In the first days of her coming it was he who, in pursuance of his
method of reserve, had held aloof. He had been frequently absent from
New York, and, even when there, had lived much at one or another of his
clubs. Weeks had already passed when the perception stole on him that
his goings and comings meant little more to her than to the trees waving
in the great Park before his door.

The discovery that he had been taking such pains to abstract himself
from eyes which scarcely noticed whether he was there or not brought
with it a little bitter raillery at his own expense. He was piqued at
once in his self-love and in his masculine instinct for domination. It
seemed to be out of the natural order of things that his thoughts should
dwell so much on a woman to whom he was only a detail in the scheme of
her surroundings--superior to the butler, and more animate than the
pictures on the wall, but as little in her consciousness as either. It
was certainly an easy opportunity in which to display that
self-restraint which he had undertaken to make his portion; but when the
heroic nature finds no obstacles to overcome, it has a tendency to
create them.

Without obtruding himself upon Diane, Derek began to dine more
frequently at his own house. On those occasions when Dorothea went out
alone it was impossible for the two who remained at home to avoid a kind
of conversation, which, with the topics incidental to the management of
a common household, often verged upon the intimate. When Diane
accompanied his daughter to the opera, he adopted the habit of dropping
into the box, and perhaps taking them, with some of Dorothea's friends,
to a restaurant for supper. He planned the little parties and excursions
for which Dorothea's "budding" offered an excuse; and, while he
recognized the subterfuge, he made his probable journey, with the long
absence it would involve, serve as a palliation. Since, too, there was
no danger to Diane, there could be the less reason for stinting himself
in the pleasure of her presence, so long as he was prepared to pay for
it afterward in full.

Thus the first winter had gone by, until with the shifting of the
environment in summer a certain change entered into the situation. The
greater freedom of country life on the Hudson made it requisite that
Diane should be more consciously circumspect. In her detachment Derek
noticed first of all a new element of intention; but since it was the
first sign she had given of distinguishing between him and the dumb
creation, it did not displease him. While he could not affirm that she
avoided him, he saw less of her than when in town. During those
difficult moments when they had no guests and Dorothea was making visits
among her friends, Diane found pretexts for slipping away to New York,
on what she declared to be business of her own--availing herself of the
seclusion of the little French hostelry that had first given her
shelter.

It was at times such as these that Derek began to perceive what she had
become to him. As long as she was near him he could keep his feelings
within the limitations he had set for them; but in her absence he was
restless and despondent till she returned. The brutality of life, which
made him master of the beauty of the country and the coolness of the
hills, while it drove her to stifle in the town, stirred him with
alternate waves of indignation and compassion.

There was a torrid afternoon in August when the sight of her, trudging
along the dusty highway to the station, almost led him to betray himself
by his curses upon fate. Dorothea having left for Newport in the
morning, Diane was, as usual, seeking the privacy of University Place
for the two weeks the girl's visit was to last. Understanding her desire
not to be alone with him for even a few hours when there was no third
person in the house, Derek had taken the opportunity to motor for lunch
to a friend's house some miles away. With the intention of not returning
till after she had gone, he had ordered a carriage to be in readiness to
drive her to her train; but his luncheon was scarcely ended when the
thought occurred to him that, by hurrying back, he might catch a last
glimpse of her before she started.

He had already half smothered her in dust when he perceived that the
little woman in black, under a black parasol, was actually Diane. To his
indignant queries as to why she should be plodding her way on foot, with
this scorching sun overhead, her replies were cheerful and
uncomplaining. A series of small accidents in the stable--such had
constantly happened at her own little chateau in the Oise--having made
it inadvisable to take the horses out, one of the men had conveyed her
luggage to the station, while she herself preferred to walk. She was
used to the exigencies of country life, in both France and Ireland; and
as for the heat, it was a detail to be scorned. Dust, too, was only
matter out of place, and a necessary concomitant of summer. Would he not
drive on, without troubling himself any more about her?

No; decidedly he would not. She must get in and let him take her to the
station. There he could work off his wrath only by buying her ticket and
seeing to her luggage; while his charge to the negro porter to look to
her comfort was of such a nature that during the whole of the journey
she was pelted with magazine literature and tormented with glasses of
ice-water.

That night he found himself impelled by his sense of honor as a
gentleman to write a letter of apology for the indignity she had been
exposed to while in his house. When it had gone he considered it
insufficient, and only the reflection that he ought to have business in
town next day kept him from following it up with a second note.

Arrived in New York, where the city was burning as if under a sun-glass,
he found his chief subject for consideration to be the choice of a club
at which to lunch. There, in the solitude of the deserted smoking-room,
where the heat was tempered, the glare shut out, and the very footfall
subdued, he thought of the little hotel in University Place. Because
human society had mysterious unwritten laws, the woman he loved was
forced to steal away from the freshness and peace of green fields and
sweeping river, to take refuge amid the noisome ugliness from which, in
spite of her courage, her exquisite nature must shrink. He, whose needs
were simple, as his tastes were comparatively coarse, could command the
sybaritic luxury of a Roman patrician, while she, who could not lift her
hand without betraying the habits of inborn refinement, was exposed not
only to vulgar contact, but to a squalor of discomfort as odious as
vice. The thought was a humiliation. Even if he had not loved her, it
would have seemed almost the duty of a man of honor to step in between
her and the cruel pathos of her lot.

It was a curious reflection that it was the very fact that he did love
her which held him back. Could he have turned toward Paradise and said
to the sweet soul waiting for him there, "This woman has need of me, but
you alone reign in my heart," he would have felt more free to act. But
the time when that would have been possible had gone by. Anything he
might do now would be less for her need than his own; and his own he
could endure if loyalty to his past demanded it. None the less was it
necessary to find a way in which to come to Diane's immediate relief;
and by the time he had finished his cigar he thought he had discovered
it.

"Having been obliged to run up to town," he explained, when she had
received him in the little hotel parlor, "I've dropped in to tell you
that I'm going away for a few weeks into Canada."

"Isn't it rather hot weather for travelling?" she asked, with that
clear, smiling gaze which showed him at once that she had seen through
his pretext for coming.

"It won't be hot where I'm going--up into the valley of the Metapedia."

"It's rather a sudden decision, isn't it?"

"N--no. I generally try to get a little sport some time during the
year."

"Naturally you know your own intentions best. I only happen to remember
that you said, yesterday morning, you hoped not to leave Rhinefields
till the middle of next month."

"Did I say that? I must have been dreaming?"

"Very likely you were. Or perhaps you're dreaming now."

"Not at all; in fact, I'm particularly wide awake. I see things so
clearly that I've looked in to tell you some of them. You must get out
of this stifling hole and go back to Rhinefields at once."

"I don't like that way of speaking of a place I've become attached to.
It isn't a stifling hole; it's a clean little inn, where the service is
the very law of kindness. The art may be of a period somewhat earlier
than the primitive," she laughed, looking round at the highly colored
chromos of lake and mountain scenery hanging on the walls, "and the
furniture may not be strictly in the style of Louis Quinze, but the host
and hostess treat me as a daughter, and every garcon is my slave."

"I can quite understand that; but all the same it's no fit place for
you."

"I suppose the fittest place for any one is the place in which he feels
at home."

"Don't say that," he begged, with sudden emotion in his voice.

"I think I ought to say it," she insisted, "first of all because it's
true; and then because you would feel more at ease about me if you knew
just how it's true."

"You know that I'm not at ease about you."

"I know you think I must be discontented with my lot, when--in a certain
sense--I'm not at all so. I don't pretend that I prefer working for a
living to having money of my own; but I've found this"--she hesitated,
as if thinking out her phrase--"I've found that life grows richer as it
goes on, in whatever way one has to live it. It's as if the streams that
fed it became more numerous the farther one descended from the height."

"I'm glad you're able to say that--"

"I can say it very sincerely; and I lay stress upon it, because I know
you're kind enough to be worried about me. I wish I could make you
understand how little reason there is for it, though you mustn't think
that I'm not touched by it, or that I mistake its motive. I've come to
see that what I've often heard, and used scarcely to believe,  is quite
true, that American men have an attitude toward women entirely different
from that of our men. Our men probably think more about women than any
other men in the world; but they think of them as objects of prey--with
joys and sorrows not to be taken seriously. You, on the contrary, are
willing to put yourself to great inconvenience for me, merely because I
am a woman."

"Not merely because of that," Derek permitted himself to say.

"We needn't weigh motives as if they were golddust. When we have their
general trend we have enough. I only want you to see that I understand
you, while I must ask you not to be hurt if I still persist in not
availing myself of your courtesy. I wish you wouldn't question me any
more about it, because there are situations in which one cheapens things
by the very effort to put them into words. If you were a woman, you'd
comprehend my feeling--"

"Let us assume that I do, as it is. I have still another suggestion to
make. Admitting that I stay at Rhinefields, why can't you ask your
mother-in-law to come and make you a couple of weeks' visit there?"

For a moment Diane forgot the restraint she made it a habit to impose
upon herself in the new conditions of her life, and slipped back into
the spontaneous manner of the past.

"How tiresome you are! I never knew any one but a child twist himself in
so many directions to get his own way."

"You see, I'm accustomed to having my own way. You ought not to think of
resisting me."

"I'm not resisting you; I'm only eluding your grasp. There's one great
obstacle to what you've just been good enough to propose: my
mother-in-law couldn't come. Miss Lucilla van Tromp couldn't spare her.
As a matter of fact, she--Miss Lucilla--asked me to go to Newport and stay
with her all the time Dorothea is with the Prouds; but I declined the
invitation. You see now that I don't lack cool and comfortable quarters
because I couldn't get them."

"I see," he nodded. "You evidently prefer--this."

"I'll tell you what I prefer: I prefer a breathing-space in which to
commune with my own soul."

"You could commune with your own soul at Rhinefields."

"No, I couldn't. It's an exercise that requires not only solitude and
seclusion, but a certain withdrawal from the world. If I were in France,
I should go and spend a fortnight in my old convent at Auteuil; but in
this country the nearest approach I can make to that is to be here where
I am. After all that has happened in the last year and more, I am trying
to find myself again, so to speak--I'm trying to re-establish my
identity with the Diane de la Ferronaise, who seems to me to have faded
back into the distant twilight of time. Won't you let me do it in my own
way, and ask me no more questions? Yes; I see by your face that you
will; and we can be friends again. Now," she added, briskly, springing
up and touching a bell, "you're going to have some of my iced coffee.
I've taught them to make it, just as I used to have it at the
Mauconduit--that was our little place near Compiegne--and I know you'll
find it refreshing."

It was half an hour later, while he was taking leave of her, that a
thought occurred to him which promised to be fruitful of new resources.

"Very well," he declared, as they were parting, "if you persist in
staying here, I, too, shall persist in looking in whenever I come to
town--which will have to be pretty often just now--to see that you're
not down with some sort of fever."

"But," she laughed, "I thought you were going away--to Canada?"

"I'm not obliged to; and you've rather succeeded in dissuading me."

"Then let me succeed in dissuading you from everything. Don't come here
again--please don't."

"I certainly shall."

"I'm generally out."

"In that case I shall stay till you come in."

"Of course I can't keep you from doing that. I will only say that the
American man I've had in mind for the past few months--wouldn't."

The fact that he did not go back to University Place, either on this or
any subsequent occasion when she thought it well to withdraw there,
emphasized his helplessness to aid her. By the time autumn returned, and
the household was once more settled in town, he had grown aware that
between Diane and himself there was an impalpable wall of separation,
which he could no more pass than he could transcend the veil between
material existence and the Unseen World. He began to perceive that what
he had called detachment of manner, more or less purposely maintained,
was in reality an element in the situation which from the beginning had
precluded friendship. Diane and he could not be friends in any of the
ordinary senses of the word. As employer and employed their necessary
dealings might be friendly; but to anything more personal, under the
present arrangement, there was attached the impossible condition of
stepping off from terra firma into space.

The obvious method of putting their mutual relationship on a basis
richer in future potentialities Derek still felt himself unable to adopt
of his own initiative act. The vow which bound him to his dead wife was
one from which circumstances--and not merely his own fiat--must absolve
him; but as winter advanced it seemed to him that life had begun to
speak on the subject with a voice of imperative command.

It was the middle of January, when a small, accidental happening drew
all his growing but still debatable intentions into one sharp point of
resolution. It was such an afternoon as comes rarely, even in the
exhilarating winter of New York--an afternoon when the unfathomable blue
of the sky overhead runs through all the gamut of tones from lavender to
indigo; when the air has the living keenness of that which the Spirit
first breathed into the nostrils of man; when the rapture of the heart
is that of neither passion, wine, nor nervous excitement, but comes
nearer the exaltation of deathless youth in a deathless world than
anything else in a temporary earth. It was a day on which even the jaded
heart is in the mood to begin all over again, in renewed pursuit of the
happiness which up to now has been elusive. To Derek, whose heart was by
no means jaded, it was a day on which the instinctive hope of youth,
which he supposed he had outlived, proved itself of one essence with the
conscious passion of maturity.

When, as he walked homeward along Fifth Avenue, he overtook Diane, also
making her way homeward, the happy occurrence seemed but part of the
general radiance permeating life. The chance meeting on the neutral
ground of out-of-doors took Diane by surprise; and before she had time
to put up her guards of reserve she had betrayed her youth in a shy
heightening of color. Under the protection of the cheerful, slowly
moving crowd she felt at liberty to drop for a minute the subdued air of
his daughter's paid companion, and in her replies to what he said she
spoke with some of her old gayety of verve. It was an unfortunate moment
in which to yield to this temptation, for it was, perhaps, the only
occasion since her coming to New York on which she was closely observed.

Engrossed as they were, the one with the other, they had insensibly
relaxed their pace, becoming mere strollers on the outside edge of the
throng. The sense of being watched came to both of them at once, and,
looking up at the same moment, they saw, approaching at a snail's pace,
an open Victoria, in which were two ladies, to whom they were objects of
plainly expressed interest. The elder was an insignificant little woman,
who looked as though she were being taken out by her costly furs, while
the younger was a girl of some two or three and twenty, of a type of
beauty that would have been too imperious had it not been toned down by
that air which to the unintelligent means boredom, though the wise know
it to spring from something gone amiss in life. Both ladies kept their
eyes fixed so exclusively on Diane that they had almost passed before
remembering to salute Derek with a nod.

"I've seen those ladies somewhere," Diane observed, when they had gone
by.

"I dare say. They've probably seen you, too. The elder is Mrs. Bayford,
sister of Mr. Grimston, my uncle's partner in Paris. The girl is Marion
Grimston, his daughter."

"I remember perfectly now. They used to come to our charity sales,
and--and--anything of that kind."

Pruyn laughed.

"Anything, you mean, that was open to all comers. Mrs. Grimston would be
flattered."

"I didn't mean to speak slightingly," she hastened to say. "There were
plenty of nice people in Paris whom I didn't know."

"And plenty, I imagine, who thought you ought to have known them. Mrs.
Grimston, and Mrs. Bayford, too, would have been among that number."

"Well, you see I do know them--by sight. I recall Miss Grimston
especially. She's so handsome."

"I shall tell her that to-night."

"To-night?"

"Yes; it's with them that Dorothea and I are dining. The name conveying
nothing to you, you probably didn't remember it. The fact is that, as
Mrs. Bayford is the sister of my uncle's partner--my partner, too--I
make it a point to be very civil to her twice a year--once when I dine
with her, and once when she dines with me. The annual festivals have
been delayed this season because she has only just returned from a long
visit to Japan and India, with Marion in her wake."

There had been so much to say which, in the glamour of that glorious
afternoon, was more important that no further time was spent on the
topic. Derek forgot the meeting till Mrs. Bayford recalled it to him as
he sat beside her in the evening. She was one of those small, ill-shapen
women whose infirmities are thrown into more conspicuous relief by dress
and jewels and _decolletage_. Seated at the head of her table, she
produced the impression of a Goddess of Discord at a feast of
well-meaning, hapless mortals.

"I want a word with you," she said, parenthetically, to Derek, on her
left, before turning her attention to the more important neighbor on her
right.

"One is scant measure," he laughed, in reply, "but I must be grateful
even for that."

It was the middle of dinner before she took notice of him again, but
when she did she plunged into her subject boldly.

"I suppose you didn't think I knew who you were walking with this
afternoon?"

"Yes, I did, because the lady recognized you. She said you and Mrs.
Grimston were among the nice people in Paris whom she hadn't met--but
whom she knew very well by sight."

If Derek thought this reply calculated to appease an angry deity, he
discovered his mistake.

"Did she have the indecency to say she hadn't met me?"

"I think she did; but she probably didn't know that the word indecency
could apply to anything connected with you."

"Why, I was introduced to her four times in one season!"

"I suppose she hasn't as good a memory as yours."

"Oh, as for that, it wasn't a matter of memory. Nobody was permitted to
forget her--she was quite notorious."

"I've always heard that in Paris the mere possession of beauty is enough
to keep any one in the public eye."

"It wasn't beauty alone--if she _has_ beauty; though for my part I can't
see it."

"It _is_ of rather an elusive quality."

"It must be. But if it exists at all, I can tell you that it's of a
dangerous quality."

"Hasn't that always been the peculiarity of beauty ever since the days
of Helen of Troy?"

"I'm sure I can't say. I've always tried to steer clear of that sort of
thing--"

"That must be an excellent plan; only it deprives one of the power of
speaking as an authority, doesn't it?"

"I don't pretend to speak as an authority. If I say anything at all,
it's what everybody knows."

"What everybody knows is generally--scandal."

"This was certainly scandal; but it wasn't the fact that everybody knew
it that made it so."

"Then I'm sure you wouldn't wish to repeat it."

"I don't see why you should be sure of anything of the kind. I consider
it my duty to repeat it."

"Then you won't be surprised if I consider it mine to contradict it."

"Certainly not. I shouldn't be surprised at anything you could do,
Derek, after what I've heard since I came home."

"I won't ask you what that is--"

"No; your own conscience must tell you. No one can go on as you've been
doing, and not know he must be talked about."

"I've always understood that that was more flattering than to be
ignored."

"It depends. There's such a thing as receiving that sort of flattery
first, only to be ignored in the sequel. I speak as your friend, Derek--"

"I thoroughly understand that; but may I ask if it's in the way of
warning or of threat?"

"It's in the way of both. You must see that, whatever risks I may be
prepared to run myself, as long as I have Marion with me I can't expose
her to--"

"To what?"

Notwithstanding his efforts to keep the conversation to a tone of
banter, acrimonious though it had to be, Derek was unable to pronounce
the two brief syllables without betraying some degree of anger. Glancing
up at him as she shrank under her weight of jewels, Mrs. Bayford found
him very big and menacing; but she was a brave woman, and if she
shrivelled, it was only as a cat shrivels before springing at a mastiff.

"I can't expose her to the chance of meeting--"

She paused, not from hesitation, but with the rhetorical intention of
making the end of her phrase more telling.

"My future wife," he whispered, before she had time to go on. "It's only
fair to tell you that."

"Good heavens! You're not going to marry the creature!"

Mrs. Bayford brought out the words with the dramatic action and
intensity they deserved. In the hum of talk around and across the table
it was doubtful whether or not they were heard, and yet more than one of
the guests glanced up with a look of interrogation. Dorothea caught her
father's eyes in a gaze which he had some difficulty in returning with
the proper amount of steadiness; but Mrs. Berrington Jones came to the
rescue of the company by asking Mrs. Bayford to tell the amusing story
of how her bath had been managed in Japan.

So the incident passed by, leaving a sense of mystery in the air; though
for Derek, all sense of annoyance disappeared in the knowledge that he
was Diane's champion.

He was thinking over the incident in the luxurious semi-darkness of the
electric brougham as they were going homeward, when the clear voice of
Dorothea broke in on his meditation.

"Are you going to be married, father?"

The question could not be a surprise to him after the occurrence at the
table, but he was not prepared to give an affirmative answer on the spur
of the moment.

"What makes you ask?" he inquired, after a second's reflection.

"I heard what Mrs. Bayford said."

"And how should you feel if I were?"

"It would depend."

"On what?"

"On whether or not it was any one I liked."

"That's fair. And if it was some one whom you did like?"

"Then it would depend on whether or not it was--Diane."

"And if it was Diane?"

"I should be very glad."

"Why?"

She slipped her arm through his and snuggled up to him.

"Oh, for a lot of reasons. First, because I've always supposed you'd be
getting married one day; and I've been terribly afraid you'd pick out
some one I couldn't get along with."

"Have I ever shown any symptom to justify that alarm?"

"N--no; but you never can tell--with a man."

"Can you be any surer with a woman?"

"No; and that's one of my other reasons. I'm not very sure about
myself."

"You don't mean that it's to be young Wap--?" he began, uneasily.

"I suppose it will have to be he--or some one else. They keep at me."

"And you don't know how long you may be able to hold out."

"I'm holding out as well as I can," she laughed, "but it can't go on
forever. And then--if I do--"

"Well--what?"

"You'd be left all alone, and, of course, I should be worried about
that--unless you--you--"

"Unless I married some one."

"No; not some one; no one--but Diane."

They were now at their own door, but before she sprang out she drew down
his face to hers and kissed him.




IX


During the succeeding week Derek Pruyn, having practically announced an
engagement which did not exist, found himself in a somewhat ludicrous
situation. Too proud to extort a promise of secrecy from Mrs. Bayford,
he knew the value of his indiscretion--if indiscretion it were--to any
purveyor of tea-table gossip; and while Diane and he remained in the
same relative positions he was sure it was being bruited about, with his
own authority, that they were to become man and wife. It did not
diminish the absurdity of the situation that he was debarred from
proposing and settling the affair at once by the grotesque fact that he
actually had not time.

There was certainly little opportunity for lovemaking in those hurried
days of preparing for his long absence in South America. He was often
obliged to leave home by eight in the morning, rarely returning except
to go wearily to bed. Though nothing had been said to him, he had more
than one reason for suspecting that Mrs. Bayford was at work; and, at
the odd minutes when he saw Diane, it seemed to him as if her clearness
of look was extinguished by an expression of perplexity.

He would have reproached himself more keenly for his lack of energy in
overcoming obstacles had it not been for the fact that, owing to their
peculiar position as members of one household, and that household his,
he was planning to ask Diane to become his wife on that occasion when he
would also be bidding her adieu. She would thus be spared the
difficulties of a trying situation, while she would have the season of
his absence in which to adjust her mind to the revolution in her life.
He resolved to adhere to this intention, the more especially as a small
family dinner at Gramercy Park, from which he was to go directly to his
steamer, would give him the exact combination of circumstances he
desired.

When, after dinner, Miss Lucilla's engineering of the company allowed
him to find himself alone with Diane in the library, he made her sit
down by the fireside, while he stood, his arm resting on the
mantelpiece, as on the afternoon of their first serious interview, over
a year before. As on that other occasion, so, too, on this, she sat
erect, silent, expectant, waiting for him to speak. What was coming she
did not know; but she felt once more his commanding dominance, with its
power to ordain, prescribe, and regulate the conditions of her life.

"Doesn't this make you think of--our first long talk together?"

"I often think of it," Diane said, faintly, trying to assume that they
were entering on an ordinary conversation. "As you didn't agree with
me--"

"I do now," he said, quickly. "I see you were right, in everything. I
want to thank you for what you've done for Dorothea--and for me. I
didn't dream, a year ago, that the change in both of us could be so
great."

"Dorothea was a sweet little girl, to begin with--"

"Yes; but I don't want to talk about that now. She will express her own
sense of gratitude; but in the mean while I want to tell you mine. You
will understand something of its extent when I say that I ask you to be
my wife."

Diane neither spoke nor looked at him. The only sign she gave of having
heard him was a slight bowing of the head, as of one who accepts a
decree. The first few instants' stillness had the ineffable quality
which might spring from the abolition of time when bliss becomes
eternity. There was a space, not to be reckoned by any terrestrial
counting, during which each heart was caught up into wonderful spheres
of emotion--on his side the relief of having spoken, on hers the joy of
having heard; and though it passed swiftly it was long enough to give to
both the vision of a new heaven and a new earth. It was a vision that
never faded again from the inward sight of either, though the mists of
mortal error began creeping over it at once.

"If I take you by surprise--" he began, as he felt the clouds of reality
closing round him.

"No," she broke in, still without looking up at him; "I heard you
intended to ask me."