"Well," he said, when he had read it, "that's simple. We're too busy."

"But I'd like to see them again."

"You would?" he asked in surprise--and a little hurt. "All right; of course, if you want to. I've got to rush back. But there's no reason why you shouldn't stay."

"Don't be foolish, dear," she said. "You know I won't stay a minute longer than you. I wouldn't think of going alone. We could leave here after lunch Thursday and stay in Oxford for dinner and catch our boat all right. You see, dearest, it's sort of like dying never to see people who meant so much once. You don't know how much I grieve about Mabel.

She was my first friend--the first real friend I ever had. It was my fault that we quarrelled. I wouldn't like to feel that it was my fault if I lost all touch with Walter and Mrs. Karner--I mean Mrs. Longman.

They've asked us to come in a friendly spirit. I think we ought to go."

"Very well," he said. "Wire that we'll come. But it sounded to me like a sort of duty note--not exactly cordial."

As a matter of fact it had not been in an entirely cordial spirit that Beatrice had written.

One morning Walter, who very rarely disturbed his wife when she was writing, knocked at the door of her work-room.

"May I interrupt a minute," he asked apologetically.

"What is it?" she asked.

He came over and laid a newspaper on her table, pointing halfway down a column which was headed, "International Socialist Congress." Among the names of the delegates from the United States were those of Isadore and Yetta Braun.

"You'd like to have me invite them out here?" she asked.

"Yes, if it isn't inconvenient. I'd like to see them again."

For the next few days Beatrice's work went wrong. More often than not she found herself looking up from her paper, staring out through the window, across the lawn to the grape arbor. She would catch herself at it and turn again to her work. Finally she decided that she had best fight it out. So--forgetting to put the cap on her fountain-pen--she walked out into the garden.

There was no possible doubt of it. She was afraid of Yetta--jealous! She tried to laugh at herself, but it hurt too much. Yetta was years younger than she.

Isadore she had scarcely known, was not quite sure whether she had the name attached to the right vague memory, but she held an impression that he was an unattractive person. Yetta had probably married him in discouragement. Undoubtedly she still loved Walter. In these last four years Beatrice had been constantly discovering that he was more lovable than she had realized before. Yes; Yetta was probably still in love with him. Would she accept the invitation?

A telegraph boy turned into their gate. She had not opened a despatch with such unsteady nervousness in a long time.

"Arrive Oxford thursday afternoon four o'clock leave ten for Liverpool Yetta"

Beatrice walked slowly back to the house and into Walter's study. It was as dissimilar from her very orderly work-room as well might be. There were three large tables, but each was too small for the litter of books and charts and drawings and closely written notes it carried.

"They're coming to-morrow at four," she said, handing him the telegram.

"Good."

"I suppose we'd best have tea and then sight-see them around the colleges till dinner."

"I guess the tour is obligatory," he said with a grimace. "Has the Muse been refractory this morning? I saw you rambling round in the garden."

"Yes," her lips twisted into a wry smile. "Had to fight out a new idea.

It's provoking. You get things nicely planned out, everything marching placidly to a happy ending--then something unexpected turns up, some eleventh-hour disturbance. Something you've got to take time off to think out."

"Fine," he said. "You're growing into a more realistic vision of life all the time, B. And that means constantly improving novels."

He got up and walked about the room, developing into quite a speech his ideas on the Unexpected Element in Life and how it deserved more recognition in literature. But all the time, while she was appearing to listen in rapture to his wisdom, she was telling herself bitter things about the literal-minded, uncomprehending male.

Thursday afternoon as Yetta and Isadore found their places in the train for Oxford they both had an unusual feeling of tongue-tiedness. They were quite tired and it was a relief to have sleepiness as an excuse for not talking. Yetta was not conscious of any stress between them. She believed that Isadore was as sleepy as he pretended to be. It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world to renew old friendships.

She opened her eyes now and then for a glimpse at the unfamiliar countryside. But most of the time she dreamily lived over again "the old days." She was generally too busy to think these things out leisurely--as you must if you are to think of them at all. She found it hard to recognize the picture of herself which she drew out of her memory. The few years, which had pa.s.sed since her marriage, seemed to her much longer and fuller than all her life before. She, a mother of two children, found it very hard to sympathize with the _jeune fille_, who had been so very much in love with this man she had scarcely seen a dozen times. She was half sorry she had accepted the invitation. She was no longer the same person whom Walter and Beatrice had known. Instead of renewing an old acquaintance, her visit to Oxford would be that of a stranger. It would be embarra.s.sing if Walter treated her like the girl he had known. But it never occurred to her that Isadore was suffering from jealous apprehension.

"Oxford's the next station," Isadore said.

It jerked her out of her revery. As they got off the train there was a kaleidoscopic moment, an impression of many people rushing hither and thither in a senseless chaos. Then suddenly the vagueness dissolved, and there were Walter and Beatrice, the blank look on their faces just melting into a smile of recognition. Everybody shook hands, the women kissed each other, and Walter and Isadore rushed off to check the bags.

Yetta's motherhood had changed her subtly. She could not have been called matronly. In fact, Beatrice, who was childless, was poignantly conscious that she looked the more like a regulation matron. The contrast hurt her.

The thing which Yetta saw was that Beatrice had come to reflect the gracious refinement of her surroundings. There was a sudden longing that life might have thrown her into an environment where she too could have given time and thought to being beautiful. It was rare indeed that she could devote ten minutes to "doing her hair." It took all the time she could spare to keep herself clean and neat. Beatrice's appearance suggested that the selecting of even her underwear was a matter of careful thought. Yetta, also, was poignantly conscious of the contrast.

When the men rejoined them, they all--still under the constraint of stock-taking--climbed into the dogcart and drove through the quaint Oxford streets to the house.

Yetta talked busily--a bit raggedly--about her two children. Walter pointed out the towers of some of the colleges. Neither Beatrice nor Isadore added much to the conversation. The tea-table was set on the lawn, but the constraint was still on them. Yetta told with slightly forced enthusiasm of the little house and lot they had taken in a Building and Loan a.s.sociation on Long Island. Isadore at last rallied in reply to Walter's questions and talked about the International Congress.

The thing which had impressed him most was the widespread growth of revolutionary, nonpolitical labor organizations. The growth of industrial unionism in America was closely paralleled by the _Syndicaliste_ movement in Europe.

"I never gave you sufficient credit as a prophet, Walter," he said.

"I'm an orthodox party member still, but this 'direct actionism' doesn't seem so much like heresy to me as it did. It's too universal to be all wrong."

When they got up from the table to wander about in the University, he and Walter walked ahead, still in the heat of this discussion. The women brought up the rear. Yetta found that the easiest things to talk about were the babies and Beatrice's novels. She had read and liked them very much.

They sat down together in the grounds of Christ Church, and Isadore began to tell about _The Clarion_. Yetta joined in the men's talk, and Beatrice felt herself decidedly out of it. She was glad when the time came to go back for dinner. But that was no better, for still the talk clung to _The Clarion_. It interested them so much that she could not find heart to change the subject.

The moon came up royally as they took their coffee on the terrace.

Without any one suggesting it, they strolled down the lawn and along the river. Great trees stretched their branches overhead across the stream.

It was a warm night, and many boats were out. Their gay lanterns glistened over the water. Here and there a song floated through the dusk. The predominant note of the scene was laughter.

But the riverside did not seem beautiful to Isadore; Beatrice had never cared less for it. Walter and Yetta were walking on ahead.

Beatrice found a sort of whimsical sympathy for her companion--realizing that he also was troubled by the turn things had taken. The unrest of each infected the other. It required all the social tact she could command to keep up the semblance of a conversation.

Yetta had taken Walter's arm, and for a while they walked in silence.

But somehow the constraint suddenly fell away, and she felt in him the old friend to whom it had always been so easy to talk.

"It's strange," she said, "how very often I have taken your advice and found it good. More and more I realize what a big factor you've been in my life. A dozen times I've been on the point of writing to you. But it's so hard to put on paper the deeper sort of thanks."

Walter tried to protest.

"Oh, yes," she insisted. "I've lots of things to thank you for. It's hard to put it into words. But now that it's ancient history, now that the wounds have healed, I want to talk about it. When you told me to marry Isadore, it seemed like the cruelest words that could be spoken.

You were right in smashing up my romance. But of all the lessons you ever set me, that was the hardest to learn, the bitterest. I could not take your word for it. I had to learn it for myself. But if you had not driven me to it, I would have been a romanticist still--always weaving dreams. I would never have found the wonder and beauty of life as it is.

"I guess any suffering is worth while that teaches a real lesson. I can be philosophic about those tear-stained months now. But they were dreary enough--and sometimes worse. I don't believe there was anything that Job said about the day he was born that I did not echo.