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"Hello, everybody!" she said, in a voice of extraordinary richness and sweetness, "Peter, Dolly, Vivian -- HELLO, Elinor! How do you do, Mrs. Emory?"

There was an aside when the newcomer said imperatively to a club attendant, "We'll have some light here, please!" Then she resumed easily:

"I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Emory, I interrupted you -- "

"Belle,"

"I don't want any tea, thank you, Peter," she said now

"And I won't allow the Infant to have any -- no, Billy, you shall not. You've got a complexion, child; respect it. Besides, you've just had some. Besides, we're here for only two seconds -- it's six o'clock. We're looking for Clarence -- we seek a husband fond, a parent dear -- "

"Here we are!"

"Surely Clarence wouldn't ask a woman to marry him just to give Billy a home and social backing?" Rachael asked herself

"Someone wants you on the telephone, Billy," she repeated

"Take it in the library. Run right up to my room, Elinor, and I'll be there in two minutes. I'll send some one in with towels and brushes; you've time for a tub. Take these things, Helda, and give them to Annie, and tell her to lookout for Miss Vanderwall."

"Asleep, Alfred?"

"When did he get home?" the wife asked.

"Do you know if he went to bed last night at all?"

"Do you know what he wants?" Rachael asked

"Go down and get it, then!"

"You've got a fever, Clarence," she announced quietly.

"Tired," Rachael answered

"Asleep. He's wretched, poor fellow! Berry Stokes' bachelor dinner, you know. That crowd is bad for him."

"No, he promised her he wouldn't. But everyone was at the dinner. Some of them came home early, I believe. But it was all kept quiet, because Aline Pearsall is such a little shrinking violet, I suppose," Mrs. Breckenridge said. "The Pearsalls are to think it was just an impromptu affair. Billy and Aline of course have no idea what a party it was. But Clarence says that poor Berry was worse than he, and a few of them are still keeping it up. It's a shame, of course -- "

"The mystery to me -- about men," mused Mrs. Breckenridge, her absent eyes upon the buckled slipper she held in her hand, "is not that they are as helpless as babies the moment anything goes wrong with their poor little heads or their poor little tummies, but that they work so hard, in spite of that, to increase the general discomfort of living. Women have a great deal of misery to bear, they are brave or cowardly about it as the case may be, but at least they endure and renounce and diet and keep early hours -- or whatever's to be done -- they TRY to lessen the sum of physical misery. But men go cheerily on -- they smoke too much, and eat too much, and drink too much, and they bring the resulting misery sweetly and confidently to some woman to bear for them. It's hopeless!"

"Oh, I wasn't speaking of Clarence," Mrs. Breckenridge said

"If there's one thing I AM thankful for," Rachael presently said moodily, "it's that I haven't a child. I'm rather fond of kiddies- -nice kiddies, myself; and Clarence likes children, too. But things are quite bad enough now without that complication!" She brushed the loosened hair from her face restlessly, and sighed.

"Sometimes, when I see the other girls," said she, "I think I'd make a rather good mother! However" -- and getting suddenly to her feet, she flung up her head as if to be rid of the subject -- "however, my dear, we shall never know! Don't mind me to-night, Elinor, I'm in a horrible mood, it will take nothing at all to set me off in what Bill used to call a regilyer tant'um!"

"It isn't the drinking and headaches and general stupidity in themselves, you know," Rachael said, reverting to her original argument, "but it's the atrocious UNNECESSITY of it! I don't mind Clarence's doing as other men do, I certainly don't mind his caring so much for his daughter" -- her fine brows drew together -- "but where do I come in?" she demanded with a quizzical smile. "What's MY life? I ask only decency and civility, and I don't get it. The very servants in this house pity me -- they see it all. When Clarence isn't himself, he needs me; when he is, he is all for Billy. I must apologize for breaking engagements; people don't ask us out any more, and no wonder! I have to coax money out of him for bills; Billy has her own check-book. I have to keep quiet when I'm boiling all over. I have to defend myself when I know I'm bitterly, cruelly wronged!"

"Well, what would YOU do?"

"For several reasons," the other woman returned

"One very excellent one is that I haven't one penny. But I tell you, Elinor, if I knew how to put my hand on about a thousand dollars a year -- there are little towns in France, I have friends in London -- well"

"well, what's the use of talking?" she said

"All hooked up straight?" asked Rachael

"Has she got it a shade too short?" speculated Rachael

"Oh, not a bit," Rachael presently decided

"They're all up to the knees this year, anyway. Car come round?"

"Come back here a moment, Bill," Mrs. Breckenridge said

"You're just seventeen, Billy," said the older woman indifferently

"When you're eighteen, next March, I suppose you may do as you please. But until then -- either see a little less of Joe Pickering, or else come right out in the open about it, and tell your father you want to see him here. This silly business of telephoning and writing and meeting him, here, there, and everywhere, has got to stop."

"Like him if you want to," said Mrs. Breckenridge, "although what you can see in a man twice your age -- with his particular history -- However, it's your affair. But you'll have to tell your father."

"I didn't suppose you would."

"Don't be preposterous, Bill. You've said it before, every time you've been angry, in the last five years," the older woman said

"This only means that you will feel that you have to wake me up, when you come in to-night, to say that you are sorry."

"Well, I hope you won't," Rachael Breckenridge said amiably, "for if there is one thing I loathe more than another, it is being waked up for theatricals in the middle of the night. Good-bye. Be sure to thank Mrs. Bowditch for chaperoning you."

"Run along, Billy," Rachael said

"Nobody could speak to your father about anything to-night, as you ought to know."

"I don't dislike him now," Rachael said

she said, "Oh, Lord!"

"Oh! Well, he'll probably be here in the morning," Rachael said carelessly.

"Doctor GREGORY!" echoed his mistress

"Alfred, what were you THINKING of! Why didn't you call me?"

"Oh, dear, dear, dear!" Mrs. Breckenridge said

"Gregory -- called in for a -- for a -- for this! If I could get hold of him! He didn't say where he was dining?"

"Well, Alfred, I wish sometimes you knew a little more -- or a little less!" Rachael said dispassionately.

"Light a fire in the library, will you? I'll have my dinner there. Tell Ellie to send me up something broiled -- nothing messy -- and some strong coffee."

"What is it, Helda?" she asked.

"Doctor Gregory? Ask him to come in. And ask Alfred -- is Alfred still downstairs? -- ask him to go up and see if Mr. Breckenridge is awake.

"This is very decent of you, Greg," she said

"It doesn't seem right to interfere with your dinner for the same old stupid thing!"

"Great pleasure to do anything for you, Rachael," the newcomer said

"You don't call on me often! I wish you did!"

"Oh, the same old thing, Greg. The Berry Stokes' dinner, you know!"

"Perhaps you'll tell me what more I can do, Greg!"

"No, you didn't mean anything, Greg, nobody means anything! Nobody is anything but sorry for me: you, Billy, Elinor, the woman who expected us at dinner to-night, the servants at the club!" she said hotly. "Nobody blames me, and yet every one wonders how it happens! Nobody thinks it anything but a little amus-ing, a little shocking. I am to write the notes, and make the excuses, and be shamed -- and shamed -- shamed -- "

"I know you are, Greg!" she answered gratefully.

"And I know," she added, in a low tone, "that you are one of the persons who will understand -- when I end it all!"

"Not suicide," she reassured him smilingly.

"No," she said thoughtfully, "I mean divorce."

"I haven't thought of it myself, much," Rachael admitted

"I'm twenty-eight, Greg," she said reasonably, "I'm not stupid, I'm not plain -- don't interrupt me! Is this to be my fate? I'm capable of loving -- of living -- I don't want to be bored -- bored -- bored for the rest of my life!"

"No -- it's not that. I don't want more dinners and dances and jewels and gowns!" Rachael answered

"Greg," she said, "do you know what I'd like to be? I'd like to be far away from cities and people, a fisherman's wife on an ocean shore, with a baby coming every year, and just the delicious sea to watch! I could be a good wife, Greg, if anybody really -- loved me!"

"Not long!" she answered, in a whisper.

"I mean that I must, Greg, if I am not to go mad!"

"Oh -- to Vera, to Elinor." She paused, frowning.

"Or away by myself," she decided suddenly.

"Away from them all!"

"To your mother!"

"My dear Don Quixote," she answered affectionately, "I love you for asking me! But I will be better alone. I must think, and plan. I've made a mess of my life so far, Greg; I must take the next step carefully!"

"Have we known each other so long, Greg?"

"Dear old Bobby! But I don't remember you, Greg!"

"Afraid -- of ME?" The three words were like a caress, like holding her in his arms.

"You DO do something," she said, deeply stirred in her turn.

"I'm- -you don't know how fond I am of you, Greg!"

"Greg!" she answered, in the same tone.

"Don't -- frighten me!"

"Greg!" she could only answer

"Greg -- don't frighten me!"

"My father was a doctor," she said once to an old friend, "and James inherits it!"

"I would rather have him with his father, with George and Charles, and with my angel Francis, than have him the greatest man that ever lived!" she said.

"Wouldn't Florence and Gardner buzz!" she thought with a smile.

"And if they buzzed at the divorce, what WOULDN'T they say if I really did remarry? But the worst of it is" -- and Rachael reaching for The Way of All Flesh sighed wearily -- "the worst of it is that one never DOES carry out plans, or I never do, any more. I used to feel equal to any situation, now I don't -- getting old, perhaps. I wonder" -- she stared dreamily at the soft shadows in the big room -- "I wonder if things are as queer to most people as they are to me? I don't get much joy out of life, as it is, and yet I don't DARE cut loose and go away. No maid, no club, living at some cheap hotel -- no, I couldn't do that! I wish there was someone who could advise me -- some disinterested person, someone who -- well, who loved me, and who knew that I've always tried to be decent, always tried to play the game. All I want is to be reasonably well treated; to have a good time and be among pleasant people -- "

"How are you this morning?" Rachael asked

"Headache?" said the nicely modulated, indifferent voice.

"You're not up to the Perrys' lunch to-day, are you, Clancy?"

"I don't imagine I'll have much trouble steering him off," Rachael said coldly.

"His Sundays are pretty well occupied without -- sick calls!"

"Well, I'll have my breakfast," she said

"Perfectly!" Mrs. Breckenridge said.

"I slept until nine, and felt quite proud of myself to think that I had got through so much of the day!"

"Was Gardner at the Berry Stokes bachelor dinner on Friday night?" asked Rachael.

"Pretty much as usual," Rachael answered philosophically.

"What are you doing, then?" Rachael asked

"I'm getting pretty tired of it," said Rachael moodily.

"I don't want any open break," she muttered.

"Dressing," Rachael answered briefly.

"Perfectly," Rachael admitted. "But what do you expect me to do?"

"By whom?" Rachael countered lightly.

"Clarence!" Rachael's tone was but a scornful breath.

"Can't you -- couldn't you talk to her, Rachael?"

"Talk to her?" Mrs. Breckenridge smiled

"My dear Florence, you don't suppose I haven't talked to her!"

"I can say no more than I have said," Rachael

"What authority have I? Clarence could influence her, I think, but she lies simply and flatly to Clarence."

"Joe drinks," Rachael went on, "but he doesn't drink as much as her adored Daddy does. Joe is thirty-nine and Billy is seventeen -- well, that's not his fault. Joe is divorced -- well, but Carol's mother is living, and Clarence's second wife isn't exactly ostracised by society! A clergyman of your own church married Clarence and me -- "

"And as Billy is too young and too blind to see that Joe isn't a gentleman," she continued, "or to realize that Lucy got her divorce against his will, to believe that her money might well influence a gentleman of Joe's luxurious tastes and dislike for office work -- why, I suppose they will be married!"

"Unless Clarence shoots him," submitted Rachael

"He might," his wife said seriously.

"If ever it comes to that, we shall simply have to keep them apart. You see Billy -- the clever little devil -- "

"I daresay!"

"Billy, then," she resumed, "keeps her father happy in the thought that he is all the world to her, and that her occasional chats with Joe are of an entirely uplifting and impersonal character."

"Vivvy Sartoris was here!" Rachael said quickly.

"I understood Vivian WAS here," said Rachael

"I suppose I'd better tell Clarence that -- about Wednesday night," Rachael said

"As for me," Mrs. Breckenridge said

"I'm just desperately tired of it. I can't see that I'm doing Clarence, or Billy, or myself, any good! I'd like to resign, and let somebody else try for a while!"

"The usual thing, I suppose," Rachael answered

"It's not absurd at all," she protested

"I've put it off years longer than most women would; now I'm getting rather tired."

"Oh, yes, I could. Clarence wouldn't contest it," Rachael said.

"He'd agree to anything to be rid of me. If not -- if he wouldn't agree to my filing suit under the New York law, I could establish my residence in California or Nevada, and bring suit there. ..."

"You may imagine that I've thought of it from a good many angles, Florence," Rachael said

"Oh, quite some time," said Rachael.

"It's a very serious thing," the other assented placidly.

"But Clarence has no one but himself to blame."

"I don't care what they say or whom they blame!" she answered proudly..

"I know," Rachael said huskily, her lashes dropped.

"Don't speak in that precocious way, Bill," Rachael said sharply.

"You went to your first dances last winter!"

"Thank you, no, woman dear! I may go over to Gertrude's for tea."

"Clarence," said she, depositing several pounds of morning papers upon the foot of his bed, "who's Billy lunching with at the club?"

"Do you know?" Rachael asked vigorously.

"Don't be so rude, Clarence," she said

"Billy said you agreed to her going to the club for golf. Who's she with?"

"Listen, Clancy," said she placatingly.

"Florence was just here, and she says -- and I agree -- that there is no question that Joe Pickering is devoted to Bill. Now, I don't say that Billy is equally devoted -- "

"But I DO say," pursued Rachael steadily, "that she is with him a good deal more than she will admit. Yesterday, for instance, when she was playing tennis with the Parmalees and the Pinckard boy, Kent came up to the house to get some ginger ale. I happened to be dummy, and I went out on the terrace. Joe's horse was down near the courts, and Joe and Billy were sitting there on one of the benches -- where the others were I don't know. When Kent went down with the ginger ale, Joe got on his horse and went off. Of course it was only for a few minutes, but Billy didn't say anything about it -- "

"Then Florence says," Rachael went on after a moment, "that when she and Gardner stopped here Wednesday night Joe was here, and Vivvie Sartoris wasn't here. Now, of course, I don't KNOW, for I didn't ask Alfred -- -"

"All that may be true," Rachael said

"still, you don't want Billy to marry Joe Pickering! You know that sort of pity, and that business of reforming a man -- " She paused

"Not that Billy herself realizes it, I daresay," Rachael added

"Clarence!" she began imperatively.

"But -- " Rachael stopped short on the word.

"What an awful mix-up it is!" Rachael thought wearily.

"And what a sickening, tiresome place this world is!"

"You're getting pretty, Carlotta!" said her Aunt Rachael

"Don't drink tea, that's a good child! You can stuff on cakes and chocolate of course, Isabelle," she added, "but Charlotte's complexion ought to be her FIRST THOUGHT for the next five years!

"Ah, well, there's safety in numbers!" she said

"You take cream, Judy, and two lumps? Give Mrs. Moran some of those little damp, brown sandwiches, Isabelle. A minute ago she had some of the most heavenly hot toast here, but she's taken it away again!

I wish I could get some tea myself, but I've tried three times and I can't!"

"Come have some tea, Greg," she said, indicating the empty chair beside her.

"You make my heart behave in a manner not to be described in words!" said Rachael

"I thought I hadn't, Greg, but, upon my word -- -"

"You know how often there is neither cool reason nor any cause for laughter in my life, Greg," she said

"As for love -- I don't think I know what love is! I am an absolutely calculating woman, and my first, last, and only view of anything is just how much it affects me and my comfort."

"It's true. And why shouldn't it be?"

"No one," said she seriously, "ever -- ever -- EVER suggested to me that there was anything amiss in that point of view! Why is there?"

"One doesn't often talk this way, I suppose," she said

"But there is a funny streak of -- what shall I call it? -- conscience, or soul, or whatever you like, in me. Whether I get it from my mother's Irish father or my father's clergyman grandfather, I don't know, but I'm eternally defending myself. I have long sessions with myself, when I'm judge and jury, and invariably I find 'Not Guilty!'"

"Not guilty of anything!" she answered, with a child's puzzled laugh.

"I stick to my bond, I dress and talk and eat and go about- -" Her voice dropped

"But -- that's just it -- but I'm so UNHAPPY all the time!" Rachael confessed. "We all seem like a lot of puppets, to me -- like Bander- log! What are we all going round and round in circles for, and who gets any fun out of it? What's YOUR answer, Greg -- what makes the wheels go round?"

"Oh -- love!" Rachael's voice was full of delicate scorn.

"I've seen a great deal of all sorts and kinds of love," she went on, "and I must say that I consider love a very much overrated article! You're laughing at me, you bold gossoon, but I mean it. Clarence loved Paula madly, kidnapped her from a boarding-school and all that, but I don't know how much THEIR seven years together helped the world go round. He never loved me, never once said he did, but I've made him a better wife than she did. He loves Bill, now, and it's the worst thing in the world for her!"

"I wonder just what would happen there if Parker lost his money to-morrow -- if Aunt Frothy died and left it all to Magsie Clay?" Rachael suggested, smiling.

"More than that," pursued Rachael, "suppose that Parker woke up to-morrow morning and found his engagement was all a dream, found that he really hadn't asked Leila to marry him, and that he was as free as air. Do you suppose that the minute he'd had his breakfast he would go straight over to Leila's house and make his dream a heavenly reality? Or would he decide that there was no hurry about it, and that he might as well rather keep away from the Buckney house until he'd made up his mind?"

"If you talk to me of clothes, or of jewelry, or of what one ought to send a bride, and what to say in a letter of condolence, I know where I am," said Rachael, "but love, I freely confess, is something else again!"

"But, Greg, she's so unhappy!" Rachael objected briskly.

"And love -- surely the contention is that love ought to make one happy?"

"You're a joy to her anyway, Greg," Rachael said

"So the case for love is far from proved," Rachael summarized cheerfully.

"There's no such thing!"

"Girls who saw themselves worried about rent and bread and butter!" suggested Rachael in delicate irony.

"Yes, I know, Greg. There's something very appealing about a sick kiddie. Bill was ill once, just after we were married, such a little thing she looked, with her hair all cut! And that DID -- now that I remember it -- it really did bring Clarence and me tremendously close. We'd sit and wait for news, and slip out for little meals, and I'd make him coffee late at night. I remember thinking then that I never wanted a child, to make me suffer as we suffered then!"

"Well, yes, I suppose so. Some mothers. I don't believe a mother like Florence ever was really made to suffer through loving. However, there IS mother love!"

"No, there I don't agree. While the novelty lasts, while the passion lasts -- not more than a year or two. Then there's just civility -- opening the city house, opening the country house, entertaining, going about, liking some things about each other, loathing others, keeping off the dangerous places until the crash comes, or, perhaps, for some lucky ones, doesn't come!"

"And what makes you think that there would be some saving element in our relationship?" Rachael asked in a low voice.

"What makes you think that our love would survive the -- the dry-rot of life? People would send us silver and rugs, and there would be a lot of engraving, and barrels of champagne, and newspaper men trying to cross-examine the maids, and caterers all over the place, but a few years later, wouldn't it be the same old story? You talk of a desert island, and swimming, and seaweed, Greg! But my ideas of a desert island isn't Palm Beach with commercial photographers snapping at whoever sits down in the sand! Look about us, Greg -- who's happy? Who isn't watching the future for just this or just that to happen before she can really feel content? Young girls all want to be older and more experienced, older girls want to be young; this one is waiting for the new house to be ready, that one -- like Florence -- is worrying a little for fear the girls won't quite make a hit! Clarence worries about Billy, I worry about Clarence -- "

"Of course you do, bless your heart!" Rachael laughed.

"So here we are, the rich and fashionable and fortunate people of the world, having a cloudless good time!"

"You carry it well, Judy," said Rachael

"Clarence!" said Rachael

"Oh, if he wouldn't DO these things!" Rachael said

"I left him all comfortable -- Joe Butler was coming in to see him! It does EXASPERATE me so! However!"

"Billy's doing no harm! What did he say?" Rachael asked

"Oh, nothing definite, of course. But as soon as I said that Billy was here -- he'd asked if she was -- he said, 'Then I suppose Mr. Pickering is here, too!'"

"He's the one person in the world afraid of talk about Billy, yet if he starts it, he can blame no one but himself!" Rachael said

"Hello, Clarence" Rachael said

"I would have waited for you if I had thought you would come!"

"It's been a lovely tea," Rachael assured him enthusiastically.

"But I'm just going. Billy's out here on the porch with a bunch of youngsters; I was just going after her. Don't let Frank give you any more of that stuff, Clancy. Stop it, Frank! It always gives him a splitting headache!"

"Greg says he'll take us home, Clarence," Rachael said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

"It's a shame to carry you off when you've just got here, but I'm going."

"Right here!" his wife answered reassuringly.

"Had enough tea, Monkey?" said Rachael pleasantly

"Then say day-day to Aunt Gertrude!"

"Do that, then," she agreed quickly.

"Greg, will bring me!"

"I'd like to bump both your silly heads together," Rachael exclaimed

"Yes, you bring the car around, Kent," she added

"Come on, Bill? get in. Get in, Clarence! Don't be an utter fool -- "

"All in the day's work!" Rachael said

"Will you take me home, Greg?"

"No chance at all," Rachael said

"Good-bye, Gertrude," said Rachael

"If you please, Greg," Rachael answered

"I am afraid I am -- a little," Rachael answered

"That -- that wasn't anything unusual, Greg."

"But since last night," Rachael added, smiling after a moment's thought, "I know I have a friend. I believe now, when the crash comes, and the whole world begins to talk, that one person will not misjudge me, and one person will not misunderstand."

"Only that?" she echoed.

"My dear Greg, after seven such years as I have had as Clarence's wife, that is not a small thing!"

"Don't -- don't let me drag you into this, Greg!"

"Good morning!"

"Clarence and Billy will, I suppose," the other woman said

"Perhaps; I don't know, Florence."

"Things?"

"Oh! Yes, perhaps they are. Changed, perhaps."

"Well, it couldn't go on that way forever, Florence," Rachael said

"On the tennis courts," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without turning her head.

"You had better make it a message: explain that he's playing!"

"His car came in about half an hour ago; he and Joe Butler went down to the courts without coming into the club at all," Rachael said.

"I believe he's going to take his mother abroad with him," said the well-informed Rachael.

"She'll visit some friends in England and Ireland, and then join him. He's to do the Alps with someone, and meet her in Rome."

"He did," the other said briefly.

"Oh, my dear. Old Catholic families with chapels in their houses, and nuns, and Mother Superiors!"

"What a dreadful age it is," mused Rachael.

"I wonder which phase is hardest to deal with: Billy or poor little Carlotta?"

she said: "Suppose you walk down to the courts with me, Infant, and we will see what's going on?"

"Just be natural -- that's the best way," said Rachael from the depths of an icy boredom.

"Mustn't do what?" she asked.

"Why" -- Rachael rose slowly, and slowly unfurled her parasol -- "why, suppose we walk up together?"

"It IS a miserable position, Greg," Rachael said, after a moment's silence.

"And although, as you say, it's commonplace enough, somehow I never thought before just what this sort of thing involves! However, the future must take care of itself. For the present there's only this. I'm going to leave Clarence."

"I don't think he will." Rachael frowned.

"I think he'll be willing to furnish -- the evidence. Especially if he has no reason to suspect that I have any other plans," she added thoughtfully.

"Nor anyone," she finished, with a look of alarm.

"I don't know that I HAVE any other plans," Rachael said sadly.

"I won't think beyond that one thing. Our marriage has been an utter and absolute failure, we are both wretched. It must end. I hate the fuss, of course -- "

"I shall slip off to some quiet place, I think. I'll tell him before he goes away. My attorneys will handle the matter for me -- it's a sickening business!" Rachael's beautiful face expressed distaste.

"Of course divorce is not a new idea to me" Rachael presently pursued.

"But it is only in the last two or three days -- for a week, perhaps -- that it has seemed to have that inevitable quality- -that the-sooner-over-the-better sort of urgency. I wonder why I didn't do it years ago. I shall" -- she laughed sadly -- "I shall hate myself as a divorced woman," she said. "It's a survival of some old instinct, I suppose, but it doesn't seem RIGHT."

"Greg!" she said quickly and breathlessly.

"Please -- -Let's not -- let's not say it. Let me feel, all this summer, that it wasn't said. Let me feel that while I was living under one man's roof, and spending his money, that I didn't even THINK of another man. It's done all the time, you say, that's true. But I HATE it. Whether I leave Clarence, and make my own life under new conditions, and never remarry, or whether, in a year or two -- but I won't think of that!"

"You s-see what a baby I am becoming, Greg," she said unsteadily.

"It's all your doing, I'm afraid! I haven't cried for years -- loneliness and injustice and unhappiness don't make me cry! But just lately I've known what it was to dream of -- of joy, Greg. And if that joy is ever really coming to us, I want to be worthy of it. I want to start RIGHT this time. I want to spend the summer quietly somewhere, thinking and reading. I'm going to give up cards and even cocktails. You smile, Greg, but I truly am! Just for this time, I mean. And it's come to me, just lately, that I wouldn't leave Clarence if he really needed me, or if it would make him unhappy. I'm going to be different -- everything SEEMS different already -- "

"Oh, yes, Greg!" she answered

"When do you go?"

"Monday, probably."

"She needs things for camp, and I've got a little shopping to do."

"I may not always be a favorite there," Rachael said

"The maids probably get any amount of fun out of it," mused Rachael.

"I don't believe I'll go to Vera's this year," Mrs. Breckenridge said

"Anyway, you might depend upon Vera to take absolute good care of Bill," Rachael said soothingly.

"It's time you both got away to some cooler place, if you are going to fight so about nothing! Why do you do it? Billy can't marry anyone for eleven months, and if she wants to marry the man in the moon then you can't stop her. So there you are!"

"You only waste your breath arguing with Clarence when he's got one of his headaches," Rachael said

"Of course he'll go to Vera's, and of course you'll go, too! Just don't tease him when he's all upset."

"What does anybody do it for?" Rachael countered.

"Listen, Bill," she said

"Well -- " Rachael faltered

"It's just this, Bill," she resumed slowly, "when you think of marriage, don't think of just a few weeks or a few months; think of all the time. Think of other things than just -- that sort of -- love. Children, you know, and -- and books, don't you know? Things that count. Be -- I don't say be guided entirely by what your father and lots of other persons think, but be influenced by it! Realize that we have no motive but -- but affection, in advising you to be sure."

"I had an aunt in California," Rachael continued, "who cried, and got whipped and locked up, and all the rest of it, and she carried her point. But she was unhappy. ..."

"N -- not entirely," she answered in some confusion.

"Well, I suppose every case is different, Bill."

"You said, time and time again, that if people can't live together in peace they OUGHT to separate, but that it was another thing if they married again!"

"Did I?" Rachael asked weakly

"Here we are! It's only this, Bill," she finished, as they mounted the brown stone steps, "be sure. You can do anything, I suppose. Only be sure!"

"It wouldn't seem so," Rachael said

"So it was Greg who was curling his hair?" Rachael asked

"I always thought he was rather vain! But let's not talk about him, we only make him worse. Tell me about yourself?"

"of course it was dreadful, but then it was funny, too!" Rachael finished lamely

"On Sunday?"

"Well, yes. It was on Sunday. I am afraid we are absolute pagans; we don't always remember to go to church, by any means!"

"Didn't Mrs. Gregory seem horribly cross to you to-day? She made me feel as if I'd broken all the Commandments and was dancing on the pieces!"

"Loads of horses and cars up there, my dear," Rachael said

"You couldn't disappoint Vera now," she protested.

"My dear boy, it's nothing to me, whatever you do," Rachael said

"But Vera Villalonga is a very important friend for Bill. There's no sense in antagonizing her -- "

"Now or never -- now or never!" said Rachael's fast-beating heart

"Clarence, I need some money," Rachael said simply.

"Why, for living, and travelling expenses," she answered

"Come in here a moment," Rachael said

"Sit down there," she went on

"Clarence," said she, conscious of a certain dryness in her mouth, and a sick quivering and weakness through-out her whole body, "I want to end this."

"I want to be free," Rachael said

"Our marriage has been a farce for years -- almost from the beginning," Rachael asserted eagerly.

"You know it, and I know it- -everyone does. You're not happy, and I'm wretched. I'm sick of excuses, and pretending, and prevaricating. There isn't a thing in the world we feel alike about; our life has become an absolute sham. It isn't as if I could have any real influence over you -- you go your way, and do as you please, and I take the consequences. I realize now that every word I say jars on you. Why, sometimes when you come into a room and find me there I can tell by the expression on your face that you're angry just at that! I've too much self-respect, I've too much pride, to go on this way. You know how I hate divorce -- no woman in the world hates it more -- but tell me, honestly, what do we gain by keeping up a life like this? I used to be happy and confident and full of energy a few years ago; now I'm bored all the time. What's the use, what's the use -- that's the way I feel about everything -- "

"Then why keep it up?" she asked urgently.

"You've Billy, and your clubs, and your car, to fill your time. There'll be a fuss, of course, and I hate that, but we'll both be away. We've given it a fair trial, but we simply aren't meant for each other. Good heavens! it isn't as if we were the first man and woman who -- "

"If you please," Rachael answered

"Here's this check of Mary Moulton's for July," Rachael said

"She wants to pay month by month, because I think she hopes you'll rent after August. I believe she'd keep the place indefinitely, on account of being near her mother, and for the boys."

"Thank you. You'll have to furnish the grounds, I presume -- there will be a referee -- nothing need get out beyond the fact that I am the complainant. You -- won't contest? You -- won't oppose anything?" She hated herself for the question, but it had to be asked.

"And" -- Rachael hesitated -- "and you won't say anything, Clarence," she suggested, "because the papers will get hold of it fast enough!"

"I want to tell you something, Florence," Rachael said

"I don't suppose it will surprise you to hear that Clarence and I have decided to try a change," Rachael said slowly.

"The usual thing," Rachael smiled

"It's not entirely Clarence," Rachael explained with a touch of pride.

"Not necessarily, my dear," Rachael answered, resolutely serene.

"You don't know what it is! It's bad enough for him, but it's simple suicide for you!"

"Well, I wanted you to hear it from me," Rachael submitted mildly.

"Very seriously, I assure you!"

"The way other people do it," Rachael said

"Clarence agrees. There will be evidence."

"I think that in any question of fairness between Clarence and me the balance is decidedly in my favor!" Rachael said crisply.

"Why should I?"

"What has Gardner or anyone else to do with it? It's Clarence's business, and my business, and it concerns nobody else!" she said warmly.

"You look on from the outside. I've borne it for seven years! I'm young, I'm only twenty-eight, and what is my life? Keeping house for a man who insults me, and ignores me, who puts me second to his daughter, and has put me second since our wedding day -- making excuses for him to his friends, giving up what I want to do, never knowing from day to day what his mood will be, never having one cent of money to call my own! I tell you there are days and days when I'm too sick at heart to read, too sick at heart to think! Last summer, for instance, when we were down at Easthampton with the Parmalees, when everyone was so wild over bathing, and tennis, and dancing, Clarence wasn't sober ONE MOMENT of the time, not one! One night, when we were dancing -- but I won't go into it!"

"All men aren't like that! Gardner does that sort of thing now and then, I know," Rachael rushed on, "but Gardner is always sorry. Gardner takes his place as a man of dignity in the world. I am nothing to Clarence; I have never been to him one-tenth of what Billy is! I have borne it, and borne it, and now I just can't -- bear it -- any longer!"

"Not much fun for me, Gardner," she said gravely.

"You sound like a play, Florence," her sister-in-law said with a little nervous laugh.

"'Exit Rachael and Bishop, L.' Surely you've seen the sundial, Bishop?"

"No, I'll go!"

"Come on, Bishop," she said courageously, adding, as soon as they were out of hearing, "and if you're going to be dreadful, begin this moment!"

"I am not a child," she said slowly.

"I am sorry to hurt Florence -- God knows I'm sorry for the whole thing!" Rachael said, "but you must admit that I am the best judge of this matter. I've borne it long enough. My mind is made up. You and I have always been good friends, Bishop Thomas" -- she laid a beautiful hand impulsively on his arm -- "and you know that what you say has weight with me. But believe me, I'm not jumping hastily into this: it's come after long, serious thought. Clarence wants to be free as well -- "

"He has said so," Rachael answered briefly.

"After all," Rachael said presently, giving him a rueful glance, "what are the statistics? One marriage in twelve fails -- fails openly, I mean -- for of course there are hundreds that don't get that far. Sixty thousand last year!"

"But you don't call this a Christian country?" Rachael said

"Supposedly Christian," she mused, "and yet one marriage out of every twelve ends in divorce, and you Christians -- well, you don't CUT us! We may not keep holy the Sabbath day, we may not honor our fathers and mothers, we may envy our neighbor's goods, yes, and his wife, if we like, but still -- you don't refuse to come to our houses!"

"Call it Neroism, or Commonsensism, or Modernism, or anything you like," Rachael said with sudden fire, "but while you go on calling what you profess Christianity, Bishop, you simply subscribe to an untruth. You know what our lives are, myself and Florence and Gardner and Clarence; is there a Commandment we don't break all day long and every day? Do we give our coats away, do we possess neither silver nor gold in our purses, do we love our neighbors? Why don't you denounce us? Why don't you shun the women in your parish who won't have children as murderers? Why don't you brand some of the men who come to your church -- men whose business methods you know, and I know, and all the world knows -- as thieves!"

"I'm not," Rachael said

"Perhaps we had better," Rachael agreed

"I do appreciate your affectionate interest in -- in us, Bishop. But -- but it does exasperate me, when so many strange things are done in the name of Christianity, to have -- well, Florence for instance -- calmly decreeing that just these other certain things shall NOT be done!"

"What will they do?" Rachael demanded

"What's our elevation?"

"But I never heard -- I never HEARD of the sea coming right over a whole village!"

"Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?" she said then slowly.

"Oh, Greg -- Greg -- Greg!" Rachael laughed and cried and sang the words together. "When did you come, and how did you get here? Tell me -- tell me all about it!"

"Oh, hush!" she said,

"Yes, I suppose I do!" She laughed,

"Now -- you embarrass me! Was -- was anything settled?"

"Greg -- " Tears came to her eyes. "You don't know how much!" she said in a whisper.

"Never -- never in my wildest flights. Not even in the past few months!"

"No, not that. But I've been rebuilding, body and soul. I didn't think of the future or the past. It was all present."

"Do I remember it?"

"It is going to mean everything in life to me," she said seriously. "I mean to be the best wife a man ever had. If loving counts -- "

"Love you?"

"Greg," she said quietly, "I didn't know there was such love! I've heard it called fire and pain and restlessness, but this thing is ME! It is burning in me like flame, it is consuming me. To be with you" -- she caught his wrist with one hand, and with her free hand pointed out across the smiling ocean -- "to be with you and KNOW you were mine, I could walk straight out into that water, and end it all, and be glad -- glad -- glad of the chance! I loved you yesterday, but what is this to-day, when you have kissed me, and held me in your arms!" Her voice broke on something like a sob, but her eyes were smiling. "All my life I've been asleep," said Rachael. "I'm awake now -- I'm awake now! I begin to realize how helpless one is -- to realize what I should have done if you hadn't come -- "

"It is as WE feel, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it isn't only me? You -- you love me?"

"You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give myself to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly have. I don't want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife, and to learn your faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down into harness -- one year, five years -- ten years married! Oh, you don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit being nearly forty. Forty -- doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate -- and that's what I want. I -- I shall love getting gray, and feeling that you and I don't care so much about going places, don't you know? We'll like better just being home together, won't we? We're older than most people now, aren't we?"

"Your car?" Rachael said. "You drove down?"

"Oh, that's my nice lady -- gray haired, and with three children?" Rachael said eagerly. "Do you know her?"

"I'm glad, Greg. I like her immensely!"

"Wife and baby well, Martin?"

"Still in Belvedere Hills?"

"Not a bit!" the wife-to-be answered, feeling as she said it that her hands, busy with long gloves, were shaking, and her knees almost unready to support her.

"Ah, Elinor, it's wonderful to marry the man you love!" Rachael turned from the mirror, her blue eyes misted with tears under the brim of her wedding hat.

"And unashamed, and proud of it!" Rachael said with a tremulous laugh. "Are you all ready? Shall we go down?" She turned at the door and put one arm about her friend. "Kiss me, Elinor, and wish me joy," said she.

"But Greg, dear, did you tell me that you and Doctor Valentine drove down yesterday in all that frightful storm?"

"Did the Valentines know what a tide we were having in Quaker Bridge?" she asked

"You mean, she doesn't like the -- divorce part of it?"

"I see," she answered

"How's your mother, Greg?" she asked

"No -- is she really furious?" Rachael asked

"Oh, Greg, you're delicious! Tell me about old Lady Frothingham, is she difficult, too? And how's pretty Magsie Clay?"

"It sounds delicious! Go on!"

"You know we do, to say nothing of lying awake all night talking about our beaux!"

"I'll make her love me!" said Rachael

"Perhaps some day you'll have a very powerful argument," he said with a significant glance that brought the quick blood to her face. "Mother couldn't resist that!"

"She's about twenty-one, perhaps no more than twenty," Rachael said, after some thought. "Did they say anything about Parker and Leila?"

"Oh, Greg, the fun of going places together!"

"Divorce is -- monstrous," she said

"No," she smiled reluctantly, "I suppose we can't. But -- but I never feel like a divorced woman, Warren, I feel like a different woman, but not as if that term fitted me. It sounds so -- coarse. Don't you think it does?"

"Don't you care -- that it's true of me?" she asked

"Yes, perhaps I am," she admitted, as if she were a little surprised that it was so. And in her next slowly worded sentence she discovered for herself another truth. "I mind it, Warren!" she said. "I wish, with all my heart, that it wasn't so!"

"I wish you cared!" she said

"Yes -- suffered over it -- objected. Then I could keep proving to you that I never in my life loved anyone, man, woman, or child, until now!"

"Oh, Warren, if you'd only say that to me over and over!" she begged.

"Oh, I don't mean now. I mean always, all through our lives. It's ALL I want to hear!"

"I only realize one thing in these days," she answered; "I only live for one thing!"

"And you are going to let me come and make friends with the boy and the girls some afternoon?" Rachael asked.

"One can see that she was all ready to hate me, Greg; a woman who had been married, and who snapped up her favorite bachelor -- "

"No, and I'll see to it that she never does. She's my sort of woman, and the children are absolute loves! I like that sort of old-fashioned prejudice -- honestly I do -- that honor-thy-father-and- thy-mother-and-keep holy-the-sabbath-day sort of person. Don't you, Greg?"

"No." Rachael pondered in the dark. "Yet if you're not narrow you seem to be -- really the only word for it is -- loose," she submitted. "Somehow lately, a great many persons -- the girls I know -- do seem to be a little bit that way."

"I'm no prude," Rachael smiled, over a raging heart. "But I couldn't see this coming, nobody did. All I could do was to break free before my self-respect was absolutely gone!"

"Seriously, Vera, I mean it!"

"Ah, well -- " Rachael's face was flaming.

"The woman just sent this home. I couldn't resist showing you!" said Rachael, in a shower of compliments. "Isn't my tiger a darling? Warren went six hundred and seventy-two places to catch him. Of course there never was a stripey tiger like this in North America but what care I? I'm only a poor little redskin; a trifling inconsistency like that doesn't worry ME!"

"I'd love it," Rachael said, and making a deep bow before her husband she added: "I'll be Squaw-Afraid-of-Her-Man!"

"Etta," said she, consigning the Indian costume to her maid, "I'm too happy to live!"

"You've seen it?" she said

"Warren, what shall we do?" she said

"With all those people coming to-night," she added

"You don't mean," Rachael said incredulously, "that we shall have to GO ON with it?"

"But" -- her color, better since his entrance, was waning again -- "with Clarence Breckenridge dying while we dance!" she shuddered.

"No, it's not that!" she answered feverishly. "But -- but for any old friend one would -- would make a difference, and surely -- surely he was more than that!"

"Yes, legally -- technically, of course," Rachael agreed nervously. She sat silent for a moment, frowning over some sombre thought. "But, Warren, they'll all know of it, they'll all be THINKING of it," she said presently. "I -- really I don't think I can go through it!"

"It was Billy's marriage, of course!"

"She was mad about her father," Rachael said in a preoccupied whisper. "Poor Billy -- poor Billy! She never crossed him in anything but this. What did you see it in?"

"Etta brought up the paper." She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. "It seemed to jump at me -- his picture and the name. Is he living -- where is he?"

"It just seems to me that I CANNOT face all those people to- night!" Rachael said, giving him a quick, unthinking kiss before she gently put him away from her, and got to her feet. "It seems so wrong -- so coarse -- to be utterly and totally indifferent to the man who was my husband a year ago. I don't love him, he is nothing to me, but it's all wrong, this way. If it was Peter Pomeroy or Joe Butler, of COURSE we'd put off our dance -- Warren," she turned to him with sudden hope in her eyes, "do you suppose anybody'll come?"

"Do you suppose Billy's with him?" Rachael asked

"Oh, don't -- don't -- don't -- Greg!"

"Florence is with him, of course?"

"Then who IS with him, Greg?"

"Yes, I'll do that," Rachael agreed automatically. A moment later she said urgently: "Warren, isn't there a chance that I'm right about this? Mightn't it be better simply to telephone everyone that the dance is postponed? Make it next week, or Mi-Careme -- anything. If they talk -- let them! I don't care what they say. They'll talk anyway. But every fibre of my being, every delicate or decent instinct I ever had, rebels against this. Say I'm not well, and let them buzz! I know what you are going to say -- I know that it would SEEM less sensitive, less fine, to mourn for one man while I'm another man's wife, than to absolutely ignore what happens to him, but you know what's the truth! I never loved him, and I love every hair of your head -- you know that. Only -- "

"I'll be ready in no time, dear. Where are we to dine?"

"At this time to-morrow it will all have been over for many hours!"

"Dead?" Rachael said

"Greg -- Greg! Won't you talk to me a little? I'm going mad, I think!"

"I've been lying awake -- and lying awake!" said Rachael, panting. "I haven't shut my eyes -- it's nearly three. Greg, I keep seeing it -- Clarence's face, you know, with that horrible scar! What shall I do?"

"Yes, I must see Billy when she comes back!" Rachael said

"Then you and I would have been only engaged now," said Rachael, smiling. "And I would like that!"

"I'd like to live the first days over and over and over again, Greg!" she answered

"Deal away!" Rachael, one hand on Warren's arm, would look saucily at the others over his shoulder. "I like my beau," she would assert brazenly, "and if you say a word more, I'll kiss him here and now!"

"Why not?" asked Rachael

"If you men want to swear at your strokes, I decline to be a party to it!" Rachael said

"I talk about him because I like him!" Rachael said. "Better than anybody else in the world."

"He says so," Rachael answered

"Well, don't tell me who it is, and break my heart!" Rachael warned them. But her old sense of humor so far failed her that she could not help adding curiously, "If Warren ever cared for anybody else, he'll tell me!"

"But that's not true," she said presently. "For I have never seen a man change as much since marriage as Warren! It's still a perfect miracle to him. He says himself that he gets happier and happier -- "

"Shall you be glad, Greg?" she asked, with tears in her eyes; "shall you be just a little jealous?"

"What a fool I've been about the shadows," she said. "This is the reality! This counts, as it seems to me that nothing else I ever did in my life counts."

"Oh, Warren, is he very ill?"

"But, Warren, you don't think -- "

"George, there's been a change -- I'm sure of it. Look at him!"

"How is he?"

"Oh -- yes -- yes -- yes!" the baby's mother said eagerly, drying her eyes. "And you'll be back later, George?"

"Oh, George, then he is better!"

"Oh, what a world!" Rachael said, half laughing and half sighing. But later she said to Warren, "Yet isn't it deliciously worth while!"

"Ah, but Jim was the darling baby!"

"How's my boy?"

"Hello, Daddy. Here we are! How are you, dearest?" Rachael would say, adding, before he could answer her: "We want you to notice our chic Italian socks, Doctor Gregory; how's that for five months? Take him, Greg! Go to Daddy, Little Mister!"

"Lovely! Do you know that your son weighs fifteen pounds -- isn't that amazing?"

"Why not Mars?" she asked

"But -- I don't understand you. What about Jim?"

"Oh, Warren, we couldn't! I couldn't! I would simply worry myself sick!"

"George -- but George isn't his mother!" Rachael fell silent, biting her lip, a little shadow between her brows. "What is it -- the convention?" she presently asked. "Do you HAVE to go?"

"George, DOES Warren have to go to this London convention, or whatever it is?"

"I don't want him to go!" Rachael asserted.

"Awful bore!" she said

"They all bore me to death," Rachael said idly. "I'd rather have a chop here with you, and then trot off somewhere all by ourselves! Why don't they leave us alone?"

"I know, I know!"

"I know, dear," she added more composedly; "I am afraid I do think too much about Jim; I am afraid" -- and Rachael smiled a little pitifully -- "that I would never want anyone but you and the boy if I had my own way! Sometimes I wish that we could just slip away from everybody and everything, and never see these people again!"

"Indeed you don't!" Rachael conceded

"You're right, of course, Greg, and it must have been stupid for you!"

"Greg, as if I could be angry with you for being jealous of your son!"

"I like anything that makes you seem my devoted adorer," Rachael answered wistfully, and smiling whimsically she added, "and I am going to get some new frocks, and give a series of dinners, and win you all over again!"

"But I am such a broken reed!" Rachael smiled ruefully. "I have no energy!"

"because we're happier by our own fire than anywhere else, aren't we, dearest?" "Don't tell me about your stupid operations!" she would smile at him, "talk about -- US!"

"That's a pretty girl," she found herself saying involuntarily as her absent eyes were suddenly arrested by the face and figure of one of the guests. "I wonder who that is?"

"Magsie Clay!" Rachael exclaimed, the look of uncertainty on her face changing to one of pleasure and welcome. "Well, you dear child, you! How are you? I knew you were here, and yet I couldn't place you. You've changed -- you're thinner."

"Not quite!" Rachael said, laughing, but a little discomposed by the girl's coolness. "But I have two mighty nice boys, as I'll prove to you if you'll come see me!"

"Jimmy does, the baby is rather young for tastes of any description," Rachael answered

"To think that she is younger than Charlotte!" Rachael ejaculated to herself

"Did you ever see any one so improved, Warren? Really, she's quite extraordinary!"

"I suppose so," Rachael agreed

"Warren, do you suppose so?" his wife asked

"Perhaps -- " Rachael's interest wandered. "What time have you?" she asked.

"Six-TEN! Oh, my poor abused baby -- and I should have been here at quarter before six!"

"Never mind, Mary!" her mistress said in luxurious ease before the fire, "there are plenty of dresses!"

"No, she's not stupid," Rachael said cordially. "Let's do it!"

"Why should it be stupid for her?" Rachael looked at him in surprise.

"I don't imagine Magsie Clay would find a dinner here in her honor a bore," Rachael said in delicate scorn. "Why, think who she is, Warren -- a nurse's daughter! Her father was -- I don't know what -- an enlisted man, who rose to be a sergeant!"

"It's true, Warren. I've known that for years -- everybody knows it!"

"Her mourning is rather absurd under the circumstances," Rachael said vaguely, antagonized against anyone he chose to defend. "And if people choose to treat her as if she were Mrs. Frothingham's daughter instead of what she really is, it's nice for Magsie! But I don't see why we should."

"Oh, of course, if you put it that way!" Rachael said with a faint shrug.. "I'll get hold of some eligibles -- we'll have Charlie, and have rather a youthful dinner!"

"She told you about them?"

"What DOES she want to do?"

"Really!" said Rachael

"Let's think about the dinner," she said

"Charlotte!" she said

"Don't cry, dear!" said Rachael's rich, kind voice. She put a hand upon Charlotte's shoulder. "Did you want to ask for Charlie?"

"We've all been pretty near crying, ourselves, this morning," Rachael said, not looking at her, but rather seeming to explain to the sympathetic yet pleasurably thrilled Fanny. "Dear boy, he is very ill. Doctor Hamilton has just been here; and he tells us frankly that it is only a question of a few hours now -- "

"How well did you know Charlie, dear?" asked Rachael

"I see."

"Oh, my dear, he wouldn't know you. He doesn't know any of us now. He just lies there, sometimes sighing a little -- "

"Poor little girl!" said the older woman tenderly. "Poor little girl!"

"What is it, Charlie-boy?" she asked

"It will be rest, Charlie-boy," she answered

"What about Charlotte, dear, dear boy?" she asked

"You're good, Rachael. Someone prayed for you long ago; someone gave you goodness. Don't forget -- if you ever need -- to turn to prayer. I don't ask you to do any more. It was for James to make his sons Christians, and James did not do so. But promise me something, Rachael: if James -- hurts you, if he fails you -- promise me that you will forgive him!"

"I promise," Rachael said

"I have made mistakes, I have had every sorrow a woman can know," said old Mrs. Gregory, "but prayer has never failed me, and when I go, I believe I will not be afraid!" "I have made mistakes, too," Rachael said, strangely stirred, "and for the boys' sake, for Warren's sake, I want to be -- wise!"

"Pray about it!" she said

"Warren! In all this heat?"

"You've seen her, then?"

"I wonder if she wouldn't come down to us for a week?" Rachael said

"Saturday night?" Rachael said

"He's kind to everyone," Rachael smiled.

"Do it any other time you can!" Rachael waved

"Well, that's the odd thing about ill health, Greg -- you haven't any chance to answer back," she answered thoughtfully. "If money could make me well, or if effort could, I'd get well, of course! But there seem to be times when you simply are SICK. It's an extraordinary experience to me; it's extraordinary to lie here, and think of all the hundreds of thousands of other women who are sick, just simply and quietly laid low with no by-your-leave! Of course, my being ill doesn't make much trouble; the boys are cared for, the house goes on, and I don't suffer! But suppose we were poor, and the children needed me, and you couldn't afford a nurse- -then what? For I'd have to collapse and lie here just the same!"

"Warren, I thought you liked Miss Snow!"

"When do you think I will get well, Miss Snow?" she would ask.

"Oh, WARREN!"

"But, dearest, that spoils our day!" Rachael would fling her wraps down, and face him ruefully. "How can I go alone!_ I don't want to. And it's SUCH a day, and the babies are so sweet -- "

"Oh, but Warren, that spoils it all!"

"Why, Warren, it was your suggestion, dear! Why take a drive at all if you don't feel like it!"

"Mary took them out. They've got to be back for naps at half-past eleven, you see."

"Would you like to have me come down and join you anywhere later?" his wife might ask in the latter case.

"Lovely."

"Warren," she said one evening when the move to Home Dunes was near, "should you be sorry if I began to go regularly to church again?"

"It's not that," Rachael said, smiling over a little sense of pain, "but I -- I like it. I want the boys to think that their mother goes to church and prays -- and I really want to do it myself!"

"I hope not," Rachael said, sighing. "I wish I had never stopped. I wish I were one of these mild, nice, village women who put out clean stockings for the children every Saturday night, and clean shirts and ginghams, and lead them all into a pew Sunday morning, and teach them the Golden Rule, and to honor their father and their mother, and all the rest of it!"

"Oh, I would gain -- security," Rachael said vaguely, but with a suspicion of tears in her eyes. "I would have something to -- to stand upon, to be guided by. There is a purity, an austerity, about that old church-going, loving-God-and-your-neighbor ideal. Truth and simplicity and integrity and uprightness -- my old great- grandmother used to use those words, but one doesn't ever hear them any more! Everything's half black and half white nowadays; we're all as good or as bad as we happen to be born. There's no more discipline, no more self-denial, no more development of character! I want to -- to hold on to something, now that forces I can't control are coming into my life."

"Love, Warren," she answered quickly. "Love for you and the boys, and fear for you and the boys. Love always brings fear. And illness -- I never thought of it before I was ill. And jealousy -- "

"Your work," Rachael said simply; "everything that keeps you away from me!"

I believe I am sick!" Rachael agreed. "I shall be glad to get down to the shore next week."

"It would be a brilliant match for her," Rachael countered

"I was ill last winter, woman! And never so ill as when they all thought I was entirely cured! Besides -- " Rachael looked down at her tanned arm and slender brown fingers marking grooves in the sand. "Besides, it's partly -- bluff, Alice," she confessed. "I'm fighting myself these days. I don't want to think that we -- Greg and I -- can't go back, can't be to each other -- what we were!"

"But it's three weeks since he was here," Rachael said in a low voice. "I don't understand it, that's all!"

"Next week!" Rachael predicted

"Dearest! Why didn't you say so!"

"And you let those great boys climb all over you!"

"Would you like a nap, Warren, or would you like to go over to the beach, just you and me, and have a swim?"

"Would you like me to go with you, Warren?"

"For me, this time, but now I'll talk for you!"

"Look at Jim, Alice, that second summer -- before Derry was born! Wasn't he the dearest little fatty, tumbling all over the place!"

"Well, one loses them almost as completely," Rachael said, smiling. "Jim is such a great big, brown, mischievous creature now, and to think that my Derry is nearly two!"

"I shouldn't mind getting old, Alice," Rachael said, "if I were like you; you're so temperate and unselfish and sweet that no one could help loving you! Besides, you don't sit around worrying about what people think, you just go on cutting out cookies, and putting buttons on gingham dresses, and let other people do the worrying!"

"I'm so frightened, Alice!" sobbed Rachael. "I don't know what's the matter with me, but I FEEL -- I feel that something is all wrong! I don't seem to have any HOLD on Warren any more -- you can't explain such things -- but I'm -- "

"I am a fool to break down this way," said Rachael, interrupting her guest's musings to come back to her chair, and showing a composed face despite her red eyes, "but my -- my heart is heavy to- day!"

"I had a birthday yesterday -- and Warren forgot it!"

"But Warren always has before," Rachael said, smiling sadly, "and- -and it came to me last night -- I didn't sleep very well -- that I am thirty-four, and -- and I have given him all I have!"

"But, Alice, people BORE me so -- I've had so much of it, and it's always the same thing!"

"I believe I'll suggest it to Warren, Alice. Then if he's keen for it, we'll do it next year."

"Oh, it isn't right for him to torture me so!" she would whisper to herself. "It isn't right!"

"Anything -- anything!" she said to the waiter, with dry, bloodless lips, and a ghastly attempt at a smile. "Yes, that will do. Thank you, yes, I suppose so. Yes, if you will. Thank you. That will do nicely."

"It's amazing to me that Magsie doesn't get ahead faster," Rachael had mused

"I've kept you waiting, Martin?"

"At the Lyric!" Rachael said in a rush of something almost like joy that they could speak of Magsie at last, "and one of Barrett's! Well, Magsie is coming on! What part does she take?"

"The LEAD! At the Lyric -- why, isn't that an astonishing compliment to Magsie!"

"But I thought she wasn't so successful last winter, Warren?"

"How did you hear this, Warren?" his wife asked

"Well, we must see the play," Rachael said

"We could take a box, couldn't we, and ask George and Alice?" she added.

"You and George aren't quite as good friends as you were, are you?" Rachael said

"It looks like a good house," said Rachael

"I should think any investment in Magsie would be perfectly safe," said Rachael's delightful voice. And boldly she added: "Do you know who is backing this, Warren?"

"How young she is!" Rachael thought

"I think Magsie is rather good," she said

"Well, what do you think, Peter?" his hostess asked.

"I don't suppose we could see Magsie, Warren, after this is over?" Rachael asked

"You wouldn't mind my sending a line down by the boy?" Rachael persisted.

"Why should I, Magsie?" she asked a little huskily, "He's kind to everyone!"

"I wish you had let me know you were helping Magsie, so -- so conspicuously, Warren. One hates to be taken unawares that way."

"Well, she ought to be launched now," Rachael said.

"Young Mr. Richie Gardiner seemed louche" she observed

"I wonder what she considers you -- her champagne?" Rachael asked

"Do you see her often, Warren?" Rachael asked

"Did you see these?" she asked

"No -- that was a mean one," Rachael said sweetly. "I thought it might distress you, as it probably did Magsie."

"She's really scored a success," said Rachael

"But is this right, is it fair?" she asked herself sombrely while she was slowly disrobing. "Could I treat him so? Of course I could not! Why, I have never even looked at a man since our very wedding day -- never wanted to. And I will be reasonable now. I will be reasonable, but he tries me hard -- he makes it hard!"

"Well," she thought, with a certain desperate philosophy, "in a certain number of months or years this will all be over, and I must simply endure it until that time comes. Life is full of trouble, anyway!"

"Now that I've talked about it," Rachael smiled, "I believe I feel better!"

"Mother's afraid that she will have to dress, to meet Daddy downtown," she began

"Why, so I did!" she said, getting to her feet. "I think I'll go upstairs. Any message from Doctor Gregory?"

"Thank you, Mary, good-night!"

"I dreamed that we were just married, and in the old studio," she said, half aloud. "I dreamed I had the old-feeling again, of being so sure, and so beloved! I thought Warren had come home early and had brought me violets!"

"This is nice of you, Magsie," Rachael said

"Warren likes silk handkerchiefs," explained Rachael, all the capable wife, "and those I make are much prettier than those he can find in the shops. So I pick up pieces of silk, from time to time, and keep him supplied."

"A doctor has to be," Rachael answered

"What are your plans, Magsie?" Rachael asked

"Yes, so I noticed." Rachael had looked for this news every week since the run of the play began. "Well, that was a successful engagement, wasn't it?" she asked.

"Why, what's the matter, my dear child?" she asked

"You'll go on with your work, now that you've begun so well, won't you?" she asked

"But surely you've had an unusually encouraging beginning?" pursued Rachael

"They're good little boys," their mother said contentedly. "I know that the queerest persons in the world, about eating and drinking, are actresses, Magsie," she added, smiling, "so I don't know whether to offer you tea, or hot soup, or an egg beaten up in milk, or what! We had a pianist here about a year ago, and -- "

"The boys may be in soon," Rachael remarked

"I don't understand," Rachael said

"Just as I have singled you out this horrible winter," Rachael said to herself, in strange pain and bewilderment at heart.

"Dreamed of what?" Rachael said with dry lips.

"You've been seeing each other?" Rachael asked stupidly.

"Go on!" Rachael urged, clearing her throat.

"And what did -- Warren say?" Rachael asked in a whisper.

"An honorable way?" Rachael echoed in an unnatural voice.

"You are brave, Magsie, to come and tell me this," she said at last quietly.

"I see," Rachael said.

"I'm glad you did come, Magsie," said Rachael painfully, "although I never dreamed, until this afternoon, that -- this -- could possibly have been in Warren's thoughts. You speak of -- divorce, quite naturally, as of course anyone may, to me. But I never had thought of it. It's a sad tangle, whatever comes of it, and perhaps you're right in feeling that we had better face it, and try to find the solution, if, as you say, there is one."

"Ah -- you must leave that to me," Rachael said with a sad smile.

"Oh, no!" Rachael answered, perfunctorily polite, and with her eyes still fixed darkly on space.

"It all rests with Warren!"

"It all rests with Warren," Rachael said.

"You mustn't think either one of us saw this coming!"

"Sixteen, seventeen!" Rachael sat suddenly erect, and looked at her watch again. Twenty-two minutes past three.

"Never mind," Rachael consoled the discomfited junior, "Pauline will come in and pick them all up. Mother doesn't care!"

"Warren!" she called in a shaken voice.

"Warren," said Rachael with a desperate effort at control, "I want you to tell me about -- about you and Magsie Clay."

"Magsie came to see me yesterday," she said, panting.

"What about it?" she echoed, in a constrained tone, still with that quickened shallow breath. "Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a girl to come to a man's wife, and tell her that she cares for him? Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a man to have tea every day with a young actress who admits she is in love with him -- "

"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know that Margaret Clay cares for you," Rachael asked in rising anger, "and that you have never told her you care for her -- that you and she have never talked about it, have never wished that you were free to belong to each other!"

"She said so," Rachael admitted, heart and mind in a whirl.

"I know all this, Warren!" Rachael said wearily.

'I'm sorry, Magsie,' I said.

We talked it over, I took her back to her hotel, and very simply she said, 'Kiss me, once, Greg, and I'll be good!'

"Perhaps -- the world -- may some day question them, Warren!" Rachael tried to speak quietly, but she was beginning to be frightened at her own violence.

"Warren!" Rachael interrupted hoarsely.

"And what about the boys' feelings and rights?" Rachael said in a low, tense tone.

"But it is a tangle in which one still sees right and wrong, Warren," she said, desperately struggling for calm. "Human relationships can't be discussed as if they were the moves on a chess-board. I make no claim for myself -- the time has gone by when I could do so -- but there is honor and decency in the world, there is simple uprightness! Your attentions, as a married man, can only do Magsie harm, and your daring" -- suddenly she began restlessly to pace the floor as he had done -- "your daring in coming here to me, to tell me that any other woman has a claim on you," she said, beginning to breathe violently, "only shows me how blind, how drugged you are with -- I don't know what to call it -- with your own utter lawlessness! What right has Margaret Clay compared to MY right? Are my claims, and my sons' claims, to be swept aside because a little idle girl of Magsie's age chooses to flirt with my husband? What is marriage, anyway -- what is parenthood? Are you mad, Warren, that you can come here to our home and talk of 'tangles' -- and rights? Do you think I am going to argue it with you, going to belittle my own position by admitting, for one second, that it is open to question?"

"Why, if some four-year-old child came in here and began to contend for Derry's place," Rachael asked passionately, "how long would we seriously consider his right? If I must dispute the title of Magsie Clay this year, why not of Jennie Jones next year, of Polly Smith the year after that? If -- "

"Warren! When was our marriage that?"

"Failure!" she echoed with white lips.

"You know that you may say this -- to me, Warren," she said with a leaden heart.

She interrupted with a quick, breathless, "WARREN!"

"I shouldn't have spoken of it, Warren!" she echoed. "I should have borne it, and smiled, and said nothing! Perhaps I should! Perhaps some women would have done that -- "

"Warren!" she said with deadly decision, "I'm not that sort of woman. You've had your fun -- now it's my turn! Now it's my turn!" Rachael repeated in a voiceless undertone as she rapidly paced the room. "Now you can turn to the world, and SEE what the world thinks! Let them know how often you and Magsie have been together, let them know that she came here to ask me to set you free, and then see what the general verdict is! I'm not going to hush this up, to refrain from discussing it because you don't care to, because it hurts your feelings! It SHALL be discussed, and you shall be free! You shall be free, and if you choose to put Magsie Clay here in my place, you may do so!"

"Don't touch me!" she said, wrenching herself free. "Don't touch me, you cruel and wicked and heartless -- ! Go to Magsie! Tell her that I sent you to her! Take your hands off me, Warren -- "

"Mary," Rachael said quickly, "I want you to help me. Pack some clothes for the boys and me, and give them some luncheon. We are going down to Clark's Hills on the two o'clock train -- "

MY DEAR WARREN: I am leaving with the children for Clark's Hills. You will know best what steps to take in the matter of the freedom you desire. I will cooperate in any way. I have written Magsie that I will not contest your divorce. If for any reason you come to Clark's Hills, I will of course be obliged to see you. I ask you not to come. Please spare me another such talk as ours this morning. I have plenty of money.

She would take them away to some other atmosphere: "England, I think," she told Alice. "That's my mother country, you know, and children lead a sane, balanced life there."

"I will be everything to them until they are -- say, ten and twelve," she added on another day, "and then they will begin to turn toward their father. Of course I can't blame him to them, Alice. And some day they will come to believe that it is all their mother's fault -- that's the way with children! And so I'll pay again."

"No, I mean it, I truly mean that! It is disillusioning for young boys to learn that their father and mother were not self- controlled, normal persons, able to bear the little pricks of life, but that our history has been public gossip for years, that two separate divorces are in their immediate history!"

"I have come to this conclusion," she told Alice one day, about a fortnight later, "while civilization is as it is, divorce is wrong. No matter what the circumstances are, no matter where the right and wrong lie, divorce is wrong."

"Then it's the drink, or the infidelity that should be changed!" Rachael answered inflexibly. "It's the one vow we take with God as witness; and no blessing ever follows a broken vow!"

"Separation, if you like!" Rachael conceded with something of her old bright energy. "Change and absence, for weeks and months, but not divorce. Paula Verlaine should never have divorced Clarence; she made a worse match, if that was possible, and involved three other small lives in the general discomfort. And I never should have married Clarence, because I didn't love him. I didn't want children then; I never felt that the arrangement was permanent; but having married him, I should have stayed by him. I know the mood in which Clarence took his own life; he never loved me as he did Bill, but he wouldn't have done it if I had been there!"

"I might have made Clarence a man who would have been a loss to society," Rachael mused. "He was proud; loved to be praised. And he loved children; one or two babies in the nursery would have put Billy in second place. But he bored me, and I simply wouldn't go on being bored. So that if I had had a little more courage, or a little more prudence in the first place, Billy, Clarence, perhaps Charlotte and Charlie, Greg, Deny, Jim, Joe Pickering, and Billy might all have been happier, to say nothing of the general example to society."

"From Joe? -- is that so?" Rachael looked up interestedly. "I hadn't heard it, and somehow I don't believe it! They have a curious affinity through all their adventures. Poor little Bill, it hasn't been much of a life!"

"I wonder if she would let the youngster come down here and scramble about with my boys?" Rachael said unexpectedly.

"I wonder if she would?" she added with more animation than she had shown for some time. "I would love to have him, and of course the boys would go wild with joy! I would be so glad to do poor old Billy a good turn. She and I were always friends, and had some queer times together. And more than that" -- Rachael's eyes darkened -- "I believe that if I had had the right influence over her she never would have married Joe. I regarded the whole thing too lightly; I could have tried, in a different way, to prevent it, at least. I am certainly going to write her, and ask for little Breckenridge. It would be something to do for Clarence, too," Rachael added in a low tone, and as if half to herself, "and for many long years I have felt that I would be glad to do something for him! To have his grandson here -- doesn't it seem odd?-and perhaps to lend Billy a hand; it seems almost like an answer to prayer! He can sleep on the porch, between the boys, and if he has some old clothes, and a bathing suit -- "

"MY DEAR BILLY," she wrote that night, "I have heard one or two hints of late that you have a good many things in your life just now that make for worry, and am writing to know if my boys and I may borrow your small son for a few weeks or a month, so that one small complication of a summer in the city will be spared you. We are down here on Long Island on a strip of high land that runs between the beautiful bay and the very ocean, and when Jim and Derry are not in the one they are apt to be in the other. It will be a great joy to them to have a guest, and a delight to me to take good care of your boy. I think he will enjoy it, and it will certainly do him good.

"I often think of you with great affection, and hope that life is treating you kindly. Sometimes I fancy that my old influence might have been better for you than it was, but life is mistakes, after all, and paying for them, and doing better next time.

"Always affectionately yours, RACHAEL."

"Listen, Breck," she said suddenly, catching him lightly in her arm, and smiling down at him, "would you like to go down and stay with the Gregory boys?"

"Billy, it was good of you to come," Rachael said, kissing her quite naturally as they met.

"It's a joy to them," their mother said. "Get in here next to me, Bill; I'm not going even to look at you until I get you home. Did you ever see the water look so delicious? We'll all go down for a dip pretty soon. I live so simply here that I'm entirely out of the way of entertaining a guest, but now that you're here, you must stay and have a little rest yourself!"

Rachael laughed. "So funny to hear your old voice, Bill, and your old expressions."

"I? Oh, but I've gray hair! Getting old fast, Billum."

"Very well, my dear."

"He always comes in his car. They make it in -- I don't know -- something like two hours and ten minutes, I think. This is my house, with all its hydrangeas in full bloom. Yes, isn't it nice? And here's Mary for Breckenridge's bag."

"Well, Breck," said she, "do you think you are going to like my house, and my little boys? Will you give Aunt Rachael a kiss?"

"Thank you!" Rachael said with a little note of real pleasure under her laugh.

"You may say anything you like to me, Billy," Rachael said.

"No, Bill, you mustn't say that you killed him," Rachael said, turning pale. "If you were to blame, I was, too, and your grandmother, and all of us who made him what he was. I didn't love him when I married him, and he was the sort of man who has to be loved; he knew he wasn't big, and admirable, and strong, but many a man like Clancy has been made so, been made worth while, by having a woman believe in him. I never believed in him for one second, and he knew it. I despised him, and where he sputtered and stammered and raged, I was cool and quiet, and smiling at him. It isn't right for human beings to feel that way, I see it now. I see now that love -- love is the lubricant everywhere in the world, Bill. One needn't be a fool and be stepped upon; one has rights; but if loving enough goes into everything, why, it's bound to come out right."

"I believe," Rachael said, "that in those seven years I might have won your father to something better if I had cared. He wasn't a hard man, just desperately weak. I've thought of it so often, of late, Bill. There might have been children. Clancy had a funny little pathetic fondness for babies. And he was a loving sort of person -- -"

"He's a great darling," smiled Rachael, "and all small boys I adore. He'll begin to put on weight in no time. And -- I was thinking, Bill -- he would have reconciled Clancy to you and Joe, perhaps; one can't tell! If I had not left him, Clarence might have been living to-day, that I know. He only -- did what he did in one of those desperate lonely times he used to dread so."

"Just how much money is left, Billy?" Rachael presently felt herself justified in asking.

"But Billy, wouldn't that bring you in a fair income, in itself, if it was once filled?"

"But, Billy, if you and the boy took a little place somewhere, and you had one good maid -- up there on the pony farm, for instance -- surely it would be saner, surely it would be wiser, than trying to think of the stage now with him on your hands!"

"I see him always as he was that last horrible morning," she said to Alice. "And I pray that I will never look upon his face again!"

"Don't quote it to me, Alice," she said gently; "don't ask me to hear it. It's all over. I haven't a heart any more, just a void and a pain. You only hurt me -- I can't ever be different. You and George love me, I know that. Don't drive me away. Don't ever feel that it will be different from what it is now. I -- I wish him no ill, God knows, but -- I can't. It wouldn't be happiness for me or for him. Please, PLEASE -- !"

"Read this, George," said she, resting against the door of his car, and opening the letter before him. "This came from Billy -- Mrs. Pickering, you know -- several days ago."

"What do you think?" Rachael questioned in her turn.

"It might be, I suppose. You can see that Billy believes it," she said.

"Understand it?" she echoed in rich scorn. "Who understands anything of the whole miserable business? Do I? Does Warren, do you suppose?"

"Oh, that was true enough," Rachael said lifelessly. "They came."

"A great package of them came," Rachael added dully. "I didn't open it. I had a fire that morning, and I simply set it on the fire." Her voice sank, her eyes, brooding and sombre, were far away. "But I watched it burning, George," she said in a low, absent tone, "and I saw his handwriting -- how well I know it -- Warren's writing, on dozens and dozens of letters -- there must have been a hundred! To think of it -- to think of it!"

"Well," Rachael said, straightening up suddenly, and with resolute courage returning to her manner and voice, "you'll have, somebody look it up, will you, George?"

"I don't know how anything can make a great difference now, George," she answered slowly. "The thing remains -- a fact. Of course this ends, in one way, the sordid side, the fear of publicity, of notoriety. But that wasn't the phase of it that ever counted with me. This will probably hurt Warren -- "

"Perhaps I don't understand men," she said with a mildness that George found infinitely more disturbing than any fury would have been.

"Lovely," Rachael smiled. "My trio goes fishing to-day, packing its lunch itself, and asking no feminine assistance. The lunch will be eaten by ten o'clock, and the boys home at half-past ten, thinking it is almost sundown. They only go as far as the cove, where the men are working, and we can see the tops of their heads from the upstairs' porch, so Mary and I won't feel entirely unprotected. I'm to lunch with Alice, so my day is nicely planned!"

"Divorce has actually no place in our laws, it isn't either wrong or right," Rachael said one autumn day when they were walking slowly to the beach.

"In some states it is absolutely illegal," Rachael continued, "in others, it's permissible. In some it is a real source of revenue. Now fancy treating any other offence that way! Imagine states in which stealing was only a regrettable incident, or where murder was tolerated! In South Carolina you cannot get a divorce on any grounds! In Washington the courts can give it to you for any cause they consider sufficient. There was a case: a man and his wife obtained a divorce and both remarried. Now they find they are both bigamists, because it was shown that the wife went West, with her husband's knowledge and consent, to establish her residence there for the explicit purpose of getting a divorce. It was well- established law that if a husband or wife seek the jurisdiction of another state for the sole object of obtaining a divorce, without any real intent of living there, making their home there, goes, in other words, just for divorce purposes, then the decree having been fraudulently obtained will not be recognized anywhere!"

"But thousands don't seem to realize -- I never did before -- that that is illegal. You can't deliberately move to Reno or Seattle or San Francisco for such a purpose. All marriages following a divorce procured under these conditions are illegal. Besides this, the divorce laws as they exist in Washington, California, or Nevada are not recognized by other states, and so because a couple are separated upon the grounds of cruelty or incompatibility in some Western state, they are still legally man and wife in New York or Massachusetts. All sorts of hideous complications are going on: blackmail and perjury!"

"Because divorce is an abnormal thing. You can't make it right, and of course we are a long way from making it wrong. But that is what it is coming to, I believe. Divorce will be against the law some day! No divorce on ANY GROUNDS! It cannot be reconciled to law; it defies law. Right on the face of it, it is breaking a contract. Are any other contracts to be broken with public approval? We will see the return of the old, simple law, then we will wonder at ourselves! I am not a woman who takes naturally to public work -- I wish I were. But perhaps some day I can strike the system a blow. It is women like me who understand, and who will help to end it."

"What a different woman!" Rachael said under her breath.

"But Warren, after all, isn't a child!" Rachael said sadly.

"But he isn't the man I loved, and married," she said slowly. "I thought he was a sort of god -- he could do no wrong for me!"

"It isn't a question of my holding out for a mere theory, Alice," Rachael said after a while; "I'm not saying that I'm all in the right, and that I will never see Warren again until he admits it, and everyone admits it -- that isn't what I want. But it's just that I'm dead, so far as that old feeling is concerned. It is as if a child saw his mother suddenly turn into a fiend, and do some hideously cruel act; no amount of cool reason could ever convince that child again that his mother was sweet and good."

"How CAN I forgive him?" Rachael said, badly shaken, and through tears. "No, no, no, I couldn't! I never can."

"Misjudging?" Rachael said quickly, half turning her head, and bringing her eyes from the far horizon to rest upon Alice's face.

"The pack," Rachael said to Alice, "is ready to run again!"

"I shall have to bring my own car over this road to-morrow, Kane," she explained. "I have never been at the wheel myself before in all the times I have done it."

"But Martin hasn't been with me this summer," the lady smiled.

"But that won't break to-day?" Rachael said uneasily, thinking of Derry.

"I am afraid I am a little out of my way," she stammered. "I am going to the station."

"Oh, what are we thinking about, to act in this crazy manner!" Rachael asked herself desperately. "He loves me, and I -- I've always loved him. Other people may misjudge him, but I know! He's horrified and shamed and sorry. He's suffering as much as I am. What fools -- what utter FOOLS we are!"

"Clark's Hills," Rachael said, noticing that she was alone in the train.

"Looks as if we were going to try it!" Rachael answered with equal aplomb as the train ran through Quaker Bridge without stopping, and went on with only slightly decreased speed.

"Where's my Derry?" Rachael's voice rang strong and happy through the house. "Mary -- Mary!" she added, stopping, rather puzzled, in the hall. "Where is he?"

"I know that, Mary," Rachael said. "It would have happened as easily with me. We all know what you have been to the boys, Mary. But you mustn't cry so hard. I need you. I am going to drive him into town."

"There's nothing else to do," Rachael said. "He may die on the way, but his mother will do what she can. I couldn't have Doctor Peet, kind as he is. Doctor Gregory -- his father -- will know. It's nearly seven now. We must start as fast as we can. You'll have to pin something all about the back seat, Mary, and line it with comforters. We'll put his mattress on the seat -- you'll make it snug, won't you? -- and you'll sit on the floor there, and steady him all you can, for I'll have to drive. We ought to be there by midnight, even in the storm."

"That's a blessing."

"Thank you," Rachael said, not hearing him. "God bless you! Good- bye!"

"At the worst, we can back out of this, Millie," said she.

"Oh, Ruddy, how grateful I am to you!" Rachael said. "Perhaps you can go back and get us a tow? What can we do?"

"No, I don't think so, not yet. But I can feel the road under us giving already. And I've killed my engine!"

"She simply WON'T!"

"Why, yes, we have, under my seat here. But is there a chance that she might start on cranking?" she said eagerly.

"No use!" she said with a sinking heart.

"Oh, Ruddy, do you think we can make it, then?" Rachael's face was wet with tears.

"Ruddy!" said Rachael passionately, her wet gloves holding his big, hairy hands tight. "I'll never forget this! If he has a chance to live at all, this is his chance, and you've given it to him! God bless you, a thousand times!"

"No change?"

"How is he, Mary?"

"My boy! But not sleeping?" "Oh, no, Mrs. Gregory. He just lies quiet like."

"God bless him!" Rachael said under her breath. Aloud she said: "Millie, couldn't you lean over, and watch him a few minutes, and see what you think?"

"My darling!" she said.

"I will try not to, my heart!" Rachael, wild with terror, looked to Mary's face.

"Does it, my darling?"

"Warren!" she said in a voice that those who heard it remembered all their lives. "It's Derry! He's hurt -- he's dying, I think! Can you -- can you save him?"

"We've just brought him up from Clark's Hills!" Rachael said.

"There was nothing else to do!" she faltered.

"Since seven."

Oh, my God! this is not right," Rachael said half aloud. "Oh, take him, take him, but don't let him suffer so!"

"Now he is dead," Rachael said in the same quiet, half-audible tone. "I am glad. He will never know what pain is again. Five perfect little years, with never one instant that was not sweet and good. Gerald Fairfax Gregory -- five years old. One sees it in the papers almost every day. But who thinks what it means? Just the mother, who remembers the first cry, and the little crumpled flannel wrappers, and the little hand crawling up her breast. He walked so much sooner than Jim did, but of course he was lighter. And how he would throw things out of windows -- the camera that hit the postman! Oh, my God!"

"Oh, Alice, could I get Warren, do you think? They mustn't -- it's too cruel! He's only a baby, he doesn't understand! Better a thousand times to let him go -- tell them so! Get George -- tell him I say so!"

"What is it?"

"Hold him?" Rachael's voice of agony said. "Yes, I could do that. I -- I have been wanting to!"

"I am ready," she said.

"Just a little more, dearest," she said, white lipped; eyes full of agonized appeal turned to George.

"Wouldn't he be more comfortable in his bed?" Rachael's shaken voice asked in a low tone.

"You saved him," she whispered.

"YOU saved him; George says so, too. If that fellow down there had given him chloroform, there would have been no chance. Our only hope was to relieve that pressure on his heart, and take the risk of it being too much for him. He's as strong as a bull. But it was a fight! And no one but a woman would have rushed him up here in the rain."

"Sweetheart," said her wonderful voice, a mere tired essence of a voice now, "if there is anything to forgive, I am so glad to forgive it! You are mine, and I am yours. Please God we will never be parted again!"

"I am not younger," Rachael said, smiling. "And I think I am changed, too. All the pressure, all the nervous worry of the last few years, seem to be gone. Washed away, perhaps, by tears -- there have been tears enough! But somehow -- somehow I am confident, Warren, as I never was before, that happiness is ahead. Somehow I feel sure that you and I have won to happiness, now, won to sureness. With each other, and the boys, and books and music, and Home Dunes, the years to come seem all bright. After all, we are young to have learned how to live!"

"It seems to me that there never was such a bright sunshine, and never such a nice little third person, and never such coffee, and such happiness!" said Rachael, her eyes reflecting something of the placid winter day; soul and body wrapped in peace. "Yesterday- -only yesterday, I was wretched beyond all believing! To-day I think I have had the best hours of my life!"

"Say rather," she said seriously, "that we know each other, and ourselves, now. Say that I will never demand utter perfection of you, or you of me. But, Warren -- Warren -- as long as we love each other -- "

"As long as we love each other!" she said, smiling through tears, her eyes piercing him to the very soul.