BY RIGHT OF TROVE. "Child, if it were thine error or thy crime WHAT difference does that make?" he said with a note of irritation in his voice. He had been talking for hours, and he felt he was as far from gaining his point as when he had first begun. She raised her eyes until they were on a level with his own. He was growing almost childish in his irritation. He waited a second to see if she would make any response to his declaration, which he hoped she would take as a challenge for denial, but she did not, and he went on : "But if you don't love me-thenwhy, then, I say, your course has been one of cursed cruelty, that's all. If you don't love me, why did you come to me just at the one moment in my life when "All the difference in the world," I was loneliest and forlornest, and most she said wearily. There was something in her glance of which she was not aware that gave him courage. He strode toward her and grasped her hands. soul-sick and discouraged? Why did you hearten me with praise of my work? Why did you take me out of the devil's life I was leading, and set me here in sight of you, where the world is easy "None under heaven," he broke out and things go straight? Why did you passionately, “If—if you loved me." do everything under heaven for me, She drew herself away from him and from putting food in my mouth and took a step back. It brought her to the money in my pocket, to ambition in my hearth upon which some logs were burn- soul and love in my heart? You did n't ing. She laid her hand upon the high use your age as a pretext for not being mantel-shelf and her forehead upon her good to me then. Why should you now? hand. She was very tired. He did not What matter can a few years make? know that, but if he had known it, it They don't to me; and they would n't would not have made any difference to to you if loved me. But if you if you him then. Perhaps it might even have don't-" he broke off suddenly, and struck him as being a favorable condi- swept his hand savagely across his eyes. tion to her more immediate surrender. "The life was hard that you took me He was bent upon bringing her over to from, but if you don't love me, you've only his point of view. If he succeeded he given me over to one that 's harder still. would not regret all this season of har Why I tell you, a god that created a assing suspense, but as yet he had his soul merely to send it down to damnasuccess to gain, and it was hard. It tion could n't be more cursedly cruel raised him to a certain unreasoning than this, if—if you — don't love me." anger against her. But that was just because he loved her so, and because she would not yield to him. "None under heaven-if you loved me," he repeated. "But if you don't," he went on, "anything will serve as an excuse, I suppose. It may as well be the paltry one of your being older than I as anything else." The woman raised her head and looked at him standing there, his young face seamed and drawn with pain. "Hush!" she said. "No, I won't hush," he went on with another passionate outburst. "Do you think a man who loves a woman as I do you is going to be satisfied to have his affection flung back at him, and then tamely hush,' like a scolded child? Do you suppose I'm going to pick and choose my words now? You've driven me to the point where I don't care what I say. What do you think I care for words now? I've got past that. Once I thought I cared because you were rich and I was poor. Once I thought my pride would keep me from this, but now -riches! pride! they mean nothing to me now. They're just words that make no difference. Nothing makes any difference but the hurt you've given me, and that aches - God! how it aches! He broke off suddenly, clinching his hands and setting his. jaws hard, one upon the other. The woman upon the hearth met his tirade with absolute silence. She was treating him with the patient forbearance one uses toward a passionate child who is beating his anger out in a storm of willful words, or so he thought. Her attitude galled him. can "O, I suppose you think I will feel your silence to be a rebuke," he said with a fresh impulse of revolt. "But I don't. Do you think the praise or blame of a woman who has acted as you have done if you don't love me have any weight? O, I'm tired of it all; deadly tired. Why did you do it? Why were you good to me if it was only to betray me like this? Is it so much of a gratification to a woman to see a man suffer what I am suffering now, for love of her? Or, perhaps you thought it was worth all the troubie to see the effect heart-break would have on a poor inexperienced fool, who did n't know. what was being done to him. Was it such a satisfaction to feel you were giving me my first experience? Is that what a woman will sacrifice honesty for? Well, if it is, and you have been laughing in your sleeve at me all this time, you may rest content. I am fairly launched by this. And you may take this sweet unction to your soul; you've given me a magnificent initiation. But ness. For the last few hours she had been controlling herself by an almost superhuman effort. She felt herself beginning to give way. She could not bear to see him suffer; it hurt her cruelly. "When you will let me," she murmured, "I will talk to you. All this time you have not been willing to listen. You are all wrong. You do not understand.” He raised his face to her mutely, and with a sudden impulse she bent forward and kissed him. first instinct had been a mistaken one, and this were the right? the one to survive? Anyway, she was powerless now to stem the tide of the young man's exuberant satisfaction. He was delirious with happiness. mire, and puts him into a pure place and makes life possible for him? Were n't you the first who ever saw anything in me worth trying to save? Did n't you discover me? Did n't you recognize the something in my work that had kept me "You make a boy of me, Mary," said alive till then the only thing that had he, joyously. She smiled wistfully. "Ah, that's it. You are a boy. Such a mere boy; only twenty-five, and I why, I'm an old woman, Hal. See, I can show you ever so many white hairs." He looked at her proudly, meeting her admission with superb indifference, and smiled into her eyes until she smiled back again. His face was radiant, and its clean-shaven smoothness gave it the contour of a lad's. He could not keep the happiness out of it, though he tried. It kept stealing about his mouth and rippling into his eyes. He wondered how Mary could be so calm. "I should be happier if I were sure it was right," she said. "I may be doing you an injury,- I do not know." "How could you be doing me an in- jury?" he asked with a fine show of scorn. "Aren't you beautiful, and rich, and respected, and am I not only a poor, unknown beggar, without a penny to my name except what I am able to earn through your influence? Where should I be now if it were not for you? Scribling away yet at my poems that no one would take, way up in that God-forsaken country; or more likely lying across my bed with a bullet through my brains because I had n't money enough to" "O, don't," she entreated. "How can I help it when you talk of injury?" he retorted. "O, Mary, how can I help loving you, when I think of all you've have done for me." "If I thought you loved me for that -" she said. "Why, how could I help it?" he asked. "How can any man help it when a woman comes to him like an angel of mercy, and lifts him clean out of the kept me alive? I tell you, Mary, if I am a poet, if I am a soul, I'm your poet and your soul, for you discovered me; you alone.,How could I help but love you?" "Love ought not to be because of," said Mary. "It ought to be in spite of." "Well, then, dear heart, have it your own way," the young fellow cried, impetuously. I'll say I love you in spite of it all, if you like." "I love you in spite of your sauciness," she said, fondly. "Have you no respect for your elders, you wretched boy? Have you no reverence for white hairs?" "Ah, of course there's nothing to say to that," he returned. "If you didn't know you were young, and if you were n't sure you were beautiful, you wouldn't risk saying those things, Mary. Come now, what else do you love me 'in spite of '?" "Myself," she said in a low voice, with a sudden soberness. They were very happy. He with that new, keen sense of bliss that the young take so for granted as their own indubitable right, and she with the tremulous joy of restitution, half of whose sweetness comes from the knowledge of its utter fortuity. He was jubilant in his possession of this beautiful woman, and she looked at him with the wistful eyes. of one who has watched other blessings disappear. It was his first experience of love. It was not hers. She told him this frankly, but it made no impression on his confident content. It had all happened long ago; so long ago that, as a matter of fact, at the time of its occurrence Harold Thorndike was nothing but a baby-child; a seven-year-old boy. herself to grow ardent over. And others beside her allowed themselves the same privilege now. Thus, while she had been the first to discover, she was only one of many to acknowledge him in these more prosperous days. She had managed his début with the nicest tact. Now he was fairly launched, with every prospect of a favorable voyage, she had resigned, to all outward appearance, her piloting. She urged him to go about without her, and she insisted upon his being seen with other women. At first he complained bitterly at their enforced separation, but he knew it was the only alternative, since they did not wish their engagement made public just yet, and later he learned to submit to it with a better grace. Mary DeWolfe was seventeen. But she himself. It was his work she permitted had never forgotten. In the very nature of things it would have been impossible for her to forget, for the effects of the unhappy experience colored her whole subsequent life. Perhaps it was no severer a trial than that any woman suffers who realizes that she has bestowed her love upon an unworthy object. But Mary had never been able to recover that sustaining sense of personal value that is, and ought to be, inherent in us. She had come in contact with an ignoble nature and she felt contaminated. She had mistaken coarse fibre for fine, and she felt a distrust of her own perception. She felt she had suffered a humiliation that somehow set her apart, and gave her less right than other women to expect to be loved. It had shaken her faith in herself. Withal, it had put her upon the cold defensive, and that made her appear unemotional. The truth was, she dared not be herself. She was afraid fate would take advantage of her. So all these years she had wrapped herself in a mantle of reserve and now-well, she could not cast it all aside at once, it had become too much a part of her nature, but she permitted Thorndike to see that she loved him. Naturally he could not know what a concession this was, for he had never been caused to make a vow of keeping the world at arm's length. But he knew that Mary was timid in her love, with a timidity that was as sweet as the innocent shyness of a young girl, and he appreciated the effect if he did not comprehend the cause. They went rather much into society that winter. People looked upon Thorndike as Miss De Wolfe's protégé, and no one suspected the truth. Mary had such an air of unassailable dignity that gossip was dumb before her. Moreover, she never gave the slightest evidence of anything beyond the most impersonal interest in the young man They met almost constantly at the various places of their common attendance, and then Thorndike always bowed to her demurely over the head of the pretty girl upon his arm, and she gravely returned his greeting from her place beside her stately escort, who, more often than not was a man of note. It was a bit of dissimulation that gave them food for much quiet fun in their rather infrequent hours of dual solitude. jest He often feigned a jealousy of this one or that, who, he insisted, was too earnest in his attention to be altogether disinterested, and he laughingly warned her not to try him too far. She never alluded in any way to a like possibility of feeling on her part. It was that she felt might too easily become earnest. Her feeling for him was of the intensest kind; it seemed to be the cumulation of the hunger of years, and she felt an awe, almost a fear of it. So she contented herself with rallying him. on his success, and the mild form of lionizing of which he was being made a victim. "It's all a great bore," he insisted. "I mean to cut it as soon as I can. I would now, at once, if it did n't mean bread and butter and-you. Just wait, Mary, until I can offer you a decent living, independent of your own money, I mean, and see how quick I'll retire from all this society rush-and-tumble, and invite you to share my quiet and see me work. One can 't do any thing worth while this way. It's suicidal. It's suicidal. I hate it." "It need only last a little longer, Harold," said Mary soothingly. "See, what rapid progress you have made already. You must not expect me to urge you to give it up before the time is ripe, when my only justification in letting myself love you at all is the desire I have for your best. It would n't be for your best if I let you snub the public so. And besides, you can't blame me for feeling a bit proud of your independence. Everything I have is yours, dear, but I can't help feeling glad you are not content to settle down comfortably in that belief without more ado. I'd rather have you anxious for possessions of your own earning. I should love you even if you did n't feel so, but I respect you more this way, and I know it is best." "O yes. Of course, it is best," the young man replied, beginning to tramp the floor. "But in the mean time it is an uncommon bore to have to talk weather to a parcel of women one does n't care a rush for. Positively out of all the girls I know there's only one who's worth wasting breath and minutes on. That's Agnes Duane." Mary flushed. Thorndike, happening to be looking directly down at her, saw it, and said: "What's the matter, dear?" Mary laughed a little shamefacedly. "I had thought you were going to say I was the only one," she said. "O, that goes without saying," returned the young fellow, squaring about. "I was talking outside of you. Besides, I said girls-that is, I meant-I—" "O, never mind," said Mary quietly. Thorndike turned toward her, and she saw that his face was deeply flushed. At this hers paled somewhat. She knew he was cursing himself for a clumsy brute, and she knew he would not be doing that if he did not suppose he had hurt her. It did not hurt her, except as it might hurt him,- this reference to her age. "Yes, Agnes Duane is a nice girl," she made haste to remark. "She has all the charm of youth. She has a flower-like quality, and a naturalness, that make one think of a garden full of fresh, fragrant things. There's nothing world-worn about her. After one grows older and has lost all that oneself, one appreciates it so much in others. When I am beside her I always feel like some thing someone might have bought in a florist's shop days ago, and that has been in the room so long that it really must be set aside." "O, I say, I wish you would n't talk so," broke out Thorndike wrathily. "I hate to hear you speak of yourself like that. I do not think it's quite-quite dignified." Mary smiled calmly up at him. "It's much more dignified than if I were to pose as an ingénue, don't you think?" she asked quietly. 'Or even if I were to show a sensitiveness about my lack of youth. I'm not at all sensitive about it." "Of course not," returned the young man hastily. "But then, you need n't make a point of your age, either. I don't feel the necessity of publishing mine, but you seem to feel it incumbent on you to seize every time and occasion to give yours the honorable mention. It's a trifle supererogatory. It's none of the public's business when one was born." "I have never made the public my confidant," returned Mary flushing faintly. "I was telling you." "Well, that is n't necessary either," said Thorndike petulantly. "I know." |