He groped for a word, stammered and was silent.

She examined him curiously, then smiled.

"Silence?  Confession!"

"I've nothing to confess."  And then desperately.  "Appearances
are--were against us.  If you've spoken of that--you've done a great
mischief--an irreparable wrong--to--to Hermia."

She was laughing again, silently, inwardly, her head bent.

"Oh, as to that, I'll relieve your anxiety at once," she said at last.
"It was to rich a secret to tell too quickly--too good a story--and
then the embroideries--I had to think of those.  No, I have not told
it, John,--not yet.  You see, after I left you, I changed my mind about
things.  Your rural _amourette_ is still a secret, _mon ami_."

He gasped a sigh of relief.  How could he ever have believed it of her?
 He laughed lightly with an air of carelessness.

"You wouldn't tell.  I knew that.  You're not that sort, Olga--"

"Not so fast, my poor friend," she put in quickly.  "I've said that
your indiscretion was still a secret, but I still reserve the right to
tell it here in New York if the humor seizes me."

"Nonsense," he laughed.  "I simply don't believe you would."

She shrugged.

"I have told you the truth. I mean what I say.  I shall tell what I
know, unless--"

She paused.  Her moment was not yet.

"Unless?" he questioned.

"Unless I find reasons why I shouldn't," she finished provokingly.

"Meaning--what?" he persisted.

He regarded her for a moment in silence, quickly joining in her
laughter.

"Oh, what's the use of making such a lot of fuss over a thing?  It was
imprudent, indiscreet of us, if you like.  Hermia and I met by
accident.  I was tramping it--as you know.  I asked her if she didn't
want to go along, and she did.  Simplest thing in the world.  We waved
convention aside.  Nothing odd about that.  We're doing it every day."

"Oh, are we?"

"Yes.  The laws of convention were only made as props and crutches for
the crooked.  If you're straight, you don't need 'em."

"Still," she mused sweetly, "society must be protected.  Who is to tell
which of us is straight and which crooked?  Even if we were crooked,
you know, neither of us would be willing t admit it."

"But it's a question not so much of my wisdom--as of Hermia's.  You'll
admit--"

"I admit nothing," she said quickly.  "You've surprised, shocked and
grieved me beyond words, both of you, also made me feel a trifle
foolish.  My judgment is shaken to the earth.  Here I've been holding
you up as a kind of paragon, a fossilized _Galahad_, with a horizon
just at your elbows, to find you touring France, _faisant l'aimable_
with a frolicsome scapegrace in a bolero jacket."

"I would remind you," he broke in stiffly, "that you're speaking of
Hermia Challoner."

"Oh, I'm quite aware of it," with a careless wave of her hand.  "And as
to Hermia's wisdom--life has taught me this--that a woman may be
clever, she may be intuitive, she may be skillful, but she's never
wise.  And so I say--I'm shocked, John Markham, outraged and shocked
beyond expression."

"Oh, you're the limit, Olga," he blurted out.

"Simply because I adhere to the traditions of my sex, because I adhere
to the memory of my friendships.  I like you, John Markham, your
simplicity has always appealed to me.  And now that you add gallantry
to your more sober charms I confess you're quite irresistible."

Markham stopped short.

"I can't have you talking like this," he said quietly.  "I don't mind
what you say of me, of course, but your choice of words is not
fortunate.  Miss Challoner and I--"

"Spare your breath," she said, turning on him swiftly.  "I'm no fool.
I've lived in the world.  If Hermia Challoner chooses to lay herself
open to criticism that's her lookout.  I'll say what I please of her.
She has earned that retribution.  Talk as you will of your own virtues
and hers you'd never succeed in convincing anyone of your innocence--me
least of all.  What's the use of beating around the bush.  I can see
through a millstone--if it has a hole in it.  Hermia Challoner--"

"Silence!"  His fingers gripper her arm and she stopped, ready to
scream with the pain of it.  "You're insulting the woman I love.  Do
you hear?" he whispered through set lips.  "I'll hear no more of it
here--or elsewhere?  We traveled together, that is all.  My God--that
you should dare!"  He stopped suddenly, peering through the dusk at her
face which still smiled, though the pain of her arm gave her agony, and
then he relaxed with a laugh.  "You don't mean it, I know.  It isn't
worthy of you.  Why, Olga, you are her friend.  You know her
intimately--body and soul.  You can't believe it.  You don't--"

"I do," fiercely.  "I _do_ believe it--more's the pity."

They had stopped and were facing each other, bayonets crossed.  The
city roared about them, but they did not hear it.  He dominated her,
masterful.  She fought back silently, a thing of nerves and passion
only, but she did not flinch, though he had already wounded her
mortally.

"Lie, if you like to me, John Markham.  Lie to me.  It's your duty.
Lie like a gentleman.  But you can't make me believe you.  I'm no fool.
 I'll say what I like of her--or of you, when I choose, where I
choose--"

"I won't believe you."

"You must.  It has come to that," she went on, whispering.  "I've given
you the best of me, the very best, what no man has had of me,
affection, strong and tender, friendship, clean and wholesome.  I gave
gladly.  I'm not sorry.  They were sweeter even than the love in my
breast which stifled--which still stifles me."

"Olga!"

The suppressed passion of her confession startled him.  Her half-closed
eyes burned through the dusk, then paled again.

"It's true," she went on haltingly.  "I love you.  My love--I'm proud
of it--prouder of it than of anything I've ever been or known--because
it's sweet and clean.  That's why I can look you in the eyes and tell
you so.  Why shouldn't I?  What is my woman's pride beside that other
pride?  I have not stopped--as she has--to conquer."

"Sh--!"

"She stooped to conquer.  I'm glad--glad--it shows the difference
between us.  It weighs us one against the other.  You shall know.  One
day you shall know.  You'll tire of her.  It's always the ending of a
conquest like that."

"You're mad," he whispered, aghast.

She threw up her hands and pressed them to her breast a moment.  Then,
with a quivering intake of the breath, the tension broke, and her hands
dropped to her sides, her laughter jarring him strangely.

"Curious, isn't it?" he heard her saying.  "You're the last man in the
world I would have dreamed of.  I used to laugh at you, you know.  You
were so _gauche_ and _so_ ill-mannered.  I took you up as a sort of
game.  It amused me to try and see what could be made of you.  If you'd
made love to me, I would have laughed at you.  But you didn't.  Why
didn't you, John?  It would have saved us all such a lot of trouble."

Her mockery set him more at ease.  He saw a refuge and took it.

"I think you're not quite so mad--as mischievous," he said boldly.
"Your loves are too frequent to cause your friends much concern--least
of all the one you honor with your present professions.  I'm not
woman-wise, Olga.  And I'm not honey-mouthed.  I hope you won't mind if
I say I don't believe you."

Her smile vanished.

"You will--in time," she said quickly.  "So will--Hermia."  She paused,
and then, her fingers on his arm, her eyes to his.

"Have you--?  Has she--?  You wouldn't _marry_ her, John?"

Her tone was soft, but the inference had the ominous sibilance of a
whip-lash, which swirled in the air and circled over Hermia, too.  He
chose his words deliberately.

"She's the sweetest, cleanest, purest woman I've ever known."

She shrugged and drew away.  Whatever she felt, no sound escaped her.
He followed toward the lights of the Avenue, aware that a crisis in his
affairs of some sort had been reached and passed.  His companion walked
more and more rapidly, setting the pace which outdid the slow movement
of his wits.

But he caught up with her presently and took her by the arm.

"Olga, forgive me.  You maddened me.  I wanted you to know--that Hermia
was not what you thought she was.  You lower your own standards--can't
you see--when you lower hers?  She's only a girl--thoughtless, a thing
of impulses only--mad impulses if you like--but clean, Olga,--like a
child.  You've only to look at her and see--"

"I did look at her--and see," she said through her teeth.

He stopped her by main force.

"You've got to listen!  Do you hear?  It was I who put her in this
false position.  I who must get her out of it.  I owe her that and you
owe it to me."

He released her and went on more quietly.  "I'm no _Galahad_ and I make
no pretences to virtue, but I'm no rake or despoiler of women either.
I dare you to doubt it.  You didn't doubt it--there--in the studio.
You can't doubt it now.  Women of your sort--and hers--are inviolable."

Her lids flickered and fell.

"A girl--Olga, a mere child.  Think!  What is this love of yours that
feeds on hatred--on uncleanness  Love is made of gentler
stuff-beautifies, uplifts--not destroys."

Her head was bent and her face was hidden under her wide hat, but her
whisper came to him quite clearly.

"_You_--tell _me_--what love is?  _You!_"

When she raised her head her lips were smiling softly, and she moved
forward slowly, he at her side.  They had reached the Avenue.  A motor
he had not observed stood near.

"We part here I think.  It's _adieu_, John."

"No," he muttered.

"Oh, yes, it is."  And then with a gay laugh which was her best
defence--"Too bad we couldn't have hit it off, isn't it?  I would have
liked it awfully.  I give you my word you've never seemed nearly so
interesting as at this moment of discomposure.  There's a charm in your
awkwardness, John,--a native charm.  Good night.  I go alone."

He followed her a few paces but she reached the machine before him and
was whisked away.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE WINGS OF THE BUTTERFLY

John Markham spent an unpleasant evening.  He dined alone at a club,
wandering afterward aimlessly from library to billiard room and then
took to the streets, trusting to physical exercise to clear his head of
the tangle that Olga had put into it.  Olga, the irrepressible
man-hunter, in love with a "fossilized Galahad_."  That was ironically
amusing, extraordinary, if true, a punishment which fitted her crime,
and something of a grim joke on the man-hunter as well as the fossil.
Markham tried to view the matter with unconcern, man-like, recalling
the many times that Olga's name had been coupled with those of various
distinguished foreigners and the frequent reports of her engagement,
always denied and forgotten.  And yet she worried him.  For a brief
moment she had given him a glimpse of the shadowy recesses where she
hid her naked soul; a glimpse only, like some of those she had given
him when he was painting her portrait; but what he had seen now was
different--an Olga no longer wistful no longer amenable; a wild,
unreasoning thing who purred, cat-like, while he stroked her, sheathing
and unsheathing her claws.  There was mischief brewing--he felt it in
her sudden access of self-control, and in the final jest with which she
had left him.  He knew her better now.  It was when she mocked that
Olga was most dangerous.  It was clear that she had not believed him
when he told her the truth.  Her standards forbade it, of course.  It
was too bad.

But she had not told what she knew--that was the main thing.  What if
she did tell now?  Hermia could deny it, of course, and if necessary he
must lie, as Olga had said, like a gentleman.  And where were Olga's
proofs?  Who would confirm her?  What evidence, human or documentary
could she bring forward here in New York to prove Hermia's culpability,
if, as it seemed to be her intention, she insisted on carrying her
sweet vengeance to its end?  There was no one--he paused, his brow
clouding.  De Foligny!  Had De Folligny learned who Hermia was?  Had
Olga found out about the companion in his automobile at Verneuil?  He
waved the thought away.  De Folligny was on the other side of the
ocean.  The psychological moment for Olga's revelation had passed.

Consoling himself with these thoughts he went home and to bed and
morning found him early at the studio, awaiting his new sitter, in a
more quiescent, if still uncertain, frame of mind.

The portrait of Mrs. Berkeley Hammond on which he had been working sat
smugly upon one of his easels, a thing of shreds and patches (though
the lady was in pearls and a DrÂcoll frock), a thing "painty" without
being direct, mannered without being elegant, highly colored without
being colorful, a streaky thing with brilliant spots, like the work of
a promising pupil; a pretty poor Markham, which had pleased the sitter
because its face flattered her, and for which she would gladly pay the
considerable sum he charged, while Markham's inner consciousness loudly
proclaimed that the canvas was not worth as much as the crayon sketch
of Madam Daudifret in Normandy which had been the price of a _ragoÂt_.
 Really he would have to pain better.  He swung the easel around with a
kick of the foot and faced a new canvas, primed some days before, and
busied himself about his palette and paint tubes.

When Phyllis Van Vorst emerged from the dressing-room a while later
into the cool north light, Markham's eyes sparkled with a genuine
delight.  Here was the sort of thing he could do--white satin with
filmy drapery from which rose the fresh-colored flower of girlhood.
Without being really pretty, his model created the illusion of beauty
by her youth, her abundant health and many little tricks of gesture and
expression.  Her role was that of the ingÂnue and she prattled
childishly of many things, flitting like a butterfly from topic to
topic, grave and gay with a careless grace which added something to the
picture she made.  Markham let her talk, interjecting monosyllables
lulled by the inexhaustible flow, aware, after the first pose or two,
that he was painting well, with the careless brush of entire
confidence.  As Olga had said, he always was at his best when a little
contemptuous.  In three hours the head was finished and the background
laid in, _premier coup_-- the best thing he had done in a year.

He twisted the canvas around to get a better look at it and groped for
his pipe, suddenly conscious of the fact that he had painted and that
his model had sat steadily for an hour and a half without a rest.

"You poor child," he muttered with compunction, as he helped her down,
"that's the penalty of being interesting."

"Oh, I'm so glad," she cried, "You _can_ say nice things, can't you?"

"When I think of them," he laughed.

She stood before the canvas in breathless delight.

"Oh, do I look like that, Mr. Markham, like _Psyche_ with the lamp?
It's quite too wonderful for _words_.  I'm a _dream_.  I've never seen
anything quite so flattering in my _life_.  Oh, I'm _so_ glad I came to
you instead of to Teddy Vincent.  You've made my poor nose quite
straight--and yet it's _my_ nose, too.  How on _earth_ did you do it?
You're not going to work any more--?"

"No--" he laughed, "the head is done."

She sat in the chair he brought forward for her and Markham dropped on
the divan near her and smoked.  She gazed at the head for a while in
rapturous silence.

"O Mr. Markham, will you _ever_ forgive me for being so stupid last
summer," she said at last, "about that upside-down painting?  I've been
so humiliated--"

"I'm not really a landscape man, you know," he said cheerfully by way
of consolation, "and it was only a sketch."

"Oh, but they made such a lot of fun of me--at Westport.  They're not
very merciful--that crowd."

Markham's gaze shifted.

"Yes, I know," he said quietly.

"Oh, have you heard?" his companion laughed suddenly.

"About Crosby Downs."

"No."

"He has married Sybil Trenchard."

Markham took a puff at his pipe.

"Really?  Why?"

She laughed.  And then quickly.

"I don't know.  And Hilda and Carol--Carol Gouverneur, you
know--engaged.  She has wanted him a long time.  Everybody thought he'd
wiggle out of it somehow, but he didn't or couldn't or something."

He smiled.  "Cupid has had a busy summer."

"Oh, yes, quite extraordinary.  You see out of all that house party,
there are only three or four left."  She spoke of this wholesale
selection and apportionment as though her topic had been apples.

"Indeed?"  Markham stopped smoking.  "Who else?" he asked calmly.

"Me," she said blushing prettily.  "I mean I--I and Reggie--"

"Reginald Armistead!  I thought that he and Miss Challoner--"

"Oh, that's all off," she laughed.  "They didn't really care for each
other at all--not that way--just as friends you know.  Hermia is a good
deal like a fellow.  Reggie liked her that way.  They were pals--had
been from childhood, but then one doesn't marry one's pal."

"I'm very glad," said Markham politely, examining her with a new
interest.  "I shall make it a point at once to offer him my
congratulations.  I like him."

"He's adorable, isn't he?  But I'm horribly frightened about him.  He's
so dreadfully reckless--flying, I mean.  If it hadn't been for Hermia,
I'm sure he never would have begun it.  But he has promised me to give
it up--now.  Hermia may break her neck if she likes; that's Mr.
Morehouse's affair, but--"

"Morehouse!" Markham broke in, wide-eyed.

She regarded him calmly.

"Where on earth have you been, Mr. Markham?"

"In--France," he stammered.  "Do you mean that Hermia--Miss Challoner
is--"

"Engaged to Trevvy?  Of _course_.  It was cabled from Paris--to the
_Herald_.  But then nobody who knows about things is really very much
surprised.  Trevvy has been _wild_ about her for years and her family
have all wanted it.  It's really a _very_ good match.  You see Trevvy
is so steady and she needs a skid to her wheel--"

She rambled on but to Markham her voice was only a confused chatter of
many voices.  He rose and turned the easel into a better light, then
knocked out his pipe into the fireplace.  The room whirled around him
and he steadied himself against the mantel, while he tried to listen to
what else she was saying.  Her loquacity, a moment ago so amusing, had
assumed a deeper significance.  The phrases purled with diabolical
fluidity from her lips, searing like molten metal.  Hermia!  The girl
was mad.

The confusion about him ceased and in the silence he heard her voice.

"Are you ill, Mr. Markham?"

He straightened with a short laugh and faced toward her.

"No--not at all.  And I was really very much interested," he said
evenly.  "Miss Challoner is in Europe?" he asked carelessly.

"Oh, yes,--or was--and Trevvy followed her there.  She's home now--came
yesterday--of course, with Trevvy at her heels.  Oh! he'll keep her in
order, no fear about that.  It's about time that Hermia settled down.
She's _quite_ the wildest thing--perfectly properly, you know, Olga
Tcherny says--"

"Olga is home, too?" he interrupted, steadying himself.

She nodded quickly and went on.  "Olga says that Hermia disappeared
from Paris for over a week and no one knew where she was.  Trevvy was
_crazy_ with anxiety.  But she came back one night in an old gray coat
and hat with a bundle--the shabbiest thing imaginable, looking like a
tramp.  Trevvy was in the hotel and saw her.  But they patched things
up somehow."

"Did Madame Tcherny learn where she had been?"

"Oh, no," she laughed.  "You see Olga was too busy with her own
affairs.  She has a Frenchman in tow this season--she's brought him
here with her--florid, blonde, curled and monocled, the Marquis de
Folligny--"

"Pierre de Folligny!"

"You know him?"

"Yes--er--slightly."

She had babbled her gossip so lightly and rapidly that this last piece
of information had not given him the start its significance deserved.
But its import grew.

"It's an affair of long standing, isn't it?" she asked him.

"I--I don't know, I'm sure," he muttered, his brow clouding.

"Something in his manner made her glance at the clock.

"Half-past one--and Reggie's coming to lunch at two.  I'll have to
_tear_."

He opened the dressing-room for her and, after she had vanished within,
stood glowering at the door like one possessed.

A butterfly that dripped poison!  He was drenched with it.  How lightly
Hermia's name had dropped from her satin wings!  He smiled grimly at
the thought of his own situation, the central figure in at least one
act of this comedy, viewing it from the far side of the proscenium
arch, gaping like the rustic in the metropolis who sees himself for the
first time depicted upon the stage.  What right had she--this little
flutter-budget--to know these things--when he was denied them?
Hermia--the report of her engagement had been disturbing, but some
reason it seemed less important now than the fact that she was
here--here in New York within twenty minutes of him--perhaps, upon the
very street where he might meet her when he went out.  Hermia and
Trevvy Morehouse!  He simply would not believe it.  Hermia might look
him in the eyes and tell him so--and then--  But she would not dare.
Those eyes--blue--violet--gray--all colors as the mood or the sunlight
pleased--honest eyes into whose depths he had peered when they were
dark with the shadows of the forest and seen his image dancing.  She
was his that day--all his.  He could have taken her; and he had let her
go back to Paris--and the excellent Trevelyan.  Hermia, his mad
vagabond Hermia, was ready to tie herself for life to that automatic
nonentity at Westport who trailed, a patient shadow in Hermia's
swirling wake.  Hermia and Morehouse!  He simply wouldn't believe it.

When his sitter had departed in a rush to keep her engagement, he
filled his pipe again and walked the floor smoking furiously, the
scenario of Olga's little drama taking a more definite form.  He
understood now the reasons why she had not told what she had seen.  He
doubted now whether it was her intention to tell.  But she had brought
the Frenchman De Folligny over to do the telling for her, reserving her
little climax until all her marionettes were properly placed according
to her own stage directions, when she would let the situation work
itself out to its own conclusion.  It was an ingenious plan, one which
did her hand much credit.  She had realized, of course, that a
revelation of Hermia's shortcomings in AlenÂon, Paris or Trouville
would have deprived her vengeance of half its sting.  It required a New
York background, a quiet drawing-room filled with Hermia's intimates
for her "situation" to produce its most telling effect.  De Folligny
now had the center of the stage and at the proper moment she would pull
the necessary wires and the thing would be accomplished.

Something must be done at once.  He changed into street clothes and
went out, lunched alone on the way uptown and at three was standing at
the door of the Challoner house.

The butler showed Markham into the drawing-room and took his card.  He
did not know whether Miss Challoner was in or not, but he would see.
Markham sat and impatiently waited, his eyes meanwhile restlessly
roving the splendor of the room in search of some object which would
suggest Hermia--mad Hermia of Vagabondia.  Opposite him upon the wall
was a portrait of her by a distinguished Frenchman, with whose
_mÂtier_ he was familiar--an astounding falsehood in various shades of
tooth-powder.  This Hermia smirked at him like the lady in the fashion
page, exuding an atmosphere of wealth and nothing else--a strange,
unreal Hermia who floated vaguely between her gilt barriers, neither
sprite nor flesh and blood.  How could Marsac have known the real
Hermia--the heart, the spirit of her as he knew them!

And yet when a few moments later she appeared in the doorway he
wondered if he knew her at all.  She was dressed for afternoon in some
clinging dark stuff which made her figure slim almost to the point of
thinness.  She wore a small hat with a tall plume and seemed to have
gained in stature.  Her face was paler and her modulated voice and the
studied gesture as she offered him her hand did more to convince him
that things were not as they should be.

"_So_ good of you to come, Mr. Markham," he heard her saying coolly.
"I was wondering if I'd have the pleasure of seeing you here."

He stood uncertainly at the point of seizing her in his arms when he
was made aware of her premeditation.  The tepor of her politeness was
like a blow between the eyes, and he peered blindly into her face in
vain for some sign of the girl he knew.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked, and dumbly he sat.  "I hear you were
in Normandy," she went on smoothly.  "Did you have a good summer?  You
did leave us rather abruptly at Westport, didn't you?  But then you
know, of course, I understood that--"

"Hermia," he broke in in a low voice.  "What has happened to you?  Why
didn't you answer my letters.  I've been nearly mad with anxiety."  He
leaned forward toward her, the words falling in a torrent.  But she
only examined him curiously, a puzzled wrinkle at her brows vying with
the set smile she still wore.

"Your letters, Mr. Markham!" she said in surprise.  "Oh!  You mean the
note about the sketch of Thimble Island?  I _did_ reply, didn't I?  It
was awfully nice--"

"Good God!" he muttered, rising.  "Haven't you punished me enough now,
without this--" with a wave of his hand--"this extravaganza.  Haven't I
paid?  I searched Paris high and low for you, Hermia, haunted your
bankers and the hotel where you had been stopping, only returning here
at the moment when my engagements in New York made it necessary.  Has
it been kind of you, or just to ignore my letters and leave me all
these weeks in anxiety and ignorance?  I've missed you horribly--and I
feared--nameless things--that you had forgotten me, that you wanted
everything forgotten."  As he came forward she rose and took a step
toward an inner room, her eyes still narrowed and quizzical, watching
him carefully.

"Hermia--Hermia!"  He stopped, the tension breaking in a laugh.  "Oh,
you want to punish me, of course.  Don't you think you've paid me well
already?  See!  I'm penitent.  What do you want?  Shall I go down on my
knees to you.  I have been on my knees to you for weeks--you must have
know it.  My letters--"

He paused and then stopped, puzzled, for she had not moved and her gaze
surveyed him, coolly critical.

"You got my letters?" he asked anxiously.

She was silent.

"I've written you every day--since you left me--poured my heart out to
you.  You didn't get them?  O Hermia, you must have known what life has
been without you.  Do you think I could forget what I read in your eyes
that day in the forest?  Could _you_ forget what you wrote there?  Only
your lips refused me.  Even when they refused me, they were warm with
my kisses.  They were mine, as you were, body and soul.  You loved me,
Hermia--from the first.  These flimsy barriers you're raising, I'll
break them down--and take you--"

As he approached, she reached the curtains, one hand upraised.

"You're dreaming, Mr. Markham," she said, distinctly.  "I haven't the
least idea what you're talking about."

"You love me--" he stammered.

"_I_?"

Her laughter checked him effectually.  He stood, his full gesture of
entreaty frozen into immobility.  Then slowly his arms relaxed and he
stood awkwardly staring, now thoroughly awake.  She meant him to
understand that Vagabondia was not--that their week in Arcadia had
never been.

He gaped at her a full moment before he found speech.

"You wish to deny that you and I--that you were there with me--in
Normandy?" he stammered.

"One only denies the possible, Mr. Markham," she said with a glib
certitude.  "The impossible needs no denial.  I was in Paris and in
Switzerland this summer.  Obviously I couldn't have been in Normandy,
too."

"I see," he muttered mechanically.  "You were in Switzerland."

"Yes.  In Switzerland, Mr. Markham," she repeated.

He turned slowly and walked toward the window, his hands behind him,
struggling for control.  When his voice came, it was as firm as her own.

"Can you prove that?" he asked coldly.

"Why should I prove it, Mr. Markham?" she asked, "My word should be
sufficient, I think."

The even tones of her voice and the repetition of his name inflamed
him.  There was little doubt of her apostasy.  He turned toward her
with a change of manner, his eyes dark.

"Perhaps you'll be obliged to prove it," he muttered.

"I?  Why?"

He looked her straight in the eyes.

"Monsieur de Folligny is with Olga Tcherny--her in New York."

The plume on her hat nodded back, and her eyes widely opened gave him a
momentary glimpse of her terror.

"De Folligny is here--with Olga!"

"Yes.  I've just learned it--to-day."

She moved her slender shoulders upward in the gesture she had learned
from Olga Tcherny.

"That will be quite pleasant," she resumed, easily.  "He will render us
a little less prosy, perhaps."

Markham watched her a moment in silence, his wounds aching dully.

"I came here--to warn you of that--danger," he said slowly.  "Since
you don't feat it, my mission is ended."  He took up his hat and stick
and moved toward the door.  "I shall not question your wisdom or your
sense of responsibility to me or to yourself.  But I think I
understand at last what you would have of me.  Whatever you wish, of
course, I shall do without question.  I was alone in Normandy--or with
someone else, if you like.  It was my Vagabondia--not yours.  There
was no Philidor--no Yvonne--no Cleofonte or Stella--no roses of
PÂre GuÂgou--no roses in my heart.  They're withered
enough, God knows.  You wish to forget them.  You want me to remember
you as you are--to-day."  He laughed.  "I think I'll have no
difficulty in doing so--or helping by my silence or my cooperation in
carrying out any plans you may have, if you should find it necessary
to call upon me."

"I thank you," she murmured, her head bent.

He regarded her a moment steadily, but she would not meet his gaze.  At
the door he paused.

"I have heard of your reported engagement," he finished more slowly.
"I'd like you to know that I had too much faith in you to believe it.
But I think--indeed I'm sure I'm ready to believe it now--if you tell
me it's true."

She did not raise her head, but her lips moved inarticulately.  He
glanced at her a moment longer and then, with an inclination of the
head, passed out into the hall and so to the door.

CHAPTER XXV

CIRCE AND THE FOSSIL

Christmas had come and gone and the city had struck its highest note of
winter activity.  Those envied mortals who compose society, pausing for
a brief moment of air and relaxation in the holidays, plunged again
into the arduous treadmill of the daily round, urged by the flying lash
of unrest, creatures of a common fate, plodding wearily up the path of
preferment, not daring to falter or to rest under the pain of instant
oblivion.

Olga Tcherny paused only long enough to catch a deep breath after her
momentous interview with John Markham in Washington Square and then
plunged into the busy throng with De Folligny after.  She had heard
with some interest the reports of Hermia Challoner's engagement to Mr.
Morehouse, but it had made no very deep impression upon her mind.  She
only considered it, in fact, with reference to its possible effect upon
the mind of John Markham, who she soon learned was avoiding the social
scene, as had been his custom, before she had made forcible entry into
his studio last year and had dragged him forth into the company of his
fellow man.

It was quite evident that Hermia was playing her game rather ruthlessly
and, whatever her object, John Markham and she for the present at least
were at cross purposes.  Olga did not dare to go to see him, and though
her door stood open she had no hope that he would enter it without
encouragement. But one blithe morning she sent him a note:

What's this I hear?  Can it be true that your nymph has fled from the
woods of Pan to take shelter under the eaves of a _Morehouse_?  And
what becomes of the faun?  I can't believe it--and yet my rumor comes
direct.  Do satisfy my craving for veracity, won't you?  I'd like
awfully to see you, if you'll forgive and forget.  I can now give you
positive assurances that you will be quite as safe in my drawing-room
as in that smudgy place where you immortalize mediocrity.  I'll never
propose to you again as long as I live.  The phantasy has passed, I
think.  Do you believe me?  Come and see--but _'phone_ first.
                                        Affectionately,
                                                Olga.

To her surprise, he came the following afternoon.  She received him
with a frank and careless gayety which put him very much at his ease.
He marveled at her assurance and the resumption of the little airs of
proprietorship to which he had been accustomed before the visit to
Westport.  She was the Olga of the portrait with the added graces of a
not too obtrusive sympathy and a manner which seemed subtly to suggest
self-elimination.  He accepted the situation without mental
reservation, sat in the chair she indicated with a grateful sigh and
watched her pretty hands busy about the tea-tray.  Whatever their
relations and however directly he could trace his present misfortunes
to her very door, the illusion of her friendliness was not to be
dispelled, and he relinquished himself to its charm with a grateful
sense that, for the moment at least, here was sanctuary.

She found him thinner and said so.

"You're working too hard, my dear Markham," she said.  "On every hand I
hear of people you've painted or are about to paint.  A real
success--_un success fou_--and in spite of yourself!  It's quite
wonderful."

"I've painted very badly," he muttered.

"Oh, you're too close to your work to have a perspective.  Mrs. Hammond
has touted you the length and breadth of the town--you know--and that
means there's a pedestal for you in her Hall of Fame.  What does
Immortality taste like?  Sweet?"

He laughed.  "Fame in New York--is merely a matter of dollars.  My
prices are enormous--hence my reputation.  If I charged what the things
are worth, these people would send me back to Paris."

"And still you refuse to go to their houses?  I hear that Mrs. Hammond
wanted to give a dinner for you--to all her set--and that's quite
extraordinary of her--even for a lion--"

"But I couldn't eat them, you know--"

"But you could let them watch you eat--"

"I wouldn't have eaten.  You see, magnificence of that sort takes my
appetite away."

"Why?"

"I don't know.  I suppose I'm a crank.  They speak another
language--those people.  I don't understand them.  I find that no
exertion of the legs brings my mind and theirs any closer together.
They bore me stiff and I bore them.  What's the use?"

"You have no social ambitions?"

"None whatever--in the sense you mean.  I like my fellow men stripped
to the bone.  That's indecent when one dines out."

"And your fellow woman?"

He shrugged and laughed.

"She's a child--adorable always.  But then I never understand her--nor
she me."

She sipped tea and smiled.

"Woman is at once the woman and the serpent, _mon ami_.  All she needs
is a man and a Garden of Paradise."

He frowned into his teacup but did not reply.

"Is it true, John?" she asked quietly.

"What is true?"

"That Hermia is to marry Trevvy Morehouse?"

"From whom did you hear that?" he asked.

"From whom have I not heard it?  Everyone.  Hermia hasn't denied it,
has she?"

"Not that I'm aware of.  Why should she deny it?  It's her own affair."

His tone rebuked her.

"I don't want to be meddlesome, you know.  I only thought--"

"Oh, I'm glad you spoke," he murmured.  "I--I wanted to talk about her.
 You know, you and I--when you left me--there in the Park--you gave me
the impression that you--er--that you didn't care for Miss Challoner
any more--"

"Did I?  I'm glad I did.  That's the truth.  I don't care for her.  She
cut me very prettily on the street the week after she got back from
Europe.  Evidently the antipathy is mutual."

He paused, considering.

"I'm sorry she saw fit to do that.  That was foolish--very foolish of
her."

"Wasn't it?  Especially as I had about decided to forget that I'd ever
been in AlenÂon--"

He put his hand over hers and held it there a moment.

"I want you to forget that, Olga," he muttered.  "It--it never
happened."

She smiled, her gaze on the andirons.

"You're quite positive of that?"

"Yes.  I was--er--in Holland last summer."

"Oh, _were_ you?"

"Yes.  And Hermia--Miss Challoner was in Switzerland."

"Yes.  So I hear.  Very interesting.  But how does that explain things
to Pierre de Folligny?  He met her the other day--and remembered her
perfectly--"

Markham rose and paced the floor.

"Oh," he heard her saying, "she denied seeing him in France, of
course,--but it was quite awkward--for her, I mean."

He took two or three turns, his brows serious, and then came and stood
near her at the mantelpiece.

"You must straighten things out, Olga--with De Folligny," he muttered.
"It will ruin her, if he speaks--you know what New York is.  Gossip
like that travels like fire.  And she doesn't deserve it--not that.
You've told me that you don't believe in her innocence, but at heart I
think you do.  You must.  I swear to you--on the honor of--"

She raised a hand.

"Don't--!" quickly. "I'm willing to assume her innocence.  Haven't I
told you that I had been prepared to forget the whole incident--when
she cut me.  Why did she do that?  What does that mean?"

"Not guilt surely--wouldn't she be trying to get you on her side?"

Olga waved an expressive hand.

"Oh, that's impossible--and she knows it."

"Why?"

She paused, shielding her eyes with her fingers.  He was such an
innocent.  But she had no notion of enlightening him.

"She has given you up--to marry.  That's clear.  I told her secret.
The simplest way out of her difficulty is to ignore me.  Well--let her.
 I don't mind.  I'll survive.  But I would give my ears to let Fifth
Avenue know--"

"No--no," he put in quickly, "you mustn't do that--  If you've ceased
to care for her, you've got your duty to me to consider.  Do you hold
my honor so lightly--"

"Yours?"

"Yes.  She was in my care.  I let her go with me.  The responsibility
was sacred.  I was morally pledged to keep her from harm.  That
responsibility has not ceased because she no longer--because she has
made up her mind to--to marry.  It's greater even.  If you ever told
that story--"

"And De Foligny?  You forget him--"

He came quickly over and took her hands in his.

"You can seal this secret, if you will, as in a tomb.  Do it, Olga.  It
will be magnificent of you.   Give me your word--your promise to keep
silent--to keep De Folligny silent--"

She had turned, her chin upon her shoulder, away from him.

"You ask a great deal," she said with reluctance.

"Not more than you can give--not more than you _will_  give.  Whatever
your--your differences she doesn't deserve this of you.  Will it give
you pleasure in after years to think of her life embittered--of _his_
life embittered, too, by a piece of gossip, woven out of a tissue of
half-truths--that will damn her--as half-truths do?"

"You love her so much as this?" she gasped.

He relinquished her hand--stood a moment looking dumbly at her and then
walked the length of the room away.  The little clock on the mantel
ticked gaily, the fire sparkled and the familiar sounds of the careless
city came faintly to their ears.  She stirred and he turned toward her.

"Will you promise?" he asked quietly.

"Promise what?"

"Not to speak--of what you saw at AlenÂon."

"Yes.  I promise that," she said slowly at last.

"Or let De Folligny speak?"

Another silence.  And then from thinned lips.

"I--I will use my influence--to keep him silent."

The firmness of her tone assured him.  He caught up her hands and
pressed them softly to his lips.

"I knew you would, Olga.  I knew you were bigger than that.  I thank
you--I will never forget--"

But before he could finish she had snatched her fingers away from him
and was laughing softly at the tea-caddy.

"Now, if you please," she said composedly, "we will speak of pleasanter
things."

She opened a long silver box on the table and took a cigarette,
offering him one.

"The pipe of peace?" he asked.

"If you like."

He drew in the smoke gratefully.

"Olga, you're a trump," he said with a genuine heartiness.

"Thanks," she said dryly.  "I know it.   And you're playing me quite
successfully--aren't you?  Hearts? and I'm the 'dummy.'  I never liked
playing the 'dummy.'"

He laughed.

"I wish I were quite sure in my mind what you _do_ like to play."

Her look questioned coolly.

"I mean, that, as well as I've thought I've know you, I find that I've
never known you at all.  You're a creature of bewildering transitions.
I hear that you're going to marry De Folligny."

"And what if I am?" she flashed at him.

"I'm sure I wish you every happiness.  Only--"

He paused.

"Please finish."

"Nothing--except that you will leave me with an unpleasant sense of
having been made a fool of."

She rose, flicked her cigarette into the fire and then turned as if
about to speak.  But thought better of it.  There was a long silence.

"Pierre de Folligny and I are friends of long standing," she said at
last.  "One marries some day.  Why not an old friend?  The age of
madness passes--I am almost thirty and I have lived--much.  It is
time--" she finished wearily, "time that I married again.  We
understand each other perfectly."  A smile slowly dawned and broke.
"What one wants in a husband is not so much a rhapsodist as a
rhymester, not so much a lover as a walking-gentleman--Pierre is that,
you know."

She sighed again and rose.

"It was very sweet of you to come in, John.  Don't misunderstand me
again.  _That_--" and she paused to give the word emphasis, "is all
over.  I'm quite safe as a _confidante_.  Hermia has treated you very
badly, I think.  I'd like to tell her so--No?  Well, good-bye.  Do come
in again.  I want you to know Pierre better.  He really is all that a
walking-gentleman should be."

He laughed and kissed her fingers, and in a moment had gone.

Olga Tcherny stood immovable where he had left her, one foot upon the
fender, her gaze upon the fire.  After a time she stretched forth her
fingers to the blaze.  All over!  She straightened slowly and caught a
glimpse of her face in the mirror.  The firelight gleamed under her
brows, brought out with unpleasant sharpness the angle of her jaw and
touched the bones of her cheek caressingly.  She looked again, the
truth compelling her, and then buried her face in her arm.  The
truth--middle age, had set its first mark upon her.  The sallow fingers
of Time had touched her lightly, more as a warning than as a prophecy,
painted with a reluctant brush a deeper tone into the shadows, a higher
note in the lights, had brushed in haltingly the false values that now
mocked at her.  Time!  She seemed to count it by her heart-throbs.

She walked across the room and stood before the portrait John Markham
had painted of her.  The face gazed out from its shadows, its eyes met
hers for a moment, then looked through her and beyond, eyes which
looked, yet saw not, eyes deep and inscrutable, seers of visions,
bathed in memories which would not sink into oblivion.  Her eyes he had
painted carefully.  For him it seemed the rest of the face had been a
blank.  The nose, the chin, were hers, and the mouth--the lips, a
scarlet smudge of illusiveness.  They were hers, too.  He had had
difficulty with her lips, painting and repainting them.  They had
puzzled him.  "The eyes we are born with," he had said--how well she
remembered it now!  "The lips are what we make ourselves."  At last he
had painted them in quickly--almost brutally and let them be.  They
seemed to mock at her now--to contradict the meaning of the eyes--which
would not, could not, smile.

Hermia had scoffed at this portrait because it was not "pretty."  There
was something bigger than mere prettiness here.  He had painted the
soul of her, reading with his art what had been hidden from the man, as
he had strayed through the labyrinth of her thoughts viewing the
blighted blossom of her girlhood and wifehood and the neglected garden
of her maturity.  As she viewed the portrait now in the light of time
and event, she saw, more clearly than ever, her soul and body as
Markham had seen it.  He had painted her as he would have painted
character--an old man or an old woman, searching for shadows rather
than lights, seeking the anatomy of sorrow rather than that of joy--had
made her the subject of a cool and not too flattering psychological
investigation.  Was this how he had always seen her?  This far-looking,
inscrutable, satiated woman of the world, who peered forth into the
future, from the dull embers of the past--a being whose physical beauty
was rather suggested than expressed--whose loveliness lay in what she
might have been rather than in what she was?  He had always thought of
her thus?

She rubbed her eyes and looked again.  Not, not always.  She remembered
now--he couldn't have painted her as he had painted others--as he had
painted a while ago the portrait of Phyllis Van Vorst--carelessly,
contemptuously.  He had probed deeply--painted form his own deeps.
They had been very close together in those hours, mentally,
spiritually, and only the barrier she herself had raised prevented
their physical nearness.  That, too, she could have had?

A mist fell across the canvas and Hermia's vision interposed, rosy and
careless, her braggart youth triumphant.

She turned, threw herself upon the couch and buried her head, her
fingers clenched, in the pillows.  She made no sound and lay so
immovable that one might have thought she was sleeping.  But her blood
was coursing madly and her pulses throbbed a wrist and neck.  She had
been true to her better self--with Markham--and her idealism had
brought her only this void of barren regret.  Whichever way she looked
into the past or into the future, the vista was empty; behind her only
the echoes of voices and a grim shape or two; before her--vacancy.  She
had bared her soul to Markham, there in the Square, torn away the veil
of her pride and let him know the truth.  Why, God knew.  She had been
mad.  She had believed the worst of Hermia and of him, and had offered
herself to him that he might judge between them--her heart and
Hermia's, her mind, her body and Hermia's.  Was her own face no longer
fair that he should have looked at her so curiously and turned away
with Hermia's name on his lips, Hermia's image in his heart?  A doubt
had crept into her mind and lingered insidiously.  Hermia innocent!
She was beginning to believe it now.  In spite of the damning facts she
had discovered, the evidence of Madam Bordier and Monsieur Duchanel, of
the peasant women at TilliÂres and of Pierre de Folligny, the
testimony of Hermia's pale face at the shooting lodge at AlenÂon and
of her confession which she had not thought of doubting, the belief had
slowly gained force in her mind that Markham had not lied to her.  She
found confirmation of it in Hermia Challoner's disappearance in France,
in her attitude toward Markham and in the announcement of her
engagement to another man.  Markham could not guess, as she did now,
that this was only a _ruse de femme_, born of the access of timidity at
the discovery of her indiscretion and the consciousness that she had
gone too far with Markham, who must be punished for his share in her
downfall.  It seemed pitifully clear now.

Olga's bitterness choked and whelmed her.  It seemed even worse that
Hermia should be innocent.  She dared not think of the picture she had
made in Markham's mind when she had thrown herself into the scales that
he might weigh their frailties and compare them.  Hermia innocent!  How
Olga hated her for it, and for her youth and beauty.  They mocked and
derided the tender flame that she had nourished, which now glowed
ineffectually as in another, a greater light.  She hated Hermia for all
the things that she herself was not.

Lucidity came to her slowly.  After a long while she raised a
disordered face and leaned her chin upon her hands, staring at the
dying log.  She had promised him not to speak.  She could not.  She had
even promised to persuade De Folligny to silence.  Had he mentioned the
incident already?  She did not know.  He was not by nature a gossip,
but Hermia had not been too tactful and it was a good story--the
sanctity of which, upon the mind of a man of De Folligny's temperament,
might not be impressive.  She would keep her promise to Markham and
persuade Pierre to silence.  No one should know by word of mouth--

Olga started up, her eyes wide open, staring at the opposite wall,
where there hung a colored print of a woodland scene by Morland, and a
smile slowly grew at one end of her lips, a crooked smile, that might
have been merely quizzical, had not the impression been unpleasantly
modified by the narrowing eyes and the tiny wrinkle that suddenly grew
between her brows.

"I will do it," she muttered.  "It may be amusing."

CHAPTER XXVI

MRS. BERKELEY HAMMOND ENTERTAINS

The heritage of the world comes at last to the pachyderms.  Fate is
never so unkind as to those who blindly resist her and into the lap of
stoic and unimpressionable she pours the horn of plenty.

Trevelyan Morehouse had gone through life on the low gear.  In fact he
had no change of gears and needed none.  He never "hit it up" on the
smooth places or burned out his tires on the rough ones, and was
therefore always to be found in perfect repair.  He was a good hill
climber and had a way of arriving at his destination no matter how
difficult the going.  When others passed him he let them go, and
plodded on after them with solemn assurance, his gait so leisurely that
rapid travelers had the habit of regarding his conservatism with
undisguised contempt.  And yet his perseverance, though inconspicuous,
was singularly effective.  He had won his way into the sanctorum of a
big corporation and his advice, though never brilliant, was always sane
and peculiarly reliable.  He did not mind rebuffs and was so
indifferent to indignities that people had ceased to offer them.
Socially he could always be trusted to do the usual thing in the usual
way and was therefore always much in demand by hostesses who required
conventional limitations.  In a word he was "the excellent Trevelyan."
and the adjective fitted him as snugly as it did the well-known
comestible with which it had come to be so comfortably and freely
associated.  His excellence lay largely in the fact that he did not
excel.  He was content with his subordinate capacity, wise in his
confidence that all things would come to him in the end, if he only
waited long enough.

The same rules which he found so successful in business he now applied
to his affair of the heart, and plodded off in the wake of the fast
flying Hermia, imperturbable and undismayed.  His flowers had been sent
to her with the regularity of the clock, his visits carefully timed,
and his proposals renewed with a well-bred ardor.  He had waited
patiently through Hermia's short and sportive attachment for "Reggie"
Armistead, and when their "trial" engagement reached its tempestuous
conclusion, had stepped softly into the breach, rosy with hope and a
definite sense that his time had come.  Hermia liked him--had liked him
for years.  She had gotten used to him as one does to a familiar chair
or an article of diet.  He was a habit with her like her bedroom
slippers or her afternoon tea.  He was comfortable, always safe and
quite sane, which she was not, and she accepted him in the guise of
counselor and friend with the same cheerful tolerance that she gave to
her Aunt Harriet Westfield or to Mr. Winthrop of the Pilgrim Trust
Company.

When Hermia departed suddenly for Europe, her sportive idyl so suddenly
shattered, Mr. Morehouse followed her in the next steamer.  She had
given him no definite encouragement, it was true, and yet he found
reasons to hope that the time was at hand when she must make some
definite decision.  In Europe her brief disappearance from the scene of
her usual activities had mystified him and her return to her hotel,
shabby and uncommunicative, had aroused a chagrin and an anxiety quite
unusual to him; but he had sat and waited her pleasure, survived her
turbulent moods and had found his patience at last rewarded by her
silent acquiescence in his presence, and by an invitation to accompany
her to Switzerland, where she was to join her Aunt Julia and the
children.

From the vantage point of his office window down town, where he now sat
and viewed the bleak perspective of the city, his memories of the
summer with Hermia seemed a strange compound of brief blisses and more
enduring pangs.  They had been much seen together and the announcement
of their engagement which had appeared in the newspapers had not been
surprising.  Aunt Julia had favored his suit and Mrs. Westfield had
given him to understand that it was time Hermia married.  But the fact
remained that Hermia had not accepted him.  His insistence had always
provoked and still provoked one of two moods--either resentment or
mockery.  She either dismissed him in a dudgeon or cajoled him with
elusive banter.  Why was he so impatient?  There was plenty of time?
Was he sure that he wanted to marry her?  What did her really know
about her heart of hearts?  Perhaps, if he knew her better he might not
want to marry her.  He pleaded in patient calm.  The world, it seemed,
thought them engaged.  Why shouldn't _he_ be permitted to think so.
She only laughed at him and her heart of hearts had come to be the most
profound enigma that it had ever been his fortune to study.  So the
prize, which he had thought most surely his own, still hung reluctantly
upon the lip of the horn of plenty.  It would not fall, and all the
traditions of his experience forbade that he should jostle it.  And so
he only watched with patient eyes and a physical restraint which could
only be described as "excellent."

What did she mean by saying that if he knew her better he might not
want to marry her?  Vague doubts assailed him.  Did he, after all, know
her?  What was this chapter of her life of which he knew nothing and to
which she had so frequently alluded?  Was it something which had
happened to her in America?  Or had it something to do with her
disappearance last summer from Paris, after which she had returned
sober and intolerant?  He gave it up.  He was always giving her up and
then putting his doubts of her in his pocket with his neat
handkerchief, plodding sedulously as before.  He must wait.  Everything
that he had got in life had come from waiting and Hermia, his
philosophy told him, must be no exception to the rule.

The winter drew on toward spring.  Lent arrived, and society, quite
bored and thoroughly exhausted, halted in the mad round of the
"one-step" and turned to calmer delights.  Country places in adjacent
counties were opened and guests flitted from one house to the other in
a continuous round of visits.

Mrs. Berkeley Hammond's invitations, whether to the big house near the
Park or to Rood's Knoll, her place in the country, were much in demand.
 The Hammonds had unlimited means, the social instinct, worthy family
traditions, and a talent for entertainment, a combination of qualities
and circumstances which explained the importance of this family in the
social life of the city.  The mantle of an older leader who had passed
had fallen comfortably on Mrs. Hammond's capacious shoulders and she
wore it with a familiar grace which gave the impression that it had
always been there.  Conservative, the more radical called her, and
radical, the conservative; but her taste and her _chef_ were both above
reproach, and her dinners, whether large or small, had the distinction
which only comes of a rare order of tact and discrimination.  Nor were
her hospitalities confined to the entertainment of the indigenous.
Visitors to New York, foreign celebrities, literary, artistic or
political, found within her doors a welcome and a company exactly
suited to their social requirements.  She liked young people, too, and
contrived to let them know it, to the end that her dances, while
formal, were gay rather than "stodgy," juvenescent rather than
patriarchal.

The house at Rood's Knoll was a huge affair, of brick and timbered
plaster, set in the midst of its thousand acres of woodland in the
heart of the hills.  Lent found it full of people and its gayety was
reflected in other houses of the neighborhood whose owners, like the
Hammonds, kept open house.  There was much to do.  March went out like
a lion and the snow which kept the more timid indoors at the cards made
wonderful coasting and sledding, of which latter these wearied children
of fortune were not slow to take advantage.  The ponds were frozen,
too, and skating was added to the sum of their rural delights.

Hermia Challoner, who was visiting Caroline Anstell, joined feverishly
in these pursuits, glad of the opportunity they afforded her of relief
from her personal problems.  There were some of her intimates here in
the neighborhood, but she found greater security in the society of an
older set of whom she had seen little in town and in the pleasure of
picking up the loose ends of these acquaintanceships she managed to
forget, at least temporarily, her sword of Damocles.  Olga Tcherny was
one of Mrs. Berkeley Hammond's house guests, but she had not been in
evidence on either of the occasions when Hermia had called.  There was
some excitement over an evening which Mrs. Hammond was planning to take
place in the country during the latter days of Lent.  The invitations
were noncommittal and merely mentioned the date and hour, but it was
understood that "everyone" was to be there, and that an entertainment a
little out of the ordinary was to be provided.

It was, therefore, with a pleasurable anticipation that Hermia got down
from the Anstell's machine on the appointed evening, and followed her
party into the great house.  The rooms were comfortably filled, but not
crowded, and it seemed that the women had done their best to add their
share to the merely decorative requirements of the occasion.  The
ball-room lights shimmered softly on the rich tissues of their
costumes, and caught in the facets of the jewels on their bared
shoulders.  Society was at its best, upon its good behavior, patiently
eking out the few short days that remained to it of the penitential
season.  Hermia managed to elude the watchful Trevelyan and entered the
ball-room with Beatrice Coddington and Caroline Anstell.  Just inside
she found herself face to face with the Countess Tcherny.  She would
have passed on, but Olga was not to be denied.

"So glad to see you, Hermia, dear," she purred, her eyes lighting.
"It's really dreadfully unlucky how seldom we've met this winter.
You're a little thinner, aren't you?  But it becomes you awfully."

"Thanks," said Hermia.  "I'm quite well."

"I hope you'll like the play, you know I--" and she whispered.  "Nobody
knows--_I_ wrote it."

"Oh, really," Hermia smiled coolly.  "I hope it's quite moral."

"Oh, you must judge for yourself," said Olga, and disappeared.

The men, having searched the premises vainly for the bridge tables,
resigned themselves to the inevitable and drifted by twos and threes
into the ball-room, where they melted into the gay company which was
not seated, or stood along the back and side walls, making a somber
background for the splendid plumage of their dinner-partners.

"_Tableaux-vivants_, for a dollar!" said Archie Westcott in bored
desperation.

"Oh, rot!" blurted out Crosby Downs in contempt.  "What's the use?
They'll be havin' Mrs. Jarley's waxworks next--"

"Or the 'Dream of Fair Women'--"

"Or charades.  Not a card in sight--or a cigar!  Rotten taste--_I'd_
call it."

The music of the orchestra silenced these protests and a ripple of
expectation passed over the audience as the curtain rose, disclosing a
sylvan glade and a startled nymph in meager draperies hiding from a
faun.  The music trembled for a moment and then, as the nymph was
discovered, broke into wild concords through which the violins sang
tunefully as the chase began.  It was not for some moments that the
audience awoke to the fact that these must be the Austrian dancers
whose visit to New York had been so widely heralded.  Captured at last,
the nymph was submissive, and the dance which followed revealed
artistry of an order with which most of the spectators were unfamiliar.
 Even Crosby Downs ceased to grumble and wedged himself down the side
wall where he could have a better view.  The dance ended amid applause
and the audience now really aroused from its lethargy eagerly awaited
the next rise of the curtain.

The first part of the program, it seemed, was to be a vaudeville.  A
famous tenor sang folk songs of sunny Italy; two French pantomimists
did a graceful and amusing _Pierrot_ and _Pierrette_; a comedian did a
black-face monologue; and the first part of the program concluded with
the performances of a young violinist, the son of a Russian tobacconist
down town, whom Mrs. Berkeley Hammond had "discovered" and was now
sending to Europe to complete his musical education.  A budding genius,
was the verdict, almost ready to blossom.  The brief period of disquiet
which had followed Hermia's meeting with Olga, had been forgotten in
her enjoyment of the performance and in the gay chatter of her
companions and of her neighbors back and front.  When the curtain had
fallen upon the violinist, there was a rustle of programs.

"'The Lady Orchestra,' some on back of her read aloud. 'Comedy with a
Sting--'  What's coming now?  What's a 'Lady Orchestra'?  Does anyone
know?"

"A 'Lady Orchestra,' my dear Phyllis," said Reggie Armistead, "is an
orchestra lady."

"An orchestra lady!  I wonder what she plays--"

"The devil probably--he's your most familiar instrument."

"Reggie!  I'm surprised at you.  You know--"

The remainder of Miss Van Vorst's speech was lost to Hermia, who sat
staring speechless at the stage curtain, her body suddenly ice-cold,
all its blood throbbing in her temples.  "The Lady Orchestra!"  The
words had fallen so lightly that their significance had dawned upon her
slowly.  This play--this "comedy with a sting" was about
_her_--Hermia--and John Markham.  Olga had written it, and was even now
watching her face for some sign of weakness.  Olga, De Folligny--and
how many others?  Terror gripped her--blind terror, every instinct
urging flight.  But this, she knew, was impossible.  She stared hard at
the red curtain, and swallowed nervously, sure now that, whatever the
play revealed, she must sit until its end, giving no sign of the tumult
that raged within her.  The eyes of the audience burned into the back
of her head, and she seemed to read a knowledge of her secret in every
careless glance thrown in her direction.  This was a vengeance worth of
Olga--the refinement of cruelty.

"What is it, Hermia," she heard Caroline Anstell whispering.  "Are you
ill, dear?"

"Oh, no, not at all.  Why do you ask?" coolly.

"I thought you looked a little tired."

"I--I think it's the heat," said Hermia.  "Sh--Carrie, there goes the
curtain."

If Hermia had been startled a moment ago, she now learned that she
would have need of all her courage.  The curtain revealed the
market-place of a French town on a fÂte day.  To the left a row
of penny shows, a "man hedgehog," an "_homme sauvage_" and an Albino
lady who told fortunes; to the right a platform backed by a canvas
wall, surmounted by a sign in huge letters "ThÂÂtre Tony
Ricardo" flanked by rudely painted representations of the acts which
were to be seen within.  The setting was admirable and brought forth
immediate applause form the audience, under which Hermia hid her gasp
of dismay.  There were even pictures like those which Philidor had
painted, of Cleofonte breaking chains and of the child Stella flying
in mid-air, and at one side the legend "Artistide Bruant, painter of
portraits at two francs fifty--soldiers ten sous."  Sure now of the
scene which was to follow, but outwardly quite composed, Hermia
listened carelessly to the dialogue, saw the acrobat appear, and the
"Lady Orchestra," who was the guilty heroine of the piece, take her
place upon the platform beside him.  Here the resemblance to reality
ceased, for the heroine was dark and _Aristide_ blonde and beardless,
and yet this very discrimination on Olga's part seemed to point more
definitely to Hermia even than if the characterization had been
truthfully followed.  The actors were professionals who had been well
drilled in their parts and the plot developed quickly in the dialogue
between _Madeleine_, the erring wife, and _Aristide_, the recreant
husband, who had fled from fashionable Paris, met upon the road and
joined this troupe of Caravaners that they might taste life together
in rural simplicity and security.  The dialogue was clever, if
_dÂcadent_, the situations amusing, the action rapid, the first
act ending with the appearance of the irate wife of _Aristide_, and
the disappearance of the guilty couple, just in time to avoid
discovery.

During the _entr'acte_, though the restless guests moved about, Hermia
sat rooted to her chair, fascinated with horror.  Her body seemed
nerveless and she feared that if she rose her limbs would not support
her, or, if they did support her, she must fly like a mad thing from
the house.  And so she sat, a fixed smile frozen on her lips, greeting
those who approached her.  Beatrice Coddington left her seat, and
Trevvy Morehouse made haste to fill it.  He had never seemed so welcome
to Hermia as at the present moment, and his patient mien and quiet
commonplaces did much to restore her composure; so that when the bell
rang for the curtain of the second act, she was laughing with a brave
show of enjoyment at Reggie and Phyllis, who seemed at the point of
severing their amatory relations.  Hermia was prepared for anything
now.  If her breach of conventions had found her out, there was no one,
not even Olga, who would look at her and say that she was showing the
white feather.

She could see the play to its end now, for from Reggie's program she
had learned that the setting for the second act was the interior of a
shooting lodge in the forest, and when the curtain rose she was not
surprised at the setting of the stage, which represented, as accurately
as possible, the house of the Comte de Cahors, in the forest of
Âcouves.  The approach of the injured wife, discovered in time by the
refugees through the half-opened shutter, gives _Aristide_ time to help
the fictitious orchestra lady up a stair to the garret, where she is in
concealment during the dramatic interview between husband and wife,
which ends in the woman seizing a loaded rifle with the intention of
killing both herself and her husband.  In the struggle which ensues for
the possession of the weapon, the gun is discharged, there is a cry
overhead and the figure of _Madeleine_ is seen to rise, opening the
trap-door, and then to fall the length of the stairs, at the feet of
the woman who has been wronged.

The scene was admirably done and carried the audience to its conclusion
in breathless silence.  The lights of the ball-room, fortunately
lowered, had hidden the pallor of Hermia's face but she realized, when
they suddenly blazed, that Trevvy Morehouse was looking at her
curiously, that her fingers were ice-cold and that, when she spoke a
word or two in reply to his anxious query, her voice was strangely
unfamiliar.  As the applause ceased, there was a general movement
toward the supper-room.  Hermia rose stiffly and moved as in a dream.
Was it her own conscience that told her that Carol Gouverneur was
looking at her strangely?  Or that there was meaning in the glance and
laughter of Mrs. Renshaw and Archie Westcott as she passed them?  She
tried to smile carelessly, but her muscles would not obey her.  Would
she never reach the door?  People stopped and spoke but she only nodded
and passed on, intent upon the shadows of the hallway, where the lights
glowed dimly and the gaze of these people would no longer burn past her
barriers, searching out the innermost recesses of her heart, which they
read according to the hideous lie which Olga had told.  A comedy with a
sting, she had called it, and the sting meant for Hermia, had poisoned
the air with its venom.  She leaned heavily on Trevvy's arm but she did
not hear what he was saying; and, as they passed the door into the
hall, two men, neither of whom she knew, followed her pale face with
their glances.  Was it her tortured imagination that made her hear one
of them say to the other after she had passed, "That's the girl--?"

What girl?  Not herself?  She gasped a question to Trevvy.  He smiled
gaily.

"Yes--they were pointing you out.  Do you wonder that I'm so proud?"

Hermia stopped and faced him.  She learned in that moment that the
thing he had dreamed was impossible.

"Please order Mrs. Anstell's machine for me," she said quickly.  "I'm
going at once."

"Are you ill?  Shall I go with you?"

"No--I want to go alone--alone--" she gasped.

Vaguely troubled, he followed her anxiously to the door of the
dressing-room, but did her bidding.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY

The account of this atrocity did not reach John Markham for some weeks.
With the exception of the people who came to the studio and the few
men he met at the club where he dined, he saw little of society, and
troubled himself less with its affairs.  His life was more secluded,
and his work more exacting than ever, and when he walked out, which he
did in the late afternoons, he choose avenues which would not remind
him of the things he was trying to forget.  He had given up hope of
Hermia, and though her vision persisted, it was not of the modish,
self-contained creature who had received him so coolly that he thought.

This was not the Hermia he had loved.  That other girl, the joyous
companion of his summer idyl, was no more.  At times it almost seemed
that she had never been.  She had made it clear that she wished no more
of him and he had accepted her dictum without question.  A more
sophisticated lover would have laughed away the barriers she had
interposed, followed her carelessly, and brought her to bay when he had
proved or disproved the genuineness of her indifference.  But Markham
was singularly ingenuous, his reasoning as simple and direct as that of
a child.  He had never understood the woman of society and until Olga
had appeared upon his horizon had let her severely alone.  Hermia had
been an accident--a divine accident.  Her frankness had disarmed him,
and he had followed his impulses blindly, as (it seemed to him then)
she had followed hers.  He gloried in the memory of their pilgrimage,
its gayety, its freedom and the clean spirit with which they both had
entered on it.  He had believed in her and in believing had let his
heart carry him where it would, willing to forget that she might not be
infallible.  He had been so sure of her--so sure--and now--

He wiped his brushes on a square of cheesecloth, cleaned his palette
and lay in his chair frowning at the portrait, which smiled back at him
with ironical amusement.  It was curious.  All his portraits now
smiled.  His reputation was based on his skill in  making people happy
in paint--painting all people happy but himself--_Punchinello_ dancing
while his _Columbine_ lay dead.  He straightened with a quick intake of
the breath, then washed his brushes carefully and changed into street
clothes.  He was writing to one of his sitters when his knocker clanged
and a man in livery entered bearing a note.  He opened it and read:

My Dear Mr. Markham:
I must see you at once on a matter of importance.  Can you come up this
afternoon for a dish of tea?  I'm sending my car for you in the hope
that your engagements will not forbid.  If anything prevents to-day,
won't you lunch with me to-morrow at two?
                                        Very sincerely yours,
                                                Sarah Hammond.

Markham frowned.  There was no getting out of it, it seemed.

"You have Mrs. Hammond's car below?" he said to the waiting footman.

"Yes, sir.  I was to get an answer or take you up, if you could go."

"I'll go.  I'll be down in a moment."

The man retired, and Markham, somewhat mystified, reread Mrs. Hammond's
note and got into this hat and overcoat.  A matter of importance!
Another commission, perhaps--she had already got him two.  And yet it
seemed, had it been that, she would have expressed herself differently.

He went down and got into the elegantly appointed limousine and in a
while, too short to solve his problem, was set down under the _porte
cochÂre_ of his _patronne_.

He found her at the tea table, a stout but puissant figure in mauve and
black.  In the studio she had not bothered him.  She had been merely an
amiable millionaire, in pearls and black satin.  Here in the majestic
drawing-room, with her small court gathered about her, she dominated
him.  He hesitated a second at the door before going forward, but when
she saw him she rose at once and excused herself to her guests.  After
their departure, she motioned him to a chair beside her and entered
without delay upon her subject.  Her manner was kindly, if restrained,
and he saw at once that the matter was of a personal nature.

"I suppose, Mr. Markham, you think it rather curious that I should have
sent for you in such haste, but I shouldn't have done so had I not
thought it necessary.   You understand that, don't you?"

Markham murmured something and waited for her to go on.

"It seems a little difficult to begin, for there are some matters which
are not easy even with a friend."

"I am sure if there is anything in which I can help you--"

"There is, Mr. Markham.  I should not have dared to speak to you if I
hadn't, unfortunately, found myself brought into an affair in which
your name has been mentioned."

"My name?"

"Yes.  Yours and Miss Challoner's."

He blanched and was immediately conscious that her small eyes were
watching him keenly.

"Wh--what have you heard, Mrs. Hammond?" he blurted out.

"One moment, Mr. Markham.  I don't want you to think that I am the kind
of woman who seeks to pry into the affairs of other people.  I don't.
I abominate meddlers and will have nothing to say, even if after I tell
you what my motives are, you refuse to answer my questions.  But a
great wrong has been done, an advantage taken of my hospitality.  I
speak of the theatricals which took place at my house in the country
last month."

He stared at her blankly and she smiled.

"I forgot," she went on, "what a hermit you are.  Of course you have
not heard."  She leaned over the tea table and took a slip of paper
from under a tea dish.  "I shall let you read this so that you may know
in just what terms New York is speaking of you--of me--of us."

She handed him the clipping.  It was from a weekly paper, which
concerned itself with the doings of society, and he read, his eyes
glowing:

The much heralded theatricals at "Roods Knoll" have come and gone, but
the echoes of this affair are still reverberating the length of the
Avenue.  It seems that the very clever play, written by a well-known
woman of society, was based upon fact, and that the hero and heroine of
the adventures depicted are in New York, the girl in question a member
of the hunting set and the man a distinguished portrait painter--both
of whom shall be nameless.  As everyone knows, the play is laid in
rural France, and deals with the loves of a French countess who has
fled from her husband to join her lover, also married, upon the road,
where they become members of a band of strolling mountebanks, the lady
masquerading as a _Dame Orchestre_ and the gentleman as an itinerant
painter of portraits--

Markham stopped, his eyes seeking those of his hostess.

"The play was given," he said hoarsely, "at your house?"

"It was, Mr. Markham," she said simply.  "Read it through to the end,
please."

He did so, his horror increasing as the full significance of the
description grew upon him.  Hermia had seen--had read this.  They were
talking about her and about him?  He could not understand.

"You said that Miss--Miss Challoner's name had been mentioned--and
mine," he said slowly.  "There is no name--mentioned her.  The identity
of the people--"

"Your names have been mentioned, Mr. Markham, in my presence.  The
story back of this vile clipping is on the lips of every gossip in
town.  Where it originated Heaven only knows, but facts are given and
dates which make it ugly in the extreme.  I thought it best that you
should know and sent for you to assure you that I had no knowledge
about the play and its possible reference to any one."

"The play," he asked quietly, "was written by Madame Tcherny?"

She nodded, her eyes regarding him soberly.

"What shall I do, Mr. Markham?  If there is some basis of truth in the
reports I hear, I have been grossly imposed upon and, whatever the
facts, have done a great wrong both to you and Hermia.  Unfortunately,
she has left New York, and I don't know where to find her.  She left
town, I am informed, the day after the play was given.  I wish she
hadn't.  It makes things awkward for me.  I have the best intentions in
the world, but if she ties my hands by silence what can I do?"

Markham had risen and was pacing the floor slowly, his head bent, all
this thoughts of Hermia.  Olga's cruelty stunned him.  She had promised
not to speak.  Had she spoken other than in this ingenious drama?  Or
was it--De Folligny?  His fists clenched and his jaws worked forward.
De Folligny--a man.  Here was something tangible--a man, not a woman,
to deal with.  He turned and stood beside the tea table, struggling for
the control of his voice.

"Who has told this story, Mrs. Hammond?" he asked at last.

She shrugged her capacious shoulders and settled her head forward in
his direction.

"Frankly, I don't know.  Thank God, I'm not in any was responsible for
that part of this misfortune.  I only know that Olga Tcherny wrote the
play.  As to her motives in doing so I am at a loss.  But if I thought
she used my house, violated my hospitality at the expense of one of my
guests, to serve some private end, I would--"

The good lady grew red in the face, and then, controlling herself after
a moment, "I would find some means of getting her the punishment she
deserved.  Hermia Challoner was there," she went on quickly.  "Her
appearance was remarked.  She looked ill and left the house before
supper.  You were invited, too, Mr. Markham, if you will remember, but
would not come.  I confess I'm at my wit's ends.  I shall not question
you.  All I ask is your advice."

Markham raised his head and looked her in the eyes for a full moment.
She was much distressed at the position, and the friendliness of her
look was all that could be desired.  He hesitated a moment, weighing
his duty with his inclination.  What was best for Hermia?  How could he
serve her?  How build a bulwark to dyke the flood of scandal which
threatened her in her flight?  A lie?  Obviously that wouldn't do, for
Mrs. Hammond believed in him.  And the story had gone too far, was too
diabolic in its accuracy, for a flat denial without explanation.  The
truth?

His hostess still regarded him patiently.  He searched her with his
eyes, his gaze finally falling.

"If one is guiltless one does not fear the truth," he muttered slowly,
"nor does virtue fear a lie--but a half-truth will damn even the
innocent, Mrs. Hammond."

"There is some basis then for the stories they are telling?" she asked
kindly.

"My lips have been sealed.  I'm not sure that I have the right to open
them now.  But I will.  I don't think I could pay you a higher
compliment than by trusting Miss Challoner's fate entirely into your
hands."

Mrs. Hammond, now keenly interested, smiled at him encouragingly.

"Thanks, Mr. Markham, I'm not so old that I have forgotten how to be
human."

He glanced around the room and lowered his voice.

"You know--Hermia--Miss Challoner very well, Mrs. Hammond?"

"Since her infancy--a creature of moods--willful, wayward, if you
like--but the soul of honor and virtue."

He bowed his head.

"Thanks.  You make it easier for me," he said.  "I want you to
understand first, Mrs. Hammond, that I alone am responsible for this
misfortune.  Miss Challoner and I met upon the highroad in Normandy,
entirely by chance.  I was doing the country afoot, as is my custom in
summer.  He machine was destroyed in an accident.  She was alone.  I
asked her to go with me.  She accepted my invitation.  It was mad of me
to ask her, made of her to accept--but she did accept.  We were
together more than a week-traveling afoot by day--sleeping in the open
when the weather was fine and indoors when I could find a room for her.
I had moments of inquietude at my responsibility, for I had done wrong
in letting her go with me.  She was a child and trusted me.  I began by
being amused.  I ended by--  Good God! Mrs. Hammond, I loved--I
worshiped her.  I _couldn't_ have harmed her.  She was sacred to
me--and is now.  You _must_ understand that."

His hostess's expression, which had grown grave during this recital,
relaxed a little.

"I think I understand, Mr. Markham. I am keenly interested.  Where does
Olga Tcherny come in?"

Her question bothered him.  He thought for a moment, and then went on,
deliberately postponing a reply.

"Our relations were clearly established from the first.  We had met
before, you know, earlier in the summer, and I had visited at Westport.
She liked and understood me, and was sensible enough to tell me so;
and I--she attracted me--curiously.  I had always lived a solitary sort
of existence.  She simply ignored my prejudices and over-rode them.
She invaded my life and took it by storm.  She was like the sudden
_capriccioso_ after the _largo_ in a symphony.  She was Youth and Joy,
and she got into my blood like an elixir.  I loved her for all the
things she was that I was not, but I did not tell her so--not then.  I
hid my secret, for I knew that if she guessed it would make a
difference to us both."  He raised his head and went on more rapidly.
"We joined a company of strolling mountebanks.  Oh, that was true
enough--and went with them as far as AlenÂon.  Hermia--Miss
Challoner--_was_ a _Dame Orchestre_ and I a 'lightning' artist.  We
made our living in that way.  It was quite wonderful how she
played--wonderful how she forgot what she was--how she became what I
wanted her to be--an earthling among earthlings.  With them she lived
in poverty and discomfort, learned the meaning of weariness and felt
the pinch of hunger."  He smiled.  "I suppose you wonder why I'm
telling you all this, Mrs. Hammond.  I wanted you to understand just
what the pilgrimage was--how little it had in common with--with what
you have heard these people saying."

"I know, Mr. Markham.  I understand," she said gently.  Her eyes
softened and she looked past him as though back through a vista of the
years.  "It was Romance--the true Romance," she murmured.  "She
borrowed a week from Immortality--that, for once, she might be herself.
 She was free--from this thralldom--free!"

"She worked--hard," he went on after a moment, "and she earned what
money she made.  And so did I.  But I was bothered.  My sins were
pursuing me.  One day we saw upon the road a man Miss Challoner had
met, and at AlenÂon--"

"Olga Tcherny?" asked Mrs. Hammond keenly.

Markham paused, looked beyond her and went on.

"And at AlenÂon, when we were giving a performance, some one I knew
appeared and recognized me.  Need I mention names?"

"Not if you prefer to be silent.  And the hunting lodge?"

"We fled from AlenÂon that night and took refuge from the rain in a
house in the forest.  Miss Challoner was dead tired.  We had been up
since sunrise.  So we stayed there, thinking ourselves safe.  But in
the morning--"  He paused.

Mrs. Hammond had risen and was fingering the flowers on the tea table.

"In the morning," she finished dryly, "Olga Tcherny found you there.  I
understand."

He rose and faced her uncomprehendingly.  "Mrs. Hammond, do you mean
that you believe--as she did?"

She turned quickly and thrust forth both of her plump jeweled hands,
and he saw that her friendliness was in no way diminished.

"I'm not one to believe half-truths, Mr. Markham, when I hear whole
ones," she said, smiling rosily.  "If you had lied to me I should have
known it.  But you didn't and I believe in you."

She released his hand and made him sit again.

"I've never been so entertained and delighted since--since hundreds of
years ago," she sighed.  "You were mad--quite mad, both of you.  And
Hermia--" she stopped, sat quickly upright, and while he watched her,
laughed deliberately.  "Hermia comes back to New York and engages
herself to--to Trevelyan Morehouse!  The excellent Trevelyan--after
Arcadia!  And you?"  She read his face like an open book, her humor
dying in a gently smile.

"It doesn't matter about me, Mrs. Hammond," he said quietly.

"But I think it does," she insisted.  "Do you mean that you can't
understand?"

"Understand what, Mrs. Hammond?"

"How that poor child has suffered.  Do you mean that you don't know why
it is that she has ignored you and fled to Trevelyan Morehouse?"

He made no reply.

"Then I can't help you.  There is nothing in the world denser than a
lover.  The object of his affections is large in his eyes, so large
that the focus is blurred.  He can't see her--that's all.  Hermia was
terror-stricken and you were not aware of it.  She knew that she was
clean and that you were, and the dirt that threatened her threatened
her idyl, too."

She stopped abruptly and looked past him.

"I'm afraid I've said too much, Mr. Markham.  That is because I see how
foolish you have been--both of you in this affair.  It's none of my
business."

She fingered the clipping on the table and went on vigorously.

"As to this infamous story that they are telling, I shall find means to
stop it.  How, I don't know just yet.  This paper shall print a
retraction.  I'll manage that.  Olga Tcherny--"

"I beg of you--"

"Olga Tcherny's career in New York is ended.  She shall never enter my
house, or the house of any of my friends.  That play was a lie, written
with a motive.  She has used me shamefully--shamefully--made me an
accomplice, and placed me in the undesirable position of sponsor for
her villainies."

She rose, walked to the window and looked out upon the Avenue, her lips
taking firmer lines of resolution.  He watched her in silence, and when
she spoke her tones were short and decisive.

"With your permission, Mr. Markham," she said at last, "as Hermia's
friend and yours, I shall deny this story in every detail.  You must
provide me with an alibi."

She turned back into the room and faced him.

"You were not in Normandy last summer--that is positive."

He smiled.

"I am in your hands," he said.

"Where were you?"

"In Holland, if you like.  I've tramped there."

"And Hermia?"

"In Switzerland.  She went there after leaving me.  There was a party.
Morehouse was with her.  It's easily proved."

"Good.  We must lose that week somewhere.  It must be wiped from the
calendar.  If Hermia only hadn't run away!"

"Mrs. Westfield is still here, I believe," he ventured.

She deliberated a moment.

"Excellent.  I shall see her at once.  Together we will manage it.  You
are to leave things to me.  I'm not without influence here in New York,
Mr. Markham.  We shall see.  All I ask is that you avoid seeing Olga or
taking the matter into your own hands.  That would only make a
noise--an unpleasant noise.  Will you promise me?"

He was silent.  She examined him curiously.

"You think you know who told this story?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You think it was not Olga?"

"Yes.  She gave me her word she would say nothing.  I believed her."

"Was it--" she paused.

"The man we met upon the road in Normandy was Monsieur de Folligny,
Mrs. Hammond."

"Oh!  I see."  She fingered the sugar tongs a moment.  "And you want to
question him?" she asked then.

"Er--I would like to find out if it was he who told."

"And then thrash him?  You want the papers full of the whole affair,
with portraits of the principals, and a description of your romantic--"

"God forbid!"

"How like a man!  To get a girl talked about and then of course to want
to thrash somebody!  I've no patience with you.  You must promise to
behave yourself or I'll wash my hands of the whole affair."

He smiled down at his clasped hands.  "I suppose you are right," he
muttered.

"Right!  Of course I am.  This is a case which will require the most
careful handling--a case for the subtlest diplomacy.  If I am going to
risk my reputation for veracity--and jeopardize my hopes of Heaven by
the fibs that I must tell in your behalf, I don't propose to have my
efforts spoiled by senseless bungling.  Will you give me your promise?"

He shrugged.  "I suppose there is nothing left for me to do."

She leaned forward toward the tea table with a laugh.

"I'm so glad that you are sensible.  Now we shall have our tea.  I owe
you apologies.  My business seemed more urgent than my hospitality."

They sat and chatted for a while, Markham sipping his tea and wondering
why he was imparting to this stout and very amiable old lady all his
life's secrets.  A half hour later, when he rose to go, he realized
that he had told her all about his week in Vagabondia, including its
sudden termination.  She surprised him at intervals by the sympathy of
her appreciation, and at others equally serious by an unseemly mirth or
an impatience which they had not merited.  But when he got up to go she
followed him to the door and gave him both of her hands again.

"I like you, John Markham.  You're quaint--a relic of a less flippant
age.  I'm sorry you won't accept any of my invitations--but I'll
forgive you, if you'll promise to do as I bid you."

"I'm deeply grateful to you, Mrs. Hammond.  Of course, I shall be
obedient.  I will do whatever you ask of me."

She released him and gave him a gentle push toward the door.

"Then go--and find Hermia!"

"I, Mrs. Hammond?"

"Yes, you.  At once."

"But--"

"And when you find her--marry her, do you hear?  It's the happiest
issue out of your afflictions."  She laughed again, rather
mischievously.  "You know, I think you owe her that!"

"I--  She--you--"

"She is waiting for you--somewhere.  Find her: Leave the rest to me.
Now go."

He halted again--incredulous, but she waved him past the door where a
man appeared to help him into his coat.  And so he bowed his thanks and
went out into the dusk of the Avenue, his brain teeming with nebulous
inconsistencies.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE BRASS BELL

Hermia, waiting for him!  What did Mrs. Hammond mean?  Was the woman
mad?  Hermia had fled from New York, her proud little head bent before
this cruel story which, of course, had gathered impetus in the telling
and now indicted her of sins unwritten in the fair page of her
experience.  Poor child!  She had suffered--and he, fool that he was,
had sat in his studio, the victim of his false pride, wrapped in his
own ego while this vile plot was brewing.  He might have done something
if he had had his wits about him, instead of hiding his head like an
ostrich and imagining himself unseen.  Olga--he did not dare to think
of Olga Tcherny or of De Folligny.  He had given his word to Mrs.
Hammond to leave the entire matter in her hands.  Even while she had
given him her word not to speak she had been planning this refined
vengeance, probably knew that Pierre de Folligny had already made a
good story of their adventure for some of his new intimates at the
Club.  He would have a reckoning with her--some day--and with De
Folligny!  His fingers tightened on his stick, and an angry tide warmed
his face and temples.  Had he met them, there upon the Avenue at that
moment, all his promises to Mrs. Hammond must have been forgotten--and
he would have made short work of that unspeakable gentleman.  Of Olga
Tcherny he thought with hardly less rancor.  At one time--a year ago
now--Olga had loomed large upon his horizon.  Now in the light of his
present knowledge of her he wondered how he could have ever thought of
her friendship seriously.

She belonged in an atmosphere too sophisticated for his simple rustic
soul.  She had always lied to him; her friendship was a lie; her love,
too--a lie.  That declaration--Good God!--and he had been actually at
the point of being sorry for her.  He had nothing to regret now with
regard to Olga Tcherny.  She had wiped the slate clean, and made a new
account at poor Hermia's expense.

Hermia in exile--and suffering!  Her innocence could not make her heart
pangs any the less real.  Like a child she had followed the line of
least resistance, and seeking freedom from the trammels of convention
had obeyed her impulses blindly.  It was such a trivial transgression
to find so crushing a retribution.  And he, Markham, walked the streets
of New York the envied hero of an "armourette."  This was the law,
which says that women may sin if they are not found out and that men
may sin when they please.

Poor little penitent, atoning for sins uncommitted!  All his heart went
out to her, and his memory, passing the forbidding vision of her last
appearance, now pictured the real Hermia that he knew, a brave, buoyant
Hermia, who knew nothing of discouragements and greeted the sunrise
with a smile, her head now bowed and, like _Niobe_, "all tears."

Was she waiting for him?  If so, why had she not written?  A line, and
he would have sped to her.  She knew that.  She must have known it when
she had fled.  Where was she now?  At Westport, perhaps?  In the South
somewhere, alone with her maid, avoiding the newspapers, seeking the
company of strangers that her ears might not hear or her eyes see the
record of her transgression?  Had she gone abroad again?  Who would
know?  He might inquire of Phyllis Van Vorst or Caroline Anstell over
the telephone.  But when he reached his rooms and had taken up the
receiver he saw that even this information was denied to him.  Any
manifest interest or anxiety on his part with regard to Hermia would be
regarded with suspicion.  Nor was he any more positive than before that
his quest would meet with the approval of its object.  He was
powerless.  There was nothing for him but to wait.

The thought of going to his club to dine was repellant to him.  The
story that Mrs. Hammond had let him read was not common property and,
though none of his acquaintances would have had the bad taste to
mention his connection with it, his appearance among them must revive
its disagreeable details, at Hermia's expense.  So for some days he
dined alone at an obscure restaurant, glooming over the evening paper
and wondering what could be done.  Night after night he walked the
street until, at last, wearied and no nearer the solution of his
problem, he went home and to bed, to toss restlessly most of the night
and plan impossibilities.  Through his thoughts, the friendship of Mrs.
Berkeley Hammond hovered comfortingly.  She was not a woman to promise
idly.  She had been interested in his story and felt herself morally
bound to make some sort of restitution to Hermia for her own unwilling
responsibility in the attention that had been drawn to it.  He did not
doubt that she would use all her influence to minimize the effect of
Olga's machinations, and he felt sure with such a friend at court that
Hermia need have little fear from the opinions of Mrs. Hammond's
friends and her own, and these after all were the only opinions that
mattered to her.

An early morning, a few days after the interview with Mrs. Hammond,
found Markham at his studio, somber and dark eyed, regarding his latest
work with a savage eye of disapproval.  He didn't feel like working,
and by a piece of good fortune his time was free for him to do what he
chose.  He would have liked above all things to have employed it in a
visit to the house of Olga Tcherny and thence with dispatch to the
hotel of Monsieur de Folligny, where what remained of his wrath could
be honestly expended in a manner befitting the occasion.  This
occupation being denied him, there was nothing left but to take what
pleasure he could from the mental picture that he made of it.

At last he rose and groped for his tobacco.  A precious lot of good
that would do him!  It would have been a pity, too, because murder,
even such justifiable murder, had not yet received the sanction of
society as represented in the New York Department of Police.  He paced
the floor restlessly and brought up before his desk, where the janitor
of the building had a few moments ago laid the morning mail.  He took
it up idly--and glanced over it--a note or two in the fashionable
feminine scrawl about sittings, a letter from a framemaker, one from
his Paris agent, and the usual litter of circulars.  He took them up
one by one, opened them, put some of them aside and consigned others to
the paper basket.  A small package lay at the bottom of the pile, an
unobtrusive package neatly tied with string--evidently an advertisement
of some sort--of a paint or of a canvas.  He was about to drop it with
the others when he was made aware that as he turned the small parcel
over it emitted a tinkle as of two metal objects striking together.  He
turned it again and examined the address and stamp.  His name was
printed in ink as though with a bad pen and the stamp was French.  Now
really curious as to its contents and aware of its individuality, he
cut the string and opened it.  There was an inner wrapping of tissue
paper containing a small white pasteboard box which bore the name of a
fashionable New York jeweler, and inside the box the origin of the
tinkle was revealed in a small brass bell.

He took the object out, his wonder growing, and held it suspended
between his thumb and forefinger.  A brass bell no larger than his
thumbnail, a tarnished little trinket, no longer new, which tinkled
merrily under his astonished gaze.  He examined the thing more
carefully, his bewilderment increasing, noting the curious
construction, which was unlike that of the toy bells which had adorned
the necks of the wooly beasts abroad at Christmas-time.  It was heavy
for its size, and when he moved it had a decisive and very mellow note.
Who would send him a thing like this and why?  There must have been a
mistake.  He took up the paper wrapper from the waste basket and
examined it with renewed interest.

        John Markham, Esquire,
                --West--th Street,
                        New York City.

With a stamp of the French Republic and a postmark of--What were the
postmarks?  Paris.  Of course.  And the other?  VAL-E--?  Valence?
Valence was in the South of France on the Rhone.  He had never been
there.  No.  That wouldn't do.  VAL-L-E--VallÂcy!

A brass bell from VallÂcy!  Still he did not understand.  He took the
object up again and scrutinized it, its meaning dawning slowly.
VallÂcy!  That was the village where he and Hermia had stayed with
MÂre GuÂgou.  There was the garden of the golden roses where--The
bell!  It was from Hermia's head-dress--the belled cap of the _Femme
Orchestre_!  He knew it now.  It was a token.  Hermia had sent it--from
VallÂcy.  A token.

In high excitement he examined the obscure postmark again.  The accent
on the E, a little smudged, but quite legible.  Hermia had sent the
bell as a token from Vagabondia which meant that she was there in PÂre
GuÂgou's garden, whither she had fled when her own world had renounced
her.  She was waiting for him.  She needed him, and took this means of
showing him that all things that had happened to them both since they
had parted in the forest at SÂes were to be forgotten--that they were
both to take life up--from VallÂcy.  He stood a moment in joyous
uncertainty, his glance on the clock, then, quickly wrapping the
memento in its tissue paper, thrust it into his coat pocket and in a
moment was striding like a madman down the street.  At his apartment he
rang for a taxicab, thrust a few things into a suitcase, wrote a note
or two and in half an hour was on his way to the bank and then to the
steamship wharf.

He had no definite plans except that he must take the first steamer
which left New York for Europe.  A brief glance at his morning paper
advised him of two sailings this morning, one for Havre and the other
for Cherbourg, and he had made up his mind to take one steamer or the
other.  The taxicab crawled, it seemed, and on the way downtown was
caught in a block of traffic which delayed him for ten minutes, during
which he fumed silently.  But he reached the dock with scarcely a
quarter of an hour to spare, and after a difficulty which was cleared
away, found himself upon the deck of the _Kaiserin Augusta_, a somewhat
flustered individual, with many loose ends dangling in retrospect, with
no cabin as yet assigned to him, sober of face but inexpressibly happy.

It was really not until his ship was well out at sea and the voyage
fairly begun that Markham had the opportunity to settle down
comfortably and mediate upon the surprising events of the morning.  He
found a steamer chair in a quiet place and then gave himself up to his
thoughts.  He took the tiny object from his breast pocket and turned
it over in his fingers.  Of course it was Hermia's.  The wonder was
that he had not recognized it at first glance.  This bell and its
other small companions had tinkled their way into his heart at each
step she had taken down the long road from Evreux to
AlenÂon--tinkled merrily at Passy, joyously at VallÂcy,
disdainfully at Verneuil, and contentedly at La Mesle.  AlenÂon
had made them tragic so they had been packed in Hermia's bundle which
went with her to SÂes and were heard no more, except in a faint
tinkle of protest as she was put aboard the train for Paris.
Wonderful bells they were, tiny chimes that had rung in the season of
their joy and lingered in their memory never to be forgotten.
Tokens--Hermia had realized it--symbols of her greatest happiness and
his, with life reduced to the simplest elements, in which there had
been no place for the extravagant commonplaces of the other life which
they both had lived and endured.  Hermia had fled to VallÂcy to
the motherly breast of MÂre GuÂgou, and there perhaps
was weeping out her troubles.  He took out the square of paper (he had
clipped it with his penknife) which bore the address and examined it
again.  This and the bell were all he had had to start him off on his
fateful pilgrimage.  But they were enough.  She could not have written
him after her treatment of him in New York.  She had thrown herself
upon his mercy, given her message ambiguity that he might ignore it if
he chose, or read, as she had hoped he would, the message of her
heart, across the distances.  It was the message of a vagabond like
himself, as definite a message as the gypsy _patteran_ which shows the
way from one camp to another.  His _patteran_ pointed to
VallÂcy, that lovely village by the Arth where he had first
told Hermia that he loved her.  Beyond VallÂcy had come
misunderstanding, bitterness, misfortune.  She had chosen that spot as
though by instinct.  She wanted him to remember her there where love
had first been spoken.  Alone and waiting for him among the roses of
PÂre GuÂgou--

He started up from his chair in bewilderment, staring blankly at the
sunlit sea, suddenly mindful of the fact that in the hurry of getting
away he had not cabled her.  He threw his rugs aside and made his way
hastily to the office, to find unluckily that the wireless had gotten
out of order, and that it might be several hours before it was
repaired.  He strolled on deck again, thoughtful, suddenly impressed
with the potency of the charm that had called him.  The thought of
replying to her message had not until this moment entered his head.
All that he had been able to think of was that he must get to her at
once, follow the _patteran_ at top speed.  He had done so and now
unhappily remembered a dozen neglected people who must wonder at his
extraordinary disappearance.  But he only smiled joyously.  He had
another engagement.

He took up his walk along the promenade deck, careless of the enemies
he had made, careless of the friendships he might lose, all his
thoughts of the small vagabond at VallÂcy.  His inability to
communicate with her by wireless set him thinking.  Wasn't that, too, a
symbol?  If he got a message over what would be its effect?  Would she
still wait for him, looking forward to the precious hour of their
meeting?  Or would her mind change at the last moment and send her
flying from him again?  This was more like Hermia, the real Hermia that
he knew.  He feared her moods still.  And if he refused to cable her
would her patience last until he got to France?  He cast is memory over
the months that had passed in New York.  He guessed how much she had
suffered.  He had followed her social career through the newspapers and
he knew now that she had gone gaily that she might hide her terror.
She was tired--poor child--tired in body and spirit, and that was why
she had not stayed in Paris among the fashionable people she knew
there; that was why she had fled to VallÂcy, where at least she might
be at peace, unreminded by those of her own social sphere of the
villainous story which pursued her.  There at VallÂcy she sat remote,
with her own innocence for company, convalescent--amid these primitive
surroundings--from the sickness that her world had given her.  She
would wait for him _if she wasn't sure that he would come_.  He smiled.
 He would not send the wireless.  Nor would he wire her from Cherbourg.

A search of the postmark of his much-beloved package revealed the date
"_Av. 22_."  She had sent her token on the twenty-second of April and
it was now only the second of May.  Ten days only had passed, and he
was already well on his way to her.  In less than a week more he would
be in VallÂcy.  She would wait for him.  Markham, as will be observed,
was learning something about women--about one woman at least, the only
woman in the world who mattered.

The voyage seemed interminable, through the ship was a fast one, and
the day's run (on paper) highly satisfactory.  He knew no one aboard
but some of the officers, with whom he had crossed before, and he was
thankful that he was therefore left alone with his thoughts, which were
infinitely more pleasing to him than the chatter of the salon or
smoking-room.  He read novels, or tried to, but his own story was so
much more interesting, so much more real than those he could find that
he gave them up after a trial or two and lived again his own romance.
The time to take it up again where he had left it off came slowly, but
at last the _Lizard_ hove into sight and the passengers for France
prepared for debarkation.  Morning of the next day found Markham in the
express to Paris.  Evreux was his station, and from there to Verneuil
was a little over an hour, most of it along the road he and Hermia had
so blithely traveled.  The road from Verneuil to VallÂcy--he would
cover it afoot if there were no vehicles to be begged, borrowed or
stolen.

CHAPTER XXIX

DUO

At some distance from the village street he dismissed the vehicle which
had brought him from Verneuil, a rickety affair drawn by an emaciated
horse, and suitcase in hand strode up the hill toward the house of
Madame GuÂgou, the garden wall of which was visible beyond the
flowering orchard.  The air was laden with odors, sweet with the smell
of the fruit blossoms and early shrubs.  In the meadow to the left some
goats were grazing and, as he passed, the wether raised his head and
examined him incuriously, its bell clanking solemnly.  The sun was
already beyond the profile of the forest; beyond the sleepy village and
against the warm sky thin threads of purple smoke ascended in
perpendicular lines and then drifted lazily down to the mist of the
valley below.  Nature breathed slowly, deeply, as though aware that its
state was not a matter of days or even of years, but of an eternity,
during which its evolution must not be hurried.

After the turmoil of steamer and railroad this silence was oppressive.
Minute sounds came to Markham across the distances, the bark of a dog,
the lowing of cattle, a shutter closing, human voices near and far,
each one distinct, but each mellowed and softened as though strained
through a silver mesh.  He missed the shudder of the steamer, the
rattle of the train, the jolting even of the station wagon from which
he had just descended; for they were all a part of the fever of his
voyage made in such mad haste, sounds which had soothed and given him
patience, their very turbulence assuring him that he was losing no time
upon the way.  And now that he had reached his destination, a violent
reaction had set in.  He was still moving forward toward the house with
the walled garden, but a fear obsessed him that perhaps after all there
had been a mistake.  What if, after all, Hermia were not here?  His
suitcase gained in weight and he perspired gently.  Why hadn't he
cabled her at the first moment of his decision to sail or why hadn't he
relayed his wireless across when the opportunity had offered?  All his
hopes seemed to be slipping from his finger ends.  Was this Vagabondia?
 It seemed different somehow.  He was aware of his neatly creased
trousers, his bowler hat, his gloves, and the leather bag which reeked
of sophistication.  He was an anachronism, or VallÂcy was.  They were
not attune.  He and VallÂcy clashed discordantly.

Timorously, almost upon tiptoe, he reached the village street.  A dog
emerged from a field, sniffed at the crease of his trousers
suspiciously and growled.  At this moment Markham desired anything but
commotion, so he chirped to the animal and stroke on, his head bent,
his gaze on the portal of the _ancien_, which, as he noted, was
forbiddingly closed.  He paused a moment, eyeing the cur which stopped
when he stopped, still regarding him uncertainly.  And then summoning
his courage he went to the door and knocked.  This noise, which sounded
faintly enough to Markham, seemed to be the demonstration of hostility
the dog was waiting for, and it began barking furiously, snapping
almost at Markham's immaculate heels, a signal which was taken up
immediately, near and far, by every cur in the village.  Curious heads
were poked out of windows, and at last after a few moments his door was
opened just wide enough for the head of his former hostess to inspect
him.

"Madame GuÂgou," he began uncertainly and then paused.

The door opened a trifle wider.

"It is I," she remarked, her gaze on the suitcase.  "I can buy nothing,
Monsieur."

He laughed uneasily.

"You do not remember me, Madame?" he asked.

She relinquished the door-knob and emerged, inspecting his clothing.

"You are from Paris, of course.  Last year perhaps, you came--"

"I did--last summer, Madame.  I am Philidor--the artist."

"You!  Monsieur!  _You_ Philidor!"  She leaned forward upon the step,
her eyes searching his face.  "Philidor was not such as you.  He wore a
beard and--"  She suddenly caught him by the shoulder and turned him
toward the sunset.  "I might think--and yet--"

"I am Philidor," he repeated, laughing.  "I came in search of--of
Yvonne."

"You--are he!  It is true.  The saints be praised!"  She threw the door
inside open and called:  "Jules!  Jules!  He is come.  Monsieur
Philidor is here!"

The _ancien_ limped forward from the inner darkness, showing his gums.

"I knew it," he cried triumphantly.  "Did I not say that he would
return?"

Markham took the bony fingers, his anxious gaze going past them toward
the glow of the kitchen.

"And Yvonne?" he asked feverishly.  "She is within?"

"She is here, yes, she is here--waiting for you."

He dropped his valise and strode past them eagerly.  A pot simmered
upon the fire, the table gave evidence of a recent repast, and a pile
of dishes nearby stood mutely in evidence, but of Hermia there was no
sign.

"_Tiens_!"  Madame GuÂgou was muttering.  "She was here but a moment
ago.  In the garden, perhaps--"

He dashed out of the rear door and down the graveled walk.

"Hermia!" he called, and then again, "Hermia!"

He reached the arbor just in time to see her speed across the lower end
of the meadow and vanish into the trees.  Hatless he leaped the low
wall and followed, joy giving him wings, while the old couple
wonderingly watched from the doorway.  They were mad, these two.  She
had been waiting for him a month and now--she fled.  Mad?  But what was
love but madness?

Markham sprang into the cover of the trees where he had seen her
disappear and followed the path up the hill breathlessly.  She would
escape him now, even, when she had sent for him and he had come to
her!  She could not go far.  The cover was thin.  He would have called
again, but he spared his breath, for he knew that she would not reply.
He reached the end of the path and scanned the hill beyond.  She could
not have gone that way.  He turned and plunged among the pine trees to
his right where the woods were thicker.  It was getting darker, but he
saw her white skirt, gray in the shadows--saw it--lost it and found it
again in the deep wood.  He sprang forward over fallen trees, through
brambles, over rocks, down the slope to the streamside and caught her
behind a tree where she had hidden away from him.

"Hermia!" he cried.  "Hermia, you witch!  What a dance you've led me!
But I have you now--I have you--"

And so he had--in both of his arms, his lips seeking hers.  But she
denied him.

"Did you think you could escape me--again?" he laughed, "when I've come
half across the world for you?"

"You--you frightened me," she gasped.

"How did I frighten you?"

"I did--didn't expect you--"

"You sent for me?"

"I--I thought you would have cabled--"

He laughed joyously.

"Cabled the hour of my arrival, and found you--missing!  I know you
now, you see.  I took no chances.  As it is, you tried to get away--"

"I didn't get far--"

"That wasn't your fault.  You tried.  Why did you run?"

She was silent, her head still hidden.  He repeated the question.

"I--I don't know."

"Do I frighten you now?"

"Not so much."

He held her more closely in his arms, and kissed the crown of her head,
which was the only object offered.

"I know," he whispered, "because you had given me everything except
yourself--and you knew that I would take that."

"No, no."

"What, then?"

Silence.

"I had feared--" she paused.

"What had you feared?"

"That you might not come.  You didn't reply--"

"This is my reply."

He raised her lips slowly to his own and took them.  Her eyes were
closed as though she feared to open them, and show him the dawn of her
womanhood.  But in a moment her figure relaxed in his arms and her head
sank upon his shoulder in token of surrender.

"Mad little Hermia!" he whispered.

"Mad no longer," she sighed.

"You must prove it.  I'll not let you go until I'm sure you won't go
flying from me again."

"I don't want you to let me go.  I want you to hold me tight.  It
is--rest.  I'm tired of going.  I want to stay--here."

"You love me?"

This time she opened her eyes wide and let him see that what she said
was true.  She had outgrown her adolescence--her madness, unless it
could be called madness to love as she did.  Her eyes were deep wells
of mystery, in which he saw, as from the distant brink above, his own
image, clear amid the shadows.  There were signs of trouble in them,
too, as though she had thought long and distressfully, but greater than
the marks of pain were the sweeter tokens of a love and trust
unalterable.

She sank upon a rock, he beside her, her head on his breast.  The dusk
fell swiftly, its shadows enfolding them.  He kissed her again and
again, her lips trembled upon his as she murmured the words so long
unspoken.

"Philidor, I love you--I love you.  It was so long--the waiting."

"You needn't have waited, dear," he said gently.

"Oh, don't reproach me!  I can't bear it.  It had to be.  Olga--she
smirched us--your love and mine--made--"

He stopped her lips with kisses, smiling inwardly and thinking of the
wisdom of Mrs. Hammond.

"There is no Olga--" he murmured, "no gossip but the whisper of the
stream which knows the truth."

"Yes--the truth.  That is all that matters, isn't it?  But that
play--shall I ever forget it?"

"Sh--child.  You must forget.  A lie never lives."

"I will forget.  I don't care--now.  Let them say what they choose.
But I _did_ suffer, Philidor."

"And I.  You were cruel, dear."

"I had to be cruel.  I feared that you--that I--"

She paused and he questioned gravely.

"I feared that you, too, might have misjudged me--there in the woods at
SÂes--that I had cheapened myself to you--that I had been unwomanly."

"Hermia!"

"I don't know what possessed me after Olga appeared.  She poisoned the
very air with doubt.  I was desperate.  I didn't seem to care what
happened.  I don't know what I wanted.  I think if you had taken me
then and held me--as you do now--held me close to you and had not let
me go, as you did, you might have had me to do as you willed.  But you
relinquished me--"

"I had to, dear."

"Yes, I understand now.  I couldn't then.  I wanted to hurt you--as I
was hurt.  Your sanity made me desperate.  I couldn't understand why
you should be so sane while I was not.  You were greater than I--and
though I loved you for it (O Philidor, how I loved you!) I meant that
you should pay for my heart-throbs--that you should pay for Olga--for
everything."

"I have paid."

"Forgive me.  I suffered doubly in knowing that you suffered.  I fled
from you and hid my heart as a miser would buy his treasure.  But your
letters, forwarded from Paris, followed me.  O Philidor!  I did not
read them--not at first.  I saw Olga telling that story at the dinner
table and my pride revolted.  I put them away--unopened, and kept them
concealed--from others, from myself and tried to forget them.  I
couldn't. They were you.  I would take them out and look at them.  I
slept with them under my pillow.  At last I could stand it no longer.
I took them and disappeared for a whole day from the rest of my party.
I read them alone on the summit of a mountain."  She broke off with a
sigh.  "Ah me!  If you had come to me there you would not need to have
pleaded, Philidor."

"My Hermia!"

"You were with me that day.  Didn't you know it?"

"I was with you every day, child."

She smiled happily.

"When I got down to Evian at nightfall they were searching for me.
They thought that I had fallen and been killed.  They reproved me.  I
was calm and smiling, my spirit still soaring to you across the
distances.  I had made up my mind to go to you the next day."

"Oh, if you had--!"

"In the morning," she went on, "came your letter telling me that you
were sailing for New York.  It wasn't like the other letters.  You were
reproachful and you were going away from me.  It chilled me a
little--after the day before.  Olga's face interposed--again.  And so I
let you go.  You see I'm telling you everything."

"Go on, dear."

"I got no more of your letters for a time--for a long time--"

"I wrote you--"

"Yes--from New York.  There was some mistake.  I didn't get those
letters until long after--until I reached New York--until after I had
seen you.  Meanwhile, I feared--that you had cooled--that Olga had done
something to change you--"

"Not that--"

"I feared her.  I knew then that she was capable of anything.  I heard
that she was again in New York and sensed that you must have seen her--"

"I did see her," he put in grimly.

"I didn't know what had happened.  I made up my mind to ignore her--to
ignore _you_--to forget you and to make you forget, if I could, what
had happened."

"That was impossible."

"I knew it, but I tried.  O my dear, if you had known my pains at
making you suffer!  It was hard.  But I did it.  When you came to the
house--"

"Don't speak of that," he muttered.  "It was not Hermia that I saw."

"Not _this_ Hermia.  It was a girl that even _I_ did not know.  I had
rehearsed that conversation and I carried it through to the end."

"The end--of all things, it seemed."

She drew more closely into the shelter of his arms and drew his lips
down to hers.

"Yes--but we shall make a new beginning----And then," she went on,
after a moment, "I saw Olga and cut her.  I hadn't meant to--but I
couldn't help it.  The sight of her turned me to ice.  And Pierre de
Folligny--"  She stopped again, her brows tangling.  "That man!  He
remembered me.  He presumed.  He was odious.  I had the butler show him
the door.  I--I wasn't very wise, I think.  But I couldn't,
Philidor,--I simply _couldn't_ temporize with a man of his caliber."

"D--n him!" said Markham.

"He told--I think--of Olga did--"

"It was De Folligny," he groaned.  "But I couldn't do anything.  That
would have made things worse."

"Oh, yes--and then the play--that dreadful play!  That was Olga's
doing.  I was _there_, Philidor, at Rood's Knoll.  I saw it all.
Listened in terror to every word of the dreadful sacrilege.  It _was_
sacrilege!--to see my love and yours pictured the dreadful thing that
that love was.  I got out somehow.  They were talking of me--lightly.
I heard them; as they talked of--of other women who do not know right
from wrong--as they would have talked of that dreadful Frenchwoman
who--who was killed."

She was sobbing gently on his shoulder, her slender body quivering and
drawing closer.  "Oh, I have paid--paid in full for my fault--"

He soothed her, but she started back, holding him at arm's length, her
eyes the more lovely through their tears, "But I regret nothing.  I
would suffer more, if I might, to know what I know.  I have learned the
meaning of life, Philidor.  I bless my pain for the new meaning it has
given my joy.  I bless _your_ pain even, dear, for the new meaning it
has given your unselfishness.  You thought only of me, of my happiness
when I had paid you only misery."

"There shall be no more pain," he murmured.  "There is no room for it.
Joy shall crowd it out."

"Will you forgive me?" she asked.

"I'll try," he smiled.  "Will you promise never to run away from me
again?

"Where should I run?"

He meditated a moment and then said with a smile:

"To Trevelyan M--"

But she put her fingers over his lips before he could finish.

"Don't Philidor.  Wherever I went, I should not go to Trevvy."  She
laughed.  "He cast me off, you know."

"Cast _you_ off?"

She nodded.  "He heard that story at Rood's Knoll after I had gone.
The next day he came to my house in town.  I saw him.  He wore a
woe-begone expression and silently presented a clipping from a paper."
She laughed again.  "He looked like a virtuous undertaker presenting a
bill, long overdue, for the interment of some lightly mourned relative.
 He asked me if the story were true.  I said it was--and he went out of
the house--casting not even one longing, lingering look behind!"

"But it _wasn't_ true."

"That's just the point--but he thought so.  Would _you_ have believed
me that kind of a girl?  You could have, you know, and didn't."  She
sighed happily, and sank back into his arms.  "I think I don't want
people to be _too_ excellent, Philidor.  Just human--"

"Were you"--he hesitated a moment--"were you engaged to him, Hermia?"

She gazed at him wide-eyed.

"Never," she asserted, and then repeated, "Never, never, never!"

"But the newspapers--"

"O Philidor!  How could I have been engaged to Trevvy when I--I was
already engaged to you?"

"Engaged."

"Yes, promised.  After the forest at SÂes I knew it then.  I could
never have loved anyone else.  Why, Philidor, you held me like this,
and kissed me--"

"You loved me then--and before--?"

She hesitated demurely.

"Yes--before."

"Before, AlenÂon?"

"Y--yes."

"Before Verneuil?"

She smiled and nodded.

"Here--at VallÂcy?"

"Before that."

"You adorable child!  Passy?"

"Yes?"

He was now really astounded.  What she added astounded him still more.

"I think it began before 'Wake Robin'?"

"Thimble Island?"

She stammered.  "I--I think it really began in your studio."

"In New York?"

"You interested me--and you snubbed me so completely.  You were so
impolite, John Markham.  I was curious about you.  You were like no man
I had ever met.  You told me the truth.  I didn't like it, but I
respected you for telling it.  When I went away I remember wanting to
see you again.  AT Thimble Island--"

"Yes?"

She hid her face in his breast and the words came slowly.

"My visit to--to Thimble Island--I--I knew you were there.  My m--motor
_didn't_ miss fire, Philidor?"

He raised her head and made her look at him.  Even in the wan light her
face was rosy with her confession.  But she laughed joyously.

"I wanted to snub you for being so rude to me.  Alas!  I ended by--by
scrubbing your floor."

"Diana of the Tubs!  How you scrubbed!"

"I liked it.  You were very nice at Thimble Island, Philidor."  She
paused a moment.  "Then Olga came--and the others.  She quite owned
you, then, didn't she?"

"No," he replied slowly.

"I don't think I really liked Olga's face-powder on your coat, dear."

He was silent.

"I knew you didn't love her.  You couldn't.  She wasn't your sort."

More silence.

"You didn't care for her, did you?" jerkily.

He looked down into her eyes tenderly but made no reply.  She sighed
but asked no more questions.  And, when he knew that she understood the
meaning of his silence, he took her head between his hands and made her
look at him.

"Isn't it enough for me to say to you that I love you better than all
the world, dear, that I am yours--wholly and indivisibly--my past, my
future--"

"Oh, I am content," she whispered quickly.  "Your past--shall be what
you have made it.  I'm not afraid.  But your future--"

She caught one of his hands in both of her own and held it to her
heart.  "That is mine."

There was a silence rich with meaning.  The stream, the whispering
boughs, the rising breeze in the tree-tops joined in the soft chorus of
their nuptial-song.  The night fell, shrouded in mystery.  Behind them
over their shoulders a new moon rose, a harbinger of good fortune, but
they did not turn to look at it.  It could not foretell them a fortune
that was already theirs.  Its light flowed through the shadows, paling
the silhouette of the leaves against the afterglow, bathing them both
in liquid silver.  He told her many of the things that she already
knew, but each reiteration had a new meaning and a new delight.  The
same immortal questions and answers, ever new, ever mystifying.  The
touch of hands, of eyes, the physical contact, outward tokens of the
spiritual pact made already, the welding of the bonds which were to
make them one!  The moments of their more intimate confessions past, he
told her of the friendship of Mrs. Hammond and what she had done to set
the story right, but she did not seem to hear him.  Her gaze was upon
the pale rim of light along the hill-top beyond, a gaze which looked
and saw nothing beyond the rosy aura of her thoughts.

"What does it matter now?" she murmured.  "What does anything
matter--after this?"

"You will marry me--soon?" he urged her.

She sighed softly and laid her hand in his.