THE CLUB OF FREE DISCUSSION.

Hermia looked at her reflection that evening with a smile. The shadowed emerald of her velvet gown made her hair glow like vibrant flame. The color wandered through her cheeks and emptied itself into her lips. Her eyes were as green as the limpid floor of ocean-hollowed caverns. Across her ivory-white shoulder swept a curving blue vein, thin as an infant’s lash, and on the rise of her right breast were three little moles, each marking the corner of a tiny triangle.

Mr. Simms called for her promptly, and when they arrived at the club-rooms they strolled about looking at the pictures and the people until the exercises began. There were many literary and artistic celebrities present, all of whom looked much like ordinary and well-bred people; but to Hermia there was a luminous halo about each. It was her first experience in the literary world, and she felt as if she had entered the atmosphere of a dream. It was one of her few satisfactory experiments. She was much stared at; everybody knew her by reputation if not by sight; and a number of men asked to be presented.

Among them was Mr. Overton, the editor who had published her poem in his magazine. She changed color as he came up, but his manner at once assured her that she was not recognized: he would have vindicated his fraternity, indeed, had he been keen-sighted enough to recognize in this triumphant, radiant creature the plain, ill-dressed, stooping girl with whom he had talked for half an hour at the close of a winter’s day two years before. Hermia, of course, no longer wrote; life offered her too many other distractions.

Mr. Overton suggested that they should go into the lecture-room and secure good seats. He found them chairs and took one beside Hermia.

“Ogden Cryder gives the address to-night,” he said, after he had satisfied Hermia’s curiosity in regard to the names of a half-dozen people. “Do you like his books?”

“Fairly. Do you?”

Mr. Overton laughed. “That is rather a direct question, considering that I print one of his stories about every six months.”

“Oh, you might not like them. You might publish them out of tender regard for the demands of your readers.”

Mr. Overton had a characteristic American face, thin, nervous, shrewd, pleasant. He gave Hermia a smile of unwonted frankness. “I will confide to you, Miss Suydam, that such is the case with about two-thirds I publish. I thank Heaven that I do not have to read a magazine as well as publish it. I have an associate editor who sits with his finger on the pulse of the public, and relieves me of much vexation of spirit.”

“But tell me what you think of Mr. Cryder.”

Mr. Overton raised his eyebrows. “He is indisputably the best dialect writer we have, and he is a charming exponent of surface passions. Whether he would drown if he plunged below the surface is a question; at all events he might become improper, and morality pays in this magazine era. There he is now; no doubt we shall have a delightful address.”

Hermia turned her head quickly, but Cryder had taken a chair at the foot of the rostrum, and there were many heads between her own and his. A moment later, however, the president of the club made the preliminary remarks, and then gave place to Cryder.

Hermia watched him breathlessly as he ascended the steps and stood beside the table, waiting for the hearty welcome to subside. Was it he at last? He was certainly good to look at; she had never seen more charming eyes—clear golden-hazel, half melancholy, wholly intelligent. His small, well-shaped head was thickly covered with short, soft, gold-brown hair; the delicate, aristocratic features were as finely cut as those on an intaglio; and the thin, curved lips were shaded by a small mustache. His figure, tall, light, graceful, had a certain vibrating activity even in repose. His hand was white and tapering as that of a woman, and his auditors were given opportunity to appreciate it.

The subject of the lecture was “The Dialect Element in American Fiction,” and Mr. Cryder did it justice in a clear, ringing, musical voice. He very properly remarked that it was the proud boast of America that no other country, ancient or modern, could present such an array of famous dialects, consequently no other country had ever had such infinite variety in her literature. He would say nothing of the several hundred dialects as yet awaiting the Columbus-pen of genius; he would merely speak of those nine already discovered and immortalized—the Negro, the Yankee, the Southern, the Creole, the Tennessee Mountain, the Cow-boy, the Bret Harte Miner, the Hoosier, and the Chinese. Each of these, although springing from one bosom, namely, that of the Great American People, had as distinct an individuality as if the product of an isolated planet. Such a feature was unique in the history of any country or any time. The various patois of the French, the provincialisms of the English, the barbarisms of the Scotch, the brogue of the Irish, were but so many bad and inconsequent variations upon an original theme. Reflect, therefore, upon the immense importance of photographing and preserving American neologies for the benefit of posterity! In the course of time would inevitably come the homogeneity of the human race; the negro, for instance, would pervade every corner of the civilized earth, and his identity become hopelessly entangled with that of his equally de-individualized blonde brother. His dialect would be a forgotten art! Contemporaries would have no knowledge of it save through the painstaking artists of their ancestors’ time. Reflect, then, upon the heavy responsibility which lay upon the shoulders of the author of to-day. Picture what must be the condition of his conscience at the end of his record if he has failed to do his duty by the negro dialect! Picture the reproaches of future generations if they should be left ignorant of the unique vernacular of their grandfathers’ serfs! (Applause.) He did not lay such stress upon the superior importance of the negro dialect because he had enrolled himself among its faulty exponents; he had taken his place in its ranks because of that superior importance. Nevertheless, he was by no means blind to the virtues of those other eight delightful strings in the Great National Instrument. No one enjoyed more than he the liquid and incomprehensible softness of the Creole, the penetrating, nasonic strength of the Yankee, the delicious independence of the Hoosier, the pine-sweet, redwood-calm transcriptions of the prose-laureate of the West. He loved them all, and he gloried in the literary monument of which they were the separate stones.

To do Mr. Cryder’s oration justice would be a feat which no modest novelist would attempt. Those who would read that memorable speech in its entirety and its purity will find it in the archives of the club, in the sixth volume of the Sessional Records. After reading brief and pithy extracts from the nine most famous dialect stories of the day, he sat down with the applause of approval in his ears.

Hermia turned to Mr. Overton: “He was guying, I suppose,” she said.

Mr. Overton stared. “Certainly not,” he said, severely. “The value of precisely rendered dialect is incalculable.”

Hermia, quite snubbed, said no more; and in a few moments, Mr. Duncan, a shrewd, humorous-looking little Scotchman, rose to reply.

“I have nothing whatever to say in contradiction to Mr. Cryder’s remarks regarding the value of dialect,” he said, looking about with a bland, deprecating smile. “On the contrary, I have yet another word to add in its favor. I hold that the value of dialect to the American author has never yet been estimated. When a story has a lot of dialect, you never discover that it hasn’t anything else. (Laughter, and a surprised frown from Cryder.) Furthermore, as America is too young to have an imagination, the dialect is an admirable and original substitute for plot and situations.” (Laughter and mutterings; also a scowl from Cryder.) “Again, there is nothing so difficult as the handling of modern English: it is a far speedier and easier road to fame to manipulate a dialect familiar to only an insignificant section of our glorious sixty millions.” (“Hear, hear!” from a pair of feminine lips, and many sympathetic glances at Cryder’s flashing eyes.) “Yet again, the common fault found with our (I wish it understood that I speak always from the standpoint of the country which I have adopted)—with our writers is lack of passion. Now, nobody can be expected to be passionate when groaning in the iron stays of dialect. Dialect is bit and curb to the emotions, and it is only an American who is sharp enough to perceive the fact and make the most of it. What is more, pathos sounds much better in dialect than in cold, bald English, just as impropriety sounds better in French, and love-making in Spanish. Contrast, for instance, the relative pathos of such sentences as these—the throbbing sadness of the one, the harsh bathos of the other: ‘I done lubbed you, Sally!’ ‘I loved you, Maria.’” (Laughter from one side of the house; ominous silence from the other.) “Truly, ’tis in the setting the jewel shines. I would like to say, in conclusion,” he went on, imperturbably, “that Mr. Cryder, in his enumeration of American neologics has omitted one as important and distinctive as any in his category, namely, that of fashionable society. In the virility, the variety, and the amplitude of her slang, America is England’s most formidable rival.”

He left the platform amidst limited applause, and then Mr. Cryder’s pent-up wrath burst forth, and he denounced in scathing terms and stinging epigrams the foreigner who had proved himself incapable of appreciating one of his country’s most remarkable developments, and attempted to satirize it from his petty point of view.

The auditors were relieved when the exercises were over and the club’s disruption postponed, and, betaking themselves to the supper-room, dismissed both lecture and reply from their minds.

Hermia was standing by one of the tables talking to three or four men, when Mr. Simms brought up Cryder and introduced him. Cryder looked absent and somewhat annoyed. He was evidently not in a mood to be impressed by feminine loveliness. At the end of a few moments Hermia wisely let him go, although with a renewed sense of the general flatness of life. At the same time she was somewhat amused, and sensible enough to know that it could not have been otherwise.

OGDEN CRYDER.

Only the nineteenth century could have evolved Cryder. The infancy of a democratic civilization produces giants. The giants build hot-houses, and a flower, delicate, beautiful, exquisitely perfumed, but fragile, light as bubbles of blown glass, is the result. America is now doing the best she can with her hot-house flora. She has no great men, but the flora is wondrous fine. Outside the forcing-houses is a wilderness of weeds in which lies her future’s hope.

Cryder would have taken the medal at an orchid show. He was light as a summer breeze, yet as stimulating and fresh. He was daintily humorous, yet seldom witty enough to excite envy. His conversation was like the song of a lark, clear, brilliant, trilling, with never a bass note to disturb the harmony. In a quick, keen, flashing way, he had an exact knowledge of the salient world. He was artistic to his finger-tips, and preferred an aquarelle to an oil. He had loved many times and hoped to love as many more, and his love was always that of an æsthete. For coarse passions he had a cold contempt. He had broken many roses from their stems, but more because he thought an herbarium looked better when filled than because he enjoyed the plucking of the flower. Probably it is needless to observe that he never drank more than a pint bottle of champagne, and that he never over-ate.

The day after his address at the club he was walking down the avenue when he met Helen Simms. He turned back with her, and finished the afternoon in her drawing-room.

Helen did not give him so much of her time without an object. She cared little for Cryder, and few of her doings were unprompted by motive; life was too brief.

“You met Miss Suydam last night, did you not?” she asked, when Cryder was comfortably established in an easy-chair near the fire.

“Yes, for a moment. I was a little put out by Duncan’s attack on me, and only stayed for a few words. I needed the solace of a cigarette.”

“I read the account of the affair in this morning’s papers. Mr. Duncan’s remarks were purely foolish, as he must have realized when he saw them in print. However, you have the consolation of knowing that after your reply he will not be likely to attack you again. But I am glad you met Miss Suydam. She will interest you as a study. She is all the rage at present. Every other man in town is in love with her.”

Cryder turned to her with some interest in his eyes. “Is she so very fascinating? She is certainly handsome—yes—stylishly handsome.”

“Oh, she is a beauty! Such a unique type! And she is quite as different from other people herself. That is her great trouble. She is called a terrible flirt, but it is the men’s fault, not hers. She is always looking for something, and can never find it.”

“Sad and strange! Is she a young woman with yearnings?”

“Not at all. She is the most sensible woman I know. She is merely unusually clever, consequently she is very lonely. I do not believe any man will ever satisfy her. She is like the sleeping princess in the enchanted castle. She shuts herself up in that wonderful house of hers and dreams of the lover who never comes.”

“You touch my fancy; and what do you mean by her wonderful house?”

“That house would delight your author’s soul. Every room is the materialization of a dream, as Hermia would say;” and she gave him an account of her friend’s inartistic but original abode.

Cryder listened with much interest. Romance was a dead-letter to him, but he was alive to the picturesque. He concluded that it would be quite enchanting to make love to a woman in a feudal library or an Indian jungle, and more than satisfactory to awaken the sleeping beauty. It would be a charming episode for his present brief stay in New York, altogether quite the choicest specimen in his herbarium. What she was waiting for was a combination of brain and skill.

“You have made me want to know her,” he said, “but, of course, she did not ask me to call.”

“I will take you to see her some time.”

“That is very good of you. Some afternoon when you have nothing better to do.”

“Come on Monday. That is her day. You won’t have much chance to talk to her, but then you can go again as soon as you like.”

Cryder took out his note-book and penciled a memorandum, “On Monday, then.”

Helen concluded that if she had been born a man she would have elected diplomacy as a career.

IN A METROPOLITAN JUNGLE.

Cryder called on Hermia Monday afternoon. Although the room was full he had a few words with her, and she thought him very charming.

“I want to talk to you,” he said. “I have wanted to talk to you ever since I met you, but I was in such a bad humor the other night that I would not inflict you. Are you ever alone? Cannot I have an hour or two some evening?”

Hermia smiled. “Come on Thursday evening. I have not another evening until late next week.”

“I have an engagement, but I will break it. And will you think me impertinent if I ask you to show me all over this wonderful house? There is nothing like it in Europe.”

“I shall be delighted,” said Hermia, enthusiastically. “So few people appreciate it.”

“It is good of you to think I can. But in thought I always dwell in the past (he hated the past), and although my work is realistic, because realism is of more value to literature, yet my nature is essentially a romantic one. Only, one so seldom acknowledges romance, one is so afraid of being laughed at.”

He watched her as he spoke, and saw a sudden gleam come into her eyes. A year’s training and her own native cleverness had taught Hermia not to believe all that men said to her, but Cryder had struck a well-loved chord. And she had no wish to be skeptical.

On Thursday evening Hermia arrayed herself with great care. After much deliberation she donned a gown which as yet she had never worn. It was of tan-gold velvet, with irregular appliqués of dark-brown plush. Down the front was a curious design of gold braid and deep-green brilliants.

She received Cryder in the conservatory. It had but recently been completed, and looked enough like a jungle to deceive the most suspicious of tigers. The green tiles of the floor were painted with a rank growth of grasses and ferns. Through the palms and tropical shrubs that crowded the conservatory glared the wild beasts of far-off jungles, marvelously stuffed and poised. The walls were forgotten behind a tapestry of reeds and birds of the Orient. In one corner was a fountain, simulating a pool, and on its surface floated the pink, fragrant lilies that lie on eastern lakes. Few people had seen this jungle—before its completion, Hermia had learned that it was dangerous to test her city’s patience too far.

Hermia sat down on a bank and waited for the curtain to rise. She felt the humor of the situation, but she knew that the effect was good. A few moments later Cryder came in and was charmed. He had the same remote yearning for the barbaric that the small, blonde actor has for the part of the heavy villain. As he walked down the jungle toward Hermia, he felt that he gave this Eastern ideal its completing touch.

Hermia held up her hand. “I would not have dared do this for any one but you,” she said, “but you will understand.”

“For Heaven’s sake do not apologize!” exclaimed Cryder. He raised her hand to his lips and sat down on the bank beside her. “There was never anything so enchanting in real life. And you—you are Cleopatra in your tiger-hood.”

“I was Semiramis before,” said Hermia, indifferently. She turned her head and gave him a meditative glance. “Do you know,” she said, with an instinct of coquetry rare to her, “I cannot understand your being a realistic author.”

He was somewhat taken aback, but he replied promptly: “That is a mere accident. To tell you the truth, I care no more for realism than I do for idealism, and dialect is a frightful bore. I will tell you what I have told no one else. Now that my position is established, my name made, I am going to leave dialect to those who can do no better, and write a great romantic novel.”

Hermia thought his last remark a trifle conceited, but she forgave it for the sake of its sentiment. “I shall like that,” she said, “and be romantic without sensationalism. Tell me the plot of your book.”

“It is too vague to formulate, but you and your house are to be its inspiration. I have wanted to meet a woman like you; the study will be an education. Tell me of your life. You have not always been as you are now?”

Hermia gave him a startled glance. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

“I mean that you have two personalities, an actual and an assumed. You are playing a part.”

Hermia gave him a fierce glance from beneath her black brows. “You know that until a year ago I was poor and obscure, and you are rude enough to remind me that I play the part of grande dame very badly,” she exclaimed.

“I beg your pardon,” said Cryder, quickly, “I knew nothing of the kind. You might have spent the last ten years in a fashionable boarding-school for all I have heard to the contrary. But I repeat what I said. I received two impressions the night we met. One was that you were at war with something or somebody; the other that you had a double personality, and that of one the world had no suspicion. It is either that you have a past, or that you are at present in conditions entirely new and consequently unfamiliar. I believe it is the latter. You do not look like a woman who has lived. There is just one thing wanting to make your face the most remarkable I have seen; but until it gets that it will be like a grand painting whose central figure has been left as the last work of the artist.”

Hermia leaned her elbow on her knee and covered her face with her hand. She experienced the most pleasurable sensation she had ever known. This was the first man who had shown the faintest insight into her contradictory personality and complicated nature. For the moment she forgot where she was, and she gave a little sigh which brought the blood to her face. To love would not be so difficult as she had imagined.

“What is it?” asked Cryder, gently. He had been watching her covertly. “I want to amend something I said a moment ago. You have not lived in fact but you have in imagination, and the men your fancy has created have made those of actual, prosaic life appear tame and colorless.”

Hermia’s heart gave a bound. She turned to him with shining eyes. “How do you know that?” she murmured.

“Is it not true?”

“Yes,” she said, helplessly, “it is true.”

“Then I will tell you how I know. Because I have lived half my natural life with the population of my brain, and dream-people know one another. Ours have met and shaken hands while we have been exchanging platitudes.”

“That is very pretty,” said Hermia; “I hope their estates border upon each other, and that their chosen landscape is the same, for dream-people may have their antipathies, like the inhabitants of the visible world. Because we have taken out our title-deeds in dream-land, it does not follow that our tenants live in harmony.”

“It would not—except that we both instinctively know that there has not been even border warfare. There have been marriage and inter-marriage; the princes of my reigning house have demanded in state——”

Hermia interrupted him harshly: “There is no marriage or giving in marriage in my kingdom. I hate the word! Are you very much shocked?”

Cryder smiled. “No,” he said, “one is surprised sometimes to hear one’s own dearest theories in the mouth of another, but not shocked. It only needed that to make you the one woman I have wanted to know. You have that rarest gift among women—a catholic mind. And it does not spring from immorality or vulgar love of excitement—you are simply brave and original.”

Hermia leaned forward, her pupils dilating until her eyes looked like rings of marsh about lakes of ink. “You know that—you understand that?” she whispered, breathlessly.

Cryder looked her full in the eyes. “Yes,” he said, “and no one ever did before.”

His audacity had the desired effect. Men were always a little afraid of Hermia. She looked at him without speaking—a long gaze which he returned. He was certainly most attractive, although in quite a different way from any man born of her imaginings. Perhaps, however, that gave him the charm of novelty. He was almost magnetic; he almost thrilled her—not quite, but that would come later. She had received so many impressions this evening that no one could master her. Yes, she was sure she was going to love him.

“No,” she said, at last, “no one ever did.”

“You have been loved in a great many ways,” Cryder went on; “for your beauty, which appeals to the senses of men, yet which at the same time frightens them, because of the tragic element which is as apparent as the passionate; for your romantic surroundings, which appeal to their sentiment; for the glamour which envelops you as one of the most sought-after women in New York; for your intellect; and for your incomprehensibility to the average mind, which has the fascination of mystery. But I doubt if any man has ever known or cared whether you have a psychic side. If I fall in love with you, I shall love your soul, primarily. Passion is merely the expression of spiritual exaltation. Independently of the latter it is base. A woman of your strong psychical nature could never forget the soul for the body—not for a moment.”

“That is very beautiful,” murmured Hermia, dreamily. “Can it be? And are you sure that I have any spirituality?”

“If you do not know it, it is because you have never loved and never been loved in the right way.” He sprang suddenly to his feet, and then, before she could answer, he was gone.

She sank her elbow into a cushion and leaned her cheek on her palm. Cryder had touched her sensuous nature by the artistic novelty of his wooing—her ideal had been brutal and direct. She had always imagined she should like that best, but this was a new idea and very charming. It appealed to the poetic element in her. The poetic vase tossed aloft the spray of refined passion and rode contemptuously over the undertow of sensuality. That was as it should be.

She went up-stairs, and, after she was in bed, thought for a long time. She slept until late the next day, and in the afternoon paid a number of calls. In the temporary seclusion of her carriage she took pleasure in assuring herself that Cryder was uppermost in her mind.

A CLEVER TRIFLER.

The next afternoon Cryder came again. Hermia received him this time in the hall which, with its Gothic roof, its pictured windows, its walls ribbed and dark, and its organ, looked like a cathedral. As she came down the broad staircase, in a gown that made her look as if she had stepped from some old French canvas, Cryder stood gazing at her for a moment, then without a word sat down before the organ and began to play. The organ needs only a skillful hand; its own rich, sonorous tones pour soul through cold, calm fingers. Cryder played Tristan’s Death Song, and Hermia sank into a chair and felt that naught existed but glory of color and surge of sound.

Cryder played but a short time—he never did anything too long—then went over and sat beside her. He made her talk about herself, and managed to extract much of her past. He learned nothing, however, of her former lack of beauty. Then he entertained her brilliantly for an hour with accounts of celebrated people he had met.

After he had gone she felt a vague sense of disappointment; he had not touched upon co-personal topics for a moment. The sense of disappointment grew and deepened, and then she gave a sudden start and smiled. She could not feel disappointment were she not deeply interested. Was this the suffering, the restlessness, which were said to be a part of love? Surely! She was pained that he could talk lightly upon indifferent subjects, and apparently quite forget the sympathy which existed between them. The pain and the chagrin might not be very acute, but they were forewarnings of intenser suffering to come. Of course she wanted to suffer. All women do until the suffering comes. After that they do not go out of their way to look for it.

She went up-stairs and sat down before the fire in her boudoir. It was very delightful to fall in love with a man as mentally agreeable as Cryder. He would always entertain her. She would never be bored! The intervals between love-making would never drag; she had heard that they were sometimes trying. And then the pictures between those framing intervals—when the fierce, hot tide of passion within her would leap like a tidal wave, lashed into might by the convulsion at its heart. And Cryder! To see the tiger in the man fling off its shackles and look through the calm brown of his eyes! (Like all girls, Hermia believed that every man had a tiger chained up inside him, no matter how cold he might be exteriorly.) What a triumph to break down that cool self-control!

Her maid brought her a cup of tea and she drank it; then, resting her elbows on her knees leaned her chin on her locked fingers. There were some things she did not like about Cryder. He lacked literary conscience, and she doubted if he had much of any sort. Her high ideals still clung to her; but perhaps this was her mission in life—to remold Cryder. A man is always much under the influence of the woman who gives him his happiness; she would have a grand opportunity to make him better. When the end came, as of course it would—she was no longer such a fool as to imagine that love lasted forever—he should have much to thank her for.

When a woman thinks she loves a man, she dreams of making him better. When she really loves him, she would have him share his virtues with the saints. She loves his faults and encourages them; she glories in the thought that his personality is strong enough to make her indifferent to defects. This lesson, however, Hermia had yet to learn; but she was pleased with the idea of putting the spirituality of which Cryder had accused her to some practical use. She had not a very clear idea what spirituality meant, but she thought she was learning.

A LITERARY DINNER.

A few weeks later Hermia gave a dinner to Cryder. The other guests were Mr. Overton, Mr. Simms, Alan Emmet, a young author who combined the literary and the sensational in a manner which gave him much notoriety, Mr. Langley, Cryder’s publisher, and Ralph Embury, a noted young journalist. Helen Simms was there to chatter serious thought to ambush, and Miss Starbruck, primly alert, and waiting to be shocked.

Poor Miss Starbruck! She drifted like a gray shadow through Hermia’s rooms, and longed for her modest cottage at Nantucket. She had been an active member of sewing-circles and reading-clubs, and the farther down her past’s perspective did this unexciting environment retreat, the oftener did she sigh as she contrasted its cool shadows with the hot glare into which fate’s caprice had suddenly cast her. But Hermia was considerate—if Miss Starbruck appeared at her niece’s dinners and receptions, and drove with her occasionally, she could sit up in her room and dream of Nantucket and bewail duty as much as she pleased. Mrs. Dykman was chaperon-in-chief.

Hermia wore a gown of white velvet, simply made, and fitting in wrinkleless perfection the free lines and curves of her full, lithe figure. About her throat hung a silver chain of Roman workmanship, and around her waist a girdle of similar but heavier links. The wiry maze of her hair outshone the diamond pins that confined it.

Miss Simms wore a dinner-gown of black tulle and a profusion of chrysanthemums. Her hair was as sleek as a mole.

The conversation was naturally more or less literary, and Hermia drew out her ambitious guests with a good deal of skill. It was hard to curb them when they were started, but she managed to make each feel that he had had an opportunity to shine. Some day, when her personal interest in life had ceased, she intended to have a salon, and this was a pleasant foretaste. She even let Mr. Simms tell a few anecdotes, but after the third gently suppressed him.

It is not easy to check the anecdotal impulse, and both Mr. Langley and Mr. Overton were reminiscent. The former told a tale of a young man who had brought him a manuscript ten years before, and never returned to ask its destiny.

“He looked delicate, and I imagine he died of consumption,” said the great publisher, placidly, as he discussed his pâté. “At all events I have never heard from him since. Our readers unanimously advised us not to publish the manuscript. It was entirely out of our line, and would have involved great risk. We put it aside and forgot all about it. The other day I happened to meet one of the readers through whose hands it passed—he has not been with us for some years—and he asked me why I did not publish the rejected book. ‘That sort of thing has become fashionable now,’ he said, ‘and you would make money out of it.’ I merely mention this as an illustration of how fashion changes in literature as in everything else.”

“You publishers are awful cowards,” said Emmet, in his drawling tones; “you are so afraid of anything new that all authors you introduce are branded Prophets of the Commonplace.”

Mr. Langley’s blonde, pleasant little face took a warmer hue, and he answered somewhat testily: “The publisher was brave, indeed, who presented you to the public, Mr. Emmet.”

In spite of the general laugh, Emmet replied imperturbably: “The best advertisement I had, and the only one which I myself inserted, was that ‘Mrs. Bleeker’ had been refused by every conservative house in New York. My reward is that I have the reputation instead of the firm.”

“No; the firm hasn’t any left—that’s a fact,” retorted Mr. Langley; and Emmet turned to Helen with a pout on his boyish face.

“Do my books shock you?” he asked her.

Helen smiled. “No, they do not,” she said, briefly. “I quite adore them. I don’t always acknowledge having read them, but I don’t mind telling you, considering that you are the author.”

“Oh, some women assure me that nothing would induce them to read my books. I am glad you have the courage of your opinions. I scorn women who have not, and I will not talk to a girl unless I can do so as freely as to a man.”

“Oh, I am not a prude,” said Helen, lightly. “I only draw the line at positive indecency, and you are quite vague enough. But do you always talk to men on improper subjects?”

“Oh—no; I merely meant that I like to feel the same lack of restraint with women as with men. It is a bore to call up every thought for inspection before you utter it.”

“Yes,” said Helen; “you wouldn’t talk at all, you would only inspect.”

“Speaking of mysterious disappearances,” broke in Embury’s voice, “what has become of that girl who used to give us such bucketfuls of soulful lava?—the one who signed herself ‘Quirus’?”

Mr. Overton laughed, and much to Hermia’s relief every one turned to him. “She brought me that poem I published, herself, and I came near laughing outright once or twice. I have seen few plainer women; there was such a general dinginess about her. At the same time there was a certain magnetism which, I imagine, would have been pronounced had she been a stronger woman. But I should not be surprised to hear that she had died of consumption.”

“Is it possible?” said Embury. “Her work was strong, however. Why didn’t you take her in hand and bring her up in the way she should go?”

“My dear Embury, life is too short. That girl was all wrong. She worked her syllogisms backward, so to speak. Her intellect was molten with the heat of her imagination, and stunted with the narrowness of her experience. She reasoned from effect to cause. Her characters, instead of being the carefully considered products of environment and heredity, were always altered or distorted to suit some dramatic event. Intellect without experience of the heart and of life is responsible for more errors than innate viciousness which is controlled by worldly wisdom, or natural folly which is clothed in the gown of accumulated knowledge. I have seen so many clever writers go to pieces,” he added, regarding his empty plate with a sigh; “they lie so. They have no conscience whatever, and they are too clever to see it.”

“Then how can they help themselves?” asked Hermia, with a puzzled look.

“They had better wait until they can.”

Hermia did not care to pursue the subject, and saw, moreover, that Embury was waiting to be heard. “What would journalism do if no one knew how to lie?” she asked him, with a smile, and was somewhat surprised when every man at the table except Embury laughed aloud.

Embury colored, but replied promptly: “It would probably die for want of patronage.”

“You are right, Embury,” said Cryder. “You could not have found a more appreciative field for your talents.”

Embury looked at him reproachfully, and Cryder continued: “I never could resist the temptation to kick a friend when he was down. I will give you an opportunity later.”

“Life is made up of lost opportunities—I probably shall not see it. True, I might review your books, but to do so I should have to read them.”

“Is this the way literary people always spar?” murmured Hermia to Cryder.

“Oh! do not let it worry you,” he replied. “This is only facetiousness—American humor. It doesn’t hurt.” He dropped his voice. “Are you not well? You look tired.”

“I am tired,” said Hermia, returning his gaze—he seemed very near to her at that moment. “Clever people, singly, are very delightful, but en masse they keep one on the rack.”

“Don’t bother any more!” said Cryder. “Leave them to me; I will take care of them.”

“You are good,” murmured Hermia. “When I am old I shall like a salon; I shall like the power of it. Now—it bores me a little.”

Cryder bent somewhat nearer to her. “Do not wait too long for anything,” he murmured. “A man’s power comes with age; a woman’s power goes with age.”

He turned from her suddenly and addressed a remark to Embury which immediately gave that clever young man a chance to entertain his companions for ten minutes. Hermia found herself drifting from her guests. She had undergone many evolutions of thought and feeling during the past few weeks. At times she had believed herself in love with Cryder; at others, she had been conscious of indifferent liking. She was puzzled to find that his abstract image thrilled her more than his actual presence. On the other hand, she liked him better when with him. He was so entertaining, so sympathetic; he had such delicate tact and charm. When absent, she sometimes thought of him with a certain distaste; he had qualities that she disliked, and he was diametrically different from all imagined lovers. Then she would make up her mind to close her eyes to his deficiencies and to love him spiritually. She would compel herself to think of him for hours together on an exalted mental and spiritual plane, where passion had no place. Not that she believed him incapable of passion, by any means—she believed that all men were constructed on the same plan—but he was so different from that man who now dwelt behind a barred door in her brain that she felt it her duty, to both, to love him in a different way. She was surprised to find that after such æsthetic communion she almost hated him. Reaction following excess of passion may be short-lived; but immoderate sentimentality leaves a mental ennui that requires a long convalescence. Sentimentality is a growth of later civilization, and trails its roots over the surface like a pine; while passion had its seeds planted in the garden of Eden, and is root, branch, twig, and leaf of human nature.

In summing up her sensations she had come to the conclusion that on the whole she was in love with him. No one had ever moved her one-tenth as much before. If she had not lost her head about him, it was because her nature had slept too long to awake in a moment. That would come by degrees. There were times when she felt the impulse to cast herself on her face and sob farewell to the dreams of her youth and to the lover who had been a being more real than Ogden Cryder; but she thrust aside the impulse with a frown and plunged into her daily life.

At opportune moments Hermia’s attention returned to her guests. Miss Starbruck rose at a signal from her niece and the women went into the library. The men joined them soon after, and Cryder, much to the gratitude of his tired and dreamy hostess, continued to entertain them until eleven o’clock, when they went home.

AN ILLUSION DISPELLED.

The front door had closed after the last guest, the butler had turned down the lights in the hall, Miss Starbruck had gone up-stairs, and Hermia was standing by the library fire. She heard some one come down the hall, and turned her head, her expression of indifference and mental fatigue lifting a little. The portière was pushed aside and Cryder entered the room.

The next morning Hermia stood gazing at her bedroom fire for a few moments before going down-stairs. Her face wore a peculiar expression. “Is there anything in love?” she murmured, half aloud. “Is there?”

She went down to the library and sank listlessly into a chair, and covered her face with her hands. She did not love Cryder. There was but one answer to the question now. Imagination and will had done their utmost, but had been conquered by fact. She had made a horrible mistake. She felt an impulse to fling herself on the floor and shriek aloud. But the self-control of years was stronger than impulse. In spite of the softening influences of happier conditions, she must suffer or enjoy in her old dumb way until something had smashed that iron in her nature to atoms or melted it to lava.

But, if she was saturated with dull disgust and disappointment, her conscience rapped audibly on her inactive brain. It was her duty to herself and to Cryder to break the thing off at once—to continue it, in fact, was an impossibility. But she shrank from telling Cryder that he must go and not return. He loved her, not as she had wanted to be loved, perhaps, but with his heart, his sentiment. She liked him—very much indeed—and had no desire to give him pain. He might suffer the more keenly because of the fineness of his sensibilities. Suppose he should kill himself? Men so often killed themselves for women who did not love them. She remembered that she had dreamed of men dying for hopeless love of her; but, now that it seemed imminent, the romance was gone. It would be nothing but a vulgar newspaper story after all.

What should she do? She must tell him. She turned to her desk, then sank back into her chair. She could not write. He would come again that evening. She would tell him then. Written words of that sort were always brutal.

How she got through that day she never knew. It seemed as if the very wheels of life were clogged. The sky was gray and the snow fell heavily; the gas had to be lighted in the house. No one called; but Hermia was willing to be left to solitude. She was not restless, she was dully indifferent. The grayness of the day entered into her and enveloped her; life in the Brooklyn flat had never looked colder and barer than in this palace which her will and her wealth had created.

When evening came she gave orders that no one but Cryder should be admitted. Somewhat to her surprise he did not come. She did not care particularly, but went to bed at half-past nine, and had Miss Newton rub her to sleep.