Then came Mrs. Varina Tuis; who since the tragic cutting of her own
domestic knot, had given her life to the service of the happier
members of the Castleman line. She was now to be companion and
counsellor to Sylvia; and on the very day of her arrival she
discovered the chasm that was yawning in her niece's life. 

"It's wonderful," wrote Sylvia, "the intuition of the Castleman
women. We were in the launch, passing one of the viaducts of the new
railroad, and Aunt Varina exclaimed, 'What a wonderful piece of
work!' 'Yes,' put in my husband, 'but don't let Sylvia hear you say
it.' 'Why not?' she asked; and he replied, 'She'll tell you how many
hours a day the poor Dagoes have to work.' That was all; but I saw
Aunt Varina give a quick glance at me, and I saw that she was not
fooled by my efforts to make conversation. It was rather horrid of
Douglas, for he knows that I love these old people, and do not want
them to know about my trouble. But it is characteristic of him--when
he is annoyed he seldom tries to spare others. 

"As soon as we were alone, Aunt Varina began, 'Sylvia, my dear, what
does it mean? What have you done to worry your husband?' 

"You would be entertained if I could remember the conversation. I
tried to dodge the trouble by answering off-hand, 'Douglas had eaten
too many turtle-eggs for luncheon '--this being a man-like thing,
that any dear old lady would understand. But she was too shrewd. I
had to explain to her that I was learning to think, and this sent
her into a perfect panic. 

"'You actually mean, my child, that you are thinking about subjects
to which your husband objects, and you refuse to stop when he asks
you to? Surely you must know that he has some good reason for
objecting.' 

"'I suppose so,' I said, 'but he has not made that reason clear to
me; and certainly I have a right--' 

"She would not hear any more than that. 'Right, Sylvia? Right? Are
you claiming the right to drive your husband from you?'

"'But surely I can't regulate all my thinking by the fear of driving
my husband from me!' 

"'Sylvia, you take my breath away. Where did you get such ideas?' 

"'But answer me, Aunt Varina--can I?'

"'What thinking is as important to a woman as thinking how to please
a good, kind husband? What would become of her family if she no
longer tried to do this?' 

"So you see, we opened up a large subject. I know you consider me a
backward person, and you may be interested to learn that there are
some to whom I seem a terrifying rebel. Picture poor Aunt Varina,
her old face full of concern, repeating over and over, 'My child, my
child, I hope I have come in time! Don't scorn the advice of a woman
who has paid bitterly for her mistakes. You have a good husband, a
man who loves you devotedly; you are one of the most fortunate of
women--now do not throw your happiness away!' 

"'Aunt Varina,' I said (I forget if I ever told you that her husband
gambled and drank, and finally committed suicide) 'Aunt Varina, do
you really believe that every man is so anxious to get away from his
wife that it must take her whole stock of energy, her skill in
diplomacy, to keep him?' 

"'Sylvia,' she answered, "you put things so strangely, you use such
horribly crude language, I don't know how to talk to you!' (That
must be your fault, Mary. I never heard such a charge before.) 'I
can only tell you this--that the wife who permits herself to think
about other things than her duty to her husband and her children is
taking a frightful risk. She is playing with fire, Sylvia--she will
realize too late what it means to set aside the wisdom of her sex,
the experience of other women for ages and ages!' 

"So there you are, Mary! I am studying another unwritten book, the
Maxims of Aunt Varina! 

"She has found the remedy for my troubles, the cure for my disease
of thought--I am to sew! I tell her that I have more clothes than I
can wear in a dozen seasons, and she answers, in an awesome voice,
'There is the little stranger!' When I point out that the little
stranger will be expected to have a 'layette' costing many thousands
of dollars, she replies, 'They will surely permit him to wear some
of the things his mother's hands have made.' So, behold me, seated
on the gallery, learning fancy stitches--and with Kautsky on the
Social Revolution hidden away in the bottom of my sewing-bag!" 

3. The weeks passed. The legislature at Albany adjourned, without
regard to our wishes; and so, like the patient spider whose web is
destroyed, we set to work upon a new one. So much money must be
raised, so many articles must be written, so many speeches
delivered, so many people seized upon and harried and wrought to a
state of mind where they were dangerous to the future career of
legislators. Such is the process of social reform under the private
property rГ©gime; a process which the pure and simple reformers
imagine we shall tolerate for ever--God save us! 

Sylvia asked me for the news, and I told it to her--how we had
failed, and what we had to do next. So pretty soon there came by
registered mail a little box, in which I found a diamond ring. "I
cannot ask him for money just now," she explained, "but here is
something that has been mine from girlhood. It cost about four
hundred dollars--this for your guidance in selling it. Not a day
passes that I do not see many times that much wasted; so take it for
the cause." Queen Isabella and her jewels! 

In this letter she told me of a talk she had had with her husband on
the "woman-problem." She had thought at first that it was going to
prove a helpful talk--he had been in a fairer mood than she was
usually able to induce. "He evaded some of my questions," she
explained, "but I don't think it was deliberate; it is simply the
evasive attitude of mind which the whole world takes. He says he
does not think that women are inferior to men, only that they are
different; the mistake is for them to try to become _like_ men. It
is the old proposition of 'charm,' you see. I put that to him, and
he admitted that he did like to be 'charmed.' 

"I said, 'You wouldn't, if you knew as much about the process as I
do.' 

"'Why not?' he asked. 

"'Because, it's not an honest process. It's not a straight way for
one sex to deal with the other.' 

"He asked what I meant by that; but then, remembering the cautions
of my great-aunt, I laughed. 'If you are going to compel me to use
the process, you can hardly expect me to tell you the secret of it.'

"'Then there's no use trying to talk,' he said. 

"'Ah, but there is!' I exclaimed. 'You admit that I have
'charm'--dozens of other men admitted it. And so it ought to count
for something if I declare that I know it's not an honest
thing--that it depends upon trickery, and appeals to the worst
qualities in a man. For instance, his vanity. "Flatter him," Lady
Dee used to say. "He'll swallow it." And he will--I never knew a man
to refuse a compliment in my life. His love of domination. "If you
want anything, make him think that _he_ wants it!" His egotism. She
had a bitter saying--I can hear the very tones of her voice: "When
in doubt, talk about HIM." That is what is called "charm"!' 

"'I don't seem to feel it,' he said. 

"' No, because now you are behind the scenes. But when you were in
front, you felt it, you can't deny. And you would feel it again, any
time I chose to use it. But I want to know if there is not some
honest way a woman can interest a man. The question really comes to
this--Can a man love a woman for what she really is?' 

"'I should say,' he said, 'that it depends upon the woman.' 

"I admitted this was a plausible answer. 'But you loved me, when I
made myself a mystery to you. But now that I am honest with you, you
have made it clear that you don't like it, that you won't have it.
And that is the problem that women have to face. It is a fact that
the women of our family have always ruled the men; but they've done
it by indirection--nobody ever thought seriously of "women's rights"
in Castleman County. But you see, women _have_ rights; and somehow
or other they will fool the men, or else the men must give up the
idea that they are the superior sex, and have the right, or the
ability, to rule women.' 

"Then I saw how little he had followed me. 'There has to be a head
to the family,' he said. 

"I answered, 'There have been cases in history of a king and queen
ruling together, and getting along very well. Why not the same thing
in a family?' 

"'That's all right, so far as the things of the family are
concerned. But such affairs as business and politics are in the
sphere of men; and women cannot meddle in them without losing their
best qualities as women.' 

"And so there we were. I won't repeat his arguments, for doubtless
you have read enough anti-suffrage literature. The thing I noticed
was that if I was very tactful and patient, I could apparently carry
him along with me; but when the matter came up again, I would
discover that he was back where he had been before. A woman must
accept the guidance of a man; she must take the man's word for the
things that he understands. 'But suppose the man is _wrong?_' I
said; and there we stopped--there we shall stop always, I begin to
fear. I agree with him that woman should obey man--so long as man is
right!" 

4. Her letters did not all deal with this problem. In spite of the
sewing, she found time to read a number of books, and we argued
about these. Then, too, she had been probing her young doctor, and
had made interesting discoveries about him. For one thing, he was
full of awe and admiration for her; and her awakening mind found
material for speculation in this. 

"Here is this young man; he thinks he is a scientist, he rather
prides himself upon being cold-blooded; yet a cunning woman could
twist him round her finger. He had an unhappy love-affair when he
was young, so he confided to me; and now, in his need and
loneliness, a beautiful woman is transformed into something
supernatural in his imagination--she is like a shimmering
soap-bubble, that he blows with his own breath. I know that I could
never get him to see the real truth about me; I might tell him that
I have let myself be tied up in a golden net--but he would only
marvel at my spirituality. Oh, the women I have seen trading upon
the credulity of men! And when I think how I did this myself! If men
were wise, they would give us the vote, and a share in the world's
work--anything that would bring us out into the light of day, and
break the spell of mystery that hangs round us! 

"By the way," she wrote in another letter, "there will be trouble if
you come down here. I was telling Dr. Perrin about you, and your
ideas about fasting, and mental healing, and the rest of your fads.
He got very much excited. It seems that he takes his diploma
seriously, and he's not willing to be taught by amateur experiments.
He wanted me to take some pills, and I refused, and I think now he
blames you for it. He has found a bond of sympathy with my husband,
who proves his respect for authority by taking whatever he is told
to take. Dr. Perrin got his medical training here in the South, and
I imagine he's ten or twenty years behind the rest of the medical
world. Douglas picked him out because he'd met him socially. It
makes no difference to me--because I don't mean to have any
doctoring done to me!" 

Then, on top of these things, would come a cry from her soul. "Mary,
what will you do if some day you get a letter from me confessing
that I am not happy? I dare not say a word to my own people. I am
supposed to be at the apex of human triumph, and I have to play that
role to keep from hurting them. I know that if my dear old father
got an inkling of the truth, it would kill him. My one real solid
consolation is that I have helped him, that I have lifted a
money-burden from his life; I have done that, I tell myself, over
and over; but then I wonder, have I done anything but put the
reckoning off? I have given all his other children a new excuse for
extravagance, an impulse towards worldliness which they did not
need. 

"There is my sister Celeste, for example. I don't think I have told
you about her. She made her _dГ©but_ last fall, and was coming up to
New York to stay with me this winter. She had it all arranged in her
mind to make a rich marriage; I was to give her the _entrГ©e_--and
now I have been selfish, and thought of my own desires, and gone
away. Can I say to her, Be warned by me, I have made a great match,
and it has not brought me happiness? She would not understand, she
would say I was foolish. She would say, 'If I had your luck, _I_
would be happy.' And the worst of it is, it would be true. 

"You see the position I am in with the rest of the children. I
cannot say, 'You are spending too much of papa's money, it is wrong
for you to sign cheques and trust to his carelessness.' I have had
my share of the money, I have lined my own nest. All I can do is to
buy dresses and hats for Celeste; and know that she will use these
to fill her girl-friends with envy, and make scores of other
families live beyond their means." 

5. Sylvia's pregnancy was moving to its appointed end. She wrote me
beautifully about it, much more frankly and simply than she could
have brought herself to talk. She recalled to me my own raptures,
and also, my own heartbreak. "Mary! Mary! I felt the child to-day!
Such a sensation, I could not have credited it if anyone had told
me. I almost fainted. There is something in me that wants to turn
back, that is afraid to go on with such experiences. I do not wish
to be seized in spite of myself, and made to feel things beyond my
control. I wander off down the beach, and hide myself, and cry and
cry. I think I could almost pray again." 

And then again, "I am in ecstasy, because I am to bear a child, a
child of my own! Oh, wonderful, wonderful! But suddenly my ecstasy
is shot through with terror, because the father of this child is a
man I do not love. There is no use trying to deceive myself--nor
you! I must have one human soul with whom I can talk about it as it
really is. I do not love him, I never did love him, I never shall
love him! 

"Oh, how could they have all been so mistaken? Here is Aunt
Varina--one of those who helped to persuade me into this marriage.
She told me that love would come; it seemed to be her idea--my
mother had it too--that you had only to submit yourself to a man, to
follow and obey him, and love would take possession of your heart. I
tried credulously, and it did not happen as they promised. And now,
I am to bear him a child; and that will bind us together for ever! 

"Oh, the despair of it--I do not love the father of my child! I say,
The child will be partly his, perhaps more his than mine. It will be
like him--it will have this quality and that, the very qualities,
perhaps, that are a source of distress to me in the father. So I
shall have these things before me day and night, all the rest of my
life; I shall have to see them growing and hardening; it will be a
perpetual crucifixion of my mother-love. I seek to comfort myself by
saying, The child can be trained differently, so that he will not
have these qualities. But then I think, No, you cannot train him as
you wish. Your husband will have rights to the child, rights
superior to your own. Then I foresee the most dreadful strife
between us. 

"A shrewd girl-friend once told me that I ought to be better or
worse; I ought not to see people's faults as I do, or else I ought
to love people less. And I can see that I ought to have been too
good to make this marriage, or else not too good to make the best of
it. I know that I might be happy as Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver, if I
could think of the worldly advantages, and the fact that my child
will inherit them. But instead, I see them as a trap, in which not
only ourselves but the child is caught, and from which I cannot save
us. Oh, what a mistake a woman makes when she marries a man with the
idea that she is going to change him! He will not change, he will
not have the need of change suggested to him. He wants _peace_ in
his home--which means that he wants to be what he is. 

"Sometimes I can study the situation quite coolly, and as if it
didn't concern me at all. He has required me to subject my mind to
his. But he will not be content with a general capitulation; he must
have a surrender from each individual soldier, from every rebel
hidden in the hills. He tracks them out (my poor, straggling, feeble
ideas) and either they take the oath of allegiance, or they are
buried where they lie. The process is like the spoiling of a child,
I find; the more you give him, the more he wants. And if any little
thing is refused, then you see him set out upon a regular campaign
to break you down and get it." 

A month or more later she wrote: "Poor Douglas is getting restless.
He has caught every kind of fish there is to catch, and hunted every
kind of animal and bird, in and out of season. Harley has gone home,
and so have our other guests; it would be embarrassing to me to have
company now. So Douglas has no one but the doctor and myself and my
poor aunt. He has spoken several times of our going away; but I do
not want to go, and I think I ought to consider my own health at
this critical time. It is hot here, but I simply thrive in it--I
never felt in better health. So I asked him to go up to New York, or
visit somewhere for a while, and let me stay here until my baby is
born. Does that seem so very unreasonable? It does not to me, but
poor Aunt Varina is in agony about it--I am letting my husband drift
away from me! 

"I speculate about my lot as a woman; I see the bitterness and the
sorrow of my sex through the ages. I have become physically
misshapen, so that I am no longer attractive to him. I am no longer
active and free, I can no longer go about with him; on the contrary,
I am a burden, and he is a man who never tolerated a burden before.
What this means is that I have lost the magic hold of sex. 

"As a woman it was my business to exert all my energies to maintain
it. And I know how I could restore it now; there is young Dr.
Perrin! _He_ does not find me a burden, _he_ would tolerate any
deficiencies! And I can see my husband on the alert in an instant,
if I become too much absorbed in discussing your health-theories
with my handsome young guardian! 

"This is one of the recognized methods of keeping your husband; I
learned from Lady Dee all there is to know about it. But I would
find the method impossible now, even if my happiness were dependent
upon retaining my husband's love. I should think of the rights of my
friend, the little doctor. That is one point to note for the 'new'
woman, is it not? You may mention it in your next suffrage-speech! 

"There are other methods, of course. I have a mind, and I might turn
its powers to entertaining him, instead of trying to solve the
problems of the universe. But to do this, I should have to believe
that it was the one thing in the world for me to do; and I have
permitted a doubt of that to gain entrance to my brain! My poor
aunt's exhortations inspire me to efforts to regain the faith of my
mothers, but I simply cannot--I cannot! She sits by me with the
terror of all the women of all the ages in her eyes. I am losing a
man! 

"I don't know if you have ever set out to hold a man--deliberately,
I mean. Probably you haven't. That bitter maxim of Lady Dee's is the
literal truth of it--'When in doubt, talk about HIM!' If you will
tactfully and shrewdly keep a man talking about himself, his tastes,
his ideas, his work and the importance of it, there is never the
least possibility of your boring him. You must not just tamely agree
with him, of course; if you hint a difference now and then, and make
him convince you, he will find that stimulating; or if you can
manage not to be quite convinced, but sweetly open to conviction, he
will surely call again. 'Keep him busy every minute,' Lady Dee used
to say. 'Run away with him now and then--like a spirited horse!' And
she would add, 'But don't let him drop the reins!' 

"You can have no idea how many women there are in the world
deliberately playing such parts. Some of them admit it; others just
do the thing that is easiest, and would die of horror if they were
told what it is. It is the whole of the life of a successful society
woman, young or old. Pleasing a man! Waiting upon his moods, piquing
him, flattering him, feeding his vanity--'charming' him! That is
what Aunt Varina wants me to do now; if I am not too crude in my
description of the process, she has no hesitation in admitting the
truth. It is what she tried to do, it is what almost every woman has
done who has held a family together and made a home. I was reading
_Jane Eyre_ the other day. _There_ is your woman's ideal of an
imperious and impetuous lover! Listen to him, when his mood is on
him!--

"I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night; and that
is why I sent for you; the fire and the chandelier were not
sufficient company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none of
these can talk. To-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss
what importunes, and recall what pleases. It would please me now to
draw you out--to learn more of you--therefore speak!" 

6. It was now May, and Sylvia's time was little more than a month
off. She had been urging me to come and visit her, but I had
refused, knowing that my presence must necessarily be disturbing to
both her husband and her aunt. But now she wrote that her husband
was going back to New York. "He was staying out of a sense of duty
to me," she said. "But his discontent was so apparent that I had to
point out to him that he was doing harm to me as well as to himself.

"I doubt if you will want to come here now. The last of the winter
visitors have left. It is really hot, so hot that you cannot get
cool by going into the water. Yet I am revelling in it; I wear
almost nothing, and that white; and even the suspicious Dr. Perrin
cannot but admit that I am thriving; his references to pills are
purely formal. 

"Lately I have not permitted myself to think much about the
situation between my husband and myself. I cannot blame him, and I
cannot blame myself, and I am trying to keep my peace of mind till
my baby is born. I have found myself following half-instinctively
the procedure you told me about; I talk to my own subconscious mind,
and to the baby--I command them to be well. I whisper to them things
that are not so very far from praying; but I don't think my poor
dear mamma would recognize it in its new scientific dress! 

"But sometimes I can't help thinking of the child and its future,
and then all of a sudden my heart is ready to break with pity for
the child's father! I have the consciousness that I do not love him,
and that he has always known it--and that makes me remorseful. But I
told him the truth before we married--he promised to be patient with
me till I had learned to love him! Now I want to burst into tears
and cry aloud, 'Oh, why did you do it? Why did I let myself be
persuaded into this marriage?' 

"I tried to have a talk with him last night, after he had decided to
go away. I was full of pity, and a desire to help. I said I wanted
him to know that no matter how much we might disagree about some
things, I meant to learn to live happily with him. We must find some
sort of compromise, for the sake of the child, if not for ourselves;
we must not let the child suffer. He answered coldly that there
would be no need for the child to suffer, the child would have the
best the world could afford. I suggested that there might arise some
question as to just what the best was; but to that he said nothing.
He went on to rebuke my discontent; had he not given me everything a
woman could want? he asked. He was too polite to mention money; but
he said that I had leisure and entire freedom from care. I was
persisting in assuming cares, while he was doing all in his power to
prevent it. 

"And that was as far as we got. I gave up the discussion, for we
should only have gone the old round over again. 

"Douglas has taken up a saying that my cousin brought with him:
'What you don't know won't hurt you!' I think that before he left,
Harley had begun to suspect that all was not well between my husband
and myself, and he felt it necessary to give me a little friendly
counsel. He was tactful, and politely vague, but I understood
him--my worldly-wise young cousin. I think that saying of his sums
up the philosophy that he would teach to all women--'What you don't
know won't hurt you!'" 

7. A week or so later Sylvia wrote me that her husband was in New
York. And I waited another week, for good measure, and then one
morning dropped in for a call upon Claire Lepage. 

Why did I do it? you ask. I had no definite purpose--only a general
opposition to the philosophy of Cousin Harley. 

I was ushered into Claire's boudoir, which was still littered with
last evening's apparel. She sat in a dressing-gown with resplendent
red roses on it, and brushed the hair out of her eyes, and
apologized for not being ready for callers. 

"I've just had a talking to from Larry," she explained. 

"Larry?" said I, inquiringly; for Claire had always informed me
elaborately that van Tuiver had been her one departure from
propriety, and always would be. 

Apparently she had now reached a stage in her career where pretences
were too much trouble. "I've come to the conclusion that I don't
know how to manage men," she said. "I never can get along with one
for any time." 

I remarked that I had had the same experience; though of course I
had only tried it once. "Tell me," I said, "who's Larry?" 

"There's his picture." She reached into a drawer of her dresser. 

I saw a handsome blonde gentleman, who looked old enough to know
better. "He doesn't seem especially forbidding," I said. 

"That's just the trouble--you can never tell about men!" 

I noted a date on the picture. "He seems to be an old friend. You
never told me about him." 

"He doesn't like being told about. He has a troublesome wife." 

I winced inwardly, but all I said was, "I see." 

"He's a stock-broker; and he got 'squeezed,' so he says, and it's
made him cross--and careful with his money, too. That's trying, in a
stock-broker, you must admit." She laughed. "And still he's just as
particular--wants to have his own way in everything, wants to say
whom I shall know and where I shall go. I said, 'I have all the
inconveniences of matrimony, and none of the advantages.'" 

I made some remark upon the subject of the emancipation of woman;
and Claire, who was now leaning back in her chair, combing out her
long black tresses, smiled at me out of half-closed eyelids. "Guess
whom he's objecting to!" she said. And when I pronounced it
impossible, she looked portentous. "There are bigger fish in the sea
than Larry Edgewater!" 

"And you've hooked one?" I asked, innocently. 

"Well, I don't mean to give up all my friends." 

I went on casually to talk about my plans for the summer; and a few
minutes later, after a lull--"By the way," remarked Claire, "Douglas
van Tuiver is in town." 

"How do you know?" 

"I've seen him." 

"Indeed! Where?" 

"I got Jack Taylor to invite me again. You see, when Douglas fell in
love with his peerless southern beauty, Jack predicted he'd get over
it even more quickly. Now he's interested in proving he was right." 

I waited a moment, and then asked, carelessly, "Is he having any
success?" 

"I said, 'Douglas, why don't you come to see me?' He was in a
playful mood. 'What do you want? A new automobile?' I answered, 'I
haven't any automobile, new or old, and you know it. What I want is
you. I always loved you--surely I proved that to you.' 'What you
proved to me was that you were a sort of wild-cat. I'm afraid of
you. And anyway, I'm tired of women. I'll never trust another one.'"

"About the same conclusion as you've come to regarding men," I
remarked. 

"'Douglas,' I said, 'come and see me, and we'll talk over old times.
You may trust me, I swear I'll not tell a living soul.' 'You've been
consoling yourself with someone else,' he said. But I knew he was
only guessing. He was seeking for something that would worry me, and
he said, 'You're drinking too much. People that drink can't be
trusted.' 'You know,' I replied, 'I didn't drink too much when I was
with you. I'm not drinking as much as you are, right now.' He
answered, 'I've been off on a desert island for God knows how many
months, and I'm celebrating my escape.' 'Well,' I answered, 'let me
help celebrate!'" 

"What did he say to that?" 

Claire resumed the combing of her silken hair, and smiled a slow
smile at me. "'You may trust me, Douglas,' I said. 'I swear I'll not
tell a living soul!'" 

"Of course," I remarked, appreciatively, "that means he said he'd
come!" 

"_I_ haven't told you!" was the reply. 

8. I knew that I had only to wait for Claire to tell me the rest of
the story. But her mind went off on another tack. "Sylvia's going to
have a baby," she remarked, suddenly. 

"That ought to please her husband," I said. 

"You can see him beginning to swell with paternal pride!--so Jack
said. He sent for a bottle of some famous kind of champagne that he
has, to celebrate the new 'millionaire baby.' (They used to call
Douglas that, once upon a time.) Before they got through, they had
made it triplets. Jack says Douglas is the one man in New York who
can afford them." 

"Your friend Jack seems to be what they call a wag," I commented. 

"It isn't everybody that Douglas will let carry on with him like
that. He takes himself seriously, as a rule. And he expects to take
the new baby seriously." 

"It generally binds a man tighter to his wife, don't you think?" 

I watched her closely, and saw her smile at my naivetГ©. "No," she
said, "I don't. It leaves them restless. It's a bore all round." 

I did not dispute her authority; she ought to know her husbands, I
thought. 

She was facing the mirror, putting up her hair; and in the midst of
the operation she laughed. "All that evening, while we were having a
jolly time at Jack Taylor's, Larry was here waiting." 

"Then no wonder you had a row!" I said. 

"He hadn't told me he was coming. And was I to sit here all night
alone? It's always the same--I never knew a man who really in his
heart was willing for you to have any friends, or any sort of good
time without him." 

"Perhaps," I replied, "he's afraid you mightn't be true to him." I
meant this for a jest, of the sort that Claire and her friends would
appreciate. Little did I foresee where it was to lead us! 

I remember how once on the farm my husband had a lot of dynamite,
blasting out stumps; and my emotions when I discovered the children
innocently playing with a stick of it. Something like these children
I seem now to myself, looking back on this visit to Claire, and our
talk. 

"You know," she observed, without smiling, "Larry's got a bee in his
hat. I've seen men who were jealous, and kept watch over women, but
never one that was obsessed like him." 

"What's it about?" 

"He's been reading a book about diseases, and he tells me tales
about what may happen to me, and what may happen to him. When you've
listened a while, you can see microbes crawling all over the walls
of the room." 

"Well----" I began. 

"I was sick of his lecturing, so I said, 'Larry, you'll have to do
like me--have everything there is, and get over it, and then you
won't need to worry.'" 

I sat still, staring at her; I think I must have stopped breathing.
At the end of an eternity, I said, "You've not really had any of
these diseases, Claire?" 

"Who hasn't?" she countered. 

Again there was a pause. "You know," I observed, "some of them are
dangerous----" 

"Oh, of course," she answered, lightly. "There's one that makes your
nose fall in and your hair fall out--but you haven't seen anything
like that happening to me!" 

"But there's another," I hinted--"one that's much more common." And
when she did not take the hint, I continued, "Also it's more serious
than people generally realize." 

She shrugged her shoulders. "What of it? Men bring you these
things, and it's part of the game. So what's the use of bothering?" 

9. There was a long silence; I had to have time to decide what
course to take. There was so much that I wanted to get from her, and
so much that I wanted to hide from her! 

"I don't want to bore you, Claire," I began, finally, "but really
this is a matter of importance to you. You see, I've been reading up
on the subject as well as Larry. The doctors have been making new
discoveries. They used to think this was just a local infection,
like a cold, but now they find it's a blood disease, and has the
gravest consequences. For one thing, it causes most of the surgical
operations that have to be performed on women." 

"Maybe so," she said, still indifferent. "I've had two operations.
But it's ancient history now." 

"You mayn't have reached the end yet," I persisted. "People suppose
they are cured of gonorrhea, when really it's only suppressed, and
is liable to break out again at any time." 

"Yes, I knew. That's some of the information Larry had been making
love to me with." 

"It may get into the joints and cause rheumatism; it may cause
neuralgia; it's been known to affect the heart. Also it causes
two-thirds of all the blindness in infants----" 

And suddenly Claire laughed. "That's Sylvia Castleman's lookout it
seems to me!" 

"Oh! OH!" I whispered, losing my self-control. 

"What's the matter?" she asked, and I noticed that her voice had
become sharp. 

"Do you really mean what you've just implied?" 

"That Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver may have to pay something for what she
has done to me? Well, what of it?" And suddenly Claire flew into a
passion, as she always did when our talk came to her rival. "Why
shouldn't she take chances the same as the rest of us? Why should I
have it and she get off?" 

I fought for my composure. After a pause, I said: "It's not a thing
we want anybody to have, Claire. We don't want anybody to take such
a chance. The girl ought to have been told." 

"Told? Do you imagine she would have given up her great catch?" 

"She might have, how can you be sure? Anyhow, she should have had
the chance." 

There was a long silence. I was so shaken that it was hard for me to
find words. "As a matter of fact," said Claire, grimly, "I thought
of warning her myself. There'd have been some excitement at least!
You remember--when they came out of church. You helped to stop me!
" 

"It would have been too late then," I heard myself saying. 

"Well," she exclaimed, with fresh excitement, "it's Miss Sylvia's
turn now! We'll see if she's such a grand lady that she can't get my
diseases!" 

I could no longer contain myself. "Claire," I cried, "you are
talking like a devil!" 

She picked up a powder-puff, and began to use it diligently. "I
know," she said--and I saw her burning eyes in the glass--"you can't
fool me. You've tried to be kind, but you despise me in your heart.
You think I'm as bad as any woman of the street. Very well then, I
speak for my class, and I tell you, this is where we prove our
humanity. They throw us out, but you see we get back in!" 

"My dear woman," I said, "you don't understand. You'd not feel as
you do, If you knew that the person to pay the penalty might be an
innocent little child." 

"_Their_ child! Yes, it's too bad if there has to be anything the
matter with the little prince! But I might as well tell you the
truth--I've had that in mind all along. I didn't know just what
would happen, or how--I don't believe anybody does, the doctors who
pretend to are just faking you. But I knew Douglas was rotten, and
maybe his children would be rotten, and they'd all of them suffer.
That was one of the things that kept me from interfering and
smashing him up." 

I was speechless now, and Claire, watching me, laughed. "You look as
if you'd had no idea of it. Don't you know that I told you at the
time?" 

"You told me at the time!" 

"I suppose, you didn't understand. I'm apt to talk French when I'm
excited. We have a saying: 'The wedding present which the mistress
leaves in the basket of the bride.' That was pretty near telling,
wasn't it?" 

"Yes," I said, in a low voice. 

And the other, after watching me for a moment more, went on: "You
think I'm revengeful, don't you? Well, I used to reproach myself
with this, and I tried to fight it down; but the time comes when you
want people to pay for what they take from you. Let me tell you
something that I never told to anyone, that I never expected to
tell. You see me drinking and going to the devil; you hear me
talking the care-free talk of my world, but in the beginning I was
really in love with Douglas van Tuiver, and I wanted his child. I
wanted it so that it was an ache to me. And yet, what chance did I
have? I'd have been the joke of his set for ever if I'd breathed it;
I'd have been laughed out of the town. I even tried at one time to
trap him--to get his child in spite of him, but I found that the
surgeons had cut me up, and I could never have a child. So I have to
make the best of it--I have to agree with my friends that it's a
good thing, it saves me trouble! But _she_ comes along, and she has
what I wanted, and all the world thinks it wonderful and sublime.
She's a beautiful young mother! What's she ever done in her life
that she has everything, and I go without? You may spend your time
shedding tears over her and what may happen to her but for my part,
I say this--let her take her chances! Let her take her chances with
the other women in the world--the women she's too good and too pure
to know anything about!" 

10. I came out of Claire's house, sick with horror. Not since the
time when I had read my poor nephew's letter had I been so shaken.
Why had I not thought long ago of questioning Claire about these
matters. How could I have left Sylvia all this time exposed to
peril? 

The greatest danger was to her child at the time of birth. I figured
up, according to the last letter I had received; there was about ten
days yet, and so I felt some relief. I thought first of sending a
telegram, but reflected that it would be difficult, not merely to
tell her what to do in a telegram, but to explain to her afterwards
why I had chosen this extraordinary method. I recollected that in
her last letter she had mentioned the name of the surgeon who was
coming from New York to attend her during her confinement. Obviously
the thing for me to do was to see this surgeon. 

"Well, madame?" he said, when I was seated in his inner office. 

He was a tall, elderly man, immaculately groomed, and formal and
precise in his manner. "Dr. Overton," I began, "my friend, Mrs.
Douglas van Tuiver writes me that you are going to Florida shortly."

"That is correct," he said. 

"I have come to see you about a delicate matter. I presume I need
hardly say that I am relying upon the seal of professional secrecy."

I saw his gaze become suddenly fixed. "Certainly, madame," he said. 

"I am taking this course because Mrs. van Tuiver is a very dear
friend of mine, and I am concerned about her welfare. It has
recently come to my knowledge that she has become exposed to
infection by a venereal disease." 

He would hardly have started more if I had struck him. "HEY?" he
cried, forgetting his manners. 

"It would not help you any," I said, "if I were to go into details
about this unfortunate matter. Suffice it to say that my information
is positive and precise--that it could hardly be more so." 

There was a long silence. He sat with eyes rivetted upon me. "What
is this disease?" he demanded, at last. 

I named it, and then again there was a pause. "How long has
this--this possibility of infection existed?" 

"Ever since her marriage, nearly eighteen months ago." 

That told him a good part of the story. I felt his look boring me
through. Was I a mad woman? Or some new kind of blackmailer? Or, was
I, possibly, a Claire? I was grateful for my forty-cent bonnet and
my forty-seven years. 

"Naturally," he said at length, "this information startles me." 

"When you have thought it over," I responded, "you will realise that
no possible motive could bring me here but concern for the welfare
of my friend." 

He took a few moments to consider. "That may be true, madame, but
let me add that when you say you KNOW this----" 

He stopped. "I MEAN that I know it," I said, and stopped in turn. 

"Has Mrs. van Tuiver herself any idea of this situation?" 

"None whatever. On the contrary, she was assured before her marriage
that no such possibility existed." 

Again I felt him looking through me, but I left him to make what he
could of my information. "Doctor," I continued, "I presume there is
no need to point out to a man in your position the seriousness of
this matter, both to the mother and to the child." 

"Certainly there is not." 

"I assume that you are familiar with the precautions that have to be
taken with regard to the eyes of the child?" 

"Certainly, madame." This with just a touch of HAUTEUR, and then,
suddenly: "Are you by any chance a nurse?" 

"No," I replied, "but many years ago I was forced by tragedy in my
own family to realise the seriousness of the venereal peril. So when
I learned this fact about my friend, my first thought was that you
should be informed of it. I trust that you will appreciate my
position." 

"Certainly, madame, certainly," he made haste to say. "You are quite
right, and you may rest assured that everything will be done that
our best knowledge directs. I only regret that the information did
not come to me sooner." 

"It only came to me about an hour ago," I said, as I rose to leave.
"The blame, therefore, must rest upon another person." 

I needed to say no more. He bowed me politely out, and I walked down
the street, and realised that I was restless and wretched. I
wandered at random for a while. trying to think what else I could
do, for my own peace of mind, if not for Sylvia's welfare. I found
myself inventing one worry after another. Dr. Overton had not said
just when he was going, and suppose she were to need someone at
once? Or suppose something were to happen to him--if he were to be
killed upon the long train-journey? I was like a mother who has had
a terrible dream about her child--she must rush and fling her arms
about the child. I realised that I wanted to see Sylvia! 

She had begged me to come; and I was worn out and had been urged by
the office to take a rest. Suddenly I bolted into a store, and
telephoned the railroad station about trains to Southern Florida. I
hailed a taxi-cab, rode to my home post-haste, and flung a few of my
belongings into a bag and the waiting cab sped with me to the ferry.
In little more than two hours after Claire had told me the dreadful
tidings, I was speeding on my way to Sylvia. 

11. From a train-window I had once beheld a cross-section of America
from West to East; now I beheld another from North to South. In the
afternoon were the farms and country-homes of New Jersey; and then
in the morning endless wastes of wilderness, and straggling fields
of young corn and tobacco; turpentine forests, with half-stripped
negroes working, and a procession of "depots," with lanky men
chewing tobacco, and negroes basking in the blazing sun. Then
another night, and there was the pageant of Florida: palmettos, and
other trees of which one had seen pictures in the geography books;
stretches of vine-tangled swamps, where one looked for alligators;
orange-groves in blossom, and gardens full of flowers beyond
imagining. Every hour, of course, it got hotter; I was not, like
Sylvia, used to it, and whenever the train stopped I sat by the open
window, mopping the perspiration from my face. 

We were due at Miami in the afternoon; but there was a freight-train
off the track ahead of us, and so for three hours I sat chafing with
impatience, worrying the conductor with futile questions. I had to
make connections at Miami with a train which ran to the last point
on the mainland, where the construction-work over the keys was going
forward. And if I missed that last train, I would have to wait in
Miami till morning. I had better wait there, anyhow, the conductor
argued; but I insisted that my friends, to whom I had telegraphed
two days before, would meet me with a launch and take me to their
place that night. 

We got in half an hour late for the other train; but this was the
South, I discovered, and they had waited for us. I shifted my bag
and myself across the platform, and we moved on. But then another
problem arose; we were running into a storm. It came with great
suddenness; one minute all was still, with a golden sunset, and the
next it was so dark that I could barely see the palm-trees, bent
over, swaying madly--like people with arms stretched out, crying in
distress. I could hear the roaring of the wind above that of the
train, and I asked the conductor in consternation if this could be a
hurricane. It was not the season for hurricanes, he replied; but it
was "some storm, all right," and I would not find any boat to take
me to the keys until it was over. 

It was absurd of me to be nervous, I kept telling myself; but there
was something in me that cried out to be there, to be there! I got
out of the train, facing what I refrain from calling a hurricane out
of deference to local authority. It was all I could do to keep from
being blown across the station-platform, and I was drenched with the
spray and bewildered by the roaring of the waves that beat against
the pier beyond. Inside the station, I questioned the agent. The
launch of the van Tuivers had not been in that day; if it had been
on the way, it must have sought shelter somewhere. My telegram to
Mrs. van Tuiver had been received two days before, and delivered by
a boatman whom they employed for that purpose. Presumably,
therefore, I would be met. I asked how long this gale was apt to
last; the answer was from one to three days. 

Then I asked about shelter for the night. This was a "jumping-off"
place, said the agent, with barracks and shanties for a
construction-gang; there were saloons, and what was called a hotel,
but it wouldn't do for a lady. I pleaded that I was not
fastidious--being anxious to nullify the effect which the name van
Tuiver had produced. But the agent would have it that the place was
unfit for even a Western farmer's wife; and as I was not anxious to
take the chance of being blown overboard in the darkness, I spent
the night on one of the benches in the station. I lay, listening to
the incredible clamour of wind and waves, feeling the building
quiver, and wondering if each gust might not blow it away. 

I was out at dawn, the force of the wind having abated somewhat by
that time. I saw before me a waste of angry foam-strewn water, with
no sign of any craft upon it. Late in the morning came the big
steamer which ran to Key West, in connection with the railroad; it
made a difficult landing, and I interviewed the captain, with the
idea of bribing him to take me to my destination. But he had his
schedule, which neither storms nor the name of van Tuiver could
alter. Besides, he pointed out, he could not land me at their place,
as his vessel drew too much water to get anywhere near; and if he
landed me elsewhere, I should be no better off, "If your friends are
expecting you, they'll come here," he said, "and their launch can
travel when nothing else can." 

To pass the time I went to inspect the viaduct of the railway-to-be.
The first stretch was completed, a long series of concrete arches,
running out, apparently, into the open sea. It was one of the
engineering wonders of the world, but I fear I did not appreciate
it. Towards mid-afternoon I made out a speck of a boat over the
water, and my friend, the station-agent, remarked, "There's your
launch." 

I expressed my amazement that they should have ventured out in such
weather. I had had in mind the kind of tiny open craft that one
hears making day and night hideous at summer-resorts; but when the
"Merman" drew near, I realized afresh what it was to be the guest of
a multi-millionaire. She was about fifty feet long, a vision of
polished brass and shining, new-varnished cedar. She rammed her
shoulder into the waves and flung them contemptuously to one side;
her cabin was tight, dry as the saloon of a liner. 

Three men emerged on deck to assist in the difficult process of
making a landing. One of them sprang to the dock, and confronting
me, inquired if I was Mrs. Abbott. He explained that they had set
out to meet me the previous afternoon, but had had to take refuge
behind one of the keys. 

"How is Mrs. van Tuiver?" I asked, quickly. 

"She is well." 

"I don't suppose--the baby----" I hinted. 

"No, ma'am, not yet," said the man; and after that I felt interested
in what he had to say about the storm and its effects. We could
return at once, it seemed, if I did not mind being pitched about. 

"How long does it take?" I asked. 

"Three hours, in weather like this. It's about fifty miles." 

"But then it will be dark," I objected. 

"That won't matter, ma'am--we have plenty of light of our own. We
shan't have trouble, unless the wind rises, and there's a chain of
keys all the way, where we can get shelter if it does. The worst you
have to fear is spending a night on board." 

I reflected that I could not well be more uncomfortable than I had
been the previous night, so I voted for a start. There was mail and
some supplies to be put on board; then I made a spring for the deck,
as it surged up towards me on a rising wave, and in a moment more
the cabin-door had shut behind me, and I was safe and snug, in the
midst of leather and mahogany and electric-lighted magnificence.
Through the heavy double windows I saw the dock swing round behind
us, and saw the torrents of green spray sweep over us and past. I
grasped at the seat to keep myself from being thrown forward, and
then grasped behind, to keep from going in that direction. I had a
series of sensations as of an elevator stopping suddenly--and then I
draw the curtains of the "Merman's" cabin, and invite the reader to
pass by. This is Sylvia's story, and not mine, and it is of no
interest what happened to me during that trip. I will only remind
the reader that I had lived my life in the far West, and there were
some things I could not have foreseen.