CHARTER AND STOCK ARE CALLED TO THE PRIEST'S HOUSE IN THE NIGHT, AND THE WYNDAM WOMAN STAYS AT THE PALMS Peter Stock was abroad in the Palms shortly after Charter left for the wine-shop to join Jacques, for the day's trip. The absence of the younger man reminded him of the project Charter had twice mentioned in the wine-shop.
 
"I can't quite understand it," he said to Miss Wyndam as he started for the city, "if he really has gone to the . He had me thinking it over—about going along. Why should he rush off alone? I tell you, it's not like him. The boy's troubled—got some of the groan-stuff of Pelée in his vitals."
 
The day began badly for Paula. Her mind assumed the old receptivity which the occultist had found to his advantage; terrors flocked in as the hours drew on. One pays for being responsive to the finer of life. Under the of heat, good steel becomes radiant with an activity destructive to itself, but quite as marvellous in its way as the heavens. What a superior and admirable endowment, this, though it consumes, compared to the dead asbestos-fabric which will not warm. Paula felt the city in her breast that day—the restless, fevered cries of children and the answering , the terror everywhere, even in bird-cries and limping animals—that cosmic sympathy.
 
She knew that Charter would not have rushed away to the mountain without a "good morning" for her, had she told him yesterday. She saw him turn upon the Morne, look at her window, almost as if he saw the outline of her figure there—as the call went to him from her inner heart.... She had reconstructed his last week in New York, from the letter of Selma Cross and his own; and in her sight he had achieved a finer thing than any who ever broadened the borders of his queen. Not a word from her; encountering a mysterious suspicion from Reifferscheid; avoiding Selma Cross by his word and her own; , who may know how many devils of his own past; and then summoning the courage and gentleness to write such a letter as she had received—a letter sent out into the dark—this was and courage to woo the soul. With such a spirit, she could tramp the world's highway with feet, but a singing heart.... And only such a spirit could be true to Skylark; for she knew as "Wyndam" she had quickened him for all time, though he ran from her—to commune with Pelée. She felt his strength—strength of man such as dream of, and, maturing, put their dreams away.
 
"... as I sat by my study window, facing the East!" Well she knew those words from his letters; and they came to her now, from the talk of yesterday in the high light of an angelic visitation. Always in memory the dining-room at the Palms would have an occult , for she saw his great love for Skylark there, as he of "facing the East." How soon could she have told him after that, but for the evil old French face that drew him away.... "You deserve to suffer, Paula Linster," she whispered. "You let him go away,—without a of your secret, or a of your mercy."
 
before such a conception of manhood—Paula feared her unworthiness. She saw herself back in New York, under the power of Bellingham; swayed by those specialists, Reifferscheid in books, Madame Nestor in occultism; and, above all blame-worthily, by Selma Cross of the passions. She seemed always to have been listening. Selma Cross had been strong enough to destroy her Tower; and this, when the actress herself had been so little sure of her statements that she must needs call Charter to prove them. Nothing that she had done seemed to carry the of decision.... So the self-arraignment thickened and about her, until she cried out:
 
"But I would have told him yesterday—had not that old man called him away!"
 
Peter Stock returned at noon, her to go out to the ship, for even on the Morne, Pelée had become a plague. He out that she was practically alone in the Palms; that nearly all of Father Fontanel's parishioners had taken his word and left for Fort de France or Morne , at least; that he, Peter Stock, was a very old man who had earned the right to be fond of whom he pleased, and that it seriously injured an old man's health when he couldn't have his way.
 
"There are big reasons for me to stay here to-day—big only to me," she told him. "If I had known you for years, I couldn't be more assured of your kindness, nor more willing to avail myself of it, but please trust me to know best to-day. Possibly to-morrow."
 
So the American left her, complaining that she was quite as inscrutable as Charter.... An hour or more later, as she was watching the mountain from her room, a little black carriage stopped before the gate of the Palms, and Father Fontanel stepped slowly out. She hurried downstairs, met him at the door, and saw the rare old face in its great weariness.
 
"You have given too much strength to your work, Father," she said, putting her arm about him and him toward the .
 
"I am quite well," he panted. "I was among my people in the city, when our amazing friend suddenly appeared with a carriage, me in and sent me here, saying there were enough people in Saint Pierre who refused to obey him, and that he didn't propose that I should be one."
 
"I think he did very well," she answered, laughing. "What must it be down in the city—when we suffer so here? We cannot do without you——"
 
"But there is great work for me—the great work I have always asked for. Believe me, I do not suffer."
 
"One must not until he falls and dies, Father."
 
"If it be the will of the good God, I ask nothing fairer than to fall in His service. Death is only terrible from afar off in youth, my dear child. When we are old and perceive the glories of the Reality, we are to forget the illusion here. In remembering , we forget the cares and ills of flesh.... I am only troubled for my people, in the gray curse of the city, and for my brave young friend. My mind was clouded when he asked me certain questions last night; and to-day, they say he has gone to the craters of the mountain."
 
"What for?" she whispered quickly.
 
"Ah, how should I know? But he tells me of people who make pilgrimages of sanctification to strange cities of the East—to Mecca and Benares——"
 
"But they go to Benares to die, Father!"
 
"I did not know, my daughter," he assured her, drawing his hand across his brow in a troubled fashion. "He has not gone to the mountain for that, though I see storms about him, storms of the mountain and of men. But I see you with him afterward—as I saw him with you—when you first spoke to me."
 
She told him all, and found healing in the old man's smile.
 
"It is well, and it is wonderful," he whispered at last. "Much that my life has misunderstood is made clear to me—by this love of yours and his——"
 
"'And his,' Father?"
 
"Yes."
 
There was silence. She would not ask if Quentin Charter had also told his story. Father Fontanel arose and said he must go back, but he took the girl's hands, looked deeply into her eyes, saying with gentleness:
 
"Listen, child,—the man who cannot forget a vision that is lost, will be a brave mate for the envisioned reality that he finds."
 
At all that afternoon she felt the influence of Bellingham. It was not desire. Dull and , it appealed, as one might hear a child in another house repeatedly calling to its mother. Within her there was no response, save that of for a spectre that rises untimely from a past long since . She did not ask herself whether she was lifted beyond him, or whether he was debased and weakened, or if he really called with the old . Glimpses of the strange place in which he occasionally flashed before her inner mind, but it was all far and indefinite, easily to be . To her, he had become inextricable from the . There was so much of living fear and greater glory in her mind that afternoon, that these were but evil shadows of slight account.
 
The torturing hours crawled by, until the day turned to a deeper gray, and the North was reddened by Pelée's which the thick dimmed and . Paula was suffered to fight out her battle alone. She could not have asked more than this. A thousand times she paced across her room; again and again straining her eyes , along the road, over the city into the darkness, and the end of all things—the mountain.... There was a moment in the half-light before the day was spent, in which she seemed to see Quentin Charter, as Father Fontanel had told her, in by all the storms and hates of the world. Over the surface of her brain was a vivid track for flying agonies.
 
The that had been was at intervals now by an and deeper . Altogether, the sound was like a steady stream of vehicles, certain ones heavier and moving more swiftly than others, pounding over a wooden bridge. To her, there was a in each phase of the volcano's activity, since Quentin Charter had gone up into that red ro............