CHAPTER XI
AT THE OLD BURYING POINT

By the next morning the incident just recorded had taken on to Rachel a somewhat different tinge. Her sense of humiliation had so far abated as to admit of her entertaining a feeling of pity for Emil. He certainly had appeared a disconsolate and astounded figure as he stood there gazing after her as she drove away. She wished now that she had not left so precipitately, or, at least, that she had not declined his proffered assistance when mounting into the cart.

By an altered reasoning the apology which had offended her yesterday, now gratified her. As a gentleman who had been guilty of the grave misdemeanour of kissing a lady, he could not have acted differently; for she now thrust the entire blame of the incident on his masculine shoulders. "It certainly was his fault in the first place," she argued. And, having shifted the ground of resentment from the apology for the kiss to the kiss itself, she resolved to forgive the wrong-doer.

The greater part of the day she spent in wandering on the shore of the bay. Whenever she went there, instinctively she glanced at the mound of sand where, on the occasion of their first meeting, she had seen Emil bury the torn scraps of a letter. Not that she would have touched the mound for the world, but the strictest would not censure a glance of curiosity in that direction. Owing to its protection from the wind, the little grave, strangely enough, had remained intact. But this morning a scrap of paper appeared on the beach bearing, in what was incontestably a woman's handwriting, the single word "Dearest."

Scarcely cognizant of what she did, Rachel, like a feminine Crusoe, hovered over this bit of evidence on the sand. Like the legendary hero her consciousness of being alone was destroyed, but with different effect, for instead of an expression of surprise not unmixed with fear, her look was one of suspicious misery.

"That letter was never from his mother," flashed through her mind. "Old ladies don't make D's that way, so big and round,—but small and trembly. No, whoever she is, she's young. Of course," reason suggested, "the letter may have been written by some relative—by a cousin, perhaps." The supposition was barely tenable.

With the keen brightness of eye that betokens jealousy, she remained poised for the briefest fraction of time above the tantalizing find, then she turned and pranced away. The instant devoted to the scrutiny had been so short as to admit of scarcely more than half a heart-throb, so short as scarcely to be termed a look at all, yet a sense of dishonour was not lacking in her suffering.

She walked, stopped to think, shed a tear or two, and eventually grew calm. What comforted her was the thought that Emil cared so little for its writer that he had torn the letter into bits.

By afternoon her anxiety to forgive him for the misdemeanour of the day previous had grown to such proportions as to drive her to the place of meeting much earlier than usual; and waiting there still further increased the feeling. When she saw him coming, she rose. Her arms, hanging down her sides, trembled. She was all languor, all expectancy; she was the desire for reconciliation incarnate. Yet even from a distance, she knew that something was wrong. She turned upon him a look of inquiry as he drew near with his hands sunk in his pockets and his head lowered.

His face was clouded, his moustache curved downward, though when he lifted his eyes to hers, into them flashed a warm and intensely grateful smile. But the expression was succeeded by a gloomy one.

"Well, it's all over," he announced. "No need for me to have slaved so. I'm thrown aside and someone else goes ahead and reaps the profits."

"What do you mean?" she gasped.

"Mean? Why I mean that my delightful employers have stolen the press, the sheets, the whole scheme. I wasn't quick enough and they got someone else to finish the thing and applied for the patent."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I've been informed all right," he said and from his pocket he drew a letter.

Involuntarily Rachel extended her hand; then her face went white. On the sheet that fluttered in his fingers she beheld the same childish chirography that had appeared on the scrap of paper on the beach. Her hand dropped.

"It's always the same," he went on, without noticing the change that had come over her. And seating himself on the tomb, he took out his pipe. Having filled it, he commenced to smoke, his eyes widely opened, full of profound thought, fixed on vacancy.

"Not that it makes any difference," he continued philosophically after a pause. "The world gets the benefit of the invention; as for me, I've plenty of other things in my head. I'm not crying over spilt milk," and he looked up at her and laughed while the shining returned to his glance. Reaching out toward her he tried to take her hand. This movement, while bold, was not destitute of an appealing grace. It was a mute reference to the kiss, to their changed relations; it was also a demand for sympathy.

At any other time Rachel would not have resisted it, but now she stepped out of his reach. "Who is it that informs you?" Her voice was implacable.

He hesitated. "The daughter of one of my employers," he said in a low tone. "She's stood by me from the first," he admitted. "She's been in fact a—little trump." And then he sighed.

Rachel turned away her head. "I should think you'd go to her at once," she said. "I don't see why you wait here. There's a train at six."

Disconcerted, he got to his feet. Their eyes locked. He glowered upon her.

"You might be able to protect your rights," she continued in a stinging voice. "Then I should think, on her account, if not on your mother's, you'd make the attempt."

She saw the visible pang the mention of his mother occasioned.

"I will," he cried, "I'll go." And he held out his hand.

She saw that he shook from head to foot, and she knew that she had hurt him mortally. But every force of her passionate nature had become negative to all appeal from him. She could but stand with an impassive face and bid him go, lest he court worldly failure instead of success.

And so they parted like strangers.

When he had passed from her sight, Rachel sank in a little heap on the tomb. She bent her face on her knees. She felt as if a sounding-instrument had gone to the very depths of her heart and explored there among ambiguous weeds and mud, and as she listened to the message that came back, she rocked backward and forward in a very ecstasy of barren grief and shame. It seemed to her that she had reached the burying point of life, and her sobs, quick with the agony of youthful living, sounded small and piteous in that quiet place of the dead.

CHAPTER XII
THE MIGRATORY INSTINCT

During the first weeks succeeding Emil's departure, Rachel looked feverishly for a letter. It seemed to her the intensity of her longing must cause one to appear. But none came, and finally she realized that none would come. She went about with a curled lip and a scornful eye. Nora Gage might run the house as she chose and cook as many savory dishes as she pleased, the girl did not care; she was indifferent even to her grandfather; but let the one or the other cross her will, and her anger blazed forth. These violent outbursts were nature's defence.

In the painful upheaval that separated her dream from the reality, that which was the very centre of her higher life, suffered to such an extent that she must have become inert, had it not been for the responsibility felt by all the ruder faculties of her hardy young being. She had sought love, struggling albeit unconsciously, toward a supposed freedom; and driven back on herself, she would have become like a prisoner at the bottom of a cellar—bleeding, discouraged, without further hope—had it not been for the nerves that proved insurrectionary, for the temper that refused to be thwarted. The activity of these rescuers gradually amazed the girl herself and drew her from the contemplation of her trouble. But the experience, long after the actual pain of it had given place to a general dissatisfaction with existence, left its trace upon her face; and this tempestuous beauty, wrought from within, played around her lips in a smile of tragic comprehension and increased the range of her youthful and expressive eye.

At home Nora dragged her slippers over the kitchen floor with a flapping sound, and at "the barn," where even the occasional customer had ceased to appear, André played wild airs upon his fiddle. Both these sounds were intolerable to Rachel and, to escape them, she fled to the cliffs. There, even as the cold weather came on, she sat for hours, with her chin buried in her hands and her eyes on the ocean—the ocean which, unfathomable and perpetually active, built itself into gigantic walls that broke against the rocks with a reverberating report and were sucked back emitting long murmurs.

Old David, thinking that he discovered in this preoccupation with the sea a likeness to her father, approached Zarah Patch on the subject and from a distance, screwing up their eyes in the sunlight, the two ancient men observed her.

"It's her father's blood," explained old David, "often and often I seen him look the same way."

"It's jest female feelings," Zarah affirmed, "she ain't rightly found her rudder yet, and she's young. It's always so with women;"—a remark of unusual length and penetration for Zarah.

Finally old David hit on a plan for diverting her, a plan, however, which was destined to increase her malady rather than to cure it. In the Old Harbour paper that once a week found its way to the Point, there appeared an account of a private car fresh from the shops which, for the purpose of conveying his family and friends to their home in the city, had been brought to Old Harbour by a wealthy summer resident. The car was stalled on a side track, and old David proposed to his granddaughter that they go and see it.

It was a fine clear afternoon, and as the visit was in the nature of a pleasure expedition, they drove beside Zarah Patch in his cart. As they bowled along the road, the ruts of which were slightly stiffened by the frost, old David talked continuously and Rachel found herself listening.

"You know I used to work in the car shops at Philadelphy when I was a young chap," he explained. "It was an immense sky-lighted place covered with tracks and filled from one end to t'other with cars, some old to be repainted and some entirely new. Winter was the time when the old ones used to come troopin' back to us all faded and travel-stained; they used to seem like old women whose finery was a little gone-by, who came back to see how young and spruce they could be made to look. And in the summer we fitted out the new ones, and they of course was like young things jest preparin' fer their first venture into the world.

"I tell ye," he continued, "I used to feel about them jest as if they were human creatures. The men who worked there was called 'liners,' 'sign-writers,' 'hardwood-finishers,' 'decorators,' and 'rubbers-down.' The 'rubbers-down' worked with emery-cloth and water, and oh my, didn't they have to be careful about savin' the gold paint on the old cars, though! For the letters and lines of gold on a car are always left to stand, bein' as you might say, her jewellery," he added, with a cackling laugh.

But when the little party descended at the station, the magnificence of the new coach dazzled old David. He had never seen anything like it, though this fact he strove to conceal.

"They used to decorate 'em more," he said, "they used to paint scrolls along the sides, and between the winders they put on yaller tulips; and to my mind, the cars was handsomer."

The ticket agent ran across the tracks to open the new coach and the old man, to demonstrate his knowledge of the subject, began enumerating the different classes of common cars. "'P.K.' is the best of 'em," he proclaimed, "'P.K. Wide Vestibule'. But of course this car is something a little extry."

When, however, the ticket agent had left them and they once more stood looking up at the coach, he broke forth into lyric praise of it.

"'Tain't hardly been on the tracks, remember," he cried, "but think of the miles and miles it has to run, through what different kinds of country. It'll be like a good soldier followin' the leader! But the engine! Oh, that's the master of 'em all!" he continued; "great, shinin', pantin' master, that's what the engine is, the master."

Rachel looked at the car as at a traveller who is about to start on a long journey. Once she had seen the wife of the owner with a party of friends, and she began filling the seats of the new coach with these people. Oh, the ladies, the softly-turned heads; the nicely-dressed children—no common folk were to ride in this car! And she imagined how they would be carried forward, the rolling of the wheels growing ever swifter and swifter; and then how they would arrive at that spot, glimmering with a million lights, tumultuous and confused, the city containing great homes.

On the drive back to the Point, she closed her eyes the better to pursue her thoughts, and her grandfather's words mingled with them like something heard in a dream.

"Sometimes, not often, I used to paint station signs," he said, "and after I'd finished the name of a place—maybe it was Kingston, or maybe it was only Smithville,—I used to think how the sign would be hung at the end of a long platform or perhaps jest posted against a little shed of a buildin' in the midst of a great prairie, and I used to think of the rain and the snow that'd blow against it, and most blot out the letters, and the little birds that would perch on it; and somehow I felt as if I had been to the places jest through paintin' of the signs."

Rachel pictured the earth webbed with tracks like veins, and she saw the ships following certain appointed routes over seas; and again, as in the past, it appeared to her that she was the one stagnant thing in an active creation.

"But the signs I liked to paint best," resumed her grandfather's tremulous voice, "were the Stop-Look-Listen signs, and the Railroad-Crossin'—Look Out For The Engine. They are made of cast steel now and the letters are raised, but in my time they was of wood, tall white posts with a pointin' arm, like ghosts givin' warnin'."

It seemed to the girl that at all costs she must set herself free and become a part of a moving and active world. But how transgress the law that had placed her there on the Maine coast, without experience and without outlet for all the various capacities of her being? From that time she began to coax her grandfather to leave Pemoquod.

"The president of the car shops who gave you this house," she began one evening, winding her arms about his neck, "if you looked him up—"

"Nicholas Hart ain't in Philadelphy no longer," objected the old man. "I seen in the papers years ago about the car shops failin' when he had 'em, and then about his movin' to New York City."

"Yes, I know that," she assented, "now if you looked him up, he'd probably get you a nice easy position in New York. But I don't intend you shall work much longer," she continued, "and that's just the point; I ought to be doing something to support us both. But what can I do here?"

In vain old David protested that he did not wish her to work, she overruled him, the more easily because his ever-youthful heart was pleased with the idea of a change. Then, too, he was lapsing into his second childhood and as time went on he allowed himself to be guided more and more by her.

Nora Gage was no match for the pair. She had conceived a fondness for the kitchen, for the stove, for the very pots and pans; moreover, the food that she was able to get in this house was to her liking, especially now, when secure from observation, she fried, stirred and seasoned to her heart's content. No longer driven to eat these supplementary luncheons in the privacy of her own chamber, surrounded by her mice like St. Francis by his birds, she ate when and where she chose, even under the eyes of the abstracted girl. It must not be concluded that she was ignorant of any detail of the plan that was on foot. No one knew, better than she, through listening at the cracks of doors, what was going forward. And anon she would be servile before Rachel, through sheer apprehension, and again would rage inwardly to think that the coming change in her fortunes was due to a brat of a girl. The grandfather, by the force of that will which existed in the depths of her being like a seldom-used sword in a scabbard, Nora could have managed; but Rachel was beyond the range of her power. However, when the announcement of the great news was finally made to her, her plea was ready.

"And what's to become of me, miss?" she demanded. "For more years than ye've lived I've served yer grandfather faithful, and now at a word from ye I'm turned off with no place to go."

Rachel, sitting on the arm of her grandfather's chair, regarded the housekeeper coldly. "Why can't you go back in the meat-market with your cousin?" she asked; "grandfather says you used to be there."

"Yes, but his son's growed up now and he don't need me," and Nora began to turn a corner of her apron over one stodgy finger. "It was jest as my friends warned me," she whimpered, "they said I'd be sorry if I stayed on here after yer mother died. I've sacrificed everything for ye two and ye don't seem to know it." She ended with a guttural sob.

Rachel scanned her with a swift glance from head to foot. "What have you sacrificed for us?" she asked. "Haven't you been paid?"

"Yes, but there's some things that can't be paid for," Nora muttered. "A woman can't stay in a man's house the way I have without its costing her dear."

The girl stared, then the clear colour stained her face. "Nonsense!" she cried.

"It may seem nonsense to you, miss," Nora retorted, "I can well understand that it do—actin' as you did awhile back. But it ain't nonsense to the world. I might as well be like that poor thing at the lighthouse 'stead of the decent woman I am, as far as the world knows. I've give up everything for ye two, that's what I have, and this is the way I git treated," and she began sobbing in earnest.

The old man gazed from one to the other in bewilderment. He saw his granddaughter rise and heard her draw a sharp breath, and he saw the housekeeper cower and drop her eyes.

Rachel passed to a window and stood there for some seconds; then a whiff of cookery from the kitchen stirred in her a kind of pity. Through a crack of the door was revealed that for which Nora struggled and schemed. To have food in plenty, greasy, rich food, this was the one desire of Nora's life.

"Grandfather," she said softly and a little wearily, without looking at the woman, "if you are willing, we'll take Nora with us."

Of all this interesting parley which betrayed itself in the late-burning lamp at the Beckett house, André Garins caught not an inkling. He slept above in the lighthouse, or, when chance favoured, below in his bed; and cut off as he was from news, he remained ignorant of the proposed flight.

Occasionally, after he had polished the crystal lenses and the brass trimmings of the lantern, his duties over for the day, he tapped at the Beckett door; but Rachel was too busy to see him: and to escape the belligerent eyes of Captain Daniels who drank secretly but heavily as the cold weather came on, he betook himself to the deserted barn.

Blown upon by all the winds of heaven, with whisperings at every crack and meanings in its loosened timbers, "the barn" was André's retreat. Far from finding it dismal, he had only to light a fire in the cracked stove and whip out his fiddle; and henceforth, it became a cheerful and friendly abode. He was too close to nature to be rendered unhappy by mere loneliness. The booming of the sea against the cliffs and the sighing of the wind in the vastnesses of the sedgegrass, but lit in him a fiercer gayety.

Up to this time André had resembled one of those unobtrusive plants which encumber the highway, but which are apt to escape notice until the flowering season. He was as handsome as an animal, a child or any other natural thing, and of the primitive soul at the bottom of him, his large and rolling eye revealed little. But the hour comes when the humble flower arrests our attention, if only for the fraction of a moment, by opening a corolla of exquisite perfection.

It was on a day in late autumn after the first snow had vanished from the earth, leaving it wistful and half-chastened, that Rachel sought out André. It was to be expected that her schoolfellow would feel sharp regret at her news, and for this reason she had delayed enlightening him until the last moment. They stood some distance from "the barn" in the pale sunlight and as she began to speak, he looked straight into her eyes with a kind of uncomprehending terror. Scarcely had she finished when he sank to the ground as if felled by a blow.

"Say you didn't mean it," he moaned, and at her dress she felt his clinging hands while his forehead rested hot against her feet.

She lifted his head and saw his mouth twisting like a child's, while from his eyes poured two steady streams of tears.

"Why André!" she cried, and with a movement of almost maternal compassion, she put her arms about him. Thus drawn against the sky, the young pair vaguely suggested the group of Niobe and her child.

"Say you won't leave me," he moaned, "say we'll be married and you'll never, never leave me."

Softly she stroked his hair while gazing straight before her. Through a sort of prescience she knew that this humble and suppliant love was sweeter and more fathomless than anything that would come to her again.

"No, André dear," she said finally, "I can't stay just living on day after day, and all the days just alike; I can't because there's something here," and she touched her heart, "that won't let me. All the same," she continued, "I'm not sure that you're not wiser. You'll stay here patiently, and, after a fashion, you'll be happy, I suppose. But it won't be that way with me," she added, with a prophetic shake of the head; "I shall not be patient and so—"

But André comprehended nothing save the fact that the innermost hope of his being was in ruins. He was sobbing now with even more abandon and through the texture of her dress Rachel felt the pure warmth of his tears.

"Look, André," she said, "do you see that they are burning wrecks down there—the lumber of those fishing boats that came ashore last spring. Why are they doing it?"

He raised his wet eyes and followed the direction of her pointing finger.

"It's because they want to use the iron bolts that screw them together," she continued. "In just the same way, life treats us—like wrecked barks, and the flames sweep over us, so that at last all that is left is the iron strength of us." She finished almost in a whisper, as if she had forgotten him.

It was clear that André's soul would continue to cling to her soul like the lichen to the wood, the ivy to the tree. And this he knew, even while he mourned the material separation.

Presently more matter-of-fact words brought him to himself. He ceased weeping, and rising, stood at her bidding.

"You'll see about the trunk lock," she said, "right away; and you'll meet grandfather and go with him to buy the tickets. I'll see you again in the morning, but this is the real goodbye."

His face was as calm as hers now, even the longing in it had died. Seeing him thus—being no Spartan, but soft woman every inch—her arms went about his neck and her lips met his. While the two young creatures stood thus the sun, faintly pink, sank into the sea and a cold wind blew over the land.

Rachel had disappeared but André had gone scarcely a hundred yards when he flung himself face downward. With his hands knotted among the sedgegrass, he wept without sound. A locust that had been lured from its retreat by the warmth of the day, looked at him from the stalk of a plantain, then changed its location to less violently agitated quarters; only the shaking of some denuded stalks marked where the boy lay.

Because of the insubmission, bravery and perseverance of a young girl, the old weather-beaten house of the former lobsterman was forsaken. No more would its rooms echo to the sound of voices, and footsteps would no more pass its thresholds; its doors were closed. The sunlight would penetrate into its unused rooms and trace the accustomed pattern on floor and wall; no one would know. And on roof and steps the rain would beat its old friendly reveille. Sagging in roof and beam under the drifted snow of winter, denuded in summer of shutter and shingle, gradually the abandoned house would disappear from the landscape; little by little it would vanish like a nest that the birds have forsaken.

When the hour for the departure arrived, several of the good wives of the Point appeared. They formed a little group around Rachel. One of them straightened her hat, another retied the scarf around her neck; then they shook hands with her gravely, looking at her with dimmed eyes. Rachel strained her gaze in the direction of the lighthouse and saw Lizzie Goodenough standing with a parcel in her hands. Instantly the girl darted up the rocky path and the two embraced, while the others exchanged glances.

Old David, all eagerness to be off, had clambered into the cart in which a quantity of household gear had been packed, and sat there holding the reins; while Zarah Patch helped André bring out the one trunk and several bags and boxes. At last all was in readiness, when Nora Gage discovered an important item of luncheon unprepared for transportation. Several baskets were offered, and in the confusion, Rachel made her escape.

Arrived at the bay shore, flushed and panting, she stooped with a graceful movement and laid her cheek against the wreck, while with her hand she patted that shadowy collection of letters that still in washed out reds and blues formed a name no wind nor tide could efface. Defender! Warped, dislocated, destroyed, its tarry timbers pierced with innumerable holes, its dismal hulk filled with the last lamentable cargo of seawrack and sand, the wreck lifted its broken ribs like arms toward the girl. From what would it restrain her? From what did it seek to defend her?

Rising, she approached and stood before the figure-head, and the figure-head looked back at her and, as it were, over and beyond her. With a timid movement, Rachel kissed this old comrade also. Then she ran away, and a moment later she looked back, and there she saw her—that "great-kneed, deep-breasted" Goddess of Hope—with her face set toward the Unknown,—valiant, free!

BOOK II

CHAPTER I
THE STREET OF MASTS

"He saw you in the shop that time long ago, Grandfather, and understood that the paint had affected you?"

"Yes, it were the lead in the white paint that poisoned me," agreed David; "I'd been paintin' cattle cars pretty stiddy, which was a job most on 'em tried to skip."

"I see, and the superintendent told Mr. Hart how faithfully you'd worked and the result was that he sent you this letter with a deed for the house at the Point. It shows that he thought a great deal of you; and even if we shouldn't be able to find him," she continued with a shade of apprehension, "it seems to me this letter, old as it is, ought to help in getting you some sort of a position, just temporarily."

"But it ain't some sort of a position I'm wantin'," the other objected, "it's a railroad position; and though railroad corporations is one thing," he continued, "and car shops is another, still they do business together constant; and I guess we'll find the Big Middletown people know all about Nicholas Hart when we ask 'em."

And so these two, the one so lately emerged from childhood and the other just reëntering it, started on their quest, and from their eyes looked out the same innocence, ignorance and unquenchable hope.

"I'll feel safer about Grandfather when he's occupied," thought the girl, "but it must be light work, I'll insist upon that; and then directly I'll find something to do myself."

Since their arrival in the city a fortnight before, old David had manifested a growing irresponsibility. Deprived of his accustomed occupations and transferred to the streets of the metropolis, he had become like a ship without a rudder. So far, his driftings had been as pleasant as they were aimless, but more than once he had been lost, more than once, following the lead of his errant curiosity, had barely escaped serious accident. And there was no telling how soon the threatening dangers of the new existence might overwhelm him. Insensibly, in the midst of his delight, he looked to the young girl for guidance. She it was who had settled them in their present quarters, three small rooms at the top of an old building in lower New York, rooms selected because of their cheapness and because two windows overlooked a wharf at which foreign ships were tethered while a third window looked toward the west. She it was who had added to their meagre stock of house plenishings at push-carts and cheap shops. Indeed, she it was who had assumed entire responsibility for the undertaking.

Nora Gage, who now received a lower wage than formerly, and in consequence performed only such duties as she chose, grumbled constantly. The poor fare on which Rachel and the old man subsisted filled her with disgust, and she would have gratified her gastronomic preferences out of her savings of twenty years, had it not been that the queer foreign foods, in which the markets of the neighbourhood abounded, were not to her taste. Even old David at moments was inclined to be fractious, and Rachel, who had wilfully played the part of Fate to these two, was forced to listen as patiently as she could to their criticisms.

On the afternoon in question when she emerged from the house with her grandfather, the old man scowled; for the street was dank with mist and clamorous with the roar of the nearby "elevated."

"This ain't a nice street," he complained, "I don't like the smell on it, and with everything swallowed up in the fog so, we can't see the only thing worth seein'—the ships."

"But perhaps we can later; when we come back the fog may be gone," Rachel comforted him. However, a touch of the cold and damp seemed to threaten her own heart.

By dint of timid inquiries, at the end of two hours' weary searching, the bewildered pair found themselves in a Broadway office of the Middletown road. But the clerk to whom they made known their quest, shook his small, well-combed head at them.

"It's to Philadelphia you ought to have gone, Uncle," he said, while a smile wrinkled the flesh beneath his prominent eyes. "We know nothing about your car shops here. As for this letter, it's a bit ancient," and he handed it back.

Rachel flushed. "My grandfather wishes to obtain work in New York," she said. "We showed you the letter merely as a credential, thinking perhaps you might know Mr. Nicholas Hart—if he is still living," she added with a pang of fear.

The man glanced at the handsome girl and the boldness, the indestructible animation of sex, flashed in his pale eyes. "I'm sorry," he said in a voice which he strove to make respectful, "but I do not know him. However, I've no doubt if you go—"

"Is it Nicholas Hart you're speaking of?" interrupted an older clerk who had been an interested listener to the conversation. "Yes, he's still living, I think. Years ago he used to be one of the owners of the car shops in Philadelphia; that's right. If I'm not mistaken he's living now with his son Simon Hart who is a jeweller in some street in the Thirties. Here, I'll look him up for you. The residence is near Washington Arch," he added, returning after a moment; "I've written the address on this card."

Rachel thanked him and, ignoring the younger clerk who ran officiously to open the door for them, she passed out, followed by old David.

"Now wasn't that the slickest thing ye ever saw," he exulted, "I told ye how folks, especially the older ones, would know all about Nicholas Hart. We can walk there, can't we, Rachel?"

"We can walk part of the way," she responded with a sigh.

From childhood she had been taught to look upon Nicholas Hart as a benefactor and in her dreams it had been to him that she had seen herself appealing for advice. Now the fact that Nicholas Hart, in case they were fortunate enough to find him, would be an old man, entered her mind for the first time.

Young and serious, she walked on lost in meditation, merely keeping a restraining hand upon her grandfather, who threatened every moment to quit her side. His eyes under his white tufted eyebrows shone like sapphires and an innocent and childlike delight radiated from him. More than one jaded pedestrian turned to look after the refreshing pair who, in that crowded Broadway, suggested a hooded violet and a slightly withered buttercup blowing in the sun.

When they reached the space in front of the Herald building, old David planted himself on the walk and insisted on waiting until the two bronze figures above the clock struck the hour; but when they reached the Farragut statue he sank down on the architectural seat.

"These pavements don't give none," he said plaintively.

"We'll just rest a minute," Rachel soothed him.

With a tender movement she placed the end of her worn scarf around his neck and forced him to lean his head on her shoulder. Almost at once he fell into the light slumber which is nature's most beneficent gift to infancy and old age.

Under the rays of the February sun the mist had disappeared and in the air there was a springlike warmth. Rachel, turning her head, read the words of the inscription traced on the back of the seat; then her eyes travelled upward to the Admiral, who, by his staunch and determined air, seemed to convert the stone base into the deck of a vessel. And immediately the city ceased to terrify her and bravery rose in her in a flood.

The Hart house had once been a cheerful mansion, but its home-like aspect had long since given place to an air of cold and pathetic reserve.

The knock was answered by a smartly-dressed maid with a crafty yet heedless air. On Rachel's inquiring for Mr. Nicholas Hart, the girl eyed them with sharp suspicion.

"Mr. Hart don't ever see anyone," she said.

"He once showed my grandfather a great kindness," Rachel explained, "and I thought perhaps he might remember—"

"He don't remember much," interrupted the other; "but I suppose you can go along up," she admitted, after a further scrutiny of the pair from whom, it was clear, there was nothing to fear. "He remembers faces sometimes; you'll have to climb the stairs though," she added maliciously.

Rachel helped her grandfather up the three flights of stairs and the servant rapped on the attic door.

"Come in," piped a voice which sounded like the note of a cracked flute. And old David and Rachel entered.

The attic was wide and sunny and in the recess of a gable window stood a very little old man with a face fair and pink as a child's and with a skull cap on the back of his white head. He turned with one delicate hand resting on the barrel of a microscope. On perceiving the servant his eyes grew round with fury.

"Get out of here!" he shrilled, and, ignoring the strangers, he flew straight at the maid, skipping over the floor with remarkable briskness, his coat-tails moving like the wings of a maddened bird. The girl retreated with a laugh.

Old David presented his letter. In the presence of his host, who was as airy and, seemingly as fragile-lived as a figure traced upon a window-pane of a frosty morning, old David appeared endowed with the sturdiness of youth. "Years ago when I was a paintin' of cars," he began; but Nicholas Hart sent the letter, from which he had not removed the envelope, whirling across the floor.

"Cars," he cried, "run on wheels, but look at these wings,—" and with a finger shaking with excitement he pointed to the microscope. "Don't they beat all the wheels in creation?" he demanded.

In answer to his gesture, old David peeped timidly into the instrument; then he straightened himself and the face which he turned toward the other expressed a world of simple wonderment.

"Eh, what did I tell you?" exclaimed Nicholas exultingly. "And look here! and here!" he cried, placing one slide after another under the lens.

Finding herself forgotten, Rachel left the absorbed pair and went downstairs to wait for her grandfather. Her glimpse of Nicholas Hart had convinced her that no help could be expected from him.

"I told you he wasn't used to seeing folks," commented the maid who appeared in the hall. "He's touched here," and she indicated her head. "He thinks I mean to destroy a book he's writing about the house-fly, because once I mixed up his papers. Your grandfather's all right that way, is he?" she asked.

"Certainly he is," responded Rachel, and after a few further remarks that elicited no reply, the servant retreated. But from the dining room, where she rather obviously engaged herself with some sewing, she kept strict watch over the stranger.

Rachel, seated on a low settle, threw an indifferent glance about her. Then, almost insensibly her attitude changed. She was seized with an indefinable feeling. This house, with its purely masculine furnishings, for some reason suggested to her mind the image of a life darkened and repressed. The hall, the drawing-room, the dining room were like a succession of gloomy thoughts. Portieres, rich in texture but indeterminate in hue, outlined the doors with their dismal folds; and the drawing-room chairs and armchairs were upholstered in rep of the same shade.

In the drawing-room the mantel-piece was adorned with an ill-assorted collection of candle-sticks, match-safes, inlaid boxes; and in the centre was an elaborate clock of an elegant modern design, violently at odds with the homely daguerreotype of a woman which flanked it on one side and a vase of an ugly pattern on the other. A nude figure, atrociously modelled, supported the vase in the form of a flower and might have been kissing a hand to the patient becapped countenance in the daguerreotype; otherwise the various objects bore no closer relation one to another than the articles on the counter in a shop. On the floor, before a pier-glass, was a plate on a support of twisted wire. Household gods were present in abundance, but chilly, silent, they imparted no charm of life to the vastness of the apartment.

In the dining room, however, this effect was slightly modified. It was the room apparently where the master spent most of his time when at home; and, as if in preparation for his arrival, a discreet fire had been started in the grate. Unlike the more material accessories, the fire did all that it could to impart its own peculiar charm to the room. It leaped as high as possible; its beams were reflected in the polished case of the pianola, its rays were caught by the glass doors of the cupboard which contained the records, its gleams were imprisoned in tangled rainbows in the cut glass and silver of the sideboard. The laughing light, indeed, like an impolite guest, seemed, in the absence of the host, to occupy the table laid staidly for one, and delicately to help itself to the wine, to the fruit, to all that the board held, with rosy, caressing, immaterial fingers.

Toward this distant point of comparative cheer Rachel turned her eyes with troubled interest. To the finely organized there are in life few, if any, absolutely unheralded events. Now she hung over the problem of the personality suggested by these surroundings with a tremour of premonition—a fact which she recalled later with amazement.

Presently a latch key grated in the lock and the street door was opened with extreme caution. A gentleman entered wrapped in a long overcoat. He did not immediately perceive Rachel. Divesting himself of the coat, he blew imaginary particles of dust from its sable collar and hung it on the rack; then he removed his hat and disclosed a long head, bare on top, and trimmed with a sparse fringe of hair. This hair he proceeded to smooth into place with quick motions of his hands; he even drew his fingers through it. Then he turned round.

Her scrutiny was older than his, and the prophetic, vague apprehension had mounted, mounted. She glanced aside; he could not.

There are moments when surprise stirs a mind like a stick thrust into a pool. The ordinarily clear surface of the water reveals sodden leaves, mud, perhaps even shrinking plants; the eye usually enigmatic, unfathomable, reveals hidden weaknesses, sins, temerities. When he beheld her, a young girl, seated in his hall, in Simon Hart's hollow cheek the blood slowly mantled. He was as clean-shaven as a monk, save for the barely indicated line of a moustache above the narrow lips. His nose was handsome, though pointed; his chin was cleft. One ear was a little higher than the other.

After a perceptible pause he passed her, bowing slightly, and proceeded through the drawing-room with his soft tread. His legs were short, but his shoulders and head were imposing. He was like a building begun by a carpenter and finished by an architect.

In the dining room he approached the sideboard and poured some liquor from a decanter. He did not, however, drink the liquor, but stood holding the glass. And this vision of him was reflected in the dining room mirror, caught again in the small mirror above the hall-rack and repeated indefinitely in the bevellings. Rachel was unfamiliar with Piranesi's series of engravings in which the artist is represented climbing an everlasting staircase, or this multiplied vision of Simon Hart, continued through one room after another, until he disappeared with his glass in the border of the last mirror, might have suggested to her a similar allegory. She directed toward him a second glance, wistful, unconsciously searching, and at that moment her grandfather descended the stairs and the servant appeared to show them out. In the open Rachel straightway forgot all presentiments and the meeting wore in her memory an aspect ordinary enough.

Old David was elated. "I tell ye, I never see anything like what he's got up there," he cried. "There's butterfly wings all sparklin' with jewels, and mosquito legs—"

Rachel taking his arm, guided him toward a car. Not an allusion to the real object of the call fell from the old man's lips. All memory of their purpose had apparently escaped him on the instant of his introduction into that sphere of ideal beauties. His face shone like a child's. Looking at him Rachel smiled a little sadly. How absolutely irresponsible he was, and how she had erred when she had withdrawn him from the simple duties which had acted as an anchor for his fantastic mind. Yet was not that which he expressed the highest poetry? The essence of an abstract delight was in him and shone through him, transforming his aged frame as an elixir transforms the delicate goblet that contains it. His eyes blazed, his lips were wreathed in smiles, and suddenly he no longer seemed to her an old man entering the drear regions of second childhood, but a seer, a bard, a singing poet, chanting a chant of Beauty, which is immortal. And because she was spirit of his spirit as well as flesh of his flesh, she nestled to him; and, seated side by side, they were conveyed rapidly through the city which resounded with the unparalleled bustle and confusion that precedes the subsidence and comparative silence of the night.

When they descended from the elevated station and turned into the "Street of Masts," as old David termed the alley in which they lived, he paused, "Jest—look a there!" he said, and extended a finger.

The sun shone on the muddy pools beside the road and into the inexpressibly weary eyes of horses. It glinted on the hair of the ragged children swarming in the doorways and put an added blush on the cheeks of apples swinging by the stems at the doors of tiny fruit shops and on stands. It made the outlines of factory stacks indistinct, enveloped in a haze. The sun, shining through streaks and trails and plumes of smoke, made the city appear to be waving flags of glory—the glory of a dream.

"And the ships—let's go and see what they've brought in," whispered the old man, and, in a kind of awe, the two approached the wharf where were ranged those patient, graceful visitors from foreign ports.

Their masts towering against the sky, the ships suggested a fantastic forest, or a chimerical orchard, for the undulations of the water imparted to them a gentle motion, so that they seemed to be in the act of shedding their gracious and varied fruits on the wharf. There were skins of mountain goats from Switzerland, and elephant tusks from Egypt; there was oil golden with the sunlight of Italy and there were winecasks bursting with the purple sweetness of her vineyards. There were bales of textile fabrics from China, there were strange-leaved plants, with their roots bound tightly in canvas, from the isles of Bermuda. It seemed to Rachel that all these fruits from every land and clime were treasures poured bounteously into the lap of a mystical city; and the last vestige of that fear, so foreign to her nature and so little to be harboured there in all the coming years, vanished from her heart. Were they not, she asked herself, in the land of fulfilment, in the city of realized dreams?

CHAPTER II
EMILY SHORT—TOY-MAKER

When the bells of St. Joseph trembled into motion, Emily Short opened her eyes; when those inverted cups of bronze began to move faster, flinging their summons over the roofs, tossing it in at open windows, emptying it into narrow courts, she arose. When the parish father, still half asleep, donned his robes and straightened his stole, she put the last pin in her collar and tied on her apron. When he began to say mass, she began to hum a tune; and as the high-sounding Latin escaped through the trefoiled windows, her artless warble escaped through the attic casement, and together the two strains, the one from the heart of the Church and the other from the heart of a woman, ascended straight to the throne of the good God and who shall say they were not equally acceptable?

Outwardly Emily was no friend of the church. Its frequent services, she declared, were disturbing, and a room on the other side of the house with a view of the ships and the wharfage would have been a deal more to her mind. However, it was noticeable that whenever one of these rooms fell vacant she held her peace and abode in her attic as tightly as a limpet in its shell when danger is toward. It must be confessed that she clung to the church very much as a limpet clings to its chosen rock. For forty years she had lived close to the church, for forty years been keenly alive to its spirit of consolation. Though unencumbered with a creed, Emily was a staunch reformer and the church represented a strong ally.

On a summer morning, by merely craning her neck, she could peer down through an open window and learn who were present of her special following. If she spied the old charwoman, whose honesty was not above suspicion, or Dan, who stole grain on the wharves, she nodded her head with satisfaction. It was more than possible, she considered, even if the priest's exhortations were lost on their befuddled minds, that the pure strong notes of the organ might reach their consciences, the beautiful colours of the windows cause some expansion of their dwarfed souls. So she completed her survey like an inquiring angel, then settled to her work of the day.

Emily trimmed hats, furnishing them for a Division Street milliner, and earned a very comfortable livelihood; for she trimmed with an abandon, a daring, a freedom that no other trimmer could equal. That she might have full scope for the expression of her individuality, she was granted the privilege of working at home instead of under the eye of her employer. She was regarded as an artist, and more than once her creations had changed the prevailing styles in that section. If Emily, canny soul, had her own ideas about the beauty of her hats, she kept them to herself and it is not for me to reveal them. It was sufficient that the hats suited the heads they were intended to adorn. Humming under her breath, she curled and looped and tied and twisted with such swiftness that the room was filled with the shimmer of satin, the flutter of laces, the darting of wings, the bursting of flowers; and so unremitting was her industry that by night the wire frames, delivered to her in the morning, had been converted into veritable traps for the captivation of men's hearts.

Working away through the long hours, all the vanity that had never found expression in her own life, flew into her needle; she placed feathers at an irresistible angle, sewed buckles and bows in telling positions. When she fared along the streets, quiet and demure, carrying her great pile of boxes, who would have guessed that she was a great matchmaker? Yet such was the case. And when she met one of her creations, brave and flaunting as youth itself, accompanied by a male hat, she knew that her work was succeeding. When the hats proclaimed a maid and a lad, her spirits rose; but when they proclaimed an errant wife and her admirer, her spirits clouded.

For once they had left her hands with all their potency for good or evil, Emily had no more control over her hats than a parent over the children that have quitted the hearth. Sometimes her pangs were so sharp at what she witnessed that for days she trimmed with a sobriety, a propriety that was the despair of her employers. Indeed, she fairly sewed a sermon into the hats until a protest of loud-voiced dismay stayed her hand. Thereupon the full tide of her remorse was diverted into another channel.

All who came to her she helped, as was her custom, with money, with food, with influence; but her lectures, always forcible, now became inspired. She rated them eloquently, and such an admiration did she exhibit for virtue, and such detestation for evil, that the indigent, the drunken, the lazy, went away not only consoled but strengthened in the "inner man."

Emily's philosophy was comprehended in one word. Work for brain and hand, body and soul,—work was the world's salvation, she declared; and right staunchly, in her own life, did she demonstrate the truth of this theory. Nor did her labours cease with the hours of daylight.

The setting of the sun witnessed a change in her occupation. With the lighting of the gas all the hats that had not been delivered, went to roost, like an array of tropical birds, behind a curtain; and from a corner where it had stood neglected all day, came forth her little work-bench. Forthwith Emily began the practice of the cunning craft that was to her the highest of the arts. Between the fine ardour of the youthful Cellini, as he approached his delicate metals after an irksome day in his father's shop, and Emily's grave exaltation as she seated herself at the bench, there was not the difference of a jot. The thing that we create matters nothing, the divine desire to create is all; and whether we design a medal for a pontiff's honour or a toy for a child's delight, the object is but a little door through which the soul wings to freedom.

Emily had a dream, an ambition. Her ambition was to make toys and one day to see a whole army of them performing on the walks of the popular uptown districts where shoppers throng. To this end she twisted wires with her claw-like fingers, and, as she lacked the proper tools, her fingers were often bruised; to this end she soldered together and hammered into shape. And right fairly did her toys represent her, for, disgusted with the laziness of humanity, Emily endowed her race of tiny men and women with a perfect passion for industry. They seemed obsessed with the notion, and though the work that engaged them would still be unfinished when the spring of their life ran down, was not this the crowning fact in the history of all brave effort? So Emily continued to announce her theory even through her toys.

On a certain sultry morning she had barely settled herself near the window and carefully threaded her first needle, when she dropped the work in her lap.

"There, I haven't made the acquaintance of that child yet," she murmured. "Judging from the smell of cooking they have enough to eat. But something's amiss and I must get her to tell me what it is."

Chance favoured Emily, for that evening as she was starting forth with a load of bright-coloured bandboxes, she encountered her youthful neighbour. The girl was mounting the stairs languidly. The warm weather had sapped her vitality, already undermined by the air of the city. Emily nodded cheerily, and purposely let fall one of the boxes. Rachel turned.

"Here, I'll pick it up for you," she cried; then, after a moment, "Won't you let me help you with them? I can do it as well as not."

Together they emerged into the lighted street.

Though she looked about her with a kind of wistful wonderment, the sordidness of the scenes through which they passed, did not seem really to touch Rachel. Emily kept glancing at her and marked how her childish passionateness was mingled with a suggestive reticence. It was clear that some saddening experience had already come to her. "Poor lamb!" muttered Emily. When a man with a lurching gait passed too close to Rachel, Emily nudged him savagely with the boxes; and when they turned into Division Street, not one of the crew of strident women who solicit trade for the shops, dared to accost her young charge. Not a few of these poor creatures, recognizing Emily, ceased long enough in their chant of "Nice hats! pretty hats!" to give the popular trimmer "good-evening."

Joseph Stedenthal's "Emporium" boasted a millinery department, of which his wife had charge, and a general merchandise and furniture department over which he himself presided. Everything the push-carts furnished, he furnished a little cheaper—at least a penny cheaper; and this stock, as proclaimed by his advertisement, was "displayed to invite the refined mind."

Joseph Stedenthal, staunchly backed by his wife and daughter, expressed a profound scorn for the push-carts and for all who bought and sold therefrom, and never in the bosom of his family was it hinted that he himself, in a not too remote past, had prospered finely as the owner of a cart. Now he had a dignified air of superiority, and only women who did not go bare-headed, came to his shop, women who made some pretence to style. His was the "exclusive" shop of the street.

Mrs. Stedenthal was in her husband's part of the shop when Emily and Rachel entered the "millinery section." Emily seated herself on a high stool and motioned Rachel to do the same. Joseph Stedenthal's voice came to them from a distance. He was thundering with wrath.

"Shame upon you, talking mit the salesmen! Go you up-stairs, I tell you!"

A young girl with flaming cheeks flashed by the door and ascended the stairs.

"I ain't talking to him. I just asked him how much he sold it for," she screamed back.

"You were talking mit the salesmen! All times you talk mit them. And that I will not—I shall not have!"

His tirade was interrupted by the teasing voice of a woman.

"There, there, Joseph, give me one little kiss! You know how much you lofe me."

There was an explosion of wrath and a woman, rolling in flesh, shaking with laughter, entered the millinery shop. She nodded to Emily, still smiling; but in spite of the merriment that convulsed her, she examined the hats attentively and counted the money very carefully into the other's hand. One of the hats she declined to pay for until the trimming was changed.

"All times you make 'em too dark, Miss Short,—too dark, like a hearse," she remonstrated affably; "put a little more red on it."

When Rachel, following Emily, once more gained the street, her tender face was clouded.

Men, women, children; hats, socks, coats; candles, worn-out books; dirt, dirt, dirt! Men, men, men, bearded, unkempt, bedraggled, saddened, stupid, hungry! Under each coat, each gown was a living heart, struggling to keep its life. In every eye was a demand; in too few hands were the coppers to buy—not the pears, the grapes, the oranges that grow in Hester Street as in an orchard—but the great black loaves of bread, round, twisted, covered with a strange kind of seed. Coppers were lacking to buy milk for the starving, anemic baby, dirty-faced, struggling over the floor of the tenement; lacking for the shoes,—thirty pennies enough—for the shoes of little Johnnie that he might go to school: pennies lacking for the whiskey and the beer,—pennies that must be cheated for, thieved for, murdered for,—the all-necessary pennies for the drink.

Separated from the life about her, Rachel was yet united to it, she was a part of it, and she drew her breath sharply. But should she be less brave than these others? Emily, who divined what was passing within her, came to a decision.

"You've been a great help with the boxes, Miss Beckett," she said cheerfully when they reached the house and mounted the stairs; "now you come along in for a cup of tea."

To the lonely girl the little toy-maker's room wore a grateful air of comfort. Emily placed her in a rocking-chair where she could see the windows of the church; then she bustled about preparing the tea. She had just handed a cup to Rachel when there came a rap on the door; before Emily could open it a pretty light-haired girl stood on the threshold. She was dressed in a starched waist and a plaid skirt and the eyes under her smart hat showed red rims.

"It's all over," she cried, ignoring Rachel's presence. "I've got to leave my position, Miss Short. It's all along of Tom. The president called me into his office to-day and said right out, either I could stop letting his son come to see me, or I could leave. He gave me my choice. And you better believe I wasn't long choosing. I told him I'd see whom I pleased, and if Mr. Colby liked to come and call on me perfectly proper, like any other gentleman, I shouldn't stop him. So I got notice."

The girl blazed with defiance, but, in spite of her bravado, she was once more on the brink of tears. Her bosom rose and sank tumultuously, her full red lips gathered into a pout, her little hands, dimpled like an infant's, rested on her hips. She was a child too soon imprisoned in the rich envelope of womanhood. On every lineament of her pretty, pathetic, excited face potential weakness was stamped.

Emily scrutinized her for a moment in silence. Still without expressing an opinion, she replaced the kettle on the gas stove; then she looked at the new-comer gravely:

"Miss Beckett, this is Miss Holden. Have you anything else to turn to, Betty?" she asked.

The other shook her head. "I haven't, but I'm going to an agency to-morrow. I thought I'd just stop in and tell you. No, thanks, I won't wait for tea. Tom's coming this very evening," she added with an audacious smile.

When she had gone, Emily poured Rachel another cup of tea; then taking a chair directly in front of her, she looked at her shrewdly:

"Have you got any work?"

Rachel raised an anxious face. She had been seeking work for many months.

"Can you do anything special?" Emily demanded.

Rachel was dubious. "Unless it was to trim hats," she ventured.

But Emily shook her head. "There's no chance in that line," she said decidedly. "Did you ever paint any?"

"No, but I could do it. I've seen it done—that is, little things, like roses and lighthouses."

Emily gave the other's hand two or three approving taps. "To-morrow I'll bring you the materials from a place I know."

The next day she appeared with a supply of silk and paints and patterns. Rachel's work was to paint garlands of roses on candle-shades, but as she lacked even a rudimentary knowledge of colour and drawing, for a time the work went ill. Even Emily, when she compared Rachel's copy with the pattern, was less optimistic.

"It's a knack, though, they say," she encouraged her; "and one can learn to do most anything if one goes about it firmly enough."

A week later, Emily, in a state of repressed excitement, summoned Rachel to her room to see a mechanical toy she had devised. Rowing his tiny boat over the waters of a tub was a wee figure dressed in sailor costume.

In Emily's cheeks was a spot of crimson and in her eyes, which ordinarily resembled little dark berries, was a peculiar brightness.

As she looked at Emily the colour even left Rachel's face with the strength of her longing. When she returned to the garlands, the roses blossomed under her fingers. "So much for work!" she thought, and there arose in her a new and virile sensation of pride and joy.

CHAPTER III
SIMON HART TO THE RESCUE

As the summer advanced she refused to accept the dealer's verdict that the demand for all sorts of hand-painted trifles languished in the summer; painting was her one means of support, and with magnificent courage, if with small practical sense, she continued to paint. But when she carried her work to the dealer, though he admired it, he refused to buy it, and she came home again and again as empty of pocket as when she had started out.

She said nothing to Emily Short about her difficulties. Barring a glimpse which she caught of her now and then she seldom saw the little toy-maker, for during the hot weather Emily was unusually busy.

Emily was a famous nurse, and during the season when sickness was rampant among the children of the slums, she put aside her toys and hats and fought bravely for the little lives. She scrubbed faces and cleaned floors and administered doses of medicine, and more than once Rachel had met her at the edge of evening, bringing home an infant in her arms. To see her depositing it where the breeze came in through the open window, cooing to it, directing its wandering attention to the sights and sounds of the church, was enough to bring tears to the eyes. Fate, so prone to interfere with the plans of nature, wins at best but a superficial victory when she attempts to extinguish the motherhood in certain women. Deny them offspring she may, but dam up the love in their hearts, she cannot. Fate makes spinsters, but God makes mothers. And what is a mother but a being that looks with tenderness on all that is weak, with delight on all that is young? To such a being, an infant is ever a bud of promise to which she longs to be the sun. In the most radiant and satisfying sense, Emily Short was a mother, and not a waif in the quarter but knew it. Those who could walk, flocked after her on their little bare feet, clinging to the folds of her dress with their grimy fingers; and those who were too small to walk, looked at her with fixed, unwinking eyes, apparently beholding nothing, while in reality still seeing the something beyond this nothing, their state being one of celestial preoccupation rather than one of dormant thought.

Rachel, aware of the burden Emily carried, hesitated to add to its weight. If truth be told, as long as old David did not lack for food,—and so far he had not gone hungry—as long as the rent was paid for a week ahead, a subject more tyrannical than poverty engrossed her thoughts. In some women the love that has once stirred them, never becomes extinct; it is a flame that never completely dies, a fire of which some sparks always linger among the dead ashes. At a breath from that far-off source of all existence, a breath that quickens alike grain and fruit and human hearts, this spark leaps to renewed life in the sensitive, wounded and restless soul.

With the disingenuousness of a woman in love, with the timidity of a little mouse, Rachel had established herself under the eaves of an obscure garret in lower New York. For a time, following the change, her heart had beat more tranquilly, for now the same sky covered her that covered that egoistic remarkable being who had once played so important a role in her life.

But gradually the sombreness of a storm was created within her; though when she thought of the inventor she experienced little of the chagrin of a woman whom a lover has deserted. Rather, what she felt was a surprised resentment of soul. Emil St. Ives was ordained to understand her, and behold he had forsaken her! With eyes as clear as a child's, though shadowed by indefinable emotions, she often watched from the window the pigeons circling on pointed wings over the house-tops, and they seemed to her like a flurry of white letters tossed by a derisive hand through the sky.

"Why had he never written her?"

At the thought her melancholy was crossed by anger; but at other moments she remembered that it was she herself who had sent him away. Oh, if he had only looked at her with his mind as well as his eyes! But, enlivened continually by the astonished happy perception of the inventor's mastery of the expedients he employs in his tests, joyful with the joy of a creator, Emil had never really seen her. His love for his mother carried him backward into the past, his love for his work carried him forward into the future, until it actually seemed to her he had no present, no to-day.

And she reflected that under one of those million roofs he was working on some foolish instrument for which the world, as yet, did not recognize its own need. The world, therefore, in all probability, was leaving him alone, to live if he could, to starve if he must. Meanwhile, the sound of his drilling, his hammering, above all, his loud-voiced singing, was doubtless causing a commotion among the stars where the important is recorded before it is heralded on this commonplace earth.

Although she did not wish to remember the inventor, the thought of him constantly returned and gradually she began to extract a kind of pleasure from this involuntary analysis which she carried on for hours together. Then roused by some sound from the street, with the languor which results from power held in abeyance, she would resume work on the shades.

One heavy morning toward the end of August, Rachel made the unpleasant discovery that there was scarcely money enough in the house to cover the needs of the day. To increase her dismay her grandfather, leaning his head on his hand, refused his breakfast. Even the newspaper with its sensational headlines failed to arouse him. She brought him a glass of water, but with a weak gesture he motioned her away. Thoroughly frightened, Rachel flung her arm about him and coaxed him to return to his bed. Old David grew first red, then white, but gradually the natural look returned to his face and he fell into a sound sleep.

Instructing Nora Gage to keep a close watch over him, Rachel started for the shop where she had formerly disposed of her wares. She was intoxicated with her own resolution. Though it was the third time within a fortnight that she had made her appearance there, she spread the shades on the counter with confident movements; then she looked up.

The clerk with his delicate salesmen's hand swept them toward her. "I have told you that we have no call for these things," he said and impatiently turned on his heel.

For some moments she seemed not to comprehend these words; presently his voice, bland and seductive, reached her from another part of the shop. Then she gathered up the shades, returned them to her handbag, and walked slowly to the door. She made a movement to open it, but at that instant she heard a step behind her.

When he lifted his hat, she recognized Simon Hart. He was looking at her attentively with his weary, enigmatic eyes.

The salesman had followed him in a little rush.