She coloured crimson, hung up the receiver, and picked up the evening
paper, not daring to glance at Ilse.

CHAPTER XI

When Shotwell arrived, dinner had already been announced, and Palla
and Ilse Westgard were in the unfurnished drawing-room, the former on
a step-ladder, the latter holding that collapsible machine with one
hand and Palla's ankle with the other.

Palla waved a tape-measure in airy salute: "I'm trying to find out how
many yards it takes for my curtains," she explained. But she climbed
down and gave him her hand; and they went immediately into the
dining-room.

"What's all this nonsense about the Red Flag Club?" he inquired, when
they were seated. "Do you and Ilse really propose going to that dirty
anarchist joint?"

"How do you know it's dirty?" demanded Palla, "--or do you mean it's
only morally dingy?"

Both she and Ilse appeared to be in unusually lively spirits, and they
poked fun at him when he objected to their attending the meeting in
question.

"Very well," he said, "but there may be a free fight. There was a row
on Fifth Avenue this evening, where some of those rats were parading
with red flags."

Palla laughed and cast a demure glance at Ilse.

"What is there to laugh at?" demanded Jim. "There was a small riot on
Fifth Avenue! I met several men at the club who witnessed it."

The sea-blue eyes of Ilse were full of mischief. He was aware of
Palla's subtle exhilaration, too.

"Why hunt for a free fight?" he asked.

"Why avoid one if it's free?" retorted Ilse, gaily.

They all laughed.

"Is that your idea of liberty?" he asked Palla.

"What is all human progress but a free fight?" she retorted. "Of
course," she added, "Ilse means an intellectual battle. If they
misbehave otherwise, I shall flee."

"I don't see why you want to go to hear a lot of Reds talk bosh," he
remarked. "It isn't like you, Palla."

"It _is_ like me. You see you don't really know me, Jim," she added
with smiling malice.

"The main thing," said Ilse, "is for one to be one's self. Palla and I
are social revolutionists. Revolutionists revolt. A revolt is a row.
There can be no row unless people fight."

He smiled at their irresponsible gaiety, a little puzzled by it and a
little uneasy.

"All right," he said, as coffee was served; "but it's just as well
that I'm going with you."

The ex-girl-soldier gave him an amused glance, lighted a cigarette,
glanced at her wrist-watch, then rose lightly to her graceful,
athletic height, saying that they ought to start.

So they went away to pin on their hats, and Jim called a taxi.

The hall was well filled when they arrived. There was a rostrum, on
which two wooden benches faced a table and a chair in the centre. On
the table stood a pitcher of drinking water, a soiled glass, and a jug
full of red carnations.

A dozen men and women occupied the two benches. At the table a man
sat writing. He held a lighted cigar in one hand; a red silk
handkerchief trailed from his coat pocket.

As Ilse and Palla seated themselves on an empty bench and Shotwell
found a place beside them, somebody on the next bench beyond leaned
over and bade them good evening in a low voice.

"Mr. Brisson!" exclaimed Palla, giving him her hand in unfeigned
pleasure.

Brisson shook hands, also, with Ilse, cordially, and then was
introduced to Jim.

"What are you doing here?" he inquired humorously of Palla. "And, by
the way,"--dropping his voice--"these Reds don't exactly love me, so
don't use my name."

Palla nodded and whispered to Jim: "He secured all that damning
evidence at the Smolny for our Government."

Brisson and Ilse were engaged in low-voiced conversation: Palla
ventured to look about her.

The character of the gathering was foreign. There were few American
features among the faces, but those few were immeasurably superior
in type--here and there the intellectual, spectacled visage of
some educated visionary, lured into the red tide and left there
drifting;--here and there some pale girl, carelessly dressed, seated
with folded hands, and intense gaze fixed on space.

But the majority of these people, men and women, were foreign in
aspect--round, bushy heads with no backs to them were everywhere;
muddy skins, unhealthy skins, loose mouths, shifty eyes!--everywhere
around her Palla saw the stigma of degeneracy.

She said in a low voice to Jim: "These poor things need to be properly
housed and fed before they're taught. Education doesn't interest empty
stomachs. And when they're given only poison to stop the pangs--what
does civilisation expect?"

He said: "They're a lot of bums. The only education they require is
with a night-stick."

"That's cruel, Jim."

"It's law."

"One of your laws which does not appeal to me," she remarked, turning
to Brisson, who was leaning over to speak to her.

"There are half a dozen plain-clothes men in the audience," he said.
"There are Government detectives here, too. I rather expect they'll
stop the proceedings before the programme calls for it."

Jim turned to look back. A file of policemen entered and carelessly
took up posts in the rear of the hall. Hundreds of flat-backed heads
turned, too; hundreds of faces darkened; a low muttering arose from
the benches.

Then the man at the table on the rostrum got up abruptly, and pulled
out his red handkerchief as though to wipe his face.

At the sudden flourish of the red fabric, a burst of applause came
from the benches. Orator and audience were _en rapport_; the former
continued to wave the handkerchief, under pretence of swabbing his
features, but the intention was so evident and the applause so
enlightening that a police officer came part way down the aisle and
held up a gilded sleeve.

"Hey!" he called in a bored voice, "Cut that out! See!"

"That man on the platform is Max Sondheim," whispered Brisson. "He'll
skate on thin ice before he's through."

Sondheim had already begun to speak, ignoring the interruption from
the police:

"The Mayor has got cold feet," he said with a sneer. "He gave us a
permit to parade, but when the soldiers attacked us his police clubbed
us. That's the kind of government we got."

"Shame!" cried a white-faced girl in the audience.

"Shame?" repeated Sondheim ironically. "What's shame to a cop? They
got theirs all the same----"

"That's enough!" shouted the police captain sharply. "Any more of that
and I'll run you in!"

Sondheim's red-rimmed eyes measured the officer in silence for a
moment.

"I have the privilege," he said to his audience, "of introducing to
you our comrade, Professor Le Vey."

"Le Vey," whispered Brisson in Palla's ear. "He's a crack-brained
chemist, and they ought to nab him."

The professor rose from one of the benches on the rostrum and came
forward--a tall, black-bearded man, deathly pale, whose protruding,
bluish eyes seemed almost stupid in their fixity.

"Words are by-products," he said, "and of minor importance. Deeds
educate. T. N. T., also, is a byproduct, and of no use in conversation
unless employed as an argument--" A roar of applause drowned his
voice: he gazed at the audience out of his stupid pop-eyes.

"Tyranny has kicked you into the gutter," he went on. "Capital makes
laws to keep you there and hires police and soldiers to enforce those
laws. This is called civilisation. Is there anything for you to do
except to pick yourselves out of the gutter and destroy what kicked
you into it and what keeps you there?"

"No!" roared the audience.

"Only a clean sweep will do it," said Le Vey. "If you have a single
germ of plague in the world, it will multiply. If you leave a single
trace of what is called civilisation in the world, it will hatch out
more tyrants, more capitalists, more laws. So there is only one
remedy. Destruction. Total annihilation. Nothing less can purify this
rotten hell they call the world!"

Amid storms of applause he unrolled a manuscript and read without
emphasis:

"Therefore, the Workers of the World, in council assembled, hereby
proclaim at midnight to-night, throughout the entire world:

"1. That all debts, public and private, are cancelled.

"2. That all leases, contracts, indentures and similar instruments,
products of capitalism, are null and void.

"3. All statutes, ordinances and other enactments of capitalist
government are repealed.

"4. All public offices are declared vacant.

"5. The military and naval organisations will immediately dissolve
and reorganise themselves upon a democratic basis for speedy
mobilisation.

"6. All working classes and political prisoners will be immediately
freed and all indictments quashed.

"7. All vacant and unused land shall immediately revert to the people
and remain common property until suitable regulations for its
disposition can be made.

"8. All telephones, telegraphs, cables, railroads, steamship lines and
other means of communication and transportation shall be immediately
taken over by the workers and treated henceforth as the property of
the people.

"9. As speedily as possible the workers in the various industries will
proceed to take over these industries and organise them in the spirit
of the new epoch now beginning.

"10. The flag of the new society shall be plain red, marking our unity
and brotherhood with similar republics in Russia, Germany, Austria and
elsewhere----"

"That'll be about all from you, Professor," interrupted the police
captain, strolling down to the platform. "Come on, now. Kiss your
friends good-night!"

A sullen roar rose from the audience; Le Vey lifted one hand:

"I told you how to argue," he said in his emotionless voice. "Anybody
can talk with their mouths." And he turned on his heel and went back
to his seat on the bench.

Sondheim stood up:

"Comrade Bromberg!" he shouted.

A small, shabby man arose from a bench and shambled forward. His hair
grew so low that it left him practically no forehead. Whiskers blotted
out the remainder of his features except two small and very bright
eyes that snapped and sparkled, imbedded in the hairy ensemble.

"Comrades," he growled, "it has come to a moment when the only law
worth obeying is the law of force!----"

"You bet!" remarked the police captain, genially, and, turning his
back, he walked away up the aisle toward the rear of the hall, while
all around him from the audience came a savage muttering.

Bromberg's growling voice grew harsher and deeper as he resumed: "I
tell you that there is only one law left for proletariat and tyrant
alike! It is the law of force!"

As the audience applauded fiercely, a man near them stood up and
shouted for a hearing.

"Comrade Bromberg is right!" he cried, waving his arms excitedly.
"There is only one real law in the world! The fit survive! The unfit
die! The strong take what they desire! The weak perish. That is the
law of life! That is the----"

An amazing interruption checked him--a clear, crystalline peal of
laughter; and the astounded audience saw a tall, fresh, yellow-haired
girl standing up midway down the hall. It was Ilse Westgard, unable to
endure such nonsense, and quite regardless of Brisson's detaining hand
and Shotwell's startled remonstrance.

"What that man says is absurd!" she cried, her fresh young voice still
gay with laughter. "He looks like a Prussian, and if he is he ought to
know where the law of force has landed his nation."

In the ominous silence around her, Ilse turned and gaily surveyed the
audience.

"The law of force is the law of robbers," she said. "That is why this
war has been fought--to educate robbers. And if there remain any
robbers they'll have to be educated. Don't let anybody tell you that
the law of force is the law of life!----"

"Who are you?" interrupted Bromberg hoarsely.

"An ex-soldier of the Death Battalion, comrade," said Ilse cheerfully.
"I used a rifle in behalf of the law of education. Sometimes bayonets
educate, sometimes machine guns. But the sensible way is to have a
meeting, and everybody drink tea and smoke cigarettes and discuss
their troubles without reserve, and then take a vote as to what is
best for everybody concerned."

And she seated herself with a smile just as the inevitable uproar
began.

All around her now men and women were shouting at her; inflamed faces
ringed her; gesticulating fists waved in the air.

"What are you--a spy for Kerensky?" yelled a man in Russian.

"The bourgeoisie has its agents here!" bawled a red-haired Jew. "I
offer a solemn protest----"

"Agent provocateur!" cried many voices. "Pay no attention to her! Go
on with the debate!"

An I. W. W.--a thin, mean-faced American--half arose and pointed an
unwashed finger at Ilse.

"A Government spy," he said distinctly. "Keep your eye on her,
comrades. There seems to be a bunch of them there----"

"Sit down and shut up!" said Shotwell, sharply. "Do you want to start
a riot?"

"You bet I'll start something!" retorted the man, showing his teeth
like a rat. "What the hell did you come here for----"

"Silence!" bawled Bromberg, hoarsely, from the platform. "That woman
is recognised and known. Pay no attention to her, but listen to me. I
tell you that your law is the law of hatred!----"

Palla attempted to rise. Jim tried to restrain her: she pushed his arm
aside, but he managed to retain his grasp on her arm.

"Are you crazy?" he whispered.

"That man lies!" she said excitedly. "Don't you hear him preaching
hatred?"

"Well, it's not your business----"

"It _is_! That man is lying to these ignorant people! He's telling
them a vile untruth! Let me go, Jim----"

"Better keep cool," whispered Brisson, leaning over. "We're all in
dutch already."

Palla said to him excitedly: "I'm afraid to stand up and speak, but
I'm going to! I'd be a coward to sit here and let that man deceive
these poor people----"

"Listen to Bromberg!" motioned Ilse, her blue eyes frosty and her
cheeks deeply flushed.

The orator had come down into the aisle. Every venomous word he was
uttering now he directed straight at the quartette.

"Russia is showing us the way," he said in his growling voice. "Russia
makes no distinctions but takes them all by the throat and wrings
their necks--aristocrats, bourgeoisie, cadets, officers, land owners,
intellectuals--all the vermin, all the parasites! And that is the law,
I tell you! The unfit perish! The strong inherit the earth!----"

Palla sprang to her feet: "Liar!" she said hotly. "Did not Christ
Himself tell us that the meek shall inherit the earth!"

"Christ?" thundered Bromberg. "Have you come here to insult us with
legends and fairy-tales about a god?"

"Who mentioned God?" retorted Palla in a clear voice. "Unless we
ourselves are gods there is none! But Christ did live! And He was as
much a god as we are. And no more. But He was wiser! And what He told
us is the truth! And I shall not sit silent while any man or woman
teaches robbery and murder. That's what you mean when you say that the
law of the stronger is the only law! If it is, then the poor and
ignorant are where they belong----"

"They won't be when they learn the law of life!" roared Bromberg.

"There is only one law of life!" cried Palla, turning to look around
her at the agitated audience. "The only law in the world worth
obedience is the Law of Love and of Service! No other laws amount to
anything. Under that law every problem you agitate here is already
solved. There is no injustice that cannot be righted under it! There
is no aspiration that cannot be realised!"

She turned on Bromberg, her hazel eyes very bright, her face surging
with colour.

"You came here to pervert the exhortation of Karl Marx, and unite
under the banner of envy and greed every unhappy heart!

"Very well. Others also can unite to combat you. A league of evil is
not the only league that can be formed under this roof. Nor are the
soldiers and police the only or the better weapons to use against you.
What you agitators and mischief makers are really afraid of is that
somebody may really educate your audiences. And that's exactly what
such people as I intend to do!"

A score or more of people had crowded around her while she was
speaking. Shotwell and Brisson, too, had risen and stepped to her
side. And the entire audience was on its feet, craning hundreds of
necks and striving to hear and see.

Somewhere in the crowd a shrill American voice cried: "Throw them guys
out! They got Wall Street cash in their pockets!"

Sondheim levelled a finger at Brisson:

"Look out for that man!" he said. "He published those lies about
Lenine and Trotsky, and he's here from Washington to lie about us in
the newspapers!"

The I. W. W. lurched out of his seat and shoved against Shotwell.

"Get the hell out o' here," he snarled; "--go on! Beat it! And take
your lady-friends, too."

Brisson said: "No use talking to them. You'd better take the ladies
out while the going is good."

But as they moved there was an angry murmur: the I. W. W. gave Palla a
violent shove that sent her reeling, and Shotwell knocked him
unconscious across a bench.

Instantly the hall was in an uproar: there was a savage rush for
Brisson, but he stopped it with levelled automatic.

"Get the ladies out!" he said coolly to Shotwell, forcing a path
forward at his pistol's point.

Plain clothes men were active, too, pushing the excited Bolsheviki
this way and that and clearing a lane for Palla and Ilse.

Then, as they reached the rear of the hall, there came a wild howl
from the audience, and Shotwell, looking back, saw Sondheim unfurl a
big red flag.

Instantly the police started for the rostrum. The din became deafening
as he threw one arm around Palla and forced her out into the street,
where Ilse and Brisson immediately joined them.

Then, as they looked around for a taxi, a little shrimp of a man came
out on the steps of the hall and spat on the sidewalk and cursed them
in Russian.

And, as Palla, recognising him, turned around, he shook his fists at
her and at Ilse, promising that they should be attended to when the
proper moment arrived.

Then he spat again, laughed a rather ghastly and distorted laugh, and
backed into the doorway behind him.

They walked east--there being no taxi in sight. Ilse and Brisson led;
Palla followed beside Jim.

"Well," said the latter, his voice not yet under complete control,
"don't you think you'd better keep away from such places in the
future?"

She was still very much excited: "It's abominable," she exclaimed,
"that this country should permit such lies to be spread among the
people and do nothing to counteract this campaign of falsehood! What
is going to happen, Jim, unless educated people combine to educate the
ignorant?"

"How?" he asked contemptuously.

"By example, first of all. By the purity and general decency of their
own lives. I tell you, Jim, that the unscrupulous greed of the
educated is as dangerous and vile as the murderous envy of the
Bolsheviki. We've got to reform ourselves before we can educate
others. And unless we begin by conforming to the Law of Love and
Service, some day the Law of Hate and Violence will cut our throats
for us."

"Palla," he said, "I never dreamed that you'd do such a thing as you
did to-night."

"I was afraid," she said with a nervous tightening of her arm under
his, "but I was still more afraid of being a coward."

"You didn't have to answer that crazy anarchist!"

"Somebody had to. He lied to those poor creatures. I--I couldn't stand
it!--" Her voice broke a little. "And if there is truly a god in me,
as I believe, then I should show Christ's courage ... lacking His
wisdom," she added so low that he scarcely heard her.

Ilse, walking ahead with Brisson, looked back over her shoulder at
Palla laughing.

"Didn't I tell you that there are some creatures you can't educate?
What do you think of your object lesson, darling?"

CHAPTER XII

On a foggy afternoon, toward midwinter, John Estridge strolled into
the new Overseas Club, which, still being in process of incubation,
occupied temporary quarters on Madison Avenue.

Officers fresh from abroad and still in uniform predominated; tunics
were gay with service and wound chevrons, citation cords, stars,
crosses, strips of striped ribbon.

There was every sort of head-gear to be seen there, too, from the
jaunty overseas _bonnet de police_, piped in various colours, to the
corded campaign hat and leather-visored barrack-cap.

Few cavalry officers were in evidence, but there were plenty of spurs
glittering everywhere--to keep their owners' heels from slipping off
the desks, as the pleasantry of the moment had it.

Estridge went directly to a telephone booth, and presently got his
connection.

"It's John Estridge, as usual," he said in a bantering tone. "How are
you, Ilse?"

"John! I'm so glad you called me! Thank you so much for the roses!
They're exquisite!--matchless!----"

"Not at all!"

"What?"

"If you think they're matchless, just hold one up beside your cheek
and take a slant at your mirror."

"I thought you were not going to say such things to me!"

"I thought I wasn't."

"Are you alone?" She laughed happily. "Where are you, Jack?"

"At the Overseas Club. I stopped on my way from the hospital."

"Y--es."

A considerable pause, and then Ilse laughed again----a confused, happy
laugh.

"Did you think you'd--come over?" she inquired.

"Shall I?"

"What do _you_ think about it, Jack?"

"I suppose," he said in a humourous voice, "you're afraid of that
tendency which you say I'm beginning to exhibit."

"The tendency to drift?"

"Yes;--toward those perilous rocks you warned me of."

"They _are_ perilous!" she insisted.

"You ought to know," he rejoined; "you're sitting on top of 'em like a
bally Lorelei!"

"If that's your opinion, hadn't you better steer for the open sea,
John?"

"Certainly I'd better. But you look so sweet up there, with your
classical golden hair, that I think I'll risk the rocks."

"Please don't! There's a deadly whirlpool under them. I'm looking down
at it now."

"What do you see at the bottom, Ilse? Human bones?"

"I can't see the bottom. It's all surface, like a shining mirror."

"I'll come over and take a look at it with you."

"I think you'll only see our own faces reflected.... I think you'd
better not come."

"I'll be there in about half an hour," he said gaily.

He sauntered out and on into the body of the club, exchanging with
friends a few words here, a smiling handclasp there; and presently he
seated himself near a window.

For a while he rested his chin on his clenched hand, staring into
space, until a waiter arrived with his order.

He signed the check, drained his glass, and leaned forward again with
both elbows on his knees, twirling his silver-headed stick between
nervous hands.

"After all," he said under his breath, "it's too late, now.... I'm
going to see this thing through."

As he rose to go he caught sight of Jim Shotwell, seated alone by
another window and attempting to read an evening paper by the foggy
light from outside. He walked over to him, fastening his overcoat on
the way. Jim laid aside his paper and gave him a dull glance.

"How are things with you?" inquired Estridge, carelessly.

"All right. Are you walking up town?"

"No."

Jim's sombre eyes rested on the discarded paper, but he did not pick
it up. "It's rotten weather," he said listlessly.

"Have you seen Palla lately?" inquired Estridge, looking down at him
with a certain curiosity.

"No, not lately."

"She's a very busy girl, I hear."

"So I hear."

Estridge seated himself on the arm of a leather chair and began to
pull on his gloves. He said:

"I understand Palla is doing Red Cross and canteen work, besides
organising her celebrated club;--what is it she calls it?--Combat Club
No. 1?"

"I believe so."

"And you haven't seen her lately?"

Shotwell glanced at the fog and shrugged his shoulders: "She's rather
busy--as you say. No, I haven't seen her. Besides, I'm rather out of
my element among the people one runs into at her house. So I simply
don't go any more."

"Palla's parties are always amusing," ventured Estridge.

"Very," said the other, "but her guests keep you guessing."

Estridge smiled: "Because they don't conform to the established scheme
of things?"

"Perhaps. The scheme of things, as it is, suits me."

"But it's interesting to hear other people's views."

"I'm fed up on queer views--and on queer people," said Jim, with
sudden and irritable emphasis. "Why, hang it all, Jack, when a fellow
goes out among apparently well bred, decent people he takes it for
granted that ordinary, matter of course social conventions prevail.
But nobody can guess what notions are seething in the bean of any girl
you talk to at Palla's house!"

Estridge laughed: "What do you care, Jim?"

"Well, I wouldn't care if they all didn't seem so exactly like one's
own sort. Why, to look at them, talk to them, you'd never suppose them
queer! The young girl you take in to dinner usually looks as though
butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. And the chances are that she's all
for socialism, self-determination, trial marriages and free love!

"Hell's bells! I'm no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But
this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous for a
girl like Palla."

"But Palla doesn't believe in free love."

"She hears it talked about by cracked illuminati."

"Rain on a duck's back, Jim!"

"Rain drowns young ducks."

"You mean all this spouting will end in a deluge?"

"I do. And then look for dead ducks."

"You're not very respectful toward modernism," remarked Estridge,
smiling.

Then Jim broke loose:

"Modernism? You yourself said that all these crazy social notions--crazy
notions in art, literature, music--arise from some sort of physical
degeneration, or from the perversion or checking of normal physical
functions."

"Usually they do----"

"Well," continued Shotwell, "it's mostly due to perversion, in my
opinion. Women have had too much of a hell of a run for their money
during this war. They've broken down all the fences and they're loose
and running all over the world.

"If they'd only kept their fool heads! But no. Every germ in the wind
lodged in their silly brains! Biff. They want sex equality and a pair
of riding breeches! Bang! They kick over the cradle and wreck the
pantry.

"Wifehood? Played out! Motherhood? In the discards! Domestic
partnership?--each sex to its own sphere? Ha-ha! That was all very
well yesterday. But woman as a human incubator and brooder is an
obsolete machine. Why the devil should free and untramelled womanhood
hatch out young?

"If they choose to, casually, all right. But it's purely a matter for
self-determination. If a girl cares to take off her Sam Brown belt and
her puttees long enough to nurse a baby, it's a matter that concerns
her, not humanity at large. Because the social revolution has settled
all such details as personal independence and the same standard for
both sexes. So, _a bas_ Madame Grundy! _A la lanterne_ with the old
régime! No--hang it all, I'm through!"

"Don't you like Palla any more?" inquired Estridge, still laughing.

Jim gave him a singular look: "Yes.... Do you like Ilse Westgard?"

Estridge said coolly: "I am accepting her as she is. I like her that
much."

"Oh. Is that very much?" sneered the other.

"Enough to marry her if she'd have me," replied Estridge pleasantly.

"And she won't do that, I suppose?"

"Not so far."

Jim eyed him sullenly: "Well, I don't accept Palla as she is--or
thinks she is."

"She's sincere."

"I understand that. But no girl can get away with such notions. Where
is it all going to land her? What will she be?"

Estridge quoted: "'It hath not yet appeared what we shall be.'"

Shotwell rose impatiently, and picked up his overcoat: "All I know is
that when two healthy people care for each other it's their
business--their _business_, I repeat--to get together legally and do
the decent thing by the human race."

"Breed?"

"Certainly! Breed legally the finest, healthiest, best of specimens;--and
as many as they can feed and clothe! For if they don't--if we don't--I
mean our own sort--the land will be crawling with the robust get of
all these millions of foreigners, who already have nearly submerged us in
America; and whose spawn will, one day, smother us to death.

"Hang it all, aren't they breeding like vermin now? All yellow dogs
do--all the unfit produce big litters. That's the only thing they ever
do--accumulate progeny.

"And what are we doing?--our sort, I mean? I'll tell you! Our sisters
are having such a good time that they won't marry, if they can avoid
it, until they're too mature to get the best results in children. Our
wives, if they condescend to have any offspring at all, limit the
output to one. Because more than one _might_ damage their beauty.
Hell! If the educated classes are going to practise race suicide and
the Bolsheviki are going to breed like lice, you can figure out the
answer for yourself."

They walked to the foggy street together. Shotwell said bitterly:

"I do care for Palla. I like Ilse. All the women one encounters at
Palla's parties are gay, accomplished, clever, piquant. The men also
are more or less amusing. The conversation is never dull. Everybody
seems to be well bred, sincere, friendly and agreeable. But there's
something lacking. One feels it even before one is enlightened
concerning the ultra-modernism of these admittedly interesting people.
And I'll tell you what it is. Actually, deep in their souls, they
don't believe in themselves.

"Take Palla. She says there is no God--no divinity except in herself.
And I tell you she may think she believes it, but she doesn't.

"And her school-girl creed--Love and Service! Fine. Only there's a
prior law--self-preservation; and another--race preservation! By God,
how are you going to love and serve if girls stop having babies?

"And as for this silly condemnation of the marriage ceremony, merely
because some sanctified Uncle Foozle once inserted the word 'obey' in
it--just because, under the marriage laws, tyranny and cruelty have
been practised--what callow rot!

"Laws can be changed; divorce made simple and non-scandalous as it
should be; all rights safeguarded for the woman; and still have
something legal and recognised by one of those necessary conventions
which make civilisation possible.

"But this irresponsible idea of procedure through mere inclination--this
sauntering through life under no law to safeguard and govern, except
the law of personal preference--that's anarchy! That code spells
demoralisation, degeneracy and disaster!... And the whole damned
thing to begin again--a slow development of the human race, once more,
out of the chaos of utter barbarism."

Estridge, standing there on the sidewalk in the fog, smiled:

"You're very eloquent, Jim. Why don't you say all this to Palla?"

"I did. I told her, too, that the root of the whole thing was
selfishness. And it is. It's a refusal to play the game according to
rule. There are only two sexes and one of 'em is fashioned to bear
young, and the other is fashioned to hustle for mother and kid. You
can't alter that, whether it's fair or not. It's the game as we found
it. The rules were already provided for playing it. The legal father
and mother are supposed to look out for their own legal progeny. And
any alteration of this rule, with a view to irresponsible mating and
turning the offspring over to the community to take care of, would
create an unhuman race, unconscious of the highest form of love--the
love for parents.

"A fine lot we'd be as an incubated race!"

Estridge laughed: "I've got to go," he said, "And, if you care for
Palla as you say you do, you oughtn't to leave her entirely alone with
her circle of modernist friends. Stick around! It may make you mad,
but if she likes you, at least she won't commit an indiscretion with
anybody else."

"I wish I could find my own sort as amusing," said Jim, naïvely. "I've
been going about recently--dances, dinners, theatres--but I can't seem
to keep my mind off Palla."

Estridge said: "If you'd give your sense of humour half a chance you'd
be all right. You take yourself too solemnly. You let Palla scare you.
That's not the way. The thing to do is to have a jolly time with her,
with them all. Accept her as she thinks she is. There's no damage done
yet. Time enough to throw fits if she takes the bit and bolts----"

He extended his hand, cordially but impatiently:

"You remember I once said that girl ought to be married and have
children? If you do the marrying part she's likely to do the rest very
handsomely. And it will be the making of her."

Jim held on to his hand:

"Tell me what to do, Jack. She isn't in love with me. And she wouldn't
submit to a legal ceremony if she were. You invoke my sense of humour.
I'm willing to give it an airing, only I can't see anything funny in
this business."

"It _is_ funny! Palla's funny, but doesn't know it. You're funny!
They're all funny--unintentionally. But their motives are tragically
immaculate. So stick around and have a good time with Palla until
there's really something to scare you."

"And then?"

"How the devil do I know? It's up to you, of course, what you do about
it."

He laughed and strode away through the fog.

It had seemed to Jim a long time since he had seen Palla. It wasn't
very long. And in all that interminable time he had not once called
her up on the telephone--had not even written her a single line. Nor
had she written to him.

He had gone about his social business in his own circle, much to his
mother's content. He had seen quite a good deal of Elorn Sharrow; was
comfortably back on the old, agreeable footing; tried desperately to
enjoy it; pretended that he did.

But the days were long in the office; the evenings longer, wherever he
happened to be; and the nights, alas! were becoming interminable, now,
because he slept badly, and the grey winter daylight found him
unrefreshed.

Which, recently, had given him a slightly battered appearance,
commented on jestingly by young rakes and old sports at the Patroon's
Club, and also observed by his mother with gentle concern.

"Don't overdo it, Jim," she cautioned him, meaning dances that ended
with breakfasts and that sort of thing. But her real concern was
vaguer than that--deeper, perhaps. And sometimes she remembered the
girl in black.

Lately, however, that anxiety had been almost entirely allayed. And
her comparative peace of mind had come about in an unexpected manner.

For, one morning, entering the local Red Cross quarters, where for
several hours she was accustomed to sew, she encountered Mrs.
Speedwell and her lively daughter, Connie--her gossiping informants
concerning her son's appearance at Delmonico's with the mysterious
girl in black.

"Well, what do you suppose, Helen?" said Mrs. Speedwell, mischievously.
"Jim's pretty mystery in black is here!"

"Here?" repeated Mrs. Shotwell, flushing and looking around her at the
rows of prophylactic ladies, all sewing madly side by side.

"Yes, and she's prettier even than I thought her in Delmonico's,"
remarked Connie. "Her name is Palla Dumont, and she's a friend of
Leila Vance."

During the morning, Mrs. Shotwell found it convenient to speak to
Leila Vance; and they exchanged a pleasant word or two--merely the
amiable civilities of two women who recognise each other socially as
well as personally.

And it happened in that way, a few days later, that Helen Shotwell met
this pretty friend of Leila Vance--Palla Dumont--the girl in black.

And Palla had looked up from her work with her engaging smile, saying:
"I know your son, Mrs. Shotwell. Is he quite well? I haven't seen him
for such a long time."

And instantly the invisible antennæ of these two women became busy
exploring, probing, searching, and recognising in each other all that
remains forever incomprehensible to man.

For Palla somehow understood that Jim had never spoken of her to his
mother; and yet that his mother had heard of her friendship with her
son.

And Helen knew that Palla was quietly aware of this, and that the
girl's equanimity remained undisturbed.

Only people quite sure of themselves preserved serenity under the
merciless exploration of the invisible feminine antennæ. And it was
evident that the girl in black had nothing to conceal from her in
regard to her only son--whatever that same son might think he ought to
make an effort to conceal from his mother.

To herself Helen thought: "Jim has had his wings singed, and has fled
the candle."

To Palla she said: "Mrs. Vance tells me such interesting stories of
your experiences in Russia. Really, it's like a charming romance--your
friendship for the poor little Grand Duchess."

"A tragic one," said Palla in a voice so even that Helen presently
lifted her eyes from her sewing to read in her expression something
more than the mere words that this young girl had uttered. And saw a
still, pale face, sensitive and very lovely; and the needle flying
over a bandage no whiter than the hand that held it.

"It was a great shock to you--her death," said Helen.

"Yes."

"And--you were there at the time! How dreadful!"

Palla lifted her brown eyes: "I can't talk about it yet," she said so
simply that Helen's sixth sense, always alert for information from the
busy, invisible antennæ, suddenly became convinced that there were no
more hidden depths to explore--no motives to suspect, no pretense to
expose.

Day after day she chose to seat herself between Palla and Leila Vance;
and the girl began to fascinate her.

There was no effort to please on Palla's part, other than that natural
one born of sweet-tempered consideration for everybody. There seemed
to be no pretence, no pose.

Such untroubled frankness, such unconscious candour were rather
difficult to believe in, yet Helen was now convinced that in Palla
these phenomena were quite genuine. And she began to understand more
clearly, as the week wore on, why her son might have had a hard time
of it with Palla Dumont before he returned to more familiar pastures,
where camouflage and not candour was the rule in the gay and endless
game of blind-man's buff.

"This girl," thought Helen Shotwell to herself, "could easily have
taken Jim away from Elorn Sharrow had she chosen to do so. There is no
doubt about her charm and her goodness. She certainly is a most
unusual girl."

But she did not say this to her only son. She did not even tell him
that she had met his girl in black. And Palla had not informed him;
she knew that; because the girl herself had told her that she had not
seen Jim for "a long, long time." It really was not nearly as long as
Palla seemed to consider it.

Helen lunched with Leila Vance one day. The former spoke pleasantly of
Palla.

"She's such a darling," said Mrs. Vance, "but the child worries me."

"Why?"

"Well, she's absorbed some ultra-modern Russian notions--socialistic
ones--rather shockingly radical. Can you imagine it in a girl who
began her novitiate as a Carmelite nun?"

Helen said: "She does not seem to have a tendency toward extremes."

"She has. That awful affair in Russia seemed to shock her from one
extreme to another. It's a long way from the cloister to the radical
rostrum."

"She spoke of this new Combat Club."

"She organised it," said Leila. "They have a hall where they invite
public discussion of social questions three nights a week. The other
three nights, a rival and very red club rents the hall and howls for
anarchy and blood."

"Isn't it strange?" said Helen. "One can not imagine such a girl
devoting herself to radical propaganda."

"Too radical," said Leila. "I'm keeping an uneasy eye on that very
wilful and wrong-headed child. Why, my dear, she has the most
fastidious, the sweetest, the most chaste mind, and yet the things she
calmly discusses would make your hair curl."

"For example?" inquired Helen, astonished.

"Well, for example, they've all concluded that it's time to strip poor
old civilisation of her tinsel customs, thread-worn conventions,
polite legends, and pleasant falsehoods.

"All laws are silly. Everybody is to do as they please, conforming
only to the universal law of Love and Service. Do you see where that
would lead some of those pretty hot-heads?"

"Good heavens, I should think so!"

"Of course. But they can't seem to understand that the unscrupulous
are certain to exploit them--that the most honest motives--the
purest--invite that certain disaster consequent on social irregularities.

"Palla, so far, is all hot-headed enthusiast--hot-hearted theorist.
But I remember that she did take the white veil once. And, as I tell
you, I shall try to keep her within range of my uneasy vision.
Because," she added, "she's really a perfect darling."

"She is a most attractive girl," said Helen slowly; "but I think she'd
be more attractive still if she were happily married."

"And had children."

Their eyes met, unsmilingly, yet in silent accord.

Their respective cars awaited them at the Ritz and took them in
different directions. But all the afternoon Helen Shotwell's mind was
occupied with what she now knew of Palla Dumont. And she realised that
she wished the girl were back in Russia in spite of all her charm and
fascination--yes, on account of it.

Because this lovely, burning asteroid might easily cross the narrow
orbit through which her own social world spun peacefully in its
orderly progress amid that metropolitan galaxy called Society.

Leila Vance was part of that galaxy. So was her own and only son.
Wandering meteors that burnt so prettily might yet do damage.

For Helen, having known this girl, found it not any too easy to
believe that her son could have relinquished her completely in so
disturbingly brief a time.

Had she been a young man she knew that she would not have done so.
And, knowing it, she was troubled.

Meanwhile, her only son was troubled, too, as he walked slowly
homeward through the winter fog.

And by the time he was climbing his front steps he had concluded to
accept this girl as she was--or thought she was--to pull no more long
faces or sour faces, but to go back to her, resolutely determined to
enjoy her friendship and her friends too; and give his long
incarcerated sense of humour an airing, even if he suffered acutely
while it revelled.

CHAPTER XIII

Palla's activities seemed to exhilarate her physically and mentally.
Body and brain were now fully occupied; and, if the profit to her soul
were dubious, nevertheless the restless spirit of the girl now had an
outlet; and at home and in the Combat Club she planned and discussed
and investigated the world's woes to her ardent heart's content.

Physically, too, Red Cross and canteen work gave her much needed
occupation; and she went everywhere on foot, never using bus, tram or
taxicab. The result was, in spite of late and sometimes festive hours,
that Palla had become something more than an unusually pretty girl,
for there was much of real beauty in her full and charming face and in
her enchantingly rounded yet lithe and lissome figure.

About the girl, also, there seemed to be a new freshness like
fragrance--a virginal sweetness--that indefinable perfume of something
young and vigorous that is already in bud.

That morning she went over to the dingy row of buildings to sign the
lease of the hall for three evenings a week, as quarters for Combat
Club No. 1.

The stuffy place where the Red Flag Club had met the night before was
still reeking with stale smoke and the effluvia of the unwashed; but
the windows were open and a negro was sweeping up a litter of defunct
cigars.

"Yaas'm, Mr. Puma's office is next do'," he replied to Palla's
inquiry; "--Sooperfillum Co'poration. Yaas'm."

Next door had been a stable and auction ring, and odours characteristic
still remained, although now the ring had been partitioned, boarded over
and floored, and Mr. Hewitt's glass rods full of blinding light were
suspended above the studio ceilings of the Super-Picture Corporation.

Palla entered the brick archway. An office on the right bore the name
of Angelo Puma; and that large, richly coloured gentleman hastily got
out of his desk chair and flashed a pair of magnificent as well as
astonished eyes upon Palla as she opened the door and walked in.

When she had seated herself and stated her business, Puma, with a
single gesture, swept from the office several men and a stenographer,
and turned to Palla.

"Is it you, then, who are this Combat Club which would rent from me
the hall next door!" he exclaimed, showing every faultless tooth in
his head.

Palla smiled: "I am empowered by the club to sign a lease."

"That is sufficient!" exclaimed Puma, with a superb gesture. "So! It
is signed! Your desire is enough. The matter is accomplished when you
express the wish!"

Palla blushed a little but smilingly affixed her signature to the
papers elaborately presented by Angelo Puma.

"A lease?" he remarked, with a flourish of his large, sanguine, and
jewelled hand. "A detail merely for your security, Miss Dumont. For
me, I require only the expression of your slightest wish. That, to
me, is a command more binding than the seal of the notary!"

And he flashed his dazzling smile on Palla, who was tucking her copy
of the agreement into her muff.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Puma," she said, almost inclined to laugh at
his extravagances. And she laid down a certified check to cover the
first month's rental.

Mr. Puma bowed; his large, heavily lashed black eyes were very
brilliant; his mouth much too red under the silky black moustache.

"For me," he said impulsively, "art alone matters. What is money? What
is rent? What are all the annoying details of commerce? Interruptions
to the soul-flow! Checks to the fountain jet of inspiration! Art only
is important. Have you ever seen a cinema studio, Miss Dumont?"

Palla never had.

"Would it interest you, perhaps?"

"Thank you--some time----"

"It is but a step! They are working. A peep will take but a moment--if
you please--a thousand excuses that I proceed to show you the
way!----"

She stepped through a door. From a narrow anteroom she saw the
set-scene in a ghastly light, where men in soiled shirt-sleeves
dragged batteries of electric lights about, each underbred face as
livid as the visage of a corpse too long unburied.

There were women there, too, looking a little more human in their
makeups under the horrible bluish glare. Camera men were busy; a
cadaverous and profane director, with his shabby coat-collar turned
up, was talking loudly in a Broadway voice and jargon to a bewildered
girl wearing a ball gown.

As Puma led Palla through the corridor from partition to partition,
disclosing each set with its own scene and people--the whole studio
full of blatant noise and ghastly faces or painted ones, Palla thought
she had never before beheld such a concentration of every type of
commonness in her entire existence. Faces, shapes, voices, language,
all were essentially the properties of congenital vulgarity. The
language, too, had to be sharply rebuked by Puma once or twice amid
the wrangling of director, camera man and petty subordinates.

"So intense are the emotions evoked by a fanatic devotion to art," he
explained to Palla, "that, at moments, the old, direct and vigorous
Anglo-Saxon tongue is heard here, unashamed. What will you? It is art!
It is the fervour that forgets itself in blind devotion--in rapturous
self-dedication to the god of Truth and Beauty!"

As she turned away, she heard from a neighbouring partition the hoarse
expostulations of one of Art's blind acolytes: "Say, f'r Christ's
sake, Delmour, what the hell's loose in your bean! Yeh done it wrong
an' yeh know damn well yeh done it wrong----"

Puma opened another door: "One of our projection rooms, Miss Dumont.
If it is your pleasure to see a few reels run off----"

"Thank you, but I really must go----"

The office door stood open and she went out that way. Mr. Puma
confronted her, moistly brilliant of eye:

"For me, Miss Dumont, I am frank like there never was a child in arms!
Yes. I am all art; all heart. For me, beauty is God!--" he kissed his
fat fingers and wafted the caress toward the dirty ceiling.

"Please excuse," he said with his powerful smile, "but have you ever,
perhaps, thought, Miss Dumont, of the screen as a career?"

"I?" asked Palla, surprised and amused. "No, Mr. Puma, I haven't."

"A test! Possibly, in you, latent, sleeps the exquisite apotheosis of
Art incarnate! Who can tell? You have youth, beauty, a mind! Yes. Who
knows if, also, happily, genius slumbers within? Yes?"

"I'm very sure it doesn't," replied Palla, laughing.

"Ah! Who can be sure of anything--even of heaven!" cried Puma.

"Very true," said Palla, trying to speak seriously, "But the career of
a moving picture actress does not attract me."

"The emoluments are enormous!"

"Thank you, no----"

"A test! We try! It would be amusing for you to see yourself upon the
screen as you are, Miss Dumont? As you _are_--young, beautiful,
vivacious----"

He still blocked her way, so she said, laying her gloved hand on the
knob:

"Thank you very much. Some day, perhaps. But I really must go----"

He immediately bowed, opened the glass door, and went with her to the
brick arch.

"I do not think you know," he said, "that I have entered partnership
with a friend of yours?"

"A friend of mine?"

"Mr. Elmer Skidder."

"Oh," she exclaimed, smilingly, "I hope the partnership will be a
fortunate one. Will you kindly inform Mr. Skidder of my congratulations
and best wishes for his prosperity? And you may say that I shall be
glad to hear from him about his new enterprise."

To Mr. Puma's elaborate leave-taking she vouchsafed a quick, amused
nod, then hurried away eastward to keep her appointment at the
Canteen.

About five o'clock she experienced a healthy inclination for tea and
wavered between the Plaza and home. Ilse and Marya were with her, but
an indefinable something caused her to hesitate, and finally to let
them go to the Plaza without her.

What might be the reason of this sudden whim for an unpremeditated cup
of tea at home she scarcely took the trouble to analyse. Yet, she was
becoming conscious of a subtle and increasing exhilaration as she
approached her house and mounted the steps.

Suddenly, as she fitted the latch-key, her heart leaped and she knew
why she had come home.

For a moment her fast pulse almost suffocated her. Was she mad to
return here on the wildest chance that Jim might have come--might be
inside, waiting? And what in the world made her suppose so?--for she
had neither seen him nor heard from him in many days.

"I'm certainly a little crazy," she thought as she opened the door. At
the same moment her eyes fell on his overcoat and hat and stick.

Her skirt was rather tight, but her limbs were supple and her feet
light, and she ran upstairs to the living room.

As he rose from an armchair she flung her arms out with a joyous
little cry and wrapped them tightly around his neck, muff, reticule
and all.

"You darling," he was saying over and over in a happy but rather
stupid voice, and crushing her narrow hands between his; "--you
adorable child, you wonderful girl----"

"Oh, I'm so glad, Jim! Shall we have tea?... You dear fellow! I'm so
very happy that you came! Wait a moment--" she leaned wide from him
and touched an electric bell. "Now you'll have to behave properly,"
she said with delightful malice.

He released her; she spoke to the maid and then went over with him to
the sofa, flinging muff, stole and purse on a chair.

"Pure premonition," she explained, stripping the gloves from her
hands. "Ilse and Marya were all for the Plaza, but something sent me
homeward! Isn't it really very strange, Jim? Why, I almost had an
inclination to run when I turned into our street--not even knowing
why, of course----"

"You're so sweet and generous!" he blurted out. "Why don't you raise
hell with me?"

"You know," she said demurely, "I don't raise hell, dear."

"But I've behaved so rottenly----"

"It really wasn't friendly to neglect me so entirely."

He looked down--laid one hand on hers in silence.

"I understand, Jim," she said sweetly. "Is it all right now?"

"It's all right.... Of course I haven't changed."

"Oh."

"But it's all right."

"Really?"

"Yes.... What is there for me to do but to accept things as they
are?"

"You mean, 'accept _me_ as I am!' Oh, Jim, it's so dear of you. And
you know well enough that I care for no other man as I do for
you----"

The waitress with the tea-tray cut short that sort of conversation.
Palla's appetite was a healthy one. She unpinned her hat and flung it
on the piano. Then she nestled down sideways on the sofa, one leg
tucked under the other knee, her hair in enough disorder to worry any
other girl--and began to tuck away tea and cakes. Sometimes, in
animated conversation, she gesticulated with a buttered bun--once she
waved her cup to emphasise her point:

"The main idea, of course, is to teach the eternal law of Love and
Service," she explained. "But, Jim, I have become recently, and in a
measure, militant."

"You're going to love the unwashed with a club?"

"You very impudent boy! We're going to combat this new and terrible
menace--this sinister flood that threatens the world--the crimson tide
of anarchy!"

"Good work, darling! I enlist for a machine gun uni----"

"Listen! The battle is to be entirely verbal. Our Combat Club No. 1,
the first to be established--is open to anybody and everybody. All are
at liberty to enter into the discussions. We who believe in the Law of
Love and Service shall have our say every evening that the club is
open----"

"The Reds may come and take a crack at you."

"The Reds are welcome. We wish to face them across the rostrum, not
across a barricade!"

"Well, you dear girl, I can't see how any Red is going to resist you.
And if any does, I'll knock his bally block off----"

"Oh, Jim, you're so vernacularly inclined! And you're very flippant,
too----"

"I'm not really," he said in a lower voice. "Whatever you care about
could not fail to appeal to me."

She gave him a quick, sweet glance, then searched the tea-tray to
reward him.

As she gave him another triangle of cinnamon toast, she remembered
something else. It was on the tip of her tongue, now; and she checked
herself.

_He_ had not spoken of it. Had his mother mentioned meeting her at the
Red Cross? If not--was it merely a natural forgetfulness on his
mother's part? Was her silence significant?

Nibbling pensively at her cinnamon toast, Palla pondered this. But the
girl's mind worked too directly for concealment to come easy.

"I'm wondering," she said, "whether your mother mentioned our meeting
at the Red Cross." And she knew immediately by his expression that he
heard it for the first time.

"I was introduced at our headquarters by Leila Vance," said Palla, in
her even voice; "and your mother and she are acquaintances. That is
how it happened, Jim."

He was still somewhat flushed but he forced a smile: "Did you find my
mother agreeable, Palla?"

"Yes. And she is so beautiful with her young face and pretty white
hair. She always sits between Leila and me while we sew."

"Did you say you knew me?"

"Yes, of course."

"Of course," he repeated, reddening again.

No man ever has successfully divined any motive which any woman
desires to conceal.

Why his mother had not spoken of Palla to him he did not know. He was
aware, of course, that nobody within the circle into which he had been
born would tolerate Palla's social convictions. Had she casually and
candidly revealed a few of them to his mother in the course of the
morning's conversation over their sewing?

He gave Palla a quick look, encountered her slightly amused eyes, and
turned redder than ever.

"You dear boy," she said, smiling, "I don't think your very charming
mother would be interested in knowing me. The informality of
ultra-modern people could not appeal to her generation."

"Did you--talk to her about----"

"No. But it might happen. You know, Jim, I have nothing to conceal."

The old troubled look had come back into his face. She noticed it and
led the conversation to lighter themes.

"We danced last night after dinner," she said. "There were some
amusing people here for dinner. Then we went to see such a charming
play--_Tea for Three_--and then we had supper at the Biltmore and
danced.... Will you dine with me to-morrow?"

"Of course."

"Do you think you'd enjoy it?--a lot of people who entertain the same
shocking beliefs that I do?"

"All right!" he said with emphasis. "I'm through playing the rôle of
death's-head at the feast. I told you that I'm going to take you as
you are and enjoy you and our friends--and quit making an ass of
myself----"

"Dear, you never did!"

"Oh, yes, I did. And maybe I'm a predestined ass. But every ass has a
pair of heels and I'm going to flourish mine very gaily from now on!"

She protested laughingly at his self-characterisation, and bent toward
him a little, caressing his sleeve in appeal, or shaking it in
protest as he denounced himself and promised to take the world more
gaily in the future.

"You'll see," he remarked, rising to take his leave: "I may even call
the bluff of some of your fluffy ultra-modern friends and try a few
trial marriages with each of 'em----"

"Oh, Jim, you're absolutely horrid! As if my friends believed in such
disgusting ideas!"

"They do--some of 'em."

"They don't!"

"Well, then, I do!" he announced so gravely that she had to look at
him closely in the rather dim lamplight to see whether he was
jesting.

She walked to the top of the staircase with him; let him take her into
his arms; submitted to his kiss. Always a little confused by his
demonstrations, nevertheless her hand retained his for a second
longer, as though shyly reluctant to let him go.

"I am so glad you came," she said. "Don't neglect me any more."

And so he went his way.

His mother discovered him in the library, dressed for dinner.
Something, as he rose--his manner of looking at her, perhaps--warned
her that they were not perfectly _en rapport_. Then the subtle,
invisible antennæ, exploring caressingly what is so palpable in the
heart of man, told her that once more she was to deal with the girl in
black.

When his mother was seated, he said: "I didn't know you had met Palla
Dumont, mother."

Helen hesitated: "Mrs. Vance's friend? Oh, yes; she comes to the Red
Cross with Leila Vance."

"Do you like her?"

In her son's eyes she was aware of that subtle and unconscious appeal
which all mothers of boys are, some day, fated to see and understand.

Sometimes the appeal is disguised, sometimes it is so subtle that only
mothers are able to perceive it.

But what to do about it is the perennial problem. For between lack of
sympathy and response there are many nuances; and opposition is always
to be avoided.

Helen said, pleasantly, that the girl appeared to be amiable and
interesting.

"I know her merely in that way," she continued. "We sit there sewing
slings, pads, compresses, and bandages, and we gossip at random with
our neighbours."

"I like her very much," said Jim.

"She does seem to be an attractive girl," said his mother carelessly....
"Are you going to Yama Farms for the week end?"

"No."

"Oh, I'm sorry. The Speedwells' party is likely to be such a jolly
affair, and I hear there's lots of snow up there."

"I haven't met Mrs. Vance," said her son. "Is she nice?"

"Leila Vance? Why, of course."

"Who is she?"

"She married an embassy attaché, Captain Vance. He was in the old
army--killed at Mons four years ago."

"She and Palla are intimate?"

"I believe they are good friends," remarked his mother, deciding not
to attempt to turn the current of conversation for the moment.

"Mother?"

"Yes, dear."

"I am quite sure I never met a girl I like as well."

Helen laughed: "That is a trifle extravagant, isn't it?"

"No.... I asked her to marry me."

Helen's heart stood still, then a bright flush stained her face.

"She refused me," said the boy.

His mother said very quietly: "Of course this is news to us, Jim."

"Yes, I didn't tell you. I couldn't, somehow. But I've told you now."

"Dearest," she said, dropping her hand over his, "don't think me
unsympathetic if I say that it really is better that she refused
you."

"I understand, mother."

"I hope you do."

"Oh, yes. But I don't think you do. Because I am still in love with
her."

"You poor dear!"

"It's rotten luck, isn't it?"

"Time heals--" She checked herself, turned and kissed him.

"After all," she said, "a soldier learns how to take things."

And presently: "I do wish you'd go up to Yama Farms."

"That," he said, "would be the obvious thing to do. Anything to keep
going and keep your mind ticking away until you're safely wound up
again.... But I'm not going, dear."

Helen looked at him in silence, not wondering what he might be going
to do with his week-end instead, because she already guessed.

Before she said anything more his father came in; and a moment later
dinner was announced.

Jim slept soundly for the first night in a long time. His mother
scarcely closed her eyes at all.

CHAPTER XIV

There had been a row at the Red Flag Club--a matter of differing
opinions between members--nothing sufficient to attract the police,
but enough to break several heads, benches and windows. And it was
evident that some gentleman's damaged nose had bled all over the
linoleum in the lobby.

Elmer Skidder, arriving at the studio next morning in his brand new
limousine, heard about the shindy and went into the club to inspect
the wreckage. Then, mad all through, he started out to find Puma. But
a Sister Art had got the best of Angelo Puma in a questionable cabaret
the night before, and he had not yet arrived at the studio of the
Super-Picture Corporation.

Skidder, thrifty by every instinct, and now smarting under his wrongs
at the hands--and feet--of the Red Flag Club, went away in his
gorgeous limousine to find Sondheim, who paid the rental and who lived
in the Bronx.

It was a long way; every mile and every gallon of gasoline made
Skidder madder; and when at length he arrived at the brand new,
jerry-built apartment house inhabited by Max Sondheim, he had
concluded that the Red Flag Club was an undesirable tenant and that it
must be summarily kicked out.

Sondheim was still in bed, but a short-haired and pallid young woman,
with assorted spots on her complexion, bade Skidder enter, and opened
the chamber door for him.

The bedroom, which smelled of sour fish, was very cold, very dirty,
and very blue with cigar smoke. The remains of a delicatessen
breakfast stood on a table near the only window, which was tightly
shut, and under the sill of which a radiator emitted explosive
symptoms of steam to come.

Sondheim sprawled under the bed-covers, smoking; two other men sat on
the edge of the bed--Karl Kastner and Nathan Bromberg. Both were
smoking porcelain pipes. Three slopping quarts of beer decorated the
wash stand.

Skidder, who had halted in the doorway as the full aroma of the place
smote him, now entered at the curt suggestion of Sondheim, but refused
a chair.

"Say, Sondheim," he began, "I been to the club this morning, and I've
seen what you've done to the place."

"Well?" demanded Sondheim, in a growling voice, "what haf we done?"

"Oh, nothing;--smashed the furniture f'r instance. That's all. But it
don't go with me. See?"

Kastner got up and gave him a sinister, near-sighted look: "If ve done
damach ve pay," he remarked.

"Sure you'll pay!" blustered Skidder. "And that's all right, too. But
no more for yours truly. I'm through. Here's where your bunch quits
the hall for keeps. Get me?"

"Please?" inquired Kastner, turning a brick red.

"I say I'm through!" blustered Skidder. "You gotta get other quarters.
It don't pay us to keep on buying benches and mending windows, even if
you cough up for 'em. It don't pay us to rent the hall to your club
and get all this here notoriety, what with your red flags and the
_po_-lice hanging around and nosin' into everything----"

"Ach wass!" snapped Kastner, "of vat are you speaking? Iss it for you
to concern yourself mit our club und vat iss it ve do?"

"Say, who d'yeh think you're talkin' to?" retorted Skidder, his eyes
snapping furiously. "Grab this from me, old scout?--I'm half owner of
that hall and I'm telling you to get out! Is that plain?"

"So?" Kastner sneered at him and nudged Sondheim, who immediately sat
up in bed and levelled an unwashed hand at Skidder.

"You think you fire us?" he shouted, his eyes inflamed and his dirty
fingers crisping to a talon. "You go home and tell Puma what you say
to us. Then you learn something maybe, what you don't know already!"

"I'll learn _you_ something!" retorted Skidder. "Just wait till I show
Puma the wreckage----"

"Let him look at it and be damned!" roared Bromberg. "Go home and show
it to him! And see if he talks about firing us!"

"Say," demanded Skidder, astonished, "do you fellows think you got any
drag with Angy Puma?"

"Go back and ask him!" growled Bromberg. "And don't try to come around
here and get fresh again. Listen! You go buy what benches you say we
broke and send the bill to me, and keep your mouth shut and mind your
fool business!"

"I'll mind my own and yours too!" screamed Skidder, seized by an
ungovernable access of fury. "Say, you poor nut!--you sick mink!--you
stale hunk of cheese!--if you come down my way again I'll kick your
shirttail for you! Get that?" And he slammed the door and strode out
in a flaming rage.

But when, still furiously excited, he arrived once more at the
office,--and when Puma, who had just entered, had listened in sullen
consternation to his story, he received another amazing and most
unpleasant shock. For Puma told him flatly that the tenancy of the Red
Flag Club suited him; that no lease could be broken, except by mutual
consent of partners; and that he, Skidder, had had no business to go
to Sondheim with any such threat of eviction unless he had first
consulted his partner's wishes.

"Well, what--what--" stammered Skidder--"what the hell drag have those
guys got with you?"

"Why is it you talk foolish?" retorted Puma sharply. "Drag? Did
Sondheim say----"

"No! _I_ say it. I ask you what have those crazy nuts got on you that
you stand for all this rumpus?"

Puma's lustrous eyes, battered but still magnificent, fixed themselves
on Skidder.

"Go out," he said briefly to his stenographer. Then, when the girl had
gone, and the glass door closed behind her, he turned heavily and
gazed at Skidder some more. And, after a few moments' silence: "Go
on," he said. "What did Sondheim say about me?"

Skidder's small, shifty eyes were blinking furiously and his
essentially suspicious mind was also operating at full speed. When he
had calculated what to say he took the chance, and said:

"Sondheim gave me to understand that he's got such a hell of a pull
with you that I can't kick him out of my property. What do you know
about that, Angelo?"

"Go on," said Puma impatiently, "what else did he say about me?"

"Ain't I telling you?"

"Tell more."

Skidder had no more to tell, so he manufactured more.

"Well," he continued craftily, "I didn't exactly get what that kike
said." But his grin and his manner gave his words the lie, as he
intended they should. "Something about your being in dutch--" He
checked himself as Puma's black eyes lighted with a momentary glare.

"What? He tells you I am in with Germans!"

"Naw;--in dutch!"

Puma's sanguinary skin reddened; his puffy fingers fished for a cigar
in the pocket of his fancy waistcoat; he found one and lighted it, not
looking at his partner. Then he picked up the morning paper.

Skidder shrugged; stood up, pretending to yawn; started to open the
door.

"Elmer?"

"Yeh? What y'want?"

"I want to know exactly what Max Sondheim said to you about me."

"Well, you better go ask Sondheim."

"No. I ask you--my friend--my associate in business----"

"A fine associate!--when I can't kick in when I want to kick out a
bunch of nuts that's wrecking the hall, just because they got a drag
with you----"

"Listen. I am frank like there never was a----"

"Sure. Go on!"

"I say it! Yes! I am frank like hell. From my friend and partner I
conceal nothing----"

"Not even the books," grinned Skidder.

"Elmer. You pain me. I who am all heart! Elmer, I ask it of you if you
will so kindly tell me what it is that Sondheim has said to you about
this 'drag.'"

"He said," replied the other viciously, "that he had you cinched. He
said you'd hand me the ha-ha when I saw you. And you've done it."

"Pardon. I did not say to you a ha-ha, Elmer. I was surprised when you
have told me how you have gone to Sondheim so roughly, without one
word to me----"

"You was soused to the gills last night. I didn't know when you'd show
up at the studio----"

"It was not just to me that you go to Sondheim in this so surprising
manner, without informing me." He looked at his cigar; the wrapper was
broken and he licked the place with a fat tongue. "Elmer?"

"That's me," replied the other, who had been slyly watching him. "Spit
it out, Angy. What's on your mind?"

"I tell you, Elmer!"

Puma's face became suddenly wreathed in guileless smiles: "Me, I am
frank like there never--but no matter," he added; "listen attentively
to what I shall say to you secretly, that I also desire to be rid of
this Red Flag Club."

"Well, then----"

"A moment! I am embarrass. Yes. You ask why? I shall tell you. It is
this. Formerly I have reside in Mexico. My business has been in Mexico
City. I have there a little cinema theatre. In 1913 I arrive in New
York. You ask me why I came? And I am frank like--" his full smile
burst on Skidder--"like a heaven angel! But it is God's truth I came
here to make of the cinema a monument to Art."

"And make your little pile too, eh, Angy?"

"As you please. But this I affirm to you, Elmer; of politics I am
innocent like there never was a cherubim! Yes! And yet your Government
has question me. Why? you ask so naturally. My God! I know no one in
New York. I arrive. I repair to a recommended hotel. I make
acquaintance--unhappily--with people who are under a suspicion of
German sympathy!"

"What the devil did you do that for?" demanded Skidder.

Puma spread his jewelled fingers helplessly.

"How am I to know? I encounter people. I seek capital for my art. Me,
I am all heart: I suspect nobody. I say: 'Gentlemen, my art is my
life. Without it I cease to exist. I desire capital; I desire
sympathy; I desire intelligent recognition and practical aid.' Yes. In
time some gentlemen evince confidence. I am offered funds. I produce,
with joy, my first picture. Ha! The success is extravagant!
But--alas!"

"What tripped you?"

"Alas," repeated Puma, "your Government arrests some gentlemen who
have lend to me much funds. Why? Imagine my grief, my mortification!
They are suspect of German propaganda! Oh, my God!"

"How is it they didn't pinch _you_?" asked Skidder coldly, and
beginning to feel very uneasy.

"Me? No! They investigate. They discover only Art!"

Skidder squinted at him nervously. If he had heard anything of that
sort in connection with Puma he never would have flirted with him
financially.

"Well, then, what's this drag they got with you?--Sondheim and the
other nuts?"

"I tell you. Letters quite innocent but polite they have in
possession----"

"Blackmail, by heck!"

"I must be considerate of Sondheim."

"Or he'll squeal on you. Is that it?"

Puma's black eyes were flaring up again; the heavy colour stained his
face.

"Me, I am----"

"All right. Sondheim's got something on you, then. Has he?"

"It is nothing. Yet, it has embarrass me----"

"That ratty kike! I get you, Angy. You were played. Or maybe you did
some playing too. Aw! wait!"--as Puma protested--"I'm getting you, by
gobs. Sure. And you're rich, now, and business is pretty good, and you
wish Sondheim would let you alone."

"Yes, surely."

"How much hush-cash d'yeh pay him?"

"I?"

"Yaas, you! Come on, now, Angy. What does he stick you up for per
month?"

Puma's face became empurpled: "He is a scoundrel," he said thickly.
"Me--I wish to God and Jesus Christ I saw the last of him!" He got up,
and his step was lithe as a leopard's as he paced the room, ranging
the four walls as though caged. And, for the first time, then Skidder
realised that this velvet-eyed, velvet-footed man might possibly be
rather dangerous--dangerous to antagonise, dangerous to be associated
with in business.

"Say," he blurted out, "what else did you let me in for when I put my
money into your business? Think I'm going to be held up by any game
like that? Think I'm going to stand for any shake-down from that
gang? Watch me."

Puma stopped and looked at him stealthily: "What is it you would do,
Elmer?"

But Skidder offered no suggestion. He remained, however, extremely
uneasy. For it was plain enough that Puma had been involved in
dealings sufficiently suspicious to warrant Government surveillance.

All Skidder's money and real estate were now invested in Super-Pictures.
No wonder he was anxious. No wonder Puma, also, seemed worried.

For, whatever he might have done in the past of a shady nature, now he
had become prosperous and financially respectable and, if let alone,
would doubtless continue to make a great deal of money for Skidder as
well as for himself. And Skidder, profoundly troubled, wondered
whether his partner had ever been guiltily involved in German
propaganda, and had escaped Government detection only to fall a
victim, in his dawning prosperity, to blackmailing associates of
earlier days.

"That mutt Sondheim looks like a bad one to me, and the other
guy--Kastner," he observed gloomily.

"It is better that we should not offend them."

"Just as you say, brother."

"I say it. Yes. We shall be wise to turn to them a pleasing face."

"Sure. The best thing to do for a while is to stall along," nodded
Skidder, "--but always be ready for a chance to hand it to them.
That's safest; wait till we get the goods on them. Then slam it to 'em
plenty!"

"If they annoy me too much," purred Puma, displaying every dazzling
tooth, "it may not be so agreeable for them. I am bad man to
crowd.... Meanwhile----"

"Sure; we'll stall along, Angy!"

They opened the glass door and went out into the studio. And Puma
began again on his favourite theme, the acquiring of Broadway property
and the erection of a cinema theatre. And Skidder, with his limited
imagination of a cross-roads storekeeper, listened cautiously, yet
always conscious of agreeable thrills whenever the subject was
mentioned.

And, although he knew that capital was shy and that conditions were
not favourable, his thoughts always reverted to a man he might be
willing to go into such a scheme with--the president of the Shadow
Hill Trust Company, Alonzo Pawling.

At that very moment, too, it chanced that Mr. Pawling's business had
brought him to New York--in fact, his business was partly with Palla
Dumont, and they were now lunching together at the Ritz.

Alonzo Pawling stood well over six feet. He still had all his
hair--which was dyed black--and also an inky pair of old-fashioned
side whiskers. For the beauty of his remaining features less could be
said, because his eyes were a melancholy and faded blue, his nose very
large and red, and his small, loose mouth seemed inclined to sag, as
though saturated with moisture.

Many years a widower he had, when convenient opportunity presented
itself, never failed to offer marriage to Palla Dumont. And when, as
always, she refused him in her frank, amused fashion, they returned
without embarrassment to their amiable footing of many years--she as
child of his old friend and neighbour, Judge Dumont, he as her
financial adviser, and banker.

As usual, Mr. Pawling had offered Palla his large, knotty hand in
wedlock that morning. And now that this inevitable preliminary was
safely over, they were approaching the end of a business luncheon on
entirely amiable terms with each other.

Financial questions had been argued, investments decided upon, news of
the town discussed, and Palla was now telling him about Elmer Skidder
and his new and apparently prosperous venture into moving pictures.

"He came to see me last evening," she said, smiling at the recollection,
"and he arrived in a handsome limousine with an extra man on the
front--oh, very gorgeous, Mr. Pawling!--and we had tea and he told me
how prosperous he had become in the moving picture business."

"I guess," said Mr. Pawling, "that there's a lot of money in moving
pictures. But nobody ever seems to get any of it except the officials
of the corporation and their favourite stars."

"It seems to be an exceedingly unattractive business," said Palla,
recollecting her unpleasant impressions at the Super-Picture studios.

"The right end of it," said Mr. Pawling, "is to own a big theatre."

She smiled: "You wouldn't advise me to make such an investment, would
you?"

Mr. Pawling's watery eyes rested on her reflectively and he sucked in
his lower lips as though trying to extract the omnipresent moisture.

"I dunno," he said absently.

"Mr. Skidder told me that he would double his invested capital in a
year," she said.

"I guess he was bragging."

"Perhaps," she rejoined, laughing, "but I should not care to make such
an investment."

"Did he ask you?"

"No. But it seemed to me that he hinted at something of that nature.
And I was not at all interested because I am contented with my little
investments and my income as it is. I don't really need much money."

Mr. Pawling's pendulous lip, released, sagged wetly and his jet-black
eyebrows were lifted in a surprised arch.

"You're the first person I ever heard say they had enough money," he
remarked.

"But I have!" she insisted gaily.

Mr. Pawling's sad horse-face regarded her with faded surprise. He
passed for a rich man in Shadow Hill.

"Where is Elmer's place of business?" he inquired finally, producing a
worn note-book and a gold pencil. And he wrote down the address.

There was in all the world only one thing that seriously worried Mr.
Pawling, and that was this worn note-book. Almost every day of his
life he concluded to burn it. He lived in a vague and daily fear that
it might be found on him if he died suddenly. Such things could
happen--automobile or railroad accidents--any one of numberless
mischances.

And still he carried it, and had carried it for years--always in a
sort of terror while the recent Mrs. Pawling was still alive--and in
dull but perpetual anxiety ever since.

There were in it pages devoted to figures. There were, also, memoranda
of stock transactions. There were many addresses, too, mostly
feminine.

Now he replaced it in the breast pocket of his frock-coat, and took
out a large wallet strapped with a rubber band.

While he was paying the check, Palla drew on her gloves; and, at the
Madison Avenue door, stood chatting with him a moment longer before
leaving for the canteen.

Then, smilingly declining his taxi and offering her slender hand in
adieu, she went westward on foot as usual. And Mr. Pawling's
directions to the chauffeur were whispered ones as though he did not
care to have the world at large share in his knowledge of his own
occult destination.

Palla's duty at the canteen lasted until six o'clock that afternoon,
and she hurried on her way home because people were dining there at
seven-thirty.

With the happy recollection that Jim, also, was dining with her, she
ran lightly up the steps and into the house; examined the flowers
which stood in jars of water in the pantry, called for vases, arranged
a centre-piece for the table, and carried other clusters of blossoms
into the little drawing-room, and others still upstairs.

Then she returned to criticise the table and arrange the name-cards.
And, this accomplished, she ran upstairs again to her own room, where
her maid was waiting.

Two or three times in a year--not oftener--Palla yielded to a rare
inclination which assailed her only when unusually excited and happy.
That inclination was to whistle.

She whistled, now, while preparing for the bath; whistled like a
blackbird as she stood before the pier-glass before the maid hooked
her into a filmy, rosy evening gown--her first touch of colour since
assuming mourning.

The bell rang, and the waitress brought an elaborate florist's box.
There were pink orchids in it and Jim's card;--perfection.

How could he have known! She wondered rapturously, realising all the
while that they'd have gone quite as well with her usual black.

Would he come early? She had forgotten to ask it. Would he? For, in
that event--and considering his inclination to take her into his
arms--she decided to leave off the orchids until the more strenuous
rites of friendship had been accomplished.

She was carrying the orchids and the long pin attached, in her left
hand, when the sound of the doorbell filled her with abrupt and
delightful premonitions. She ventured a glance over the banisters,
then returned hastily to the living room, where he discovered her and
did exactly what she had feared.

Her left hand, full of orchids, rested on his shoulder; her cool,
fresh lips rested on his. Then she retreated, inviting inspection of
the rosy dinner gown; and fastened her orchids while he was admiring
it.

Her guests began to arrive before either was quite ready, so engrossed
were they in happy gossip. And Palla looked up in blank surprise that
almost amounted to vexation when the bell announced that their
tête-à-tête was ended.

Shotwell had met the majority of Palla's dinner guests. Seated on her
right, he received from his hostess information concerning some of
those he did not know.

"That rather talkative boy with red hair is Larry Rideout," she said
in a low voice. "He edits a weekly called _The Coming Race_. The Post
Office authorities have refused to pass it through the mails. It's
rather advanced, you know."

"Who is the girl on his right--the one with the chalky map?"

"Questa Terrett. Don't you think her pallor is fascinating?"

"No. What particular stunt does she perform?"

"Don't be flippant. She writes."

"Ads?"

"Jim! She writes poems. Haven't you seen any of them?"

"I don't think so."

"They're rather modern poems. The lines don't rhyme and there's no
metrical form," explained Palla.

"Are they any good?"

"They're a little difficult to understand. She leaves out so many
verbs and nouns----"

"I know. It's a part of her disease----"

"Jim, please be careful. She is taken seriously----"

"Taken seriously ill? There, dear, I won't guy your guests. What an
absolutely deathly face she has!"

"She is considered beautiful."

"She has the profile of an Egyptian. She's as dead-white as an
Egyptian leper----"

"Hush!"

"Hush it is, sweetness! Who's the good-looking chap over by Ilse?"

"Stanley Wardner."

"And his star trick?"

"He's a secessionist sculptor."

"What's that?"

"He is one of the ultra-modern men who has seceded from the Society
of American Sculptors to form, with a few others, a new group."

"Is he any good?"

"Well, Jim, I don't know," she said candidly. "I don't think I am
quite in sympathy with his work."

"What sort is it?"

"If I understand him, he is what is termed, I believe, a concentrationist.
For instance, in a nude figure which he is exhibiting in his studio, it's
all a rough block of marble except, in the middle of the upper part,
there is a nose."

"A nose!"

"Really, it is beautifully sculptured," insisted Palla.

"But--good heavens!--isn't there any other anatomical feature to that
block of marble?"

"I explained that he is a concentrationist. His school believes in
concentrating on a single feature only, and in rendering that feature
as minutely and perfectly as possible."

Jim said: "He looks as sane as a broker, too. You never can tell, can
you, sweetness?"

He glanced at several other people whose features were not familiar,
but Palla's explanations of her friends had slightly discouraged him
and he made no further inquiries.

Vanya Tchernov was there, dreamy and sweet-mannered; Estridge sat by
Ilse, looking a trifle careworn, as though hospital work were taking
it out of him. Marya Lanois was there, too, with her slightly slanting
green eyes and her tiger-red hair--attracting from him a curious sort
of stealthy admiration, inexplicable to him because he knew he was so
entirely in love with Palla.

A woman of forty sat on his right--he promptly forgot her name each
time he heard it--who ate fastidiously and chose birth-control as the
subject for conversation. And he dodged it in vain, for her
conversation had become a monologue, and he sat fiddling with his
food, very red, while the silky voice, so agreeable in pitch and
intonation, slid smoothly on.

Afterward Palla explained that she was a celebrated sociologist, but
Jim remained shy of her.

Other people came in after dinner. Vanya seated himself at the piano
and played from one of his unpublished scores. Ilse sang two
Scandinavian songs in her fresh, wholesome, melodious voice--the song
called _Ygdrasil_, and the _Song of Thokk_. Wardner had brought a
violin, and he and Vanya accompanied Marya's Asiatic songs, but with
some difficulty on the sculptor's part, as modern instruments are
scarcely adapted to the sort of Russian music she chose to sing.

Marya had a way, when singing, which appeared almost insolent. Seated,
or carelessly erect, her supple figure fell into lines of indolently
provocative grace; and the warm, golden notes welling from her throat
seemed to be flung broadcast and indifferently to her listeners, as
alms are often flung, without interest, toward abstract poverty and
not to the poor breathing thing at one's elbow.

She sang, in her preoccupied way, one of her savage, pentatonic songs,
more Mongol than Cossack; then she sang an impudent _burlatskiya_
lazily defiant of her listeners; then a so-called "dancing song," in
which there was little restraint in word or air.

The subtly infernal enchantment of girl and music was felt by everybody;
but several among the illuminati and the fair ultra-modernettes had
now reached their limit of breadth and tolerance, and were becoming
bored and self-conscious, when abruptly Marya's figure straightened
to a lovely severity, her mouth opened sweetly as a cherub's, and,
looking up like a little, ruddy bird, she sang one of the ancient
_Kolyadki_, Vanya alone understanding as his long, thin fingers
wandered instinctively into an improvised accompaniment:

                     "Young tears
                     Your fears disguise;
                     He is not coming!
                     Sweet lips
                     Let slip no sighs;
                     Cease, heart, your drumming!
                     He is not coming,
                                   [A]_Lada!_
                     He is not coming.
                     _Lada oy Lada!_

                     "Gaze not in wonder,--
                     Yonder no rider comes;
                     Hark how the kettle-drums
                     Mock his hoofs' thunder;
                     Hark to their thudding,
                     Pretty breasts budding,--
                     Setting the Buddhist bells
                     Clanking and banging,--
                     Wheels at the hidden wells
                     Clinking and clanging!
                     (_Lada oy Lada!_)
                     Plough the flower under;
                     Tear it asunder!

                     "Young eyes
                     In swift surprise,
                     What terror veils you?
                     Clear eyes,
                     Who gallops here?
                     What wolf assails you?
                     What horseman hails you,
                                     _Lada!_
                     What pleasure pales you?
                     _Lada oy Lada!_

                     "Knight who rides boldly,
                     May Erlik impale you,--
                     Your mother bewail you,
                     If you use her coldly!
                     Health to the wedding!
                     Joy to the bedding!
                     Set all the Christian bells
                     Swinging and ringing--
                     Monks in their stony cells
                     Chanting and singing
                     (_Lada oy Lada!_)
                     Bud of the rose,
                     Gently unclose!"

Marya, her gemmed fingers bracketed on her hips, the last sensuous
note still afloat on her lips, turned her head so that her rounded
chin rested on her bare shoulder; and looked at Shotwell. He rose,
applauding with the others, and found a chair for her.

But when she seated herself, she addressed Ilse on the other side of
him, leaning so near that he felt the warmth of her hair.

"Who was it wrestled with Loki? Was it Hel, goddess of death? Or was
it Thor who wrestled with that toothless hag, Thokk?"

Ilse explained.

The conversation became general, vaguely accompanied by Vanya's
drifting improvisations, where he still sat at the piano, his lost
gaze on Marya.

Bits of the chatter around him came vaguely to Shotwell--the
birth-control lady's placid inclination toward obstetrics; Wardner on
concentration, with Palla listening, bending forward, brown eyes wide
and curious and snowy hands framing her face; Ilse partly turned where
she was seated, alert, flushed, half smiling at what John Estridge,
behind her shoulder, was saying to her,--some improvised nonsense, of
which Jim caught a fragment:

                   "If he who dwells in Midgard
                   With cunning can not floor her,
                   What hope that Mistress Westgard
                   Will melt if I implore her?

                   "And yet I've come to Asgard,
                   And hope I shall not bore her
                   If I tell Mistress Westgard
                   How deeply I adore her----"

Through the hum of conversation and capricious laughter, Vanya's vague
music drifted like wind-blown thistle-down, and his absent regard
never left Marya, where she rested among the cushions in low-voiced
dialogue with Jim.

"I had hoped," she smiled, "that you had perhaps remembered me--enough
to stop for a word or two some day at tea-time."

He had had no intention of going; but he said that he had meant to and
would surely do so,--the while she was leisurely recognising the lie
as it politely uncoiled.

"Why won't you come?" she asked under her breath.

"I shall certainly----"

"No; you won't come." She seemed amused: "Tell me, are you too a
concentrationist?" And her beryl-green eyes barely flickered toward
Palla. Then she smiled and laid her hand lightly on her breast: "I, on
the contrary, am a Diffusionist. It's merely a matter of how God
grinds the lens. But prisms colour one's dull white life so gaily!"

"And split it up," he said, smiling.

"And disintegrate it," she nodded, "--so exquisitely."

"Into rainbows."

"You do not believe that there is hidden gold there?" And, looking at
him, she let one hand rest lightly against her hair.

"Yes. I believe it," he said, laughing at her enchanting effrontery.
"But, Marya, when the rainbow goes a-glimmering, the same old grey
world is there again. It's always there----"

"Awaiting another rainbow!"

"But storms come first."

"Is another rainbow not worth the storm?"

"Is it?" he demanded.

"Shall we try?" she asked carelessly.

He did not answer. But presently he looked across at Vanya.

"Who is there who would not love him?" said Marya serenely.

"I was wondering."

"No need. All love Vanya. I, also."

"I thought so."

"Think so. For it is quite true.... Will you come to tea alone with me
some afternoon?"

He looked at her; reddened. Marya turned her head leisurely, to hear
what Palla was saying to her. At the sound of her voice, Jim turned
also, and saw Palla bending near his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she was saying to Marya, "but Questa Terrett desires to
know Jim----"

"Is it any wonder," said Marya, "that women should desire to know
him? Alas!--" She laughed and turned to Ilse, who seated herself as
Jim stood up.

Palla, her finger-tips resting lightly on his arm, said laughingly:
"Our youthful and tawny enchantress seemed unusually busy with you
this evening. Has she turned you into anything very disturbing?"

"Would you care?"

"Of course."

"Enough to come to earth and interfere?"

"Good heavens, has it gone as far as that!" she whispered in gay
consternation. "And could I really arrive in time, though breathless?"

He laughed: "You don't need to stir from your niche, sweetness. I
swept your altar once. I'll keep the fire clean."

"You adorable thing--" He felt the faintest pressure of her fingers;
then he heard himself being presented to Questa Terrett.

The frail and somewhat mortuary beauty of this slim poetess, with her
full-lipped profile of an Egyptian temple-girl and her pale, still
eyes, left him guessing--rather guiltily--recollecting his recent but
meaningless disrespect.

"I don't know," she said, "just why you are here. Soldiers are no
novelty. Is somebody in love with you?"

It was a toss-up whether he'd wither or laugh, but the demon of gaiety
won out.

She also smiled.

"I asked you," she added, "because you seem to be quite featureless."

"Oh, I've a few eyes and noses and that sort----"

"I mean psychologically accentless."

"Just plain man?"

"Yes. That is all you are, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid it is," he admitted, quite as much amused as she appeared
to be.

"I see. Some crazy girl here is enamoured of you. Otherwise, you
scarcely belong among modern intellectuals, you know."

At that he laughed outright.

She said: "You really are delightful. You're just a plain, fighting
male, aren't you?"

"Well, I haven't done much fighting----"

"Unimaginative, too! You could have led yourself to believe you had
done a lot," she pointed out. "And maybe you could have interested
me."

"I'm sorry. But suppose you try to interest _me_?"

"Don't I? I've tried."

"Do your best," he encouraged her cheerfully. "You never can be sure
I'm not listening."

At that she laughed: "You nice youth," she said, "if you'd talk that
way to your sweetheart she'd sit up and listen.... Which I'm afraid
she doesn't, so far."

He felt himself flushing, but he refused to wince under her amused
analysis.

"You've simply got to have imagination, you know," she insisted.
"Otherwise, you don't get anywhere at all. Have you read my smears?"

"Smears?"

"Bacteriologists take a smear of something on a glass slide and slip
it under a microscope. My poems are like that. The words are the
bacteria. Few can identify them."

"Are you serious?"

"Entirely."

He maintained his gravity: "Would you be kind enough to take a smear
and let me look?" he inquired politely.

"Certainly: the experiment is called 'Unpremeditation.'"

She dropped one thin and silken knee over the other and crossed her
hands on it as she recited her poem.

                           "UNPREMEDITATION."

                     "In the tube.
                     Several,
                     With intonation.
                     Red, red, red.
                     A square fabric
                     Once white
                     With intention.
                     Soiled, soiled, soiled.
                     Six hundred hundred million
                     Swarm like vermin,
                     Without intention.
                     Redder. Redder.
                     Drip, drip, drip.
                     A goes west,
                     B goes east,
                     C goes north,
                     Pink, pink, pink.
                     Two white squares.
                     And a coat-sleeve.
                     Without intention,
                     Intonations.
                     Pinker. Redder.
                     Six hundred hundred million.
                     Billions. Trillions.
                     A week. Two weeks.
                     Otherwise?
                     Eternity."

Jim's features had become a trifle glassy. "You do skip a few words,"
he said, "don't you?"

"Words are animalculæ. Some skip, some gyrate, some sub-divide."

He put a brave face on the matter: "If you're not really guying me,"
he ventured, "would you tell me a little about your poem?"

"Why, yes," she replied amiably. "To put it redundantly, then, I have
sketched in my poem a man in the subway, with influenza, which infects
others in his vicinity."

She rose, smiled, and sauntered off, leaving him utterly unable to
determine whether or not he had been outrageously imposed upon. Palla
rescued him, and he went with her, a little wild-eyed, downstairs to
the nearly empty and carpetless drawing-room, where a music box was
playing and people were already dancing.

Toward midnight, Marya, passing Jim on her way to the front door,
leaned wide from Vanya's arm:

"Let us at least discuss my rainbow theory," she said, laughing, and
her face a shade too close to his; and continued on, still clinging to
the sleeve of Vanya's fur-lined coat.

Ilse was the last to leave, with Estridge waiting behind her to hold
her wrap.

She came up to Palla, took both her hands in an odd, subdued, wistful
way.

After a moment she kissed her, and, close to her ear: "Wait,
darling."

Palla did not understand.

Ilse said: "I mean--wait before you ever take any step to--to prove
any theory--or belief."

Still Palla did not comprehend.

"With--Jim," said Ilse in a low voice.

"Oh. Why, of course. But--it could never happen."

"Why?"

Palla said honestly: "One reason is because he wouldn't anyway."

"You must not be certain."

"I am. I'm absolutely certain."

Ilse gazed at her, then laughed and pressed her hand. "Are you cold?"
asked Palla.

"No."

"I thought I felt you shiver, dearest."

Ilse flushed and held out her arms for the sleeves of her fur coat,
which Estridge was holding.

They went away together, leaving Palla alone with Shotwell, among the
fading flowers.

  [A] The ancient Slavonic Venus.

CHAPTER XV

"So," said Puma, "you are quite convinced he has much wealth. Yes?"

"You betcha," replied Elmer Skidder. "That pious guy has got all kinds
of it. Why, Alonzo D. Pawling can buy you and me like we were two
subway tickets and then forget which pocket he put us in."

"He also is a sport? Yes?"

"On the quiet. Oh, I got his number some years ago. Ran into him once
in New York, where you used to knock three times and ring twice before
they slid the panel on you."

"A bank president?"

"Did you ever know one that didn't?" grinned Skidder, inserting pearl
studs in his shirt.

"It is very bad--for a shake-down," mused Puma, smoothing his glossy
top hat with one of Skidder's silk mufflers.

"Aw, you can't scare Alonzo D. Pawling. Say, Angy, what dames have you
commandeered?"

"I ask Barclay and West. Also, they got another--Vanna Brown."

"Pictures?"

"No, she has a friend."

Skidder continued to attire himself in an over-braided evening dress;
Puma, seated behind him, gazed absently at his partner's features
reflected in the looking glass.

"A theatre on Broadway," he mused. "You say he has seemed interested,
Elmer?"

"He didn't run away screaming."

"How did he behave?"

"Well, it's hard to size up Alonzo D. Pawling. He's a fly guy, Angy.
What a man says at a little supper for four, with a peach pulling his
Depews and a good looker sticking gardenias in his buttonhole, ain't
what he's likely to say next day in your office."

"You have accompany him to Broadway and you have shown him the
parcel?"

"I sure did."

"You explain how we can not lose out? You mention the option?"

Skidder cast aside his white tie and tried another, constructed on the
butterfly plan.

"I put the whole thing up to him," he said. "No use stalling with
Alonzo D. Pawling. I know him too well. So I let out straight from the
shoulder, and he knows the scheme we've got in mind and he knows we
want his money in it. That's how it stands to-night."

Puma nodded and softly joined his over-manicured finger-tips:

"We give him a good time," he said. "We give him a little dinner like
there never was in New York. Yes?"

"You betcha."

"Barclay is a devil. You think she please him?"

"Alonzo D. Pawling is some bird himself," remarked Skidder, picking up
his hat and turning to Puma, who rose with lithe briskness, put on his
hat, and began to pull at his white gloves.

They went down to the street, where Puma's car was waiting.

"I stop at the office a moment," he said, as they entered the
limousine. "You need not get out, Elmer."

At the studio he descended, saying to Skidder that he'd be back in a
moment.

But it was very evident when he entered his office that he had not
expected to find Max Sondheim there; and he hesitated on the
threshold, his white-gloved hand still on the door-knob.

"Come in, Puma; I want to see you," growled Sondheim, retaining his
seat but pocketing _The Call_, which he had been reading.

"To-morrow," said Puma coolly; "I have no time----"

"No, _now_!" interrupted Sondheim.

They eyed each other for a moment in silence, then Puma shrugged:

"Very well," he said. "But be quick, if you please----"

"Look here," interrupted the other in a menacing voice, "you're
getting too damned independent, telling me to be quick! I had a date
with you here at five o'clock. You thought you wouldn't keep it and
you left at four-thirty. But I stuck around till you 'phoned in that
you'd stop here to get some money. It's seven o'clock now, and I've
waited for you. And I guess you've got enough time to hear what I'm
going to say."

Puma looked at him without any expression at all on his sanguine
features. "Go on," he said.

"What I got to say to you is this," began Sondheim. "There's a kind of
a club that uses our hall on off nights. It's run by women."

Puma waited.

"They meet this evening at eight in our hall,--your hall, if you
choose."

Puma nodded carelessly.

"All right. Put them out."

"What?"

"Put 'em out!" growled Sondheim. "We don't want them there to-night or
any other night."

"You ask me to evict respectable people who pay me rent?"

"I don't ask you; I _tell_ you."

Puma turned a deep red: "And whose hall do you think it is?" he
demanded in a silky voice.

"Yours. That's why I tell you to get rid of that bunch and their
Combat Club."

"Why have you ask me such a----"

"Because they're fighting us and you know it. That's a good enough
reason."

"I shall not do so," said Puma, moistening his lips with his tongue.

"Oh, I guess you will when you think it over," sneered Sondheim,
getting up from his chair and stuffing his newspaper into his overcoat
pocket. He crossed the floor and shot an ugly glance at Puma _en
passant_. Then he jerked open the door and went out briskly.

Puma walked into the inner waiting room, where a telephone operator
sat reading a book.

"Where's McCabe?" he asked.

"Here he comes now, Governor."

The office manager sauntered up, eating a slice of apple pie, and Puma
stepped forward to meet him.

"For what reason have you permit Mr. Sondheim to wait in my office?"
he demanded.

"He said you told him to go in and wait there."

"He is a liar! Hereafter he shall wait out here. You understand,
McCabe?"

"Yes, sir. You're always out when he calls, ain't you?"

Puma meditated a few moments: "No. When he calls you shall let me
know. Then I decide. But he shall not wait in my office."

"Very good, sir." And, as Puma turned to go: "The police was here
again this evening, sir."

"Why?"

"They heard of the row in the hall last night."

"What did you tell them?"

"Oh, the muss was all swept up--windows fixed and the busted benches
in the furnace, so I said there had been no row as far as I knew, and
I let 'em go in and nose around."

"Next time," said Puma, "you shall say to them that there was a very
bad riot."

"Sir?"

"A big fight," continued Puma. "And if there is only a little damage
you shall make more. And you shall show it to the police."

"I get you, Governor. I'll stage it right; don't worry."

"Yes, you shall stage it like there never was in all of France any
ruins like my hall! And afterward," he said, half to himself, "we
shall see what we shall see."

He went back to his office, took a packet of hundred dollar bills from
the safe, and walked slowly out to where the limousine awaited him.

"Say, what the hell--" began Skidder impatiently; but Puma leaped
lightly to his seat and pulled the fur robe over his knees.

"Now," he said, in excellent humour, "we pick up Mr. Pawling at the
Astor."

"Where are the ladies?"

"They join us, Hotel Rajah. It will be, I trust, an amusing evening."

About midnight, dinner merged noisily into supper in the private
dining room reserved by Mr. Puma for himself and guests at the new
Hotel Rajah.

There had been intermittent dancing during the dinner, but now the
negro jazz specialists had been dismissed with emoluments, and a
music-box substituted; and supper promised to become even a more
lively repetition of the earlier banquet.

Puma was superb--a large, heavy man, he danced as lightly as any
ballerina; and he and Tessa Barclay did a Paraguayan dance together,
with a leisurely and agile perfection of execution that elicited
uproarious demonstrations from the others.

Not a whit winded, Puma resumed his seat at table, laughing as Mr.
Pawling insisted on shaking hands with him.

"You are far too kind to my poor accomplishments," he said in
deprecation. "It was not at all difficult, that Paraguayan dance."

"It was art!" insisted Mr. Pawling, his watery eyes brimming with
emotion. And he pressed the pretty waist of Tessa Barclay.

"Art," rejoined Puma, laying a jewelled hand on his shirt-front, "is
an ecstatic outburst from within, like the song of the bird. Art is
simple; art is not difficult. Where effort begins, art ends. Where
self-expression becomes a labour, art already has perished!"

He thumped his shirt-front with an impassioned and highly-coloured
fist.

"What is art?" he cried, "if it be not pleasure? And pleasure ceases
where effort begins. For me, I am all heart, all art, like there never
was in all the history of the Renaissance. As expresses itself the
little innocent bird in song, so in my pictures I express myself. It
is no effort. It is in me. It is born. Behold! Art has given birth to
Beauty!"

"And the result," added Skidder, "is a _ne plus ultra par excellence_
which gathers in the popular coin every time. And say, if we had a
Broadway theatre to run our stuff, and Angelo Puma to soopervise the
combine--oh boy!--" He smote Mr. Pawling upon his bony back and dug
him in the ribs with his thumb.

Mr. Pawling's mouth sagged and his melancholy eyes shifted around him
from Tessa Barclay--who was now attempting to balance a bon-bon on her
nose and catch it between her lips--to Vanna Brown, teaching Miss West
to turn cart-wheels on one hand.

Evidently Art had its consolations; and the single track genius who
lived for art alone got a bonus, too. Also, what General Sherman once
said about Art seemed to be only too obvious.

A detail, however, worried Mr. Pawling. Financially, he had always
been afraid of Jews. And the nose of Angelo Puma made him uneasy every
time he looked at it.

But an inch is a mile on a man's nose; and his own was bigger, yet
entirely Yankee; so he had about concluded that there was no racial
occasion for financial alarm.

What he should have known was that no Jew can compete with a
Connecticut Yankee; but that any half-cast Armenian is master of both.
Especially when born in Mexico of a Levantine father.

Now, in spite of Angelo Puma's agile gaiety and exotic exuberances,
his brain remained entirely occupied with two matters. One of these
concerned the possibility of interesting Mr. Pawling in a plot of
ground on Broadway, now defaced by several taxpayers.

The other matter which fitfully preoccupied him was his unpleasant and
unintentional interview with Sondheim.

For it had come to a point, now, that the perpetual bullying of former
associates was worrying Mr. Puma a great deal in his steadily
increasing prosperity.

The war was over. Besides, long ago he had prudently broken both his
pledged word and his dangerous connections in Mexico, and had started
what he believed to be a safe and legitimate career in New York,
entirely free from perilous affiliations.

Government had investigated his activities; Government had found
nothing for which to order his internment as an enemy alien.

It had been a close call. Puma realised that. But he had also realised
that there was no law in Mexico ten miles outside of Mexico City;--no
longer any German power there, either;--when he severed all
connections with those who had sent him into the United States
camouflaged as a cinema promoter, and under instruction to do all the
damage he could to everything American.

But he had not counted on renewing his acquaintance with Karl Kastner
and Max Sondheim in New York. Nor did they reveal themselves to him
until he had become too prosperous to denounce them and risk
investigation and internment under the counter-accusations with which
they coolly threatened him.

So, from the early days of his prosperity in New York, it had been
necessary for him to come to an agreement with Sondheim and Kastner.
And the more his prosperity increased the less he dared to resent
their petty tyranny and blackmail, because, whether or not they might
suffer under his public accusations, it was very certain that
internment, if not imprisonment for a term of years, would be the fate
reserved for himself. And that, of course, meant ruin.

So, although Puma ate and drank and danced with apparent abandon, and
flashed his dazzling smile over everybody and everything, his mind,
when not occupied by Alonzo D. Pawling, was bothered by surmises
concerning Sondheim. And also, at intervals, he thought of Palla
Dumont and the Combat Club, and he wondered uneasily whether
Sondheim's agents had attempted to make any trouble at the meeting in
his hall that evening.

There had been some trouble. The meeting being a public one, under
municipal permission, Kastner had sent a number of his Bolshevik
followers there, instructed to make what mischief they could. They
were recruited from all sects of the Reds, including the American
Bolsheviki, known commonly as the I. W. W. Also, among them were
scattered a few pacifists, hun-sympathisers, conscientious objectors
and other birds of analogous plumage, quite ready for interruptions
and debate.

Palla presided, always a trifle frightened to find herself facing any
audience, but ashamed to avoid the delegated responsibility.

Among others on the platform around her were Ilse and Marya and Questa
Terrett and the birth-control lady--Miss Thane--neat and placid and
precise as usual, and wearing long-distance spectacles for a more
minute inspection of the audience.

Palla opened the proceedings in a voice which was clear, and always
became steadier under heckling.

Her favourite proposition--the Law of Love and Service--she offered
with such winning candour that the interruption of derisive laughter,
prepared by several of Kastner's friends, was postponed; and Terry
Hogan, I. W. W., said to Jerry Smith, I. W. W.:

"God love her, she's but a baby. Lave her chatter."

However, a conscientious objector got up and asked her whether she
considered that the American army abroad had conformed to her Law of
Love and Service, and when she answered emphatically that every
soldier in the United States army was fulfilling to the highest degree
his obligations to that law, both pacifists and conscientious
objectors dissented noisily, and a student from Columbia College got
up and began to harangue the audience.

Order was finally obtained: Palla added a word or two and retired; and
Ilse Westgard came forward.

Somebody in the audience called out: "Say, just because you're a
good-looker it don't mean you got a brain!"

Ilse threw back her golden head and her healthy laughter rang
uncontrolled.

"Comrade," she said, "we all have to do the best we can with what
brain we have, don't we?"

"Sure!" came from her grinning heckler, who seemed quite won over by
her good humour.

So, an armistice established, Ilse plunged vigorously into her theme:

"Let me tell you something which you all know in your hearts: any
class revolution based on violence and terrorism is doomed to
failure."

"Don't be too sure of that!" shouted a man.

"I am sure of it. And you will never see any reign of terror in
America."

"But you may see Bolshevism here--Bolshevist propaganda--Bolshevist
ideas penetrating. You may see these ideas accepted by Labor. You may
see strikes--the most senseless and obsolete weapon ever wielded by
thinking men; you may see panics, tie-ups, stagnation, misery. But you
never shall see Bolshevism triumphant here, or permanently triumphant
anywhere.

"Because Bolshevism is autocracy!"

"The hell it is!" yelled an I. W. W.

"Yes," said Ilse cheerfully, "as you have said it is hell. And hell is
an end, not a means, not a remedy.

"Because it is the negation of all socialism; the death of civilisation.
And civilisation has an immortal destiny; and that destiny is
socialism!"

A man interrupted, but she asked him so sweetly for a few moments more
that he reseated himself.

"Comrades," she said, "I know something about Bolshevism and
revolution. I was a soldier of Russia. I carried a rifle and full
pack. I was part of what is history. And I learned to be tolerant in
the trenches; and I learned to love this unhappy human race of ours.
And I learned what is Bolshevism.

"It is one of many protests against the exploitation of men by men. It
is one of the many reactions against intolerable wrong. It is not a
policy; it is an outburst against injustice; against the stupidity of
present conditions, where the few monopolise the wealth created by the
many; and the many remain poor.

"And Bolshevism is the remedy proposed--the violent superimposition
of a brand new autocracy upon the ruins of the old!

"It does not work. It never can work, because it imposes the will of
one class upon all other classes. It excludes all parties excepting
its own from government. It is, therefore, not democratic. It is a
tyranny, imposing upon capital and labour alike its will.

"And I tell you that Labour has just won the greatest of all wars. Do
you suppose Labour will endure the autocracy of the Bolsheviki? The
time is here when a more decent division is going to be made between
the employer and the labourer.

"I don't care what sort of production it may be, the producer is going
to receive a much larger share; the employer a much smaller. And the
producer is going to enjoy a better standard of living, opportunities
for leisure and self-cultivation; and the three spectres that haunt
him from childhood to grave--lack of money to make a beginning; fear
for a family left on its own resources by his death; terror of poverty
in old age--shall vanish.

"Against these three evil ghosts that haunt his bedside when the long
day is done, there are going to be guarantees. Because those who won
for us this righteous war, whether abroad or at home, are going to
have something to say about it.

"And it will be they, not the Bolsheviki--it will be labourer and
employer, not incendiary and assassin, who shall determine what is to
be the policy of this Republic toward those to whom it owes its
salvation!"

A man stood up waving his arms: "All right! All right! The question is
whether the sort of government we have is worth saving. You talk very
flip about the Bolsheviki, but I'll tell you they'll run this country
yet, and every other too, and run 'em to suit themselves! It's our
turn; you've had your inning. Now, you'll get a dose of what you hand
to us if we have to ram it down with a gun barrel!"

There was wild cheering from Kastner's men scattered about the hall;
cries of "That's the stuff! Take away their dough! Kick 'em out of
their Fifth Avenue castles and set 'em to digging subways!"

Ilse said calmly: "Thank you very much for proving my contention for
all these people who have been so kind as to listen to me.

"I said to you that Bolshevism is merely a new and more immoral
autocracy which wishes to confiscate all property, annihilate all
culture and set up in the public places a new god--the god of
Ignorance!

"You have been good enough to corroborate me. And I and my audience
now know that Bolshevism is on its way to America, and that its agents
are already here.

"It is in view of such a danger that this Combat Club has been
organised. And it was time to organise it.

"It is evident, too, that the newspapers agree with us. Let us read
you what one of them has to say:

  "'We fully realise the atrocity of the Bolshevik propaganda, which
  is really the doctrine of communism and anarchy. We realise the
  perilous ferment which endangers civilisation. But in the
  countries which have held fast to moral standards during the war
  we believe the factors of safety are sufficiently great, the
  forces of sanity are far stronger than those of chaos----'"

Here, those whose rôle it was to interrupt with derisive laughter,
broke out at a preconcerted signal. But Ilse read on:

  "'In a word, as a mere matter of self-interest and common sense,
  we can only see the people, as a whole, in any country, as opposed
  to anarchy in any form. In our own land, even granted that there
  are a hundred thousand "red" agitators, or say a quarter of a
  million--and we have no real belief that this is so--what are
  these in a population of one hundred and five millions? Are the
  ninety and nine sane, moral, law abiding men and women going to
  allow themselves to be stampeded into ruin by a handful of
  criminals and lunatics?

  "'We do not for a moment believe it. These agitators and
  incendiaries have a sort of maniacal impetus that fills the air
  with dust and noise and alarms the credulous. Perhaps it may be
  wise to counteract this with a little quiet promotion of ideas of
  safety and prosperity, based on order and law. It may be well to
  calm the nerves of the timorous and it can do no harm to set in
  motion a counter wave of horror and repulsion against those who
  are planning to lead the world back to conditions of tribal
  savagery. Educational work is always beneficent. Let us have much
  of that but no panic. The power of truth and reason is in calm
  confidence.'"

And now a bushy-headed man got on his feet and levelled his forefinger
at Ilse: "Take shame for your-selluf!" he shouted. "I know you! You
fought mit Korniloff! You took orders from Kerensky, from aristocrats,
from cadets!"

Ilse said pleasantly. "I fought for Russia, my friend. And when the
robbers and despoilers of Russia became the stronger, I took a
vacation."

Some people laughed, but a harsh voice cried: "We know what you did.
You rescued the friend of the Romanoffs--that Carmelite nun up there
on the platform behind you, who calls herself Miss Dumont!"

And from the other side of the hall another man bawled out: "You and
the White Nun have done enough mischief. And you and your club had
better get out of here while the going is good!"

Estridge, who was standing in the rear of the hall with Shotwell, came
down along the aisle. Jim followed.

"Who said that?" he demanded, scanning the faces on that side while
Shotwell looked among the seats beyond.

Nobody said anything, for John Estridge stood over six feet and Jim
looked physically very fit.

Estridge, standing in the aisle, said in his cool, penetrating voice:

"This club is a forum for discussion. All are free to argue any point.
Only swine would threaten violence.

"Now go on and argue. Say what you like. But the next man who
threatens these ladies or this club with violence will have to leave
the hall."

"Who'll put him out?" piped an unidentified voice.

Then the two young men laughed; and their mirth was not reassuring to
the violently inclined.

There were disturbances during the evening, but no violence, and only
a few threats--those that made them remaining in prudent incognito.

Miss Thane made a serene, precise and perfectly logical address upon
birth control.

Somebody yelled that the millionaires didn't have to resort to it,
being already sufficiently sterile to assure the dwindling of their
class.

A woman rose and said she had always done what she pleased in the
matter, law or no law, but that if it were true the Bolsheviki in
America were but a quarter of a million to a hundred million of the
bourgeoisie, then it was time to breed and breed to the limit.

"And let the kids starve?" cried another woman--a mere girl. "That
isn't the way. The way to do is to even things with a hundred million
hand grenades!"

Instantly the place was in an uproar; but Palla came forward and said
that the meeting was over, and Estridge and Shotwell and two policemen
kept the aisles fairly clear while the wrangling audience made their
way to the street.

"Aw, it's all lollipop!" said a man. "What d' yeh expect from a bunch
of women?"

"The Red Flag Club is better," rejoined another. "Say, bo! There's
somethin' doin' when Sondheim hands it out!"

Ilse went away with Estridge. Palla came along among the other women,
and turned aside to offer her hand to Jim.

"Did you expect to take me home?" she asked demurely.

"Didn't you expect me to?" he inquired uneasily.

"I? Why should I?" She slipped her arm into his with a little nestling
gesture. "And it's a very odd thing, Jim, that they left the chafing
dish on the table. And that before she went to bed my waitress laid
covers for two."

CHAPTER XVI

"Are you worried about this Dumont girl?" asked Shotwell Senior
abruptly.

His wife did not look up from her book. After an interval:

"Yes," she said, "I am."

Her husband watched her over the top of his newspaper.

"I can't believe there's anything in it," he said. "But it's a shame
that Jim should worry you so."

"He doesn't mean to."

"Probably he doesn't, but what's the difference? You're unhappy and
he's the reason of it. And it isn't as though he were a cub any
longer, either. He's old enough to know what he's about. He's no Willy
Baxter."

"That is what makes me anxious," said Helen Shotwell. "Do you know,
dear, that he hasn't dined here once this week, yet he seems to go
nowhere else--nowhere except to her."

"What sort of woman is she?" he demanded, wiping his eyeglasses as
though preparing to take a long-distance look at Palla.

"I know her only at the Red Cross."

"Well, is she at all common?"

"No.... That is why it is difficult for me to talk to Jim about her.
There's nothing of that sort to criticise."

"No social objections to the girl?"

"None. She's an unusual girl."

"Attractive?"

"Unfortunately."

"Well, then----"

"Oh, James, I _want_ him to marry Elorn! And if he's going to make
himself conspicuous over this Dumont girl, I don't think I can bear
it!"

"What _is_ the objection to the girl, Helen?" he asked, flinging his
paper onto a table and drawing nearer the fire.

"She isn't at all our kind, James----"

"But you just said----"

"I don't mean socially. And still, as far as that goes, she seems to
care nothing whatever for position or social duties or obligations."

"That's not so unusual in these days," he remarked. "Lots of nice
girls are fed up on the social aspects of life."

"Well, for example, she has not made the slightest effort to know
anybody worth knowing. Janet Speedwell left cards and then asked her
to dinner, and received an amiable regret for her pains. No girl can
afford to decline invitations from Janet, even if her excuse is a club
meeting.

"And two or three other women at the Red Cross have asked her to lunch
at the Colony Club, and have made advances to her on Leila Vance's
account, but she hasn't responded. Now, you know a girl isn't going to
get on by politely ignoring the advances of such women. But she
doesn't even appear to be aware of their importance."

"Why don't you ask her to something?" suggested her husband.

"I did," she said, a little sharply. "I asked her and Leila Vance to
dine with us. I intended to ask Elorn, too, and let Jim realise the
difference if he isn't already too blind to see."

"Did she decline?"

"She did," said Helen curtly.

"Why?"

"It happened that she had asked somebody to dine with her that
evening. And I have a horrid suspicion it was Jim. If it was, she
could have postponed it. Of course it was a valid excuse, but it
annoyed me to have her decline. That's what I tell you, James, she has
a most disturbing habit of declining overtures from everybody--even
from----"

Helen checked herself, looked at her husband with an odd smile, in
which there was no mirth; then:

"You probably are not aware of it, dear, but that girl has also
declined Jim's overtures."

"Jim's what?"

"Invitation."

"Invitation to do what?"

"Marry him."

Shotwell Senior turned very red.

"The devil she did! How do you know?"

"Jim told me."

"That she turned him down?"

"She declined to marry him."

Her husband seemed unable to grasp such a fact. Never had it occurred
to Shotwell Senior that any living, human girl could decline such an
invitation from his only son.

After a painful silence: "Well," he said in a perplexed and mortified
voice, "she certainly seems to be, as you say, a most unusual girl....
But--if it's settled--why do you continue to worry, Helen?"

"Because Jim is very deeply in love with her.... And I'm sore at
heart."

"Hard hit, is he?"

"Very unhappy."

Shotwell Senior reddened again: "He'll have to face it," he said....
"But that girl seems to be a fool!"

"I--wonder."

"What do you mean?"

"A girl may change her mind." She lifted her head and looked with sad
humour at her husband, whom she also had kept dangling for a while.
Then:

"James, dear, our son _is_ as fine as we think him. But he's just a
splendid, wholesome, everyday, unimaginative New York business man.
And he's fallen in love with his absolute antithesis. Because this
girl is all ardent imagination, full of extravagant impulses, very
lovely to look at, but a perfectly illogical fanatic!

"Mrs. Vance has told me all about her. She really belongs in some
exotic romance, not in New York. She's entirely irresponsible,
perfectly unstable. There is in her a generous sort of recklessness
which is quite likely to drive her headlong into any extreme. And what
sort of mate would such a girl be for a young man whose ambition is to
make good in the real estate business, marry a nice girl, have a
pleasant home and agreeable children, and otherwise conform to the
ordinary conventions of civilisation?"

"I think," remarked her husband grimly, "that she'd keep him
guessing."

"She would indeed! And that's not all, James. For I've got to tell you
that the girl entertains some rather weird and dreadful socialistic
notions. She talks socialism--a mild variety--from public platforms.
She admits very frankly that she entertains no respect for accepted
conventions. And while I have no reason to doubt her purity of mind
and personal chastity, the unpleasant and startling fact remains that
she proposes that humanity should dispense with the marriage ceremony
and discard it and any orthodox religion as obsolete superstitions."

Her husband stared at her.

"For heaven's sake," he began, then got frightfully red in the face
once more. "What that girl needs is a plain spanking!" he said
bluntly. "I'd like to see her or any other girl try to come into this
family on any such ridiculous terms!"

"She doesn't seem to want to come in on any terms," said Helen.

"Then what are you worrying about?"

"I am worrying about what might happen if she ever changed her mind."

"But you say she doesn't believe in marriage!"

"She doesn't."

"Well, that boy of ours isn't crazy," insisted Shotwell Senior.