"Dosia," said Lawson, standing up; his altered voice sounded far away in her ears.

"Yes," she answered, rising also, she knew not why.

"This is good-by."

She did not speak, but looked at him. His face seemed to lose the marks of dissipation and bitterness, and become strangely boyish, strangely sweet, in its expression.

"See!" he said, "I could clasp my arms around you, as I'm longing to, and kiss your darling mouth. You'd let me, wouldn't you, blessed one?

For all that I've done or all that I've been, you'd let me?"

"Yes," whispered Dosia, trembling.

"Then remember it of me, for one poor thing of good, that I did not-that I was man enough to keep you free of me at the last. I'll never touch you again-no, not so much as the hem of your gown. And, so help me G.o.d, I'll never look upon your face again."

"Lawson, Lawson!"

"I'll never see your face again. When you think of me, believe and pray that I'll keep my word. I want to have the thought of you to die with."

"I can't bear it!" wailed Dosia suddenly.

"Good-by."

She made a motion as if to fling herself upon his breast, and his gesture stayed her. They stood, instead, looking at each other; the room faded away from before them in those moments that were of eternity. The past-the present-the future crept up now and stood between them, pushing them farther and farther away from each other, farther and farther, till even parting had become a fact long ago lived through and grown dim. They were neither man nor woman, but two souls who saw truth, and beyond it something beautifully just, even comforting.

Through the high window the darkening sky had become suddenly luminous where it touched the horizon.

Slowly she moved away from him-slowly, slowly. One last lingering, solemn look, and the door had closed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Lois, would you mind very much if we didn't move into the new house, after all?"

"Not move into the new house! What do you mean? I thought it would be finished next week."

"It means that I shall not be able to increase my living expenses this year," said Justin.

Husband and wife were sitting on the piazza, in the shade of the purple wistaria-vines, on a warm Sunday afternoon, a month after Dosia's return. At the side of the steps a bed of lilies-of-the-valley made the place fragrant; the air was full of a sort of glitter that touched the leaves whenever they swayed into the sunshine or the shadow, and made the gra.s.s brilliant in its new greenness. From within, the voices of the children sounded peacefully over their early supper.

The afternoon, so far, had savored only of domestic monotony, with no foreshadowing of events to come. Dosia was out walking with George Sutton, and the people who might "drop in," as they often did on Sundays, had other engagements to-day. Lois, gowned in lavender muslin, had been sitting on the piazza for an hour, trying to read while waiting for Justin to join her. She had counted each minute, but now that he was here she put down her book with a show of reluctance as she said:

"Why didn't you tell me before? I gave the order for the window-shades yesterday when I was in town-that was what I wanted to talk to you about this afternoon. You have to leave your order at least two weeks beforehand at this season of the year."

"You can countermand it, can't you?"

"I suppose I'll have to-if we're not to move into the house," said Lois in a high-keyed voice, with those tiresome tears coming, as usual, to her eyes. She felt inexpressibly hurt, disappointed, fooled. "I thought you said you were having so many orders lately. Does the money _all_ have to 'go back into the business,'" she quoted sardonically, "as usual? I think there might be some left for your own family sometimes.

I'm tired of always going without for the business." It was a complaint she had made many times before, but in each fresh pang of her resentment she felt as if she were saying it for the first time.

"We have orders, I'm glad to say, but we've had one big setback lately,"

he answered.

He knew, with a twinge, that she had some reason on her side-the very effort for success was meat and drink to him, he cared not what else he went without, so the business grew; but she _might_ have had a little more out of it as they went along, instead of waiting for the grand climax of undoubted prosperity. A little means so much to a wife sometimes, because it means the recognition of her right.

"I've been in a lot of trouble lately, Lois, though I haven't talked about it," he continued, with an unusual appeal in his voice. The blasting fact of those returned machines had been all he could cope with; he had been tongue-tied when it came to speaking about it-the whirl and counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, not diffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he had begun to see his way clear again, he had a sudden deep craving for the unreasoning sympathy of love.

"I waited until the last possible moment to tell you, in hopes that I shouldn't have to, Lois. Anyway, Saunders is going to put up a couple of houses for next year that you'll like much better, he says."

"Oh, it will be just the same next year; there'll always be something,"

said Lois indifferently, getting up to go into the house. "I hate the whole thing!"

He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He could have counted on quickest sympathy from her once; he knew in his heart that he could call it out even now if he chose, but he did not choose. If his own wife could be like that, she might be.

"Papa dear, I love you so much!"

He looked down to see his little fair-haired girl, white-ruffled and blue-ribboned, standing beside him a-tiptoe in her little white shoes, her arms reached up to tighten instantly around his neck as he bent over.

"Zaidee, my little Zaidee," he said, and, lifting her on his knee, strained her tightly to him with a rush of such pa.s.sionate affection that it almost unmanned him for the moment. She lay against his heart perfectly still. After a few moments she put her small hand to his lips, and he kissed it, and she smiled up at him, warm and secure-his little darling girl, his little princess. Yet, even in that joy of his child, he felt a new heart-hunger which no child love, beautiful as it was, could ever satisfy, any more than it could satisfy the heart-hunger of his wife.

She had begun, since the ball, to go around again as usual, and the house looked as if it had a mistress in it once more, though the atmosphere of a home was lacking. She was languid, irritable, and unsmiling, accepting Justin's occasional caresses as if they made little difference to her, though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce, pa.s.sionate remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him; it contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there were still occasionally evenings when he came home to find her windows darkened and everything in the household upset and forlorn; when every footfall must be adjusted to her ear-that ear that had strained and ached for his coming. Her whole day culminated in that poor, meager half-hour in which he sat by her, and in which her personality hardly reached him until he kissed her, on leaving, with a quick, remorseful affection at being so glad to go.

The typometer disaster had proved as bad as, and worse than, he had feared, but he was working retrieval with splendid effort, calling all his personal magnetism into play where it was possible. He had borrowed a large sum from Lewiston's,-a young private banking firm, glad at the moment to lend at a fairly large interest for a term of months,-holding on to the dissatisfied customers and creating new demand for the machine, so that the sales forged ahead of Cater's, with whom there was still a good-natured we-rise-together sort of rivalry, though it seemed at times as if it might take a sharper edge. Leverich's dictum regarding Cater embodied an extension of the policy to be pursued with minor, outlying compet.i.tors: "You'll have to force that fellow out of business or get him to come into the combine."

Leverich again smiled on Justin. Immediate success was the price demanded for the continuance of a backing; there was just a little of the high-handed quality in his manner which says, "No more nonsense, if you please." That morning after the ball had shown Justin the fangs that were ready, if he showed symptoms of "falling down," to shake him ratlike by the neck and cast him out.

"Papa dear, papa dear! There's a man coming up the walk, my papa dear."

"Why, so there is," said Justin, rising and setting the child down gently as he went forward with outstretched hand, while Lois simultaneously appeared once more on the piazza. "Why, how are you, Larue? I'm mighty glad to see you back again. When did you get home?"

"The steamer got in day before yesterday," said the newcomer, shaking hands heartily with host and hostess. He was a man with a dark, pointed beard and mustache, deep-set eyes, and an unusually pleasant deep voice that seemed to imply a grave kindliness. His glance lingered over Lois.

"How are you, Mrs. Alexander? Better, I hope? Which chair shall I push out of the sun for you-this one?"

"Yes, thank you," responded Lois, sinking into it, with her billows of lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green vines. "Aren't you going to sit down yourself?"

"Thank you, I've only a minute," said the visitor, leaning against one of the piazza-posts, his wide hat in his hand. "I'm out at my place at Collingswood for the summer, and the trains don't connect very well on Sunday. I had to run down here to see some people, but I thought I wouldn't pa.s.s you by."

"Did you have a pleasant trip?" asked Lois.

"Very pleasant," rejoined Mr. Larue, without enthusiasm. "Oh, by the way, Alexander, I heard that you were inquiring for me at the office last week. Anything I can do for you?"

"Have you any money lying around just now that you don't know what to do with?" asked Justin significantly.

Mr. Larue's dark, deep-set eyes took on the guarded change which the mention of money brings into social relations.

"Perhaps," he admitted.

"May I come around to-morrow at three o'clock and talk to you?"