perfectly at ease, making himself agreeably at home.
The spectacle of Briggs among the Hamadryads appeared to paralyze Wayne.
Then an immense, intense resentment set every nerve in him tingling. Briggs, his friend, his confidential business adviser, his indispensable alter ego, had abandoned him to be tormented by this fat, saccharine poet—abandoned him while he, Briggs, made himself popular with eight of the most amazingly bewitching maidens mortal man might marvel on! The meanness stung Wayne till he jumped to his feet and strode out into the sunshine, menacing eyes fastened on Briggs.
“Now wouldn’t that sting you!” he breathed fiercely, turning up his trousers and stepping gingerly across the brook.
Whether or not Briggs saw him coming and kept sidling away he could not determine; he did not wish to shout; he kept passing pretty girls and taking off his hat, and following Briggs about, but he never seemed to come any nearer to Briggs; Briggs always appeared in the middle distance, flitting genially from girl to girl; and presently the absurdity of his performance struck Wayne, and he sat down on the bank of the brook, too mad to think. There was a pretty girl picking strawberries near-by; he rose, took off his hat to her, and sat down again. She was one of those graceful, clean-limbed, creamy-skinned creatures described by Briggs; her hair was twisted up into a heavy, glistening knot, showing the back of a white neck; her eyes matched the sky and her lips the berries she occasionally bit into or dropped to the bottom of her woven basket.
Once or twice she looked up fearlessly at Wayne as her search for berries brought her nearer; and Wayne forgot the perfidy of Briggs in an effort to look politely amiable.
Presently she straightened up where she was kneeling in the long grass and stretched her arms. Then, still kneeling, she gazed curiously at Wayne with all the charm of a friendly wild thing unafraid.
“Shall we play tennis?” she asked.
“Certainly,” said Wayne, startled.
“Come, then,” she said, picking up her basket in one hand and extending the other to Wayne.
He took the fresh, cool fingers, and turned scarlet. Once his glance sneaked toward Briggs, but that young man was absorbed in fishing for brook trout with a net! Oh, ye little fishes! with a net!
Wayne’s brain seemed to be swarming with glittering pink-winged thoughts all singing. He walked on air, holding tightly to the hand of his goddess, seeing nothing but a blur of green and sunshine. Then a clean-cut idea stabbed him like a stiletto: was this Vanessa or Iole? And, to his own astonishment, he asked her quite naturally.
“Iole,” she said, laughing. “Why?”
“Thank goodness,” he said irrationally.
“But why?” she persisted curiously.
“Briggs—Briggs—” he stammered, and got no further. Perplexed, his goddess walked on, thoughtful, pure-lidded eyes searching some reasonable interpretation for the phrase, “Briggs—Briggs.” But as Wayne gave her no aid, she presently dismissed the problem, and bade him select a tennis bat.
“I do hope you play well,” she said. Her hope was comparatively vain; she batted Wayne around the court, drove him wildly from corner to corner, stampeded him with volleys, lured him with lobs, and finally left him reeling dizzily about, while she came around from behind the net, saying, “It’s all because you have no tennis shoes. Come; we’ll rest under the trees and console ourselves with chess.”
Under a group of huge silver beeches a stone chess-table was set embedded in the moss; and Iole indolently stretched herself out on one side, chin on hands, while Wayne sorted weather-beaten basalt and marble chess-men which lay in a pile under the tree.
She chatted on without the faintest trace of self-consciousness the while he arranged the pieces; then she began to move. He took a long time between each move; but no sooner did he move than, still talking, she extended her hand and shoved her piece into place without a fraction of a second’s hesitation.
When she had mated him twice, and he was still gazing blankly at the mess into which she had driven his forces, she sat up sideways, gathering her slim ankles into one hand, and cast about her for something to do, eyes wandering over the sunny meadow.
“We had horses,” she mused; “we rode like demons, bareback, until trouble came.”
“Trouble?”
“Oh, not trouble—poverty. So our horses had to go. What shall we do—you and I?” There was something so subtly sweet, so exquisitely innocent in the coupling of the pronouns that a thrill passed completely through Wayne, and probably came out on the other side.
“I know what I’m going to do,” he said, drawing a note-book and a pencil from his pocket and beginning to write, holding it so she could see.
“Do you want me to look over your shoulder?” she asked.
“Please.”
She did; and it affected his penmanship so that the writing grew wabbly. Still she could read:
To Sailing Master, Yacht Thendara, Bar Harbor:
Put boat out of commission. I may be away all summer.
“How far is it to the station?” asked Wayne, turning to look into her eyes.
“Only five miles,” she said. “I’ll walk with you if you like. Shall I?”
IV
WEALTH,” observed the poet, waving his heavy white hand, “is a figure of speech, Mr. Wayne. Only by the process of elimination can one arrive at the exquisite simplicity of poverty—care-free poverty. Even a single penny is a burden—the flaw in the marble, the fly in the amber of perfection. Cast it away and enter Eden!” And joining thumb and forefinger, he plucked a figurative copper from the atmosphere, tossed it away, and wiped his fingers on his handkerchief.
“But—” began Wayne uneasily.
“Try it,” smiled the poet, diffusing sweetness; “try it. Dismiss all thoughts of money from your mind.”
“I do,” said Wayne, somewhat relieved. “I thought you meant for me to chuck my securities overboard and eat herbs.”
“Not in your case—no, not in your case. I can do that; I have done it. No, your sacred mission is simply to forget that you are wealthy. That is a very precious thought, Mr. Wayne—remain a Crœsus and forget it! Not to eliminate your wealth, but eliminate all thought of it. Very, very precious.”
“Well, I never think about things like that except at a directors’ meeting,” blurted out the young fellow. “Perhaps it’s because I’ve never had to think about it.”
The poet sighed so sweetly that the atmosphere seemed to drip with the saccharine injection.
“I wish,” ventured Wayne, “that you would let me mention the subject of business”—the poet shook his head indulgently—“just to say that I’m not going to foreclose.” He laid a packet of legal papers in the poet’s hand.
“Hush,” smiled Guilford, “this is not seemly in the house beautiful.... What was it you said, Mr. Wayne?”
“I?
