Transcriber's Notes:
Blank pages have been eliminated.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original.
A few typographical errors have been corrected.
The cover page was created by the transcriber and can be considered public domain.

BOOKS BY MISS DASKAM

WHOM THE GODS DESTROYED. $1.50.

THE IMP AND THE ANGEL. Illustrated. Net, $1.25.

FABLES FOR THE FAIR. Net, $1.00.

SISTER'S VOCATION AND OTHER GIRLS' STORIES. $1.25.

SMITH COLLEGE STORIES. $1.50.

WHOM THE GODS DESTROYED

BY

JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MDCCCCII

Copyright, 1902, by Charles Scribner's Sons

Published, October, 1902

TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK

To

K. W.

WITH THE FRIENDSHIP OF

MANY YEARS

J. D. D.

CONTENTS

WHOM THE GODS DESTROYED

I

The most high gods have decided that too much power over the hearts of men shall not be given to other men, for then the givers are forgotten in the gift and the smoke dies away from the altars. So they kill the men who play with souls. According to an ancient saying, before they destroy the victim they make him mad. There are, however, modifications of the process. Occasionally they make him drunk.

As I came down the board-walk that leads to the ocean, I saw by his staggering and swaying gait that the man was not only very drunk indeed, but that he gloried in the fact. This was shown by his brandishing arms and tossing head and the defiant air with which he regarded the cottages, before one of which he paused, leaned forward, placing one hand dramatically at his ear, and presently executed a wild dance of what was apparently derision. A timid woman would have retreated, but I am not timid, except when I am alone in the dark. Also I have what my brother-in-law calls Bohemian tastes. As nearly as I have been able to understand that phrase, it signifies a great interest in people, especially when they are at all odd. And this solitary, scornful dance of a ragged man before the Averys' cottage was odd in the extreme.

So I walked quietly along. When I reached the man I heard him muttering rapidly to himself, while he rested from the exertion of his late performance. What did dancing drunken men talk about? I walked slower. My brother-in-law says that a woman with any respect for the proprieties, to say nothing of the conventions, would never have done this. I have observed, however, that his feelings for the proprieties and the conventions, both of them, have on occasion suffered relapse, more especially at those times, prior to his marriage to my sister, when I, although supposed to be walking and riding and rowing and naphtha-launching with them, was frequently and inexcusably absent. So I gather that the proprieties and the conventions, like many other things, are relative.

As I passed the man he turned and looked crossly at me and spoke apparently to some one far away behind me, for he spoke with much force.

"Did you ever hear such damn foolishness?" he demanded. Now there was nothing to hear but Miss Kitty Avery playing Chopin's Fourth Ballade in F minor. She played it badly, of course, but nobody who knew Kitty Avery would have imagined that she would play otherwise than badly, and I have heard so much bad playing that I didn't notice it very much anyway. I thought it hardly probable that the man should know how unfortunate Kitty's method and selection were, so I passed directly by. Soon I heard his steps, and I knew he was coming after me. While he was yet some distance behind me he spoke again.

"I suppose that fool of a woman thinks she can play," he growled as he lurched against a lamp-post. Then I did the unpardonable deed. I turned and answered him.

"How do you know it's a woman?" I asked.

"Huh! Take me for a fool, don't you?" he said scornfully, scuffling along unsteadily. "I'm drunk as an owl, but I'm no fool! No. I know it's a woman from the pawin' 'round she does. Bah! Thinks she's playin'. Damn nonsense!" He sat down carefully on the sand by the side of the walk and wagged his head knowingly. I looked cautiously about. No one was in sight. I bent down and untied my shoe.

"Perhaps you could play it better?" I suggested sweetly. His jaw dropped with consternation.

"Play it better! Oh, Lord! She says can I play it better! Can-I-play-it-better? Well, I'll tell you one thing. If I couldn't play it better, d'ye know what I'd do? Do you?"

"No," said I, and tied my shoe. He didn't talk thickly as they do in books. On the contrary, he brought out each word with a particularly clear and final utterance.

"Well, I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go off and drown my sorrers in drink! Yes, I would. Although I'm so drunk that I wouldn't know when I was getting drunk on principle and when I was just plain drunk. Le' me tell you somethin': I'm drunk now!" He announced the fact with a gravity so colossal as to render laughter impossible. I untied the other shoe.

"Can you really play Chopin?" I said. He shook his fist at the Avery cottage.

"What I can't play of Chopin you never heard played! So that's the end o' that," he said. The folly of the situation suddenly became clear to me. I hastily tied my shoe and turned to go. He half rose from the sand, but sank helplessly back.

"Look here," he said confidentially, "I'm tired, and I need m' rest. I got to have rest. We all need rest. If you want to hear me play, you come to the old hulk of a barn that's got the piano in it. They call it the auditorium—au-di-to-ri-um." He pronounced the syllables as if to a child of three. "I'll be there. You come before supper. I'll be rested then. I'd like to shoot that woman—thinks she can play—damn nonsense—" I went on to the beach.

II

My brother-in-law came down on the afternoon boat, and of course he occupied our attention. His theories, though often absurd, are certainly well sustained. For instance, his ideas as to the connection between genius and insanity. He says—but I don't know why I speak of it. I defeated him utterly. At length I left the room. I hate a man who won't give up when he's beaten. I found the Nice Boy on the piazza, and we sat and talked. Really a charming fellow. And not so very young, either. He told fascinating tales of a shipwreck he'd experienced, where they sat on the bow as the boat went down and traded sandwiches.

"I gave Hunter two hams for a chicken, and it was a mean swindle!" he said reminiscently. "Speaking of sandwiches, I gave a chap ten cents to buy one this afternoon. Awfully seedy looking. Shabby clothes, stubbly beard, dirty hands, not half sober, and what do you think he said?" I remembered and blushed.

"I don't know," I murmured.

"He invited me to a recital—a piano recital! He said he was going to play at five-thirty in the auditorium, and I might come if I liked, though it was a private affair! How is that for nerve? He didn't look up to a hand organ."

My curiosity grew. And then, I had a great consciousness of not liking to disappoint even a drunken man. He evidently thought I was coming. I sketched lightly to the Nice Boy the affair of the morning. He was not shocked. He was amused. But my brother-in-law says that nothing I could say could shock the Nice Boy. In fact, he says, that if I mean nothing serious, I have no business to let the Nice Boy think—but that is a digression. It is one of my brother-in-law's prerogatives to be as impertinent as he cares to be.

"Shall we go over?" said I. "He is very probably an accompanist, stranded here, with his engagement ended. Perhaps he even plays well. These things happen in books." The Nice Boy shook his head.

"We'll go, by all means," he said, "but don't hope. He's not touched a piano this long time."

So we gathered some shawls and cushions and went over. The building was all dusty and smelled of pine. As we stumbled in, the sound of a piano met us. I own I was a bit excited. For one doubtful second I listened, ready to adore. Then I laughed nervously. We were not people in a book. It was Mendelssohn's "Spring Song," played rather slowly and with a mournful correctness. I could feel the player's fingers thudding down on the keys—one played it so when it was necessary to use the notes. The Nice Boy smiled consolingly.

"Too bad," he whispered. "Shall we go out now?"

"I should like to view the fragments of the idol!" I whispered back. "Let's end the illusion by seeing him!"

So we tip-toed up to the benches, and looked at the platform where the Steinway stood. Twirling on the stool sat a girl of seventeen or so, peering out into the gloom at us. It was very startling. Now I felt that the strain was yet to come. As I sank into one of the chairs a man rose slowly from a seat under the platform. It was the stranger. He nodded jauntily at us.

"Good thing you come," he announced cheerfully. "I don't know how long I could stand that girl. I guess she's related to the other," and he shambled up the steps. His unsteady walk, his shaking hand, as he clumsily pushed the chairs out of the way, told their disagreeable story. He walked straight up to the girl, and looking beyond her, said easily, "Excuse me, miss, but I'm goin' to play a little for some friends o' mine, an' I'll have to ask you to quit for a while." The girl looked undecidedly from him to us, but we had nothing to say.

"Come, come," he added impatiently, "you can bang all you want in a few minutes, with nobody to disturb you. Jus' now I'm goin' to do my own turn."

His assurance was so perfect, his intention to command obedience so evident, that the child got up and went slowly down the stairs, more curious than angry. The man swept the music from the rack, and lifted the top of the piano to its full height. Then with an impatient twitch he spun the music-stool a few inches lower, and pulled it out. The Nice Boy leaned over to me.

"The preparations are imposing, anyhow," he whispered. But I did not laugh. I felt nervous. To be disappointed again would be too cruel! I watched the soiled, untidy figure collapse onto the stool. Then I shut my eyes, to hear without prejudice of sight the opening triple-octave scale of the professional pianist. For with such assurance as he showed he should at least be able to play the scales.

The hall seemed so large and dim, I was so alone—I was glad of the Nice Boy. Suppose it should all be a horrible plot, and the tramp should rush down with a revolver? Suppose—and then I stopped thinking. For from far-away somewhere came the softest, sweetest song. A woman was singing. Nearer and nearer she came, over the hills, in the lovely early morning; louder and louder she sang—and it was the "Spring Song"! Now she was with us—young, clear-eyed, happy, bursting into delicious flights of laughter between the bars. Her eyes, I know, were grey. She did not run or leap—she came steadily on, with a swift, strong, swaying, lilting motion. She was all odorous of the morning, all vocal with the spring. Her voice laughed even while she sang, and the perfect, smooth succession of the separate sounds was unlike any effect I have ever heard. Now she passed—she was gone by. Softer, fainter, ah, she was gone! No, she turned her head, tossed us flowers, and sang again, turned, and singing, left us. One moment of soft echo—and then it was still.

I breathed—for the first time since I heard her, I thought. I opened my eyes. It was all black before them, they had been closed so long. I did not dare look at the Nice Boy. There was absolutely nothing for him to say, but I was afraid he would try to say it. He was staring at the platform. His mouth was open, his eyes very large. Without turning his face towards me, he said solemnly, "And I gave him ten cents for a sandwich! Ten cents for a sandwich!"

Suddenly I heard sobs—heavy, awkward sobs. I looked behind me. The girl had dropped forward on to the chair in front and was hysterically chattering into her handkerchief.

"I played that! I played that!" she wailed. "Oh, he heard me! he did, he did!" I felt horribly ashamed for her. How she must feel! A child can suffer so.

But the man at the piano gave a little chuckle of satisfaction, and ran his hands up and down the keys in a delirium of scales and arpeggios. Then he hit heavily a deep, low note. It was like a great, bass trumpet. A crashing chord: and then the love-song of Germany and musicians caught me up to heaven, or wherever people go who love that tune—perhaps it is to Germany—and I heard a great, magnificent man singing in a great, magnificent baritone, the song that won Clara Schumann's heart.

Schubert sang sweetly, wonderfully. I cry like a baby when one sings the Serenade even fairly well. And dear Franz Abt has made most loving melodies. But they were musicians singing, this was a man. "Du meine Liebe, du!"—that was no piano; it was a voice. And yet no human voice could be at once so limpid and so rich, so thrilling and so clear. And now it crashed out in chords—heavy, broken harmony. All the rapture of possession, the very absolute of human joy were there—but these are words, and that was love and music.

I don't in the least know how long it lasted. There was no time for me. The god at the piano repeated it again and again, I think, as it is never repeated in the singing, and always should be. I know that the tears rolled over my cheeks and dropped into my lap. I have a vague remembrance of the Nice Boy's enthusiastically and brokenly begging me to marry him to-night and go to Venice with him to-morrow, and my ecstatically consenting to that or anything else. I am sure he held my hand during that period, for the rings cut in so the next day. And I think—indeed I am quite certain—but why consider one's self responsible for such things? At any rate, it has never happened since.

And when it was over we went up hand in hand, and the Nice Boy said, "What—what is your—your name?" And I stared at him, expecting to see his dirty clothes drop off, and his trailing clouds of glory wrap him 'round before he vanished from our eyes. His heavy eyebrows bent together. His knees shook the piano-stool. He was labouring under an intense excitement. But I think he was pleased at our faces.

"What—what the devil does it matter to you what I'm named?" he said roughly.

"Oh, it doesn't matter at all, not at all," I said meekly; "only we wanted, we wanted——" And then, like that chit of seventeen, I cried, too. I am such a fool about music.

"Now you know what I mean when I say I can play," he growled savagely. He seemed really terribly excited, even angry. "I'll play one thing more. Then you go home. When I think o' what I might have done, great God, I can't die till I've shown 'em! Can I? Can I die? You hear me! You see"—his face was livid. His eyes gleamed like coals. I ought to have been afraid, but I wasn't.

"You shall show them!" I gasped. "You shall! Will you play for the hotel? We can fill this place for you. We can——"

"Oh, you shut up!" he snarled. "You! I've played to thousands, I have. You don't know anything about it. It's this devil's drink that's killin' me. It ruined me in Vienna. It spoiled the whole thing in Paris. It's goin' to kill me." His voice rose to a shriek. He dropped from the stool, and from his pocket fell a bottle. The Nice Boy gave a queer little sob.

"Oh, it's dreadful, dreadful!" he whispered to himself. He jumped up on the platform and seized the man's shoulder.

"Come, come," he said. "We'll help you. Come, be a man! You stay here with us, and we'll take care of you. Such a gift as yours shall not go for nothing. Come over to the hotel, and I'll get you a bed."

The man staggered up. He was much older than I had thought. There were deep, disagreeable lines in his face. There was a coarseness, too—but, oh, that "Spring Song"! Now, how can that be? My brother-in-law says—but this is not his story. The man got onto the seat somehow.

"You're a decent fellow," he said. "When I've done playing, you go out. Right straight out. D'ye hear? I'll come see you to-morrow morning."

Then he shut his eyes and felt for the keys, and played the Chopin Berceuse. And it is an actual fact that I wanted to die then. Not suddenly—but just to be rocked into rest, rocked into rest, and not wake up any more. It was the purest, sweetest, most inexpressibly touching thing I ever heard. I felt so young—so trustful, somehow. I knew that no harm would come. And then it sang itself to sleep, and we went away and left him, with his head resting on his hands that still pressed the keys. And we never spoke. I think the girl came out with us, but I'm not sure.

At the door the Nice Boy gulped, and said in a queer, shaky voice, "I'm not nearly good enough to have sat by you—I know that—you seem so far away—but I want to tell you." And I said that he was much better than I—that none of us were good—that I thought it would be all right in the end—that after all it was being managed better than we could arrange it—that perhaps heaven was more like what we used to think than what we think now. There is no knowing what we might have said if my brother-in-law had not come down to see where I was. And then I went to sleep like a baby.

III

I should like to end the story here. I should like to leave him bowed over the keys and remember only the most exquisite experience of my life in connection with him. But there is the rest of the tale, and it really needs telling.

I didn't see the end. The Nice Boy and my brother-in-law saw that, and I only know as much as they will tell me. The Nice Boy went over and got him the next morning. He said his name was Decker. He said that he had spent the night in the solemnest watching and praying, and he had held the bottle in his hands and never touched a drop of it. They gave him a bath and clothes, and fed him steadily for two days. He grew fat before our eyes. He looked nicer, more respectable, but more commonplace. He refused to touch the piano, because it gave him such a craving for drink.

He hated to talk about himself. But he let slip occasional remarks about London and Paris and Vienna and Leipsic that took away one's breath. He must have known strange people. Once he told me a little story about Clara Schumann that implied more than acquaintance, and he quoted Liszt constantly. He was an American beyond a doubt, we thought. He spoke vaguely of a secret that even Liszt had missed. I guessed it was connected with that wonderful singing quality that made the instrument a human voice under his fingers. When I asked him about it he laughed.

"You wait," he said confidently. "You just wait. I'll show you people something to make you open your eyes. I know. You're a good audience, you and your friend. You make a good air to play in. You just wait."

And I have waited. But never again shall I hear that lovely girl sing across the hills. Never again will my heart grow big, and ache and melt, and slip away to that song, "Du, Meine Leibe, Du." Oh, it was not of this earth, that music. Perhaps when I die I shall hear the Berceuse echo—I think it may be so.

Well, we got them all together. There must have been a thousand. They came from across the bay and all along the inlet. The piano was tuned, and the people were seated, and I was just where we were that night, and Mr. Decker was walking behind the little curtain in a new dress-suit. He had shaken hands with me just before. His hands were cold as ice and they trembled in mine. I congratulated him on the presence of Herr H—— from Leipsic, who had been miraculously discovered just across the bay; and Mr. J—— of New York, who could place him musically in the most desirable fashion; and asked him not to forget me, his first audience, and his most sincere friend and admirer.

In his eyes I could swear I saw fright. Not nervousness, not stage fear, but sheer, appalling terror. It could not be, I thought, and my brother-in-law told me to go down. Then he stepped to the front and told them all how pleased, how proud and delighted he was to be the means of introducing to them one whom he confidently trusted would leave this stage to-night one of the recognised pianists of the world. He described briefly the man's extraordinary effect upon two of his friends, who were not, he was good enough to say, likely to be mistaken in their musical estimates. He hoped that they all appreciated their good fortune in being the first people in this part of the world to hear Mr. Decker, and he took great pleasure in introducing him.

At this point Mr. Decker should have come forward. As he did not, my brother-in-law stepped back to get him. He found the Nice Boy alone in the room behind the stage, looking distinctly nervous. He explained that Mr. Decker had gone out for a moment to get the air—he was naturally a bit excited, and the room was close. My brother-in-law said nothing, and they waited a few minutes in strained silence. Finally they walked about the room looking at each other.

"Do you think it was quite wise to let him go?" said my brother-in-law, with compressed lips. The Nice Boy is horribly afraid of my brother-in-law.

"I'll—I'll go out and—and get him," he gasped, and dashed out into the dark, cursing himself for a fool. This was unfortunate, for in five seconds more Mr. Decker had reeled into the room. He explained in a very thick voice that he had never been able to play without the drink; that a little brandy set his fingers free, but that he had taken too much and must rest.

When the Nice Boy got back—he had brought two great pails of cold water and a fresh dress-shirt—it was too late. The man lay in a heap on the floor, and my brother-in-law stood, white and raging, talking to the heap. The man was drunkenly, horribly asleep. The Boy said that the worst five minutes he ever spent were those in which he poured water over the heap on the floor and shook it, my brother-in-law watching with an absolutely indescribable expression!

Then he got out on the platform and said something. Mr. Decker had met with an accident—would some one get a doctor?—was there perhaps a doctor in the audience?—they could realise his position—and more of that sort.

I knew well enough. When the doctor went in he found the Boy shaking the drunken brute on the floor, and they told the doctor all about it, and then went out by the other door. And they got a carriage and took Decker to the hotel.

I don't know—it seemed not wholly his fault. And his face showed that he had suffered. But the men would hear nothing of that. My brother-in-law says that for a woman who is really as hard as nails I have more apparent and æsthetic sympathy than any one he ever knew. And that may be so.

The people took it very nicely. They cleared the floor, and the younger ones danced and the older ones talked, and the manager sent over ices and coffee, and it turned out the affair of the season. And they were all very grateful to my brother-in-law and his friend, and quite forgot about the strange artist.

Whether he ever fully realised what the evening had been we never knew, because when they went in the next morning to see how he was, they found him dead. The doctor said that the excitement, the terror, the sudden cutting off of liquor, with the sudden wild drinking, were too much for an overstrained heart, and that he had probably died soon after he was carried to his room.

It seemed to me a little sad that while they were dancing, the man whom they had come to see——. But my brother-in-law says that I turn to the morbid view of things, and that that was the very blessing of the whole affair—that the crowd should have been so pleased, and that the horrible situation should have ended so smoothly. Because such a man is better dead, he says. And of course he is right. Life would be horrible to him, one can see.

But I have noticed that the Nice Boy and the girl who heard him play do not feel so sure that his death was best. For myself, I shall always feel that the world has lost its musical master. I have heard the music-makers of two generations, and not one of them has excelled his exquisite lightness and force of touch, and that wonderful singing stress—oh! I could cry to think of it! And when we go abroad next I shall find out the name of the man who played in Leipsic and Paris and Vienna—for he must have played there once; he said he had played to thousands—and see if any one there has heard of his secret, his wonderful singing through the keys.

For, though my brother-in-law says that the musical temperament in combination with a Bohemian tendency gives an emotional basis which is absolutely unsafe and therefore untrustworthy in its reports of actual facts, I know that the most glorious music of my life gained nothing from my imagination. For there were three of us who saw the spring come over the hills that night. Three of us heard the triumph-song of love incarnate, and thrilled to it. Three of us knew for once a peace that passed our understanding, and had the comfort of little children in their mother's arms.

And though it is not true, as my brother-in-law insinuates, that a man need only be able to play my soul away in order to be ranked by me among the angels, I shall continue to insist that somewhere, somehow, the beautiful sounds he made are accounted to him for just a little righteousness!

A WIND FLOWER

I

Willard's landlady smiled sympathetically across the narrow breakfast-table. "I guess you've got to stay in this mornin', Mr. Willard," she said. "It's a good deal too raw and cold for you to be out around, paintin', to-day."

Willard nodded. "Quite right, Mrs. Storrs," he returned, and he smiled at his landlady's daughter, who sat opposite. But she did not smile at him. She continued her silent meal, looking for the most part at her plate, and replying to direct questions only by monosyllables.

She must be nineteen or twenty, he decided, but her slender, curveless figure might have been that of a girl several years younger. Her face was absolutely without character to the casual glance—pale, slightly freckled, lighted by grey-green, half-closed eyes, and framed in light brown hair. Her lips were thin, and her rare smile did not disclose her teeth. Even her direct look, when he compelled it, was quite uninterested.

Her mother chattered with volubility of a woman left much alone, and glad of an appreciative listener, but the girl had not, of her own accord, spoken a word during his week's stay. He wondered as he thought of it why he had not noticed it before, and decided that her silence was not obtrusive, but only the outcome of her colourless personality—like the silence of the prim New England house itself.

He groaned inwardly. "What in time can I do? Nothing to read within five miles: my last cigar gone yesterday: this beastly weather driving me to melancholia! If she weren't such a stick—heavens! I never knew a girl could be so thin!"

The girl in question rose and began clearing the table. Her mother bustled out of the room, and left Willard in the old-fashioned arm-chair by the window, almost interested, as he wondered what the girl would do or say now. After five minutes of silence he realised the strange impression, or rather the lack of impression, she made on him. He was hardly conscious of a woman's presence. The intangible atmosphere of femininity that wraps around a tête-à-tête with even the most unattractive woman was wholly lacking. She seemed simply a more or less intelligent human being.

Given greatly to analysis, he grew interested. Why was this? She was not wanting intellectually, he was sure. Such remarks as she had made in answer to his own were not noticeable for stupidity or even stolidity of thought. He broke the silence.

"What do you do with yourself, these days?" he suggested. "I don't see you about at all. Are you reading, or walking about these fascinating Maine beaches?"

She did not even look up at him as she replied. "I don't know as I do very much of anything. I'm not very fond of reading—at least, not these books."

Remembering the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Book of Martyrs," "Mrs. Heman's Poems," and the "Adventures of Rev. James Hogan, Missionary to the Heathen of Africa," that adorned the marble-topped table in the parlour, he shuddered sympathetically.

"But I walk a good deal," she volunteered. "I've been all over that ledge you're painting."

"Isn't it beautiful?" he said. "It reminds me of a poem I read somewhere about the beauty of Appledore—that's on this coast somewhere, too, isn't it? You'd appreciate the poem, I'm sure—do you care for poetry?"

She piled the dishes on a tray, and carried it through the door before he had time to take it from her.

"No," she replied over her shoulder, "no, I don't care for it. It seems so—so smooth and shiny, somehow."

"Smooth? shiny?" he smiled as she came back, "I don't see."

Her high, rather indifferent voice fell in a slight embarrassment, as she explained: "Oh, I mean the rhymes and the verses—they're so even and like a clock ticking."

He took from his pocket a little red book. "Let me read you this," he said eagerly, "and see if you think it smooth and shiny. You must have heard and seen what this man tries to tell."

She stood awkwardly by the table, her scant, shapeless dress accentuating the straight lines of her slim figure, her hands clasped loosely before her, her face turned toward the window, which rattled now and then at the gusts of the rising wind. Willard held the little book easily between thumb and finger, and read in clear, pleasant tones, looking at her occasionally with interest:

"Fresh from his fastnesses, wholesome and spacious,

The north wind, the mad huntsman, halloos on his white hounds

Over the gray, roaring reaches and ridges,

The forest of Ocean, the chase of the world.

Hark to the peal of the pack in full cry,

As he thongs them before him, swarming voluminous,

Weltering, wide-wallowing, till in a ruining

Chaos of energy, hurled on their quarry,

They crash into foam!"

"There! is that smooth and shiny?" he demanded. She had moved nearer, to catch more certainly his least intonation.

Her hands twisted nervously, and to his surprise she smiled with unmistakable pleasure.

"Oh, no!" she half whispered, eyeing the book in his hand wistfully. "Oh, no! That makes me feel different. I—I love the wind."

"What's that?" Mrs. Storrs entered quickly. "Now, Sarah, you just stop that nonsense! Mr. Willard, has she been tellin' you any foolishness?"

"Miss Storrs had only told me that she liked the wind," he replied, hoping that the woman would go, and let him develop at leisure what promised to be a most interesting situation. She had really very pretty, even teeth, and when she smiled her lips curved pleasantly.

But Mrs. Storrs was not to be evaded. She had evidently a grievance to set forth, and looking reproachfully at her daughter, continued:

"Ever since Sarah was five or six years old she's had that crazy likin' for the wind. 'Tain't natural, I say, and when the gales that we hev up here strike us, the least anybody can do 's to stay in the house and thank Providence they've got a house to stay in! Why, Mr. Willard, you'd never think it to look at her, for she's a real quiet girl—too quiet, seems to me, sometimes, when I'm just put to it for somebody to be social with—but in thet big gale of eighty-eight she was out all night in it, and me and her father—that was before Mr. Storrs died—nearly crazy with fearin' she was lost for good. And when she was six years old, she got up from her crib and went out on the beach in her little nightgown, and nothin' else, and it's a miracle she didn't die of pneumonia, if not of bein' blown to death."

Mrs. Storrs stopped for breath, and Willard glanced at the girl, wondering if she would appear disconcerted or angry at such unlooked-for revelation of her eccentricity; but her face had settled into its usual impassive lines, and she dusted the chairs serenely, turning now and then to look fixedly through the window at the swaying elm whose boughs leaned to the ground under the still rising wind.

Her mother was evidently relieving the strain of an enforced silence, and sitting stiffly in her chair, as one not accustomed to the luxury of idle conversation, she continued:

"And even now, when she's old enough to know better, you'd think, she acts possessed. Any wind-storm 'll set her off, but when the spring gales come, she'll just roam 'round the house, back and forth, staring out of doors, and me as nervous as a cat all the while. Just because I won't let her go out she acts like a child. Why, last year I had to go out and drag her in by main force; I was nearly blown off the cliff gettin' her home. And she was singin', calm, as if she was in her bed like any decent person! It's the most unnatural thing I ever heard of! Now, Sarah Storrs," as the girl was slipping from the room, "you remember you promised me not to go out this year after supper, if the wind was high. You mind, now! It's comin' up an awful blow."

The girl turned abruptly. "I never promised you that, mother," she said quickly. "I said I wouldn't if I could help it, and if I can't help it, I can't, and that's all there is to it." The door closed behind her, and shortly afterwards Willard left Mrs. Storrs in possession of the room.

The day affected him strangely. The steady low moan of the wind was by this time very noticeable. It was not cold, only clear and rather keen, and the scurrying grey clouds looked chillier than one found the air on going out. The boom of the surf carried a sinister threat with it, and the birds drove helplessly with the wind-current, as if escaping some dreaded thing behind them.

Indoors, the state of affairs was not much better: Mrs. Storrs looked injured; her sister, a lady of uncertain years and temper, talked of sudden deaths, and the probability of premature burial, pointed by the relation of actual occurrences of that nature; Sarah was not to be seen. At last he could bear idleness no longer, and opening the dusty melodeon, tried to drown the dreary minor music of the wind by some cheerful selection from the hymn-book Mrs. Storrs brought him, having a vague idea that secular music was out of keeping with the character of that instrument. After a few moments' aimless fingering the keys he found himself pedalling a laborious accompaniment to the "Dead March" from Saul, and closed the wheezy little organ in despair.

The long day dragged somehow by, and at supper Sarah appeared, if anything, whiter and more uninteresting than ever, only to retire immediately when the meal was over.

"I might's well tell you, Mr. Willard, that you c'n give up all hope of paintin' any more this week," announced Mrs. Storrs, as the door closed behind her daughter. "This wind's good for a week, I guess. I'm sorry to have you go, but I shouldn't feel honest not to tell you." Mentally vowing to leave the next morning, Willard thanked her, and explained that the study was far enough advanced to be completed at his studio in the city, and that he had intended leaving very shortly.

II

A few moments later, as he stood at the window in the parlour, looking at the waving elm-boughs and lazily wondering how the moon could be so bright when there were so many clouds, the soft swish of a woman's skirt sounded close to his ear. As he turned, the frightened "Oh!" and the little gasp of surprised femininity revealed Sarah, standing near the table in the centre of the room. Even at that distance and in the dark he was aware of a difference in her, a subtle element of personality not present before.

"Did I frighten you?" he asked, coming nearer.

"No, not very much. Only I thought nobody would be here. I—I—wanted some place to breathe in; it seems so tight and close in the house." As she spoke, a violent blast of wind drove the shutters against the side of the house and rubbed together the branches of the elm until they creaked dismally. She pressed her face against the glass and stared out into the dark.

"Don't you love it?" she questioned, almost eagerly.

Willard shook his head dubiously. "Don't know. Looks pretty cool. If it gets much higher, I shouldn't care to walk far."

She took her old place by the table again, but soon left it, and wandered restlessly about the room. As she passed him he was conscious of a distinct physical impression—a kind of electric presence. She seemed to gather and hold about her all the faint light of the cold room, and the sweep of her skirt against his foot seemed to draw him toward her. Suddenly she stopped her irregular march.

"Hear it sing!" she whispered.

The now distinct voice of the wind grew to a long, minor wail, that rose and fell with rhythmic regularity. As she paused with uplifted finger near him, Willard felt with amazement a compelling force, a personality more intense, for the time, than his own. Then, as the blast, with a shriek that echoed for a moment with startling distinctness from every side, dashed the elm branches against the house itself, she turned abruptly and left the room. "Stay here!" she said shortly, and, resisting the impulse to follow her, he obeyed. In a few moments she returned with a heavy shawl wrapped over her head and shoulders.

"Hold the window open for me," she said, "I'm going out." He attempted remonstrance, but she waved him impatiently away. "I can't get out of the door—mother's locked it and taken the key, but you can hold up the window while I get out. Oh, come yourself, if you like! But nothing can happen to me."

Mechanically he held open the window as she slipped out, and, dragging his overcoat after him, scrambled through himself. She was waiting for him at the corner of the house, and as he stumbled in the unfamiliar shadows, held out her hand.

"Here, take hold of my hand," she commanded. Her cool, slim grasp was strangely pleasant, as she hurried along with a smooth, gliding motion, wholly unlike her indifferent gait of the day before.

Once out of the shelter of the house, the storm struck them with full force, and Willard realised that he was well-nigh strangled in the clutches of a genuine Maine gale.

"What folly!" he gasped, crowding his hat over his eyes and struggling to gain his wonted consciousness of superiority. "Come back instantly, Miss Storrs! Your mother——"

"Come! come!" she interrupted, pulling him along.

He stared at her in amazement. Her eyes were wide open and almost black with excitement. Her face gleamed like ivory in the cold light. Her lips were parted and curved in a happy smile. Her slender body swayed easily with the wind that nearly bent Willard double. She seemed unreal—a phantom of the storm, a veritable wind-spirit. Her loosened hair flew across his face, and its touch completed the strange thrill that her hand-clasp brought. He followed unresistingly.

"Aren't—you—afraid—of—the—woods?" he gasped, the gusts tearing the words from his lips, as he saw that she was making for the thick growth of trees that bordered the cliff. Her high, light laughter almost frightened him, so weird and unhuman it came to him on the wind.

"Why should I be afraid? The woods are so beautiful in a storm! They bow and nod and throw their branches about—oh, they're best of all, then!"

A sweeping blast nearly threw him down, and he instinctively dropped her hand, since there was no possible feeling of protection for her, her footing was so sure, her balance so perfect. As he righted himself and staggered to the shelter of the tree under which she was standing, he stopped, lost in wonder and admiration. She had impatiently thrown off the shawl and stood in a gleam of moonlight under the tree. Her long, straight hair flew out in two fluttering wisps at either side; her straight, fine brows, her dark, long lashes, her slender, curved mouth were painted against her pale face in clear relief. Her eyes were widely open, the pupils dark and gleaming. It seemed to his excited glance that rays of light streamed from them to him. "Heavens! she's a beauty! If only I could catch that pose!" he said under his breath.

"Come!" she called to him again, "we're wasting time! I want to get to the cliff!" He pressed on to her, but she slipped around the tree and eluded him, keeping a little in advance as he panted on, fighting with all the force of a fairly powerful man against the gale that seemed to offer her no resistance. It occurred to him, as he watched with a greedy artist's eye the almost unnatural ease and lightness of her walk, that she caught intuitively the turns of the wind, guiding along currents and channels unknown to him, for she seemed with it always, never against it. Once she threw out both her arms in an abandon of delight, and actually leaned on the gust that tossed him against a tree, baffled and wearied with his efforts to keep pace with her, and confusedly wondering if he would wake soon from this improbable dream.

Speech was impossible. The whistling of the wind alone was deafening, and his voice was blown in twenty directions when he attempted to call her. Small twigs lashed his face, slippery boughs glided from his grasp, and the trees fled by in a thick-grown crowd to his dazed eyes. To his right, a birch suddenly fell with a snapping crash. He leaped to one side, only to feel about his face a blinding storm of pattering acorns from the great oak that with a rending sigh and swish tottered through the air at his left.

"Good God!" he cried in terror, as he saw her standing apparently in its track. A veer in the gale altered the direction of the great trunk, that sank to the ground across her path. As it fell, with an indescribable, swaying bound she leaped from the ground, and before it quite touched the earth she rested lightly upon it. She seemed absolutely unreal—a dryad of the windy wood. All fear for her left him. As she stood poised on the still trembling trunk, a quick gust blew out her skirt to a bubble on one side, and drove it close to her slender body on the other, while her loose hair streamed like a banner along the wind. She curved her figure towards him and made a cup of one hand, laying it beside her opened lips. What she said he did not hear. He was rapt in delighted wonder at the consummate grace of her attitude, the perfect poise of her body. She was a figure in a Greek frieze—a bas-relief—a breathing statue.

Unable to make him hear, she turned slightly and pointed ahead. He realised the effect of the Wingless Victory in its unbroken beauty. She was not a woman, but an incarnate art, a miracle of changing line and curve, a ceaseless inspiration.

Suddenly he heard the pound and boom of the surf. In an ecstasy of impatience she hurried back, seized his hand, and fairly dragged him on. The crash of the waves and the wind together took from him all power of connected thought. He clung to her hand like a child, and when she threw herself down on her face to breathe, he grasped her dress and panted in her ear: "We—can't—get—much—farther—unless—you—can—walk—the—Atlantic!" She smiled happily back at him, and the thickness of her hair, blown by the wind from the ocean about his face, brought him a strange, unspeakable content.

"Shall we ever go back?" he whispered, half to himself. "Or will you float down the cliff and wake me by your going?"

Her wide, dark eyes answered him silently. "It is like a dream, though," her high, sweet voice added. And then he realised that she had hardly spoken since they left the house. The house? As in a dream he tried vaguely to connect this Undine of the wood with the girl whose body she had stolen for this night's pranks. As in a dream he rose and followed her back, through the howling, sweeping wind. Her cold, slim hand held his; her light, shrill voice sang little snatches of songs—hymns, he remembered afterward. As the moonlight fell on her, he wondered dreamily why he had thought her too thin. And all the while he fought, half-unconsciously, the resistless gale, that spared him only when he yielded utterly.

The house gleamed white and square before them. Silently he raised the window for her. He had no thought of lifting her in. That she should slip lightly through was of course. The house was still lighted, and he heard the creaking of her mother's rocking-chair in the bedroom over his head. He looked at his watch. "Does her mother rock all night?" he thought dully, for it was nearly twelve. She read his question from the perplexed glance he threw at her.

"She's sitting up to watch the door so that I sha'n't get out," she whispered quietly, without a smile. "Good-bye." And he stood alone in the room.

Until late the next morning he wandered in strange, wearied, yet fascinating dreams with her. Vague sounds, as of high-pitched reproaches and quiet sobbing, mingled with his morning dreams, and when, with aching head and thoroughly bewildered brain, he went to his late breakfast, Mrs. Storrs served him; only as he left for the train, possessed by a longing for the great, busy city of his daily work, did he see her daughter, walking listlessly about the house. Her freckled face was paler than ever, her half-closed eyes reddened, and her slight, awkward bow in recognition of his puzzled salute might have been directed to some one behind him. Only his aching head and wearied feet assured him that the strangest night of his life had been no dream.

III

That his studio should seem bare and uninteresting as he threw open the door, and tried to kindle a fire in the dusty stove, did not surprise him. That the sketches and studies in colour should look tame and flat to the eye that had been fed for two weeks with Maine surf, angry clouds, and swaying branches, was perhaps only natural. But as the days went on and he failed to get in train for work a puzzled wonder slowly grew in him. Why was it that the picture dragged so? He remembered perfectly the look of the beach, the feel of the cold, hungry water, the heavy, grey clouds, the primitive, forbidding austerity that a while ago he had been so confidently eager to put on the canvas. Why was it that he sat for hours together helplessly staring at it? His friends supposed him wrapped in his subject, working under a high pressure, and considerately left him alone; they would have marvelled greatly had they seen him glowering moodily at the merest study of the subject he had described so vividly to them, smoking countless packages of cigarettes, hardly lifting his hand from his chair-arm.

Once he threw down a handful of brushes and started out for a tramp. It occurred to him that the city sights and smells, the endless hum and roar, the rapid pace of the crowded streets would tone him up and set his thoughts in a new line; he was tired of the whistling gales and tossing trunks and booming surf that haunted his nights and confused his days. A block away from the studio a flower-woman met him with a tray of daffodils and late crocuses. A sudden puff of wind blew out her scant, thin skirt; a tree in the centre of the park they were crossing bent to it, the branches creaked faintly. The fresh, earthy odour of the flowers moved him strangely. He bought a bunch, turned, and went back to the studio, to sit for an hour gazing sightlessly ahead of him.

Suddenly he started up and approached the sketch.

"It wants wind," he muttered, half unconsciously, and fell to work. An hour passed, two, three—he still painted rapidly. Just as the light was fading a thunderous knock at the door ushered in the two men he knew best. He nodded vaguely, and they crossed the room in silence and looked at the picture. For a few moments no one spoke. Presently Willard took a brush from his mouth and faced them.

"Well?" he said.

The older man shook his head. "Queer sky!" he answered briefly.

The younger looked questioningly at Willard. "You'll have to get a gait on you if you hope to beat Morris with that," he said. "What's up, Willard? Don't you want that prize?"

"Of course I do." His voice sounded dull, even to himself. "You aren't any too sympathetic, you fellows——" he tried to feel injured.

The older man came nearer. "What's that white thing there? Good Lord, Will, you're not going to try a figure——"

Willard brushed rapidly over the shadowy outline. "No—that was just a sketch. The whole thing's just a sort of——"

"The whole thing's just a bluff!" interrupted the younger man, decidedly. "It's not what you told us about at all—and it's not good, anyway. It looks as if a tornado had struck it! You said it was to be late afternoon—it's nearer midnight, as far as I can see! What's that tree lying around for?"

His tone was abusive, but a genuine concern and surprise was underneath it. He looked furtively at his older friend behind Willard's back. The other shook his head expressively.

Willard bit his lip. "I only wanted to try—it won't necessarily stay that way," he explained. He wished he cared more for what they said. He wished they did not bore him so unspeakably. More than all, he wished they would go.

The younger one whistled softly. "Pretty late in the day to be making up your mind, I should say," he remarked. "When's it going to dry in? Morris has been working like a horse on his for six weeks. He's coming on, too—splendid colour!"

Willard lit a cigarette. "Damn Morris!" he said casually. The older man drew on his glove and turned to go.

"Oh, certainly!" he replied cheerfully. "By all means! No, we can't stay—we only dropped in. We just thought we'd see how you were getting along. If I were you, Will, I'd make up my mind about that intoxicated tree and set it up straight—good-bye!"

They went out cheerfully enough, but he knew they were disappointed and hurt—they had expected so much from that picture. And he wished he cared more. He looked at it critically. Of course it was bad, but how could they tell what he had been doing? It was the plan of months changed utterly in three hours. The result was ridiculous, but he needed it no longer—he knew what he wanted now, what he had been fighting against all these days. He would paint it if he could—and till he could. The insistent artist-passion to express even bunglingly something of the unendurable beauty of that strange night was on him, and before the echo of his guests' departure had died away he was working as he had never worked before, the old picture lying unnoticed in the corner where he had thrown it.

He needed no models, he did not use his studies. Was it not printed on his brain, was it not etched into his heart, that weird vision of the storm, with the floating fairy creature that hardly touched the earth? Was there a lovely curve in all her melting postures, which slipped like water circles into new shapes, that he did not know? That haunting, elf-like look, that ineffably exquisite abandon, had he not studied it greedily then in the wood, and later, in his restless dreams? The trees were sentient, the bushes put out clasping fingers to detain him, the wind shrieked out its angry soul at him; and she, the white wonder with her floating wisps of stinging hair, had joined with them to mock at him, the startled witness of that mad revel of all the elements. He knew all this—he was drunk with it: could he paint it? Or would people see only a strange-eyed girl dancing in a wood?

He did not know how many days he had been at work on it; he ate what the cleaning-woman brought him; his face was bristled with a stubby growth; the cigarette boxes strewed the floor. Men appeared at the door, and he urged them peevishly to go away; people brought messages, and he said he was not in town, and returned the notes unread. In the morning he smiled and breathed hard and patted the easel; at night he bit his nails and cursed himself for a colour-blind fool.

There was a white birch, strained and bent in the wind, that troubled him still, and as he was giving it the last touches, in the cold, strong afternoon light, the door burst open.

"Look here, the thing closes at six! Are you crazy?" they called to him, exasperatedly. "Aren't you going to send it?"

"That's all right, that's all right," he muttered vaguely, "shut up, can't you?"

They stood over behind him, and there was a stillness in the room. He laid down his palette carefully and turned to them, a worried look on his drawn, bristled face.

"That's meant to be the ocean beyond the cliff there," he said, an almost childlike fear in his eyes, "did—did you know it?"

The older man drew in a long breath.

"Lord, yes! I hear it!" he returned, "do you think we're deaf?"

The younger one squinted at various distances, muttering to himself.

"Dryad? Undine? No, she frightens you, but she's sweet! George! He's painted the wind! He's actually drawn a wind! My, but it's stunning! My!"

Willard sank into a chair. He was flushed and his legs shook. He patted the terrier unsteadily and talked to her. "Well, then! Well, then! So she was, iss, so she was!"

The older man snapped his watch. "Five-thirty," he said. "Put something 'round it, and whistle a cab—we'll have to hurry!"

Willard fingered some dead crocuses on the stand beside him. "Look out, you fool, it's wet!" he growled. The older man patted his shoulder.

"All right, boy, all right!" he said soothingly. "It's all done, now—never mind!"

They shouldered it out of the door while he pulled the terrier's ears.

"Where you going?" they called.

"Turkish bath. Restaurant. Vaudeville," he answered, and they nodded.

"All alone?"

"Yes, thanks. Drop in to-morrow!"

"——And drive like thunder!" he heard them through the open window.

A week later he was walking up Broadway between them, sniffing the fresh, sweet air comfortably, the terrier at his heels. At intervals they read him bits from the enthusiastic comments of the critics.

"Mr. Willard, whose 'Windflower' distanced all competitors and won the Minot prize by a unanimous verdict of the judges, has displayed, aside from his thorough master of technic, a breadth of atmosphere, an imaginative range rarely if ever equalled by an American. Nothing but the work itself, so manifestly idealistic in subject and treatment, could convince us that it is not a study from life, so keen, so haunting is the impression produced by the remarkable figure of the Spirit of the Gale, who seems to sink before our eyes on the falling trunk, literally riding the storm. In direct contrast to this abandon of the figure is the admirable reticence of the background which is keyed so low——"

Willard stopped abruptly before the window of a large art establishment where a photograph of the picture was already displayed. "I want one of those," he said, "and I'm going out into the country for a bit before I sail, I think."

"Oh, back there?" they asked, comprehensively.

"Yes, back there!"

IV

As the train rushed along he explained to himself why he was going—why he had not merely sent the photograph. He wanted to see her, to brush away the cloud of illusion that the weeks had spun around her. He wanted to realise definitely the difference between the pale, silent, unformed New England girl and the fascinating personality of his picture. Ever since he left her they had grown confused, these two that his common sense told him were so different, and he was beginning to dread the unavowed hope that for him, at least, they might be some day one. The same passionate power that had thrown mystery and beauty into colour on the canvas wove sweet, wild dreams around what he contemptuously told himself was little better than a lay figure, but he yielded to it now as he had then.

When he told himself that he was going purposely to hear her talk, to see her flat, unlovely figure, to appreciate her utter lack of charm, of all vitality, he realised that it was a cruel errand. But when he felt the sharp thrill that he suffered even in anticipation as his quick imagination pictured the dream-cloud dropping off from her, actually before his eyes, he believed the journey more than ever a necessary one.

As he walked up the little country street his heart beat fast; the greening lawns, the fresh, faint odours, the ageless, unnamable appeal of the spring stirred his blood and thrilled him inexpressibly. He was yet in the first flush of his success; his whole nature was relaxed and sensitive to every joy; he let himself drift on the sweet confused expectancy, the delicious folly, the hope that he was to find his dream, his inspiration, his spirit of the wind and wood.

A child passed him with a great bunch of daffodils and stopped to watch him long after he had passed, wondering at the silver in her hand.

At the familiar gate a tall, thin woman's figure stopped his heart a second, and as a fitful gust blew out her apron and tossed her shawl over her head, he felt his breath come more quickly.

"Good heavens!" he muttered, "what folly! Am I never to see a woman's skirt blown without——"

She put the shawl back as he neared her—it was Mrs. Storrs's sister. She met his outstretched hand with a blank stare. Suddenly her face twitched convulsively.

"O Mr. Willard! O Mr. Willard!" she cried, and burst into tears.

The wind blew sharper, the elm tree near the window creaked, a dull pain grew in him.

"What is it? What's the matter?" he said brusquely.

"I suppose you ain't heard—you wouldn't be apt to!" she sobbed, and pushing back the locks the wind drove into her reddened eyes, she broke into incoherent sentences: he heard her as one in a dream.

"And she would go—'twas the twenty-fifth—there was dozens o' trees blown down—'twas just before dark—her mother, she ran out after her as soon's she knew—she called, but she didn't hear—she saw her on the edge o' the rocks, an' she almost got up to her an' screamed, an' it scared her, we think—she turned 'round quick, an' she went right off the cliff an' her mother saw her go—'twas awful!"

Willard's eyes went beyond her to the woods; the woman's voice, with its high, flat intonation, brought the past so vividly before him that he was unconscious of the actual scene—he lived through the quick, terrible drama with the intensity of a witness of it.

"No, they haven't found her yet—the surf's too high. We always had a feeling she wouldn't live—she wasn't like other girls——"

Half unconsciously he unwrapped the photograph.

"I—I brought this," he said dully. The woman blanched and clutched the gate-post.

"Oh, take it away! Take it away!" she gasped, a real terror in her eyes. "O Mr. Willard, how could you—it's awful! I—I wouldn't have her mother see it for all the world!" Her sobs grew uncontrollable.

He bent it slowly across and thrust it in his pocket.

"No, no," he said soothingly, "of course not, of course not. I only wanted to tell—you all—that it took the prize I told you about and—and was a good thing for me. I hoped—I hoped——"

He saw that she was trembling in the sudden cold wind, and held out his hand.

"This has been a great shock to me," he said quietly, his eyes still on the woods. "Please tell Mrs. Storrs how I sympathise—how startled I was. I am going abroad in a few days. I will send you my address, and if there is ever anything I can do, you will gratify me more than you can know by letting me help you in any way. Give her these," and he thrust out the great bunch of daffodils to her. She took them, still crying softly, and turned towards the house.

Later he found himself in the woods near the great oak that lay just as it had fallen that night. Beneath all the confused tumult of his thoughts one clear truth rang like a bell, one bitter-sweet certainty that caught him smiling strangely as he realised it! "She's won! She's won!"

There, while the branches swayed above him, and the surf, sinister and monotonous, pounded below, the vision that had made them both famous melted into the elusive reality, and he lived again with absolute abandonment that sweet mad night, he felt again her hair blown about his face as he lay on the windy cliff with the lady of his dreams.

For him her fate was not dreadful—she could not have died like other women. There was an intoxication in her sudden taking away: she was rapt out of life as she would have wished, he knew.

Slowly there grew upon him a frightened wonder if she had lived for this. Her actual life had been so empty, so unreal, so concentrated in those piercing stolen moments; she had ended it, once the heart of it had been caught and fixed to give to others faint thrills of all she had felt so utterly.

"She died for it!" he felt, with a kind of awe that was far from all personal vanity—the blameless egoism of the artist.

He left the little town hardly consciously. On his outward voyage, when the gale beat the vessel and the wind howled to the thundering waves, he came to know that though a love more real, a passion less elusive, might one day hold him, there would rest always in his heart and brain one ceaseless inspiration, one strange, sweet memory that nothing could efface.

WHEN PIPPA PASSED

Mr. Delafield, stepping comfortably forth from his club, had dined especially well, and was in a correspondingly good humour. As the brisk March wind swept across the corner just in front of him, he meanwhile settling his glossy hat more firmly on a fine, close-clipped grey head, a sudden kindly impulse, not entirely usual with him, sent him bending to his knee to pick up the fugitive slip of white, scribbled foolscap that fluttered by him, hotly pursued by a slender young man.

"Thanks. Oh, thanks!" murmured the pursuer, as Delafield, with a courteous inclination of the head, tendered the captured slip.

"Not at all." A consciousness of the boy's quick panting, his anxious tug at the paper, actually an almost audible beating of the heart, drew the older man to look carefully at him. A white, oval face, drooping mouth, black, deep-set eyes that fairly burned into his, compelled attention.

"Important paper, I suppose?" he inquired lightly. "Wouldn't want to lose it."

"No—oh, no!"

"Get a wigging at the office?"

"It—it's not—they are my own—it is a poem!" stammered the young man.

Delafield chuckled involuntarily, and then, as a quick red poured over the other's cheeks, he made a hasty gesture of apology.

"No offence—none at all, I assure you, Mr.—Mr. Poet! I was only taken by surprise. One doesn't often assist a poet in catching his works!" He laughed again, a contented after-dinner laugh.

Then, as the young man fell behind him quietly, the incident being over, an idle desire for company prompted him to delay his own pace.

"Do you write much? Get it printed? Good publisher?" he inquired genially. Few persons could resist Lester Delafield's smile: his very butler warmed to it, and the woman who retained her reserve under it he had never met.

Again the young man blushed. "Published? No, sir; I never dared to see—I don't know if it's worth being printed," he said.

"But you think it's pretty good, eh? I'll bet you do. I used to. Let me see it. I'll tell you if it's worth anything."

They had turned into a quieter cross-street; the wind had passed them by. Standing under a street-light, benevolently amused at his impulse, Delafield tucked his stick under his arm, uncreased the paper, and noted the title of the poem aloud: To the Moon in a Stormy Night. His eyebrows lifted; he glanced quizzically at the young man, but met such an earnest, searching look, so restrained, yet so quivering, so terrified, yet so brave, that his heart softened and he read on in silence.

A minute passed, two, three, and four. The man read silently, the boy waited breathless in suspense. The noisy, crowding city seemed to sweep by them, leaving them stranded on this little point of time.

Mr. Delafield raised his eyes and regarded the boy thoughtfully.

"You say you wrote this?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir."

"When did you write it?"

"Last night."

"Have you any more like it?"

"I don't know if it's like it. I've got quite a good deal more. What do you——" He could get no further. Drops of perspiration started from his forehead. His mouth was drawn flat with anxiety.

"This poetry," said Delafield, with a carefully impersonal calm, "is very good. It is remarkably good. It is stunning, in fact. 'And moored at last in some pale bay of dawn'—why did you stop there? Isn't that rather abrupt?"

"That was when it ended. Do you really think——"

"I don't think anything about it. I know. You have a future before you, my young friend. I should like to see—Good Lord, what is it?"

For the boy had twined his arms around the lamp-post and was slowly sinking to the pavement. His face was ghastly white. Delafield grasped his arm, and as their eyes met, the older man drew a quick breath and scowled.

"It's not because—you're not—when did you have your lunch?" he demanded shortly.

The boy smiled weakly.

"And your breakfast?"

"Oh, I had that—quite a little—really I did!" he half whispered.

Delafield got him on his feet and around the corner to a restaurant. As they entered, the smell of the food weakened him again, and he staggered against his friend, begging his pardon helplessly.

"Soup—and hurry it up, it's immaterial what kind," the host commanded.

As the boy gulped it down he made out a further order, and while the hot meat, vegetables, and bread vanished and the strong, brown coffee lowered in the cup, he lighted a long cigar and talked with a quiet insistence. Later, when his guest blinked drowsily behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, he asked questions, marvelling at the simple replies.

The boy's name was Henry West; it was twenty-two years since he had made his appearance in a family already large enough to regard his advent with a stoical endurance. His people all worked in the mills in Lowell; he, too, till the noise and jar gave him racking headaches. He made his first verses in the mill. He had come to New York to learn to be a clerk in a corner drug-store kept by a distant cousin, but he couldn't seem to learn the business. The names of the things were hard to remember. His cousin said he was absent-minded.

And he had to read everything that was in sight: if a thing was printed he seemed to have to read it. He read books from the library and the night-school when his cousin thought he was polishing the soda-fountain. Of all the things he hated—and they were many—the soda-fountain was the worst. He wanted to study a great deal, but only the studies he liked. Not algebra and geometry, nor chemistry that made his head ache, but history and poetry and French. He thought he would like to know Italian, too. The family supposed he was still in the drug-store, but he had quarrelled with his cousin and left it a month ago. He stayed mostly in the library and helped the janitor with sweeping and airing the rooms. The janitor paid him a little to ease his own hours of night-watching, and often asked him to supper. He read nearly all day and wrote at night. It was better than the mills or the drug-store. He supposed he was lazy—his family always said he was.