Woman must not belong to herself; she is bound to alien
destinies.—Friedrich von Schiller.

With an exclamation of surprise the old woman departed from the door. I heard the rustle of a footfall. I could have told in advance what face would now appear outlined in the candle glow—with eyes wide and startled, with lips half parted in query. It was the face of Helena, Baroness von Ritz!

"Eh bien! madam, why do you bar me out?" I said, as though we had parted but yesterday.

In her sheer astonishment, I presume, she let down the fastening chain, and without her invitation I stepped within. I heard her startled "Mon Dieu!" then her more deliberate exclamation of emotion. "My God!" she said. She stood, with her hands caught at her throat, staring at me. I laughed and held out a hand.

"Madam Baroness," I said, "how glad I am! Come, has not fate been kind to us again?" I pushed shut the door behind me. Still without a word, she stepped deeper into the room and stood looking at me, her hands clasped now loosely and awkwardly, as though she were a country girl surprised, and not the Baroness Helena von Ritz, toast or talk of more than one capital of the world.

Yet she was the same. She seemed slightly thinner now, yet not less beautiful. Her eyes were dark and brilliant as ever. The clear features of her face were framed in the roll of her heavy locks, as I had seen them last. Her garb, as usual, betokened luxury. She was robed as though for some fête, all in white satin, and pale blue fires of stones shone faintly at throat and wrist. Contrast enough she made to me, clad in smoke-browned tunic of buck, with the leggings and moccasins of a savage, my belt lacking but prepared for weapons.

I had not time to puzzle over the question of her errand here, why or whence she had come, or what she purposed doing. I was occupied with the sudden surprises which her surroundings offered.

"I see, Madam," said I, smiling, "that still I am only asleep and dreaming. But how exquisite a dream, here in this wild country! How unfit here am I, a savage, who introduce the one discordant note into so sweet a dream!"

I gestured to my costume, gestured about me, as I took in the details of the long room in which we stood. I swear it was the same as that in which I had seen her at a similar hour in Montreal! It was the same I had first seen in Washington!

Impossible? I am doubted? Ah, but do I not know? Did I not see? Here were the pictures on the walls, the carved Cupids, the candelabra with their prisms, the chairs, the couches! Beyond yonder satin curtains rose the high canopy of the embroidery-covered couch, its fringed drapery reaching almost to the deep pile of the carpets. True, opportunity had not yet offered for the full concealment of these rude walls; yet, as my senses convinced me even against themselves, here were the apartments of Helena von Ritz, furnished as she had told me they always were at each place she saw fit to honor with her presence!

Yet not quite the same, it seemed to me. There were some little things missing, just as there were some little things missing from her appearance. For instance, these draperies at the right, which formerly had cut off the Napoleon bed at its end of the room, now were of blankets and not of silk. The bed itself was not piled deep in down, but contained, as I fancied from my hurried glance, a thin mattress, stuffed perhaps with straw. A roll of blankets lay across its foot. As I gazed to the farther extremity of this side of the long suite, I saw other evidences of change. It was indeed as though Helena von Ritz, creature of luxury, woman of an old, luxurious world, exotic of monarchical surroundings, had begun insensibly to slip into the ways of the rude democracy of the far frontiers.

I saw all this; but ere I had finished my first hurried glance I had accepted her, as always one must, just as she was; had accepted her surroundings, preposterously impossible as they all were from any logical point of view, as fitting to herself and to her humor. It was not for me to ask how or why she did these things. She had done them; because, here they were; and here was she. We had found England's woman on the Columbia!

"Yes," said she at length, slowly, "yes, I now believe it to be fate."

She had not yet smiled. I took her hand and held it long. I felt glad to see her, and to take her hand; it seemed pledge of friendship; and as things now were shaping, I surely needed a friend.

At last, her face flushing slightly, she disengaged her hand and motioned me to a seat. But still we stood silent for a few moments. "Have you no curiosity?" said she at length.

"I am too happy to have curiosity, my dear Madam."

"You will not even ask me why I am here?" she insisted.

"I know. I have known all along. You are in the pay of England. When I missed you at Montreal, I knew you had sailed on the Modesté for Oregon We knew all this, and planned for it. I have come across by land to meet you. I have waited. I greet you now!"

She looked me now clearly in the face. "I am not sure," said she at length, slowly.

"Not sure of what, Madam? When you travel on England's warship," I smiled, "you travel as the guest of England herself. If, then, you are not for England, in God's name, whose friend are you?"

"Whose friend am I?" she answered slowly. "I say to you that I do not know. Nor do I know who is my friend. A friend—what is that? I never knew one!"

"Then be mine. Let me be your friend. You know my history. You know about me and my work. I throw my secret into your hands. You will not betray me? You warned me once, at Montreal. Will you not shield me once again?"

She nodded, smiling now in an amused way. "Monsieur always takes the most extraordinary times to visit me! Monsieur asks always the most extraordinary things! Monsieur does always the most extraordinary acts! He takes me to call upon a gentleman in a night robe! He calls upon me himself, of an evening, in dinner dress of hides and beads—"

"'Tis the best I have, Madam!" I colored, but her eye had not criticism, though her speech had mockery.

"This is the costume of your American savages," she said. "I find it among the most beautiful I have ever seen. Only a man can wear it. You wear it like a man. I like you in it—I have never liked you so well. Betray you, Monsieur? Why should I? How could I?"

"That is true. Why should you? You are Helena von Ritz. One of her breeding does not betray men or women. Neither does she make any journeys of this sort without a purpose."

"I had a purpose, when I started. I changed it in mid-ocean. Now, I was on my way to the Orient."

"And had forgotten your report to Mr. Pakenham?" I shook my head. "Madam, you are the guest of England."

"I never denied that," she said. "I was that in Washington. I was so in Montreal. But I have never given pledge which left me other than free to go as I liked. I have studied, that is true—but I have not reported."

"Have we not been fair with you, Baroness? Has my chief not proved himself fair with you?"

"Yes," she nodded. "You have played the game fairly, that is true."

"Then you will play it fair with us? Come, I say you have still that chance to win the gratitude of a people."

"I begin to understand you better, you Americans," she said irrelevantly, as was sometimes her fancy. "See my bed yonder. It is that couch of husks of which Monsieur told me! Here is the cabin of logs. There is the fireplace. Here is Helena von Ritz—even as you told me once before she sometime might be. And here on my wrists are the imprints of your fingers! What does it mean, Monsieur? Am I not an apt student? See, I made up that little bed with my own hands! I—Why, see, I can cook! What you once said to me lingered in my mind. At first, it was matter only of curiosity. Presently I began to see what was beneath your words, what fullness of life there might be even in poverty. I said to myself, 'My God! were it not, after all, enough, this, if one be loved?' So then, in spite of myself, without planning, I say, I began to understand. I have seen about me here these savages—savages who have walked thousands of miles in a pilgrimage—for what?"

"For what, Madam?" I demanded. "For what? For a cabin! For a bed of husks! Was it then for the sake of ease, for the sake of selfishness? Come, can you betray a people of whom you can say so much?"

"Ah, now you would try to tempt me from a trust which has been reposed in me!"

"Not in the least I would not have you break your word with Mr. Pakenham; but I know you are here on the same errand as myself. You are to learn facts and report them to Mr. Pakenham—as I am to Mr. Calhoun."

"What does Monsieur suggest?" she asked me, with her little smile.

"Nothing, except that you take back all the facts—and allow them to mediate. Let them determine between the Old World and this New one—you satin couch and this rude one you have learned to make. Tell the truth only. Choose, then, Madam!"

"Nations do not ask the truth. They want only excuses."

"Quite true. And because of that, all the more rests with you. If this situation goes on, war must come. It can not be averted, unless it be by some agency quite outside of these two governments. Here, then, Madam, is Helena von Ritz!"

"At least, there is time," she mused. "These ships are not here for any immediate active war. Great Britain will make no move until—"

"Until Madam the Baroness, special agent of England, most trusted agent, makes her report to Mr. Pakenham! Until he reports to his government, and until that government declares war! 'Twill take a year or more. Meantime, you have not reported?"

"No, I am not yet ready."

"Certainly not. You are not yet possessed of your facts. You have not yet seen this country. You do not yet know these men—the same savages who once accounted for another Pakenham at New Orleans—hardy as buffaloes, fierce as wolves. Wait and see them come pouring across the mountains into Oregon. Then make your report to this Pakenham. Ask him if England wishes to fight our backwoodsmen once more!"

"You credit me with very much ability!" she smiled.

"With all ability. What conquests you have made in the diplomacy of the Old World I do not know. You have known courts. I have known none. Yet you are learning life. You are learning the meaning of the only human idea of the world, that of a democracy of endeavor, where all are equal in their chances and in their hopes. That, Madam, is the only diplomacy which will live. If you have passed on that torch of principle of which you spoke—if I can do as much—then all will be well. We shall have served."

She dropped now into a chair near by a little table, where the light of the tall candles, guttering in their enameled sconces, fell full upon her face. She looked at me fixedly, her eyes dark and mournful in spite of their eagerness.

"Ah, it is easy for you to speak, easy for you who have so rich and full a life—who have all! But I—my hands are empty!" She spread out her curved fingers, looking at them, dropping her hands, pathetically drooping her shoulders.

"All, Madam? What do you mean? You see me almost in rags. Beyond the rifle at my cabin, the pistol at my tent, I have scarce more in wealth than what I wear, while you have what you like."

"All but everything!" she murmured; "all but home!"

"Nor have I a home."

"All, except that my couch is empty save for myself and my memories!"

"Not more than mine, nor with sadder memories, Madam."

"Why, what do you mean?" she asked me suddenly. "What do you mean?" She repeated it again, as though half in horror.

"Only that we are equal and alike. That we are here on the same errand. That our view of life should be the same."

"What do you mean about home? But tell me, were you not then married?"

"No, I am alone, Madam. I never shall be married."

There may have been some slight motion of a hand which beckoned me to a seat at the opposite side of the table. As I sat, I saw her search my face carefully, slowly, with eyes I could not read. At last she spoke, after her frequent fashion, half to herself.

"It succeeded, then!" said she. "Yet I am not happy! Yet I have failed!"

"I pause, Madam," said I, smiling. "I await your pleasure."

"Ah, God! Ah, God!" she sighed. "What have I done?" She staggered to her feet and stood beating her hands together, as was her way when perturbed. "What have I done!"

"Threlka!" I heard her call, half chokingly. The old servant came hurriedly.

"Wine, tea, anything, Threlka!" She dropped down again opposite me, panting, and looking at me with wide eyes.

"Tell me, do you know what you have said?" she began.

"No, Madam. I grieve if I have caused you any pain."

"Well, then, you are noble; when look, what pain I have caused you! Yet not more than myself. No, not so much. I hope not so much!"

Truly there is thought which passes from mind to mind. Suddenly the thing in her mind sped across to mine. I looked at her suddenly, in my eyes also, perhaps, the horror which I felt.

"It was you!" I exclaimed. "It was you! Ah, now I begin to understand! How could you? You parted us! You parted me from Elisabeth!"

"Yes," she said regretfully, "I did it It was my fault."

I rose and drew apart from her, unable to speak. She went on.

"But I was not then as I am now. See, I was embittered, reckless, desperate. I was only beginning to think—I only wanted time. I did not really mean to do all this. I only thought—Why, I had not yet known you a day nor her an hour. 'Twas all no more than half a jest"

"How could you do it?" I demanded. "Yet that is no more strange. How did you do it?"

"At the door, that first night. I was mad then over the wrong done to what little womanhood I could claim for my own. I hated Yturrio. I hated Pakenham. They had both insulted me. I hated every man. I had seen nothing but the bitter and desperate side of life—I was eager to take revenge even upon the innocent ones of this world, seeing that I had suffered so much. I had an old grudge against women, against women, I say—against women!"

She buried her face in her hands. I saw her eyes no more till Threlka came and lifted her head, offering her a cup of drink, and so standing patiently until again she had dismissal.

"But still it is all a puzzle to me, Madam," I began. "I do not understand."

"Well, when you stood at the door, my little shoe in your pocket, when you kissed my hand that first night, when you told me what you would do did you love a woman—when I saw something new in life I had not seen—why, then, in the devil's resolution that no woman in the world should be happy if I could help it, I slipped in the body of the slipper a little line or so that I had written when you did not see, when I was in the other room. 'Twas that took the place of Van Zandt's message, after all! Monsieur, it was fate. Van Zandt's letter, without plan, fell out on my table. Your note, sent by plan, remained in the shoe!"

"And what did it say? Tell me at once."

"Very little. Yet enough fora woman who loved and who expected. Only this: 'In spite of that other woman, come to me still. Who can teach yon love of woman as can I? Helena.' I think it was some such words as those."

I looked at her in silence.

"You did not see that note?" she demanded. "After all, at first I meant it only for you. I wanted to see you again. I did not want to lose you. Ah, God! I was so lonely, so—so—I can not say. But you did not find my message?"

I shook my head. "No," I said, "I did not look in the slipper. I do not think my friend did."

"But she—that girl, did!"

"How could she have believed?"

"Ah, grand! I reverence your faith. But she is a woman! She loved you and expected you that hour, I say. Thus comes the shock of finding you untrue, of finding you at least a common man, after all. She is a woman. 'Tis the same fight, all the centuries, after all! Well, I did that."

"You ruined the lives of two, neither of whom had ever harmed you, Madam."

"What is it to the tree which consumes another tree—the flower which devours its neighbor? Was it ............