Her face was white and tear-stained. I had no sooner closed the door of their sitting-room behind me, than she flung herself upon my breast and burst into a storm of sobs. After a long time words began to mingle with the sobs.

"It will kill me. Why does he want me to die? . . . I've only got you. . . . I want to belong to you--to you."

I talked and I talked, and I soothed and I soothed, but she was sick with grief and pain and a kind of insane resentment, as if she had gone through a major operation without an anesthetic. It would have been horrible to see anybody suffer so. And she was the woman I loved! The strain was so great upon me that at last my powers of resistance snapped. I flung honor to the winds, and became strong with resolution. And now my words seemed to pierce her consciousness and to calm her.

"It's all right, Lucy." I had to speak loudly at first, as if she was deaf. "You shan't suffer like this. I tell you you shan't--not if I am d.a.m.ned to h.e.l.l."

I knew now that she was listening, the sobs became m.u.f.fled and less frequent. "It's you and me against the world now," I said. "There'll be no more flimflamming. I promised John to wait a year. That doesn't matter. A promise made at your expense won't hold. . . . When is your husband coming back?"

". . . hour," was all the answer I got. . . .

"Then there's not much time left. Try to pull yourself together.

We've got to make all our plans right now, and there's not much time."

"You will take me away?"

"Of course. Now listen. There's no sense in putting your husband on his guard. Let him think that we are both agreed to the year's probation. I'll look up things and engage pa.s.sage. I'll do that this afternoon. Tonight I'll go to Hot Springs to see my father and get money. My own balance is very low, unfortunately. Day after tomorrow I'll be in town again. Now, how are we going to communicate?"

I can't say that she was calm now, but she no longer sobbed, and her mind was in working order again.

"By telephone," she said. "Every morning when I know John's plans for the day I'll let you know, and so you'll know when to call me up."

Already the antic.i.p.ations of our great adventure were bringing back the color to her cheeks and the sparkle to her eyes. I smiled at her.

"Don't be too cheerful," I said; "we might get ourselves suspected."

"Couldn't we just tell John that we had decided to go--and go?"

"Better not."

"I hate to deceive and play act and be underhanded."

"So do I--but--Lucy, darling, you're going to trust me in more important things than this. I _think_ my way is best. We don't want any more agonies and recriminations and scenes. _Do_ we?"

I took her in my arms and whispered, "It's only a few days now, but I don't see how I can wait. I don't see how."

And she burrowed with her face between my cheek and shoulder, and whispered back, "And I don't see how I can wait."

There was a little s.p.a.ce of very tense silence, during which my eyes roved to the little silver traveling-clock on the mantel, and then I said in a voice that shook:

"I'd better get out before he comes back."

x.x.xI

My parents, loafing North, via Hot Springs, were delighted to see me.

As soon as courtesy to my mother made it possible, I got my father aside, and told him that my real purpose in coming was to raise the wind.

"I need a lot of money," I said; "sooner or later you'll know why. So I may as well tell you."

My father's fine weather-beaten face of a country squire expressed an interest at once frankly affectionate and tinged with a kind of detached cynicism.

"I am going to run off with Lucy Fulton," I said.

"I supposed that was it," said my father, without evincing the least surprise.

"You _did_?"

"Oh, we old fellows put an ear to the ground now and then," he explained; "and sometimes sleep with one eye open. Punch's advice to the young couple about to marry was 'Don't.' My advice to you and Lucy is double don't. Why not give yourselves a year to think it all over, as John Fulton so sanely and generously suggests?"

Astonishment at my father's superhuman knowledge of events must have showed in my face. Still smiling with frank affection, he said, "John put me in touch with the whole situation before he left Aiken. The year of probation was my suggestion to him."

"But Lucy and I can't agree."

"Then you can't. Do you sail, fly, entrain, or row--and when?"

"We sail, father, next Wednesday."

"A week from today. I am profoundly sorry. It's very rough on Fulton, just when he has closed with this Russian contract and is by way of getting rich."

"It's our _one_ chance for happiness, father."

He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at me. "And I think it is your one sure road to misery."

"But you'll see me through?"

"Come to me a year from today. Tell me that during that time you have neither seen Lucy nor communicated with her, but that you still love each other--_then_ I'll see you _through_."

"My dear father, it's so much better for you to put up the money than for me to borrow it from one of my friends."

"Only because the friend would expect you to pay him back. How would you live when his money was gone--keep on borrowing?"

"Why, father, you're acting like a parent in an old-fashioned novel.

Are you threatening to cut me off?"

"My son," said he, "a man who had done well, and who deserved well of the world came to me and showed me his heart--a heart tormented beyond endurance with unreturned love, with jealousy, and with despair. He threw himself upon my mercy. And I said that I would help him, with whatever power of help I have at command. I don't love that man, my son. I love you. But I am on his side. All my fighting blood is aroused when I learn that still another American husband has been wronged by his wife, and by an idle flirting bachelor. G.o.d keep me firm in what must seem to you like cruelty in one to whom you have always turned with the utmost frankness and loyalty in your emergencies. And from whom until this moment you have always received help."

I was appalled and thunderstruck. After a while I said, "Father, she sobbed so that I thought she would break a blood vessel. I couldn't stand it. I had to say I would take her away. If I don't, I think she will die or kill herself."

My father drew himself up very straight, and looked very handsome and stern, for a moment. Then his frame relaxed and his eyes twinkled, and he said, "Die? Kill herself? My grandmother!"

"Oh, father," I cried, "don't! Don't! She is all the world to me.

You talk as if----"

"I talk as if she was an excellent example of the modern American wife in what the papers call 'society.' And that is precisely what she is.

You know that as well as I do. Just because you love her is no reason for pretending that she's a saint and a martyr and the victim of a grand historical pa.s.sion. She _is_ lovely to look at. She _is_ charming to be with. But that doesn't prevent her from being a bad little egg."

"Father," I said, as gently as I could, "I love her with all my heart.