manners. Her mind was troubled vaguely, like the surface of a lake which trembles at the distant storm.
A walk through the forest soothed her. The brook—her brook and his—sang as musically as before, the long drawn aisles had not changed, and the note of praise still swelled among the fretted vaults above. The birds made light of their troubles, too, and the leaves were whispering joyously the last gossip of the wood. What they said she could not guess, but she knew by the warm flush that had risen to her cheeks that it must be personal.
When she returned to camp her arms were full of asters and cardinal flowers. He greeted her gravely, with an almost too elaborate politeness.
“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he begged her. “I don’t think I’m quite myself to-day.”
“Are you feeling better?” she questioned.
“Yes, I’m quite—quite comfortable. I was afraid I had offended you.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t understand you for a moment. That was all.” She lifted the flowers so that he might see them better. “I’ve brought these for our lunch-table.”
But he did not look at them. His eyes, still glowing unfamiliarly, sought only hers.
“Will you forgive me?”
“Yes, of course,” lightly.
“I want—I want your friendship. I can’t tell you how much. I didn’t say anything that offended you, did I? I felt pretty seedy. Everything seemed to be slipping away from me.”
“Not now?”
“Oh, no. I’m all right.”
He took the flowers from her arms and laid them at the foot of a tree. Then coming forward he thrust out both his hands suddenly and took her by the elbows.
“Jane!” he cried, “Jane! Look up into my eyes! I want you to see what you’ve written there. Why haven’t you ever seen it? Why wouldn’t you look and read? It’s madness, perhaps; but if it’s madness, then madness is sweet—and all the world is mad with me. There isn’t any world. There’s nothing but you and me—and Arcadia.”
She had turned her gaze to the ground and would not look at him but she struggled faintly in his embrace. The color was gone from her cheeks now and beneath the long lashes that swept her cheek—one great tear trembled and fell.
“No, no—you mustn’t,” she whispered, stifling. “It can’t—it mustn’t be. I don’t–”
But he had seized her more closely in his arms and shackled her lips with his kisses.
“I’m mad—I know—but I want you, Jane. I love you—I love you—I want the woods to hear–”
She wrenched one arm free and pushed away, her eyes wide, for the horror of him had dawned slowly.
“Oh!” she gasped. “You!”
As he seized her again, she drew back, mad with fear, shrunken within herself, like a snake in a thicket coiling itself to thrust and then struck viciously.
He felt the impact of a blow full in the face and staggered back releasing her. And her accents, sharp, cruel, vicious, clove the silence like sword-cuts.
“You cad! You brute! You utter brute!”
He came forward like a blind man, mumbling incoherently, but she avoided him easily, and fled.
“Jane!” he called hoarsely. “Come back to me, Jane. Come back to me! Oh, God!”
He stumbled and fell; then rose again, putting his hands to his face and running heavily toward the spot where she had vanished into the bushes—the very spot where three days ago she had appeared to him. He caught a glimpse of her ahead of him and blundered on, calling for forgiveness. There was no reply but the echo of his own voice, nor any glimpse of her. After that he remembered little, except that he went on and on, tripping, falling, tearing his face and clothes in the briars, getting to his feet and going on again, mad with the terror of losing her—an instinct only, an animal in search of its wounded mate.
He did not know how long he strove or how far, but there came a time when he fell headlong among some boulders and could rise no more.
That morning two Indian guides in search of a woman who had been lost, met another Indian at the headwaters of a stream, and together they followed a fresh trail—the trail of a big man wearing hob-nailed boots and carrying a burden. In the afternoon they found an empty shack beside which a fire was burning. Two creels hung side by side near the fire and upon the limb of a tree was the carcass of a deer. There were many trails into the woods—some made by the feet of a woman, some by the feet of a man.
The three guides sat at the fire for awhile and smoked, waiting.
Then two of them got up and after examining the smaller foot-marks silently disappeared. When they had gone the third guide, a puzzled look on his face, picked up an object which had fallen under a log and examined it with minute interest. Then with a single guttural sound from his throat, put the object in his pocket and bending well forward, his eyes upon the ground, glided noiselessly through the underbrush after them.
VII
ALLEGRO
A storm of wind and rain had fallen out of the Northwest, and in a night had blown seaward the lingering tokens of Autumn. The air was chill, the sunshine pale as calcium light, and distant buildings came into focus, cleanly cut against the sparkling sky at the northern end of the Avenue; jets of steam appeared overhead and vanished at once into space; flags quivered tensely at their poles; fast flying squadrons of clouds whirled on to their distant rendezvous, their shadows leaping skyward along the sunlit walls. In a stride Winter had come. The city had taken a new tempo. The adagio of Indian Summer had come to a pause in the night; and with the morning, the baton of winter quickened its beat as the orchestra of city sounds swung into the presto movement. Upon the Avenue shop-windows bloomed suddenly with finery; limousines and broughams, new or refurbished, with a glistening of polished nickel and brass, drew up along the curbs to discharge their occupants who descended, briskly intent on the business of the minute, in search of properties and backgrounds for the winter drama.
In the Fifth Avenue window of the Cosmos Club, some of the walking gentlemen gathered in the afternoon and were already rehearsing the familiar choruses. All summer they had played the fashionable circuit of house-parties at Narragansett, Newport and other brief stands, and all recounted the tales of the road, glad at last to be back in their own corners, using the old lines, the old gestures, the old cues with which they had long been familiar.
If its summer pilgrimage had worked any hardship, the chorus at the windows of the Cosmos Club gave no sign of it. It was a well-fed chorus, well-groomed, well-tailored and prosperous. Few members of it had ever played a “lead” or wished to; for the tribulations of star-dom were great and the rewards uncertain, so they played their parts comfortably far up-stage against the colorful background.
Colonel Broadhurst took up the glass which Percy Endicott had ordered and regarded it ponderously.
“Pretty, aren’t they?” he asked sententiously of no one in particular, “pretty, innocent, winking bubbles! Little hopes rising and bursting.”
“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” put in the thirsty Percy promptly. “Luck,
