XXI.

Lord Farquhart's imprisonment, his trial, his escape, had suffered the fate of all nine day wonders. There were some busybodies in London who occasionally commented on the fact that the Black Devil no longer frequented the highways, but they were answered by others who declared that, doubtless, the gentleman was otherwise amused. And those who commented and those who answered might and might not have had double meanings in their words.

As it happened, Lord Farquhart was otherwise engaged. His marriage to the Lady Barbara had been solemnized quite simply down at Gordon's Court, and Lord and Lady Farquhart were enjoying a honeymoon on the continent. Harry Ashley was balked not only of his lady but also of his revenge, and his own black looks seemed to encounter naught save black looks in others, so he had taken himself out of the way. No one knew or cared whither.

Otherwise, the life and gossip of the town had returned to its wonted serenity. Everyone was moving on quietly and calmly in dead level ruts save Cecil Lindley. He found serenity in nothing. He could do nothing quietly or calmly. Twice he had communicated directly with his cousin, Mistress Judith, and twice she had returned his communications unread. In a personal interview with his uncle, Master James Ogilvie, he fared no better. Judith's father shook his head over Judith's obstinacy, but declared he could not shake her will.

There seemed nothing in all the world for Lindley to do save to wander back and forth on the roads that lay between Ogilvie's woods and London, hoping to meet thereon some chance that would lead him to his lady's feet or something that would open his lady's heart to him. And then, quite suddenly, when he had almost given up hope of ever winning word with her or look from her, he received a note written in her round, clerkly hand, saying that she would meet him at two o'clock of the afternoon of Thursday, the twentieth day of November, at the tavern known as The Jolly Grig, the tavern hosted by Marmaduke Bass.

As it happened, by chance or by Mistress Judith's own will, the lady was first at the inn. The room was quite empty and deserted. The hour named for the tryst savored little of conviviality. The rotund innkeeper slumbered peacefully in front of his great hearth, and small patches of November sunshine lay on the floor, while merry November motes danced in the yellow beams.

Johan, the player's boy, had said that Mistress Judith was no beauty; but no one in all England would have agreed with that verdict had they seen her lightly poised on the threshold of the old inn, the gray plumes of her high crowned riding hat nodding somewhat familiarly to the motes in the sunshine. Her gray velvet riding skirt was lifted high enough to reveal her dainty riding boots; her hair, bright and burnished as a fox's coat, fell in curls about her shoulders, and mischief gleamed from her tawny eyes, even as mischief parted her red lips over teeth as white as pearl. It almost seemed as though she were about to cross the room on tiptoe, and yet she stopped full in the doorway, sniffing the air with dainty nostrils, before she turned back to meet her father, who followed close on her footsteps.

"Faugh!" she cried, shrugging her shoulders, holding a kerchief to her nose. "Why, the place reeks of wine and musty ale. A pretty place, I must say, for a lover's tryst."

"But, Judith, my love," remonstrated her father, "the place is of your own choosing. You stated that 'twas here you'd meet your cousin Lindley, and nowhere else. Surely you're not going to blame him if a tavern reeks of a tavern's holdings."

"In truth, I fancy I'll blame my cousin Lindley for whatsoever I choose to blame him," answered the girl, her small mouth seeming but a scarlet line over her dainty chin, under her tilting nose. She was still standing in the black frame of the doorway, her merry eyes noting each detail of the room within, still excluding her father from the place.

"I hope, Judith, my dear, as I've said a hundred times, that you've not induced your cousin to meet you here merely that you may flout him." The words evidently cost Master Ogilvie great effort. "For my sake----"

"Flout him!" laughed the girl. "Flout my cousin Lindley!" Then her voice grew suddenly serious. Turning, she put both hands caressingly on her father's shoulders. "Let us pray Heaven, rather, that there be no flouting on either side!" She bent her head slightly and kissed him on either cheek. Then her serious mood fled as quickly as it had come. "Though I'm in no way bound to give my reason for choosing a wayside inn for this meeting with my cousin--you'll admit, sir, that I'm not bound so to do? Well, I've no objection to telling you that I meet him here so that, if I like him not, I can leave him on the instant. If I had him come to my own house, if I met him anywhere save on the common ground of a public place, and liked him not, or saw that he liked me not at all--why, there would be certain courtesies due from a lady to a gentleman, and I choose not to be held by those. And--and I may have had another reason for choosing The Jolly Grig, and then--I may not. But I think, sir, that the innkeeper solicits your attention."

Marmaduke Bass had, for several moments, been hovering officiously in the wake of Master James Ogilvie.

"It's many a day since I've seen your honor at The Jolly Grig," murmured Marmaduke, with a certain obsequious familiarity that he reserved for old and well-known patrons.

"Ay, I've had little time for jollity this many a year," agreed Master Ogilvie, with a ponderous wink behind his daughter's back. "My hands and my head have been full."

Judith's small nose was still sniffing the air while she moved lightly about the long, dark room.

"I--I like not the smell of your place, Master--Master----"

"'Tis Marmaduke Bass, my love," interrupted her father.

"Ah, yes," she assented. "I'd forgotten for the moment. This hearth has an air of comfort, though, and as for this chair----" She had seated herself in the chair that fronted Marmaduke's settle. "Ah, Master Bass, I should say that your chair would induce sleep." She yawned luxuriously, and her feet, in their dainty riding boots, were stretched over far in front of her for a well-brought-up damsel. But it must not be forgotten that Mistress Judith Ogilvie had been brought up quite apart from other girls, quite without a woman's care. "If I were only a man, now," she continued, "I'd call for a glass of--what would I ask for, Master Bass? Would it be Geldino's sherris or Canary Malmsey, or would I have to content myself with a royal port lately brought from France?" She sprang to her feet, laughing gayly, while old Marmaduke scratched his head, wondering of what her words reminded him. She touched his shoulder lightly and added: "If my father calls for wine, later--later, mind you, we'll have the sherris, Geldino's own."

Her words and Marmaduke's efforts to collect his thoughts were interrupted here by the clatter of horse's hoofs in the court. The next instant Lindley was entering the room.

"I'm not late?" he cried. "Surely, I'm not late?"

"No, my boy, 'tis not yet two," Master Ogilvie answered, hurriedly, but Judith answered nothing. She still stood in front of the deep hearth. "Come, come, Judith, girl," cried her father, "surely you need no introduction to Cecil Lindley?"

"No, surely I know my cousin well." The girl's voice fell soft and full of singing notes as a meadow lark's. "But I think he questions if he knows me."

Her brown eyes were on a level with his, and he was remembering at that instant that Johan had said Mistress Judith's lips would be level with his. Ay, they were level with his, and they were near his, too, for she had come straight to him and given him both her hands.

"Judith!"

That was all he said, and it seemed to the girl that he drew back, away from her. And possibly he did, for he knew that he must not draw her close, not yet, oh, not yet, anyway.

And after he had spoken that one word, after he had said her name, he seemed to find no words to offer her, and she looked for none. He still held her hands, however, and she still looked straight and deep into his eyes.

Once the red line of her mouth widened into a smile, once it twisted into a mutinous knot. But she would not speak, nor would she help him to find words.

Master Ogilvie and Marmaduke Bass had passed into the room behind the hearth. The girl and the man were alone.

"You are as familiar to me as my own self, Judith," he said at last. "It seems to me that I have known you always, that we have never been apart."

"And even to me, we seem not quite strangers," answered the soft, singing voice that held the meadow lark's notes.

"You wrote me that love lay all in the chance of meeting, Judith!" The man's voice was tremulous with desire.

"Ay, so I believe it does," she answered, her eyes falling for an instant before his.

"You said that you might meet me and find me the man of your heart's desire, Judith."

"Well, if love lies in chance, why might I not chance to love you?" Her words were brave, her eyes were again steady, were again deep in his, but the red line of her mouth was tremulous.

"When will you know, when will you tell me that I am the man of your heart's desire, Judith? I--I love you, Judith."

"Must I tell you unasked? Might you not ask me now and see?"

Her white lids drooped over her tawny eyes, and just for an instant the red lips that were level with his met his.

But suddenly the girl drew back, withdrew her hands from his. She had not meant to yield so easily. She had not meant to give so much. She had not meant to yield at all until Cecil knew--until he knew--why, certain things that he must know before he could take what she so longed to give.

"I--I must speak, my cousin, there is something I must tell you," she faltered, and no one would have known the trembling voice for that of Mistress Judith Ogilvie.

"Ah, sweetheart, speak, speak all you will," cried Lindley. "Your voice is music in my ears. Say that you love me, say it over and over, for whatever else you say, whatever else you tell me, that is all I'll hear."

"Nay, but, Master Lindley----"

Cecil's brain sprang to the sound, and all at once he seemed to recognize a perfume familiar, yet all unfamiliar.

But then there fell upon their ears a clash of swords in the court. Lindley and the girl, standing near the window, were thrust aside by Master Ogilvie and the innkeeper.

"Mr. Ashley and his servant are quartered here," sputtered the latter, "and like as not 'tis one of them. The man's as quarrelsome as his master."

"_Aie!_" cried Judith, suddenly, "'tis Johan, the player's boy, and Johan cannot fight. He will be killed! Stop it, good Marmaduke. Have a care, boy! Protect yourself! Hit under! Ay, now, to the left! 'Fend yourself, Johan!"

"But if 'tis Johan, the player's boy," cried Lindley, "he needs no instructions. He's master of the art of fighting."

But Judith was heedless of the meaning in his words.

"He knows not one end of the sword from t'other," she cried, impetuously, the hot blood in her cheeks. Leaning far from the window, it seemed almost as though she fought with Johan's sword, so fast her instructions followed one the other, so exactly her motions portrayed what he should do.

The fight in the yard was summarily stopped by the intervention of Marmaduke and Master Ogilvie. Then Judith, drawing back into the room, met Lindley's eyes for just a second.

"Ah, what have I done?" she cried.

"Oh, Judith, Judith!" he exclaimed. "Johan, Johan, and I never for an instant knew it!"

"Ay, Johan, the player's boy," she answered. The words were almost a sob, and yet Lindley heard the same tremulous laugh that had rung through the woods the night when Johan had killed the highwayman. "Johan, the player's boy, and Judith, the play actor!"

"But----"

"No, there is no but," she answered, quickly. "'Twas that, too, that I was trying to tell you. But I've been Johan to you for all this time, though I've had to play so many parts. And love did lie in the chance of meeting, too. I loved you when first I laid eyes on you, when I lay feigning sleep in that chair by the hearth, when Lord Farquhart entertained his guests, when you took my part and begged that I might be let to sleep, when you vouched for my conscience. And I think my conscience should have wakened then, but it did not. And I loved you even more that same night when we rode through the moonlit roads together, when you vowed to win Judith's love in spite of Judith's hate. See, I've the golden crown you threw to Johan to bind your bargain with him." She drew from her bosom the golden piece of money strung on a slender chain.

Her words had poured forth so tumultuously that Lindley had found no chance to interrupt. Now he said, almost mechanically, the first words that had occurred to him.

"You were the lad asleep in the chair that night?" He was holding her close, as though she might escape him.

"Ye-es," she answered, faintly, "and--and, oh, Cecil, shall I tell you all? I was Johan all the time, you know. You only saw the real Johan twice; once that night at the edge of our woods, when he told you that I had gone to London, and--and once on the day of the trial, when you saw him asleep at the end of the lane. And--and--of course you know that I disguised myself as the Lady Barbara that night in hopes of gaining a word with Lord Farquhart. I did that well, did I not, Cecil?" There was a touch of bravado in the voice for a second, but it quickly grew tremulous once more. "'Tis harder to be a woman than a man, I think, harder to play a woman's part than a man's. And--well, I was the woman in the court who stopped Lord Grimsby's sentence. 'Twas Lady Barbara's gown that she had ready for her wedding journey with Lord Farquhart. It was a beautiful gown, did you not think so?" Again the bravado quivered in and out of her voice. "I ruined it outright, for Johan and I shoved it, gown and hat and all, under Star's saddle cloth, and I rode on it all the way from London to Ogilvie's woods, with a king's guard mounted behind for part of the way. I've played all those parts, Cecil, and it's been a wearying, worrisome thing, part of the time, with quick work and rapid changes, but it's all over now. I've learned my lesson and I've done with mumming forever."

"And those are all the parts you've played?" Lindley's question was almost careless, for he was tasting again the girl's sweet lips.

"No," she answered, slowly, with long hesitations between the words. "There was one other. But--but must you know all, every one?" For an instant the eyes and lips were mutinous.

"All, every one, sweetheart," he answered.

"Well," she said, slowly again and with still longer hesitations, "there was one other, but--but 'twas--well, the blackest kind of a black devil that tempted me, that led me on, that showed me the excitement of it all, that taught me the ease of escape and flight!"

"A--a--black devil!" Cecil was echoing her words, and yet Judith was well aware that not yet did he know the truth.

"Ay, a black devil," she answered. "The Black Devil himself. I was the Black Devil. I was that black highwayman. But 'twas only a joke of a highwayman, Cecil, only a joke when I held up all those stupid, cowardly lords. Only a joke when I frightened the poor old bishop. Only a joke when I made Grimsby come to poor Jack's rescue. Only a joke to frighten Barbara. It was all a joke, until I knew what a scrape I'd got Lord Farquhart into. And then I knew I had to rescue Farquhart. And rescue him I did. So I've never hurt anyone. I've never injured anyone. I robbed no one really, you know, and, oh, Cecil, Cecil, can't you see that 'twas only done for fun, all of it? And it's all gone from me now, gone from me forever, every bit of it. And, Cecil, it's love, love for you, that's exorcised it. Even the devil himself can be exorcised by love. Even the Black Devil himself can be exorcised by the kind of love I have for you."

It was not only her words that pleaded. Love itself pleaded in the tawny eyes, on the tender lips, with the clinging hands, and in very truth it is doubtful if the devil himself could have found place between her lips that clung to his, within his arms that clasped her close.

And in Geldino's sherris, opened by Marmaduke Bass, Lindley only repeated a former toast, offered in the same place; for, with laughing eyes on Judith's, he said:

"Shall we drink once more, and for the last time, to the Gentleman of the Highways?"

FROM GARDENS OVER SEAS

(A Rondel After Catulle Mendes)

I am the merle for whistling known, And you, the sweet branch small and light; I, gold and black; you, green and white; I, full of songs; you, flower full-blown.

Take if you will my merry tone And with your rose-blooms me requite; I am the merle for whistling known, And you the sweet branch small and light.

But should your blossoms--overthrown By storm's or wind's or water's might-- Be swept to earth in sudden plight, Count not on me for grief or groan; I am the merle for whistling known.

THOMAS WALSH.

AN EDITORIAL

SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS I-XV OF "THE DELUGE," BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

Matthew Blacklock, the central figure of the story, is essentially a self-made man, who has made himself a power to be reckoned with. He is a man of great natural force, immense egotism, insatiable greed for notoriety and unswerving adherence to his own standards of morality. He has two devouring ambitions: First to become one of the inner circle that controls high finance and second to become one of the elect in society.

The opening chapters explain these ambitions. The magnate of the financial world is Roebuck, who has from time to time made use of Blacklock's peculiar abilities and following. The latter has become dissatisfied with his role as a mere instrument and demands of Roebuck that he shall be given a place among the "seats of the mighty." Roebuck makes a pretense of yielding to the demand.

Blacklock's social ambition is awakened and stimulated by his meeting with Anita Ellersly, a young society girl whose family have been the recipients of many financial favors from him.

Using these obligations as a lever, he secures the entree to the Ellersly home, though it is soon made plain to him that his intentions with respect to Anita are extremely distasteful to her.

His first impulse is to regard his plans as hopeless, but his vanity comes to his rescue and strengthens his resolution to succeed. For assistance he turns to Monson, the trainer of his racing stable, an Englishman of good birth and breeding. Under Monson's tuition he makes rapid progress in adapting himself to the requirements imposed upon aspirants for social distinction.

Blacklock persists in his attention to Anita and finally becomes engaged to her, though it is perfectly understood by both that she does not love him and accepts him only because he is rich and her family is poor.

Meantime, he has to some extent lost his hold upon his affairs in Wall Street and suddenly awakens to the fact that he has been betrayed by Mowbray Langdon, one of Roebuck's trusted lieutenants, who, knowing that Blacklock is deeply involved in a short interest in Textile Trust stock, has taken advantage of the latter's preoccupation with Miss Ellersly to boom the price of the stock. With ruin staring him in the face, Blacklock takes energetic measures to save himself.

He sees Anita, tells her the situation and frees her, but she refuses to accept her release when she hears of Langdon's duplicity.

With the aid of money loaned to him by a gambler friend, he succeeds the next day, by means of large purchases of Textile Trust, in postponing the catastrophe.

Calling at the house of the Ellerslys, he has a violent scene with Mrs. Ellersly, who attempts to break the engagement between him and Anita, but it ends in his taking her with him from the house.

They go to the house of Blacklock's partner, Joseph Ball, where they are married, after which Blacklock takes his wife to his own apartments, despite her protest that she wishes to go to her uncle's.

Anita plainly shows her aversion to her husband, though he treats her with the greatest delicacy and consideration.

After some days the young wife receives a call from her parents, who seek to persuade her to leave Blacklock, telling her that they have private information that he will soon be a bankrupt. Anita refuses to go unless they will return to her husband all the money they have obtained from him.

All this she frankly tells Blacklock, who scoffs at the idea that he is in sore straits financially, though in his secret heart he knows that his position is indeed precarious.

In his extremity he goes to Roebuck, to ascertain, if he can, if he too is in the plot to ruin him.

THE DELUGE

By DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

[FOR SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS SEE PRECEDING PAGE]

XV--(_Continued_).

When Roebuck lived near Chicago, he had a huge house, a sort of crude palace such as so many of our millionaires built for themselves in the first excitement of their new wealth--a house with porches and balconies and towers and minarets and all sorts of gingerbread effects to compel the eye of the passer-by. But when he became enormously rich, so rich that his name was one of the synonyms for wealth, so rich that people said "rich as Roebuck" where they used to say "rich as Croesus," he cut away every kind of ostentation, and avoided attention more eagerly than he had once sought it. He took advantage of his having to remove to New York, where his vast interests centered; he bought a small and commonplace and, for a rich man, even mean house in East Fifty-second Street--one of a row and an almost dingy looking row at that. There he had an establishment a man with one-fiftieth of his fortune would have felt like apologizing for. The dishes on his table, for example, were cheap and almost coarse, and the pictures on his walls were photographs or atrocious bargain-counter paintings. To his few intimates who were intimate enough to question him about his come-down from his Chicago splendors, he explained that with advancing years he was seeing with clearer eyes his responsibilities as a steward of the Lord, that luxury was sinful, and no man had the right to waste the Lord's gifts that way. The general theory about him was that advancing years had developed his natural closeness into the stingiest avariciousness. But my notion is he was impelled by the fear of exciting envy, by the fear of assassination--the fear that made his eyes roam restlessly whenever strangers were near him, and so dried up the inside of his body that his dry tongue was constantly sliding along his dry lips. I have seen a convict stand in the door of his cell and, though it was impossible that anyone could be behind him, look nervously over his shoulder every moment or so. Roebuck had the same trick--only his dread, I suspect, was not the officers of the law, even of the divine law, but the many, many victims of his merciless execution of "the Lord's will." This state of mind is more common than is generally supposed, among the very rich men, especially those who have come up from poverty. Those who have inherited great wealth, and have always been used to it, get into the habit of looking upon the mass of mankind as inferiors, and move about with no greater sense of peril than a man has in venturing among a lot of dogs with tails wagging. But those who were born poor and have risen under the stimulus of a furious envy of the comfortable and the rich, fancy that everybody who isn't rich has the same savage hunger which they themselves had, and is ready to use the same desperate methods in gratifying it. Thus, where the rich of the Langdon sort are supercilious, the rich of the Roebuck sort are nervous and often become morbid on the subject of assassination as they grow richer and richer.

The door of Roebuck's house was opened for me by a maid--a manservant would have been a "sinful" luxury, a manservant might be an assassin or might be hired by plotters against his life. I may add that she looked the cheap maid-of-all-work, and her manners were of the free and fresh sort which indicates that a servant feels he or she should get as high, or higher, wages, and less to do, elsewhere. "I don't think you can see Mr. Roebuck," she said.

"Take my card to him," I ordered, "and I'll wait in the parlor."

"Parlor's in use," she retorted, with a sarcastic grin, which I was soon to understand.

So I stood by the old-fashioned coat and hat rack while she went in at the hall door of the back parlor. Soon Roebuck himself came out, his glasses on his nose, a family Bible under his arm. "Glad to see you, Matthew," said he, with saintly kindliness, giving me a friendly hand. "We are just about to offer up our evening prayer. Come right in."

I followed him into the back parlor. Both it and the front parlor were lighted; in a sort of circle extending into both rooms were all the Roebucks and the four servants. "This is my friend, Matthew Blacklock," said he, and the Roebucks in the circle gravely bowed. He drew up a chair for me, and we seated ourselves. Amid a solemn hush, he read a chapter from the big Bible spread out upon his lean lap. My glance wandered from face to face of the Roebucks, as plainly dressed as were their servants. I was able to look freely, mine being the only eyes not bent upon the floor. It was the first time in my life that I had witnessed family prayers. When I was a boy at home, my mother had taken literally a Scriptural injunction to pray in secret--in a closet, I think the passage of the Bible said. Many times each day she used to retire to a closet under the stairway and spend from one to twenty minutes shut in there. But we had no family prayers. I was therefore deeply interested in what was going on in those countrified parlors of one of the richest and most powerful men in the world--and this right in the heart of that district of New York where palaces stand in rows and in blocks, and where such few churches as there are resemble social clubs for snubbing climbers and patronizing the poor.

It was astonishing how much every Roebuck in that circle, even the old lady, looked like old Roebuck himself--the same smug piety, the same underfed appearance that, by the way, more often indicates a starved soul than a starved body. One difference--where his face had the look of power that compels respect and, to the shrewd, reveals relentless strength relentlessly used, the expressions of the others were simply small and mean and frost-nipped. And that is the rule--the second generation of a plutocrat inherits, with his money, the meanness that enabled him to hoard it, but not the greatness that enabled him to make it.

So absorbed was I in the study of the influence of his terrible master-character upon those closest to it, that I started when he said: "Let us pray." I followed the example of the others, and knelt. The audible prayer was offered up by his oldest daughter, Mrs. Wheeler, a widow. Roebuck punctuated each paragraph in her series of petitions with a loudly whispered amen. When she prayed for "the stranger whom Thou hast led seemingly by chance into our little circle," he whispered the amen more fervently and repeated it. And well he might, the old robber and assassin by proxy! The prayer ended and us on our feet, the servants withdrew, then all the family except Roebuck. That is, they closed the doors between the two rooms and left him and me alone in the front parlor.

"I shall not detain you long, Mr. Roebuck," said I. "A report reached me this evening that sent me to you at once."

"If possible, Matthew," said he, and he could not hide his uneasiness, "put off business until to-morrow. My mind--yours, too, I trust--is not in the frame for that kind of thoughts now."

"Is the Coal reorganization to be announced the first of July?" I demanded. It has always been, and always shall be, my method to fight in the open. This, not from principle, but from expediency. Some men fight best in the brush; I don't. So I always begin battle by shelling the woods.

"No," he said, amazing me by his instant frankness. "The announcement has been postponed."

Why did he not lie to me? Why did he not put me off the scent, as he might easily have done, with some shrewd evasion? I suspect I owe it to my luck in catching him at family prayers. For I know that the general impression of him is erroneous; he is not merely a hypocrite before the world, but also a hypocrite before himself. A more profoundly, piously conscientious man never lived. Never was there a truer epitaph than the one implied in the sentence carved over his niche in the magnificent Roebuck mausoleum he built: "Fear naught but the Lord."

"When will the reorganization be announced?" I asked.

"I cannot say," he answered. "Some difficulties--chiefly labor difficulties--have arisen. Until they are settled, nothing can be done. Come to me tomorrow, and we'll talk about it."

"That is all I wished to know," said I. And, with a friendly, easy smile, I put out my hand. "Good-night."

It was his turn to be astonished--and he showed it, where I had given not a sign. "What was the report you heard?" he asked, to detain me.

"That you and Mowbray Langdon had conspired to ruin me," said I, laughing.

He echoed my laugh rather hollowly. "It was hardly necessary for you to come to me about such a--a statement."

"Hardly," I answered, dryly. Hardly, indeed. For I was seeing now all that I had been hiding from myself since I became infatuated with Anita, and made marrying her my only real business in life.

We faced each other, each measuring the other. And as his glance quailed before mine, I turned away to conceal my exultation. In a comparison of resources this man who had plotted to crush me was to me as giant to midget. But I had the joy of realizing that man to man, I was the stronger. He had craft, but I had daring. His vast wealth aggravated his natural cowardice--crafty men are invariably cowards, and their audacities under the compulsion of their insatiable greed are like a starving jackal's dashes into danger for food. My wealth belonged to me, not I to it; and, stripped of it, I would be like the prize-fighter stripped for the fight. Finally, he was old while I was young. And there was the chief reason for his quailing. He knew that he must die long before me, that my turn must come, that I could dance upon his grave.

As I drove away, I was proud of myself. I had listened to my death sentence with a face so smiling that he must almost have believed me unconscious; and also, it had not even entered my head, as I listened, to beg for mercy. Not that there would have been the least use in begging--as well try to pray a statue into life as try to soften that set will and purpose. Still, another sort of man than I would have weakened, and I felt--justly, I think--proud that I had not weakened. But when I was once more in my apartment--in _our_ apartment--perhaps I did show that there was a weak streak through me. I fought against the impulse to see her once more that night; but I fought in vain. I knocked at the door of her sitting room--a timid knock, for me. No answer. I knocked again, more loudly--then a third time, still more loudly. The door opened and she stood there, like one of the angels that guarded the gates of Eden after the fall. Only, instead of a flaming sword, hers was of ice. She was in a dressing gown or tea gown, white and clinging and full of intoxicating hints and glimpses of all the beauties of her figure. Her face softened as she continued to look at me, and I entered.

"No--please don't turn on any more lights," I said, as she moved toward the electric buttons. "I just came in to--to see if I could do anything for you." In fact, I had come, longing for her to do something for me, to show in look or tone or act some sympathy for me in my loneliness and trouble.

"No, thank you," she said. Her voice was that of a stranger who wished to remain a stranger. And she was evidently waiting for me to go. You will see what a mood I was in when I say I felt as I had not since I, a very small boy indeed, ran away from home--it was one evening after I had been put to bed; I came back through the chilly night to take one last glimpse of the family that would soon be realizing how foolishly and wickedly unappreciative they had been of such a treasure as I; and when I saw them sitting about the big fire in the lamp light, heartlessly comfortable and unconcerned, it was all I could do to keep back the tears of self-pity--and I never saw them again.

"I've seen Roebuck," said I to Anita, because I must say something, if I was to stay on.

"Roebuck?" she inquired. Her tone reminded me that his name conveyed nothing to her.

"He and I are in an enterprise together," I explained. "He is the one man who could seriously cripple me."

"Oh," she said, and her indifference, forced though I thought it, wounded.

"Well," said I, "your mother was right."

She turned full toward me, and even in the dimness I saw her quick and full sympathy--an impulsive flash that was instantly gone. But it had been there!

"I came in here," I went on, "to say that--Anita, it doesn't in the least matter. No one in this world, no one and nothing, could hurt me except through you. So long as I have you, they--the rest--all of them together--can't touch _me_."

We were both silent for several minutes. Then she said, and her voice was like the smooth surface of the river where the boiling rapids run deep:

"But you _haven't_ me--and never _shall_ have. I've told you that. I warned you long ago. No doubt you will pretend, and people will say, that I left you because you lost your money. But it won't be so."

I was beside her instantly, was looking into her face. "What do you mean?" I asked, and I did not speak gently.

She gazed at me without flinching. "And I suppose," she said, satirically, "you wonder why I--why you--are repellent to me. Haven't you learned that, while I may have been made into a moral coward, I'm not a physical coward? Don't bully and threaten. It's useless."

I put my hand strongly on her shoulder--taunts and jeers do not turn me aside. "What do you mean?" I repeated.

"Take your hand off me," she commanded.

"What did you mean?" I repeated, strongly. "Don't be afraid to answer me."

She was very young--so the taunt stung her. "I was about to tell you," said she, "when you began to bluster."

I took advantage of this to extricate myself from the awkward position in which she had put me--I took my hand from her shoulder.

"I am going to leave you," she went on. "I am ready to go at any time. But if you wish it, I shall not go until my plans are arranged."

"What plans?" I demanded.

"That is no concern of yours."

"You forget that you are my wife," said I, my brain on fire.

"I am not your wife," was her answer, and if she had not looked so young and childlike, there in the moonlight all in white, I could not have held myself in check, so insolent was the tone and so hopeless of ever being able to win her did she make me feel.

"You are my wife, and you will stay here with me," I reiterated.

"I am my own, and I shall go where I please, and do what I please," was her contemptuous retort. "Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't you see how utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a gentleman--but just a man, and be ashamed even to wish to detain a woman against her will."

I drew up a chair so close to her that, to retreat, she was forced to sit in the broad window seat. Then I seated myself. "By all means, let us be reasonable," said I. "Now, let me explain my position. I have heard you and your friends discussing the views of marriage you've just been expressing. Their views may be right, may be more civilized, more 'advanced,' than mine. No matter. They are not mine. I hold by the old standards--and you are my wife--mine. Do you understand?" All this as tranquilly as if we were discussing fair weather. "And you will live up to the obligation which the marriage service has put upon you."

She might have been a marble statue pedestaled in that window seat.

"You married me of your own free will--for you could have protested to the preacher, and he would have sustained you. You put certain conditions on our marriage. I assented to them. I have respected them. I shall continue to respect them. But--when you married me, you didn't marry a dawdling dude chattering 'advanced ideas' with his head full of libertinism. You married a man. And that man is your husband."

I waited, but she made no comment--not even by gesture or movement. She simply sat, her hands interlaced in her lap, her eyes straight upon mine.

"You say, let us be reasonable," I went on. "Well, let us be reasonable. There may come a time when a woman can be free and independent, but that time is a long way off yet. The world is organized on the basis of every woman having a protector--of every decent woman having a husband, unless she remains in the home of some of her blood relations. There may be women strong enough to set the world at defiance. But you are not one of them--and you know it. You have shown it to yourself again and again in the last forty-eight hours. Further, though you do not know it, your bringing up has made you more of a child than most of the inexperienced women. If you tried to assert your so-called independence, you would be the easy prey of a scoundrel or scoundrels. When I, who have lived in the thick of the fight all my life, who have learned by many a surprise and defeat never to sleep except sword and gun in hand, and one eye open--when I have been trapped as Roebuck and Langdon have just trapped me--what chance would a woman like you have?"

She did not answer, or change expression.

"Is what I say reasonable or unreasonable?" I asked, gently.

"Reasonable--from _your_ standpoint," she said.

She gazed out into the moonlight, up into the sky. And at the look in her face, the primeval savage in me strained to close round that slender white throat of hers and crush and crush until it had killed in her the thought of that other man which was transforming her from marble to flesh that glowed and blood that surged. I pushed back my chair with a sudden noise that startled her; by the way she trembled, I gauged how tense her nerves must have been. I rose and, in a fairly calm tone, said: "We understand each other?"

"Yes," she answered. "As before."

I ignored this. "Think it over, Anita," I urged--she seemed to me so like a sweet, spoiled child again. I longed to go straight at her about that other man. I stood for a moment with Tom Langdon's name on my lips, but I could not trust myself. I went away to my own rooms.

I thrust thoughts of her from my mind. I spent the night gnawing upon the ropes with which Mowbray Langdon and Roebuck had bound me, hand and foot.