IL SEGRETO——"

Marie's voice rang out, clear and fluid, scattering notes through the room, filling it with them, charging the air with melody, then, like a chorus entering a crypt, it sank in diminishing accords and, sinking, died slowly away.

The segreto indeed! The secret of happiness was remoter now than when, under the teaching of the ex-first lady, she had first attacked the score. But her voice had improved. It was fuller, more resonant and ample.

Marie, too, had improved. In face and figure beauty had developed. Her manner was securer, her eyes more grave, her smile less frequent. The bud had blossomed.

In the process a year had gone. From high Norman downs she had watched the summer pass. Autumn had met her in the Elysian Fields. There the wolfish winter had approached. At the first bite there had been a flight to Havre, the return to New York. Now it was spring again. Through the open windows of the Arundel came the city's hum and with it the subtleties and enticements of May.

A year had gone. But there are years that count double. There are others so vast that in them you may have evolved a world, seen it glow and subside. The solitudes of space appal. The solitudes of the heart may be as endless as they. In those where Marie loitered a world had had its birth and subsidence, a world with gem-like hopes for stars, a world lighted by a sun so eager that its rays had made her blind. There had been aspirations, gorgeous and tangental as comets are. There had been the colorless ether of which dreams are made. For cosmic matter there was love. A year had gone. In it, these wonders had formed and fled.

Marie got from the piano. It had no secret to tell. But there was another which the year had revealed, a secret which, at first opaque and obscure, little by little had taken shape and changed from an impossibility into a monstrous fact. Marie had begun by disavowing it. She had disowned it, would have none of it. But disavowals cease. In certain conditions we get used to monsters. The soul makes itself at home with what it must. The monster to which Marie was accustoming herself was the knowledge that her lover had lied.

In departing with him from the den of the ex-first lady it was not merely with faith and trust, but with absolute certainty that marriage, if delayed, was only postponed; that a week, a month at the furthest, would see her his wife.

On the way she had stopped and wired to Gay street, telling her father not to worry, that she had gone to be married, that she would write to him soon.

Whether he had worried she could only surmise. But soon she had written, inclosing a photograph of Loftus, one which she had colored, an excellent likeness that displayed his chiseled features, wonderful eyes and thin, black mustache with a perfection of precision that was lifelike. Above it she wrote: "Marie's Husband." It would please her father, she was sure, and in the letter she told him prettily, in a little, cajoling way which he loved, that while, for the moment, he must not know where she was, yet shortly she was planning to come and surprise him—to surprise him more than he could ever imagine, and show him that he could be very, very proud of her, but prouder still, much, much prouder of the man she had married.

The plan, delightful to her, first the illness of her lover's mother, then the lady's absence from town, prevented her from at once effecting. Then, greatly to her uneasiness, she found that the plan must be yet further delayed. Mrs. Loftus had gone to her manor on the Hudson, where, her son declared, he could not take Marie "like that." Financially it was stupid to rush things. Gradually his mother must be prepared. Moreover, as preparation could be decently managed only in town, to which she would not now return until autumn, it would be a good idea to run over to Europe.

So spoke Royal Loftus. It was all false as an obituary. Financially he was entirely independent of his mother, who, at the time, was not at her manor, but just around the corner and never better in her life. But Marie, wholly infatuated, quite willing to believe that the moon was made of green cheese if only he took the trouble to so inform her, accepted it all for gospel.

The delay, of course, was a deep disappointment. She felt it, and felt it acutely. But in Europe she supposed that people would not know, and would not care a rap if they did, Loftus hastened to assure her.

To his project, therefore, she yielded. Presently she was glad that she had. The journey itself was a joy. At the Arundel he had come and gone. Often she had been lonely. Often she had sat through hours that limped themselves away, waiting for him, waiting fruitlessly. But during the journey and after it, on the high Norman downs, always she had him with her. Therein was the joy.

The places, new to her and fragrant, to which he took her interested her very much, but very much, too, as accessories might. It was from him that their real charm emanated. He also enjoyed himself, but less rapturously, in a fashion more detached. He found time to busy himself with the news of the world, with menus, with wines—occupations which to her were extraordinary. Marie did not know what she ate; as for the world, it was sublimated in him, a fact which she confided to him—of which, if she had not, he would have been perfectly aware and which he accepted at first as but a proper tribute to himself, but which ended by boring him distinctly. An excess of anything disagrees with the best.

The first symptoms of indigestion declared themselves in Paris. They had there a large suite in a big hotel. So large was the suite that frequently Marie could not find Loftus in it. He was off, returning when he saw fit, refusing to be questioned, yawning at reproaches, but otherwise perfectly civil, agreeing with her that it was not nice to be left alone, yet leaving her alone whenever he felt like it.

On the Norman downs the fresh fragrance of life had put a higher color on her cheeks, marking them with the flush of happiness and health. But in this game of hide and nowhere to seek her face became pallid as the curious white sky which in autumn stretches itself over Paris. Then stealthily, like a wolf, winter approached. The cheerlessness of it Loftus hated, as all New Yorkers do. To Marie, however, it was welcome. It meant a return to the Arundel, where she felt that the marriage so long delayed could not be further postponed.

The illusion was pleasant but not permanent. On re-emerging in the noise and sunshine of New York Loftus ceased to bother himself with the invention of excuses. He told Marie that his mother would not listen to anything of the kind, a statement which, while frank, was not exact. Mrs. Loftus had never heard of it, or for that matter, of the girl, and Loftus saw no reason whatever why she should. Yet if not frank, he was patient. Marie, on the other hand, took it all very hard. Humiliation possessed her. By day it confronted her, spectrally. At night it came to her, sat by her side, plucked at her sleeve, awoke her. It was a thing she could not get away from, could not forget; what is worse, she could not understand. It tortured her, and concerning it she tormented him constantly, displaying a persistence that was annoying and pathetic—the persistence of a child. It was as such that he treated it with yawning indifference, quite as though it were but a whim which, other things intervening, she would forget.

Other things did intervene. Among them was an adventure in Central Park. One afternoon a brougham in which she was driving crossed a victoria where sat a remarkably pretty woman with Loftus at her side.

Marie's eyes filled. Had he struck her he would have hurt her far less. When next she saw him she told him so. The idea amused him. He was not a ruffian, only a cad. Like the whim, he waved the little tragedy away.

"That was Mrs. Annandale," he announced unabashedly, "a very old friend of mine. I have known her all my life."

"Mrs. Annandale!" Marie exclaimed. "Not the wife of the Mr. Annandale whom you brought here last year?"

Loftus stared at her. He did not understand. Yet then, neither did she.

"Why," she continued, "you told me he was to marry a dark young lady."

"Yes," said Loftus, fumbling as he spoke for a cigarette. "But I told you also not to use that expression. Say girl or young woman. If you want to be fantastic, say young gentlewoman, but never young lady. You are right, though. Annandale was to have married a Miss Waldron, but she threw him over and he married somebody else."

To Marie all this was inexplicable. She did not understand how a man thrown over by one girl could so speedily marry another. She did not understand, either, what Loftus could be doing with her. To her mind driving presupposed an intimacy which acquaintance might explain but did not excuse. The matter perplexed her, and not unnaturally. It is only through our own heart that it is possible to attempt to read the heart of another. In her heart Marie knew that nothing earthly could induce her to appear as intimate with a man as Loftus had with that woman. Yet, though she knew that, she knew also that many of her views, like many of her expressions, were not in tune with the tone of the set in which Loftus moved.

None the less a fact remained. To her other men did not exist. To him other women existed. However she tried to console herself with difference in breeding, that fact, remaining, pricked. It pricked perhaps the harder because of this particular woman's looks. The woman herself was hateful. How, she wondered, could Loftus drive about with her when, with herself, he would barely be seen.

And why wouldn't he? In those days Marie's whys were many. But at the end of every one of them the answer which she always found was that it was all because she was not his wife. Yet there always another why recurred. Why was she not what he had sworn she should be?

The possible disinheritance which hitherto he had imaginatively displayed had no terrors of any kind for her. On bread and kisses she would have lived with him joyfully in a slum. To luxury she was unused. That with which she was surrounded she would not have missed in the least. On the contrary, it had grown odious to her; it suggested a form of compensation the very thought of which was sickening. It was not for this that she had left Gay street, but for him and an honest name.

In the prolonged absence of the latter there were times when her soul seemed to slink into the obscurities of her being and swoon there for shame. There were times when she could not look at herself in the glass. Quite as often she had found it difficult to look at her servants.

After the episode in Central Park the increasing sense of degradation affected her so deeply that with a weary idea of preserving such self-respect as she might, summoning those servants she dismissed them—securing, meanwhile, from an agency a woman able to do what little was essential, a negress named Blanche who talked Irish.

When Loftus discovered what she had done he was for having the servants immediately back. He liked to have the girl entertain for him. He liked to have his friends come to the aviary and hear the bird sing. But Marie, with an air of determination that was new to him, refused.

"They do not respect me," she said. "I don't blame them for that. Nor can you. When we are married it will be different.

"When we are," she added with slow scorn.

CHAPTER II

THE MOTE IN THE EYE

This house, leased fully furnished from November to June, Fanny selected. She liked the neighborhood. Annandale, whose bachelor quarters had, of course, been given up, liked it too. It was convenient. He had got an idea that he ought to have something to do. The something which he hit on consisted in going downtown every day and standing, in a broker's office, over a ticker. Such were the quantities of stupid money afloat that the ticker was very loquacious. It talked and talked, generally in jumps. As it jumped Annandale bought. As it continued to jump, he made. Whereupon he regarded himself as a born financier. It was an illusion which that year very many men shared.

But the illusion was agreeable to him. It was equally so to Fanny. It took him out of the way and induced pleasant dreams. He talked of drags and yachts. On fifty thousand a year these things are impossibilities. But Annandale, believing himself a born financier, believed, too, that the day was not remote when they would solidify into facts. Pending which, Fanny, from her own carriage, distributed to Annette, Juliette and the rest of them such orders as she liked.

It was in this carriage that Marie had seen her with Loftus. Others also saw her. Fanny being a little more than a bride and Loftus a good deal more than a beau, the spectacle caused comment. There were, though, other things that the future had in charge which were to cause more. But among those who beheld the particular spectacle was Fanny's husband.

Annandale was in a hansom with Mr. Skitt, the broker in whose office he looked over the tape. As Fanny drove by, Annandale raised his hat, then, with a mimic which he meant to be humorously indignant, he shook his stick at Loftus much as though he were saying, "Aha! making up to my wife!"

Loftus entering into the spirit of the jest, ducked his head in feigned alarm.

"That's a deuced pretty woman," remarked Mr. Skitt when the carriage had passed.

"It is Mrs. Annandale," his client returned with some hauteur.

"Oh, beg pardon, I didn't know."

"Yes," Annandale resumed, "and that was Loftus, an old friend of mine."

"Any relation to the Loftus?" Mr. Skitt, glad that the subject was out of the way, inquired.

"He is the Loftus," Annandale, now entirely mollified, replied.

Others, however, took the spectacle less lightly. To Marie it was distressing. To Mrs. Price it was absurd. Mrs. Price had not seen it, but she heard of it. To air a few views on the subject she pounced in on Fanny the very next day. Loftus, however, was there at the time. She had to wait until he was gone. Then she let drive.

"Do you fancy," she asked fiercely, "that this is London? Do you?" she repeated and menacingly pulled off a glove. "Don't you know that you cannot have men hanging about you, and of all men that man? Great heavens, if you wanted him you should have taken him at the start."

Fanny lit a cigarette, made a ring of smoke, poked a finger through it and in a sugary, demure little way which she sometimes affected, answered serenely: "At the finish perhaps I may yet."

"What!" cried Mrs. Price.

But from the door a servant was announcing Miss Waldron. The girl swam in. Necessarily, for the time being, the subject was dropped. Later Mrs. Price got back to it, but without notable result, without obtaining either any elucidation of Fanny's rather curious remark.

That though, with graver things, the future had in charge. Meanwhile Fanny, with nine servants and a housekeeper to run them, led the life of any other young society woman, the life of an objet de luxe.

This form of existence would have been quite to her liking if—Yet is there not always an If? A poet declaimed on the subject two thousand years ago. Times have changed, customs with them, but not the human heart. Barring great wealth and its fanfares and accompaniments, Fanny had enough to throw the average woman into stupors of envy, enough also to even satisfy her, if only instead of one man she had married another. Annandale was very nice. He had but one defect. But that defect was fatal. He did not happen to be somebody else.

This defect Fanny had fancied that she could overlook. She was young, therefore ignorant, and, in fancying that she could ignore that fatal defect, fancied also that she had the ability to order herself about, to command her nature and dictate to her heart. The fallacy is common. Many of us have entertained it and kept at it too until the discovery is made that the heart is a force which we must yield to or break.

Fanny became aware of this shortly after Loftus returned. There in her existence was the If. As a consequence, although Annandale was quite perfect to her, his perfection was as nothing to his one defect.

Of this defect Annandale was wholly unconscious. Yet, though he could not see the mote in his own eye, there was one in Fanny's which, though he saw, he was unable to define. It is true on the mote question he was not an expert. A husband, particularly when he happens to be big and blond, seldom is. Then, too, the effect of the mote was odd. It affected Fanny's disposition. When he approached her he could not but notice that she became elusive. He could not but perceive that she was as afraid of a kiss as of a bee.

"What is the matter with you?" he inquired on one occasion when she appeared even more tantalizingly intangible than he had seen her yet.

"Women are the very devil," he muttered as, without answering, she moved yet further away.

The question, though, was very unreasonable. So at least Mrs. Price, whom he tried to take into his confidence, assured him with fine scorn. "The idea of a man asking his wife what is the matter with her!" she exclaimed. "A man ought to know. If he doesn't, how in the world can he expect her to?"

But that was before the episode with Loftus in the Park. Had Annandale gone to Mrs. Price then she would have been quite capable of putting a flea in his ear. That opportunity he neglected. Stocks were soaring. On paper he was making money hand over fist. He had no time to bother with women's whims. When men do have time for such things the time has passed.

Even then it had gone. One night early in May Fanny had a few people in, among whom were Loftus and Sylvia Waldron.

Sylvia, who long since had let bygones be bygones, was now as sisterly as ever with Fanny, and with Annandale on terms friendly and frank, an attitude which, as Fanny put it, "made it so easy, don't you know, all around." Yet then in putting it in that way Fanny may have been actuated by the fellow-feeling which makes us all so wondrous kind. With Loftus she was rather friendly herself.

That, however, by the way. During the dinner a telegram was brought to Annandale. It concerned the morrow's market and interested him considerably. As soon as he decently could he got away to confer with Skitt. Later the other guests began to go. But Loftus lingered. Presently he and Fanny were alone.

"How is the lady?" Fanny negligently inquired.

Her arms and neck were bare. Her dress, immaterial as cobwebs, was of starbeams' restful hue. About her throat was a string of opals. They were colorful, though less so than her eyes and mouth.

She was seated on a sofa. Loftus was standing. As always, he was superiorly sent out. Other men who got their things at the same places that he got his never succeeded, however they tried, in appearing half so well.

"Do you know," Fanny continued, "she has improved vastly since that day when I saw you trying to pick her up. How did you ever manage? Tell me."

Loftus, his hands in his pockets, shrugged a shoulder.

"And she is so delightfully disdainful," Fanny ran on. "In Central Park this afternoon she turned up her nose at me. It is a very pretty nose, Royal, did you know that?"

"I know that it is a bit out of joint," Loftus condescended at last to reply.

"Dear me! Fancy that! But then the course of true love never did run smooth."

Loftus assumed an air of great weariness. "Do drop it," he said. "You know very well that I have never cared for anyone but you."

"Oh, of course," Fanny promptly and pleasantly retorted. "I may have had a doubt or two about it. But when you put this lady in a flat around the corner, then, naturally, you convinced me. It was a rather circuitous way, though, to go at it, don't you think?"

Beside her on the sofa Loftus flopped. "Why do you always go back to that?" he asked, with the same affectation of weariness.

Fanny turned from him. "I don't seem to be able to get away from it," she answered, but less promptly and pleasantly than before. Her fair face had grown serious. From her eyes the bantering look had gone. "Besides," she added after a moment, "you took her to Europe, and that did seem a trifle steep."

"Would you like her to go back there?" Loftus tentatively inquired.

In and out from Fanny's skirt a white slipper, butterflied with gold, moved restlessly. "I should have preferred that you had let her alone. It was not nice of you. It was not nice at all."

From him she had turned to the carpet. She was looking at it still. "I wonder," she presently resumed, "if you ever suspected how it hurt me." Pausing a bit she looked up. "But you have been so dense, Royal."

Loftus was about to interrupt. She checked him. "The first time I saw you I was just fifteen. That is eight years ago. Since then I can honestly say that until I accepted Arthur I had never thought of anyone but you. Never. Not once. Can you realize now how this affair of yours affected me? It hurt. If it had not been for that, do you suppose I would have taken the prince in the fairy tale? You were my prince."

"But," Loftus protested, "this affair, as you call it, came about only faute de mieux, faute de toi. Why cannot I—why cannot we——?"

Fanny checked him again. "No, we cannot. Two years ago you said the same thing to me. I forgave you then because I loved you. For the same reason I forgive you now. But, however I care for you, never will I be your mistress."

"Fanny——"

"No, never. If, as again and again you have told me during the past few months, you still care for me, either you must love me openly or I will not permit you to love me at all."

At the sudden horizon Loftus bent to her. "Let us go, then. In Europe we can love before all the world."

Fanny drew back. "Particularly before all the half-world," she answered with a sniff. "No. You misunderstand me. Perhaps, too, I misunderstand you. Let my hand be."

"Fanny, I will do anything——"

"It is rather late to say that. But if I were free now, what would you do? Would you repeat the invitation you have made?"

Loftus, his wonderful eyes looking deep into hers, answered quickly and sweetly, "I would beg you to be my wife."

Fanny straightened herself. "Then give that girl her congé, give her a dot too, send her abroad and let her marry some count."

"Very good, I will do so."

"When you have," said Fanny, "I will ask Arthur for a divorce."

"What?" And Loftus, with those wonderful eyes, stared in surprise. He was in for it, let in for it, was his first impression. Yet at once, on looking back, he realized that Fanny was incapable of trick of any kind. "But," he objected, "supposing he refuses?"

"But what of it?" Yet even as she spoke she understood. "Fiddlesticks!" she exclaimed with a gesture of annoyance. "I sha'n't care if you haven't two cents."

To this Loftus had no chance to reply. Annandale came lounging in.

"Do you know what I have done?" he collectively and blandly inquired. "I told Skitt to buy me, at the opening, 1,000 Atchison and 1,000 Steel. Now I would like a quiet drink."

Loftus stood up. "I am going in the Park for a quiet smoke. But I thought you had sworn off."

Annandale tugged at his cavalry mustache and laughed. "I haven't touched a thing for nearly a year. But on a night like this, when the whole town is mad, I think I might have a drop. Stop, dear boy, won't you, and have one with me? No? Well—" And, accompanying Loftus to the door, he whispered to him there, "My compliments to Miss Leroy."

"Don't forget, Royal," Fanny called after him, "that you dine with us on the ninth."

CHAPTER III

THE GATES OF LIFE

At first, in the old days, when he met her in the ex-first lady's den, it had seemed to her that life would be incomplete without him. Then it had seemed that with him it would be fulfilled to the tips. Subsequently the long train of disenchantments had ensued. In Paris he had pained her greatly. There, after a series of those things, little in themselves, but which, when massed, become mountainous, she had been forced to consider not her love for him but the nature of such love as he had for her. In him there was a reticence which perplexed, depths which she could not reach. At times his silence was that of one to whom something has happened, who is suffering from some constraint, from some pressure or from some long illness of which traces remain. At others, it had exasperated her, it made her feel like a piano, on which, a piece played, the cover is shut. She had seemed to serve as a pastime, nothing more; a toy which now and then he took up, but only because it was there, beneath his feet. Yet even then she was not quite unhappy. Even then she had faith. She believed in him still. Hope had not gone.

Hope has its braveries. Its outposts patrol our lives. Until death annihilates it and us, always beyond is a sentry. The sentry which she still discerned was the promise he had made. Latterly it had not been much of a sentry. It had far more resembled a straw. But it was all she had. She had clung to it. Hope indeed has its braveries, but it has its cowardices as well.

This hope, ultimate and forlorn, she knew now was craven, mated to her degradation, born of her shame. If it were to be realized the realization must delay no more. She was at the gates. She must pass through. On that she had decided. When Loftus came she would tell him so. She would tell him that she would work for him, slave for him, envelop him with her love, pillow him on her heart. Though he lost his wretched money what would it matter to her and how should it matter to him? She could sing him if not into affluence at least into ease. Tambourini, with whom until recently she had studied, had told her not once, out of politeness merely, but again and again that in her throat was a volcano of gold. With Italian exaggeration he had called her Pasta, Alboni, Malibran, predicting their triumphs for her. If Loftus would make an honest woman of her those triumphs would be for him. But as she told herself that she told herself too that such triumphs he would prefer to avoid. He should have, though, the chance. If he rejected it she would go. And of its rejection she had little manner of doubt. But the chance he should have, yes, even though she knew beforehand that with his usual civility—a civility which she had learned to hate—he would hand it back. She could see him at it. She could see his negligent smile. That smile she had learned too to hate. Always she loved him to distraction, but sometime she hated him to the death.

From Loftus for a moment her thoughts veered to Tambourini. The week previous suddenly, without warning, he had told her torrentially that he adored her. He was a good teacher. Yet, of course, after that she had been obliged to let him go.

But now her thoughts were interrupted. At the table where she sat she started, her head drawn abruptly in that attitude which deers have when surprised. In the door without had come the fumble of a key and, in the hall, she caught the almost noiseless tread of her lover. As he entered she got from her seat. Loftus had his hat on. He took it off, put it down on the table and taking a cigar from his pocket lit it at the chimney of a lamp that was there.

At the conclusion of the operation he looked at her. Her dress was canary. From the short loose sleeves lace fell that was repeated at the neck. There a yellow sapphire had been pinned. As he looked at her, she looked at him.

"I have something to say to you, Marie," he began.

With an uplift of the chin she answered: "And I, Royal, have something to say to you."

"The usual thing, I suppose. Well, shy a teacup at me if you like, but spare me a scene."

As he spoke he seated himself. "Marie," he at once resumed, "I shall have to take my mother up the Hudson shortly——"

The girl interrupted him. "Does Mrs. Annandale go too?"

The man's cigar had gone out. He relighted it. "No," he replied, "the last time I saw her she said something about going West."

"Ah!" Marie exclaimed, and immediately with that curious intuition which women that really love possess she added, "to Dakota?"

"Perhaps," replied Loftus with a puff. The surety of the shot amazed him, but of the amazement he gave no sign. "Perhaps, though I do not remember that she said just where she did intend to go." He drew in a large mouthful of smoke, which leisurely he blew forth. It circled about her. She moved away. "Oh, excuse me," he said, "I did not mean—" The girl made a gesture of indifference. "You see," he began again, "the point is just here. My mother is not well. She rather wants me with her this summer. In the circumstances I thought you might like to go abroad."

Marie, through half-closed eyes, cautiously peered at him. "Without you?" she asked.

Loftus nodded.

"For good?"

To this Loftus made no answer. Provided she went, though it were for bad, he did not much care.

Marie, who had been standing, crossed the room and recrossed it. A year before she had suggested the kitten. Where that had been the leopard had come. In her movements were the same supple ease, the same grace and alertness. Suddenly at the table where he sat she stopped, rested a hand on it and bending a little looked him in the face.

"Liar," she muttered. "Liar! I know and so do you. Yes, I knew it almost from the first, but, though I knew it, I tried as hard to deceive myself as you did to deceive me. You never intended to marry me, not for a moment, not even at the moment when you called God to witness that you would."

Her hand had gone from the table, from it and him she turned away.

Loftus, who at the arraignment had retreated a full inch in his chair, called after her. "It is untrue; what I said, I meant."

Marie turned back. "Then if you meant it, marry me this night. If you have any honor, any whatever, a spark of it, you will; if not——"

She paused and looked at him. It was not this at all she had meant to say. She had meant to entreat him, to picture what their life might be, to tell him of her enveloping love, and that failing, to go, but to go without words, without reproaches, without suffering that which had been between them to be marred by vituperation and, so marred, to descend to the level of some coarse intrigue. But something, his manner, the manifest lie about his mother, the apparition of that other woman, battening on nerves overwrought had irritated her into entire forgetfulness of what she had meant to do and say.

The pause Loftus noticed. What was behind it he misconstrued. "Don't mind me," he encouragingly interjected. "Threaten away. It is so nice and well-bred. Yet I must be allowed to say that while I did intend to marry you, the intention has been rather weakened through just such scenes as this. Though, to be frank, it is not so much that I object to scenes as it is that, if scenes there must be, I prefer to make them myself."

At the humor of that Marie ran her nails into her hands, dug them in. Without some such moxa it seemed to her that she might take and hurl the lamp at him, fire the place and, fate favoring, be calcinated with him there.

"And now that I have been frank," he went on, "let me be franker. You and I have ceased to be able to hit it off. The blame for that I will, if you like, assume."

Then he too paused. But not at all because he did not fully know what he meant to do and say.

"Marie," he continued, putting a hand in a pocket as he spoke, "in the past year we have been more than friends. Friends at least let us remain. Friends do part, and for awhile we must. Your voice, like yourself, is charming. If I may advise, go and study abroad. Though if you prefer remain here. But, of course, whatever you do you will need money. I have brought some."

In his hand now was a card case which he offered her. She took it, looked at it, opened it, then moving to a window she raised the sash and threw the card case into the night, yet so quickly and unexpectedly that Loftus had no time to interfere.

"That is an agreeable way of getting rid of twelve thousand dollars," he remarked.

Yet, however lightly he affected to speak, the action annoyed him. Like all men of large means he was close. It seemed to him beastly to lose such a sum. He got up, went to the window and looked down. He could not see the case and he much wanted to go and look for it. But that for the moment Marie prevented.

"If it were twelve times twelve million," she exclaimed, "I would do the same! Oh, Royal," she cried, "don't you know it is not your money I want; don't you know it is you?"

Loftus did know, but he did not care. The flinging away of the money was all he could think of. It was an act which he could not properly qualify as plebeian, but which seemed to him crazily courtesanesque. He returned to the table and picked up his hat. "I am going," he announced.

Marie sprang at him. "Is that your answer?"

He brushed her aside. She saw that he was going, saw too, or thought she saw, that he was going never to return, saw also that now at last she was at the gates.

"My God!" she cried. "My God!"

So resonant was the cry that Loftus turned, not to her but to the window. He closed it. But already the cry had passed elsewhere.

From regions beyond a fat negress waddled hurriedly in. Her eyes rolled whitely from the girl to Loftus and then again to the girl.

"Are you sick, miss?"

"Go away," said Loftus, "there is nothing the matter."

"Nothing?" exclaimed Marie. "Nothing!" she repeated in a higher key. "Nothing!" Then, visibly, anger enveloped her. "Do you call it nothing to be cheated and decoyed? Nothing to have faith and love and be gammoned of them by a living lie, by a perjury in flesh and blood? Is that what you call nothing? Is it? Then tell me what something is?"

At the moment she stared at Loftus, her lips still moving, her breast heaving, her small hands clenched, her face very white. And Loftus stared at her. In the vehemence and contempt of her anger he did not recognize at all the kitten of the year before. But it was very vulgar, he decided.

That vulgarity Blanche complicated at once. "What has he done, miss?" she asked, her hands on her hips.

"Done?" Marie echoed. "He has made me drink of shame. Now, tired of that, he is going."

"Not to leave you, miss?"

"To leave me for another woman."

"Then hanging is too good for him."

Loftus gestured at the negress. "I say," he called. "Did you hear what I told you? Go away and hold your tongue."

Blanche's eyes that had rolled whitely before were rolling now not merely whitely but wildly.

"I won't go away, sir. I won't hold my tongue, sir. I am as good as you, sir. I have a son that's better nor you, sir. He wouldn't treat a lady as you have her, sir. Staying away from her as you have, sir. Making her eat her heart out, sir. No, sir, I won't hold my tongue, sir."

And Blanche, mounting in paroxysms of indignation, shouted: "For the Lord's sake, sir. Hanging is too good for you, sir. You ought to have your ghost kicked. Yes, sir."

"Oh, hell!" muttered Loftus between his teeth, and turning on his heel, he stalked out, flecking from his sleeve as he went an imaginary speck.

CHAPTER IV

THE RETURN OF THE YELLOW FAY

Loftus moved forward to where Sylvia and Fanny sat. Fanny gave him a finger; Sylvia, a little distant nod. She was dressed in white. About her neck was a string of pearls. Fanny was in a frock of tender asparagus green fluttered with lace, very cool to the eye and cut rather low.

"I hope Arthur isn't hurt much," said Loftus.

"Are you?" Fanny asked.

"No. I have been selling. Today I covered. It was not easy, though. Everybody was crazy. I have never seen a panic before."

"It will be a generation before you see another," Orr, from across the room, called out.

At the further end of the room Harris, Annandale's former valet, since promoted to the position of butler, appeared, smug-faced and solemn, in silent announcement of dinner.

For the time being the subject was abandoned, but presently when at table all were seated it was resumed.

"It will cost the country $50,000,000," said Orr. He was at Fanny's left. At her right was Loftus.

"Well," said Annandale, emptying a glass of Ruinart, "I am glad I don't have to produce it." Emptying another glass he added, "I have produced all I could."

"I think I do not quite understand," said Mrs. Waldron, who led a highly unspeculative life and seldom saw the evening papers.

Orr and Annandale both hastened to enlighten her. Ever since the Presidential election there had been a boom in the Street, a soaring market in which the whole community, down to and including messenger boys and chorus girls, had joined. On this, the ninth of May, it had, in the slang of the Street, just "busted." Since the great black day of a generation previous, never had there been such a crash, so many landed gentry, so much paper profit sunk into such absolute loss.

In the flow of talk Fanny turned to Loftus.

"How is the lady?"

Loftus, whose mouth was full of jellied consommé, did not answer for a moment. Then he made a slight gesture. "She has gone."

"Already?"

"I had your orders!"

Fanny looked at him wonderingly. "How did she take it?"

"What difference does it make? She has gone. Is not that sufficient?"

"For you, no doubt. But for her! No; really I am sorry. When you told her that you loved her I am sure she thought you meant forever. I am sure, too, that you meant for a week. It is a shame to treat a girl like that and then turn her loose."

Loftus had begun to busy himself with some fish. He put his fork down. "But, confound it, you told me to."

"Did I? I forgot. Besides, you are not usually so obedient."

Loftus turned to his fish. "It seems to me that there is rather a change in the temperature. Isn't there?" he asked.

"But, Royal, I cannot help feeling sorry for that girl. I cannot help feeling, too, that if you can get rid of her in this lively fashion you might do the same with me."

"In that case it only shows what a simpleton you are. If I have had anything to do with her at all it was only because I couldn't have anything to do with you."

"Well, hardly in that way. But you could have asked me to marry you."

"I have since."

"Say, rather, I asked you."

"Anyway, the other evening it was settled. If now you have changed your mind——"

"Regarding you my mind will never change. I shall speak to Arthur tonight."

"What's that?" called Annandale who, from the other end of the table, had caught the mention of his name. "What's that?"

"We were talking stocks," Loftus answered. "Do you know how money was today?"

"I know it was beastly tight."

"And that seems to me," Fanny with one of her limpid smiles remarked, "such a vulgar condition for money to be in."

"Did I hear you ask," Orr inquired, "how money was today? It was sixty per cent."

"Dear me, Melanchthon," Mrs. Waldron exclaimed. "I think I must get you to speak to the Trust Company. They only give me three. A mouse could not live in New York on that."

"The time is not distant," said Orr, "when the population of New York will be exclusively composed of mice and millionaires. Nobody but plutocrats and paupers will be able to live here. Already it is little more than a sordid hell with a blue sky. I can remember——"

Orr ran on. He had the table. In the impromptu which ensued other conversation was swamped. But during it, for a second, Loftus had Fanny's hand in his. It clasped it and in clasping thrilled. It was the first time in her life that she had permitted herself—or him—such a thing. It was the last.

Sylvia, happening at the moment to turn that way, could not help seeing what was going on. She colored and looked at Annandale.

During Orr's impromptu he had been attempting with plentiful champagne to fill the hole of which he had complained.

Later, the dinner at an end, the women gone, the hole still unfilled, he called for whisky and soda and monologued plaintively on the disasters of the day. As he talked he drank. But the monologue, which was becoming tedious, Harris interrupted. Mrs. Waldron had sent in to say that she and Miss Waldron were going, and would Mr. Orr be so good as to see them home.

At this Annandale got up. With the others he made for the room beyond. There, shortly, the guests of the evening departed; husband and wife were alone.

"Do you know, Fanny, how much I have lost today?" that husband began.

"No, Arthur," that wife replied. "Nor do I know that I particularly care. There is something more important to me than money just now. I want a divorce."

"Eh?" Annandale had been walking up and down the room, but at this he stopped short. He did not seem to have heard aright. "Eh?"

"Eh?" Fanny repeated in open mimic. "Yes, I want a divorce."

"A divorce?" Munching the syllables of the word, Annandale put a hand to his shirt front. "From me?" Had Fanny asked him to make good the fifty million loss to the country which Orr had mentioned his bewilderment could not have been more sheer.

Annandale passed a hand over his forehead. He did not in the least understand what all this was about. Then suddenly the fumes of wine disclosed a retrospect of incidents garnered unconsciously, memories of Fanny and Loftus, the sense of her increasing aloofness, the knowledge of his constant presence. These things made pictures which he saw and, seeing, inflamed. At once, in answer not to her but to them, he got from his seat, pounded violently on an étagère and cried with the viciousness of drink: "I'll shoot him! I'll shoot Royal Loftus for the dog that he is!"

"Beg pardon, sir." Through the lateral entrance to the drawing-room Harris emerged, a tray in his hand. "A necklace, sir. It was under the dining-room table where Miss Waldron sat, sir."

Annandale strangled an oath. He glared at Fanny, glared at the man, glared at the pearls, took the latter, thrust them in his pocket, motioned to Harris, strode from the room, went upstairs, then down and out from the house, slamming the door after him with a noise in which there was the clatter of musketry and the din of oaths.

The night was black yet full of stars, the hour homicidal and serene. Annandale strode on. Before him was the park, about it a fence of high iron and within phantasmal peace. He did not notice it. He was wondering angrily what he would do, how he should act.

Had he been sober he would have known at once. When in his sphere of life a woman wants to go, it is a man's mere duty to open the doors, open the windows, run ahead, get a divorce and bring it back to her on a salver. Had he been sober he would have realized that. He would have recognized too the propriety of Fanny's frank request. After little more than five months of marriage it was perhaps precipitate. Yet considered simply as a request it was, in the world in which he moved, more common than the reverse.

Ordinarily he would have realized that. What is more, he would have realized that what Fanny had said was true. They were not suited for each other. When people are not so suited it is best that they should separate. But people that have bowed when they met might just as well bow when they part. In the life known as polite big words and little threats have long since gone out of fashion.

All of which ordinarily Annandale would have known. He was essentially urbane, of a nature far more inclined to inaction than anger. Ordinarily, he would have accepted the situation, without joy, no doubt, but certainly without raising the roof. Whereupon, having so accepted it, he would have turned in and gone to bed.

But alcohol plays strange tricks. It affects manners and memories. It affects, too, the imagination. Annandale was drunk. The Yellow Fay that lurks in liquor awoke in him the manger dog. He told himself that he was being robbed. And of what? The wife of his bosom! And by whom? His nearest friend! The outrage and the villainy of that loomed, or rather, the Yellow Fay aiding, seemed to loom so monstrously, that, beside it, the disasters of the Street dwindled into nothing, lost in the sense of this wrong.

It was damnable, he decided.

Putting a hand in a pocket his fingers encountered a string of pearls. It was not that which he was seeking. Besides, he had forgotten them. But finding them there it occurred to him that he ought to restore them at once. Circling the park he entered Irving Place and rang at Sylvia's door.

There, instead of the usual if brief delay, the door opened at once. Orr was coming out. Beyond in the hall Sylvia stood. Orr looked at Annandale, wondering what the dickens he was after. But Annandale brushed by. Orr passed on. Annandale entered the hall.

As the door closed the light revealed to Sylvia what Orr in the semi-obscurity of the stoop had not observed and which, had he observed, would, in view of an anterior episode, have induced his return.

But Sylvia saw. In face and manner his excitement was obvious. Mindful of that episode she feared that he was again in his cups. Yet immediately, though for a moment, a question which he asked reassured her. She understood, or thought she did, why he had come.

"Did you know that you had lost your pearls?"

Instinctively the girl's hand went to her throat.

"Here they are. They were found somewhere. In the hall, I think."

"Thank you, Arthur. This is very good of you. But tomorrow would have done."

She did not ask him in and this omission he did not appear to notice. He looked about the hall and then at the girl. At the look her fear returned.

"Did you know about Fanny and Loftus?" he suddenly asked. "They're going to elope." As he spoke he leaned back heavily against the door. "I shall kill him," he added thickly.

Sylvia wrung her hands. "Oh, Arthur, you have been drinking again. You promised that you never would."

"I shall kill him," Annandale stubbornly repeated.

"Oh, don't say such things," the girl pleaded. "Don't say them. Go home."

Annandale turned sullenly, opened the door and looking back, muttered, "I have no home."

Closing the door after him he started down the steps. They were few and wide, easy of descent. But they had become unaccountably steep. He caught at a rail. It steadied him. He stood there a moment. Then, a bit uncertainly, he zigzagged on.

CHAPTER V

EXIT FANNY