To a man who has never been in love the humble passion of his heart is to be allowed to love. He conjures visions of the woman who will call out his affection; he is always looking for her, seeing a face which seems the companion of his dreams, following, turning back disappointed and setting out afresh. When he does find her, his first feeling is one of overwhelming gratitude. His one idea is to give unstintingly, expecting nothing. He robes himself in a white unselfishness.

But the moment he has been allowed to love his attitude changes. He still wants to love, but he craves equally to be loved. He is no longer content to worship solitarily; he becomes sensitive to be worshiped in return. He is anxious to compete with the woman’s generosity. If she receives and does not give, he grows infidel like a devotee whose prayers God has not answered.

The right to clasp her without repulse, which the silver wood had granted him, had brought him to this second stage in his journey—the urgent longing to be loved. Then, like a coarse cynicism, discovering in all love’s loyalties an unsuspected foulness, had come the scene which he had witnessed in her presence. It had struck the barbaric note, stripping of conventional pretenses the motives which underlie all passion. It had revealed to him the direction of impulses which he himself possessed. Mr. Dak was no worse than any other man, if only the other man were tantalized sufficiently. Vashti had starved him too much and relied too much on his awe of her. She was a lion-tamer who had grown reckless through immunity; the beast had taken her unaware. Probably Mr. Dak was as surprised as herself.

Teddy understood now what Horace had meant by calling her “a slave of freedom.” All this gayety which he had envied, which had made him wish that he was more of a Sir Launcelot and less of a King Arthur—it was nothing but the excitement of skating over the treacherous thin ice of sex.

Mr. Dak was no worse than he might be if circumstances pushed him far enough. Desire had told him as much: “All men are beasts, I expect.”

He felt hot with shame. He sympathized with her virginal anger. He, too, felt besmirched. But her words rankled; they had destroyed their common faith in each other. Never again would he be able to approach her with his old simplicity. Never again would he hear her whisper, “I feel so safe with you, Meester Deek.” How could she feel safe with him? All men were beasts. She classed him with the lowest Any moment he might be swept out of caution into touching and caressing her. They would both remember the ugliness they had witnessed; she would flinch from him, and view him with suspicion. He would suspect himself. His very gentleness would seem to follow her panther-footed.

He returned to the Brevoort, but not to sleep. As he tossed restlessly in the darkness, he could hear her words of dismissal. She spoke them sorrowfully with disillusion; she spoke them mockingly; she spoke them angrily, clenching her white virago fists. It was she who ought to have said, “Thank God, there are good men.” Her mother had said that She had said, “All men are beasts, I expect” In the saying of it, she had seemed to attribute to his courting the disarming smugness of a Mr. Dak. The silver wood with its magnanimity counted for nothing. Whatever ideals he had built up for her were shattered by this haphazard brutality.

He shifted his head on the pillow. How did she look when she was tender and little? His last memory of her had blotted out all that. Rising wearily, he switched on the light and commenced a search for the tin-type photograph. At last he found it. Her features were undiscernible—faded into blackness.

Sleep refused to come to him. He dressed and sat himself by the window. How quiet it was! Night obliterates geography. The yards at the back of the hotel were merged into a garden—a garden like the one in Eden Row. He had only to half close his eyes to image it.

Eden Row set him remembering. The disgust with life that he was now feeling, had only one parallel in his experience—that, too, was concerned with her: the shock which her father’s confession had caused him on the train-journey back from Ware. “If you’re ever tempted to do wrong, remember me. If you’re ever tempted to get love the wrong way, be strong enough to do without it” And then, “I sinned once—a long while ago. I’m still paying for it You’re paying for it One day Desire may have to pay the biggest price of any of us.”

She was paying for it now when she could see no difference between his love and Mr. Dak’s—between honor and mere passion. “All men are beasts, I expect.” That was the conclusion at which she had arrived. She was incapable of high beliefs at twenty!

He recalled what the knowledge of Hal’s sin had done for him. Perhaps it had done the same for her. It had made him see sin everywhere; marriage itself had seemed impurity—all things had been polluted until into the dusk of the studio his mother had entered. He could hear himself whispering, “Things like that make a boy frightened, mother, when—when they’re first told to him.” It was after that that he had determined to make Desire in his life what the Holy Grail had been in Sir Galahad’s.

Would the consequences of this wrong, more than twenty years old, never end? Ever since he had begun to think, it had striven to uproot his idealism. Yet once, in the little moment of selfishness, it must have been ecstatic.

He had been thinking only of himself. In a great wave of compassion his thoughts swept back to her. She had had to live in the knowledge of this sin always. For her there had been no escape from it—no people like his mother and father to set her other standards of truer living. What was his penalty as compared with hers? What was the worth of his chivalry if it broke before the first shock of her injustice? He saw her again as a little girl, inquiring what it was like to have a father. There must have been a day in her waking womanhood when the knowledge that all children are not fatherless had dawned on her. Perhaps it had been explained to her coarsely by a servant or by the cruel ostracism of school-children. He could imagine the shame and tears that had followed, and then the hardening.

If she would only allow herself to understand what it was that he was offering! He longed to take her in his arms—not the way he had; but as he would cuddle a sick child against his breast to give it comfort. His compassion for her was almost womanly; it was something that he dared not tell her. Compassion from him was the emotion which she would most resent.

It was her pride that made her so poignantly tragic—her pose of being an enviable person. There was no getting behind it except by a brutal statement of facts. The scene which they had surprised in the apartment had staged those facts with ugly vividness. Despite the gayety with which she drugged herself, she must know that her mother’s position made her fair game for the world’s Mr. Daks. Her way of speaking of her as “my beautiful mother” was an acknowledgment, and sounded like a defense.

Her fear of losing her maiden liberty, her dread of the natural responsibilities of marriage, her eagerness to believe the worst of men, her light friendships, her vague, continually postponed ambitions—they were all part of the price she was paying. Her glory in her questionable enfranchisement was the worst part of her penalty; it made what was sad seem romantic, and kept her blind to the better things in the world. She did not want to be rescued from the dangers of her position. She ignored any sacrifice that he might be making and spoke only of the curtailments that love would bring to her. In putting forward her unattempted career as an obstacle, she did not recognize that his accomplished career was in jeopardy while she dallied.

Increasingly since he had landed in New York, his financial outlook had worried him. At the time of sailing he had had seven hundred pounds in the bank; then there were the three hundred pounds per annum from his Beauty Incorporated shares. This, in addition to what he could earn, had looked like affluence by Eden Row standards. But in the last few months he had been spending recklessly. The frenzy which held him prevented work. Commissions from magazines were still uncompleted. His American and English publishers were urging him to let them have a second manuscript. He assured them they should have it, but the manuscript was scarcely commenced. The dread weighed upon him like a nightmare that he had lost his creative faculty. His intellect was paralyzed; he had only one object in living—to win her.

And when he had won her, at the rate at which he was now going, marriage might be impossible. Already he had drawn on his English savings. After accustoming her to a false scale of expenditure, he could scarcely urge retrenchment It would seem to prove all her assertions of the dullness which overtakes a woman when she has placed herself absolutely in a man’s power. At this stage there was no chance of curtailing his generosity. So long as they were both in New York the endless round of theatres, taxis and restaurants must continue. He could not confess to her how it was draining his resources. It would seem like accusing her of avarice and himself of poverty. Poverty and the loss of beauty were the two calamities which filled her heart with the wildest panic.

Like a thunderstorm that had spent itself, the clamor of argument died down. It left him with a lucid quietness. Again she lay hushed in his embrace; her lips shuddered beneath his pressure. That moment of dearness, more than any ceremony of God or man, had bound him to her. It had made him sure of subtle shades of fineness in her character which she refused to reveal to him yet His love should outlast her wilfulness. He would wait for years, but he would win her. The day would come when she would awake to her need of him. Meanwhile he would make himself a habit—what the landscape was to the old man at Baveno—adding link upon link to her chain of memories, so that in every day when she looked back, there would be some kindness to remind her of him.

A thought occurred. He would put his chances to the test. He fetched a pack of cards from his trunk and drew up to the desk. Having shuffled them, he spread them out face-downwards. If he picked a heart, he would many her within the year. When he found with a thrill of dismay that it was a spade, he changed his bargain and agreed to give himself three chances. The next two were hearts. That encouraged him. He played on for hours in the silent room—played feverishly, as though his soul depended on it He craved for certainty. When luck ran against him, he made his test more lenient till the odds were in his favor. Whatever the cards said, he refused to take no for an answer. Morning found him with the lights still burning, his shoulders crouched forward, his head pillowed on his arms.

All that day he waited to hear from her. He could not bring himself to telephone her. After what had happened, delicacy kept him from intruding. In the afternoon he sent her flowers to provide her with an excuse for calling him up. She let the excuse pass unnoticed. Her strategic faculty for silence was again asserting itself. He lived over all the events of the previous day, marking them in sequence hour by hour, finding them doubly sweet in remembrance. The longest day of his life had ended by the time he crept to bed.

Next morning he searched his mail for a letter from her. There was nothing. He was sitting in his room trying to work—it was about lunch-time—when the telephone tinkled.

“Hulloa,” a voice said which he did not recognize, “are you Mr. Gurney, the great author?—Well, something terrible’s happened; you’ve not spoken to your girl for more than twenty-four hours. It’s killing her.” A laugh followed and the voice changed to one he knew. “Don’t you think I’m very gracious, after all your punishment?—Where am I?—No, try another guess. You’re not very psychic or you’d know. I’m within—let me count—forty seconds of you. I’m here, in a booth of the Brevoort, downstairs.—Eh! What’s that?—Will I stop to lunch with you? Why, of course. That’s what I’ve come for.”

It was extraordinary how his world brightened. The ache had gone out of it Finances, work, nothing mattered. The future withdrew its threat “I’m wearing my Nell Gwynn face,” she laughed as he took her hands. Then they stood together silent, careless of strangers passing, smiling into each other’s eyes.

“You silly Meester Deek,” she whispered, “why did you keep away if you wanted me so badly?”

“Because——” and there he ended. He couldn’t speak to her of the ugliness they had seen together; she looked so girlish and innocent and fresh. It was hateful that they should share such a memory.

“I’m not proud when I’ve done wrong,” she said. Her eyes winked and twinkled beneath their lashes. “And it’s rather fun to have to ask forgiveness when you know you’ve been forgiven beforehand.”

He led her into the white room with its many mirrors. Quickly forestalling the waiter, he helped her off with her furs and jacket. She glanced up at him as he did it. “Rather mean of you to do the poor man out of that It’s about the nearest a waiter ever comes to romance.”

When he had taken his seat opposite to her, she questioned him, “Why did you act so queerly?”

“Queerly!”

“You know. After the night before last?”

He wished she would let him forget it “I thought you might not want me.”

“Want you!” She reached across the table and touched his hand. “You do think unkind thoughts. If I did say something cruel, it wasn’t meant—not in my heart I’m afraid you think I’m fickle.”

He delayed her hand as she was withdrawing it “If I did, I shouldn’t love you the way I do, Princess.”

A waiter intruded to take their order. It seemed to Teddy that ever since Long Beach, waiters had been clearing away his tenderest passages as though it were as much a part of their duties as to change the courses.

When they were left alone, she brought matters to a head. “I suppose you got that strange notion because—because of what I said. Poor King! He did make me angry, and yesterday he came to us so penitent and sorry. We had to forgive him.—You’re looking as though you thought we oughtn’t But it doesn’t do to be harsh. We all slip up sooner or later, and the day’s always coming when we’ll have to ask forgiveness ourselves.”

He stared at her in undisguised amazement Was this merely carelessness or a charity so divine that it knew no bounds?

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” she continued; “you’re thinking we’re lax. That’s what people thought about Jesus when he talked to the woman of Samaria. Mr. Dak’s quite a good little man, if he did make a mistake. He’s always been understanding until this happened.”

She described as a mistake something that had appealed to him as tragedy. Had her innocence prevented her from guessing the truth? Perhaps it was he who was distorting facts.

“You seem to be accusing me of self-righteousness when you speak of other people being understanding. I’m not self-righteous—really I’m not, Desire—I do wish you’d believe that. Can’t you see why I’m not so lenient as some of your friends? It’s because I’m so anxious to protect you. If people are too lenient, it’s usually because they don’t want to be criticized themselves. But when a man’s in love with a girl, he doesn’t like to see her doing things that he might encourage her to do if he didn’t respect her and if they were only out for a good time together.”

She had frowned while he was speaking. When he ended, she lifted her gray eyes. “I do understand. I think I understand much more than you’ve said. But please don’t judge me—that’s what I’m afraid of. I know I’m all wrong—wrong and stupid in so many directions.—I’ve only found out how wrong,” her voice dropped, “since I’ve known you.” He felt like weeping. He had judged her; in spite of his resolutions to let his love be blind, he had been judging her. Every time he had judged her, her intuition had warned her. And there she sat abasing herself that she might treat him with kindness.

He became passionate in her defense. “You’re not wrong. I wouldn’t have anything, not a single thing in your life altered—nothing, Desire, from—from the very first. You’re the dearest, sweetest——”
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