Part 41

It was Standish's gaze that brought to me sudden realization that I, too, had a part in the drama. Until I found his steady stare on me I had felt apart from the play that he and Dick and Leila were going through, but with his urgent glare I awoke into knowledge that the message he had taken for Dick held for me the same significance that Leila had thought it bore for her. Like a stab from a knife came the thought that this girl--whoever she was--had, in her dying, done what she had not done in life, taken Dick Allport from me. There went over me numbing waves of a great sense of loss, bearing me out on an ocean of oblivion. Against these I fought desperately to hold myself somewhere near the shore of sensibility. As if I were beholding him from a great distance, I could see Dick standing in the lamplight in front of Leila Burton. Understanding of how dear he was to me, of how vitally part of me he had grown in the years through which I had loved him--sometimes lightly, sometimes stormily, but always faithfully--beaconed me inshore; and the plank of faith in him, faith that held in itself something of forgiving charity, floated out to succor my drowning soul. I moved across the room while Standish Burton kept his unwinking gaze upon me, and Leila never looked up from the piano. I had come beside Dick before he heard me.

He looked at me as if he had only just then remembered that I was there. Into his eyes flashed a look of poignant remorse. He shrank back from me a little as I touched his hand, and I turned to Leila, who had not stirred from the place where she had listened to Standish's cry when he took the fateful message. "We are going," I said, "to do what we can--for her."

She moved then to look at me, and I saw that her eyes held not the compassion I had feared, but a strange speculativeness, as if she questioned what I knew rather than what I felt. Their contemplating quiet somehow disturbed me more than had her husband's flashlight scrutiny, and with eyes suddenly blinded and throat drawn tight with terror I took my way beside Dick Allport out from the soft lights of the Burtons' house into the darkness of the night.

Outside we paused a moment, waiting for a cab. For the first time since he had told Leila of Bessie Lowe, Dick spoke to me. "I think," he said, "that it would be just as well if you didn't come."

"I must," I told him, "It isn't curiosity. You understand that, don't you? It is simply that this is the time for me to stand by you, if ever I shall do it, Dick."

"I don't deserve it." There was a break in his voice. "But I shall try to, my dear. I can't promise you much, but I can promise you that."

Down the brightness of Piccadilly into the fuller glow of Regent Street we rode without speech. Somewhere below the Circus we turned aside and went through dim cañons of houses that opened a way past the Museum and let us into Bloomsbury. There in a wilderness of cheap hotels and lodging-houses we found the Meynard.

A gas lamp was flaring in the hall when the porter admitted us. At a desk set under the stairway a pale-faced clerk awaited us with staring insolence that shifted to annoyance when Dick asked him if we might go to Bessie Lowe's room. "No," he said, abruptly. "The officers won't let any one in there. They've taken her to the undertaker's."

He gave us the location of the place with a scorn that sent us out in haste. I, at least, felt a sense of relief that I did not have to go up to the place where this unknown girl had thrown away the greatest gift. As we walked through the poorly lighted streets toward the Tottenham Court Road I felt for the first time a surge of that emotion that Leila Burton had voiced, a pity for the dead girl. And yet, stealing a look at Dick as he walked onward quietly, sadly, but with a dignity that lifted him above the sordidness of the circumstances, I felt that I could not blame him as I should. It was London, I thought, and life that had tightened the rope on the girl.

Strangely I felt a lightness of relief in the realization that the catastrophe having come, was not really as terrible as it had seemed back there in Leila's room. It was an old story that many women had conned, and since, after all, Dick Allport was yet young, and my own, I condoned the sin for the sake of the sinner; and yet, even as I held the thought close to my aching heart, I felt that I was somehow letting slip from my shoulders the cross that had been laid upon them, the cross that I should have borne, the burden of shame and sorrow for the wrong that the man I loved had done to the girl who had died for love of him.

The place where she lay, a gruesome establishment set in behind that highway of reeking cheapness, the Tottenham Court Road, was very quiet when we entered. A black-garbed man came to meet us from a room in which we saw two tall candles burning. Dick spoke to him sharply, asking if any one had come to look after the dead girl.

"No one with authority," the man whined--"just a girl as lived with her off and on."

He stood, rubbing his hands together as Dick went into hurried details with him, and I went past them into the room where the candles burned. For an instant, as I stood at the door, I had the desire to run away from it all, but I pulled myself together and went over to the place where lay the girl they had called Bessie Lowe.

I had drawn back the sheet and was standing looking down at the white face when I heard a sob in the room. I replaced the covering and turned to see in the corner the shadowy form of a woman whose eyes blazed at me out of the dark. While I hesitated, wondering if this were the girl who had lived occasionally with Bessie Lowe, she came closer, staring at me with scornful hate. Miserably thin, wretchedly nervous as she was, she had donned for the nonce a mantle of dignity that she seemed to be trailing as she approached, glaring at me with furious resentment. "So you thought as how you'd come here," she demanded of me, her crimsoned face close to my own, "to see what she was like, to see what sort of a girl had him before you took him away from her? Well, I'll tell you something, and you can forget it or remember it, as you like. Bessie Lowe was a good girl until she ran into him, and she'd have stayed good, I tell you, if he'd let her alone. She was a fool, though, and she thought that he'd marry her some day--and all the time he was only waiting until you'd take him! You never think of our kind, do you, when you're living out your lives, wondering if you care enough to marry the men who're worshipping you while they're playing with us? Well, perhaps it won't be anything to you, but, all the same, there's some kind of a God, and if He's just He'll punish you when He punishes Standish Burton!"

"But I--" I gasped. "Did you think that I--?"

"Aren't you his wife?" She came near to me, peering at me in the flickering candle-light. "Aren't you Standish Burton's wife?"

"No," I said.

"Oh, well"--she shrugged--"you're her sort, and it'll come to the same thing in the end."

She slouched back to the corner, all anger gone from her. Outside I heard Dick's voice, low, decisive. Swiftly I followed the girl. "You must tell me," I pleaded with her, "if she did it because of Standish Burton."

"I thought everybody knew that," she said, "even his wife. What's it to you, if you're not that?"

"Nothing," I replied, but I knew, as I stood where she kept vigil with Bessie Lowe, that I lied. For I saw the truth in a lightning-flash; and I knew, as I had not known when Dick perjured himself in Leila's music-room, that I had come to the place of ultimate understanding, for I realized that not a dead girl, but a living woman, had come between us. Not Bessie Lowe, but Leila Burton, lifted the sword at the gateway of my paradise.

With the poignancy of a poisoned arrow reality came to me. Because Dick had loved Leila Burton he had laid his bond with me on the altar of his chivalry. For her sake he had sacrificed me to the hurt to which Standish would not sacrifice her. And the joke of it--the pity of it was that she hadn't believed them! But because she was Burton's wife, because it was too late for facing of the truth, she had pretended to believe Dick; and she had known, she must have known, that he had lied to her because he loved her.

The humiliation of that knowledge beat down on me, battering me with such blows as I had not felt in my belief that Dick had not been true to me in his affair with this poor girl. Her rivalry, living or dead, I could have endured and overcome--for no Bessie Lowe could ever have won from Dick, as she could never have given to him, that thing which was mine. But against Leila Burton I could not stand, for she was of my world, of my own people, and the crown a man would give to her was the one he must take from me.

There in that shabby place I buried my idols. Not I, but a power beyond me, held the stone on which was written commandment for me. By the light of the candles above Bessie Lowe I knew that I should not marry Dick Allport.

I found him waiting for me at the doorway. I think that he knew then that the light of our guiding lantern had flickered out, but he said nothing. We crossed the garishly bright road and went in silence through quiet streets. Like children afraid of the dark we went through the strange ways of the city, two lonely stragglers from the procession of love, who, with our own dreams ended, saw clearer the world's wild pursuit of the fleeing vision.

We had wandered back into our own land when, in front of the darkened Oratory and almost under the shadow of Leila Burton's home, there came to us through the soft darkness the ominous plea that heralds summer into town. Out of the shadows an old woman, bent and shriveled, leaned toward us. "Get yer lavender tonight," she pleaded. "'Tis the first of the crop, m'lidy."

"That means--" Dick Allport began as I paused to buy.

I fastened the sprigs at my belt, then looked up at the distant stars, since I could not yet bear to look at him. "It means the end of the season," I said, "when the lavender comes to London."

THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY FOR 1917

ADDRESSES OF AMERICAN MAGAZINES PUBLISHING SHORT STORIES

NOTE. _This address list does not aim to be complete, but is based simply on the magazines which I have considered for this volume._

Ainslee's Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City. All-Story Weekly, 8 West 40th Street, New York City. American Magazine, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City. Art World, 2 West 45th Street, New York City. Atlantic Monthly, 3 Park Street, Boston, Mass. Bellman, 118 South 6th Street, Minneapolis, Minn. Black Cat, Salem, Mass.

## Bookman, 443 Fourth Avenue, New York City.

Boston Evening Transcript, 324 Washington Street, Boston, Mass. Century Magazine, 353 Fourth Avenue, New York City. Collier's Weekly, 416 West 13th Street, New York City. Cosmopolitan Magazine, 119 West 40th Street, New York City. Delineator, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City. Detective Story Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City. Everybody's Magazine, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City. Every Week, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City. Forum, 286 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Good Housekeeping, 119 West 40th Street, New York City. Harper's Bazar, 119 West 40th Street, New York City. Harper's Magazine, Franklin Square, New York City. Hearst's Magazine, 119 West 40th Street, New York City. Illustrated Sunday Magazine, 193 Main Street, Buffalo, N. Y. Ladies' Home Journal, Independence Square, Philadelphia, Pa. Live Stories, 35 West 39th Street, New York City. McCall's Magazine, 236 West 37th Street, New York City. McClure's Magazine, 251 Fourth Avenue, New York City. Metropolitan Magazine, 432 Fourth Avenue, New York City. Midland, Moorhead, Minn. Milestones, Akron, Ohio. Munsey's Magazine, 8 West 40th Street, New York City. Outlook, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City. Pagan, 174 Centre Street, New York City. Parisienne, Printing Crafts Building, 461 Eighth Avenue, New York City. Pearson's Magazine, 34 Union Square, New York City. Pictorial Review, 216 West 39th Street, New York City. Queen's Work, 3200 Russell Avenue, St. Louis, Mo. Reedy's Mirror, Syndicate Trust Building, St. Louis, Mo. Saturday Evening Post, Independence Square, Philadelphia, Pa. Scribner's Magazine, 597 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Short Stories, Garden City, Long Island, N. Y. Smart Set, Printing Crafts Building, New York City. Snappy Stories, 35 West 39th Street, New York City. Southern Woman's Magazine, American Building, Nashville, Tenn. Stratford Journal, 32 Oliver Street, Boston, Mass. Sunset Magazine, 460 Fourth Street, San Francisco, Cal. To-day's Housewife, 461 Fourth Avenue, New York City. Top-Notch Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City. Touchstone, 118 East 30th Street, New York City. Woman's Home Companion, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City. Woman's World, 107 So. Clinton Street, Chicago, Ill. Youth's Companion, St. Paul Street, Boston, Mass.

THE BIOGRAPHICAL ROLL OF HONOR OF AMERICAN SHORT STORIES FOR 1917

NOTE. _Only stories by American authors are listed. The best sixty-three stories are indicated by an asterisk before the title of the story. The index figures 1, 2, and 3 prefixed to the name of the author indicate that his work has been included in the Rolls of Honor for 1914, 1915, and 1916 respectively._

"AMID, JOHN." (M. M. STEARNS.) Born at West Hartford, Conn., 1884. Lived in New England at Hartford, South Dartmouth, Mass., and Randolph, N. H., until 1903, with the exception of two years abroad. Threatened with blindness when fifteen years old, and gave up school work, but later resumed studies, graduating from Stanford University, 1906. Has been

## active in newspaper work in Los Angeles. Has since developed water,

broken horses, and set out lemon trees. Married. Three children. Good mechanic. Musical. Fond of boating and chess. Authority on turkey raising. At present associate scenario editor of the American Film Company, Santa Barbara, Cal.

Professor, A.

(3) ANDERSON, SHERWOOD. Born in Camden, Ohio. Primary school education. Newsboy until he became strong enough to work; then a day laborer. With American army in Cuban campaign. Studied for a few months at college, Springfield, Ohio. Now an advertising writer. Author of "Windy McPherson's Son" and "Marching Men." Has three novels, three books of short stories, and book of songs unpublished. First short story published, "The Rabbit-pen," Harper's Magazine, July, 1914. Lives in Chicago.

"Mother." Thinker, The. Untold Lie, The.

(3) ANDREWS, MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN. Born at Mobile, Ala. While still a baby, moved with her parents to Lexington, Ky., where she lived until about 1880. Married W. S. Andrews, 1884, now Justice Supreme Court of New York. Chief interests: horseback riding, shooting, and fishing. Author of "The Marshal," "The Enchanted Forest," "The Three Things," "The Good Samaritan," "The Perfect Tribute," "Bob and the Guides," "The Militants," "The Eternal Feminine," "The Eternal Masculine," "The Courage of the Commonplace," "The Lifted Bandage," "Counsel Assigned," "Better Treasure," and "Old Glory." First short story, "Crowned with Glory and Honor," Scribner's Magazine, February, 1902. Resides in Syracuse, N. Y.

Blood Brothers. Return of K. of K., The.

(3) BABCOCK, EDWINA STANTON. Born at Nyack, N. Y. One of eleven children. Academic experience up to age of twenty-three, one year in private school. Attended extension classes in English, Teachers' College, Columbia University. Author "Greek Wayfarers," a volume of verse. First short story, "The Diary of a Cat," Harper's Magazine, August, 1904. Her deepest enthusiasms are children, the mountains of Greece, the French Theatre, and the Irish imagination. She lives at Nyack, N. Y., and Nantucket, Mass.

*Excursion, The.

BARNARD, FLOY TOLBERT. Born in Hunter, Ohio, 1879. High school education in Perry, Iowa. Married Dr. Leslie O. Barnard, 1902. Went West, 1905. Descendant of Rouget de Lisle, author of the "Marseillaise," through her mother. Her great-grandfather dropped the "de" to please a Quaker girl, who would not otherwise marry him, so opposed was she to the French, and to a name so associated with war. Her first story, "--Nor the Smell of Fire," appeared in Young's Magazine February, 1915. Lives in Seattle, Wash.

Surprise in Perspective, A.

BEER, THOMAS. Born in 1889, Council Bluffs, Iowa. Educated at MacKenzie School, Dobbs Ferry, N. Y., Yale College (1911), Columbia Law School. Now in National army. First story, "The Brothers," Century, February, 1917. Chief interest: the theatre. Lives at Yonkers, N. Y.

*Brothers, The. *Onnie.

(3) BOTTOME, PHYLLIS. Born of American parents. Now resident in England. Author of "The Derelict," "The Second Fiddle," and "The Dark Tower."

*Ironstone.

"BRECK, JOHN." (ELIZABETH C. A. SMITH.) Lives in Grosse Isle, Mich.

*From Hungary.

(3) BROOKS, ALDEN. Author of "The Fighting Men." Lives in Paris. Now in the American army in France.

Three Slavs, The.

(23) BROWN, ALICE. Born at Hampton Falls, N. H., 1857. Graduated from Robinson Seminary, Exeter, N. H., 1876. Author "Fools of Nature," "Meadow-Grass," "The Road to Castaly," "The Day of His Youth," "Tiverton Tales," "King's End," "Margaret Warrener," "The Mannerings," "High Noon," "Paradise," "The County Road," "The Court of Love," "Rose MacLeod," "The Story of Thyrza," "Country Neighbors," "John Winterbourne's Family," "The One-Footed Fairy," "The Secret of the Clan," "Vanishing Points," "Robin Hood's Barn," "My Love and I," "Children of Earth," "The Prisoner," "Bromley Neighbourhood," and other books. Lives in Boston.

*Flying Teuton, The. Nemesis.

(1) BURT, MAXWELL STRUTHERS. Born in Philadelphia, 1882. Educated at Princeton, 1904, and at Merton College, Oxford. Author of "In the High Hills." Instructor of English at Princeton for two years. Then went West, settling in Jackson Hole, Wyo., where he is senior partner of a cattle ranch. He is now in the Signal Corps, Aviation Section, U. S. Army. First story, "The Water-Hole," Scribner's Magazine, July, 1915 (reprinted in "The Best Short Stories of 1915").

*Closed Doors. *Cup of Tea, A. Glory of the Wild Green Earth, The. John O'May. Le Panache.

(13) BUZZELL, FRANCIS. Born in Romeo, Mich., 1882. His father was editor of the Romeo Hydrant, which Mr. Buzzell mentions in his Almont stories as the "Almont Hydrant." Moved when he was seven years old to Port Huron, Mich. Backward student. Educated in private school, and one year in Port Huron High School and Business College. Worked in railroad yards, and at age of nineteen as reporter on Port Huron Herald. At twenty-one became Chicago newspaper reporter, and later, associate editor, Popular Mechanics. In 1912 began literary career by publishing two poems in Poetry. Went to New York determined to become a great poet, and stayed there nine months. Married Miriam Kiper and returned to Chicago. Now a chief petty officer, U. S. N., and associate editor of Great Lakes Recruit. Lives in Lake Bluff, Ill.

*Lonely Places. *Long Vacation, The.

(3) CAMPBELL, FLETA. (_See Roll of Honor for 1916 under_ SPRINGER, FLETA CAMPBELL.) Born in Newton, Kan., 1886, moved to Oklahoma, 1889. Educated in common schools of the frontier, no high school, and a year and a half preparatory school, University of Oklahoma. Lived in Texas and California. First story, "Solitude," Harper's Magazine, March, 1912. Lives in New York City.

*Mistress, The.

CEDERSCHIÖLD, GUNNAR.

*Foundling, The.

CHAMBERLAIN, GEORGE AGNEW. Born of American parents, São Paulo, Brazil, 1879. Educated Lawrenceville School, N. J., and Princeton. Unmarried. In consular service since 1904. Now American Consul at Lourenço Marquez, Portuguese East Africa.

Man Who Went Back, The.

CLEGHORN, SARAH NORCLIFFE. Born at Norfolk, Va., 1876. Educated at Burr and Burton Seminary, Manchester, Vt., an old country co-educational school; and one year at Radcliffe. Writer and tutor by profession. Chief interests are anti-vivisection, socialism, and above all, pacifism of the "extreme" kind. She likes best of everything in the world to go on a picnic with plenty of children. First short story, "The Mellen Idolatry," Delineator, about 1900. Author of "A Turnpike Lady," "The Spinster," "Fellow Captains" (with Dorothy Canfield), and "Portraits and Protests." Lives in Manchester, Vt.

"Mr. Charles Raleigh Rawdon, Ma'am."

(23) COBB, IRVIN SHREWSBURY. Born at Paducah, Ky., 1876. Education limited to attendance of public and private schools up to age of sixteen. Reporter and cartoonist for several years; magazine contributor since 1910. Chief interests, outdoor life and travel. First short story, "The Escape of Mr. Trimm," Saturday Evening Post, November, 1910. Author of "Back Home," "Cobb's Anatomy," "The Escape of Mr. Trimm," "Cobb's Bill of Fare," "Roughing It de Luxe," "Europe Revised," "Paths of Glory," "Speaking of Operations," "Local Color," "Fibble, D. D.," "Old Judge Priest," "Speaking of Prussians," "Those Times and These," and "'Twixt the Bluff and the Sound." Lives within commuting distance of New York City.

*Boys Will Be Boys. Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom. *Family Tree, The. *Quality Folks.

(3) CONNOLLY, JAMES BRENDAN. Born at South Boston, Mass. Education, parochial and public schools of Boston and a few months in Harvard. Married Elizabeth F. Hurley, 1904. Clerk, inspector, and surveyor with U. S. Engineering Corps, Savannah, 1892-95. Won first Olympic championship of modern times at Athens, 1896. Served in Cuban campaign and in U. S. Navy, 1907-08. Progressive candidate for Congress, 1912. Member National Institute of Arts and Letters. Author "Jeb Hutton," "Out of Gloucester," "The Seiners," "The Deep Sea's Toll," "The Crested Seas," "An Olympic Victor," "Open Water," "Wide Courses," "Sonnie Boy's People," "The Trawler," "Head Winds," and "Running Free." Lives in Boston.

Breath o' Dawn.

(2) COWDERY, ALICE. Born in San Francisco. Graduate of Leland Stanford University. First short story, "Gallant Age," Harper's Magazine, September, 1914. Lives in California.

Robert.

CRABBE, BERTHA HELEN. Born in 1887 in Coxsackie, N. Y. Her father moved his family to Rockaway Beach, L. I., in 1888, when it was little more than an isolated fishing-station. It was her good fortune to live among the novel conditions attending the rapid growth of this pioneer village, and to be surrounded by those interesting and widely varying types of people who are drawn to a city-in-the-making. Educated in public schools of the Rockaways, and at a boarding school in Tarrytown, N. Y. Student of painting. First story published in 1913 in a magazine of the Munsey group. Lives in Far Rockaway.

Once in a Lifetime.

DOBIE, CHARLES CALDWELL. Born in San Francisco, 1881. Education; grammar school and seventeen years' supplementary schooling in University of Hard Knocks. In fire insurance business for nearly twenty years. First story, "An Invasion," San Francisco Argonaut, Oct. 8, 1910. Gave up business, 1916, to devote himself to literature. Lives in San Francisco.

Empty Pistol, The. Gifts, The. *Laughter. *Our Dog.

DODGE, MABEL.

Farmhands.