XIV

"Do you think he did—shoot himself?"

They continued to stand staring into each other's eyes—the width of the room between them. A red azalea on the long mahogany table, strewn with books, separated them by its fierce splash of color. The apathy of Diane's voice was not that of worn-out emotion, but of emotion which finds no adequate tones. The very way in which her inquiry ignored all other subjects between them had its poignancy.

"What do you think?"

"Oh, I suppose he did. Every one says so; then why shouldn't it be true? If it were, it would only be of a piece with all the rest."

"I reminded you last night that he had other troubles besides—besides—"

"Besides those I may have caused him."

"If you like to put it so. He might have been driven to a desperate act by loss of fortune." "Leaving me to face poverty alone. No; I can't think so ill of him as that. If you suggest it by way of offering me consolation, you're making a mistake. Of the two, I'd rather think of him as seeking death from horror—horror of me—than from simple cowardice."

"It would be no new thing in the history of money troubles; and it would relieve you of the blame."

"To fasten it on him. I see what you mean; but I prefer not to accept that kind of absolution. If there's any consolation left to me, it's in the pride of having been the wife of an honorable man. Don't take it away from me as long as there's any other explanation possible. I see you're puzzled; but you'd have to be a wife to understand me. Accuse me of any crime you like; take it for granted that I've been guilty of it; only don't say that he deserted me in that way. Let me keep at least the comfort of his memory."

"I want you to keep all the comfort you can get, Diane. God forbid that I should take from you anything in which you find support. So far am I from that, that I come to offer you—what I have to offer."

There was a minute's silence before she replied:

"I don't know what that is."

"My name."

There was another minute's silence, during which she looked at him hardly.

"What for?"

"I should think you'd see."

"I don't. Will you be good enough to explain?"

"Is that necessary? Is this a minute in which to bandy words?"

"It's a minute in which I may be permitted to ask the meaning of your—generosity."

"It isn't generosity. I'm saying nothing new. I've come only for an answer to the question I asked you before going to South America, three months ago."

"Oh, but I thought that question had answered itself."

"Then perhaps it has—in that, whatever reply you might have given me under other conditions, now you must accept me."

"You mean, I must accept—your name."

"My name, and all that goes with it."

"How could you expect me to do that, after what happened last night?"

"What happened last night shall be—as though it had not happened."

"Could you ever forget it?"

"I didn't say I should forget it. I suppose I couldn't do that any more than you. I said it should be as though it hadn't been."

"And what about Dorothea?"

"That must be as it may."

"You mean that Dorothea would have to take her chance."

"She needn't know anything about it—yet."

"You couldn't keep it from her forever."

"No. But she'll probably marry soon. After that she'll understand things better."

"That is, she'll understand the position in which you've been placed—that you could hardly have acted otherwise."

"I don't want to go into definitions. There are times in life when words become as dangerous as explosives. Let us do what we see to be our obvious duty, without saying too much about it."

"Isn't it your first duty to protect your child?"

"My first duty, as I see it now, is to protect you."

"I don't see much to be gained by shielding one person when you expose another. What happens to me is a small matter compared with the consequences to her."

"Your influence hasn't hurt her in the past; why should it do so now?"

"You forget that there are other things besides my influence. Her whole position, her whole life, would be changed, if she had for a mother—if you had for a wife—a notorious woman like me."

"There are situations where the child must follow the parent."

"But there are none, as far as I know, in which the parent must sacrifice the child."

"I don't agree with you. There are moments in which we must act in a certain definite manner, no matter what may be the outcome. Don't let us talk of it any more, Diane. You must know as well as I that there is but one thing for us to do."

"You mean, of course, that I must marry you."

"You must give me the right to take care of you."

"Because it's a duty that no one else would assume. That's what it comes to, isn't it?"

"I repeat that I don't want to discuss it—"

"You must let me point out that some amount of discussion is needed. If we didn't have it before marriage, we should have it afterward, when it would be worse. You won't think I'm boasting if I say that I think my vision is a little keener than yours, and that I see what you'd be doing more clearly than you do yourself. You know me—or you think you know me—as a guilty woman, homeless, penniless, and without a friend in the world. You don't want to leave me to my fate, and there's no way of helping me but one. That way you're prepared to take, cost what it will. I admire you for it; I thank you for it; I know you would do it like a man. But it's just because you would do it like a man—because you are doing it like a man—that your kindness is far more cruel than scorn. No woman, not the weakest, not the worst, among us, would consent to be taken as you're offering to take me. A man might bring himself to accept that kind of pity; but a woman—never! You said just now that you had come to offer me—what you had to offer; but surely I'm not fallen so low as to have to take it."

"I said I offered you my name and all that goes with it. I would try to tell you what it is, only that I find something in our relative positions transcending words. But since you need words—since apparently you prefer plainness of speech—I'll tell you something: I saw Bienville this morning."

She looked up with a new expression, verging on that of curiosity.

"And—?"

"Since then," he continued, "I've become even more deeply conscious than I was before of the ineradicable nature of what I feel for you."

"Ah?"

"I've come to see that, whatever may have happened, whatever you may be, I want you as my wife."

"Do you mean that you would overlook wrongdoing on my part, and—and—care for me, just the same?"

"I mean that life isn't a conceivable thing to me without you; I mean that no considerations in the world have any force as against my desire to get you. Whatever your life has been, I subscribe to it. Listen! When I saw Bienville this morning he withdrew what he said on shipboard—as nearly as possible, without giving himself the lie, he denied it—and yet, Diane, and yet I knew his first story was—the truth. No, don't shrink. Don't cry out. Let me go on. I swear to God that it makes no difference. I see the whole thing from another point of view. I'll not only take you as you are, but I want you as you are. I give you my honor, which is dearer than my life—I give you my child, who is more precious than my honor. Everything—everything is cheap, so long as I can win you. Don't shrink from me, Diane. Don't look at me like that—"

"How can I help shrinking from anything so base?"

Her voice rose scarcely above a whisper, but it checked the movement with which, after the minutes of almost motionless confrontation, he came toward her with eager arms.

"Base?" he echoed, offended.

"Yes—base. That a man should care for a woman whom he thinks to be bad is comprehensible; that he should wish to make her his wife is credible; that he should hope to lift her out of her condition is admirable; but that he should descend from his own high plane to stay on hers is despicably weak; while to drag down with him a girl in the very flower of her purity is a crime without a name."

The dark flush showed how quickly his haughty spirit responded to the flicker of the lash.

"If you choose to put that interpretation of my words—" he began, indignantly.

"I don't; but it's the interpretation they deserve. There's almost no indignity that can be uttered which you haven't heaped upon me; and of them all this last is the hardest to be borne. I bear it; I forgive it; because it convinces me of what I've been afraid of all along—that I'm a woman who throws some sort of evil influence over men. Even you are not exempt from it—even you! Oh, Derek, go away from me! If you won't do it for your own sake, do it for Dorothea's. I won't do battle with Bienville's accusations now. Perhaps I may never do battle with them at all. What does it matter whether he tells the truth or lies? The pressing thing just now is that you should be saved—"

"Thank you; I can take care of myself. Let's have no more fine splitting of moral hairs. Let us settle the thing, and be done with it. There's one big fact before us, and only one. You can't do without me; I can't do without you. It's a crisis at which we've the right to think only of ourselves and thrust every one else outside."

"Wait!" she cried, as he advanced once more upon her. "Wait! Let me tell you something. You mustn't be hard on me for saying it. You asked just now for my answer to your question of three months ago. My answer is—"

"Diane!" he said, lifting his hand in warning. "Be careful. Don't speak in a hurry. I'm not in a mood to plead or argue any longer. What you say now will be—the irrevocable word."

"I know it. It will not only be the irrevocable word, but the last word. Derek, I see you as you are, a strong, simple, honest man. I admire you; I esteem you; I honor you; I'm grateful to you as a woman is rarely grateful to a man. And yet I'd rather be all you think me; I'd rather earn my bread as desperate women do earn it than be your wife."

They looked at each other long and steadily. When he spoke, his words were those she had invited, but they made her gasp as one gasps at that which suddenly takes one's breath.

"As you will," he said, briefly.

XV

As the pivot of events, Miss Lucilla van Tromp was beginning to feel the responsibilities of her position. Only a woman with an inexhaustible heart could have met as she did the demands for sympathy, of various shades, made by the chief participants in the drama; while there was one phase of the action which called for a heroic display of conscience.

It was impossible now to contemplate Marion Grimston's peril without a grave sense of the duties imposed by friendship. Some people might stand by and see a girl wreck her happiness by giving her heart to an unworthy suitor, but Miss van Tromp was not among that number. It was, in fact, one of those junctures at which all her good instincts prompted her to say, "I ought to go and tell her." As a patriotic spinster, she held decided views on the question of marriage between American heiresses and impecunious foreign noblemen—and, in her eyes, all foreign noblemen were impecunious—in any case; but to see Marion Grimston become the victim of her parents' vulgar ambition gave to the subject a personal bearing which made her duty urgent. If ever there was a moment when a goddess in a machine could feel justified in descending, for active intervention, it was now. She had the less hesitation in doing so, owing to the fact that she had known Marion since her cradle; and between the two there had always existed the subtle tie which not seldom binds the widely diverse but essentially like-minded together. Accordingly, on a bright May morning, within a few days of the last meeting between Derek Pruyn and Diane Eveleth, she sallied forth to the fashionable quarter where Mrs. Bayford dwelt, coming home, some two hours later, with a considerably extended knowledge of the possibilities inherent in human nature.

The tale Miss Lucilla told was that which had already been many times repeated, each narrator lending to it the color imparted by his own views of life. As now set forth, it became the story of a girl sought in marriage by a man who has inflicted mortal wrong upon an innocent young woman. With unconscious art Miss Lucilla placed Marion Grimston herself in the centre of the piece, making the subsidiary characters revolve around her. This situation brought with it a double duty: the one explicit in righting the oppressed, the other implicit—for Miss Lucilla balked at putting it too plainly into words—in punishing a wicked marquis.

The girl sat with head slightly bowed and rich color deepening. If she showed emotion at all, it was in her haughty stillness, as though she voluntarily put all expression out of her face until the recital was ended. The effect on Miss Lucilla, as they sat side by side on a sofa, was slightly disconcerting, so that she came to her conclusion lamely.

"Of course, my dear, I don't know his side of the story, or what he may have to say in self-defence. I'm only telling you what I've heard, and just as I heard it."

"I dare say it's quite right."

The brevity and suggested cynicism of this reply produced in Miss Lucilla a little shock.

"Oh! Then, you think—?"

"There would be nothing surprising in it. It's the sort of thing that's always happening in Paris. It's one of the peculiarities of that society that you can never believe half the evil you hear of any one—not even if it's told you by the man himself. I might go so far as to say that, when it's told you by himself you're least of all inclined to credit it."

"But how dreadful!"

"Things are dreadful or not, according to the degree in which you're used to them. I've grown up in that atmosphere, and so I can endure it. In fact, any other atmosphere seems to me to lack some of the necessary ingredients of air; just as to some people—to Napoleon, for instance—a woman who isn't rouged isn't wholly dressed."

"I know that's only your way of talking, dear. Oh, you can't shock me."

"At any rate, the way of talking shows you what I mean. I can quite understand how Monsieur de Bienville might have said that of Mrs. Eveleth."

Lucilla's look of pain induced Miss Grimston promptly to qualify her statement.

"I said I could understand it; I didn't say I respected it. It's only what's been said of hundreds of thousands of women in Paris by hundreds of thousands of men, and in the place where they've said it it's taken with the traditional grain of salt. If all had gone as it was going at the time—if the Eveleths hadn't lost their money—if Mr. Eveleth hadn't shot himself—if Mrs. Eveleth had kept her place in French society—the story wouldn't have done her any harm. People would have shrugged their shoulders at it, and forgotten it. It's the transferring of the scene here, among you, that makes it grave. All your ideas are so different that what's bad becomes worse, by being carried out of its milieu. Monsieur de Bienville must be made to understand that, and repair the wrong."

"You seem to think there's no question but that—there is a wrong?"

"Oh, I suppose there isn't. There are so many cases of the kind. Mrs. Eveleth is probably neither more nor less than one of the many Frenchwomen of her rank in life who like to skate out on the thin edge of excitement without any intention of going through. There are always women like my aunt Bayford to think the worst of people of that sort, and to say it."

"And yet I don't see how that justifies Monsieur de Bienville."

"It doesn't justify; it only explains. Responsibility presses less heavily on the individual when it's shared."

"But wouldn't the person—you'll forgive me, dear, won't you, if I'm going too far?—wouldn't the person who has to take his part in that kind of responsibility be a doubtful keeper of one's happiness?"

Miss Grimston, half lowering her eyes, looked at her visitor with slumberous suspension of expression, and made no reply.

"If a man isn't good—" Miss Lucilla began again, tremblingly.

"No man is perfect."

"True, dear; and yet are there not certain qualities which we ought to consider as essentials—?"

"Monsieur de Bienville has those qualities for me."

"But surely, dear, you can't mean—?"

"Yes, I do mean."

The avowal was made quietly, with the still bearing of one who gives a few drops of confession out of deep oceans of reserve. Miss Lucilla gazed at her in astonishment. That her parents should sacrifice her was not surprising; but that she should be willing to sacrifice herself went beyond the limits of thought. The revelation that Marion could actually love the man was so startling that it shocked her out of her timidity, loosening the strings of her eloquence and unsealing the sources of her maternal tenderness. There was nothing original in Miss Lucilla's subsequent line of argument. It was the old, oft-uttered, futile appeal to the head, when the heart has already spoken. It premised the possibility of placing one's affections where one cannot give one's respect, regardless of the fact that the thing is done a thousand times a day. It reasoned, it predicted, it implored, with an effect no more disintegrating on the girl's decision than moonbeams make upon a mountain. Through it all, she sat and listened with the veiled eyes and mysterious impassivity which gave to her personality a curiously incalculable quality, as of a force presenting none of the ordinary phenomena by which to measure or compute it.

It was not till Miss Lucilla touched on the subject of honor that she obtained any sign of the effect she was producing. It was no more, on Marion's part, than an uneasy movement, but it betrayed its cause. Miss Lucilla pressed her point with renewed insistence, and presently two big tears hung on the long, black lashes and rolled down.

"I should like to see Mrs. Eveleth."

Like the hasty raising and dropping of a curtain on some jealously guarded view, the words gave to Miss Lucilla but a fleeting glimpse of what was passing in the obscure recesses of the girl's heart; but she determined to make the most of it by fixing, there and then, the day and hour when, without apparently forcing the event, the two might come face to face on the neutral ground of Gramercy Park.

It was a meeting that, when it took place, would have been attended with embarrassment had not both young women been practised in the ways of their little world. Progress in mutual understanding was made the easier by the existence, on both sides, of the European view of life, with its fusion of interests, its softness of outline, its give and take of toleration, in contradistinction to the sharp, clear, insistent American demands for a certain line of conduct and no other. Five minutes had not gone by in talk before each found in the other's presence that sense of repose which comes from similar habits of thought and a common native idiom. Whatever grounds for difference they might find, they were, at least, ranged on the same side in that battle which the two hemispheres half unconsciously wage upon each other as to the main purposes of life. Thus they were able to approach their subject without that first preliminary shock which makes it difficult for races to agree; and thus, too, Marion Grimston found herself, before she was aware of it, pouring out to Diane Eveleth that heart which, in response to Miss Lucilla's tender pleading, had been dumb.

They sat in the big, sombre library where, only a few days before, Diane had seen Derek Pruyn turn his back on her, without even a gesture of farewell. On the long mahogany table the red azalea was in almost passionate luxuriance of blossom; while through the open window faint odors of lilac came from Miss Lucilla's bit of garden.

"I don't want you to think him worse than you're obliged to," Marion said, as though in defence of the stand her heart had taken. "I've been told that very few men possess the two kinds of courage—the moral and the physical. Savonarola had the one and Nelson had the other; but neither of them had both. And of the two, for me, the physical is the essential. I can't help it. If I had to choose between a soldier and a saint, I'd take the soldier. When the worst is said of Monsieur de Bienville, it must be admitted that he's brave."

"I've always understood that he was a good rider and a good shot," Diane admitted. "I've no doubt that in battle he would conduct himself like a hero."

The girl's head went up proudly, and from the languorous eyes there came one splendid flash before the lids fell over them again.

"I know he would; and when a man has that sort of courage he's worth saving."

"You admit, then, that he needs to be—saved?" Again the heavy lids were lifted for one brief, search-light glance.

"Yes; I admit that. I believe he has wronged you. I can't tell you how I know it; but I do. It's to tell you so that I've asked you to come here. I hoped to make you see, as I do, that he's capable of doing it without appreciating the nature of his crime. If we could get him to see that—"

"Then—what?"

"He'd make you reparation."

"Are you so sure?"

"I'm very sure. If he didn't—" The consequences of that possibility being difficult of expression, she hung upon her words.

"I should be sorry to have you brought to so momentous a decision on my account."

"It wouldn't be on your account; it would be on my own. I understand myself well enough to see that I could love a dishonorable man; but I couldn't marry him."

"You have, of course, your own idea as to what makes a man dishonorable."

"What makes a man dishonorable is to persist in dishonor after he has become aware of it. Any one may speak thoughtlessly, or boastfully, or foolishly, and be forgiven for it. But he can't be forgiven if he keeps it up, especially when by his doing so a woman has to suffer."

The movement with which Diane pushed back her chair and rose betrayed a troubled rather than an impatient spirit.

"Miss Grimston," she said, standing before the girl and looking down upon her, "I should almost prefer not to have you take my affairs into your consideration. I doubt if they're worth it. I can't deny that I shrink from becoming a factor in your life, as well as from feeling that you must make your decisions, or unmake them, with reference to me."

"I'm not making my decisions, or unmaking them, with reference to you; it's with reference to Monsieur de Bienville. He has my father's consent to his asking me to be his wife. I understand that, according to the formal French fashion, he's going to do it to-morrow. Before I give him an answer I must know that he is such a man as I could marry."

"You would have thought him so if you hadn't heard this about me."

"Even so, it's better for me to have heard it. Any prudent person would tell you that. What I'm going to ask you to do now will not be for your sake; it will be for mine."

"You're going to ask me to do something?"

"Yes; to see Monsieur de Bienville."

Diane recoiled with an expression of dismay.

"I know it will be hard for you," Miss Grimston pursued, "and I wouldn't ask you to do it if it were not the straightest way out of a perplexing situation. I've confidence enough in him to believe that when he has seen you and heard your story, he'll act according to the dictates of a nature which I know to be essentially honorable, even if it's weak. You can see what that will mean to us all. It will not only clear you and rehabilitate him, but it will bring happiness to me."

There was something in the way in which these brief statements were made that gave them the nature of an appeal. The very difficulty of the reserved heart in speaking out, the shame-flushed cheek—the subdued voice—the halting breath—had on Diane a more potent effect than eloquence. What was left of her own hope, too, at once put forth its claim at the possibility of getting justice. It was a matter of taking her courage in both hands, in one tremendous effort, but the fact that this girl believed in her was a stimulus to making the attempt. Before they parted—with stammering expressions of mutual sympathy—she had given her word to do it.

XVI

In the degree to which masculine good looks and elegance are accessories to impressing a maid's heart, the Marquis de Bienville had reason to be sure of the effect he was producing, as he bent and kissed Miss Marion Grimston's hand, in her aunt's drawing-room, on the following afternoon. He was not surprised to detect the thrill that shot through her being at his act of homage, and communicated itself back to him; for he was tolerably certain of her love. That had been, to all intents and purposes, confessed more than two years ago; while, during the intervening time, he had not lacked signs that the gift once bestowed had never been withdrawn. He had stood for a few seconds at the threshold on entering the room, just to rejoice consciously at his great good-fortune. She had risen, but not advanced, to meet him, her tall figure, sheathed in some close-fitting, soft stuff, thrown into relief by the dark-blue velvet portière behind her. He was not unaware of his unworthiness in the presence of this superb young creature, and as he crossed the room it was with the humility of a worshipper before a shrine.

"Mademoiselle," he said, simply, when he had raised himself, "I come to tell you that I love you."

The glance, slightly oblique, of suspended expression with which she received the words encouraged him to continue.

"I know how far what I have to give is beneath the honor of your acceptance; and yet when men love they are impelled to offer all the little that they have. My one hope lies in the fact that a woman like you doesn't love a man for what he is—but for what she can make him."

The words were admirably chosen, reaching her heart with a force greater than he knew.

"A woman," she answered, with a certain stately uplifting of the head, "can only make a man that which he has already the power to become. She may be able to point out the way; but it's for him to follow it."

"I don't think you'd see me hesitate at that."

"I'm glad you say so; because the road I should have to ask you to take would be a hard one."

"The harder the better, if it's anything by which I can prove my love."

"It is; but it's not only that; it's something by which you could prove mine."

His face brightened.

"In that case, Mademoiselle—speak."

She took an instant to assemble her forces, standing before him with a calmness she did not feel.

"You must forgive me," she said, trying to keep her voice steady, "if I take the initiative, as no girl is often called upon to do. Perhaps I should hesitate more if you hadn't told me, two years ago, what I know you've come to repeat to-day. The fact that I've waited those two years to hear you say it gives me a right that otherwise I shouldn't claim."

He bowed.

"There are no rights that a woman can have over a man which you, Mademoiselle, do not possess over me."

"Before telling me again," she continued, speaking with difficulty, "what you've told me already, I want to say that I can only listen to it on one condition."

"Which is—?"

"That your own conscience is at peace with itself."

There was a sudden startled toss of the head, but he answered, bravely:

"Is one's conscience ever at peace with itself? A woman's, perhaps; but a man's—!"

He shook his head with that wistful smile of contrition which is already a plea for pardon.

"I'm not speaking of life in general, but of something in particular. I want you to understand, before you ask me—what you've come to ask, that you couldn't make one woman happy while you're doing another a great wrong."

He was sure now of what was in store for him, and braced himself for his part. He was one of those men who need but to see peril to see also the way of meeting it. He stood for a minute, very straight and erect, like a soldier before a court-martial—a culprit whose guilt is half excused by his very manliness.

"I have wronged women. They've wronged me, too. All I can do to show I'm sorry for it is—not to give them the same sort of offence again."

"I'm thinking of one woman—one woman in particular."

He threw back his head with fine confidence.

"I don't know her."

"It's Diane Eveleth. She says—"

"I can imagine what she says. If I were you, I wouldn't pay it more attention than it deserves."

"It deserves a good deal—if it's true."

"Not from you, Mademoiselle. It belongs to a region into which your thought shouldn't enter."

"My thought does enter it, I'm afraid. In fact, I think of it so much that I've invited Mrs. Eveleth to come here this afternoon. I hope you don't mind meeting her?"

"Certainly not. Why should I?" he demanded, with an air of conscious rectitude.

Miss Grimston touched a bell.

"Ask Mrs. Eveleth to come in," she said to the footman who answered it.

As Diane entered she greeted Bienville with a slight inclination of the head, which he returned, bowing ceremoniously.

"I've begged Mrs. Eveleth to meet us," Marion hastened to explain, "for a very special reason."

"Then perhaps she will be good enough to tell me what it is," Bienville said, with a look of courteous inquiry.

"Miss Grimston thought—you might be able—to help me."

There was a catch in Diane's voice as she spoke, but she mastered it, keeping her eyes on his, in the effort to be courageous.

"If there's anything I can do—" he began, allowing the rest of his sentence to be inferred.

He concealed his nervousness by placing a small gilded chair for Diane to sit on. He himself took a chair a few feet away, seating himself sidewise, with his elbow supported on the back, in an easy attitude of attention. Marion Grimston withdrew to the more distant part of the room, where, with her hands behind her, she stood leaning against the grand piano, with the bearing of one only indirectly, and yet intensely, concerned. Bienville left the task of beginning to Diane. In spite of his determination to be self-possessed, a trace of compunction was visible in his face as he contrasted the subdued little woman before him with the sparkling, insouciant creature to whom, two or three years ago, he had paid his inglorious court.

"I shall have to speak to you quite simply and frankly," Diane began, with some hesitation, still keeping her eyes on his, "otherwise you wouldn't understand me."

"Quite so," Bienville assented, politely.

"You may not have heard that since—my—my husband's death, I have my own living to earn?"

"Yes; I did hear something of the kind."

"I've had what people in my position call a good situation; but I have lost it."

"Ah? I'm sorry."

"I thought you would be. That's why Miss Grimston asked me to tell you the reason. She was sure you wouldn't injure me—knowingly."

"Naturally. I'm very much surprised that any one should think I've injured you at all. To the best of my knowledge your name has not passed my lips for two years, at the least. If it had it would only have been spoken—with respect."

"I'm sure of that. I'm not pretending when I say that I'm absolutely convinced you're a man of sensitive honor. If you weren't you couldn't be a Frenchman and a Bienville. I want you to understand that I've never attributed—the—things that have happened—to anything but folly and imprudence—for which I want to take my full share of the blame."

"I've never ventured to express to you my own regret," Bienville said, in a tone not free from emotion, "but I assure you it's very deep."

"I know. All our life was so wrong! It's because I feel sure you must see that as well as I do that I hoped you'd help me now."

He said nothing in reply, letting some seconds pass in silence, waiting for her to come to her point.

"On the way up from South America," she began again, with visible difficulty, "you were on the same ship with my—my—employer. From certain things you said then—"

"But I've withdrawn them," he interrupted, quickly. "He should have told you that. Mademoiselle," he added, rising, and turning toward Marion Grimston, "wouldn't it spare you if we continued this conversation alone?"

"No; I'd rather stay," Miss Grimston said, with an inflection of request. "Please sit down again."

"He should have told you that," Bienville repeated, taking his seat once more, and speaking with some animation. "I did my best to straighten things out for him."

"Then he didn't understand you. He told me you had taken back what you had said, but only in a way that reaffirmed it."

"That's nothing but a tortuous construction put on straightforward words."

"Quite so; but for that very reason I thought that perhaps you'd go to him again and explain what you meant more clearly."

He took a minute to consider this before speaking.

"I don't see how I can," he said, slowly. "I've already used the plainest words of which I have command."

"Words aren't everything. It's the way they're spoken that often counts most. I'm sure you could convince him if you went the right way to work about it."

"I doubt that. I'm afraid I don't know how to force conviction on any one against his will."

"You mean—?"

"I mean—you'll excuse me; I speak quite bluntly—I mean that he seemed very willing to believe anything that could tell against you, but less eager to credit what was said in your defence."

"You think so because you don't understand him. As a matter of fact—"

"Oh, I dare say. I don't pretend to understand the gentleman in question. But for that very reason it would be useless for me to try to enlighten him further. It would only make matters worse."

"It wouldn't if you'd put things before him just as they happened. I don't want any excuses made for me. My best defence would be—the truth."

There was a perceptible pause, during which his eyes shifted uneasily toward Marion Grimston.

"I should think you could tell him that yourself," he suggested, at last.

"It wouldn't be the same thing. You're the only person who could speak with authority. He'd accept your word, if you gave it—in a certain way."

"I'm afraid I don't know what that way is."

"Oh yes, you do, Bienville!" she exclaimed, pleadingly, leaning forward slightly, with her hands clasped in her lap. "Don't force me to speak more plainly than I need. You must know what I refer to."

He shook his head slowly, with a look of mystification.

"What you may not know," she continued, "is all it means to me. I won't put the matter on any ground but that of my need for earning money. Because Mr. Pruyn has—misunderstood you, I've had to give up my—my—place"—she forced the last word with a little difficulty—"and until something like a good name is restored to me I shall find it hard to get another. You can have no idea of what that means. I had none, until I had to face it. There's only one kind of work I'm fitted for—the kind I've been doing; but it's just the kind I can't have without the—the reputation you could give back to me."

That this appeal was not without its effect was evident from the way in which his expressive brown eyes clouded, while he stroked his black beard nervously. The fact that his pity was largely for himself—that with instincts naturally chivalrous he should be driven to these miserable verbal shifts—being unknown to Diane, she was encouraged to proceed.

"You see," she went on, eagerly, "it wouldn't only bring me happiness, but it would add to your own. You're at the beginning of a new life, just like me—or, rather, just as I could be if you'd give me the chance. Think what it would be for you to enter on it, I won't say with a clear conscience, but with the knowledge that in rising yourself you had helped an unhappy woman up, instead of thrusting her further down! It isn't as if it would be so hard for you, Bienville. I'd make it easy for you. Miss Grimston would help me. Wouldn't you?" she added, turning toward Marion. "It could all be done quite simply and confidentially between ourselves—and Mr. Pruyn."

"Oh no, it couldn't," he said, coldly. "If I were to admit what you imply, secrecy wouldn't be of any use to me."

"Does that mean," she asked, fixing her earnest eyes upon him, "that you don't admit it?"

"It means," he said, rising quietly and standing behind his chair, "that this conversation is extremely painful to me, and I must ask to be excused from taking any further part in it. I know only vaguely what you mean, Madame; and if I don't inquire more in detail, it's because I want to spare you distressing explanations. I think you must agree with me, Mademoiselle," he continued, looking toward Miss Grimston, "that we should all be well advised in letting the subject drop."

Marion came slowly forward, advancing to the side of Diane, over whose shoulder, as she remained seated, she allowed her hand to fall, in a pose suggestive of protection.

"Of course, Monsieur," she agreed, "we must let the subject drop, if you have nothing more to say."

He stood silent a minute, looking at her steadily. "I'm afraid I haven't," he said, then.

"Nor I," Miss Grimston returned, significantly.

Again there was a minute or two of silence, during which Bienville seemed to probe for the meaning of the two laconic words. If anything could be read from his countenance, it was doubt as to whether to relinquish the prize with dignity or to pay its price in humiliation. There was an instant in which he appeared to be bracing himself to do the latter; but when he spoke his interrogation threw the responsibility for decision on Miss Grimston.

"Have I received—my answer?"

She waited, finding it hard to give him his reply. It was as if forced to it against her will that her head bent slowly in assent.

"Then," he said, in a tone of dignified regret, "there's nothing for me but to wish Mademoiselle good-by."

He bowed separately to Miss Grimston and to Diane, and, with the self-possession of a man accustomed to the various turns of drawing-room drama, he left the room.

XVII

During the summer that followed these events Derek Pruyn set himself the task of stamping the memory and influence of Diane Eveleth out of his life. His sense of duty combined with his feelings of self-respect in making the attempt. In reflecting on his last interview with her, he saw the weakness of the stand he had taken in it, recoiling from so unworthy a position with natural reaction. To have been in love at all at his age struck him as humiliation enough; but to have been in love with that sort of woman came very near mental malady. He said "that sort of woman," because the vagueness of the term gave scope to the bitterness of resentment with which he tried to overwhelm her. It enabled him to create some such paradise of pain as that into which the souls of Othello and Desdemona might have gone together. Had he been a Moor of Venice he would doubtless have smothered her with a pillow; but being a New York banker he could only try to slay the image, whose eyes and voice had never haunted him so persistently as now. In his rage of suffering he was as little able to take a reasoned view of the situation as the maddened bull in the arena to appraise the skill of his tormentors.

When in the middle of May he had retired to Rhinefields it was with the intention of laying waste all that Diane had left behind in the course of her brief passage through his life. The process being easier in the exterior phases of existence than in those more secret and remote, he determined to work from the outside inward. Wherever anything reminded him of her, he erased, destroyed, or removed it. All that she had changed within the house he put back into the state in which it was before she came. Where he had followed her suggestions about the grounds and gardens he reversed the orders. Taken as outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual change he was trying to create within himself, these childish acts gave him a passionate satisfaction. In a short time, he boasted to himself, he would have obliterated all trace of her presence.

And so he came, in time, to giving his attention to Dorothea. She, too, bore the impress of Diane; and as she bore it more markedly than the inanimate things around, it caused him the greater pain. He could forbid her to hold intercourse with Diane, and to speak of her; but he could not control the blending of French and Irish intonations her voice had caught, or the gestures into which she slipped through youth's mimetic instinct. In happier days he had been amused to note the degree to which Dorothea had become the unconscious copy of Diane; but now this constant reproduction of her ways was torture. Telling himself that it was not the child's fault, he bore it at first with what self-restraint he could; but as solitude encouraged brooding thoughts, he found, as the summer wore on, that his stock of patience was running low. There were times when some chance sentence or imitated bit of mannerism on Dorothea's part almost drew from him that which in tragedy would be a cry, but which in our smaller life becomes the hasty or exasperated word.

In these circumstances the explosion was bound to come; and one day it produced itself unexpectedly, and about nothing. Thinking of it afterward Derek was unable to say why it should have taken place then more than at any other time. He was standing on the lawn, noting with savage complacency that the bit by which he had enlarged it, at Diane's prompting, had grown up again, in luxuriant grass, when Dorothea descended the steps of the Georgian brick house, behind him.

"Would you be afther wantin' me to-day?" she called out, using the Irish expression Diane affected in moments of fun.

"Dorothea," he cried, sharply, wheeling round on her, "drop that idiotic way of speaking. If you think it's amusing, you're mistaken. You can't even do it properly."

The words were no sooner out than he regretted them, but it was too late to take them back. Moreover, when a man, nervously suffering, has once wounded the feelings of one he loves, it is not infrequently his instinct to go on and wound them again.

"We have enough of that sort of language from the servants and the stable-boys. Be good enough in future to use your mother-tongue."

Standing where his words had stopped her, a few yards away, she looked up at him with the clear gaze of astonishment; but the slight shrug of the shoulders before she spoke was also a trick caught from Diane, and not calculated to allay his annoyance.

"Very well, father," she answered, with a quietness indicating judgment held in reserve, "I won't do it again. I only meant to ask you if you want me for anything in particular to-day; otherwise I shall go over and lunch at the Thoroughgoods'."

"The Thoroughgoods' again? Can't you get through a day without going there?"

"I suppose I could if it was necessary; but it isn't."

"I think it is. You'll do well not to wear out your welcome anywhere."

"I'm not afraid of that."

"Then I am; so you'd better stay at home."

He wheeled from her as sharply as he had turned to confront her, striding off toward a wild border, where he tried to conceal the extent to which he was ashamed of his ill temper by pretending to be engrossed in the efforts of a bee to work its way into a blue cowl of monk's-hood. When he looked around again she was still standing where he had left her, her eyes clouded by an expression of wondering pain that smote him to the heart.

Had he possessed sufficient mastery of himself he would have gone back and begged her pardon, and sent her away to enjoy herself. It was what he wanted to do; but the tension of his nerves seemed to get relief from the innocent thing's suffering. The very fact that her pretty little face was set with his own obstinacy of self-will, while behind it her spirit was rising against this capricious tyranny, goaded him into persistence. He remembered how often Diane had told him that Dorothea could be neither led nor driven; she could only be "managed"; but he would show Diane, he would show himself, that she could be both driven and led, and that "management" should go the way of the wall-fruit and the roses.

As, recrossing the lawn, he made as though he would pass her without further words, he was an excellent illustration of the degree to which the adult man of the world, capable of taking an important part among his fellow-men, can be, at times, nothing but an overgrown infant. It was not surprising, however, that Dorothea should not see this aspect of his personality, or look upon his commands as other than those of an unreasonable despotism.

"Father," she said, "I can't go on living like this."

"Living like what?"

"Living as we've lived all this summer."

"What's the matter with the summer? It's like any other summer, isn't it?"

"The summer may be like any other summer; but you're not like yourself. I do everything I can to please you, but—"

"You needn't do anything to please me but what you're told."

"I always do what I'm told—when you tell me; but you only tell me by fits and starts."

"Then, I tell you now: you're not to go to the Thoroughgoods'."

"But they expect me. I said I'd go to lunch. They'll think it very strange if I don't."

"They'll think what they please. It's enough for you to know what I think."

"But that's just what I don't know. Ever since Diane went away—"

"Stop that! I've forbidden you to speak—"

"But you can't forbid me to think; and I think till I'm utterly bewildered. You don't explain anything to me. You haven't even told me why she went away. If I ask a question you won't answer it."

"What's necessary for you to know, you can depend on me to tell you. Anything I don't explain to you, you may dismiss from your mind."

"But that's not reasonable, father; it's not possible. If you want me to obey you, I must know what I'm doing. Because I don't know what I'm doing, I haven't——"

"You haven't obeyed me?" he asked, quickly.

"Not entirely. I've meant to tell you when an occasion offered, so I might as well do it now. I've written to Diane."

"You've——!"

He strode up to her and caught her by the arm. It was not strange that she should take the curious light in his face for that of anger; but a more experienced observer would have seen that two distinct emotions crowded on each other.

"I've written to her twice," Dorothea repeated, defiantly, as he held her arm. "She didn't reply to me—but I wrote."

"What for?"

"To tell her that I loved her—that no trouble should keep me from loving her—no matter what it was."

He released her arm, stepping back from her again, surveying her with an admiration he tried to conceal under a scowling brow. The rigidity of her attitude, the lift of her head, the set of her lips, the directness of her glance, suggested not merely rebellion against his will, but the assertion of her own. It occurred to him then that he could break her little body to pieces before he could force her to yield; and in his pride in this temperament, so like his own, he almost uttered the cry of "Brava!" that hung on his lips. He might have done so if Dorothea had not found it a convenient moment at which to make all her confessions at once and have them off her mind. It was best to do it, she thought, now that her courage was up.

"And, father," she went on, "it may be a good opportunity to tell you something else. I've decided to marry Mr. Wappinger."

During the brief silence that followed this announcement he had time to throw the blame for it upon Diane, using the fact as one more argument against her. Had she taken his suggestions at the beginning, and suppressed the Wappinger acquaintance, this distressing folly would have received a definite check: As it was, the odium of putting a stop to it, which must now fall on him, was but an additional part of the penalty he had to pay for ever having known her. So be it! He would make good the uttermost farthing! In doing it he had the same sort of frenzied satisfaction as in defacing Diane's image in his heart.

"You shall not," he said, at last.

"I don't understand how you're going to stop me."

"I must ask you to be patient—and see. You can make a beginning to-day, by staying at home from the Thoroughgoods'. That will be enough for the minute."

Fearing to look any longer into her indignant eyes, he passed on toward the stables. For some minutes she stood still where he left her, while the collie gazed up at her, with twitching tail and questioning regard, as though to ask the meaning of this futile hesitation; but when, at last, she turned slowly and re-entered the house, one would have said that the "dainty rogue in porcelain" had been transformed into an intensely modern little creature made of steel.

She did not go to the Thoroughgoods' that day, nor was any further reference made to the discussion of the morning. Compunction having succeeded irritation, with the rapidity not uncommon to men of his character, Derek was already seeking some way of reaching his end by gentler means, when a new move on Dorothea's part exasperated him still further. As he was about to sit down to his luncheon on the following day, the butler made the announcement that Miss Pruyn had asked him to inform her father that she had driven over in the pony-cart to Mrs. Throughgood's, and would not be home till late in the afternoon.

He was not in the house when she returned, and at dinner he refrained from conversation till the servants had left the room.

"So it's—war," he said, then, speaking in a casual tone, and toying with his wine-glass.

"I hope not, father," she answered, promptly, making no pretence not to understand him. "It takes two to make a quarrel, and——"

"And you wouldn't be one?"

"I was going to say that I hoped you wouldn't be."

"But you yourself would fight?"

"I should have to. I'm fighting for liberty, which is always an honorable motive. You're fighting to take it away from me——"

"Which is a dishonorable motive. Very well; I must accept that imputation as best I may, and still go on."

"Oh, then, it is war. You mean to make it so."

"I mean to do my duty. You may call your rebellion against it what you like."

"I'm not accustomed to rebel," she said, with significant quietness. "Only people who feel themselves weak do that."

"And are you so strong?"

"I'm very strong. I don't want to measure my strength against yours, father; but if you insist on measuring yours against mine, I ought to warn you."

"Thank you. It's in the light of a warning that I view your action to-day. You probably went to meet Mr. Wappinger."

In saying this his bow was drawn so entirely at a venture that he was astonished at the skill with which he hit the mark.

"I did."

He pushed back his chair; half rose; sat down again; poured out a glass of Marsala; drank it thirstily; and looked at her a second or two in helpless distress before finding words.

"And you talk of honorable motives!"

"My motive was entirely honorable. I went to explain to him that I couldn't see him any more—just now."

"While you were about it you might as well have said neither just now—nor at any other time."

She was silent.

"Do you hear?"

"Yes; I bear, father."

"And you understand?"

"I understand what you mean."

"And you promise me that it shall be so?"

"No, father."

"You say that deliberately? Remember, I'm asking you an important question, and you're giving me an equally important reply."

"I recognize that; but I can't give you any other answer."

"We'll see." He pushed back his chair again, and rose. He had already crossed the room, when, a new thought occurring to him, he turned at the door. "At least I presume I may count on you not to see this young man again without telling me?"

"Not without telling you—afterward. I couldn't undertake more than that."

"H'm!" he ejaculated, before passing out. "Then I must take active measures."

It was easier, however, to talk about active measures than to devise them. While Dorothea was sobbing, with her elbows on the dining-room table, and her face buried in her hands, he was pacing his room in search of desperate remedies. It was a case in which his mind turned instinctively to Diane for help; but in the very act of doing so he was confronted by her theories as to Dorothea's need of diplomatic guidance. For that, he told himself, the time was past. The event had proved how impotent mere "management" was to control her, and justified his own preference for force.

Before she went to bed that night Dorothea was summoned to her father's presence, to receive the commands which should regulate her conduct toward "the young man Wappinger." They could have been summed up in the statement that she must know him no more. She was not only never to see him, or write to him, or communicate with him, by direct or indirect means; as far as he could command it, she was not to think of him, or remember his name. His measures grew more drastic in proportion as he gave them utterance, until he himself become aware that they would be difficult to fulfil.

"I will not attempt to extract a promise from you," he was prudent enough to say, in conclusion, "that you will carry out my wishes, because I know you would never bring on me the unhappiness that would spring from disobedience."

"It's hardly fair, father, to say that," she replied, firmly. "In war, no one should shrink from—the misfortunes of war."

"That means, then, that you defy me?"

She was calmer than he as she made her reply.

"It doesn't mean that I defy you. I love you too much to put either you or myself in such an odious position as that. But it does mean that one day, sooner or later, I shall marry—Mr. Wappinger."

He looked at her with a bitter smile.

"I admire your frankness, Dorothea," he said, after a brief pause, "and I shall do my best to imitate it. If it's to be war, we shall at least fight in the open. I know what you intend to do, and you know that I mean to circumvent you. The position on both sides being so pleasantly clear, you may come and kiss me good-night."

During the process of the stiff little embrace that followed it was as difficult for her not to fling herself sobbing on his breast as for him not to seize her in his arms; but each maintained the restraint inspired by the justice of their respective causes. When she had closed the door behind her, he stood for a long time, musing. That his thoughts were not altogether tragic became manifest as his brow cleared, and the ghost of a smile, this time without bitterness, hovered about his lips. Suddenly he slapped his leg, like a man who has made a discovery.

"By Gad!" he whispered, half aloud, "when all is said and done, she knows how to play the game!"

XVIII

It was, perhaps, the knowledge that Dorothea could play the game that enabled Derek, during the rest of the summer, to play it himself. This he did without flinching, finding strength in the fact that, as time went on, Dorothea seemed to enter into his plans and submit to his judgment. The first few weeks of pallor and silence having passed, she resumed her accustomed ways, and, as far as he could tell, grew cheerful. Always having credited her with common-sense, he was pleased now to see her make use of it in a way of which few girls of nineteen would have been capable. She accepted his surveillance with so much docility that, by the time they returned to town in the autumn he was able to congratulate himself on his success.

On her part, Dorothea carried out his instructions to the letter. Notwithstanding the opening of the season and the renewal of the usual gayeties, she lived quietly, accepting few invitations, and rarely going into society at all, except under her father's wing. On those accidental occasions when Carli Wappinger came within their range of vision, it was only as a distant ship drifts into sight at sea—to drift silently away again. If Dorothea perceived him, she gave no sign. It was clear to Derek that her spurt of rebellion was over, and that her little experience had done her no harm. The name of Wappinger being tacitly ignored between them, he could only express his pleasure, in the results he had achieved, by an extravagant increase of Dorothea's allowance, and gifts of inappropriate jewels. It would have taken a more weatherwise person than he to guess that behind this domestic calm the storm was brewing.

The first intuition of threatening events came to Mrs. Wappinger.

"I've seen nothing and heard nothing," she declared, in her emphatic way, to Diane, "but I know something is going on."

That was in September. They sat in the shade of the cool flag-paved pergola at Waterwild, Mrs. Wappinger's place on Long Island. The tea-table stood between them, and they lounged in wicker chairs. Framed by marble pillars, and festooned from above by vines drooping from the roof, there was a view of terraced lawns descending toward the sea. Between the slightly overcrowded urns and statues there were bright dashes of color, here of dahlias in full bloom, there of reddening garlands of ampelopsis or Virginia creeper. It was what Mrs. Wappinger called an "off-day," otherwise she could not have had Diane at Waterwild. In her loyalty toward the deserted woman she seized those opportunities when Carli was away, and she was certain of having no other guests, "to have the poor thing down for the day, and give her a good meal."

Not that people occupied themselves with Diane or her affairs! Her place in the hurrying, scrambling social throng had been so unobtrusive that, now that she no longer filled it, she was easily forgotten. Among the few who paid her the tribute of recollection there was the generally received impression that Derek Pruyn, having discovered her relations with the Marquis de Bienville—relations which, so they said, had been well known in Paris, in the days when she was still some one—had dismissed her from her position in his household. That was natural enough, and there was no further reason for remembering her. Having disappeared into the limbo of the unfortunate, she was as far beyond the mental range of those who retained their blessings as souls that have passed are out of sight of men and women who still walk the earth. For this very reason she called out in Mrs. Wappinger that motherly good-nature which was only partially warped by the ambition for social success. On more than one of her "off-days" she had lured Diane out of her refuge in University Place, treating her with all the kindness she could bestow without causing disparaging comment upon herself. On the present occasion she was the more desirous of her company because of the fact that, as she expressed it herself, she had "sniffed something going on."