To Shadyville she had always seemed a brilliant figure; now, as a successful professional singer, she was a dazzling one. Even Sheila was a little awed by her, although the two had kept up their childhood's friendship during all these years of separation and of such diverse interests. Every now and then Charlotte descended on Shadyville for a brief visit to her parents, and then she invariably took up with Sheila their dropped threads and wove a new flower into the pattern of their affection. On this occasion she came to Sheila with more than her usual warmth, divining what a grief Mrs. Caldwell's death must have been to her, and she watched her friend, as the days pa.s.sed, with an increasing solicitude.

To all appearances everything was well with the Kent household. Sheila and Ted seemed to be on the best of terms; Eric had grown into a fine, healthy, handsome little lad, particularly fond of his proud mother; prosperity, as Shadyville measured it, fairly shone from the charming and well-ordered little house. Certainly all appeared to be well with Sheila, yet Charlotte was not satisfied about her. Six months had pa.s.sed since Mrs. Caldwell's death, and though Charlotte allowed for the sincerity and depth of Sheila's mourning, she rejected a sorrow already somewhat softened by time as sufficient cause for the change she found in Sheila. There was something else, something of an altogether different nature, that was responsible for the hunger of Sheila's eyes, the restlessness of her manner. Charlotte remembered, with a rush of indignation, Sheila's unfulfilled ambitions, her wasted gift. That was the trouble; of course that baffled gift of Sheila's was the trouble. And something must be done about it. She was with Sheila when she came to this conclusion, and immediately she acted on it, impulsive, decisive creature that she was.

"What of your writing, Sheila dear? I can't recall your speaking of it to me for a long, long while."

"Oh--_that's_ over!" replied Sheila, with unhappy emphasis.

"But why?"

It was a warm May afternoon and they were sitting on Sheila's veranda.

Out on the lawn Eric and another boy of his own age frolicked about like a couple of animated puppies. Sheila pointed to them:

"You remember what Mrs. North said--that a woman couldn't be both mother and artist?"

"I told you that wasn't true!"

"It has been true for me, Charlotte."

"It needn't be now. While Eric was a baby, it may have been true for you, but there's no reason in the world why it should be now."

"Well, it _is_ true for me now--it will be true for me always. And yet----"

And then, because disillusion and bitterness were strong upon Sheila, Charlotte got the whole story out of her, from the first revelation of Ted's att.i.tude toward a married woman's art to the final climax of Eric's illness, her self-blame and her renunciation of her work. Even while she told it, she knew that she would reproach herself afterward for disloyalty to Ted, but the sheer relief of confiding it to a sympathetic listener was too much for her scruples.

"I never heard of anything so outrageous in my life!" exclaimed Charlotte, when the story was ended. "It's barbarous--_barbarous_!"

Not a word of her final clear vision of her husband, her belated disappointment in him, had Sheila uttered. For that at least she had been too loyal. But already she repented having betrayed his views in regard to the married woman-artist. So well she knew what Charlotte must think of them, indeed, that she now felt impelled to a defense:

"Of course it hasn't been Ted's fault--you mustn't feel that he's to blame."

"Mustn't I?" asked Charlotte drily. And then, "My dear girl, he _has_ been to blame--absolutely, unforgivably to blame. It makes me wild to think of his narrow-minded, pig-headed selfishness. And that you should have given in to it--! Oh, Sheila, Sheila, where is your independence, your sense of your rights as an individual, a human being? Are you a cave woman--that you should be just your husband's docile chattel?" And Charlotte sprang from her chair and began to pace the veranda, urged by the fierce energy of her anger.

"I said it had been Ted's fault--this spoiling of your life," she went on presently, "but it's been your fault, too, Sheila. It's been your fault for giving in to him."

"But," pleaded Sheila, "I didn't give in to _Ted_. I gave in to circ.u.mstances. Seeing that Eric was ill--that he might die--because I'd neglected him in order to write was what conquered me. That was what drove me to the vow to renounce my work--if Eric was spared."

Charlotte came and stood before her then: "Sheila, you know as well as I do that you'd never have made that vow if the sense of Ted's disapproval, his condemnation, hadn't been working on you. You know that it was merely an accident that you were writing when Eric was exposed to scarlet fever. You know that if you _hadn't_ been writing, you would have been reading or sleeping or paying calls, and that if you'd been doing any of those things, you wouldn't have thought yourself guilty because you'd taken an hour off from the hardest job a woman has--the mother-job--even though Eric did suffer by it. You know you'd have recognized that there are just so many cruel mischances in life, and that Eric's illness was one of them. You know that it was _Ted_, back of circ.u.mstances, that influenced you to make your vow of renunciation!"

It was what Sheila had so recently told herself, and she could not refute it now. Looking into her downcast, acquiescent face, Charlotte continued: "As for the vow--that's nonsense! It's mere morbid, hysterical nonsense. G.o.d never exacted it of you. He's never held you to it, you may be sure. If He's wanted anything of you, He's wanted you to use the talent He's given you. If you've been at all at fault, it's for wasting your talent. You _have_ wasted it--you've wasted it to please Ted. You've wasted it because you've allowed yourself to be intimidated and bullied by Ted. That's the whole trouble!"

"Oh, Charlotte--," began Sheila.

"I've spoken the truth," insisted Charlotte firmly. "You can't deny a word I've said." And then, flinging out her hands with a gesture of despair, "The worst of it is that it's too late to help matters now.

You'll go on in the same way--letting Ted bully you--to the end of your days. There's never been any chance for you with him. Your chance was with Peter Burnett. It's Peter you should have married!"

"You must not say that," objected Sheila quickly--and a little unsteadily. "You must not say that, Charlotte. It's ridiculous. And it's dreadful, too. Ted and I love each other--we _do_ love each other!"

But Charlotte was no longer inclined for argument. She answered Sheila's protest with a smile--no more. Suddenly she seemed to be through with the subject of Sheila's life, and perching upon the railing of the veranda, she looked off into green distances with a gaze singularly vague and pensive for her. Sheila watched her admiringly, noting her erect slenderness, her spirited, keenly intelligent face, the clear blue of her eyes, the warm gold of her hair in the sunshine.

"It's you Peter should marry," said Sheila lightly, when the silence between them had lengthened uncomfortably. "You'd be just the wife for him, Charlotte!"

Charlotte turned toward her, and there was no mistaking her earnestness and her sincerity. "I'd marry him to-morrow!" she cried.

"Oh, Charlotte, I never _dreamed--my dear_!----"

"Don't be sorry for me," Charlotte interrupted warningly. "Don't be sorry for me. I may marry him yet!"

And a moment later, she was swinging down the street, as serene and independent as if she had never known--much less, confessed--the pain of unrequited love.

As Sheila looked after her, she noticed again the gold of her hair, the beautiful, free carriage of her shoulders--and now she felt no pleasure in them. Rather was she conscious of a sharp little pang of envy, and with it, sounded the echo of Charlotte's last words--"I may marry him yet!" Charlotte was a splendid, gallant creature; she _might_ marry Peter. And then Sheila, feeling that envious pang again and still more sharply, demanded of herself in swift terror: "Am I jealous?--_am I jealous of Charlotte because Peter may come to love her_?"

Oh, it couldn't be that!--it couldn't! It was impossible that she should be jealous about any man but her husband. For she and Ted loved each other--they _did_ love each other, whatever had been their mistakes with each other.

She called Eric to her, and he left his playmate on the lawn and came, smiling. She caught him to her, with a sort of frightened pa.s.sion:

"Kiss mother, darling!"

He looked back over his shoulder at the boy who was waiting for him.

"With him there?" he inquired reluctantly, already shy of caresses before his own s.e.x.

But Sheila, usually the most considerate and tactful of mothers, amazed him now by ignoring his hint. Still with that terrified pa.s.sion, she kissed him not once, but many times--her son and Ted's! Her son and Ted's! Then, leaving him standing there in his astonished embarra.s.sment, she went into the house and up to her own room, there to sit and stare before her at things unseen, but all too visible to her.

So Ted had been right after all; right in objecting to her being so much with Peter. It _had_ been unwise; moreover, it had been wrong, all that companionship of the past winter. For it had brought her to this; it had brought her so to depend upon Peter that she could not be happy unless he was often with her; it had brought her so to care for him that she could not think of him in relation to another woman without jealousy. It had brought her to this--and she was a wife and mother!

She had been ashamed when Ted had told her that she would get herself talked about in connection with Peter, and still more ashamed when he had accused her of "running after" Peter. But that had been an endurable shame, for at the heart of it had been self-respect, the indestructible pride of perfect innocence. But the shame that surged over her now was the agonizing shame of guilt, the shame of utter self-scorn, self-loathing. She--a wife, a mother!--cared for a man not her husband; cared for him in a way that made it torment to her to think of his marrying another woman. Hideous and unbelievable though it was, she cared for him so much. She had cared for him even while she was declaring to Charlotte--and later, to herself--that she loved her husband. She cared for Peter--even now, facing the truth and admitting it, she would not use the word, love--she cared for Peter, and she was Ted's wife, the mother of Ted's son. Not even the touch of that little son had been powerful to blind her. She cared!--she _cared_!

For a moment her face went down into her hands, and the hopeless grief of unfortunate love mastered her, tore her throat with its sobs, burned her eyes with its bitter tears. But presently her head was up again, and with shaking fingers she was bathing her eyes, concealing as best she could the ravages of that instant's surrender. She had no rights in this thing; she had not even the right to suffer. Ted or Eric might come in at any moment, and they must not see that she had wept; she was theirs.

She had no right to suffer. There could be only one right course in this; to fight, to crush out of herself what she was not free to feel, to put between herself and Peter some barrier that could not be destroyed. There was Ted, there was Eric--they should have been barriers enough. But they had not been barriers enough, and there must be another. There must be something--some one--more, to keep her safe, to hold her heart, her thoughts, from this forbidden haven. There must be something--some one--else--. And then her mind leaped to Charlotte.

Charlotte loved Peter; she had practically admitted that. Well, she should marry him--as she'd said that she might do. Though it broke her own heart, Charlotte should marry Peter. She herself would arrange it.

She did not pause to consider that Peter might not want to marry Charlotte, that he might not be happy in doing so. She did not pause, yet, to question--she did not dare to question, indeed--whether Peter turned her own love. She was intent upon but one end: to protect herself from what she felt for him, from what she would continue to feel for him as long as he was free.

With this haste and need and fear upon her, she wrote to him, asking him to come to her the next afternoon. It would be their first meeting since Ted's ban upon their friendship, and she realized, with fresh humiliation, that in spite of everything, she was glad of this chance to be with Peter. She realized that she could scarcely wait until the morrow should bring him to her. Because she was thus glad, she almost decided not to send her note after all, and then--lest she would not!--she hurried out and mailed it herself.

Somehow she got through dinner and the evening. She heard Eric's lessons and tucked him away for the night with a bedtime story and the kisses that, when no one was looking on, he was eager enough to receive. She listened to Ted's anecdotes of the day and responded with a mechanical vivacity. Then, at last, she was hidden by the night, freed by the night--though she lay by Ted's side.

She had no right to suffer, but she did suffer now. As Peter had done months before, she suffered through the darkness. But with her there was no yielding to dear visions of a forbidden love, as there had been with him; there was no picturing of life as it might have been with him; no thrilling to the imaginary caresses and delights of a pa.s.sion which, in her married self, was wholly unworthy. Rather was the night a long battle with the love that it so shamed her to find within herself. Thus, in this distress of her soul, she was at least spared the physical torture which Peter had endured. Not for an instant was her love for Peter translated, in her mind, into physical terms; she neither imagined nor desired its touch; in her guilt there was a strange innocence--an innocence characteristic of her. She would go through life unaware of the grosser aspects of things; under any circ.u.mstances, however equivocal, she would be curiously pure. In one thing only did she fall now to the level of less idealistic beings; in spite of her struggle to the contrary, she wondered, at last, if Peter loved her. She dared and stooped, in the privacy of the night, to wonder that.

When Peter came to her the next afternoon, he found her haggard, but very quiet, very calm. Beneath her calmness, however, he divined the stir of troubled depths, and he carefully kept to the surface; ignored his long banishment; took up one impersonal topic after another for her entertainment; and was altogether so much the safe, unromantic, delightful old friend of the family that, but for the hammering of her pulses, he would have persuaded Sheila that the distress of the past night was a mere, ugly dream. But because she could not look at him without a catch of her breath; because she could not speak to him without first pausing to steady her voice; because all her tranquility was but desperate and painful effort, she knew the night was no dream, but even more of a reality than she had thought.

"Peter," she said at last, with attempted lightness, "Peter, I'm going to meddle with your destiny."

"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling at her.

That smile of his almost cost her her self-control, so dear it was to her. But she went on bravely enough: "I'm going to secure you a wife."

He threw up his hands in dismay. "Don't try," he pleaded. "You could never find a wife to suit me!"