After that silence fell upon us, and before long Spoof and Burke left on their errand of reprisal. Jean elected to go home soon afterwards, and I accompanied her to Twenty-two. She stood a moment with the door latch in her hand, as though debating with herself whether she should send me home.

"You had better come in," she said at length. "There are some things we should talk about."

I closed the door behind me and Jean lighted a lamp and removed her wraps. "Come and sit down," she said, making room for me beside her on a bench.

I sat down beside her, and would have kissed her, but she drew gently away. "Please don't, Frank," she said, and when her eyes met mine I saw a look in them as of some wild thing wounded to the death.

"Jean!" I exclaimed. "Have I hurt you so?"

"No, Frank, not you. But I am hurt--hurt," and she pressed her hands about her bosom as though in physical pain. "It is so hard to know--to be sure--what is right!"

"How what is right?"

"In books--you will understand, Frank--it is always so clear. One is a hero; the other is a villain; it is so easy to know. But in life--I don't suppose there are so many villains after all. That doesn't make it any easier to decide."

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, Jean."

"I suppose you don't, and I shrink from making it more clear to you. Do you know what "The Song of Lost Endeavor" means? Have you sung it--in your heart?"

Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper, and her arm, apparently of its own volition, had found its way to my neck.

"I don't know that I do," I admitted, "except in a vague way. I suppose it has to do with failure, with knowing one's self to be a failure----"

"That's it--and I know. . . . I have tried, and failed."

"Jean!"

"I thought our promise--my promise--would bind me. . . . It didn't. It won't. It can't." She withdrew her arm, then quickly seized both my hands in hers.

"Oh, my boy, my friend, my chum!" she exclaimed, and little crystal wells gathered between her eyelids as she spoke. "How can I hurt you so!

But nothing else would be honest. I have tried and failed. I lost my temper with you to-day, and once before, over Spoof. You were playing jokes on him--making him the b.u.t.t of your humor--your idea of humor----"

"I promise you nothing of that kind will ever happen again, dear; I promise it, I swear it!"

"But that doesn't help, any. Don't you see, it's not that I care--so much--about the joke--on anybody--but because _I love Spoof_."

I hope I took the blow like a gentleman. I had the advantage of being somewhat prepared for it.

"I suspected that," I said at length. "I don't want to stand in the way of your happiness."

Then I fell from the heroic with a thud. "Oh, Jean, Jean," I pleaded, "why do you turn to Spoof, whom you hardly know, and away from me? Have I fallen so far short--an I so little to be desired--that you should love a stranger in preference?"

She pressed her hand against my lips. "Don't, please. . . . I can't explain. Ask me why the wind blows--why the flowers turn to the sunlight--I can't explain. I would ever so much rather it had been you."

"Then make it me! It is in your hands----"

"No, it is not. I can't change it. I have tried--and failed. Of course, I could marry you still, but you would not want me with a reservation in my heart. You would despise me if I married you like that."

Beneath the numbing shock of the fact that Jean was slipping--had slipped--out of my life, I was conscious that her words were true. I should not have wanted her--with a reservation. And so we sat in silence and in suffering, with no sound about us except the ticking of the clock and the thumping of our own hearts, until at length Jean arose to rebuild the fire. I took it as my cue to leave.

"Well, what is to be done about it?" I said, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way, although I could not keep the tremble out of my voice. "We must clear up the situation some way."

"Yes. We will explain, so far as it can be explained, to Jack and Marjorie. We must not interfere with their marriage or their happiness.

And Spoof must not know."

"Spoof not know! How shall we prevent----"

"I mean he must not know why--why our marriage is post--is off. Don't you see, Frank; Spoof must not know--I love him." She whispered the last words and turned her head away, as though ashamed of her confession.

"Not know you love him! Do you mean that Spoof doesn't know you love him?"

"No, he doesn't, Frank."

"And he has not made love to you?"

"Not a word."

I stood pondering that fact. If Spoof, without trying, could win Jean in compet.i.tion with me, who had been trying my hardest, and who had the advantage of all the intimacies of childhood, what would happen when he set himself to the business of wooing? That he would do so as soon as he knew the coast was clear I did not doubt for a moment.

"I think I understand, Jean," I said, as I turned toward the door. "This happiness is not for me--it was too much to be expected. I had dreams--dreams that are not going to be realized, ever. I had pictures, but they must be torn out of my life. . . I hope you will be happy.

Goodbye."

"Oh, Frank, don't go like that!" she cried, her arms outstretched toward me. But I had no heart to prolong my torture in her presence. I closed the door behind me and went stumbling through the drifts toward Fourteen.

CHAPTER XVII.

Breaking the news to Jack and Marjorie was no easy task, but we got through it some way. Jack and his sister had an unhappy hour over it, but Jean was adamant in her decision. There was to be no marriage, so far as she was concerned. It was out of the question.

"You are pa.s.sing up as decent a chap as ever lived," Jack told her, "on a chance of Spoof, and you don't know that he even cares for you.

Perhaps Spoof's affections are already fixed. Have you thought of that?"

"Thought of it! I've lain awake nights, with burning eyes, and thought of it. But what can I do? I can't ask him."

"You could marry Frank, like a sensible girl."

"I only wish I could. But it is out of the question."

And with that the matter had to stand. Jean doubled her energies in helping Marjorie prepare for the great event, and while she tried always to greet me with a smile I more than once surprised a tear stealing unbidden down her cheek. I reflected that if I was suffering, Jean was suffering, too, but there was no comfort in that. I didn't want Jean to suffer. And why she should wring her heart over me, and yet refuse to marry me, was a twist in her nature beyond my power of comprehension.

Spoof took the news with genuine or well-feigned surprise. We merely explained that the wedding was not to be a double one after all; that Jean and I had reconsidered matters, but Jack and Marjorie would be married as arranged.

"I say, I'm sorry to hear that--I mean about you and Jean. I presume it is only a postponement?" But we gave him no answer to that question, and Spoof, of course, did not press it.

Christmas day dawned bright and cold, with a whip of north-west wind and a skiff of loose snow sifting across the frozen prairies. I found myself lying awake in the morning, thinking of Jean, and of all I had hoped that day would mean to me. This was the dream that was gone; the picture I had had to tear out of my heart, only it would not stay gone; it plagued me in my sleep, it haunted me in every silent moment of the day.

That Jean should be so strong, so set, so immovable, and, as it seemed to me, so unreasonable, in spite of all her delicate wistfulness and strange uncommonness of spirit--that was a side of Jean's character which all the years of our childhood and youth had not revealed to me. .