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Title: Hard-Pan: A Story of Bonanza Fortunes

Author: Geraldine Bonner

Release date: November 28, 2020 [eBook #63911]

Language: English

Credits: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARD-PAN: A STORY OF BONANZA FORTUNES ***




  HARD-PAN

  A STORY OF BONANZA FORTUNES

  BY GERALDINE BONNER

  NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1900




  Copyright, 1900, by THE CENTURY CO.

  THE DE VINNE PRESS.




HARD-PAN




I


Dinner was coming to an end. The Chinaman, soft-footed in his
immaculate white, had just finished his circuit of the table, leaving
a tiny gold-rimmed coffee-cup at each of the four plates. Into hers
Letitia was lowering a lump of sugar, when a thought occurred to her,
and she dropped the sugar into the cup with a little splash, and
looking across at her vis-à-vis, said:

"Oh, John, I've been going to ask you half a dozen of times, and have
always forgotten: did you know that Colonel Ramsay Reed had a daughter?"

To see the effect of her question, she stretched forward a plump white
hand and tilted to one side one of the pink silk petticoats that veiled
the candle-flames. The obstruction removed, she looked with vivacious
interest at the person to whom she had addressed her query. He, too,
had just dropped his sugar into his coffee, and was stirring it
slowly, watching the little maelstrom in the cup.

"Colonel Ramsay Reed," he said, without looking up. "Yes, I think I've
heard something about his having a daughter. But why do you ask me?
Isn't Maud a much better person? She knows everything about everybody."

He glanced at his sister-in-law, the dark, brown-eyed woman, very
splendid in her white-and-yellow dress, who sat at the head of the
small table. It was just a family party--Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Gault,
Mrs. Mortimer's sister, Letitia Mason, and Mortimer's brother, John
Gault. Mrs. Gault, who seemed to be quite oblivious to the impertinence
of her brother-in-law's remark, answered smartly:

"I shouldn't be surprised to hear that Colonel Reed had daughters by
the dozens. Who knows really anything about those old bonanza men
who've lost their bonanzas? They drop out of sight, and nobody ever
hears of them again. Colonel Reed was in his glory before I was born."

This was a slight exaggeration. Mrs. Mortimer Gault had been born a
full thirty-eight years ago, in a house which now has a bakery beneath
and furnished rooms above, in the environs of North Beach. It was quite
fitting and proper that she should have first seen the light there,
as in that day North Beach was fashionable. But that this should have
occurred thirty-eight years ago was a subject she quietly ignored.
She was still so effective in her dark, quick-flashing style, so much
admired and so fond of being admired, that she turned her back on and
denied the thirty-eight years whenever she had the chance.

Her husband looked at her with indulgent and humorous appreciation of
her quickness.

"I don't see, if Colonel Reed has a daughter," he said, "what he keeps
her on. She can't live on the memory of his bonanza glories. The old
fellow hasn't got a cent in the world. White Pine scooped the last
dollar he had. When did his wife die?"

Letitia, who was twelve years her sister's junior, and, even if she
had not been, would not have felt sensitive about her accumulating
birthdays, answered:

"Oh, long ago. Colonel Reed's always been a widower ever since I can
remember."

"I remember hearing about his wife when I was a boy," said Mortimer.
"She was a young actress, and married the colonel when everything was
going his way. Then she died in a year or two of consumption. I didn't
know there was a child."

"She must be quite young, then," said Maud Gault. "What did you hear
about her, Letitia?"

"Nothing much; only that she was pretty, and lived in an old ramshackle
house somewhere across town, and that nobody knows anything about her.
One of the girls was talking about it the other day at Mamie Murray's
lunch, and I thought it was so funny, everybody knowing about Colonel
Reed, that he should have had a daughter that none of us had ever heard
of. That's why I asked John. He knows more of those queer, left-over
people than anybody else."

She again tilted the candle-shade and looked at John Gault. For
the first time since the conversation had turned on Colonel Reed's
daughter, he met her eyes. His were brown and deep-set, and being
near-sighted, he generally wore a pince-nez. He had taken this off,
and looked at Letitia with his eyes narrowed to mere slits, after the
manner of short-sighted people. Having finished his coffee, he was
leaning back, the candle-light striking a smooth gleam from his broad
expanse of shirt-bosom. The restless fire of diamonds broke the glossy
surface, for John Gault, like many rich Californians of a passing era,
clung to the splendid habits of the bonanza days. Sitting thus, he
looked a spare, muscular man verging on forty, with dark hair and an
iron-gray mustache.

"I don't know whether that's meant to be a compliment," he said, with
the lazy smile with which he generally treated Letitia's sallies. "Have
I got a larger collection of freaks than most people?"

"What did _you_ hear about Colonel Reed's daughter?" asked Maud Gault.

"Really, I don't recollect anything in particular," he said; "probably
just what Letitia heard--that she was pretty and lived somewhere across
town."

"If a man's going to remember everything he hears about girls that
are pretty and live somewhere across town, he'd have to get Professor
What's-his-name's Memory System down by heart," said Mortimer, pushing
back his chair. "Come, Maud, you don't want to sit here all night, do
you?"

They rose, and together, the rustling ladies first, passed through the
intervening hall into the drawing-room beyond. It was a warm, glossy,
much-upholstered room, with an appearance of overcrowded cheeriness.
Lamps casting halos of mellow light through beruffled silk shades like
huge primeval flowers, glowed from the corners and sent glistening
rays along the leaves of tropical plants. The ornaments disposed upon
the tables and mantel-shelves were numerous and interesting enough to
have claimed an afternoon's careful attention. There were mounds of
cushions on the divans, and sudden prolongations of the surroundings
in unexpected mirrors. Framed in the folds of the portières was the
bright, distant picture of the deserted dining-table, with its bloom of
candles and glint of glass and silver.

The small family party all knew one another so well, and so constantly
met for these little informal dinners, that when John Gault excused
himself on the ground of an evening engagement, no one criticized his
defection or urged him to stay. Letitia, who had put on her new pink
gauze dinner-dress that evening, was more hurt by the fact that he did
not comment upon its splendors than that he left so early. She was used
to his unceremonious inclusion of herself in the family party, whom he
called by their Christian names and treated with brotherly informality.

This evening, as usual, she went into the hall with him for a last
word or two while he put on his coat. Secretly she was hoping that he
would notice her dress; for if Letitia had a weakness, it was for rich
apparel. Fortunately she could indulge it. She had a fair fortune in
her own right, and being an orphan who made her home with her married
sister, her income was hers to spend as she pleased.

Standing under the hall light, she regarded Gault with grave attention
as he attempted, alone and unaided, to put on his coat. Then, seeing
the unequal nature of the struggle, she said suddenly, "Let me help
you, John," and taking the garment from him, shook it and held it out
to him by the collar.

He laughed, and thrusting an arm into the sleeve, said over his
shoulder:

"You're not only the most ornamental but the most useful person I know,
Letitia."

"Thanks," she responded sedately; "but I wouldn't have supposed you
thought I was so ornamental."

"Why not?" he answered, affecting as dramatic a surprise as was
possible in his position, with his second arm just thrust into the
sleeve.

"Because you never noticed me to-night at all," said Letitia, giving
the collar a settling jerk.

"Never noticed you?" He was able to turn round on her now, and regarded
her with exaggerated astonishment. "What do you mean? I noticed you
more than I did any one else."

"I didn't mean myself, exactly; I meant my gown."

"That shows how a feeling silence is thrown away on a woman. I noticed
it a dozen times; but just because I didn't say so you suppose I was
blind to it. How could I be?"

He stepped back and looked critically at Letitia standing where the
light of the hall lamp fell softly over her.

"But you know," he said, "it wouldn't be strange for a man not to
notice the dress, because the person who has it on is so much better
worth looking at than any dress."

Letitia's delight at this compliment could not be disguised. She
blushed and tried not to smile, and looked as childishly pleased as
a woman can who is five feet nine inches high, and has the massive
proportions and noble outlines of a Greek goddess.

She was, in truth, a fine creature, large, statuesque, and handsome,
as Californian women are handsome, with the beauty of form and color.
Viewed critically, her features were not without defects; but her
figure was superb in its type, her skin was flawless, and her naturally
rich coloring was still further intensified by the reddish hue that
had been imparted to her hair by some artificial means. In the full
panoply of evening dress there was something magnificently vivid,
almost startling, about her. One could imagine a stranger, who had come
suddenly upon her in a doorway or on a staircase, standing mute, with
caught breath, staring.

To-night, touched into higher brilliancy by the new pink dress, her
beauty even struck Gault's accustomed eye, and his compliment had
more sincerity in it than is usually found in those administered to
relations. Then, amused at her girlishly naïve pleasure, he bade her a
laughing good night, and without waiting for her response, opened the
door and let himself out.

The Mortimer Gaults lived in the newest and most fashionable part of
San Francisco. Two years before they had leased one of the houses that
have sprung up, alone or in groups of three or four, throughout that
quarter of the city where Pacific Avenue runs out along the edges of
the sand-hills. Here the undulating lines of the great dunes, dreaming
under the ceaseless hush, hush, hush of the wind sweeping through the
rank sea-grass, have been hidden under the march of progress. Large new
houses, shining with paint and bright with window-boxes, have settled
on the slopes, and now hold the sand down. A layer of earth and a hose
have transformed the haggard face of the dunes into gardens which would
be a mass of vegetation but for the French gardeners' restraining
shears.

The house rented by the Gaults, a solid, pale-hued building of the
colonial form of architecture, was large, new, and imposing. Flowers
drooped over its façade from many window-boxes. Its porch was verdurous
with great leafy plants growing in tubs and earthenware pots. In the
front there was a close-clipped strip of lawn, with neat borders and
a filamentosa palm, and the lower part of the bulging bay-window was
hidden by the close, fine foliage of an ivy geranium.

Faring down the street with a quick step, John Gault passed many such
dwellings, the homes of the city's well-to-do and wealthy. Here and
there an undrawn blind afforded him a glimpse of a glowing interior,
where the tall, shrouded lamp cast its light over a room as gaily
brilliant as the one he had just left. But his eye traveled over the
illuminated pane with unseeing preoccupation. He walked rapidly, and
with the undeviating glance of inward reflection. Once he stopped at a
corner lamp and looked at his watch. Then he hastened his steps, and a
few blocks farther on boarded a cross-town car.

The part of the city toward which he was going was of a very different
aspect and period. His car passed from the quiet gentility of the West
Side toward the hum and glare of the business quarter. It swept him
through streets full of the rank and ugly sidewalk life of a great city
after dark to where Market Street, the town's main artery, throbbed and
roared with the traffic of the night.

The line he had taken reached its terminus here, and he alighted, made
his way through the crowd and clangor of the wide thoroughfare, and
plunged into the streets beyond.

Here at once the wayfarer feels himself in a locality whence prosperity
and fashion have withdrawn themselves. The ill-lit streets, the small
and squalid shops, the sordid faces of the passers-by, tell their own
tale of a region fallen from grace. John Gault had too often passed
this way for the ruinous aspect of the surroundings to possess any
interest for him. With a thin thread of cigarette smoke streaming out
above his upturned collar, he passed on rapidly through the patches of
shadow and garish light from show-windows. People turned and looked
at him sharply, his noticeable figure being an unusual one in that
locality. To one watching it might have seemed that this curiosity
annoyed him, for he quickened his pace, and at the first side street
turned off to the left.

There were fewer wayfarers here; the lamps were far apart, and on
either hand the dark forms of huge houses, their façades showing only
an occasional light in an upper window, loomed vague and forbidding.
The dreariness of desertion seemed to hold them in a spell, as they
rose, brooding and black, from the dimness of overgrown gardens. This
had been one of the great streets in San Francisco's splendid heyday.
Here millionairedom had built its palaces and held its revels. John
Gault remembered some of them, and now his eye passed blankly over the
lines of darkened windows and the wide porticos where years before, on
his vacations from college, he had entered as a guest.

But his thoughts were elsewhere.

How strange that the conversation should have taken that turn at
dinner! Could Letitia have heard anything? Impossible! Even if she
had, she was too simple-minded and direct to be so manoeuvering. This
was the seventh time he had been to see Viola Reed--the seventh time
in less than three months. What did he go for? He laughed a little
to himself at the question, and throwing his head back, blew a film
of cigarette smoke into the night. What did he go for? To pass the
evenings, that otherwise would have been idly passed in his own
rooms, or dully passed in society, or drearily passed in the pursuit
of amusements he had long wearied of, in the society of a girl who
pleased his critical taste, beguiled him of his boredom, and piqued his
interest and curiosity.

Yes, that was the secret of her attraction for him. She was not like
any one he had ever known before. She piqued his curiosity.

A picture of her rose before his mental vision, and with a shamefaced
laugh at his own sentiment, he threw his cigarette away. Letitia
had said she was pretty. Undoubtedly she was, but she was something
more than pretty. Refined, delicate, poetic--there was no word that
described it. If Letitia went about talking of her, other people would
want to see her. He resented the idea violently, and felt his anger
rising at the thought of the coarse curiosity and comment that would
suddenly surround her. Some one ought to stop Letitia from talking that
way.

"For," thought John Gault, as he turned a corner and came within view
of Colonel Reed's abode, "I am the prince who has found the Sleeping
Beauty."

The house, like many in that quarter of the city, was detached, and had
once been a dwelling with pretensions to gentility. Time and weather
had worked their will of it, and even under the kindly veil of night
its haggard dilapidation was visible. It sat back a few feet from the
street in a square of garden, where a tall dracæna shook its rustling
foliage to every breeze. There was a large flowering jasmine-tree by
the gate, that spread a sweet scent through the noisome airs of that
old and ill-drained quarter. The visitor softly opened the gate and
entered up a pathway flagged with squares of black-and-white stone that
were broken and uneven. From the front window--a wide bay shrouded
in vines--the light squeezed in narrow slits. John Gault pulled the
old-fashioned bell and stood listening to its jingling note.

There was a step in the passage within, and the light shone through
the two narrow panes of glass that flanked the front door on either
side. A key turned and the door was opened. In the aperture Viola Reed
stood with a kerosene lamp flickering in her hand. She held a piece of
light-colored material in the other hand. As her glance fell on the
visitor she made an instinctive movement as if to hide this.

"Oh, is it you?" she said. "Come in. I'm glad you've come!"

She uttered the sentences quickly, and was evidently embarrassed. Even
by the light of the smoky lamp Gault could see that she had flushed.

"I never thought of your coming to-night," she said, as she turned
to open the parlor door. "It's a great surprise. My father will be
delighted."

She held the lamp up while the visitor divested himself of his coat and
hung it on the chair that did duty as a hat-rack. In the dim hallway,
with its walls from which the paper had peeled in long strips, and the
stairway beyond, with the twine showing through the ragged carpet,
the man of the world in his well-groomed, well-dressed, complacent
perfection of finish, presented a curiously incongruous appearance.

The girl opened the door, and he followed her into the parlor. It was
a long room, divided in the middle by an archway, its lower end now
veiled in shadow. On a large table another lamp glowed, a bunch of
paper flowers hanging on one side of the globe to subdue the light.
The room gave an impression of lofty emptiness. The footsteps of the
visitor seemed to be flung back from its high, bare walls. The lamp
struck gleams of light from the gilded frame of a large mirror over the
chimney-piece, and here and there caught the running gold arabesques
which covered the wall-paper. There were a few wicker chairs drawn up
to the table, which was covered with the litter of amateur dressmaking.
In the single upholstered chair that the room boasted sat Colonel
Ramsay Reed.

With a loud exclamation of pleasure the colonel rose and greeted his
guest. He was a remarkable-looking man of sixty-five or seventy, fully
six feet in height, erect, alert, with a striking air of distinction in
his narrow, hawk-featured face, and a gaunt, angular figure. His white
hair flowed nearly to his shoulders, and his white mustache was in
singular contrast to the brown and leathery surface of his thin cheeks.
He wore a long wrapper of indeterminate hue, patched with materials
of different colors and patterns, and a pair of old leather slippers
that slipped off his heels when he walked. In his suave and urbane
courtesy he seemed to be serenely indifferent to the deficiencies of
his costume, folding his dressing-gown round his legs as he subsided
into his chair with the deliberate ease that a Roman senator might have
displayed in the arrangement of his toga of ceremony.

His daughter did not appear to share his composure; she was nervous
and embarrassed. She swept off the evidences of her dressmaking with
a few rapid movements, and took them away to the shadows of the far
end of the room, hung another paper flower over the blinding glare
of the second lamp, and, sitting by the table, let her glance stray
furtively about for further details that needed correcting. John
Gault, who appeared to be awarding a polite attention to the colonel's
conversational amenities, was conscious of her every movement.

Viola Reed was one of those women that nature seems to have intended
to make completely and satisfyingly beautiful, the intention having
been changed only at the last moment. The upper half of her head was
without a fault--the low forehead, the wonderful hair, thick and wavy,
and so instinct with life that every separate filament seemed to
stand out from its fellows, in color a warm, bright blond, and with
shorter hairs about the ears and temples which curled up in golden
threads. In strange contrast with this brilliant hair were level,
dark-brown eyebrows, that were low over large gray eyes. She had the
same dark-brown lashes, which grew wide apart and turned back, a rare
beauty, and one which imparts an expression of soft, wistful tenderness
to the eyes thus encircled.

Here Viola's beauty ended. Her other features were, at least,
inoffensive. She was tall and beautifully formed, but in the slenderest
mold. To the Californian ideal she was thin. But her movements were
distinguished by a supple grace denied to women of a more stately build
and proportion. To-night she wore a shirt-waist, washed out from its
original pink to a wan flesh-color, and a scanty black stuff skirt,
belted with a black ribbon. Gault, with his eyes fixed on the colonel,
was aware of the stealthy rearrangement she made of the ribbon round
her neck, and the movements of the investigating hand with which she
pushed back her loosened hair-pins.

As was her custom, she made little attempt to join in the conversation.
The evening settled down into a replica of its predecessors. The fact
that Gault was becoming a familiar figure in the bare front parlor did
not seem to abate the colonel's buoyant appreciation of him as a good
listener.

The younger man, with his glance on the floor and an expression of
polite attention on his face, found himself wondering, with inward
amusement, what his friends would say if they could have had a glimpse
of him, listening, silently and submissively, to the reminiscences
of Colonel Ramsay Reed. The conjecture called up such a picture of
incredulous astonishment and disbelief that a smile broke out on his
lips. Aware of its incongruity, he stole a quick, apprehensive look
at Viola. She was watching him with a surprise evidently tempered by
pain at the thought that his amusement might be evoked by her father's
garrulity. Gault's gravity became intense, and the colonel, who was too
engrossed in the joy of having secured a victim to notice anything,
went gaily on. He was launched on his favorite subject--the men he had
assisted to affluence in the early days.

"There's Jerry McCormick. You know where he is now? No need to ask
any one that; has been a member of Congress, can draw his check for
a million, his wife a leader of society, and his daughters marrying
English lords. You know them, of course?"

The visitor made an affirmative sign, and the colonel continued:

"Well, I made that man. When I first ran against McCormick he was
working in the mines up in Tuolumne, with the water squelching in
his boots. In those days a dollar to Jerry looked about as big as a
cart-wheel. His wife was glad enough to do a little washing, and his
daughter--the youngest ones weren't born then, but the eldest, the one
that married the English lord, was--used to run round barefoot, and
bring her father his dinner in a tin pail."

"I'm sure she doesn't know what a tin pail is now," said Gault, a
mental picture rising in his mind of the magnificent Lady Courtley as
he had seen her on her last visit to her parents.

"No," said the old man; "I hear she's one of the Vere de Veres. And
I can remember her, a little freckled-faced kid with her hair in her
eyes, hanging round the tunnel of the Little Bertha, waiting to give
her father his dinner."

"Do you know the younger McCormick girls, Miss Reed? Lady Courtley was
before your time," said Gault, in an attempt to draw Viola into the
conversation.

She looked surprised, and then gave a little laugh and shook her head.

"I've never even seen them," she answered.

"Oh, they don't know Viola," said the colonel--not with bitterness, but
as one who states a simple and natural fact; "the old woman's educated
them out of all that. But, as I was saying, I made their father.
He'd managed to scrape together a little pile, put it all in a small
prospect, and lost every nickel. He was just about dead broke, and came
to me crying--yes, crying--and said, 'Colonel Reed, there's only one
man in California whose advice I'd follow and whose opinion I'd trust.'
'Who's that?' said I, intending to help the poor devil to the best of
my ability. 'It's Ramsay Reed,' said he. 'Well,' said I, 'if you'll
just put yourself in my hands, and do what I tell you, I'll set you on
your feet.' 'Colonel,' said he, 'say the word, and whatever it is, it
goes. You've got more financial ability in your little finger than all
the rest of 'em have in their whole bodies.' So I took him in hand."

The colonel paused, a reflective smile wrinkling the skin at the
corners of his eyes.

"You certainly seem to have made a success of his case," said Gault,
feeling that some comment was expected of him.

"Yes, yes," said the colonel; "I may say a great success. The poor
fellow's confidence in me made me determined to do my best. I used to
give him points--those were the days when I could give points. Told
him if he would follow the lead west of the Little Bertha--people had
hardly heard of the Little Bertha then--he'd strike it. He was broke,
and I gave him the money. Three months later he'd struck pay dirt. That
was the beginning of the Alcade Mine, but he didn't have sense enough
to hold on to it, and sold out for a few thousands. I saw then that I'd
have to do more than give him an occasional boost, and stood behind
him, off and on, for years. Even when we ran into the Virginia City
boom he never bought without my advice. He hadn't any discrimination.
I'd just say to him, 'Save your money and buy five feet next to the
Best and Belcher,' and he'd do what I said every time. Without me he'd
have been working in the mines in Tuolumne yet."

In the absorption of his recollections the colonel crossed his knees,
bringing one foot, with a torn slipper dropping from the heel, into a
position of prominence.

"Oh, those were days worth living in!" he said, running a long, spare
hand through his hair--"great days! Men that weren't grown then don't
know what life is. I meet Jerry sometimes, but we don't talk much about
old times. He knows that he owes everything to me, and it goes against
the grain for him to acknowledge it. I hear his daughters are handsome
girls."

"Perhaps--I don't know," said Gault, recalling the occasions when
he had sat next to the Miss McCormicks at dinners, and suffered
exceedingly in the effort known as "making conversation."

"I heard that they were fine, handsome girls, large, and with black
hair like their mother. She was a beauty in her day--a hot-tempered
Irish girl that Jerry married from the wash-tub. The youngest daughter
is about Viola's age--twenty-three."

John Gault turned and looked at Viola with some surprise.

"You thought I was younger, didn't you?" she said, smiling. "Everybody
does."

He was about to answer when the colonel once more took up the thread of
his reminiscences.

"Maroney was down then--'way down; not even on the lowest rung of the
ladder--he wasn't on the ladder at all. I gave him the first lift
he had. No one would look at Maroney in those days. He was a thin,
consumptive-looking fellow, full of crazy schemes, forever coming to
you and borrowing money for some wild-cat stock that wasn't worth the
paper it was printed on. I took a fancy to him, and every dollar he
made was through my help and advice. It was when I had my offices on
Montgomery Street, and he'd have a way of dropping in about lunch-time
and hanging round looking poor and sick. I used to take him out to
lunch, and give him a square meal and a few points that he'd sense
enough to follow. He wasn't like Jerry; he was smart. Why, I almost fed
that man for years. When he'd get down on his luck--and he was always
doing that--I'd say, 'You know, when you want, my check-book's at your
disposal.' And it was, more times than I can remember."

The colonel paused, smiling at his thoughts. The visitor, who had been
looking idly on the ground, raised his eyes and let them dwell in
curious scrutiny upon the old man's profile, cut like a cameo against
the dim walls with their fine gold traceries. John Gault, like all
Californians, knew every vicissitude in the life of Adolphus Maroney,
one of the great bonanza kings, a man whose career was quoted as an
example of what could be done by brains and energy in the California of
the Comstock era.

Wondering, as he had done many times before, what Viola thought of her
father's vainglorious imaginings, he turned now and suddenly looked
at her. She was sitting with her elbow on the table and her chin
resting in the palm of her hand. Her eyes were on the colonel, and her
expression was one of appreciative interest. It was possible that she
believed in him, absolutely and unquestionably. Yet her face, in its
placid, restful gravity, gave no clue to the thoughts within. She was
not to be read by every casual comer. Even the practised eye of the
man of much worldly experience was baffled by the quiet reserve of this
young girl who was nearly half his age.

"I haven't seen Maroney for nearly eight or nine years," continued
the colonel. "The last time it was in the lobby of the Palace. He was
with some capitalists from England, with a millionaire or two from New
York thrown in. He saw me and looked uncomfortable, but he shook hands
and introduced me. I got away as quickly as I could. I didn't want to
embarrass him."

"Why should you embarrass him?" asked Viola.

The colonel looked at Gault, and gave the forbearing laugh of the man
who treats with good-humored tolerance the ignorance of the woman.

"Why, he was always uneasy for fear I'd give away the fact that it was
I who made his money for him. But, God bless my soul!" said the old
man, throwing back his head and going off into a sonorous laugh, "he
needn't be afraid. I wouldn't rob him of any of his glory. Only I took
it pretty hard, when Mrs. Maroney was here last winter, that she didn't
go out of her way to be kind to you."

Viola gave a little exclamation, Gault could not make out whether
of annoyance or protest. That the colonel should have expected his
daughter to be the object of Mrs. Maroney's attention and patronage was
only another evidence of his painful self-delusion. Mrs. Maroney was
a lady who aspired to storm the fashionable citadels of New York and
London, and troubled herself little with those of whom she could make
no practical use in the campaign.

"You're unjust to Mrs. Maroney," Viola said gently, and rather
weariedly, the visitor thought; "she was only here for two months, and
she had quantities of friends to see and people to entertain."

"Oh, my dear, my dear," answered the old man, "that's just your amiable
way of looking at it. She was like her husband--she wanted to forget."

He turned his eyes, still bright under their thick white brows, upon
the younger man, and looking at him with an expression of mingled pride
and patience, said:

"That is the way with the Californians. Once fall, and the procession
passes you, and the men that were beside you don't wait to turn and see
where you dropped. You stay where you fall and you watch the others
sweep on. That's what I have done."

"Don't talk that way, father," said Viola; "Mr. Gault will think you
feel unhappy about it."

The old man smiled, and leaning forward, clasped her hand and held it.

"Mr. Gault," he said, with quite a grand air, "knows better than that.
The opinions of other people don't affect our happiness. I don't resent
the prosperity of my old mates, nor feel any discouragement at our
present--er--temporary embarrassments."

Viola stirred uneasily, and said quickly:

"No--no; of course not. Why should you?"

John Gault rose here, and she rose, too. Her embarrassment, which had
vanished during the evening's conversation, now returned, and she
plucked nervously at the paper flower on the lamp-globe. It seemed to
him that she was anxious for him to go.

With the colonel it was otherwise. Rising and standing upright in the
patched limpness of his dressing-gown, he affected incredulity at the
thought that his guest contemplated such an early departure. Then,
being politely assured that this was unavoidable, and that, for the
matter of that, it was now close upon eleven, he urged him to repeat
the visit at an early date.

"We are always here, Viola and I," he said. "We have not many
engagements, as you see--just a friend here and there. But we value
our friends more highly than the people do who count them by dozens."

He had followed John Gault out into the hall, and from here his voice
called:

"The lamp, Viola. Mr. Gault can't put on his overcoat in the dark."

She came out quickly, carrying the smaller of the two lamps, divested
once more of its paper flower shade. To give a better light she held
it up and looked at him, smiling a little from under the halo made by
her hair. In answer to his good night she gave him her hand, which he
pressed with a warm, strong grip.

As he went down the few steps from the porch the colonel stood in the
doorway, his figure in sharp silhouette against the light within.

"Don't be a month finding your way down here again," he said. "People
say it's out of the beaten tracks, but we prefer it to any other
locality in the city. Viola and I like the old associations, and I've
struck my roots here too deep to have them pulled up. Well, good night!
So long!"

The door closed, and as John Gault opened the gate, the light vanished
from the two long panes of glass that edged it on both sides, and
gleamed out through the cracks and crevices between the blinds of the
bay-window.

It was a warm night, soft and still, and Gault decided to walk.
With his head bent down he walked slowly, striking the cracks in the
pavement with the tip of his cane. From small gardens still tended
and watered in this unkempt wilderness of brick and stucco, whiffs of
delicate fragrance drifted out across the pavements, only to be stifled
by the sickly odors that rose from the open sewer-mouths.

When he turned into the wide avenues where the old mansions stood, the
air was fresher and the silence heavier. Desertion and darkness seemed
to claim as their own this relic of a life that had already passed
away. The dim, bulky shapes of the great houses stood back from the
street, sullen, black, and morose, like the visions in a dream. Vines
shrouded their solemn forms, and here and there clung to the support
of an iron balcony-rail, hanging down in the darkness like a veil that
swayed and whispered in the breeze. In one porch a hall lamp was lit,
and cast a pale and faltering light over an entrance that looked as
full of menace and evil mystery as the opening to some bandit's cavern.

But Gault passed their iron gates, high between supporting pillars,
without looking up. A man's dreams held him in a trance-like reverie.
A man's perplexities destroyed the content of many serenely selfish
years. He had come to what seemed to him the fateful moment of his
destiny. Had he been a younger man he would have said with a rush of
reckless ecstasy, "I love her!" Now, walking slowly home under the
solemn stars, he queried to himself:

"Shall I let myself love her? Do I dare?"




II


Letitia's surprise at the discovery that Colonel Reed had an unknown
daughter was an unconscious compliment to the prominence and
conspicuousness still enjoyed by that gentleman.

Hundreds of men who had made their fortunes in the great days of the
Comstock, and lost them in the depression that followed, had daughters
and sons that the friends of their prosperity neither knew nor cared
about. The Californian is shy of all sad, unsuccessful things. Failures
in the race in which so many won a prize were quickly forgotten, and
crept away to hide their chagrin in distant quarters of the city or in
the smaller towns. The procession had passed them by, and men who had
been underlings when they were kings reigned in their stead. Even their
names were no longer heard, and their children grew up separated by the
chasm of poverty and obscurity from the children of their old mates.

That Colonel Reed had not been overlooked was partly accidental
and partly owing to his inability to realize that such a state of
affairs could be anything but a public misfortune. The colonel had
the distinction of having collapsed in a most tremendous and complete
manner, and he was proud of it. His case was quoted to inquiring
tourist and ambitious native as a star example of money-getting and
money-losing in the State of California. His passage from affluence to
poverty was still a story worth telling and hearing. It was all in the
superlative degree, for the colonel had never done anything by halves.
His prosperity had been as extravagantly splendid as his adversity was
characteristically complete.

He had made the bulk of his fortune in those years of the fat kine
from 1870 to 1875. Before that he had been well-to-do, as every man
could be in the San Francisco that developed between the days when
"the water came up to Montgomery Street" and the inauguration of the
Comstock boom. He had been a figure in the city from the earliest
times, had known San Francisco when it was a straggling line of houses
edging the muddy shores of the bay, with a trail winding through the
chaparral over the dunes to the Mission Dolores. He had climbed the
lupine-covered slopes of what is now California Street, and looked down
on the hundreds of deserted ships that lay rotting in the cove. He had
seen the city of tents swept by fire, and the city of wood follow it in
a few months. He had been one of those who had held a ticket for the
Jenny Lind Theater on the night it was burned down. He had witnessed
the trial of Jansen's assailants, and had served on the two great
Vigilance Committees, and from the windows of Fort Gunnybags had seen
Casey and Cora go to their last accounts.

Of his journey across the isthmus in '49 he could tell thrilling
stories. Only those of iron physique and reckless courage had the
hardihood to accomplish the trip. The weak in health and feeble in
spirit were left behind at the Chágres or turned back at Panama. The
fittest survived to become those giants of the far West, the California
pioneers. Of these the colonel had been a leading figure. Blood ran
red in the veins in those days, and ginger was hot in the mouth. The
present was too full and tumultuous to allow of even the briefest
glimpse of the future. He became a part of the seething life of the
city, felt its heart-beats as his own, lived greatly as it lived,
loved, hated, sinned, and rejoiced with it.

He often said afterward that at this period of his life money was his
last consideration. There was too much outside to make the question of
sordid gain an engrossing one. The pecuniary side of things was never
one that had bothered the colonel much. And, true to the old adage,
Fortune knocked at the door of him who seemed most indifferent to
her. His riches came suddenly. It was toward the seventies, when the
Comstock was pouring its streams of wealth into hundreds of purses. The
colonel held his open and it was filled. It was dazzling, wonderful,
bewildering. His fortune rose by bounds that he could hardly follow.
The figures of it seemed to grow overnight. In the wild exhilaration
of the period he pressed his luck with unvarying success. He became
intoxicated, the fever of money-getting seized him, and he believed
equally in his star as a man of destiny and his genius as a financier.

Such a sudden and unexpected rise to opulence might have dazed another
man, but the colonel rose to it like a race-horse to the spur. He was
born with a natural instinct for luxury. Formerly he had been merely
one of a thousand good fellows. Now he became a prince. Nothing was too
whimsically extravagant for the pioneer who had crossed the isthmus in
1849. He could be traced by the trail of squandered money. He bought a
country place near San Mateo, raised a palace on it, and entertained
such celebrities as then drifted to California in a way that made them
tell astonishing stories of the "Arabian Nights" existence of the
bonanza kings. In the heyday of his prosperity he had married a young
actress, who had enjoyed the splendors of her sudden elevation for
three years, and had then died, leaving her husband but one legacy--a
baby daughter.

Very shortly after her death the colonel's fortunes began to decline.
He put on a bold front and was more lavish in his expenditures than
ever, for his belief in himself was unshakable. Then stories of his
reverses got abroad, and people said the whole brief span of his glory
had been a piece of pure and unmerited luck; as a financier he had
no ability. The misfortune which attended all his later investments
seemed to prove this assertion. His money melted like wax before fire.
He bought largely of land about South Park and Rincon Hill when it was
at its highest, refused to sell out, and saw the tide of popularity
move to the other side of the city, leaving him overweighted with real
estate upon which he could not pay the taxes. He mortgaged it to its
full value, speculated with the money, and lost it. Ten years after his
wife's death he was ruined. Twenty years after saw him living in the
house near South Park, the sole possession left him.

The colonel took his defeat bravely. He held his head as high as ever
and accepted patronage from no man. When some one suggested that he
should apply for aid to the Society of Pioneers he looked as haughtily
amazed as though they had told him to stand and beg on the corner
of Kearney and Sutter streets. Fate had forced him into the little
house on the far side of town, but that was no reason why he should
remain hidden there. Nearly every day he could be seen striding down
Montgomery Street and mingling with the world of men where he had
once been a leading figure. He seemed to feel no shame on the score
of his old clothes turning green about the shoulders, and greeted his
comrades, now lords of the street, with a cheery word and a wave of his
hand to his hat-brim.

He always had a busy air as of the man of affairs. Men who did not
know him well wondered what scheme he had on hand that caused him so
much hurry and preoccupation. But there was no scheme. It was only
the colonel's way of defying destiny and satisfying the thirst and
longing for the old excitement that carried him back to the scenes of
his triumphs. He hung round Pine Street a good deal, telling those who
would listen to him stories of the early days--of the men he had made,
and of the women who had been the reigning beauties. Sometimes he was
accorded an amused attention, for he could be excellent company when he
chose, and many of his stories of the ups and downs of 1868 and 1870
had become classics.

There was just one subject upon which, in his Montgomery Street
peregrinations, he preserved silence. This was his daughter. He said to
himself, with a sudden squaring of his gaunt shoulders, that he only
mentioned her to his intimates, and as his intimates existed mainly in
his own imagination, Viola Reed's name was almost unknown.

John Gault, who belonged to a later era of California's prosperity than
the colonel, had heard that there was such a person, but had never
seen her. He did not fraternize with the old man, whom he regarded as
a painful landmark in the city's record of blighted hopes and ruined
careers. Like many of his kind, he had an intense, selfish dislike for
all that played upon his sympathies or moved him to an uncomfortable
and discomposing pity.

One afternoon in the past winter he had gone across town to South Park
to see some houses left him by his father, for which he had received
a reasonable offer. On the way home, passing through one of the small
cross-streets that connect the larger thoroughfares, he had encountered
Colonel Reed and a lady. He would have passed them with the ordinary
salutation, had not the lady, who had been gazing into the wayside
gardens, turned her head as he approached and looked indifferently at
him with what he thought were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.

He stopped and greeted the colonel with the polite friendliness to
be expected of wayfarers who encounter one another in such distant
localities. The colonel, who was always childishly flattered by the
notice of well-known men, was expansive, and, after a few moments of
casual talk, introduced the younger man to his daughter. Then they
walked together to the old man's house, which was some little distance
away. The colonel, stopping at the gate, invited the stranger in. John
Gault noticed that the girl did not second the invitation, and excused
himself on the ground of pressing business. But the colonel, who had
never got over the hospitable habits of his _beaux jours_, urged him to
come some evening.

"Viola," said the old man, smiling proudly on his daughter, "will be
glad to see you, too. She's the housewife--runs everything, myself
included."

Thus appealed to, she added her invitation to her father's, and Gault
said he would come.

As he walked away, he wondered if she wanted him to come. It had seemed
to him as if she had spoken under pressure and reluctantly, though she
had been perfectly polite. But it was impossible to tell what a woman
thought, or when she was pleased or displeased, and the next week he
went.

Three months had passed since then. The visit had been repeated many
times, each time under almost exactly similar circumstances. Evening
after evening Gault had listened to the colonel, wondering why he came,
why he subjected himself to this absurd imposition, why he sat meek and
generally mute under the conversational assaults of the garrulous old
man. And yet, the day after his seventh visit, he sat in his private
office wondering how soon he could go again to the little house near
South Park without causing surprise to its inmates or breaking the
rules of conventionality and deliberation that governed his life.

In the midst of his cogitations the door was opened by one of his
clerks, who acquainted him with the fact that Colonel Reed was without
and wanted to see him.

The announcement came upon him so unexpectedly that his color rose, and
it was with an effort that he composed his face to greet the visitor. A
disturbing presentiment of something unpleasant seized upon him. Never
before had Colonel Reed entered or suggested entering his office. "What
does the old man want?" he thought testily, as he bade the clerk show
him in.

A moment later the colonel entered. He was suave and smiling. There
was nothing of the broken financier, the ruined millionaire, in his
buoyant and almost patronizing manner. His old black coat, faded and
many years behind the mode, but well brushed and carefully mended, was
buttoned up closely, and still sat upon his thin but sinewy figure with
something of its old-time elegance. In one hand he carried a little
black lacquer cane.

Sitting down opposite John Gault, where the light of the long window
fell full upon his face, he had all the assurance of manner of a man
whose bonanza has not become a memory and a dream.

"I was going by, and I thought I'd drop in and pass the time of day,"
he said. "Things aren't as lively with me just now as they have been.
It's an off season."

"It's that with most of us," said the other, regarding him intently and
wondering what he had come for.

"All in the same coffin, are we?" said the colonel, airily. "I'm
generally on the full jump down here of a morning; but lately--"

He shrugged his shoulders and flung out his hands with a gesture of
hopeless acquiescence in unmerited bad luck.

"You're fortunate," said Gault, "to have something to be on the full
jump about. We find things pretty slow."

"Oh, of course, in comparison with the past," assented the old man.
"Slow? Slow is not the word. Dead, my dear friend! San Francisco is a
dead city--dead as Pompeii."

"Well, not quite as bad as that," said Gault, laughing in spite of
himself.

"How should you be able to judge?" retorted the colonel. "You weren't
thought of when we old fellows were laying out the town. There was more
life here in a minute then than there is now in a week. Then Portsmouth
Square was the plaza and the center of the city, with a line of French
boot-blacks along the lower side. We used to try our French on 'em
every time we got a shine. And Lord! what smart fellows they were, and
how much money they made!"

"So I've heard," murmured Gault.

"And when I think of this street later on, this street alone, in, say,
'70--how it boiled and bubbled and sizzled with life! Those were the
days to live in!"

"Undoubtedly," acquiesced the listener. He was afraid the colonel had
only come to continue the reminiscences on the historic ground of his
early gains and losses, and he ran over in his mind the excuses he
could use to politely and speedily get rid of the old man.

But the colonel, it appeared, had another end in view.

"I don't find, however," he continued, "that my full-jumping pays very
well. I've got the energy and the savvy, but the luck isn't with me.
And I'm too old a Californian not to know there's no good bucking
against bad luck."

He paused and tapped with the tip of his cane against the side of the
desk, evidently expecting his companion to speak. This time, however,
Gault vouchsafed no reply, but sat looking at him with a steady and
somewhat frowning intentness.

The colonel continued, nothing abashed:

"I've run into bad luck belts before, but never as wide a one as this.
It's about the biggest I've struck yet, and I've had some experience.
Not that it's knocked me out," he said, looking up and speaking with
quick, genuine earnestness--"don't imagine that."

"Nothing is farther from my mind," said Gault; for the old man's look
demanded an answer.

"For an old-timer like me, privations, misfortunes, poverty, don't
matter. We pioneers who came round the isthmus and across the plains
aren't afraid of a little more roughing it to finish up on. A day
without dinner don't frighten us, and we don't put our fingers in
our mouths and cry because we haven't got sheets to our beds or
fires in our stoves. But when you've women in your corral it's
different--especially women that haven't always seen the rough side of
things."

"Of course it makes a difference," the other said, to fill up the
colonel's second and more persistent pause.

"Well, that's how it is with me. If it was only myself I'd not think
twice of it. But I have to consider my daughter. It's not the same with
her. During her childhood she had every luxury, but lately I've not
been able to give her all that I'd like to, though, of course, she's
never really suffered. And just now my affairs are in such a devil of
a tangle that--well, I was going to ask you if you could oblige me
with a temporary loan--just a trifle to tide us over this spell of bad
weather--say fifty dollars."

The colonel looked into the younger man's face quite unembarrassed,
his old countenance still preserving its expression of debonair
self-satisfaction. The money in his hand, he gave it a slight clink,
and then dropped it into a worn leather purse with a clasp that
snapped, and said gaily:

"This is the best medicine for low spirits. Not that mine are low--no,
sir; it takes more than a temporary shortness of funds to knock out a
pioneer of '49. Whether it's champagne or beer or water, there's no
difference when it comes to quenching your thirst, and at my age that's
all you want to drink for."

"You're a better philosopher than most of the pioneers," said Gault,
feeling the embarrassment that the old man seemed so complacently free
from.

"Philosopher!" said the other, rising. "Why, my dear boy, I could
found a school of philosophy--only where would the pupils come from?
No, no; philosophy wouldn't pay in California; too much blue sky and
sunshine here. Well, when are we going to see you again? Soon--don't
forget that. Viola and I haven't many friends--just an odd one, like
yourself, here and there. Viola doesn't go much on society, and so we
let the old crowd drop; and we're not sorry, not sorry--too many tares
in the wheat. What old Solomon said about a dinner of herbs and good
company being better than a stalled ox in a wide house with a brawling
woman--wasn't that it?--was right. He was a great old chap, Solomon!
Brains and experience--that's a combination that's hard to beat."

They moved toward the door together, and here the colonel turned on his
friend for a last good-by.

"Well, so long," he said, extending his hand and smiling on the
younger man with a bland benignity of aspect that had in it something
paternally patronizing. "Don't forget that we expect you soon. We're
always at home in the evenings, and always glad to see our friends--our
real friends."

When he had gone, Gault went to the window of the outer office and
stood there watching him. The faded old hat, shadowing the fringe of
white hair, towered over the heads of the hurrying men who passed in
two streams up and down the street.

Gault stood gazing till the tall figure passed out of sight. When he
turned back from the window his clerks noticed that he looked moodily
preoccupied.

Five days after this the colonel appeared again. He was urbane,
affable, and easy as an old shoe, and, with the air of a king honoring
a faithful servant, borrowed thirty dollars more.

This was on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon Gault, who had passed a
restless night, resolved to escape from the irritation of his own
thoughts and seek amusement in the society of Letitia. For this purpose
he took an early lunch at his club, and by two o'clock was wending his
way up the sunlit streets that run between large houses and blooming
gardens through what is known as the Western Addition.

For the past six years it had been an open secret in that small family
circle that Mortimer Gault and his wife wished to make a marriage
between John and Letitia. Certainly it was a neat combination of
the family relationships and properties that might have suggested
itself to any one. The ambition had originated with Maud Gault,
who, like most managing, clever women, was a match-maker, and who,
with her social successes and pecuniary ambitions, would naturally
select as the husband of her only sister this rich, agreeable, and
presentable gentleman who was so constantly in their society, and who
stood upon that footing of a semi-romantic intimacy which distant
relationship gives. But it was difficult to force the two objects of
this matrimonial plot into sentimental relations. Letitia was reserved
upon the subject of her own feelings. Mrs. Gault, who was not reserved
upon any subject except her age, could get nothing out of the girl,
either as to what she herself felt for John or as to what she thought
he felt for her. Sometimes Letitia laughed a little when the persistent
questions of her sister were hard to avoid; sometimes she blushed; and
once or twice she had grown angry and rebelled against this intrusive
catechizing. It was difficult even for so keen a woman as Maud Gault to
read the girl's heart.

John Gault, who was sincerely fond of Letitia, in a steady-going,
brotherly way, watched the manoeuvers of his sister-in-law with a good
deal of inward amusement. He was confident that Letitia entertained the
same sort of regard for him that he did for her, and he took an honest
and simple pleasure in the frank good-fellowship that existed between
them. Now and then, it is true, he had vaguely thought of the young
girl as his wife, and had wondered, in an idle way, whether he could
win her affection. He thought that no man could ever find a better wife
than she would make. But these were aimless speculations, and no one
knew of them. Even Maud Gault sometimes felt discouraged--he was so
exasperatingly pleased when she told him of Letitia's admirers!

Though it was so early, Gault found one of these rivals already before
him. Tod McCormick, the only son of Jerry McCormick, who had been
"made" by Colonel Reed, was sitting with Letitia in the drawing-room,
to which the umbrella-plants and palms gave an overheated and tropical
appearance. The sunlight poured into the room, and, shining through
the green of all this juicy and outspreading foliage over the lustrous
silks on piled-up cushions and upholstered chairs, gave an impression
of radiance and color even more brilliant than that imparted by the
lamplight.

In the midst of the rainbow brightness Letitia sat among the cushions.
She was very upright, for she was not of the long, lithe order of women
who lounge gracefully, but in her tight-drawn silks and pendulating
laces she found her habitual attitude of square-shouldered erectness
more comfortable.

Her guest, who rose to meet the newcomer, looked as if he must be a
changeling in the blooming and lusty brood of Jerry McCormick. While
his sisters were women of that richness of coloring and contour
peculiar to California, Tod was not five feet and a half high, and
was thin, meager, sallow-skinned, and weak-eyed. A thatch of lifeless
hair covered his narrow head, and a small and sickly mustache had been
coaxed into existence on his upper lip. He was in reality twenty-seven
years old, but he looked hardly twenty. Even his clothes, of the
most fashionable make and texture, could not impart to him an air
of elegance or style. Their very splendor seemed to heighten his
insignificance.

"Howdy, Gault," he said, his small and weazened countenance lightened
by a fleeting and evidently perfunctory smile. "You're early, but I'm
earlier."

"I came to see my brother," said the older man, rather stiffly, for
though he knew Tod to be good-natured and harmless, he did not like him.

"What a pity!" said Letitia. "Maud and Mortimer are both out. They're
lunching at the Murrays'. But they'll be back soon now. Won't you sit
here with us?"

Though Tod's annoyance at this proposition did not find vent in words,
it was plain to be seen in the dejected and sullen expression that
settled on his face. With his hands in his pockets, he stood looking
down on his feet in pointed patent-leather shoes, balancing absently on
his toes and heels.

"No, thanks," said Gault, whose dislike of the young man did not go far
enough to blight his afternoon. "I'll go into the library. I've got
some letters to read over and answer, and I'll do it now, while I am
waiting."

He turned away and passed through the wide hall-space to the library,
a room at the back of the house, where two large windows commanded a
view of the Golden Gate and the bay. He had picked up a magazine from
a table in the hall, and now, seating himself, prepared to look at it.
But he presently threw it aside, and abandoned himself to a dreamy
survey of the view.

The magnificent panorama of hills and water lay still and enormous
under the afternoon sun. It was not late enough for the summer's
drought to have burned the hills, and the nearer ones were a faint,
mellow green. Their hollows were filled with clear, amethyst shadows,
and the sea lay at their bases, motionless and level like a blue floor.
The extraordinary vividness which marks the Californian landscape was
softened by the almost imperceptible haze which overlay the scene. The
watcher clasped his hands behind his head, and looked with troubled
eyes at this splendid prospect. From the room beyond came the murmur
of conversation, every now and then interrupted by the high, cackling
laugh of Tod McCormick. Presently there was a break in the voices,
they grew louder and decreased, the hall door banged, and Letitia came
rustling into the room.

"It's too bad Maud and Mortimer are not back yet," she said. "You'll
have to talk to me."

Gault yawned, flung out his arms in a stretch, and looked at her
smiling.

"I told a little story in there. It was out of consideration for the
feelings of your young man. I didn't come to see Mortimer. I came to
see you."

There was no denying the fact that Letitia looked pleased. She tried to
hide her satisfaction under an air of curiosity.

"What did you come to see me for?" she asked.

"To take a walk. It's too fine to stay indoors talking to Tod
McCormick. Go up-stairs and put on your hat, and let's take a _pasear_."

Letitia needed no urging. She rarely went out alone with Gault, and the
prospect of a walk in his society was very attractive.

She was absent some time. When she reappeared the cause of her delay
was evident. She had changed her dress, and now, in a checked silk of
black and white, and trimmed with a wonderful arrangement of black
gauze and ribbon, she looked her best. A large black hat with a brim
shaded the upper part of her face. In the back it was trimmed with some
green flowers which made a delightful harmony with her copper-colored
hair. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and as she entered the room,
conscious, perhaps, of her beauty and her vanity in thus decking it,
her eyes sought his, asking for admiration.

Unfortunately he was not looking at her, but was turning over the pages
in the magazine he had formerly discarded.

"Are you ready?" he said, without looking up, but hearing from the
rustle of her dress that she was beside him. "I thought you were never
coming."

Outside the house, they turned to the right and walked slowly up the
avenue, conversing with the desultory indifference of old friends. In
the bright afternoon sunlight the broad street stretched before them,
almost deserted in its Sunday calm. On either side the gardens blazed
with color, enameled with blooms of an astonishing richness of tint.
Over the tops of fences nasturtiums poured blossoms that danced in the
air like tongues of fire. Scarlet geraniums, topping long stalks,
clothed with a royal robe the summit of hedges. Against sunny stretches
of wall, heliotrope broke in a purple foam. Climbing roses hung in
heavy clusters from vines that were drooping under the weight of such
a prodigal over-production. The wide, sumptuous flowers of the purple
clematis clung round the balcony posts, completely concealing the dry,
thread-like vine that gave them birth.

Between the houses, each one detached in its own square of ground, with
that suggestion of space which is peculiar to San Francisco, glimpses
of the bay came and went--bits of the gaunt hills, lengths of turquoise
sea touched here and there with a patch of white sail, and sudden views
of Alcatraz queening it alone on its red-brown rock.

Letitia and Gault walked on, now and then according the customary
phrase to the beauty of the landscape. Letitia, who was not an admirer
of nature, was much more interested in the occasional couples they met,
smart and smiling in their Sunday attire; but, with the complaisance
of her amiable spirit, she was always quick to echo her companion's
enthusiasm. Presently, after walking in silence for a few minutes, he
asked her:

"How would you like to earn your own living, Letitia?"

This was rather an unexpected problem to solve, but Letitia had no
doubts on the subject, and answered promptly:

"I wouldn't like it at all."

"But there are lots of women who have to--women like you, who have had
everything they wanted, and been well taken care of, and then their
parents--relations--guardians lose their money, and they have to work."

"I think it would be better for them to marry," said Letitia, sagely.
"It's much better for a woman to marry, and have some one to take care
of her, than to have to take care of herself."

"Well, suppose she doesn't want to marry, or doesn't want to marry the
kind of man that asks her, isn't it better for her to work for her
living? Wouldn't a proud, self-respecting woman rather work for her
living than--than--than not? You see, Letitia," he said, turning to her
with a smile, "how much I think of your opinion."

"Of course, any woman would rather work than go without things. She'd
have to. Why do you want my opinion? Whom do you know that has to work
for her living?"

"Oh, no one in especial," he said, with a careless shrug. "It was just
a supposititious case. I was reading a novel about something like
that, and I thought I'd get your opinion as an intelligent, modern,
up-to-date young person." He looked at her again with his indulgent and
somewhat quizzical smile. "Aren't you all that, Tishy?" he asked, using
the family diminutive of her name.

"I don't know," she answered, "whether I'm all that. I may be some of
it. But it's so awfully hard for a woman to support herself. They have
such a hard time, and get so badly paid, and there are so few things
that you make money by soon, you know, without studying for years."

"Why, it seems to me there are lots of things: dressmaking, and
type-writing, and--er--trimming hats, and making jam, and reciting
poems, and teaching children."

Letitia laughed.

"Why, how could a girl type-write, or trim hats, or even make jam,
without knowing how? You've got to learn those things. I've tried to
trim hats a dozen times, and always spoiled them; and one summer Maud
undertook to make some jam, and it was perfectly awful--I don't mean
the jam: I mean the house while the jam was getting made. Maud and the
Chinaman and Mortimer were all in such a bad temper!"

They walked on for a few moments in silence. Then Letitia continued:

"Why, even the girls who have fairly good positions in stores don't
get enough to live on. The girl who shampoos my hair has a sister
in Abram's, and she gets seven dollars a week, and has to be nicely
dressed. Just fancy that!" said Letitia; and then, in a burst of
candor: "Why, I never in this world could dress on that alone, even if
I gave up silk stockings and always wore alpaca petticoats like the
woman who teaches Maud German."

"Nevertheless," said Gault, "it seems to me that a woman who was
high-minded and proud and independent would be a shop-girl and live on
seven dollars a week rather than--"

He stopped. Letitia looked at him interestedly, struck by something in
his tone.

"Rather than what?" she asked.

"Rather than--well, in this story the people who were so poor had
friends that were well off, and all that sort of thing, and they
borrowed from them, and--I think it's going to turn out that they lived
that way."

"Did the girl borrow? Wouldn't work and lived on the borrowed money?
Oh, that's--!"

Letitia raised both hands in the air and let them drop with a gesture
that expressed complete finality of interest and approval.

"What do you mean by 'oh,' Letitia?" he said, rather sharply. "I never
said the girl knew anything about it."

"Well, she must have had some curiosity to know where the money came
from. When her father or mother came in and said, 'Here's ten dollars
to pay the butcher, and here's twenty dollars to pay the grocer,'
don't you suppose she wanted to know where it came from? Really, John,
considering you're supposed to be so clever, you don't know much about
women."

He made no answer, and she went on:

"Of course she knew all about it. She would have been an idiot if she
hadn't. And she doesn't sound at all like an idiot. It's just the other
way. She was clever--altogether too clever. I don't like that kind of
person at all. I wouldn't trust her from here to the corner. She must
have been one of those soft, clinging, gentle creatures who are always
turning aside to hide their tears. Was she?"

"I dare say. You seem to know more about her than I do."

"But it sounds very interesting," said Letitia, coming closer to him.
"I'd like to read it. What is the name of the book?"

"Oh, I don't remember. It's nonsense, anyway--some stuff not worth
talking about."

Letitia continued to look at him silently for a moment; then she said
slowly:

"It's not a book at all. It's a real person. You've been trying to make
a fool of me."

He looked at her quickly, his eyes, behind the shield of his glasses,
narrowed to mere lines. For a moment, as their cold gleam met hers, she
shrank, for she thought he was angry, and, like other people, Letitia
was afraid of John Gault's anger. Then he smiled at her, and said:

"If you ever have to earn _your_ living, Tishy, there'll be no trouble
about your vocation. You'd make a fortune as a female detective. I
never saw such wonderful ability. Why, Sherlock Holmes isn't in it with
you."

"You can laugh as much as you like," said Letitia, flushing under his
sarcasms, "but I know I'm right."

"What!" he said, coming to a standstill, and staring into her face with
a frown of exaggerated intensity, "you actually don't believe me?"

"No, I don't," she retorted, doggedly combative.

"After all these years, has my noble example of truth and probity made
no deeper impression on you? Oh, Letitia, I couldn't have believed it
of you!"

"I don't care what you say," she repeated, "or how you try to turn it
off. It's a real person, and I'm certain she's simply horrid. And if
you take _my_ advice, the less you have to do with her the better."

This was apparently too much for the sobriety of John Gault. In the
loneliness of the street his laughter resounded deep and loud. Letitia
looked at him with moody disfavor as he stood, his face flushed, his
eyes suffused with moisture, and fairly roared. Letitia's eyes were
threatened with a moisture of a different kind.

"Oh, dear Tishy," he said, when his paroxysm was over, taking one of
her hands and holding it tightly, "what a sage you are! How good of you
to warn me! With you to take care of me, I ought never to come to any
harm."

"I guess you never would," said Letitia, with a little sigh. "Certainly
I know enough to know that that woman is not a good person to trust--or
even to know," added the mentor, with an accent of warning, and staring
at him with large, cautioning eyes from under her hat-brim.

Her companion was threatened with another outburst.

"Oh, Letitia, don't be so _funny_," he said. "I haven't laughed as much
as this for a month."

He took her hand and, drawing it inside his arm, pressed it against his
heart; then, looking down at her with eyes still full of laughter, but
touched with tenderness, he said:

"To think of Letitia Mason taking the trouble to give me good advice!"

Letitia was mollified, less by his words than by his manner, which had
in it that kindly camaraderie which made her feel happy and at ease.
She withdrew her hand, laughing, and said, with a sort of shyness that
was very charming:

"I'll always give you good advice, if you'll promise not to laugh at
me."

Then they walked on, talking of other things, until the girl's spirits
were restored to their normal attitude of a sedate, candid cheeriness.
She grew quite talkative, discoursing to him of various small
happenings in the house, and not noticing, in her recovered good humor,
that his answers were short and his manner grave and distrait.

As they retraced their steps the broad, yellow glow of the sunset
deepened behind them, and before them burned on the windows of houses
that climbed the hillsides still farther on. The water and its
low-lying shores--flat lands where silver creeks lay embedded like
the metal wires in cloisonné ware--were already veiled in a soft,
purplish twilight which exhaled a creeping chilliness. At a high point,
unobstructed by buildings, they turned to watch the sun drop into the
sea. For a moment it seemed to hesitate, resting on the horizon like a
spinning copper disk; then it slipped out of sight, and the darkness
rushed up from unexpected places and swept over the prospect, blotting
out all distinctions of color. Only in the west there was a great gold
radiance, against which little red clouds floated like bits of raveled
silk.

John Gault, as was his Sunday custom, dined with his brother's
family. After dinner he left early, before the usual callers
appeared--generally young men come to bow the knee at Letitia's shrine.

For a space he walked down the street with a quick, decided step. Then,
of a sudden, he stopped, and stood looking at the pavement, uncertain
and irresolute. The car which had borne him to the other side of town
on the last evening that he had dined with the Mortimer Gaults glided
across the avenue some blocks farther down. He heard its bell and saw
the long funnel of light from its lantern pierce the darkness before it.

He stood for a moment watching it, then turned in the opposite
direction and stopped. As he hesitated, he heard in the distance the
bell of the next car. With a smothered ejaculation, he wheeled about
and ran for it. He caught the car and swung himself to a front seat.

"Kismet!" he said to himself, as he sank down panting.




III


At this period of his history the colonel's exchequer must have been
in a particularly depleted condition, for it was not a week after John
Gault's visit that he again appeared at the office, and this time
requested a loan of forty dollars.

Had the colonel, during this interview, exhibited some of that
shamefaced and conscious embarrassment that the most hardened borrowers
will show, his benefactor would have felt less miserably ill at ease.
But the old man was as suave and affably benignant as if he were
conferring a long-solicited favor. That there was something of shame in
his barefaced assaults upon the purse of his daughter's friend seemed
an idea that had never entered his mind. No disconcerting scruples
marred his appreciation of his sudden good fortune. Pride was evidently
a possession of which he was as poorly supplied as he was with the
tangible goods of this world.

He was in the best of spirits; indeed, to John Gault's suspicious eye
he had the triumphant air of a man who had found a good thing. He came
into the office with a jaunty tread and an alert, all-embracing glance,
and left it showering smiles and bows on its chief and his clerks. The
sun of his prosperity seemed to have warmed and brightened him in every
way. He told inimitable stories of the early days, which--unhampered
by the presence of his daughter--were less egotistical, and not always
so conventional, as those he regaled Gault with at home. He was as
pressing as ever in his invitations to call, and into these introduced
Viola's name as being a participator with himself in the desire of
seeing their mutual friend as often as his time and inclination would
lead him to the house near South Park.

After this visit the vague irritation and moodiness that Gault had felt
gave place to a poignant sense of uncertainty and doubt. Naturally of
a suspicious nature, the life he had led, the surroundings in which he
had passed from youth to maturity, the large experience of evil gained
in a twenty years' residence in a thoroughly loose and lawless city,
had intensified his original tendency till he was now prone to suspect
where suspicion was either a folly or an insult. He had the vain man's
dread of being fooled, imposed upon, made ridiculous, and he was proud
of his keenness in detecting such intentions.

At twenty-two he had come from Harvard to San Francisco, had plunged
into the fashionable life of the day, and being the son of wealthy
and well-known parents, had quickly learned the bitter lessons which
society teaches its followers. People said John Gault had never married
because he believed in no woman. This was an aspersion upon his sound,
if narrow, common sense. He was afraid of marriage, of a terrible
disillusionment, followed by a life-time of conventionally correct
misery. What he feared in it was himself. He dreaded that he might not
make the woman he married happy, and deep in his soul he cherished
the same dream as Balzac, who once wrote: "To devote myself to the
happiness of a woman has been my ceaseless dream, and I suffer because
I have not realized it." With the passage of the years he had grown
narrower and more ambitionless. When he met Viola Reed he was sinking
into the dull apathy of a self-engrossed and purposeless middle age.

Her attraction for him was sudden and compelling. He often wondered why
he liked her so much. He had known hundreds of women who were prettier
and quite as clever. About Viola there was a curious, distinguishing
touch of refinement that he did not find in many of the beauties and
belles who were so ready to smile on him at the fortnightly cotillions
and subscription germans. The delicate modesty of her beauty satisfied
his exacting eye. There was something subtle and rare about her, a
suggestion of romance in her wide, pondering eyes, a charm of mystery
behind the face that looked so youthful and yet was so femininely
secretive. She always seemed to say the right thing, and that and the
soft tones of her voice were keenly pleasing to his fastidious taste.

At first he had merely sought her society for the passing pleasure he
had derived from it. He was reaching that stage of life when he found
it difficult to be interested in new people, and where the long tedium
of a dinner next a handsome and pretentious partner was beginning
to assume the aspect of a martyrdom. There was nothing irksome or
commonplace or tedious in the evenings spent in the house near South
Park; even the colonel ceased to be a bore when his daughter sat by
listening. Gault began to like going there better than going anywhere
else. On the days when he decided that he would spend the evening at
the Reeds', he found himself looking forward to the visit all the
afternoon. The anticipation of it lay like a glad thought at the bottom
of his heart. On the night that Letitia had asked him about Colonel
Reed's daughter, he had nearly arrived at a conclusion--that Viola
Reed was the one woman in the world for him.

Nearly, but not quite. The next day Colonel Reed had come and borrowed
the first fifty dollars.

This simple action had disturbed John Gault's serenity. The second and
third visits tore the fabric of his dream to pieces. If the old man had
only made his request once, he would have thought no more of it than
of the numberless other loans which he had contributed to the human
wreckage left by the receding tides of San Francisco's several booms.
But the colonel's subsequent appearances, so closely following on
Gault's visits, awoke a sudden swarm of suspicions that began buzzing
their importunate warnings into his ears. Why had the old man been
so effusive in the beginning? Why had he invited him, insisted even,
upon his calling? Was he so determinedly hospitable merely to secure
a listener to his reminiscences? And if he had acted upon his own
impulses at first,--which certainly seemed the case,--Viola could have
stopped him later on. Gault had noticed that her word seemed law to her
father.

In the pain of his doubts he surreptitiously made inquiries, and
discovered that Colonel Reed's penury was of the past five years'
duration. Up to that time he had still held small properties and
realized on them at intervals. People who knew said that since then
his circumstances had been desperate, and yet it was known of all men
that he was engaged in no paid employment. It was the one point upon
which the pride of the erstwhile millionaire was firm. Viola did no
work, either. In the West, the woman laboring to help sustain the
ruined fortunes of her family is so common a spectacle that the strong
man, secure in his riches and his health, felt a species of fierce
indignation against the girl for her seeming idleness.

Yet it must take so little to keep them. They owned the house they
lived in, and employed no servant, Viola doing all the work of the
small menage. He had tried to persuade himself that the colonel was
using him for his banker without the girl's knowledge, and then
Letitia, with her heavy feminine common sense, had laid her finger on
the weak spot in that argument. How could a sudden influx of money
enter into so small a household without the cognizance of the person
who managed it all? It was nonsensical to think of. She knew--and if
she knew, was she not party to the whole sordid, ugly plot?

But here he always stopped. It was impossible. It could not be. The
image of her face rose before him, as it often did now, making him
feel disgusted and ashamed that even in thought he should have done her
an injury. There was a mistake somewhere. It would explain itself. But
he knew that until it did explain itself he would know no peace; for he
could not live without seeing her, and at every visit he felt her charm
penetrate deeper into his heart, despite his lurking doubts.

He spent hours in pondering as to the best way to silence these doubts
without letting her suspect their existence. Even if she were cognizant
of it, he could hardly speak to her of her father's borrowing. Yet in
his thought she always seemed so simple, so girlish, so young, that he
was sure if he could see her alone, and perhaps turn the conversation
upon some analogous subject, her ignorance would speak from every
feature. He had grown to know all the varying expressions of her face,
and he felt that he could detect the slightest change of color or
tremor of consciousness on its pale innocence.

He did not, however, know at what hour he was likely to find her by
herself. He had always gone in the evening, as it was the colonel who
asked him, and who invariably designated that time. Gault fancied that
his visits were the old man's chief amusement and recreation, and that
he so particularly insisted upon the evening in the desire not to miss
them. Upon this hypothesis he concluded that he ran a better chance
of finding Viola alone in the second half of the day, and on his first
disengaged afternoon he left his office early, with the intention of
walking across town to South Park.

It was not late enough in the season for the summer winds to have
begun, and the straw, dust, paper, and general refuse that they sweep
away with their steady, cold breath lay thick on the pavements. In
the hard light of afternoon the dreary quarter looked even meaner and
more squalid than it did by night. The wayfarer could see the dirt on
the little shop-windows, the dinginess of the wares displayed. The
small, open stands, where shell-fish and oyster cocktails were sold,
were thick with flies. Behind the grimed glass of the pawnbroker's
windows lay the relics of vanished days of splendor and extravagance.
Old-fashioned pieces of jewelry, broken ornaments, rusted pistols,
gold-mounted spectacles, mother-of-pearl opera-glasses, were heaped
together in neglected disorder. Now and then the entrance of a
second-hand clothes store gave a glimpse of a dark interior hung with
clothes, between which the sharp Jewish faces of the patron and his
wife peered out eagerly.

John Gault's eyes passed over this with slow disgust. What might not
the constant sight of such naked poverty breed in the most sensitive
soul! Day after day Viola must have passed this way, must have seen the
human spiders waiting in their dark web, perhaps might have chaffered
with them, or recognized her own jewelry among the tarnished relics in
the pawnbroker's window.

He turned into the wider avenue, where gentility had once dwelt in its
bulky palaces. They seemed to stare with wide, unshuttered windows,
drearily speculating on the desolation of the street and their own
decay. Around them gardens stretched unkempt and parched, here and
there an aloe or some vigorously growing shrub striking a note of color
in the uniform grayness. High iron gates, richly wrought, but eaten
into by rust, hung open from broken hinges, or were tied together with
ravelings of rope. One of the most imposing, still standing upright,
was held ajar with a piece of broken brick. It gave entrance to a
circular sweep of driveway and a large garden full of rankly growing
shrubs and vines and headless statues, with a rusty fountain-basin in
the center, and urns still showing the corpses of geraniums. Inside
Gault saw some of the children of the neighborhood playing games, and
realized that the broken brick was evidently of their introduction.
This was the house which had been built by Jerry McCormick thirty-odd
years before. It had the appearance of having been deserted for a
century.

A few turns down narrower streets brought the wayfarer to the Reeds'
home. He had only seen it once before by daylight, and now eyed it with
curiosity. Though age and poverty showed in its peeling stucco walls,
in the untended vines that hung about the bay-window, in the rotting
woodwork of the old gate, it still had the air of a place that is
lived in and cared for. Inside the gate the pathway of black-and-white
marble was clean and bright. Round the root of the dracæna there was a
flower-bed planted with mignonette. On the other side of the flagged
walk fuchsias and heliotrope were trained against the high fence which
separated the house from its next-door neighbor.

In answer to his ring Viola opened the door. She was dressed in a
blue-and-white gingham dress, the sleeves of which were rolled up to
the elbows, and showed arms slightly rounded and white as milk. She
wore an apron and had a pair of scissors in her hand. When she saw who
it was the color of joy ran in a beautiful flush over her face.

"You never came at this time before," she said in the hall, hastily
pulling down her sleeves. "I never thought for a moment it was you, or
I shouldn't have come to the door with my sleeves this way."

Then they passed into the drawing-room. The afternoon light streamed
through the bare emptiness of this once stately apartment, revealing
the long crack that zigzagged across the mirror, and the rents in the
colonel's arm-chair. In the rear half of the room there were only
one or two pieces of furniture, evidently seldom used, and pushed
back into the corners. The double doors leading from here were open,
and vouchsafed the visitor a view of one of those long and spacious
dining-rooms, with an outer wall of glass, often seen in old San
Francisco houses. Fronting this glass wall were tiers of plants, some
mounted on rough boxes, some on tables. They were of many sizes and
sorts, but the feathery foliage of the maidenhair was most in evidence.
It seemed to be growing in every kind of receptacle, from the ordinary
flower-pot to a tomato-can on one side and a huge kerosene-oil tin on
the other. Near the dining-table was a chair, and the table itself was
littered with brown paper, cut neatly into circular pieces about three
inches in diameter.

Viola moved forward to close the doors, but was arrested by her visitor.

"Why, you've a regular conservatory in there. What beautiful plants!"

She held the door open and let him look in, though apparently not quite
at her ease.

"Yes," she said; "I have great luck with ferns. Some people have, you
know. It's just because we take more care of them than others."

"My sister-in-law would die of envy if she could see those," said
Gault, indicating the maidenhairs; "she's always buying that sort of
thing, and they're always dying."

Viola looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. The color deepened in
her cheeks, and then she looked away and began to play with the lock of
the door.

"She must buy a great many," she said, with a questioning inflection.

"Cart-loads," said he, absently, wondering what had caused her
augmented color, and watching her as he would always now watch her
whenever there was the slightest deviation from her normal manner.

"And I suppose," she said, "she spends a great deal on them?"

"I suppose so," he answered, "judging by the number that I've seen
wither in their prime and disappear, and new ones take their places the
next day."

Viola pressed the lock in and shot it out.

"Are any of them dead just now?" she asked, in rather a small voice.

"Dozens, probably. It seems to me some of them are always dead, only
they're considerate enough not to all die at the same time."

There was a moment's pause. Gault's gaze was diverted from her face to
the high, old-fashioned room, with its marble mantel carved in fruits
and flowers and its bare sideboard. Then Viola said:

"Your sister-in-law always gets her plants from the large florists,
doesn't she? Some one on Kearney or Sutter Street?"

"I dare say she does; but I'm sure I don't know. I can't control my
curiosity any further--what were you going to do with those round bits
of paper you were cutting when I came in?"

She looked at him quickly, a look of sharp, dubious inquiry; then, as
she met the amused curiosity of his glance, she gave a little laugh and
said:

"I was going to make jam."

"But you don't make jam out of paper?"

"No; those are for the tops of the glasses. I soak them in brandy and
put them on, and they preserve it."

He looked at the papers, then back at her. As their eyes met the
delight each felt in the other's presence found expression in a
simultaneous burst of laughter. For a moment they stood facing each
other, laughing in foolish but happy lightness of heart.

"Now, you know," he said, "I'm a credulous person, but isn't that going
too far? Why, if you used all those things you'd have jam enough to
feed the American army."

Her laughter died, and looking slightly confused, she put out her hand,
seized the other door, and drew them together with a bang.

"There!" she said, dropping the catch; "you can't see any more. You're
too curious, in the first place, and you don't believe me, which is
worse."

"I've found out the skeleton in the closet," he said, as they walked
back into the front room. "It's the colonel's passion for jam. I've
heard of a passion for pie running in families, but jam's something
new."

The bare austerity of this bleak apartment seemed to cast a sudden
chill over their high spirits. Gault, sitting in the colonel's chair,
reverted in thought to the object of his visit, and wondered how he
could turn the conversation in the direction he had intended. His
preoccupation, and the sense of shame he felt at the mean part he
contemplated playing, made him respond to her conversational attempts
with dry shortness. She grew constrained and embarrassed, and finally,
in a desperate attempt to arrest a total silence, said:

"Don't you like my new cushion? You've never noticed it!"

The visitor's slow glance moved in the direction indicated, and rested
on a cretonne cushion in one of the wicker chairs.

"It's a perfect beauty," he said, with as much enthusiasm as he
thought the occasion required.

"I'm glad you think it's pretty," she answered, evidently much pleased.
"I ought not to have bought it, I suppose, but I do love pretty things."

"Why oughtn't you to have bought it? What is the matter with it?"

"Nothing; I mean it was an extravagance. I sometimes think how
perfectly delightful it would be to be able to go into stores and buy
furniture and ornaments and curtains just whenever you wanted."

This remark dispelled Gault's preoccupation. He remained in the same
position and continued staring at the cushion, but his glance had
changed from its absent absorption to a fixed and listening intentness.

Viola saw that she had interested him, and continued with happy
volubility:

"Sometimes, when I have nothing to do and am here alone, I think how I
would furnish this room if I could buy anything I saw, and could just
say to some outside person, the way princesses do, 'I have bought so
much; please pay the bill.' I've done it in white and gold, and in
crimson with black wood, teak or ebony, very plain and heavy; and also
in striped cretonnes with bunches of flowers, and little chairs and
sofas with spindle legs. There's a great deal of satisfaction in it.
It's almost as good as having it really happen."

"It sounds very amusing," said Gault, as she paused; "but then, castles
in the air," he added, turning to look at her, "are never quite the
same as the real thing."

"If you can't get the real thing, you take the castles in the air," she
answered, smiling.

"Tell me some more of yours."

"Oh, they're just silly dreams, and mercenary ones, too. My castles
are all built on a foundation of money. It's a dreadful thing to have
to acknowledge, but I'm afraid I am mercenary. And it's such a horrid
fault to have."

"But isn't it rather a useful one?" he could not forbear asking.

"Not so far. Once I had my palm read by a palmist, and he told me I was
going to be very prosperous--to have great riches. That's one of my
best castles in the air. I'm all the time wondering about it, and where
my great riches are coming from."

She spread both hands, palms up, on the table, and studied them as if
trying to elicit further secrets from their delicately lined surfaces.

"Great riches!" she repeated. "Where could a person suddenly find great
riches? The mining booms are over, and in California people don't
strike oil-wells in their gardens. I'm afraid it will have to be either
begging, borrowing, or stealing. I wonder which I would succeed best
in."

With the last words she raised her bent head, and her eyes, diminished
in size by her laughter, rested full on his. Their glance was clear,
candid, and innocently mirthful as that of a merry child.

As he stared at her, almost vacantly, the notes of a clock, striking
somewhere in the back of the house, fell with crystalline distinctness
upon the silence.

"One--two--three--four--five," she counted absently, with each number
touching the table with a finger-tip.

Gault rose to his feet, remarking with unfeigned surprise on the
lateness of the hour. She looked suddenly confused and annoyed at the
realization of her unintentional rudeness, and asked him if he would
not remain till her father's return. But he pleaded an engagement
he had made to attend the tea given that afternoon by Mrs. Jerry
McCormick, and, with a hand pressure and the conventional words of
farewell, brought his visit to a close.

Outside, he turned to the right and walked slowly forward toward
where the rumble of traffic indicated one of the large and populous
thoroughfares of the district. Before him, at the end of the street's
long vista, the sunset glowed pink, barred by a delicate scoring of
telegraph-wires. Even as he looked it deepened and burned higher and
higher up the sky, while at the far end of the vista it concentrated
into a core of brightness, as though a conflagration were in progress
there.

What was he to think? He felt his mind confused and full of warring
images. He had been almost afraid of what she might say--she who was to
him the ideal of all that was gentlest and truest and most maidenly.
And yet what had she said to disturb or annoy him? It was only the
foolish prattle of a girl who is happy and in high spirits. And even as
he made these assurances to himself, sentences from the past interview
surged up to the surface of his mind: "I'm afraid I'm mercenary, and
it's such a horrid fault to have." "Where are my riches coming from? It
will have to be either begging, borrowing, or stealing."

Her mother had been an actress--one of the stars of San Francisco's
hectic youth. Dissimulation might be instinctive with a woman of Viola
Reed's heredity. It was the whole art of acting; it was in her blood.
He thought of all he had ever heard of her mother, of her few years
of fame and glory, so splendidly ended by her marriage to the bonanza
millionaire. It had been a wonderful, glittering life, quenched in an
early death. He had never heard anything against her character, but she
had been an actress, the essence of whose art is the capacity to both
conceal and assume emotion. And her daughter, in personal appearance at
least, resembled her. He had heard that from the colonel himself.

A feeling of weariness and disillusion took possession of him, and in
the sickness of heart that it brought he thought suddenly of Letitia.
She was the one woman he knew that he could always rely on to be true
and steadfast and genuine. Why had he not loved her--a woman a man
could trust forever, and handsome enough to be the wife of a king?
There would be no doubts nor difficulties in a life with her; it would
be all kindness and cheer and sympathy. And even as he thus reflected,
he knew that love for Letitia was as far from him as was indifference
to the woman whom he mistrusted.

At the very hour that Gault was walking moodily across town from South
Park, Letitia, the object of his thoughts, was rolling along the
asphalted streets of the Western Addition in Mrs. Mortimer Gault's
coupé. Her sister was with her, and both ladies were dressed with a
rustling splendor which betokened festal doings. For they, too, were
en route to the McCormick tea. This was, in fact, a large reception
given by Mrs. McCormick to little Prince Dombroski, a gentleman who
had come from Russia to wed a Californian heiress, and was receiving a
helping hand from the McCormicks, who on this particular afternoon had
gathered together all maiden and widowed San Franciscan wealth for his
inspection.

Letitia had dressed herself for the occasion with great care. When
she had appeared at the front door and descended the stairs to the
carriage, she had presented so dazzling a picture that even the
coachman, a well-trained functionary imported from the East, could
hardly forbear staring at her. She was regally clothed in a costume
of bluish purple, with much yellow lace, fur, cream-colored satin,
and glints of gold braiding about the front. There was a purple jewel
at her throat, and a bunch of pale, crape-like orchids, that toned
with the hue of her dress, was fastened on her breast. Clad thus in
the proudest production of a great French modiste, Letitia was really
too handsome to be quite in good taste. But she was used to sumptuous
apparel, and carried it with the air of an actress who knows how to
take the stage.

Maud Gault was somewhat less punctual to-day than her sister. Letitia
sat in the carriage waiting for her, and finally, by the brushing of
silken skirts and an advancing perfume of wood-violet, was apprised
of her sister's approach. The elder woman gave the address to the
coachman and then sprang in.

Hardly had the door closed when she looked at Letitia with a kindling
eye, and said:

"Oh, Tishy, I know the funniest thing!"

Letitia knew that her sister had something of note to impart. Mrs.
Gault's dark cheek was flushed a fine brick-red, her eye was alight.
She was pulling on her gloves as she spoke.

"Do you remember that night, only a few weeks ago, when you asked John
about Colonel Reed's daughter?"

"Yes."

"And do you remember that he said he'd never seen her?"

"No, he didn't say that," corrected Letitia; "he said he'd heard of
her."

"And what else?" asked the other, stopping in her glove-pulling to fix
Letitia with a keen eye.

"I don't think he said anything else. I don't remember anything."

"But he certainly led us to believe that he didn't know her. Didn't he,
now?"

Letitia paled slightly. Her eyes, looking frankly troubled, were
fastened on her sister.

"Yes--I think so. Why?"

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Gault, bridling with the consciousness of
her important announcement, "he knows her well. He goes there all the
time. He's having a regular affair with her. Did you ever know anything
to beat men?"

"How do you know?" said Letitia, looking down and picking at the gold
arabesques on her dress.

"Mortimer told me last night. He made me swear I wouldn't tell a living
soul. You must remember that, by the way, or I'll get into trouble.
Mortimer saw Colonel Reed in the office the other day, and that
red-haired clerk, the one John took in because his mother was crazy or
consumptive or something, told Mortimer Colonel Reed came there often,
and that John went out to see him at his home somewhere near South
Park. Doesn't that beat the band? John going calling in South Park on
Colonel Reed's daughter, and then pretending to us that he doesn't know
her! If John knew the man had said anything about it, he'd kick him
down all the stairs in the building, if they reached from here to the
ferry."

Letitia was silent. She thought of the conversation on Sunday, and the
woman who had been the heroine of the novel. All the sunshine seemed to
go out of the afternoon, and the innocent joy she had taken in putting
on her beautiful clothes suddenly shriveled up and vanished.

"He might go out there and see Colonel Reed's daughter and not tell us
about it," she said, "and yet not--not be exactly in love with her."

"Dear me, Letitia," said her sister, pettishly, "what a dunce you are!
Do you suppose John's going to drag himself over to South Park to see
Colonel Reed's daughter because he's taken a philanthropic interest in
her father? One would think you'd been raised in Oshkosh or Milpitas,
to hear the things you sometimes say. But that's not all. This morning
I was in the Woman's Exchange, and who should be there but old Biddy
McCormick herself. I can't endure her, you know, especially since she's
got this little prince-creature up her sleeve; but I'm always polite to
her because of Tod and you--and things generally. You never can tell
what may happen. And I heard her say, 'Not that jam; I always buy the
same kind--Miss Viola Reed's.' So I up and said, as innocent as Mary's
little lamb, 'Do tell me, Mrs. McCormick, what jam that is you're
buying. Everything you have is always so delicious.' And she said,
'It's some that's made by a woman named Reed, who lives across town
somewhere.' Then, when she'd gone, I corralled the girl, and she told
me it was made by a Miss Viola Reed, who lives--"

Mrs. Gault opened her jeweled card-case and produced a slip of paper
with an address written on it. She handed this to Letitia, and said
with an air of triumph:

"That's where she lives. Now you'll have to admit, Miss Letitia Mason,
that there are no flies on your little sister!"

Letitia looked at the address and gave it back.

"No," said her sister; "you keep it. That's my little scheme. You're to
go there now--this afternoon--and order jam. Do you see?"

"But I don't want any jam, and you never eat it."

"Good gracious, Tishy, how awfully stupid you are to-day! What a
fortunate thing it is that you and Mortimer have got me to take care of
you! Of course you don't want jam. I never heard of any civilized being
who did. But I suppose you'll admit that you want to see this girl?"

"I don't think I do," said Letitia. "I don't see why I should."

"Well, I do," said Mrs. Gault, with asperity. "Don't you take an
interest in John? Don't you want to see if he's fallen into the
clutches of an adventuress?"

"She doesn't sound at all like an adventuress, Maud. I never heard of
an adventuress making jam for her living."

"Jam for her living! Bosh! Can't you imagine how she tells that to
John, and shows him the glasses in the corner cupboard, and lets him
find her stirring things in a big pot on the kitchen stove? Oh, she's
no fool, my dear! Will you go and see her?"

"I'd rather not."

"Very well, then; if you care so little for John, you needn't go. I'll
do it myself, and I can tell you, I'll size her up."

Letitia looked uneasy. She knew nothing of Miss Reed except that she
was poor and pretty. But she did not like the thought of subjecting
even an unknown female to Mrs. Gault's mercies, when her interest was
so evidently hostile and her curiosity so poignant.

"If you think somebody must go, then I will," she said pacifically. "I
don't see the use of it, but I can go better than you."

"All right," said Mrs. Gault, immediately placated. "You'd better go
now. It's always best to do a thing when you have the opportunity."

"No," said Letitia; "I don't think I'll do that."

"Why not? Is it possible you're so crazy to see that miserable little
prince that I could put in my hat-box?"

"I don't care about him," answered the girl, with unmoved placidity.
"I don't like to go--to go this way." She made an explanatory gesture
toward her dress.

Mrs. Gault looked at her uncomprehendingly.

"Why? What's wrong about your clothes?"

It was painful, but Letitia had to explain:

"If she's so poor as all that--and everybody says so--I don't think
it's--it's--quite nice, some way or other, for me to go in this dress."
Her voice took on a sudden tone of decision. "I won't do it, anyway."

Her sister knew the tone, and knew that there was no use in combating
the mood it indicated.

"You have the queerest notions," she said, with a resigned sigh; "but
do as you like. It's all the same, if you do go to-morrow. Only you
must promise that you won't back out."

Letitia promised.

On the afternoon of the next day she stood before her glass and
critically eyed her reflection. She had put on a plain tailor-made
suit, which fitted her heavily molded figure with unwrinkled
smoothness. A brown turban crowned her reddish hair, and the exquisite
pallor of her skin was obscured by a thin veil. Letitia did not approve
of herself in this modest garb. She accepted the dictum that "beauty
should go beautifully." But for the mission upon which she was bound
she had selected her attire with an eye to its fitness and propriety.

It was a gray afternoon, with a breath of fog in the air. Already the
city was beginning to show signs of the summer exodus, and Letitia
was glad that in her journey across town she met no acquaintances and
attracted no more attention than that frankly candid stare which is
male California's passing tribute to beauty.

Though she had been born in South Park, she knew nothing of this side
of the city, and found herself as much a stranger as its inhabitants
would have been had they been transported to the aristocratic heart of
the Western Addition. Finally, however, after some questioning of small
boys and much retracing of steps, she found the house, and walked up
the path with the black-and-white flagging.

Letitia was one to whom the word "shyness" has no meaning. She
possessed her full share of the Westerner's placid self-approval, and
with it that careless curiosity which makes an incursion into new
surroundings interesting. Yet, as she stood waiting for the door to
open, she experienced a sensation of nervousness quite new to her. Her
heart had ached more in the last twenty-four hours than it had since
her mother's death, years before. If Viola Reed was an adventuress
or if she was a saint, the situation was equally painful to this
splendid-looking creature, who, for all her regal air and stately
immobility of demeanor, was only a woman of a simple, almost primitive
type.

The door was opened by Viola, in her blue gingham dress and her
apron. At the sight of her visitor she looked startled almost into
speechlessness. Letitia announced the fact that she had come on
business, and an invitation to enter brought her sweeping into the
little hall and the drawing-room beyond.

Here the two girls looked at each other for one of those swift
exploring moments in which women seem to take in every detail of dress,
every peculiarity of feature and revealing change of expression, that a
rival has to show. Letitia, with all her apparent heaviness, had keen
perceptions. With a sinking at her heart she saw the beauty of the gray
eyes fastened shyly upon her, and realized what must be the power of
the delicate charm, so far removed in its soft, dependent femininity
from her own. She saw that this girl had a distinguishing refinement
she could never boast, and that it was strong enough to triumph over
such poverty-stricken surroundings as, in all her experience, she had
never before encountered. Her quick eye took in the gaunt emptiness
of the room as John Gault's could not have done in a week's arduous
examination. She saw the split and ragged shades in the windows, the
ribs of twine in the old carpet, the rents in the colonel's chair.

Viola, for her part, saw one of the handsomest and most imposing
young women she had ever gazed upon. The very way Letitia rustled when
she moved, and exhaled a faint perfume with every movement, seemed to
breathe an atmosphere of fashion and elegance. She had never seen her
before, and had no idea who she was. Letitia soon put an end to this
condition of ignorance.

"My name is Mason," she said judicially--"Letitia Mason. I am the
sister of Mrs. Mortimer Gault."

At this announcement an instantaneous change took place in Viola. For a
second she looked alarmed, then her face stiffened into lines of pride
and anger. The eyes that had been so full of a naïve admiration were
charged, as by magic, with a look of cold antagonism. Letitia felt her
own breath quicken as she realized how much the name of Gault must mean
to this girl.

Viola attempted no answer to the introduction, and Miss Mason hastily
went on:

"My sister heard that you made jam--very good jam. We don't like what
we get in the stores, so we thought we would try yours."

Viola had now found her voice,--a very low and cold one,--and answered:

"You can get it at the Woman's Exchange. I sell it there all the time."

"Yes, I know that," said Letitia; "but we thought it would be better
to buy it straight from you; that--perhaps--it--perhaps it would save
time and trouble."

"I don't see how it could do that. This part of town is a long distance
out of everybody's way."

"Yes, of course it is," the other agreed eagerly; then, with a sudden
happy inspiration, "but I thought you might have a larger variety
here--that you might have a good many different kinds on hand. I don't
want all the same sort."

Viola rose and went to the door that led to the dining-room. Her
resentment was not more obvious than her embarrassment. There was
something tremulous in the expression of her face that gave Letitia a
wretched feeling that only pride enabled her to keep back her tears.

"I have just the same here that I have at the Exchange," she said,
opening the doors.

The visitor followed her. In the gray of the afternoon the long room,
with its tiers of plants and its bare sideboard and mantelpiece,
looked even colder and drearier than the drawing-room. Viola opened a
cupboard and indicated the lines of glass jars standing on the shelves.
She tried to be businesslike, and told their contents and prices, but
her voice betrayed her. Letitia, listening to her and staring at the
Chinese cracker-jar that was the sole adornment of the sideboard,
suddenly felt sick with disgust at herself for intruding, at her
sister, at John Gault.

As Viola's voice went on,--"These are apricots; they're fifty cents.
Those on that shelf are strawberry and raspberry; they are only
thirty,"--Letitia's shame and indignation worked up to a climax and a
resultant resolution.

She took up one of the glasses and, looking at the legend written in
neat script on the paper top, said:

"I think I ought to tell you how I happened to come here. It's really
a secret and you mustn't tell. What I said at first was not quite the
case. No one at our house knows anything about this but me. I'm going
to buy these preserves for my brother-in-law and tell him I made them.
I'm going to fool him. Do you understand? It's just a little joke."

Letitia delivered herself of this amazing effort at invention with
admirable composure, for it was the first elaborate and important
falsehood she had ever told in her life. Viola, turning from her
contemplation of the shelves, looked at her, relieved but not quite
comprehending.

"So I hunted you up myself at the Exchange," continued Letitia,
plunging deeper into the slough of deception, but knowing now that she
had gone too far to compromise with truth, "and came here myself this
way so as to keep it all dark."

Viola's face had cleared with each word. As the other ended, her lips
parted in the smile that John Gault found at once so irresistible and
so enigmatic. Letitia found nothing enigmatic in it. She only thought,
with a piercing dart of pain, "She is still prettier when she smiles."

"It's very amusing," said Viola; "but why do you want to fool him?"

Letitia was even ready for this, so expert does the first lie make us
in perpetrating the second.

"He says I am useless and can't do anything. I am going to show him
that I can make jam."

Viola was rather shocked, but relief and amusement combined to make her
light-hearted, and this time she laughed.

"But the writing," she said. "Won't he see by that that it's not yours?
There's writing on every glass."

"Oh, that will be all right. I'll have the Chinaman put it out in a
dish. But you'll promise not to give me away?"

"Oh, I never will," said Viola. "In fact," she continued naïvely, "I'd
rather have it that way myself. You see, many people--all people, that
is--don't know that I do this."

She stopped and looked tentatively at Letitia, as if curious to see how
she was taking these revelations.

"Do what?" asked Letitia, not understanding.

"Make the jam. Not that I mind much. But it's a little sort of fancy of
my father's. Sometimes older people have those ideas, and it's best to
humor them, I think; don't you?"

"Oh, much the best," assented the other, turning aside and looking at
the plants. "It's best to humor everybody; it's so much easier to get
on. What beautiful ferns!"

"Yes; I am quite proud of them. But this is a splendid window for
ferns."

"Did you raise these yourself? I never saw such plants out of a
greenhouse."

Viola was now eagerly interested.

"Yes, I grew them all--some of them from a few roots like black
threads. I sell these, too. There is a man at one of the Kearney Street
florists' who used to live near here and knew us, and he buys them from
me. At Christmas I do quite well."

Letitia examined the ferns.

"I wonder if you would let me buy one or two of them," she said. "We
can't get such plants at our florist's, and I am fonder of them than of
any other kind of fern."

Viola agreed with a blush of pleasure, and after some consultation
four ferns were selected. The visitor was amazed at their cheapness,
but concealed her astonishment. Then she bought three dozen jars of
the jam. She did not pay for them, but said that on the following day
she would send the money by a messenger, who would also bring away the
purchases.

Standing in the doorway, about to leave, she said:

"I'm glad to have seen you. It's so interesting for a person like me,
who can't do anything, to meet some one who is clever and of use in the
world. Good-by!" She held out her hand, and Viola, surprised, put hers
into it. "Don't forget to keep our secret. It makes a person feel like
a conspirator, doesn't it? I think, too, Colonel Reed's quite right to
want to be reticent about business matters. So you and I'll keep dark
about this little transaction of ours."

This was the most diplomatic sentence Letitia had ever given vent to in
her life.

She walked slowly away from the house, her eyes downcast in thought.
The superb health she had inherited from an untainted peasant ancestry
made her imagination dull, and lightened such sufferings as she had
encountered in her easy, care-free life. Even now she experienced none
of those fierce pangs that jealousy and disappointed love provoke in
the women of a more sophisticated stock. She was made on that large,
calm plan on which an all-wise nature creates the maternal woman--she
whose destiny it is to bear strong children to a stalwart sire. But
this afternoon, for the first time in her life, she knew what it was to
feel her heart lying heavy in her breast like a thing of stone.

It was late when she reached home. Mrs. Gault was to give a dinner that
evening, and as Letitia passed through the hall she caught a glimpse of
her sister, in a loose creation of pink silk and lace, which swelled
out behind her like a sail, hurrying round the bedecked dining-table,
followed by two meek and attentive Chinamen. Knowing the indignation of
Maud should she be late, she ran to her room and made her toilet with
the utmost speed.

She was just completing this important rite, and, seated at her
dressing-table under a blaze of electric light, was selecting an aigret
for her hair, when the door opened and Mrs. Gault entered.

She had discarded her ebullient draperies of pink silk, and was
sheathed tightly in her favorite yellow, from which the olive skin of
her bared neck emerged in polished smoothness. As she came forward she
had one hand full of diamond brooches, which she pinned with apparent
carelessness round the edge of the low bodice.

"Well, Tishy," she said, sitting down by the dressing-table, "what
happened?"

Letitia looked at the array of silver that covered the table. Some
jewels lay scattered among it, and the aigrets from which she had been
about to choose the one she should wear. She selected a black one, and
turned it round, looking at it.

"Nothing happened," she answered. "I saw her, and bought the jam and
some plants. She raises plants, too."

"Is she really so pretty?"

"Yes, very--I think some people might say beautiful."

Mrs. Gault's face fell.

"She didn't say anything about John, I suppose?"

"Of course not."

"Did it seem to you that there was anything adventuressy or bad about
her?"

Letitia looked at her sister--a sidelong look, which made Mrs. Gault
feel rather uncomfortable.

"I never saw any one in my life that looked to me less so," she
answered.

"Dear me!" ejaculated Mrs. Gault, in a dismayed tone. "You don't say
so! Tishy, for goodness' sake, look where you're putting that aigret!
You look like Pocahontas, and Tod McCormick's coming to dinner."

Letitia arranged the aigret at a more satisfactory angle, her large
white arms, shining like marble through the transparent tissue of her
sleeves, shielding her face.

"Then," said Mrs. Gault, returning to the more important subject,
"there really may be a chance of his marrying her."

"I should think a very good one," answered Letitia, in a low voice.

"Good heavens!" breathed her sister, in the undertone of utter horror,
"how awful men are! What makes you think he may intend marrying her?"

"Because," said Letitia, dropping her arms and turning on her sister
with her mouth trembling and her breast agitated with sudden emotion,
"no man who was any sort of a man could mean anything else."

Maud Gault was amazed by the girl's unexpected emotion. She pushed back
her chair, and staring at Letitia, said vaguely:

"Why? I don't understand."

"Even if he didn't care, even if he didn't love her, he'd marry her.
Oh, Maud, she's so helpless and so poor!"

And Letitia burst into a sudden storm of tears.

For a moment her sister sat still, looking at her in blank amazement.
Then she felt a pang of feminine sympathy. So Letitia did care for him.
Poor Tishy!

"There, don't cry!" she said, patting her shoulder. "You never can tell
about these things. John may not care a button for this girl, or have
the least intention of marrying her. You're always seeing the dark side
of things."

But her form of consolation was not well chosen. Letitia threw off the
hand and raised her disfigured face.

"John may be selfish and mean and all that, and I've no doubt he is;
but he's not mean enough, he's not contemptible enough, to do what you
think he's doing. I'll not believe that of him. I'd despise him if I
thought so; I'd hate him!"

Her tears burst forth afresh, and she hid her face in her hands.

Mrs. Gault was nonplussed. She looked at her sister's shaken shoulders
and bowed head with an uncomprehending but pitying eye. Then, as
Letitia's sobs diminished, she said gloomily:

"How much jam did you buy?"

"Three dozen glasses," came the muffled answer.

"Good gracious!"--raising her eyes toward the ceiling in an access of
horror. "What did you get so much for? Two or three would have done.
We'll not get through that by Christmas." There was no answer made to
this, and after a moment or two of silence Mrs. Gault recommenced, in
a brisk and unemotional tone:

"I don't understand you at all, Tishy; but I do know that if you don't
stop crying you'll look a perfect fright at dinner, and everybody will
be wondering what's the matter with you."

This appeal to her pride had a good effect upon Letitia. She struggled
with her tears and finally subdued them. But her flushed and swollen
countenance needed much attention, and when Mrs. Gault left the room
she carried with her a picture of her sister sitting before the mirror
solicitously dabbing at her eyelids with a powder-puff.

When she appeared all traces of her previous distress seemed
successfully obliterated. It remained for the eye of love to penetrate
the restorative processes with which she had doctored her telltale
countenance.

Near the end of dinner Tod McCormick, who sat beside her, leaned toward
her and said, in the low tone of long-established friendship:

"What's the matter, Tishy? You look sort of bunged up."

Letitia said nothing was the matter--why?

The small, red-rimmed eyes of Tod passed over her face, lingering
with the solicitude of affection upon the delicately pink eyelids and
nostrils.

"You look as if you'd been crying," he said.

"Oh, what a silly idea!" answered Letitia, with a laugh that would have
been quite successful on the stage, but could not deceive the enamoured
Tod; "I have a cold."

"It's not that you don't look as pretty as usual. No matter what you
did, you'd always be out o' sight. But it just gives me the willies to
think of your being down on your luck. Honest--I can't stand it."

Letitia looked away, more to avert her face from his searching gaze
than from embarrassment.

"Everybody gets blue now and then," she said carelessly.

"But you oughtn't to. I'm the one that ought to get blue--black and
blue."

"I guess we all do, more or less."

"If you'd just ease up on the way you keep giving me the marble heart,"
continued Tod, dropping his voice to the key of tenderness, "I'd see to
it that there'd never be a thing to make you blue. Everything would go
your way. I'd see to it."

Letitia looked at him with a little vexed frown.

"Dear me, Tod!" she said crossly, "you're not going to propose to me
here at dinner, are you, with everybody listening, too?"

Tod looked round rather guiltily. Letitia had exaggerated. The only
person who appeared to be noticing them was Mrs. Mortimer Gault, and
her glance immediately slipped away from his to give the signal for
withdrawal to a lady at the other end of the table.




IV


The colonel's visits now followed John Gault's with businesslike
regularity. One week from the afternoon when the younger man had paid
his last call, Colonel Reed had made his customary appearance and
proffered his customary request.

With each succeeding gift of money his spirits seemed to rise, his
gracious bonhomie to become more pronounced. Upon this occasion he
had said cheerfully, as he dropped the pieces of gold into his old
chamois-skin purse:

"It's these unconscionable tradespeople that eat up our resources! Why
can't a provident government arrange things so that we don't have to
pay butchers and bakers and milkmen? Life would be so much better worth
while if we could spend our money on clothes and books and entertaining
our friends than in paying bills. Now, this"--jingling the gold in the
purse--"goes to a son of Belial who sells us groceries on tick."

"Very kind of him, I should say," said the other. "Aren't you rather
lucky to have such good credit?"

"Well, that's what I think," said the colonel, throwing back his head
and laughing like an old prince in whom the joy of life and the desire
of the eyes still burned strong; "but Viola thinks credit is a trap set
by the king of all the devils."

"Women are apt to be cautious about that sort of thing."

"I don't know about all women, but Viola is. She is more afraid of
credit than she is of smallpox. But I say to her: 'My dear, look where
we would have been without it! And as long as these good, charitable
souls will give us food and drink for nothing, for goodness' sake let
them do it. Don't let's try and suppress such a worthy impulse.' Not,
of course," said the colonel, growing suddenly grave and squaring his
shoulders, "that we don't intend to pay them. We always do. Sometimes,
it is true, we're rather slow about it; but eventually things are
squared off to everybody's satisfaction. How else could we have the
credit?"

He asked this question with an air of triumph that, to the listener,
seemed to have something in it of conscious cunning. Gault answered
with a commonplace about the advantage of inspiring so great a trust in
the vulgar mind. The colonel was openly gratified.

"Oh," he said, as he moved toward the door, "there's something in the
name of Ramsay Reed yet. But not enough," he added, laughing with a
mischievous appreciation of the humor of his misfortunes, "to let a
grocery bill run on indefinitely. There was a day when my name was good
for any length of time--but that was thirty years ago."

Then he left, smiling and happy, and on the way home bought a pot of
pâté de foie gras, a bottle of claret, and a handkerchief with an
embroidered edge for Viola. At the grocery store on the corner of the
street where he lived he stopped and paid twenty dollars on his bill,
and then fared up the street with rapid strides, all agog with pleasure
at the thought of Viola's delight in his present, and the jolly little
supper they would have on the end of the kitchen table.

The man who had made these innocent pleasures possible was far from
enjoying those sensations of gratification said to be experienced by a
cheerful giver.

He had begun to know very dark hours. His first great love, come
tardily and reluctantly, at an age when the heart is almost closed to
soft influences and the mind is hardened with much worldly contact,
had come poisoned with torturing suspicions, with shame for his own
weakness, with fears of the truth.

Had he been a stronger man he would have torn up by the roots this
passion for a woman he dared not trust, have gone away and tried to
forget. But the lifelong habit of self-indulgence was too powerful
to be broken. He did not want to try and live without the charm and
torment of Viola's presence. Had he been weaker he would have yielded
to the spell, never dared to question, and gone on blindly into the
purgatory of those who love and doubt. All his life he had retained an
ideal of womanhood--a creature aloof from the coarseness of worldly
ambition and vulgar greed. Now he found himself bound to one the breath
of whose life seemed to be tainted with duplicity and sordid intrigue.

At times his state of uncertainty became intolerable. Then he resolved
to go to her, take her hands in his, and looking into her eyes, ask
for the truth. But the world's lessons of a conventional reserve,
a well-bred reticence, asserted their claims, and he found himself
contemplating, with ironical bitterness, this picture of his own
simplicity. If they were deceiving him, how they would laugh--laugh
together--at the folly of the pigeon they were plucking so cleverly! A
life's experience, caution, cynicism, had gone down into dust before a
girl's gray eyes. Could she be false and those eyes look into his so
frankly and honestly? Could those lips, that folded on each other in
curves so full of innocence and truth, be ready with words of hypocrisy
and deceit? When he was with her such thoughts seemed madness; when he
was away from her his belief seemed a miserable infatuation.

After the colonel's last appearance he again determined to try and see
her alone. This, he discovered, was not as easy of accomplishment as it
had been on his first attempt. Arriving at the house at four o'clock,
he rang repeatedly, but was not able to gain admittance. At last a
small boy, who had been studying him through the bars of the gate,
volunteered the information that the lady was out.

Gault turned away, and coming down the flagged walk, asked the child if
he knew what direction she had taken.

"I dunno that," said the boy, "but she went out with her basket, and
when she goes with her basket she generally stays a long while."

Gault rewarded him for his information with a piece of money, and
turned down the street toward the other side of town.

It was a windy afternoon. The trades were just beginning, and their
clear, chill sweep had already borne away some of the evil odors which
hung about the old portion of the city. Gault could feel the touch of
fog in their buoyant breath, and knew that long tongues of it like
white wool were stealing in through the Golden Gate. The city was
putting on its summer aspect--a gray glare, softened by the mingling of
dust and haze that rode the breezes. Bits of paper, rags, and straws
were collected at corners in little whirling heaps. Presently the
mightier winds would come, winging their way across miles of heaving
seas to rush down the street in a mad carouse, carrying before them the
dirt and refuse and odors and uncleanness which mark the dwelling of
man.

He had walked some distance when, rounding a corner, a sharp gust
seized him. In its fierce exultation it threw a whirlwind of dust into
his eyes, so that, for a moment, he did not see that she was coming
toward him. Then he caught a glimpse of the approaching figure and
recognized it. She did not see him, but was engaged in her customary
amusement of looking into the gardens. There was an air of unmistakable
alertness and gaiety about her. Her hand tapped the tops of the
fence-rails as she came, and she looked at the floral display behind
them with happy eyes. Her scanty black skirt was sometimes whirled
round her feet, showing her small ankles and narrow russet shoes. Once
she had to put up her hand to her hat,--a white sailor bound with a
dark ribbon,--and the frolicsome wind swept all the loosened ends of
her hair forward and lashed her skirts out on either side. She had a
basket on one arm, and holding this firmly, leaned back almost on the
wind, laughing to herself.

At the same moment she caught sight of him. The wind dropped suddenly,
as if conscious that she should not be presented in such boisterous
guise to a lover's eye, and her figure seemed to fall back into lines
of decorous demureness; only the color and laughter of her recent
buffeting still remained in her face.

"Is it you?" she cried. "Did you see me in the wind? Isn't it fun?"

They met, and he took her hand. She was all blown about, but fresh
as a flower that has shaken off the dew. The contrast between them,
between what might be called their different ranks in society, was much
more clearly marked in the open light of the street than in the ragged
homeliness of her own parlor.

While he was essentially the man of luxurious environment and assured
position, she presented the appearance of a working-girl. Even the
delicacy and refinement of her face could not counteract the suggestion
of her dress. Beauty when unadorned may adorn the most, but it cannot
give to ill-made old clothes the effect of garments made by a French
modiste. John Gault was used to women who wore this kind of clothes--so
used, in fact, that he hardly knew what made Viola appear so different
from the other girls of his acquaintance. The contrast in their looks
seemed to mark more clearly the contrast in their positions, seemed to
purposely accentuate that wide gulf set between them.

Gault took her basket from her and dropped into place at her side. The
high rows of houses protected them from the wind, and only as they
crossed the open spaces at the intersection of streets did it catch
them, and, for a moment, play boisterously with them.

The girl seemed in excellent spirits. He had noticed this with every
recurring visit. Looking back upon her as she was when he had first
known her, care-worn, pale, and quiet, she seemed now like a different
person. Her glance sparkled with animation, her voice was full of
that thrilling quality which some women's voices acquire in moments
of happiness. She was a hundred times more fatally alluring than she
had been in the beginning. He knew now that while he was with her his
reason would always be in abeyance to his heart.

"You seem to be in very good spirits," he said to her, not without a
feeling of personal grievance that some cause of which he was ignorant
should add so to her lightness of heart.

"I am," she answered. "I'm in very good spirits. I'm quite happy. It's
something lovely to feel so gay in your heart, isn't it?"

"I don't know; maybe I've never felt so."

"Oh, what nonsense!" she cried, looking at him reproachfully. "You, who
have always had just what you wanted! I used to be afraid of you at
first. It seemed rather awful to know anybody who'd always had things
go exactly their way."

He ignored the remark and said:

"What's making you happy? Tell it to me, and then perhaps I'll get a
little reflection of it."

"I don't know that it's any one especial thing. Happiness comes when
lots of little things fit nicely together. I never had one big thing in
a lump to make me happy. I tell you what's doing a good deal toward it.
Father and I are"--she made an instant's pause and then said--"doing so
much better; financially, I mean. It's such a relief! You don't know."

He turned and looked at her and met her eyes. They looked rather
abashed, and then fell away from the scrutiny of his.

"You don't think it queer of me to tell you that, do you?" she asked.
"I tell you a good many things I wouldn't say to other people."

"I am proud that you should have such confidence in me."

"Well," she continued, with a quick sigh of relief, "we've been
lately--that is, just about when we first knew you, and before
that--really quite badly off. And my father being so sanguine, and
having once been so differently situated, it's very hard on him--very
hard."

She paused, and he felt that she was looking at him for confirmation of
her remark.

"Very; I quite understand," he answered.

"And, really, it was dreadful. It's trying for old people--so much
anxiety. And then, just at the very worst, things suddenly brightened.
Just about a month or six weeks ago the luck changed. You must have
been the mascot."

This time he looked at her, but her glance was averted.

"Go on," he said, thinking that his voice sounded strange.

"Because it was after we knew you that things began to get better. I
was angry with my father that first day when he asked you in, because
I didn't want you to see how--how straitened we were. There's a pride
of poverty, you know; well, I suppose I must have a little bit of it.
Everything was at its worst then. But now it's all different. You've
been the mascot."

He again felt her eyes surveying him, but found it impossible to look
at her. In his heart he was afraid of what he might read in her face.

"Don't you like being a mascot?" she queried, in her happy girl's
voice. "You don't look as if you did."

"I'm proud and flattered, probably too much so for speech."

"I'm glad, because that's what you were. There's no getting out of it.
I'll tell you how it happened. My father used to own a great deal of
stock in mines and companies and things, and when everything went down
so fast, he sold almost all of it. But some he kept. He had it put away
in the drawers of his desk up-stairs in his room, and about two months
ago it began to go up, and now it pays dividends and we get them. Isn't
that good luck?"

She was close to him, looking into his face. He turned his head this
time and confronted her with a steady gaze. In the harsh afternoon
light every curve and line of her countenance was revealed. Her eyes
were full of light and joy. His glance met and held them for one
searching moment, then turned away baffled.

"Very good luck. I congratulate you," he said.

"You may well," she answered. "I'd given up expecting good luck ever
any more in this world. I believe in it, and my father's had come
and gone almost before I was born, and mine--mine hasn't come yet, I
suppose."

"Unless you discover some more old stock in the pigeonholes of the
desk."

"Oh, I don't think that's likely. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the
same place."

"What was the stock? Mining stock?"

She seemed in doubt for a moment, then said:

"Yes, I think so--yes, surely, mining stock."

"Do you remember the name of the mine?"

He glanced at her as she walked beside him. She appeared to be
cogitating.

"I don't believe I do," she answered at length. "To tell you the truth,
I don't believe my father mentioned it to me. I'm very stupid about
business. I've never had any necessity to know about it, and so I've
never learned."

"How long had it been lying in the desk?"

"Oh, years and years! Probably twenty. It was a relic of the days when
everything was booming."

"If he's been paying assessments on it all these years, he ought
certainly to be repaid now."

He was scrutinizing her sharply. Her profile was toward him, and at
this remark he saw the color mount into her cheek, and that curious
appearance of immobility come over her face which denotes a sudden,
almost electric stoppage and then concentration of mental activity. She
raised her head and said, without looking at him:

"Assessments are a yearly or semi-yearly payment, aren't they?"

"Yes, or quarterly--according to the way the stock is drawn."

"But isn't there some that is non-assessable? I've surely heard that
expression."

"In other States, but in California--well, possibly there might be."

"I'm sure there must be. This of my father's must have been." She
came quite close to him in her earnestness, and looked at him with an
expression of uneasiness on her face.

"It must have been that kind," she insisted; "probably you never heard
of this mine."

"Probably I never did," he answered grimly.

They walked on for a few moments in silence. There was a visible drop
in her spirits. Stealing a side glance at her, he could see that she
was looking down, evidently in troubled thought. Suddenly she raised
her head and said:

"Well, I don't really know anything about it. Only I do hope one thing,
and that is that it will go on paying."

"Don't bother about that," he said; "it will."

"What makes you think it will?"

He turned on her roughly and said:

"Don't you think it will?"

"I'd like to think so," she answered, abashed by his unusual manner;
"but I've learned that it's foolish to hope. I try not to."

He gave a short, disagreeable laugh and said:

"Oh, not in this case. Hope as much as you like."

"You're very cheering," she answered; "but I don't see how you can be
so sure."

"It seems to me you're very pessimistic--especially for a young woman
who has just found a drawerful of paying stock."

His manner in making this remark was so impregnated with angry
bitterness that Viola, chilled and repelled, made no response. In
silence they walked onward till a turn in the street brought them in
sight of the house.

At the gate she said rather timidly:

"Would you like to come in?"

He had been carrying the basket, and now found the depositing of it in
a place of safety an excuse to enter; for even in his present state of
morose ill humor he could not forego the pleasure of a few more moments
of her society.

In the cold, half-furnished house their footsteps echoed with a
strangely solitary effect. She preceded him into the parlor, and moved
about with the confident tread of the chatelaine, pulling up the
blinds, putting the basket out of sight, and laying aside her hat and
gloves. There were some thin flowered muslin curtains hanging over the
bay-window, and she arranged the folds of these with deft, proprietary
touches, and then stepped back and studied the effect.

After watching her for a moment the visitor said in a tone of restored
amiability:

"Aren't those something new?"

She looked at him with quick, grateful recognition of his change of
mood.

"Yes; do you like them? I changed my mind about a dozen times before I
bought them. Even now I don't know whether I'm entirely satisfied."

"Oh, you ought to be," he said, as he drew near and eyed the curtains
with the air of a connoisseur; "I'm sure you couldn't have chosen
anything prettier."

Viola's spirits rose to the level they had been at when he met her
earlier in the afternoon. Her eyes brightened and her face took on its
most animated expression.

"They're another outward and visible sign of the rise in mining stock,"
she continued. "I'm so glad you noticed them without my having to make
you do so."

"Do you want to know why I did?"

"Because they were pretty, of course."

"Not at all. I was looking at you as you arranged them, and wondering
why a pair of curtains should be so much more interesting than I was."

"What made you think they were?"

"Because you were devoting yourself to them and coldly ignoring me."

"That was because I was a little bit frightened of you. You were so
cross just now, before we came in, that I didn't know what to say to
you."

"I cross? What a calumny! I was in my sweetest humor."

She looked at him mischievously.

"If you call that your sweetest humor, all I can think is that you're
not as clever as you pretend to be."

"I'm afraid I'm not. For example, I'm not clever enough to understand
you--a little girl like you, scarcely half my age."

"Am I really such a sphinx?"

"You are to me."

"I like that," she said, smiling, and gathering up the edge of the
curtain in a frill; "I don't want everybody to see through me. But
you're different."

"How am I different?"

"You're more a friend than other people--more a friend than anybody
else I know. Tell me what you don't understand about me, and I'll
explain it. I won't leave myself a single secret."

Though he was standing close to her, looking down at her, he suddenly
dropped his voice to the key that was the lowest she could hear.

"If I only dared to ask, and you would only tell the truth."

"Dared to ask!" she repeated blankly, alarmed and upset by his singular
change of manner.

"And you would tell the truth," he added, and heard his own voice sound
suddenly husky and shaken. "Tell it to me now!"

"I always do," she stammered.

"No matter what it is," he continued, as if he had not heard her--"no
matter how it may hurt me or injure you."

The color ran over her face and as quickly ebbed away, leaving her
pallid. It might have been the confession of innocence or the confusion
of guilt. She looked nervously from side to side, raised her eyes to
his, and dropped them again.

"There are always a few things a person can't tell," she almost
whispered.

He gave an ugly laugh, and put his arm half round her as if to draw
her to him, then drew back as quickly, and turning away, walked to the
window. Viola did not seem to have noticed the attempted caress. There
was a moment of penetrating silence. He wondered if she could hear his
heart beat.

Then she said:

"Why do you say such strange things? I always tell you the truth."

To his listening ear her voice sounded affectedly naïve. He answered
without moving:

"Of course you do. So do all women since the days of Eve."

"But you don't seem to believe me."

"You mustn't jump at such hasty conclusions."

"Have you heard anything about me that would make you think I was
deceitful?"

"I have never spoken of you to any one except your father."

"I can't understand you at all to-day. You're so changeable and moody,
and sometimes so ill-humored."

"What a dreadful afternoon you've had! I'm sorry." Then, with an abrupt
change of tone: "Who picks up the leaves of the deodar and ties them up
in those neat little bundles?"

"I do--do you believe me?" She spoke with a sharpness he had never
heard her use before.

He broke out into sudden laughter that this time sounded genuine.
Turning from the window, he came toward her and took her hand.

"Are you angry?" he asked. "I don't wonder. Say the most disagreeable
things you can think of, and they won't be more than I deserve."

For the second time this afternoon she beamed over his restoration to
good humor.

"I'm not a very good person to quarrel with," she said, looking at him
with soft, forgiving eyes, "though, as you see, I've got a temper."

He gave her hand a little pressure and relinquished it, taking up his
hat.

"Accept a hundred apologies from me for my rudeness. Good-by."

"You _were_ disagreeable," she admitted, as they went together into
the hall. "You seemed as if you didn't believe half I said to you, and
actually as if our good luck made you angry."

Gault had opened the door, and his face was turned from her.

"Oh, don't think that," he answered, as he stepped out on to the porch;
"whatever gives you happiness adds to mine. Adios, señorita."

The door closed after him, and Viola stood alone in the hall, smiling
to herself. She made as if to watch him through one of the narrow panes
of glass which formed small windows on either side of the portal, then
suddenly drew back and shook her head.

"That would be bad luck," she said, "and I'm too happy to risk bad
luck."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a few days later than this that an opera company of some fame in
southern France was encouraged by a successful Mexican season to run
up to San Francisco. Californians are notoriously fond of music, and
the small opera companies which wander through the West, not daring to
measure their talents with the Eastern stars, generally can count on a
profitable season by the Golden Gate. Bad scenery, absurd costumes, and
indifferent acting do not damp the ardor of the Californian, who will
go anywhere and undergo any small discomfort to hear passable singing.

Mrs. Gault, who went every year or two to New York and found her ideas
there, as she did her hats and dresses, derided the local taste for
hearing unknown prima donnas as Leonora and Gilda. But her husband and
Letitia overruled her in at least this one particular, and when opera
came up from Mexico or across from New Orleans, she always went with
them, and tried to look as bored as her animated features and lively
style would permit.

This particular season, a short one of three weeks given by an Italian
company that had been touring Mexico during the winter, opened with
a performance of "Rigoletto." For the first night Mortimer Gault
procured one of the lower boxes, leaving it to his wife to fill it with
such company as she desired, provided a seat was left for him in the
background, where he could hear and would not have to talk. The party,
which consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Gault, Letitia, John, Tod McCormick,
and his sister Pearl, was late in arriving, and it was not until the
interval between the second and third acts that they found time to
look about the house. Letitia and Pearl were in the front of the box,
the latter on the inner side nearest the audience, with John Gault
sitting behind her in the shadow of the curtain. While Letitia looked
about the house through her lorgnon she could hear the animated chatter
of Pearl, interspersed with comments from Maud Gault and Tod.

"Do you see that woman in the box opposite--the pale one with the piece
of blue velvet twisted in her hair? She came up with the company, and
her husband is a professional gambler in Mexico and makes heaps of
money. You can ask Tod if you don't believe me."

Tod said it was all true, and that she was a "peach," a form of
encomium that, in his vast appreciation, he was fond of applying to
every member of the other sex that came within range of his admiring
eye.

"In the box above, where the two good-looking men are, that little red,
squeezed-looking woman is Lady Jervis, who used to be Tiny Madison ever
so long ago. She went abroad and married Sir Somebody or other Jervis,
and she's out here now with a syndicate."

"What is she doing with a syndicate?" Mrs. Gault asked. "Is she going
on the stage?"

"No; they're buying mines or railroads or something. Her husband's in
it, and all the others, they say, are English lords. That's part of the
syndicate with her now, in the box."

"What part of the syndicate?" said Tod. "The head, or the feet, or the
middle?"

"Don't get gay, Tod," said his sister, severely; "I don't like small
boys when they're too funny. Down there in the audience, near the
middle of the parquet, is the woman whose husband is something or other
in Central America. He's enormously rich, and she comes up here once a
year and buys clothes. They say she used to be on the stage, and she
looks just like it; she has such a lot of paint round her eyes and
such vaudeville hair. But you ought to see her children! They're quite
black, just like little negroes. Major Conway, who lived down there
a good deal, says that Central American children are all dark when
they're young, and then it wears off as they grow older."

"Do they use sapolio?" inquired Tod.

Pearl treated this inquiry with fitting scorn, and continued:

"There's Bertha Lajaune, over there by the pillar. Do you think she's
so beautiful? I must say I don't. I heard the other day that she was a
Jewess, and that her mother had one of those pawnbroking places south
of Market Street, and that they'd only just moved away a few years
when she married old Marcel Lajaune."

As Pearl rattled on thus, assisted by Tod and Mrs. Gault, Letitia let
her lorgnon follow on the track of their comments, idly passing from
face to face as their light talk touched on it.

She looked curiously at the wife of the Mexican gambler, a romantically
handsome woman, with a skin like a magnolia-petal, and a frame of
ebony hair setting off a face of Madonna-like softness. The lady in
the box above was not pretty at all, Letitia thought. She had a broad,
good-humored red face, an impudent nose, and a frizz of blond hair
crimped far down on her forehead in the English fashion. Her black
evening dress showed a section of white neck, and a piece of reddened
arm was visible between her short sleeves and the edge of her long
gloves. Letitia had been too young to remember her as Tiny Madison,
and wondered how a Californian could come to look so like a British
princess.

The Central American lady was much more interesting. She was like a
lily among the gipsy-looking dark women and small, beady-eyed men of
her suite. She was thin, pale, and haggard, with artificially reddened
hair and heavy eyelids much painted. Her eyes from under these looked
out with an air of languid world-weariness. She had some immense
diamonds round her throat, and the fan she lazily moved twinkled with
them.

Letitia studied her for some interested minutes, then passed on to
Bertha Lajaune, of whom everybody had heard and most people were
talking. She was accounted by many the most beautiful woman in San
Francisco, and had risen from an unpenetrated obscurity by her
marriage with a rich French wine merchant. Letitia disagreed with
Pearl. She thought Mme. Lajaune quite as beautiful as people said she
was. To-night, in a gorgeous toilet of pale lavender with a good deal
of silver and lace about it, she had the appearance of an ennuyéd
princess. Her pale skin, classic features, and large light eyes, with
an extraordinarily wide sweep of lid, seemed to stamp her as one
designed by nature to wear a crown. Letitia was about to turn and
draw John Gault's attention to her, when the lorgnon, in its transit,
suddenly commanded two faces just below--Colonel Reed's and Viola's.

They were not looking her way, and Letitia riveted the glass on them.
The colonel was sitting up and looking about alertly. He was instinct
with life, enjoyment, and animation. With his neck craned out of his
collar, he was surveying the audience, now and then turning to impart
some hasty comment to Viola. He had the eager, happy air of a man who
is in his element.

Viola was sitting back rather listlessly, with her hands clasped in her
lap. She was dressed simply but prettily in gray, and wore no hat. The
color was the one most perfectly suited to harmonize with her eyes and
hair. Among the handsome and well-dressed women that surrounded her,
she preserved the same suggestion of distinction and superiority that
Letitia had recognized when she saw her in her own ragged drawing-room.

Holding out the glass, Letitia turned to Gault, who was sitting silent
in the shelter of the curtain, and said:

"Colonel Reed's sitting down there."

He gave the slightest possible start, and moving forward, looked in the
direction she indicated.

"So he is," he said in an uninterested tone, "and with his daughter."

Unfortunately, Tod McCormick, who had drawn up as close to Letitia as
his chair would permit, heard this short dialogue and pricked up his
ears.

"Colonel Reed," he said vivaciously, "and his daughter? Where?"

He bent forward, his lean neck stretched out, his weazened visage full
of a curiosity that was only naïvely boyish, but that on his ugly and
insignificant features acquired a mean and disagreeable air.

"By gracious!" he said, after surveying the colonel with a knowing
grin. "At the opera, in the best seats, dressed like the lilies of the
field--oh, you old rascal!"

He wagged his head at the colonel with a look of wicked knowledge that
he was extremely fond of assuming.

"What do you mean?" said Letitia, twisting round on her chair so that
she could see him. "What makes you call him a rascal?"

"Oh, old rogue! old rogue!" repeated Tod, as though he had secret and
masonic intelligence of serious misdeeds in the colonel's past. "And
that's his daughter? Ain't she a peach!"

John Gault moved uneasily and looked back into the shadows of the box.
Letitia, feeling uncomfortable, said hurriedly:

"Yes, indeed. She's prettier than anybody here, I think."

"Except you, Tishy," said Tod, but, it must be admitted, in an absent
tone. He leaned farther forward, his eyes on the girl in the seat
below, the smile on his face changing from one of whimsical malice to
the slow, pleased grin of affected admiration.

"Well, she can draw my salary! She can have the key of my trunk!"

"Have you ever seen her before?" asked Letitia.

"No, but I've heard of her. Everybody's heard of her."

"It's very odd; I never did till the other day."

"You mightn't have. The boys, I mean. All of a sudden, every feller's
begun askin' every other feller if he knows Colonel Reed's daughter.
She's sort of in the air, like microbes."

"Why should she be?"

Tod shrugged.

"Oh, a girl as pretty as that can't be expected to blush unseen down in
South Park forever."

John Gault rose suddenly and went to the back of the box, where he
joined his brother, who was silently digesting his pleasure in the
music. Tod, quite unconscious of any offense, was glad to be left in
sole possession of Letitia, and rambled on, repeating tag-ends of
gossip that had lodged in his shallow brain.

"The colonel's a great old chap. He likes the 'long green.' He once had
plenty of it, and once you get the habit of having it, it's worse than
morphine to get cured of. The colonel ain't got cured."

"He hasn't got a cent," said Letitia, "so I don't see but that he's got
to get cured."

"There's two good ways of getting money when you ain't got it--just
two," said Tod, oracularly.

"And what are those?"

"Stealing and borrowing. And if you steal you know there's always a
risk about being an expense to your country; and no self-respecting man
wants that. But borrowing! Get a good, quiet, peaceable victim,--the
kind that don't make a fuss, likes to have his leg pulled, thrives on
it, misses it when you leave off,--and you're on velvet. I should judge
the colonel had found just the right kind."

"What a horrid thing to say, Tod!"

"Horrid! The colonel doesn't think it's horrid. I wonder who he's
corralled. Three years ago he took hold of my father. It was great, the
way he worked the old man. You know, people haven't been able to trace
Jerry McCormick through life by the quarters he's dropped. It did my
heart good to see the way the colonel managed him. I guess he must have
got nearly a thou' out of him before my father shut down."

"I shouldn't think his daughter would like that," said Letitia, feeling
a chill at her heart.

Tod raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. His faith in the pride and
fine feelings of young women who were poor did not appear strong. But
in spite of his assumption of a blasé cynicism, he was a kindly soul at
heart.

"Oh, she mightn't know," he said; "it's so easy to fool women."

Letitia was silent for a moment. Then she commented, as if speaking to
herself:

"I suppose it would be easy for her father to fool her?"

"Easy as lying."

"Do you suppose he borrows that way from other men?"

Tod directed upon her an incredulous side glance. Then, meeting the
anxious inquiry of her eyes, he broke into a broad smile.

"Well, I should snicker," he said, in an amused tone.

The curtain rose here, and further dialogue was cut off, for Letitia
was a lover of singing, and when the music began again, sank into
a rapt and immovable silence. During the other entr'actes the
conversation was general, and any more confidences on the subject of
Colonel Reed and his daughter were impossible.

In the foyer, on the way out, the party became scattered. Crowds
surging from the main aisle pressed forward and separated Mrs. Gault,
her husband, and Pearl McCormick from the other three, who had stopped
in an angle of space near the stairway for Letitia to adjust her
cloak. As Gault was shaking it out preparatory to laying it across her
shoulders, her attention was caught by the figures of Colonel Reed and
Viola, who emerged from the entrance of a side aisle just in front of
them.

The colonel's eye fell on Gault, his face beamed with recognition and
pleasure, and, with a word to Viola, he started forward to greet him.
Viola gave a vexed exclamation and caught him by the arm, evidently
with the intention of deterring him. But the old man, flushed with the
excitement of once more finding himself in the familiar scenes of light
and revelry, seized her hand, and, drawing her with him, came forward.
Viola, thus forcibly overruled, advanced, her face full of distressed
embarrassment.

Gault, who had been occupied with the cloak, had not seen this little
pantomime, and the first intimation he had of the colonel's proximity
was his loud and patronizing greeting. He turned quickly and saw the
old man, bland and majestic as ever, and beside him Viola, pained
and uncomfortable, the object of Tod's admiring stares, and only too
plainly dragged forward by her ill-inspired father. His face flushed
with annoyance, aroused alike by the false position in which the girl
was placed, and by the revelation thus made to Letitia that he had not
been frank when he had led her to believe that he did not know Colonel
Reed's daughter.

His indignation found expression in his cold and almost curt reply to
the colonel's greeting. There was no mistaking its import. It spoke so
plainly of annoyance that even the easy affability of the old man was
disturbed. He looked taken aback, and for a moment evidently did not
know what to say. Tod looked from one man to the other, grinning at the
embarrassment of a situation he did not understand. For a moment there
was a most disagreeable pause. Letitia knew that recognition would
betray the fact that she had met Viola, but the mortification of the
girl's position made her bold.

"How do you do, Miss Reed?" she said; and then, as a brilliant
afterthought, "Do you like music?"

"Very much," Viola managed to answer; "and it was good, wasn't it?"

"It was A1," said Tod, not by any means intending to be left out; "and
that prima donna, ain't she a peach?"

"Mme. Foedor is a lovely Gilda. She looks so young. Most of them are
too old and matronly," continued Letitia, fastening the clasps of her
cloak, and wondering if this exceedingly uncomfortable conversation was
to be prolonged.

Viola's reply put an end to her uneasiness:

"Lovely! I never saw her before, or the opera, either. But we must go.
Father, we'll miss the car if we don't hurry. Good night. Good night,
Mr. Gault."

She took the old man by the arm and tried to draw him toward the side
entrance. But the vision of Letitia in all the glory of evening dress
had been the last touch to the colonel's enjoyment on this momentous
evening. He seemed to have forgotten the repulse he had just received,
and hung back from his daughter's persuasive hand, looking with courtly
admiration at Miss Mason. She was keen enough to see that he would
again overrule his daughter and add further to the embarrassment of the
meeting, and sweeping her cloak round her, she said:

"We must go too, or we'll never find the others. Good night." And
with a little smiling nod she turned with her attendant cavaliers and
plunged into the crowd.

Tod, squeezing along beside her in the throng, said querulously:

"Why didn't you introduce me? I'd have given that old man a song and
dance, and he'd have asked me down there."

But Gault, on her other side, said nothing. Once, as the crowd jostled
her against him, she stole a glance in his direction, and found him
looking away with frowning brows and a morose expression. She wondered
if he had realized that her remarks to Viola indicated a previous
acquaintance. If he had he would certainly be angry with her.

Pearl and Tod were dropped on the way back, but Gault drove home with
the others. He said he had been suffering from insomnia lately, and a
walk would tire him out. Once in the house, Mortimer led him back into
the dining-room to try a new wine that had been made on the vineyard of
a mutual friend. Letitia and Maud were left alone in the drawing-room,
where the former, expressing fatigue, threw herself down in a long
chair, and the latter moved about turning down lamps, and here and
there arranging with a housewife's hand the disarray of tumbled
cushions and carelessly disposed draperies. Finally she passed out of
the room, and Letitia, still sitting where she had dropped, heard her
skirts rustling softly as she ascended the stairway.

Letitia did not move. She wanted to see John before he left. If he had
noticed her greeting of Viola Reed he would undoubtedly speak of it,
and she would be given a chance to explain. With any other man but John
it would have been nothing. But John was so peculiar, so reserved about
his own affairs, so resentful, so terribly resentful, of anything like
intrusion or interference. Letitia as she waited felt, much to her own
surprise, that she was growing nervous, that her heart was beginning to
beat uncomfortably hard and her breath to come uncomfortably short.

Suddenly she heard his voice, in the room beyond, bidding Mortimer
good night. She sat up quickly, and then as quickly looked down so as
to give her figure the air of repose and indifference which was so far
from her state of mind. He entered the room, and seeing her, said:

"Oh, Tishy, are you still there?"

The tone of his voice struck on her ear as singularly cold and aloof.
Her nervousness increased, for she sincerely feared his anger.

"Yes," she answered; "I--I--wanted to speak to you."

"What had you to say?" he asked, stopping before her, but not sitting
down.

It did not occur to her, in her state of trepidation, that the obvious
abstraction and coldness of his manner might be the result of causes
that she did not know. She at once leaped to the conclusion that he had
realized she had made Viola's acquaintance in some underhand way, and
that he was now bitterly incensed with her.

"I wanted to explain to you how--how--I came to know Viola Reed."

The remark dispelled all his indifference in an instant. The sudden
concentrating of his attention upon her in a piercing look and a sharp,
penetrating fixity of observation added a hundredfold to Letitia's
agitation.

"I--I--knew you'd be angry and probably misunderstand. You're always
so--so reticent and queer about your own affairs. I didn't see any harm
in trying to know Miss Reed. It was better, anyway, than letting Maud
go, and she was so set upon it."

Letitia raised her eyes pleadingly, then dropped them quickly. His were
blazing. But it was too late to go back now. He took a chair, drew it
up before her, and sat down.

"Just explain to me what you mean," he said quietly. "You and Maud have
been trying to make the acquaintance of Miss Reed--is that it?"

"We did more than try. We did it--I did it. I wouldn't let Maud. I was
afraid she'd do something. Maud sometimes hasn't got as much tact--as
much tact as she ought to have."

"How did you do it?"

"I just went there."

"You went there? You went into that lady's house--intruded, without
invitation or acquaintance--forced your way in as if you were a
peddler? I can't believe that of you, Letitia. You had some excuse for
going there."

Letitia rose to her feet. She did it unconsciously.

"I didn't exactly intrude; though I'll tell you the truth, John--I'll
not hide anything. I do think it was mean. I thought it after I got in
and saw how--how poor and miserable everything was. I felt mortified at
what I'd done. I wouldn't have gone in the beginning if I'd thought it
was as bad as that. But I had an excuse. I bought jam and four plants.
That's one of them on the stand."

"Bought jam and plants! What are you talking about? I don't understand
you."

"She sells them,--jam and plants,--and I bought three dozen pots and
four plants."

"You went there and bought these things from her in her own house?"

"Yes," Letitia answered, and went on helplessly, in order to say
something: "Four plants for two dollars. It was very cheap."

There was a moment's pause. Then the man said in a suppressed voice:

"You patronized her in her poverty--pried into her home, bought things
from her, gave her money! Good God!"

He dropped his voice and turned away, unable to finish. Letitia came
toward him. She knew that in this interview the happiness of her life
was at stake, and yet that she must be true to herself.

"I did give her money, but not as you mean. I was sorry for her and
wanted to help her. I wouldn't have hurt her any more than you would.
It was because of you I went there. It was because we heard you were so
interested in her. But after I got there I was ashamed and sorry, and
I tried not to make her feel it."

"So you gave her two dollars for four plants! It takes a woman to know
how to humiliate a woman!"

"I saw she wasn't the kind of person Maud thought she was," continued
Letitia, going blindly on. "I was certain they made a mistake in saying
the things they did about her. Even if you were giving them money, even
if you were supporting them, she wasn't that kind."

"Who told you I was supporting them?"

"Oh, I don't know--people say it. And maybe I did do her an injustice
in going there and spying on her, as you say. But you are the one who
has done her a real injustice--the kind of injustice that hurts."

"I!" he exclaimed, too surprised to defend himself. "What have I done?"

"You've kept it all so secret that you made people think there was
something wrong about it."

"Letitia," he cried, in a tone of warning, "take care! You've meddled
enough already."

"You hid away your friendship with her as if it were shameful. You
acted as if you were ashamed of her and of your knowing her--as if
there was something wicked about her, so you couldn't even speak of
her to me or any other woman that you knew well. When I asked you about
her, though you were too much of a man of honor to tell me a lie, you
were not too much of a man of honor to act one. You gave her father
money, but you were ashamed to acknowledge that you even knew her."

"We've had enough of this conversation," he said, now trembling with
rage. "Let it end."

He turned to leave the room, but Letitia's voice arrested him, and he
stood with his back to her, listening.

"You ought to have known enough to trust her," she continued
desperately, for she was singing the swan-song of her hopes. "You've
only got to look into her face to see what she is. No matter what
people say about her and her father, no matter what silly stories are
repeated, even if there _were_ other men who gave the colonel money--"

Letitia stopped. Gault had wheeled suddenly round upon her, and the
expression of his face made the words die on her lips.

"Other men!" he repeated. "Who said that?"

"Tod," she faltered.

"Who were they?"

"I--I--don't know; he didn't tell their names."

"What did he say?"

"He said--he said--" she stammered, bewildered by her own pain and
sympathy for his obvious suffering. "No, it was I. I asked him if
the colonel got money from other men, and he--he didn't say much; he
laughed and said, 'Well, I should snicker!'"

"Thank you," answered Gault, in a low voice. "Good night."

He turned and left the room, and a moment later the hall door closed
behind him with a muffled bang.

For a space Letitia stood motionless as a statue, a tall and splendid
figure in her gleaming dress, on which fine lines of interwoven
silver-work caught and lost the light. Then, rousing herself, she moved
about heavily but methodically, putting out the remaining lights. When
they were all extinguished she crossed the hall and slowly ascended the
stairway, the silken whisperings of her skirts being the only sound in
the sleeping house.




V


The season had worn itself away to June. The winds were an established
fact, and blew from the ocean down the long clefts of the streets out
into the bay beyond. Outside the Golden Gate the fog lay along the
horizon like the faint gray shores of a distant country. When the winds
dropped at sundown, it came creeping in, drawing its white cloak over
the water, across the dunes, and finally down the streets and round
the houses. All night it brooded close over the city, sleeping on its
crowded hills, and in the morning lay brimming in every hollow till the
valleys looked like cups crowned high with a curdling white drink.

When the sun had driven it back to its cloud-country on the horizon,
there were wonderful mornings, all blue and gold. The warm rays licked
up the night's moisture, and for a few clear, still hours had the world
to themselves. They burned the land dry and parched. The hills at the
mouth of the bay turned fawn-color, and looked like lean, crouching
lions with hides that fell away from their gaunt bones. The sea and
sky were a hard-baked blue, with the little sails of boats and the
strenuous green leafage of tropical plants seeming as if inlaid in the
turquoise background. The gardens about South Park grew dustier and
drier. Only the aloes appeared to have sap enough to retain any color,
and against the faded monochrome of the surrounding shrubs they shone
a strong, cold gray-blue. In the Western Addition the gardens were
watered and bloomed extravagantly, till the ivy geraniums hung from the
window-boxes like pieces of pink carpet, and the heliotropes dashed
themselves in purple spray to the second stories.

Fashionable people were leaving town daily. Some were going to the
redwoods, where the forest glades are dim and still and full of a chill
solemnity, like the aisles of old cathedrals. Others were en route for
one of the twin towns which tip the points of the crescent that holds
Monterey Bay between its horns. Many were repairing to the country
houses which have sprung up in scattered clusters down the line of the
railroad to the Santa Clara valley. Here they found the warmth and
idleness which Californians love. All summer the vast expanse of the
valley, shut in from wind and fog by a rampart of hills, brooded under
perpetual sunshine. In the motionless noons its yellow fields, where
the shadows of the live-oaks lie round and black, swam in quivering
veils of heat, and the smell of the tar-weed rose heavy and aromatic,
like the incense from a hundred altars.

The Mortimer Gaults, being fashionable folk, had broken up their
household and gone their several ways--Letitia first, with many trunks,
to make visits at hotels and country houses. Mrs. Gault, like other San
Francisco matrons, did not close her house, but made quick flights into
the country, which she sincerely hated, and then came back thankfully
to town, where she dwelt in comfort with two servants, and, when her
husband was not with her, ate meals of choice daintiness, which were
laid on a square of drawn-work on the end of the dining-room table.

John Gault had not been able to see Letitia before her departure, which
was not so strange, as she left shortly after the night at the opera.
In the one or two small gatherings which took place at the Mortimer
Gaults' before the family exodus, he had been unable to participate--at
least, that was what he wrote to Maud. She, it is needless to state,
knowing of that evening interview after the opera, had tried to elicit
from Letitia an account of what had taken place. In this, however, she
was unsuccessful. Letitia was at first stubbornly silent, then cross.
But she accepted an invitation to stay with the McCormicks at their
country place, the Hacienda del Pinos, in the Napa valley; and Maud
felt that her extraordinary and inexplicable sister was, for once in
her life, behaving like a rational human being.

Gault's reluctance to see Letitia had been the whim of a nature
harassed past bearing. He had gone from her that evening in frenzy with
her, himself, and a world where life was so unlivable and being alive
so remorseless a tragedy. The man who had never had a serious check in
his easy course from birth to middle age had now suddenly found himself
the central figure in one of those maddening dilemmas which blight or
make the lives of less fortunate individuals.

The time had come when the situation called for a determined step. But
what step he could not decide. What particular course of action would
end the whole matter most satisfactorily for himself was the question
that besieged him. He hardly gave a thought to Viola. He was the victim
of either a repulsively sordid plot, or else he was a man cruelly lured
by fate into a position from which it seemed impossible to extricate
himself without misery of one sort or another. At one moment he saw
himself as the gullible victim of a clever pair of adventurers, and
laughed fiercely at the scruples which prevented him from holding them
at their own valuation. At the next he was sickened at the manner in
which he was degrading himself and her by giving way to the meanest and
most dastardly suspicions.

He longed to think that he wronged her, and yet, so fearful was he
of being hoodwinked, so inclined to distrust himself and the rest
of the world, that he could not rise up and believe in her, though
his love bade him. Once he thought of going to Tod and asking him to
explain his conversation with Letitia, and then revolted at the idea
of exposing Viola and his own weakness to the vulgar curiosity of
the shallow-brained youth. The only possible ground for believing in
Viola's innocence was that her father was deceiving her, and it seemed
to Gault that the old man had neither the subtlety nor the desire to
deceive anybody.

After suffering these torments for some days he suddenly came to a
decision. He resolved that he would have an interview with Viola, in
which, if she did not voluntarily tell him the truth, he would demand
it from her. He would at first try to beguile her into an explanation,
and if she evaded this, he would, directly and without circumlocution,
force her to tell him. He knew it was brutal, but he was past
consideration for any one. He had thought of this before, but merely
from the comfortable distance of casual speculation. His attitude now
was one of determination. His self-indulgent, indolent nature had been
goaded to a point where it could act more easily than it could endure.

Once having made up his mind, he was more at rest than he had been
for weeks. He did not give much thought to the manner of attacking
the subject, merely saying to himself that he was sure she could be
induced to reveal all she knew by diplomacy. Of only one thing he felt
convinced, and he felt this with the conviction that one has of the
mandates of destiny--that the next time he saw her alone he would learn
from her all there was to learn. Beyond this he shrank from looking.

While he had no desire to put off the interview that two months before
would have seemed an impossibility, he was deliberative and unhurried.
Thinking that the afternoon was the best time to find her by herself,
he went to the house near South Park at four o'clock, a week after he
had seen her at the opera. She was out, and on a second visit at a
similar hour the result was the same. He had pushed his card under the
door, and had hoped that she might have acknowledged the visits by a
note; but she made no sign.

At the end of the second week he went again, in the evening, and
found her, as usual, sitting with her father. She mentioned her
disappointment at missing him, and said that the afternoon was a bad
time to find her, as she was almost always either busy or out. This
seemed to him to plainly indicate that she did not wish to encourage
his afternoon visits. He began to wonder if she was endeavoring to
avoid seeing him alone. If she was, she must have had some inkling
of what he contemplated. The thought spurred him to a feverish
determination to have the explanation with her at the earliest
opportunity. Heretofore she had appeared to him a factor which, if he
chose to be hard enough, he could always manage. Now, if she were to
oppose him with strategy and evasion, the difficulties of solving the
problem would be increased a hundredfold.

But if Viola seemed desirous of escaping a tête-à-tête, the colonel
was more assiduous than ever in seeking the society and bounty of his
obliging friend. The sum to which he now stood indebted to Gault he
described as being "quite formidable." He constantly spoke of repaying
it, and made many vague allusions to promising enterprises that were
destined to enrich his old age.

Two days after the evening visit the colonel appeared as usual, and
this time produced a sheet of paper upon which was written a statement
of his indebtedness. It was copied out in his clear, fine hand, each
sum scrupulously set down with its corresponding date, and at the end
of the column of figures the total--$510. Slapping his breast-pocket,
he remarked that a duplicate of the memorandum lay there for his
benefit and the stimulating of his memory.

"And when the days of the lean kine are over," he said, "we will wipe
it all out--clean the slate."

His friend disclaimed any eagerness as to the arrival of these golden
days, accommodated the colonel with his customary sum, and saw the
old man go striding out in lofty satisfaction. Left by himself, he
idly looked over the colonel's memorandum. It was a full statement,
the dates preceding each sum, and at the top bearing the legend,
"Memorandum of moneys loaned by John Gault to Ramsay Reed."

He threw the paper into a drawer of his desk and thought no more about
it, though he could not forbear smiling at the old man's studied
preciseness.

After considerable reflection, Gault decided that the best way to bring
matters to the crisis he desired was to ask Viola to accord him an
interview. He would manage to make the request at some moment when the
old man was either not listening--which was unusual--or had preceded
him into the hall in the moment of departure. If Viola refused, as he
had some reason to think she might, he would have to arrange another
plan, but, for the present, this was the most feasible one he could
think of.

It was late for a cross-town visit when he started from his club. The
evening, too, was one of the most disagreeable of the season. The city
lay soaked under a blanket of fog. On the West Side there was so much
life and activity on the streets, so much light and sound and pressure
of shifting humanity, that, to a certain extent, the dreariness of the
weather was overcome; but in the dark desolation of the old quarter
the chill weight of the fog lay like a veil of mystery over the silent
streets.

Gault passed down narrow alleys where his own footsteps were the only
sound, and where the light of the rare lamps seemed smothered by the
dense atmosphere. On the broad thoroughfare the old mansions looked
like vast, dim ghosts of a lordly past, rising vague and mournful
from huddled masses of wet foliage. Underfoot the hollows in the worn
asphaltum gleamed with water, and lengths of brick wall, touched by the
beam of an adjacent lamp, shone as though rain were falling.

Turning out of this wider way into the cross-streets, he could hear
in the silence the fog dripping off angles in slowly detaching drops.
The old wooden pavements oozed water beneath the pressure of his foot.
Sometimes from a crack in a sagging shutter an inquisitive yellow
ray shot into the recesses of a tangled garden, gilding the shining
leaves of great thirsty plants that drank in the reluctantly distilled
moisture. Now and then a hurrying figure passed him with collar up and
hat drawn down, but for the most part the streets were deserted, and
even at this comparatively early hour the dwellers in the district
seemed to be retiring, as most of the houses showed lights only in the
upper stories.

In the Reeds' house there were the usual edges of light shining through
the cracks and slits of the old blinds. In answer to his ring there
was the usual moving of this light into the hall, where it shone out
suddenly through the two narrow panes of glass that flanked the door.
When the door opened there was the usual picture of Viola shading the
light with one hand, that shone rosily, and looking questioningly out.

She seemed gladly surprised to see him, but the old days of her
embarrassment were over. She helped him hang his coat, which was beaded
with moisture, over the back of a chair, and then paused to arrange
the wick of her lamp as he preceded her into the drawing-room. In the
doorway he stopped and looked questioningly about. The colonel was not
there.

"Where is your father?" he said, as she followed him, carrying her lamp.

"My father?" She set the lamp on the table, still occupied with the
recalcitrant wick. "Oh, he's out. He hardly ever goes out in the
evening, but to-night he wanted to see Mr. Maroney, who is only here
from New York for a few days. Such a dreadful night, too! There--I
don't think it will smoke any more."

Gault, who had absently taken the colonel's chair, made no response. So
the opportunity he had been planning for had come! He felt a sensation
of sickening repulsion at the task he had set himself. Already his
heart seemed to have begun to beat like a hammer and his mouth felt
dry. Without consciousness of what he looked at, his eyes moved about
the room and rested on a black coat which was hanging over the back of
a chair. On the edge of the table were a pair of scissors, a thimble,
and some spools of thread.

Viola took the vacant chair near these and put on the thimble.

"You'll not mind if I go on sewing?" she said. "I never thought of your
coming to-night, and so I was fixing this. It will only take a few
moments to finish it."

"What is it?" Gault asked, in order to say something, noticing that the
garment seemed heavy and difficult for her to handle.

"My father's coat--the one he wears every day," she answered. "I was
mending it while he had his other one on. He gets fond of clothes, and
it's next to impossible to get them away from him."

She turned the coat about every now and then, her needle assaulting
it, and catching splinters of light as it darted in and out. Gault
leaned back, watching her. She bent her face over the work as she
sewed, presenting to his gaze the fine white parting down the middle
of her head, and the close-growing threads of her hair, here and there
transmuted into filaments of gold. There was an air of serenity, of
quietness and peace, about her, that seemed to tell of an inner sense
of happiness.

As he sat back staring at her, and wondering, with that breathless
beating of his heart growing stronger, what he should say, she suddenly
raised her head and, looking straight into his eyes, said:

"What are you thinking about?"

Her face, with the lamplight shining full on it, seemed to radiate a
soft, pervasive content. She asked the question with the indescribable
charm of glance and smile of the woman who knows that her lightest word
gives pleasure. The increase in her beauty and attraction which he had
felt rose from the consciousness that she was loved.

"I wasn't thinking about anything much," he said evasively. "I'd like
to sit on here this way, not thinking or worrying or caring, but just
watching you."

"There is no reason why you shouldn't do it; only it doesn't sound very
amusing."

"It isn't amusing."

"I know it isn't," she said contritely, "and I'm so sorry that I have
to do this old coat; but it will be done soon, and then we can talk.
Just a minute--just a minute!"

She spoke in a busy tone, and went on turning the coat about, jerking
at the buttons, and plunging her hands into the pockets.

Gault felt that the pleasure of thus sitting and looking at her was
sapping his resolution. He felt himself drifting away, aimless and
irresponsible, on the current of the moment. The duties of past and
future were lost sight of in the dreamy satisfaction of watching the
light on her hair and the movements of her hands.

He rose suddenly and walked to the window, with a remark about seeing
if the fog was lifting. As he turned, he saw her take a folded paper
from one of the coat-pockets, and, standing looking out of the window,
heard the crisp rustling of the paper as she unfolded it. There was
a moment of perfect silence, and then he heard again the same light
rustling, which sounded curiously loud and intrusive to his irritated
nerves.

He turned toward her, wondering why she did not speak. She was sitting
with the opened paper in her hands, her eyes riveted on it. As he drew
near, he saw that the rustling rose from the fact that her hands were
trembling violently, causing the paper to vibrate.

She heard his approaching step and looked up. At the sight of her face
he stopped.

"What is it?" she cried, rising suddenly to her feet and holding it out
toward him.

He glanced at it. It was the colonel's duplicate memorandum. Without
aid or provocation the hour of revelation had come.

His first impulse was to seize it. But she drew it back from him,
repeating in a high, strained voice:

"What is it? I don't understand. What is it?"

"It's nothing--nothing but a business paper. Give it to me."

He did not know what to say or do--the scene had changed so suddenly
and horribly. Her face looked at him, pale, bewildered, quivering with
a terrified surmise. Without a moment's memory of what he had come for,
he felt as if all he wanted was to get the paper and hide it.

"Give it to me!" he demanded authoritatively. "It doesn't concern you."

"It does," she cried, "it does! But what is it? What does it mean?"

She looked back at it, and her eyes ran down the list of figures, and
then were raised to his, full of a piercingly anguished inquiry.

"It's nothing but a business matter between your father and me; and you
don't understand business."

"I do understand--I understand this!" she answered; and then, with a
sudden cry of shame and pain, she threw the crumpled paper on the table
and covered her face with her hands. "Oh, how could he!" she whispered.
"How could he!"

Gault looked at her, mute and motionless. From the moment he had seen
her face as she read the paper, he knew that every suspicion he had had
was groundless. He was ashamed to speak, almost to move. The sound of
his own voice was hateful to him. He stood helplessly looking at her,
shaken with pity, passion, and remorse. Finally he said gently:

"Look at me, Viola."

She obeyed him like a child. Her face was drawn; her eyes, after the
moment of meeting his, sank.

"Any man would have done what the colonel did. It's nothing of the
least importance."

"Perhaps not to you," she answered in a hardly audible voice; "but to
me!"

He looked away and tried to speak lightly:

"It is of no importance whatever to me, and I don't see why it should
be of any to you."

"Oh, Mr. Gault, what do you think I am, that you should say that?"

"A foolish girl who takes a trifling matter too seriously," he answered
quickly.

"No--a woman who has been hurt and humiliated. It may have been of no
importance to you that you were giving us the clothes we wore and the
food we ate--but oh! to me--"

Her voice broke, and she turned her face away.

He made an impatient movement with his head.

"Come, don't let's talk about that anymore. You're not yourself.
Besides, whatever insignificant matter you're worrying about was not of
your doing."

"No," she said, turning on him passionately, "but the responsibility
rests on me; for whatever my father may have done that was wrong
or foolish was for me. There is an excuse for him. You--other
people--outsiders--don't know. He hasn't wanted these things for
himself. It was all done for me. I was his idol, and it has almost
broken his heart that his money and position were gone before I was old
enough to profit by them. He always wanted to be rich again, but it was
for me. He wanted me to have everything--pretty clothes to wear, and
good things to eat, and theaters and amusements, like other girls. He
tried to keep up with his old bonanza friends who were tired of him and
had no use for him, because he thought their wives might be kind to me
and ask me to their houses. He has forgotten himself and what he owed
to me, but it was because he loved me so much."

"Viola dear," he said pleadingly, "I understand all this. No one blames
the colonel."

She did not seem to hear him. Her mood was past control.

"When we first met you things were at their worst. We were in terrible
need. We had had some money--quite a good deal--three years before; it
was for a mortgage on the house, or something; but it had all gone,
mostly in Pine Street. Yours must have gone there, too. Everything he
has had of late years goes there, because he is determined to make a
second fortune for me before he dies. And he never will--poor old man!
he never will. I did what I could and made a little, but he couldn't
bear it, because he hated to think I worked at anything. So that was
why he went to you. We were in despair when we knew you first--we were
starving."

"Dear child, why go over all this? It's only a pain to us both."

He tried to take her hands, but she drew them back and made a gesture
as though pushing him away.

"I didn't know where it came from. I believed him. Oh, Mr. Gault, if
he told me what was not true, you can't blame him. You've never known
what it feels like to have some one you love wanting the necessaries of
life. You could beg for them--steal for them! And when I told you those
things about the mining stock, what did you think I meant? What did you
believe?"

She spoke less to him than to her own dazed and miserable
consciousness, which moment by moment saw new matter for humiliation in
the deception of which she had been the victim.

But Gault, with the guilt of his own hateful suspicions weighing upon
him, feared that she had realized his previous state of mistrust, and
said fervently:

"If I did believe what was a wrong to you, forgive me, Viola. I was a
blind fool."

She raised her head like a stag and transfixed him with a sudden
glance. Unprepared for the innocence of her point of view, he met the
look shamefacedly, and in an instant she guessed what he had suspected.
In one terrible moment, illuminated with a blasting flash of memory,
she understood his attitude in the past, and heard again the words that
had puzzled and surprised her. Horror and despair seemed to choke her.
She drew away from him, her eyes full of tragic accusation, murmuring
almost under her breath:

"You--that I believed in, and trusted, and loved!"

"I was a fool--a brute! I know it. All I can say is to ask you to
forgive me."

"I can't forgive--or forget. Never--never!"

He tried again to take her hands, but she drew back from him with what
seemed a fierce repugnance, and cried wildly:

"Go--you and my father, what have you done to me? I can't forgive
him, either! How can I? You've dragged me down, between you. You've
destroyed me and broken my heart."

"Viola," he cried desperately, "listen to me. You don't know my side.
Listen to me while I tell you."

"There's nothing to say. I don't want to hear. I know enough. Go--go
away from me! Oh, my father! My poor father! How could you! How could
you!"

She burst into tears--the most terrible tears that he had ever seen.
Throwing herself into the colonel's chair, she lay huddled there, her
face pressed into the arm, her slender figure shaken by the explosive
force of her grief.

To his broken words and appeals she made no answer. He doubted whether
she heard him. The storm of feeling, stronger than he had ever supposed
her capable of, swayed her as a blast sways a sapling. Finally he bent
over her and rested his cheek on her hair, whispering:

"I want to do everything you ask me. But before I go, say you forgive
me."

She raised herself and pushed him away. Her face was almost
unrecognizable, blurred and swollen with tears.

"Go--go!" she cried. "That is all I want of you. You've done enough
harm to me. Do what I ask now."

He attempted to bend over her and say some last words of farewell, but
she turned her face away from him and pressed it into the upholstered
arm of the chair. He kissed her hair, and stood for a moment looking
at her, then turned and crossed the room. At the door he stopped and
looked back.

"Good-by," he said hesitatingly.

A smothered good-by came from her. He waited, hoping for some word
of forgiveness or recall. Instead, she said once more, this time
pleadingly:

"Oh, go! please go--I want to be alone."

He obeyed her--softly opened the door into the hall, put on his coat,
and let himself out into the cold and fog-bedewed night. As he fumbled
with the gate he heard a quick, swinging step coming from the darkened
end of the street. It approached rapidly, and into the dense aureole
of light shed by a lamp half-way up the block, a tall, muscular figure
emerged from the surrounding blackness. Gault recognized the walk and
the square, erect shoulders. With as little noise as possible he opened
the gate, and, turning in the opposite direction, passed into the
darkness with a stealthy tread.

The colonel let himself in with his latch-key, pulled off his coat
in the hall, and entered the drawing-room with the buoyancy that
characterized all his movements. As was often the case in these days of
prosperity, he carried a paper bag full of fruit and a box of candy for
Viola.

To his eye, dulled by the darkness without, the room looked brilliantly
illuminated and seemed to welcome him with the warm and cheery note
of home. Viola was standing with her back to him, her elbow on the
chimney-piece. When she heard his step on the walk she had made a
violent effort to control herself, had tried to rub away the stains of
her tears, and had turned the paper flower on the lamp-globe so that
the light, as it fell upon her, was subdued.

The colonel was in good spirits. He laid his packages on the table and
began opening them.

"Wasn't that Gault that I saw coming away as I came down the street?"
he asked.

Viola said "Yes."

"Why didn't you keep him longer? I'd like to have seen him. Look at
that pear," said the old man, holding up a yellow Bartlett that gleamed
like wax in the lamplight. "Did you ever see anything finer than that?
And there are people who say they don't like the Californian fruit."

Viola did not look at the pear, but he was too occupied in his
purchases to notice her.

"He ought to have stayed till I came in. You oughtn't to have let him
go. Poor old Gault, coming out in all this wet! It's a devil of a
night. You could cut the fog with a knife. What did he have to say for
himself?"

"Nothing much," said Viola.

"I don't think myself he's much of a talker. Now, see what I've brought
for you." Viola heard the tearing away of the wrappers that were folded
around the candy-box. "Look, young woman; isn't that tempting?"

The colonel held out the box. Viola did not turn. He drew it back, a
puzzled expression on his face.

"What's the matter?" he said. "Why don't you look at me? Don't you feel
well?"

She turned round slowly and made a feint to take the box. As the
colonel's glance fell on her face he gave a sharp exclamation and
started to his feet.

"What's happened?" he said. "What's the matter with you?"

She tried to tell him, but could not. The love and honor of him that
had been the faith of her life were still alive. She could not say
the words that would bring him to shame. Suddenly she pointed to the
crumpled paper on the table. The colonel snatched it and pulled it open
while she turned away. He recognized it at the first glance.

"Well," he said, holding his head high and looking at her with a
defiant air, "what of it?"

She made no answer, and he went on violently:

"What's there wrong about this to make you cry as if you'd lost
everything in the world, and Gault to sneak out of the house like a
thief?"

"What's wrong about it?" she burst out. "What's wrong about you to make
you ask such a question?"

"My dear, don't be so violent," said the colonel, trying to assume his
old jaunty manner. "It's all a very simple matter, easily explained."

"Then explain it, father--explain it. Oh, if there's anything to be
said, say it!"

"It's merely a business matter, a financial transaction between myself
and Gault--nothing that concerns you."

"Oh, father, it concerns me more than anything that has ever happened
to me in my life before."

Her tone wrung the colonel's soul. He tried to silence his pain and
fear by a sudden attempt to divert the blame from himself.

"Did that dog--that mean, underhanded sneak--come here to-night, when
he knew I was out, to show you that paper?"

His manner and words horrified her, and she shrank from him.

"I found the paper in your coat. He tried to take it from me. He never
breathed to me or let me suspect what you were doing. To-night, when I
found the paper, he tried to make me think it was all right, quite an
ordinary thing--that you had done what every one else would have done."

"Well, then, why do you get so worked up about it? Why should a
business transaction between him and me put you into such a state of
mind?"

"A business transaction? Oh, father, have you deceived yourself, or are
you trying to deceive me? What has been the matter with you? How could
you do it! How could you forget yourself that way--yourself and me!"

The colonel's bravado began to give way, but he tried to take a last
stand.

"If there was anything wrong, as you seem to think, in what I did, you
shouldn't blame me for it. I did it for you. I was trying to make you
comfortable and make things a little easier for you. I was only trying
the best way I knew to make you happy."

"Make me happy!" she repeated. "Did you think it would make me happy to
have a man think I was being sold to him?"

The words burst from her, vibrating with all the anguish of the last
two hours. They struck the colonel like a dagger in his heart.

"Oh, Viola!" he said. "Viola--don't!"

He began to tremble, and sat down, looking at her with an aghast,
protesting look. Whatever his idea had been in so openly using Viola's
name in his dealings with Gault, he had not meant that. Old age, bitter
poverty, trampled pride--all had combined to lower that high standard,
that proud self-respect, which his daughter had believed to be his. She
would never believe in them again.

"You oughtn't to say that, Viola," he said in a low voice; "you
oughtn't to say that to me."

She did not stir, and he said again, after a moment's pause:

"It's not right for you to say that. I thought I was doing for the
best. I may have done foolishly, but it was because I loved you."

He spoke heavily, sitting inert and sunken, with the lamplight pouring
over his wrinkled face and white hair.

Suddenly Viola ran toward him. She put her arms round his neck, close
and warm, and her tears fell on his hair, on his face, on his coat. She
hugged his head against her breast and kissed it wildly, sobbing over
and over:

"Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father!"

The old man patted her head and said gently:

"Don't--don't go on that way. You didn't say anything. I've forgotten
it already."

But she knew he had not, and continued sobbing out passionate, broken
sentences:

"I didn't mean it--I spoke without thinking. Oh, please forget it!
Don't look like that! I didn't mean it--I didn't mean it for a minute."

He tried to soothe and comfort her, but he himself was very quiet. When
she had sobbed herself into a state of apathetic exhaustion, he helped
her up-stairs to her room, and prowled up and down in the passageway,
every now and then listening at her door till he heard her caught
breaths regulate themselves into the long, regular ones of heavy sleep.

Then he went into his own room. He did not go to bed, but sat
motionless, shrunk together, staring at the light. His love for his
daughter had been dear to him, but a thousand times dearer had been
his realization of her love for him. When all the world had turned its
back on him, the knowledge that he was still believed in, watched for,
cherished by this one young girl had made life as well worth living
as it had been in the days of his glory. And now he had lost that--it
was gone forever. He was an old man, and to-night he had received his
death-blow.

The day after his scene with Viola was the happiest John Gault had
known for many months. The memory of her pain, of her tears, of her
humiliation, could not outweigh the joy he felt in her exculpation.
Even his own shame at the meanness of the part he had played was pushed
aside by this pervasive, irradiating, uplifting sense of happiness. No
cloud, no shadow of disbelief, could ever come between them now. He
could love her without mistrust, without fear, without suspicion. He
would absorb her, envelop her, inwrap her in the might of his passion.
He had wronged her bitterly, but with what limitless tenderness, what
depths of devotion, would he make up for it! He was troubled by no
doubts as to her feeling for him. The memory of the light in her eyes
as they met his, of the flush on the cheek, were enough. Viola was his
when he chose to claim her.

Still, the deliberative habits of his curiously sensitive and
conventional nature were stronger than the force of his last and
deepest attachment. Three days followed his interview with Viola, and
he had not yet gone to see her. He could not bring himself to intrude
upon her. Her girl's passion of shame and grief seemed a sanctuary
into which no man's coarse eye should look. He thought of her with a
deep, almost reverential tenderness, but he did not feel as if he ought
to see her till the first anguish of her discovery had spent itself.
Then--then--he would take her in his arms, and there would be nothing
to say, only to ask her to forgive him, to hear her say it, and then
happiness--happiness--happiness--on to the end of time.

On the fourth day he decided to send her some flowers. But after he had
bought them it seemed to him so meaningless, so banal, to send such a
formal offering, one that he had sent so often to women for whom his
sentiments were so widely different, that he suddenly changed his
mind, and ordered the flowers to be sent to his sister-in-law, who was
just then in town. When he walked away from the florist's he looked
rather ashamed of himself and of his burst of sentiment. But what did
he want to send her flowers for? He wanted to see her, to take her
hands in his and look down deep into those beautiful gray eyes and
say--perhaps not say anything. She and he understood.

He made up his mind that he would go on the morrow, and on this
decision he went to sleep with a light heart. In the morning he was
awakened by a messenger to say that his brother Mortimer had returned
from the country seriously ill. He was at the house on Pacific Avenue
inside an hour. Mortimer had come home a week before with a bad cold
which had developed into a dangerous case of pneumonia. Maud Gault was
helpless and distracted. Her brother-in-law spent the day in attending
to the numerous duties which crop up with sickness, and in the evening
telegraphed for Letitia.

For the four following days Mortimer Gault hung between life and death,
brooded over by a frantic wife, three doctors, two nurses, a fond
sister-in-law, and an extremely anxious brother. The tie between the
two men was very close--John had never realized how close till those
four days of desperate anxiety were over. During this time, as he sat
either by his brother's bedside or in one of the rooms adjoining, or
made hasty visits to his office, he thought of Viola and wondered if
she was puzzled by his lengthened absence. He did not think that she
would misunderstand it. Like many men, he took it for granted that her
knowledge of his character and affairs had been as thorough as the
knowledge his superior insight and experience had given him into all
that pertained to her.

On the sixth day after his brother's summons Mortimer was pronounced
out of danger. This was the first opportunity John had had of seeing
Viola.

At four o'clock he alighted from the car that had carried him across
town to the old quarter about South Park. As he passed through the
dingy side streets holiday reigned in his heart. Life in the past
seemed dun and dreary compared to what it had become under the
influence of the still, almost rapt joy which now possessed him. An
immense, deep tenderness seemed to well from his heart over all his
being. His love for Viola seemed to have made him see and feel all that
was love-worthy in others--in the children that ran across his path or
played in chattering groups in the gutters, the women he met trudging
home with baskets on their arms, the lean-shanked boys playing ball in
the deserted gardens, the tousled young matrons exchanging gossip from
open upper windows. He had never noticed these people before, save with
cold repugnance; now he seemed to be able to see into them and note
their justifiable ambitions, their unselfish struggles, their smiling,
patient courage. The thought passed through his mind that perhaps
this exalted, unusual affection was the love of the future state, the
happiness that awaits the liberated soul.

He turned the last corner and came in sight of the house. For the first
few advancing steps he did not realize what gave it an unfamiliar look.
Then, as he approached, he saw that the vines which had hung in bunches
about the bay-window were cut away. There were frilled white curtains
in the lower windows. He drew near, staring astonished through his
glasses, each step revealing some innovation.

They were evidently renovating the whole place. The two thick-set brick
posts that supported the gate had been painted. The steps to the porch
had been mended with new wood. Then, as he put his hand forward to
unlatch the gate, he saw a woman--a broad-backed, red-necked woman in
a blue print dress--kneeling on the ground just below the bay-window,
evidently gardening. The sight surprised him into immobility, and for a
moment he stood motionless, gazing at the back of her head, where her
hair was twisted into a tight and uncompromising coil about as big as a
silver dollar.

The next moment he pressed the latch, and the gate opened with a click.
The woman started and turned round. Evidently greatly surprised at
the figure her glance encountered, she straightened herself from her
stooping posture, eying him curiously and wiping her earthy hands on
her apron.

"Is Miss Reed in?" he said, advancing up the flagged walk.

"Miss Reed?" said the woman "No. She ain't here any more."

Gault stopped.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Colonel Reed lives here."

"Not now," said the woman, struggling to her feet. "He did until last
week. We bought the place off of him just seven days ago, and moved in
Tuesday."

"Do you mean that he has sold it and gone away?"

"That's it. We rushed it through, both of us. He wanted to sell 'bout
as much as we wanted to buy, so there wasn't much time wasted on either
side."

"Had he thought of selling it for any length of time?"

"I can't rightly say as to that. We've had our eyes on it for the past
five years. My husband--he's Robson, the dry-goods dealer, on Third,
just below here--was pretty well satisfied that the colonel couldn't
hang on to it forever. 'Bout three years ago he offered him three
thousand. But the old man wouldn't hear of it. Said he wouldn't even
raise a mortgage on it, as it was all he had to leave to his daughter
when he died. But we knew he couldn't hold out much longer. He didn't
have no work, nor nothing to live on. Miss Reed she made a little, but
not enough to run everything, and--"

"Yes--I know all about that. When did you say they left?"

"On Monday, and we moved in Tuesday. Saturday the old man came round to
Mr. Robson's place and said he'd let him have the house for anything
he chose to give. There ain't nothing mean about Mr. Robson. He could
'a' beat the colonel down to 'most anything, but he said he'd give him
two thousand cash down, and the old man just jumped at it. Mr. Robson
said it would 'a' been business to get the colonel to a lower figure,
and he said he supposed he would 'a' done it if it hadn't been for the
daughter. She was sick, and the old man said he'd got to have money to
take her away."

"Sick?--seriously sick?"

"Well, as to that I can't say. But she was about the peakedest-looking
girl I ever seen. I was awful sorry for them."

"Where have they gone?"

"I ain't able to say."

"But you surely have some idea of where they've moved to? Didn't they
say something about their intentions? Didn't the colonel tell your
husband in reference to the transfer of the money?"

"They didn't neither of 'em say a word. They're the most close-mouthed
pair I ever ran into. My husband paid the money down in cash the day we
moved in. They took it, and that's all I know about them."

"Can't you tell me some one about here who may know more--some of the
tradespeople--butchers, grocers, that sort of thing?"

"You might try Coggles, the grocer at the corner. I think they had an
account with him. But they didn't deal regular with any one else."

Gault thanked her and turned to go. She followed him down the walk,
anxious to be agreeable, for his manner and appearance had impressed
her immensely.

"If I hear anything about them I'll let you know," she said affably.

"Thanks; it's very good of you," he answered, opening the gate. But he
had no intention of giving her either his name or address, as he did
not for a moment think that this disappearance of the Reeds was other
than temporary.

At the corner he stopped and inquired for them at Coggles the grocer's.
Coggles himself answered his inquiries. He had even less information to
give than Mrs. Robson. A week before the colonel had paid such small
amounts as he yet owed, and had casually mentioned the fact that he had
sold his house and was about to leave the city. This was all Coggles
knew. He showed some desire to talk over the colonel's pecuniary
difficulties, but Gault cut him short and left the store.

Gault walked away, feeling dazed and hardly master of himself. It had
been so absolutely unexpected that he did not yet send his mind back
over their past intercourse to ask what she might have been thinking
since he saw her last. As is the case of the man in love, he had seen
the situation only from his own side. But he did not for a moment doubt
that he would hear from her within the next few days.

He was still with his brother a good deal of the time, and the days
that followed passed with the swiftness which characterizes hours
filled with various anxieties. Four days after learning of her flight,
two weeks from the evening that he had seen her last, the janitor at
his office handed him a small but heavy package. It had been left early
in the morning by a boy, the janitor said, who had merely asked if
this was Mr. John Gault's office, and had then hastened away.

An instinct told him it was from her, and he shut himself into his
inner office before he opened it. It was a rough wooden box, and
contained the money given by him to the colonel--five hundred and ten
dollars in gold coin. Lying on the top was a slip of paper bearing the
words: "Good-by. VIOLA."

Still he could not but believe that she would soon reveal her
whereabouts. The move was occupying her, and such an operation would
seem a gigantic undertaking to her youthful inexperience. That she
should treat him this way was thoughtless, cruel even, but she had been
deeply wounded, and her hurt was evidently still sore. He could only
wait patiently.

He did so for two weeks, his uncertainties growing into fears,
his conviction of her intention to communicate with him gradually
weakening. Uneasiness gave place to alarm. For the first time the
haunting thought that she had gone from him purposely, fled forever
from his love, entered his mind.

Finally, unable to endure the anxiety that now beset him, he
commissioned a private detective agency to run to earth the boy who had
brought the money. He supposed it had come directly from her, and that,
through the boy, without drawing her into the affair, her hiding-place
could be discovered.

The finding of the boy was not so simple a matter as might have been
supposed. It required a week's search to locate him. He was the only
son of a poor widow living near South Park, who had done the Reeds'
washing. Before her departure Miss Reed had commissioned him to deliver
the package at Mr. Gault's office at a certain date, and at an hour
when there would be no chance of his coming into personal contact with
Mr. Gault himself.

Gault snatched at this meager information, and lost no time in seeking
out the widow in her own home. She was a good-natured and loquacious
Irish-American,--Mrs. Cassidy by name,--and was full of terror at
the thought that detectives had been occupied in discovering her
place of abode. Her fears, however, were soon allayed, and she became
exceedingly discursive. But when it came to information of Viola, she
could tell no more than the others.

Before Miss Reed had left the city she had given the package to the
boy, with the instructions that he should not deliver it till the day
set by her, some time after her departure. Of her own volition Mrs.
Cassidy stated that she thought Miss Reed did not want any one to know
where she went. Mrs. Cassidy had conferred with others of her kind
in the locality, and the silent and hasty departure of the Reeds
had been matter of comment. The shrewd Irishwoman saw that there was
a mysterious romance here, and her glance dwelt with compassionate
curiosity upon the gentleman who was sufficiently interested in the
pretty girl they had all known by sight to employ detectives to hunt
for her.

The finding of the boy and the interview with Mrs. Cassidy broke down
the last of Gault's hopes. He now knew that Viola had intentionally
fled from him. At first, when no word came from her, and Mrs. Robson's
description of her as ill was fresh in his mind, he had a terrible
fear that she might have died. But a later judgment convinced him that
had this been the case he would have heard from the colonel. Viola
was living--hiding somewhere from him, restraining her father from
communicating with him, which, Gault knew, would be the old man's wish
and intention.

And now, with the blankness of her absence deadening his heart, for
the first time he began to understand what she must have thought and
felt--began to see the situation with her eyes. He thought of her,
loving and believing in him as he knew she had always done, suddenly
waking to the knowledge that he had suspected her. He saw her living
over again those conversations in which he had half revealed his
groundless doubts, had tried to find confirmation of them in the
halting admissions of her puzzled ignorance. And with her comprehension
of the light in which he had been regarding her came that _coup de
grâce_ of all doubts in his favor--the giving of the money.

With a clearness of vision that was like clairvoyance, he seemed to be
able to read down into the depths of her consciousness, to see into the
hidden places of the nature he had once thought so jealously secretive.
In the gnawing bitterness of his remorse he realized that she had
believed herself tricked, that the hand she had thought stretched
to her in kindly fellowship in reality concealed a trap. Where she
had looked for protection, support, and love, she had found what now
presented itself to her as a sinister and cruel craftiness. Her best
friend had turned out to be her most unrelenting enemy.

In the loneliness of that long summer he came face to face with
despair. He had lost her by his own mad folly. Remorse for the wrong he
had done her alternated in his thoughts with an unquenchable longing
to see her again. His heart craved for her, even if only for a single
moment's glimpse. A younger man would have shaken off the gloom of his
first great disappointment, have told himself that there were other
eyes as sweet and hearts as true. But with him the elasticity of youth
was gone. There was no forming of new ties, no delight in fresh faces.
Life had offered him supreme happiness, and he had let it pass by him.
Like the base Indian, he had "thrown a pearl away richer than all his
tribe."

The summer held the city in its spell of wind and fog. Acquaintances
who encountered one another on its wide thoroughfares said town was
empty--not a soul left in it. The Mortimer Gaults took themselves
away for rest and recuperation to balsamic mountain gorges among the
redwoods. Letitia returned to the hotels and the Hacienda del Pinos.
John Gault was left alone with his empty heart. If she had died it
would have been bearable. The inevitableness of death makes us bow to
its blows with broken submission. But she was alive--poor, sick, her
love disprized, her pride trampled on, driven away from all that was
familiar and friendly to her by fear of him.

The winds beat and tore through the city, buffeting the passers-by and
sweeping street and alley. Then, as the color deepened toward evening,
their stress and clamor suddenly ceased, a burst of radiance ran from
the Golden Gate up the sky, glazing the level floor of the bay and
flaring on all the western windows. It stayed for a space, seeming to
immerse the town in an atmosphere of beaten gold, as if for one brief
half-hour it was transformed into the glistening El Dorado of the early
settlers' dreams. Then the fog stole noiselessly in, and the houses
crowding to the summits of the hills, the rose-red clouds, and the
clear purple distances were blotted out.

That went on day by day till the autumn came. The winds dropped and
the sun shone all day. In the country the air was clear and heavy with
sweet, aromatic scents. All the fields were parched and sun-dried like
hemp; only the thick-growing, bushy trees defied the drought, remaining
green and hardy. The great hills were scorched to a smooth yellow,
with a few green tree-tufts slipped down into their valleys where the
watercourses were not quite dry.

In town it was all still and golden and hot. The city, queening it on
its hills, rose in an atmosphere of crystal clearness from a girdle of
sapphire sea. In the evening the smoke lay lightly over it, and the
sun glared through like a great, inquisitive eye. Poor people in the
old districts were ill from lack of rain and from unclean sewers. Rich
people were coming back, looking sunburnt and healthy from their summer
in the open air.

The Gaults came up out of their lounging-place in the redwoods, robust
and blooming, Mortimer quite restored to health, and Maud two shades
darker with her country tan. Letitia, with three trunks of ruined
millinery, appeared from the hotels, and the town house was once more
alive.

They had seen little of John since they left for the country, and it
was not strange that Maud Gault, after his first visit, should have
said to her husband:

"What's the matter with John? All of a sudden he looks quite old."

"Nothing," said the loyal Mortimer; "only a fellow can't be expected to
look young forever. John's not like a woman: he doesn't keep the same
age for twenty years."




VI


The selling of the house and the subsequent flight of the Reeds had
been, as Gault had guessed, Viola's idea. When, the morning after those
two soul-destroying interviews, she had come down, white and apathetic,
and had told her father that she wanted to leave the city, the old man,
in a desperate desire to reinstate himself in her regard, had been
willing to accede to anything.

Pressed by Viola, he had hurried through the sale, had taken the small
sum Robson had offered without demur, and, driven by her feverish
anxiety, had paid off all their household debts and handed to her the
remaining money. This, with himself, he had placed entirely in her
hands. As the girl locked it into the small tin box in which she kept
such valuables as they possessed, she had suddenly looked at it, and
then at him, and finally said:

"But the mortgage? Wasn't there interest or something to pay on that?"

"Mortgage!" said the colonel, in innocent surprise. "What mortgage?"

Viola looked away from him and murmured something about being mixed up.
She saw that he had forgotten the story by which, three years ago, he
had accounted to her for the first sudden era of prosperity. She felt,
with a dreary indifference, that she did not care where that money
had come from. She, at least, had not been put forward as a means of
procuring it.

The breathless hurry of their departure, and the quantity of work that
accumulates about the breaking up of even so small a household, gave
her no time for the indulgence of her own bitter thoughts. The days
passed in a turmoil of noise and movement. In a nightmare atmosphere of
dust and strange faces she haggled with the Jews from the second-hand
stores on Mission Street, listened to their sarcastic comments on the
old pieces of furniture she had passed her life among, watched them
with dull eyes as they tested the springs of the colonel's chair and
rubbed between appraising fingers the curtains his young bride had
bought twenty-four years before. At night she crept into her bed, too
exhausted for thought, to lose herself in blessed gulfs of sleep.

She was possessed by a wild desire to escape from the house and the
city. The scene of her humiliation had become intolerable to her, and
deep in her heart lay the terror that if she remained it would be the
scene of her downfall. The thought of Gault's reappearance filled her
with dread. She was confident of his return, and his return as the
conqueror who had gauged her weakness and his own power. All her trust
in him had been shattered at a blow. Suddenly he had appeared to her,
not as the lover whose highest wish was for her happiness, but as the
master, cruel and relentless, the owner who had bought and paid for
her. The shame of the thought that she still loved him caused her to
bow her face upon her breast, hiding it from the eyes of men and the
light of day. All she could whisper in her own justification was the
words, "But when I grew to love him I never knew--I never guessed for a
minute what he meant."

She wanted to begin all over again, to be another person in another
place. The charm of home had vanished from the little house. She longed
to put it behind her, to be a different woman from the Viola Reed who
once within its narrow walls had known the taste of happiness.

She was so engrossed in her own sorrows that she thought nothing of
her father, heretofore the first consideration of her life. She told
him what he should do, and he did it unquestioningly. Though no more
angry words had passed between them, it seemed to the frightened old
man as if every day she receded further from him. His only thought was
to repair the damage he had done, to climb back somehow into his old
position. He tried to anticipate her every wish, and followed her about
with humble offers of help. But when, during those days of work and
hurry, her eyes met his, they seemed to him to have a hard and alien
gleam. It struck upon his somewhat vague contrition like an icy wind.
If she had been gay and talkative he would have forgotten the wrong he
had done her in twenty-four hours, and been ready to laugh with her at
Gault. But she seemed now to have suddenly ranged herself against him
on Gault's side, and to have left him, chilled and solitary, out in the
cold.

So when she told him they would go to Sacramento, though the thought of
change turned his heart to lead, he agreed with a good grace. He also
acquiesced in all her injunctions about keeping their place of refuge
a secret. When she told him of her plan to return Gault's money, he
controlled his desire to disagree with it, and accepted her decision
without open murmur. It seemed to him an unnecessary waste. What were
the few paltry hundreds to the rich man? The colonel had been rich,
too, and had aided hundreds of needy ones without ever thinking of
repayment. By some obscure mental processes he had come to believe that
Gault wanted the money. Now that the younger man had come between
him and Viola, his feeling for him had become sharply hostile. It was
only fear of reopening a disagreeable subject that prevented him from
abusing his former friend to his daughter.

They left the city with very different feelings. To the colonel his
departure was as the dragging out of every fiber. The roots of his life
seemed to have struck deep down into that sandy soil. His horizon had
always been bounded by the long lines of gray houses, by the girdling
blue of the bay. To the girl it seemed a flight from shame and misery.
She was not escaping from it: part of it would go with her always; but
she was putting behind her her own weakness and the temptation and
despair that the weakness of others had brought upon her.

As the train carried them farther away, as the bay faded out of sight,
and the scarred and dwarf scrub-oaks gave place to the stately trees of
the valleys, she felt her breath come with the sigh of a deep relief,
and to her blank heart whispered the consolation, "It's over and done.
I shall never see him again."

At Sacramento they found shelter in a cheap boarding-house. It was a
large old house on a side street, set back from the publicity of the
thoroughfare in an extensive garden. The garden was so far cared for
that it was watered, and the palms and aloes and fig-trees had reached
a mighty growth; but its paths were weed-grown, and the statues and
urns raised by its original owners lay overturned in the rank grass.

The house itself, dropping fast into peeling, unpainted decay, was
commodious, with the high, airy rooms that were built in the days
when all Californians seemed to be prosperous, and space was not too
valuable to be sacrificed to comfort. The rooms still showed traces of
their fine beginnings. There were exceedingly bad and elaborate frescos
on the lofty ceilings of the lower floor, and great mirrors incased in
gold moldings crowned the mantelpieces. In the musty, unaired parlors,
where the puckered inside shades of faded silk were always down to keep
the sun from revealing the threadbare secrets of the pale old carpets
and the frayed satin arm-chairs, the colonel felt as if he were having
a nightmare of the old days. It was all so like in its largeness, its
rich stiffness, its obvious expensiveness, but so terribly unlike in
its stuffy, squalid, unclean penury.

In the evening at dinner they met their fellow-boarders. The wide
dining-room, with long windows opening on one of the many balconies
that projected from the walls, showed the same frescos, the same pale,
rose-strewn carpet, the same cumbrous pieces of furniture, that,
forty years back, some mining prince had brought round the Horn in a
sailing-ship. The smell of hundreds of boarding-house dinners hung
in the folds of the dingy lace curtains. From a crystal chandelier,
lacking most of its pendants, a garish burst of light fell over the
table, where much plated ware and pressed glass made a glittering array
on a dirty cloth.

At the head of the board sat Mrs. Seymour, the landlady, and beside
her her only child, Corinne, a sharp-faced little girl of eight,
who, leaning with her elbows on the table, let her glance, shrewd,
penetrating, and amused, pass from face to face. Mrs. Seymour,
a large woman of a countenance originally buxomly pleasant, but
hardened by contact with the world as the boarding-house keeper meets
it, introduced the newcomers. They presented a curious contrast to
their fellows. The colonel, whose social tastes had not fallen with
his fortunes, was a trifle puzzled by the society in which he found
himself. At the same time his gregarious spirit was cheered to see
that there were other people in the house. He bowed to the lady on his
right, introduced as Miss Mercer, with elaborate gallantry, and drawing
out her chair, stood waiting for her to seat herself. The recipient of
this unexpected courtesy did not know how to take it, for the moment
suspecting some joke.

To Viola the strange faces seemed unlovely and forbidding. She had
met few people in her life, and this sudden plunge into society
was a portentous experience. Pale and silent under the glare of
the chandelier, she nibbled at her food, having neither heart nor
courage to speak. When she raised her eyes she saw the young man
opposite--Mrs. Seymour had presented him as "Bart Nelson, our prize
young man"--staring at her over his plate with a steady, ruminating
air. As he met her eyes for the second time, he said:

"Off your feed?"

And then, in reply to the colonel's look of uneasy inquiry, jerked his
head toward Viola and said:

"Mrs. Seymour ain't goin' to lose anything by her."

Mrs. Seymour replied that she wanted somebody like that to even things
off against such an appetite as Mr. Nelson's.

The laugh then was on the prize young man, and he joined in it as
heartily as the others.

Miss Mercer, who, it appeared, was a school-teacher, and who had
the tight-mouthed visage and dominant voice of those who habitually
instruct the young, said she guessed Miss Reed was trying to put Mrs.
Seymour off her guard; it was a case of making a good impression in
the beginning.

The voice of the little girl here rose with penetrating suddenness:

"She don't ever eat much. She's too thin."

Viola, suddenly the objective point of interest of the table, felt
herself growing red and embarrassed. That she might hide her face from
this alarming concentration of attention, she pretended to drop her
napkin, and bent down to get it. The landlady, with a tact that her
appearance belied, saw that the girl was uncomfortable, and diverted
the conversation.

It swelled, and was tossed back and forth about the table with much
laughter and jest of a personal nature. There were but six people in
the house besides Mrs. Seymour, and these seemed intimately conversant
with one another's histories and individual foibles. The school-teacher
was attacked about an admirer known as "Little Willie," and after a
moment of confusion she made a spirited return on the young man beside
her, whom every one called Charley, but who had been presented to Viola
as Mr. Ryan. Charley's infatuation for a lady who had ridden a bicycle
in a recent vaudeville performance seemed to be a subject of gossip,
and the school-teacher added further poignancy to the tale by relating
how this lady, having made an appointment to lunch with Charley, had
failed to keep the tryst. The glee roused over Charley's discomfiture
was loud and deep. A heavily bearded man who sat at the foot of the
table, and was ceremoniously addressed as Mr. Betts, lay back in his
chair and roared.

"Oh, Charley!" he gasped, when he had recovered his composure, "she got
you straight in the slats that time."

His wife, at the other end of the table, said with a prim air: "What
I'd like to know is where Miss Mercer hears all these stories."

"Little birds tell them to her," said the child, in her sudden,
piercing voice. "I guess they're trained birds."

After dinner, when they had gone up-stairs, the colonel stopped with
Viola at her door. The passage was dimly lit by a gas-jet at the
farther end, which was turned economically low. From the parlor bursts
of laughter ascended.

"Well, good night, honey," said the colonel. "I'm sorry you're so
tired." Then, somewhat uneasily, "Do you think you'll like it here?"

"Oh, I think so," said Viola.

The door swung back, and the dark, stuffy interior of the room opened
before her like a long-closed cave. She turned her cheek and the
colonel kissed it.

"Do you think you'll be able to stand those people?" he asked, in the
low tone of confidential criticism.

"I dare say they'll be very nice when we get to know them. Everybody's
strange at first. Good night, father."

She went in and closed the door. The aloofness of her manner had never
been more marked. It seemed to place the colonel in the position of a
stranger to whom she preserved an attitude of polite reticence. Feeling
shrunk and chilled, he crept away to his own room.

So the new life began. Everything was very strange, and the weather
was very hot. The colonel, who had not for fifty years known a warmer
climate than San Francisco, wilted in the furnace-like airs of the
interior city. The first burning week exhausted him as a serious
illness might have done. Viola, who had never seen her father ill, was
frightened, and sent for a doctor. The doctor came, asked questions,
and looked wise. He said the colonel's heart was weak, and that he
seemed in a very debilitated condition. A trip to the seaside would do
him good; cooler weather would brace him up.

When the man had gone there was a silence between the father and
daughter. Through the drawn blinds the golden cracks of intruding
sunshine cut the dimness that Viola had made by closing all the
shutters in a futile attempt to keep the room cool.

Presently she said, in a voice that she tried to make cheerful:

"As soon as you get stronger we will go on. It's too hot and
uncomfortable here for any one to stay."

"Go on where?" the colonel asked, with the light of interest in his
eyes.

"Farther east. It will be cool enough there. We can go to one of those
seaside places you read about in the papers--a cheap one, I mean. We
have plenty of money for the trip."

The colonel moved restlessly in his chair, and finally twitched open
one of the shutters. The hot breath of the garden, laden with heavy
exotic scents, puffed in through the opening like incense.

"Don't take me farther away, Viola," he said suddenly, in a tone like
that of a querulous child; "don't take me out of California."

"Do you want to stay here?" she asked.

"If we can't go back," he answered, looking at her wistfully.

"I didn't think you minded," she said; "I thought you'd like the
change."

There was something of the old gentle fellowship in her tone, and it
made the colonel's heart expand. He held out his hand to her, and
taking her fingers, rubbed them against his cheek.

"I'm too old to be transplanted now."

She stood beside him, looking down, evidently troubled.

"Some day, perhaps," he went on, watching her, "we can go back. They'll
have forgotten us there in a few more weeks."

He saw her face change at once, and dared go no further.

"Yes--some day," she answered, and the conversation ended.

The long summer burned itself on through July into August. Glaring,
golden mornings melted into breathless noons, which smoldered away
into fiery sunsets. The leafage in the garden hung motionless, and
exhaled strange, aromatic perfumes. In the evenings the palms stood
black against the rose-red west like paintings of sunset in the desert.
The city they had left, wrapped in its mantle of fog, appealed to the
memories of the exiles as a dim, lost paradise.

To the girl whose simple life had passed in a seclusion almost
cloistral, but at its loneliest marked by refinement, the sudden
intimacies, the crude jovialities, of the boarding-house were violently
repelling. She shrank from contact with her fellow-boarders, touched
by, but unresponsive to their clumsy overtures of friendship, alarmed
by their ferociously playful personalities. Fortunately her coolness
was set down as shyness, and she suffered from none of that rancor
which the boarder who is suspected of "putting on frills" is liable to
rouse.

The long, idle days seemed interminable to her. At first she had found
occupation in an attempt to beautify the two rooms she and her father
rented. Of hers she had made a sitting-room, transforming the bed
into a divan covered with a casing of blue denim and a heap of shaded
blue cushions. Under one of the balconies she discovered a quantity
of forgotten flower-pots, and in these she had planted cuttings of
gay-colored geraniums, and set them along the window-sills and the
balcony-railing. But the work was soon completed, and a second interval
of terrifying vacant hours faced her. This time she tried to seek
intellectual diversion, and joined the free public library. She had
often secretly deplored her own ignorance; now was the time to repair
this defect; and she carried home many serious works, great thoughts
of great minds with whom she had never before had an opportunity of
becoming acquainted.

But poor Viola was not of the women who find in the exercise of the
brain a method of healing the hurts of a wounded heart. At times a
sense of piercing misery possessed her. There were hours when her
loneliness pressed upon her like a weight, when the sense of what she
had lost was unbearable as a fierce, continuous pain. Then, in the hope
of escaping from the torment of "remembering happier things," she went
out and, in the blistering heat under which the streets lay sweltering,
walked aimlessly. If fatigue overcame her she sat down on one of the
benches in the little plazas that dot the city, and there a graceful,
listless figure slipped back over the intervening gulf to the days when
the sunshine had been bright and her own heart was full of it.

Sometimes rebellion against the fate which had shut her out from
happiness rose within her. A beloved companionship, no matter at what
cost, was better than this waste of desolation. One life is all of
which we are sure; why not, then, seize what we can of that one? How
terrible, in the darkness of death, to realize that we have lost all
that might have made this world so rich and sweet! Oh, the frightful
thoughts of seeing at the end that we have relinquished joy and love
for a dream, for nothing! For the first time in a life singularly free
from event or developing experience, she met that dark second self
which dwells in each of us.

So the tempter whispered his old words. She closed her ears to them
with fear and aversion. But they returned, coming upon her persuasively
in moments of deadly depression and disgust of life, coming upon her
with comforting declarations of harmlessness, coming upon her with
challenging queries as to their wrong.

One evening they were more convincing than they had ever been before.
Sitting alone in her own room after dinner, Viola listened, for the
first time hesitating. Where would be the wrong in writing to him--just
a line to tell him she was sorry they had gone without seeing him?
Common politeness would seem to suggest that she ought to do that. She
would have done it before, only--only-- She rose from her seat and,
going to the window, looked down into the dark recesses of the garden,
whence small rustling noises rose, then upward to the clear pink of the
sunset, cut with black palm-spikes. He, once their best friend! What
excuse was there for slighting a friend?

She turned from the window suddenly and went to the table where her
writing-materials were kept. A sheet of note-paper lay ready on the
blotter. It shone pink in the sunset light as she drew it toward her.
Her hand trembled a little as she dipped the pen in the ink, but was
firm when she wrote her letter. There were only a few lines, and of
the most commonplace description. In the barest words she accounted
for their sudden departure, made an apologetic allusion to their not
having acquainted him with their intention of leaving, and ended with
the words, "I hope we shall some day see you again." At the end of
the letter she wrote the address, and upon this expended some care,
forming the numbers with exactness, and inscribing the name of the
street with slow clearness. She sealed the envelop with nervous haste,
and was rising from her chair when the colonel entered.

"Been writing letters?" he asked.

The question was not an idle one, for letter-writing was seldom
practised in that small family circle.

Instinctively Viola placed her hand over the envelop as it lay on the
table.

"Yes," she said hurriedly, "just a note."

"Whom to?" he asked. "Oh, I suppose your friend at the Woman's
Exchange." This was a girl Viola had spoken of writing to anent the
relinquishing of her work.

Viola made no answer. The old man, who was lighting the lamp, did not
appear to notice her silence.

"Letter-writing's not much in my line," he said absently, "but your
mother wrote beautiful letters."

"Whom to?" said the girl, in her turn.

"Me, when we were lovers."

The lamp was lit, and he charily placed the globe on it. As he did so,
Viola, from behind him, leaned forward and applied the letter, twisted
into a spiral, to the chimney. It smoked, charred, and then went up in
a flicker of flame.

"What are you doing?" he asked, staring at her in surprise.

"Burning my letter."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Perhaps because I don't write beautiful ones like my
mother."

Her voice trembled, broke, and she burst into wild tears. The door into
the room beyond was open, and she ran through the aperture and shut the
door behind her.

The colonel stood looking after her, amazed, alarmed, uncomprehending.
In the old days he would have followed her. Now he stood listening at
the closed door, not daring even to knock. When he heard her sobbing
cease he came tiptoeing away as though afraid of reawakening her
drowsing grief. Standing by the table, he looked long and ruefully at
the lamp-globe.

"Poor little girl!" he whispered; "she's homesick, too."

The old man's own homesickness was an incurable malady. As he had said
himself, he was too old for transplanting. He could not shake himself
down in the new rut. He could not get accustomed to the strange city
and its unfamiliar thoroughfares. Its alien aspect seemed to force in
upon him the sense of his insignificance and failure. He walked along
the streets and no one knew him. There were no cheery voices to cry
out, "So long, colonel," and wave a welcoming hand to a hat-brim.
People jostled him to one side, seeing only a thin, threadbare old man
in a faded coat. He had no consciousness that they would turn and look
at him, and point him out to the stranger from the East whom they were
"taking round." He was no more to Sacramento than it was to him. He
grew so to dread the feeling of oppressive melancholy that fell upon
him in its unfriendly streets that he gave up going out, and spent most
of his time in the garden or in Viola's room.

When with her he tried to be bright and to make the best of the
situation. He saw in her changed attitude nothing but blame of him,
and he would have borne anything uncomplainingly to win back the love
he thought she withheld. That another and a deeper feeling could be
causing her heaviness of spirit he did not dream. Like many another
man, he had no instinct to see into the hidden inner life of the child
that was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

He hardly ever let his thoughts revert to the cause that had made her
take her hasty step. He knew he had been to blame, and the colonel was
a man who always forgot his own mistakes. In the course of time they
ceased to be mistakes, and, in his eyes, assumed the proportions of
worthy attempts that an unjust fate had frustrated. Just what he had
meant by using his daughter's name in his intercourse with Gault he
himself hardly knew--nothing to her actual detriment, that was certain.
If any one had breathed a word of blame against her, or tried to harm
one hair of her head, he would have been quick to rise in her defense,
wrathful as a tiger. The wrongs that do not come directly back, like
boomerangs, were wrongs the responsibility of which the colonel readily
shifted from his shoulders. He had wanted money for Viola, and he used
the readiest means to his hand to get it. The jingling of gold in his
pocket, the gladness of her face when he brought her some trifling
gift, made everything outside the pleasure of the moment count for
naught.

And now they were estranged. A veil of indissoluble coldness separated
them. Yet she was never curt or sharp or cross to him. Sometimes it
seemed to him that she was the same in word and voice and manner as
she had always been, only something had gone from her--light, cheer,
gaiety, some inexpressible, loving, lovely thing that had made her
the star of his life. Once, taking his courage in both hands, he had
asked her if she was angry with him, and then shrank like a whipped
dog before the startled negation of her eyes and her quick "Why, no,
father! How could I be?"

The one diversion of the colonel's life was the society of his
fellow-boarders. Though he abused them roundly up-stairs to Viola,
he took undoubted satisfaction in regaling them with the stories of
his past greatness. Night after night he bestrode his hobby, and
entertained an admiring circle with its evolutions. It was many years
since he had had so large and so attentive an audience, and he profited
by the occasion, giving even more remarkable accounts of the men he had
made than those with which he had once amused John Gault.

For some time his listeners awarded him a half-credulous attention;
but soon their interest in the garrulous old man died away. Miss
Mercer expressed the opinion that the colonel was "no better than an
old, worn-out fake," a sentiment which found an echo in the breasts of
every other inmate of the house--even Mrs. Seymour quietly, in her own
mind, relegating him to the ranks of harmless frauds. The traditions
of San Francisco were not known of all men in Sacramento. The colonel
found that he was singing the songs of Zion in a strange land. No one
believed him. When he spoke of his friendship with Adolphus Maroney,
and how thirty years before he had laid the foundation of Jerry
McCormick's fortune, the listeners made little attempt to hide their
disbelief, and Mr. Betts and Charley Ryan took much delight in openly
"joshing the old man." Bart Nelson did not indulge in this pastime, as
he had conceived a violent, if secret, regard for Viola.

One evening after dinner the "joshing" reached a climax against which
even the colonel's egotistical infatuation was not proof. Viola was
up-stairs, according to her custom; Mrs. Seymour was absent on her
never-ending household duties; and Bart Nelson was out. There was no
one to restrain the old man's foolish flights, and inspired by the
ironically flattering queries of his listeners, his reminiscences
became more vaingloriously brilliant than they had ever been before.

His completion of an elaborate account of his patronage of Adolphus
Maroney called forth from Mr. Betts the remark:

"I don't see, colonel, how he can get on at all without you. Once you
got from under him, it's a miracle he didn't entirely collapse."

"No, not quite that," the colonel modestly deprecated. "Maroney was no
fool--no fool; only speculative and lacking in foresight. When I got
him on his feet he was able to go his way alone."

"Well, that was smart of him, wasn't it?" commented Charley Ryan, with
a sagacious wag of his head.

There was something in the tone of his remark that disturbed the
colonel's complacency. For a moment he eyed Charley with a side
glance, then he said:

"I'm always willing to admit that Maroney was no fool."

"Now, how do we know," said Miss Mercer, letting her eyes give a
preliminary sweep over the faces about her, "that you're not still
doing all the work and making all the money for those San Francisco
millionaires? You know, I believe that's just what you're up to, and
you're too sly to tell."

She looked at him with an air of bright challenge. The colonel was
pleased.

"No, my dear young lady," he answered; "that was in the past, when I
was one of them myself."

"Are you sure you are not one of them still?" said Charley Ryan. "Come,
now, colonel; make a clean breast of it. Here's the family album; can
you swear upon this book that you haven't got a few loose millions
lying round in tea-pots and stockings up in your room?"

The colonel flushed. He did not mind alluding to his poverty himself,
but he resented having others treat it as a jest.

"I can swear without family albums that the fortune I once had is a
thing of the past," he answered, "and I rather fancy that you know all
about its magnitude and its loss. Most people do."

This was too much. Mr. Betts, who was afflicted by an irrepressible
sense of humor, burst into loud laughter.

"Well, colonel," he said, "now that you remind me, I believe I have
heard that there was a hitch about your millions. So there is about
mine. Yours are gone, and mine ain't come. Brothers in misfortune!
Shake on that!"

He held out a large fist, and the colonel, not quite comprehending, but
feeling the derision about him in an inward sense of heated discomfort,
put his hand in it. Mr. Betts gave it a vigorous clasp, and holding it
aloft, said:

"The Corsican Brothers!--as they appeared at that fatal moment when one
had just lost and the other not yet found his pile."

There was a shout of laughter, and the old man drew his hand away. His
face was deeply flushed, and a feeling of tremulous indignation was
rising in him.

"Don't despond, colonel," said Miss Mercer, cheerily. "Lots of men have
made two fortunes. There's a chance for you yet."

"I guess there's about as much chance for him," said Mrs. Betts, who
was an acidulous lady of a practical turn, "as there is for Mr. Betts.
I'm sorter tired of this talk of making millions, and then never having
an extra dollar."

"Stick close to the colonel, Mrs. Betts," said Charley Ryan, "and
you'll have your extra dollar. He'll make it for you same way as he
did for Jerry McCormick."

"Now, colonel," said Mr. Betts, "there's a chance for you. Here's Mrs.
Betts wants an extra dollar, and here are you, just the man to make it
for her. No gentleman can resist the appeal of a female in distress.
Send my henchman for ink and paper." He drew a stub of pencil from
his pocket and began writing on the back of an envelop, reading as he
wrote: "Colonel Reed, the multi-millionaire, will before the present
witnesses sign a contract to make for the hereinbefore-mentioned Mary
Louise Betts the sum of one dollar, the same payable on--"

He paused with raised pencil.

"What date did you say?"

The colonel rose. He was pale and almost gasping with anger. He had at
last realized that these barbarians were making sport of him.

"I did not state any date," he said slowly; "nor did I--that I can
remember--say that I would make any specified sum of money for any one
here. But since you seem to insist that I did so, I will fulfil my
obligations without any more unnecessary talk. Here is the dollar."

He drew a dollar from his pocket and flung it on the table with the
gesture of one throwing a bone to a dog.

"Ladies," he said, bowing deeply to the two women, "I have the honor
to wish you good evening."

There was a moment of silence after his withdrawal, during which they
all sat staring rather foolishly at the dollar. But if he had thought
to humiliate them, he had mistaken his audience.

"There, now!" was the opening remark, contributed by Mrs. Betts;
"you've gone and rubbed him up the wrong way. And I don't see what
satisfaction you get from it."

"Well," said Mr. Betts, "I'll get the dollar, anyway."

He made a playfully frenzied lunge for the coin. But Charley Ryan had
anticipated the movement, and his hand struck it first. An animated
tussle ensued, during which Miss Mercer averted a catastrophe by
removing the lamp.

"Lord! Lord!" cried Mrs. Betts, querulously, "what under the canopy
possesses them? It's like living in a bear-garden."

The struggle ended with the triumph of Charley Ryan, who, with an
exaggerated bow and an affectation of the colonel's manner, presented
his trophy to Mrs. Betts. She took it, threw it into her work-basket,
and said snappishly:

"The old man gets that to-morrow. I ain't goin' into the hold-up
business."

After this the colonel's attitude toward his fellow-boarders was of the
stillest and most repelling sort. They were a good deal surprised at
it at first; then, as days passed and it did not soften, they came to
regard it as a joke, and though by tacit consent he was let alone, they
seemed to harbor no ill feeling toward him. He, on his side, was filled
with unappeasable rage. He often passed a meal without speaking to one
of them, and never again spent an evening in the parlor.

Up-stairs he abused them to Viola with a violence of phrase that
would have amazed them. Even to Mrs. Seymour he permitted himself to
indulge his wrath to the extent of biting sarcasms at their expense.
The landlady soothed him by assuring him that they were of an inferior
class to himself. This was some consolation to the colonel, but he
avoided their society with a hauteur which was quite thrown away on
them, and his life became lonelier and more purposeless than ever.

Cut off still further from his fellows, longing for, yet afraid to
court, the society of his daughter, the old man found himself in a
position of distressing isolation. In his dreariness he turned for
amusement and solace to the one person left in the house who had
neither the self-consciousness to bore, the experience to judge by, nor
the cruelty to mock. This was Corinne, Mrs. Seymour's little girl, a
grave, large-eyed, lean-shanked child of eight.

The alternate spoiling and scolding that the boarders awarded her had
developed in Corinne a chill disbelief in human nature. As a rule she
held off from those about her who would one day buy her kisses with
a bag of candy, and the next, when she was singing to her doll on
the balcony, would box her ears for making a noise. The vagaries of
humanity were a mystery to her, and she had already acquired a cautious
philosophy, the main tenet of which was to go her own way without
demand or appeal to her fellow-creatures.

Corinne, if not as experienced as her mother, was possessed of those
intuitive faculties which distinguish many neglected children. She knew
after the first week that neither the colonel nor Viola would blow hot
and cold upon her little moods. Still, there was a prudent reticence
in her acceptance of their overtures, and she took the colonel's first
gifts of fruit and candy with a wary apprehension of the next day's
rebuffs. But they never came, and the prematurely grave child and the
lonely old man established friendly relations, grateful and warming to
both. Finally, when the other boarders drove the colonel back into the
citadel of his wounded pride, the tie between them was strengthened.
Each felt the isolation of the other as a secret bond of sympathy and
understanding.

The colonel, sore, homesick, repulsed on every side, turned to the
child with a pitiful eagerness, and lavished upon her the discarded
affections of his hungry heart. He greeted her entrance into Viola's
sitting-room--a noiseless entrance, hugging up to her breast her doll
and her pet black kitten--with expressions of joy that to an outsider
would have seemed laughably extravagant. But they were not, for she
had come to represent to him tenderness, tolerance, appreciation.
He felt at ease and contented with her, for he knew that she would
not criticize him, would never find fault with him. She flattered
and sustained the last remnant of his once buoyant vanity. He was
not afraid that her eyes would meet his with a sad reproach. On the
contrary, their absorbed unconsciousness was one of the most soothing
and delightful things about her. Corinne would not have cared what he
did. She liked him for himself, and accepted him unmurmuringly as he
was.

It was holiday-time, and she spent many afternoons in the colonel's
society, generally squatted on the floor in Viola's sitting-room. She
spoke little, but had the appearance of listening to all the old man
said, and at times made solemnly sagacious comments. He, on his part,
talked to her as if she had been a woman, expatiating to her on the
strange capriciousness of affection that marked her sex. Once or twice
he alluded sadly to the apparent estrangement between himself and his
daughter.

"Seems almost as if she didn't like me, Corinne; doesn't it?" he asked
anxiously, watching the child, who was trying to put her doll's skirt
on the kitten.

"I don't think so," Corinne responded gravely, holding the cat on its
hind legs while she shook down the skirt; "I think she likes you a lot."

"What makes you think that? She doesn't ever talk to me much, or tell
me things, the way she used."

"She doesn't talk to anybody much," said Corinne. "Mr. Nelson said she
was the most awful quiet girl he ever knew." Here the cat gave a long,
protesting mew, and Corinne's attention became concentrated on its
toilet.

"She usen't to be quiet like that. She was the brightest girl! You
ought to have seen her, Corinne--just like a picture, and always
laughing."

"She don't laugh much now," said Corinne; "I don't think I ever heard
her laugh--not once. Keep quiet now, deary"--coaxingly to the cat;
"you're nearly dressed."

"And all because I only tried to please her. I just tried to do my
best to make her happy. There's no good trying to please a woman.
You're all the same. Be kind to them, be loving, break your heart
trying to give them pleasure--and that's the way it is."

"What's the way it is?" asked Corinne, sitting up on her heels and
feeling over her person for a pin to fasten the waistband of the skirt.

"The way it is now with me and Viola--coldness, indifference, maybe
dislike." Then, half to himself: "There's no understanding women. What
were they made for, anyway?"

Corinne seemed to think this remark worthy of attention. Her search for
the pin was arrested and she pondered for a moment. Then she looked at
the colonel and said tentatively, not quite sure of the reasonableness
of her reply:

"I suppose so that people can have mothers, colonel."

"So that people can have love, Corinne," he answered sadly.

Corinne, feeling that her solution of the problem had not been the
right one, returned to the pin. She found it, and bending over
the patient kitten, inserted it carefully into the band. But her
calculations were not true, the pin pricked, and the cat, with an angry
mew, broke away and went scuttling across the room inclosed in the
skirt. Her appearance was so funny that Corinne sat back on her heels
and, punching the colonel's knee, cried in a burst of laughter:

"Oh, look, colonel, look! Ain't she cunning?"

The colonel looked. The cat turned, still in the skirt, and eyed them
both with a look of hurt protest. It appealed to the colonel's humor
as it had to Corinne's. Their combined laughter filled the room and
greeted Viola as she came up the passage from one of her long walks.

"What are you laughing at?" she asked, as she opened the door and
entered like a pale vision wilted with the heat and light outside.

The colonel's laughter died away immediately. Her listless air of
delicacy struck him anew with the silent reproach which her mere
presence now seemed to suggest. All amusement faded from his face, and
he looked guiltily conscious, like a child found in mischief.

A short time after this a hot spell struck the city. Though it was
September, the heat was stifling. For three days the mercury stood so
high that even Corinne's engrossingly arduous play with the doll and
the kitten was listlessly performed, and she spent most of her time
in the sitting-room with Viola and the colonel, where, behind closed
shutters, they gasped away the hours. The old man seemed to feel the
heat less than before; at least, he said little about it, and occupied
himself in teaching Corinne to play solitaire, a game for which she
evinced a precocious aptitude. Viola, sitting by the window, where now
and then a fine edge of warm air sifted in between the slats in the
shutters, watched them. Her father seemed as much interested as the
child, and the girl wondered how in this oppressive exile he could have
spirit for so trivial an amusement.

After three days the heat broke, and was succeeded by a soothing,
balmy coolness, under the influence of which the city seemed to relax
and rest inert in the torpor of recuperation. The freshened airs that
flowed through the overheated old house extracted every odor left from
years of bad cooking and insufficient ventilation. The musty hangings
of the rooms closed in and held the oven-like atmosphere. Dusty
curtains and grease-stained carpets added their contributions to the
closeness left by years of untidy occupancy.

Viola had spent the morning in the garden, sitting under the great
fig-tree, sewing. The house was unbearable to her, and she wondered why
her father had chosen to remain there, working methodically over an
old solitaire he was trying to recall. Late in the afternoon, her work
done, she resolved to go out for a walk. Entering the sitting-room with
her hat and gloves in her hand, she found the colonel still sitting
at the table, upon which the cards were arranged in twelve neat piles.
He had mastered the solitaire, and now refused to accompany her on the
ground that he had an engagement to teach it to Corinne, who had that
day gone to school for the first time. He seemed to be looking forward
to the few hours of the child's society that the afternoon would give
him, and had set forth on a corner of the table a little feast of
cookies and fruit with which to regale her when the solitaire became
irksome. Viola was not sorry that he would not come. She liked being
alone, with nothing to interrupt the aimless flow of her thoughts.

The air was clear, fresh, and fine. The languor of the warm weather
was gone, and the girl, as she fared toward one of the little plazas
which at intervals interrupt the passage of the long streets, felt the
promise of autumn. Sitting on a bench in the plaza, she looked out over
the city, and caught a glimpse of the sparkle of the river at the end
of an open vista, and, cutting into the thin pink of the sunset sky,
roof beyond roof and chimney over chimney. The golden dreaminess of
summer was over, with its brooding, purposeless inaction. The haze of
churned-up yellow dust, was dispersed by a breath that held a prophecy
of coming cold, sharp and imperious. There was a stir in the air, a
promise in the flaring sky. Its light fell on Viola's face, and seemed
to suddenly send a shaft into her deadened heart. She moved and looked
up, almost as if some one had spoken to her. On the pallor of her
lifted face the reflected glow shone like gilding.

The dead lethargy that had held her all summer seemed to be breaking.
As she sat staring at the illuminated sky, her mind sprang back like
a mended spring, past all the despair and struggle of the past three
months to the life behind it, and then forward to the future. A rousing
of energy, a sense of work to do, a return of force and will, ran
through her in a brisk, revivifying current. The checked stream of her
life seemed to burst the barrier that had held it and to move onward
again.

There was work for every one, and work was the purpose of existence.
She had claimed happiness as a right, demanded what is not to be; then,
when the inexorable ruling will had interposed, had dropped from the
ranks in the passion of a thwarted child. The glory and the dream--who
realized them? Who of the millions about her had touched the happiness
she had expected to seize and hold? Why should she be exempt from the
grinding that forces the grain from the chaff? All yearned, aspired,
dreamed, and yet, never achieving, lived on, learning their lesson of
obedience. Only some bowed their necks to the yoke more quickly than
others.

There was a second plane of life--a plane to which some were rudely
hurled and some crept by degrees. Here you went sternly on, and did
the work before you for its own sake, not for yours. And thus, in
time, self might be conquered and its insistent cry for recognition be
stifled. There was a corner in the world for every one, where they took
their broken idols and set them up, and some day would look at them and
smile over the anguish there had been when they fell.

The sunset deepened to a fine, transparent red, which looked as if it
had been clarified of all denser matter. It gave a flush to Viola's
upward-looking face. Her thoughts turned from the vague lines they had
been following to closer personal ones. The love for her father, that
had seemed frozen, gushed up in her heart. His face, with its wistful
glance, came before her; a hundred instances of her past coldness
rose in accusing memory. There was something better yet than work.
Love--that was the axis of the world; that made life possible, and the
sacrifice of self full of use and meaning; that was the key-note of the
whole structure of existence.

She rose to her feet, and rapidly, with her old firm alertness of
step, moved out through the plaza. She wanted to run, to find the old
man and, taking his head in her arms, whisper her contrition. Through
street after street her swift footfall woke sharp, decisive echoes. Her
face had lost its look of dejection and was set in lines of firmness
and resolution. People, as she passed, turned to look at her--at the
young face so full of a steady purpose, at the eyes deep with a woman's
aspirations. Her thoughts flew forward, high-strung, exalted, beating
against the confining limits of time and space. She would take him back
to San Francisco. They would go together. How had she had the heart to
hurt him so! Now, all blindness swept away by the breaking down of her
egotism, she knew what he had suffered.

It was almost dark when she reached the house, and as she went up the
path from the gate she saw lights springing out here and there in
the upper windows. In the passage to her own room she came upon Mrs.
Seymour lighting the gas, her back toward the stair-head. The elder
woman, hearing the girl's light step, turned with the match in her
hand. Viola, still engrossed in her own thoughts, mechanically smiled a
greeting. Mrs. Seymour's face, with the crude gaslight falling on it,
was unresponsively grave.

"I'm glad that's you," she said; "I've had a sort of scare about your
father."

"Scare!" exclaimed Viola, stopping with a start. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing for you to get frightened about. It's all over now. He had a
sort of a sinking spell, that was all, when he was playing them cards
with Corinne. She come out and hollered for me, and I come up and found
him looking white and kind o' queerish. He said he'd only lost his
breath. I gave him some brandy, and it seemed to pull him together all
right. But I didn't, some way or other, like his looks. I sorter wished
you was here."

Viola looked relieved.

"Oh, he's had that several times before. It's his heart, the doctor
said; but he didn't seem to think it was anything serious. You
frightened me."

Mrs. Seymour walked down the hall to the gas-jet by the stair-head.

"You don't want to get frightened," she said over her shoulder; "but I
don't think you know much about sickness, and, if I was you, I'd get
the doctor to-morrow."

"I'll do that anyway," said Viola, as she opened the door of the
colonel's room.

The picture that she entered upon was reassuring. The lamp was lighted
under its opaque yellow shade, and cast its chastened light over the
center of the room. Here Corinne lay on the floor, the pack of cards
spread out before her. In the intensity of her absorption she kicked
gently on the floor with her toes, making a soft but regular tattoo.
Near by sat the kitten, its tail curled neatly round its front feet,
ink-black save for the transparent yellow-green of its large watching
eyes. The colonel leaned over the arm of his chair, following the game
as intently as the child. He was laughing when Viola came in, and
pointing with a long forefinger at a possible move that Corinne had not
seen. Both were so interested in their play that they did not heed the
opening of the door. Viola stood in the aperture, regarding them with
pleasure and relief. A slight smell of brandy in the air was the only
indication that there had been sickness here a short time before.

At the sound of the closing of the door they both looked up. Over the
colonel's visage the same childishly embarrassed expression flitted
that Viola had noticed a few days before. Corinne, on the contrary,
merely gave the newcomer the short side look of begrudged attention,
and returned to the cards, murmuring, "It's only Viola."

The girl went across to her father, and taking his hand, curled her
soft fingers around it in a warm, infolding clasp.

"Mrs. Seymour says you haven't been well," she said.

The unexpected caress made the old man forget the game, and his face
flushed with pleasure. He leaned toward her with the content of a
forgiven child.

"It was nothing--just a little turn like I had the other day. First a
pain, and then something comes fluttering up near your throat. The heat
knocked me out. But it scared Corinne."

"He got the color of the pitcher," said Corinne, not moving her eyes
from the cards, but sparing enough time to give a jerk of her head in
the direction of a white china water-pitcher on the table.

"You ought to have seen Corinne. She went out in the passage and made a
noise as if there was a fire."

"I was scairt," said Corinne, "and hollered for mommer. I don't want
you to scare me that way again, colonel."

The colonel and Viola laughed.

"I'll try and not have it happen again," said the old man. "You know, I
always do what you tell me."

"Mostly always," Corinne absently agreed. "I'm going to put this
ten-spot here. Look, colonel, isn't that the best move?"

The old man leaned forward, studying the contemplated move. Viola drew
back, watching him. She had noticed his pallor when she came in. Now
his face, settled into lines of gravity, appeared to have suddenly
collapsed and withered into the gray hollows of decrepitude. Her heart
contracted at the sight. She turned away, under the pretense of pulling
off her gloves, and said:

"I made a plan when I was out this afternoon. I think you'll like it."

"Let's hear it," he said, turning back from the cards and watching her
with a fond half-smile.

"Something I think you'll like--oh, ever so much!" She patted and
pinched the limp gloves into shape, not looking at him.

"Hit me with it," he said. "Mrs. Seymour's just given me that glass
half full of brandy; you can't expect me to guess after that."

"That we should go back to San Francisco."

Her news had more effect than even she had expected. The colonel sat
up as if he had been struck, his lips quivering into a smile that he
feared to indulge.

"Do you mean that, Viola? Do you really mean it?" he asked.

"Of course I do. I thought you'd like it."

"But do you like it? Do you want to go? Isn't there--wouldn't you
rather stay here?"

"Oh, no." She struck lightly on the edge of the table with the gloves,
avoiding his eyes. "I'd rather be there. We've had our little change,
and we can go back. It's our home, anyway; and we've enough money to
last for a long time yet."

"Of course we have, and it doesn't matter if we haven't." The old man's
face burned with excitement and joy. "But the house is sold! Where
shall we go? Oh, that doesn't matter, either. We can get rooms near
there. You'd like to be back near the old place, wouldn't you? We could
go to Mrs. Cassidy's; you know she rents her two back rooms on the
second floor. Oh, Viola--to be back again!"

He sank back in his chair, his eyes half shut in the ecstasy of this
sudden restoration to happiness.

"Just think of it!" he said. "To see the bay again, and Lotta's
Fountain, and Montgomery Street! and to smell the sea outside the
Golden Gate when the wind's that way! and to feel the fog! Viola, you
don't know what I've suffered. I never meant to tell you."

"I know--I know now. But I didn't guess at first--truly, father, I
didn't know at first."

"Why, of course not, honey--how should you? And it doesn't matter now.
It's all over, and we're going to have the time of our lives. But it
was awful, wasn't it? Everything was so lonesome and strange. And those
dreadful people! But we won't have any more bother with them. When'll
we start? Let's not waste any time."

Viola had turned away to the tall glass behind him, under the pretense
of taking off her hat. She could not control her tears. As she stood,
seeing her blurred image dark against the lamplight, she could hear the
colonel babbling on, apparently too preoccupied to notice that she was
not answering:

"It'll be warm when we get back--not this diabolical heat, but just
soft and sunny. The hills will be all brown. Presently there'll be a
smell of eucalyptus in the air, but that won't be till later, when the
evenings are short. Oh, I'm so glad we're going back! It's like getting
out of prison."

He was suddenly silent, and Viola heard him making a slight rustling
movement in his chair. Then the room was very quiet, for Corinne
had stopped beating with her toes. For a space Viola struggled
with herself, biting her lips, and surreptitiously taking out her
handkerchief and pressing it against her face. She was more afraid
of the piercing eyes of Corinne than of her father, and when she had
controlled herself sufficiently to be presentable, she looked in the
mirror to see if Corinne had been observing her. Instead, she saw the
child standing up some few steps away from the colonel, regarding him
with an expression of keen, suspended intentness that was at once
curious and fearful.

As Viola's eyes encountered the reflection, and read in it terror and
alarm, Corinne spoke in a quick, frightened voice:

"Look at the colonel, Viola. He looks so queer. I don't like him."

Viola was at his side before the child had ceased speaking.

The colonel's head had dropped forward on his breast. A yellowish,
waxen hue had spread over his face, and his eyes, cold and brooding,
were staring straight before him.

"Father!" she said, touching his hand with a strange fearfulness she
had never felt before.

The word sounded portentously loud in the deep, mysterious stillness
that had settled on the room. Awe of something majestic and terrible
clutched Viola's heart. As she stood staring, she heard the child
screaming down the hall:

"Mommer! Mommer! the colonel's sick again, and his eyes are open. Oh,
come quick--come quick!"

A moment later Mrs. Seymour's heavy footfall sounded at the doorway,
and she entered panting. As her glance fell on the colonel, she gave a
sharp sound.

"What is it?" whispered Viola, her tongue suddenly dry and stiff as a
piece of leather. "He won't speak."

Mrs. Seymour stepped forward, and laying her hand on the colonel's
eyes, softly closed the lids.

"He won't never speak no more, my dear," she said gently.

Viola looked at her with a wild and terrified face.

"Oh, no, Mrs. Seymour!" she cried. "Oh, no--oh, not that! We were just
going away--we were going home! Oh, it couldn't be that; it's too
cruel, it's too unnecessary. He wanted so to go! There was no harm in
it. Why couldn't they have waited till we'd got home?"

She raised her hands to her head in a gesture of dazed despair, and
fell senseless into Mrs. Seymour's arms.




VII


One week from the day Viola had told her father of their contemplated
return to San Francisco, Colonel Reed had passed into a memory.

Death had come and gone so quickly--so terribly, bewilderingly quickly!
Viola had hardly realized what had happened to so check and change
the current of her life when the days had already sprung back to
their monotonous routine, and the other boarders had laid aside the
expressions of lugubrious solemnity which they had worn while death
had hushed the house. Now, while she sat still and stupid in her room
up-stairs, they told funny stories and "joshed" each other at dinner,
as they had "joshed" the old pioneer a few weeks before. Even Corinne
had returned to the doll and the kitten, though, out of consideration
for Viola, she played with them furtively on the corner of the balcony,
where, with the assistance of an old umbrella and a pair of towels, she
had built herself what she called a house. One morning, stepping out
upon the balcony, Viola came upon the child lying face downward and
whispering to herself while she played the solitaire the colonel had
taught her, with the pack of cards he had bought for her a few days
before his death.

The waters of oblivion had closed without a ripple over the old
pioneer. In the dingy boarding-house where he had spent the last
months of his life his name was unknown, and his fellow-lodgers had
come to regard the personal part of his reminiscences as figments of
his imagination. So obscure had been his situation, so little trusted
his own words, that his passing had not even been awarded the short
newspaper notice that is evoked by the death of the most commonplace
forty-niner. In the Sacramento boarding-house Colonel Reed was as a
stranger in a strange land. Only his daughter, Mrs. Seymour, and Bart
Nelson were the mourners at the funeral of the man who had once been
one of the most extravagant and picturesque figures of California's
brilliant youth.

At the end of the week Viola was to return to San Francisco. In her
heart-sickness and desolation she had turned to her home as a cat does.
After the first stunned bewilderment she woke to a sense of loneliness
that chilled her to the marrow. The world seemed terribly wide and
menacing as she stood thus hesitating on its verge. For the first time
in her life she realized what it meant to be alone, to be thrown into
that great maelstrom without a hand to hold or a shoulder to lean on.

She had no intimates--few acquaintances, even. The houses and streets
of San Francisco came to her mind with a more friendly aspect than the
people. Mrs. Seymour had asked her if she should write to any one.
She had answered that there was no one to write to. The good-natured
landlady had gazed at the girl--looking so slight and pale in her
somber draperies--with a frowning and fidgeted anxiety. She thought
it a very hazardous thing to let this delicate creature, still half
stupefied by a sudden blow, go away alone and unprotected into a city
of strangers. But Viola insisted. To herself she kept reiterating,
"I want to go home." It seemed to her as if the gaunt, gray city,
crowded on its wind-swept hills, would welcome her with the silent,
understanding love of a mother. It was the one friend she knew and
trusted.

After the expenses of the colonel's funeral were paid and her score
settled with Mrs. Seymour, she had still nearly one thousand dollars
left. This to her represented a little fortune. Even without work
she could live on it for several years. Economy had been the only
completed branch in Viola's education, and in this she was as
proficient as she was ignorant of all pertaining to business and the
investment or disposal of money. If she could find employment she would
put her money away--tie it up in an old glove, and hide it in the
bottom of her trunk. Mrs. Seymour had refused to allow her to leave
until she had positively arranged for a place of abode which would
be waiting and ready for her. Under the direction of that sensible
woman, Viola had written and engaged one of Mrs. Cassidy's upper back
rooms--it being the only place of its kind in the city where she knew
the people.

The evening before her departure the last leaf was added to this
momentous and miserable Sacramento chapter. Meeting her in the
sitting-room, Bart Nelson had detained her and made a halting and
bashful offer of marriage. Viola, too stunned by the terrible surprise
of the past week to have room for any more astonishment, had listened
to him indifferently, and then politely but coldly refused him.

The young man seemed to be astonished. He looked at her incredulously.

"But--but," he stammered, "what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to San Francisco to-morrow," she answered, rather wearily,
as she knew he was aware of her purpose.

"But what are you going to do when you get there?"

"I'm going to work at something."

"Work at something! What in the world can you work at? You look as if
you hadn't strength enough to grind an organ! You must be crazy."

"I can work at anything," she said, almost absently. "Besides, I have
money to live on, enough for a long time--several years."

He looked at her moodily, amazed by her indifference.

"It would be a hundred times better for you to stay here and marry me.
I'd take care of you and support you. Ain't that better for a woman
than scratching along by herself? Mrs. Seymour says you haven't got a
friend in San Francisco."

"No; but I don't mind that. I don't want to marry. I don't ever want
to."

"But isn't it better to have a man to work for you, and give you a
nice comfortable home, and--well--of course, be fond of you, and all
that--than to go off by yourself, trusting to luck to get work? You
don't know what you're in for."

"Perhaps I don't. But truly, there's no use talking about it any more.
I can't. I couldn't, no matter what happened. It was kind of you to
think of me. Thank you, and good-by."

When she had gained her own room she stood among her scattered
possessions, thinking. No one knew how terrifying her loneliness
seemed to her. As she looked out at it now, so close at hand, to begin
to-morrow, her heart sickened, and the bleakness of an encompassing
world, all strange, all cold, all uncaring, seemed to encircle her.
Were not protection, companionship, home, at any price, better than
this? She recalled the young man's coarse but good-natured face, his
passion shining through the businesslike phlegm of his manner, and
uttered a vehement exclamation, at the same time making a gesture as
though repulsing him. There were some things that even to a woman in
her position were impossible.

The next day she started, turning her back on her father's grave, and
her face toward the city where she had been born and yet had not a
friend.

Had Mrs. Cassidy heard this stricture upon her lonely condition, she
would have hotly denied it. Mrs. Cassidy told Viola that she would
be at once a mother and a father to her, and Micky Cassidy, her son,
would fill the various positions of male relations that, in Miss Reed's
case, were as yet untenanted. The impulsive widow did her best to make
the girl feel at home, and certainly offered Viola the consolation
of shedding many tears with her, and of lauding the colonel's good
qualities till even the girl's dulled emotions were roused, and she
wept as she had not done since her father's death.

But her home-coming was sharpened with pangs that she had not reckoned
on when her first longing to return to the city swept over her. Every
step of her surroundings was reminiscent of her father and of their
close companionship. All the byways held recollections of him, of small
happenings that, at the time, had been pregnant with joy or anxiety, of
little jokes they had had together. The shops they dealt at seemed as
if they might at any moment disgorge his tall, angular figure, with its
quick, decisive step, the old face alight with smiles as his eye fell
on her.

One afternoon, after she had been home a week, she was returning from
a walk, slowly traversing the familiar streets, absorbed in her own
thoughts. So engrossed was she that, for the moment, the Sacramento
interval, with all that it had held, was obliterated from her mind,
and, walking loiteringly, she turned the accustomed corner and
approached the house. Her suspension of memory lasted till she had her
hand on the gate. Then, with a sudden, dizzying rush, the consciousness
of the present returned. She felt faint and sick, and stood holding the
gate-post and looking up at the house with a frightened face. When she
had mastered herself she went home to her room at Mrs. Cassidy's and
locked herself in. Mrs. Cassidy knocked at her door three times that
evening, but Viola would not open it, even when the widow, through the
keyhole, extolled the merits of the tea she had waiting on the tray.

The next day Viola appeared to be herself, though she looked white
and listless, and Mrs. Cassidy resolved to impart to her a piece of
information that, with great effort of will, she had been hoarding up
to cheer a particularly dark hour. It was her habit to bring Viola her
tea at six, and during this meal to seat herself and discourse with her
lodger in a friendly and cheering spirit. The widow loved a gossip, and
it seemed to her that Miss Reed was a person more redolent of romance
than any one she had ever known before.

Rocking comfortably back and forth in the plush-covered, ribbon-decked
rocking-chair, she watched her lodger as she poured out her tea, and
delicately, after the manner of people who are without appetite, broke
small fragments off her roll and put them in her mouth. Then, in a
voice vibrating with secret exultation, she said:

"You won't always feel so bad as this, honey. Things cheer up sooner
'n we expect, and black clouds have silver linin's. Besides, there's
friends of yours that wouldn't let you want for nothin', if they knew
you was back."

She saw the piece of roll stop midway between Viola's mouth and the
plate, and her eyes fix themselves on the lid of the tea-pot in an
arrested stare.

"Who do you mean?" said the girl, the even modulations of her voice not
hiding its undertone of apprehension.

"Who do you suppose?" retorted Mrs. Cassidy, teasingly.

"I can't imagine," replied Viola. "I haven't the slightest idea to whom
you're referring."

"Oh, yes, you have, now," said Mrs. Cassidy, wagging her head
knowingly, and flushing over her broad, buxom face with the pleasure of
her secret. "Try and guess."

"Who do you mean, Mrs. Cassidy?" said Viola. Her pretension of
indifference had suddenly disappeared. She tried to make her voice
commanding, but it was full of a frightened distress.

"Mr. John Gault," announced the other, her narrow eyes, alight with
curiosity, fastened on her lodger's face. The change in its expression,
quick, inexplicable in its sudden tightening of the muscles and veiling
of the eyes, told the watcher, not what the romance was that she so
keenly scented, but confirmed her suspicions that there was a romance
of some sort or other.

Viola turned back to the tea-things. As she moved them about, the eager
eyes of the watcher saw that her hands were trembling.

"He's the finest gentleman I ever set eyes on since I came to
California," continued the widow, immensely interested and hardly able
to wait for further developments. "I said to Micky, after he'd been
here, 'There, Mick Cassidy, is the way they grow real gentlemen. No
imitation about him!'"

"Was he _here_?" came the question, in a hardly comprehending voice.

"He was that--and to find out about you. He was that crazy to know
where you'd gone that he was at Coggles's, and had the Robsons turned
'most inside out with his questions. When he couldn't get nothing out
of them, he got detectives to track out Mick,--'cause, you remember,
he'd left that package,--and he was here to find out what I knew. Oh,
he's got it bad."

Viola, conscious of the scrutiny fastened upon her, bent her face over
the tray. She began to make another cup of tea.

"I couldn't give him no information," continued Mrs. Cassidy--"more's
the pity, for I ain't never seen a gentleman that took my fancy more;
and just as pleasant and agreeable as if he was no better off than me
or Mick. Policeman O'Hara, when I asked him, says to me: 'Rich? Why,
Mrs. Cassidy, he's more money in a minute than you'll ever see in your
life. He's a capitalist, and not mean, like the rest of 'em, neither.'"

Though the widow's tongue had been busy, her eyes had followed the
tea-making closely. It was not a success. Viola had abandoned it, and
her hands were now clasped under the edge of the table. But she made no
comment, sitting motionless, with her face averted. Nothing daunted,
Mrs. Cassidy returned to the charge.

"He was just dead set upon finding you. He says to me as he left, says
he, 'If you hear anything of her, Mrs. Cassidy, let me know. Send over
Mick the first thing in the morning.'"

It must be confessed that Mrs. Cassidy's imagination had added this
last touch; but to Viola, in her fluttered alarm, it carried no
suggestion of fiction.

"Mrs. Cassidy," she said, turning on the woman, "you haven't let him
know? You haven't sent Mick?"

"Lord love you, no, dear," returned the widow, good-humoredly. "I was
waiting till you pulled yourself together a little more. But don't you
think, now,"--she leaned forward and spoke in a wheedling tone, but
with her eyes full of an avid interest,--"don't you think you might
write a little letter, and Mick'll take it over to his office this
evening?"

Viola pushed back from the table, her face suddenly suffused with an
angry red.

"No--no!" she cried violently. "Don't think of such a thing--don't
suggest it! I don't want to see that gentleman again, ever. This is my
affair, Mrs. Cassidy; leave it to me."

She rose from the table and walked to the window.

"There's no use gettin' mad about it," retorted the other, somewhat
tartly, rising from the rocker and setting the tea-things on the tray.
"I'm only tryin' to do the best I can for you. And it don't seem to
me just right for a girl like you, young and not over-strong, to be
knockin' round this way, when she's got friends ready to black her
boots for her. Still, it's your funeral, not mine."

There was no reply, and as she lifted the tray she said in an aggrieved
tone:

"I don't want to hurt no one's feelin's, but I want to do my dooty
in this world. Well, good night, deary. Don't get down on your luck.
You're not so friendless as you think."

After she had left the room, Viola stood motionless, looking out of the
window on the gray and soot-grimed back yard. Night was falling, and
the washing, still pendulating on its lines after the slovenly fashion
of the neighborhood, gleamed white and ghostly through the dusk. A
high brick wall shut off the end of the lot, and over this, dark,
mournful-looking trails of ivy hung downward, rubbing back and forth in
the passing breaths of wind. It was a prospect and an hour conducive
to melancholy. But Viola felt none. For the moment a sense of hunted
terror had shut out all other feelings.

He had searched for her, employed detectives to try and find a clue to
her hiding-place! And now, led by some horrible caprice of destiny, she
had walked into the very house where he would soonest find her. She
must go to-morrow. Mrs. Cassidy could not be trusted. The expression of
her face, with its ugly, half-concealed triumph and its coarsely prying
interest, warned the girl that the secret of her whereabouts would not
long remain with the widow. In a fever of anxiety she paced up and down
the room. Her nerves, broken by the shock and strain of the past two
weeks, exaggerated the importance of the situation, till she felt as if
Mrs. Cassidy and Gault had spread a net around her, from which, in her
weakness, she would never be able to break away.

She fell asleep, only to wake in the dead of the night, shaken into
throbbing consciousness by the thought that the widow had already
communicated with Gault, and that the conversation of that evening was
for the purpose of preparing her for the appearance of her lover.
Curled up and trembling under the clothes, she lay staring into the
blackness about her. It seemed a reflex, in its impenetrable gloom, of
her own surroundings. With the goblin terrors of night weighing upon
her overwrought spirit, she felt too helpless and feeble to battle
with a life that was so beset with pitfalls. The dreariness of her
isolation, the hopelessness of her misplaced love, that should have
been the crown of her life, and was instead its direst dread and peril,
seemed combining to crush her, and in her despair she pressed her face
into the pillow and whispered wild supplications for death.

The next morning life did not look so formidable. Things fell into
their proper perspective, and Viola's fears of Mrs. Cassidy as an agent
of destruction appeared phantasmagoric. Nevertheless, sunlight and its
restoring influences did not allay all her doubts of the woman. She
had seen her thoughts and intentions written on her face, and she knew
that it would only be a question of time when she would be tempted to
communicate with Gault.

She determined to leave Mrs. Cassidy with no clue as to her new place
of residence. She had no idea as to where she would go, except that she
would try to find a lodging as far from where she was now as possible.
This would be an easy matter. The town seemed to be placarded from end
to end with the signs of "Furnished Rooms." Viola was brave, now the
morning had come, and with it sunlight. Moreover, the thought of moving
from the locality every corner of which seemed alive with memories of
her father was a sustaining relief.

After breakfast she acquainted Mrs. Cassidy with her intention of
leaving, giving as her reason the fact that that portion of the
city was too full of painful memories for her to remain in it. The
widow received the news with loud lamentations, which ended almost
in tears. As soon as she had overcome her surprise and commanded her
feelings, she besieged Viola with questions as to where she intended
going. The girl, who was not skilful at this sort of duel, found it
difficult to evade her hostess's vigilant determination to maintain
her surveillance. Viola was soon red and stammering under the widow's
persistent and unescapable queries, and her discomfort was not lessened
by the realization that Mrs. Cassidy had guessed her real reason for
leaving and had resented it.

It was a clear, soft morning, the air still and golden. In its brief
Indian summer the city seemed to stretch itself, and lie warm,
apathetic, and relaxed, basking in the mellowness of its autumnal
quiet. That part of it toward which Viola directed her course was
almost as old as the locality where she had passed her uneventful
girlhood. Boarding an electric car, she crossed the low basin of the
town, where originally the village of Yerba Buena skirted the cove
in straggling huts and tents. Here the business life of a metropolis
is compressed into an area covered by a few blocks. Women do their
shopping one street away from where men are making the money which
renders the shopping possible. The car swept Viola through the gay
panorama that Kearney Street presents on a sunny morning, out past
Portsmouth Square, with a glimpse of Chinese back balconies, where
lines of flowering plants, the dip of swaying lanterns, and here and
there the brilliant spot of color made by a woman or a child, bring to
the scene a whiff of the Orient.

Beyond, where the broken flank of Telegraph Hill rises gaunt and red
amid its clinging tenements, she alighted and continued her way on
foot. She made a detour round the forbidding steeps of the hill, past
narrow alleys where shawled figures slunk along lengths of sun-touched
wall, by old verandahed houses brooding under rusty cypress-trees, by
straight-fronted, plastered dwellings, the stucco streaked with dark
rain-stains like the traces of tears on a face too dejected to care
how it looked. Finally the street rose over a spur of the hill, then
dipped, sloping down to the hollow of North Beach.

There was a sudden widening of the horizon on every side. Marine
views broke on the eye through the spaces between high, cramped, flat
buildings, over the tops of decrepit cottages, in the breaks between
peeling, vine-draped walls. Vivid bits of sea were set in mosaic-like
clearness between the trunks of dark old trees in gardens that were
planted when the region was yet suburban. The end of the street's vista
was filled with its blue expanse, with the distant hills beyond--all
clear lights and shadows on this sun-steeped autumn morning.

Here was spaciousness and room. The torn hill, battered and
weather-beaten with the stress and turmoil of the elements, stood
up from the lower portions of the city in an eternal wash of air
fresh from the ocean. Houses clung to it like barnacles. On its
sharper steeps they seemed to be hanging precariously, clutching to
irregularities in the soil, cowering down in hollows, or gripping rocky
projections. But on its seaboard face the slope was more gradual, and
here, in the old days, prosperous families had once built charming
villas, where, from rose-shaded balconies, the inmates could look on
the bay, sometimes a weltering waste, sometimes a vast sapphire level
tracked with the trails of sailing-vessels bending to the trades.

Viola knew that North Beach, like her old home, was a quarter upon
which fashion had turned its back. Rents were low there, and, judging
by the number of signs of "Furnished Rooms," the inhabitants must be
poor. She began her search at the foot of the hill, working up through
the streets that struck her as at once clean and respectable-looking.
But even her humble requirements were hard to fill.

By noontime, passing back and forth from street to street, she had
gained the top of the hill. She had seen nothing at once tolerable
to her taste and suitable to her purse. Now, spent with fatigue and
disappointment, she climbed a last breathless ascent, and came out
upon the slope below the summit. This space of open ground, devoid of
streets, and with here and there a hovel squalidly sprawling amid its
own debris, slants up the crest of the incline upon which perches the
deserted observatory, worn and weather-stained into an appearance of
mellow antiquity.

Even at this warm noonday hour the air was pure and balmily clear.
Viola sank down, panting, on a broken sod, and several dogs, attracted
by the unusual presence of a stranger, rushed upon her from one of the
neighboring shanties, barking frenziedly. Some hens joined them, and
for a moment they stood in an excited group, evidently meditating a
sortie. Presently a tousled woman in a wrapper emerged from the house
and threw an old boot at them, at which they scattered--the hens
running off in staggering terror, the dogs scuttling away to safer
regions, their tails tucked in.

The silence that settled was crystalline. It seemed to place the city
at a curiously remote distance. Far below her, Viola could see the
wharves and the masts of ships that lay idle by the quays. Men were
running about down there with the smooth, sure movements of mechanical
toys. Drays passed along the water-front, and little light wagons that
sped by in a sudden wake of dust. From there, and from regions unseen,
sounds came up to her with clear distinctness. A bell rang, a dog
barked, a child cried piercingly--each sound seeming to rise separate
and finely accentuated from the muffled roar which broods over the
hives of men.

She leaned back against the broken ground behind her and looked
sleepily about. The parched sward was lined by little paths that seemed
to cross and recross each other in purposeless wanderings. Some led
to the edge of a quarry that had torn away a huge chunk of the hill
as though a giant lion had struck down and ripped off a piece of its
flank. Below her were the roofs and chimneys of houses on the face
of the slope. Smoke came from the chimneys and went up straight,
and here and there the ragged foliage of eucalyptus-trees that had
grown sere and scant in the turmoil of wintry gales hung motionless,
resting on this day of grace. It must be near midday, Viola thought,
and, even as the thought formed in her mind, all the whistles of the
city below seemed to suddenly open their throats and blow together--a
long, mellifluous, fluent sound. Then there was a pause, and odd ones,
late but determined, took up the cry and poured out their hollow,
reverberant roar. From the water-front louder ones came, hoarse,
harsh, dominant, riding the tumult like strident talkers, and others,
shrill-toned, broke in, high and protesting, and the note of distant
whistles, away in the Mission and the Potrero, answered again, faint,
thin, and far. It was twelve o'clock.

Viola gathered herself up from her relaxed attitude. She had been
hunting now for two hours, and felt tired and discouraged. She wished
she could live here, since one must live somewhere--just here, she
thought, as she rose stiffly to her feet and dusted her dress. No one
would ever find her, and there was something at once inspiring and
soothing in all this vast panorama of sea and mountain and this wash
of living air. She looked back at the house the woman with the shoe
had come from, and wondered if even there they would take her in. The
woman had come to a doorway now, and stood there, eying her, it seemed
to Viola, with suspicious disfavor; and even as she looked, the dogs,
grown brave again, made a spirited rally round the corner, and came
yapping about her heels. She turned and, selecting the first path that
she saw, walked down over the forward face of the hill.

The fall of the land was so abrupt here that the few householders had
had to build steps from the street below to their gates. Some had even
gone to the extravagance of a handrail. Viola, making a chary descent,
was attracted to glance about her by a sweet, pungent fragrance, and
looking to locate its source, found herself at the gate of a house,
low, long, and narrow, with a garden on the outward side, terraced
to keep the soil from sliding bodily down into the back yard of the
house below. From this garden rose the scent that had attracted her.
It was the soft, illusive perfume of mignonette, of which the little
inclosure, sheltered from the winds by a lattice-work fence, held a
goodly store.

The love of flowers was strong in Viola, and pressing her breast
against the top of the fence, she stood peering in at the garden with
its roughly bordered terraces and pebbled paths. The mignonette
was growing in a border that skirted the side of the house. In the
parterres below it were many varieties of blossoming annuals and
rose-bushes still densely in flower. The cypress-trees from the yard
below showed their dark, funereal tops over the outer fence, and a
gaunt eucalyptus made a pattern on the pale noonday sky with its
drooping foliage. From the garden Viola's gaze turned to the house. It
presented its side to the view, its narrow front to the street. Its
seaward face was flanked by a balcony, and windows, commanding the
enormous sweep of water and distant hills, were set closely along the
wall. In one of these windows Viola saw the sign her eyes had grown so
accustomed to that morning--"Furnished Rooms."

Half an hour later she made her exit from the house, having completed
her arrangement to become a tenant that same day. Its sole occupant at
the time was the landlady, Miss Defoe, a spinster of advanced years,
who dwelt there with her brother. She was glad of the chance of a
lodger, especially one who seemed so gently tractable. The almost
inaccessible position of the house made it difficult to rent the rooms,
even at the lowest prices. Viola found that the terms offered her were
more desirable than those made by Mrs. Cassidy.

In the afternoon, having made her escape from the widow's with guilty
stealth, she took up her residence on the high hilltop, in a room
from one window of which she could look out through the Golden Gate
on the broad bosom of the Pacific, while from the other she could see
the dappled sweep of the Alameda hills, with Berkeley and Oakland
clustering about their bases.

A life uneventful and monotonous now began for the solitary girl. The
days in the house on the hill passed with the even, colorless rapidity
of days full of uninteresting duties and bereft of the stimulus of
hope. Viola plodded on doggedly, with her head down and her eyes on the
furrow before her. Work had cropped up quickly, and she turned to it
with dull resolution. In the back of the house some former tenant had
built a small greenhouse, which, during the Defoes' occupancy, had been
left in dusty desuetude. Being granted the use of it, she cleaned and
repaired it, and here once more plied her old graceful trade of raising
plants.

Her friend the Kearney Street florist, to whom the colonel in his grand
days had given many profitable orders, was glad to help the daughter
of his old patron. Once again Viola found herself supplying his shops
with the delicate ferns which grew so luxuriantly under her intelligent
care. Besides this, he now and then engaged her to assist in making
up floral pieces used in decoration and at weddings and funerals. In
this branch of the work she displayed so much taste and skill that her
services were employed more and more constantly.

She earned enough to supply her small wants, and the remains of the
thousand dollars lay untouched in the bottom of her trunk.

As the winter began, with its early darkening of the days, its long
gray spells of lowering weather, and its first warm, hesitating rains,
Viola spent hours in the small room behind the store in Kearney Street,
surrounded by flowers mounted on wire stalks, which she stuck into the
mossy mold that filled in the skeleton frames. When the work was heavy
she was assisted by the girl who waited in the shop--a self-confident,
talkative young woman, whom every one called "Miss Gladys," and who
had the most improbably golden hair and the most astonishingly high
collars Viola had ever seen. Nevertheless, the confidential chatter of
Miss Gladys, which ranged over a variety of topics, not the least of
which was Miss Gladys's own conquering charm and its fatal power, had a
salutary effect in diverting Viola from her brooding melancholy.

Her hours in the shop and greenhouse acted as preservatives of
her physical health and mental freshness. Here she felt safe from
observation, and worked on, with mind engrossed and fingers busy,
through the long gray afternoons till the dark fell and the early night
was spangled with garlands of lamps.

In the off hours, when her plants did not need her attention and
there was no work for her at the store, she took long walks. That
portion of the city where she had hidden herself grew as familiar to
her as the old one on the other side of town. Its charm of a ruinous
picturesqueness, of a careless intermingling of alien races, of a
sprawling, slovenly serenity through days drenched by sun and swept
by rain, was slowly revealed to her. Aspects of it grew to have
expressions of almost human attraction or repulsion. This little blue
glimpse of sea invited her, with its suggestion of freedom and space.
That lowering alley, dark and furtive, with reluctant rays of sunshine
slanting down its walls, and the gleam of eyes watching from behind its
stealthy shutters, inspired her imagination to strange, soaring flights.

From the summit of the hill she looked down on the crowding,
dun-colored city, cut cleanly with streets and decked with feathers of
smoke, and tried to reconstruct the village of '49. Here, far back,
was the curve of the shore; there, up the California Street incline,
tents and shanties were dotted through the chaparral; and below, an
open sand-space marked the plaza. The adobe of the Señora Briones lay
farther round in the hollow of North Beach; her father had often shown
her where it stood. Now the myriad roofs of a metropolis stretched far
away, filling the valley and cresting the adjacent hills. Domes and the
crosses on church steeples caught the light, and from this great height
the girdle of silver water encircled it like a restraining bond.

The Italian and Spanish quarter was even more interesting. It was
farther round, on one of the steepest faces of the hill. The streets
seemed to share the characteristics of their occupants. They all
started out bravely from the level ground, ascended for a few energetic
blocks, then gave up the effort and appeared to lazily collapse in
a debris of unkempt houses and squalid yards. But no one seemed to
care. A tranquil indifference pervaded the quarter. Only the old
houses--grave, stucco-fronted dwellings, with long windows under
floriated cornices, and iron balconies skirting the upper stories--had
the air of looking out on this degradation of the once prosperous
region with the sad, patient dignity of a broken old age. Here and
there, too, stood those dwellings, relics of Spanish taste, which
maintain a secret and arresting suggestion of mystery. They are
ramparted from vulgar eyes by a high plaster wall, which, through a
curved archway, gives egress up a flight of steps. All is dark, mossy,
and quiet. Over the top of the wall great strands of ivy hang, and
only an angle of windowed roof rises above the sheltering cypress- and
pepper-trees.

But through decay, poverty, and dirt the love of beauty still spoke. It
met Viola's eye and gave her its message in the touch of green, in the
brilliant blossom that rejoiced in its existence on balcony-rail and
window-ledge. Flowers were the one ornament that was cheap. They hung
from windows, and stretched out frail blossoms from shadowed angles.
They grew bushily in glad luxuriance on sunny roofs, and put forth buds
of perfect beauty behind broken, grimy panes. When the sun touched them
they bloomed, bravely, splendidly, prodigally, giving forth their best.
Old verandas, sagging under their weight of decrepitude and household
overflow, held their gardens. In the most menacing of the alleys there
was the gleam of flower and leaf from starch- and soap-boxes on the
ledges below unwashed, unshuttered casements. Viola had seen children
leaning over the sills as they searched with pouting, busy gravity
for a bud to pluck; and sometimes she caught a glimpse of the coarse,
painted face of some humble Aspasia of the quarter bending over her
window-garden, where the flowers bloomed as luxuriantly for her as
they did for the children on the floors above.

With the advance of winter and its multiplying gaieties, Viola's
engagements at the florist's grew more and more frequent, her hours
longer. Her employer realized that she was a more than ordinarily
valuable acquisition, and constantly demanded the assistance of her
skill and taste. She was often detained till long after dark, when she
made a weary way up the hill to the cold dinner that had been awaiting
her since six o'clock. On one of these nights, at the beginning of the
rainy season, she walked past her destiny unseeing and unsuspecting.

It had been a lowering day. The clouds lying low and gray over the city
bulged with rain which did not fall. The wind was moist and sweet,
smelling as if it had blown over miles of rich earth, quick with
germinating seed. People were out with umbrellas, and the children as
they came home from school were protected by mackintoshes and rubbers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gault, walking up Kearney Street in the gray of the late afternoon,
observed his sister-in-law's coupé standing at the curb before a
popular confectioner's. As he approached, Letitia emerged from the
shop, her hands full of small boxes, and crossed the sidewalk to the
carriage. He encountered her half-way, and paused with her by the
carriage door for a moment's greeting. Gault did not see as much
of his brother's household as formerly. They knew of Viola Reed's
disappearance; and Letitia from delicacy and Maud from a sense of
guilty embarrassment refrained from urging him to reëstablish himself
on the old footing of careless intimacy.

He said now, in response to Letitia's query why he absented himself so
much, that he was getting old and had to go to bed early. "For beauty
sleep, you know," he added, looking at her with his eyes smiling behind
his glasses. "You don't need that, do you, Tishy? Hullo, there's the
rain!"

The first drops, swollen, slow, and reluctant, spotted the pavement.
The air felt curiously damp, and had a languid softness in its touch.

Letitia looked up at the low-hanging clouds, and a drop fell on her
cheek.

"Yes, there it is," she said. "Get in the carriage and come home to
dinner, John. No one will be there--just ourselves."

He said he had an engagement for dinner.

"Well, then, get in the carriage and drive with me down to South Park,
where I have a message to give a scrub-woman. I've got something I want
to say to you."

He obediently entered, and the coachman turned the horses' heads in the
direction of South Park.

The afternoon had suddenly darkened as if a pall had been unfurled
across the sky. The streets without had burst into a forest of
umbrellas, already shining, and agitated with curiously unsteady
movements as the bearers hurried this way and that. The rain was still
falling slowly, but the drops were large. A little flurry of wind
lashed the window with them as the coupé made its way through the mêlée
of vehicles and over the car-tracks at Lotta's Fountain. An eery,
yellowish light seemed to be diffusing itself from the horizon, and to
have crept along under the dark cope of the storm.

Letitia leaned forward, looking out at the figures of the passers-by,
butting against the wind with lowered umbrellas, and then jerking them
aside and giving a scared look up and down for a threatening car.
Gault, leaning back, could see her profile clearly defined against the
pale square of the window. On the little seat in front of them she had
dropped all her parcels, and a bunch of violets that she had thrust
into a convenience for that purpose filled the carriage with its soft
and subtle fragrance. Outside, the bells of the cars clanged furiously,
and at moments the rain was dashed against the window and then diverted.

"Well, Tishy," he said, "what's the communication you're going to
make? As far as I know, when a lady speaks solemnly of having an
important matter to impart, it only means one thing."

"What's that?" asked Letitia, without responding to the raillery of his
tone.

"That she is going to be married."

"Well, that's just it," she answered, and continued to look out of the
window.

"What?"

Gault leaned forward and tried to see what her face revealed. It was
handsome as ever, calm and imperturbable.

"That's just it," she repeated, turning toward him and letting her eyes
dwell gravely on his. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Tishy!" he ejaculated. "Why, you amaze me!"

"Why should I?" she queried. "Everybody gets married sometime or other."

"I know, but--who is it?"

"Tod McCormick."

"Oh, Letitia!" he exclaimed in quite a different tone--a man's tone of
sudden revolt and protest. "Tod McCormick?"

"Yes, of course, Tod McCormick. I should think you would have guessed
him in a minute."

"He's the last person I ever should have thought of."

"Well, isn't that odd! Everybody knows Tod's been fond of me. It's been
going on for years--five or six, I should think."

"A woman doesn't marry a man because he happens to be fond of her. She
marries a man because she happens to be fond of him."

"She sometimes does--if she's very lucky, and things turn out exactly
right. But things don't often turn out exactly right. Besides, I like
Tod."

"Yes--like him, of course. Everybody likes him. Maud likes him, and
Mortimer, and, I've no doubt, hundreds of other people. But liking's a
poor sort of thing to marry on. It's a bad substitute for love. A woman
ought to love the man she marries."

"Yes, I suppose she ought; and in novels she always does--unless she
hates him terribly. But in real life girls don't love or hate so
desperately as all that. We just go along easily, taking things as they
come."

"Why are you going to marry him, if you don't love him?" he asked in a
tone of irritation.

"I think it's better to marry. You see, there isn't really anything
else for a girl like me to do. Besides,--don't misunderstand me,--I
tell you I like him very much."

He ignored the remark and said:

"I don't see what you want to marry for at all. Wait till the right man
comes along."

"Oh, the right man!" she answered, with a little laugh which was the
nearest approach to a bitter laugh he had ever heard from her. "That's
what they keep telling us. But we may have met the right man, and he's
never found out that he was the right man, or perhaps hasn't felt that
we were the right woman."

"A man must be a fool if he can't see when a woman cares for him," he
answered.

For a moment Letitia looked silently out of the window; then she
continued, but without turning her head: "Men seem to think that women
can marry any one they want. We have to wait till we're asked. And the
men that ask us are not always the men that we would like the best.
Novelists would make you think a girl has nothing to do but make her
choice from dozens of suitors who are all crazy about her. But that's
not true--not in California, anyway. I've only had three real offers in
my life, and I've got money, and"--she made a little pause, and then
added bravely--"and I'm handsome."

Gault leaned forward, and, in a sudden élan of admiration for the
honest, simple, strong-hearted creature, took her hand.

"Dearest Tishy," he said, "don't do this. Don't make a hasty marriage
with a man who is--who is--not worthy of you."

Her hand remained motionless for a moment, and then she drew it away.

"Don't say that. Tod's quite worthy of me," she answered. "He's
a first-rate fellow, but you never liked him, and so you never
appreciated his good points. He's not good-looking, and that's made
people misunderstand him."

Gault smothered a groan, and she went on:

"You asked me why I wanted to marry at all. There's nothing else for a
woman in my position to do. I'm not bright. I can't do anything like
writing, or painting, or making statues. All I do now is to help Maud
when she has dinners, and talk to the dull people. And you know"--her
voice dropping to a key of naïve confidence--"I sometimes feel that I'd
like to have a home of my own--a house where I could do just what I
liked, and have the sort of people I liked to dinner. Maud doesn't care
for the kind of people I do."

"Why don't you have it, then? You're of age; you're financially
independent. You can do exactly what you like. You seem to forget that
this is the United States at the end of the nineteenth century."

"No, I don't forget; but that doesn't make it any easier for me. I
can't go off and live all by myself. And think what a fuss Mortimer
and Maud would make! It would drive Maud crazy if I did that. People
would say I'd quarreled with her, and she can't stand people saying
things like that. I don't like it, either. And it would hurt Mortimer's
feelings dreadfully. He'd think I wasn't happy with them. You couldn't
make him understand. Besides, I don't want to live in a house of my own
all alone. I'd die of the blues. Think how dismal I'd be with nobody
but servants and Chinamen!"

Gault looked out of the window near him and made no immediate response.
The appearance of squalor which marked the street was intensified by
the rain, which was now falling heavily. Already the pavements shone
with the greasiness of well-tramped mud. Miserable pedestrians, without
umbrellas and in scanty clothes, stood under the dripping projections
before show-windows, looking out with yellow, dejected faces. Others
plodded drearily onward, their heads lowered against the descending
flood. Women passed, with bare, red hands gripping at their sodden
skirts. In the depths of the dark interiors Gault had seen so often,
lights were being kindled that shone like small red sparks in the
thick, smothering gloom. Without turning from the window, he said:

"But why marry Tod? If you want liberty, a larger and more independent
life, why not choose some one else?"

Letitia was silent for a moment. Then she said in rather an offended
tone:

"There's nothing so dreadful about Tod. I don't like the way you speak
about him. It sounds as if he was idiotic or deformed. I like him more
than I do almost any one. I respect him, too. And then," she added, in
one of her uncontrollable bursts of candor, "there's nobody else wants
to marry me."

Gault gave an annoyed ejaculation. The carriage turned from the main
thoroughfare and began jolting over the cobbles of a paved street.

"Then wait till somebody better does," he said. "Heavens, Letitia! to
think of you, that I've always looked upon as a model of reason and
sense and intelligence, throwing yourself away like this, when five-ten
years from now will be time enough for you to marry."

"I'll be twenty-seven next month," replied Letitia, with her ruthless
regard for veracity.

The carriage here stopped at a high-stooped porch, and the coachman,
alighting, delivered Letitia's message. While they waited, silence
rested between its occupants, and continued when they were once more
rattling over the uneven cobbles toward the wider street they had
recently left.

Darkness had settled by this time, and the lamps were breaking out
in every direction, the long lines of the rain looking like threads
of glass against their light. The force of the storm was augmenting.
The drops beat on the top of the carriage with a drumming, pugnacious
violence, and now and then dashed across the window. There were already
pools in the hollows of the pavement, and from bent gutter-pipes long
ribbons of water, torn by the gusts, sprang down on unwary passers-by.

Letitia took her handkerchief and rubbed away the moisture on the
pane. She was looking out on the spectacle of the swimming streets
with apparent interest. The conversation had not been resumed. She
had nothing more to say, and Gault sat back in his corner immersed in
silent thought. Once he had asked her if her engagement to Tod was a
fully accomplished and recognized fact. To this she had replied that
it was not, exactly, as Tod was to receive her final answer on the
following Sunday, but that as far as she was concerned it was a settled
thing.

Leaning back in the darkened corner, Gault bitterly inveighed against
the social system which allows such a mismating; against the narrowing
laws of conventionality which had fettered so strong a spirit as
Letitia; above all, against that weakness of the woman which makes
life alone so impossible to her unsufficing and dependent spirit.
What a fate for this creature, so rich and tender in her splendid
womanhood! Letitia to make such a marriage--Letitia, whom nature had
designed to be some strong man's guide and solace, to be the queen of a
gracious home, the mother of tall sons and blooming daughters! It was a
sacrilege.

The carriage rolled out upon Market Street, amid a din of car-bells
and the roar of intersecting streams of traffic. The outlines of the
high newspaper buildings were hazy in the blur of the rain, but their
illuminated windows seemed dotting the sky far up toward the zenith,
where they burst into a splutter of lights. From every point cars
seemed to be advancing, with their lanterns shooting rays through the
wet, and stretches of pavement and pools of water gave forth sudden
gleams. The whole scene, lights magnified and outlines erased by the
rain, had a chaotic, broken effect of glaring radiance and softly dark,
looming vagueness.

Letitia again rubbed the window and leaned forward. Her companion
could see the outline of her head against the light, as if it were a
silhouette backgrounded with gold-leaf. Why should he not marry her?
Would he not be a better mate for her than the witless and sickly boy
to whom she intended binding her blooming youth, for whom she would
pour out the treasures of her heart and reveal the sacred places of a
nature that he could never understand or appreciate?

She did not care for Tod. Her very assertions of a liking for him
seemed to the man of the world proof of her indifference. He could make
her care for him. He was certain of it. He was certain that even now
she had more real affection for him--far removed from love though it
was--than she had for the brainless lad who next Sunday would be her
acknowledged fiancé.

What was the use of wasting a life in regrets for what was past, for
what was irrevocably gone? Alone, he would go drearily on, forever
dreaming of his lost paradise. He was so wretched in the isolation of
his own accusing loneliness! Life was slipping by him unlived. The
future loomed dark and terrible, bereft of hope and promise. He cowered
before its vast, cold emptiness. There was nothing that offered him a
refuge from its enveloping despair but an affection in which he could
forget the might-have-beens that now were unforgettable. The dreariness
of that long road would only be beguiled by a loved presence at his
side, a soft hand in his. And he would make Letitia happy--a thousand
times happier than she would be with Tod.

His thoughts reached an abrupt decision. He leaned forward.

"Letitia," he said, in a tone the low pitch of which did not conceal a
peremptory note.

"Yes," she answered rather listlessly, without turning from the window.

"I have something to say to you."

"Is it that you're going to be married, too?" she asked, smiling.

"No--at least, I don't know. Listen to me. I want--"

She checked him with a sudden cry, and leaned forward, staring out of
the window.

"Oh, John--wait! That girl! Did you see her? I'm almost sure it was
Viola Reed."

In an instant every thought of Letitia had vanished from his mind.

"Where?" he said. "What girl? Which way did she go?"

"Look out of the back window," said Letitia, greatly excited. "Do you
see her? A woman in black, walking quickly. I just caught a glimpse of
her side face as she moved her umbrella, and it looked very like."

Through the small back window Gault saw the woman--a slender figure in
black, the head bent forward under the fronting shield of her umbrella.
As she passed a lamp he saw the gleam of blond hair. She was walking so
rapidly that already she was some distance away. He pulled the strap,
and the carriage came to a jolting halt.

"Letitia," he said, turning toward her and trying to speak quietly,
"you'll excuse me, won't you? I'm going to get out. Yes, I'm going to
follow her--I must. I don't know whether it's she or not, but it may
be. Good night."

He was out and the door shut before Letitia could answer. As the
carriage rolled on she turned and through the window followed his
pursuing figure with eagerly interested eyes.

It was Viola. At the end of the block she turned into the florist's,
where she had agreed to come and spend the evening helping Miss Gladys
on some extra orders. She passed through the store into the room
beyond, and, donning her black apron, was soon busy. The two girls were
working and talking together when Gault stopped at the street door
and swept the flower-scented interior with a searching gaze. He had
done this at every shop on the block. Yet, though he went up and down,
hunting in every corner, in every darkened doorway where she might
possibly have sought shelter, she had disappeared as completely as if
the passing glimpse of her had been a vision.

Letitia had evidently made a mistake. Slowly through the rain Gault
walked home to his rooms.

It was two hours later when Viola started to leave the florist's. The
storm was raging with all the malignant intensity of driving rain and a
wind that lay in wait at corners and sprang upon the wayfarer. She made
part of her journey on the electric car, but the long climb up the hill
had to be accomplished on foot. About this high point the wind met few
obstacles, and swept by, shouting hoarsely in the joy of its freedom.

It played with Viola like a cat with a mouse--at one moment swept her
forward in a sail-like spread of skirt, at the next turned upon her,
buffeting her furiously back against the streaming walls, tearing at
her hat, driving the rain into her face, down her neck, up her sleeves.
It seized her umbrella and whisked it this way and that, while she held
its handle and helplessly followed its eccentric course. When half-way
up the hill she was forced to shut it, and then, angry with her for
thus terminating its sport, the wind concentrated its spiteful anger
upon her.

It blew steadily in her face, except at the moments when she crossed
an intersecting street. Then it seemed to blow from all points at
once, seizing her and shaking her, whirling her about, throwing her
against a gate or into the drenched, yielding leafage of a hedge, and
then creeping up behind her and beating against her with a force that
almost sent her on her face. Her clothes clung to her, saturated and
heavy, confining her limbs with their clammy hold. The water streamed
off her hat and oozed out of her shoes. Once she was forced to take
shelter on a door-step, under the jutting roof of a balcony. From this
she crept onward, clinging close to the walls, down which water ran in
wide rills, and where long strands of creepers struck her with their
wet leaves. Once in the cottage, she threw her clothes out of the
window on the balcony, and crept shivering to bed.

The storm wore itself away in the course of the week, to be followed
by an interval of bright weather, and then by other storms. There
were short ones, when the rain came and went with a sudden rolling
up of clouds and breaks of blue, and the sun burst out hopefully and
licked up the moisture. There were long ones, when the rain fell in
warm, rustling floods, copious but gentle, that assuaged the earth's
thirst and poured down in silvery lances from a low, swollen sky.
There were blustering ones, that lashed the windows and threshed
against the pavements, flooded the sewers, and tried to force an
entrance through opened casements and doors left ajar. And then the
great, conscientious, businesslike ones, which went on day after day,
oblivious of anything but their duty to thoroughly saturate the dry
ground far down through its parched crust to where the seeds lay
waiting for the moisture that was to give them life.

So the time wore on till Christmas began to loom close at hand, and all
the town was agog with its holiday shopping.

Maud Gault and Letitia splashed about the dripping streets in a hired
coupé, which returned from every trip full of packages. Mortimer
went alone to Shreve's and bought his wife and sister-in-law costly
surprises. John ordered his presents,--there were a good many of
them,--all but the beautiful turquoise clasp for Letitia, which he
selected himself. Tod gave his mother money to buy his sisters suitable
gifts, but took with him a friend of acknowledged taste when he went to
choose the necklet of small diamonds and emeralds that was to carry his
greetings to the fortunate Miss Mason.

On Christmas eve Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Gault gave a large dinner for
their sister, whose engagement to Mr. Theodore McCormick had been
announced a short time before. Society had often predicted this finale
to the attachment which it was known Mr. Theodore McCormick had long
cherished for Miss Mason. Society did not concern itself about Miss
Mason's sentiments on the subject. That Mr. Theodore McCormick was
the only son of Jerry McCormick, one of the richest of the bonanza
men, was supposed to be sufficient ground for Miss Mason to have been
pleased and flattered by his choice of herself. Society regarded her as
a very lucky girl.

John Gault had gone to this dinner reluctantly. The thought of
Letitia's marriage with Tod was as repulsive to him after a month
had familiarized his mind with it, as it had been on the day Letitia
told him of it. That the large-hearted girl, whose simple honesty of
nature he had learned long ago to respect and rely on, was to give the
freshness and beauty of her life to the feeble and half-bred son of a
day-laborer, seemed to him a sacrilege worthy of the days of Molech. He
had seen little of Letitia lately. When he had been at his brother's
she had generally been absent, staying at the McCormicks', or dining
elsewhere with Tod. Whatever her feelings for her fiancé were, Gault
saw that, with her unswerving obedience to convention and duty, she was
evidently doing her best to understand and grow fond of him.

To-night, however, at the dinner, he saw that a change had taken place
in her. It was so subtle, so illusive, so hard to define, that for a
space he watched her surreptitiously, wondering what it was. Yet even
as he shook hands with her in the moment of greeting, he saw it in
her face, he felt it radiating from her, like the warm individual
atmosphere that is said to encompass us and contain the color of our
personality.

Her eyes dwelt on his with a bright, soft inner look of happiness, but
happiness aloof and far away from him. The impersonal, cold sweetness
of her glance seemed to put him at a great distance, to herd him
together with all the hundred other casual people that she knew and
spoke to, and liked and forgot. Some mysterious influence had suddenly
withered their friendship. Its richness and reality were gone, and as
he met that sparkling, conscious, and yet distant glance, he realized
that Letitia was no longer his friend, nor yet his enemy, but from
henceforth would be the same Letitia to him that she was to his
brother, that she had once been to Tod.

She was in love with Tod McCormick. It was incredible, inconceivable,
but true. He saw it in the abashed and yet proud consciousness of her
manner to him, in her averted eye, in the indefinable softening of her
whole presence when the meager-visaged lad addressed her. Inside she
glowed with the consciousness of the developing of her life; but her
eyes only let a little of the inner light out in their shy shining.
That was why they had lost their look of a dear, comfortable intimacy
when they met his. Now they said that all that was over, a remnant
of freedom that must die with girlhood and its other relinquished
liberties. Everything belonged to some one else now--not love alone,
but interest, loyalty, confidence, duty. The rest of the world was
only to get that cool interest, that gentle, remote kindness, which is
the husk of the woman's heart. The kernel was for her mate. With her
maidenhood would end for Letitia all life but such as bore on the life
of her husband.

Gault had lost her, even as he had lost Viola. He had thought of
marriage removing her from the close, interested friendliness of the
old days, but he had never realized that it would wean her from him
with this cold completeness. She wore the semblance of the Letitia
of the past, with strange, bright, alien eyes, and a soft hand that
held his with the slack, indifferent clasp of polite acquaintance.
Women--would he ever understand them? Would any man? What mystery was
behind their white foreheads and under their white breasts?

A rush of unutterable sadness, of dreary, sick depression, overwhelmed
him. He was hardly able to respond intelligently to the conversational
inanities of Pearl, who sat beside him. A numbing consciousness of
the futility and hopelessness of life invaded him, and with it, in
the midst of the noise and glitter of the brilliant scene, a sense of
isolation and a yearning for the woman who, in this gay throng, would
have felt lonely as he, and have turned to him as her one soul-mate.
Suppose to-night she had been waiting for him in the bare parlor down
near South Park!

A sudden resolve seized upon him. As soon as dinner was over he excused
himself to Mrs. Gault and Letitia, hurried on his overcoat, and slipped
away.

It had been raining all day--the warm, abundant rain of late December.
The breath of the night was softly damp, and fragrant with scents from
the saturated gardens. The avenue was deserted and noiseless, save for
the even rustle of the falling flood, which made the asphalt shine
like ice, into which the lamps' reflections stabbed in long, broken
poniards. Nobody was abroad. It was Christmas eve. There were wreaths
in the lighted windows, and sounds of singing now and then fell upon
Gault's ear.

He boarded the car which crossed the avenue farther down, and sat
in the glare of its lamps, his face fallen into lines of spiritless
apathy. When it reached its terminus he alighted.

There were life and movement enough here. People were jostling on the
sloppy sidewalks; umbrellas struck against umbrellas, sometimes, in
an elbow-brushing contact, caught together, and were dragged apart
with a spattering of moisture over laughing faces. The rain dripped
monotonously down on them, between them, across the glare of windows,
over the rheumy halo of lamps, off the cope of cornices and the angles
of gutters. The even roar of Market Street was broken into by the deep
voices of hilarious men and the shrill notes of women. Raucous laughter
was interrupted by the sudden petulant wail of tired children. Over all
the light of show-windows poured in a steady glare, unsoftened by the
veil of rain. It was reflected from innumerable wet surfaces, uncovered
faces that were moist, draperies beaded with drops, bits of sidewalk,
pools in little hollows, and the black and gleaming bosses of hundreds
of umbrellas.

Gault, unheeded and unheeding, hurried through the press, crossed
Market Street, and plunged into the region beyond. There were crowds
here too, and lights and laughter, brilliant windows that sent gushes
of raw radiance across the sidewalks, and Christmas shoppers as busy as
those on the other side of the city's great dividing artery. Even in
the old street, among the brooding palaces, there was a faint show of
life. In one there were lights in the second-story windows. Against the
ground-glass panels in the massive front door of another the circular
forms of two wreaths were outlined. The iron gate of its bulky neighbor
grated grudgingly to give egress to an expressman carrying parcels.

In the smaller streets down which he had so often passed, the windows
were alight and, according to the gracious custom of the time, the
blinds were undrawn. Sometimes he had a glimpse of darkling interiors,
where, alone and glittering frostily in its fairy trimmings, the tree
stood, not to be revealed until the morrow. But in many homes they
were keeping Christmas eve. The rifled branches, sparkling even in
their despoilment, were a-wink with candles. The children clustered
about, some flushed and excited, others sitting solemnly among their
presents, examining them with grave and pouting intentness. There were
mothers with sleeping babies in their arms, and fathers explaining
the mechanism of wondrous, uncomprehended toys. They were the city's
humblest and least prosperous homes; yet, hidden by the veil of night,
a man, rich in all they lacked, stood staring in at them, wistful,
heart-hungry, and envious.

He turned the last corner, and the small shape of the colonel's old
house defined itself among the surrounding buildings. In the kindly
dark it looked as it used to, and he approached slowly, letting his
gaze wander over its façade and dwell on the homely bulge of the
bay-window, whence, as of old, light broke in cracks and splinters
on the small panes of glass on either side of the front door, on the
steps, and the porch that used to sag down to one side, and the gate
between its squat brick posts.

There was no one on the street, but a block away he could hear the
measured tread of Policeman O'Hara on his customary beat from the
saloon at the corner to the saloon in the middle of the block. Beyond
this there was nothing but the whispering fall of the rain and its
warm breath. Then, as he drew nearer, he passed into an atmosphere of
delicate, illusive sweetness that told him the jasmine-tree by the gate
was in flower. It recalled vividly other times when he had come--but
not to stand outside this way, a stranger in the rain.

He advanced slowly. The street was deserted; no one was there to spy
upon him. What would he have felt if to-night he had known she was
there, and he was coming to see her--coming like a lover to see her,
when the door opened to feel her little hand cold in his, and her
lips softly respond to his welcoming kiss--the kiss that had never
been given, that was never now to be returned! He would not pass by,
but would stop at the gate just for a moment, and dream that she was
waiting. He paused, and then started with a suppressed exclamation.

Some one was standing close in front of him in the shadow of the
jasmine-tree, and almost concealed by its foliage. He could not see
whether the figure was that of a man or woman, could only trace the
outline of a form through the darkness and rain. Whoever it was, he
had not been heard,--the fall of the rain muffling other sounds,--and
he was now close at hand. As he stood, undecided whether to pass on or
turn back, the figure made a stealthy movement with its arm--appeared
to part the flexible jasmine branches and through the aperture look at
the house. The head was thus presented to Gault in partial profile,
spotted over with the moving lights that filtered between the leaves.
He saw it was a woman's, crowned with some sort of small, close hat.
She seemed to be watching the house. The light caught the curve of her
cheek; it was gleaming with moisture.

"She must be soaking," he thought, "with no umbrella," and made a step
forward.

She heard and started, and, still mechanically holding the branches
back, turned and looked at him. For one moment, like a memory from
another life, he saw her face in the light.

"Viola!" he cried, as a man might cry to whom the beloved dead stood
suddenly revealed.

She gave a gasping ejaculation and let go the branches. In the
sudden blotting out of the light he lost her, and, in his terror and
superstitious dread, he thought he had seen a vision.

"Viola," he cried again, "stay with me! love me! forgive me! I've
prayed for you--I've longed for you--I've died for you! Don't leave me
now! There is no life for me without you!"

She came forward beyond the dark shadow of the tree, and the light
shone full on her. He might still have thought her a vision, for her
face was transfigured with a look that seemed hardly of this earth. But
the woman that he held in his arms was warm with life, the lips against
his gave back his kiss.

A few moments later Policeman O'Hara, having extended his beat beyond
the saloons, saw what he supposed to be a single figure standing
opposite Robson's house under a dripping umbrella. As he approached,
it suddenly resolved itself into two figures, and walked away from him
under the umbrella.

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" murmured the bewildered policeman. "Have I
got it that bad so early in the evenin'?"

And judging that his case was gone too far for help, he dropped into
another saloon.

The two figures under the one umbrella walked down the street, out and
away through the rain, seeing nothing but the vistas of glory which
open before those who for one moment stand upon the pinnacle of life.




Transcriber's Note:

Minor changes have been made to regularize hyphenation and correct
obvious typesetter errors. Variant spellings have been retained.



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