Youth and the Bright Medusa

had to do. It was one thing to gratify every wish of a cake-loving fellow like Bouchalka, but quite another to stand behind a financier. And Brown would be a financier or nothing. After her marri

mism was like trying to find framework in a feather bed. All Cressida knew was that she was perpetually "investing" to save investments. When she told me she had put a mortgage on the Tenth Street house, her eyes filled with tears. "Why is it? I have never cared about money, except to make people happy with it, and it has been the curse of my life. I

his interests there. Then Cressida went to England-where she could always raise money from a faithful public-for a winter concert tour.

el. But Cressida had waited for the first trip of the sea monster-she still believed that all advertising was good-and she went down on the road between the old world and the new. She had been ill, and when the collision occur

who had come on from Ohio. I had not seen him for years. He was now an old man, but he was still conscious of being in the public eye, and sat turning a cigar about in his face with that foolish look of importance which Cressida's achievement had stamped upon all the Garnets. Poppas was in front, with Horace. He was gnawing the finger of his chamois glove as it rested on the top of his cane. His head was s

ks that were almost worthless. The marketable property realized only a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To defeat the bequest of fifty thousand dollars to Poppas, Jerome Brown and her family

and entreated him to go with her to some foreign city where they could live quietly and where she could rest; if they were careful, there would "be enough for all." Neither Brown nor her brothers and sisters had any sense of shame about these le

f the lot of them, he was the only one who had helped her to make one penny of the money that had brought her so much misery. He was at least more deserving than the others. We saw to it that

ded that Cressida's jewels and furs and gowns were to go to her sisters. Georgie and Julia wrangled over them down to the last moleskin. They were deeply disappointed that some of the muffs and stoles which they rememb

gs we had become rather better friends than of old. His reply arrived only

ich u

ur in d

h und

ort oben

which have followed Poppas into the middle of As

ld S

le he was a junior partner. When he became a person of substance he stopped that sort of nonsense. His wife, too, was a sensible person, the daughter of an old Pittsburgh family as solid and well-rooted as the McKanns. She would never have bothered him about this concert had not the meddlesome Mrs. Post arrived to pay her a visit. Mrs. Post was an old school friend of Mrs. McKann, and because she lived in Ci

he had settled the matter, made his reservation on the 11.25 train for New York. He was unable to get a drawing-room because this same Kitty Ayrshir

, behind the piano, and that they would be on sale at noon. Would he please get seats in the front row? McKann asked if they would not excuse him, since he was going over to New York on the late train, would be tired, and would not have time to dress, etc. No, not at all.

as well known, and sitting among a lot of music students and excitable old maids. Only the desperately zealous or the morbidly curious would endure two h

riving in the Bois with a French composer-old enough, he judged, to be her father-who was said to be infatuated, carried away by her. McKann was told that this was one of the historic passions of old age. He had looked at her on that occasion, but she was so befrilled and befeathered that he caught nothing but a graceful outline and a small, dark head above a white ostrich boa. He had noted with disgust, however, the st

be less conspicuous there than in the centre, and he had not foreseen that the singer would walk over him every time she came upon the stage. Her velvet train brushed against his trousers as she passed him. The applause which greeted her was neith

t; but then it was a little disconcerting, even to the well-disposed. It was constructed of a yard or two of green velvet-a reviling, shrieking green which would have made a fright of any woman who had not inextinguishable beauty-and it was made without armholes, a device to which we were then so unaccustomed that it was nothing less than alarming. The v

its money and to make her name a household word. Nobody ever became a household word of being an artist, surely; and you were not a thoroughly paying proposition until your name meant something on the sidewalk and in the barber-shop. Kitty studied her audience with an appraising eye. She liked the stimulus

she was doing it. They thawed gradually under the beauty of her voice and the subtlety of her interpretation. She had sung seldom in concert then, and they had supposed her very d

into his clever generalization. She displayed, under his nose, the only kind of figure he considered worth looking at-that of a very young girl, supple and sinuous and quicksilverish; thin, eager shoulders, polished white arms that were nowhere too fat and nowhere too thin. McKann found it agreeable to look at Kitty, but when he

in front, glanced up at the balconies, and then turned to the company huddled on the stage behind her. After her gay and careless bows, she retreated toward

a rock face, exactly, but a kind of pressed-brick-and-cement face, a "business" face upon which years and feelings had made no mark-in which cocktails might eventually blast out a few hollows. He had never seen himself so distinctly in his shaving-glass as he did in that instant when Kitty Ayrshire's liquid eye held him,

nn in the act of yawning behind his hand-he of course wore no gloves-and he thought she frowned a little. This did not embarrass him; it somehow made him feel important. When she retired after the seco

rigid public was thoroughly aroused. While she was coming back again and again to smile and curtsy,

on the same train. She sings in Faust at the o

ten for her and to her and round about her, by the veteran French composer who adored her,-the last and not the palest flash of his creative fire. This brought her audience all the way. They clamoured for more of it, but she was not to be coerced. She had been unyielding through storms to whi

ike for pretty women; he even didn't deny that gay girls had their place in the world, but they ought to be kept in their place. He was born a Presbyterian, just as he was born a McKann. He sat in his pew in the First Church every Sunday, and he never missed a presbytery meeting when he was in town. His religion was not very spiritual, certainly, but it was substantial and concrete, mad

Schenley, McKann lit a big cigar, got into

of the troublesome bubble of life as the Allegheny cemetery itself. Suddenly the cab stopped, and McKann thrust his head out of the window. A woman was standing in the middle of the street addressing his driver in a t

d as to help us? It is M

nd we cannot move. We m

the train; she sings to

Could you not take us

ert

ave to hurry. It's eleven-ten now. You've only got fift

zement. "But, the hand-luggage to carry, and M

ver had gone off somewhere to telephone for a car. Miss Ayrshire seemed not at all apprehensive; she had not doubted that a rescuer would be forthco

to the concert stage. The petals showered upon the sooty, sleety pavement as she picked her way along. They would be lying there tomorrow morning, and the child

ten it. It is on the back sea

r bag. When he returned he found the maid and the luggage bestowed on the fron

is. I'm not even sure about the name. Céline thinks it is East Liberty, but I think it is West Liber

e didn't think the name refe

n we called a place Liberty Hill or Liberty Hollow-well, we meant it. You will excuse me if I'm uncommunicative, won't you? I

histling in. A porter opened the door. McKann sprang out, gave him a claim check and his

claimed, as she saw his face in the light. "What a coincidence!" She made no further move to alight, but

s Ayrshire, if you mean to catch that train

" she laugh

the sun. They reached the door of Miss Ayrshire's state-room just as the train began to pull out. McKann was ashamed of the way he was panting, for Kitty's breathing was as soft and regular as when she was reclining on the back seat of his taxi. It had somehow run in his head that all these

out it. He had got the last section left on the train, No. 13, next the drawing-room. Every other berth in the car was made up. He was just starting to

hall not disturb any one." She crossed her feet and rested her elbow on his Gladstone. Though she still wore her gold slippers and stockings, she did not, he thanked Heaven, have on her concert go

e wasn't being taken in. "Did you?

ight, and I thought I was singing very we

"My dear young lady, I am not critical at

What did displease you? My gown, perhaps? It may seem a little outré here, but it's the sort of thi

c. If I looked uncomfortable, it was probably because I was u

ay with a smile as he came toward them. Half-clad Pittsburghers were tramping up and down the aisle, casting sidelong glances at McKann and his companion. "How much better they look with all their clothes on," she murmured. Then, turning directly to McKann again:

at. He thought he would try her out. She had come for it, and he would let her have it. He found, however, that it was harder to formulate the grounds of

t much believe in any of you fluffy-ruffles people. I have a sor

"Artists, you mean?" dr

your bu

oa

ever so many. I don't know any coal-men, but I think I could be

rested. There is so much fake about your profession. It's an affectation on both sides. I know a great many of the people who went to hear you ton

tribe he had ever seen that he would cross the street to see again. Those were remarkable eyes

y are honest because it is the accepted rule of good conduct in business. Do you know"-she looked at him squarely-"I thought you wou

of people to get together and pretend to

ople go to church in exactly the same way? If there were a spiritual-pressur

know I go

is seat with the toe of her gold slipper. "You sat there all evening, glaring at me as if you could eat me alive. Now I give you a chance to state your objec

I perhaps dislike your

ve a natural distru

lly dislike coal-men. I don't classify people by their occupations. Doubtless I should find some coal-men repulsi

to boot. But you are, all of you, according to my standards, li

ome things to be heavy, and in others to be light. Some things are meant to go de

"fed on hectic emotions. You are pampered. You don't help to car

ent I am supporting just eight people, besides those I hire. There was never another family in California that had so many cripples and hard-luckers as that into which I had the honour to be born. The only ones who could take care of themselves were ruined by the San Francisco earthquake some time ago. One should make personal sacrifices. I do; I give money and time and effort to talented students. Oh, I give something much more than that! something that you probably have never given to any one. I give, to the really gifted ones, my wish, my desire, my light,

ural and simple. She was at ease because she was not afraid of him or of herself, or of certain half-clad acquaint

As nearly as I could get it, he believes that we are a race who can exist only by gratifying appetites; the appetites are evil, and the existence they carry on is evil. We were always sad, he says, without knowing why; even in the Stone Age. In some miraculous way a divine ideal was disclosed to us, directly at variance with our appetites. It gave us a new craving, which we could only satisfy by starving all the other hunger

a crank," said M

ou mean by

an ext

e a world full of people who keep to the golden

cept when yo

ult. Still, you did provoke it by glari

s dra

pologetic and sneaking. When righteousness becomes alive and burning, you hate it as much as you do beauty. You want a little of each in your life, perha

"My views on women," he

them to your stenographers as well as to me? I take it for granted you have

With a woman, everything comes back t

down to brass tacks, eh? I have beaten you i

e are very much alike. You are more different than any one I have met for some time, but I know that there are a great many more at home like you. And even you-I believe there is a real creature down under these custom-made prejudices that save you the trouble of thinking. If you and I were shipwrecked on a de

or his watch-chain. "Of

any generalizations-

pher seems to you a better sort. Well, she does to me. Just because her life is, presumably, greyer than mine, she seems better. My mind tells me that dulness, and a mediocre order of ability, and poverty, are not in themselves admirable things. Yet in my heart I always feel that the sales-women in shops and the working girls in factories are more

to go

many fish yo

rk hard for him. I like the pussy-willows and the cold; and the sky

u'd like to be a tenor, and a perfect lady-killer!" She rose, smiling, and paused with her hand on the door of her stateroom. "Anyhow, thank you for a pleasant evening. And, by the way, dream of me tonight, and not of either of those ladies who sat beside you. It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of." She noticed his bricky flush. "You are very naive, after all, but, oh, so cautious! You are naturally afraid of everything new,

oom, Céline, in her dressing-g

gentleman interesting?" sh

same thing. If I could find one really intellig

iginal," murmured Céline, as she

*

ing his hair with his fingers, began to hunt about for his clothes. As he put up the window-blind some bright object in t

ondered whether he might have been breathing audibly when the intruder thrust her head between his curtains. He was conscious that he did not look a Prince Charming in his sleep. He dressed as fast as he could, and, when he was ready to go to t

his clothes-closet. He found it there when he returned from the theatre that evening. Considerably mellowed by food and drink and cheerful company, he took the slipper in his hand and decided t

*

s state of mind. He has had the pine-trees in his yard cut down because they remind him of cemeteries. On Sundays or holidays, when the office is empty, and he takes his will or his insurance-policies out of his lock-box, he ofte

mpractical, since then, that she has long ago forgotten the night wh

an

hate the glass windows between her and the world, and the wintry stretch of the Park they looked out upon. She was losing a great deal of money, and, what was worse, she was losing life; days of which she wanted to make the utmost were slipping by, and nights which were to have crowned the days, nights of incalculable possibilities, were being stolen from her by women for whom she had

g to lose her resiliency? Was she, by any cursed chance, facing a bleak time when she would have to cherish herself? She protested, as she wandered about her sunny, many-windowed rooms on the tenth floor, that if she was going to have to live frugally, she wouldn't live at all. She wouldn't live on any terms but the very gene

d, but during this calamitous time he had tried to be soothing, and he agreed with Creedon that she must not risk a premature appearance. Kitty was tormented by a suspicion that he was secretly backing the little Spanish woman who had sung many of her parts since she had been ill. He furthered the girl's interests because his wife had a very special con

he would go to pieces. In some way the chill of her disillusionment would quiver through the long, black line which reached from the box-office down to Seventh Avenue on nights when she sang. They shivered there in the rain and cold, all tho

the outside world but notes and flowers and disquieting morning papers, Kitt

horrors to me. Every night is the last night of a condemned

than with others. His athletic figure, his red cheeks, and splendid teeth always ha

Shall I come and hold your lovely hand from

! But the world is big, and I am missing it. Let some one come tonight, some one interesting, but not too interesting. Pierce Tevis, for instance. He is just back from Par

t all evening in Kitty's dressing-room, spraying her throat and calming her nerves, using every expedient to get her through a performance. He had studied her voice like a singing master; knew all of its idiosyncrac

I may depend on your word?" He rose, and stood before the deep couch on which his patient reclined. Her arch look

"May I?" Selecting one, he sat down on the chair from which he had lately risen, and leaned f

e hospital. I've a nasty little operation to do this morning. I'

es ran rapidly about, s

on la

r lunch, with all the windows open, remember. Read something diverting, but not exciting; s

-tree that had come that morning was giving out its faint sweetness in the warm room. But Kitty looked paler and wearier than when the doctor was with her. Even with him she rose to her part just a little; cou

any scale she knew. Parker White had brought him to her, from Ojo Caliente, in New Mexico, where he had been trained in the pine forests by an old Mexican and an ill-tempered, lame master-bird, half thrush, t

re. Her tiny Chinese slippers were embroidered so richly that they resembled the painted porcelain of old vases. She looked like a sultan's youngest, newest bride; a beautiful little toy-woman, sitting at one end of the long room which compo

one could feel the grey, chill winter twilight in the Paris streets outside. There stood the cavalier-like old composer, who had done much for Kitty, in his most characteristic attitude, before the hearth. Mme. Simon sat at the tea-table. B--, the historian, and H--, the philologist, stood in animated discussion behind the piano, w

ly harmonized and richly associated rooms in Paris. There her friends sat or stood about, men distinguished, women at once plain and beautiful, with their furs and b

ly and greeted Kitty, stood before her fire

red, God knows where, fighting to preserve just that. But your own roo

ugged her

lamp, but I can't supply th

ard and took her hand affectionately. "You've been over a rough bit of road. I'm so

gratefully against

but-gossip. That always gets in. Often I don't mind, b

how hard up we are for interesting public personages; for a royal family, for romantic fictio

rather more than t

ce? You are the sort of person who makes myths. You can't turn around without making one. That's your singular good luck. A whole staff of pub

e person I'm supposed to be as of the person I really am. I wish you would invent a new

rose i

int your public. The popular imagination, to which you make such a direct appeal, for some reason wished you to have a son, so it has given you one. I've he

d dropped back

does he, in spite of

kept in Russia, in St. Petersburg, that was. He is about eight years old and of marvellous beauty. He is always that in every version. My old friend has seen him being driven in his sledge on the Nevskii Prospekt on winter afternoons; black horses with silver bells and a giant

ughed mo

pretend to have a son. It would be very like him." She looked at her finger-tips and her rings disapprovingly for a moment. "Do you kno

d up and sa

u like hi

ne has only two or three things to choose from, life is hard; when one has many, it is harder still. No, on the

at least I never heard but one that

ked int

es get started? How did that one get going and w

and won't be vexed, I can tell you exactly how it got going, for I took the trouble t

ell me; I should like to know exact

and not get into a rage, and let

n painting had a kind of beauty which she would never have. This knowledge, Tevis was thinking, this important realization, contributed more to her loveliness than any other thing about her; more than her smooth, ivory skin or her changing grey eyes, the delicate forehead above them, or even the dazz

on her friend

you did. I hate to deprive

for me. May you? No, I suppose not." He settled himself by the fire, with the can

eve that you were with Stein. I could not contradict them at that time, however, for the resemblance, if it was merely a resemblance, was absolute, and all the world knew that you were not singing at the Manhattan that night. The girl's hair was dressed just as you then wore yours. Moreover, her head was small and restless like yours, and she had your colouring, your eyes, your chin. She carried herself with the critical indifference one might expect in an artist who had come for a look at a new production that was clearly doomed to failure. She applauded lightly. She made comments to Ste

r elbow and burs

woman really looked like, and they were all dressmakers. Even painters"-glancing back in the direction of the Simon picture-"never get more than one type through their thick heads; they try to make all women look like some wife or mistress. You are all the same; you never see our real faces. What you do see, is some cheap concepti

s man of that management, in the lobby, and asked him whether Kitty Ayrshire was in the house. He said he thought so. Stein had telephoned for a box, and said he was bringing one

d he used to keep such eccentric hours that I had not run across him for a long time. We got to talkin

world to choose her friends from, this young woman should flit about with Siegm

ked, 'seen her wi

the Manhattan on nights when Kitty sang. I told Dan that I suspected a masquerade. That interested him, and he said he thought he would look into the matter. In short, w

mon sort of ugliness that comes from over-eating and automobiles. He isn't one of the fat horrors. He has one of those rigid, horselike faces that never tell anything; a long nose, flattened as if i

. While he was still at the machine, a hideous, underfed little whippersnapper, he was already a youth of many-coloured ambitions, deeply concerned about his dress, his associates, his recreations. He haunted the old Astor Library and the Metropolitan Museum, learned something about pictures and porcelains, took singing lessons, though he had a voice like a crow's. When he sat down to his baked apple and doughnut in a basement lunch-room, he would prop a book up before him and address his food with as much leisure and ceremony as if he

s said to be a secret agent for some South American republic-to teach him Spanish. He cultivated the society of the unknown great: poets, actors, musicians. He entertained them sumptuously, and they re

motional actress who is now quite forgotten, but who had her little hour of expectation. Then there was a dancer; then, just after Gorky's visit he

e girl's address through a taxi-cab driver who got next to Stein's chauffeur. She had an apartment in a decent-enough house

rls over, and picked Ruby out from several hundred. He had her call at his office after business hours, tried her out in cloaks and evening gowns, and offered her a position. She never, however, appeared as a model in the Sixth Avenu

tory is still the biggest earner of his properties. I've seen him there with these buyers, and they carried themselves as if they were being let in on something; took possession of the box with a proprietory air, smiled and applauded and looked wise as if each and every one of them were friends of Kitty Ayrshire. While they buzzed and tra

eople are like children; nothing that is true or probable interests them. They want the old, gaudy lies, told always in the same way. Siegmund Stein and Kitty Ayrshire-a story like that, once launched, is repeated unchall

ng in hotels, took this apartment, and began to know people. Stein discontinued his pantomime at the right moment, withdrew his patronage. Ruby, of course, did not go back to shirtwaists. A business friend of Stein's took her over, and she dropped out of sight. Last winter, one cold, snowy night, I saw her onc

ining porcelain slipper out to the fire. "The girl doesn't interest me. There is nothing I can

ss. Her people have a line of department stores along the Pacific Coast. The Steins now inhabit a great house on

e end of her couch nearest her gu

bout that house than you

sequel to

at all. We were told that we could take only hand luggage on the railways, but I took nine trunks and Peppo. I dressed Peppo in knickerbockers, made him brush his curls down over his ears like doughnuts, and carry a little violin-case. It took us eleven days to reach Naples. I got my trunks through purely by personal persuasion. Once at Naples, I ha

rina,' he kept whimpering. 'Why shou

reamed. 'Not t

oce. It is gone

t string, I wished I hadn't made the boy such a spectacle. But ridiculous as he was, I managed to make the inspector believe that I had kidnapped him, and that he was indispensable to my happiness. I found that incorruptible official, like mos

ala. Peppo had to scratch along just any way. One evening he came to me and said he could get an engagement to sing for the grand rich Steins, but the condition was that I should sing with him. They would pay,

re I had my first glimpse of the company. They were strange people. The women glittered like Christmas-trees. When we were half-way down the stairs, the buzz of conversation stopped so suddenly that some foolish remark I happened to be making rang out like oratory. Every face was lifted toward us. My host and I completed our descent and went the length of the drawing-room through a silence which somewhat awed me. I couldn't help wishing that one could ever get that kind of attention in a concert-hall. In the music-room Stein insisted upon arranging things for me. I must say that he was neither awkward nor stupid, not so wooden as most rich men who rent singers. I was properly affable. One has, under such circumstances, to be either gracious or pout

ran through the drawing-room and fled up the stairway, which was thronged with Old Testament characters. As I passed them, they all looked at me with delighted, cherishing eyes, as if I had at last come back to my native hamlet. At the top of the stairway a young man, who look

that I would, of course, come down to supper, as a special tabl

began to fear that I would actually be dragged down to supper. It was as if I had been kidnapped. I felt like Gulliver among the giants. These people were all too-well, too much what they were. No chill of manner could hold them off. I was defenseless. I must get away. I ran to the top of the staircase and looked down. There was that fool Peppo, beleaguered by a bevy of fair women. They were simply looting him, and he was grinning like an idio

ace and began to talk; said rather intelligent things. I did not drive him out; it was his own house, and he made himself agreeable. After a time a deputation of his friends came down the hall, somewhat boisterously, to say that supper could not be served until we came down. Stein was still standing by the

s. Siegmund Stein, lately married in New York City, and Kitty Ayrshire, operatic soprano, who sang at their house-warming. Mrs. Stein and I were gr

is

no discretion. It was just like you to fall

y circle, they'll get you in the end. That's why I don't feel compassionate about your Ruby. She and I are in t

l's

out his son. Paul entered the faculty room suave and smiling. His clothes were a trifle out-grown, and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but for all that there was something of the dandy about him, and he

rical brilliancy, and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sort of way, peculiarly offensive in a boy. The pupils were

at it was scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble, which lay in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of the boy's; in the contempt which they all knew he felt for them, and which he seemingly made not the least effort to conceal. Once, when he had been making a synopsis of a paragraph at the blackboard, his English teacher had stepped to his side and attempted to guide his hand. Paul had started back with a shudder and thrust his hands violently behind him. The aston

abit of raising his eyebrows that was contemptuous and irritating to the last degree.) Older boys than Paul had broken down and shed tears under that ordeal, but his set smile did not once desert him, and his only sign of discomfort was the nervous trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons of his overcoat, and an

of the boy's, and the Principal asked him whether he thought that a courteous speech

e polite or impolite, either. I guess it's a so

of. Paul grinned and said he guessed so. When he was told that he could go, he bowed

t the boy which none of them understood. He added: "I don't really believe that smile of his comes altogether from insolence;

his eyes. One warm afternoon the boy had gone to sleep at his drawing-board, and his master had noted with amazement what

to have uttered this feeling in cutting terms, and to have set each other on, as it were, in the grewsome game of

n to see whether some of his teachers were not there to witness his lightheartedness. As it was now late in the af

m. He was delighted to find no one in the gallery but the old guard, who sat in the corner, a newspaper on his knee, a black patch over one eye and the other closed. Paul possessed himself of the place and walked confidently up and down, whistling under his breath. After a while he sat down b

oming-though he knew the tight, straight coat accentuated his narrow chest, about which he was exceedingly sensitive. He was always excited while he dressed, twanging all over to the tuning of the strings and the pr

w more and more vivacious and animated, and the colour came to his cheeks and lips. It was very much as though this were a great reception and Paul were the host. Just as the musicians came out to take their places, his English teacher arrived with checks for the seats which a prominent manufacturer had taken for the season. She betrayed some embarrassment when she handed Paul the tickets, and a hauteur which subsequently made her feel

led there like the Genius in the bottle found by the Arab fisherman. He felt a sudden zest of life; the lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendour. When the soprano soloist came on, Paul forgot even the nastiness of his teacher's being there, and gave himself up to the peculiar

down; of its being impossible to give up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called living at all. During the last number he withdrew and, after hastily c

house under a Christmas tree. All the actors and singers of any importance stayed there when they were in the city, and a number of the big manufacturers of the place live

that he, too, entered. He seemed to feel himself go after her up the steps, into the warm, lighted building, into an exotic, a tropical world of shiny, glistening surfaces and basking ease. He reflected upon the mysterious dishes that were brought into the dining-room, the green bottles in buckets of ice, as he had seen them in the supper party pictures of the Sunday supplement. A quick gust of wind brought the rain down with sudden vehemence, and Paul was startled to find that he was still outside in

ly improvised fictions that were forever tripping him up, his upstairs room and its horrible yellow wallpaper, the creaking bureau with the greasy plush collar-box, and over his painte

m were as exactly alike as their homes, and of a piece with the monotony in which they lived. Paul never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing. His home was next the house of the Cumberland minister. He approached it tonight with the nerveless sense of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home. The moment he turn

tairs, his hairy legs sticking out from his nightshirt, his feet thrust into carpet slippers. He was so much later than usual that there would certainly be inquiries and reproaches. Paul stopped short before the door. He felt that he could not

furnace door, and sat down. He was horribly afraid of rats, so he did not try to sleep, but sat looking distrustfully at the dark, still terrified lest he might have awakened his father. In such reactions, after one of the experiences which made days and nights out of the dreary blanks of the calendar, when his senses were deadened, Paul's head was always singularly clear. Suppose his father had heard him getting in at the window

at led down to the sidewalk, while the women, in their Sunday "waists," sat in rockers on the cramped porches, pretending to be greatly at their ease. The children played in the streets; there were so many of them that the place resembled the recreation grounds of a kindergarten. The men on the steps-all in their shirt sleeves, their vests unbuttoned-sat with their legs well apart, their stomachs comfortably protruding, and talked of the prices of th

w many shirt-waists they had made in the last week, and how many waffles some one had eaten at the last church supper. When the weather was warm, and his father was in a particularly jovial frame of mind, the girls m

e thick spectacles, with gold bows that curved about his ears. He was clerk to one of the magnates of a great steel corporation, and was looked upon in Cordelia Street as a young man with a future. There was a story that, some five years ago-he was now barely twenty-six-he had been a trifle 'dissipated,' but in order to curb his appetites and save the loss of time and stren

ld, in turn, the plan his corporation was considering, of putting in an electric railway plant at Cairo. Paul snapped his teeth; he had an awful apprehension that they might spoil it all before he got there. Yet he rather liked to hear these legends of the iron kings, that wer

e had to repeat, as his father, on principle, did not like to hear requests for money, whether much or little. He asked Paul whether he could not go to some boy who lived nearer, and told him that he ought not to leave his s

ngers a few drops of violet water from the bottle he kept hidden in his drawer. He left the house with his geometry conspicuously under his arm,

ght rehearsals whenever he could. For more than a year Paul had spent every available moment loitering about Charley Edwards's dressing-room. He had won a place among Edwards's followi

moment he inhaled the gassy, painty, dusty odour behind the scenes, he breathed like a prisoner set free, and felt within him the possibility of doing or saying splendid, brilliant things. The mom

because his experience of life elsewhere was so full of Sabbath-school picnics, petty economies, wholesome advice as to how to succeed in life, and the unescapable odours of cooking, th

It was very like the old stories that used to float about London of fabulously rich Jews, who had subterranean halls, with palms, and fountains, and soft lamps and richly apparelled women who never saw the disenchanting li

e wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own. It was equally true that he was not stage-struck-not, at any rate, in

ok these people seriously; he must convey to them that he considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a joke, anyway. He had autograph pictures of all the members of the stock company which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible stories of his familiarity with these people, of his acquaintance with the soloists who came to Carnegie Hall, his suppers

was appreciated elsewhere, he mentioned once or twice that he had no time to fool with theorems; adding-with a twitch of the eyebrows and a

work. The manager at Carnegie Hall was told to get another usher in his stead; the doorkeeper at the theatre was w

hard-working women, most of them supporting indolent husbands or brothers, and they laughed rather bitterly at having stirr

uneasy slumber, rubbed the breath-misted window glass with his hand, and peered out. The snow was whirling in curling eddies above the white bottom lands, and the drifts lay already deep in the fields and along

had noticed him in Denny & Carson's office. When the whistle woke him, he clutched quickly at his breast pocket, glancing about him with an uncertain smile. But the little, clay-bespattered Italians were stil

was just opening for the day. He spent upward of two hours there, buying with endless reconsidering and great care. His new street suit he put on in the fitting-room; the frock coat and dress clothes he had bundled into the cab with his new shirts. Then he drove to a hatt

from Washington; said his mother and father had been abroad, and that he had come down to await the arrival of their steamer. He told his st

one over every detail of it with Charley Edwards, and in his scrap book at home t

hem hastily into water, and then tumbled into a hot bath. Presently he came out of his white bath-room, resplendent in his new silk underwear, and playing with the tassels of his red robe. The snow was whirling so fiercely outside his windows that he could scarcely see across the street; but within, the air was deliciously soft and fragrant. He put the violets and jonquils on the tabouret beside the

gh that he had always been tormented by fear, a sort of apprehensive dread that, of late years, as the meshes of the lies he had told closed about him, had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and tighter. Until now, he could not remember a time when he had not been dreading something. Eve

f, as though he had at last thrown down

e bank notes which he had taken from the book and quietly transferred to his pocket. At the bank he had made out a new deposit slip. His nerves had been steady enough to permit of his returning to the office, where he had finished his work and asked for a full day's holiday tomorrow, Saturday, giving

this time there would be no awakening, no figure at the top of the stairs

days gone already! He spent nearly an hour in dressing, watching every stage of his toilet carefully

woollen mufflers were shovelling off the doorsteps; the avenue stages made fine spots of colour against the white street. Here and there on the corners whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows, against which the

arriages poured down the avenue, intersected here and there by other streams, tending horizontally. There were a score of cabs about the entrance of his hotel, and his driver had to wait. Boys in livery were running in and out of the awning stretched across the sidewalk, up and

the plot of all dramas, the text of all romances, the nervestuff of all sensation

his breath. The lights, the chatter, the perfumes, the bewildering medley of colour-he had, for a moment, the feeling of not being able to stand it. But only for a moment; these were his own people, he to

in his glass-Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at all. This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this was what all the struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he ever known a place called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged looking business men boarded the early car? Mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paul,-sickening men, with combings of children's h

ded for. Nor was he lonely later in the evening, in his loge at the Opera. He was entirely rid of his nervous misgivings, of his forced aggressiveness, of the imperative desire to show himself different from his surroundings. He fel

en he went to sleep, it was with the lights turned on in his bedroom; partly because of his old timidity, and partly so that, if he should wake

to show Paul the night side of the town, and the two boys went off together after dinner, not returning to the hotel until seven o'clock the next morning. They had started out in the confiding warmth of a champagne friendship, but their parti

his flowers, his clothes, his wide divan, his cigarette and his sense of power. He could not remember a time when he had felt so at peace with himself. The mere release from the necessity of petty lying, lying every day and every day, restored his self-respect. He had never lied for pleasure, even at school; but to make himself noticed and admired, to assert h

ny & Carson announced that the boy's father had refunded the full amount of his theft, and that they had no intention of prosecuting. The Cumberland minister had been interviewed, and expressed his hope of yet reclaiming the motherles

d years; Sabbath-school, Young People's Meeting, the yellow-papered room, the damp dish-towels; it all rushed back upon him with sickening vividness. He had the old feeling that the orchestra had suddenly stopped, the sinking sensation that the play was over. The sweat broke out on his face, and

he mere scenic accessories had again, and for the last time, their old potency. He would show himself that he was game, he would finish the thing splendidly. He doubted, more than ever, the existence of Cordelia Street, and for the first time he

n well out of their clutches before now. But the other side of the world had seemed too far away and too uncertain then; he could not have waited for it; his need had been too

oes on. His limbs and hands were lead heavy, and his tongue and throat were parched. There came upon him one of those fateful attacks of clear-headedness that

e knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted. The thing was winding itself up; he had thought of that on his first glorious day in New York, and

tely calm; perhaps because he had looked into the dark corner at last, and knew. It was bad enough, what he saw there; but somehow not so bad as his long fear of it had been. He saw everything clearly now. He had a feeling that

tracks, his mind a medley of irrelevant things. He seemed to hold in his brain an actual picture of everything he had seen that morning. He remembered every feature of both his drivers, the toothless old woman from whom he had bought the red flowers in his coat, the agent from whom he had got his ticket, and all of his fellow-passengers on the ferry. His mind, unable to cope with vital matters near at

long before this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass. It was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which t

ering, his lips drawn away from them in a frightened smile; once or twice he glanced nervously sidewise, as though he were being watched. When the right moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his

urably far and fast, while his limbs gently relaxed. Then, because the picture making mechanism was crus

ner M

lean, was from my uncle Howard, and informed me that his wife had been left a small legacy by a bachelor relative, and that it would be necessary for her to go to Boston to attend to the settling of the estate. He requested me to meet her at the station and rende

xistence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness

ers to alight, and it was not until I got her into the carriage that she seemed really to recognize me. She had come all the way in a day coach; her linen duster had become black with

estors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of my uncle, Howard Carpenter, then an idle, shiftless boy of twenty-one. When she returned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her, and the upshot of this infatuation was that she eloped with him, eluding the reproaches of her family and the criticism of her friends by going with him to the Nebraska frontier. Carpenter, who, of course, had no money, took up a homestead in Red Willow County, fifty miles from the railroad. There they had measured

tions, gently shaking me when my drowsy head sank down over a page of irregular verbs. It was to her, at her ironing or mending, that I read my first Shakspere, and her old text-book on mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. She taught me my scales and exercises on the little parlour organ which her husband had bought her after fifteen years during which she had not so much as seen a musical instrument. She would sit beside

journey that she had no recollection of anything but her discomfort, and, to all intents and purposes, there were but a few hours of nightmare between the farm in Red Willow County and my study on Newbury Street. I had planned a little pleasure for her that afternoon, to repay her for some o

altogether too timid to wish to venture out. She questioned me absently about various changes in the city, but she was chiefly concerned that she had forgotten to leave instructions about feeding half-skimmed milk to a certain weakling calf, "old Maggie's calf

familiar with their respective situations, and had once possessed the piano score of The Flying Dutchman. I began to th

g suddenly into the world to which she had been dead for a quarter of a century. But, again, I found how superficially I had judged her. She sat looking about her with eyes as impersonal, almost as stony, as those with which the granite Rameses in a museum watches the froth and fret that ebbs and

unting, the shimmer of fabrics soft and firm, silky and sheer; red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, purple, écru, rose, yellow, cream, and white, all the colours that an impressionist

had not forgotten how they had sunk into mine when I came fresh from ploughing forever and forever between green aisles of corn, where, as in a treadmill, one might walk from daybreak to dusk without perceiving a shadow of change. The clean profiles of the musicians, the gloss of their linen, the dull black of their coats, the beloved shapes of the i

of strings, there came to me an overwhelming sense of the waste and wear we are so powerless to combat; and I saw again the tall, naked house on the prairie, black and grim as a wooden fortress; the black pond where I had learned to swim, its margin pitted with sun-dried cattle tracks; the rain gullied clay banks about the n

of a quarter of a century ago. She had often told me of Mozart's operas and Meyerbeer's, and I could remember hearing her sing, years ago, certain melodies of Verdi. When I had fallen ill with a fever in her house she used to sit by my cot in the evening-when the cool, night win

o at all comprehend this power which had kindled the world since she had left it? I was in a fever of curiosity, but Aunt Georgiana sat silent upon her peak in Darien. She preserved this utter immobility throughout the number from The Flying Dutchman, though her fingers worked mechanically upon her black dress, as if, of themselves, they were re

a moment more, they were in my eyes as well. It never really died, then-the soul which can suffer so excruciatingly and so interminably; it withers to the outward eye only; like

on his gingham-sheeted bed in the hands' bedroom which opened off the kitchen, cleaning the leather of his boots and saddle, singing the "Prize Song," while my aunt went about her work in the kitchen. She had hovered over him until she had prevailed upon him to join the country church, though his sole fitness for this step, in so far as I could gather, lay in his

etter things than the ol

ied, with a well mean

om behind it she murmured, "And you have been hearing this ever since you

eral march. My aunt wept quietly, but almost continuously, as a shallow vessel overflows in a rain-stor

e trembling of her face I could well believe that before the last number she had been carried out where the myriad graves are, into the grey, nameless burying ground

swoman made no effort to rise. The harpist slipped the green felt cover over his instrument; the flute-players shook the water from their

ars and sobbed pleadingly. "I don't w

the tall, unpainted house, with weather-curled boards, naked as a tower; the crook-backed ash seedlings

lptor's

their trousers pockets, their overcoats open, their shoulders screwed up with the cold; and they glanced from time to time toward the southeast, where the railroad track wound along the river shore. They conversed in low tones and moved about restlessly, seeming uncertain as to what was expected of them. There was but one of the company who looked as if he knew exactly why he was there, and he kept conspicuously apart; walking to the far end o

e agin to-night, Jim," he remarked in a

nnoyance, speaking from out an astonishing cataract of re

ther side of his mouth. "It ain't likely that anybody from the Ea

onded the other, mor

for people of some repytation," the spare man continued, with an ingratiating concession in his shrill voice, as h

d up the siding. The spare man rejoined the uneasy group. "Ji

es by the red stove, or half asleep on the slat benches; others uncoiled themselves from baggage trucks or slid out of express wagons. Two clambered down from the driver's seat of a hearse that stood backed up against the siding. They straightened their stooping should

light streamed up the snow-covered track before the siding and glittered on the wet, black rails. The burly man with the dishevelled red beard walked swiftly up the platform toward the approaching train, uncovering his head as he went. The group of men behind him hesitated, glanced questioningly at one another,

friends here?" inqu

nker, responded with dignity: "We have come to take charge of th

ed the express messenger, "and t

o one said anything. The baggage man stood by his truck, waiting to get at the trunks. The engine panted heavily, and the fireman dodged in and out among the wheels with his yellow torch and long oil-can, snapping the spindle boxes. The you

s brothers are here?"

"No, they have not come yet; the family is scattered. The body will be taken dir

e horses," called the liveryman as the undertaker snapped the

lained. "It's a long walk, so you'd better go up in the hack." He pointed to a single battered conveyance, but the young man replied

ps in the still village were shining from under the low, snow-burdened roofs; and beyond, on every side, the plai

g was huddled about the gate. The front yard was an icy swamp, and a couple of warped planks, extending from the sidewalk to the door, made a sort of rickety footbrid

house; the front door was wrenched open, and a tall, corpulent woman rushed out bareheaded into the sno

essed entirely in black, darted out of the house and caught Mrs. Merrick by the shoulders, crying sharply: "Come, come, mother; you mus

John Alden and Priscilla, wreathed with smilax. Henry Steavens stared about him with the sickening conviction that there had been a mistake, and that he had somehow arrived at the wrong destination. He looked at the clover-green Brussels, the fat plush upholstery, among the hand-painted china placques and panels

There was a kind of power about her face-a kind of brutal handsomeness, even; but it was scarred and furrowed by violence, and so coloured and coarsened by fiercer passions that grief seemed never to have laid a gentle finger there. The long nose was distended and knobbed at the end, and there were deep lines

olded in her lap, her mouth and eyes drawn down, solemnly awaiting the opening of the coffin. Near the door stood a mulatto woman, evidently a servant in the house, with a timid bearing and an emaciat

gy beard, tobacco stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly up to the coffin and stood rolling a blue cotton handk

rom the room, her daughter strode after her with set lips. The servant stole up to the coffin, bent over it for a moment, and then slipped away to the kitchen, leaving Steavens, the lawyer, and the father to themselves. The old man stood looking down at his dead son's face. The sculptor's splendid head seemed even more noble in its rigid stillness than in life. The dark hair had crept down upon the wide forehead; the face seemed strangely long, bu

n't they?" he asked. "Thank'ee, Jim, thank'ee." He brushed the hair back gently from his son's forehead. "He was a good boy, Jim; always a good boy. He was ez gentl

arted timorously: "Yes, Annie, I'm coming." He turned away, hesitated, stood for a moment in misera

Seems as if his eyes would have gone dry long ago. At

ne else; but now, from the moment he first glanced into Jim Laird's florid face and blood-shot eyes, he knew that he had fo

kept plucking at his beard with a sort of fierce resentment. Steavens, sitting by the window, watched him turn down the glaring lamp, still its jangling pendants with an angry gesture, and then s

cken salad which had been prepared for the watchers. Steavens had never heard anything in the least like it; it was injured, emotional, dramatic abuse, unique and masterly in its excruciat

d thing could tell tales that would curdle your blood. She's the mulatto woman who was standing in here a while ago, with her apron to her eyes. The old woman is a fury;

lowly, "wonderful; but until tonigh

ch a dung heap as this," the lawyer cried, with a sweeping gesture which

began pulling at his collar. The lawyer came over, loosened the sash with one blow of his red fist and sent the window up a few inches. Steavens thanked him, but the nausea which had been gradually climbing into his throat for the last half hou

while a full-lipped, full-blooded little urchin, his trousers held up by a single gallows, stood beside her, impatiently twitching her gown to call her attention to a butterfly he had caught

him earnestly, puzzled at the line of the chin, and wondering why a man should conceal a feature of such distinction under

an oyster?" he asked abruptly.

isliked violent emotion; he was reflective, and rather distrustful of himself-except, of course, as regarded his work. He was sure enough there. He distrusted men p

ire," said the lawyer gri

hadow of a poplar leaf flickering against a sunny wall would be etched and held there for ever. Surely, if ever a man had the magic word in his finger tips, it was Merrick. Whatever he touched, he revealed its holiest secret; liberat

eeper than anything else could have done-a shame not his, and yet so unescapably his, to bide in his heart from his very boyhood. And without-the frontier w

ed them to "step into the dining-room." As Steavens rose, the lawyer said dryly: "You go on-it'll

d back at the lawyer, sitting by the coffin in

bly against the wall, fishing his quill toothpick from his waistcoat pocket. The two bankers, Phelps and Elder, sat off in a corner behind the dinner-table, where they could finish their discussion of the new usury law and its effect on chattel security loans. The real estate agent, an old man with a smiling, hypocritical face, soon joined them. The coal and lumber dealer and the cattle shipper sat on o

ill, Phelps?" he querie

and began trimming his nails wi

need for one, will there

, getting his knees still nearer his chin. "Why, the o

hat Harve ain't asked him to mortgage any more far

to a time when Harve wasn't bein' e

arked with reflective authority. "They never hung together. He spent money enough on Harve to stock a dozen cattle-farms, and he might as well have poured it into Sand Creek. If Harve had stayed at home and

u remember when he bought Sander's mules for eight-year olds, when everybody in town knew that Sander's father

the Grand Army man rubbed his knee

time he was home; the day he left, when the old man was out to the barn helpin' his hand hitch up to take Harve to the train, and Cal Moots was

a rawhide in the barn for lettin' the cows git foundered in the cornfield when he was drivin' 'em home from pasture. He killed a cow of mine that-a-way onct-a

s goatee and speaking in a deliberate, judicial tone. "There was where he got his head full of nonse

nnection with Harvey Merrick's. He remembered what his master had said to him on the day of his death, after the congestion of both lungs had shut off any probability of recovery, and the sculptor had asked his pupil to send his body home. "It's not a pleasant place to be lying while the world

for a Merrick to cash in; they usually hang on pre

He had been the boy's Sunday-school teacher, and had been fond of him; but he felt that he was not in a position to speak. His own sons had turn

ooked upon the wine when it was red, also variegated, and it

hot eye. They were all afraid of Jim; he was a drunkard, but he could twist the law to suit his client's needs as no other man in all western Kansas could do, and there were many who tried. The lawyer closed the door beh

le young men are as scarce as millionaires in Sand City? It might almost seem to a stranger that there was some way something the matter with your progressive town. Why did Ruben Sayer, the brightest young lawyer you ever turned out, after he had come home from the university as

gton and John Adams. But the boys were young, and raw at the business you put them to, and how could they match coppers with such artists as Phelps and Elder? You wanted them to be successful rascals; they were only unsuccessful ones-that's all the difference. There was only one boy ever raised in this borderland between ruffianism and civilization who didn't come to grief, and you hated

drank too much; and this

very tone in which brother Elder swore his own father was a liar, in the county court; and we all know that the old man came out of that

came back here to practise, and I found you didn't in the least want me to be a great man. You wanted me to be a shrewd lawyer-oh, yes! Our veteran here wanted me to get him an increase of pension, because he had dyspepsia; Phelps wanted a new county survey that would put the widow Wilson's little bottom farm ins

ul you couldn't dirty and whose hands you couldn't tie. Oh, you're a discriminating lot of Christians! There have been times when the sight of Harvey's name in some Eastern paper has made m

er your marshes for all you've got put together, and you know it. It's not for me to say why, in the inscrutable wisdom of God, a genius should ever have been called from this place of hatred and bitter waters; but I want this Boston man to know

vercoat in the hall, and had left the house before the Grand Army man had ha

from him again, and left his address on the lawyer's table; but if Laird found it, he never acknowledged it. The thing in him that Harvey Merrick had loved must have gone under ground with Harvey Merric

h in th

wore a conspicuous diamond solitaire upon his third finger, and Everett judged him to be a travelling salesman of some sort. He

Chicago, and who were earnestly discussing the cost of their first trip out of Colorado. The four uncomfortable passengers were covered with a sediment of fine, yellow dust which clung to their hair and eyebrows like gold powder. It blew up in clouds from the bleak, lifeless country through which they passed, until the

look at him with that curious interest, and it had ceased to embarrass or annoy him. Presently the stranger, seeming satisfied with his observation, leaned back in his seat, half closed his eyes, and began softly to whistle the Spring Song from Proserpine, the cantata that a dozen years before had made its young composer famous in a night. Everett had heard that air on guitars in Old Mexico, on mandolins at college glees, on cottage organs in New England hamlets, and only two weeks ago he had heard it played on sleig

s the aisle. Immediately the large man rose and coming ove

n and bred in de briar patch, like Br'er Rabbit. I've been trying

name is Hilgarde. You've probably met my broth

nd down upon his knee with such v

als at the Auditorium, and he played the piano score of Proserpine through to us once at the Chicago Press Club. I used to be on the Commercial there before I began to trav

ly subject that people ever seemed to care to talk to him about. At length the salesman an

h a hotel. A phaeton stood near the crossing and a woman held the reins. She was dressed in white, and her figure was clearly silhouetted against the cushions, though it was too dark to see her face. Everett had scarcely noticed her, when the switch-engine came puffing up from the opposite direction, and the head-light threw a strong glare of light on his face. The woman in the phaeton utte

fted his hat and passed on. He was accustomed to sudden reco

the floor. His whole manner betrayed a high degree of agitation, though his physique was not that of a man whose nerves lie near the surface. He was something below medium height, square-shouldered and solidly built. His thick, closely cut hair was beginning to sho

r name on the hotel register. My name is Gaylord. I'm afraid my sister

dn't know whether I had anything to do with her a

little under the da

my sister used to be a pupil of your brother's, and it seems you favour

harine Gaylord! Is it possible! Why, I used

ause. "You've got at the heart of the matter. You kn

My brother and I correspond infrequently, and seldom ge

ley Gaylord's bro

ee you. She's set on it. We live several miles out of town, b

get my hat and be w

and Charley Gaylord drew a long sigh of relief as he gat

t know just where to begin. She travelled in Europe with your brother and his wife, a

most gifted of his pupils. When I knew her she was very youn

rd's mind was entirely

" he went on, flecking h

cago, and then to New York, and then to Europe, and got a taste for it all; and now she's dying here like a rat in a hole, out of her

re well out into the country now, spinning along over the dusty plains

e, but the doctors all say it's no use. She hasn't the ghost of a chance. It's just getting through the days now. I had no notion she was half so bad before she came to me. She just wrote that she was run down. Now that she's here, I think she'd be happier anywhere under the sun, but she won't leave. She says it's easier to let go

esent status in the world might be, he had brou

ly painted house with many gables and a round tower. "Here we are,"

d introduced as "My sister, Maggie." She asked her brother to show

d from the glaring Wyoming sunlight into some New York studio that he had always known. He looked

bly his brother's room. If it were not an exact copy of one of the many studios that Adriance had fitted up in various parts of the world, wearying of them and leaving almos

barrassment. It was the face of a woman already old in her first youth, a trifle hard, and it told of what her brother had called her fight. The camaraderie of her frank, confident eyes was qualified by the deep lines about her mouth and the curve of the lips, which was both sad and cyni

all woman advanced toward him, holding out her hand. As she started to speak she coughed slightly, then, laughing, said, in

especially designed to conceal the sharp outlines of her body, but the stamp of her disease was there; simple and ugly and obtrusive, a pitiless fact that could not be disguised or evaded. The splendid shoulders were stooped, there was a swaying unevenness in her gait, her arms seemed disproportionat

look it, but you must be quite frank and sensible about that and get used to it at once, for we've

if you are tired," urged Everett.

ow does it look and taste and smell just now? I think a whiff of the Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to me. Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana still keep her vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practise their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theatres, and what do they eat and drink in t

inter looks at a picture. He finished his explanation vaguely enough and put the pencil ba

sh. "Yes, isn't it absurd? It's almost as awkward as looking like Napoleon-But, after all, the

haughty, reserved youth you were then, and how you used to stare at people, and then blush and look

rett, "very crude and boyish, but certainly since

upils." Everett shook his head. "I saw my brother's pupils come and go. Sometimes I was called on to play accompaniments, or to fill out a vacancy at a rehearsal, or

fferent lives. It's not merely an ordinary family likeness of features, you know, but the suggestion of the other man's personality in your face-like an air tr

ds. "I remember, when I was a child I used to be very sensitive about it. I don't think it exactly displeased me, or that I would have had it otherwise, but it seemed like a birthmark, or something not to be lightly spoken of. It came into even my relations with my mother. Ad went abroad to study when he was very young, and mother was all broken up over it. She did her whole du

haven't heard, except through the press, for a year or more. He was in Algiers then, in the valley of the Chelif, riding horseback, and

y long enough to write checks and be measured for his clothes

ust be in the publisher's hands by this time. I have been

his pocket. "This came a month

u to play for me. Whatever you like; but if there is

inconstant April colour, but they were reflective and rather dull; while Adriance's were always points of high light, and always meaning another thing than the thing they meant yesterday. It was hard to see why this earnest man should so continually suggest that lyric, youthful face, as gay as his was grave. For Adriance, though he was ten years the

r Katharine Gaylord, visionary as it was, had been the most serious of his boyish love-affairs. The fact that it was all so done

called back again and again, and the flowers went up over the footlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano-brooding in his sullen boy's heart upon the pride those two felt in each other's work-spurring each other to their best and beautifully contending in

*

p all his life. He remembered going through a looking-glass labyrinth when he was a boy, and trying gallery after gallery, only at every turn to bump his nose against his own face-which, indeed, was not his own, but his brother's. No matter what his mission, east or west, by land or sea, he was sure to find himself employed in his brother's business, one of the tributary lives which helped to swell the shining current of Adriance Hilgarde's. It was not the first time that his duty had been to comfort, as best he could, one of the broken things his brother's imperious speed had cast aside and forgotten. He made no attempt to analyse the situation or to state it in exact terms; but he accepted it as a commission f

opportune, graceful, exquisite thing. He caught the lyric essence of the moment, the poetic suggestion of every situation. Moreover, he usually did the right thing,-except, when he did very cruel things-bent upon making people happy when their existence touched his, just as

ver thought," she said, as he entered the music-room, "how much these séances of ours are like Heine's 'Florentine Nights,' except that I don't give you an oppo

nd away, for he felt that this time she was looking at

nd the last address I gave him was a place in Florida. This deed shall be remembered of you when I am with the just in Paradise. But one thing you did not ask him to do, for you di

r, his lashes half-veiling his kind eyes, and saw to his satisfaction that it was a long one; wonderfully tactful and tender, even for A

running water, as it had been in a certain old garden in Florence, long ago. The sky was one great turquoise, heated until it glowed. The wonderful Moorish arches threw graceful blue shadows all abo

trifle patronizing, yet it was just what she had wanted. A strong realization of his brother's charm and intensity and power came over him; he felt the breath of that whirlwind of flam

do that for me. I want you to tell him many things for me, yet they can all be summed up in this: I want him to grow w

tt, thoughtfully. "And yet it's difficult to prescrib

estness. "Ah, but it is the waste of himself that I mean; his lashing himself ou

alarmed at her excitement. "Where is the

he had done up to that time, and marked the transition from his early lyric vein to a deeper and nobler style. Everett played intelligently and with that sympath

ies of passion; but this is the tragedy of effort and failure, the thing Keats called hell. This is my traged

de her. In all the days he had known her she had never before, beyond an occasional ironical jest,

I can't stand it, I really

y had taken an old palace there for the winter, and I found him in the library-a long, dark room full of old Latin books and heavy furniture and bronzes. He was sitting by a wood fire at one end of the room, looking, oh, so worn and pale!-as he always does when he is ill, you know. Ah, it is so good that you do know! Even his red smoking-jacket lent no colour to his face. His first words were not to tell me how ill he had been, but that that morning he had been well enough to put the last strokes to the score of his 'Souvenirs d' Automne,' and he was as I most like to remember him; calm and happy, and tired with that heavenly tiredness that comes after a good work done at last. Outside, the rain poured down in torrents, and the wind moaned and sobbed in the garden and about the walls of that desolated old palace. How that night comes back to me! There were no li

ess as in a glittering garment. That ironical smile, worn through so many years, had gradually changed the lines of her face,

upon his hand. "How much

n't imagine what a comfort it is to have you know how I ca

at the floor. "I was not sure how m

at day with Charley. You are so like him, that it is almost like telling him himself. At leas

wn at all?" asked Eve

been guilty of some discourtesy. He has a genuine fondness for every woman who is not stupid or gloomy, or old or preternaturally ugly. I shared with the rest; shared the smiles and

ake me hate him,

est degree his fault; that is the most grotesque part of it. Why, it had really begu

k I must go. You ought to be quiet, and I

r hand and too

, haven't you? Well, it ought to square accounts

that's all. I have never cared about other women since I knew you in New York when

pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not love the dying, dear friend. Now go, and you will come again tomorrow, as long

If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; I

like the clear light of a

t she was in the Pullman on her way to New York, going back to her life and her work. When she roused from her stupor, it was only to ask the porter to waken her half an hour out of Jersey City, or to remonstrate about the delays and the roughness of the road. At midnight Everett and the nurse were left alone with her. Poor Charley Gaylord had lain down on a couch outside the door. Everett sat looking at the sputtering night-lamp until it made his eyes ache. His head drop

harine was awake and conscious, and struggling a little. He lifted her gently on his arm and began to fan her. She loo

but when they came back the madn

Everett's bags were piled on the truck, and his step was hurried and his eyes were full of impatience, as he gazed again and again up the track, watching for the train. Ga

any, en route for the coast, rushed by them in frantic haste to snatch their breakfast during the stop. Everett heard an exclam

ance, lieber Fre

at you have mistaken me for Adriance Hilgarde. I am his brothe