“‘WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE?’ HE ASKED.”—Page [85].

A Whirl Asunder

By GERTRUDE ATHERTON
AUTHOR OF “THE DOOMSWOMAN” AND “BEFORE
THE GRINGO CAME.”

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
E. FREDERICK

New York and London
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

A WHIRL ASUNDER.

CHAPTER I.

As the train stopped for the sixth time, Clive descended abruptly.

“I think I’ll walk the rest of the way,” he said to the conductor. “Just look after my portmanteau, will you? and see that it is left at Yorba with my boxes.”

“O. K.”, said the man. “But you must like walking.”

Clive had spent seven days on the ocean, three in the furious energy of New York, and six on a transcontinental train, whose discomforts made him wonder if he had a moral right to enter the embarrassing state of matrimony with a temper hopelessly soured. As he had come to California to marry, and as his betrothed was at a hotel in the northern redwoods, he did not pause for rest in San Francisco; he left, two hours after his arrival, on a narrow guage train, which dashed down precipitous mountain slopes, shot, rocking from side to side, about curves on a road so narrow that the brush scraped the windows, or the eye looked down into the blackness of a cañon, five hundred feet below; raced shrieking across trestles which seemed to swing midway between heaven and earth; only to slacken, with protesting snort and jerk, when climbing to some dizzier height. Clive had stood for an hour on the platform, fascinated by the danger and the bleak solemnity of the forests, whose rigid trunks and short stiffly pointed arms looked as if they had not quivered since time began. But he felt that he had had enough, moreover that he had not drawn an uncompanioned breath since he left England. If he was not possessed by the graceful impatience of the lover, he reminded himself that he was tired and nervous, and had been obliged to go dirty for six days, enough to knock the romance out of any man; the ubiquitous human animal had talked incessantly for sixteen days, and his legs ached for want of stretching.

A twisted old man with a sharp eye, a rusty beard depending aimlessly from a thin tobacco-stained mouth, limped across the platform, rolling a flag. Clive asked him if he could get to the Yorba hotel on foot.

The man stared. “Well, you be an Englishman, I guess,” he remarked.

“Yes, I am an Englishman,” said Clive haughtily.

“Oh, no offence, but the way you English do walk beats us. We ain’t none too fond of walkin’ in Californy. Too many mountains, I guess. Yes, you kin walk it, and I guess you’ll have to. There goes your train. Stranger in these parts?”

“I arrived in California to-day.”

“So. Goin’ to raise cattle, or just seein’ the wonders of the Gold State?”

“Will you kindly point out the way? And I should like to send a dispatch to the hotel, if possible.”

“Oh, suttenly. We don’t think much of English manners in these parts, I don’t mind sayin’. You English act as if you owned God Almighty when you come out here. You forget we licked ye twice. Come after a Californy heiress?”

Clive felt an impulse to throw the man over the trestle, then laughed. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “I am sorry my manners are bad but the truth is my head is tired and my legs are not. Come, show me the way.”

Being further mollified by a silver dollar, the old man replied graciously, “All right, sir. Just amuse yourself while I send your telegram, and fetch a dark lantern. You’ll need it. The moon’s doin’ well, but the tops of them redwoods knit together, and are as close as a roof.”

Clive walked idly about the little waiting-room. The walls were decorated with illustrated weekly newspapers, and the gratuitous lithograph. John L. Sullivan, looking, under the softening influence of the weekly artist, as if sculptured from mush, glowered across at Corbett, who displayed his muscles in a dandified attitude. There were also several lithographs of pretty, rather elegant-looking girls. Clive noticed that one had a rude frame of young redwood branches about it, and occupied the post of honor at the head of the room. He walked over and examined it as well as he could by the light of the smoking lamp.

The head was in profile, severe in outline, as classic as the modern head ever is. The chin was lifted proudly, the nostrils looked capable of expansion. The brow and eyes suggested intellect, the lower part of the face pride and self-will and passion, perhaps undeveloped cruelty and sensuality.

“Who is Miss Belmont?” he asked, as the station agent left the telegraph table.

“Oh, she’s one of the heiresses. That’s our high-toned society paper. It’s printin’ a series of Californy heiresses. One of the other papers says as how it’s a good guide book for impecoonious furriners, and I guess that’s about the size of it. She’s got a million, and nobody but an aunt, and she has her own way, I—tell—you. She’ll be a handful to manage; but somehow, although she keeps people talkin’, they don’t believe as much harm of her as of some that’s more quiet. You’ll meet her, I guess, if you’re goin’ to stay at Yorba, for she’s got a big house in the redwoods and knows a lot of the hotel folks and the Bohemian Club fellers. I like her. She rides this way once a year or so, and we have a good chin about politics. She knows a thing or two, you bet, and she believes in Grover.”

“How old is she? And why doesn’t she marry?” asked Clive idly, as they walked up the road.

“She’s twenty-six, and she’s goin’ to marry—a Noo York feller; one of them with Dutch names. She’s had offers, I guess. Three of your lords, I know of. But lords don’t stand much show with Californy girls—them as was raised here, anyhow. They don’t give a damn for titles, and they scent a fortune-hunter before he’s off the dock. They’ve put their heads together and talked him over before he’s registered. This Dutchman’s got money, so I guess he’s all right. Be you a lord?”

“I am not. I am a barrister, and the son of a barrister.”

“What may that be?”

“I believe you call it lawyer out here.”

“O—h—h—a lawyer’s a gay bird, ain’t he? And don’t he have a good time?” The old man chuckled.

“I never found them different from other men. What do you mean?”

“Ours are rippers. I’ve been in Californy since ’49, and I could spin some yarns that would make your hair curl, young man. Lord, Lord, the old ones were tough. The young ones ain’t quite so bad, but they’re doing their best.”

“California is rather a wild place, isn’t it?”

“It was. It’s quietin’ down now, and it ain’t near so interestin’. Jack Belmont, that there young lady’s father, was a lawyer when he fust come here, but he struck it rich in Con. Virginia, in ’74, and after that warn’t he a ripper. Oh, Lord! He was a terror. But he done his dooty by his girl; had her eddicated in Paris and Noo York, and never let no one cross her. He was as fine-lookin’ a man as ever I seen, almost as tall and clean made as you be, and awful open-handed and popular, although a terrible enemy. He’s shot his man twice over, they say, and I believe it. His wife died ten years before him. She was fond of him, too, poor thing, and he made no bones about bein’ unfaithful to her—they don’t out here. A man’s no good if you can’t tell a yarn or two about him. Well, Jack Belmont died five years ago, and left about a million dollars to his girl. He’d had a long sight more, but she was lucky to git that. They say as how she was awful broke up when he died.”

“You’re a regular old chronique scandaleuse,” said Clive, much interested. “What sort of a social position has this Miss Belmont? Is she received?”

“Received? Glory, man—why her father was a Southern gent—Maryland, as I remember, and her mother was from Boston. They led society here in the sixties; they’re one of the old families of Californy. That’s the reason Miss Belmont does as she damned pleases, and nobody dares say boo—that and the million. She’s ancient aristocracy, she is. Received! Oh, Lord!”

Clive, much amused, asked, “What does she do that is so dreadful?”

“Oh, she’s been engaged fifteen times; she rides about the country in boy’s clothes, and sits up all night under the trees at Del Monte talkin’ to a man, or gives all her dances to one man at a party, and then cuts him the next day on the street; and when she gits tired of people, comes up here without even her aunt. She used to run to fires, but she give that up some years ago. She travels about the country for weeks without a chaperon, and once went camping alone with five men. Sometimes she’ll fill her house up with men for a week, and not have no other woman, savin’ her aunt. Lately she’s more quiet, they say, and has become a terrible reader. Last winter she stayed up here for three months alone. I hear as how people talked. But I didn’t see nothin’. She’s all right, or my name ain’t Jo Bagley. Well, here you are, sir. Good luck to ye! Keep to the road and don’t strike off on any of them side trails, and you can’t go wrong. Evenin’.”

Clive went into the dark forest. What the old man had told him of Miss Belmont had quickened his imagination, and he speculated about her for some moments; then his thoughts wandered to his English betrothed. He had not seen her for two years. Her mother’s health failing, her father had taken his family to Southern California. A year later Mrs. Gordon had died, and her husband having bought a ranch in which he was much interested, had written to Clive that he wanted his eldest daughter for another year; by that time her sister would have finished school, and could take her place as head of the household. Lately he and Mary had felt the debilitating influence of the southern climate and had gone to the redwoods of the north. There Clive was to meet them, remain a few weeks, then marry in San Francisco and take his wife back to England.

Clive was thirty-four, ten years older than Mary Gordon. He recalled the day he had proposed to her. She had come down the steps of her father’s house, in a blue gown and garden hat, and they had gone for a walk in the woods. She was not a clever woman, and she had only the white and pink and brown, the rounded lines of youth, no positive beauty of face or figure; but with the blind instinct of his race he had turned almost automatically to the type of woman who, time out of mind, has produced the strong-limbed, strong-brained men that have made a nation insolently great. She reminded him of his mother, with her even sweetness of nature, her sympathy, her large maternal suggestion. He had known her since her early girlhood and grown fonder of her each year. She rested him, and had the divine feminine faculty of making him feel a better and cleverer man than he was in the habit of thinking himself else where.

She had accepted him with the sweetest smile he had ever seen, and he had wondered if other men were as fortunate. For two years he saw much of her, then she went to America, and he had plunged into his work and his man’s life, not missing her as consistently as he had expected, but caring for her none the less. The Saturday mail brought him, unintermittingly, a letter eight pages long, neatly written, and describing in detail the daily life of her family, and of the strange people about them. They were calm, affectionate, interesting letters, which Clive enjoyed, and to which he replied with a hurried scrawl, rarely covering more than one page. An Englishwoman does not expect much, but Mary occasionally hinted sadly that a longer letter would make her happier; whereupon his conscience hurt him and he wrote her two pages.

He enjoyed these two years, despite hard work; he was popular with men and women, and much was popular with him that adds to the keener pleasures of life. When the time came to pack his boxes and go to America he puffed a large regretful rack from his last pipe of freedom; but it did not occur to him to ask release. For the matter of that, although he had come to regard Mary Gordon as the inevitable rather than the desired, he had felt for her the strong tenderness which such men feel for such women, which endures, and never in any circumstance turns to hate.

After a time Clive extinguished the lantern: it illumined the road fitfully, but accentuated the dense blackness of the forest. The undergrowth was too thick to permit him to stray aside, and he wanted to form some idea of his surroundings. His eyes accustomed themselves to the dark. Moon rays splashed or trickled here and there through lofty cleft and mesh. Clive paused once and looked up. The straight trees, sometimes slender, sometimes huge, were as inflexible as granite, an unbroken column for a hundred feet or more; then thrusting out rigid arms from a tapering trunk into another hundred feet of space. The effect was that of a dense forest suspended in air, supported above the low brush forest on a vast irregular colonnade, out of whose ruins it might have sprung. Clive had never known a stillness so profound, a repose so absolute. But it was not the peaceful repose of an English wood. It suggested the heavy brooding stillness of archaic days, when the uneasy world drowsed before another convulsion. There was some other influence abroad in the woods, but at the time its meaning eluded him.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he could not see Mary Gordon in this forest. There was an irritating incongruity in the very thought. She belonged to the sweet calm beech woods, of England; nothing in her was in consonance with the storm and stress, the passion and fatality which this strange country suggested. Did the women of California fit their frame? He experienced a strong desire for the companionship of a woman who would interpret this forest to him, then called himself an ass and strode on.

An hour later he became aware of a distant and deep murmur. It was crossed suddenly by a wild, hilarious yell. Clive relit the lantern and flashed it along the brush at his right. Presently he came upon a narrow trail. The prospect of adventure after sixteen days of civilized monotony lured him aside, and he walked rapidly down the by-path. In a few moments he found himself on the edge of a large clearing. The moon poured in without let, and revealed a scene of singular and uncomfortable suggestion.

In the middle of the space was a huge funeral pyre; beyond it, evidently on a bier, Clive could see the stony, upturned feet of a mammoth corpse, lightly covered with a white pall. Between the pyre and the trees nearer him a large caldron swung over a heap of fagots, which were beginning to crackle gently. The place looked as if about to be the scene of some awful rite. Englishmen are willing to believe anything about California, and Clive, who had commanded the admiration of his father’s colleagues with his clear, quick, logical brain, leaped at once to the conclusion that this part of California was still the hunting-ground of the Red Indian, and that some mighty chief was about to be cremated; whilst his widow, perchance, sacrificed herself in the caldron.

He plunged his hands into his pockets and awaited developments with the nervous delight of a schoolboy. Although the forest was silent again, he had an uneasy sense of many human beings at no great distance.

He had not long to wait. There was a sudden red glare which made the aisles of the forest seem alive with dancing shapes, hideously contorted. Simultaneously there arose a low soft chanting, monotonous and musical, bizarre rather than weird. Then out of the recesses on the far side of the clearing, startlingly defined under the blaze of many torches held aloft in the background, emerged a high priest, his crown shaven, his beard flowing to his waist, his white robes marking the austerity of his order. His hands were folded on his breast, his head bowed. Behind him, two and two, followed twenty acolytes, swinging censers, the heavy perfume of the incense rising to the pungent odor of the redwoods, blending harmoniously: the lofty forest aisles were become those of some vast primeval crypt.

Then illusion was in a measure dispelled. The two hundred torch-bearers who came after wore the ordinary outing clothes of civilization.

The strange procession marched slowly round the circle, passing perilously close to Clive. Then the priest and acolytes walked solemnly up to the caldron, the others dispersing themselves irregularly, leaping occasionally and waving their torches. The fagots were blazing; Clive fancied he heard a merry bubbling. A moment of profound silence. Then the priest dropped something into the caldron, chanting an invocation of which Clive could make nothing, although he was a scholar in several languages. The acolytes and torch-bearers tossed to the priest entities and imaginations, which he dropped with much ceremony into the caldron, to the accompaniment of hollow, not to say ribald laughter, and jests which had a strong flavor of personalities.

The prologue lasted ten minutes. Then the mummers crowded backward and faced the pyre. Again the heavy silence fell. The priest went forward, and raising his clasped hands and set face to the moon, stood, for a moment, like a statue on a monument, then turned slowly and beckoned. The acolytes formed in line and marched with solemn precision to the other side of the pyre. A moment later they reappeared, walking with halting steps, their heads bowed, chanting dismally. On their shoulders they carried a long bier, on which, apparently, lay the corpse of a dead giant. The priest sprinkled the body, then turned away with a gesture of loathing. The acolytes carried it by the torch-bearers, who spat upon and execrated it; then slowly and laboriously mounted the pyre, and dropping the bier on its apex, scampered indecorously down with savage grunts of satisfaction, their white garments fluttering along the dark pile like a wash on a windy day. The corpse lay long and white and horrid under the beating moon and the flare of torch. As the acolytes reached the ground the rest of the company rushed simultaneously forward, and with a hideous yell flung their torches at the pyre. There was the hiss of tar, the leap of one great flame, an angry crackling. A moment more and the forest would be more vividly alight than it had ever been at noonday. Clive, feeling as uncomfortable as an eavesdropper, but too fascinated to retreat, stepped behind a large redwood. With his eyes still fixed on the strange scene he did not pick his steps, and coming suddenly in contact with a pliable body, he nearly knocked it over. There was a smothered shriek, followed by a suppressed but forcible vocative. Clive mechanically lifted his hat.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, addressing a tall lad, whose face was partly concealed by the visor of a cap; “I hope I have not hurt you.”

“I am not so easily hurt,” said the lad haughtily.

The masculine man never lived who did not recognize a feminine woman in whatever guise, if within the radius of her magnetism. This young masquerader interested Clive at once. Her voice had a warm huskiness. The mouth and chin were classically cut, but very human. She had thrown back her head and revealed a round beautiful throat. The loose flannel shirt and jacket concealed her figure, but even the slight motions she had made revealed energy and grace.

Clive offered her a cigarette. She accepted it and smoked daintily, withdrawing as much as possible into the shadow and shielding her face with her hand. He leaned his back against the tree and lit a cigar.

“What on earth is the meaning of this scene?” he asked.

“That is the great Midsummer Jinks ceremony of the Bohemian Club. They have it every year, and never invite outsiders. So I was bound I’d see it anyhow.”

“I wonder you don’t become a member.”

“Oh, I’m too young,” promptly.

“Tell me more about it. What do these ceremonies mean?”

“Oh, they put all sorts of things into that caldron—the liver of a grasshopper with one of Harry Armstrong’s jokes; the wasted paint on somebody’s last picture with the misshapen feet of somebody’s else latest verse. The corpse is an effigy of Care, and they are cremating him. Now they’ll be happy, that is to say, drunk, till morning, for Care is dead. I’m going to stop and see it out.”

“I think you had better go home.”

“Indeed?” Clive saw the hand that shielded her face jerk.

“Did you ever see, or rather hear a lot of men on a lark when they fancied that no women were about?”

“No; but that is what I wish to do.”

“Which you are not going to do to-night.”

There was a sudden snapping of dry leaves. A small foot had come down with emphasis.

“What do you mean?”

“That this is no place for a woman, and that you must go.”

“I’m not—well, I am, and I don’t care in the least whether you know it or not. I wish you to understand, sir, that I shall stay here, and that I am not in the habit of being dictated to.”

“You are Miss Belmont, I suppose.”

An instant’s pause. Then she replied with a haughty pluck which delighted him: “Yes, I am Miss Belmont, and you are an insolent Englishman.”

“How do you know that I am an Englishman?”

“Anyone could tell from your voice and your overbearing manner.”

“Well, I am,” said Clive, much amused.

“I detest Englishmen.”

“Smoke a little, or I am afraid you will cry.”

She obeyed with unexpected docility, but in a moment crushed the coal of her cigarette on a damp tree stump. Then she turned to him and folded her arms.

“I am not going to leave,” she said evenly. “What are you going to do about it?”

“How did you get here?”

“On my horse.”

“Where is he?”

“Tethered off the road.”

“Very well; if you are not on that horse in five minutes, I shall carry you to it, and what is more, I shall kiss you.”

She deliberately moved into the light and pushed her cap to the back of her head, disarranging a mass of curling dark hair. Her coloring was indefinable in the red light, but her eyes were large and long, and heavily lashed. They sparkled wickedly. The nostrils of her finely cut nose were dilating; her short upper lip was lifted. Clive ardently hoped that she would continue to defy him. Her whole attitude was that of a young worldling, delighting in an unforeseen adventure.

“Who are you, anyhow?” she demanded. “Of course I could see at once that you were a gentleman, or I should not have taken the slightest notice of you.”

“Thanks. My name is Owin Clive.”

“Oh, you are Mary Gordon’s friend, that she has been expecting.”

“Miss Gordon is an old friend of mine.” He half-consciously hoped that Miss Belmont did not know of his engagement.

“She says you are frightfully handsome.”

Clive laughed. “I cannot imagine Miss Gordon using any such expression; but then she has been two years in California.”

“I suppose Englishmen can’t help being rude. I remember exactly what she said, and she said it so slowly and placidly. ‘Oh, yes, dear Miss Belmont, I think our men are very fine-looking indeed.’ (I had been black-guarding them.) ‘My friend, Mr. Clive, of whom you have heard me speak, is quite the handsomest man I have ever seen.’”

“That sounds more like it. And that is exactly what she would have said two years ago. I mean,” laughing with some embarrassment, “the way she would have expressed herself.”

“Oh, I suppose you are a mass of vanity; all men are. Yes; your Mary Gordon is as English as if she had never left Hertfordshire. And always will be. She hasn’t a spark of originality.”

Clive discerned her purpose, but he replied coldly, “Say rather that she has individuality.”

“Which she hasn’t, and you know it. I have that. Do you think there is much in common between us?”

“How can I tell after knowing you ten minutes?”

“I can’t get a rise out of you, I see. You Englishmen are such phlegmatic creatures. I don’t believe there is a spark of impulse left in your island.”

“You are a very brave young woman.”

“Why?” She drew her eyelashes together, shooting forth audacity.

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

The muscles of her face twitched angrily. “An Englishman’s only idea of wit is impertinence.”

“What have Englishmen done to you that you are so bitter? I don’t believe those lordlings I have heard of, proposed, after all.”

“They did,” replied Miss Belmont emphatically, and quite restored. “Every last one of them. I made Dynebor fetch and carry like a trained dog. It was great fun. I used to say, before a room full of people, ‘Go get my fan, little man; I left it with Charley Rollins in the conservatory.’ And he would trot off; he was that hard up, poor thing!”

“I am glad you did not marry any of them; I am sure they were not good enough for you.”

“How polite of you. Why don’t you step out and let me see you?”

“My vanity will not permit. I feel sure that your remarkable frankness would not allow you to disguise your disappointment.”

“Well, I shall see you on Sunday. You are coming with Miss Gordon to dine with me. She has accepted for you.”

“I shall wait until then. I look better in evening clothes and when I am clean.”

“I like your voice and your figure, and you certainly have a remarkable amount of magnetism,” she said meditatively. “Good heavens! what a row those idiots are making. And do look at that bonfire. It looks for all the world as if the earth had run its tongue out at the moon.”

Clive wondered why he did not kiss her. He certainly wanted to, and he certainly would have been justified. He recalled no other attractive woman who would have had to offer half the encouragement with which Miss Belmont had recklessly toyed. A man who coined epigrams for sale had once said of him: “Clive is thoroughbred; he can drink the strongest whiskey, smoke the blackest cigars, and he never fails to kiss a pretty woman when the opportunity offers.” And yet, so far, something about Miss Belmont stayed him. He had no intention that it should endure, however.

The scene was growing more and more picturesque. Behind them was a great roar, crossed by the howling and yelling of two hundred and twenty-one abandoned throats. The remotest aisles of the forest were crimson. Every needle of the delicate young redwoods, every waving frond was etched minutely on the red transparency. The thousand columns with their stark capitals wore a softened and gracious aspect, albeit the general effect of the night was infernal.

“Are you going?” asked Clive.

“No.” She curled her lips defiantly away from her teeth.

Clive crossed the short space between them with one step, lifted her in his arms and walked rapidly up the trail. For a moment she was too stupefied to protest; then she attempted violently to free herself.

“What do you mean?” she cried furiously. “Do you know who I am? I am in the habit of doing exactly as I please. Everybody knows me here. If you have misunderstood me it’s because you are a thick-headed Englishman, used to women who are either stupid or bad.”

“You mean that the men you surround yourself with are idiots who permit you to play with them as you choose. Keep quiet. Don’t you see that you can’t get away? If you struggle I shall hurt you, and I don’t want to do that.”

“I have sat up all night with men and they have never dared to kiss me, however much they may have wanted to.”

“Then they were rotters, and you can tell them so, with my compliments. If I sat up all night with you I should kiss you, and several times.”

“Well, you never will!”

They reached the road. She stiffened suddenly and tried to spring out of his arms. He placed her on her feet and grasped her firmly by the shoulders.

“Now,” he said, “kiss me, and don’t be silly about it. If you go in for larks of this sort you must take the consequences.” She wrenched again. He caught and held her so firmly that she could not struggle.

“You brute of an Englishman,” she gasped.

Clive clasped his hand about the lower part of her face and lifted it gently. As he did so he shifted his position and the light, for the first time, shone full on his face. The girl became suddenly quiet. Something leaped into her eyes which his own answered. But as he bent his face she moved her head backward along his shoulder.

“Please, please don’t,” she said beseechingly. “Oh, please don’t.”

Clive let her go. He walked with her to the horse, mounted her, and watched her dash away.

“What a stupid ass I am,” he thought. “Why on earth didn’t I kiss that woman?”

He walked up the road for a few moments, then turned and made for the clearing.

The flames were still leaping symmetrically upward into a dense column of smoke, the men still dancing about the pyre, their enthusiasm unabated. As Clive suddenly appeared in their midst an immediate and disagreeable silence fell. Clive had never felt so uncomfortable in his life. He concealed a certain amount of natural shyness under a haughty bearing, which would have repelled strangers had it not been for his charm of expression, the quick laughter of his eyes.

“Does Mr. Charles Rollins happen to be here?” he asked stiffly. “I have brought a letter to him. My name is Clive. I have an apology to make. I stumbled upon your strange ceremony and watched it, not knowing at the time that there was anything private about it——”

“Don’t mention it. Don’t mention it,” cried a hearty voice. A young man pushed forward from the back of the circle and grasped his hand. “I had a letter from Stanley and hoped you would get here in time for this. You can make up for being late only by drinking six quarts of fizz between now and sunrise. Boys, come up and shake.”

Clive’s hand was shaken, with a solemnity which at first embarrassed, then amused him, by every man present. Then solemnity vanished, and with it any lingering remnant of Clive’s shyness.

The odor of savory viands mingled with burning pitch and the subtler perfumes of the forest. A great table was spread. Champagne corks flew. Before an hour was done Clive was voted the liveliest Englishman, that had ever set foot in California, and elected off-hand an honorary member of the Bohemian Club.

CHAPTER II.

At four o’clock Clive once more started for Yorba. He had not drunken six quarts of champagne, but he had commanded the respect of his comrades by the courage with which he had mixed his drinks. Rollins had held his head under a waterfall, in the little river, but it still felt very large. He took off his straw hat and looked at it resentfully. Why had he not worn his traveling cap? He also felt depressed, and reproached himself vehemently. What must Mary Gordon think? Doubtless she was sitting up, waiting for him, and thought him dead—murdered. Nevertheless he had enjoyed himself thoroughly, and he found remorse more coy than he would have wished. He had an uneasy consciousness that if his head did not ache so confoundedly he would not feel remorse at all.

His thoughts wandered to Miss Belmont. “I believe I found the woman for the forest, after all. I wonder if she would fit it as well now. Perhaps, in another mood. I fancy she is a woman of many.”

The redwoods were dripping with mist, itself as motionless as the silent trees it shrouded. It filled every hollow, was banked in every aisle, lay like silver cobweb on the young redwoods and ferns. It emphasized the ghastly silence. Not a bird was awake, not a crawling thing moved. Once a panther cried far up on the mountain, but that was all.

Clive came upon the hotel an hour later, a long rough wooden structure at the foot of the mountain, up which straggled many cottages. Hard by, across a little creek, were a saloon and billiard room. As he ascended the steps, a stout man with a red heavy face, came out of the office, stretching himself.

“You’re Mr. Clive, the Gordons’ friend, I surmise,” he said.

“I hope they haven’t sat up for me.” He devoutly hoped they had not.

“They hain’t. Miss Gordon waited till twelve, then concluded you’d fallen in with the Bohemian Club, as she knowed you’d brought a letter to Rollins. Jedging by the looks of you I should say you had. Come over to the bar and taper off. My name’s Hart and I run this hotel.”

“Thank you,” said Clive grimly, “but I’ll have no more to-night. Be good enough to show me to my room, and be sure to have me wakened at eight. I suppose Mr. and Miss Gordon are not up before then. If they are, please give them my compliments and tell them that I did fall in with the Bohemian Club.”

CHAPTER III.

When Clive awoke and looked at his watch it was a quarter to three in the afternoon. He sprang out of bed in dismay. He was an ideal lover! If Mary Gordon sent him about his business he could not question the justice of the act. After a hurried tub and toilet he went in search of his landlord.

“Why in thunder didn’t you call me at eight?” he asked savagely.

“Miss Gordon was up at seven, mister, and she gave strict orders that you was not to be disturbed. I’m to take you over to her cottage the minute you show up and to send a broiled chicken after you.”

“She’s an angel,” thought Clive, “and will certainly make an ideal wife.”

He followed his host out of the hotel and up the hill. The summer girl in pink and blue, sailor hat and shirt-waist, dotted the greenery; in rare instances attended by a swain. On the piazzas of the hotel and cottages older women knitted or read novels.

The day was very warm. The sun shone down into the forest above and about the cottages, where the trees were not so densely planted as in the depths. The under-forest looked very green and fresh. A creek murmured somewhere. Bees hummed drowsily.

Clive’s head still ached and he was hungry; but at this moment he was conscious of nothing but a paramount wish to see Mary Gordon.

Mr. Gordon, a pink-faced man with white side-whiskers, was standing on the piazza of a tiny cottage which looked as if it had been built in a night. He winked at Clive as he came down and shook him heartily by the hand. He had loved his wife and been kind to her, but had always done exactly as he pleased.

“She’s inside,” he whispered, “and I don’t think she’ll row you. Sorry it happened, just vow it never will again and she’ll forget it. They always do, bless them!”

Clive went hastily into the little parlor. Mary Gordon was standing in the middle of the room, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes very bright, her upper lip caught between her teeth. Clive saw in a glance that she had more style and grace of carriage than when she had left England. Her hair was more fashionably arranged, and altogether she was a handsomer girl. He took her in his arms and kissed her many times, and she cried softly on his shoulder. He humbled himself to the dust and was told that he must always do exactly what he wanted; and he felt a distinct thrill of pleasureable domestic anticipation. He had been spoiled all his life, and would have taken to matrimonial discipline very unkindly.

When he had eaten of the broiled chicken and several other substantial delicacies, and was at peace with himself and the world once more, he went for a long walk in the forest with Mary. After a time they sat down on a log, and he lit his pipe and tried to imagine an environment of English oaks and beeches. Again and more forcibly he felt the discordance between the English girl, simplified by generations of discipline and homogeneous traditions, and this green light, this strange brooding silence, this vast solitude suggesting a new world, a new race, an unimaginable future, this hot electric sensuous air.

They talked of the past two years and of their future together.

“I have not told anyone yet that we are engaged,” said Mary. “People here don’t seem to take things as seriously as we do, and I could not stand being chaffed about it. I have merely said that we expected an old and dear friend of the family.”

“I am glad. It’s a bore to be chaffed.”

“Of course, I have written to all our friends in England that we are to be married on the twelfth. But as the wedding is to be so quiet it is not necessary to tell anyone here.”

“How do you like this country?” he asked curiously. “I mean how does it suit you personally? Of course, I know you would make up your mind to like any place where duty happened to take you, but you must have a private little idea on the subject, and it is your duty to tell me everything.”

She smiled happily. “‘Well!’ as they say here, now that I am sure that Edith will make papa comfortable, I shall be glad enough to go back to England. California doesn’t suit me at all. It rubs me the wrong way. I think I should develop nerves if I stayed here much longer. Americans don’t seem to me to be half human. Helena Belmont says that America will be the greatest nation on earth when it gets a soul, but that it is nothing but a kicking squalling, precocious infant at present; and that if some one were clever enough to stick his finger in the soft spot on the top of its head, it would transform it into an idiot or a corpse; but that America will pull though all right because she has so many weak points that her enemies forget which is the weakest. Miss Belmont is so clever. You will meet her on Sunday. You don’t mind my having accepted an invitation for you to dine there?”

“Not at all. It was very kind of you, I am sure. I have heard of this Miss Belmont; I don’t imagine you find much in common with her.”

“She horrifies me, but she fascinates me more than any person I have met here. I am sure she is a good woman in spite of the reckless things she does. Your friend Mr. Rollins, says that she is the concentrated essence of California, and I always excuse her on that ground. You never know what she is going do or say next; and she is the most desperate flirt I ever heard of. I suppose she is so beautiful she can’t help it. Her eyes always seem to be looking at you through tears, even when they are laughing or flirting, although I don’t believe she sheds many. I cannot imagine her crying, although I know her to be kind-hearted, and generous, and impulsive.”

“Do you call it kind-hearted to throw fifteen men over?”

“I told her once that I thought it was morally wrong for her to lure men on to such a terrible awakening, and she said that there was just one thing that man didn’t know, which was woman; and that it was her duty to her sex to addle their brains on the subject as much as possible. But I want you to know me, Owin.”

“The better I know you the better I shall love you.”

“When your eyes laugh like that I never know whether you are chaffing me or not. It will not take long, for I am not clever;” she smiled a little sadly; “you are so clever that I know you will often want to go and talk to women who know more than I do; but none of them will ever love you so well.”

“I know it,” he said tenderly, and he believed what he said.

“I am glad that I have been in California, though,” pursued Mary. “It has broadened me. At home we take it for granted that all the unconventional people are bad, and all the conventional ones good. Here it is so different; although I must say that I never heard so much petty gossip and scandal in my life as there is in the smart set in San Francisco. All visitors remark that; I suppose it is because they have so little to do and think about. It is very slow here socially; and I suppose that is what makes some of the women do such outlandish things—that and the country, for even the quiet ones are not exactly like other people. One can judge for oneself. I have often pinned the tattlers down when they were abusing Helena Belmont, for instance, and they could not verify a single statement.”

“Women know each other very little,” said Clive.

CHAPTER IV.

He passed his nights in the Bohemian Club camp, his mornings in bed, the remaining hours wandering about with his betrothed; and felt that altogether life was not understood by the pessimists. England, with the struggles and cares and responsibilities it held in store for him, seemed to exist only between the rusty covers of history, and life a thing to be dawdled away in a wonderful forest, where the very air made a man hate the thought of all that was hard and ugly and too serious.

Clive was something more than curious to see Miss Belmont again, but hardly knew whether he ought to go to her house or not. It was possible that she expected him to decline an invitation proffered before an unpleasant adventure; but unless he pleaded sudden illness he did not see his way out of acceptance. On Saturday, however, Mary received a note from the châtelaine of Casa del Norte, reminding her of the dinner and of her promise to bring Mr. Clive.

“Charley Rollins tells me that he is the best all-round Englishman he has ever known,” the note concluded; “not the least bit of a cad. I am most anxious to meet him.”

Mary laughed as she handed the note to Clive. “If any other woman had written that I’d never enter her house again. But, somehow, you let her say and do exactly what she chooses. The trouble is that the only Englishmen she has met have been fortune-hunters. When we are married I’ll ask her over to visit us, and let her meet men who are almost as perfect as you are.”

Clive said “Yes, dear,” absently. Three days of unshifting devotion had blunted the fine point of his content.

The next day Mary was prostrate with one of the severe headaches to which she was subject, and sent Clive off with Charley Rollins to the dinner.

“Go, go, my boy,” Mr. Gordon had said to him, when Clive had displayed a decent amount of reluctance; “she’ll be too ill to be spoken to for twenty-four hours. You could do no good by hanging round.”

During the hour’s drive through the redwoods Clive said to Rollins, “You are a great friend of Miss Belmont, are you not?”

“I am, for a fact.”

“Have you known her long?”

“She nearly scratched my eyes out when she was three and I five. I’ve adored her ever since, and think the reason I’ve been able to hang on successfully is because I’ve never proposed to her.”

“I’ve heard several opinions of her, and I’d like yours. I can’t say that, so far, I’ve met anyone likely to understand her. You should, particularly as you have never made love to her.”

Rollins half closed his shrewd, dark eyes, and tilted his hat over his nose. Like all San Francisco men, he looked carelessly dressed, although in evening clothes, and carried himself badly; but his face was clear and refined, his hair and beard trimly cut.

“Helena Belmont,” he said, in what the club called his “summing-up voice,” “has the genius of California in her, like Sibyl Sanderson and a dozen others I could mention without stopping to think, although they would be mere names to you. You see, it is like this: all sorts of men came here in early days—poor men of good family who had failed at home, or were too proud to work there; desperadoes, adventurers, men of middle life and broken fortunes—all of them expecting everything from the new land, and ready to tear the heart out of anyone who got in their way. It was every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Many succeeded. Some of their methods will not bear the fierce light of history. That savage spirit, that instinct to trample to a goal over anything or anybody, that intolerance of restraint, still lingers in the very atmosphere, and is quick in the blood of many of the present generation, although, strangely enough, it has given a distincter individuality to the women than to the men. Of course, there are Californians and Californians. It is always a mistake to generalize too freely, but the type I speak of is the most significant, although you will find no Californian exactly like any other American. This is the land of the composite. All America and all Europe have emptied themselves into it. God knows what it will sift down to eventually—the commonplace, probably. As for Helena Belmont, Jack Belmont, her father, came here in the fifties, and hung up his shingle. He was one of the cleverest lawyers the State has had. He rarely drew a sober breath, and was never seen to stagger; he was an inveterate gambler, and a terror with women. He married a Miss Lowell, of Boston, who came out here on a visit—a beautiful girl; and God knows what she went through with him. You may be surprised that she married him. I may have given you the impression that he was a cowboy in a red shirt and sombrero. Jack Belmont was one of the most elegant men this State has ever seen, a gentleman when he was drunkest, and the idol of the Southern set, a strong contingent here. There you have the elements of which Helena Belmont is made up. She has the blood of Cavaliers and Roundheads in her veins; she grew up amidst the clash of the South against the North, for no two people could ever have been more unmated than her mother and father; and she was born in California, nurtured on its new savage traditions, and mentally and temperamentally fitted to draw in twice her measure of its atmosphere. She does what she pleases, because she would never know if she were beaten, has a tremendous personality and a million dollars. Here we are.”

CHAPTER V.

The forest had ended abruptly. They had come upon a large low adobe house on a plateau, looking down over a shelving table-land upon the ocean, a mile below.

“It’s about eighty years old,” said Rollins, “which is antique in this country. It belonged to one of the grandees of the old time, and Miss Belmont bought it shortly after her father’s death. She has several houses, but this is her favorite. It has about thirty rooms, and there have been some jolly good times up here, I can tell you. Those are the original tiles and the original walls, but everything else has been pretty well modernized, except that old orchard you see on the other side and the vineyard and rose-garden.”

They dismounted at an open gateway in a high adobe wall, and entered a large orderless garden. The air was sweet with the delicate perfume of Castilian roses, whose green, thorny bushes, thick with pink, rioted over the walls, up the oaks, across the paths, and looked as if no hand had cut or trimmed them since the old Spaniard had coaxed them from the soil, nearly a century ago.

“She hates modern gardens,” said Rollins, “and has never had a gardener in this. We’d prefer to walk without leaving ourselves in shreds and patches on the thorns, but if it suits her I suppose it’s all right.”

They entered the house opposite a courtyard filled with palm-trees and rustic chairs. A large curiously modelled fountain, which Rollins told Clive was the work of the old Franciscans, splashed lazily. Several young men were swinging in hammocks on the corridor which traversed the four sides of the court. A Chinese servant, in blouse and pendant cue, was passing cocktails.

Rollins conducted Clive into a small drawing-room, fitted in copper-colored silken stuffs, and overlooking the ocean. Neither Miss Belmont nor her aunt was present, and Rollins introduced Clive to the assembled guests, with running footnotes not intended for the ear of the subject.

“Miss Lord”—presenting Clive to a tall handsome, scornful-looking girl. “She tears out reputations with her teeth. Miss Carter—a clever little snob, who is a joy to flirt with because you know she is too selfish to fall in love with you. Mrs. Lent—an army flirt, who has done much to educate the youth of San Francisco. Mrs. Volney—a widow with a commanding talent for marrying and burying rich husbands. Miss Leonard—who plays better than any woman in San Francisco, which is saying a good deal; a lovely girl, if a trifle cold. Mrs. Tower—a really charming young widow, with a voice as fiery as her eyes. Miss West—who is half Spanish, a good deal of a prude, and a most accomplished flirt. Here comes Mrs. Cartright, who has the honor of being Miss Belmont’s aunt, chaperon, and slave.”

A middle-aged lady—small, stout, but with much dignity of bearing, her dark face refined and gentle—entered, and greeted Clive with the rich Southern brogue which twenty years of California had not tempered. As he exchanged platitudes with her she reminded him of a gentle breeze which had wandered aimlessly in, barely touching his cheek. She talked incessantly, and wholly without consequence.

Clive had created a perceptible flutter among the women. Being a shy man, he was painfully aware that every eye in the room was upon him, and that he was being discussed behind more than one fan. The other men—society youths—had entered, and looked crude and new beside him. He had the straight figure of the athlete, and carried his clothes in a manner which made Rollins feel, as he confided to Miss Carter, like hitching up his trousers. His closely cut hair was almost black; his moustache the color of straw, and as uneven as frequent conflagrations could make it, fell over a delicately-cut, strong, mobile mouth. It had taken many generations to breed his profile—so delicate and sensitive was it, yet so strong. His eyes were grey and well set, full of humour and fire. The chin and neck were a trifle heavy. There was something very splendid about the whole appearance of the man, and he filled the eye whenever he stood in a room.

Mrs. Cartwright’s fluttering attention having been deflected elsewhere, he plunged his hands into his pockets and talked to Mrs. Volney, whose crêpe set off a pair of shoulders of which he approved. She was a remarkably pretty woman, with large innocent-looking green eyes and golden hair, and conversed with a babyish inflection which he thought very fetching. In a moment he forgot her, and went toward the door with Rollins. Miss Belmont had entered.

The pink color in her face flamed for a moment, but her eyes lit with an admiration so unmistakable that Clive, too, colored and laughed nervously. He wondered if his eyes were as frank as hers. Her tall slim figure was very round; the delicate neck carried no superfluous flesh, but was apparently boneless. The small proud head was poised well back. Clive knew her features; but the rich mahogany-brown hair, crisp and electric, and curling unmanageably, the dark blue eyes, the warm whiteness of skin, the pink of cheek and lips, were the splendid finish of a hasty sketch. Her white gown was of some silken stuff embroidered with silver, and pearls were in her hair and about her throat. She looked as proud and calm and well-conducted as a young empress.

“Of course this is Mr. Clive,” she said. “You are not at all necessary, Charley. I am so sorry Miss Gordon is ill. Give me your arm; dinner is ready. I know that you have not told anyone,” she murmured, as they walked down the corridor.

“How do you know? It is a good story, and I may have told it all over the place.”

“I am sure you have not even told it to Miss Gordon.”

“Why Miss Gordon?” he asked, smiling into her frankly curious eyes.

“Are you engaged to her?”

He laughed but made no reply.

“I don’t believe you are,” she said abruptly, after they were seated. “You don’t look the least bit as if anyone owned you.”

“Why did you make an English room of this? It might have been taken bodily out of some old manor house. These Chinamen in it are an anomaly. I should have thought you would rather preserve the character of the country.”

“The old Californians had no taste whatever about interiors—whitewashed walls and hair cloth furniture. Besides, we have just about as much of California out here as we can stand, and like to import something else into it occasionally.”

There were eighteen people at table. The conversation was principally about other people. Occasionally, a current novel or play captured a few moments’ attention, but the talk soon swung triumphantly back to personalities. Clive had never seen so many pretty women together. One or two were beautiful. The dense blackness of Mrs. Tower’s hair, the red and olive of her skin, the high, cheek bones, inadvertently modelled features and fierce eyes suggested Indian ancestry. Miss West’s soft Spanish eyes languished or coquetted, but there was a New England meagreness about her mouth. Miss Leonard, with her cendré hair, and cold regular features might have had all the blood of all the Howards in her. Mrs. Lent had a dark piquant Franco-American face. Miss Carter was very small, very dignified, with large cool intelligent grey eyes, abundant yellow hair, and an Irish nose and upper lip. All had the slight bust and generous development of hip and leg peculiar to the Californian women. The men interested Clive less: they looked very ordinary society youths, and he wondered if Rollins could not dispose of them collectively in an epigram.

He quarrelled intermittently with Miss Belmont: they did not hit it off. Nevertheless, he wondered if it could be the rashling he had met in the forest. She still wore her regal air and would have looked as cold as one of the fine marbles in her drawing-room, had it not been for her lavish coloring. She took little part in the general conversation, and he said to her abruptly—

“These people don’t seem to interest you.”

“I’m tired to death of them. I’ll turn them all out presently. I bought this place to be near the redwoods, which I love better than anything in the world, and I like to entertain by fits and starts. I spent last winter here alone.”

“I should like to have known you then. When you get time to think about yourself you must be a charming egoist.”

“You have the most impertinent tongue and the most flirtatious eyes I have ever met.”

“Where is the man you are engaged to?”

“Up at Shasta and the lava beds. He will be back in a few days. You will like him.”

“Is he a good fellow?”

“Yes,” with friendly enthusiasm; “an awfully good fellow.”

“You don’t love him, though.”

Her lashes half met—a habit they had. “No,” she said, “I don’t believe I do.”

“Helena! Helena!” cried Rollins. “Clive, I feel it my duty to tell you that she is engaged, and for the fifteenth time.”

“He has been telling me that I am not in love with Mr. Van Rhuys, and intimating that he has come just in time to save me from a fatal mistake.”

She looked charmingly impertinent, her eyes half closed, her chin lifted, her pink lips pouting from their classic lines.

Clive was somewhat taken aback, but replied promptly, “If I disclaim, it is from timidity, not lack of gallantry: I fear I should learn more than I have the power to teach.”

Everybody laughed. Miss Belmont’s eyes sparkled. “You mean,” she said, when the attention of the others was once more diverted, “that you are not going to fall in love with me. Everybody does, you know. I never mind surrounding myself with beautiful women, because I am much more fascinating than any of them.”

“I am hopelessly unoriginal, but I shall make a desperate effort this time.”

“Why do you say that? You look quite unlike anyone I have ever seen; I mean quite a different person looks out of your eyes.” Her own eyes had a frankly speculative regard devoid of coquetry. Clive’s masculine vanity warmed.

“You read a great deal, I hear,” he said.

“What an extraordinary way you have of ignoring what a person says to you. Are you absent-minded, or deaf, or merely impolite?”

“Merely an Englishman.”

Miss Belmont’s color deepened. Clive’s eyes invoked a ridiculous picture of a stately young châtelaine kicking and struggling in an Englishman’s arms.

“Why do the people of your country take pride in being rude?”

“They don’t. They don’t bother about trifles like the men of several other nations, that is all. I’ll open the door for you when you leave the room, and even take off my hat in the lift and catch a cold in my head, but don’t expect me to find a reply to all the nonsense a woman chooses to talk, if a more interesting subject occurs to me.”

“Are you very haughty and supercilious, or are you very shy?”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean that you were flattered to death by what I said, and changed the subject, as a girl would blush or stammer.”

“I suspect you are right.” He rose to let her pass. His eyes laughed down into hers, and she felt the sudden content of a child when it is noticed by a person of superior years and stature.

“That man has the most charming eyes I ever saw,” she said, as the dining-room door closed behind the women. “I don’t believe they ever could be sober.”

“Just observe his lower jaw,” said Mrs. Volney, with her infantile lisp.

CHAPTER VI.

When the men left the dining-room they found the women in the patio, or scattered about the corridor. There was no moon, but the clear sky blazed with stars, and colored lanterns swung between the pillars or among the broad leaves of the palm-trees. The girls (the married women were little more) had thrown lace or silken scarves over their heads, and fluttered their fans idly. Clive recalled all he had read of the old time, and imagined himself back among the careless dons and doñas who lived for little but pleasure, and had not a prescience of the complex civilization to enter their Arcadia and rout its very memory.

Miss Belmont was sitting on the corridor, leaning over the low balustrade, her hands lightly clasped. She had draped a white lace mantilla about her head, and looked more Spanish than Miss West. It seemed to Clive that she had a faculty of looking whatever she wished. Someone handed her a guitar. She leaned against the pillar and tuned it absently. Clive walked over and stood staring down on her, his hands in his pockets. She sang, in a rich contralto voice, a Spanish song, whose words he could not understand, but which was the most passionate he had ever heard. Her head was thrown back. She sang frankly to Clive; her face changed with every line.

When it was over Mrs. Cartright breathed a plaintive sigh. “That’s the handsomest song that Helena sings,” she announced.

Helena arose abruptly. “Come,” she said to Clive. “Let us go for a walk.”

He followed her out into the rose-garden. There were no lanterns here, and it looked wilder than by day. The air was very warm and sweet. Helena plucked one of the pink Castilian roses, and fastened back her mantilla with it, exposing a charming ear.

“You will never find any occupation so becoming to your hands,” said Clive dutifully. “Are your feet as perfect?”

“They are something to dream of,” said Miss Belmont flippantly.

They went out on to the terrace. The ocean pounded monotonously, tossing spray high into the air. Clive looked at his companion. Her head was thrown back, her lips were slightly apart. She looked like a woman who held a ball of fire between her finger-tips, and toyed with it caressingly.

“Shall we walk along the cliffs?”

She hesitated a moment. “No; let us go into the forest.”

As they entered they were greeted by a rush of cool perfumed air, the scent of wild lilac and lily, the strong bracing odor of redwood and pine. For a hundred yards or more there was little brush; the great trees stood far apart; but as they left the plateau and ascended a narrow trail, the young redwoods and ferns and lilacs grew thick. It was a hard pull and they said little. He helped her up the almost perpendicular ascent, over fallen trees and rocks, and huge roots springing across the path like pythons, and wondered if they were penetrating wilds hitherto sacred to the red man. Presently the low roar of water greeted them, and pushing their way through a small grove of ferns they came upon the high bank of a broad creek. Beyond and around rose the dark rigid forest, but into the opening the stars flung plentiful light. They revealed the clear rapid rush of water over huge stones and logs that looked like living things, great bunches of maiden-hair springing from dripping boulders, the dark mysterious perspective of the creek.

Clive did not wonder if he would lose his head. He had no intention of keeping it.

“Sit down,” she said, arranging herself on a fallen pine and leaning against a redwood. Clive made himself as comfortable as he could, and she gave him permission to light his pipe.

The lace mantilla, in spite of brush and briar, still clung to her head and shoulders. She looked very lovely and womanly.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked. “You told me the other night that you would never trust yourself alone with me. This is equivalent to saying that you want me to make love to you. I am quite ready.”

“How brutally abrupt you are. I don’t want you to make love to me. I meant to tell you before we started that I did not expect it. Most women do, I know, and it must be such a relief to a man to be let off occasionally.” She opened and closed her large fan, with a graceful motion of the wrist, and then turned and looked straight at him. “I have never walked alone with a man in this forest before,” she said; “neither at night nor in the daytime. It would have been spoiled for me if I had.”

He pulled at his pipe. “You are a very brave woman. If what you say is true, what is your reason for bringing me here?”

“I felt a desire to do so, and I always obey my whims.”

“You know that my vanity is touched to the quick. But will you tell me why you are doing all you can to turn my head, if you don’t want me to make love to you?”

“I do want you to.”

Clive laid down his pipe.

“No! It would be a pity to let it go out, and it might set my forest on fire. Do let me finish. Women are not like men. A man is fascinated by a woman, and his one impulse is to get at her, and without loss of time; a woman may have the same impulse, but the dislike of being won too quickly, the desire to be sure of herself, above all, the wish to make the man more serious—all these things hold her back. So I don’t want you to make love to me to-night.”

“Which means that I may later?”

“I don’t know. That will depend on a good many things, one of which is whether I break my engagement with Schuyler Van Rhuys or not. I have some slight sense of honor.”

Clive colored hotly, and for the moment his ardor left him.

“Are you thinking of breaking it off?”

“Somewhat.”

“Is it true that you have been engaged fifteen times?”

“No; only eight. I have not yet discovered that there are fifteen interesting men in the world. I have only met nine.”

“You can flatter charmingly. But you say you have a sense of honor. What would you think of a man who deceived and jilted eight girls?”

“It is quite different with a man: women are so helpless. But when a woman has the reputation of being fickle, men know what to expect and propose with their eyes open. As a matter of fact, there is not an atom of the flirt in me; of coquetry, perhaps, for I have an irrepressible desire to please the man who has pleased me. To most men I am clay. I am doing all I can to fascinate you, and I shall continue to do so. I engaged myself to each of those eight men, honestly believing that I could love him—that I had found a companion. If I ever suffered the delusion that any one of them was my grande passion, the delusion was brief. Still, I gave up all idea of that some years ago. With each of those men I set myself honestly to work to get into sympathy, and to love him. Of course, you will understand that I had been more or less fascinated in each case. If a man has not magnetism for me, he might have every other quality given to mortal, and he would not attract my passing interest. Well, I could not find anything in any one of them to get hold of. One cannot love a clever mind, nor personal magnetism, nor a charming trick of manner, nor a kind heart; nor all. There is something else. One hates to be sentimental, but I suppose what those men have lacked is soul. Our men don’t seem to have time for that. It isn’t in the make-up of this country. Perhaps I haven’t it; but, at all events, I have a mental conception of it, and know that it is what I want.”

Clive puffed at his pipe for a moment.

“Are you talking pretty nonsense,” he asked, “or do you mean that?”

She turned her head away angrily.

“You are just like other men,” she said. “I have always been laughed or stared at by every man I have ever had the courage to broach the subject to. I was a fool to speak to you. It is two or three years since I let myself go like this.”

“I am not laughing. It is a very serious subject: the most serious in life. Girls and men and minor poets are always prating of it, but it is a good subject to keep quiet about until you understand it.”

“Don’t you think I understand it?”

“I think you will some time—yes, certainly. And you had better not marry Mr. Van Rhuys.”

“We are so new,” she said, leaning her elbows on her knees, her chin on her clasped hands. “It is as if the Almighty had flung a lot of brilliant particles together, which cohered symmetrically, and so quickly that the spiritual essence of the universe had no time to crawl inside. I stayed here last winter by myself trying to solve the problem of life, but I only addled my brain. I read and read and read, and thought and thought and thought, and in the end I felt sadder, but not wiser.”

“You can’t find it alone.”

She flushed, and he saw her eyes deepen.

“Then Schuyler Van Rhuys turned up, and I concluded that the best thing I could do was to go to New York and cut a dash in the smart set. And he is such a good fellow. He would fight superbly if there were a war; he would carry me safely out of a mob; he would always be kind, and in a manner companionable, for he is well up on affairs and current art and literature. I should like you to know him, for he is one of the best types of American you will ever meet. But—there is nothing else. And I am the stronger of the two. There is nothing as solitary as that.”

“Don’t marry him. You have no excuse—at your age and with your brain. Wait until you find the right man, even if it is a million years hence.”

“Oh, I’ve heard that——” She paused abruptly. “It isn’t like you to talk exaggerated nonsense. What did you mean by that last?”

“What I said.”

Her lip curled. “You don’t mean to say that you believe in a life after this—you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, do explain.”

“I don’t see why any belief of mine should interest you.”

“But it does. Tell me!”

“This is not my hour for lecturing. I’d much rather talk about you.”

“Oh, please don’t be unhumanly modest. Go on, you’ve roused my curiosity now, and I will know what you think.”

“Very well. Not being an unreasoning oyster, I believe in a future state. Not in the old-fashioned business, of course; but if a man has ever thought, and if he has had two or three generations of thinking ancestors behind him, he hardly believes that the scheme of creation is so purposeless as to turn people of progressive development loose on one unsatisfactory plane, only.” Clive spoke rapidly when he spoke at length, but paused abruptly every now and again, then resumed without impulsion. “What would be the object? What meaning? Everything else in the scheme of creation has a meaning, leads to something definite.... That is the significance of the lack of soul you search for in a race of men that have not yet had time to develop it—who are yet surely progressing toward such a consummation.... On this earth it takes generations of leisure, of art, of literature, of science, but mainly of individual thinking, to develop the subtle combination which puts man in relation with the divine principle in the universe. The pre-eminent development of England over all other nations is as indisputable as it is natural. What would be the object of such mental and spiritual development if this incomplete life of ours were all? We go on afterward, of course; ascending by slow and laborious evolution, from plane to plane.”

“And about the other thing? You believe that in one existence or another you meet the person who satisfies you in all things—your other part?”

“Perhaps two in a century meet in this existence. But most of us don’t—for centuries. Perhaps millions of centuries. Time is nothing. Your man may not be born here for several centuries—but you will find him some time. And when you do, you and he will become biunial—one in a sense that I believe passes all understanding here—except, perhaps, that of the one or two fortunate ones of each century or so.... The ancients had some such idea when they took Eve out of Adam.”

Helena rose and went to the edge of the creek. She stood there without speaking for ten minutes, kicking stones down into the water. Then she turned about.

“I have always looked upon that sort of thing as poetical rot,” she said; “beneath the consideration of anyone of the higher order of intelligence; probably because in this country, particularly in this State, everything occult, except religion, and sometimes that, is enveloped fifteen times over in vulgar and mercenary fraud. Even well written treatises on such subjects have never interested me—my American intolerance of anything which cannot be demonstrated, I suppose. But if a man like you believes, it makes one think.”

She came and sat close beside him on the log, her gown brushing his feet.