The Vehement Flame

me," she said, over and over; and once she said, "it is because I am-" But she didn't finish this; she just got up and went over to the bureau and stared into the mirror; she ev

ange, she held her breath until it walked into and out of the circling glare of the arc light-not Maurice! It was after twelve when she

ta

ans

d kissed her, the soft lead pencil might not have acted as Destiny; she might have melted under

was an opportunity!-was lost; her interest in Lily was not needed, because a call at the apartment house showed Maurice that Batty was forgiven. So he forgot his desire to lift the fallen, in more of those arid moment

ntness finally culminated in his leaving her, and by October she was living in the yellow-brick apartment house alone, and very

leanor about anything,-not because he was secretive-he hated secrecy! "It's next door to lying," he thought, faintly disgusted at himself,-but because she seemed to feel hurt if he was interested in anyone

, with a sound digestion, will not look faded; on the contrary, she is at her best-as far as looks are concerned! Eleanor was not happy; her digestion was uncertain; she did not go into society, and sh

; "they'd give you something to do! I saw a lot of hyacint

people flowers won't

y. That's what comes of boarding. I knew a woman who boarded, and she lost her tee

s on one of these occasions that Mrs. Newbolt, spreading out her cards on the g

aged. I believe

ot! Why sh

sed to say that, after a thing happened, I was the one to tell people that they might have expected it. You see, I made a point of bein' intelligent; of course I wasn'

ed," Eleanor said, pass

more important than adorin' him! A man can buy a cert

're talking about," El

to say that the finest tribute a man could put on his wife's tombstone would be, 'She was interestin' to live with.' So I tell you,

best of his bargain. That he had begun to know it was a bad bargain did not lessen his regret for his wife's childlessness, which he knew made her

d cloying sweetnesses! Yet, in spite of these things, the boarding-house marriage survived the lengthening of the fifty-four minutes of ecstasy into three years. But it might not have survived its own third winter had it not been t

en farther from his mind or purpose. But ther

'eighties, and she felt herself insulted; "As if I could remember!" she told Maurice; but whatever it was, he had tried to comfort her by joking about it. Then she had reproached hi

u're tired of me becau

f you were old enough to have any

back of her hand against her l

many times; she rather liked to say them! But she had not believed them; now, her own words were a boomerang,-they seemed to strike her in the face! He was tired of her. Instantly she was alert! What must she do? She sat down, tense with thought; first of all, she must be sweet to him; she must

undeniable fact-he was tired of her! Walking aimlessly about in the cold, he said to himself, dully, "Why was I such an idiot as to marry her?" He was old enough to curse himself for his folly, but he was young enough to suffer, agonies of mortification, and to pity himself, too; pity himself for the mere physical discomfort of his life: the boarding-house table, with its uninteresting food; the worn shirt cuff which was scratchin

Spr

ck over the traces some day?" his thoughts would run; and again, "Suppose I should be in a theater fire, and 'disappear,' and never come back, and she'd think I was dead," "Suppose there should be a war, and I should enlist," ... and so forth, and so forth. "Fool thoughts," of course!-but Maurice is not the only man upon whom a jealous wo

el a glow of comfort; and when Lily let him into her little parlor, all clean and vulgar and warm, and fragrant with blossoming bulbs, and ga

my! Ain't you cold! Why,

anished Batty's chair; then she saw that his feet were wet, and insisted (to

take you out to dinn

cook something for you, and we'll

e said, with admi

her pretty, laughing face was very honest friendliness. "I 'ain't forgot t

preparations in the tiny closet of a

on; her father's a butcher; and he's got a dandy shop on the next block; an' Annie run in with

he table, and that if he opened that closet he'd see the beer. "I got just one bottle,"

ately?" Mau

ar. He was going to 'settle down,' and 'have a home,'-you know the talk? So he took it for the year. Well, he said I could stay till June. So I'm staying. There! It's done!" She put the siz

get one as good,

tness, was a reformed character, owing, no doubt, to his own efforts, Maurice, comfortable in mind and body, felt the intense pleasure of punishing Eleanor by his mere presence in Lily's rooms. For, if she could know where he was!... "Gosh!" said Maurice. But of cours

ter, Lily could do something in the way of uplift for Eleanor! ... Look at this tidy, gay little room, and the well-cooked steak, and the bulbs on the window sill!

if I hadn't but ten cents,

to the fire, and, flecking off the ashes of her cigarette over her shoulder, she talked a friendly trickle of funny stories; Maurice, smoking, too, thought how comfortable he was, and how pleasant it was to have a girl like Lily to talk t

shiny scissors and trimmed the broken edge of

anor. "It would serve her right if I took Lily on," he thought. But he had not the remotest intention o

nor, that the reality came, and he did "take Lily on." When he did so, no o

called him "Curt," and they joked together like two playfellows,-except when he was too gloomy to joke. But it was his gloominess that made her feel sure there was nothing but friendliness in his calls. She was not curious about him; she knew he was married, but she never guessed that his preoccupation-during the spring Maurice was very preoccupied with his own wret

ithfulness. He would never, he told himself, see Lily again! That was easy! He was done with all "Lilys." If he could only shed the self-knowledge which he was unable to share with Eleanor, as easily as he could shed Lily, how thankful he would be! If he could but forget Lily by keeping away from her! But of course he could not forget. And with memory, and its redeeming pain of shame, was also the stabbing mortification of knowing that he had made a fool of himself, again! First Eleanor; then-Lily. Sometimes, with this realization of his idiocy, he would feel an almost physical nausea. It was so horrible to him,

eft its imprint on his face, as well as on his mind. They speculated about it at the office: "'G. Washington's'

im. He had almost nothing to say, now, at dinner-no more jokes with t

Eleanor, without a pause, for an hour. And of course Eleanor felt a difference in him; all day long, in the loneliness of their third-floor front, under the gaze of Daniel Webster, she brooded over it. Even while she was reading magazines and plo

rs you! I'm not enough fo

shortly,

wered? For certainly an idea did spring into her mind: those tiresome people downstairs-he liked to talk to them;-to Miss Moore, who giggled, and tried, Eleanor thought, to seem learned; and to the elderly woman who told stories. How could he enjoy talking to them when he could talk to her? But he did. So, su

he household should make a night of it: "Let's all go up on the roof and see the show!" So the friendly gayety was planned-a supper in the basement dining room at half past eleven-ginger ale! ice cream! chocolate! Then an adjournment en masse to th

aurice told Elea

ad been a real sacrifice to her, was a bomb to the other boarders. "What has happened?" they said to each other, blankly. "She'll be a

ntly "trying"! At midnight they all toiled up four flights of stairs from the basement to the garret, where, with proper squeamishness on the part of the ladies, and much gallantry of pushing and pulling on the part of the gentlemen, and all sorts of awkwardnesses and displaying of legs, they climbed a ladder and got out through the

an attic window. Leaning on the coping and looking down, he thought of the humanity under the dark roofs: a horizontal humanity-everybody asleep! The ugly fancy came to him that if that sleepin

d. Above him soared the abyss of space, velvet black, pricked faintly

aring up into immensity; specks of consciousness on a whirling ball that was rushing forever into the void, and, as it rushed, its shadow, sweeping soundless through the

uld know an ant." Yet, just because Inconceivable Greatness was great, mightn't it know Inconceivable Littleness? "The smaller I am-the nastier, the meaner, the more contemptible-the greater It would have to be to know me? To say I was too little for It to know about, would be to set a limit to Its greatness." How foolish Reason looks, limping along behind such an intuition-Intuition, running and leaping, and praising God! Maurice's reason strained to follow Intuition: "If It knows about me, It could help me, ... because It holds the stars. Why! It could fix things-with Eleanor!" Looking up into the gulf, his tiny misery suddenly fell away. "It would just prove Its greatness,

"light miles"; the old, sad, clever woman said, "The firmament showeth his handiwork,"-and instantly, as

ous firmam

e blue ethe

, standing with her hands clasped lightly in front of her, her hea

ening earth Repeats the story of her birth; Whilst all the s

, unseen, listened. Down in the street, two passers-by paused

nging as th

minutes no one spoke. Miss Moore wiped her eyes; the baseball fan said, huskily, "My mother used to sin

oof melted away; they climbed through the scuttle, forgetting to joke, but saying to each other, in lowered voic

to himself, calmly. The overwhelming grandeur of the heavens had washed him clean of fear, clean even o

ack again in their room-so stifling after those spaces between the wor

" Maurice said;

I thought they might like a hymn? Some of them sai

r" (he could hardly see that terrible path among the stars, bu

ing down, his elbow on his knee, his head in his hand. She came and k

s breath. "How much do

foolishness!) "How much? Why, Maurice, I love you so that sometimes, when I see you talking to other people-even these tiresome people here in the house, I

o be," he said; "I am not-" (the p

itable as Law. It did not seem inevitable now. He had lost his way among the stars. He could not find words to begin his story. But words overflowed on Eleanor's lips!... "Sometimes I get to thinking about myself-I am older than you, you know, a little. Not that it matters, r

as s

a baby," she said in a whisper,

Yet still he caught at Truth! "Dear, don't! As for people, I may talk to them; I may even-even be wi

confession from his lips. Those last words-"I don't love anybody but you"-folded her in complete content! "Dear,

his lips? So he did choke them down, turning his back on the clean freedom of Truth; and the burden of his squalid

ould disappear if he had the luck to be in a theater fire. He knew that because he had enslaved himself to a lie, he had lost the right even to dream freedom. So there were no more "fool thoughts" as to how a man might "kick over the traces." There was nothing for him to do, now (he said), but "play the game." The Houghtons were uneasily aware of a difference in him

to Maurice, but he immediately beat her so badly that she became her old childlike, grumpy self, and said Johnny was nicer for singles; which enabled Maurice to turn her loose on John and go off alone to climb the mountain. He had a dreary fancy for looking at the camp, and living over again those days when he was still young-and a fool, of course; but not so

en by the awful beauty of eternal order, he had, for just one high moment, dreamed that he, too, could attain the orderliness of Truth-and tell Eleanor. "Idiot!" he said, co

that night of Eleanor's courage and love and terror. He even reverted to those first excuses for her: "She nearly killed herself for me. Nervous prostration, Doctor Bennett said. I suppose a woman never gets over that. Poor Eleanor!" he said, softening; "it would kill her ... if she knew." He sat

d that she didn't want any money, and wouldn't take it! And she hadn't taken it. He had made some occasional presents, but nothing of any value. He had given her nothing, hardly even a thought (except the thought that he was an ass), since last May. Thinking of her now, he had another of those pangs of shame which had stabbed him so at first, but to which of late he had grown callous. The

y store

ft two

and with

ths to fee

er; saw a cloud shadow touch the shoulder of a mountain and move down across the gracious bosom of its forests. Below him, chestnuts twinkled and shimmered in the sun, and there were dusky stretches of hemlocks, then open pastures, vividly green from the August rains.... "It ought to be set to music," he thought; the violins would give the flicker of the leaves-"and the harps would outline the river. Eleanor's voice is lovely ... she looks fifty. How," he pondered, interested in the mechanics of it, "did she ever get me into that wagon?" Then, again, he was sorry for her, and said, "Poor girl!" Then he was sorry for himself. He knew that he was tired to death of Eleanor-tired of her moods and her lovemaking. He was not angry with her; he did not hate her;-he had injured her too much to hate her; he was simply unutterably tired of her-what he did hate, was this busi

n't a man get a minute to himself?" Maurice thought, despairingly. It was the mild-eyed and s

eerful gasps; "thought we'd co

Mauri

eyes angry and ashamed, staring over the treetops, sat down beside him. Johnny pulled out his pipe, and Edith

Mauric

aid. "Eleanor told me to bri

some instinct warned him that that cramped handwriting on the narrow lavender envelope, forwarded from the office, could only be hers. A whiff of perfumery m

of Johnny Bennett's pipe in his nostrils, and the friendly Edith beside him, he tore open the scented envelope, a

ou'll say. I hope you won't be mad. I

d even his horror; he swallowed-swallowed-swallowed. Ed

r hands?" Edith inquired. "

shaking so that the paper rustled. He did not hear her.

you help me a little? Sorry to

fri

I

h your hands?" Edith sa