The Lay Anthony: A Romance

XXXIII XXXIII H E found the automobile in the semi-gloom of a closed carriage house. On the right, separated by a partition, were three loose stalls, apparently long unoccupied; their ornamental fringe of straw had moldered, and dank, grey heaps of feed lay in the troughs. A ladder fixed vertically against a wall disappeared into cobwebby shadows above; and mounting, Anthony found the room to which he had been directed. It, too, was partitioned from the great, bare space of the hay-loft; the musty smell of old hay and heated wood hung dusty, heavy, about the corners, where sounded the faint squeaks of scattering mice. The space which he was to occupy had been rigorously swept and aired; print curtains hung at the small dormer window that overlooked the lawn, while, above the washstand, was the bell which, he had been warned, would appraise him of the possible presence of burglars above. A bright metal clock ticked noisily on a deal bureau, and, on a table beside a pitcher and glass, two books had been arranged with precise disarray; they proved, upon investigation, to be a volume of the Edib. Rev. LXIX, and a bound collection of the proceedings of the Linean Society. He saw by the noisy clock that it was nearly seven, and, hastily washing, responded immediately to the summons of the bell. A small, covered porch framed the kitchen door, where he entered to find a long room dimly lit, and a dinner set at the end of a table. A bulky woman with a flushed countenance and massive ankles in white cotton stockings set before him half a broiled chicken, an artichoke with a bowl of yellow sauce, and a silver jug of milk. “God knows it's a queer meal to put to a hearty young lad,” she observed; “but it's all was ordered. There's not a pitata in the house,” she added in palpable disgust. A younger woman in a frilled apron appeared from within, carrying a tray of used dishes. She had a trim figure, and a broad face glowing with rude vitality, which, with an assumption of disdain, she turned upon Anthony. “I'd never trust myself with him in the machine,” she observed to the older woman, “and him not more than a child.” “Be holding your impudent clatter,” the other commanded, “you're not required to go out with him at all.” “Mr. Hardinge says, will you see him in the library when you have done,” the former shot at Anthony over a shapely shoulder. “You can walk through the dining room to where he is beyond.” The library was a somber chamber: its long windows were draped with stiff folds of green velvet, its walls occupied by high bookcases with leaded glass doors and ornamental Gothic points under the ceiling. A massive desk was piled with papers, pamphlets, printed reports, comparative tables of figures, an hundred and one huddled details; the table beneath a glittering crystal chandelier was hardly better; even the floor was stacked with books about the chair where Anthony found his employer. The latter looked up absently from a printed sheet as Anthony entered. “Positively,” he pronounced, “there are not enough dominants to secure Mendel's position.” His expression was profoundly disturbed. “Yes, sir,” Anthony replied non-committally. “The consequences of that,” the other continued, “are beyond prediction.” Silence descended upon him; his fixed gaze seemed to be contemplating some unexpected catastrophe, some grave peril, opened before him in the still chamber. “I am at a temporary loss!” he ejaculated suddenly; “we are all at a loss... unless my experiments in pure descent warrant—” Suddenly he became aware of Anthony's presence. “Oh!” he said pleasantly; “glad you got fixed up. Say nothing more to Annot—it's all nonsense, taking it out of your salary. That's what I wanted to see you for,” he added; “what salary do you require? what did you get at your last place?” Anthony made a swift calculation of the distance to California, the probable cost of carriage. “I should like seventy-five,” he pronounced finally. His conscience suddenly and uncomfortably awoke in the presence of the other's unquestioning generosity. “Perhaps I'd better tell you that I don't intend to stay here long.... I am anxious to get to California.” But Rufus Hardinge had already forgotten him. “Seventy-five,” he had murmured, with a satisfied nod, and once more concentrated his attention upon the sheet in his hand. As Anthony returned through the dining room he found Annot Hardinge arranging a spray of scarlet verbena in a glass vase. “Has father spoken to you about the salary you are to get?” she asked. He paused, cap in hand. “I told him that you were positively not to get above eighty.” “I told him seventy-five. He seemed contented.” “He would have been contented if you had said seven hundred and fifty.” Then, to discountenance any criticism of her father's intelligence, she added: “He is a very famous biologist, you know. The people about here don't understand those things, but in London, in Paris, in Berlin, he is easily one of the greatest men alive. He is carrying the Mendelian theory to its absolute, logical conclusion.” “He said something about that to me,” Anthony commented; “it seemed to upset him.” A cloud appeared upon her countenance; then, coldly, “That will do,” she told him. Once more in the informal garage he lit the gas jet on either wall, and, in the bubbling, watery light, found the automobile caked with mud and grease, the tires flat, the wires charred and the cylinders coated with carbon. A pair of old canvas trousers were hanging from a nail, and, donning them and connecting a length of hose to a convenient faucet, he began the task of putting the machine in order. It was past eleven when he finished for the night, and mounting with cramped and stiffened muscles to his room, he fell into immediate slumber. XXXIV O N the following morning he wrote a brief, reassuring note to his father; then, over another page, hesitated with poised pen. “Dear Eliza,” he finally began, then once more fell into indecision. “I wish I were back on the Wingo-hocking with you,” he embarked. “That was splendid, having you in the canoe, with no one else; the whole world seemed empty except for you and me. It's no joke of an emptiness without you. I have been delayed in reaching California, but I'll soon be out there now, working like thunder for our wedding. “Mostly I can't realize it, it's too good to be true—you seem like a thing I dreamed about, in a dream all full of moonlight and white flowers. It's funny but I smell lilacs, you know like you picked, everywhere. Last night, cleaning a car just soaked in dirt and greasy smells, that perfume came out of nothing, and hung about so real that it hurt me. And all the time I kept thinking that you were standing beside me and smiling. I knew better, but I had to look more than once. “Love's different from what I thought it would be; I thought it would be all happy, but it's not that, it's blamed serious. I am always flinching from blows that might fall on you, do you see? Before I went away I saw a man kiss a woman, and they both seemed scared; I understand that now—they loved each other.” He broke off and gazed out the narrow window over the feathery tops of maples, the symmetrical, bronze tops of a clump of pines. The odor of lilacs came to him illusively; he was certain that Eliza was standing at his shoulder; he could hear a silken whisper, feel an intangible thrill of warmth. He turned sharply, and faced the empty room, the bright, stentorious clock, the table with the pitcher and glass and serious volumes. “Hell!” he exclaimed in angry remonstrance at his credulity. Still shaken by the reality of the impression he wondered if he were growing crazy? The bell above the washstand rang sharply, and, putting the incomplete letter in a drawer, he proceeded over the tanbark path that led to the house. Annot Hardinge beckoned to him from the porch, and, turning, he passed a conservatory built against the side of the dwelling, where he saw small, identical plants ranged in mathematical rows. “What is your name?” she demanded abruptly, as he stopped before her. “Anthony,” he told her. She was dressed in apricot muslin, with a long necklace of alternate carved gold and amber beads, dependent amber earrings, and a flapping white hat with broad, yellow ribbands that streamed downward with her hair. In one hand she held a pair of crumpled white gloves and a soft gold mesh bag. “You may bring around the car... Anthony,” she directed. “I want to go into town.” In the heart of the shopping district they moved slowly in an unbroken procession of motor landaulets, open cars and private hansoms, a glittering, colorful procession winding through the glittering, colorful cavern of the shop windows. The sidewalks were thronged with women, brilliant in lace and dyed feathers and jewels, the thin, sustained babble of trivial voices mingled with the heavy, coiling odors of costly perfumes. When a small heap of bundles had been accumulated a rebellious expression clouded An-not Hardinge's countenance. “Stop at that confectioner's,” she directed, indicating a window filled with candies scattered in a creamy tide, bister, pale mauve, and citrine, over fluted, delicately green satin, against a golden mass of molasses bars. She soon emerged, with a package tied in silver cord, and paused upon the curb. “I want to go out... out, into the heart of the country,” she proclaimed; “this crowd, these tinsel women, make me ill. Drive until I tell you to stop... away from everything.” When they had left the tangle of paved streets, the innumerable stone façades, she directed their course into a ravine whose steep sides were covered with pines, at the bottom of which a stream foamed whitely over rocky ledges. Beyond, they rose to an upland, where open, undulating hills burned in the blue flame of noon; at their back a trail of dust resettled upon the road, before them a glistening flock of peafowl scattered with harsh, threatening cries. By a gnarled apple tree, whose ripening June apples overhung the road, she called, “stop!” The motor halted in the spicy, dappled shadow of the tree; at one side a cornfield spread its silken, green tapestry; on the other a pasture was empty, close-cropped, rising to a coronal of towering chestnuts. The road, in either direction, was deserted. Anthony heard a sigh of contentment at his back: relaxed from the tension of driving he removed his cap, and, with crossed legs, contemplated the sylvan quiet. He watched a flock of blackbirds wheeling above the apple tree, and decided that they had been within easy shot. “Look over your head!” she cried suddenly; “what gorgeous apples.” He rose, and, measuring the distance in a swift glance, jumped, and caught hold of a limb, by means of which he drew himself up into the tree. He mounted rapidly, filling his cap with crimson apples; when his pockets were full he paused. Down through the screen of leaves he could see her upturned countenance, framed in the broad, white hat; her expression was severely impersonal; yet, viewed from that informal angle, she did not appear displeased. And, when he had descended, she picked critically among the store he offered. She rolled back the gloves upon her wrists, and bit largely, with youthful gusto. On the road, after a moment's hesitation, Anthony embarked upon the consumption of the remainder. He strolled a short distance from the car, and found a seat upon a low stone-wall. XXXV S OON, he saw, she too left the car, and passed him, apparently ignorant of his presence. But, upon her return, she stopped, and indicated with her foot some feathery plants growing in a ditch by the road. “Horsetails,” she declared; “they are Paleozoic... millions of years old.” “They look fresh and green still,” he observed. She glanced at him coldly, but his expression was entirely serious. “I mean the species of course. Father has fossils of the Devonian period... they were trees then.” She chose a place upon the wall, ten feet or more from him, and sat with insolent self-possession, whistling an inconsequential tune. There was absolutely no pose about her, he decided; she possessed a masculine carelessness in regard to him. She leaned back, propped upon her arms, and the frank, flowing line of her full young body was like the June day in its uncorseted freedom and beauty. “If you will get that package from the confectioner's—” she suggested finally. She unfolded the paper, and exposed a row of small cakes, which she divided rigorously in two; rewrapping one division she held it out toward him. “No, no,” he protested seriously. “I'm not hungry.” “It's past two,” she informed him, “and we can't possibly be back in time for luncheon. I'd rather not hold this out any longer.” He relieved her without further words. “Two brioche and two babas,” she enumerated. He resumed his place, and then consumed the cakes without further speech. “The study of biology,” she informed him later, with a gravity appropriate to the subject, “makes a great many small distinctions seem absurd. When you get accustomed to thinking in races, and in millions of years, the things your friends fuss about seem absurd. And so, if you like, why, smoke.” It was his constant plight that, between the formal restrictions of his position, and the vigorous novelty of her speech, Anthony was constantly at a loss. “Perhaps,” he replied inanely; “I know nothing about those things.” She flashed over him a candid, amber gaze that singularly resembled her father's. “You are not at all acquisitive,” she informed him; “and it's perfectly evident that you are the poorest sort of chauffeur. You drive very nicely,” she continued with severe justice. “One could trust you in a crisis; but it is little things that make a chauffeur, and in the little things,” she paused to indicate a globe of cigarette smoke that instantly dissolved, “you are like—that.” He moodily acknowledged to himself the truth of her observation, but such acumen he considered entirely unnecessary in one so young; he did not think it becoming. He contrasted her, greatly to her detriment, with the elusive charm of Eliza Dreen; the girl before him was too vivid, too secure; he felt instinctively that she was entirely free from the bonds, the conventions, that held the majority of girls within recognized, convenient limits. Her liberty of mind upset a balance to which both heredity and experience had accustomed him. The entire absence of a tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy, and he took refuge in imponderable silence. “Besides,” she continued airily, “you are too physically normal to think, all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood creatures in the classic pastorals.” A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many unintelligible words he had regained his poise—this was the usual, the familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions; its tone had deceived him only at the beginning. In the stillness which followed other blackbirds, equally within shot, winged over the apple tree; the shadow of the boughs crept farther and farther down the road. She rose vigorously. “I must get back,” she announced. She remained silent during the return, but Anthony, with the sense of direction cultivated during countless days in the fields and swales, found the way without hesitation. When she left the car he slowly backed and circled to the carriage house. As he splashed body and wheels with water, polished the metal, dried and dusted the cushions, the crisp, cool voice of Annot Hardinge rang in his ears. He divined something of her isolated existence, her devotion to the absorbed, kindly man who was her father, and speculated upon her matured youth. She recalled his sister Ellie, for whose inflexible integrity he cherished a deep-seated admiration; but both left him cold before the poignant tenderness of Eliza... Eliza, the unforgettable, who loved him. XXXVI A FTER an unsubstantial dinner of grilled sweetbreads and mushrooms, and a frozen pudding, he continued his interrupted letter: “But there isn't any use in my trying to write my love in words; it won't go into words, even inside of me I can't explain it—it seems as if instead of its being a part of me that I am a part of it, of something too big for me to see the end of.” Then he became practicable, and wrote optimistically of the things that were soon to be. There was a letter box at the upper corner of the street, and, passing the porch, he saw the biologist sunk in an attitude of profound dejection. His daughter sat with bare arms and neck at his side; her hair was bound in a gleaming mass about her ears, and one hand was laid upon the man's shoulder, while she patted Thomas Huxley with the other. The dog rose, growling belligerently at the unfamiliar figure, but sank again beneath a sharp command. When he returned Rufus Hardinge greeted him, and turned to his daughter with a murmured suggestion, but she shook her head in decisive negation. A light shone palely in the long windows at their back. The sun, at its skyey, evening toilette, seemed, in the rosy glow of westering candles, to scatter a cloud of powdered gold over the worn and huddled shoulders of the world. Suddenly, seemingly in reconsideration of her decision, she called, “Oh, Anthony!” and he retraced his steps to the porch. “My father suggests that you sit here,” she told him distantly. “He says that you are very young, and that solitude is not good for you.” “Annot,” the older man protested humorously, “you have mangled my intent beyond any recognition.” With an unstudied, friendly gesture he tended Anthony his cigar case. A deep preoccupation enveloped him; he sat with loose hands and unseeing eyes. In the deepening twilight his countenance was grey. Anthony had taken a position upon the edge of the porch, his feet in the fragrant grass, out of which fireflies rose glimmering, mounting higher and higher, until, finally, they disappeared into the night above, in the pale birth of the stars. A deep silence enfolded them until in an unexpected, low voice, Rufus Hardinge repeated mechanically aloud lines called, evidently, out of a memory of long ago: ''Within thy beams, Oh, Sun! or who could find, While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That too,” he paused, groping in his memory for the words: “That too such countless orbs thou madst us blind.” The girl rose, and drew his head into her warm, young arms. “Don't, father,” she cried, in a sudden, throbbing apprehension; “please... please. You have the clearest, most beautiful eyes in the world. Think of all they have seen and understood—” He patted her absently. Anthony moved silently away. XXXVII N OT long after, at breakfast, the young and disdainful maid conveyed to Anthony a request to proceed, when he had finished, to the conservatory. There he discovered Annot Har-dinge, with her sleeves rolled up above her vigorous elbows, dusting with a fine, brown powder the rows of monotonous, potted plants. She directed him to follow her with a slender-nosed watering pot. He wondered silently at the featureless display of what he found to be ordinary bean plants, some of the dwarf variety, others drawn up against the wall. They bore in exact, minute inscriptions, strange names and titles, cryptic numbers; some, he saw, were labelled “Dominants,” others, “Recessives.” “The 'cupids' are doing wretchedly, poor dears!” she exclaimed before a row of dwarf sweet peas. “This is my father's laboratory,” she told him briefly. “I thought he had something to do with Darwin and the missing link.” She gazed at him pityingly from the heights of a vast superiority. “Darwin did some valuable preliminary work,” she instructed him; “although Wallace really guessed it all first. Now Mendel, Bateson, are the important names. They were busy with the beginnings; and, among the beginnings, plants are the most suggestive.” She indicated a small row of budding sweet peas. “Perhaps, in those flowers, the whole secret of the universe will be found; perhaps the mystery of our souls will be explained; isn't it thrilling! The secret of inheritance may sleep in those buds—if they are white it will prove... oh, a thousand things, and among them that father is the most wonderful scientist alive; it will explain heredity and control it, make a new kind of world possible, a world without the most terrible diseases. What church, what saint, what god, has really done that?” she demanded. “Stupid priggish figures bending out of their gold-plated heavens!” Her enthusiasm communicated a thrill to him as he regarded the still, withdrawn mystery of the plants. For the first time he thought of them as alive, as he was alive; he imagined them returning his gaze, his interest, exchanging—critically, in their imperceptible, chaste tongue—their unimpassioned opinions of him. It was a disturbing possibility that the secret of his future, of life and death, might lurk in the flowers to unfold on those slender stems. He was oppressed by a feeling of a world crowded with invisible, living forms, of fields filled with billions of grassy inhabitants, of seas, mountains, made up of interlocking and contending lives; every breath, he felt, absorbed races of varied individuals. He thought, too, of people as plants, as roses—Oh, Eliza!—as nettles, rank weeds, crimson lilies. And, vaguely, this hurt him; something valuable, something sustaining, vanished from his unformulated, instinctive conception of life; the world of men, their aims, their courage, ideals, lost their peculiar beauty, their importance; the past, rising from the mold through those green tubes and vanishing into a future of dissolving gases, shrunk, stripped of its glamor, to an affair of little moment. Outside, as he descended the lawn, the sun had the artificial glitter of an incandescent light; the trees waved their arms at him threateningly. Then, with a shrug of his normal young shoulders, he relinquished the entire conception; he forgot it. He recklessly permeated a universe of airy atoms with the smoke of a Dulcina. “That's a woolly delusion,” he pronounced. That evening he burnished the car, and mounted the ladder to his room late. But the evening following, detained to perform a trivial task, found him seated upon the porch, enveloped in the fragrant clouds of Habana leaf. XXXVIII A NNOT, as now he mentally termed her, dressed in the inevitable yellow, was swinging a satin slipper on the point of her foot; her father was, if possible, more greyly withdrawn than before. “To-night,” the biologist finally addressed his daughter, “your mother has been dead eighteen years.... She hated science; she said it had destroyed my heart. Impossible—a purely functionary pump. The illusions of emotions are cerebro-spinal reflexes, only that. She said that I cared more for science than—than herself.” He raised his head sharply, “I was forced to tell her the truth, in common honor: science first.... Tears are an automatic escapement to protect the vision. But women have no logic, little understanding; hopelessly romantic, a false quantity—romance, dangerous. I was away when she died ... Borneo, Aurignacian strata had been discovered, a distinct parallel with the Maurer jaw. Death is only a change of chemical activity,” he shot at Anthony in a voice not entirely steady, “the human entity a passing agglomeration, kinetic.... Love is a mechanical principle, categorically imperative,” his voice sank, became diffuse. “Absolute science, selfless. “People found her beautiful, I didn't know,” he added wistfully; “beauty is a vague term. The Chapelle skull is beautiful, as I understand it, as I understand it. In a letter to me,” after a long pause, “she employed the term 'frozen to death'; she said that I had frozen her to death. Only a figure, romantic, inexact.” “Stuff!” Annot exclaimed lightly, but her anxious countenance contradicted the spirit of her tones. “You mustn't stir about in old troubles. Everything great demands sacrifice; mother didn't quite understand; and I expect she got lonely, poor dear.” Anthony rose, and made his way somberly toward the stable, but running feet, his name called in low, urgent tones, arrested his progress. An-not approached with the trouble deepening in her gaze. “Does he seem entirely himself to you?” she asked, but, before he could answer,—“of course, you don't know him well enough. You see, he is working too much again, an average of sixteen hours for the ten days past. I haven't said anything because the most difficult part of his work is at an end. If his last conclusions are right he will have only to scribble the reports, put a book together.... I can always tell when he is overworked by the cobwebs—he tries to brush them off his face,” she explained. “They don't exist, of course. “But I really wanted to say this,” she lifted her candid gaze to his face. “Could you be a little more about the house? we might need you; we'll use the car very little for a while.” The apprehension was clearly visible now. “Would you mind helping him with his clothes; he gets them mixed? It isn't regular, I know,” she told him; “but we have a great deal of money; anything you required—” “Perhaps I'd be better at that,” he suggested. “You know, you said I was a rotten chauffeur.” For a moment, appealing, she had seemed nearer to him, but now she retreated spiritually, slipped behind her cold indifference. “There will be nothing more to-night; if he grows worse you will have to move into the house.” She left him abruptly, gathering her filmy skirt from the grass, an elusive shape with gleams on her hair, her arms and neck white for an instant and then veiled in the scarf of night. In his room he could still hear, mingled with the faint, muffled squeaking of the mice in the empty hayloft, Hardinge's voice, jerky, laborious, “a categorical imperative... categorical imperative.” He wondered what that meant applied to love? An errant air brought him the unmistakable odor of white lilacs, an ineffable impression of Eliza. XXXIX T HE day following found him installed in the house, in a small chamber formed where the tower fronted upon the third story. At luncheon a place was laid for him at the table with Annot and her father, where the attentions of the disdainful and shapely maid positively quivered with suppressed scorn. Anthony had found in his room fifty dollars in an envelope, upon which Annot had scribbled that he might need a few things; and, at liberty in the afternoon, he boarded an electric car for the city, where he invested in fresh and shining pumps, and other necessities. The house was dark when he inserted his newly acquired latchkey in the front door and made his way softly aloft. But a thread of light was shining under the door of Rufus Har-dinge's study. Later—he had just turned out the light—a short knock fell upon his door. “Me,” Annot answered his instant query. “I am going to ask you to dress and come to my father. It may be unnecessary; he may go quietly to bed; but go he must.” He found her in a dressing gown that fell in heavy, straight folds of saffron satin, her feet thrust in quaint Turkish slippers with curled points; while over her shoulders slipped and slid the coppery rope of her hair. She led the way to the study, which she entered without knocking. Anthony saw the biologist bent over pages spread in the concentrated light of a green shaded globe. In a glass case against the wall some moldy bones were mounted and labelled; fragmentary and sinister-appearing casts gleamed whitely from a stand; and, everywhere, was the orderly confusion of books and papers that had distinguished the library. “Come, Rufus,” Annot laid her hand upon his shoulder; “it's bedtime for all scientists. You promised me you would be in by eleven.” He gazed at her with the hasty regard directed at an ill-timed, casual stranger. “Yes, yes,” he ejaculated impatiently, “get to bed. I'll follow... some crania tracings, prognathic angles—” “To-morrow will do for those,” she insisted gently, “you are making yourself ill again—” “Nonsense,” he interrupted, “never felt better in my life, never—” his voice dwindled abruptly to silence, as though a door had been closed on him; his lips twisted impotently; beads of sweat stood out upon his white, strained forehead. His whole body was rigid in an endeavor to regain his utterance. He rose, and would have fallen, if Annot's arm had not slipped about his shoulders. Anthony hurried forward, and, supporting him on either side, they assisted him into the sleeping chamber beyond. There, at full length on a couch, a sudden, marble-like immobility fell upon his features, his mouth slightly open, his hands clenched. Annot busied herself swiftly, while Anthony descended into the dark, still house in search of ice. When he returned, Hardinge was pronouncing disconnected words, terms. “Eoliths,” he said, “snow line... one hundred and thirty millimeters.” He was silent for a moment, then, struggling into a sitting posture, “Annot!” he cried sharply, “I've frightened you again. Only a touch of... aphasia; unfortunately not new, my dear, but not serious.” Later, when Anthony had assisted him in the removal of his clothes, and lowered the light, he found Annot in the study assembling the papers scattered on the table. “I am glad that you are here,” she said simply. “Soon he can have a complete rest.” She sank into a chair; he had had no idea that she could appear so lovely: her widely-opened eyes held flecks of gold; beneath the statuesque fall of the dressing gown her bare ankles were milky-white. XL H E felt strangely at ease in a setting so easily strange. There was a palpable flavor of unreality in the moment, of detachment from the commonplace round of existence; it was without connection, without responsibility to yesterday or to to-morrow; he was isolated with the informal vision of Annot in an hour which seemed neither day nor night. He felt—inarticulately—divorced from his customary daily personality; and, with no particular need for speech, lit a cigarette, and blew clouds of smoke at the ceiling. It was his companion who interrupted this mood. “The life that people think so tremendously important,” she observed, “the things one does, are hardly more real than a suit of clothes, with religion for a nice, prim white collar, gloves for morals, and a hidden red silk handkerchief for a rare revolt. And all the time, politely ignored, decently covered, our bodies are underneath. Now and then some one slips out of his covering, and stands bare before his shocked and protesting friends, but they soon hurry something about him, a conventional shawl, a moral sheet. Do you happen to remember a wonderful caricature of Louis XIV—simply a wig, a silk suit, buckled shoes and a staff?” The mordant humor of that drawing penetrated Anthony's understanding: he saw rooms, streets, a world full of gesticulating suits, dresses, nodding hats, bonnets; he saw the unsubstantial concourse haughtily erect, condescending, cunningly deceptive, veiling in a thousand subterfuges their essential emptiness. The thought evaporated in laughter at the obvious humor of such a spectacle; its social significance missed him totally, happily. “What an unthinking person you are,” she told him; “you just—live. It's rather remarkable—one of Bacchus' company caught in the modern streets. It is all so different now,” she added plaintively; “men get drunk in saloons or at dinner, and the purple stain of the grape centers in their noses. I tried myself,” she confessed, “in Geneva. I was with a specialist who had father. The café balcony overhung the lake; it was at night, and the villages looked like clusters of fireflies about a black mirror; and you simply never saw so many stars. We were looking for a lyric sensation, but it was the most awful fizzle; he insisted on describing an operation with all the grey and gory details complete, and I fell fast asleep.” The outcome of her experiment tallied exactly with that of his own more involuntary efforts in that field. It established in his mind a singularly direct sympathy with her; the uneasy element which her attitude had called up in him disappeared entirely, its place taken by a comfortable sense of freedom, a total lack of rot . She rose, vanishing into her father's room, then, coming to the door, nodded shortly, and left for the night. He found on the bureau in his tower room what remained of the fifty dollars—it had been reduced to less than eight. Suddenly he remembered his purpose there, his supreme need of money, the imperative westward call.... He bitterly cursed his lax character as he recalled the cigars he had purchased, the silk shirt too, and an unnecessary tie. A deep gloom settled upon his spirit. He heard in retrospect his father's clear, high voice—“shiftless, no sense of responsibility.” He sat miserably on the edge of the bed in the dark, while the petty, unbroken procession of past failures wheeled through his brain. Then the shining vision of Eliza, compassionate, tender, folded him in peace; one by one he would subdue those rebellious elements in himself, of fate, that held them apart. XLI A T a solitary breakfast the incident of the preceding night seemed fantastic, unreal; he retained the broken, vivid memory of the scene, the thrill of vague words, that lingers disturbingly into the waking world from a dream. And, when he saw Annot later, there was no trace of a consequent informality in her manner; she was distant, hedged about by an evident concern for her father. “I have sent for Professor Jamison.” She addressed Anthony with blank eyes. “Please be within call in case—” He saw the neurologist as the latter circled the plaster cupids to the entrance of the house—a heavy man with a broad, smooth face, thinlipped like a priest, with staring yellow gloves. Anthony remained in the lower hall, but no demand for his assistance sounded from above. When the specialist descended, he flashed a glance, as bitingly swift and cold as glacial water, over Anthony, then nodded in the direction of the garden. “Miss Annot tells me that you are sleeping in the house,” he said when they were outside; “on the chance that she might need you for her father... she will. He is at the point of mental dissolution.” An involuntary repulsion possessed Anthony at the detached manner in which the other pronounced these hopeless words. “Nothing may be done; that is—it is not desirable that anything should. I am telling you this so that you can act intelligently. Rufus Hardinge knows it; there was a consultation at Geneva, which he approved. “He is,” he continued with a warmer, more personal note, “a very distinguished biologist; his investigations, his conclusions, have been invaluable.” He glanced at an incongruous, minute, jewelled watch on his wrist, and continued more quickly. “Ten years ago he should have stopped all work, vegetated—he was burning up rapidly; merely a reduced amount of labor would have accomplished little for his health or subject. And we couldn't spare his labor, no mere prolongation of life would have justified that loss of knowledge, progress. It was his position; he insisted upon it and we concurred... he chose... insanity. “Miss Annot is not aware of this; he must have every moment possible; every note is priceless. The end will come—now, at any time.” He had reached the small, canary yellow Dreux landaulet waiting for him, and stepped into it with a sharp nod. “You may expect violence,” he added, as the car gathered momentum. But that evening in the dim quietude of the piazza the biologist seemed to have recovered completely his mental poise. He spoke in a buoyant vein of the great men he had known, celebrated names in the world of the arts, in politics and science. He recalled Braisted, the astronomer, searching relaxation in the Boulevard school of French fictionists. “I told him,” he chuckled at the mild, scholastic humor, “that he had been peeping too long at Venus.” Annot was steeped in an inscrutable silence. For the first time, Anthony was actually aware of her features: she had a broad, low brow swept by the coppery hair loosely tied at the back; her eyes resembled her father's, they were amber-colored, and singularly candid in their interest in all that passed before them; while her nose tilted up slightly above a mouth frankly large. It was the face of a boy, he decided, but felt instantly that he had fallen far short of the fact—the allurement, the perfection, of her youthful maturity hung overwhelmingly about her the challenge of sex. Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision of the nice girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind, all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining, desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was a law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life, he realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one, he was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness offered infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the conscious modesty of the others. When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to her companion. “He hasn't seemed so well—not for years; his little, gay fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to celebrate—something entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh, dreadfully.” The night was still, moonless; the stars burned like opals in the intense purple deeps of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich fruitage of full summer, hung close and heavy. “It's hot as a blotter,” Annot declared. “I think, yes—I'm sure, I should like to go out in the car.” She rose. “Will you bring it around, please?” He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her, enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front gate. Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby filament of flowers “I think I'll sit in front,” she decided; “perhaps I'll drive.” He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions. “Go west, young man,” she told him, and would say nothing more. A distant bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the flickering gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating unsteadily on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling radiance of the arc lights at the crossings. The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens, flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a long, silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more open and direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface below, but to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing incandescence into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds. They passed with a muffled din through the single street of a sleeping village, leaving behind a confusion of echoes and the startled barking of a dog. Anthony could see Annot's profile, pale and clear, against the flying and formless countryside; the lace about her hair fluttered ceaselessly; and her wrap bellowed and clung about her shoulders, about her gloveless hands folded upon her slim knees. She was splendidly, regally scornful upon the wings of their reckless flight; the throttle was wide open; they swung from side to side, hung on a single wheel, lunged bodily into the air. In the mad ecstasy of speed she rose; but Anthony, clutching her arms, pulled her sharply into the seat. Then, decisively, he shut off the power, the world ceased to race behind them, the smooth clamor of the engine sank to a low vibratone. “You did that wonderfully,” she told him with glowing cheeks, shining eyes; “it was marvellous. A moment like that is worth a life-time on foot... laughing at death, at everything that is safe, admirable, moral... a moment of the freedom of soulless things, savage and unaccountable to God or society.” The illuminated face of the clock before him indicated a few minutes past one, and, tentatively, he repeated the time. “How stupid of you,” she protested; “silly, little footrule of the hours, the conventional measure of the commonplace. For punishment—on and on. Like Columbus' men you are afraid of falling over the edge of—propriety.” She turned to him with solemn eyes. “I assure you there is no edge, no bump or brimstone, no place where good stops and tumbles into bad; it's all continuous—” He lost the thread of her mocking discourse, and glanced swiftly at her, his brow wrinkled, the shadow of a smile upon his lips. “Heavens! but you are good-looking,” she acknowledged, her countenance studiously critical, impersonal. After that silence once more fell upon them; the machine sang through the dark, lifting over ridges, dropping down declines. Anthony had long since lost all sense of their position. The cyanite depths of the sky turned grey, cold; there was a feeling in the air of settling dew; a dank mist filled the hollows; the color seemed suddenly to have faded from the world. He felt unaccountably weary, inexpressibly depressed; he could almost taste the vapidity of further existence. Annoys hard, bright words echoed in his brain; the flame of his unthinking idealism sank in the thin atmosphere of their logic.

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