KING MIDAS

A ROMANCE

By Upton Sinclair

I dreamed that Soul might dare the pain,
Unlike the prince of old,
And wrest from heaven the fiery touch
That turns all things to gold.

New York and London
1901

NOTE

In the course of this story, the author has had occasion to refer to Beethoven's Sonata Appassionata as containing a suggestion of the opening theme of the Fifth Symphony. He has often seen this stated, and believed that the statement was generally accepted as true. Since writing, however, he has heard the opinion expressed, by a musician who is qualified to speak as an authority, that the two themes have nothing to do with each other. The author himself is not competent to have an opinion on the subject, but because the statement as first made is closely bound up with the story, he has allowed it to stand unaltered.

The two extracts from MacDowell's “Woodland Sketches,” on pages 214 and 291, are reprinted with the kind permission of Professor MacDowell and of Arthur P. Schmidt, publisher.

CONTENTS

PART I

In the merry month of May.

KING MIDAS

CHAPTER I

“O Madchen, Madchen,
Wie lieb' ich dich!”

It was that time of year when all the world belongs to poets, for their harvest of joy; when those who seek the country not for beauty, but for coolness, have as yet thought nothing about it, and when those who dwell in it all the time are too busy planting for another harvest to have any thought of poets; so that the latter, and the few others who keep something in their hearts to chime with the great spring-music, have the woods and waters all for their own for two joyful months, from the time that the first snowy bloodroot has blossomed, until the wild rose has faded and nature has no more to say. In those two months there are two weeks, the ones that usher in the May, that bear the prize of all the year for glory; the commonest trees wear green and silver then that would outshine a coronation robe, and if a man has any of that prodigality of spirit which makes imagination, he may hear the song of all the world.

It was on such a May morning in the midst of a great forest of pine trees, one of those forests whose floors are moss-covered ruins that give to them the solemnity of age and demand humility from those who walk within their silences. There was not much there to tell of the springtime, for the pines are unsympathetic, but it seemed as if all the more wealth had been flung about on the carpeting beneath. Where the moss was not were flowing beds of fern, and the ground was dotted with slender harebells and the dusty, half-blossomed corydalis, while from all the rocks the bright red lanterns of the columbine were dangling.

Of the beauty so wonderfully squandered there was but one witness, a young man who was walking slowly along, stepping as it seemed where there were no flowers; and who, whenever he stopped to gaze at a group of them, left them unmolested in their happiness. He was tall and slenderly built, with a pale face shadowed by dark hair; he was clad in black, and carried in one hand a half-open book, which, however, he seemed to have forgotten.

A short distance ahead was a path, scarcely marked except where the half-rotted trees were trodden through. Down this the young man turned, and a while later, as his ear was caught by the sound of falling water, he quickened his steps a trifle, until he came to a little streamlet which flowed through the forest, taking for its bed the fairest spot in that wonderland of beauty. It fled from rock to rock covered with the brightest of bright green moss and with tender fern that was but half uncurled, and it flashed in the sunlit places and tinkled from the deep black shadows, ever racing faster as if to see what more the forest had to show. The young man's look had been anxious before, but he brightened in spite of himself in the company of the streamlet.

Not far beyond was a place where a tiny rill flowed down from the high rocks above, and where the path broadened out considerably. It was a darkly shadowed spot, and the little rill was gathered in a sunken barrel, which the genius of the place had made haste to cover with the green uniform worn by all else that was to be seen. Beside the spring thus formed the young man seated himself, and after glancing impatiently at his watch, turned his gaze upon the beauty that was about him. Upon the neighboring rocks the columbine and harebell held high revel, but he did not notice them so much as a new sight that flashed upon his eye; for the pool where the two streamlets joined was like a nest which the marsh-marigold had taken for its home. The water was covered with its bright green and yellow, and the young man gazed at the blossoms with eager delight, until finally he knelt and plucked a few of them, which he laid, cool and gleaming, upon the seat by the spring.

The flowers did not hold his attention very long, however; he rose up and turned away towards where, a few steps beyond, the open country could be seen between the tree trunks. Beyond the edge of the woods was a field, through which the footpath and the streamlet both ran, the former to join a road leading to a little town which lay in the distance. The landscape was beautiful in its morning freshness, but it was not that which the young man thought of; he had given but one glance before he started back with a slight exclamation, his face turning paler. He stepped into the concealment of the thick bushes at one side, where he stood gazing out, motionless except for a slight trembling. Down the road he had seen a white-clad figure just coming out of the village; it was too far away to be recognized, but it was a young girl, walking with a quick and springing step, and he seemed to know who it was.

She had not gone very far before she came to a thick hedge which lined the roadside and hid her from the other's view; he could not see her again until she came to the place where the streamlet was crossed by a bridge, and where the little path turned off towards the forest. In the meantime he stood waiting anxiously; for when she reached there he would see her plainly for the first time, and also know if she were coming to the spring. She must have stopped to look at something, for the other had almost started from his hiding place in his eagerness when finally she swept past the bushes. She turned down the path straight towards him, and he clasped his hands together in delight as he gazed at her.

And truly she was a very vision of the springtime, as she passed down the meadows that were gleaming with their first sprinkling of buttercups. She was clad in a dress of snowy white, which the wind swept before her as she walked; and it had stolen one strand of her golden hair to toss about and play with. She came with all the eagerness and spring of the brooklet that danced beside her, her cheeks glowing with health and filled with the laughter of the morning. Surely, of all the flowers of the May-time there is none so fair as the maiden. And the young man thought as he stood watching her that in all the world there was no maiden so fair as this.

She did not see him, for her eyes were lifted to a little bobolink that had come flying down the wind. One does not hear the bobolink at his best unless one goes to hear him; for sheer glorified happiness there is in all our land no bird like him at the hour of sunrise, when he is drunk with the morning breeze and the sight of the dew-filled roses. At present a shower had just passed and the bobolink may have thought that another dawn had come; or perhaps he saw the maiden. At any rate, he perched himself upon the topmost leaf of the maple tree, still half-flying, as if scorning even that much support; and there he sang his song. First he gave his long prelude that one does not often hear—a few notes a score of times repeated, and growing swift and loud, and more and more strenuous and insistent; as sometimes the orchestra builds up its climax, so that the listener holds his breath and waits for something, he knows not what. Then he paused a moment and turned his head to see if the girl were watching, and filled his throat and poured out his wonderful gushing music, with its watery and bell-like tone that only the streamlet can echo, from its secret places underneath the banks. Again and again he gave it forth, the white patches on his wings flashing in the sunlight and both himself and his song one thrill of joy.

The girl's face was lit up with delight as she tripped down the meadow path. A gust of wind came up behind her, and bowed the grass and the flowers before her and swung the bird upon the tree; and so light was the girl's step that it seemed to lift her and sweep her onward. As it grew stronger she stretched out her arms to it and half leaned upon it and flung her head back for the very fullness of her happiness. The wind tossed her skirts about her, and stole another tress of hair, and swung the lily which she had plucked and which she carried in her hand. It is only when one has heard much music that he understands the morning wind, and knows that it is a living thing about which he can say such things as that; one needs only to train his ear and he can hear its footsteps upon the meadows, and hear it calling to him from the tops of the trees.

The girl was the very spirit of the wind at that moment, and she seemed to feel that some music was needed. She glanced up again at the bobolink, who had ceased his song; she nodded to him once as if for a challenge, and then, still leaning back upon the breeze, and keeping time with the flower in her hand, she broke out into a happy song:

“I heard a streamlet gushing
From out its rocky bed,
Far down the valley rushing,
So fresh and clear it sped.”

But then, as if even Schubert were not equal to the fullness of her heart, or because the language of joy has no words, she left the song unfinished and swept on in a wild carol that rose and swelled and made the forest echo. The bobolink listened and then flew on to listen again, while still the girl poured out her breathless music, a mad volley of soaring melody; it seemed fairly to lift her from her feet, and she was half dancing as she went. There came another gust of wind and took her in its arms; and the streamlet fled before her; and thus the three, in one wild burst of happiness, swept into the woodland together.

There in its shadows the girl stopped short, her song cut in half by the sight of the old forest in its majesty. One could not have imagined a greater contrast than the darkness and silence which dwelt beneath the vast canopy, and she gazed about her in rapture, first at the trees and then at the royal carpet of green, starred with its fields of flowers. Her breast heaved, and she stretched out her arms as if she would have clasped it all to her.

“Oh, it is so beautiful!” she cried aloud. “It is so beautiful!”

In the meantime the young man, still unseen, had been standing in the shadow of the bushes, drinking in the sight. The landscape and the figure and the song had all faded from his thoughts, or rather blended themselves as a halo about one thing, the face of this girl. For it was one of those faces that a man may see once in a lifetime and keep as a haunting memory ever afterwards, as a vision of the sweetness and glory of woman; at this moment it was a face transfigured with rapture, and the man who was gazing upon it was trembling, and scarcely aware of where he was.

For fully a minute more the girl stood motionless, gazing about at the forest; then she chanced to look towards the spring, where she saw the flowers upon the seat.

“Why, someone has left a nosegay!” she exclaimed, as she started forward; but that seemed to suggest another thought to her, and she looked around. As she did so she caught sight of the young man and sprang towards him. “Why, Arthur! You here!” she cried.

The other started forward as if he would have clasped her in his arms; but then recollecting himself he came forward very slowly, half lowering his eyes before the girl's beauty.

“So you recollect me, Helen, do you?” he said, in a low voice.

“Recollect you?” was the answer. “Why, you dear, foolish boy, of course I recollect you. But how in the world do you come to be here?”

“I came here to see you, Helen.”

“To see me?” exclaimed she. “But pray how—” and then she stopped, and a look of delight swept across her face. “You mean that you knew I would come here the first thing?”

“I do indeed.”

“Why, that was beautiful!” she exclaimed. “I am so glad I did come.”

The glance which she gave made his heart leap up; for a moment or two they were silent, looking at each other, and then suddenly another thought struck the girl. “Arthur,” she cried, “I forgot! Do you mean to tell me that you have come all the way from Hilltown?”

“Yes, Helen.”

“And just to see me?”

“Yes, Helen.”

“And this morning?”

She received the same answer again. “It is twelve miles,” she exclaimed; “who ever heard of such a thing? You must be tired to death.”

She put out her hand, which he took tremblingly.

“Let us go sit down on the bench,” she said, “and then we can talk about things. I am perfectly delighted that you came,” she added when she had seated herself, with the marigolds and the lily in her lap. “It will seem just like old times; just think how long ago it was that I saw you last, Arthur,—three whole years! And do you know, as I left the town I thought of you, and that I might find you here.”

The young man's face flushed with pleasure.

“But I'd forgotten you since!” went on the girl, eyeing him mischievously; “for oh, I was so happy, coming down the old, old path, and seeing all the old sights! Things haven't changed a bit, Arthur; the woods look exactly the same, and the bridge hasn't altered a mite since the days we used to sit on the edge and let our feet hang in. Do you remember that, Arthur?”

“Perfectly,” was the answer.

“And that was over a dozen years ago! How old are you now, Arthur,—twenty-one—no, twenty-two; and I am just nineteen. To-day is my birthday, you know!”

“I had not forgotten it, Helen.”

“You came to welcome me! And so did everything else. Do you know, I don't think I'd ever been so happy in my life as I was just now. For I thought the old trees greeted me, and the bridge, and the stream! And I'm sure that was the same bobolink! They don't have any bobolinks in Germany, and so that one was the first I have heard in three years. You heard him, didn't you, Arthur?”

“I did—at first,” said Arthur.

“And then you heard me, you wicked boy! You heard me come in here singing and talking to myself like a mad creature! I don't think I ever felt so like singing before; they make hard work out of singing and everything else in Germany, you know, so I never sang out of business hours; but I believe I could sing all day now, because I'm so happy.”

“Go on,” said the other, seriously; “I could listen.”

“No; I want to talk to you just now,” said Helen. “You should have kept yourself hidden and then you'd have heard all sorts of wonderful things that you'll never have another chance to hear. For I was just going to make a speech to the forest, and I think I should have kissed each one of the flowers. You might have put it all into a poem,—for oh, father tells me you're going to be a great poet!”

“I'm going to try,” said Arthur, blushing.

“Just think how romantic that would be!” the girl laughed; “and I could write your memoir and tell all I knew about you. Tell me about yourself, Arthur—I don't mean for the memoir, but because I want to know the news.”

“There isn't any, Helen, except that I finished college last spring, as I wrote you, and I'm teaching school at Hilltown.”

“And you like it?”

“I hate it; but I have to keep alive, to try to be a poet. And that is the news about myself.”

“Except,” added Helen, “that you walked twelve miles this glorious Saturday morning to welcome me home, which was beautiful. And of course you'll stay over Sunday, now you're here; I can invite you myself, you know, for I've come home to take the reins of government. You never saw such a sight in your life as my poor father has made of our house; he's got the parlor all full of those horrible theological works of his, just as if God had never made anything beautiful! And since I've been away that dreadful Mrs. Dale has gotten complete charge of the church, and she's one of those creatures that wouldn't allow you to burn a candle in the organ loft; and father never was of any use for quarreling about things.” (Helen's father, the Reverend Austin Davis, was the rector of the little Episcopal church in the town of Oakdale just across the fields.) “I only arrived last night,” the girl prattled on, venting her happiness in that way instead of singing; “but I hunted up two tallow candles in the attic, and you shall see them in church to-morrow. If there's any complaint about the smell, I'll tell Mrs. Dale we ought to have incense, and she'll get so excited about that that I'll carry the candles by default. I'm going to institute other reforms also,—I'm going to make the choir sing in tune!”

“If you will only sing as you were singing just now, nobody will hear the rest of the choir,” vowed the young man, who during her remarks had never taken his eyes off the girl's radiant face.

Helen seemed not to notice it, for she had been arranging the marigolds; now she was drying them with her handkerchief before fastening them upon her dress.

“You ought to learn to sing yourself,” she said while she bent her head down at that task. “Do you care for music any more than you used to?”

“I think I shall care for it just as I did then,” was the answer, “whenever you sing it.”

“Pooh!” said Helen, looking up from her marigolds; “the idea of a dumb poet anyway, a man who cannot sing his own songs! Don't you know that if you could sing and make yourself gloriously happy as I was just now, and as I mean to be some more, you could write poetry whenever you wish.”

“I can believe that,” said Arthur.

“Then why haven't you ever learned? Our English poets have all been ridiculous creatures about music, any how; I don't believe there was one in this century, except Browning, that really knew anything about it, and all their groaning and pining for inspiration was nothing in the world but a need of some music; I was reading the 'Palace of Art' only the other day, and there was that 'lordly pleasure house' with all its modern improvements, and without a sound of music. Of course the poor soul had to go back to the suffering world, if it were only to hear a hand-organ again.”

“That is certainly a novel theory,” admitted the young poet. “I shall come to you when I need inspiration.”

“Come and bring me your songs,” added the girl, “and I will sing them to you. You can write me a poem about that brook, for one thing. I was thinking just as I came down the road that if I were a poet I should have beautiful things to say to that brook. Will you do it for me?”

“I have already tried to write one,” said the young man, hesitatingly.

“A song?” asked Helen.

“Yes.”

“Oh, good! And I shall make some music for it; will you tell it to me?”

“When?”

“Now, if you can remember it,” said Helen. “Can you?”

“If you wish it,” said Arthur, simply; “I wrote it two or three months ago, when the country was different from now.”

He fumbled in his pocket for some papers, and then in a low tone he read these words to the girl:

AT MIDNIGHT

The burden of the winter
The year haa borne too long,
And oh, my heart is weary
For a springtime song!
The moonbeams shrink unwelcomed
From the frozen lake;
Of all the forest voices
There is but one awake
I seek thee, happy streamlet
That murmurest on thy way,
As a child in troubled slumber
Still dreaming of its play;
I ask thee where in thy journey
Thou seeest so fair a sight,
That thou hast joy and singing
All through the winter night.

Helen was silent for a few moments, then she said, “I think that is beautiful, Arthur; but it is not what I want.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“I should have liked it when you wrote it, but now the spring has come, and we must be happy. You have heard the springtime song.”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “and the streamlet has led me to the beautiful sight.”

“It is beautiful,” said Helen, gazing about her with that naive unconsciousness which “every wise man's son doth know” is one thing he may never trust in a woman. “It could not be more beautiful,” she added, “and you must write me something about it, instead of wandering around our pasture-pond on winter nights till your imagination turns it into a frozen lake.”

The young poet put away his papers rather suddenly at that, and Helen, after gazing at him for a moment, and laughing to herself, sprang up from the seat.

“Come!” she cried, “why are we sitting here, anyway, talking about all sorts of things, and forgetting the springtime altogether? I haven't been half as happy yet as I mean to be.”

She seemed to have forgotten her friend's twelve mile walk; but he had forgotten it too, just as he soon forgot the rather wintry reception of his little song. It was not possible for him to remain dull very long in the presence of the girl's glowing energy; for once upon her feet, Helen's dancing mood seemed to come back to her, if indeed it had ever more than half left her. The brooklet struck up the measure again, and the wind shook the trees far above them, to tell that it was still awake, and the girl was the very spirit of the springtime once more.

“Oh, Arthur,” she said as she led him down the path, “just think how happy I ought to be, to welcome all the old things after so long, and to find them all so beautiful; it is just as if the country had put on its finest dress to give me greeting, and I feel as if I were not half gay enough in return. Just think what this springtime is, how all over the country everything is growing and rejoicing; that is what I want you to put into the poem for me.”

And so she led him on into the forest, carried on by joy herself, and taking all things into her song. She did not notice that the young man's forehead was flushed, or that his hand was burning when she took it in hers as they walked; if she noticed it, she chose at any rate to pretend not to. She sang to him about the forest and the flowers, and some more of the merry song which she had sung before; then she stopped to shake her head at a saucy adder's tongue that thrust its yellow face up through the dead leaves at her feet, and to ask that wisest-looking of all flowers what secrets it knew about the spring-time. Later on they came to a place where the brook fled faster, sparkling brightly in the sunlight over its shallow bed of pebbles; it was only her runaway caroling that could keep pace with that, and so her glee mounted higher, the young man at her side half in a trance, watching her laughing face and drinking in the sound of her voice.

How long that might have lasted there is no telling, had it not been that the woods came to an end, disclosing more open fields and a village beyond. “We'd better not go any farther,” said Helen, laughing; “if any of the earth creatures should hear us carrying on they would not know it was 'Trunkenheit ohne Wein.'”

She stretched out her hand to her companion, and led him to a seat upon a fallen log nearby. “Poor boy,” she said, “I forgot that you were supposed to be tired.”

“It does not make any difference,” was the reply; “I hadn't thought of it.”

“There's no need to walk farther,” said Helen, “for I've seen all that I wish to see. How dear this walk ought to be to us, Arthur!”

“I do not know about you, Helen,” said the young man, “but it has been dear to me indeed. I could not tell you how many times I have walked over it, all alone, since you left; and I used to think about the many times I had walked it with you. You haven't forgotten, Helen, have you?”

“No,” said Helen.

“Not one?”

“Not one.”

The young man was resting his head upon his hand and gazing steadily at the girl.

“Do you remember, Helen—?” He stopped; and she turned with her bright clear eyes and gazed into his.

“Remember what?” she asked.

“Do you remember the last time we took it, Helen?”

She flushed a trifle, and half involuntarily turned her glance away again.

“Do you remember?” he asked again, seeing that she was silent.

“Yes, I remember,” said the girl, her voice lower—“But I'd rather you did not—.” She stopped short.

“You wish to forget it, Helen?” asked Arthur.

He was trembling with anxiety, and his hands, which were clasped about his knee, were twitching. “Oh, Helen, how can you?” he went on, his voice breaking. “Do you not remember the last night that we sat there by the spring, and you were going away, no one knew for how long—and how you told me that it was more than you could bear; and the promise that you made me? Oh, Helen!”

The girl gazed at him with a frightened look; he had sunk down upon his knee before her, and he caught her hand which lay upon the log at her side.

“Helen!” he cried, “you cannot mean to forget that? For that promise has been the one joy of my life, that for which I have labored so hard! My one hope, Helen! I came to-day to claim it, to tell you—”

And with a wild glance about her, the girl sprang to her feet, snatching her hand away from his.

“Arthur!” she cried; “Arthur, you must not speak to me so!”

“I must not, Helen?”

“No, no,” she cried, trembling; “we were only children, and we did not know the meaning of the words we used. You must not talk to me that way, Arthur.”

“Helen!” he protested, helplessly.

“No, no, I will not allow it!” she cried more vehemently, stepping back as he started towards her, and holding close to her the hand he had held. “I had no idea there was such a thought in your mind—”

Helen stopped, breathlessly.

“—or you would not have been so kind to me?” the other added faintly.

“I thought of you as an old friend,” said Helen. “I was but a child when I went away. I wish you still to be a friend, Arthur; but you must not act in that way.”

The young man glanced once at her, and when he saw the stern look upon her face he buried his head in his arms without a sound.

For fully a minute they remained thus, in silence; then as Helen watched him, her chest ceased gradually to heave, and a gentler look returned to her face. She came and sat down on the log again.

“Arthur,” she said after another silence, “can we not just be friends?”

The young man answered nothing, but he raised his head and gazed at her; and she saw that there were tears in his eyes, and a look of mute helplessness upon his face. She trembled slightly, and rose to her feet again.

“Arthur,” she said gravely, “this must not be; we must not sit here any longer. I must go.”

“Helen!” exclaimed the other, springing up.

But he saw her brow knit again, and he stopped short. The girl gazed about her, and the village in the distance caught her eye.

“Listen,” she said, with forced calmness; “I promised father that I would go and see old Mrs. Woodward, who was asking for me. You may wait here, if you like, and walk home with me, for I shall not be gone very long. Will you do it?”

The other gazed at her for a moment or two; he was trying to read the girl's heart, but he saw only the quiet firmness of her features.

“Will you wait, Arthur?” she asked again.

And Arthur's head sank upon his breast. “Yes, Helen,” he said. When he lifted it again, the girl was gone; she had disappeared in the thicket, and he could hear her footsteps as she passed swiftly down the hillside.

He went to the edge of the woods, where he could see her a short distance below, hurrying down the path with a step as light and free as ever. The wind had met her at the forest's edge and joined her once more, playing about her skirts and tossing the lily again. As Arthur watched her, the old music came back into his heart; his eyes sparkled, and all his soul seemed to be dancing in time with her light motion. Thus it went until she came to a place where the path must hide her from his view. The young man held his breath, and when she turned a cry of joy escaped him; she saw him and waved her hand to him gaily as she swept on out of his sight.

For a moment afterwards he stood rooted to the spot, then whirled about and laughed aloud. He put his hand to his forehead, which was flushed and hot, and he gazed about him, as if he were not sure where he was. “Oh, she is so beautiful!” he cried, his face a picture of rapture. “So beautiful!”

And he started through the forest as wildly as any madman, now muttering to himself and now laughing aloud and making the forest echo with Helen's name. When he stopped again he was far away from the path, in a desolate spot, but tho he was staring around him, he saw no more than before. Trembling had seized his limbs, and he sank down upon the yellow forest leaves, hiding his face in his hands and whispering, “Oh, if I should lose her! If I should lose her!” As old Polonius has it, truly it was “the very ecstasy of love.”

CHAPTER II

“A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay.”

The town of Oakdale is at the present time a flourishing place, inhabited principally by “suburbanites,” for it lies not very far from New York; but the Reverend Austin Davis, who was the spiritual guardian of most of them, had come to Oakdale some twenty and more years ago, when it was only a little village, with a struggling church which it was the task of the young clergyman to keep alive. Perhaps the growth of the town had as much to do with his success as his own efforts; but however that might have been he had received his temporal reward some ten years later, in the shape of a fine stone church, with a little parsonage beside it. He had lived there ever since, alone with his one child,—for just after coming to Oakdale he had married a daughter of one of the wealthy families of the neighborhood, and been left a widower a year or two later.

A more unromantic and thoroughly busy man than Mr. Davis at the age of forty-five, when this story begins, it would not have been easy to find; but nevertheless people spoke of no less than two romances that had been connected with his life. One of them had been his early marriage, which had created a mild sensation, while the other had come into his life even sooner, in fact on the very first day of his arrival at Oakdale.

Mr. Davis could still bring back to his mind with perfect clearness the first night he had spent in the little wooden cottage which he had hired for his residence; how while busily unpacking his trunk and trying to bring the disordered place into shape, he had opened the door in answer to a knock and beheld a woman stagger in out of the storm. She was a young girl, surely not yet out of her teens, her pale and sunken face showing marks of refinement and of former beauty. She carried in her arms a child of about a year's age, and she dropped it upon the sofa and sank down beside it, half fainting from exhaustion. The young clergyman's anxious inquiries having succeeded in eliciting but incoherent replies, he had left the room to procure some nourishment for the exhausted woman; it was upon his return that the discovery of the romance alluded to was made, for the woman had disappeared in the darkness and storm, and the baby was still lying upon the sofa.

It was not altogether a pleasant romance, as is probably the case with a good many romances in reality. Mr. Davis was destined to retain for a long time a vivid recollection of the first night which he spent in alternately feeding that baby with a spoon, and in walking the floor with it; and also to remember the sly glances which his parishioners only half hid from him when his unpleasant plight was made known.

It happened that the poorhouse at Hilltown near by, to which the infant would have gone if he had left it to the care of the county, was at that time being “investigated,” with all that the name implies when referring to public matters; the clergy of the neighborhood being active in pushing the charges, Mr. Davis felt that at present it would look best for him to provide for the child himself. As the investigation came to nothing, the inducement was made a permanent one; perhaps also the memory of the mother's wan face had something to do with the matter. At any rate the young clergyman, tho but scantily provided for himself, managed to spare enough to engage a woman in the town to take care of the young charge. Subsequently when Mr. Davis' wife died the woman became Helen's nurse, and so it was that Arthur, as the baby boy had been christened, became permanently adopted into the clergyman's little family.

It had not been possible to keep from Arthur the secret of his parentage, and the fact that it was known to all served to keep him aloof from the other children of the town, and to drive him still more to the confidence of Helen. One of the phrases which Mr. Davis had caught from the mother's lips had been that the boy was a “gentleman's son;” and Helen was wont to solace him by that reminder. Perhaps the phrase, constantly repeated, had much to do with the proud sensitiveness and the resolute independence which soon manifested itself in the lad's character. He had scarcely passed the age of twelve before, tho treated by Mr. Davis with the love and kindness of a father, he astonished the good man by declaring that he was old enough to take care of himself; and tho Mr. Davis was better situated financially by that time, nothing that he could say could alter the boy's quiet determination to leave school and be independent, a resolution in which he was seconded by Helen, a little miss of some nine years. The two children had talked it over for months, as it appeared, and concluded that it was best to sacrifice in the cause of honor the privilege of going to school together, and of spending the long holidays roaming about the country.

So the lad had served with childish dignity, first as an errand boy, and then as a store clerk, always contributing his mite of “board” to Mr. Davis' household expenses; meanwhile, possibly because he was really “a gentleman's son,” and had inherited a taste for study, he had made by himself about as much progress as if he had been at school. Some years later, to the delight of Helen and Mr. Davis, he had carried off a prize scholarship above the heads of the graduates of the Hilltown High School, and still refusing all help, had gone away to college, to support himself there while studying by such work as he could find, knowing well that a true gentleman's son is ashamed of nothing honest.

He spent his vacations at home, where he and Helen studied together,—or such rather had been his hope; it was realized only for the first year.

Helen had an aunt upon her mother's side, a woman of wealth and social position, who owned a large country home near Oakdale, and who was by no means inclined to view with the complacency of Mr. Davis the idyllic friendship of the two young people. Mrs. Roberts, or “Aunt Polly” as she was known to the family, had plans of her own concerning the future of the beauty which she saw unfolding itself at the Oakdale parsonage. She said nothing to Mr. Davis, for he, being busy with theological works and charitable organizations, was not considered a man from whom one might hope for proper ideas about life. But with her own more practical husband she had frequently discussed the danger, and the possible methods of warding it off.

To send Helen to a boarding school would have been of no use, for the vacations were the times of danger; so it was that the trip abroad was finally decided upon. Aunt Polly, having traveled herself, had a wholesome regard for German culture, believing that music and things of that sort were paying investments. It chanced, also, that her own eldest daughter, who was a year older than Helen, was about through with all that American teachers had to impart; and so after much argument with Mr. Davis, it was finally arranged that she and Helen should study in Germany together. Just when poor Arthur was returning home with the sublime title of junior, his dream of all things divine was carried off by Aunt Polly, and after a summer spent in “doing” Europe, was installed in a girl's school in Leipzig.

And now, three years having passed, Helen has left her cousin for another year of travel, and returned home in all the glory of her own springtime and of Nature's; which brings us to where we left her, hurrying away to pay a duty call in the little settlement on the hillside.

The visit had not been entirely a subterfuge, for Helen's father had mentioned to her that the elderly person whom she had named to Arthur was expecting to see her when she returned, and Helen had been troubled by the thought that she would never have any peace until she had paid that visit. It was by no means an agreeable one, for old Mrs. Woodward was exceedingly dull, and Helen felt that she was called upon to make war upon dullness. However, it had occurred to her to get her task out of the way at once, while she felt that she ought to leave Arthur.

The visit proved to be quite as depressing as she had expected, for it is sad to have to record that Helen, however sensitive to the streamlet and the flowers, had not the least sympathy in the world for an old woman who had a very sharp chin, who stared at one through two pairs of spectacles, and whose conversation was about her own health and the dampness of the springtime, besides the dreariest gossip about Oakdale's least interesting people. Perhaps it might have occurred to the girl that it is very forlorn to have nothing else to talk about, and that even old Mrs. Woodward might have liked to hear about some of the things in the forest, or to have been offered the lily and the marigold. Unfortunately, however, Helen did not think about any of that, but only moved restlessly about in her chair and gazed around the ugly room. Finally when she could stand it no more, she sprang up between two of Mrs. Woodward's longest sentences and remarked that it was very late and a long way home, and that she would come again some time.

Then at last when she was out in the open air, she drew a deep breath and fled away to the woods, wondering what could be God's reason for such things. It was not until she was half way up the hillside that she could feel that the wind, which blew now upon her forehead, had quite swept away the depression which had settled upon her. She drank in the odors which blew from the woods, and began singing to herself again, and looking out for Arthur.

She was rather surprised not to see him at once, and still more surprised when she came nearer and raised her voice to call him; for she reached the forest and came to the place where she had left him without a reply having come. She shouted his name again and again, until at last, not without a half secret chagrin to have been so quickly forgotten, she was obliged to set out for home alone.

“Perhaps he's gone on ahead,” she thought, quickening her pace.

For a time she watched anxiously, expecting to see his darkly clad figure; but she soon wearied of continued failure, and because it was her birthday, and because the brook was still at her side and the beautiful forest still about her, she took to singing again, and was quickly as happy and glorious as before, ceasing her caroling and moderating her woodland pace only when she neared the town. She passed down the main street of Oakdale, not quite without an exulting consciousness that her walk had crowned her beauty and that no one whom she saw was thinking about anything else; and so she came to her home, to the dear old parsonage, with its spreading ivy vines, and its two great elms.

When she had hurried up the steps and shut the door behind her, Helen felt privileged again to be just as merry as she chose, for she was even more at home here than in the woods; it seemed as if everything were stretching out its arms to her to welcome her, and to invite her to carry out her declared purpose of taking the reins of government in her own hands.

Upon one side of the hallway was a parlor, and on the other side two rooms, which Mr. Davis had used as a reception room and a study. The parlor had never been opened, and Helen promised herself a jolly time superintending the fixing up of that; on the other side she had already taken possession of the front room, symbolically at any rate, by having her piano moved in and her music unpacked, and a case emptied for the books she had brought from Germany. To be sure, on the other side was still a dreary wall of theological treatises in funereal black, but Helen was not without hopes that continued doses of cheerfulness might cure her father of such incomprehensible habits, and obtain for her the permission to move the books to the attic.

To start things in that direction the girl now danced gaily into the study where her father was in the act of writing “thirdly, brethren,” for his next day's sermon; and crying out merrily,

“Up, up my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you'll grow double!”

she saluted her reverend father with the sweetest of kisses, and then seated herself on the arm of his chair and gravely took his pen out of his hand, and closed his inkstand. She turned over the “thirdly, brethren,” without blotting it, and recited solemnly:

“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good.
Than all the sages can!”

And then she laughed the merriest of merry laughs and added, “Daddy, dear, I am an impulse! And I want you to spare some time for me.”

“Yes, my love,” said Mr. Davis, smiling upon her, though groaning inwardly for his lost ideas. “You are beautiful this morning, Helen. What have you been doing?”

“I've had a glorious walk,” replied the girl, “and all kinds of wonderful adventures; I've had a dance with the morning wind, and a race of a mile or two with a brook, and I've sung duets with all the flowers,—and here you are writing uninteresting things!”

“It's my sermon, Helen,” said Mr. Davis.

“I know it,” said Helen, gravely.

“But it must be done for to-morrow,” protested the other.

“Half your congregation is going to be so excited about two tallow candles that it won't know what you preach about,” answered the girl, swinging herself on the arm of the chair; “and I'm going to sing for the other half, and so they won't care either. And besides, Daddy, I've got news to tell you; you've no idea what a good girl I've been.”

“How, my love?”

“I went to see Mrs. Woodward.”

“You didn't!”

“Yes; and it was just to show you how dutiful I'm going to be. Daddy, I felt so sorry for the poor old lady; it is so beautiful to know that one is doing good and bringing happiness into other people's lives! I think I'll go and see her often, and carry her something nice if you'll let me.”

Helen said all that as gravely as a judge; but Mr. Davis was agreeing so delightedly that she feared she was carrying the joke too far. She changed the subject quickly.

“Oh, Daddy!” she cried, “I forgot to tell you—I met a genius to-day!”

“A genius?” inquired the other.

“Yes,” said Helen, “and I've been walking around with him all morning out in the woods! Did you never hear that every place like that has a genius?”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Davis, “but I don't understand your joke.”

“This was the genius of Hilltown High School,” laughed Helen.

“Oh, Arthur!”

“Yes; will you believe it, the dear boy had walked all the way from there to see me; and he waited out by the old seat at the spring!”

“But where is he now?”

“I don't know,” said Helen. “It's very queer; I left him to go see Mrs. Woodward. He didn't go with me,” she added, “I don't believe he felt inclined to charity.”

“That is not like Arthur,” said the other.

“I'm going to take him in hand, as becomes a clergyman's daughter,” said Helen demurely; “I'm going to be a model daughter, Daddy—just you wait and see! I'll visit all your parishioners' lawn-parties and five o'clock teas for you, and I'll play Handel's Largo and Siegfried's Funeral March whenever you want to write sermons. Won't you like that?”

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Davis, dubiously.

“Only I know you'll make blots when I come to the cymbals,” said Helen; and she doubled up her fists and hummed the passage, and gave so realistic an imitation of the cymbal-clashes in the great dirge that it almost upset the chair. Afterwards she laughed one of her merriest laughs and kissed her father on the forehead.

“I heard it at Baireuth,” she said, “and it was just fine! It made your flesh creep all over you. And oh, Daddy, I brought home a souvenir of Wagner's grave!”

“Did you?” asked Mr. Davis, who knew very little about Wagner.

“Yes,” said Helen, “just a pebble I picked up near it; and you ought to have seen the custom-house officer at the dock yesterday when he was going through my trunks. 'What's this, Miss?' he asked; I guess he thought it was a diamond in the rough. 'Oh, that's from Wagner's grave,' I said. And what do you think the wretch did?”

“I'm sure I don't know, my love.”

“He threw it back, saying it wasn't worth anything; I think he must have been a Brahmsite.”

“It took the longest time going through all my treasures,” Helen prattled on, after laughing at her own joke; “you know Aunt Polly let us have everything we wanted, bless her heart!”

“I'm afraid Aunt Polly must have spoiled you,” said the other.

“She has,” laughed Helen; “I really think she must mean to make me marry a rich husband, or else she'd never have left me at that great rich school; Lucy and I were the 'star-boarders' you know, and we just had everybody to spoil us. How in the world could you ever manage to spare so much money, Daddy?”

“Oh, it was not so much,” said Mr. Davis; “things are cheaper abroad.” (As a matter of fact, the grimly resolute Aunt Polly had paid two-thirds of her niece's expenses secretly, besides distributing pocket money with lavish generosity.)

“And you should see the wonderful dresses I've brought from Paris,” Helen went on. “Oh, Daddy, I tell you I shall be glorious! Aunt Polly's going to invite a lot of people at her house next week to meet me, and I'm going to wear the reddest of red, red dresses, and just shine like a lighthouse!”

“I'm afraid,” said the clergyman, surveying her with more pride than was perhaps orthodox, “I'm afraid you'll find it hard to be satisfied in this poor little home of ours.”

“Oh, that's all right,” said Helen; “I'll soon get used to it; and besides, I've got plenty of things to fix it up with—if you'll only get those dreadful theological works out of the front room! Daddy dear, you can't imagine how hard it is to bring the Valkyries and Niebelungs into a theological library.”

“I'll see what I can do, my love,” said Mr. Davis.

He was silent for a few moments, perhaps wondering vaguely whether it was well that this commanding young lady should have everything in the world she desired; Helen, who had her share of penetration, probably divined the thought, for she made haste to change the subject.

“By the way,” she laughed, “we got so interested in our chattering that we forgot all about Arthur.”

“Sure enough,” exclaimed the other. “Pray where can he have gone?”

“I don't know,” Helen said; “it's strange. But poets are such queer creatures!”

“Arthur is a very splendid creature,” said Mr. Davis. “You have no idea, Helen, how hard he has labored since you have been away. He carried off all the honors at college, and they say he has written some good poetry. I don't know much about that, but the people who know tell me so.”

“It would be gloriously romantic to know a great poet,” said Helen, “and perhaps have him write poetry about you,—'Helen, thy beauty is to me,' and 'Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss,' and all sorts of things like that! He's coming to live with us this summer as usual, isn't he, Daddy?”

“I don't know,” said the other; “I presume he will. But where can he have gone to-day?”

“He acted very queerly,” said the girl; and then suddenly a delighted smile lit up her face. “Oh, Daddy,” she added, “do you know, I think Arthur is in love!”

“In love!” gasped Mr. Davis.

“Yes, in love!”

“Pray, with whom?”

“I'm sure I can't imagine,” said Helen gravely; “but he seemed so abstracted, and he seemed to have something to tell me. And then he ran away!”

“That is very strange indeed,” remarked the other. “I shall have to speak to him about it.”

“If he doesn't come back soon, I'll go to look for him,” said the girl; “I'm not going to let the water nixies run off with my Arthur; there are such things in that stream, because the song I was singing about it says so.” And then she chanted as merrily as ever:

“Why speak I of a murmur?
No murmur can it be;
The Nixies they are singing
'Neath the wave their melody!”

“I will tell you what,” said Mr. Davis, rising from his chair as he realized that the sermon had entirely vanished for the present. “You may go part of the way with me, and we'll stop in to see the Vails.”

“The Vails!” gasped Helen. (Mr. Vail was the village dairyman, whose farm lay on the outskirts of the town; the village dairyman's family was not one that Helen cared to visit.)

“My love,” said Mr. Davis, “poor Mrs. Vail has been very ill, and she has three little children, you know. You told me that you liked to bring joy wherever you could.”

“Yes, but, Daddy,” protested Helen, “those children are dirty! Ugh! I saw them as I came by.”

“My love,” answered the other, “they are God's children none the less; and we cannot always help such things.”

“But we can, Daddy; there is plenty of water in the world.”

“Yes, of course; but when the mother is ill, and the father in trouble! For poor Mr. Vail has had no end of misfortune; he has no resource but the little dairy, and three of his cows have been ill this spring.”

And Helen's incorrigible mirth lighted up her face again. “Oh!” she cried. “Is that it! I saw him struggling away at the pump as I came by; but I had no idea it was anything so serious!”

Mr. Davis looked grieved; Helen, when her first burst of glee had passed, noticed it and changed her mood. She put her arms around her father's neck and pressed her cheek against his.

“Daddy, dear,” she said coaxingly, “haven't I done charity enough for one day? You will surfeit me at the start, and then I'll be just as little fond of it as I was before. When I must let dirty children climb all over me, I can dress for the occasion.”

“My dear,” pleaded Mr. Davis, “Godliness is placed before Cleanliness.”

“Yes,” admitted Helen, “and of course it is right for you to inculcate the greater virtue; but I'm only a girl, and you mustn't expect sublimity from me. You don't want to turn me into a president of sewing societies, like that dreadful Mrs. Dale!”

“Helen,” protested the other, helplessly, “I wish you would not always refer to Mrs. Dale with that adjective; she is the best helper I have.”

“Yes, Daddy,” said Helen, with the utmost solemnity; “when I have a dreadful eagle nose like hers, perhaps I can preside over meetings too. But I can't now.”

“I do not want you to, my love; but—”

“And if I have to cling by the weaker virtue of cleanliness just for a little while, Daddy, you must not mind. I'll visit all your clean parishioners for you,—parishioners like Aunt Polly!”

And before Mr. Davis could make another remark, the girl had skipped into the other room to the piano; as her father went slowly out the door, the echoes of the old house were laughing with the happy melody of Purcell's—

Nymphs and shepherds, come a-way, come a-way,
Nymphs and shepherds, come a-way, come a-way, Come,
come, come, come a-way!

CHAPTER III

“For you alone I strive to sing,
Oh, tell me how to woo!”

When Helen was left alone, she seated herself before her old music stand which had been brought down to welcome her, and proceeded to glance over and arrange the pieces she had learned and loved in her young girlhood. Most of them made her smile, and when she reflected upon how difficult she used to think them, she realized that now that it was over she was glad for the German regime. Helen had accounted herself an accomplished pianist when she went away, but she had met with new standards and learned to think humbly of herself in the great home of music. She possessed a genuine fondness for the art, however, and had devoted most of her three years to it, so that she came home rejoicing in the possession of a technic that was quite a mastership compared with any that she was likely to meet.

Helen's thoughts did not dwell upon that very long at present, however; she found herself thinking again about Arthur, and the unexpected ending of her walk with him.

“I had no idea he felt that way toward me,” she mused, resting her chin in her hand; “what in the world am I going to do? Men are certainly most inconvenient creatures; I thought I was doing everything in the world to make him happy!”

Helen turned to the music once more, but the memory of the figure she had left sunken helplessly upon the forest seat stayed in her mind. “I do wonder if that can be why he did not wait for me,” she thought, shuddering,—“if he was too wretched to see me again; what CAN I do?” She got up and began walking restlessly up and down the room for a few minutes.

“Perhaps I ought to go and look for him,” she mused; “it was an hour or two ago that I left him there;” and Helen, after thinking the matter over, had half turned to leave, when she heard a step outside and saw the door open quickly. Even before she saw him she knew who it was, for only Arthur would have entered without ringing the bell. After having pictured him overcome by despair, it was rather a blow to her pride to see him, for he entered flushed, and seemingly elated.

“Well, sir, you've treated me nicely!” she exclaimed, showing her vexation in spite of herself.

“You will forgive me,” said Arthur, smiling.

“Don't be too sure of it,” Helen said; “I looked for you everywhere, and I am quite angry.”

“I was obeying your high command,” the other replied, still smiling.

“My command? I told you to wait for me.”

“You told me something else,” laughed Arthur. “You spent all the morning instructing me for it, you know.”

“Oh!” said Helen. It was a broad and very much prolonged “Oh,” for a sudden light was dawning upon the girl; as it came her frown gave place to a look of delight.

“You have been writing me a poem!” she cried, eagerly.

“Yes,” said Arthur.

“Oh, you dear boy!” Helen laughed. “Then I do forgive you; but you ought to have told me, for I had to walk home all alone, and I've been worrying about you. I never once thought of the poem.”

“The muses call without warning,” laughed Arthur, “and one has to obey them, you know.”

“Oh, oh!” exclaimed the other. “And so you've been wandering around the woods all this time, making verses! And you've been waving your arms and talking to yourself, and doing all sorts of crazy things, I know!” Then as she saw Arthur flush, she went on: “I was sure of it! And you ran away so that I wouldn't see you! Oh, I wish I'd known; I'd have hunted you up and never come home until I'd found you.”

As was usual with Helen, her momentary vexation had gone like April rain, and all her seriousness had vanished with it. She forgot all about the last scene in the woods, and Arthur was once more the friend of her girlhood, whom she might take by the hand when she chose, and with whom she might be as free and happy as when she was alone with the flowers and the wind. It seemed as if Arthur too had vented all his pent up emotion, and returned to his natural cheerful self.

“Tell me,” she cried, “did you put in all the things I told you about?”

“I put all I could,” said Arthur. “That is a great deal to ask.”

“I only want it to be full of life,” laughed Helen. “That's all I care about; the man who wants to write springtime poetry for me must be wide awake!”

“Shall I read it to you?” asked Arthur, hesitatingly.

“Yes, of course,” said Helen. “And read it as if you meant it; if I like it I'll tell you so.”

“I wrote it for nothing but to please you” was the reply, and Arthur took a much bescrawled piece of paper from his pocket; the girl seated herself upon the piano stool again and gazed up at him as he rested his elbow upon the top of the piano and read his lines. There could not have been a situation in which the young poet would have read them with more complete happiness, and so it was a pleasure to watch him. And Helen's eyes kindled, and her cheeks flushed brightly as she listened, for she found that the verses had taken their imagery from her very lips.

In the May-time's golden glory
Ere the quivering sun was high,
I heard the Wind of Morning
Through the laughing meadows fly;
In his passion-song was throbbing
All the madness of the May,
And he whispered: Thou hast labored;
Thou art weary; come away!
Thou shalt drink a fiery potion
For thy prisoned spirit's pain;
Thou shalt taste the ancient rapture
That thy soul has sought in vain.
I will tell thee of a maiden,
One who has thy longing fanned—
Spirit of the Forest Music—
Thou shalt take her by the hand,
Lightly by her rosy fingers
Trembling with her keen delight,
And her flying steps shall lead thee
Out upon the mountain's height;
To a dance undreamed of mortal
To the Bacchanal of Spring,—
Where in mystic joy united
Nature's bright-eyed creatures sing.
There the green things of the mountain,
Million-voiced, newly-born,
And the flowers of the valley
In their beauty's crimson morn;
There the winged winds of morning,
Spirits unresting, touched with fire,
And the streamlets, silver-throated,
They whose leaping steps ne'er tire!
Thou shalt see them, ever circling
Round about a rocky spring,
While the gaunt old forest-warriors
Madly their wide branches fling.
Thou shalt tread the whirling measure,
Bathe thee in its frenzied strife;
Thou shalt have a mighty memory
For thy spirit's after life.
Haste thee while thy heart is burning,
While thine eyes have strength to see;
Hark, behind yon blackening cloud-bank,
To the Storm-King's minstrelsy!
See, he stamps upon the mountains,
And he leaps the valleys high!
Now he smites his forest harp-strings,
And he sounds his thunder-cry:—
Waken, lift ye up, ye creatures,
Sing the song, each living thing!
Join ye in the mighty passion
Of the Symphony of Spring!

And so the young poet finished, his cheeks fairly on fire, and, as he gazed down at Helen, his hand trembling so that he could hardly hold the paper. One glance told him that she was pleased, for the girl's face was flushed like his own, and her eyes were sparkling with delight. Arthur's heart gave a great throb within him.

“You like it!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, Arthur, I do!” she cried. “Oh, how glorious you must have been!” And trembling with girlish delight, she took the paper from his hand and placed it in front of her on the music rack.

“Oh, I should like to write music for it!” she exclaimed; “for those lines about the Storm-King!”

And she read them aloud, clenching her hands and shaking her head, carried away by the image they brought before her eyes. “Oh, I should like music for it!” she cried again.

“I don't know very much about poetry, you know,” she added, laughing excitedly. “If it's about the things I like, I can't help thinking it's fine. It's just the same with music,—if a man only makes it swift and strong, so that it leaps and flies and never tires, that is all I care about; and if he just keeps his trombones till the very last, he can carry me off my feet though he makes the worst noise that ever was! It's the same as a storm, you know, Arthur; do you remember how we used to go up on our hillside when the great wind was coming, and when everything was growing still and black; and how we used to watch the big clouds and the sheets of rain, and run for home when we heard the thunder? Once when you were away, Arthur, I didn't run, for I wanted to see what it was like; and I stayed up there and saw it all, singing the 'Ride of the Valkyries,' and pretending I was one of them and could gallop with the wind. For the wind is fine, Arthur! It fills you so full of its power that you stretch out your arms to it, and it makes you sing; and it comes, and it comes again, stronger than ever, and it sweeps you on, just like a great mass of music. And then it howls through the trees and it flies over the valleys,—that was what you were thinking of, weren't you, Arthur?”

And Helen stopped, breathlessly, and gazed at him; her cheeks were flushed, and her hands still tightly clasped.

“Yes,” said Arthur, half mechanically, for he had lost himself in the girl's enthusiasm, and felt the storm of his verses once more.

“Your poem made me think of that one time that was so gloriously,” Helen went on. “For the rain was almost blinding, and I was drenched, but I did not even know it. For oh, the thunder! Arthur, you've no idea what thunder is like till you're near it! There fell one fearful bolt quite near me, a great white, living thing, as thick as a man's body, and the crash of it seemed to split the air. But oh, I didn't mind it a bit! 'Der Sanger triumphirt in Wettern!' I think I was a real Valkyrie that time, and I only wished that I might put it into music.”

The girl turned to the piano, and half in play struck a great rumbling chord, that rolled and echoed through the room; she sounded it once more, laughing aloud with glee. Arthur had sunk down upon a chair beside her, and was bending forward, watching her with growing excitement. For again and again Helen struck the keys with all the power of her arms, until they seemed to give forth real storm and thunder; and as she went on with her reckless play the mood grew upon her, and she lost herself in the vision of the Storm-King sweeping through the sky. She poured out a great stream of his wild music, singing away to herself excitedly in the meantime. And as the rush continued and the fierce music swelled louder, the phantasy took hold of the girl and carried her beyond herself. She seemed to become the very demon of the storm, unbound and reckless; she smote the keys with right royal strength, and the piano seemed a thing of life beneath her touch. The pace became faster, and the thunder rattled and crashed more wildly, and there awoke in the girl's soul a power of musical utterance that she had never dreamed of in her life before. Her whole being was swept away in ecstasy; her lips were moving excitedly, and her pulses were leaping like mad. She seemed no longer to know of the young man beside her, who was bent forward with clenched hands, carried beyond himself by the sight of her exulting power.

And in the meantime, Helen's music was surging on, building itself up into a great climax that swelled and soared and burst in a deafening thunder crash; and while the air was still throbbing and echoing with it, the girl joined to it her deep voice, grown suddenly conscious of new power:

“See, he stamps upon the mountains,
And he leaps the valleys high!
Now he smites his forest harp-strings,
And he sounds his thunder cry!”

And as the cry came the girl laughed aloud, like a very Valkyrie indeed, her laugh part of the music, and carried on by it; and then gradually as the tempest swept on, the rolling thunder was lost in a march that was the very tread of the Storm-King. And the march broadened, and the thunder died out of it slowly, and all the wild confusion, and then it rose, glorious and triumphant, and turned to a mighty pean, a mightier one than ever Helen could have made. The thought of it had come to her as an inspiration, and as a refuge, that the glory of her passion might not be lost. The march had led her to it, and now it had taken her in its arms and swept her away, as it had swept millions by its majesty. It was the great Ninth Symphony Hymn:

“Hail thee, Joy! From Heaven descending,
Daughter from Elysium!
Ecstasy our hearts inflaming,
To thy sacred shrine we come.
Thine enchantments bind together
Those whom custom's law divides;
All are brothers, all united,
Where thy gentle wing abides.”

And Helen sang it as one possessed by it, as one made drunk with its glory—as the very Goddess of Joy that she was. For the Storm-King and his legions had fled, and another vision had come into her heart, a vision that every one ought to carry with him when the great symphony is to be heard. He should see the hall in Vienna where it was given for the last time in the great master's life, and see the great master himself, the bowed and broken figure that all musicians worship, standing up to conduct it; and see him leading it through all its wild surging passion, almost too frantic to be endured; and then, when the last towering climax has passed and the music has ceased and the multitude at his back has burst forth into its thundering shout, see the one pathetic figure standing there aloft before all eyes and still blindly beating the time. There must have been tears in the eyes of every man in that place to know the reason for it,—that he from whose heart all their joy had come, he who was lord and master of it, had never heard in his life and could never hope to hear one sound of that music he had written, but must dwell a prisoner in darkness and solitude forever.

That was the picture before Helen's eyes; she did not think of the fearful tragedy of it—she had no feeling for tragedy, she knew no more about suffering than a child just born. But joy she knew, and joy she was; she was the multitude lifted up in its ecstasy, throbbing, burning and triumphant, and she sang the great choruses, one after another, and the piano beneath her fingers thundered and rang with the instrumental part. Surely in all music there is no utterance of joy so sustained and so overwhelming in its intensity as this; it is a frenzy almost more than man can stand; it is joy more than human—the joy of existence:—

“Pleasure every creature living
From kind Nature's breast receives;
Good and evil, all are seeking
For the rosy path she leaves.”

And so the torrent of passionate exultation swept Helen onward with it until the very end, the last frantic prestissimo chorus, and then she sprang to her feet and flung up her hands with a cry. She stood thus for a moment, glowing with exultation, and then she sank down again and sat staring before her, the music still echoing through every fiber of her soul, and the shouting multitude still surging before her.

For just how long that lasted, she knew not, but only that her wild mood was gradually subsiding, and that she felt herself sinking back, as a bird sinks after its flight; then suddenly she turned. Arthur was at her side, and she gave a cry, for he had seized her hand in his, and was covering it with burning kisses.

“Arthur! Arthur!” she gasped.

The young man gazed up at her, and Helen remembered the scene in the forest, and realized what she had done. She had shaken him to the very depths of his being by the emotion which she had flung loose before him, and he seemed beside himself at that moment, his hair disordered and his forehead hot and flushed. He made a move as if to clasp the girl in his arms, and Helen tore her hand loose by main force and sprang back to the doorway.

“Arthur!” she cried. “What do you mean?”

He clutched at a chair for support, and stood staring at her. For fully a minute they remained thus, Helen trembling with alarm; then his head sank, and he flung himself down upon the sofa, where he lay sobbing passionately. Helen remained gazing at him with wide open and astonished eyes.

“Arthur!” she exclaimed again.

But he did not hear her, for the cruel sobbing that shook his frame. Helen, as soon as her first alarm had passed, came softly nearer, till she stood by the sofa; but still he did not heed her, and she did not dare even to put her hand upon his shoulder. She was afraid of him, her dearest friend, and she knew not what to make of him.

“Arthur,” she whispered again, when he was silent for a moment. “Please speak to me, Arthur.”

The other gazed up at her with a look of such helpless despair and longing upon his face that Helen was frightened still more. He had been sobbing as if his heart would break, but his eyes were dry.

“What is the matter?” she cried.

The young man answered her hoarsely: “Can you not see what is the matter, Helen? I love you! And you drive me mad!”

The girl turned very pale, and lowered her eyes before his burning gaze.

“Helen,” the other went on impetuously, “you will break my heart if you treat me in this way. Do you not know that for three long years I have been dreaming of you, and of the promise that you gave me? You told me that you loved me, and that you always would love me! You told me that the night before you went away; and you kissed me. All this time I have been thinking of that kiss, and cherishing the memory of it, and waiting for you to return. I have labored for no other reason, I have had no other hope in the world; I have kept your image before me, and lived in it, and worshiped before it, and the thought of you has been all that I had. When I was tired and worn and ill I could only think of you and remember your promise, and count the days before your return. And, oh, it has been so long that I could not stand it! For weeks I have been so impatient, and so filled with the thought of the day when I might see you again that I have been helpless and half mad; for I thought that I should take your hand in mine and claim your promise. And this morning I wandered about the woods for hours, waiting for you to come. And see how you have treated me!”

He buried his face in his hands again, and Helen stood gazing at him, breathing very fast with alarm, and unable to find a word to say.

“Helen,” he groaned, without looking up again, “do you not know that you are beautiful? Have you no heart? You fling your soul bare before me, and you fill me with this fearful passion; you will drive me mad!”

“But, Arthur,” she protested, “I could not think of you so; I thought of you as my brother, and I meant to make you happy.”

“Tell me, then,” he gasped, staring at her, “tell me once for all. You do not love me, Helen?”

The girl answered with a frank gaze that was cruel, “No, Arthur.”

“And you can never love me? You take back the promise that you made me?”

“I told you that I was only a child, Arthur; it has been a long time since I have thought of it.”

The young man choked back a sob. “Oh, Helen, if you only knew what cruel words those are,” he groaned. “I cannot bear them.”

He gazed at her with his burning eyes, so that the girl lowered hers again. “Tell me!” he exclaimed. “What am I to do?”

“Can we not remain friends, just as we used to be?” she asked pleadingly. “Can we not talk together and help each other as before? Oh, Arthur, I thought you would come here to live all summer, and how I should like it! Why can you not? Can you not let me play for you without—without—” and Helen stopped, and flushed a trifle; “I do not know quite what to make of you to-day,” she added.

She was speaking kindly, but to the man beside her with his burning heart, her words were hard to hear; he stared at her, shuddering, and then suddenly he clenched his hands and started to his feet.

“Helen,” he cried, “there is but one thing. I must go!”

“Go?” echoed Helen.

“If I stay here and gaze at you I shall go mad with despair,” he exclaimed incoherently. “Oh, I shall go mad! For I do love you, and you talk to me as if I were a child! Helen, I must get this out of my heart in some way, I cannot stay here.”

“But, Arthur,” the girl protested, “I told father you would stay, and you will make yourself ill, for you have walked all day.”

Every word she uttered was more torment to the other, for it showed him how much his hopes were gone to wreck. He rushed across the room and opened the door; then, however, he paused, as if that had cost him all his resolution. He gazed at the girl with a look of unspeakable yearning, his face white, and his limbs trembling beneath him.

“You wish me to go, Helen?” he exclaimed.

“Wish you!” exclaimed Helen, who was watching him in alarm. “Of course not; I want you to stay and see father, and—”

“And hear you tell me that you do not love me! Oh, Helen, how can you say it again? Can you not see what you have done to me?”

“Arthur!” cried the girl.

“Yes, what you have done to me! You have made me so that I dare not stay near you. You must love me, Helen, oh, some time you must!” And he came toward her again, stretching out his arms to her. As she sprang back, frowning, he stopped and stood for an instant, half sinking; then he whirled about and darted out of the door.

Helen was scarcely able to realize at first that he was gone, but when she looked out she saw that he was already far down the street, walking swiftly. For a moment she thought of calling him; but she checked herself, and closed the door quietly instead, after which she walked slowly across the room. In the center of it she stopped still, gazing in front of her thoughtfully, and looking very grave indeed. “That is dreadful,” she said slowly. “I had no idea of such a thing. What in the world am I to do?”

There was a tall mirror between the two windows of the room, and Helen went toward it and stood in front of it, gazing earnestly at herself. “Is it true, then, that I am so very beautiful?” she mused. “And even Arthur must fall in love with me!”

Helen's face was still flushed with the glory of her ride with the Storm-King; she smoothed back the long strands of golden hair that had come loose, and then she looked at herself again. “It is dreadful,” she said once more, half aloud, “I do not think I ever felt so nervous in my life, and I don't know what to do; everything I did to please him seemed only to make him more miserable. I wanted him to be happy with me; I wanted him to stay with me.” And she walked away frowning, and seated herself at the piano and began peevishly striking at the keys. “I am going to write to him and tell him that he must get over that dreadfulness,” she muttered after a while, “and come back and be friends with me. Oakdale will be too stupid without him all summer, and I should be miserable.”

She was just rising impatiently when the front door opened and her father came in, exclaiming in a cheery voice, “Well, children!” Then he stopped in surprise. “Why, someone told me Arthur was here!” he exclaimed.

“He's gone home again,” said Helen, in a dissatisfied tone.

“Home!” exclaimed the other. “To Hilltown?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought he was going to stay until tomorrow.”

“So did I,” said Helen, “but he changed his mind and decided that he'd better not.”

“Why, I am really disappointed,” said Mr. Davis. “I thought we should have a little family party; I haven't seen Arthur for a month.”

“There is some important reason,” said Helen—“that's what he told me, anyway.” She did not want her father to have any idea of the true reason, or to ask any inconvenient questions.

Mr. Davis would perhaps have done so, had he not something else on his mind. “By the way, Helen,” he said, “I must ask you, what in the world was that fearful noise you were making?”

“Noise?” asked Helen, puzzled for a moment.

“Why, yes; I met old Mr. Nelson coming down the street, and he said that you were making a most dreadful racket upon the piano, and shouting, too, and that there were a dozen people standing in the street, staring!”

A sudden wild thought occurred to Helen, and she whirled about. Sure enough, she found the two windows of the room wide open; and that was too much for her gravity; she flung herself upon the sofa and gave vent to peal after peal of laughter.

“Oh, Daddy!” she gasped. “Oh, Daddy!”

Mr. Davis did not understand the joke, but he waited patiently, taking off his gloves in the meantime. “What it is, Helen?” he enquired.

“Oh, Daddy!” exclaimed the girl again, and lifted herself up and turned her laughing eyes upon him. “And now I understand why inspired people have to live in the country!”

“What was it, Helen?”

“It—it wasn't anything, Daddy, except that I was playing and singing for Arthur, and I forgot to close the windows.”

“You must remember, my love, that you live in a clergyman's house,” said Mr. Davis. “I have no objection to merriment, but it must be within bounds. Mr. Nelson said that he did not know what to think was the matter.”

Helen made a wry face at the name; the Nelsons were a family of Methodists who lived across the way. Methodists are people who take life seriously as a rule, and Helen thought the Nelsons were very queer indeed.

“I'll bet he did know what to think,” she chuckled, “even if he didn't say it; he thought that was just what to expect from a clergyman who had a decanter of wine on his dinner table.”

Mr. Davis could not help smiling. And as for Helen, she was herself all over again; for when her father had come in, she had about reached a point where she could no longer bear to be serious and unhappy. As he went on to ask her to be a little less reckless, Helen put her arms around him and said, with the solemnity that she always wore when she was gayest: “But, Daddy, I don't know what I'm to do; you sent me to Germany to study music, and if I'm never to play it—”

“Yes, but Helen; such frantic, dreadful noise!”

“But, Daddy, the Germans are emotional people, you know; no one would have been in the least surprised at that in Germany; it was a hymn, Daddy!”

“A hymn!” gasped Mr. Davis.

“Yes, honestly,” said Helen. “It is a wonderful hymn. Every German knows it nearly by heart.”

Mr. Davis had as much knowledge of German music as might be expected of one who had lived twenty years in the country and heard three hymns and an anthem sung every Sunday by a volunteer choir. Helen's musical education, as all her other education, had been superintended by Aunt Polly, and the only idea that came to Mr. Davis' mind was of Wagner, whose name he had heard people talk about in connection with noise and incoherency.

“Helen,” he said, “I trust that is not the kind of hymn you are going to sing to-morrow.”

“I don't know,” was the puzzled reply. “I'll see what I can do, Daddy. It's dreadfully hard to find anything in German music like the slow-going, practical lives that we dull Yankees lead.” Then a sudden idea occurred to the girl, and she ran to the piano with a gleeful laugh: “Just see, for instance,” she said, fumbling hurriedly amongst her music, “I was playing the Moonlight Sonata this morning, and that's a good instance.”

“This is the kind of moonlight they have in Germany,” she laughed when she found it. After hammering out a few discords of her own she started recklessly into the incomprehensible “presto,” thundering away at every crescendo as if to break her fingers. “Isn't it fine, Daddy?” she cried, gazing over her shoulder.

“I don't see what it has to do with the moon,” said the clergyman, gazing helplessly at the open window, and wondering if another crowd was gathering.

“That's what everybody's been trying to find out!” said Helen; then, as she heard the dinner bell out in the hall, she ended with half a dozen frantic runs, and jumping up with the last of them, took her father's arm and danced out of the room with him.

“Perhaps when we come to see the other side of the moon,” she said, “we may discover all about it. Or else it's because the moon is supposed to set people crazy.” So they passed in to dinner, where Helen was as animated as ever, poor Arthur and his troubles seeming to have vanished completely from her thoughts.

In fact, it was not until the meal was nearly over that she spoke of them again; she noticed that it was growing dark outside, and she stepped to the window just as a distant rumble of thunder was heard.

“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “There's a fearful storm coming, and poor Arthur is out in it; he must be a long way from town by this time, and there is no house where he can go.” From the window where she stood she had a view across the hills in back of the town, and could see the black clouds coming swiftly on. “It is like we were imagining this morning,” she mused; “I wonder if he will think of it.”

The dinner was over soon after that, and she looked out again, just as the first drops of rain were falling; the thunder was rolling louder, bringing to Helen a faint echo of her morning music. She went in and sat down at the piano, her fingers roaming over the keys hesitatingly. “I wish I could get it again,” she mused. “It seems like a dream when I think of it, it was so wild and so wonderful. Oh, if I could only remember that march!”

There came a crash of thunder near by, as if to help her, but Helen found that all efforts were in vain. Neither the storm music nor the march came back to her, and even when she played a few chords of the great chorus she had sung, it sounded tame and commonplace. Helen knew that the glory of that morning was gone where goes the best inspiration of all humanity, back into nothingness and night.

“It was a shame,” she thought, as she rose discontentedly from the piano. “I never was so carried away by music in my life, and the memory of it would have kept me happy for weeks, if Arthur hadn't been here to trouble me!”

Then, however, as she went to the window again to watch the storm which was now raging in all its majesty, she added more unselfishly: “Poor boy! It is dreadful to think of him being out in it.” She saw a bolt of lightning strike in the distance, and she waited breathlessly for the thunder. It was a fearful crash, and it made her blood run faster, and her eyes sparkle. “My!” she exclaimed. “But it's fine!” And then she added with a laugh, “He can correct his poem by it, if he wants to!”

She turned to go upstairs. On the way she stopped with a rather conscience-stricken look, and said to herself, “Poor fellow! It seems a shame to be happy!” She stood for a moment thinking, but then she added, “Yet I declare, I don't know what to do for him; it surely isn't my fault if I am not in love with him in that mad fashion, and I don't see why I should make myself wretched about it!” Having thus silenced her conscience, she went up to unpack her trunks, humming to herself on the way:

“Sir Knight, a faithful sister's love
This heart devotes to thee;
I pray thee ask no other love,
For pain that causes me.
“Quiet would I see thee come,
And quiet see thee go;
The silent weeping of thine eyes
I cannot bear to know.”

While she was singing Arthur was in the midst of the tempest, staggering towards his home ten miles away. He was drenched by the cold rain, and shivering and almost fainting from exhaustion—for he had eaten nothing since early dawn; yet so wretched and sick at heart was he that he felt nothing, and scarcely heard the storm or realized where he was.

CHAPTER IV

“Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saay.
But I knawed a Quaaker feller as often 'as towd ma this:
'Doant thou marry for munny, but goa wheer munny is!'”

Helen had much to do to keep her busy during the next few days. She had in the first place to receive visits from nearly everybody in Oakdale, for she was a general favorite in the town, and besides that everyone was curious to see what effect the trip had had upon her beauty and accomplishments. Then too, she had the unpacking of an incredible number of trunks; it was true that Helen, having been a favored boarder at an aristocratic seminary, was not in the habit of doing anything troublesome herself, but she considered it necessary to superintend the servant. Last of all there was a great event at the house of her aunt, Mrs. Roberts, to be anticipated and prepared for.

It has been said that the marriage of Mr. Davis had been a second romance in that worthy man's career, he having had the fortune to win the love of a daughter of a very wealthy family which lived near Oakdale. The parents had of course been bitterly opposed to the match, but the girl had had her way. Unfortunately, however, the lovers, or at any rate the bride, having been without any real idea of duty or sacrifice, the match had proved one of those that serve to justify the opinions of people who are “sensible;” the young wife, wearying of the lot she had chosen, had sunk into a state of peevish discontent from which death came to relieve her.

Of this prodigal daughter Aunt Polly was the elder, and wiser, sister. She had never ceased to urge upon the other, both before and after marriage, the folly of her conduct, and had lived herself to be a proof of her own more excellent sense, having married a wealthy stockbroker who proved a good investment, trebling his own capital and hers in a few years. Aunt Polly therefore had a fine home upon Madison Avenue in New York, and a most aristocratic country-seat a few miles from Oakdale, together with the privilege of frequenting the best society in New York, and of choosing her friends amongst the most wealthy in the neighborhood of the little town. This superiority to her erring sister had probably been one of the causes that had contributed to develop the most prominent trait in her character—which is perhaps the most prominent trait of high society in general—a complete satisfaction with the world she knew, and what she knew about it, and the part she played in it. For the rest, Aunt Polly was one of those bustling little women who rule the world in almost everything, because the world finds it is too much trouble to oppose them. She had assumed, and had generally succeeded in having recognized, a complete superiority to Mr. Davis in her knowledge about life, with the result that, as has been stated, the education of the one child of the unfortunate marriage had been managed by her.

When, therefore, Helen had come off the steamer, it had been Mrs. Roberts who was there to meet her; and the arrangement announced was that the girl was to have three days to spend with her father, and was then to come for a week or two at her aunt's, who was just opening her country home and who intended to invite a score of people whom she considered, for reasons of her own, proper persons for her niece to meet. Mrs. Roberts spoke very condescendingly indeed of the company which Helen met at her father's, Mr. Davis having his own opinions about the duty of a clergyman toward the non-aristocratic members of his flock.

The arrangement, it is scarcely necessary to say, pleased Helen very much indeed; the atmosphere of luxury and easy superiority which she found at her aunt's was much to her taste, and she looked forward to being a center of attraction there with the keenest delight. In the meantime, however, she slaked her thirst for happiness just as well at Oakdale, accepting with queenly grace the homage of all who came to lay their presents at her feet. Sunday proved to be a day of triumph, for all the town had come to church, and was as much stirred by the glory of her singing as Arthur had predicted. After the service everyone waited to tell her about it, and so she was radiant indeed.

By Tuesday, however, all that had come to seem a trifling matter, for that afternoon Aunt Polly was to come, and a new world was to be opened for her conquest. Helen was amusing herself by sorting out the motley collection of souvenirs and curios which she had brought home to decorate her room, when she heard a carriage drive up at the door, and a minute later heard the voice of Mrs. Roberts' footman in the hall.

Mrs. Roberts herself did not alight, and Helen kept her waiting only long enough to slip on her hat, and to bid her father a hurried farewell. In a minute more she was in the carriage, and was being borne in state down the main street of Oakdale.

“You are beautiful to-day, my dear,” said her aunt, beaming upon her; “I hope you are all ready for your triumph.”

“I think so,” said Helen. “I've about seen everybody and everything I wanted to at home; I've been wonderfully happy, Auntie.”

“That is right, my dear,” said Aunt Polly. “You have certainly every cause to be, and you would be foolish not to make the most of it. But I should think this town would seem a somewhat less important place to you, after all that you have seen of the world.”

“Yes, it does a little,” laughed Helen, “but it seemed good to see all the old people again.”

“Someone told me they saw Arthur here on Saturday,” said the other. “Did you see him?”

“Oh, yes,” said Helen; “that's what he came for. You can fancy how glad I was to meet him. I spent a couple of hours walking in the woods with him.”

Mrs. Roberts' look of dismay may be imagined; it was far too great for her to hide.

“Where is he now?” she asked, hastily.

“Oh, he has gone home,” said Helen; and she added, smiling, “he went on Saturday afternoon, because he's writing a poem about thunderstorms, and he wanted to study that one.”

The other was sufficiently convinced of the irresponsibility of poets to be half uncertain whether Helen was joking or not; it was very frequently difficult to tell, anyway, for Helen would look serious and amuse herself by watching another person's mystification—a trait of character which would have been intolerable in anyone less fascinating than she.

Perhaps Aunt Polly thought something of that as she sat and watched the girl. Aunt Polly was a little woman who looked as if she herself might have once made some pretense to being a belle, but she was very humble before Helen. “My dear,” she said, “every minute that I watch you, I am astonished to see how wonderfully you have grown. Do you know, Helen, you are glorious!”

“Yes,” said Helen, smiling delightedly. “Isn't it nice, Aunt Polly? I'm so glad I'm beautiful.”

“You funny child,” laughed the other. “What a queer thing to say!”

“Am I not to know I am beautiful?” inquired Helen, looking at her with open eyes. “Why, dear me! I can look at myself in the glass and be just as happy as anyone else; I love everything beautiful.”

Aunt Polly beamed upon her. “I am glad of it, my dear,” she laughed. “I only wish I could say something to you to make you realize what your wonderful beauty means.”

“How, Aunt Polly?” asked the girl. “Have you been reading poetry?”

“No,” said the other, “not exactly; but you know very well in your heart what hopes I have for you, Helen, and I only wish you could appreciate the gift that has been given you, and not fling it away in any foolish fashion. With your talents and your education, my dear, there is almost nothing that you might not do.”

“Yes,” said Helen, with all of her seriousness, “I often think of it; perhaps, Auntie, I might become a poetess!”

The other looked aghast. Helen had seen the look on her aunt's face at the mention of her walk with Arthur, and being a young lady of electrical wit, had understood just what it meant, and just how the rest of the conversation was intended to bear upon the matter; with that advantage she was quite in her glory.

“No, indeed, Aunt Polly,” she said, “you can never tell; just suppose, for instance, I were to fall in love with and marry a man of wonderful genius, who would help me to devote myself to art? It would not make any difference, you know, if he were poor—we could struggle and help each other. And oh, I tell you, if I were to meet such a man, and to know that he loved me truly, and to have proof that he could remember me and be true to me, even when I was far away, oh, I tell you, nothing could ever keep me—”

Helen was declaiming her glowing speech with real fervor, her hands dramatically outstretched. But she could not get any further, for the look of utter horror upon her auditor's face was too much for her; she dropped her hands and made the air echo with her laughter.

“Oh, Aunt Polly, you goose!” she cried, flinging one arm about her, “have you really forgotten me that much in three years?”

The other was so relieved at the happy denouement of that fearful tragedy that she could only protest, “Helen, Helen, why do you fool me so?”

“Because you fool me, or try to,” said Helen. “When you have a sermon to preach on the impropriety of walking in the woods alone with a susceptible young poet, I wish you'd mount formally into the pulpit and begin with the text.”

“My dear,” laughed the other, “you are too quick; but I must confess—”

“Of course you must,” said the girl; and she folded her hands meekly and looked grave. “And now I am ready; and if you meet with any difficulties in the course of your sermon, I've an expert at home who has preached one hundred and four every year for twenty years, all genuine and no two alike.”

“Helen,” said the other, “I do wish you would talk seriously with me. You are old enough to be your own mistress now, and to do as you please, but you ought to realize that I have seen the world more than you, and that my advice is worth something.”

“Tell it to me,” said Helen, ceasing to laugh, and leaning back in the carriage and gazing at her aunt. “What do you want me to do, now that I am home? I will be really serious if you wish me to, for that does interest me. I suppose that my education is finished?”

“Yes,” said the other, “it ought to be, certainly; you have had every advantage that a girl can have, a great deal more than I ever had. And you owe it all to me, Helen,—you do, really; if it hadn't been for my insisting you'd have gotten all your education at Hilltown, and you'd have played the piano and sung like Mary Nelson across the way.”

Helen shuddered, and felt that that was cause indeed for gratitude.

“It is true,” said her aunt; “I've taken as much interest in you as in any one of my own children, and you must know it. It was for no reason at all but that I saw what a wonderful woman you promised to become, and I was anxious to help you to the social position that I thought you ought to have. And now, Helen, the chance is yours if you care to take it.”

“I am taking it, am I not?” asked Helen; “I'm going with you, and I shall be just as charming as I can.”

“Yes, I know,” said the other, smiling a little; “but that is not exactly what I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“Of course, my dear, you may enter good society a while by visiting me; but that will not be permanently. You will have to marry into it, Helen dear.”

“Marry!” echoed the girl, taken aback. “Dear me!”

“You will wish to marry some time,” said the other, “and so you should look forward to it and choose your course. With your charms, Helen, there is almost nothing that you might not hope for; you must know yourself that you could make any man fall in love with you that you wished. And you ought to know also that if you only had wealth you could enter any society; for you have good birth, and you will discover that you have more knowledge and more wit than most of the people you meet.”

“I've discovered that already,” said Helen, laughing.

“All that you must do, my love,” went on the other, “is to realize what is before you, and make up your mind to what you want. You know that your tastes are not those of a poor woman; you have been accustomed to comfort, and you need refinement and wealth; you could never be happy unless you could entertain your friends properly, and live as you pleased.”

“But I don't want to marry a man just for his money,” protested the girl, not altogether pleased with her aunt's business-like view.

“No one wants you to,” the other responded; “you may marry for love if you like; but it is not impossible to love a rich man, is it, Helen?”

“But, Aunt Polly,” said Helen, “I am satisfied as I am now. I do not want to marry anybody. The very idea makes me shudder.”

“I am not in the least anxious that you should,” was the answer. “You are young, and you may choose your own time. All I am anxious for is that you should realize the future that is before you. It is dreadful to me to think that you might throw your precious chance away by some ridiculous folly.”

Helen looked at her aunt for a moment, and then the irrepressible smile broke out.

“What is the matter, child?” asked the other.

“Nothing, except that I was thinking about how these thoughts were brought up.”

“How do you mean?”

“Apropos of my woodland walk with poor Arthur. Auntie, I do believe you're afraid I'm going to fall in love with the dear fellow.”

“No,” said Aunt Polly; “it is not exactly that, for I'd never be able to sleep at night if I thought you capable of anything quite so ghastly. But we must have some care of what people will think, my dear Helen.”

As a matter of fact, Aunt Polly did have some very serious fears about the matter, as has been hinted before; it was, perhaps, a kind of tribute to the divine fire which even society's leaders pay. If it had been a question of a person of her own sense and experience, the word “genius” would have suggested no danger to Mrs. Roberts, but it was different with a young and probably sentimental person like Helen, with her inflaming beauty.

“As a matter of fact, Aunt Polly,” said Helen, “everybody understands my intimacy with Arthur.”

“Tell me, Helen dear,” said the other, turning her keen glance upon her; “tell me the honest truth.”

“About what?”

“You are not in love with Arthur?”

And Helen answered her with her eyes very wide open: “No, I certainly am not in the least.”

And the other drew secretly a great breath of relief. “Is he in love with you, Helen?” she asked.

As Helen thought of Arthur's departure, the question could not but bring a smile. “I—I'm afraid he is,” she said.—“a very little.”

“What a ridiculous impertinence!” exclaimed the other, indignantly.

“Oh, that's all right, Auntie,” said Helen; “he really can't help it, you know.” She paused for a moment, and then she went on: “Such things used to puzzle me when I was very young, and I used to think them quite exciting; but I'm getting used to them now. All the men seem to fall in love with me,—they do, honestly, and I don't know how in the world to help it. They all will make themselves wretched, and I'm sure it isn't my fault. I haven't told you anything about my German lovers, have I, Auntie?”

“Gracious, no!” said the other; “were there any?”

“Any?” laughed the girl. “I might have robbed the Emperor of a whole colonel's staff, and the colonel at the head of it. But I'll tell you about Johann, the funniest one of all; I think he really loved me more than all the rest.”

“Pray, who was Johann?” asked Aunt Polly, thinking how fortunate it was that she learned of these things only after the danger was over.

“I never will forget the first time I met him,” laughed the girl, “the first day I went to the school. Johann was a little boy who opened the door for me, and he stared at me as if he were in a trance; he had the most wonderful round eyes, and puffy red cheeks that made me always think I'd happened to ring the bell while he was eating; and every time after that he saw me for three years he used to gaze at me in the same helpless wonder, with all lingers of his fat little hands wide apart.”

“What a disagreeable wretch!” said the other.

“Not in the least,” laughed Helen; “I liked him. But the funniest part came afterwards, for when I came away Johann had grown a whole foot, and was quite a man. I sent for him to put the straps on my trunks, and guess what he did! He stared at me for a minute, just the same as ever, and then he ran out of the room, blubbering like a baby; and that's the last I ever saw of him.”

Helen was laughing as she told the story, but then she stopped and looked a little conscience-stricken. “Do you know, Aunt Polly,” she said, “it is really a dreadful thing to make people unhappy like that; I suppose poor Johann had spent three whole years dreaming about the enchanted castle in which I was to be fairy princess.”

“It was a good chance for a romantic marriage,” said the other.

“Yes,” said the girl, laughing again; “I tried to fancy it. He'd have kept a Wirthshaus, I suppose, and I'd have served the guests; and Arthur might have come, and I'd have cut Butterbrod for him and he could have been my Werther! Wouldn't Arthur have made a fine Werther, though, Aunt Polly?”

“And blown his brains out afterwards,” added the other.

“No,” said Helen, “brains are too scarce; I'd rather have him follow Goethe's example and write a book about it instead. You know I don't believe half the things these poets tell you, for I think they put themselves through their dreadful experiences just to tell about them and make themselves famous. Don't you believe that, Auntie?”

“I don't know,” said the other (a statement which she seldom made). “I don't know much about such things. Nobody reads poetry any more, you know, Helen, and it doesn't really help one along very much.”

“It doesn't do any harm, does it?” inquired the girl, smiling to herself, “just a little, once in a while?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” said the other; “I believe that a woman ought to have a broad education, for she never knows what may be the whims of the men she meets, or what turn a conversation may take. All I'm afraid of, Helen, is that if you fill your mind with sentimental ideas you might be so silly as to fancy that you were doing something romantic in throwing your one great chance away upon some worthless nobody. I want you to realize what you are, Helen, and that you owe something to yourself, and to your family, too; for the Roberts have always had wealth and position until your mother chose to marry a poor man. What I warn you of now is exactly what I warned her of. Your father is a good man, but he had absolutely nothing to make your mother happy; she was cut off from everything she had been used to,—she could not even keep a carriage. And of course she could not receive her old friends, very few of them cared to have anything more to do with her, and so she simply pined away in discontentment and miserable poverty. You have had an easy life, Helen, and you have no idea of what a horrible thing it is to be poor; you have had the best of teachers, and you have lived at an expensive school, and of course you have always had me to rely upon to introduce you to the right people; but if you married a poor man you couldn't expect to keep any of those advantages. I don't speak of your marrying a man who had no money at all, for that would be too fearful to talk about; but suppose you were to take any one of the young men you might meet at Oakdale even, you'd have to live in a mean little house, and do with one or two servants, and worry yourself about the butcher's bills and brush your own dresses and drive your own horse. And how long do you suppose it would be before you repented of that? Think of having to be like those poor Masons, for instance; they are nice people, and I like them, but I hate to go there, for every time I can't help seeing that the parlor furniture is more dingy, and thinking how miserable they must be, not to be able to buy new things. And their servants' liveries are half worn too; and when you dine there you see that Mrs. Mason is eating with a plated fork, because she has not enough of her best silver to go around. All those things are trifles, Helen, but think of the worry they must give those poor people, who are pinching themselves and wearing themselves out soul and body, trying to keep in the station where they belong, or used to. Poor Mrs. Mason is pale and nervous and wrinkled at forty, and those three poor girls, who spend their time making over their old dresses, are so dowdy-looking and uneasy that no man ever glances at them twice. It is such misery as that which I dread for you, Helen, and why I am talking to you. There is no reason why you should take upon you such sorrows; you have a clear head, and you can think for yourself and make up your mind about things if you only won't blind yourself by foolish sentimentality. You have been brought up to a certain station in life, and no man has a right to offer himself to you unless he can maintain you in that station. There is really no scarcity of such men, Helen, and you'd have no trouble in finding one. There are hundreds of men in New York who are worth millions, and who would fling themselves and their wealth at your feet if you would have them. And you would find such a difference between the opportunities of pleasure and command that such a chance would give you and the narrow life that you lead in this little town that you would wonder how you could ever have been satisfied. It is difficult for you to realize what I mean, my dear, because you have only a schoolgirl's knowledge of life and its pleasures, but when you are in the world, and have learned what power is, and what it means to possess such beauty as yours, you will feel your heart swelling with a new pleasure, and you will thank me for what I tell you. I have figured a wonderful triumph for you, Helen, and it is time you knew what is before you. Of what use is your beauty, if you do not carry it into a wide enough sphere, where it can bring you the admiration and homage you deserve? You need such a field, Helen, to discover your own powers in; believe me, my dear, there is really a higher ambition in the world than to be a country clergyman's daughter.”

“Is there any higher than being happy, Auntie?” asked Helen.

The importance of that observation was beyond the other's ken, as indeed it was beyond Helen's also; she had thrown it out as a chance remark.

“Mr. Roberts and I were talking about this last night,” went on Aunt Polly, “and he told me that I ought to talk seriously to you about it, and get you to realize what a golden future is before you. For it is really true, Helen, as sure as you can trust what I know about the world, that you can have absolutely anything that you want. That is the long and short of the matter—anything that you want! And why should you not have the very best that life can give you? Why should you have to know that other people dwell in finer houses than yours, and are free from cares that make you ill? Why should you have the humiliation of being looked down upon and scorned by other people? Are these other people more entitled to luxury than you, or more able to enjoy it; or could anyone do it more honor than you? You are beautiful beyond telling; you have every gift that a woman can ask to complete enjoyment of life; you are perfect, Helen, you are really perfect! You must know that; you must say it to yourself when you are alone, and know that your life ought to be a queenly triumph. You have only to stretch out your arms and everything will come to you; and there is really and truly no end to the happiness you can taste.”

Helen was gazing at the other with real earnestness, and the words were sinking deep into her soul, deeper than words generally sunk there. She felt her cheeks burning, and her frame stirred by a new emotion; she had seldom before thought of anything but the happiness of the hour.

“Just think of it, my love,” continued Mrs. Roberts, “and know that that is what your old auntie was thinking of when you were only a little tiny girl, sitting upon her knee, and when you were so beautiful that artists used to beg to have you pose for them. I never said anything about it then, because you were too young to understand these things; but now that you are to manage yourself, I have been waiting for a chance to tell you, so that you may see what a prize is yours if you are only wise. And if you wonder why I have cared so much and thought so much of what might be yours, the only reason I can give is that you are my niece, and that I felt that any triumph you might win would be mine. I want you to win a higher place in the world than mine, Helen; I never had such a gift as yours.”

Helen was silent for a minute, deeply thoughtful.

“Tell me, Auntie,” she asked, “and is it really true, then, that a woman is to train herself and grow beautiful and to have so much trouble and money spent upon her—only for her marriage?”

“Why of course, Helen; what else can a woman do? Unless you have money and a husband you cannot possibly hope to accomplish anything in society. With your talents and your beauty you might go anywhere and rule anywhere, but you have to have money before you can even begin.”

“But where am I to meet such a rich man, Aunt Polly?” asked Helen.

“You know perfectly well where. Do you suppose that after I have worried myself about you all this time I mean to desert you now, when you are at the very climax of your glory, when you are all that I ever dared dream of? My dear Helen, I am more interested in you just now than in anything else in the world. I feel as a card player feels when millions are at stake, and when he knows that he holds the perfect hand.”

“That is very nice,” said Helen, laughing nervously. “But there is always a chance of mistake.”

“There is none this time, Helen, for I am an old player, and I have been picking and arranging my hand for long, long years; and you are the hand, my love, and the greatest glory of it all must be yours.”

Helen's heart was throbbing still faster with excitement, as if she were already tasting the wonderful triumph that was before her; her aunt was watching her closely, noting how the blood was mounting to her bright cheeks. The girl felt herself suddenly choking with her pent up excitement, and she stretched out her arms with a strange laugh.

“Auntie,” she said, “you tell me too much at once.”

The other had been marshaling her forces like a general during the last few minutes, and she felt just then as if there were nothing left but the rout. “All that I tell you, you may see for yourself,” she said. “I don't ask you to take anything on my word, for you have only to look in the glass and compare yourself with the women you meet. You will find that all men will turn their eyes upon you when you enter a room.”

Helen did not consider it necessary to debate that question. “You have invited some rich man to meet me at your house?” she asked.

“I was going to say nothing to you about it at first,” said the other, “and let you find out. But I thought afterwards that it would be better to tell you, so that you could manage for yourself. I have invited all the men whom Mr. Roberts and I thought it would be best for you to meet.”

Helen gazed at her aunt silently for a moment, and then she broke into a nervous laugh. “A regular exposition!” she said; “and you'll bring them out one by one and put them through their paces, won't you, Auntie? And have them labeled for comparison,—so that I can tell just what stocks they own and how they stand on the 'Street'! Do you remember the suitor in Moliere?—'J'ai quinze mille livres de rente; j'ai le corps sain; j'ai des beaux dents!'”

It was a flash of Helen's old merriment, but it did not seem so natural as usual, even to her. She forced herself to laugh, for she was growing more and more excited and uneasy.

“My dear,” said Aunt Polly, “please do not begin making fun again.”

“But you must let me joke a little, Auntie,” said the girl. “I have never been serious for so long before.”

“You ought to be serious about it, my dear.”

“I will,” said Helen. “I have really listened attentively; you must tell me all about these rich men that I am to meet, and what I am to do. I hope I am not the only girl.”

“Of course not,” was the response; “I would not do anything ridiculous. I have invited a number of other girls—but they won't trouble you in the least.”

“No,” said Helen. “I am not afraid of other girls; but what's to be done? It's a sort of house-warming, I suppose?”

“Yes,” was the reply, “I suppose so, for I only came down last week myself. I have asked about twenty people for a week or two; they all know each other, more or less, so there won't be much formality. We shall amuse ourselves with coaching and golf, and anything else we please; and of course there will be plenty of music in the evening.”

Helen smiled at the significant tone of her aunt's voice. “Are the people there now?” she asked.

“Those who live anywhere in the neighborhood are; most of the men will be down on the afternoon train, in time for dinner.”

“And tell me who are the men, Auntie?”

“I'm afraid I won't have time,” said Mrs. Roberts, glancing out of the carriage. “We are too near home. But I will tell you about one of them, if you like.”

“The king-bee?” laughed Helen. “Is there a king-bee?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Roberts; “there is. At any rate, my husband and I think he is, and we are anxious to see what you think. His name is Gerald Harrison, and he comes from Cincinnati.”

“Oh, dear,” said Helen, “I hate to meet men from the West. He must be a pork-packer, or something horrible.”

“No,” said the other, “he is a railroad president.”

“And why do you think he's the king-bee; is he very rich?”

“He is worth about ten million dollars,” said Aunt Polly.

Helen gazed at her wildly. “Ten million dollars!” she gasped.

“Yes,” said the other; “about that, probably a little more. Mr. Roberts knows all about his affairs.”

Helen was staring into her aunt's face. “Tell me,” she asked, very nervously indeed. “Tell me, honestly!”

“What?”

“Is that the man you are bringing me here to meet?”

“Yes, Helen,” said the other quietly.

The girl's hands were clasped tightly together just then. “Aunt Polly,” she asked, “what kind of a man is he? I will not marry a bad man!”

“A bad man, child? How ridiculous! Do you suppose I would ask you to marry a bad man, if he owned all New York? I want you to be happy. Mr. Harrison is a man who has made his own fortune, and he is a man of tremendous energy. Everyone is obliged to respect him.”

“But he must be old, Auntie.”

“He is very young, Helen, only about forty.”

“Dear me,” said the girl, “I could never marry a man as old as forty; and then, I'd have to go out West!”

“Mr. Harrison has come to New York to live,” was the other's reply. “He has just bought a really magnificent country seat about ten miles from here—the old Everson place, if you remember it; and he is negotiating for a house near ours in the city. My husband and I both agreed, Helen, that if you could make Mr. Harrison fall in love with you it would be all that we could desire.”

“That is not the real problem,” Helen said, gazing out of the carriage with a frightened look upon her face; “it is whether I can fall in love with him. Aunt Polly, it is dreadful to me to think of marrying; I don't want to marry! I don't care who the man is!”

“We'll see about that later on,” said the other, smiling reassuringly, and at the same time putting her arm about the girl; “there is no hurry, my love, and no one has the least thought of asking you to do what you do not want to do. But a chance like this does not come often to any girl, my dear. Mr. Harrison is in every way a desirable man.”

“But he's stupid, Aunt Polly, I know he's stupid! All self-made men are; they tell you about how they made themselves, and what wonderful things they hare made!”

“You must of course not expect to find Mr. Harrison as cultured as yourself, Helen,” was the reply; “his education has been that of the world, and not of books. But nobody thinks less of a man for that in the world; the most one can ask is that he does not make pretenses. And he is very far from stupid, I assure you, or he would not have been what he is.”

“I suppose not,” said Helen, weakly.

“And, besides,” observed Aunt Polly, laughing to cheer the girl up, “I assure you it doesn't make any difference. My husband makes no pretense to being a wit, or a musician, or anything like that; he's just a plain, sensible man, but we get along as happily as you could wish. We each of us go our own way, and understand each other perfectly.”

“So I'm to marry a plain, sensible man?” asked the girl, apparently not much comforted by the observation.

“A plain, sensible man with ten million dollars, my dear,” said Aunt Polly, “who adores you and has nothing to do with his money but to let you make yourself happy and glorious with it? But don't worry yourself, my child, because the first thing for you to feel is that if you don't like him you need not take him. It all rests upon you; he won't be here till after the rest, till the evening train, so you can have time to think it over and calculate whether ten million dollars will buy anything you want.” And Mrs. Roberts laughed.

Then the carriage having passed within the gates of her home, she kissed the girl upon her cheek. “By the way,” she added, “if you want to meet a romantic person to offset Mr. Harrison, I'll tell you about Mr. Howard. I haven't mentioned him, have I?”

“I never heard of him,” said Helen.

“It's a real romance,” said the other. “You didn't suppose that your sensible old auntie could have a romance, did you?”

“Tell me about it,” laughed Helen.

The carriage was driving up the broad avenue that led to the Roberts house; it was a drive of a minute or two, however, and so Aunt Polly had time for a hasty explanation.

“It was over twenty years ago,” she said, “before your mother was married, and when our family had a camp up in the Adirondacks; there were only two others near us, and in each of them there was a young man about my age. We three were great friends for three or four years, but we've never seen each other since till a short while ago.”

“And one of them is this man?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Roberts; “his name is David Howard; I met him quite by accident the other day, and recognized him. He lives all alone, in the winter in New York somewheres, and in the summer up at the same place in the mountains; he's the most romantic man you ever met, and I know you'll find him interesting. He's a poet, I fancy, or a musician at any rate, and he's a very great scholar.”

“Is he rich too?” asked the girl, laughing.

“I fancy not,” was the reply, “but I can't tell; he lives very plainly.”

“Aren't you afraid I'll fall in love with him, Auntie?”

“No,” said the other, smiling to herself; “I'm not worrying about that.”

“Why not?”

“Wait till you see him, my dear,” was the reply; “if you choose him for a husband I'll give my consent.”

“That sounds mysterious,” observed the girl, gazing at her aunt; “tell me, is he here now?”

“Yes,” said Aunt Polly; “he's been here a day or two; but I don't think you'll see him at dinner, because he has been feeling unwell today; he may be down a while this evening, for I've been telling him about you, and he's anxious to see you. You must be nice to him, Helen, and try to feel as sorry for him as I do.”

“Sorry for him?” echoed the girl with a start.

“Yes, my dear, he is an invalid, with some very dreadful affliction.”

And Helen stared at her aunt. “An affliction!” she cried. “Aunt Polly, that is horrible! What in the world did you invite an invalid for at this time, with all the other people? I hate invalids!”

“I had asked him before,” was the apologetic reply, “and so I couldn't help it. I had great difficulty in getting him to promise to come anyway, for he's a very strange, solitary man. But I wanted to have my little romance, and renew our acquaintance, and this was the only time the third party could come.”

“Oh, the third one is here too?”

“He will be in a day or two.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Lieutenant Maynard, and he's in the navy; he's stationed at Brooklyn just now, but he expects to get leave for a while.”

“That is a little better,” Helen remarked, as the carriage was drawing up in front of the great house. “I'd marry a naval officer.”

“No,” laughed Aunt Polly; “he leaves a wife and some children in Brooklyn. We three are going to keep to ourselves and talk about old times and what has happened to us since then, and so you young folks will not be troubled by us.”

“I hope you will,” said the other, “for I can't ever be happy with invalids.”

And there, as the carriage door was opened, the conversation ended abruptly. When Helen had sprung out she found that there were six or eight people upon the piazza, to whom the excitement of being introduced drove from her mind for a time all thoughts which her aunt's words had brought.

CHAPTER V

“If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me,
Without my stir.”

Most of the people whom Helen met upon her arrival were of her own sex, so that she did not feel called upon to make special exertions to please them; but she was naturally cheerful and happy with everyone, and the other matters of which Mrs. Roberts had talked took on such vast proportions before her mind that it was a relief to her to put them aside and enjoy herself for a while in her usual way. Helen was glad that most of the men were to arrive later, so that she might make her appearance before them under the most favorable circumstances. When she heard the distant whistle of the afternoon train a couple of hours later, it was with that thought that she retired to her room to rest before dressing.

Aunt Polly, following her plan of accustoming the girl to a proper style of living, had engaged a maid to attend her during her stay; and Helen found therefore that her trunks were unpacked and everything in order. It was a great relief to her to be rid of all care, and she took off her dress and flung herself down upon the bed to think.

Helen had imbided during her Sunday-school days the usual formulas of dogmatic religion, but upon matters of morality her ideas were of the vaguest possible description. The guide of her life had always been her instinct for happiness, her “genial sense of youth.” She had never formulated any rule of life to herself, but that which she sought was joy, primarily for herself, and incidentally for other people, because unhappy people were disturbing (unless it were possible to avoid them). In debating within herself the arguments which her aunt had brought before her mind, it was that principle chiefly by which she tested them.

To the girl's eager nature, keenly sensitive to pleasure and greedy for it, the prospect so suddenly flung wide before her eyes was so intoxicating that again and again as she thought of it it made her tremble and burn. So far as Helen could see at that moment, a marriage with this Mr. Harrison would mean the command of every source of happiness; and upon a scale so magnificent, so belittling of everything she had known before, that she shrank from it as something impossible and unnatural. Again and again she buried her heated brow in her hands and muttered: “I ought to have known it before! I ought to have had time to realize it.”

That which restrained the girl from welcoming such an opportunity, from clasping it to her in ecstasy and flinging herself madly into the whirl of pleasure it held out, was not so much her conscience and the ideals which she had formed more or less vaguely from the novels and poems she had read, as the instinct of her maidenhood, which made her shrink from the thought of marriage with a man whom she did not love. So strong was this feeling in her that at first she felt that she could not even bear to be introduced to him with such an idea in her mind.

It was Aunt Polly's wisdom and diplomacy which finally overcame her scruples enough to persuade her to that first step; Helen kept thinking of her aunt's words—that no one wanted to compel her to marry the man, that she might do just as she chose. She argued that it was foolish to worry herself, or to be ill at ease. She might see what sort of a man he was; if he fell in love with her it would do no harm,—Helen was not long in discovering by the increased pace of her pulses that she would find it exciting to have everyone know that a multimillionaire was in love with her. “As for the rest,” she said to herself, “we'll see when the time comes,” and knew not that one who goes to front his life's temptation with that resolution is a mariner who leaves the steering of his vessel to the tempest.

She had stilled her objection by such arguments, and was just beginning to feel the excitement of the prospect once more, when the maid knocked at the door and asked to know if mademoiselle were ready to dress for dinner. And mademoiselle arose and bathed her face and arms and was once more her old refreshed and rejoicing self, ready for that mysterious and wonderful process which was to send her out an hour or two later a vision of perfectness, compounded of the hues of the rose and the odors of evening, with the new and unutterable magic that is all the woman's own. Besides the prospects her aunt had spoken of, there were reasons enough why Helen should be radiant, for it was her first recognized appearance in high society; and so she sat in front of the tall mirror and criticised every detail of the coiffure which the maid prepared, and eyed by turns her gleaming neck and shoulders and the wonderful dress, as yet unworn, which shone from the bed through its covering of tissue paper; and was all the time so filled with joy and delight that it was a pleasure to be near her. Soon Aunt Polly, clad in plain black as a sign that she retired in favor of Helen, came in to assist and superintend the toilet. So serious at the task, and so filled with a sense of its importance and the issues that were staked upon it was she and the maid also, that one would not dare think of the humor of the situation if Helen herself had not broken the spell by declaring that she felt like an Ashantee warrior being decked out for battle with plumes and war paint, or like Rinaldo, or Amadis donning his armor.

And Helen was in fact going to war, a war for which nature has been training woman since the first fig-tree grew. She carried a bow strong as the one of Ulysses, which no man could draw, and an arrow sharp as the sunbeam and armed with a barb; for a helmet, beside her treasure of golden hair, she wore one rose, set there with the art that conceals art, so that it was no longer a red rose, but one more bright perfection that had come to ripeness about the glowing maiden. Her dress was of the same color, a color which when worn upon a woman is a challenge, crying abroad that here is perfection beyond envy and beyond praise.

When the last touch was finished and Helen gazed upon herself, with her bare shoulders and arms and her throat so soft and white, she knew that she was, compared to all about her, a vision from another world. Chiefest of all, she knew that neither arms and shoulders, nor robe, nor gleaming hair, would ever be thought of when once the face that smiled upon her with its serene perfectness had caught the eye; she knew that as usual, men must start when they saw her, and never take their eyes from her. The thought filled her with an exulting consciousness of power, and reared her form with a new dignity, and made her chest heave and her cheeks burn with yet a new beauty.

When everything was ready, Aunt Polly's husband was called in to gaze upon her. A little man was Aunt Polly's husband, with black side whiskers and a head partly bald; a most quiet and unobtrusive person, looking just what he had been represented,—a “plain, sensible man,” who attended to his half of the family affairs, and left the other half to his wife. He gazed upon Helen and blinked once or twice, as if blinded by so much beauty, and then took the end of her fingers very lightly in his and pronounced her “absolutely perfect.” “And, my dear,” he added, “it's after seven, so perhaps we'd best descend.”

So he led the girl down to her triumph, to the handsome parlors of the house where eight or ten men were strolling about. It was quite exciting to Helen to meet them, for they were all strangers, and Aunt Polly had apparently considered Mr. Harrison of so much importance that she had said nothing about the others, leaving her niece at liberty to make what speculations she pleased.

It was a brilliant company which was seated in the dining room a short while later. As it was assembled in Helen's honor, Aunt Polly had taken care to bring those who would please the girl, and represent high life and luxury at its best; all of the guests were young, and therefore perfect. The members of the “smart set,” when they have passed the third decade, are apt to show signs of weariness; a little of their beauty and health is gone, and some of their animation, and all of their joy,—so that one may be led to ask himself if there be not really something wrong about their views and ways of living. When they are young, however, they represent the possibilities of the human animal in all things external. In some wonderful way known only to themselves they have managed to manipulate the laws of men so as to make men do for them all the hard and painful tasks of life, so that they have no care but to make themselves as beautiful and as clever and as generally excellent as selfishness can be. Helen, of course, was not in the least troubled about the selfishness, and she was quite satisfied with externals. She saw about her perfect toilets and perfect manners; she saw everyone as happy as she liked everyone to be; and the result was that her spirits took fire, and she was clever and fascinating beyond even herself. She carried everything before her, and performed the real feat of dominating the table by her beauty and cleveness, without being either presumptuous or vain. Aunt Polly replied to the delighted looks of her husband at the other end of the table, and the two only wished that Mr. Harrison had been there then.

As a matter of fact, Helen had forgotten Mr. Harrison entirely, and he did not come back to her mind until the dinner was almost over, when suddenly she heard the bell ring. It was just the time that he was due to arrive, and so she knew that she would see him in another half hour. In the exultation of the present moment all of her hesitation was gone, and she was as ready to meet him as her aunt could have wished.

When the party rose a few minutes later and went into the parlors again, Helen was the first to enter, upon the arm of her neighbor. She was thinking of Mr. Harrison; and as she glanced about her, she could not keep from giving a slight start. Far down at the other end of the room she had caught sight of the figure of a man, and her first thought had been that it must be the millionaire. His frail, slender form was more than half concealed by the cushions of the sofa upon which he was seated, but even so, Helen could discover that he was a slight cripple.

The man rose as the party entered, and Aunt Polly went towards him; she apparently expected her niece to follow and be introduced to the stranger, but in the meantime the truth had occurred to Helen, that it must be the Mr. Howard she had been told of; she turned to one side with her partner, and began remarking the pictures in the room.

When she found opportunity, she glanced over and saw that the man had seated himself on the sofa and was talking to Mrs. Roberts. He looked, as Helen thought, all the invalid her aunt had described him to be, for his face was white and very wan, so that it made her shudder. “Dear me!” she exclaimed to herself, “I don't think such a man ought to go into public.” And she turned resolutely away, and set herself to the task of forgetting him, which she very easily did.

A merry party was soon gathered about her, rejoicing in the glory of her presence, and listening to the stories which she told of her adventures in Europe. Helen kept the circle well in hand that way, and was equally ready when one of the young ladies turned the conversation off upon French poetry in the hope of eclipsing her. Thus her animation continued without rest until Mrs. Roberts escorted one of the guests to the piano to sing for them.

“She's keeping me for Mr. Harrison,” thought Helen, laughing mischievously to herself; “and I suppose she's picked out the worst musician first, so as to build up a climax.”

It seemed as if that might have been the plan for a fact; the performer sang part of Gluck's “J'ai perdu mon Eurydice,” in strange French, and in a mournful voice which served very well to display the incompatibility of the melody and the words. As it happened, however, Mistress Helen heard not a word of the song, for it had scarcely begun before she turned her eyes towards the doorway and caught sight of a figure that drove all other ideas from her mind. Mr. Harrison had come at last.

He was a tall, dignified man, and Helen's first feeling was of relief to discover that he was neither coarse-looking, nor even plain. He had rather too bright a complexion, and rather too large a sandy mustache, but his clothes fitted him, and he seemed to be at ease as he glanced about him and waited in the doorway for the young lady at the piano to finish. While the faint applause was still sounding he entered with Mrs. Roberts, moving slowly across the room. “And now!” thought Helen, “now for it!”

As she expected, the two came towards her, and Mr. Harrison was presented; Helen, who was on the watch with all her faculties, decided that he bore that trial tolerably, for while his admiration of course showed itself, he did not stare, and he was not embarrassed.

“I am a little late, I fear,” he said; “have I missed much of the music?”

“No,” said Helen, “that was the first selection.”

“I am glad of that,” said the other.

According to the laws which regulate the drifting of conversation, it was next due that Helen should ask if he were fond of singing; and then that he should answer that he was very fond of it, which he did.

“Mrs. Roberts tells me you are a skillful musician,” he added; “I trust that I shall hear you?”

Helen of course meant to play, and had devoted some thought to the selection of her program; therefore she answered: “Possibly; we shall see by and by.”

“I am told that you have been studying in Germany,” was the next observation. “Do you like Germany?”

“Very much,” said Helen. “Only they made me work very hard at music, and at everything else.”

“That is perhaps why you are a good player,” said Mr. Harrison.

“You ought to wait until you hear me,” the girl replied, following his example of choosing the most obvious thing to say.

“I fear I am not much of a critic,” said the other.

And so the conversation drifted on for several minutes, Mr. Harrison's remarks being so very uninspiring that his companion could find no way to change the subject to anything worth talking about.

“Evidently,” the girl thought, during a momentary lull, “he has learned all the rules of talking, and that's why he's at ease. But dear me, what an awful prospect! It would kill me to have to do this often. But then, to be sure I shan't see him in the day time, and in the evenings we should not be at home. One doesn't have to be too intimate with one's husband, I suppose. And then—”

“I think,” said Mr. Harrison, “that your aunt is coming to ask you to play.”

That was Aunt Polly's mission, for a fact, and Helen was much relieved, for she had found herself quite helpless to lift the conversation out of the slough of despond into which it had fallen; she wanted a little time to collect her faculties and think of something clever to start with again. When in answer to the request of Aunt Polly she arose and went to the piano, the crushed feeling of course left her, and her serenity returned; for Helen was at home at the piano, knowing that she could do whatever she chose, and do it without effort. It was a stimulus to her faculties to perceive that a general hush had fallen upon the room, and that every eye was upon her; as she sat down, therefore, all her old exultation was back.

She paused a moment to collect herself, and gave one easy glance down the room at the groups of people. She caught a glimpse as she did so of Mr. Howard, who was still seated upon the sofa, leaning forward and resting his chin in his hand and fixing his eyes upon her. At another time the sight of his wan face might perhaps have annoyed the girl, but she was carried beyond that just then by the excitement of the moment; her glance came back to the piano, and feeling that everyone was attentive and expectant, she began.

Helen numbered in her repertoire a good many pieces that were hopelessly beyond the technic of the average salon pianist, and she had chosen the most formidable with which to astonish her hearers that evening. She had her full share of that pleasure which people get from concerning themselves with great things: a pleasure which is responsible for much of the reading, and especially the discussing, of the world's great poets, and which brings forth many lofty sentiments from the numerous class of persons who combine idealism with vanity. Helen's selection was the first movement of the “Sonata Appassionata,” and she was filled with a pleasing sense of majesty and importance as she began. She liked the first theme especially because it was striking and dignified and never failed to attract attention; and in what followed there was room for every shading of tone, from delicate softness that showed much feeling and sympathy, to stunning fortissimos that made everyone stare. The girl was relieved of any possible fear by the certainty that the composition was completely beyond her hearers' understanding, and so she soon lost herself in her task, and, as her excitement mounted, played with splendid spirit and abandon. Her calculations proved entirely well made, for when she stopped she received a real ovation, having genuinely astonished her hearers; and she crossed the room, beaming radiantly upon everyone and acknowledging their compliments, more assured of triumph than ever before. To cap the climax, when she reached her seat she found Mr. Harrison betraying completely his profound admiration, his gaze being riveted upon the glowing girl as she sat down beside him.

“Miss Davis,” he said, with evident sincerity, “that was really wonderful!”

“Thank you very much,” said Helen, radiantly.

“It was the most splendid piano playing I have ever heard in my life,” the other went on. “Pray what was it that you played—something new?”

“Oh, no,” was the answer, “it is very old indeed.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Harrison, “those old composers were very great men.”

“Yes,” said Helen, demurely.

“I was astonished to see with what ease you played,” the other continued, “and yet so marvelously fast! That must be a fearfully hard piece of music to play.”

“Yes, it is,” said Helen; “but it is quite exciting,” she added, fanning herself and laughing.

Helen was at the top of her being just then, and in perfect command of things; she had no idea of letting herself be dragged down into the commonplace again. “I think it's about time I was fascinating him,” she said to herself, and she started in, full of merriment and life. Taking her last remark as a cue, she told him funny stories about the eccentricities of the sonata's great composer, how he would storm and rage up and down his room like a madman, and how he hired a boy to pump water over his head by the hour, in case of emergency.

Mr. Harrison remarked that it was funny how all musicians were such queer chaps, but even that did not discourage Helen. She rattled on, quite as supremely captivating as she had been at the dinner table, and as she saw that her companion was yielding to her spell, the color mounted to her cheeks and her blood flowed faster yet.

It is of the nature of such flame to feed itself, and Helen grew the more exulting as she perceived her success,—and consequently all the more irresistible. The eyes of the man were soon riveted upon the gorgeous vision of loveliness before him, and the contagion of the girl's animation showed itself even in him, for he brightened a little, and was clever enough to startle himself. It was a new delight and stimulus to Helen to perceive it, and she was soon swept away in much the same kind of nervous delight as her phantasy with the thunderstorm. The sofa upon which the two were seated had been somewhat apart from the rest, and so they had nothing to disturb them. A short half hour fled by, during which Helen's daring animation ruled everything, and at the end of which Mr. Harrison was quite oblivious to everything about him.

There were others, however, who were watching the affair; the keen-eyed Aunt Polly was comprehending all with joy, but she was as ever calculating and prudent, and she knew that Helen's monopoly of Mr. Harrison would soon become unpleasantly conspicuous, especially as she had so far introduced him to no one else. She felt that little would be lost by breaking the spell, for what the girl was doing then she might do any time she chose; and so after waiting a while longer she made her way unobtrusively over to them and joined their conversation.

Helen of course understood her aunt's meaning, and acquiesced; she kept on laughing and talking for a minute or two more, and then at a lull in the conversation she exclaimed: “But I've been keeping Mr. Harrison here talking to me, and nobody else has seen anything of him.” And so Mr. Harrison, inwardly anathematizing the rest of the company, was compelled to go through a long series of handshakings, and finally to be drawn into a group of young persons whose conversation seemed to him the most inane he had ever heard in his life.

In the meantime someone else was giving a piano selection, one which Helen had never heard, but which sounded to every one like a finger exercise after her own meteoric flight; the girl sat half listening to it and half waiting for her aunt to return, which Mrs. Roberts finally did, beaming with gratitude.

“My love,” she whispered, “you are an angel; you have done better than I ever dreamed of!”

And Helen felt her blood give a sudden leap that was not quite pleasant; the surging thoughts that were in her mind at that moment brought back the nervous trembling she had felt in the carriage, so that she leaned against the sofa for support.

“Now listen, my dear,” the other went swiftly on, perhaps divining the girl's state, “I want you to do a great favor for me.”

“Was not that for you, Auntie?” asked Helen, weakly.

“No, my dear, that was for yourself. But this—”

“What is it?”

“I want you to come and talk to my David Howard a little while.”

The girl gave a start, and turned a little paler. “Aunt Polly,” she exclaimed, “not now! He looks so ill, it makes me nervous even to see him.”

“But, Helen, my dear, that is nonsense,” was the reply. “Mr. Howard is one of the most interesting men you ever met. He knows more than all the people in this room together, and you will forget he is an invalid when you have talked to him a while.”

Helen was, or wished to think herself, upon the heights of happiness just then, and she shrunk more than ever from anything that was wretched. “Not now, Aunt Polly,” she said, faintly. “Please wait until—”

“But, my dear,” said Aunt Polly, “now is the very time; you will wish to be with Mr. Harrison again soon. And you must meet Mr. Howard, for that is what he came for.”

“I suppose then I'll have to,” said Helen, knitting her brows; “I'll stroll over in a minute or two.”

“All right,” said the other; “and please try to get acquainted with him, Helen, for I want you to like him.”

“I will do my best,” said the girl. “He won't talk about his ailments, will he?”

“No,” said the other, laughing, “I fancy not. Talk to him about music—he's a great musician, you know.”

And as her aunt left the room, Helen stole a side glance at the man, who was alone upon the sofa just then. His chin was still resting in his hand, and he was looking at Helen as before. As she glanced at him thus he seemed to be all head, or rather all forehead, for his brow was very high and white, and was set off by heavy black hair.

“He does look interesting,” the girl thought, as she forced a smile and walked across the room; her aunt entered at the same time, as if by accident, and the two approached Mr. Howard. As he saw them coming he rose, with some effort as Helen noticed, and with a very slight look of pain; it cost her some resolution to give the man her hand. In a minute or two more, however, they were seated alone upon the sofa, Aunt Polly having gone off with the remark to Helen that she had made Mr. Howard promise to talk to her about music, and that they both knew too much about it for her. “You must tell Helen all about her playing,” she added to him, laughingly.

And then Helen, to carry on the conversation, added, “I should be very much pleased if you would.”

“I am afraid it is an ungracious task Mrs. Roberts has chosen me,” the man answered, smiling. “Critics are not a popular race.”

“It depends upon the critics,” said Helen. “They must be sincere.”

“That is just where they get into trouble,” was the response.

“It looks as if he were going to be chary with his praise,” thought Helen, feeling just the least bit uncomfortable. She thought for a moment, and then said, not without truth, “You pique my curiosity, Mr. Howard.”

“My criticism could not be technical,” said the other, smiling, again, “for I am not a pianist.”

“You play some other instrument?” asked Helen; afterwards she added, mischievously, “or are you just a critic?”

“I play the violin,” the man answered.

“You are going to play for us this evening?”

“No,” said the other, “I fear I shall not.”

“Why not?” Helen inquired.

“I have not been feeling very well to-day,” was the response. “But I have promised your aunt to play some evening; we had quite a long dispute.”

“You do not like to play in public?” asked Helen.

The question was a perfectly natural one, but it happened unfortunately that as the girl asked it her glance rested upon the figure of her companion. The man chanced to look at her at the same instant, and she saw in a flash that her thought had been misread. Helen colored with the most painful mortification; but Mr. Howard gave, to her surprise, no sign of offense.

“No, not in general,” he said, with simple dignity. “I believe that I am much better equipped as a listener.”

Helen had never seen more perfect self-possession than that, and she felt quite humbled.

It would have been difficult to guess the age of the man beside her, but Helen noticed that his hair was slightly gray. A closer view had only served to strengthen her first impression of him, that he was all head, and she found herself thinking that if that had been all of him he might have been handsome, tho in a strange, uncomfortable way. The broad forehead seemed more prominent than ever, and the dark eyes seemed fairly to shine from beneath it. The rest of the face, tho wan, was as powerful and massive as the brow, and seemed to Helen, little used as she was to think of such things, to indicate character as well as suffering.

“It looks a little like Arthur's,” she thought.

This she had been noticing in the course of the conversation; then, because her curiosity had really been piqued, she brought back the original topic again. “You have not told me about my playing,” she smiled, “and I wish for your opinion. I am very vain, you know.” (There is wisdom in avowing a weakness which you wish others to think you do not possess.)

“It gave me great pleasure to watch you,” said the man, after a moment.

“To watch me!” thought Helen. “That is a palpable evasion. That is not criticising my music itself,” she said aloud, not showing that she was a trifle annoyed.

“You have evidently been very well taught,” said the other,—“unusually well; and you have a very considerable technic.” And Helen was only more uncomfortable than ever; evidently the man would have liked to add a “but” to that sentence, and the girl felt as if she had come near an icicle in the course of her evening's triumph. However, she was now still more curious to hear the rest of his opinion. Half convinced yet that it must be favorable in the end, she said:

“I should not in the least mind your speaking plainly; the admiration of people who do not understand music I really do not care for.” And then as Mr. Howard fixed his deep, clear eyes upon her, Helen involuntarily lowered hers a little.

“If you really want my opinion,” said the other, “you shall have it. But you must remember that it is yourself who leads me to the bad taste of being serious in company.”

That last remark was in Helen's own style, and she looked interested. For the rest, she felt that she had gotten into grave trouble by her question; but it was too late to retreat now.

“I will excuse you,” she said. “I wish to know.”

“Very well, then,” said Mr. Howard; “the truth is that I did not care for your selection.”

Helen gave a slight start. “If that is all the trouble, I need not worry,” she thought; and she added easily, “The sonata is usually considered one of Beethoven's very greatest works, Mr. Howard.”

“I am aware of that,” said the other; “but do you know how Beethoven came to compose it?”

Helen had the happy feeling of a person of moderate resources when the conversation turns to one of his specialties. “Yes,” she said; “I have read how he said 'So pocht das Schicksal auf die Pforte.' [Footnote: “So knocks Fate upon the door.”] Do you understand that, Mr. Howard?”

“Only partly,” said the other, very gently; “do you?” And Helen felt just then that she had made a very awkward blunder indeed.

“Fate is a very dreadful thing to understand, Miss Davis,” the other continued, slowly. “When one has heard the knock, he does not forget it, and even the echo of it makes him tremble.”

“I suppose then,” said Helen, glibly, trying to save herself, “that you think the sonata is too serious to be played in public?”

“Not exactly,” was the answer; “it depends upon the circumstances. There are always three persons concerned, you know. In this case, as you have pardoned me for being serious, there is in the first place the great genius with his sacred message; you know how he learned that his life work was to be ruined by deafness, and how he poured his agony and despair into his greatest symphony, and into this sonata. That is the first person, Miss Davis.”

He paused for a moment; and Helen took a deep breath, thinking that it was the strangest conversation she had ever been called upon to listen to during an evening's merriment. Yet she did not smile, for the man's deep, resonant voice fascinated her.

“And the second?” she asked.

“The second,” said Mr. Howard, turning his dark, sunken eyes full upon the girl, “is another man, not a genius, but one who has suffered, I fear, nearly as much as one; a man who is very hungry for beauty, and very impatient of insincerity, and who is accustomed to look to the great masters of art for all his help and courage.”

Helen felt very uncomfortable indeed.

“Evidently,” she said, “I am the third.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Howard, “the pianist is the third. It is the pianist's place to take the great work and live it, and study it until he knows all that it means; and then—”

“I don't think I took it quite so seriously as that,” said Helen, with a poor attempt at humility.

“No,” said Mr. Howard, gravely; “it was made evident to me that you did not by every note you played; for you treated it as if it had been a Liszt show-piece.”

Helen was of course exceedingly angry at those last blunt words; but she was too proud to let her vexation be observed. She felt that she had gotten herself into the difficulty by asking for serious criticism, for deep in her heart she knew that it was true, and that she would never have dared to play the sonata had she known that a musician was present. Helen felt completely humiliated, her few minutes' conversation having been enough to put her out of humor with herself and all of her surroundings. There was a long silence, in which she had time to think of what she had heard; she felt in spite of herself the folly of what she had done, and her whole triumph had suddenly come to look very small indeed; yet, as was natural, she felt only anger against the man who had broken the spell and destroyed her illusion. She was only the more irritated because she could not find any ground upon which to blame him.

It would have been very difficult for her to have carried on the conversation after that. Fortunately a diversion occurred, the young person who had last played having gone to the piano again, this time with a young man and a violin.

“Aunt Polly has found someone to take your place,” said Helen, forcing a smile.

“Yes,” said the other, “she told me we had another violinist.”

The violinist played Raff's Cavatina, a thing with which fiddlers all love to exhibit themselves; he played it just a little off the key at times, as Helen might have told by watching her companion's eyebrows. She in the meantime was trying to recover her equanimity, and to think what else she could say. “He's the most uncomfortable man I ever met,” she thought with vexation. “I wish I'd insisted upon keeping away from him!”

However, Helen was again relieved from her plight by the fact that as the fiddler stopped and the faint applause died out, she saw Mr. Harrison coming towards her. Mr. Harrison had somehow succeeded in extricating himself from the difficulty in which his hostess had placed him, and had no doubt guessed that Helen was no better pleased with her new companion.

“May I join you?” he asked, as he neared the sofa.

“Certainly,” said Helen, smiling; she introduced the two men, and Mr. Harrison sat down upon the other side of the girl. Somehow or other he seemed less endurable than he had just before, for his voice was not as soft as Mr. Howard's, and now that Helen's animation was gone she was again aware of the millionaire's very limited attainments.

“That was a very interesting thing we just heard,” he said. “What was it? Do you know?”

Helen answered that it was Raff's Cavatina.

“Cavatina?” said Mr. Harrison. “The name sounds familiar; I may have heard it before.”

Helen glanced nervously at Mr. Howard; but the latter gave no sign.

“Mr. Howard is himself a violinist,” she said. “We must be careful what criticisms we make.”

“Oh, I do not make any—I do not know enough about it,” said the other, with heartiness which somehow seemed to Helen to fail of deserving the palliating epithet of “bluff.”

“Mr. Howard has just been telling me about my own playing,” Helen went on, growing a little desperate.

“I hope he admired it as much as I did,” said the unfortunate railroad-president.

“I'm afraid he didn't,” said Helen, trying to turn the matter into a laugh.

“He didn't!” exclaimed Mr. Harrison, in surprise. “Pray, why not?”

He asked the question of Mr. Howard, and Helen shuddered, for fear he might begin with that dreadful “There are always three persons concerned, you know.” But the man merely said, very quietly, “My criticism was of rather a technical nature, Mr. Harrison.”

“I'm sure, for my part I thought her playing wonderful,” said the gentleman from Cincinnati, to which the other did not reply.

Helen felt herself between two fires and her vexation was increasing every moment; yet, try as she might, she could not think of anything to change the subject, and it was fortunate that the watchful Aunt Polly was on hand to save her. Mrs. Roberts was too diplomatic a person not to see the unwisdom of putting Mr. Harrison in a position where his deficiencies must be so very apparent, and so she came over, determined to carry one of the two men away. She was relieved of the trouble by the fact that, as she came near, Mr. Howard rose, again with some pain as it seemed to Helen, and asked the girl to excuse him. “I have been feeling quite ill today,” he explained.

Helen, as she saw him walk away with Mrs. Roberts, sank back with a sigh which was only half restrained. “A very peculiar person,” said Mr. Harrison, who was clever enough to divine her vexation.”

“Yes,” said the girl, “very, indeed.”

“He seemed to be lecturing you about something, from what I saw,” added the other. The remark was far from being in the best taste, but it pleased Helen, because it went to justify her to herself, and at the same time offered her an opportunity to vent her feelings.

“Yes,” she said. “It was about music; he was very much displeased with me.”

“So!” exclaimed Mr. Harrison. “I hope you do not let that disturb you?”

“No,” said the girl, laughing,—“or at any rate, I shall soon recover my equanimity. It is very hard to please a man who plays himself, you know.”

“Or who says he plays,” observed Mr. Harrison. “He didn't play, you notice.”

Helen was pleased to fancy that there might be wisdom in the remark. “Let us change the subject,” she said more cheerfully. “It is best to forget things that make one feel uncomfortable.”

“I'll leave the finding of a new topic to you,” replied the other, with graciousness which did a little more to restore Helen's self-esteem. “I have a very humble opinion of my own conversation.”

“Do you like mine?” the girl asked with a laugh.

“I do, indeed,” said Mr. Harrison with equally pleasing frankness. “I was as interested as could be in the story that you were telling me when we were stopped.”

“Well, we'll begin where we left off!” exclaimed Helen, and felt as if she had suddenly discovered a doorway leading from a prison. She found it easy to forget the recent events after that, and Mr. Harrison grew more tolerable to her every moment now that the other was gone; her self-possession came back to her quickly as she read his admiration in his eyes. Besides that, it was impossible to forget for very long that Mr. Harrison was a multi-millionaire, and the object of the envious glances of every other girl in the room; and so when Aunt Polly returned a while later she found the conversation between the two progressing very well, and in fact almost as much enjoyed by both as it had been the first time. After waiting a few minutes she came to ask Helen to sing for the company, a treat which she had reserved until the last.

Helen's buoyant nature had by that time flung all her doubts behind her, and this last excitement was all that was needed to sweep her away entirely again. She went to the piano as exulting as ever in her command of it and in the homage which it brought her. She sang an arrangement of the “Preislied,” and she sang it with all the energy and enthusiasm she possessed; partly because she had a really good voice and enjoyed the song, and partly because an audience appreciates singing more easily than any other kind of music. She really scored the success of the evening. Everybody was as enthusiastic as the limits of good taste allowed, and Helen was compelled, not in the least against her will, to sing again and again. While she was laughing with happiness and triumph, something brought, back “Wohin” to her mind, and she sang it again, quite as gaily as she had sung it by the streamlet with Arthur. It was enough to delight even the dullest, and perhaps if Mr. Howard had been there even he would have applauded a little.

At any rate, as Helen rose from the piano she received a complete ovation, everyone coming to her to thank her and to praise her, and to share in the joy of her beauty; she herself had never been more radiant and more exulting in all her exulting life, drinking in even Mr. Harrison's rapturous compliments and finding nothing exaggerated in them. And in the meantime, Aunt Polly having suggested a waltz to close the festivities, the furniture was rapidly moved to one side, and the hostess herself took her seat at the piano and struck up the “Invitation to the Dance;” Mr. Harrison, who had been at Helen's side since her singing had ceased, was of course her partner, and the girl, flushed and excited by all the homage she had received, was soon waltzing delightedly in his arms. The man danced well, fortunately for him, and that he was the beautiful girl's ardent admirer was by this time evident, not only to Helen, but to everyone else.

In the mood that she was then, the fact was as welcome to her as it could possibly have been, and when, therefore, Mr. Harrison kept her arm and begged for the next dance, and the next in turn, Helen was sufficiently carried away to have no wish to refuse him; when after the third dance she was tired out and sat down to rest, Mr. Harrison was still her companion.

Helen was at the very height of her happiness then, every trace of her former vexation gone, and likewise every trace of her objections to the man beside her. The music was still sounding merrily, and everyone else was dancing, so that her animation did not seem at all out of taste; and so brilliant and fascinating had she become, and so completely enraptured was Mr. Harrison, that he would probably have capitulated then and there if the dancing had not ceased and the company separated when it did. The end of all the excitement was a great disappointment to Helen; she was completely happy just then, and would have gone just as far as the stream had carried her. It being her first social experience was probably the reason that she was less easily wearied than the rest; and besides, when one has thus yielded to the sway of the senses, he dreads instinctively the subsiding of the excitement and the awakening of reason.

The awakening, however, is one that must always come; Helen, having sent away the maid, suddenly found herself standing alone in the middle of her own room gazing at herself in the glass, and seeing a frightened look in her eyes. The merry laughter of the guests ceased gradually, and silence settled about the halls of the great house; but even then Helen did not move. She was standing there still when her aunt came into the room.

Mrs. Roberts was about as excited as was possible in a matron of her age and dignity; she flung her arms rapturously around Helen, and clasped her to her. “My dear,” she cried, “it was a triumph!”

“Yes, Auntie,” said Helen, weakly.

“You dear child, you!” went on the other, laughing; “I don't believe you realize it yet! Do you know, Helen, that Mr. Harrison is madly in love with you? You ought to be the happiest girl in the land tonight!”

“Yes, Auntie,” said Helen again, still more weakly.

“Come here, my dear,” said Mrs. Roberts, drawing her gently over to the bed and sitting down beside her; “you are a little dazed, I fancy, and I do not blame you. I should have been beside myself at your age if such a thing had happened to me; do you realize, child, what a fortune like Mr. Harrison's is?”

“No,” said Helen, “it is very hard, Aunt Polly. I'm afraid about it; I must have some time to think.”

“Think!” laughed the other. “You queer child! My dear, do you actually mean that you could think of refusing this chance of your lifetime?”

“I don't know,” said Helen, trembling; “I don't—”

“Everybody'd think you were crazy, child! I know I should, for one.” And she added, coaxingly, “Let me tell you what Mr. Roberts said.”

“What, Auntie?”

“He sent you in this message; he's a great person for doing generous things, when he takes it into his head. He told me to tell you that if you'd accept Mr. Harrison's offer he would give you the finest trousseau that he could buy. Wasn't that splendid of him?”

“Yes,” said Helen, “thank him for me;” and she shuddered. “Don't talk to me any more about it now, tho,” she pleaded. “Please don't, Aunt Polly. I was so excited, and it was all like a dream, and I'm half dazed now; I can't think about it, and I must think, somehow! It's too dreadful!”

“You shan't think about it tonight, child,” laughed the other, “for I want you to sleep and be beautiful tomorrow. See,” she added, beginning to unfasten Helen's dress, “I'm going to be your little mother tonight, and put you to bed.”

And so, soothing the girl and kissing her burning forehead and trying to laugh away her fears, her delighted protectress undressed her, and did not leave her until she had seen her in bed and kissed her again. “And promise me, child,” she said, “that you won't worry yourself tonight. Go to sleep, and you'll have time to think tomorrow.”

Helen promised that she would; but she did not keep her promise. She heard the great clock in the hallway strike many times, and when the darkest hours of the night had passed she was sitting up in bed and gazing about her at the gray shadows in the room, holding the covering tightly about her, because she was very cold; she was muttering nervously to herself, half deliriously: “No, no, I will not do it! They shall not make me do it! I must have time to think.”

And when at last she fell into a restless slumber, that thought was still in her mind, and those words upon her lips: “I will not do it; I must have time to think!”

[Music: The opening passage of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata.]

CHAPTER VI

“And yet methinks I see it in thy face,
What them shouldst be: th' occasion speaks thee; and
My strong imagination sees a crown
Dropping upon thy head.”

When Helen awoke upon the following morning, the resolution to withstand her aunt's urging was still strong within her; as she strove to bring back the swift events of the night before, the first discovery she made was a headache and a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction that was new to her. She arose and looked in the glass, and seeing that she was pale, vowed again, “They shall not torment me in this way! I do not even mean that he shall propose to me; I must have time to realize it!”

And so firm was she in her own mind that she rang the bell and sent the maid to call her aunt. It was then only nine o'clock in the morning, and Helen presumed that neither Mrs. Roberts nor any of the other guests would be awake, they not being fresh from boarding school as she was; but the girl was so nervous and restless, and so weighed upon by her urgent resolution, that she felt she could do nothing else until she had declared it and gotten rid of the matter. “I'm going to tell her once for all,” she vowed; “they shall not torment me any more.”

It turned out, however, that Mrs. Roberts had been up and dressed a considerable time,—for a reason which, when Helen learned it, prevented her delivering so quickly the speech she had upon her mind; she noticed a worried expression upon her aunt's face as soon as the latter came into the room.

“What is the matter?” she asked, in some surprise.

“A very dreadful misfortune, my dear,” said Mrs. Roberts; “I don't know how to tell you, you'll be so put out.”

Helen was quite alarmed as she saw her aunt sink down into a chair; but then it flashed over her that Mr. Harrison might have for some reason been called away.

“What is it? Tell me!” she asked eagerly.

“It's Mr. Howard, my dear,” said the other; and Helen frowned.

“Oh, bother!” she cried; “what about him?”

“He's been ill during the night,” replied Aunt Polly.

“Ill!” exclaimed Helen. “Dear me, what a nuisance!”

“Poor man,” said the other, deprecatingly; “he cannot help it.”

“Yes,” exclaimed Helen, “but he ought not to be here. What is the matter with him?”

“I don't know,” was the reply, “but he has been suffering so all night that the doctor has had to give him an opiate.”

The wan countenance of Mr. Howard rose up before Helen just then, and she shuddered inwardly.

“Dear me, what a state of affairs!” she exclaimed. “It seems to me as if I were to have nothing but fright and worry. Why should there be such things in the world?”

“I don't know, Helen,” said the other, “but it is certainly inopportune for you. Of course the company will all have to leave.”

“To leave!” echoed Helen; she had never once thought of that.

“Why, of course,” said her aunt. “It would not be possible to enjoy ourselves under such very dreadful circumstances.”

“But, Aunt Polly, that is a shame!” cried the girl. “The idea of so many people being inconvenienced for such a cause. Can't he be moved?”

“The doctor declares it would be impossible at present, Helen, and it would not look right anyway, you know. He will certainly have to remain until he is better.”

“And how long will that be?”

“A week, or perhaps more,” was the reply.

And Helen saw that her promised holiday was ruined; her emotions, however, were not all of disappointment, for though she was vexed at the interruptions, she recollected with sudden relief that she could thus obtain, and without so much effort of her own, the time to debate the problem of Mr. Harrison. Also there was in her mind, if not exactly pity for the invalid, at any rate the nearest to it that Helen had ever learned to feel, an uncomfortable fright at the idea of such suffering.

“I promise you,” said Aunt Polly, who had been watching her face and trying to read her emotions, “that we shall only postpone the good time I meant to give you. You cannot possibly be more vexed about it than I, for I was rejoicing in your triumph with Mr. Harrison.”

“I'm not worrying on that account,” said Helen, angrily.

“Helen, dear,” said Mrs. Roberts, pleadingly, “what can be the matter with you? I think anyone who was watching you and me would get the idea that I was the one to whom the fortune is coming. I suppose that was only one of your jokes, my dear, but I truly don't think you show a realization of what a tremendous opportunity you have. You show much more lack of experience than I had any idea could be possible.”

“It isn't that, Aunt Polly,” protested Helen; “I realize it, but I want time to think.”

“To think, Helen! But what is there to think? It seems to be madness to trifle with such a chance.”

“Will it be trifling to keep him waiting a while?” asked Helen, laughing in spite of her vexation.

“Maybe not, my dear; but you ought to know that every other girl in this house would snap him up at one second's notice. If you'd only seen them watching you last night as I did.”

“I saw a little,” was the reply. “But, Aunt Polly, is Mr. Harrison the only man whom I can find?”

“My husband and I have been over the list of our acquaintances, and not found anyone that can be compared with him for an instant, Helen. We know of no one that would do for you that has half as much money.”

“I never said he'd do for me,” said Helen, again laughing. “Understand me, Auntie,” she added; “it isn't that I'd not like the fortune! If I could get it without its attachment—”

“But, my dear, you know you can never get any wealth except by marriage; what is the use of talking such nonsense, even in fun?”

“But, listen,” objected Helen in turn; “suppose I don't want such a great fortune—suppose I should marry one of these other men?”

“Helen, if you only could know as much as I know about these things,” said Mrs. Roberts, “if you only could know the difference between being in the middle and at the top of the social ladder! Dear, why will you choose anything but the best when you can have the best if you want it? I tell you once for all I do not care how clever you are, or how beautiful you are, the great people will look down on you for an upstart if you cannot match them and make just as much of a show. And why can you not discover what your own tastes are? I watched you last night, child; anyone could have seen that you were in your element! You outshone everyone, Helen, and you should do just the same all your life. Can you not see just what that means to you?”

“Yes, Auntie,” said Helen, “but then—”

“Were you not perfectly happy last night?” interrupted the other.

“No,” protested the other, “that's just what I was going to say.”

“The only reason in the world why you are not, my dear, is that you were tormenting yourself with foolish scruples. Can you not see that if you once had the courage to rid yourself of them it would be all that you need. Why are you so weak, Helen?”

“It is not weak!” exclaimed the other.

“Yes,” asserted Mrs. Roberts, “I say it is weak. It is weak of you not to comprehend what your life is to be, and what you need for your happiness. It is a shame for you to make no use of the glorious gifts that are yours, and to cramp and hinder all your own progress. I want you to have room to show your true powers, Helen!”

Helen had been leaning over the foot of the bed listening to her aunt, stirred again by all her old emotion, and angry with herself for being stirred; her unspoken resolution was not quite so steady as it had been, tho like all good resolutions it remained in her mind to torment her.

She sprang up suddenly with a very nervous and forced laugh. “I'm glad I don't have to argue with you, Auntie,” she said, “and that I'm saved the trouble of worrying myself ill. You see the Fates are on my side,—I must have time to think, whether I want to or not.” It was that comfort which saved her from further struggle with herself upon the subject. (Helen much preferred being happy to struggling.) She set hurriedly to work to dress, for her aunt told her that the guests were nearly ready for breakfast.

“Nobody could sleep since all the excitement,” she said. “I wonder it did not wake you.”

“I was tired,” said Helen; “I guess that was it.”

“You'll find the breakfast rather a sombre repast,” added Mrs. Roberts, pathetically. “I've been up nearly three hours myself, so frightened about poor Mr. Howard; I had neveer seen anyone so dreadfully ill, and I was quite certain he was in his death agony.”

“Aunt Polly!” cried Helen with a sudden wild start, “why do you talk like that?”

“I won't say any more about it,” was the reply, “only hurry up. And put on your best looks, my dear, for Mr. Harrison to carry away in his memory.”

“I'll do that much with pleasure,” was the answer; “and please have the maid come up to pack my trunks again; for you won't want me to stay now, of course.”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Roberts, “not unless you want to. Our house won't be a very cheerful place, I fear.”

“I'll come back in a week or two, when you are ready for me,” Helen added; “in the meantime I can be thinking about Mr. Harrison.”

Helen was soon on her way downstairs, for it was terrifying to her to be alone and in the neighborhood of Mr. Howard. She found a sombre gathering indeed, for the guests spoke to each other only in half-whispers, and there were few smiles to be seen. Helen found herself placed opposite Mr. Harrison at the table, and she had a chance to study him by glances through the meal. “He's well dressed, anyway,” she mused, “and he isn't altogether bad. I wonder if I'd dare to marry him.”

After breakfast Helen strolled out upon the piazza, perhaps with some purpose in her mind; for it is not unpleasant to toy with a temptation, even when one means to resist it. At any rate, she was a little excited when she heard Mr. Harrison coming out to join her there.

“Rather a sad ending of our little party, wasn't it, Miss Davis?” he said.

“Yes,” answered the girl, “I feel so sorry for poor Mr. Howard.”

“He seemed to be rather ill last night,” said the other. He was going to add that the fact perhaps accounted for the invalid's severity, but he was afraid of shocking Helen by his levity,—a not entirely necessary precaution, unfortunately.

“You are going back to town this morning, with the others?” Helen asked.

“No,” said Mr. Harrison, somewhat to her surprise; “I have a different plan.”

“Good Heavens, does he suppose he's going to stay here with me?” thought the girl.

“I received your aunt's permission to ask you,” continued Mr. Harrison, “and so I need only yours.”

“For what?” Helen inquired, with varied emotions.

“To drive you over to Oakdale with my rig,” said the other. “I had it brought down, you know, because I thought there might be a chance to use it.”

Helen had turned slightly paler, and was staring in front of her.

“Are you not fond of driving, then, Miss Davis?” asked the other, as she hesitated.

“Yes,” said Helen, “but I don't like to trouble you—”

“I assure you it will be the greatest pleasure in the world,” said Mr. Harrison; “I only regret that I shall not be able to see more of you, Miss Davis; it is only for the present, I hope.”

“Thank you,” said Helen, still very faintly.

“And I have a pair of horses that I am rather proud of,” added Mr. Harrison, laughing; “I should like you to tell me what you think of them. Will you give me the pleasure?”

And Helen could not hesitate very much longer without being rude. “If you really wish it, Mr. Harrison,” she said, “very well.” And then someone else came out on the piazza and cut short the conversation; Helen had no time to think any more about the matter, but she had a disagreeable consciousness that her blood was flowing faster again, and that her old agitation was back in all its strength. Soon afterwards Mrs. Roberts came out and joined the two.

“Miss Davis has granted me the very great favor,” said Mr. Harrison; “I fear I shall be happier than I ought to be, considering what suffering I leave behind.”

“It will do no good to worry about it,” said Mrs. Roberts, a reflection which often keeps the world from wasting its sympathy. “I shall have your carriage brought round.”

“Isn't it rather early to start?” asked Helen.

“I don't know,” said her aunt; “is it?”

“We can take a little drive if it is,” said Mr. Harrison; “I mean that Miss Davis shall think a great deal of my horses.”

Helen said nothing, but stood gazing in front of her across the lawns, her mind in a tempest of emotions. She could not put away from her the excitement that Mr. Harrison's presence brought; the visions of wealth and power which gleamed before her almost overwhelmed her with their vastness. But she had also the memory of her morning resolve to trouble her conscience; the result was the same confused helplessness, the dazed and frightened feeling which she so rebelled against.

“I do not want to be troubled in this way,” she muttered angrily to herself, again and again; “I wish to be let alone, so that I can be happy!”

Yet there was no chance just then for her to find an instant's peace, or time for further thought; there were half a dozen people about her, and she was compelled to listen to and answer commonplace remarks about the beauty of the country in front of her, and about her singing on the previous evening.

She had to stifle her agitation as best she could, and almost before she realized it her aunt had come to summon her to get ready for the drive.

Helen hoped to have a moment's quiet then; but there was nothing to be done but put on her hat and gloves, and Mrs. Roberts was with her all the time. “Helen,” she said pleadingly, as she watched the girl surveying herself in the glass, “I do hope you will not forget all that I told you.”

“I wish you would let me alone about it!” cried Helen, very peevishly.

“If you only knew, my dear girl, how much I have done for you,” replied the other, “and how I've planned and looked forward to this time, I don't think you'd answer me in that way.”

“It isn't that, Aunt Polly,” exclaimed Helen, “but I am so confused and I don't know what to think.”

“I am trying my poor, humble best to show you what to think. And you could not possibly feel more worried than I just now; Helen, you could be rid of all these doubts and struggles in one instant, if you chose. Ask yourself if it is not true; you have only to give yourself into the arms of the happiness that calls you. And you never will get rid of the matter in any other way,—indeed you will not! If you should fling away this chance, the memory of it would never leave you all your life; after you knew it was too late, you would torment yourself a thousand times more than ever you can now.”

“Oh, dear, dear!” cried Helen, half hysterically; “I can't stand that, Aunt Polly. I'll do anything, only let me alone! My head is aching to split, and I don't know where I am.”

“And you will never find another chance like it, Helen,” went on the other, with sledge-hammer remorselessness. “For if you behave in this perfectly insane way and lose this opportunity, I shall simply give you up in despair at your perversity.”

“But I haven't said I was going to lose it,” the girl exclaimed. “He won't be any the less in love with me if I make him wait, Aunt Polly!—”

“Mr. Harrison was going back to Cincinnati in a day or two,” put in Mrs. Roberts, swiftly.

“He will stay if I wish him to,” was the girl's reply. “There is no need for so much worry; one would think I was getting old.”

“Old!” laughed the other. “You are so beautiful this morning, Helen, that I could fall in love with you myself.” She turned the girl towards her, seeing that her toilet was finished. “I haven't a thought in the world, dear, but to keep you so beautiful,” she said; “I hate to see you tormenting yourself and making yourself so pale; why will you not take my advice and fling all these worries aside and let yourself be happy? That is all I want you to do, and it is so easy! Why is it that you do not want to be happy? I like to see you smile, Helen!” And Helen, who was tired of struggling, made a wry attempt to oblige her, and then broke into a laugh at herself. Meanwhile the other picked a rose from a great bunch of them that lay upon the bureau, and pinned it upon her dress.

“There, child,” she, said, “he can never resist you now, I know!”

Helen kissed her excitedly upon the cheek, and darted quickly out of the door, singing, in a brave attempt to bring back her old, merry self:—

“The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la-la, Have nothing to do with the case.”

A moment later, however, she recollected Mr. Howard and his misfortune, and her heart sank; she ran quickly down the steps to get the thought of him from her mind.

It was easy enough to forget him and all other troubles as well when she was once outside upon the piazza; for there were plenty of happy people, and everyone crowded about her to bid her good-by. There too was Mr. Harrison standing upon the steps waiting for her, and there was his driving-cart with two magnificent black horses, alert and eager for the sport. Helen was not much of a judge of horses, having never had one of her own to drive, but she had the eye of a person of aristocratic tastes for what was in good form, and she saw that Mr. Harrison's turnout was all of that, with another attraction for her, that it was daring; for the horses were lithe, restless creatures, thoroughbreds, both of them; and it looked as if they had not been out of the stable in a week. They were giving the groom who held them all that he could do.

Mr. Harrison held out his hand to the girl as she came down the steps, and eyed her keenly to see if her flushed cheeks would betray any sign of fear. But Helen's emotions were surging too strongly for such thoughts, and she had, besides, a little of the thoroughbred nature herself. She laughed gaily as she gave her hand to her companion and sprang into the wagon; he followed her, and as he took the reins the groom sprang aside and the two horses bounded away down the broad avenue. Helen turned once to wave her hand in answer to the chorus of good-bys that sounded from the porch, and then she faced about and sank back into the seat and drank in with delight the fresh morning breeze that blew in her face.

“Oh, I think this is fine!” she cried.

“You like driving, then?” asked the other.

“Yes indeed,” was the reply. “I like this kind ever so much.”

“Wait until we get out on the high-road,” said Mr. Harrison, “and then we will see what we can do. I came from the West, you know, Miss Davis, so I think I am wise on the subject of horses.”

The woods on either side sped by them, and Helen's emotions soon began to flow faster. It was always easy for her to forget everything and lose herself in feelings of joy and power, and it was especially easy when she was as much wrought up as she was just then. It was again her ride with the thunderstorm, and soon she felt as if she were being swept out into the rejoicing and the victory once more. She might have realized, if she had thought, that her joy was coming only because she was following her aunt's advice, and yielding herself into the arms of her temptation; but Helen was thoroughly tired of thinking; she wanted to feel, and again and again she drank in deep breaths of the breeze.

It was only a minute or so before they passed the gates of the Roberts place, and swept out of the woods and into the open country. It was really inspiring then, for Mr. Harrison gave his horses the reins, and Helen was compelled to hold on to her hat. He saw delight and laughter glowing in her countenance as she watched the landscape that fled by them, with its hillsides clad in their brightest green and with its fresh-plowed farm-lands and snowy orchards; the clattering of the horses' hoofs and the whirring of the wheels in the sandy road were music and inspiration such as Helen longed for, and she would have sung with all her heart had she been alone.

As was her way, she talked instead, with the same animation and glow that had fascinated her companion upon the previous evening. She talked of the sights that were about them, and when they came to the top of the hill and paused to gaze around at the view, she told about her trip through the Alps, and pictured the scenery to him, and narrated some of her mountain-climbing adventures; and then Mr. Harrison, who must have been a dull man indeed not to have felt the contagion of Helen's happiness, told her about his own experiences in the Rockies, to which the girl listened with genuine interest. Mr. Harrison's father, so he told her, had been a station-agent of a little town in one of the wildest portions of the mountains; he himself had begun as a railroad surveyor, and had risen step by step by constant exertion and watchfulness. It was a story of a self-made man, such as Helen had vowed to her aunt she could not bear to listen to; yet she did not find it disagreeable just then. There was an exciting story of a race with a rival road, to secure the right to the best route across the mountains; Helen found it quite as exciting as music, and said so.

“Perhaps it is a kind of music,” said Mr. Harrison, laughing; “it is the only kind I have cared anything about, excepting yours.”

“I had no idea people had to work so hard in the world,” said Helen, dodging the compliment.

“They do, unless they have someone else to do it for them,” said the other. “It is a fierce race, nowadays, and a man has to watch and think every minute of the time. But it is glorious to triumph.”

Helen found herself already a little more in a position to realize what ten million dollars amounted to, and very much more respectful and awe-stricken in her relation to them. She was sufficiently oblivious to the flight of time to be quite surprised when she gazed about her, and discovered that they were within a couple of miles of home. “I had no idea of how quickly we were going,” she said.

“You are not tired, then?” asked the other.

“No indeed,” Helen answered, “I enjoyed it ever so much.”

“We might drive farther,” said Mr. Harrison; “these horses are hardly waked up.”

He reined them in a little and glanced at his watch. “It's just eleven,” he said, “I think there'd be time,” and he turned to her with a smile. “Would you like to have an adventure?” he asked.

“I generally do,” replied the girl. “What is it?”

“I was thinking of a drive,” said the other; “one that we could just about take and return by lunch-time; it is about ten miles from here.”

“What is it?” asked Helen.

“I have just bought a country place near here,” said Mr. Harrison. “I thought perhaps you would like to see it.”

“My aunt spoke of it,” Helen answered; “the Eversons' old home.”

“Yes,” said the other; “you know it, then?”

“I only saw it once in my life, when I was a very little girl,” Helen replied, “and so I have only a dim recollection of its magnificence; the old man who lived there never saw any company.”

“It had to be sold because he failed in business,” said Mr. Harrison. “Would you like to drive over?”

“Very much,” said Helen, and a minute later, when they came to a fork in the road, they took the one which led them to “Fairview,” as the place was called.

“I think it a tremendously fine property myself,” said Mr. Harrison; “I made up my mind to have it the first time I saw it. I haven't seen anything around here to equal it, and I hope to make a real English country-seat out of it. I'll tell you about what I want to do when we get there, and you can give me your advice; a man never has good taste, you know.”

“I should like to see it,” answered Helen, smiling; “I have a passion for fixing up things.”

“We had an exciting time at the sale,” went on Mr. Harrison reminiscently. “You know Mr. Everson's family wanted to keep the place themselves, and the three or four branches of the family had clubbed together to buy it; when the bidding got near the end, there was no one left but the family and myself.”

“And you got it?” said Helen. “How cruel!”

“The strongest wins,” laughed the other. “I had made up my mind to have it. The Eversons are a very aristocratic family, aren't they?”

“Yes,” said Helen, “very, indeed; they have lived in this part of the country since the Revolution.” As Mr. Harrison went on to tell her the story of the sale she found herself vividly reminded of what her aunt had told her of the difference between having a good deal of money and all the money one wanted. Perhaps, also, her companion was not without some such vaguely felt purpose in the telling. At any rate, the girl was trembling inwardly more and more at the prospect which was unfolding itself before her; as excitement always acted upon her as a stimulant, she was at her very best during the rest of the drive. She and her companion were conversing very merrily indeed when Fairview was reached.

The very beginning of the place was imposing, for there was a high wall along the roadway for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then two massive iron gates set in great stone pillars; they were opened by the gate-keeper in response to Mr. Harrison's call. Once inside the two had a drive of some distance through what had once been a handsome park, though it was a semi-wilderness then. The road ascended somewhat all the way, until the end of the forest was reached, and the first view of the house was gained; Helen could scarcely restrain a cry of pleasure as she saw it, for it was really a magnificent old mansion, built of weather-beaten gray stone, and standing upon a high plateau, surrounded by a lawn and shaded by half a dozen great oaks; below it the lawn sloped in a broad terrace, and in the valley thus formed gleamed a little trout-pond, set off at the back by a thickly-wooded hillside.

“Isn't it splendid!” the girl exclaimed, gazing about her.

“I thought it was rather good,” said Mr. Harrison, deprecatingly. “It can be made much finer, of course.”

“When you take your last year's hay crop from the lawn, for one thing,” laughed she. “But I had no idea there was anything so beautiful near our little Oakdale. Just look at that tremendous entrance!”

“It's all built in royal style,” said Mr. Harrison. “The family must have been wealthy in the old days.”

“Probably slave-dealers, or something of that kind,” observed Helen. “Is the house all furnished inside?”

“Yes,” said the other, “but I expect to do most of it over. Wouldn't you like to look?” He asked the question as he saw the gate-keeper coming up the road, presumably with the keys.

The girl gazed about her dubiously; she would have liked to go in, except that she was certain it would be improper. Helen had never had much respect for the proprieties, however, being accustomed to rely upon her own opinions of things; and in the present case, besides, she reflected that no one would ever know anything about it.

“We'd not have time to do more than glance around,” continued the other, “but we might do that, if you like.”

“Yes,” said Helen, after a moment more of hesitation, “I think I should.”

Her heart was beating very fast as the two ascended the great stone steps and as the door opened before them; her mind could not but be filled with the overwhelming thought that all that she saw might be hers if she really wanted it. The mere imagining of Mr. Harrison's wealth had been enough to make her thrill and burn, so it was to be expected that the actual presence of some of it would not fail of its effect. It is to be observed that the great Temptation took place upon a high mountain, where the kingdoms of the earth could really be seen; and Helen as she gazed around had the further knowledge that the broad landscape and palatial house, which to her were almost too splendid to be real, were after all but a slight trifle to her companion.

The girl entered the great hallway, with its huge fireplace and its winding stairway, and then strolled through the parlors of the vast house; Helen had in all its fullness the woman's passion for spending money for beautiful things, and it had been her chief woe in all her travels that the furniture and pictures and tapestry which she gazed at with such keen delight must be forever beyond her thoughts. Just at present her fancy was turned loose and madly reveling in these memories, while always above her wildest flights was the intoxicating certainty that there was no reason why they should not all be possible. She could not but recollect with a wondering smile that only yesterday she had been happy at the thought of arranging one dingy little parlor in her country parsonage, and had been trying to persuade her father to the extravagance of re-covering two chairs.

It would have been hard for Helen to keep her emotions from Mr. Harrison, and he must have guessed the reason why she was so flushed and excited. They were standing just then in the center of the great dining-room, with its massive furniture of black mahogany, and she was saying that it ought to be papered in dark red, and was conjuring up the effect to herself. “Something rich, you know, to set off the furniture,” she explained.

“And you must take that dreadful portrait from over the mantel,” she added, laughing. (It was a picture of a Revolutionary warrior, on horseback and in full uniform, the coloring looking like faded oilcloth.)

“I had thought of that myself,” said Mr. Harrison. “It's the founder of the Eversons; there's a picture gallery in a hall back of here, with two whole rows of ancestors in it.”

“Why don't you adopt them?” asked Helen mischievously.

“One can buy all the ancestors one wants to, nowadays,” laughed Mr. Harrison. “I thought I'd make something more interesting out of it. I'm not much of a judge of art, you know, but I thought if I ever went abroad I'd buy up some of the great paintings that one reads about—some of the old masters, you know.”

“I'm afraid you'd find very few of them for sale,” said Helen, smiling.

“I'm not accustomed to fail in buying things that I want,” was the other's reply. “Are you fond of pictures?”

“Very much indeed,” answered the girl. As a matter of fact, the mere mention of the subject opened a new kingdom to her, for she could not count the number of times she had sat before beautiful pictures and almost wept at the thought that she could never own one that was really worth looking at. “I brought home a few myself,” she said to her companion,—“just engravings, you know, half a dozen that I thought would please me; I mean to hang them around my music-room.”

“Tell me about it,” said Mr. Harrison. “I have been thinking of fixing up such a place myself, you know. I thought of extending the house on the side that has the fine view of the valley, and making part a piazza, and part a conservatory or music-room.”

“It could be both!” exclaimed the girl, eagerly. “That would be the very thing; there ought not to be anything in a music-room, you know, except the piano and just a few chairs, and the rest all flowers. The pictures ought all to be appropriate—pictures of nature, of things that dance and are beautiful; oh, I could lose myself in such a room as that!” and Helen ran on, completely carried away by the fancy, and forgetting even Mr. Harrison for a moment.

“I have often dreamed of such a place,” she said, “where everything would be sympathetic; it's a pity that one can't have a piano taken out into the fields, the way I remember reading that Haydn used to do with his harpsichord. If I were a violinist, that's the way I'd do all my playing, because then one would not need to be afraid to open his eyes; oh, it would be fine—”

Helen stopped; she was at the height of her excitement just then; and the climax came a moment afterwards. “Miss Davis,” asked the man, “would you really like to arrange such a music-room?”

The tone of his voice was so different that the girl comprehended instantly; it was this moment to which she had been rushing with so much exultation; but when it came her heart almost stopped beating, and she gave a choking gasp.

“Would you really like it?” asked Mr. Harrison again, bending towards her earnestly.

“Why, certainly,” said Helen, making one blind and desperate effort to dodge the issue. “I'll tell you everything that is necessary.”

“That is not what I mean, Miss Davis!”

“Not?” echoed Helen, and she tried to look at him with her frank, open eyes; but when she saw his burning look, she could not; she dropped her eyes and turned scarlet.

“Miss Davis,” went on the man rapidly, “I have been waiting for a chance to tell you this. Let me tell you now!”

Helen gazed wildly about her once, as if she would have fled; then she stood with her arms lying helplessly at her sides, trembling in every nerve.

“There is very little pleasure that one can get from such beautiful things alone, Miss Davis, and especially when he is as dulled by the world as myself. I thought that some day I might be able to share them with some one who could enjoy them more than I, but I never knew who that person was until last night. I know that I have not much else to offer you, except what wealth and position I have gained; and when I think of all your accomplishments, and all that you have to place you so far beyond me, I almost fear to offer myself to you. But I can only give what I have—my humble admiration of your beauty and your powers; and the promise to worship you, to give the rest of my life to seeing that you have everything in the world that you want. I will put all that I own at your command, and get as much more as I can, with no thought but of your happiness.”

Mr. Harrison could not have chosen words more fitted to win the trembling girl beside him; that, he should recognize as well as she did her superiority to him, removed half of his deficiency in her eyes.

“Miss Davis,” the other went on, “I cannot know how you will feel toward such a promise, but I cannot but feel that what I possess could give you opportunities of much happiness. You should have all the beauty about you that you wished, for there is nothing in the world too beautiful for you; and you should have every luxury that money can buy, to save you from all care. If this house seemed too small for you, you should have another wherever you desired it, and be mistress of it, and of everything in it; and if you cared for a social career, you should have everything to help you, and it would be my one happiness to see your triumph. I would give a thousand times what I own to have you for my wife.”

So the man continued, pleading his cause, until at last he stopped, waiting anxiously for a sign from the girl; he saw that she was agitated, for her breast was heaving, and her forehead flushed, but he could not tell the reason. “Perhaps, Miss Davis,” he said, humbly, “you will scorn such things as I have to offer you; tell me, is it that?”

Helen answered him, in a faint voice, “It is not that, Mr. Harrison; it is,—it is,—”

“What, Miss Davis?”

“It has been but a day! I have had no time to know you—to love you.”

And Helen stopped, afraid at the words she herself was using; for she knew that for the first time in her life she had stooped to a sham and a lie. Her whole soul was ablaze with longing just then, with longing for the power and the happiness which this man held out to her; and she meant to take him, she had no longer a thought of resistance. It was all the world which offered itself to her, and she meant to clasp it to her—to lose herself quite utterly and forget herself in it, and she was already drunk with the thought. Therefore she could not but shudder as she heard the word “love” upon her lips, and knew that she had used it because she wished to make a show of hesitation.

“I did not need but one day, Miss Davis,” went on the other pleadingly, “to know that I loved you—to know that I no longer set any value on the things that I had struggled all my life to win; for you are perfect, Miss Davis. You are so far beyond me that I have scarcely the courage to ask you what I do. But I must ask you, and know my fate.”

He stopped again and gazed at her; and Helen looked at him wildly, and then turned away once more, trembling. She wished that he would only continue still longer, for the word was upon her lips, and yet it was horror for her to utter it, because she felt she ought not to yield so soon,—because she wanted some delay; she sought for some word that would be an evasion, that would make him urge her more strongly; she wished to be wooed and made to surrender, and yet she could find no pretext.

“Answer me, Miss Davis!” exclaimed the other, passionately.

“What—what do you wish me to say?” asked Helen faintly.

“I wish you to tell me that you will be my wife; I wish you to take me for what I can give you for your happiness and your glory. I ask nothing else, I make no terms; if you will do it, it will make me the happiest man in the world. There is nothing else that I care for in life.”

And then as the girl still stood, flushed and shuddering, hovering upon the verge, he took her hand in his and begged her to reply. “You must not keep me in suspense!” he exclaimed. “You must tell me,—tell me.”

And Helen, almost sinking, answered him “Yes!” It was such a faint word that she scarcely heard it herself, but the other heard it, and trembling with delight, he caught her in his arms and pressed a burning kiss upon her cheek.

The effect surprised him; for the fire which had burned Helen and inflamed her cheeks had been ambition, and ambition alone. It was the man's money that she wanted and she was stirred with no less horror than ever at the thought of the price to be paid; therefore the touch of his rough mustache upon her cheek acted upon her as an electric contact, and all the shame in her nature burst into flame. She tore herself loose with almost a scream. “No, no!” she cried. “Stop!”

Mr. Harrison gazed at her in astonishment for a moment, scarcely able to find a word to say. “Miss Davis,” he protested, “Helen—what is the matter?”

“You had no right to do that!” she cried, trembling with anger.

“Helen!” protested the other, “have you not just promised to be my wife?” And the words made the girl turn white and drop her eyes in fear.

“Yes, yes,” she panted helplessly, “but you should not—it is too soon!” The other stood watching her, perhaps divining a little of the cause of her agitation, and feeling, at any rate, that he could be satisfied for the present with his success. He answered, very humbly, “Perhaps you are right; I am very sorry for offending you,” and stood silently waiting until the girl's emotions had subsided a little, and she had looked at him again. “You will pardon me?” he asked.

“Yes, yes,” she said, weakly, “only—”

“And you will not forget the promise you have made me?”

“No,” she answered, and then she gazed anxiously toward the door. “Let us go,” she said imploringly; “it is all so hard for me to realize, and I feel so very faint.”

The two went slowly down the hallway, Mr. Harrison not even venturing to offer her his arm; outside they stood for a minute upon the high steps, Helen leaning against a pillar and breathing very hard. She dared not raise her eyes to the man beside her.

“You wish to go now?” he asked, gently.

“Yes, please,” she replied, “I think so; it is very late.”

Helen scarcely knew what happened during the drive home, for she passed it in a half-dazed condition, almost overwhelmed by what she had done. She answered mechanically to all Mr. Harrison's remarks about his arrangements of the house and his plans elsewhere, but all reference to his wealth seemed powerless to waken in her a trace of the exultation that had swept her away before, while every allusion to their personal relationship was like the touch of fire. Her companion seemed to divine the fact, and again he begged her anxiously not to forget the promise she had given. Helen answered faintly that she would not; but the words were hard for her to say and it was an infinite relief to her to see Oakdale again, and to feel that the strain would soon be over, for the time at any rate.

“I shall stay somewhere in the neighborhood,” said Mr. Harrison. “You will let me see you often, Helen, will you not?”

“Yes,” answered Helen, mechanically.

“I will come to-morrow,” said the other, “and take you driving if you like; I promised to go back and lunch with your aunt to-day, as I thought I was to return to the city.” In a moment more the carriage stopped in front of Helen's home, and the girl, without waiting for anyone to assist her, leaped out and with a hasty word of parting, ran into the house. She heard the horses trotting away, and then the door closed behind her, and she stood in the dark, silent hallway. She saw no one, and after gazing about her for a moment she stole into her little music-room and flung herself down upon the couch, where she lay with her head buried in her hands.

It was a long time afterwards when she glanced up again; she was trembling all over, and her face was white.

“In Heaven's name, how can I have done it?” she whispered hoarsely, to herself. “How can I have done it? And what am I to do now?”

Nur wer der Minne Macht ent-sagt, nur wer der Liebe Lust verjagt

CHAPTER VII

“Wie kommt's, dass du so traurig bist,
Da alles froh erscheint?
Man sieht dir's an den Augen an,
Gewiss, du hast geweint.”

Helen might have spent the afternoon in that situation, tormenting herself with the doubts and fears that filled her mind, had it not been for the fact that her presence was discovered by Elizabeth, the servant, who came in to clean the room. The latter of course was astonished to see her, but Helen was in no mood to vouchsafe explanations.

“Just leave me alone,” she said. “I do not feel very well. And don't tell father I am here yet.”

“Your father, Miss Helen!” exclaimed the woman; “didn't you get his letter?”

“What letter?” And then poor Helen was made aware of another trouble.

“Mr. Davis wrote Mrs. Roberts last night,” answered the servant. “He's gone away.”

“Away!” cried the girl. “Where to?”

“To New York.” Then the woman went on to explain that Mr. Davis had been invited to take the place of a friend who was ill, and had left Oakdale for a week. Helen understood that the letter must have reached her aunt after her own departure.

“Dear me!” the girl exclaimed, “How unfortunate! I don't want to stay here alone.”

But afterwards it flashed over her that if she did she might be able to have a week of quiet to regain her self-possession. “Mr. Harrison couldn't expect to visit me if I were alone,” she thought. “But then, I suppose he could, too,” she added hastily, “if I am engaged to him! And I could never stand that!”

“Miss Helen,” said the servant, who had been standing and watching her anxiously, “you look very ill; is anything the matter?”

“Nothing,” Helen answered, “only I want to rest. Leave me alone, please, Elizabeth.”

“Are you going to stay?” the other asked; “I must fix up your room.”

“I'll have to stay,” said Helen. “There's nothing else to do.”

“Have you had lunch yet?”

“No, but I don't want any; just let me be, please.”

Helen expected the woman to protest, but she did not. She turned away, and the girl sank back upon the couch and covered her face again.

“Everything has gone wrong!” she groaned to herself, “I know I shall die of despair; I don't want to be here all alone with Mr. Harrison coming here. Dear me, I wish I had never seen him!”

And Helen's nervous impatience grew upon her, until she could stand it no more, and she sprang up and began pacing swiftly up and down the room; she was still doing that when she heard a step in the hall and saw the faithful servant in the doorway with a tray of luncheon. Elizabeth asked no questions about matters that did not concern her, but she regarded this as her province, and she would pay no attention to Helen's protests. “You'll be ill if you don't eat,” she vowed; “you look paler than I ever saw you.”

And so the girl sat down to attempt to please her, Elizabeth standing by and talking to her in the meantime; but Helen was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she scarcely heard a word—until the woman chanced to ask one question: “Did you hear about Mr. Arthur?”

And Helen gazed up at her. “Hear about him?” she said, “hear what about him?”

“He's very ill,” said Elizabeth. Helen gave a start.

“Ill!” she gasped.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “I thought you must know; Mr. Davis was over to see him yesterday.”

“What is the matter?”

“The doctor said he must have been fearfully run down, and he was out in the storm and caught a cold; and he's been in a very bad way, delirious and unconscious by turns for two or three days.”

Helen was staring at the servant in a dumb fright. “Tell me, Elizabeth,” she cried, scarcely able to say the words, “he is not dangerously ill?”

“The danger is over now,” the other answered, “so the doctor said, or else Mr. Davis would never have left; but he's in a bad way and it may be some time before he's up again.”

Perhaps it was the girl's overwrought condition that made her more easily alarmed just then, for she was trembling all over as she heard those words. She had forgotten Arthur almost entirely during the past two days, and he came back to her at that moment as another thorn in her conscience.

“Mr. Davis said he wrote you to go and see him,” went on the servant; “shall you, Miss Helen?”

“I—I don't know,” said Helen faintly, “I'll see.”

As a matter of fact, she knew that she almost certainly would not go to see Arthur after what had just passed; even to have him find out about it was something of which she simply could not think. She felt dread enough at having to tell her father of what had occurred with Mr. Harrison, and to see Arthur, even though he did not know about it, she knew was not in her power.

“Perhaps I ought not to have told you about it until after you had had your lunch; you are not eating anything, Miss Helen.”

“I don't want anything,” said Helen, mournfully; “take it now, please, Elizabeth, and please do not trouble me any more. I have a great deal to worry me.”

When the woman had left the room, Helen shut the door and then sat down on a chair, staring blankly before her; there was a mirror just across the room, and her own image caught her eye, startling her by its pale and haggard look.

“Dear me, it's dreadful!” she cried aloud, springing up. “Why did I let people trouble me in this way? I can't help Arthur, and I couldn't have helped him in the beginning. It's every bit of it his own fault, and I don't see why I should let it make me ill. And it's the same with the other thing; I could have been happy without all that wealth if I'd never seen it, and now I know I'll never be happy again,—oh, I know it!”

And Helen began once more pacing up and down.

“I never was this way before in my life,” she cried with increasing vexation, “and I won't have it!”

She clenched her hands angrily, struggling within herself to shake off what was tormenting her. But she might as well have tried to shake off a mountain from her shoulders; hers had been none of the stern experience that gives power and command to the character, and of the kind of energy that she needed she had none, and not even a thought of it. She tried only to forget her troubles in some of her old pleasures, and when she found that she could not read, and that the music she tried to play sounded hollow and meaningless, she could only fling herself down upon the sofa with a moan. There, realizing her own impotence, she sank into dull despair, unable any longer to realize the difficulties which troubled her, and with only one certainty in her mind—that she was more lost and helpless than she had ever thought it possible for her to be.

Time is not a thing of much consequence under such circumstances, and it was a couple of hours before Helen was aroused. She heard a carriage stop at the door, and sprang up in alarm, with the thought that it might be Mr. Harrison. But as she stood trembling in the middle of the room she heard a voice inquiring for her, and recognized it as that of her aunt; a moment later Mrs. Roberts rushed into the room, and catching sight of Helen, flung her arms eagerly about her.

“My dear girl,” she cried, “Mr. Harrison has just told me about what has happened!” And then as she read her niece's state of mind in her countenance, she added, “I expected to find you rejoicing, Helen; what is the matter?”

In point of fact the woman had known pretty well just how she would find Helen, and having no idea of leaving her to her own tormenting fancies, she had driven over the moment she had finished her lunch. “I received your father's letter,” she said, without waiting for Helen to answer her, “so I came right over to take you back.”

“To take me back!” echoed Helen.

“Yes, my dear; you don't suppose I mean to leave you here all alone by yourself, do you? And especially at such a time as this, when Mr. Harrison wants to see you?”

“But, Aunt Polly,” protested Helen, “I don't want to see him!”

“Don't want to see him? Why, my dear girl, you have promised to be his wife!”

Mrs. Roberts saw Helen shudder slightly, and so she went on quickly, “He is going to stay at the hotel in the village; you won't find it the same as being in the house with him. But I do assure you, child, there never was a man more madly in love than he is.”

“But, Auntie, dear, that Mr. Howard, too!” protested Helen, trembling.

“He will not interfere with you, for he never makes any noise; and you'll not know he's there. Of course, you won't play the piano, but you can do anything else you choose. And Mr. Harrison will probably take you driving every day.” Then seeing how agitated Helen was, her aunt put her arms around her again, and led her to the sofa. “Come, Helen,” she said, “I don't blame you for being nervous. I know just how you feel, my dear.”

“Oh, Aunt Polly!” moaned the girl. “I am so wretched!”

“I know,” laughed Aunt Polly; “it's the idea of having to marry him, I suppose; I felt the very same way when I was in your place. But you'll find that wears off very quickly; you'll get used to seeing him. And besides, you know that you've got to marry him, if you want any of the other happiness!”

And Mrs. Roberts stopped and gazed about her. “Think, for instance, my dear,” she went on, “of having to be content with this dingy little room, after having seen that magnificent place of his! Do you know, Helen, dear, that I really envy you; and it seems quite ridiculous to come over here and find you moping around. One would think you were a hermit and did not care anything about life.”

“I do care about it,” said the other, “and I love beautiful things and all; but, Aunt Polly, I can't help thinking it's dreadful to have to marry.”

“Come and learn to like Mr. Harrison,” said the other, cheerfully. “Helen, you are really too weak to ruin your peace of mind in this way; for you could see if you chose that all your troubles are of your own making, and that if you were really determined to be happy, you could do it. Why don't you, dear?”

“I don't know,” protested the girl, faintly; “perhaps I am weak, but I can't help it.”

“Of course not,” laughed the other, “if you spend your afternoons shut up in a half-dark room like this. When you come with me you won't be able to do that way; and I tell you you'll find there's nothing like having social duties and an appearance to maintain in the world to keep one cheerful. If you didn't have me at your elbow I really believe you'd go all to pieces.”

“I fear I should,” said the girl; but she could not help laughing as she allowed herself to be led upstairs, and to have the dust bathed from her face and the wrinkles smoothed from her brow. In the meantime her diplomatic aunt was unobtrusively dropping as many hints as she could think of to stir Helen to a sense of the fact that she had suddenly become a person of consequence; and whether it was these hints or merely the reaction natural to Helen, it is certain that she was much calmer when she went down to the carriage, and much more disposed to resign herself to meeting Mr. Harrison again. And Mrs. Roberts was correspondingly glad that she had been foreseeing enough to come and carry her away; she had great confidence in her ability to keep Helen from foolish worrying, and to interest her in the great future that was before her.

“And then it's just as well that she should be at my house where she can find the comfort that she loves,” she reflected. “I can see that she learns to love it more every day.”

The great thing, of course, was to keep her ambition as much awake as possible, and so during the drive home Mrs. Roberts' conversation was of the excitement which the announcement of Helen's engagement would create in the social world, and of the brilliant triumph which the rest of her life would be, and of the vast preparations which she was to make for it. The trousseau soon came in for mention then; and what woman could have been indifferent to a trousseau, even for a marriage which she dreaded? After that the conversation was no longer a task, for Helen's animation never failed to build itself up when it was once awake; she was so pleased and eager that the drive was over before she knew it, and before she had had time for even one unpleasant thought about meeting Mr. Harrison.

It proved not to be a difficult task after all, for Mr. Harrison was quiet and dignified, and even a little reserved, as Helen thought, so that it occurred to her that perhaps he was offended at the vehemence with which she had repelled him. She did not know, but it seemed to her that perhaps it might have been his right to embrace her after she had promised to marry him; the thought made her shudder, yet she felt sure that if she had asked her aunt she would have learned that she was very much in the wrong indeed. Helen's conscience was very restless just at that time, and it was pleasant to be able to lull it by being a little more gracious and kind to her ardent lover. The latter of course responded joyfully, so that the remainder of the afternoon passed quite pleasantly.

When Mr. Roberts arrived and had been acquainted with the tidings, he of course sought the first opportunity to see the girl, and to congratulate her upon her wonderful fortune. Helen had always found in her uncle a grave, business-like person, who treated her with indifference, and therefore inspired her with awe; it was not a little stirring to her vanity to find that she was now a person of sufficient consequence to reverse the relation. This fact did yet a little more to make her realize the vastness of her sudden conquest, and so throughout dinner she was almost as exulting in her own heart as she had been at the same time on the previous day.

Her animation mounted throughout the evening, for Mr. Harrison and her aunt talked of the future—of endless trips abroad, and of palatial houses and royal entertainments at home—until the girl was completely dazed. Afterwards, when she and Mr. Harrison were left alone, Helen fascinated her companion as completely as ever, and was radiant herself, and rejoicing. As if to cap the climax, Mr. Harrison broached the subject of a trip to New York, to see if she could find anything at the various picture dealers to suit her music room, and also of a visit to Fairview to meet an architect and discuss her plan there.

The girl went up to her room just as completely full of exultation as she had been upon the night before, yet more comfortable in the conviction that there would be no repetition of that night's worry. Yet even as the thought occurred to her, it made her tremble; and as if some fiend had arranged it especially for her torment, as she passed down the hall a nurse came silently out of one of the rooms, and through the half open doorway Helen fancied that she heard a low moan. She shuddered and darted into her own room and locked the door; yet that did not exclude the image of the sufferer, or keep it from suggesting a train of thought that plunged the girl into misery. It made her think of Arthur, and of the haggard look that had been upon his face when he left her; and all Helen's angry assertions that it was not her fault could not keep her from tormenting herself after that. Always the fact was before her that however sick he might be, even dying, she could never bear to see him again, and so Arthur became the embodiment of her awakening conscience.

The result was that the girl slept very little that night, spending half of it in fact alternately sitting in a chair and pacing the room in agitation, striving in vain to find some gleam of light to guide her out of the mazes in which she was lost. The gray dawn found her tossing feverishly about upon her pillow, yearning for the time when she had been happy, and upbraiding herself for having been drawn into her present trouble.

When she arose later on, she was more pale and wearied than she had been upon the morning before; then she had at least possessed a resolution, while this time she was only helpless and despairing. Thus her aunt found her when she came in to greet her, and the dismay of the worthy matron may be imagined.

However, being an indefatigable little body, she set bravely to work again; first of all, by rebuking the girl for her weakness she managed to rouse her to effort once more, and then by urging the necessity of seeing people and of hiding her weakness, she managed to obtain at last a semblance of cheerfulness. In the meantime Mrs. Roberts was helping her to dress and to remove all traces of her unhappiness, so that when Helen descended to breakfast she had received her first lesson in one of the chief tasks of the social regime:

“Full many in the silent night
Have wept their grief away;
And in the morn you fancy
Their hearts were ever gay.”

And Helen played her part so well that Mrs. Roberts was much encouraged, and beamed upon her across the table. As a matter of fact, because her natural happiness was not all crushed, and because playing a part was not easy to the girl, she was very soon interested in the various plans that were being discussed. When Mr. Harrison called later on and proposed a drive, she accepted with genuine pleasure.

To be sure, she found it a trifle less thrilling than on the day before, for the novelty was gone; but that fact did not cause her much worry. In all her anticipations of the pleasure before her, it had occurred to her as little as it occurs to others in her situation to investigate the laws of the senses through which the pleasure is to be obtained. There is a whole moral philosophy to be extracted from the little word “ennui” by those who know; but Helen was not of the knowing. She believed that when she was tired of the horses she could delight herself with her beautiful house, and that when she was tired of the house she could have a new one. All her life she had been deriving ecstasy from beautiful things, from dresses, and flowers, and books, and music, and pictures; and of course it was only necessary to have an infinite quantity of such things in order to be infinitely happy. The way to have the infinite quantity was to marry Mr. Harrison, or at any rate that was Helen's view, and she was becoming more and more irritated because it did not work well in practice, and more and more convinced that her aunt must be right in blaming her weakness.

In the meantime, being in the open air and among all the things that she loved, she was bound to rejoice once more; and rejoice she did, not even allowing herself to be hindered by Mr. Harrison's too obvious failures to comprehend her best remarks. Helen argued that she was not engaged to the man because of his cleverness, and that when she had come to the infinite happiness towards which she was traveling so fast, she would have inspiration enough for two. She had enough for the present to keep them both happy throughout the drive, and when she returned she found that some of the neighbors had driven over to see her, and to increase her excitement by their congratulations. The Machiavellian Aunt Polly had told the news to several friends on the day before, knowing full well that it would spread during the night, and that Helen would have her first taste of triumph the next day.

And so it continued, and exactly as on the night before, the feverish excitement swept Helen on until the bedtime hour arrived. Then she went up into her room alone, to wrestle with the same dreadful specter as before.

The story of that day was the story of all that followed; Helen was destined to find that she might sweep herself away upon the wings of her ambition as often as she chose, and revel all she pleased in the thought of Mr. Harrison's wealth; but when the excitement was over, and she came to be all alone, she could think only of the one dreadful fact of the necessity of marrying him. She was paying a Faustus price for her happiness; and in the night time the price stared at her, and turned all her happiness to misery.

A state of mind such as this was so alien to Helen that it would have been strange indeed if she had sunk into it without protest and rebellion; as day after day passed, and the misery continued, her dissatisfaction with everything about her built itself into a climax; more and more plainly she was coming to see the widening of the gulf between the phantom she was pursuing and the place, where she stood. Finally there came one day, nearly a week after her engagement, when Helen was so exhausted and so wretched that she had made up her mind to remain in her room, and had withstood all her aunt's attempts to dissuade her. She had passed the morning in bed, between equally vain attempts to become interested in a book and to make up for the sleep she had missed during the night, and was just about giving up both in despair when the maid entered to say that Elizabeth wished to see her. Helen gave a start, for she knew that something must be wrong; when the woman entered she asked breathlessly what it was.

“It's about Mr. Arthur,” was the hurried reply, and Helen turned paler than ever, and clutched the bedclothing in her trembling hands.

“What is it?” she cried.

“Why you know, Miss Helen,” said Elizabeth, “your father wrote me to go and see him whenever I could, and I've just come from there this morning.”

“And how is he?”

“He looked dreadful, but he had gotten up to-day, and he was sitting by the window when I came in. He was hardly a shadow of himself.”

Helen was trembling. “You have not been to see him?” asked the woman.

“No,” said Helen, faintly, “I—” and then she stopped.

“Why not?” Elizabeth inquired anxiously.

“He did not ask for me, did he?” asked the girl, scarcely able to utter the words.

King Midas: a Romance

KING MIDAS

A ROMANCE

By Upton Sinclair

New York and London1901

PART I

In the merry month of May.

KING MIDAS

CHAPTER I

AT MIDNIGHT

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

New York and London
1901