...

When a man has been driving cattle in blizzards, or muffling his mouth against the yellow dust of summer days for an uninterrupted period of three years, there comes a time, no matter how much he may love his little cow-ponies, and gray expanses of sage-brush, and all the poignant moments of the country in which he lives, when he wants gayety and plenty of it, gayety unshaken by the sterner facts of life. I had reached this point. For certain things I had been thirsting as a man thirsts for dusk in August; streets, for instance, with a veil of fog giving mystery to a thousand blinking electric signs; crowds, so that you hear the high, whispering accumulation of voices, feel the insistent elbows, smell the curious, sodden, inspiring smell of slightly damp, not very good clothes. And then, from all this, I wanted to come back to the unexpected quiet and aloofness of a club; to low-voiced, well-scrubbed servants; to a bed of cool sheets; to a morning of a valet and a porcelain tub and new and beautiful clothes. In short, I wanted to touch again for a while the thrilling magic of material comforts. And, particularly, I didn't want to think. I had been back a week; I was just settling down to a full enjoyment of the things I have described; life, meanwhile, with its incurable sardonicism, was taking not the least account of what I wanted or did not want. Out of the warm, tree-scented dusk of a May evening the sinister and the unexpected strolled in upon me. Its messenger, of all people in the world, was PritchardPritchard, blond, bland, bred to the now archaic school that gentlemen should never show their feelings.

He-Pritchard-greeted me with the harmless condescension he practises; he placed one beautiful brown, begaitered boot on the foot-rail of the bar; in a disinterested voice he admitted a desire for a cocktail; in the same disinterested voice he informed me that the Carstons were back in New York, Mansfield Carston invalided from the trenches in Flanders, where, for the past two years, he had been. Fate seems to prefer for the conveying of its more tragic messages couriers with about them a touch of the futility of

nificance of the information I had just received failed to come home to me; I was merely glad at the prospect of seeing, contrary to expectation, the Carstons so soon; merely greatly relieved that Mansfield Carston, with that brain of his so sensitive to beauty, those eyes with back of them so many pictures yet to be painted, was out of the hideous uncertainties of war. Inspiring as had been his sacrifice in enlisting, it had always seemed to me a sacrifice too great. Then, suddenly, a realization of the oddity of it all touched me. Although I saw them only at rare intervals, the Carstons were amongst the very best friends I had in New York; were amongst the few people whose movements I followed from my isolation in Wyoming. I had loved them both-and I use the much-abused word advisedly ever since, ten years before, they had come, half without knowing why, to New York. I had watched them develop, from a shy, slim, gracefully awkward young British painter of portraits, and a shy, slim, auburn-haired young wife, into the winged sort of people they now were: the direct, dexterous-minded man; the delicately resilient, mistily beautiful woman. These attributes of Alice Carston-this quality of delicate resilience, this quality of misty beauty-need bearing in mind, for in the eyes of most of her friends the latter attribute far outweighed the former. I had never thought so. She had always given me the impression of sunset across cornfields-strength, you perceive; brooding thought; and I had always been sure that it was she who had directed the somewhat errant stream of her impatient husband's nature into the broad channel of accomplishment. Women are constantly doing this: making little dams along leaky banks; pulling out of the way dangerous driftwood; very alert; persistently anxious; and men seldom know about it.

Filaments of all these associated thoughts crossed my mind as I stared at Pritchard and grew into a definite perplexity. Why hadn't I known that the Carstons were back? Why hadn't I known that Mansfield Carston was wounded? Why had there been no mention of his return in the papers? Through

all the anxiety that was hers, through all the difficulties that surround war-time mails, Alice Carston had, during her two years' stay in England, written me at intervals of a month. Her last letter had reached me only a couple of weeks before.

"They're not searching out their friends," said Pritchard.

I trust I am not given to premature apprehension a middle-aged man in the cattle business shouldn't be-but at the moment a little, unexpected sense of oppression, of the untoward, blew upon me like a cold draft from a hidden crack. I do not like oppression, I do not like the untoward; I am averse to mystery. I attempted to corner Pritchard. It was curious to see embarrassment, hesitation, uncertainty struggle for possession of his careful, negative face. He pushed aside his glass; then he turned to me in sudden decision.

"I can tell you nothing," he said; "not a thing. I am as perplexed as you. I only know there is something hidden and out of the way, something beyond my experience. You see, I only saw the Carstons for a few minutes the other night, and"- he interrupted himself and stared vaguely at the wall opposite-"it happened to be fairly dark." I wondered what this had to do with what he was saying and why it was so carefully emphasized, but I had no time to question him, for he immediately proceeded; he proceeded, for Pritchard, with extreme volubility. I gathered that here were injured feelings. After all, he asked, he was one of the earliest and best friends the Carstons had, wasn't he? A little consideration was due him, wasn't it? Yes, just a little consideration. Hadn't he bought the first picture Mansfield Carston had ever sold in New York? Yes, that girl with the oranges. And now, here they were acting in a way he couldn't understand. Not a word to him of their being back; not a word. He had come across Alice Carston merely by chance in the street, and he had noticed right away an odd aloofness in her manner, an odd lack of cordiality, when he announced, as of course any one would have announced under the circumstances, his intention of calling at once.

"But I don't understand you," I insisted. "I don't know what you mean. Do you think there's something disgraceful?" I faced about on him. What are you talking about, anyhow? Do you mean to imply that Carston isn't really wounded?"

There was a little minute of silence before Pritchard answered; when he did, he said an astonishing thing. "Yes, he said, "that's just it! I don't know whether he's wounded or not." He allowed me a pause for this announcement to sink in. "That's just it," he continued; "just it! When you see a man sitting in a chair apparently as well as he's ever been, when he talks quite frankly about everything else in the world except what's the matter with him, but when, at the same time, from the moment you enter a room until you leave it, you are clearly aware of an atmosphere of reserve reserve about real things, that isand that on the part of two old friends whom you haven't seen for months, you wonder, that's all. You wonder, and you don't know."

He drew himself up. "I wouldn't talk this way," he observed, with a return to his old, muffled manner, "except to you and a few other of Mansfield Carston's friends. No, I wouldn't talk this way at all. I don't approve of conjecture, anyhow-and particularly about Mansfield Carston." He ate an olive apprehensively. "I've never met a man," he resumed, "so proud and so sensitive; have you? Never. No, I never met a man like him. And, do you know-it's queer, it's queer, but I've always had about him the feeling that if you were to say behind his back things he didn't like he'd know about it the next time you saw him." He looked at me anxiously. "Did you ever feel that way?" he asked. "He's-he's the most pervading man I've ever met." He wiped his mustache with a handkerchief of fine linen. "Going to dine here?" he concluded, with evident relief at the change of subject.

I shook my head. "No," I said. "No." As a matter of fact, it had been my intention to do so, but I felt that at the moment I could get along very well without further conversation with Pritchard. I wanted to think, and, although the

Pritchards of the world may occasionally start one thinking, they seldom aid in the furtherance of the task.

Not far off was a small and fairly quiet hotel. I sought its down-stairs restaurant and chose a table in a corner. I proceeded to piece together what I had heard. It seemed to have no relation to fact. It was quite possible to imagine Mansfield Carston doing a foolish thing, but wellnigh impossible to imagine him doing a shameful one. A man who gives up a career, gives up a life it has taken him ten years to make, draws back from the very threshold of fame, submerges an impatient, shining individuality in the great anonymity of war, because of the adventi-. tious gift of being born an Englishman, begins bravely, quixotically. A high degree of sensitiveness, of imagination, is necessary for such an act. And the highly imaginative man may be afraidin fact, always is afraid-but he is more afraid of fear than of death. And Carston had gone on bravely. In Wyoming word had reached me of his promotion, of a second promotion, of a mention in despatches. I remember at the time trying to visualize him in his new, so strange surroundings; his thin, freshly colored face, with its shy, brown, humorous eyes-eyes that had in them that look of perspective instantly grasped the eyes of painters are so likely to have; his mouth, under its close-cropped black mustache; and particularly I saw his hands, those beautiful, proficient hands. I imagined them hanging, with their slim, strong wrists showing, from the sleeves of a tunic too short for him. He was excessively long-boned. Somehow, one thought of him most as peering out at night above barricades, wondering if here, or perhaps there, or perhaps over there, beauty was to be found amidst all the hideous litter of war. He would be sure to find beauty somewhere. And I remembered later on going into the house and finding there a magazine lately come and in it a poem. One stanza seemed peculiarly apt to the news I had just received.

The glory of the wild green earthand the bravery of man! No, they had not altered-either of them. It was extraordinary-all these years; it was very heartening as well. It made a queer, splendid little shiver run across your shoulders; a fine, cold feeling touch your jaws.

Now, as I sat at my table in the restaurant, I recalled the poem and the thoughts it had given me. No, whatever it was that Carston was concealing, I felt sure that here was no ordinary secret of the wreck of war. The decision to see the Carstons-or to attempt to see themgrew in me. I have a theory that assistance, sincerely offered, no matter how much resented it may be at first, is in the end invariably welcome.

I paid my bill and went out into the street. In the main dining-room above the grill where I had been, the orchestra was playing a waltz. The windows, set with flowers in long boxes, were open, and the strains of the music drifted into the soft warmth of the spring night. The incredible wistfulness of waltzes struck me afresh. They are constantly reaching after a gayety their very real beauty prevents them ever from attaining. Life wants so much to be gay; and life has always to be satisfied instead with beauty, that antithesis of gayety. Suddenly I found myself laughing with rather dreary amusement at the way my holiday, so pleasantly begun, was beginning to end.

And yet the human mind is a confused affair. At first, when I arrived at the Carstons', I experienced distinct disappointment; felt greatly let down; a little bit silly. Everything seemed perfectly natural, perfectly ordinary, exactly what I remembered it to have been three years before. I don't know what I had been expecting; one never does know exactly what one expects when one has a sense of disaster; but to find apparent outward peace is invariably disconcerting. That it is usual makes no difference. We cannot accustom ourselves, despite experience, to the persistent anticlimaxes of life. We hear of tragedy, but when we

not

Since ever the world began

The glory of the wild green earth

And the bravery of man."

istence going on much as usual; perhaps a red nose or two, that's all. We expect pomp and banners; we very seldom get

the Carstons' garden, had been very quiet and dark. An Italian man servant, whom I remembered from my previous visits, had answered my ring and had asked me to wait outside, as the main part of the house was stripped for packing. The little garden, under a thick sky, heavy with stars, lay odorous and strangely remote from the encompassing city. There was a smell of grass, of flowering bushes;

But in a minute or two Alice Carston had come down to me and had invited me up to the studio, and, although in the light of the hallway stairs I had studied her face, I could see about it nothing exceptional. Perhaps she was a trifle graver; perhaps she smiled more with her lips and less with her eyes. I could not tell; there were a good many shadows about.

"Mannie is not walking much as yet,"

she said, "or he would have come down himself to welcome you. He will be so glad to see you."

How silly of Pritchard! And how silly of me to allow myself to be disturbed by his vague imaginings! As if necessarily a man's wounds would be where anybody could see and diagnose them! I found myself resenting Pritchard and the whole tribe of whispering, conjecturing, "social detectives." I laughed aloud, greatly, I am sure, to Alice Carston's astonishment. "How is his wound getting along?" I asked. "Where did he get it?"

I blamed my fancy that I imagined that there was a perceptible pause before she answered and that, as she turned toward me on the landing opposite the studio door, a veiling of her eyes, like a sudden wind over calm water, took place. She laid her hand on my arm; I thought her fingers unnecessarily tense.

"He-?" she said. "Oh, yes! He is much better, thanks. But don't mention it to him, please. Not a word of it." We opened the door and went in.

The odd, fascinating, bazaar-like smell of a place where men paint pictures met

us.

The room was mostly in shadow. In one corner, by a table on which stood a lamp with a crimson shade, Carston was sitting in a high-backed chair. His face and figure were indistinct.

"Here's Walter, Mannie," said his wife. Carston did not get up. "Ah, my dear fellow!" he said. "My dear fellow! The one person in New York I really wanted to see! Come here and shake hands with me. I can't quite come to you-but some day I'll be able to. Very soon, I hope. Alice, tell Emmanuel to bring some whiskey and biscuits."

I lit a cigarette and took one of Carston's big, enveloping chairs, a chair on the other side of the table from where he was sitting, one of the chairs with gorgeous, faded brocade covers I so well remembered. I looked about the room with warm satisfaction. It was nice to be back; to be back here again; to be again with these two dear people. I recalled a night, not so many weeks before, when I had snow-shoed from sundown to sunup through the strangling cold of zero weather. That had been to westward; and eastward were all the scarred battle

fields that Carston had so recently left. I smiled at Alice Carston as she sat down opposite me and picked up some needlework. She smiled back.

I cannot tell when first I began to alter my impression of relief; when first began a return of the uneasiness, the anxiety of a short while before. Such a state of mind grows upon you imperceptibly; is the result of silences, gestures, indefinable mental attitudes. You come from entire unconsciousness to full-fledged certainty. Perhaps in this case it was Alice Carston's evident desire to avoid talking about the war; perhaps it was Carston's vagueness as to his future plans; perhaps it was— and here was the only definite thing I could lay hold of the sudden, extraordinary, unlike-herself anger with which Alice Carston rebuked the servant when he placed the whiskey decanter and biscuits on the table near her husband and away from me.

"Never do that!" she commanded, a high, metallic quality in her voice. "I have told you before. Put the tray beside Mr. Harbison!"

In itself the speech was entirely unimportant and natural, but the tone that accompanied it was not in the least unimportant and natural when it fell on the ears of a person who knew Alice Carston and knew her gentleness and her definite philosophy of gentleness where inferiors were concerned. "One may, possibly, be harsh with the powerful," she had once told me, "but with the humble? Oh, no, never! That's dulling your own heart." And now, here she was doing this very same detested thing. There were only three possible explanations: either her nerves were bad, or she was angry, or she was frightened. The first, in view of her calmness, her clear, if somewhat thin, look of health, seemed preposterous; the remaining two had back of them certainly no obvious reasons. At all events, whatever the reason, my perplexity and discomfort increased. I felt myself even growing a little angry, as one does under circumstances of the kind where people with whom one is intimate are concerned. I objected to this sudden closing me out of their lives on the part of the Carstons. Friendship is too rare a thing for one to allow, without struggle, the curtain of