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Title: The noise of the world

Author: Adriana Spadoni

Release date: January 15, 2025 [eBook #75113]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Boni and Liveright, Inc, 1921

Credits: Mary Meehan and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NOISE OF THE WORLD ***





                        THE NOISE OF THE WORLD

                          By ADRIANA SPADONI

                 AUTHOR OF "THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM"

                          BONI AND LIVERIGHT
                              PUBLISHERS
                               NEW YORK

                           COPYRIGHT, 1921,
                       BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.

                         _All rights reserved_

               _Printed in the United States of America_


                      ... but hearing oftentimes
                   The still, sad music of humanity,


                   A motion and a spirit that impels
                   All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
                   And rolls through all things.

                             --WORDSWORTH




                        THE NOISE OF THE WORLD




                              CHAPTER ONE


"Well, what do you propose? Come down to facts. It's all very
interesting and ethical, this harangue of yours; I wouldn't ask any
better if I were the defendants' counsel, but, as the opposition, it
is not in line. Are you seriously suggesting that this firm refuse the
case?"

"Exactly. I thought I made that plain at the beginning of my
'harangue.'"

John Lowell drew in his upper lip, frowned and swayed slowly back and
forth, as was his habit when thinking out some intricate point of law.
But, by the nervous tapping of the fingers upon the desk, Roger Barton
knew that the other was not analyzing a point of law. He was angry and
would continue to sway thoughtfully and tap with long, slim fingers
until he had fashioned a verbal sword with which to slash Roger's
repression to bits; then, smiling, would watch Roger flounder from
abstraction to personality, and drown in the sea of his own anger.
Roger Barton's wide mouth closed in a firm line.

At her stenographer's desk by the window, Anne Mitchell leaned
across her machine, her eyes on the younger man. In the year of her
secretaryship she had seen few men defy John Lowell and none emerge
with dignity from the interval of his silent tapping.

"Well?"

Still Roger did not speak. Neither did he knit his brows nor make any
outward sign of searching for a more cogent argument than the one he
had already advanced. His blue eyes summed up the man in the chair and
held his deduction quietly for the other to read. Against that look
John Lowell's pretense of calmness finally splintered.

"If we don't, some one else will; and it's eight thousand a year for
whoever gets the Morgan work."

Anne Mitchell rose and came round her desk. There she stopped, as
Lowell reached the end of his sentence, and stood leaning against the
edge. Standing so, she was slighter even than one would expect, almost
frail but for a kind of compactness, a perfection of bodily finish that
allowed no such waste of material as physical weakness. If Anne had
been a few inches taller, or twenty pounds heavier; if she had been
more sharply defined instead of being a small portion of space cased in
a body for the convenience of physical motion; if she had obstructed
attention instead of being almost fluid in the unobtrusiveness of
her movements, she would long ago have doubled her twenty dollars a
week. As it was, on the few occasions when John Lowell lent her to
other members of the firm, they always looked puzzled for a moment:
"Mitchell? Oh, sure, send her along. Good." And gave Anne twice the
amount of work they had intended.

"Well?" John Lowell drew out his watch, murmured "four twenty-seven!"
as if he were noting the amount to be charged later, and slipped his
watch back. "You don't seem to have anything very constructive to
offer, do you, Barton? Our not taking the case won't save your friends
on the hill."

"No. Neither did your refusing that railroad franchise case save the
public."

The older man smiled at the reference. "Too sticky. That would have
smelled to high Heaven."

"Not a bit stickier or smellier than this." Roger now took a step
forward, as if to insure the aim of his words through the unexpected
aperture of the other's momentary honesty. "The only difference is,
that you can put this over without publicity. The smell would never get
beyond the office. No one would whiff the rotten legal juggling that's
going to take away those poor beggars' homes. The Morgan Gravel Company
has literally blasted away dozens of laborers' homes, of foreigners
mostly, in the last ten years, and now that they've come up against a
few fighting Irish, the last stand on the Hill, they're going to daub
over their proceedings with a coat of white-wash."

"Goldwash," Lowell corrected with a grin. "You seem to forget that
these people are going to be paid for their property--whatever the
judge decides is fair."

"His imagination may reach to one hundred. McLaughlin may prod him to
one hundred and fifty."

"They'll take it."

"Of course they will, because Morgan will take the land out from under
them whether they accept the money or not."

"They can appeal. There's always more law."

Roger Barton's shoulders hunched. His thick, dry, blond hair seemed
to rise like an angry dog's. Without his moving, Anne felt that he
had crossed the space between himself and the other. Her small hands
clenched, and she nibbled her lower lip as she always did in moments of
forced repression.

"Yes," Roger said quietly, "there is always the law, more law, for the
rich, the crooked, the morally rotten. There is always the perversion
of justice, the farce of an appeal, the hypocrisy of a judge, the
pitiful sight of the 'twelve good men and true.' There is always more
law to quibble and distort the truth."

"No doubt." The smile deepened at Roger's vehemence. "Only we lawyers
don't usually express it so frankly."

"No, we don't. As long as we stay in the shameful business."

John Lowell's smile vanished. He looked at Roger with a sudden, new
penetration, as if he had only just come to the realization of the
seriousness of Roger's objection. After all, it might be well to
temporize a little with this hectic young idealist. The firm needed
Roger in many ways, and, in time, might need him more. With all this
popular truckling to labor and democracy, this preposterous inversion
of common sense and accepted order that seemed settling on the world,
Lowell & Morrison might come to need a signpost in the murk.

John Lowell frowned thoughtfully. In the six months of Roger's
connection with Lowell & Morrison, John Lowell had, more than once,
admitted to old Morrison that Roger Barton had "principle-itis in an
acute form." But as he had never seen, in the long course of his legal
life, this disease withstand the treatment of personal success, he
had kept his faith in Roger's final malleability--and many cases from
Roger's knowledge. This Morgan matter had escaped his vigilance, and he
was almost as angry with old Morrison as with Roger.

"Well," he finally conceded and rose to indicate the interview at an
end. "I don't want you to do anything you don't believe in, Barton.
I'll give the briefs to Daniels. You need have nothing to do with it."

"I never intended to have anything to do with it, nor with any other
case from now on. I'm through."

For a moment John Lowell looked at the younger man with a look of
hatred, scorn, and a shade of envy so faint that it was gone before
Roger could be sure it had been. Then he shrugged his acceptance.

"That, of course, is for you to decide. I would not want to try to
influence you in either direction. If you feel there is a purer field
for your talents, why, go to it. The law has existed for several
thousands of years and will probably go on." With a cold smile that
never touched his eyes, he turned to Anne.

"Miss Mitchell, could you take some letters right away? I must get them
off before five."

But Anne was coming slowly across the room toward him, as if drawn
against her consciousness. Now, at the direct address her face flushed
to realization; she hesitated, and then completed the distance with
so genuine an effort that Roger Barton felt her courage, and without
knowing that he moved, took a step toward her, as if answering the call
of her slight frailness for physical support.

"Do you really mean that those people are going to be maneuvered out
of their homes? That the legal action is only a sham? That it's all
settled before we begin?"

Always physical torture for Anne to assert her beliefs against
opposition, the flush flamed to a brick-red burning, her eyes grew
smaller, she looked hot and swollen. When Anne blushed like this she
was ugly.

John Lowell moved impatiently.

"Really, Miss Mitchell, a law office is not a church. It is a business.
Here is a big firm needing rock and gravel, easy to get and close to
shipping facilities. Years ago, when the city was not much more than a
village, a few people built some dilapidated shacks on Telegraph Hill.
The Lord knows what they paid for the land, or whom they paid. Soon
the growth of the city will force down these shacks. Morgan offers to
buy them now, and unless you value them by the 'home and fireside,
and baby's cradle' standard of every sentimental tenant, the price is
a fairly just one. The people themselves, if not interfered with,
will be glad to take what they can get. On the whole, they're a canny
lot. They know that it's only a question of a short time before they'd
have to go. A city growing like this has no room to waste so near its
water-front in rotting cottages and little gardens. The place for small
houses like those is in Ocean View, or the Portrero, or the Mission
outskirts."

"But it would take the men hours to get to their work from those places
and"--Anne shivered--"they're so dismal and bleak. Gray hills, and wind
and dust. The Hill has the Bay and the islands and the ferryboats at
night."

John Lowell stared in astonishment and then laughed.

"Really, Miss Mitchell, you alarm me. I'm afraid you'll be turning my
dictation into poetry, and sending out letters in blank verse."

The laugh cut Anne's last grip from the hope that John Lowell had not
really meant what he said. He was, then, deliberately doing this thing
that he knew was wrong, for the money in it. He was going to tear away
from these people perhaps the only external beauty their lives held.
Safe in his own well-appointed home, with all the glory of Bay and
hills spread out before him, he was going to condemn these to the gray,
thick dust of the Portrero, the bleak and windswept hills, the dull,
depressing streets of the Mission outskirts. All her life Anne had
lived on such a street and hated it with the whole force of her nature.

He had the power to do this thing and he was going to do it. Under the
suave kindliness of his slim, perfectly groomed figure, he was like an
animal snapping at every morsel that came his way. The law suddenly
appeared to Anne as a trick surface upon which one walked, ignorant of
the complicated mechanism below.

Standing before John Lowell, not reaching above his elbow, she looked
straight into the eyes smiling down at her with a new, appraising gleam.

"Well?" he said, "do you feel that you will be able to get them out in
plain prose?"

Anne rose on her toes, because the look in the full, brown eyes above
her forced her to throw her scorn straight into them.

"No. I shall not be able to get them out in prose--nor--in any other
way--after to-night. I--I--sha'n't be taking any more at all."

"No?" he said softly, the look changing to a touch that passed hotly
all over the surface of her body. "I'm extremely sorry."

"I--I--couldn't work here another day," Anne squeaked, furious at the
ridiculous picture she must make, poised upon her toes, like a silly
little bantam pecking in a rage.

"You needn't explain, Miss Mitchell, I understand--perfectly." And,
without moving his eyes, Anne felt them now include Roger Barton. "I
beg your pardon for suggesting it. Of course you couldn't--under the
circumstances. I assure you--I understand."

"Oh," Anne gasped in a cracking whisper that reached only to John
Lowell and deepened his touch-like look, "you are--rotten."

Then, feeling the tears rushing to her eyes, she dropped to her heels
and walked back to her desk.

The telephone summoned John Lowell. Roger Barton hesitated as if he
were coming to her, but she put a sheet of paper quickly into the
machine and he left the room. The office routine closed over the
incident.

From long practice Anne's fingers worked with accurate independence,
but, beyond their flying movement, her brain tried to put in order
the chaos of her thoughts. She had given up her job, the best job she
had had in the five years of her working life. In another half hour
she would go out of the office, never to return. She would go home
and tell her people. Into the heat of her mood, this need to tell her
people fell like a small, cold lump of lead. Something within herself
would drive her to try to make them understand, and only one fact would
emerge clearly to them--she had lost her job.

At five-thirty, Anne laid the last letter on John Lowell's desk. As she
put on her things, she knew that he was aware of every motion without
directly looking at her.

"Good night, Mr. Lowell."

"Good night, Miss Mitchell." He looked up. Anne was the best
stenographer he had ever had. In her close-fitting blue tailor suit,
with a small blue velvet toque framing the wonderful fairness of her
skin, and the smooth, cool gold of her hair, she was exceedingly
pretty--prettier than John Lowell had ever noticed. With Roger Barton
out of the way----

"If you reconsider your decision by morning, I won't remember it," he
said with a smile that she alone among his stenographers had escaped so
long.

"I shall not reconsider, Mr. Lowell." Anne spoke with a stiff primness
that instantly dispelled his new interest.

"Very well. Your check will be sent you at the end of the week, as
usual."

"This is only Wednesday."

"That's all right. You've often given overtime."

"Until Wednesday, if you please," Anne said quietly and wanted to cry.
Four days would mean nothing to John Lowell; much to her.

"Very well." He picked up his pen and Anne went out.

She heard Roger Barton's voice as she passed his door and hurried on
to the elevator. Down in the street, the home-going crowds flowed by.
Anne's eyes filled with tears and she nibbled her lip to keep them
back. Then she joined the northward current and walked quickly away.




                              CHAPTER TWO


The Mitchells lived in an old-fashioned upper flat on a street that,
before the great fire of 1906, had been a street of two-story wooden
houses and small cottages set back in pleasant gardens. But the fire,
sweeping the City's poorer quarters, had driven the inhabitants to the
safety of the Mission hills; the little cottages had been converted
into flats, the houses raised and small, congested shops inserted
below. For the first two years, until the new city settled to permanent
lines, there had been a bustle and cheap glitter through these streets,
a cosmopolitan mingling of many different types and nationalities,
that had touched the district faintly with romance. But now the better
shops had gone, and only a few frowsy Italian immigrants continued in
their untidy vegetable stands; disheartened widows managed small notion
stores and bewailed to the wives of the petty clerks, also nailed to
the district by low rents, the mythical comforts they had enjoyed
"before the Fire."

The wooden houses were all dulled to the same sad gray by wind and sun
and rain. The once pleasant gardens had shrunk to occasional slabs
of hard brown earth railed off with rusty iron pickets. The front
doors of the flats, raised three steps from the sidewalk, were all
exactly alike, warped and dust-grimed, with oblong insets of glass
two-thirds of the way up. Behind these insets, in brilliant curtains
of silkoline, or conscientious Battenburg or negligent Nottingham, the
tenants expressed their individuality against the engulfing monotony.
The Mitchells had plain white scrim, of thick quality and tightly drawn
on a brass rod. The doors of the upper flats worked by an uncertain
mechanism managed from within. When this mechanism broke, if one lived
in the top flat, one descended the endless stairs and worked the latch
by hand. As a child, Anne had dreaded calling on friends and ascending,
watched suspiciously from the heights above, until her identity was
disclosed. There were ghastly stories of unsuspecting women who had so
opened to burglars and been at their mercy.

As Anne unlocked the door the smell of pot-roast instantly enveloped
her, shutting away the problem of her own immediate future and the
broad shoulders of Roger Barton, hunched forward in defiance of John
Lowell. Anne's lip quivered.

"To-night--of all nights!"

Slowly she began the long ascent, enclosed by the thickening odor as by
the walls of a narrow corridor.

Anne hated pot-roast, not because of itself, but for its associations.
Pot-roast was a pretense. It had not the open honesty of stew.
Pot-roast was Mrs. Mitchell's final compromise in a line of preference
that had started with prime ribs of beef. It meant that James Mitchell
had bet away more than the usual portion of his monthly pay check; the
meager remnant had stung Hilda's patience to rebellion; her imagination
had leaped from the invariable shoulder chops of Wednesday evening to
prime roast; but, before it could safely land upon that pinnacle of
rebellion, had tripped and clutched at pot-roast. Anne sighed and went
slowly on. At the stair-head, the gas jet, stuffed with cotton wool to
keep it from ever being extravagantly turned to its full capacity, shed
a sickly light through an amber globe. She turned the cock ferociously
as far as it would go and then went on down the hall to the curtained
niche just outside her own hall bedroom.

Long ago this niche had been formed to hold the overflow from the hall
closet. Into it Mrs. Mitchell had since crowded broken and worn-out
pieces of household furniture, hideous bisque ornaments of the '90's
which Anne and Belle had refused to have about, oil lamps, in case
"something happens to the gas"; a sewing-machine that would cost more
to fix than to replace; dresses and bits of carpet, some day to be
made into new rugs; and the week's accumulation of laundry from which
she snatched and ironed pieces as she needed them. Years ago Anne had
tried to eliminate this niche, but when her mother had demanded where
she should put the things and Anne had suggested burning them, Hilda
had looked so grieved at the implication of her bad management in
ever letting them accumulate, and had asked Anne in so hurt a tone to
pick out "one single thing that might not be needed some day," that
Anne relented. Now the niche was like a malignant growth, too late to
operate upon, to which one submits. But even yet Anne never let the
portière quite fall to behind her and enclose her in this cemetery of
odds and ends.

When she had hung up her things she went down the hall, past the
dining-room where her father sat in the rocker under the hard, white,
incandescent light, staring at the unlit gas log in the grate, the
evening paper spread on his knees. In the kitchen her mother was making
gravy from the fat in the baking-pan.

"Hello, dear. You're late. I was just going to begin without you."

Mrs. Mitchell wiped the perspiration from her face with the corner of a
very soiled apron and kissed her daughter. She was taller and broader
than Anne, but she had the same long-lashed, deeply-blue eyes, and her
skin had once been even fairer. It was remarkably white and soft yet at
the base of her throat, although there were tiny lines about her ears
and at the corners of her mouth. Her hair had been dark, however, like
Belle's, and now was a fluffy mass of gray curls.

Anne always felt older than her mother and loved her, on the whole,
with a passionate, protective tenderness. There were times, however,
when Hilda's persistent cheerfulness and muddled thinking annoyed her,
and at long intervals Hilda disgusted her. These were the moments
of confidence in which her mother, under the pretense of "warning
the girls," confided to them, in general terms, "some of the things
married women have to put up with." Belle and Anne both knew that these
confidences were the result of her relations with the small, gray man,
their father. Years ago it had deepened Belle's indifference and Anne's
dislike to him.

"What is it now?" Anne took the spoon and tried to beat the lumpy gravy
to smoothness. "He's just staring into the grate."

Hilda shrugged. "That oil well, I suppose. I wish to goodness they'd
stop discovering gushers and copper and all those things. I thought
when the Chinese lottery was put out of business we might get a little
ahead."

Anne smashed at the lumps and frowned. "You ought to have put your foot
down years ago, that's all there is to it. If you'd made a real row
every time instead of just--just spluttering sometimes--he would have
had to sit up and behave."

Hilda bridled. "It's one thing to talk and another to do. When you're
married yourself, you'll understand. By the time you get 'round to see
how you could do it better, it's too late. They've got you saddled with
a baby and----"

Feeling a confidence about to descend upon her, Anne snatched the first
weapon to hand.

"I've quit the office, mamma."

Hilda's mouth remained open, her eyes held the "if-you-only-understood"
look that always accompanied such a confidence.

"You needn't look like that, moms; the world is really rotating just as
usual."

"Quit!" Hilda echoed in a whisper. "Quit!"

Anne nodded. "But I'll get another place in a day or two, don't worry,
dear."

"Quit!" Hilda echoed more faintly, and emerged into the reality of
the situation. "What for? I thought you liked the place. Did Mr.
Lowell--did he--anything----?"

Anne stamped her foot. "No. Of course he didn't. I did like it as far
the general atmosphere of the office went, although I've had doubts of
him lately. But to-day he came out into the open. He's a--crook."

"Good gracious! What did he want you to do?"

"Nothing special. But I can't work in a place where I know things are
being done that he's doing. I just can't."

Hilda went back to the gravy. She did not want Anne to work in a
dishonest office, but she did wish Anne had not discovered the
delinquency of John Lowell for a few days.

"No, dear, of course you can't. But--suppose you don't tell papa
to-night. It's gloomy enough as it is."

"Why on earth he should create all the gloom is beyond me. Why
shouldn't he be annoyed? It might do him good."

"Please, dear."

"Well, I'll see, moms. I won't promise."

Hilda sighed and dished up the potatoes. For all her slim, frail
fairness, Anne was very difficult to manage. As Belle said, "You never
know when you're going to strike one of Anne's principles. They're like
deep sea mines, unsuspected till they go off under you." Hilda carried
the roast into the dining-room, Anne followed with the potatoes, and
they sat down to dinner. In silence they began to eat.

Through the glass of the mantel above the gas log, wreathed in asbestos
moss, Anne watched her father. He was a small man with thin, gray hair
and brown eyes, faded from long years of figuring in bad lights. He
bent low over his plate, but ate slowly, through habit acquired in
an attack of nervous indigestion when Anne and Belle were children.
There was little general conversation at the Mitchell meals, although,
when James Mitchell was in a good humor, he was inclined to deliver
monologues, chiefly against Radicalism and the Catholic Church. Any
newspaper mention of the possibility of a strike precipitated the
first, which before its finish, by some complicated process of logic,
always included the second.

In the office of the Coast Electric Company, where he had been an
assistant bookkeeper for thirty years, James Mitchell was known as
one of the most faithful men they had. He never took a vacation nor
objected to overtime. He had a tremendous respect for every one in
authority above him, and the only temper the office had ever seen him
display was when one of the younger clerks had tried to organize a
clerks' union. James Mitchell had thrown down his pencil, whirled upon
the astonished organizer, and demanded to know "where the city would
have been if it hadn't been for the men who started this company?"
Apparently he considered that the city would still have been using
candles. For this act of faith he had been raised five dollars shortly
after.

He disliked open conflict and in the early days of his marriage had
once left the house to escape the first real discussion between himself
and Hilda on the subject of money. This astonishing act had for years
hung over the home, and the fear that "papa would take his hat and go
out" had been held as an extinguisher over the children's quarrels and
suffocated any tendency Anne or Belle might have had to appeal to him.

Anne could never remember an age when either she or Belle had talked
to him of their own accord, although there had been periods when her
mother, driven by some hidden impulse, had insisted that they "go and
talk to papa. Tell him about school; he likes to hear it." At thirteen
Belle had refused, and Anne, three years younger, had managed to slip
from the obligation at the same time.

They finished the meat and vegetables in safe silence and Hilda
gathered up the dishes, hopeful of peace to the end. But the heavy
stillness had weighted Anne's already taut nerves, and when her mother
returned with brown betty and hard sauce, and her father came suddenly
to consciousness of the elaborate nature of this week-day dinner with
a remark on the price of butter and sugar, Anne's hands went cold and
her face flamed.

"Well, we don't have it often," Hilda propitiated, "but sometimes it
gives one a headache trying to think of changes, everything's so high."

"And going higher." He helped himself sparingly to the hard sauce and
pushed it across to Anne, who smothered her pudding in it. "And it'll
keep on going up, too, unless people stop buying. Women could bring
down the prices in a minute if they had the sense. Nobody needs hard
sauce."

"They do," Anne spoke quietly without looking up. Her mother tried to
touch her foot under the table, but Anne moved just beyond reach. Hilda
began to eat her betty.

"They do, do they?" James Mitchell pounced upon Anne's remark like a
small and hungry terrier on a bone. "They do? Well, it would take more
than any argument you, or anybody else your age, could put up, to show
me."

"I don't doubt that," Anne shot at him, still busy with her dessert;
"nothing would convince you because you don't want to see, or else you
really can't understand."

"I can't understand, can't I? Oh, no, I suppose nobody can understand
anything these days when they're past twenty-five. I've been out
bucking the world for more years than you've lived in it, but of course
I've had my eyes shut all the time. Now see here, let me tell you this,
young lady," he leaned toward Anne and thumped the table, "you've got
what this whole country's got--a dose of blind staggers. You can't see
what's coming and you won't till it's hit you. You go ranting along
about people needing hard sauce and luxuries and you kick like steers
when the prices go up. Of course they'll go up. Why shouldn't they?
It's the law of supply and demand. When dairymen find out people 'have
to have hard sauce' they're going to run up butter and eggs. A fool can
see that."

"Only a fool can see that," Anne's voice shook in spite of herself.
"Why shouldn't people have hard sauce?"

"Don't you get off any of that Socialistic jargon in this house. I
won't have it. If I'd had any say in the bringing up of you girls----"

"Now, papa, please. The girls----"

"If you'd had anything to say, Belle would never have been a trained
nurse, nor I a special stenographer. We'd both have been wrapping
packages in some department store basement." Anne rolled her napkin and
rose in an icy quiet.

"A lot of good either Belle's nursing or your stenography does," he
darted now down the personal opening Anne had made him. "We never see
Belle except when she has a few moments she doesn't know what to do
with, and she wouldn't help out with a dollar if she was asked. And as
for you--where could you get the board your mother puts up for what you
pay?"

"Now, papa! Anne----"

"Well, I've quit my job, so you'll have to board me for nothing until I
get another one."

"Quit!" James Mitchell stared as his wife had stared. "Quit! What for?"

"Because John Lowell is dishonest and I won't work for a dishonest
firm."

"How many firms do you suppose are honest? You haven't risen to the
management of a firm yet."

"Nor have I sunk to conniving with a thief, either."

James Mitchell opened his lips and then, suddenly and unexpectedly,
leaned back. He looked shrunken and grayer, and he stared as if he saw
something unseen by the others.

"I've had--the same job--for--thirty--years," he said slowly.
"Thirty--years--at the same desk."

Anne softened.

"You ought to have quit long ago. They've used you because you let
them. You could have done better. You could do better now. Do you want
to quit? I'll get another place to-morrow and stake the house till you
get a job."

"No, no, I don't want to quit. No." He seemed fleeing before the
suggestion. The strangeness of the new road terrified him and he
scuttled back to the familiar. "Used me? Of course they've used me. A
man with a family has to get used to being used. A married man has to
put up with things. Where would you kids have been if I'd have been
getting on my ear all the time you were little?"

"Papa has been faithful," Hilda began, but the sudden tears that filled
Anne's eyes astonished her to silence.

Without a word, Anne picked up the plates and went into the kitchen.
Hilda followed.

"If he only wouldn't get down behind that pretense of having done it
all for us, I might respect him, moms. But he just burrows into that
hole like a gopher and you can't get him out."

"Well, after all, dear, I don't suppose he would have stuck if it
hadn't been for us. He'd have gotten into some kind of a gambling
scheme long ago. After all, he brings home most of his salary most of
the time."

And Anne saw herself a small girl watching her mother dividing the
contents of the pay envelope, counting and recounting and finally
tying up each little package in tissue paper, as if to keep the tiny
allotments from spending themselves in another department. They had
hurt to tears, those thin little allotments, and her mother's sigh as
she gathered them up and went humming about the housework. Anne did not
answer and they did the dishes in silence until the phone rang. Hilda
came from answering it with such a look of relief that Anne smiled.

"Belle?"

"Yes. She's got an hour off and is coming up."

Anne wiped the last glass and put it away.

"Well, I'm all in and I'm going to bed. The autopsy will have to take
place without the corpse." The smile deepened as she kissed her mother.
"All nice and safe again, moms?"

"I don't care what you say, Belle has a practical mind. She always
seems to know what to do."

"As if we had a fever or a dose of colic."

"I'd a lot rather we had things like that. What with you and papa,
sometimes I feel as if I were living in a cloud of feathers."

"You dear thing," Anne patted her shoulder. "Well, Belle will be along
with her spray in a minute and wet us all down nice and flat. I don't
suppose I'll go right to sleep----"

"She'll look in for a minute, I guess."

Anne laughed. "She sure will."




                             CHAPTER THREE


Belle Mitchell was much taller than Anne or Hilda, with straight, very
heavy brown hair and brown eyes. She had a jolly, even disposition,
was rarely hurt herself, never knew when she hurt others, and felt
competent to manage any situation in which she found herself. Her
favorite expression was "look facts in the face." She loved Anne with
the same protecting tenderness that Anne felt for Hilda, and never
understood the chain of "highfalutin" reasoning by which Anne finally
exploded into one of her rare rages. James Mitchell had always been
a little afraid of Belle, but he agreed with Hilda that she "had a
practical streak." This was supposed to have descended to her intact,
like an heirloom, from James' Scotch grandmother.

At seventeen, Belle had looked over the possibilities of the future,
left high-school and gone into hospital training. Four years later she
was earning twenty-five dollars a week. She had then left the family
and taken an apartment with two other nurses. As she explained to Anne:

"The only way to go on caring for your family is to get away from them."

She had paid for Anne's course in a good business college and
supplemented the family income with five dollars a week, until Anne was
making enough to pay her own board. Then she stopped.

"In some silly streak she'll call 'being honest with papa,' mamma will
tell him, and some race-track tout will get that extra five. Or she'll
have a fit of rebellion and go off at a tangent in another washing
machine or bread mixer or aluminum contraption for getting a whole
dinner under one lid, and nobody will have the benefit. But kidlets,"
and here Belle had put her arms about Anne in a way that always melted
any hardness Anne felt for Belle's practicality, "this rule is not for
you. If you want any extras--please, sisterkin, ask, won't you?"

Anne had promised, her amazement at Belle's ability to do these firm,
decided things, mingling with a sense of disloyalty to her mother in
recognizing their truth. She herself could never have left the house,
nor stopped a contribution, unless she had done it as the final step
against pricks that Belle would never have felt at all.

But now, as Anne sat in the cool darkness of her own little room,
looking out into the fog-wrapped silence of the empty street, she was
not thinking of Belle, nor of Belle's management of "her case." She was
thinking again, in spite of her effort not to, of Roger Barton. He had
passed out of her life, and yet, in some inexplicable way, he seemed to
have suddenly entered it very intimately.

In the six months of his connection with Lowell & Morrison, Anne
had seen more of him than of any man in any of the three offices in
which she had worked. They had never talked of personal things, but
of business details and the generalities into which these seemed
inevitably to lead them; discussions, scarcely ever more than a few
moments long, of plays and books and Life.

Anne envied Roger his university education and Roger envied Anne the
courage which carried her, after a hard day's work, to extension
lectures at night. From these she extracted a kind of sensory
conviction of the complex and interesting world beyond her experience.
A world of clear thinking, in contrast to the muddled and confused
mental processes of her own family and of all the people whom she had
ever known; of aims higher than the daily grubbing for food and shelter
that they called living. In Roger Barton, Anne had encountered the
first person who, born into an environment like her own, had forced his
way through to this interesting and complex world. Anne often wondered
how he had done it, but as he seemed to take his own progress for
granted, and had never commented on the achievement, Anne had been too
shy to ask him. And now she would probably never see him again. Through
the monotony of the working day there would be no moment to look
forward to; no memory with which to contrast the dullness of evenings
at home.

Out in the great world open to men, Roger Barton would make another
place for himself. Before his ability, his courage and his masculinity,
everything was possible. He could leave to-morrow for distant countries
and the far strange places he expected some day so confidently to see.
He could seek beauty and romance, limited only by his own powers of
physical endurance. He could work his way in ships about the world, or
tramp alone across deserts. He was strong and free.

And she? In a few days she would begin again to look for another place.
Perhaps she would better her salary a little, but she would come and go
at fixed hours. For the greater part of the waking day she would sell
her intelligence and strength to strangers. They would know nothing of
the reality beneath, nor would she touch their lives at any vital spot.
Her father would get over this spell of depression at his losses and
his annoyance with her contradiction, and the house would run smoothly,
like a narrow gauge train along a dusty, uninteresting depression
between high hills; beyond these she would never see. It was all so
flat, so gray, so dead. Anne shivered:

"Anything as ugly as this house and the way we live is WICKED."

Through the silence of the lonely street, Belle's firm step echoed
clearly. The signal ring, three quick peals, brought Hilda running to
the stair-head. The lever on the landing clicked, far below the door
opened and closed with a slam, and Belle came gayly up the stairs,
filling every cranny of the house with the force of her cheerful
efficiency, just as if a strong breeze had been suddenly admitted.

"Hello, moms. Her Royal Highness decided she was well enough to let me
off for an hour, and so I----"

All sound suddenly ceased. Then Belle, with a brisk "Hello, papa,"
followed her mother down the hall, past the dining-room, and the
kitchen door closed behind them.

Anne shrugged impatiently. No smallest change was ever accomplished in
the Mitchell household without this background of tragedy. The news of
her action in leaving Lowell & Morrison was now being "broken" to Belle
and advice asked, exactly as if Anne had absconded with the funds or
tried to commit suicide. There were no degrees of tragedy among the
Mitchells.

"I don't care, let them talk it over until there isn't a shred of it
left. I'm not going to explain. They wouldn't understand if I talked
all night."

Anne closed the window, turned on the softly shaded lamp and chose a
book from the small bookcase at the foot of the white enameled bed.
Settled in the chintz-covered Morris chair, she opened the book and
forced herself to follow the lines to the end of the first page. But
Roger Barton's angry gray eyes moved between the words and Anne did not
even turn the leaf. The book slowly slid to her lap. Across it Anne
stared into the future.

The sound of Belle's step coming firmly along the hall drew her back to
the present with a physical reaction of having been literally lifted
from one spot and deposited in another. And before she had quite
achieved equilibrium in the moment, Belle was tapping at the door. This
tap of Belle's was not a motion of the fingers, but a denunciation of
any pretense of absence you might be intending. It not only declared
Belle's certainty that you were there but her knowledge of exactly what
you were doing.

"It's me, kidlets; may I come in?"

Anne opened the door and Belle instantly filled the entire room.
Closing the door, she smiled down upon Anne, flushed and a little
stiff with the force of her decision not to be led into any apologetic
explanation of her act.

"Well, you certainly have done it this time. I never saw such gloom,
and that's going some. You'd think the sheriff was in the parlor and
the morgue wagon at the door. Tell me the whole sad tale."

From an ivory cigarette case, "a remembrance from an officer patient,"
Belle drew a cigarette and lighted it.

"Come on, 'fess up."

"You've been out there half an hour and have heard the whole thing,
more no doubt."

"From A to Z, and inside out and I haven't got it straight yet. Why did
you do it? That's what has upset them, but they don't seem to know what
it was. Why did you?"

"That's what they both asked."

"Their intelligence must be looking up. I gather that you were asked to
do something your conscience didn't approve and that you up and quit."

"I wasn't asked to do anything. But John Lowell isn't straight and I
won't work for him."

Through her cigarette smoke, Belle stared as Hilda and James had done.

"But, kiddie, you'll never find a business man that is straight, or an
office or any place where you approve of everything. How long do you
think I'd be a nurse if I had to approve of everything I see in an
operating room; people cut up when there's no need; often carelessness
that would make your hair stand on end. My relation to the surgeon is
like yours to Lowell. I hand the instruments, and keep mum."

"And I quit."

"So I hear," Belle laughed. "But what are you going to do? Ask for a
certificate of conscience from your next employer? I say, sisterkin,
what do you think business life is?"

"That depends on what you want to make it."

"Rot. It's compromise from dawn till dark; from the cradle to the
grave. When you start out you think you're going to do wonderful
things, reorganize everything and everybody, because your own pet
ideals are the very finest ideals in captivity. And--in the end you're
lucky if you remember what they were. Why, even I, and nobody would
accuse me of being sentimental, had all kinds of ideas about what a
nurse's vocation might be, a kind of etherealized Florence Nightingale
in a perpetual ecstasy; but when I came up against real patients,
whining nervous women and men--well, Belle Nightingale gives her pills
and powders now strictly according to the doctor's orders and forgets
most of her patients with the last pay check. The whole thing's like
Mom's pot-roast--a good solid makeshift for something better."

Anne shrugged. "If Moms had never fallen for that first pot-roast----"

"If Eve had never picked the apple."

"Well? You don't know what the world might have been like if she
hadn't, do you?"

"I can make a guess. It would have been just about as it is--if not a
little worse. She would have found a pear or a cranberry or a walnut,
any old thing." Belle leaned slightly forward and peered with genuine
concern through the thickening film of tobacco smoke at the small
blonde figure, sitting stiffly now on the bed-edge. "Anne, do you
know that I worry a lot about you sometimes? I know you're a good
stenographer and as economically independent as any woman, but it
always seems to me as if you were out of step with the world in some
way. You don't plunk, plunk along with the rest of us. You--you----"

"Sit down on the curb-stone."

"No. You mince along reluctantly. I wish to Heaven you'd get married."

Anne flushed, but Belle was grinding her cigarette stub into Anne's
lacquered pin tray and did not notice. She ground it into the polished
surface as if the tray were the problem of Anne's future and the stub
her own power of settling the difficulty. When she had burned the
delicate surface to a black spot, she went on. "But I can't for the
life of me picture the kind of man you would marry, not with your
opportunities for meeting them. An ordinary business man would drive
you as crazy as you would drive him. A professional man--well, there's
not much difference. An up-to-date doctor, even an up-to-date minister,
has just as keen an eye for the main chance as John Lowell--and
that's what seems to upset you. And even if you found one straight in
business--men are rotten morally, most of them, and you're so--I don't
know just what it is, Anne, but you're like a cool drink in a very
clean glass, and men want beer in an earthen mug when it comes right
down to everyday diet. They want it in women just as much as they do in
business."

"I don't believe it." Anne spoke with such vehement assurance that
Belle looked at her sharply.

"You don't? Why not?"

Anne wished now that she had not spoken, but the quickest way to escape
from that gimlet-like boring of Belle's eyes was to go on. "It isn't
true of all men in business and I don't see why it should be true of
all men morally."

"Did you ever know an absolutely honest business man?"

"Yes." Anne felt her face beginning to burn, and to escape the look
creeping into her sister's eyes she rose quickly and began doing
something unnecessary to the window curtain. She felt Belle's eyes
between her shoulder blades and knew that even the back of her neck was
flaming. At Belle's low chuckle she bit her lip, dragged about herself
the fast vanishing wrap of impersonal interest, and turned to her
sister with an assumption of surprise that Belle's look shattered in a
moment.

"Come on, sisterkin, this is getting interesting. Who is he?"

"I wasn't thinking of any special individual. I--there must be----"

"Cut it out, Anne, anyhow with sister Belle. When a working girl keeps
her faith in men for five years, there is always an individual."

"Shut up, Belle. I loathe that cheap talk."

"And I loathe dodging round and pretending. Who is this torch-bearer in
the darkness of the legal world?"

"He isn't a torch-bearer, but he's honest. Roger Barton." It was the
easiest way, because Belle would prod until she got it.

"That good-looking young blond? Well, how does he compromise with his
honesty and John Lowell?"

"He doesn't. He quit, too."

"Well--I'll--be darned. You both rode out of the office on the same
white palfrey! When's the wedding?"

"Will you please get out of this room?"

"Not on your life. Not till I hear the whole thrilling tale. Are you
engaged, Anne?"

"No. Will you stop?"

"What'll you bet that you won't be inside a month?"

Anne did not answer.

"All right. It would be a shame to take the money. Why, if dad had tips
like that we'd have been rich long ago. What'll you bet, then, that he
doesn't ask you?"

Anne's lips trembled. "Belle, please stop joking like that."

"But, kiddie, the most wily flirt in the world couldn't have done
better. Any man would be flattered to death. You don't suppose he's
going to let a kindred soul--and a pretty one--slip out of his life, do
you? He'll look you up, anyhow."

"No, he won't. I won't be here. I'm--I'm going to take a vacation,"
Anne added in a sudden decision that startled herself.

Belle grinned, and then, at the tears that filled Anne's eyes, relented.

"Fine idea. You never did have a real one. Where are you going?"

"Quincy."

"Heavens! That's not a vacation. That's a penance."

"I never hated it the way you do. I don't mind Aunt Het, and I'm fond
of Janet and Bab."

"If it's money, Anne, I'll be tickled to death--Tahoe or Yosemite--or
any other real place."

"I loathe them."

"You don't know anything about them. Please. Don't be so highfalutin'.
I can do it easily. Make it a birthday present if you like."

"No, thanks just the same. I don't mean to be highfalutin', but I love
the bluff, really I do. And I am rather tired. I just want to lie out
there on the dunes and think."

Belle's eyes twinkled. "Of course----"

"Belle Mitchell, if you go back to that I'll walk straight out of this
room."

"Go back to what?" Belle rose and took the rigid little body in her
arms. "Oh, come on, Anne, relax inside and out. Run along and have a
grand time feeding the chickens and listening to Aunt Het reminisce and
thank the Lord for your simple tastes. When are you going?"

"To-morrow."

"Moms know it?"

"Not yet."

The sisters smiled at each other. Then Belle drew Anne into her arms
and held her close, her own cheek on the cool blonde hair, her eyes
very soft and tender.

"You dear little thing," she whispered, "you dear--breakable--little
thing."

Released, Anne tried to laugh, but she was too queerly excited about
something that, as soon as she was alone, was going to slip out from
behind the wall to which Belle's presence relegated it. The laugh
stopped at her lips in a wistful little smile.

"Remember, Anne, if you change your mind you only have to phone me. I
always have some cash on hand. You will, won't you?"

"Yes, I will."

"Honest?"

"Cross my heart to die. And--thanks--awfully----"

"Nonsense."

Belle opened the door and went briskly down the hall. Anne closed it
softly, turned out the light, undressed and threw the window as wide as
she could. Between the smooth, fresh sheets she lay waiting tensely for
silence to settle on the house and leave her quite alone with her own
thoughts.

At last Belle and her mother went downstairs, her father wound the
cuckoo clock, the door below slammed and Hilda came slowly up. The hall
light went out. Silence had come.

In the soft, black stillness, Roger Barton stood out clearly, his
crisp blond hair electric with vitality, his wide mouth now tight with
repressed anger, now whimsical with mirth.

Would he really look her up?




                             CHAPTER FOUR


For two days Roger Barton luxuriated in his escape from the law.
At twenty-eight all experience had to him the nature of a material
thing. It was to be grasped, used to his need, and when it failed him,
dropped. He absorbed what his mind needed at the time and went on, as
an animal leaves a food supply, its wants satisfied. University and
law school had been the road to an education offered by a distant,
childless relative with an ambition to have a profession in the family.
Roger now wrote and told this relative he had given up the law, but the
old man's irate answer did not disturb him in the least. He did not
feel that he had been ungrateful or that he owed anything beyond the
power of his own conscience to pay.

He had no definite plans for the future, except a general feeling that
he was about to enter a real and interesting world. In this world there
were fine, high things to do, and he would probably be poor, for John
Lowell's office had convinced Roger that ideals do not pay and that
nothing else is worth while. He took long tramps through the Marin
hills, or lay on the sand at Land's End listening to the waves, and
dreamed. In these dreams he thought often of Anne, standing on tiptoes
before John Lowell. Now that he would probably never see her again he
wished that he knew her better.

There could not be many women like Anne. She gave so fully of her time
and interest, and yet there were unstirred depths beneath. Roger had
always felt them in sudden, sad looks that passed across Anne's eyes,
in the catching of the breath that marked an almost painfully keen
interest, in small, quick motions and physical responses that he had
accepted as mannerisms, but now saw as revelations of that courage and
ideality that was Anne.

"It wasn't easy for her to confront that rotter, but she did it, the
slip of a beauty-loving thing! How she must hate an office!"

And she would probably go into just such another in a few days, perhaps
a worse one. She might already have found a place. While he lay on
the sand, facing the full future, she might be bent above a machine,
her fine enthusiasm leashed to the narrow demands of price lists, her
physical rarity the object of some cad's coarse admiration. The thought
sickened Roger when it first came to him clearly, an employer trying
to touch Anne's hand, pressing her knee as he forced her to needless
proximity for dictation; Anne, the hurt and quivering object of those
advances he had seen other girls welcome with feigned annoyance and
sidelong glances. He rose quickly to escape it, although he had come
to his favorite cove with a book for the whole afternoon, and began
walking again across the dunes. But the picture moved beside him.

"By Jove, it isn't right. A man has a hard enough time hanging to his
principles, but a girl, a worth-while girl like that who has something
beyond the idea of attracting men--it's a shame."

And he could do nothing to prevent it. He could not even call Anne a
friend. He did not know where she lived.

"What a simp!" He stopped and kicked the sand viciously and marveled at
his own stupidity. For six months he had worked with Anne and had never
asked her to go anywhere with him, or tried to know her better. He knew
now that he had looked forward in the mornings to seeing her, soft and
small and silvery fair at her desk. He had snatched every opportunity
to talk with her. And had made none! Seen so, now, from the outside,
it was incredible but true. He knew nothing of Anne whatever. Nothing.
She might even be engaged to some man, no better, under the veneer
with which men, physically desirous, deceive girls, than John Lowell.
Perhaps worse.

Roger strode on, his shoulders hunched now as they always hunched
against obstruction and defeat. He would do something to prevent the
waste of Anne. He would find Anne a place where that rare fineness
would not be quite wasted in the mechanical routine of mercenary
ambition. At least he could do that.

Anne quivering with hurt of ugliness, seeing the bay at night, the
jewel-like islands, the stately white ferry boats, clinging to them for
people she had never known! He would find a place for Anne and see her
in it before he went out into the fullness of the future waiting for
him. The possibility of Anne's engagement to a worthless man, Roger had
finally to push aside, with reluctant concession to his own ideal of
her. If Anne were engaged, the man would have to be worth while.

For a day and a half Roger sought a place for Anne. His own mail
remained unopened, telephone messages unanswered. About twelve o'clock
on the morning of the second day he found what he wanted. It was with
a publishing firm and the duties involved a wider scope than the usual
stenography. The surroundings were as pleasant as any office could
offer, the hours easy, the firm established, conservative to a degree
that had always rasped Roger's youthful enthusiasm, but satisfied him
when he visioned the two white-haired, old-fashioned gentlemen as
Anne's employers. At the end of half an hour he had forced the salary
up five dollars a month and secured an option on the opening for two
days.

From old Morrison he got Anne's address, and ten minutes later
so astonished Hilda by his insistence that he must know Anne's
whereabouts, that she forgot the definite orders to tell no one and
described the Saunders home at Quincy so minutely that Roger could have
found it blindfolded in the dark.

Three hours later Roger got off the train, the sole passenger for the
windswept little wooden box upon the dunes. To the north and east
the dun sand swelled to mounds and rounded hummocks, held from their
eternal drifting by bunches of coarse, gray grass. Across the narrow
bay, low hills, dense and black with chaparral, each guarding at its
base a tiny white beach, ran westward to the sea, beating on the rocky
coast in long, sobbing protest against the lashing wind.

In the vast, clean loneliness of sand and wind and sky, a fear that had
touched him on the way up that Anne might think it strange for him to
appear suddenly like this, dissolved. The silent emptiness absorbed the
misunderstanding of motive, and Roger knew that if Anne did not wish
the position she would not think him intrusive. He easily found the
half-obliterated wagon-road Hilda had described and took it across the
dunes.

As the front gate creaked on its sagging hinges, Barbara Saunders rose
from the floor, where she and Anne had been trying to force a faded
blue dimity to contain a yard more material than it had ever had.

"I simply will not wear the thing as it is. Janet can say what
she likes--she doesn't care what she wears--but I've been to six
Quarterlies in it--and I've reached my limit."

The gate slammed and Barbara turned to the window.

"Anne! It's a man!"

Anne looked up, still puzzling over the impossibilities of the faded
dimity. "Do you know, Bab, I believe if we ripped the whole thing and
turned the top to the bottom and gored it, we could take all the scraps
left over and----"

"Come here," Bab whispered as if the person below could hear through
the glass. "He doesn't look like an agent. Who on earth----"

Anne came and stood beside her. With nose pressed to the glass she
could just see the top of Roger's hat. A loud knock echoed through the
house.

"In a hurry, rather, isn't he? Who----" Bab turned. "Why! Anne! Do you
know him?"

Before the burning self-consciousness in Anne's eyes, Bab stepped back.

"Will--will--you open the door? Yes, I know him. It's Mr. Barton.
He--used to be in the same office."

Barbara's sallow cheeks flushed and her eyes scorned Anne's
insincerity. For five nights Anne had let her go on, in the
dark intimacy of the same room, piling up the mass of her small
perplexities, the annoying efforts at adjustment between herself and
Janet and her mother. And all the time Anne had harbored a romance.
Anne was not the small, shy cousin, so different from Belle, so like
themselves in spite of her daily contact with the great world of
business. Anne knew men. When deprived for a few days of her society
they came long distances to see her.

"Very well, I'll open the door. But don't be long, please. Janet's
cleaning out the chicken house and looks like a fright. My other waist
isn't ironed and mother's asleep."

She went. Anne heard her open the door and lead Roger down the creaking
hall to the dining-room, a bare, dilapidated room, with sagging floor
beyond the skill of the manless household to repair, and woodwork
painted streakily by Bab and Janet.

Anne tried to hurry, but her cold fingers fumbled. And even when, at
last, the hooks were hooked, the hairpins all in place, and Anne stood
with her hand on the knob, it seemed impossible to turn it.

Why had he come?

Was Belle right? How had she known?

Roger Barton looked up as the rear door unexpectedly opened and Anne
came toward him, with just the degree of welcome to express her
surprise, and the exact amount of pleasure at the sight of a friend.
Her greeting angered and disappointed him. Anne thought she did it very
well.

"Hunting?" She tossed the word off lightly, as if she had many male
friends all deeply interested in the sport.

"No," Roger snapped, annoyed at this assumption of social manner in the
stark, unfriendly room, with its stained walls and broken floor. "No. I
didn't bring a gun. Besides, it's not duck season yet. I never heard of
any other game on the marshes, did you?"

"No. I don't think I have." Anne flushed.

Her embarrassment at discovery did not soften Roger; he had been too
hurt by her greeting.

"No. I have no excuse except one you may think presumptuous. I heard,
accidentally, of a place I thought might suit you. But you'll have to
let them know by Tuesday, to-morrow if possible. It's with Wilmot &
Brown--twenty-five a week."

Anne tried to look as if she were seriously considering, but she had
scarcely heard. She had not thought of this and now she saw so clearly
it could have been the only reason for his coming. He had a deep, human
kindliness for all misfortune, and she had been unfortunate. She, a
working girl, had given up her place. He had found her another almost
instantly.

"Thank you. It was very kind of you. But I'm not sure I'm going back to
town directly. My cousins," the word contained the broken floor, the
scratched wall, the worn furniture, "want me to stay for the rest of
the month. I may do it."

Through the window she saw Janet wheeling a refuse-filled barrow from
the chicken run. Bent against the wind, she moved, almost doubled above
the vile load. Bab followed with a pitchfork. They disappeared behind
the barn. Anne looked straight at Roger:

"There are no men on the place and the school vacations are the only
time my Cousin Janet gets enough leisure to do anything. We have been
talking about fixing the fences and mending this floor. If you'd come
to-morrow instead of to-day you'd have found us calcimining."

Roger's eyes came back to Anne, flushed, defiant, so unmistakably proud
and hurt.

"I didn't mean it intrusively," he said quietly. "I just couldn't stand
the thought of you taking any old thing--another rotter like Lowell,
perhaps--where anything but a machine is wasted. Please believe----"

A sound from beyond the thin partition struck him to silence. It was a
high, querulous voice calling, "B--a--b."

Anne started. In another moment Aunt Harriet would come trailing in,
her frail hands moving gracefully to insure safety, her sightless blue
eyes staring before her. It was years since Harriet Saunders had talked
to a city man, a professional man, a man worthy of her own Harrington
culture, a culture guarded through long years with Hilda Mitchell's
brother, kept undimmed to hand down to "the girls." In another moment
she would be there, winding about him the snake-like coils of her
selfish monopolization.

"Would you mind if we went outside?" Anne whispered, partly because she
could so convey the need for instant action, partly to bear out the
quickly invented reason. "Aunt Het is rather an invalid and she has
been asleep. If no one answers she'll drop off again, but if she hears
us----"

"Certainly," Roger whispered back, and they tiptoed from the room
together, out through the nearer kitchen to the yard. And there Anne
paused. Where could she take him? There was no spot on that windblown
dryness, no garden nook. For a moment she thought of the barn, a
favorite place of her own. But it was so overtoned; herself and Roger
Barton, who had come to tell her of a position, sitting in the hay!

"It does seem inhospitable to drag you out on a day like this," she
began, but Roger cut her short.

"I like gray days, and it may be an extraordinary taste but I love the
wind--in the open. Not city wind filled with dust, like the dead hopes
of people blowing in your face, but clean, open wind like this."

Anne's face lighted with the pleasure of a shared sensation.

"So do I. It seems to blow all the tangles out of the world and give
every one a chance to begin again--simply."

"I guess--maybe--that is it--only I hadn't thought of it as a beginning
again. It always makes me feel courageous, like plowing straight on
through everything, just as it is."

Anne did not look toward him instantly, but she felt him very sharply,
so much taller than herself, broad, with that courageous, crisp hair,
and his clear blue eyes that could look so different according to his
mood. They would be wide and blue now, with a light in them as if Roger
were turning it upon this "everything" through which the wind gave him
the courage to plunge. He would be looking straight ahead, his chin up,
ready. Anne turned a little, and he was looking exactly like that. She
felt that she knew him very well, and then, that he was rushing into
the wind, away from her, leaving her behind.

"I think you will, because--I don't believe you're ever afraid, are
you?"

"No--I don't believe I am. You see," he seemed to be feeling his way
carefully through this new experience of dissecting his own impulses,
"there is really nothing to be afraid of in the world. Of course there
is sickness, but when you're well you don't go about fearing a possible
illness; there's hard work, but that's fun."

"There's poverty."

"Yes, I know there is, but, somehow, the poorer I am the freer I feel."

"But it's so ugly--always skimping and twisting and thinking about
money. It--it's stifling."

"But you don't stay in a state of poverty for long," Roger laughed.
"You get busy getting out of it. But while it lasts there's something
exhilarating in being broke and not knowing what's going to happen. You
know how it feels on a clear, cold, sunny morning of north wind, when
the bay's all white-caps and you can almost see the windows of every
house in Oakland? The air seems more alive than at any other time, and
everybody goes round with his head up, smiling. Of course the feeling
wouldn't last forever, but, for a time--it's like being suddenly
freed from all binding restrictions, being lifted from a groove and
thrown suddenly out into new possibilities--like being picked up by
this wind and carried--off to China. There's something safe--and
depressing--about a steady income."

Anne tried to smile in return. But the tissue-wrapped allotments of her
childhood were too vivid.

"I don't think it's the having nothing that exhilarated you, it's the
excitement of getting the next thing."

Roger stopped and the wind wrapped them about. "I never thought of it
that way," he said slowly, "but perhaps it was."

They went on again in a moment, their relation somehow readjusted.
Roger felt masculine and dense; Anne protective and feminine. Roger
felt her sensitive and intuitive reaction to hidden impulses, and she
his need to be looked after.

Anne became conscious of this readjustment first and tried to find an
impersonal path back to the reason for having come out at all, but
could not. She grew gradually so conscious of the physical motion of
walking that she felt she was obeying a natural law as inescapable as
the force of gravity. She would put one foot before the other until
they had reached the moaning sea two miles away.

By a tremendous effort she stopped. And then the alternative of going
back to the house and watching Aunt Het's python-like embrace of Roger
in general conversation, emerged from subconsciousness.

"There's an old Indian graveyard back a little; would you like to see
it?" Without waiting his agreement, Anne turned into a depression
between the dunes and led the way. "When I was a little girl, I used to
think this was the most wonderful place in the world. We used to dig up
beads and arrow heads and invent the most conventional Indian stories
about braves and princesses."

Roger did not answer. The wind swept across the dune tops, leaving
them in the warm seclusion of a sandy depression. Anne went lightly
just before him, small and silvery blonde, her arms white and quiet
by her sides, no physical effort disturbing her swift, quiet way over
the shifting sand. A sudden turn brought them to it on a slope above
the dunes. Anne stopped and waited for him. Together they climbed the
short distance to the small square of parched earth, with its broken
fence, once whitewashed, now peeled by sun and wind to leprous patches,
like the little wooden crosses that marked the mounds within. At the
corners four gaunt gum trees sighed and bent, chieftains wailing the
degradation of the Christian burials below. Anne passed through an
opening in the fence and Roger followed, tense now with the realization
of Anne, of the moaning trees, of the wind searching over the earth,
and, far away, the sea crying its everlasting plaint to the rocks.

Up one row and down another they went, Anne trying to read the
rain-washed names on the tiny crosses. "You see, many of them were
half-breeds, and Father Crowley was the only friend they really had
among the whites, and so he managed to baptize most of them and bury
them at last with the rites of the Church. I wonder what they really
felt while he annointed them."

"Like fakirs, I suppose," Roger said quickly, and moved a little nearer
to Anne.

She shook her head. "No, I don't think they felt like that. They're
all gone now except one or two, but when I was a little girl there
were a lot scattered through these hills, and I knew some of them. One
was very old, wrinkled like an oak leaf, with the most piercing black
eyes. I used to feel as if he had died, all but his eyes. We called
him William Black, but he had a wonderful Indian name we never could
pronounce and he would never tell what it meant. Most often, when we
asked, he would grunt and walk away, but once he told me that his name
was dead, and if he told it, it would come back and kill him. I didn't
know what he meant, but now I think he was sad and ashamed of his
people and despised us too much to even tell us what he had once meant
among them. He was the only Indian I ever heard of who refused to be
baptized. Nevertheless, when he died Father Crowley buried him over
there. It was really just on the edge of the consecrated ground then,
but one night the fence in that corner was broken down, and when they
put it up William Black was outside. I think the others were very proud
of William, but not so strong as he."

"Very likely," Roger muttered, and stepped nearer still.

She felt him so close that the slightest motion on her part would touch
him, strong and alive against this eternal sleep of a dead race.

"On--on--a clear day--you can see the sea--from here, and the
spindrift--high as the cliffs--in a rough surf." Her arm, so slim,
so white, like a wisp of the fog caught in form, pointed toward the
muffled calling.

Leaning over her, Roger's hand closed gently on the cool flesh. He drew
her slowly round and they looked silently at each other.

"I think I have always loved you," Roger said at last, like a child,
whispering a confession strange to itself, born of the tender knowing
in its mother's eyes. He did not understand this thing himself,
revealed with such sudden swift quietness, but the earth understood,
and the fog, and that old, old race asleep. As if the mist had parted
and revealed it to him, so this love was revealed, something concrete
in that wind-filled emptiness, something definite and shapeable, a
thing he could cup in both hands and offer to Anne.

It had come. Belle had been right and so utterly wrong; Belle, with her
cheap experience, her world-eaten deductions from sickness and disease.
Roger Barton loved her. The wonder of it held Anne to the exclusion of
her own feeling.

Roger dropped her hand and Anne looked up quickly.

"I'm pretty clumsy, Miss Mitchell, but----" the pounding in his throat
choked him. A piercing shaft of joy shot through her.

"You're--you're not clumsy at all. And I--I would like to marry you
very much."

Sudden awkwardness descended upon them. They looked shyly at each
other, Anne waiting for Roger to draw her close and kiss her, Roger a
little frightened.

Wasn't he going to kiss her? Chill crept over Anne. And then he was
drawing her to him. The surface of her body broke into tiny pricks of
excitement, triumph, awe. She could feel his breath on her face, see
the inevitable approach of his lips. Now he was too near to see. His
lips were on hers. Suddenly, driven by the need to reach through to
something beyond them both, Anne returned their pressure. Roger felt
their clinging with faint surprise, deep tenderness and awe.




                             CHAPTER FIVE


The following morning Anne and Roger went back to town. They strolled
up Market Street to Third and Kearney and there Anne stopped.

"Wilmot & Brown, you said. They're on Mission, aren't they?"

Roger looked puzzled, until he recalled the position he had found for
Anne, and laughed. "You're not going to bother with that now."

"I certainly am. Why not?"

"You're engaged."

Anne giggled. "Not yet. I haven't seen them."

"I'm not joking. Listen." He drew her to a doorway from the hurrying
stream. "Don't, dear, please. I don't like to think of you tied down in
an office, and anyhow it's not worth while. We're going to be married
soon."

Anne looked away confused, partly because of the strange feeling
it gave to realize herself engaged, partly at the imminence of the
wonderful, new experience of matrimony waiting her; and, beyond her
own acknowledgment in words, curiosity as to how Roger planned to
marry without a position. In the sweet intimacy of the trip from
Quincy, Roger had talked of the future, a future that exhilarated and
frightened Anne in its possibility.

"We're going to live for something worth while," Roger had said, "and
live for it with every scrap of the stuff that's in us."

Anne's eyes came back to him with a tender smile.

"But we're not going to be married to-day. Besides, I----" Anne had not
spoken much of her family yet, but at these definite words of Roger's
about marrying, Anne realized what a difference it would make when her
income into the house had stopped, especially to many little pleasures
she had accustomed her mother. "There are lots of things I want to get
and--and--I like to work, really I do."

Roger frowned. "Will you promise to quit the instant I ask you to?"

Anne laughed. "Are you always going to boss me round like this?"

Roger's hand slipped into hers. "No. Because we're going to want to do
the same things."

The future was going to be very wonderful.

"And I'm going to do some of the wanting and you're going to do some of
the meek and mutual obeying?" she teased, and wished they were alone so
that Roger could kiss her. Instead he dropped her hand and looked down
seriously.

"Do you mean, honestly, that you would rather work until we marry?
I never want to try to persuade you to do anything against a real
inclination."

Anne knew that her puckered brows and serious lips were weighing,
to Roger, hesitation between her own preference and the dislike of
going counter to this, his first expressed request. But behind them
the thought clicked away that Roger himself could solve the problem
by accepting the opening of private secretary to Hilary Wainwright,
a millionaire ship owner and philanthropist, who had offered him the
place as soon as he heard that Roger had left John Lowell. But Roger
was not quite sure that he believed in Wainwright or that he wanted the
place. The tick, tick, kept saying: "Take the place for a beginning and
we can marry to-morrow."

"Yes, dear, I think I do," she said at last, and added gayly, "Now,
where is Wilmot & Brown?"

They walked east to Mission Street and stopped before the building.

"I'll wait here twenty minutes. If you don't turn up I'll know you're
taken."

He sought her hands, and linked, they smiled at each other until a
passing man turned to look again, when Anne snatched her hands away,
and with a whispered, "Good-by, dear," hurried into the building.

Roger waited half an hour and then went, disappointed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Every noon hour Roger was waiting for Anne and they had lunch together
at a nearby cafeteria which Anne insisted was the only kind of place
she liked for lunch. For the rest of the hour they strolled on the
sunny side of the street, or, if it were raw and foggy, sought some
sheltered bench in one of the small plazas and talked. Roger usually
did most of the talking, a running commentary on the people they
passed, which linked the individuals up to society as a whole. Roger
was always seeing people whom he pitied; starved, eager souls, thwarted
longings, stunted minds, drudges in a mill whose working they did not
understand, whose spiritual profits they did not share. When he pointed
out these people and qualities to Anne, she understood, because she
too had felt stifled and thwarted and full of vague, high longing.
But she never quite understood how Roger understood, because he never
seemed to long vaguely, nor to feel suppressed or driven. As the days
slipped into weeks, Anne came to feel that there was a surplus of some
qualities in Roger over and above the sum of those same qualities in
herself. She had ideals and courage and faith, but his ideals were
sharper before him, his courage deeper, his faith firmer.

Roger never doubted the best within himself, nor allowed a nervous
over-conscientiousness to distort a quality into its reverse. If he
had had a family, he long ago would have told them of his engagement,
while Anne could not yet make up her mind what to do. Sometimes she
saw her hesitancy as loyalty to Roger, because neither her father nor
her mother would understand Roger or his standards. At others she felt
that it was her own need for harmony and peace in the life about her,
a need so deepgrown that it was a weakness in its inability to risk
disturbance. And she knew how her father would accept a son-in-law who
had no position, who talked of the world's misery as if it really did
matter to him personally, who dallied with the prospect of a private
secretaryship at fifty dollars a week to begin with because he could
not quite prove to himself Hilary Wainwright's sincerity.

Sometimes, after an irritating day in the office, when old Mr. Wilmot
dictated worse than usual and, on rehearing the letters, declared he
had never used those words at all, Roger's begging to be allowed to
come up in the evening and meet her people annoyed Anne almost to the
point of confessing the main difficulty.

It was at the end of such a day, more than a month after she had
promised to marry Roger, that she came down from the office almost
wishing Roger would not be waiting. It was a June day of clear
sunshine, but with a gusty wind straight from the ocean. The air was
filled with dust that seeped through clothing and got into one's eyes
and mouth and scratched one's nerves to snapping. But Roger was there,
holding his hat on with one hand and making his happy little gesture
of welcome with the other. Anne tried to smile cheerfully, but it was
difficult with dust blowing into her face and a wind whipping her skirt
about her. Roger came up quickly and took her arm.

"You mite of a thing. It always astonishes me to think of you getting
about by yourself."

Anne was glad that a gust forced her to duck at that moment so that
Roger did not see her unsmiling eyes. She was tired, sick of getting
around by herself, of being respectful to that impossible old Mr.
Brown, of keeping exact hours, every one a tiny bit snatched from the
happy future of which Roger was so sure. It was one thing to refuse to
work with John Lowell, or in the law at all because it was corrupt and
unjust, but it was--to-night anyhow--just a bit overstrained to dally
about over the possible insincerity of Hilary Wainwright. Whatever the
man might be, at least he was doing real things for civic betterment,
the kind of thing Roger seemed to believe in. If Hilary Wainwright's
methods were not exactly Roger's, still it was an attempt. And she and
Roger could marry.

They had crossed the street and now, in the temporary protection of a
high building, were safe for a few moments from the wind. Anne could
not go on with her head bent. She looked up into Roger's smiling eyes
and succeeded in smiling back. His fingers closed over hers and drew
her closer to him.

"You mite," he whispered, "you little, silvery-gold princess. When
we're married I'm afraid I'll worry every time you're out of my sight."

"That'll be nice," Anne said a little sharply, but she was very tired.

Roger looked down quickly.

"Anne, when are you going to tell your people? It makes me feel as if
you weren't sure yourself. You said at first that you wanted to 'gloat'
all by yourself; that's very flattering and I believe it when we're
together, but, sometimes after I've left you, I feel--Anne, you are
sure, aren't you?"

"Of course I am."

"Don't they expect you ever to marry?"

"Why, I suppose so. We never talked about it."

"Is it me, 'specially, they would object to?"

For a moment Anne hesitated. At last he was giving her the chance.
Should she take it? But before she could quite make up her mind Roger
was pleading again, and suddenly Anne felt her strength exhausted. She
would not evade or pretend any more. It might as well come now as later.

"All right, dear, if you feel that way. Come up to-night."

Roger gave her fingers a quick grip, and they stepped from the
protection of the buildings into a side crossing. The wind tore at
them. Bent against it, they reached the opposite curb. In that interval
Anne felt the matter had been settled beyond change.

"I think I'll take the car here. It's useless trying to walk in this
wind."

Just then Anne's car came into sight. They hurried out into the street
and Roger helped her through the crush about the steps. It was nice
to have Roger making a way for her, to feel the strong, sure lift
of his hand under her arm, to feel herself swung up by such a small
expenditure of his strength. Now that the decision was made, Anne was
glad. After all, no matter what the conditions, her people would have
found some objection. Clinging to the hand-strap almost beyond her
reach, Anne went over the best ways of opening the subject to them.

But in the end Anne did not open it. She was catapulted from an
unusually pleasant meal, straight into it, by a chance remark of her
father's.

"I see there's likely to be another street railway strike," he
remarked. "They were running provisions into the carbarn as I passed."

"Well, now, that will be a nuisance." Hilda beamed round the table. Any
general conversations at dinner always made her feel that they were,
after all, a closely knit family. "Thank goodness, I don't have to
go on a car to do any shopping, although those Saturday sales at the
Sunset Market are quite a save."

"Didn't the company promise the men not to push that matter of open
shop until the year was up?" Anne, like her mother, was glad of any
general conversation, and had no intention of bringing down the wrath
of her father. But he peered at her suddenly over the top of his
steel-rimmed glasses.

"What if they did? How long do you think the men would have kept their
agreement not to agitate a strike if they had been in a position to
call one?"

Anne felt herself chill; a thin surface of frost seemed to cover her as
it always did when her father talked like this. But she did not want to
anger him and so she said quietly:

"I don't know. But I would like to think that there was a little
decency and honesty in the world. There must be."

"Well, it's not among labor agitators, let me tell you that. A greedy,
selfish lot, out for what they can get. They won't take a job and stick
to it themselves and so they try to stir up others to quit."

"But they couldn't stir the others up all the time, if the others
didn't really want to be stirred. Something is wrong and people feel
it."

When James Mitchell delivered an opinion he did not expect to be
answered, much less argued with. He turned swiftly upon Anne.

"What's that? Who feels things are wrong?"

"A lot of people feel things are unjust and wrong and that something
has to be done. They may not be clear as to exactly what it is or how
they're going to do it, but they know there's trouble somewhere." The
icy veneer deepened, but Anne held her ground.

"Who? A lot of Jews and foreigners who never had enough to eat in their
own country. The trouble with this country is that the natives are too
good-natured. They won't realize the harm these fools are doing until
it's done. They ought to be deported now, every last one of them."

Anne nibbled at her lip and did not trust herself to speak. But she saw
Roger, his eyes deep and sad, watching some weary soul in a city park.

"I think papa's right, Anne. It is mostly foreigners that do the
kicking. Not the blonde kind. Danes and Swedes are hard workers, but
Jews and Dagos are always fussing. Don't you remember that Greek,
Kapoulos, who lived over Martini's after The Fire, always haranguing
about justice and fair play, and the first chance he got he ran off
with the firm's funds and went to Greece?"

James shrugged Hilda's efforts aside and leaned across to Anne.

"Let me tell you one thing, Annie; these theories won't hold water,
socialism and I. W. W.-ism and all the other fire-eating babble. And
they'll never be put into practice, because, at bottom, the working
man is too smart and he knows he'd lose his job if he tried them, and
then where'd he be?"

James whisked the tail of this inverted logic in Anne's face and waited
triumphantly. But Anne did not see the narrow, tired face, the small
work-weakened eyes of her father. She saw Roger, hunching toward John
Lowell.

"But men do give up their jobs for their beliefs; not unskilled
laborers, but professional men who have spent years getting their
preparation."

"Bunk! You talk like a romantic school girl. Show me one professional
man, likely to succeed in his line, and show me him quitting."

"I will," Anne spoke with difficulty, "to-night. Roger Barton is coming
up this evening."

"Now, I am glad of that," Hilda breathed a sigh of relief. "I wish
you would have more company, Anne. It's not my fault the place is not
filled with young folks."

"Who's he?" James demanded.

"The man I'm engaged to." It was scarcely more than a whisper.

At last Anne looked up, from one to the other. Her mother sat, the look
of pleasure at the prospect of young company frozen in her eyes. Her
father peered forward, still amused at her childishness, triumphant at
his own logic.

"What say?" He too whispered. "You're engaged!"

Anne rose. Sitting, she felt the coming struggle closing down upon her.

"Yes. I am engaged to Roger Barton and we'll be married as soon as he
gets a job."

"You're engaged to a man without a job! A fool, that throws up a
profession--fine profession it must have been--and then asks a girl
from a decent home to marry him!"

There was a silence, filled by small, clicking noises from Hilda.
Then James Mitchell rose too, and with the evening paper screwed to a
ferule, banged his ultimatum upon the table.

"No damned skunk like that comes into this house, not if I know it. Do
you hear? What you do outside the house I can't help, and I'm not fool
enough to suppose I can. I never did have any say in this house, nor
about you girls. But I'll have my say about this thing and now. If this
fellow thinks he's going to sneak into this house and have me support
him, he's going to get left. Go ahead. Marry him; a man that asks a
girl to wait till he gets a job! Have half a dozen kids and then sneer
at the state of the world and a steady job." His rising voice reached a
thin scream. "Do you hear? That blackguard never enters this door."

Anne looked at him, gray, thin, raging, and a sudden pity mingled with
her anger. He was so tightly locked within his fear of life, his terror
of all strange ways and wide roads, all experience that had not been
his. In that moment, Anne's feeling for her father parted in clearer
strands than she had ever seen it. She scorned and pitied and disliked
him.

Without another word, Anne went into the hall, took the receiver from
the hook, and called Roger's number. In the momentary silence until
she got it, she felt the two gray-headed people peering at her, like
animals from a hole.

"Yes, it's Anne. I don't think you can come up to-night, dear. I
twisted my foot getting off the car and it's swelling. I'm going
straight to bed."

Not even Roger's genuine concern, nor his loving good-night penetrated
the icy calm that encased her. She hung up, and, without looking toward
the dining-room, went down the hall to her own room and locked the
door. Dressed, she lay upon the bed, staring up through the window to
the stars.

She did not know what time it was when her mother came tapping gently
at the door. But she did not open, and, after a moment, heard her
tiptoe away.

Out on the back porch, Hilda Mitchell stood for a long time looking
out over the city lights and trying to straighten her world so
suddenly upheaved by Anne. But the fact of the engagement loomed like
a blank wall before her and finally she gave up. With a sigh she went
in, locked the back door and, without turning on the bedroom light,
undressed and got into bed. Beside her the small gray man huddled under
the clothes, but, by his stillness Hilda knew that he was not asleep.

"Papa, I wish you wouldn't be so harsh with Anne. Young folks can't be
expected to think ahead like old folks. Anne's not flighty or silly
like most girls. She won't do anything foolish."

"She can't--after this. My God, what a mess you've made of bringing
up those girls! Belle was always an obstinate, headlong piece
but--little--Annie----"

"Now, papa. Have patience."

"Oh, shut up. It's no good talking to you." James Mitchell turned on
his side and drew the clothes high about his shoulders.

For a long time, Hilda lay beside him, thinking. Then, she, too, sighed
and turned over.

Life would have been a simple thing to Hilda Mitchell if it had not
been for her family.




                              CHAPTER SIX


"You didn't hurt your foot after all?"

"No. I didn't hurt it. I didn't want you to come and it was the first
thing I thought of."

Roger crumbled his bread on the cloth and waited. Anne tried to go on
calmly with her lunch, but she felt her face flushing and she knew
Roger was watching her, his eyes growing sterner, his mouth settling in
that straight line. She felt like a trapped animal, caught between a
quixotic pity of her people, a pity seen most clearly in moments when
Anne detested it most, and her longing to have Roger confess, unaided
by an explanation, the understanding she was sure he had. But Roger sat
on silent, waiting.

Before the strong, free youth of Roger, her father and mother shrank,
small, aging, pitiful. Little gray things, scuttling over the surface
of their flat, uninteresting world, never looking up, their worried
little eyes fastened on their own food and shelter. Units, among
incalculable millions of others, all frightened, worried, and avid
of personal comfort. To explain was to strip them bare, tear off the
meager covering of their self-respect, expose their one pride in all
its narrow rigidity.

At last Anne put down her knife and fork and looked at Roger.

"Roger, you asked me to trust you, yesterday. Won't you trust me?
You're right, I was not ill. Something did happen and I couldn't have
you come."

But no generous yielding softened Roger's eyes.

"It's different, Anne. Yesterday, when I asked you to have faith in me,
it was a question between ourselves. But this--there are others. I feel
surrounded by enemies. I don't even know which side----"

He bit the sentence, but Anne finished it for him.

"----I am on."

"Because you're not being open with me."

"Neither are you being honest. You do know, but you want to force me to
say."

Anne's lip trembled and Roger looked quickly away. In this, their first
misunderstanding, Roger wanted no emotional element to enter.

"Yes, I think I do. Your people don't approve of me. You've always
known it and that's why you didn't tell them. Why did you pretend it
was any other? I wouldn't have minded the truth."

"No, because you would scarcely recognize their existence as human
beings. They are of the 'spiritual bourgeoisie.' They are of the great,
spiritual middle class you despise so much."

Roger flushed. Anne went on:

"But they are my people. I live with them. I don't share their
standards. My brain despises their outlook on life. I can't help
knowing what their reactions will be. My father is bigoted and selfish
and, on the whole, rather mean. Sometimes, he is jolly and kind and a
little more tolerant, usually when a bet goes well. He is a clerk, a
corporation clerk, in body and soul. But he is a victim, too, of the
smallness of his own soul, just as much as the men who can't get work
are victims of 'the system.' And mamma----" Anne held her voice steady
by an effort, "I wouldn't hurt mamma for the world, or make things more
uncomfortable for her. In time----" but the tears welled over and ran
down Anne's cheeks.

Roger gripped her hand. "Don't, Princess, please don't. I was a brute.
I do understand, better than you think. But I hate meeting you round
in parks and public places, sneaking as if there were something to be
ashamed of. Last night, I wanted to sit close to you, in some warm,
comfortable room, like a human being."

Anne's lips moved in a warped smile. "You wouldn't have sat in a
comfortable room. It's one of the ugliest rooms I have ever seen.
There's a crayon portrait of a brother papa always hated and won't
have removed, and they would have watched us through hideous chenille
portières. That is, mamma would; papa would have pretended to read, in
a chair fixed so he could see us in the mantel glass. It would have
been ghastly."

Roger smiled, but his fingers held Anne's more firmly. "My high-strung,
beauty-loving Princess. We'll never have an ugly thing in the house,
will we?"

Anne shook her head. "No. We'll have nothing in it at all, rather than
that."

"Oh, it won't be as bad as that," Roger laughed.

"I don't care, Roger. Really I----"

Two people took the vacant places at the same table, so, in a few
moments, Anne and Roger finished and went. It was another day of
sunshine and dusty wind.

"I don't feel parky, to-day, do you? Then let's walk." Anne turned
north and Roger walked close beside her.

They walked slowly, Anne tingling with consciousness of Roger's
nearness, and of their isolation from others, in a new understanding
that had come to them. All these hurrying strangers were the world,
flowing around the little island on which she and Roger stood alone.

Block after block they walked in a silence rhythmic with shared dreams
and hopes that seemed to throb in unison with the perfect harmony of
their step.

Roger spoke first: "There was another call from Wainwright this morning
while I was out and he left word for me to see him this afternoon."

"I guess he wants a decision," Anne said casually.

"Yes. Yes, that's it, no doubt."

"Don't do anything you don't want to do." Anne's voice was even,
indifferent to the issue. Roger pressed her arm.

"Anne, you're a trump. The grandest little chum a fellow ever had."

Anne nodded valiantly. "And some hiker. Look where we've walked to.
Clear out to the City Hall."

"So we have! It didn't seem but a few blocks, did it?" Roger looked so
bewildered at the sight of the City Hall just before him, that Anne
laughed.

"Seeming is not being. There it is and I'll have to take a car right
straight back."

She moved, but suddenly Roger's hand held her arm and, at the strange
look on his face, Anne's eyes grew serious.

"Princess, let's go over and get the license now. It doesn't mean
much--but I would like to feel we'd gotten that far."

"Why! Roger! Now, this minute?"

Roger nodded. "Will you, dear?"

Under his look, Anne colored. She tried to say something flippant but
could not.

"All right," she whispered finally.

They crossed the street and went up the steps into the rather dirty
corridor, along which fat, red-faced politicians and young clerks
hurried. In the license office, a bored clerk, just about to leave for
his delayed lunch, rushed them through the questions. Anne held up her
right hand and swore. Then Roger. The clerk scribbled in the answers.
Roger paid the fee. They turned away, as legally two as when they had
entered.

But to Anne, something had happened, so that never again would she be
the Anne Mitchell who had come up the steps only a few moments before.
All the weeks of her hidden secret had not made her feel so irrevocably
Roger's as this: a few stereotyped questions gabbled by a bored clerk,
the unimportant fact of her age sworn to with ridiculous solemnity. The
personal quality of her secret had been hers, even through the ordeal
with her parents, but now, it was not hers any longer. It had been
given to the world. This bored, gum-chewing clerk had placarded her
name and Roger's for the world to see. She and Roger were now tagged
and listed, in orthodox fashion, for the great event of matrimony. She
began to tremble.

"Let's--do the--rest--now."

"Anne!" A lump rushed to Roger's throat and he could say no more. Then,
hand in hand, like two children, they crossed the corridor to the
judge's chambers.

In ten minutes it was over, witnessed by a stenographer and the
janitor called in from the hall. The judge made his mechanical speech
of congratulation, which neither heard nor waited for him to finish.
Silent, they walked down the stairs and out into the sunny, dust-filled
wind.

"What--what would you like to do?" Roger felt as if he had suddenly
been left alone in a strange situation with a strange woman.

Anne wanted to cry. "Are--are--you sorry?" she demanded almost angrily.

"Why, sweetheart!" But the thing he had just done was touching Roger to
a seriousness beyond his power to treat gayly.

"Only, we can't go away very well till to-morrow and----"

Anne tried to catch the words fluttering about her like bits of paper
in the wind, but the realization that she was now married, that all
the rest of her life she would come and go, eat and sleep, share the
thoughts of the man beside her, paralyzed her power to think or move.
She could not even look at Roger.

"I'm--going--back to work," she managed at last.

"You are not. Not for a single minute."

The tone left no alternative. Anne thrilled.

"But I can't leave them like this--without notice."

"You're going to do just that. I'll phone Wilmot. It'll be all right."

Anne looked at him with a shy smile. Roger pressed her arm.

"You're mine now, Princess," he whispered. "And to-morrow we'll go away
into the mountains."

Anne nodded, and then there was nothing small and unimportant to say.
They stood in a self-conscious silence that had the separating quality
of space, until Anne broke it:

"I--think--I'll go home now."

"Just as you like, sweetheart." The relief in Roger's tone
disappointed, although Anne did not know what she had expected. An
unending stream of cars all going in the wrong direction passed. They
were both glad of the clanging noise and the wind which made speech
difficult and filled the silence between them.

At last the right car came and they hurried out into the roadway. As
Roger helped her in, he whispered:

"Till to-morrow--little wife."

The crowd on the step jostled her forward, the conductor, like a
specialized machine, bellowed his--"Step forward. Fare please. Step
forward. Plenty of room in the front of the car."

Through the jam on the back platform Anne looked back and glimpsed
Roger, already hurrying away, holding to his hat. A strange mingling of
fear and exultation rushed over her.

"Mrs. Roger Barton."

She tried to think of it calmly, as indifferently as any one of the
strangers in the car would have thought of it, but the realization
danced like electricity along her nerves.

       *       *       *       *       *

Three-quarters of an hour later, Roger accepted the position of private
secretary to Hilary Wainwright, at fifty a week, the work to begin in
two weeks.




                             CHAPTER SEVEN


The next afternoon while Anne packed her trunk, her mother kept
wandering to the door and gazing in the puzzled excitement of a child
who encounters something pleasant, but so extraordinary and unexpected
that its delight is lost in bewilderment--like being confronted with a
Christmas tree on the Fourth of July. Without turning from her task,
Anne felt her come, stare, decide to say something and go, unable to
express her thought.

At last the trunk was packed, locked and corded. Anne rose and smiled
at her mother, again in the doorway.

"By the look on your face, one would think you had never expected me to
marry."

Hilda came in and sat on the bed-edge. "Of course, I did, Annie. I
wouldn't like either of you girls to be old maids. Women have a lot
to put up with either way, married or single. But you have certainly
rushed right along. First you quit a good job, dash off to a place
where there isn't a man for miles and come home engaged; don't
tell a soul for weeks and then marry in the lunch hour. I feel all
upside-down."

Anne patted her knee. "Well, you'll get right side up again before I
come back and then we'll have some good times, momsy."

Hilda's pleasure at the prospect vanished almost instantly.

"What papa will say, I'm sure I don't know."

"Shall I write him a note? I will, if it will make things easier. I
don't want to upset him needlessly, for your sake. But he wouldn't be
any better if he had a month to think about it."

"I know. But then, you must make allowances, Anne. At our ages we can't
shift round so quick as you young folks, and papa thinks----"

"I know what papa thinks. Let's not go into that. But I don't, and,
as I am the one marrying, papa's opinion doesn't matter. Besides,
you know, I can get a job any day. I don't have to sit at home and be
supported."

"Now see here, Anne, you may be a lot smarter than I ever was, but I'm
older than you, and one thing I've learnt, if nothing else, it doesn't
pay for a woman to work after she's married. A man may pretend he
doesn't want her to and all that, but he gets used to it mighty soon
and takes it for granted. And no woman can do it--keep a home and work
and have babies. Just wait till some morning when you feel sick and
have to go out as usual. Why, when Belle was coming, I couldn't lift up
my head till ten o'clock. I----"

Anne turned quickly and began putting some things in a handbag. In a
few moments Hilda wandered back again from her own first confinement to
Anne's marriage.

"And to think you were married yesterday and came home here as cool as
you please. Now when I was young, if a girl had done a thing like that
it would have been thought wicked, although I don't know but what it
is a good thing for the man. It's just as well to keep them waiting as
long as you can. Besides, an hotel room, just an ordinary room where
the man's been living right along, seems kind of--coarse."

Anne's flaming face bent lower over the grip. There was a short
silence. Then Hilda whispered:

"Annie--is there--anything--you would like to know?"

Anne did not even shake her head. She had felt like this once,
strengthless in disgust, when Belle had persisted in showing her the
colored illustration of a disease in its worst stage. At last she
succeeded in turning to her mother.

"I'm going to phone for the taxi, now, mamma, and we'll have a cup of
tea before it comes."

"I'll put the kettle right on." Hilda bustled away, relieved. For she
had always found it a little difficult to enlighten Anne and had a
vague idea that it would have been easier if Anne had been a brunette.
Certain simple truths had a way of splattering all over Anne's
fairness, and making Hilda uncomfortable.

"Oh, well, I dare say she knows more than I did at her age;
everything's different than it used to be, anyhow."

With this large, comforting deduction, Hilda began to make the tea.
They drank it in a constrained effort on Anne's part to keep the
conversation general, and finished just as the taxi driver rang the
bell. The little trunk went bobbing down the stairs; Hilda took Anne in
her arms and they clung together, not crying, but very quiet.

"There, dear, I must run, and you can say I eloped and phoned you
afterwards, or anything that comes handiest."

"Oh, I'm not going to lie about it. It's done now. Besides, papa's
bark's a lot worse than his bite. He'll be decent when you get back."

Anne kissed her mother and ran quickly down the stairs, waved from the
door and shut it behind her. As the taxi drove off, she looked back,
but Hilda was not at the window. Anne's eyes clouded.

"Dear old moms. She does annoy me sometimes, but she has had a hard
time. I'm going to see that it's better in the future."

And then Anne forgot all about her old home, and sat nervous and very
timid on the edge of the taxi seat.

       *       *       *       *       *

At dawn, Roger and Anne went down to the lake edge. In the east, the
cold, night gray was melting in green and silver pools. Not a sound.
Not a ripple on the surface of the lake. Beyond the lower hills,
granite mountains rose, peak upon peak, to the snow-covered barrier
beyond which the world lay. They stood silent, hand in hand, part of
the eternal youth of the dew-drenched earth.

Behind the towering mountains were cities and hurrying men. Anne knew
it because they had passed through them the night before, but it was
hard to remember and impossible to visualize. This was the core of the
world, calm, absolute in its perfect understanding, untouched by hurry
or man's confusion.

Anne pressed closer to Roger and he put his arm about her.

The green and silver pools brightened with the coming light; a faint,
crimson glow, herald of the day, spread its warmth for the advance of
the sun, and then, suddenly, a great jolly sun looked over the rim of
the world and laughed at them. They laughed back.

"The old fool thinks he's surprised us. As if we didn't know he was
there and going to do exactly that."

Anne made a face at the sun, just as the breakfast bell at the ranch
rang for the milkers' breakfast.

Hand in hand, they turned from the lake. The sun was already well over
the mountain top. The herald had rolled his crimson carpet and gone.
Day had come.

"I suppose a dewdrop should be meal enough, but I hope it's at least
bacon and eggs and pancakes."

"With cereal and cream first," Anne laughed.

Roger squeezed her hand. "I'm awfully glad, Mrs. Barton, that you
suggested marrying me."

"Always take my suggestions. You'll find they will always be right,
even if I do say so," Anne teased.

"Not a doubt of it." Roger stopped and took Anne in his arms.
Tenderness beyond passion was in his hold. "Princess--it's--so good to
be alive and love you."

Day after day, deeper and deeper in their understanding, Anne and Roger
wandered in the hills. Icy streams tumbled roaring through granite
gorges, suddenly emerged to wide sunny meadows, and spread in flat
stillness. The fat, black earth of the lower mountains thinned to sheer
granite slopes, where sparse trees grew miraculously in tiny crevices,
their roots hanging like ropes from the cliffs.

They sat by the lake, which, beginning a hundred yards from the ranch,
stretched to the blue distance of the hills. The lake fascinated Anne.
No fish swam in it, no birds alighted upon it, the wind seemed scarcely
to ruffle its terrible stillness. No one drank of its water. No one
swam in it. No craft sailed it. In its own brackish depths, it hid
the reason of its existence. No one knew how many centuries it had
lain there, acrid, wide, as indifferent to man's need as man to its
uselessness. "The lake," the rancher and his wife spoke as if it were
a person who had committed some unmentionable crime and been banished
from human intercourse because of it. There were legends that, ages
ago, the Indians had worshipped a god living far out in its bitter
depth. But now, they were afraid of it. The Christian God had stolen
their god and given them fear. But the lake was as indifferent to this
Christ as it had been to their pagan deity. It needed neither god nor
man.

They talked and were still. They were very near.

At the end of the second week, the first sheep-man came. Early in
the morning, Anne and Roger were waked by the baaing of the lambs, a
piercing wail of terror, as of children pursued by a malignant force.
They went quickly to the window. Hundreds of gray, dusty sheep were
coming up the road. Every now and then they stopped to nibble the
thick, sweet grass. But the dogs, at a call from the shepherd, ran
among them and with uncanny knowledge, drove them on. Bleating, they
obeyed. The rancher hurried out and opened the gate. The dogs began to
maneuver them through. Behind the band, the shepherd came, carrying a
lamb in his arms.

"A hierarchy of authority," Roger said. "The shepherd directs the dogs,
the dogs drive the sheep."

At last they were all safely through and the gate closed. In a few
moments, the bleating was over. The sheep were contentedly munching the
lush grass.

"They are like people. A moment ago and they seemed really to have some
definite point of view. They wanted to do something. And now, they've
forgotten what it was. They'll eat the meadow flat and then the dogs
and the shepherd will drive them on, and they'll rebel and yield and
eat another meadow flat--and go on--and on."

Anne patted his hand, resting on her breast. Roger was always seeing
things so, analogies between animals and mountains and trees and
people. Nothing was just itself to Roger, but always a picture of
something else. It made Anne very tender and filled her with the same
sense of deep protectiveness that a child's belief in fairies does; a
gladness, touched faintly with wistful envy and regret that faith must
go.

As they sat down to breakfast they realized a new feeling of bustle and
industry in the air. The sheep had come. Soon tourists would follow.
Automobiles would pass, meals would be called for at all hours. The
rancher and his wife talked of rooms to be opened, supplies brought up
from cellars, bedding aired. Roger and Anne sat silent, as silent as
the dark Indian girl who served them.

The rancher ate quickly and went. In a moment his wife followed. They
crossed the rear yard and disappeared in a storehouse. Roger looked at
Anne and sighed.

"I suppose it's the end. The place will be all cluttered up with people
soon."

"I suppose it will. It's been perfect, hasn't it?"

Roger's hand moved over and took hers. "Absolutely perfect. We----"

A note so clear, so sweet, so rounded that it seemed to be the spirit
of the earth slipping into sound, stole into the room.

"Oh!" Anne whispered and held fast to Roger's hand.

The Indian girl straightened and stood listening. A brightness
flashed over the brown silence of her face and vanished as she moved
noiselessly to the door and passed through. Outside, in the sun-filled
meadow, the Basque shepherd stood among his sheep, his arms raised, a
little wooden flute to his lips. Once more he sounded the clear, sweet
call and then, at the sight of the girl, the happiness of the whole
earth came rippling and dancing from his flute.

For a moment, the girl remained motionless on the doorstep. Then,
without a sign of recognition, glided away toward the dense high reeds
of the lake edge. Still playing, the Basque shepherd moved after
her through the munching sheep. At the edge of the reeds, the music
stopped. He parted them and they closed, thick and blank, behind him.

That evening, Roger and Anne took their last walk. They walked far
along the lake, until a chill little wind crept out from the cañons, a
jealous little wind, guarding the tremendous silence of the night from
these paltry, human intruders.

Roger and Anne turned back. The sheep were huddled a dark mass in the
corner of the meadow. Over the embers of a campfire, the Basque herder
and two half-breed milkers were playing cards. Against the door of her
whitewashed shack the Indian girl leaned, her black hair in two great
braids to her waist, facing toward the glow of the dying fire. As Anne
and Roger crossed the front yard, she slipped inside and closed the
door.

The rotation of the days had fulfilled its promise. The perfect had
come to its own end. Anne lay in Roger's arms.

"I always felt there was something perfect somewhere," she whispered.

Roger drew her closer to him.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," he answered hotly. Anne's
arms closed about him. Through the force sweeping him, almost to
unconsciousness of Anne as a separate body, he felt her lips, warm,
soft, as eager as his own.




                             CHAPTER EIGHT


In the next weeks, it seemed to Anne that the world had been recreated
while she and Roger loved by the lake. The old world of definite
working hours, through which strangers claimed her physical energy and
brain, as deeply strangers one day as the next; the old family life
of repression, grown unconscious from habit; minute but never ceasing
spiritual adjustment, strengthless rebellions against habits set in
steel bands before one awakened to their cramping horror, all had
dissolved in a community of interest in a larger and much simpler world.

In this world, men and women tried to increase happiness. They worked
with ideas; many ideas and many people striving to embody them in form.
Often in the mornings, after Anne had watched Roger vanish round the
corner of the street far below, she continued to stand on the porch of
the little cottage they had found on a rocky crag that rose from the
grass-grown cobbles to a view of the bay and Tamalpais. It was like
her inner life here, high above the confusions of her mother's muddled
thinking, her father's petulance, Belle's brutal experience. Above the
confusion of The Niche, the unironed laundry, the unreasoned bursts of
Hilda's extravagances, the intrusion of uninteresting gossip. The three
white-painted rooms with their sweep of bay and hills, close to the
stars at night, walled from the city below by the spicy fragrance of a
tangled garden, was another world.

Anne dreaded anything that might disturb its peace. No discordant
note must enter the full day, when alone in her new home, she made it
beautiful, or prepared for the guests Roger like to ask to dinner;
nor the pleasant evenings when she and Roger read or talked before
the fire, or went to the many meetings included in Roger's duty as
Wainwright's secretary.

But, at the end of two months, when Anne realized that this guarding
of her new peace had excluded her family, that neither Belle nor her
father had seen the place at all, and her mother only once, she was
ashamed and decided to ask all three to dinner the first night Belle
could take off and to make a little celebration of the occasion. On
the next Thursday evening, when Roger was at a conference with Hilary
Wainwright, Anne went especially to arrange the night.

"Well! I was just wishing you'd phone or something!" Hilda hurried
half-way down the stairs to meet Anne and walked back with her arm
about her daughter's waist. "It was kind of lonesome to-night and I
was just thinking of running down to Mrs. Welles for a minute, but
this is the night she goes to church and it didn't seem worth while. I
am glad." Hilda hugged her effusively; for, although Anne had made it
a rule to go home once a week, if only for a few moments late in the
afternoon, Hilda greeted each visit with such amazed admiration that
Anne had been able to include it among the many responsibilities of her
new life.

For Hilda was now very deeply impressed with Roger's importance as the
private secretary of a millionaire. Millionaire philanthropists had
not existed in Hilda's knowledge of the social structure and Roger's
close connection with one filled her with awe. The status of Hilary
Wainwright in the financial world had done much, also, to reconcile
James. And when, one day, shortly after Anne's marriage, he had chanced
to see Roger in earnest talk with the president of the Coast Electric,
James Mitchell had accepted Roger, in no generous apology to Anne for
his attitude the last night before her marriage, but in a thinly veiled
eagerness to know all about the schemes of the great man.

Anne despised herself for yielding to this curiosity, but it was so
much pleasanter when things moved smoothly, that she catered just a
little to him. She admitted him, without apparent consciousness of
his real purpose, to the projects of Hilary Wainwright for increasing
the total of human happiness. She threw off carelessly such phrases
as: "welding of classes," "the larger democracy," "the obligations of
wealth"; phrases which James Mitchell heard with satisfaction, as he
might have observed the social minutiæ of a class above him. As working
theories he did not visualize them at all, but it gave him a feeling of
Roger and Anne--hence vaguely himself--moving in high places.

To-night he was specially interested, for the papers were full of some
scheme of Wainwright's for getting sugar more cheaply to the market
from his plantations in Hawaii. In the office, James Mitchell had
spoken with authority upon the subject that very afternoon, and had
enjoyed the respectful attention of the other clerks.

He accepted the invitation with such unusual grace that Anne was
ashamed for him; but when, a little later, as she said good-by to her
mother in the hall and Hilda whispered: "It will be a great occasion
for us, Annie. I never saw him so delighted," Anne forgave him. Her
mother had so few pleasures and this mood of her father's was almost
as great an event as the dinner itself. "I don't believe he remembers
a word he said that night," Hilda went on in the same confidential
whisper as she went with Anne down the stairs. "Anyhow he's never said
another thing about objecting and now--everything's going to be lovely.
I feel it in my bones. But three extra to dinner! I'm afraid it will
make a lot of extra work for you."

"Now, mamma, don't be silly. Besides, you haven't the least idea what a
fine cook I am."

"I don't doubt it a bit. Any one who can get up a dinner for a
millionaire! Goodness, I should be scared to death."

"Oh, Mr. Wainwright's simple. Roger says his god is simplicity." But
as Anne herself was not quite sure how Roger sometimes meant this, she
hurried over the puzzled stare in her mother's eyes. "Next Wednesday at
seven."

Hilda sparkled. She had never eaten later than six and the fashionable,
if inconvenient hour, clinched her belief in Roger's efficiency.

"I'll finish my new waist for the occasion and see that papa gets a
good shave."

She went as far as the street corner with Anne and gave her an extra
hug.

"Going to dinner with my married daughter. Why, I feel like a young
girl going to her first dance."

Anne kissed her. "You dear thing, you're going to eat a lot of meals of
your daughter's contriving only--don't expect too much this first time.
In spite of my boasting, I'm not always absolutely sure, especially
about salad dressing and gravy."

"I'll take a chance." Hilda nodded, her eyes so bright, that Anne drew
her quickly back and kissed her again.

"Don't forget, seven sharp."

"We'll be there in cap and bells, never fear."

She stood on the pavement until Anne had disappeared, then went smiling
back to the flat. Hilda Mitchell was indeed deeply grateful for her
daughter's happiness. In spite of her denial of the fear that Anne
might have been an old maid, she had never been quite sure of Anne's
powers of attraction. Anne was so "highfalutin'," what Belle called a
"spiritual aristocrat"; and, like most women who refer to the physical
relation with their husbands as "duty," Hilda considered spinsterhood a
disgrace.

       *       *       *       *       *

To Anne's relief, by which she measured to a hairline her previous
anxiety, the dinner was a success. If Roger made an effort to meet
the Mitchells on their own ground, his tact exceeded Anne's keen
sensitiveness to discover. He kept the conversation at anecdotal level,
apparently because that mood was his own. James Mitchell laughed as
Anne had rarely heard him laugh, and reciprocated with uninteresting,
tedious reminiscences of the office. In her delight at "papa's mood,"
Hilda was sobered to quiet dignity. Belle was a little bored, as she
always was when she did not direct the conversation, but content, for
she had expected to shoulder the social responsibility at this initial
dinner, and she was not in the vein. She watched Roger and Anne and
wondered whether they were really as united as they seemed. Belle had
had more experience than even Hilda suspected.

Roger felt the evening glide pleasantly away and was glad that Anne had
done this. The Mitchells interested him not at all. He thought Hilda
a vapid fool, Belle pretentious and James a nonentity. They were a
perfect illustration of the bewildered and confused sheep. Anne's birth
among them was a miracle. But the miracle had happened and they would
always be more or less in the background of life.

A little after ten the Mitchells went. They kissed Anne and Anne
returned their kisses while Roger tried not to resent this very natural
act. They had kissed Anne and she had kissed them years before he
had known of her existence, but now, she was so exclusively his, her
delicate fairness so fully the outward expression of their love and
understanding, that this intimate physical contact with the Mitchells
echoed a discordant note in the perfect harmony.

So he forced himself, in rebuke of his jealousy, to the unnecessary
courtesy of seeing them down the long flight of stairs with a
flashlight, because the porchlight just missed a weak spot below the
second landing. But he came back three steps at a time to Anne.

"Well, little hostess, that was some dinner you got up." He went about
switching out all the lights except one, as he always did when people
had gone. With this dimming of the light, he closed out intruding
personalities, focussed life back to the points of himself and Anne.
"How did I behave?"

He had then felt the need to "behave."

The unconsciousness of the confession chilled Anne's joy a little. It
made her feel a traitor to her people and she moved away and stood
looking thoughtfully down into the fire. Her mother, so stiff and
subdued in the new waist, so happy in her happiness; Belle, bored,
but generous always in her love; even her father so genial that she
had wondered several times during dinner whether, if the conditions
of his life had been different, he would have been quite so dull and
gray-souled and selfish. Each in his own way was a little vain and
proud of the way she now lived. To her father and mother, at least, she
was a very real part of life; through her, they touched experience not
their own. But they were no longer a needed part of her life. Across
the chasm of the full present and her future with Roger, they stood
apart in the past, a tiny group, a little isolated and lonely, even
Belle.

Her eyes filled with tears and Roger took her quickly in his arms.

"Why, Princess, what is it?"

"Oh, Roger, it is tragic, really. I felt it all evening, and when they
followed you down the stairs and I knew you would come back alone
and they would go to that cold, dismal flat--they seemed suddenly so
cut off, so separate. They were the Mitchells and--and we were the
Bartons--and it hurt."

"But, honey girl, that's such a natural thing. It's always that way.
How did you expect to feel toward your lawful husband?" he added,
trying to force an answering smile into Anne's eyes. But she only
burrowed deeper into his shoulder and he felt her body quivering.

"It's awful the way children grow up and go away. Mamma hasn't anything
really but me and Belle. She's gone on all these years--kind of looking
forward, feeling in the midst of life--oh, I can't get it into words,
but she doesn't seem to have anything. She's always been so cheerful
and planning and doing the best she knew how--and now--there doesn't
seem to be any reason for her to keep it up."

Roger stroked Anne's hair gently. "I know, dear, but any one who hasn't
anything of his very own in life, has to come to that point. And most
people haven't."

"But she did have something of her own. We were her own. She's lost it."

"Nobody can be anybody else's own, not lastingly their own. Men and
women who haven't anything but their children, haven't really anything
at all. They're just vehicles for the next generation, a kind of
machine to keep things running. And what's the good of keeping things
running, unless you make them better?"

Anne lay close to Roger, her nerves relaxing under the soft touch of
his fingers.

"Roger," she whispered after a long silence, "don't you ever want
children?"

Roger's stroking of her hair ceased. She looked up into his suddenly
grave eyes. Already Anne was seeing life in relation to children, and
he had not thought of a child at all. It seemed very necessary to be
honest in his answer.

"It's this way. I do, if you do. But there's so much to do in the
world, and there are so many people in it already, that it seems to
me selfish just to add to the numbers. There's a lot of talk about
children being the highest work of the race and all that, but it seems
to me it's on the part of people who can't do anything else. Most
anybody can have children, and very few can do anything else; but
what's the good of perpetuating a race on and on without time or space
to grow in? As for the comfort of children, the selfish clutching at
companionship or less lonely age--well--if the children are really
worth while as human beings, if they're going to add anything to the
sum of life, they have to be so far in advance of their parents'
generation--that you just can't bridge the gap. And even if they're
not, but just trudge along in the old groove--still they're themselves
and not you really. They----"

"Don't," Anne cried, "it breaks my heart."

Roger held her closer still and began stroking her hair again. But he
felt, for the first time, a difference between himself and Anne. Was
this just the difference between all men and all women? Or was it a
difference between one viewpoint and another? The natural growth of
life, the widening of human outlook, the wrenching of any bonds, these
were pain to all the Mitchells in the world. The sentimental, clutching
possession of "family" was Love to them. Roger wished he knew exactly
what Anne was thinking, drawn close to him, her arm creeping up until
it circled his neck in a clinging hold.

"Roger, let's never grow apart. Let's share always. Wait, if one of us
has to, but never go on alone. I--I--couldn't bear it, Roger, now."

"Neither could I, Princess." Roger took Anne's face between his hands
and tried to smile into her eyes. But, at the cool firmness of her
cheeks beneath his fingers, the smile burned to a flame that scorched
Anne's eyes; with a little sigh she closed them and raised her lips to
his.




                             CHAPTER NINE


It was a few weeks after the Mitchell dinner that Roger came back to
the office one afternoon to find Hilary Wainwright pacing up and down
in a frank perplexity that he did not often permit himself to show;
although, as the months had passed, Roger had come to feel very keenly
that Hilary Wainwright, who never doubted his own point of view on a
business matter, was growing more and more uncertain of his former
enthusiasm for carrying out what he always called "the responsibilities
of wealth."

Hilary Wainwright had been born to wealth, in a generation that had
begun to question the right of such inheritance. Roger had always
felt that Hilary was glad of this generation, which permitted him
to enjoy his wealth, and, at the same time, by discussing his right
to it, admitted him to the inner circle of intellectuals who doubt
and lead civilization. He owned vast shipping interests, many sugar
plantations in Hawaii and was often called upon by other capitalists to
arbitrate their difficulties with labor. He went to strike meetings in
a limousine.

He lived in a great, old-fashioned, inherited mansion far out on
Pacific Avenue near the Presidio, surrounded by lawns and clipped
hedges and conservatories. He lived alone, except for the servants, and
entertained in down-town hotels. Long ago mothers had ceased managing
their daughters in his direction, but the upper social crust was dotted
with matrons, mothers of grown girls, who still had, in the depths of
their hearts, a soft spot for this "idealist." If they had married
him, they were sure he would have understood them so much better than
did their husbands. These women contributed largely to the charities
and civic betterment schemes in which Hilary was interested, and never
refused committee work.

These schemes for the just treatment of labor and the improvement of
living conditions among Wainwright's workmen, were Roger's special
province, and he now saw them as a pond upon the surface of which he
was paid to swim. Coming from an investigation into the justice of
some strike, or from tense discussion with the leader of some industry,
Roger felt like a diver bringing back strange fauna and flora, after
which he had not been sent. Hilary always listened attentively, but
sometimes he tapped his desk in a gesture that recalled John Lowell.
He had a habit of saying "Yes. Yes," in an emphatic way, as if his
mind were a hammer tapping each nail. But when Roger had finished, no
completed structure ever rose from Hilary's agreement.

"Of course, Barton, I, personally, agree with you. There is a lot to
be said for the other side. But, after all, present society is founded
on wealth, and one can't disturb the foundations without jeopardizing
every one--every one," Hilary would repeat, unconsciously warning
Roger that he himself might go down in the welter, if every Wainwright
suddenly put his principles into operation.

The first time he had explained this kindly to Roger, but, as the weeks
slipped by, and Roger had continued to make the same suggestions for
the adjustment of conditions which Hilary pretended were disturbing
him, Hilary had gradually allowed his impatience to appear.

"What's the good, Barton, of talking like that?" he had demanded almost
angrily one day, about a week before the Mitchell dinner. "It's the way
the man who has never had wealth talks, as if it were an excrescence,
something that can be cut away from the possessor without injury to any
one else. Wealth is an essential plank in the social structure of our
day, the keystone in the arch. Redistribute wealth suddenly and the
whole thing will fall."

It had been a tiring day full of very clear deductions on Roger's part
that something was fundamentally wrong with the whole economic system.
He shrugged impatiently. "I don't know but what it might not be a good
thing if it did--only the wrong people would probably be underneath."

Sitting in the well-appointed office of his employer the man's
manicured nails, his ostentatiously unconventional soft shirt and tie
were as offensive as the smug personal safety of his theories.

For a moment Wainwright had not answered. Then, with marked repression
and annoying calm, as if Roger were a fractious child to be excused
because of his usually good behavior:

"That's rather wild talk, Barton. You can't knock out the essential
plank of a structure and not make things worse for every one."

"And you can't expect Tom and Pete and Jim to get all worked up over
the luxuries Mr. Vanderbilt might have to go without under a new order."

"Because the average workingman doesn't think clearly. His mind is
untrained. He doesn't see beyond the food and clothes of the day."

"No. The average man doesn't think--yet."

"I'm afraid it will take many years." Hilary had reminded Roger of one
perfunctorily mourning the death of a hated relative whose passing was
to his financial advantage.

"I'm not so sure," Roger had said shortly.

"Ah--let us hope you're right."

In the pause that followed, a feeling that Roger had always had from
the very first interview suddenly crystallized. The man was spiritually
smug, soaked through and through in unconscious insincerity.

Why had he ever consented to work for Hilary Wainwright? Instantly
Roger had pushed the question from him and never again had he allowed
it to rise clearly before him.

But now, as he came into the office and for a moment unobserved,
watched Wainwright pacing slowly the length of the thick, rich rug, the
well-kept hands clasped behind his back, frowning so seriously, Roger
felt a positive repulsion of the man's smugness touch him, an almost
physical inability to go over to his own desk and seriously begin
consideration of one of Hilary's futile little problems.

At the sound of the door closing, Wainwright turned.

"That Sabatini case has bobbed up again, Barton, and I wish you'd look
into it. All kinds of welfare committees are pestering me about it and
your legal experience will make a report valuable."

"He's that Sicilian fisherman who burned down the warehouse of the
United Fish Company and incidentally almost killed Joe Morelli?"

"That's the man. It's straight arson and attempt to murder, as far as
I can see, but the Republicans and the Democrats are fighting for the
elections and this thing has been dragged in. The fishermen worship
Sabatini. He has power. Worse, he has a wife and eight children. There
is no issue in the Latin Quarter at present to hang a fight upon and
so Sabatini's friends are using him. The present district attorney is
against him, but--the present district attorney wants to be reëlected.
Sabatini speaks very little English, wears gold hoops in his ears and a
red sash, and his children are really beautiful. The Settlement is very
fond of the family and a lot of sentimentality is creeping into the
thing, I'm afraid. Could you make it to-day?"

"Certainly. There's nothing special. I'll report back to-night."

"If you could. I'd like a clear, logical report before to-morrow. I'm
being pestered a good deal by some people," Hilary smiled the smile
that meant "women," "and I want to know more and take a stand."

An hour later, Roger stood beside Angelo Sabatini in his prison cell.

The man sat on the narrow cot, his elbows on his knees, his face
buried in his grimed and broken hands. His broad, bent shoulders, the
shoulders of a toiler from childhood, were hunched to the flat-backed
head, covered with coarse, curly black hair. On the floor at his feet
lay a little pile of torn paper, the citizenship papers of Angelo
Sabatini. Roger stood silent, leaning against the steel door of the
cell. Outside, a guard stopped every now and then in the monotony of
his walking to stare.

"You deliberately waited until you knew that Joe Morelli was in his
office, then you set fire to the building and when you saw that Morelli
had a chance to get away you tried to knife him?" Roger spoke very
slowly and distinctly, so that Angelo Sabatini caught the drift.

He nodded. "Morelli--he no buy and sell de feesh--he buy and sell
de mens--me and Paolo and Giacomo--everybody--and de babies of me
and Paolo and Giacomo. Many days--we have no meat--and no shoes--but
Morelli have much meat and de childrens fine shoes. Ecco." With a
gesture that laid before Roger the primitive justice of survival,
Sabatini paused. "We work all night on the sea. We bring much feesh.
Morelli he trow it all--all--back into the sea. Much feesh--too cheap.
Ecco."

Roger paced the short cell length and came back again to the steel bars.

"Did you tell the judge all the circumstances, the meat and shoes of
Morelli, your own children, the tons of wasted fish?"

The small black eyes blinked. "Che disc'? No caspic' good Inglis. Too
queer talk."

Roger repeated slowly. The heavy face lit with a scorn before which
Roger was ashamed. "Yes. I tell. And I show dat." A grimed and hairy
finger pointed to the pile of torn papers. "I tell dat I come America
to get good chance and I no get. All mens is de same and Morelli do me
bad. Many times me and Paolo and Beppo go to Morelli and tell: 'Throw
no feesh into de sea. We must live.' Morelli laugh. Den me and Paolo
and Giacomo talk many nights in de cellar of Beppo. We make--I don know
in Inglis--de leetle papers in a hat. It tells me. Ecco. I go."

"And you told the judge?"

"De seguro, I tell. I make swear on Libro Santo to say true and I tell.
Ecco."

Roger's body sagged against the steel bars with the hopelessness of
this man's case. He had done this thing and confessed it. No twisting
of ethics, no pointing of advantage, could make him change one comma.
His code was dearer to him than all the complications of the law that
might set him free. As long as Giuseppe Morelli lived and threw the
fish into the sea, Angelo Sabatini would try to kill him. And Giuseppe
Morelli would continue to throw fish into the sea and keep up prices,
as long as society permitted him to do it.

On the cot, Angelo Sabatini was leaning again with his face in his
hands, the tiny gold hoop in his right ear twinkling through the black
curls. He had told his story again, in spite of his lawyer's warnings,
because Angelo Sabatini saw no reason to withhold the truth. In time,
perhaps, some one would believe, understand that he had done this thing
because he had been chosen to do it and his children needed as many
shoes and as much food as the children of Giuseppe Morelli. But, the
quiet form of Roger, leaning against the bars, his chin on his breast,
Sabatini understood. This man was only another with the right to ask
him many things and go away and leave him.

Roger wanted to put his hand on the bowed shoulder and say something.
But there was nothing to say. Tell him to hope? Against the United Fish
Company? To brace up? Before twenty, thirty years in prison walls?
Angelo Sabatini, who had lived all his life in the sun on the sea, ever
since as a tiny boy in the old country he had gone out before dawn
in his father's blue painted boat. Roger moved and the man looked up.
Already the hope had gone from him. His small, black eyes were dead
embers in the dull, brown face. He looked at Roger, stupid, dumb,
confused. In five years, in less, he would be scarcely human.

Roger beckoned the turnkey and without another word, went out. Angelo
Sabatini did not move. As Roger passed the desk, a woman with a baby
in her arms and a little boy of ten beside her was trying to make the
man behind the desk understand. The little boy translated, in an awed
whisper, what his mother said. The man behind the desk shook his head:

"Tell her not to keep coming here. She can't see him except on
visitors' day and if she keeps up this pestering she won't see him
then."

The child translated. The woman wrung her hands and pleaded. Under the
torrent of harsh Sicilian dialect, the man behind the desk rose.

"Get out!"

The child pulled his mother's skirts and they hurried away.

Roger went straight home. It was dusk, the wood fire was lighted, and
the dinner table spread before it. Anne came quickly at the sound of
Roger's key and he kissed her.

"What's the matter?" she laughed. "It's me, not a wax image in a shop."

Roger kissed her again. "I beg your pardon, Princess, but I'm all
wrought up. I never want to have another afternoon like this one."

While Anne put the finishing touches to dinner, Roger told her of
Angelo Sabatini. Anne made no comment until, the dinner served, they
faced each other across the little table.

"But he's scarcely human now," Roger repeated. "A year of those granite
walls--and he'll be a beast indeed."

Anne shivered. Roger had drawn the man very vividly, hunched on the
cot, his thick neck, his round, flat head.

"If he'd only stopped to think," she said, "he must have seen that you
can't go round burning property and murdering people."

"No, he wouldn't have seen it. As Wainwright says," Roger spoke
bitterly, "the average working man's mind is untrained. He doesn't
think. He's too busy getting food and clothes."

Anne thought of her father, his servile acceptance of rules and
orders. His ever-haunting fear of losing his job, of a rainy day.

"I think Mr. Wainwright's right, don't you? The average person does not
think."

"Then he's got to be made to think," Roger said with such sudden
vehemence that Anne started. "It's not because he doesn't want to
think. He hasn't got time to think. And he realizes the uselessness of
thinking when he can't do anything with his thoughts."

"But everybody has time to think, Roger. You're always talking about
the way machinery affects men, they just do things over and over with
their hands because it gets mechanical and they don't have to think
about it. They can think while they're working, if they're the thinking
kind."

"Try it. Make the same motion over and over for eight hours and see how
alive your brain would be. Make it for a week, a month, all a working
life. You're dead."

Anne looked thoughtful. She liked discussing with Roger and they
usually agreed. But a note had crept into Roger's line of argument
lately, that disturbed her almost physically, just as it did to hear a
soap-boxer shrieking on the corner. It always made something inside her
curl up and retreat, so that she could never stop and listen to what
the man was saying.

She got back again to particulars. "But he did do it. He burned a
building and tried to kill a man."

"Yes, he did it, just as a machine that is started by a clever mechanic
does the work for which it is made. It obeys its law. Angelo Sabatini
is obeying his law, the law that ground him and his ancestors down
until there was only a spark left--the spark that brought him six
thousand miles--to the 'Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave'.
And then we tried to kill that spark and Sabatini kicked out. Why, it's
this spark, this will and courage to kick, that's the only thing in the
man worth saving."

Anne felt a little frightened. "But, dear, I know things are all wrong
and ought to be different, but they're not different yet. If you do
wrong you have to pay the price."

Roger pushed back his almost untouched plate and began walking up and
down the pretty room. "But that's just the point. The guilty, the
really ethically guilty, do not pay the price. Angelo Sabatini is a
victim of society, just as much as he would have been the victim of a
beam falling on him. This isn't a personal fight between one fisherman
and another, it's the whole social revolution. And that's what fools
like Wainwright don't see or pretend they don't. They patch and sing
hymns while they patch."

Anne laid down her dessert spoon hastily. "Roger," she said quietly
after a silence, filled only by the dropping of the burned wood and
Roger's even tread the length of the room, "you're not going to quarrel
with Mr. Wainwright, are you?"

Roger smiled. "Hilary Wainwright doesn't quarrel with his employees. He
dismisses them."

Anne looked quickly away into the fire. After a moment she asked,
almost indifferently: "Do you think he will dismiss you?"

Roger shrugged; then stopped and looked at the little figure turned
toward the fire.

"No," he said slowly. "He won't dismiss me--yet."

Anne got up and began to clear the table. Roger came forward to help as
he always did, but Anne insisted he was tired.

"Besides you have to make the report to-night. I can do these few
things quite well."

Roger looked at the clock. "And I'd better hurry, too. It's half past
eight now."

Still he continued to walk up and down while Anne thoughtfully washed
the dishes. She had just finished when he came to kiss her good-night.

"Don't wait up, dear, I may be late."

Anne went to the door with him, then came back, turned out the lights
and made up the fire.

Deep in the easy chair, Anne felt the battling and struggling far down
under the pleasant surface of life. Rough men, like Angelo Sabatini,
were striking blindly up at her peaceful security. Anne looked slowly
around the quiet room, uncluttered by useless furniture, wide, clean
and calm. She loved her living-room. It was almost alive to her. Anne's
lips trembled.

"He takes things so hard," she whispered to herself, "and one person
can't really do anything."

It was after eleven when Roger came in. He thought Anne was asleep and
got into bed quietly. But after a little while, she turned to him.

"What's Mr. Wainwright going to do, Roger?"

"Nothing," Roger said heavily. "Nothing at all."

Anne crept closer to him and stroked his cheek. "I'm so sorry, dear."

Roger moved impatiently. "Don't do that, Anne, it fidgets me."

Anne instantly withdrew her hand. Roger reached for it and clasped it
listlessly. "Excuse me, dear, but I'm all tensed up. He was so damned
judicial and--and 'just.'"




                              CHAPTER TEN


For several weeks after Roger's outburst, Anne sensed a new element
in her life, as if she had come face to face with something hidden
before. This element was a quality in Roger that changed the angle of
their relations. She felt that she might be suddenly called upon for
calm judgment, a need might arise for a balancing force between them.
The foundations of her new life, of the deep peace and security she
had felt for the last six months, were not quite so secure as she had
thought them. There was something in Roger she was not quite sure of.

Often during the day, Anne stopped her housework, and made
conversational beginnings calculated to lead to an opening of this
subject with him. But when she concentrated her uneasiness in words,
it seemed always to gain more substance than it really had. Roger did
not approve of Hilary Wainwright. He never had, exactly. But Hilary
Wainwright was not crooked as John Lowell had been. At worst, his
methods might be mistaken. He was trying to do something worth while,
even if he went more slowly and cautiously than Roger's enthusiasm
demanded.

Again and again, Anne concluded that she was exaggerating the tension
between Roger and Wainwright, only to have her fear reach out of the
most unexpected situations and touch her with a small, cold finger.

"I will not start managing him. It gets nowhere and does no good."
Anne's logic always led her to this point, where, by an extra effort,
she usually succeeded in leaving it for the time.

And then, two weeks before Christmas, something happened that drove all
other thoughts from Anne's mind. She was going to have a child. She
knew it now beyond a doubt. The vague fears and tenuous analyses of the
last weeks vanished.

"It's what mamma would call 'my condition,' I suppose."

The world had changed, suddenly, and Anne's relation to it and to
herself had changed. Everything seemed bigger, wider and full of soft
mystery. The universe, a great, shadowy stretch far beyond her or
her immediate concerns, now centered in herself. She was the center
of something beyond ordinary life, beyond any small, blind struggle
of mistaken millions, almost beyond the law that governed the daily
comings and goings of mere humanity. No mystic ever felt nearer to
bodies unseen, heard far voices more clearly, than did Anne in the
first days of her sureness; when, her secret guarded for the perfect
moment of revelation, she sat hour after hour, looking out across
the tangled garden to the Bay, to old Tamalpais, quiet, eternal,
understanding.

The Wednesday before Christmas the weather turned. The long period of
sunshine was blotted by the first rain. All day it fell, soaking the
garden and shutting Anne from the world behind a thick, soft curtain.
Roger came early that night, less troubled than he had seemed of late,
and after dinner sat reading before the fire, instead of staring into
it as he had done so often since the Sabatini case. She felt small and
happy and understanding, shut within the warm peace of her home by the
pouring rain, very near to the man sitting so close beside her. She
would tell him now. When he closed his book she slipped her hand into
his and then, leaving her chair, curled up in his lap.

Roger's arms held her gently, and he leaned his cheek against her hair.
Anne waited, a little disappointed that he did not sense instantly the
secret just behind her lips. Surely if Roger had had anything so vital
to tell her, she would have known it. But he only stroked her hair
and now that she was listening with every nerve in her for a key to
Roger's mood, she felt that he was really far away. He was thinking of
something that had nothing whatever to do with her, while she felt so
strangely, almost terribly, one with him. She sat up.

"What is it, Princess?" Roger drew his attention from some distant
point. "Aren't you comfy?"

"How do you know it was anything? You were miles away."

"I guess I was. Not so far, however, not farther than the office."

Anne frowned. "Has Hilary Wainwright come to live permanently in the
house with us? It was really much nicer when we were alone."

Something in Anne's tone made Roger look at her intently. He had come
as near having a quarrel with Hilary Wainwright that afternoon as he
could come, and still keep the secretaryship. He had intended to laugh
off his seriousness and to say nothing until he was surer of himself,
but, at the look in Anne's eyes, he changed his mind:

"Anne, the man's false. I don't believe he really believes a thing he
says. It's a pose, as much of a pose as those silly soft shirts he
wears and those ready-made clothes. He thinks it brings him nearer to
'The People.' He----"

But Anne did not hear beyond the first sentence. Roger stood before
her, defying John Lowell, giving up the law. She rose slowly from his
knees and said quietly:

"Let's not talk about that to-night. Roger,--we're going to have a
baby."

It seemed to Anne an hour that they stood staring at each other while
she saw understanding dawn slowly in Roger's eyes. Understanding, and
then such a blank look of helplessness, that Anne felt the fears of the
last weeks form visibly before her and swarm down, almost suffocating
her.

"Good Lord!" he whispered.

Tears ran down Anne's cheeks.

Roger brushed his hand across his eyes and reached to her, but Anne
stepped back.

"You--don't--want--it," she whispered fiercely, "but I do. I don't
care how many people there are already. I want my baby. I----" She was
almost hysterical now.

Roger took her firmly in his arms.

"Of course I want it, too, Anne. There, dear, there."

Just as if she were a child, crying for a toy, instead of a woman
telling the father of her child the most wonderful news in the world!

Anne lay close, afraid to move away, to make concrete to herself her
own hurt and anger and separateness from Roger. He had not wanted
it. His first reaction had not been joy, but fear. Fear of what?
Over-burdening the world with one small baby more? Or fear for himself,
the new weight of responsibility?

"Please, dear, won't you believe me? I am glad. But it came so
suddenly. Why----"

It was Roger now who was suddenly afraid to voice his question. Why had
Anne chosen that moment to tell him? Had she thrown the thing at him,
a grapple to hold him fast in safe acceptance of Hilary Wainwright's
insincerity? Roger pushed the thought aside.

"This is not the usual way of whispering the 'sweet secret,' is it,
dear?" He turned Anne's face up and smiled into her eyes, wet and hurt.
"Whisper it now, Princess," and he bent his head.

But Anne could not smile. It would take all her strength and courage
to forget--and forgive--that first blank, helpless bewilderment in
Roger's eyes. He might be glad--he had said he was, but he was glad
for her gladness. He had none for the baby itself. He was cheating the
baby of its full meed of welcome, accepting gracefully now for his own
peace and comfort, something he could not escape. And she had hoarded
her secret. She had even thought of saving it to Christmas day! Of
giving Roger this, the biggest present in her power, early in the dawn
when they always waked. She had seen it so clearly, herself creeping
close to Roger. Then the rain had come, walling them in together, and
Roger had seemed nearer than he had for weeks and the depth of her own
happiness had forced the secret from her. And Roger had said:

"Good Lord!"

Anne moved away to physical freedom. In this spiritual isolation she
did not want Roger's arms about her, nor to have him touch her in any
way. Roger straightened at Anne's movement and they stood, one on each
side of the fireplace, outwardly two people very near in the intimacy
of the low fire and shadowed lights, inwardly far apart.

Why had Anne told him, at just this moment? Why had she done it? Had
she felt him slipping over the edge of Hilary Wainwright's insincerity,
out from these months of his own uncertainty, into spiritual freedom,
and thrown the silken lariat of her dependence over him, drawn him back
to the safety of 'a job'?

Without turning, Roger felt Anne standing small, almost prim, by the
fireplace, distrusting him, clinging fast to her safety, as James
Mitchell clung to his little job. Afraid to dare, clutching comfort at
any price. Perhaps she had deliberately decided this thing should be.
She so often understood his unuttered thoughts, clarified his reactions
before they had emerged clearly to himself from their first chaos of
emotion and enthusiasm. If Anne had done this, feeling the safety of
their present comfort slipping! But, when he turned to her--she was
so silvery fair, shame of his own thought rushed over him. Against the
reluctance he felt in her, he drew her to him again. And Anne, in her
desperate need to believe, came back. He kissed her and smiled into
her eyes, and this time, Anne smiled too. But she was glad that Roger
did not insist again that she whisper "the sweet secret!" She did not
want to talk of it until this mood was dead in the past. After a long
silence, she looked up.

"Mamma phoned to-day. She wants us to go there for Christmas."

Their first Christmas to be spent with the Mitchells!

"It's going to be the first real Christmas party mamma has ever had,"
Anne went on, "and she's as excited as a child. Dr. Stetson is back
from the East, more successful and famous than ever and he's asked
Belle to go out twice in three weeks. He's coming, and I believe moms
has some kind of idea that when he sees how successful matrimony can
be, he will be moved to go and do likewise."

Roger tried to smile, but none of Mrs. Mitchell's ideas ever amused
him. This was so exactly the kind of crude thing she would do. But he
had hurt Anne too much to-night to do anything but pretend genuine
pleasure.

"We'll do our best to help the good cause along. Shall I hold your hand
and murmur sweet nothings? Come on, let's practice."

"Don't be silly. But I do wish Belle would marry him." Anne spoke in
such a matronly tone that Roger laughed. "You needn't laugh. Belle's
awfully independent and all that, but she'd make a corking wife for
some man. And this Dr. Stetson does seem more persistent than most.
She usually frightens them off. I shouldn't wonder a bit if something
doesn't come of it." Anne looked oddly like Hilda for a moment.

"Well, you can coach me up, or we'll arrange a code to entangle the
gentleman in domestic felicity. I'll do whatever you tell me."

"Then it's sure to be a success. But, Roger, I do want this to be a
nice dinner. It's really the first effort mamma has ever been able
to make at a jolly Christmas. And she would so have loved trees and
Santa Clauses and all the regulation fixings. Only they cost so much,
and it never seemed worth while, because it would have taken all the
money--even if she could have scraped it together--just for the
machinery and there would have been no party."

Roger's own childhood had not been very full of treats, but at the
picture of little Anne deprived of the usual Christmas, Roger's heart
melted.

"You sweet baby, you. Ours will have a tree the very first year."

Anne nestled to him. "Oh, Roger, he will be cute, won't he?"

"He?"

"Of course. It's got to be a boy."

"I rather hope so myself, although I should never dare to prophesy so
vehemently. But I daresay you are right. What's his name? No doubt that
detail's settled, too."

"It certainly is. He is Roger Mitchell Barton. How do you like it?"

"Great," Roger said very quickly.

But after he and Anne were in bed, and he had held Anne and assured her
of his own free will that he was glad, and Anne was sleeping with his
arms about her, Roger whispered to himself:

"Roger MITCHELL Barton!"




                            CHAPTER ELEVEN


After days of tentative discussion, Hilary Wainwright decided on
Christmas Eve to have a Christmas tree at his office for the children
of the striking stevedores who loaded his sugar fleet. When he
announced the decision Roger almost flatly refused to have anything to
do with it.

"The children really should not be made to pay for their fathers'
obstinacy," Hilary said, and recalled to Roger the sanctimonious aunt
who had brought him up, trying to force a cookie on him after she had
unjustly spanked him.

"Why not settle the strike?" he suggested, without looking at Hilary.
"The men are only asking ten cents an hour more, and the right to
organize."

He felt Hilary's lips compress, exactly like that aunt's, and wanted to
laugh, although he was angry and disgusted.

"The matter is being arbitrated, and, in the meantime, Christmas is
here. I don't like to think of children unmerry on Christmas day."

"It would be uncomfortable," Roger said in a tone that made Hilary
glance at him with the look of a financier considering an uncertain
investment. But, whatever Hilary Wainwright's reaction to Roger's tone,
he dismissed it and said pleasantly:

"I guess we'll have to deliver the invitations personally. There's
not enough time for notes. Could you take half? I have the names and
addresses. They all live rather close together."

For a moment Roger hesitated. Then he agreed.

"I can probably cover the lot. They all live in one section."

Hilary nodded. "That would be great, if you can."

Years afterwards, when Roger recalled the thing that had made him most
ashamed of himself before men, it was this house-to-house canvass of
Hilary Wainwright's stevedores.

They all lived in mean, dilapidated buildings, down close to the great
wharves, on narrow side-streets, never free from the smell of tar
and bilge water and refuse. The men were mostly physical giants, with
badly shaped heads, small, close-set eyes, and brutal mouths. The women
were worn and dull, although here and there, among those with fewer
children, faint traces of an anemic, youthful prettiness were fading to
shrewish angles and deep lines about the pale lips. The children were
dirty and sharp-eyed, with the shifting look and the quick, darting
movements of children who live in the streets, dodging policemen and
irate parents and passing trucks.

The men glared sullenly at Roger, and, for the most part, made no
comment. Some of the women reviled Hilary Wainwright in gutter speech;
some were confused; none were grateful. But in the end, they all
accepted. If the "kids" did not go to this tree, they would have none.
The kids would like it.

On Christmas morning Anne went to the office and helped with the
tree. It was the finest that Hilary could find and weighted under
innumerable, if cheap, presents, and bags of candy and lights. It was
finished a little before twelve, and the clerks and clerks' wives who
had helped stood back and admired it.

"It's a lot better than my children are going to have," one woman
whispered to Anne.

"It really is pretty, isn't it, Roger?" Anne had enjoyed hanging the
thick, silver tinsel and concealing the colored electric globes in the
most effective places.

"Yes. It's pretty." Roger had made up his mind to see the thing through
decently, but it was difficult.

The lights were switched on for a trial view; every one exclaimed
"O-h," and, after other appropriate remarks of appreciation for the
beauty of the tree, and Hilary's generosity, left. Anne came close to
Roger.

"Next year," she whispered, "we're going to have one exactly like this,
only a teeny, weeny one, aren't we?"

Roger did not answer, but as Hilary called to him just then, Anne did
not notice. In a moment Roger returned.

"He wants me to come back after lunch and start things going. His
sister can't get here until half past three and the tree's scheduled
for three."

"Half past three!" The Mitchell dinner was to be at four, to give Belle
time to get back to her case at seven. Roger could not possibly be
punctual and James Mitchell hated a meal to be delayed. But Roger could
not refuse Hilary.

"It's one now. There's hardly time to go home for lunch and get back
here."

"I tell you. I'll go round the corner and get a bite and then clear up
a few reports I didn't have time for yesterday and stay right on until
she arrives. I'll leave the minute she comes."

"Try not to be later than you can help, dear, won't you?"

"I'll try. But don't wait for me. I won't be much behind. I'll come
right out."

"All right. I guess you've got to stay, but--I wanted us to go
together. Don't be any later than you can help," Anne again warned
Roger as he took her to the elevator.

"I won't." But coming back to the office, Roger wished that Miss
Wainwright would not come at all. The Mitchell dinner, from a boring
incident, had become in the last forty-eight hours, through Anne's
constant reference to it, an ordeal not unlike the delivery of the
invitations and the tree itself. He had wanted a quiet home dinner,
with liberty of silence afterwards, a small space in the cluttered
confusion of the last days, in which to take careful stock of his
almost irrepressible scorn of Hilary Wainwright.

But Hilda Mitchell had never had a pleasant Christmas!

Roger frowned and tried to shrug off his unjust impatience. "I wish
to the Lord they'd all go and live in China or somewhere. I suppose
it will be worse after the baby comes. Roger Mitchell Barton!"
he whispered. "Sabatini would be better." But at the impossible
combination of Roger Sabatini Barton, Roger laughed.

       *       *       *       *       *

At two the children began to arrive, surprisingly clean and well
dressed; the girls with bright hair ribbons and white stockings
and patent leather shoes and the boys with plastered hair and neat
suits. A clerk, with no family ties, who had come from the shipping
office to help, made a running line of comment aside to Roger on the
extraordinary and warped viewpoint of men who could afford patent
leather shoes for their children, striking for higher wages.

"If they came in the things they wear at home during the week, you'd be
afraid of germs," Roger exploded.

The man looked at him suspiciously, but ceased his comments.

Anne waited for Roger until three and then left the house. By Hilda's
concern at seeing her alone, Anne knew that her mother was not quite
sure that Roger would come at all.

"He's coming, but yesterday Mr. Wainwright sprang a Christmas tree for
the children of his striking stevedores, and his sister can't get there
to help him entertain until after three. The children will begin coming
long before that and he needed Roger. I would have stayed too except
that I knew you wouldn't like us both to be late."

"Now, I think that's mighty kind of Mr. Wainwright. Not many rich
people, men 'specially, would have thought of such a thing. Yes, dear,
it would have made it a little awkward for you both to be late, but
we'll wait a bit for Roger anyhow."

"No, please don't. He won't be much behind and he'd rather you didn't."

Anne and Hilda were in Anne's old room where she was taking off her
things. In the front room, Belle and Dr. Stetson were talking. Hilda
closed the door softly.

"I believe there is something doing," she whispered with raised
eyebrows and quick nods. "He's one of those thin, decided-looking men
and he's got Belle going. I heard him tell her not to smoke so much and
she actually threw her cigarette away."

"They must be married."

"Anne! No, they're not married. I don't believe he's asked her yet, but
I hope he will. Belle says he's a wonder at his line, cuts the queerest
things out of you, and never makes a cut for less than a thousand
dollars."

"Maybe he'll do it cheaper for the family. I couldn't afford a pin
prick at that rate."

"I hope you'll never need it. But papa seems to like him. Listen.
That's him laughing. I like his voice, don't you?"

Anne thought it was cold, rather like one of his wonderful knives, but
she said it sounded pleasant and followed Hilda down the hall to the
kitchen, where she gave her the black silk underskirt she had brought.
Hilda's eyes filled with tears, and she touched the thick messaline
lovingly.

"It's the first real silk petticoat I've ever had, Annie. It's almost
too nice to wear."

"Now, mamma, you put it right on."

Hilda hesitated, then dropped the torn gingham she was wearing, made a
face at it, slipped into the new skirt, and waltzed about the kitchen
holding up her dress skirt like a ballet dancer.

"You're just a girl, yourself, mamma. I don't believe you'll ever grow
up." Anne watched her mother with the deep tenderness and sense of
protection. No piece of finery could ever make her as happy as this
black silk petticoat made her mother. It was a shame that she had
never been able to have pretty things. The old resentment against her
father, somewhat allayed since her marriage, rose in Anne, and she
was glad that Dr. Stetson's presence prevented her having to give him
at that moment the box of good cigars she had brought. She had always
resented giving her father presents, ever since, as a little girl of
ten, she had discovered one Christmas morning, that the handkerchiefs
with "papa's love" had really come from Hilda's manipulation of the
tissue-wrapped allotments. She had succeeded in losing every one of the
handkerchiefs before New Year, but she had gone on giving him gifts and
thanking him for his.

Hilda had waltzed into the bedroom, and now returned with the family's
remembrances to Anne and Roger, a silver cigarette case from Belle, a
necktie from James and Hilda to Roger. Three pair of silk stockings
from Belle to Anne, a hand-embroidered nightgown from Hilda and James.

And then, the matter of presents being over, they both felt a little
freer. Hilda looked at the kitchen clock. It was five minutes after
four.

"If you don't think Roger would really mind, Anne, we'll begin. I want
a nice, long talky dinner, and a little evening after." Hilda gave her
petticoat a last flirt, twirled about on her toes, and began dishing up
the turkey. "Belle came early and made the salad, something extra fancy
she's learned. The plates are ready in the pantry, Anne. If you'll just
carry them in, then I'll introduce you."

Anne carried the salad into the dining-room, catching a side view of
Dr. Stetson through the drawn portière. He looked as she imagined he
would look from his voice; slim, and exceedingly well groomed. He was
leaning back now in the rocker, his thin, strong white hands clasped
behind his sleek, dark head. He was listening to an animated anecdote
of Belle's and smiling. Anne thought he was the most collected,
self-possessed being she had ever seen. He might have removed every
nerve in his body by one of his own skillful operations.

"If Belle marries him, she'll toe the mark." Anne smiled and went back
to the kitchen. When the turkey and cranberries and sprouts were dished
and in the hotplate, Hilda took Anne into the parlor. Dr. Stetson rose
instantly, gave her a penetrating glance as if she were a patient,
dismissed her as much less interesting than Belle, and they all
followed Hilda into the dining-room beyond.

"Why, where's Roger?" Belle demanded.

"He'll be along shortly. Hilary Wainwright's giving a party, a
Christmas tree to some poor children, and Roger had to help get the
thing going."

"If there were a few more Wainwrights in this country there wouldn't be
any labor trouble," James explained, squinting and pursing up his lips
as if he had private information of this certainty. Belle laughed.

"Well, I'm glad I'm not a philanthropic millionaire if he can't even
take Christmas off. It must be worse than nursing or surgery, don't you
think so, Doctor?"

"It must be if it keeps any one from a salad like this," Dr. Stetson
smiled at Hilda, who was saved in the nick of time by Belle's look,
from disclaiming the honor.

Roger's absence was not further commented upon and the talk became
general. Dr. Stetson had traveled extensively before the war in Europe
and he described people and places well, always picking out with the
unerring accuracy of his famous thousand-dollar cuts, the weak or
ridiculous spots in people and conditions. James Mitchell scarcely
stopped smiling. Belle's ringing laugh interrupted every few moments.
Anne, too, was interested. She felt the charm of the man's culture and
experience. It would be nice to travel and meet interesting people, go
to wonderful concerts and luxuriate for a little while in pleasant,
easy places. To meet people concerned in creating beauty or enjoying
it; not only those always striving to divide it up. Perhaps, some
day, when Europe had settled again to a semblance of what it had been
before, she and Roger and Rogie would go. Anne began in imagination to
travel.

A loud peal of the doorbell brought her back from Rome, and stopped Dr.
Stetson in the middle of a story.

Roger came up the stairs two at a time, explaining to Hilda as he came.

"I'm awfully sorry, but I couldn't make it sooner. Miss Wainwright was
later even than she expected. The train was stalled or something."

"That's all right. We've only just about begun."

When Roger had said he would come straight on, Anne had not thought of
his clothes, and now, as he followed Hilda, she saw that he was in his
everyday suit, rumpled and covered with a fine powdering of dust from
the tree. A bit of wool and a scrap of tinsel clung to his sleeve. He
looked tired. She saw Dr. Stetson size him up and a touch of annoyance
cloud Belle's eyes. She was annoyed herself. Roger took the vacant
place and Hilda made a great to-do about getting him salad, although
Roger said, more emphatically than one usually refuses a course at a
special dinner, that he did not want any. And when it came, he ate it
as indifferently as if it had been plain lettuce. Anne saw her mother
watching him and tried to catch his eye, but Roger's head was bent
and she gave it up. Dr. Stetson had caught again the thread of his
interrupted story, but Anne heard little of the rest. She wished that
Roger would not sit so, absorbed in his salad as if he were alone at a
lunch counter.

The others, seeing that Roger was not entering the talk, abandoned
their pretense of eating slowly until he caught up with them, took
their second helping of turkey, and disregarded him. As Hilda removed
his salad plate and passed him turkey, Anne managed at last to catch
his eye. He looked puzzled, frowned slightly, and with a distinct
effort banished his thoughts and turned to the doctor.

"It's the same in all countries," the doctor was saying, "there's just
a small group of people who really care for what's beautiful. We hear
a lot about the artistic French and Italians. The average Latin--the
ordinary man--doesn't respond to beauty, pure beauty, in itself, any
more than does the average Saxon. They grub along with their eyes in
the dust in exactly the same dull way."

"What is pure beauty, in itself?" Roger demanded, as if he were
heckling a witness on the stand. "What is impure beauty, or beauty out
of itself?"

Dr. Stetson regarded him for a moment with a smile of forced amusement,
as if this were a joke, in poor taste, but to be condoned in a family
gathering.

"The Latin past," he elaborated, "was very closely tangled up with
Art, and, as they have nothing to be proud of now, they fall back a
few centuries and rave about their paintings and marbles, which never
did interest more than a very few of them. And it's the same thing
with other nations which have not much now to boast of. They go back
to something centuries ago and find comfort in it. You can't talk ten
minutes to an educated Portuguese before he's referring to the dead
glories of the Portuguese fleet and dragging in Vasco da Gama as if
he lived to-day. A Spaniard--at any rate up until the time of the
Spanish-American War--would talk as if Mexico and all South America
were still theirs. Nations, like people, the less they have as a whole
to boast of now, the more they blind themselves with the dreams a few
choice souls among them had generations ago."

"Just as we, in America, blind ourselves with the dream of liberty and
equality that Washington and Lincoln had," Roger interposed so quietly
that his inference was lost for a moment in the echo of Dr. Stetson's
sweeping assertions. The doctor himself was the first to catch it, and
turning to Roger with a look as if he were diagnosing an unexpected
symptom said, with the same smug assurance with which Hilary Wainwright
regretted the slow coming of the Average Man's ability to think:

"No, I don't think the cases are parallel. At least I, personally, am
old fashioned enough to believe we have liberty and equality for all."

"You're right." James Mitchell threw out his narrow shoulders and
glared at Roger. "Liberty and equality! There's too much of them now,
allowing every dirty foreigner and crack-brained native to stir up any
fool that will listen. Let me tell you," and James Mitchell cut the
heart of the problem from the air before him with his knife, "if there
isn't a little less 'liberty and equality' pretty soon, this country's
going to be in the same rotten mess as Russia. The people are half
asleep. If I didn't know that down at bottom, the great middle class of
America is really sane----"

"----we might get somewhere," Roger spoke almost sadly, so that
Belle and Dr. Stetson looked toward him, puzzled; but Anne, her face
flushing, looked down. "It's the great, sane, middle class that's
holding back liberty--killing it. The rich, to a certain extent, have
it. The poor are struggling for it. It's only in the middle that
they're dead, and safe. The middle class. There is no middle class,
really. It is the dividing class. It's the blow-neither-hot-nor-cold.
It's the lackey-souled. It's the misfortune of any country that has
it, this great, sane, safe, middle class."

"From your point of view, whatever that is, it may be. Not from mine."
Dr. Stetson now spoke in crisp, sharp tones; like tiny glittering
knives they seemed to pare the emotion from Roger's words. "The
lackey-souled are, on the whole, the clean bodied. Your struggling
poor, battling for so-called liberty, are unfit, humanly below par.
They can't function efficiently as humans where they are, much less
direct matters. Perhaps you don't know the number of mental defectives
there are in this country. The draft records showed a tremendous
proportion of men with the mental capacity of children. They work
at trades requiring little skill, they marry and raise others like
themselves. It's ridiculous to talk about increasing the liberty of
these people. It ought to be restricted, anyhow redirected. At the
other end of the scale, we have, of course, the effect of over-license,
but, it may surprise you to know that in school tests taken through all
classes, it was the children of the rich who, on the whole, averaged
highest."

"It doesn't surprise me at all," Roger said quietly, while Hilda
fidgeted and made little clucking noises, as if trying to swallow the
too large portions of mental food offered by Dr. Stetson. "It's exactly
what I would expect under the present system."

"Which system is the result of these conditions, not the other way
round. The upper class, using it in a broad sense as the directors of
the world, are there because they are most fit."

"Exactly," James Mitchell interpolated like a stinging wasp. "Look
at the directors of any corporation, quiet, clean, sharp-eyed men.
Look at the soap-boxers, the I. W. W.'s, the union organizers--all
shifty-looking, as if they'd never had enough baths or enough to eat."

"Maybe they haven't," Roger said slowly, while Anne's face flamed and
with difficulty she kept back the tears.

Why did Roger persist? What did it matter anyhow who was right or who
wrong, at this first real Christmas of her mother's?

"Perhaps they haven't," Dr. Stetson conceded, "but that doesn't alter
the fact that, socially, they are not fit to function as directors.
They are mentally below par," he repeated in clean, crisp finality.
"They are to be classed roughly, to the layman, in the same general
division as idiots."

"Idiots!" Hilda murmured with a shiver.

"Nonsense, mamma." Belle's hand pushed away Hilda's excited, intruding
interest. "They're not idiots. That's just the point. Idiots, real ones
that everybody recognizes, get locked up. These people--why you meet
them every day. You wouldn't know them, very likely. You----"

"Why, Belle! I certainly would know an idiot when I see one."

"They're not idiots, not driveling idiots, Mrs. Mitchell," the doctor
hastened to her aid; "they are--well, just the average unskilled
worker, the laborer, the migratory worker, the seasonal worker. Many
stevedores and longshoremen, fruit pickers, the simplest work in
machine shops--an appalling percentage of these men aren't over ten
or twelve years of age really. From these sub-normals or variants,
come the criminals. Criminology is only just beginning to associate
itself with psychology, but I could tell you some apparent miracles
worked in prisons by small, minor operations. Which proves," he turned
now, including Roger, "that it is not a question of opportunity or
will--Nature isn't romantic or emotional--it's a scientific question.
Deficiencies, variations, do exist. Perhaps, in time, all this may be
correctable, but only by scientific methods--not by talk." He allowed
himself the last thrust, covering it by a genial smile. "A clinic is
enough to make one doubt the right of the democratic principle."

"Not unless you refuse to look below the surface. Nature may be
scientific, but she's not insane. She doesn't turn out millions upon
millions of human beings that a few may scramble to themselves all the
beauty of the universe. I grant you all the mentally inefficient you
claim, but, what started it, what caused it? Why?"

"A thousand things, many too intricate, too subtle to explain. And
remember we know very little about it. The field is new. There are a
thousand threads tangled in the problem, pre-natal influences, going
back for generations, malnutrition of mothers, early environment of
the baby, nervous stimuli--dozens of influences. A psychopathic clinic
in any of the big, free institutions, a ward in a baby hospital,
a maternity ward--it's enough to make one doubt the right of the
democratic principle," he repeated as if he found the phrase so exact
he needed no other.

Roger looked at him. "It would be very hopeless, if it were true:
I mean if nothing preventive could be done." Hilda moved uneasily
and James Mitchell cleared his throat. Anne's flaming face was still
lowered. "But since, according to science, malnutrition, pre-natal
conditions, unhealthy nerve conditions, do play a part, it seems to
me there is a chance. As you say, the children of the rich, under the
best physical and educational conditions, do average higher; if these
conditions, or even approximately these, were extended, it ought to
help some, don't you think?"

Dr. Stetson saw where Roger was leading and looked at him coldly.
"Really, Mr. Barton, it's such an intricate subject, and, on the
whole, so impossible to discuss with a layman, that"--he beamed round,
his charming smile of culture and advantage--"I think we'd have to
give more time to it, and more seriousness, than I, at least, am
able to give under these conditions." A gracious gesture laid the
responsibility for this upon the well-cooked turkey.

Hilda got up to remove the dishes and Anne rose quickly to help. Out in
the kitchen, Hilda closed the door and whispered:

"What on earth is the matter with Roger?"

Anne shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. He simply can't take those things
lightly. He gets all wrought up about the state of the world."

"Do you think he's dropped it now?" Hilda said hurriedly, detaining
Anne as she was about to pass back to the dining-room.

"Yes," Anne said shortly. "He won't say any more."

"Really, it's enough to scare one to death," Hilda went on in her
hurried whisper, as she slipped the mince pies from their pans to the
serving plates. "Idiots and criminals lurking round and you can't tell
them from sane people! Sometimes I think Christian Science must be an
awful comfort. Look at Charlotte Welles, she never gets all stewed
up. She just goes round saying--All is Love--and she doesn't have to
bother about fixing it. What with Dr. Stetson saying you can almost cut
wickedness out of people, and Roger wanting to feed it out of them,
and Charlotte saying there is none in them--one doesn't know what to
believe."

Belle's laughter drifted from the dining-room. Hilda heaved a sigh of
real relief. "That's nice. I guess everything'll be all right now.
Belle has a lot of tact."

The rest of the meal went off pleasantly. Although Roger made no
definite contribution, he no longer sat frowning and crumbling his
bread. It was after six when they rose from the table, and, according
to a prearranged scheme of Belle's, had black coffee in the other room
before the gas log. But Anne saw that Belle did not quite trust Roger
yet, because she so evidently kept the conversation in her own hands.

"It's a shame," Anne decided. "He couldn't change them, and this is
the first time Belle has ever brought any of her friends home and had
things pleasant."

As soon after the black coffee as she could, she let her eye catch
Roger's and, at the question in his, nodded faintly. The others would
have a better time when he had gone, and they would all be going soon
anyhow. She slipped out as Hilda took the empty coffee things.

"I think we'll have to go now, mamma. Roger has had a tiring day and
there may be reports to do yet. This is Mr. Wainwright's busy season."

"Do you have to go, dear, really?" Hilda could not keep every atom of
relief out of her voice, for neither was she sure of Roger. Perhaps
James would let the dinner pass, but not if Roger annoyed him any more.

"I think so. It was a lovely dinner. I'd like to help you with the
dishes, but I suppose you'll leave them till morning."

Hilda laughed. "I'm not going to do them at all. Mrs. Welles' Jap
schoolboy's coming at half past eight for an hour."

"Good for you!"

"It's papa's present," Hilda said proudly. "Really, Anne, papa's
changing quite a bit."

Anne put her arms about her mother. "You dear, patient thing. I wish I
were more like you."

"Go on, you flatterer. There's Roger coming to look you up."

"They're going to play bridge for a while. Do you want to play, dear?"
he asked.

"No. We'll just slip out the back way. They won't notice."

"Why, Anne, that's awfully rude. Of course they'll notice."

"Is it?" Anne asked coldly, as Hilda disappeared for a moment into the
pantry. "Well, I don't think it matters if it is now."

She got her things quietly and joined Roger again in the kitchen. Hilda
leaned over the porch railing and waved as they disappeared into the
covered tunnel that led to the street. On the sidewalk, Roger slipped
his hand under Anne's arm, but Anne drew violently away.

"Why, honey, what's the matter? Surely you don't----"

"Surely I do care for common decency and politeness. Mamma got up a
lovely dinner; every one was having a good time, until you got one of
those excited streaks on. You might know they wouldn't agree with you.
What sense was there in insisting? Besides, Dr. Stetson is an authority
and you don't know anything about subnormal psychology or criminology."

Under the stream of Anne's anger, Roger's nerves quivered. Like fork
lightning, fears cut across his mind, phrases of Anne's, moods, likes
and dislikes, resemblances to the Mitchells. He had been longing to
get away from the house, now he wanted to get away from the stream of
Anne's invective. But, once started, Anne clung to her hurt.

"Please, Anne, quit it," Roger said as they reached the corner where
they had to take the car. "I don't want to hear any more about it."

The car was just coming into sight. "No," Anne said hurriedly, "you
never do, after you've had your say."

Side by side, hurt and angry, they sat through the long ride home. But,
as they climbed the hill, quiet at this hour, the earth sweet with long
rain, the stars clean and shining from a densely blue-black sky, Roger
took Anne's hand.

"I'm sorry I hurt you, dear. I really never meant to."

"I don't see how you could have helped meaning it," Anne said coldly,
and then, because she too was afraid of this their first real
disagreement, pressed his fingers faintly.




                            CHAPTER TWELVE


They did not mention the dinner again, but for weeks it hung in
the background of all Anne's thought. The long silences and sudden
irritations of Roger she interpreted by it, as well as her own growing
inability to discuss his work with him. All their talks now were
touched with the same dislike, almost fear, she had always had of
dropping the curtain of Hilda's Niche behind her, and being left alone
in the dark confusion of the interior.

Beyond the brilliant light of her own happiness in the coming of the
baby, the still positive joy in her pretty home, there was something
dark, hidden and unclear. It was as if Roger himself had absorbed some
of the dumb hatred, the bitterness of revolt that saturated the outside
world.

The longshore strike hung on; other strikes threatened in sympathy. The
newspapers clamored for settlement. Through January and February, Roger
was out almost every evening with Hilary Wainwright, attending useless
efforts at adjustment. From these he returned, his anger throttled to
consideration of Anne's condition, a consideration so palpable that
Anne felt the foundations of her peace tremble.

Finally, one night at the beginning of March, when, after a brief rest
of exhaustion, the rain was again pouring hour after hour, a mass of
water from sky to earth, Anne spoke:

"A penny, Roger. You've been staring into the fire half an hour by the
clock. I spoke twice and you never heard a word."

Roger turned to her. "Didn't I? I was thinking."

Anne put aside the tiny white nightgown she was hemstitching and drew
her chair closer. "I should hope so. I'd hate to think you were just
gazing blankly. You're getting awfully quiet, Roger."

"Am I? I suppose I am. There's so little time to really think in the
day. It's so cluttered up doing--nothing."

"I thought Mr. Wainwright used to overwork you at first. It's about
time he did a little more himself." Anne watched Roger's face, with
something of the same tense interest with which one waits for a stage
curtain to roll back.

"Oh, he gives me enough to do. It's not that. It's the kind of thing."

"What's he want now?" Anne was going to say: "Another Christmas tree?"
but the subject had closed itself naturally on Christmas night and
neither had again referred to it.

"He wants to call a meeting of the strike leaders; the heads of
the other unions he's afraid are going out in sympathy--a bunch of
charity buttinskies, Rockefeller Foundation people and Russell Sage
investigators, and--some of his own stock-holders. The thing's to be a
cross between a directors' meeting and a church social. He's going to
have refreshments served--after a friendly, informal talk, served by
his private butler, brought down from the house for the occasion!"

Anne laughed. Roger smiled, and then laughed with her. "If it wasn't
pitiful, wicked in a way, it's so dense and stupid, it would be
a scream. Black Tom O'Connell, and the Reverend Kenneth Peabody
Smythe--being buttled with expensive sandwiches."

Now that he had really started to talk about it, Roger felt the
enthusiasm of communication sweep him. It was nice to talk again
like this to Anne. The habit had dropped out lately, ever since the
Christmas dinner.

"He's obsessed with the idea that if he can persuade Capital and Labor
to eat a sandwich together, all will be harmony and brotherly love."

"The men will swallow their claims with their sandwich, as it were?"

"Exactly. And his directors will swallow their just grievances at the
men's obstinacy, and everything will be exactly as it was before."

"Did you try to dissuade him?"

"No. It would do no good. He cannot or will not see the thing as an
indicator. To him, each strike is a separate act of obstinacy, or
anger, or a monetary demand on the part of the men. He concedes some to
be just and some unjust, but the just ones are getting fewer, rapidly
fewer. He sees the whole labor situation as a kind of rising shriek on
the part of the workers, higher and higher, like angry and perverse
children who have found a way to terrify their nurses. He's looked
the shrieking baby over and can find no pins in its clothing and so
he's going to give it a lollypop and tell it to be good. If it doesn't
obey--he'll set it down with a thump and leave it to itself."

Under the grotesque figure of his speech, Anne felt Roger's anger. He
now hated Hilary Wainwright with a personal bitterness Anne had not
believed in him. After a little, she asked quietly:

"When's this meeting coming off?"

"To-morrow night. The invitations went out days ago; off-hand,
'comradely' notes to the labor people; beseeching little appeals to the
Russell Sagers, et al. 'to help out'; I didn't see those to the company
directors; he managed them himself."

Again there was a short silence, filled to Anne with cold little puffs
of anxiety blowing from beyond the warm security of their pretty rooms.

"Can outsiders go, Roger? There wouldn't be any real objection, would
there?"

"Why, no. I don't see that there would. Why?"

"I'd like to go."

"Really?" Roger turned to her, his eyes full of a pleased surprise that
hurt Anne a little.

"Of course I would. It sounds interesting."

"Interesting? Yes, it will be interesting as a psychological problem--a
kind of clinic for studying the blind stupidity of Hilary Wainwright
and his kind. It may be rough, too. I wouldn't answer for Black Tom
O'Connell--if he comes."

"I guess it won't be so rough that I can't stand it--if you can," Anne
added in an emphasis that escaped Roger, visioning again the absurd
sandwich that was to unite Labor and Capital.

But the next evening, as she followed Roger into the already
well-filled room, Anne forgot her personal interest in the feel of
suppressed antagonism that filled the very air. Almost abnormally
sensitive to hidden currents, as Anne passed down the empty space so
clearly separating the two factions of the audience, she felt the
currents playing across her.

On the right, in little knots and groups about Hilary Wainwright's
desk, were the directors and their wives, the Russell Sagers, et al., a
few thin, rather pale young men and a woman with horn-rimmed glasses,
stringy hair and a note book. On the left, a fat man with a red face
and very black hair and two women, one scarcely more than a girl, with
bobbed chestnut curls, and great violet eyes, child-like eyes above
the scarlet lips of a woman.

As Roger led to seats just opposite this girl, Anne noticed that the
girl looked at them, and said something to the woman beside her, but
the latter did not answer, nor even turn to them. She was a squat,
heavily built woman, with a swarthy skin, and densely black, living
hair, without a thread of gray, although Anne judged her more than
forty.

She gripped Anne's attention and held it. She was so still. She looked
as if she could wait forever and, in the end, the thing she waited
would come. She was like the earth, silent, indifferent to all the
play of light and shadow in life. She lived for a purpose. Whatever it
was, Anne felt it like a thick, brown shell about her. Again the girl
with the bobbed hair spoke to her. This time she frowned and shrugged
aside the girl's remarks. It was like the motion of a tree disturbing
the poise of a bright insect lodged for a moment upon its leaves. The
girl laughed and the heavy woman lit a cigarette. She smoked in deep,
violent draws that obscured her face in a cloud of stinging blue smoke.

At the odor, a short, bald-headed man rose on the other side of the
room and opened a window. When he came back to his chair the woman
beside him bowed her thanks. She was a large, gray-haired woman,
conspicuous as the one bright spot amid the dark tailored suits of the
other women and the business clothes of the men. Her amber-colored
tunic, of soft silk, blended into the golden tint of her rounded,
unlined face. Her skirt of golden-brown broadcloth toned in perfect
harmony with her brown suede boots. When, through her gold lorgnette,
hung on an amber chain, her brown eyes smiled their thanks to the man
for his service, she seemed to come down from some height for the
special purpose. She was like a rich, perfectly-ripened apricot, hung
beyond reach. Next to her, on the left, the black-coated slimness of
the Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe stood out like an exclamation
point, calling attention to his presence in this extraordinary
gathering.

At his desk, Hilary Wainwright kept glancing anxiously from the door to
the group of men talking together in the third row. These men were all
beyond middle age, with well-brushed gray hair, white, well-kept hands
and tailored clothes. Two of them were lean, sharp-eyed men, their
bodies tightened like springs, perfect mechanisms for the gripping
and adjusting of any obstruction before them. The other was shorter,
with a heavy neck and predatory eyes, the cheap cartoonists' favorite
illustration of a capitalist.

Hilary Wainwright was just moving to join them, when the door opened
and a large, raw-boned man in an untidy overcoat entered hurriedly
and, without looking to the right or left, came straight to the seat
beside the bobbed-haired girl. His boots left a muddy trail across the
rug, and, as he shrugged himself out of his overcoat the ashes from
his cigar stub fell on the girl's lap. With a dainty flip of her white
fingers she brushed them aside, leaned close to the man, and whispered.
He nodded, and the girl patted his knee. With a tap of his gavel,
Hilary Wainwright called the meeting to order.

Under cover of the preliminary remarks on the present situation among
the longshoremen, Anne whispered to Roger:

"Who's that man?"

"Black Tom O'Connell. The idol of the laboring world."

"Who's that heavy woman this side?"

"That's Katya Orloff, the inevitable Russian Jew."

Anne looked beyond her to Black Tom. He, like Katya, was sitting
perfectly still, the unlit butt of the cigar hanging from his lips.
His long, thin face was badly shaven and grayish from overwork. His
worn clothes hung loosely on his large frame, bent and gnarled from a
childhood of work and the passions which Anne felt were always tearing
the man. Again and again, Anne tried to look away, to listen to the
smooth flow of Hilary Wainwright's studied periods, but her eyes always
came back to the still, slouching form next to the pretty girl. Their
physical proximity disturbed her. She felt an element in the girl
reaching to this man, scarred, untidy, old enough to be her father.
When the girl for the second time laid her soft, white hand on his
knee, Anne felt herself flush and looked quickly away to Hilary.

Whatever he had been saying, he had now reached the end of the first
period. With a distinct bracing of his shoulders, and a decided
hardening of his lips, he went on:

"And so it seemed the best thing for us all to get together and talk
the thing out frankly and honestly. The situation is serious and it
concerns us all, every one of us and the whole city," he added, to
impress the fact that it was not his peculiar position as main owner
in the sugar fleet, not the financial interest of the other keen
directors, that had brought them there, but their world interest in all
that touched humanity. "Until now, the strike has been fairly orderly,
but it will not continue so much longer. The city, the common people,
cannot be made to bear much longer the brunt of curtailed sugar supply,
or idle shipping. The boats have got to be run." He paused. Anne felt
Katya Orloff move for the first time, a slight movement toward them.
She turned slightly and saw that Katya was now looking with faint
amusement at Roger, the only one in the room listening intently to
Hilary.

The directors, bored by having to give up their evening to this
"hare-brained scheme of that idealist, Wainwright," but realizing the
importance of having every morning paper blazon the fact that they
had met with Labor and tried to reach a sane compromise, sat back in
noncommittal placidity. The Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe looked
worried, and the lady in apricot disgusted. The thin woman with the
notebook chewed her pencil while studying the severely plain and
expensive suit of the woman in front of her. It was impossible to tell
whether Black Tom even knew where he was, and the bobbed-haired girl
toyed with a string of jade beads and yawned. Anne moved a little and
so obstructed the view of the squat woman. Hilary continued:

"There was, of course, no written and official agreement that the men
would not strike, but it was understood, by the law of good will and
decency. The world has been through a period of bitter suffering and
now it is the duty of every one, from the top to the bottom, to pull
and pull together. That it is no longer possible to pay the war time
wage, when labor is scarce, is not the fault of any one individual. We,
those who happen to be the hirers of labor, regret this as much as any
one. The men ought to understand. They refuse to do so. Every method
has been tried, short--of strike-breakers." Hilary paused to let the
significance sink in. "But the country is full of men eager to work,
desperate for work, with a right to work. The mayor understands the
situation. He will protect the right of these men to sell their labor.
He----"

Black Tom was on his feet, his long, narrow head thrust forward, the
stinking ash of his cigar falling again on the bobbed-haired girl,
who again brushed it off with an exquisitely dainty fillip of a white
finger.

"He will, will he? How long does he think he's going to run this town?"

Hilary Wainwright tapped with his gavel, a little sound like a
woodpecker. Every one but Katya was looking at Tom now.

"Just--about--as--long as it will take to bring in those
strike-breakers." Black Tom's stained hand moved in a quick, drawing
motion, gathering the strike-breakers to him. "Just that long and no
longer. Bring them on," he commanded. "You can't bring them too soon.
Bring them, dozens, hundreds, thousands--you will need them all."

The heavy hands moved now in a low, undulating wave, the wave of
advancing thousands. Anne felt Roger rigid beside her and her own heart
was beating thickly. The force of the man was terrific. It rayed from
his gaunt body, burned in his deep-set, brown eyes. "Bring them, I tell
you, bring them, the poor, starving victims you'll fool with higher
wages than you're paying the present ones; hand out the promises you're
laughing in your sleeves to see them believe. But--they won't believe
them long. They'll take the jobs because they have to, with shame in
their hearts, the decent ones, and in the end they'll come to us." He
paused, and a smile, so sad, so understanding, so full of pity lit his
face that Anne saw Roger's hands grip the chair arms.

Instantly Hilary Wainwright seized the opening. "That's the spirit
that's doing so much harm. We came here to-night, each to take
advantage of the other's greater knowledge along certain lines, but we
can get nowhere unless----"

"Unless liars like you get out," Black Tom thundered, filling the room
with the fury of his anger, although he scarcely raised his voice. It
was the warning rumble of thunder, distant, rolling nearer. "You've
held the power, until the best of you have forgotten that God Almighty
didn't create the world for you. But he didn't and He's getting sick
of seeing the mess you've made of it. Not much longer, not so very
long now." In the pleasantly warmed air before him he seemed to see a
vision, a vision that suddenly quelled his anger. He smiled a slow,
understanding smile of love and forgiveness. "You can't do it; why do
you try? It's not you against us; can't you see that? It's the new
against the old, the worn out, the rotten. It's not this strike, or any
one strike; it's men, men beating their way up out of the dark below.
They're coming, coming." His head, bent now, seemed to hear them in
the stillness that filled the room. "Coming slowly, with bleeding feet,
the way your God marched on to Calvary, but--nothing will stop them.
Nothing." And then he laughed, so genuinely amused, that the terrible
silence shattered in little clicks of disgust. "Strike-breakers! Good
God, a bunch of starving boobs--to hold back the Social Revolution!"

The apricot-colored woman was the first to move. With a decisive
gesture she snapped her gold lorgnette and motioned the bald-headed man
to bring her cape. At his desk, Hilary Wainwright looked helplessly
about for a moment, then rose and walked down to the group of directors.

Katya Orloff drew on the jacket she had only partly loosed. The pretty
girl was already pulling a grass-green tam over the chestnut curls.

"Come on, Tom. Pete and Ikey are having a blowout. Let's beat it.
There's lots of time."

The man did not seem to hear, but he followed her. Too impatient for
the elevator, whose driver, expecting a protracted "row," had gone into
the pool parlor in the next basement, they ran down the stairs. Before
they turned the first flight, Anne heard the girl laughing gayly.

Katya stepped up to Roger with a look that Anne resented personally.
It was the smile of an older person to a small boy, not a precocious
annoying small boy, but the kind of boy one refers to as "an
exceedingly bright little chap."

"Your meeting was not a success." She spoke with a soft burr,
impossible to reproduce, a thick, throaty tone with an odor of
foreignness in it.

"No," Roger answered shortly. "It wasn't."

She seemed to be going to say something else, changed her mind and
clumped off alone.

The elevator man had come back to his post. In a few moments the room
was empty of all save Roger and Anne.

"I suppose you have to wait," Anne began, when a long, pale face,
apparently disconnected from any body, appeared at the door of Hilary's
private office.

"No need, Williams; they're gone."

"Gone, sir!"

"Gone. Slipped. Vamoosed," Roger added in an urge to shock the frozen
composure of that face. "Sandwiches all wasted unless--you eat them
yourself."

The face retreated in shocked but respectful silence. Roger laughed and
Hilary Wainwright entered. There was a short, awkward silence, and then
Hilary said hurriedly, as if, in the interval of his absence, he had
accumulated unforeseen but important duties:

"Would you mind locking up, Barton?" He took some papers from his desk,
his raincoat and umbrella, and, with a gracious smile to Anne, moved to
the door. "See you in the morning, Roger," he threw back and was gone.

Williams had already disappeared. The untouched sandwiches Roger put
into a box, switched off the lights and locked the doors. When he
presented the astounded elevator boy with at least a hundred very
delicately cut sandwiches, the boy grinned; but Roger did not smile in
return.

"Let's walk," Anne suggested.

"Do you feel like it? I'd like to."

They went on in silence.

"Who's that pretty girl with the bobbed hair that went out with Black
Tom?"

"Merle something. I don't know her last name. She lives with Black Tom."

Anne stopped. "Lives with him! Do you mean--that--that they live
together?"

"Yes. He has a wife somewhere who won't divorce him. He hasn't even
seen her for years, I believe. But I don't know much about it."

Anne shuddered. "She's so young and clean and pretty. He's all worn and
old enough to be her father."

Roger shrugged. "Sex is queer. You can never tell a thing about it."

Disgust touched Anne. She had felt the man's spirit, but now his body
obstructed her vision. She could think of nothing but those scarred
hands, and wide, rather heavy lips caressing the clean daintiness of
the girl.

"It makes me sick," she said in a tight, hard tone. "A leader of men, a
kind of prophet of the oppressed living like that! It's sickening."

Roger looked at her quickly. "What has his private life to do with it?
He is a leader, a prophet."

"It has a lot to do with it. For a moment there, he looked as if he
were really seeing visions, clean, high, unselfish ideals. It's a pity
he can't see himself and--and that child."

"Rubbish, Anne. She's no child. He probably didn't kidnap her."

"Nor will Hilary Wainwright and those men Tom O'Connell despises kidnap
the strike-breakers," Anne went on hotly. "They will come of their own
free wills--'the poor, deluded victims, fooled with promises.'"

Roger looked at her helplessly. He wished he had not taken Anne's arm,
because now, he could not very well drop it. If he did, Anne would
think he was angry. And he was not angry.

They walked on again in silence, until Anne asked with a pecking,
personal intrusion into the calm he had captured again in the silence:

"Does Katya Orloff live with some one too?"

"I don't know," Roger answered impatiently. "Really, Anne, I don't know
anything about the private lives of any of them."




                           CHAPTER THIRTEEN


The next morning Roger reached the office at half past nine but Hilary
was already there. It was the first morning of a clear sunshine after
weeks of rain, and Hilary, even more groomed and manicured than usual,
looked as if he, too, had emerged into a new mood. There was a new
crispness in his manner; business efficiency sparkled in his quick
movements, his hasty finishing of a memorandum, the way he nodded to
Roger.

"Just a moment, Barton. I'll be through in a jiffy." Usually Roger
passed on to his own partitioned end of the room, and began on work
arranged the night before. But now he sat down and waited for Hilary.
Seated so, to one side and just a little behind Hilary, Roger saw him
spiritually foreshortened in the reflection of last evening. He looked
tight and secure, encased in his own assurances of safety as in a
spiritual corset. In a moment he had blotted the paper and turned to
Roger.

"Well," he began genially, "we didn't put it over, did we? Not
discouraged, I hope?"

"Not at all."

Hilary seemed balked, reconsidered what he had arranged for his next
sentence, and said instead:

"I rather over-reached myself in having Tom O'Connell. He's an
uncertain quantity, a regular firebrand. And he isn't the power he
thinks he is. When it comes to a pinch, the men will desert him.
They're more level-headed than he gives them credit for."

"The men forced to scab," Roger inquired, and, at the sharp look Hilary
darted to him, added "by the pinch of hunger?"

Hilary tapped for a moment, then made his decision with a quick frown.

"Barton, just where do you stand on that meeting last night?"

"With Tom O'Connell," Roger said and rose.

Hilary rose too. They looked at each other. Roger smiled first.

"I suppose it was bound to come," Hilary said, relieved.

"Yes. I have thought for some time--yes--it had to come." Roger almost
respected him for his honesty and when, with a truly regretful smile,
Hilary held out his hand, Roger was able to return the shake without
scorn. "We see things too differently to work well together."

"Yes. I feel like a fish out of water, more so every day."

Hilary twinkled. "Well, if you're going to jump into the sea I think
you're headed for--I hope you won't drown," was his comment.

"I'll try to swim," Roger agreed, and then followed a short talk of
work Roger was leaving undone. "If it will help out, I'll stay till you
get some one."

"N-o, you needn't. I'm taking on Hawthorne from the auditing department
as my private secretary. In fact, I'm thinking of changing the angle
of some of the work quite materially. It's no good wasting brains and
money on conditions that aren't ripe for them."

"None at all," Roger agreed.

At the end of a quarter of an hour it was over. Roger was out again in
the warm morning sunshine. And then he thought of Anne.

Would Anne understand? Once he would have been sure. Now he did not
know. He was getting to know less and less how Anne would stand on
many questions. Last night she had seemed to grasp the power and soul
of Tom O'Connell, and then, when the one great fetish of the sane
and respectable middle class was violated, when the conventional
sanctity of marriage was imperiled, Anne had retreated behind the
great bourgeois virtue of "decency," as smug and prim and spiritually
corseted as Hilary himself.

Roger went slowly up the long flight of steps and came on Anne, weeding
the trailers from a border of violets. Bent so over the bed, her hands
and arms spattered with rich black earth, her silvery blonde hair
shining in the sun, Anne looked like a little girl. Tenderness touched
Roger. Anne looked up.

"You've quit," she said quickly.

Roger nodded.

"I think I knew you would--last night." Anne rose and shook the loam
from her fingers. Still her tone had told Roger nothing.

"Do you think I did wrong? Are you angry?"

"Why, Roger, what a silly question. If you felt it was wrong to work
with him, of course you did right. And I would never be angry at your
doing what you thought was right. I don't think that's quite fair, do
you?"

And still Roger did not know how she really felt.

Anne picked up the basket and trowel and Roger took them from her.

"Finished? You look as if you had just started in." Ten minutes earlier
Roger would have been disappointed that Anne could go on with the
ordinary day's work in face of the great event; now he resented her
silent attitude that the course of the day had been terminated by his
act. He walked beside her to the kitchen door, but it seemed impossible
to go in between walls and leave the pungent earth and blue sky.

"I say, let's celebrate. Let's go over to Tamalpais. We've never taken
that scenic trip. We'll make a whole day of it, have lunch at the
inn." Still, in her centuries of rest, the Sleeping Beauty lay along
the ridge. "Look at the old girl, isn't she clear? I was always a bit
uncertain about her nose, but there it is. Quite a feature; looks as if
she were sniffing this gorgeous day. Well, do we sniff too?"

Anne smiled and put her gardening things on their shelf by the door.

"Can't, dear, not to-day. Mamma's been waiting for me to come up and
finish that house dress. To-day's the best for her. Pretty soon I won't
have a thing I can wear."

"I wish you wouldn't do so much sewing, Anne. Can't you buy baby
things and--and maternity clothes? I'd a lot rather you did or would
hire somebody, than refuse to go on picnics with me," he ended with a
pleading, boyish look, that did not influence Anne in the least. It
seemed hardly the time to suggest buying clothes or hiring help.

"Yes. But it's so much cheaper. I don't mind sewing."

Roger felt his pleasure in the picnic die. "All right, honey, run along
if you really want to. But let's go to somewhere for dinner to-night. I
feel spaghetti-ish. How's Ramillotti's?"

"Let's wait and see how we feel then," Anne parried. "A celebration
that's all cut and dried beforehand isn't much of a celebration, is
it?"

And then, because Anne did look so pretty in her big gardening apron
standing in the full sunshine, Roger picked her up and kissed her.

"Don't sew too hard and get all tired out. I think I'll go down to the
library for a while. There's a lot of reading I've been wanting to do
for a long time. I'll get a chance now."

Until Anne reached Hilda's front door, she wondered what she would do
if her mother were out. She could scarcely sit on the front steps and
she would not go back. But she was just in time. Hilda was half way
downstairs when Anne rang.

"Of all people! I just knew something nice was going to happen to-day."
Hilda trilled with a gay laugh, for Anne rarely came in the morning,
and Hilda adored all-day visits.

"You were going out, mamma."

"Not any place I had to. I just couldn't stay in alone to-day." They
went upstairs hand in hand.

"I thought, perhaps, we might finish that gingham. The idea of it's
hanging round half done has gotten on my nerves."

"Never felt more like sewing. A nice long day ahead always seems to
have so much more time in it than the same number of hours chopped up
during the week. You ought to be glad Roger doesn't come home to lunch,
Anne. When I was working at Belle's baby clothes it seemed to me as
soon as I got started it was time to stop and fix lunch. I'll just put
these dishes out of the way and we'll get right at it."

She took off her things, carried the unwashed breakfast dishes into the
pantry and closed the door on them. The broken egg-shell and scraps of
toast on the stove she swept into the coal-scuttle, the crumbs from
the oilcloth-covered breakfast table followed, and the scuttle was
deposited on the back porch. While she rolled the sewing-machine in
from the hall, Anne swept the floor.

"This is nice." Hilda's eyes danced; even the gray curls on her neck
seemed to bob merrily. "Now, if you'll just slip off your dress, I'll
fit it."

When it was pinned to the right length, Hilda leaned back on her heels
and admired.

"That's a fine pattern. Wonderful how they get things regulated now--no
riding up in front as you get bigger. Why, you won't scarcely show in
that at all, right up to the end."

Anne felt the same touch of distaste she always did when her mother
referred to her physical condition. There was something in Hilda's
manner that stripped the miracle to its physiological basis, and,
although she tried not to, Anne always felt naked before it. She had
endured a really difficult half-hour when she had first told Hilda of
Roger Mitchell Barton.

"It's pretty. What's more important, it will keep clean a long time
without washing."

Hilda laughed. "Getting practical at last. Nothing like a baby for
doing that. Do you remember the arguments we used to have when you were
fourteen, about that black sateen petticoat? You always insisted that
it must be just as dirty as if it were white, and wanted to send it to
the laundry every week?"

Anne nodded. How she had loathed dark clothes supposed not to show the
dirt! "I must have been a nasty child, always fussing about something."

"You weren't at all. But you were pretty finicky and highfalutin. I
never did know what was going to send you off. And how you loved pretty
things! Even as a tiny baby, I always felt you enjoyed having your best
things on. You used to feel one dress, rub your little hands up and
down it softly--it was really a lovely cambric; papa's boss's wife sent
it; her baby had outgrown it--and goo and smile. I suppose you would
have a fit to see his Highness dressed in any one else's cast-offs, but
I was glad to get it. How far along's the layette?"

"Most of the under-things are done, not quite all. I haven't begun on
dresses."

"I thought you were going to buy those, the best ones?"

"No--I don't--think I will. They'll be cheaper to make."

"But they're such close sewing and you don't like that kind of work,
tucks and hemstitching. Don't be a penny-wise and a pound-foolish and
get all frazzled out, Anne."

"No--at least--I won't be a pound-foolish. Roger's left Mr. Wainwright."

"Oh!" Hilda gasped. "Oh, Anne, when did it happen?"

Anne tried to laugh. "This morning."

"Don't you think you'd better go right straight home, dear?" she
whispered as if Anne had communicated Roger's sudden death.

"Why? There's nothing to do."

"N-o. I don't suppose there is. But--what happened, with the baby and
everything?"

"Nothing special. They don't agree. It's been coming on for some
months. Roger doesn't feel that Mr. Wainwright is sincere and he can't
work with him."

"Well, I must say----"

"And I wouldn't have him stay a minute when he feels like that."

"No, dear, I don't suppose you would," Hilda hastily conciliated Anne's
"condition." "But it does seem too bad that his conscience got worked
up just at this time. A few months more----"

"This is the best possible time," Anne said decidedly. "There's no
extra expense now."

"No. But when a woman's carrying, she likes to feel a good safe road
ahead. It's nature, I suppose, like birds building nests and all that.
If papa had suddenly given up his job when I was in your condition,
like as not you would have been an idiot. I should have worried myself
sick. But you always were a cool little customer."

Anne forced a smile and slipped the gingham over her head.

"If you'll stitch the skirt seams, mamma, I'll baste this collar.
That's the only tricky part in the whole thing. Perhaps we can finish
it to-day."

"We certainly can. We'll stay right with it till it's done."

And they did, stopping only for a cup of tea and some very stale cake,
about one o'clock. At three the dress was finished.

"Now, you go lie down and take a nap and when you wake phone Roger
to come up for dinner. He hasn't been round for ages, not since
Christmas." Having become involved in the exact date, Hilda slipped
over it quickly.

"We will some other time, moms, but I can't to-night."

The long day of sewing and chatting, and constant steering away from
the subject of Roger, had exhausted Anne and she wanted her own quiet
home, which, even if its peace were now disturbed, held its past
security, and a calm, quiet cleanliness that her mother's never had.
"I've got all the things in for a fussy kind of supper and they'd
spoil."

"Then of course you can't." Death itself could not have been a greater
deterrent. "What-all are you going to have?"

"Oh, a fussy pudding, and mayonnaise and things."

Anne was putting on her things in the bedroom and Hilda stood watching,
a little envious of Anne's calmness. Mayonnaise and fussy pudding!
Perhaps, if she had dared, years ago----

"You certainly have learned to be some cook, Anne."

"I like to try new dishes." Her things on, Anne moved from the room and
when she had passed Hilda, said, "but it's the so-called fussy things
that are easiest. Whipped cream and eggs make a great show, but any
fool can beat them up. Lots of things are harder. I don't believe I
could make a decent pot-roast, if I tried. I don't even know what part
of the animal to buy."

"There are different parts. Cross-rib's fine, but chuck's cheapest, and
I like it just as well."

"And it takes hours and hours, doesn't it?" Anne was still moving
toward the stair-head, her back to Hilda.

"No, it doesn't. Lots of people think it does and they make those dry,
leathery roasts. A piece big enough for us never took more than a
couple of hours, going slow, with plenty of suet."

"Chuck, going slow, two hours, plenty of suet," Anne entrenched it in
her memory, and then Hilda was saying:

"You never used to like it, but I'm sure I don't know why. I don't
think there's any gravy like the gravy of a good pot-roast. And there's
always plenty of it."

As usual, she walked down the stairs with Anne and kissed her again at
the front door.

Roger was not in when Anne reached home. She lit the gas-range and put
the pot-roast on before taking off her things. When it was simmering
at the right rate, she shut the kitchen door to keep the odor from the
living-room, changed into a kimono, and lay down on the living-room
couch.

It was dusk, with the first faint stars winking uncertainly in the
deepening twilight, when Roger came running up the stairs. He was out
of breath, cool-skinned and glowing. He came straight to the couch and
kissed her.

"Well, Princess, which is it, Pietro's or the Pheasant? I felt
spaghetti-ish this morning but it's gradually worked round to planked
steak."

Anne sat up and said gayly, "It's neither. It's pot-roast, and it'll be
ready about six."

Roger stared, the sparkle in his eyes receding slowly. Still Anne
smiled gayly at him. "It's the first one I've made and it's going to be
a dandy."

But Roger took her hands in his, and Anne's gayety died. They looked at
each other, and then Roger said:

"Anne, please, never do a thing like this again. Don't you trust me,
dear? We believe in the same things, don't we? We're not afraid of
anything, are we, honey?"

Something in Anne urged her to stand her ground. Something else made
her want to cry and creep close to Roger and be held safe from her
own fears and "common-sense." She was very tired. Her lips trembled.
Roger drew her quickly into his arms. They clung so for a moment, as
if holding fiercely against a force reaching toward them. Then Roger
turned Anne's face to his.

"Princess, let's throw that damned pot-roast out."

Anne smiled faintly. "That would be silly. It's really an awfully good
pot-roast. There, you can smell it. It must be going a little too fast."

But Roger did not smile. "I won't eat it. It smells--like death."

"Do you really feel like that?"

"I do, Anne, really."

"Then we'll go and have planked steak."

In the sweetness of reconciliation, Roger forgot to throw out the
pot-roast. They had a gay and expensive dinner at the Pheasant and went
to the theater afterwards.

But, for the rest of the week, Roger ate savoury ragouts, and meat
pies which taxed Anne's ingenuity to the utmost, especially when the
pot-roast had dwindled to a dry, outer rim.




                           CHAPTER FOURTEEN


There were times in the next month when Roger seriously considered
going back into the law. He even went so far as looking up Walter
Marsh, an old college chum with whom he had rather grown out of touch,
now a very successful corporation lawyer. But at Marsh's hints that
there was an opening with him if Roger cared to consider it, Roger
always hurried away from further discussion. Nor did he tell Anne of
these visits.

Anne never referred to his leaving Wainwright, nor did she ever again
serve pot-roast. Apparently their method of life was unchanged. Roger
could not put his finger on any one incident, recall a single allusion
of Anne's, but he now felt encased in an atmosphere of watching, of
tight guardedness, and of economical maneuverings. Outwardly Anne
seemed as cheerful as ever, but Roger could feel unexpressed criticism
moving shadow-like about him, and his nerves tightened. He often grew
irritable and then desperately contrite. Irritation at this time
was brutal, but Roger could not shake off the feeling of breathing
imperceptible particles of objection. Sometimes he started to talk
out their situation frankly, but it always ended in a fog. He felt as
if he were beating with exaggerated violence in a cloud of dust. The
air was full of minute, subtle differences, sudden closings of Anne's
lips, sentences caught and deftly turned from their first intention;
and of Anne's patience. This patience was the hardest to stand without
reference.

Again and again Roger tried to explain this growing tensity between
them by Anne's nervous condition. But Anne had never felt better in her
life. Always pretty in a cool, silvery way, there were moments now when
Anne seemed to send from within a living, golden flame. Often, in the
evenings, when Anne sat, her head bent above the small, white sewing in
her lap, Roger trembled, awed and a little frightened before the marvel
of this thing that was happening to Anne.

It was after a sudden, stabbing vision of Anne like this, that Roger
went to Walter Marsh's office for the second time in one week.

"Hello." Walter Marsh put away some important work to greet Roger.
"Well, what's the decision?"

Up to the very door, Roger had intended to accept the good opening
Marsh had definitely offered him at the last visit, but, now, as he
looked about the beautifully furnished office, the hard processes of
the law softened by the tinted walls, the thick rugs, the great bunch
of chrysanthemums in the old-blue, China vase, he sparred for time.

"Haven't made one yet."

Marsh frowned. His genuine admiration for Roger's ability was scarcely
proof against a certain quality in Roger that he had always felt might,
and now feared had already, swamped Roger's sense of proportion. As
he put it to his wife, Helen: "Roger's got that dog-goned idealist
sophistry in his bean, that nothing can be right or just or fine--if
you make a decent living at it. And the joke of it, or the tragedy for
men like Roger, is that it's only outsiders like him who feel that way.
You can't get a real radical to do a thing without paying him up to the
hilt. I'll wager that Labor god, O'Connell himself, has a pile salted
down safely." For, like all financially successful men, Walter Marsh
had a fixed belief that no able, sane person worked long for an ideal
alone.

"Well, it's up to you," he said shortly.

For, although he was willing to talk the matter over with Roger for the
rest of the afternoon if it would lead anywhere, he was not willing to
waste more time even on Roger, who, after seven days' consideration
of a decidedly advantageous opening, still announced that he had
reached no decision. He picked up his pen, not quite indicating the
interview over, but very clearly expressing his feeling toward Roger.
Years after, Roger used to wonder what he would have done, if Walter
Marsh had not picked up his pen in just that way, at just that moment.
He looked quietly at Marsh, only a few years older than himself, but
already with the fine lines of nervous concentration about his eyes,
blue eyes glazed in assurance of their owner's mental processes; the
eyes of a very successful man who realizes the uselessness of fretting
his conscience over conditions beyond his personal power to change.

"But I don't think I'll take you up," Roger went on as if no interval
had intervened. "I've grown too far away from the law. I can't go back."

"Or ahead," Walter almost snapped in his honest disappointment.

"Perhaps not." For a moment Roger felt very much alone.

"Well, I can't change you and I won't try. I hope you'll make a go of
anything you settle to." Unconsciously Marsh intimated his doubt of
Roger's ever settling to anything worth while.

Roger smiled, his momentary sadness dissolved in Marsh's solicitude.
Walter Marsh might have been an elderly uncle, washing his hands of a
wild nephew.

"Thanks, just the same, old chap. Your offer was certainly generous."

For a moment the other felt inclined to tell him that it would remain
open, changed his mind, and took Roger's out-stretched hand.

"When you get settled, let me know. And come over to dinner some night,
you and Anne. Helen's always asking me why I don't make you."

"We will."

Roger left the office, glad that he had not told Anne where he was
going.

Dinner was ready when he reached home and they sat down at the daintily
set table on the porch. Now that spring was come they had gone back
to the pleasant custom. To-night, in his relief at having put the
possibility of Walter Marsh behind him, Roger was gayer than he had
been for weeks. Anne noticed and wondered and tried to edge the talk
around to discovery, and finally, to Roger's astonishment, mentioned
Marsh.

"I see Walter Marsh's been engaged for that big Southern Pacific case."

"Yes, he's getting ahead wonderfully. He'll end way up yet."

"Do you think he's honest?" Anne asked after a moment filled with
pouring the black coffee into the small cups.

"Y-e-s, in a way. Personally, he's as straight as a die. But he's
divided his life into sections, private and public. He'll do as
corporation lawyer for the Southern Pacific what he would never dream
of doing for himself."

Anne drank her coffee slowly. "I suppose he compromises by being 'a
mild progressive' and making things better 'along the line they are.'"

Roger leaned back in his chair and laughed until Anne joined him.

"Princess, you'd make a first class lawyer yourself. Walter calls
himself a liberal already."

"And you're--a Socialist, I suppose?"

Roger stopped laughing. "I suppose I am. Are you?"

"I--don't know. I don't know enough about it."

"I don't know much myself, not the technical details. But it seems to
me it's the only thing that isn't trying to patch a rotten piece of
cloth. It wants to weave a new one, from what I understand."

"Some job," Anne said and lit the single cigarette she ever smoked, the
after-dinner cigarette that Roger had taught her to take soon after
their marriage, when they had done all things together.

"It certainly is. But a worth-while one. Anne, suppose we frankly join
some radical group and begin weaving, too."

Anne puffed, flicked the ash into the tiny lacquer tray, and said with
more calmness than she felt:

"I don't think I will, Roger. Not till I know more about it. I don't
believe in jumping in and out of things."

Roger looked away. He felt that he had again been caught in the cloud
of dust. Anne smoked her cigarette and lit a second. Only by this
extraordinary act could she bring herself to the point she had decided
upon that afternoon. When it was smoked quite through, she said calmly:

"Why don't you go and see Tom O'Connell?"

"What?" he echoed stupidly.

"Why not? Your sympathies are with him."

Now that Anne had worded it, Roger recognized the longing he had been
stifling for weeks. To do something he believed in with his whole soul.
His eyes softened and coming quickly about the table he knelt beside
her.

"Princess," he whispered, "you're the most wonderful thing in the
world."

Anne looked down into Roger's eyes and wondered. Why did he think it
wonderful for her to suggest this thing that she had felt in him for
weeks? Had he been waiting for her to do so? Why? What would he have
done if she had not?

Before her quiet, searching look, Roger's eyes fell.

"Forgive me, honey," he whispered.

Roger had mistrusted. His plea for forgiveness proved it. Something
deep in Anne hardened, but she patted his cheek and said cheerfully:

"Why don't you look him up to-night? It's early yet."

"Do you want to get rid of me?" Roger teased with a look in his eyes
that had not been there for a long time.

"No--of course I don't," Anne said, and he kissed her.




                            CHAPTER FIFTEEN


The next day Roger went to Tom O'Connell. Through a cloud of tobacco
smoke, Roger saw him at the end of the dusty loft, sprawled on the edge
of a table behind a low railing and listening to two short, heavy men
talking at once. Some maps and statistical charts hung from the rough,
wooden walls; a magazine-stand stood close to the door, piled with
papers and pamphlets, red-bound, or with glaring red splotches in their
cover designs. Close to the bench on which Roger waited some one was
pounding a typewriter behind a partition. The east end of the loft was
enclosed as a separate office and from this enclosure came the voices
of men and women talking loudly. The whole room vibrated to the feel of
a rushing force, of many violent plans being made and driven through to
execution in an incredibly short time. No restraint here, no polish,
no modulation. Right or wrong, these people believed in themselves.
Society was a wall through which, by brute force, they would drive
the spike of their ideal. Roger's excitement grew. He felt like the
unfortunate son of the leading citizen in a small town, watching a
magnificent back-alley fight by "de gang."

Suddenly the typewriter beside him stopped, and Katya Orloff peered
over the top of the partition. If she was surprised she did not show it.

"Come in. Tom will be through in a minute." She disappeared and Roger
went round to the gate she opened. Katya's desk was piled with papers,
carbons, and cigarette ashes. Teetering on one edge, the dregs of a
cup of black coffee, into which Katya had dropped the crust of a ham
sandwich, threatened to destroy a pile of clean copy, but didn't.

"Sit down." Katya motioned to an upturned apple box and Roger sat down.
Then, for the first time, Katya smiled. A spark lit in the little brown
eyes, but the heavy mouth remained unmoved. It was as if her power
to smile was slowly dying. The eyes alone refused to petrify in the
devastating seriousness of Katya's purpose. Roger smiled back.

"I thought you would come. I expected you sooner."

"Did you?" Roger withdrew his smile, resentful of her assurance. He
felt that Katya caught his feeling, but she did not apologize. Instead
she offered him one of her vile cigarettes. Roger refused.

"They are beastly, but I can't smoke anything else any more." She
inhaled and the cigarette was gone in a few deep breaths. "But I'm
really glad you didn't come any sooner. It means you've thought it
out carefully. We're overloaded now with enthusiasm, twigs not strong
enough to keep the pot boiling. Hear them crackling?" Her frowsy black
head jerked toward the voices of the two men talking to Tom. "Poor Tom.
He'll have to pour water on them and then--two more vanity-wounded
enemies."

Katya's voice, husky from too much loud speech-making and the vile
cigarettes, had unexpected soft spots, rest places, quiet corners of
pity in the roar of her faith. Roger felt that the woman might have
many of these hidden places, little corners of pity and gentleness, and
forgot his resentment.

"I'll promise not to crackle."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-nine. Almost thirty."

"You're married, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Katya lit another cigarette. "Got any ideas?"

"No." Roger began to feel like a small boy again.

"That's good. You're too inexperienced to have any worth while; too
obstinate to put up with having any rooted out. What do you know about
the movement, anyway?"

"Practically nothing," Roger snapped. After all, Katya had not invented
her Social Revolution. It was not her personal property.

"'Virgin Soil,'" Katya grinned. "Ever read it?"

"Yes."

"Like it?"

"Not much."

"Why?"

"It didn't get me."

"Russian literature is a fad with most Americans, only they won't own
it. But some day you will like it."

She might as well have said: "Some day you will develop to the point of
understanding Russian literature."

For the present, however, she had finished with him. She rose now above
the fence and gave a long, clear whistle. Instantly the two men stopped
talking.

"No more time to-day, boys." Black Tom answered the whistle with two
short notes and Katya opened the gate.

"I say, you're not going to let the thing hang in mid-air, are you?"
one of the men demanded belligerently. "You think you've got the whole
thing in your own pocket. Well, you haven't. The rest of us----"

"Get out," Tom thundered. "Neither of you has a suggestion worth
listening to. I tell you we're not ready yet. You're like a lot of
kids with firecrackers, can't wait till the Fourth to make your little
splutter. I'm not going to fight just for the sake of fighting."

"You tin Czar----"

"Get out."

The men banged out of the loft and Katya led Roger over to Black Tom.

"Roger Barton."

The big man stared at him, still concerned with the others, until Katya
laid a hand on his arm and drew him back to the present.

"Hilary Wainwright's secretary. Sent out those invitations." They
smiled at each other, and Roger bristled. The courtesy of these people
was an extraordinary thing. "He's left and wants to talk to you." Like
a nurse delivering her charge, Katya clumped away.

Black Tom glanced at the desk clock, frowned and said shortly:

"I suppose that means you want to look us over with a view to coming
in?"

"I don't know whether I do or not," Roger flung at him.

Black Tom seemed to see him for the first time. He smiled and sat down.

"I beg your pardon, but we get pretty gruff in this thing. So you've
left Wainwright? Consequential ass. What do you want to do?"

"Anything that will stop the output of more--consequential asses."

Black Tom leaned back in his chair and laughed, a laugh so deep and
eternally young, that Roger knew the man could never seriously annoy
him again.

"You've come to the right place. That's our specialty," and added, "any
party affiliations?"

Roger shook his head. "Not yet."

"That's all right. Don't--till you're ready. When your faith needs to
sign itself to some register, do it. Right Wing, Left Wing Socialist,
Syndicalist, Communist, I. W. W., they're all headed right and there's
something the matter with them all. It doesn't matter really; start
a new party if you like. Names, names," he added, a little wearily,
"all names for the same thing--the new world that's struggling to be
born. Science, art, religion, politics, we're all fighting for the same
end--to root out the dead old forms, give new growths a chance. We're
all beating in our different ways toward the same thing--Understanding,
Beauty, Unity. One fits in where he can." He looked across the dirty
loft to a group of men waiting for him on the bench where Roger had
sat a few moments before. "This is mine. I had no special training,
nothing but physical strength and longing." His gaze came back to his
own hands, broken and sparsely covered at the wrists and knuckles with
stiff black hair. "I worked in a Pennsylvania coal mine when I was
twelve. I read at night. When I was nineteen I went for a while to
night-school with kids thirteen and fourteen. I never had three square
meals a day until I was twenty-three. I lived in mines and shops and
libraries."

He paused, and it seemed to Roger that he had gone away, back down the
years, alone. In those crowded years, herded among men, he had learned
to slip away, leave his gaunt, over-worked body to the crowd. Privacy
was a spiritual possession, free to his will.

He jerked himself back with a motion of his bowed shoulders.

"Have you had any special training along any line?"

"Yes, I'm a lawyer."

"Great. We need----"

"But I'd rather not practice, anyhow not plead in court for a while. I
don't feel that I understand enough about the thing as a whole. I want
to soak in it, feel myself honestly a part before I undertake to defend
men. Is that an out-of-the-way request?"

"It's an out-of-the-ordinary request. I wish more men felt as you do.
There wouldn't be so many misunderstandings and shiftings around and
party splits. I guess we can fit you in somewhere. How little can you
work for?"

Roger did not answer instantly.

"Married?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps you'd better talk it over with your wife."

"It's not necessary. She--she's with me in this."

"We need lawyers, but we can't pay what the meanest scrub can't better
in a very few years. What have you been getting?"

"Fifty a week."

"About ten beyond our possible limit--with expenses when you
travel--but not fancy ones. You can take outside cases on the side--if
you get them once you're known as one of us. That will have nothing to
do with us."

"I don't want any 'cases on the side,' not for the present anyhow."

Black Tom smiled. "When do you want to begin?"

"Now."

Black Tom hesitated. Roger felt his first resentment returning. He
leaned forward.

"This thing doesn't belong to any group," he began. "We all happen to
be at the same point at the same time. I know what I'm doing. I----"

Black Tom laid a hand on his knee. "Boy, you'll have to excuse a lot of
manner when you're one of us. Our material's men and we get to handle
them sometimes as if they were--pig iron." He whistled and Katya popped
above the fence. "Bring me the Anderson case."

When Katya brought it he said briefly, "Barton's going to work with us."

Roger noticed that he did not say Comrade Barton and wondered whether
Black Tom did not quite trust him yet. But he found later that Black
Tom tagged no man with artificial distinction, except in addressing a
meeting whose sympathy he was not quite sure of. In a few moments he
had explained the case to Roger, and turned him back to Katya.

"You can work here if you like. It's noisy at times, but we can fix
you up with a kind of office down in the corner. Or you can work
elsewhere."

"Here. I don't mind noise."

"Tell Jim to fix up the office Philips used to have," he ordered Katya,
took his hat, and was gone.

"Let's go and have lunch," Katya suggested. "Tom's probably forgotten a
lot of details you ought to know."

But Anne was expecting him and anxious to hear. "Suppose you come home
and have lunch with us?"

Roger thought that Katya smiled, but was not quite sure. One never was
sure whether Katya smiled unless her eyes actually twinkled, her face
was so swarthy and still.

On the way home Roger listened with interest to Katya's history of the
Anderson case, but, as they came to the bottom of the long flight, he
wished he could run ahead and prepare Anne. He led and Katya followed,
still talking. At the door they met Anne. For a moment she looked
disturbed and then greeted Katya with such ease that Roger felt all
responsibility for the lunch drop from him. While she skilfully reset
the table and twisted the menu to include three instead of two, Katya
talked on.

Nor did she stop when Anne summoned them, and only for short periods
during lunch. From the Anderson case and the Labor Movement, she
drifted to Russia, to her native village, to the Jewish pogroms, her
struggles for an education, her imprisonment under the Czarist system,
her escape and flight from Siberia through Sweden to Finland and
the United States; her gradual migration westward, from an eastside
tenement in New York, through New Jersey, to Chicago, to San Francisco.
She talked vehemently but without bitterness. In her long fight for an
idea, she had become impersonal.

She ate almost greedily, but neither Anne nor Roger felt that she knew
what she ate. She smoked cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from
the other, and drank cup after cup of black coffee without noticing
that Anne refilled her cup. Anne was considering making more coffee,
when at last Katya broke off.

"You're a perfect hostess, Mrs. Barton. I don't believe you've said a
word."

Anne flushed. Evidently this woman had not expected her interest.

"It's fascinating," she said, with just a touch of primness that
brought an odd look to Katya's eyes. Roger felt uncomfortable.

"We've never had a chance before to get it first-hand," he said
quietly, and saw Katya's eyes twinkle. She rose and, to Roger's
embarrassment, ran her hand over his thick, wavy hair.

"You're a nice boy."

She put on her things, waited a moment for Roger to join her, but when
he made no motion, shook hands with both and went clumsily down the
stairs without looking back.

"Almost as conceited as Hilary Wainwright, in her own way, isn't she?"
Anne said demurely.

Roger laughed. "You're a wiz. I hope you never take a dislike to me."

"Not much of a wiz to get that slam about a perfect hostess. As if one
couldn't believe in Man and fruit salad at the same time."

Roger put his arm about her. "We can, but then, you know, we are
exceptional people."

"Because, really, I should loathe beet soup and pickled fish and those
Russian foods."

"Honey and violet stems for ours." Roger bent to kiss her and Anne ran
her fingers through his hair, stopped abruptly and said:

"She's really a terribly lonely soul, for all her world interests."

"I shouldn't wonder. She didn't mention any relatives, after her
childhood, did she?"

When they came again into the house Roger picked up the Anderson case
and went over to the couch. Anne began clearing the table. As she
gathered up the doilies, she asked carelessly:

"What's the salary?"

"Forty. And expenses," Roger answered, making notes on the margin of
a sheet. "Outside cases if I want to. But I shall not take any for a
while--anyhow."

Anne went into the kitchen without comment.




                            CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Through the next three months Anne thought more about money than she
had ever thought in her life before. During the Wainwright days she
had often been able to save ten dollars a week, but now that this sum
was abstracted before it reached her, the remainder refused to include
all that it had included then. Their small bank balance Anne refused
to count an asset. She never mentioned it and was not sure that Roger
remembered they had it. When he suggested some extravagance, a week-end
trip, or absurdly expensive theater seats, treats that in the past had
been supposed to be made possible by this balance--but which, in the
end, Anne had always managed without touching--she now escaped on the
plea of fatigue. Nevertheless, when Roger stopped suggesting them, Anne
was hurt and angry.

Each week she put aside something for little Roger's need. And if
gradually his clothes began to be finer, his bassinet more elaborate,
his weighing scales unnecessarily expensive, she did not allow herself
to word the reason. Only when Roger donated with extra liberality to
some strike benefit or defense fund did Anne deliberately go out and
buy something little Roger could very well have done without.

In their daily intercourse there was now more of the old comradeship
than there had been for months, but often, her light housework
finished, Anne sat in a shady corner of the garden, spicy and sweet
again in the hot spring sun, and wondered whence had come this feeling
of silently and strongly holding out against something that was always
in the background of her mind. Once she had felt this something to be
in Roger himself, a kind of accidental quality that circumstances might
or might not develop. But now she felt it as something beyond Roger,
something permanent functioning through him. Between herself and Roger
there was some essential difference. Their attitude toward the coming
of Rogie, to Black Tom O'Connell and Merle, to the futile efforts of
Hilary Wainwright, even their union against the duplicity of John
Lowell, had held this germ of difference. Hour after hour Anne pried
into her own motives for action and Roger's, trying to find the source
of this difference, but when, in an entirely fictitious future, she
sometimes glimpsed its possible scope, she fled back to the concrete
present and Rogie.

It was always after one of these exhausting exhumations of motive and
impulse that Anne gripped more firmly the old habit of discussion with
Roger; that they went to one of the many protest meetings which, now
that Anne refused concerts and theaters, had come to be Roger's chief
interest outside the direct round of his work; or that Anne called for
Roger at the loft, and, while she waited, tried to feel a little of the
enthusiasm mounting sometimes almost to fever heat in him.

But the force and driving power that Roger felt as an almost concrete
thing never included Anne. She could never lose herself in it, nor be
carried away on its flood. It was too loud, too insistent, too hot,
like hissing black steam, screaming through a narrow vent.

It did not frighten, but deadened something within, so that Anne,
waiting quietly on the bench where Roger had first waited for Black
Tom, felt her effort to believe in the ultimate aim of all this
striving shrink and grow cold within her. To hear the violent click of
Katya's typewriter depressed her. To see Black Tom suddenly rise, and,
with the same sweeping gesture with which he had opened before her the
advance of strike-breakers, throw clear to Roger some new plan, made
Anne feel that the man's broken and unkempt hands had actually drawn
her with them. Nor could she ever look at him without thinking of Merle.

Like a brilliant bird, Merle flitted about the dusty place, getting in
every one's way, interrupting at her own whim, indifferent to their
amused tolerance or irritation. Birdlike, she perched on the gate of
Katya's den and chirped through Katya's clicking, or disturbed Roger
with her flutey recital of a movie she had taken the afternoon off to
enjoy. Only Black Tom's absorption did she respect, but sometimes,
when she came and chattered to Anne, Anne saw her watching him with a
wistful longing that was not in the least birdlike or gay.

Anne grew gradually to feel a protecting tenderness for Merle, quite
distinct from her realization of the girl's shallow mind and different
moral standards. It had a little of the same personal tenderness she
felt for Hilda's confused thinking and perpetual gayety. When Merle
referred to some mass meeting of protest that had fired the enthusiasm
of the others to fever heat as "a beastly bore," and Roger or Katya
demanded to know why she went, Anne felt that she understood.

For neither could Anne enter the spirit of these meetings. The hatred
of the men and women, massed to demand justice for this and that, swept
on high above Merle's head, but it weighted Anne and stuck to her like
an unclean substance. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of bodies smelling
of sweat and dust and the day's toil in factory and machine shop,
nauseated her and stifled the purpose of their rebellion. Alone, high
in the clean sweetness of her own home, Anne could rebel against the
blockade of Russia, the forced toil of little children, the throttling
of free speech and liberty. But the air, thick with human breath, the
shrill voices of boys and girls selling revolutionary pamphlets, the
mass weight of their hatred, woke in her a rebellion against the stark
ugliness of its expression that took all Anne's control not to express
by rising and leaving the hall. When, inflamed by what she came to
feel, as the weeks passed, was deliberate manipulation of this human
capacity to hate, protest broke in that mounting cry of rage, that
long-drawn, rising bellow of hatred, that inhuman baying with which
they greeted the name of some oppressor, Anne shivered with actual
cold. "B-o-o-o," it rose and fell and rose again like an icy blast,
freezing Anne's capacity to share their anger.

Like bells, certain words and names rang out in signal--war-lords, wage
slave, master class. Through the months with Hilary Wainwright Anne had
heard them often and used them herself glibly. Now she felt that she
would never again be able to utter them. As Hilda stripped the facts of
birth and love to their biological skeletons, so these men and women
stripped the words of their conventional acceptance, their usefulness
as tags of common understanding, and released raging genii to perform
their tasks. After such a meeting the surface of her body was covered
with a clammy dampness.

But no torrent of unleashed hatred chilled Roger or made him cold and
weak. Coming, at the end of May, from the largest meeting they had
attended, Anne felt Roger throbbing with enthusiasm, even after they
had walked blocks under the peaceful stars.

"Wasn't Tom great?" he demanded for the third time, unconscious that
Anne had not answered. "When he talks as he did to-night he makes me
think of Christ driving the money changers from the temple."

"The Bible would never have remained literature if Christ had ranted
like that."

"It isn't ranting, Anne. He sees things like that, literally sees the
workers slaves, just as bound and owned by capitalistic pressure as
ever a black African savage was owned by a Southern cotton planter. He
sees the 'masters' in their great Wall Street offices just as clearly
as any master with the legal right to beat his slave." Roger tried to
speak patiently, but sometimes the shadings of Anne's sensitiveness
rasped him as much as this "ranting" rasped Anne. Was it really her
dislike of Black Tom, what she insisted on calling the "coarseness of
his moral fiber," that made her blind to the man's sincerity? Could
not, or would not, Anne see above and beyond this single breach of the
world's standard? Roger did not know. And, like Anne, fleeing before
the definite revelation of the difference between herself and Roger,
Roger, too, hurried away.

There was a pause and then Roger said:

"That was the biggest collection I've ever seen taken up at a meeting.
Carson certainly can get the cash."

Anne saw, as if he had been there in the night before her, the thin,
bowed shoulders of Robert Carson butted out over the edge of the
platform in the final gesture he always took before defying the
audience not to "give and give their all." His lank, black hair fell in
a long side lock across his high forehead, his black eyes burned in his
pale, thin face. She shivered.

"It's terrible to use hate like that, or pain, or any feeling, fan it
to that white heat and then mint money from it."

Roger bit his lip. "It isn't hate or any pain. It's not a destroying
force. It's the demand for universal justice and the right to Beauty
that centuries of oppression have not been able to kill. It's love,
Anne, not hate."

"Maybe," Anne said drearily, with such an unexpected cessation of
personal interest that Roger turned to her quickly.

"You're tired, Anne. You ought not to have gone."

His eyes were concerned for her, for her personally, her body and her
comfort. Anne swallowed the lump that rose suddenly in her throat.

"I guess I am. It was so hot and noisy and they last so long. It must
be almost twelve."

Roger drew her arm into his. "I ought not to have let you go."

"I don't think I will any more--before Rogie comes."

"I sha'n't let you," Roger warned, and Anne smiled up at him. Roger
smiled back: "You're nothing but a baby yourself."

But he was glad that Anne had decided not to go to any more meetings
until after the baby came. Perhaps, then, he and Anne would go and
understand together, as they had understood that day on the Bluff in
the sweeping wind; and by the lake in the green and scarlet dawn.




                           CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


In July the baby was born. Anne was very ill and Hilda fluttered about
looking reproachfully at Roger. But, with the least impatience of Roger
toward her, she propitiated him with assurances that many women were
worse, that Anne would not die or be a wreck for life; and when, at
the end of two weeks, Anne took a decided turn for the better and the
doctors let him go in for a few moments to see her, Hilda acted as if
she had personally managed this for his peace of mind.

Anne was so small and white, so exhausted and utterly content, and his
son was such a mite of a thing; although the nurse assured him that
little Roger was an "exceptional" fine and healthy boy, Roger felt
that any life encased in such a tiny and strengthless form must be
precarious. They were so small and helpless, dependent so completely on
him. It frightened Roger. Now that his son was there before him, Roger
was humble. His own part in this creation no longer seemed a thing of
choice. He had been used by the force of Life, which refused to stop.
It would go on and on and on, through little Roger and little Roger's
sons; on, in its majestic stride indifferent to the means it used, to
him as an individual, on to the fulfillment of its own purpose.

Roger went back to the office and was glad that Katya was alone.

"It's a boy," he said queerly, "such a wee mite of red. He fumbles with
his clenched fists and sucks in the air. He doesn't seem human."

She listened without looking directly at Roger and did not ask after
Anne. Just then Merle came in and Katya began to work again.

But Merle announced that the moment Anne was home she was coming up to
see the baby. Roger laughed:

"You wouldn't know which end to take hold of, Merle. He's not bigger
than a minute."

"You clumsy brute. I'll bet you're afraid to touch him yourself."

"I am, just about."

Merle giggled. "Well, I'm not and I'm going up to play with him next
week."

"You'll be two of a kind," Roger teased, "only don't teach him any of
your swear words. They're picturesque--but remember, he's a pure soul."

"Don't worry. I wouldn't teach him or any other living soul a thing.
He'll get enough of that before long, poor little devil. This place
reeks with instruction."

"But you've escaped," Roger teased on; "the first axiom of the Social
Revolution never got under your skin."

"Oh, yes it did. Only it started to fester--and I cut it out." On that
she went whistling, the green tam pulled coquettishly to one side.

When Anne was home again Merle kept her promise. At first she stayed
only a few moments, but gradually the habit formed for her to drop in
late in the afternoon, several times a week. As Anne grew stronger and
began again to get regular meals, she often let Merle undress Rogie and
make him ready for bed. It seemed to please the girl to take off the
tiny garments and feel the soft, warm roundness of the strong little
body.

One night in mid-October, a warm evening of glowing sunset, Anne came
into the bedroom from the kitchen at the sound of Merle's low crooning.
Merle's single song was Tipperary and she had mangled the martial notes
to a strange lullaby. Anne laughed and Merle turned quickly, Rogie
clasped tight as if from intrusion. Then she laughed, too, not quite so
gayly as Anne, and together they put him to bed. When he was tucked in
and the window open, Merle followed Anne back to the kitchen.

"Did you really want Rogie, Anne, or was he an accident?"

Anne flushed at the unwarranted intimacy. But Merle was leaning against
the wall, her full throat rising so young and white from her brilliant
smock, her eyes so serious, that Anne relented.

"I wanted him," she said hastily.

Merle did not answer for a moment. She seemed to be looking at
something in no way connected with Anne.

"I wonder if it would have worked out all right--if I had gone ahead.
But I haven't your grit, Anne. And I was bugs about Tom; oh, nuts,
simply nuts. I believed he was God. If he'd told me to jump off the
ferry boat, I'd have done it without waiting to ask him why." There was
no bitterness, just the bewildered statement of a fact, a fact that had
once been true and that Merle wished were true now.

It was the first reference she had ever made to her relations with
Black Tom O'Connell. Anne wished she had not said anything but it
seemed unkind to cut her off.

"Didn't--he--want--one?"

"Well, not so you could notice. He has some of his own, you know, so
perhaps that makes a difference. I don't suppose if it had been the
third or fourth I'd have been as excited myself as I was. But when I
told him, he said 'Good God!' and looked so solemn I was scared to
death. Having a baby seemed the most terribly serious thing in the
world; and then he began to talk of all the suffering and poverty in
the world, just as if we were responsible for it, until I saw the poor
little beggar starving to death under my nose. Well, perhaps he might
have," Merle added with a shrug. "We were sure in a hell of a mess. We
were broke, as usual. The police were watching Tom--it was the first
months of the war when they were locking up everybody--and I never knew
when Tom went out whether he would come back. I own that I felt pretty
solemn myself at times. The world seemed to have gone mad. It's died
out now, but you remember that feeling as if the bottom of life might
drop out at any moment or the heavens open and sweep us all away? There
did seem to be so many needless millions in the world already. And what
for? Gunfodder. So--I--had it done."

There was no mistaking Merle's meaning. Anne put the saucepan down on
the sink very slowly and stood with her back to Merle. She felt the
girl's eyes on her rigid body, but it was beyond her power to move or
speak.

"I suppose you wouldn't have done it. Nobody could scare you like that,
but I must say that Tom didn't force me. He didn't even suggest it.
He just frightened me to death with the responsibility and left the
decision to me. But he never said afterwards that he wished I hadn't,
although--I got to feel that way myself. I got to thinking about it,
seeing it--and although I knew it wasn't really alive, it kind of grew,
in the night specially when I was waiting for Tom and didn't know
whether he had been arrested or not--staring at me with those big,
bulging eyes. You know--kind of seeing nothing and yet knowing all the
time what I had done to it. I got woozy----"

"Stop." Anne dragged herself round and, gripping the sink board,
stared, white and sick, at Merle. Merle flushed.

"Oh, come off, Anne; you needn't look like that. Thousands of women do
it; a million a year, here in the United States alone, and you know it.
Because they're too lazy to have them, or want to gad, scores are doing
it all the time. Everybody knows it. Besides, it's not nearly so bad
to----" Merle hesitated, and then at the loathing in Anne's eyes, threw
the words at her, "to abort it before it's really alive at all, as it
is to let it come and then see it starve or go to the devil."

"Please don't say any more about it, Merle. I can't stand it."

Just then Roger turned the key in the latch.

"I'm--not blaming you, Merle, but it--makes me sick all over."

Quick to forgive, Merle came and put her arm across Anne's shoulder and
Anne succeeded in not shuddering. "You're just like a little silver
fairy, Anne. And I bet you spoil Rogie like the devil."

"But you forget this stern parent," Roger laughed from the doorway.
"I'll discipline him; he's going to be the finest young revolutionist
you ever saw."

Merle grinned: "Aren't you and Tom and Katya going to get the poor old
world straightened out before that?"

"You're a scoffer." Roger came to Anne and kissed her, but she wanted
to take little Rogie and run far from every one; far from those
terrible, bulging eyes; those blind, embryonic eyes, resentful,
unseeing, so eternally wise.

She served the dinner, but ate little, and was grateful when Merle
went. Until she had gone Anne did not feel that she could go near
Rogie. But the moment after she had left, Anne went softly into the
bedroom. Kneeling by the baby's crib, she looked so long that he seemed
to feel it and frowned and moved in his sleep. He was there, safe,
alive and hers. But Anne felt all the babies in the world, the babies
thwarted of life, staring at her in the warm blackness of the night.

She had wanted him and he was there, but she felt as if, somehow, he
had missed a great danger. As if he had won to life by a chance.

Had Roger really wanted him?

Anne rose quickly. Again she saw the look of stupefaction in Roger's
eyes. Heard his "Good Lord!"

Anne went slowly out of the room. Roger was reading under the shaded
light. He was very strong, very sure of himself, sure that he was
right. She stood looking at him speculatively. For the first time since
her marriage Anne thought of Roger as the man she had married.

Feeling her eyes on him, Roger glanced up.

"What's the matter?"

"Did you ever wish--before--after I told you that Rogie was
coming--that--that--I--that some way----?"

"What on earth are you talking about," Roger asked after a pause in
which he waited bewildered for Anne to finish.

Anne moistened her lips. "Did you ever
feel--like--suggesting--that--I----?"

She could not say it. Roger frowned and then understanding came to him.

"What are you trying to say, Anne? Do you mean did I ever wish that you
wouldn't go on with it?"

Anne nodded.

Roger rose and put both hands on her shoulders.

"What's the matter with you, Anne? No, of course I didn't."

"Not--once, not even once--the least wish----"

"No," Roger said quietly. "I never thought of it once."

"Are you glad now, really glad we have him?"

"I certainly am, Anne; what on earth is the matter with you?"

Anne began to cry. "Merle told me--Tom--oh, Roger, it makes me sick
all over. I--I loathe that man. How can he care about the world
and--and--be like--he is?"

Roger's hands dropped from Anne's shoulders. "Let's not discuss Tom,
Princess; we never agree."

Anne flared. "You don't think it's wicked or disgusting, you don't
really--you wouldn't have--minded."

"Stop it, Anne, please. You're being awfully unjust and you know it.
He was poor, broke, hunted, everything was chaos. The cases aren't the
same at all. Besides, Merle isn't fit to be a mother."

"She's fit to be a mistress."

Roger turned to the couch again and picked up his book.

Anne stood where she was, tense, her lips drawn.

"So you knew it? Perhaps he boasts of it--as one of his 'sacrifices for
the Revolution.' When did he tell you?"

"He didn't tell me," Roger answered patiently. "Katya did, one day when
we were talking about Merle."

Anne's small frame tightened. "Well! Of all things to discuss with
another woman!"

"Oh, hell," Roger exploded, "come off that pedestal, Anne. It's
ridiculous."




                           CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


For a week the tension between Roger and Anne lasted, pulling a little
weaker each day under the pressure of proximity, little Rogie, and the
habit of agreement. Anne did not mention Merle again and tried not to
think of the staring, embryonic eyes of what might have been Merle's
child. She knew such thought was morbid and unhealthy. As Merle had
said, one million women a year, in the United States alone, recognized
this as their right of escape. To Belle it was perhaps a very ordinary
occurrence. Anne herself would have hesitated to call it "wicked."
She called it "horrible" instead. But she was glad when Merle stopped
coming and never asked about her.

Autumn passed and the holiday season came with early rain. Hilda spoke
tentatively of another Christmas dinner, although Belle was in Europe
now with a rich patient. But Anne evaded these suggestions and did not
even mention them to Roger.

On Christmas Eve Anne bought a tiny tree and decorated it, but Rogie
was fretful and squirmed away from it, crying; so that Anne put out the
candles and did not light them again.

On Christmas morning she and Roger exchanged their presents and
immediately after the late breakfast Roger began work on a complicated
case that was to come up right after the New Year.

Just before noon it began to rain again, a thin, icy drizzle that
soaked all the cheer and hope from life. Anne tried to read or sew, but
the thin, cold, inexhaustible rain washed away all interest. She could
not even make up her mind to go to Hilda, although it was Christmas day
and she had not been for a week. No decision could crystallize in that
icy drip, never condensing to a real downpour, never ceasing, trickling
into one's courage until it washed away desire.

They had planned to go to a theater in the evening, but a little after
five the woman whom Anne had hired to stay with Rogie phoned that she
could not come, and the tickets were cancelled. Roger had worked all
afternoon in order to have the evening free, and now that the evening
was to be his he decided to take a nap. He slept until Anne waked him
for dinner at half past six.

After dinner he helped Anne with the dishes and they smoked an extra
cigarette in honor of the day. But he was so plainly anxious to get
back to the work he had not quite finished that at last Anne's taut
nerves could no longer stand his generosity and she urged him to finish.

"Otherwise you'll want to sit up all night, and you've been up late for
days."

"I would like to get it through to-night," he conceded. "But what will
you do? I'm afraid I've been pretty absorbed all day."

"That's all right. I may go 'round to mom's for a little. I haven't
even phoned and I sent the presents by post."

"Has it stopped raining?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter." Anne went to the door and the sweet
dampness of the garden flooded the warm room. "Yes, it's stopped;
thickened to a heavy mist. I won't be long."

"Then I'll try and finish by the time you get back."

Almost before the door closed Roger was at the typewriter. As Anne went
down the stairs she heard it click, click, as fast as Katya's.

She found Hilda and James alone, Hilda crocheting and James reading
in the silence that always lay over their evenings. For a few moments
her entrance shattered it, and they came together in interest of her
news, the health of Rogie, the presents Anne had sent. Then James went
back to his paper and Hilda rummaged in her disordered work-basket for
Belle's last letter.

Would she and Roger some day meet like this for a moment on the coming
of Rogie, a grown man?

Anne scarcely heard the letter Hilda had found, not in the work-basket
at all, but in the pocket of her kitchen apron. It was only the
postscript that drew Anne's attention in time to comment intelligently:

"We're leaving Marseilles to-morrow," Belle wrote, "and may go on to
the Far East."

"Now, if that isn't just like Belle's luck," Hilda smiled and folded
the letter. "Traipsing 'round like a millionaire with nothing to do.
The lady has her own maid, and Belle only has to see that she takes her
drops and things and doesn't get too tired. I'll bet Belle has a high
old time."

Hilda looked like an excited child, prematurely gray-headed, as she
nodded her assurance of Belle's ability to have a good time in any
circumstance.

"I don't doubt that, but, personally, I can't imagine anything worse
than trotting about with an invalid, looking after her pills and
sandwiching all the lovely things in Europe into the spaces between her
patient's rests."

Hilda laughed. "If I know Belle, by this time she's got that maid
trained."

"She's tried, anyhow," Anne agreed, and they smiled together in
appreciation of Belle's "efficiency."

Just as Anne was leaving Charlotte Welles came in, and Anne stayed on
a few moments. Charlotte Welles was a slight woman with great dark
eyes under cloudy brown hair, a pale skin, and pale, sweet lips. She
had a soft voice, but her manner annoyed Anne. Her gentleness was so
insistent, and although she never mentioned her belief in Christian
Science, Anne was sure she never forgot it for a moment. She seemed
always to measure one's remarks up against eternity, to discount any
opposition as the meanderings of a clouded mind; to be quite sure that,
in time, one would see Truth. To-night she was particularly annoying,
although as Anne walked home she could not repeat a single annoying
thing Mrs. Welles had said.

"She affects me as the sight of a limousine or a fur-lined overcoat
affects the man with a dinner pail trudging in the street, I suppose.
She's a kind of spiritual 'capitalist' with an unfair advantage
over the rest of the world. Because she started with an illogical
mind she's been able to accumulate this 'peace,' and never earned
it through a real trouble in her life. I can't imagine what she and
moms have in common, but she seems to be always dropping in. Perhaps
she hopes to convert mamma to Science." But at the picture of Hilda
converted to Science and moving thereafter in calm assurance through
the perversities of James Mitchell, Anne laughed aloud. "Dear old moms,
she'd never keep her mind on one thing long enough to demonstrate it
into existence, even if she could decide what it was she wanted most."

But the calm face of Charlotte Welles continued beside Anne until
she reached her own door. After all, the "capitalist" did enjoy his
viciously accumulated millions, and Charlotte Welles' peace was real to
herself.

The typewriter was covered now, and Roger was reading before the fire.
As Anne came in he laid his book aside and looked up.

"Well, what's the news?"

"Nothing special. Belle's going on from France to the Far East. She
seems to be having a wonderful time."

"Trust Belle."

"Oh, I don't know. Belle works hard for her money. You wouldn't like to
trot a nervous millionaire around the world, would you?"

"Not on your life." Roger was about to add that neither would he like,
if he were a nervous millionaire, being trotted about the world by
Belle. But he never, if he could avoid it, referred in any way to the
Mitchells. He always asked after them when Anne had been there, but he
never went himself. He felt at times that Anne understood his feeling,
and he wished he could have been more honest with her about it. But at
the first hint of criticism Anne flared to their defense; and often,
when the Mitchells themselves had been far from his intention, Anne had
interpreted his scorn of intellectual narrowness as direct criticism of
her people.

The subject of Belle dropped, but Roger did not take his book again. He
felt Anne beside him, aloof in some interest acquired at the Mitchell
flat, something she would guard from him if he tried to share it. Roger
felt a little sentimental and lonely, too, as he searched about among
the topics of common interest for a meeting ground with Anne. But this
meeting ground had grown narrower and narrower and what remained had
dangerous spots, slippery places from which they were sure to slide
from generalities to personal recrimination--if Anne let it get that
far. Usually, just as they were about to plunge into an anger that
Roger often felt would clear the atmosphere, Anne would retreat behind
the patient calm that closed him from her as effectually as a barred
door.

The silence grew until Roger felt that he must break it at any price,
when unexpectedly Anne sighed. She had been wandering through the
lovely places of Europe.

"Tired?"

"No, not very. But this rain is getting on my nerves I think. I can't
get out much with Rogie, and I feel all cooped up."

"Couldn't we make some arrangement? Couldn't you get Mrs. Horton to
come round for so many hours a day? That would leave you free. It's not
right to drop all your interests, even for His Highness."

His voice was so concerned, his eyes so gentle that Anne forced back
the statement that His Highness was now the only real interest she had.

"I suppose we could. But I really don't know what I would do. I thought
the other day of taking some extension lectures again, afternoon ones.
I got the prospectus for French literature and history--but I don't
know. It seems finicky and dilettantish somehow."

French literature, when Roger was always talking about the drama and
tragedy of life about them! History, when the people round her were
engaged in making it!

For a moment Roger thought of suggesting that Anne come for a few hours
a day and help out in the loft. They were deluged in work. Merle was
getting more and more careless. Some days she never appeared at all.
She had been away a week now, no one knew where, unless it was Tom, and
he had offered no explanation. Katya had done Merle's work in addition
to her own, but even Katya was not so good a stenographer as Anne.
While he turned the suggestion about, making sure it hid no pitfall of
antagonism, Anne went on:

"I guess that the real reason is I'm too lazy."

"You're certainly not that. You keep Rogie like a prince and this house
is a regular jewel-box."

And yet, less than two years ago, he had planned to do high things
with Anne. One planned, and something, faint as breath, impalpable as
a mist, crept in, and one did not do those things. The burned log fell
apart. The rain beat again on the roof as if striving to reach within.
In the rising wind the acacia lashed at them. Anne came from her
thoughts with a little shrug.

"Perhaps I will. I don't know. In the meantime, let's go to bed. The
jewel-box has to be thoroughly overhauled this week and I want to get
up early to-morrow."

In the darkness they listened for a while to the rain. Then gradually
Roger ceased to hear it. His breath came in long, steady sighs, even
and assured. Anne rose quietly on her elbow until she could see his
face faintly in the blackness. He looked very young in his sleep and
remarkably like Rogie.




                           CHAPTER NINETEEN


It was a windy March afternoon when Anne, having secured the services
of Mrs. Horton's oldest daughter to look after Rogie while she did some
necessary shopping, came face to face with Merle, a Merle she scarcely
knew.

"Going right straight by me," Merle began gayly, but at Anne's
astonishment Merle quieted to sincerity. "I don't blame you. I scarcely
know myself," she went on with a whimsical gesture that included her
own person, from expensive hat and furs to dainty shoes. "I say, Anne,
come and have tea. If I don't talk to some one, I'll bust."

But even after she had given the order for an elaborate tea at the
exclusive shop where she was evidently known, Merle did not begin. She
asked after Rogie and chattered of everything she could think of, until
Anne said finally:

"I've only got a few minutes, Merle. Betty Horton can't stay with
Rogie after four. She has to be home when the other children come from
school."

And then, almost without a break or change of tone, Merle said:

"I've been thinking a lot about you, Anne. I came near 'phoning you
twice. I've left Tom."

"Left Tom!"

Merle nodded. "Anne, do you know how Tom took it? Did Roger say
anything? I haven't seen a soul of them for three weeks."

"No. I don't believe Roger knows it. He would have said something."

Merle shrugged. "Perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps Tom hasn't noticed it
himself."

Her eyes misted, but she tossed her head with a cynical smile. "Oh,
well, it doesn't matter. I wouldn't want him to go lallygaggin about it
to others--even if he did any lallygaggin to himself."

Anne flushed. Merle and Tom together had seemed so ugly, but Merle like
this was even worse.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," Merle said in fierce whisper, "nothing and everything.
Anne, I couldn't stand it another minute. I tried, for the sake of the
past and everything, but I couldn't." She was like a child begging
forgiveness and Anne softened.

"Do you really want to talk about it, Merle?"

"Yes. It won't do any good, but I always did love to talk. I'm a good
revolutionist, as far as that goes. I can babble and babble with the
best of them till the cows come home. But where we part is that I
do something in the end. Oh, I know they all think I'm Merle, the
bobbed-haired fool, but I'm not such a fool as to sit tight and let
Life run by, the one and only Life we'll ever get, and make no stab
at anything in it. Anne, I'm so sick and tired of the Brotherhood of
Man and the wicked capitalist and the abused proletariat, I could eat
my hat. I can't live up on those holy heights and I don't want to. I
always belonged down in the dust, gold dust if I could get it. And
now--I'm there."

Anne waited in silence, and after a moment Merle went on:

"Of course, Katya and the rest will just believe I was tempted--if
they think at all, but I wasn't. I worked it all out. I even made a
kind of trial balance--what would happen if I stayed, on one side of
the sheet--what would happen if I went, on the other. And I went. I'm
going to keep that paper and some day I'm going to compare the results.
Anyhow, I'm gone; Merle, the bobbed-haired fool, is no more. Behold
Mrs. Benjamin Wilson, at least on hotel registers, and in private
life--if I choose."

Anne did not move. She did not even turn her eyes from the angry violet
eyes opposite.

"I'll do a little 'crushing under the heel of capitalism' myself,
before my heel gets too old and shriveled and ugly to be hired for the
job." The bitterness of Merle's voice cut.

"Don't, Merle. I mean don't talk like that, please. If--if you have
left Tom because you want to--don't--don't make it any worse."

"But, Anne, it's true," Merle spoke more quietly now, and quickly, as
if the things she had to say must be said instantly, once for all. "I
do want money, because money is the only way to get the things I want,
to get my kind of Beauty. To Tom it may be beauty to be always dodging
jail, to live in the kind of rooms we have lived in, to yell himself
hoarse four nights a week about Russia or India or longshoremen,
anything that's far enough from him. But it's not to me. When there's a
play in town I want to see it, and I want decent clothes to go in and
a fairly decent seat, and I'm not waiting for any old 'adjustment' to
give it to me. I'm going to take it while it's going. Why, Anne, when I
first went to Tom, I used to wake in the night, afraid the 'Revolution'
would hit us before morning, and that's five years ago and we're still
dashing after its tail. Katya, poor old thing, has been kicking at the
world for fifteen years, until she couldn't stop if she tried. And when
they get it all done, how do I know it'll be any better? People will
only be kicking about something else then. No, I'll take my million
dollars now and hang on to it."

"But you loved Tom. You can't----"

"Y-e-s--I loved him. And what did I get for it? Not in money. I--I'm
not that bad, Anne, but Tom doesn't know half the time whether I'm
alive or not."

"That can't be true, Merle. He's always busy----"

"Oh, shucks, Anne, you can't tell me anything about Tom. I know he's
busy. Doing what? Saving the world; wearing himself to skin and bones
for millions of people he has never seen. But if all these 'oppressed'
were there in one single soul he had to see and touch and be with all
the time and do little loving things for, he'd hate them. Bah! they
make me sick. They're all the same. They're monomaniacs. It's the
fighting they like. If they had it all fixed to-night they'd mess it
up again just for fun, or go insane because they had nothing to do. I
know. I've been through it. You're only just beginning. Wait and see.
Roger's the same stuff, floating 'round in the clouds with those blue
eyes and that square chin. It'll get him too, Anne, if you don't watch
out."

Anne's lips set tightly. "You're hurt and mad, Merle. You----"

Merle laughed. "All right, call it that. It's been a long time coming,
but it's come to stay. I'm going to Europe, Anne."

"When?"

"Just as soon as Mr. Wilson can arrange his business. I went once
with Tom--steerage, before the war. Good Lord! I'm going to have a
stateroom, Anne, and I'm going to tip, God, how I am going to tip. Pay
human beings, 'lackeys,' 'wage slaves,' to do the most menial things I
can think of. I hope I'm seasick all the time just to----"

Merle broke off and her eyes invited some one who had just entered the
door. The next moment a heavy young man whose well-cut clothes and
expensive tie could not refine the overfed body, came forward.

"Anne, let me present Mr. Wilson. Ben, this is Anne you've heard me
speak about, Mrs. Roger Barton."

His bold, brown eyes summed up Anne's fair delicacy, and he smiled
approval of Merle's friend. But Anne felt that as long as Merle wanted
him he would find no real interest in any other woman. He was shrewd
and would know when Merle worked him, but it would please him to be
so worked at his own pleasure. Merle's childish curls and violet eyes
and scarlet mouth saying bitter, worldly things, had caught his jaded
interest and filliped it to stinging passion, so far above the torn and
frayed sample he had bought at extravagant prices, that the man was
humble and grateful. Perhaps he, too, in his own way, was searching for
Beauty. Besides, it gave him a pleasant sense of the security of the
world he helped to make to have taken Merle from Black Tom O'Connell.
In some way it justified the existence of things as they were, proved
the tottering foundations of the movements that had begun to give him a
good deal of trouble with his labor.

He was so plainly in love with Merle, it surprised Anne that his look
was no grosser than it was, for it was evidently difficult for him
to sit near and touch her in no way. If Merle were conscious of his
restraint she did not show it, but after a few moments it got on Anne's
nerves, and she rose. Merle rose too, insisting that Mr. Wilson stay
where he was and finish the tea the waitress had just brought.

"I'll be back. I'm just going to the door with Anne. You wait here,
honey."

Merle hurried after Anne.

"When's Tom coming back, do you know?" she whispered. "I saw in the
papers he is out of town."

"Yes. No, I don't know; in a few days I think."

Merle's small, white teeth marked the crimson lip in a faint line.
Slowly her black brows drew down in a frown. Her hands clenched.

"Anne, I would have died for him--I really would have once."

"Merle, don't go on with this. You're doing it in a fit of anger.
You'll be sorry."

"I'm not doing it in a fit of anger. Didn't I tell you I thought it
out, wrote it out? And do you know what was the last item on the
balance sheet for Ben? Well, if I stay and marry him, it's a baby,
a warm, cuddly thing like Rogie. And I'm going to dress him in the
loveliest clothes, and nobody will kick about the starving Russians or
the dying Roumanians. I'll feed him out of a gold-monogrammed nursing
bottle if I take the fancy, and Ben will think it's grand."

At the exaggerated picture Anne smiled. Merle smiled, too, and then her
eyes darkened again, just for a moment, as if a shadow had crossed them.

"Anne, you might let me know if Tom puts over that case he's gone on. I
used to listen to it till I most went frantic, but it's--well, the last
thing I'll ever hear of the crowd and I'll feel more finished, neat and
tidy-like, to know. I'll be here another two weeks, anyhow."

"All right. I'll let you know."

But Anne did not keep her promise, because two days later she saw in
the society news that Mr. Benjamin Wilson was leaving unexpectedly for
Europe. The next day Black Tom came back. He had lost his case.




                            CHAPTER TWENTY


The days passed. Roger did not mention Merle. He was often at the
office now in the evening and Anne knew he and Tom were working harder
than ever. Some Hindoo revolutionists had been arrested and an almost
hopeless fight to free them was under way. Picturesque men with sad,
dark eyes came to the cottage to talk to Roger, and Roger made quick
trips to adjoining towns to see strange men in secret places.

One day, about a month after Anne had met Merle, Roger came home
earlier than he had come for some time, and very gay. He had succeeded
in getting an appeal for the Hindoo revolutionists and that was more
than any one had expected.

"Tom's like a small boy. I never saw him so excited."

"And Merle, I suppose, is flitting all over the place, trying to talk
Hindustani?"

"No. Merle isn't 'round these days. I haven't seen her for weeks. She's
been dodging work for some time, coming and going when she liked. Come
to think of it, I don't believe she's been there at all for ages. Katya
was saying something about getting another stenographer. Merle's bad
enough, but she was better than nothing."

"Katya'd better go ahead and get one then, because Merle won't come
back. She's gone away with another man."

The amazement in Roger's eyes struck at Anne's control. Merle was
right. She had flitted among them and flitted away. Concerned with the
affairs of distant India, Roger did not even know it. And he had liked
Merle with her gay slang, her flippant comment.

"Do you suppose that Tom O'Connell has happened to notice she's gone?
Perhaps you'd better not tell him. He may never find it out at all."

"So--that--was it," Roger said slowly, putting together the pieces of
a puzzle that had caught his attention the day after Tom's return from
the South. "Poor Tom--poor old Tom. But it had to come. Merle had gone
as far as she could--and Tom couldn't stay behind."

"Certainly not," Anne said quietly, "an Indian woman in Burmah might
have died."

"What? What about an Indian woman?"

But Anne did not answer. She was afraid she might cry, and after a
brief pause Roger went back to the thing that had puzzled him.

"I saw Tom, the day after he came back, sitting all bowed over his
desk. It was late in the evening and the others had gone. He was
expecting me, but he never moved when I came in and I thought he was
ill. I went over to him and he looked up. I never saw a man so torn.
His face was ash-gray and those lines he always has down the sides of
his mouth were deep like scars. And his eyes, they were like a hurt
dog's, so dumb and crushed and puzzled. He didn't even try to cheer up,
just said: 'I won't be doing any work to-night; I don't feel well.' I
said something about getting him a drink, but he shook his head and I
went. I was rather afraid--he was going to cry."

"It wouldn't have hurt him if he had," Anne said in a hard whisper.
"He's killed Merle's soul, and if she goes to the dogs it will be his
fault."

"Killed Merle's soul? She never had one, at least not much of a one."

"No. There are no individual souls, I suppose; just one great, big
world soul--though what it's made of if it isn't individual souls, I
don't know."

Roger moved impatiently, but when he spoke it was with weary acceptance:

"You never liked Tom. You never understood him, the real man, or tried
to."

"No? I understand what he claims to be, but not what he is."

"What is he?"

"A monomaniac." The word slipped from Anne and frightened her.

"I don't know what you mean, Anne."

"He's gone mad on social injustice, just as mad as any capitalist has
on accumulating money. He's lost all sense of individual values. He's a
machine, a machine for fighting for his own theory."

Roger's lips set. It brought the squareness of his chin into terrible
relief. "Roger's the same stuff, floating around in the clouds with
those blue eyes and that square chin." Anne's body began to quiver, but
she kept her eyes steady.

"Let's not talk about it. We don't agree."

"Evidently not. There don't seem to be many things we do agree about
any more."

Anne tried to speak gayly. Otherwise the tears would come. But she
sounded like Hilda Mitchell, pecking at a tragedy with her silly giggle.

"Not many," Roger said shortly. "I've got to go back to the office and
I may be late. Don't wait up for me."

He kissed Anne as usual, and as usual she went as far as the door with
him. But long after his step had died she stood looking out over the
city's lights, lonelier than she had ever been in all her life.

She remembered coming home with Roger once, very late, on just such a
night. They had sat hand in hand, far in the prow of the almost empty
ferry, and Anne's head had rested on his shoulder. She was tired after
a happy day, one of the old picnics they had found time to take. She
had been glad of the lights coming nearer and they had traced the
row up their own hill. The twinkling lights had beckoned them to the
warm, human comfort of others. Now they burned on indifferent to her,
lighting the way for hurrying crowds, the creeping, inimical confusion
of the world. The twinkling lights lit the ways of men and men were
cruel.

Anne went in and sat down before the fire, without turning on the lamp.
It was so still she could hear her own thoughts moving about her.
Gradually, from the rustling crowd, one emerged:

"I've been through it. You wait and see."

She was not like Merle. Roger was not like Black Tom. And yet----

       *       *       *       *       *

It was after twelve when Roger came.

"Why, Anne!"

Anne lifted her face. Her lips trembled.

Roger came quickly to her in real concern. "You haven't been sitting
here alone worrying, have you? I didn't mean to be harsh."

Anne clung to him. "Roger," she whispered, "I don't want to grow apart."

"Neither do I." Roger stroked her hair, the old tenderness moving him.
"And since neither of us do," he said after a moment, with a smile, "I
guess we won't."

Anne answered his smile weakly. "Roger, I don't believe it is right
just to sit up here keeping the 'house like a jewel-box' and looking
after Rogie. I'm going to work."

"What?" Roger had never very clearly heard when Anne looked like that,
and she had not looked like that for a long time.

"I--am--going--to work," Anne repeated with exaggerated distinctness,
and laughed.

"Oh, you are, are you? Who said you could?"

"Myself. And you--in a minute."

"Oh, I will? That depends. I won't have you drudging in some office."

"No? How about that extra stenographer Katya's looking for?"

"Anne!"

"Don't you think I could do it? I don't believe I've lost much speed.
I----"

But Roger's kiss silenced her and Anne did not try to finish. At last
he loosed her.

"Do you really want to do this, sweetheart?"

Anne turned her eyes away. "Yes, Rogie's old enough to leave now and I
believe Mrs. Horton would be glad of the place. I would get a salary, I
suppose--enough to pay her."

Roger grinned. "You would--most of the time, anyhow. How much would she
do it for, do you think?"

"How much would I get?"

"Eighteen or so."

"That would be plenty--more than she would ask. I'll talk it over with
her to-morrow. You would really like it?"

"Anne! There's nothing in the world I would like so much. Why
I--I--thought lots of times of asking you just that thing."

Remembering his reason for not doing it, Roger, too, looked into the
fire, his arms still close about Anne.

But Anne did not press for the reason of his silence. Against the long
evening alone with Merle's words singing in her ears--"Wait and see.
It'll get him yet"--his hold was strong and full of comfort.

Suddenly Anne gripped him close and kissed him, as she had kissed on
the Bluff, her lips seeking fiercely, through his, the thing beyond
them both.




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


The following Monday Anne went to the loft with Roger. Another niche
was partitioned off for her and she began to take dictation.

Now that she had definitely come among them, joined her interest with
Roger's, Anne tried to shake off the feeling that had held her in the
past when she waited for Roger, and to get below the surface of this
violent enthusiasm. But she could not do it.

So many orders were given during a day, so many plans made, so many
contingencies prepared for that never arose. It was an exhausting game,
the enthusiasm created by the players themselves. It was an insane May
dance, Black Tom in the center holding the ribbons.

And such strange people danced at the end of the strings. Anne had
never seen so many different nations and kinds of individuals in one
spot, nor imagined they could so exist. Ministers who had given up the
Gospel of Christ to preach this gospel of Man; teachers weary of the
narrow round of instructing; a college professor who had discovered
that the Social Revolution had really begun with creation, and written
a pamphlet to prove it. A chemist who had discovered with equal
suddenness that the social revolution was the newest and perhaps the
last stage in man's evolution from the lower types.

There were men and women who saw some great change in the conduct
of world affairs looming in huge, vague mass, but had no clear idea
as to how this vague mass was to be shaped. Others who saw only the
small, unimportant details and these groups argued for hours accusing
each other of wrong methods that delayed progress. There was one
young man with mild, kind eyes who forgave all bigotry and personal
misunderstanding and wrote fierce, revolutionary songs, clarion
calls to these people whom he forgave for not hearing. There was
one plump little widow, raised in rigid Boston, who for the first
time in her life had found an opportunity to berate car-conductors
and minor officials in a loud voice. These she called publicly, in
piercing tones--"the wage slaves of a rotten system"--and urged them
to organize. She could always be relied upon at a moment's notice to
picket, carry banners or distribute leaflets. The "rottenness of the
system" excused her from contributing to any charity, but, until the
arrival of the millennium, she invested her income with remarkable
shrewdness in bonds.

Above this conglomerate of excitement Katya rose like a mountain in
her belief and patience. Katya never attacked car-conductors nor urged
telephone girls to strike, or bothered whether the social revolution
had begun with creation, or whether it was the last stage of progress.
Katya worked, often far into the night, and rarely spoke to any one but
Tom or Roger. Anne she ignored, not with definite rudeness but with an
unfathomable disregard of her existence. In her dark corner Katya was
like a brown bear that had been taught to work. So incessant was the
click of her machine that it was noticeable only in its rare intervals
of silence, as one notices the momentary lull of the sea forever
breaking on a rocky coast.

At first it was almost impossible for Anne to take Black Tom's
dictation, to speak to him, or be near him. Merle was always there
in her brilliant smock. Or the staring, embryonic eyes asking their
eternal Why?

It was not until July, when a heavy cold forced Katya to stay home and
Black Tom's personal dictation fell to Anne, that the faith of the man
at last reached through her repulsion and she reluctantly conceded
his sincerity. It was impossible to be admitted even so slightly into
his confidence and not feel his faith. It was stark, like a granite
headland, unornamented with scholastic theory. Its rough surface bore
no intricate carving of historical or philosophic research. The man saw
and believed. As the weeks passed, Anne came to feel that if he ever
thought of Merle, he thought of her as a victim, neither of himself nor
of her own nature, but of this colossal social injustice to which he
referred all the ills of life.

But she never grew to like him, and months after she had come to take
his dictation with no thought of Merle, any over-emphasized admiration
of Roger's stripped her feeling back to her original disgust.

"The trouble is that you demand perfection in people you don't like,"
Roger said to her one day, when her annoyance at one of Black Tom's
schemes for propaganda had driven her to biting criticism. "You measure
every quality in them by their highest peak, and when they don't
measure up to this standard all the way down, you reject them."

"Rather subtle, but not true," Anne said in the voice that always
reminded Roger of a small, sharp gimlet. "I don't see anything for you
to take offense at. Tom O'Connell is a monomaniac. Merle was right."

"Any one who believed utterly in an abstract principle would be a
monomaniac to Merle."

"Any one who believes in only one aspect of a principle is a
monomaniac."

"Tom does not believe in only one aspect; he is concerned with only one
application of his principle. And no human being can be interested in
more. If that's being a monomaniac then Tom's one, with all the other
people in the world who have ever accomplished anything. You can't
spatter your interest and energy all over the earth and make it count.
A scientist is interested in science and an artist in art. Tom's medium
is the present condition of the world. He doesn't want to win strikes
for themselves, or stir up disorder, but only that greater order may
come. His eyes aren't always fixed on the sores and confusions under
his eyes, but on the perfect body society might be. If Jesus Christ had
lived to-day and worked in a Pennsylvania coal mine when He was twelve,
instead of two thousand years ago on the sandy plains of Syria--he
would have been rather like Tom, I think."

"That's ridiculous, Roger. You're getting to be a monomaniac too."

"It's not ridiculous. And if that's what you call being a monomaniac,
I'd just as soon be one. In fact, I hope I am."

"Well, I don't. I've always been sorry for Christ's family. I think He
must have been dreadfully annoying to live with. Didn't He tell His
mother to go home and mind her business while He went and lectured to
men old enough to be His grandfather?"

"Nice, old conservatives, gripping their traditions like crabs hanging
to their rocks."

"Making their application of their principle."

"No. Not making it at all. Just hanging on to its corpse long after it
had ceased to have a spark of life. Once the Syrians had needed their
philosophy, but they were petrifying in a social system that human life
had really outgrown. They had lived so long in a barren land, fighting
for their means of living, fighting against their sand wastes and rocks
and neighboring tribes, that the whole of life had become a kind of
arena. Their Jehovah was only another brigand of the Syrian hills.
Those old men you sympathize with were like the militarists of to-day.
They can't think except in terms of gunpowder. 'War always has been'
and so it's always going to be. Then Christ happened along and saw that
Life was wider than the barren wastes of Syria and that they were at
the wrong end of the solution. Those old Syrian War-lords had applied
the principle of physical conquest to all kinds of spiritual problems
and Christ saw that it wasn't getting them anywhere. He was really
telling them how to get the things they had started out after and lost
the way of finding. When I was a kid He used to annoy me awfully--an
anemic young Jew with a silly beard and girl eyes--but I've gotten to
like Him."

"You'll get to like any other monomaniac who's been dead long enough."

"Are we quarreling?" Roger asked impatiently, exasperated by this
eternal twisting of a general path back to the personal point. "I
thought we were discussing that measure Tom's going to try and put
through the convention."

"We are--as far as I am concerned. You dragged in Christ."

"I didn't drag Christ in except to try and make you see why Tom
wants to get this particular measure across. I don't understand you,
Anne. You say sometimes that you believe the man's sincere and yet
you're always trying to measure him up with some little yardstick of
inherited social convention. Tom's like the great central wheel of some
high-powered machine, and you pick flaws because he's not the spring of
some jeweled and useless little watch."

Anne shrugged and began to gather up the dinner things. What did it
matter? If she and Roger talked half the night they would only branch
from one difference to another. In the exhausting day behind her there
was not one still spot wherein they could meet in perfect accord.
To her, the day had been filled with whirling, human particles that
obstructed her vision and stimulated Roger. All day Anne had felt
choked by these particles; the mannerisms, the shop-worn jargon, the
unrestrained enthusiasm, had gotten into her ears and eyes and down her
throat like sand. She had meant to keep the dinner hour free from this
sand, but it had filtered in. It always did. Anne was coming to feel
that these people with whom she passed the day followed her home at
night.

As Roger watched her moving, slight and graceful, about the room,
putting it in evening order, he wondered why Anne had ever offered to
come to the loft. She did the work well, as she had done John Lowell's,
but with no more personal joy in it. And yet Anne had once felt a
larger world calling for more than perfection of mechanical detail or
conscientious accomplishment of the day's stint. At what point in their
lives had that Anne slipped away into the fog in which he groped now
without finding her? Behind his book Roger grappled with this problem,
growing larger week by week.

Two years before they had started from the same point to walk along a
road together. At no spot had they left the way. No emotional side-path
had lured Roger from his faithfulness to Anne; no other way of life
had tempted her. Their hope had been the same--to live beautifully a
beautiful life. They were not living it beautifully. It was growing
ugly, full of impatience on his side, suppressions on hers. Sometimes,
for a few days, even a week, they managed to step from stone to stone
of personal agreement, and then, on some little hidden rock, they stood
and grew bitter toward each other.

In the kitchen Anne stacked the dishes for Mrs. Horton's coming in the
morning, clicked off the light, and came back. She, too, took a book
and curled up in her favorite spot on the couch to read.

Was she reading? Didn't she feel this fog closing in about them? What
would happen if he asked her why she had wished to work with him, or
suggested that she leave it? Would Anne be honest and tell him? Did she
know herself?

But Roger did not ask. At ten he stopped reading. A few moments later
Anne finished her chapter. They went to bed. From habit, Anne lay close
for a little, with his arm about her. Then he kissed her and turned
over on his side. Once more the harmony of sleep covered the tangled
knots and broken threads of the day behind.




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


So the weeks passed until one afternoon in early August, when James
Mitchell was taken suddenly ill and Hilda sent for Anne. She found her
mother sitting in the kitchen, crying helplessly as if she would never
stop. Anne knelt beside her.

"Mamma. Dear. Don't. You mustn't; you'll get all worn out."

Through the running tears Hilda's frightened eyes clung to Anne.

"It--it was terrible. I've never been through such a thing in my life.
I had such a time to get you. They--brought him home--oh, I wish Belle
was here."

Anne took the shaking hands in hers and held them firmly.

"Mamma, you must stop crying. It won't do any good and I want to know.
Who said it was a stroke?"

"Dr. Fletcher, the company doctor. Thank goodness the company gives a
doctor. What would we do, Anne, if they didn't? What we'll do anyhow--I
don't know. And I never would have dreamed of a stroke. Papa, of all
people! He isn't the build. He isn't the kind that gets strokes. He----"

"But momsy dear, he has it. Don't, don't go worrying about other
things. And the company has a doctor. Let's just take one thing at a
time."

At the calm assurance of Anne, Hilda's sobs lessened. She wiped her
eyes on the corner of her apron and spoke more quietly.

"I was just ready to go out, down town shopping at that cut-rate
market--it's beef bargain day--when the phone rang and some one at
the office said papa wasn't well and would be coming home. Of course
I thought he had been killed and the girl got so impatient and ugly
with me. I don't believe now they were at the office at all, because
in a few moments, I had scarcely time to take off my things, the bell
rang and they had him in a taxi. Oh--Anne--he was all kind of purplish;
papa, who's too pale if anything, and his eyes were twisted like,
but he knew me, and--and--he didn't want me to do anything for him.
It--it--seemed to make him nervous just to have me near him, and he
kept trying to say something and I couldn't understand."

"Can't--he--speak?" Anne's lips were dry but she kept her tone level
for Hilda's comfort.

"He can now--but it's not like it was--although it may come back almost
as good as ever, in time, the doctor says. But--Anne--he can't--ever
work again and what shall we do? There's the lodge and perhaps they'll
take up a little collection in the office--papa seemed always donating
to collections for families, but then maybe he was only fibbing--and
there's some small pension scheme they've just put through. But--it's
so--scrappy and he'll need so many things."

Behind the fact of her father's illness, towering over the misfortune
of his never again being able to speak quite clearly, or to walk
unaided, loomed this ghastly reality--never again to work; never to
draw a monthly salary again. All her childhood this possibility had
existed in the background of life, as it existed in the background of
all the lives she knew--the cessation of income, the wage-earner's
power suddenly cut off. Dependents on unearned money. Life continuing
with the source of supply not in one's own hands, beyond one's control.
Now this fact was no longer in the background. It had stalked to the
very front of life and demanded all their thought. Two aging people,
dependent on others! Anne shivered away from it.

"Don't think about that now, mamma. Perhaps it won't be so bad as the
doctor says. They're often mistaken. You know how little faith Belle
has in them."

"If only Belle were here."

"But she isn't, mamma. You'll have to do the best you can with me."

"Don't be sharp with me, Annie. You know I don't mean it that way. I
don't know what I would do without you. I could scarcely get to the
phone quick enough to call you. But I wish we knew where Belle was. I
haven't had a card ever since that one when they were just starting
for Jerusalem or some other heathenish spot. She--she'll help if she
can, but she never has anything laid aside. And that was one thing papa
always did try to impress on you children--to look out for a rainy day.
I hope you and Roger will never do that, Anne, live right up to the
last cent, not with Rogie and all. It's a temptation when everything's
all right, but the minute sickness comes----If only papa hadn't thought
that miserly little lodge and his life insurance would be enough--if
anything happened--we might have had a snug bit aside."

"He still has the life insurance, has he? You remember you used to be
afraid sometimes--he'd try to raise money on it. You----"

"Oh--Anne----" Hilda clutched her in sudden fear. "I--I--suppose so. I
never dared ask papa things like that. You don't suppose--he couldn't
have--oh, Anne----"

"Hush, dear. I'm sorry I asked. Of course he has. He would surely have
told you if he hadn't."

"He surely would have done nothing of the sort. It's exactly what he
would not do. He would have thought he could make it up, get it back or
something."

Anne rose and began taking off her things. "I'll stay to-night, momsy.
I'll just go and phone Roger and Mrs. Horton. She can take Rogie for a
day or two until we see how things are."

Hilda looked so relieved, almost cheerful, that Anne bent and kissed
her.

"It will be all right, dear. We'll manage."

Hilda clung to her hand. "Annie--you don't really think--he might
have----"

Anne took a sudden decision. "I'll ask him, mamma." It would be
difficult enough the next few days without this constant, harping
anxiety of her mother's.

"Annie! You can't ask him a thing like that. Not now. The doctor said
he must have absolute rest, not be worried or annoyed in any way. He
would think we were counting--Anne! It's horrible."

"I won't do it that way, moms. I won't do it at all if it doesn't work
out. Please trust me."

"I do, Annie. And I would like to know. I sha'n't be able to think of
anything else until I do. You won't be long phoning, will you?"

"Just a minute. Suppose you make some tea. I'd like a cup."

Happy to do something definite, more, to be told exactly what to do,
Hilda began to make the tea.

Roger had come in and Anne told him briefly what had happened and that
she would stay a day or two. He was not to phone as the bell might
disturb James and the doctor had said he was to have absolute quiet.
She would phone instead, the following evening.

The tea was made and they drank it, Hilda's spirit reviving in bounds
at the knowledge she was not to be left alone in her dilemma. Anne
tried to talk of other things, but again and again Hilda came back to
the question--had James Mitchell disposed of his insurance? At last
they heard a sound from the sick room.

"He's waking, Anne. Don't--don't tell him you can't understand what he
says--it seemed to vex him so. He----"

"I won't vex him." Now that she was about to see her father, changed
perhaps almost beyond recognition, Anne's voice shook. At this sign of
weakness Hilda began again to cry. Anne went quickly out of the room.

At the sound of some one entering, James Mitchell tried to turn his
head. He was very weak, and his neck seemed twisted and stiff, but his
eyes moved and when he saw who it was they lit faintly.

"Annie," he said in a low, thick tone, but much more clearly than she
had expected.

She sat down on the bed-edge and took his hand in hers. It was strange
to be taking her father's hand, offering him any physical demonstration
of affection. As if the act generated the impulse, a welling pity rose
in Anne. His fingers closed on hers and he tried to nod.

"Don't try to talk, papa. Just rest. It will do you lots of good."

Anne was not sure whether the faintest smile of scorn touched his lips
under the ragged gray mustache, or whether they were curved forever
into that faint bitterness.

"I'm glad you've come, Annie. You can stay a while, can you?" It took
him a long time to say this and Anne felt her nerves tighten between
the words.

"As long as you need me. But you're not going to need me long. If you
do as the doctor says, you'll soon be about. These things don't--don't
mean anything permanent." Anne spoke cheerfully, but the dawning hope
in her father's eyes shamed her to silence. She longed to turn her eyes
away from that pitiful hope, but dared not.

"No--Annie--I won't get better." It begged again her assurance.

"Well, we'll do what the doctor says anyhow, papa."

"I've--never been sick----" James mumbled, "always--lived
sensibly--just--my luck----"

"Don't worry about anything now, papa," Anne said soothingly, and
disengaged her fingers.

"I--want--a drink, Annie."

She brought a glass of fresh, cold water, held it for him to drink and
then, supporting him with one arm, deftly shook up the pillows and
placed him comfortably on them.

"That--was fine--don't let mamma--she makes me nervous. She doesn't get
what I say. Do I talk very thick, Annie?"

"No. I understand."

"Of course you do," he mumbled. He held her fingers again and she could
not draw them away. Nor could she ask him about the insurance while
he clung like that, so weak, so changed, so suddenly dependent upon
her. And she had never loved him. She did not love him now. She could
never love him. The tragedy lay in that--she never could. He might grow
better. He might grow worse. She might be there a long time, doing
the horrible, intimate things nurses did for hire, to Anne revolting,
except for deep love. She would do them to save his nerves from Hilda,
the woman with whom he had lived for more than thirty years; who did
not understand his blurred speech, whose every motion disturbed him;
Hilda, sitting in the kitchen waiting to hear whether he had gambled
away her only hope of independence when he had gone.

Anne slipped her hand from his, covering its withdrawal by soft little
taps on the back of his. She must ask him now, while her presence still
held something of the unusual. In a few days he would have accepted her
ministering. All the small tyranny of him would have risen in defiance
of his dependence on them. She must do it now, or not at all. Without
preamble, Anne asked quietly:

"Papa, things may be a little tight for the present. Do you think we
might raise a little money on your life insurance? As soon as we can
reach Belle----"

With sudden strength his fingers clutched her arm, and he gripped it
until she felt the bones press into her flesh. His eyes were full
of anger, fear, defiance. With a terrible effort he drew her down,
motioning with his slightly twisted lips not to let Hilda hear.

"I haven't got--it--Annie. I--thought--I had a sure--thing--it was
sure--and I staked--it's gone," he ended in a squeaking note of fear
and anger.

Anne patted his shoulder and tried to speak cheerfully, "Never mind,
papa. Never mind. Don't think about it."

That fearful squeak, like a mouse caught in a trap.

"Don't--tell--her, Annie. She'll fuss me about it and--I meant it
right. It--was for her--I don't want anything for myself--it was a sure
thing. Just my luck--any one would have taken--the tip."

And there was nothing Anne could find to say, although she seemed to be
tearing her brain apart in an effort to find a thought. She could only
whisper absently, over and over:

"Never mind, papa; we'll talk about it later." At last the monotony of
repetition soothed him, and he freed her to tuck the clothes about him.
But Anne could not bend to kiss him. With all her strength she tried.
Her muscles would not obey. She stroked his cheek and, with an extra
little pat, said good night and left him. Almost before she was out of
the room he was asleep.

Anne went slowly the short distance from the bedroom to the kitchen.
The door was ajar and she saw Hilda crocheting, a wad of lace in a
soupbowl by her on the table. Years ago Anne and Belle had rebelled
against the monstrosity of pineapple edging or star pattern upon their
underclothes. Still Hilda persisted in "not wasting time." The darkest
crannies of the Niche were filled with these rolls of crochet; they
were even tucked away on the pantry shelves.

"One--two--three plain, and four chain," Hilda mumbled.

Anne went in and closed the door. "He did do it. He's lost the
insurance, bet it away on a sure thing and it's gone."

"Oh--Anne----"

"Don't cry," Anne went on in the stern tone with which one handles an
hysterical child. "It won't get it back. And if I were you I wouldn't
say anything to him. It's done. He can't undo it now and he'll have
time enough to wish it undone--lying--there--thinking about it."

Hilda forced back the tears. After a moment she heaved a sigh and
picked up the edging again. Soon she was lost once more in the
intricacies of one--two--three plain, and four chain.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


The days went by neither slowly nor quickly, but with a terrible fixity
of sameness. The routine of illness, once established, life adjusted
itself to nourishment at certain hours, periods of sleep, efforts to
entertain James. Even waiting to hear from Belle was reduced to a
law, once in the morning post, once in the afternoon. As soon as they
received her address they would cable. Till then they had to wait.

With the assumption of all responsibility by Anne, Hilda Mitchell
ceased to worry about the future. Her old gayety returned. Sometimes
Anne felt that her mother was really enjoying herself more than she
had for many years. In this release from the housekeeping cares she
had borne so long, she was like a child. She insisted on doing all the
errands, and although it sometimes annoyed Anne, on the whole it filled
her with tender amusement to find how far Hilda insisted on going for
some small, needed thing. Prescriptions she always had filled at night
in a big down-town drug store, although there was a small, reliable but
very dull little drug store on the corner. She followed food bargains
about the city, adding carfare until the article cost more than it
would have in her own block.

At the end of the first week Anne brought Rogie to the flat. When James
was awake he liked to have the baby crawling and laughing about him.
Sometimes Anne wanted to cry as she watched the numbed form propped in
the big bed and the laughing, crawling baby dragging his little limbs
in their awkward newness over the limbs that would never walk again.

At the end of the second week she felt that she had lived this way for
years, that she would never live otherwise. The loft and the world with
its bickering were far away, behind the present routine. On Tuesdays
and Sunday evenings two old men took turns in coming to see James. A
quick, wiry little man came on Tuesday. A slow, fat man on Sunday. They
came early in the evening, just after their own suppers, and James
watched all day for their coming. They never had much news and there
were long pauses between their remarks. The flat was never so still,
so cut off from the world functioning beyond this silence, as in these
long intervals between the items of office gossip. Anne could never
shut the kitchen door and forget the old men, but sat tense, waiting
for the next buzz from the sick room.

They had imposed upon themselves this task of calling, but she felt
their relief when, always a few moments before half-past eight, each
old man rose to go, said something reassuring about soon seeing James
Mitchell back at work, and with awkward kindliness got himself out
of the room. Then Anne would go in, straighten her father's pillows,
make him comfortable for the night, and listen with assumed interest
while he retailed in his thick, halting speech, their meager news.
The paucity of it hurt beyond her strength to reply. To have lived
fifty-five years and have no interests larger than the clickings of a
machine, functioning far above him; to be bound in the tiny screws and
cogs of an intricate mechanism, towering into official dimness. The
old men depressed Anne terribly, almost more than James himself. His
illness separated him, in his first distinction, from the rest of his
world. But they were still part of it. Like chained animals they seized
and gnawed at each tiny happening until they had gnawed it to powder.
In these clouds of dust they were walking blindly toward the grave.

On the nights when the old men did not come James dropped asleep almost
immediately after his light supper. Anne put little Roger to bed. Hilda
found some reason to leave the house, even if it were only "to run
down to Mrs. Welles' for a minute," and Anne was alone. Sometimes she
sat in her old room, beside Rogie's basket, and stared out into the
darkening street. Strange noises emerged into the stillness, tickings
and creakings in the walls, rustlings and faint tappings.

Anne's thoughts, too vivid to be held within her brain, slipped into
the darkness and she saw them, pictures in the thick silence; the
terrible black vacuum of life in which moved the old gray men, her
father, Hilda, herself, Roger, Tom, the dancing marionettes about
him; Hilary Wainwright, his keen-eyed partners in great enterprises;
Merle snatching at beauty, the grimed workers; all groups of whirling
dervishes, spinning round in useless effort, until they dropped into
decay and death.

It was in such a mood, one night about three weeks after she had
come to care for James, that Anne went on the back porch, where the
sure shining of the stars, the black outline of the unchanging hills,
sometimes gave her rest. But to=night no peace came. The stars were
hard and cold, the hills indifferent. Locked in a vault of decay and
death, she heard the voice of Life, like the undertone of the sea
wailing forever: This is all there is. I am decay and death, decay and
death.

So deep was she within the darkness of this realization that when a
man's quick step sounded on the stairs and she saw Roger smiling up,
Anne stared back as if he were a stranger from another world. Roger's
smile vanished and he bounded up the last steps and took her in his
arms. At his touch the vividness of thought vanished, and she seemed
to slip down from the high places of a dream into waking. It was good
to feel his hold again and Anne smiled at him, but he looked at her
anxiously.

"Princess, you're awfully pale, and your eyes are as big as saucers."

"Are they? That's good news; they always were too small."

"I'm not joking, Anne. You look all in."

"I feel all right, a little tired, but I'm perfectly well. Papa had a
pretty hard day--sometimes I think he knows he'll never get about again
and it frightens him. He--doesn't want to be left alone with mamma. She
fusses him and he gets all nervous and worn out."

"Can't they get some one?"

"No. They couldn't pay any one. The pension isn't straightened yet.
They're taking up a collection, but a couple of hundred will be a
miracle, and how long does that last in illness? Besides, mamma is such
a bad manager."

"You're not responsible for that. And how about me?"

"You're a wonderful manager."

"I'm not."

"Then you ought to learn," Anne tried to tease. "It's really my duty
to stay away until you do. A great, big, social revolutionist able to
reorganize the world, needing one small wife to look out for him!"

"It's beastly eating at restaurants, and that hill's the stillest place
in the world at night. It's like lighting up a tomb to go home and not
hear you or Rogie."

Anne thought of the old man in the other room, eating his soft,
childish foods, alone with the empty past and death.

"I can't leave them, Roger, not yet. The doctor says that in a few
weeks he may be able to get into a wheel-chair, and then he can come
out here. That will be some change."

But Roger did not hear what Anne was saying; her eyes with their dark
circles beneath were too big, her cheeks too pale.

"But you'll be ill yourself, and what good will that do them? Anne, Tom
isn't going to be able to make that Chicago convention; he wants me to
go instead. Won't you come?"

"To Chicago! Now! I couldn't, Roger. I couldn't go that far away now."

"Why not?"

If the Mitchells had been on the other side of the world they would
have had to manage without her. "It seems to me you've done as much as
they can expect."

Anne stiffened. "They don't expect anything. I'm not doing it because
they expect it. There's nothing else to do. Don't talk like that,
Roger; I don't like it."

"And I don't like it either, this arrangement, not one bit."

Anne flushed. She felt that Roger was opposing her opposition more than
entreating her to go.

"Let's not talk about it. No matter what they expect or don't expect, I
should be miserable. Besides, it is impossible."

"What would they do if you weren't here?"

"I am here."

"But, sweetheart, you say he doesn't need special attention. It
wouldn't even take the expense of a trained nurse--if your mother has
to have some one. A woman like Mrs. Horton could do it."

"Who would pay?"

"We will--until you hear from Belle, anyhow."

"How?"

Roger looked away into the twinkling lights.

"You see," Anne said after a moment, with the prim patience that made
Roger feel like a greedy child clinging to his toys. "There's no sense
in talking round and round like that. I couldn't go--even if I felt
free in other ways."

Deftly Anne had poured the responsibility over him. Roger felt himself
choking in the patience of Anne.

"You don't want to go. Why can't you be honest and say so?"

"I can't leave them with no one to see after papa." Anne's reiteration
was an iceberg before the sputtering match of his objections.

"She saw to him for years."

Into that "she" went all Roger's scorn of Hilda Mitchell.

"Then mamma has had her share and I wish to help now."

"Why didn't you say so in the first place? There's no need to beat
about the bush. When it comes to a show-down between your people and
me, I go."

Anne's eyes narrowed. Her face flamed its ugly, brick-red, "I might
just as well have, mightn't I?"

"Certainly." Roger's voice accepted Anne's decision.

There was nothing else to say. Having fought over James Mitchell's
body, it seemed grotesque to ask after him. Roger turned again to the
winking lights. Anne moved away to the kitchen and lit the gas.

If he followed--there was nothing to talk about. But he could not
call "good night" and go off down the back stairs--to Chicago. Roger
hesitated. Voices sounded below. Two women were coming up the stairs.
He went slowly into the kitchen. United in the need of pretense, he and
Anne stood together.

"I can only stay a moment," Charlotte Welles' voice trailed like a soft
cloud after the crackling sunshine of Hilda's laugh.

Then Roger was being introduced to a small, pale woman with dark
eyes that seemed to see his annoyance at being bothered with this
introduction.

As soon as they were settled, he moved toward the door.

"Going already?" Hilda asked brightly.

"Yes. I have a lot to do to-night."

Anne's heart thumped. Perhaps he was going to leave for Chicago
to-night. He had not said when.

"Roger's going to Chicago," she explained.

"To Chicago! Well, that is a trip! Won't it be roasting? Going on
business?"

What did she suppose he was going for? "Yes," he answered as pleasantly
as he could, and knew that Mrs. Welles thought him extremely rude.

"It's not so hot now," she interposed in her sweet, low voice, so
evidently smoothing a situation she had no right to assume existed,
that Roger resented her almost more than he did Hilda.

"No. It cools off in September." He moved nearer the door. Anne and
Hilda followed.

"How long will you be away?"

"I don't know exactly. Perhaps only two weeks, perhaps longer."

"Good gracious!" Hilda trilled, "it doesn't seem worth while going for
such a little while, does it? Two weeks! Hardly time to get there and
back."

"I'm not going for the pleasure of the trip," Roger said stiffly, "and
the convention won't last more than four days. But I won't have time to
come up again. I'll say good-by now." It was almost a challenge, but it
was the best that he could do. Followed by Hilda's stupid injunction
to have a good time, he preceded Anne into the hall and she shut the
door. Instantly the heavy breathing of James Mitchell filled the space
between them. In silence they reached the stair-head and he began the
long descent.

Would Roger really go like that, without a kind word or apology? Three
steps below, Roger stopped, and looked back.

He was going away for weeks and Anne could not even come to the door
with him.

"I won't write often. You'll see all the news in the papers and I'll be
pretty busy."

"Oh, that's all right. And don't worry if you don't hear from me. There
won't be any news."

They looked at each other.

Anne went slowly down the three stairs and kissed him, a kiss of
condescending allowance for his bad temper and rudeness. Roger's lips
brushed her cheek. "Good-bye. Take care of yourself."

He was gone.

"Annie! Annie!" It was repeated in a querulous quaver from the sick
room and Anne went to her father.

"That was Roger, wasn't it? Are you going back home, Annie?" He looked
up from the burrow of the bed-clothes, so disturbed that Anne laid her
hand upon his shoulder to reassure him.

"No. I'm not going. Roger has to go to Chicago and he ran up to say
good-by."

"That's nice. That's nice, Annie." He patted her hand, his eyes were
already filming with sleep. In a moment he was breathing evenly again.

He had wakened from his sleep to clutch at her, to hold her to his
need, no matter what her own. True to his own selfishness until the
end; his claims always hidden under a false consideration, just as his
pleased "that's nice, that's nice," covered, in its implication of
affection for her, the hook with which he would draw her to him, hold
her between the fussy efforts of Hilda and his own exhausted nerves.

Anne went quietly from the room, closing the door except for the narrow
crack left open always for his call. In her own room, Rogie was asleep.
If she lit the light he might wake. She could not lie in the dark
thinking. She would have liked to go and walk far in the night, but
Hilda would ask questions. There was no spot in the universe hers, hers
alone, free from some binding chain, some duty to some one.

In the kitchen, Charlotte Welles was talking while Hilda listened, her
blue eyes wide in a fascinated interest. As Anne came just inside the
door, Charlotte's eyes included her in what she had been saying and
Anne's bitterness changed slowly to anger.

"She has lost everything," Charlotte Welles was saying, "husband,
child, wealth. But she has found peace. Now she knows. She says she was
never really happy before."

"It's wonderful. It does seem as if there must be something in it."
Hilda's head wabbled as if over-weighted by the marvel imposed upon her
intelligence.

"Why didn't she give away her money," Anne demanded fiercely, "and
leave her husband and kill her children--whoever she may be--years ago,
if that's all she needed for her happiness?"

Charlotte Welles looked up with such gentle understanding of her
bitterness and hurt that Anne wanted to strike her. What right had
this woman to penetrate one's mood, to be always down there under the
surface of one's thoughts? It was as if she had entered a room locked
against her.

"Why, Annie!"

Anne ignored Hilda and went on in a rapid, cracking voice.

"How on earth you can believe such rubbish, I don't know. And to call
it science! If science is anything, it's the seeking of effect from
cause. Something happens, and you burrow far enough down under the
surface and find the cause. A woman loses everything in the world she
cared about and--she sings for joy! She never loved her husband or
children nor enjoyed her wealth."

"She did--all three. She was a loyal wife, a devoted mother, and I
never knew any one do as much good with their money, or use it to finer
purpose."

"Then she's lying," Anne went on, "she's hysterical and unbalanced by
grief. It's not peace she's found, it's a delusion."

"It is no delusion. It is peace, the peace that comes from
understanding."

"'The peace that passes understanding.'"

"That passes understanding--until you find it."

"And no sane person ever will find it in--'Science and Health'."

"Annie! Why, what's got into you?" Hilda flushed with shame of Anne's
rudeness, but Mrs. Welles did not seem to notice it.

"I don't suppose you know much about Science, do you? Have you ever
read 'Science and Health'?"

"No. But would I have to read a book claiming the moon was made of
green cheese, to know it wasn't?"

"Certainly not. Long ago the moon was proved not to be made of green
cheese."

"And long ago, farther back than that, it was proved that human
beings--except a few insane ascetics--are not happy when everything
worth while in life is snatched from them and they have nothing left to
make the fight worth while."

"No power in heaven or earth can snatch everything from one. It is
impossible to be left with nothing. There is no such thing as a
spiritual vacuum, because Love is everywhere."

"Like the poor!"

"No, because there are no poor who cannot escape from their poverty if
they will. They remain poor because they do not understand Love. They
do not grasp it as a force, a greater force than any so-called natural
force that material science has ever discovered. Love is the magnet
that draws worlds together. No star, no earth, no planet can oppose
it. The poor, the ill, the unhappy remain so because they do not, will
not Love. They shut themselves off, insulate themselves against the
power of Love by their small, physical desires. 'Seek ye first the
Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.' Christ
understood."

"Without Mary Baker Eddy?"

"Anne! If I were Mrs. Welles I wouldn't explain another thing to you."

"She needn't," Anne said wearily, "I'm going to bed."

And she went. They could talk her over if they liked, wonder, excuse
her, give her absent treatment. Nothing mattered. They were not real,
her mother and father and Roger were not real. Black Tom with his
detached love of humanity and his indifference to Merle; Charlotte
Welles with her disgusting monopoly of Universal Love, her intrusive
intimacy with God; all snatching at some personal comfort and dressing
up their little fetish, just as she dressed Rogie's teddy bear and made
a sailor of him.

Nothing mattered but sleep.




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


At the end of three weeks, Roger wrote his first real letter. He was
going on to the Pennsylvania coal fields, then to New York, the West
Virginia mining country, the southern cotton mills and home. It would
take him fully a month longer. Anne read it several times, as if
committing the itinerary to memory, gathered no picture or quickening
of interest from it, and slowly tore the pages up. Roger might have
mapped a trip from star to star, so little did it seem to touch her
life. The only realities were this growing antagonism between herself
and Roger, and the helplessness of her father and Rogie. Between these
two points of advancing Death and Life, Anne stood, making mechanical
motions of getting up, going to bed, caring for Rogie, listening to
Hilda's chatter, and filling some of the empty hours for her father.

This was the most difficult of all. No book held him, although he
complained if none were provided for him. His fettered mind exhausted
itself in the effort to assimilate experience beyond his own. He would
put away the travels and biographies and fiction, for which Anne spent
hours searching the library, for the evening paper or the most trivial
bit of gossip. Sometimes this need to fill the emptiness about him with
little concrete facts oppressed Anne until her very jaws ached with the
unuttered words she could not summon, and her brain went dizzily round,
searching in the vacancy, conscious of its own motion.

Bound in a life of routine, James Mitchell complained if his useless
medicine was a moment late, his nourishment delayed. He was jealous of
Hilda's health and upbraided her cheerfulness as indifference; but when
she was over-zealous for his comfort he grew irritable and asked for
Anne.

Anne quieted him. The old friction between them was lost in the
profundity of Anne's indifference to all that happened. It was
cloaked under her gentle touch, her quiet movements, her quickness in
understanding his thickened speech, her anticipation of his needs. He
liked to hold her cool hand after she had straightened his pillows
for the night, or feel its sure grip guiding his dragging feet to
the window to investigate some trivial noise in the street below.
She read to him for hours, never putting the book aside at his first
lurching into sleep, and so drawing him back to realization of her own
preference.

She read on until his gray head dropped to his breast and his hands
relaxed in his lap. Then Anne would lay aside the book and look at
him impersonally; at the thin hair, the clothes spotted with dropped
food, the heavy canes propped against the chair arm. This man was her
father. From this now decaying body, she had drawn life. She had never
loved him, never been near him, and could never be quite separated
from him. From the beginning of Time to the end of Time, the chain
ran, a living link, a dead link, on and on; health no more permanent
than decay, life as accidental and meaningless as death. She would
grow old and rot; Rogie would grow old and rot; and his son's sons
until Time itself dropped in death. Or, somewhere along the line, Time
would snap suddenly, as purposeless in its ceasing as in its beginning.
Her longings for a permanent Beauty, Hilda's unconscious clutching
at happiness, Roger's childish faith in his power to create justice,
Black Tom's ferocious idealism, all meaningless words scratched on the
monument to Death. This overwhelming negation was Reality. Only people
like Charlotte Welles, blind and insensate before their own terror of
extermination, could juggle away this truth.

Charlotte Welles no longer annoyed Anne. Charlotte was no more deluded
than any one else. In the confusion of living, she had darted down a
blind alley, but no more of a blind alley than any other path opened to
the shufflings of humanity. At least this path hurt no one, as Roger
hurt her, as Black Tom hurt Merle, as her father and mother hurt each
other.

Anne had even grown to like Mrs. Welles and look for her coming.
With quiet cheerfulness she often led James Mitchell away from the
realization of his heavy canes and numbed feet back into the only
world he had ever known. Deep within him, the hope lingered that he
would again be able to go to the office, make endless rows of figures
and be commended for his faithfulness: that he would draw his salary,
place his small bets, make his luckless snatches at fortune, become
again "the head of the house." Without deliberately deceiving him, Mrs.
Welles deepened this faith, so that, after a visit from her he was
actually stronger and once managed, unaided except for his canes, to
stumble across the room.

Anne felt her always standing beside the sick man, throwing the thread
of her faith about him, trying to draw him back to health. When she did
not come for a few days, James fretted.

"I really believe you do him good," Anne said to her at the end of an
afternoon in which Charlotte had kept him cheerful for hours.

"Faith will move mountains. You can never tell." It was the first
direct reference she had made to her belief since the night of Anne's
rudeness. But now, the assurance did not anger Anne. She was too weary.

"Faith in what?"

"Faith--in the power of faith. Just believing."

"Believing that you will get what you want just because you want it?"

"Not exactly. Believing in the harmony of Life, knowing that what you
must have, what your soul needs, must come."

"How do you know what your soul needs?"

The other paused, thoughtful. "By listening," she said at last. "By
escaping from the noise of material life. Material life is not Real."

"It's the only reality we have, our brains and bodies and senses to
measure by."

Mrs. Welles shook her head. "No. Our brains and bodies and senses
are not the ultimate reality. It is something else, something almost
impossible to put into words, something you must feel."

"But how can you feel without your body?"

"By leaving your body behind and going into Silence. Then you Know. You
Feel it, you See it, you Touch it."

On the last words, Hilda came in, fresh and gay from a walk with Rogie.

"Touch what?"

"Peace and reality," Anne said with a faint smile.

Hilda looked puzzled.

"We were talking of faith," Charlotte explained, "and the absolute
certainty you get in Silence."

"Oh, yes," Hilda nodded. "Just getting away from a racket does help.
Why, I used to feel sometimes when the children were small, and it
rained so they had to play in the house, that I'd go frantic with them
tearing round getting in my way, when I had a lot to do. I broke down
once and the doctor told me to take things easier, so after that I used
to go into my own room with a novel every day for an hour and lock the
door. It helped a lot."

Anne caught the twinkle in Charlotte's eyes and returned it.

"I'd forgotten all about it," Hilda went on. "But I shouldn't wonder if
that wouldn't be a good thing to keep up. Do you do it?"

"I don't take the novel, but I try to get quiet some part of every day."

"I don't know that I could do it without a book. There doesn't seem to
be anything to think about when you just sit down and try to think."

"Don't try to think. Don't try to do anything. Just relax."

"Good gracious, I'd have to crochet or something. I'd feel wicked
sitting like that wasting the time."

"It's the one thing that isn't wasting time. It's getting at the only
thing in Life worth getting at."

"Is it? Well, I must say if you can keep your house looking the way it
does and find time to sit round doing nothing, nothing at all, I guess
there's something in it. I don't know but what I'll try it sometime."

"Perhaps you'd understand better if you didn't 'try it' alone."

"But I'd feel so silly relaxing with other people looking at me."

"Other people wouldn't be looking at you. They'd be quiet too. There's
a terrific force in many people being quiet together."

"'Many-people-being-quiet-together,'" Anne whispered.

"Well--if I were sure they weren't paying any attention," Hilda spoke
with mounting excitement, as if about to venture an intoxicating drink,
not quite certain of its after-effects.

"You know that any time you care to come with me," Charlotte suggested,
"I shall be glad. Our meetings always close with a few moments of utter
stillness."

"Maybe I will. I'd like to see it."

"Next Sunday we're going to have one of the Boston Board of Lecturers
out. If you like, I'll call up for you. About half past three?"

"That's just the time I never know what to do with myself. I'd like to."

But the following Sunday when Charlotte came, Hilda had not returned
from an outing with Rogie.

"She must have forgotten all about it," Anne explained. "She did say
something about taking Rogie to the Park, but I thought she would be
back in time. She's been talking about Silence all the week."

Mrs. Welles laughed and turned to go. She was a little late already.
"Perhaps the outing will do her just as much good. Besides she can come
some other time. It makes no difference."

In a moment Charlotte would be gone and there would be nothing for Anne
to do but sit as she had sat for the last hour, staring out into the
deserted street, listening to the wind and the heavy breathing of her
father asleep.

"Perhaps you would take me, instead," Anne said in a sudden need to
escape from this stillness that had no force or peace in it. "Papa will
be all right and mamma won't be long now."

"Certainly. Could you be ready in ten minutes? There's sure to be a
crowd and I like to walk. It gets me in the mood more than riding in a
crowded car."

Anne went quickly from the room and was back again in five minutes.
"I'll just leave a note for moms or she'll wonder what's happened."

She scribbled, "Gone with Mrs. Welles," and pinned the paper on the
wall.

They walked quickly in a silence that rested, so that, by the time they
reached the church, Anne no longer felt the need of this escape and
wished she had not come. But as she had herself suggested it, she did
not know how to retreat now and followed Charlotte through the iron
gate and up the wide graveled path, with reluctant curiosity and a hope
that the service would not be long.

The church was a low, gray stone building, covered with ivy, standing
back from the street on a lawn, undisturbed by shrubs or flowers. Its
leaded casement windows and outer door of heavy oak studded with nails,
gave a feeling of age and great strength. Silently swinging doors
led from the wide vestibule into the body of the building, which was
covered with thick soft carpet that deadened all sound. Across the foot
of the platform, stretching the width of the room, great branches of
oak and huckleberry broke the hardness of line and filled the room with
a faint odor of living greenness. Half-way down the aisle, they stopped
and then, with no rustle of disturbance, Anne found herself seated in
the center of the row. Mrs. Welles took a leaflet from the rack before
her and Anne looked about.

She had had no clear idea of what such a gathering would be like, but
now, as she studied the faces of those within her range, she marveled
at their likeness. There were old and young, men and women, but they
all looked to have gone through a process that had dissolved their
personal differences. They all sat quietly, their bodies in repose,
their faces calm. They were neither eager nor indifferent. No doubt
or uncertainty disturbed them. Anne could conceive of no opposition
that would sweep them to anger. No power could force from these
well-dressed, cultured bodies the cry of rage that lashed the audiences
of Black Tom O'Connell.

Here there were no slovenly clothes, no stunted bodies, no stormy,
foreign eyes. They had found their Peace and held it with well-bred
restraint. They were sure, not waiting; positive, not patient. Before
this sureness, Katya's was the certainty of an elemental force striving
through obstacles to prove itself in creation. This surety was the
after-calm, when God, having labored to create a world, stood back
satisfied and said: "It is good." It was restful in a way but had
something of the same supreme aloofness.

The side doors of the platform opened. Two men and a woman, dressed in
white, took the three vacant chairs behind the hedge of green. A hymn
was announced and the audience rose. Verse after verse they sang of
gloating peace and furious good-will. Protected by the music, their
calm at last broke through restraint, and flung itself aloft in an
abandon their composed bodies never would have allowed. Anne felt the
peace about her crack like thin ice and disappear.

When the Reader advanced to the rostrum and the reading of the day's
selections from the Scriptures and from Science and Health began, Anne
held her patience by an effort. Before the colossal discovery of Mary
Baker Eddy, the old Hebrew Prophets were little children searching in
the dark. Again and again, the name of Mary Baker Eddy, uttered in
unctuous pride of possession, struck at Anne's resolve to give tolerant
attention, until she felt her own lips forming the words in the
respectful pause which invariably preceded them. The old woman herself
might have been peeping from a door, counting these ordered references,
tabbing them against a possible omission. But the trained Reader never
forgot, at the appointed places he gave her due, in perfection of
delivery that set him aside from others, made him the special messenger
of the exaggerated optimism of Mary Baker Eddy. When he had finished he
sat down, in quiet withdrawal, and the Boston Lecturer took his place.

With bowed head, the Boston Lecturer stood for a moment, in silence
receiving the silent applause, spirit greeting spirit. He was a
middle-aged man, his slim alertness padded to suave courtesy by
prosperity; not the obtrusive prosperity of Mr. Benjamin Wilson, but an
unobtrusive prosperity, like a bank-book bound in morocco to stimulate
a book of poems. He made sweeping statements of incredible facts, in
a slow careful way that claimed a long process of logical analysis to
which they had never been subjected. He spoke fluently, as if he had
said the same things many times, but inserted unexpected pauses, direct
demands that gave the impression of deep concern for this special
audience; a willingness to give them personally of his great abundance.

At the end of twenty minutes, he, too, sat down. A faint motion marked
the loosened tension of his hearers. The meeting was thrown open
to testimony. Men and women rose to relate, in nauseating detail,
illnesses from which they had been cured by Divine Truth. Tumors,
cancers and wasting weaknesses had been alleviated, instantly in some
cases, by a reading of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy. The listeners radiated affirmation. If they had
ever possessed the power to doubt, it had long ago been buried under
the weight of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures, by Our
Revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy.

At last those eager to testify grew fewer. The Reader looked over the
hall to find no one standing. The Boston Lecturer rose again and named
the solo to be sung by the woman in white. She came forward in her
turn to the edge of green and Anne sat back, disappointed to the point
of tears. The woman sang well, but Anne did not hear. After the solo
would follow the five minutes of Utter Silence. Anne wished that she
could get up and slip away. Why had she come?

And then, so silently, so swiftly that she long afterwards recalled
this moment as one in which she must have lost consciousness, Anne
felt herself swept out upon a Silence, so deep, so profound that
there was no room within it for doubt or antagonistic withholding.
Without a break, as if a great curtain had suddenly and noiselessly
been rolled back, the whole hall moved into stillness. It was not a
thing that descended upon them. It was a state into which they passed.
The terrific wave of silence carried Anne with it; caught her on the
pinnacle of its huge curve and dropped her gently into a peace so
profound and so real that Anne felt it laving the whole surface of
her body. Something within slipped beyond the tight hold of her will,
escaped from the encasing body in which she had gripped it, claimed its
own and fled into Peace.

The rustle of others brought Anne back. She got up and followed
Charlotte Welles through the groups smiling and shaking hands and
agreeing on the wonders of the Boston Lecturer. She was glad that Mrs.
Welles did not stop but went directly out, and hoped Charlotte would
not ask her about the meeting. She could not talk of it. And yet these
unmagnetic, unvital, bewildered people had within themselves this
tremendous power. Close to Charlotte Welles she walked in silence,
angry at their possession of it.

Gradually Anne's mood dulled. Exhausted by her own emotion, she felt
spiritually weak and drained. In her reaction, she could have dropped
to sleep. She stifled a yawn and knew that Charlotte had seen. But it
didn't matter. Without mention of the meeting, Anne left Mrs. Welles at
the door and went upstairs.

At her step, Hilda looked up from the cake she was slicing and laughed.

"I never did a thing like that before, but do you know, it never
entered my head. I took Rogie to the Park and was giving him a ride in
the goat carriage when it struck me, all of a sudden, that I'd promised
her. It was four then, but I came, right straight back home, although
I knew it was too late."

"You might just as well have stayed."

"I suppose I might. Oh, well, we had a lovely time. Rogie was as good
as gold. How did you like it? Is there anything in it?"

"Not for me," Anne said wearily.

"I thought as much. Still, I wish I could believe it. I'd like to get
rid of that sciatica and no liniment touches it."

"But if you are a scientist, momsy, you don't have sciatica; and if you
have sciatica you're not a scientist. So they get you coming and going."

"I suppose they do," Hilda agreed placidly. "Besides, I haven't tried
that salt and bacon grease the delicatessen woman told me of. I'll do
that to-night."

But the sciatica was miraculously cured without the bacon grease
or Science. It disappeared that very evening with a cablegram from
Belle. She sent a hundred dollars and said she was starting for home.
At intervals all evening Hilda read the message. By nine o'clock the
hundred dollars had been stretched to include a dozen things.

"And a wheel-chair for papa," she concluded.

"Not if you buy those other things," Anne warned, struggling to keep
Hilda's imagination within some kind of bounds.

"Are chairs very expensive?"

"They're sure to be. Perhaps you could get a second-hand one."

"Perhaps we could."

There was a long pause and then Hilda asked: "Annie, do you suppose
that papa--do you think he will be able--it would be silly to----"

Anne looked quickly away. "I don't know, mamma, let's ask the doctor."

"I don't know just how to do it," Hilda whispered. "But really, Annie,
if he couldn't use it, it would be----"

"A waste," Anne finished.

But it was another week before the doctor found time to include this
useless visit in his busy round. He came in mid-afternoon, as James
Mitchell waked from his after-luncheon nap. He stayed chatting for a
quarter of an hour and wrote a new prescription to make the sick man
feel that everything possible was being done. As he left, Hilda drew
him into the kitchen.

"He seems brighter, doctor, don't you think so?"

"Yes. You're good nurses. His general health is wonderfully good."

Hilda looked at Anne, the unasked question in her eyes, but Anne
refused to put it. Not until the doctor was drawing on his gloves, did
Hilda face it.

"How long, doctor--is there--always a second stroke--how----?"

"My dear Mrs. Mitchell," he said with his professional smile, "please
ask me something I can tell you. After all, you know, we doctors
are not prophets. I have known the strokes to follow each other
within a very short time and sometimes they are years apart. In
fact, sometimes the patient never has another and dies of some quite
other--complication. The only thing to do is rest, quiet and diversion."

After he had gone, Hilda said thoughtfully:

"I wonder, if I went straight down town now, whether they could get a
chair here to-night."

"You might try."

"I believe I will."

Just at dusk, they brought it, a comfortable chair on wheels, with a
little rack for books, a tiny adjustable side tray, and a footrest.
Hilda lit both gas jets in the bedroom and Anne wheeled herself gayly
in. This unusual game covered over the presentation long enough to get
James settled, and then the added comfort and independence hid, for the
moment, his terrible need.

No one knew that James Mitchell cried that night when the excitement
was over.




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


Hour after hour, day after day, the train raced on, away from the
smoke-wrapped slums of great cities, from great stretches of the earth
torn open for men's greed, from the mills where little children slaved
to accumulate the wealth of those whom they would never see. On and
on, over the sun-soaked earth, across black, fat land; clean and empty
desert; past lonely farms; little towns, isolated from the inimical
immensity about them by their fenced gardens, their paved streets and
electric lights. Above the prairie flatness, the gilded domes of their
courthouses boomed pompously of law and order, and the tapering spires
of churches pricked the blue sky to attract the attention of God.

Long after the rest of the car was asleep, Roger sat on the observation
watching the distant lights break through the thick blackness, come
near, recede, disappear. Something was so desperately wrong. There was
so much land, so few owners. So much wealth, so many poor. Myriads
lived and died, that a few might enjoy. That a few might own the earth,
millions upon millions tore it apart, herded in unclean cities, built
uncanny machines to speed the process of accumulation.

When at last the train dropped over the snowy crest of the Sierras and
plunged down, down past clear mountain lakes, forest fringed, down,
down into the richest land of all, Roger felt as if something had
hardened and shaped to new purpose within him. Nothing in all the world
mattered but to help; to slave too, and die trying to even the chances
a little. When the ferry docked and the hills of the city rose misty in
the salt fog creeping across their tops, Roger felt older and full of a
stronger faith than he had ever had.

And he wanted Anne and Rogie. They were so small and helpless and the
world was so cruel. He had been impatient lately with Anne, but he did
not feel now that he would ever be impatient again. He wanted them and
the quiet little house on the hill.

Half an hour later he rang the Mitchell bell and Anne peered from the
dim light above.

"It's me," he called gayly and went up the stairs three at a time. But
before he could take Anne in his arms or kiss her, a warning gesture
motioned him to quiet.

"Papa's only just gotten to sleep and if he wakes now he'll get all
fussed up and nervous. It's been a bad day."

She tiptoed past the partly open door of the sick room and Roger felt
the darkness within reach through and chill his eagerness. He had not
telegraphed purposely to take Anne unawares. He had pictured holding
her in his arms and kissing away the memory of their last meeting
in a new effort at nearness and understanding. Anne led the way to
the kitchen and closed the door noiselessly. The gas was not lit and
through the open back door the fog was stealing swiftly from the hills.
A silent tidal wave, it was sweeping directly upon himself and Anne
standing together in the dim dusk. In a moment it would break over the
thick, black silence of the house and engulf them in its chill.

"Why didn't you let me know, Roger? I hadn't the least idea."

What would have been her greeting if he had? Perhaps a wire to tell him
to be sure and come up the back stairs.

"I wasn't positive I could make it. Such a lot of delays turned up. I
expected once to be here last week. How's Rogie? I suppose he's asleep."

"For hours. Shall I wake him?"

"N-o--no, of course not."

Roger moved to the back door and closed it. The fog was so stealthy, so
uncannily conscious, an inimical spirit released to stifle himself and
Anne in its silence. As he turned again Anne struck a match to light
the gas-taper but he stopped her. He could conceal his disappointment
better in the dark.

"Don't light the light, unless you want it. I like it--dark--after the
last weeks. It was so noisy and glaring and dirty most of the time."

Anne put the taper back on its hook. "I like it this way, too," she
said in a detached tone that drew Roger's attention sharply. It was the
voice of some one, not at all concerned with present reality, scarcely
conscious of its surroundings. It was as lonely and detached as a wisp
of the fog. He went nearer to her.

"How is your father? Better?"

"Yes. He's better on the whole, in some ways at least. But----" Anne
shivered. "It's terrible, watching some one die; that's what it
really is. He may live for years like this, good days and then a bad
day--but--all the time--he is really dying--dying every day--a little
bit--dropping apart--until--he drops away altogether over the Edge."

She was turned to him, but her eyes strained past to the chasm beyond
the Edge, and her hands were clenched as if she would hold the old man
from it.

Roger put his arm about her, but Anne stood stiffly within his hold,
seeing only the terrible, slow progress of her father to the grave.
But to Roger, it was not terrible that one old man, criminal in his
narrowness and stupidity, was slowly dying in the same dull way he
had lived. There was a magnificent poetic justice in it--the little
gray mole, creeping blindly through life, now creeping blindly,
selfishly toward death. Men in their prime poured their strength into
the fiery pits of the steel mills; the slums of great cities battened
on the babyhood of thousands; here, in the comfort of his home, one
uninteresting, unimportant human unit was dying. He had contributed
nothing to life. He would leave no unfillable space behind him. Even
his own wife would not sincerely mourn him, nor would the faintest ray
of beauty be dimmed in any life by his going. Impatience touched Roger,
although he still held Anne and quietly stroked her hair.

"You mustn't think about it like that. Your father isn't old, but he
isn't young, either. He has had the average length of life. We all have
to die."

"Why?" Anne whispered fiercely.

Before the mills debouching their hundreds at set hours, the miles upon
miles of sordid streets, Roger's eyes saddened.

"I don't know--unless it is to make more room."

"Then why not go now--every one, quickly and cleanly--instead of
rotting into it?"

"Suicide? No. Not until you're sure anyhow that you can't do anything
to make it better. It can't be the purpose of life, this horrible
chaos, like the panic at a fire, with the stronger treading down the
weak."

Anne shivered. "The strong--as you call them--have been treading on
the weak since the beginning of time and will go on to the end. If it
would all stop--just for a day, an hour--not a human being on the face
of the earth--not a sound--just silence. Perhaps we could hear then--if
there's anything to hear."

"Anne! You're getting morbid. What do you do here all day? How many
times a week do you get out?"

"Whenever I want to. I'm not tied here."

"You might as well be, if you take no more advantage of your freedom
than you look to have done. You're thinner, Anne, a lot thinner. And I
don't like it."

The old man in the other room was thinner, too, so thin that Anne could
feel his shoulder blades when she put her arm round to help him.

"I don't think so. I feel all right anyhow."

"You couldn't possibly--and look the way you do. Haven't you heard from
Belle yet?"

"Yes. She cabled a hundred dollars. We bought papa a wheel-chair."

Across the wheel-chair, Anne felt the thought leap to Roger's brain.
They should have hired some one to help with James. She should have
rested and taken walks and kept herself in condition for his coming.
Like a valuable animal for his master's pleasure. She moved from
Roger's hold, understanding of his resentment in her eyes.

"He can get out on the back porch now when it's sunny."

"That's nice," Roger said indifferently. "When is Belle coming back?"

"In a few weeks. She cabled from Genoa."

"Are you going to stay until she comes?"

"No--I don't think so--not unless you're going away again."

"I'm not going away that I know of."

"Then I'll be home to-morrow. I can't very well to-night because I made
mamma go to Pinafore with Mrs. Welles. She won't be back till twelve
and I can't leave papa and Rogie."

"No, of course not." There was a short self-conscious pause and then
Roger said:

"Does His Highness get that 'daddy' any better than he did? I don't
suppose so, just because I feel I've been away a year."

"Oh, yes, he does. He says it quite distinctly. And he makes a weird
noise that papa insists is 'grandpa'."

They both smiled. For an instant they had met in Rogie. Once more Roger
tried to reach to Anne.

"I often wished that you could have come with me. It was a wonderful
experience."

"It must have been. Did you have a good trip?"

"Yes. We swung the convention. But the rest of it--Anne, it's terrible.
They're so thwarted and driven! Millions of human beings with never a
real rest, never all they need to eat, and worse than all--no hope, not
even understanding, so many of them. Down in the social mud they're
crawling, thousands upon thousands, like lower forms of life, not
undeveloped, but being pushed back, down the scale of humanity. Human
beings--going backward!"

But no thrill of anger gripped Anne. What did it matter whether one
went forward or backward, since, in the end all dropped in death. Roger
and Black Tom spoke as if this life were the purpose of creation; the
personal comfort of the individual the apex of creation's effort;
while all the time, behind this violence of adjustment, Death stood
indifferent to their misunderstanding. Across the confusion of living,
Death's shadow lay, penetrating to consciousness in moments of illness;
in the stillness of dawn; in moments of physical exhaustion, when the
weary body for an interval ceased its demands and something within
yearned toward its own without; in rare moments like the massed silence
that had swept Anne into peace. Death was the Great Silence, the
everlasting Peace.

"I know," she said absently.

"You don't know," Roger broke out passionately. "We have no conception
of it out here. The land itself is too rich, the mountains and the sun
and sea are too emotional. We're all drugged with the beauty of the
land. We have no slums, no poverty as they have it in New York and
Chicago and Philadelphia. We have graft, oppression, rotten politics,
indifference, all the symptoms of the disease, but the ghastly, running
sore itself we do not see. Broiling heat in summer, freezing cold in
winter, twice every year adjusting the mere physical machinery of
life to climate--a scramble for coal in the winter; for ice and air
in summer; thousands of people herded in a single block, hundreds of
families, packed like sardines in a can; layer on layer of life in
one rotting building! Two men for every job. Millions of bewildered
insects crawling over each other to find a little morsel to pick from
the carcass."

His voice had risen and Anne motioned him hastily to lower it.

"It's terrible, dear, but please don't wake papa. He has to have all
the sleep he can and if he wakes now he'll have a hard time getting to
sleep again."

The old man in the next room must not be wakened! He was indeed the
great, safe, sane, middle-class incarnate. James Mitchell and his
daughter Anne! With her "It's terrible, dear."

"Don't you think you'd better go straight home, you're tired out," Anne
suggested after a short silence.

Roger shrugged. "I'm not tired, not bodily tired. I couldn't sleep if I
went home."

Remembering the tomb-like stillness of which Roger had complained, Anne
laid her hand on his arm.

"I'll come the first thing in the morning, Roger. Now papa has the
chair, it helps such a lot. I'll come up two or three afternoons a
week, but I don't really need to be here steadily."

"Don't come unless you feel you want to," Roger said dully and moved
to the door. He opened it cautiously, no need to warn him now. They
tiptoed to the stair-head, kissed perfunctorily, and Anne watched him
to the door which he closed noiselessly. The next moment the chug of a
starting motor drew Anne's attention and she hurried to a front window.
A taxi was just leaving, the driver's head bent to catch Roger's
instructions.

He had come in a taxi, kept it waiting, and now was going back in it!

"And he thinks he's consistent," Anne whispered with quiet bitterness.
"Dollars wasted and--'thousands never have enough to eat.'"

She watched the taxi out of sight and went slowly back to the kitchen.

She was still sitting there in the dark when Hilda came. At her
mother's step, Anne jumped up and lit the light, otherwise she would
have to explain or invent an excuse for sitting in the dark. No one
understood without words. The smallest act had to be dragged out, cut
up into speech and put together like an intricate puzzle. And then it
was not really understood.

Radiantly gay, her curls damp and tight with the fog, Hilda bustled in.

"You just lit the light, didn't you? I thought I saw it go up."

"Did you? How was the show?"

"Anne, it was too funny for words. I haven't enjoyed a thing so for
years. You must see it. There's a matinée to-morrow. I'll feel selfish
if you don't."

"Maybe I will, sometime before it goes. It'll be here a week. But I
can't to-morrow. Roger's home."

Hilda's gayety vanished. "Oh," she said forlornly, "I suppose you'll be
going, then."

"Yes. To-morrow, I think."

Hilda took off her things and they had some hot cocoa. In its warmth,
her cheerfulness returned. To-morrow her freedom would be gone. But
to-morrow was to-morrow.

"Really, Anne, I never laughed so much in my life. That's the funniest
thing that ever was written."




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


The next day Anne went home and the following Monday was back in the
loft. A long period of stagnant waiting had ended in a new burst of
hope and the place vibrated with the rush of people going and coming.
Like the three prongs of a huge fork, Black Tom, Roger and Katya caught
up on their unflagging faith and indefatigable energy the smaller plans
and physical limitations of those about them.

Often Anne came from a revery to find that her hands had been idle on
the keyboard for a long time. There was no safe, quiet spot anywhere
in life. The surface at every point was heaving, just as the surface
of the earth had heaved and cracked on the day of the Great Quake,
torn open by forces within itself. Until then the earth had been the
most stable thing in the universe. Sun and moon came and went; stars
gleamed and died away; rain beat upon it and the wind swept over it,
but, to human sense, the old, old earth was still. And then, in a
moment, without warning, its patience exhausted, it had risen and like
an angry giant, struggled to hurl aside the pigmies crawling upon it.
Anne had never forgotten that feeling, as the earth began to rock, the
feeling of being grasped and personally shaken by a malignant force
beyond her power to propitiate, a force growing more and more furious,
illimitable in its anger. In a moment it might release her or it might
go on forever until it had annihilated every living thing.

There was no permanence, no sureness, no stability, no stillness
anywhere. Often Anne closed her machine and slipped away unable to
endure the noise and confusion. But out upon the streets the noise
and confusion continued. People hurried everywhere. Cars clanged by
obeying many desires to go in many directions. Newsboys shrieked their
announcements of murders, explosions, and terrible deeds of violence.
Sometimes Anne sought quietness by the sea, but, gripped in the law of
ebb and flood, the sea roared or moaned or whimpered to its degree of
strength.

As the weeks passed, the longing for a place of stillness, one little
spot of silence, grew to a desperate need. She must have it. Somewhere
it must exist, this small place of peace where she could stop for
a moment. She thought of the meeting to which she had gone with
Charlotte, but when she visioned the interval that preceded filled
with the assertions of false optimism, the hymns of gloating joy, the
sickening testimony, she could not face them. Then the silence had
caught her but Anne knew that if she sought it deliberately in these
surroundings it would escape. Perhaps, somewhere else, in other faiths,
if she searched she would find it. Anne began to search.

And now, that all her thought was turned to find Silence, she found
others seeking, too. Some sought silence in costly edifices, beautiful
with stained glass and priceless paintings. Others in public halls,
cozily furnished rooms, rickety buildings. In offices that did double
service, where Business and Silence alternated like opposing armies
occupying the same fortress successively.

There were Services of Silence conducted by men and services by women.
Some built a vestibule of music and, in the beautiful vestments of
ancient orthodoxy, walked slowly through to the treasure room of
Stillness. Others, in the common garb of everyday, entered without
prelude. Some plunged from the roar of traffic into Silence as if it
were a bath; others went through little personal rituals of reading and
bodily posturing, as if to steal upon it unawares.

Old, old faiths claimed silence as their own, and conceded reluctantly
to the modern scramble in simple statements of the hour and place they
offered it. Like a conservative firm reluctant to meet the modern need
of advertising, they offered this staple so long a specialty of their
own. New faiths shrieked of Silence as if it were a food to be eaten
instantly before it cooled.

"A half-hour of Silence, from twelve to twelve-thirty,"--like the
professional card of a reputable physician; and "Come and be Quiet
With Us"; "Learn the Power of Silence"; "Be Still and Know"--the paid
advertisement of a hustling quack.

Anne sought but could not find. The stained glass and wide arches of
the churches; the few cozily placed chairs of ordinary rooms were as
glaring in their claims as the thick carpet, the heavy oaken door and
casement windows of the little gray stone church. The solemn music, the
sentimental texts upon the walls, as artificial as the modulated voice
of the Trained Reader and the bowed head of the Boston Lecturer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Outwardly Anne grew quieter and quieter. Sometimes she saw Katya
watching her with a mingling of triumph and curiosity that would have
interested her deeply six months before. Now, nothing interested her.
Not even the dependence of Rogie held her to the exclusion of this
growing need to find a place of peace. Once, Rogie had seemed to fill
every need, but now Anne knew within herself something over and above
the power of any person or situation quite to fill. It had always been
so. In her love for her mother and Belle, there had been the empty spot
of longing for a wider life and deeper interests. Then Roger had come,
with the wider life and deeper interests, but the tiny empty spot had
remained, the very core of herself that had never melted into Roger's.
Now, she and Roger could scarcely see each other across the space of
separation.

Concerned with the pain of the world, Roger strode on, confusing the
force of his own effort with the accomplishment of results. When, early
in spring, he won the case of a Hindoo revolutionist, he was as excited
as Rogie at a new toy. He came shouting down the loft, and because
Katya was out, and he had to share this enthusiasm with some one, came
to Anne.

"Singh's been released. They couldn't make their case. We've got them
on the run." Perched on the railing about Anne's desk, he swung his
feet like an excited boy. "Of course England will chase him out of
India again, but he'll get in some deadly licks before she does. Gosh,
but I'd like to be there to-day. Think of it, that slip of a fellow,
stirring up that old race, prodding it out of its centuries of sleep."

But Anne did not see that old race rising from its sleep. At most it
would be only a little turning, as Rogie turned and then settled to
deeper sleep. She shrugged: "He will prod and then die."

"What of that? It doesn't nullify his accomplishment. Suppose millions
more still have to do it. Can't you get the romance--if nothing else?"

Anne smiled faintly. "That's just what I do get--millions of
sleepers--in an ageless sleep." Across the room, Black Tom was the
center of an excited group, elated at the success of Singh. A messenger
boy dashed in with a telegram. Two telephones rang wildly. "It's like a
little child with a horn," she said quietly, "blowing because he likes
to hear the noise himself."

Roger's hands clenched and he dropped quickly from the railing.

"You've got--just about as much imagination--as a flea."

Anne shrugged. "Since you don't know the extent of a flea's
imagination, your figure hasn't much force, has it?"

Roger turned away and Anne went on with her work.

At two o'clock she left the office and went to the flat. But even
here she was not needed as she once had been. On her return, Belle
had installed a practical nurse three afternoons a week to relieve
Hilda, and the woman had filled Anne's place completely. Anne went
on the days she did not come, but she felt her in Hilda's accounts
of how "she rests papa and manages him to perfection," and in James'
constant references to things she said or did for him. Now that there
was no need to fill hours with chatter, Anne missed the need. The empty
relationship with her father was emptier than before.

In the vacuum of her isolation, Anne began to watch her thoughts, until
she came to see them as minute machines, installed within her brain by
some outside power, clicking away independent of her will. A power was
working out some experiment with her, using her brain as if it were a
dark room for the development of a film. Without emotion Anne watched
the negative develop. She grew absorbed in the process. She often
asked Roger to repeat a statement, and then sat motionless, watching
its reaction, as if it were a stone he had dropped into the well of
her intelligence. With judicial exactness she weighed the most trite
remark, until conversation with Anne became impossible.

Roger escaped it when he could. Night after night, he stayed on at
the office and Anne ate her dinner alone. Or he returned to work
immediately after dinner, always courteous and insincere in his excuse.
Anne saw the insincerity but never resented it. She was glad to have
Roger go. When he stayed there was nothing real to talk about and the
effort of making conversation with Roger was more exhausting than the
lonely evening.

It was on a Sunday afternoon, after several such evenings in
succession, that Anne sat pretending to read in her favorite place,
a cushioned settle under the window that gave on the bay and hills
beyond. It was a still day of little wind, but a dry, high fog hid the
sun. It was three o'clock, the dreariest, the least personal of any
hour of the day. The feeling of youth that morning has was gone. The
positiveness of evening and lighted lamps had not yet come.

Roger had gone to the office in the morning, read for a little after
lunch and was now asleep in the darkened room beyond, Rogie in the crib
beside him. But he would not sleep much longer. Rogie would probably
wake when he did and Roger would play a while with him. Then, unless
Roger went to a meeting, they would sit, each absorbed or feigning
absorption in his reading: Roger in some legal or economic work of vast
pretension, Anne in her novel, a thing so far from life in the maudlin
sentimentality, spread like soft icing over the relation between the
man and the woman, that it would better have been frankly a fairytale.
About them the silence of the dead hour would close and they would sit
in peace as false as the stillness of the churches and small meeting
rooms.

Anne thrust her book aside. If she went out to walk, the Sunday streets
would echo the tread of others trying to kill the day in the same way.
At the flat James would be asleep in his chair, Hilda napping in the
dining-room. Anne leaned forward, her elbows on the sill, her chin
in her palms. The Bay, flat and gray as if it, too, were exhausted
from the week's work, stretched to the fog-crowned hills. Under the
pall, the Sleeping Beauty on Tamalpais had passed to eternal rest. The
commanded peace of the Seventh Day shut like a cover of lead upon the
world.

Only Charlotte Welles could move beneath such grayness, unconscious
of its deadening weight. She would be walking now, with her short,
quick steps, straight to the peace she entered at her will. Anne moved
uneasily, like a sick person resisting a desired opiate. Perhaps, if
she went once again, and tried not to hear the hymns or the testimonies
or the selected readings, if she slipped into the back seat, just
before the meeting closed, she might yet grasp the secret and have it
for her own.

In the room beyond, Rogie cried and Roger woke. She heard him lift the
baby from its crib and in a moment they were laughing together. Then
the blind went up with a noisy spring, and Roger came out, rested and
carrying the delighted Rogie in his arms.

"There, you little fake." He deposited the baby on the rug before
the fire, threw a piece of wood which caught instantly in gay little
tongues of flame, and laughed at Rogie's clumsy efforts to reach them
through the screen. But Anne did not see them. She was looking at
Roger's back, at the rumpled hair and slightly creased shirt, with
faint distaste.

Roger removed his son to safer distance, stretched and crossed to the
window on the other side of the room.

"Beastly day. I wonder how that Kenneally meeting will be."

Roger yawned and, leaning against the window sash, looked into the
gray stillness for an inspiration. Rogie, finding the pretty flames
inaccessible and himself deserted, puckered his face for a cry, which
Anne diverted just in time by cuddling him to her and kissing his bare
toes.

Roger turned listlessly from the window, took a cigarette from the
brass box on the mantel shelf, and began to walk up and down.

"Are you going? It's at four, isn't it?" she asked.

"I don't know--I haven't decided yet. Kenneally isn't much of a
speaker."

He might not go. The afternoon would shut heavy upon them. She could
not face it. She carried Rogie into the bedroom and closed the door.
She dressed first and then dressed Rogie. If Roger did decide to go,
she did not wish to prevent him by leaving the baby on his hands. A
few moments later, carrying Rogie, delighted at the prospect of going
out, but objecting strongly to his bonnet, which he tried to remove by
vicious tugs, Anne came into the living-room. Roger was in his chair
now, an open book on his lap. He looked up surprised at Anne, dressed
to go out.

"I'll take him, so you needn't stay in if you want to go to the
meeting."

"Going up to the house?" He was sure she was because Anne never went
anywhere else on a Sunday, but he always mentioned her coming and going
with kindly formality.

"No. I'm going to church."

"To church!"

Anne drew on her gloves and nodded.

"What church?"

"Christian Science."

"What!" Roger barked the word in exasperated astonishment.

"The Christian Science Church," Anne said with maddening composure, as
if she were disciplining a child for its harsh voice.

Roger closed his book and rose. "Are you a Scientist now?"

"No."

"Then what do you want to go and listen to that drivel, for?"

Anne did not answer and moved to the door. Roger stepped quickly in
front of her.

"How many times have you been?"

Anne's face flamed with the ugly, brick-red flush. Her body tightened
and she looked scornfully at Roger.

"I shall be late as it is," she said stiffly. "Please let me pass."

"I won't." Roger knew that his anger was carrying him to rudeness,
but Anne's manner rasped him beyond control. Behind Anne, he saw the
subtle, low-voiced influence of Charlotte Welles. A Christian Science
wife, believing in the muddled effusions of a sick old woman; for all
he knew practicing her ridiculous faith upon him. Lost in a stupid
philosophy that denied disease and poverty, Anne dared to look in scorn
at Black Tom, at Katya, at Singh, at himself. With a quick movement,
Anne passed him and laid her hand on the door-knob.

"You sha'n't go," he cried, white with anger.

"I shall go where I please," Anne answered quietly, "I don't interfere
with you. You can go to your meeting, listen to your own particular
brand of 'drivel,' pump up the enthusiasm of a few dozen people who
don't know what else to do with themselves on a Sunday afternoon. At
least, the few million Scientists, more or less, in the world, haven't
had their belief manufactured and forced down their throats."

Roger's anger died. He reached for Rogie, and before Anne knew what had
happened, holding the baby firmly, Roger stood aside.

"You're right. You don't interfere with me. But Rogie doesn't go."

It was Anne now who flamed to anger. Standing upon her tiptoes she
snatched for the baby, who, thinking it was a new kind of game, wound
his hands in his father's thick hair and kicked with joy.

"Give him to me," she commanded in a cracked whisper.

Roger stepped back, for between himself and Anne clutching for their
child, the old Anne stood upon her tiptoes defying John Lowell.

"No, Rogie does not go." He turned and went silently back to the fire
and sat down, Rogie clinging to his neck. For a moment Anne stood
motionless in an anger that seemed to have frozen her to the bone.
Then, with a sob that was a cry of hate, she opened the door and went
quickly.

Until it was dark, Anne walked up one street and down another. She
passed mean houses where families sat at dinner behind partly-drawn
blinds, and stately homes, the intimacy of family life decorously
concealed behind thick curtains. She did not know when the high fog
parted and the stars came out, but when the sky was all a-glitter and
a soft little wind ruffled the bay, she found herself sitting on a
pile of lumber at the farthest jetty of Fisherman's Wharf. The lighted
ferries lumbered cheerfully, the fishing boats grated softly on the
piles. A few yards behind, in the new warehouse of Giuseppe Morelli, a
group of fishermen laughed and chattered while they mended their nets
against the turn of the tide.

Beyond the wharf, on the rocky crest of a hill, she could just glimpse
the cottage light. She looked at it for a long time without emotion.
She was cold and calm. Nothing could ever again stir her to anger or
feeling of any kind.

The wind freshened. The men began climbing down into their boats. With
much calling back and forth, the boats pushed off.

Anne left the wharf and went slowly up the steep, silent streets. At
the foot of her own stairs she stopped and looked at her watch. It was
five minutes after eleven.

The light in the cottage was out, the fire lay a handful of smoldering
embers. The room was rather cold but she was not conscious of its
chill although she stood for some time listening to the even breathing
of Roger asleep in the next room. Then she crept into the bedroom,
undressed and got noiselessly into bed. At its warmth, she shivered as
if touched by something unclean. But in a few minutes she was asleep,
worn by her long walk and the storm of anger and despair.

In the dawn, Roger woke, and, turning slightly, looked at Anne. She was
sleeping as always, on her side, her cheek pillowed on one arm; small,
exquisitely fair and utterly unmoving. Roger looked at her, almost with
surprise that she should be there. And then aversion to Anne's body
gripped him. He did not want to touch her or be near her. Never again
of his own impulse would he wish to hold her in his arms or kiss her.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


Winter came, a dry winter of cool mornings and nights, and days of
clear sunshine. Against this sparkling background, Anne and Roger moved
side by side in almost total silence. Anne still went to the loft but
not regularly. Roger never asked why she stayed away or what she did
with her time. He worked now far into the night, often even after Katya
had gone with a comforting, indifferent "good night." Sometimes they
left together and Roger walked as far as her car with her, talking of
their plans, never of personal things. If she noticed that Anne no
longer came regularly to the loft, she never mentioned it, nor did she
make any comment when Anne ceased coming at all.

It was in February that Rogie had an attack of croup and Anne stayed
away for two weeks. When he was well she did not return. On the first
night of his illness she had moved his crib into the wing of the
living-room they called a library and this arrangement was maintained.
She bought a screen of silk and lacquer and converted the wing into a
comfortable bedroom. Roger made no comment. For a few days their eyes
held consciousness of the change and then they spoke indifferently of
"your room" and "my room."

On the evenings when Roger was home, Anne usually retired first. Behind
the impregnable wall of silk and lacquer, Roger heard the soft swish
of her garments as she dropped them, then the even breathing of her
sleep. For a little while, after their forced nearness in the illness
of Rogie, Roger would sometimes close his book, and, with tightening
muscles, glare at this thing of silk, or stare before him, trying to
find a clew through the present to the past.

When had it all begun?

Farther back than the day that Anne had snatched at Rogie. Much farther
back than that. Perhaps, back at the very beginning, when Anne had been
afraid to tell her people. But when Roger visioned again the Indian
graveyard, the weeks by the lake, the Basque herder playing his flute
in the sunny meadow, the clinging of Anne's lips that last night, and
moments in their first months, the clew vanished in hurt wonder.

If moments like those were not real, what was? If a certainty as real
as the certainty that had come to him in the sweeping wind on the Bluff
was false, what was true?

Had their nearness even then held within itself the germ of discord?
Had this erosion of difference, that had at last eaten its way down to
their physical relationship, always existed between himself and Anne?
Did it exist between all men and women, and was that marvelous nearness
only a cloak over the stark skeleton of sex? The hunger once appeased,
was the purpose satisfied, and did the soul demand this separateness
for its own development? Was marriage only the lowering of an ideal
beyond the average man and woman to reach?

At farther and farther intervals, the puzzle held him. Then, wonder
settled to acceptance. Roger no longer heard the swish of Anne's
garments or her breathing behind the screen. He came from the office
pleasantly tired and was content with the wide coolness of the big bed
and freedom.

But his mouth grew firmer and his eyes lit less often. Like a copy done
in fainter wash, his eyes at times had the loneliness of Black Tom's.
Katya watched and found it harder and harder not to go to him on the
nights they worked alone. Often after they had separated, and Katya sat
in the ugly hall bedroom that had been her home for years, she would
clench her fists and pound the washstand as if it were a rostrum and
she were addressing a crowd:

"It had to come, with that little fool. She couldn't hold him back. He
will grow now."

But when, stealing a glance toward Roger, she saw him staring out
across the loft with lonely eyes, she would have had him happy at any
price. To have his enthusiasm bubble over in gayety as it used to do,
to feel him warmly happy, Katya would have freely given the years that
remained. Standing at that terrible spot of middle ground, the future
clear in the light of the past and perfect knowledge of self, looking
back down the lonely years indifferently, through the future lonelier
still, nothing mattered but to have Roger happy.

At last, one night in early April, a warm night of many stars, Katya
rose from her machine and went to Roger sitting motionless at Black
Tom's desk. It was late and the others had all gone long ago. As Katya
took a seat on the window sill, Roger looked up, not concerned at all
with this action of Katya's but with the confusion of his own thought.
He had gone home to dinner that night, stirred by the soft spring
warmth, to make an effort at some kind of adjustment with Anne. They
had slipped so far now, to almost quarreling over the most trivial
things. To-night Anne had objected to the way he sat at the table and
asked with plaintive primness if the world would be saved any more
quickly if every one slouched over his plate like a plow-hand. And he,
in blind rage to smash that primness to bits, had deliberately done
things to annoy her, until he felt the disgust in Anne's eyes flick him
like whips. The remainder of the meal had been eaten in hasty silence
and he had left immediately after.

What a thing to quarrel over!

Katya smoked through her cigarette and then said slowly:

"Why do you go on?"

So perfectly did it fit with Roger's thought, that he answered with no
wonder at her understanding.

"I don't know."

There was a short silence before Katya added: "You ought never to have
married her."

"I--suppose not. But it seemed----" Roger broke off, disturbed at
discussing Anne with another. He shrugged and made a motion as if to
go on with his work. But he felt Katya's look on him, and, after a
moment, met it. Her concern was too deep for insincerity and he said
thoughtfully:

"Love is a queer thing. One thinks it is going to last forever and bear
any weight. Perhaps the very weight of the years themselves must break
it."

Katya made a strange noise deep in her throat, as if the words were
cracking their way through some obstruction.

"Love does bear any weight--love, but nothing else. Only there is so
little love and so few find it. What the world calls love is a flash
of desire--a Catherine wheel of emotion, Life's urge to continue
tricked out in finery, like an old woman dressed in silk. Fools. They
understand nothing. They are afraid of truth, everywhere. To excuse
the suffering in the world, the human cruelty of man to man, they have
invented the patient, anemic Christ. The fact of sex they have hung
over with the ornaments of matrimony. And of Love they know nothing,
nothing at all."

Katya had turned while she spoke and was looking out now through
the open window to the light-strewn city. Seen so, in profile, the
thickness of feature was thinned to hardness. It seemed to Roger, for a
moment, that Katya had never been born, would never die. She was like
her own steppes, stretching away beyond the weariness of human sight,
unhurt by the rage of men. She was eternal truth and courage.

"Perhaps. But if you're not one of the rare few? We have been as happy
as most people."

"And now you are content to be as miserable as most people. To go on
year after year, dragging at each other, quarreling, making up, hating,
despising, driven sometimes, by a force beyond you--to--to--mocking
Love."

"Don't," Roger whispered. "Don't. You're exaggerating. One adjusts to
anything in time."

"Yes. And then there is no strength left for anything else--and
spiritually--you die. You will die. You are weaker than she is, because
there is no force so unbreakable as the rigidity of self-righteous
mediocrity. You will die--in this 'adjustment,' slowly perhaps,
as thousands of others have died, sometimes men, sometimes women,
whichever has the finer soul. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of
Heaven.' But a camel goes easier through the eye of a needle than a
high purpose breathes with a smaller fastened upon it. Adjust and die."

Katya threw the stub of her cigarette violently out the window and then
leaned from it to watch the tiny red spark expiring on the black tarred
roof below.

"What--can--I do?"

Katya's brain despised the question and her arms ached for Roger.

"Do? Leave. Demand your own life."

"Leave Anne!"

Katya shrugged. Why did she love this boy looking at her like a
frightened baby?

"Do you want to go on like this forever?"

The future opened before Roger, all the years to the end faced by the
lacquer screen, the almost silent meals, the never-ceasing need for
watchfulness, artificial and unfree.

"No," he said slowly. "No."

"Then don't."

"There's--Rogie."

With a broken laugh, Katya got down from the window sill.

"And, in a few years, there will probably be others. Then your 'duty'
will be still clearer."

She clumped away and a moment later Roger heard her heavy step going
down the stairs. He stayed for another hour, staring out into the
night.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


Now that he had worded aloud the idea of leaving Anne, the thought was
always with him.

Spiritual freedom. He wished for no other. The man in the street might
talk as if sex were a devouring hunger, a ravening wolf ready to spring
upon one unexpectedly at any moment. But sex without companionship
nauseated him to visualize. There might be moments--these he would deal
with when they arose. Now, the wind of spiritual freedom carried no
taint of lesser, fiercer need.

How did Anne feel? Perhaps she, too, would welcome freedom. He had
visioned restrictions binding him alone. Perhaps Anne, too, was bound.

The need to know consumed Roger's thought and his impatience with
smaller issues. As one forgives trivial failings in the face of a great
crisis, Roger grew strangely gentle and forbearing. He rarely left home
in the evenings now, and Anne often felt his eyes on her questioningly,
as she sat sewing under the lamp. For she rarely read; she so often
forgot to turn the pages.

It was one evening, about three weeks after he had talked with Katya,
that Roger looked up to see Anne almost immersed under a billow of
white material. Usually Anne's work was something small and compact,
and more than once he had traced fanciful analogies between the short,
swift movements of Anne's needle, mending a jagged hole in a sock, and
the mental methods of the world of Mitchells. It was with such little
stabs that they attempted to draw together the holes of life, patch it
for what?--a few more wearings at best. But to-night, as if in keeping
with the wonder of Anne's attitude to freedom, she was engaged on
larger work.

He laid his book aside and asked with real interest:

"What's that?"

Anne started. They scarcely ever broke in on each other's occupations
any more.

"A sheet."

"A sheet? Do you make sheets? I thought you bought them all ready."

"You do, if you want to throw away every one that gets a hole in it.
But you can cut them in two--they usually wear in the center--and sew
them up again and they're as good as new except for the seam."

Roger was disappointed. No doubt it was an excellent method, but it
annoyed him. It was so vehemently sensible and frugal.

"It seems to me that's mending--in extremis. If we need new sheets I
wish you'd buy them."

"We don't need new sheets. These are for mamma. Hers are almost all
gone."

Roger felt as if he were being quietly suffocated in an ocean of mended
sheets. He sat looking at Anne until his eyes disturbed her beyond her
power to pretend indifference. She glanced up, but before she could ask
him why he was so interested in her sewing, Roger spoke.

"Anne," he said slowly, "why aren't things the same as they used to be
between us?"

At last it had come, the thing that had been moving toward her for
weeks. It had taken possession of her. The matter was no longer in her
control.

"I don't know."

"Neither do I, when I try to put it into words."

Anne threaded her needle in the silence that followed and bent again
over the hem. Bent so, with the light gilding to the cool fairness of
her, Roger's clear-cut decision of the last few weeks clouded. Surely
nothing so physically exquisite as Anne could be empty of beauty within.

"If--neither--of us knows," he went on, "it--can't be terribly
serious--can it?"

"Then why are we talking about it?" Anne asked stiffly.

"But what is it? We--we both feel it and yet you say you don't know
either. But you feel it, as well as I. Something we used to have is
gone."

"Yes. I feel it. We haven't really anything at all," she added, as if
facing a fact Roger had avoided.

"I tried to keep it," he said bitterly. "I tried desperately for a long
time."

"Did you?"

"Yes, I did. But one can't do those things alone." This was not
what he had meant to say, but Anne was looking at him with such cool
composure, so safe from all touch of blame in her small assurance of
having done all in her power.

"No, of course not. One can't do all the understanding--alone."

Roger felt his anger rising, and stood up, as if by so standing he
could reach the calm escaping him.

"I don't suppose you think I tried at all."

"I didn't say you didn't try. You asked me if I felt it and I said I
did."

"Well, have you any suggestion to make?" He might have been asking an
accused witness to submit proof of his innocence.

"No. I haven't any. Have you?"

"We can't go on like this. We claim to be reasonable human beings and
we might as well recognize the truth. We--" but the words were so
final; like bullets to say--"we can separate"--that Roger temporized.
"We must find what it's all about and try to straighten it out or----"
Roger shrugged and turned away. "I have tried to find out what it's all
about."

"So have I." Anne went calmly on to the end of the seam, although
afterwards she had to rip out every stitch, for not one of them had
caught through. At the end of the hem, she looked up, fastened her
needle in the material, and said:

"Then there is no real alternative."

At the decision of Anne's tone, Roger started.

"What do you mean?"

"What you didn't quite like to say--we can separate."

"Do you mean that?"

"If you do."

"What do you want?"

"Whatever you do," Anne said after a thoughtful pause. "In a situation
like this, the wish of one must be the wish of both."

The cold patience of her explanation was maddening.

"That's unfair--to put it up to me like that."

"I'm not. You put it up to me in the first place. You say we can't go
on like this and the only thing to do is separate."

"You said separate."

"Don't quibble." The first impatience pricked Anne's calm. "This isn't
a witness stand. You said we had to find the trouble or--you didn't
quite have the courage to say separate, but you meant it."

"If you know so well what I mean," Roger said a little sadly, "why
haven't you applied that knowledge more frequently? It's only when--oh,
what's the use?"

Anne waited but he did not go on. "None, unless you'll speak plainly. I
don't know what you're referring to."

"No, I don't suppose you do. You can only interpret my unspoken
thoughts against me. Never the other way round."

"Are we quarreling?" she asked with frigid politeness, as she might
have asked a detail of social behavior by which to regulate her action.

"No," Roger shouted in a need to break through that icy calm, "we're
not quarreling because there's nothing to quarrel about. There's
nothing at all."

"That's where we began," Anne rose and carefully folded the sheet which
she felt now was the shroud of all dead hopes. "There's really nothing
more to be said, is there?"

She was actually waiting for him to confirm this fact, put a neat,
rhetorical period to this immense finality. He did not answer.

"I don't want to discuss this again. There's really no need." She put
her thimble and cotton back in the work-basket and closed the lid.
"We've reached the decision. Haven't we?"

After all, why try to change Anne? She would force the decision upon
him. She was right. It was quibbling to evade it.

"Yes. I guess we have."

They stood for a moment looking at each other quietly. Then, to stifle
the scream Anne felt rising beyond her control, she yawned.

"Good night. There's no need to keep on talking about it, is there?"

"None at all. Good night."

She turned out the light over the sewing table and went behind the
screen. Her garments dropped with the soft swish. Roger heard her open
the windows and get into bed.

He stood leaning his elbows on the mantelshelf, his face in his hands,
for what seemed to Anne an entire lifetime.

In reality it was not half an hour. This was the situation he had been
reluctant to face, had wasted weeks of thought upon. Anne seized the
first suggestion, yawned in his face and went to bed. It was almost
funny.




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


The next morning Roger went before Anne awoke. In the afternoon a
messenger brought a note asking to have his things sent to the office.
At dusk the express came and Anne watched Roger's trunk down the stairs
and the truck clang away over the grass-grown cobbles. When the last
sound had died she went in, fed Rogie and let him kick for a while
naked before the fire. When he crumpled in sleep upon the rug, Anne
carried him to bed, to the crib back now beside the wide bed, hers
alone. A little later she was asleep beside him.

The hours heaped themselves to days, the days dropped under their
weight to nights. Each day was the same as another. Anne neither cried,
regretted, nor rebelled. She did not even think. She seemed to be
moving in a clear, white light that illuminated every cranny of the
past, so that the shadows which had been her thoughts and reactions to
Roger and the world, were now obliterated in this dazzling lucidity, a
light so vivid and intense that nothing but itself existed, a wordless
understanding and acceptance. Anne could not have said what it was she
so clearly understood, but she moved in a petrifaction of calm. Her
exhausted nerves were dead.

On the tenth day, Anne received a short note enclosing two-thirds of
Roger's salary, with the receipt for the rent and the electric bill and
asking her to make some arrangement for his seeing Rogie. On the third
reading, the meaning penetrated and Anne faced the future.

The clear white light was gone. It was unclear and confused, filled
with sudden, new needs and readjustments. Roger could not go on sending
her so much of his salary. Nor did she wish to be dependent on him. If
she gave nothing, she would take nothing for herself.

She would go back to work. She would have to sell her brain and
obedience again to the highest bidder, give of her best, suit her
hours to the order of another, give to the limit of her power, always
conscious of others waiting to snatch this privilege from her.
Outwardly her life would be the life before she met Roger. Inwardly it
could never be that again. Rogie made it impossible. Neither girl nor
wife, Anne faced the years. Only motherhood was left.

Hour after hour, Anne sat, tense and still, staring out across the
garden, moving only to the need of Rogie. Unsuspected threads crossed
and tangled her clearest purposes. She would go back again into the
prison cell of some law office. She would begin again the deadening
round that had once so disturbed Roger. Now it would not disturb him.
From depths within, anger rose at the world, at life, at Roger. Into
the pit of his belief he could throw all his own energy and hope, even
the first loneliness,--if he felt any,--for past material comfort and
little Rogie. She had no such pit. She would walk through the days,
physically weary, empty of purpose except for Rogie. And he was so
little, his demands for food and sleep and cleanliness, any kind woman
could meet.

Anne sat until dawn, the darkness within as dense as the night without.
Not until the first faint streaks of silver broke in the east did Anne
see the thread of a path before her. She could not move on blindly into
the future--a future like Hilda's Niche. To the limit of her power,
she would straighten it, begin her new life with no thread running to
the past. She would get a legal divorce, stipulate a small amount for
Rogie's maintenance and fixed times and ways for Roger to see him.

Late that morning Anne went to a lawyer. As she moved across the outer
office to the door marked private it gave her an extraordinary feeling
of being two people, in two different spots at the same time--Anne
Mitchell, private secretary, going to take dictation, and Anne Barton,
wife of Roger Barton, mother of Roger Mitchell Barton, going to seek a
divorce.

The lawyer Anne had selected because she had once written him a letter
in a case John Lowell was handling, was an elderly man with sagging
cheeks, passion-weary eyes, and a fastidious nicety of dress. Within
the casque of his manner and clothes, the soul of man was rotted. His
surprise at Anne's blond youth flashed for a second in his eyes, and
then with lowered head, he listened with professional interest while
she stated her wish briefly. When she had finished he looked up.

"Ah--incompatible, you say, quite incompatible. A great pity. Are
you sure you've given the matter every possible consideration, Mrs.
Barton?"

"Every possible consideration," Anne said sharply.

"Incompatible," he repeated, and his eyes stripped from the word
every meaning but the connotation of physical repulsion. Anne's hands
clenched and she wanted to run. But where? The world would give this
same interpretation; under all the large vague terms with which people
might cover them, this would be their thought. She turned her eyes
quickly from the eyes moving with pretense of deep consideration over
her flaming face and neck and body.

"Suppose you don't do anything definite for a time, Mrs. Barton. Nearly
all young couples--ah--after the first two or three years--reach
this point. It seems as if the first passion almost invariably
runs its course in that time then--after a period of physical
indifference--aversion often--if you have intellectual interests----"

Anne rose. "If you do not wish to take the case, please say so. I am
not doing this hastily. I have thought it over very carefully."

"Ah--then there is perhaps nothing else to do," he said with a sudden
change of tone. He was like a well-trained dog, refusing a bone until
his master's permission allows him to snatch it. "You wish to institute
proceedings directly, I suppose?"

"Yes. I would like you to act right away."

"Certainly. After all, Mrs. Barton, that is the brave thing to
do--think, decide and act." His smile admitted Anne to the regions of
masculine logic, uncluttered by the usual feminine sentimentality.

Ten minutes later, Anne was down again on the street. Dazed as if she
had emerged into a strange world, she walked unseeing in the hurrying
stream. She had done the one clear thing to do and yet she could not
shake off the feeling that this act, instead of ending a situation, had
created it. It had not existed until she had risen and spoken sharply
to that vile old man. Until then she had been alone. Now she had
admitted strangers. Before, her inner life had been her own; now, every
one who heard of the Barton divorce would share it. They would surmise,
and discuss, and nibble at her privacy.

Anne walked slowly along in the hot noon sunshine, up the hill to
the cottage. This was changed, too. It was like a house, clean and
straightened after a funeral, the flowers gone, the extra chairs
removed. This was divorce of which one spoke so carelessly, this great
emptiness to be filled with unglimpsed future. No one to consider now
but herself. Every experience to be her own, unshared, unadjusted
to another. It was like the clearness of a cold north wind that
obliterates all softness, sharpens every outline. Clear, cold, stark,
the future lay before her.

The next Thursday afternoon, as usual, a little before three, Anne let
herself into the flat. At this hour, James was usually awake and Hilda
busy warming the broth or malted milk he always took in the afternoon.
But to-day, as Anne went up the stairs, she felt a thick silence
envelop her, and before she had reached the top, she knew that they
knew. For a moment she thought of slipping away. Then she went quietly
on. They would have had to know soon. It did not matter.

In the kitchen, James Mitchell sat in his chair, the daily paper spread
open on the reading rack. Hilda stood beside him. They might have been
victims of Pompeii, stricken at their tasks. As Anne came quietly into
the room and stood inside the door, Hilda turned frightened eyes upon
her.

"What is it," she whispered piteously, "what is it, Annie? It isn't
true?"

She pointed to the paper and Anne knew how they knew. The lawyer had
indeed lost no time. Anne moved to the chair and took the paper.

"Anne vs. Roger Barton, incompatibility."

She laid the paper back on the rack. "Yes, it's true. Roger and I have
separated."

The old man took the paper and tried to tear it, but it only rustled in
his futile striving. He pulled at it and shook his head and then, with
a supreme effort, tore it and rising a few inches in his chair, waved
the torn pieces uncertainly.

"I--won't--have--it--do you--hear--you sha'n't--do--this." His thick
muttering choked him and Hilda began to cry.

"Don't, papa, don't. It isn't good for you. Annie will explain."

The old man cried with her, at first helplessly like a child, then more
violently. Anne took the torn paper from him and laid her hand on his
shoulder.

"Be quiet, papa."

He shook her hold from him and again tried to speak. The contortion
was terrible. Hilda put her arms about him, the effort strangled in a
sob and Hilda held him close.

"There, there," she murmured, "don't cry, papa."

As she held him the sobs lessened. Anne stood looking at them, this
extraordinary sight of her mother comforting her father, both of them
locked together beyond her, opposing her; with every scrap of their
strength clutching their own peace.

"Please," she began wearily, "stop this fuss. If you want to talk, I'll
talk, but there's nothing to say. Roger and I don't agree. That's all.
We'll both be freer to be ourselves, apart. That's all, really."

"Rub--bish," Hilda sputtered between her lessening sobs, but a little
cheered at the familiar garb of a situation in words. Silence terrified
Hilda. "Nonsense, Anne. Freer to be yourselves! Nobody expects to be
free when they're married."

"Nobody--listens--to--me----" James began muttering again.
"I--told--you--socialist--anarchist--nobody--in my own--house--I----"

"Don't, papa, don't get all stirred up again," Hilda patted his head
soothingly. "You're getting along so nice and the doctor said----"

"To--hell--doctor," he spluttered, stopped for a moment, took a
deep breath, and said in a quick, almost unintelligible rush,
"I--won't--have it--disgrace--everybody--in--office--know----" his
breath exhausted, he leaned back panting, and glared at Anne.

She returned his look quietly. In his rage and weakness he was not
pitiful, only disgusting. Thin and gray and unshaven, he was like a
mangy old dog, clinging to the dry bone of his respectability. Icy
nausea swept Anne. The room began to move, to gyrate in mockery about
her. She gripped the wall with her fingers, and the smooth coldness
gave her strength.

"Listen, please, and then I don't want to talk about it any more." She
knew that her words were audible because they were both looking at her,
but her whole effort was concentrated in uttering them and she felt
herself forming each syllable separately and throwing it at the two
bewildered people before her. "We don't agree, and neither of us wishes
to live like that; to hold each other, for what? I am economically
independent. I can work. I don't have to stay for support. Roger
will help with Rogie and we will go our own ways. We have grown apart
spiritually----"

But the last word was too heavy a burden for Hilda's credulity. She
went swiftly to Anne and would have put her arms about her, if Anne had
not eluded.

"Don't, mamma. Please don't talk or ask me any questions. I am telling
you exactly what it is."

"Anne Mitchell! Do you expect me to believe that? Grow apart
spiritually! Anne--is there--don't be ashamed--to tell us--is there
another woman?"

James Mitchell leaned avidly forward: "Old--sick--but--no
man--deserts--my--daughter----"

Under cover of the hissing whisper, Hilda murmured rapidly, "Don't act
hastily, Anne. All men----"

The muttering ceased, and Hilda broke off. But a faint shrug and
an almost imperceptible nod toward the chair, spread before Anne's
sickened sense, some long concealed, almost forgotten infidelity of the
decaying old man in the chair.

"Stop. Both of you," she cried sharply. "There is no other woman. Roger
has done nothing disgraceful. If you can't understand, I can't make
you. We no longer love each other. Marriage is a free contract. It
fitted one condition. It doesn't fit another. We've dissolved it."

The old man blinked and then turned piteously to Hilda. She went
quickly to him. With her arms again about him, she flared at Anne.

"Anne Mitchell, you're doing a silly and wicked thing.
You're--making--papa--miserable. You've no--right--in our old--age----"

James' fingers closed about hers.
"Don't--cry--Hildy--children--ungrateful----"

And then, the walls began to dance about her, the two angry faces
oscillated like grotesque masks, the floor was sinking under her. A
great, peaceful darkness was coming towards her. At last she could let
go, sink down into this soothing blackness. Anne swayed, clutched at
the wall, and slid along its smoothness to the floor.

Twice she came to partial consciousness of a great bustle; some one
was calling, footsteps rushed about, some one stepped over her and ran
somewhere. Then she was being lifted and carried, and some one, not
Hilda--it sounded like a faint, far echo of Charlotte Welles--said:

"There, she'll be all right now. Don't disturb her. Let her sleep as
long as she can."

So dim that it was not clearly a thought at all, Anne was grateful for
this suggestion. She heard the door to whatever place she was in close
softly and footsteps recede.

When she woke she was in her own little room, the stars were shining
and Belle was standing beside the bed. Anne tried to return the
cheerful smile, but the effort did not get further than a slight motion
of her lips.

"You poor little kid. Here, drink this." Belle held a glass to Anne's
lips and supported her while she obeyed. "And then we'll talk. I
wouldn't disturb you, but I have to get back on my case and we'll just
settle one or two things first. No, I'm not going to talk about it. I
don't want to know anything. But you're going away."

Anne gazed at her without interest.

"If you try to stick round here listening to moms' buzzing you'll
have brain fever. But they'll buzz themselves out in a week and--"
she was going to add, "be glad of it," but caught herself in time and
said--"see the thing straight. Now, the only thing I want to know is
whether you have any place you'd like to go. Several old patients have
places here and there, inaccessible ranches and things, and I could fix
up something. They're always inviting me but I'm not keen on solitude
as you know." She chattered along, watching Anne with soft, loving
eyes. The authority of her tone comforted Anne and she felt a little
cheered.

"Of course, I'm not suggesting a high-class resort but somewhere you
have never been, that's quiet."

Anne drew a deep sigh. Some new place where it was still!

"There are two places I can arrange for quickly and you can have your
choice. One's down in Monterey County, on the coast, a ranch that hangs
on a mountain side rising right out of the sea. It----"

Anne sat up. "No. No. Belle, not the sea." She looked past Belle,
through the fog of the Bluff to the bar where the sea moaned its
everlasting complaint. "I can't stand the sea, always moving and
crying--never, never still. Oh," Anne shivered and Belle laid a large,
cool hand on the hot little one gripping the comforter.

"All right, sisterkin. I get you. The sea is rather a fussy old party.
Exit the sea."

Anne tried to smile. "It's--like the Social Revolution. It's been
moaning away for centuries and it's just where it started."

A look of understanding crossed Belle's eyes and was gone before Anne
looked up.

"Then the other's the thing you want. It's away up in the high Sierras.
There's only an old couple as caretakers. You won't have to see much of
them, but the old man--I saw him once--is as still as a tree. I should
go crazy in two days but you'll love it."

High up in the mountains, higher and stiller even than the lake. And
the old man like a tree. Anne's eyes filled with tears.

"But there's the cottage--all the things--I can't----"

"I'll fix that. I'll write to Roger; he'll have to know you're not
there anyhow, and let him struggle with storage if he wants to."

"But--I can't stay away very long. I'm not going to take money from
Roger--I'm going to work, I----"

Belle put both hands very gently on Anne's shoulder and forced her back
on the pillows from which she had risen in nervous need to manage the
details of her going.

"Sisterkin, you've passed out of your own authority now; you're in
mine. You're going, and you're going to-morrow and you'll stay until
you're well."

"I'm not sick."

"No? All right. But you will be if you don't do as you're told. Listen,
kiddie. Is there any real reason why you can't go and go to-morrow?"

Anne shook her head. There was no reason beyond her own desire. There
never would be any more. Anne tried to smile. She did not want to cry,
not even before Belle.

"How long are you going to make me stay, nurse?"

"There, that's the way to behave. Stay? Until you want to come back.
Until--you want noise, jangling cars and people rushing round and the
whole silly mess."

"Then--I'll--never--come."

"Don't then." She smoothed the pillows, stroked back the hair from
Anne's troubled eyes and smiled.

"You're--awfully--good to me, Belle."

"A perfect angel," Belle agreed, but her own eyes were not quite clear.

"I must have Rogie with me, Belle. Don't--try to manage me out of that."

"We'll settle everything in the morning. I'm not going to insist on
anything against your will, kiddie. Don't worry. Only you must go to
sleep now and do not think of a thing. You'll be all right after a good
night's rest."

The peace of yielding settled upon Anne. Not to think of anything--to
go to sleep--and to-morrow--the high, still mountains--and the old
man--like--a--tree. Anne's eyes closed.

"I'll do--anything--you--say."

She was asleep before Belle had quite finished opening the window and
arranging the blind so that it would not rattle if the wind came up.

Back beside the bed, Belle stood looking down at Anne.

"Poor little kid," she whispered, "poor little kid, she's rather like
the sea herself--crying forever for something out of reach." She
smoothed a fold in the sheet and added:

"Poor old Roger--he isn't half bad either."




                            CHAPTER THIRTY


Roger received Belle's note telling him that Anne had left town and
asking him to make some arrangement about the cottage in the same mail
that he received the legal notice of Anne's action. Both letters were
on his desk when he came back to the loft after dinner to work as he
had done every night since that sudden, quiet ending of everything
between himself and Anne.

He opened Belle's first and read it slowly, surprise changing rapidly
to anger.

Anne had gone away. Where, for how long, why, alone or with Rogie?
Belle did not say. The few lines breathed possession of Anne, pushed
him aside from all interest or concern in her movements.

Anne had left the cottage and gone away. He was to do what he liked
with the place. Evidently the past with its memory was too distasteful
to Anne. She was going to begin somewhere else. For a moment Roger felt
a touch of the old anxiety, the need to look after Anne, manage and
arrange for her; the feeling that she was too frail and fair to look
out for herself, the feeling that had amused Anne so in the days of
their engagement when, if she were a little late in meeting him, he was
always afraid that something terrible had happened.

It passed and was gone, blotted in his clear understanding of how
perfectly well Anne was able to look out for herself. That frail
fairness, that delicate sensitiveness behind which she tripped with
such deep assurance of herself, was almost a masque in the completeness
with which it hid the real Anne. Life would present no problem that
would trouble or perplex her. With the scalpel of her assurance she
would delicately remove all emotion, all passion, all hot, human
weakness, wrap it neatly in her own conceit, label it and forever after
know exactly where she had put it.

Roger drew a sheet of paper to him and began writing to Belle. At
least she had no right to withhold information of his son. But when
he had written two angry pages he read them and tore them up. Finally
in words, as blunt and straightforward as Belle, he demanded to know
Rogie's whereabouts. When this was sealed and addressed, he pushed it
aside to mail when he went out, and picked up the other letter.

He read it only this once and then it fluttered between his knees and
lay upon the floor. His chin dropped to his breast, his lips closed in
a hard line. Now that Anne had done this thing, his own surprise in not
having thought of the possibility was lost in his understanding of how
perfectly this action expressed Anne.

When two people loved, they came together in legal sanction.

When they no longer loved, they separated legally.

Anne would no more live apart without the ceremony of divorce than she
would have lived with him without the ceremony of marriage.

Anne had tidied the situation.

She had instituted her action for divorce and gone away. She had put
the little period of her standard to the past, blotted the paper and
ordered it sent to him. It was almost like sending him a receipt for
the old love, the months of bickering strain, itemized and receipted in
full.

Roger made a strange little noise, a kind of choking grunt of
amusement, anger and hurt. Across the loft Katya looked up. The
clicking of her machine stopped suddenly. Over it she gazed at Roger
with passionate longing, pain and anger and tenderness in her small
brown eyes.

Roger was in trouble. He never sat so, his head bowed, his hands
clenched like that. For days Katya had felt something in him that
eluded her; something strange had entered their relationship, the
old frankness was gone. It had gone from the night she counseled his
leaving Anne, but they had not mentioned the subject again, and since
then Katya had moved in an uncertainty of his motive that had been like
a stone wall about her. At every move she had touched it and it had
sent strange hopes and fears through her.

Now, she leaned across her machine, her lips parted. Something was
forming from these days of uncertainty, coming toward her. Katya held
her place before her machine by an effort that at last forced from
her a low cry. At the sound, Roger turned slowly toward her, his own
problem in his eyes. They looked so for a moment at each other, then
Katya's hands trembled and she rose. His muscles had answered, but his
real concern was far away. Her lips quivered.

"What is it?" she demanded angrily. "Why are you staring at me like
that?"

Her voice drew Roger's consciousness. He shook his head as if
physically throwing aside something that held him in its grip and said
with pitiful assumption of his usual cheerfulness:

"Was I staring at you unpleasantly, Katya? I beg your pardon. I didn't
mean to."

Katya came toward him. If she did not reach physical proximity, in a
moment the old camaraderie would rise and shut off this thing Katya
felt forming for the first time clearly between them. Coming to the
window ledge, the same ledge on which she had counseled his leaving
Anne, Katya lit a cigarette and said with forced calm:

"What's the matter? Can I help?"

"N-o--nothing's the matter. I----" Roger broke off.

"You're lying," Katya replied calmly. "Something has happened.
Something--very--big to you."

For a second Roger stiffened in resentment of her assurance. It was
like the first time he had ever seen her, when her certainty had
annoyed him. Then the memory of all the past months of friendship and
understanding, shamed the insincerity of denial. He picked the lawyer's
letter from the floor and handed it to her. Katya read it and without
the least change of expression returned it, but her whole squat body
trembled violently and only by drawing deeply on the cigarette could
she maintain an outward semblance of poise.

Roger sat fingering the letter. Now that he was sharing this with
Katya, emotion was rapidly chilling to intellectual speculation.
What would have happened between him and Anne if they had not done
this thing? Would they really have adjusted in time? Would they have
bickered to weariness and dropped at last from spiritual exhaustion to
any compromise that held outward peace? Would he have fallen to the
revolting relationship suggested by Katya?

Why had Katya said that? From her knowledge of him or from her own
experience? She had spoken so earnestly, as if her certainty were a
concrete thing she was thrusting into his keeping. It was no general
warning gathered from vague reflection of life or observation. Katya
knew--either herself or him to the deepest recesses.

What was the source of Katya's knowledge?

She was so wise and still and dark, like the night. Gazing at her
now, Roger felt as if he were gazing into the well of human impulse,
weakness and strength. In it lay understanding of the death of love
between himself and Anne.

"What is it?" she demanded turning suddenly from the night outside.

"I was thinking of something you said to me and wondering why you said
it."

"Yes. What was it I said?"

"You said that if I did not separate from Anne I would stay and----"
It was difficult to say even to Katya and he stumbled, annoyed at the
touch of scorn that came to Katya's eyes. It was like the first look
she had ever given him,--the nice small boy who had called a silly
meeting. "That there would be other children," he flung at her, "and
that I would then see my duty clearer to stay. Did you mean that I was
so bound in physical ties that I could not break them. Is that what you
meant?"

Katya nodded. "If you hadn't separated, what else? If you had gone
on living with her, you would have gone on 'loving.' Nothing else is
possible. And because you are an idealist and must have harmony, you
would have tied together the soul and body, because only so would you
not have been ashamed before yourself. You would have done what many
millions have done and will do till Time ends. You would have come
to deny the existence of Love. You would have talked of the death of
physical passion and the survival of something else, in the large vague
words that dead souls use, like you talked of 'adjusting.' You would
have stifled the body because you could not make it one with the soul.
Or--you would have stifled the soul. With you I do not know--which it
would have been I am not sure. But now your soul has a chance. Perhaps,
some day, you will find another woman and then----"

"Never," Roger began vehemently, and stopped.

After all, who could say? He had not meant to marry until years later
than he did. He had meant to go to many countries and do many things
alone. He had not even thought of Anne in that way, half an hour before
they stood alone among the dunes, and his need had shaped itself from
the wind and fog.

"Perhaps," Katya said slowly, "it will be never. I am not sure. Perhaps
you will never love. I do not know."

She was looking at him with faint bitterness and his interest in her
certainty hardened to impatience. "Perhaps I won't," he said shortly,
"since, according to you, so few people even know what it is. Why
should I expect to be one of the chosen few?"

Katya looked away. "I don't know--perhaps because you need it?"

"Need what?" This was almost as tenuous as some of Anne's involved
reactions. First Katya wanted him to be free for his soul, then she
wanted this same soul meshed and tangled in an absorbing passion. Roger
looked at her impatiently now, turned from him, again gazing out across
the roofs. Then his impatience vanished as suddenly as it had come.

Katya looked tired to-night. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had not
slept. Her thick lips held the cigarette uncertainly. Swarthy, squat
and blunt, Katya's body conveyed a feeling of unsureness, as if she
were trembling just beneath the surface. He had no right to intrude on
her sympathy, but it was so easy to monopolize Katya's understanding.
He laid his hand on her knee and started to feel the vibration of her
body. She must be holding it in check by her supreme will.

"Never mind, Katya, let's not probe too deeply to-night."

But he knew that Katya did not hear. She was reading in places hidden
from him, the answer to his own question.

"You need to love," she said slowly, as if she were translating from
a foreign tongue, "because there is a chance that you are worth it.
If you love you may be truly great. If you never love--you will go no
higher than now--and--it will be all wasted," she ended in a whisper.

Roger felt that Katya was actually drawing a curtain back before him, a
thick, black curtain that hid strange things he did not wish to see.

"Well, let's hope that whatever ought not to be wasted, won't be," he
said with forced lightness.

"You--will--be afraid," Katya whispered and leaned so close that
involuntarily Roger stepped back. At his motion, she laughed in scorn.

"Yes, that is what you will do when you see it coming. You will step
back. You will run away. You will be afraid of love."

"Oh, no, I won't. Why should I be afraid?" With an uncertain smile
Roger tried to turn the tide creeping from the pit that Katya had
opened.

"Because it hurts." Katya shuddered so violently that Roger saw the
heavy muscles of her shoulders and neck quiver. "It hurts more than any
pain in all the world. It burns out everything in the world, in you,
but itself. It takes your brain and your body and makes white ashes of
them. It takes you, the individual, and melts you into the world. It is
the volcano through which the highest force of spirit finds expression.
There are not many volcanoes in the world or the earth would melt in
flames. There are not many who can love or the race too would melt
away. Through all the ages a few mountains above the level, flat earth.
A few who can love, only a few. That is love. Would you run away?"

In spite of her body trembling as with cold, little beads of moisture
stood on Katya's face. It was too fierce, too elemental, too naked.
Roger looked away. A choking noise from Katya drew his eyes again.
She was gazing at him now with anguish and hatred in her eyes. Roger
stepped back. The blood flamed into his brain, then rushed away,
leaving him cold and sick at the stark nakedness of Katya's revelation.

"Don't," he whispered, "don't."

Slowly the spark in Katya's eyes faded. She gazed at him blankly with
the dead eyes of a statue. Then, with a quick shudder she came back to
life.

"Never mind," she said in her husky whisper. "It isn't your fault."

"I--I never--dreamed--it isn't possible--you can't----"

"Oh, keep quiet. What does it matter? I don't mind your knowing. I
didn't choose to love you. I don't respect you a great deal or admire
you in many ways. You're so young, so undeveloped, like a baby. Stop
staring like a frightened child. It doesn't matter, I tell you. It
doesn't matter."

And, in spite of himself, Roger felt that it did not really matter so
very much. Katya, the Russian Jewess, with her squat body, her strange
foreign past, was a being of another world, as she stood there talking
of volcanoes and white ashes and souls that melted in their own fire.

If she had been of his own race, his own age--but no woman of his age
and race would have said those things, would have thought them, would
have felt them. Disgust rose against his will, disgust seated deep in
the past of his people, disgust of flagrant confession like this.

Katya smiled, a twisted smile of pity for the feeling in him. His lips
moved to deny it, but against the penetration of Katya's knowledge, the
falsehood died.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, and knew that it sounded like Anne
regretting the pain and sorrow of the world.

"You needn't be. I'm not. Can't you stop staring and trying to pretend?"

"Yes," Roger snapped, angry now with her and with himself, "when you
stop pretending too. You talk of melting fire and volcanoes and yet you
say it doesn't matter. It must matter. It----"

"It doesn't matter--as you mean. You understand nothing at all. Will
you please go away?"

Roger's head dropped and he turned from her.

Her whisper followed. "Please forget. You can if you try because it
really doesn't matter--to you." The last words were so low and Roger
already so far across the loft that he did not hear them. He went
without looking back.

But as he walked slowly home, he knew that something within himself had
gone forever. Never again would he be absolutely certain of any human
being. Katya, the indefatigable worker, the passionless comrade, the
clear thinker; Katya the unconfused, had tangled life and the threads
that bound one to another beyond his power of ever straightening. Never
again would he be able to say of any human being "I am sure of this. I
am positive of that."

It was a warm night but Roger was cold and lit a fire. Before it he sat
till dawn, moving only to reach for wood in the basket on the hearth.

Was Katya right? Would he run from love if it ever came to him,
devastating burning passion in a body other than Katya's? Before such a
love as this his love for Anne was the flickering of a tiny flame, as
small, as pale as Anne's feeling for a world beyond the narrow limits
of her own individual safety.

And Anne?

Again Roger lived that first hour on the Bluff, his own surprise and
tenderness at Anne's kiss. The night on the lake when her lips had
clung as hotly as his own.

What was he himself?

What was Anne?

To-night, in this whirlwind that was Katya, he felt strangely near to
Anne. When at last he groped in the wood basket and found it empty,
he rose and went to bed. The east was lighting. The bed was wide and
chill, as if the little ghost of Anne were there beside him.




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


Day after day Anne sat at rest in the vast silence. Far back in space
and time she had waved a last good-bye up the black funnel of the
staircase to Hilda, holding Rogie, for, in the end, Belle had prevailed
and Anne had come alone. Trains and stages and the creaking wagon of
old Timothy Potter had brought her from the world below and laid her
in the heart of this little grassy meadow. Ringed by mountain peaks it
lay, small and still, at the top of the world.

In the morning the sun rose with sudden gladness, not with the slow
reluctance of the lowlands, but as if forced by its own energy and
desire from the blackness of night. All day it poured its warmth into
the meadow and when it went, yielding to night in a blaze of color; it
called good-by in brilliant purple and crimson and went as gladly as it
had come. In the afternoons a busy little wind came down from the snowy
peaks, went its round of inspection over the lush green grass of the
meadow, chatted with the little brook, whispered to the trees, saw all
was well and slipped back again into the granite gorges. The stars came
out, not with furious twinkling and effort to reach through to men so
far below, but, with still gold, they moved forward into night.

It seemed to Anne that she made no definite motion of her own volition.
The day came, lifted her into the perfect rhythm of its rotation,
carried her through the clear warm morning, the still gold-filled
afternoon, deposited her gently in the deep black peace of night.

This was the silence she had sought, the perfect peace. No artificial
formula summoned it. No bodily posture propitiated it. It was there,
deep, all pervading, everlasting, to one's need.

Perhaps, in incalculable space, other worlds were being made and
destroyed. But this world was finished. In the marvelous perfection of
its completion, the beginning was impossible to visualize, an ending
inconceivable. No force could ever move again those granite peaks,
melt the glacial ice, upheave the profound permanence of that tiny
grassy meadow. It was done; perfectly done and left in peace.

Even old Timothy Potter and his wife were part of this profundity
of accomplishment. They could never have been other than they were.
Through the years of close companionship they had grown to look alike.
It was impossible to imagine them ever having been younger, slimmer,
more agile than they were. They must always have been together since
the beginning of time, stout and quiet, with their understanding smile,
their white hair, the little wrinkles of happiness about their kindly
eyes.

As a separate human unit, apart from the spirit of the universe, she
no longer existed. She was alone with old Timothy and Mary, his wife,
at the very center of the all-living; so deep within the heart of Life
that words were not needed. They communicated in silence like the earth
and grass and trees. They were not bodies, opposed in their humanity to
an exterior spirit without. They were part of the whole, as grass, the
gnarled cedars growing in the clefts of the granite mountains, and the
brook bubbling through the little meadow, were parts. Sitting in utter
stillness Anne felt this engulfing Unity, drawing her gently down into
the single purpose that ran through the granite mountains, the dancing
brook, the rustling leaves, through her own body, and linked them all,
each to the other.

Now, a poem of Wordsworth that she had thought silly and sentimental in
the days of college extension, came back to her with new meaning, and
often, sitting on the porch after the early supper, watching the day's
gorgeous farewell to the granite peaks, Anne whispered slowly:

    To her fair works did Nature link
    The human soul that through me ran;
    And much it grieved my heart to think
    What Man has made of Man.

The rest of the stanzas she had forgotten, except the three final lines
of all:

    If such be Nature's Holy plan,
    Have I not reason to Lament
    What Man has made of Man?

Far off beyond distant Dana, rising in ice-capped majesty above the
last range of mountains, hate and discord and confusion were positive
qualities. Men struggled against each other, ideals clashed, faiths
oppressed. Even love fought for its place and in the end surrendered.
There was nothing sure, nothing positive, nothing motionless like this
in its own perfection. It was all distorted, ugly and forever battling.

Sitting on the porch, after an early supper, watching the day's
farewell to the granite peaks, Anne's eyes filled with tears. If only
she had Rogie with her she would never leave this peace. The world
beyond could fight its futile battles. If only Rogie were with her,
nothing would be lacking. Undisturbed by the world's confusion, they
would live out their lives, and sink, at last into the stillness of the
earth.

What did it matter if they made no place for themselves among men;
if no one ever heard of them; the ambitions of men were such pitiful
things?

In the arrogance of his conceit, man had appropriated to himself the
pinnacle of creation. In his fury of effort he rushed about over the
surface of the great, still earth, erecting his little cities and
civilizations, setting up his little philosophies for the guidance
of others. His ideals, his religions, his pretentious systems of
thought, so futilely abstruse and complicated, were like the rules and
regulations for the guiding of traffic in public places: "Keep to the
right"; "turn here"; "cross there"; vast in their pretension of public
usefulness; needed because of the confusion created by himself. In the
peace of the mountains his efforts had less cohesion, less purpose
than the movements of the ants, running here and there, making long
circuits about some tiny obstacle. So man made circuits through his own
philosophies in a stupendous effort to reach the truth which he had
lost in the involved processes of his own journey to it. Anne could
almost see these myriads of tiny individuals rushing about over the
surface of life, jostling, shouting, getting in each other's way, going
down, being trampled, struggling to rise, each shouting his own foolish
solution of the problem of life.

When Anne had been a month in the mountains she wrote to Belle asking
her to find some way of sending Rogie. Belle wrote back promising to
do so, even to bring him herself, if no other way opened, but the days
slipped again to weeks and Rogie did not come.

Anne grew restless. The peace was disturbed now by this need. At the
end of the second month she wrote more insistingly, but this time Belle
did not answer.

The leaves began to fall. In the mornings the grass of the meadow was
white with frost. The nights were clear, black and cold now with a kind
of thrill in the coldness, as if the air were tingling with hidden
excitement.

Anne's restlessness increased. Something was creeping upon the world
from the places hidden beyond all puny human knowledge.

She no longer sat for hours on the porch, absorbed in the peaceful
stillness, but moved about the house or went for long walks. In the
evenings she sat with Mary and Timothy, and, although she rarely
listened to the words, she liked to hear Timothy read from one of their
few books. He read slowly with long pauses instead of comment. These
pauses were like caves into which the old people went silently, hand
in hand, to look for the deeper truths hidden in words. At the end of
these pauses they smiled quietly at each other and the reading began
again.

It was one evening in mid-September that a nervous motion of Anne's
disturbed the reading and Timothy looked over the steel rim of his
spectacles with kindly interest:

"You're worried."

"I'm sorry," Anne apologized. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I was
thinking about something else."

Mary Potter leaned across the red-checked cloth and laid her hand on
Anne's.

"You were thinking about the baby. Isn't your sister going to send him?"

"I don't know. I can't make it out and I feel so helpless. You won't be
going down to Milton again for mail for weeks, will you?"

"I hadn't thought of going again this year," Timothy took off his
glasses now and laid them on the closed book. "I don't usually go after
the middle of September. Soon the road'll be closed even to Milton."

"Closed!"

"In a few weeks now the snow'll begin."

"Nobody can get in after the snow begins," the old woman explained.

"Nothing can get through!"

"Nothing gets through after the snow begins. Pretty soon it'll come and
we'll be shut in tight till Spring."

Anne rose quickly. "Shut--in--tight till Spring!"

Timothy nodded and his eyes lit as if in welcome of the snow.

"Oh, it's wonderful then," he said softly. "You think it's quiet and
peaceful now, but it ain't nothing to what it is then--between the
storms. You'll love it, white and so still you can almost hear God
movin' round. And then the storms." He rose, the first restless motion
Anne had ever seen him make. "They're wonderful. Trees that have stood
for centuries go crashing down. Mountain sides slip away." His eyes
blazed as if he were watching the Creator at work. "When Spring comes,
it's a new world. Me and Mary go round like children, don't we, mother,
looking up things to see if they're there yet. Last Spring that little
creek down there came a~bubbling up to look at us, just like a new
baby, laughing and smiling through the snow. It weren't there the year
before. A storm cut the channel and there it was dancing and laughing
as if it had just been waiting to surprise us. Wasn't it, mother?"

The old woman nodded. "And do you remember that spruce we used to call
'The Hunchback?'" She turned to Anne. "It was so old and twisted and
it never seemed happy, like other spruces; they're always so glad and
straight. We used to wish a storm would take him, for his own sake, and
one winter that gorge yonder opened and when Spring came, he was gone."

"Gone!" Under cover of the snow, cliffs slid away, gorges opened,
century-old trees disappeared!

"Yes. Winter makes great changes up here in the mountains. Down in
the cities you think winter is a time when everything stops and rests
and nothing moves. But up here we see it moving. It's like watching
God fix things up, cut out a bit here and there, tinker round making
improvements. Nothing ain't ever fixed to stay forever. It stands to
reason it can't be. There wouldn't be any life to things that's fixed
like that. Things keep moving and changing. Why, that doesn't frighten
you, does it?" he asked curiously at the look in Anne's eyes. "There
ain't nothing to be afraid of, Mrs. Barton."

"I'm--not afraid," Anne whispered. "Only I--don't want it to change. I
want it to stay like this--perfect always, quiet and still."

Timothy shook his head and smiled gently. "Oh, no, it wouldn't be good
that way. You wait and see. You'll love it. Why, me and mother's often
spoke about it--when we go, we'd like to be out in a big storm and just
be swept down. Not be sick and helpless for a long time, just have
God throw us in along of some change He's making and use us again in
another way, wouldn't we, ma?"

The old woman nodded. "It would be a grand way to go. I suppose we'd
get there in the end just the same, even if we was buried in one of
them tight little city cemeteries under a marble slab like people put
over the dead as if they wanted to keep them shut up in their little
boxes forever; or even if we was burned like some people hold with,
we'd get back into the earth somehow. But folks have their preference,
and me and pa'd like to go, as he says, in some storm that'd sweep us
out clean and sudden into the midst of things."

Into the midst of things!

For a few moments Anne stood motionless, her hands gripping the back
of the chair, staring at the old people, who, lost in the coming of
the snow, seemed already to have slipped away together--into the midst
of things. Then, without a word, she went quickly out of the room and
upstairs to her own.

It was very cold but she threw the window wide and leaned far out into
the night.

In the full moonlight, the peak of Dana rose, the burnished helmet of
a giant warrior leading the mountains into the coming battle. In the
black secrecy of the granite gorges the courier wind ran swiftly with
its orders. The trees took counsel together. Everything was whispering,
moving, preparing. Nothing was motionless any longer in the security
of its own permanence. Everything was awaiting now the fulfillment of
the law beyond its power to anticipate, change, or deviate from its own
purpose.

In a few weeks now the snow would come. Mountain sides would slip away.
Giant trees go crashing down. New rivers open. God would tinker with
the world! Make his changes, form it to his further plan.

Nothing was completed beyond change. Nothing was still. From rocks
to man, the force moved, making, changing, destroying, recreating,
fashioning to--what? Chaos or perfection.

There was no permanent silence and peace apart from motion, from the
ever-changing march of the universe on--to what? A purpose hidden from
finite sense. A scale so vast that its first note was lost in the birth
of time, its last in infinity.

And she, deaf to this tremendous harmony, had stood scornful of all but
the small, thin note of her own personal security! The chord of the
world's pain, so clear to Roger and Black Tom, she had not heard. Of
the perfect scale so clear to Charlotte Welles, she had not grasped a
note. The joy of life that thrust through her mother's muddled thinking
was a far sweeter note than her own blind assurance of superiority.
Even the sensuous longing of Merle for physical beauty was a finer
understanding of the purpose of life than her own.

The moon had moved on across the world, the little meadow lay in
darkness, when Anne closed the window at last and went to bed.

A week later, the first snow fell. It came in the night and Anne waked
to a white world so white and still that the very stillness throbbed
with its own intensity. Anne stood for hours staring out at the
snow-filled hollows. Under that thick white, perhaps change was already
beginning, a little opening here, a little closing here, the small
first notes of the great orchestra tuning for the vast symphony.

In the night the snow fell again, thicker, whiter, heavier.

Early in the morning Anne sought Mary Potter.

"I can get through, can't I? If I go at once?"

"Yes. But there won't be many days longer. The snow's going to be heavy
this year. It's going to be a wild winter. Did you hear that crash last
night? It was that cedar you say looks like an old woman with a basket.
It snapped clear off like----"

"If I pack to-day, can Mr. Potter get me down to Miller's? The stage
will take me to Raymond."

The old woman was making bread, her arms deep in the clinging dough.
But as Anne spoke, she scraped the dough from them and came quietly
round the table.

"You're going back and, do you know, I'm glad. We'll miss you. When we
heard you was coming we were kind of upset only there didn't seem to be
any good reason why you shouldn't. But now, we'll miss you. You fit in.
I guess me and pa got to think we were the only people that like it
quiet and I suppose there's lots--even down there." She always spoke
so of the world beyond the mountains, "down there," with a nod and a
little gesture out and downward.

"Yes. I think that they want quiet down there more than they want
anything in the whole world. They look and look for it and--some find
it. The world is getting noisier and faster, and yet there are more
and more people looking for--Stillness." She smiled. "Churches even
advertise it in the papers--half hours and quarter hours of Silence."

"Well! Down there they'd make a business out of most anything, wouldn't
they? Advertising silence! Why, it's about the only thing everybody can
have."

"Yes--but we don't find that out. We're all making such a noise looking
for it."

Mary Potter wiped one hand on her apron and laid it on Anne's shoulder.
"I guess you won't make much noise looking for it now, will you?"

"No--I don't--think I will. I'll try not to, anyhow."

"I'd like to have seen the baby. His picture's awful cute."

"He is cute. And as good as gold."

"Maybe you'll want to come back in the Spring and can bring him with
you?"

Anne's lip trembled. "I'm never coming back again, Mrs. Potter,
unless--I don't have to come."

The old woman did not answer for a moment and then she nodded. "I
know. Well, I don't think, my dear, you'll ever have to come again.
You--don't--lose it--once you really get it up here."

She patted Anne's shoulder, but Anne suddenly threw her arms round the
other and kissed her. The old woman's eyes lit with pleasure. She said
nothing. She rarely did when she understood.




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


As she stepped from the train into the roar of the city, Anne
straightened her shoulders and smiled:

"Perhaps I'll get to love the racket as much as Belle does."

She let herself into the flat and went noiselessly up the stairs to the
hall. In the front room her father was talking to Rogie. She could not
catch the words but she heard the baby's crow of delight and gripped
the balustrade to keep from surprising the old man too suddenly.

The kitchen was empty but Hilda was on the porch picking dead leaves
from a geranium. The kettle was boiling and a bottle of malted milk
stood beside the inevitable wad of crochet on the table. Very softly
Anne closed the door and waited. In another moment the kettle boiled
over and Hilda turned. At the sight of Anne, she stepped back, stared,
and then came with a little rush and took Anne in her arms. When she
stood away at last, her eyes were full of happy tears, but she said
gayly:

"I believe you just love to startle people nearly out of their skins.
Well, you certainly did give me a turn. I suppose it was the dog that
howled all night, but when I saw you there--for a minute--I almost
thought----"

"It was my ghost. Moms Mitchell! You are superstitious."

"No, I'm not. Not a bit. I never held with those old sayings but it did
give me a start." She still held Anne's hand and stroked it, reluctant
to relinquish the comfort of reality.

"Do I look like a ghost?"

"You certainly do not. My, but you're a different girl altogether. Papa
will be surprised."

Anne laughed. "If my appearance has the same effect on him as it had on
you, you'd better prepare him. Did he hear the dog too?"

"Go on with you. I don't believe those things. No, I don't think he
did. Papa sleeps fine now. He's better a lot too. He got down onto the
landing yesterday and sat in the sun for an hour."

"Papa! Got down those stairs to the landing! He must be improved."

"He is," Hilda said with subdued pride. "Papa's changed in the last two
months, Annie. He's different--in a great many ways. He's more like he
was--at first--before you children were born. You won't know papa in
some ways."

"Hardly, if he's like he was before I was born. Perhaps we'll have to
be introduced."

Hilda smiled, but Anne saw under the amusement a kind of glad
possession and knew that a new link had been forged between her father
and mother. For an instant, loneliness touched her and she wondered
what these months had done to Roger. She had changed. Her mother and
father had changed. Had Roger changed too?

"I'm dying to see Rogie. Shall I go in or do you want to tell papa
first?"

"I'll just give him a hint. You wait here. He always has his milk in
the kitchen and I usually have tea with him. Good gracious, I forgot
all about the tea."

"I'll make it. You run along and hint. If I don't see Rogie in a minute
I'll be howling like that dog myself."

As she made the tea Anne's hands shook with excitement. It was all so
strange, filled with a vibrant livingness it had never had before. In
a few moments, she heard them coming along the hall, the tap of her
father's canes, his shuffling step, Hilda's gleeful laugh, as they
stopped just outside the kitchen door.

"No, I'm not joking, papa, we've got company to tea. I can't help it if
you didn't hear them come. No, it's not Charlotte and I'm not going to
tell you who it is."

"You can't fool me. When your eyes shine like that it's something good.
Do you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see Annie come in most any day."

"Now--how--on earth--did you----"

James laughed. "We've been married more than thirty years and you never
put one over on me yet."

He turned the knob and came shuffling into the kitchen. Hilda followed
with Rogie. Anne had a passing flash of her father, thin and gray, but
with a happy twinkle in his eyes; Hilda smiling behind him and Rogie
clinging tightly to her neck, before her eyes filled with tears and
they all blurred together.

Leaning unsteadily on one cane, James Mitchell put his arm round her.

"She tried to fool me, Annie, but I smelled the rat. I knew you'd get
lonely and come running back when we didn't expect you."

Anne tried to smile. "But you did expect me. You're not surprised a
bit." Over his shoulder she was watching Rogie in hungry fear that he
was not going to recognize her. If Rogie cried and shrank away----But
he didn't. He was only making quite sure before he gave a gurgle of
delight and began wriggling in Hilda's grasp. James Mitchell's arm
dropped and Anne was beside Hilda with Rogie tight in her hold.

"Grown some, hasn't he?" James demanded as he stumbled to the chair
beside the stove. "Not bad nurses, the old folks, eh?"

"He's grown an inch," Anne declared, hugging him to her. "And my
gracious, he's heavy!"

"Weighs a ton when he's been on the same spot in your lap ten minutes.
Only he don't often stay ten minutes in the same spot. He's a lively
youngster, Anne. Got a lot more pep than you ever had at his age. He
must take after----" James broke off and looked at Hilda.

"Yes, he's more like Roger," Anne finished. There was no reason to
avoid Roger's name.

There was a short silence, filled by her father sipping the malted milk
and her mother pouring out the tea. Then Anne said:

"Has Roger seen him often?"

Hilda and James looked at each other in a new habit of consultation.

"No, dear. Belle thought it would be just as well to wait until you
could arrange things as you wanted."

"I'm sorry. There's no reason he shouldn't see him. I never intended
keeping him all to myself. He's Roger's, too."

Again Hilda and James consulted on a problem they had evidently
discussed often. Their glances reached a decision and James said:

"Annie, do you suppose that things between you and Roger could
be patched up? Me and mother have talked about it quite a lot. I
don't hold with Roger--I never did," there was a touch of the old
intolerance which a look from Hilda softened and James went on. "But
he's young and there's this to be said for him--the rubbish he believes
in is in the air. It's like an epidemic. But there's no reason he
shouldn't outgrow it. You can do a lot."

Anne sat holding Rogie and fingering her teaspoon absently.

"I don't want him to outgrow it, papa. I don't want him to be anything
but himself."

"No, of course you don't," Hilda broke in with the familiar manner
of smoothing a family difference that had once annoyed Anne. But now
it did not annoy her. She would have to face, once at least, this
discussion of herself and Roger and she might as well do it now.
Besides, it clarified her own thought to talk patiently in this way.

"Roger was one kind of person," she went on, "and I was another. Roger
saw things--in--in sweeps while I saw them in spots."

The definition was exact to Anne but her father and mother looked
bewildered.

"I mean that we really both want the same thing, only we wanted to get
it differently. I think--it's harder for two people to agree in their
methods--than in their aims. If Roger had been a Jew and I had been a
Catholic----"

"Why, Anne!" Hilda was so horrified, that amusement touched Anne's very
earnest wish to get this thing perfectly straight to them.

"I'm only supposing, moms, making the wildest example I can think of."

"Well, it's certainly wild enough."

"But, if we had been, it might have been easier than it was. I mean
that--in some ways we would have been so very far apart that it would
have been useless to try and meet in those ways at all. But Roger and
I weren't far apart. We both wanted the same thing--a beautiful world,
but we tried to find this beauty in different places and there are no
different places. There's only one Beauty everywhere."

"What in the name of Heavens ARE you talking about, Annie?"

Anne began to feel a little helpless but persisted.

"I mean that nearly all the fuss and noise in the world comes from
people quarreling about the way to get things, because, nearly
everybody wants the same thing really when you get right down to
it. They only quarrel about their own pet way of getting it. Roger
thinks that if he can make the whole world happy in a lump, then every
individual will be happy. And I thought that if every individual was
happy then the whole world would be happy. We----"

"I don't know what you're trying to get at, Annie, and I don't believe
you do yourself," her father interrupted, but so kindly that Anne
forgave his not understanding. After all, she had not understood
herself, before the mountains, and it was not clear in detail yet. "I
suppose it's something very modern and educated. But common sense is a
lot older than education and these up-to-date folderols. When a man and
a woman's married they can't expect to agree about everything. Me and
mamma never had scarce an idea in common, did we, ma?"

"No. We never agreed about things. I never knew any married folks that
did. But it doesn't make much difference if you don't talk about them.
As long as you keep still, things go pretty smooth. I guess our home
was as comfortable as most homes."

"But I don't want it to be as comfortable as most homes. Most homes are
terrible places and I want a real home or none at all."

"Well, I must say, I think there's something to be said for Roger,"
Hilda conceded. "Do you think a home all by yourself is going to be a
'real home'?"

Anne's throat tightened and she could not answer.

"That's all rubbish, Anne. Nothing we could say would have kept you
from marrying him and I guess he was just the same as he is now.
Besides, you'll find it's a different thing working now you've got
Rogie than it was before when you were a girl."

"Let's not talk about it, mamma. I wouldn't live with Roger just to be
supported, not if I had a dozen children."

"I wish to heaven you had, Anne; nothing else will ever get a mite of
real common sense into your head. Oh, well, it's no good talking, I
suppose. You can't put old heads on young shoulders."

Anne nibbled at her lip and said nothing. She and Hilda finished their
tea and James his malted milk. When he had put aside the cup he turned
to her again.

"You'll stay with us for a while, Annie?"

"No--I don't think I will, not more than a few days anyhow. I'm going
to begin looking for a job to-morrow and I'm sure to find one within a
day or two. Then I'll take rooms where Rogie can be looked after and
moms will get a rest. It made an awful lot of extra work having him
here all that time. He----"

"Now see here, Anne, you needn't use Rogie as an excuse. I don't
need a rest and he hasn't been a bit of extra work. You always were
an independent thing." Hilda's impatience ended in a laugh and James
smiled with her.

"All right, we'll let it go at that. Anyhow, to-morrow morning at eight
o'clock, off I go job-hunting."

Anne joined the laugh a little uncertainly. The new life was so very
near.




                         CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE


On the following Monday Anne found a position with a fruit commission
house on Front Street. The salary was not quite what she had hoped, but
the surroundings were so different from the office of Lowell & Morrison
that she was glad to take it.

Here there were no soft rugs, no quietly closing doors, or smoothly
running elevators; no suave and courtly men. Great drays rumbled
through the street outside; loud-voiced men called orders in strange,
foreign tongues. For the first hours of the morning the warehouse shook
with the thud of huge crates being thrown from trucks, trundled through
the cool darkness of the shed and piled high to the shadow of the roof.
In the afternoon the rumble of the drays loading and unloading ceased;
many of the men went home; the place was quiet. Anne could hear the
whistle of the boats at the wharves, and on foggy days the wail of the
fog sirens very near.

On Saturday afternoon the office closed at one o'clock and Anne spent
until six looking for an apartment. At dusk she found what she thought
would do. It was the upper floor of an old house on the edge of Russian
Hill. The house was run down and rather dismal, but the rear windows
looked out on a small garden, and from Anne's floor, a little triangle
of the Bay was visible.

The landlady was a childless widow, a thin, saddened woman with soft
brown eyes that had almost lost the trick of brightening. But when
she heard about Rogie they lit gently and she suggested a sand-pile
in one corner of the garden and a crib for his morning and afternoon
nap in her own bedroom. Anne's first feeling, that there it would be
almost impossible to forget the past, lessened, and she closed the
arrangement, grateful for the garden, the glimpse of the Bay, and Mrs.
Jeffries' pleasure in Rogie.

On Sunday there was a family dinner at the flat and afterwards Anne
and Rogie and Belle came to the new home. Mrs. Jeffries had put some
flowers on the ugly center table and covered the gas globe with orange
crêpe paper.

"Oh," Anne gasped when she saw it, "I wish she hadn't done that."

"Never mind. Let it stay up for a day or two and then it can catch fire
or destroy itself somehow," Belle advised.

Anne shook her head. "It doesn't matter really--and she might be hurt."

"Now, Anne, don't start in that way. You know it won't work. If this
furnishing is her taste and she begins to 'take an interest' in you and
tries 'to make you comfortable' you'll only blow up in the end. Take
those orange shades down and tell her in the morning that you don't
want anything added to your rooms. You needn't be sharp about it, but
you can be firm."

Anne smiled with a wistfulness that escaped Belle, touring the room in
inspection of the ugly steel engravings hung exactly in the center of
each wall. The first hour in her new home, and already she knew that
there would be many nights when she would be grateful for even the
terrible green glass vase that held the flowers, if it meant any one's
caring for her comfort.

"Don't worry, Belle. When this wall paper gets too much for my nerves
I'll go down and sit awhile in 'the parlor.' You should see that."

"Worse?"

"Three horsehair chairs with red velvet trimmings; one rocker to match.
An onyx and brass stand with a pink silk drape. A floor lamp with a
red shade and a white marble mantel, over a grate that has never had a
fire. Oh, yes--a 'good body-Brussels' rug, and the floor-border painted
cherry!"

"Heavens! Well, you'll never have to sit in it. And that back room
you're going to use for a sitting-room can be made cheerful in time
with just a few softening things round. Besides, there's the fireplace.
I've a good mind to light a fire, Anne, just to see how it looks. I
believe I'd feel better about leaving you alone with this wall paper
and that what-not if I got the effect of a fire."

"I'm not afraid of the what-not--wouldn't those ghastly statuettes in
the Niche fit perfectly?--but I would rather like a fire. I wonder if
Mrs. Jeffries could let us have a little wood."

"I'll ask her." In a moment Belle was back and while Anne undressed
Rogie, lit a fire in the back room. When Anne heard the cheerful
crackle, her eyes filled with tears but she brushed them angrily away.

"Now see here," she whispered brusquely to herself, "you're not going
to get weepy, every time you look at the Bay or hear a fog-whistle or
light an open fire."

"Are you coming, Anne? This kindling won't last forever." Belle had not
lit the gas and the kindly darkness hid the brown and red wall paper
and stiff chairs.

"It's not going to be bad, Belle. It's really wonderfully still, almost
as still as the mountains. When the fog-whistles don't go, there'll be
hardly a sound outside."

"Nor inside either. Does that women ever laugh, do you suppose?"

"I don't know. Mary Potter never really laughed outright. I think,
perhaps, Mrs. Jeffries has only forgotten how."

Belle shrugged. "Well, I hope she'll remember again soon. If she
doesn't, Rogie will forget too."

"Now, Belle, can you honestly imagine Rogie a solemn baby?"

"It does take some stretching of the imagination. But--when I look at
this wall paper and those chairs I can imagine almost anything. I can
even imagine Roger losing faith in----"

"Yes? Go on, Belle, don't be silly; as if Roger's name mustn't be
mentioned. I--I don't feel that way at all. Besides, even if I did, I
couldn't avoid Roger--because of Rogie. He has just as much right to
him as I, and as soon as I feel a little more settled, I'm going to
make some regular arrangement for his seeing him, having--him--part--of
the time if he wants to."

Belle looked down at the small figure gazing earnestly into the fire
and her hand moved toward her sister's shoulder, then drew back without
touching.

"Yes, of course, he ought to see him if he wants to," she said in her
brusque, impersonal way as if she were agreeing in some physician's
instruction concerning a patient.

"I wish," Anne went on, "that Roger had been seeing him right along.
I really don't understand, Belle, why you didn't let him. He must
think it was my wish that he shouldn't and believe that I was being
deliberately mean about it. He must think I am awfully narrow and
ungenerous and--and vindictive and----'

"I don't know why he should think that. Naturally he would suppose that
Rogie was with you. Besides, how did a poor blunderbuss like myself
know what mood you would come back in? If I had let Roger make his
own arrangements for seeing him I might have set up a precedent you
wouldn't have wanted to keep. Then there was moms and papa. You've
grown so calm and sure in the mountains, Anne, you don't realize that
the rest of us are pretty jumpy yet. Moms ranted along for days after
you'd gone. I don't know but what she might have refused to let Roger
look at him even if he had come. Under the circumstances I did what
seemed best. You know the family channels aren't the easiest to steer
in safely."

Anne smiled. "No, I know they're not. And I didn't mean to be unfair,
Belle. You've all been terribly dear to me. I don't believe I ever
understood any of you--or--any one--else--before I went away."

Again Belle looked at her sharply, changed her mind about speaking,
and put the last piece of kindling on the fire. Together they stood
silently watching it flare, then crumble, char and drop to gray ash.

When the last faint glow had died from the embers, Anne brought Belle's
things from the room where Rogie was now fast asleep. But even after
they were on, Belle lingered as if reluctant to go.

"If there's anything you want, you'll let me know, won't you, kiddie?"

"Yes, I'll let you know, but there won't be anything, I'm sure. The
hours at the office aren't bad at all and I believe Mrs. Jeffries will
take wonderful care of Rogie. It's--a little strange now--but I'll get
it homied up in time. I've got a few ideas about this room already."

"You can have anything of mine out of storage that you want. Do you
remember that heavy tapestry stuff I had a mania for once? It didn't
go in a small modern apartment, but it would be great with these high
ceilings. You'll ask me, won't you?"

"Yes, I promise. But for the present I'll just go on like this till I
get the feel of the place."

"Don't go on too long or you'll get to feel like the place. I know you,
Anne, better than you know yourself."

Anne laughed. "You make me feel like a fly at the end of a microscope."

"Not a fly," Belle said with a pretense of serious consideration,
"no, not a fly. A little moth with gold dust all over it, one of the
shimmery kind that looks as if it were going to fall apart if you
touched it."

"And never does, but crawls right alone even after it's burnt off its
wings."

Anne realized the possible interpretation and flushed, but if Belle had
caught this meaning, she said nothing, and a few minutes later went.

As Anne closed the door behind Belle, and came back again up the stairs
alone, a little of the courage that she had sincerely felt her own
while she and Belle stood before the fire died away. Again before the
tiny heap of gray ashes, Anne forced down the tears with an effort.
Was her new-found peace to be so easily disturbed? She had been back
in the city only a little over a week, and already this going of Belle
made her feel so terribly alone. Anne went to the window and opened it
wide. Perhaps the touch of night would bring that throbbing, silent
assurance of companionship. With her elbows on the sill Anne gazed to
the triangle of twinkling lights at the base of the dark hills across
the bay. Faintly the murmur of the city came to her, but her hands
clenched and it took all her strength to keep back the tears.

She was a part of it. But such a little part.

"I won't be lonely," she whispered fiercely. "I won't. I WON'T."

But the resolution flitted away into the blackness and left Anne tense
with her own vehemence. She closed the window quickly and went into the
other room. Between the cool sheets she tried to relax, to immerse her
body in the vast, eternal unity of all-living, but she was conscious
only of the effort and after a while she gave up trying to relax and
let her thought go where it would.

It went straight to Roger. What had these months done to Roger? They
had done so much to her, it seemed impossible that Roger could be
just the same. And yet, she hoped he was. The old Roger she felt now
she understood. A new Roger might be very strange. At first the new
relationship that had to be between them would be difficult, and, with
another Roger, perhaps impossible.

No, Roger must be just the same, have the same sweeping enthusiasm, the
same impatience, the same intolerance of prejudice not his own. Until
she had gripped more firmly her own peace, she could risk no change in
Roger. At last the tightness in her muscles eased and Anne fell asleep
a little comforted in her decision to write to Roger before the end of
the week.

But the end of the week came and went and Anne had not written.
Every evening she had tried and in the morning destroyed the letter.
Some were tinged with memory, the others almost belligerent in their
indifferent brevity. The second week she did not even try but convinced
herself that the mood would descend upon her suddenly and she would
tell Roger of her return and suggest his coming to see Rogie with
exactly the right degree of friendly interest.

But the mood did not come, although Anne waited for it, in the same
bodily relaxation in which Charlotte Welles entered The Silence. By the
beginning of the fourth week after her return, this need to communicate
with Roger and the impossibility of doing it, was destroying her
peace and absorbing every waking thought. That she managed to do her
work well, was only because the old power of mechanical attention had
returned. Often Anne read through the transcriptions of her employer's
dictation and wondered at this subconscious power that permitted her to
quote correctly prices and invoices, write intelligently of fruits and
vegetables, while her whole consciousness was concerned in forming a
letter to Roger.

Once she thought she saw Roger on the street, and, although she would
have grasped eagerly this solution if it had occurred to her before,
now she turned and went rapidly in the other direction. But no sooner
had she lost the possibility--if it had been really Roger--than she
wished with her whole heart that she had faced certainty. She began
looking for him everywhere, hoping and then dreading to meet him. From
walking in places where the possibility of meeting might occur, she
swung to going and coming by circuitous ways, angry with herself for
her own indecision, touched sometimes even to anger at Roger.

Finally, at the beginning of the fifth week, in exhaustion of her
own irresolution, Anne wrote and without rereading or waiting for
morning counsel, went out and dropped the note in the letter box.
And then began a period of waiting that made the weeks preceding
seem full of calm certainty. Now Anne was so sharply conscious of two
selves within her, that, at times, she could almost visibly see them
both. One went to and from work, wrote letters, cared for her rooms,
attended to Rogie, talked quietly with Mrs. Jeffries. The other did
nothing, nothing at all, except wait. This self emerged to control at
the postman's coming in the morning; when she opened the door in the
evening and looked first to the hat-stand to see if there was a letter;
and at night when she lay in bed trying to find a reason for Roger's
silence. For Roger did not answer.

The days filled to a week, two, three.

When, a few days before Christmas, Anne came home one night to find
Mrs. Jeffries crying in the kitchen, her first reaction was almost
relief that something had happened that would call upon her for some
quality besides the petrifying patience of waiting in which she felt
her brain rapidly numbing to a living death.

"What is it? What has happened?"

In the comfort of companionship, Mrs. Jeffries looked up from the table
where she had been sitting in the dark, her head buried in her arms.

"My sister's dead. Little Lucy----"

Anne knelt and put her arm about the heaving shoulders. The older woman
clung in a renewed passion of sobs and Anne held her quietly until they
eased. At last Mrs. Jeffries looked up.

"There are three children, the youngest only five and John doesn't know
what to do."

"You'll have to go to them?"

"Yes--I must go. John and Lucy adored each other--they were like lovers
always. Poor--John--he's so lost--he doesn't seem able to grasp it. He
says----" She reached to the letter lying as she had dropped it two
hours before.

"Don't--don't, please, really, I'd rather not." Anne took the letter
from her quickly and laid it back on the table.

Mrs. Jeffries shuddered. "They loved each other so. Why did she have
to be taken? He and the children need her so. And she was so strong,
stronger than I have ever been. Nobody needs me. But Lucy--one moment
well and laughing--the next----"

In the cold darkness of the unlit kitchen Anne saw old Mary and
Timothy smiling at each other as they pictured "going out sudden into
the midst of things." She held the quivering form again until it
quieted. Mrs. Jeffries wiped her eyes at last and tried to consider
Anne.

"How will you manage? Can you get some one to look after Rogie? I may
be away some time. I may bring the children back with me. I don't know.
I feel as if everything has changed so; I'm bewildered."

"Don't think of me, I'll manage. Perhaps I can get Mrs. Horton, the
woman I used to have, to come up until we see what we're going to do.
But you mustn't think about me, or consider me at all. Promise that you
won't. I wish I could do something."

"You are doing something. You always have ever since you came. You
don't know what it's meant to have you and Rogie round though I haven't
seen much of you. I believe I was freezing up clear through--until he
came."

"I'm glad you've liked having us. It's meant a great deal to me to know
some one was looking after Rogie as you have done."

Mrs. Jeffries put the letter away and rose wearily. Without having
taken off her things, Anne went out again. In an hour she had arranged
with Mrs. Horton.




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR


Roger was in Los Angeles on a speaking trip when Anne's letter was
forwarded to him from the office. He found it when he came back from
one of the most successful meetings he had ever held. He had held his
audience in his hands, moved them at his will. Enthusiasm had run high.
He had thrilled with his own power, and then, depression had followed.
It was so easy to move men with words. It was almost a trick, emphasis
here, appeal to emotion there, a climax of enthusiasm malleable to his
will.

After such a gathering men and women insisted on meeting him
personally. He often left the halls with groups violently discussing
his words. And so little resulted from this enthusiasm. An inclination
strengthened here and there, a few teetering on the edge of belief
converted. Sometimes a successful meeting such as this had been
exhausted Roger more than any antagonistic opposition could have done.

To-night he was very tired. The ideal for which a few strove seemed so
far away, so beyond those for whom he searched for it. He had left the
hall instantly, escaping, as he rarely permitted himself to do, the
urgent wish of strangers to meet him. Safe in his hotel room at last
he had given the order not to be disturbed by any visitor or telephone
call, and had begun indifferently looking over the forwarded mail, when
he came unexpectedly on Anne's letter.

He looked at it for a moment curiously, as if it were something not
intended for him. He turned it over and over, until a sudden eagerness
to know of Anne and Rogie seized him and he tore the envelope open with
quivering fingers. The note was brief, and, although Anne had intended
it to be friendly, it seemed to Roger stiff and formal. He read it only
once and then tore it across and dropped the pieces in the waste-basket
with a touch of disappointment he refused to recognize. There was no
reason Anne should write to him in another tone, and, after all, the
important thing was that he could see Rogie. He had longed for this and
resented Anne's monopoly of the boy, but now he knew that seeing Rogie
rested alone with him he forgave Anne the bitterness he had felt. He
sat down to answer instantly, but he, as Anne, found it difficult to
write. Three drafts of a simple note he destroyed, and then suddenly
pushed the pad from him. He would go. There was a train in an hour. He
would be in the city in the morning, Sunday morning. He had another
meeting on the following Monday to complete the itinerary, but when
Roger visioned the empty Sunday between, he could not face it.

Half an hour later he had paid his bill and left the hotel. As the
train pulled out of the station it began to rain sharp, slanting rain
that lashed at the windows of his berth. But Roger, exhausted from the
meeting and his own reaction to Anne's letter, slept almost instantly.
Nor did he wake until the train clanged into the station. It was still
raining, but less violently now. The sharp lashing had quieted to a
steady fall. Roger had breakfast, went to the loft to see if there was
an urgent matter for him, telephoned to Tom to send another speaker to
Los Angeles in time for the Monday night meeting, and then went to the
cottage.

It was still and clean and empty as he had left it. He made a fire,
and, to persuade himself that he was in no haste, sat before it.

By night he would have seen Anne and Rogie. Whatever was to be the
future relation between them would have been fixed. What did he want
this relation to be? He felt no anger with Anne. She had been true to
herself as he had been to himself. He felt no emotional eagerness to
meet Anne, nor reluctance. His sharpest feeling was toward Rogie.

In the past Rogie had been a baby, the child of himself and Anne, not
in any way distinct from them. But now that the convention of a home
had been taken from Rogie--now that the accepted standard of father,
mother, child under one roof had been taken from him, somehow Rogie
had become a distinct personality. It was as if, in some strange way,
the responsibility of being an individual, a separate social unit, had
somehow descended upon the baby; so that now he was almost an adult
in the separateness of his personality. Roger could not shake off a
ridiculous feeling that he would almost meet Rogie as man to man.

It was after six before Roger climbed the hill, and, closing the
old-fashioned garden gate quietly behind him, rang the bell.

At the sound of the bell pealing through the still house, Anne
started, and then certainty gripped her beyond motion. Again the bell
rang, this time less fiercely, as if eagerness in the ringer were
passing. Anne hurried from the room, but at the foot of the stairs
she paused, staring at the door, her heart thumping until she could
scarcely breathe. It sounded again, this time a sad little clang of
disappointment. Anne went slowly to the door and opened it. The cold
wind and rain rushed in and then Roger was close to her in the hall;
the door shut, and the smell of his damp clothes sharp in the air.

"I thought you must have left town," she said calmly.

"I have been away. I only just got back."

In the closing of the umbrella and the hanging up of his hat and
overcoat they escaped a more intimate greeting. But now that the hat
and coat were hung and the dripping umbrella safe in the stand, Anne
faced the need to take Roger upstairs or into the gloomy parlor to the
right. She hesitated.

Roger had come. In a moment, she would bring Rogie to him. The future
would hold whatever was possible of friendship for them, or else she
would be outside the union of Rogie and his father. Until she knew, she
must keep her lonely rooms upstairs as a retreat untouched by Roger's
presence. If the future was to hold nothing she did not want memory
there. She led the way to the parlor and lit the light.

"I was just getting Rogie ready for bed, but he didn't want to go a
bit. He's wide awake."

Roger felt the dismal chill of the room shutting down upon him and
struggled against it in the first remark that came to him.

"I don't suppose he will remember me."

"Oh, yes, I think he will. I was afraid he wouldn't know me when I came
back from the mountains, he took so long to size me up. But he did."

She pulled down the shades and moved to the door.

"I'll just dress him again; it won't take but a few minutes."

She had not taken Rogie with her then. He had been in the city all the
time, guarded by the Mitchells. Roger frowned and began walking up and
down the rather long room. At the farther end a narrow glass door,
draped with an ugly curtain of monk's cloth, hid the garden beyond.
When he reached it, Roger pulled the curtain aside and looked out
into the dripping bushes. It was a neglected garden, not riotous with
overgrown plants as the cottage garden, but a lank, weed-grown strip,
long and narrow. Roger dropped the curtain quickly and, lighting a
cigarette, began walking again.

As the ugliness of the room penetrated in detail, the red shaded lamp,
the horsehair furniture, the onyx stand, gradually his anger at the
Mitchells faded in wonder of Anne. Why had Anne come to live here;
Anne, who hated ugly surroundings with physical passion? Was Anne so
poor that she could find no better place, or had she changed? Did
things like this no longer trouble Anne?

A door upstairs closed. Then the silence continued unbroken. Roger's
nerves tightened. Why didn't Anne take him up to what was evidently
her part of the house? He lit a cigarette and pulled deeply on it.
The smell of the smoke drifted up to Anne. Her throat swelled and she
braced her shoulders as she buttoned Rogie's rompers with trembling
fingers.

Roger heard her coming and ground out the cigarette on the white
mantelshelf. Anne was in the doorway, Rogie in her arms. Just as he
had done with Anne, so now Rogie leaned away, frowning, before, with a
plunge of delight, he almost threw himself from Anne's arms. Roger took
him.

"Well, old chap, who is it? So you knew me, did you?"

Over the baby's head Roger smiled proudly at Anne, and Anne smiled
back; for Rogie's hands were already clutching his father's hair as if,
in this favorite game, he was making assurance doubly sure.

"You see, he did remember," Anne came nearer. "He really has a
wonderful memory."

"I don't believe many his age would have remembered, do you?"

"No, I don't believe they would."

They laughed together. Then the memory of their intimacy, incarnate
forever in Rogie, swept Anne, and she turned hastily away and sat down
on the sofa. Still holding the child, Roger took the rocker.

Silence came between them. Each searched nervously for some spot in the
present on which to meet. But the strangeness of seeing Anne and Rogie
in these surroundings, his ignorance of all that had happened to them
in the last months, wrapped Roger like a fog, through which he felt
Anne receding from him.

But, for the first time, the room was not hideous to Anne. The damp
smell of Roger's clothes, the lingering cigarette smoke, filled it with
a throbbing vitality it had never had. She felt Roger's masculinity in
the very air and it made the few small remarks she managed to catch
from the whirling mass of feeling seem thin and artificial.

Roger tried to fill the silence with remarks to Rogie; by tickling him
and riding him on his foot. For a while it succeeded. Then Rogie grew
tired. His eyes filmed; he leaned more heavily on his father's shoulder.

Roger tried to keep him awake, but Rogie objected with impatient jerks,
and Roger looked to Anne. In a few moments he would be asleep. Then he
and Anne would be faced by the need to fill the silence or he would
have to go.

"He's just about asleep. Perhaps I'd better carry him to bed. He must
be awfully heavy for you."

"No, I'll take him. That's something no one seems to do just right.
He wakes even if Mrs. Jeffries tries to carry him at this stage, and
usually he's as good with her as with me."

She took Rogie from him and Roger watched her go, so small and fair
herself. He heard her go slowly up the stairs, for Rogie was indeed a
heavy weight for her slight arms.

Again it was still.

Anne put Rogie down, stayed a moment to make sure he would not wake,
turned out the light and opened the window. Again the smell of smoke
drifted to her and now she heard Roger's step walking up and down as he
had used to walk in anger at Hilary Wainwright.

Up and down the long, narrow room Roger walked, trying to force the
chaos of thought to ordered sequence by the rhythm of his step. He
could not go back to the cottage which Anne had made beautiful and
leave her and Rogie in this dismal place. No matter whether Anne had
grown indifferent to her surroundings or not, he hated to think of his
boy, even as a baby, absorbing impressions of that horsehair furniture
and onyx stand. And in imagination he saw sharply Mrs. Jeffries, whom
they represented, a dull, thin woman like the aunt who had brought
him up. Anne hated to face new situations, and, if she had indeed
persuaded herself that this was not so bad, she would go on living here
year after year. Roger shuddered. What Anne chose to do was no longer
his concern, although the old need to protect rose in him, untinged by
any personal emotion, almost against his will. He wanted Anne to be
happy and have the things she liked. But Rogie was very definitely his
concern; not only his duty, but with the feel of the fat little body as
vivid in his arms as when he had held him, Rogie was the deepest motive
of his life.

He was just turning again at the far end of the room when Anne
returned. He looked up quickly, still frowning over the problem, but
said, with a strange, new hesitancy and unsureness:

"Anne, I don't like to think of you and Rogie living in this place. You
ought to have the cottage. I only moved back because there seemed no
reason not to."

Anne leaned against the onyx stand; she could get no farther, but her
voice was steady and she even smiled slightly and looked in forced
amusement about the room.

"It is pretty bad, isn't it? But I don't come in here often."

"Are your own any better?"

"Not exactly--in the furnishing, but the sitting-room looks over a
garden and there's a little triangle of bay."

Roger locked about, trying to get clearer the location of the house.

"Darn little bay from any part of this house. Anne, won't you take the
cottage? I have to be away a great deal now. It doesn't matter much
where I live in between times."

"I--don't--see how I can quite--not yet, anyhow." By speaking so,
very slowly in assumed consideration of this as a proposition, Anne
succeeded in keeping her voice even. "I may get a raise after New
Year's, although it's rather soon to expect one, but at present I
couldn't pay the cottage rent and have Mrs. Horton too. This is
ridiculously cheap and when Mrs. Jeffries is here she takes such care
of Rogie."

"Isn't she here all the time?"

"Not at present. She had to go to a brother-in-law. Her sister died and
left several children. She may bring them back with her."

"Will you go on just the same then?"

"I don't know. We didn't have time to discuss that. I suppose I can."

Again Roger walked the length of the room, past Anne, and back. When he
came to the other end, as if only from this spot could he explain, he
said sharply:

"Anne, I don't want it. I don't want any woman, no matter how kind she
is, bringing Rogie up. Mrs. Horton didn't matter so much when he was
quite little, but he's getting a regular boy now and--I don't want it."

This consideration was all for Rogie, but Anne felt as if some one very
strong had picked her up and was carrying her easily.

"I would rather be with him all the time, too, but that's impossible."

"No, it isn't. Anne, I don't want you to work. It isn't necessary.
No, don't interrupt, please. Listen. I can do it very well. I've
been writing some on the side lately and I've got to be quite a
speech-maker. You'd be surprised. Speech-making doesn't pay a great
deal, but it's something. Please believe me, I can do it very well."

The floor swayed beneath Anne, but she held tight to the cold onyx and
answered quietly:

"I'll have to have time to think about it, Roger. I--can't--decide
right away now."

Roger shrugged impatiently. "You can if you try. What is there to
prevent? I--" he hesitated--"I won't trouble you in any way. You
will be exactly as free as you are now. Anne, if you won't do it for
yourself, won't you do it for Rogie?"

"I--don't--know," Anne whispered, her strength almost gone.

Roger turned away. Again he felt himself tilting against the soft,
unbendable obstinacy of one of Anne's principles.

"Well," he said at length, "will you agree to this? Will you move back
to the cottage and let me pay the rent? Will you?" he repeated more
gently when Anne did not answer.

To be back in the cottage in her three white-painted rooms with all the
Bay and the hills and the sweet garden. Anne felt herself sinking down
into a peace so thick and deep that she could scarcely bear to break it
even by an answer. She nodded.

"When will you come? To-night?"

"To-night!"

"Why not? It's early. Have you much to pack?"

"No--only my clothes and Rogie's."

"You could do it, couldn't you?"

"Yes--I--could--do it. There's Mrs. Jeffries though----"

Roger felt as if Anne were opposing tiny twigs to this sweeping need of
his to get them both out of that horrible house.

"Do you owe her any rent?"

"No. I just sent her a check for the coming month."

"Then there's no reason you can't. Besides, from what you say, she's
not sure of her own plans. Perhaps she won't come back herself."

"I think she will. But she may not."

"Then it's settled, is it? I can get a taxi while you pack?"

"All right." The words quivered and dropped from Anne in a low whisper
as if her last resistance had died. She hurried from the room and Roger
went out to find a telephone and get the taxi.

Anne could never remember how she packed her trunk or dressed Rogie
or when she turned to find Roger beside her telling her the taxi was
waiting. She seemed to be escaping from some terrible catastrophe,
her whole consciousness taken in the effort to get away. It was only
when they were all together in the close intimacy of the cab that Anne
realized what she had done.

In a few moments she and Roger and Rogie would be again in the cottage.
Beyond that Anne could not think. Nor did her mind clear to any detail,
even as she followed Roger, carrying Rogie up the long, familiar flight
and into the living-room. He put Rogie on the couch, paid the driver
and closed the door. Anne was shaking so she could scarcely stand.

"I'll make a fire. Everything is just the same, except the crib.
I--I'll get that. It's in the attic."

Roger went into the kitchen and Anne heard him light the candle-lantern
they had always kept for searching things stowed in the tiny loft they
called the attic. Then he brought the step ladder and, taking out the
small square of ceiling that made the attic entrance, clambered up.
Anne's hands were stiff with cold. It seemed impossible that Roger
should be doing these things exactly as he had done them ages upon
ages ago in the past. Life was so different now that no motion in it
could be quite the same. But it was exactly the same, even to Roger's
throwing the unwanted things out of his way as he always did, because
he was a bad packer and never knew exactly where he had put anything.
At last he found it, and threw the mattress out through the opening,
scrambling down with the framework. When he had put away the ladder and
lantern and dusted his clothes, he brought the crib in.

"Shall I put it up in the bedroom?"

Anne was bent now above the opened trunk searching Rogie's night things
which she had thrust hastily in among her own clothes in the rush of
packing.

"Yes," she whispered, without looking up, feigning this need not to
wake Rogie, already restless from the unusual confusion about him.

When she had found the things she carried Rogie to the fire, undressed
him, slipped on the tiny pajamas, and, holding him close, listened with
every nerve to Roger moving about in the next room. In a few moments
now Rogie would be in his own crib, in the old room. What would Roger
do?

At last Roger came from the bedroom.

"I've put it up but I didn't make it--I don't know just how you do it.
The blankets and things are all on the bed--I'm sure they're all there."

Anne rose and moved to lay Rogie on the couch while she made up the
crib, but Roger held out his arms and Anne laid the baby in them. Very
gently Roger sat down in Anne's place and she went in to make the
crib. But the blood beat so behind her eyes and her hands trembled so
violently that she scarcely knew what she did.

Roger stared across his son's head into the flames, conscious of the
new disorder of the room, the opened trunk, Rogie's tiny garments lying
on the hearthrug, Anne in the next room.

The past, the present, the future tangled before him, a mass of paths
leading in all directions; quagmires of misunderstanding, blind alleys
of separate interests, smooth, pleasant spots of memories long past.
Here a path to the night by the lake when Anne's lips had clung as
eagerly as his own; there the blank wall of the lacquer screen and the
desert spots of Anne's carping criticism. Here the path of his deepest
faith and belief broke short above the chasm of Anne's indifference.
The world was indifferent too. But the world's indifference he could
escape in the comradeship of others who believed with him; in solitary
hours when, physically rested, his own faith always rose again clear
and strong. With the narrowness and indifference of strangers he did
not have to rise up and lie down, eat, sleep and be patient.

Then suddenly the past and present divided, and in the space between
Roger saw a future, the future Katya had pictured--a devastating
passion that would destroy him--or remake life. Roger felt as if a
fiery wind were suddenly blowing upon him, and his hold on Rogie
tightened. He did not want life broken or remade. He wanted to work on
as he was working, accomplish more and more, mold Rogie to the ideal he
had once shaped for himself, but which he sometimes felt now was very
high and far away. He would get only a little way to it and die. But
Rogie might reach and pass it.

The door opened and Anne came in. Quietly Roger handed the baby to
her, and she went back again into the bedroom. Roger got up and stood
leaning against the mantelshelf.

Had Anne really changed?

Had he?

From the maze of separate interests and ideals could they find one
tiny path back to the old dreams? Could they cut a new one to a shared
future? Would his arms ever again seek Anne hungrily of their own will?
Would hers close about him and hold him fiercely as they had held him
by the lake? Was need like this ever reborn?

What was Anne doing in the other room? Why didn't she come back?

She came at last, softly closing the door behind her. At the other end
of the hearth she too stood leaning against the mantelshelf, staring
down into the fire, as conscious of the familiar room and Roger leaning
so close beside her as Roger of her.

What was Roger going to do? What did he expect of her? In a moment
would he take his things and go, as many guests had gone after a
pleasant evening in those far gone days? Would she lock the door and
put out the lights after Roger, as Roger had done after those other
guests whose going had meant nothing at all?

Why did Roger stand there staring into the fire? Was he waiting for her
to speak?

Without changing her position Anne looked to him. He seemed suddenly,
in her absence with Rogie, to have grown strangely weary. His face,
turned in profile, looked thinner, sharper, and a little drawn about
the corners of the eyes and lips. His shoulders sagged as they only
did when he was very tired. When he had grown suddenly tired like
this it had always rested him to lie on the couch and have her stroke
his head quietly in one long, sweeping gesture from forehead to neck.
Anne felt the outline of his head now beneath her hand, and the dry
crispness of his hair as if it were actually beneath her touch. She
looked quickly back into the fire.

The rain began again and Roger threw another log on the fire. The
acacia lashed its long, thin arms and the rising wind cried over the
hill. Anne felt Roger's look on her and very slowly her own rose to
meet it.

"Shall we try again, Anne?"

"Y-e-s," Anne whispered, and her eyes filled with tears.

Roger drew her gently to him. There was no passion of possession in his
hold, but deep tenderness and protection,

"I think it will be all right this time, Princess."

Anne stood close.

"Are you quite sure, Roger, that you want it so?"

"Yes. For myself I am quite sure. And you?"

"I'm--sure--too."

They stood so for a moment, then Roger drew her gently nearer.

Would they ever find it now, that everlasting, undestroyable love that
they had missed? Over Anne's fair head, Roger gazed wistfully into the
fire.





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