Chapter 19

Now that the throes of birth were over, their love bade fair to be like those robust infants that almost kill mothers in the bearing but thereafter give not a moment's anxiety. Outdoors it was rivalling the previous winter; indoors�at the house and at the laboratory�there reigned mid-summer serenity. Nanny�always a shadow, though very faint indeed latterly�had yielded before her arch enemy, rheumatism, had been pensioned off, had gone to her brother's, seventeen miles into the wilderness. She would shadow them no more. Richard had come to another crisis in his researches; and a mind in the act of gestation is like a hen on eggs�solitary, brooding, best left utterly alone. He was as unconscious of Courtney and Basil as of himself; all three were, for him, simply instruments to the strange and terrible marvels of chemical action that were unfolding. Soon Basil felt about him as did Courtney�that is, lost all sense of his being related to her or to the life of the household. As they held to their compact, they experienced none of passion's inevitable alternations of rapture and revulsion. Habit is equally the friend of virtue and of vice. It was not a matter of months but of weeks when they were looking on their love as not only moral but even exalted, since they were self-restrained.

The chief factor in the tranquillity was the work. Courtney began at the laboratory solely that she and Basil might be together. Soon she had another reason�love of the work itself. Everything worth while, whether for achievement or for amusement, involves drudgery at the outset�tennis or bridge no less than a trade or an art. Although Courtney had done at school the worst part of the drudgery in acquiring chemistry, it was nearly a month before she began to enjoy. Then came the first haunting alluring glimpses of the elusive mystery which makes chemistry the most fascinating of the sciences; and from that hour forth she forgot the difficulties in the delights. She often stole in to gaze longingly at Richard's work�for, he kept the main part of the great task of finding a new and universal fuel altogether in his own hands and used the other two as mere helpers. She would have liked to work with him; and, as she understood better and better what he was about, the temptation to try to bring her skill and her knowledge to his attention became strong at times. But she was afraid that if he began to think attentively about her being there, he would send her away. No, it was best to remain hidden behind Basil, to do nothing to remind Richard of her existence.

At first Basil assumed she was toiling like another Richard because she wished quickly to get knowledge enough to make plausible her necessary pretense of interest. But after a few weeks he saw she was in earnest, or thought she was�for, he could not believe one so pretty, so charming, so light of spirit and of mind, could be deeply in earnest about such a heavy, unwomanly matter as chemistry�or about anything else, except of course love. He was fond of chemistry; but it was in the fashion of most men's fondness for serious effort�to get excuse and appetite for idling. However, partly through pride, partly because her enthusiasm was contagious, he buckled to and worked as Richard had never been able to make him.

"Really, you needn't crowd yourself quite so hard," said he to Courtney, when his own energy began to flag.

"I've got to choose between being a drag and a help. Besides�" She glanced down with the shy, subtle smile he had learned to recognize as a cover for something she meant very much indeed�"don't you find that being occupied is a great aid?"

"I'd not have thought it possible to live as we're living�and be happy."

"You are happy?" As she asked this, she scrutinized his face in woman's familiar veiled fashion. She was always watching, watching, for the first faint dreaded sign of discontent.

"So much so," answered he, earnestly, "that I'd be afraid to change anything."

She saw that he meant it, that he felt it with all the intensity of the fine side of his nature. And she breathed a secret sigh of relief. She said: "Every day�time and again�I say to myself, 'If only this will last!'"

"It will!" declared he.

And, pessimist though she had been made by disappointment on disappointment in small things and large her whole life through, she began to hope that this would last, that the worst of her life was perhaps over, that her life problem was settling and settling right. The watchdogs of presentiment are like their much overrated animal prototypes. They bark at everything, that they may get credit for usefulness if by chance they once do happen to vent their nerve-racking warnings in advance of a real peril. Even presentiment called its dogs off duty.

She had been brought up among people who imagine they see the operations of natural law in the artificial conventions of morality that differ for every age and race and creed, really for every individual. She had long discarded as superstition the creed of her parents; but she had not been able wholly to uproot all the ramifications of beliefs dependent upon that creed for vitality. Thus, she vaguely felt a relationship of effect and cause between her sufferings in the autumn and early winter and those fear-shadowed, shame-alloyed but ecstatic moments of joy in the summer. And in the same vague way, there seemed to her some sort of connection between their present happiness and their self-restraint. She would have, quite honestly, denied, had she been accused of harboring such a "remnant of superstition." Nevertheless, it was the fact. However, she did not analyze or reason about her happiness. She simply accepted and enjoyed it�and forgot the foundations on which it rested.

And the days�the long, long days that only people who live in quiet places have�moved tranquilly and happily by, swift yet slow. The weeks seemed to be flying, and the days went very fast; but each hour presented its full quota of sixty minutes for enjoyment. In those dreadful days of the previous fall she had wished every hour that she was living in a city, because in the city a thousand resolute intrusions compel distraction, make the moments seem to fly, whether the heart is heavy or light. Now, she was glad with all her heart that she was living and loving where there were no distractions, where each moment could be lived as a connoisseur drinks his glass of rare old wine drop by drop.

One day late in April she and Richard, it so happened, were alone for a few minutes before supper. He abruptly emerged from his abstraction to say, "Basil and Helen are getting on famously."

She startled, then lapsed into her usual isolation when alone with him.

"I expect there'll be a marriage before the summer is out."

"Yes?" said Courtney, absently.

"Well, it's a good match. They're both comfortably shallow. They're fond of the same kind of harmless pretenses. They look well together.... I hope they'll stay on with us�at least until the first baby comes."

She shivered, rose abruptly. "Supper must certainly be ready," said she.

"Then," pursued Dick, intent upon his train of thought, "they might get the Donaldson place. The Donaldsons want to sell."

She smiled ironically. "I suppose you've spoken to Donaldson about it."

"Not yet. But next time I see him, I'll give him a hint. He might sell to some one else."

Basil now came in. "Sell what?" he asked, to join in the conversation.

"Oh, nothing," answered Dick. "Courtney and I were discussing the Donaldson place. Donaldson wants to sell, and we thought we might get neighbors we didn't like."

"Richard suggested," said Courtney, in her most innocent manner, "that you might buy it."

Dick looked alarmed. Basil, with his eyes on Courtney, promptly said: "Maybe I will. It's second only to this place. And I shall always live here."

"Richard thought it would be a good idea for you to settle there when you and Helen marry," said Courtney, with a smile only Basil could understand.

If anything, Basil looked more confused and nervous than did Richard; he laughed hysterically. "Really�really�that's very attractive�if�" he stammered.

Just then Helen, out of hearing on the lake-front veranda, happened to call, "Oh, Mr. Gallatin!"

"Yes," he answered, and hastened out to join her. Richard stared helplessly at his wife. "Now, why did you do that?" he demanded.

"What?"

"You certainly are the most thoughtless, frivolous person! I never knew you to be serious about anything�except something that was of not the least importance. I must remember to be always on guard when I speak before you."

"Yes, you ought to be careful. I'm not intellectual, like Helen. But I was forgetting; now you say she's shallow, too."

"All intellectual women are shallow," said Dick. He was ashamed of his heat of the moment before. "And I never said you were shallow. You ought to be glad you have no intellectual tendencies, but are a bundle of instincts and impulses, as a woman should be. I guess you didn't spill the milk, after all. If Gallatin loves Helen, a little break such as you made won't scare him off."

"No indeed. When a man's in love, the sight of the net doesn't frighten him. He helps to hold it open so that he can jump in deep."

Courtney intended to tease Basil, the next time they were alone. But it slipped her mind until nearly a week later. Basil had got into the habit of going out for a stroll and a smoke every morning about ten. She never went with him, because she did not wish to interrupt her work to which she could give only the mornings, as the time for gardens and growing things was at hand. One morning it so chanced that her task of the moment was just finished when Basil moved toward the door. "I'll go with you," said she.

He hesitated, looked disconcerted.

"Oh, if you don't want me," laughed she.

"Indeed I do," he hastened to say. "Only�usually you don't."

They went out together, walked up and down the wide retaining wall of the lake, beyond the Smoke House. Presently Helen appeared, on her way to the apartment over the laboratory. Now that she had charge of the housekeeping, it was part of her duties to look at the apartment and see that Lizzie was keeping things clean and was making Gallatin comfortable. At sight of Basil and Courtney, she stopped short, colored painfully. She answered their greetings with embarrassment, went with awkward haste in at the apartment entrance.

"Helen's extremely shy," said Courtney.

"She is difficult to get acquainted with," replied Basil. His manner might have been either absent or constrained.

"I'm afraid I haven't given you much chance," said Courtney, merely by way of saying something.

"Oh, I know her pretty well," Basil hastened to protest. "There's a lot more to her than one sees at first."

"Indeed there is," said Courtney, warmly. "I've grown very fond of her�fonder than I ever thought I could be of another woman. I don't care much for women. They're so small toward each other�because they're all brought up to be cutthroat rivals in the same low business�husband-catching. But Helen isn't a bit small. She has a real heart."

"And real intellect, too."

Courtney's smile was absolutely free from malice. "That's just what she has not," she replied, for she talked with perfect frankness to him, her other self. "I suppose the man never lived who could judge a good-looking woman. Women don't always misjudge men. But men always fancy beauty means brains, if the woman's heavy and serious�and not downright imbecile."

"I shouldn't call Miss March imbecile," said he. "Or even heavy."

"Now don't be cross because I hinted that women could fool you," teased Courtney. "And I didn't mean to suggest that Helen is imbecile or heavy."

"She knows an awful lot," said Basil. "She often corrects me�in little slips about authors and poetry, and so on."

Courtney could hardly keep from showing her amusement that Basil should be impressed by what was really one of Helen's weaknesses. For Helen, like so many who have small or very imperfect knowledge, attached as great importance to trifles of worthless learning as a college professor; she became agitated if anyone showed lack of knowledge of some infinitesimal in etiquette or grammar or what not, just as fashionable people sweat with mortification or distend with vast inward derision if some one, however intelligent, however capable, appears among them in an out-of-style garment or uses an expression not in their tiny vocabulary. Courtney was striving tactfully to open out a less ignorant point of view to Helen. And here was Basil showing that Helen's weakness was in reality a strength, highly useful in dealing with men.

Courtney said: "Helen is a fine, sensible, capable girl�about the finest I ever knew. And she has genuine sweetness and good taste."

"She does dress well," said Basil warmly. "If she had the means, she'd be stunning."

"Could be, but wouldn't be," replied Courtney, perfectly just and good humored, but perhaps a little weary of hearing another young woman's praises in her lover's voice. "She'd 'settle down' if she married. She's resolutely old fashioned�hates to think or to exert herself. She'll make a fine, old-fashioned wife for some man who likes to be mildly bored at home and wants his fun elsewhere. This reminds me. Richard has you and her married�wedding in the fall�baby next spring."

Basil flushed at this teasing.

"You don't seem enthusiastic."

"I don't care to hear a good young girl spoken of so lightly," said he, with some stiffness.

And now Courtney colored. After a moment she said, apologetic without knowing why: "Perhaps I shouldn't have done it. But I always feel free to speak out to you any stray thought that drifts into my head�without choosing my words."

Helen now reappeared, cast a peculiar glance in their direction, blushed rosily, hastened away toward the house. "She'd better be careful how she blushes at sight of you," said Courtney smiling, "or you'll be thinking she's in love with you."

"Nonsense!" protested Basil, again unaccountably irritated.

"How solemn you are to-day, dear. And, why shouldn't she fall in love with you? I can see how a woman might."

He did not respond to her glance. He stared straight ahead, answered awkwardly, "Helen and I are simply good friends."

The phrase jarred upon her a little. "Simply good friends." As she repeated it, she remembered suddenly, vividly, the beginning of their own love. They too had been "simply good friends." The phrase kept recurring to her, dinning disagreeably in her ears. She frowned on herself; she laughed at herself. But it continued to ring and to jar. "I certainly have a nasty jealous streak hidden away in my disposition," she said to herself. "I mustn't encourage it."

During the next few days every time Helen and Basil were together, she caught herself watching them for signs�"Signs of what?" she demanded of herself. But in spite of herself she kept on watching. That specter of the dreadful days without him�that specter so easily called up�began to glide about in the background of her thoughts, rousing those fears before which she was abject coward.

Helen had the young girl's usual assortment of harmless little tricks. Her favorite was to note when a man made a remark which she thought he regarded as clever, to go back to it after a moment or so, and repeat it and laugh or admire according as it had been intended to be amusing or profound. She was constantly doing this�with Richard, with Basil, with every man she met. The time came when the overworked trick began to get upon Courtney's nerves, especially as Helen, being entirely without humor and a close-to-shore wader in the waters of thought, was not always happy in her selection of the remark. Still, her intentions being of the best, Courtney endured; and at times she got not a little secret amusement from seeing how Basil and even Richard were flattered by the trick, never suspecting, even after Helen had again and again laughed or admired effusively in quite the wrong place. As she watched Helen and Basil now, the only "sign" she saw was this clever-stupid subtlety of Helen's for flattering male vanity�Helen practicing it on Basil, Basil purring each time like a cat under the stroking of an agreeable hand. This certainly was not serious. She laughed at herself with a reproachful "You don't deserve happiness�trying to poison it with contemptible suspicion." And the specter faded, and she no longer heard the sound of rain beating, of rain drizzling, of rain dripping through days and nights of aloneness and despair.

Spring was smiling from every twig. The birds, impatient at winter's reluctant leave-taking, had arrived before the young leaves were far enough advanced to cover them. So, every tree was alive with them, plainly in view, boldly about their courting and nesting, like lovers who, despairing of finding a quiet place, march along the highway embracing in defiance of curious eyes. One morning, half an hour after Basil went out for his habitual stroll and cigarette, Courtney changed her mind and decided to join him. She looked along the retaining wall. No Basil. She walked up and down, noting, and feeling in her own blood, the agitations of the mightiest force in the universe�those agitations that in the springtime set all nature to quivering. Ten minutes passed�fifteen�half an hour�nearly three quarters of an hour. Still no Basil. She decided he must have gone up to his rooms and fallen asleep. She resisted the temptation to go and waken him, and went slowly toward the laboratory doors. Just as she was about to jump from the wall, out of the apartment entrance came Helen, her face aglow, her eyes sparkling, all the austerity gone from her regular features. "How pretty she looks," thought Courtney. "I wonder what's delighting her so. One'd think she was in love and was loved. There never lived a sweeter, more unselfish girl. Nothing petty in her. She even has a nice way of being prudent about money."

Helen did not see her, went quickly up the path and into the wood between the Smoke House and the lawns round the house. Courtney resisted the impulse to call because she had already been out of the laboratory too long. As Helen disappeared among the trees, Courtney was astounded to see appear at the apartment door�Basil! On his face a contented pleased expression, as if he were reflecting upon something highly agreeable�Helen's face�his face�Courtney stood for an instant like a flaming torch planted upon that wall�a torch with a white-hot flame of hate.

As Basil was taking a last puff at his cigarette, she darted into the laboratory and sat at her case. When he entered, she was just where she had been at his going out. "Still at work!" he cried.

"Still at work!" said she. She forced her lips to smile, but she did not dare lift her fluttering eyelids. She looked calm and, as always, sweet; but in those few minutes all the sweetness of her nature had transformed, as the thunderstorm changes milk from food to poison. And the remembered horror of those days of desolation goaded her toward a very insanity of fear and jealousy. That smile on Helen's face�then on his.

He stood behind her. If she had had a knife she would have whirled round and plunged it into his breast and then into her own. But she had not; also, this was twentieth-century and conventional life. She sat rigid, intent upon the flame of the blast tube she was using.

He bent and kissed her neck. "Sweetheart!" he murmured.

The fixed smile became a distortion, as she lowered her head.

"The spring�outdoors," he went on in the same low caressing voice. "It's hard to bear. It seems so long�so long�since�" His pause finished the sentence better than any words.

Long indeed, thought she; a singularly patient and restrained lover; strangely respectful.

"There are more kinds of happiness in love than I imagined," he went on. "But do you never�never��"

"Please," she interrupted. She found her voice could be trusted; she ventured to test her eyes. She looked up at him, taking pleasure in veiling her hate behind a smile. She strove to make the smile sweet and tender. She felt that she was succeeding. "How homely he is," she thought. "And I love him�ugly and a traitor. I love him, and I'll keep on loving him�for, he's all there is between me and misery."

Richard called them into the front compartment, and the three worked together at the big retort the rest of the morning. It was a strange hour and a half. She seemed to be two distinct persons�no, three. One was hating Basil and Helen�a being that seemed to concentrate all that is venomous and malignant. One was watching with interest and excitement the awful processes by which calm liquids poured together suddenly became violent, colorless liquids a marvelous radiance of exquisite color, heat became infinite cold and cold became heat that consumed hard metals as if they were bits of fluff. The third personality within her was aloof and calm, and watched her other two and wondered at them.

At dinner time she and Richard walked to the house together, Basil stopping at the apartment to tidy himself, as usual. "Well, how do you think they are getting on?" she asked carelessly.

"I can't tell," replied Richard, "till I've got several other reactions."

"Helen and Basil, I mean."

"How should I know? All right, I suppose."

"Didn't you tell me, a week or so ago, you thought it was a match?"

"Of course it's a match," said he, as if there weren't a doubt about it.

She quivered at this pressure upon the thorn that was pricking and festering. "Why are you so positive?" she asked.

"You know as much as I do. He goes out to meet her every morning, doesn't he?"

Every morning! To smoke! In a series of internal explosions whose flames scorched her soul she traced the progress of that smoking habit of his. With an outer calmness that amazed her she pursued her inquiries. "Are they�affectionate when they're alone?" she asked.

"How?" Richard's mind was back at his experiments.

She repeated her question in a voice that was under still better control.

"I've never seen them but once�one day when he was helping her balance herself at the edge of the wall�she was pretending to look down into the water at something�the old trick."

Courtney laughed. "The old trick�yes." She laughed again.

"It's all settled, no doubt," declared Richard. "And good business!"

Courtney hurled a glance of fury at him. "Unless he's making a fool of her."

"Oh�absurd. He's a gentleman."

"Gentleman. That sounds as if it meant a lot, but does it?"

Richard wished to think of his work uninterrupted by this trifle of a love affair. "Why not ask her about it? She's no doubt dying to tell�if you give her the excuse of opening the subject."

Courtney went up to her balcony, seated herself in a rocking-chair. She rocked and thought, thought, thought�getting nowhere, motion without progress, like that of her chair. She did all the talking at dinner that day. She took the relations of men and women for her subject and shot arrows of wit at it. As Winchie was having dinner next door with the Donaldson children, she did not need to restrain herself. She was mocking, cynical, audacious. Basil stopped laughing and stared at his plate. Helen, all blushes, looked as if she would sink under the table. Richard remained calm�he was not hearing a word. Basil's gloom and Helen's shocked modesty delighted Courtney, edged her on to further audacities. She looked from one to the other, smiling, jeering at them�and she rattled on and on, because she felt that if she stopped scoffing and laughing, she would spring at him or at her. She had the longing to do physical violence, like one in the torment of a toothache.

Richard and Basil had not been gone many minutes before she began on the unconscious Helen. A sigh gave her the opening. "Unhappy?" she said.

"No, indeed," answered Helen. "If anything, too happy. You know what this life here means to me."

"But you must find it lonely."

"Lonely! Not for an instant."

"We've had almost no company this winter and spring. I must hunt up some young men for you."

"I don't want them, as I've often told you." Courtney remembered that she had, and muttered, "What a blind fool I've been." Helen went sweetly on: "Beside such men as Richard and Mr. Gallatin, the ordinary young man is anything but interesting."

"Still, you must marry. And you've got the looks to make a first-rate bargain."

Helen looked gently disapproving of this frank mode of stating the case. "I could never marry for anything but love."

"Of course. But, being a well-brought-up woman, you'll not have difficulty in loving any proper candidate."

"I'm well content."

Courtney bent low over the scarlet and pink and white tulips in one of the window boxes. Content! This woman who was stealing her lover�this woman who was thrusting her back into the despair of those loveless, hopeless days when Basil was gone and the icy rains poured on and on upon her desolate life! She controlled herself, repeated vaguely: "Content? Impossible unless you've got your eye on a likely man. No single woman ever was since the world began."

Helen blushed consciously.

"Who is he?" teased Courtney. She had seen the blush, and her nerves were twitching. "Who is it?" she repeated softly. "Basil?"

The blush deepened.

"I thought so!" exclaimed Courtney with laughing triumph. "You've yielded to his fascinations, have you?"

Helen paled and her lip trembled. "Please don't," she faltered. "Don't joke me about�about him."

Courtney turned hastily away to hide the devil that gleamed from her eyes; for she felt that her worst suspicions were confirmed. "Tell me," she said, as soon as she could find voice, and could make that voice gay with good-humored raillery, "how long has this�this idyll been going on?"

"Really�you're quite mistaken, dear," pleaded Helen.

"How long have you and he been keeping those trysts?"

"You're quite wrong. We've met by accident," protested Helen. "We just happen to meet." She hung her head. "I'll admit I�I arrange to go to look at the apartment about the time I know he comes out to smoke."

Courtney was all smiles. "And he arranges to come out to smoke about the time he knows you're going to the apartment. How�delicious!"

"Do you think he does it deliberately?" inquired Helen eagerly.

Courtney was amazed at the girl's skill in duplicity. She began to wonder how far they had gone. But her face was bright and innocent as a poison locust bloom when she said: "You sly child! What were you and he doing in his apartment to-day?"

"Oh!" cried Helen, covering her face with her hands.

Courtney's features were distorted with fear and fury; the specter was stalking and leering. But her voice sounded soft and seductive as she urged: "Go on, dear. You needn't be afraid to tell me�everything."

Helen lifted her flaming face. "There's nothing to tell," cried she. "When you asked me that question, something in your tone made me feel as if I had done a�a wickedly indiscreet thing. But it was all so harmless and accidental. I came earlier than usual, and he was getting the cigarette case he'd forgotten."

"Highly probable!" exclaimed Courtney, apparently much amused. "And so, you could make love to each other at your ease."

"Courtney!" Helen started up, horror-stricken. "Can you think I'd let him lay the weight of his finger on me?" And she burst into tears. "Oh, what have I done!" she sobbed. "And it seemed perfectly innocent."

Insane with jealousy though she was, Courtney could not but be convinced. "Don't take it so to heart, my dear," said she. "Tell me all about it."

"And you could suspect me! But I deserve it. If I'd been really a good woman, I'd not have thought of him until he had spoken to me."

"Dry your eyes," said Courtney, calm and practical. "How far has this gone?"

"Not at all," declared Helen. "We've never said a word of love to each other."

"Is that the truth?"

"As God is my judge."

"Not a kiss�no hand-holding?"

"Nothing."

"Only looks?"

"Sometimes�I've hoped�from the way he looked�" She sighed. "But I'm afraid he meant nothing."

Courtney studied her ingenuous face as a bank teller a note that is under suspicion of being counterfeit. Yes�Helen was telling the truth.

"Do you think he cares?" asked Helen wistfully. "He seems to like to talk with me. And he's very eloquent about sentimental things. He talks and he acts like a man in love. But�at times I feel as if it were with another woman."

Courtney buried her face in the urn of violets. And next to her feeling of enormous relief at the clearing of Basil from the worst charge against him was gratitude that she would not have to try to play the tyrant�try to send Helen away.

"It may be some bad woman's gotten hold of him," continued the girl reflectively. "He may be chained by a love he's ashamed of."

"That sounds like a weekly story paper."

"I know there's some weight on his conscience," maintained Helen.

Courtney looked strangely at her and laughed. "When people look and talk remorse, they're only boasting. He's trying to make himself interesting, my dear. He wants to thrill you with the story of his life�some commonplace adventure he exaggerates into an epic drama." She laughed again, most unpleasantly. "Heaven deliver me from these 'My God! How she loves me' men!"

"He's not like that�not at all," protested Helen. "But�oh, I wish I knew whether he cared for me. I don't know what to do! I've given him every opportunity�" She stopped short with such an expression of horror at her slip that Courtney laughed outright. "I don't mean I've done anything forward or unladylike�" stammered Helen.

"He's a man of the world." She pinched Helen's cheek. "He reads that innocent little mind of yours like an electric sign."

Helen was hysterical with dismay. "You think he's laughing at me?"

"And getting ready to�to amuse himself."

"Courtney!"

Courtney nodded and smiled.

"He never could think so lightly of me. Never!"

"Lightly? He sees you are in love with him. Why should he suspect you of being calculating?"

"Calculating? I don't understand."

"Unwilling to give except for an annuity�for life support."

Helen's honest brown eyes were big and round. "What do you mean?"

"What I say," was Courtney's reply. And in a, to Helen, appallingly matter-of-fact way, she went on to explain. "And what I say is simply the sense under all the nonsense about marrying. You want to marry, don't you? You're looking about for somebody to support you and your children, aren't you? You say you love our homely, fascinating, well-to-do friend Gallatin. But not enough to go very far unless he'd sign a life contract. Didn't I hear you say one day that you didn't think it proper for people even to kiss until the preacher had dropped the flag?"

Helen gazed at her with an expression of sheer horrified amazement that delighted her. "How can as sweet and pure a woman as you talk that way?"

Courtney laughed gayly. "Because she's neither sweet nor pure. Because she's got intelligence and experience. I just wanted to show you that while you were pretending to think about love�ideal, romantic, unselfish love, you were really planning for food, clothing and shelter."

"But I don't want to hear such talk!" cried Helen. "If I'm deluded, why, let me stay so. You are so frivolous, Courtney! Don't you believe in love at all?"

Courtney reflected. "I don't know whether I do or not," she finally said.

Helen looked at her with sad sympathy. "And I thought you were happy!" she sighed.

"I am," rejoined Courtney. "And I purpose to remain so."

"But you are worried about me? You think Bas�Mr. Gallatin is not a fit man for me to marry?" The tone betrayed her anxiety, the importance she attached to Courtney's judgment; for, while Helen's conventional mind told her that Courtney was a "light-weight," like all lively, laughing persons, her instinct made her always consult her before acting in any matter from a man to what hat to wear with what dress. "You think he's�not nice?"

Courtney felt Helen's nearly breathless expectation; she did not answer immediately. When she did it was from the farther side of the room, with her attention apparently on a window garden of hyacinths. "Be careful, my dear. Remember, your primness is your chief asset. If he thought�or hoped�you were�loose��"

"Loose!" Helen trembled, looked as if she were about to faint.

"It's ridiculous the way we women exaggerate the value of our favors," philosophized Courtney.

"I wish you wouldn't make that kind of�of jests, dear," pleaded Helen. "I know you don't mean a word of it. You feel just as I do�that a man couldn't do enough to repay any good woman for giving herself to him."

"Or a woman do enough to repay a man for giving himself to her," retorted Courtney. "The account's even, or the whole thing's too low to talk about. Still�you don't understand�you can't. And so long as men think a woman the grander the more conceited and selfish she is, you're as well off, believing as you do.... As to Gallatin��"

"I don't care anything about him!" cried Helen. "What you've been saying has given me such a shock." She paused, then went on in a low, awful tone, "Courtney, I must tell you that I was alone with him in his sitting room for over an hour!"

"When?" asked Courtney, sharply.

"To-day�what we were talking about."

"Only to-day?"

"Never before!" exclaimed Helen. "And never again."

"Then�perhaps�only perhaps, mind you," mocked Courtney, "I'll put off speaking to Richard about it�and writing Mrs. Torrey."

Helen could not see any humor in the situation. "Do you honestly believe, Courtney," she asked in deep distress, "that he could have thought of me as if I were�were a�a�bad woman?"

Courtney's eyes were most unpleasant.

"I see you're disgusted and angry with me, dear," said Helen, in tears again. "I know it was unwomanly of me to think of him when he'd said nothing. But I�I couldn't help it. I will help it, though!"

"You think you can?"

Helen showed she was astonished and hurt. "Do you imagine I could care for a man whose way of caring for me was an insult?"

Courtney counseled with a vase of jonquils. "No, I suppose you couldn't," she replied. "You don't know about wild, free�fierce�love� Do you?"

Helen's expression was of one appalled. "How can you talk that way?" she asked. "You're very strange to-day. You're not at all yourself."

"Self!" exclaimed Courtney, scornfully. "What is my self? What is your self? What is anybody's self?"

She no longer had the delusion of free will that makes us talk about bettering the race by "changing human nature from within"�the delusion that the individual is responsible, though obviously the social system and the other compelling external conditions move the individual as the showman his puppet. She, helpless in the whirl of strong emotions, was beginning to understand why, at the outset of her married life, instinct had bade her arrange all the circumstances round her and Richard so that they would be compelled to live the life in common, the life of the single common interest that holds love captive as the cage the bird. She was beginning to realize how like water self is in the grip of circumstances�how self is mill pond or torrent, pure or foul, or mixture of the two, according as circumstance commands. These demon impulses�they were not her self. Self was amazed onlooker at its own strange doings�was like helpless occupant of the carriage behind the runaway team.

When Helen spoke again, she showed that her thoughts were still lingering longingly where they must not, if Courtney was to be rid of the demons. "But if a man loves a woman," said Helen, "why shouldn't he be glad to give her honorable marriage?"

Courtney hesitated, dared. "She might be already married."

"Courtney!" And her horrified eyes told Courtney she had caught the intended hint that Basil was in love with some married woman. "It isn't possible!"

"Haven't such things happened?"

"Yes�but� No married woman a nice man would notice would ever think of another man than her husband."

"I don't know about a 'nice' woman," said Courtney, slowly. "But I can imagine that a human woman�if her husband neglected her, and chilled and killed her love��"

Helen was not listening, was not aware that she had interrupted as she said, "Do you think Mr. Gallatin could be in love with some married woman�of�of our class?"

"I suspect so," replied Courtney, gazing calmly into her eyes.

"I'll not believe it!" cried Helen. "I'll not believe it!"

"You're like all girls. Because your own head's full of marriage, you think every man who's polite to you, or flirts a little to make the time pass more agreeably, is about to send for the preacher. Now, frankly, has Basil ever made love to you?"

"No," admitted Helen. "But�" She halted.

"But what?" came from Courtney sharp and arresting as a shot.

"I feel he is fond of me," confessed Helen.

Courtney laughed harshly. "All men are fond of all good-looking women�especially in the spring. Don't be a fool, Helen."

"But a married woman has no right to him!"

Courtney flushed, and her eyes flashed. "And how do you know? And what right have you to judge? Are you God?"

"No, but��"

"No!" cried Courtney. "How do you know what he�his love may mean to her? How do you know but what it may be the one thing between her and despair and ruin? You, with your timid, proper calculating little love! Why, if the woman cared enough for him�needed him so�that she sacrificed self-respect�honor�truth�all�all�for love�what could you give him to replace it? And what are your needs beside hers?"

Helen's face grew hard as these words that outraged every principle of her training poured recklessly from Courtney's lips. "I'm astounded at your defending a bad woman," she said. "You're too generous, Courtney. You'd feel differently if she were taking Richard away from you. But, I'm not in love with Basil. I see you know things about him. I�I�despise him. I pity him, of course, for he might have been a nice man. But I couldn't love him. I'm glad you told me. I might have engaged myself to him."

Courtney's far from sane eyes twinkled at that last ingenuous bit of maidenly vanity. Helen went about her work, and she departed to the greenhouse. "She'll stop loving him as easily as she began," said she to herself. "What does her sort of women know about love? They're faithful to whatever man they marry, as a dog's faithful to whoever feeds and kennels it.... Basil Gallatin is mine! And no man�nor no woman�shall come between us."

She had not forgotten Basil's expression as he stood in the apartment entrance, after his t�te-�-t�te with Helen. "Now�for what's in his heart," she said. "I must know just where I stand." She recalled how she had used to say, and to think, that if a man was not freely a woman's�freely�inevitably�without any need of being held by feminine artifice�no self-respecting woman could for an instant wish to detain him. And here she was, ready to make any sacrifice to hold this man. Truly, fate seemed determined to compel her to give the lie to everything she had ever believed, to abase every instinct of pride that had plumed or still plumed the haughty front of her soul.

Richard asked Helen up to his study after supper, to take dictation of an article he was doing for a scientific magazine; thus, Courtney had a chance to explore Basil. She was seated beneath the tall lamp, a big hat frame on her lap, ribbon and feathers on the small table. She knew he was watching her over the top of a newspaper; and she was not insensible to his extremely flattering expression�nor, perhaps, to the advantages her occupation gave her in the way of graceful gestures, effective posings of the head and arms as she studied the effect of different arrangements of ribbon and feathers. She glanced directly at him; he glanced away, confused�the frightened zigzag of a flushed partridge.

"Well?" said she. She felt more lenient toward him, now that she had discovered his innocence of overt treachery, at least; and the way he was looking at her when he fancied her quite unaware was certainly reassuring. Also, she realized now that she herself was largely responsible for these errant springtime thoughts of his�she with her struggling to keep both love and self-respect. "Well?" she repeated, when he did not speak. "What guilty thought did I almost surprise?"

"No guilty thought," replied he. "I was loving you�terribly�just then. I was thinking�how impossible it would be for a man who loved you ever to wander."

"That's very nice," said she, with a mocking smile. "So you have been�looking over the fence?" And she went on with bending the brim of the hat frame to a more graceful curve. She was placid to all appearances; but once more the great dread was obsessing her.

"Not at all," protested he. "What fence? At whom?"

"The fence of our compact�perhaps."

He sighed impatiently.

"Ah�well�" She laughed, eying the result of her shaping, the hat frame at one angle, her head at the opposite angle�"there's Helen."

He looked grave reproach at her, altogether absorbed in trying a long plume against the frame in different positions. "Do you think, dear, it's quite respectful to Helen��"

"Your thoughts couldn't harm her," interrupted she�that is, she interrupted him, but not her work. "If men's thoughts smirched women, what an unsightly lot the attractive ones would be!"

"Where did you get such ideas?" he exclaimed, trying to conceal how her frankness had scandalized him.

She worked on calmly. "By observing and reading and thinking�and feeling."

He drummed uneasily upon the arm of his chair with the tips of his fingers. At length he said with some embarrassment, "It's hardly necessary for me to say that I have the highest respect for Helen."

"Yes�and I also know she's very�very pretty."

"Yes, she is pretty."

"You respect her. You like to talk with her. You think she is physically attractive."

Stiffly, "I have never thought about her in that last way."

"Then, that's probably her chief charm for you," observed Courtney, placid and reflective and industrious. "When we think we don't think about things that are worth thinking about, the chances are we really haven't been thinking about anything else." With a smile and a shake of the head that might have been for the plumes which refused to please her, "I'm afraid you're falling in love with Helen."

"No," replied he judicially�and how he would have been startled if he had seen her veiled eyes!�shiny green and cruel as those of a puma stretched in graceful ferocity along the leafy limb that overhangs the path. "No, I'm not the least in love with her. But I do like her. Her seriousness is very pleasant, now and then. If I did not love you, I perhaps might have grown to care for her, in a way. But�beside you, Helen is�tame."

"I shouldn't call her tame�" encouragingly.

"Well�perhaps not. She sometimes suggests a person who could be waked up."

"That's a temptation, isn't it?" she asked. And she looked straight at him over the top of the plumes. She wished to see all.

"No," said he, positively. "To be quite frank I'd never give her as a woman a thought�if I weren't�" He stirred uneasily, burst out in confession. "You were right a while ago. Men often don't understand themselves. But we'll not talk about that."

There was such love and tenderness in the gaze meeting hers that all the squalid thoughts her mind had been fouled with the whole day washed away like the dust and dirt on the leaves and petals of her flowers in a sudden rain.

He said with a gentle, manly earnestness that thrilled her: "There's only the one woman for me. And�I want our love to be what you wish. And it shall be!"

She lowered her head, the tears welling. The others interrupted, and Helen sat beside her advising about the hat. When it was finished, she made Helen try it on. They all admired, and it certainly was becoming. "Now, you try it on, dear," said Helen.

"No, don't take it off," Courtney answered. "It's for you, of course." And she kissed her and, laughing away her thanks, went upstairs. She sat down at her dressing table and, with elbows resting on it and face supported by her hands, gazed into her own eyes. "If you do not wish to lose him," she said slowly aloud to her grave face imaged in the glass, "you must take away from him temptation to wander. A door is either open or shut. A man�a man worth while�won't stand at the threshold long. He comes in or he goes away. Basil does not realize it, but that other side of his nature will compel him to go away�unless�" Compel him to go away? She was hearing again the monotonous fall of those icy rains, was feeling again the monotonous misery of those days without love and without hope. She must choose. Choose? "The woman doesn't live�doesn't deserve to live�who'd hesitate. There's no choice. There's simply the one way."

Well�since it must be so�what would be the event? Would she lose him anyhow? Would she merely be putting off his going? Would her complete yielding end in disaster of some kind, as she had feared? Or, wasn't it possible that, while most people were tangled and finally strangled by the web of their own deceit, a skillful few could use it dextrously to snare the bright birds of joy? ... She stood up, stretched her arms, swayed her slim supple figure gently. "He shall have no reason for letting one single thought wander. He shall be mine�all mine! I'll take no more risks." She continued to sway gently, her eyes closed. A look of scorn, of disgust came into her face. She shuddered. "How hideous it is to be a woman! Always slave to some man! Gold fetters cut as deep as iron, and they're heavier." She stopped swaying. "I can see how I might come to hate my master in trying to hold his love.... Love! To keep our love warm, we have to bury it in the mire."