hour 
 I met him three or four times at about forty miles an 
 hour. Nothing could have been more characteristic of 
 him. He was at once defying his tutelary divinity and 
 enjoying the probability of landing himself and three 
 friends in eternity before dinner time. It irritated me 
 more than is usual, because Marcella was on the front 
 seat of the car. She did not recognize me. In fact, at 
 that speed, she could scarcely have recognized the 
 Metropolitan Museum. I had some difficulty in recog- 
 nizing her, for she was muffled in furs and disguised by 
 a pair of enormous goggles. 
 
 It was almost dark when they came out of the park. 
 I waited at the Plaza entrance until they did come out. 
 The habit of looking after Marcella must have got a 
 tremendous hold upon me while I was her husband. 
 Finally, they came out and stopped within ten yards 
 
 67
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 of me, while the chauffeur got down and lit the lamps. 
 Marcella got up and waved her arms about like a 
 semaphore, and I heard a muffled voice from out one of 
 the fur wraps in the tonneau ask: "Cold?" 
 
 Marcella said: "Uh-huh." 
 
 It was not a very lovely vision, that grotesque, ges- 
 ticulating goggled figure and that reply, but it was the 
 first time I had seen Marcella since we were divorced. 
 I was in the shadow of the wall, quite invisible to the 
 profile in the motor. I waited until they had driven 
 away, then I went home, feeling like a little boy who 
 could not get another little boy to play with him. 
 
 It was a fifty horse-power, six-cylinder car that 
 Stewart Dewar was driving. He is about five and one 
 hah* feet tall and weighs very few more than one hun- 
 dred pounds. His universe is ordered by electricity 
 telephones, telegrams, lifts, push bells, motor-cars, 
 subways. He regards the country, I think, as a quiet 
 place to play cards in. The cement and steel-nerved 
 city with copper wire is the womb in which he was con- 
 ceived. He is a strange product, as devoid of intelli- 
 gence as the most powerful motor-car in his garage. 
 
 
 
 Courtland Brown is a most unaccountable person. 
 68
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 The three weeks I have lived with him have shown me 
 that I know nothing about him. I expected him to be 
 an unmitigated nuisance. He has most remarkably 
 disappointed the expectation, and I still know noth- 
 ing about him. Neither does Habliston, which is truly 
 amazing. Habliston at first was a spy and reported 
 every morning Mr. Brown's actions of the day before. 
 The reports grew less and less, and now we never dis- 
 cuss Mr. Brown. If Aunt Louise were to ask me now 
 if Courty was a "technical gentleman" I should answer 
 without hesitation in the affirmative, relying upon this 
 tacit assurance from Habliston. 
 
 He spends a great deal of his time since liberty and 
 breeches have been restored to him on Riverside 
 Drive doing I know not what. I am not quite certain 
 whether I expect him to be brought home drunk from 
 these visits or not. It would be the most natural thing 
 in the world from the general point of view. From the 
 particular one which I have insensibly adopted of 
 late it would be a tremendous surprise. I switch back 
 and forth between the view-points in an unpleasantly 
 vacillating manner. 
 
 I told him this to-night to explain my irritation when 
 he was late for dinner. He laughed and said he himself 
 
 69
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 did not know. Then I proposed the Avenue X scheme 
 to him. 
 
 "Courty," I said, "how would you like to be an 
 angel?" 
 
 "How soon?" he asked. 
 
 "I mean," I explained, "an angel like Eleanor 
 North. Live down on Avenue X and show everybody 
 the evil of then* ways?" 
 
 "Probably I could show them a good deal," he 
 meditated. 
 
 "Think it over," I suggested. "I want an angel 
 down there." 
 
 "You are going to kill two birds with one stone," 
 said Courty. "Me and Avenue X." 
 
 In a way that is true. It would be still more like a 
 cock-fight matching the two birds against each other. 
 If he agrees I have not the slightest idea what he will 
 do in Avenue X or how. These are details. The idea 
 is an inspiration, and inspirations are smothered by 
 details. They can only be managed properly when they 
 are managed in the grand manner. I assumed the grand 
 manner in presenting the idea to Brown. 
 
 " If you are going to live a decent life you will neces- 
 sarily be a beneficent influence in the avenue. If you 
 
 70
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 are going to lead any other sort of life the avenue is 
 an excellent place for you to live it in." 
 
 "What could I do?" he asked. "Teach all the little 
 blackguards how to swing Indian clubs?" 
 
 The inspiration would have been smothered in five 
 minutes if I had attempted to answer this sort of ques- 
 tion. I explained my theory of inspiration and left the 
 matter so. 
 
 Poor Courty ! He is a victim of compensative moral- 
 ity. He did not even ask why he should be a source 
 of beneficent influence anywhere; why it would not 
 suffice him merely to absorb beneficence of the sort 
 emanating elsewhere. Instead, he asked if there was a 
 monetary reward for the diffusion of beneficence in 
 Avenue X. 
 
 I waved my hand in the grand manner. "Munifi- 
 cent," I assured him. 
 
 "I'll think about it," he replied. 
 
 After all, what more can an inspiration ask for itself 
 than to be thought about, to arouse reflection? 
 
 * 
 
 It is curious how completely women can emasculate 
 masculine clothes. I met Miss Barbara Gilbert this 
 afternoon in riding clothes; not a habit, but breeches 
 
 71
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and boots, a long coat, and a stiff hat, and a more 
 female appearance I never saw the human figure pre- 
 sent. She* was wandering rather aimlessly down West 
 Fifty-seventh Street, looking up at the house numbers, 
 and she said she was looking for nineteen. A friend of 
 hers lives there, and they were going riding together. 
 
 "It is rather shocking, isn't it," she asked me, 
 "going on the street in these things?" 
 
 "It would be extremely shocking if a man did it," I 
 told her. "If I met a man I knew wearing things like 
 that I'd cut him, and if his tailor met him he would 
 probably shoot him." 
 
 "What's wrong?" said she. "I bought them at 
 Brook's. I thought they were rather good." 
 
 "They are awful." 
 
 "I wish I had a cab," she replied. "But I can't. I 
 haven't any money. I don't know where to put it. 
 What pocket do you put money in in riding things 
 so it won't come out?" 
 
 I told her that no such pocket had ever been made 
 by a human tailor in anything. "But there is," I 
 added, "at the top of the breeches " 
 
 "Don't be too literal," she advised, "and, anyway, 
 I can't unbutton the coat. That's one of the rules." 
 
 72
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 The only scheme I could think of was a groom or a 
 maid to walk behind and carry the cash. 
 
 "Why not Laurie?" I suggested. 
 
 "Laurie," said Miss Gilbert, "hasn't any money to 
 carry." 
 
 "So he told me," I answered. 
 
 "Yes, he told me what he told you. I think it was 
 rather fresh of him." 
 
 "Everybody," I replied, "tells me secrets, because 
 I never tell." 
 
 "Yes. He told me that too. Still, it's done now," 
 she added frankly. "What did you tell him?" 
 
 "Didn't he tell you that?" I asked. "I told him 
 you were quite the nicest person he knew." 
 
 "Oh!" said Miss Gilbert. "I thought you were 
 going to end that differently." 
 
 "Most people would have," I agreed. 
 
 "I know I am past nineteen," she answered. "When 
 are you coming to see me ? " 
 
 "To-morrow afternoon," I suggested. 
 
 "Come after dinner. I am going to be alone all 
 evening. Mamma and papa are going out." 
 
 I confess this sounded more attractive. Mrs. Gil- 
 bert is a most uncongenial person. 
 
 73
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 She looked at me quizzically as she stood on the 
 lowest step of nineteen. "I'd give a great deal," she 
 remarked, "to know just what Laurie did tell you." 
 
 "He told me nothing that he has not said to you," 
 I answered. 
 
 "I wonder if he told you everything he has told me," 
 she said. 
 
 "I am not sure," I replied, "but I doubt if he did. 
 He led me to believe that there was something he had 
 said to you that he would never, as long as he lived, 
 say to any one else." 
 
 She blushes attractively, which is a feat for a pro- 
 nounced blonde. She blushed attractively now, and 
 ran into the house, and as I continued down Fifty- 
 seventh Street I felt quite convinced of the existence 
 of a love of humanity. 
 
 For some reason Brown considers that call of mine 
 a tremendous joke. He is very witty on the subject, 
 and when I speak of philanthropy he howls with 
 laughter. The cause of his mirth is Barbara's beauty. 
 Apparently he thinks a beautiful woman outside the 
 pale of philanthropy; they cannot be included in a 
 love of humanity. 
 
 Mrs. Axson understands me better, but disapproves 
 74
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 of my efforts because they will be wasted. She says 
 that both Mrs. Gilbert and Laurie are fools, and as 
 nobody can help fools so I shall be discouraged in a 
 worthy cause. 
 Between them I find the path of true philanthropy a 
 
 very narrow one. 
 
 > 
 * 
 
 I have just been with Mrs. Axson while she had her 
 boots polished in Madison Square. This is a result of 
 my late sociological activities. So far, I must confess, 
 it is the only actual result. Brown is reflecting, so am 
 I; but Mrs. Axson, like a woman, has acted. 
 
 "Do you suppose," she asked, "the sort of polish 
 they use will ruin the leather?" 
 
 I convinced her that this was a slander circulated by 
 a trust to injure the independent trade and she con- 
 sented. I beckoned to a boy. He came enveloped in a 
 cloud of rivals. 
 
 "Competition," I pointed out, "is yet unstifled in 
 Madison Square." 
 
 "Drive them away," said Lilly. "Drive them away." 
 
 Her tone was not at all in accord with my sociolog- 
 ical theories. "They are not mosquitoes," I replied 
 sternly. 
 
 75
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Nor," said Mrs. Axson, "am I a centipede." 
 
 I smoothed over this mutual misunderstanding as 
 best I could and retained one of the applicants. He 
 proudly spit on his hands and grasped Mrs. Axson's 
 ankle. 
 
 "I am afraid I didn't pick out a good one," I said 
 apologetically. 
 
 "I am afraid you didn't," said Lilly. 
 
 "It is more or less guesswork," I admitted. 
 
 "What are you pinching my toe for?" she asked. 
 
 The bootblack didn't know, nor did I. I told her it 
 seemed to me a perfectly senseless habit. 
 
 "It seems to me," said Mrs. Axson, "you don't 
 know very much about it." 
 
 As this also applied equally to the bootblack and me, 
 I left the answer to him and gazed at the top of the 
 Metropolitan Tower across the street. I hope Court- 
 land Brown will make a better angel than Mrs. Axson. 
 Otherwise he will be lynched. 
 
 I am afraid I was unfair to Lilly at the time. I 
 thought that her attitude was snobbish. I still think 
 so. But then there is nothing inherently blameworthy 
 in snobbishness. After all, it is only a fear of defilement. 
 Its character depends on what is protected. In this 
 
 76
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 case it was the beautiful. My sociological theories do 
 not include the beautiful, and I cannot sufficiently 
 stretch them to do so. To me there is always the same 
 irreconcilable antagonism which developed between 
 Mrs. Axson and the bootblack. This is because, I sup- 
 pose, my sociological theories are founded on justice, 
 and beauty is so unjust. One is a principle of division 
 and the other of selection. 
 
 The principle of selection with Mrs. Axson was ap- 
 plied, I can certify, as far away as her second great- 
 grandfather and has been applied as immediately as 
 the angle of her hat brim. It was all visualized for me, 
 this tremendously complicated operation by Mrs. 
 Axson. The principle of division was visualized, too, 
 very vividly so, by the bootblack. I gave him twenty- 
 five cents to soothe his feelings and I took Mrs. 
 Axson up-town for tea to soothe hers. The tea cost, I 
 remember, one dollar and a half. 
 
 77
 
 VI 
 
 I MET Mrs. Axson on the street yesterday while I 
 was walking up from the office. When I told her what 
 I was doing she said: "Oh! Then you can go shopping 
 with me," as if it were the most sequential thing in 
 the world. 
 
 She seemed quite eager about it and accordingly we 
 entered Altaian's. Immediately she left me to wait at 
 the door while she bought stockings. But, apparently 
 changing her mind, she came back and asked me if I 
 was going to the Eastmans. 
 
 At that moment I don't believe that I had ever 
 heard of the Eastmans. If she had said the East 
 Indies I should have been taken less unawares. 
 
 "Why should I go?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, everybody is going." 
 
 I suggested that unless my presence at the East- 
 mans' would affect her choice of stockings I should 
 like time to think it over. She smiled pleasantly and 
 disappeared in the crowd. 
 
 78
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 When she came back I told her I was not going to 
 the Eastmans. Whereupon she smiled absently and 
 said she must buy a collar. She asked me if I could 
 find the collar counter. I struck off blindly in an 
 easterly direction, steering by floor-walkers, and was in 
 sight of the collars when she saw an umbrella and 
 stopped to buy that. Then she led me to the ribbon 
 counter and asked me if I thought it was a good time 
 to buy "steel." I said it was not, and she dropped the 
 subject and bought an immense quantity of yellow 
 ribbon instead. 
 
 "Now," she said, "all I need is a book-marker, and 
 we can go home." 
 
 I was very anxious to go home, but I do not believe 
 I would ever have done so if it had depended upon my 
 finding a book-marker in Altman's. Lilly did so, how- 
 ever, without a single floor-walker. Then she turned 
 to me without a trace of pride and remarked: "Mar- 
 cella is going to the Eastmans." 
 
 Before I could answer she asked the clerk for a 
 purple silk book-marker with an ivory cross. 
 
 Then I remembered that the Eastmans were man 
 and wife, and that they were going to give a ball in a 
 sort of castle they had built overlooking the park. 
 
 79
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "If you will go I will take you," offered Lilly as we 
 walked away from the ribbon counter. Her conversa- 
 tion is always crystalline, clear in expression, but often 
 tangled in its continuity. 
 
 "Thank you very much, indeed," I answered; "but 
 I don't know the Eastmans." 
 
 "Nobody does," said Lilly. "That's why we are all 
 going." 
 
 "I want to be original," I answered. "You once 
 told me that the only way to surprise New York was 
 by not doing things not being a broker or not having 
 a telephone. Well, I am not going to the Eastmans." 
 
 " You would never be noticed one way or the other," 
 said Lilly. "That's why it would be such a good place 
 for you and Marcella to get used to seeing each other." 
 
 There was a great deal of truth in what Mrs. Axson 
 said. There generally is. What would Marcella and I 
 amount to in a spectacular way on the floor of the 
 Eastmans' half -million-dollar ballroom? Scarcely a 
 hundred dollars, I suppose; not as much as the small- 
 est mirror. 
 
 "It is exactly suited to you and Marcella," de- 
 clared Mrs. Axson. "I would not in the least mind 
 Tom's being there." 
 
 80
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 That is easily said while Tom is somewhere between 
 India and Egypt, but, as a matter of fact, Lilly and her 
 husband prefer separate continents. As an argument, 
 however, it was crushing. 
 
 "Why on earth," I asked, when we were got out of 
 Altaian's, and were walking up toward Lilly's apart- 
 ment, "why on earth should you care about an ideal 
 situation for Marcella and me ? " 
 
 "I don't know. It interests me. You see we are in 
 the same boat." 
 
 It is curious I never thought of this before. Lilly's 
 marriage has always seemed to me a peculiarly un- 
 pleasant example of this sort, and my own something 
 quite different. I suppose, however, viewed from the 
 outside, the resemblance is striking. Reflecting upon 
 this disconcerting discovery, I was rude enough to 
 walk half a block without speaking. I was brought back 
 to consciousness by a traffic block at Forty-second 
 Street. Lilly had disappeared. I waited. She did not 
 reappear. I walked back several blocks, but I did not 
 find her. It was not in the least alarming, but it was 
 very annoying. I spent the better part of an hour 
 patrolling ten blocks of Fifth Avenue's east pavement, 
 and then I went into a drug store and telephoned to 
 
 81
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 her apartment. She had not returned. It was the first 
 time since I have known Mrs. Axson, the first time in 
 twenty-five years, that she has done anything of this 
 sort. 
 
 Later several hours later I called her again, this 
 time from the club, and found her. She said she had 
 stopped at the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company to 
 cash a check. I did not ask her how the Farmers' Loan 
 and Trust Company happened to be open at half-past 
 four. I never say things to women they cannot deny. 
 I said instead: "How about the Eastmans?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. Are you going?" 
 
 "I should be very glad to." 
 
 "I am so glad," said Mrs. Axson politely. 
 
 "You will keep to your bargain about taking me?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "Of course. Call for me about ten. We will go to- 
 gether." 
 
 "In the same boat," I suggested, why I don't know, 
 except that I am always idiotic when talking over the 
 telephone. 
 
 She laughed queerly and rang off, and then I under- 
 stood how I had hurt her by my silence when she sug- 
 gested that she and Marcella were somehow sisters 
 
 82
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 under their skins. Remorsefully, I called a florist, and 
 sent her a quantity of flowers. That was probably 
 almost as crude as my silence. That is the unfailing 
 resource of a man when he thinks he has been a brute 
 to a woman to spend money on her. 
 
 The strangest part of it is that the method should 
 be so frequently successful. Lilly was as pleased as a 
 child. When I called for her the apartment was filled 
 with roses. She opened the door of her bedroom and 
 showed me a bowlful at her bedside. 
 
 "You never sent me flowers before in your life," 
 she said. 
 
 "I thought," I explained, "that you had a mind 
 above such things." 
 
 "My mind is not above anything that smells nice 
 and looks pretty," answered Mrs. Axson. 
 
 To speak the truth, mine was not either at that 
 moment. It was, I am afraid, pretty completely oc- 
 cupied with Mrs. Axson. She wore blue, and blue, I 
 fancy, is her color. It covered her snow-white neck 
 and arms like blue foam. She looked like the wave of 
 a summer sea. I felt for one giddy instant that the wave 
 of a summer sea was about to break over me and took 
 a deep breath. A feeling of oppression as though I
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 were physically overcome by all this blueness and 
 whiteness and when Lilly threw a great white fox fur 
 about her throat she looked more like a summer wave 
 than ever was strong upon me when I sat by her in 
 the dim-lit motor. 
 
 She was swept away from me twenty minutes later 
 at the ballroom door by an Englishman with a tre- 
 mendous mustache. I saw him solemnly revolving in 
 a regular orbit about the ballroom floor, while Lilly 
 was anxiously searching the walls for rescue. 
 
 While I was standing there in the crowd about the 
 doorway, a woman passing in brushed me with her 
 arm. I stepped back to give room, and as I did so she 
 looked back and we recognized each other, Marcella 
 and I. I fancied she stopped and I tried to make my 
 way toward her, but the crowds held me back, and 
 when I reached the place where she had stood she was 
 gone. I saw her far down the room dancing with some 
 one I didn't know. A man next me began to brush my 
 sleeve with his glove where Marcella's arm had left a 
 great smear of powder. 
 
 I had hoped to get it over with there. It would have 
 been so easy to shake hands, speak indifferently, and 
 separate in the crowd, and it might be so difficult 
 
 84
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 under other circumstances. And I was quite self-con- 
 fident, too. Lilly's dress was a tremendous assistance. 
 But the chance was gone. 
 
 I think Marcella has grown younger. She looks ever 
 so much younger than Mrs. Axson, and she dances 
 with the verve of a young girl. I must have stood 
 staring at her, for once when she passed close by the 
 man next to me caught my glance and smiled. 
 
 "She dances beautifully.'*, 
 
 "Who?" I asked coldly. 
 
 "That Mrs. Vinton." 
 
 I went to the smoking-room in a bad humor. There 
 I found Malory. He needs a new dress coat. I don't 
 believe he has bought one since Joan was born. 
 
 "What are you doing here?" he wanted to know. 
 
 "What are you?" I asked. 
 
 "Don't know. Let's have a drink." I imagine our 
 greeting was precisely like that of ninety out of every 
 hundred pair of men present. I had the drink and felt 
 somewhat better. 
 
 "I saw Marcella just now," said Malory. "She is 
 here, you know." 
 
 "So I suppose, if you saw her." 
 
 "She is looking tremendously well," he coat&uedL 
 85
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Is she?" I answered. "I saw Mrs. Malory here, and 
 she is looking very badly. I bet you haven't given her 
 a new dress for a year." 
 
 "Don't know," said Malory. "Don't suggest it to 
 her." And he left me, doubtless thinking me in a bad 
 humor. 
 
 Malory is a self-centred beast, like most provident 
 fathers. He is so deeply engaged with his youngest 
 son's distant future that his wife can wear a frock to 
 tatters under his very nose and he would never notice 
 it. I had seen Mrs. Malory and she did look pathet- 
 ically shabby. The contrast between Mrs. Malory and 
 Mrs. Axson was an unwholesome example for young 
 girls, and Malory ought to be ashamed for allowing it 
 to be presented. 
 
 I left the smoking-room, too, for a quiet place to 
 smoke in and promptly lost my way. The house is a 
 perfect maze of narrow hallways. Paduan Gothic a 
 newspaper man said in describing it. What in the name 
 of common sense is Paduan Gothic, and who would 
 build a house of it except some creature like Eastman, 
 who, I believe, inadvertently sat down on a copper 
 mine in Colorado? I found a lift after a while and a 
 profusely liveried flunky asleep inside of it. I woke 
 
 86
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 him up and asked him where the thing went to. He 
 said to the roof-garden. 
 
 They evidently had glass-covered roof-gardens in 
 Padua probably during a later Renaissance. They 
 have gone out of fashion there now. 
 
 It was a beautiful place, massed with plants, with 
 tiny lights among the leaves, and a cascade and foun- 
 tain in the centre, and pink-tiled walks intersecting 
 each other at every turn. Best of all, it was absolutely 
 deserted, and there was a magnificent view across the 
 park, the tremendous cliffs of the rows of apartment- 
 houses on the west side blazing with light, and the 
 great dark canyons that marked the streets. I found 
 a bench next the glass behind the shrubbery and 
 lit a cigarette, and wondered if my host had ever 
 seen it. 
 
 Sitting there, I heard presently the lift come up and 
 the iron door clang, and then Marcella's long-drawn 
 sigh of delight of delight at the beauty of it all. I 
 did not turn. I had lived with her face before my eyes 
 of flesh for three years and with the memory of it 
 quite as vivid ever since, and could picture it quite 
 perfectly her glowing eyes, her lips just parted, and 
 the deep-breathed "Ooh," only it used to be sometimes 
 
 87
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Oh, Pierre," and will never be so again. So I did not 
 turn. 
 
 Then I heard: "Well done, isn't it?" and I turned 
 very quickly, for it was Stewart Dewar's voice. 
 
 He was standing behind her, humpbacked and im- 
 maculate as usual. 
 
 "It is the most wonderful thing I ever saw in my 
 life," said Marcella. That is like Marcella, to exag- 
 gerate with a touch of enthusiasm that sweeps you 
 along with her and makes you also think that it, 
 whatever it may be, is the most wonderful thing in the 
 world. It always affected me so, and she always called 
 such times our "moments," when, as it were, our 
 souls stood on a pinnacle of exhilaration, stood atip- 
 toe and touched. If ever Marcella should read this she 
 will understand, and though her cup be brimming will 
 regret, if she regrets nothing else in the world, at least 
 one of our "moments." 
 
 There had been probably some error in the construc- 
 tion of one of the pipes that fed the fountain and a 
 jet of water spurted out beyond the stone basin and 
 fell splashing on the stone walk. Marcella spied it 
 and ran to the place where the water showed dark 
 red on the tiles and stuck out her foot so that the 
 cool mist-like spray fell on her yellow satin slipper. 
 
 88
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 There was about her poise, standing one foot lifted, 
 her hands holding her skirts aside, something of that 
 wild grace that Marcella seemingly can bring straight 
 from the woods into a ballroom that makes the old 
 men along the wall smile while they watch her. 
 
 "Better be careful, Mrs. Vinton," said Dewar, "you 
 will get your feet wet." 
 
 The words or something like them were at my 
 tongue's tip. It was really a very odd sensation that 
 they did not belong there. I was screened by a great 
 century-plant (which this morning's papers say bloomed 
 during the night and was one of the features of the 
 ball). Looking between the broad leaves I could see 
 quite plainly Marcella draw back obediently and hold 
 out the slipper for inspection. 
 
 "It's wet already," she observed. 
 
 "You will probably catch cold," said Dewar. 
 
 This is true. She probably has a bad cold this morn- 
 ing. The remark irritated me. 
 
 Marcella sighed as if she felt so too, and led the way 
 down the walk by the dry side of the fountain. 
 
 In the course of their explorations it was highly 
 probable, I thought, that they would discover me. 
 Being intensely irritated I rather hoped they would. 
 
 89
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 They did not, however. The fountain fascinated Mar- 
 cella, and she came back to it. It is just like her to 
 come to a half-million-dollar ballroom and play with 
 a tin fountain. 
 
 "If I were you," I heard her say, "I would run 
 through it." 
 
 "It would ruin your dress," objected Dewar, who 
 seemed to be rather an obstructive critic. 
 
 "It wouldn't ruin yours," she said, and came on 
 past my century-plant again on the dry side. 
 
 I smiled. Knowing Marcella, I knew that finally she 
 would get in that fountain and by any means except 
 force would get him in too. I also thought it highly 
 probable that the experience would give him a bad 
 cold. I lit another cigarette and broke off a piece of the 
 century-plant that obscured the view. Almost all my 
 life it has delighted me to watch Marcella. 
 
 It occurs to me now that I was doing a rather un- 
 gentlemanly thing, playing the spy as it were. What 
 Aunt Louise calls the "instincts of a gentleman" 
 should have made me sneeze or otherwise declare my- 
 self, but, as a matter of fact, they never quivered me 
 until now. I am probably an ex post facto gentleman. 
 
 The smoke of my cigarette floated out from between 
 90
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 the leaves and curled and eddied above the walk where 
 they passed. It was no more impalpable than the spray 
 of the fountain that could only be detected by the 
 refraction of the lights and the dark-red stain on the 
 tiles. As the two were coming toward me Marcella 
 suddenly ran a little ahead of him, hesitated at the 
 edge of the spray, and gathered her skirt with one 
 hand and curved the other over her head with the 
 curved upturned palm as a parapluie for the silk 
 flower in her hair. The glittering spray fell between 
 us like a jewelled wall of gossamer. Then she broke 
 through with a little joyous laugh, scattering a thou- 
 sand tiny points of light. 
 
 It seemed to me that she could not have failed to 
 see me, that she was rushing straight into my arms. 
 Instead, she stopped with strange suddenness at the 
 bench opposite and her yellow satin slipper went 
 tumbling down the walk after her. 
 
 "Oh !" she cried, "I have lost my slipper," and she 
 caught hold of a bench to steady her balance while 
 she held her stockinged foot clear of the cold tiles. 
 
 Dewar recovered the slipper and brought it back to 
 her. The sight of Marcella had been like champagne 
 to me, golden, exhilarating. I do not know what it 
 
 91
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 had been to him. I could not see his face as he knelt 
 to replace the slipper, but I could see Marcella's when 
 he did and to pursue the vintage metaphor that 
 sight of Marcella was like absinthe, green, maddening, 
 flavored with wormwood. 
 
 "I can do it myself, thank you," she said quickly, 
 and with one dexterous movement she did, and both 
 of them stood on their feet again. 
 
 A stockinged foot, and a man on his knees before it 
 what is that, in God's name, to set a man's blood on 
 fire? Scarcely more than common courtesy, but it 
 seemed to me the shamefullest intimacy. I should like 
 to discuss this with a conservative Turk of the sort 
 that bowstring then* ladies for a lifted veil. I am 
 afraid an Occidental mind would not understand. A 
 jealous husband is the butt of all human ridicule. 
 What of a jealous divorcee? That's a witticism for 
 the high gods, flavored with that peculiar irony which 
 they are said to relish most in their humor. My only 
 excuse is that I forgot the supreme bench, I forgot the 
 legislatures, and its statutes and decrees; I forgot 
 everything except my naked humanity, which still ap- 
 parently persists in claiming Marcella as its own. It 
 is getting to be a habit with me, this form of forget- 
 
 92
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 fulness. It is a damnably dangerous habit too. They 
 passed within one yard of where I was crouched among 
 the leaves, and if he had taken her in his arms, as she 
 had every right to let him do if she so desired, perhaps 
 he would have never got past. Do I not read of such 
 things in every newspaper? 
 
 Before they reached the lift the iron doors rolled 
 back and a crew of laughing, chattering men and women 
 burst into the place. 
 
 " Is this the roof -garden ? " I heard a woman's voice 
 call out. 
 
 "Oh, no," answered an unseen humorist, "this is 
 the forest primeval." 
 
 Marcella and Dewar, I think, went down then, for I 
 did not see them any more and the newcomers swarmed 
 everywhere. I got away too, and coming down in the 
 mirror-lined lift I saw that I had cut my hands on 
 the century-plant's thorns and stained my shirt-front 
 with little drops of blood. 
 
 This compelled me to leave without seeing Mrs. 
 Axson. I shall probably hear of it again. 
 
 03
 
 VII 
 
 MY aunt, Mrs. Grandy is having a dispute with the 
 Health Department. She thinks she has smallpox. 
 The Health Department thinks she has chicken-pox 
 caught through a clothes-basket from her laundress's 
 daughter. It would not surprise me if Aunt Louise were 
 in the right, though the hotel and press and general 
 public are on the side of the Health Department. My 
 confidence in her gratifies her immensely, I am informed, 
 and it annoys Doctor Symington. This I regard as the 
 double duty of relatives in case of illness to gratify the 
 patient and annoy the physician. 
 
 "It is positively ridiculous," Doctor Symington told 
 me when I met him on the steps of the Buckingham. 
 "There hasn't been a case of smallpox in New York 
 in these circumstances for ten years." 
 
 "And there hasn't been a king in France in sixty 
 years," I answered, "and my aunt is a stanch Roy- 
 alist." 
 
 Doctor Symington is in the early thirties and an 
 94
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 enthusiastic scientist. He explained the rules to me 
 that absolutely forbid her having smallpox and penal- 
 ize her with chicken-pox. He had very much the best 
 of the argument; nevertheless, I shall not desert Aunt 
 Louise. 
 
 "Have you seen her?" he demanded with consider- 
 able violence. 
 
 "Lord, no, man," I answered. "I can't. I think she 
 has smallpox." 
 
 Firmly as I uphold Aunt Louise, however, there are 
 lengths to which I am not prepared to go. She sent out 
 word that I must be vaccinated. I sent in word that I 
 had been vaccinated, which is relatively true, for I 
 was vaccinated thirty odd years ago. If this does not 
 relieve her anxiety I am afraid of the consequences. I 
 am a believer in the smallpox theory, but I am not 
 a fanatic on the subject. I shall not mutilate myself 
 for my creed's sake like a dervish. 
 
 Though I do not see her I go daily to ask after her. 
 Sometimes I am admitted to the sitting-room, which 
 is shut off from the other rooms by a great white sheet 
 soaked in carbolic acid. That sheet is Aunt Louise's 
 banner of defiance. Behind it she is impenetrably in- 
 trenched against the Health Department. Fraulein 
 
 95
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Hummell lifts it reverentially when she enters to bring 
 me news of my plague-stricken kinswoman. The 
 Fraulein has done her mistress's lightest bidding for 
 thirty-one years, and is, of course, like myself a firm 
 adherent of the smallpox theory. The Fraulein is 
 genuinely distressed by my aunt's illness, which is 
 queer because while Aunt Louise lives Fraulein Hum- 
 mell's life will be an unceasing and none-too-well-re- 
 warded servitude, and after Aunt Louise's death it 
 will become a well-earned and dignified independence. 
 Poor Hummell happens to prefer the servitude and to 
 anticipate relief with apprehension. Her mistress says 
 she is awkward, stupid, and a Lutheran. She is also 
 ill treated, long-suffering, and an angel. Unfortu- 
 nately she is as ugly as the practice of virtue and rigid 
 economy can make a woman, so that my admiration 
 always remains unexpressed in her presence. It would 
 be impossible to compliment a woman as ugly as 
 Fraulein Hummell on anything without appearing to 
 joke in extremely bad taste. She suggests La Gioconda 
 caricatured at full length. There is the same heavy 
 face and severely simple coiffure, but the eyes are 
 hidden behind thick glasses and the uncertain, un- 
 ceasing smile is burlesqued by thick lips. Her waist is 
 
 96
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 cylindrical, and about it her skirt is draped like the 
 canvas about a shower-bath. Above, her billowy bosom 
 heaves like a bellows and produces a deep bass tone 
 which she forever tries to reduce to a whisper. 
 
 We conversed on the public side of the sheet con- 
 cerning the illness, which she loyally represents as 
 grave I in a guilty whisper, the Fraulein in her tre- 
 mendous basso profundo. I scarcely have ever spoken 
 to her in my life except concerning her mistress, and I 
 have been speaking to her for thirty years. I realize 
 now that I have always thought of her as a certain mani- 
 festation of my aunt rather than as an individuality. 
 She has represented, as it were, Aunt Louise too-ill- 
 to-see-me, and Aunt Louise dressing and Aunt Louise 
 taking a nap. 
 
 I had never realized this. That, I suppose, is why I 
 did not realize that the first day of Aunt Louise's 
 segregation was the first time, too, that I had seen the 
 Fraulein alone for almost two years. We talked of the 
 contagion in the room with the carbolized sheet, and 
 reciprocally fortified our mutual faith in the con- 
 tagion's existence. 
 
 "Mr. Bierre," said the Fraulein as I was going 
 out. 
 
 97
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Yes," I turned in the doorway and saw her stand- 
 ing in the other doorway against the carbolized sheet. 
 At the distance her thick glasses were little pools of 
 reflected light. 
 
 "Mr. Bierre, how iss Miss Marcella?" 
 
 "I don't know, Fraulein," I said. "You see, I don't 
 see Miss Marcella any more." 
 
 "Ja, I know," she answered. She paused and her 
 bosom seemed to heave as I had never seen it, and by 
 the booming tremulo in her voice when she spake I 
 knew she was trying to speak softly. "Ja, I know," 
 she repeated. The pools of light glimmered and danced. 
 "And I am sorry mit you, Mr. Bierre." 
 
 It was the voice of a fog-horn, but, nevertheless, 
 those were words that nobody else has ever been kind 
 enough to speak to me. I went back with the inten- 
 tion of shaking hands with the Fraulein, but she had 
 lifted the sheet and gone and I was alone with only 
 a very strong smell of carbolic acid. 
 
 Why my aunt wishes to have smallpox I do not 
 know. It does not interest me inherently, and extrin- 
 sically it is, of course, none of my business. I confine 
 myself to carrying out her wishes as far as possible. 
 She is somewhat like an inspiration in that she must be 
 
 98
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 accepted in the grand manner. The details of Aunt 
 Louise are apt to bewilder the average intellect. She 
 is a good woman. That is an article of faith with me, 
 and as is the case with most articles of faith it is main- 
 tained by constant repetition. I repeat it every time I 
 leave her. If I said it not I don't know what I should 
 say instead. I suggested to Courty that he try the 
 formula as a cure for the intense dislike he has for her. 
 With the disconcerting docility which he has developed 
 he has adopted the suggestion. 
 
 "How is your aunt who is a good woman and has 
 smallpox to-day?" he asks me every evening as he 
 unfolds his napkin at dinner. 
 
 "She is better, thank you, Courtland," I reply. 
 "The disease is of the least malignant type." 
 
 The Fraulein and I talk in very much the same man- 
 ner. I would not be surprised if Aunt Louise adopted 
 the manner in talking to herself about it. What a 
 mystery she is, the Fraulein ! To me her smile is more 
 cryptic now than that painted on the lips of her pro- 
 totype. It never changes its unexplained detachment 
 from the mutability of things; it is almost unintelli- 
 gent. But I know very much better than this. 
 
 Yesterday the Fraulein herself opened the door of 
 99
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 the apartment for me. All was in darkness. She apolo- 
 gized. 
 
 "I haf not lid the lights," she explained. "You go 
 indo de sitting-room, Mr. Bierre, und I vill see aboud 
 it." And she pattered off up the hall to find the switch. 
 I lifted the portieres of the sitting-room and entered. 
 The room seemed to be strangely still, and I stopped 
 with that curious feeling that somebody was near me 
 and holding his breath. 
 
 "Is there somebody here?" I asked. The perfect 
 silence which was my only answer seemed to deepen. 
 In the dim reflection from the windows I could make 
 out the black forms of furniture, and there was a heavy 
 smell of carbolic acid in the air, and nothing else ex- 
 cept the eerie silence as of some one holding his breath. 
 Where was Hummell; why was the place dark; what 
 had happened ? 
 
 Then from out the shadow of a bookcase next me 
 I saw a figure moving toward the door, moving noise- 
 lessly and close to the wall. I jumped forward, seized 
 the figure, and felt a woman's clothing. 
 
 I had my arm around her, and with my right hand 
 I had grasped her arm between her glove and the short 
 sleeve. The feel of this mysterious woman's flesh in 
 
 100
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 my hand and her body under my arm in the dark was 
 like the scent of an old familiar perfume or the sound 
 of a half-forgotten melody. By the touch I recognized 
 her. It was Marcella. 
 
 She broke free in that instant and I heard somebody 
 out in the hall say, "Ach, here dis," and the light 
 flashed on. There was Marcella, dressed in brown, 
 holding her hat, and her other arm held up defensively, 
 and I leaning against the bookcase. I don't think I 
 could have lifted my hand as high as my head as she 
 did for my life's sake. 
 
 I believe if every impression I have of the woman 
 who used to be my wife were to pass away one by 
 one, according to the degree of their intensity, the last 
 which would pass away would be the impression of 
 her gracefulness. She has very slim ankles and a very 
 slender throat and rather wide hips and a deep bosom, 
 and she balances like a billiard-ball, as if any impulse 
 would send her moving evenly in any direction. She 
 has, more than any man or woman I have ever seen, 
 the beauty of perfect balance. She was a little fright- 
 ened, and I think graceful things are most graceful 
 when they are a little frightened. 
 
 "I came to ask for Aunt Louise, for Mrs. Grandy," 
 101
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 she hurried on, "and Hummell and I got to talking, 
 and when you rang we didn't know what it was until 
 I heard your voice." She paused, out of breath. 
 
 "I hope," I began, "I hope you had a pleasant 
 talk." 
 
 "Oh, Pierre," said Marcella desperately, "don't be 
 an idiot." 
 
 "I can't help it, Marcella," I answered, "unless I 
 open one of the windows and let some of this damned 
 smell out." 
 
 The room was frightfully close from the odor of 
 that absurd sheet over the door, and I stood for a 
 moment at the open window long enough for a 
 crippled taxicab to crawl out of sight behind the 
 Cathedral. The fresh air braced me up tremendously, 
 and when I turned I saw Marcella putting her vanity 
 box back into her big black muff. The box had evi- 
 dently done as much for her. 
 
 "I have been expecting this for a long time," I said, 
 "but not quite in this way." 
 
 "It was an awful way," said Marcella. 
 
 "Won't you sit down?" I pushed forward a chair, 
 but she shook her head and intimated by a gesture 
 that she was on her way to the door. 
 
 102
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "I am glad Mrs. Grandy is so much better," she said. 
 "Hummell tells me that she is out of danger." There 
 she stopped. I suppose she realized as I did that we 
 could not exchange inanities about a woman at whom 
 we had laughed together a thousand times. In truth, 
 we could not exchange anything, because we possessed 
 too much in common. We had sat together in that 
 room innumerable times and talked of each piece of 
 furniture in it. There was not a habit of dress or speech 
 or gesture used by one of us that had not been ad- 
 mired or criticised by the other. Recognitions of this 
 sort were breaking between us every moment like tiny 
 electric sparks, and each was conscious of the other's 
 recognition. I felt her glance at my watch-chain which 
 she had given me, and I saw her thrust her arm deeper 
 into her muff to hide the bracelet I had given her. 
 The vanity box I had given her too. The high, thin 
 collar she wore was the mode I had always praised, 
 because it emphasized the slender grace of her throat. 
 She was as conscious of that collar about her throat 
 as if it were a stiffness in the muscles. I felt as though I 
 blushed when I remembered I was wearing a knitted 
 red waistcoat she had made me. And, truly, these 
 recognitions were only sparks from the great current 
 
 103
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 of primal recognition that flowed from me to Mar- 
 cella and from Marcella to me. 
 
 We talked, as it were, caught the sparks that leaped 
 off from the current when they were cold, and tossed 
 the dead black specks back and forth as words. 
 
 "I caught a glimpse of you the other day," I said 
 faintly. 
 
 Marcella started. "Why didn't you speak?" she 
 asked. 
 
 Why didn't I? Good Lord! I could not explain. She 
 understood partly and tried to rush past her mistake. 
 "I scarcely ever get to town," she hurried on, "and 
 when I do I am always in a terrible rush. There are 
 such a number of things to do for the family." 
 
 "How is Mr. Barton?" I asked, carefully avoiding 
 her mistake about Aunt Louise. 
 
 "Very well. He often asks about you." She stopped 
 and looked a little frightened. 
 
 I smiled. "Be sure to say that I asked for him," I 
 returned. 
 
 "Yes, I will. But how are you, Pierre?" 
 
 "Oh, I am doing splendidly. Courty Brown is living 
 with me, you know. We are keeping bachelor's hall 
 up there." 
 
 104
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 It must have been that Marcella had a vision of 
 how Courty and I would keep any sort of hall, for she 
 winced a little. "And how is Habliston?" she asked 
 quickly. 
 
 She should not have mentioned Habliston. We could 
 talk of relatives safely enough, but Habliston was our 
 first servant. How upset he would be if he learned that 
 he was a sentiment. "He is just as good as he used to 
 be," I answered ruthlessly. 
 
 "Is he ?" she said slowly and was silent, stroking her 
 muff. 
 
 Our conversation suggested a man walking on knives, 
 an unskilful man who was continually cutting him- 
 self. 
 
 "It was awfully kind of you to call here. It will 
 please her tremendously when she hears of it." 
 
 "She is really out of danger, then?" Marcella asked. 
 "Hummell seems to think so." 
 
 "She never was in it," I answered. 
 
 "Everything looks like illness," said Marcella, mov- 
 ing toward the door. The air from the open window 
 blew against the carbolized sheet fastened over the 
 inner door and made it flap against the woodwork. 
 "That quite frightened me when I came in." 
 
 105
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "That," I said, "is just ridiculous. No use in the 
 world." 
 
 "It served one purpose," she answered dryly. "But 
 for it I should have got out by that door." 
 
 "I am very glad you didn't," I said. 
 
 "Don't talk like that, Pierre," she exclaimed. 
 
 "I mean," I explained, "it had to happen soon or 
 late." 
 
 "Yes," she agreed. "It had to happen. It was in 
 the nature of things, as you would say." 
 
 I would not say anything of the sort because what 
 impressed me most about the situation was its utter 
 unnaturalness. But I did not say so to Marcella. I 
 asked her, instead, if she was going to Babylon that 
 night. 
 
 "No," she answered, "I am going to stay in town 
 for the night." 
 
 "Have you a cab here?" 
 
 "Yes. Good night." 
 
 She turned and went out by the door I held open for 
 her with exactly the smile she used to give the last 
 departing dinner guest before she turned to me alone 
 together in our home. 
 
 It was exquisitely painful. It was ridiculous also, we 
 106
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 two trying to pretend that the past was dead and we 
 had buried it. "God has no power over the past," 
 says the proverb. What could Marcella and I do with 
 it? We had never before understood how many ties 
 bound us. We had never before felt so completely 
 married. Whatever may be said of divorce, it is, at any 
 rate, an utterly inadequate institution. 
 
 107
 
 VIII 
 
 X "-; 
 IF Stewart Dewar was a toy I think I should like to 
 
 break him open to see how he worked inside, as little 
 Tommy Axson does his toys. 
 
 I fancy he is cultivating my acquaintance, for I find 
 him constantly in my path. He telephones me at the 
 office on comparatively trivial causes and is generally 
 attentive at the club whenever I go there. I dined there 
 last night and alone, and he asked if he might dine at 
 my table. 
 
 He has the blackest hair I have ever seen on a man's 
 head. Sometimes a woman's heavily massed coiffure 
 gives the same impression of blue-blackness "as if 
 cigarette smoke had been blown through it," but I 
 never saw any other man's close-cropped hair achieve 
 the same effect. When he crossed the dining-room to 
 my table I noticed he was scarcely as tall as the high- 
 backed chairs he walked between. This is partly due, 
 I suppose, to his wretched carriage. He stoops so that 
 a cursory glance might easily give the impression that 
 
 108
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 -r^> ' ^ . 
 
 his back was not straight. When, remembering this, 
 I compare him with the other small men I know, it in 
 itself indicates a marked personality. The other small 
 men, without exception I think, stretch their inches 
 to the utmost and have, in consequence, a sparrow-like 
 erectness of carriage. A short man who stoops must 
 have a very busy mind. 
 
 He attracts a great many people. I suppose he has 
 what is meant by a magnetic personality. But he at- 
 tracts like a magnet; what he influences only touches 
 the outside of him. That is why I should like to break 
 him open and see what is inside. So, in a way, he at- 
 tracts me, too, I suppose. Since I can't see his interior 
 mechanism, I enjoy watching him work from the out- 
 side; he is so perfectly adjusted to the circumstances 
 of his existence; he works so smoothly in his particular 
 groove. He fits into New York life as exactly and works 
 in it with as little friction as a piston-rod in a cylinder. 
 
 "What are you going to do?" he asked me after 
 dinner. He was drinking brandy and maraschino in 
 his coffee. 
 
 I think if I had answered truthfully I would have 
 said I was going to get rid of him. I answered instead 
 that I did not know and suggested a play. 
 
 109
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 He said they were all dull and suggested bridge in 
 his rooms. 
 
 I accepted. I wanted to see him work, and gambling 
 is his life's work. Bridge would only be a method of 
 passing the time, but I thought it would be interest- 
 ing to watch the motor run even if the clutch were 
 out. 
 
 Dewar lives on the eleventh floor of the Hotel 
 Gotham. They are magnificent rooms. There is no 
 such sweep of space in all my house as he has in his 
 apartment, and the view from his windows must be 
 superb, even at night. We caught no glimpse of it, 
 however, because the shades were carefully drawn. 
 It seems it is against the law in New York to gamble 
 with the shades up. We got there by a taxicab and 
 an electric lift, and summoned Norman Vaux and a 
 friend of Dewar's named Houston by telephone. 
 
 Houston, who was a frequent visitor to the apart- 
 ment, apparently, proved rather an expert with the 
 push-buttons, of which I think the place contains 
 probably one hundred and fifty. He manipulated them 
 with great skill and produced wonderful effects in 
 light and water and hallboys. There were electric 
 lights in the lamps, clocks, vases, and picture-frames, 
 
 110
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and iced water in the walls of the bedroom, bathroom, 
 drawing-room, and library all under the control of a 
 push-button. He produced one effect which I do not 
 know that he fully appreciated. He picked up Dewar's 
 mail in the hall and threw it down on the card-table 
 between us. It was only one letter, addressed in Mar- 
 cella's handwriting. Dewar stupidly stuffed it in his 
 pocket so hastily that I could not but understand that 
 he recognized the hand too. Houston at this looked at 
 me and winked. 
 
 We played until after midnight, and Dewar played 
 well. The points were rather high and Houston, who 
 had lost pretty consistently, grew worried, and at one 
 time when he had lost nearly a thousand dollars and 
 when the score was read off he showed it very plainly. 
 Vaux, who was his partner at the time, noticed it, I 
 saw, but Dewar apparently saw nothing. At any rate, 
 he took advantage of his nervousness and pressed him 
 mercilessly. 
 
 At the end he paid up with a check and left, de- 
 clining supper. Dewar, to whose order the check was 
 drawn, stood holding it in his fingers with a curious 
 little smile for a while after the door had closed. Then 
 he slowly tore it across and dropped it on the floor. 
 
 Ill
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "It's no earthly good, you know," he explained. 
 
 Yet he had pursued that man like an enemy. 
 
 "Why did you ask him?" said Vaux. "I don't care 
 about playing with that sort very much, you know." 
 
 "Why, there was nobody else," said Dewar simply. 
 
 He insisted on our having supper with him, I am 
 glad to say, because I learned that he ate bread and 
 meat. I had rather suspected that he fed on steel 
 filings and drank out of a Leyden jar. 
 
 I wonder what face he turns toward a woman when 
 he loves her. I can not imagine Dewar in love. He is 
 quite famous for his mistresses, I am told. 
 
 This I can perfectly understand, but anything more 
 baffles my imagination. What, for instance, could he 
 be to a woman like Marcella, who is the most primeval 
 personality I have ever known. Would the intricate 
 mechanism which animates him attract simplicity as 
 a mystery or would it repel ? Apparently it attracts, as 
 she writes to him. 
 
 
 
 I to-day had the pleasure of offering a position in 
 my office to Mr. Lawrence Hastings, which was cheer- 
 fully rejected. He is on the immediate highroad to 
 fortune, he told me. He has hopes of being "taken in" 
 
 112
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 the firm which at present employs him, and as I was not 
 prepared to take him in my partnership, he thought it 
 best to stay where he was. 
 
 I sincerely hope it may be best. Brown, who has 
 nothing to do with the matter, says he hopes he will 
 starve. I tell Brown I hope he, Brown, doesn't mean 
 what he says, which very naturally arouses Brown to 
 resounding rage. 
 
 "This," says Brown, "comes of spending evenings 
 with that little Gilbert girl." 
 
 He dislikes everything and everybody I like. I think 
 he would stop drinking finally and forever if I got drunk. 
 
 "I am trying," I told him with a touch of pathos, 
 " to put a deserving young fellow in the way of making 
 a beautiful young girl happy, and you insinuate I am 
 a fool." 
 
 "Not so much about the deserving young fellow," 
 replied Brown. 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" I asked the growl- 
 ing old cynic. 
 
 "People don't help others to beautiful wives," said 
 Brown, "they help themselves." 
 
 So much for philanthropy. This is the interpretation 
 of my first efforts in the field. Confound the science 1 
 
 113
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Not only I do not understand it, neither do other 
 people. 
 
 Aunt Louise is better. She is reconciled to the Health 
 Department. They have agreed to let bygones be by- 
 gones, either smallpox or chicken-pox, and compromised 
 on convalescence. 
 
 I have been admitted to see her in a fresh, thoroughly 
 disinfected room. She was sitting up in bed in a lace- 
 trimmed pink dressing-sacque, and her hair dressed a la 
 guillotine. 
 
 "Well, Pierre," she said languidly when I entered, 
 and turned her cheek to be kissed. 
 
 "Well, Aunt Louise," I answered when I had kissed 
 it, "it has been a close shave, hasn't it?" 
 
 She shook her head dolefully. "Don't let us talk of 
 it," she requested. 
 
 I assented quickly and pulled up a chair to the bed- 
 side. 
 
 "Tell me what has happened while I have been ly- 
 ing here," she asked. 
 
 None of the sort of events which Aunt Louise re- 
 ferred to have happened only wars and earthquakes 
 and such things. 
 
 114
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "I hear that Marcella called to ask for me while I 
 was ill," she went on. 
 
 "Yes," I said, "she did." 
 
 "It was very kind of her. What does she call her- 
 self now?" 
 
 "She calls herself Mrs. Vinton," I explained. 
 
 "Mrs. Pierre Etienne de Meilhac Vinton," Aunt 
 Louise murmured. "That is a very good name." 
 
 "No," I answered. "Marcella Barton Vinton." 
 
 "Oh," she said. "She was a Miss Barton, wasn't 
 she?" 
 
 "Yes," I said, "she was. Didn't she leave a card?" 
 
 "My dear boy," exclaimed Aunt Louise reproach- 
 fully, "I have not seen any cards." 
 
 I apologized for my mistake. It was a natural one 
 because there was a trayf ul of cards at the foot of the 
 bed. 
 
 "Pierre," she went on, "I have been thinking about 
 you a great deal. I hope you will marry again." 
 
 I don't think I was ever so astonished in my life. I 
 was surprised when Aunt Louise had not protested 
 volubly against the divorce, but that she should go so 
 far as to suggest remarriage was almost incredible. 
 
 "Haven't you ever thought about it?" she suggested, 
 115
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 taking a pill-box from the stand by her bed and pop- 
 ping a pill into her mouth. Then she gesticulated 
 eagerly toward the water-bottle. While she swallowed 
 the pill I regained my self-control. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I have thought about it, but I never 
 thought about your thinking about it." 
 
 She drew the counterpane closer about her waist and 
 smiled affectionately, as if she was rather pleased by 
 my discovery of her thinking powers. 
 
 "Well, I have thought about it," she continued. 
 "In the first place, I think you owe it to your fam- 
 
 ay." 
 
 "That is to you," I put in; "you are all the family 
 I have." 
 
 "Then, I think," she continued without regarding 
 my interruption, "I think you owe it to yourself. I 
 am old enough and close enough to you to tell you 
 these things." 
 
 "A young man placed as you are now," said Aunt 
 Louise, "is very apt to form an unfortunate connec- 
 tion. Poor Phillipe ! His life has been wrecked by such 
 a connection. He still refuses to give the woman up. I 
 know of half a dozen others. I used to be horrified by 
 such things, but now I can accept them naturally. I 
 
 116
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 remember mamma's telling us that her father (the 
 Count de Meilhac de Berne) used to say: 'A woman 
 can wear chastity openly like a jewel, but with a man 
 it is hidden like the shirt of Nessus.'" 
 
 Only a chaste woman could have achieved my aunt's 
 impression of professional detachment. A man would 
 have spoken with hesitation or bravado. It requires, I 
 suppose, constant reflection upon a subject to acquire 
 this attitude of scientific impersonality toward it. 
 Aunt Louise might have been Galileo talking about 
 apples. 
 
 I was embarrassed, for women always embarrass me 
 in such matters; but I nodded affirmatively and said 
 that her grandfather must have been an uncommonly 
 wise old fellow. 
 
 "He was," she replied. "But this is more or less by 
 the way. My chief reason for talking to you is that I 
 know you are going to be married by some woman, 
 and I want you to get the proper sort this time." 
 
 "But, my dear Aunt Louise," I objected, "even ad- 
 mitting that I got the wrong sort last time, how can 
 you, a good Catholic, advise me to marry when you 
 cannot believe me free?" 
 
 She looked at me in equal surprise and said: "But, 
 117
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Pierre, as a good Catholic, I don't think you have been 
 married at all." 
 
 This really cleared up the situation in a twinkling. 
 In fact, the rapidity of the clearing up quite took my 
 breath away. 
 
 "Didn't you ever know it?" she asked triumphantly. 
 
 "Of course, I knew it," I answered. Literally I an- 
 swered truthfully, but in the spirit I lied like a sailor. 
 It had never occurred to me before that Marcella and 
 I had never been married. 
 
 Our conversation was cut short by Hummell, who 
 brought in the masseuse and an immense number of 
 towels, and I left. Aunt Louise bade me good-by in 
 an absent-minded way and told me to think over 
 what she had said. 
 
 It was a good suggestion, because what she had said 
 was the unanimous opinion of two hundred and fifty 
 million of other people. The unanimous opinion of 
 two hundred and fifty million civilized people is always 
 worth thinking about, at any rate. A verdict of such a 
 size should not be disregarded without reflection. On 
 the whole, there is much to be said for my aunt's 
 point of view, and as I stood on the Buckingham's 
 steps and looked up at the Cathedral across the street 
 
 118
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I said it that it would have prevented a vast amount 
 of bother if I had been married at Saint Patrick's in- 
 stead of at Saint Stephen's. 
 
 Anyway, the theory is a very valuable addition to 
 my collection of matrimonial hypotheses. I am rather 
 proud of the collection, particularly so when I recall 
 how limited my field of exploration has been. It begins 
 with Father Witherspoon, who does not believe I have 
 been divorced, and ends with Aunt Louise, who does 
 not believe I have been married, and includes Lilly 
 Axson, who believes I have been both. That is a fairly 
 complete outline of the situation. I may fill it up some- 
 what, but I do not believe I can enlarge its scope. 
 
 110
 
 riABLISTON awoke me this morning with preter- 
 natural solemnity. 
 
 "What is it?" I asked. "If it is as bad as it looks I 
 won't get up." I got this idea from my aunt, who 
 never gets up unless the world is to her liking. 
 
 "It is Mr. Brown, sir." 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 Habliston only shook his head. 
 
 He doesn't know, neither does the club, nor the 
 police, nor the Turkish baths, nor any of the receivers 
 of lost spirits that go astray in city streets. He will 
 probably return of his own accord within twenty-four 
 hours. Knowing Courty, I can imagine an even longer 
 absence resulting in a safe return. Meanwhile Hab- 
 liston's agitation is a powerful sedative to me. His 
 imagination is a crude, untrained force, overfed by 
 his afternoon paper, and it hurries him from an ex- 
 treme to its opposite like a tennis-ball between racquets. 
 He does not know whether to rush out and buy a 
 fatted calf or drag the rivers. My superior education 
 
 120
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 permits me to imagine the return of Brown neither 
 drowned nor hungry. 
 
 What annoys me most is that somehow the news has 
 got out at the club as, I suppose, the results of Hablis- 
 ton's telephone inquiries. Courty is now regarded 
 there as a warning, a transformation, which apparently 
 reverses all moral laws; that is, the worse his conduct 
 as an individual member of society the greater his 
 validity as a warning. This is, however, the point of 
 view of the elderly element. They would unquestion- 
 ably regard poor Brown's rehabilitation as a loss to 
 the general welfare. The younger members are more 
 sympathetic. Some of these have even backed Brown's 
 sobriety to last a twelvemonth and were much alarmed 
 at the rumor that it had already met shipwreck. I 
 assured them one and all that he was safe in Fifty- 
 third Street. If the truth ever gets out I shall prob- 
 ably have to resign. 
 
 
 
 As I expected, my inexcusable conduct in leaving 
 Mrs. Axson unprotected at the Eastmans' has been 
 recalled to my mind. I was imprudent enough to call 
 on her for the purpose of expressing my contrition. 
 She received my excuses with chilling reserve, but be- 
 
 121
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 neath this glacial exterior I detected a tiny flame of 
 curiosity as to why I had done it. I dexterously fanned 
 the flame. 
 
 "What were you doing?" she asked, melting at 
 last into curiosity when I mentioned the blood-stained 
 shirt-front. 
 
 "I was caught by a century-plant," I explained. 
 
 Mrs. Axson shrieked with laughter. 
 
 THURSDAY 
 
 When I came in to dinner this afternoon I found 
 Habliston talking to a housemaid in the front hall. 
 The maid's name is Kate, a plump, red-cheeked, 
 timid creature, whom I always see going through doors 
 backward when I approach. She fled precipitately as 
 I opened the door. I felt that something had hap- 
 pened. Habliston was nervous. He dropped my stick 
 with a tremendous clatter and then laid it with added 
 nervousness on the table. There, next to it, was one 
 of the most disreputable hats I have ever seen in my 
 life. 
 
 "Whose is that?* 
 
 "Mr. Brown's, sir." 
 
 I picked up the hat, a soft black affair that could 
 122
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 probably be carried folded in the breast pocket. It 
 was torn and green and, furthermore, the initials 
 stamped on the band were not Brown's. I looked at 
 Habliston and sighed, and Habliston stooped to pick 
 up a pin. I went into the library. Courty was leaning 
 against the mantelpiece. He looked at me without 
 lifting his head, which is a deucedly depressing way to 
 be looked at. 
 
 "Don't look at me in that way," I suggested. "I 
 haven't done anything." 
 
 He straightened himself up and walked away from 
 the fire. "It seems as if I am finished, doesn't it?" 
 
 Then he stared at me for a moment in a vacant, 
 wild way, his lips working like a rabbit's, and came over 
 and gripped my shoulder. "For God's sake," he said, 
 "don't drop me." 
 
 "It's all right, Courty," I said. "I have just had a 
 setback myself." 
 
 This is true. As Mrs. Axson puts it, Brown and I 
 are in the same boat. His mind can be overthrown, as 
 he says, by an accessible whiskey bottle, and mine by 
 a yellow satin slipper. 
 
 I did not tell Brown this, however. I gave him 
 bromide and put him to bed instead. He gave me a 
 
 123
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 recital of his adventures of the past thirty-six hours, 
 a dance with his devil through the lurid flame-lit 
 caverns of the underworld, or upper Hades, Walpurgis- 
 Nacht, on Manhattan. 
 
 "What started you, Brown," I asked. 
 
 "A rum omelet," said Brown. 
 
 Poor Brown! The gods have not had their laugh 
 out yet. But, as a precaution, I shall speak to the cook 
 about her omelets. 
 
 
 
 I detest these middle-aged women who, having out- 
 lived the power of beauty, cling to its arrogance. It 
 is Schopenhauer, I think, who compares them to the 
 sacred apes of Benares, that have been worshipped 
 so long they have come to believe themselves sacred. 
 Mrs. Gilbert is of this sort; she is a sacred ape. She 
 was beautiful as lately as twenty-five years ago, I 
 believe, and she is still good-looking in a sort of ripe- 
 to-bursting style. Her hair is defiantly brown; her 
 skin exquisitely colored, her figure only full for the 
 most part, but she spills over mightily about her neck 
 and chin. 
 
 She had an aged beau with her yesterday when I 
 called at the house, whose name was Haight and who 
 
 124
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 lived, I gathered, in Italy. He spent most of his strength 
 urging her to visit him at Como next summer. Poor 
 old fellow, he did not look as if he would possibly live 
 so long, for he was half blind and all gone in the knees. 
 
 She was uncommonly civil to me. Barbara, I found, 
 had gone to a dress rehearsal of some charitable cha- 
 rades, which take place to-day. Mamma in her absence 
 was not only civil but in the lamplight much less 
 overripe-looking than usual. I really do not see why 
 I did not think her charming except that there is an 
 essential immutable hardness about even her gracious- 
 ness which is repellent. She suggests a piece of marble 
 beautifully polished by friction. 
 
 I could not help wondering as I watched her if 
 Barbara could ever become like her; and, watching, I 
 decided Barbara could not. Barbara's generation at 
 its meridian will doubtless have many faults, but I do 
 not believe that sacred apishness will be among them. 
 The grande dame, I think, is a vanishing type. With it 
 must go much apishness, for what is a grande dame ex- 
 cept a very sacred simian, a sort of right reverend 
 among the lesser clergy. 
 
 It seemed that Mrs. Gilbert could not accept the 
 feeble little gentleman's invitation for Como until 
 
 125
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Mr. Gilbert had been consulted. I was about to take 
 my leave when this came up and delayed me, because 
 I thought it would be instructive to watch her manage- 
 ment of Mr. Gilbert in actual operation. He is reckoned 
 the best-trained husband in New York, a place sup- 
 posed to be the first school of that sort in the world. 
 
 Mr. Haight clapped his little hands and with a 
 bow, whereby I thought he would surely be pros- 
 trated, asked that Mr. Gilbert be sent for. I seconded 
 him, and Mrs. Gilbert rang to find out if he had come in. 
 
 The maid who answered the bell said that Mr. 
 Gilbert had come in, but that he was lying down in 
 his room and had left word that he was not to be dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 Mrs. Gilbert looked at us uncertainly. "The poor 
 man ! He has not been at all well lately." 
 
 Mr. Haight begged permission by a gesture and 
 said to the maid: "Tell Mr. Gilbert, please, that Mr. 
 Haight, Mr. Haight sends a thousand apologies for 
 disturbing him, but might he speak with him on a very 
 important matter?" 
 
 With this message, the maid left the room. The 
 curtain is up, I thought, and I settled myself to watch 
 a comedy. 
 
 126
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 But this is what I saw: 
 
 The maid returned. The door was at my back, so I 
 did not see her enter, but when I heard her voice I 
 jumped about in my chair to look at her. It was a 
 deferential voice, but it was frightened. 
 
 "Mrs. Gilbert," it said, "Mr. Gilbert's door is 
 locked." 
 
 "Then knock," said her mistress. 
 
 "Please'm, I did knock, but he won't answer." 
 
 Somehow we two men looked at each other. 
 
 "You didn't knock loudly enough. He's asleep." 
 
 I saw the woman's face twitch. " Oh, Mrs. Gilbert," 
 she cried, "you had better come. I did knock and 
 knock and I listened, and there isn't a sound." 
 
 Mrs. Gilbert got up as we all did. "Don't be 
 alarmed," she said coolly; "Mr. Gilbert is a sound 
 sleeper, and this woman is a green fool from the coun- 
 try." 
 
 At that the maid began to sob hysterically and her 
 mistress went out, driving the woman in front of her. 
 
 When we were left alone, Haight said: "Don't you 
 think we had better go?" 
 
 "No," I said. "I think we had better stay." 
 
 So we waited. The house seemed perfectly quiet 
 127
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 There wasn't a sound from above. Suddenly, after a 
 minute or two, there came a crash of splintering wood. 
 Somebody had driven in a door. 
 
 "I am going up there," cried the little man. 
 
 But I caught his arm. "Wait. They'll call." 
 
 They didn't call. Instead, from the back the butler 
 came running through the room, struggling into his 
 coat. 
 
 "What's happened?" called out Haight. 
 
 "Mr. Gilbert's dead up-stairs. I'm going for the 
 doctor." 
 
 "The telephone, you damned idiot," cried Haight. 
 There was an instrument on a table within a yard of 
 us. "What's the number?" and when I went out of 
 the room they were both talking into the telephone, 
 the butler in gasps, Haight in a high falsetto. 
 
 I went out because I remembered Barbara at the 
 dress rehearsal. 
 
 There was a crowd of servants in the hall as I passed 
 through, gathered about the stair's foot. Half-way up 
 I saw Mrs. Gilbert facing them, her hands barring the 
 passage from stair rail to wall. She was, as she had 
 left us, in her hat. Her long white gloves dangled from 
 her wrists. She was on guard in full uniform. Some 
 
 128
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 great evil had befallen, but the monster of public 
 scandal might still be defeated, so she stood there, 
 true in the last extremity to the traditions of her code. 
 For once in my life I almost admired Mrs. Gilbert. 
 
 I found a cab at the corner and drove to Sherry's, 
 where I remembered Mrs. Gilbert had said the re- 
 hearsal was. I was in a hurry, for I didn't know what 
 minute some stampeded idiot would send a telephone 
 message to the girl. The stage was set up in a ball- 
 room on the third floor of the restaurant, where they 
 would not allow me to enter unless I explained my 
 business. So I preferred to write "urgent" on a card 
 and send it in instead. She came out very soon. She 
 was wearing an enormous hat and was rouged and 
 powdered for the footlights. The papers to-day say 
 that she was to have represented Le Brun's portrait 
 of the "Girl with the Muff." Certainly, then, as I saw 
 her, she was the most beautiful woman I have ever 
 seen. 
 
 She came into the hall holding my card in her hand 
 and smiling a little at the underscored "urgent." 
 
 "Come in," she said, holding out her other hand. 
 
 "I haven't time," I told her. "I've a message for 
 you from Mrs. Gilbert." 
 
 129
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "From mamma?" 
 
 "She wants to see you." 
 
 "To see me?" she repeated again. "Is there anything 
 the matter?" 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "Mr. Gilbert is ill. I don't know 
 any more. I think you had better let me take you 
 home." 
 
 She wore heavy furs. They are part, if I remember 
 rightly, of the Le Brun portrait. She put up her hands 
 and touched these. "Perhaps," she said, "I'd better 
 go as I am." 
 
 "Perhaps," I answered, and rang for the lift. 
 
 "Then he's very ill?" 
 
 "I'm afraid so." 
 
 "Just what do you know? You must tell me," she 
 asked as we waited. 
 
 I only knew that he had been found unconscious 
 and was so still when I left, and this I told her. I could 
 make nothing of her expression under the hat brim 
 and the paint and powder, but her voice trembled when 
 she said I was very kind to come for her. 
 
 As I followed her through the crowded hall I could 
 not help wondering how many of those who turned to 
 stare at her startling beauty in all that make-up 
 
 130
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 envied her. In the cab I told her exactly what I had 
 seen, for I did not know how, in the confusion of that 
 distraught household, the truth would be finally told 
 her. And she listened without answering. Only at the 
 end she asked me how I happened to be there. 
 
 "I came to see you." 
 
 "About Laurie?" she asked and said no more. 
 
 When we got to the house a little group of three or 
 four people were gathered about the steps and a police- 
 man was standing on them. At this she shrank back 
 for an instant with a curious little cry. But she got 
 herself together again and went up the steps without 
 faltering. The door opened before I rang, and it was 
 Mrs. Gilbert who opened it. Over her shoulder I caught 
 a glimpse of an empty hall. 
 
 Then I stepped back and the door closed on mother 
 and daughter, and on what tragedy I had no idea. 
 
 It was not until I read to-day's papers that I learned 
 how the butler had broken down the light door of the 
 bathroom between the two bedrooms of the husband 
 and wife, and found his master lying dead on the floor. 
 Yet it had all happened six feet above my head. And 
 what else he found I shall probably never know. And 
 so once again I am forced to admire Mrs. Gilbert, for 
 
 131
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 that there is something more to know seems, on the 
 face of it, probable. Is it usual for men to lie down for 
 an hour's nap between locked doors ? Is it not strange 
 that the heart trouble that killed him was unsuspected 
 by his most intimate friends? These are some of the 
 questions that are being asked to-day. When they 
 asked me I told the questioners to be patient. Mrs. 
 Gilbert will answer them all satisfactorily in twenty- 
 four hours. 
 
 The truth revealed itself to me to-day that Mar- 
 cella is poor. Heretofore, I suppose, I have been unable 
 to imagine Marcella poor w.hile I was not. In my in- 
 vestigations of the relations which the divorced has 
 severed and left intact the financial relation had not 
 attracted my attention. I had supposed it intact. Of 
 course it is, in reality, completely severed, the last 
 ligament having been snipped in two by Marcella's 
 refusal of alimony. The revelation is due to my ac- 
 cidental meeting with Uncle Fred at lunch this noon. 
 
 I saw his round bald head above a table by the 
 window as soon as I entered the restaurant, and went 
 over to sit with him. He is an ordinary enough little 
 man, I suppose, to the vision of the world at large, with 
 
 132
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 a round, bald head, and round, fat cheeks, and a round, 
 little stomach, and a white mustache that sprouts 
 parabolically, completely hiding his lips. But I can 
 never approach him without inward quailing. He 
 frightened me once so completely that I have never 
 recovered. He broke my spirit once and, like a con- 
 quered horse, I have acknowledged his supremacy ever 
 since. It seemed to me on that occasion that the clouds 
 of Olympus veiled his brow and the thunders of Sinai 
 echoed in his voice. I cowered before him with scarcely 
 enough courage to ask him for Marcella, that being the 
 object of the interview. 
 
 He is a country gentleman nowadays, and was very 
 inquisitive about the vegetables, many of which he 
 insisted upon inspecting before they were cooked. He 
 told me that there was only one variety of asparagus 
 that was fit to eat and that variety could not be 
 bought in New York. This appeared to give him great 
 satisfaction. I fancy I would have smiled to see any- 
 body else with Mr. Barton's peculiar, quiet dignity in- 
 specting a raw potato. Eating the vegetable afterward 
 made me uncomfortable, as though I were guilty some- 
 how of a discourtesy. I don't understand why he has 
 not been made president of something. 
 
 133
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I asked for Marcella. 
 
 He said she was well, and then he added decisively: 
 "She is a very scatter-brained woman, Vinton." 
 
 "Is she?" 
 
 At that moment his own intellect was concentrated 
 on a potato. "And she has a very scatter-brained lot 
 of friends." 
 
 I did not answer. A short time past, no doubt, he 
 would have added that she had a very scatter-brained 
 husband. He then explained that Marcella was wast- 
 ing her time with books, music, horses, and friends. 
 
 "Her plan now," he continued, "is to teach music." 
 
 "To do what?" I cried. 
 
 My voice must have been too loud, because he looked 
 at me disapprovingly and replied in a whisper : " Music." 
 
 I did not accept the rebuke. In fact, I did not notice 
 it. 
 
 "Why?" I asked stupidly. 
 
 He dismissed the subject as if it bored him. "It is 
 just a woman's fancy," he explained. 
 
 It is, of course, nothing of the sort. The reason Mar- 
 cella wishes to give music lessons is that Marcella 
 wishes to make money. It occurs to me now that some 
 of the sympathy I have expended on myself during
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 the last six months might have been shared with Mar- 
 cella. Uncle Fred's information has enabled me to 
 see Marcella at Babylon. His hand has unwittingly 
 torn a little rent in the veil that has hitherto hidden 
 Uncle Fred's household, and through that rent I can 
 see, it seems to me, into every nook and cranny of it. 
 There is not a great deal to see; Mrs. Barton and 
 her daughter Matilde and Matilde's Aunt Sophie and 
 Marcella in the one spare bedroom. But my previous 
 acquaintance with the household when it was estab- 
 lished in Lexington Avenue makes that little tremen- 
 dously significant. 
 
 I wish I could bribe somebody to marry Matilde. 
 That would relieve the situation more effectively than 
 any other happening I can think of. It must be gall and 
 wormwood to the poor girl to see Marcella throw away 
 a husband. It is to her, doubtless, a sort of insolence 
 which if she does not resent mamma resents for her, and 
 her Aunt Sophie too. Poor Matilde! Marcella used in- 
 variably to ask her to dinner once a week, and she as 
 invariably accepted. Experience had no terrors for her 
 verdant optimism. She used up a man a week, and in 
 the third year Marcella used to give me the morning be- 
 fore a sort of roving commission, like a privateersman, 
 
 135
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 to "bring home somebody." In some ways I was a suc- 
 cessful husband. I never, if I remember rightly, re- 
 turned empty-handed. Once, to be sure, it was Malory, 
 and once it was a professional baseball player with 
 whom I was at college. But my prize was always grown 
 and sober. Marcella insisted upon these qualifications. I 
 would welcome them almost on the front steps and 
 when I ushered them into the drawing-room I was as 
 elated as a high priest of Moloch on a feast-day. Dining 
 Matilde was probably the most consistently successful 
 effort of my life. 
 
 Altogether, it is not a pleasant sight I look upon 
 through the rent. Matilde, who has suffered all this, 
 has the bitter wormwood beneath the veneering of 
 sweetness of the predestined spinsters; and her mother, 
 who has always resented Marcella as an elderly duck 
 resents having a swan forced into her brood for foster- 
 child; and Aunt Sophie, who is simply Matilde's 
 predecessor in the stony path of celibacy. I do not 
 know how women torture each other in these circum- 
 stances. I have known the operation to be taking place 
 beneath my eyes, and I have not been able to discern 
 a single feature of it. But I know Marcella is com- 
 pletely at their mercy. Her only ally is six bonds. That 
 
 136
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 is Marcella's fortune; six four-and-one-half-per-cent 
 bonds. 
 
 And Uncle Fred defines her frantic efforts to escape 
 as "scatter-brained." He would doubtless describe the 
 movements of a cornered rat as "nervous." I am be- 
 ginning to recover my equanimity in regard to my ex- 
 uncle-in-law, who has such good manners and a pro- 
 found knowledge of asparagus. 
 
 As I sit here writing this, in a house which her 
 taste and labor changed from an unsightly museum of 
 mid- Victorian relics to what it is, where some memento 
 of her is beneath my eyes always, the penholder in my 
 fingers as well as the paper on the walls, and as I re- 
 member her delight in it all and then picture that 
 household down at Babylon and Marcella in the one 
 spare bedroom, I could beat my head against these 
 walls to be rid of the knowledge that all this luxury 
 was weighed in the balance against me and it was 
 found wanting. 
 
 Examining this violent impulse calmly, I find it to 
 be for the most part vanity. The philosophic calm 
 which impersonal analysis is supposed to induce does 
 not, however, pervade my being. On the contrary, I feel 
 more like beating my head against the wall than ever. 
 
 137
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 My demon is, I think, exultingly sharpening his 
 claws to-night. He knows that I have to spend an 
 evening with myself. How the prospect would terrify 
 Phillipe ! I think I shall try to trick my demon and 
 take up with Brown's instead. To accomplish this pur- 
 pose, I shall have to wake Habliston, who has strict 
 orders to lock up all forms of alcohol, and frighten him 
 painfully into the bargain. This is one of my privileges. 
 I may maltreat servants and drink champagne at any 
 hour of the day or night, for I have sixty times six 
 bonds. 
 
 Habliston has come and gone, a shivering, timid 
 creature in a dressing-gown whom I scarcely recog- 
 nized. All his dignity laid off with his coat tails. What 
 an illustration for Ecclesiastes ! What a frontispiece 
 for "Sartor Resartus" ! A butler en deshabille ! He has 
 placed the bottle, with rare discrimination, on a volume 
 of Montaigne on the desk here, and I can think that 
 the wine has sucked the spirit out of the book. Just so, 
 the bitter-sweet of the nobleman's philosophy stings 
 and exhilarates. 
 
 Phillipe is right. I am a dull dog. I realize now what 
 a very dull dog I generally am. I perceive this now with 
 the aid of two glasses of champagne. The perception 
 
 138
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 does not trouble me in the least. I am, at any rate, a 
 very brilliant, dashing dog for the time being. 
 
 There lies the power of the stuff. They are fools who 
 say it changes the outer world to the eyes. On the con- 
 trary, the outer world shows clearer to me now, only 
 I have the courage to look it fairly in the face and see 
 it as it is. I look even into the glass which Marcella 
 always kept upon the desk, and I see there a pleasant- 
 faced fellow enough whom his tailor finds easy to fit. 
 This, say the mystics, is a "Centre of Immensities," 
 "A Confluence of Eternities." I smile. Surely it is the 
 mystics and not I who have been taking wine ! "What," 
 bellows Jean Paul, "is this me, the thing that can say 
 I?" I answer imperturbably: "It is a stock-broker." 
 
 At other times the inadequacy of the answer fills 
 me with dismay. Now the foolishness of the question 
 fills me with pity. I am as the gods, knowing good and 
 evil, and not necessarily preferring the former. This 
 passion that torments me is no mystery of the spirit. 
 It is not beyond the skill of the surgeon or the experi- 
 ence of a man of pleasure. On the contrary, it is pecu- 
 liarly of the flesh. Why, then, should I spend my days 
 in such a vain longing when the world is what it is 
 and I have sixty times six bonds ? The money may not 
 
 139
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 be able to purchase happiness, but no one denies, so 
 far as I know, that it can unfailingly purchase satiety. 
 Marcella made a mistake. She should have kept me 
 and the bonds. Now she has lost both and must 
 teach music for bread and peace. I have lost only Mar- 
 cella, and, having the bonds, can buy another woman. 
 
 
 
 God pity me for a futile liar! I would be happier if 
 I could buy the real woman a hairpin; I do not even 
 dare offer her what is really hers. "In vino veritas." 
 That's false. This calendar here on the desk, whose 
 days are marked by her hand, the blotting-pad that 
 no one else has used, the crumpled gloves in the table 
 yonder, the faint perfume in the empty closet up- 
 stairs where is the truth that can talk these argu- 
 ments down? 
 
 Brown's devil lives in the nethermost pit. I have 
 thrown the bottle in the fire, and I saw him fly up the 
 chimney in blue flames. 
 
 140
 
 X 
 
 MY Aunt Louise sent for me to-day in a state of ter- 
 rific excitement. She has just returned from a tour 
 of convalescence with Phillipe through the South. It 
 seems that immediately on her return Miss Kate 
 Hetherington (whom I do not know, but may the earth 
 lie heavy on her bones!) informed her of Marcella's 
 intent to teach music. If my aunt had learned of her 
 intention of teaching the seven deadly sins she could 
 not be more shocked. 
 
 "It is impossible," she said to me this afternoon at 
 the Buckingham. 
 
 That is one of the few things it is not. It is neither 
 wicked nor impossible. I admit it is pretty near every- 
 thing else. 
 
 "You must stop it," said my aunt. 
 
 "How?" I asked. 
 
 "You must tell her that it is a reflection on you, and 
 that inasmuch as you offered to " and she began to 
 enumerate the offers the Supreme Court and myself 
 held out to Marcella until I grew weary. 
 
 141
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "I shall do nothing of the sort," I replied. I would 
 rather be crushed by an avalanche of "reflections" 
 than face Marcella with such a plea. 
 
 "Then I shall." 
 
 "If you do I shall go about drumming pupils for 
 her." 
 
 "Pierre, are you mad?" she inquired. "Are you 
 going to let it be said that your wife has to take 
 scholars for bread while you enjoy a fortune ? " 
 
 "You forget that she is no longer my wife." I did 
 not add that according to my aunt she never had 
 been. 
 
 "It is not the time to quibble," she replied. "The 
 obligations of a gentleman are not abrogated by the 
 decisions of a law court." 
 
 "Then," I asked, "there are still some duties be- 
 tween Marcella and me ? I am still responsible to some 
 degree for her welfare ? " 
 
 My aunt hesitated. I think she suspected another 
 quibble. "I don't see how you can ask such a question," 
 was all she could say. 
 
 "It seems to me the most natural question in the 
 world," I replied, "and yet the hardest to get an- 
 swered." 
 
 142
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Whom have you asked such questions?" she in- 
 quired, having a female weakness for side issues. 
 
 " Everybody, and I always get a different answer." 
 
 "I should think," she replied, "that in matters of 
 this sort you could use your natural feelings for guide." 
 
 As a matter of fact, I had as soon use an infernal 
 machine for a watch. "My natural feelings," I returned, 
 "are quite out of the question." 
 
 Aunt Louise's lips tightened. She has very thin lips, 
 and now, in her old age, when she closes them in this 
 way her chin protrudes slightly. "It shall not go on," 
 she said. " She has no right, bearing your name, to use 
 it in such a way." 
 
 If Marcella had any other name Aunt Louise would 
 not object to her taking in washing. That is why the 
 discussion irritated me so. "If the name can get her a 
 single pupil," I answered, "I hope she will put up an 
 electric sign in Long Acre Square." 
 
 Aunt Louise raised her hands despairingly. "Is 
 there nothing that is sacred to you, Pierre ? " 
 
 I did not relieve her despair. She is not quite the 
 person to whom I would open my heart. 
 
 "If you will not do anything, I shall," she con- 
 tinued. 
 
 143
 
 PIERRE VINTON; 
 
 ,"What will you do?" 
 
 "I shall send for her and tell her what I've told you." 
 
 I have reviewed what she has told me, and to save 
 my life I cannot understand how any portion of it 
 will have any effect upon Marcella. It will, of course, 
 be intensely disagreeable, but I realize that I cannot 
 prevent Aunt Louise's being disagreeable. 
 
 "It will be quite useless," I pointed out. "You must 
 tell her that you are acting on your authority only 
 and that I have no objection to her doing whatever 
 she chooses." 
 
 "She knows that," she said sarcastically. 
 
 We have not parted so stiffly for years not since 
 the days when she used to turn me out of her room for 
 stealing hairpins, and that was twenty-five years ago. 
 I had a sudden impulse while I was putting on my coat 
 in the hall to go back and make it up with her and 
 beg her to give up the proposed interview. But to 
 what purpose, I reflected. I could no more change my 
 aunt's conviction of the heinousness of Marcella's 
 conduct in this matter than I could alter her manner 
 of speech. She is of one age, Marcella of the next. 
 Between them there is the impassable gulf. Let them 
 shriek at one another from the edges for an hour or 
 
 144
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 so. It can do neither harm. In fact, it may possibly do 
 one good. 
 
 Walking up-town in this philosophic mood and hap- 
 pening to pass the door of Mrs. Axson's hotel I turned 
 in there. 
 
 Mrs. Axson prides herself and exasperates her rela- 
 tives by her progressivism. It is as well recognized a 
 feature of her personality as her Christian name. 
 Having listened to my aunt's mediaeval views in regard 
 to Marcella's scheme, I felt that it would be beneficial 
 to hear Mrs. Axson's also. So I went in and asked to 
 see her. She sent down word that she would be delighted 
 to see me. 
 
 I found Mrs. Axson on her sofa with a bottle of 
 scent and a volume of Brieux's plays. 
 
 "An excellent precaution," I remarked, as I drew up 
 my chair. " But why read Brieux at all ? " 
 
 "I have a headache," she explained, but she dropped 
 the volume on the other side of the sofa. 
 
 "I have some news," I began. 
 
 Mrs. Axson spilled an extravagant quantity of scent 
 on a pocket-handkerchief and held the pocket-hand- 
 kerchief for me to smell. "About Marcella?" she in- 
 quired. 
 
 145
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "How did you guess?" 
 
 She put the handkerchief up to her own nose and 
 smiled. "Never mind," she answered; "tell me what 
 it is." 
 
 I told her. I also told her of my interview with 
 Aunt Louise, and the firmly progressive stand I had 
 maintained therein. 
 
 She did not interrupt me, which was unusual, and 
 even when I had quite finished she remained silent. 
 
 "I expected," I observed presently, "you would 
 agree with me." 
 
 "What have you done?" she asked. 
 
 "Why, that is just the point. I haven't done any- 
 thing. It is none of my business." 
 
 "Oh, I see." 
 
 I made no reply to the exclamation, although it was 
 a distinctly disagreeable one. Lilly did not appear to 
 expect me to do so. She looked around the room which, 
 as I have often told her, is a very pretty room. 
 
 "It must be awful to be poor," she remarked unex- 
 pectedly. 
 
 "To Marcella, at present," I answered, "a room 
 like this would be a cage." 
 
 "I wasn't talking about Marcella." 
 146
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Mrs. Malory does not mind it," said I. 
 
 "I wasn't talking about Mrs. Malory, either," said 
 Lilly. 
 
 "Well, then," I conceded, "you, of course, would 
 hate it like the devil, but think how sweet would be 
 a life of independence." 
 
 Lilly, lying on her pillows, smelled the cologne 
 bottle and reflected. "Yes," she admitted slowly, 
 "that would be rather jolly." 
 
 "Nobody's objections or prejudices or authority," 
 I continued, "to amount to a " 
 
 "To a damn. Yes, that would be a great advantage." 
 
 "To feel that between you and the world there 
 existed no obligation except what your strength con- 
 ceded to its weakness; to be able to look all human 
 society square in the face and demand with justice the 
 fair return of your services to it and no more; to be 
 able to say to friend or critic: *Take me for all in all, 
 I am a man.' ' 
 
 "But I am not." 
 
 "Not what?" 
 
 "Not a man," said Mrs. Axson. 
 
 "I was speaking generally," I explained. 
 
 "Yes, but I am not even generally a man." 
 147
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "By generally " I began. 
 
 "You might explain all night," said Lilly, "but I 
 remain a woman and for the present an ill woman 
 too, and I say it must be awful to be poor when you 
 are a woman. It may not matter to a man. Nobody 
 cares how men live unless their wives live with them. 
 They have holes, like rabbits, that they have come out 
 of when we see them. We don't know where the holes 
 are or what they do when they are in them. But a 
 woman needs money everywhere, at home or on the 
 street." 
 
 I did not feel that my experience allowed me to 
 contest the statement that a woman needed money, 
 so I said nothing. 
 
 "I suppose, of course, you don't agree with me," 
 said Mrs. Axson. 
 
 "I agree with you perfectly." 
 
 She looked aggrieved. 
 
 "Only," I added, "I don't think your views are very 
 progressive. I thought the modern woman cared only 
 for independence." 
 
 Mrs. Axson had often told me so herself. In fact, 
 some of my speech on the sweets of independence was 
 borrowed from her and I was surprised she did not 
 
 148
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 recognize it. "Who," I continued, venturing on 
 plagiarism verbatim, "who would not prefer the dol- 
 lar earned by labor unashamed to the thousands 
 lavished upon caprice?" 
 
 "That's rot," said Lilly. 
 
 "You said it yourself," I cried. 
 
 "I did not." 
 
 I was silent, but with obvious politeness. 
 
 "I suppose," she continued, "you think you can 
 make me admit anything, just because I have had a 
 bad headache." 
 
 "I forgot the headache," I confessed. 
 
 "I wish I could," she said wearily, and passed the 
 handkerchief across her forehead. 
 
 "Perhaps," I suggested, "talking increases it." 
 
 "No, but argument does," said Mrs. Axson. 
 
 I looked at her. She was laughing. 
 
 "Lilly," I said, "you are a humbug." 
 
 "I swear upon my heart," she said, "that I have a 
 headache." 
 
 "That has nothing to do with it," I replied. "I 
 came to you for sympathy and support in a course of 
 conduct exactly in accord with your avowed belief* 
 and you openly turn against me." 
 
 149
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "I told you," she replied, "that I have a headache." 
 
 I rose. "I won't trouble you again," I remarked, 
 "on matters of importance." 
 
 "Not even when I am well?" she asked. 
 
 "Not even when you are well," I repeated. "I do 
 not see any great difference in such matters between a 
 woman with a headache and a woman without one." 
 
 "Then I thank God I did not marry you," said 
 Lilly. 
 
 I did not answer. "I hope," I said, feeling for my 
 hat, "that you will be better before the next suffrage 
 conference." 
 
 "Where are you going?" she asked. 
 
 "I am going to see Mrs. Malory," I replied with my 
 hand on the door. 
 
 "Be sure," said Mrs. Axson, "to kiss the children 
 for me." 
 
 This was an undeserved sneer at Mrs. Malory, be- 
 cause I did go to see her and I did not see the chil- 
 dren. To be sure, the floor of the library where she gave 
 me tea was decorated with the contents of a rag doll 
 and a Noah's ark. 
 
 Mrs. Malory's housewifely eye was on them at once. 
 "The children have been playing here," she apologized. 
 
 150
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 It was an unnecessary apology, however, because I 
 did not suspect either her or Malory of playing with a 
 Noah's ark or a rag doll. "Such things are the most 
 cheerful sights in the world," I declared, "the true 
 ornaments of any home." 
 
 Only the original designer of the ark and Mrs. 
 Malory would have accepted that remark. Mrs. 
 Malory beamed on it, however, as she picked up the 
 sugar bowl, then suddenly her face clouded. I was 
 puzzled, but only for a moment. "The children," I 
 suggested, "have been playing in there too?" referring 
 to the sugar bowl. 
 
 "I am afraid," she confessed, "that they have. 
 Would you excuse me for a moment?" 
 
 "Don't trouble yourself about sugar," I urged. "I 
 really prefer tea without it." 
 
 Mrs. Malory looked a little confused. "I am a 
 little anxious," she explained, "sugar in such quan- 
 tities is so bad for them." 
 
 I withdrew my protest and she fled. I spent the next 
 fifteen minutes examining the contents of the Noah's 
 ark. Perhaps because it was there that I had last seen 
 Mrs. Malory, the affair reminded me of the Eastmans' 
 ball. 
 
 151
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 When she returned I plunged at once into the middle 
 of things. "Mrs. Malory," I began, "I want to ask you 
 a question." 
 
 "As many, Mr. Vinton," she replied, "as you like. 
 We can have a long private chat until Malory comes." 
 
 "When does he come?" 
 
 "Oh, never before six," said Mrs. Malory. 
 
 I glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes of that 
 hour. 
 
 "Perhaps," I began. 
 
 "Oh, there he is now," cried Mrs. Malory, and I 
 heard the sound of a key in the front door. 
 
 "It was just about time, you see," she added 
 irrelevantly I thought. 
 
 Malory came in and shook hands with me, and kissed 
 his wife. "Has anything happened," he inquired. 
 
 She explained about the sugar, while I returned to 
 the contemplation of the ark. 
 
 "Have you sent for McCullogh?" I heard from 
 Malory. 
 
 "No, dear. I did not think it necessary, and we have 
 called him up so often unnecessarily." 
 
 "He is paid for it, isn't he?" demanded her husbandi 
 "and you don't know how much they ate." 
 
 152
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I rose. "Don't go," said Malory. 
 
 "I must," I replied. 
 
 "Oh, well, if you must," said Malory, leading the 
 way to the street. 
 
 I was in the door when I heard Mrs. Malory cry: 
 "I knew there was something I wanted to ask 
 you." 
 
 I stopped and looked back. Malory was on the stair- 
 way, half-way to the second floor. 
 
 "Is it really true about Marcella?" Mrs. Malory 
 asked. 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "it is really true, I am afraid." 
 
 "She is going to make her own living?" cried Mrs. 
 Malory. 
 
 "She is going to try." 
 
 "And she will live in town, and have a little flat 
 all to herself?" 
 
 "I suppose so," I agreed, and looked at Mrs. Malory 
 closely. Malory had entirely disappeared. From the 
 darkened up-stairs floated down a plaintive wail. She 
 started. 
 
 "Yes," I added, "all to herself. What do you think 
 of that?" 
 
 Mrs. Malory paused. In the light of the hall lamp 
 IM
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 her face shone. "I think," she murmured, "I think it 
 would be the loveliest thing in the world." 
 
 Then she fled to investigate that plaintive wail. 
 
 Inasmuch as Mrs. Malory had no headache, I con- 
 sider her an even more flagrant renegade than Mrs. 
 Axson. 
 
 154
 
 XI 
 
 "POOR Gilbert! He left very little." That is not 
 gossip; it is an epitaph. 
 
 The truth is he died a bankrupt, and the Hudson 
 Trust Company will pay his debts. But truth is such 
 an awkward thing to handle; it is easier to stick to 
 epitaphs. It is easier to believe that he left the house 
 in Madison Avenue and a small income than to believe 
 them both gifts of the Hudson Trust Company, and 
 that is the way everybody is handling the situation at 
 present. 
 
 I have seen Barbara once since the afternoon of the 
 rehearsal, a far-off, black-robed figure in a pageant. 
 She was, I believe, much fonder of her father than of 
 the other parent, and, besides, he was the Atlas of her 
 world. Mrs. Gilbert may have ruled the house, but he 
 was the pillar that held up her universe. Now the pillar 
 has fallen, and I am afraid her everything has come 
 crushing down to ruin, along with it, Laurie Hastings 
 as much as anything else. 
 
 155
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 When such a thing as this happens I cannot be sur- 
 prised that women are getting tired of such insecurity 
 and want some support more stable than these very 
 mortal Atlases to rest their universes upon. The ar- 
 rangement is pretty enough, even splendid at times, 
 while they are running about in motors, jewelled and 
 furred, silken clad and exquisitely scented. It has 
 always seemed to me particularly pretty and charming 
 when I have seen them here in New York at luncheon 
 in the up-town cafes, and compared those gay, pretty 
 scenes with some feeding establishments below Four- 
 teenth Street, where their Atlases were doubtless at 
 the same hours filling their stomachs. But, pshaw! it 
 is only a gambler's luxury. They never know where the 
 end is. A quarrel, an illness, a prettier face one of a 
 hundred such little happenings may take it away in a 
 week. How can they be ever truly happy on such frail 
 foundations ? 
 
 Yes, I have the deepest sympathy with the protests 
 of these sisters and wives of the rich, and I can per- 
 fectly understand how they feel that society is unjustly 
 a man-devised organization. The complaints of the 
 humbler sisters seem to me quite artificial by compar- 
 ison. 
 
 156
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 This, I suppose, "lets me out" as a philanthropist. 
 Well, no matter, I was getting tired of the role anyway. 
 
 "Old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long 
 ago." 
 
 Marcella has a bad temper. I had almost forgot 
 that of late; it was brought to my mind this afternoon, 
 down at Babylon, by Marcella herself. She talked to 
 me by telephone in the office yesterday. 
 
 "This," announced a muffled, creaking sound, "is 
 Marcella." 
 
 I kicked the door of my private office closed and 
 answered: "Oh! How are you?" 
 
 "I want to talk to you," she went on. "Can I see 
 you to-day?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 I was a little confused. In the first place, I haven't 
 the gift of the telephone, and I had not, moreover, re- 
 covered from the surprise of talking to her at all. I 
 answered as a child repeats a well-learned "Fouquard's 
 at five." Marcella agreed and there ended our con- 
 versation. 
 
 I have not been in Fouquard's tea shop in Forty- 
 157
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 third Street since I was married. I can recall perfectly 
 the last time I was in it. Marcella and I were having 
 tea at a little marble-topped table with iron legs that 
 stood in the corner farthest from the corner at which 
 the orchestra of three pieces plays every afternoon. 
 The walls of Fouquard's are lined with mirrors in very 
 cheap gilt frames, and Marcella was reflected at al- 
 most every angle. She was nibbling a brioche; I was 
 gnawing a bun. 
 
 "Marcella," I said, "I am going to tell your Uncle 
 Fred." 
 
 I did not finish that bun, and I have never tasted 
 one since. The heroism of that determination lifted me 
 forever beyond buns. Marcella too put down her 
 brioche not finally, however; she still retains her 
 fondness for them and said "Whe-e-e-u" as nearly 
 as I can remember. 
 
 Even that did not daunt me, and I did tell Uncle 
 Fred, and the next time Marcella and I had tea to- 
 gether we had it brazenly at Sherry's, just around the 
 corner. Before that time, however, we were well-known 
 customers at Fouquard's. The hideous dame du comp- 
 toir bowed to us, and the waiters had even got to 
 understand Marcella's French, which was of the pains- 
 
 158
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 takingly incorrect sort disseminated at a neighboring 
 day-school. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon I once more presented myself 
 to the hideous dame du comptoir. She knew me and 
 smiled as of old, and the waiter who showed me to 
 a seat knew me also. I ordered tea and brioche rolls 
 and buns and lit a cigarette. The waiter brought the 
 tea and the bread and let it stand awhile. I lit other 
 cigarettes and waited, but Marcella never came. 
 Fouquard's is not for married people. It is fly-specked 
 and tawdry, and its clientele is, I suspect, pretty 
 nearly disreputable. 
 
 Presently I gave up hope and went out. The waiter 
 who had brought me the tea stopped as I was nearing 
 the door. 
 
 " Did you not see mam'selle ? " he asked in a tone of 
 surprise. 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 "She was here ten minutes ago. Here, right here," 
 and he pointed to the dame du comptoir. Then I saw 
 that he was telling the truth, that Marcella had come 
 and gone away again. I did not blame her. I was 
 anxious to go away again myself. 
 
 I met Goadbye as I was coming out of Fouquard's. 
 159
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 He was coming out of a garage next door. He gave me 
 a knowing smile as he passed. I had been in rather a 
 hurry to get away from the office, and I suppose Goad- 
 bye had no doubt that I was conducting some disrepu- 
 table intrigue with Fouquard's for a tryst. I wonder 
 what he would have said if I had told him that I had 
 been keeping an assignation with my wife and had been 
 disappointed into the bargain. 
 
 The disappointment did not have any serious ma- 
 terial results, because Marcella sent me a note by a 
 messenger asking me to come to Babylon this after- 
 noon on a matter of "great importance." The note did 
 not give any explanation of her failure to meet me at 
 Fouquard's, although it must have been written very 
 shortly after the hour of that appointment an omis- 
 sion for which I admire Marcella. I doubt, moreover, if 
 she could have explained it on paper. I am quite sure 
 I could not. 
 
 I went down to Babylon on the 3.15 train. Marcella 
 met me with a piebald pony whose legs made me 
 shudder and a diminutive wicker cart of the sort in 
 which governesses air their charges about the streets 
 of New England summer resorts. Marcella sat in one 
 corner and I diagonally opposite, and we filled it un- 
 
 160
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 comfortably full. She wore an old weather-stained polo 
 coat which made me in city clothes feel vulgarly over- 
 dressed as I climbed in beside it. 
 
 "I had a letter this morning from your aunt, Mrs. 
 Grandy," she began as we drove across the tracks 
 toward the open country. 
 
 "You are lucky," I observed. "You came very near 
 having a visit from her." 
 
 Marcella shook the reins. "Then you knew what 
 was in the letter." She lashed the pony. "I thought 
 you did." She lashed the pony again. "I suppose you 
 asked her to write it." She put the pony to a gallop. 
 "Why don't you write your own letter? Why did you 
 get your aunt ? " 
 
 I couldn't hear any more, because the cart was mak- 
 ing a fearful row and I was holding tightly to the side 
 to save myself from being thrown out, and just as we 
 were rounding a curve of the road she burst out crying 
 and dropped the reins to get her pocket-handkerchief. 
 If that pony had possessed as much as one sound leg 
 I believe the interview would have ended there. Per- 
 haps that would have been the best way out of it. 
 At the time I could think of no other and I sat in 
 my corner waiting for the catastrophe and Marcella 
 
 161
 
 PEERRE VINTON 
 
 sat in hers mopping the tears with the pocket-handker- 
 chief. 
 
 "Stop him," she sobbed out. 
 
 "I can't," I answered. 
 
 "Whoa," said Marcella with a sob. 
 
 The pony subsided gradually to a walk and she put 
 away the pocket-handkerchief and took up the reins. 
 Her style of driving is startlingly suggestive. When 
 things are going to the deuce at a run she drops the 
 reins and takes her pocket-handkerchief; when they 
 have returned to an orderly progression she resumes the 
 reins. 
 
 "Did you know what was in the letter?" she asked, 
 temporarily forgetting the charge that I had dictated it. 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 She pulled out a letter from somewhere beneath the 
 weather-stained polo coat, and held it out to me. I 
 took it and tore it in two and dropped the pieces over 
 the edge of the pony cart. 
 
 "That doesn't do any good," she remarked. 
 
 "And it doesn't do any more harm, either." 
 
 "She said that I was putting a stigma on you." 
 
 I recognized the accuracy of Marcella's paraphrase; 
 stigma is a favorite word with Aunt Louise. 
 
 1612
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Then she added," Marcella continued, "that I 
 probably didn't know it." 
 
 "Well, of course, you hadn't and you didn't," I 
 observed. 
 
 "I don't understand." 
 
 I did not quite understand myself, and I saw a 
 morass of further misunderstanding immediately be- 
 fore us. 
 
 "Marcella," I said, "it is perfectly useless for you 
 and me to try to understand each other through the 
 medium of my aunt, isn't it?" 
 
 She nodded and whipped up the pony. 
 
 "I don't care a bawbee about stigmas. But I 
 know " I stopped. 
 
 " Know what ? " asked Marcella. 
 
 "That you have a right to part of everything I have 
 and that you are very silly not to take it." 
 
 "I had a right," said Marcella, "but I refused. 
 Now I haven't a right any longer. That's the law." 
 
 "I am not talking about the law." 
 
 "What else is there for you and I to talk 
 about?" 
 
 I, sitting in my corner of the pony cart and Marcella 
 in hers, looked each into the other's eyes. Marcella's 
 
 163
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 turned away first. "I think you are talking like a 
 beast," she said bitterly. 
 
 "I have not said anything." 
 
 "I'll substitute * ungentlemanly ' then." 
 
 I laughed. "You sound like Aunt Louise." 
 
 For the first time, her face, which had been quite 
 colorless, flushed; she turned again and looked ahead. 
 
 I felt a sudden desire to make her cry. "Ungentle- 
 manly," I repeated, "is that all? I presume you did 
 not marry me because I was a gentleman." 
 
 Marcella turned. "I married you for money," she 
 said. 
 
 I perceived then that Marcella was trying to make 
 me cry. 
 
 "That's not true," I returned. "You could not help 
 marrying me. You would have married me if I had not 
 had a penny in the world." 
 
 She turned on me again. I saw I had failed in my 
 attempt to make her cry, but I had succeeded in making 
 her very angry. 
 
 "At any rate," she retorted, "I recovered my senses 
 fairly soon." 
 
 "Senses? Do you call it sense to do what you did? 
 To make yourself unhappy and me " I paused. 
 
 164
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Make you what?" she asked quickly. Then as 
 quickly she recovered herself. "Aren't you taking a 
 good deal for granted when you say I am un- 
 happy ? " 
 
 "If you were happy you would not want to leave 
 and go and make your own living." 
 
 "I have no right to ask my uncle to support me." 
 
 "You have no right to ask that of any man except 
 me," I replied. 
 
 "And I have no need to ask it of you. Women 
 nowadays don't have to beg for support. I have no 
 need to ask help of any man." 
 
 "You don't have to ask it of me, Marcella," I re- 
 minded her. "It is yours already. You only have to 
 use it." 
 
 "It was mine," she corrected, "when I loved you. 
 But it isn't now, because I don't." 
 
 It was marvellously lucid. But still, as the pony 
 jogged along, I sat still and tried to understand. Mar- 
 cella also sat still and stared ahead up the road. 
 
 "Might it not be as well," I suggested at length, 
 "to turn? There is nothing more to say, and I believe 
 there is a four-thirty back to town." 
 
 "Yes," she assented, "there is a four-thirty," and 
 165
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 she pulled the pony up short. "Do you understand?'* 
 she asked. 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 "You would not want me to go on living as though I 
 loved you to lie to you." 
 
 As a matter of fact, to have Marcella at this table 
 now, with an arm across my shoulders, lying her 
 damnedest would suit me perfectly, but in the pony 
 cart I agreed glibly. 
 
 "There was nothing else for me to do," she went on. 
 
 "No," I agreed; "nothing. But really we had best 
 turn. The four-thirty " 
 
 Marcella turned with abruptness. "There is nothing 
 vital about the four-thirty. At the worst, there is the 
 five-thirty." 
 
 I murmured something about a dinner engagement. 
 I suppose the average husband understands when his 
 wife divorces him that she has, temporarily, at any 
 rate, ceased to be passionately in love with him. But 
 the fact held a certain surprise for me even this after- 
 noon. We jogged along the road to Babylon in silence. 
 I have never ridden in a vehicle that was so sickeningly 
 uncomfortable. I suppose governesses and children 
 can stand anything. Once Marcella looked back at me 
 
 166
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and I tried to smile amiably in return, but she paid no 
 heed and turned again. We might as well have been 
 married, I reflected. 
 
 We crossed the tracks again and drew up at the 
 same end of the platform where I had got in. I rose, 
 but Marcella motioned to me to sit down again. 
 
 "Just a moment," she explained. 
 
 "There is no hurry." 
 
 "I don't think," she began, "that Mrs. Grandy had 
 any right to send me that letter. It was impertinent, 
 really, but the world is full of impertinent people, and 
 I suppose " 
 
 She paused and sat still. 
 
 "And I suppose," she continued, "that they will all 
 think she did quite right." 
 
 "Possibly," I rejoined; "which doesn't matter to 
 you or me in the slightest possible degree." 
 
 "Oh, yes, it does." 
 
 I shook my head. "It should not," I insisted. 
 
 "But it does," said Marcella. "It does and it always 
 will. So I sent for you to tell you that I am not going 
 to teach music." And she put down the whip and held 
 out her hand. 
 
 I was surprised, but to a much greater degree I was 
 167
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 interested. "You are not going to do this thing," I 
 asked, "because of some possible effect upon me?" 
 
 Marcella drew herself up. "I wouldn't," she began. 
 
 "Don't," I begged. "I understand, only what are 
 you going to do?" 
 
 "Go on living here." 
 
 "But you can't. You are unhappy." 
 
 "There comes the four-thirty," said Marcella, and 
 I heard the toot of a distant steam-engine. "You have 
 to get in on the other side." 
 
 I climbed out and stood looking over the edge of the 
 pony cart. Marcella's manner in regard to the four- 
 thirty was decisive. I understood that the five-thirty 
 had become impossible. It may have been imagination, 
 but she looked very lonely and unhappy, and this was 
 probably due to the polo coat she looked poor too. 
 She was all this, I reflected, because she could not 
 completely get rid of me. She, I, and the law had each 
 done all it could, and still Marcella's life and mine re- 
 mained entangled. We have broken, cut, and hacked 
 away every tie we can get, and still we are not free. 
 
 I did not tell her good-by. It would have been 
 ridiculous under the circumstances. I turned away with- 
 out saying anything, and got on the four-thirty on the 
 
 168
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 wrong side. If I had cared truly more for Marcella's 
 welfare than my own I would, of course, have got under 
 it instead of on it, and so out of her way forever. 
 
 There was, doubtless, as the common saying runs, 
 a great deal of truth in what Marcella said, but there 
 was undoubtedly a great deal of mortification as well, 
 and unfortunately the truth was for the benefit of 
 society at large, while the other was exclusively re- 
 served for me. I had that reflection as company on 
 the four-thirty. Vulgarly put, I tad been well whipped 
 and then thrown a bone if I happened to care for it. 
 And, as a matter of fact, I happened not to care for it 
 at all. I did not care a pin's worth for the world's 
 opinion of me in regard to my divorced wife's earning 
 a living, and I had distinctly and even rudely said as 
 much to both sides in the dispute. In consequence, the 
 sides had united in blaming all their grievances on me. 
 I was to blame for allowing my wife to earn a living. 
 I was to blame for thrusting my self-interest upon a 
 woman who had publicly proclaimed that she wished 
 to have nothing to do with me. Mrs. Grandy I could 
 forgive; she was only a fool. Mrs. Vinton knew better. 
 She knew that I wished only her happiness and was 
 endeavoring to do no more than secure it. She had de- 
 
 169
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 liberately made use of the other's folly to make of me 
 a fool. I felt I could not forgive Marcella. Her con- 
 duct was spiteful; it was mean; it was intensely femi- 
 nine, perhaps, but it was thoroughly unwomanly. 
 
 To think so of Marcella was to revolutionize my 
 manner of thinking. It was her superiority to these 
 qualities of meanness and pettiness that had placed her 
 above all other women. A chaotic condition of mental 
 affairs ensued if the truth was otherwise. If she was 
 this, then what was I ? I was standing by the stern rail 
 of the Long Island ferry-boat looking down at the 
 black water, for it had got dark on my way up on the 
 four-thirty. All the lights on the river were aflame, and 
 the great bridges hung outlined in dots of fire. It was 
 the hour for the rush from Manhattan, and the re- 
 turning boats were almost empty. There was nobody 
 at the stern except me, and a woman dressed in black 
 and thickly veiled whom I had once glanced at and 
 then forgot. Suddenly I heard a voice ask: "Who are 
 you talking to?" 
 
 It was the woman in black who had come behind me 
 unnoticed. It was very dark out there, and I was taken 
 quite by surprise, and she was heavily veiled, where- 
 fore I entirely failed to recognize her at first. 
 
 170
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "I suppose," she went on, "you feel like asking the 
 same question?" And she lifted the veil that hung 
 from her hat brim. Then I saw Barbara Gilbert. "You 
 were cursing some one. Who was it?" 
 
 "Myself, naturally," I answered. 
 
 She leaned over the rail beside me and looked at the 
 great shining arc of the new bridge. "When I come 
 into New York from this side at night," she said, "I 
 don't feel big enough even to be cursed." 
 
 "That is the case," I answered, "when you think of 
 yourself as a rational being. I was regarding myself as 
 a jackass; whereupon I loomed big enough " 
 
 "Don't," she interrupted, "talk of jackasses out 
 here." 
 
 I had never thought of the view of the East River 
 from the back end of a ferry-boat as inspiring, but 
 somehow, as she spoke, I felt as though I had been 
 vulgar. 
 
 "I have been looking forward to this all afternoon," 
 she went on. "I have been at my aunt's, at Oyster 
 Bay, on business, talking," she gave a queer little 
 shudder, "of money. And all the while I was really 
 thinking of coming out here on the way back and 
 getting clean. When I first saw somebody else here 
 
 171
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 too I felt insulted," she added, "until I recognized 
 you." 
 
 It was the first time I had spoken to her since I had 
 driven her home on the night of her father's death. 
 That was less than a month ago. I was thinking of 
 this and of the great change in her since then, natural 
 enough perhaps, but puzzling when felt for this time. 
 As if she read something of my thoughts, she said: 
 "You were very kind to me. I never thanked you, I 
 never can, but I felt it." 
 
 Then, as if she wished to turn from that altogether, 
 she asked me, while I murmured some reply: "Tell 
 me why you were so displeased with yourself. " 
 
 "Oh," I answered, "a lifelong list of reasons. How 
 is Laurie?" 
 
 I heard a little laugh, and she looked at me as com- 
 posedly as before. "Laurie and I are quite out," she 
 answered. 
 
 "Good Lord," I exclaimed, "and you don't mind 
 any more than that." 
 
 "Not really. At least, I think not. You see things 
 got too thick for Laurie and me. I mean circumstances 
 got too big; they sort of threw us in the shade." 
 
 "I don't see," I said. "To be honest, I don't see." 
 172
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Well then, I don't think I can explain. He under- 
 stands and I understand, but I doubt if either of us 
 could put it into words." 
 
 "Perhaps," I said, "I do see a glimmer now." 
 
 "We thought," she explained, "at such a time each 
 would mean a great deal to the other, and we found 
 out that neither mattered at all." 
 
 "So," I reflected, "another occupation's gone." 
 
 "What did you say?" asked Barbara. 
 
 "I was wondering," I answered, "what I was going 
 to do next." 
 
 "It's my turn not to understand," she said. 
 
 "And I can't explain," I answered. 
 
 "You are full of mysteries," said Barbara. 
 
 "It's the place," I suggested. "So Laurie is gone. 
 I'm sorry." 
 
 "You needn't be," she replied, "certainly not for 
 me, and I don't think for him, either. He was very 
 nice about it all and said he was heart-broken, but I 
 knew he wasn't and he knew I knew it. So there you 
 are. Laurie isn't built for rough weather, and neither 
 am I, I am afraid." 
 
 There was a deeper touch of seriousness about her 
 last words that made me look at her. " I hope you will 
 never find it," I said. 
 
 173
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "What is the sense of hoping," she answered, "when 
 it's already here?" 
 
 While she spoke the boat's speed slackened, and we 
 heard the rush of water as the engines reversed. She 
 began to rearrange her veil. "I hate to go off," she 
 said. 
 
 "Don't," I suggested. "We can stay where we are 
 for a return trip." 
 
 She had moved out a little from the rail and was 
 standing in the light from the cabin doors, so that I 
 could see her clearly for the first time. I thought she 
 was rather more beautiful in black than ever. 
 
 "I don't believe," she cried, "anything could be 
 sillier; but if you will I should love it." 
 
 We moved a little toward what would now be the 
 bow of the boat so as to get out of the coming crowd. 
 
 "It will be colder out here," she suggested, and she 
 insisted that I put on the coat I was carrying on my 
 arm. Presently they came, the crowd, pouring through 
 the cabin and hemmed us in our corner. 
 
 "It'll be all right again going back," I predicted. 
 
 "I don't mind as it is," she replied, looking over- 
 board. "You need never know they are there." 
 
 Perhaps she did not, but I did; and I enjoyed the 
 174
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 knowledge of their presence. Individually, perhaps, I 
 did not feel attracted, but en masse they warmed me 
 with a sense of sympathy and common humanity, these 
 hard-toiling men and women going home after a day's 
 labor. I liked the feel of them close around me. And I 
 envied them. Ah, in the very core of my soul was envy. 
 I too was going home, but after such a day and to 
 such a home. They perhaps envied me, but that was 
 their folly. Mine was a dearly bought wisdom. Among 
 them I felt of them in spirit, but separated by injus- 
 tice. I too had worked, and was willing, God knows, 
 to work again for their reward. In my fine clothes I 
 felt among them like an alien, an outcast, robbed and 
 homeless. 
 
 Presently Barbara looked up at me as if a little 
 puzzled by my silence. "Please," she said impatiently, 
 "please button your coat. The wind here is very keen." 
 
 I had put on the coat obediently enough, but ap- 
 parently had neglected to fasten it. I did so now in an 
 absent-minded way. Suddenly she gave a little ex- 
 clamation of impatience and pushing away my hands 
 fastened it herself. 
 
 She was hah" laughing up at me as her fingers were 
 busy about my throat. 
 
 175
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "You need somebody to take care of you," she said. 
 
 "Will you take the job?" I asked. 
 
 She turned away and looked over the side again. 
 "How neatly put!" she exclaimed. 
 
 "I mean it, Barbara," I said. 
 
 There were probably a dozen people listening. I 
 knew it, but I did not care; neither did Barbara. 
 
 "Don't ask me why," she answered, "but I can't." 
 
 Then the boat slipped smoothly into her moorings, 
 and the crowd surged around us preventing speech. 
 We stood there with our backs to the outgoing and 
 then incoming passengers, and neither of us said a 
 word. Presently, when all was quiet again, she began 
 to speak. "You mustn't think I don't mean this. I 
 do. I have thought of it before. You haven't, I suppose, 
 but I have. You see, I must marry now, and I have 
 thought well, to tell the truth I have thought of 
 pretty nearly everybody, but of you among the first. 
 Then mamma has thought of it too." She laughed. 
 "You guessed that, didn't you?" 
 
 "It seems," I answered, "that every circumstance 
 favors except the man." 
 
 "No," she said quickly, "it's not the man. It's a 
 woman." 
 
 176
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "What woman?" 
 
 "Where are you coming from?" she asked. 
 
 Then, of course, I understood. Perhaps I under- 
 stood the better of the two. 
 
 We had got out of the slip now and were gliding 
 smoothly through the dark water. 
 
 "You do understand, don't you, that I am not 
 thinking of anybody else who might answer differently? 
 Perhaps I am not thinking at all. I just feel that way. 
 I always have. I don't blame anybody who feels dif- 
 ferently. Only, I can't myself. Do you know what I 
 mean?" 
 
 Again I felt that I knew what she meant a great 
 deal better than she knew it. I only said hah* of this, 
 and for fear she should guess the other half in her 
 queer woman's way I said: "You needn't worry 
 about that anybody else. There won't be anybody 
 else. If, after this, another person should make a 
 different answer, look at it from another point of view. 
 I should regret having asked the question. So you see 
 there is no possible chance of my asking it." 
 
 And in this, certainly, I spoke from the deep of the 
 heart. This was the end of such matters for me, and I 
 knew it and said it. 
 
 177
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 As a matter of honest fact, I suppose I knew it be- 
 fore. Only the crowd was too much for me. Democracy 
 is the spirit of cities. When we are in the mob we 
 think as the mob, we feel as the mob, we want what the 
 mob wants. Henceforth I must avoid such company; 
 the clay pot must keep away from the brass ones. 
 For I cannot have what the mob wants and gets. 
 In it, nevertheless I am not of it, but a man of a 
 different kind. Indeed, not a whole man. And that other 
 part of me, that which wants a wife and a home with 
 children and the quiet end of a day's work, should 
 be put decently away, not dragged awkwardly through 
 the world any longer. Yes, that part had best be put 
 an end to, and with it these overscrawled pages 
 which, after all, are only the record of its post-mortem 
 antics. 
 
 178
 
 BOOK II
 
 IT was how many months ago I dined with Mrs. 
 Axson in her little Wedgwood dining-room, which is 
 so extraordinarily becoming to her? This is October; 
 that was April. It was that many months ago. 
 
 We dined alone, for we had affairs of business to 
 discuss. The maid who served spoke only French, so 
 we were quite alone. Generally Mrs. Axson's dinners 
 are attractive rather than sustaining, but then the 
 menu was aldermanic. Further, we had Burgundy and 
 brandy, which I am sure had been given her, for no 
 woman, except possibly a washerwoman, would spend 
 so much money on brandy. 
 
 I was to advise her about the purchase of some bonds, 
 but it seemed impossible to begin such a subject. We 
 fought shy of it unmistakably. I was quite sure that 
 my advice was not half so good as the dinner, and she 
 had a reason of her own. She looked very charming 
 in pale yellow, and was inexpressibly fragrant. Her pink 
 finger-tips on the white cloth epitomized the sugges- 
 
 181
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 tion of her toilet. It seemed to me that she had bathed 
 in milk and her clothes had lain in rose-leaves. We 
 talked of very old days in the country, when we used 
 to race horses together on the soft country roads about 
 Westbury and go swimming together in a singularly 
 informal manner. 
 
 "They were soft roads then," I recalled, "and no 
 motors, praised be Heaven ! " 
 
 "And it is lucky they were soft too," said Lilly, "or 
 we would have broken half a dozen necks apiece. Do 
 you remember ? " 
 
 I did remember once very distinctly Lilly, a little 
 bunch of brown habit in the brown dust and a brown 
 pony browsing peacefully on the ditch side. 
 
 "I have the mark of that fall now," she told me, 
 and held up one round white arm and vowed it was 
 crooked, had been for all these years. 
 
 "How I used to adore you then, Pierre! " 
 
 I felt alarmed. It had never occurred to me be- 
 fore. 
 
 Lilly nodded, and I thought she blushed just a 
 little. "Yes, I did; and when you went off to Saint 
 Mark's, do you remember, I hoped you were going 
 to kiss me and you didn't. I remember I cried." 
 
 182
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "But how about the next spring when I wanted to 
 kiss you and you would not let me? Do you re- 
 member ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, but I was in love with the Holworthy boy 
 then." 
 
 I felt a dislike of Holworthy and tried to remember 
 who he was. It was queer, though, I had never sus- 
 pected Lilly's passion. Still it titillated the vanity of 
 the present hour very perceptibly, as it was, and I felt 
 grateful to her for confessing. I felt a little gauche, too, 
 in not insinuating something of the sort on my part. 
 One always likes such confessions to be reciprocal. 
 
 The Burgundy tickled my imagination deliciously. 
 Lilly began to recall other things, some of which I had 
 shamefully forgotten. I confessed the lapses too some- 
 times, and sometimes there were long pauses, and the 
 musical sound of the French clock in the drawing- 
 room beyond was clearly audible in the Wedgwood 
 dining-room. And sometimes, in those pauses, I was 
 not thinking of the past at all but of the present and 
 what would it be like if I had not forgotten to kiss 
 Lilly good-by when I went to Saint Mark's and there 
 had been no Holworthy boy or anybody like him and 
 this was my Wedgwood dining-room. The slim little 
 
 183
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 maid moved about without disturbing at all those 
 pleasant dreams. 
 
 "And do you recollect the summer in the Thousand 
 Islands ? Let me see, I was sixteen then and you were 
 nineteen. Oh, what a summer! After all, there is 
 something about sixteen." 
 
 And I recalled too a boat race of that summer which 
 Lilly and I had lost disgracefully by hours, lying be- 
 calmed that long out on the river, and how we crept 
 in before an almost impalpable breeze just at dusk. 
 We had not gone to the house then; we had sat on the 
 dock. 
 
 The pale gold of Mrs. Axson's little head glimmered 
 a moment, as she leaned to straighten a candle. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I remember." 
 
 We had said things on that dock. 
 
 "I wonder," I mused, "why I remember these things 
 so clearly." 
 
 "Perhaps you have said them so often since," she 
 explained. 
 
 "Perhaps," I agreed. 
 
 "Of course," said Lilly. 
 
 "No. Not 'of course,' only * perhaps.' ' 
 
 There was a very long pause, and the French clock 
 184
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 ticked loudly in the drawing-room. The maid came in 
 with coffee and went out again. 
 
 "And then you went abroad," I said suddenly. 
 
 "Yes. Then I went abroad." 
 
 She met Axson abroad, and was married there. 
 
 Lilly got up. "When you finish your coffee come 
 into the drawing-room. I must take a peep at 
 Tom." 
 
 Although I did not hear a sound she was already in 
 the drawing-room when I got there, sitting with her 
 feet tucked up on a chaise-longue. She was looking 
 down at the clear little fire. She looked up as I entered 
 with the half -absent smile of one aroused from pleasant 
 thoughts. 
 
 She took a cigarette from my case, leaned back among 
 the cushions, and smoked brightly. 
 
 "How sentimental we were!" she said. 
 
 "How is Tom?" I asked. 
 
 "Sound," she answered. 
 
 "You came back very noiselessly." 
 
 "I didn't want to interrupt your coffee. I am proud 
 of my coffee." Then she poured out a glass of brandy 
 from the liqueur stand at her elbow and held it up 
 toward me. "I am proud of this too." 
 
 185
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "You see you are an honored guest, M'sieu. And 
 now" she settled her body among the cushions "and 
 now the bonds." 
 
 I have seldom forgot anything so completely as 
 those bonds. 
 
 "Dear me," said Lilly. "Forgot 'em! All this fatted 
 calf for nothing?" 
 
 "The original fatted calf was not killed for bonds," 
 I answered. 
 
 "What was it killed for, then?" 
 "For well, let's say for Auld Lang Syne." 
 "Well, at any rate, it was bought for bonds." 
 I disputed even this. Sitting on the edge of the chaise- 
 longue, it seemed to me that bonds were not very 
 apropos. I was thinking of what awaited me when I 
 left the room and its delicate charm, of Brown sprawl- 
 ing on a sofa asleep, surrounded by crumpled news- 
 paper and tobacco smoke, in place of Mrs. Axson. 
 The withered, parched craving in me for the delicacy, 
 the daintiness of intimate womanhood grew green 
 again in my soul, as I put my hands on the back of 
 the lounge and bent over her. I felt deliciously re- 
 freshed, as if I had entered into a flower shop from a 
 crowded street. 
 
 186
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 She moved imperceptibly and raised her arm, and 
 I found I was looking across it into her eyes. 
 
 "Why do you do this?" she asked very quietly. 
 
 "What a very silly question!" I answered. 
 
 "No. It isn't silly." She took both my hands in hers 
 and held them in front of me. "Because I have some- 
 thing to tell you." She paused, and the little glass 
 clock on the mantel began to chime. 
 
 "What is it?" I asked. "Is it bad news or good?" 
 
 "Ah! That I don't know." She paused again. The 
 little clock ceased. And as the last note ended she 
 said: "Peter, Marcella is going to be married." 
 
 Presently I felt my hands released, and next Lilly 
 was standing beside me by the mantel. 
 
 "You didn't know it then," she was saying. 
 
 "Of course, I didn't know it." 
 
 "She wrote me yesterday. I imagine it is rather 
 sudden." 
 
 "Yes, rather," I answered. "Who is the other per- 
 son?" 
 
 "Stewart Dewar, of course. Didn't you know?" 
 
 Then I had a strange feeling that I had known for 
 a long time, that it had all happened many years ago, 
 only I couldn't precisely remember when. It confused 
 
 187
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 me. There were so many other things I wanted to 
 think of and could not because of that obsession. 
 Lilly's voice speaking to me sounded queer. 
 
 "Pierre, go and get your hat and take a walk." 
 
 And I obeyed like a child. While I was in the hall, 
 looking for my things, I heard her call me. I looked in 
 the door; she was still standing as I had left her. 
 
 "Pierre," she said, "you haven't told me that you 
 enjoyed the evening." 
 
 I told her something and went away. 
 
 I was in the hands of horror when I left that place. 
 Marriage is a horrible thing to a man if he loves the 
 woman he has married. It is many other things as well, 
 and all of them beautiful; but always, to a lover, it is 
 horrible too. Perhaps one reason may be that thereby 
 a fundamental lie of human life is displayed naked 
 before his eyes. That is always horrible. To me the 
 preservation of that falsehood as an immaculate truth 
 has been a principle of existence, and now I was told 
 I must share my secret with another man. I felt how 
 much easier it would have been to take her life than 
 to share her so. Such an act appeared to me heroic by 
 the contrast, sublime, the true apotheosis of love. Ah ! 
 sometimes I wonder whether if women could read 
 
 188
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 men's minds the mystery of themselves would ever be 
 quite so marvellous again. 
 
 I am quite aware that physical jealousy is a fair 
 diagnosis of my emotional state when I left the Clin- 
 ton. But that is only a name, and one of my symptoms 
 was a disgust with names. I was feeling, not thinking, 
 and names to me then were of no earthly use. I threw 
 them off, as I walked down the dark street, and bade 
 my mind go naked and unfed. Names had been its 
 food and clothing long enough. I gave it instead the 
 strong drink of pure emotion. So, in reality, I was 
 drunk, but gifted with that strange lucidity of thought 
 which often gleams through the chaos of a drunkard's 
 brain. Almost, as if in the actual delirium of alcohol, 
 I had conceived of the world I live in as overrun with 
 animals, driven wild with appetites whose causes, 
 purposes, even satisfactions they were ignorant of, the 
 kennel of a raving pack. I could fairly see it, a vast 
 plain in a dim light and the black, uncouth shapes 
 writhing and falling and I irresistibly driven on by 
 the supreme appetite. 
 
 I stood on a New York street corner, and felt lay 
 hold of me the oldest fever in the world, that despair 
 of life itself which first peopled the air with demons 
 
 189
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and undermined the earth with hell. In such chaos, 
 what hope was there except in the sharpest tooth ? Was 
 there any? 
 
 Looking back now, I see that figure standing on a 
 New York street corner in a very detached and im- 
 personal way, a distraught man standing in a world 
 overthrown into total darkness and given over to the 
 spirits thereof. A tragic figure, a human being in honest 
 doubt of a divine law in the universe. Now, a very 
 little thing had sufficed to work this ruin, merely the 
 knowledge that a woman who had belonged to him 
 could belong to somebody else. That does not cer- 
 tainly seem a sufficient cause for such disaster. Men, 
 surely, should have their lives more firmly based if 
 they would deserve the name of man. Very true, 
 perhaps; very fine sounding, certainly; but the naked 
 truth is all men are in the last analysis as this man was. 
 Every man's life has just so narrow a pediment as 
 his. Have I not known men when even the lack of a 
 drug would deliver them over to a very material hell, 
 and others to whom a loss of dollars meant the extinc- 
 tion of the universe ? At this detached and impersonal 
 view-point I do not find this figure so contemptible 
 or in any way weaker than his fellows. Indeed, it seems 
 
 190
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 to me rather that this man's plight was of a nobler 
 kind than most, and that he who bases life upon love 
 of a woman builds boldly. 
 
 It must have been an appreciable length of time I 
 stood there so. I awoke. The delirium or whatever it 
 was had passed. Instead, I was looking down a long, 
 black street like a tunnel with a flare of light at the 
 end. The light, I recognized, streamed from the en- 
 trance to a theatre and beneath was a passing throng 
 of men and women. I felt as if I had somehow dropped 
 into this world from some other and, giddy from the 
 fall, I put out my hand and touched the cold, hard 
 stone of a great building. Somebody was walking to- 
 ward me down the dark street and the flick-flack of 
 footfalls echoed between the houses. Little by little, 
 through such sensations, the perceptions of reality 
 came to me. This was, the other had been delirium. 
 
 But not always. Once that delirium had been reality 
 and this world of mine a dream. Suddenly a greater 
 light broke through a greater darkness. If this was, 
 and the other madness, if those distant black shapes 
 were men and women and not the animals I had seen, 
 if this had been evolved from the other, then there must 
 be an eternal equity. I did not follow the thought or 
 
 191
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 question the principle. Its mere existence there in the 
 dark with the other so close by was enough. I have 
 heard Broadway called many bad names, but I looked 
 at it as Paradise. 
 
 What followed was perhaps natural for a man who 
 had reached this state of emotional excitement. What 
 I wished to do, what I felt I had to do, was to account 
 to myself for this horror which had seized upon me 
 at the thought of this marriage. It was not balked ap- 
 petite, for I had voluntarily surrendered the gratifica- 
 tion of that and had proved that I was capable of per- 
 fecting the sacrifice. I may have failed as a husband, 
 but in divorce I was impeccable. My honest self-con- 
 sciousness was without reproach there. It may have 
 been jealousy. It is easy enough to give the mystery 
 a name and throw it aside; but for my part I could 
 not get rid of it so. No; it was none of these. It was 
 not lust; it was not jealousy. It was something in no 
 way related to such things; something quite different, 
 of a higher nature, of vastly greater power. What was 
 it ? As I slowly walked on the answer came, the trium- 
 phant consciousness awoke in me that I had somehow 
 become an instrument of that law which stretched 
 from Broadway to the beasts, and incalculably farther, 
 
 IM
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 that I was in my horror an infinitesimal means to its 
 vast mysterious purpose. 
 
 I remember only one sensation of my life like that 
 swimming off the Rhode Island coast far out, too far 
 out I was beginning to fear, and suddenly feeling under 
 my feet the lift of a comber rushing shoreward. The 
 feel of that big breaker, as if there was the whole 
 might of the ocean behind it shoving me irresistibly 
 forward, faster and faster, headlong toward firm 
 ground ! I felt it again. 
 
 Those are rare moments in a man's life when he feels 
 all the energies of his consciousness pull together to 
 one purpose. I felt it now. I had surrendered, as it 
 were, my will-power, given myself over to another 
 power outside of myself, which I believed to be right 
 and knew to be irresistible. My duty was only to 
 fulfil its decrees. This marriage was a thing abhorrent, 
 not to me but to the force of which I was a manifes- 
 tation, and to prevent it was only to f ulfil the law of 
 my existence, the law that stretched from Broadway 
 to the beasts. 
 
 Yes. That was fanaticism. I recognize it now. 
 Though I did not then. 
 
 It was still early, far short of midnight, but I had 
 193
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 got pretty far down-town I discovered by looking at a 
 street sign. I was at Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. 
 I found a cab a few blocks away in front of the Cafe 
 Lafayette; drove up-town to the club on the chance 
 that I would find Dewar there. I did not. He had not 
 been there that evening, the man at the door told me. 
 He was not at his apartment but was thought to be 
 in the country, they told me there. 
 
 As I was turning away from the desk at the Gotham 
 a party of women passed me coming in from the street. 
 They had evidently been to a theatre. One of them 
 seemed to know me and bowed. As I stood there un- 
 determined what to do I overheard a half dozen words 
 of their conversation while they waited for the lift. 
 They thought I was drunk and were whispering about 
 the pity of it. It was not an unnatural mistake, for 
 when I glanced in a mirror I saw a dishevelled, horrid- 
 looking individual, somewhat resembling me. The 
 sight made me realize the ridiculousness of my hot 
 haste. And I drove straight home. 
 
 194
 
 II 
 
 DfiWAR'S office windows look down on old Trinity 
 churchyard, and as I stood at one of them next morn- 
 ing I could not help reflecting that there was a certain 
 similarity between us, old Trinity and me. It was 
 early and Dewar was in one room with a stenographer 
 and the morning mail, so I was waiting outside in 
 the board room. We were both supporters of creeds 
 called outworn and certainly temporarily neglected. 
 Dewar's mail must have been voluminous, for I waited 
 a long while. And meanwhile I felt a great sympathy 
 for the little brown church in its long, patient vigil 
 down below. Behind me the market was just opening, 
 and the whir of the ticker was unbroken. I heard a 
 voice announce that if steel opened below sixty illim- 
 itable disaster would result, and the clock in the tower 
 struck ten. I felt somehow as if it were a greeting from 
 old Trinity to another old fogy. 
 
 Presently Dewar's door opened and his stenographer 
 appeared with an armful of papers. I went in. 
 
 195
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 The office was a small room and as bare as a cell. 
 There were three telephones on a flat-topped desk, a 
 ticker in the corner next to it, and two chairs, but not 
 a pen or a pencil or a scrap of paper except what the 
 stenographer took out with her when she finally left us. 
 Dewar greeted me curtly enough, but I was conscious 
 immediately that he was puzzled by my visit. He wore 
 a business manner which, of course, he would never 
 have assumed for a business interview. I almost ex- 
 pected him to say: "What can I do for you?" He 
 stopped barely short of it. Actually he made some com- 
 ment on the stock-market, letting the ticker tape run 
 through his fingers. 
 
 "It is breaking pretty quickly," he began. 
 
 "Yes," I said. He seemed absorbed in the quota- 
 tions until I was seated. 
 
 "Well," he said presently, "what's up?" 
 
 "I have come on a purely personal matter," I ex- 
 plained. "Will we be uninterrupted?" 
 
 "Oh, quite. Go ahead. What is it?" 
 
 " I was told last night that you were going to marry 
 Mrs. Vinton. Is it true?" 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "Only we didn't intend it to 
 get out so soon." 
 
 196
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Oh, it isn't out," I answered. "You see you can 
 scarcely describe me as 'out.' ' 
 
 "Quite so," he smiled. "But, you understand, no 
 further." 
 
 "No, certainly, no further by all means. In fact," 
 I added, "that is what I wanted to see you about 
 its getting this far." 
 
 He drew in cautiously and turned from the desk 
 so as to face me. "I don't quite understand," he said. 
 
 The constant repetition of " quite " made me nervous. 
 I thought I had best be as exact as possible. "I mean 
 this," I explained. "I am going to prevent its going any 
 further, prevent the marriage. Do you understand?" 
 
 He jumped out of his chair. "Oh, tommy-rot, I 
 haven't time to listen to it. " 
 
 I rose too. "It's no matter. I have said all that is 
 necessary. I thought it only fair to tell you before- 
 hand." 
 
 "Well, I tell you," he broke out, "that if you are 
 joking, you have a damned queer humor. And if not 
 you are crazy. You might as well warn me of your in- 
 tention to drink up the East River." 
 
 "Honestly, Dewar, you behave as if nobody had 
 ever talked to you seriously before in your life. I am 
 
 197
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 completely sane, only I am completely serious. I am go- 
 ing to prevent the marriage, and I'll tell you exactly 
 by what means." 
 
 "Thanks," he put in, "that would be interesting." 
 
 "Naturally I have some influence over her, and I 
 have, if I care to use it, absolute control over you. We 
 will leave her out of it. Take your case first. The surest 
 method of prevention would be to throw you through 
 that window. That is where my control over you be- 
 gins. I am able to throw you through it. Next, I can 
 threaten to do it. That is the second zone of influence, 
 because you know I am able to do it. The third step 
 is to convince you that I am quite willing to do it. 
 That is what I have come here to do." 
 
 Dewar is such a pitiful little creature. I had never 
 imagined he had any vanity about his body, but 
 when I said that I saw he had. He flushed up like a 
 little boy, and his eyes quivered. I almost felt sorry 
 for him. It is queer that you can be at once quite pre- 
 pared to break a man's neck and yet be averse to 
 hurting his feelings. 
 
 "I am not pretending that I can frighten you," I 
 went on. "Only I want you to understand exactly 
 what sort of game you are up against. Now, believe 
 
 198
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 me, man, because I mean what I say. Before Almighty 
 God, I mean every word of it." 
 
 He was not afraid, either. I liked his not trying to 
 bluff about his weakness, keen as his mortification was. 
 
 "You seem to overlook one thing," he answered 
 quietly. "There is such a thing as the law." 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "but unfortunately the law is 
 only for punishment. It doesn't prevent." 
 
 "Don't you know that I could have you locked up 
 for what you have already said ? " 
 
 "It is not impossible," I agreed. "Nevertheless, you 
 won't. Ring for an officer. Have me charged with 
 threatening to thrash you, break your neck, throw you 
 through the window, assault, anything of the sort. 
 Why, I'll make you so ridiculous you couldn't marry 
 your own chambermaid." 
 
 The sneer must have cut terribly. He lost all control 
 instantly, and with it he lost all force too. He fairly 
 gibbered. Every minute I expected an interruption 
 from outside. They could scarcely have failed to hear. 
 "You threaten me, do you?" he bawled. "You can 
 throw me out of a window ? Well, what if you can ? I 
 don't scare that way. And the law is impotent, is it? 
 You will see just how much truth there is in that boast. 
 
 199
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I have got you nailed there, for I am going to marry her, 
 and if any damned lunatic tries to interfere I will be 
 married with the officers of the law at the altar-rail." 
 
 "Don't," I advised, "Marcella might marry the 
 policeman. She certainly would not marry you." 
 
 He jumped up and came at me as if he were going 
 to commit assault. "Marcella, Marcella," he gibed, 
 "what right have you to call her Marcella?" 
 
 What right had I? Good God! I looked at his face 
 so close to me, at his twisted lips, and just then the 
 thought flashed in my mind that those lips had kissed 
 hers, would kiss again and again and something came 
 between us and I struck at them, as I would stamp on 
 a snake. 
 
 I struck him only with my open hand, but he tripped 
 backward over his chair and went head over heels 
 into the corner. And he lay there, where he had fallen, 
 perfectly quiet. 
 
 He was not hurt. I do not believe that he was fright- 
 ened, either, but I do believe he was stunned by aston- 
 ishment. It was probably the first time in his life he 
 ever felt a blow. Blows were things he had heard of, 
 knew existed, of course, probably had seen, but cer- 
 tainly believed as remote from his world as Sirius. 
 
 200
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 To be struck by a man must have been as startling to 
 him as to be struck by a meteor. He got up presently 
 to my great relief and took out his handkerchief and 
 began to dab at a little cut on his chin, made by my 
 glove button. I felt sorry for him again and looked 
 away and, happening to look down at old Trinity, 
 felt ashamed of myself. 
 
 He said not a word but stood there looking at me, 
 and dabbing at his chin with a pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 I felt like a fool. It was a ridiculous situation, and I 
 had made it so. I had quarrelled with a man over a 
 woman. Truly, an archaic proceeding. Nowadays men 
 don't quarrel over women, they quarrel with them. 
 My place was at Babylon. By coming here I pre- 
 tended that a woman was a piece of property and her 
 possession a matter of title, which was obviously ab- 
 surd, especially so in this case. In sober truth Dewar and 
 I might as profitably have quarrelled over real estate 
 in the moon. It was possible that finally I might have 
 to fulfil my threats to the last syllable, but until then 
 the matter lay between the woman and me. And now, 
 bound by some shred of an ancient code, I had come 
 down here and made an ass of myself. 
 
 "Well, Dewar," I said at length, "I shouldn't have 
 201
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 struck you. I did not come here to do that. Something 
 you said then got under my skin." 
 
 "Yes," he answered curiously, "I know." 
 
 "Of course I do not retract anything I have said, 
 but I am sorry I struck you. That was absolutely 
 useless." 
 
 He nodded and kept on dabbing at his chin. 
 
 There seemed to be no shadow of resentment in him. 
 Apparently he was rather shaken, for he sat down 
 weakly in the visitors' chair. But he never took his 
 eyes from me and he did not speak. 
 
 "You are not hurt?" I asked. "That is only a little 
 scratch on the chin, isn't it?" 
 
 He looked down at his handkerchief, just flecked with 
 red, and replied: "Oh, yes, only a scratch." 
 
 As I had told him, I could not very well offer to 
 shake hands, and I had nothing to add and nothing 
 to retract from what I had said; for me the interview 
 was ended. And yet I couldn't go. I distinctly felt 
 that he did not expect me to go. So I stood waiting. 
 
 Presently he asked me in a still weak voice: "Did 
 you ever want to kill a man?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because, I do." 
 
 202
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "I suppose that is perfectly natural under the cir- 
 cumstances," I answered vaguely. 
 
 "No. It isn't. Not for me. It's terribly queer for 
 me. I have never felt anything like it in my life. When 
 you said something of the sort just now, I didn't un- 
 derstand. I sincerely thought you were crazy. Now I 
 understand, and I believe you perfectly." 
 
 "That is what I came to do," I answered. "To make 
 you understand." 
 
 "Well," he said, "you have succeeded perfectly." 
 
 Those were our last words. When I closed the door 
 he was still sitting in the chair with his handkerchief 
 to his chin.
 
 Ill 
 
 I HAVE no clear recollection of any plan or motive in 
 going immediately down to Babylon. I believe that I 
 had none. Otherwise, surely I would have telephoned 
 and found out beforehand the uselessness of the trip. 
 The same senseless craving for action made me choose 
 to go down by motor rather than by train. I could not 
 endure, I felt, the inactivity of the train. So I tele- 
 phoned for a car from Frizzell's, which met me at the 
 Bridge, and drove down myself. From the village I 
 telephoned to the Bartons' house and found that Mar- 
 cella was in New York. The servant who talked did 
 not know where, and could not find out except that she 
 definitely would not be home for luncheon and prob- 
 ably would for dinner. 
 
 I came out of the drug store where the telephone was 
 and looked helplessly up and down the familiar street. 
 What to do next was my thought. The thought was 
 answered by the chauffeur in the car at the curb, who 
 suggested that he wanted lunch. The homely good 
 
 204
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 sense of the want made me laugh at my own self. 
 What was my haste? What had I to tell Marcella 
 that could not wait ? What had I to tell her, anyway ? 
 I had no answer. The chauffeur, thinking I was laugh- 
 ing at him, got mad meanwhile and kept muttering 
 something about flesh and blood and three o'clock. 
 
 So I pacified him, and we lunched together at a 
 delicatessen shop across the street. He was a good- 
 tempered creature when properly fed and told me wild 
 tales of parties he had driven to and from on that same 
 Long Island with all the nastiest details put in in a 
 whisper. 
 
 He ate unreasonably, too, and when we finally got 
 away, found the main street blocked by the railroad 
 gates. Two trains, up and down, arrived simultaneously. 
 We were on the side of the up train, which pulled out 
 last. As it cleared the crossing, it gave me a view of the 
 opposite platform. I saw Marcella standing there. 
 She was looking about her as if she half expected to 
 be met, and as my car came into full view and she 
 saw me, she started and turned toward one of the ram- 
 shackle cabs gathered about the place. 
 
 I got out and went over to her. 
 
 "I have come down to see you," I said. "I have 
 205
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 something to tell you." Even then I did not know 
 what. 
 
 "Can you tell me here?" she asked. 
 
 "No, not here," and I waited while she scrutinized 
 me. 
 
 "Then we had best go to the house. There is nobody 
 at home." 
 
 I drove and Marcella sat alone in the tonneau, and 
 sat, I felt, very straight up, too. In the driving seat I 
 repeated what I was going to tell her. 
 
 As we drove up to the gate she leaned forward and 
 spoke: "Drive around to the stables; I see somebody's 
 car in front." So I turned and we got out back of the 
 stables. I caught that chauffeur's narrow eyes watch- 
 ing us, summing us up as we walked off toward the 
 garden. 
 
 "I have seen Mrs. Axson," I said. 
 
 "Yes. She told me so to-day." 
 
 "Oh ! That's where you were. I thought so." 
 
 "I have also seen Stewart Dewar," I went on. 
 
 "On on purpose?" she asked quickly. 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 She stopped and made me face her there on the walk 
 between two hedges. "What did you have to say to 
 him?" she demanded. 
 
 206
 
 PIERRE VINTON, 
 
 And as I looked at her there I thought how I loved 
 her, and how I must always love her, and how she was 
 Marcella, my Marcella, my wife, my sweetheart. I 
 understood for the first time how a man can strike a 
 woman. Something queer probably showed in my face, 
 for she dropped a parcel she carried and laid both 
 hands on my arm. " What have you done ? " she asked. 
 "Tell me, Pierre. Pierre, what have you done?" 
 
 "Done to him," I answered, "nothing. But what 
 have you done?" 
 
 "Done to him?" she questioned. "What do you 
 mean ? " 
 
 "No. To me." 
 
 She dropped her hands and drew back. "To you?" 
 she said. "What have I to do with you?" 
 
 There it was again: the appeal to cool reason in the 
 futile turmoil of emotions, like the chauffeur's appeal for 
 lunch; and again it sobered me. 
 
 "Will you let me tell you," I answered, "what you 
 have to do with me ? " 
 
 And before she answered I picked up that parcel 
 and led the way to a board seat nailed to a pear- 
 tree a bench that was in the garden, when I first 
 entered it. 
 
 207
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "I can't imagine what all this means," she ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 "If you will listen I shall explain. In the first 
 place, I fell in love with you when I was a boy. I have 
 always loved you ever since." 
 
 She half rose, as if to protest. But I put my hands 
 on her shoulders and pushed her back. "You have got 
 to listen, and, moreover, you have got to believe." 
 
 She was a little frightened and looked hurriedly 
 about over that ill-kept old garden with its weed- 
 grown paths and untrimmed trees and rotten palings. 
 "I have always loved you. I loved you when you 
 married me and when you left me, and I think I loved 
 you more when you left me than when I married. 
 But I let you go. That was criminally wrong. I thought 
 it was right. I had listened to too much dribble about 
 Feminists, I suppose. I believed it unfair to keep a 
 woman to her bargain against her will. So I let you go." 
 
 "I suppose now," she broke in, "you believe it 
 right to keep her to that bargain against her will." 
 
 "That isn't my problem any more," I said. "I 
 bitterly regret letting you go, and I believe I did wrong. 
 I am as much as you and my needs are as great. And 
 my need of you was greater than your need of freedom. 
 
 208
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I sacrificed a greater to a less. That is always wrong, 
 and between you and me it was such a wrong I call 
 it a crime. It took from me all happiness, and it has 
 not brought you any." 
 
 "I not happy?" she rose. "I am a thousand times 
 
 
 "If you were, you would never think of marrying 
 Stewart Dewar," I interrupted. 
 
 As soon as I spoke I knew I was right. Marcella is 
 not clever at duplicity, and I have known her and 
 loved her for nearly fifteen years. She played very well. 
 She insulted me endlessly. She even wept, but I never 
 doubted. Once she tried to rush past me, but I caught 
 her and pushed her back on the seat. 
 
 "When he kissed you, you thought of me and 
 blushed," I told her. 
 
 She twisted about to face me. "You are indecent," 
 she almost hissed. 
 
 "Yes. It is all indecent," I cried back at her. 
 
 She seemed a little quieted by my heat. "Is that 
 all you have to say to me?" she asked. 
 
 "No; it is only the beginning. I let you go because 
 I believed that you had the right to freedom. I thought 
 that our marriage was a sham if you had ceased to 
 
 209
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 love me. It seemed to me that to bind you to me be- 
 cause of a document rotting in dust in a never-opened 
 vault or to claim your life forfeit because of words 
 spoken in the presence of a priest was a degradation 
 of human life. I still believe it more faithfully now 
 since I have learned how many other miseries are 
 due to such mildewed paper, or sacrosanct formulae." 
 
 Marcella was looking up at me, standing before, with 
 blazing eyes. As I met their glance I hesitated and 
 stopped. I could not say to her what I meant to say 
 that way. 
 
 "Well?" she questioned impatiently. 
 
 "Well," I went on, "so much for documents and 
 formulae. But, Marcella, when we were married, when 
 you first told me you would do you remember? It 
 wasn't very far from here and that day when we 
 drove off from this house together and that night when 
 you slept in my arms, were we thinking of documents 
 or of formulae? Did either of us think then that we 
 owed our happiness to those things? They were al- 
 ways, then as afterward, trash which we never thought 
 of. Our marriage then was something infinitely more 
 sacred than any priest and more binding than any 
 document could make it." 
 
 210
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Yes. But then I loved you," she broke in. 
 
 "Yes. You you you I am not thinking of you, 
 I am thinking of myself I have never ceased to love 
 you. What of that? I have broken the ties of priest 
 and pieces of paper easily enough. And because I have 
 done that, you claim to believe that I have broken all 
 ties that held between us. It is you who are inconsis- 
 tent. How can those formulae mean nothing in the 
 marriage and everything in the divorce? What hap- 
 pened to them to make them grow so, and what hap- 
 pened to my love for you which made the marriage 
 binding, that it had no part in the divorce? If it was 
 all-important in one, how did it become negligible in 
 the second?" 
 
 "But you surrendered these rights. You gave them 
 up." 
 
 "I did not," I answered, "because I could not. 
 Before Almighty God, what made me your husband 
 on our wedding night is in my soul now." 
 
 She rose, shaking, a little frightened. " But I am free. 
 Free," she repeated, putting out her hands in appeal. 
 
 Never before in her whole life had she asked me for 
 something and been refused. I could not have refused 
 her then, only as she spoke I thought of Dewar and 
 
 211
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 those hateful lips I struck. Then I knew that I could 
 never give her this. 
 
 "If you believe," I answered, "that marriage is a 
 formula muttered by a priest, if you believe it is the 
 desire of one meeting the convenience of the other, you 
 are free. If you can strip your womanhood naked, cut 
 down your life to the bare mechanistic principle, you are 
 free. But if you can't, you must listen to what I say." 
 
 "And what you say is ? I am listening." 
 
 "That this thing which happened between us was 
 not of your doing only, but partly, also, of mine; that 
 you may I give you every right that you may 
 take from it all that is yours, all that you put into it, 
 but that you cannot touch my part. You may leave 
 me; I have not held you. You may withhold from me 
 every privilege a wife grants a husband; I ask none 
 of these from you, but further you cannot go. I ad- 
 mit that you are entitled to every freedom I can give, 
 but you are not entitled to freedom from my loving 
 you, because I can't give you that." 
 
 "That means, I suppose," she added, "marrying 
 again? Then I answer that what you ask is not only 
 injustice, it is insanity." 
 
 "It may be insanity," I answered. "Yes, it may be
 
 PIERRE VINTON 1 
 
 that, but it is certainly not injustice. After all, I only 
 forbid you to commit adultery." 
 
 She got up, flaming red. "You have forgotten that 
 even a wife should not be insulted." 
 
 "Would you blame any woman," I asked, "who left 
 a marriage when she found she had been deceived, 
 and that her husband's love was a lie. Wouldn't you 
 say that such a marriage was a sham and bound no 
 more than the law, which could be abrogated, bound ? 
 Then why is not divorce similarly effective ? Both are 
 mere matters of formulae, depending for their human 
 validity on human love. If I cannot be truly married 
 to you without love, I cannot be divorced from you 
 with it." 
 
 "I think I am going a little mad," she said. "I can't 
 believe that you are speaking what I seem to hear." 
 She laid her palms against her cheeks and turned away 
 from me to look across the marshes toward the distant 
 blue glimmer of the sea. "Yes. I think I am a little 
 mad, too." 
 
 "No, my dear, not mad, only beginning to under- 
 stand," I said to myself, and I sat down and began to 
 smoke, watching her standing still at the tree trunk, 
 looking out into the distance. 
 
 213
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 What a kaleidoscope life is! Here were Marcella 
 and I in that old weed-grown garden at Babylon, 
 where she and I had loved so. What an infinite number 
 of shapes and colors life had formed since then! And 
 now, back again, the same garden and Marcella and I, 
 and I pleading with her not to strike me the foulest 
 blow a woman can give a man. I know well of what 
 she was thinking while she stood so silent. She was 
 trying, just as I had tried, to scare away the memories, 
 to strip her girlhood to its skeleton, to get life down, 
 as I had told her, to the mechanistic principle. And she 
 was going to fail, as I had failed, as everybody, per- 
 haps, fails once or twice in a lifetime. 
 
 She turned then and looked at me. 
 
 "So you love me?" she said. 
 
 "Yes," I answered. 
 
 "You must believe this, then," she went on; "I have 
 ceased to love you. At first, for a little while, I missed 
 you, thought of you at least frequently, wanted you, 
 perhaps, sometimes. Now I don't do that. You are a 
 part of my life that is dead; quite dead forever. Do 
 you believe me?" 
 
 "Yes," I answered. 
 
 "Does it make any difference?" she asked. 
 214
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "No. If there is ever any difference, I shall tell 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes. I believe that you will," she said. "And you 
 must believe this: I don't love you, but I believe in 
 your love for me. I don't deserve it, I don't even want 
 it. But I value it, and I don't think I could ever do 
 anything to hurt it. I didn't think anything of this 
 sort when you came in here. But you know it now. I 
 can never hurt it. It is like a little child, I can never 
 hurt it." 
 
 "That is what I meant, Marcella," I said. 
 
 "Is it? I don't know. Only I can't hurt it." 
 
 We stood looking at each other so for a moment. 
 She put out her hand. "Good-by." 
 
 Then suddenly she put both hands against the 
 rough bark of the pear-tree and leaned her face against 
 them. I saw the tears creep through her fingers. 
 
 I did not wait. I knew she would not want me to see 
 her cry. I went away then. 
 
 The chauffeur was asleep in the car when I got there. 
 He had been asleep all the time. I awoke him and 
 drove slowly back to New York. 
 
 215
 
 IV 
 
 I SUPPOSE men will always change their skies in 
 search of new thoughts as I did now. In truth, at 
 that time my thoughts needed a change pretty badly, 
 for, as I lay sleepless through that night after my trip 
 to Babylon, they became rather desperate and de- 
 spairing. The situation was so obviously impossible 
 as it stood, and as I had brought it there it was quite 
 as obviously my part to find a solution. That was not 
 very hard to find the elimination of Pierre Vinton at 
 once from all earthly situations forever. 
 
 That is a very radical conclusion for a man under 
 any circumstances to be brought to, and besides fright- 
 ening me badly it shocked me, too. I do not believe in 
 radicalism. Life, if properly treated, will generally 
 yield to compromise. I had no instinct for the Wer- 
 therian heroics. Such heroes, besides everything else, 
 it seems to me, generally in the end turn out to be 
 silly. I can excuse a man's self-extinction only in case 
 of an utter exhaustion of the will after a long struggle 
 
 216
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 or else extreme ennui. Neither was my condition. In- 
 deed, my will had never been so intensely excited and 
 I was further from ennui than at any time in several 
 years. But, on the other hand, how else could I relieve 
 a woman of the burden of my continued existence, inas- 
 much as I had deliberately fastened it like a pack upon 
 her shoulders? I lay for hours in the dark with that 
 problem for my company, and for once, at any rate, I 
 could find no compromise to fit it. 
 
 At length, just as the morning was showing gray 
 about the windows, the hope came that if I got away 
 I might get a different angle of vision. It is a confused 
 reason but a very ancient faith. I went down in the 
 dim light to the library, where yesterday's newspapers 
 still littered the floor, and finding that the Kronprin- 
 zessin Cecilie sailed that evening at nine o'clock for 
 Cherbourg and Bremen, I decided to sail on board her. 
 
 There were a great many affairs of detail that might 
 have delayed me if I had not thought of handing over 
 all of them into the hands of Courtland Brown. The 
 simple matter of an attorneyship, and I was free of 
 mundane worry, and Courtland Brown equipped once 
 more to take a fall out of the world. I prided myself 
 greatly on this master-stroke of rehabilitation. Courty's 
 
 217
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 comment was that it seemed to be a pretty large order. 
 He needed a large order; anything else would have 
 been a temptation, as I explained to him. So I left him 
 shackled to good behavior more securely than a convict. 
 
 He drove to the dock with me, he and Habliston. I 
 saw them last under one of the big arc-lights of the 
 pier, looking for me along the steamer's rail. When 
 Brown caught sight of me, he raised one clinched fist 
 above his head and shook it in the ah-. I found a note 
 from Habliston saying that there were woollen under- 
 clothes at the bottom of a leather trunk. I left two 
 good things behind me a good servant and a good 
 friend. 
 
 On landing at Cherbourg I went directly to Paris, 
 for the reason that every one from the boat did so. 
 There was no one on board whom I knew, and I had 
 made no acquaintances, but I had formed the habit 
 of seeing these faces, and to lose sight of them would 
 have been a useless jar. So they melted away imper- 
 ceptibly until I took formal leave of the last one, a 
 fat little haberdasher from Denver, and left him stand- 
 ing speechless on a Paris sidewalk, one of the loneliest 
 figures I have ever seen. 
 
 Phillipe I believed to be in Normandy, but I fancied 
 218
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 he might return unexpectedly and I did not wish to 
 go anywhere I might meet him. He is one of those 
 clear-thinking souls, so offensive to the melancholy. 
 So are all Frenchmen. So especially is Paris. The 
 melancholy love vagueness, shadows, mists, semi- 
 obscurity. Paris does not know such things. It is her 
 mission to bring light into the world. I have never 
 cared for Paris at any time, but I loathed the city 
 then. The only melancholy that French can tolerate 
 is that of reflection. The melancholy of emotion is 
 incomprehensible to them. To think life is a poor farce 
 is the r61e of a philosopher, but not to laugh at it is 
 an inexcusable btise. It is a very gallant philosophy, 
 y too, but I was not. in the humor for it at the time. 
 
 It was during these days that I learned the differ- 
 ence between the loneliness of solitude, which is fear, 
 and the loneliness of the multitude, which is despair. 
 At night I felt one, and all the day the other. I stayed 
 at a little gray hotel in the Rue Castiglione, where I 
 knew no one, and spent my time in art galleries, mu- 
 seums, theatres, restaurants. I frequently saw familiar 
 faces and I always avoided them. However American- 
 ized Paris may have become, still no particular Amer- 
 ican is expected, and when he is seen there is always 
 
 219
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 an incredulous moment when he may, if he wishes, make 
 an escape. I used innumerable moments so. I had a 
 curious dislike of hearing of New York. I felt it was a 
 complete disassociation of ideas I needed, and in the 
 crowds I diligently preserved my solitude. 
 
 I sought earnestly for the new angle of view I had 
 come away to find. I did not find it. Once, however, I 
 imagined I caught a glimpse of it. It was at Enghien, 
 whither I had gone for dinner. Afterward I went into 
 the baccarat rooms. It was not exciting. Gambling 
 sometimes is when it is a passion, but it is generally 
 disgusting as a pastime. Some men worship the great 
 goddess Chance and observe scrupulously every de- 
 tail of her rituals black cats, bent pins, Fridays, lucky 
 numbers, and all the rest of it. I respect such devout 
 souls, but who can respect the devotion of a partner 
 at a whist table? There were no devout souls at the 
 tables. Every one was playing listlessly and stingily. 
 I found a seat at a table of Chemin de Fer, and for a 
 time played as listlessly and stingily as any of them, 
 winning for the most part, and at last in disgust threw 
 down the handful of gold pieces I had slowly accumu- 
 lated and played the whole on my own hand. I won. 
 The table grew a little more animated when I played 
 
 220
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 the double amount on the second hand. When I staked 
 that also and won I became a hero, an unsuspected 
 favorite of the goddess. Sparks of the true gaming 
 spirit flashed about. There was approximately fifteen 
 hundred francs in front of me. I played it and won; 
 played and won again. I risked the whole, something 
 more than a thousand dollars, and lost. But the table 
 had lost courage by then probably, for the croupier 
 pushed over to me a double handful of gold. 
 
 As I took the money I heard my left-hand neighbor 
 murmur in French: "A run of six. My God !" 
 
 She was a glorious, full-lipped, deep-bosomed woman, 
 and I imagine she had never looked better than at that 
 moment, for, evidently a novice at gambling, she was 
 thrilled by the fascination of it. She had splendid big 
 brown eyes, all afire now, and her lips just parted 
 showed the gleam of her teeth and the tiny tip of her 
 tongue. She smiled frankly back when I caught her 
 glance and said, pointing to a gold piece: "That is 
 mine. I scratched it for good luck." 
 
 I told her in that case I should keep it. 
 
 She said politely that I was very kind and added: 
 "And it was my last one, too." Then she glanced sadly 
 across to where the cards were. 
 
 221
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 So I understood that just for the gold I had in my 
 hand she was mine. That was the new angle. I had only 
 to throw the money in her lap and tell her to follow 
 me, and I was thenceforth a burden upon no woman in 
 the world. The necessity that bound me was snapped 
 like sewing thread. 
 
 The idea was not new, but it had a new force now; 
 the beauty of the woman. She was beautiful, and I 
 was bored. She was poor, and I was rich. Surely there 
 were many compromises to be made with life of those 
 four elements. In the end I decided there were, and I 
 gave her the money and went back to Paris alone. 
 There was no reason in this, and there was no morality, 
 either. Perhaps there was only obstinacy. 
 
 In the end this little adventure led me away from 
 Paris. After it I saw the counterpart of that woman 
 everywhere. She became for me the visible expression 
 of all that Paris had left to offer me since I had refused 
 her true great gift. First a philosophy I had no taste 
 for, then a woman I did not wish to buy: I felt that 
 Paris had behaved stingily toward me. 
 
 Disgusted with Paris, I despaired of all cities and 
 went to Vevey. One year, many years ago, I went to 
 school at Vevey, and I had always remembered a 
 
 222
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 certain schoolmaster with reverence. Perhaps but my 
 master was dead, and even the desks were new. They 
 showed me his tomb. Perhaps the living man would 
 have been as inarticulate to my needs as the stone that 
 covered him. Still, I remembered him as an unceasing 
 spring of knowledge, and I went away like a man who 
 has barely failed to grasp some longed-for prize. 
 
 Switzerland is an incomparable place to be alone in. 
 After Paris, I appreciated it. I rested there and spent 
 more than a week idling about on the shores of the lake 
 around Vevey. Later, at Lucerne, the Nemesis of the 
 post overtook me and I found the accumulated mail. 
 I read the first two letters, glanced at a few more, and 
 then, being on the bridge, I heaved the whole parcel 
 of letters overboard into the lake. As they fell they 
 attracted an innumerable flock of ducks waiting below 
 for bread, who fell on them and then scattered in all 
 directions. One large black pirate I saw sailing off, 
 bearing in his beak an envelope I recognized as Lilly 
 Axson's with an air of inexpressible triumph. 
 
 How I disliked a postage stamp ! To me the marvels 
 of the post were the tentacles of a gigantic octopus in 
 whose clutches I struggled vainly for release. Now, a 
 glance at a letter had brought back to me New York 
 
 223
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and the realization that in all essential ways I was 
 precisely where I had started. It was a beautiful spring 
 day. Under my feet were the sparkling waters of the 
 lake, above me the glittering summits of the Alps. 
 
 I have no reason to believe that I am more life- 
 loving than the common run of men, but I have never 
 committed the stupidity of despising it. I wished to 
 lay aside my garment of the years decently and with 
 respect, not tear it loose like a boy at bedtime. I had 
 nothing to do with mails. They could neither help me 
 nor hinder me. The high, white summits met more the 
 needs of my spirit. I threw the letters to the ducks 
 and went up into the mountains. 
 
 That night, looking out from a window in Engle- 
 berg, I saw the moon shining down on the great white 
 head of Titlis. 
 
 It is a benign and venerable summit. As I looked up 
 to it I felt suddenly the desire to climb up to it, too. 
 It was a desire easily enough fulfilled. Next morning, 
 by inquiries at the office, I found that two parties were 
 starting that afternoon for the summit and I decided 
 to go with them. The clerk at first was very insistent 
 that I take a guide, and he spoke a great deal of bad 
 English anent the dangers to the inexperienced. But I 
 
 JttM
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 especially did not wish a guide. I wished, above all 
 things, to be alone, and even if there should be an ac- 
 cident, what of it? Accident might be well met. To 
 the clerk I pointed out a family party a German 
 father and two daughters starting out alone, and as 
 one of the daughters was certainly not over fifteen, he 
 gave it up and let me pay my bill in peace. I started, 
 therefore, on the next afternoon with only a boy from 
 the hotel to show me the way across the meadows to 
 the foot of the tortuous path up the preliminary climb. 
 The family party had started an hour before and was 
 already out of sight; just ahead of me was a huge 
 Englishman, with a black-bearded German guide. The 
 Englishman had been pointed out to me as Lord 
 Bathurst Kerr, a famous cragsman, now bound across 
 country for Interlaken, and the Jungfrau. I followed 
 this couple up the interminable zigzags in a fine mist 
 that soaked me to the skin. All of us slept that night at 
 the little Tribsee Inn, wrapped in mist and rain the 
 Englishman, the German family party, and a solitary 
 German, who had come from some hinterland, in a 
 pair of long-toed patent-leather dancing shoes. 
 
 It was clear next morning, however, and I set out 
 under a pale-gray sky with just enough light to make 
 
 225
 
 PIERRE VINTON, 
 
 lanterns unnecessary. The Englishman was ahead as 
 before, but the Germans, who had lingered over break- 
 fast, I had this time behind me. It was a very easy 
 climb even for such a green hand as myself, and I 
 would have enjoyed it if I had not looked back and 
 seen that the Germans for he of the dancing shoes had 
 joined the family party were rapidly gaining on me. 
 There was something mortifying about being over- 
 taken by two schoolgirls and a man who wore such 
 shoes on the Alps, and I changed the leisurely climb 
 into a race. The older daughter, who had red hair, 
 for some reason took off her hat as soon as we reached 
 the snow, and this shining oriflamme drove me up and 
 on at a killing pace. I won. I think I even gained a little 
 on them, but as I was in very bad shape to begin with, 
 this exertion in the thin air did me up pretty badly. 
 When I got to the top I was thoroughly beat. 
 
 The big Englishman, who was sitting on the snow 
 munching a roll, looked me over slowly as I sat down, 
 and without speaking tossed me a brandy flask. I 
 declined with thanks and tossed it back. He put it 
 in his pocket without a word and went on with his 
 breakfast. The silence of his much-loved solitudes had 
 got into that man's soul. The Germans trooped past
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 us and settled themselves on the farthest corner of 
 the tiny plateau. The Briton never lifted his eyes from 
 his bread, and we representatives of three nations sat, 
 each in a different corner, and exchanged not a word 
 among us. The Germans talked a little among them- 
 selves, the Englishman spoke rarely and in monosyl- 
 lables to his servant. I lay on a rubber coat and talked 
 to myself. In the great depths some strange black birds 
 circled slowly and silently around. As I lay there, feel- 
 ing as if I were in an island above a stormy sea of 
 crags and snow, I wondered less and less at the English- 
 man's habit of silence. 
 
 He was the first to move. As he stood up and fastened 
 the knapsack across his tremendous shoulders, bent 
 as if muscle-bound, he asked me which descent I in- 
 tended to make. I told him I was bound for the Engstlen 
 Alp. 
 
 "I pass it," he said. "Some bad spots. Keep me in 
 sight." 
 
 I thanked him and said I would, and I watched him 
 go swinging down the snow slope, handling his big 
 stick as rhythmically as a drum-major. When he was a 
 few hundred feet below I started to follow. 
 
 The descent was easy, and, relieved of my pursuers, 
 227
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 I took my ease. Half the time the couple below me were 
 hidden from my sight, and my solitude was complete. 
 It was a boundless panorama, constantly spread below 
 my eyes a vast white, glistening emptiness. Such soli- 
 tudes either break men's spirits or mend them. It 
 mended mine. The little street-bred stock-broker had 
 glimpses of higher things. I began to descend more 
 quickly. Only when two black spots below reappeared 
 and seemed too near, I stopped altogether, and let them 
 draw ahead and get out of sight again. At the bad 
 spots I increased my speed, but there was no deliberate 
 purpose in my mind, only an invitation, as it were, to 
 the whim of chance. It seemed to me such a splendid 
 opportunity for chance. 
 
 At length the unbroken snow my path had followed 
 from the summit came to an end. The trail of my guides 
 turned at right angles and crossed a ledge of rock, led 
 to another snow slope beyond. This ledge was about a 
 foot and a half wide, and fifty feet or more in length. 
 Crossing it was like walking on the top of a stone wall, 
 an old stone wall of crumbling mortar and loose stones. 
 On the left was a drop of a hundred feet or less to snow. 
 On the right the fall was sheer for a thousand feet. As 
 I stepped onto it I knew I had found what I had come 
 
 MS
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 to find. That little platform of rock was the "ultimate 
 island of my destiny." 
 
 I stepped out quickly. A pebble slipped beneath my 
 foot. It had to be an accident, or it had best not be 
 at all. Then a wild uprush of chaos, a sudden stab of 
 pain. And that was all. 
 
 829
 
 COURTLAND BROWN had been left in New York 
 with authority to do as he thought fit with his trust, 
 and advised not to expect any communications of 
 any sort. He received none until the cablegram from 
 Bathurst Kerr. This was directed to the firm of Vinton, 
 Bragg, and Goadby, and contained a succinct account 
 of the accident on Titlis. A man carrying in his knap- 
 sack the papers of Pierre Vinton had met with the 
 accident and was lying at the Engstlen Alp with a 
 fractured skull and other injuries in a very critical 
 condition. The writer was awaiting instructions care 
 Thomas Cook at Interlaken. It was signed Bathurst 
 Kerr. Goadby received it and telephoned Brown, 
 who came to the office. Together they sent a reply, 
 promising fuller instructions to follow immediately. 
 Then Brown put the cable in his pocket and took it to 
 Babylon. 
 
 It was early when he got there, and Marcella, who 
 230
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 had not been well, was still in bed. The colonel was on 
 the lawn superintending the transplanting of a tree 
 when Brown drove up from the station. He knew 
 Brown vaguely. 
 
 "You can't see her," he said when Brown asked for 
 Marcella. "She's ill" 
 
 "I've got to see her. Vinton's dying!" said Brown. 
 
 "Dying!" said the colonel. 
 
 Brown gave him the cablegram. 
 
 The old gentleman read it and started indoors with 
 the paper in his hand. 
 
 "For God's sake, man, don't give it to her like that. " 
 
 He sat down helplessly on the steps. He still held 
 the spade in his left hand. "You take it to her. I'm 
 beat. I liked that boy." 
 
 They finally sent for Marcella by a maid. But the 
 woman, after the mysterious manner of servants, had 
 caught the spirit of the crisis and her message brought 
 Marcella in a dressing-gown to the stair top. When 
 she caught sight of Brown, she called to him and he 
 came up-stairs into the sitting-room. Marcella closed 
 the door and stood with her back to it. 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 "It's Vinton," said Brown. 
 231
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Of course. But what of him? What's happened?'* 
 
 Brown handed her the cable. 
 
 She read it for a long time, said nothing, stood look- 
 ing at it as if she were reading it and rereading it, 
 again and again. 
 
 Suddenly she put out both hands toward him. 
 Brown had always hated her. He stepped back. 
 
 "What was he doing on that mountain alone?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "God knows," said Brown. 
 
 "Yes," said Marcella, "God knows, and me." 
 
 She put out her hands to him again. "Help me," she 
 prayed. "He helped you. Help me to get to him." 
 
 He did help her wonderfully, and only four hours 
 later he bade her good-by at a gang-plank of the French 
 Line. All the way in from Long Island in the motor 
 she had not said one word, and her eyes had been very 
 dry. She knew he hated her and why. But she had 
 imagined he was going with her, and when he started 
 overboard for the pier, she broke down. He caught 
 her in his arms, and the colonel and he carried her 
 to a chair. She lifted her veil then, and he saw how 
 her face had changed, and his heart changed at the 
 sight. 
 
 232
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Tell me," she asked him then, "when he left you, 
 did he hate me, too?" 
 
 "Marcella," he answered, "I know that if his eyes 
 are open when you get to him he will live." 
 
 This much I can piece together from Brown's letter 
 and her. 
 
 There was a little English clergyman on the Tou- 
 raine that voyage coming home from the Canadian 
 Northwest. Before that he had been a tutor to two boys 
 in Switzerland. He must have been a clergyman of the 
 simple-thinking, clean-lived sort that we like best to call 
 "parson," and he was drawn to Marcella by the curious 
 instinct his sort possess in all genuine sorrow. He knew, 
 apparently, every peak in Switzerland; knew Titlis 
 well; had climbed it twice. There was no spot on it, he 
 told her, where an able-bodied man could come to 
 harm. To prove his statement he described a part of 
 the climb. It must have been an accident of an un- 
 usual kind, he thought, incomprehensible to him. 
 Marcella, lying in her chair, listened and said nothing. 
 
 At last, because it had grown unbearably compre- 
 hensible to her, she told him the whole story and what 
 she feared, and he, in hot remorse for what he had 
 done, but unable to retract a word, refused to leave her 
 
 233
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 and turned his back on England, after ten years' exile, 
 so that he might hand her over safely to Bathurst 
 Kerr on the platform at Interlaken. 
 
 Those two Englishmen who shook hands on that 
 platform were right worthy of their race. Kerr had 
 been told by cable that Mrs. Vinton would sail at once 
 and he had waited for her. Practically by force he had 
 brought the German doctor from Interlaken out to 
 Engstlen Alp and kept him there. By an odd chance 
 one of the guests at the little hotel was Miss Civilese 
 Springer, of Dayton, O., U. S. A., a graduate of the 
 Training School for Nurses at the University of Chicago. 
 Haussmann, of Geneva, had been telegraphed for and 
 had arrived the day before. He was to stay until the 
 necessity of an operation was decided definitely one 
 way or the other, for there was an abscess on the 
 brain and meningitis. Kerr detailed all this to Marcella 
 between Interlaken and Engstlen, and also how he had 
 happened to see the fall, and with his servant had 
 carried the stranger on a litter made of a Loden mantle, 
 slung between two alpenstocks from the foot of the 
 glacier, whither the lifeless body had rolled, to the inn. 
 
 It was this same Bathurst Kerr who put his huge 
 arm about her when she stood at the foot of a wooden
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 bed and looked down at a bandage-swathed, unrecog- 
 nizable thing that gibbered and shrieked at the sight 
 of her. He wanted to lead her away after that, but she 
 sent him away instead, and the nurse, too, and, alone, 
 she knelt down by that bed and took the poor, battered, 
 senseless thing in her arms. 
 
 235
 
 VI 
 
 MlSS CIVILESE SPRINGER is a duly graduated 
 nurse, but at Engstlen Alp she was without the para- 
 phernalia of her profession. She had no uniforms, no 
 glasses, no sponges; she did not have even a ther- 
 mometer at first, but had to order one from Geneva. 
 Among the things she thus lacked were charts, and she 
 tried to fill their place by a diary. Miss Springer is by 
 no means an instinctive diarist, but, nevertheless, a 
 good many matters are in that diary that would cer- 
 tainly not find a place on an official chart. 
 
 She has showed me this diary. It is very interesting, 
 and at times very embarrassing, too. On the whole, it 
 is the most personal document I have ever inspired. 
 It is interesting to read what the great Haussmann 
 thought of me and did to me. He looks like a fat, black- 
 bearded Russian, the diary says. And he thought very 
 badly of me, indeed. On the night of his arrival, which 
 was the second before the night of Marcella's, he 
 
 236
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 wouldn't have anything to do with me at all. The next 
 day he thought a little better of it. Then Marcella 
 came. The diary reads here: "And now the wife has 
 come!" with a huge exclamation point. Then Hauss- 
 mann operated. Miss Springer was greatly interested ap- 
 parently in seeing the maltre in action. " What luck ! " 
 says the diary. "It was wonderful," she writes later; 
 "Gushing cannot be more wonderful." Who is Gush- 
 ing? I was ashamed to display my ignorance to Miss 
 Springer. When the great man went away he left an 
 assistant, Doctor Lebon. She describes him as dirty. 
 "A duly Frenchman," the diary reads. There was 
 also a nurse, Sceur Agathe. Miss Springer has a very 
 high standard of personal cleanliness, for Sister Agathe 
 also was "dirty." All this was intensely interesting to 
 him who had felt it all and known nothing about it. 
 This was the way the world wagged without the help 
 of his consciousness. 
 
 But the most interesting entry was that which de- 
 scribed a little lapse into semiconsciousness of the 
 patient in the fourth week of his illness. The patient 
 suddenly gave unmistakable evidences of consciousness. 
 He even made a sign that he was thirsty. "His wife," 
 the record says, "who was seated at the bedside, bent 
 
 237
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 over him, spoke to him, called 'his name. He looked 
 at her intently for several moments. Then, without 
 recognition, he closed his eyes and apparently slept. 
 Later, delirium." 
 
 It was very curious. When I read that I remembered 
 the occurrence perfectly. I had never forgot it. Only I 
 had never before known that the gaunt, white, hollow- 
 eyed woman standing there was Marcella. 
 
 The second return was very different. I had lain for 
 hours, forever, it seemed to me, conscious of a beam 
 above my head. (The rooms at the Engstlen are un- 
 papered.) Suddenly the beam enlarged into a roof, the 
 roof into a house, into the world, into life. That was 
 the way I came back. 
 
 Curiously, my mind instantly returned to the minute 
 when I stood at the mantel in Mrs. Axson's apart- 
 ment and she told me to get my hat and take a walk. 
 Indeed, it was several days before I recovered the 
 lost interval, and weeks before I could arrange its 
 proper sequence. So, when I awoke in the far-away 
 Swiss inn, I was mentally still standing in Mrs. Axson's 
 apartment in New York. In this sense my remark was 
 coherent enough. The diary records it triumphantly, 
 though very badly spelled. I had intended, I suppose, 
 
 238
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 to say it to Lilly Axson over a liqueur glass after dinner, 
 when it would have sounded possibly cynical and clever. 
 Instead, on what was pretty near to my death-bed, I 
 spat it out, when it sounded silly and vulgar as it 
 really was, and I was ashamed when I read it and 
 hope to forget it. So much for that sort of flip- 
 pancy. 
 
 But I was not allowed to make any such headlong 
 plunge into consciousness. On the contrary, no sooner 
 had I poked my head above the "waters of oblivion" 
 than Doctor Lebon ducked it under again with opiates. 
 I remember on the first occasion a strange-looking 
 woman in white giving me a drink and nothing more. 
 Lebon and I played, according to the "chart," this 
 little game for several days, each emergence on my 
 part becoming a little longer, and each ducking on his 
 part a little less complete. Then, too, I recollect de- 
 liberately playing into my opponent's hands. I often 
 lay for hours conscious of my position in a vague, 
 dreamlike way, without giving a sign or making any 
 effort to complete the consciousness. Then some move- 
 ment would betray me, and under I had to go again. 
 They were really very delightful, those stolen moments. 
 I viewed the world as a soul detached from its body, 
 
 239
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 an intelligence, dim and uncertain, of course, but in 
 compensation, quite relieved of all responsibility, even 
 the responsibility of continuing to exist. I had only 
 one anxiety then the dread of completing the con- 
 sciousness. I suppose I remembered nothing particularly 
 alluring in this world that was going on about me, and 
 as from the first moment of my consciousness, they had 
 banished Marcella, or rather she had banished her- 
 self, I saw nothing to indicate that it had changed 
 during my absence. I lay, looking at the strange woman 
 at my bedside or at the ceiling or out of the windows 
 at the mountains, quite realizing who I was and where 
 I was, and rapidly learning how the combination had 
 come about, but without the least curiosity in the 
 matter; rather, in fact, with a strong repugnance for 
 such information. So, for a week, I dwelt in Nirvana, 
 and then abruptly one morning I dropped into Switzer- 
 land. 
 
 It was a very bright day out-of-doors, and one of 
 the windows was open. From very far off came the 
 sound of cow-bells. A white-clothed man was standing 
 at the foot of my bed and a white-clothed woman was 
 bending over me from the side of it. The man was 
 short and bald, with a very black mustache. The 
 
 40
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 woman had coarse dark hair, too, but was tall and thin 
 and wore a rimless pince-nez, guarded by a thin gold 
 chain fastened around the ear. 
 
 "Mr. Vinton," said the woman. And I knew I was 
 caught at last. 
 
 "Yes," I said, "I am Mr. Vinton," and the thin, 
 shaky voice scared me. 
 
 "Of course," said the woman, bending still lower 
 and arranging the covers about my throat. "And you 
 feel all right this morning, don't you ? " 
 
 "What happened?" I asked. 
 
 She glanced at the man before she replied. "You 
 fell," she explained. 
 
 "When?" 
 
 Again she glanced at him. "About a week ago, but 
 if you ask any more questions you will have to go to 
 sleep again." 
 
 I knew about how much truth there was in her 
 answer, but persisted no further. 
 
 "Now, to-day," she went on, "you may lie here 
 without going to sleep, but you mustn't ask any ques- 
 tions, and you must not move. If you do either you will 
 have to go to sleep again." She had the patronizing air 
 of a mother toward a child. 
 
 241
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Do you mind telling me what place this is?" I 
 asked. 
 
 She told me. Then, with a finger on her lips, sat down 
 beside me and took up a book. The man in white tip- 
 toed softly out of the room. They were Doctor Lebon 
 and Miss Civilese Springer, of Dayton, O. 
 
 For two days I had nothing better than to watch 
 Miss Springer read a book and try to guess what the 
 book was about from the expression of her face. It 
 was a singularly unexpressive face, too dark and 
 thin and with a noticeable mustache. Occasionally 
 Soeur Agathe took her place. The nun was short and 
 stout and, instead of reading, slept placidly with her 
 hands crossed on her stomach. On the whole, the time 
 passed slowly. 
 
 "Now, this morning," said Miss Springer on the 
 morning of the third day, "you may talk for a little 
 while." 
 
 "Thanks," I replied. 
 
 "But not to me," she added archly. 
 
 I was grateful but quite unaware of what she meant. 
 
 "Not to me; to some one ever so much nicer than me." 
 
 Apparently, she thought my intellect permanently 
 impaired. While she talked she was making purpose- 
 
 itf
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 less dabs at my hair and the furniture and the bed- 
 clothes. Finally, with a finger on her lips and an ex- 
 ceedingly arch smile, she disappeared. 
 
 It was a brilliant day. Out of the windows I could 
 see the snow in the sunlight and the room shone with 
 the dazzling reflection. For the first time then I felt 
 a faint stir of joy in the return to life. But the sensa- 
 tion went no further. Life might be pleasant, but it 
 was not as yet interesting. 
 
 So when I heard a door open softly behind me, a 
 footstep in the room, I did not turn. The sunlight 
 outside was pleasant and pretty. Then I heard a sound 
 hau" a sob, half my name. I turned and saw her. 
 She was standing just inside the room, the sunlight 
 about her feet, her face in the shadow. How worn it was! 
 The almost boyish air of diffidence, that is so wholly 
 hers seemed strange with such a care-worn woman. 
 
 "Marcella," I whispered. 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 "When did you come?" 
 
 "A long time ago." 
 
 Then I gasped. The astounding nature of the thing 
 touched me at last. "Who sent for you?" 
 
 "Nobody. I just came," she answered. 
 243
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "You just came by yourself? Why?" 
 
 "Why?" she repeated. She came a step nearer, al- 
 most angrily. Then she stopped with a sob. "So that 
 if you didn't get well I could go up on that mountain 
 and jump off after you." 
 
 "Somebody," I said, "has been telling you lies." 
 
 "Nobody has told me anything. Nobody knows any- 
 thing except me, but I know it all." 
 
 "Marcella," I began, "there's nothing to know. I 
 fell, if that's what you mean. I swear I fell. It was 
 awfully good of you to come far more." 
 
 But when I said that she dropped to her knees and 
 hid her face in her hands, sobbing. 
 
 I was bandaged like a mummy. I could only lift 
 one arm, and that very little, but I somehow raised 
 my shoulders from the pillows, and I called to her. 
 She came with a cry of warning. "You mustn't move. 
 You mustn't." 
 
 The move was a little bit too much. It made me 
 giddy. Then, gently, I was lowered by her arms to the 
 pillows again. 
 
 She held me so, absolutely helpless, and her face 
 was hidden by my shoulder. I could only touch her 
 hair with my fingers. 
 
 244
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "Don't send me away," she whispered. 
 
 And lying there, faint and half blind, feeling her 
 arms again about me, after the long grief and pain, I 
 had no strength of any kind, and taking advantage of 
 my own weakness I whispered back: "Don't leave 
 me." 
 
 245
 
 VII 
 
 BY a charming convention happiness is recognized 
 as dwelling in valleys, and certainly if I were an 
 Olympian with a quantity of human happiness to dis- 
 pose of I should hide it in just some such valley as 
 this of the Engstlen Alp. It is very small and very 
 green with the bluest water in the world, by the banks 
 of which our weather-stained dwelling sits as incon- 
 spicuously as possible, and the whole is set like a jewel, 
 like two jewels, green and blue among the snow-crowned 
 cliffs. It is an unreally beautiful place altogether, and 
 a most unreal situation has developed itself within it 
 a situation that smacks of opera bouffe and yet is an 
 incontestable reality. I cannot accept it, and yet I 
 would not alter it for the gift of the stars. It is, and it 
 isn't. I will, and I won't. Tweedledum and tweedledee. 
 In short do what I can, I can make neither head nor 
 tail of it. 
 
 Marcella says I have no business trying; that my only 
 246
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 affair is to get well. Perhaps she is right, and I endeavor 
 to follow her council but cannot quite. The getting 
 well is simple enough and is proceeding at a very 
 satisfactory rate to every one; to mine host and hostess, 
 for example, who assure me of the fact every morning; 
 and to the servants, and to the few guests who still 
 remain and also assure me of their satisfaction when- 
 ever we meet. But the situation ! That does not pro- 
 ceed at all, but sticks impregnably in the same place. 
 What is going to happen to that, only an all-wise 
 Providence and Marcella can say. We are doing very 
 well under the circumstances, but the circumstances 
 are rather peculiar. 
 
 The first stage of my recovery was marked by the 
 departure of Doctor Lebon and Sister Agathe. They 
 went away together. Between them they had probably 
 saved my life, but I saw them go with unmixed satis- 
 faction. Before leaving Lebon gave me two pieces of 
 excellent advice never while I lived to go in a hot sun 
 without a handkerchief in my hat and never during 
 the same period to take any of Miss Civilese Springer's 
 medicines. Miss Springer remained behind and, it 
 seemed, was inclined to certain drugs which French 
 science holds in contempt. 
 
 247
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 To Miss Springer also I largely owe my present 
 existence; nevertheless, she was a nuisance. To begin 
 with, Marcella disliked her; and, besides, she held 
 prominent religious views. I forget their nature; it was 
 their intensity I found unpleasant. She was a Buddhist 
 or something of the sort, and I like Christians about 
 me when I am not feeling well. Buddhism and polo 
 and terrapin are the recreations of health. Still her 
 departure was not as simple a matter as was that of 
 the other two, and this was because of the before- 
 mentioned situation. 
 
 At the time there were, unquestionably, a great 
 many things which I was obliged to say to Marcella, 
 and a similar number of things which she was obliged 
 to say to me. Yet as day followed day in this lovely 
 little valley with the "pot of blue ink" in the middle 
 of it and snowy summits all about it, we never said 
 them. We came very close at times, but always between 
 our last words and the actual beginning intervened a 
 silence, a queer eerie silence that was the end of it. 
 We came up to the very edge of that silence which 
 hung like a gulf between us and the highly important 
 conversations and there we stopped. Time and again 
 we got that far, but we never got any further. Perhaps 
 
 48
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 it was because the valley was so lovely, the lake so 
 blue in it, the snow-capped peaks so exquisite a frame 
 for it, the days so calmly pure, life so full of peace and 
 content and hope that we hated to disturb so much 
 loveliness by any talk of hideous and half-forgotten 
 things. They were all ultramontane things, anyway; 
 and to me at Engstlen Alp what is ultramontane is 
 practically beyond my imagination, too. Occasionally 
 letters come and Marcella reads me bits of them, but 
 I never listen very long. 
 
 So we drifted on in the rudderless boat of content, 
 occasionally touching a sand-bar of silence but never 
 sticking very long, until Miss Springer's assistance 
 was palpably superfluous. It was considered so when I 
 could put on my trousers unassisted. Before that I 
 felt a certain moral need of Miss Springer's presence 
 in the hotel; but when I stood erect, a presentably 
 clothed man, made so by my own efforts, I felt that 
 Miss Springer's day was done. I told her so. She agreed 
 with me. The actual leave-taking alone remained. But 
 it was just here that the weakness of Marcella's and 
 my position became apparent. 
 
 Then I recognized that I must to a certain degree 
 break througk one of those queer silences. I do not 
 
 249
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 know that I should ever have had courage for the 
 plunge had it not been for Miss Springer's salary. 
 Theretofore all such matters had been in the care of 
 Marcella, but now that I could make my toilet, it 
 was manifest that I could sign my checks. So, sitting 
 up in bed, on the night before Miss Springer's depar- 
 ture I wrote out a check. A sense of complete mas- 
 culinity pervaded my soul as I flourished the signature. 
 A man who can put on his own trousers and sign a 
 check can do anything. I took a deep breath and sat 
 erect. 
 
 "My dear Marcella," I began. 
 
 "Are you writing me a letter?" asked Marcella. 
 She was drying the check over a candle and had her 
 back to me. 
 
 "No. I am talking to you." 
 
 "Well, what is it?" She turned and began to blow 
 on the check instead. Thus, face to face, my courage 
 fled. I grasped at it desperately. 
 
 "Don't you realize that we are not married?" I 
 cried. 
 
 She looked at me and giggled. "Have you just 
 thought of that?" she asked. 
 
 "Have you ever thought of it?" I asked. 
 250
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 "I thought of it the very first minute I came in this 
 house." 
 
 "Well, what did you do?" 
 
 "I didn't do anything. I didn't have to. Of course, 
 every one thought we were." 
 
 "That," I answered, "doesn't alter the fact that we 
 are not." 
 
 "Oh, doesn't it?" said Marcella. "Then what are 
 you going to do ? " 
 
 "We must get married." 
 
 She put down the check and sat down on my bed. 
 "Now listen, Peter. Let me explain and then go to 
 sleep, for you mustn't get excited. In the first place 
 we can't get married here, because if we did naturally 
 everybody would know we hadn't been before. I 
 couldn't face 'em then to save my life. It would be 
 terrible. Think of it. They might turn me out. I don't 
 know what they might not do. Well, in the second 
 place, you can't go away to get married anywhere else. 
 It would probably kill you to try. Now, there isn't 
 any third course. So we can't do anything except go on 
 as we are. Now, if I put out the light will you try to go 
 to sleep?" 
 
 "Just a moment," I put in. "There is a third course. 
 251
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 We can tell Miss Springer and make her stay. * Chap- 
 eron,' you see." 
 
 Marcella hesitated. Then she blushed. "Oh, Peter!" 
 she said, "I couldn't." 
 
 And for my part I don't see very well how she 
 could. So there the matter rested, and the next morn- 
 ing Miss Springer left us. From my chair I saw her 
 finally vanish beyond the hills. There, I thought, goes 
 our last link with respectability. I looked at Marcella. 
 She was crocheting. 
 
 It is true that the situation is largely of her making. 
 
 When I had been identified at the hotel as Mr. 
 Vinton and it was announced that Mrs. Vinton was 
 coming, the implication was natural. The situation 
 demanded a female relation of some sort, preferably a 
 wife. Thus, when Marcella arrived the situation might 
 be said to have been created; it only remained for her 
 to step into it. This she did, and in this way, though 
 she may not have created it, at any rate she completed 
 it. Therefore her nonchalance when face to face with it 
 amazes me. It makes me quake with apprehension of 
 the day when the guidance of this world will be put 
 into the hands of her sex. 
 
 Discussion of any sort is useless in the circumstances. 
 252
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Thus we are sitting here on the porch, looking over 
 the valley. We are waiting for the sounds of the cattle- 
 bells as they are driven down for the night. Marcella 
 has a sewing-basket, I a writing-pad, a pack of cards, 
 a book any of the consolations of convalescence. She 
 glances up from her work and catches me looking at her. 
 
 "What are you thinking of?" asks she. 
 
 " I was wondering how I ever got you back. " 
 
 "Don't you know?" 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 She bent lower over her sewing. "Neither do I," 
 she answered. "Only when Courty showed me the cable 
 it was like somebody had tied a string around me and 
 was pulling." 
 
 "It was a pretty long string," I suggested. 
 
 "It was pretty strong, too," she said. 
 
 "What was it made of, Marcella?" 
 
 Marcella dropped her sewing, and looked up at the 
 cows. "Oh!" she said slowly, "it was the same old 
 string." 
 
 Undoubtedly it was, as she said, a pretty strong 
 string. I thought of how many people had taken a 
 hack at it; how I had gnawed at it, and she too, and the 
 Supreme Bench. 
 
 253
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 Marcella interrupted my reminiscences. "Pierre," 
 she said, "there can't be real divorce. There's release, 
 but there isn't any such thing as divorce." 
 
 "Marcella," I answered, "don't let's talk about such 
 disagreeable subjects." 
 
 And that is the nearest we have ever come to that 
 tremendous conversation which should certainly have 
 taken place between us. 
 
 Meanwhile our condition causes, I am led to be- 
 lieve, some uneasiness to the ultramontanes. Brown's 
 letters arrive by every post. At first they were reticent. 
 Lately they have become the trumpet-calls of ortho- 
 doxy. Finally, in desperation, he writes: "You see, Old 
 Top, it's all right for you and for me and for every- 
 body that has any sense, but if it were to get out it 
 would be all-fired bad for Business." I made Marcella 
 read that twice. In that sentence I read the birth an- 
 nouncement of a Courtland Brown 2d, whom as yet 
 I have never seen: a self-respecting young American, 
 with his weather-eye on "business." Accompanying 
 this was a P. S.: "Habliston begs pardon, but may 
 he send his respects to Miss Marcella?" Whereat Mar- 
 cella almost cries. 
 
 Mrs. Axson is allied with Brown. She has taken a 
 IM
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 house at Auteuil for the autumn, and feels sure that 
 I would convalesce more quickly and surely there 
 than here. Marcella writes that I shall not stir until 
 Haussmann gives the word. She added: "Anyhow we 
 are in no condition to pay visits." Whereupon Mrs. 
 Axson must be told everything, and in return we get a 
 telegram : 
 
 "Pour 1'amour de Mike, soyez raisonable. 
 
 "LILLY." 
 
 These are things we hear. What is being said, whis- 
 pered, thought, imagined, that we do not hear, we 
 sometimes guess at sometimes, not frequently. At 
 such times Marcella sighs patiently and says I am to 
 blame for falling in such an inaccessible place. I have 
 no fault to find with the place. It is vastly the pleas- 
 antest place I have dwelt in for many years, and I 
 could be quite content to dwell here forever, while 
 the heathen rage beyond the mountains. About this 
 rude little settlement in the lonely, beautiful valley we 
 live by the sun, and when that leaves us in the evening 
 we linger out here on the porch until the high pastur- 
 ing cattle come tinkling down from the heights and 
 
 255
 
 PIERRE VINTON 
 
 are housed for the night. Then, leaning on her arm, I 
 am led within. Such are the faces of the uncounted 
 days. Of what queer stuff does Happiness cut its 
 clothes ! 
 
 Once, in the night, I woke suddenly from a dream 
 of days that are past and dead now, but the spell 
 of the dream was strong upon me. It was only the 
 touch of another's hand as it lay in mine while she 
 slept that brought back the present. Through the un- 
 curtained window a single star was shining cold and 
 pale through the moonlight above a snow-capped peak. 
 Had I touched coarsely or rudely the divine gift of Love 
 that placed that hand so trustingly in mine, or had I 
 only stripped it of the convenient wrappings of custom 
 and laid bare the living miracle within? 
 
 The touch of her hand, as she stirred in her dream, 
 and I knew and slept in peace. 
 
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