Crofts was senile and slow, and unusually aspen with anxiety and the
rebukes he had had. His deliberation was maddening to Enslee. The
old-fashioned deference of Crofts' manner was only further irritation.

Persis' own heart was wretched enough with its load of shame; she was
hard put to it to sit and smile at the husband who had caught her in the
arms of her paramour and heard him casting her off. But she had that
social understanding of the actor's creed that the show must go on to
the last curtain, no matter what had preceded it, or what might happen
between the acts, or what might follow. She was certain of only one
thing, that she and Willie must sit out this dinner somehow.

The entr'actes in the solemn mummery were the spaces between the courses
while the servants left the room for a few moments to bring on the next
thing.

When the caviar had been nibbled and rejected, the oysters set down and
refused without being tasted, the two men went into the pantry for the
soup-tureen and the hot plates. The swinging door oscillated with little
puffs of air like sneers, and a breath ran around the tapestries hung on
the walls. Ripples went through them in shudders, and, as the wrinkles
traveled, averted faces seemed to turn and glance quickly at the
Enslees, then turn away again.

With all the surreptition possible Crofts and his lieutenants brought in
the silver urn and the ladle and the plates, and set them down on the
serving-table behind the screen of Spanish leather with its glowing
landscape and its gilded sky.

But Enslee's raw nerves shrieked at the soft thud of plate on tray, the
infinitesimal click of ladle on tureen, the very endeavor not to make a
sound. He fidgeted, bit his knuckles, wrung his hands out like damp
cloths, played a tattoo on the arm of his chair, and passed his hand
wildly across his eyes. At length he whirled, and shouted:

"In God's name, less noise! Less noise!"

Crofts turned to bow and made a trifle more noise. And when he took the
plate from Roake's tray and set it before Enslee his hand trembled
perilously. It was Enslee's favorite soup, a luscious _purée Mongole_.
He lifted one spoonful now to his lips and put it away with disgust. His
ignominy was so vile that it sickened his stomach. He had been told that
his wife was unfaithful to him; he had found it true; he had wrought
himself to a frenzy of revenge upon the destroyer of his home; but the
lover, instead of leaping from the window like the typical man of guilt,
had taken the husband's weapon from him, denounced the wife, and left
the wrecked home in triumph.

Enslee had endured all these disgraces; why should he add one more? Why
should he play a part before his own menials? Why should he care what
they thought? None the less, as mutinous soldiers keep the line
automatically, so a lifetime of paying devotion to the ordinances of
etiquette held him to the mark now.

Seeing that Persis had not even made a pretense of lifting her spoon to
her lips, he nodded to Crofts, "Take it away."

The failure of a dinner was a catastrophe to Crofts, and he forgot his
wonted reticence enough to ask:

"Isn't it good, sir? Sha'n't I tell the chef to--"

His solicitude brought him only a reproof:

"Crofts, if you speak again I'll have the other servants serve the
dinner. Take it away, I said."

Hurt and frightened, Crofts hurried the soup and its apparatus off. As
he slipped out with his aides the swinging door went "Phew!" and the
tapestried figures glanced and whispered together.

As soon as he was alone with his wife, Enslee's voice rose querulously:

"If Dobbs ever leaves us in the lurch again I'll fire him for keeps.
This old fool gets on my nerves. Everything is going wrong here. The
whole house is falling to rack and ruin. Ought at least to have decent
servants--if I can't have a decent wife!"

Persis smiled patiently at this, but as with lips bruised from a blow.

"I trust, Willie, that you won't forget yourself. All these doors have
ears, you know."

"You bet they have!" he snapped. "And eyes, too. Are you crazy enough to
think that lowering our voices will conceal the truth from any one?
Don't you realize that those hounds out there know everything that goes
on in this house? Don't you understand that your good name and my honor
were gossiped away down-stairs long before my dishonor became public
property?"

Persis felt a panic in her own heart at his manner. Still she tried
suasion. "I implore you to postpone this. At any moment Crofts will be
back."

"Crofts, eh?" Willie shouted. "Crofts! Crofts will be back! Why, do you
imagine for a moment that even that deaf old relic is ignorant of this
intrigue you have carried on? Don't you know that every servant of ours
that has left the house for weeks has carried through the area-gate a
bundle of news and innuendo and suspicion and keyhole information, to be
scattered broadcast in every servants' hall in town?"

And then he heard Crofts at the door, and in spite of him habit
throttled him; he pulled down the comic mask he had pushed back from his
dour face. He ransacked his brain for something humorous to serve as a
libretto, and he was reminded of a story he had laughed at heartily
before he learned that his own household was a theme for laughter.

He began to giggle uncannily, gruesomely. Persis looked at him,
wondering if he had gone mad and begun to gibber. But while Crofts and
the others served deviled crabs in their grotesque shells he began to
explain his elation, overacting sadly:

"I heard the best story to-day about Mrs. Tom Corliss."

Forgetfully Persis, from her own glass house, protested: "Oh, don't tell
me anything about that woman!"

Enslee sneered. "Oh, you're always so easily shocked--such a prude, so
conventional!"

Persis understood and blanched. "Go on, I'll stand it."

Enslee began to snicker again, taking some support in his shame from
another man's disgrace.

"Well, you know old plutocrat Crane?"

"Not old Deacon Crane," Persis gasped, "that passes the plate at
church?"

Willie nodded.

"What can he have to do with any story about Mrs. Tom?"

Enslee he-he'd. "That's the fun of it. Mrs. Tom, it seems--one day when
Tom was off to the races--entertained the dear Deacon at a little
dinner--served _à deux_. The Deacon used to give her tips on the market
and back them himself for her, and she--well, he was talking about the
present-day craze for dancing with bare feet, _et cetera_; and she vowed
that she wasn't ashamed of her feet either; and so she made the Deacon
play Mendelssohn's Spring Song on the pianola, and--"

He looked up to find that Chedsey, while pretending to be very busy at
the sideboard, wore a smile that extended almost into the ear he perked
round for the gossip. Willie choked on his own laughter, and roared:

"Chedsey, leave the room, and don't come back!"

Chedsey slunk away, and Roake became a statue of gravity. Crofts had not
heard at all. Willie finished his story without mirth.

"Anyway, Tom Corliss came in unexpectedly just then, and--well, when the
Deacon finally got home his wife met him in the hall; he told her he had
been sandbagged by a footpad; and she believed him!"

Willie found Tom Corliss' shame so piquant that he began to relish his
food. Crofts, a little encouraged, nodded to Roake and led him out for
the next dish.

Persis took small comfort from other people's sordid scandals. They
seemed to have no relation to the pure and high tragedy that had ended
the romance of her own love. Seeing that they were alone again, she
expressed her dislike before she realized its inconsistency.

"And where did you pick up all this garbage?"

Enslee was outraged at this ingratitude for his hard work. "Oh, it
shocks you, eh? So beautiful a veneer of refinement and so thin!"

"Where did you hear it?" Persis persisted, lighting herself a cigarette
to give her restless hands employment; and Willie answered:

"Mrs. Corliss' second man told it to Mrs. Neff's kitchen maid, and she
to Mrs. Neff's maid, and she to Mrs. Neff; and Mrs. Neff to Jimmie
Chives, and he to me--at the Club."

"At the Club?"

"Where I heard of your behavior."

"You heard of me at the Club?" Persis gasped.

"Yes, that crowning disgrace was reserved for me. Big Bob Fielding took
me to one side and said: 'Willie, everybody in town knows something that
you ought to be the first to know--and seem to be the last. I hate to
tell you, but somebody ought to,' he said. And I said 'What's all that?'
And he said: 'Your wife and Captain Forbes are a damned sight better
friends,' he said, 'than the law allows,' he said."

The room swam, and Persis clung to her chair to keep from toppling out
of it.

"So that's what he said. And what did you say?"

"I didn't believe him--then. I was too big a fool to believe him; but he
opened my eyes, and I came home to see what was going on. And I saw!"

Persis was on fire with a woman's anxiety to know if any champion had
defended her name. She demanded again:

"What did you say to Bob Fielding?"

And Enslee answered with a helpless, mincing burlesque of dignity:

"I told him he was a cad, and I didn't want him ever to speak to me
again."

"And you didn't strike him?"

Enslee cast up his eyes at the thought of attacking the famous
center-rush; then he lowered his eyes before her blazing contempt. She
demanded again, incredulously: "You didn't strike him?"

Enslee dropped his face into his two palms and wept, the tears leaking
through his fingers. Persis felt outlawed even from chivalry. She gagged
at the thought: "Agh! The humiliation!"

Enslee lifted his head again, his wet eyes flashing. "Humiliation?" he
screeched, in a frenzy of self-pity. "Do you talk of humiliation? What
about me? My father and mother brought me into the world with a small
frame and a poor constitution. They left me money as a compensation. And
what did my money do for me? It bought me a woman--who despised me--who
dishonored me before the world. And I'm too weak to take revenge. I'm
helpless in my disgrace, helpless!"

He sobbed like a lonely girl, his eyes hid in the crook of his left arm,
his elbow on the table, his little hand clenching and unclenching. His
tears brought tears to Persis. It was the first time she had ever felt
sorry for Willie; had ever realized that a weak man does not select his
weaknesses, though he must endure their consequences. She had often
justified herself by the plea that she had not chosen her own soul, but
must get along with it. That defense was her husband's, too.

The swinging door thudded softly, and Willie raised himself in his
chair, but he could not quell the buffets of his sobs, and he dared not
put his handkerchief to his eyes. And so Crofts, bending close to remove
the crab-shells, noted the grief-crumpled face and the drench of tears;
his mind went back to the time when Willie Enslee was a child and wept
in a high chair in his nursery. Before he could suppress it the old man
had let slip the query:

"Why, Master Willie, you're not crying?"

Willie, with splendid presence of mind, answered:

"Nonsense, you old fool, it's that deviled crab. There was so much
cayenne pepper in it, it w-went to my eyes."

Crofts was desolated.

"Oh, I am sorry, sir. The chef shall hear of it, sir. And the roast
now--shall I carve it, or will you?"

Willie looked drearily across at Persis. "Do you want any roast?"

She frowned with aversion. "I couldn't touch it."

And Willie shook his head to Crofts. "We'll skip the roast. What follows
that? Be quick about it!"

Crofts lowered his voice, as if a game-warden might be listening, for it
was after the season had closed. "There is a pheasant, sir--sent down
from your own run, sir. It is braised, _financière_. I'm sure you'll
like it. You may have to wait a little, seeing as you didn't eat the
roast; but it's worth waiting for, sir."

The old man was pleading both for the honor of his menu and for the
welfare of his master. Willie nodded curtly, and the roast, that had
ridden in so royally on its silver palanquin with its retinue of cutlery
and its hot plates, was removed in disgrace.

Once more husband and wife were abandoned to themselves. But now Persis
looked with new eyes at the heap of misery collapsed in the opposite
chair. All these years Willie had tried to win her love with gifts, with
splendors, with caresses, prayers, compliments, and with weak
experiments in tyranny. And he had failed dismally. Finally his failure
and his shame had crushed him into abjection.

And now her heart went out to him with a melting tenderness. But now she
was unworthy to approach him. Now it was she that must plead:

"I'm awfully sorry for you, Willie. You haven't had a fair deal. I never
realized what a rotter I've been till now. But if you'll let me, I'll
try again; I'll try hard, really, honestly, Willie. The only man I ever
seemed to care for has taken himself out of my life. He hates me as you
hate me. I haven't much of anything to live for now except to try to
square things with you. I'll do better by you. I'll be on the level with
you after this. Honestly I will. We'll find happiness yet."

"Happiness!"

Even at this belated hour the world's ambition was so dear to him that
he was wrung with longing.

"It might have been possible if I hadn't found you out. I was a fool to
trust you so blindly, but I was a happy fool. I didn't know how happy I
was till I learned how unhappy I can be. Oh, Persis, how could you--how
could you? You seemed so clean and so cold and so proud, and you've let
that man make as big a fool of you as you've made of me."

She took her lashings meekly, hoping thereby to achieve some atonement.
"I know, I know," she confessed. "But we can keep other people from
knowing. We don't have to tell all the world, do we?"

Again the vision of stalking gossip enraged him. "The world--ha! It
always knows everything before the husband suspects anything. I've said
that about so many other fools I've known. Now it's my turn. Here we sit
at dinner in this ruined home as if everything were all right. Think of
it! After what I saw and heard I'm sitting here trying to persuade a
pack of flunkeys that you have been a good wife to me!"

"It's hideous, I know, Willie. I'll go away to-morrow. You can divorce
me if you want to. I won't resist. It will be horrible to drag your name
through the yellow papers. But I won't resist--unless you think you
might let our life run along as before until gossip has starved to
death? We'll be no worse than the rest, Willie. Every family has its
skeleton in the closet. The worst gossips have the worst skeletons.
Let's fight it out together, Willie, won't you? Please!"

She stretched one importunate hand across the table to him, but he
stared at her with glazed eyes. "And go on like this the rest of our
lives? Sitting at table like this every day, facing each other and
knowing what we know? Knowing what other people know of us? Keep up the
ghastly pretense till we grow old?"

She drew back her rejected hand with a sigh, but pleaded on: "It's not
very pretty, that's true; but let's be good sports and play the game. We
tried marriage without love, for you knew I didn't really love you,
Willie. You knew it and complained of it. But you married me. I tried to
do what was right. I ran away from him in France, and I tried to love
you and unlove him. But you can't turn your heart like a wheel, you
know. We've married and failed. But nearly everybody else has failed one
way or another, Willie. Nobody gets what he wants out of life. Let's
play the game through. You said to me once--do you remember?--you said,
'Gad, Persis, but you're a good loser.' And I've lost a little, too,
Willie. I've had a pretty hard day of it, too. Let's be good losers,
Willie; let's try it again, won't you? Won't you, please?"

She sat with hands clasped, and thrust them out to him and prayed to him
as if he were an ugly little idol. But contrition did not seem to render
her more attractive in his eyes. It hardened his heart against her.

"When I look at you I can only think what you've been to that man;
where you've gone, what you've done. You sit there half naked now, ready
to go to the opera, to expose your body before the mob--my body--my
wife's body. You show it in public--and you dance it in public with
anybody--with him! The first time you saw him you were dressed like
that, and you danced with him that loathsome tango. You taught him how.
And he has taught you how to be his wife--not mine.

"You've set everybody laughing at me. They're all saying I was a blind,
infatuated fool before. Now you want them to fasten that filthy word
'complacent' on me. You want me to overlook what you have done and what
you've brought me to. I'm just to say: 'Well, Persis, you've had your
lover and your fling, and you're tired of each other, so come home and
welcome, and don't worry over what's past. It's a mere trifle not worth
discussing. What's the Seventh Commandment between friends?"

She was trying to silence him, but he had not heeded the return of
Crofts till the pheasant was placed before him in all its garnishment,
and the plates and the carving-fork and the small game-knife. He was
ashamed, not of what he had said of her, but of his own excitement.

"Is the knife sharp?" he asked, for lack of other topic.

"Oh yes, sir," said Crofts. "I steeled it myself."

Willie began anew, groping in his tormented brain for something to
dispel the silence. The result was a dazed query:

"By the way, my dear, what's the opera to-night?"

"Carmen," she said.

He brightened. "Oh, of course. That's the opera where the fellow kills
the girl who betrays him, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"With a knife like this, eh?" And with a fierce absent-mindedness he
made a quick slash in the air. The knife was small and curved a little,
and it fitted his hand like a dagger. He chuckled enviously. "Ah, he was
the wise boy, that Don José. He knew how to treat faithless women. He
knew how to talk to 'em. A knife in the back--that's all they can
understand."

Crofts was too anxiously trying to avoid spilling a drop of the wine he
was pouring to heed the warning gestures of Persis. She felt that the
breaking-point of Willie's self-control had been reached. She must
dismiss the audience. She spoke hastily:

"Willie, my dear--my dear! Won't you send for some champagne--or sherry.
I hate this red wine, and, besides, we've skipped the roast."

"Oh yes," Willie agreed, with abrupt calm. "Crofts, down in
the--er--wine-cellar in the farthest end--you'll find laid away by
itself one bottle of--er--L'Âme de Rheims--one bottle, the last of its
ancient and--er--honorable name. Bring that here."

As Crofts stumbled out on his long journey, Willie commented, ominously:

"It's a good time to say good-by to that vintage!"

His roving eyes discovered Roake standing aloof. Willie snapped his
fingers and yelped at him:

"Get out! And stay out!"

Roake withdrew in haste, and Enslee muttered:

"I'm sick of seeing so many people standing around, staring, smirking,
listening, thinking about me. I wish I were on a desert island."

He sat forward to the pheasant, set the fork into it, and paused with
the knife motionless. Suddenly there were beads of sweat on his
forehead, and he was panting hard; then he groaned:

"My God, he took my revolver away from me!"

His eyelids seemed to squeeze his eyes in anguish. When he opened them
they were bloodshot and so fierce that they seemed to be crossed. He
laughed.

"I was too weak to kill your soldier. But I think I'm just about strong
enough to pay you up. Carmen got her reward with a knife, and you're no
better than she was."

He looked at the knife; it was beautifully sharp, and it inspired a
desire to use it. As a man seeing a gun wants to fire it at something,
he felt the call to employ this implement. He pushed back his chair,
rose, and groped his way round the table toward her, all crouched and
prowling.

CHAPTER LXVIII

Persis watched him come, and did not move. It was unbelievable that
disaster should fall to such as her from such as him in such a way. He
was evidently only playing a part to frighten her.

She blew a puff of smoke from her cigarette and fanned it away with
leisure, and smiled.

"You'd look well, now, wouldn't you, if one of the servants came in?"

She laughed at the picture.

"You're laughing at me again!" he groaned. "You're always laughing at
me. But you won't feel so funny with this knife in you."

She saw now that he was not fooling. But she despised him for his effort
to prove his bravery by a cowardice, and she eyed him with a marble calm
worthy of a nobler cause and a better reward.

"Sit down, Willie, and don't threaten me. You don't frighten me at all.
But you may alarm some of the servants and give them more of that gossip
you have harped on so much."

Her obstinate pluck bewildered him, but he lowered his voice as he
commented to some imaginary spectator: "My God! she has no higher
thought than that! Even now when death stares her in the face!" Then he
had a fanatic's mercy for her. "Why aren't you saying your prayers, you
fool?"

She answered him with all the authority she could command:

"Put down that knife! Put it down, I say! You know I could save myself
from any danger by raising my voice. And you know I'd rather die than
bring the servants in on such a scene."

"A scene!" he shrieked. "A scene! Why, woman, I'm going to kill you.
Don't you understand anything? You've only got a minute more to live.
Say your prayers! Damn you! say your prayers!"

There was an insanity in his look that frightened her at last. She tried
persuasion now, and her voice was soft and caressing.

"Gently, Willie; gently now, I beg you. You're not yourself, you know.
You must control yourself. Please!--as a favor to me."

It was the wrong word. It maddened him, and he snarled: "As a favor to
you? You dare ask favors of me? Go ask 'em of the man you've given
favors to! The man? The men!"

And this was sacrilege to her one love. Her lip curled in angry
contempt, and she turned from him in loathing, muttering:

"You dirty little beast!"

It was his muscles rather than his mind that did it. While his mind was
recoiling from the insult his arm had struck out, and the knife had slid
deep in the snow of her half-averted left breast; through the petal of a
rose, and the satin gown, and the deep white flesh beneath it, and on
into the wall of her struggling heart.

The blow and her effort to escape flung her backward, but the heavy
chair held her. Before she could remember a wild scream broke from her
lips.

As Enslee fell back his hand withdrew the knife. It came out all red. He
gaped at it and shuddered, and it fell with a little clatter on the
marble floor, flinging a few crimson drops on the black-and-white.

The noise startled him, and he retreated from her, clinging to the edge
of the table. He felt queasy, and pushed back till he felt his chair and
dropped into it--still staring at her and wondering, and she
wondering at him.

[Illustration: HER OBSTINATE PLUCK BEWILDERED HIM]

It seemed a long time before her cry brought any response. Chedsey was
in the cellar with Crofts and heard no sound, but Roake was in the
pantry. He paused a moment, not trusting his ears, then he pushed the
door open slightly and peered through. Other servants came crowding into
the pantry whispering and jostling. He motioned them back.

His master and mistress were in their places. Mrs. Enslee looked pale
and was lying back in her chair. He slipped through the door and spoke
timidly:

"Beg pardon, ma'am; but did you call?"

Persis, at the sound of the door, finding her fan still in her hand, had
instantly spread it across her wound. And her first impulse was to deny.

"No," she answered; then quickly: "Yes, I--I am ill--a little--suddenly.
Telephone for Doctor--Doctor--the nearest doctor. You'd better run."

He turned to obey, but paused to ask:

"Isn't there anything I can do first, ma'am?"

"No, go! Go!" she fluttered.

"Sha'n't I send some one else while I am gone, ma'am?"

"No, no; keep them all away, all of them, till I ring."

Roake, with a face like ashes, still waited, staring.

"But, ma'am, you are hurt! You are bleeding!"

"Nonsense!" she stormed. "I spilled some claret on my fan. The doctor!
Will you never go?" And he ran out through the jumble of servants,
ordering them back to their stations.

And then Nichette came stumbling through the golden portal. She had
heard the cry above, and had understood the pain and terror in it, and
had run pell-mell down the great stairs, her hand whistling on the
marble balustrade.

She paused now, clinging to one of the red curtains, and stammering:

"_Madame, Madame! qu'y a-t-il? qu'avez-vous?_"

Persis turned her head dolefully toward the face so wild with anxiety
for her sake, and murmured, with a smile of affection and a tender form
of speech:

"_C'est toi, Nichette? Ce n'est rien, mais--mais_"--A shiver ran through
her. "_Je sentis des frissons. Va faire mon lit. Je me vais coucher._"

Nichette came forward unconvinced or to help her, but she motioned her
off with a frantic hand, crying impatiently, "_Dépêche-toi! veux-tu te
dépêcher!_"

And Nichette, mutinously obedient, ran away, leaving Persis shivering
indeed with a chill.

And now husband and wife were alone once more. And Willie could only
stare and murmur, vacuously:

"What have I done? What have I done?"

"You've killed me, that's all," she answered, with a curious amusement.
"It was such a funny thing for you to do, so old-fashioned."

There is a strange fact about wounds in the heart. If they are not so
deep that they flood the lungs and smother out life they inspire a wild
desire to talk, a fluttering garrulity.

So Persis, now, with that madly stitching shuttle in her breast, and
that red seepage from her side, had unnumbered things to say. She
chattered desperately, disjointedly:

"Oh, I suppose it had to come. It's what I get for trying to run things
my own way. And now the tango-shop's closed up. But it's so funny that
you should be the one to--and with a knife! You didn't mar my face,
anyway. I thank you for that much. I'd hate to have my face hidden at
the funeral. I should hate to make an ugly cor--"

Her lips refused the awful word as a thing unclean, abominable. Her body
and all the voluptuous company of her senses felt panic-stricken at the
thought of dissolution. She moaned and struggled with her chair.

"No, no, not that! What have I to do with death? I'm not ready to die.
I'm not ready to die."

Willie got up and ran to her left side, but shrank back from what was
there, and moved cautiously round on the slippery floor, crying: "You're
too beautiful to die, too beautiful! You'll not die! The doctors will
save you!"

"They must come very soon, then," Persis said, "for I'm bleeding--oh, so
fast." She looked down along her side and complained: "See, my gown is
quite ruined. And it was such a pretty gown. I'm afraid of my blood. How
it gushes! Will it never stop? And it hurts! Willie, it hurts!"

In a long writhe of pain she gathered the table-cloth about her left
side as if to stanch its flow. There was a rattle of falling glasses and
a chink of tumbled silver as she moaned: "Oh, what shall I do? What
shall I do?" And she turned her head this way and that, panting as one
pursued, bewildered, utterly at a loss. "Oh, what shall I do? I don't
want to die. It's an awful thing to die--just now of all times, with no
chance to make good the wrong I've done."

"You can't die; I won't let you die. You're too beautiful to die,"
Willie protested, and then turned to pleading: "I didn't mean to. I
didn't mean to strike you, Persis, at all. It was just my hand. It
wasn't me that stabbed you, Persis. I couldn't hurt you, Persis."

"Oh, that's all right, Willie. I understand. I understand things better
now, with so few minutes more to live. It is you that must forgive me. I
haven't been a good wife to you, Willie. And he--he, of all men!--said I
wasn't worth fighting for! Faithless to you--faithless to him! But oh,
God knows, most faithless to myself. And now I must die for it."

"You are too beautiful to die! I won't let you die! You can't die!"

"But I must, boy. Don't hate me too much. I didn't mean to harm you.
Some day--long after--you'll forgive me, won't you?"

"Oh, if you only won't die I'll forgive you anything."

"That's awfully nice of you, Willie," she said, with almost a smile. "I
wonder if God will be as polite? They--they usually pray for dying
people, don't they? I'm afraid they'll never get a doctor in time, to
say nothing of a preacher. So you'd better pray for me, Willie."

The idea was so ridiculously tragic that she laughed; but he would not
so far surrender her as to pray. He sobbed:

"You've got to live! I don't know a single prayer. You mustn't die, I
tell you. You've got to live!" And he wept his little heart out as he
knelt at her side, and, clinging to her hand, mumbled it with kisses.

She wept, too; moaned, and dreaded the black Beyond, which she must
voyage prayerless. Still she must talk. From her silence came a frail,
thin voice like a far-off cry.

"It's growing very dark, Willie--very dark! And I'm drifting, I wonder
where? Can you hear my voice away off there? Better throw me a kiss, and
wish me bon voyage! for this--is the last--of Persis. Poor Persis!"

Something of old habit reminded her of the gossip that would break into
storm at her death. This spurred her heart to strive again. She clutched
at the table and at Willie's arm and shoulder, and held herself erect as
with claws, while she babbled:

"Willie, Willie, I've just thought. They'll try you for--for murder. The
newspapers--the newspapers! Oh, my poor father! And they'll put you in
jail! That mustn't happen to you--not to one of your family!--not
through me!--no--no, it just mustn't! You must run--run--run!"

Enslee shivered at the future, and would have fled if he could have
found the strength to rise from his knees.

And then the swinging door puffed softly, sardonically, and on the
tapestries Tristram and Isoud looked at each other and then at her and
shook their heads in pity.

Crofts, who had neither heard nor been told, came in with that eminent
champagne in a dingy and ancient bottle.

He went behind the screen to untwist the wires and rub away the
spider-webs. Then he came forward toward Willie's place to pour the
first few drops there, according to the rite, before he filled Persis'
glass. He had eased out the cork, and the soul of the wine was frothing
forth into the swathing cloth when he blinked at the empty chair; then
his eyes went across to Persis. He stared at her in mute amazement. She
stared at him. She beckoned.

He put the bottle on the table and shuffled toward her.

She motioned him nearer with a limp and tremulous hand, and he bent down
to hear her tiny voice.

"Crofts, come closer--listen to me--do you hear?" He nodded.
"Perfectly?" He nodded, wringing his dry old hands.

"Well," she began, "I must tell you--and you must remember. Mr. Enslee
and I had a--a little quarrel--and I--I lost my temper--you know--and
seized the knife and--and stabbed myself."

The old man did nothing unbecoming to his caste, but he stood doddering
and longed to die in place of that beautiful youth. She beckoned him
nearer again, and spoke in a strangled voice: "Remember, I did
it--myself! Re-mem--"

Her head fell forward, her exquisite chin rested in her bosom. Her body
collapsed upon itself, and only the arms of the chair and the table kept
it from rolling out on the floor.

But as if even this last ugliness of attitude were intolerable to her,
she fought against the chair and the table, and pushed and slid backward
till her head was erect. And she was whispering courage to herself,
hoarsely:

"Come--come--Persis!"

She seemed to be trying to die like a thoroughbred, a good loser.

And then her head rolled back in the billows of her hair, with the
jeweled crown pointing downward and her eyes staring upward. Her wan,
pouting, parted lips and the long arch of her perfect throat were
themselves a prayer for mercy, offering up beauty as its own undoing and
its own excuse.

She was dead.

THE AFTERMATH

We cannot live to ourselves alone, nor die so. If a man or a dog crawl
off to perish in a wilderness, immediately death sets in motion a great
activity. On the ground ants muster, flies drum and pound; in the earth
worms make haste upward. On the empty sky a speck appears, wings gather,
buzzards are overhead. In the bushes eyes peer, paws are lifted and set
down with caution; coyotes, hyenas arrive. A city of scavengery is
founded and begins to flourish.

Persis had said, "This is the last of Persis." As if there were ever the
last of anybody or anything.

Of Persis it was almost the beginning. People were to hear of her now
who had never known of her existence. She who had never done anything
ambitious or earnest in any large sense was to become the cause of
world-wide debate. The newspapers she dreaded so much were to give her
head-lines above panics, wars, and empires.

When Persis screamed at the horror and the shame of being knifed, and
Roake appeared, and she told him that she was ill, he believed her. He
dispersed the servants. They knew, as servants always know, that a
quarrel had been raging; but family quarrels were the staple of their
lives, and they suspected nothing unusual.

Persis had told Roake to call the nearest physician. The telephone is
the confusion of distance; it mixes near and far hopelessly. So Roake
called the family physician, Dr. Thill; caught him dressing for the
opera. He promised to "be right over."

Then Roake went back to give Mrs. Enslee this word. He found the woeful
spectacle of Persis no longer able to hide her wound, no longer thinking
of appearances. Enslee was on his knees sobbing. Crofts, too good a
servant to express his emotions noisily, had not fallen to the floor or
sunk into a chair; he had turned a little aside and stood waiting the
next command; only, rubbing his hands together a little harder than
usual, while the tears poured across his eyelids.

Roake tiptoed to him and put his hand on his arm, and whispered, "Mr.
Crofts."

Crofts put his finger to his quivering lips and, beckoning his underling
aside, whispered to him: "No word of this to the rest of the house, mind
you. We'd best carry Mrs. Enslee to her room. Then we must help the
master to his."

They took Persis' chair by the arms dreadfully; but Crofts could not
lift his share of the weight. It was necessary to call Chedsey, and to
explain things a little to him and to pledge him to silence for the
honor of the house. He sickened of his burden and nearly fainted in the
little elevator as they crowded into it with their hideously beautiful
freight.

Nichette had the bed ready, and Enslee's man was helping her. Also two
other chambermaids had gathered to talk of the scream that had shot
through the house. Nichette banished the men while she took what care
she could of what remained of Persis--so different an office now from
what it had always been to Nichette.

Crofts told Roake to see to things below, and Roake and Chedsey went
down to the dining-room. Here there were tasks that were not pleasant.
They stared at the ruined graces of the table, the spilled wine and the
red-stained flowers, the glasses shattered and fallen, as if an orgy had
preceded there. The cook was told that the rest of the dinner would not
be served. The laundress was called from her supper to take away the red
table-cloth and the napkin. The housekeeper must know that Roake and
Chedsey were not to be charged with the breakage. The kitchen-maid was
sent to scrub the marble, and on her knees she must follow the crimson
trail to the door of the elevator, and wash that, too.

Before the doctor arrived a dozen people had been told that the mistress
of the household had killed herself. It was easy to warn them that
loyalty to the family imposed absolute silence. But what money or what
threat or plea could ever bribe a loose tongue to keep a secret for
somebody else?

Then Dr. Thill came in his motor. He left his huge fur coat on the hall
floor, and, dashing up-stairs, flung off his evening coat and his white
waistcoat, and rolled back his cuffs. He wrought upon the exquisite bare
flesh of Persis and upon the stopped clock of her heart with all his
science; yet he could not make her anything but a cadaver.

As he toiled he asked questions. Crofts and Nichette told him what they
knew, or thought they knew. Willie was supported in and questioned.
Remorse and fright made him pitiable. Still there remained a fox-like
intelligence. He told the doctor what Persis had told Crofts, but he was
so full of contradictions and confusion that Dr. Thill quickly suspected
the truth. He was enraged and revolted. The cruelty of the murder was
bad enough; but the wantonness of destroying so perfect a machine, as he
found Persis to be, was more wicked in his eyes.

Still, he was a typical family doctor. People who were dead were outside
his province. His clients were the living, and his business to keep them
alive and well. He had foiled death-bed revenges, aborted scandals that
threatened ruin to the young; risked his life and his liberty for his
patients. His trade was fighting the ravages of sin and error; saving
people, not destroying them. He felt no call to deliver an Enslee to the
electric chair.

He put Willie to bed, jammed bromides into him, and forbade him to talk
or to see any one. He telephoned Persis' father and Willie's mother to
come at once. He told them as delicately as he could. It was like
breaking a thunderbolt gently. Persis' father was stricken frantic. He
could not believe that his beautiful, his wonderful girl was dead. He
ran to her bedside, lifted her in his arms as if she were again his
little child, called to her, wept horribly over her, imagined the truth,
and vowed every revenge.

After the first tempests had worn him out he began to feel that it would
not comfort her to add scandal to her fate. He loathed the very name of
Enslee; but he had profited by it; he was still involved with it
financially; it was his daughter's final name. He joined the conspiracy
to bury the truth in Persis' grave. To say that she had killed herself
was an appeal for mercy; to proclaim that her indignant husband had
executed her for her crimes was a damning epitaph. He solaced himself
with the thought that it would be her wish.

Mrs. Enslee was first and last Willie's mother. Her thought was of him;
her heart was his advocate alone. She committed herself utterly to his
defense.

Dr. Thill was ready to give a certificate that Persis had died of
heart-failure. Even the story of suicide would attract the noisy
attention of the journals. He left the matter in abeyance for the
moment. The needful thing was a few hours of saving peace and silence.
He would be glad even to postpone the news from the next morning's to
the next evening's papers.

But little things thwart great schemes.

II

One of the Enslee housemaids, who had been flirting with the
brindle-haired reporter Hallard, remembered in the midst of the panic
that he was to take her that night to a moving-picture theater. He would
be loitering in the area now. She ran out bareheaded to explain that she
could not keep her engagement. When he asked why, she told him
falteringly that there had been a death in the family. She apologized
for permitting such an affair to interfere with her promised evening
out, but he gasped:

"A death in the Enslee family! Gosh, I've spent so many dismal hours on
death-watches that it's great to have you slip me a nice little
ready-made death like this. Whose was it? Who died?"

The maid felt that she had a clue now to Mr. Hallard's profession: from
his cheerful reception of such news he must be an undertaker. She
explained that it was Mrs. Willie Enslee who was dead.

"My God! the young one?" he cried, afire with the news possibilities.

"Yes; she killed herself."

This was almost too good to be true. Hallard grew greedy as a miser.

"Does anybody else know of this? Have any reporters called at the
house?"

"Nobody; only the doctor."

Hallard looked at his watch. He had time to build up a big story, which
was good; but there was time enough for the other papers also to arrive
on the ground, which was bad.

"Why did she kill herself?"

"Nobody knows. She had a terrible quar'l with Mr. Enslee, though."

"What about?"

"Nobody could find out."

Hallard thought hard. The name of Forbes occurred to him, for he
remembered the time he had seen Forbes with Persis.

"Did Captain Forbes call to-day?"

The maid stared. "Ain't you a wonder! How did you know?"

"Did they quarrel about him?"

"Nobody knows they did, but all of us feels sure they did."

Hallard bade his inamorata good night with genuine affection. She had
been worth while.

He went to the door of the house and reached it just as Persis' father
arrived in his car and was helped up the steps. Hallard tried to push in
with him, but was thrust out. He sent his card in, and it was returned
to him.

Dr. Thill threw up his hands in despair at the card. Reporters seemed to
be as ubiquitous as microbes. But he realized that it was now necessary
to make a formal announcement to the papers. He wrote out for Hallard a
statement, and had the housekeeper telephone it to a press bureau, that
"Mrs. William Enslee, during a period of mental aberration, committed
suicide at her home at seven-thirty o'clock, in the presence of her
husband. Mr. Enslee is prostrated with the shock." It was a simple
announcement.

Meanwhile Hallard, rebuffed at the front door and at the tradesman's
entrance, and rebuffed by telephone when he called up from a booth in
the nearest drug-store, was trembling with the opportunities almost
within his reach. His was the ecstasy of the writer of tragedies who
exults in every new horror that he can inflict on his characters. Only,
the Hallards are dealing in real lives, and not feigned.

Hallard's scent for news quickened at the thought of Forbes. Easily
enough he learned the name of Forbes' hotel. He hurried there and sent
up his card, with a penciled note: "Would appreciate expert opinion
regard to probable fate Philippine Islands in case of war with Japan."

The card found Forbes not yet recovered from the hurricane of passion
that had swept through his heart. He was dumfounded at what he had done
and said; at his ruthless cruelty, his revulsions from love to hate and
back again; at the supreme insolence of his treatment of the husband he
had wronged.

He found Enslee's little silver-handled revolver in his pocket and
tossed it on the table. He felt that he ought to turn it against himself
in self-execution. It was too weak an instrument for such a business. He
got out his own big army revolver. But he was not of the type that is
capable of suicide, any more than Persis was.

He began to pack his things for his return to hard service away from the
frivolities of the city. The sight of his uniforms made him the soldier
once more. He grew homesick for the brisk salute of his soldiers, the
gruff and wholesome joviality of fellow-officers, the noble reality of
his chosen career.

And then he came across her boudoir cap again. It bewitched him. It was
so utterly unmilitary, so far from usefulness or importance, all pliant
and fragrant and adorably foolish. He put it back in its nest in the
pocket next his heart. And his heart quickened its pace.

With that quickening came by reflex a sense of terror. What had become
of Persis? He had left her to the mercies of Enslee. It occurred to
Forbes that if a man had dealt with him as he had dealt with Enslee he
would be so maddened that he would run amuck and slay the first thing he
met, and first of all the woman who had dragged him into such shame
below shame.

What if Enslee had attacked Persis? Beaten her, or torn her face with
his nails, or hurled her out into the street? Forbes felt that he must
go to her rescue. The impulse lasted only long enough to be ludicrous.
What right had he in that household? What harm could Enslee wreak upon
Persis to equal the wrongs that Forbes had done her? He blamed himself
for everything, and, blaming himself, absolved Persis, forgave her,
loved her again.

In this seethe of moods the card of Hallard arrived with a request for
his expert military opinion on a subject that had been one of his
hobbies in the days when military ambition was the major theme of his
life. It renewed his hope. It was like the feel of something solid
underfoot to a spent swimmer in cross-currents.

He welcomed Hallard with cordiality, apologized for the disorder of the
room, expressed an opinion that he had met Hallard somewhere before.
Hallard said he thought not. As he stated his plans for a Sunday
special, a "symposium" of views on Philippine fortification, he picked
up the silver-handled revolver on the table and laughed:

"Is this lady-like weapon the latest government issue?"

Forbes did not laugh; he flushed as he shook his head. A wild thought
came to Hallard. Forbes might have been present at Mrs. Enslee's death.
He might have killed her himself with her own revolver. It was a wild
theory; but he had known so much of murder, and had come upon such
fantastic crimes, that nothing seemed impossible to him.

With pretended carelessness he broke the silver revolver open and
glanced at the cylinder. Every chamber was full but one. Had a shot been
fired from it, or had one chamber been left unloaded for the hammer to
rest on?

Hallard put down the weapon and talked yellow journalism of the
Philippine problem. A little later he said, quite casually:

"Too bad about Mrs. Enslee, wasn't it, Captain?"

The startled look of Forbes confounded his theories.

"What is too bad about Mrs. Enslee?"

"Her sudden death, I mean."

"Her death!" Forbes cried, the world rocking with sudden earthquake.
"Her death! Not Persis! Persis isn't dead?"

"Why, yes; didn't you know?"

"My God! My God! how did she die? She was well, perfectly well
at--at--this afternoon when I--tell me, man, man, what do you mean?"

Hallard was readjusting his case. He spoke very gently.

"I'm mighty sorry to have told you without warning. I thought, of
course, you knew. You were a great friend of the family, weren't you,
Captain?"

Forbes whitened at this, but his grief was keener than his shame.

"Tell me, how did she die?"

"The story we get is that she killed herself--stabbed herself!"

Forbes gripped his head in his arms and bowed to the thunderbolts
crashing about him. At length his distorted face appeared again and he
demanded:

"Who was with her when she killed herself?"

"Her husband."

"Then it's a lie. She never--she wouldn't--he killed her! And it's my
fault for leaving her with him. I ought to have known better. I was
tempted to go back to her. I shouldn't have left her there with
that--that--and now she's dead! He butchered her! I'll kill him for it.
I will! He wasn't man enough to fight me--he--did you say you were a
reporter?"

"Well, I'm a special writer."

Forbes' words began to roar back through his memory. He began to hear
them as they would fall on a stranger's ear. Even in his frenzy he
realized the danger of his madness. Talking to a reporter was like
crying his thoughts aloud in Madison Square Garden. Grief, discretion,
remorse, revenge, assailed him from all sides at once.

He seized Hallard by the shoulder and raged at him.

"Look here! This Philippine idea was just a trick, wasn't it, to startle
me and make me forget myself? You fooled me, but you can't get away with
it."

He saw his big Colt's revolver in his trunk-tray, and he thundered:

"I ought to shoot you for this, and I will unless you swear that you
will never print a word of what I've said, never breathe a word of it to
a soul. Promise, or by--"

Hallard smiled and raised his half-eyebrow.

"You're a little excited, Captain, aren't you? You're kind of forgetting
that shooting a reporter would be about the poorest way of escaping
publicity ever imagined. People would naturally ask what it was you were
so anxious to conceal, eh?"

Forbes turned away helpless.

Hallard anticipated his next desperate idea. "I'm much obliged to you,
Captain, for not offering me a ten-dollar bill or a new suit of clothes.
They usually begin with that. But it rarely works, Captain. We're a
shiftless lot, some of us, but we've got our ideas of duty, too."

"Duty to what?" Forbes sneered. "Duty to act as grave-robbers and expose
the sorrows of the world to the laughter of the public? To drag families
down to ruin?"

"Duty to throw the light into dark places, Captain; duty to make it hard
to conceal things the public ought to know; duty to keep digging up the
truth and throwing it into the air."

"Truth!" Forbes raged. "What have you got to do with the truth? Would
you know it if you saw it? Would you use it if you had it?"

"You bet I would," Hallard said. "If you'll tell me the exact truth, as
far as you know it, about the suicide--or murder, as you call it--of one
of the most beautiful members of one of the most prominent
families--I'll publish it."

"In your own way, yes."

"In your own words, Captain. I write shorthand. Just dictate to me the
whole story of your acquaintance with Mrs. Enslee and your reasons for
believing that her husband killed her; and I'll not change a word. You
can read it, and sign it, and take affidavit that it's the truth, so
help you--"

Forbes dropped into a chair, discredited, his bluff called. All the
lofty motives and compulsions of chivalry took on an ugly look. Sir
Launcelot was an adulterer and a welcher.

The hideously altered face of things shattered him so that Hallard felt
merciful.

"I'm sorry, Captain; but you see how it is. You see why reporters get a
little hard, why our mouths sag. We don't publish the truth oftener
because people won't tell it to us. The truth isn't the pure white lady
in a nice clean well that the painters represent her: the truth is a
kind of a worm-eaten turnip that comes out of the ground with a lot of
dirt on it. We don't print all we find out by a long shot. If we did
this old town would make for the woods, and the people in the woods
would run to cover in town. I'd be glad to drop this affair right here;
but, don't you see, I can't. The Enslees are too big to overlook.
There'll be an army of reporters on the job, with their little
flashlights poking everywhere. The police will fall in line later.
There'll be editorials on the wickedness of society. Society--if there
is such a thing--isn't any wickeder than anybody else. The middle
classes are rotten, and the lower classes are putrid. But society makes
what old Horace Greeley called 'mighty interesting reading.'

"The name of Enslee is going to be a household word, because when an
Enslee sins it's like sinning in the grandstand. I saw something like
this coming a year ago. I thought it might simmer down; but it's broken
bigger than I ever dreamed. You're in for it, Captain. The Great
American People is going to rise on the bleachers and holler for blood.
It will forget all about you the minute something else happens. Take
your medicine, Captain. It will be somebody else's turn soon, for most
of us are doing the tango on a thin crust of ashes over a crater. But
it's the face-cards that the two-spots like to read about. The minute
somebody else that's prominent pops through we'll let you alone. But
you're in for it, Captain--'way in. Better crawl under my umbrella and
give me the story."

He meant it well, but it was impossible for Forbes to accept his
philosophy or his counsel. To Forbes he was a slimy reptile with a
hellish mission. Forbes told him so, denied all that he had said, defied
him, and turned him out. And now he had leisure to understand the full
meaning of it all. First, his grief for Persis broke his heart open. He
mourned her as a sweetheart, a betrothed, a wife; mourned her with an
intolerable aching and rending and longing, and with an utter remorse
because of his last words to her. When she was afraid and distraught he
had heaped condemnation on her! And who was he to reproach her? Had he
not pursued her, overwhelmed her, made and kept her his? And then to
discard and desert her, knock aside her pleading hands and leave her in
the clutch of the maniac who had threatened them both! He had taken
Enslee's revolver away--as if that were the only weapon in the world!

Never had Persis seemed so beautiful to Forbes as he remembered her now,
cowering under his wrath, pleading for pity, rushing to protect him even
then, and falling in a white swoon at his feet, as if already dead. And
even then he had spat on her and left her!

IV

The next morning's papers, without exception, gave the death of Mrs.
Enslee "under mysterious circumstances" the doubtful honor of the front
page, right-hand column. In some of them the account bridged several
columns. The head-lines ranged from calm statements to blatant
balderdash.

To Forbes, who had not slept all night and had sent down for the papers
soon after daybreak, the stories were inconceivably cruel, ghoulish,
fiendishly ingenious. The fact that Persis' wedding had been celebrated
only a year before was emphasized in every account. She was called a
"bride" in most of them, and her "honeymoon" was used dramatically in
others. The importance of her family and of Enslee's was exaggerated
beyond reason. Her portrait was published even in papers that rarely
used illustrations.

Her beauty pleaded from every frame of head-lines till it seemed as if
her face had been clamped in a pillory, and that the newspapers were
pelting her without mercy or decency.

There was no way of protecting her, no way of punishing the anonymous
rabble, no way of crying to the mob how lovable she had been and how
impossible it was that she should have taken her own life. Forbes was
understanding now how much worse a scandal it implied to say that she
had been murdered. A woman might kill herself for any number of reasons,
most of them pathetic; but a woman whom her husband puts to death can
hardly escape calumny. Her lover was silenced by the reasons that
silenced her father.

Forbes had not heard, or had forgotten, what paper Hallard represented.
He soon recognized his touch. One paper, and one only, implied that
Persis' death might not have been a suicide, but a murder. One paper
alone referred to her "interest in a certain well-known army officer who
had recently come into a large fortune and was much seen with her."

When he read this Forbes turned as scarlet as if he had been bound hand
and foot and struck in the mouth.

Only one morning paper implied that Persis had strayed into the primrose
path of dalliance. Not one evening paper failed to emphasize this
theory. The editors of these sheets, appearing at their office before
dawn, issued their first "afternoon" editions at 8 A.M., and had their
"night" editions ready by noon. They all made use of Hallard's material
and tried to supplement it.

Before Forbes had finished his breakfast he was visited by the first
reporter, and refused to see him. Within the next half-hour a dozen
reporters were clustered in the hotel lobby. They lay in wait for him
below like a vigilance committee zealous for his lynching.

Forbes felt like a trapped desperado. He dared not venture out into that
lurking inquisition. He dared not call upon any of his friends for help,
lest they be tarred with the brush that was blackening his name. He had
planned to take a morning train to his Western post. He was afraid to go
to it now. He was afraid to arrive at the garrison, knowing that the
scandal would have preceded him on the wires.

He decided that he must resign from the army before he was dismissed the
service for bringing disgrace upon the uniform. There were officers
enough whose irregularities were overlooked, but they had kept from the
public prints. Forbes had not only sinned, but had been found out.

He felt like a mortgager who sees himself foreclosed and sold up. He had
lost Persis, and he was about to lose his career. He wrote out his
resignation, addressed the envelope, sealed it, bent his head down in
his arms above it, and gave himself up to despair. His loneliness was
almost more than he could endure.

By and by a letter was brought to his room. He had refused to answer the
telephone, and he ignored the knocks of the hall boys. This letter was
pushed under the door. It was from Ten Eyck:

     DEAR HARVEY,--Just a line to tell you that my heart aches for you
     and with you. The thought of Persis dead is almost unthinkable,
     nearly unbearable to me. What it must be to you I dread to imagine.

     I always remember the old Persian philosopher's motto when he was
     tempted to enjoy joy too much or grieve too much over grief: "This,
     too, will pass away."

     You are too big a man to let this or anything break you down. Bend
     to it, but don't break.

     It occurs to me that you may need a little time to recuperate,
     where you can't read the papers or hear them bawled under your
     window.

     On Long Island I have a little shack on a sandbar on the edge of
     the ocean. How would you like to run down there for a few days? You
     can do your own cooking. If you wish I'll go along; but if you'd
     rather be by yourself I won't go. I think you'd better be by
     yourself and think it all out.

     I enclose a time-table with the best trains marked.

     Take a closed taxi to the station, and you'll not be noticed. If I
     can do anything, command me.

    Affectionately yours,

    MURRAY TEN EYCK.

Not a reproach. Not an "I told you so." Not a minimizing of the tragedy.
Just a life-preserver thrown to a man in deep waters.

Forbes wrote:

     God love you for this. I'll never forget. I'll prove my gratitude
     by sparing you the ordeal of my company.

He packed a suit-case, bribed a porter and an elevator man, and escaped
from the hotel by one of the service elevators and the trade entrance.
He swore to Heaven that this should be the last time he would sneak or
cower. He reached his destination without remark, and found it
congenially dreary.

There was a furious storm that night. Wind and rain flogged his cabin,
and the sea cannonaded the beach. But the shack survived, and the beach
was still there in the morning. There was only the wreckage of a little
schooner cast ashore.

At first Forbes railed against the heartlessness of the sea. But
gradually he came to understand that the ocean is not heartless; it
simply obeys its own compulsions, and the wrecks it makes are those that
should not have been out upon the waters or those that got in the way of
the laws. That was what Forbes had done.

As he strolled the sands or sat and watched the endless procession of
waves, waves, waves, hurling themselves upon the shore to their own
destruction, in his thoughts memories came up one after another, like
waves: memories of beautiful hours that seemed to have no meaning beyond
their own brief charm; visions of Persis in a thousand attitudes of
enchantment, in costume after costume. He saw her at the theater, lithe,
exposed, incandescent; he clasped her in the tango; he clenched her hand
at the opera; he saw her riding her cross-saddle in her boyish togs; he
clasped her in the taxi-cab in the rain; he walked with her in moonlight
and in the auroral rose; he galloped alongside her, strode with her in
the woods; he held her in his arms while they watched the building
burning gorgeously at night; he saw her in all the lawless intimacies of
their secret life--careless, childish ecstasies and wild throes of
rapture.

Then he remembered what she had told him of Ambassador Tait's warning:
"The world is old, my child, but it is stronger than any of us. And it
can punish without mercy."

He was tasting now the mercy of the world, and Persis, lying in cold
white state, as he imagined her, was the visible slain sacrifice on the
altar. They had indeed sinned. She had chosen wealth instead of love,
and then had tried to steal love, too. The simple fact was that they had
been wicked. They had duped and sneaked and feasted on stolen sweets.
Their punishment was just. Many others had sinned more viciously and
prospered in their sin or repented comfortably and suffered nothing. But
they were not to be envied altogether.

Somehow to his man's heart it brought a strange kind of comfort to feel
that this ruination was not a wanton cruelty, but a penalty exacted. It
made the world less lonely; it replaced chaos with law and order.
Perhaps other souls would take warning from their fate; perhaps other
guilty couples would be frightened back to duty; perhaps somebody
tempted by the scarlet allurements of passion would be helped toward
contentment with the gray security and homely peace of fidelity.

The world was in a tempest against him. The waves had cast up his
beautiful fellow-voyager on the sands. If only their shipwreck might
keep somebody else from putting out to sea in pleasure craft unseaworthy
and unlicensed!

V

Had Forbes read the papers he would have known that the storm had not
subsided yet. The wealth of Enslee could not bribe the least mercy; it
was rather a stimulus to the press.

At the height of the tempest the funeral of Persis was held. Almost
nobody attended it, and the few that did were rather drawn by curiosity
than respect. Those who knew Persis well were afraid to be seen in the
company even of her body. They were busy denying their earlier intimacy
or telling how they had foreseen this disaster. She went in lonely state
to join the silent throng in the cemetery, and she knew no more of the
storm that raged about her than the world knew of the one high
achievement of her soul. She was like some little brilliant bird of
paradise flung to the ground by a lightning stroke. The storm roared on,
the ferocity of the newspaper attacks increased with every extra. The
fact that a theory was hinted in an early edition was taken as proof
enough for a positive statement in a later. Finally there were demands
for the arrest of the husband.

The district-attorney was busy, however, on an Augean task--the cleaning
out of the police stable. He delayed or forbore to take up the Enslee
matter. He was accordingly attacked as a toady to the rich. This stung
him to an investigation.

And at last the police entered into the affair. Enslee was sent for and
cross-questioned by commissioners. He was at bay, and he revealed
unexpected gifts of evasion. Willie's lawyers stood by him. They were
high-priced men, and they earned whatever he paid them. They succeeded
in fighting off an indictment.

But even now Hallard and his cronies would not let him rest above ground
or Persis beneath. Conflicting bits of Enslee's testimony were published
in parallel columns, and his explanation that Persis, in her final rage,
had seized the knife from his hand and stabbed herself was declared
impossible and unconvincing. Her dying statement, as sworn to by Crofts,
stood, however, as the one strong shelter over Enslee's head.

The skeptics insisted that Crofts, being deaf, had heard wrong or been
bribed to perjury. None of them dreamed that Persis could have devised
that snow-white lie as her atonement to the man she had betrayed.
Hallard was obsessed with an idea that if Persis' body were exhumed it
would be shown that she could not have dealt the fatal wound with her
own hand. He had once organized a campaign against a decision of the
court sentencing a valet to the penitentiary, and kept it up until the
prison gates were opened and the man gained an opportunity to tell his
story anew. He was found guilty again and sent back to his cell; but the
despotic power of the press was demonstrated. If Hallard could open the
penitentiary, why not the grave in which a _corpus delicti_ had been
hastily hidden?

With every weapon in the vast armory of newspaperdom Hallard waged his
battle. The political ambition of the district-attorney finally yielded
to the coercion. An order was obtained from the court commanding the
officials of the cemetery to unseal the tomb where Persis' body had been
stored until the great monument Enslee had commissioned could be made
ready to weigh her down irretrievably.

Forbes, having regained his courage in his absence in the wilderness,
was seized with a mad desire to gaze upon his beloved's face once more
and to whisper to her a prayer that she forgive him for abandoning her
in her desolation and her peril. Ten Eyck used every plea to dissuade
him; but, failing, determined to go with him.

Permission to be present at the exhumation was secured with little
difficulty, and the two men joined the group of court officials and the
six experts who were to decide from examination whether or not Persis
could have inflicted the fatal wound upon herself.

VI

And so Persis came back again to the world in a mockery of resurrection,
back again from the sodden earth to the light of day that had blessed
her beauty and not known her sin.

Forbes waited her reappearance in a frenzy of anxiety. It was to him a
kind of holy tryst that he must keep at any cost.

Slowly the casket was raised; one by one the screws in the coffin-lid
were removed, and at last the board was removed from over the white,
white face. Some impulse of protection led Ten Eyck to thrust Forbes
back until he himself had taken the first look. He gazed and groaned at
the havoc death had wrought in all that beauty. When Forbes pressed
forward, Ten Eyck whirled and clapped his hands over Forbes' eyes and
dragged him aside, whispering huskily:

"Don't look! In God's name keep the memory of her as she was."

Forbes suffered himself to be led aside. He and Ten Eyck waited at a
distance while the tests were made. The knife was closed in the icy
fingers, and the exquisite arms moved here and there. Over the cold and
silent body the experts wrangled. And the upshot of the desecration was
that they could not agree; three of the jurors declared that Persis
could not have reached so far around to set the knife in her side; and
three that she could have done it, whether she did or not.

Persis, wherever she was, kept her secret. And Willie, abiding the
decision in a stupor of terror, thanked God and her for their silence.

The newspapers had much to say of this last phase of the Enslee mystery.
They summed up again all the old scandals, and then they, too, went
silent. Their readers grew weary of the juggle of facts and falsehoods.
The mishaps of other lovers furnished them with unfailing supply of the
old mistakes that are the eternal news. Forbes, who had withheld his
resignation from the army at Ten Eyck's bidding, was received back into
his place, shorn of his ambitions, his youth, and his pride.

Often and often when he is alone he takes from its hiding shelter a
little nightcap of ribbons and laces and shakes his head with vain
regret.

He thinks of Persis always as she was that morning when the filmy cap
fell from her lawless curls. He cannot but feel that there was something
elect in her, something divinely beautiful, however thwarted for this
world.

But then he loved her, he could forgive her anything. If God loved her,
could he not do as much?

When the skies are clouded he remembers her wise little saying, "Behind
the blinds there are always eyes." He wonders if there are eyes behind
the clouds and beyond the sun. And if there are, and if they are the
seeing eyes of perfect understanding, What do those people say?

THE END

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Obvious typographical errors in spelling and punctuation have been
corrected without comment. One example of an obvious typographical error
is on page 345 where the word "irrevocaable" was changed to
"irrevocable" in the phrase: "The irrevocable was accomplished." Other
than obvious typographical errors, the author's original spelling,
punctuation, hyphenation and use of accents has been left intact with
the following exceptions:

     Page 24: "tile" was changed to "tie" in the phrase: "... one silk
     tie..."

     Page 99: "lovelily" was changed to "lovely" in the phrase: "... her
     lovely disparted bosom..."

     Page 206: "darkled": was changed to "darted" in the phrase: "And
     they darted between the planets..."

     Page 251: The phrase: "... some one's else success." was changed
     to: "... some one else's success."

     Page 284: "ditto" was changed to "ditty" in the phrase: "... it was
     a romping ditty...."

     Page 423: A question mark (?) was changed to a period (or
     full-stop) in the sentence ending: "... stealth of clandestine
     lovers."

The author's use of the words "thridding" and "thredding" have been left
unchanged as in the following instances:

     Page 13: "... as it thridded the unpoliced traffic...."

     Page 67: "... he was now thridding the maze...."

     Page 380: "... thredding the increasingly mucilaginous crowd...."