CHAPTER XVI

She had no experience of the discipline of society; she understood only crude impulses of nature; she never believed that he would dare approach her. He came directly to her, offered his hand with perfect courtesy, gave a formal greeting, bowed and left her immediately. She was so taken by surprise by the ease with which he had surmounted a difficult moment that she suffered him to take her hand and to depart without the slightest resistance. But immediately afterward her anger flamed up. What! not a word of excuse, not a regret, nothing but a trivial evasion! And forgetting all her own resolves, she flung herself recklessly into the excitement of the evening, recklessly resolved to make herself a thousand times more desirable, to outdo even the most daring of the dancers, to draw on herself every regard, that he might see to what he had driven her. He continued to watch her, transformed into a spectator, arms folded, seeing no one else; and with a keen cutting joy she saw the furrow of pain and doubt which gathered across his brow, as she abandoned herself, head thrown back, laughing up at her partner, as she had seen Georgie Gwynne once in the embrace of Lindaberry. The men, already over-excited, crowded about her, contending for each dance.

Now she no longer avoided Massingale's troubled gaze. Each time she passed near him, she sent him a scornful veiled glance, a smile of derision and recklessness, which said: "There—you see! This is what you have done to me; this is where I am going!" A fury impelled her on; she wished to drive him, at all costs, from the room. But still he remained rooted by the piano, never averting his eyes. She saw that he suffered, and by every coqueting provoking glance, by every seductive movement of her body, by the very vertigo of her languorous, half closed eyes and parted eager lips, she sought to bury deeper the sting.

Lindaberry sought her, among others, and she danced with him once, twice, a third time, granting him that personal distinction which would double the pain she was inflicting. This evening Lindaberry was different. She felt in him an agitation equal to her own. He danced extraordinarily well, with an impulsive sense of the alternately controlled or passionately rebellious movements of the dance. And the impulses within him which subdued her movements to his, fiercely checking them or suddenly enveloping her in a mad, surging, frantic rush which left her breathless, was something not of the room, or the mechanics of the step, but an inner fierce revolt that sought its liberating expression in this physical madness. Even in her obsession of resentment, she felt a curiosity to know why this was so. Other men enlightened her, whispering caution:

"For God's sake, Miss Baxter, don't let him drink any more!"

"He's been on a spree for a week!"

"They say he lost forty thousand last night at Canfield's."

She could not believe it. His face was so hilariously young, lighted up with such boyish laughter. To-night she had no fear of him; if he was reckless, so was she!

"This is nothing!" he had said to her once, when he had driven her about the room at such a pace that she had halted, laughing, protesting that it was glorious, waiting for breath. "How would you like to go spinning along at eighty miles an hour? That's sensation!"

She had not understood his meaning, but, the idea once in her head, she returned to it. It seemed to her all at once that in her hand lay the final stroke that would wound Massingale as nothing else would wound, which would show him how little she cared for anything now—reputation, danger, or what might come after.

"You like the feeling of eighty miles an hour?" she said to Lindaberry, the next time he came.

"Adore it!"

"Is your machine here?"

"Yes."

"Show me what it is like—eighty miles an hour!"

"Do you mean it?"

"Of course!"

"You've got the nerve?"

She laughed; it was not a question of courage.

"Come on, then!"

She nodded, and glanced about the room. Ida Summers was at the piano, clamoring for a certain dance, not five feet from Massingale. She went quickly, saying, in a voice that would carry where she intended:

"Ida, I'm off for a lark. Don't be worried if I disappear!"

"Heavens, Dodo, what are you going to do now?" said Ida, looking up startled.

"Great fun! Mr. Lindaberry's going to show me what it feels like to go a mile a minute in the dark."

To her surprise, she was instantly surrounded by those who had heard her remark—a group in violent protest.

"You're mad!"

"Lindaberry'll wreck the car!"

"Don't you know his condition?"

"Miss Baxter, it's suicide!"

Massingale alone did not offer a word.

She put them laughingly away with double-edged words:

"Danger? So much the better! What do I care?"

But she had considerable difficulty in freeing herself. When finally she escaped, laughing, and had made for the entrance, Lindaberry, too, was facing a storm of protest from those who had learned of his proposed escapade.

"I say, Miss Baxter, I'm looked on as a slaughter-house champion here," he said, laughing. "No one particularly cares about my neck, but a good many do about yours! What do you say? Shall we give them the slip?"

"I'm ready!"

"Can't we put up a little bet on this?" he continued triumphantly. "It's now ten minutes before one. Yonkers and back, despite cops, punctures and accidents, in forty minutes! Who'll take me for a hundred, even at that?"

A chorus of murmurs alone answered him:

"Don't be a fool, Garry!"

"Not I!"

"You ought to be manacled!"

"I'll make it two to one—five to one!" He stopped expectantly, shrugged his shoulders, and turned to Doré. "Miss Baxter, I give you my word of honor there's not the slightest risk. Still, it's up to you. Well?"

"I'm crazy about it!" she said, with a reckless laugh, slipping her hand through his proffered arm.

Below, she drew back suddenly. Judge Massingale was on the sidewalk, standing by the car. He turned at once to Lindaberry, looking steadily past her.

"Garry, this is sheer madness! You have no right to do what you're doing! Miss Baxter does not know what she is getting into!"

Lindaberry's only answer was a boyish laugh, and a hand to Doré, who sprang to her seat.

"Risk your own life. If you'll go alone, I'll take up your bet!"

"Listen to him, Miss Baxter!" said Lindaberry, with an airy wave of his hand. "Why, upon my honor, I'm the safest driver in New York!"

Massingale gave a groan of despair.

"Besides, if you're arrested and brought into court, Garry, Miss Baxter's name will be dragged—"

"I won't be nabbed. And, if I am, Judge, I'll telephone for you! Besides, there isn't a cop in the place that doesn't love me like a brother. Ask Mulligan, here!"

The patrolman on the beat, who had lazily sauntered up at his colloquy, grinned and shook his head.

"Why, every time I get in a scrap with one of them," continued Lindaberry joyously, "I send the kids to college! They'd break my head open the first chance they got, but beyond that they wouldn't harm a hair. Eh, Mulligan?"

"Sure! That's right!"

Lindaberry, ready to take the wheel, bent over.

"I say, Mulligan, is De Lima on deck to-night?"

Mulligan gazed anxiously in the direction of Judge Massingale, who was standing helplessly by.

"Oh, the judge is a good sport!" said Lindaberry. "Well, where's De Lima?"

"Above Ninety-sixth, I believe, sorr!"

"Good! I'll keep an eye out. De Lima's expensive! Well, Judge, too bad you can't join us. Little bet? Now, don't worry! I'll promise nothing faster than a mile a minute until we strike the country!"

They were drawn up in the electric flare of the side entrance. Quite a group of staring white-aproned waiters, impudent newsboys, appearing like bats out of the hidden night, chauffeurs and curious creatures of the underworld hung around open-mouthed, very black and very white in the artificial region of light and shadow. Massingale turned suddenly to her, forced to his last appeal.

"Miss Baxter," he said, looking up directly, "I wouldn't insist if I didn't know the chances you are running with this madman! Believe me, it is a reckless thing to do! Miss Baxter, please don't go!"

"Please?" she repeated, looking into his eyes with a glance as cold as his own was excited.

"Yes! I ask you—I beg you not to go! You don't know—you don't understand. Mr. Lindaberry is not a safe person—now, under present conditions!"

She leaned a little toward him, modulating her voice for his ear alone.

"I'm sure, Judge Massingale," she said coldly "that I will be much safer with Mr. Lindaberry, wherever he wishes to take me, than with some other man, even in my own house, alone!"

He understood: she saw it by the hurt look in his eyes. He withdrew without further proffer.

The next instant the car shot out, with the trailing scream of a rocket, shaved a wheel by an inch, swung the corner with hardly a break, the rear wheels sliding over the asphalt, and went streaming up the avenue, the naked trees of the park running at their side.

She sank back into the shaggy coat, adjusting the glasses which the wind cut sharply into her face, appalled at the speed, yet strangely, contemptuously unafraid.

"Fast enough?" he cried, and the words seemed to whistle by her.

"Love it!" she shouted, bending toward him.

She watched him, shrunk against the seat, her curiosity awakening at his mood, so married to her own. Massingale, the dancers, the stirring pain-giving world of pleasure, were miles away. She remembered all at once that she was with him—a stranger, wild as herself, heedlessly, recklessly engaged in a mad thing. All at once she laughed aloud, a curious sound that made him jerk his head hastily back. If he knew how little she cared if the wheel swerved that necessary fraction of an inch!

"Crazy! We're crazy, both of us!" she thought to herself joyfully. At this moment of wild cynicism she felt that she had flung over everything, done forever with scruples; that, now that she had compromised herself so publicly, nothing more mattered. She would be cruel, selfish, mercenary, but she would make this city of Mammon that went roaring past her serve her by its own false gods of money and success. In the gathering roar of the hollow air, high roof and low roof, sudden sparkling streets, file on file of blinking lights, fatally brilliant as the lure of shop windows, black instantaneous masses on the avenue, streamed behind her in a giddy torrent. Yes, it was her last scruples she thus flung to the winds, and foolishly confident of divining inscrutable fates, she repeated fiercely, defiantly, drunk with the speed madness:

"What do I care! This is the end!"

CHAPTER XVII

Another turn, and they were on Riverside, the broad Hudson with its firefly lights below, the Palisades rising darkly, like gathering thunder-clouds. There was no moon, but above their heads were the swarming stars, brilliant as a myriad sword-points. Once a policeman rushed with a peremptory club in their path, springing aside with an oath as Lindaberry set the machine at him—an oath that was lost like a whirling leaf. She no longer sought to distinguish the giddy passage at her sides, straining her eyes on the white consuming path of the lanterns, feeling all at once the hungry soul of the monster waking in the machine, strident, throbbing, crying out at the unshaken hand of man which dominated it. Then the Viaduct slipped underneath them, and below, in a swirling dip, the sunken city, hungry as a torrent, awaiting a single mishap.

She had a sudden remembrance of her dream—of Nebbins pulling her over a brink, and the thread of a river grave miles below. Only now she remembered coldly, as if the speed at which they were flying gave her no time to associate two ideas. Suddenly, by an instinct not of fear but of disdainful certainty, her eyes closed before the impossibility of surviving a looming obstacle. When she opened them again they were among trees and fields, while the goaded machine hurled itself forward in tugging leaps. Now, as they seemed to fling themselves irrevocably on the destruction of wall or upstarting tree, she no longer winced or closed her eyes, but breathlessly waited the sudden liberating touch of the hand, which snatched them miraculously aside in the last fraction of time. She felt something that she had never felt before—an appetite and an intoxication in thus defrauding destruction; even her flesh responded with a tingling electric glow. All at once she perceived that he was trying her purposely—steering from right to left, seemingly bent on a plunging end, trying to draw a cry of fear. She laughed again disdainfully, and all at once the runaway came back into control, gliding into a smooth easy flight, slower and slower, until it came to a stop.

"By George! you have nerve!" he said, turning toward her.

"Go on! Go on!" she said feverishly.

He extended to her his hand, which was trembling.

"God! that's excitement that's worth while!" he said. "A fight every minute. Ugly old brute! Wouldn't it like to throw me just once?" He put on the brakes, drawing his sleeve across his forehead, which was wet with perspiration, taking a long breath. "Each century has its vice. By George, this is ours—speed! And it's got everything in it—gamble, danger, intoxication, all! Like it?"

"Yes!"

He remained silent a moment, as if struggling to clear his heavy head of befogging weights. Then he said slowly, a little thickly, curiosity growing:

"Why the devil did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Risk your neck with a fool like me?"

"Oh, don't let's talk!" she said nervously. "Go on! Fast!"

"All right!"

They were off again, a wild liberating rush, and then a calmer motion, a gliding ease. She felt in him a different mood, a mood that sought an opportunity to put questions and weigh answers, and as she felt a desire to escape personalities, she said complainingly:

"But it's so slow—so tame! Let's go on running away!"

"This is different," he said, with a wave of his hand overhead at the myriad-eyed night. "You can't run away from this! The rest—houses, people, rotten brutality, useless things, yes; that's what I like to go plunging from—to get to this. I like the feeling—solitude. George! if you could only go steering your way out of all the old into something new!" He repeated the phrase moodily, as if to himself: "If one only could—if it were only possible!" Then he broke off abruptly, laughing to himself: "You're too young. You can't understand. Everything is new to you. By George, marry me and start for Australia, or Timbuctoo, to-morrow! What do you say?"

"Look out! I might accept!" she said, laughing, and yet understanding.

"Every one thinks I'm a wild ass," he said grimly. "Wish I could do something really wild—make over the world! Look here; are you going to answer my question?"

"What question?"

"Why in the name of the impossible are we here to-night?"

"I wonder?" she said, half to herself.

The reply seemed to satisfy him; he continued a moment, absorbed in their smooth progress. Insensibly she felt her mood yielding to his, no longer impatient, vaguely content, lulled into reverie, giving herself over to a new strange companionable inclination toward the man who had revealed himself, half boy, half savage, in his first unconscious longings.

To escape from the old? No, she did not yet understand that; but she did comprehend the all-pervading serenity of the night, warm still with the touch of Indian summer. The grating strident sounds of the day were gone; the whisper on the wind was soft as a lullaby—sharp angles and brutally straight lines lost in the feathery suffusion that lay on the fields. Ahead, the brave steadfast rays of their lamps pierced through sudden pools of darkness, that closed gently above them, and gave way again to clear visions of stars. Once or twice she saw across the enchanted blackness a distant trolley, unheard, rolling its ball of fire like the track of a shooting star. Again, the far-off leathery bark of a watch-dog complaining. But of man no sound. Only the mysterious shadows held a spirit of life; only a giant tree, silhouetted against the faint sky, seemed to move as they moved, racing with them past the vanishing road bushes. A rabbit, started from its security, horribly hypnotized by this chugging, fiery-eyed monster, scurried foolishly before them. Once a swerving bat zigzagged before her eyes like the cut of a black whirling blade. Even these were intruders, out of place in the old world, older than the pyramids, older than the first stirring of life—this waiting dominion of time, which reclaimed each night the futile centuries of men, secure of the hour when all must return in loyalty to its first silence. She looked at the stars, and the world beneath dwindled into nothingness, to the span of a hand before these twinking immensities. Which was real? This night, where only the infinite and the inevitable reigned, or the day, with its clamoring intrusion of confusing and needless voices?

She put her hand on his arm.

"It's so strange. It's so long since I remembered. I had forgot!"

She had forgot, indeed, that world which lay beyond men's world; but she remembered it now—the strange night, which formerly in the quiet of a child's room came gently, like a friendly stream, across her white counterpane, awaking troubled questionings, impossible, terrifying confrontations of the beyond and the hereafter. She had feared these strange whys and wherefores then; and now they laid upon her only a great peace—perhaps because she sought no answer.

She wanted to talk to him as one could talk in the hidden night, away from foolish conventions. What did it matter what they said or did here in this engulfing quiet? Why should human beings be constantly at war with one another, stopped by vanities? She had forgot her anguish, in an impulse toward the weakness in the man.

He stopped the car and turned toward her.

"What's wrong? What's the trouble?"

"Mine's nothing!" she said. "Let me talk about you."

But they did not at once begin—a little at a loss.

"How old are you?" she said at last.

"Twenty-eight ages!"

"Is it true, what they tell me?"

"That I'm riding hellbent to the devil? Correct!"

He did not say it with braggadocio, and yet it seemed incongruous, after the glimpse she had had of the man.

"Why?" she said, laying her two hands impulsively on his arm and with every instinct of her feminine nature sending him a message of sympathy.

"It's such a long story!" he said slowly. Then, with a last return of the Saxon's fear of sentimentality: "If I were sober I wouldn't tell you!"

"You're not—"

"Drunk? Yes! For ten days," he said—"in my way! There's nothing to fear; never gets the best of me! When it does—crack! It'll be over in a second!"

"But why?" she asked helplessly.

"Why not?" he said fiercely. "All I care about is a good fight, and, by George, it is a fight, a real sensation. You can't understand, but it's so! To have your temples beating like trip-hammers, to fight the mists out of your eyes—a great brute like this whipping back and forth, shaking you off. One slip, a hundredth of a second, and then to beat it all, to master it. God! it's gorgeous!"

Suddenly, with an attempt at evasion, he drew back.

"You know, I had a mind once. I reason things out now—I see straight! Do you know how I figure it out? This way! What earthly use am I in the world? What earthly use is a cuss who is given forty thousand a year, without earning it, and told to amuse himself? None! By George! Sometimes I believe dissipation is nature's way of getting rid of us! And she's right, too; the sooner it's over, the more chance for some one real to come along!"

"Are you serious?"

He drew his hand across his forehead, pinching his temples.

"Curiously enough, I am! I'm quite hopeless, and I don't care in the least! So don't let's waste time!"

He started to crank the machine; but she stopped him.

"There was a woman?" she said.

"Yes, but not in the first place." He turned to her, puzzled. "Why do you want to make me talk?"

"I don't know; I do!"

"What's your name?"

She hesitated.

"Dodo."

"I like that!" he said reflectively. "So you are really interested? And you don't know our story? Lord! That's funny! I thought every one knew the story of the Lindaberry boys! We certainly raised enough Cain! Do you know, I really was a damned nice sort of kid—men adored me!" He drew in his breath reflectively, conjuring up, with a tolerant smile, a picture out of forgotten days. "Yes, a real decent cuss who'd have done something if he'd had half a chance! There's only one thing I love in this world—a fight; and they took it all away from me!

"Do you know, the finest days, the ripping ones, were those back in the old school, when I used to be carried off the field on the shoulders of a mob. That was something real! I loved it! We used to sing about shedding our blood, and all that funny rot, for the glory of the red and black—and I believed it, too. Lord bless that queer cuss. Good days! I used to play the game like a raging little devil, ready to fling my life away! The Lindaberry boys—they haven't forgot us yet! It was so at college, only not quite the same. But at school, four hundred fellows, and to be king! Ambition? I was chock-full of it then. But they took it away from me! That's what knocked me out! And who did it? The one who loved us best—the governor!

"Out of college, forty thousand a year, and told to have a good time! Put that down for my epitaph! The dad, poor old fellow, didn't know any better! He'd worked like a pirate; said he'd never been young; wanted us to live! Forty thousand a year each, and let her go! I remember the day we started, with a whoop! Wonder is, we lasted a year! Tom, the young one, didn't!"

"Dead?"

"To the world, yes; asylum. Killed the governor. He tried to stop us, but it was too late! Now the race is between Jock and me. My lord, if they'd only packed us off—started us in a construction gang, anywhere, temperature a hundred in the shade—might have owned a state to-day! Remember what I said about the feeling you get out here alone—the awaking into something new? If Jock would go, I'd cut to-morrow—ship before the mast, and God take the rudder! He won't. But, by jove, to get into a new life, a new chance! You'll understand—or, no. I hope you never will!"

She could see but a faint blurred mass at her side. Under the goblin shadows of autumn trees, a brook sunk in the field told its hidden story to piping crickets and rovers of the night. She felt in her a great need of compassion, a yearning emptiness in her arms, a desire to lay her comforting touch across his eyes, as once she had put into slumberland the tear-stained cheeks of Snyder's little child. No other sentiment came to mingle with this pure stream of maternal longing; but all about her and all within her so impelled her to follow the instinct of the ages that she drew back with a sigh.

"Here! Don't do that for me!" he said, straightening up ashamed.

She could not tell him what in her had called forth that sigh, so she said hurriedly:

"No, no. Then, of course, there was a woman?"

"Yes, of course!" he assented. He opened his match-case, lighted a cigarette and then flung it away nervously. "Lord, but I was a child in those days. I believed implicitly! Women? A religion to me. I was ready to fall down and worship! We were engaged—secret until I had got hold of myself. Easy? It was child's play! I could have won out in three months. Then, quite by accident, I found she was playing the same game with my best friend—how many others, God knows! Great God! talk about smashing idols for poor old heathen Chinese! Whew—there was nothing left! I didn't even see her. Went off, crazy as a loon. A wild letter, and good-by for a year. Bang around the world to get the poison out of my system. Little good it did, too!" He stopped, considered a moment, and added: "Now that I look back, I think she did care for me—as much as she could in her polygamous little soul—else she wouldn't have done what she did! When I got back—fool that I was—I found her Mrs. Jock Lindaberry, and the devil in the saddle!"

"What! your own brother?" she said incredulously. "How did she dare?"

"You don't know the lady!" he said, with a laugh. "There's nothing in this world she's afraid of. And—God, how she can hate! Fine revenge, eh?"

"But you didn't tell—"

"Jock? No! What's the use? We never talk much—and he knows! Then, there's a child, a boy—a Lindaberry; and that holds him. She was clever enough for that!"

"You see her?"

"Never have entered the house!"

"You were very much in love?" she asked.

"At twenty-three? Mad, crazy in love! Ready to take any man by the throat who dared insinuate a word!"

"Aren't you over it yet?"

"I? Yes and no. It was Kismet! If I'd been lucky enough, even then, to have found a woman who cared, whom I could worship—who knows? Well! the other thing happened! Kismet!"

"But there are lots of women—"

"Yes, of course! But I—I've never trusted since."

"You are really a great coward, Mr. Lindaberry!"

She said it impulsively—yet, once said, resolved to stand by her guns, feeling now threefold the anger and irritation he had awakened in her at their first meeting.

He shifted in his seat, amazed.

"You give up at your first defeat—let a woman who isn't worth a candle wreck your life!"

"By Jove!"

"Pride? You talk of pride and courage! You haven't a drop of either," she continued hotly. "So you'll give her just what she wants, the satisfaction of seeing how you cared! Yes, what a delicious revenge you give her! I'm a woman—I know! She hates you, and she sits back smiling, waiting for the end, saying to herself: 'I did it!' No; I have no patience with such weakness! You are nothing but a great coward!"

She stopped, surprised at a sob that arose, unbidden, in her throat. He gazed ahead, without answering, a long while, his fingers playing on the wheel.

"That's rather rough!" he said at last.

"You deserve every bit of it!"

"To call me a coward?" he said, with an uneasy laugh.

"A great coward! Oh, courage! Easy enough, when you know you've physical strength, to go smashing into a weaker man—or a dozen! That's so obvious, so easy. But when something difficult comes up—"

He swore impatiently to himself.

"Yes, something difficult. When the odds are all against you, you give up—do just what a cold-blooded little vixen wants of you. Why? Because you have no pride!" she cried heatedly. "Don't talk to me of courage! I have a thousand times more than you, to come to-night!"

"By jove! You're right!" he said, folding his arms. "Hold up, now; that's enough. You've reached me. Don't say any more!"

She began to feel sorry for the way she had attacked him, feeling his utter loneliness. Finally he ceased humming to himself, and turned.

"You're an honest, brave little thing—a child!" he said slowly. "I don't know you at all. Who are you? What are you? I've only met you at a couple of rowdy parties, and yet you talk this way! Are you straight?"

"Mr. Lindaberry!"

"I mean no offense—I wouldn't care. You're genuine, that's the thing! I'm your friend, proud to be! Tell me about yourself!"

She saw that social judgments meant nothing to him; in fact, she was rather touched by the thought that, even if she had not been what he called "straight," he would have given her a loyal respect.

"Me?" she said dreamily. "I don't know what to tell you! I come from nothing—a little town way out in Ohio. Never had a home—sort of turned over to an aunt and uncle. I've shifted for myself, but I've never lost my nerve. I was bound to get into a bigger life, to do something—if only to be free, to live! I've done a lot of foolish things, I suppose, because I'm a little crazy myself—can't resist excitement!"

"You shouldn't have gone to that party at Sassoon's," he said. "You are too innocent to understand what it meant!"

"I'm not living in a sheltered house!" she protested. "I'm hurting no one. I face the world by myself, stand on my own feet, and I can take care of myself. I'm not ignorant!"

"Yes, you are. You can't know. You think you can, but you can't know! No girl can, until—until she's caught!" He looked at her steadily. "You know, at bottom you are a child. That's the danger! What the devil sent you out here to-night?"

"A good angel, perhaps," she said evasively.

He laughed obstinately, but with less resistance.

"No, that isn't it!" she said impulsively. "I am in a reckless mood myself. I am hurt—oh, so hurt! Disappointed in a man. You see, we are comrades, in a way!"

"Good God! Who could have hurt you!" he said roughly.

"It was all a mistake; it wasn't meant, perhaps, but that doesn't help much!"

He reached out his hand and laid it comfortingly over her shoulder, surprising her with the tenderness in his touch and in his voice.

"Sorry! I know. Queer, isn't it? We are sort of in the same boat! Queer world! Who'd have thought we'd ended up this way? Funny! You start up some of the old thoughts in me. I could have done something once, if I'd only had to! But I belong to a cursed second generation. We Americans weren't meant to be loafers!"

"Why are you, then?" she said impulsively. "Listen! I was hard on you when I went for you a moment ago! Mr. Lindaberry, we are in the same boat. Let me help you—see what I can do! No, wait! I'm speaking what I feel! I've been cruel myself, very cruel—"

"Don't believe it!"

"Yes, yes, I have; I've made others suffer!"

"Then it was their fault!" he said obstinately.

"It would mean, just now, a lot to me to count for something," she rushed on. "I can't tell you all the reasons—I don't know all—but I believe what I feel here to-night is the best in me. There is something in all this; I know there's some reason, back of it all, why we have been sent here. Oh, Mr. Lindaberry, do let me help!"

"Save me?" he asked, with an ugly laugh.

"Yes, save you!"

A long silence, in which she watched him breathlessly, hoping for an answer.

"Fight it out!" she insisted.

He turned suddenly, wondering if she knew how felicitous had been her appeal.

"Why, Dodo, I'm pretty far gone!" he said sadly.

"Coward!"

"No, by God!" he said fiercely.

"Let me see you fight, then!"

"What for?"

"For your own self-respect! See here, Mr. Lindaberry, fight it out for the love of a good fight, and let me be in it. Let me help!"

"You mean it?" he said slowly; then he nodded toward all that surrounded them. "This, you know, gets us—sentimental!"

"No; I want it!"

He laughed in his characteristic way as he did when he sought more reflection.

"The bets at the club are two to one against my lasting the year, Dodo!"

"Then take up the bet!"

"Why, that's an idea!" he said, with a chuckle.

He considered more profoundly, his arm still on her shoulder; but there was in it no acquiring touch, only a clinging—the clinging of a weak hand groping for companionship.

"I suppose I'm a lonely cuss at bottom," he said slowly, nor did she follow his thought.

"Anything I can do I'll do," she urged. "It'll be my fight too! Come to me, call me night or day, when you need me—when things are getting too much for you! I'll come any time!"

"You can't!"

"I can!" she cried defiantly. "What do I care what is said, if I know and you know that all is right! Thank God, I'm alone! I have no one to whom it matters what the world says. I'm only a waif, a drifter!"

"Drifters both!" he said solemnly.

She stopped a moment, struck by the idea, feeling their mutual clinging, and the incomprehensible, unseen winds of the night sweeping about them and carrying them—whither?

"Listen!" she added hurriedly. "This is my promise. Fight it out, and I will help you by everything that's in me! No matter whom I'm with or where I'm going, I'll turn over everything, when you need me, and come!"

"Even nights like this?" he said. "For that's when it'll be the hardest!"

"Especially nights like this!" she cried, opening her arms with a feeling of glorification.

"Tell me something," he said slowly; "and be honest with me!"

"I swear I always will," she said impulsively from her heart, devoutly believing it.

"Are you in love now?"

"Yes!"

"Are you sure?"

His arm, as if suddenly aware of her body, removed itself. He bent toward her, striving to see her face.

An instant before, she had sworn to herself, swiftly, in the exultation of a new-born spiritual self, that to this man, at least, she would never lie; and all at once, by the divining charity of her woman's soul, bent on saving him, she began her first deception!

"No; I am not—sure!"

She had a quick fear that he would spoil everything by an overt movement, and shrank from him, conscious of the male and of her sex. But at the end he rose quietly, saying:

"All right, Dodo. The fight's begun!"

If there were a double meaning in his words, he gave no sign of it. He went to the front and cranked the car, then drew the rug about her with solicitous deference, that had in it a new attitude. He did not even offer his hand to seal the compact, and for that, too, she was profoundly thankful, watching him with slanted approving glances.

"Whatever he does he will do magnificently!" she thought.

"Comfy?" he asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Yes!"

They shot out into the white road. He did not ask her wish, but, as if sure of her acquiescence, went flying into the country, at times with magnificent ease, at others with wild bursts of speed, break-a-neck, the monster obeying the fierce exultant moods of the master. She lay back in the seat, her eyes on the jagged tree-line, where broken shadows spun past her, and the stars swam overhead. She felt his mood in every glide, in every resentful bound, knowing what was in his spirit, uplifted into a new manifestation, resolved, whatever happened, that to this one, at least, she would give the divine that was in her.

It was three o'clock by the paling of the dawn in the east, and the slinking scavengers in the streets, when they returned.

She fell almost instantly to sleep, for the first time in long weeks. And as she tucked her hand under her cheek contentedly, in perfect peace, she had a satisfied feeling that God, her inscrutable friend, had not been so angry with her as she had believed; that in the moment of her failing He had shown her this way out. She did not question her feelings toward this new man. Pity? Yes, a great compassion, a tenderness and a sure belief in his protection, all were confusedly in her mind; but above all a great fatigue, and a wonder how the night would remain in the beating clarity of the day.

CHAPTER XVIII

"Heartless creature!" continued Ida, rolling her eyes. "Three automobiles, shover, father a patent-medicine king. I might have married him, Do, if you hadn't popped up! However, this is my business day; I forgot. How'm I going to get hold of Zip?"

"So that's the game?" said Doré, laughing for reasons that will appear. "Be careful how you do it, though; Mr. Benson strikes me as a very rapid advancer!"

"Yes, Miss Pussy," exclaimed Ida, laughing; "you give very good advice—in the morning. However, I just must have a fur muff I saw yesterday, and that's all there is to it! Also, my room's too small for visitors, so get up and dress, as I'm going to receive him here. What's Zip's telephone?"

"You'll find it on the pad," said Doré, rising precipitately.

"Good, the bait's planted," said Ida, presently reappearing. "I told Zip to be most oxpensive; Benson's a fierce spender!"

"How do you know?"

"A girl friend of mine," said Ida evasively.

"What's become of that little fellow you annexed at the Free Press?"

"Tony Rex? Bothers the life out of me. Got it bad! Sighs and poetry. Jealous as a Turk! Doesn't want me to pose—wants to shut me up in a convent. Lord! I don't know how to shake him!"

"I thought him rather insignificant," said Doré, at the dressing-table.

"Nothing of the sort!" said Ida vigorously. "Every one says he's a coming man—ideas, humor, massive brain, you know, and all that sort of thing. Only—only, he gets in the way all the time—trip over him. Well, are you going to give an account of yourself last night? Say, what a shame it is some squillionaire doesn't endow us! It's such a nuisance getting your clothes!" As she forgot a question as soon as she asked it, she was off on a digression. "I say, Dodo, it's a marvel how some girls do manage! You remember Adèle Vickers, who's in light opera?"

"Chorus," corrected Doré.

"Same thing for the Johnnies—only more so! Say, you'll die when you hear this! I was up in her hotel, calling, a couple of nights ago, just before dinner, when one of them married T-Willys blows in, with a how-can-you-resist-me-little-girl look. You know him—Penniston Schwartz, money-bags in something, death on manicures. Are you listening?"

"Go on...."

"Del had no dinner in sight, so she winked at me to stick close, and waited for a bid, one eye on the clock. The old beau—he oils his mustache and looks at you with buttery eyes—kept telling us we were breaking up his happy home with our resplendent beauty, and a lot of fluff that was quite beyond the point, for Del was fidgeting, getting ready to assist, when the hope of the evening says:

"'Awful sorry I can't take you little rosebuds out to dinner,—family, the dear family, you know,—but call up a waiter and let me order.'

"Order? You should have seen what Del concocted! There wasn't a dollar-mark got by her! It must have footed twenty plunks, at the least! 'Course she thought he'd pay at the desk—naturally! That was the awful slip! No sooner had the waiter disappeared than he takes a fifty-dollar bill from his purse, flips it on the table, and says, with a wink:

"'The change's for the waiter—of course!'

"I thought I'd die choking, watching Adèle, staring from the bill to the clock, aching for him to go, but quiet as a mouse—oh, perfect manner, crocheting away at a dinky tie until I thought the needles would fly in pieces! When the family man got up to go, say! you should see her bounce him out of the door and leap to the telephone, crying:

"'Make that a veal chop and mashed!'"

"Too late?" said Doré, laughing.

"Well, we lost as far as the first entrée; but, as Del said, the next time such a thing occurs, there'll be a wise waiter on the other end of the line! Where's Snyder?"

"They opened in Atlantic City last week; expect to return Monday."

"They say she's got a big hit! Glad of it!"

"So what's-his-name—your cartoonist—doesn't approve?" said Doré, smiling.

"He's a perfect pest. Furious at Vaughan Chandler and that crowd. Lectures me from morning to night—heavens!"

"What's wrong?"

"He's coming around for me at one. He'll be wild if he sees Benson! Lord! Dodo, what shall I do?"

"Leave word you're out with Josephus!"

"That won't stop him!" said Ida scornfully. "He's liable to go to sleep on the door-step!"

"Leave him to me, then," said Dodo, with the facility of long practise. "I'll receive him while you two vamose."

"I say, Do," said Ida, with sudden gratitude, "I owe you a pointer." She went on tiptoe to the door of Winona's room, listened a moment, and returning stealthily, held up crossed fingers. "Don't trust her!"

"What do you mean?"

"Trespassing—examine your fences—all I can say!" exclaimed Ida, who fled laughing, not to be cross-questioned.

Half an hour later there was being played one of those little scenes so familiar in Salamanderland, the secret of which may bring enlightenment to several fatuous self-made young men of the world. Mr. Harry Benson, a young gentleman of great future intelligence, now extremely avid of all the mysteries of a puzzling strata of the feminine world, was strutting contentedly in the presence of Miss Ida Summers and Miss Doré Baxter, the actress, friend of such howling swells as Judge Massingale and Garret Lindaberry. The two girls, with a perfect sense of values, were listening with accented indifference to his flow of self-exposition, which consisted in a narration of how many bottles he had consumed two nights before, how much money he had won at bridge, what he had paid for his socks, his cravats and the silk shirts which bore his initials, when there came a slight deferential scraping at the door, and at a quick summons, the figure of a diminutive Jewish pedler appeared, doubled under a pack, bowing convulsively, wreathed in smiles. He had been christened "Zip," a contraction of some unpronounceable name, and his motto was: "Zip buys or sells anythings!" He was a general intermediary for the Salamanders, disposing of every conceivable article when money had to be raised; and as he enjoyed this confidential intimacy with lively and pretty girls, he contented himself, good-humoredly, with no more than two hundred per cent. profit.

"Oh, dear me, Zip," cried Ida instantly. "It's no use—come around some other day!"

"Brought der shtockings," said Zip, in an untranslatable accent.

"No money—I'm broke to-day! Next week."

"I trust you!" said the pedler, advancing benignly, perfect comedian that he was, by a hundred such performances.

"No, no!" said Ida firmly. "That's not my way! No bills; cash only!"

Mr. Harry Benson, who had been on the point of indiscreetly offering a loan, bit his tongue, thoroughly convinced by her manner.

"Oh, now, Mees Sumpers, beezness is beezness—ain't it right? I trust you!" said Zip, turning to one and the other with a look of the greatest dejection.

"Next week—next week."

Zip, during this preliminary canter, had slipped his pack to the ground and was uncovering the tarpaulin.

"Bretty laties must have bretty tings; vot? All silk! Barkain! De most vonderful lincherie—feren frend shmuggles it through de coostom house. Sh'h dot's a secret! Look at dot hein?"

"No, no; don't want to see a thing. Don't tempt me!"

"Mees Baxter?"

"Impossible," said Doré, laughing. "Bad month! I'm saving up for Christmas presents!"

"Vell, it don't cost nottings to look, eh?" said Zip, suddenly bringing to light a mass of pink and white feminine lingerie. "Eef it don't embarrass de shentlemans?"

"Come on! Let's have a look at them!" said Harry Benson, gorgeously excited at the idea of this devilish pastime.

The two girls continued to protest, averting their eyes, while the prop, alternately eager and hesitating, afraid that too abrupt an offer would offend their sensibilities, continued to run through the bewildering array of secret silks and laces. Perhaps he was decided finally by an encouraging wink from Zip, who thus telegraphed to him that, being his friend, he advised him to dare. Anyhow, very red and confused, he blurted out:

"Look here, girls, don't be furious at me! Give me this pleasure, won't you? I've won an awful lot at bridge lately. Let me make a little present! By jove, Ida, your birthday's next week. Let me beat all the crowd to it. Vaughan'll be furious! What a lark! And you, Miss Baxter, do have a birthday too, won't you?"

She laughed.

"Mine's just passed."

"Passed? Then I come in late. Bully for you! It's a go, isn't it? You're the right sort! I can't tell you how I appreciate it!"

"I don't think I ought to," said Ida, looking doubtfully at Doré.

"It is unusual, but I think Mr. Benson won't make any mistakes," said Doré, beaming on him with a smile of confidence.

Benson shook her hand gratefully.

Zip rubbed his hands together in delight, wagging his bearded head.

"Goot, goot! Make de bretty kirls habby, eh? Vat apout it, hein? Trow in de shtockinks, eh?"

The two girls exclaimed furiously. Benson, laughing and roguish, defended the pedler from their wrath, protesting he was loaded with money, crazy to get rid of it, carrying his point in the end. Zip, recipient of a hundred-dollar bill, departed, grinning and wagging; nor did Mr. Benson, in the joyous delight of this newly permitted intimacy, for a moment suspect that the silks and laces which now lay so provokingly on the table would presently return to the pack of the histrionic Zip, at forty per cent. off for commission.

For the accuracy of historic customs, another detail must be added. When silk stockings were purchased, the color chosen was invariably pink, one pair of that color being in the cooperative possession, always at hand, to be borrowed hastily and worn for a convincing effect on the last purchaser.

Ten minutes later Josephus produced a card which Ida, on receiving, said:

"How stupid, Josephus! That's for Miss Baxter. Come on, Harry. Dodo's most particular and secretive—we won't embarrass her, will we?" She opened the door of Winona's room, lingering a moment behind the laughing prop to whisper: "Tell Tony to telephone this evening. Say I've called up from a studio—had to finish rush job—awful sorry! Be particular!"

She disappeared, locking the door for security's sake.

The next moment Mr. Tony Rex entered, in evident agitation and surprise—Ida and Harry Benson slipping down-stairs by the second stairway as Doré was saying glibly:

"Oh, Mr. Rex, Miss Summers has just telephoned! She wants me to tell you—"

But she proceeded no further. Mr. Tony Rex was watching her with a sarcastic smile.

"Come off! Don't hand me any useless fibs, Miss Baxter! Ida's here; I took the precaution to find out! What's her little game to-day?" Suddenly, as if struck by an idea, he moved to the window. Below, Ida Summers was just springing to her seat in the big yellow automobile.

Doré had no time to prevent him; in fact, she had momentarily lost her wits. One thing had startled her on his arrival—his shoes: patent leather with yellow tops—not chamois, but close enough to recall the dreadful wraith of Josh Nebbins.

"So she's chucked me for a stuffed image like Benson?" he said grimly. "Oh, I know the owner; I asked the chauffeur!"

"What a terrible man!" she thought. Even in that he recalled that other persistent suitor! Aloud she said hastily, as he took up his hat:

"What are you going to do?"

He affected to misunderstand the question.

"Look here, Miss Baxter," he said abruptly, "I'm dead serious in this! I'm going to marry that little kid, and it's going to happen soon! Likewise, I'm a wise one, and I know just the game she's playing—and the dangers! Some of you can keep your heads—maybe you can and maybe you can't! She's nothing but a babe—she doesn't know! That's why I'm going to stop this fooling, P. D. Q.!"

"Look out! You can't drive a girl into things!" said Doré.

"Oh, yes, I can! Watch me!" he said confidently. "Now, I'm going to find where they're lunching, buy up the table next, and see how jolly a little party Miss Ida'll have out of it, with me for an audience! Lesson number one!"

He was off in a rush before she could recover from her laughter. Left at last alone, she sought to return into herself, to adjust the Dodo of the day to the surprising self of the night before. It even struck her as incongruous that, after the depths she had sounded in the silence and loneliness of the world, she should now be forced to return to the superficiality of banter and petty intrigue. Lindaberry—she thought of him as of a great wounded animal lifting up to her a thorn-stricken paw. He would come for her in a few minutes, according to agreement, and she half feared the encounter. Would it be disillusionment? Would all that had so enveloped her with the mystery and charity of human relations now dissipate thinly in the commonplace day? Had they been swayed simply by a passing sentimentality, as he himself had feared? She did not know quite what she hoped. She did not feel the slightest sentimental inclination. She did not even attempt to dramatize herself as the good angel. She had only an immense curiosity as to herself, wondering if she had really discovered something new, if in fact it were possible for the same Doré, who selfishly, in will-o'-the-wisp fashion, enticed men on to mock their discomfiture, could open up a flood of womanly strength to one who came to her in weakness.