a lie; but he had never had the slightest _use_ for a lie, and a
prevarication on his tongue would have been as strange to him as castanets
in his palms. Guile takes alertness, adroitness; and the slim pennyworth
of these that he could command he used up, no doubt, on Fontenette. I
noticed that after an hour with the Creole he always looked tortured and
exhausted. With us he was artless to the tips of his awful finger-nails.

Nor was Mrs. Fontenette a skilful dissembler; she over-concealed things so
revealingly. Then she was so helplessly enamoured and in so childish a
way. I venture one of the penalties almost any woman may have to pay for
bringing to the altar only the consent to be loved is to find herself,
some time, at last, far from the altar, a Titania, a love's fool. Our
Titania pointed us to the fact that the Baron's wife never tried to divert
his mind from the one pursuit that enthralled it; and she borrowed one of
our garden alleys in which to teach him--grace-hoops! He never caught one
from her nor threw one that she could catch; but, ah! with her coaxing and
commanding, her sweet taunting and reprimanding and his utter lack of
surprise at them, how much she betrayed! Fontenette came, learned in a few
throws, and was charmed with the toys--a genuine lover always takes to
them kindly--but Mrs. Fontenette was by this time tired, and she never
again felt rested when her husband mentioned the game.

Furthermore, their countenances!--hers and the entomologist's--especially
when in repose--you could read the depths of experience they had sounded,
by the lines and shadows that came and went, or stayed, as one may read
the depths of a bay by the passing of wind and light, day by day, over its
waters--particularly if the waters are not very deep.

They made painful reading. What degrees of heart-wretchedness came and
went or stayed with them, we may have over--we may have underestimated.
God knows. In two months Mrs. Fontenette grew visibly older and less
pretty, yet more nearly beautiful; while he, by every sign, was gradually
awakening back--or, shall we not say, being now first born?--to life,
through the pangs of a torn mind; mind, not conscience; but pangs never of
sated, always of the famished sort.

XII

It was he who finally put the very seal of confirmation upon both our
hopes and our fears.

The time was the evening of the same Sunday in whose afternoon his wife
had declined those transparent spelling-lessons. A certain preacher, noted
for his boldness, was drawing crowds by a series of sermons on the text
"Be thou clean," and our fat neighbor and his wife took us, all six, to
hear him. Their pew was well to the front and we were late, so that going
down the aisle unushered, with them in the lead--husband and spouse,
husband and spouse, four couples--we made a procession which became
embarrassingly amusing as the preacher simultaneously closed the Scripture
lesson with, "And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons'
wives with him into the ark."

That has been our fat neighbor's best joke ever since, though he always
says after it, "The poor Baron!" and often adds--"and poor Mrs.
Fontenette! Little did we think," etc. But he has never even suspected
their secret.

The entomologist was the last of our pew-full to give heed to the pulpit.
When the preacher said that because it was a year of state elections, for
which we ought already to be preparing, he had in his first discourse
touched upon political purity--cleanness of citizenship--the Baron showed
no interest. He still showed none when the speaker said again, that
because the pestilence was once more with us--that was in the terrible
visitation of 1878--he had devoted his second discourse to the hideous
crime of a great city whose voters and tax-payers do not enable and compel
it to keep the precept, "Be thou clean." I thought of the clean little
home from whose master beside me came no evidence that he thought at all.
But the moment the preacher declared his purpose to consider now the
application of this great command to the individual life and character of
man and woman as simply man and woman, the entomologist became the closest
listener in the crowded throng.

The sermon was a daring one. I was struck by the shrewd concessions with
which the speaker defined personal purity and the various false
conceptions of it that pass current; abandoning the entrenched hills, so
to speak, of his church's traditional rigor and of many conventional
rules, and drawing after him into the unfortified plain his least
persuadable hearers of whatever churchly or unchurchly prejudice, to
surround them finally at one wide sweep and receive their unconditional
surrender. His periods were not as embarrassing to a mixed audience as my
citations would indicate. Those that I bring together were wisely
subordinated and kept apart in the discourse, and ran together only in
minds like my own, eager for one or two other hearers to be specially
impressed by them. And one, at least, was. Before the third sentence of
the main discourse was finished the fierceness of the Baron's attention
was provoking me to ask myself whether a conscience also was not coming to
birth in him.

In a spiritual-material being, said the speaker, the spirit has a
rightful, happy share in every physical delight, and no physical delight
need be unclean in which the spirit can freely enjoy its just share as
senior member in the partnership of soul and body. Without this spiritual
participation it could not be clean, though church, state, and society
should jointly approve and command it. Mark, I do not answer for the truth
of these things; I believe them, but that is quite outside of our story.

The commonest error, he said, of those who covet spiritual cleanness is to
seek a purification of self for self-purification's sake.

The Baron grunted. He was drinking in the words; had forgotten his
surroundings.

Only those are clean, continued the speaker, whose every act, motive,
condition is ordered according to their best knowledge of the general
happiness, whether that happiness is for the time embodied in millions, or
in but one beyond themselves. Through errors of judgment they may fall
into manifest outward uncleannesses; but they, and none but they, are
clean within.

Because women, he went on, are in every way more delicately made than men,
we easily take it for granted they are more spiritual. From Genesis to
Revelation the Bible never does so. It is amazing how feeble a sense of
condemnation women--even as compared with men--often show for the _spirit_
of certain misdeeds if only it be unaccompanied by the misdeed's
performance; or what loathing so many of them--"of you," he really said,
and the Baron grunted as though his experience had been with droves of
them--what loathing so many of you heap upon certain things without
reference to the spirit by which they are accompanied and on which their
nobility or baseness, their cleanness or foulness, entirely depends.

Nothing is unclean that is to no one anywhere unjust or unkind; and
nothing is unjust, unkind, or unclean which cannot easily be shown to be
so without inventing an eleventh commandment. To him, he said, no
uncleanness was more foul than that which, not for kindness, or for
righteousness, but for a fantastical, self-centred refinement, invents
some eleventh commandment to call that common which God hath cleansed; to
call anything brutish which the incarnation of the soul has made sacred to
spotless affections.

The Baron muttered something in German, and Fontenette shut his mouth
tight and straightened up in approbation.

At the close of the service we were not out of the pew before our escort
was introducing Senda to his friends in front and behind as busily and
elaborately as if that was what we had come for. Twice and again she cast
so anxious an eye upon her husband--from whom Mrs. Fontenette had wisely
taken shelter behind hers--that I softly said to her, "We'll take care of
him."

A care he was! All the way down the aisle, amid the peals of the organ, he
commented on the sermon aloud, mostly to himself but also to whichever of
us he could rub his glasses against. Sometimes he mistook others for us
until they stared. His face showed a piteous, weary distress, his thin
hair went twenty ways, he seemed scarcely to know where he was or how to
take his steps, and presently was saying to a strange lady crowded against
him, as though it was with her he had been talking all along:

"Undt vhy shall we haf t'at owfool troubple? No-o, t'at vould kill me! I
am not a cat to keep me alvays clean--no more as a hogk to keep me always
not clean. No, I keep me--owdside--inside--always so clean as it comes
eassy, undt I leave me so dirty as it comes eassy."

XIII

I took his arm into mine--his hand was hot--and drew him on alone. "Undt
t'ose vomens," he persisted in the vestibule, "t'ey are more troubple yet
as t'eir veight in goldt! I vish, mine Gott! t'ere be no more any vomens
ut all, undt we haf t'e shiltern by mutchinery."

On the outer steps I sprang with others to save a young girl, who had
stumbled, from pitching headlong to the sidewalk. Once on her feet again,
after a limp or two she walked away uninjured; but when I looked around
for my real charge he was not in sight. I hurried to Fontenette and his
wife a few steps away, but he was not with them. The three of us turned
back and came upon the rest of our group, but neither had they seen him.
Our other neighbor said he must have got into a car. I asked Senda if it
was likely he would go home without trying to find us, and she replied
that he might; but when we had all looked at one another for a moment she
dded, with a distinct tremor of voice--and I saw that she feared
temptation and conscience had unsettled his wits--"I sink he iss not ve'y
vell. I sink he is maybe--I ton't know, but--I--I sink he iss not ve'y
vell." She averted her face.

She agreed with us, of course, that there was no call for alarm, and Mrs.
Smith and I had to plead that we could not, the six of us, let her go
home, away downtown, alone, while we should go as far the other way and
remain all night ignorant of her husband's whereabouts. So our next door
neighbor, my wife and I went with her, and his wife and the Fontenettes
went home; for a conviction probably common to us all, but which no one
cared to put into downright words, was that the entomologist, whether
dazed or not, might wander up to one of our homes in preference to his
own. In the street-car and afterward for a full hour at her house, Senda
was very silent, only saying now a little and then a little more.

"_He_ iss all right! _He_ vill sure come. Many times he been avay se
_whole_ night. Sat is se first time I am eveh afraid; is sat se vay when
commencing to grow old? Yes, I sink sat is se reason."

When we had been at her cottage for nearly an hour, my neighbor started
out on a systematic search; and half an hour later, I left Mrs. Smith with
her and went also.

About one o'clock in the night, I came back as far as the corner nearest
her house, but waited there, by appointment, with my neighbor; and very
soon--stepping softly--he appeared.

"No sign of him?"

"None."

"You don't suppose he's done himself any violence, do you?" he asked.

"No, no. O no."

"And yet," he said, "I think we ought to tell the police at once."

I advanced some obvious objections. "At any rate," I said, "go in, will
you, please, and see if he hasn't come home, while we were away."

"Why, yes, that _is_ the first thing," laughed he, and went.

As I waited for him in the still street, I heard far away a quick
footstep. By and by I saw a man pass under a distant lamp, coming toward
me. I looked with all my eyes. Just then my neighbor came back. "Listen,"
I murmured. "Watch when that man comes under the next light."

He watched. "It's Fontenette!"

"Well," said the Creole as he joined us, "he's yondeh all right--except
sick.

"Yes, he cou'n't tell anybody where to take him, and a doctor found that
letteh on him print' outside with yo' uptown address; and so he put him in
a cab an' sen' him yondeh, and sen' word he muz 'ave been sick sinze sev'l
hours, an' get him in bed quick don't lose a minute."

"And so he's in bed at my house!" I put in approvingly.

"Ah, no! I coul'n' do like that; but I do the bes' I could; he is at _my_
'ouse in bed. An' my own doctor sen' word what to do an' he'll come in the
mawning. And (to our neighbor) yo' madame do uz that kineness to remain
with Madame Fontenette whiles I'm bringing his wife."

At the cottage my companions remained outside. As I entered Senda caught
one glance and exclaimed, "Ah, mine hussbandt is foundt and is anyhow
alife!"

"Yes," I replied, "but he's ill. Mr. Fontenette met him and took him to
his house. He's there now with Mrs. Fontenette and Mrs. Blank. Get a
change of dress and come, we'll all go together."

Senda stared. "A shange of dtress?" Then, with a most significant mingling
of relief and new disturbance, she said, "Ah, I see!" and looking from me
to Mrs. Smith and from Mrs. Smith to me, while she whipped her bonnet
ribbons into a bow, she cried, with shaking voice and streaming eyes:

"Oh, sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow feveh."

XIV

No sick man could have been better cared for than was the entomologist at
our neighbor's over the way. "The fever," as in the Creole city it used to
be sufficiently distinguished, is not so deadly, nor so treacherous, nor
nearly so repulsive, as some other maladies, but none requires closer
attention. After successive days and nights of unremitting vigilance,
should there occur a momentary closing of the nurse's eyes, or a turning
from the bedside for a quarter of a minute, the irresponsible patient may
attempt to rise and may fall back dying or dead. So, the attendant must
have an attendant. In the case of the entomologist, his wife became the
bedside nurse and sentinel.

In the next room, now and then Mrs. Smith, and now and then our fat
neighbor's wife, waited on her, but by far the most of the time, Mrs.
Fontenette was her assistant. When Senda, while the patient dozed, stole
brief moments of sleep to keep what she could of her overtasked powers,
her place, at the bedside, was always filled by Fontenette, who as often
kept his promise to call her the instant her husband should rouse.

Thus we brought our precious entomologist through the disorder's first
crisis, which generally comes exactly on the seventy-second hour, and in
due time through the second, which falls, if I remember aright, on the
ninth day. What I do recall with certainty, was that it came on one of the
days of the city's heaviest mortality and that two of our children, and my
next neighbor's wife, came down with the scourge.

And O, the beautiful days and the beautiful nights! It seemed the illusion
of a dream, that between such land and sky, there should be not one street
in that embowered city unsmitten by sorrow and death. Out of yonder fair
home on the right, they carried yesterday, the loved mother of five
children--but the Baron is better. From this one on the left, will be
borne to-morrow such a man as no city can lightly spare, till now a living
fulfilment of the word "Be thou clean"--but the entomologist will be ever
so much better.

To be glad of it, you needed only to hear Senda allude to him as "Mine
hussbandt." Why did she never mention him in any other way? The little
woman was a riddle to me. I did not see how she could give such a man such
a love, and yet I never could see but she was as frank as a public record.
Stranger still was it how she could be the marital partner--the mate, to
speak plainly--of such a one, without showing or feeling the slightest
spiritual debasement. Finally, however, I caught some light. I had stepped
over to ask after "Mine hussbandt," everyone else of us being busy with
our own sick. Senda was letting Fontenette take her place in the
sick-room, which, of course, was shut close. I silently entered the room
in front of it, and perceiving that Mrs. Fontenette had drawn her into the
other front room, adjoining--a door stood half open between--and was
tempting her with refreshments, I sat down to await their next move. So
presently I began to hear what they said to each other in their gentle
speculations.

"A wife who has realized her ideal," Mrs. Fontenette was saying, when
Senda interrupted:

"Ah! vhat vife is sat? In vhat part of se vorldt does she lif, and how
long she is marriedt? No-o, no! Sare is only vun _kindt_ of vife in se
_whole_ vorldt vhat realize her ideal hussbandt; and sat is se vife vhat
idealize her real hussbandt. Also not se hussbandt and se vife only; I
sink you even cannot much Christ-yanity practice vis anybody--close
related--vissout you idealize sem. But ze hussbandt and vife--

"You remembeh sat sehmon, 'Be'--O yes, of course. Vell, sat is vun sing se
preacher forget to say--May be he haf not se time, but I sink he forget:
sat sare is no hussbandt in se whole vorldt--and also sare is no vife--so
sp'--spirit'--spirited? no? Ah, yes--spiritual!--yes, sank you. Vhen I
catch me a bigk vord I am so proudt, yet, as I hadt a fish caught!"

I was willing to believe it, but thought how still more true it was of
Mrs. Fontenette. But the gentle speaker had not paused. "Sare iss no vife
so _spiritual_," she repeated, triumphantly, "and who got a hussbandt so
spiritual, sat eeser vun--do you say 'eeser vun'?"

"Either one," said her hostess, reassuringly.

"Yes, so spiritual sat eeser vun can keep sat rule inside--to be pairfect'
clean, if sat vun do not see usseh vun _idealize_."

I made a stir--"Hmm!" Whereupon she came warily to the door. I sat
engrossed in a book and wishing I could silently crawl under it snake
fashion; but I could feel her eyes all over me, and with them was a
glimmering smile that helped them to make me tingle as she softly spoke.

"Ah!--See se book-vorm! He iss all eyes--and ee-ahs. Iss it _not_ so?"

"Pardon," I murmured; "did you spe'--has  any one been speaking and I have
failed to give attention?"

"O no, sir! I sink not! Vell, you are velcome to all you haf heardt; but I
am ve'y much oblige' to you for yo' 'hmm.' It vas se right sing in se
right place. But do you not sink I shouldt haf been a pre-eacheh? I love
to preach."

I said I knew of three men in one neighborhood with whom she might start a
church, and asked how was the Baron.

Improving--would soon be able to sit up. She inquired after my children.

It was quite in accord with a late phase of Mrs. Fontenette's demeanor
that on this occasion she did not appear until I mentioned her. She had
not come near me by choice since the night the Baron was found and sent to
my address, although I certainly was in every way as nice to her as I had
ever been, and I was not expecting now to be less so.

When she appeared I asked her if a superb rose blooming late in August was
not worth crossing to our side of the way to see. She knew, of course,
that sooner or later, as the best of a bad choice, she must allow me an
interview; yet now she was about to decline on some small excuse, when her
eyes met mine, and she saw that in my opinion the time had come. So she
made her excuses to her guest and went with me.

She gave the rose generous notice and praise, and as she led the way back
lingered admiringly over flower after flower. Yet she said little; more
than once she paused entirely to let me if I chose change the subject, and
when at the gate I did so, she stood like a captive, looking steadily into
my face with eyes as helpless as a half-fledged bird's and as lovely as
its mother's. When I drew something from my breastpocket, they did not
move.

"This," I said, "is the letter that was found on the Baron the night he
was taken ill. Your husband handed it to me supposing, of course, I had
written it, as it was in one of my envelopes, and he happens not to know
my handwriting. But I did not write it. I had never seen it, yet it was
sent in one of my envelopes. I haven't mentioned it to anyone else,
because--you see?--I hope you do. I thought--well, frankly, I thought if I
should mention it first to you I might never need to mention it to anyone
else." I waited a moment and then asked, eyes and all: "Who could have
sent it?"

"Isn't," she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was
hardly more than a whisper, "isn't it signed?"

Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had
never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew
it bore no signature. We gazed into each other's eyes for many seconds
until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said--and the words seemed to drop
from my lips unthought--"It didn't have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette,
although the handwriting is disguised."

Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been
kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her
up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or
wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick
pavement with her tiny boots--and tremble.

"I--I had to write it," she began to reply, and her words, though they
quivered, were as mechanical as mine. "He was so--so--imprudent--my
husband's happiness required----"

I stopped her. "Please don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but--
not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told
her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had
been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute
christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed
ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine.

She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the
eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You
wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've striv--
--"

I interrupted again. "O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman--at thirty-
five--knows it _all--himself_. And he had better go and cut his throat
than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep
she cannot retrace."

Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave
me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured,
"I will retrace it."

"I have kept you here a good while," I said. "After a moment or so drop
your handkerchief, and as I return it to you the letter will be with it.
Or, better, if you choose to trust me, we'll not do that, but as soon as I
get into the house I'll burn it."

"I can trust you," she replied, "but----"

"What; the Baron--when he misses it? O I'll settle that."

She gave a start as though I had shouted.

I thought it a bad sign for the future, and the words that followed seemed
to me worse. "Isn't it my duty," she asked--and her eyes betrayed
unconsciously the desperateness of her desire--"to explain to him myself?"

I answered with a question. "Would that be in the line of retracement,
Mrs. Fontenette?"

"It would!" she responded, with solemn eagerness. "O it would be! It shall
be! I promise you!"

"Mrs. Fontenette," said I, "consider. If his wife"--she flinched; she
could do so now, for the sudden semi-tropical darkness had fallen--"if his
wife-or your husband"--she bit her lip--"knew all--would they think that
your duty? Would it take them an instant to refuse their consent? Would
they not firmly insist that it is your duty never again to see him alone?"

Her only reply was an involuntary moan and a whitening of the face, and
for the first time I saw how deep into her soul the poison had gone.

"My friend," I continued, "you must not think me meddlesome--officious. I
can no more wait for your permission to help you than if you were
drowning. Perhaps for good reasons within _me_, I know, better than you,
that you-and he--are on a slippery incline, and that whether you can stop
your descent and creep back to higher ground than either of you has
slipped from is not to be told by the fineness of your promises or
resolves. I cannot tell; you cannot tell; only God knows." ...

"Please, sir," said a new maid--in place of one who had gone home fever
struck and had died--"yo' lady saunt me fo' to tell you yo' little boy a
sett'n on de back steps an' sayin' his head does ache him, an' she wish
you'd 'ten' to him, 'caze she cayn't leave his lill' sisteh, 'caze she
threaten with convulsion'."

XV

Mrs. Fontenette and the maid silently ran in ahead of me; I went first to
the mother. When I found Mrs. Fontenette again she had the child undressed
and in his crib, and I remembered how often I had, in my heart, called her
a coward.

She saw me pencil on a slip of paper at the mantelpiece, and went and read
-"You mustn't stay. He has the fever. You've never had it."

She wrote beneath--"I should have got it weeks ago if God paid wages every
day. Don't turn me off."

I dropped the paper into the small firegrate, added the other from my
breastpocket, and set them ablaze, and the new maid, entering, praised
burning paper as one of the best deodorizers known.

So my dainty rose-neighbor stayed; stayed all night, and all the next day
and night, and on and on with only flying visits to her home over the way,
until we were amazed at her endurance. The little fellow was never at ease
with her out of his wild eyes. Her touch was balm to him, and her words
peace. Oh, that they might have been healing also! But that was beyond the
reach of all our striving. His days were as the flowers and winged things
of the garden-kingdom, wherein he had been--without ever guessing it--
their citizen-king.

It awakens all the tenderness at once that I ever had for Mrs. Fontenette,
to recall what she was to him in those hours, and to us when his agonies
were all past, and he lay so stately on his short bier, and she could not
be done going to it and looking--looking--with streaming eyes.

As she stood close by the tomb, while we dumbly watched the masons seal
it, I began to believe that she blamed herself for the child's sickness
and death, and presently I knew it must be so. One of those quaint burial
societies of Negro women, in another quarter of the grounds, but within
plain hearing, chose for the ending of their burial service--with what
fitness to their burial service I cannot say, maybe none--a hymn borrowed,
I judge, from the rustic whites, as usual, but Africanized enough to
thrill the dullest nerves; and the moment it began my belief was
confirmed.

     My sin is so dahk, Lawd, so dahk and so deep,
       My grief is so po', Lawd, so po' and so mean,
     I wisht I could weep, Lawd, I wisht I could weep,
       Oh, I wisht I could weep like Mary Mahgaleen!

     Oh, Sorroh! sweet Sorroh! come, welcome, and stay!
       I'd welcome thy swode howsomever so keen,
     If I could jes' pray, Lawd, if I could jes' pray,
       Oh! if I could jes' pray, like Mary Mahgaleen!

My belief was confirmed, I say; but I was glad to see also that no one
else read as I read the signs by which I was guided. At the cemetery gate
I heard some one call--"Yo' madam is sick, sih," and, turning, saw Mrs.
Fontenette, deathly white, lift her blue eyes to her husband and he get
his arm about her just in time to save her from falling. She swooned but a
moment, and, in the carriage, before it started off, tried to be quite
herself, though very pale.

"It's nothing but the reaction," said to me the lady who fanned her, and
we agreed it was a wonder she had held up so long.

"Hyeh, honey," put in the child's old black nurse, in a voice that never
failed to soothe, however grotesque its misinterpretations, "lay yo' head
on me; an' lay it heavy: dass what I'm use-en to. Blessed is de pyo in
haht; she shall res' in de fea' o' de Lawd, an' he shall lafe at heh
calamity."

I was glad to send the old woman with them, for as we turned away to our
own carriage, I said in my mind, "All that little lady needs is enough
contrition, and she'll give away the total of any secret of which she owns
an undivided half."

But a night and a day passed, and a second, and a third, and I perceived
she had told nothing.

It was a terrible time, with many occasions of suspense more harrowing
than that. Our other children were getting on, yet still needed vigilant
care; the Baron was to be let out of his room in a day or two, but my fat
neighbor had come down with the disease, while his wife still lay between
life and death--how they finally got well, I have never quite made out,
they were so badly nursed--and all about us were new cases, and cases
beyond hope, and retarded recoveries, and relapses, and funerals, and
nurses too few, and ice scarce, and everybody worn out with watching--
physicians compelled to limit themselves to just so many cases at a time,
to avoid utterly breaking down.

As I was in my fat neighbor's sick chamber one evening, giving his nurse a
respite, word came that Fontenette was at my gate. I went to him with
misgivings that only increased as we greeted. He was dejected and
agitated. His grasp was damp and cold.

"It cou'n' stay from me always," he said in an anguished voice, and I
cried in my soul, "She's told him!"

But she had not. I asked him what his bad news was that had come at last,
but his only reply was,

"Can you take _him_? Can you take him out of my house--to-night--this
evening--now?"

"Who, the Baron? Why, certainly, if you desire it?" I responded; wondering
if the entomologist, by some slip, had betrayed _her_. There was an awe in
my visitor's eyes that was almost fright.

"Fontenette," I exclaimed, "what have you heard--what have you done?"

"My frien', 'tis not what I 'ave heard, neitheh what I 'ave done; 'tis
what I 'ave got."

"Got? Why, you've got nothing, you Creole of the Creoles. Your skin's as
cool as mine."

"Feel my pulse," he said. I felt it. It wasn't less than a hundred and
fifty.

"Go, get into bed while I bring the Baron over here," I said, and by the
time I had done this and got back to him his skin was hot enough! An hour
or two after, I recrossed the street on the way to my night's rest,
leaving his wife to nurse him, and Senda to attend on her and keep house.
I paused in the garden and gazed up among the benignant stars. And then I
looked onward, through and beyond their ranks, seemingly so confused, yet
where such amazing hidden order is, and said, for our good Fontenette, and
for his watching wife, and for all of us--even for my wife and me in our
unutterable loss--"Sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow fevah!"

XVI

Three days more. In the third evening I found the doctor saying to Mrs.
Fontenette:

"Nine o'clock. It's now seven-thirty. Well, you'd better begin pretty soon
to watch for the change.

"O, you'll know it when you see it, it will be as plain as something
sinking in water right before your eyes. Then give him the beef-tea, just
a teaspoonful; then, by and by, another, and another, as I told you,
always keeping his head on the pillow--mind that."

Out beside his carriage he continued to me: "O yes, a nurse or patient may
break that rule, or almost any rule, and the patient may live. I had a
patient, left alone for a moment on the climacteric day, who was found
standing at her mirror combing her hair, and to-day she's as well as you
or I. I had another who got out of bed, walked down a corridor, fell face
downward and lay insensible at the crack of a doorsill with the rain
blowing in on him under the door--and he got well. As to Fontenette, all
his symptoms so far are good. Well--I'll be back in the morning."

So ran the time. There were no more new cases in our house; Mrs. Smith and
I had had the scourge years before, as also had Senda, who remained over
the way. Fontenette passed from one typical phase of the disorder to
another "charmingly" as the doctor said, yet he specially needed just such
exceptionally delicate care as his wife was giving him. In the city at
large the deaths per day were more and more, and one night when it
showered and there was a heavenly cooling of the air, the increase in the
mortality was horrible. But the weather, as a rule, was steady and
tropically splendid; the sun blazed; the moonlight was marvellous; the
dews were like rains; the gardens were gay with butterflies. Our
convalescent little ones hourly forgot how gravely far they were from
being well, and it became one of our heavy cares to keep the entomologist
from entomologizing--and from overeating.

From time to time, when shorthanded we had used skilled nurses; but when
Mrs. Fontenette grew haggard and we mentioned them, she said
distressfully: "O! no hireling hands! I can't bear the thought of it!" and
indeed the thought of the average hired "fever-nurse" of those days was
not inspiring; so I served as her alternate when she would accept any and
throw herself on the couch Senda had spread in the little parlor.

XVII

At length one day I was called up at dawn and went over to take her place
once more, and when after several hours had passed I was still with him,
Fontenette said, while I bent down,

"I have the fear thad's going to go hahd with my wife, being of the
Nawth."

"Why, what's going to go hard, old fellow?"

"The feveh. My dear frien', don't I know tha'z the only thing would keep
heh f'om me thad long?"

"Still, you don't know her case will be a hard one; it may be very light.
But don't talk now."

"Well--I hope _so_. Me, I wou'n' take ten thousand dollahs faw thad feveh
myself--to see that devotion of my wife. You muz 'ave observe', eh?"

"Yes, indeed, old man; nobody could help observing. I wouldn't talk any
more just now."

"No," he insisted, "nobody could eveh doubt. 'Action speak loudeh than
word,' eh?"

"Yes, but we don't want either from you just now." I put his restless arms
back under the cover; not to keep the outer temperature absolutely even
was counted a deadly risk. "Besides," I said, "you're talking out of
character, old boy."

He looked at me mildly, steadily, for several moments, as if something
about me gave him infinite comfort. It was a man's declaration of love to
a man, and as he read the same in my eyes, he closed his own and drowsed.

Though he dozed only at wide intervals and briefly, he asked no more
questions until night; then--"Who's with my wife?"

"Mine."

He closed his eyes again, peacefully. It was in keeping with his perfect
courtesy not to ask how the new patient was. If she was doing well,--well;
and if not, he would spare us the pain of informing or deceiving him.

Senda became a kind of chief-of-staff for both sides of the street. She
would have begged to be Mrs. Fontenette's nurse, but for one other
responsibility, which we felt it would be unsafe, and she thought it would
be unfair, for her to put thus beyond her own reach: "se care of mine
hussbandt."

She wore a plain path across the unpaved street to our house, and another
to our neighbor's. "Sat iss a too great risk," she compassionately
maintained, "to leaf even in se daytime sose shiltren--so late sick--alone
viss only mine hussbandt and se sairvants!"

The doctor was concerned for Mrs. Fontenette from the beginning. "Terribly
nervous," he said, "and full from her feet to her eyes, of a terror of
death--merely a part of the disease, you know." But in this case I did not
know.

"Pathetic," he called the fevered satisfaction she took in the hovering
attentions of our old black nurse, who gave us brief respites in the two
sick-rooms by turns, and who had according to Mrs. Fontenette, "such a
beautiful faith!" The doctor thought it mostly words, among which "de Lawd
willin'" so constantly recurred that out of the sick-room he always
alluded to her as D.V., though never without a certain sincere regard.
This kind old soul had nursed much yellow fever in her time, and it did
not occur to us that maybe her time was past.

When Mrs. Fontenette had been ill something over a week, the doctor one
evening made us glad by saying as he came through the little dining-room
and jerked a thumb back toward Fontenette's door, "Just keep him as he is
for one more night and, I promise you, he'll get well; but!"--He sat down
on the couch--Senda's--in the parlor, and pointed at the door to Mrs.
Fontenette's room--"You've got to be careful _how_ you let even that be
known--in there! She can get well too--if--" And he went on to tell how in
this ailment all the tissues of the body sink into such frail
deterioration, that so slight a thing as the undue thrill of an emotion,
may rend some inner part of the soul's house and make it hopelessly
untenable.

"Iss sat not se condition vhat make it so easy to relapse?" asked Senda.

He said it was, I think, and went his way, little knowing to what a night
he was leaving us--except for its celestial beauty, upon which he
expatiated as I stepped with him to the gate.

XVIII

He had not been gone long enough for me to get back into the house-
Fonteette's--when I espied coming to me, in piteous haste from her home
around the corner, the young daughter of another neighbor. Her hair was
about her eyes and as she saw the physician had gone, she wrung her hands
and burst into violent weeping. I ran to her outside the gate, pointing
backward at Mrs. Fontenette's room, with entreating signs for quiet as she
called--"Oh, _where_ is he gone? Which way did he go?"

"I can't tell you, my dear girl!" I murmured. "I don't know! What is the
trouble?"

"My father!" she hoarsely whispered.

"My father's dying! dying in a raging delirium, and we can't hold him in
bed! O, come and help us!" She threw her hands above her head in wild
despair, and gnawed her fingers and lips and shook and writhed as she
gulped down her sobs, and laid hold of me and begged as though I had
refused.

I found her words true. It took four men to keep him down. I did not have
to stay to the end, and when I reached Fontenette's side again, was glad
to find I had been away but little over an hour.

I sent the old black woman home and to bed, and may have sat an hour more,
when she came back to tell us, that one of the children was very wakeful
and feverish. Senda went to see into the matter for us, and the old woman
took her place in the little parlor. Mrs. Smith was with Mrs. Fontenette.

Fontenette slept. Loath to see him open his eyes, I kept very still, while
nearly another hour dragged by, listening hard for Senda's return, but
hearing only, once or twice, through the narrow stairway and closets
between the two bedrooms, a faint stir that showed Mrs. Fontenette was
awake and being waited on.

I was grateful for the rarity of outdoor sounds; a few tree-frogs piped,
two or three solitary wayfarers passed in the street; twice or more the
sergeant of the night-watch trilled his whistle in a street or two behind
us, and twice or more in front; and once, and once again, came the distant
bellow of steamboats passing each other--not the famous boats whose
whistle you would know one from another, for they were laid up. I doubt if
I have forgotten any sound that I noticed that night. I remember the
drowsy rumble of the midnight horse-car and tinkle of its mule's bell,
first in Prytania street and then in Magazine. It was just after these
that at last a black hand beckoned me to the door, and under her breath
the old nurse told me she was just back from our house, where her mistress
had sent her, and that--"De-eh--de-eh"--

"The Baroness?"

"Yass, sih, de--de outlayndish la-ady--"

Senda had sent word that the child had only an indigestion--a thing
serious enough in such a case--and though still slightly feverish was now
asleep, but restless.

"Sih? Yass, sir--awnressless--dass 'zac'ly what I say!"

Wherefore Senda would either remain in the nursery or return to us, as we
should elect.

"O no, sih, she no need to come back right now, anyhow; yass, sih, dass
what de Mis' say, too."

"Then you'll stay here," I whispered.

"Yass, sih, ef de Lawd wil'--I mean ef you wants me, sih--yass, sih,
thaynk you, sih. I loves to tend on Mis' Fontenette, she got sich a bu'ful
fa aith, same like she say I got. Yass, sih, I dess loves to set an' watch
her--wid dat sweet samtimonious fa-ace."

Fontenette being still asleep I gave her my place for a moment, and went
to the door between the parlor and his wife's room. Mrs. Smith came to it,
barely breathing the triumphant word--"Just dropped asleep!"

When I replied that I would take a little fresh air at the front door she
asked if at my leisure I would empty and bring in from the window-sill,
around on the garden side of her patient's room a saucer containing the
over-sweetened remains of some orange-leaf tea, that "D.V." had made "for
to wrench out de nerves." She wanted the saucer.

I went outside a step or two and took in a long draught of good air--the
air of a yellow-fever room is dreadful. It was my first breath of mental
relief also; almost the first that night, and the last.

I paced once or twice the short narrow walk between the front flower-beds,
surprised at their well-kept and blooming condition until I remembered
Senda. The moths were out in strong numbers, and it was delightful to
forget graver things for a moment and see the flowers bend coyly under
their passionate kisses and blushingly rise again when the sweet robbery
was finished. So it happened that I came where a glance across to my own
garden showed me, on the side farthest from the nursery, a favorite bush,
made pale by a light that could come only from the entomologist's window!
I went in promptly, told what I proposed to do, and hurried out again.

XIX

I crossed into my garden and silently mounted the balcony stairs I have
mentioned once before. His balcony door was ajar. His room was empty. He
had occupied the bed. A happy thought struck me--to feel the spot where he
had lain; it was still warm. Good! But his clothes were all gone except
his shoes, and they, you remember, were no proof that he was indoors.

I stole down into the garden once more, and looked hurriedly in several
directions, but saw no sign of him. I am not a ferocious man even when
alone, but as I came near the fence of our fat neighbor--once fat, poor
fellow, and destined to be so again in time--and still saw no one, I was
made conscious of waving my fist and muttering through my gritting teeth,
by hearing my name softly called. It was an unfamiliar female voice that
spoke, from a window beyond the fence, and it flashed on my remembrance
that two kinswomen of my neighbor were watching with his wife, whose case
was giving new cause for anxiety. It was Mrs. Soandso, the voice
explained, and could I possibly come in there a moment?--if only to the
window!

"Is our friend the Baron over here?" I asked, as I came to it. He was not.
"Well, never mind," I said; "how is your patient?"

"Oh that's just what we wish we knew. In some ways she seems better, but
she's more unquiet. She's had some slight nausea and it seems to increase.
Do you think that is important?"

"Yes," I said, "very. I hear some one cracking ice; you are keeping ice on
her throat--no? Well, begin it at once, and persuade her to lie on her
back as quietly as she can, and get her to sleep if possible! Doctor--no;
he wouldn't come before morning, anyhow; but I'll send Mrs. Smith right
over to you, if she possibly can come."

I turned hurriedly away and had taken only a few steps, when I lit upon
the entomologist. "Well, I'll just--what _are_ you doing here? Where were
you when I was in your room just now?" His shoes were on.

"Vhat you vanted mit me? I vas by dot librair' going. For vhat you moof
dot putterfly-net fon t'e mandtelpiece? You make me _too_ much troubple to
find dot vhen I vas in a hurry!" He shook it at me.

"Hurry!" In my anger and distress I laughed. "My friend"--laying a hand on
him--"you'll hurry across the street with me."

He waved me off. "Yes; go on, you; I coom py undt py; I dtink t'ere iss
vun maud come into dot gardten, vhat I haf not pefore seen since more as
acht years, alreadty!"

"Yes," I retorted, "and so you're here at the gate alone. Now come right
along with me! Aren't there enough lives in danger to-night, but you must"
-He stopped me in the middle of the street.

"Mine Gott! vhat iss dot you say? Who--_who_--mine Gott! _who_ iss her
life in dtanger? Iss dot--mine Gott! is dot he-ere?" He pointed to Mrs.
Fontenette's front window.

I could hardly keep my fist off him. "Hush! you--For one place it's
_here_." I pushed him with my finger.

"Ach!" he exclaimed in infinite relief. "I dt'ought you mean--I--I
dt'ought--hmm!--hmm! I am dtired." He leaned on me like a sick child and
we went into the cottage parlor. The moment he saw the lounge he lay down
upon it, or I should have taken him back into the dining-room.

"Sha'n't I put that net away for you?" I murmured, as I dropped a light
covering over him.

But he only hugged the toy closer. "No; I geep it--hmm!--hmm!--I am
dtired--"

XX

Both patients, I found, were drowsing; the husband peacefully, the wife
with troubled dreams. When the Baron spoke her eyes opened with a look,
first eager and then distressful, but closed again. We put the old black
woman temporarily into her room and Mrs. Smith hurried to our other
neighbors, whence she was to despatch one of their servants to bid Senda
come to us at once. But "No battle"--have I already used the proverb? She
gave the message to the servant, but it never reached Senda. Somebody
forgot. As I sat by Fontenette with ears alert for Senda's coming and was
wondering at the unbroken silence, he opened his eyes on me and smiled.

"Ah!" he softly said, "thad was a pleasan' dream!"

"A pleasant dream, was it?"

"Yes; I was having the dream thad my wife she was showing me those rose-
_bushes_; an' every rose-_bush_ it had roses, an' every rose it was
perfect."

I leaned close and said that he had been mighty good not to ask about her
all these many days, and that if he would engage to do as well for as long
a time again, and to try now to have another good dream I would tell him
that she was sleeping and was without any alarming symptoms. O lucky
speech! It was true when it was uttered; but how soon the hour belied it!

As he obediently closed his eyes, his hand stole out from the side of the
covers and felt for mine. I gave it and as he kept it his thought seemed
to me to flow into my brain. I could feel him, as it were, thinking of his
wife, loving her through all the deeps of his still nature with seven--
yes, seventy--times the passion that I fancied would ever be possible to
that young girl I had seen a few hours earlier showing her heart to the
world, with falling hair and rending sobs. As he lay thus trying to court
back his dream of perfect roses, I had my delight in knowing he would
never dream-what Senda saw so plainly, yet with such faultless modesty--
that all true love draws its strength and fragrance from the riches not of
the loved one's, but of the lover's soul.

His grasp had begun to loosen, when I thought I heard from the wife's room
a sudden sound that made my mind flash back to the saucer I had failed to
bring in. It was as though the old-fashioned, unweighted window-sash,
having been slightly lifted, had slipped from the fingers and fallen shut.
I hearkened, and the next instant there came softly searching through
doors, through walls, through my own flesh and blood, a long half-wailing
sigh. Fontenette tightened on my hand, then dropped it, and opening his
eyes sharply, asked, "What was that?"

"What was what, old fellow?" I pretended to have been more than half
asleep myself.

"Did I only dream I 'eard it, thad noise?"

"That isn't a hard thing to do in your condition," I replied, with my
serenest smile, and again he closed his eyes. Yet for two or three minutes
it was plain he listened; but soon he forbore and began once more to
slumber. Then very soon I faintly detected a stir in the parlor, and
stealing to the door to listen through the dining-room, came abruptly upon
the old black woman. Disaster was written on her face and when she spoke
tears came into her eyes.

"De madam want you," she said, and passed in to take my place.

As I went on to the parlor, Mrs. Smith, just inside Mrs. Fontenette's
door, beckoned me. As I drew near I made an inquiring motion in the
direction of our neighbor across the way.

"I'm hopeful," was her whispered reply; "but--in here"--she shook her
head. Just then the new maid came from our house, and Mrs. Smith whispered
again-- "Go over quickly to the Baron; he's in his room. 'Twas he came for
me. He'll tell you all. But he'll not tell his wife, and she mustn't
know."

As I ran across the street I divined almost in full what had taken place.

I had noticed the possibility of some of the facts when I had left the
Baron asleep on the parlor lounge, but they could have done no harm, even
when Senda did not come, had it not been for two other facts which I had
failed to foresee; one, that we had unwittingly overtasked our willing old
nurse, and in her chair in Mrs. Fontenette's room she was going to fall
asleep; and the other that the entomologist would waken.

XXI

And now see what a cunning trap the most innocent intentions may sometimes
set. There was a mirror in the sick-room purposely so placed that, with
the parlor door ajar, the watcher, but not the patient, could see into the
parlor, and could be seen from the parlor when sitting anywhere between
the mirror and the window beyond it. This window was the one that looked
into the side garden. Purposely, too, the lounge had been placed so as to
give and receive these advantages. A candle stood on the window's inner
ledge and was screened from the unseen bed, but shone outward through the
window and inward upon the mirror. The front door of the parlor opened
readily to anyone within or without who knew enough to use its two latches
at once, but neither within nor without to--the Baron, say--who did not
know.

Do you see it? As he lay awake on the lounge his eye was, of course, drawn
constantly to the mirror by the reflected light of the candle, and to its
images of the nodding watcher and of the window just beyond. So lying and
gazing, he had suddenly beheld that which brought him from the lounge in
an instant, net in hand, and tortured to find the front door--by which he
would have slipped out and around to the window--fastened! What he saw was
the moth--the moth so many years unseen. Now it sipped at the saucer of
sweet stuff, now hovered over it, now was lost in the dark, and now
fluttered up or slid down the pane, lured by the beam of the candle.

If he was not to lose it, there was but one thing to do. With his eyes
fixed, moth-mad, on the window, he glided in, passed the two sleepers, and
stealthily lifted the sash with one hand, the other poising the net. The
moth dropped under, the net swept after it, and the sash slipped and fell.
Mrs. Fontenette rose wildly, and when she saw first the old woman, half
starting from her seat with frightened stare, and then the entomologist
speechless, motionless, and looming like an apparition, she gave that cry
her husband heard, and fell back upon the pillow in a convulsion.

I found the Baron sitting on the side of his bed like a child trying to be
awake without waking. No, not _trying_ to do or be anything; but aimless,
dazed, silent, lost.

He obeyed, automatically, my every request. I set about getting him to bed
at once, putting his clothes beyond his reach, and even locking his
balcony door, without a sign of objection from him. Then I left him for a
moment, and calling Senda from the nursery to the parlor told her the
state of the different patients, including her husband, but without the
hows and whys except that I had found him in our garden with his precious
net. "And now, as it will soon be day, Mrs. Smith and I--with the servants
and others--can take care of the four."

"If I"--meekly interrupted the sweet woman--"vill go for se doctors? I
vill go." Soon she was off.

Then I went back to her husband, and finding his mood so changed that he
was eager to explain everything, I let him talk; which I soon saw was a
blunder; for he got pitifully excited, and wanted to go over the same
ground again and again. One matter I was resolved to fix in his mind
without delay. "Mark you," I charged him, "your wife must never know a
word of this!"

"Eh?--No"--and the next instant the sick woman across the way was filling
all his thought: "Mine Gott! she rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!"
and up he would start. Then as I pressed him down--"Mine Gott! I vould not
go in, if I dhink she would do dot. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!--Undt I tidt not
t'e mawdt get.

"Hmm! Even I titn't saw vhere it iss gone. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!

"Undt dot door kit shtuck! Hmm! Undt dot vindow iss not right made. Hmm!

"I tidn't vant to do dot--you know? Hmm! I am sorry!--Ach, mine Gott! she
rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" Thus round and round. What to do
for him I did not know!

Yet he grew quiet, and was as good as silent, when Senda, long before I
began to look for her, stood unbonneted at my side in a soft glow of
physical animation, her anxiety all hidden and with a pink spot on each
cheek. I was startled. Had _I_ slept--or had she somehow ridden?

"Are the street-cars running already?" I asked.

"No," she murmured, producing a vial and looking for a glass. "'Tis I haf
been running alreadty. Sat iss not so tiresome as to valk. Also it is
safeh. I runned all se vay. Vill you sose drops drop faw me?" Her hand
trembled.

I took the vial but did not meet her glance: for I was wondering if there
was anything in the world she could ask of me that I would not do, and at
such a time it is good for anyone as weak as I am to look at inanimate
things.

"You got word to all three doctors?"

"Yes;" she gave her chin the drollest little twist--"sey are all coming
--vhen sey get ready."

XXII

That is what they did; but the first who came, and the second, brought
fresh courage; for the Baron--"would most likely be all right again,
before the day was over"; our child was "virtually well"; and from next
door-"better!" was the rapturous news. The third physician, too, was
pleased with Fontenette's case, and we began at once to send the night-
watchers to their rest by turns.

But there the gladness ended. At Mrs. Fontenette's bedside he asked no
questions. In the parlor he said to us:

"Well, ... you've done your best; ... I've done mine; ... and it's of no
use."

"Oh, Doctor!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith.

"Why, didn't you know it?" He jerked his thumb toward the sick-room. "She
knows it. She told me she knew it, with her first glance."

He pondered. "I wish she were not so near _him_. If she were only in here
--you see?"

Yes, we saw; the two patients would then be, on their either hand, one
whole room apart, as if in two squares of a checkerboard that touch only
at one corner.

"Well," he said, "we must move her at once. I'll show you how; I'll stay
and help you."

It seemed more as though we helped him--a very little--as we first moved
her and then took the light bedstead apart, set it up again in the parlor,
and laid her in it, all without a noticeable sound, and with only great
comfort of mind to her--for she knew why we did it. Then I made all haste
to my own house again and had the relief to see, as Senda came toward me
from her husband's room, that he had told her nothing. "Vell?" she eagerly
asked.

"Well, Monsieur Fontenette is greatly improved!"

"O sat iss goodt! And se Madame; she, too, is betteh?--a little?--eh--
no-o?"

I said that what the doctor had feared, a "lesion," had taken place, and
that there was no longer any hope of her life. At which she lighted up
with a lovely defiance.

"Ho-o! no long-eh any hope! Yes, sare _iss_ long-er any hope! Vhere iss
sat doc-toh? Sare _shall_ be hope! Kif _me_ sat patient! I can keep se
vatch of mine huss-bandt at se _same_ time. He hass not a relapse! Kif me
se patient! Many ossehs befo'e I haf savedt vhen hadt sose doctohs no
long-eh any hope! Mine Gott! vas sare so much hope vhen she and her
hussbandt mine sick hussbandt and me out of se street took in? Vill you
let stay by mine hussbandt, anyhow a short vhile, one of yo' so goodt
sairvants?" The instant I assented she flew down the veranda steps,
through the garden, and out across the street.

I lingered a few moments with the entomologist before leaving him with
others. He asked me only one question: "Hmm! Hmm! How she iss?"

"Why," said I, brightly, "I think she feels rather more comfortable than
she did."

"Hmm!--Hmm!--I am sorry--Hmm!--Ach! mine Gott, I am so hoongary!--Hmm! I
am so dtired mit dot sou-oup undt dose creckers!--Hmm! I vish I haf vonce
a whole pifshtea-ak undt a glahss beer--hmm!"

"Hmm!" I echoed, "your subsequent marketing wouldn't cost much." I went
down town on some imperative office business, came back in a cab, gave
word to be called at such an hour, and lay down. But while I slept my
order was countermanded and when I awakened it was once more midnight. I
went to my open window and heard, through his balcony door--locked, now,
and its key in my pocket--the Baron, snoring. Then I sprang into my
clothes and sped across the street.

I went first around to the outer door of the dining-room, and was briefly
told the best I could have hoped, of Fontenette. I returned to the front
and stepped softly into what had been Mrs. Fontenette's room. Finding no
one in it I waited, and when I presently heard voices in the other room, I
touched its door-knob. Mrs. Smith came out, closed the door carefully, and
sank into a seat.

"It's been a noble fight!" she said, smiling up through her tears. "When
the doctor came back and saw how wonderfully the--the worst--had been held
off, he joined in the battle! He's been here three times since!"

"And can it be that she is going to pull through?"

My wife's face went down into her hands. "O, no--no. She's dying now--
dying in Senda's arms!"

Her ear, quicker than mine, heard some sign within and she left me. But
she was back almost at once, whispering:

"She knows you're here, and says she has a message to her husband which
she can give only to you."

We gazed into each other's eyes. "Go in," she said.

As I entered, Senda tenderly disengaged herself, went out, and closed the
door.

I drew near in silence and she began at once to speak, bidding me take the
chair Senda had left, and with a tender smile thanking me for coming.

Then she said faintly and slowly, but with an unfaltering voice, "I want
you to know one or two things so that if it ever should be my husband's
affliction to find out how foolish and undutiful I have been, you can tell
them to him. Tell him my wrongdoing was, from first to last, almost
totally--almost totally----"

"Do you mean--intangible?"

"Yes, yes, intangible. Then if he should say that the intangible part is
the priceless part--the life, the beauty, the very essence of the whole
matter--isn't it strange that we women are slower than men to see that--
tell him I saw it, saw it and confessed it when for his sake I was
slipping away from him by stealth out of life up to my merciful Judge.

"I may not be saying these things in their right order, but--tell him I
wish he'd marry again; only let him first be sure the woman loves him as
truly and deeply as he is sure to love her. I find I've never truly loved
him till now. If he doesn't know it don't ever tell him; but tell him I
died loving him and blessing him--for the unearned glorious love he gave
me all my days. That's all. That's all to him. But I would like to send
one word to"--she lifted her hand--

"Across the street?" I murmured.

Her eyes said yes. "Tell _him_--you may never see the right time for it,
but if you do--tell him I craved his forgiveness."

I shook my head.

"Yes--yes, tell him so; it was far the most my fault; he is such a child;
such a child of nature, I mean. Tell him I said it sounds very pretty to
call ourselves and each other children of nature, but we have no right to
be such. The word is 'Be thou clean,' and if we are not masters of nature
we can't do it. Tell him that, will you? And tell him he has nothing to
grieve for; I was only a dangerous toy, and I want him to love the dear
Father for taking it away from him before he had hurt himself.

"Now I am ready to go--only--that hymn those black women--in the cemetery
--you remember? I've made another verse to it. You'll find it--afterward--
on a scrap of paper between the leaves of my Bible. It isn't good poetry,
of course; it's the only verse I ever composed. May I say it to you just
for my--my testimony? It's this:

     Yet though I have sinned, Lord, all others above,
     Though feeble my prayers, Lord; my tears all unseen;
     I'll trust in thy love, Lord; I'll trust in thy love--
     O I'll trust in thy love like Mary Mahgaleen."

An exalted smile lighted her face as she sunk deeper into the pillows. She
tried to speak again, but her voice failed. I bent my ear and she
whispered--"Senda."

As I beckoned Senda in, Mrs. Smith motioned for me to come to her where
she stood at a window whose sash she had slightly lifted; the same to
which the moth had once been lured by the little puddle of sweet drink and
the candle.

"Do you want to see a parable?" she whispered, and all but blinded with
tears, she pointed to the lost moth lying half in, half out of the window,
still beautiful but crushed; crushed with its wings full spread, not by
anyone's choice, but because there are so many things in this universe
that not even God can help from being as they are.

At a whispered call we turned, and Senda, in the door, herself all tears,
made eager signs for us to come. The last summons had surprised even the
dying. We went in noiseless haste, and found her just relaxing on Senda's
arm. Yet she revived an instant; a quiver went through her frame like the
dying shudder of a butterfly, her eyes gazed appealingly into Senda's,
then fixed, and our poor little Titania was gone.

XXIII

The story is nearly told. Before I close let me confess how heartlessly I
have told it. Pardon that; and pardon, too, the self-consciousness that
makes me beg not to be remembered as I seem to myself in the tale--a
tiptoeing, peeping figure prowling by night after undue revelations, and
using them--to the humiliation of souls cleaner than mine could ever
pretend to be.

Next day, by stealth again, we buried the little rose-lady, unknown to her
husband. We could not keep the fact long from the entomologist, for he was
up and about the house again. Nor was there equal need. So when the last
rites were over I told him, but without giving any part of her message--I
couldn't do it! I just said she had left us.

His eye did not moisten, but he paled, trembled, wiped his brow. Then I
handed him the crushed moth, and he was his convalescent self again.

"Hmm!--Dot iss a pity she kit smashed; I titn't vant to do dot."

I thought maybe he felt more than he showed, for he fretted to be allowed
to take a walk alone beyond the gate and the corner. With some misgivings
his wife let him go, and when she was almost anxious enough over his tardy
stay to start after him he came back looking very much better. But the
next morning, when we found him in the burning fever of an unmistakable
relapse, he confessed that the German keeper of an eating-stall in the
neighboring market, for his hunger's and the Fatherland's sake, had
treated him to his "whole pifshtea-ak undt glahss be-eh."

He lived only a few days. Through all his deliriums he hunted butterflies
and beetles, and died insensible to his wife's endearments, repeating the
Latin conjugations of his inconceivable boyhood.

So they both, caterpillar and rose, were gone; but the memory of them
stays, green--yes, and fragrant--not alone with Fontenette, and not only
with Senda besides, but with us also. How often I recall the talks on
theology I had used sometimes to let myself fall into with the little
unsuccessful mistress of "rose-es" who first brought the miser of
knowledge into our garden, and whenever I do so I wonder, and wonder, and
lose my bearings and find and lose them again, and wonder and wonder--what
God has done with the entomologist.

We never had to tell Fontenette that he was widowed. We had only to be
long enough silent, and when he ceased, for a time, to get better, and
rather lost the strength he had been gaining, and on entering his room we
found him always with his face to the wall, we saw that he knew. So for
his sake I was glad when one day, without facing round to me, his hand
tightened on mine in a wild tremor and he groaned, "Tell it me--tell it."

I told it. I thought it well to give him one of her messages and withhold
the rest, like the unscrupulous friend I always try to be; and when he had
heard quite through--"Tell him I died loving him and blessing him for the
unearned glorious love he gave me all our days"--he made as if to say the
word was beyond all his deserving, turned upon his face, and soaked the
pillow with his tears. But from that day he began slowly but steadily to
get well.

We kept Senda with us as long as we could, and when at length she put her
foot down so that you might have heard it--say like the dropping of a nut
in the wood--and declared that go she must-must-must! we first laughed,
then scoffed, and then grew violent, and the battle forced her backward.
But when we tried to salary her to stay, _she_ laughed, scoffed, grew
violent, and retook her entrenchments. And then, when she offered the
ultimatum that we must take pay for keeping her, we took our turn again at
the three forms of demonstration, and a late moon rose upon a drawn
battle. Since then we have learned to count it one of our dearest rights
to get "put out" at Senda's outrageous reasonableness, but she doesn't
fret, for "sare is neveh any sundeh viss se lightening."

The issue of this first contest was decided the next day by Fontenette,
still on his bed of convalescence. "Can I raise enough money in yo' office
to go at France?"

"You can raise twice enough, Fontenette, if it's to try to bring back some
new business."

"Well--yes, 'tis for that. Of co'se, besides--"

"Yes, I know: of course."

"But tha'z what puzzle' me. What I'm going do with that house heah, whilse
I'm yondeh! I wou'n' sell it--ah no! I wou'n' sell one of those roses! An'
no mo' I wou'n' rent it. Tha's a monument, that house heah, you know?"

"Yes, I know." He never found out how well I knew.

"Fontenette, I'll tell you what to do with it."

"No, you don't need; I know whad thad is. An' thaz the same I want--me.
Only--you thing thad wou'n' be hasking her too much troub'?"

"No, indeed. There's nothing else you could name that she'd be so glad to
do."

When I told Senda I had said that, the tears stood in her eyes. "Ah, sat
vass ri-ight! O, sare shall neveh a veed be in sat karten two dayss oldt!
An' sose roses--sey shall be pairfect ever' vun!"

XXIV

As perfect as roses every one were her words kept. And Fontenette got his
new business but could not come back that year, nor the second, nor the
third. The hither-side of his affairs he assigned for the time to a
relative, a very young fellow, but ever so capable--"a hustler," as our
fat friend would say in these days. We missed the absentee constantly, but
forgave his detention the easier because incidentally he was clearing up a
matter of Senda's over there, in which certain displeased kindred had
overreached her. Also because of his letters to her, which she so often
did us the honor to show us.

The first few were brief, formal and colorless; but after some time they
began to take on grace after grace, until at length we had to confess that
to have known him only as we had known him hitherto would have been to
have been satisfied with the reverse of the tapestry, and never fully to
have seen the excellence of his mind or the modest nobility of his spirit.
Frequently we felt very sure we saw also that no small share of their
captivating glow was reflected from Senda's replies--of which she never
would tell us a word. The faults in his written English were surprisingly
few, and to our minds only the more endeared it and him. Maybe we were not
judicial critics.

Yet we could pass strictures, and as the months lengthened out into years
these winged proxies stirred up, on our side of the street, a profound and
ever-growing impatience. O, yes, every letter was a garden of beautiful
thoughts, still; but think of it! _pansies_ where roses might have been;
and a garden wherein--to speak figuratively--the nightingale never sang.

On a certain day of All Saints, the fourth after the scourge, Senda sat at
tea with us. Our mood was chastened, but peaceful. We had come from
visiting at the sunset hour the cemetery where in the morning the two
women and our old nurse had decked the tombs of our dead with flowers. I
had noticed that at no tomb front were these tokens piled more abundantly,
or more beautifully or fragrantly, than at those of Flora and the
entomologist; it was always so. I had remarked this on the spot, and
Senda, with her rearranging touch still caressing their splendid masses,
replied,

"So?--vell--I hope siss shall mine vork and mine pleassure be until
mineself I shall fade like se floweh."

I inwardly resented the speech, but said nothing. I suppose it was over my
head.

Now, at the table, she explained as to certain costly blooms about which I
had inquired, that they were Fontenette's special offering, for which he
always sent the purchase money ahead of time and with detailed requests.
Whereat, remembering how she had formerly glozed and gilded the
entomologist's unthrift, I remarked, one-fourth in play, three-fourths in
earnest,

"A good plain business man isn't the least noble work of God, after all."

"No," said Senda, without looking up; and, after a long, meditative
breath, she added, very slowly,

"Se koot Kott makes not all men for se same high calling. If Kott make a
man to do no betteh san make a living or a fawtune, it iss right for se
man to make it; se _man_ iss not to blame. And now I vant to tell you se
news of sat letteh from----"

"The other side," we suggested, and invited her smile, but without
success.

"Yes, from se osseh si-ide; sat letteh vhat you haf brought me since more
as a veek ago; and also vhy I haf not sat letteh given you to read. Sat
iss--if you like to know--yes?

"Vell, sen I vill tell you. And sare are two sings to tell. Se fairst is a
ve'y small, but se secondt iss a ve'y lahge. And se fairst is sat that _I_
am now se Countess.

"So? you are glad? I sank you ve'y much. I sink sat iss not much trouble
--to be a countess--in Ame'ica?

"Se secondt sing"--here a servant entered, and, it seemed to me, never
would go out, but Senda waited till we were again alone--"se secondt--
pahdon me, I sink I shall betteh se secondt sing divide again into two aw
sree. And se fairst is sat Monsieur Fontenette vill like ve'y--ve'y much
to come home--now--right avay."

We lifted hands to clap and opened mouths to hurrah, but she raised a
warning hand.

"No, vait--if you pleass.

"Se secondt of sose two or sree sings--it is sat--he--Monsieur Fontenette
--hass ask me--"  Our hearts rose slowly into our throats--"Ze vun
qvestion to vich sare can be only--se--vun--answeh."

At this we gulped our breath like schoolgirls and glowed. But the more
show we made of hopeful and pleading smiles, the more those dear eyes, so
seldom wet, filled up with tears.

"_He_ sinks sare can two answehs be, and he like to heah which is se
answeh I shall gif him, so he shall know if he shall come--now--aw if he
shall come--neveh.

"O my sweet friend,"--to Mrs. Smith, down whose, face the salt drops stole
unhindered--"sare iss nossing faw _you_ to cry." She smiled heroically.

I could be silent no longer. "Senda, what have you answered?"

"I haf answered"--her lips quivered till she gnawed them cruelly--"I am
sorry to take such a long time to tell you sat--but--I--I find sat--ve'y
hahd--to tell." She smiled and gnawed her lips again. "I haf answered--

"Do you sink, my deah, sat siss is ri-ight to tell the we'y vords sat I
haf toldt him?--yes?--vell--he tell me I shall se answeh make in vun
vord--is sat not like a man?

"But I had to take six. And sey are sese: I cannot vhispeh across se
ocean."