mumble something incoherent and pass on to the drawing-room door. It was a wide opening, hung with portieres, through which he could see Olivia Guion standing by the crackling wood fire, a foot on the low fender. One hand rested lightly on the mantelpiece, while the other drew back her skirt of shimmering black from the blaze. Drusilla Fane, at the piano, was strumming one of Chopin's more familiar nocturnes.
He was still thinking of this glimpse when, a half-hour later, he said to Rodney Temple, as they walked homeward in the moonlight: "I haven't yet told you what I came back for."
"Well, what is it?"
"I thought—that is, I hoped—that if I did the way might open up for me to do what might be called—well, a little good."
"What put that into your head?" was the old man's response to this stammering confession.
"I suppose the thought occurred to me on general principles. I've always understood it was the right thing to attempt."
"Oh, right. That's another matter. Doing right is as easy as drawing breath. It's a habit, like any other. To start out to do good is much like saying you'll add a cubit to your stature. But you can always do right. Do right, and the good'll take care of itself."
Davenant reflected on this in silence as they tramped onward. By this time they had descended Tory Hill, and were on the dike that outlines the shores of the Charles.
By a common impulse both Temple and Davenant kept silent concerning Guion. On leaving Tory Hill they had elected to walk homeward, the ladies taking the carriage. The radiant moonlight and the clear, crisp October air helped to restore Davenant's faculties to a normal waking condition after the nightmare of Guion's hints. Fitting what he supposed must be the facts into the perspective of common life, to which the wide, out-of-door prospect offered some analogy, they were, if not less appalling, at least less overwhelming. Without seeing what was to be done much more clearly than he had seen an hour ago, he had a freer consciousness of power—something like the matter-of-course assumption that any given situation could be met with which he ordinarily faced the world. That he lacked authority in the case was a thought that did not occur to him—no more than it occurred to him on the day when he rescued the woman from drowning, or on the night when he had dashed into the fire to save a man.
It was not till they had descended the straggling, tree-shaded street—along which the infrequent street-lamps threw little more light that that which came from the windows shining placidly out on lawns—and had emerged on the embankment bordering the Charles, that the events of the evening began for Davenant to weave themselves in with that indefinable desire that had led him back to Boston. He could not have said in what way they belonged together; and yet he could perceive that between them there was some such dim interpenetration as the distant lamps of the city made through the silvery mist lying on the river and its adjacent marshes like some efflorescence of the moonlight.
"The difficulty is," he said, after a long silence, "that it's often so hard to know what is right."
"No, it isn't."
The flat contradiction brought a smile to the young man's lips as they trudged onward.
"A good many people say so."
"A good many people say foolish things. It's hard to know what's right chiefly when you're not in a hurry to do it."
"Aren't there exceptions to that rule?"
"I allowed for the exceptions. I said chiefly."
"But when you do want to do it?"
"You'll know what it is. There'll be something to tell you."
"And this something to tell you? What do you call it?"
"Some call it conscience. Some call it God. Some call it neither."
Davenant reflected again.
"And you? What do you call it?"
"I can't see that anything would be gained by telling you. That sort of knowledge isn't of much use till it's worked out for oneself. At least, it wouldn't be of much use to you."
"Why not to me?"
"Because you've started out on your own voyage of discovery. You'll bring back more treasures from that adventure than any one can give you."
These things were said crustily, as though dragged from a man thinking of other matters and unwilling to talk. More minutes went by before Davenant spoke again.
"But doesn't it happen that what you call the 'something-to-tell-you' tells you now and then to do things that most people would call rather wild—or crazy?"
"I dare say."
"So what then?"
"Then you do them."
"Oh, but—"
"If there's an 'Oh, but', you don't. That's all. You belong to the many called, but not to the few chosen."
"But if things are wild—I'm thinking of something in particular—"
"Then you'd better leave it alone, unless you're prepared to be considered a wild man. What Paul did was wild—and Peter—and Joan of Arc—and Columbus—and a good many others. True they were well punished for their folly. Most of them were put in irons, and some of them got death."
"I shouldn't dream of classing myself in their company."
"Every one's in their company who feels a big impulse and has the courage of it. The trouble with most of us is that we can do the feeling all right; but when it comes to the execution—well, we like to keep on the safe side, among the sane."
"So that," Davenant began, stammeringly, "if a fellow got something into his head—something that couldn't be wrong, you know—something that would be right—awfully right in its way, but in a way that most people would consider all wrong—or wild, as I said before—you'd advise him—?"
"I shouldn't advise him at all. Some things must be spontaneous, or they're of little use. If a good seed in good ground won't germinate of its own accord, words of counsel can't help it. But here we are at home. You won't come in just yet? Very well; you've got your latch-key."
"Good-night, sir. I hope you're not going to think me—well, altogether an idiot."
"Very likely I shall; but it'll be nothing if I do. If you can't stand a little thing like that you'd better not have come back with the ideas that have brought you."
III
avenant turned away into the moonlit mist. Through it the electric lamps of Boston, curving in crescent lines by the water's edge, or sprinkled at random over the hill which the city climbs, shone for him with the steadiness and quiet comfort inherent in the familiar and the sure after his long roaming. Lighting a cigarette, he strode along the cement
