For two months he had fought his battle silently with her image in his mind—the image of a girl who had once given him faith and friendship, whose fingers had soothed him in fever, and whose eyes had been dark with compassion—the girl who had taught him the uses of responsibility and the glorification of the labor of his hands. That silent battle had magnified the image, vested it with sovereign rights, given it the gentle strength by which he had conjured, and he had fought joyfully, with a new belief in his own destiny, a real delight in conquest. His heart glowed with a dull wrath. Was it nothing that he had come to her clean-handed again? The image that he had conjured was fading in the sullen glow in the West out of which she had come to him. Was this Jane? The Jane he knew had sorrowed with the falling of a bird, mourned the killing of a squirrel and wept over the glazed eyes of a dead deer. Was this Jane? This disdainful woman with the modish hat and cold blue eye, this scornful[93] daughter of convention who sneered at sin and mocked at the tokens of repentance ?

The image was gone from his shrine, and in its place a Nemesis sat enthroned—a Nemesis in dark gray who looked at him with the eyes of contempt and who called herself Miss Loring. He was resentful of her name as at an intrusion. It typified the pedantry of the conventional and commonplace.

The arc lamps died and flared, their shadows leaping like gnomes in and out of the obscurity. High in the air, lights punctured the darkness where the hotels loomed. Beside him on the drive gay turnouts hurried. The roar of the city came nearer. Arcadia was not even a memory dermes hk.

The Pride of the Gallatins was a sorry thing that night. This Gallatin had bared it frankly, torn away its rugged coverings, that a woman might see and know him for what he was—the best and the worst of him. ; for bitter as the retribution had been, he knew that he had owed her that candor, for it was a part of the lesson he had learned with Jane—the other Jane—among the woods. This Jane remembered not; for she had struck and had not spared him, and each stinging phrase still pierced and quivered in the wound that it had made.

Out of the blackness of his thoughts reason came slowly. It was her right, of course, to deny him the privileges of her regard—the rights of fellowship—this he had deserved and had expected, but the carelessness of her contempt had been hard to bear. Mockery he had known in women, and intolerance, but no one of his blood had ever brooked contempt. His cheeks burned with the sudden flush of anger and his hand upon his stick grew rigid. A man might pay for such a thing as that—but a girl flu virus!

If she had not hesitated, he might not have examined her so minutely. As it was she looked up at him irresolutely and then away. Over her head, beyond the edge of the shack, he saw the young pine-tree that she had placed for a roof support .

He stretched his hand toward the door, but she seized him by the arm.

“I forbid it. If Mrs. Pennington knew—” she stopped again in consternation. “Phil! Do you think that Nellie Pennington——”

“I don’t know. She’s a wonderful woman—keeps amazing horses—extraordinary coachmen——”

“Could she have told the man—to mistake me—purposely?”

“I think so,” he said brazenly. “She’s capable of anything—anything—wonderful wom——”

“Phil, I’ll be angry with you.”

“No, you can’t.”

He took her in his arms again and she discovered that what he said was true. She didn’t want to be angry. Besides, what did it matter, about anything or anybody else in the world Polar M600.

“I don’t know how this could have happened. I’ve hated you, Phil,” she confessed after a while. “Oh, how I’ve hated you!”

[164]

“No.”

“Oh, yes. It’s true. I hated you. I really did. You were the living emblem of my disgrace. When you got in here beside me to-night, I loathed you. I’m still angry with myself. I can’t understand how I could have yielded so—so completely.”

“It all happened a thousand years ago.”

“Yes, I know it. Up there—I seemed to remember that.”

“So did I—the same stream, the same rocks, the forest primeval.”

“And the voices——”

“Yes. You couldn’t change things. They were meant to be—from the beginning.”

She drew closer into his arms and whispered.

“It frightens me a little, though.”

“What?”

“That it has happened in spite of me. That I had no power to resist.”

“Do you want to resist?”

“No, not now—not now.”

“You make me immortal. There’s no need to be frightened for me or for you. The strength of the ages is in me, Jane. I’ll win out, dear,” he whispered. “I’ll win out. For you—for us both.”

“I believe it,” she sighed. “It’s in you to win. I’ve known that, too. You must put the—the Enemy to rout, Phil. I’ll help you. It’s my Enemy as well as yours now. We’ll face it together—and it will fall. I know it will.”

He laughed.

“God bless you for that. I’m not afraid of it. We’ve conjured it away already. You’ve put me in armor, Jane. We’ll turn its weapons aside polar m600.”

“Yes, I’m sure of it.”

[165]

She looked up at him and by the glow of a street lamp he saw that she was afraid no longer, for in her eyes was a light of love and faith unalterable.

She could not know, nor did he, that  their vehicle, his weapons sheathed, baffled and thwarted for the moment, but still undismayed, strode the Enemy.

Determined to think of him no more, she rang for her maid and ordered dinner. Then, book in hand, she went down stairs. Mr. Van Duyn, , had departed with Mrs. Loring, and she smiled almost gaily at the thought that this evening at least was her own. As she passed into the library, she saw that a bright light was burning in her father’s study, and she peeped in at the door You Find.

Jane sank to the floor in front of the painting and[104] reached for the enlarging glass. But he held it away from her.

“No, no,” he insisted. “Wait, first tell me how many things you can see with the naked eye.”

“A horse, a cow, a man lying on the grass, trees, distant haystacks and a windmill,” she said slowly.

“And is that all?” he laughed.

“No, a saddle on the ground, a rooster on the fence—yes—and some sheep at the foot of the hill.”

“Nothing more?”

“No, I don’t think so—except the buckles on the harness and the birds flying near the pigeon-cote.”

“Yes—yes—is that all?”

“Yes, I’m sure it is.”

“You’re blind as a bat, girl,” he roared delightedly. “Look through this and see!” and he handed her the glass. “Buckles on the horses! Examine it! Don’t you see the pack thread it’s sewed with? And the saddle gall on the horse’s back? And the crack in the left fore-hoof? Did you ever see anything more wonderful? Now look into the distance and tell me what else .”

“Haymakers,” gasped Miss Loring. “Two women, a man and—and, yes, a child. I couldn’t see them at all. There’s a rake and pitch fork, too——”

“And beyond?”

“Dykes and the sails of ships—a town and a tower with a cupola!”

“Splendid! And that’s only half. I’ve been looking at it for an hour and haven’t found everything yet. I’ll show them to you—see——”

And one by one he proudly revealed his latest discoveries. His passion for the minute almost amounted to an obsession, and the appearance of his large bulk poring over some delicate object of art was no unfamiliar one to[105] Jane, but she always humored him, because she knew that, although he was proud of his great house, here was the real interest that he found in it. His business enthralled him, but it made him merciless, too, and in this harmless hobby his daughter had discovered a humanizing influence which she welcomed and encouraged. It gave them points of contact from which Mrs. Loring was far removed, and Jane was always the first person in the household to share the delights of his latest acquisitions. But to-night she was sure that her duty demanded a mild reproof.

“It’s an astonishing picture, Daddy, but I’m sure we’ve both treated Mother very badly. You know you promised her——”

“So did you——”

“But I—I felt very badly.”

“So did I,” he chuckled, “very badly.” He put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and drew her closer against his knees. “Oh, Jane, what’s the use? Life’s too short to do a lot of things you don’t want to do. Your mother likes to go around. Let her buzz, she likes it .”

“Perhaps she does,” Jane reproved him. “But then you and I have our duty.”

“Don’t let that worry you, child. I do my duty—but I do it in a different way. Your mother stalks her game in its native wild. I don’t. I wait by the water hole until it comes to drink, and then I kill it.”