A CANDLE IN THE WIND

A CANDLE
IN THE WIND

BY
MARY IMLAY TAYLOR
Author of “The Impersonator,” “The Reaping,” “Caleb Trench,”
“The Man in the Street,” etc.

NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1919

Copyright, 1919, by
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY

CONTENTS

A CANDLE IN THE WIND

A CANDLE IN THE WIND

I

Diane controlled the secret distress which the mere mention of Overton’s name made immeasurably keen, and tried to give her undivided attention to the entertainment of her father’s guests. She had a fine discrimination in social matters, and she felt that this occasion, however simple and domestic, was made important by the presence of Arthur Faunce, the young hero of the recent antarctic expedition.

Faunce had not been expected at Mapleton so soon after his triumphant reception in New York, where, exalted into prominence by Overton’s tragic death, he had been hailed as the leading survivor of the brave band of explorers. But, with that infatuated zeal with which the moth seeks the candle, he had returned almost immediately to the place where he was sure to feel the radiant flame of Diane Herford’s charm.

However well aware she may have been in the past of the young man’s incipient infatuation, Diane had almost forgotten those early passages in their lives when she had made a conquest of a college boy’s heart at a time when, with the sublime optimism of youth, he had worn it joyously upon his sleeve. Since then several years had intervened, rich in experience. Diane had traveled a good deal with her father, and had been received, both at home and abroad, with flattering attention. She had felt the force of a deeper emotion, suffered the actual pang of bereavement, seen a hope, beautiful and thrilled with an exquisite tenderness, lost forever with the gallant hero who had perished almost within sight of the goal that he had sought with such courage and such devotion.

That he had not spoken more definitely at parting, that their understanding was tacit rather than actual, only deepened her grief by depriving her of the right to indulge it. Since she was thus denied the privilege of openly mourning the loss of Overton, and must force herself to speak of him and to hear his death discussed with apparent composure, Diane was listening now to the becoming modesty with which Arthur Faunce was quietly assuming the dead man’s mantle.

She saw, too, that Faunce’s new honors, his youth, and his undoubted good looks had again enlisted her father’s good-will. Some feeling, almost an impulse of indignation, swept through her at the thought that a man’s fame, like his life, had no more permanence than the flame of one of the delicately shaded candles that she had placed among the flowers upon the table. Her thought, poignant as it was with sadness, must have been winged, for it found an almost immediate echo in her father’s response to a tribute that Faunce had just paid to Overton.

“Yes, he was a brave fellow,” Judge Herford declared in his Olympian tones. “If he had lived, Faunce, you’d have had to look to your laurels. But what a tragic end—to fall by the way, almost in sight of the goal!”

“As Moses died in sight of the promised land!” sighed Mrs. Price, her host’s cousin, the plump and amiable wife of the dean of a neighboring theological seminary.

Thoroughly imbued with the precepts of her more gifted husband, Mrs. Price allowed herself to fall into a fatal way of applying scriptural similitudes, or, as Dr. Gerry irreverently phrased it, of “talking shop.”

The judge smiled involuntarily, leaning back in his chair, a massive figure, his fine head scantily covered with iron-gray hair, and his keen eye as bright at sixty-five as Faunce remembered it when he himself had been a lad of ten. He tossed back a reply now with a gleam of amusement.

“It takes your imagination, Cousin Julia, to clothe the antarctic in milk and honey. Poor fellow! As I understand it, Faunce, Overton perished as much from hunger and exhaustion as from cold!” he added, turning toward the guest of honor.

Faunce seemed to flinch, and an expression of such keen distress passed over his handsome face that it awoke a glow of sympathy, almost of cordiality, in the breast of Diane Herford. There was a little silence. Mrs. Price, her daughter, Fanny, her husband, the dean, and Dr. Gerry all stopped talking to listen to the young man’s expected reply. It was the kind of hush that expressed not only sympathy, but something like awe of a great tragedy enacted in a distant and unknown clime, where even death has been obscured by the mystery and silence of those frozen solitudes.

Faunce had been admirable all the evening—brilliant, convincing, and yet becomingly modest; but now he stretched out an unsteady hand, lifted his wine-glass to his lips, tried in vain to swallow some liquor, and set it down with a gesture of despair.

“Don’t speak of it!” he exclaimed in a faltering voice. “We were together—I can never forget it, I——” He broke off, and recovered himself. “Pardon me if I can’t talk of it, can’t tell you about it yet. The time may come, but now——”

He ceased speaking and stared straight in front of him with unseeing eyes, his powerful but shapely hand unconsciously clenched on the edge of the table.

Dr. Gerry, an old family friend and an eminent practitioner, suspended his dissection of the duck to cast a keen glance at Faunce. He had the searching eyes of the professional observer, set well back under heavy brows, a quantity of short red hair, and a square jaw that was somewhat relieved by the whimsical lines about his tight, thin-lipped mouth and the puckers at the corners of his eyes.

There was a significance in the doctor’s glance which did not escape the troubled eyes of Diane. When he turned it suddenly upon her, she averted her face, unable to meet its perfectly apparent suspicion. She knew that Dr. Gerry had long ago surmised her attachment to Overton, and her hand trembled slightly as she picked up her fork and tried once more to make a pretense of eating her dinner.

She was so completely absorbed in her own unhappiness, in the thrill of misery and pride that stirred her heart at the thought of the gallant man who had died as he had always lived, in her eyes, like a hero, that she awoke from her reverie to find that she had lost the thread of the conversation, which had been hastily resumed to cover Faunce’s collapse.

“We’re puny creatures,” her father was saying in the tone of a pessimist. “What do our efforts amount to, after all? There’s a saying—and it’s true—that ‘a man’s life is like a candle in the wind, or hoar frost on the tiles.’ It’s blown away or melted off, and there’s nothing left!”

The little dean fired up.

“The immortal soul is left! What would life be worth if we didn’t believe that a young, enthusiastic spirit like Overton’s had in it the seed of immortality? ‘White-breasted, like a star fronting the dawn he moved.’ A soul like his can’t be compared to the flame of a candle, Herford, but rather to the light of a star that is kindled in the darkness of our impotent endeavors. He had the magnificent youth, the immortal courage, that always lead the world!”

“Well, well!” retorted the judge, unmoved. “He had, at least, the courage to meet the great adventure.”

“He had more than that, papa,” Diane commanded herself to say quietly, lifting her head with a recurrent thrill of pride. “No one could know him without realizing that he had supremely the courage to live—to live as he believed a man should.”

At the sound of her voice Faunce turned his head sharply, and his face flushed, but his eyes dwelt on her with such earnestness that Diane, suddenly meeting his look, stopped in confusion. Her embarrassment surprised no one more than herself, for she had long ago achieved that sort of self-control which carries a woman through far more difficult moments than this. It was almost a relief to hear her father’s tranquil retort.

“Di’s a good friend,” he observed, throwing her a benevolent smile. “She always defends the absent. And she’s right this time. Overton had courage enough to have been allowed to live. It’s one of the mysteries why such men are cut off in their prime.”

“I had only one fault to find with him,” rejoined the dean, relapsing into his more usual formalism. “I said that to his face, and it saddens me now to recall it. He wasn’t what we call a Christian in the orthodox meaning of the word.”

“How can you say that?” exclaimed Diane warmly. “He was a Christian in the larger sense. Do you remember Abou Ben Adhem’s dream of peace? Of no man could it be said more truly than of Overton that ‘he loved his fellow men.’”

Dr. Gerry nodded.

“That’s so, Di. I fancy you can indorse her sentiments, Faunce?”

Again all eyes turned in the direction of the young explorer, and he roused himself with an evident effort.

“He was one of the best friends a man ever had,” he exclaimed with feeling. “I don’t know much about his religious beliefs. I’ll leave that to Dr. Price and to Miss Herford,” he added, inclining his head to Diane; “but he had courage enough to stand by anything that he believed.”

“That only brings us back again to the original proposition,” rejoined Judge Herford. “It’s an affirmative verdict—we’ve established his courage!”

“Haven’t we got an example of that right before us?” cried Mrs. Price, with a little bubbling sound of enthusiasm like the pleasant hum of a teakettle. “Here’s Mr. Faunce!”

“That’s right—we haven’t forgotten you, Faunce,” smiled their host. “You can’t escape your rôle of hero here.”

Faunce murmured a confused acknowledgment, blushing suddenly like a schoolboy. Dr. Gerry, who had been listening attentively, his keen eye studying the young explorer with professional curiosity, interposed now, giving the conversation a new and unexpected turn.

“Courage takes on strange streaks sometimes,” he remarked slowly, leaning back in his chair in an apparently reminiscent mood. “I remember a queer case out in the Philippines. A young private—the fellow came somewhere from the big grain-fields of the Northwest, and had never seen service before—went into action out there and got honorable mention three times. One day he carried a wounded comrade off under fire, and some of the women heard of it and wrote home, trying to get the Carnegie medal for him. About ten days after that the cholera broke out in a camp in Mindanao. I was down there with the regimental surgeon when Private Bruce was ordered on hospital duty. He begged to be excused, he turned as white as a sheet, and his teeth chattered. He wasn’t afraid of bullets, but he was afraid of cholera. Of course he didn’t get off. He had to go on duty, and he was sent out with a stretcher to bring in a dead comrade. A little Filipino, one of Uncle Sam’s new recruits, went with him. Presently the Filipino came back; he said he couldn’t do it alone, and the white man had run away. It was true, too. Bruce had bolted. He ran all the way to Manila, and they had to comb the place to find him for the court martial. He simply couldn’t face a quietly unpleasant death, and pestilence got on his nerves.”

Faunce, who had been listening with his eyes on his plate, looked up now, and his glance kindled with something akin to anger.

“Perhaps it wasn’t pure cowardice,” he exclaimed with feeling. “It’s easier to judge another man than to do the thing yourself. I——” He stopped short, aware of the silence around the table, and then ended lamely: “I’ve seen men do strange things under the stress of circumstance!”

The doctor chuckled.

“So have I. I once saw a burly blacksmith faint dead away at the mere sight of a tortoise-shell cat. He’d inherited a prenatal aversion to that kind of a feline, and he’d never been able to conquer it.”

Faunce threw him a darkened glance.

“There you have it—prenatal influence!” he retorted, thrusting away his coffee-cup, the dinner having reached its final stage. “Mayn’t a prenatal influence excuse a sudden, an inexplicable and unconquerable impulse?”

“In a lunatic, yes.”

Diane looked quickly at the speaker. It seemed to her that he was purposely goading Faunce. He leaned back in his chair again, watching the younger man, his rugged face and upstanding reddish hair thrown into sharp relief in the midst of the group at the table. Across softly shaded lights and flowers, the gleam of snowy damask, and the sparkle of silver, she could see the white-haired, placid dean, comfortable, matronly Mrs. Price, her father’s massive, aggressive gray head, and Fanny’s bright youthfulness, which only served to accentuate the shrewd personality of Gerry and the grace and dignity of Faunce.

For the moment these two were pitted against each other. Then the younger man, perhaps aware that he was being baited, dropped the debate with a shrug.

“According to your idea, then, Private Bruce had an insane impulse, instead of simply losing his nerve, as I’ve seen men do a thousand times—and they weren’t cowards, either.”

“You’re not exactly the man we should expect to defend any form of cowardice,” interposed Judge Herford, smiling.

“With his magnificent record,” chimed in Mrs. Price, in her amiable voice, “it’s simply fine to be so considerate toward the weaknesses of the rest of us poor mortals!”

“I suppose, madam, that’s to imply that I’m not charitable,” rejoined Dr. Gerry composedly. “As a matter of fact, I’ve the greatest sympathy for cowards myself.”

“So have I!” exclaimed Fanny Price, her young face turned radiantly, like a full moon, toward the hero of the evening. “I’m an awful coward!”

“She is,” agreed her father cheerfully. “She looks under her bed every night for a burglar.”

In the laugh that greeted Fanny’s blushes, the topic was turned. Diane asked Faunce some questions about his recent experience in New York.

“I had to lecture,” he replied with an uneasy laugh. “That’s one penalty we pay in America when we discover anything. I gave two lectures, and I’m booked for a third, worse luck!”

“I shall try to hear that,” she rejoined quietly, forcing herself to smile in a conventional way, though her eyes were still pathetic.

Faunce thought he had never seen her more beautiful. The delicate hollows in her cheeks, and the white brow under her dusky hair, made her charm assume an elusive and spiritual quality that was rather enhanced by the simplicity of her low-cut, sleeveless black dress and the filmy draperies that floated about her shoulders and blended with the long, soft folds at her waist. The beautiful lines of her slender figure, and something in the grace and harmony of her whole aspect, reminded him of a splendid Reynolds that had once enthralled his eye.

“You would be an inspiration,” he began, in a tone intended for her ear alone; “but”—he hesitated for an instant, bending his dark eyes upon her—“I wonder if I could keep on making a fool of myself with you there to see me do it!”

Something in his tone brought the color to her cheeks, and she passed his remark over lightly.

“I’m sorry if I’m a discouraging listener. I think I’ll have to give you a chance to discuss that with the dean and papa. Dr. Gerry is too critical,” she added, laughing at the doctor as she rose from the table. “Come, Cousin Julia and Fanny dear, these men are pining to talk politics when we’re not here to insist on suffrage.”

“Oh, I’ll give it to you any time, Di!” flung back the doctor.

But she did not answer him; she was smiling at Faunce as he held open the door for her to pass out.

“Please come soon and give us a lecture,” she entreated.

He made no reply, but his eyes were bent so intently on her that he entirely missed the girlishly admiring gaze of Fanny Price, who followed her mother and Diane out of the room.

II

Leading the way into the small, old-fashioned drawing-room, Diane seated her guests around the bright fire on the hearth, taking care to select a chair for herself that would put her face in the shadow.

Mrs. Price took the low seat opposite. Her plump, round little body spread out comfortably and settled into the cushions with the genial softness of a pudding. Her lustrous black silk, which the dean approved as “the most suitable and stately dress for a lady,” seemed to billow over the curved arms of the chair, and decorously veiled her white stockings and old-style, low shoes. Fanny, pretty and fair and barely eighteen, with only a suggestion of her mother’s button nose and her father’s tranquil brow under a fluffy mass of fair curls, dropped on a low cushion between the two.

“Isn’t he splendid?” she exclaimed rapturously, clasping her hands. “He’s so handsome—isn’t he, Di? He looks just as I’ve always imagined heroes did!”

“He’s very good-looking, my dear,” her mother admitted amiably. “I couldn’t help thinking of that picture at the seminary—you remember it, Fanny—of David? You must know it too, Diane?”

“I don’t think I’ve noticed it very much,” Diane replied vaguely. “Of course, Mr. Faunce seems a hero just now, and people are making a great deal of his exploits. It’s right that they should; but what hurts me, what seems to me so strange, is the way they forget that Overton led the expedition, that he made all these great discoveries, that it isn’t right to forget him while they’re applauding the things he did.”

“My dear, nobody forgets him,” Mrs. Price reassured her. “He was tremendously real, I’m sure, and we all liked him, though, as Edward said at dinner, he seemed a little—a little——”

“Fogged on religion,” chimed in Fanny cheerfully. “So many men are, mama, and I’m sure Overton was as nice as he could be. When I was a child, he used to give me candy—didn’t he, Di?”

“A sure way to win your heart!” retorted Diane, smiling. “I don’t think I’m as orthodox as you are, Cousin Julia,” she added calmly. “There are greater things in heaven and earth than mere formalism.”

“Diane!” breathed her shocked relative.

“Oh, I sha’n’t dispute it with you!” Diane went on easily; “but you mustn’t think that a man like Simon Overton hadn’t a soul great enough to have its own faith. I know he had it.”

“I’m sure he did,” agreed Fanny warmly. “Didn’t you hear what Mr. Faunce said—that Overton was one of the best friends a man ever had? Isn’t that a great tribute—from a man like Faunce, too?”

Diane assented, leaning farther back in her corner. At the moment she could not quite command her voice. Overton’s face seemed to rise before her as she had seen it last—manly and tender and kindled with high hope. How could she think of it veiled in the mist and chill of a frozen death, like a light suddenly quenched in a tempest, or a star receding into the clouds of the infinite?

“No, I’m not a formalist,” she said with sudden passion, as if her thoughts must find an outlet in words; “but I do believe in the immortal soul. It isn’t possible that a man’s life, going out as it does like—like a candle in the wind, leaves nothing whatever behind, nothing to reach up to the heights that he sought.”

“Of course you believe in the soul!” Mrs. Price was immeasurably startled. Her round eyes grew rounder than ever. “How can you express a doubt of it, Diane?”

“Di hasn’t really,” argued Fanny, interfering between the two. “She’s off on one of her tangents, that’s all. She can’t get the awful part of it out of her head. Wasn’t it touching, mama, the way Faunce couldn’t even speak of Overton’s death?”

“It’s perfectly natural, dear. Your father heard that Faunce risked his life in trying to bring Overton’s body back, and was almost dead himself when he reached the cache.”

“It was the blizzard that overwhelmed them,” supplemented Diane’s rich, melancholy voice from the shadow. She was resting her head on her hand, and her face was completely obscured. “They had pushed far ahead, they had reached the farthest south, and then—Overton died. It seems terrible to think that the rescue ship was so near all the while. They had only to struggle a while longer, only to keep life in them for four days!”

“Their ship was completely crushed in the ice, wasn’t it?” Fanny asked softly, clasping her hands around her knee and gazing into the fire. “If it hadn’t been for that——”

“He would have been saved, yes!” Diane drew a long breath. “If it hadn’t been for that, the wrecking of the ship, the great storm, he would be here now with Faunce.”

“Well, for my part,” said Mrs. Price firmly, “I don’t think we should dwell on these things too much. They’re all appointed. ‘The wind bloweth where it listeth.’ We ought to cheer up Arthur Faunce. He’s been given back to us, and there must be a purpose in it. I always feel, when a man comes back from the dead, as it were, that he’s been spared for a reason. You mark my words, Arthur Faunce has been marked out for a great work. He will be a kind of prophet in Israel!”

Diane made no immediate reply. Her mind was too deeply absorbed in thought. She realized more fully than Mrs. Price the great opportunity that had come to Faunce like a legacy from the dead. She remembered his emotion at the mention of Overton, the feeling tribute that he had paid to his friend, and the spirit, at once kindled but modest, that had breathed through many of his previous utterances.

He was like a man who had been following in the wake of genius, content to take up the fragments of success that fell to his share, but had suddenly found the gates flung wide open and seen the long road beyond—the road which he would henceforth travel alone, and to no uncertain goal. He had loved Overton. Their friendship was well known, and he had been faithful to the end. Even now he did not withhold the laurels that belonged to his leader; he only accepted them because there was no one left to dispute his claim.

She knew, too, that he had shown his ability, his power to command in an emergency. He had returned a far-different man from the uncertain youth who had set out two years before. Something in this, and in the optimism he had shown in the midst of disaster, touched her imagination.

If he had been more vainglorious, more eager to take the glory of the great work achieved by the expedition, she would have hated him. But his tone when he had begged them not to speak of Overton’s death, the tribute he had paid to his dead comrade’s friendship, when his voice broke and his eyes filled—these things went to Diane’s heart.

The thought of them had taken such possession of her that she scarcely noticed the silence that had fallen on the little trio. Fanny’s blue eyes were gazing dreamily into the blaze, while the remote murmur of talk and the scent of tobacco came to them from the dining-room. Diane was startled by the awakening of her elder relative, who, apparently, had also been wrapped in dreamy meditation.

“Diane, did your cook make those delicious rolls that were served with the fish?” Mrs. Price asked abruptly.

Diane looked up blankly.

“Why, of course! She’s very proud of them, too. Haven’t you ever tasted them before?”

“I don’t think so, and I’m sure I should remember. They were so crisp! I’ve got a new cook—did Fan tell you? She’s dreadful. Poor Edward says she’s ruining his digestion, and I’d better try a fireless cooker instead. Can’t you let me have that recipe for her?”

“It wouldn’t do any good, mama. She’s a Norwegian, Di, and she understands so little English that when she tries to talk it sounds like a turkey gobbling.”

Fanny began to give a practical illustration, but her mother protested.

“Hush! Here are the gentlemen, and they’ll think you’re crazy, child!”

Fanny stopped, with a queer little grimace that made Diane laugh. They were interrupted by the entrance of Dr. Gerry and Arthur Faunce, who were a little in advance of the judge and the dean. Diane found herself engaged in conversation by the old doctor, who began by remarking that she was too pale, and that he suspected she sat up half the night to read novels.

Diane, who knew that this was merely an excuse to give him an opportunity to probe her inmost mind, parried it lightly, and engaged him in an animated discussion of the latest best-seller.

“Advertisement—nothing but advertisement!” he declared bruskly. “In my young days a novel had to be good to be read. Now it’s an even thing between the man who’s written a book and the man who’s invented a bunion-eraser—it all depends on which gets the most advertising!”

“Iconoclast! Won’t you leave us the illusion of fame?” retorted Diane, laughing.

“It isn’t fame men want these days—it’s money!”

“Filthy lucre!” said the dean. “Don’t let that pessimist destroy your enjoyment of life, Diane. Send him off to play billiards with your father. I’ve got to take my girls home. I’ve an engagement for seven o’clock to-morrow morning, and I need rest.”

As he spoke, Mrs. Price came up and bestowed a flattering kiss upon Diane’s cheek.

“Good-night, dear! Don’t forget about that recipe for rolls,” she murmured.

Diane promised to remember, and went up-stairs to help the two women into their wraps. Fanny was still blushing and confused. She had been talking to Faunce, and her blue eyes shone like two radiant aquamarines.

“He’s so splendid, Di, isn’t he?” she whispered, as her cousin fastened her cloak for her. “And his eyes—there’s something wonderful about them. They haunt you!”

Diane laughed as she kissed her good-night, and watched the two cloaked and hooded figures marshaled out by the little dean in his long black coat and high hat. Standing in the open door, she saw the three familiar figures walking in single file down the long path to the gate, not one of them keeping step with the others, but each bobbing up and down at a different gait, as curiously bundled and indiscriminate in the darkness as so many Indian papooses suddenly set on their feet and compelled to toddle.

As she closed the door and turned back toward the drawing-room, she saw that Arthur Faunce was awaiting her there alone.

“I thought you were with papa and the doctor,” she said, apologizing for her neglect, as he drew a chair forward for her to sit again near the dying embers on the hearth.

“They went to play billiards, and I don’t know one ball from another,” he replied. “I told them I should wait for you.” He took the chair that Mrs. Price had vacated, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the arms. “I wanted to speak to you alone.”

Diane looked up, and met his dark eyes bent on her with a melancholy and troubled gaze that sent a sad thrill of expectation to her heart. He meant to speak of Overton!

She said nothing. For a moment, indeed, she was quite incapable of speech. They both heard the distant click of the billiard-balls and her father’s deep voice speaking to Dr. Gerry.

“You know that I was with Overton—with Simon,” he said at last, “to the very end, and once or twice he—he talked to me of you.”

She looked up in surprise. She had felt that it was unlike Overton even to mention her name, so deep and almost sensitive was the reserve that he had always shown. Faunce met her look again, and this time his pale face flushed.

“I mean in the way that Overton always spoke of women—of his friends—with the truest and most chivalrous regard. He was not well; the climate broke him up before the end, and I think he had a feeling that he might not live to come back. One day, after we had to abandon the ship, he showed me some photographs he had—pictures that he had taken himself—and he asked me to remember, if anything happened to him, that he wished you to have them. He said that you had cared so much for the whole expedition, and had cheered him so often in those hard days when he thought he could never get the thing started. After he—after that awful time in the snow, I found the case he had shown me, and I brought it with me.” He stopped and put his hand in his pocket, producing a large, square envelope. “As soon as I got to New York I had the plates developed. A few were spoiled, but there are some here, and I’ve brought them to you to-night.”

As he spoke, he held out the package. Diane compelled herself to take it with outward composure, but her hands were shaking, and she could not meet his eyes.

“I can’t tell you how much I thank you!” she murmured, opening the envelope and looking over the pictures in order to hide her emotion.

There were only a few of them—studies of sea and sky, a familiar view of the ill-fated ship, a group of sailors, and some impressive views of frozen straits and giant icebergs. It was a meager glimpse of the world for which Simon Overton had laid down his life, but something in it, in his thought of her, of the things she would care to see, touched Diane to the soul. She restrained her tears with difficulty, and, although she continued to make a show of examining the prints, her eyes were too dim to see the details.

For a while Faunce was silent. He seemed to understand the emotion that prevented Diane from speaking. On the whole, he was thankful for it, since she did not have time to see the pain that distorted his own face. He felt that he was white and rigid, and that his eyes stared at the fire; but he had enough self-control to keep his hands steady on the arms of his chair, and after a while he commanded his voice.

“I’m sorry that there were so few things that we could bring,” he said slowly. “A great deal was lost in the wreck, and we had to sacrifice more still in our journey across the ice. There came a time when we couldn’t carry a load—we could scarcely carry ourselves.”

Diane folded the pictures carefully away before she replied.

“What you say makes me all the more grateful for these!”

He raised his head at that, and their eyes met. The sympathy, the kindling kindness of her glance went to his heart.

“You don’t ask me about it all, and yet I’m sure you want to know.”

“I understood. I was deeply touched by what you said at dinner. I know you can’t talk of it yet—I don’t ask it.”

“I think I could talk to you; but perhaps I had better wait until another time.” Faunce paused; then, rising from his seat, he came over and stood beside her, resting his elbow on the mantel, with his face in the shadow, as hers had been. “I want you to feel that the end was painless. It always is, you know, in those awful solitudes. You knew Overton; you must know that he was a hero—to the end.”

She, too, rose involuntarily from her seat and faced him. Again her pale face, and her slight figure in its black draperies, recalled to his mind the charm and buoyant grace of that wonderful picture of long ago. It was, indeed, this charm of hers, so subtle and so poignant, that drew him on deeper and deeper into the shoals.

“I loved him,” Faunce continued, with a painful effort at self-control. “No one in the world could have suffered more bitterly than I at his loss. I don’t want you to feel that I purposely tried to take his place in this great achievement. I only fell heir to his glory.”

She was deeply touched. Again, even in the midst of her tender remembrance of Overton, this man, who had suffered with him and dared with him, laid hold of her imagination. She raised her beautiful eyes to Faunce’s face, holding out her hand in an involuntary gesture of friendship and good-will.

“I think you’re more than his heir,” she said gently. “He was so large-hearted, so just, that I know he would feel, as I do, that you were his comrade and his partner in sacrifice and in fame.”

There was an instant of silence, one of those moments which become almost supreme in their effect upon two lives. Then, as Faunce seemed to have no words in which to reply, he took Diane’s hand in both of his and lifted it gently to his lips.

III

Half an hour later, Judge Herford stood on his front steps, bidding his last two guests good-night.

“Come again!” he called after them in his deep bass. “You’ll always find us prepared enough for the pair of you. By the way, Faunce, I suppose it’s too much to expect that any one so famous as you will hang around Mapleton long?”

“I don’t know any better place to hang around, judge,” Faunce replied. “When a man’s been in exile two years, the old places look good to him.”

“That’s right! Then be sure you don’t forget the way here.”

“He won’t!” Dr. Gerry flung back, as he plodded toward the gate. “You’re not the only attraction at this house, Hadley. For my part, I only come here to see Diane!”

They heard the judge’s laugh following them, and saw his large figure still outlined against the light, the big gray head and massive shoulders and long body looking a little too heavy for the short legs.

“If Hadley had been sawed off at the waist, they’d have said he was a perfect model for a Roman emperor,” observed the doctor, as they passed out into the road and heard the judge shut his door for the night.

Faunce agreed with some amusement.

“It’s strange, isn’t it, how some men seem to lose their proportion when they stand up? They’re not put together in equal parts.”

“A good many who are put together right outside are out of joint inside.”

“How about the mental proportion—or shall we call it the spiritual?”

“That depends upon how much you follow the dean. A mental twist is pretty nearly certain to go hand in hand with moral lopsidedness, though.”

Faunce reflected on this for a moment, while they made their way under the interlacing branches of the big trees that arched over the country road. It was late in October, and the fall of the leaves had already stripped the big elms and left them in spectral outline against the moonlit sky.

“I take it, then, that you hold a moral shortcoming as a sign of an unbalanced mind?”

“I didn’t say that. That’s the other way around; but it’s true, too, though I shouldn’t cite it as a reason for getting off a criminal. We’ve had a little more of that lately than is good for us.”

“Then you don’t think that the mental condition palliates crime?”

“I think a good many people commit murder or highway robbery, and then, about the time when they get caught, they decide that they must have been crazy.”

“You argue, then, that the insanity is synchronous with the discovery?”

The doctor nodded, trudging sturdily forward toward the turn in the road which led to his own house. The autumn air was chill with frost, and Faunce seemed to shiver as he buttoned up his coat. Dr. Gerry, observing the young man from the tail of his eye, remarked it.

“Feel a chill, eh? I shouldn’t think you’d mind it, after the south pole!”

“Any touch of cold that reminds me of that is enough to make me shiver. I can’t close my eyes now without seeing those livid wastes and hearing the wind. It’s a frozen hell!”

“It’s on your nerves. How many hours do you sleep at night?”

Faunce gave him an uneasy look, in which surprise and something like apprehension were strangely mingled; but the street lights were poor, and he could only half discern the old man’s face as it emerged above the heavy collar of his greatcoat.

“I don’t sleep at all. How did you find that out?”

“I’ve seen a good many in the same plight before, for one thing, and you’re a pretty easy case to read.”

“Am I?” Faunce laughed harshly. “I didn’t know it. Perhaps you can tell me what to do, then?”

“Stop taking narcotics, to begin with, and then get control of your nerves.”

“So you’ve discovered that, too?”

“What?”

“The narcotics. I had to try something. I haven’t had three continuous hours of sleep since—not for five months, anyway.”

“Humph!” The doctor stumbled on a stone and stopped to kick it out of the way. “That’ll lead you on the same road with old Henry Jersey, down in Featherbed Lane.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Well, there’s some divergence of opinion, but his neighbors call him bughouse, if you know what that is.”

“Crazy?”

“Pretty near it. He took drugs, too, for a while.”

“I’ve only taken small doses, enough to get a little sleep. I had to have it. Perhaps”—he laughed unsteadily—“perhaps you can tell me what I’ve taken?”

“Oh, it might be anything,” the doctor replied carelessly; “but I should call it chloral.”

“You’ve hit it! I shall begin to think you’re a mind-reader.”

“I am, in a sense. The fact is, I can tell you what’s the matter with you now. It’s your nerves. You’ve got something on your mind, and you won’t be any better, you won’t sleep any sounder, until you get it off.”

Faunce was startled. He glanced around again, but could only make out a dim outline of Gerry’s blunt profile between the old man’s collar and the big soft hat he had pulled comfortably down to his ears. For a moment he reflected on the doctor’s words in silence.

It was evidently true that Gerry had an unaccountable way of hitting the nail on the head. Faunce wondered how much the old man had already divined of the trouble that was harassing his soul. If he was indeed so palpably easy to read, how could he screen it from the curious gaze of every inquiring eye that he met? They were almost in sight of the doctor’s white gate before he roused himself to reply.

“That sounds like saying that honest confession is good for the soul,” he said with his nervous laugh. “I should never have suspected you of commending that course.”

“I’ve been father confessor for a good many,” retorted the doctor crustily. “What I meant to say, though, was much simpler. You’ve got to free your mind. When a man lets anything bite in as your trouble seems to be doing, he soon comes to the end of his tether. His nerves break down, he can’t sleep, and then he can’t eat. It’s an old story. I can give you something to ease up the body, but I can’t do anything for the mind. You’ll have to look after that for yourself.”

Faunce stopped at the gate.

“How about the soul?” he asked dryly.

“I’ll leave that to the dean—or to Mrs. Price. She’d have a quotation that would fit it to the letter. Will you come in?” he added, opening his gate.

“Not to-night. I’m going to tramp for a while. When I’m tired out, I sometimes sleep a little—without the chloral.”

The doctor grunted, went into his front yard, and let the old white gate swing to behind him.

“I suppose you know the risk you’re taking?”

Faunce nodded.

“Oh, I sha’n’t kill myself.” He laughed again, rather loudly this time. “I haven’t the courage!”

“It doesn’t take courage when you’ve got enough of the stuff. It’s as easy to slip off as it is for a frozen man to sink into the final stupor.”

For a moment they stood peering at each other through the night. A fitful moon vanished behind a cloud, and left each one in doubt of the other’s attitude; but the doctor was aware that Faunce pulled himself together and moved away from the fence.

“So you think that’s easy?” he said in a hoarse voice.

“I know it is—at the end. There’s a limit, you see, to human endurance. When it’s reached and passed, coma ensues. That’s easy!”

Faunce took a step toward the gate, as if an impulse moved him to follow the doctor in. Then he turned with an inarticulate exclamation, waved an abrupt good-night, and walked rapidly away into the darkness.

Dr. Gerry watched him disappear before he turned and deliberately climbed the steps to his own front door, to find the cat rubbing herself against his ankles. He stooped down and caressed her, running his hand down the length of her sleek, gray back, and finally giving her tail a gentle tweak. Then he unlocked his door and entered, carrying her under his arm.

IV

Meanwhile Faunce tramped steadily down the long lane. It led to the edge of the little river, scarcely more than a brook, which divided the village into two unequal parts. Just now, at flood from the recent rains, the stream tumbled noisily over the stones and rushed under the low bridge with a harsh, insistent murmur.

He stopped for a moment with his hand on the rail, and looked down at the black current below. Then the clouds broke, and he saw the moon reflected in the water, while the rising wind suddenly showered the falling leaves until they fell with a patter like rain. Beside him an ancient willow stood like a stricken giant. A summer thunderbolt had split the great trunk in twain, and half of it lay across the stream, while the other half still loomed up, grim and leafless, against the sky.

It was past midnight and in that rural community, where early hours prevailed, the feeling of solitude was as intense as if he had reached the end of the world and was alone in the October night, the last man. Such a feeling had come to him once before, fraught with such cruel terror, such a sensation of disintegration, of the loss of all that was mortal, that Faunce could never forget it, could never feel even the reflection of it again without recalling those vast and terrifying wastes, that inexorable sky, that blinding, cruel, exterminating ice that had frozen its image on his soul.

He tried to drive the thought of it from his mind, and, by fixing his gaze on that intimately familiar scene, to recall the days when, as a lad, he had fished by that old bridge. He remembered his grandmother as she had looked to him then, the quaint cap she wore, and the little plaid shawl folded about her shoulders over the black bombazine dress. His mother had died when he was born, and his father had married again. Young Arthur, in the way of a gay stepmother, had been reared by a fond maternal grandmother.

No one had disciplined his childhood, and he knew that as a boy he had done some mean tricks, which a better-trained lad would have scorned. But he had ceased to be small and tricky when he fell in with Overton, his senior by three years in age and by ten in mental development. He realized now, as he looked back on the long perspective, that Overton had saved him.

Strong-willed and straight-thinking, Simon Overton had possessed that kind of spiritual force of which leaders and martyrs are made. He had been a leader even at school. His companions had followed him with the boyish devotion that always surrounds the school hero with a halo of glory. It was not alone young Overton’s physical strength, and his skill in their favorite sports; it was a certain unfailing stanchness of character, a fearless square-dealing, that impressed the others, and Faunce had only followed the universal lead when he attached himself to him.

Faunce had been favored. Overton had seen that the lad was without a real friend, that his old grandmother could do little more than wrap him in a figurative blanket, spoiling and scolding by turns; and the elder boy suddenly took hold of the younger. A friendship was formed, protective on one side, almost adoring on the other, and from that time their fates had moved forward in an inseparable course.

When Overton went to Annapolis, he had helped Faunce to work his way through college. When Faunce’s father died and left his estate—a small one—to his widow and Arthur’s stepsisters, Overton had tided Arthur over, until he got a place, and his grandmother’s death left him the sole heir of her modest fortune. It was this old bond that had drawn him into the first expedition to the south pole.

Overton, as a lieutenant in the navy, had organized the great adventure, which was financed by an old friend of his father. He had selected Faunce to accompany him, and the trip had been successful up to a certain point. Then the inexorable conditions of polar exploration had worsted their efforts, and they had been forced to turn back. Bitterly chagrined, Overton had returned for another year of preparation, and then, flushed with new hope, and with that kind of fateful vision which pursues the most difficult and dangerous chimeras, he had set out for the second time, determined to plant the Stars and Stripes at the farthest south.

In the interval between the two expeditions much had happened. Overton had become an acknowledged force in the world of adventure, and Faunce was aware that he had set his heart on the one girl who had remained to both of them the sweetest and most charming reminder of their young days at Mapleton. That Diane, too, had outgrown their early environment and matured into a gracious and accomplished woman of the world seemed only fitting and natural; and Faunce knew, long before the ill-fated ship sailed from New York, that the young leader had left his heart behind him.

Faunce had felt a thrill of satisfaction, too, that under that supreme test he had not failed to keep his faith with his comrade and benefactor. Loving Diane himself, he had stood aside and left the field free to his rival. Whatever misunderstanding had obscured their parting, he had not been at fault. He had found some consolation, in the midst of his discomfiture, in the fact that he had demonstrated his own spiritual growth, and had proved to himself that he was now above those mean devices which, in his boyhood, had sometimes won for him immunity from punishment, or a reward that was not rightfully his.

The expedition had sailed amid the thunder of salutes from the war-ships in the harbor, and for the second time Overton followed the ill-omened star that led him toward the south pole. All these things came back to Faunce with fatal clarity as he leaned there, under the pallid October sky, his hand on the worn railing of the old bridge that he had crossed many a day on his way to school.

But at this point in his recollections—when the fated ship, brilliant with flags, receded slowly, like a fantom, into the mists which on that day had shrouded the Narrows—Faunce shuddered and passed his hand over his eyes. His reverie was broken. He could no longer recall the past without seeing the wraith that seemed to rise from the very mist over the brook and to shape itself before him, as it had shaped itself hundreds of times already, into a vision of Overton as he had seen him last.

There, in that secluded spot, under the fitful moon, that face—rugged, strong, beautiful with spiritual power—rose from the vapors. Faunce saw it as he had seen it last, stricken with the awful look of death, pallid and calm, a smile on the lips, the eyes closed. Solitudes, vast, white, inexorable, the peaks of blue ice, the mirage that mocked and deluded, only the shriek of the wind to break the silence that drove men mad.

That drove men mad! That was it! That must be what possessed him now, Faunce thought—madness!

He could never escape that vision, never quite cast it out. All the laurels he had won, the applause, the eager friendships that seemed to await him, were but empty mockery when he had only to close his eyes to find himself in the presence of that terrible vision, to feel the deadly chill strike again to his heart, to hear the howl of the wind on those polar wastes.

What had tempted him to go there a second time? What infatuation had led him to follow Overton? Faunce had never shared his leader’s enthusiasm, had never had his courage; but he had followed him like a little dog at the heels of a big St. Bernard, led by admiration rather than love, held by fear rather than zeal.

He remembered what he had just said to Diane—his assurance of his devotion to Overton; and it seemed to him now like an attempt on his part further to imperil his own salvation by deliberately deceiving her. Yet he had really loved Overton. It was his love for the dead man, the remembrance of his boyish gratitude, that was driving him on, goading him to misery.

Of what avail was the rescue that had brought him and his surviving comrades out of that frozen inferno, and had crowned him with the laurels that Overton had sought, if he could reap no reward, not even grasp the triumph of their success, their victory over a rival English expedition, without paying the price in a mortal agony that had all but extinguished the light in his soul? He had returned to find himself a hero, to be fêted and honored in New York and in Washington, to be mentioned with mingled envy and praise in London and Paris—and he could not sleep!

At first he had thought that he could conquer his weakness, that there was courage enough left in him to force forgetfulness; but there was not. The thing possessed him, pursued him, harried him, and he had come to the end of his endurance. He began to dread night as a condemned man must dread the final summons. In the daytime, and among his fellows, he believed that he bore himself almost with the air of a hero. He had, indeed, thought his performance perfect, but Dr. Gerry had discovered a cleft in the armor, had put his finger on a sore spot.

Was it possible, then, that others saw it, too? That Diane herself might have suspected it when she forbore to question Faunce? The thought, laying hold of him, added a fresh pang to his misery. He turned with a gesture of disgust and plunged into the night. He could not sleep, and here, in this quiet spot, he could walk until the day broke, unseen and unsuspected.

V

In the weeks that followed Faunce drifted restlessly from Mapleton to New York, from New York to Washington, and then, assured of Diane’s continued presence there, back to Mapleton.

Meanwhile he had been signally honored, as the surviving leader of the successful expedition, both at home and abroad. A medal had been voted to him by Congress for his distinguished services, and he had been notified of his election, in London, as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Praise and emolument poured in upon the young and handsome explorer, while only one man—the chief financier of Overton’s two expeditions—devoted any large sum to a memorial tablet for the lost leader.

Like the proverbial candle in the wind, Overton’s life and his reputation had been extinguished together in the eternal snows; but they had not been exiled from the mind of Faunce. He was fully aware that his honors rightfully belonged to his friend, that he was in much the same position as the mythical jay in the peacock’s plumes. He could think of no simile less trite to express his misery.

If Overton had lived, Faunce might have been envious—he knew that he was not free from that taint; but he could at least have accepted any tribute that came his way with a light heart. As it was, his honors were so many millstones about his neck. He grew pale and thin, and the dark shadows under his eyes made their expression take on a haunted look; but his very modesty, his evident hesitation to accept the full measure of applause, and the growing melancholy in his handsome face, only served to increase the interest in a personality so attractive and so reserved.

It appealed most keenly, perhaps, to the imagination of Fanny Price. Her girlish fancy clothed the handsome explorer in all the attributes of the favorite heroes of romance. The fact that she perceived, only too clearly, his infatuation for Diane Herford whetted her admiration by removing its object from the proximity of her own possible adorers.

A pretty young thing and a great favorite, she had no lack of “beans,” to use the familiar language of the inhabitants of Mapleton; but none of them, in Fanny’s mind, could be compared to the hero of two antarctic expeditions and the probable commander of a third. Talk was already current that the same great financier who had furnished the sinews of the Overton expeditions was about to equip another and more perfect ship to be placed at the command of Arthur Faunce.

There was another reason, too, which caused a little flutter in Fanny’s innocent breast. She was well aware that a heart is often caught on the rebound, and she knew that, next to Diane, she was an object of interest to Faunce. The question therefore resolved itself into the more complex problem of the state of Diane Herford’s heart. Did she, or did she not, care for Faunce?

If, as Fanny suspected, Diane had loved Overton, she might be unable to reconcile herself to a man who must inevitably recall a dead lover. On the other hand, this might also be Faunce’s strongest appeal—the fact that he was Overton’s chosen comrade, his closest friend, and the man who had last seen him alive.

The two girls were fairly intimate, but the younger had never dared to encroach on the quiet reserve with which the elder screened her inmost thoughts; and she could draw no positive conclusions from the vague glimpses that Diane’s rare moments of deep emotion gave her. Those moments indicated a strong but hidden feeling which might, at any moment, find an outlet in some fresh channel; and what could be more likely than the awakening of a new and living love? The probability of this termination of the affair chilled Fanny’s joy in her hero’s frequent reappearances in the quiet neighborhood of Mapleton.

“He would never come here at all,” she reasoned shrewdly, “if he wasn’t in love with somebody. He isn’t in love with me—that’s certain—so it must be Diane!”

This conclusion, which seemed to overlook all the other charming girls in the suburb, was less self-centered than it appeared. Fanny knew that Faunce had practically ignored the rest of the world, and had concentrated his attentions upon the Herford house, when an occasional invitation did not divert him to the seminary. But those occasional moments when either an actual invitation, or the courtesy of a visit after one, brought him into the Prices’ dingy drawing-room were always fraught with a tremor of excitement for Fanny, not unpleasantly mingled with the refined tortures of hope deferred.

It was just about that agreeable hour which is devoted to drinking a sociable cup of afternoon tea that she actually saw Faunce coming up the broad driveway which led from the seminary gates to the dean’s modest Queen Anne cottage. She had thought him in Washington, and his sudden appearance, pale and tall and graceful, on his way to her own door, sent a thrill to her heart.

For a moment she leaned forward, with both hands on the sill of the bay window, and watched his unconscious approach. She was quite composed when he entered the room, a few moments later, and found her rearranging her little tea-table with deft and graceful hands, while a sudden shaft of afternoon sunshine touched the little fair curls that clustered about her small, pink ears and nestled on the white nape of her neck.

She was very glad to see him. Her large blue eyes would have told him so, if he had not been so preoccupied; but it was not Fanny of whom he was thinking. He dropped into a comfortable chair beside her tea-table, accepted a cup of her tea, and began at once to talk about Diane. The irony of this almost made the girl smile; but she controlled herself, and turned a sympathetic face toward him, glad that her back was to the light, and that he seemed more occupied with staring absently at the fire on the hearth than in looking at her.

“I just heard that the Herfords might go to Florida this winter,” he observed, balancing his cup in a way that would have wrung Mrs. Price’s housewifely heart with anxiety for her best rug.

“I suppose Dr. Gerry told you?”

He nodded.

“It’s on account of the judge’s rheumatism, isn’t it?”

“I think Di likes to play golf.”

“She doesn’t seem to care for it here. I asked her to go to the links the last time I was home, and she refused.”

Fanny elevated her delicate brows.

“Perhaps she had another engagement. You know Di’s the most popular person in Mapleton.”

He set the neglected cup down on the table and looked at her with preoccupied eyes.

“She’s perfectly charming, isn’t she? But—do you think—I mean, does she seem quite happy?”

Fanny temporized, aware of a sinking heart.

“She should be. She’s got everything, and the old judge adores her.”

He leaned back in his chair, toying with the spoons on the table.

“Has she got everything? That’s what I want to know. Do you think—you’re great pals, you and Diane—do you think she cared for Overton?”

Fanny was silent for a moment. Her hands were trembling a little, and she thrust them out of sight under the table.

“That’s not a fair question. I couldn’t answer it, could I, if I knew? And I don’t know. Diane never talks about herself like some other girls. She wraps herself up the way—I don’t know how to describe it, but you’ve seen some flowers, the more delicate ones, fold their petals together at nightfall and hide their golden hearts? I’ve always thought of them when—when I’ve tried to pry into Diane’s soul.”

He reflected, looking thoughtfully into the fire.

“That’s a beautiful idea, isn’t it?—that her heart’s like a delicate flower!”

The thought seemed to please him so much that he remained silent, dwelling on it. Fanny, keenly aware of the cause of his preoccupation, poured out another cup of tea and tried to drink it. Then he returned to the subject.

“I know that Overton cared for her. I knew it before he went away. That’s why I—I——”

He stopped, the color mounting painfully to his hair.

“Why you didn’t speak?” she concluded gallantly.

He turned a flushed face toward her.

“I say, I didn’t mean to give myself away like that! Tea always makes me gossip like an old woman.”

“Old women aren’t always gossips,” Fanny corrected him, calmly looking at his full cup; “and, moreover, you’ve only just tasted your tea.”

“Then it’s your fault! You made me blurt out the truth. I felt your sympathy. Do you know, it’s a beautiful thing, the way you can sympathize? It’s a gift. You’ve made me feel that I have a real friend.”

Fanny lifted her cup firmly and drank a little tea before she managed to answer.

“That’s really a tremendous compliment,” she said, smiling at him. “I’m very proud of it!”

“Well, since I’ve let the cat out of the bag, I might as well tell you the whole truth, hadn’t I?” he exclaimed with that open and engaging manner that had so often won his way. “I’ve been in love with her ever since I was a little shaver. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in love with her.”

“And you stood aside because you were loyal to Overton?” she ventured.

He paled as suddenly as he had reddened.

“Yes, I knew he loved her. I owed him a great deal, you know. I let him have his chance first.”

She lifted her eyes bravely to his.

“I think that was magnificent!” she said in a low voice with a tremor of emotion.

VI

The girl’s words had a strange effect on Faunce. They seemed to strike like a goad into his flesh. He sprang to his feet and began to pace the room with his head down. Fanny Price followed him with an astonished gaze, but she was too much concerned with her own emotion, her own folly in caring at all, to attempt to analyze his moods. It was enough for her that he loved Diane. She did not want to go beyond that, for it utterly crushed her hopes.

“Nothing I’ve ever done is magnificent!” he declared in a choked voice. “I’m not such a bounder as to let you think it. I would have tried as hard as Overton, I know I should, if I hadn’t been sure that she—she loved him!”

Fanny struggled with the last remnant of her self-love. Then she answered in a weak voice:

“Why does it matter to you so much if she did—then?”

He stopped short.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he’s dead now.”

There was a profound pause. He stood staring at her with a strange expression, his hands hanging clenched at his sides. Fanny had never seen him look so handsome, so tragically inspired; but she returned his gaze with a kind of defiance. She felt that she was at bay, and mast defend herself.

“You mean,” he said slowly, at length, “that his being dead opens the way for me? That perhaps she might care for me now—because of that?”

Fanny nodded.

“Good Heavens!” He drew a deep breath. “That—that would make it impossible. I couldn’t do that!”

“I don’t see why,” she said blankly.

He caught the amazement in her eyes, and was silent, but his face blanched, and his evident emotion was so unaccountable that it startled and puzzled her. She rose from her seat and went to the window, averting her face.

“It’s natural, isn’t it? I don’t think you should feel so dreadfully about it.”

But Faunce still seemed unable to master himself.

“I can’t help it. I—I——” he stammered again, relapsing into silence as he began to walk to and fro.

Fanny did not turn her head, but continued to look out of the window with unseeing eyes, which did not even recognize the boys who were playing football on the campus, not fifty yards away. She was aware of their plunging, dodging figures, of a blur of multicolored sweaters and brown corduroys; but she was not thinking of them, and even their shouts came to dull ears.

Before her the long driveway to the gate was arched with naked elms, and even the hedgerows began to take on the somber hues of early winter. Far in the west a heavy cloud had broken, the widening rift showing a space of translucent light that shot out oblique shafts of glory, like a shower of golden arrows darting through the leaden sky. A sudden gust of wind sent the brown leaves scampering wildly across the lawn, and swept them at last into a frantic dance below the window.

Fanny’s mind remained absorbed in the exhibition of emotion that she had just witnessed. Her heart swelled with grief and mortification as she realized how little she mattered to Arthur Faunce, how useless it was for her to try to console him, when he cared only for Diane.

“I can’t tell you,” he managed to say at length, “how I feel about that terrific end to the expedition.” He threw out his arms with an almost frantic gesture. “I’d give not only my life, but the hope of her love, to bring him back!”

Fanny turned from the window with a strange look on her face.

“Hush!” she said in a low voice. “Here she is—here’s Diane.”

She gave him time to recover his composure; then, going swiftly into the hall, she opened the door for her visitor.

“Papa has been out all day, and I was lonely,” Diane explained. “I thought I’d come in for a cup of your tea, Fanny.”

The two girls kissed each other, and Fanny whispered:

“Arthur Faunce is here.”

She thought Diane colored, but she was not sure. A moment later they entered the room together. Faunce was standing by the fire with his back to the door, but he turned as they came in. Fanny saw that he had entirely mastered his emotion, and his handsome face lit up with a ready smile as Diane greeted him.

“I was sorry to miss you this morning,” she said gravely; “but papa gave me the package. I—well, I haven’t tried to read it yet. I couldn’t!”