He answered, firmly, "Yes, Rosie; I am."

She sighed. "Oh, very well."

He could see that for the moment she had no spirit to say more. Her very movements betrayed la.s.situde, dejection. Though his heart smote him, he felt constrained to speak on his own behalf.

"You'll remember that it wasn't my fault."

She went on with her picking silently, but with a weary motion of the hands. The resumption of the task compelled her to turn her back to him, in the position in which he had found her when he arrived.

"I'm simply doing what you would have done yourself--only Thor wouldn't let you."

She made no response. The picking of the blossoms took her away from him, step by step. He made another effort to let her see things from his point of view.

"It wouldn't be honorable for me now, Rosie, to be paid for doing a thing like that. It _would_ be payment to me, though he was going to settle the money on you."

Even this last piece of information had no effect on her; she probably didn't understand its terms. Her fingers picked and dropped the blossoms slowly till she reached the end of her row.

He thought that now she would have to turn. If she turned he could probably wring from her the word of dismissal or absolution that alone would satisfy his conscience. He didn't know that she could slip around the dense ma.s.s of foliage and be out of sight. When she did so, amazement came to him slowly.

Expecting her to reappear, he stood irresolute. He could go after her and clasp her in his arms again--or he could steal down the narrow aisle of greenery and pa.s.s out of her life for ever. Out of her life, she would be out of his life--and there was much to be said in favor of achieving that condition. There was outraged love in Claude's heart, and also some calculation. It was not all calculation, neither was it all outraged love. If Rosie had flung him one piteous backward look, or held out her hands, or sobbed, he might have melted. But she did nothing. She only disappeared. She was lying like a stricken animal behind the thick screen of leaves, but he didn't know it. In any case, he gave her the option of coming back.

He gave her the option and waited. He waited in the overpowering heat, amid the low humming of bees. The minutes pa.s.sed; there was neither sound among the vines nor footstep beside him; and so, with head bent and eyes streaming and head aching and nerves unstrung and conscience clamoring reproachfully, he turned and went his way.

He surprised his father by going back to the bank. "Look here, father,"

he confessed, "I'm not ill. I'm only terribly upset about--about something. Can't you send me to New York? Isn't there any business--?"

Masterman looked at him gravely and kindly. He divined what was happening. "There's nothing in New York," he said, after a minute's thinking, "but there's the Routh matter in Chicago. Why shouldn't you go there? Mr. Wright was taking it up himself. Was leaving by the four-o'clock train this afternoon. Go and tell him I want you to take his place. He'll explain the thing to you and supply you with funds.

And," he added, after another minute's thought, "since you're going that far, why shouldn't you run on to the Pacific coast? Do you good. I've thought for some time past that you needed a little change. Take your own time--and all the money you want."

Claude was trying to articulate his thanks when his father cut him short. "All right, my boy. I know how you feel. If you're going to take the four-o'clock you've no time to lose. Good-by," he continued, holding out his hand heartily. "Good luck. G.o.d bless you!"

The young man got himself out of his father's room in order to keep from bursting into tears.

CHAPTER XXII

As Thor and Lois breakfasted on the following Sunday the former was too busy with the paper to notice that his wife seemed preoccupied. He was made to understand it by her manner of saying, "Thor."

Dropping the paper, he gave her his attention. "Yes?"

Her head was inclined to one side as she trifled with her toast. "You know, Thor, that it's an old custom for newly married people to go to church together on the first Sunday they're at home."

"Oh, Lord!"

She had expected the exclamation. She also expected the half-humorous, half-repentant compliance which ensued.

"All right, I'll go."

It was the sort of yielding that followed on all his bits of resistance to her wishes--a yielding on second thought--a yielding through compunction--as though he were trying to make up to her for something he wasn't giving her. She laughed to herself at that, seeing that he gave her everything; but she meant that if she were not so favored she might have harbored the suspicion that on account of something lacking in their life he fell back on a form of reparation. As it was, she could only ascribe his peculiarity in this respect to the kindness of a nature that never seemed to think it could be kind enough.

It was her turn to feel compunction. "Don't go if you'd rather not. It's only a country custom, almost gone out of fashion nowadays."

But he persisted. "Oh, I'll go. Must put on another suit. Top-hat, of course."

With a good woman's satisfaction in getting her husband to church, if only for once, she said no more in the way of dissuasion. Besides, she hoped that, should he go, he might "hear something" that would comfort this hidden grief of which she no longer had a doubt, since Claude too, was aware of it. It was curious how it betrayed itself--neither by act nor word nor manner, nor so much as a sigh, and yet by a something indefinable beyond all his watchfulness to conceal from her. She couldn't guess at his trouble, even when she tried; but she tried only from inadvertence. When she caught herself doing so she refrained, respecting his secret till he thought it well to tell her.

She said no more till he again dropped the paper to give his attention to his coffee. "Have you been to see the Fays yet?"

He put the cup down without tasting it. He sat quite upright and looked at her strangely. He even flushed.

"Why, no."

The tone appealed to her ear and remained in her memory, though for the moment she had no reason to consider it significant. She merely answered, "I thought I might walk up the hill and see Rosie this afternoon," leaving the subject there.

Thor found the service novel, and impressive from its novelty. Except for the few weddings and funerals he had attended, and the service on the day he married Lois, he could hardly remember when he had been present as a formal partic.i.p.ant at a religious ceremony. He had, therefore, no preconceived ideas concerning Christian worship, and not much in the way of prejudice. He had dropped in occasionally on the services of foreign cathedrals, but purely as a tourist who made no attempt to understand what was taking place. On this particular morning, however, the pressure of needs and emotions within his soul induced an inquiring frame of mind.

On reaching the pew to which Lois led him he sat down awkwardly, looking for a place in which to bestow his top-hat without ruffling its gloss.

Lois herself fell on her knees in prayer. The act took him by surprise.

It was new to him. He was aware that she said prayers in private, and had a vague idea of the import of the rite; but this public, unabashed devotion gave him a little shock till he saw that others came in and engaged in it. They entered and knelt, not in obedience to any pre-concerted ceremony, but each on his own impulse, and rose, looking, so it seemed to Thor, rea.s.sured and stilled.

That was his next impression--rea.s.surance, stillness. There was a serenity here that he had never before had occasion to recognize as part of life. People whom he knew in a commonplace way as this or that in the village sat hushed, tranquil, dignified above their ordinary state, raised to a level higher than any that could be reached by their own attainments or personalities. It seemed to him that he had come into a world of new standards, new values. Lois herself, as she rose from her knees and sat beside him, gained in a quality which he had no capacity to gauge.

He belonged to the new scientific school which studies and co-relates, but is chary of affirmations, and charier still of denials. "Never deny anything--_ne niez jamais rien_"--had been one of the standing bits of advice on the part of old Hervieu, under whom he had worked at the Inst.i.tut Pasteur. He kept himself, therefore, in a non-hostile att.i.tude toward all theories and systems. He had but a hazy idea as to Christian beliefs, but he knew in a general way that they were preposterous.

Preposterous as they might be, it was his place, however, to observe phenomena, and, now that he had an opportunity to do so, he observed them.

"How did you like it?" Lois ventured, timidly, as after service they walked along County Street.

"I liked it."

"Why?"

The answer astonished her. "It was big."

"Big? How?"

"The sweep--the ideas. So high--so universal! Makes a tremendous appeal to--the imagination."

She smiled toward him shyly. "It's something, isn't it, to appeal to the imagination?"

"Oh, lots--since imagination rules the world."

They were on their way to lunch with Thor's father and stepmother. Now that there were two households in the family, the father insisted on a domestic reunion once a week. It was his way of expressing paternal forbearance under the blow Thor had dealt him in marrying Lois Willoughby.

"Where's Claude?"