Ordham walked far out on the moor, then returned, not to the house, but to stroll up and down between the avenue of plane trees that connected it with the Italian garden. He finally threw himself down on a seat in his favourite spot. Above the glassy lake was a broken grey balustrade covered with mould and barely outlined against the stiff old cypresses beyond. In a dark grove on his right were marble seats, several noseless fauns and nymphs, the whole scene so reminiscent of Italy that his mind, always liable to peculiar deflections, experienced once more a sense of infidelity to Margarethe Styr: so often they had planned together that month in Italy which he had been the one to suggest, and this had been a favourite spot for making love to his bride.

He was too indolent to cherish anger for any great length of time, but resentment lingered, and since his talk with the doctor not only had it increased, but he felt that old sense of humiliation in not rising to an occasion. He had a hazy idea that young husbands always flew enraptured to worship their brides anew when informed that their ego had taken a fresh lease; but he felt anything but enraptured. Not only was he very much embarrassed, but, while shrinking from arranging the idea in words, he felt that Mabel, in her determination to press on to victory at any cost in this their first battle, had been indelicate in taking advantage of what could be little more than inference on the part of the doctor aided by her own canny suggestions. Wild horses would not have dragged such an admission from him until the last possible moment. How could she have talked it over with Cresswell—and, no doubt, with her maid? The ideal Mabel whom he had distractedly worshipped for one interminable fortnight had trembled more than once on her pedestal during the intimacy of the honeymoon, but it took this final conscious offence to sweep her off and leave her standing at the base, still beautiful, young, and fascinating, but for evermore bereft of illusion.

He resented, too, the sudden loss of that sense of pagan youth that he had enjoyed from the moment he had met Mabel in London, and which had been crushed but by no means extinguished during the fortnight of despair. He recalled the day in the Maximilianstrasse when he had ungratefully carped at fate for the undue allowance of women of the world that had fallen to his share. He had come into his inheritance soon after, and now he felt suddenly dispossessed. He had not the faintest desire to become a father; the very idea made him hot all over, then cold. Ten years hence would have been time enough; for the matter of that, nothing short of a plague could exterminate his family.

It is probable that to-day he had for the first time something more than a glimpse of the depth and vigour of his egoism, which, heretofore, polite even to himself, he had ignored. At all events, he realized that unconsciously he had for years been planning an existence into which the commonplace and material should as little obtrude as was possible on this mortal plane; he became aware that one of Mabel’s salient attractions had been her ability to help him to achieve this ideal existence with as little trouble to himself as possible. Now that his career was peremptorily postponed, he wanted it more than ever, and not for the services he might be able to render to his country—he admitted this brutally—but that he might live in the congenial atmosphere of Continental and diplomatic life, the while he dwelt in a romantic and splendid old palace with his lovely bride. He wanted to buy beautiful things every day in the treasure-house of Europe. His searching analytical mind craved the constant refreshment of new peoples, with their strange customs, their hidden traits, their thousand differentiations from the people of his own land. He wanted the bright suns of Europe, the wonderful nights, the light careless brilliancy of Continental life, the abundant music, the un-British drama from which every taint of puritanism and philistinism had been banished long since. While his remarkable poise, not the least of his gifts, had preserved the health of his mind notwithstanding his insatiable curiosity, still was it a mind that could only feel quite alive when feeding upon the unusual, stimulated with a variety not to be found rooted in his own orthodox soil; with all, indeed, that was covered from common uncomprehending eyes. To remain in England for a year on end as a prospective parent and an idle country gentleman, while he hated increasingly his sporting neighbours with their wolfish appetites, and was pressed down into the very depths of gloom by leaden skies and drizzling mists—he was still young and irresponsible enough to think of bolting.

But in a little while he faced another side of his problem. He was married to a girl whose pampered existence had given her a fairly good substitute for a strong will. It was patent that when she discovered his was the stronger she would resort to weapons—those enormous tears, for instance,—which he as a man could not emulate. He wished that he had something to fling viciously into the lake, but in that well-kept garden there were neither rocks nor fallen branches. The pebbles of the path were much too small. Then he laughed aloud as he realized that in one small tract of his brain he was as much of a child as his wife. Then he ground his teeth—

He stirred uneasily, turned his head. Mabel was standing there in the grove. Her hair looked like an offering from the sun to the soft gloom of ilex and cypress. Surrounded by those ancient trees, those battered old fauns and nymphs, she looked like the blessed damozel. If she was as white as her frock, her eyes were shining. She had never been more beautiful.

Ordham caught his breath. He had a confused sense that the world had turned over and in the act burst open a shell from which the ideal Mabel, that Mabel whom he had once seen in a sort of magic reflection, had really emerged. She stood quite still, gazing at him with soft appealing eyes, yet holding herself with dignity, and seeming taller than when under the lofty ceilings of the castle. Once more she looked the creature of pure romance, the fairy princess. His pulses shook. In an instant he was the adoring bridegroom, youth revelling in the joy of having found its mate.

Mabel permitted him to cover the distance, and when he had taken her in his arms and kissed her many times, with a certain imperious softness that never became violent, she asked him to sit down, and nestled against him in a fashion that made him feel very big and strong. Then she murmured apologies for “going to pieces.” “She had hidden herself to cry it out, first because she was unhappy and ashamed, and then because she could not control herself. Brigitte had sent for that dear old doctor, who had made her well at once.” By common consent the delicate subject was ignored, and they prattled like happy children themselves.

On the following day she was pink and white once more, in the best of health and spirits. It was evident that she was to be spared the minor and more humiliating common-places of maternity. A week later Lady Bridgminster, who had joined them, was sending out invitations for a monster house party, while the bridegroom ordered the guns cleaned, the discharged beaters replaced, the stables replenished, and felt as if he were hypnotized.

Munich was sheathed in ice. The bare trees of the Englischergarten, the little parks set into the city like so many jewels, the long avenue of the Leopoldstrasse, the thousand gardens, glittered with the prismatic radiance of the diamond, while the hard snow was underfoot, and the sky was like a vast blue and white flag of the House of Wittelsbach. The lake was frozen, and gay with skating parties. The Isar alone flowed too swiftly to be caught in the ice grasp. It was intensely cold, clear, brilliant, tonic. Margarethe opened the window of her tower and stood looking out at the arctic splendours winter had given to the park beyond the light green belt of water. Once more she felt something of the exaltation of spirit that in the old days she had been able almost to summon at will, and that had never tarried before such inspiration as this.

But she moved away in a moment with an impatient sigh and returned to the warm comfort of the gallery. It was now four months since she had seen Ordham, and she was still unable to break the mental habit of discussing all things interesting with him, invoking him to share her pleasure. She had but just now called his attention to the contrast of the beryl green of the river with the crystal groves beyond. Yesterday she had caught herself discussing A Rebours with him. Was it not time to banish this senseless habit?

It was, of course, the effect of living alone, and some time since she had made up her mind to go constantly into society upon its return, become a persistent seeker after the lighter distractions of the world. She sighed again as she thought of that ideal life she had led in this villa by the Isar for nearly seven years, and which she found it impossible to renew. But she had opened the gates of her Eden deliberately, and it was fair that she should pay the price.

She had made no attempt to develop her infrequent interchange of notes with Ordham into a correspondence, partly because she knew that a young bridegroom has no reserve fund of sentiment, no active memories of the past, partly because she had persuaded herself of a firm belief in the wisdom of severed relations. But yesterday she had received a call from Princess Nachmeister, who had been flitting about, avoiding her castle after a brief sojourn in the summer, as she was in an economical temper and indisposed to entertain a horde of relatives. In Paris she had met Mrs. Cutting, whose detention in New York had been mercifully brief, and had gone with her to Ordham Castle. Immediately upon her return to Munich she had flown to her admirable Styr with news of their jüngling. The Ordhams were entertaining one great house party after another, and in the most brilliant fashion imaginable. Those Americans! They cared not what they spent. Mabel received with the aplomb of six seasons, and was increasingly beautiful, with frocks—But frocks! New ones came every week from Paris. In spite of a certain expected event, mercifully distant, she was quite well, and with that tall slender figure—enfin! The jüngling? He was the most perfect host imaginable. He even sacrificed himself and rode to hounds with his guests; a lazy careless rider, but often in the lead, nevertheless. Need she ask? So much exercise and outdoor life had improved him; he was beginning to have a more lusty look, while losing nothing of that aloof air, that perfect courtesy. But he glowed. Ah, yes! no doubt with happiness as well as health. His career? She had had but few words with him on the subject, for with royalties, she could not sit beside him at dinner; but once or twice he had managed to place her next to him at luncheon; yes, she had asked him, and he had said that no doubt he should go abroad late in the following year, that fortunately these unavoidable delays would not ruin his prospects. But he had spoken languidly; it was evident that he was well content. And why not? Gott! but that was a life. Forty million marks and as much again when dear Adela was gathered to her American ancestors. Gott! One of the greatest places in England virtually his own, a broken-down elder brother, and a lovely wife!

“I forgot that I had been so ambitious for him,” continued the old dame, contritely. “I said: ‘But this is enough. Why fly in the face of providence by asking all things? And if dear Mabel is so opposed to life on our Continent—what substitute, indeed, could we offer her, since she does not mind the climate of this island?’ And he said, in his old manner: ‘Of course. Why indeed? She is so happy that I am almost in love with England myself. It is all very wonderful.’ Then when I was gone from that enchanted scene, I reproached myself. Shall he bury those great abilities in matrimony, in society, in that country which is always making great men but very properly sending them elsewhere? Is he not made to manipulate the destinies of Europe? I should have remonstrated instead of weakly yielding, almost participating in his happiness, the charming creature! It was such a delight to hear him jest and run on in his old fashion, to see him happy as the young should be happy. We must trust to time. He will wake up. It may be two years, three. But he was born to be a diplomatist and a great one, and that is not for nothing. Mabel may rule now, he may be philosophically happy, but—”

Judiciously interrogated, the keen old observer admitted that Mabel was selfish, spoilt, “American.” She loved Ordham. But yes! Was it not his lot to be loved? Too much, no doubt. He had the gift, the genius of charm, and when a young thing was married to him—enfin! Had she, Olivia Nachmeister, been fifty years younger, she should have married and worshipped him herself. But Mabel had no real sensuousness in her nature, none of those strong emotions that make the woman the willing subject of a resolute man. She loved, yes; but with youth, selfishness, vanity, romantic sentiment, the instinct of the race. That little brain would be cool and calculating in its fondest moments. He might win if ever it came to a great battle of two wills, crush that poor little butterfly, who fancied herself a personage of vast importance; but he never would manage her. But never! That was her part, and whether he recognized that fact, and was resigned, other causes keeping him in England, or whether he was merely enthralled, she could not say. But he had a jaw. Ma foi, but a jaw! And Mabel had been indulged like a—well, an American princess (“Who more disciplined than ours?”), from the moment she screeched in her cradle. “Some day—well, what matter? Do not all have their troubles? They are fortunate, those two, but they are not immortals. Think of our beloved King, and of Rudolph von Hapsburg. But the future Bridgminster has one talent denied these poor princes, what you call ‘landing on his feet.’ Through no management of his, perhaps, but destiny—women?—Yes, shall not we always arrange that he alights in the safe spot, dry, sound, whole, even if he has whirled through the air in the heart of what you call a cyclone? What happens to the women? Ah, many die in this world that a few may live, dear Gräfin.” It was a mere matter of destiny—of the survival of the strongest—of charm, perhaps? She was a student of effects, not of causes. It was enough to know the surface of this terrible world; but dig up the roots and put them under the microscope? Not she! That was for clever people like Die Styr and their dear jüngling.

To do Excellenz justice, she had not come altogether to torment Styr with this picture of Ordham’s felicity, for she was still convinced that there had been but a pleasant summer friendship between the two, whose only undercurrent was the subtle influence exercised upon Ordham in behalf of his examinations. To no other woman would she have given the benefit of the doubt for a moment, but not only had Styr let the young man go, permitted him to marry, but she looked quite the same as ever. She was an artist, nothing more. They came to that! What the Nachmeister had forgotten, possibly because the fact was so glaring that it blinded her, was that Styr was a great actress. And she was something more, a woman of magnificent pride, of iron strength of will. Not a tear had she shed over the loss of Ordham, not a moment’s sleep had she lost since that night when she had very nearly taken all Munich into her confidence. She could summon sleep, banish thought, the moment her head touched the pillow. She had no mind to furnish gossip for Nachmeister, still less to ruin her own life. If she chose to spend her idler hours in his imagined society, why not? That was compensation of a sort and did no harm.

She had persistently refused to sing Isolde again, for not only was she aware that Munich would demand a repetition of her last performance, an impossible feat even for her, but, strong as she was, she shrank from too vivid a reminder of that awful night. She had weathered a storm of feeling that would have prostrated a weaker or a less seasoned woman; but avaunt its memory, nevertheless!

The worst was over, yes, but not for a moment did she cease to miss him, to regret, to long unreasonably for his return. Her mind argued that an episode of that sort when closed was closed forever, but her heart ached. True, she had had the perfect experience she deliberately planned, she possessed a beautiful memory; but she found this cold comfort, now that she no longer pretended to deny that she loved him, that her imagination had woven itself all over that Ordham so unknown to others, until he was almost visibly hers.

This morning she asked herself squarely what she intended to do, admitting as squarely that from the very first she had had no real intention of remaining quiescent and forgotten. She could meet him within a week if she chose, for a prima donna can always develop a throat and demand a rest. But she was quite positive that the time had not yet come for their second meeting. She knew that he would tire of his Mabel, hate her, beyond doubt, and before long; but she did not care to see him until then. Ordham complacently in love with a pretty doll might sicken her; she was resigned never to find again the young man she had known, but she wanted him in his next evolution, not this! not this!

She had remained becalmed, unanalytical, until yesterday, because nothing had occurred to rouse her from the half melancholy half pleasurable state of mind into which she had drifted. But Princess Nachmeister’s gossip had filled her with rage and bitterness. The sleeping devil she so seldom permitted to assert itself stirred, yawned, awakened. The little fool had lived in her paradise long enough. She comprehended the intentions of Mabel Ordham and her mother, for Excellenz had prattled for quite an hour. They purposed to turn this brilliant gifted but incomparably lazy young man into the mere husband of a rich wife, of a professional beauty, manipulating and drugging him until the springs that carry ambition over discouragement and opposition had sagged, broken, and he would sink down into his good fortune, entertaining the great of the land at his castle, proud of the enormous social importance to which he had attained in his youth; taking the waters at Carlsbad, growing stouter every year; wintering on the Riviera; everywhere following his wife at a respectful distance while her court crowded at her heels; taking out his increasing brood for an occasional romp in the park—

She sprang to her feet with a hoarse cry of rage and a face that would have made Excellenz cross and excoriate herself. But before she reached her desk that other self so assiduously cultivated these last nine years cried out peremptorily. True, she did take a deep and legitimate interest in this young man whose future was threatened, but that was not the impulse which drove her to open a campaign that must shatter his domestic life. No woman, particularly no woman constantly exercising an art, occupies herself for long with the future of any man that has not vitally interested her. Friendship between the sexes is casual, a mere matter of time and habit, never demonstrating itself during long absences unless love skulks at the foundations. Had Ordham interested her no more vitally than he had interested so many others during his memorable sojourn in Munich his future could have taken care of itself. But not only was he her chief work, whom she would not renounce unfinished, but she wanted him to be conscious that his soul, his ego, was hers. The passions of the body, what were they to the passions of the heart? There were remedies for the impulses that man shared in common with the beasts, but none short of death for that imperious demand of the soul for its mate. It was the one thing that made her give some credence to religious belief, this insistent desire of the hidden ego for one other ego out of the billions of egos on Earth alone. Possibly these two had sought one another since the birth of Time; perhaps they had been united and severed, united and severed; paying, no doubt, for sins and crimes for which no other adequate punishment could be devised even by a resourceful God. If she had committed crimes in another existence instead of hideous sins as in this, it was possible that her punishment was that brief tormenting glimpse of her other part, possible also that she should be just, and accept the natural sequence as final.

But his secret, invisible life?

She made a last-effort to be “fine,” always a pitiful effort in people foredoomed by the very strength of their wills and passions, the anarchistic tendencies of their strong brains, to failure. Let him go! When he was older! Time might awaken him, ambition call, with no assistance from her. Let him be happy as long as he could; untroubled. Let that poor child, whose worst offence, after all, was her love for this charming young man—bah! Not for nothing was she the greatest of Isoldes. She went straight to her desk.

A group of æsthetes—the women in the livery of Burne-Jones, the men in the satin small-clothes, velvet coat, and silk stockings affected by Wilde—stood before the great stone mantel in the octagonal drawing-room of Ordham, permitting the brilliant company to gaze upon them. The only celebrities present were the reigning professional beauty, that famous young politician who resembled an intellectual pug, and the great poet who looked like the reincarnation of Paris and Helen of Troy. The rest of the distinguished company scattered throughout the endless suites of state reception rooms were drawn from nearly every old family in the kingdom, and there were royalties, domestic and foreign. Mrs. Cutting and Lady Bridgminster had assembled these unrivalled house parties one after another, the former not only with a proud satisfaction, but with the complacent sense of fulfilling a patriotic duty, the latter with a keen relish in handling the income of millions as were it her very own.

Mabel, spared every detail, had only to dress herself exquisitely, sit at the head of the table in the dining room, or in a high abbot’s chair, carved and gilded, in one of the salons, look radiant, and chatter. She did all to perfection.

But these three notable figures, two with inexhaustible wardrobes from Paris, the other looking alternately like a Burne-Jones or a Rossetti, to say nothing of the magnificent rooms, now made richer and more inviting by a thousand subtle touches, were but a background for the young host. Never for a moment had Ordham been reminded that this lavish display, this recrudescence of the glory of his house, this skilful gathering of the most difficult people in England, had been accomplished with his wife’s money, not with his own delayed inheritance. He had heard of the unhappy fate of American husbands, but had quite forgotten that beyond the seas the world was woman’s. In this splendid company he was the legitimate host, the chief figure; several of the men that ruled the destinies of Britain might have had long and meaning conferences with “Lady Pat,” so subtly did they flatter and court him.

The natural modesty of his disposition was deftly overlaid by the as natural assurance of his birth and bringing up, for not only was he consulted, flattered, his judgment challenged that it might inevitably pronounce the last word, by these three women, until he felt older and more important every day, but his position as host threw him into intimate association with many of the most eminent men and women in England. And besides their friendship for Lady Pat, they were much impressed with the Aladdin-like, yet never vulgar, lavishness of these entertainments, and really found Ordham as charming and clever as people always did when he was on his good behaviour.

Nor did Ordham trouble himself to remember that all was not his. The first party was not over before he had slipped insensibly into the rôle of hereditary lord of the manor, forgotten the existence of his elder brother, or remembered him only to feel a passing relief that he need no longer wish him dead and experience that hateful demoralizing shame. Some of the guests were dull, notably the most important, but there were others whose conversation he found delightful; and the perpetual atmosphere of gayety, brilliancy, life, which now pervaded the castle, diverted his mind from the Continent. For not even in the old days, when his father had been a cabinet minister, had Ordham Castle known anything like this. The family rent-roll was large, but not inexhaustible. It was all very romantic, enchanting, and his self-love was mightily tickled. Had he come into his titles and estates upon the death of his father, he would have been less impressed no doubt; but after a long interval of petty financial annoyances, this sudden good fortune filled him with an abiding if complacent sense of enjoyment. One moment of humiliation and the work would have been undone. But if Mrs. Cutting and Mabel had not discovered the pride and sensitiveness in that complicated nature, there was always her ladyship to advise; and day by day the young man who had accomplished nothing, who had not even been chosen by destiny to succeed his father, was lifted higher and higher into that rarefied atmosphere where the nectar of flattery was ever at his lips, in goblets of gold fashioned to delight the artist within him. Mabel had even renounced the desire to remain uninterruptedly at Ordham for a year; they were to go to London as soon as she was no longer equal to house parties; her husband should continue to be amused in that capital he did not pretend to despise.

As for the chef at the castle, he had no rival in New York, and received a higher salary than the American Minister. The wages of the old servants were increased, and although they disapproved of alien blood, they were well content to see their idol in his rightful position. Nevertheless, they longed for the great day when this ancient domain should really be his, not rented with American dollars. They corresponded with a servant in the small household of the secluded Bridgminster and were not as impatient as they might otherwise have been. American wives were well enough, particularly when high-bred and inoffensive, but they wanted to see the Ordham coffers carried back to the castle.

But Ordham cast not a thought to the ancestral coffers, assisted perhaps by those water-tight compartments with which nature had endowed him, and more particularly when he strolled among his guests after dinner, discharging his duties as host with the zest of youth under his languid manner. It is true that the small and repeated doses of Americanism administered by Margarethe Styr lingered in his mental system, but they were kept sternly under. If once or twice they whispered that he was living on his wife’s fortune, he sharply reminded them that neither Mrs. Cutting nor Mabel could have assembled parties like this, and that, apparently, was all they lived for. Lady Bridgminster, although hospitable to celebrities and artists, when they knew how to behave themselves, was notoriously one of the most exclusive hostesses in the kingdom. “New people” had seldom found a permanent place on her visiting list, never unless they were foreigners. Mrs. Cutting, with her unerring social instinct, had recognized this fact during her first season in London, but although she had the good fortune to take her ladyship’s fancy, she would have been dropped in time had she proved of no material benefit. Nor could Lady Bridgminster have induced certain personages to come to an American woman’s house parties until this marriage of the daughter had placed her in a new and infinitely more important position. Of all this Ordham as a man of the world was fully conscious, but what he did not suspect was that his mother also was determined to keep him in England. Why the diplomatic career, now that he possessed the riches to which that was to have been but the stepping-stone? Nor would he have the same opportunities for magnificence on the Continent, certainly not for being of service to her distinguished self. He was kind and generous, but he had a habit of forgetting people when out of their range. And although he had immediately settled an income on herself, as well as on two of his brothers, that would be a small compensation indeed for the free hand she now enjoyed.

Many young people were invited to Ordham. If he could not sit beside them at table, he could play tennis and croquet with them, loiter about the park and in the woods with girls almost as pretty as his wife, sit with them in the picturesque ruin of the original castle, occupied by generations of Ordhams before the tidal wave of the Renaissance reached England. There was also music, private theatricals, tableaux, and not too much dancing, which he detested. There were other young men, not all of them mad on the subject of sport, and always some brilliant figure from the artistic world like Wilde, then the idol of all the clever young brains in the empire. Altogether, he thought, as he strolled through the great rooms of his castle to-night, he felt that life was quite enchanting and only hoped that he would not grow fat.

He paused beside Mabel, who immediately turned her shoulder upon her little court and looked up at him with a brilliant smile. She was too well-bred to display her adoration in public, but at least she might pretend that he was an illustrious guest. She wore her favourite shimmering green, with lilies in her girdle. Her golden hair shone like nebulæ against a dull piece of green tapestry, thrown over the back of a tall chair by an unerring æsthete.

“Are you bored, Jackie darling?” she whispered.

“Of course not. How can you ask such a thing? No one is bored. It is quite astonishing how you and the respective maters manage. Even the men that have been out all day seem to have got hold of the right women and look almost awake.”

“Lady Pat says that English women are much more amusing than they used to be, and I adore them, myself. How wonderful it all is, and the most, most, most wonderful is that I have a husband, although I am only nineteen, whom all these distinguished and worldly people admire.”

This speech struck him as obscurely pathetic, consequently its flattery missed the mark. He looked down upon her kindly. “Don’t overdo it,” he whispered. “I must go now and talk to that old lady with her wig on one side. Fortunately she is rather amusing, or I might resent being her host.”

“Do you mean the duchess—your grandmother?” asked Mabel, wonderingly. Why were English people so odd sometimes?

“I believe she is. I only remembered for the moment that she often makes me laugh.”

Mabel stood watching him as he bent with his formal manner and charming smile over the old lady of whom she stood in some awe, for there was no more caustic tongue in England than the old duchess’s, and she lost no opportunity of informing the Cuttings that they were the first Americans she had ever met. But it was her husband’s careless words that held Mabel’s puzzled attention. She understood her own departures from the truth, because they were deliberate and inevitable; but it was difficult for the direct and businesslike American mind to comprehend the casual—or affected?—lie when the truth would have been far less trouble. Ordham, unless driven to the wall—when he lied as coolly as if it were a sort of royal prerogative—thought no one worth a deliberate fabrication. But he had an instinctive dislike of the obvious, and all the little affectations of his class. He was sometimes audaciously candid, but he rarely thought in a straight line. The wit of the day said of him, several years later, that whereas all the English were liars, the Scotch more liars, and the Irish most liars, Bridgminster was the only man he had ever met who could lie with the simplicity of a savage, the grace of an artist, and the blandness of an Oriental. Therefore when his opportunity came would he prove himself the greatest diplomatist in Europe.

At eleven o’clock he stood watching the charming procession of women in their flashing jewels and trailing gowns filing down the long gallery, candle in hand, when Mabel passed him.

“Shall you come over soon?” she whispered, with her head on one side in the fashion which seems to be peculiar to American women when begging their lords not to stay out late. Ordham looked at her in surprise and a faint sense of displeasure, but he said kindly:

“I am afraid not. The men sit up late—those that have not been out, you know. I cannot well leave them.”

“You leave them when you are tired of them in the field, fast enough.” Mabel looked pretty, even when she pouted, but her husband replied calmly:

“You should get to sleep as early as possible. I’ll look in later and see if you are awake, but better put the light out and drop off.”

“I can sleep in the morning, and I hardly see anything of you now that we have such a lot of company.”

“I thought you wanted house parties.”

“I did—I do. But I did not realize that they would separate us so much.”

It was on the tip of Ordham’s tongue to remark that he did not fancy any man saw more of his wife, but bethought himself in time that this might sound ungallant. Nevertheless, he was tired of reiterating his adoration when he wanted to go to sleep or to talk with people whose minds were engaged with less personal matters, and he had, perhaps unconsciously, drifted into the habit of seeking his couch as late as possible. He often assured himself that he loved Mabel as much as ever (of course), but love was entitled to vacations, and a man should feel that his soul was his own, not his wife’s. Mabel had been well coached, and her woman’s instincts were sharp, her brain calculating, but she loved with as much passion as her nature was capable of generating, and no woman in love avoids mistakes. Love made her insistent, demand constant verbal demonstration, until Ordham sometimes felt that if called upon once more to reiterate “I love you,” he should give full rein to the sulks which so often arose in him. But Mabel reasoned that he was hers, he had received proof that she had married him for love alone, why should not he seek her every moment when he was off duty as host, instead of compelling her to resort to wiles, coaxings, tears? She was still astonished at the discovery that the ceremony of marriage had not put an end to all effort. Where was the happy ever after?

She drooped a little at his last words, and the change from her grand air was so sudden that he said contritely, although an angry flush rose to his face, “You know that it is my duty to take all possible care of you, but I’ll break loose from the smoking room as soon as I decently can, and wander over.”

This promise he forgot before she was out of sight. Leaving the men to take care of themselves, he sought a little room off the library which his father had used as a den and he had appropriated to himself. He locked the door behind him, and opening his desk, took out a letter he had received that morning from Margarethe Styr but had not yet found time to read.

He had appreciated at once that it was a letter, not the usual note with which she had infrequently favoured him. Once before he had received a letter from her. It had arrived while he was in Purgatory and he had not opened it for a fortnight. Then, absorbed as he was, he had read it twice, so delightful was its quality. It was evident that not the least of Styr’s gifts was the epistolary, a common enough gift in her sex, but reaching the superlative degree when the woman has brains, experience, subtlety. As he opened this long letter, written on numberless sheets of thin foreign paper, he suddenly realized that he had looked forward to the time when he should have leisure to correspond with Margarethe Styr. Rarely as he faced it, he was still uneasily conscious that he had not been quite fair to this woman with whom he had enjoyed so deep and unique an intimacy. He knew there was a bond, that it was not severed, perhaps never would be. But he believed that he never again should seek her deliberately, for he had no desire to dislocate the even and, all things considered, delightful tenor of his present life; moreover, she was inaccessible save for a day now and again, or during some brief vacation he might pass in Munich. He was becoming dimly aware of deeper currents in his nature than those disturbed by his first love storm, dark and turbulent currents, perhaps, which his wife could never undam; but this was one reason the more for immuring them. Although his body had lost something of its inertia in this new life that took him so much out of doors, still was his hatred of bother, exertion, his dread of possible upheavals, no whit abated. Moreover, although it was now some time since he had admitted that he never should find companionship in his wife, still had he no wish to hurt her. She was, at least, a wife for pride, and although he had every intention of seeking his mental companionship elsewhere, still had he no desire to combine it with intoxications that Mabel must discover. As he stared at Margarethe Styr’s long letter, still half opened, he admitted, with that blunt candour of which he was signally capable, that here alone was the woman who could satisfy not only his mind but those deeper currents which run and roar in man’s maturer nucleus. This recognition, however, merely caused him to resolve anew to see no more of her. Correspondence, however—why not? He should enjoy sitting up after everybody—particularly his wife—was in bed, and living this purely mental life that ever had fascinated him in so many of its forms, enjoy it far more than assuring Mabel absent-mindedly that he loved her—of course.

He read the letter. It was an extremely artful letter, for Styr was at all times and above all things—for the present, at least—an artist. It was so deliberately clever that Ordham smiled again and again in sheer delight at its spontaneity, its naturalness. She talked irresistibly this midnight to her absent friend; and how much there was to talk about, to tell him! The letter was saturated with the atmosphere of Munich, an atmosphere of art, beauty, indolence, independence; a world in itself was that city on its lofty plateau, where poverty and “business” and the rush of modern life were almost unknown; an aristocratic, exclusive, segregated city, created as with a magic wand for pleasure, for dreams, not for work. No wonder he had found it difficult to study there. Never could he repay his debt to Lutz—and to this most wonderful of women. He sighed for his lost paradise, saw the gallery with its divan upon which he so often had made himself wholly at home!—and talked . . . and listened as she read to him . . . or to the Isar beneath the window, the birds in the green trees beyond . . .

She told him amusing anecdotes of his numerous acquaintance, of the opera house cabal, of the King. And she was impelled to write to him upon this particular night, not only because he had been even more than commonly in her mind all day, but because of the news that he had been accredited to Rome, and she must express the hope that he travel via Munich instead of Paris. She had learned a new rôle—Katharine, in The Taming of the Shrew; he must see her in comedy. Perhaps he would not believe it, but the experiment was a success; the critics, even those that belonged to the opposite faction, thought her as good as in tragedy, and her ovation from the public had been tremendous.

He read this letter through eagerly, then again more slowly, the second time in search of something that had induced a certain uneasiness in his mind. It did not take a third reading to discover the causes—for they were two.

She assumed, as a matter of course, that he was about to embark upon that career for which nature had so consummately equipped him, and to whose aid fortune had flown as if with a conscious sense of duty. How often they had discussed that future of his; she was on fire to witness the beginning of what must be an historical career; it was strange and delightful to be able to believe that she had played her little part in his life, and she was almost as excited as before her own début.

But this was the least of the jars, and although it stirred and shamed him, not in a moment could he be roused from the pleasant sloth into which he had fallen. She had written little of herself, but that little upon careful reading assumed a dark significance. The King’s moroseness and eccentricities increased daily. There were no more midnight performances in the Hof. And there were hints! He might shortly be relegated to a deeper obscurity still, and permanently. His expenditures were passing belief; drastic action by the government might be necessary to save the state from bankruptcy.

All this meant that Styr had lost her protector. The inimical party in the opera house, no longer restrained by fear of the King’s wrath, would conquer, drive her forth. It had required all the influence she possessed to obtain permission to learn two new rôles, and although her party was not contemptible, it was not likely that her friends among the opera house officials would go so far as to threaten Munich with their own loss were she driven out.

Perhaps the most deeply human trait in Ordham was his quick and sincere sympathy. He experienced it toward mere acquaintances in trouble or slighted by fortune. It gushed warmly for those he loved, and only dried when, sulky and obstinate, he turned his back after they had bored or otherwise alienated him. Then he could be as cold and unrelenting as if all his heart instead of that core were flint, and it is doubtful if he would turn his head to observe the most malignant straits to which the offender might be reduced. He shared this trait with certain women; the women whom too much desire has spoilt, and who mete out the extreme penalty to the man that bores them as coolly and remorselessly as the law disposes of its criminals.

Ordham was filled with pity and concern for this friend that had given him nothing but delight, and to whom he felt almost visibly linked by those latent vitalities which he would not permit to conquer his beloved inertia. But they shook him to-night. He rose and walked rapidly up and down the room. Driven from Munich, what would happen to this gifted unfortunate creature? There were other German capitals, but each had its hochdramatisch, who would use all her influence to exclude such a rival as Die Styr. She could merely gast about, with no assured income, while her lovely home was leased or sold. He had wished to think of her always in those intensely personal rooms which still seemed half his own, to see her moving about them with her noble pliant grace, or looking almost like a mere woman in that ugly rocking-chair. He had wished always to be able to close his eyes and conjure the vision of her Isolde, the notes of her great golden voice meeting in a rendezvous of happy birds in the cold classic dome of that opera house he had loved even before he knew her.

What ailed the world that it was so slow to accept Richard Wagner, one of the few positive geniuses it had produced? If he could but do something to rouse the British public at least, create in it a thirst for The Master, interpreted by the greatest of his pupils, surely that must add to their happiness. The most ignorant were often quite happy when surrendering themselves to the seductive charm of music, to that spell which enmeshes the facile senses and makes no demand upon a brain often tired out by nightfall. And what master had ever liberated from those mysterious centres of the musically gifted brain such a voluptuous perfumed sea of music as Richard Wagner? People that had been educated on the old barrel-organ operas had only forcibly to be introduced to the far more satisfying—intoxicating—music to crave it constantly, as the Germans did.

Suddenly he remembered that he possessed two hundred thousand pounds in his own right. To what better use could he put a part of it than to educate the musical taste of his country while assuring the future of the best of his friends? That a nice ethical point was involved in spending the gift of one woman upon another he would have dismissed as unworthy of consideration had it occurred to him. He was without conscious arrogance, but he had the blood of kings in his veins, as have all the older families of the British aristocracy, with or without the bend sinister, for Plantagenets and Tudors had married more than one daughter to a peer of the realm; and in blood of this order democracy is but one more affectation, or policy, or manifest of good manners, as the individual is composed; all tributes, therefore, are his natural due. Ordham would have shrunk with a hot blush from admitting that his wife belonged to a nation of upstarts, that her family pretensions were absurd, and that the god of circumstance had shown uncommon judgment in sweeping that river of crude American gold across the Atlantic to be properly enjoyed by one of a mighty people to whom that bundle of states owed its being; he would have blushed, but, driven to the wall, he would have set his countenance into the mask of a type, opened his large cold eyes, and carelessly admitted it.

Therefore did he give no thought whatever to the source of his present affluence. Besides, not only would he have done as much for one or two of his old college friends, but he was meditating a great public service. To hold London by the nose until it swallowed, and assimilated, and bred an appetite for the greatest music ever written, what signified it if the artist who should help him to accomplish the miracle happened to be his dearest friend threatened with disaster? Not that he pretended to any such sophistry as that he was not thinking quite as much of Margarethe Styr as of London, more perhaps; but facts were facts.

And he knew that in no more direct fashion would she ever accept aid from him. Were she driven from one opera house to the next by the jealousies of the most jealous of all artists, unable to obtain a permanent position, she could support herself by teaching; no doubt, too, she had a small private fortune, and the villa was hers. But that was not the point. She was a great and a very ambitious artist. The voice was the shortest-lived of all Nature’s gifts, and the voices devoted to the music of Wagner had an even shorter lease than the nightingales in the throats of the Violettas and Lucias. Something must be done at once. On Monday he would go up to London and ask advice of Hans Richter, who had conducted Wagner concerts with distinguished success, and whom Styr had met many times in Bayreuth and Munich. It must be the dream of his life to conduct a season of Wagner opera in London, and this could be made possible only if the experiment were privately financed. At this time Covent Garden was not a company; there was no board of directors to consult. It could be rented by any one that had the money to put up, so long as its traditions were not violated. Ordham knew that with Richter behind him, it would be possible to hire the opera house for a season—the season, were it not already disposed of; and that Styr could obtain a leave of absence either through the influence of her friends, or by flying into a rage and goading the directors to break her contract. He could rely upon many of his aristocratic and all of his artistic friends to spread the fame of Styr before her arrival, make her the fashion, fill the house for the first night with all that prided themselves upon being fad tasters, avid for new sensations. Let them be manipulated to that extent and Styr would do the rest. The English might not be able to appreciate the wonder of her voice, might yawn miserably during those everlasting recitatives, but they would succumb to her personality, her magic and magnetism; for to these rare qualities no race is more susceptible; and the mere sweetness of her voice would enchant them no matter what their lack of artistic instinct.

And then! A triumph in London, and New York, already nibbling at Wagner, would give him at least a season’s hearing and demand the Styr as a matter of course. Her fortune and greater fame would be assured. Ordham, as he strode up and down the room, had never felt so enthusiastic, so energetic, so inspired. He could give to England what Ludwig II had given to central Europe. He had never been sensible, save when Styr had deliberately played upon him, of wishing to be of any use to the world; but in these exalted moments, rattling those thin sheets of foreign paper (a link in themselves), he felt his first real impulse toward accomplishment, to stand for something, experienced the real awakening of that gift for leadership which has raised him so high among men to-day, but which, so far, had only manifested itself occasionally in an obstinate determination to have his own way. He felt his power, saw his future more clearly than he had ever done before.

His mind flashed to the woman who had always roused his higher and better impulses, while other women sought to make a Lucien de Rubempré of him; to-night she had transmitted to him out of her own stupendous energies—Good God! what had they not accomplished?—a tingling shock. She sent him his first opportunity to use his own energies, to taste the delights of power. It was something of the rapture of the creative artist that he felt on that never-to-be-forgotten night, for although no composition took form in his quickened brain, the genius of his personality came to life, the fires of his own peculiar gifts crackled in a mind created for the world’s use. As he finally made his way through the silent house to his room, he admitted with delight that he owed those moments of temperamental rapture, this awakening of his vital forces, which reached far beyond introducing Styr and Wagner to England, to the mate of that secret part of him the world would never suspect. His wife’s door was ajar, but he did not even glance at it. He made haste to get into bed, and, with the functional regularity of youth, was asleep in five minutes.