White Magic: A Novel

The bill for that excursion in flimsy dress and slippers through the wet, cold woods was promptly presented; and, after the rude manner of all such bills, it had to be met on sight. As has been hinted, Beatrice did not have those refined, ladylike colds which enable heroines of fiction to continue in undiminished loveliness. She had the plain, human cold that reduces its victim to a wheezing, sneezing, snuffling hunk of misery, swollen of eyes and nose, laden with pocket handkerchiefs. She let no one but the family see her at such times—and was just as well pleased if they kept away.

Thus, she now had five days for uninterrupted reflection, in a humble, most penitential frame of mind. Her father did not disturb her, flattered her with attentions of specially selected flowers, of solicitous inquiries twice a day, not through secretary or butler or valet, but personally seeking her own maid.

The third day her mother came with glowing accounts of what he purposed doing for her in commemoration of the marriage. The chief items were magnificent jewels and the Red Hill estate. As the jewels would be too dear, to her who loved jewels, for her ever to think of realizing on them, and as the Red Hill estate would call for a huge annual appropriation from her father’s bounty for maintenance, it must be said that Richmond, resolved to keep his children dependent, had chosen not uncannily. But Beatrice was in no mood to tear his acts into shreds in search for the slyly concealed motive. Since he had reversed her expectations by dealing gently with her when he caught her at the cascade, she had almost restored him to favor in her thoughts. Nor did the fact that gentle dealing was absolutely the only course left open to him affect her generous judgment. This news of the gifts, the excited talk of her maid, on her own behalf and also in repeating what was being said below stairs, the journalistic comments on the approaching “alliance”—all these things tended to put marrying Peter before her in a less unfavorable light. And she was not seeing Peter—nor Roger.

Abased by her cold, she took a low view of her goings-on with Roger. She succeeded in shaming her skulking pride into the open, where it made earnest efforts to reproach her for having thrown herself at a man who had promptly and decisively repulsed her. No matter what his reason. He had shown her that he did not love her—and did not want her love. The older people grow, the less nervous they are about being sillily romantic; they glory in the divine follies of love. Young heart being all they have left of youth’s fair, fleeting riches, they try to enjoy it to the uttermost. But young people, if at all sophisticated, shy from extravagant romance; they fear to be convicted of the horrible crime of being young and green; they dread falling victim to the humiliating swindle of loving more than they are loved, of giving more than they get. Until Beatrice met Roger she had prided herself on the control of her mind over her heart, on being “woman of the world.” She now began to smile—faintly, but with attempt at mockery—upon her delirium of love. She did not regret it, did not repent it. But she thought of it as a thing of the past.

Her father dropped in on her for a little talk before dressing for dinner. He had never been so attentive—and no man could be more fascinating than Richmond, when he wished. “I’ve got to make a tour of the Northwest,” said he. “I must start not later than the twenty-second of May—and be gone a month. I wish you’d either put off the wedding till I get back or have it before I go. When Peter comes down to-morrow you and he can talk it over. You know I’d rather you married before I go. I’m not as young as I once was, and there’s an element of uncertainty in these journeys. But it shall be just as you say.”

“It’ll have to be put off,” said Beatrice.

“Don’t forget that Peter has made arrangements for you to be presented at court the tenth of June.”

“I simply can’t get ready.”

“Your mother thinks you can,” said Richmond, showing his keen disappointment, but altogether in regret, not at all in anger or reproach. “Still, do the best you can. Think it over. Talk with Peter.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” said Beatrice. She had protested more strongly to him than she had in her own heart, for she was now sunk down into indifference. Nothing seemed to matter. The cold had left her physically below par; her mental state was therefore blackly pessimistic. Roger’s lack of response seemed profoundly discouraging; she began to doubt whether she loved him—whether she ever had loved as she had fancied. We should get very much nearer to the truth about human adversities and disasters—the truth about their real causes—did we but know exactly what was the state of health of the persons chiefly concerned. Beatrice well and Beatrice ill were two absolutely different persons.

“Yes—I know you’ll oblige me if it’s possible,” said her father.

The next day happened to be a Sunday. Richmond himself motored down to meet Peter, who was arriving in time for lunch.

As the young man descended from the train it took no skill whatever at reading faces to discover that he was out of humor—had been brooding over Beatrice’s treatment of him, and in the brooding had lost nothing of the grouch he had taken away with him. A weak man never looks so weak as when he is out of humor; accordingly, Peter was showing his true character, or lack of character, with a distinctness that irritated Richmond even as he reflected how admirably it fitted in with his plans. Peter was not to blame for his weakness. He had not had the chance to become otherwise. He had been deprived of that hand-to-hand strife with life which alone makes a man strong. Usually, however, the dangerous truth as to his weakness was well hidden by the fictitious seeming of strength which obstinacy, selfishness, and the adulation of a swarm of sycophants and dependents combine to give a man of means and position. Richmond, for all his reverence for Peter’s lineage and wealth nearly two centuries old, had not for an instant been deceived as to his personal character. One reason why he felt so satisfied with him as a son-in-law was his belief that Beatrice could be happy only with a man she could rule; and on this Sunday of Peter’s arrival with his weakness stripped naked to the most casual eye by his bad humor, Richmond was better pleased than ever with his selection for his high-strung daughter.

“Peter,” said he sharply, when he had him in the limousine.

The young man clinched his hands in a feeble gesture of preparation for resolute resistance.

“I’ve got to go West the middle of the month. I want you and Beatrice to marry before I go—say, on the twentieth. You have to be in London early in the second week in June?”

“Yes,” said Peter reluctantly—the yes of a man lacking the moral courage to say no.

“I’ll not be in the East again before the middle of June—maybe July.”

“Can’t do it,” said Peter with a sudden scowl at the back of the chauffeur separated from them by thick glass.

“Why not?” inquired Richmond in the animal trainer’s tone and with the animal trainer’s eye upon the unhappy Peter. “Why not?”

“I’m not sure I shall marry at all,” said Peter, and his fright distorted his bluff at resoluteness into a sort of nervous impudence, like that of the schoolboy braving the teacher’s uplifted ferule because the rest of the school is waiting with ears that long to hear him howl and beg.

Richmond twisted his small, wiry body round in the seat that he might bring the various batteries in and behind his face full upon Vanderkief. “Is this a joke?” he demanded.

“I wish it were,” replied Peter diplomatically. “I’ve made some discoveries that will compel me to—to relieve your daughter of—of the engagement which—which is so distasteful to her.”

Richmond’s policy in dealing with his fellow-men was to strike his heaviest blow first—that is, he blew up the intrenchments before he charged the intrenched. He laughed in that gentle, light way which is as the soft tap of the nettle leaf that instantly produces a swelling and a smarting. “So, this is why you’ve been sneaking round these last three days, trying to dispose of the stocks I let you in on.”

Peter grew sickly pale. “I’ve—I’ve been—arranging my affairs somewhat,” mumbled he.

Richmond laughed again—cheerily, genially. “This world,” said he, “is peopled by fools. But the biggest fool of all is the fellow who thinks he is a little less of a fool than the others. That seems to fit you, my boy. You must think I was whelped only yesterday. Do you suppose I trust people because I take ’em in with me? Why, I’d have been in the jail or the poorhouse long ago if I had. When I let you in I locked the door behind you. I always do.”

Peter’s hands were trembling so that they shook the stick round which he had them clasped.

“You think you’ve sold out,” continued Richmond. “Instead, you’ll find to-morrow that you still have all you bought through me—and that you’ve got to buy as much more.”

“But I can’t do it,” pleaded Vanderkief—and his voice was not much better than a whine. “I’ve got no ready money. I’d have to sell real estate that’s been in the family from the beginning.”

“I’ll take it on mortgage,” said Richmond reassuringly. “So, you needn’t worry about that, my boy.”

“But we never mortgage!” cried Peter. His face became shiny with sweat. “No, indeed—we never mortgage, Mr. Richmond. I’m much obliged, but we never mortgage.”

“Got to begin some time,” said Richmond. And seeing that his prospective son-in-law was in the proper state of flabbiness, he went back to the point. “Now—as to the trouble between you and Beatrice. Please explain it. Let’s see just what it is.”

“She cares nothing about me.”

“Who says so?”

“She does.”

“When?”

“When we became engaged.”

“Yet you proposed and she accepted.”

Peter squirmed. “But I didn’t know she cared about—about some one else.”

“Who?”

“An—an artist.”

“Who?”

“I met him at your house.” Peter’s anger was rising, as will the anger of the worst frightened boy in the world if the whipping is kept up long enough. “I might have known,” he cried. “I did suspect, the day I saw him painting her. But it seemed absurd that a girl of her position——”

“It is absurd,” cut in Richmond. “Who told you this story?”

Peter did not reply.

“My daughter?”

“No. I’m not at all likely to——”

“Then it was Allie Kinnear,” said Richmond, and Peter guiltily felt as if the information had been wrenched from him. “So, she’s trying to marry you?”

“Mr. Richmond,” said Peter with the stiffness of an insulted man of ancient lineage, “I have the highest esteem for Miss——”

“So have I,” interrupted Richmond. “She’s a pretty, bright, shrewd girl. She fools everybody. But I’d have thought you would have been on guard.”

“I assure you, sir, Miss Kinnear——”

“Oh—by the way”—Richmond broke into Peter’s sentence as if a thought on another subject had happened to flash through his mind. “Bring those mortgages to my office before two o’clock to-morrow,” said he carelessly. “I’ve an appointment at two-thirty. That gives us a clear half hour—plenty of time.”

Peter seemed to wither. The internal havoc was more dire than the external; for, internally, he had shriveled.

“Miss Kinnear is pretending to love you,” went on his tormentor, harking back to the matrimonial business. “I want to find out just how far you’ve walked into her trap.”

“She has made no pretenses,” protested Peter. “I’m sure if she married a man it’d be because she cared for him.”

“Fudge, Peter—fudge!” laughed Richmond. “You’re a man of the world. You know what she wants.” Then, with gimlet eyes and with bony finger poking into the heavy muscle of Peter’s arm: “If you wish to know what anybody wants you don’t listen to what they say, you look at what they need.”

This was the kind of shrewdness that made impression upon Peter, the sensitively suspicious. He winced, looked uncomfortable and sheepish.

“There’s nothing in that artist story,” scoffed Richmond. “You know Beatrice. She’s very proud. Take my advice, don’t speak to her about it. If she got a notion that you were flirting with Allie—” Richmond made a gesture suggestive of vague, vast dangers.

“I hope, sir, you’ve not got the impression that I—that I—” Peter came to a full stop.

“I’ve got no impression at all except that you wish to marry Beatrice on the eighteenth.”

“The twentieth,” corrected Peter.

“The twentieth, then.” Richmond had now changed his manner to the benevolent paternal. “And do be sensible, young man, and make no trouble between Beatrice and Allie.”

Thus it came to pass that when Peter and Beatrice were strolling down the Italian garden after lunch, Peter lost no time in obeying Richmond’s orders. Nor did he set about it with any reluctance, for Beatrice was once more herself and, in a costume that gave her every charm its best chance, was enough to turn a far steadier head than Peter’s had been in several years where she was concerned. “Don’t you think,” said he, “that we’d better change the date to the eighteenth?”

She made no immediate reply. They walked slowly toward the arch at the farther end, he glancing at her from time to time with a notion that she had not heard. At last he asked: “Did you hear?”

She nodded, seated herself on an old stone seat from the garden of an ancient palace, where it had no doubt participated in many a fateful interview between man and woman.

“What are you thinking about?” inquired he.

“About our marriage.” She gave him a steady, penetrating look—the sort of look that always made him ill at ease with her and a little afraid of what marrying her might mean. “Do you want to marry me, Peter?” she asked.

“What rot!” exclaimed he. His glance shifted.

“You know you don’t,” rejoined the girl. “Your good sense tells you I’m not the sort of woman a man would enjoy being tied to unless she loved him. You don’t want to marry me, and I don’t want to marry you.”

“What’s the use of this kind of talk?” he remonstrated.

“Every use. Let’s refuse to marry.”

Peter looked strangely alarmed, glanced round as if in mortal dread lest they were being overheard. “If your father hears of this he’ll blame me,” he cried. “I tell you I want to marry you. I’m determined to marry you. I’ve given my word and you’ve given yours. And we’ll marry on the——”

“I ask you to release me,” interrupted the girl.

“I’ll not do it!” And visions of money pouring out and mortgages pouring in put a note of shrill hysteria into his usually heavy voice.

“I thought I could marry you,” said Beatrice, strong, vigorously strong under a surface of sweet gentleness. “I find I can’t. You’ll release me.”

“I will not!” exclaimed Peter, once more shiny with sweat and mopping industriously. “And I want you to tell your father that I absolutely refused to release you—that I insisted on your marrying me.”

“My father?” said the girl wonderingly. “What has he got to do with it?”

Peter was winded for the moment. He recovered quickly, hastened to explain: “I—I’ve the highest respect for your father. I wouldn’t like him to think for a minute that I was careless about my word—or that I wasn’t bent and determined to marry you. I want you to understand, Beatrice. I hold you to your promise.”

“As I’ve told you, I love another man,” said Beatrice. “I thought I was getting over it. I find it was simply a fit of the blues.” She smiled absently. “I ran across an old pipe of his that I had locked in a drawer—a horrid, smelly, old pipe. And—Peter, were you ever in love?”

“With you,” said he, sullen and jealous—and certainly her expression, her tone, were not soothing to his vanity, fine and beautiful though they were in themselves.

She laughed. “Your grandmother!” mocked she. “That pipe—it was like one of those enchanted things in The Arabian Nights. It made me see”—her eyes grew fascinatingly tender and dreamy—“and see—and see!... Could you marry a woman who felt like that about another man?”

“Then why did you engage yourself to me?”

“Because he won’t have me,” confessed she, her old-time pride in her love rampant.

“I never heard such rot!” exclaimed he in disgust.

“And I know you really don’t want to marry me,” she went on in a voice of appeal, of confidence in his manhood, in his friendliness for her, his childhood playmate.

If Richmond had been standing behind his daughter, making menacing faces at Peter over her shoulder, that sore-beset, young man could not have felt him more curdlingly. “You don’t know anything of the kind,” he blustered. “Don’t you dare tell your father anything like that.”

She scrutinized him. “You seem to have father on the brain.... Peter—Hanky—what has he been saying to you?”

“Nothing,” lied Peter shiftily. “Not a word.”

“That isn’t true, Hanky. Is it?”

He hung his head.

“Own up. He’s been—threatening you?”

“Now, look here, Beatrice—you are trying to get me into trouble,” pleaded and protested Hanky. “I haven’t said a word about your father’s having spoken to me of you.”

“What has he been threatening?” persisted the girl, her hand on his arm. “You can trust me, Hanky. You know, I keep my mouth shut.”

“I’ve got nothing to tell,” he insisted with a kind of whining doggedness. “All I say is, I want to marry you. If you’re stuck on another man and won’t marry me I can’t help it. But I want to marry you.”

“I understand perfectly—perfectly,” said Beatrice. “He’s compelling each of us to marry the other. I want to marry another man. You want to marry Allie. But——”

“I don’t want to marry Allie!” he protested with the energy of terror. “I said nothing to you about her. Anyhow, I regard her as an underhanded, designing fraud. She told me about you and Wade. Yes, she was the one that did it.”

“Well, why not?” cried Beatrice. “I’ve no objection. She knows I want to get out of marrying you.”

Peter’s eyes glistened with hope. “You gave her leave to tell? You asked her to tell?”

“Practically. What of it?”

“I am glad to hear that!” cried he with a gusty breath of relief. “I was beginning to think women were all alike—that there wasn’t any such thing as sentiment in them.”

Beatrice’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Yes, Hanky, and she practically had my permission to make love to you. I’m sure she’s just dying to marry you. Now, you’ll release me, won’t you?”

Peter lit a cigarette and inspected the horizon as if hoping to sight something in the way of aid. “I can’t do it, Beatrice,” he finally said, deeply apologetic. “If I could tell you what a ghastly fix I’m in, I assure you you’d not blame me.”

“I don’t blame you,” said she. “It’s just as well for me to do it alone.”

“You’re going to release me?” cried he eagerly.

“What would father say if he saw you now!” said she.

The eagerness whisked out of his face.

“That’s better,” mocked she. “But I’ll not tease you, Hanky—with your soul torn between love and money. I shall take the whole responsibility. I shall refuse to marry you.”

But Peter continued to look depressed. “Your father’ll think it was something I said.”

“My father will not think I could have been discouraged that easily—or at all—if I wished to be your wife. He’ll know you are too fond of money to risk losing any. Don’t be alarmed, Peter. Father will understand the instant you tell him.”

“I tell him!” cried Peter. “You’ll have to do that yourself. You’re used to him. You don’t realize how he gets on my nerves. If I tried to tell him I’d get permanent paralysis of the tongue before a word came.”

“What a stupid you are! Don’t you see that I’m letting you tell him, as a favor—to help you to escape? You go to him—complain of me—urge him to make me keep my promise. Understand?”

Peter saw it, looked humble apology.

“Put it to him as strong as you like,” pursued Beatrice. “You can’t make it any worse for me, and you’ll make it a lot better for yourself.”

Peter looked at her so admiringly that she sent him away on the instant. She knew him—knew how easily she could get him back if she wished, and how little it would take to make him forget his resentment at her failure to appreciate him and at her father’s energetic methods—and his dread of what life with so strenuous a will as hers might mean. “Tell him right away, Hanky,” advised she, pointing with her sunshade to where Richmond stood in the library window observing them. “Let’s get it over with.”

Mrs. Richmond sat writing at a desk not far from where Richmond was standing. As Peter started up the walk toward the house Richmond said to his wife: “What a chucklehead Peter is! No wonder Beatrice felt like balking.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t say Peter was worth getting excited about, one way or the other,” replied Mrs. Richmond.

“The young men growing up nowadays are a mighty cheap, thin lot. He’s as good as any.” Richmond pressed his lips together firmly. “And he’s the best possible husband for her. A strong woman ought to marry a small man if there’s to be peace.”

Mrs. Richmond sneered—faintly and covertly—at the paper before her. She did not miss any of the possible implications of her husband’s remark. For once, however, she did him an injustice. He was not hitting at her—had not meant to insinuate that a strong man ought to marry a small woman, and that Daniel Richmond had done this very thing. He was thinking only of his daughter and Peter. He would have liked to provide her with a real man; he sincerely regretted the exigencies of his game—of the game of life as it lies—that forbade it, that forced him to give her only a Peter Vanderkief.

He consoled himself by feeling that she would before many years appreciate what he had done for her—this, when she should have installed herself in the dazzling position her ability would make out of the wealth he could give her and the prestige she would get through Peter’s ancient lineage. Being a man of imagination—as every man who achieves in whatever direction must be—Richmond had a strong vein of sentiment, of romance. He could not but sympathize with his daughter’s heart trouble, now that her acquiescence in his plans permitted him to be fair-minded—in secret. But romance was a fleeting thing, while the things he had been planning for her were not spring-time ephemerals, but the substantialities that make a human being comfortable and often happy the whole life through from youth to old age.

When Peter entered, Mrs. Richmond had finished her note and was just departing. “Will you drive with me in about an hour?” asked she, passing him in the door.

“Sorry, but I’ve got——”

“Oh, if Beatrice needs you,” laughed she, going on and leaving the two men alone.

Peter interrupted Richmond’s reverie with a bomb. “Beatrice has broken the engagement,” said he nervously. “She refuses to marry me.”

The small, wiry figure in the window swung round with a jerk. Gone were the sentimental reflections inspired by the lovely prospect from that window, his daughter the crown and climax of the loveliness. “Why?” he shot at the young man.

Peter shrank only a trifle. He was strong in his strong case. “Because she does not care for me and cares for some one else.”

“That trash again! You refused to release her?”

“Yes, sir,” said Peter, proud of his virtue.

“Well?”

“She released herself.”

Richmond wheeled round, noted his daughter seated in the same place, twirling her pale-blue sunshade and looking idly about. He wheeled back, started for the door.

“Pardon me, sir,” said Peter, “but I am taking the train for town. This puts me in an embarrassing—painful——”

“Wait here,” ordered Richmond, and disappeared.

Peter, discreetly standing well back in the room, watched the father speeding toward the daughter and awaited in nervous suspense the crash of the collision. He marveled that she could sit placidly when she knew exactly what was coming. “She sure is the real thing,” he muttered. “Where can you beat it? A sport—that’s what I call her—a good sport.”

When Richmond arrived within comfortable speaking distance of the placid girl with the sweet smile of welcome he began. “How did Vanderkief get this false impression?” said he in a flexible tone, readily convertible either to geniality or to wrathful imperiousness.

“Has he told you I am willing to marry him?” inquired she.

Richmond beamed. “I thought the numskull didn’t know what he was talking about!” he exclaimed. “He says you won’t marry him.”

“Oh,” said Beatrice with her merriest smile. “I thought you said he had a false impression.”

Richmond shook his head impatiently. “Have you or have you not told him you’d not marry him?”

“Yes,” replied Beatrice, eyes dancing with the pleasure of teasing him.

“Yes—what?” demanded he.

“What you said,” replied she.

“Beatrice—I insist on a serious answer. Peter came to me and said——”

“Oh, papa! Surely, you’re not going over that again. You said it all before.”

Richmond paused to frame a question that could be answered only plainly. “Did you tell Peter you would not marry him?” he said sternly, though he had too good a sense of humor not to appreciate her childish cleverness.

“I did,” laughed Beatrice, engagingly at her ease. “Can you blame me?”

Richmond seated himself on the bench beside her. “You realize the consequences of your refusal?” he said coldly.

Her face became sober. The eyes with which she met his gaze were as resolute as his own. “I realize the consequences of not refusing,” said she. “And I’m prepared to take the consequences of refusing.”

Richmond’s baffled expression was pushed aside by one of arrogant anger. “What did Peter say to you? I understand this affair. I’ll make that young man writhe for his impudent treachery!”

“He pleaded with me to marry him. He refused to release me. He went straight to you——”

“You can’t trick me!” cried her father, his expressive eyes sparkling ominously. “Before I get through with this situation I think all concerned will regret having crossed my will. That’s always the way—good nature is mistaken for weakness.”

“You may ruin Peter if you feel you can afford to be so contemptible,” said Beatrice unmoved, “and you may ruin Roger Wade—though I doubt if he’ll regard losing a little money as ruin. But you——”

“I told you I’d drive him from the country in disgrace!”

Through the youth of the girl showed her inheritance of strength of soul, to make a woman of her, a personality a match for his own. “If you bring out anything disgraceful about him that’s true you’ll be only doing what’s right,” said she calmly. “If you try to damage him with falsehood I shall myself tell who’s doing it and why.”

A sense of his powerlessness against her silenced him.

“You may do your worst, as I was saying,” she went on. “But I shall not marry any man I do not at least respect; I shall not marry any poor, tiresome creature like Hanky. I’ve learned better. I’ve found something with which to contrast life with him. And I cannot and will not do it.”

There, of course, had been a time in Daniel Richmond’s career when he had made his way and gained his points by discussing and reasoning with his fellow-beings. Every leader wins leadership by persuading his fellows that he has the necessary qualifications. But that time had long passed; for many a year Richmond had been in the habit of deciding what to do at a council within his own brain and informing the outside world of his decision only by acts and orders. He now continued silent, regarding the ground; he was fighting for control of his temper, fighting for the calmness to argue with this rebel daughter. To make her reasonable he must first become so, himself.

“You have not known this artist long—have you?” he said at length in the tone of a rational being and a father.

“Long enough,” replied the girl.

“Long enough for what?” inquired the father pleasantly, though his daughter’s tone—she being still much ruffled internally—was teasing his temper.

“Long enough to know that I care for him.”

Her father laughed agreeably. “You and I are much alike, my dear,” said he. “You know yourself well enough to know that the real reason for your excitement is opposition. Now, be reasonable. What could I do but oppose? Can you blame me for opposing? Can you wonder that I am afraid you will do something foolish—something you will regret your whole life? Suppose this was a case of some other father and daughter—a case you had no personal interest in. Would you be on the side of the father or of the daughter?”

There was no resisting this fairness, so fairly put. Beatrice smiled. “On the side of the father,” said she promptly. “I don’t expect you to understand, father. I see all your arguments. I see how foolish and headlong I seem to you. But— The fact remains that I love Roger Wade. I know I am not making a fool of myself in loving him. Oh, you’ll say that in the same circumstances other girls have said the same thing, when they were simply blinded and deceived by their craze for romance. But this case is the exception. And I know it.” She looked at him with her sweetest expression. “Let me ask you a few questions. Do you know Roger?”

“I understand that sort of man perfectly. It’s a familiar type. Every girl with expectations has several such buzzing about her.”

“‘Not another word! I’ll show you, miss—’”

“Is that honest, father? Is that really the impression you have of Roger Wade?”

The dangerous look reappeared in Richmond’s face—in his eyes, round his mouth.

“Now, don’t get angry, father. That would be confession, you know. One does not get angry in a discussion unless one is in the wrong.”

“Who wouldn’t get angry, seeing a girl like you bent on making a fool of herself.”

“If you were where you were when you started, and you met such a man as Roger, you’d be——”

“Don’t speak his name to me,” cried Richmond, twitching and squirming. “I ask you to take time to come to your senses.”

“I’ve tried that. When I don’t see him, it’s even clearer to me than when I do that I must marry him. Besides, if he weren’t on earth now, I still couldn’t marry the Hanky sort. Oh, father dear—can’t you see the change in me? As you say, I’m like you. Put yourself in my place. Would you marry the sort of person Hanky is—the sort all the Hankies are—if you could—” She sighed. “But I can’t. He won’t. Father, please help me!”

There was a conflict of expressions in Richmond’s face as she made this appeal movingly. It was sheer confession of fear of his own better self which loved his daughter, which respected the things she was now learning to respect—it was sheer confession when he flew into furious rage—the one mood where a human being is safe from the entreaties of heart and the counsels of higher intelligence. “You are crazy—plain crazy!” he cried in his most insulting tone. “There’s no excuse for you—none! Reasoning with you is time wasted.”

“If I’m crazy there’s every excuse for me,” answered she, with the placidity of the anger that is beyond the stage of bluster and sputter. “If I’m not crazy there’s no excuse for you.”

“Answer me! Are you going to be sensible? Are you ready to drop tomfoolery and make a happy and contented future for yourself?”

“If I can,” replied she. “If Roger will——”

Up sprang Richmond. “Not another word! I’ll show you, miss——”

“Yes, one word more,” interrupted she. “I want to say just one thing more. If you do not agree to let Peter and Mr. Wade alone I shall leave your house at once—and this time it will be for good.”

“You—threaten me!” he shouted, shaking with fury, for that sense of ultimate powerlessness with her had driven him quite insane.

“Do you wish me to stay or to go?” asked she, her color gone, but every sign of steadfastness in her face, in her figure, in her attitude.

“Go!” he shrieked. “Go—and make a fool and a scandal of yourself. Go! Go! Go!”

And away he rushed, a crazy man.