Title: Labyrinth
Author: Hull, Helen R.
Language: English
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LABYRINTH



[Illustration]

 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
 NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
 ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
 LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
 MELBOURNE

 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
 TORONTO



 LABYRINTH


 BY
 HELEN R. HULL
 AUTHOR OF "QUEST," ETC.


 New York
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
 1923

 _All rights reserved_



 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


 Copyright, 1923,
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1923.


 Press of
 J.J. Little & Ives Company
 New York, U.S.A.



 To
 MABEL L. ROBINSON



LABYRINTH


In the old story of the labyrinth at Crete, the Minotaur dwelling
there devoured in his day innumerable youths and maidens. He was slain
finally by the hero Theseus. The story goes that Theseus escaped both
monster and death in the blind alleys of the labyrinth only because
Ariadne was wise enough to furnish egress by means of her slender
silken thread.

There is a modern story of a labyrinth, differing from the old tale in
that it has as yet no termination, no hero who has slain the Minotaur,
no thread to guide those who enter its confusion of passages out
to any clear safety beyond its winding darkness. This modern story
differs from the old legend in other ways. The monster lurking in
this labyrinth seems to many who hear the tale merely a phantom. His
bellowings are soft and gentle, he writhes in so sentimental a fashion
that he can scarcely be taken as a monster, and since he leaves his
victims with their bones unbroken and their flesh unscarred, who is to
say that he has devoured them? They themselves may deny their fate.
And in that lies a final likeness to the old story. Until Theseus and
Ariadne had between them destroyed the Minotaur, people had thought
him an inevitable pest, and had looked upon the destruction he wrought
as legitimate. Perhaps some of the youth were tragic about their fate,
but after all, a monster and a labyrinth possess dignity and provoke
indifference merely by their continued existence.

Ariadne alone might not have slain the monster. She might have traveled
through the passageways, her silken thread between her fingers, and
perished herself without some aid from Theseus.

Here is the modern story of the labyrinth.



CONTENTS


 PART I

                                                         PAGE

 An Idyll--From the Inside                                 3


 PART II

 Both Ends of the Candle                                  87


 PART III

 Blind Alleys                                            147


 PART IV

 Encounter                                               213


 PART V

 Impasse                                                 265



PART I

AN IDYLL--FROM THE INSIDE


I

"Tell Letty, Muvver. Tell Letty."

"Again? Oh, Letty!" Catherine opened her eyes. Letty, on her stomach,
was pointing at a black ant slipping along a grass blade.

"'Nother ant. Tell Letty."

"Don't squirm off the rug, or the ant will crawl up your rompers and
take a nip." Catherine looked up through the motionless leaves of the
birch trees under which she had spread the rug. "Once there was a busy
ant," she began, "and he went out for a walk to find a grain of sand to
build his house. His brother went out for a walk, too----" Her thoughts
drifted through the story: how close the sky looks, as if the heat had
changed its shape, and it rested there just above the tree---- "The
busy ant found a grain of sand and ran back to his hill to lay it on
his house." The haze seems thicker; the forest fires must be worse, no
rain forever----

"Uh-h," Letty grunted, and held up her small brown hand, the ant a
black smear on her palm.

"Why, Letty!" Catherine pulled herself up on one elbow. "You squashed
him!"

"Bad ant. Nip Letty."

Catherine reached for Letty's fist just as a pink tongue touched it.

"Going to eat him, are you? Little anteater." She brushed the ant away
and rolled her daughter over into her arm. "You might wait until you
are nipped."

Letty chuckled and lay quietly for a minute, while Catherine looked at
her. Brown legs and arms, yellow rompers, yellow hair with sun streaks
of palest gold, blue eyes squinted in mirth, a round and sturdy chin.

Catherine closed her eyes again. Out from the woods behind them came
with the lengthening shadows the odor of sun-warmed firs and dried
needles. Quiet--release from heat--from thought.

Suddenly Letty squirmed, pounded her heels vigorously against her
mother's knee, rolled over, and began her own method of standing up.
Her process consisted of a slow elevation of her rear, until she had
made a rounded pyramid of herself. She stood thus, looking gravely
around, her hands flat on the rug, her sandaled feet wide apart.

"Hurry up, anteater," jeered Catherine. "You'll have vertigo."

But Letty took her time. Finally erect, she started off across the
meadow.

"Here, you!" Catherine sat up. "Where you going?"

"Get Daddy." Letty's voice, surprisingly deep, bounced behind her.

"Wait for me." Catherine stretched to her feet, reluctantly.

Letty would not have waited, except that she stumbled into an ant hill
hidden in the long grass, and went down plump on her stomach. So she
lay there calmly, turning her head turtle-wise to watch her mother.

       *       *       *       *       *

Catherine had borne three children without adding a touch of the matron
to her slender, long body. In knickers and green smock, her smooth
brown hair dragging its heavy coil low down her slim neck, she looked
young and strong and like the birch tree under which she stood. There
was even the same suggestion of quiet which a breath might dispel, of
poise which might at a moment tremble into agitation. The suggestion
lay in her long gray eyes, with eagerness half veiled by thin lids and
dark lashes, or perhaps in the long, straight lips, too firmly closed.

A shout came up the path between the alders, and Letty scrambled to her
feet.

"Daddy!" she shrieked, and headed down the path, Catherine loping
easily after her.

There they were, Charles and the two older children, Spencer carrying a
string of flounders, Marian with the fish lines hugged under her arm,
and Charles between them, each of his hands caught in one of theirs.
They stopped as Letty pelted toward them.

"Fishy! Sweet fishy!" Letty reached for the string. Spencer drew it
sternly away, and Letty reached again, patting the flat cold flounder
on the end.

"Letty, you'll get all dirty and fish smelly." Spencer disapproved.

"Sweet fishy--" Letty's howl broke off as her father swung her up to
his shoulder.

"Fine supper we got, Mother," said Charles, grinning.

"And I caught two," cried Spencer, "and Marian caught one----"

"It was bigger'n yours," said Marian, sadly, "if it was just one."

"Well, but Marian hollered so when a fish picked at her line and so she
scared him off."

Marian peered up under her shock of dark bobbed hair, and finding a
twinkle in Catherine's eyes, giggled.

"I did holler," she said. "I like to holler, and fish haven't any ears
and couldn't hear me----"

"This being the ninth time this discussion has been carried on," said
Charles, "I move we change the subject. Anything will do----"

Spencer sighed. The procession moved up the lane, Father at the head,
with Letty making loud "Glumph! Glumphs!" as his rubber boots talked,
Spencer next, trying to space his smaller boots just in his father's
footsteps, and Marian with Catherine at the rear.

"Who's going to clean those fish?" Catherine wrinkled her nose.

"Well, we caught them. Division of labor, eh, Spencer?"

"The male has the sport, and the female the disgusting task of removing
the vitals, I suppose."

"Amelia won't," announced Marian. "She said she couldn't clean fish, it
turned her stomach."

"I wouldn't keep a maid that wouldn't clean fish." Charles dropped
Letty on the broad granite step of the farmhouse, and settled beside
her. "Who'll get me some shoes?" He hauled at his red rubber boot, and
the clam mud flew off in a shower.

Letty grabbed again at the string of fish as Spencer stood incautiously
near her.

"Take them into the sink, Spen," said Catherine. "Marian, can you find
Daddy's sneakers? You'll all need a scrub, I'll say."

She looked at them a moment. Marian, dark; irregular small features,
tanned to an olive brown; slim as witch grass. Spencer, stocky, with
fair cropped head and long gray eyes like her own. Charles--he looked
heavier, and certainly well; the sun had left a white streak under the
brim of his battered hat and behind his spectacles, but the rest of his
face was fiery.

"Cold cream for you, old man," she said. "You aren't used to our Maine
sun and sea burn."

"I think I'll be a captain," said Spencer, seriously, turning from his
opening of the door. "And fight. Like father." He gazed admiringly at
the old service hat on the step.

Catherine's mouth shut grimly and her lids drooped over her eyes.

"Plan some other career, my son. Your father didn't fight, anyway. Did
he say he did?"

"Now, Catherine, I just told them about the camp at Brest."

Catherine looked at her husband, a long, quiet glance. Then she
followed Spencer into the kitchen.

"Oh, 'Melia!" The heat from the stove rushed at her. "You built a fire
to-night!"

"Yes, I did." Amelia, a small, wiry, faded Maine woman, turned from the
table. "That oil stove's acting queer, and anyways, it don't seem as if
you could fry fish on it."

"We might eat them raw, then, instead of sweltering." Catherine pushed
her sleeves above her elbows, and reached for a knife.

"Now that's a real pretty ketch, ain't it?" Amelia nodded at Spencer,
who watched while the flounders were slipped from the cord into the
sink.

Catherine cleaned the fish. She left Amelia to fry them while she set
the table. The heat from the kitchen crept into the long, low dining
room. Then Catherine drew Letty, protesting shrilly, into the bedroom,
where she undressed and bathed her. When she had slipped the nightie
over the small yellow head, she kissed her. "Now you find Daddy, and
I'll have Amelia bring your milk out to the porch."

She called Marian, who came on a run, peeling her jumper over her head.

"Can I put on my white sailor suit to show Daddy, Muvver?" She dragged
it from the clothes-press. "Oooh! That's cold water!" She wriggled
under Catherine's swift fingers.

"There, little eel." Catherine knotted the blue tie. "Run along.
Where's Spencer?"

"He's washing hisself, I think." Marian smoothed up her blue sock with
a little preening motion, and vanished.

"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's thin call, and Catherine went back to the
kitchen.

Letty was in bed on the porch, her smeary white duck sitting on
the pillow beside her, her deep little voice running on in an
unintelligible story of the day.

"Supper ready, Catherine?" Father stood in the doorway of the dining
room, Marian and Spencer at his heels. "We fishermen are starved. Oh,
you aren't dressed yet."

"I'm as dressed as I shall be." Catherine pushed her hair back from a
moist forehead. "Let's eat."

"Well, we like to see you dressed up like a lady once a day, don't we?"
Charles grinned at her as he pulled up his chair.

Catherine felt her hands twitch in her lap. "Steady," she warned
herself. "He's just joking. I've been busy--I should have dressed this
afternoon----"

"Some flounder!" Charles bit into the golden brown fish. "What you been
doing all the time, Catherine, while we went provender hunting?"

"Thinking," said Catherine slowly. "That is, I thought in between
Letty's demands for more story."

"What did you think about, Mother?" Spencer's face lighted with quick
curiosity.

"Some about you, Spencer, and some about Marian and Letty, and some
about Daddy, and mostly about--me." Catherine was serving the salad.
She had deft, slim hands with long fingers, and her movements were slow
and beautifully exact.

"What about us?" asked Marian.

"I have to think some more, first." Catherine looked up at Charles. "A
lot more."


II

The house was a gray mass in the evening, with one pale yellow window
where the kitchen lamp shone. Catherine lay motionless in the wicker
lounge on the low front veranda. Amelia had gone home. Spencer and
Marian were asleep. Charles had gone to the village store for tobacco.
Down below the house the smoke and heat mist veiled the transparency of
the sea. So still was the night that Catherine heard the faint "mrrr"
of wings of a huge gray moth that flew against her cheek and then away.

"Queer," she thought. "If the house were empty, it would have many
sounds, rustles and squeaks and stirrings. But because children sleep
there, it is quiet. As if the old ghosts and spirits stood on tiptoe,
peeking at the intruders."

She stretched lazily, and relaxed again. The loudest sound in the night
was her own soft breathing. Then, faintly, the gravel in the path
slipped. Charles was coming back.

Catherine dropped her feet over the edge of the couch and clasped her
arms about her knees. When he comes, she thought, I will tell him. If I
go on thinking in the dark, I'll fly to bits.

She could see him, darker than the bushes, moving toward her. Then she
could smell his pipe.

"Hello!" she called softly, and he crossed the grass to the steps.

"Say, what a night! And what a place!" He slapped his hat beside him,
and sat down at Catherine's feet, backed against the pillar. "It's been
fierce in town to-day, I'll bet. You're lucky to be able to stay here."
He puffed, and the smoke moved in a cloud about the indistinct outline
of his face. "Wish I could!"

"When are you going?"

"To-morrow night." Charles sounded aggrieved. "I wrote you I had just
the week-end."

"I hoped you might manage a little longer----"

"Can't manage that conference on Monday without being there."

"What conference is that?" Catherine swung one knee over the other; as
she watched the face there in the dark, she could feel its expression,
although the features were so vague.

"The committee on psychological work in the schools. You remember?
Planning it all through the East. It's a big thing."

"Oh, that new committee." Catherine was apathetic.

"That woman I spoke of, Stella Partridge, is mighty keen. She's working
out an organization scheme that beats any plan I've seen. I tell you
what, old girl, it's great to see the world wake up and swing around
to asking for what you want to give it!" Charles cuffed at her foot.
"Remember that first year down here? With Spencer a baby, and buying
this old house a tremendous undertaking, and me writing a book that I
didn't dare hope would sell? Things are different now, aren't they?"

"They are different." Catherine's voice hardened subtly. "I helped with
that book, didn't I?"

"Jove! I should say you did. All that typing, and correcting, and then
the proof reading."

"And now----" Catherine hesitated.

"Well, now my work has broadened out so much, and there are the three
children. I can afford to hire the typing done now, eh what?"

"Yes."

"What's the matter with you, Catherine? You've had a kind of chip about
you somewhere ever since I came this time. I can't help it if I can't
spend all my time playing in the country with you and the children,
can I? After all, I have to see to my work, and it's increasingly
demanding."

"I haven't any chip on my shoulder, Charles?" Catherine caught her
breath. "I do want to talk to you."

"Fire ahead." Charles tapped out the ashes from his pipe and reached up
for her hand. "What's eating you?"

"Oh, Charles!" Catherine's slender fingers shut inside his warm
palm. "Help me out! You ought to understand." Her laugh shivered off
abruptly. "You know I'm proud of you, just puffed up. Do you know I'm
jealous, too? Jealous as--as nettles!"

"Huh? Jealous? What about? Come down here, where I can hug you."

"No. I don't want to be loved. I want to talk. I'm not jealous about
your love. I guess you love me, when you think of it----"

"Now, Cathy, you aren't turning into a foolish woman."

"I'm turning into something awful! That's why I've got to do something.
It's your work, I'm jealous of."

"Why, my work doesn't touch my feeling about you."

"That's not what I mean. I mean I'm proud of you, every one is, and you
aren't proud of me. No one is. No one could be. I'm----"

"Why, Cathy! I am! You're a wonder with the children. And the way
you've stood back of me. What are you talking about?"

"I don't want to get emotional. I want to make you see what I've been
thinking about. All the nights this summer while I've sat here at the
end of the day. I've tried to think--my mind is coated with fat, my
thoughts creak. Charles"--her voice trembled--"can you imagine yourself
in my place, all summer, or all last year, or the year before? Planning
meals or clothes--instead of conferences? Telling stories to Letty.
Holding yourself down on the level of children, to meet them, or answer
them, or understand them, until you scarcely have a grown-up thought?
Before Letty was born, and the year after, of course I wasn't very
well. That makes a difference. But now I am. What am I going to do?
Could you stand it?"

"But, Catherine, a man----"

"If you tell me a man is different, I'll stop talking!" Catherine cried
out.

"I was going to make a scientific statement." Charles stopped, the
tolerant good nature of his voice touching Catherine like salt in a
cut finger. "To the effect," he went on, "that usually a man's ego is
stronger, and a woman's maternal instinct drowns her ego, so that she
can live in a situation which would be intolerable to a man."

"Well, then, I'm egoistic to the root." Catherine jerked her hand away
from his grasp. "At any rate, the situation is intolerable."

"Poor old girl!" Charles patted her knee. "The summer has been dull,
hasn't it?"

"It's not just that. Do you know, I was almost happier while you were
in France and I was working--than I am now!"

"Didn't care if I did get hit by a shell, eh? Didn't miss me at all?"

"I did, and you know it." Catherine was silent, her eyes straining
toward him in the darkness.

"That was part of the war excitement, wasn't it?"

"No. But something happened in me when you told me you were going. I
had been living just in you, you and the two children. I thought that
was all I ever wanted. And I thought you felt toward me the same way.
Then--you could throw it over--because you wanted something else."

"Catherine, we've had that out dozens of times. You know it was a
chance for the experience of a lifetime, psychological work in those
hospitals. And then--well, I had to get in it."

"I know. I didn't say a word, did I? But I went to work and I liked it.
Then you came back----"

"Well?" His word hung tenderly between them.

"Yes." Catherine sighed. "Like falling in love again, wasn't it? Only
deeper. And we wanted Letty." Her voice quavered again. "That's it!
I love you so much. But you don't sit down in your love--and devour
it--and let it devour you. It isn't right, Charles, help me! I"--she
laughed faintly--"I'm like your shell-shocked soldiers. You couldn't
really cure them until peace came. Then they weren't shell-shocked any
more. I'm shell-shocked too, and I can't cure myself, and I see no
armistice. I'm growing worse. I know why women have hysterics and all
sorts of silly diseases. I'll have 'em too in a day or so!"

"Funny, isn't it, when I'd like nothing better than a chance to loaf
here with the kids. But you'll get back to town soon and see people,
theaters, club----"

"And hear about the whooping cough the Thomases had--and--oh, damn!"
Catherine was crying suddenly, broken, stifled sobs.

Charles pulled her down into his arms, holding her firmly against his
chest.

"There, old girl! Stop it! What do you want?"

Catherine pushed herself away from him, her hands braced against him.

"I won't be silly." She flung her hand across her eyes. "I'm sorry. But
I've tried to figure it out, and I just drop into a great black gulf,
and drown!"

"What are you figuring on?" Charles let his fingers travel slowly along
the curve of her cheek until they shut softly about her throat.

Catherine held herself sternly away from the comfort of touch.

"I can't endure it, day after day, the same things. Petty manual jobs.
And I'm older every day. And soon the children will be grown up, and
I'll be flat on the dump heap."

"In a few more years, Cathy, I'll have more money. Now you know we
can't afford more servants, I'm sorry."

"I don't want more from you!" Catherine cried out. "I want to do
something myself!"

"You know how much you do." Charles scoffed at her, but she caught the
hint of scratched pride in his voice. "In the middle-class family the
wife is the largest economic factor."

"Charles, if I work out a scheme which puts no more burden on
you"--Catherine's breath quickened--"would you mind my going back
to work? I've figured it out. How much I'd have to earn to fill my
place----"

"You mean--take a job?"

"Yes."

Charles reached for his pipe.

"What would you do about the children?" He cleared his throat. "They
seem to need a mother."

"Well, they need a father, too, but not to be a door-mat."

"Everything I think of saying, Catherine, sounds awfully mid-Victorian."

"I know what it all is! You needn't think I don't. But I know the
answer to it all, too, so you needn't bother saying it."

"I suppose I better consider myself lucky you aren't expecting me to
stay home and take care of Letty. You aren't, are you?"

Catherine laughed. She knew Charles wanted to laugh; he was tired of
this serious talk.

"You won't mind, then?" she added, tensely. "You see, if you aren't
willing, and interested, I can't do it."

"Try it. Go ahead. I'll bet you'll get sick of it soon enough. After
all, you women forget the nuisance of being tied to appointments, rain
or shine, toothache or stomachache----"

"Ah-h"--Catherine relaxed in his arms, one hand moving up around his
neck. "It has seemed so awful, so serious, thinking it out alone. You
are an old dear!"

"All right. Have it your own way." Charles struck his match and held
it above the pipe bowl. The light showed his eyes a little amused,
a little tender, a little skeptical. It flared out, leaving dancing
triangles of orange in the darkness. Catherine shivered. Was he just
humoring her, like a child? Not really caring? But she shut her eyes
upon the mocking flecks of light and slipped off to the step below
him, her head comfortably against his arm.

She was tired, as if she had cut through ropes which had held her erect
and taut. She could feel the slight movement of muscles in the arm
under her cheek, as Charles sucked away at his pipe. The soft darkness
seemed to move up close and sweet about them, with faint rustles in the
grass at her feet. Queer that just loving couldn't be enough, when it
had such sweetness. Her thoughts drifted off in a warm, tranquil flood
of emotion; her self was gone, washed out in this nearness, this quiet.
Charles stirred, and unconsciously she waited for a sign from him out
of the perfect, enclosed moment.

He spoke.

"I want you to meet Miss Partridge when you come back to town. Great
head she's got. We're using her plan of organization in the small
towns."

Catherine sat very still. After an instant she lifted her head from his
shoulder and yawned audibly.

"I'm sleepy. The day has been so warm," she said, and rose. She kicked
against something metallic and stooped to pick up Letty's red pail and
shovel, as she passed into the house.


III

"Dark o' the moon! Dark o' the moon! Dark--Mother, see what I found!"
Spencer broke his slow chant with a squeal, and dangled above his head
the great purple starfish. Sure-footed, like a lithe brown sea animal,
he darted over the slippery golden seaweed toward Catherine, who looked
up from the shallow green pool over which she had been stooping.

"Lemme see too!" Marian's dark head rose from behind a rock and she
stumbled after her brother. Plump! she was down in the treacherous
kelp, her serious face scarcely disconcerted. Marian always slipped on
the seaweed.

"Isn't he 'normous? He's the 'normousest yet." Spencer laid the star on
the rock, bending over to straighten one of the curling arms.

"I found one almost as big," declared Marian, "only pink. And pink's a
nicer color. Isn't it, Muvver?"

"If you like it." Catherine took Spencer's sea-chilled fingers in hers
and drew them down to the under side of the ledge over the pool. "Feel
that?"

"What is it?" Spencer's gray eyes darkened with excitement.

"Lemme feel too!" Marian sat down on the seaweed and slid along to the
ledge. "Where?"

Catherine guided her fingers. How like sea things those cold little
hands felt! "What does it feel like?"

"Kinda soft and kinda hard and----Oh, it's got a mouth!" Marian
squirmed away. "Tell us, Muvver! What is it?"

"Can you guess, Spen?"

"May I look, Mother? I think it's--snail eggs."

Catherine laughed.

"Lean over and look. I'll hold you." She seized his belt, while he
craned his neck over the bit of rock.

"Purple, too!" He came back, flushed. "I know!"

"Lemme see!" Marian plunged downward, her legs waving. "It's full of
holes. What is it?"

"Sponges," said Spencer, importantly.

"Sponges is brown and bigger," cried Marian.

"These are alive and not the same kind as your bath sponge."

Catherine straightened her back and looked out over the sea. Opal,
immobile, so clear that the flat pink ledges beyond the lowest tide
mark were like blocks of pigment in the water. Something strange in
this dark of the moon tide, dragging the water away from hidden places,
uncovering secret pools. Once every summer Catherine rowed across to
the small rocky point that marked the entrance to the cove, to see what
the tide disclosed. There was a thrill about the hour when the water
seemed to hang motionless, below the denuded rocks. Spencer felt it;
Catherine had touched the sensitive vibration of his fingers as he
searched. Marian found the expedition interesting, like clam digging!
Catherine remembered the year the fog had come in as the tide swung
back, suddenly terrifyingly thick and gray about them, so that she had
wondered whether they ever would find their own mooring; she could see
the ghostly shore, with unfamiliar rocks looming darkly out of the
grayness, as she rowed slowly around the cove, trying to keep the shore
line as guide. Charles had come out to meet them; his "Hullo!" had been
a whisper first, moving through the mist and seeming to recede. Then
he had come alongside them, the fog drops thick on his worried face.
Spencer had liked that, too, although Marian had crouched on her bow
seat, shivering.

No fog to-day. The horizon line was pale and clear. She should go back
for Letty. They had left her behind them on a sandy stretch of beach,
with a pile of whitened sea-urchin shells.

"Mother!" Spencer repeated his summons. "What is dark o' the moon?"

Catherine explained vaguely as they scrambled up the rounded, slippery
rocks to the patch of coarse grass at the top of the small point. Where
was Letty? She had been visible from there. Catherine began to run,
down to the muddy flats that separated the point from the mainland.
Only a few minutes since she had last seen her head, like a bit of
bright seaweed. The water was so far out, surely---- Panic nipped at
her heels as she flew. "Letty! Let-ty!" There was the pile of shells.
"Letty!" A spasm of fear choked her breathing. Then a call, deep and
contented.

"Letty here." Around the clump of beach peas and driftwood-- The yellow
head nodded out of a mud hole left by a clam digger on the beach.
"Letty swim."

Catherine picked up her daughter.

"Letty, darling! You little imp----" The gray mud dripped from rompers
and sandals.

"Oh, she's all wet." Marian puffed up. "And dirty!"

"Now how are we going to get you home without a cold, young woman!"
Catherine stood her on the beach, and sighed. Letty, her fingers full
of the soft mud, looked up with bright, unremorseful eyes.

"My sweater's in the dory, Mother." Spencer frowned at his sister. "You
haven't any sense, Letty."

Letty's rompers served as a bath towel, and the sweater made a cocoon.
She sat beside Marian, while Catherine and Spencer rowed the old dory
across the half mile of quiet water. The children chattered about their
discoveries, and Catherine listened while her thoughts moved quickly
beneath the surface of the talk. Fear like that--it's terrific,
unreasoning, overwhelming. How would you bear it if anything happened!
You have to be all eyes, and be with them every instant. How can you
plan, thinking of anything else? And yet, things happen to children, of
any mothers----

"Dark o' the moon--pulls the ole water--away from the earth----"
Spencer chanted as he rowed. "Dark o' the moon----"

"What makes you say that all the time, Spencer?" demanded Marian.

"I like to say it. Pulls the ole water--away from the earth----"

"Not so deep, Spencer. You drag your oar. See--" Catherine pulled the
blades smoothly along, just beneath the surface.

"I know. I meant to." Spencer was intent on his oars again.


IV

The mail bag hung on the post. Catherine drew out its contents. A
letter from Charles. The paper. Her fingers gripped over an envelope.
From the Bureau, in answer to hers. A piece of fate, in that square
white thing. She thrust it into her pocket. Later, when the children
were asleep. She could think then.

Now the air was full of the children. Letty's deep squeals of mirth,
a strange noise from Spencer, meant to be whinnying, as he pranced up
the path dragging Letty's cart, protests from Marian, "You are silly, I
think!" Would Marian always be so serious? And Spencer--he was always
exhausting himself by the very exuberance of his fancy. Catherine
followed them slowly. Suddenly the sounds broke off for an instant of
surprised silence; Catherine lifted her head. The children were out
of sight around the bend, and she could not see the house yet. Other
voices, and a shriek from Letty. She hurried past the alder growth.
There was a car by the side door, and people. Marian flew toward her.

"Muvver! Mr. Bill and Dr. Henrietta! They've come to see us!"

"Good gracious! What can I feed them?" thought Catherine. Then, as she
came nearer and saw them, she thought, "I'm getting to be the meanest
kind of domestic animal."

Dr. Henrietta Gilbert, fair, plump, serene, immaculately tailored,
looked up from her seat on the step, one arm around Letty, who was
gleaming brown and sleek from the carelessly draped red sweater.
Spencer hovered at her shoulder, his face lighted with pleasure.

"Hello, Catherine!" she held up one hand.

William Gilbert stood behind them, his dark, tired face smiling a
little, his long, lean body sagging lazily. Catherine reached for his
hand.

"Well, you two!" she cried. "How'd you find this place?"

"Charles gave us minute directions." Dr. Henrietta rose neatly. "He
wouldn't come. He's too important for trips. What's happened to Letty?
She seems to be clothed for a prize fight."

"Letty swim!" shouted Letty proudly.

"You drove from New York?" Catherine lifted Letty into her arms, and
enveloped her in the sweater. "I didn't know you could get away."

"Labor Day," said Bill. He was gazing at the children, his eyes half
shut behind his thick glasses.

"If you can't put us up, Catherine, we'll hunt for a boarding house.
But we wanted to see you."

"Of course I can. Do you think I'd let you escape, when I'm starving
for human beings?"

"With all of these?" Bill nodded at the group.

"They are animals, not human beings, aren't you, Marian?" Dr. Henrietta
laughed at Marian's distressed face. "Your woman in the kitchen"--she
dropped her voice mysteriously--"thought we were bandits and didn't ask
us in."

       *       *       *       *       *

Amelia was pleased to meet them, when Catherine ushered them properly
into the house.

"Don't that beat all!" she said, loudly, as they followed Spencer to
the guest room. "I thought they was peddlars. Drove all the ways from
New York! Don't that beat all!" She made flurried rushes about the
kitchen, pulling open the cupboard doors. "Now don't you fuss, Mis'
Hammond. If baked beans is good enough I can make out a meal, I guess.
She's a doctor, eh?"

After a fleet half hour Catherine had Letty bathed, fed, and tucked
into her cot. She had slipped out of her knickerbockers and smock into
a soft green dress. No time to brush her hair; she adjusted a pin in
the heavy brown knot, and glanced at her reflection. Letty's voice rose
in deep inarticulate demand from the porch. Catherine stepped to the
door. Bill stood outside.

"She wants you to say good night to Ducky Wobbles." Catherine smiled
at him; she had, at times, a lovely smile, unreserved in its warm
friendliness. She was fond of Bill; his dark silence piqued her, but
she felt that it was a silence of steady, quiet wisdom, which couldn't
break itself up into tiny words.

"Can't I say good night to Letty instead?"

"No! Nice Ducky!" Letty wobbled her duck at him. "Goo'ni' to my Ducky!"

"Well, then, good night to Ducky and to his Letty."

Letty dropped back into her pillow, content.

"Now you go to sleep, old lady." Catherine closed the door, and stopped
for a moment to supervise Marian's preparations.

Spencer had filled the wood basket with shining pink-white birch logs.
Catherine drew out the crane with the kettle and laid a fire on the
andirons in the huge old fireplace. Dr. Henrietta came out, dangling
her eyeglasses on a long black ribbon over her sturdy white finger.

"This is a charming old place, Catherine. You all look well, too. A
summer in the country certainly sets the children up."

Catherine glanced at her, as the flame crept around the logs.

"You ought to try it, if you want to know what it does to you--" she
paused. "Moss in every cranny of your brain--" Bill was coming in.
"After supper I'll tell you!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Supper was over. Spencer had piloted Bill and the car safely into the
barn, running back to tell Catherine, "Moth-er! Mr. Bill thinks his car
scared all the old cow ghosts in the stalls." When he and Marian were
in bed, Catherine came back to the living room, the square envelope
from the Bureau in her hand.

"It's queer you two should come to-night," she said. "I need you to
talk to."

Bill had settled in the old fiddle-back walnut chair, the smoke from
his pipe turning his lined face into a dim gargoyle. Dr. Henrietta was
fitting a cigarette into her long amber holder.

"Charles hasn't been here much this summer, has he?" she asked.

"Only occasional week-ends." Catherine sat down on the footstool on the
hearth. The light shone through the loosened brown hair about her face
and turned her throat to pale ivory. "He was here a week ago."

"Your sister? Has she been here?"

"No. She decided to spend her vacation in the mountains with that
friend of hers. Nobody's been here! I haven't seen anyone since last
May, except for flying shots at Charles. If I begin to spout a Mother
Goose rhyme at you, you might understand why."

"Well, you haven't the mossy look I connect with mothers," said
Henrietta, as she smoked in quick little spurts. "Have a cigarette?"
She tossed her silver case into Catherine's lap.

"Sworn off." Catherine ran her finger over the monogram. "Amelia would
know I was a fallen woman--haven't lighted one since--oh, since Charles
came back from France."

"Didn't he care for those home fires?" Bill took his pipe out of his
teeth, drawled his question, and went on with his inspection of the
flames.

Catherine laughed.

"Tell me what you two have been doing since I saw you."

Henrietta retrieved her case and extracted a second cigarette.

"Same things. Babies, clinics, babies. Bill's had a bridge over in
Jersey. The _Journal's_ taken a series of articles I did on that gland
work last year. Public school on the East Side is going to let me run
sort of a laboratory clinic on malnutrition. Mother instinct down there
feeds its infants on cabbage, fried cakes, and boiled tea."

"You're a wonder, Henry." Catherine sighed. "Putting over what you
want."

"It's only these last few years, you know, that I've had any
recognition."

"You're a wonder, just the same. Isn't she, Bill?"

"Um." Bill's grunt gave complete assent.

Catherine looked steadily at her friend. Even in the soft firelight Dr.
Henrietta Gilbert retained her smooth, competent neatness. A smoothness
like porcelain, thought Catherine. Porcelain with warmth in it, she
added hastily to herself, as if she had made an unfair accusation.
Firm, kindly lips; contented, straightforward blue eyes; plump,
ungraceful body; Dr. Henrietta had a compact, assured personality,
matter of fact, intelligent, enduring. Catherine wondered: do I give,
as she looks at me, as complete an impression of me? I feel hidden
away. Then she thought, quickly, of the grim days when Spencer lay
so piteously still except when he struggled for breath, when he had
so nearly died--pneumonia--and Henrietta had seemed to hold herself
between the child and death itself, calm, untroubled. She was a wonder!

"You couldn't have done it, could you," she said suddenly, "if you
had had children?" Then she stopped, aghast at her heedlessness. She
had never said that when Bill was there to hear her. But Henrietta's
response was cheerful and prompt.

"Certainly not. That's why we haven't any."

Catherine glanced shyly toward Bill. His eyes, inscrutable as ever, did
not lift from the fire.

"That's"--Catherine hesitated--"that's what I want to talk about."

"What?" Henrietta was on her guard.

"Oh, I don't mean you. I mean me?" She balanced the letter on her knee
and pointed at it. "That letter. I haven't opened it, but it's an omen."

"Don't be mysterious," Henrietta jibed at her.

"I want to go to work. I wrote to the Bureau, where I had that job
while Charles was in France. This is their answer."

Bill leaned forward to tap his pipe out on the fire tongs. Catherine
felt his eyes on her face.

"Catherine! Bully for you!" Henrietta clapped her hand on Catherine's
shoulder. "Have you told Charles? Can you manage it?"

"I told him." Catherine drank eagerly of the bluff encouragement in
Henrietta's voice. "He calls it my 'unsatisfied trend.' But he wouldn't
object, of course."

"I thought you didn't care much for that work. Statistics, wasn't it?"
Bill put his question quietly.

"Part of it I didn't." Catherine admitted that reluctantly. "But a new
investigation is being started, on teaching. I am interested in that. I
taught, you know, before I married, and I think that is as important as
anything in the world."

"Read the letter, woman!" Henrietta shook Catherine's shoulder.

Catherine ran her finger under the flap and unfolded the square page.
As she bent near the firelight, a log rolled off the burning pile,
sending a yellow flame high into the chimney, touching into relief the
wistful, tremulous lines of her mouth.

"They want me." Her voice was hushed, as she looked up at Henrietta.
"At once. Dr. Roberts says he had been looking for someone. He thought
I was unavailable."

A shrill, frightened cry darted into the room, sharp as a flame.
Catherine leaped to her feet.

"Spencer. He has nightmares." She went hastily out to the sleeping
porch.

He was moaning in his sleep, one hand brushing frantically over his
blanket. Catherine's hand closed over his. "There, Spencer," she said,
softly, "it's all right, dear." He did not wake, but the moaning
dropped into regular, quiet breathing, and his hand relaxed warmly in
hers. She stood a moment, listening. Then she stole to the other two
beds, bending over each. Letty's breathing was so soft that her heart
stood still an instant as she listened. At the door of the porch she
clasped her hands over her breast.

"Am I wicked?" she thought. "When I have them--to care about--" A
passion of tenderness for them shook her; she felt as if the three
of them lay at the very core of her being, and she enclosed them,
crouching above them, fiercely maternal.

Slowly she went back to the living room. She heard Bill's low voice,
and then Henrietta's,

"Catherine can do it. She has brains and strength----"

Her entrance broke off the sentence.

"I'll light a lamp," she said briefly. "This firelight's too
sentimental. I want hard common sense."

"Here, let me." Bill flicked a match with his thumb nail, and Catherine
fitted the heavy orange globe down over the lamp.

She seated herself in the straight chair near the desk.

"Well," said Henrietta, "I don't see any more clearly than I did in the
dark. If you have the nerve to try this, Catherine, go ahead. I'm all
for you."

"You think, professionally, that it won't harm the children?"

"You can hire some woman, can't you, to take your place as slave? I
suppose you still can look at them occasionally."

"Yes. I suppose"--Catherine twisted her fingers together--"I suppose I
am as conceited as most mothers, wondering whether they can get along
eight hours a day without me."

"You aren't happy, are you?" Henrietta flung at her, abruptly. "You
have the blues, black as ink. You have to hang on to yourself about
trifles. You----"

"Oh, yes, yes!" Catherine's laugh shrilled a little. "Don't go on with
my disgraceful disposition. I admit it. But don't women have to put up
with that?"

"My Lord, no. No longer than they are willing to. Most of them find
it easier to lie down. You've got too much brains to be sentimental,
Catherine Hammond."

"What do you think, Bill?" Catherine appealed to him suddenly. She felt
him, in his motionless silence, probing, inspecting, and never saying
what he saw.

"It is for you to decide," he answered.

"You know you can't get advice out of Bill! It's a wonder he ever can
serve on an engineering commission." Henrietta laughed at him, in
friendly, appreciative amusement. "He has to offer technical advice
there. He won't give any other kind."

"You won't consider my specifications?" Catherine was a trifle piteous,
under her light tone. "Even if I need--well, it is rebuilding, isn't
it?" She wondered why his opinion seemed so necessary. She had
Henrietta's, and Henrietta was a woman. But she wanted to reach across,
to pull at those passive, restrained hands, to beg him to speak.

"I really think that you have to decide yourself." He paused. "You
realize, probably, that it will be like handling a double job. Charles
would find it difficult to take over a new share of your present job.
Most men would."

"I don't want him to. I couldn't bear to do the slightest thing to
interfere with him. His career is just starting--and brilliantly. It
wouldn't be right to bother him."

"Why not?" Henrietta sat up, hostility bristling in her manner. "Why
not a fair sharing of this responsibility? He wanted the children,
didn't he? You're as bad as some of my clinic mothers. They go out to
work by the day, and they come home to work by the night. I asked one
of them why she didn't let her man help with the dishes and the wash,
and she said, 'Him? He's too tired after supper.' And she was earning
more scrubbing than the man!"

"You wouldn't make Bill sit up with your patients, would you?" cried
Catherine, hotly, "or typewrite your articles?"

"Of course Henrietta has only one job," said Bill.

"Charles has expected the children to be my job." Catherine spoke
slowly. "He is in competition with other men whose wives have no other
thought. Like Mrs. Thomas, for instance. You met her?"

"I've met scores of them. Most of them haven't brains enough to think
with," said Henrietta, crisply. "You have. That's the trouble with you.
Now think straight about this, too."

"I am trying to." Catherine's cry hung in the pleasant room, a sharp
note of distress.

"It is true, as Catherine sees"--Bill leaned forward--"that the average
man grows best in nurture furnished by the old pattern of wife. But you
can't generalize. This is Catherine's own problem." He rose. "I wish
you luck, you know. Good night." He went slowly across the hall, and
closed the door of the guest room.

"You can't drag Bill into an argument," said Henrietta. "Now he's
gone." She pulled her chair around to face Catherine. "I want to see
you make a go of this. To see if it can be done. It's got to be, some
day. I wouldn't take the chance, you see."

"But it was children I most wanted." Catherine groped among her
familiar thoughts. "I didn't know I wouldn't be contented. I'm not sure
I shouldn't be."

"You aren't. The signs are on you, plain as day. And you've hit
straight at the roots of your trouble. I've seen it, longer than
you have, and I've just been waiting. When Charles went off for his
adventure, he left you space to see in!"

"Are you--happy?"

"Me? Of course. Reasonably."

"You don't want any children?"

"Good heavens, no! I see enough of children."

"But you like them. You couldn't handle them as you do----"

"I take out my well-known maternal instinct that way, if you like."

"You're hard as nails, Henry."

"Catherine"--Henrietta's face was grim under its fair placidity--"when
I was sixteen, I saw my mother die in childbirth. She had eight
children. Two of them are alive now. She was only thirty-three when she
died. She died on a farm in Michigan, and my father thought she picked
a poor time, because he was haying. I swore then I'd be something
besides a female animal. William knew what I wanted. It's a fair deal
to him. He knew he was getting a wife, but not a mother. That's all
there is to that. I like you. When you fell for Charles so hard, I was
afraid you were ended. Now I have hopes!" Her hand, firm and hard, shut
about Catherine's. "Only, don't handicap yourself with this clutter of
feelings."

Something in the clutch of the firm fingers gave Catherine a quick
insight. Henrietta wasn't hard! Not porcelain. A shell, over a warm,
soft creature--a barnacle, hiding from injury as deep as that her
childhood had shown her.

"You're a nice old thing." Catherine laid her other hand over
Henrietta's. "And"--she came back to her own maelstrom--"you think it
will be fair to the children? I ought to be more decent--better for
them--if I can get some self-respect."

"That's talking. You write and take that job, instanter! I'll look
around for a woman for you. When can you come down?" Henrietta withdrew
her hand.

"That's another thing." Catherine frowned. "Dr. Roberts says as soon as
possible. School doesn't open, though, for two weeks. I don't like to
drag the children back."

"You see?" Henrietta made an impatient lunge with her foot.

"I'll have to think that out."

They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Henrietta rose.

"I'm glad we blew in," she said. "But we have to start off early."

"You've helped." Catherine stood in front of her friend, her hands
clasped loosely. "I'll hunt you up in town, when I need an injection of
common sense."

She went through the quiet house, setting the screen in front of the
crimson ash of the fire, turning down the lamp, hanging away the red
sweater Letty had worn home, placing a row of damp little sandals on
the kitchen steps where the morning sun would dry them. She stood there
for a moment, looking off across the water. A huge crimson star hung
low in the east; she thought she caught a flicker of reflection in the
dark stretch of water. Perhaps it was only a late firefly.

For hours she lay awake, staring out at the great birch tree, watching
the faint motion of its leaves, and the slipping through them of the
Big Dipper as it wheeled slowly down its arc.


V

They all stood in the sunshine in front of the house, watching the tan
top of the Gilberts' car disappear into the alders.

Spencer sighed ostentatiously.

"Wisht we had a nottomobul," he said. "Mr. Bill let me help him squirt
oil and I filled a grease cup and put it back."

"Should say you did!" scoffed Marian. "Look at your sleeve! You're
awful dirty."

"Aw, shut up," growled Spencer.

"Shut up! Shut up!" shrieked Letty, dancing on her toes, and pulling at
Catherine's hand. "Shut up!"

Catherine, who had been caught in a tight knot of confused thought by
Henrietta's final mockery, "You won't come down for weeks, I know. And
here's your job, waiting for you! You can't break through!" came back
with a little start.

Spencer was staring dolefully down the lane; Marian hovered at his
smeared elbow, ready to taunt him again if he stayed silent; Letty
pranced as if she wanted to say, "Sic 'em!"

Catherine smiled. She knew how they felt. The arrival of the Gilberts
was a large stone dropped into the smooth evenness of their days.
Their departure--she couldn't carry on that figure, but she knew the
emptiness it left, a funny little sickish feeling, almost a fear lest
the days would stay empty.

"Well, isn't he a dirty pig, Muvver?"

"You hush up!" Spencer flushed as Catherine's grave eyes rested on his.

"Amelia says she wants some peas picked. The basket is in the woodshed."

"I picked 'em last," said Marian.

"You never did!" Spencer's anger bubbled up. "You----"

"And some potatoes," continued Catherine, calmly. "If you aren't too
cantankerous, Spencer might dig those, and Marian might pick the peas."

Spencer dug his toe into the turf.

"Letty dig!" Letty pulled at Catherine's hand, her lower lip piteously
imploring. "Letty dig, Muddie!"

"I have some letters to write." Catherine picked up Letty and started
for the house. "I hope you two can see to the vegetables."

With a brief glance as she opened the door, she saw Spencer with a
gruff "Aw, come along!" heading for the woodshed.

Letty twisted and squirmed in her arms. "Dig!" she declared.

"You can dig in your sand pile." Catherine set her down. "Where is your
red pail? You find that, while I find my pen."

       *       *       *       *       *

She couldn't go back to town before school opened. Her pen made tiny
involved triangles at the edge of the blotter. Charles wouldn't like it
if she brought the children down so early. Still, that would give her a
few days to set the house in order, to find a woman to take her place.
What a queer thought! Henrietta had one in mind, she had said, a sort
of practical nurse and housekeeper. There were the children's clothes
to see to. When could she do that? She wouldn't have time for sewing.
She dropped her head down on the table, her hands clasped under her
forehead. I can't do it, she thought. Too many things. _Things!_ That's
it. Clothes, and laundry, and dirt in the corners. One hand groped out
for the letter from Dr. Roberts, and she lifted her head. Her mouth set
in a hard, thin line; the smears under her gray eyes made them larger,
weary with a kind of desperation.

"I remember so well your admirable work," he had written. "I can think
of no one with whom I should prefer to entrust this new piece of work."

If I don't do it now, I never will, she thought. Never. Perhaps I
haven't the courage, or the endurance.

"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's nasal call. "D'you want a fish? Earle's
here and wants to know."

"Yes." Catherine drew her paper near.

"Huh? D'you want one?"

Catherine rose abruptly and hurried into the kitchen.

"Buy one, Amelia," she said. "Good morning, Earle."

"Well, he's got cod and haddock and hake." Amelia was stern.

"Haddock," said Catherine. "There's change there in my purse."

When she came back to the porch, Letty was not in sight, nor did she
answer Catherine's call. Her red pail lay beside the sand pile.

"Oh, damn!" thought Catherine, as she flung her pen on to the table and
started in quest of Letty. "If I don't find her, I'll regret it. Letty!
Mother wants you!"

Incredible that those small legs could travel so fast. Catherine peeked
into the poultry yard. Last week she had found Letty there, trying to
catch an indignant rooster. But Letty seldom repeated.

As she rounded the corner of the house, she saw the child, and her own
heart contracted terribly. Letty was lying on her stomach on a broad
stone, part of the well curb, her small yellow head out of sight, her
heels in the air.

"Who left that cover off! If I call her, I may startle her----"

Amelia appeared at the door, a water pail in her hand, her pale eyes
popping out in her tight face.

"Sh-h!" Catherine laid a finger on her lips, as she stole softly toward
Letty, with knees that trembled. Her hand closed firmly over a kicking
foot, and she dragged the child suddenly back. Then she sat down on the
grass.

Letty wriggled violently to be free.

"Letty fish!" she waved a bit of string. "Fish!"

"Well, don't that beat all!" Amelia stood over them. "Who left that
well cover off?"

"You didn't?" asked Catherine wearily.

"My land, no. I was just coming out to draw a bucket. I'll bet that
Earle done it."

"Letty, be still!" Catherine's tone hushed the child. "I have told you
never to go near that well, haven't I?"

Letty smiled, beguilingly.

"Pretty Muddie. Letty fish." Her small face wrinkled into the most
ingratiating smile she possessed.

"You are a naughty Letty." Catherine rose. "Come along and be tied up,
like a bad little dog."

Letty's wrinkled nose smoothed instantly, and her eyes closed for a
scream. Catherine lifted her firmly into her arms, one hand over the
open mouth.

She sat in her room, waiting for Letty's shrieks to subside. They did,
soon, and she heard her chirrup. "Get ap! Get ap!" and knew the rope
which tied her had become a horse.

Fiercely she seized her pen and wrote. If she stopped to think again--
Anything might happen, anyway! She stopped long enough to see clearly
that if anything happened while she, the mother, was away, she might
have a load of self-reproach heavier than she could endure. It's part
of the struggle, she thought. Someone else can play watchdog, surely.
There! She had committed herself. A note to Charles. She was glad his
conference had been so interesting. She had just accepted a position
at the Bureau, like her old job there. She might come down a few days
early. With love----


VI

The porter dropped the bags on the platform beside them, and held out
his pink palm. Then he swung up to the step, as the long train began
to move. Until the train was out of sight down the curving track,
Catherine knew it was useless to start her procession. A fine drizzle
filled the air under the shed, and the roofs of the street below them
gleamed dull and sordid.

"Spencer, will you take that bag? And Marian, this one----" Catherine
pulled Letty up into her arm and with a suitcase dragging at her
shoulder, piloted the children toward the stairs. "Daddy may be
downstairs. Careful, Marian, on those wet steps."

There he was, at the bottom of the narrow, dark stairs. Catherine's
heart gave its customary little jump--always, when she saw Charles
again, even after the briefest separation.

Marian clung to his arm, Spencer let himself be hugged, Letty squealed
with delight. Catherine looked at him, her eyes bright. He did look
well! And he had a new suit, in all this rain!

"Here's a taxi, right here. Jump in. Where are your checks?" he bundled
them in and handed the checks to the driver.

"This is a crowded street, Mother, and awful loud!" said Spencer, his
nose against the glass.

"I like the big station better," said Marian, adjusting herself with
interest on the little folding seat. "Why can't we get out there?"

"This is nearer home, dear."

Daddy sat next to Mother, and the taxi rattled off, spurting slimy mud.

"Hard trip, old girl?" Charles put his arm around Catherine's shoulders.

"Fair." Catherine shone at him softly. "Sort of a job, putting the
family to bed on a sleeper. But it's over."

"An awful homely street," muttered Spencer, his face doleful.

"It's got lots of things in it," said Marian, wiggling down from her
seat, and thrusting her face against the door. "See the folks and the
stores and the street cars."

"It's dirty." Spencer turned from the window and looked darkly at
Catherine. "I want to be back home," he said.

Catherine smiled at him. Poor boy! The little quiver of his nostrils
was eloquent of nostalgia, of the rude necessity of adjustment.

"Our street isn't like this, Spencer," she assured him. "You will like
that better."

"Turned into a country kid, have you?" Charles reached for the boy's
arm. "Fine muscle! You'll have to try some handball with me this
winter."

Spencer lost his forlornness at once. "In the court? Oh, gee!"

"I've got muscle too, Daddy." Marian bounced across to her father's
knees. "Feel me! Can't I play ball with you?"

"Letty play!" wailed Letty.

The taxi jolted to a standstill in the traffic, and Letty was diverted
by a large and black mammy descending from the street car close to the
cab.

"Girls can't play," said Spencer conclusively.

"They can, too, can't they, Muvver!"

"Your mother agrees with you, Marian," said Charles. "But not on our
handball courts, eh, Spencer?"

Catherine flushed at the submerged note in Charles's words.

"Don't you give my daughter an inferiority complex!" she said, lightly.

But Charles went on, the note rising to the surface.

"You won't find the house in very good shape. I wasn't expecting you so
early."

The glow of the meeting was disappearing under the faint, secret
friction. Catherine thought quickly, "He didn't like it--the job, or
my coming down. But he isn't admitting it." Aloud she said, "Did Flora
desert you?"

"Oh, no. She's there, her mouth larger than ever. I meant the finishing
touches."

"We can give those."

"There's Morningside Park!" Spencer's shout was full of delight.
"Rocks and trees an' everything!" The taxi had left One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street and was bumping along the side street which
bordered the park. The rocks shouldered up gray and wet through brown,
worn shrubbery.

"There's where we had the cave," cried Marian. "I remember it."

Up to the Drive, a few blocks south, and just around the corner the
taxi halted.

"Here we are!" Out they all scrambled, to stare up at the gray front,
tessellated with windows, while Charles maneuvered the luggage.
Catherine felt Spencer's cold hand creep into hers; she held it firmly,
knowing that he, too, had the sinking depression with which that
monotonous dingy structure filled her.

But Sam, the elevator boy, came out, all white grin and shiny eyes, to
greet them and carry in the bags. Letty, as of old, clasped her hands
over her stomach as the elevator shot up. The key clicked in the lock
and the door opened on the familiar long hall. They were home again.

"When we have breakfast," declared Catherine, "we won't feel so much
like lost cats!"

Flora, her gold tooth gleaming in her dark face, was loudly and
cheerfully glad to see them. Catherine scurried for towels, and left
the children scrubbing their hands, while she walked back through the
hall with Charles, who had said he must go to his office immediately.

They faced each other in the dim light. Catherine struggled to throw
off the constraint which had settled upon her.

"That's a grand suit," she said, laying her hand on his sleeve. "You
better take your rain coat."

"It's at the office. I am afraid I can't come in for luncheon. I made
this engagement downtown before I knew you were coming to-day."

"That's good." Catherine smiled at him. "Leaves me more time--there are
endless things to do."

He looked at her, a curious reserve in his eyes.

"You are really going to do it, take that job?"

"I wrote you----"

"When do you start?"

"Monday. That's why I'm here." She couldn't help that air of defense!
"I had to have a few days to shop for the children, and get the house
running."

"Hard on them, isn't it?"

"I thought a few days couldn't matter so much to them as to me."

"No." Charles turned the doorknob.

"Charles!" Catherine seized his hand. "Are you--cross?"

"Of course not." He sounded impatient. "But I have to get over to
college sometime to-day."

"Have you changed your mind about my trying this?"

"No." He pursed his under lip, hesitatingly. "I didn't know you were
going to jump in so immediately. But it's quite all right."

Catherine released his hand, and he pulled open the door. He stood a
moment on the threshold, and then wheeled.

"I--I'm glad you're home." Catherine was in his arms, her lips
quivering as he kissed her.

"There, run along!" She patted his shoulder, her eyes misty.

       *       *       *       *       *

But when he had gone, she leaned against the door, brushing hot tears
from her lashes. She could hear the children, their voices raised in
jangling. It was going to be hard, harder than she had thought. Bill
was right; she would have a double job. She might have more than that,
if Charles really carried a secret antagonism to her plan. Perhaps he
was only gruffy; perhaps this was only a flicker of his unadmitted
dislike of anything which threatened change, anything at least which
he had not originated. But she saw, clearly, what she had felt as a
possibility, that she had, for a time, his attitude as further weight
to carry. That he wouldn't admit his attitude made the weight heavier,
if anything. As she went slowly towards the sounds of squabbling, she
saw her attempt as a monstrous undertaking, like unknown darkness into
which she ventured, fearing at every step some unseen danger; and
heaviness pressed down physically upon her.


VII

Breakfast restored the temper of the children, and lifted part of her
own heaviness. The day then stretched into long hours. The children
couldn't go out into the park, as the drizzle of the morning increased
to cold rain. Toward noon Dr. Henrietta telephoned, and Catherine
found her voice like a wind blowing into flame her almost smothered
intentions. Henrietta was sending over that evening the woman she had
mentioned: Miss Kelly. She could come at once, if Catherine liked her.
She would have to come by the day, as she had an invalid mother. "We'll
run in soon, Catherine, Bill and I. Don't you weaken!"

Lucky Miss Kelly wouldn't want a place to sleep, thought Catherine, as
she went about the business of unpacking and reordering the apartment.
With New York rents where they were it was all they could do to shelter
the family decently. Was it really decent, she wondered, as she laid
the piles of Spencer's clothes away in the white dresser, and looked
about the little court room where he slept. She went to the window. A
hollow square, full of rain and damp odors; windows with drab curtains
blowing out into the rain; window sills with milk bottles, paper
bags--the signs of poor students, struggling to wrest education out
of the jaws of hunger! And yet, when she and Charles had found this
apartment, they had thought it fine. A large, wide, airy court; none of
your air shafts. She glanced up where the roof lines cut angles against
the sodden sky. Spencer did watch the stars there, on clear nights. She
picked up the laundry bag, stuffed with soiled clothes, and left the
room. Marian's room was next, a little larger. She had planned to have
Letty's bed moved in there this fall, opposite Marian's. Flora was on
her knees, her yellowed silk blouse dangling from her tight belt, as
her arm rotated the mop over the floor.

"Had a pleasant summer, Flora?" asked Catherine, as she opened Marian's
bag.

"Land, yes, Mis' Hammond." Flora whisked her cloth. "I'm gonna get
married to a puhfessional man. He's been showing me tenshions all
summer. He ain't committed hisself till last week."

"You are!" Catherine looked at her in dismay. "When?"

"Oh, I ain't gonna give up my work, Mis' Hammond. Not till I sees
how he pans out. I tried that once, and my las' husband, he couldn't
maintain me as I was accustomed to be. So I says to my intended, I'll
get married to you for pleasure, but I keeps my job. He don't care."

Catherine laughed. She knew that Flora had made earlier experiments in
marriage, once to the extent of going back to Porto Rico. But she had,
through all her changes of name, kept her good humor, her cleverness,
and her apparent devotion to Catherine.

She rose swiftly from her knees, her long string of green beads
clinking against her pail of water.

"I believes in keeping men in his place," she said, with an expanding
grin. "If you don't, they keeps you in yours."

Catherine, adding the pile of Marian's dirty clothes to the jammed
laundry bag, laughed again.

"I suppose so," she said. "What am I going to do with all this laundry!
You'd think we hadn't washed all summer, the way things pile up."

"I'll take that right home to-night, Mis' Hammond. My sister can do it
for you. My gentleman friend is stopping by for me in his car."

Catherine smoothed the cretonne scarf on the dressing table, adjusted
the bright curtains, moved the little wicker chair to make room for
Letty's bed, and with a grimace at the glimpse of the court even
through the curtains, went on to the living room. Letty was asleep in
Catherine's room. Spencer and Marian had scorned her hint that a nap
might be good for them, and were sitting disconsolately in chairs drawn
near the windows. Here, at least, was something beside too intimate
suggestion of neighboring lives, even if the rain held it to-day in
somber dullness. Beneath the windows the tops of trees pricked through
the mist, as if one looked down into a forest; they were only the
poplars and Balm of Gilead that grew on the steep slope of Morningside,
but as Spencer had said, they were _trees_. And beyond them, extending
far off into the dim gray horizon, the city--flat roofs, with strange
shapes of chimneys, water tanks, or elevator sheds, merged to-day
into dark solidity. On clear days, there was a hint of water in the
distance, and the balanced curve of a great bridge. After all, thought
Catherine, there was air in the bedrooms--you couldn't expect birch
trees and stars in the city--and they did have distance and sometimes
the enchantment of the varying city from these windows. But it was
queer--she smiled as Spencer eyed her over his book--queer that beauty,
sunlight, air, should be things for which you paid money; that you had
to think yourself fortunate if you could afford one window which did
not open upon sordidness.

"Moth-er, do you think I'd get too wet if I just went outdoors for five
minutes?" Spencer was dolorous. "My throat is all stuffed up, and I'll
lose my muscle, just sitting still."

"No fun going out here," grumped Marian.

"In a little while I am going out shopping for dinner. Would you like
to go?"


VIII

In raincoats and rubbers, each with a bobbing umbrella, Catherine
sighing at the lost summer comfort of knickerbockers and boots, the
three went out into the rain. The children sparkled as if they had
escaped from jail. Spencer peered from under his umbrella at the heavy
sky.

"Mebbe when the tide turns the wind'll change," he said.

"Huh!" Marian giggled. "In the city? That's only in the country."

"I guess there is wind in town, too, and tides, aren't there, Moth-er?"

"Wind, all right!" The gust at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue caught
their umbrellas like chips. They ducked into the wet wind, rounded the
corner, and bent against it down the avenue.

"Isn't there any tide?" insisted Spencer.

"Yes, of course," Catherine answered, absently. Too far such a day, she
supposed, to go down to her old market. That restaurant had changed
hands again; a man behind the large window was even then drawing
outlines for new gilt letters. The same hairdresser, the same idle
manicure girl, intent on her own fingers, the drug store. They crossed
the street, their feet wobbling over the cobblestones, slipping through
the guttered water. There they were, at the market.

"Where's the kitty?" demanded Marian, her eyes bright in her
rose-tanned face.

"Kitty?" Catherine weighed the oranges in her fingers, and looked about
for a clerk.

"Why, yes, Muvver. That little gray kitty----"

"He'd probably be grown into an old gray alley cat by this time."

Catherine frowned a little over her list. She should have come out
earlier; everything looked wilted, picked over. Vitamins, calories, and
the budget. The old dreary business of managing decently, reasonably.
The country and a garden of your own did spoil you for these dejected
pyramids.

"There's another thing," she thought, as she watched the clerk hunt for
a satisfying head of lettuce, stripping off brownish, slimy leaves.
"When can I market, if I am downtown at nine? Perhaps this Miss Kelly
can do it, with Letty, as I always have done." A swift picture of
Letty in her go-cart, herself with the basket hanging from the handle.
Marketing had been her most intellectual pursuit.

Back to the meat counter, with its rows of purplish fowls, their
feathered heads languishing on their trussed wings, and the butcher,
wiping his hands on the apron spotted and taut over his paunch.

Marian, her eyes round and black, watched him sharpen his knife, while
Spencer lingered near the door. Spencer didn't, as he said, like dead
things. Neither did Catherine, shivering as the butcher shoved aside
the quivering lump of purplish-black liver. Queer, the forms that the
demands of ordinary living took; forms you never dreamed of, when you
entered living.

"We should have brought two baskets!" Catherine looked at the bundles.

"Send 'em over, lady?"

"It's so late."

"I can carry some, Moth-er." Spencer came back from his post at the
door.

Marian had the bag of oranges under her arm, Spencer the basket,
Catherine a huge bag of varied contents. A scramble at the door to open
the three umbrellas, and they started up the street, the wind gusty at
their heels.

"Be careful crossing the street," warned Catherine. Marian, darting
ahead, reached the curb, slipped, and sat down plump in a puddle, the
oranges rolling off, bright spots on the wet cobblestones. Marian,
dismayed, sat still, her mouth puckered.

Catherine pulled her to her feet with a hand abrupt, almost harsh. The
throbbing behind her temples which had begun the day before, in the
steady drive of closing the house and getting off, had increased to a
heavy drum. "Pick them up," she said. "Don't stand there like a ninny!"

Spencer's grin faded at the tone of her voice, and her flare of weary
temper subsided as she watched them scurry after the fruit. They stowed
the oranges into pockets, and corners of the basket.

Finally they were home again. Flora's loud "Glory, glory, halleleuia,"
swept down the hall as they opened the door, and Letty's accompaniment.

"She's found my drum!" Spencer fled to the kitchen, and a wail followed
as Letty was reft of her instrument.

Catherine pressed her lips firmly together as she hung her dripping
coat on the rack. "Steady," she said. "They are as tired as I am." Then
she thought: that's the great trouble with being a mother. You never
get away for a chance to sulk and indulge your bad temper.

Charles came in, with his blandest air of preoccupation. Flora had
prepared the dinner, and then gone home when her gentleman friend
called for her, to cook her own evening meal, leaving Catherine to
broil the steak and set things on the table. Since Letty had slept
so long, she was permitted to sit in her high-chair during dinner,
where she conducted an insuppressible and very little intelligible
conversation.

"She certainly needs training," declared Charles.

"She isn't often on hand for dinner," said Catherine, wearily.

Spencer and Marian cleared away the table, while Catherine bathed
Letty, deafening herself to the crash which came from the kitchen. What
had Marian dropped this time?

Then she heard them, chattering away to their father, with the
occasional interruption of Charles's deep laugh. She hung away Letty's
towels and garments, and let the water run for Marian's bath. Wasn't
that Kelly person coming in? Would she, Catherine wondered, give the
children their baths? Could she let anyone else do that? Those slender,
rounded bodies, firm, ineffably young and sweet, changing so subtly
from the soft baby curves of Letty into young strength. Oh, at every
second there waited for her some coil of sentiment, of devotion, to
hold her there, solid, unmoving, in the round of the past few years.

She was too tired to-night to think straight. She called Marian from
the door, and was answered by a demonstrating wail.

"Not yet, Muvver. I have to see my Daddy."

But at last both she and Spencer were bathed and in bed. As Catherine
turned out Spencer's light, she heard the doorbell.

"Who is it, Moth-er?" Spencer's head came up from his pillow.

"I don't know, son. But you go to sleep."

"Mother--" His voice was low, half ashamed. "Mother, what makes me ache
in here?"

"Where?" Catherine hung over his bed. He drew her hand to his chest.

"When I think about my porch--an' everything."

"You better think about something here, Spencer." Catherine's words
were tender. "Something you like here. That will cure your ache."

"But I can't think up anything to think about! You tell me something
nice----"

"'F you talk to Spencer, you'd ought to talk to me, too," came Marian's
sleepy protest from the adjoining room.

"Sh-h! You'll wake Letty." Catherine's mind moved numbly over Spencer's
city likes. "Spencer, you might think about Walter Thomas. You can see
him soon----"

"Well." Spencer sounded very doubtful. But Charles called her, and
Catherine said good night to him and to Marian.

It was Miss Kelly who had rung. Catherine sat down in the living room,
brushing her hair away from her face, to which weariness had given a
creamy pallor under the summer tan, and wished furiously that she was
not so tired, that she could see into this rather plump, sandy, stubby
person who sat opposite her, with calm, light blue eyes meeting her
gaze. She looked efficient, if not imaginative. Well, the children had
imagination enough, and if Henrietta thought Miss Kelly would do,
surely she would. Charles had retired into his study. Miss Kelly folded
her plump hands in her lap and looked down at her round, sensible shoes
as Catherine spoke of Dr. Gilbert's high recommendation.

She couldn't come before Monday. She liked nursing better, but the
hours were so uncertain, and her mother needed her. Yes, she had cared
for children before. She had always, for several years, had twenty-five
dollars a week, when she lived in her own home.

H-m, thought Catherine, that will make one large dent in my wages! But
I must have someone, and I can't fill my place for nothing. So Monday
morning, about eight. Too bad the children were in bed, but then on
Monday Miss Kelly could see them.

When Catherine had closed the door on the last descending glimpse of
Miss Kelly's round face behind the elevator grill, she hurried back to
the study. Charles looked up from his book.

"Did you like her, Charles? You do think she looks capable?"

"She has an air of honest worth." Charles laid aside his book. "Did you
hire her?"

Catherine nodded.

"I shouldn't care to have you supplanted by that face, if I were
Letty--or Spencer--or----"

Catherine moved around to the desk to the side of his chair, her
fingers twisting together in a nervous little gesture.

"She looks sensible and good natured, and Henrietta says she is fine.
I've got to try someone."

"I suppose you must."

Catherine, balancing on the edge of the desk, looked steadily at her
husband. He was holding his thoughts away from her, out of his eyes.

"It's mostly Letty, of course," she said. "The others will be in
school." She sighed. "She can come Monday, the day I start."

Then they were silent. Charles rubbed his thumb along the edge of his
book, and Catherine watched him, her gray eyes heavy.

No use talking about it to-night, when she was so tired. She pushed the
affair away.

"Poor Spencer is homesick for Maine," she said. "He wanted to know why
he ached----"

"He needs to get out with boys more," said Charles sharply. "He's too
notional for a boy his age."

Catherine felt a quick flicker of heat under her eyelids. Charles had
said that before this summer.

"I want him to be a man," he continued, "not a sentimental little fool."

"I think you needn't worry about that." Catherine was icy. Then
suddenly she slipped forward to the arm of his chair, her head down on
his shoulder, one hand up to his cheek. "Good Lord, I'm tired! Don't
talk about anything, or I'll fight!"

Charles pulled her down into his lap and held her close.

"That's more like it." His mouth was close to her ear. "Sitting off and
staring at me! Silly old girl----"

Catherine laughed, just a weak flutter of sound.

"Call me names! But hug me, tighter!" She laughed again. Words, she
thought--you can't get a person with words. They stand between you like
a wall.

"You'd better go to bed. You feel limp as a dead leaf."

"Yes." She stretched comfortably. "In a minute----"


IX

Catherine sat at one of the living room windows, the floor about her
chair littered with packages, the result of her shopping for the
children. She unwrapped them methodically, clipped a name from the
rolls of tape in her basket, and sewed the label in place. Spencer
Hammond; Marian Hammond; Letitia Hammond. She was thankful that none
of them had a longer name! After three gloomy days the sun shone
again, pricking out spots of red in the roofs of the distance, falling
in splotches of brilliance on the white stuff Catherine handled. The
children were playing in the dining room, where the east windows
admitted the broad shafts of sunlight. Poor kids! They had begged her
to go outdoors with them, but her mother had telephoned that she was
coming in.

Catherine had not known she was in town. She had been visiting her son
in Wisconsin, George Spencer. Catherine had seen little of that brother
since her own departure for college; he had married and gone west,
sending back, at astonishingly frequent intervals, photographs of his
increasing family. Mrs. Spencer visited him at least once each year,
returning always with delighted accounts of the children, of George's
business, of his wife.

Catherine folded the striped pajamas and laid them on the pile at her
right. Her thoughts drifted around her mother and the small apartment
in the Fifties where she kept house for Margaret, the youngest of the
family. Letty came in a little rush toward her.

"Letty draw." She spread the paper on Catherine's knee. "For Gram." Her
yellow head bent over it intently.

"What is it, Letty?" Catherine laid a finger softly on the little
hollow just at the base of Letty's neck, an adorable hollow with a
twist of pale hair above it.

"She says it's a picture of her fishing," called Marian. "Catching
cunners. But I'm painting a good picture of our house for Grandma----"

"Letty paint?" Letty looked up, her eyes crinkled.

"Grandma will like a drawing just as well." Catherine picked up a set
of rompers. "Mother's going to sew your name right on the band." Letty
watched a moment and then trudged back to her corner on the dining room
floor.

What would her mother think when Catherine told her of her plan?
Catherine's hands dropped into her lap. She wouldn't say much. She
never did. But that little crinkle of Letty's eyes was like hers! You
saw her laughing at you. Since her own marriage Catherine had wondered
about her mother, and the last few months, while she had struggled with
her moods and desires, she had found that the admiration she had always
felt had gathered a tinge of curiosity, or speculative wonder. How had
her mother attained the lively serenity, the animated poise, the quiet,
humorous tranquillity with which she bore herself? Catherine remembered
her father only as a somewhat irritable invalid; the accident which
had injured him and finally killed him had happened when she was
young, and Margaret a mere baby. And yet, somehow, her mother had
seemed to keep a whimsical invulnerability. She had sent them all to
college, however she had managed even before the cost of living gained
its ominous present-day sound. Only for the last few years, since
Margaret, the last of them, had grown into a youthfully serious welfare
worker, had Mrs. Spencer's income been adequate to the uses for it. And
yet--Astonishing adjustment, thought Catherine. As if she had found
what she most wanted in life. As if things outside herself couldn't
scratch her skin.

There was a scramble of children to the door at the ring of the bell,
and Catherine rose, her work sliding to the floor. They loved her,
the children. Was that the answer to her curiosity? That her mother
was essentially maternal? Catherine smiled as the delighted shouts of
greeting moved down the hall toward her. No, that wasn't the answer.
They had never felt, Catherine, or George, or Margaret, that they were
the core of her life; what was?

"Cathy, dear!" How pretty she was, thought Catherine, as she bent
to kiss her. A moment of encounter while she gazed at her; always
Catherine had to pause that moment to regather all the outward details
which during absence merged into her feeling of the person as a whole.
She hadn't remembered how dark the blue of her mother's eyes was. Or
was it only the small blue hat with the liberty scarf, and the new blue
cape?

"How smart you look!" she said. "And a new dress, too!"

Mrs. Spencer slipped off her cape with a little twirl. "Paris model,
reduced." She handed the cape to Spencer.

"It's pretty, Grandma." Marian touched the blue silk. "Little beads all
over the front."

"You certainly look well!" Mrs. Spencer settled herself in a rocker,
unpinned her veil, let Marian take her hat, and upon insistence from
Letty, allowed her to hold the silk handbag. "Now please put my things
all together, won't you?" She ran her fingers through her soft gray
hair. Catherine watched her with tender eyes. Something valiant about
those small hands, white and soft, with enlarged knuckles and fingers a
little crooked, marked by hard earlier years.

Not until after luncheon did Catherine talk with her mother. The
children had to show her their pictures; Charles came in, and Mrs.
Spencer wanted to know about his new work; dinner had to be planned.
Finally Letty was stowed away for her nap, and Spencer and Marian, with
the promise of a walk when she woke, went off to read.

"I'll help you with that sewing." Mrs. Spencer threaded her needle.
"You've done your shopping in a lump, haven't you? I thought you
usually made some of these things."

"I won't have time this year."

Catherine was half afraid to tell her. Her proposition sounded absurd,
as if she heard it through her mother's ears. But Mrs. Spencer listened
quietly.

"That's what Charles meant, then," she said.

"He spoke of it?" Catherine looked up.

"He asked if I had heard how modern you had suddenly become."

Catherine snapped her thread. She wondered why she had felt this
desperate need to make her mother approve of her scheme, and Charles,
too. Wouldn't approval come after she had carried it through, if she
could?

"Do you think me foolish--or wicked?"

Mrs. Spencer patted the tape into place on the blouse she held.

"Not at all, Cathy," she said.

"But you don't think I ought to do it?"

"That is for you to decide. You say you have found a nurse?"

"Yes."

"Did Dr. Henrietta Gilbert suggest this to you?"

Catherine's head came up at that, but her irritation scurried off into
amusement; her mother looked so guileless, stitching with busy fingers.

"You don't see, then, that I can't help it? That I must try something?
Oh, Mother, I've thought and thought----"

"Yes, that's just it. You think too much. You always thought, Cathy.
That's why I was relieved when you met Charles. You didn't think much
for a while, at least, and I hoped"--Mrs. Spencer was looking at her,
her head on one side, her eyes bright, her mouth turning up in a funny
little smile--"I hoped your thinking days were over. But it's in the
air so. Women seem to take pride in being restless, unhappy. We were
taught to consider that a sin."

"Is that why you're so nice?"

"No." Mrs. Spencer smiled. "Maybe my children were smarter than yours.
I didn't find them such bad company."

"Oh, that's not it!" Catherine cried out. Then she laughed. "Mother,
you're outrageous. You're making fun of me, just as if----"

"As if you wanted to be a missionary again."

"But I was only a child then. That was amusing."

"Yes. You didn't think so, then." Mrs. Spencer folded the blouse
neatly. "Hasn't Spencer grown tall! I see you're buying eleven-year-old
clothes for him."

"Well"--Catherine's mouth was stubborn--"I'll just have to show you!
And Charles, too. He thinks it's a whim, I know."

"He hasn't objected?"

"Oh, no. Not in words. He wouldn't."

"Poor Charles. These modern women in your own home!" Mrs. Spencer's
eyes crinkled almost shut. "Do you know why I came back early? Your
sister Margaret has a modern turn, too."

"But she's not in town yet."

"No. She wrote, asking if I wouldn't like to stay with George this
winter."

"Why?"

"I suppose she thinks a mother is a sort of nuisance. She wants to set
up housekeeping with her friend."

"The little wretch!"

"Not exactly. But I did want that apartment myself, as I am fond of it.
I think I'll take a roomer."

"Mother!" Catherine stared at her.

"She's been reading something a German wrote. What is his name? Freud.
She's been thinking, too, I am afraid."

Catherine was silent; she recognized her instinctive protest as a
flourish of habit, of righteousness for someone else. After all----

"She needn't be so apologetic," said Mrs. Spencer deliberately. "If she
doesn't need me, I shall be glad to find someone nearer my own age."

Letty's deep voice announced her awakening. Mrs. Spencer decided to
walk over to Riverside with Catherine and the children, as she could
go on downtown from there by bus. After several minutes of agitated
preparation, a frantic search for roller skates, they were in the hall,
Letty rolling noisily along on her wooden "Go-Duck," her busy legs
waving like plump antennæ. Catherine held the strap of Marian's skates
firmly; Marian was all for skating right down the hall. Then, just as
the elevator came, Catherine remembered that she hadn't paid Flora for
the week.

Flora's gold tooth flashed as Catherine handed her the money.

"I certainly is obliged," she said. "My frien' and I, we're going on
the Hudson River boat to-morrow, and I suspicions he's short of cash."

"You'll be in early on Monday, Flora? Miss Kelly is coming, and she'll
need you to show her about things."

"Sakes, yes. You can go about your business, Mis' Hammond, with a light
soul."

Flora was delighted at this venture of Catherine's. Catherine thought,
a little grimly, as she hurried after the family, that Flora was the
only one in the house who was pleased. It's her dramatic sense, she
speculated, waiting for the elevator. I wish I had more of it myself,
and Charles, too.

The sharp blue clarity of the air was like a sudden check rein, pulling
Catherine's head up from doubtful thoughts. As they waited at Amsterdam
Avenue for the car to rumble past, she glanced up the street; in the
foreground the few blocks of sharp descent, and then the steady climb
for miles, off to the distance where street and marginal buildings
seemed as blue as the sky. It was like a mountain, with blue-gray
shadows across the canyon of the street, and jagged cliffs of buildings
merging into solid rock up the slope. She reached for the head of
Letty's red duck. "You better walk across the street, Letty."

"No! Ducky go!" and bumping over the cobblestones it went, propelled
vigorously, while Spencer and Marian stumbled along on their skates.

The walk through the half block of park behind the University buildings
was smooth sailing. Catherine and her mother followed the children.
"Wait for us at the gate!" warned Catherine.

At last they were across the Drive and safe on the lower walk of the
park.

"Here's my old bench." Catherine sat down with her mother. "I can see
clear to those steps from here."

Spencer was off with a whoop, his figure balancing surely as he sped.
Marian chased him, a determined erectness in her body. Letty paddled
after them, chanting loudly to her duck.

"When school opens," Catherine sighed, "they'll have some exercise,
poor chickens. City life isn't easy for them."

"It's no place for children." Mrs. Spencer watched a passing group, a
beruffled little girl yanking fretfully at the hand of her nurse, a
small, fat boy howling in tearless monotony. "Not even a yard."

"We talked about a suburb last year. But Charles hates the idea of
commuting, and he is so busy with his additional work that he'd never
be home at all."

"Won't you miss these little expeditions with your children?"

Catherine looked hastily at her mother. But the bright blue eyes were
apparently intent on a tug steaming along the river. The tide was
running swiftly down, swirling off into the quiet water near shore bits
of refuse, boxes, sticks, which caught the sun in dazzling sham before
they drifted into ugly lack of movement.

"They don't need me when they are playing here," said Catherine.
"Anyone would do, just to watch them."

"I wonder," said her mother. "I see some of these nurses do outlandish
things."

"Miss Kelly looks intelligent and kind." Again stubbornness in
Catherine's mouth, in her lowered eyelids. "And I might as well admit,
I'm reaching the place where I won't be either of those things. You'd
be ashamed of your daughter if you knew how peevish she can get!"

"Catherine, dear"--Mrs. Spencer laid her hand softly on Catherine's--"you
know I don't mean to interfere. But are you sure you haven't just caught
the general unrest, in the air and everywhere?"

"Where did it come from?" The children were coasting toward them, down
the little hill. "Why do I feel it?"

"Oh, the war, no doubt."

"The war! Blame that for my hatred of this dreadful monotony, my lack
of self-respect, my--my grubby, dingy, hopeless feeling!"

"I can see you have your mind made up." Mrs. Spencer caught Marian as
she tumbled, laughing, against the seat.

"I beat Spencer back!"

"Come on and I'll beat up the hill!" Spencer wiggled to a standstill.

A wail went up. Letty and her duck were upside down, a jumble of legs
and red wheels. Spencer clattered away to rescue her, Marian after him.

Mrs. Spencer began with a little chuckle a story of George's two
youngest children. Catherine relaxed, content to leave her own problem.
Her mother had said all she meant to say. The sun dropped lower and
lower, until it seemed to catch on the sharp margin of the New Jersey
shore and hang there, red, for long minutes. The tide had slackened and
the water caught a metallic white luster. The park was almost deserted
now. Finally Catherine called the children. They came; she smiled at
their scarlet cheeks and clear eyes, their smudged hands and knees.

"Home now, and dinner."

"See the gold windows!" Spencer pointed to the massed gray buildings
above the park.

"That's the sun," explained Marian, panting up the steps.

They waited with Grandmother until a bus lumbered to a halt, and they
could wave her off down the Drive.


X

Charles came into the hall as they entered, clattering skates and duck.

"Hello!" He pinched Letty's cheek. "Where you been?" He moved close to
Catherine and continued, in a confidential undertone, "I thought you'd
be here. I brought Miss Partridge in. Don't you want her to stay to
dinner?"

Catherine, with a swift glance at the disheveled group, and a swifter
consideration of food--what had she told Flora to prepare?--shrugged.

"Of course," she said. She concealed a secret grin at the relief which
ran over Charles's nonchalance. In the old days--how long ago!--one of
her most sacred lares had been just that, that Charles should feel free
as air about bringing any one in at any time. What was home for? But
with three children, perhaps she burned less incense at that altar. She
was moving toward the door of the living room as she thought.

"Here's my wife and family, Miss Partridge."

"I am glad you waited for us." Catherine disengaged herself from
Letty's fingers and went to meet the woman who was rising from the
window. "I have wished to meet you." Catherine smiled as she spoke; her
smile touched her face with a subtle irradiance, charming, completely
personal. She's younger than I had supposed, Catherine was thinking,
and quite different.

"Dr. Hammond urged me to wait." Her voice was clear and hard, like a
highly polished instrument. Her manner was as cool and detached as the
long white hand she extended. "And this is the family?"

"Letitia, Marian, and Spencer," announced Charles. Catherine watched
them make their decorous greetings with a little flicker of pride.
Sometimes Marian had ridiculous fits of shyness and wouldn't curtsey.
"You'll have to test them, Miss Partridge," Charles went on. "See if my
paternal bias misled me in my tests. Their I.Q.'s seem satisfactory."

"Of course they would!" Miss Partridge's smile lifted her short upper
lip from a row of even teeth so shining that they looked transparent.
"Such a handful must keep you busy, Mrs. Hammond. You've just come in
from the country, haven't you?"

"Good Lord!" thought Catherine. "I'm to be treated like an adoring
mother." Her level glance met the dark brown eyes for an instant; she
felt a queer clatter, as if she had struck metal. Aloud she said,
"Won't you have dinner with us, Miss Partridge? I should enjoy hearing
your side of all these new schemes."

"That's it." Charles was hearty, insistent. "Let me take your wraps."

Elegant, slim, in soft taupe tailor-made, close-fitting velour hat.
She gets herself up well; Catherine was aware suddenly of her own
appearance in rough tweed coat and last year's hat with its bow of
ribbon rather wilted. Not so hasty, she warned herself; look out, or
you'll have a rooted dislike out of this feeling. Queer, how some women
heighten their femininity by tailored clothes. Miss Partridge, without
a demur, had stripped off her jacket and removed her hat. Her blouse of
dull gleaming silk fitted closely about her throat, her dark hair was
wound in a heavy braid about her smooth, small head; lovely skin, with
a pale luster. Catherine noted in a flash the heavy jade cuff links,
the small bar of jade that fastened the collar, the chain of dull
silver and jade which looped into the belt. She's the sort that affects
the masculine for more subtle results, was the swift conclusion, as she
ushered the children out of the room.

It was a nuisance, having a maid who couldn't stay to serve dinner.
But in other ways Flora couldn't be touched, and they did like not
having to house her. Catherine heard the tone of that clear, hard
voice as she moved from bathroom to kitchen, lighting the gas under
the vegetables, supervising Letty's supper and bath. Is she brilliant,
or shrewd, she wondered, as she directed Spencer in his grave attempt
to lay another place at the table. She is young to have achieved her
reputation. Has she one, or has she made Charles think she has? Don't
be a cat!

At last Letty was in bed, the children were clean, the chops were
broiled, the corn steamed on the platter, and with a last glance at the
table, Catherine went to the living room door.

"Dinner is ready," she said. "We have a maid by the day, who goes home
at six," she explained, and then stopped. She wouldn't apologize!

As they seated themselves, Letty's shout broke across the hall.

"Lady kiss duck! Lady kiss Ducky goo' ni'."

"Spencer, please tell Letty we are at dinner."

But Letty's shout gained energy.

"That's one of her rites," said Charles. "Miss Partridge might as well
be initiated at once. Come along!"

Catherine laughed at Marian's distressed face.

"Muvver, isn't Letty _awful_! A strange lady----"

Charles and Miss Partridge were back, and Marian sank into embarrassed
silence.

"Isn't she an amusing baby, Mrs. Hammond!" Miss Partridge unfolded her
napkin with a lazy gesture; her smile disclosed her teeth, without
touching her large dark eyes.

"She's the most stubborn one of the family," said Charles.

It was difficult to play a continuous part in the conversation when
you had to leave half your mind free for food and drink, thought
Catherine, as dinner moved along under her guidance. She didn't, she
discovered, know half that Charles had been doing all summer. Miss
Partridge had assisted in the summer-school work, to begin with. Time
for salad, now. Spencer helped clear the first course away, breathing
heavily as he pondered over his movements with the plates and silver.
Catherine brought in the huge green bowl, filled with crisp, curling
leaves, and Spencer followed with the plates of cheese and crackers.
As Catherine poured the dressing over the leaves and stirred them, her
hands moving with slow grace, she picked up the threads of the talk.
Miss Partridge thought a family must be illuminating; you could watch
instincts unfold. And Charles--"I tried Spencer, to see if he had that
prehistoric monkey grip, and Catherine thought I was endangering his
life. But you're so busy keeping them fed and happy that you haven't
time to experiment."

When dinner was over, Catherine stood in the living room door.

"If I may be excused for a few minutes," she said.

"Is it dishes, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Partridge turned from the window,
where Charles had been pointing out the view. "I'm not a bit domestic,
but I think I could wipe them."

"Oh, no, thank you." Catherine smiled. "Just the children."

They were in Spencer's room, arguing in low tones about which chair
Marian was to have. Catherine adjusted the reading lamp, suggested that
Spencer curl up on the end of his bed. "Now you may read for a whole
hour," she said. "Then Marian must bathe. If you will call me, I'll rub
your back for you." She started toward the door. "You will be quiet,
won't you," she asked, "since we have a guest?"

"Of course, Muvver," said Marian. "Isn't she a handsome lady?"

"No, she isn't," said Spencer, loudly.

"Remember Letty's asleep just next door."

Catherine stopped outside their closed door. They were quiet, dropping
at once into their stories. Good children. She brushed her hair from
her forehead with an impatient hand. "I feel like--like a nonentity!"
she raged. "Almost as if I were invisible. Not there to be even looked
at. Perhaps I am jealous, but it doesn't feel like that. She's not the
vamp type. Too smooth and egoistic. It's what Charles can do for her,
not Charles that she is after. O, well----"

But before she had returned to the living room the bell rang. Henrietta
and Bill!

Catherine held out her hands, one to each, and drew them into the hall.

"You dears!" she cried. "I am glad to see you. Come in."

She stepped back into visibility with their entrance. Henrietta had
met Miss Partridge at Bellevue one day. William bowed with his usual
courtly silence.

"Did you like Miss Kelly?" demanded Henrietta, as she settled into the
wing chair before Miss Partridge had it again. "She came in, didn't
she?"

"She's coming Monday."

"Is Monday the great day?" Bill was looking at her, and Catherine
smiled swiftly at the warm, quiet friendliness of his eyes.

"Monday!" she declared. "I telephoned Dr. Roberts this morning."

"Isn't it fine, Miss Partridge"--Henrietta turned briskly to her--"this
move of Mrs. Hammond's."

"I haven't heard about it." Miss Partridge's dark, smooth brows lifted.

Did Charles look uneasy, almost guilty, as he stretched out in his
armchair and fumbled in the box of cigars?

"You haven't?" Henrietta grinned slyly at Catherine. "Haven't you heard
that Mrs. Hammond is renouncing the quiet, domestic life for a real
job?"

"Why not say exchanging jobs?" Charles was intent on the end of his
cigar.

"Or annexing a second job?" That was Bill's quiet voice.

"I am going to work at the Lynch Bureau," explained Catherine, "as
investigator." She felt a flash of delight in the astonishment which
rippled briefly over Miss Partridge's smooth face. Knocked down her
first impression, she thought maliciously.

"Really? How interesting!" Miss Partridge smiled. "But what will your
sweet children do?"

"They'll go to school and have an efficient nurse," said Henrietta
abruptly, "and they'll be vastly better off when they aren't having
the sole attention of an intelligent woman like their mother. And
that's that!" She dangled her glasses over her forefinger. "Did you
decide that girl was malingering, Miss Partridge? She certainly had no
physical symptoms. Just a case we ran into the other day," she added,
to Catherine.

Charles, in answer to a query from Bill, had started a long and eager
explanation of an industrial test he had been working up.

Catherine noticed that even as Miss Partridge answered Henrietta's
question, her eyes had turned to Charles and Bill. "Is your husband a
doctor, too?" she finished.

"Heavens, no! Bill couldn't be anything so personal as a doctor."
Henrietta laughed. "Could he, Catherine? He's an engineer."

And presently, maneuvering cleverly, Miss Partridge was talking
industrial tests with Charles, while Bill, puffing on his old pipe, let
his half-shut eyes rest on her face, and then move across to Catherine.
Was he smiling?

Marian's call came just then, and Catherine rose.

"May I come along, Catherine? I haven't seen the kids since that night
in Maine." Henrietta stopped at Spencer's door, and as Catherine draped
Marian's slim body in the huge bath towel, she heard Spencer's eager
voice and Dr. Henrietta's bluff tone. Marian, her face rosy and her
dark hair rumpled, threw herself into Henrietta's arms. "Hello, my
Doctor!" she cried.

They had a moment in the hall, when Henrietta looked firmly into
Catherine's eyes.

"You stop your worrying," she said. "You won't swing your job unless
you are clear of doubts. Brace up!" Her hand clasped Catherine's. "If I
can help you any way, be sure you let me know."

"Oh, you are a brick!" Catherine's fingers were convulsive. "I do need
you!"

The three in the living room looked up at their entrance.

"Spencer sent you his regards, Bill. He wished me to tell you that he
thought the cows recovered from the alarm your car caused them."

Bill removed his pipe, a slow smile on his gaunt face.

"What cows?" demanded Charles.

"Ghost cows, Charles. Not in your lexicon. But we felt them in that old
barn, behind those stanchions."

When they had gone, Charles followed Catherine into the dining room,
gathered a handful of coffee cups, and walked after her into the
disorderly kitchen.

"What'd you think of her?" he asked, casually.

"Her being the cat?" Catherine grinned at him. She was at ease again,
confident, the sense of nonentity gone.

"Oh, Stella Partridge, of course. Fine person, isn't she! No nonsense
about her. Mind like a man's."

"Is it?" Catherine stacked the dishes in the sink.

"Has the qualities which are conventionally labeled masculine. Like
that better?"

The clatter of the garbage pail cover served for Catherine's answer.

"Bill's a queer duck, now, isn't he?" Charles lolled against the table,
his long body making a hazardous oblique angle. "Never can make up my
mind whether it's shyness or laziness."

"I don't think it's either of those things, if you mean his lack of
loquaciousness."

"Loquaciousness!" Charles threw back his head in a laugh. "That's some
word to use about Bill!"

"I suppose I might as well wash these confounded dishes to-night."
Catherine turned the faucet and the water splashed into the sink.

"Where's your dusky maiden?"

"To-morrow's Sunday."

"Oh, say, it's too bad I brought a guest in to-night, eh?" Charles
waited comfortably for her assurance that it wasn't too bad.

"We'd hate the mess in the morning," was Catherine's dry retort.

Charles was in extraordinary humor, the purring kind, thought
Catherine, as her hands moved deftly among the dishes. And I'm not. I
feel as if I should like to yell! She bent more swiftly to her task.
Charles straightened his long angle and reached for a dish towel.
He needn't be magnanimous about wiping dishes! As he rubbed the
towel round and round a plate, he began to sing. Somewhere--rub--the
sun--rub--is shi-i-ining--rub! And Catherine had, suddenly, a flash of
a picture, smarting in her throat. The shabby little flat where they
had first lived, before Spencer was born; Charles wiping the dishes,
singing, and Catherine singing with him, ridiculous old hymns and
sentimental tunes. And always after the occasional guests had gone, the
"gossip party," as they labeled it, speculation, analysis, discussion
of the people who had gone, friendly, shrewd, amusing, ending when the
dish towel was flapped out and the dish-pan stowed under the sink with
the ritualistic but none the less thrilling, "There's no one can touch
my girl for looks or charm or brains!" and Catherine's, "I'm sorry for
everyone else--because they can't have you!"

Charles was echoing that old custom. But he didn't realize it. And
Catherine thought, with a stabbing bitterness, "He has this feeling of
comfort, not because we are here together, but because the evening has
pleased him."

"What do you think is Bill's secret, then?" Charles broke out.

"He's thinking of something else, not of that; he's keeping me off his
real center," hurried Catherine's thoughts. "I won't be horrid and
cross."

"Isn't it lack of conceit?" She reached for the heavy frying pan. "Most
of us have to talk to assert ourselves, to make folks listen to us.
Bill hasn't any ego----"

"Oh, he's got one, all right." Charles balanced the pile of dishes
precariously near the edge of the table. "Looks more conceited just to
sit around with that cryptic expression----"

"I don't think so!" Catherine scrubbed vigorously at the sink. "He
never looks critical."

"Couldn't get a harsh word out of you about Bill, could I?" Charles
jested a little heavily. "He's always been that way, ever since he was
a kid."

"Now when Miss Partridge"--Catherine resisted the impulse to say "your
Miss Partridge"--"when she is silent, she looks too superior for words."

"Nonsense! I felt you were misjudging her. Now, she's awake, ready to
talk----"

"About herself."

"Meow!" Charles grinned. "Though we did talk a good deal about the
work. But, of course, that's only natural."

"She didn't even see me until Henrietta pointed at me and yanked me out
of the pigeon-hole where she had me stuck."

"I hope you aren't going to dislike her, Catherine." Charles was
serious. "Since I have to see her in connection with the clinic, it
might be awkward----"

"Thank the Lord, those are done!" Catherine turned from the sink.
"Don't worry, old thing," she said, lightly. "I don't hate her. We
never have insisted on love me, love all my dogs, you know."

"I thought you'd appreciate her." Charles was sulky.

"She's extremely handsome."

"She's as warm hearted as she is brilliant, too."

"Like a frog, she is!" thought Catherine. But she reached for the
button and snapped out the light.

"I'll hurry with my shower," she said, preceding him up the hall. "Then
you can have the tub. It's late."

The bathroom was littered with the children's discarded clothes. Little
sluts! thought Catherine, gathering socks and shirts and bloomers. My
fault, I suppose. I can't make 'em neat! Like a nice warm tub myself,
she growled, but Charles is waiting. Someone's always waiting.

She sat in the dark by the window in their room, while Charles splashed
and hummed. Yellow cracks edged a few of the windows of the opposite
wall, not many, as it was so late. Above the rim of the building she
could see one great blue-white star with a zigzag of pale stars after
it. Vega, she thought. Smiting its--what is it? Wonder if you could see
stars at noon from the bottom of this court? It's like a well. She drew
her dressing gown close over her throat. It feels nasturtium colored,
even in the dark, she thought, running her fingers over the heavy silk.
Her one extravagance last spring, lovely flame-orange thing. Why, she
hadn't braided her hair. Her fingers were tired. They moved idly
through the heavy softness.

Her elbows on the window sill, she stared up at the star. Monday, she
thought. Monday I shall have something else to think about. Just as
Charles does. This dreadful mulling over words and looks, hanging on
the wave of an eyelash. That's what women do, poor fools, trying to
keep all the first glamor. Love. She heard the water gulping out of the
tub. Love needs to be back of your days, _there_, but not the thing
you feed on every second. Terrible indigestion, eating your heart out
forever. Ugh, the sill was gritty with dust. She rubbed her elbows
resentfully. That song Charles had hummed in the kitchen had sent her
back through the years. She hadn't wanted anything else in those days.
Passion, its strange, erratic light making everything else seem tinsel.
Tenderness, making all else in life seem cold. And quarrels--the still,
white silence, swift product of some unexpected moment, so that you
felt yourself imprisoned in an iceberg, from which you never could
escape--that was part of the struggle of admitting another person, your
lover, into yourself. And child-bearing. Peculiar, ecstatic, difficult;
commonplace physical preoccupation for long stretches of your life.
Catherine shrugged. Perhaps, if you weren't husky--she twisted from her
cramped position--perhaps some women never got over childbirth. It did
eat you up. Her mother would say she was thinking too much. She rose,
stretching her arms above her head, the silk slipping away from them.
Then, as she heard Charles scuffling along the hall--he did need some
new slippers--suddenly her heart opened and poured a golden flood over
her being. Why, now, this instant, she loved him, and all the earlier
passion was a thin tinkle against this sound--sunlight in the wide
branches of a tree, and cold earth deep about the roots, and liquid sap
flowing.

Her fingers closed about the crisp curtain edge as Charles pushed open
the door.

"You in bed?" His whisper was cautious. "Oh, no." He snapped on the
light, while Catherine gazed at him, waiting. His pink pajama coat
flopped open.

"There isn't a damned button on the thing. Got a pin?" He shuffled
across to the dressing table. "My wife's been to the country."

"Poor boy." Catherine rushed to the sewing table in the corner. "I'll
sew 'em on if your wife won't." Ridiculous, enchanting. She pulled
him down beside her on the bed, seized the coat, burying her knuckles
against the hard warmth of his chest. "Don't wriggle, or you'll have it
sewed to your diaphragm."

Charles was silent. Catherine's wrist flexed slowly with the drawing of
the thread. It's like weaving a spell, she thought, with secret passes
of my hand, to melt that hard resentment he won't admit. She broke the
thread and glanced up. Charles, with a quick motion, laid his cheek
against the sweet darkness of her hair.

"First time you've so much as seen me since you came back," he said.

"Too bad about you!" Catherine jeered softly.


XI

"It's the Thomases on the 'phone." Charles came out of the study. "They
want us to come out this afternoon to see their house."

"Out where?" Catherine looked up from her book, while Spencer and
Marian fidgeted for the reading to continue.

"Croton. They've moved, you know. Bought a farm."

"Walter Thomas?" asked Spencer. "Has he got a farm?"

"Thomas says there are trains every hour, and we can stay for
Sunday-night supper."

"But the children----"

"I thought your mother was coming in."

"She may not wish to stay late."

"Well, you'll have to decide. Thomas is waiting. It would be rather
nice to get out of town for a few hours."

Catherine's brows drew together.

"We're all right," said Marian. "Go on away!"

"Yes, you are." Catherine sighed briefly. Charles had his air of "Are
you going to deprive me of a pleasant hour?"

"You wouldn't go without me?" she asked. "Tell Mr. Thomas that if
mother wishes to stay, we'll come. We can telephone him."

Mrs. Spencer said she would like nothing better than a chance at the
children without their interfering parents, and in the late afternoon
Catherine and Charles set forth. The cross-town car was jammed;
Catherine, from an uncomfortable seat just under the conductor's fare
box, watched the people about her with remote eyes. She hated these
humid, odorous jams. She always crawled off into a dark corner of
herself, away from the jostling and pushing of her body. Heavy, dull
faces--she lifted her head until her eyes could rest on the firm
solidity of Charles's shoulder and head. Nothing professorial about
that erect head, the edge of carefully shaved neck between collar
and clipped fair hair that showed under the soft gray hat. But even
the back of his head looked intelligent, alive. He turned suddenly,
and over the crowd their eyes met in a mysteriously moving flare
of acknowledgment. He grinned at her--he knew her hatred of such
crowds; and turned away again. Catherine shivered a little. That was
what she wanted to keep, that awareness of each other, that intimate
self-recognition. She couldn't keep it if she was worn down into
dullness and drabness and stupidity. She had, she knew, stirred Charles
out of his easy acceptance of her as an established custom, and for the
day, at least, she had submerged his resentment. As the car stopped
under the tracks she was thinking, if I can win him over to believe in
what I am, what I want, inwardly, in his feeling, not in words,--then I
can do anything!

They sat together on the train and talked. Charles had spent one Sunday
during the summer with the Thomases; they had a tennis court and
chickens. Thomas had been promoted to Assistant Professor, but he kept
his extension classes still, as the oldest boy was entering college
this fall.

"He was crazy about some old French verse forms that day. Couldn't talk
about anything else. Mrs. Thomas wanted to talk about the refinishing
of the walls."

"I'll wager she did. Verse forms interest her only as a means to the
salary end."

"But she's a fine type of woman, don't you think?"

Catherine shrugged.

"She's about as intellectual as a--a jellyfish. She's not a jellyfish,
though."

"Thomas gets enough enjoyment from his own mind."

They walked from the station through the crowded, dingy houses near
the river, climbed a long hill, and at the top found the country, soft
and lovely in the hazy September sunlight. As they climbed, the river
dropped beneath them, opal-blue and calm, the hollows of the wooded
Westchester hills gathered purple shadows, and on the slopes toward
which they climbed a branch of maple flamed at times like a shrill,
sweet note in the mellow silence.

"It must be good for their children, living out here." Charles sniffed
at the air. "Smell that wood smoke! Bonfires, and nuts----"

"How'd you like to climb that hill every night?"

"Thomas has a flivver. There, you can see the house through those
poplars."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Thomases were on the porch, rising to meet them with a flurry of
innumerable children and dogs and cats. Mrs. Thomas, small, pink,
worried, with curly gray hair and a high voice; Mr. Thomas, of
indifferent stature, with an astonishingly large head, smooth dark
hair, nearsighted eyes behind heavy glasses, and a large, gentle mouth;
the children--there were only five, after all, from Theodore, the
eldest, who was curly and pink like Mrs. Thomas, down to Dorothy, the
youngest, who already wore glasses as thick as her father's.

"I wanted Theodore to drive down for you, but you said you wanted to
walk." Mrs. Thomas jerked the chairs into companionable nearness.
"Quite a climb up our hill."

"Mrs. Thomas can't imagine any one liking to walk," said her husband.

"Not a mother and wife, at least. Men don't know what being on their
feet means, do they, Mrs. Hammond?"

Inquiries about the children, mutually. Admiration expressed for the
view, for the house, room by room, for the poultry run which Theodore
had constructed, for the tennis court, for the asparagus bed.

"Now that the Cook's Tour is ended, what about something to eat,
Mother?"

The dining room was small, and warm from the sunning of the afternoon;
the Thomas children chattered in high voices; Catherine sighed in
secret as she looked at the elaborate salad, the laborious tiny
sandwiches, the whipped-cream dessert in the fragile stemmed sherbet
glasses, the frosted cake. But Mrs. Thomas, the lines in her pink
cheeks a trifle more distinct, hovered in anxious delight over each
step in the progress of this evidence of her skill and labor.

"No, Dorothy, no cake. She has to be very careful of sweets, they upset
her so easily. Do your children hanker for everything they shouldn't
have?"

Theodore broke in with an account of the psychological tests he had
taken for college entrance; there was a suggestion of pimples on his
round, pink chin. Walter wanted to know when Spencer could come out;
Walter was Spencer's age, a chubby, choleric boy who kept rabbits and
sold them to the neighbors for stews. Clara, just older, had reached an
age of gloomy suspicion; her hair, which her mother was allowing to
grow, now that Clara was older, fell about her thin shoulders in lank
concavity. Catherine wondered whether the contention between Marian and
Spencer sounded to outsiders like the bickering which ran so strongly
here. Dorothy was a year older than Letty, but she did not talk so
plainly. And that other boy, Percy--why name him that!--was being sent
away from the table because he had pinched Clara.

Inevitably the talk stayed on the level of the children, in spite of
attempted detours on the part of Charles. Mr. Thomas ate with an absent
myopic eye on Dorothy and the next older boy.

But when at length they left the dining room, he was saying to Charles,
"You recall those songs I spoke of? Thirteenth century? I've found
a girl who does beautiful translations. A graduate student. She has
an astonishing sense for the form." He had come alive, suddenly, the
blank, gentle mask of his face breaking into sharp, vivid animation.
Catherine watched him, peering at his wife, glancing back at him. She
didn't care about the old verse forms, neither did his wife; but his
wife didn't care that he could come alive like that, apart from her.
Perhaps when they are alone, thought Catherine, he has some feeling for
her that compares with this--but I doubt it!

"He's as keen about those musty old papers as if they were worth huge
sums." Mrs. Thomas laid her hand on Catherine's arm, as they stood on
the edge of the porch, looking far down the valley. Mrs. Thomas had a
way of offering nervous little caresses. "Men are queer, aren't they?"
Her forehead puckered.

Catherine endured the hand, light, with an insinuating effect of a
bond between them, the bond of their sex. We women understand, those
fingers tapped softly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, half defiantly, in answer to a suggestion of Mrs. Thomas that
Catherine take her place on the faculty women's committee for teas,
Catherine explained that she would be much too busy. She saw in the
quick pursing of Mrs. Thomas's little mouth the contraction of her
eyelids, the rapid twists her announcement made as it entered Mrs.
Thomas's mind. Disapproval, hearty and determined; a small fear,
quickly over, lest some discredit reflect on her position; a chilly
covering of those emotions with her words, "Why, Mrs. Hammond, you've
seemed so devoted to your children!"

"Naturally." Catherine was curt. "I am. But they needn't suffer, any
more than they did before while Charles was in France and I worked. I
can't see any loss to them."

"I hope you won't regret it." Mrs. Thomas drew her own brood into a
symbolic shelter, as she flung her arm around Dorothy, who was at her
knee with a picture book, clamoring unintelligibly to be read to.

"Fine for you, Hammond. A family needs several wage earners, in these
postwar days."

Charles laughed, but Catherine saw the flicker of uneasiness in his
face.

"But I'd hate to have to find a cook to supplant Mrs. Thomas."

"Ah, but you see, I can't cook that way." Catherine's lightness covered
the glance she sped at Charles. She hadn't, then, touched his real
feeling about this. Just a scratch, and she could see it.

"I don't know what's to become of us poor men"--he rose lazily--"unless
we turn into housewives."

"You better take a turn at it, just to see what it's like." That was
Mrs. Thomas, vigorously exalting her ability.

"It was called husbandry once, wasn't it?" Mr. Thomas smiled in
enjoyment of his joke. "Must you go? It's very early. Let us drive you
down."

"The walk will be just what we need----"

The evening was soft and black, with faint rustle in the autumn-crisped
leaves of the trees that massed against the blue-black sky. Below them
the river gleamed silver-dark. They went in silence down the hill, the
gravel slipping under their heels. Then Catherine felt Charles groping
for her hand, the warm pressure of his fingers.

"Rummy bunch of kids," he said. And then, "That woman can cook, but
that's about all. She can't impart gentle manners." Catherine relaxed
in content. He wasn't huffy. "Too bad you have to tell people like that
what you're going to do. Let 'em see after you've succeeded, I say!"

"Oh!" Catherine's voice was sharp with delight. "You think I will!"

"Lord, yes. Of course. You've got the stuff."

Their clasped hands swinging like children's, they came to the foot of
the hill.



PART II

BOTH ENDS OF THE CANDLE


I

Catherine clicked the telephone into place on her desk and sat for a
moment with her hands folded on the piles of paper before her. Her
cheeks felt uncomfortably warm. Ridiculous, that Dr. Roberts should
have come to the door just as she told Charles where to find the shirts
he wanted! He might have found them if he had tried. She wondered
whether her voice had conveyed her embarrassment; Charles had said
good-by abruptly. He was sorry not to see her, but he had to catch the
one o'clock for Washington. No, he couldn't stop for luncheon with her.
He might be back Sunday night. She had a vivid picture of him, plowing
through drawers and closets in frantic search for things right under
his nose.

Her hand reached for the telephone. She would call him for a moment,
just for a good-by not so hasty. But Dr. Roberts, in the doorway,
clearing his throat, said, "Can you let me have those tables now, Mrs.
Hammond?" He pulled a chair to the opposite side of the desk and sat
down. Charles and the messy packing of his handbag disappeared from
Catherine's thoughts. She spread several sheets of figures between
them, the flustered shadow in her eyes gone, and hard clarity in its
place. Dr. Roberts, head of the educational section of the Lynch Bureau
of Social Welfare, was a dapper little man with a pointed beard, whose
fussy, henlike manner obscured the intelligent orderliness of his mind.

"The state laws of requirements for teachers." Catherine pointed to one
table. "County requirements, country schools. I made a separate table
for each. Now I'll work out a comparative table."

"Excellent. Clear, graphic. May I take those?" He rose. "If you aren't
working with them now?"

"No. I'm going through these catalogues now." The dusty pile was at
her elbow. "If I may have those sheets this afternoon, I'll try some
graphs."

When he had gone, Catherine's eyes rested briefly on the telephone.
Oh, well, Charles wouldn't want the interruption anyway. He would be
home again on Sunday. She opened the catalogue on top of the pile and
glanced through its pages, making swift notes on the pad under her hand.

Finally she leaned back in her chair, twisting her wrist for a glimpse
of her watch. Whew! Half past twelve, and she was to meet her sister
Margaret for luncheon. She stood a moment at the window. Beyond the
neighboring buildings the spires of the Cathedral splintered the
sunlight; a flock of pigeons whirled into view, their wings flashing
in the light, then darkening as they swirled and vanished--like the
cadence of a verse, thought Catherine. Far beneath her lay an angle
of the Avenue, with patches of shining automobile tops crawling in
opposing streams.

She gave a great sigh as she turned back to the office. A long, narrow
room, scarcely wider than the window, lined with shelves ceiling-high,
between them the flat desk piled with her work. Her work! Almost a week
of it, now, and already she had won back her old ability to draw that
thin, sliding wall of steel across her personal life, to hold herself
contained within this room and its contents.

She hadn't seen Margaret since her return from Maine. She was to meet
her at the St. Francis Luncheon Club for Working Women. As she stepped
into the sunlight of the street, the slow flowing of the emulsion of
which she was suddenly another particle, she had a sharp flash of
unreality. Was it she, walking there in her old blue suit, her rubber
heels padding with the other sounds, her eyes refocusing on distance
and color after the long morning? She loved the long, narrow channel
of the Avenue, hard, kaleidoscopic; the white clouds above the line of
buildings, the background of vivid window displays. She laughed softly
as she recalled the early days of the week. Rainy, to begin with.
She had thought, despairingly, that she couldn't swing the job. The
children stood between her and the sheets of paper. She had flown out
at noon to telephone Miss Kelly, to demand assurance that life in the
apartment hadn't gone awry in the four hours since she had left. Queer.
You seized your own bootstraps and lugged, apparently in vain, to lift
yourself from your habits of life, of thought, of constant concern,
and then, suddenly, you had done it, just when you most despaired.
She walked with a graceful, long stride, her head high. An excellent
scheme, Dr. Roberts had said. He had really entrusted her with the
entire plan for this investigation. And she could do it!

Margaret was waiting at the elevator entrance, a vivid figure in the
milling groups of befurbished stenographers and shoddier older women.
She came toward Catherine, and their hands clung for a moment. How
young she is, and invincible, thought Catherine, as they waited for
the elevator to empty its load. Margaret had Catherine's slimness
and erect height; her bright hair curled under the brim of her soft
green hat; there was something inimitably swagger about the lines of
her sage-green wool dress and loose coat, with flashes of orange in
embroidery and lining. In place of the sensitive poise of Catherine's
eyes and mouth, Margaret had a downright steadiness, an untroubled
intensity.

"How's it feel to be a wage-earner?" She hugged Catherine's arm as they
backed out of the pushing crowd into a corner of the car. "You look
elegant!"

"Scarcely that." Catherine smiled at her. "Now you do! Did you design
that color scheme?"

"I matched my best points, eyes and high lights of hair." Margaret
grinned. Her eyes were green in the shadow. "Ever lunched here? I
thought you might find it convenient. Lots of my girls come here."

They emerged at the entrance of a large room full of the clatter of
dishes and tongues.

"I'll take you in on my card to-day. If you like it, you can get one."
Margaret ushered Catherine into the tail of the line which filed slowly
ahead of them. "This is one of the gracious ladies--" Margaret shot
the half whisper over her shoulder, as she extended her green card.
"A guest, please." Catherine looked curiously at the woman behind the
small table; her nod in response to the professionally sweet smile was
curt.

"The patronesses take turns presiding," explained Margaret, as she
manipulated trays and silver. "That's the sweetest and worst. Notice
her dimonts!"

They found a table under a rear window, where they could unload
their dishes of soup and salad around the glass vase with its dusty
crêpe-paper rose.

"It's really good food," said Margaret, shooting the trays across the
table toward the maid. "And reasonable. It's not charity, though, and
the dames that run it needn't act so loving."

Two girls saw the vacant chairs at the table, and rushed for them.
One slipped her tweed coat back from shoulders amazingly conspicuous
in a beaded pink georgette blouse; the other opened her handbag for a
preliminary devotional exercise on her complexion.

Margaret hitched her chair closer to Catherine.

"Now tell me all about it." She tore the oiled paper from the package
of crackers; her hand had the likeness to Catherine's, and the
difference, which her face suggested. Fingers deft and agile, but
shorter, firmer, competent rather than graceful. "Mother says you've
hired a wet-nurse and abandoned your family. I didn't think you had it
in you!"

"I know. You thought I was old and shelved."

"Just a tinge of mid-Victorian habit, old dear."

"You young things need to open your eyes."

"I have opened 'em. See me stare!"

Were those girls listening? The georgette one was eying Margaret.
The other, her retouching finished, snapped her handbag shut and
began a story about the movies last night. Catherine was hungry; good
soup--why, it was fun to gather an unplanned luncheon on a tray in
this way.

"Your old job?" proceeded Margaret.

"A new study--teaching conditions in some middle-western states. I am
to organize the work."

Margaret's questions were direct, inclusive. She did have a clear mind.
Her business training has rubbed off all the blurry sentiment she used
to have, thought Catherine.

"And you can manage the family as well?"

"This woman Henrietta sent me is fine. It's a rush in the morning,
baths and breakfast. Flora can't come in until eight, and I have to get
away by half past eight. No dawdling."

"And the King doesn't mind?"

Catherine flushed. Margaret had dubbed Charles the King years ago, but
the nickname had an irritating flavor. "He's almost enthusiastic this
week," she said. "Now tell me about yourself. What's this about your
leaving Mother?"

"Oh, I thought she might like to stay with George. Instead of that,
she's turned me out, neck and crop, and taken on a lady friend. I'm
house-hunting." Margaret laughed. "Trust Mother! You can't dispose of
her."

"But I thought you were so comfortable----"

"Too soft. You don't know--" Margaret was serious. "I can't be babied
all my life. All sorts of infantile traits sticking to me. You got
away."

"Mother said you'd been reading a foreigner named Freud."

"Well!" Margaret was vigorously defensive. "What of it?"

Catherine dug her fork into the triangle of cake.

"I thought Freud was going out. Glands are the latest."

"I bet Charles said that." Margaret grinned impishly as she saw her
thrust strike home. "Well, tell him I'm still on Freud. Anyway, I want
to try this. Amy and I want to live together. When you wanted to live
with Charles, you went and did it, didn't you?"

"I'm not criticizing you, Marge. Go ahead! Don't bristle so, or I'll
suspect you feel guilty."

"I do." Margaret had a funny little smile which recognized herself as
ludicrous. "That's just the vestige of my conflict."

"There's another influx"--Catherine looked at the moving line--"we'd
better give up these seats."

"There are chairs yonder." They wound between the tables to the other
end of the room, where wicker chairs and chaise longues, screens,
tables, and a mirror suggested the good intentions of the patronesses
of the St. Francis Club.

"You can lie down behind the screen if you're dead, or read"--Margaret
flipped a magazine--"read old copies of respectable periodicals. Here."
She motioned to a chaise longue. "Stretch out. I'll sit at your feet. I
have a few seconds left."

"How's the job?"

"All right. I spent the morning hunting for a girl. She's been rousing
my suspicions for a time. Going to have an infant soon. That's the
third case in two months." Margaret clasped her hands about her knees;
her short skirt slipped up to the roll of her gray silk stocking. "But
I've got a woman who'll take her in. She can do housework for a month
or so before she'll have to go to the lying-in home."

Catherine watched her curiously. There was something amazing about the
calm, matter-of-fact attitude Margaret held.

"Do you hunt for the father?"

"Oh, the girl won't tell. Maybe she doesn't know."

"If I had your job, I'd waste away from anger and rage and hopelessness
about the world."

"No use." Margaret shrugged. "Wish I could smoke here. Too pious.
No." She turned her face toward her sister, her eyes and mouth
dispassionate. "Patch up what can be patched, and scrap the rest. I'm
sick of feelings."

Catherine was silent. Margaret, as the only woman in a responsible
position in a chain of small manufacturing plants, occasionally dropped
threads which suggested fabrics too dreadful to unravel.

"Time's up." Margaret rose. "Directors' meeting this afternoon, and I
want to bully that bunch of stiff-necked males into accepting a few
of the suggestions I've made. I have a fine scheme." She laughed. "I
make a list pages long, full of things, well, not exactly preposterous.
Women would see them all. But they sound preposterous. And buried
somewhere I have the one thing I'm hammering on just then. Sometimes I
get it, out of their dismay at the length of the list."

"Here, I may as well go along." Catherine slid out of the chair.

"Will you be home Sunday?" Margaret stopped at the corner. Catherine
had a fresh impression of her invincible quality, there in the
sunlight with the passing crowds.

"Charles is in Washington. Come in and see the children."

"The King's away, eh?" Margaret waved her hand in farewell. "I'll drop
in."

       *       *       *       *       *

At five Catherine was again on the Avenue, walking steadily north, an
eye on the occasional buses. If she could get a seat! As the traffic
halted, she saw a hint of movement at the rear of a bus ahead of her.
Someone was just getting out. She rushed for it, and clambered to the
top just as the jam moved stickily ahead. Just one seat, at the front.
This was luck. She relaxed, lazily conscious only of small details
her eyes seized upon. When the bus finally swung onto the Drive, she
straightened, drawing a deep breath of the fresh wind across the
river. A taste of salt in it. She liked the sweep and curving dips of
the Drive; the ride gave her a breathing space, a chance to shut off
the hours behind her and to take on the aspect of the other life that
awaited her. I'll patch up that old fur coat, she thought, and ride
all winter. Perhaps I may even afford a new one. Twenty-five a week
for Miss Kelly. Another five for my luncheons and bus rides. If Flora
will do the marketing, I'll have to pay her more. I ought to help
with the food bills, if we feed Miss Kelly, and pay for the clothes
I buy for the children, since I would otherwise be making them. Oh!
This domestic mental arithmetic sandpapered away the shine of the two
hundred and fifty a month which was her salary. But Charles couldn't
have additional expenses this year. It wasn't fair, when he had just
reached a point at which they found a tiny margin for insurance and
saving. Catherine rubbed her hand across her forehead; foolish to do
this reckoning in her head; it always left her with that sense of
hopeless friction, like fitting a dress pattern on too small a piece
of cloth--turning, twisting, trying. Charles had said, "Well, you know
_my_ income. We can't manage any more outgo there. Not this year." And
at that, she didn't see where she was going to get the first three
twenty-five dollars for Miss Kelly. Next month, after she had her own
first check--but now! She'd saved the first twenty-five on her own fall
clothes. If Charles hadn't had that heavy insurance premium this month,
she might have borrowed. It would be fine, some day, to reach a place
where their budget was large enough to turn around in without this fear
of falling over the edges. Dr. Roberts had said, "Three thousand is the
best we can do for you now, but later----"


II

Sunday was a curious day. Miss Kelly, who was to have alternate Sundays
off, had this one on, and had taken the children out. Catherine caught
a lingering, backward glance from Spencer as they all went down the
hall, a silent, wondering stare. He had said nothing about Miss Kelly,
nothing about the new order of things; Catherine felt that he held a
sort of baffled judgment in reserve. Letty, as always, was cheerfully
intent on her own small schemes. Marian had confided last night that
Miss Kelly was nice, but her stories sounded all the same, not like
Muvver's. Next Sunday, thought Catherine, I'll have them. It's absurd
to feel pleased that Spencer doesn't adjust himself at once. I want him
happy.

She sat at the breakfast table, too listless to bestir herself about
the endless things that waited for her. The morning sun was sharp and
hard on the stretch of city beneath the window, picking out slate roofs
and chimneys. Alone in the empty apartment, its silence enclosed and
emphasized by the constant sounds outside--the click of the elevator,
the staccato of voices in the well of the court, the rumble of a car
climbing the Amsterdam hill--Catherine relaxed into complete lethargy,
her hands idle in her lap.

The week had been drawn too taut. Surely coming weeks would be less
difficult, once she had herself and the rest of the family broken into
the new harness. She wished that Charles were sitting across from her,
the Sunday paper littering the floor about his feet. She would say,
"One week is over." And he--what would he say? "How do you like it, old
dear?" And she, "You know, I think I am making a go of it." Then if he
said, "Of course! I knew you would," then she could hug his shoulder
in passing, and go quite peacefully about the tasks that waited. She
sighed. If I have to be bolstered at every step, I might as well stop,
she thought.

She would like to sit still all day, not even thinking. Instead, she
pulled herself to her feet and cleared the breakfast dishes away
methodically. Then she opened the bundles of laundry, sorted the
clothes and laid them away, found fresh linen for the beds, laid aside
one sheet with a jagged tear to be mended later, investigated Flora's
preparations for dinner, and, finally, with a basket of mending,
sat down at the living room window. Perhaps Flora could see to the
laundry, although Catherine always had done that; she must plan, in
some way, to have Sunday reasonably free. Miss Kelly had offered to
take care of the children's mending; but--Catherine's fingers pushed
out at the heel of the black sock--Charles had to be sewn up!

How still and empty the house lay about her! Perhaps Charles was even
then on his way home--she had a swift picture of him at the window of
the train, hurling toward her.

Ridiculous to feel so tired. She stretched her arms above her head, and
then reached for the darning ball. Henrietta had said, "Don't weaken.
You'll find the first stages of adjustment the most difficult." True,
all right. The texture of her days rose before her, a series of sharp
images. Morning, an incredible packing of the two hours: breakfast,
the three children to bathe and help dress, Miss Kelly arriving like
clockwork to supervise the final departure for school, Catherine's
hasty glimpse at her face, flushed under the brim of her hat, before
she hurried out for the elevator. Then the bus ride; herself a highly
conscious part of the downward flood of workers, the fluster of the
morning dropping away before the steady rise of that inner self,
calm, clear, deliberate. The office--deference in the manner of the
stenographers--she was the only woman there with her own office, with
a man-size job. Occasional prickings of her other life through that
life--eggs she had forgotten to order. The ride home again, the warm
cheeks and soft hands of the children, and their voices, eager to tell
her a thousand things at once. Dinner, and Charles. What about Charles?
Her fingers paused over the crossing threads of the darn. He had been
busy with crowds of new students and opening classes. Under that, what?
She fumbled in her mist of images. She had scarcely seen him, except
at dinner. Usually he had a string of stories about the day. He had
gone back to the office two evenings, and to Washington on Friday. She
didn't know much about his week. Had he withheld it? Had she been too
engrossed?

The telephone in the study rang. Catherine hurried. Perhaps it was
Charles.

"Is Dr. Hammond in?"

"This is Mrs. Hammond." That clear, metallic voice! "Dr. Hammond is out
of town."

"Oh, yes. I thought he might be back. Would you give him a message for
me? Miss Partridge. Please ask him to call me as soon as he comes in."

"Certainly." Catherine waited, but the only sound was the click of the
telephone, terminating the call.

"Well!" Catherine sat down at the desk. Now, there's nothing to
be irritated about, she told herself. Her eyes traveled over the
bookshelves, low, crowded, piled with monographs and reviews. That
curtness is part of her pose--manlike. But she certainly hits my
negative pole!

Miss Kelly came in with the children, noisy and hungry, and the five
had dinner together. Catherine tried to talk with Miss Kelly. Her
round, light eyes met Catherine's solemnly, and she replied with calm
politeness to Catherine's ventures.

"No, Marian, dear," she said suddenly. "One helping of chicken is
enough for a little girl your age."

"Spencer had two!" Marian turned to her mother. "Why can't I?"

Catherine smiled a little wryly. She thrust under the sudden flash
of resentment. Of course, Miss Kelly had them in charge. What was
the matter with her to-day! She seemed to react with irritation to
everything.

"Marian's stomach seemed a little upset yesterday," confided Miss Kelly.

"We'll have our salad now." Catherine dismissed the question.

But after dinner, when Letty had been led protestingly away for her
nap, and Miss Kelly, armed with a volume of Andersen's "Fairy Tales,"
reappeared in the living room, Catherine couldn't resist the swift
entreaty of Spencer's eyes.

"Miss Kelly," she said, placatingly, "if you would like to go home now,
I can read to the children. I am quite free this afternoon."

Miss Kelly agreed placidly. When she had gone, Spencer stood a moment
beside Catherine, his eyes intent on her face; Catherine saw a wavering
tenseness in his look. He wanted to hurl himself at her, and he didn't
want to. She couldn't reach out for him, if he felt too grown-up for
such expression. She smiled at him, and with a huge sigh he settled
into the wicker chair, one foot curled beneath him.

"She was glad to go home, wasn't she?" he said.

"I'm glad she went," announced Marian. "She bosses me."

"Good for you," said Spencer. "Mother, read us 'Treasure Island.' I'm
sick of old fairies."

Margaret came in, her ring waking Letty. Catherine laughed at the
unconcealed expectancy with which the children welcomed their aunt.

"You've ruined them," she said, as Marian danced up the hall, her eyes
wide with anticipation for the packages Margaret carried.

"Well, they are delighted to see their old aunt, anyway!" Margaret
dropped to the floor, scattering the bundles, her hands held over them
in teasing delay.

"Your dress, Marg! On the floor in that?"

"Just a rag. Here, Letitia, your turn first."

Catherine went back to her chair to watch the orgy. Margaret was
extravagant as water.

"It isn't really a rag, Aunt Margie, is it?" Spencer had his head on
one side, deliberating. "It looks like--like pigeons."

"If I could find a gentleman of your discrimination, Spen, I'd grab him
in a jiffy!"

"It is like pigeons, isn't it, Mother?" Spencer looked perplexed.

"Yes." Catherine wished Margaret wouldn't tease him. She was lovely,
her gray-silver draperies floating around her slim, curving figure, the
purple glinting through. It was like a pigeon's breast, that dress.

Letty had a doll, soft and round and almost as large as Letty herself.

"Company for you, when your mother's off at work."

Letty's arms were fast about it, and her deep voice intoned a constant,
"Pretty doll! pretty doll!" until Marian's present appeared from its
wrappings.

"You stand on it and jump, this way." Margaret was on her feet, her
suède toes balancing on the crosspiece.

"Letty jump!"

"Not in here!" Catherine reached for the stick. "You idiots! You'll
knock the plaster off."

"Letty jump!" Catherine bundled Letty and the doll into her lap.

"Let's see what Spencer draws."

"Spencer was a difficult proposition." Margaret smiled at him. "I
thought of a rubber ball, and then I remembered he had one. So I got
this." She poked the box into his hands.

"It's as good as Christmas, isn't it, Muvver?" Marian was on tiptoe,
her Pogo stick clasped to her side, her head close to Spencer's as he
tore off the papers.

"Thought I'd help make him practical, to please the King."

"What is it?" Spencer knelt beside the box full of pieces of steel.

"You stick them together, and make skyscrapers and bridges and water
towers and elevators. The clerk said you could build a city."

"Let me help, Spencer?" Marian flung herself on the floor beside
Spencer.

"Me help!" Letty squirmed down from Catherine's lap.

"You might take the things into the dining room," suggested Catherine.

Spencer gathered up the box.

"I'm much obliged, Aunt Margie," he said, and Marian and Letty echoed
him as they followed into the next room.

Margaret settled herself in a chair at the window.

"I thought your nurse would be in charge." Her eyes wandered out to
the distant glint of water. "Thought you'd given up the heavy domestic
act."

"I sent her home." Catherine smiled. "Weak minded, wasn't it?"

Margaret nodded.

"Certainly. You look fagged. You ought to be out horseback riding or
something. You know"--she turned, her face serious--"if you're going to
do a real job, you have to look out. You have to relax sometime."

"I have to read the d'rections first, don't I?" came Spencer's firm
tones. "You can sit still and watch."

"Now I didn't budge from my bed until noon," went on Margaret, "and
then Amy had breakfast ready for me, and then I jumped in a taxi and
came up here. I have to run along in a minute, high tea down in the
Village. But you've been at work since early dawn, haven't you?"

"Oh, there were a few things----"

"Why don't you find a real housekeeper in Flora's place?"

"I can't afford to pay more, yet. And Flora is too good to throw out. I
can manage."

"You know"--Margaret's eyes were bright with curiosity--"I should like
to know what started this, your leaving your happy home, I mean. I
thought you were the devoted mother till eternity."

"I am," said Catherine, calmly. Then she leaned forward. "Do you
realize that the loneliest person in the world is a devoted mother?
This summer, Margaret, I thought I'd really go crazy. I was so sorry
for myself it was ludicrous. I'm trying to find out if I am a person,
with anything to use except a pair of hands--on monotonous, silly
tasks."

"Of course, the trouble is just that. You are a person. I'm glad
you've waked up, Catherine. You know, there isn't a man in the world
that I'd give up my job for."

"I want a man, too." Catherine's mouth was stubborn. "And my children.
I want everything. Perhaps I want too much."

"Oh, children." Margaret glanced through the wide doors. "Maybe
I'll want some, some day. Nice little ducks. Now I've got Amy--and
love enough to keep from growing stale. I want you to meet Amy some
day." She rose, adjusting the brim of her wide purple hat. "Amy's
waiting now. Tell Charles I'm longing for a glimpse of him." She
made a humorous little grimace. "Want to see how he likes this new
arrangement."

Margaret telephoned for a taxi, and then hung over the children,
offering impossible suggestions, until the hall boy announced her cab.

Marian wanted to go down to the Drive, to jump. Catherine waved good-by
to Margaret, her other hand restrainingly on Marian's shoulder.

"Not Sunday afternoon, Marian. There are so many people down there,
you'd jump right on their toes. You watch Spencer."

The children played in reasonable quiet. Catherine finished her
darning, her mind playing with the idea of the graphs she was working
on. As she rolled up the last stocking, she wondered what she used
to think about, as she sat darning or sewing. Nothing, she decided.
Plain nothing. I could let my hands work, and my ears listen for the
children, and the rest of me just stagnate.

She delayed supper a little, hoping that Charles might come. She
wasn't sure about the Sunday trains. Finally she gave the children
their supper and put Letty to bed.

Spencer was still engrossed in the construction of a building when Bill
Gilbert came in.

"Henrietta isn't here?"

"No, but do come in." Catherine led him into the living room. "Is Henry
coming?"

"She had a call, and said she'd stop here on her way home."

"Charles hasn't come yet. He's been in Washington since Friday."

"Friday? I thought I saw him downtown, with Miss Partridge. He probably
went later."

"He went at one."

"This couldn't have been Charles, then. It was about four. I thought
their committee had been meeting. Hello, Spencer. What you doing?"

Spencer had come in, his hands full of steel girders.

"Mr. Bill, you're a nengineer, aren't you? Well, could you show me
about this bridge?"

More than an hour later, when Henrietta did come, Bill was stretched
full length, his feet under the dining room table, his eyes on the
level of the completed bridge, a marvelous thing of spans and girders,
struts and tie-beams.

"I'm too weary to stay, Cathy." Henrietta set her case on the table;
her fair skin looked dusted over with fatigue. "Convulsions. One of
those mothers who won't believe in diet or doctors for her child. The
father sent for me. The child is alive in spite of her."

"Do sit down and rest, at least."

"No. I'm too ugly. Do you want to come, Bill, or are you staying?"

Bill pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, one hand reaching for his
pipe.

"This piece of work is done," he said, smiling down at Spencer's
engrossed head. "I've had a fine evening, Catherine."

He had. When they had gone, and Catherine was supervising the
children's preparations for bed, she still had the feeling of the
evening; she had pulled her chair into the dining room, to watch them;
Bill had looked up at her at long intervals, with a faint, queer smile
in his eyes; he had said nothing, except to offer solemn, technical
advice, simplified to meet Spencer's eagerness.

"I'm going to be a nengineer," said Spencer sleepily, as she bent over
him. "An' build things."

"I want to be one, too," called Marian.

"You can't! You're only a girl."

"Mr. Bill said I could if I wanted to. He said I could be anything."

"So you can." Catherine tucked her in gently. "But you have to go to
sleep first."

At eleven Catherine telephoned to the station, to ask about trains from
Washington. No express before morning. Charles wouldn't take a local;
he must have decided to take a sleeper. She set the sandwiches she had
made for him away in the ice chest. No use worrying. She had to have
some sleep, for to-morrow. Had Bill seen him, Friday afternoon? She
hated the queer way waiting held you too tight, as if you were hung up
by your thumbs. Charles might have wired her. But he knew she never
meant to worry.

She was half conscious, all through the night, of the emptiness of
his bed, opposite hers. Once she woke, thinking she heard the door
click. She sprang up in bed to listen. Nothing but the constant, faint
cacophony of city sounds. It must be almost morning--that was the
rattle of ash cans.


III

Astonishing how much less hurried the morning seemed, with no Charles
shaving in the bathroom, shouting out inquiries about his striped
shirt, his bay rum--he had a blind spot for the thing he wanted at the
moment. We need two bathrooms, thought Catherine. I've spoiled Charles.
Breakfast, too, was more leisurely; none of the last-minute scramble,
no sudden longing for crisp bacon, after the toast was made and the
eggs were boiled. There was time, actually, for a manicure. Flora
appeared promptly at eight, her Monday face lugubrious.

"Sunday's fearful exhausting, Mis' Hammond," she said, as Catherine
finished the consultation about dinner. "It's the most exhaustin'est
day us working women has, I thinks."

"And when Mr. Hammond comes, be sure to ask him if he wishes breakfast,
Flora. He may have had it on the train."

"Sure, I'll ask him. You run along and quit your worry, Mis' Hammond."

Catherine, hurrying across the Drive for the bus, was worried. She felt
almost guilty: first, because the morning rush had been so lightened;
and then, because she was going off, downtown, just as if Charles
scarcely existed. She had laid out fresh clothes for him, on his bed,
but she knew how he would rush in, full of pleasant importance from
the trip, wanting to shout bits of it to her while he splashed and
shaved and dressed, wanting her to sit down for a late cup of coffee
while he talked. If only he had come home yesterday! Well, to-night
would have to serve, although by evening there would be the film of the
day over that first sharpness of communication.

At the door of her office she paused, her fingers on the key. She
must leave, outside the door, this faint guilt which tugged at her.
She had wasted that hour on the bus. The order and quiet within were
like a rebuke. She crossed to the window and raised the heavy sash.
The cool bright morning air rushed in with a little flutter of the
papers on the desk. Across the street and a story lower, behind great
plate-glass windows, she could see busy little men hurrying about,
lifting the white dust covers from piles of dark goods: that was an
elaborate tailoring establishment, just waking into activity. Her desk
had a fresh green blotter, a pile of neatly sharpened pencils, and her
mail--C.S. Hammond. Extraordinary, this having things set in order
without your own direction! She might call up the house, to see if
Charles had come. But surely he would telephone.

Dr. Roberts came briskly in. She was to have a new filing cabinet, he
wanted her to meet the stenographer she was to share with him; the
President of the Bureau would be in that morning, and wished to talk
with her for a few minutes.

President Waterbury was a large and pompous gentleman who used his
increasing deafness as a form of reproach to his subordinates.
Catherine, sitting calmly near his massive mahogany desk, nodded at
intervals in response to his grave, deliberate remarks. Her work during
the war had convinced Dr. Roberts of her ability, hem, hem, although
that had been on a social study, and this was, hem, educational. Since
Mrs. Lynch, one of the founders of the Bureau, was a woman, it was
peculiarly fitting to place a competent woman in charge of one of their
many investigations. Ah, hem. A pleasure to welcome her there. Serious
concern, this administering of responsibility. He was dismissing her
with an elegant gesture of his old white hand, its blue veins so
abruptly naked between the little tufts of hair.

Catherine went back to her office.

"Oh, Mrs. Hammond!" The bobbed-haired office stenographer rose, with a
shake of her abbreviated skirt. "You were wanted on the wire. Said you
were in conference with the President. Here's the number."

"Thank you. No, I don't need you now." Catherine waited until the
door closed. She still hesitated. It must be Charles. Better to call
him outside, at noon. The telephone operator in the main office had a
furtive, watchful eye which probably matched her ear! But noon was an
hour away.

"Charles? Hello."

"That you, Catherine? I've been trying to get you for a solid hour!"

"I'm sorry." Was that girl listening! "When did you get in?"

"Early. Catherine, where have you put my lecture notes? The seminar,
you know. That class meets to-day. I can't find a damned shred of them."

His voice seemed to stand him at her shoulder, with the funny,
distracted flush, and rumpled hair of one of his fruitless searches.

"I haven't seen them this fall." She was moving rapidly about the
house, almost in kinæsthetic images. Where would she look? "Didn't you
file those in your office last spring? With the manuscript of your
book?"

"Um. Perhaps. I'll look there. Good-by."

Catherine hung the instrument slowly in place. Not a word of greeting.
But he had probably thrown his study into bedlam--and his disposition.
She smiled, faintly, and refusing to admit the little barbed regret,
turned to her work.

At noon, in the stuffy telephone booth at the elevator entrance of the
St. Francis Club she tried to reach him. But Miss Kelly said he wasn't
coming in for luncheon, and no one answered the call for his office.

The afternoon closed around her with steady concentration. Dr. Roberts
had said that on Friday there would be a conference: a head of a normal
college and a state commissioner of education would be on hand from the
West. She wanted this preliminary classification ready.

As she approached the house that evening, she discovered, ironically,
that her mind was revolving schemes for propitiation. Steak and onions
for dinner, and cream pie, and tactful inquiries about the trip.

There was no rush of children at the sound of her key. She heard
Marian's voice, and then Charles's. She hurried down the hall. Letty
sat on her father's knee, a crisscross of adhesive plaster on her
forehead, from which her hair was smoothed wetly back.

"She would jump on my Pogo stick, Muvver," protested Marian, "and I
told her not to, and----"

Catherine was on her knees beside the chair, and Letty's mouth began to
quiver again at a fresh spectator of her injury.

"It isn't a bad cut," said Charles, distantly. "Fortunately I came in."

"But where's Miss Kelly?"

"She left at six. I supposed you had instructed her to stay here until
you came."

"I told her to run along." Flora stopped at the doorway, her red
flowers bobbing over the brim of her hat. "I says I'd stay. An' those
chillun was all right one minute and the next they wasn't."

"Where's Spencer?" Catherine rose. She had waited a long time for a
bus, but it was just past six.

"In the bathroom, washing off the blood," said Charles, severely. "He
was wiping Letty's face when I came in."

"She fell on the radiator," went on Marian, "an' I told her not to----"

"It's all right now." Charles set Letty on her feet, and patted her
damp head. "But you surely ought to insist on that woman's filling your
place, since you aren't here."

"I shall." Catherine's eyes sought his with a defiant entreaty. "It
isn't very serious, after all," she finished, in white quiet. As she
went into her room to leave her wraps and brush up her hair, she found
her hands trembling, and her knees. She sat down at the window for a
moment. Of course, she thought, they are my responsibility. That's
only just. But he needn't hurry so to hold me up to blame. As if they
planned it--a staged rebuke for my entrance. Spencer was at the door,
his eyes large and serious.

"Hello, son!" Catherine shoved aside the tight bitterness, and smiled.

"Oh, Moth-er!" He ran across to her, burying his head for a brief
instant on her shoulder. "I thought--I thought she was dead. Only she
hollered too loud."

"I'm sorry, dear." Catherine hugged him. "But it's all right."

"And"--Spencer's lower lip quivered--"Daddy said why didn't I watch her
if she didn't have a mother. She's got a mother, and I was just sitting
there reading."

"Letty's all right now. Come, we must broil that steak! Aren't you
hungry?"

Dinner was ready, all but the steak. Catherine felt that she thrust her
hands violently into a patch of nettles and yanked them away, as she
cajoled her family back into calm humor. Charles, carving the steak,
suddenly lost his air of grave reproach, and began a story about a
family with two sets of twins that he had seen on the train. With a
sigh, Catherine relaxed her grip on the nettles. She might run into
them, later!

"We looked for you all day yesterday," she said, finally.

"Several of the men stayed over, and I had a fine chance to talk with
them. Brown of Cornell, and Davitts."

"Mr. Bill came in, Daddy, and showed me how to build a bridge."

"He thought he'd seen you Friday," said Catherine idly, "but I told him
you went at one."

"Oh, yes." Charles was casual. "I missed that train. So I went around
to the clinic."

His voice was too casual! And the swift glance he shot at Catherine as
she rose.


IV

"I've got to run over those lecture notes." Charles stretched lazily up
from the table. "They need freshening a bit."

"You found them, then?" Catherine had Letty in her arms, soft and
sweetly heavy with drowsiness.

"Yes. I'd forgotten about carrying them over to the office."

"I was in the sacred sanctum of the President's office when you called."

"Oh, that's all right. I found them in time." Charles strolled out of
the room.

"Daddy!" Spencer followed him. "Couldn't I show you my bridges and
things? I can make anything."

"Not to-night, Spencer. Daddy's got to work."

Catherine's query about home work for school relieved Spencer's gloom.
While she undressed Letty, smiling at the sleepy protests, Spencer
and Marian cleared the table. When she reappeared they were trying to
fold the long cloth, one at each end, Marian arguing heatedly about
the proper method. Charles banged his study door in loud remonstrance.
Catherine showed them the creases. Then they spread their books on the
bare table.

"You sit here with us, Mother," Spencer begged. "I can do my sums much
quicker. Marian doesn't have to do home work. She's just----"

"I do, too, have to do home work. The teacher said so."

"There, you shall, if you like." Catherine ruffled Spencer's hair. "Try
not to disturb Father."

She sat there with them for an hour and more. Marian snuggled against
her, showing her the pictures in her "suppulment'ry reading." Spencer
bent over his work in a concentration directed toward the impressing of
his sister, his cheeks growing pink, his hand clutched over his pencil.
Although she sat so quietly, her outer attention given to the children,
her deeper thoughts went scurrying and creeping up to the closed study
door, away from it. He needn't have worked to-night. Don't be absurd.
If he has a lecture to-morrow--he wants to shut himself away. Slowly
her thoughts circled, like gulls above the water, concealing in their
whirls the object which drew them.

"Muvver, does Spencer have to whisper his sums aloud?"

"Perhaps that helps him." Catherine smiled at Spencer's indignant face.
"You may whisper your story, if you like."

What were they swooping over, those gull-thoughts? Better to scatter
them and see. Not that he had missed the train; not even that he had
not troubled to run in for a moment that afternoon; nor that he had
chosen to see Miss Partridge. That might so easily be explained. No.
Just that queer, investigating glance, that deliberate offhand manner,
when he had told her. It set a wall between them.

The telephone rang distantly, behind the closed door. The children
lifted their heads to listen. A rumble of Charles's voice. Then silence
again.

When Spencer and Marian had laid away their books and gone to bed,
Catherine returned to her seat at the empty table. I want him, she
thought. But if I open his door and go in, then I become, in some way,
a propitiator. Perhaps I only imagine all this. I am tired. She drew
the pins from her hair and let the heavy coil slip over her shoulder.
Elbows on the table, fingers cool and firm against her forehead, as if
she might press order into her thoughts, she waited.

Suddenly she rose, shaking her hair back from her face. That is
grotesque, she thought, sitting here, and hastily she went through the
hall to the study door, flinging it open.

"Oh, hello." Charles looked up alertly from his book. He, too, had been
waiting. "Kids in bed?"

"Aren't you through?" Catherine yawned gently, drawing her fingers
across her lips. "I'm sleepy, and lonesome."

But under her lightness sounded a plunk, as of a stone dropping, a
confirmation of a fear, as she saw the wary alertness on Charles's face
vanish in quick relief.

"Just through," he announced. "Come on in. It's curious, how stale
these lectures seem, after a year. Have to refurbish them entirely." He
slipped the sheets into a manila cover. "That one's ready, at least."

Catherine sat on the corner of his desk, her fingers sliding through a
strand of her hair.

"Did you have a good trip?" she asked. Anything, to banish this
separateness. "I haven't heard a word about it."

"You weren't home. I was bursting with news this morning."

"Can't you remember a little of it?"

"I might try." Charles leaned back, his thumbs caught in his belt.
As he talked, Catherine listened for the under-tones, so much more
significant than the events. It had been a good trip. The men had
received him rather flatteringly, praised his latest monograph, shown
interest in the new psychological clinic. He had a comfortable,
well-nourished look; around his eyes, with the prominent jutting of
socket above, the lines were quite smoothed away. Catherine looked at
him, at the strong, slightly projecting chin, at the smooth hard throat
above the neat collar.

"Davitts hinted at an opening in a middle-western college," he said,
finally. "Head of the department. I told him I was in line for
promotion here, if I got this next book done this year. He seemed to
think he had something better up his sleeve."

"Away from New York?"

"Ye-up." Charles was blandly indifferent. "Nothing definite, you know.
Just hints."

"Would you even consider it?" Catherine's hands, even her hair against
her fingers, felt cold.

"It never does any harm to let people offer you things. And I don't
know--" He was drawing idle triangles on the manila covers of his
lecture. "Sometimes a position like that means much more power,
prominence, reputation, than anything here could. Would you mind?" He
was eying her carefully. "Be better for the children." And after a
pause. "Or would you have to stay here--for your job?"

"Have you just made this up--for a joke?" Catherine slipped to her
feet. "Are you just teasing me?"

"Not a bit. That's what Davitts said."

"Charles!" Her fingers doubled into a fist at the edge of the desk.
"Don't lurk around! Let's talk it out. You don't like it, my working?
You"--she stared at him--"you don't mean you'd hunt for a job
somewhere, in a little town, where I couldn't work, just to----"

"Good Lord! Now why go off at that tangent, just because I gave you a
bit of news. Didn't I say I wanted you to have what you wanted?"

"But you don't like it, do you?"

"Damn it, give me time to get used to it. It's all fired queer to go
off without any one caring, and come back to a deserted house. I'll
probably get used to it, but give me time."

"Do you want me to give it up?"

"Are you tired of it already?"

"Do you really care to know how I feel about it?" Catherine's voice was
low and tense. "I feel as if I'd escaped from solitary confinement. At
hard labor, too! I feel as if I could hold up my head and breathe. And
then, underneath, I feel you pulling at me, wresting me back. Oh, you
say you don't mind, but----"

"Catherine, see here." Charles stood up and leaned toward her. "I--I
haven't meant to be a hog. But a man has a kind of knock-out, to find
he isn't enough, with his home and all. Here, let's forget it. I've had
a hard week-end, and last week was a fright. That's all."

"It's not that you aren't enough." Catherine flung herself at that
phrase. "You know about that! Any more than I'm not enough, for you.
There's more to you than love, isn't there? Why isn't there more to me?
If you'd only see----"

"The only thing that bothers me is the children. Now, take Letty----"

"But I have left them with Flora many times. I've had to. And they
bump their heads when I'm home. That's not the point. It's your blaming
me."

"All right!" Charles threw up his hands in a sweep of mocking
surrender. "I won't say a word."

"I want you to say it, not hint it."

"Anything you like." His hands closed on her shoulders. "Here, you
haven't kissed me since I came home."

There were sudden wild tears under Catherine's lids, and she thought
desperately, oh, not that! Not kisses as the only way--to touch, to
reach each other!

"Didn't even kiss me good-by. Nice kind of wife." Charles pushed her
chin up with a firm finger. "There now----"

"You didn't give me a chance." Catherine was quiet, thrusting under
her rebellion. Suddenly, through her misted lashes, she saw just for a
flash, an echo of that wary, investigatory glance. She swung out over a
great abyss. Bill had seen him, with Miss Partridge. Nothing to that,
surely, except this feeling, which was not jealousy, but fear of what
he was defending himself against.

"I wanted to find you, but I didn't like to come up to the Bureau," he
was saying. "So I went down to the clinic and talked over things with
Stella Partridge." The brisk, matter-of-course words drew her back
sharply from the abyss. "It took the edge off, not finding you here,
this morning." He was threading his fingers through her hair.

"You're spoiled rotten!" Catherine could laugh at him now. He meant
that for his apology, and she would let it lift her out of fear and
hurt.


V

The week settled into a steady march. Flora had taken on the marketing,
Miss Kelly had agreed never to leave the house until Catherine arrived,
Charles was amiably preoccupied with the rush of the opening semester.
It hadn't been so hard to adjust things, thought Catherine. Takes a
little planning--I was too impatient.

Her work at the office was focussed on the Saturday conference. She
wanted her preliminary analysis in tables and graphs clear and adequate
enough to present to the men; there would be discrepancies between
the apparent system and the actual practice in the state which the
commissioner could point out. She hadn't time to complete the study of
the normal schools; they were astonishingly numerous and varied.

"It's just hit or miss, this whole educational business," she said to
Dr. Roberts, on Friday afternoon, as they talked over the material. "No
central direction or purpose."

"Too much imitation and tradition." Dr. Roberts had his pointed beard
between the pages of a catalogue. He lifted it toward her, his bright
blue eyes and sharp nose eager on the scent of an idea. "Too little
conscious plan. People are afraid of thought. Trial-and-error is the
working basis. But that's slow, and you have this heavy crust of
tradition."

"I'd like to scrap it all and make a fresh beginning!"

"There never is such a thing as a fresh beginning. You have to work
from what exists."

Catherine pushed aside a pile of catalogues, her face alight with
scorn.

"But why, if it's stale and wrong? Take these normal schools. Young
people, girls mostly, go there, because they have to have a diploma
to teach. What do they get? Things out of books. They learn to teach
paragraphs of geography, not to teach children. It would be ridiculous,
except that it is terrible. Perhaps it's because men run them."

"Women"--Dr. Roberts smoothed his beard--"are popularly supposed to
submit more docilely to tradition."

"Supposed by whom?" Catherine's hand sent a catalogue banging to the
floor. "That's been a convenient way of holding their wildness under,
I think." She felt her mind throw up swift thoughts that burst and
scattered like Roman candles. She couldn't gather the splintering
brightness. "We've had, as women, too small an orbit."

The stenographer thrust her bobbed head into the door, to say that Dr.
Roberts was wanted on the telephone. Should she connect his party here?

"No, I'll take him on my own 'phone." He rose, smiling. "We'll have to
thrash this out to-morrow," he said, "or some day. Don't frighten our
committee to-morrow, though, by announcing that you are wild, will you?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Catherine, erect in her seat on the bus top, the golden October air
fresh on her cheeks, went on coruscating. It was true, that about
women. They felt that children were the most important part of life. So
they stayed with them, cared for them, held under all their own--was
it wildness?--bending it to food and clothes and order--and then? They
threw their children out into the nets laid by men, not viciously,
not deliberately, but with all that pompous weight of tradition. The
way things should be done, learned, thought. If you could scrap it
all and begin--where? With something, a kernel of intelligence, what
children are, and what you wish them to grow into, what will nourish
that growth. Charles was on that track, with his new clinic, and all
his work.

As she climbed down from the bus and started up the hill toward
Broadway, her thoughts still sparkled, spreading out in great circles
of light about her, vague projects, shadowy schemes, beautiful
structures of clarity and sanity for the world, for the children.

"What a stride!"

The circles contracted swiftly, and she turned.

"Bill! Hello." She emerged slowly, shreds of the dream still shining.
They fell into step.

"How goes it?" His glance veered to her face. "You look as if you'd had
your salary raised."

"Better than that." Catherine wanted to break into his dark, withdrawn
glance; she wanted, suddenly, to draw him into this glittering mood.
"Bill, it's wonderful. I feel my mind budding! It wasn't dead. Like a
seed potato--shoots in every direction, out of every wrinkle!"

"You look it." Bill nodded. "I saw that you walked on air."

"I've been recasting the universe." She laughed, as they waited a
moment for passing traffic. "That's better than building bridges, isn't
it?"

"It is less confining."

They went quickly past the subway kiosk, dodging the home-pouring
workers, past the peanut stand panting warm and odorous at the corner,
to the wide hill of steps in front of the University library. A flower
vender thrust his bunches of roses at them.

"I want some!" Catherine dug into her purse.

"Aren't they stale?" Bill watched her fasten the creamy, buff-pink buds
to her coat.

"Probably. But they look fresh now." Catherine swung into step again.
Queer, how that occasional little side glance of Bill's gave assent to
her mood, dipped into it, recognized it, without a word.

"I suppose," she said, as they rounded the corner of Amsterdam, "that
I can't stay on this level. It's too high. But I've just reached it
to-day. Assurance, and a long sight into what I can do."

"There's always, unfortunately, another day." Bill frowned slightly.
"Another mood. But you seem to have hit a fair wind. Henrietta told me
that Miss Kelly was panning out well."

"Yes." The view ahead, of the dipping, climbing avenue, with its
familiar shops, its familiar clatter of the cobblestones, was sharp as
a background of relief against which to-day stood out. "I know what I
feel like, Bill. If you want to know."

"I do. Always."

Simple words, but Catherine heard them with faint wonder. Bill was
never personal. His profile, with its long nose and lean cheeks, like a
horse, was reassuring.

"Well, then. Did you ever watch a treadmill? Round and round, all your
effort taking you nowhere but around? That's where I've been. That's
what I've done. The same circle, day after day. And now I'm out of it,
on a long, straight road. Going somewhere!"

"I hope it's straight." They had reached the apartment entrance, and
Bill shook his head at Catherine's suggestion that he come in.

"No road is really straight. But as long as it goes somewhere!"

Bill looked at her; Catherine thought he started to speak, and then
refused the words.

"Spencer is longing for your next call," she said.

"I'll drop in some evening. Henry's been busy."

"Don't wait for her, then. Just come."

At the door Miss Kelly met Catherine.

"Letty hasn't seemed quite well," she said. "I put her to bed."

"What's wrong?" Catherine stared at Miss Kelly's bland, pink face. "She
isn't really sick?"

"It's hard to tell, with a child." Miss Kelly followed Catherine down
the hall. "It may be just indigestion."

Letty, her small face flushed and scowling, wrinkled her eyes at her
mother.

"Don't want to go to bed. Want to see my Muvver."

"Here I am, Letty." Catherine touched her cheek, felt for her wrist.

"She has scarcely any temperature," announced Miss Kelly. "Just a
degree. But I thought----"

"Surely, she's better in bed. Did she have any supper?"

"Broth."

"Don't wait, Miss Kelly. I know you wish to go."

"Well, since you are here."

Catherine removed her coat and hat. The roses dropped to the floor.

"Pretty!" Letty reached for them.

"I'll put them in water." Catherine came back with a vase. "Do you feel
sick anywhere, chick?"

"Letty not sick. Get up." Catherine caught the wiggling child, and
pulled the blanket into place.

"You lie still, and mother'll be back presently. I must see to dinner
for Daddy."

She hurried into the kitchen. Spencer and Marian were under the
dining room table, playing menagerie, and unable to answer her except
in fierce growls. Charles hadn't come in. Probably Letty wasn't really
sick. She had little flurries of indisposition; perhaps she had eaten
something.

Charles came in, with a jovial bang of the door, and a shout, "Ship
ahoy! Who's at the helm?"

"Don't tell him, Muvver." Marian's head butted the tablecloth aside.
"Sh!"

"'Lo, Cath!" He swung her up to tiptoe in his exuberant hug. "Where are
the kids?"

"Grrrr!" and "Woof!" The table cloth waggled.

"Ah, wild animals under foot!" Charles gave an elaborate imitation of a
big game hunter, creeping toward the table, sighting along his thumbs.
"Biff, bang!" He reached under, seized a leg, and drew out Marian,
giggling and rolling. "Bagged one! Bang, bang! Got the panther!" He had
Spencer by the collar. "Teddy, the great hunter!" He straddled them,
his arms folded, while they shrieked in delight.

A wail from the doorway, "Letty play! Shoot Letty!"

Catherine ran past them, gathering the child into her arms. Her hand,
closing over the small feet, found them dry, hot, and the weight of the
child seemed to scorch through her blouse against her shoulder.

"What's the matter with my baby?" Charles followed them. "Let me have
her, Catherine."

"She's supposed to be in bed." Catherine covered her with the blanket.
"Now you stay there, young lady! Mother will come in soon."

She touched the scarlet cheek, her fingers feather soft. Letty's
eyelids, heavy and dark, drooped, and her protest broke off.

Catherine drew Charles into the hall.

"Would you call up Dr. Henrietta? I think her fever is coming up."

"Is she sick?" Charles looked aggrieved at this intrusion upon his mood.

"I hope not." Catherine gave him a little push. "Call her up, and see
when she can come in. I'll have dinner on directly."

The wild animals were washed and combed, and dinner served when Charles
came out of the study.

"She's not in. Probably at dinner. I left word with the clerk. But I
say, Catherine. I got tickets for 'Liliom' to-night." He looked blankly
disappointed. "You said you wanted to see it, and I was downtown. Good
seats, too."

"Oh, Charles!"

"And I even called up that girl we had last year, to stay with the
children. That graduate student, you know."

"Well." Catherine lifted her hands in a little gesture of resignation.
"If Letty's sick-- But 'Liliom'! I do want to go."

"Maybe she'll be all right when she's asleep."

But she wasn't. Eight o'clock came, with Charles fidgeting like a
lamprey eel on a hook, and no word from Henrietta. Letty was asleep,
her hands twitching restlessly. Catherine shook her head, as she read
the thermometer.

"I can't go, Charles. Almost a hundred and one."

"What ails her? Has that woman you've got been feeding her pickles?"

The door bell rang. Charles, with a mutter of "Dr. Henry, perhaps,"
rushed to the door. He came back.

"It's Miss Brown, come to stay the evening. What shall I tell her?"

"Tell her I can't go." Catherine was abrupt. She was disappointed and
she was fighting off a sturdily growing fear about the next day,--and
she resented Charles's air of injury.

"I hate to, after I begged her to come in."

Catherine brushed hastily past him and went to the door. Miss Brown, a
plump, pale, garrulous woman of middle age, a southerner, waited.

"Letty, the baby, isn't very well," explained Catherine. "Nice of you
to come in so promptly. Some other night, perhaps." And presently the
door could be closed upon Miss Brown's profuseness of pity.

Charles was glooming about his study.

"When you leave them all day for your job," he said, "I should think
you might----"

"No, you shouldn't think!" Catherine laughed at him. "You're as bad as
Spencer, little boy!"

The bell rang again.

"That's Henry!" Catherine hurried to the door, and opened it to Stella
Partridge's little squirrel smile and extended hand.

"Good evening, Mrs. Hammond. I told Dr. Hammond I'd let him have this
outline when it was finished."

"Won't you come in, Miss Partridge?" Catherine heard Charles coming. He
lounged beside her, hands in pockets.

"No, thank you. I just brought this outline, Dr. Hammond." She handed
him the envelope.

There was a moment of silence, in which Catherine felt a tugging at
her will, as if Charles tried to bend her to some thought of his. She
glanced at him, still sulky.

"I have it," she said. "Why don't you take Miss Partridge to your show,
Charles? If she would like it. Have you seen 'Liliom,' Miss Partridge?"

"Letty is indisposed," said Charles, "thus interfering, after the
fashion of children, with her parents' plans."

"Can't I stay with her?" Miss Partridge opened her dark eyes very wide.

"Mrs. Hammond is punctilious."

Catherine withdrew a step. If Charles added another word--she could
hear the rest of his sentence, about her leaving them all day! But he
merely added, "Would you care to go, Miss Partridge?"

"Ought you to leave Mrs. Hammond, if the baby is ill?"

"It's always a relief to be rid of a disappointed man, Miss Partridge."
Catherine was thinking: how disdainful that cold, hard voice makes her
words sound! "Letty isn't seriously ill, but I want the doctor to look
at her. I shall be happier here."

Miss Partridge seated herself in the living room, and Catherine, after
a glance at Letty, and a moment of search for the tie Charles wished,
sat down opposite her. She was charming to look at, Catherine realized;
a soft, fawn colored suit, exquisitely tailored over her slender,
sloping shoulders; a long brown wing across the smart fawn hat, a knot
of orange at her throat. She drew off her wrinkled long gloves, and
revealed a heavy topaz on her little finger.

"Your work, Mrs. Hammond? You are finding it interesting?"

"Very." Catherine felt as expansive as an exposed clam.

"Mr. Hammond was saying you had some kind of educational research in
hand."

"Yes." Was that Letty, crying? Charles came in, rubbing his sleeve over
his hat.

"I don't need glad rags, do I, since you aren't in evening dress?"

"No gladder than those." Miss Partridge rose.

Catherine stood at the living room door, listening for the sound of the
elevator. Charles came rushing back.

"You're sure you'll be all right?" That was his little flicker of
contrition. "I don't like to leave you this way, but the tickets might
as well be used."

"Have a good time." Catherine kissed him lightly.

"Wish it was you, going!" He was in fine fettle again, offering a small
oblation before his departure.

       *       *       *       *       *

Letty woke, complaining that she wanted a drink. Catherine sat beside
her, smoothing the silky fair hair, until she slept again. Her forehead
didn't feel so parched. But Catherine went to the telephone and called
Henrietta. Bill answered.

"Oh, Catherine! Henry got your message. She had to stop at the hospital
first. She'll be in. Is Letty really sick?"

"I hope not. But I need Henrietta's assurance."

"She'll be along."

Spencer looked up from his books.

"I think Daddy ought to stay home if you have to," he said, frowning.

"Daddy isn't any use if the children are sick," announced Marian, with
dignity. "Is he, Muvver?"

"Not as a nurse," said Catherine. "But he's a great comfort to me, you
know."

"How?" Spencer was still accusing.

"Just being." Catherine smiled at him. Spencer had a curious way
of reaching out, thrusting fine feelers about him, investigating
subtleties of relationship. He was staring at her intently, as if he
pondered her last words. Then with a sigh, postponing judgment, he
closed his book.

"My home work's all done, and I did it alone, because Letty is sick. Is
that a comfort to you, Mother?"

"It is." Catherine was grave.

When they had gone to bed, Marian in Catherine's room, so that Letty
would not disturb her, Catherine moved restlessly about the apartment.
She was thinking about them, her children. What they needed. More than
food and shelter, more than physical safety. They needed a safety in
the _feeling_ around them. A warm, clear sea, in which they could
float, unaware that the sea existed. Tension, ugly monsters, frighten
them, disturb them out of their own little affairs. Spencer especially,
but Marian, too. Letty was such a baby, still, but she was growing; she
was still turned inward. Catherine wandered to the door and listened.
She was breathing too rapidly. If Henry would only come!

She sat down at the window, staring out at the dull yellow glow
which held the city as a mass and dimmed the stars. You can't pretend
for them, she thought. They catch the reality under the surface. But
that perfect safety of feeling--who has it! She felt herself opposed
to Charles, struggling with him, toward that intense calm that might
hold the children free and unaware. Perhaps some women could attain
that--she was abject, despairing--women who could lose their own
struggling selves. But what then? The children grew up, and made
their own circles, never reaching anything but this going-on. Surely
somewhere, along the way, there should be something beside immolation
for the future, otherwise why the future? Marian, Letty--I can't do
it, she thought. Drown myself to make that quiet, white peace. I
won't drown. I keep bobbing up, trying to be rescued. Something in
me, shrieking. If I can rescue that shrieking something, and silence
it, then surely there's more in me, more poise, more love, to wrap
them--no, not wrap them, to float them in. If Charles will help!

She had a sharp vision of Charles and Stella Partridge, sitting side
by side in the darkened theater, their eyes focussed on the brilliant
fantasy of the stage. Charles had been delighted to go. He didn't have
play enough, these last years. I wish I were beside him,--her hand
reached out emptily, as if to grasp his. Good for him, seeing other
people, other women. They stimulate him, even if I don't like them. She
caught, like a reflection in a mirror, the tone of that short walk from
the bus with Bill. Something exciting about that--an encounter with
another person.

A ring of the bell; Dr. Henrietta at last.

Catherine stood behind her, as she examined Letty, drowsily fretful at
the disturbance. What strong, white, competent fingers Henry had! They
went into the living room.

"She's not very sick." Henrietta sank into a chair and snapped open
her cigarette case. "I'm not sure--tell better to-morrow. I'll come in
early. You better keep the other children away from her. It might be
something contagious."

"She's had measles." Catherine was openly dismayed, as the bugbear of
contagion rose. "Good land, if she has, it means they all get it, just
like a row of dominoes. Henry! What shall I do?"

"Oh, get a nurse and quarantine them. You don't need to stay in.
Charles doesn't."

"I couldn't."

"Well, wait until to-morrow. May be just indigestion. I've given her
a dose for that." Dr. Henrietta stretched in her chair, crossing her
ankles, slim and neat in heavy black silk above small, dull pumps.
"We don't want your career busted up yet. How's it going? And where's
friend husband?"

"I sent him off to the theater with Miss Partridge." Catherine grinned.
"He had the tickets, and was sure' I needn't stay with Letty."

"I never yet saw a man who was worried about his child when he had
something he wanted to do." Henry puffed busily. "They regard children
as pleasant little amusements, but put them away if they bother."

"Charles isn't quite like that----"

"No defense necessary. I'm just offering an observation. Sorry I had
to be late. I stopped to watch Lasker do a Cæsarian on a case of mine.
Beautiful job. But how's your work? Bill said he ran into you, spoke
of your looking well."

"My job is fine." Catherine saw, at a great distance, the mood in which
she had come home. "Henrietta, I must go down to-morrow. There's a
conference. I've been getting ready for it all the week."

"Miss Kelly will be here, won't she?"

"It's Saturday. She'll have to take Spencer and Marian--although I
suppose Letty has exposed them already."

"She may have nothing at all, you know. I'll come in as early as
possible. What time is this conference?"

"Ten."

"Um. I'll try to make it. I promised to stop in at the hospital.
Charles can stay, can't he, if I should be detained?"

"Don't you let her have anything that will quarantine me! If I am
thrown out now, I'll never get back."

"All righty." Henrietta rose, shaking down her skirt. "I won't." She
ground out her cigarette in the ash tray, with a shrewd upward glance
at Catherine. "You go to bed. You look too frayed. This is just a first
hurdle, you know. I'll come in before nine to-morrow. But you make
Charles stay, if I should be later."


VI

Catherine woke into complete alertness. Charles had come in. She heard
his cautious step in the hall. Letty was sleeping easily, her breathing
soft and regular again. Catherine slipped noiselessly out of the room.

"Hello!" She brushed into Charles at the door. "Marian's in my bed,"
she whispered. "Have a good time?"

"Oh, fair." Charles yawned. "How's Letty?"

"Asleep. Tell me about it in the morning. We might wake her."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the morning Catherine was fagged. All night the awareness of Letty
had kept her at the thin edge of sleep, drawn out by the faintest
stirring. The child was sitting up in bed, now, clamoring for her doll,
her bwekkust, and her go-duck; her cheeks were pink, but they seemed
flower-cool to Catherine's fingers.

"Let's see if you have any speckles, Letty." She peeled the night dress
down; one round red spot in the shell-hollow of her knee. "Is that a
speckle, Letty Hammond, or a mosquito bite!" Letty gurgled deliciously
as Catherine's fingers tickled. "Let's see your throat. No, wider? Does
it hurt?"

"Uh huh. Hurt Letty." Letty's arms were tight around her neck, and she
bounced vigorously up and down on her pillow.

"Here, stop it." Catherine pinioned her firmly. "Where does it hurt?"

"Hurt Letty. Here." Letty sat down with a plump, and pointed at her toe.

"Well, you don't look sick, I must say. But that spot--" Catherine
imprisoned her in the night dress again, and tucked her firmly under
the blanket. "I'll bring Matilda, and you can put her to bed with you.
Dr. Henrietta's coming to see you soon."

Marian appeared at the door.

"Daddy's asleep and I didn't know he was in his bed." She giggled. "I
most woke him up jumping on him."

"Hurry and wash, dear. And don't come in with Letty, please."

Catherine sighed a little as she hurried to thrust herself into the
shafts of the morning.

Letty's frequent interruptions, and Charles's reluctance to wake;
the discovery that there were no oranges; the demoniac speed of the
clock--it was after eight when they sat down to breakfast. Catherine
drank her coffee, and hurried off to dress.

Flora came in. Catherine heard her, with relief, offering to make fresh
toast for Charles. Miss Kelly appeared. She was calmly solicitous as
Catherine explained Dr. Henrietta's visit. "Of course, I couldn't go
into quarantine," she said, "on account of my mother."

"I understand. If you'll just take the other children outdoors for the
morning----"

They had gone. It was nine, and no Dr. Henrietta. Catherine fastened a
net carefully over her coiled hair, brushed her hat, poking at the limp
bow of ribbon, and then went slowly to the study, where Charles was
rummaging through a drawer of his desk.

"You have no classes this morning, have you?" she began.

"No, I haven't. Do you know where I put that outline Miss Partridge
left?"

"Here it is." Catherine lifted it from beneath the evening paper.
"Charles, Henry is coming in. She said as early as possible. I can't
wait for her. Would you mind?"

"What's she coming for? Isn't Letty all right?"

"I don't know. She has a red spot. Henry thought she might have
something--scarlatina----"

"I thought they'd had 'em all, those red diseases."

"Her fever is down. I think she's not sick. But Henrietta wanted to be
sure. Would you mind--waiting till she comes?"

"Stay here this morning?" Charles looked up, an abrupt frown between
his eyes. "I can't, Catherine. I can't play baby tender. I've got a
meeting."

"So have I." Catherine stood immobile in the doorway. "A very important
one. Those men from the West are here. At ten. I am to present the work
I've been doing."

"Can't Flora keep an eye on Letty till Henry comes?"

"I think one of us ought to be here."

"Good Lord, Catherine! I have to meet the committee on choice of
dissertation subjects. Do you want me to telephone them that I have to
stay home with the baby?"

"You couldn't stay just an hour?"

"Be reasonable, Catherine. I can't make myself ridiculous."

"No?" Catherine stared at him an instant. Then she turned and left him.

He followed her into the living room, where she stood at the window.

"Call up your mother," he suggested. "She can probably drop in."

"Why," said Catherine evenly, "does it make you more ridiculous than
me? That dissertation committee meets a dozen times this fall. Letty is
your child, isn't she? Don't tell me I'm her mother!"

"I expected something of this sort, when you announced that you had
to have a career." Charles walked briskly in front of her, stern and
determined. "We might as well fight it out now. Do you want me to take
your place? You said not. Do be reasonable."

"I'm so reasonable it hurts." Catherine's laugh was brittle. "Go on, to
your meeting. I'll stay, of course."

"Well, really, I'm afraid you'll have to." Charles hesitated, and then
added, gruffly, "It's unfortunate it happened just this way." His
gesture washed his hands of the affair.

As he strolled importantly out of the room, Catherine's hand doubled in
a cold fist against her mouth. He can't see, she thought. There's no
use talking.

When he had gone, Catherine hovered a moment at the telephone. No use
calling her mother; she wouldn't be able to come up from Fiftieth
Street in time to do any good. She sat down at the desk, her hands
spread before her, her eyes on her wrist watch. Henrietta might still
come. The minutes were thick, cold liquid, dripping, dripping. Letty's
loud call summoned her, and she hunted up the dingy cotton duck, while
that slow, cold drip, drip continued. Half past nine. The minutes split
into seconds, heavy, cold, dripping seconds. Time could drive you mad,
thought Catherine, while the seconds dripped upon her, if you waited
for it long enough.

It was almost ten when she telephoned the Bureau.

Dr. Roberts' neat accents vibrated at her ear.

"I am sorry," she said, "but I cannot get away. One of the children is
ill. I've been waiting for the doctor. You have the final sheets and
graphs I made, haven't you? There's a list of questions and notes in
the left drawer of my desk. I regret this. If you wish any explanation
of the graphs, please call me."

He sounded abrupt, irritated, under his perfunctory regret. As
Catherine hung away her hat and coat, she felt a cold, heavy weight
back of her eyes, deep in her throat. Time had lodged there! I can't
sit down and cry, she thought. No wonder he is angry. It's my business
to be on hand. She had once, swimming at low tide, found herself in a
growth of kelp, the strong wet masses tangling about her frightened
struggles. Charles had dragged her out, to clear green water and
safety. She laughed, and pressed her fist again against her mouth. He
wouldn't drag her out of this tangle, not he!

She sat beside Letty, reading to her, when Dr. Henrietta finally came.

"Catherine! You stayed!" Her round face set in dismay. "I tried once to
call you. That baby died, the one we delivered last night. I've been
working there."

"I knew you'd come when you could." Catherine pushed her chair away
from the bed. Henrietta pulled off her coat, pushed up her cuffs from
her firm wrists, and bent over Letty.

"She's all right," she said, presently. "Just a touch of stomach upset
last night. That's good."

"Ducky sick." Letty waved her limp bird at Henrietta.

"Keep him very quiet, then." Henrietta poked the duck down beside
Letty, and shook herself briskly into her coat.

Catherine followed her into the hall.

"I might as well have gone down to the office." She was ironic.

"Exactly. I'm awfully sorry, Catherine, that I am so late. It's almost
noon, isn't it? I thought I could keep life in that little rag." Her
eyes looked hot and tired. "But I couldn't. Just keep Letty from
tearing around too much to-day. She'll be sound as a whistle to-morrow
again."

"Well, at least we escaped a plague." Catherine leaned against the
wall, inert, dull.

"Wouldn't Charles stay?" Henrietta peered at her. "Too busy, eh? Well,
Monday you'll be free as air again."

"I wonder."

"Now, Catherine, don't be so serious. A year from now you won't know
you weren't there!"

"It's not just that, Henry. It's the whole thing." Catherine flung open
her hands. "Am I all wrong, to try it?"

"You know what I think. Here, put on your hat and come out in the
sunshine. Haven't you some marketing to do?"

"No. Flora does it. But I will go to the corner with you."

Flora could keep an eye on Letty. Catherine hurried for her wraps, and
joined Henrietta at the elevator.

"You've had a horrid morning, haven't you?" she said, swinging up from
her inner concentration. "The poor baby----"

"If we can pull the mother through. She's been scared for months. She
doesn't know, yet."

They stood at the corner, the clatter of the street bright about them.

"I've another call at Ninetieth. I'll ride down." Henrietta signaled
the car. "Buck up, Cathy. It's all part of life, anyway. Death--" She
shrugged. "That's the queer thing." Her placid mask had slipped a
little. "Pleasant words to leave with you, eh?" She jeered at herself.
"So long!"

As Catherine recrossed the street, she hesitated, glancing back into
the shade behind the iron palings of the little park. Was that Charles,
just within the gate, and that slim, elegant, tan figure beside him?
She turned and fled. She wouldn't see them, not now. Not until she had
fought through this thicket of resentment. After all, she had known,
all the time, that what fight there was to make she must make unaided.
The sun was warm and golden, and there came Spencer and Marian,
shouting out, "Moth-er!" as they chased ahead of Miss Kelly.

"Oh, we had a nice time." Marian danced at her side, clinging to her
arm. "Miss Kelly told us a new game."

How well they looked, and Miss Kelly, trudging to catch up with them,
was serene and smiling. Letty wasn't sick. It was all a part of life.
She could manage it, everything, someway!

Miss Kelly, puffing and warm, was delighted with the news about Letty.

"I was trying," she said, "to figure out some way about mother, so I
wouldn't have to desert you." Catherine's quick smile saw Miss Kelly as
a sunlit rock, equable, sustaining.

Flora shooed the children out of the kitchen. She was engrossed in
the ceremonial preparation of stuffed peppers with Spanish sauce.
Catherine, preparing orange juice for Letty, was secretly amused at
the elaborate rites. Not until Flora had closed the oven door on the
pan did she look up at Catherine. Then----

"Gen'man called you up, Mis' Hammond. I plumb forgot to tell you. He
pestered me 'bout where you was, and I told him you was out for the
air."

"Who?" Catherine poured the clear juice in to a tumbler. "Did he----"
She turned quickly. "Who was it?"

"Lef' his number. I put it on the pad."

Catherine flew into the study, deaf to Letty's shrill call. It was
the Bureau. Her voice, repeating the number, was imperative. She had
forgotten that Dr. Roberts might call. The whir of the unanswered
instrument pounded on her ear drum. After one. The Bureau was deserted.
What _would_ he think! Why, it looked--she pushed the telephone away,
dull color sweeping up to her hair. It looked as if she had lied. But
it had been so late when Henrietta had come that any thought of the
conference had been worn down. She would have to explain, Monday, as if
she had been caught malingering.

"Hello." Charles stood at the door, uncertainty in his greeting.
"What's the verdict? Pest house?"

"No." Catherine was jamming the whole dreadful morning out of sight,
stamping on the cover--"Henry says it was just indigestion. She's all
right."

"Did you get down to your meeting?"

Catherine shook her head.

"Now that's a shame," Charles advanced tentatively. "I hoped Henry
would come in time."

Easy to say that now, thought Catherine. Then--I won't be ugly. I can't
endure it.

"I felt an awful brute." Charles threw his arm over her shoulders. "But
you saw how it was."

"Oh, I saw!" An ironic gleam in Catherine's eyes.

"And here Letty didn't need you, anyway. You might even have gone last
night."

"I must see to her lunch." Catherine twisted out of his arm, adding
with a touch of malice--"You know you had a good time."

"Oh, fair." Charles was indifferent. "Left me sort of done this
morning. Miss Partridge wanted me to thank you for her pleasant
evening."

"I thought I saw you at the gate just now," said Catherine.

"Yes. I just ran into her on my way home."

"Don't look at me that way!" Catherine cried out sharply.

"What way?" Charles expanded his chest, bristling.

"As if you expected to see me--_suspecting_ you!"

"Well, good Lord, you sounded as if you thought I'd spent the morning
with Stel--Miss Partridge."

"I hadn't thought so. Did you?"

"Of course not." Charles began, with elaborate patience. "I told you
that dissertation committee--" Catherine's laugh interrupted him, and
he stared at her. "I don't know what you're trying to do," he said
slowly. "I'm sick of this guilty feeling that's fastened on me. Last
night because I wanted you to go to the theater, this morning because I
had to go to a legitimate meeting. You don't act natural any more."

Catherine went quickly back to him, her finger tips resting lightly
against his shoulders.

"And so he deposited the blame where it wouldn't bother him--on her
frail shoulders!" Her eyes, mocking, brilliant in her pale face, met
his sulky defiance. "Philander if you must, but don't act as if you'd
stolen the jam!"

"I'm not philandering."

"No, of course he isn't." Catherine brushed her fingers across his
cheek. "Not for an instant. Now come, luncheon must be ready."

"But I may!" His voice came determinedly after her, as she went into
Letty's room, "if I don't have more attention paid to me at home!"


VII

Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning again. Catherine, shivering a little
in the wind from the gray river, as the bus lumbered down the Drive,
tried to escape the clutter of thoughts left from the week-end. She had
borrowed twenty-five dollars from Charles that morning, for Miss Kelly.
She had pretended not to see his eyebrows when she laid the market
bills in front of him. Flora had said, when Catherine suggested more
discretion in shopping: "Yes'm, I'll make a 'tempt. But charging things
in a grocery store jest stimulates my cooking ideas."

Perhaps I'll have to take back the shopping. A gust caught her hat,
wheeled it half around. And clothes! I've got to have some. How? I
won't have a cent left out of that first check. It's like an elephant
balancing on a ball, or a tight-rope walker without his umbrella, this
whole business.

Last night, when her mother had come in, and Bill and Dr. Henrietta,
her mother with several amusing little stories about the friend who
had come from Peoria, Illinois, to spend the winter with her--too plump
to fit easily into the kitchenette--Charles, with his affectionate
raillery of Mrs. Spencer--her mother was fond of Charles. But he
needn't have made a jest of Saturday morning, and his refusal to give
up his job to stay home with Letty. "That's what poor men are coming
to, I'm afraid," her mother had told him. Henrietta had jibed openly at
him, so openly that only Mrs. Spencer's gentle and fantastic mockery
had smoothed his feathers. And Bill had said nothing. Catherine drew
her collar closely about her throat. She had found him looking at her,
and in his glance almost a challenge, a recall of that brief walk
on Friday. "I hope it's straight, your road," he had said then. She
shrugged more deeply into her coat. Straight! Was it a road? Or merely
a blind alley? Or a tight-rope, and she had to poise herself and juggle
a hundred balls as she crossed; the house, the children, the bills,
Charles, always Charles, and her work. She came back to the thought of
Dr. Roberts and the explanation she must offer.

Dr. Roberts, however, seemed miraculously to need no explanation. He
had called to tell her that the committee was to stay over Monday, and
that she could meet the two men after all. With sudden release from
the tension of the past days, Catherine moved freely into this other
world, and her road seemed again straight. She was quietly proud of the
conservative response her suggestions met; her mind was agile, cool,
untroubled. There grew up a plan for a first-hand study of several of
the normal schools. Someone from the Bureau might go west. Catherine
brushed aside her sudden picture of herself, walking among the bricks
and stone, the people, for which these dust-grimed catalogues stood.

As she went home that evening, little phrases from the day ran like
refrains. "A masterly analysis, Mrs. Hammond. Your point of view is
interesting." And Dr. Roberts, after the men had gone--"I call this a
most encouraging meeting, Mrs. Hammond. Sometimes the personal equation
is, well, let us say, difficult. But you have tact."

Oh, it's worth any amount of struggle, she thought. Any amount! I'll
walk my tight-rope, even over Niagara. And keep my balls all flying in
the air!



PART III

BLIND ALLEYS


I

Margaret and Catherine were lunching together in a new tea room, a
discovery of Margaret's. The Acadian, Acadia being indicated in the
potted box at the windows, the imitation fir trees on the bare tables,
and the Dresden shepherdess costume of the waitresses.

"It's a relief, after St. Francis every day," said Catherine. "The soup
of the working girl grows monotonous."

"Hundreds of places like this." Margaret beckoned to a waitress. "Our
coffee, please, and cakes." The shepherdess hurried away. "Isn't she a
scream," added Margaret, "with that sharp, gamin face, and those ear
muffs, above that dress! Why don't you hunt up new places to eat?"

Catherine glanced about; sleek furs draped over backs of chairs, plump,
smug shoulders, careful coiffures, elaborately done faces.

"The home of the idle rich," she said. "I can't afford it. I'm not a
kept woman. Fifty cents is my limit, except when I go with you."

"You draw a decent salary." Margaret pulled the collar of her heavy
raccoon coat up against a snow-laden draft from the opened door. "What
do you spend it for? You haven't bought a single dud. Why, you don't
slip off your coat because the lining is patched. Does Charles make you
give him your salary envelope?"

Catherine was silent and the shepherdess set the coffee service in
front of Margaret.

"Well?" Margaret poured. "I'm curious."

"Only a rich man can afford a self-supporting wife," said Catherine
lightly. "I was figuring it up last night. I've got to make at least a
hundred a week."

"What for?" insisted Margaret.

"Everything. There's not a bill that isn't larger, in spite of anything
that I can do. Food, laundry, clothes. You have no idea how much I was
worth! As a labor device, I mean."

"Um." Margaret glinted over her mouthful of cake. "I always thought the
invention of wives was a clever stunt."

"They can save money, anyway. I tried doing some of the things
evenings, ironing and mending, but I can't."

"I should hope not!"

"Well, then, I have to pay for them. Charles can't. It wouldn't be
fair."

"You look as if you were doing housework all night, anyway." Margaret's
eyes gleamed with hostility. "Why can't the King take his share? You're
as thin as a bean pole."

"Wait till you get your own husband, you! Then you can talk."

"Husband!" Margaret hooted. "Me? I'm fixed for life right now."

"They have their good points." Catherine rose, drawing on her gloves.
Margaret paid the bill and tipped with the nonchalance of an unattached
male.

"That's all right." Margaret thrust her hands deep into her pockets and
followed her sister. She turned her nose up to sniff at the sharp wind,
eddying fine snow flakes down the side street. "I know lots of women
who prefer to set up an establishment with another woman. Then you go
fifty-fifty on everything. Work and feeling and all the rest, and no
King waiting around for his humble servant."

Catherine laughed.

"I'll try to bring up Spencer to be a help to his wife," she said.

"Oh, Spencer!" Margaret glowed. "He's a darling! Tell him I'm coming up
some day to see him."

They walked swiftly down the Avenue; Catherine felt drab, almost
haggard, worn down, by the side of Margaret's swinging, bright figure.

"How's your job?" she asked. "You haven't said a word about it."

"Grand." Margaret's smile had reminiscent malice. "You know, I've
persuaded them to order new work benches for the main shop. I told
you how devilish they were? Wrong height? Well, I cornered Hubbard
last week. It was funny! I told him I'd found a terrible leak in his
efficiency system. He's hipped on scientific efficiency. I tethered him
and led him to a bench." She giggled. "I had him sitting there cutting
tin before he knew where he was, and I kept him till he had a twinge of
the awful cramp my girls have had. Result, new benches."

"You won't have half so much fun when you accomplish everything you
want to, will you?"

"That's a hundred years from now, with me in the cool tombs." They
stepped into the shelter of the elevator entrance to the Bureau. "I'm
working now on some kind of promotion system. Of course, most of the
girls are morons or straight f.m.'s, but there are a few who are
better."

"What are 'f.m.'s'?"

"Feeble-mindeds. Like to do the same thing, simple thing, day after
day. It takes intelligence to need something ahead." She grinned at
Catherine. "They make excellent wives," she added. "Now if you didn't
have brains, you'd be happy as an oyster in your little nest."

The splutter of motors protesting at the cold, the scurry of people,
heads down into the wind, gray buildings pointing rigidly into a gray,
low sky--Catherine caught all that as background for Margaret, fitting
background. Margaret was like the city, young, hard, flashing.

"Of course, f.m.'s make rotten mothers," she was finishing. "In spite
of the ease with which, as they say, they get into trouble."

"You know," Catherine's smile echoed the faint malice in her sister's
as they stood aside for a puffing, red-nosed little man who bustled in
for shelter--"I think you take your maternal instinct out on your job.
Creating----"

"Maternal instinct! Holy snakes!" Margaret yanked her gloves out of
her pockets and drew them on in scornful jerks. "You certainly have a
sentimental imagination at times."

"That's why you don't need children," insisted Catherine. "Just as
Henrietta Gilbert takes it out on other people's children."

"You make me sick! Drivel!" Margaret glowered, gave her soft green hat
a quick poke, and stepped out of the lobby. "Good-by! You'll lose your
job, maundering so!"

"Good-by. Nice lunch." Catherine laughed as she hurried for the waiting
elevator.

She stood for a few minutes at the window of her office, before she
settled down to the afternoon of work. There was snow enough in the
air to veil the crawl of traffic far below, to blur the spires of
the Cathedral. The clouds hung just above the buildings, heavy with
storm. She would have to go home on the subway; no fun on the bus
such an evening. Dim gold patches in distant windows--office workers
needed light this afternoon. Her eyes dropped to the opposite windows.
Revolving fussily before the great mirrors--how dull and white this
snow-light made them--was a plump little man; the shade cut off his
head, but his gestures were eloquent of concern about the fit of his
shoulders.

Her window, looking out on the honeycombing of many windows, and down
on the crawling traffic, and off across the piling roofs, had come to
be a sort of watch tower. For more than two months now, she had looked
out at the city. She had come to know the city's hints of changing
seasons, hints more subtle, far less frank than the bold statements of
growing things in the country. A different color in the air, altering
the sky line; a different massing of clouds; a new angle for the
sun through her window in the morning; a gradual stretching of the
shadows on the roof tops. She stood there, gazing out at the terrific,
impersonal whirl. If she could see the atoms, separately, each would be
as fussy, as intimately concerned in some detail as little Mr. Plump
opposite, pulling up his knee to twist at his trouser leg. And yet,
out of that tiny squirming could grow this enormous, intricate whole.

The stenographer at the door drew her abruptly from the window.

"Oh, yes, Miss Betts. I wanted you to take these letters." She bent
swiftly to her work.

       *       *       *       *       *

She grimaced wryly as she was jammed and pushed through the door into
the crowded local. Shoving feet, jostling bodies, wrists at the level
of her eyes. Hairy wrists, chapped thin wrists, fat wrists, grubby,
reaching up for straps; and the horrid odor of dirty wool, damp from
the snow. A wrench, a grinding, and the terrific, clattering roar of
the homeward propulsion began. She longed for the quiet isolation
of the hour on top of the bus, in which she could swing into fresh
adjustment. Lucky that heads were smaller than shoulders and set in the
middle. The figure against her began to squirm, and her swift indignant
glance found a folded newspaper worming up before her eyes. Friday,
December 9. She stared at the date, its irking association just eluding
her. The 9th. She set her lips in dismay as she caught her dodging
thought. That reception, to-night! She had meant to buy fresh net for
her dress, her one black evening dress--and Margaret's appearance
had driven it out of her head. No room for her abortive shrug. Well,
probably fresh net would have fooled no one.

At the sound of her key in the door, Marian rushed through the hall.
Catherine, shivering a little at the sudden warmth after the windy
blocks from the subway, bent to kiss her.

"Muvver!" Marian's eyes were roundly horrified. "Spencer's run away.
We can't find him anywhere!" Her voice quavered. "He's lost himself!"

"What do you mean!" Catherine thrust her aside and ran through the
hall. Letty was clattering busily around the edge of the living room
rug on her go-duck. "Where's Miss Kelly?"

"Kelly gone. Spennie gone. Daddy gone." Chanted Letty, urging her steed
more violently.

"Flora!" Catherine went toward the kitchen, to meet Flora, her mouth
wide and dolorous.

"He's done eluded 'em, Mis' Hammond," she said. "They been hunting
hours an' hours."

"What happened?" Catherine was cold in earnest now, a gasping cold that
settled starkly about her heart.

"He ain't come home after school. Miss Kelly, she took Marian and went
over there, but they wasn't no one lef' there. Chillun all gone."

"Yes, Muvver, we went over three times, Miss Kelly and me, and he
wasn't there, and the janitor said no children were there."

"But he always comes straight home." Catherine's hand was at her
throat, as if it could melt the constriction there. "You didn't see
him, Marian?"

"No." Marian flopped her hair wildly. "Miss Kelly was waiting for me,
and Letty, and we had a walk, and he wasn't here----"

"Has Mr. Hammond been in?"

"Yessum, he's been in, and out, chasing around wild like."

"He knows, then?"

"He come home sort of early," explained Flora. Catherine shrank from
the dramatic intensity of Flora's words. "Came home, and foun' his
child wasn't here. He's gone for the police."

The telephone rang, and Catherine hurried herself into the study.

"Yes?" Her voice was faint. "Yes? Who is it?"

"That you, Catherine?"

"Have you found him?" she cried.

"No." The wire hummed, dragging his voice off to remoteness. "Has Miss
Kelly come back?"

"Where have you looked? I'll go hunt----"

"You stay there." Then, suddenly loud, "You might call up the
hospitals. I've notified the police station. They are flashing the
description all over town."

"Where are you now?" begged Catherine, but there was only silence, and
the terminating click.

Flora was at her elbow.

"Ain't found him?" She clucked her tongue.

"You better go on home, Flora." Catherine couldn't look at her. She
felt a ghoulish contamination, setting her mind afire with horrible
pictures. Spencer, run down in the snowy street. Spencer--"I must stay
here anyway."

Flora wavered. She wanted, Catherine knew, to see the end of this
melodrama.

"Your own family will need you," she urged. "Go on."

Then, swiftly, to Marian, "Please keep Letty quiet. Mother wants to
telephone."

She closed the door and pulled the telephone directory to the desk. How
many hospitals there were! Hundreds--Has a little boy been brought in,
injured? He is lost. Unless he were terribly hurt, he could have told
you who he is. Has a little boy been brought in--yes? He's nine--no,
not red hair. The wind yelled down the well outside the window. Surely
he wouldn't be hurt, and not be found. Still and unmoving, in some dark
street--oh, no! No! She clutched her arm against her breast, as her
finger ran down the dancing column of numbers. Someone at the door. She
listened, unable to stand up.

Miss Kelly came in, her face mottled with the cold, her hair in
draggled wisps on her cheeks.

"I don't know where to look next," she said. "I hunted up the addresses
of some of the boys he plays with, but they are all home, and haven't
seen him since school, not one of them."

"When did you begin to hunt?"

"Immediately." Miss Kelly was dignified, sure of her lack of blame. "We
waited here for him, just as we always do. I thought it was too cold
for Marian and Letty to wait at the corner."

"He--he's always come straight home, hasn't he?" said Catherine,
piteously.

"Always. That's why----" she stopped.

That's why, that's why--Catherine's mind picked up the words. That's
why he must be hurt, unconscious somewhere, kidnaped--that little
Italian boy who was found floating in the river--Spencer's face, white
on black water--stop it! Not that!

"Can you stay to see that Letty goes to bed?" Catherine turned to her
endless task. "I haven't called all the hospitals yet."

His gray eyes, long, with the wide space between, and the small, fine
nose; fair boy's brows; mobile, eager lips. If I had been here, she
thought, as she waited for the curt official voice to answer,--Has a
little boy been brought in? If I had been here--oh, if--if----

       *       *       *       *       *

Finally she sat, staring at the ridiculous gaping mouthpiece. Where
would they take him, if he were--dead. Wasn't there a morgue? The word
twisted and plunged in her, a slimy thing. She would call the morgue.
She heard Miss Kelly's firm voice, "No, you mustn't bother your mother,
not now. Come and have your supper, Marian."

He couldn't be dead. That warm, hard, slender body--how absurd! Morbid.
He was somewhere, just around the corner. Death, that's the queer
thing. Who had said that? Henrietta. She would call her--and ask her.

Before she had given the number, the front door clattered, opened.
Catherine pushed herself erect; she was stiff, rigid. She found herself
in the hall. Charles, glowering, and in front of him, propelled by his
father's hand on his shoulder, Spencer! She couldn't move, or speak.

"Well, here's the fine young man," said Charles.

Spencer wriggled under his hand. His eyes smoldered with resentment,
and his mouth was sullen.

Catherine's hands yearned toward him. She mustn't frighten him, but
just to touch him, to feel him!

"A great note!" Charles came down the hall, righteous anger on his
face. "I called up the police and had them send out their signals."

"Where was he?" Catherine had him now; she lifted Charles's hand away
and touched the boy. He was trembling--Charles had been rough!

"I was just playing," Spencer cried out, gruffly. "I didn't know you'd
tell the police."

"You've been told to come straight home, haven't you? Tell your mother
what you told me, sir!"

"Charles!" Catherine's flash at him was unpremeditated. "You needn't
bully him!"

"Tell her!" roared Charles.

"I just said"--Spencer's words tumbled out, full of impotent fury and
indistinct with tears--"I said--I said--I didn't want to come home to
that old Kelly. I didn't want----"

"He said," remarked Charles coldly, "that he saw no use of coming home
when his mother wasn't here."

"But where was he?" Catherine had her arm over his shoulder, in a
protective gesture. "Where did you find him?"

"I heard his voice. As I came along Broadway, past that vacant lot. He
was down behind the bill boards there, with some street gamins, doing
the Lord knows what."

"We just built a fire, Moth-er." Spencer pressed against her. "I didn't
know it was so late. We were bandits."

"Go on into your room, Spencer. You know you should come straight home."

"He ought to be punished," declared Charles, as the boy vanished in
relieved haste.

"I judge you have been punishing him." Catherine stood between Charles
and Spencer's closing door. "He was trembling, and almost crying, and
he never cries."

"Did you want me to kiss him when I found him, after the way I've spent
the afternoon?"

"You want to make him feel as bad as you have!" Catherine leaned
against the wall. She was exhausted; her heart was beating in short,
spasmodic jerks, as if she had run for miles.

"I suppose I was mad, clear through." Charles grinned, abashed. Then he
stiffened again. "Devilish thing to do. I came home after some lecture
notes, for a meeting, and I couldn't even go to the meeting."

Miss Kelly came into the hall. She had smoothed her hair into its usual
neatness, and her face was roundly pink again.

"I am afraid I must go," she said. Her eyes inspected them, gravely.
Catherine flushed; Miss Kelly had heard them squabbling and she was
reproaching Catherine.

"I'm sorry you've been detained. I'll see that Spencer realizes how
serious this is," she said.

When the door had closed on her sturdy back, Charles broke out, "If
you'd been here, this wouldn't have happened. You heard what he said,
didn't you?"

"Don't say that!" Catherine's exhaustion sent hot tears into her eyes.

But Charles had to unload his overcharged feelings somewhere.

"You might as well face the truth. If you care more for a paltry job
than for your children--" He shrugged. "But you won't see it. I've got
to have my dinner. We'll be late to that reception now. If I miss all
my appointments because my wife works, I'll have a fine reputation."

Incredible! Catherine watched him clump down to the living room. He
wanted to hurt her. She pressed her fingers, ice-cold, against her
eyeballs. She wouldn't cry. He felt that way. Not just because he had
been worried about Spencer. There was a heavy coil of resentment from
which those words had leaped. And she had thought, for weeks now,
that she had learned to balance on her tight-rope, and keep the balls
smoothly in air. While under the surface, this!

"Can't we have dinner?" he called to her. "We really must hurry a
little, Catherine."

She set the dinner silently on the table, avoiding the defiant glance
she knew she would meet.

"Don't wait for me." She paused, a tumbler of milk in her hand. "I want
to talk to Spencer."

Charles pulled out his watch and gazed at it impressively.


II

Catherine, sitting on the edge of her bed, drew on one silk stocking
and gartered it. She lifted her head; when she bent over like that,
faint nausea, like a green smear, rose through her body behind her
eyelids. She shouldn't have eaten any dinner. Or was it just Charles,
and his restrained disapproval--or Spencer. She sighed, thinking
through her talk with Spencer. With insistent cunning he had offered as
excuse, his dislike of Miss Kelly, his distaste for the house without
Catherine. "I didn't think it was bad," he said. "I didn't do anything
bad."

"Inconsiderate," suggested Catherine, looking at the stubborn head on
the pillow. Safe! She couldn't scold him, and yet--"You didn't think
how we would feel."

"Oh, I thought," said Spencer. "I thought you wouldn't know. And my
father wasn't very con-sid-'rate." He thrust his head up indignantly.
"He yanked me right away, and the fellows all _saw_ him."

Then Charles had called sharply, "Catherine! Are you dressing?" and she
had, under pressure, resorted to a threat. She was ashamed of it. She
drew on the other stocking, smoothing it regretfully. She had said, "If
you won't promise to come home directly, I shall ask Miss Kelly to call
for you at school."

Charles came in, bay rum and powder wafted with him, his face pink and
solemn.

"Oh, I haven't put in your studs--" She made a little rush for his
dresser, but he brushed her away.

"Please don't bother. You're not ready yourself."

Catherine stifled an hysterical giggle. Emotion in these
costumes--Charles in barred muslin underwear, his calves bulging above
his garters, and she in silk chemise--was funny! She lifted her black
dress from its hanger and slipped it over her head. Well, it had
dignity, of a dowdy sort, if it wasn't fresh. She stood in front of
the long mirror, trying to crisp the crumpled net of the long draped
sleeves. Her fingers caught; she had pumiced too hard at the ink on
their tips--hollows at the base of her throat--try to drink more milk.
Her skin had pale luster, against the black, but her face lacked color.
"If this weren't a faculty party," she said, lightly, "I'd try rouge."

"Why doesn't that girl come?" asked Charles, his voice muffled by the
elevation of his chin as he struggled with his tie. "Time, I should
think."

"What girl?" Catherine turned from the mirror. "Oh--" her shoulders
sagged in complete dismay.

"Miss Brown. You got her, didn't you?"

Catherine, a whirl of black net, was at the telephone. How could she
have forgotten! "No, Morningside!" She waited. She had called once,
that morning, and Miss Brown was out. She had meant--"Is Miss Brown
in?" Charles was at the door, an image of funereal, handsome dignity.
Miss Brown was not in. No, the voice had no idea when she would be in.

"Oh, say it!" Catherine's fingers pushed recklessly through her hair.
"Say it, Charles!" He swung on his heel and disappeared.

Perhaps her mother--but no one answered that call, and Catherine
remembered that Friday was the night for opera.

A voice in the hall, although she hadn't heard the doorbell. It was
Bill.

"Going out, eh?"

"Apparently not." Charles was elaborately, fiendishly jovial. "I
thought we were, but Catherine neglected to provide a chaperone for the
children."

Catherine pressed her fingers against her warm cheeks. Her quick
thought was: just Bill's entrance scatters this murky, ridiculous
tension. This ought to be a joke, not a tragedy.

"Here, run along, you two." She lifted her head and looked at Bill,
smiling at her. "I've nothing to do. Let me sit here and read."

"We can't impose on you that way--" began Charles.

"Of course we can!" Catherine tinkled, hundreds of tiny bells at all
her nerve ends. "Of course! Come on, Charles."

As Charles stamped into his overshoes, Catherine ran back to the living
room. Bill stood at the table, poking among the magazines.

"Thank Heaven you came just then!" she said, softly. "Oh, Bill!"

"What is this momentous occasion, anyway?"

"A faculty reception. It's not that. I'm an erring wife and mother."
His glance steadied her, stopped that silly tinkling. "Spencer ran
away and I forgot to send word for Miss Brown to come in, and--" That
wordless quiet of his enveloped her, like a deep pool in which she
relaxed, set free from the turmoil of the past hours. "If I could stay
here with you!"

"Are you about ready?" Charles asked crisply.

Had Bill lifted his hand in a heartening gesture, or had she imagined
it?

The elevator was slow. Charles laid a vindictive thumb on the button;
below them the signal snarled.

"Sam's probably at the switchboard," said Catherine, coldly.

"He won't be, long!" Charles pressed harder.

Catherine turned away, her fingers busy with the snaps of her gloves.
The tips were powdery and worn; another cleaning would finish this
pair. If Charles wanted to be childish, venting spite on anything-- A
clatter and a creaking of cables behind the iron grill.

"If you prefer to stay with Bill, why come?"

Catherine's jerk rent the soft kid. The snap dangled by a shred. The
door slammed open and they stepped into the car.

Sam was explaining to Charles. In the narrow corner mirror Catherine
could see the line of Charles's cheek bone, the corner of his mouth.
Poor man! He was in a humor. Well, he could stay there! She wouldn't
cajole him out of it; he could wait till she did! It was always she
who had to make the overture. Charles sat sulkily down in the swamp of
ill feeling and wouldn't budge.

"It's stopped snowing." She lifted her face to the steel plate of sky
overhead.

"Temporarily." Charles strode along with great steps. "Here, take my
arm." He stopped at the corner.

"Have to keep my gloves fresh." Catherine hurried across the slippery
cobblestones. As they climbed up past the dark chapel, she squirmed
inside her coat. How ridiculous they were, going along in a pet, like
children. Bill would laugh, if he knew. The long windows of the law
library dropped their panels of light across the thin snow. When we
reach the library steps, thought Catherine, I'll say, let's be good.
Only--why must I always be abject, and ingratiating? Again that streak
of hard, ribald mockery: let him sulk if he likes. I'm tired of being
humble. Below them the wide sweep of steps, the bronze figure aproned
with snow; the dignified weight of the building rising above them, the
recessed lights glowing behind the columns. How many times they had
walked together across these steps!

"Charles." She spoke impetuously. "Don't be cross. What's the use?"

"If you chose to project your own mood upon me--" Charles jerked his
chin away from the folds of silk muffler.

"Oh, Lord!" sighed Catherine. "Don't we sound married!"

She could see the building now, with shadowy figures moving past the
lighted windows. I can't be humble enough in that distance to do any
good. What an evening!

It was like a nightmare, through which she moved as two people, one a
cool, impersonal, outer self, given to chatter rather more than usual;
the other a mocking, irreverent, twisting inner self, mewed up in
confusion and injury. Empty, meaningless chatter. What fools people
were, dragging themselves together in an enormous room, moving around,
busy little infusoria. Charles liked it. He felt himself erect and
important, with the crowding people a tangible evidence of his success,
the decorum, the polished surfaces clinking out assurance that here
was his group, here he was admitted, recognized. Catherine, bowing,
smiling, listening to his voice, offering bright little conventional
remarks, was conscious of his feeling. He's feeding on it, she thought.
Growing smug. How far away from him I am--far enough to see him smug,
and hate it. They had drifted away from the formal receiving line. She
twisted at her glove, to hide the torn snap.

"Well, Mrs. Hammond!" Mr. Thomas was at her elbow, his thick glasses
catching the light blankly, his head enormous above the rather pinched
shoulders of his dress suit. "This is a pleasure." He shook her hand
nervously, oppressed by his social obligation. "A pleasure."

Mrs. Thomas bustled up, crisp in rose taffeta, a black velvet ribbon
around her pinkish, wrinkled throat.

"So long since we've seen you. We were just saying we must have you out
for Sunday night supper. Walter does miss Spencer so much."

"That would be fine!" declared Charles, heartily. "I haven't forgotten
that cake."

"We heard such a funny thing." Were the lines in her pink cheeks
dented in malice? She bobbed her curly gray head sidewise at Charles.
"Someone told Mr. Thomas that your wife had left you, Mr. Hammond."

Catherine saw the ominous twitching under Charles's eyes, but Mr.
Thomas put in, hastily.

"I think it was intended for a jest, you know." He turned to Catherine,
his large, gentle mouth agitated, as if in distress at his wife's poor
taste. "I met Dr. Roberts last week. I know him quite well, you know.
He was speaking about your work, Mrs. Hammond. He was extraordinarily
enthusiastic."

Catherine took that gratefully, as something in which she was at least
not culpable. There was a little eddy of people around them, throwing
off several to stop for casual greetings; when they had gone on,
Catherine heard Mrs. Thomas's high voice. "The poor boy! I suppose the
house seems empty with no mother in it." Her outer self looked across
at Charles, calm enough, but her inner self had an instant of rage, a
hurling, devastating instant.

"Mr. Hammond was just telling me about Spencer's running away." Mrs.
Thomas had a peculiarly self-righteous air in her pursed lips and
bright eyes. "How worried you must have been!"

"Oh, Mr. Hammond found him so promptly."

"But just a minute can seem a long time. I remember one day----"

"Pardon me, please." Charles moved away, restrained eagerness in the
forward thrust of his head above his broad, black shoulders.

Catherine saw him edge past a group, saw a pearl-smooth shoulder above
a jade-green velvet sheath. The Partridge, of course! What was she
doing at a faculty reception? She had a glimpse of the squirrel smile,
before she picked up the thread of Mrs. Thomas's domestic lyric.

The Thomases wanted refreshments. Catherine's throat was sticky-dry
at the thought of food. She had a sharp longing for her own living
room and Bill. He could ease her of these innumerable prickings. She
made her way to Charles, and then stood, unnoted, at his elbow. Miss
Partridge saw her, and her hand swam up in a leisurely arc. Catherine
nodded pleasantly.

"I think I'll run along, Charles. You aren't to hurry." She drifted
away before his hesitancy reached action.


III

Snow again in the air, wet on her cheeks. I am going home, to see
Bill, in search of ballast. She hurried across the campus. The library
windows were dark; two cleaning women, aprons bundled about their
heads, clattered ahead of her with their pails.

As she pushed open the apartment door, she saw Bill, standing at the
doorway of Marian's room, indistinct in the shadow. He moved violently
away.

"Have the children been bothering you?" Catherine listened an instant
at the door. Nothing but the faintest possible rhythm of breathing.

"I thought I heard Letty call." Bill retreated into the living room.
"Where's Charles? The party over?"

"I ran away." Catherine slipped out of her coat. "Leaving him with Miss
Partridge." She drew down her long gloves, laughing, and looked at
Bill. Something curiously disturbed in his heavy-lidded glance. How
tired and gaunt he looked. "What is it, Bill?"

He waited until she had settled into the wing chair.

"Nice dress, that," he said, as he sat down.

"This?" She smiled at him. Her hands lay idly along folds of the black
stuff. "Are you bored, sitting here alone? The children haven't really
been awake, have they?"

"No. I eavesdropped on them." Again that heavy, troubled look. "I heard
them--breathe."

What in that phrase had such poignancy? What in the silence swung a
light close to the dark, unruffled surface of this man, illuminating,
far down in deep water, that struggling, twisting something?

He rose, brushing aside the curtain, to gaze out at the dim city.

"Better run along," he said, slowly. "You must be weary."

"Oh, no." Catherine's hand entreated him.

At that he turned slightly, to face her. She had a queer fancy that she
saw his forehead gleam, his hair shine damp, as if he came swinging up,
up to the surface. But he spoke calmly enough.

"I've been thinking over one of Henrietta's truisms, as I eavesdropped
on your children. Wondering about it, and you."

Catherine was still; breathing might blur the glass, this glass through
which she might have a clear glimpse of Bill.

"It is this." His smile, briefly sardonic, mocked at himself. "That
children are the world's greatest illusion. The largest catch-penny
life offers."

"Sometimes," Catherine hesitated, "I think Henry says a clever thing to
fool herself."

"Isn't it more than clever? Don't you feel, when you are confronted
with a black wall of futility, in yourself, that at least there are
your children, three of them, and that they may jack life up to some
level of significance, and that they are you?"

"Is that an illusion?"

"Isn't it? Our puny little minds, scratching at the edges of whatever
it is that drives us along, pick up bits of sand." Bill laid his hand
on the back of the chair, dragged it around, and dropped into it, his
gaunt profile toward the window, his hands gripped on his knees. "After
all, a merry-go-round doesn't go anywhere but around. Isn't that what
this feeling amounts to? You don't find yourself convinced that you are
the vehicle for your parents, do you? And yet"--the words lagged--"I am
sure I have that illusion as strongly as any fool, that I have the need
for that consolation."

"Surely"--Catherine spoke softly; she mustn't drive him back--"you, of
all people, Bill, are least futile."

He turned his face toward her, a haggard little grin under his somber
eyes.

"What could be more futile? Builder of bridges and buildings, which a
hundred other men can make better than I. I had a maudlin way, when
I was younger, of expecting that to-morrow would give me the thing I
wished. To-morrow! Another catch-penny. And this, too, puerile as it
sounds. For a time Henrietta needed me, while she fought to get her
toes in. But she's past that now."

"Bill"--Catherine strained toward him, her eyes darkly brilliant--"I
came home to-night, because I wanted you. Because when I am frantic and
silly, you can pull me up. You have, countless times."

"That is your generous imagination." Catherine flung out her hand
impatiently. "And you see, I have, instead, spewed out this sentimental
maundering."

"Don't talk that way!" cried Catherine.

"No." He rose abruptly, to stand above her, so that she tipped her head
back, and one hand crept up to press against the pulse beating in her
throat. His glance buffeted hers, entreating something, inarticulate,
baffling. Then, suddenly, the old quiet mask was on again, and the
water closed over his plunge within.

"Don't ever be frantic, Catherine," he said. "Good night."

She sat motionless when he had gone. Bill, in the dark, listening to
the children. Bill, at the window, sending that heavy stare out into
the night. Bill, stripped of his concealment. There was a slow brewing
of exultation within her. He had come out, to her!

The great illusion. She crept silently to the door where Letty and
Marian slept. Spencer moaned softly in his sleep, and she stood for
moments beside his bed. They weren't illusory, except as you tried to
substitute them for everything. They were part of you, to go on when
you stopped. But they were separate, individual, cut off, _themselves_.
What had Bill said? You don't feel yourself the vehicle for your
parents, do you? You wanted your children, part of you, extenuation for
your own shortcomings. Wasn't it an illusion, a flimsy drapery of words
over a huge, blind, instinctive drive? Bill wanted children, then, and
Henrietta--crisp, efficient----

Catherine undressed hastily and crept into bed. Charles was late.
Resentment, like a small sharp bone, still rankled. He's like a little
boy. If I could be patient--Bill never takes things out on Henrietta.
She doesn't know his feeling. Perhaps it is always that way; one person
out of two is not quite happy, never an equal balance. Charles was
content until I broke loose. Henrietta is content. You have to offer up
a human sacrifice. She stared at the ceiling, where a broken rectangle
of saffron light from some court window sprawled. If I could think
about Charles, without this jangle of feelings, perhaps I could see
what to do. Could you ever think straight? Did emotion always enter,
refracting?

Charles _says_ he doesn't mind my working, that he's glad if I like it.
That's what he thinks; no, what he thinks he thinks! But underneath,
he's outraged, and any tiny thing is a jerk of the thin cover over
that feeling. Never till this winter has he been so--so touchy. Silly
little things. Perhaps--she waited an instant--was that his key?
Perhaps I notice it more, because I want approval. But he makes a
personal grievance if I forget his laundry. In a way, it is personal.
I forget, because I don't think of him every second. I try to remember
everything. She twisted over on one side, an arm curled under her
head. I haven't asked him to take any share of the house job, or the
children. She shivered, as if a cold draft from that hour before dinner
blew across her; Spencer, lost, because she wasn't at home. Charles,
intimating that he was justified. But she was at home----

The door clicked softly open, and cautious feet moved down the hall.

Catherine smiled. Charles was like an elephant when he attempted
silence.

"I'm not asleep," she said, and blinked as he flashed on the light.
"You must have had a good time, to stay so late."

"It's a pity you bothered to go at all," he said briefly, as he
vanished behind the closet door.

Catherine turned away from the light, her hand closing into a fist
under her cheek. She wouldn't wrangle, even if he was still out of
sorts. She heard him padding about in stocking feet. He snapped off the
light and scuffed down the hall. She heard him whistling. He would wake
the children, if he weren't more careful.

He was back again, a stocky figure against the pale square of window as
he shoved it open. He was scurrying for bed.

"Charles!" Catherine's cry leaped out. "Come here!"

"Well?" He stood above her. "Brr! It's chilly."

She reached up for his hands, dragged him down beside her, her arms
slipping up to his shoulders, clasping behind his neck. He resisted
her; she felt stubborn hardness in his muscles.

"Charles," she begged, "what's happening to us! Don't----"

"I'm all right," he said. "I thought you were off color."

Catherine let her hands drop forlornly away.

"You've been sort of touchy." He cleared his throat. "I'm not perfect.
But I hate this feeling--that you're standing off, waiting to be
critical of me."

"Oh, I'm not!" Catherine sighed.

"All right, then." Charles bent down, brushed his lips against her
cheek, and stood up. "Go to sleep. You're tired, I guess."

Catherine lay motionless, listening to the creak of his bed, the soft
pulling and adjusting of blankets. The wind was cold on her eyelids, on
the tears that crept down. She was humiliated, shamed. She had dropped
her pride and evoked touch--passion--only to find him--her hands flung
open, to escape the lingering sensation of that obdurate, resisting
column of his throat.

Unbidden, racking, a swift visual image of Stella Partridge, smooth
ivory and jade. She fled away from it. Not that! She wouldn't add
jealousy to her torment. But that eager, forward thrust of his head
as he made his way across the room toward her, and that secret,
honey-mouthed deference in the casual talk of the woman. Oh, no!

Then, rudely, as if she turned to face some monstrous shape that
pursued her, she looked at the image. Perhaps, if Charles was injured,
outraged, under his reasoning surface, he might turn to Stella. She
wanted something of him, that woman. Perhaps it was love she wanted,
although the hard metallic gleam under the softness of her eyes seemed
passionless, egocentric.

"Charles," she whispered. What else she might have said, she didn't
know. But Charles was asleep.


IV

The next morning, in the accustomed flurry of baths, breakfast,
dressing, Catherine jeered at her nightmares of the dark. She would
not be a fool, at least. The children were ecstatic about the snow,
which lay in caps and mounds and blankets on the roof tops below
the windows. Marian made snowballs from the window ledge, and tried,
giggling, to wash her father's face. Charles was jovial, amusing
himself with the rôle of good-natured father. Yes, he might go coasting
with them that afternoon. He'd see if he couldn't get away from the
office early. Miss Kelly could telephone him at noon.

Miss Kelly came in; Flora was belated.

"Probably the trolley cars are stuck," said Spencer, full of delight at
possible catastrophes the snow might bring.

Catherine left a note for Flora, with the day's instructions, and
hurried off. She had swung free of the night in a long arc of release.

The Drive had a dramatic beauty; white morning sunlight piercing the
gaps made by cross streets, long blue shadows stretching from the
buildings, the river gray blue under the clearing sky, the clean, soft
lines of snow turned back by the plows, snow caught in the branches of
trees and shrubbery, like strange fruit; gulls wheeling like winged
bits of snow. By nightfall all the beauty might be trampled and turned
dingy; now--Catherine sat erect, drawing long breaths.

That noon she would squeeze out a few minutes for some Christmas
shopping. Saturday wasn't a good day, but if she found a doll for
Marian, she could begin to dress it. She thrust her foot into the aisle
and peered down at it. Those shoes wouldn't last until January. Well,
she would have her third check on the twenty-third, and she had repaid
Charles. Funny, how much more it cost to dress herself as working woman
than as mother and wife. Perhaps with the first of the year that
increase would gain material shape. Dr. Roberts had hinted at it again.

The bus left the Drive and rattled through the city; one note
everywhere, the squeak of shovels against the sidewalks, piles of
grime-edged snow, files of carts heaped and dripping.

She shivered, hugging her arms close; the last few blocks were always
chilly. Wonderful colors in the great shop windows, exotic, luxurious,
and bevies of shop girls, stepping gingerly over dirty puddles in their
cheap, high-heeled slippers.

Just a half day of work to-day. She could finish the chapter she had
been writing. As she waited for the elevator, she had a sharp renewal
of herself as a part of this great, downward flood. The morning ride
was a symbol, a bridge across which she passed. She nodded to the
elevator boy; his grin made her part of the intimate life of this huge
building. You'd expect to shrink, she thought, as the elevator shot
upwards--swallowed up, and instead you swell, as if you swallowed it
all yourself.

Dr. Roberts hadn't come in. Dropping into her work was like entering a
quiet, clean place of solitude. She reread the pages she had written,
the beginning of her full report, and then wrote slowly, finding
pleasure in the search for a phrase which should be clear glass through
which the idea, the hard, definite fact, might be visible. The jangle
of the telephone bell broke into a sentence.

It was Miss Kelly. Flora hadn't shown up. What did Mrs. Hammond wish
done about luncheon?

"Hasn't she sent any word?" The picture of her kitchen, empty, and
confused, rose threateningly in the quiet office. "Well, you can find
something for the children. I'll be home early."

If something was wrong with Flora! Catherine pushed away the image of
disaster, finished her sentence, and glanced at her watch. Almost one.
Lucky it was Saturday. She would have time--vaguely--to see to this.
Better not stop for any shopping.

When she reached home, the children rushed to the door, accoutered in
leggings and mufflers for coasting.

"Mother! Come with us. Daddy's coming!" Spencer and Marian tugged at
her arms, and Letty pulled at her skirt.

"I can't, chickens." Catherine hugged them, each one. She loved the
exuberance of their greeting, the sharp delight of contrast after the
hours away. "Miss Kelly is all ready." She glanced at Miss Kelly's
serene face. "Flora hasn't shown up? Nor sent word? I'll have to look
her up. To-morrow perhaps I can go."

"I gave the children their lunch," explained Miss Kelly, "but of course
I had no time to set the kitchen to rights."

She certainly hadn't. Catherine gave one dismayed look at the disorder,
and decided to hunt for Flora first. She must be sick.


V

Catherine tried to pick a firm way through the slush of the sidewalk.
Flora must live in this block. She peered at the numbers over dark
doorways, under the sagging zigzags of fire escapes. The snow had been
thrown up in a dirty barricade along the edge of the walk, and over
the upset garbage and ash cans, down the short mounds, shrieked and
wailed and coasted innumerable children. It was like a diminutive
and distorted minstrel show, thought Catherine, stepping hastily out
of the path of a small black baby spinning down into the slush on a
battered tin tray. Snow on the East Side, and on the Drive--she had a
wry picture of the beauty of the morning.

There. 91-A. She stood at the entrance, with a hesitant glance into the
dim hall. Absurd to be nervous about entering. She had never seen where
Flora lived, although she had heard the dirge of rising rent and lack
of repairs which Flora occasionally intoned. She walked to the first
door and knocked boldly.

"Who dar?" The voice bellowed through the door.

"Does Mrs. Flora Lopez live in this house?" Catherine had a notion that
the dim house gave a flutter of curiosity, as if doors moved cautiously
ajar. "I'm Mrs. Hammond," she added sharply to the closed door. "She
works for me."

The door swung open a crack, and a fat dusky face appeared, one white
eye gleaming.

"You wants Mis' Flora Lopez?"

"Do you know her? Which is her flat?"

"Sure I knows her." The round eye held her in hostile inspection. "Is
you f'om the police station, too?"

"No. She works for me. Is she sick?" Queer, how that sense of listening
enmity flowed down the crooked stairway. "Which is her flat?"

"She ain't sick, exac'ly. Ain't she come to wuk to-day?"

"Who zat, want Flora?" The voice came richly down the stairway.

"Which is her flat?" insisted Catherine.

The door opened wider, disclosing a ponderous figure with great soft
hips and bosom, a small child in a torn red sweater clinging to her
skirts and looking up with round frightened eyes.

"She lives on the top flo' rear. I donno as she's home."

Catherine climbed the stairs. There's nothing to be afraid of, she told
herself stubbornly. The sweetish odor of leaking gas, the cold, damp
smell of broken plaster and torn linoleum in the unheated halls choked
her as she climbed. She was sure doors opened and closed as she passed.
She felt herself an intruder, with profound racial antipathy, fear,
stirring within her and around her. I won't go back, she thought. She
tried to step boldly across the hall, but her rubbers made a muffled,
sucking note. At last the top floor. She knocked at the rear door. No
sound; merely the strained sense of someone listening.

"Flora!" she called sharply. "Are you there? It's Mrs. Hammond."

Silence. Feet shuffled on bare boards behind that door.

"Flora!" she called again, and the door crept slowly open.

"Why, Flora! What _is_ the matter?" Catherine gazed at her. Short hair
raying like twisted wires about her face, one eye an awful purple-green
lump, the wide mouth cut and swollen, the broad nostrils distended--a
dumb-show, a gargoyle of miserable agony. "What has happened to you?"

Flora stepped back, pushing ajar a door.

"Come in, Mis' Hammond." Her voice had the exhausted echo of riotous
weeping. "Come in and set down. I was goin' to write you a message."

Catherine followed her into the living room, immaculate, laboriously
furnished. The table, purple plush arm-chairs--Flora had told her when
she ordered those from the installment house; lace curtains draped on a
view of tenements and dangling clothes.

"What has happened, Flora?" Catherine had lost her uneasiness. Flora
had a vestige of the familiar, at least; her gray bathrobe was an old
one Catherine had given her.

Flora sat down in a purple chair and began to rock back and forth,
moaning. Tears ran down her cheeks, gleaming on the bruises.

At a sound behind the door Catherine turned, to find the solemn round
eyes of a little boy fixed upon her. He scuttled over to Flora, burying
his face on her knees.

"Is he yours?"

"Yes'm." Flora cradled one arm about him. "Yes'm. He's my baby." Her
voice rose suddenly into a wail. "An' my li'l girl, where's she! They
took her off to shut her up--all 'count of that"--she shook one fist in
air--"that man!"

Gradually, in broken and violent bits, Catherine gathered the story.
Flora had married her professional gentleman. He hadn't wanted her to
keep the children. They were hers, she had worked for them always, and
dressed them nice, and left them with a neighbor when she went off to
work. She wanted them to grow up nice. She even put little socks on
her girl, and the teacher at school said why should she dress her up
that way, picking on her because she was black. She was twelve. Then
Flora found out her professional gentleman had another wife down
south. She let him stay, anyway, "so long as we'd been married, and
he was handsome." Then she had to put him on bail to leave the little
girl alone, always fooling with her. "I told her to stay with Mis'
Jones till I got home." And finally--Catherine was cold with pity and
horror--Flora had discovered that he hadn't let Malviny alone, that he
had ruined her, and stolen the money she had saved to pay the rent, and
was packing his suitcase to leave. "I started out to kill him," she
said briefly, "but he knocked me down." Then the police had come.

"They said I let Malviny run the streets. She's awful pretty, Mis'
Hammond, most white, she is. Her pa was pale. I was working for her,
wasn't I?" Flora's gesture was wide with despair. "Providin' for her
and him--" she rocked the boy against her breast. "I done the best I
could. She wanted things, and he give her money. She's only twelve."

At last Catherine fled down the stairs, feeling that perversion
and horror and the failure of honest, respectable effort barked at
her heels. Flora couldn't come back to her, not at once. She had
to testify. She won't ever come back, thought Catherine. She'll be
ashamed, because I know all this. She had, when Catherine had tried
to offer sympathy, shrunk away, into the collapse of the structure of
herself as competent, self-respecting working woman. "I done my bes'!"
Her pitiful wail dogged Catherine's feet through the brittle, freezing
slush of the street.


VI

Catherine, in an old house dress, waded determinedly through the mash
of the disordered apartment. Dishes, sweeping, dinner--Miss Kelly had
straightened the children's rooms. She was too well paid for general
utility. I suppose I am inefficient, thought Catherine. Just to be
caught in this mess. But what else can I do? What would a man do in
my place? She pulled a chair near the kitchen table and sat down to
the task of shelling lima beans, while she speculated as to Charles's
procedure. He wouldn't plunge himself into the mess, at least. He would
leave it, until someone else stepped in. That's one trouble with women,
she decided. They have all these habits of responsibility. Now I should
be off playing somewhere, after this week, and here I am!

Charles came in with the children. Miss Kelly, discreetly, had left
them at the steps. She's got the right idea, thought Catherine grimly.
She's not going to be roped in for something she's not paid for.
Letty's cheeks were peonies, her eyes bright stars, and her leggings
were soaked with melted snow.

"We had one grand time, didn't we, chicks!" Charles stamped out of his
rubbers and shook off his snow-spattered coat. "Had a snow fight and
Letty and I beat."

"We landed some hum-dingers right in your neck, anyways," said Spencer.

"Hum-dings in neck!" shrieked Letty. "Hum-gings in neck!"

"You all look as if you'd landed snow everywhere." Catherine shooed
Marian and Spencer into their rooms in quest of dry clothing, ran back
to the kitchen to lower the gas under the potatoes, and returned to
strip Letty of her damp outer layers.

"Even my shirt is wet." Marian giggled, shaking her bloomers until bits
of snow flew over the rug. "It was awful fun, Muvver. And we coasted
belly-bump. Is that a nice word to say?"

"And now we are starved, like any army after a fight," came a sturdy
bellow from Charles.

Bedraggled and glowing, warmly fragrant--Catherine laughed at them as
she tugged the pink flannel pajamas onto Letty's animated legs.

"There!" she kissed her, gave the tousled yellow floss a swift brush,
and carried her into the dining room to set her safely behind the bar
of her high-chair. "Supper and then to bed you go, after this exciting
day."

"What's this about the dusky Flora?" Charles came into the kitchen.

"I'll tell you about it later." Catherine spoke hastily. Tired as she
was, their home-coming had given her the old sweet rush of pleasure, of
safety, of possession. She wanted to keep it untouched, free of that
horror and pity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Much later, when the children were in bed, Charles strolled into the
kitchen and reached for a dish towel. Catherine looked up at him as he
rubbed a tumbler with slow care.

"Like old times, isn't it, eh?" He set the glass on the shelf.

Catherine swallowed her sigh.

"Me wiping dishes, and telling you about what I've been doing--" Was he
deliberately wistful?

"You needn't wait for dishes, need you, to talk?" Catherine's smile
blunted the slight edge in her words.

"Somehow, nowadays, there never seems any chance. Nights you have to go
to sleep, and day times you aren't here."

"Last night you went to sleep."

"Oh, last night!" Charles with a wave of his towel sent last night into
the limbo of things best forgotten.

"Well, tell me. What have you been doing? To-day, for instance."

"I had two interviews this morning." Charles paused. "With two
different publishers' representatives. They are keen about this new
book on tests. Ready to make me an offer right now, without even seeing
an outline. Pretty good, eh?"

"Fine! That's proof of your standing, isn't it?"

"Partly. Partly just the current fad for anything psychological, and
then the clinic behind the book is a factor."

"And you have the book--is it half done?"

"It's getting along." Charles had drawn in his lower lip and was
chewing it thoughtfully. "The clinic is furnishing material. I've been
wondering. Of course Miss Partridge did the organizing there, and
she's done most of the tabulating of results. She suggested that we
collaborate on a book. What would you think of such a scheme?"

"I'd think," cried Catherine in a flash of irritation, "that it was
pure silk for Miss Partridge! That clinic was your scheme, not hers,
and----"

"I haven't committed myself." Charles busied himself with a pile of
dishes on the shelf, rearranging them critically. His expansiveness
contracted visibly. "You needn't be so sure I'd agree with her. I might
give her a chapter to do."

"Why doesn't she write her own books?"

"She isn't that type, the type that seeks expression, I mean. She is
the competent, executive type. It seems a pity for her not to assemble
her results."

In silence Catherine hung away the dish-pan and scrubbed the sink. Be
careful, she warned herself. Don't be cattish; this may be entirely
reasonable.

"I'm sorry you don't like her." Charles was solemn. "She thinks you are
an unusually sweet----"

"She does! She little knows." Catherine grasped desperately for the
fraying thread of control. After all, why shouldn't they write a
book together? She turned quickly, to find Charles eying her with a
cautious, investigatory stare.

"You know--" she grinned at him. "I may write a book with Dr. Roberts.
He was looking over my notes yesterday, and he thinks we can find a
firm to publish the report, as a marketable book. Of course, the Bureau
puts out a report, too."

A thin veil of blankness drew itself over the curiosity in Charles's
face. Before he spoke, however, the bell in the hall sounded.

"Company to-night!" Catherine drooped. "I'm worn to a frazzle."

It was Margaret; her gay, "Hello, King Charles!" floated reassuringly
to Catherine, dabbing powder hastily on her nose, brushing back her
hair from her forehead.

"I brought my partner in to meet you two. Amy, this is the King, and
my sister, Catherine--Amy Spurgeon."

Margaret, clear, sparkling, watching them with her humorous grin, as
if she had staged a vaudeville act. Amy Spurgeon, slight, dark, her
lean, high-cheekboned face sallow and taciturn over the collar of her
squirrel coat, a flange of stiff hair black under the soft brim of her
gray fur hat. Catherine nibbled at her in swift glances as they sat
down in the living room. Margaret had talked about her. "Amy has to
have a passion for something." She looked it, with the criss-crosses
of fine lines at the corners of her black eyes, and the deep straight
lines from nostrils past her mouth. Militant suffragist, pacifist--"She
had a passion for the Hindus last winter. Now she has one for me. I
can't be a cause, exactly, but she finds plenty of causes on the side."
She looks like an Indian, decided Catherine, a temperamental, rather
worn and fiery Indian.

Margaret and Charles were sparring; they couldn't even telephone each
other without crossing points.

"If they are feeble-minded, why bother with them? You can't change
them. Sentimental bosh, this coddling of idiots."

"But they work better, I tell you! Is that sentimental? They make more
money for their bosses. That should appeal to your male sense of what
is sensible."

"Even if they didn't work better"--Amy's voice shot in, a deep throaty
tone, flexible with emotion--"Every human being has a right to
happiness and comfort."

"Even human beings with brains have some difficulty cashing in on that
right," said Catherine. If Amy and Charles started in on society with
the _vox populi_ stop out, they would fight all night! Amy stared at
her with deliberate inspection.

Presently Catherine told them about Flora. Flora had, since the
afternoon, pressed so closely to the surface of her thoughts that she
was bound to come out.

"You shouldn't have gone into a nigger tenement alone!" said Charles.

"Why not?" demanded Amy. "Aren't negroes people?"

"I did feel queer, with the house oozing excitement along with smells."
Catherine smiled at Charles. "But it wasn't dangerous. Only unpleasant."

"Poor Flora." Margaret was grave. "I didn't know she had any children."

"I knew she was always pleased to have clothes given her." Catherine
shivered. "The socks were pitiful! A symbol of her effort."

"Well"--Charles drew at his pipe and paused, impressively--"you can see
what happens to a family when the mother isn't at home."

"Listen to the King!" Margaret flared indignantly. "What about the man?
Living on her, and----"

"If she'd made him support her, he might have had more steadiness."

"I suppose"--Amy drawled--"you go on the theory that men are so
unstable that they can't stand freedom."

Charles had a dangerous little twitch under one eye. Catherine flung
herself into the whirl of antagonism.

"Will you tell me, some of you, what I am to do now? Flora won't
come back. She'll be drawn into trials and all that for a while, and
then she'll hunt up a new place, where no one knows about her. And
meantime----"

"Telephone an agency," said Amy.

"I'll send you one of my girls." Margaret's glance at Charles devilled
him. "I have one who can work about three months before she has to go
to a lying-in hospital, and she's just weak-minded enough to make a
good domestic."

"I can't," said Catherine, "haul in a stranger from an agency to leave
here all day."

"Well, then," Margaret was briskly matter of fact, "there's just one
thing to do. Give up this foolish notion of a career, and step into
Flora's empty place."

Charles made a little leap at that idea, and then sank away from it,
with a faint suggestion in his mouth of a disappointed fish watching a
baited hook yanked out of reach.

"Or," went on Margaret gravely, "Charles can stay at home. So much of
your work could be done here anyway, Charles. One eye on the stew and
the other on some learned tome."

"Why not?" Amy's tense question knocked the drollery out of the
picture. "Why wouldn't that be possible? After all, Mrs. Hammond, you
have spent years doing that very thing."

"The King would burn the stew, of course." Margaret rose, sending a
light curtsey toward Charles. "Come along, Amy. If we're to walk home.
Why don't you ask Sam, if that's the elevator boy's name, if he hasn't
a lady friend out of work? That's what we do."

When Catherine returned from the door, her eyes crinkled at the sight
of Charles sunk behind the pages of his evening paper.

"Poor old thing!" she said. "Did they rumple his fur the wrong way?"

He crashed the sheets down on his knee, and lifted his face, the tips
of his ears red.

"Whatever does Margaret want to lug that thing around with her for."

"I guess she's all right." Catherine was at the window, looking at the
pale glowing bowl of the city sky before she drew the shade. "Devoted
to Margaret."

"Ugh! I'd like that devoted to me!"

"Don't worry!" Catherine drew the shade, and turned laughing. "She
won't be. She seems violently anti-man."

"Wasn't she one of the females they had to feed through the nose down
there at Washington?"

"That's rather to her credit, isn't it?"

"She's that fanatic type, all right. All emotion, unbalanced, no brain.
Now Margaret has some intelligence. But she's being influenced by this
woman. I can see a difference in her. To think that she chose herself
to leave your mother for that!"

"I think few people influence Margaret." Catherine moved quietly about
the room, picking up books left by Spencer, a toy of Letty's, Marian's
doll. "She's hard headed, you know."

"Well," said Charles with great finality, "she won't ever capture any
man while she has that female attached to her. Great mistake for a nice
girl like Margaret to tie herself up with that woman. She seems the
real paranoia type."

"Now you've finished her," Catherine rumpled his hair gently as she
passed his chair, "tell me what on earth to do. About a maid, I mean."

"Don't know, I'm sure." Charles frowned briefly and picked up his
paper again. "Advertise, perhaps," he added.

Catherine's eyes, pondering on the crisp russet crown of his head, bent
intently over the paper, hardened. He didn't know, and he didn't mean
to concern himself. Her problem, not his. It wasn't his fault if she
had no time to hunt up a new maid. On the contrary, Flora's defection
was in a way her fault, a failure of judgment in choice.

"I'm going to bed," she said. "I'm tired to death."

"Right-o," said Charles.

Her serge dress lay in a heap across a chair, where she had dropped
it that afternoon. Careless of her. She shook it out, regarding it
critically. She should have another dress; perhaps a fresh set of vest
and cuffs would carry this one along for a time. As she hung it away
she brushed down a coat of Charles. She held it at arm's length, her
mouth puckered. She had forgotten to leave that suit at the tailor's
that morning, as Charles had asked.

She sat down before the mirror to brush her hair. What had he said last
night--that she deliberately neglected the little things he asked, that
she stood off, being critical. Was it true? Her hair drooped in two
long dark wings over her shoulders as she sat idle, thinking. She did
feel separate, no longer held in close bondage to the irking, petty
things, like darned socks or suits that must be cleaned, or studs in
shirt fronts, or favorite desserts. They used to be momentous, those
things. It's true! She flung her brush onto the dresser, where it
slid along, clattering against the tray. Now I do stand off, a little
disdainful, when he makes a fuss, because I'm not a faithful valet.
Well! She stood up hastily, braiding her hair with quick fingers.
What of it? If I spoiled him, all these years, then I must take the
consequences. But it's not--less love, is it? Or did he love me more as
his body servant? Are men like that?

She heard Bill's voice, "Don't ever be frantic, Catherine." Bill wasn't
like that. She had almost forgotten Bill and last night. What a muddle
of feeling in yesterday and to-day! Bill,--and Charles. Ah, she was
critical. Charles was right. Critical of the very quality she had
always seen and loved. His--yes, his childishness. Bill had dignity,
maturity, that was it. Even in his moment of disclosure. He didn't take
it out on Henrietta. Didn't smear her even faintly with blame.

She listened an instant as she went down the hall. Charles hadn't
moved. In the bathroom she hung away the towels and threw discarded
small stockings into the hamper. Then, with a little rush, grinning at
herself, she filled the tub. Charles could wait.

Later, drowsily warm and relaxed, she heard Charles tiptoe into the
room. She heard his "brr!" at the chill wind through the opened window.
Still later she felt him bending cautiously above her. She heard
herself breathing slowly, evenly, until his feet scuffed across the
floor and his bed groaned softly. I can't wake up, she thought,--buried
deep under soft, warm sand--heavy--even if he--wants me.


VII

Sam, the elevator boy, didn't know a single lady as was out of work.
Catherine went on down to the basement. Perhaps the janitor would know.
He called his wife. Catherine, in the door, glimpsed the rooms with
their short, high windows, full of white iron beds and innumerable
tidies. Mrs. O'Lay filled the door, her bulk flowing unrestrictedly
above and below her narrow apron strings.

She had a mind to try the job herself. Her daughter had come home with
a baby, and could mind the telephone when Sam was off, and all. Her
double chins quivered violently at little Mr. O'Lay's protest. Right in
the same house, an' all. "If I try it, he won't be all the time leaving
the fires for me to tend, and I'll turn an honest penny myself."

She's a fat straw to grasp at, thought Catherine. If she can get
between the stove and the sink----

"Sure, I been cooking all these years, and himself ain't dead yet. Nor
one of the eleven children. It'd be a fine change for me."

They decided finally that Mrs. O'Lay should come up that afternoon to
"learn the ropes." "I'd come up right now, but himself asked in his
folks for dinner."

What luck! Catherine hurried back to her own apartment. Her own rooms
look neat, and she is at least a pair of hands.

The children were waiting impetuously for Catherine to take them
coasting. Marian had suggested Sunday School. Miss Kelly thought they
should go, she explained.

"Miss Kelly may take you, then, on her Sunday," said Catherine. "I
can't, to-day. And I'm afraid the snow is almost gone."

Spencer and Marian, their leggings already on, wiped the breakfast
dishes, while Letty dragged a battered train up and down the hall.

"You come too, Daddy." Marian tugged at Charles's arm.

"No. I'm going to have a nice, quiet morning with my book." He stepped
hastily out of the path of Letty's assault.

"I've left the potatoes and roast on the shelf." Catherine looked in at
his study door. "Could you think to light the oven and stick them in,
at twelve, if we aren't back? Mother's coming in for dinner."

"I'll remember." Marian giggled at her father's grimace, and they were
off, the four of them.

On the slope Catherine chose as safe, the snow had been worn thin by
countless runners. Spencer and Marian had one Flyer, and Catherine
drew Letty on the small sled up and down the walk, to the loud tune of
"Gid-ap! horsey! Gid-ap!" until she was breathless and flushed. Then
she coaxed Letty into the construction of a snow house, while she sat
on the bench beside her. The river was gray under a lead sky; the steep
shores of New Jersey were mottled tawny and white. Spencer and Marian
puffed up the hill, to sit solemnly beside her, their legs dangling.
Letty, a small scarlet ball in her knit bloomers and sweater, an
aureole of yellow fluff about her round, pink face, crooned delightedly
as she patted her lumps of snow.

"An', Muvver," went on Marian, "the little boy made his dog drag the
sled up the hill, and the doggie cried."

"He had snow in his toes," insisted Spencer. "He didn't cry because he
had to drag the sled."

"Yes, he did. It was a very heavy sled."

Some one stopped at the end of the bench, and Catherine glanced up.

"Why, Bill!" She moved along, but Marian danced up.

"Oh, Mr. Bill! Come take a belly-bump with us, Mr. Bill. _Can_ you go
belly-bump?"

"I think so." Bill smiled across her head at Catherine.

"Don't let her bully you, if you don't want to." But they were off,
Bill flat on the sled, Spencer clinging to his shoulders, and Marian
sprawled on top of Spencer. Letty poked herself erect and opened her
mouth for a shriek.

"Here, Letty!" Catherine pulled her, stiff and unbending, onto her
knee. "If you don't yell, perhaps Bill will take you down. Don't scare
him." Ridiculous and amusing, those flying legs. Like a scooting
centipede.

"You come try it, Catherine." They had climbed up the slope to her
again.

"Take Letty first." And then Catherine tried it, while the children
stood in a row, shrieking with delight. "Go belly-bump, Muvver!" How
Marian loved that word! But Catherine insisted on sitting up, while
Bill knelt behind her to steer. A swift, flying moment, the air shrill
in her ears, and laughing, they grated to a standstill on bare ground
at the foot of the hill.

"If we had a real hill, now." Bill dragged the sled up, one hand firm
under Catherine's arm. "I remember a hill we used to coast down when I
was little. It seemed miles long, on the way up, at least."

Lucky he came along, thought Catherine, contentedly. Or he might have
hated to see me, after Friday night.

"Who is that with the children?" she asked. A figure at the crest
of the slope, coppery brown fur gleaming in the dull light. Miss
Partridge!

"Mr. Bill!" called Marian, as the two plodded nearer. "Take Miss
Partridge down just once."

Catherine felt, indignantly, the flush deepen in her cheeks. Why should
she mind----

"Good morning," she called. "Won't you try it?"

"So sorry," came the neat, clipped accents. "I must run along to
dinner. It looks like great sport." Her cold brown eyes moved from
Catherine to Bill. A flash of small teeth. "Great sport. Good-by." A
wave of a small, gloved hand, and she was off, swinging smartly along.

"What time is it?" Catherine avoided Bill's smile. "One! My gracious!
Come along, you children."

Bill drew Letty up to the street. "Have to walk here. Snow's all gone,"
and when Letty sat obdurately on the sled, crying "Gid-ap!" he swung
her up to his shoulder. She rode home in state, while Spencer and
Marian argued about snow in the handball court, about what the carts
did with the snow that was shoveled away; and Catherine walked rather
silently at Bill's side.

Bill deposited Letty on the steps at the apartment entrance, where she
amused herself by bouncing' her stomach against the low railing and
gug-gugging at Spencer and Marian, who clattered down the area stairs
with their sleds.

"I'm glad you were out for a walk this morning." Catherine wanted to
break through the thin ice of constraint--or was it better to pretend
that she did not see it? "I was afraid you might stay away from--us,"
she said quickly.

"That's very good of you." Bill spoke formally, his eyes on the
children pelting up the steps.

"Mr. Bill, would you go coasting again?" Spencer stuck his elbow up
to ward off a snowball from Marian. "You stop that, Marian. I'm not
playing now. Would you?" He frowned at his sister.

"I'm playing." Catherine pinioned Marian's snowy mittens in her own
hands. "An' anyway, the snow'll be gone, won't it, Muvver?"

"It'll snow again this winter, won't it?" snorted Spencer.

"When it does, we'll have a coast," Bill said gravely.

For a moment he met Catherine's glance, and suddenly the ice was gone,
so suddenly that Catherine almost laughed out in delight. "Will you
come, too?" he asked.

"Don't wait for the next snow." Catherine gave Marian a soft push
toward the door. "Run along. Take Letty's hand, please." Her smile
at Bill was grateful; having admitted her past his barriers, he was
unresentful. "Come sooner!" She extended her hand, felt the quick
pressure of his fingers.

Like a secret pact--she wondered a little, as she went into the hall.
Words are clumsy, with Bill, as if he dwelt so far beneath ordinary
surfaces that words didn't reach him.

"You like Mr. Bill, too, don't you, Mother?" Spencer pressed against
her confidentially as the elevator creaked up to their floor.

"Yes, I do."

"He's a nice man," Marian agreed. "I'd like to marry him."

"He's got a wife, silly," objected Spencer. "And you're only a little
girl and little girls don't get married."

"Pretty soon I can." Marian turned her back on Spencer and darted out
of the elevator door, dragging Letty briskly after her.

Spencer's eyes were wide with disapproval, but Catherine laughed at
him, and opened the apartment door.

Charles sat at his desk. He looked up ruefully.

"Home again! Say, I forgot all about your potatoes."

"Oh, well." Catherine was undisturbed. "You'll just have to wait longer
for your dinner, then." As she hurried to the kitchen she heard Marian,
"An' Mr. Bill came and coasted, and Muvver coasted with him, only not
belly-bump," and Charles, "So that's why you're so late, is it?"


VIII

Mrs. Spencer came presently. Catherine rose from the oven, blowing
wryly on a burnt thumb.

"Take Gram's coat and hat, please, Spencer." She kissed her mother's
cool pink cheek. "How well you look!"

"What a pretty chain!" Marian touched the wrought silver and dull blue
stones. "Isn't it, Muvver?"

"Margaret gave it to me yesterday, to match my new dress." Mrs. Spencer
crinkled her eyes shrewdly. "Propitiation. She can't get over her
surprise that I stand her absence so well."

"I suppose that freak woman put her up to it," said Charles, from the
doorway.

"Um." Mrs. Spencer tucked her hand under his arm. "Changes are good for
us. But Margaret must have had an ill conscience. She's overthoughtful."

"You see"--Catherine stirred the thickening briskly--"you aren't
behaving as a Freudian mother should. You are always unexpected."

"Freud!" Mrs. Spencer made a grotesque little grimace. "What does
he know about mothers! But I did think"--she glanced sidewise at
Charles--"that Margaret might find things less convenient."

"She will!" Charles patted her hand. "Don't you worry, Mother Spencer.
These violent crazes for--for freedom--or people--or causes--wear
themselves out."

Catherine lifted her head quickly, to find her mother's eyes
quizzically upon her. They meant her, too!

"Want to see my book?" Charles steered Mrs. Spencer out of the kitchen.
"Catherine's too busy to talk."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dinner went smoothly; the children told their grandmother about
coasting, and she asked about school, about Miss Kelly. She wanted to
take them to the Metropolitan that afternoon, to hear a lecture for
children.

"Aren't there awful jams?" Catherine sighed. Piles of mending, her
serge dress to freshen,--she couldn't take the afternoon off, too.

"Not too jammed for pleasure. But you needn't go." Mrs. Spencer's eyes
narrowed. "I suppose you use your Sunday for a scrap-bag of odd jobs,
like all other working women?"

"I certainly do." Catherine was abrupt. "But you know you prefer the
children without me as mentor."

She caught a quick exchange of glances between Charles and her mother.
They've been talking about me--she simmered with resentment--and
Charles has won her over to his side, whatever it is.

She had proof of that later. Mrs. Spencer and the children had come
home from their sojourn, and after they had given Catherine an excited
and strange account of the habits of a tribe of Indians, Spencer and
Marian had gone to bed.

"What did you do this afternoon?" Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine
as Catherine came wearily back to the living room.

"I showed Mrs. O'Lay where to find the various tools for her new
job"--Catherine had explained Flora's absence earlier--"conducted her
initiation ceremony. And washed out a collar, and darned."

Mrs. Spencer nodded.

"When you might have been with your children. Are you sure, Cathy"--she
paused--"sure that you aren't losing the best of your life?"

"But I'm not!" Catherine sat erect in her chair, her cheeks flushed.
"On the contrary, I am with the children, and love it, and they enjoy
me far more than when I was their constant bodyguard."

"Charles was telling me about Spencer." Mrs. Spencer drew the gray silk
of her skirt into tiny folds. "It seemed pitiful."

Catherine was silent a moment, fighting against the swift recurrence of
that frightful hour, and against a wrathful sense of injustice.

"Children run away, often," she said. "I think Spencer just happened to
catch at that excuse--of my not being here."

Mrs. Spencer shook her head.

"Charles seemed to feel----"

"He told me just how he felt." Catherine flung up her head.

Mrs. Spencer's inspection of her daughter was reflective.

"I don't like to interfere. You know that. But--Charles doesn't seem
happy."

"He has no right to----"

"He didn't say that." Mrs. Spencer was stern. "I gathered it. His work
isn't going very well. He thinks you aren't interested in it."

Catherine turned her head quickly. Had she heard the door of his study
squeak?

"I am. He knows it. Far more than he cares about what I do."

"That's all." Mrs. Spencer rose, preening her skirts like a small bird.
"I won't say another word. But think it over, Cathy. There's so much
that's crooked and wrenched in the air these days. I don't want you led
astray by it. I must run along. Alethea will be expecting me."

In the turmoil of her feelings, Catherine had a sharp sense of the
bright, valiant spirit of her mother. She didn't really like to
interfere. Charles had coerced her into this! Something wistful and
picturesque about the two elderly women, Mrs. Alethea Bragg and her
mother, moving serenely about in the great city, nibbling at music, at
theaters, at Fifth Avenue shops, taking quiet amusement out of days
free from the hectic confusion of trying to live.

"Please don't be concerned about me, Mother." She threw her arm around
the firm, neat shoulders. "I'm honestly trying to hunt for a scheme of
things that will work for everybody. Not just me. Come in oftener. The
children adore it."


IX

Miss Kelly had brought the children down for a visit to the Christmas
toy-land in some of the large stores, and at noon Catherine met them
for luncheon. Letty had shared the expedition for the first time,
and the kaleidoscopic displays had goaded her into a frenzy of noisy
delight.

"She's just roared the whole morning, Muvver." Marian was uneasy at the
scrutiny of amused neighbors in the tea room. But Miss Kelly diverted
Letty into contemplation of an enormous baked potato.

"I want you to come with us, Mother." Spencer felt under his chair for
his cap; he hadn't been quite sure where he should put that cap. "You
always did----"

"You see, I have to stay in the office, except at noon," Catherine
explained. She was conscious of admiration for the deftness with
which Miss Kelly had subdued Letty, had arranged the luncheon for the
children and herself. "I don't have a vacation until Christmas day.
Tell me what you saw."

A recital in duo. Letty had tried to hug every Santa Claus they had
seen, even the Salvation Army Santa on the corner. Extraordinary and
delectable toys. They couldn't decide what they wanted themselves.

"It is lucky we came down early," said Miss Kelly. "The crowds began to
come before we left."

"Did you buy your gifts?"

"I think Spencer bought me one," cried Marian. "He made me turn my
back----"

"You shouldn't think about that," said Spencer, earnestly. "If it's
Christmas, you shouldn't even think you've got a present."

"You did buy me one!" Marian wriggled ecstatically in her chair. "I
know you did!"

Catherine waited with them for a home-bound bus. Spencer pulled her
head down and whispered in her ear, "Mother, couldn't I go to the
office and wait till you come home? I don't want to go with them."

"It's too many hours, Spencer. You wouldn't know what to do with
yourself."

"Well, I don't know, anyway." His eyes darkened. "Staying home and no
school and----"

"Here comes our bus." Miss Kelly marshalled them before her, maneuvered
them neatly up the steps. Catherine waved to them, watched their bus
disappear in the mélêe of cars. Then she edged through the crowd to
the windows, and walked slowly toward the office. The cold sunshine
veneered the intent faces, the displays of gauds and kickshaws.

Being downtown makes Christmas quite different, she thought. An
enormous advertising scheme. That's it. Five more shopping days before
Christmas. Look at that window! She strolled past it, her eyes bright
with derision. Extraordinary, useless, expensive things, good for
gifts, and nothing else on earth. Christmas belonged in the country, in
the delicate mystery and secrecy with which children could invest it.
Not in these glaring windows. A saturnalia of selling, that's Christmas
in New York, she thought, darting across the street as the traffic
officer's signal released the flood of pedestrians. Something strained,
feverish, in the crowds. Probably half of them with empty purses. Like
her own.

Dr. Roberts stood at her window, waiting for her.

"I've been talking with President Waterbury, Mrs. Hammond, and I wished
to see you at once." He pulled reflectively at his pointed beard.
"There are various ins and outs here. I don't know that you've been
here long enough to discover them."

Catherine wondered, with faint discomfort, whether President Waterbury
had disapproved of something she had done.

"A deplorable jealousy, for example, between departments." He cleared
his throat.

Catherine sat down. She had learned to wait until Dr. Roberts had sent
off preliminary sputtering fireworks before he uncovered his serious
purpose.

"I happened to learn that Smithson, in the local social department,
was interviewing Dr. Waterbury. Had seen him twice. So I was at
once suspicious. Smithson, you've met him? Well, he's the type of
parasite this kind of organization attracts, unfortunately. We haven't
many here, but they exist. Afraid to finish up a job, because then
another may not turn up. He's nursed along his study of sanitation, I
should blush to say how long. No doubt the buildings in his original
investigation have crumbled into decay. And he hasn't published a word.
But he can't put off publication much longer, you see. And so he hit
upon this other scheme. He doesn't belong in our field." Dr. Roberts's
bright little eyes snapped, his beard waggled in a fury. "But he had
the audacity to go to Waterbury with this suggestion. He wants to
make the field study for me! He--he--" Dr. Roberts stuttered tripping
furiously over his consonants. "H-he of-ff-fered to go out west, to
gather field mat-t-terial for us. Told Waterbury that I couldn't
go, as I was in charge of things here at headquarters. He had almost
convinced the President. He's smooth. Smooth!"

"But why on earth does he want to go?" Catherine's voice placated the
irate little man. "It certainly isn't his kind of work."

"Not at all. Not at all. But he sets himself up for a dexterous
investigator. And Waterbury likes him. The point is this. I can't
very well go myself. But you can! I pointed out to Dr. Waterbury that
logically you were the person to go."

"To go where, Dr. Roberts?" Catherine sat very still, but back in her
head she heard a clear little bell of excitement begin its clanging.

"You have personality and tact. You've already met two of the chief
educators of the state. You have the work at the tips of your fingers.
Who could be better? Dr. Waterbury agreed with me. It would be an
agreeable diversion, no doubt, and of course," he added with proud
finality, "then I can obtain for you the raise in salary you deserve."

"You mean that you would like me to make the personal inspection of all
these schools?" Catherine's hand moved vaguely toward the shelves of
catalogues.

"Just that. It is time now to have that done. Smithson has--yes, he
has snooped around, discovering that. He wants the amusement of such a
trip, and the glory. For it is an excellent thing. For your reputation.
Your expenses are paid, too."

"Why don't you go yourself?"

"It's not precisely convenient. There are several meetings in January.
I am to speak at one of them."

I can't go, thought Catherine. Ridiculous to consider it.

"Don't decide immediately. Think it over. Let me know--why, after
Christmas. Late in January would do to start. You can no doubt arrange
matters at home. You'd like to talk it over with Dr. Hammond, of
course."

"How long a trip would it be?" Catherine was vibrating under the
clanging of that bell. No, it wasn't a bell, it was a pulse beating
just back of her ears.

"You can decide that yourself, practically. Perhaps a month. Depends
upon your arrangement of your route. I say, that's fine!" He rose,
slapping his hands against his pockets. "You'll think it out! It's by
far the best way to convince Waterbury you are serious, and worth a
real salary."

Think it out! Catherine let the idea play with her. Trains, new cities,
new people, herself as dignified representative of the Bureau. But the
children! She couldn't leave them--and Charles. Her clothes weren't
up to such a position. She could buy more! Her salary would grow to
cover--anything!

       *       *       *       *       *

When she went home in the cold winter twilight, she had coiled the
project into a tight spring, held firmly down below thought. She
couldn't go. How could she? But she had a week before she must reject
it openly. The pressure of that coiled spring was terrific. At any
instant it might tear up through thought and feeling.

Mrs. O'Lay had been persuaded to divide her day so that she spent part
of the afternoon in her own basement, and then stayed to serve dinner
and clear up the kitchen for Catherine. Charles said he felt as if an
Irish hippopotamus hovered at his elbow at the table, but Catherine
stretched luxuriously into freedom from dinner responsibility. If
Mrs. O'Lay had a sketchy art as a cook, Catherine found dinner more
palatable than when she had flown into domestic harness at the end of
the day.

The children were full of whispering excitement; the house was made up
of restricted zones. Marian wasn't to put her head inside Spencer's
door, and mother shouldn't look into his closet. Charles had brought
home a tree as tall as Spencer, which spread its branches drooping
and green in front of the living room windows. Miss Kelly, calmly
methodical as ever, helped the children string cranberries and popcorn
to wind through the needles.

"Saturday we will trim it," Catherine promised them, "and Saturday
night you can each wrap your presents in red paper and label them."

"Then you'll see them when we are in bed," protested Marian.

"I won't take a single peek!"

Saturday afternoon Catherine stood on a chair, hunting on the top shelf
of the hall closet for the box of tinsel and small tree lights. Surely
she had left it there on that shelf. She smiled a little, at her own
warm content. The shimmering joy of the children had thrown its glow
over her, too, and the sardonic Christmas of the streets seemed remote,
unreal.

"Hurry up, Muvver dear!" called Marian. "Isn't it there?"

Catherine felt the corner of a pasteboard box, tugged at it, caught it
as it slipped over the edge of the shelf, the cover whirling past her
hand.

She stared at the contents--a handbag of soft, tooled leather, with
carved fastenings of dull gold. Guiltily she reached for the cover at
her feet. She had stumbled upon Charles's hiding place. He shouldn't
have been so extravagant. Her fingers brushed the soft brown surface
in a swift caress as she pushed on the cover, and rose to tiptoe to
replace the box.

There, the other box was in the corner.

"What are you after up there?" Charles spoke sharply from the door.

Catherine, her cheeks flushing, dragged out the box of trimmings.

"This!" she called gaily, "for our tree!" She mustn't let him guess
that she had seen that bag. She slipped one hand under his arm,
laughing to herself at his perturbed eyes. He was in Spencer's class,
with that serious fear lest his secret be unearthed before the exact
moment. "Come help trim it. You can arrange the lights."

And as they worked, Catherine turned tentatively to that coiled spring
of her desire, and found the resilience had vanished. She did not
wish to go. She couldn't leave them. Going off to work each day was
different. She needed that. But to go away, for days and nights----

"Moth-er!" Spencer's horrified accents came from the other side of the
tree. "Letty's chewing the cranberry string!"

"Here, you!" Catherine swung her up to her shoulder. How heavy she was
growing! "You fasten Spencer's star to the top branch."


X

Catherine woke. What was that old crone crouched inquisitively at
the foot of her bed? She lifted her head cautiously; nothing but her
bathrobe over a chair, indistinct in the vague light. It must be very
early. She caught the steady rhythm of Charles's breathing. She curled
down again under the blankets, full of the relaxed ecstasy in which
she had slept so dreamlessly. Dearest--she flowed out toward him in a
great, windless tide. I've found him again, she thought. We're out of
the thickets.

Dimly she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs, the clinking of milk
bottles. It is morning, then. She listened unconsciously for the shrill
"Merry Christmas!" of the children. They would wake soon.

As she lay, waiting, effortless, relaxed, a strange phantasy drifted
over her, like morning fog in low places. She couldn't, drowsily, quite
grasp it. Charles had not known about that plan, tugging, tempting
her this last week. How could he have known when she rejected it,
completely? And yet, as if he had felt that rejection, fed upon it,
sacrificial offering to him, he had been grandly magnanimous, lavish,
taking her submission.

Perhaps--she stirred slowly out of the mists--perhaps it was only her
own knowledge of the rejection, the sacrifice, binding her more closely
to the roots of love, sloughing off that critical, offish self.

She was wide awake now, thinking clearly. Why had she so suddenly
decided? What, after all, had wiped out the vigor, the great drive in
that desire? She knew just what it meant, her going or her refusal to
go. Refusal marked her forever as half-hearted, as temporizing, so far
as her work went. That she had recognized from the beginning.

Just the glimpse of that bag, the soft leather under her fingers, had
settled matters. Without a conscious thought. An extravagant, lovely
trifle, but a symbol of the old tender awareness she had so loved in
him. Ridiculous, that a thing could have the power to touch you so.
Behind it, shadowy, serried, other things--trifles, evidence that
Charles gave her sensitive perception, that he loved her, not himself
reflected in her. Just that he knew her purse was serviceable and
shabby.

Foolish, and adorable. She sighed, happily. He would hate my going
away. He would be outraged.

A faint sound outside the door, a scuffle of bare feet, and then a
burst into chorus, "Merry Christmas! Merry--" The door flew open, and
in they rushed, the three of them. Catherine shot upright, reaching for
her bathrobe.

"Merry Christmas, but hurry back where it's warm."

Marian flung her arms around Charles's sleepy head. "Merry Christmas,
my Daddy!"

"It's only the middle of the night, isn't it?" Charles groaned.

"It's Christmas morning, and you hurry and get up!"

When the arduous business of dressing was over, Charles turned the
switch, and the colored lights starred the little tree. No one was to
unwrap a present until after breakfast. Too much excitement on empty
stomachs, insisted Catherine. The children dragged the table nearer the
door and ranged themselves along the side, so that they could gaze as
they ate.

Presently the room was a gay litter of tissue paper, colored ribbons,
toys, books. Letty sat in the middle of her pile, revolving like a
yellow top among the exciting things. Spencer had waited tensely while
Catherine unwrapped a large bundle, and then turned a little pale with
delight at her surprise. Yes, he had made it himself, at school. It was
a stand for a fern. He had carved it, too. Book ends for his father.
Then he had immersed himself in his own possessions.

Charles admired the platinum cuff links in the little purple box
with Catherine's card. Catherine grinned at him. "Nice to give you a
present," she said, "without having to ask you for the money for it."
She regretted her words; his smile seemed forced.

"What did Daddy give you, Muvver?" Marian, hugging her doll, pressed
against Catherine's knee.

"Well, this." Catherine held up a box of chocolates.

"That's not all," said Charles promptly.

"Here's another." Spencer wiggled along on his knees to hand her
another box.

Long and thin--that wasn't the same box. Catherine unwrapped the paper,
and long black silk stockings dangled from her fingers.

"Fine," she said. "Just what I wanted." She waited for a repetition of
"That's not all," but Charles said only, "I didn't know what you would
like."

She glanced up quickly. He was teasing her--they had joked about useful
gifts. But he had picked up a book. The red cover blurred before
Catherine's eyes. He was pulling his chair up to the table light.

The stockings clung to her finger tips, as if her bewilderment
electrified them. Mrs. O'Lay, lumbering through the hall to the
kitchen, stopped at the door in loud admiration of the tree.

       *       *       *       *       *

Margaret and Mrs. Spencer were coming in for early dinner. Catherine
flung herself into a numbing round of preparations. Whatever it meant,
the day shouldn't be spoiled for the children. Whatever it meant--he
couldn't have forgotten the bag. She had seen it there. She remembered
his sharp inquiry, as she reached to the shelf. Perhaps her mother
had hidden it, or Margaret. No, he knew about it. A sickening wave of
suspicion curled through her, so that she straightened from her odorous
dish of onions, browning for the dressing. It's his gift, to some one
else. The wave subsided, leaving a line of wreckage--and certainty.

Funny, how you catch a second wind, when you are knocked out, thought
Catherine, as the day wound along. No one even guessed. The children
were amazingly good. Even Letty went peacefully to her nap, after a few
moments of wracking indecision as to which new toy should accompany
her. Margaret left early, for a Christmas party somewhere. Catherine
and her mother stood in her room, Mrs. Spencer adjusting her veil at
the mirror. They were going out for a Christmas walk with Spencer and
Marian, leaving Mrs. O'Lay in charge. Catherine heard a cautious step
in the hall. She did not move. But she knew when the feet stopped at
the closet door; she heard the faint scrape of pasteboard on the shelf.

"I'm going over to the office." Charles stopped at the door. "I'll
probably be home before you are."

"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer cajoled him, her hands patting her sleek
gloves into place. "Must you work even on Christmas Day?"

"Just a few odds and ends of work." Charles looked uneasy. But he
nodded, and presently the hall door closed after him.



PART IV

ENCOUNTER


I

"Dr. Gilbert will be in immediately." The neat little office nurse
ushered Catherine into the living room. "She left word for tea at five."

Catherine said she would wait. The nurse bent down to touch a match to
the gas log, and tiny blue flames leaped in mechanical imitation of a
hearth fire. Catherine stood at the window, drawing off her gloves.
The buildings between the hotel and the corner of the Avenue had been
demolished since her last visit; beneath the windows gaped a huge
chasm, rocky, pitted with pools of dark water, angled with cranes and
derricks,--like a fairy tale, thought Catherine, and the old witch
froze them into immobility with her stick, her stick being a holiday.

The room was Henrietta, unimaginative, practical, disinterested.
Expensive, department store furniture, overstuffed chairs and
davenport, floor lamp, mahogany. Henrietta had ordered the furnishings,
the maid had set them in place, and there they stayed, unworn,
impersonal. A maid wheeled in the tea wagon, and Henrietta's firm heels
sounded in the hall.

"Catherine! Good for you." Henrietta clapped her shoulder as she
passed. "Afraid something might detain you." She shook off her heavy
English coat, and went briskly to pouring tea. Her close hat had
flattened her fine light hair above her temples, giving additional
plump serenity to her face.

"That's all, Susie," she told the maid. "If there are any calls for me,
take them. I am undisturbed for one hour now."

"Ah, this is great!" She stretched her feet toward the humming gas log;
shining toes, ankles slim even in the gray spats. "I suppose you have a
mission, since you take the time to come down here to-day. But whatever
it is, I am glad to see you."

Catherine sipped at the tea. The hot, clear fragrance was an auger,
releasing words.

"Shrewd guess, Henry." She smiled. "I want advice."

"Help yourself." Henrietta's teeth closed in her sandwich with relish.

"And I wanted it from you," Catherine spoke slowly, "because I want
advice that goes in my direction."

"Kind we always want. Only kind we take."

"Here it is." Catherine placed her tea cup on the wagon. "Just before
Christmas Dr. Roberts asked me to go west, to make the first-hand
study of the schools, you know. He gave me until to-morrow to decide."
Henrietta's eyes, alert, sharp, over the edge of her cup, waited. "More
money, for one thing. Reputation. Chance to show what I can do. But I
have to be gone almost a month, I think. I decided at once that it was
out of the question."

"Why?"

"That was a week ago." Catherine leaned forward. "In a fit of
sentiment. And egoism. I thought they couldn't get along without me,
of course. Then--no use to explain the particular eye-opener--I changed
my mind. I began to wonder whether this wasn't a sort of test. To see
how serious I am. About a job, I mean. Now! Advise me to go."

"Of course, no one is really indispensable." Henrietta grinned. "No
one. And what's a month?"

"It seems a long time to leave the children."

"Be good for them as well as you. Isn't Miss Kelly capable of handling
them?"

"I suppose so."

"Most families would be improved by enforced separations," declared
Henrietta. "They're too tight. Break 'em up. What does Charles say to
this?"

"He hasn't heard of it yet."

"Decide first and then tell him, eh?" Henrietta drew out her
eyeglasses, running her fingers absently along the black ribbon. "He
won't approve, at first. But it is a test. You're right. Your first
opportunity to enlarge your position. You'd be a fool not to go,
Catherine."

"That's just what I wanted to hear." Catherine's eyes were somber,
harassed. "I've thought it out, backwards and forwards. Mother's friend
wants to visit some one in New Jersey. If Mother will spend the night
at the house--but she won't approve, either."

"Get your approval out of the job, Catherine." Henrietta squinted
through her eyeglass. "You want it on every hand, don't you?"

Catherine lowered her eyelids.

"I did, once. I think I do less, now."

"That's right!"

They were silent a moment.

"That's ripping!" Henrietta broke out. "That the Bureau offered it to
you. You can't turn it down. I'll drop in occasionally on the kids, if
that will calm your anxiety."

"You really think it's not a preposterous scheme, then?"

"The only preposterousness would be in refusing it. It's ripping!"

"What is ripping?"

Catherine turned, a quick stir of pleasure at the low voice. Bill was
at the door.

"Come in and hear about it." Henrietta waved toward a chair. "Tea?"

Bill shook his head and sat down near Catherine. He sagged in his
chair, a suggestion of unkempt, wrinkled weariness in his face and
clothes.

Henrietta explained in hard, glowing phrases, that Catherine had the
opportunity of a lifetime. As Catherine listened and watched, she had
a renewal of the strange feeling which had haunted her since Christmas
morning. We are so lonely--so shut off--so absolutely isolated, she
thought. Each of us speaks only his own language. We think we reach
another human being, that he knows our tongue, and we discover that we
have fooled ourselves. Grotesquely. Charles--remote, unreachable. I
imagined that contact. Bill, and Henrietta--she is content, thinking
she communicates with Bill.

"Are you going?" Bill glanced at her under his heavy lids.

"I think I am," she said. She wished she could find his thought which
reached toward her.

"Perhaps I'll see you. I have to go to Chicago the end of the month on
that Dexter contract," he added, to Henrietta.

He left them presently, and when Catherine rose to go, Henrietta's hand
lingered, fumbling--queerly for her--over Catherine's fingers.

"I hope you and Bill make connections," she said. "He's not well. I
don't know--listless, needs a change, I guess."

Catherine stared at the anxiety, the puzzled bewilderment in
Henrietta's round blue eyes.

"I've been worrying at him to see a specialist here, and he won't.
Can't budge him, stubborn old Bill. He enjoys you, Cathy. Have dinner
or something with him."

"If we do make connections, of course I shall." Catherine felt a little
prickling of guilt, as if in some way Bill's confidence violated
complete loyalty to Henrietta. "I'm fond of Bill," she added.

"There's nothing seriously wrong with him. But--there's a gland
specialist here in town. I told Bill his cynicism would vanish like
the dew if he'd let himself be gone over." Henrietta frowned. "He said
if his philosophy was located in his liver, he preferred to keep his
illusions about it."

"Oh, you doctors! Thinking every feeling has its roots in some gland,
and that you can diagnose any unhappiness."

"Jeer all you like." Henrietta's moment of perplexity had passed.
"We're animals, Cathy, and a reasonably healthy animal is reasonably
happy."

Catherine reached for purse and gloves; as she dangled the shabby
black bag over a finger, she felt the stealthy, restless feet of her
obsession begin their pacing. Charles, and Stella Partridge. Charles,
with all his tenderness, his love----

With diabolic abruptness Henrietta said:

"Oh, by the way, I ran into that Miss Partridge last week, at the
hospital. Do you see much of her?"

Catherine flinched. The stealthy feet were running.

"What made you think of her?" she asked.

"Oh--" Henrietta hesitated. "Thinking about you and Charles. I had a
little talk with her, while we waited. She's an interesting type, I
think."

"What do you make of her? Charles seems to admire her immensely."

"So do several of the staff. She's the kind of modern woman men do
like. Unoriginal, useful, wonderful assistant. Cold as a frog--they
don't guess that. She's clever. Her line is that men are so generous
and fine, give her every opportunity to advance."

"What is she after, do you think?"

"Money. Position. But she's parasitical. Not in the old sense.
She's sidetracked all her sex into her ambition, but she uses it as
skillfully as if she wanted a lover or a husband."

"I have seen very little of her." Catherine was busy with her gloves.
She wanted to escape before those shrewd blue eyes caught a glimpse of
her caged, uneasy, obsessive fear.

"She'll get on," said Henrietta. "Wish you could stay for dinner,
Catherine. No? Let me know if I can help you out. Tell Charles I think
he should be immensely proud of you, being offered this trip, will you?
I'll run in some evening soon and tell him myself."


II

Dinner was ready when Catherine reached home. She went in to bid Letty
good night; Miss Kelly had put her to bed, a doll on each side of her
yellow head. As the small arms flew about Catherine's throat, choking
her, and she caught the sweet fragrance of the drowsy, warm skin her
lips brushed, a panic of negation seized her. Go away, for days and
days, without that soft ecstasy of touch, of assurance? She was mad to
think of it. "There, Letty, that's a lovely hug." She drew the blanket
close to the small chin.

"An' tuck in Tilda and li'l' Pet," murmured Letty. "My Muv-ver dear."

What was sentimental and what was sane? Catherine, smoothing into place
the heavy coil of her hair, washing her hands, delaying her entrance to
the living room, where she heard, vaguely, the voices of Charles and
the children, struggled slowly to lift her head above the maelstrom.
It was only for a few weeks out of a lifetime. The children would
not suffer. And I want to go, she thought. Something leaped within
her, vigorous, hungry, clamorous. It's not loving them less, to need
something outside them, beyond them, something worth the temporary
price of absence. Charles loved them, and yet he could go freely,
without any of these qualms, into danger, for months.

She marched into the living room, her resolution firm. She would tell
Charles about it, after dinner. Perhaps he would be indifferent.
Perhaps--her obsession bared its teeth behind the flimsy bars--he might
be relieved, at freedom to follow other desires.

Marian, perched on the arm of her father's chair, one arm tight about
his neck, squirmed to look up at Catherine, expectant brightness in her
eyes. Spencer stood in front of them, hands in his pockets, his face
puckered intensely.

"Couldn't it be managed some way, Daddy?" he begged.

"Where's your allowance?" Charles stretched lazily, one hand enclosing
Marian's slippered feet, dancing them slowly up and down.

"It's all in hock, for three weeks." Spencer was dolorous. "For
Christmas presents, and they're all over."

"It's where?" Catherine laughed, and Spencer spun around, hope
smoothing some of his puckers.

"Hock. That's what Tom says. But he says when he needs more money he
asks his mother and she tells his father and he gets it."

"And who is Tom?" Charles stood up. Swinging Marian to her feet. "Let's
have dinner."

It was Tom Wilcox on the floor below. Spencer had spent the afternoon
there; his story came out in excited fragments. He had helped set up a
radio apparatus, and he wanted one, to rig up on his bed, like Tom's.
Then he could wake up in the night and listen to a concert, or a man
telling about the weather.

"He lent me a book about it, Mother." He poised his fork in mid-air,
and down splashed his bit of mashed potato.

"Watch what you are doing, sir," said Charles.

Spencer flushed, but hurried on, "And I know I could set one up alone,
and it's wonderful, Mother, you can listen to things thousands of miles
away, an'----"

"If Spencer has one, I want one on my bed, too," declared Marian, with
a demure, sidewise glance at her father. "Couldn't I have one, Daddy?"

"Spencer hasn't one yet." Charles teased him.

"How much do they cost?" asked Catherine, gently. Marian's glance
bothered her. The child couldn't--how could she?--feel that thicket
which had sprung up this last week, enough to range herself
deliberately with her father.

"Well, quite a lot of dollars. Four or five or mebbe six." Spencer was
doubtful. "But they last forever, Tom says, an'----"

"What would you do with it?"

Spencer caught the tantalizing undertone in his father's voice.

"Listen!" he cried, "of course, listen!"

"Careful, Spencer." Catherine's eyes steadied him; poor kid! She knew
that irritating helplessness. "I'm sure it is interesting."

Mrs. O'Lay heaved herself around the table. "That roast ain't so good
as it might be," she observed confidentially to Catherine. "Butchers is
snides, that's all."

"It was all right." Catherine ignored Charles's lifted eyebrows. The
salad did look a little messy.

"Do you think, Mother, that perhaps----"

"Can't you talk about something else for a while, Spencer?" Charles
spoke up curtly.

Catherine's fingers gripped her serving fork.

"I'll see, Spencer," she said, clearly. "Later we'll talk about it."

"If he has it, I want it," Marian insisted.

"Will you change the subject?"

Charles's outbreak wrapped a heavy silence about the children.
Catherine's spoon clicked in the bowl of salad dressing. How ghastly,
she thought. It's our dissension, using them. Spencer had ducked his
head; his nostrils dilated, his eyes moved unhappily from her face to
his father's.

"Let's see, school opens on Wednesday, doesn't it?" She sought for safe
words with which to rescue them. "You have to-morrow. Miss Kelly is
going shopping for you. A coat for Marian----"

"Is she going to select clothes for them?" asked Charles, accusingly.

"Oh, she can do that. I've given her a price limit. The only difficult
thing is shopping within that limit."

"I never had a bought coat, did I, Muvver?" Marian broke in. "Only
coats you sewed for me."

"You're getting to be such a big girl." What possessed the children,
anyway! Catherine heard Charles grunt faintly as if some huge
dissatisfaction was confirmed. "And now----"

"You have more important things to do than mere sewing for the
children."

"Yes." Catherine was flint, sending off sparks. "And I have money to
bridge the difference in price."

Silence again, murky, uncomfortable. Finally the ordeal of dinner was
done with. Charles offered, with detectable ostentation, to read to
Marian. Spencer pulled his chair around until the back cut him off in a
corner with his book on radio-practice. Catherine, after consultation
with Mrs. O'Lay, withdrew to the study, where she opened her drawer
of the desk, and spread out the array of bills. Not all of them were
in yet; this was only the second of January, and a holiday at that.
But there were enough! She set down figures, added, grimly--how few
bills it took to make a hundred dollars!--and all the time, under the
external business of reckoning, whirled a tumult of half recognized
thoughts. Unendurable, that dissension should be tangled enough to
catch the children in its meshes. Since Christmas day she had held
herself remote, ice-enclosed. She had felt Charles try to reach her,
felt his fingers slip, chilled, from her impenetrable surface, until he
chose this method. As if he brandished the tender body of a child as
his weapon, threatening to bruise it against her hard aloofness. Her
hands dropped idly on the tormenting bills, and she let herself fully
into that whirling tumult. Whatever happened, she must prevent another
hour like that at dinner. If they must be opposed, she and Charles, it
must be in themselves, not with the children as buffers or weapons.
When they had gone to bed, she would go in to Charles.

Could she say, I know you are in love with Stella Partridge? Did she
know it? If she said that, he might think that this trip, her going
away, was revenge, or jealousy. Well, wasn't it? She could hear his
voice, dramatizing the fairy story he read, so that Marian broke in
occasionally with faint "Oh's!" or delighted giggles. Why had she
decided that she must go? Defense, perhaps; not revenge. She felt
again that strong, twisted cable of her own integrity. He wanted her
submissive, docile, violating herself. He might say that she had driven
him away, had failed him. But Stella--that had begun months ago. She
could pick up threads of evidence, all down the days since summer. Then
he might deny it, being secretly bland and pleased that she revealed
herself as jealous, like a beggar at a door where she had once dwelt.
Perhaps there was little to the affair. She had a brief, strange
fancy--he had swung slightly in his orbit, so that the side toward her
was cold, dead, like the dark face of the moon--and the light, the
awareness of her--all of that was turned away, out of possibility of
any incidence, any impingement from her.

No. She would tell him only that she wanted to go away for a few weeks.
That she would arrange everything so that his life would be quite as
always. That she hoped--faint hope!--that he might find some small
pleasure in this degree of success she had achieved.

If I pretend that I have noticed nothing, she thought at last, then it
may be in the end that there was little to notice. If I can cling to my
love, it may be like that old man of the sea, changing into horrible
shapes under my hands, but changing back, if I have courage to hang on,
into its true shape.

"Time for bed-ne-go," came Charles's voice down the hall.

"Please, can I finish this chapter, Daddy?" Spencer begged.

"Better put your book mark right there, son, and run along."

He had read himself into a better humor, thought Catherine. She brushed
the bills into the drawer. Her check would be larger this month.

"Come along, chickens." She stood at the doorway; her glance at Charles
gathered him clearly--the line of lower eyelid, the angle of his chin.
Marian slid down from his knee, sighing.

"Daddy read me a lovely story, all about a fairy prince."

She bent to kiss Marian good night, with a final pat to the blankets.

"I'll dream about a fairy prince, Muvver," came the child's voice,
muffled as she snuggled out of reach of the cold wind.

Spencer's arms shot up about her throat, tugging her down where he
could whisper.

"Moth-er, do you think I could have a radio receiving set?"

Catherine smiled.

"Well--" she hesitated. "You have a birthday before long. In March.
I'll have to find out more about them. Could you wait?"

"Oh, Moth-er!" His hug was exuberant. "Moth-er darling!"

Catherine closed his door, and poised an instant in the hall, priming
her courage. "Now!" she said, under her breath.

Before she had moved, however, the doorbell clattered, smudging her
flame of determination.

Charles came briskly through the hall.

"Oh, you there?" But he went on to the door.


III

It was the Thomases, Mrs. Thomas explaining wordily that they had spent
the day in town, luncheon, matinee, dinner, and thought they would just
drop in for a time, before the ten-thirty train home.

More than an hour to their train time. To Catherine, let down so
suddenly from her peak of resolution, the evening was garbled, like
a column in a newspaper struck off from pied type, with words and
phrases at random making sense, and all the rest unintelligible. Mrs.
Thomas was full of holiday vivacity; the plumes on her black hat
quivered in every filament. Those plumes bothered Catherine; she had
seen them before, perhaps not at that angle, or perhaps not on that
hat. No, they were generic plumes; eternal symbol of the academic wife
and her best hat, her prodigious effort at respectable attire.

Mr. Thomas wanted to talk shop, if Charles would permit him. One leg
crossed over his knee jerked absently in rhythm as he spoke. A student
of his was working on psychological tests for poetic creation, an
analysis of the poetic type of thought processes. Against their talk,
like trills and grace notes against the base chords, rippled Mrs.
Thomas in little anecdotes of Percy, of Clara, of Dorothy, of Walter.

"Walter wanted Spencer to come out for a few days this vacation. Be
so nice for him to get into the country. But Percy had a little sore
throat, and of course with children you never know what that may mean.
I told him perhaps between semesters--the children always have a few
days then."

"That's very kind of you." Catherine heard the determined phrases
Charles set forth: "The poetic mind is never intellectual. Always
purely emotional, intuitive, governed by associative processes." She
felt that her smile was a mawkish simper. "To think of adding another
child to your household."

"I'll tell Walter, then, that perhaps in February."

And presently, Mr. Thomas, blinking behind his glasses, turned his
gentle smile toward Catherine.

"We hear great things of you, Mrs. Hammond."

"Oh, yes." Mrs. Thomas nodded. Catherine felt the quick stiffening of
attention, and thought, here's what they came in for. What is it? She
flung out her hand to ward off danger, but unsuspectingly Mr. Thomas
hurled his bomb.

"Dr. Roberts tells us you've been appointed field investigator. He is
particularly enthusiastic about it. You deserve congratulations."

"But, dear Mrs. Hammond, are you really going? I said to Mr. Thomas I
couldn't believe it unless you told me yourself."

Catherine rushed pell-mell into words. She must stir up enough dust to
hide Charles's face, to keep him silent.

"It isn't really settled. Dr. Roberts asked me to go, but I haven't
agreed, as yet. Interesting, of course, fascinating." She saw,
breathlessly, the little glance of triumph Mrs. Thomas sent her husband.

"I said I didn't see how a mother could leave her family."

"Only for a short time, of course. Don't you think we all need some
kind of respite?"

"Well, I remember the doctor sent me to Atlantic City, after Dorothy's
birth." And Mrs. Thomas related with gusto her homesickness, her dire
imaginings each hour of absence. "You never know what might happen!
Even now, I can't help wondering if they are covered warmly enough,
although Mrs. Bates promised to stay till we came home."

Inconsequential, drifting bits of conversation--the minutes until
they should go were thin wires, drawing Catherine to the brink of
the whirlpool. Charles was laboriously talkative, and she heard the
rushing of his winds of grievance.

They were going!

"You'll send Spencer out, then, some day. He could come with Mr.
Thomas. For a week-end, say. Walter would be so pleased."

And then, as they stood in the hall, Mr. Thomas dropped another bomb.

"You haven't decided, I suppose, about that western position, Hammond?
Your husband was talking it over with me at luncheon one day," he added
to Catherine. "There's something gratifying in the idea of controlling
a department and the entire policy, I think."

It was Charles's turn now to hurry into words, vague, temporizing words.

Catherine returned to the living room and sat down. She had a queer
illusion that if she moved too quickly, she might break; she was
brittle, tight. Charles came back to the doorway, his chin thrust out.
Why, it was funny, ridiculous--caught out, each of them. This must be
a dream. It was too absurd for reality. She began to laugh. She didn't
wish to laugh, but she was helpless, as if some monstrous jest seized
her and shook her. Was it she, laughing, or the jest, outside her,
shaking her? She couldn't stop.

"Evidently you are amused." Charles strode past her. She wanted to deny
that, to explain that it wasn't she laughing. But she couldn't stop
that gasping ribald sound. "Catherine!" he stood above her, enormous,
magnified by the tears in her eyes. "Catherine!"

Abruptly the monstrous jest dropped her, limp, and the laughter had
burst through the thin partition into sobs. She twisted away from
him, flinging an arm up to shield her face, her body pressed against
the chair, seeking something hard, immovable, to check its convulsive
racking. She knew that Charles bent over her. She wanted to scream at
him to go away, to leave her alone, but she doubled her first against
her lips. She struggled back heavily to the narrow, tortuous path of
control. For days she had walked too near the edge for safety. She
could breathe now. If she could lie there, quiet, for a time--but
Charles was waiting. Her hands dropped to her lap, she relaxed,
emptily, and slowly she turned her face. Charles watched her; alarm,
and a sort of scorn on his face. He thought she had chosen that as a
weapon--feminine hysterics.

"Well?" His gruffness was a shield over his alarm, she knew.

"I am sorry." Her voice had the faint quiver of spent tears. "I really
didn't intend--but it suddenly looked--ridiculous."

"I don't see what's funny." Charles sat down stiffly. "In my hearing of
my wife's plans from outsiders."

Catherine drew a long breath. She was back on that narrow path, now.

"And my hearing of yours?" she asked.

"I told you about that offer several months ago." Charles was
dignified. "You seemed so little interested."

"Let's not quibble!" Catherine exclaimed. "I can't bear it. It's bad
enough--I was coming in to talk with you, when they rang. I hadn't
known"--she stared a moment; that was, after all, the dreadful
sign-post, indicating their diverging roads--"that you considered that
offer seriously."

"Exactly. But you will admit I had spoken of it?"

Ah, he wouldn't take that as parallel. His silence there was to be her
fault, too. Only his cold, dead side toward me--Catherine had again
that phantasy that he had swung in his orbit. If I go under now, it's
for all time. He must swing back to find me as I am, now. Pride poured
through her, hardening in the mold of her intention.

"I hadn't spoken of this field work," she said, clearly, "because I had
to think it out first. Dr. Roberts offered me the opportunity a week
ago. I did not suppose he took my assent for granted. Although he knows
I couldn't refuse it unless the work meant nothing to me."

"But what is it? You----"

Catherine explained. She was clear, hard, swift.

"You have evidently made up your mind to go."

She nodded.

"I can arrange things here so that the children will be cared for. And
the house will run, just as when I am in town. It's only for a month."

Charles got slowly to his feet, his mouth obdurate.

"Charles, won't you talk it over with me?"

"I have nothing to say. You seem to lay aside your obligations lightly.
But if you are content----"

"Not lightly." She shut her eyes against his face. One hand opened in
a piteous little gesture of entreaty. If he should, even now, beg her
to stay, wanting her, she would turn to water. "It has been difficult
to decide." She lifted her eyelids heavily. "You must see that it is a
distinct advance."

"A feather in your cap." Charles was sardonic. "And you must have
feathers."

At that she rose, faint color coming into her white face.

"Yes, I think I must. I'm sorry you don't like me--in feathers." Her
eyelids burned. "You would prefer, I suppose, dingy ostrich plumes that
you had bought, years ago--like Mrs. Thomas's."

"Mrs. Thomas may be a fool, but she's a good woman."

"Oh!" Catherine set her lips against the echoing surge of laughter that
rolled up. She wouldn't let go again; she wouldn't!

"I mean she finds her feathers in her husband's cap! Thomas is going
ahead in great strides. Ask any of the men in college. And why? Because
she is back of him, interested. A man has to feel there is some one
interested in what he's doing."

"And a woman doesn't?"

"You see! I say something, trying to explain my position, and at once
you twist it into a comment on yourself."

Catherine retreated a step. Her glance winged about the quiet, pleasant
room. That little table--they had found it in a Third Avenue store.
"It smells like mahogany," Charles had insisted. She could see it in
the kitchen, newspapers spread under its spindle legs, and Charles
scraping away at the old paint. Their house, built piece by piece. They
had never had money enough for more than one chair at a time. And they
had loved the building. Now--her glance included Charles, lowering,
defensive, unhappy.

"But I am concerned," she said, "as much as ever. You should know that."

"No! You aren't. I come home from class, and you aren't here. I
come home at night, from a committee meeting, and you've gone to
sleep because you need to be fresh for your own work. This isn't
complaining. I just want you to see how you've changed. Why, take this
matter of the Buxton professorship. When I spoke of it, the one thing
it meant to you was that you might have to leave New York. That's
all you could see in it. I haven't been able to discuss it with you,
although it might seem important."

Perhaps all that was true. Catherine felt a trickle of doubt through
the solid wall of her intention. She had been tired--had she seemed
indifferent, absorbed? In a wave of heat the trickle was consumed. She
wanted to cry out, "It's not with me that difference lies. It is in
you! You wish to blame me, for your turning away--to Stella Partridge.
You think I don't know about that!"

He moved uneasily, fidgetting with the painted silk shade of the table
lamp.

"All right," she said brusquely. "We'll leave it at that. I am
self-absorbed. Selfish."

"I expected you would tire of it long before now," said Charles. "Long
hours in an office, at someone's beck and call. When you might be
perfectly free to do as you please. I swear I don't see what you get
out of it."

"You don't see, do you?" Catherine's eyes were suddenly piteous. "You
don't see at all."

"It's evident enough that you can't swing the two jobs, home and
office. You're worn out all the time. Irritable."

"Oh!" Catherine's hand pressed against her breast. Something
extraordinary in his ingenuous construction of a case against her.

"Now if you could earn more than I do, then I might stay home, give up
my work. But you don't. You barely swing the additional expenses you
incur. Sometimes I think I'll accept the Buxton offer, just to take
you--and the children--out of this city."

Catherine's heart, under her cold fingers, stood still for a long
moment and then broke into violent, irregular beating.

"You would have to be sure"--she wondered if he could hear her
words--"that I would go!"

At that she hurried out of the room. She undressed in clumsy haste,
and crawled into bed, where she shivered, unable to relax, unable to
stop the trampling of heavy thoughts through her mind. Charles came
in, and went with elaborate unconcern about the business of going to
bed. Her mind was a sling-shot, drawn tight to hurl at him innumerable
bits of sentences, clattering stones from the ruck thrown off from what
they had said. But she held them in, to rattle against her own brain.
When he had turned off the light and was at last quiet in his own bed,
the dark rose between them heavy, thick. She was aware, in a kind of
torment, of his faintest motion.

I must sleep, she thought. If I could shut off these thoughts! She
twisted one arm up under her face, her mouth pressed hard on the cold
flesh.

Quite suddenly relief came, like a warm rush of air, blowing her empty
of battering thoughts. She had a vague sense of something under the
cluttered feelings, something hard, clear, shapely, a self distinct
from love and hate and jealousy and fear. She drifted just over the
edge of consciousness. She was lost in a vast, dark labyrinth, through
which she stumbled, hands extended in search of passageways; on and on
she labored. Had she touched that wall before? Was she going in blind
circles, with no egress? She was running, desperately--sleep closed
around her.


IV

Dr. Roberts came gravely around the desk, shook Catherine's hand, and
returned to his chair.

"I must have been somewhat in doubt about your consent," he said,
"since I am so delighted. You must see Dr. Waterbury to-day."

"Just when do you think I should start?" Catherine sat erect, hard,
bright triumph in her eyes. "Of course, there are various adjustments
in my household to make."

"The end of the month. You'll have this work in shape by that time."
Dr. Roberts jumped to his feet. "I'll make that appointment with
Waterbury myself. This is a good one on Smithson! He counted on your
being merely half-hearted about the work." He went briskly out.

Catherine's fingers moved idly among the pens and pencils on the tray.
Behind her the winter sun made pale blotches on the floor. I've done
it, she thought. It's only the beginning! If I hang on, things may work
out. A flashing picture of Charles at breakfast, dignified, reticent.
Even that! She wondered a little at herself. It's because I've found
something beside feelings to live by, perhaps, and so I can endure
feelings. I can wait.

She brushed all that away, as with a quick gesture she pulled open the
drawer and lifted out the pile of notes.

Margaret telephoned. Would Catherine lunch that day with Amy and her?
At Amy's luncheon club. Catherine made a note of the address. At
quarter to one, sharp. Upstairs. We'll meet you there.

They would be interested in her news. Approvingly interested.
Discomfiting, how eagerly you ran to lap up little crumbs of approval.
Get approval out of yourself, Henrietta had told her. Childish of her
to crave it outside herself. As if, some way, she had to make up for
Charles, to throw something into the other side of the scale along with
her own conviction.

She wanted Margaret's advice about shopping, too. New clothes. She
would have to look her part.

It was one o'clock when Catherine hurried along the side street,
looking anxiously for the number Margaret had given her. The interview
with the President had delayed her; it had left her in a state of
pleasurable excitation, like the humming of many tiny insects. Across
Madison Avenue. She came to a group of old gray buildings, houses,
with excrescenses of recent date on the ground floor,--a cleaning
establishment--funny how you always saw clothes you liked in cleaners'
windows!--an interior decorator's, with heavy tapestry draped over an
amazing gilt chair. There, the entrance was just between those shops.
Didn't look much like a club. She climbed the stairs cautiously; a door
above her opened, and two women came past her, sending her expectant
glances, their voices sharp and bright against the confusion of sound
into which she climbed. She stopped at the door, keenly self-conscious,
as if the pattern of voices was complete, and her entrance might break
through the warp. The pattern broke as she looked about the room, large
and low, with separate nodules of women. Margaret's bright head shot up
from the group near the fireplace, and Margaret swung across the room
toward her, slim and erect in her green dress. Amy strolled after her;
she had removed her squirrel turban, but her dark hair still made a
stiff flange about her thin face.

"This is fine! We've saved a table--" and Catherine, following them
into the dining room, edging between the little tables, found herself
drawn into the pattern of sound.

"I'm sorry I am late." She slipped her coat over the chair. "The
President was talking to me"--she had to release some of the tiny,
humming insects--"about my trip west." She told them about that trip.
It stepped forward out of dream regions into reality as she talked, as
they put in questions, sympathetic, approving questions.

"What does the King say?" Margaret smiled at her.

"Oh, he doesn't say much." Catherine laughed. Why, she could joke about
him! She felt a hard brilliance carry her along, as if--she sent little
glances about the room, at the women near her--something homogeneous
about them--unlike the girls at the St. Francis, still more unlike the
woman who lunched at the Acadia, or at Huylers--something sufficient,
individual--"What kind of a club is this, anyway?"

"We wanted a place downtown here where we could have good food. All
the lugs are in the kitchen. Wonderful cook!" Amy leaned across the
table, her eyes afire. She could be intense over food, too, then!
"A place where one might bring a guest. City Club too crowded, too
expensive, too--too too! for independent women. There were eleven of
us, originally. We called it the "Little Leaven," you know. Now there
are several hundred. All sorts. Writers, artists, editors. That's a
birth control organizer, and the woman with her is an actress. Anybody
interesting comes to town, we haul her in to speak in the evening. Men
always have comfortable clubs. This is for us."

"Good food, certainly."

"I thought if you were interested, I'd put you up. For membership. The
dues aren't high, and now you are downtown, you might like to run in.
Always someone here to lunch with, someone of your own kind."

Catherine smiled. Part of her was amused, but part of her shone, as
if Amy's intensity, admitting her to the leaven, polished that hard
brilliance----

"I'd like it!" she declared. "Lunching has been irksome."

She watched the women again. They seemed less homogeneous, more
individual, as she looked.

"Well, I've been thinking about you." Amy was directed at her with
astonishing concentration. "Since I met you. What you need is more
backing. You feel too much alone."

Catherine felt Margaret's uneasiness, akin to her own faint shrinking
from the access of personal probing.

"You need, as I told Margaret the other night, to touch all these other
women who have stepped out of their grooves. It's wonderful, what that
does for you. It's solidarity feeling, workers go after it in their
unions, and women so much lack it. You think you are making a solitary
struggle, and you're only part of all this----" Her sudden gesture sent
her empty tumbler spinning to the edge of the table. Margaret's quick
hand caught it.

"Don't begin an oration, Amy," she said.

"It's true." Catherine was bewildered to find tears in her eyes, and a
rush of affection toward Amy--she might be fanatic, but a spark from
her overfanned fires could warm you! "Are any of these celebrities
married?" she asked, with apparent irrelevance.

"Oh--" Amy shrugged. "I think they have husbands, some of them. Hard to
tell. That woman there has just got her divorce, I know."

She had a moment with Margaret later, standing near the fireplace,
while Amy rushed off to greet a newcomer.

"She's a funny old dear, isn't she?" Margaret was nonchalant.

"I like her," said Catherine.

Margaret looked up in frank pleasure.

"I hoped you would. She's really fine, if you get her." Her eyes,
traveling across to the small figure in the fur coat, one arm raised
in emphasis, were tender. "You'd roar if you heard her comments on
Charles. She has a certain cosmic attitude toward all men, lumps them.
I'm thrilled, Cathy, at your trip. And your salary! You show some
pick-up on this job."

"Will you take me shopping for decent clothes?" Catherine regarded her
sister wistfully. "I'm going to dress the old thing up for once."

"Will I! I've always wanted to."


V

During the next weeks Catherine lunched frequently at Amy's club. "You
were quite right," she told her one day. "I needed perspective. This
place and these women make the whole business of my working seem matter
of course. As if I'd be a fool not to. That's a more comforting feeling
than my old one, that I might be only an egoistic pig."

"That's the trouble with ordinary married women," declared Amy. "They
are all shut up in separate cages, until they don't have an idea what
is happening outside."

"Marriage isn't a cage, exactly."

"You just aren't entirely out, yet."

"At least there is comfort in finding that other women want the same
thing I want, and get it."

But marriage wasn't a cage, she thought, later. She found herself not
so much imprisoned as bewildered. It's more like a labyrinth. There are
ways out, if you can find them. Out, not of marriage itself, but out of
the thing people have made of it--for women.

Catherine knew, when she approached her mother with her plan, that she
had need of perspective and assurance. But Mrs. Spencer's comment was
brief.

"I suppose," she said, "you must work this out for yourself. Yes, I can
stay nights at your house. Alethea will be away all of February."

"Then it's really a good scheme for you, too?" Catherine begged.

"I'm a little too old to sit up with a croupy child."

"Letty's too old for croup." Catherine refused to look at her mother's
implication--that her children might be sick, might need her. "Of
course, Miss Kelly and Mrs. O'Lay together can manage the household.
There won't be any burden for you. I thought you could have Spencer's
room, and he could have my bed."

She and Charles seemed to run on tangents which seldom crossed. A young
assistant in Charles's department had influenza, and in the handling
of his work, Charles came in for an evening class. Frequent committee
meetings, clinic affairs, kept him away on other evenings. Catherine
would wake, to hear his cautious blunderings in the dark. He assumed
that she slept, and she, fumbling for some noncommittal phrase of
greeting, often lay quite still, not speaking.

One mild, sunny day toward the end of January, Catherine came up from
town on top of a bus. A little windblown and stiff, she hurried across
the campus. In the dim tunnel behind the gymnasium she met Stella
Partridge.

"Mrs. Hammond!" Stella halted just where the light through glass panels
in a door made a charming picture of her pale face and close, dark
furs. "It's been so long since we have seen each other, and I wanted to
congratulate you on your--it is a promotion, isn't it? Dr. Hammond is
so proud of you."

Catherine's first thought was a flash of resentment that she had worn
her shabby coat that morning, instead of the elegance Margaret had
selected for her. How childish! she rebuked herself, as she said,

"Thank you. It isn't really a promotion. Just a different phase of the
work."

"It will be so nice for you, having the change."

She wants to detain me, to talk--Catherine found a myriad tiny buzzing
thoughts, just out of reach--to show me that she knows all about it,
from Charles.

"I am sure I shall enjoy it." She bent forward, her words suddenly out
of her volition. "What a charming hand bag!" Her finger hovered above
it; her eyes, swooping up to the cool dark eyes, were derisive.

"Yes, isn't it?" Miss Partridge's smile was tolerant, amused, just a
flicker of pointed teeth. But she thrust the bag under her arm. "I
hope you have a pleasant trip. You go soon, don't you?"

A truck came booming through the tunnel, and under cover of its din,
Catherine nodded and hurried on.

"You knew she had it," she cried out, half aloud. "You knew it!" At the
gate she stopped, pretending to adjust her hat. She had known it, but
the sight of it, the actual visible contact with it, had sent a sharp
wave of nausea through her. How could she have spoken of it! She was
aghast--the words had pounced out, she hadn't said them. There, the
nausea had passed, and with her head up to the wind which blew along
the Avenue, she could go on, across the street, and up the hill toward
home. She doesn't love him. Catherine was sure of that. She wanted to
show off--her power. That's all. She has no tenderness in her.

And as Catherine went silently past the door of the study where Charles
sat writing, not looking up, pity moved in her. Why, she thought, he
will be hurt, out of this, and I can't save him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Henrietta came in that evening, and Charles emerged, ruffled and
absent-eyed, from the study. He was working on a paper he was to
deliver before a meeting of psychologists. On clinic practice, he
explained in answer to Henrietta's inquiry. "You know"--he slouched
down in his chair--"we're going to run you poor old-fashioned doctors
right out of business. Once we have these psychological methods
established, there won't be much left for you to do."

"Whooping cough a mere instinct, or is it a habit? And croup and
measles and broken legs?" Henrietta waved her eyeglasses at him. "If
you psychologists knew a little anatomy and materia medica----"

She and Charles squared off for a friendly skirmish on their pet field
of contention. Catherine, listening, watching Charles's lazy delight as
he parried phrases and thrust out in pointed words, felt a sudden wash
of tears too close to her eyes, and a constriction in her throat. He
would come out of his tent, genial, casual, for Henrietta, for anyone.
But when they were alone--silence, heavy and uncommunicative. How long
since they had laughed, at any silly thing?

"Here, help me out!" Henrietta was flushed with amusement. "He's
delivering his whole speech on my head! Oh, I mustn't forget to give
you Bill's address." She broke off, fumbling in a pocket of her suit.
"Here. Chicago office. A note there will reach him. Aren't you proud of
her, Charles?" Henrietta stuck her glasses on the bridge of her nose
and stared at Charles. "Just pouncing ahead!"

"Of course Catherine has brains." Charles had withdrawn, his foils
sheathed. "Always knew that."

"But these Bureaus and Foundations are so conservative. It's splendid
to see them forced into recognition of a woman's ability, I think."

"Their men always seem a little--ladylike." Charles was talking at
Catherine, through Henrietta. "Perhaps none of them wished to make a
tour of the west this time of year. It isn't my idea of a good time,
exactly."

"Don't let him josh you, Catherine!" Henrietta flashed out, warmly.

"Aren't they ladylike? Most of their men not creative enough to make a
real place for themselves. They crawl into that snug and safe berth----"

"I've thought the few I've met were much like academic men." Henrietta
grinned at her thrust. "Haven't you, Cathy?"

"You see," said Catherine, "Charles disapproves of the whole system,
the establishment of a bureau."

"Some one accumulates too much money and looks around for a conspicuous
benevolence. Ah, a bureau of investigation! Then some little men hurry
in, get jobs poking their noses into various things, and draw down neat
salaries out of the surplus money. Mrs. Lynch is pleased. Little men
are pleased."

"Why isn't it a good way to get rid of the money?" Henrietta spoke
cautiously, as if she suspected traps under the smooth surface.

"Oh, it gets rid of it. But it's artificial. Not a response to some
demand in society."

"Charles, are you stuck-up, or jealous?" Henrietta glanced shrewdly
from him to Catherine.

"This is not personal, I assure you." Charles slipped into his
grandiloquent, tolerant manner, as much as to add, "even if you, being
a woman, can not understand its being impersonal."

"Um. Aren't universities endowed with some of this surplus cash, too?"

"Only to some extent. There you have an actual need."

"In other words, the shoe is on the other foot, now." Henrietta laughed.

"It's true enough there's an actual need." Catherine sat forward,
eagerly. A sharp inner voice said: ridiculous to argue; he is attacking
me, not the Bureau. Trying to belittle the thing I'm in, so that
I'll have to shrink with it. But the voice was drowned in an uproar
of her refusal to shrink, her insistence upon some justification.
"Universities and colleges are a need, of course. But the very thing
I'm working on, and Dr. Roberts, too, is the great gap between the
human need and the pitiful offering on the part of the colleges. Why
won't it do some good, if we can show up that gap?"

"What will happen? You'll write a brochure, which won't be read by any
of the people concerned. Change comes from within, slowly, like growth
of a child."

"In other words, Catherine, your job is foolishness, and you'd better
be home making pies. You are too transparent, Charles. Don't you listen
to him!" Henrietta jumped to her feet. "I must run along. Pies are
fleeting, too. If you're interested in a thing, that's all that counts."

Catherine rose, slowly. She wished Henrietta wouldn't go. Her blunt
indifference to undercurrents had a steadying effect.

"Of course," Catherine spoke hurriedly. She wanted to get to the bottom
of this before Henry went. If there was a bottom. "Your interest
depends upon your valuation of what you are doing, doesn't it?"

"Somewhat." Henrietta paused. "But you know, you can knock a hole in
the value of anything, if you try. I can shoot a doubt straight through
doctoring. Why bother to mend people! Children--they just grow up to
make blundering old folks." She looked tired, as if the flesh of her
cheeks and chin sagged. "But do I shoot it? Not me. Same with your
job, same with Charles's job. May make a dent in the old world."

When she had gone, Catherine looked in at the door of the study.
Charles presented a shoulder overintent. He knew she was there. To
speak his name was like tugging at a great weight.

"Charles." He turned. The weight increased. "You really feel this work
is just empty fiddling?"

"There doesn't seem much use in saying what I _think_"--his emphasis
pointed out the difference--"since it is taken as limited and personal."

Catherine retreated to her own room, before hasty, intemperate words
escaped her. There was a cruel enough abyss between them now; no use to
fill it with wreckage.


VI

The following morning, when Dr. Roberts came in with time tables and
maps to help complete the itinerary, Catherine responded with apathy
to the folders. She heard that doubt gnawing away, a mouse behind the
wainscoting. Finally, as Dr. Roberts opened a new map, she let the
mouse out.

"What," she asked, "exactly, do you think we are going to accomplish?
With the whole thing. Trip, book, all of it."

Dr. Roberts spread the thin map crackling on the desk, and pressed his
forefinger into Ohio. Then he lifted his head, and his eyes, shrewdly
penetrating, studied her face.

"So----" he said. "It has lost its savor."

"Do you think we can change things, by criticism, or suggestion? Won't
all these schools go on in their own way?"

Dr. Roberts sat on the edge of the table, one neat toe pushed against
the floor to balance himself, one swinging.

"I'm glad this came up now, instead of somewhere in Ohio," he said. "I
suppose we all have hours of wondering what it amounts to, all these
mahogany desks and busy people." He brought his fist down emphatically.
"But I tell you, something must come of studies like this! Institutions
have gone on long enough, nosing along with blind snouts in old ruts.
The day has come when intellect, intelligence can step in and say,
'here, that's the wrong path. You're going that way only because it is
an old path. Here's the better way.' Conscious, intelligent control.
That's the coming idea."

"But can a blind snout open its eyes?" Catherine was intent, serious.
"Can you change things? That way?"

"See what Flexner's study of medical schools did for them! Even
Smithson's few papers on sanitation have had an ordinance or two as a
result. Where does all that agitation about child labor in the South
come from, if not from investigation?"

"You see--" Catherine looked down at the pink blotch of Ohio, under the
firm, square forefinger. "I must believe in what I'm doing. I can't
just do it to earn a living."

"Naturally. I understand that."

"The work I did during the war was obviously of use. The plans for
reeducation were fairly snatched out of our hands before the ink was
dry on them."

"Yes. An immediate need like that is, as you say, obvious. Easy to
believe in. Like baking bread for hungry people."

"I carried over that belief to the Bureau as a whole, I think. Then--I
suppose from criticism that I heard--I wondered whether we fooled
ourselves."

"I think not, Mrs. Hammond. Perhaps our report won't revolutionize the
whole educational system of several states overnight. You don't expect
that. But it may affect even a single man, and that's something." He
stroked his beard, watching her a little anxiously. "There is just one
criticism which has bothered me," he added. "That concerns policy.
After all"--his wave indicated the Bureau, established, respectable,
heavily done in mahogany--"biting the hand that feeds us, you know. We
may be tied too firmly to the social forces that make this possible.
I don't know. What I offer myself for consolation is this: there's
no such thing as complete freedom. If we can clear away any of the
debris and old pitfalls in education, we may at least leave the next
generation less obstructed. We are no more limited in policy than
churches or colleges. We don't have to lick the hand that feeds us, at
any rate."

"Well--" Catherine smiled. "I won't be doubtful, then. I want to be
enthusiastic."

And as Dr. Roberts returned to the study of the maps and time tables,
she thought: he may be right, and Charles may be right. Each of them
thinks from his own center. From his own desires. So do I. And I want
this work to have a meaning. To be significant. To _matter_. I believe
it does. I _will_ believe in it.


VII

Saturday afternoon Catherine stood in front of the long mirror in her
bedroom, with Margaret squatting on her heels beside her, pinning in
place a band of bright embroidery.

"Too bad there isn't time to send it back." Margaret dropped to the
floor, gazing up at her sister. "But that will do, I think. It's very
smart, Cathy."

"Can we pack it so that it won't crush?" Catherine brushed her fingers
over the warm brown duvetyn. "I scarcely recognize myself."

"It's the way you should look all the time. Take it off and I'll put a
stitch in where that pin is." Margaret scrambled to her feet. "I did
want you to have that beaver coat, though."

"I've got to pay for these sometime!" Catherine slipped out of the
dress. "You beguiled me into awful extravagance."

"Just because I made you buy with a near eye instead of a far eye."
Margaret sewed busily. "The middle-class married eye is a far eye,
Cathy. It never sees clothes as they are. It sees how they'll look
three years hence, and then five years, made over. No wonder you look
dubby. Can't ever get style that way." She snapped her thread, and
folded the dress over tissue paper. "There, that'll ride. Taking just
your steamer trunk?"

"And a bag." Catherine pulled her nasturtium silk kimono over her
shoulders. "Too many stops for a large trunk. It's good of you to spend
your Saturday here. I'd sent off everyone, so that I could get ready in
peace. But there are endless things to see to."

"You're a handsome thing in that rag, too." Margaret rose from the half
full trunk. "Wish I'd found an evening dress that color."

"That would have been nice and inconspicuous! And I may not need one.
I'll stick this black one in." There was a faint glow on Catherine's
cheeks; her dark hair swept in a long curve from brow to heavy coil at
the nape of her smooth neck.

"Where are the children?" Margaret seized the black dress and folded it
dexterously.

"At the opera--'Hansel and Gretel.' Mother took them. Miss Kelly has
Letty in the park."

"Won't they love it!" Margaret whistled the gay little dance melody
from the opera. "Do they mind your going?"

"Marian thinks it will be rather fun to have Gram here. Spencer wants
to go with me."

"The lamb! There, those are properly packed. You be careful when you
take them out. Now, shoes. No, put that blouse in your handbag."

"I declare--" Catherine laughed as Margaret moved competently through
the piles. "It's like a trousseau--my second."

"That would please the King, I'm sure." Margaret held off a bronze
slipper, turning it critically. "Is he as sulky as he acts, Cathy? He
said, 'I don't demand external evidence to make me proud of my wife!'"
She imitated the dignified resentment of his tone.

"He's frightfully busy with papers and things." Catherine bent over
her traveling bag. In her throat a soft pulse beat disturbingly.
To-night--she thought. Oh, I can't leave him--obdurate, silent. I must
break through.

"Um." Margaret nodded. Then, suddenly, "I told Mother I thought she had
no business siding with him."

Catherine faced her, alarmed.

"And she as much as said she thought you were endangering your home and
future happiness. Poor mother! She can't step out of her generation, I
suppose. For all she is such a brick."

"Don't put anything into her head, for goodness' sake! She's going to
be here while I'm gone. She's fond of Charles."

"The only trouble with Charles," declared Margaret, her arms akimbo on
her slim hips, "is that he is a man!"

"You sound like Amy."

"No, I don't. I know he can't help it. You're to blame, partly. You
spoiled him rotten for years. He can't get over it in a jiffy. Has that
woman got her claws in him? I suppose he's wide open to a vamp."

Catherine's color receded in the swift tautening of her body. Margaret
need not trample in. "I don't know," she said, stiffly.

"Excuse me, old thing." Margaret flung her arm over Catherine's
shoulders, and rubbed her warm cheek against her sister's. "Rude of me,
I know. We'll change the subject."

"I didn't mean to be sniffy." Catherine softened. "I really don't know.
I was shocked that you----"

"Um. What are my eyes for, little Red Riding Hood? Anyway, it's a
darned skilful move of yours, this trip."

Down the hall clumped Mrs. O'Lay. Catherine hurried into her old serge
dress, Margaret locked and strapped the little trunk, and Catherine
closed the traveling bag. "Have to finish that to-morrow."

Miss Kelly came, with Letty. Margaret carried the child off into the
dining room for her supper, while Catherine sat down with Miss Kelly
for a final discussion of the weeks she would be gone. "Eve made out
this mailing list--" she finished, "and bought enough postal cards
to last. If you would send me one every night--" She gazed at the
sandy-fringed, calm blue eyes, at the firm, homely mouth. "I'm sure
they will be happy and well, with you."

"I think so, Mrs. Hammond." Not a quaver of uneasiness in her voice.

You might suppose I went off every week, thought Catherine.

Letty was in bed, Margaret had gone, and Miss Kelly, before Mrs.
Spencer and the children arrived. Catherine listened to their
delighted rehearsing of the story. Marian tried to hum one of the
songs; Catherine couldn't recall the exact melody. And under the
outer pressure ran the slow, warm flood of waiting, waiting until
Charles should come in. What she could say or do she did not know. But
anything, anything!

"Will I serve up the soup, Mrs. Hammond?" Mrs. O'Lay was reproachful.
"It's half after six."

"Mr. Hammond should be in any minute."

The telephone shrilled into her waiting.

"That you, Catherine? I'm at the dentist's. Got a devil of a toothache.
Don't wait for me. He's out at dinner, but he's coming in to see to the
tooth. No, it's that upper tooth, where the filling was loose."

They dined without Charles.

"Poor fellow!" Mrs. Spencer was gently sympathetic. "There's nothing so
upsetting as the toothache."

Some truth in that, thought Catherine, as she sat in Charles's chair
and served. A special dinner, too. If the tooth still ached when he
came home-- The intangible hope which had grown in her through the day
was too fragile to withstand such disaster. Perhaps--was he at the
dentist's? Was there an aching tooth? She glanced up in a flurry of
guilt at a question from her mother. How despicable of her, dropping
into suspicion. Spencer was watching her. He was too sensitized, too
immediately aware of moods. It would be good for him, perhaps, to live
without her for a time. She brushed away the under-thoughts, and held
herself resolutely above the surface of their talk.

Marian wanted to play Hansel and Gretel. "But Gram is too nice to be
the witch, isn't she, Muvver? And we must have a witch."

"Miss Kelly could be witch," said Spencer.

"She's too nice, too!"

"She could pretend not to be." Spencer peered at Catherine, and
suddenly giggled.

"That isn't funny," protested Marian.

"When your mother was a little girl," began Mrs. Spencer, "I took her
to see Uncle Tom's Cabin." The children listened, entranced, to the
account of Catherine's impersonation of Little Eva. Catherine, amused,
went back to Spencer's giggle. He hadn't accepted Miss Kelly, as Marian
had. His laugh was a secret declaration of his withholding of himself.
But he no longer protested outwardly.

"And just then, I went out of the kitchen door," said Mrs. Spencer,
"and saw Catherine in the loft window of the barn. She had on one of my
best white sheets, and she was leaning forward, way out of the window,
and waving her arms."

"Oh, Muvver!" Marian sighed in delight.

"I said, 'What are you doing!'"

"You tell us what you said, Muvver," begged Marian, her eyes darkly
shining. "Please."

"I said"--Catherine laughed--"that I was going to fly to Heaven."

"Did you think you were, Mother?" asked Spencer.

"Perhaps. I was playing Little Eva so hard that I expected the angels
to pick me up, you know."

"An' then, Gram?"

"I called to the hired man. He was in the barn. And he ran upstairs up
the ladder and caught your mother by the sheet. So she didn't jump out."

"Would you really of jumped, Mother?" Spencer, in his eagerness, came
around to Catherine's chair.

"I don't know. I was a silly little girl, wasn't I?"

"Oh, Spencer was silly to-day," cried Marian. "He wanted to come home
right in the middle of the play. He said you were going away to-day,
and Gram had to take right hold of his arm."

A wave of color rushed up to Spencer's hair, and his nostrils trembled.

"Wasn't that silly?"

"I did think so, Mother." He gulped. "I got mixed up. If you think so,
it feels true, doesn't it?"

"We told him it wasn't to-day. But he kept thinking so."

Catherine remembered the dash he had made through the hall to her
bedroom, his halt at the door, his long stare at her. Poor boy!

"You better sit down, son," she said. "Here comes dessert."

Later, when she bade them good night, his arms tightened about her neck.

"You said to-morrow," he whispered, "and I thought maybe it was
to-morrow. Because to-morrow is to-day, always, when it gets here."

"We can write letters to each other," said Catherine, rubbing her cheek
softly against his hair. "Won't that be fun? We never wrote to each
other."

"With my own name on the envelope?"

"Yes, sir." Catherine felt him relax into pleased contemplation of
envelopes with his own name.

"It's queer Charles doesn't come." Mrs. Spencer laid aside her magazine
as Catherine entered the living room. "Do you know what dentist he goes
to?"

"Dr. Reeves, I think. He had to wait until the doctor came in from
dinner."

"Oh, yes." Mrs. Spencer ruffled her fingers through the pages. "Alethea
went on Thursday," she said. "I'll be glad to move in here. It's rather
queer, staying alone."

"I am glad you want to come." Catherine was grateful. "It relieves me
of any anxiety. Things should run smoothly."

"Spencer was quite pitiful." Mrs. Spencer looked like an inquisitive
little bird. "He's rather hard to manage. Notional. Marian seems more
normal."

"She is more phlegmatic than Spencer." Catherine refused to take up
that word, "pitiful," and its implications.

"They're both sweet children. They act well-bred in public. It's a
pleasure to take them out. Even when Spencer was so distressed, he
didn't make himself conspicuous. And when I promised him you'd really
be here, he settled down again."

Catherine again rejected the distress. She wouldn't argue with her
mother about going away. Too late, now.

"Miss Kelly is very good with them, I think," she said. "She gives
them better training than I ever did. I suppose she sees them more
impersonally. Even Letty----"

"I don't think anyone trains children better than their mother." Mrs.
Spencer was indignant. "You always did very well. Miss Kelly does seem
competent, of course."

A sharp ring at the bell brought Catherine to her feet. Perhaps Charles
had forgotten his key. But as she hurried down the hall, she heard a
shrill guffaw from Sam, and the elevator slid rapidly out of sight as
she opened the door.

"Why, Flora! Come in."

Flora, hastening to drag a lugubrious expression over the wide grin Sam
had evidently provoked, shook her head, the stiff purple flowers on her
large hat rattling like hail.

"No'm, I ain't coming in," she said. "I came to ask a favor of you,
Mis' Hammond. You well, and the children?"

"Yes, we're all well." Catherine recalled the dejected, bruised
Flora she had last seen. Bruises and dejection had vanished; Flora
was resplendent in a spotted yellow polo coat, a brilliantly striped
scarf displayed over one shoulder, and--Catherine almost laughed
aloud--arctics, flapping about plump white silk-stockinged legs. But
she was uneasy; the olive-whites of her eyes shone, and her gold tooth
flashed.

"Mis' Hammond, you knows what I done told you, about that worthless
puhfessional man." She thrust her hands deep into her pockets, trying
to swagger a little. "You recollects? I don' want to bother you, but
he's the worstest man. He's tryin' to ruin my character."

"I thought you had him put in prison."

"Yessum. But he's bailed out. An' the case is postponed, while he works
against me. He's provin' that I was bad, and let my li'l girl run wild.
They shut her up." Flora scrambled for a handkerchief, and rubbed
vigorously at her eyes. "My lawyer fr'en, he says if I can get proof
about my character, then that man won't stand no trial. He tole me to
get a proof from you, Mis' Hammond. You know I worked hard, don't you?"

"What kind of proof, Flora? There, don't cry. Of course I'll help you."

"My lawyer fr'en, he says you should write it out about me. A kinda
paper, all about how I done work for you. With your name and where you
lives on it. Then you don' have to come to court, you just writes it
down on a paper."

"Come in, Flora, and I'll write something for you."

"No'm, I'se going to stand right here."

"Wait, then."

Catherine wrote a brief, emphatic statement. She had employed Flora
Lopez for three years, and always found her reliable, competent, hard
working. What do I really know about her, she thought, her pen poised
at the end of that sentence. Character--she saw again that neat,
respectable flat, eloquent of Flora's ambition, and the little boy. She
is a self-respecting woman, who has supported herself and her children.

"Just Flora, that former maid of mine," she told her mother. "Wants a
recommendation."

"There you are." She handed the sheet to Flora.

"But Mis' Hammond, my lawyer fr'en, he say you have to get a notary
seal onto it, or it ain't good in court." She stared at the writing.
"You could mebbe send it by mail to me. I moved to a new place. Folks
in that house were too nosy. I'm at----"

"I'm going away to-morrow, for a month." Catherine hesitated. "I tell
you, we'll go find a notary to-night. There are several along the
Avenue, if it isn't too late."

Her mother agreed, rather doubtfully, to wait until she returned,
unless Charles came in the meantime.

"I don't think you ought to go out with that colored woman this time of
night," she insisted.

But Catherine, hurrying into coat and hat, was off. The notary in the
tobacco shop at the corner had gone home. After a cold, slipping walk
on sleeted streets to Broadway and down, Catherine found another shop,
and a man who could put a seal to her oath.

Flora folded the paper. She refused to put it in her pocket.

"I got to get it safe to my lawyer fr'en," she insisted. "I is obliged
to you, Mis' Hammond." She turned her homely, dark face passionately
toward Catherine, her wide mouth moving grotesquely as she spoke. "Mos'
folks is cruel mean to you if your luck is bad! Women are the mostest
mean. Sayin' I neglects my chile--all 'count of my being a good
worker. You got somebody to work for you now?"

"Mrs. O'Lay, the janitor's wife. You remember her? She can't cook as
you could. Mr. Hammond doesn't eat a meal without wishing you were
back."

"I--I jus' couldn't come back, Mis' Hammond. I'se obliged to you,
but----"

"Are you working somewhere?"

"Washings, at home. I ain't making so much money. But my lawyer fr'en,
he ain't charging me but half rates."

"Do you need money?" Catherine's hand moved toward her pocket book.

"I'se too much obliged, Mis' Hammond, to need it." She looked away, and
suddenly darted out across the street, her arctics flapping, her dirty
yellow coat flopping about her awkward flight.

Catherine went home, stepping gingerly over the glare of ice. A taxi
rattled and skidded to a stop at the door just as she reached the
apartment house, and her mother came out.

"Here, you'll slip." Catherine seized her arm, and engineered her
passage. "Has Charles come home?"

"Yes, poor boy. He's had an awful time. Tell the driver to go very
slowly!" Mrs. Spencer disappeared in the cab.


VIII

"'At Flora, she coming back to wuk for you-all?" Sam made friendly
inquiry as he stopped the elevator at Catherine's floor.

"No."

"She say she got grand job for some elegant folks. Sma't worker, Flora
is."

Poor Flora--Catherine unlocked the door quietly--lying to Sam, to save
her face some way, of course.

If Charles is miserable--hope thrust out a new tendril, waveringly, in
a blurred picture of herself ministering to him, pretending tenderly
that nothing ever had been wrong.

"Hello." She smiled as he turned from the window, draped in a
melancholy air of pain nobly borne. "You have had a horrid time,
haven't you?"

"Just a jumpy tooth." He sat down, reaching for the paper. "Your mother
was worried about you. Said you went off with a darky hours ago."

"She didn't seem worried. I met her at the door." Catherine went out to
the hall closet with her wraps. Her fingers brushed the sleeve of his
heavy coat. If I can pretend, she thought.

"It was only Flora," she said as she returned. "She wanted a statement
from me, evidence as to her character. That man, you remember, her
puhfessional gentleman? He seems to have a scheme to save himself at
her expense. We went out to hunt up a notary."

"You committed yourself legally to some defense of her?"

"Yes, indeed. Poor Flora!"

"Unwise, wasn't it? How do you know what she'll do with such a paper?"

"It seemed little enough to do for her. They want to prove she
neglected her children."

"Didn't she?"

Catherine wondered; did he mean that implied comparison? At least he
wouldn't drag it out, openly, if she ignored it.

"Have you had any dinner?"

"Can't eat with a nerve howling like a fiend."

"Come along, poor boy. I'll find you something."

"Don't bother."

"Come on, Charles." Catherine went into the kitchen. "Here's a
wonderful roast beef," she called back, and Charles came reluctantly.
"You sit there--" she pushed the chair near the shining white table.
"Coffee, or cocoa?"

"Cocoa, if it isn't too much trouble. I'd like to sleep. Had a cup of
coffee."

"Did the dentist keep you all this time in his torture chamber?"
Catherine moved swiftly from ice-chest to stove. If I can invoke our
midnight lunches, all down the past, she thought--I can't go away,
without trying to reach him. It is like death.

"No," said Charles. "I haven't been there all the evening."

Catherine stirred the foaming cocoa. Let's pretend, she wanted to cry
out; let's pretend!

"I thought probably you would be asleep. Since you start off to-morrow."

"I wanted to see you." Catherine poured the cocoa and set it before
him. She stood there, one hand spread delicately, the fingers pressed
against the oilcloth. "And you--didn't want to see me, did you!" She
was supplicating, provocative, leaning above him.

"I had to stop with some manuscript, at Miss Partridge's." Charles
buttered a slice of bread deliberately, and forked a slice of pink
meat to his place. "Is there any Worcestershire?"

"And she gave you coffee?" Catherine moved hastily away from the table,
and felt blindly along the cupboard shelf for the bottle of sauce.

"Yes." Charles was blandly engrossed in his lunch.

He's as much as telling me that he chose to go to her, when he wished
comfort. Catherine set the Worcestershire beside his plate. I won't
hear him. But what a burlesque, my serving him, when I can't, through
any outer humility, reach him.

"Want more sugar?" She asked, casually.

"No. This is fine." His upward glance was puzzled, uneasy.

Ah, I have no pride, no decency! she cried to herself. Her heart was
beating in suffocating rhythm; her fingers lifted, undirected, aching
for the touch of that stubborn, beloved head--the prominent temples,
the hollow above the cheekbones, the old intimate brushing across his
eyes, down to cup his strong, obdurate chin.

"Charles," she whispered, and swayed backward from his sudden violent
start, which clattered the carving knife to the floor.

"Damn!" he clapped his hand to his jaw. "Oh, damn!"

"What is it?"

"That tooth. Hell, I've yanked that filling out." He was on his feet,
his face contorted under his hand. "Get me some iodine. He said iodine
would stop it."

The tooth was treated. Charles, a little sheepishly, admitted that the
pain was less.

"Guess I'll crawl right into bed, before it jumps again. If I can get
to sleep----"

Catherine filled a hot-water bag and slipped it under his cheek.

"That feels fine." He looked up at her. "Thanks."

Catherine bent quickly and brushed her lips on his forehead.

"Good night," she said steadily. "Go right to sleep." She lay wakeful
for a long time.

"When I come back," she thought, at last-- She twisted restlessly.
"That tooth--I was a little mad, and it destroyed my frenzy. I ought to
be glad, and I'm not."

       *       *       *       *       *

The hours on Sunday between breakfast and time for her train were
telescoped into a band of pressure. Directions to Mrs. O'Lay; final
arrangements for her mother; engrossing details devouring the few hours.

The taxi was announced. Letty burst into wails because she couldn't go;
she had been discovered busily emptying her bureau drawers into an old
suitcase. Catherine, distracted, kissed her mother and hurried away,
hearing the determined shrieks until the elevator reached the ground
floor. Charles, Spencer, and Marian climbed into the taxi after her.

"You look lovely," said Marian, over and over, stroking the soft fur at
the throat of her jacket. "You look just lovely."

Spencer snuggled close against her, without a word. Charles, after a
businesslike inquiry into the state of her tickets, was silent. And
Catherine's one clear thought was: it is lucky that I can't escape
now--like a moving stairway, and I've stepped squarely on it. I
couldn't, to-day, furnish the energy, the motive power, to go and leave
them.



PART V

IMPASSE


I

Catherine moved slowly up the covered stairway from the Randolph Street
station, sniffing at the strange smell of Chicago. What did make it so
different from New York? Smoke, blown whirling back in the sharp east
wind over the grinding of ice along the lake shore, something more
composite than that, which, if she could but decipher, would give her
the essential difference between the cities. She snatched at her hat,
as she reached the gusty platform. There was Bill, lounging against the
paper stand! As she edged through the home-bound crowd, he saw her,
with a sharp lifting of his negligent, withdrawn look, and started
toward her.

"Catherine!" He drew her out of the crowd, into a little corner
protected by the booth.

"What a horrid place I made you wait!" Pleasure shimmered over
Catherine, like sun in shallow water. "Have you had to stand here long?
Oh, it is nice to see you!" The strange city, the unknown, hurrying
people, walled them about in deepened intimacy.

"Fine." Bill smiled down at her. "You look as if you had been eating up
this west, and liked its taste."

"I have. I do." Soft, clear brilliance in her eyes, in her smile.
"Let's go somewhere, so I can tell you about it. I want to talk and
talk."

"There's a place just north of here. Would you like to walk? A little
place I found. Wonderful dinners. Or if you want to celebrate, we can
go to some huge hotel."

"I don't care. Let's try your little place."

They walked swiftly along the Avenue, the lake wind whipping against
them, Bill answering Catherine's random questions about the gaunt, dark
buildings they passed, about his work.

"I'm chattering," she thought. "I don't care!"

"Here we are." Bill's hand under her elbow guided her into the doorway
of a small white building.

"Wall papers," read Catherine from the hall sign, but Bill steered her
to an opposite door.

"Oh, I do like it." She nodded at Bill's fleet, anxious query.

A long, irregular room, with scattered tables, dull gray enamel,
shining in the soft orange light of small lamps, and a great brick
fireplace where logs burned.

"Sit here, where you can watch the fire without scorching." Bill chose
a table in a small alcove. "Now tell us all about it. Have you been
made president of one of these colleges? Or endowed? You look amazingly
triumphant."

"Do I strut?" Catherine laughed softly, slipping out of her coat,
drawing off her gloves.

"Not quite. But--you could, couldn't you?"

"I've had a wonderful time, Bill. Incredibly wonderful!"

"And you haven't been lonely, or homesick? How long since you left New
York?"

"More than two weeks. I've finished Illinois. That's why I'm here
to-night. I go on to Ohio at midnight. Homesick? Should I be ashamed
not to be? The first day or so, I felt guilty. And I woke up at night,
thinking I heard Spencer cry out in his sleep, or Letty. Now I just
sleep like a baby--or a spinster."

"Henrietta wrote me that they are all O.K. Had a note this morning."

"She wrote me, too. Nice old thing, to drop in on them. I do miss them
of course. But----" She looked up, a wistful shadow across her eyes.
"Bill, I had forgotten how much time there really was in a day. When
you could go straight ahead, just doing the things you had planned.
Doing one job. You said I'd have two jobs, didn't you? These last weeks
I've had one. And I love it! Not forever, of course. But for this
month. I feel like a _person_. Sometimes, almost like a personage!
People have been very kind, and interested."

She was silent as Bill turned to consult with the waitress; for a
moment her eyes lingered on his head, dark and gaunt against the
firelight, and then looked away at the groups of diners. Early yet,
Bill had said.

"Well?" Bill watched her. "What a charming gown--like an Indian summer."

"Margaret selected it." Catherine stretched one arm along the table,
the loose sleeve of golden brown velvet falling softly away from the
firm ivory of her wrist. "I was doubtful about the color."

"You needn't be."

"She bullied me into all sorts of lugs." Catherine laughed. "And
I've been glad of it." She hovered delightedly over the tray of
hors-d'œuvres. "Like a flower garden!"

"A woman runs this place," remarked Bill with apparent irrelevance.

"Down in a little southern Illinois town, the wife of one of the
college faculty wants to start a tea room. She told me all about it.
Her husband doesn't want her to. She says she supposes it isn't very
high brow. You know, Bill"--Catherine clasped her hands at the edge
of the table--"It's happening everywhere. Women are just busting out.
That's been what they've wanted to know about me. How I manage it. It's
pitiful, their eagerness. Even their husbands. I went out to dinner one
night, and the thing the college president wanted to know was all about
how I managed. How many people it took to fill my place, and all the
rest. I expected to be told in so many words that I ought to be home
with my children."

"And you haven't?"

"Indirectly, sometimes. But even the most righteous mothers crave
information. How do I manage! It's extraordinary. It may have gone to
my head. Like strong drink. I know I'm talking too much. But, Bill,
you've boiled me over, all this brew, and I have to talk!"

"I like it."

"You see--" Catherine glanced up doubtfully. "I can't write to Charles.
It sounds too much like crowing." She fingered her soup spoon. She
wanted to talk about Charles, too. Bill would understand. Those brief,
impersonal notes of his: he was well, he was working on his book, he
was busy with semester finals, the children were well, yours, Charles.

"You never saw Charles's mother, did you?" asked Bill.

"No." Catherine waited. Bill was never random in his associations.

"He's told you about her, of course?"

"Lots of times. She was devoted to him, wasn't she? You knew her?"

"We lived next door for years, you know. She died just as Charles went
to college. His father had died years earlier. Just enough income
for comfort, and just Charles. I think"--he grinned a little--"that
you'll have to train Charles as long as she did, before he can fully
appreciate your career."

"But that was years ago."

"Yes. But--I think I can tell you this, without violation--Charles told
me once, talking of you before I had met you, that to him you were
the perfect woman, like his mother. Which meant--tender, loving, and
devoted."

Catherine's spoon clicked against the soup plate. Her eyelids were
suddenly heavy, weighted with memories. Charles had said that to her,
years ago. A cold finger touched her heart, binding it, and she knew,
through all the brimming delight of the past days, how she had hidden
away the troubling thought of Charles.

"I don't mean that she spoiled him grossly," Bill was saying. "She was
too New England, too much what we used to call a gentlewoman for that.
Charles was simply the center of her life; his welfare, his desires,
his future--those things set the radius of her circle. She had nothing
else, you see. Except the idea"--the corners of Bill's mouth rose in
his slow smile--"that since Charles was a man, he was a superior being.
Did women really think that, Catherine? Or was that a concession they
knew they could easily afford to make?"

"But Charles doesn't think men are superior." Catherine's smile was
uncertain, begging for assurance. "Why, those early experiments of
his, the brochures he published, were directed against that very
superstition."

"Yes. Intellectually he has come a long way since those early days. But
that matters so much less than we like to think."

Catherine waited while the waitress served the next course. Bill's
words had evoked a thought clearly from the churning within her; she
held it until the waitress had gone, and then spoke,

"You mean, exactly, that he wishes my radius to be his desires, his
welfare, his future?"

"That's his old pattern. Bound to hang on, Catherine. Because it is so
flattering, so pleasant. Isn't it what we all wish, anyway? Someone
living within our limits?"

"Perhaps men wish it."

"You think women don't?"

"Do they?" Catherine shook her head. "I don't want Charles to have
nothing but me in his life. Aren't women hardier? Since they've never
had that--it is a sort of human sacrifice, isn't it? Men are like
vines! Did you know vines wouldn't grow well, some of them, unless you
sacrifice to them? Bones and flesh. 'If you have an old hen,' said the
nursery man, when I asked him about our Actinidia in Maine, 'bury her
close to the roots. Then the vine will shoot up.' And it did!"

"You would make over the old saying about sturdy oaks, wouldn't you?"

"Don't make fun of me. Perhaps I can discover something which will
change the world!" She stared intently at Bill. "You--" she hesitated.
"You live without that human sacrifice, Bill. You aren't an Actinidia."

"And so, perhaps, I know why men wish it." Bill pushed to one side his
untouched salad. "Without any question now of its fairness or justice
to women like Henrietta, or you. In the first place, it is convenient,
practically so; smooths down all the details of living. But especially,
it drops a painted screen between man and the distressing futility of
his life. A man with a family and a regular wife, old style, doesn't
often have to face his own emptiness. He feels important. He hurries
around at his work, and if doubt pricks a hole in that screen, the
picture painted there is intricate enough to hide the hole. He has
something to keep his machinery in action. If by day his little ego is
deflated, there is, to change my figure, free air at home to blow him
full again."

"You sound as if you thought all wives were adoring and humble," said
Catherine.

"Some of them used to be." Bill grinned at her, and lifted his hand
abruptly in a signal to the waitress. "This is supposed to be a party,"
he apologized, "and not a lecture by me. Tell me more about what you've
been doing."

Catherine's talk was fragmentary. Something--what Bill had said, or
perhaps simply his being Bill with all the old associations close
around him--had blown the froth away from the past two weeks; she had
thought that she had become almost a different Catherine, bright,
hard, full of enthusiasm and interest, absorbed in her rôle of
Bureau-representative. She saw now that her inner self still stood
with feet entangled in perplexity and doubt.

"Bill"--she broke into her own recital--"if a man doesn't have free air
at home, does he look for it somewhere else?"

"He may." Bill's quick upward glance was disturbed. He knew,
then, about Charles and Stella. Henrietta would have told him.
"Or"--lightly--"he runs along on a flat tire."

Catherine was silent, her mind skipping along with the absurd figure.
Stella Partridge was, after all, too busy pumping her own ego hard
to perform that task long for any man. She might flatter him, and
cajole----

"Do the children write to you?"

Catherine reached into the pocket of her coat.

"I've been moving too fast the last few days to have letters. I expect
a lot to-morrow in Ohio." She spread the sheet on the table. "Here's
the latest. Letty made the crosses."

  "Dere Mother I will be glad when you come home again because I do not
  like to sleep in Daddys and your room so well. Walter is coming to
  see me for a day and maybe I am going home with him we are being good
  I love You

  From your loving Son Spencer Hammond Good-by."

"Nice kid." Bill looked up. "Let's see, he is just nine, isn't he?"

"Going on ten." Catherine refolded the letter. She loved the little
smudge from an inky thumb in the margin.

"What shall we do now? You have several hours left." Bill set down his
coffee cup. "Music? Theater? We can probably find seats for something."

"I'd rather--" Catherine paused. "Is it too stormy for a walk? I never
get out of doors any more. This morning, from a window in the building
at the University, I had a glimpse of the lake. Could we go there? I'd
like to see how much like the ocean it is."

"It's windy, of course."

"I'd like that." A picture of herself, buffeted by winds over a stretch
of water--perhaps that would blow away the melancholy cobwebs, would
whip her again into froth.

Bill summoned a taxi, and in silence they rode through the long
streets, south toward the park, their shoulders brushing as the machine
bumped over frozen slush.

Bill slumped forward, his hands linked about his knees, his shoulders
an arc of weariness. The long streets seemed drawn past the windows of
the cab, on either side a sliding strip of unfamiliar shapes. It's as
if a spring had broken in him, thought Catherine, a secret spring which
had kept him running. Perhaps Henrietta was right, and he is sick.

"It's a long way, isn't it?" She had a plaintive moment of loneliness.
Bill was the one familiar thing in the strange city, and he had
retreated almost beyond communication. "I didn't know it was so far."

"We're almost there." Bill straightened his shoulders, and peered out
at the sliding street. "In the Fifties. I thought you'd like Jackson
Park. More space there."

A moment later he thrust open the door.

"Here!" he called to the driver. "We'll get out here."


II

"There's your lake." Bill slipped his hand firmly under her arm, and
they bent slightly forward into the dark rushing wind. At their feet
a steady crunching, a restless churning as of china waves; beyond, a
stretch of black hidden action under a sky black and infinitely remote,
with sharp white stars. "This wind has broken up the shore ice."

Along the sloping beach rose vague suggestions of grotesqueries; piles
thrusting tortured heads with ice-hair above the frozen surface,
driftwood caught between great blocks of dirty ice.

"It's like Doré's Inferno." Catherine shivered. "You remember? That
frozen hell, with awful heads sticking up in the ice?"

"Let's walk along. You're cold." Buffeted, they went along the deserted
drive, passing regularly from shadow into the burst of light under the
yellow globes that hung above them. "I like that black sky," said Bill.
"In New York we never have that."

"No." Catherine glanced westward, through bare limbs of trees. "See,
there's the city glare, back there." She was warm again, her blood
tingling under the dark rush of the wind; the black hidden movement
of the water, the cold vasty black of the sky were exciting, like a
shouted challenge.

"Here is shelter from the wind." Bill drew her into an angle made by
the porch of a small summer pavilion. "You can put your head out to see
the lake, without being knocked flat."

The wind racketed in the loose boards nailed along the lake side of the
porch. Catherine leaned back, laughing, out of reach of the gusts. She
could just catch the dim outline of Bill's face, his strong, aquiline
profile.

"Bill!" She felt suddenly that in the dark, windy night there was
nothing else human except Bill and herself; she wanted to burrow into
his silence, his withdrawal. Her fingers brushed his arm in soft demand.

"Great, isn't it?" His voice was low and warm, walking under the rush
of the wind. "Blows the nonsense clear out of you." He moved slightly
so that his shoulder sheltered her. "Warm enough?"

"I shouldn't like to be here alone." She couldn't see his face
distinctly--shadowy eye sockets, dark mouth. "I'd feel too little! You
keep me life-size."

Silence, warm and comforting, like a secret place within the noise of
the wind rattling at the boards, churning up the ice cakes.

"I can't pry into him." Catherine's feeling broke into splinters of
thought. "It wouldn't be fair. He'd hate it. Digging under to see his
roots. Something passionless and fine in this--no strife--as if he
accepted me--whole. Dear Bill."

"Well?" He was smiling at her, she knew. "You have a train to catch,
haven't you?"

       *       *       *       *       *

They stood together in the downtown station. Bill had collected her
luggage from the check-room, had brought a bunch of violets for her
from the little florist's counter.

"It's Valentine's Day, you know." He watched gravely as she fastened
them against the soft beaver of her collar. "I'm starting East
to-morrow," he said. "I'll see your family before you do, won't I?"

"You can give them my love first hand. Tell them I'm coming soon."

"I'll tell them you are so triumphant and successful that they will be
fortunate to have you again."

Catherine laughed softly. A local train was announced, draining off the
waiting people, leaving them almost alone in the station.

"You know," she said, quietly, "you puff me up, Bill. Not when you say
ridiculous things like that, but all the time." Under his seeking,
hungry eyes, she flushed. "And I am grateful."

A scurry to the platform, as the through express rolled in. Bill,
relinquishing her bags to the porter, seized her hand in a hard clasp,
and stood, bareheaded, below her on the platform shouting, "Good luck!"
as she was carried with increasing rush away.


III

Catherine, braced against the shivers and jounces of the old Ford taxi,
wondered inertly what it would feel like to live in such a town, in one
of those two-story frame houses, with a corrugated iron garage in the
rear, and grayish lace curtains at the windows, with smoke-blackened
sparrows scrapping in the front yard, and drifting, curling feathers
of soot in the dingy air. I could plan a town like this with a ruler,
she thought. A straight line for the business street, a few parallel
lines, a few right-angled lines: dots for churches, one of each kind;
for moving-picture theaters; for schools; small squares for yards
and houses. Factories along the railroad, pouring up the blanket of
smoke under which the town lay. Was that the soul of the town, that
close-hanging smoke, with its drifting feathers of soot? And then,
out at the edge, where the frame houses were far apart, scattered, a
handful of college buildings, in medieval isolation. When she had said
"Hope College" to the driver, he had shrieked to a baggage master, "Hi,
Chuck! Where's Hope Collidge, d'yuh know?"

"Out past the lunatic asylum. You know, down the car track."

Hope College, typical of the small denominational institutions offering
a normal certificate. So Dr. Roberts had classified it.

That must be the lunatic asylum, that group of brick buildings with
prison windows. They were well out of town, now, the cab skidding and
jerking over deep ruts. Gray, flat, interminable fields under a flat
gray sky. It's like a dream, thought Catherine, a funny, burlesque of a
dream, with me rattling along.

"This it, lady?" The taxi shivered in all its bolts as it halted, and
the driver poked his head in at the door. There was a driveway winding
between two rows of small blotched poplar trunks, and back from the
road two square brick buildings, scrawled over with black network of
old vines.

"I don't know."

"Guess it must be." He slammed the door and whirred up the driveway.

Just as Catherine climbed the steps, still moving vaguely in a dream
burlesque, a clangor of bells burst out, followed by the clamp of feet,
the sound of voices released. She opened the heavy door, and stepped
into the hall. The sense of dream vanished; this was real enough.
Opposite the door rose the central stairs of the building, twisting up
in a dimly lighted well. Up and down them climbed young people, girls,
a few boys. Shabby, gaudy, flippant, serious--Catherine watched them,
with a sharp resurgence of all her shining belief, her keen, exciting
delight in the thing she had come for.

She marched into an office at the left of the hall. A girl sitting at a
small table, her smooth, pale-yellow head bent over a book, looked up.

"Is this the Dean's office?" Catherine smiled at her; something like
Letty in the yellow hair, although the face was rather strained and
thin. "I'm Mrs. Hammond, from the Lynch Bureau."

"She'll be right in." The girl rose and opened the door into the
adjoining office, as if in uncertainty. "She hasn't come down from
class yet. If you'll sit down----"

"Yes. Do you happen to know whether there is any mail for me here?"

"I'll see." The girl had an awkward, half-suspicious way of staring.
"Mrs. Charles Hammond?" she asked.

Catherine sat down on a hard straight chair near the window; the girl's
eyes were inquisitive, over the edge of her book. Catherine shuffled
the envelopes hastily. Nothing from home. Strange--she had given them
this address, and for this date. A bulky envelope from Dr. Roberts, a
thin one from Henrietta. She tore open the flap of the latter, and let
the round, jerky writing leap at her. Every one was well. Henrietta
thought she might be interested in some hospital gossip. Stella
Partridge had been doing some work for Dr. Beck, the psychiatrist, and
had told several of the other doctors that she thought a medical man
should be in charge of the clinic rather than a mere Ph. Doctor. "She
says Beck has asked her to help him with a book, but I have a strong
doubt. Has Charles found her out, do you suppose?"

Catherine folded the latter, and tried to poke with it into its
envelope the swirl of feeling it evoked. For a brisk little woman had
darted into the office and at a word from the girl was darting now at
her.

"Mrs. Hammond? I'm Dean Snow. Come right in!" The pressure of her palm
against Catherine's was like a firmly stuffed pincushion. "Has anyone
else with a cold been in, Martha?"

Catherine, passing ahead of the Dean into her office, caught the
friendly softening in the voice of the girl as she answered,

"No'm, not this morning. The plumber came, and I sent him over to the
dormitory. He says that pipe is rusted and ought to come out. I told
him he'd have to see you first."

"That's right, Martha. And you got those letters off?"

"Yes'm."

"Good."

She followed Catherine, closing the door.

"Just have a chair, Mrs. Hammond." She whisked herself into place
beside the old roll-top desk, her rotating office chair creaking as
she settled down on its springs. A little cubby-hole of an office,
with a sort of film of long use over the gray walls and painted floor,
over the crammed pigeon holes of the desk, over the huge framed
photographs--the "Acropolis," the "Porch of the Maidens," the "Sistine
Madonna," and, above the desk, a faded group photograph of gentle faces
above enormous puffed sleeves; in the corner a small hat-tree, from
which a rusty umbrella dangled.

"You teach, Miss Snow, in addition to being Dean?"

"Oh, yes. Latin and Greek. It's a great relief from plumbers and
colds." She had a plump, white face, with gray bangs over her forehead,
sharp blue eyes, and full pink lips held firmly together. She has
humor, thought Catherine, and common sense, but she's intolerant. "So
you're making an investigation of us, are you?" The Dean rubbed at a
streak of chalk-dust on the sleeve of her tight dress. "What do you
expect us to do after you point out our shortcomings?"

She thinks I am dressy and interfering. Catherine held her hands
motionless against her desire to fidget. She's just the kind of
sensible woman I can't get on with.

"The Bureau wants to make a constructive study," she said. "Not a
criticism."

"We need just one constructive thing." Miss Snow smiled. "Money. We're
poor. Small endowment fund. The Baptists around here seem poorer each
year. Now I haven't had a secretary for five years. The students help
me out, and I deduct the hours from their tuition. If we had money
we could do much more. We get fine young people. The godless younger
generation doesn't come here. We wouldn't admit them if they wanted to
come. Our girls and boys know how to work. They are in earnest. But you
don't want to give us money, do you? No, you want to change things.
Mrs. Hammond--" She leaned forward, her plump fist coming down whack
on her knee. "I've been here almost forty years, as student, teacher,
officer. Our President, Dr. Whitmore, has been here as long as that.
Don't you think we know how to run a college?"

Catherine hunted for phrases, gracious, illuminating, with which to
justify her mission. So many of these little colleges through the
state, such diversity of aim, changes in educational ideas----

"You see," she finished appealingly, "that's our idea. That there
should be a clear, definite program in the training of young teachers,
and that enough is known about educational needs now to make such a
program feasible."

"I've watched young people go out of here for many years now, and I
know it doesn't make much difference what they've been taught. If they
have the fear of God, if they are earnest and faithful, they succeed.
If not--none of your modern folderols will save them. Give them the
mental discipline of mathematics and the classics, and they can teach
children reading and writing all right. I've seen too many fads in
education to take them seriously. First it was natural science that was
to make the world over, and we had to raise a fund for a laboratory.
Then--oh, there's no use listing them. But I ask you, Mrs. Hammond,
what's happened to Rousseau, or Froebel, or that woman a year or so
ago, that foreigner, Monty somebody, who had a new scheme? Gone. You
have to cling to the eternal verities. Fads pass."

The building quivered under the violent clangor of bells and the sound
of hurrying feet. Miss Snow pulled open a drawer and lifted out a
shabby, yellow-edged volume. "Here's one thing that stands. Ovid." She
tucked it under her arm and rose. "I have a class now. Would you care
to visit it?"

       *       *       *       *       *

In the late afternoon Catherine stood in the hall, bidding Miss Snow
farewell.

"It's been interesting, and I appreciate the time you have given me,
out of your very busy day," she said.

"I've enjoyed it." Miss Snow shook hands vigorously. "I enjoy talking.
It airs my ideas even if it doesn't change them much. I wish you could
stay to hear the Glee Club practice to-night. We're real proud of their
singing."

"I have to take that very early train." Catherine descended the steps
and climbed into the waiting taxi--the same one which had brought her.
"The Commercial House," she said.

The early February twilight lay over the fields, as if the smoke had
settled more closely on the earth. She leaned back, letting the day
float past her, in unselected, haphazard bits. All that zeal and honest
industry poured into medieval patterns. The very best of the old
patterns, no doubt, with that stern righteousness, that obligation in
them. Something infinitely pitiful, touching, in those young things she
had watched, awkward, serious, patient, most of them.

"Of course, most of our girls teach only a few years, and then marry,"
Miss Snow had said. She couldn't have had more finality if she had
said, "and then die!"

Luncheon, a hurried half hour in a chilly, bare dining hall, with grace
helping the creamed codfish grow cold. The other faculty members,
serious and threadbare, like farm horses, thought Catherine, with bare
spots chafed by the harness of inadequate salary, of monotony. As
untouched by any modern thought as if centuries of time separated them.
And each year, young people turned into that hopper.

If I can put that feeling down on paper, she thought, it should
move even this mountain of age and tradition. To-morrow, my day will
be different; the large colleges are somewhat awake. But there are
hundreds of these.

At the desk of the hotel she asked hopefully for mail. Perhaps she had
given this address to Charles and Miss Kelly, and not the college. The
clerk poked through a pile of letters and shook his bald, red head.
Three days without a word, for Henrietta's letter had been written days
ago. After a moment of hesitation--amusing, how old habits of economy
hung on!--she wrote out a telegram.

"Night letter?" The clerk counted the words.

"No. I want it to go the quickest possible way. I want an answer before
that morning train."

In the bare little hotel room, she sat down under the light, her
writing pad balanced on her knee. A note to Dr. Roberts.

"There seems no limit to the things we may accomplish," she wrote,
"when I see, at first hand, what the catalogue discrepancies really
mean, in flesh and blood and buildings."

Suppose something was wrong, at home? She stared about at the dingy,
painted walls, with faint zigzags of cracks, and fear prickled through
the enthusiasm which enclosed her. This was the first time that letters
had failed to meet her. In two hours, or three, she should have an
answer to her message. "Please wire me at once, care Commercial House.
No word from you here." She picked up her pen again. No use to worry;
letters miscarried, and she would hear soon.

She opened Henrietta's letter, to reread the comment on Stella
Partridge. Something behind that, she thought. That woman doesn't
make incautious remarks. Her mind fumbled with the news, as if it
were a loose bit out of an intricate mechanism; if she could fit it
into place, she could see how the whole affair ran. That was one of
Charles's lowest boiling points, that contention about medical men
and psychologists. Perhaps Partridge had been too greedy, and laid
those smooth hands of hers on something Charles particularly wanted
for himself, for his own job. Whatever it is--Catherine rose suddenly,
piling her letters and portfolio on the corner of the dresser--whatever
it is, I mean to know about it, when I go home again. I am through
fumbling along.

Her room had grown chilly. A wind rattled at the loose sash of the
window. She looked out at the angle of street; a hardware store across
the way mirrored its enormous window light in shining pans and kettles.
The air seemed full of whirling bits of mica. She pushed the window up
and leaned out; sharp and wet on her face, the mica was snow, driven
along on the wind.

Only an hour since she had telegraphed. She would go down to dinner.
Something insidious in the way the soft fingers of worry pried between
thoughts, pushed down deeper than thought.

She stopped at the desk.

"If a message comes for Mrs. Hammond, please send it in to the dining
room."

"Guess we're going to have a blizzard, aren't we?" The clerk rubbed an
inky forefinger thoughtfully over his red baldness. "Coming along from
Chicago and the west on this wind."

More pushing of those soft fingers: delay of trains, wires down, who
knows when I may hear!

"It may not be a bad storm," said Catherine, and went resolutely in to
dinner. But she heard the clerk's, "You can't tell when you're going to
get trouble."

In the dining room, a few traveling men scattered about at tables
sending glances of incurious speculation after her as she chose a seat;
a middle-aged waitress whose streaked purplish hair shrieked aloud her
effort to keep youth enough to win tips, and whose heavy, laborious
tread spoke more loudly of aching, fallen arches. Catherine started
at the twin bottles of vinegar and yellowish oil in the center of the
table. Letty's just gone to bed, she thought. Mrs. O'Lay is serving
dinner. I shouldn't care to be a traveling saleswoman. The hotel drives
my job into some remote limbo. I'll go to bed early. To-morrow, at the
University, it will be different. Such a cordial note from that history
professor's wife, asking me to stay with them. It was nice of Dr.
Roberts to write personally to them.

Good steak, at least. Fair coffee. Finally, as the waitress set a
triangle of pie before her, she saw the clerk in the doorway, his
eyes focusing on her. He came slowly toward her. It's come, thought
Catherine. He ought not to button that alpaca coat; absurd, the way it
creases over his fat stomach.

"They just telephoned this from the station," he said, laying a sheet
of paper beside her plate. The elaborate scrolled heading, COMMERCIAL
HOUSE, wriggled under her eyes, settled flatly away as she read the
penciled words.

  Spencer hurt coasting wired you this morning can you come

 CHARLES

"Hope it's nothing serious, ma'am."

Those soft fingers of worry had unsheathed their claws; they tore at
her, deep in the unheeded, rhythmic working of her body. She could not
breathe, nor see, nor speak. Spencer!

"Nothing serious," he repeated, and suddenly her heart was clattering
against her ribs. She could lift her eyes from that paper. Why, he had
a kindly face, that bald clerk; his flat nostrils had widened a little,
in avid human sniffing at disaster, but his eyes were sympathetic.

"It's my little boy." She could breathe now. "It says he is hurt.
Why--" she thrust back her chair in a violent motion, and wavered as
she stood up. "There was a telegram this morning. I should have known
this morning!"

"That's too bad, Ma'am. It never came here."

"I'll have to get a train." Catherine was hurrying out of the dining
room, the clerk at her heels. "When can I?"

"It don't say how bad he's hurt." She felt his hand close about her
arm. "You sit down here, and I'll 'phone to the station for you." He
drew her into the enclosure behind his counter, and pushed her gently
into an old leather chair. "Little fellows stand an awful lot of
knocking around. I've got three, so I ought to know. Now, take it easy.
Where you want to go? New York City?"

Grateful tears in Catherine's eyes made prismatic edges around his
solid figure. As she watched him thumbing a railroad folder, her panic
lifted slightly. Perhaps--oh, perhaps Spencer wasn't badly hurt.
Charles would be frightened, would want her.

"Um. That's too bad. You just missed a good train." He turned to the
telephone. "Gimme the station. Yea-uh. That's right."

Henrietta would be there.

"When's the next through train east, Chuck? Huh? No, the next one." He
spit his words out of the corner of his mouth toward the receiver. "Any
word of that out of Chicago yet? Well, say, I got a lady here got to
get to New York on it. Got to, I said. You got any berths here? Well,
you could wire for one, couldn't you? What you hired for?"

He hung up the earpiece.

"He says there's trouble west of here. Snow. That seven o'clock just
went through, late. He's gonna let me know about the midnight."

"I'd better go to the station."

"What for? You stay here where it's comfortable. You go up to your room
and I'll let you know. I'm on till midnight."

"Just go up and wait?" Catherine was piteous.

"Yes, ma'am. I'll take care of you. Now don't you go worrying. I always
tell my wife she'd have the grass growing over all of us if worry could
do it. That's the woman of it, I suppose."

"You're very kind." Catherine was reluctant to leave him. He was a sort
of bulwark between her and the rush of dark fear. "I ought to wire
them----"

"Sure. Here, write it out. It stands in reason he needn't be hurt much,
and still he'd want his mother."

Catherine's pencil wobbled in her stiff fingers. Spencer would want
her. All day he had wanted her. Hours between them----

"Will take first train." She looked up, her lip quivering. "I wouldn't
have time for an answer, would I?"

"You ought not to, if that train's anywhere near on time, and if
there's a berth left on it." The clerk turned away, to fish cigars out
of his counter for a man who stood waiting, one hand plying a busy
toothpick.

"D'yuh hear anything about the blizzard down Chicago way?" the man
asked. "Say it's put kinks in the train service."

"You always hear worse than happens." The clerk's glance at Catherine
was anxious. But she signed her name to the message and wrote out the
address.


V

The midnight express for New York, coming through three hours late, did
not stop. The clerk came up to Catherine's door to tell her.

"They ain't an empty berth on her," he said. "Took off several coaches
to lighten her for the drifts."

"What am I going to do?" Catherine asked.

"There's a local in the morning. You could get something out of
Pittsburgh, if you got that far."

The rest of the night, the next day, the next night, all were to
Catherine grotesquely unreal, as if life had been transposed to a
different key, where all familiar things were flatted into dissonance
and harsh strangeness. All night the scrape of snow-plows and shovels,
futile against the snow; the snow which seemed the wind itself turned
to dry, drifting, impenetrable barriers. The local, dragged by two
locomotives, hours late, like a moving snowdrift itself. The hours
in that train, with nothing but snow darkening the windows, hiding
the world, driving through the aisles with the opening of the doors.
Pittsburgh, late in the afternoon, and no word from Charles. She beat
helplessly against the gruff taciturnity of the ticket agent; he had
stood up all day confronting cross, belated travelers. There was a
train in an hour, making connections at Philadelphia. Night on that
train, in a crowded day coach, malodorous and noisy. She felt as if she
dragged the train herself, down through strange valleys, where blast
furnaces sent up red shrieks of flame, through dim, sleeping towns.

Philadelphia at two, the next morning. A narrow strip of platform
across which the wind whirled. Another crowded day coach. Where were
these people going, that colored boy, asleep, his feet stuck out into
the aisle in their ragged socks, his shoes clasped under one arm--that
man and woman, slumping peacefully against each other, mouths drooping
wide?

       *       *       *       *       *

As Catherine stepped down to the platform in the New York station, the
huge dim roofs of the train shed spun dangerously about her. A porter
loped beside her, pawing at her bag, but she walked away from him, her
eyes wide like a somnambulist. She made her way to a telephone booth,
and then, when she had lifted her hand to drop in the nickel, stopped
abruptly. If she telephoned, and something dreadful came over the wire,
buzzing into her head, it would transfix her there, unable to move,
held forever behind that close, dirty glass door. She pushed violently
against the door, freed herself, and fled out to the street. She passed
on the steps a woman crawling on her knees, one arm moving in sluggish
circles, scrubbing. After she had found a taxi and was whirring away
through the dark street, the motion of that weary arm continued before
her eyes. How dark the city was, and still, as if she had come into it
just at the turn of the tide, before the morning life moved in. "Dark
o' the moon"--she heard Spencer's voice chanting--"pulls the ole water
away from the earth."

When she stepped out of the cab she did not even glance at the house.
She paid the driver, picked up her bag, and went into the dim, tiled
hall. She was empty, capable of precise, brisk movement. All her fear,
her pressure of anxiety, her physical weariness, were held in solution,
waiting the moment which would crystallize them. She stood at the
elevator shaft, her finger on the button. The car was beneath her, the
dust-nap of its top at her feet. The bell shrilled, but nothing else
stirred. The man is asleep, she thought, dispassionately, and without
haste she began to climb the stairs to the fifth floor.

At the door she stopped again, staring a moment at the small card,
HAMMOND. She had no key. If she rang, she would waken everyone. But she
must, in some way, enter. She knocked, softly. Her face, turned up to
the dark painted grain of the metal door, grew imploring.

There was her door, and she couldn't open it, couldn't know what was
behind it! Like a dreadful nightmare. She pounded with her knuckles.
Then, softly, the door opened, and Charles, his bathrobe trailing, his
eyes sleep-swollen, was blinking at her. She seemed a dream to him, too!

"Why, Catherine--you? How'd you get here, this time of day?" He
whispered, and then he closed the door with a caution alarming in its
quietness.

"Spencer! Tell me--" Catherine's nostrils quivered at a strange smell
in the dark hall, an odor of antiseptics, of drugs.

"Thought you'd never come." Charles muttered. "Ghastly, your not being
here."

"Is he here?" Catherine started to pass Charles, but he caught her,
held her a moment. Catherine felt in the pressure of his arms, in his
harsh kiss, the thwarted rage, helplessness, distress--she knew she had
those to meet, later. Now-- "Tell me, please!" she begged. "Spencer."

"He's better." Charles released her. "Sleeping now. Mustn't disturb
him." He led the way to the living room, past closed, dark doors. "We'd
better go into the kitchen."

Catherine stumbled into a chair.

"He was hurt, coasting. He and Walter Thomas. Right in front of the
house. Miss Kelly was just coming out with the other children, to
take them all to the park. He and Walter--coasted around the corner,
into a truck. Hurt his head. Miss Kelly carried him in here herself."
Charles was leaning against the table, his face away from Catherine,
his mouth twisting wryly. Catherine touched his hand. "When I got
home, Henrietta was here, and another surgeon. His head--" Catherine
swung up to a sharp peak of agony--Spencer? She saw, unbearably, that
fine, sensitive, growing life of his, smeared over. "They didn't dare
move him. Unconscious. Stitches in his temple. They think now he's all
right." He grew suddenly voluble, shrill. "You can't tell about such
things at once. Have to wait. Might injure his brain. But he's been
conscious, perfectly clear-headed, normal. Got a good nurse. Just keep
him quiet, flat on his back. Children are tough-- Oh, Catherine----"

A door was opening somewhere, an inch at a time. Catherine strained
forward, too heavy with pain to rise. She felt Charles's uneasy start,
felt the hours of anxiety behind the sharp gripping of his hand under
hers. Feet shuffled toward them. Her mother appeared at the door, her
blue eyes blinking under the frill of her lace cap, a perceptible
quaver in the old hand which held together the folds of her gray
bathrobe.

"Thank Heaven you've come, Catherine!" She scuffed across the linoleum
and pecked softly at Catherine's cheek. "Poor little Spencer--he asked
for you."

"Oh!" Catherine was on her feet, but Charles held her fingers
restrainingly.

"Last night, mother means. The nurse said she'd call me the instant he
woke. He's really sleeping now. Not unconscious."

Catherine stood between them for a moment of silence. "It stands to
reason he might not be hurt bad, and yet want his mother." Who said
that? Some one had said it to her.

"We looked for you yesterday," said Mrs. Spencer.

"Blizzards. I couldn't get a train." Catherine felt a bond between
them, excluding her, accusing her. Charles stared at her, his eyes
sunken, the lines about his mouth deepened; her mother--a thin,
wrinkled film seemed drawn over her face, dimming her color. "I came
the instant I could. I sat up on a local." She clasped her hands
against her breast, against the heavy, pounding ache.

"You must be tired to pieces, poor child." Her mother patted her arm.
"Don't feel so bad, Cathy. It might have happened if you'd been right
here. And it's turning out so much better than----"

"But I wasn't here," said Catherine, quietly. And then, "What about
Walter?" She could see that sled sweeping around the corner. "Was he
hurt?"

"Shaken up and bruised. Spencer was steering."

A rustle at the door, a strange face staring at her, crisp and cold
above white linen.

"Yes?" Charles stepped forward intently.

"The little boy is awake."

"This is Mrs. Hammond, Miss Pert. She may go in?"

She was a culprit, a stranger, trembling, unable to move.

"You'd better take off your hat and coat, Mrs. Hammond. And don't
excite him. He's drowsy."

The dim, shaded light; a little still mound under the counterpane;
under the smooth white turban of bandages, Spencer's gray eyes, moving
softly with her flight from the door to his bed. On her knees beside
him, her fingers closing about his hand. Quiet, not to excite him. How
limp and small his hand felt!

"Hello, Moth-er!" He sighed, and his eyelids shut down again.


VI

The next two weeks life was a shadow show outside that room where
Spencer lay. "He must be kept flat and motionless," the surgeon said,
with Dr. Henrietta nodding assent. "Even as he feels stronger."
Catherine was concentrated entirely upon that. Everything reduced
itself to terms of Spencer. Books that she might read to him, games
she might devise, stories she could tell--anything to keep him content
until it was safe for him to lift that bandaged, wounded head. Always
there was the terror lest some sign of injury might show itself, some
quirk in his mind, some change in personality, some flush to indicate
fever and infection. "We think he has, miraculously, escaped any bad
effects," said Henrietta, "but we can't be absolutely sure for a few
days." At night, when he slept, Catherine would leave Charles in the
house, and slip out for a quick walk in the cold March darkness. But
terrifying images pursued her--sudden blackness shutting down over that
shining, golden reality that was Spencer to her--and she would hasten
back, unassuaged of her terror until she stood again at the door of his
room.

When her trunk came, she had rummaged through it, selecting all the
material of her work, and sending it to Dr. Roberts with a brief note.
"My son has been injured and I can do nothing more with this. If you
can send someone else to finish the work, please do so. I can not even
think of it for the present."

There would come a day, she knew, when she could think again, a day
when she would face the lurking shadows of her guilt, would determine
what it meant. Not now. Not until Spencer was well.

Charles was waiting, too, she knew. He was subdued, considerate,
concerned lest she overtax herself. But he seemed one of the shadows in
the outer world.

Then Spencer lost his angelic patience, and began to fret humanly about
lying flat in bed.

"A few more days, Spencer." Henrietta smiled at him. "Then this crack
in your head will be healed enough."

"But I feel all right now."

Fear, retreating, dragged away the distortion it had given, and
gradually the shadows about Catherine grew three-dimensional again.
Henrietta warned her: "You'll have a frightful slump, Catherine, unless
you let yourself down easily, after this strain."

"I don't feel tired, not at all."

"That's the trouble. And you are. Rest more. Spencer doesn't need you
every second now. Let Charles sleep here to-night."

Catherine shook her head.

"I sleep fairly well here, because I know I shall wake if Spencer
stirs. Anywhere else I should lie awake, listening."

"But he's safe now. I'm sure of that. The only danger, after the first,
was infection. And that's past. Two more days and I'll let him up. I
don't want you down." Henrietta paused, her fingers running along the
black ribbon of her glasses. "When are you going back to work?" she
flung out.

A subtle change in Catherine's face, like the quick drawing of shades
at all the windows of a house.

"I don't know." She moved away from Henrietta, to glance in at Spencer.

"Um." Henrietta shrugged. "Well, I'll be in early to-morrow."

That was the first shadow to take real form. When _was_ she going back
to work? And behind the shades drawn against Henrietta moved a sharp
curiosity. What had Dr. Roberts done about the investigation? There
had been a note from him, tossed into a drawer. A note of sympathy.
Had he said anything about the work? But as she made a faint motion to
go in search of the note, Spencer called her.

Another shadow to grow more real was Miss Kelly. She had managed Letty
with amazing competence, keeping her quiet and amused. She had come
earlier in the morning than usual, to dress Marian and walk with her to
school. But she was worried, shying away when she met Catherine in the
hall, and her pale blue eyes stared with some entreaty in them. The day
that Spencer first sat up, Charles carried him into the living room to
the armchair, and Catherine tucked a rug about his feet and left him
there, to look out of the window. As she went back to the bedroom, she
heard a choking, muffled sound, and there in the hall stood Miss Kelly,
her hands over her face.

"What is it?" she asked gently, touching the woman's shoulder. Then, as
she looked at the swollen, reddened eyes, she knew. "He's quite well
again," she said. "Don't cry."

"I--I hadn't left him a second," Miss Kelly whispered. "Just to help
Letty down the steps."

"I know. I haven't thought you were careless."

"I thought I'd go crazy. He's never coasted in the street. The other
boy thought of it."

"It was an accident, Miss Kelly. You mustn't blame yourself."

The entreaty faded under the flush of gratitude. Miss Kelly turned and
hurried back to Letty's room, her square shoes clumping solidly.


VII

Saturday afternoon. Spencer was dressed, even to his shoes. Catherine
had suggested moccasins, but Spencer held out for shoes. "Then I'll be
sure, Mother, that I'm really up!" The terrifying pallor had left his
face. The bandages were gone, too; just the pink, wrinkled mouth-like
scar spoke audibly of the past weeks.

"You'll have to part your hair in the middle, Spencer," Dr. Henrietta
had told him, "until this bald spot grows out." And Spencer had
retorted, promptly, "I wouldn't be that sissy!"

Catherine moved one of her red checkers, smiled a little, wondering
where he had picked up that idea, and glanced away from Spencer and
checker board, out of the window. The bare trees of Morningside pricked
up through gray mist; the distant roofs were vague. What a horrid day!
It seemed too raw and cold for Spencer's first trip outdoors. But he
really was well again. Monday he could go out. It was true, Henrietta's
prophecy. She was being let down with a thud. There seemed no place
where she could take hold of ordinary life again.

Spencer giggled.

"I jumped three of your men, Mother, and you never saw I could."

"Why, so you did." Catherine looked at her dismantled forces. She
couldn't even keep her mind on those disks of wood. "There." She moved.

"Oh, Moth-er!" Spencer was gathering in the last of the red checkers.
"You're a punk player. You're a dumb-bell!"

"What a name! Where did you find that word?" Catherine watched him; he
was teasing her--that funny little quirk in his eyebrows.

"Oh, the fellers say it." Suddenly he swept the checkers into a heap.
"I'm sick of checkers."

"Want to read a while?"

"I'm sick of reading. Staying in the house just wears me out, Mother."

The doorbell broke the quiet of the house, and Catherine, with a
relieved, "Now we'll see what's coming!" went out to the door. Her
mother, perhaps, or Margaret.

"Hello, Catherine." It was Bill, shifting a large package that he might
extend his hand. She hadn't seen him since that night in Chicago. She
had an impression of herself that night, confident, radiant, but vague
and blurred, as if Bill showed her a faded photograph he had kept for
years. "Henry said she thought I might call on Spencer," he was saying.

Catherine was grateful for the lack of inquiry. He would know that she
had dropped everything in a heap, and that all the ends were tangled
and confused. But knowing, he would ask her nothing, would not even
indicate his knowledge.

"I've brought something for him." He jerked the arm which held the
package.

"Spencer's in here." Catherine led the way to the living room. "Here's
a caller for you," she announced.

"Hello, Mr. Bill!" Spencer lunged forward in his chair, but Bill set
the box promptly before him.

"This table is just what we need. I thought you might help me with this
radio." Bill shook himself out of his overcoat. And Catherine, with a
smile at the sudden lifting of Spencer's clouds of ennui, left them.

There were things to be done. She might as well shake off her lethargy
and attack them. She heard Spencer's eager voice, Bill's deliberate
tones, pronouncing strange phrases--amperes, tuning up, wave lengths.
The laundry. Prosaic, distasteful enough. If she began with that, she
might find a shred of old habit which would start her wheels running.

She carried the bundles to her room, where she sorted the linen into
piles on her bed. She had no list; she remembered Mrs. O'Lay at the
door, last Monday, "The laundry boy's here, Mis' Hammond. Should I
now just scramble together what I can put my hands on?" and her own
indifferent answer. Five sheets. That seemed reasonable. And bath
towels--that one was going. Catherine held it up to the light, poked
her fingers through the shredded fabric, and tossed it to the floor.
We need more of everything, she thought. Sheets--she stared at the
neat white squares. If she unfolded them, probably she would find
more shreds. Well, she wouldn't look! They cost so much, sheets and
towels, and you had so little fun for your money. She stowed away the
piles in the linen drawers. Then she opened the bundle of clothing,
unironed, tight, wrinkled lumps. Mrs. O'Lay would iron them. Little
undergarments, small strings of stockings. At least she didn't have to
mend them; Miss Kelly was keeping them in order. She shook out a pajama
coat; a jagged hole in the front whence a button had departed forcibly.
She would have to mend Charles up. She chuckled; before she had gone
away she had bought new socks for Charles, hiding those she had not
found time to darn. He would never notice.

She was rolling a pair of socks into a neat ball, turning the ribbed
cuff down to hold the ball, when she stopped. One finger flicked
absently at a bit of gray lint. What was she going to do? She was
sorting those clothes quite as if Mrs. O'Lay and Miss Kelly were
fixtures. And she wasn't sure she had money enough to pay Miss Kelly
for even one more week.

She piled away the clothing, dodging her thoughts. But when she had
finished her task, she stood at the window, looking out at the court
windows, and one by one her thoughts overtook her and assaulted her.

Of course I'm going back to the Bureau, the very day Spencer goes to
school again. There's no new reason why I shouldn't. Isn't there? What
about this feeling--that Spencer was a warning to me--a sign? That's
what mother meant. Her hand lifted to her forehead, smoothed back her
hair. That's not decent thinking, she went on. Absurd. Superstitious.
Spencer might have been hurt even if I had been at his heels. Walter
was hurt. Accidents--like a bony, threatening finger shaken at her!

"Moth-er!" Spencer's voice summoned her. Mr. Bill was going now, but he
left the radio for Spencer to examine, and a book about it.

"An' he's going to see the superintendent about wires to catch things
on, and we can't rig it truly until he gets a wire." Spencer clasped
the book under one arm, and drew the black box nearer him along the
table. "It's the most inturusting thing I ever saw, Mother." His eyes
were bright with pleasure.

"I'm sorry," said Bill, "that we can't install it to-night. But perhaps
to-morrow----"

Catherine went to the door with Bill.

"It was good of you to come in," she said. "He's had a dull time."

Bill had his hand on the knob.

"I've been out of town again for a week," he said. "Henry kept me
posted."

Then he was going, but Catherine caught at his arm.

"Bill"--in a sharp whisper--"do you think it was my fault? Do you?"

"Catherine!" He was laughing at her, comfortingly. "What rot!"

"Is it?" She sighed.

"You're tired." His hand enclosed hers warmly for a moment. "Henry says
you've been wonderful, but not wise----"

There was a clatter outside the door, a firm, "Now wait one second,
Letty!" Bill pulled the door open; Letty, her pointed face framed in
a red hood, Marian, pulling her tarn off her tousled dark hair, Miss
Kelly behind them.

"Oh, Mr. Bill!" Marian hugged his arm, and Letty clambered onto her
go-duck that she might reach his hand, with a lusty, "'Lo, Bill!"

"Come back and play with us, Mr. Bill," Marian cajoled him, her head on
one side.

But Bill, grinning at her, eluding Letty's grasp, stepped into the
elevator and was gone.

"'S'at Marian?" Spencer was shouting. "Oh, Marian, you come see what
I got." Marian darted ahead. As Catherine, with Letty's damp mittened
hand in hers, came to the door of the children's room, she heard
Spencer determinedly, "No, you can't touch it! It's too delicut. Mr.
Bill told me it was too delicut. You keep your hands off it! It's just
lent to me."

"Who said I wanted to touch your ole radium?"

"It isn't radium, Marian. Radio. And you were touching it."

"Marian, dear, come take your wraps off." Miss Kelly had stowed Letty's
go-duck in the hall closet, and followed Catherine. "You musn't bother
Spencer."

"He's well now, isn't he?" She lagged into the bedroom.

Catherine sat on one of the cots, watching. She had scarcely seen
her two daughters since she had come back. She had known they were
well, she had heard Miss Kelly often sidetracking them with, "No,
your mamma is busy and you mustn't disturb her. Poor little Spencer
needs her and you don't." Miss Kelly had lifted Letty into a chair and
was unbuttoning the red coat when Letty set up a strident wail, and
stiffened into a ramrod which slid out from under Miss Kelly's fingers.

"Want my Muvver!" she shrieked. "Not you!" She flung herself on the
edge of the bed beside Catherine, with gyrations of her red-gaitered
plump legs. Catherine, laughing, dragged her up beside her. Letty
snuggled against her, peering up with her blandishing smile.

"All right, old lady." Catherine tugged off the tiny rubbers, stripped
down the knit leggings, noticing absently the promptness with which
Marian carried her own cloak and tarn to the closet and hung them away.
Why, Miss Kelly had taught her to be orderly, she marveled. Then she
saw Letty's expression of sidewise expectancy under long lashes. Miss
Kelly was looking at her gravely.

"Letty tired." She drooped into Catherine's enclosing arm like a sleepy
kitten.

"That's too bad." Miss Kelly was unruffled. "Then you can't show your
mamma your own hook that you can reach."

Letty was quiet. Catherine felt the child's body stiffen a little
from its kittenlike relaxation, as if her inner conflict was purely
muscular, not thought at all. That's the way children must think, she
speculated. With a giggle Letty slid down from the bed, hugged her arms
about the pile of scarlet garments, and marched to the closet.

"I screwed a hook into the door, low down," Miss Kelly explained.
"Usually Letty doesn't have to be told."

"And you don't allow her to beguile you, do you?" Catherine laughed at
the self-righteousness in Letty's strut back to the bed.

"You can't," said Miss Kelly, "or they run all over you."

"What runs over you?" demanded Marian.

"Mice!" Letty's shriek was almost in Catherine's ear, as she plumped
down in her mother's lap. "Mice!" and she wiggled in laughter. "Free
blind mice."

"Isn't she silly!" But Marian giggled, too. "Who's that?" The hall door
sounded on its hinges. "Daddy!" Her rush halted at the door. "Oh, I
thought you were my Daddy!"

"Did you, now?" Mrs. O'Lay's red face hung a moment at the door, a
genial full moon. "Well, I ain't. But you'd best be glad I ain't, for
it's little dinner he'd be getting for you."

Marian stuck a pink triangle of tongue after her as she disappeared,
clumping down the hall.

"She's awful fat, isn't she, Muvver?" She scuffled her feet slowly to
the edge of the bed. "An' she has a funny smell. I don't know what she
smells of, but she does."

"Ashes and floor oil," said Catherine. She hadn't noticed it,
consciously. She caught Miss Kelly's surprised, disapproving glance.
"We'll have to lengthen that dress, Marian," she concealed her
amusement, and her free hand pulled at the edge of the chambray dress.
"Can't pull it over your knees, can we?"

"I have let out the tucks in four dresses," said Miss Kelly. This was
ground she knew. "But Marian is growing very fast."

Catherine's arm went around Marian's waist, and pulled her down at her
side.

"Short dresses are the style, aren't they?" She hugged them both, Letty
against her breast, Marian against her shoulder. Firm, warm, slim
things, her daughters, growing very fast.

"What are you folks doing?" Spencer stood in the doorway, his eyes
mournful. "I'm all alone."

"You've got your ole radium," declared Marian promptly, "and you're not
sick any longer, even if I can see that cut, and our Muvver can stay
with us now."

"Us now!" chanted Letty.

"Oh, you've sorted the laundry, Mrs. Hammond?" Miss Kelly turned from
the opened drawer.

"Yes. I left a pile of clothes on a chair in Spencer's room--they need
buttons."

"I thought I'd just lay out clean underwear for morning. Perhaps that
shirt is with the pile." She went past Spencer, who drew aside with a
touch of petulance.

"Suppose we all go into the living room." Catherine brushed Letty and
Marian to their feet. "Daddy will be here soon, and we'll all have
dinner together for the first time. Yes, Letty, too. It's a special
occasion. Spencer's first full-dress day."

"Should I wash for dinner now, Muvver?" Marian still clung to her
mother's arm. Catherine, looking down at the brown eyes, was disturbed.
Marian was jealous of Spencer. She resented--oh, well, probably that
was natural enough. Her legs outgrew her dresses, and her personality
was growing as rapidly, shooting up, not wholly caught in civilized
patterns.

"Can you keep your hands clean until dinner? Perhaps you might wait
until Daddy has come. Run along, children. I want to speak to Miss
Kelly a moment."

"What about, Muvver?"

"Business." Catherine was firm, and Marian's mood shifted quickly.

"Show Letty your ole radium," she said, dragging Letty after her, and
Spencer pursued them in haste.

"You needn't stay for Letty's supper," said Catherine, as Miss Kelly
returned. "You've been very kind to give me so many additional hours.
And you certainly deserve to-morrow. It is several weeks, isn't it,
since you've had Sunday?"

"That's all right, Mrs. Hammond." Miss Kelly laid the retrieved shirt
on the dresser. "Of course, if you don't need me to-morrow." She looked
at Catherine warily, her sandy lashes blinking, her nose still reddened
from the afternoon. "You will want me next week?"

"Of course." Catherine frowned, a kind of panic whirring in her.

"I wondered. I didn't know. Something your mother said. I knew you
needed some one for the children only if you were working."

"You must have misunderstood mother." The whirring deepened into fear,
like wings, beating to escape the nets spread to catch her. They all
expected her to abandon everything, to step back into the old harness.
"Of course, I have made no plans, until Spencer was well. But next
week"--she spoke out boldly, denying her own doubts--"next week I
shall--" she did not finish that sentence. "At any rate, Miss Kelly,
I should tell you in advance. I've just been admiring the way you are
training the children. You are quite remarkable with them."


VIII

When Charles came in, Marian flew to meet him, flinging her arms about
him as far as they would go, with little squeals of delight.

"Daddy, hello; we're going to have a party. Letty, too. Spencer can sit
up at the table."

"I should say I could," broke in Spencer, indignantly.

He looks tired--Catherine smiled at him over Letty's yellow head.
Sallow, discouraged. His glance withdrew quickly from hers, stopped at
Spencer.

"How's the boy? Fine?"

"Daddy!" Marian pulled at his sleeve. "I thought of something. Let me
whisper it."

And Catherine, while Letty slipped from her lap in an endeavor to
learn what Marian was whispering, thought: it's a breaking off place,
to-night. The interim is over.

"You'd better ask mother." Charles ruffled Marian's cropped head.

"No! A secret, Daddy!"

"Well. Ask Mrs. O'Lay, then."

"Tell Letty!" She pounded on his knee.

"Here, you!" He glanced again at Catherine, and his grin was suddenly
like Spencer's. "That's no way to learn a secret. You wait."

Catherine's heart began to beat quickly. He is wretched about
something, she thought. Bothered. But he wants to pretend. Marian
whisked back, jumping about it. "It's all right! She says sure!"

"Then you wait at the door. Don't let them guess," and he stalked off,
leaving Marian solemn in her delight, stationed at the door.

"Chwismas!" shouted Letty. But Marian shooed her out of the hall when
Daddy returned.

Dinner had caught the slight tingling mood of a special occasion.
Charles was deliberately jolly, and the children responded in expansive
delight. Excitement moved pleasantly into Catherine, too, in spite of
her sober, concealed thoughts. That other dinner, ages ago, with the
children responsive then to the contention between her and Charles. The
friendly enclosure of the room, with Letty at her left, Charles across
from her, the other two--and Mrs. O'Lay waddling in and out. Above all,
Spencer, safely clear of that dark threat.

"Well, it's the first time we've had a jolly dinner party for a long
time, eh, Cathy?"

Ah, that was the thing she feared, ironically, under the bright
surface, that Charles was building again; not a trap, exactly, nor a
prison, but a net, a snare. This was to be proof, this scene, that
they must have her, wholly. That her life dwelt only within such walls
as these. That her desires, even, were held here. Her eyes were bright
and troubled.

The secret came. Ice cream and chocolate sauce.

"Now it's a real party," sighed Marian, contentedly. "And I thought it
up."

The telephone rang. Charles sprang to his feet, dropping his napkin as
he hurried out.

"Why," asked Spencer, "does Daddy always have to hustle when the 'phone
rings?"

"Because he has important business, because he's a man," said Marian,
promptly.

"It might be for me." Spencer was hopeful.

"No!" Marian derided him. "Folks don't telephone little boys."

Astonishing. Catherine looked at Marian's calm profile. Where did she
pick up her perfect feminine attitude? Instinct, or a parroting of some
one, Miss Kelly, or her grandmother?

"Catherine!" Charles was calling. "Some one wants you."

"Now! It wasn't Daddy at all." Spencer was triumphant.

"Move along into the living room," said Catherine, rising. "Mrs. O'Lay
is waiting to clear the table."

Then, as she sat down at the desk, she had a hasty, random thought.
Stella Partridge hadn't called for Charles once these past weeks.
Perhaps that hint of Henrietta's--Margaret's voice cut in.

"Hello! You back?" Catherine settled herself comfortably.

"Just in. Everything all right? I've been talking with Henrietta."

"Yes. Really all right. Spencer had a party to-night, his first dinner
with the family."

"Could I see him to-morrow?"

"Of course. Where have you been, anyway? Mother was vague."

"Trip for the firm. To their factories in Boston and Pittsburgh. Cathy,
what a shame your tour was interrupted! When do you go back?"

"You mean west again?" A little shock tingled through Catherine, quite
as if, while she looked at a group of familiar thoughts, an outside
hand shifted the spotlight, and at once a different color lay upon
them, changing them.

"You hadn't finished the work, had you?"

"No." That was all Catherine could say.

"Well, Spencer's all right, isn't he?"

"Yes," heavily from Catherine. Silence for a moment. Then Margaret,
forcefully:

"I'd like to come right out to-night. Don't be a fool, Cathy! I know
just what's happened to you, old dear! Don't you let it! But Amy's
waiting for me, and I'm starved."

Catherine stared at the round black mouthpiece. If she could hold that
light Margaret threw over things--in which nothing looked the same. But
she couldn't talk.

"I'll expect you to-morrow, then?" she asked.

"Yes. Early."

       *       *       *       *       *

Charles was telling the children the story of the bantam hen he had
owned when he was a little boy. Letty was curled up on his knees,
Marian sat on the arm of his chair, his arm about her, Spencer had
drawn his chair close.

"And I used to carry her around in the pocket of my coat, with just her
head sticking out, and her bright shiny eyes and her yellow bill."

"Yellow bill?" murmured Letty.

"Just how big was she, Daddy?" Marian asked.

"I'd like a hen like that," said Spencer.

"Some day maybe we can live in a decent place, where we can have hens."

"And a dog, Father?"

"No, a kitty. A little gray soft kitty." Marian looked anxiously at her
father. "I'd much rather have a kitty, Daddy."

"We might have both"--and as Letty opened her mouth wide and pink for
a protest--"yes, and Letty could have a kitty or a dog or a pet hen.
Well, my bantam's name was Mitty. One day----"

Catherine stepped softly away from the door. She could get Letty's bath
ready. And she must transfer bedclothes. Spencer was to move into his
own room again, and she had forgotten to ask Mrs. O'Lay to arrange the
beds.

When she went in for Letty, the story had gone on to a dog. Mr. Bill's
dog. He lived next door, Charles was explaining, and he was bigger than
I was. His dog was shaggy.

Letty, protesting, came, full of incoherencies about dogs and kittens
and chickens.

"Muvver, to-day Letty wants li'l dog an' li'l kitty an' li'l shickey."

"Not to-day. To-day's over. Now you are a fish." And Letty swam
vigorously. Catherine stood beside her cot, looking down at her,
fragrant, pink, beatific. A decent place to live in--with live things
around them instead of city streets. A tiny, distant alarm clanged in
her mind. That was what Charles had said, when he spoke of the offer at
Buxton. Was he thinking about that, still? What _was_ he thinking about!

Spencer had his bath, refusing her assistance with firm dignity. He was
silent, standing at the door of his own room, a thin, pajamaed figure,
looking at his own cot.

"You don't need me now at night, do you?" Catherine turned down the
covers. "Here, hop in before you are chilly."

"I liked that other bed," said Spencer. "It's much softer."

"Nonsense!" Catherine laughed at him, tucked him in, kissed his cheek
softly, not looking at the pink, wrinkled scar. "Same kind of springs.
And you're well now."

"Will you be gone in the morning, Mother?"

His question halted her at the door.

"No, Spencer. What made you ask that?"

"I wanted to know."

She snapped off the light and closed his door.

Then Marian was bathed; scrubbing and spluttering, she repeated with
funny little imitations of Charles's phrases, the stories about Mitty
Bantam and Mr. Bill's dog.

Catherine opened the window to let the steam out of the bathroom, while
she hung up limp towels and scrubbed out the tub and restored things
to shining order. Her sleeve slipped down on her wet wrist, and she
shoved it back impatiently. She'd like a drowsy, warm bath herself, and
sleep, dreamless, heavy. But Charles was waiting for her. The interim
was over. Pushing her hair away from her forehead with her habitual
gesture, she went into the living room.

Charles looked up from his paper, smoke wreathing his face.

"This has been fine," he said, warmly. "Comfortable home evening."

Catherine sat down, brushing drops of water from her skirt.

"Hasn't it?" he urged.

"Well--" She was staring at her hands, blanched, wrinkled at the finger
tips, by their long soaking. "If home is the bathroom!" Under her
lowered eyelids she saw Charles watching her, guardedly. He set down
his pipe with a click.

"If you feel that way!"

"Horrid of me to say it, wasn't it?" Catherine relaxed, her hands
limp-wristed along the chair.

"I suppose you are tired. Awful strain, these last weeks."

"Perhaps I am." Catherine twisted sidewise in her chair and smiled at
him. "But you look tired, too, poor boy. What have you been doing?
I--why, I haven't seen you since I came back."

"You certainly haven't. But I didn't mind. Spencer--well, thank God,
that's over!"

"Yes." Catherine discovered that she was so recently out from the
distorting shadow of fear for Spencer that as yet she could not talk
about it, as if words might have black magic to recall the fear.

"Damned lucky escape." Charles rammed tobacco into the pipe bowl with
his thumb. He was thrusting out words in bravado, without looking at
Catherine. He, too, had lived in that fear! He sucked vigorously,
drawing the match flame down into the pipe. "What are you going to do
now?"

The muscles of wrists and fingers leaped into tight contraction, and
her hands doubled into fists against the chair.

"I haven't thought, until to-day." Then, suddenly,--better pour out
everything. "Nothing has changed, has it, now that Spencer is well?"

"You plan to go back to the Bureau?"

"You mean that you think I should give it up?" Catherine stared at the
hard, jutting line of his jaw, at his eyes, feverish, sunken. "Charles,
you can't mean you blame me for Spencer's accident?"

"No." He spoke sharply, denying himself. "It might have happened
anyway. I know that."

"Oh!" A long, escaping sigh. "If you had blamed me--I couldn't have
endured it." And then, "It's hard, not to blame myself."

"That's just it." Charles moved forward, eagerly. "It's frightening. I
thought you might feel, well, that you couldn't risk it. Leaving them.
I want to be fair, Catherine."

"If you had been away, on a business trip"--Catherine was motionless
except for the slow movement of her lips--"and this had happened, I
should have sent for you. Would you have blamed yourself? Or given up
your work? Oh, yes, I know you'll say that's different. It isn't so
different. It wouldn't be, if you didn't make it so."

"Oh, my work." He settled back into his chair. "I've got to tell you
things about that. I don't know how interested you are. You've been
engrossed." He paused, but Catherine did not speak. "It does concern
you! And it's a frightful mess." His eyes were haggard, angry, and his
shoulders sagged in the chair with a curious, weary dejection, unlike
their usual squared confidence. "I haven't told you. They didn't put me
in as head of the clinic. The committee recognized the value of my work
in organizing the clinic"--he was quoting, sneeringly--"but preferred
to install a medical psychiatrist. You know it was decided last year,
unofficially, that I was to be appointed the instant the funds were
clear."

"What happened? Who is the head?" Pity extricated Catherine from
her own floundering. She knew, swiftly, what had happened, as she
remembered a sentence in that letter from Henrietta.

"A Dr. Beck. What happened? The usual thing. The doctors in the town
stirred up the usual brawl. This was a medical clinic. No layman
could manage it. Any fool with a year of anatomy could do better
than a specialist. If you can cut off a leg or an appendix, you know
instinctively everything about mental disorders or feeble-mindedness or
anything else that touches psychology."

"But you had discussed that with the committee, and they----"

"They agreed with me last year. But they say they didn't realize
popular opinion. There was underhanded play going on before I heard
about it, and the thing was settled. I don't know just how. It's that
feeling--doctors are all wise, established powers, mystic, and we
scientists are new. If a man can cure the measles, he knows more about
paranoia than I know!"

Catherine clasped her hands, pulses tingling in her finger tips.

"What has happened to Miss Partridge?" she asked.

A dull, brick-glow mounted in Charles's face--anger, or humiliation.

"Has she been ousted, too?" insisted Catherine.

"Dr. Beck has made her his assistant."

"But she's not a physician." Catherine lifted one hand to her throat,
pressing it against the sharp ache there. Poor Charles, he had been
pounded. If he would only tell her!

"No. But she's shrewd enough to see where her bread will be nicely
buttered. She makes an excellent office girl. She--" He was defiant,
aggressive. "You didn't ever like her. You'll probably be delighted to
hear that she saw which way the wind blew, and even added some puffs
of her own. Queering me. Flopping over the instant she saw her own
advantage."

That little squirrel smile! And the faint, distinct, metallic ring
in her clear voice! Catherine saw her in the dusk of that passageway
behind the gymnasium, holding the brown leather bag. I'm soft, she
thought, to have no pleasure out of this.

"Well?" demanded Charles. "You see where it leaves me. All this time
wasted."

"At least you have the material for your book." Catherine was
dispassionately consoling. "And you have that almost done."

"But I haven't. It's clinic material. I can't publish it now. It
belongs to them."

"Charles!"

"Exactly. She did part of the work, Miss Partridge. She wants that for
Dr. Beck. The committee wants the rest, for its clinic as at present
established."

"That's outrageous."

"I could put out a book from my own notes. But it wouldn't mean
anything. No authority behind it. No, I'm done with them. Done."

"At least"--Catherine felt slowly for words--"you have your university
work. That's the main thing. That hasn't been touched."

"Hasn't it, though?" Charles was grim. "When I've spent all this time,
on the score of a great contribution I was about to make!"

"Does it hang up your promotion?" Catherine cried out.

"It does. I heard that this morning, indirectly."

Catherine pulled herself to her feet and stood beside him, hesitantly
brushing his hair, moving her finger down to the deep crease between
his eyes.

"See here," she said, lightly. "You aren't so done for as all that. You
know it."

He thrust his arm violently around her, drew her down to the arm of the
chair, his head pressing into her shoulder.

"And you weren't here!" he cried. "There was no one----"

"Poor boy." Her hand touched his head, softly, sensitive to the
crispness of his heavy hair.

"You haven't cared what happened to me." His words came muffled.

"Oh, haven't I?" Her fingers crept down to his cheek. "Perhaps I have."

"Haven't shown it much." He lifted his face from her shoulder.

In the instant before she bent to kiss him, there was a scurry of
thoughts through her mind--leaves lifted in a puff of wind: He is
contrite about Stella Partridge. He can't say that he is. He thinks
I don't know about her. No use in airing that. He is through, and
unhappy, and I love him.

"Let's not talk any more to-night," she said. "Lots of days coming to
talk in. Spencer is well, and we are here, together."


IX

A square, rimmed in solid black, of something full of distant,
colorless clarity. Not quite colorless, since an intense turquoise-blue
seemed to move far behind it, like a wave. Catherine stared. She had
come awake so suddenly that she could only see that square at first,
without knowledge of it. Then, as suddenly, she knew. It was the sky,
over the black rim of the opposite wall of the court, with window edges
for its frame. Almost morning. What a strange dream, digging, trying
to push the spade down through roots of dead grass, while someone kept
saying, "Make it larger. That won't hold her." Had Spencer called out?
Fully awake, she lifted herself on an elbow. The house was quiet. She
could see dimly between her and the window the dark mound of Charles's
head on his pillow.

That queer dream. As she lay down again, she had it, in a swift flash
of association. The Actinidia vine! Bury an old hen at its roots, she
had told Bill. She was digging, for herself. Oh, grotesque!

And yet, before she had slept, she had not thought of herself. She had
worked patiently, tenderly, to restore Charles. She could hear him,
humble, "You mean that, Cathy? You think this isn't a horrible failure?
I couldn't prevent it, could I? After all--" and gradually she had
drawn him clear of his forlorn dejection.

The patch of sky grew opaque, white. Morning.

There is no wall between us now, she thought. That is down.
Love--tenderness--strength--sweet, fiery, ecstasy--all that he wished.
Surely he would, in turn--lift her--into her whole self.


X

Charles had taken the children out for a Sunday afternoon walk. They
wanted Catherine, too.

"The air will do you good, if you _are_ tired," urged Charles.

"But Margaret is coming in." Catherine stretched lazily in her chair.
"And I don't want to budge."

Charles had gone, resignation in his voice as he corralled the children
out of the door. Catherine closed her eyes. She was eager to see
Margaret, and yet a little afraid. She was too like an old scrap bag
crammed with thoughts and feelings, tangled, unsorted; and Margaret
would want to shake out the bag, sweeping away the jumble of contents.

Charles had said, that morning, "Queer, how down I felt yesterday. That
pork roast Friday night was too heavy. Tell Mrs. O'Lay, will you, to
go easy on the pork." And then, hastily, "Talking things out with you
cleared the air, too. I can see I'd had an exaggerated line on them. I
have a plan I want to talk over, some time soon."

Charles, restored, could call his malady pork! At the same
time--Catherine rose hastily as the bell clattered. At the same time,
she thought, walking down the hall, there had been gratitude, hidden,
unspoken, and release in the feeling between them. That feeling was the
air itself, intangible, invisible, but holding all these other things
of shape or solidity. Charles was himself again, confident, assured,
almost boisterous.

Margaret pounced at her, shook her gently, hugged her, marched her back
to the living room.

"Fine! Everyone else is out. Now I can bully you." She dragged off
her gloves. "You look as if you needed it, too," she said. She leaned
forward abruptly and touched Catherine's hand. "Spencer! Oh, it has
been awful, I know," and surprisingly her eyes grew brilliant with
tears. "But he's honestly not hurt, is he? Henrietta swore he wasn't."

"Honestly all right," said Catherine.

"I wanted to come back, but Henry wired me I couldn't do a thing. So I
stuck to the job." She moved restlessly. "And Henry swears there's no
danger of any future complication. I worried about that. Spencer's not
the sort I want changed by any knock on his head."

"No." Catherine shivered. "They all say there is absolutely no danger."

"Well." Margaret was silent a moment.

She had to say that, to be rid of it, thought Catherine.

"But I know what you've been up to." Margaret's tears were gone.
"Wallowing in sentimental regrets. Listening to mother suggests that
you must surely see your duty now. And the King, too! Just when I was
so proud of you, and using you for an example of what a woman really
could do, could amount to, and everything." She laughed. "Don't be a
renegade, Cathy."

"Pity to spoil your example, huh?"

"Exactly. Have you seen your boss since you came back? I thought not.
Cathy, go and see him. Dress up and go down to your office. Drag
yourself out of your home, sweet home, long enough to remember how you
felt. If you'll promise that, I won't say another word. Psychological
and moral effect, that's all."

"I don't want to see him until I make up my mind."

"It isn't your mind you are making up. It's"--Margaret waved her
hand--"it's your sentiment tank. Oh, I know. I have a soft heart,
myself, Catherine."

"There's another thing." Margaret had turned her upside down, as she
had feared, and she was hunting feverishly in the scattered contents
of her scrap-bag self. "Charles." Reticence obscured her. "He's been
disappointed about that clinic. He does need----"

"Anybody," declared Margaret with quick violence, "anybody needs
somebody else loving 'em, smoothing 'em down, setting 'em up, brushing
off the dust. I know! But you can do that anyway. That just goes
on----"

"I wonder. You're a hard-boiled spinster, Margaret. What do you know
about it?"

"I know a little thing or two about love. You do it all the time,
through and around whatever else you are doing. Not from nine to five
exclusively." She settled back, a grimace on her lips, as the door
rattled open and Letty's piping was heard. "Didn't stay long, did he?
You promise me you'll go down to the Bureau. Quick! Or I'll fight with
the King like a----"

"Yes, I'll go down." Catherine laughed. "I'd have to anyway."

And Margaret, smiling at her, ran out to meet Spencer.


XI

Catherine sat at the dining room table, staring down at the straggling
columns of figures on the sheet of yellow paper. Her mouth was sullen,
mutinous. Mrs. O'Lay came through the hall, her broom swishing behind
her. She had been redding up the study, and Catherine had moved her
bookkeeping into the dining room. Well, there it was. Appalling totals.
Bills and bills and bills. She ran her fingers across the ragged edges
of her checkbook stub. No hope there. Then her hand crept past the
bills to a long white envelope, bearing the Bureau inscription in one
corner. Her check in full for the month, as if she had stayed in Ohio
and finished the job. Charles's eyebrows, lifted inquiringly when Miss
Kelly had appeared that morning, seemed to arch across her name on
that envelope. She had only to take out that slip of paper, scrawl her
name and "on deposit" across the back, and she was committed. Last
night--Charles clinging to her hand--"It's wonderful, Cathy, having
things right again. Don't spoil them." And she cravenly had kept
silence.

She looked again at the final figures in her check book. Tiny, impotent
sum. Her mind busily added to them the figures of the check. But she
couldn't take it, unless she meant to go on. Dr. Roberts intended it as
an indication of her permanence, a check for the full month, when she
had worked only half of it. Her fingers rested on the slip. The bills,
the paltry little balance, worked on her in a sort of desperate fever.

I'd have to give up Mrs. O'Lay, too, she thought, to even things.
There'll be doctors' bills. That surgeon. Everything's overdrawn. Have
to tell Miss Kelly.

She saw herself vividly walking that treadmill. Poor Charles; he had
expected some release, financially, from the clinic and his book.
Wonderful, having things right--don't spoil them.

She rose quickly, bunching together the devastating bits of paper. She
had to see Dr. Roberts, at least. No use trying to think. Her mind was
a jellyfish. Perhaps if she saw him, and talked with him, something
with a backbone would rise up to rout the jellyfish.

"I may not be in for luncheon," she told Mrs. O'Lay. "But you can
manage."

"Sure, you look elegant." Mrs. O'Lay replaced the cover on her kettle
of soup. "An' a breath of air will do your heart good."

It did, Catherine discovered. She had been housed too long. Clear,
bright, gusty, with bits of paper swirling along the stone wall of
the Drive, and sharp white wave edges rushing across the river. Too
cold for the top of the bus. She watched the river through the window,
and then the shops on the side streets. She was empty, except for bits
of external things touching her eyes. Straw hats in the windows, and
bright feathers; why, spring would come, soon.

The elevator boy grinned at her widely, ducking his bullet head.

"How'do. Ain't seen you round here for quite some time."

That old thrill of belonging to the building--that woman in furs
stepping off at the dentist's floor was eying her curiously--the thrill
of expanding into part of this complicated, intricate, impersonal life.

Her office again, long, narrow, caging the sunlight between its shelved
walls, and the stenographer rising in a little flurry. "I'll call Dr.
Roberts. He was expecting you, I think."

Catherine looked out of her window. No one in the fitting room
opposite; she could see the sweep of draped fabrics.

"Mrs. Hammond! I am delighted to see you."

Dr. Roberts bustled toward her, his bearded face cordial, his gestures
animated, fidgety. "I wondered how soon you would be in. I should have
called you soon. Your little boy has recovered?"

"Yes." Catherine sat down.

"Such a pity. Poor little chap. And calling you back. I must tell
you how admirable your investigation is. We've had several letters
from people whom you met. You handled them admirably, interested them
without antagonizing them. Well, you are ready now to finish the tour?"

"You have sent no one else?" Catherine was cold. That jellyfish in her
head was a flabby lump left by the tide.

"No. I want you to go back." His eyes, small, keen, searched hers.

She sighed faintly.

"I can't do it." She was startled at the finality in her own words. "I
can't go away, Dr. Roberts. Not--again."

He showed no surprise.

"Your letters," he suggested. "They sounded enthusiastic."

"It was fascinating." There was pain in the folding down of her long
eyelids. "But I can't go away. I--" she smiled briefly. "I've lost my
nerve. I can't risk what might happen."

"The children, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Um. A pity. Accidents happen, anyway. But of course you have thought
of that." He drummed busily with his fingers along the desk.

Catherine straightened her shoulders. She could think clearly now;
evidently the jellyfish had existed just for that one decision.

"I had hoped there wouldn't be a chance for me to go away again. I
thought you might have sent someone else, and that you'd want me here
in the office. You see--the glimpse I had of the real colleges gives
enormous vitality to all these catalogues. I'd like to go on, if I
could do it right here."

When had she thought that? Astonishing, the way ideas burst out from
some deep level, and you recognized them as authentic.

"A pity." Dr. Roberts clasped his hands, twisting his fingers in and
out. Here's the church, and here's the steeple, thought Catherine, as
if she played the finger game for Letty. "I was afraid of it. But if
you will come back, handle the work here--I like the way you write up
the material." He clapped one palm on the desk. "Let me think it over.
I suppose I might finish the trip myself. I am free now--those meetings
have come off."

"There's this check." Catherine took it out of her handbag. "For a
month, at the new rate."

"I think that will be satisfactory. It's gone into the budget, your
salary, I mean. I don't think the President will suggest cutting it.
Not if I make the trip myself. Let me think it over. No, the check is
yours."

       *       *       *       *       *

Just after twelve, by the jeweler's sidewalk clock. She could reach
home for luncheon. But she didn't want to! She turned out of the
entrance and moved along, graceful, deliberate, toward the cross street
and Amy's club.

The housekeeper nodded to her. There were women in a group near the
fire, one or two heads turning toward her; no one there who knew her.
She sat alone at a small yellow table in a corner of the dining room.
She was earlier than her usual hour. That was why she saw none of the
women she had talked with. She did recognize several of the faces.
Bits of gossip collected about them, highly colored pieces of personal
comment, which Amy had thrown off in her intense, throaty voice. That
woman who was just seating herself, dropping her heavy, squirrel-lined
great coat over her chair, was a successful physician; makes thirty
thousand at least. Has to have a young thing adoring her--yes, there's
the present young thing, with a sleek bobbed head like a child's,
and round, serious eyes. Secretary, housekeeper, chauffeur, slave!
Catherine could hear Amy's satiric list. And the two women at the table
beyond. Catherine bent over her salad, while the women in the room
retreated to some great distance, carrying the bits of gossip like
cockleburrs stuck to their garments. It's funny, thought Catherine. I
never saw it before. But it is always how they love--how they live--not
what they think. Even when Amy talks about them. Even these women.

Her thoughts ran on, clearly. She had wished to lunch there, because
she needed something to orient herself, to deliver her out of the
smother of her life and all its subtle, intimate pressures of love.
She wanted to see women in terms of some cold, dignified, outer
achievement. And instead, her mind clattered about them with tales of
their lovers, their husbands, their emotional bondage.

Well, was that her fault, her own prepossession? Or Amy's? From Amy had
come these irritating recollections. Or was it that women were like
that, summed up in personal emotions? She drew on her gloves and left
the club rooms.

She would walk up the Avenue and across Central Park. They were having
lunch at home, now, Charles, the children. Sometimes in walking her
feet seemed to tread thoughts into smoothness; or the swinging rhythm
of her body shook some inner clarity up through confused images where
she could see it, could lay hold of it.

What was she trying to think about, anyway? Women? Herself? Herself and
Charles. And the children.

Men had personal lives, too. But didn't they make them, or try to make
them, comfortable, assured, sustaining, so that they could leave them?
Find them when they came back? And women having had nothing else, still
centered there? She stopped in a block of traffic, looking about with
eyes strained and vague.

Petulant, smug faces above elegant furs. Hard streaks of carmine for
lips. Faces with broad peasant foreheads, with beak noses. Faces----

The rush carried her across the street. Letty and Marian, her
daughters, growing up.

If I knuckle under now, she thought, what of them? She could feel them
pressing against her, Letty's silky head under her throat, Marian's
firm, slim body against her arm. What I do can't matter very much,
directly, to them. They have to live, themselves. She was humble,
feeling their individualness, their growth as a curious progression
of miracles in which she was merely an incidental tool. Women devote
themselves to their families, so that their daughters may grow up and
devote themselves to their families, so that---- Catherine laughed.
Some one has to break through that circle, she thought.

She entered the Park, walking more slowly along the winding path. If
she had only sons--the thought of Spencer stood up like a straight
candle flame in her murky drifting--that would be different. There was
her own mother. Catherine could see her, being wheeled along the beach
at Atlantic City, with her friend, Alethea, on a little holiday to
recover from the shock of Spencer's accident. How does she manage it,
that poise of hers, that sufficiency?

The walk had come to a cluster of animal houses. Catherine looked about
her, and on a sudden whim went past the attendant into the monkey
house. The warm, acid, heavy odor affronted her. She didn't want to
be here. Years ago she had come in, before she married. She turned
to go, and met the melancholy flat stare of a small gray monkey. The
animal clung to the bars of the cage with one hand, the long, naked
fingers moving restlessly, and looked at Catherine, while the fingers
of the other hand dug pensively into the fur of her breast. Catherine
felt her heart pause; she had a sensation of white excitement, as if
she hung poised over an abyss of infinite knowledge, comprehension. A
second monkey swung chattering across the cage and dropped from the
bar, grabbing at the tail of the monkey that stared, and the moment
was gone. Catherine went hastily out into the clear, sweet air. I hate
them, she muttered, and hurried away across the brown, dead stretches
of park. But she could not escape the vivid recollection of that
earlier visit, years ago. She had seen then a female monkey nursing
her young, and the pathos of the close-set unwinking eyes over the
tiny furry thing had made the curve of long monkey arm a symbol of
protective mother instinct.

They're too like us. That's why I hate them. And then, fiercely, men
have climbed out of that. Some ways. But they want to keep us monkey
women. Loving our mate and children. Nothing else.

She came presently to a stretch of water at the other side of the
park, and stopped a moment on the shore. Blue, quiet, with long black
reflections of trees from the opposite bank.

My mind has made itself up, she thought. Her pallor and sullenness had
given place to an intense vitality in her wide, dark eyes, in the curve
of her mouth. It isn't selfishness, nor egoism, this hankering of mine.
It's more than that. I'll tell Charles--she laughed softly, out of the
wholeness of her release from doubt--I'll tell him that I can't be a
monkey woman. He'll help me. He must help me.


XII

She waited until the children were asleep and the house was quiet.
Then she knocked at the study door, behind which Charles sat, working
on a lecture. She scarcely waited for his "Come" but went in swiftly,
closing the door.

"Most through work?" She drew a small chair near his desk. "Why, you
aren't working." His desk was orderly, bare.

"Not just now." Charles leaned back. "I--" he hesitated. "You look
stunning in that get-up," he finished.

"Yes?" Catherine's smile lingered. "It's not the get-up. It's me,
inside."

"Handsome wife." Charles touched her fingers, spreading them wide
between his own fingers, crumpling them together in a sudden violent
squeeze. Then he leaned back again. "Just been thinking about you," he
said.

"Yes? So've I." Vivacity in Catherine's voice, her gesture, a vivacity
which had true life from deep inner light, not an external manner. "I
wanted to talk to you."

"I've been wanting to talk things over with you." Charles looked away
from her somberly. "For some time."

"It's about next year," continued Charles slowly, and Catherine
thought, I'll leave the monkeys out, at first. "Our plans, you know."

Something arrested Catherine at the edge of speech, something like the
damp finger of air from a cellar.

"I should have brought it up before you went downtown," he was saying.
"You were down this morning, weren't you?"

She nodded.

"I didn't realize you were going. And anyway, to-day sort of brought
matters to a head."

"Yes?"

"Well, it's my job. I went in to see the Head, to-day." Charles faced
her, his eyes deprecating. "You gave me nerve to do that, Cathy. I'd
been knocked so confoundedly hard--but I felt better to-day. That's
you." Catherine's hands clung together in her lap. "I wanted to have
exact data on where I stood. The trouble is, this place is too big.
I mean the institution, not my own job. There are too many men eager
for a foothold. The Chief was rather fine about it--about my work,
especially. Praised it. You know. But he said I'd stepped somewhat out
of rank, going abroad. Two men are ahead of me, in line for promotion.
Can't have too many professors. Isn't room. All that guff, you know
what it is." Charles brought his fist down on the desk. "I should like
to get to a place where I can march ahead as fast as I can go. I talked
over the whole situation with him, including the Buxton offer." His
eyes were suddenly wary, inquisitive. "You remember that, of course?
And he agreed with me."

"He advised you to leave the University?" Catherine heard her own
voice, like a thin wire.

"He agreed that the chance for advancement, for future accomplishment,
lay there rather than here."

"And you wish to go?"

"I had another letter to-day from the president there. It's a
remarkable place, Cathy. Small, but endowed to the neck. A few of
those small colleges are, you know. I'd have the entire department
in my hands, with freedom to work out anything I liked. They want a
strong department. Want a good man to build it up." His wariness, his
searching of her face had dropped away in a rush of genuine enthusiasm.
His words ran on, building the picture, his work, his opportunity.
Then he switched, suddenly. "And the place is fine, too. Pretty little
town, college community. Wonderful place for the children. The other
night, as I told them about my childhood, I felt we had no right to
imprison them here. It isn't decent. Shut up in a city, when they are
just growing up. Do you think so? All this awful struggle to stretch
our income, too. That would be over. More salary, almost twice as much.
Living conditions infinitely better. Pleasant people to live near."

"When you got your appointment at the University here, you thought it
was perfect. The institution, the city. Do you remember how you felt?"

"It did seem so, didn't it? But you have to watch a thing work out."

"You are sure you are judging Buxton fairly, and not in the light of
what's happened in the clinic?"

"I've been thinking about it for months. I spoke about it in the
fall----" He stopped suddenly, and Catherine saw the phantom that he
had evoked: his own voice, harsh, "I think I'll take that Buxton offer,
just to get you out of town," and her own answer, thrown back as she
fled, "You'd have to be sure I would go!"

"I can't decide it alone," he went on hastily. "I'm just trying to show
you how it looks to me."

"But you have decided." Her effort to keep her voice steady flattened
all its intonations. "Decided that it is much the best thing for your
career, much the best for the children."

"I can't drag you off unless you wish to go. I hoped you would like it,
too. It--well, it is something of an honor, you know. The way they keep
after me. There's a large appropriation for a laboratory. I'd have very
little teaching. They seem to have some idea of a creative department."

Catherine was silent. There was something shaking and ludicrous, in the
way that courageous light of afternoon had been snuffed out. Why, she
had thought she stood at last in a clear road, where she could be sure
of direction, and here she was only at the core of the labyrinth again,
knocked blindly into an angle of blind wall.

"Catherine!" he cried out against her silence. "If it wasn't for this
damned idea of yours, you'd care what happened to me!"

Whirling about in the lane of her labyrinth, shutting her eyes to its
maze. "I do care, Charles. That's the trouble."

"After all, it's not just me. It's the children and you, isn't it?" He
fiddled with the blotter, shoved it along the desk. "I think it will
be infinitely better for you, too." His chin was obdurate. "New York
is no place. Overstimulates you. At a place like Buxton, life is more
normal. There's a woman's Faculty Club," he added, triumphantly.

Catherine laughed.

"Teas?" she said, "or literary afternoons?"

"They're fine women. Cathy, don't laugh. I hoped you would like it."

"Like it?" She flung out her hands, sensitive, empty palms upwards.
"I've just been there! I know what it is like. But I know"--she was
sober again--"why, there's nothing for me to do but say yes, is there?
I can't say that Buxton offers me no opportunity, except to be a monkey
woman, can I?"

"What?"

"Nothing." She doubled a fist against her mouth, and stared at him.

"You've been so sweet these last days." Charles reached for her hand,
held it between both of his. "Things were ghastly mixed up, and then
we seemed straight again, you and I. You know everything's been wrong
since you first took that damned office job. I can't stand it! Our
yapping at each other. I hoped you would want to throw it over. I do
care about your being happy. Cathy, if you believe, honestly, that it's
more important that you should stay here, I'll try to see it that way."

Her hand was reluctant, cold, in the warm, steady pressure of his.

"I can't believe it, alone." The labyrinth shut her in, black,
enclosing. "You'd have to believe it, yourself. And you don't."

"It's different, considering the children, too, as well as you and me.
What you do, in an office, takes you away from me. What I do, Cathy,
that is yours, too, isn't it?"

His fingers crept up about her wrist; beneath them her life beat in
heavy, slow rhythm.

"It knocks the stuffing fairly out of everything, if I think you don't
care."

"Yes. It does that for me, too." Catherine smiled at him in a flicker
of mockery. She caught a faint slackening of his fingers. Stella
Partridge! But she knew, even in the impulse to have that out,
to insist upon it as part of the winter, that it was better left
untouched. Intangible, incomplete, a kind of subtle aberration, it
would dissolve more quickly unexpressed.

"I'd be a beast to say I wouldn't go. A perverted, selfish wife.
Wouldn't I? I can't be that. I'm too soft. Charles, I do desire for you
every chance----"

"You're not soft. You're really fine. You----" He jumped to his feet.
"And when we get out there, you'll see. You'll like it! Lots of things
for you to do. You will be happy, Cathy. I'll make you happy."

Catherine, leaning back in her chair, lifted her face to look up at
him. She heard in his voice the shouting down of fear; he had been
worried, then. He had not been sure.


XIII

Catherine sat on the window sill, looking down at the shadows which
slanted across the tree tops of Morningside. In the distance roofs
still glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Beneath her the spring
leaves were delicate and small, keeping their own fine shape, not yet
making green masses. A little easterly breeze touched her warm cheek,
and she thought, leaning from the window, that she sniffed in it the
faint piquancy of Balm of Gilead buds. The last trunk was banging down
the hall, its thuds like muttered profanities.

She turned back to the dismantled rooms. How queer they looked, small,
dingy, worn. Mrs. O'Lay, in the kitchen, was assuring Charles: "Sure
and you needn't worry yourself about that, Mr. Hammond. I'll clear out
every stick. Them little things I've saved for myself. I can make use
of them."

She was cramming things into the dumbwaiter. Catherine could hear the
rustling of waste paper.

Catherine stood up, cautiously. She was stiff, almost dizzy, as if she
had bent so long over packing boxes and trunks that her head couldn't
without penalty be held upright. Well, it was done. Incredible and
astonishing, that the disorder and confusion had come to an end.

"All ready, dear?" Charles stood in the doorway, buttoning his coat,
patting his tie into place. "About time we got off."

"Be sure there is nothing left." Catherine went slowly through the
rooms, listening to the walls return her footsteps emptily.

In the kitchen Mrs. O'Lay poked among the salvage, bundles, piles, an
old black hat of Catherine's mounted rakishly on a box of breakfast
food, a dingy cotton duck of Letty's, limp from loss of stuffing.

"I'll finish up here, Mis' Hammond." The broad red face was creased
into downward wrinkles. "Sure, an' I hate to see the end of you," she
said. "It's fine for you you got a tenant to come in right away, but
we'll miss you."

"Taxi, Catherine!" shouted Charles.

"Good-by, God love you!" Mrs. O'Lay waved her out of the apartment onto
the elevator.

"Well, we certainly got things off in great style, eh?" Charles beside
her in the cab, the bags stowed at their feet, had his erect, briskly
managing air. "Everything done, and time for dinner before your train."

Catherine was sunk in a lethargy of weariness; dimly she still sorted,
packed, gave directions.

"You know, I forgot about the gas deposit." She emerged frantically
from her lethargy. "Five dollars!"

"I'll see to it. Where's the receipt?"

"Let's see--in that envelope. I'll mail it to you. It was good of
mother to take the children until train time, wasn't it?" Catherine
sighed.

"I tell you, it was a lucky thing we got the apartment off our hands
before fall." Charles patted her knee cheerfully. "Awful job, if we'd
had to pack up at the end of the summer."

"Awful job any time!"

"Oh, well, a week in Maine will make you forget it all. Especially with
the rent off our chests."

"You'll surely come in three weeks?"

"Positively. That finishes up everything. And I'll have to get away
then if I'm to have any vacation. Say, be sure to tell old Baker he's
got to take me down to the ledges for some real fishing. I haven't
fished for two years, except for flounders."

"And Buxton the first of August?"

"Be hot there in August, won't it? Well, I'll have to go then. But I
can find a house for us, and sort of learn the ropes before you blow
in."

"I wonder----" Catherine's brows met in a deep wrinkle. "I can't
remember which trunk I put the blankets in, and the linen. Hope they
aren't labeled Buxton!"

"Oh, you got them where they belong. Don't fuss, I tell you. You let
me drop you at the Gilberts' now, and I'll go on to the station. I can
check these things, and that will give you a few minutes to rest."

"I don't care where you drop me." Catherine laughed. "All my poor mind
does is to hunt for things in those trunks and boxes."

"You might as well stop worrying. They're settled."

       *       *       *       *       *

Catherine stood at the entrance to the hotel, watching the taxi jerk
its way along with the traffic. Charles's hand lay on the opened
window, a resolute, capable fist. Every one was going home. Home from
work. Shop girls in gay tweeds, already faded across the shoulders;
sallow, small men in baggy trousers, with bits of lint sticking to
them, from the lofts where they sewed--perhaps on more gay tweed
suits, or beaded silk dresses for the trade. Moist, pale faces, with a
startled, worn expression, as if the warmth of the day surprised and
exhausted the city dwellers. And in Maine--a sharp visual image of
pointed firs reflected in clear water, with a luminous twilight sky
behind dark branches.

"Ought to be glad I'm going," she thought. "Instead of spending the
summer here, with these people. And the children--I couldn't keep them
here. Could I!"

Henrietta's maid admitted her to the quiet, orderly living room. Dr.
Gilbert was in her office. She would be free soon. Catherine sat down
at the window, looking idly out at the great steel framework which
shadowed the room. How long ago she had looked down into pits of water
and uncouth shapes of cranes! New Year's Day. And Henry had said,
"You'd be a fool not to go."

The methodical arrangement of the room was restful, sane, after the
hurly-burly of the last week. Distressing that confusion could so fray
the edges of yourself. She closed her eyes, relaxing into a kind of
blankness.

She opened them presently, to find Henrietta in the doorway, staring
through her eyeglasses, her mouth firm and compassionate.

"Hello!" Catherine moved hastily erect. "Don't turn that professional
stare on me. I won't have it."

"Hoped you were asleep." Henrietta came in. "Bill hasn't shown up
yet. Perhaps we'd better go down to the dining room. Your train is so
beastly early. Where's Charles?"

"Checking the trunks. He'll be in soon."

As they waited for the elevator, Catherine turned suddenly upon
Henrietta.

"You know, Henry, I appreciate your not telling me what you think. I
suppose you're disgusted, and you haven't said a word. Not since I told
you we were going."

"Not disgusted." Henrietta thrust her eyeglasses between the buttons of
her jacket. "I've been rather cut up about it. But it's your affair. I
don't see that you could do anything else. Not now, at any rate."

"Perhaps some women could. I can't."

"Women can't alone." Henrietta sounded violent. "Not without men
helping them. Being willing to help them. So long as their own affairs
come first----"

The door of the elevator swung open.

"When Mr. Gilbert comes in, tell him we are at dinner. And Mr. Hammond,
too."

"Yes, ma'am."

Henrietta nodded to the waiter, who led them into an alcove off the
main dining room.

"Quiet in here." Henrietta settled herself briskly. Catherine was
thinking: Henrietta manages her life so that things, mere things, never
get in her way--laundry, or food, or packing. "I wanted to see you
make a go of it," said Henrietta. "You're so darned intelligent. It's
the children, I know. If it weren't for them, you could stay here. If
you would. Probably Charles would pull you along by a heartstring even
then. Now, Bill---- But I'll let him speak for himself. He has some
news."

"Perhaps"--Catherine did not glance up--"perhaps, Henry, I've just been
knocked flat at the end of the first round. Who knows? I may get my
wind back--in Buxton."

"What can you do in a country town?"

Catherine did not answer; Charles was coming toward them, buoyant,
touched with excitement, and behind him, Bill. Charles tucked the
checks into her purse.

"I'll mail these others to the Dean," he said. "Great place we're going
to. The Dean himself has offered to see to our chattels. Going to store
them in some building on the campus until we come. Real human beings in
Buxton!"

Catherine looked silently at Bill, as he took her hand for a brief
moment. She hadn't seen him for weeks; he had been out of town again.
His glance was grave, a little pleased.

"Tell them your news, Bill."

"Oh"--he shook out his napkin--"I'm off to South America next week, to
build a bridge."

Henrietta explained. Huge engineering project, throwing a link across
mountains, a road for commerce. Difficult enough to interest even a
clam like Bill.

Catherine listened rather vaguely; Bill was moving his knife, his salt,
his roll, to illustrate. Saves hundreds of miles in shipping, you see,
if the thing can be done. A straight line from the interior.

"How long will it take?"

"Can't tell exactly until I see the ground. Perhaps a year. Or longer."

Catherine flung her glance at Henrietta, and found her watching Bill,
her blue eyes calmly reflective. Not a trace of dispute, not a faint
echo of bitterness, although Henrietta was looking less at Bill than
back into whatever secret, intimate hour of decision lay behind the
present announcement. This was what Henrietta had meant. That Bill
would go alone if he wished, not for an instant expecting Henrietta to
drop her life and follow.

"And you're just staying here?" Charles was naïve, surprised.

"Naturally." Henrietta grinned at him. "I can't move my practice. It's
a long time, but perhaps one of us can wriggle in a vacation."

"Well!" Charles leaned back. "If my wife----" he broke off,
suspiciously.

"Henrietta might reasonably object to being deserted," said Bill
quietly. "But she's good enough to see why I wish to go."

Charles paused an instant over that, and then with a shrug came out on
clear, safe ground with a question about the work. Catherine listened.
She was tired. Her thoughts crawled obscurely, undirected, in a fog of
weariness. Charles would pull her along by a heartstring, Henrietta
said. Probably. She lacked that cold singleness which Henrietta kept.
But Bill never tried to pull Henry by a heartstring. He hid away from
her.

"You're not eating a thing, Cathy," said Henrietta. "Too much packing,
I suppose. I hope you'll loaf for a while. Do you have the same woman
who took us for peddlars?"

"I think so." Catherine stared out of her fog.

"Amelia will have the house opened and ready. Catherine can loaf all
summer." Charles was hearty, assured. "It's been a hard winter, some
ways."

The talk went on, with coffee and cheese, and Catherine drifted again
in her fog. Perhaps one person always hides away. Bill had said
something about that, once. In every combination of people, one hides.
But if you hide away, then you shouldn't sulk. Play fair.

Dinner was over. Time to go. Henrietta, regretfully, explained that she
couldn't go to the station. A case. Bill would walk over.

"I shall miss you, Cathy." They stood at the entrance of the hotel.
"And the children. Bill gone, too. I'll have to work like fury."

"You must come out to Buxton when we're settled. Take a week off."
Charles glanced at his watch, edged toward the street.

"I may." Henrietta's lips, firm and cool, touched Catherine's.
"Good-by."

"We'd better walk fast," said Charles. "I have to get the bags out of
the parcel room."

"Want a taxi?" Bill lifted his hand, but Catherine refused.

"It's only three blocks. Let's walk."

At the corner entrance of Grand Central, Charles darted ahead, with a
hasty, "Meet you at the clock. You find Mother Spencer and the kids."

Catherine drew a long breath and looked up at Bill.

"South America," she said. "Mountains. And you are really keen about
it?"

"It sounds good, don't you think?" He pushed open the heavy door for
her. "Too bad we can't have dinner on some mountain peak." He smiled
down at her. "What would they give us? Hot tamales, or are those
Mexican?"

"South America--and Buxton," said Catherine.

"There is Spencer." Bill took her arm and swung her out of the path of
a laden porter. "And the others."

"I hope it will be wonderful, Bill. And I'm not done for, not yet."
Catherine could see the children, Letty with round eyes and her doll
hugged under one arm, Marian jiggling on her toes with delight.

"I hope that you----" What he would have said, Catherine did not know,
for Marian had seen them and hurled herself upon her mother with a
burst of staccato excitement. But Catherine had met, for a clear
instant, in a lifting of Bill's somber impersonality, a kind of dogged,
sympathetic challenge.

"Oh, Mother!" Spencer had his fingers around her arm. "I began to think
you weren't coming!"

"Margaret's here somewhere." Mrs. Spencer clung to Letty's hand.
"Buying you magazines, I think. Where is Charles?"

"Here's the King." Margaret came up with him. "Hello, Mr. Bill."

"The guard will have to let me through the gate," announced Charles
severely, "to settle these bags for you."

"Oh, Cathy!" Margaret whisked to Catherine's side. "We're coming up to
see you in Maine, Amy and I. In our own car! Want us?"

"I shall probably stop in Buxton on my way back from George's," said
Mrs. Spencer, as she pushed Letty and Marian toward the gate. "I wish
you weren't going so far"--she sighed--"but as I've said, I think it's
just the place for you all."

Charles was impressing the guard, successfully, so that he did step
through, Spencer beside him tugging at a handbag. A flurry of good-bys,
and Catherine, with Letty and Marian clinging to her hands, followed
him upon the platform. She turned for a last glimpse. Margaret, her
bright hair flying, was waving at them; Mrs. Spencer dabbed softly
at her cheeks with her handkerchief; Bill--no, Bill had turned away.
There, he was waving, too. Marian waggled her handkerchief. Charles
called behind her, "Come along, Cathy, your coach is halfway down the
track."



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Labyrinth" ***

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