THE BEAUTY

By MRS. WILSON WOODROW

Author of The Silver Butterfly, etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
WILL GREFÉ

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1910
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

Perdita

CONTENTS

THE BEAUTY

CHAPTER I

A BACHELOR'S BRIDE

If the proper statistics of bachelorhood were accurately tabulated they would show that at certain fixed and recurring periods, a confirmed old bachelor, say one in every ten, casts his dearly-bought experience, his hard-won knowledge of the world and women to the four winds of heaven, and chooses for himself a wife; and, as his friends and relatives invariably protest, a bungling job he makes of it. He may, before the world, walk soberly, discreetly, advisedly and in the fear of God in every other respect, but when it comes to selecting a companion for the rest of his life, he follows, apparently, a predestined leading, some errant and tricksy impulse, and from a world of desirable and waiting helpmates, eminently suitable, he will, in nine cases out of ten, fix his heart upon the one inevitable She who can keep the pot of trouble ever boiling for him.

This, according to Mr. Cresswell Hepworth's old and intimate friends, was exactly the course which he had followed; nor was even one voice upraised in dissent from this opinion, as they frankly discussed the matter over their champagne and truffled sweetbreads at the breakfast following the wedding.

It was but natural that they who were rarely in complete agreement on any subject which commended itself for discussion among them, should hold a unanimous opinion on this matter which involved the happiness of their lifelong friend. But although the opinion was unanimous, it was not unprejudiced. Hepworth had had his distinct niche in their homes and hearts for many years, and now as they gazed metaphorically at the empty space, it struck a chill to their affections.

Nevertheless they did not, could not fail to join in the little gasp of admiration which breathed through the church as the bride swept up the aisle on the arm of Mr. Willoughby Hewston, the well-known banker and intimate friend of the bride-groom. She had been stopping, it was understood, with Mrs. Wilstead, another friend of Hepworth's, for several weeks.

There were those in the large audience who saw a certain pathos in the fact that she was given away by one of Hepworth's friends, thus exposing the lack of either relatives or friends of her own, but there was nothing in her bearing to indicate that she was conscious of her isolated position as she advanced, leaning lightly on Mr. Hewston's arm.

The world, Hepworth's world, and it was a large one, was tingling with curiosity. He was a great figure, looming immense upon the financial horizon; but no one had ever heard of the bride. The invitations to the wedding were the first intimation of his impending marriage, and the bride's name, Perdita Carey, conveyed nothing to anybody. By dint of careful collection of scraps of information, it gradually became known that she was young, of southern birth and extremely pretty. Bare facts. No more.

It was also considered rather an odd reading of the customary conventions on Hepworth's part, this crowded church wedding exposing the bride's poverty in relatives, the breakfast to follow, at his town house, thus making equally plain her homeless state; but when this view was set before him, sighingly, by Isabel Hewston, and vivaciously by Alice Wilstead, he became obstinate in the insistence of his plans. He seemed possessed of some masculine idea of getting things over, of having all his friends meet his wife en masse, so to speak, and having the matter settled.

And so it was, "Nice customs curtsy to great kings"—or millionaires. The audience then of his friends—there was none of hers present, if indeed she possessed any—sat with heads turned at an aching angle and awaited, with concealed impatience, the choice of Cresswell Hepworth.

The weight of opinion leaned to a sunburst of a woman, darkly splendid, opulently graceful, and instead, when the stately strains of the wedding-march echoed through the church, the guests lifted their astonished eyes to a brown and slender girl; but no matter what the expectation had been, each realized that he gazed on a more poetic loveliness than he had dreamed.

Another unhesitating mental admission. Obscure, unknown she might have been, but she could never be considered ordinary. It had taken generations of cultivation to give that pose of the head and shoulders, that arch of the instep, that taper to her slender wrist. And what intimation of individuality! Few women could have borne more regally the weight of heavy and lusterless satin or a diadem of flashing jewels; but this girlish bride of a millionaire had insisted on being married in the white muslin her own scanty purse had furnished; and wore as if it were a crown of diamonds the wreath of white jasmine flowers which held her long tulle veil close about the cloudy masses of her hair.

For once the entire interest of any occasion which he happened to grace was not centered on Hepworth, who, with his usual invincible composure, awaited the bride at the altar, fortified by his best man, Wallace Martin.

But the owner of millions—unctuous sound—is worth more than a mere dismissing word. Let the bride continue to advance, he to await her, while he is presented in a lightning sketch.

Cresswell Hepworth was far from old, not fifty. He had more than three generations of cultivated ancestry behind him. In type he was American, approaching the Indian; tall, slightly aquiline of feature, somewhat granitic and imperturbable. His hair, which had been brown, was almost white, his eyes were gray, trained to express nothing, but startlingly penetrating when he chose to lift rather heavy lids with a peculiarly long droop at the corners.

Emerson says somewhere that "a feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds."

Hepworth was a strong man. He saw possible houses and farms, externalized them and became the acquirer of vast and profitable tracts of land—a fair map blackly dotted with mines and scrawled with the angular lines of intersecting railroads. In this yellow triangle, a great wheat farm. Here, in this square of living green, irrigated and profitable ranches. He stood, this "Colossus of Finance"—journalese—with his feet planted firmly on this solid map-basis, and, with a golden rake, drew toward him from countless clutching hands securities, stocks, bonds, curios, pictures (he was an ardent collector), loot of every description, and, it was even whispered through the church, his young and lovely bride.

But now he stepped forward to meet her with a smile that enlivened his whole face, even his eyes. The service flowed on. With that air of sulky geniality which represented his most urbane manner, Willoughby Hewston gave away the bride. The responses were duly made, and Mr. and Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth turned to walk through an aisle of smiling and nodding friends.

At that moment the mellow October sunlight fell through the stained windows enwrapping Perdita in a regal and impalpable vesture of scarlet and gold; and again a murmur of admiration rippled and echoed at this fresh revelation of her beauty. She had been pale as she walked up the aisle, but now her color had risen and the crimson on her brown cheek was the hue of a jacqueminot rose. Her hair, a deep chestnut at the temples, flowed into copper, dark in the hollows, gold where it caught the light. Her coloring was a harmony of all soft, warm, dusky shades, and one looked to the eyes to focus these tints in light or darkly rich topaz; but Perdita's eyes were gray, handed down perhaps from those Irish kings to whom her father had laughingly traced his descent.

"Lucky girl!" murmured Alice Wilstead an hour later to the group of Hepworth's intimate friends who sat together at one table during the breakfast that followed the wedding. "Just think of it. He has no family encumbrances. Never an 'in-law' will she have to cope with."

It never struck her that Hepworth's little circle of close friends had gradually assumed about all of the intrusive and proprietary prerogatives of the nearest and most affectionate relatives.

Alice Wilstead was a widow, dark, slender, piquant, versed in the secrets of grace and the art of wearing her jewels so that they accentuated her sparkling eyes and her one precious dimple without eclipsing them. Warmly sympathetic and impulsive, she had been overcome by the vision of Perdita's isolation as the girl walked up the aisle on the grudging arm of Willoughby Hewston; and had pressed her handkerchief lightly to her eyes, a moment of emotion viewed with callous interest by a misinterpreting world which regarded it as a last tear shed for a lost opportunity, a shattered hope.

"Well," said Hewston, finishing his sweetbreads and preparing to begin on the next course, "it went off very well. I was all right, wasn't I?"

"You were perfect, dear," his wife hastened to assure him, "and it was a beautiful wedding."

Mrs. Hewston was gray and pink and plump like her husband; and this morning her grayness and pinkness and plumpness were underlined, thrown into high relief by a violet gauze gown, heavily spangled in silver. Isabel Hewston resembled nothing so much as a comfortable, placid, fireside cat, purry and complacent. If she possessed claws, which is doubtful, they were always well concealed.

"Yes, a beautiful wedding and a beautiful bride," she murmured, with a little sighing inflection habitual to her, "so young, so—"

"Humph!" interrupted her husband, with as much of a snort as a mouthful of game would permit, "I tell you it's a pretty tough thing for all of us to see old Hepworth looking so happy." He thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled up his eyes until he bore a grotesque likeness to a baby about to cry. "Hepworth's my best friend, and to see that look of almost boyish joy on his face was pretty hard. There are some things you can do and some you can't; now one of these things that no man can afford to do is to marry outside his own class. I could have told Cress so."

The other members of this intimate little coterie of friends, five in all, looked at one another and burst into involuntary laughter.

Wallace Martin, an old young man, a magazine writer, who would fain be a playwright, gave the single bark of mirth which served him for an explosion of laughter. It sounded particularly derisive now.

"I would give my little all to have the new Mrs. Hepworth hear you say that," he chuckled. "Dear old Hewston, she would not in a thousand years consider any of us in her class. She belonged, let me inform you, to one of the oldest of southern families. Her mother was a cotton princess of the loveliest and haughtiest variety. One of the famous belles of her day. Her father, too, was of the old South."

"Why, what are you talking about?" growled Hewston irascibly. "She hadn't a dime—was a beautiful cloak model or something of that kind."

"She painted dinky things for a living, if you mean that," said Martin carelessly, "lamp-shades and menu cards and such."

"If she only had some friends, even one relative," deplored Mrs. Hewston, "it would look so much—er—nicer, you know. Relatives do add a background." She shook her head regretfully.

"We'll have to be her relatives," said Maud Carmine, a niece of Mrs. Hewston and a plain rather faded young woman of pale and indefinite tints and many angles. Her claim to distinction rested on the fact that she was a drawing-room musician of—strange anomaly—real musical feeling. It was her misfortune always to be explained by those who found her tact, good nature and practical common sense useful, and who drew heavily on them, as, "not attractive looking, you know; but pure gold, and one of the most dependable persons," and this damning tribute of friendship served as an admirable check to further curiosity concerning her. "Yes, we must be her background." Her glance lingered for a moment on Wallace Martin, but he returned it briefly and indifferently.

"A young woman who has just married millions needs no family group," remarked Alice Wilstead lightly. "The most effective background is her husband."

"Gad!" Mr. Hewston put down his knife and fork to glare at her. "The idea of looking at Hepworth as a background. He who has always been in the front of everything. A background! And for a snub-nosed chit of a girl!"

"Oh, Willoughby, dear, not snub-nosed," expostulated his wife mildly.

"Snub-nosed, I said," insisted Willoughby. "Didn't I walk up the aisle with her?"

"Hush, dear, hush," murmured his wife. "Here she comes now."

The bride was leaving. Passing through the handsome, stiff apartments like a white cloud, to make ready for the journey before her, she stopped a moment for a word or two with Maud Carmine as she paused at that table.

Hewston rose reluctantly to his feet. "I once heard of a wedding," he said confidentially and hopefully to Wallace Martin, "where the bride went up to change her gown, and never showed up again."

"Where did she go?" asked Wallace with interest.

"Dunno," returned Willoughby. "Old lover. Fourth dimension. Unexplainable, but fact, I assure you."

CHAPTER II

A FAR WORLD OF DREAMING

The bride had passed through the admiring groups with a smile here, a word there and was already half up the stairway, above the voices, the heavy flower scents, the sentimental melodies which stole from the musicians' bower. On, a white, mystic figure, her veil floating behind her; on, without undue haste, but most eagerly, as if she climbed some mount which led from the world to a desired solitude.

On the first landing she paused, leaning for a moment, Juliet-like as from a balcony, and looked down on the moving mosaic of color beneath, the gay, light tones of the women's gowns thrown into relief by the dark coats of the men. The gazers paid her the tribute of involuntary "Ohs," and barely restrained themselves from applause as if at the appearance of their favorite actress. As usual Perdita had made a picture of herself, an involuntary and unpremeditated picture; but in effect beyond the calculations of the most vigilant stage manager.

She stood with one arm lightly upraised holding her bouquet of white jasmine above her laughing face. Behind her, a stained glass window, before her the marble balustrade. Then the bouquet, its white ribbons waving and circling, whirled through the air, over the sea of upturned faces and white clutching hands and straight into Alice Wilstead's arms.

With the laughter and clamor of voices ringing in her ears, Perdita, hidden from sight now by a turn of the staircase, followed, with unconcealed haste, the crimson velvet pathway which led to solitude.

At the top of the stairs she hesitated briefly, glancing right and left. She had been in the house but twice before, both times under the chaperonage of Mrs. Hewston, and she was not sure of the exact geographical position of her own suite of apartments.

At this moment her maid, engaged from that morning, stepped forward and threw open a door. Perdita smiled approval. It would have been difficult to withhold it. Olga, a paragon of maids, if references and experience count, showed no signs of the wear and tear of previous mistresses. She was delightful in appearance, rosy-cheeked, amiable, immaculate, with that air of trained capability which invites confidence.

Perdita paused before entering. "Are all my traveling things out?" she asked.

"Yes, madame."

"Very well, I shall not need you for a few moments. Remain here and when I want you I will ring."

"Yes, madame."

Perdita drew a breath of relief as the door was closed gently behind her. At last she was alone, away from eyes, eyes that were everywhere. She had felt all morning as if she were encompassed by them, appraising eyes, envious eyes, unfamiliar, inquisitive eyes.

She looked slowly about her. And these were her own apartments, these beautiful, cold, unlived-in rooms, as empty of life or individuality as a shell.

Yesterday she had walked through them with Isabel Hewston, pleased, admiring, but a little overawed. She had not realized before what a wizard's wand Cresswell wielded. He had but waved it and great architects and decorators, their disciplined and cultivated imaginations stimulated by the prospect of unlimited expenditure had devised for her, penniless Perdita Carey, all this beauty and luxury. She had only stipulated timidly that she might be environed in her favorite rose color, a mere suggestion for those who had the matter in charge. It was enough. Her bed chamber bloomed with the pale but vivid flush of pink roses, La France, accentuated with cool, suave, silver notes, like the delicate, contrasted phrasing of a musical theme. The result of color and arrangement was youthful, joyous, spacious. Beyond a softly falling curtain, she caught a glimpse of her sitting-room. American beauty, a radiant spot with delicious water colors on the walls, bowls of roses, the sunshine falling through the windows, and shelves of books, each volume bound in creamy vellum.

In one of the long mirrors which reflected her graceful figure from every angle she saw through an opposite door her dressing-room and bath, with its elaborate appointments, more inviting and luxurious than any of which the proudest Roman beauty could have dreamed. She looked about her with a faint, strange smile. What a contrast were these cold and splendid rooms, not yet animated by her personality, to that little apartment with its two or three tiny chambers, high up under the roof, where she had lived and worked!

Then she turned back to her reflection in the mirror. It was extremely becoming to her, all this background of rose and silver. Perdita realized that as she unfastened the white flowers from her hair and let her long veil fall like a cloud about her. With a deft movement she caught it and tossed it on a chair for Olga to fold later. She slipped out of her wedding-gown next and laid it more carelessly still upon a couch. Then she leaned forward, her elbow on the dressing-table, her chin on her hand, and regarded herself steadily, that faint, strange smile still on her lips.

Well, she had fulfilled her destiny, justified Eugene Gresham's prophecy. She heard his words to her, spoken the last time she had seen him, three months before, as plainly as if his voice still rang in her ears.

"Perdita, your destiny is written on your face. It includes marrying a millionaire and having your portrait painted by me."

Fateful words! She had just married the millionaire, but even here, upon the threshold of this new life, she was constrained to halt a moment and cast one backward glance, "just for the old love's sake."

It was the night before Eugene Gresham sailed for Europe to paint the portraits of "Princessin, Contessin and high Altessin." Again she awaited him. Again she heard his step on the stair without, a quick, light step with an odd halt in it.

He was coming, and her heart beat. How it beat as she stood there breathless beside the window!

"Perdita!" Eugene's voice. He was across the room in a flash, both her hands in his. "Here, let me see you in the light." He drew her toward a lamp. "Two years, two years since we have met, and me wasting time painting in the desert places when I might have been with you. Time is not in the Far East. Ah, my cousin!" (the relationship was remote) he sighed. "Why, as I live," with a quick change of tone, "you've got another dimple, and that makes you a new and lovelier Perdita."

She flushed adorably. "How nice and southern," she cried with an attempt at lightness, "and how exactly like you, just like the old 'Gene."

"The old 'Gene," his eyes still holding hers, "has never changed."

"How—how—are the pictures going?" withdrawing her hands from his.

"Beautifully!" he said carelessly. "The glassy eyes of the millionaires are all turning toward me, and I have more commissions to make beautiful on canvas their pug-nosed, fat-faced wives than I care to accept. Those ladies hail me as a great psychological artist. Their mirrors are so cruel to them that when my brushes flatter them they say that I paint their souls; strip away the husk of the flesh and reveal enduring loveliness."

He struck a match to light a cigarette and then hastily shielded it with his cupped hand from the breeze which blew through the open window. The light flared into his down-bent face, bringing out its dissonances almost grotesquely in that small, momentary flash. Pick Gresham to pieces and he was incontrovertibly convicted of sheer ugliness, but the fact bothered him not at all. He knew that few ever arrived at the cool, dispassionate frame of mind regarding him where they were capable of that exhaustive analysis known as picking to pieces. He was slender and rather small of stature, not more than medium height. One shoulder was noticeably higher than the other and he walked with a slight limp, the result of an injury received in boyhood. Coarse, blue-black hair with a sort of crinkle in it stood out from his head like a cloud. His skin was swarthy, his features irregular, even his eyes, dark eyes, were only occasionally brilliant. But he might have been appreciably uglier, almost as hideous as the Yellow Dwarf or Beauty's Beast,—it would have mattered no more than his present lack of beauty, and well he knew it. His was the magic gift of glamour, and all the dissonances and inharmonies of appearance as well as of character seemed but the italics emphasizing his charm. His mind was supple and flexible, his wits nimble, even subtle. He was as vivid, as veering, as fascinating as flame.

His match, the third he had struck, blew out before it had lighted his cigarette, and he threw it away with a petulant gesture. He did not answer her, as he was again attempting to light his cigarette, this time with success. Then he began to saunter about the room.

In spite of her penury Perdita had yet managed to invest her little workshop with both daintiness and charm. The walls were hung with pink and white chintz and here and there were bits of fragile china and rare old silver on claw-legged mahogany tables, while from dim canvases in tarnished silver frames smiled the sweet, dark eyes of haughty southern beauties of a generation unused to life's struggles.

"You really saved some of the best things from that hideous auction, didn't you?" picking up a bit of china to scrutinize it more carefully. "I was horrified when I heard of it across the world, several months after it was all over. If I'd only been there to buy the whole lot in. Plucky little girl you were, Perdita, to come on here and manage to keep the gaunt, gray wolf at bay."

"What else was there for me to do?" she asked without turning her head. "Aunt died, the place had to go. As for the wolf, if you look sharp, Eugene, you may see his paws thrusting under this door."

In the center of the room was a large table covered with paint brushes, colors, a litter of candle shades, cotillion favors and cards in various stages of completion. Eugene carefully cleared a space on that edge of the table nearest Perdita's chair, and perched upon it, looking down at her with a smile.

"My stars, Dita!" he cried with the truest conviction, "you are a beauty! The moment I return, I mean to paint you again. And this time I'll set the world afire. Do you remember how many portraits I have made of you? Why, just to see you brings back my boyhood,—the hopes, the struggles, the effort, the haunted days, the feverish nights. I used to think, 'If I can just learn how to get this effect, I'll know the whole secret.' I've got past that now. There's always a new and more difficult riddle every day. But Dita, Dita, the dreams of my youth you recall!"

The smile died from her face. Her eyes grew wistful. "The dreams of our youth," she repeated. "I'm young yet; but they haunt me. They were beautiful dreams down there on that gray, old river. Can't you shut your eyes, Eugene, and see the terraces sloping down to the water, the lovely, neglected garden with its tangle of roses and jasmine?"

"Do I remember?" His eyes looked deep into hers. "I swear I never smell jasmine without thinking of the old place and you. Perdita, do you ever think what life might have been for us if it hadn't been for our accursed poverty? If we'd only had just a little between us. It's a question of courage. If we'd only had the courage to face things hand in hand we'd have got along somehow, I dare say. But we didn't have that quality, did we? We didn't believe enough in our dreams. That's the worst of life. She won't let you."

"Oh, the dreams!" she scoffed. Her color remained high, her eyes glittered, but with irritation, not tears. She suffered from an old laceration of the heart, the more wounding in that, for pride's sake, she must ever deny it expression. Eugene always took the attitude as if they together had renounced a mutual love, and often implied, without rancor, but with a forgiving, almost understanding tenderness, that the responsibility of their marred lives lay on her shoulders.

Perdita was of the twentieth century, but she was also a southern woman of many traditions, and she could not say the words which rose to her defensive lips: "Eugene, you have never asked me to face life hand in hand with you." He would with a glance, she could see it, feel it, convict her of blunted intuitions, of an inability to discern exquisite shades of emotion; and then he would express his love for her in glowing, passionate phrases, confusingly evasive, elusive beyond definition, committing himself to nothing.

And if this shifting of responsibility on her, this ardent skirting of a definite issue were premeditated or his unavoidable, temperamental way of viewing the matter, she could not tell. Conjecture was idle. Her knowledge of his character, her ready mental accusations and equally ready excuses, these comprising the sole weight of evidence, merely held the scales steady.

Eugene began to pick up, first one, then another, of the favors on the table, a smile, tender yet humorous, about his lips.

"By Jove, these are not so bad! They are rather stunning. You always did have a lot of feeling for form and color, Dita, but you wouldn't work. You weren't willing to drudge and to starve if necessary. That was because you lacked the clear vision. It wasn't always before you, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night." None might doubt his sincerity or conviction now. It was mounting as flame. "Artistic and appreciative you are, Dita. All this trash shows it, but you lack the creative impulse. You were never meant to be a barefooted, tattered follower of the vision, a lodger in a new palace of dreams each night. You should build your house on the rock of substantial things, bread-and-butter facts.

"Oh, do not toss up your head in that wounded-stag manner. Good Lord! Isn't it enough that you are beautiful? And how beautiful! I'm almost tempted to cancel my passage and, instead of sailing to-morrow morning, stop here and paint you again. Really, I am. But what would it profit me? I'd just be sowing the seed for a new harvest of heartaches. Perdita, your destiny is written on your face." It was as if he willed to speak lightly. "It includes marrying a millionaire, and having your portrait painted by me. You'll never have an international reputation as a beauty until you do both." But in spite of his smile and his flippant words there was bitterness in his eyes.

She did not see that, but the lightness of his words and tone pricked her to an immediate decision, a decision which she had, unconsciously, postponed until she had seen him. Her face paled, her lips folded in a tight line.

"I am going to marry the millionaire," she said firmly enough, although there was a slight tremor in her voice. "It depends on you whether or not there is a portrait of Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth by Gresham." There was triumph in her eyes and voice as thus she lifted her pride from the dust.

"Cresswell Hepworth!" His astonishment was unbounded. "Perdita! I throw my hat at your feet. Cresswell Hepworth! The pick of the bunch. Wonderful! But," looking at her curiously, "how on earth did you meet him?"

"He heard of my amulet through a man I met at old Mrs. Huff's, Mr. Martin. He has a wonderful collection of amulets, and he wanted to buy it of me."

"But you didn't sell it?" he said quickly. "No, of course not. H'm-m. That old amulet. You laugh at my superstitions, Dita, but you must admit that it's queer the way it's interwoven with the history of our family."

He began to roll cigarettes and lay them with neat and exquisite regularity on the table beside him. His eyebrows were raised, his mouth twisted in a sort of rueful yet whimsical grimace. When he had finished rolling the sixth cigarette, he laid it in line with the others, an exact line, his eye was so true. Then at last he looked at her, and his cynical, earnest, mocking, enthusiastic face softened. His eyes enveloped her with tenderness. There was a heart-break in his smile.

"Ah, star-eyed Perdita, how shall I give you up? The only woman!" He mused a moment, and then repeated: "The only woman! If we had but had the courage to take the bitter with the sweet, Perdita."

Unwitting goad! It struck too deep for her to conceal the wound.

"You do not say 'can,' I observe, Eugene," she said laughingly, but there was an edge to her voice like that on finely tempered steel.

"No," he returned, his fingers busy with a rearrangement of the cigarettes; "you see it involves you and me. Not John Jones and Jane Smith, but you and me. Do you know what that means? Well, it means that it involves the inheritance and training of a good many generations. Do you think I do not know how you loathe all this?" He flicked with his fingers the dainty trifles on the table. "I know well the craving of your nature for splendor and beauty, how necessary they are to you, and how dinkiness and makeshifts irritate and depress you, take the heart out of you. That is one you, one Perdita. There is another. I saw her when I came in to-night. God, I wish I hadn't!" His voice dropped on this exclamation and she did not hear it. "She is young. Her beautiful, dark eyes ask love and give it. Her heart dreams of it. It is in every tone of her voice. These two are at war, the natural woman and the woman with her inherited love of ease and luxury and cultivated, artificial desires. Which is the stronger? Why, to-night"—he picked up one of the cigarettes and prepared to light it; his hands trembled, his face was white—"the woman who is ready to love. She would listen to me—to-night. I would hold her. Oh, what's the use?" He twisted his shoulders impatiently. Then he bent forward and tapped the table lightly but emphatically, as if to add weight to his words. "You'd listen to me to-night, I know that; but as sure as to-morrow's dawn I'd get a little note from you saying that the morn had brought wisdom. But, oh, I am glad I'm sailing to-morrow."

"So am I," she flashed out. "You think—you take too much for granted, Eugene."

"I dare say." His voice sounded flat. "No one ever appreciates renunciation. Well, it's out into the night in more senses than one." He rose and looked at her as she sat with downcast eyes, and half stretched out his arms toward her. Then as she too rose, he clasped his fingers about the back of her head and drew her face toward him, although she strove to avert it from him. "Good-by, sweetheart." Even she must believe in the ardor and sincerity of his tones. "Good-by, Perdita of the South." He kissed her lightly on one cheek and then the other. "Good-by, my jasmine flower."

He hesitated a moment in leaving the room, as if to turn and clasp her to him and bear her away; then he shut the door gently behind him and she heard his halting, hurried step upon the stair. She sat listening until its last echoes had died away, and then, casting her outstretched arms on the table, sending the favors and menus and candle-shades in a shower to the floor, she burst into a storm of tears.

There was a low, discreet, respectful knock, Olga's knock on the door leading into Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth's splendid apartments. Perdita started violently and came back to the present from her far world of dreaming. She had not even begun to dress, but still was sitting, chin on hand, gazing with apparent intentness at her image in the mirror.

"It is almost time for Madame to start," Olga smiled from the doorway, "so I ventured to remind."

"Yes," Perdita spoke hurriedly, rising at the same time. "Get me into my gown quickly, please, and tie my shoes."

Olga was deft and practised, and Perdita's dressing was the work of a few minutes.

"My veil now," said the new Mrs. Hepworth, "and—oh, I almost forgot." She turned to lift from her dressing-table an exceedingly quaint and striking ornament, depending from a long, thin chain. It was a square of crystal about an inch and a half in diameter, set curiously in strands of silver and gold, twisted and beaten together, and, as must be apparent to even the casual observer, was of ancient and unique workmanship. This was Perdita's amulet, the old charm, which Eugene with his superstitious fancies had always longed to possess, and which had excited also the desire of the collector in Hepworth; but in spite of many temptations to part with it, Dita had always retained possession of it. It was her one link with the past, a personal link, but also a traditional and hereditary one. She wound the chain several times about her neck, and the crystal pendant gleamed dully against the dark blue cloth of her gown.

"You also are ready, Olga?" she said as she passed through the door.

"Yes, Madame."

Hepworth was waiting for Perdita at the head of the stairs. He was in his heavy motoring coat, his cap in hand.

He smiled as he saw her. "Just in time," he said. "I'm afraid we will have to make haste, rather. Ah," as his eye caught the talisman, "you are wearing the amulet, are you not? Blessed old thing. If it had not been for that, I should never have met you."

"I believe you only married me to get it," she replied with an answering smile, "you are such an insatiable collector."

"Do you believe that? Do you?" he asked. "Because if you do, you are as stupid as you are pretty, and you have no idea what that implies."

CHAPTER III

PINK AND WHITE EXISTENCE

So Mr. and Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth whirled away in the big motor and for the next few months wandered about the globe. Perdita, who had seen nothing but an old southern plantation and New York, the latter from the curb, as it were, must see everything; so in pursuit of this aim, the Hepworths were constantly stepping from huge, magnificent boats to huge, magnificent motors, thence to huge, magnificent hotels. And cities, the open country, villages, mountain peaks, strange peoples, were as debris strewing the pathway of Perdita's avid flight through new experiences. It was tremendously stimulating, even heady, she found, to hold the world between one's thumb and finger, and turn it this way and that to catch the light. Headier still to discover that to wish is to realize, but proportionately a shock to find that the life of infinite variety may only be lived within circumscribed boundaries. What is more disillusionizing than to learn that money has its limitations? It can merely buy the very best of things, the superlatives of the commonplace, but these, in the last analysis, remain food, lodgings, clothes, conveyances, ornaments, no more. Money can not buy stars or dreams, or love or happiness.

Perdita's soaring youth resented it. But she was adaptable, enormously interested and the ground within the boundaries was new, affording daily opportunities for fresh exploration. And she, quick to observe and compare, had profited by her new experiences. Money became to her merely the medium of exchange for any beautiful thing she might want. Speedily she lost her first, fresh pleasure in making it flutter its little golden wings and fly; but her love of art deepened and strengthened, and at many famous shrines she offered her heart's homage. She took up the study of designing, and worked at it systematically with an ardor and intensity which at first amused and then puzzled her husband.

On their return from their travels Perdita occupied herself in altering, refurnishing and redecorating one or two of Hepworth's country places and his town house. She worked in consultation with a great firm, and succeeded in changing the weary acquiescence of "our Mr. So and So" to interest and an astonishment bordering on enthusiasm. She was not the average rich woman who had gone in for being artistic, with a head full of glaringly impossible ideas and a flow of helpful suggestions which set the professional teeth on edge.

On the contrary, this girl, Mrs. Hepworth, really knew a few things and was willing to learn more. She was a student. "The only woman," murmured dazedly "our Mr. Smith-Jones," "the only woman I ever met who realizes that decoration must conform to architecture, not defy it. You usually have to fracture their skulls to make them understand that pompadour prettinesses are not suitable in a Gothic chapel."

But when she had finished the houses, and designed more costumes than she could wear, she looked about her for fresh worlds to conquer, and discovered that she was up against the boundaries. Walls everywhere! She could do anything she chose, travel, buy clothes, motors, an aëroplane if she wanted it, only she did not. She next went through a phase when she decided that the people with whom she was thrown were intolerable, representing a frivolous and empty-headed society. Her imagination dwelt on the class who "did things," "the dreamers," she called them to herself, who adorned a brilliant, picturesque, delightfully haphazard Bohemia, where, at feasts, principally of red wine and bloomy, purple grapes, laughter pealed to the rafters, and the conversation sparkled as if sprinkled with stardust. She strove to enter this Olympian vagabondia, and found herself entangled in the nets of many fowlers, sycophantic, impecunious, and, unsated of their many banquets, physically hungry.

She began to have seasons of ennui and depression, increasing in frequency. What was the matter with her world? Nothing, she would hasten to assure herself, it was the best of all possible worlds, and she, a darling of fortune—once, unforgetably, the waif of chance—was the most contented of women. Only—what was the matter with this perversely empty and uninteresting world?

It was not always so. It was once invested with wonderful things, and such simple things, too. She remembered how she used to stand at the window of her little work-room watching the day fade, marveling at the miracle of the twilight. While the sun was high, she had seen only commonplace, dusty streets, crowded with people, and had heard only a crazy, creaking old piano-organ grinding away on the pavement beneath, but in the soft indefiniteness of twilight these solid houses and buildings would become unsubstantial, mere shadowy arabesques on the spangled gloom of night. There were purple vistas, glittering lights and fairy towers. She would hold her breath, almost expecting to hear a nightingale. It was all mystery and magic, life and romance, that eternal romance her starved youth asked. How she used to dream of the unexpected, the dazzling unexpected!

And then Cresswell had come, and, as she thought, offered it to her. To do Perdita justice, she had not married Hepworth merely because of his great wealth. She was incapable of such sordid and callous calculation. But Cophetua had met this beggar maid at her most disheartened and despairing moment, and without difficulty had succeeded in first winning her interest and then enchaining her imagination.

In her two years of struggle to earn her livelihood Eugene had become more or less a memory, and, in spite of the fascination and interest he had always had for her, she did not blind herself to certain erratic tendencies of his. He might appear at any moment, so she judged him, with vows of eternal love, and straightway, if the mood seized him, begin a new picture and forget her. And so she married Hepworth largely that life might become a successive series of introductions to an ever varying unexpected. Instead, although her quest was feverish, she encountered only the commonplace. She was like a mouse which has discovered the inadequacy of cheese to quench its soul-yearnings. What remained?

The truth of the matter was that Perdita's world, which seemed so hopelessly askew to her, had an architectural defect. It lacked that sure antidote to ennui—a Bluebeard's closet.

Now Perdita was young and healthy. She had great curiosity, and a certain insatiable mental quality which would have successfully riveted her interest to life, but for one fact, her heart was as ardent and insatiable as her intelligence—and her husband bored her. There is no record of Bluebeard boring any of his wives.

She became more and more conscious of a continual little plaint running always through her consciousness, like the sad, monotonous murmur of an ever-flowing stream, a little unceasing plaint against life in the abstract and life in its personal application.

"There must be as many worlds as there are points of view," so ran the stream, "but my life's like a wedding-cake, all white and sparkling and overdecorated, and absolutely insipid. Candy! That's what it is ... my rooms are all pink and white, and I'm crusted over with pink sugar." Perdita always thought in color. "I'm tired of all this pink and white and baby-blue existence. I'd welcome a little scarlet and black sin for a change. Oh, it's just your corsets over again. You're put in them when you're about fifteen and you never get out of them again. We women think in corsets, breathe in them. We live in them mentally, and accept all their constrictions and restrictions as a matter of course. We take in drafts of air, and expand our lungs and say we're emancipated, but we only expand as much as the corsets allow. We've put our world in corsets, to confine us still more ... mine used to be mended, frequently washed, with some of the bones broken; now I have many pairs, brocade, satin—cloth of gold, if I want them—but they are the same thing, corsets, corsets on our bodies and brains and lives.

"Look at Cresswell. He doesn't wear corsets. He has an interesting, absorbing, unfettered life. He's using the muscles of his brain—strengthening them on some resisting substance. He's in the thick of it.... What fun! Planning, visioning things in his mind, and seeing them take form in the external. He's a builder. He wears an imperturbable mask. That's for defense; but behind it I sometimes see keen, powerful, calculating gleams in his eyes, and I want to know about them, but I can't.... I can't talk to him about any but surface things. I can't show him what is in my heart.... The corsets are between us. He's one of the great powers, and he's mine, a possession like the Kohinoor, but I do not fancy that the Kohinoor constitutes the queen's happiness.

"What are Cresswell and I to each other, anyway? Why, he's my Kohinoor, a possession of great price which endows me with distinction, and runs my credit up into the millions. He's as brilliant and cold and secretive as his prototype. And I—I'm his doll, a very jewel of a doll. One of the prettiest in the world, wonderfully dressed, exquisitely marceled, faultlessly manicured. I can smile enchantingly, and open and shut my mouth to ask for what I want and what I don't want, particularly the latter, and lisp 'thank you' when he drops a diamond necklace or a ruby tiara into my lap.

"I hate a man that puts me on a pedestal. Any woman does. He thinks I'm sugar and salt and will melt and break. I wish he'd come to me, just once, with some enthusiasm and hug me breathless. I'm tired of his everlasting chivalry and deference.... When he begins to treat me with reverence and guards my youth and all that, I'd like to swear at him like the disreputable parrot of a drunken sailor.... Wouldn't I surprise him? I wonder what he would do if I'd cut loose? Oh, dear, I wish he'd come home drunk some night and smash up some of this junk and—what is that phrase of Wallace Martin's—swipe me one; and then be penitent and remorseful and ashamed and human—instead of always being like a darned old statue of the American statesman with one hand thrust in the bosom of his frock-coat.

"I wonder—I wonder—what kind of a husband Eugene would have made. Not one of the amiable, benign, deferential ones, anyway. What were those lines 'Gene used to say?

"'Each life's unfulfilled, you see,
And both hang patchy and scrappy.
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired, been happy!'

"That's it—that's it—that's life. To sigh deep—to laugh free; to make your bed in hell, and then soar on the wings of the morning.... I'm young, beautiful. I have everything but experience. I mean to have it.... No wonder Eve took the apple the serpent offered, if she was as bored in the Garden of Eden as I am. I'd have bitten more than one, though. What is the use of living if you don't live?"

And while Perdita raged in inward rebellion, the world, viewing things from the outside, took an entirely different view of her matter.

Popular opinion inclined to the belief that the good fairies had too heavily dowered this young woman at her cradle, and consequently a readjustment was inevitable, probably by the gracious means of ennobling tribulation. The dramatic event was rather eagerly anticipated. Not that envy had any part in it or that any of Perdita's friends or acquaintances wished to see a fellow being punished for the liberality of Providence. On the contrary. It was merely a sane desire to mark the balances of the universe in faultless equilibrium and to have the comforting assurance that the mills of the gods still ground with the proverbial exactness.

Youth, health, wealth, beauty, happiness, all unlimited! An exasperating spectacle! How could all be right with the world as long as Hebe continued to pour most of the nectar into one glass, while so many thirsty, deserving souls were denied even a sip?

And Perdita went her way and smiled alike on those who caviled and those who applauded. She had accepted her husband's friends as her own with a sort of careless, indifferent good nature and the relations existing between herself and the closely cemented little group were sufficiently harmonious under the circumstances. Maud Carmine and she had struck "leagues of friendship" at once, and Maud's prediction that Hepworth's friends would have to serve as Perdita's relatives would seem to have been verified.

And Maud, through constant association, appeared to have reflected some of Dita's beauty, for there was evidenced the most remarkable change in the plain Miss Carmine, her name no longer prefaced by that deplorable adjective, however. Alice Wilstead explained it by frankly giving the credit to Perdita. It was she, Alice asserted, who had had the faith and the courage to take Maud vigorously in hand and make of her a new creature as far as the outward presentment was concerned. The results had been so mutually satisfactory as to rivet the friendship between the two; for Dita had proved by her works her belief that there was not the faintest necessity for any such creature as an unattractive woman; and Maud, having lost all faith in the willingness of nature to better her original handiwork, had turned hopefully to art, with the result that she was now one of the most talked-of women in town. By men, because she had recently grown attractive enough for them to discover that she was also extremely agreeable and sympathetic. By women, because they ached to discover her secret. They remembered as easily as the men forgot that for twenty-eight years of her life Maud had been as a weed by the wall, a lank and sallow weed, oppressed by the sparseness of her leaves and the entire absence of either flowers or fruit, and suddenly she had acquired an art, an air, the trick of dress so subtle that it imparted distinction even to her worst points.

But when Perdita proceeded to verify, a little tardily, it is true, the hope of Mrs. Willoughby Hewston, sighingly expressed at the wedding breakfast, and furnished herself with a relative, the coterie gasped. It was not perhaps just the selection Mrs. Hewston would have made for her, but, nevertheless, Perdita had produced a relative, although, it must be confessed, of a rather dubious and indefinite nearness.

If Mrs. Hewston had been questioned on the subject she might have confessed that the relative she had in mind, as presenting an admirable background for a young and lovely girl, was either a silver-haired mother with a white lace cap, and a hair brooch fastening the snowy lawn collar of her black gown; or, in lieu of her, a maiden aunt. Indeed, had Mrs. Hewston been given free choice, she would have inclined toward the latter. Unquestionably, a maiden aunt is the best possible promoter of that nice sense of the proprieties, those right feelings and carefully graduated moral sentiments which are indispensable to a homeless, penniless young woman scrambling for a living. But Perdita, in presenting her relative, had almost flippantly disregarded these considerations involving a sense of universal fitness. It was a far cry, really an almost revolutionary distance, one felt, from the silver-haired mother or rather acid maiden aunt to Eugene Gresham. Eugene Gresham! Fancy!

For Eugene had returned to his native land with the recognition of Paris and London, even their acclaim—golden bay leaves and purple cloaks. Therefore was he thrice welcomed of New York. Therefore, the next presumption followed as naturally as the first. It was out of the question that Mrs. Hepworth, whose beauty was a matter of international comment, should lack a Gresham portrait, a distinction now unattainable save to those upon the mountain peaks of noble birth, enormous wealth, great achievement, remarkable beauty or superlative notoriety.

As Alice Wilstead pointed out, no one could cavil at any relative Mrs. Hepworth chose to set up, however regretable might be Perdita Carey's claim of kinship with this particular person, and she had certainly, as far as one knew, been discreet enough not to flaunt him during her scrambles. Now, as Mrs. Hepworth's cousin (how many times removed, dear?) he was one more jewel in her crown.

Mrs. Hewston sighingly acquiesced. "Yes, really. As Mrs. Hepworth's relative, yes. But hardly as the guide, philosopher and friend of youth, feminine youth, anyway." Only the happily married might safely claim him, for Gresham, with his fame as a painter of beautiful women and his almost equal reputation as a fascinating person, would not have been commended by any maiden aunt for either right feelings, nice moral sentiments or a discriminating taste for the proprieties.

As for Cresswell Hepworth, he looked after his vast and varied interests, kept up his collections, especially his collection of amulets, in which he was greatly interested, and occupied his leisure in seeing that his wife was sufficiently entertained and amused to gratify the requirements even of her eager youth.

Did she hint a longing for the Roc's egg? It was cabled for within the hour. Did she breathe a desire for the moon? Orders were given that an aëronautic expedition capable of securing it be manned at once.

And yet in spite of all this obvious contentment and happiness, Mr. Willoughby Hewston in the rôle of raven had never ceased to flap his wings and croak. He was particularly in this favorite vein of his one afternoon when he shuffled into his wife's sitting-room, where she and Alice Wilstead sat over their tea-cups. They heard him sighing heavily as he came.

"No, I don't want any tea," he said, letting himself down slowly into an easy chair, "you know I never touch it.

"Poor old Cress!" He shook his head gloomily at a spot in the carpet. "Well, it's just as I predicted. That wife of his is the talk of the town!"

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed his wife. She, loyal soul, never failed him as audience. A quick glance passed between Mrs. Wilstead and herself, as if he had mentioned the subject uppermost in their minds, and, no doubt, in their conversation.

"Oh, come now, Willoughby," said Alice, instinctively choosing the best method of drawing him out, "you know it's nothing like so bad as that."

Hewston scowled heavily and laid one hand gingerly upon his rheumatic knee, which gave him an especially sharp twinge at the moment. "It's probably worse," he replied with even more than his customary acerbity, "worse than we, any of us, know. Didn't I see them walking up Fifth Avenue together this afternoon, and didn't a fellow speak of it to me? And Cress out of town!"

"Well, let me tell something, dear," said his wife soothingly. "Cress will very soon be in town again, for here are invitations to a dinner the Hepworths are having next week. Quite an informal affair. Perdita writes me, 'Just the little group of Cresswell's best friends, which I hope I may also claim as mine,'" reading from the note she had picked up from the table. "Very sweet of her."

"A dinner, eh," growled Hewston, "with all of us, and I suppose that painter fellow. Well, I only hope it will not fall to me to open poor Cresswell's eyes."

"Oh, Willoughby!"

"I'll not shirk my duty if it does. You can understand that. What evening is this dinner? Next Thursday! Humph! Who is that?" as the curtain before the door was pushed aside and some one entered.

"I!" said Wallace Martin, "only poor little me. They told me to come up. What's happening next Thursday?"

"The Hepworths' dinner. There is probably an invitation awaiting you at home."

"No, there is not," he said. "It's in my pocket now. I picked it up as I was leaving. From what Maud Carmine has just told me, I imagine it's a touching family group composed of ourselves and Eugene Gresham."

"Dear me," deplored Mrs. Hewston, "I do wish she would consider Willoughby more. She must know that he can not endure the sight of Mr. Gresham."

"It is not her fault," said Martin quickly, "as far as I can make out from what Maud told me. Cress became imbued with the idea that he wanted his dear old friends clustering about the board, and made out the list himself."

"How like a man!" remarked Alice Wilstead gloomily. "But why, just now?"

"Oh, he's been adding to that pet collection of amulets of his, and he wanted to show us his new acquisitions. That's the root of it, I fancy. I don't imagine the lovely Perdita pined for us. She has been a creature of moods lately. Very hotty-like with me."

"She was actually almost impertinent to Willoughby the other day." Mrs. Hewston spoke with a hushed mournfulness. "I'm afraid all this luxury and adulation has turned her head, and Willoughby spoke so gently to her, too, did you not, dear?"

"Ugh! Humph!" quoth Willoughby.

CHAPTER IV

OUR LOVING FRIENDS

AS it chanced the Hepworths were not particularly fortunate in their choice of an evening for the dinner so gloomily anticipated by their guests. The weather was unpropitious. All day rain had threatened, and the air had been almost sultry, a parting word flung over her shoulder to autumn by a mischievous July who should long ago have vanished. As the evening wore on clouds banked more densely upon the horizon, occasionally muttering thunder, and this electric hint of storm in the air had in some way communicated itself to the mental atmosphere. A sense of foreboding, a consciousness of discord, seemed to swell ominously now and again beneath the smooth and colorful surface of the dinner. Even the dullest of the guests felt that, and to the intuitive, the stately progress of the meal was nerve-racking.

When the hostess rose, every individual sigh of relief involuntarily exhaled became a chorus, shocking in volume.

They winced nervously, but in spite of it, each guest stood by his guns. They had, apparently with one mind, and certainly with one voice, decided against bridge. The ordeal of dinner bravely borne, licensed them, they felt, even bestowed the accolade of privilege on them, to escape the prevalent atmosphere of unrest as quickly as possible.

In the brief time they had allotted themselves to remain, barely skirting the limits of conventional decency, Alice Wilstead, Isabel and Willoughby Hewston and Wallace Martin had elected to take their coffee and cigarettes on a small balcony opening from the drawing-room by long French windows and giving upon a garden, quite half of a city block, with thick, close-cropped lawn, and black masses of dense shrubbery permeating the damp and sultry air with the mingled fragrance of earth and leaves and some late-blooming flowers. Maud Carmine, good-natured as usual, had seated herself at the piano, across the length of the room from the balcony, to play a ballad of Chaminade's at her host's request.

Hepworth, who alone appeared to be oblivious of the sinister atmospheric influences, leaned his elbows on the piano and listened, occasionally unhesitatingly breaking the flow of the music with conversation.

With their friend and host thus comfortably within sight, yet out of earshot, the group on the balcony felt at liberty to speak with freedom; no danger of sudden appearances, consequent jumps and hot wonder at what might have been overheard.

"Gad!" said Mr. Hewston, more gray and pink, puffy and heavily financial than ever, "when will people learn to eat and drink without flowers on the table?"

"No flowers!" repeated Alice Wilstead. "It would look dull, would it not?" From her tone it was evident that she had paid little heed to his words.

"What difference does that make?" he argued irritably. "You don't go to dinner to look at the table decorations. But if they must have 'em, why can't they have the artificial kind or those paper things. Anything but the beastly, smelly, live ones."

"Don't you really care for them?" she asked, laughing. "I thought every one loved flowers. To tell the truth, they were about all that made that unending dinner bearable to me. They were so exquisitely arranged."

"Oh, that," in grudging admission, "goes without saying in this house, but," fretfully, "they were all the loud smelling kind."

"She always arranges them herself," said Mrs. Wilstead, "she has wonderful taste, wonderful. Her house, her clothes, even down to the smallest detail of the table. Marvelous!"

"Humph! she doesn't show the same taste in men," grunted Hewston. "No brains at all."

Mrs. Wilstead leaned forward to tap his arm with her fan.

"Do not make any mistake on that score," her voice was emphatic, "she has plenty of brains."

"Humph!" more scornfully than before. "Then I wish they'd keep her from making the fool of herself that she is doing now."

"Hs-s-sh," Alice looked as if she would like to thrust a handkerchief into his mouth. "Ah!" glancing up with relief as Isabel and Wallace Martin turned from their contemplation of the garden over the balcony railing. "Sit down here," she motioned to two chairs beside her.

"Dear me, Alice," said Martin, "isn't your face tired with the effort of keeping the corners of your mouth turned up and the sparkle in your eyes? The only person who seems calm and serene this evening is dear old Hepworth. What do you think it is on his part, the quintessence of pose or simple, uncomprehending, fatuous ignorance?"

"My God!" growled Hewston explosively. His wife started nervously.

"Oh Willoughby dear, not so loud! Wallace," in what was as near a tone of reproof as she could achieve, "I do wish you wouldn't say those reckless things before Willoughby. You know how emotional he is."

Alice also shook her head impatiently. "Don't you think we are a lot of old gossips magnifying matters enormously? You may expect so beautiful a young woman as Dita Hepworth to be more or less talked about; but there is probably a perfect understanding between herself and Cress. Lord help her if there isn't," she added almost under her breath, "I've known him many a year."

"'When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect?'" quoted Martin impressively. As a would-be playwright he had the dramatists at his finger-tips.

"Wallace, you are too bad," expostulated Mrs. Wilstead. "No wonder you quote from The School for Scandal. Here we are a lot of old wreckers doing our best to shatter a reputation. Why Dita Hepworth and Eugene Gresham have known each other ever since they were children. Naturally, she shows her pleasure in his society."

"Oh pish!" scoffed Wallace Martin, "those unconcealed glances she bestowed on him at dinner spoke not of sisterly affection, and how we all squirmed under them and wondered miserably if Hepworth was seeing them too."

"He always did see everything without appearing to," murmured Mrs. Wilstead gloomily.

"Now merely as a sporting chance, which would you bet on," said Martin, drawing his chair a bit nearer, "the rich, middle-aged husband, or the fascinating artist, the painter of beautiful women, in the zenith of his fame? It is the same old plot you know, and the oft-told tale may have just two endings. First, she goes off with the artist, lives a squalid and miserable life abroad, falls ill, and dies, holding the hand and imploring the forgiveness of her husband, who conveniently and miraculously appears. In the second ending, she makes all preparations to flee and then something occurs which causes her to see the sculpturesque nobility of her husband's character and the curtain descends to slow sweet music while they stand heart to heart in the calcium light of a grand reconciliation scene."

"Oh, Wallace, do forget for once that you are trying to be a playwright. Forget the shop." Mrs. Wilstead was irritable. "I do wish she would join us," looking about her nervously, "I want to go home. Is she utterly careless?"

"Only absorbed," returned Martin calmly. "Didn't you hear her ask him before they left the room, to come and look at the picture gallery where he is to paint her portrait? She wanted him to judge of the lighting—a night like this. I thought I saw the flutter of her white gown in the garden yonder a bit ago."

"Oh do, for goodness sake, change the subject," said Alice Wilstead hurriedly. "I am sure Cresswell must think it queer the way we are all sitting out here with our heads together, in the teeth of that approaching storm."

"Not at all," Martin reassured her. "Don't you see that Maud is doing her duty heroically? Maud isn't the wife's confidante and dearest friend for nothing."

"Isn't it perfectly wonderful about Maud?" commented Mrs. Hewston. "You all know what a plain, angular creature she was, nothing really to recommend her but her music and she always spoiled that by playing with her shoulder blades."

"She's an extremely stunning woman," said Wallace Martin shortly.

"And all due to Dita Hepworth," announced Mrs. Wilstead. "Wonderful! I never saw a woman with such a genius for dress and decoration. If her beauty wasn't such an obvious quality, I should think it was due to her almost uncanny knowledge of what is becoming and—Ah, thank Heaven, here she is!"

CHAPTER V

PERDITA'S TALISMAN

Perdita Hepworth had entered the room, with Eugene Gresham just a step or two behind her, and, after a glance in the direction of Maud Carmine and her husband, had moved toward the little group on the balcony. Gresham was used to any amount of attention and admiration, but the adulatory interest which he may have merited and had, in fact, grown to regard as his due, was always conspicuously lacking when he appeared with Perdita.

"The picture gallery is the chosen spot," she announced as if bearing some intelligence for which they had long been waiting, "and the sittings are to be begun at once. I remember when I first knew Maud Carmine, she said to me, 'Fancy what it must be like to have your portrait painted by Eugene Gresham!'" Her low laughter rang with a sort of triumphant amusement. "'Dear child,' I answered, 'I have had my portrait painted by him so many times that there would be no novelty whatever in the experience.' You know," to Mrs. Hewston, who looked faintly puzzled, "'Gene and I have always known each other." She looked over at Gresham who was seated on the arm of a chair talking to Maud Carmine and Hepworth. "Has Maud been playing for Cresswell?" she asked suddenly. "He is so fond of her music."

"Yes, she has been playing delightfully," answered Mrs. Wilstead, "and she looks charming to-night. Maud who was always regarded as an ugly duckling has suddenly become a swan."

"Ah, why not?" said Perdita carelessly. "Maud hadn't the faintest idea how to make the most of herself. She gave the effect of hard lines and angles, and hair and eyes and skin all cut from the same piece, a dingy dust color. Like every other woman of that type she has a perfect passion for mustard colors and hard grays. Ugh!" she shivered. "The only thing to do with Maud was to make her realize that she must look odd and mysterious, you know. That was all. Oh, she is beckoning to me. They want something."

She crossed the room with that grace of bearing which nature had bestowed upon her and with the added poise and assurance gained within the last two years. She still gave the effect of extreme simplicity in dress but it was retained as by a miracle, for although she wore no jewels her white gown was of the most exquisite and costly lace. But her head was undeniably carried a trifle higher than usual, and a very close observer might have read boredom in her eyes, defiance in her chin, rebellion in her shoulders. As she turned from the little group on the balcony, she bit her lip irritably, before she again composed her features to the conventional smile of hostess-like cordiality.

Alice Wilstead followed her with puzzled eyes.

"It is very difficult to understand a beauty," she said plaintively to Martin.

"Put it more correctly," as he blew a cloud of smoke. "Say, it's difficult to understand a woman."

"But I do not find it so," she smiled. "I'm one myself. I'm on to all our various vagaries, but Dita Hepworth puzzles me. Look at this house. There are effects here in decoration, so beautiful and unusual that every one says Eugene Gresham directed them. I know he did not. Look at Maud Carmine, and yet Dita herself usually wears the plainest of gowns."

"I must confess," said Martin, "that I do not follow you."

"Perhaps not," she mused, then with more animation. "Come, Wallace, tell me exactly how she impresses you."

"That is easy," he replied. "She is one of the prettiest women I ever saw in my life."

"Ah, of course," in annoyance, "but I didn't mean that. That is no impression of character."

"Mm," he pondered. "It isn't much of one, no."

Alice leaned back in her chair. "I seem to discern depths in her that the rest of you refuse to see. You stop at her beauty and are content with never a peep beneath the surface."

Martin tossed his cigarette over the railing into the garden. "Frankly, I think that you are searching for something that isn't there," he said abruptly. "The gods never bestow all their gifts on one person. Since you profess to know your own self so well you should realize that women so very pretty as Mrs. Hepworth are rarely clever. Why should they be? It is enough of an excuse for existence that they are beautiful."

"It is indeed," growled Hewston, who had been absorbed in sulky meditation for some time. "I'd be contented if I thought she had enough head on her shoulders to keep straight and not involve good old Hepworth in God knows what."

Wallace laughed. "I'll lay you a wager, Mrs. Wilstead," he whispered, tapping her fan with his finger-tips, "that the way things are going now there will be a split in the Hepworth household within three months."

"Do not say it," she cried quickly. "I can not bear to think of such a thing."

"I'll give you heavy odds, too," he went on cynically, leaning forward to regard the group at the piano. "I'll make it a bracelet against a box of cigars, provided I'm allowed to choose the brand of cigars."

"You might as well put in another provision then," she retorted, "provided I am allowed to choose the bracelet. My taste in ornaments, dear Wallace, is both unique and expensive. I like only odd jewelry."

"Odd jewelry! That is an old fad of yours, Alice," said Hepworth's voice behind her.

She started slightly, she had not noticed his approach. "And your own," she smiled up at him. "Have you secured any new amulets lately, Cresswell?"

"Yes, one. It is a beauty, a scarab. I must show it to you; also another, a carved bloodstone set in very curiously wrought iron. I got that from a Gipsy woman. It is an old Romany talisman."

"Do let us see them," pleaded Mrs. Hewston.

"Certainly, I shall be delighted to. Excuse me a few moments. I will get the box myself. Naturally I would not trust it to the servants." He smiled at his weakness.

"Naturally," said Hewston. "Come, let us all get into the drawing-room to look at them. It is beginning to rain anyway."

It was only a few moments before Hepworth returned bearing a large, black leather box. He placed it on a table just under the light and then choosing a key from a ring, fitted it into the lock.

"I hold one key," he said to the group pressing about him as he lifted the lid, "and Perdita the other. That is in case she may want to wear any of these trinkets."

Alice Wilstead had been looking at Mrs. Hepworth at the moment her husband entered the room and she alone had noticed that Dita started violently when her eyes had fallen on the box and that all the rich color had fled her cheek, leaving her, for a second or two, white as a ghost.

The box held a series of trays, each padded and velvet lined and upon these were fastened Cresswell Hepworth's noted collection of amulets. Most of these talismans were very ancient, many of them revealed the most beautiful workmanship. All of them were distinctive. Each one, almost without exception, had a history, strange, romantic or sinister, and these were all duly catalogued, but it was never necessary for Hepworth to refer to this written history. He had not only the symbolic significance of his favorite toys, but also the vicissitudes through which they had passed, at his finger ends.

The top trays held scarabs, one of the most remarkable collections of them extant, commemorating certain mighty and fallen dynasties; or this reign or that of remote Egyptian rulers long crumbled to dust, and Hepworth lifted them lovingly from their trays and turning them deftly in his fingers explained their histories and expatiated on their beauty.

Beneath the scarabs lay the jade talismans exquisitely carved and handed down from distant centuries. The hearts that had once beat beneath them had long been dust, but the talismans, with no stain of time upon them to dim their luster, would still serve as emblems of good luck to future generations. Then there were quaint amber charms preserving the warmth and flooding radiance of the sunlight that sparkles on sea foam in their depths, and opals delicately clouded with mystery, their "hearts of fire bedreamed in haze," carbuncles, jasper and hyacinth, all in their time the almost priceless possessions of their owners because of the mystic significance attaching to them. And then there were trays containing a somewhat heterogeneous collection of old pieces of beaten silver and iron with odd characters on them, representing periods of even greater antiquity than scarab or jade.

These amulets were in many instances the memorials of bitter feuds and hot duels, fought on the moment, at the gleam of a talisman which both contestants claimed. More than one had been hastily rifled from the dead, and more than one had been bestowed by a great lady on an untitled lover of empty purse to aid him in winning fame and fortune.

"By the way, Alice," said Hepworth suddenly, "you have seen Dita's amulet, have you not? It is almost, if not quite the gem of the collection."

"No, I have never seen it," Mrs. Wilstead's whole piquant face was alive with interest. "But I have heard of it. It was through it that you met, was it not?"

Dita nodded. The color had come back to her face. "It was that old talisman he was really interested in," she said. "I always tell him he married me to get it."

Hepworth laughed. "It is well worth any one's interest. It has been in her family for generations, and there are all sorts of legends and traditions connected with it. It is said to give his heart's desire to whomever possesses it, isn't it, Dita?"

"More than that," she replied, a little strangely, or at least so it seemed to Alice Wilstead. "He to whom it is given—and it can not be bought or bartered, it must always be bestowed—must sooner or later reveal himself in his true character, either his baseness or his nobility."

"Fascinating!" cried the women in chorus. "What is it like?"

"It is a square of crystal set in silver and gold. About the silver is twined one of those old Celtic chains which can only be seen with a microscope, where the links are so tiny that we have no instruments delicate enough to fasten them together and which were believed to have been made by the fairies. And now for a sight of it."

He was about to lift the next tray, when Dita laid a detaining hand on his arm. "It isn't there, Cresswell," she said in a quick, low voice.

As if he had not heard her or had not taken in the full import of her words, he laid the tray carefully upon the table, disclosing the one beneath. Like the others, it too was full of curious amulets, but one space was empty. Perdita's talisman was indeed missing.

"Why, Dita!" he exclaimed. "You did not mention to me—"

She shot a quick, unmistakable glance at Gresham. "Didn't I?" she interrupted before he could go further. "It's being mended."

"Ah, those antique bits, they are always coming to pieces, at least I know mine are," said Mrs. Wilstead with hasty fluency. "But, Cresswell, there is still another tray, and I must see its contents before I go home."

"Make it a month," said Martin in her ear. "I said three, didn't I?"

CHAPTER VI

SIROCCO

"Good night, Hewston, good night, Alice. Don't go yet, Gresham." Hepworth laid a detaining hand on the artist's arm. "Sit down and smoke. We haven't had a moment to discuss this portrait matter yet."

"I think," said Dita, moving toward the door, "that I shall leave you two to discuss it and go to bed."

"Oh, my dear," her husband detained her with the same light touch with which he had held Gresham. He pushed an easy chair forward so that she should be seated between Eugene and himself. "We are going to get all the details of the portrait settled to-night. A portrait of you and painted by Gresham is sure to bloom and be admired for a century or two at any rate."

Dita looked at him quickly as if suspecting him of some intention beyond the discussion of the contemplated portrait, but meeting the smiling blankness of his expression, turned away, not in the least reassured, but more puzzled than ever, and sinking listlessly into the chair sat staring moodily before her with veiled eyes and compressed lips.

Eugene glanced at her uneasily, a frown between his brows. He knew her like a book. She had always, always from childhood, been a creature of moods. He was perfectly familiar with the various stages of the sirocco, as he had long ago named her outbursts. She would become restless, abstracted, absent, and then she would sit and brood as she was doing now, until finally the sullen and threatening atmosphere would be cleared by a burst of storm, a swift cyclone of anger.

Gresham gave the faintest of sighs and an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. This was a situation which he foresaw would require all his tact and ingenuity.

"Is the picture gallery all right? Did you find it satisfactory?" asked Hepworth.

"Excellent!" Eugene's brow cleared. He spoke with enthusiasm. "Yes, I told Perdita that the lighting there will be perfect. I've about decided to paint her in white. Yes," scrutinizing the indifferent object of the discussion narrowly and yet remotely, as if he were visualizing his finished portrait of her, "white velvet, I think, and rather a blare of jewels. You see I want to bring out the dominating quality of her beauty, harp on it, you know, so I want to present her eclipsing and reducing to their proper places all the splendid accessories with which we can surround her."

Her husband nodded approvingly. "What do you think, Dita?"

"Oh, by all means," she roused herself to answer, but making no effort to conceal the irony of her tones. "Let Eugene give me all the distinction and grace he is noted for bestowing on, you observe I do not say perceiving in, his clients, or patients, or patrons, whatever he may call them. Make the stones of my tiara and necklace even bigger and whiter and more sparkling than they are, Eugene. Or better still, I'll wear my diamond collar and my string of rubies and my rope of sapphires, all shouting hurrah at once, three cheers for the red, white and blue! Make me all glittery, Eugene, throw my sables over my shoulders."

"By Jove!" cried Gresham, interrupting her, a white flash of enthusiasm across his face, "you may not dream it, Dita, but that's it exactly. You've hit it."

"Yes," she went on satirically, "and present me in the middle of all this splendor, overcome by the 'burden of an honor into which I was not born.'"

"But you were born to it," interposed her husband quickly, "no one more so."

"Perhaps," she sighed a little, her eyes and voice grew softer, "but at a time when the outward manifestation had vanished."

The glow had lingered, even become intensified in Gresham's face. "By Jove!" he cried again, "you were trying to be sarcastic and all that, Dita, but it was a great idea of yours just the same. I will paint your portrait and it shall be hung side by side with my working girl. They shall be companions of contrast. You see," explaining his idea to Hepworth, "I am going to paint my working girl in the city streets just at twilight on a winter evening, hastening home after the day's long toil. The lights and colors of the shop windows dance and glitter about her, blurred by the falling snow. Everything, lights, buildings, passers-by, are all in that blurred, indistinct atmosphere, and she, herself, is a part of the blur, looking through it, with her young, worn face and wistful eyes, craving the beauty and the joy of life."

"No, no!" cried Dita suddenly. Rising, she moved rapidly up and down the room, her head bent, her finger at her lip. "No!" she cried again, her voice deeply vibrating. "I reckon you've just missed it, Eugene, it's too—too conventional. I can imagine something truer than that. My working girl, if I were painting her, should not be born to toil, not always have regarded it as the great fact of existence, an inevitable portion of her days and years from which she has never dreamed of escape. No, I would picture her delicate, highly nurtured, with traditions of race and breeding behind her; but poor, oh, very poor. And she shouldn't look out on life with resigned, wistful eyes, but with passionate, demanding ones, rebelling that her youth, her wonderful, beautiful, dreaming youth was passing in a tomb of tradition, a green and flowery tomb perhaps, maybe an old southern garden, but nevertheless a place of dead lives, dead memories, dead customs. And she, this girl, hates it, the dust and must of it. She hears always in her ears the surges of that mighty ocean of life. And she can't resist it. She can't. Then because her heart is set on it, she comes to a great city like this, comes with all her high hopes and her untarnished confidence in herself; and all this magnificent swirling tide of life, with its mingled and mingling streams, seems to bear her onward to the highest crest of the highest wave. Then she begins to hear, at first faintly and then ever louder and more menacing, the voice of New York, with its ceaseless reiteration of one theme, 'pay, pay, pay.' She turns desperately to her little accomplishments, those little, untrained, unskilful things that she can do, straws on that ocean; and expects them to save her.

"Ah!" she drew her hand across her brow, her face contracting a moment. "Then comes the grind between the millstones, the continual disappointments, the terror by day and night, the rent, that rolls like a snowball, the dreary evenings which she must spend alone in the dreary little room, while all the time she hears the mocking invitation of the great, glittering city to partake of her many feasts.

"And she," again Dita sighed deeply, "she begins to believe herself doomed to dash her youth and beauty against the walls of a tomb. And she has to learn so many things, among them the hideous accomplishment of making both ends meet. What does she know of the use and value of money? Oh, of course all kinds of cheap, left-handed pleasures are offered her, because people consider her pretty, but it is an impossibility for her to accept them. She has been born in the traditions of real lace and real jewels. And the panic-fear! Ah!—" she broke off abruptly.

"Dear me, Dita. You should have been an orator." For the past five minutes Eugene had been scarcely able to conceal his irritation, frowning, biting his lips, twisting in his chair and casting furtive glances at Hepworth. "I remember you used to be given to those bursts of eloquence now and then."

"And what finally becomes of her?" asked Hepworth of his wife, ignoring Eugene's interruption. His voice was low, expressing nothing more than a polite interest.

"I don't know," said Dita wearily. "A number of things. She may comfortably die, or marry, poor thing, any one who will have her."

"Very dramatic," said Gresham dryly. "You always did have histrionic talent, Dita. I've often wondered that you did not attempt the stage."

Perdita opened and closed her eyes once or twice as if she had just returned from a far country.

"I certainly wasn't much of a success at painting lamp-shades and menus, was I, Eugene, in spite of your early training?"

He shrugged his shoulders without answering, made a slight, disclaiming gesture with one hand and rose to his feet. "What!" listening intently as a clock chimed somewhere. "I had no idea it was so late." His face cleared. He was evidently relieved at his chance of escape. He shook hands with Hepworth and then turned to Dita. "Remember that the first sitting will be at twelve o'clock Wednesday morning, and please don't keep me waiting. That is a fact that I have to impress on these charming women," he turned laughingly to Hepworth, "that I am neither their manicure nor hair-dresser. I am accustomed to keep them waiting if I choose."

"I'll be ready," she said indifferently, but Eugene noticed with apprehension, even alarm, that those deep vibrations which spoke of barely controlled emotion were still existent in her tones. "I'll be ready, velvet, diamonds, hurrah of jewels, if you wish, sables and all."

Again a gust of wind swept through the room and Hepworth went over to close a window.

Eugene took quick advantage of the occasion. "For Heaven's sake," he whispered, "pull yourself together."

His words were too late. Too late by half an hour. The sirocco had done its work.