Chapter 26

The pause before the first decisive step toward freedom�and perhaps away from Winchie�had shrunk to a day less than two weeks.

It is mercifully not in human nature vividly to anticipate catastrophe. Death is the absolute certainty; yet no living being can imagine himself dead. And it was anything but certain that Dick would ever assert his legal right and take away her child. In her anxiety about Winchie, she had been giving much thought to Dick's character, which would be the deciding factor. And she was surprised at the knowledge of it she had unconsciously absorbed. Except among fools�who, whether they look within or without, see nothing�it is a commonplace of experience to discover that what we fancied we thought about a certain person or thing is precisely the opposite of what we really think when compelled to interrogate ourselves honestly. That is why the whole world can live and die by formulas in which it has not the least actual belief. These discoveries of our self-ignorance always astonish us, no matter how often they occur. Courtney had got many surprises of this kind in the past two years; yet this find�her intimate knowledge of her "abstract" husband's character�seemed incredible.

It wasn't strange that she should know how he took his coffee, his favorite brand of cigarettes and of whisky, that he detested cold baths and would not wear underclothes with silk in them, or, if it could possibly be avoided, starched shirts�that he hated low shoes and high collars. As a "dutiful wife" she had made it her chief business, after Winchie, to see to her legal husband's material comfort, so far as he would permit it. But how had she come by a deep conviction of his honesty, of his truthfulness, of his incapacity for meanness of any kind? Where had she got her confidence in his sense of justice�he who had alienated her by his stubborn and tyrannical injustices to her? Why did she summarily dismiss as absurd the suggestion that his recent conduct was dictated merely by indifference to her or selfish consideration for his own comfort? These high ideas of him certainly did not date from their courtship and honeymoon; for, then she had no more interest or discrimination as to character than the next young person. There was no accounting for it. She simply found that these beliefs were immovably lodged under the opinion of him she had supposed was hers�the opinion that had made her love for Basil seem as right as if she had been a girl. So, while she feared he would take Winchie away from her, with a fear dark enough to shadow her days and make many a night uneasy, she was always saying to herself believingly, "He could not do anything unjust."

One evening she fell into a somber mood. It wasn't so clear as usual that Dick would see the to her obvious injustice of separating mother and child. She left Helen, went up and stole in to sit by Winchie's bed�a habit she had formed lately. She got so low spirited that, when she heard Helen go along the hall toward the upstairs sitting room, she slipped downstairs and out into the air to wander among the flowers and beneath the scented trees. There was a thin moon and one of those faint, soft, intermittent breezes that give the disquieting yet fascinating sense of spirit companionship. She strolled to the edge of the lake; the fireflies seemed the eyes of the breeze spirits that were whispering and friendlily touching her. She saw a boat with a single occupant a few yards down the lake, close in shore. Even as she glanced, a low voice�Basil's�came from the boat: "Courtney�may I come?"

She was not startled. Before the voice she had thought, "Basil will probably be trying to see me before long." She answered in the same undertone, "Helen may be looking this way."

"If you sit on the bench down here, I can come to you. The shadow's deep enough."

She hesitated, went to the bench he indicated. The press of the immediate had been all but keeping him out of her mind. But whenever she did think of him it was as her lover. With a nature as tenacious as hers habit is not dethroned in a day or demolished all at once by any convulsion however violent. Also, the more she suffered and the lonelier she felt�not a soul about to whom she could speak or hint any part of what was harassing her�the more tender grew her thoughts of the man in whom she had invested so much. Throwing good love after bad is not a rare human weakness�and Courtney was by no means certain in those depressed days that her investment had been bad, as such investments go in a world of human beings.

He soon had his boat opposite the bench, made it fast. He sprang to her, seized her hands and was kissing them. "No�no. You mustn't," she protested, drawing away.

"Tell me all about it!" he cried. "How I suffered till I heard your voice on the telephone! I was watching the house with a glass all afternoon until dark. I was in the boat, lying a few rods up there all night. And from dawn I was across the lake watching with the glass again. So, I knew everything was quiet. But until your voice came, I was mad with dread�though I had seen you, just like your usual self, in the grounds and on the veranda hours before. But�tell me all about it."

"There's nothing to tell," said she. His recital had seemed to her as if it were of something in which she had neither part nor interest.

"He knows, doesn't he?

"Yes�he knows." And there she stopped because she never had discussed and never would discuss with anyone what happened between her and her husband.

"What is he going to do?"

"I don't know."

"But� Don't keep me in suspense, dear. Is he going to get a divorce?"

"No. I'm to get it."

"Your voice is very queer. Aren't you�glad?"

"I'm afraid about Winchie."

"Oh�of course. Does he threaten to�" Basil halted.

"No. But� Basil, you must go."

"Go? It's perfectly safe here."

"Yes. But I've no right to see you, after the way he has acted�until I'm free." All true enough; yet she could not make her voice sound right to herself. "It isn't wise and it isn't honorable," she ended haltingly.

She saw, or rather felt, him eying her somberly. "When will you be free?" he asked in a constrained tone.

"In a few months�I think."

"And then we shall marry at once." He said it in the tone a man uses when he wishes to convince himself and another that what he is saying is the matter of course.

She did not answer.

He laughed unpleasantly. "You don't seem overjoyed at the prospect."

"I'm thinking of Winchie."

"Oh!" A pause; then he asked, "As soon as you've got Winchie safely, we'll marry?"

This was a question she had not faced alone, yet. She was far from ready to face it with him. She found one of those phrases that come easily and naturally to women, ever compelled to be diplomatic. "If we both wish it then." Lightly, "You see, as I'm escaping with reputation intact, you're not bound to marry me."

"Bound?" he exclaimed. "Courtney, please don't joke about this."

"I'm quite serious�though I don't act as funereally as you do when you think you're serious."

"We love each other, and��"

"Do we?" An impulse of honesty, of impatience at her own yielding to the temptation to temporize forced her to say it, "Do we, Basil?"

"Courtney, have you�changed? Can't you forgive me for��"

"It isn't that," she interrupted, and she thought she was telling the truth. "Let's never speak of that. No�it's� Could anyone go through what we have without being�sobered?"

"That's true. It has made me love you more intensely, more earnestly than ever. What we've suffered has made us like�like the two pieces of metal the fire fuses into one."

"That sounds nice. But�is it so?"

"You know it is!" he cried angrily.

"No, I don't," she replied, as if she were weighing every word. "I've made up my mind not to tell any more lies, especially to myself. I don't feel as I used to feel. There's�some one between us."

"Vaughan?"

"Yes. I've a sense of obligation to him. If you had seen what I saw�how far above the little men who go in for cheap theatricals or act like mad dogs��"

To his sensitiveness it seemed for an instant that she was hitting at him, was slyly reminding him of his own conduct. But he soon felt that he was mistaken�that there was another reason why her words stung him. "It sounds as if you were falling in love with him," he said in a grotesque attempt at a voice of raillery.

"No," replied she, and her voice satisfied him. "That part of my life is over. It could no more be brought back than last year's summer."

"Winter," he corrected.

"It wasn't all winter, to be fair," said she, and changed the subject with, "But�remember, you are free�free as I am. We shan't see each other or hear from each other for a long time. It may be that you'll fall in love with somebody else��"

"Courtney, do you love me? ... Look at me. Answer."

She continued to gaze out over the lake. "Honestly, I do not know. Sometimes I think I do. Again I wonder, did I love you or was I only in love with love? It's so easy to fool oneself when one wants any thing as much as I wanted love."

"If you knew how you were�hurting me you'd not say these things."

"Would you rather I lied to you?" she asked gently.

"Yes! For, I love you and I can't live without you. You've made yourself necessary to me. We must marry as soon as you are free and have Winchie."

"Yes�we will marry, I suppose. There isn't anybody so near to me."

"Except Winchie."

"Winchie is me."

"I understand," he said. "It's�beautiful. Ah, Courtney, we must marry as soon as we can."

"No. I must�" She paused.

"Go on, dear. What is it that's to keep us apart?"

"I must be independent as well as free." The truth was out at last�the truth her nature as a woman of sheltered breeding was always dodging, but which her intelligence and pride were forcing her to face. "I must be independent."

"There couldn't be any question of that kind between us."

"There shan't be," replied she with energy that startled him.

"I'll settle any amount you say on you. I'll make myself your dependent if you wish."

She laughed in a sweet, tender way. Whatever his faults and failings, he certainly was generous. "Basil!" she murmured. Then: "As if that would help matters. Why, anything I got from you would only increase my dependence. No, I must be really free�so neither of us could think for an instant I was your wife because I had to be supported�or you were my husband because you felt I was helpless. We women have got to stop being canary birds if we're to get real self-respect�or real consideration."

"What queer notions you do get," said he with man's tolerant amusement at the fantasies of the women and the children. "Think of wasting such a night�and our few minutes together�discussing theories�and sordid ones!"

"Sordid! Basil, we're made out of earth and we've got to live on the ground. I'm done forever with the kind of romance and idealism we were brought up on. I'm going to build as high as I can, but I'm going to build on the ground. No more cloud castles that vanish when the wind changes. I'm going to use romance for decoration not for building stone, and cakes for dessert, not in place of bread."

He laughed appreciatively. "How clever you are! We'll get on beautifully," he said. "You're the sort of woman that never bores a man or makes him feel like looking about."

"Are you the sort of man that never bores a woman or makes her feel like looking about?"

"That's not for me to say," answered he with a careless laugh.

"It doesn't strike you as important�what a woman might think about such matters, does it?" said she, good-humored in her mockery.

"Oh, yes�if the woman's you. But let's not bother about such things. It seems such a waste of time. One kiss?"

She shook her head. "Not with Richard looking on."

"Do you want me to kiss you�dear?" he said passionately.

With a nervous glance toward the house she rose. "Please!" she said, in vague entreaty. "You must go."

"You haven't told me�anything�yet." He cast hurriedly about for some way to detain her. "There are your plans for being independent."

"I haven't any."

"Do sit down. I'll not touch you again."

"It isn't that, Basil. It's for the same reason that I didn't write and can't. Hasn't what he's done pledged us both to��"

"Don't say any more, Courtney," he interrupted; for he saw how profoundly in earnest she was, and respected her for it. "You're right. I'm going." He took her hand, pressed it. "Dear," he said, "do you know what it was that nearly drove me insane after you sent me away? As soon as I thought about it, I knew no harm would come to you. He's neither a coward nor a beast. But I was afraid you'd�kill yourself."

"I never thought of it," laughed she. "I'm too healthy. You ought to build your romance round some lady with the morbid ideas that go with addled insides�the kind they write novels about�only they call it soul."

He was amused in spite of himself. "It's lucky for you," said he, "that you look like a romance. If you didn't, your way of talking would discourage terribly."

"Is lying the only romance?" said she. "Can't you enjoy the perfume of a flower unless you make a silly pretense that perfume and flower are a fairy queen and her breath?"

She went with him to the retaining wall, gave him her hand, tried to respond to his loving pressure. He got into the boat. His expression in that odorous, enchantment-like dimness thrilled her. The feeling that he was going�leaving her to face the lowering future alone�saddened her, moved her to an emotion very like the love that had so often agitated her in these very shadows. And when he murmured, "Soon�my love!" she echoed "Soon!" in a voice melodious with the meaningless, impulsive sentiment of the moment. It sent him away believing. He pushed off. She watched the boat glide deeper and deeper into the shadow. A few seconds and the darkness had effaced it. She went slowly up the lawn. Before she reached the house, Winchie was again uppermost in her thoughts; to think of Basil involved puzzling over too many problems she was not yet ready to face.

That was one of the years when the warm weather stays on and on; goes for a night, only to return with the morning sun and change the hoar frost on the grass into dew; then in late October or later drifts languorously southward through the dreamy haze of Indian summer. On an afternoon midway of this second and sweeter, if sadder, summer Courtney came out of her sitting room to the balcony to rest a moment and to watch the sun set�a dull red globe like a vast conflagration of which the autumnal mists were the smoke and steam. Winchie and Helen were playing ball on the lawn, with Helen making great pretense of being unable to catch or to hold Winchie's curves and hard straights. Winchie, about to throw, dropped the ball, jumped up and down clapping his hands, made a dash for the veranda, crying "Papa! Papa!" Next she saw Helen, in confusion, turn and go in the same direction, her delicate skin paling and flushing by turns.

In the upstairs sitting room was the seamstress who made a local journal of society gossip unnecessary; as the divorce suit had been begun and was the chief local topic, the less she saw and heard, the more what she'd circulate would sound like pure invention. Courtney went along the balcony to the hall window and entered there. Winchie had just reached the top of the stairs. "Oh, mamma�" he began, all out of breath.

"Yes, I know," said she, laying her finger on her lips. "Let's go down."

And holding him by the hand she descended. Richard and Helen were in the lake-front doorway, Richard talking, Helen obviously nervous. Courtney advanced, her hand extended. "How do you do?" said she with easy friendliness.

"No need to ask you that," replied Dick. "Or the boy, either. How he has shot up!"

"We've had a great summer and fall for growing things," said Courtney. Then to Helen: "Don't let us interrupt your game."

"Yes�of course� Come, Winchie," stammered Helen.

"Just watch me pitch, father," cried Winchie. "Jimmie's taught me to curve."

"You don't say!" exclaimed Dick with an interest whose exaggeration roused no suspicion in the boy's breast.

While Richard was watching the exhibition with such exclamations as "fine"�"that's a soaker"�"look out or you'll do up your catcher," Courtney was watching him. She found no trace of the weary, tragedy-torn misanthrope of song and story. Evidently Dick had been too busy with other things to bother about himself. Instead of travel stains, there was neatness and care and not a little fashion in his apparel. Never had she seen him so well dressed�-and in admirable taste from collar and tie to well-cut tan boots. His hair was short�the way it was becoming to his long, strong face and finely shaped head. The face was not so gaunt as in those years of close application, especially the last two years when indigestion was giving him its look of hunger and sallow ill temper. The cheeks had filled out, had bronzed, and the blood was pouring healthily along underneath. It was distinctly a happier face, too. The eyes following Winchie's elaborate contortions in imitation of the famous pitcher of the Wenona Grays had an expression of aliveness and alertness that meant interest in the world about him. He had been one of those men of no age, like monks and convicts and professional students. He was now a young man�and a handsome young man.

When he turned away from the ball game, they went to the eastern end of the veranda. She sat in the hammock, he leaned on the broad arm of a veranda chair. "Well," said he, by way of a beginning, "you see I'm back."

"You've been abroad�haven't you?"

"Paris and Switzerland. I had a grand time. Fell in with some English people and we did three passes together, and then rested and amused ourselves at St. Moritz. Then�to Paris. I never thought I'd care about eating, but the Ritz seduced me. I think of nothing else. Then�London, to get myself outfitted. I needed it badly."

What he said sounded strange enough from him, from Richard the abstraction, the embodied chemistry. The way he said it was stupefying. There was lightness; there was the sparkle that bubbles to the surface of every look and phrase of a person with a keen sense of humor. Richard had plainly come to life while he was away. Said Courtney: "I suspect you've not worked very hard this summer and fall."

"Work?" replied he, with a laugh. "Not I! It was a hard pull at first, the habit had become so strong. But I determined I'd freshen myself up. Once I got away where I could take an impartial look at things, I saw I was not only not getting the right results by such stolid, stupid grinding but was actually destroying my mind�was getting old and stale. So, I locked up the laboratory I carry round inside me, and set out to learn to live�to learn to have a good time."

"And you did?"

"Once I found congenial people. At first I was afraid I'd been stupid so long that I'd lost the power to enjoy. But it came back."

As he talked Courtney's spirits went down and down. Just why, she could not have told. She certainly wished Richard well, had no desire that he should be miserable�at least, no active desire�though, of course, she was human and would have found some satisfaction of vanity in a Richard hard hit by the discovery that his domestic life was in ruins. Still, this vanity of desire to be taken tragically was not with her the passion it is in most men and women. She was far more puzzled than piqued. She could not understand how so serious, so proud a man as he could dismiss a cataclysm thus lightly, no matter how little he cared for her. She had pictured him suffering, suffering intensely; these pictures had given her many a self-reproachful pang, and of real pain too. Now� Looking at this robust, handsome, cheerful person, well fed and well dressed, she felt she had been making a fool of herself.

"Now that I come to examine you," he was saying, "you don't look at all well."

It was a truth of which she had been uncomfortably conscious from her first glance at him. "You ought to have gone away somewhere," he went on. "It's a bad idea to stay in the same place, revolving the same set of ideas too long. Mrs. Leamington taught me that. You'd like her. Your height�much your figure�fairer skin, though�that clear healthy dead white�a lot of really beautiful black hair�the kind with the gloss that's not greasy. She certainly was interesting. I didn't even mind her love of money. She simply had to have it�needed it in her business of being always wonderfully dressed and groomed to the last hair and the last button."

Richard paused to enjoy contemplating the portrait he had painted. Courtney wished to hear more. "She was in your party?"

"She made most of the interest. She cured me of my insanity for work�gave me a wider view�made me stop being a vain ass, thinking always about my own little ambitions and worries. There's a lot that doesn't attract me in women of the world. They're extremely petty at bottom, I find. But at least they do come nearer the truth with their cynicism than we quiet people with our preposterous egotism of solemnity."

Once more her vanity winced�that he should fancy he had to go to Europe and learn of a cynical mercenary of an English woman what she herself had made the law and gospel of her life for years. How feeble her impression upon him had been! True, the only chance one has to make an impression is in the beginning of acquaintanceship; and in their beginning she had been too inexperienced, too captivated with romance�too youthful to have developed much personality. Still, all that did not change the central fact�she had been futile.

"How's the divorce coming on?" he asked abruptly.

Courtney laughed�perhaps not so genuinely as it sounded, but still with real humorous appreciation. "The beautiful English woman�a long silence�then the question about the divorce�that's significant," she explained.

"She's not the marrying kind," replied he, easily enough. "She'll stay free as long as her looks and her money hold out. Then she'll marry some rich chap and go in for society.... She was an interesting woman�a specimen, so to speak. And I owe her a great deal. She taught me a few very important things�about myself�and about women.... What a fraud this so-called education is. One half of fitting a man for life is to teach him to know men, the other half is to teach him to know women. And we actually are taught only about things�and mostly trifles or falsehoods as to them."

His manner demolished her suspicion. There might have been some sort of an affair between him and this English woman�perhaps had been. If so, it was a closed incident. "You asked about the divorce," said she: "The suit was begun, but it has gone over till the next term of court."

"Was it my fault?" he asked, apologetically. "I've missed my mail for nearly two months."

Her hands, clasped in her lap, were white at the knuckles. Her eyes, meeting his, had deep down an expression that also belied her calm manner and even voice. "I didn't want to take the last steps until we had decided about Winchie."

"Winchie," he said thoughtfully, his glance wandering to the lawn. The boy and Helen were resting now, seated at the edge of the lake. "There's where marriage differs from other business. When it goes bankrupt, children are assets that can't be liquidated.... What do you think ought to be done?"

"I admit you've got a share in him," replied she. "But you can't help seeing that he belongs with his mother."

"I do see it," he declared. "If I took him, what could I do with him? Helen'll marry before long. Then� Could there be anything worse for him than trusting him to the care of strangers? ... As for his traveling back and forth between his mother's house and his father's�that's a farce that could only end in some sort of calamity to his character.... I don't know what to say. I know I could trust you absolutely to protect him from any possible�unfortunate influences�but�" And there he halted.

She saw he was expecting her to realize that he meant the disadvantages of Basil as a stepfather. It was stupefying�simply stupefying�this calm attitude of his toward such terrible things�at least, they were things he had always regarded as terrible.

"Don't be so gloomy about it," said he, as if reading her thoughts. "I find I can think a great deal more effectively when I'm not trying to act like the best examples from fiction but am simply human and natural. Courtney, the world�at least, the intelligent people in it�have outgrown the old, ignorant, swashbuckling sort of thing. Of course, it still survives, and ignorant people and vain people still try to act on the prescriptions of yesterday�and all the literature still pretends that they are valid. But the truth is, men and women are getting enlightened. And we�you and I�are doing, not what looks best, but what is best. Winchie isn't a problem in a novel or a poem. He's an actuality. And I see plainly his chances are better with you�in any circumstances�than with me." To make sure that she should understand, he repeated, "In any circumstances."

Her eyes were full of tears. "Thank you," she said humbly. "Thank you."

He shrugged his shoulders. "For what? For not being a fool?" He swung round into the chair and leaned toward her. "There are some things we've got to say to each other. I went away to put off the saying until I was sure just where I stood. I am sure now. Do you� Shall we�begin?"

"I wish to hear whatever you wish to say," replied she. "But�is it necessary to say anything?"

He leaned back, lighted a cigarette, smoked in silence. She again studied him. That changed expression�the tense, concentrated strain gone�a sense of life, of attractive possibilities in it other than chemistry, gave him a humanness, a reality he had not had for her even in their first months of married life. "Perhaps you're right," said he, rousing himself. "Why mull over the past? And our futures lie in different directions." He noted the queer, intent look in her eyes. "What's the matter? You seem puzzled."

"Nothing. I� Nothing."

"It's the change in me�in my point of view�isn't it?"

"Your�your mind certainly seems to have changed."

"Dropped its prejudices, rather," was his reply. "There's a difference. A man's mind's himself. His prejudices are more or less external�can be sloughed off, like clothes."

That was it, she now saw. He had got rid of those prejudices. The dead hand of his grandfather was no longer heavy upon him. This man, seated there before her in the vividness of youth, was the real Richard Vaughan.

"You used to tell me the truth about myself," he went on reflectively. "I had never seriously thought about women�about the relations of men and women. I simply accepted my grandfather as gospel on those subjects. My crisis forced me to do some thinking�and I believe you'll do me the justice of admitting I never would be stupid enough to act in a crisis without trying to use the best mind I had. Well�when I got away�and thought�I saw that the whole business was my fault."

"No," protested she. "There was where I wronged you. I blamed you�myself a little�but you most. That was unjust. But let's not talk about it. The past is�the past. I wish to drop all of it except its lessons. They'll be useful in the future."

"One thing more," he said. "I want to say I'm glad of what has happened."

She simply stared at him.

"That would sound strange, I suppose, to the mob in the treadmill of conventionality," he went on, apparently not noting her expression. "But I'm grateful to�to whatever it was�fate or chance or what you please�for my awakening. But for it, what'd have become of me? Like so many men who try to be masters of their profession or business, I had let it become master of me. A little longer, and I'd have been a dust-dry, routine plodder, getting more and more useless every day. No wonder the world advances so slowly. Just look at the musty, narrow rotters who do the work. They specialize. They soon lose touch with the whole. And their minds dwindle as their natures and interests narrow."

"You're not thinking of giving up your work!" she exclaimed in dismay.

"I'm here to begin again," replied he, with his fine look of energy and persistence. "But not in the old way. Not month in and month out, like a hermit�but with some sanity�and, I'm sure, with better results. That brings me to my real reason for calling. I wished to ask if you had any objection to my living and working at the shop." As the color flamed into her face, he hurried on, "I'll keep an independent establishment in every way and bind myself not to disturb you. If you like, Helen can bring Winchie down to see me from time to time�but not unless you like."

"I'll take Winchie and go to father's," said she, painfully embarrassed. "I'd not have stopped on here, but you'll remember you made it a condition��"

"If you leave, I leave also," he rejoined. His manner was emphatic, final. "I've no intention of intruding. Please forget I said anything." He rose to leave. "I'm going to move my laboratory to Chicago or New York. A few months sooner will make no difference."

She insisted that she would go�that she preferred to go�that going was entirely agreeable to her. But in the end he convinced her he really wished her to keep on at the house, to make Winchie feel it was his home�and would leave if she even talked of leaving. "I'll arrange with Gerster's wife over at the farm to feed me and keep the apartment in order. So, everything will go on just as if I were a thousand miles away."

When he went�like a caller after a pleasant hour�she was glad because she wished to be alone, free to shut herself in her room with the many strange things he had given her to think about�the many startling things. But just as she got the seamstress off for home, in came Helen, hoping that Courtney would talk of the amazing call, determined to talk of it herself, anyhow. "Forgive me for asking, Courtney," said she. "But I simply must. You've decided to give up the divorce, haven't you?"

The emerald eyes looked amused astonishment. "Why?" she asked.

"You and he are just�just as you always were."

"Indeed we're not!" exclaimed she. "Absolutely different."

"But I never saw two people friendlier��"

"That's it. That's precisely it. Now that we've freed each other, I can like him and he can like me."

Helen was not hearing. Suddenly she burst out: "Oh, Courtney! Courtney! What will become of you! You'll have no money�for you're not asking alimony. You'll only have to marry again." Courtney frowned at this frank statement of the problem she was putting off. "You know you'll have to marry again," pursued Helen, "and it isn't likely you'll do as well. Men don't care for widows of any kind�least of all, grass widows. They want a fresh, unspoiled woman."

Courtney's eyes danced. "The truth from Helen�at last!"

But Helen was unabashed. Because she was taller and graver than Courtney, she felt older and wiser. And because she loved Courtney, she felt she must do all in her power to avert the impending catastrophe through this divorce madness. "I do believe you've got no common sense at all!" she cried. "You talk wise enough�sometimes. But when it comes to acting� Courtney, women brought up as we've been simply have to be supported. And it's our right!"

"Is it?" said Courtney.

"Aren't we ladies? But you've never been poor. You don't realize what you've got to face. You don't realize it's your position as Richard's wife that makes everybody act so sweetly and respectfully toward you�and that makes you feel secure."

"Oh, yes, I do," said Courtney gravely. "I realize it so keenly that I'm afraid of myself�afraid I'll be tempted to do something contemptible. When I married, I had the excuse that I believed I loved and was loved and it's the custom for a man to throw in support with his love. But if I married again�feeling as I do�I'd�" She flung out her arms. "I don't want to think about it!" she cried. "I'll not do it! I'll not do it!"

Helen could not understand. And she was glad she couldn't, for she felt that such ideas, whatever they were, did not make for feminine comfort. She had listened impatiently to Courtney. She now brought the conversation back to the only point worth considering. "But you've got to marry," said she.

"No!" Courtney had the expression of fire and purpose that makes a small person seem tall. "There's an alternative. I can do for myself."

"Do what?" demanded Helen. She waited for a reply�in vain�then went on: "What could you do that anybody would pay for? Besides�you, a lady, couldn't ask for work. You don't know how I suffered when I thought I was going to have to do it. And you'd suffer even more�having occupied the position you have. What a come down!"

"Don't!" commanded Courtney. "Helen, you are tempting me."

"I'm talking the sense to you that you've so often talked to me," Helen insisted. "Unless we women have got money of our own or a man with an income back of us, we're� I'd hate to confess the truth even to another woman."

Courtney nodded slowly several times, then asked, "Don't you think it ought to be changed?"

"No!" cried Helen vehemently. "It's what God intended. The penalty of being a man is to have to work. The penalty of being a lady, and refined and dainty and untouched by low, vulgar things, is to have to be a dependent. And it's not such a heavy penalty, either. Even if one doesn't care much about the man, one isn't inflicted with him all the time."

At these plain truths wrenched by loving anxiety from the deepest and securest of hiding places, Courtney's eyes danced. She'd have laughed outright, had not Helen been so terribly in earnest�Helen without a sense of humor. However she did venture to say: "The chief equipments of a lady are a stone instead of a heart and a hide instead of a skin�is that it?"

But Helen did not see the ironic comment on her philosophy. "Well," she went on in her serious, stolid way, "I don't want responsibility. And I like to take my ease�and to have to do only things it doesn't much matter if they go undone. We women are different from men. Our self-respect's in a different direction.... Dear, can't I do something to help you?"

Courtney kissed her penitently. She always felt ashamed after poking fun at Helen whose heart was so genuinely good and kind. "Nothing, thanks. The divorce must go on. You don't understand, Helen. Believe me, if I knew that sheer misery was waiting for me, as soon as I was free, I'd still go on."

"Let me talk to Richard. I can do it tactfully."

In her alarm at this Courtney caught hold of Helen. "If you did such a thing, you'd be doing me the greatest possible injury."

"Don't be afraid, dear. I'd not meddle. But�" She looked appealingly at Courtney�"please, dear�do let me!"

"Richard and I would both resent it equally."

"But what will become of you!"

Her tone was so forlorn that Courtney had to laugh. "Why, I'm barely twenty-five�and I know a lot about several things�and could learn more."

"Don't talk that way!" cried Helen, tearful. "It makes me shiver. It sounds so coarse and common." She looked at Courtney as if doubtful of her sanity. "I can't make you out. It isn't natural for a lady bred and born, as you are, to say such things."

"You can't believe a real lady could have ideas of self-respect? Well, I'll admit they do seem out of place in my head�and give me awful sinkings at the heart. And�" There was a mocking smile round Courtney's lips, a far-away look in her eyes�"Sometimes I'm haunted by a horrible dread that I'm merely�bluffing."

Helen saw only the smile. "I'm sure you are, you dear, sweet, fascinating child!" cried she, greatly consoled and cheered.

"Don't be too sure!" warned Courtney, the smile fading.

But Helen was delighted to see that she said it half heartedly�that some effect had been produced by the grewsome reminders of the difference between independence as a dream or a vague longing and independence in the grisly reality of the working out.