Mrs. Sylvestre did not leave town early. The weather was reasonably cool, the house on Lafayette Square was comfortable, and Washington in spring is at its loveliest. She liked the lull after the season, and enjoyed it to its utmost, wisely refusing all invitations to fitful after-Lent gayeties. She held no more receptions, but saw her more intimate acquaintances in the evening, when they made their informal calls. With each week that passed, her home gave her greater pleasure and grew prettier.

"I never lose interest in it," she said to Arbuthnot. "It is a continued delight to me. I find that I think of it a great deal, and am fond of it almost as if it was a friend I had found. I think I must have been intended for a housewife."

Mrs. Merriam\'s liking for Laurence Arbuthnot having increased as their acquaintance progressed, his intimacy in the household became more and more an established fact.

"One should always number among one\'s acquaintance," the clever dowager remarked, "an agreeable, well-bred, and reliable man-friend,—a man one can ask to do things, if unforeseen occasions arise. He must be agreeable, since one must be intimate with him, and for the same reason he must be well-bred. Notwithstanding our large circle, we are a rather lonely pair, my dear."

Gradually Mrs. Sylvestre herself had found a slight change taking place in her manner toward Arbuthnot. She became conscious of liking him better, and of giving him more mental attention, as she saw him more familiarly. The idea dawned by slow degrees upon her that[Pg 393] the triviality of which she accused him was of an unusual order; that it was accompanied by qualities and peculiarities which did not seem to belong to it. She had discovered that he could deny himself pleasures he desired; that he was secretly thoughtful for others; that he was—also secretly—determined, and that he had his serious moments, however persistently he endeavored to conceal them. Perhaps the professor had given her more information concerning him than she could have gained by observation in any comparatively short space of time. "This frivolous fellow," he said to her one night, laying an affectionate hand on Arbuthnot\'s arm, as they were on the point of leaving the house together, after having spent the evening there,—"this frivolous fellow is the friend of my old age. I wonder why."

"So do I," said Arbuthnot. "I assure you that you could not find a reason, professor."

"There is a kind of reason," returned the professor, "though it is scarcely worthy of the name. This frivolous fellow is not such a trifler as he seems, and it interests me to see his seriousness continually getting the better of him when he fancies he has got it under and trodden it under his feet."

Arbuthnot laughed again,—the full, careless laugh which was so excellent an answer to everything.

"He maligns me, this dissector of the emotions," he said. "He desires artfully to give you the impression that I am not serious by nature. I am, in fact, seriousness itself. It is the wicked world which gets the better of me."

Which statement Mrs. Sylvestre might have chosen to place some reliance in as being a plausible one, if she had not seen the professor at other times, when he spoke of this friendship of his. It was certainly a warm one, and then, feeling that there must be reason for it, she began to see these reasons for herself, and appreciate something of their significance and value.

[Pg 394]

The change which finally revealed itself in her manner was so subtle in its character that Arbuthnot himself could not be sure when he had first felt it; sometimes he fancied it had been at one time, and again at another, and even now it was not easy for him to explain to himself why he knew that they were better friends.

But there was an incident in their acquaintance which he always remembered as a landmark.

This incident occurred at the close of the season. One bright moonlight night, having a fancy for making a call upon Bertha, who was not well enough to go out for several days, Mrs. Sylvestre made the visit on foot, accompanied by her maid. The night was so pleasant that they were walking rather slowly under the trees near Lafayette Park, when their attention was attracted by the sound of suppressed sobbing, which came from one of two figures standing in the shadow, near the railings, a few yards ahead of them. The figures were those of a man and a young woman, and the instant she saw the man, who was well dressed, Agnes Sylvestre felt her heart leap in her side, for she recognized Laurence Arbuthnot. He stood quite near the woman, and seemed trying to console or control her, while she—less a woman than a girl, and revealing in her childish face and figure all that is most pathetic in youth and helplessness—wept and wrung her hands.

"You must be quiet and have more confidence in"—Agnes heard Arbuthnot say; and then, prompted by some desperate desire to hear no more, and to avoid being seen, she spoke to her maid.

"Marie," she said, "we will cross the street."

But when they had crossed the street some chill in the night air seemed to have struck her, and she began to shiver so that Marie looked at her in some affright.

"Madame is cold," she said. "Is it possible that madame has a chill?"

"I am afraid so," her mistress replied, turning about[Pg 395] hurriedly. "I will not make the visit. I will return home."

A few minutes later, Mrs. Merriam, who had settled her small figure comfortably in a large arm-chair by the fire, and prepared to spend the rest of the evening with a new book, looked up from its first chapter in amazement, as her niece entered the room.

"Agnes!" she exclaimed. "What has happened! Are you ill? Why, child! you are as white as a lily."

It was true that Mrs. Sylvestre\'s fair face had lost all trace of its always delicate color, and that her hands trembled as she drew off her gloves.

"I began—suddenly—to feel so cold," she said, "that I thought it better to come back."

Mrs. Merriam rose anxiously.

"I hope it is not malaria, after all," she said. "I shall begin to think the place is as bad as Rome. You must have some hot wine."

"Send it upstairs, if you please," said Agnes. "I am going to my room; there is a large fire there."

And she went out as suddenly as she had appeared.

"I really believe she does not wish me to follow her," said Mrs. Merriam to herself.

"Is this malaria?" And having pondered upon this question, while she gave orders that the wine should be heated, she returned to her book after doing it, with the decision, "No, it is not."

Agnes drank very little of the wine when it was brought. She sat by the fire in her room and did not regain her color. The cold which had struck her had struck very deep; she felt as if she could not soon get warm again. Her eyes had a stern look as they rested on the fire; her delicate mouth was set into a curve of hopeless, bitter scorn; the quiet which settled upon her was even a little terrible, in some mysterious way. She heard a ring at the door-bell, but did not move, though she knew a caller was allowed to go to Mrs. Merriam. She was not in a mood to see callers; she could see [Pg 396]nobody; she wished to be left alone; but, in about half an hour, a servant came into her room.

"Mr. Arbuthnot is downstairs, and Mrs. Merriam wishes to know if Mrs. Sylvestre is better."

Mrs. Sylvestre hesitated a second before she replied.

"Say to Mrs. Merriam that I am better, and will join her."

She was as white as ever when she rose, even a shade whiter, and she felt like marble, though she no longer trembled.

"I will go down," she said, mechanically. "Yes, I will go down."

What she meant to say or do when she entered the room below perhaps she had not clearly decided herself. As she came in, and Arbuthnot rose to receive her, he felt a startled thrill of apprehension and surprise.

"I am afraid you are not really better," he said. "Perhaps I should not have asked to be allowed to see you."

He had suddenly an absurd feeling that there was such distance between them—that something inexplicable had set them so far apart—that it might almost be necessary to raise his voice to make her hear him.

"Thank you," she replied. "I was not really ill," and passed the chair he offered her, as if not seeing it, taking another one which placed the table between them.

Arbuthnot gave her a steady glance and sat down himself. Resolving in a moment\'s time that something incomprehensible had happened, he gathered himself together with another resolve, which did equal credit to his intelligence and presence of mind. This resolution was that he would not permit himself to be overborne by the mystery until he understood what it was, and that he would understand what it was before he left the house, if such a thing were possible. He had the coolness and courage to refuse to be misunderstood.

"I should not have hoped to see you," he said, in a quiet, level tone, still watching her, "but Mrs. Merriam[Pg 397] was so kind as to think you would be interested in something I came to tell her."

"Of course she will be interested," said Mrs. Merriam. "Such a story would interest any woman. Tell it to her at once."

"I wish you would do it for me," said Arbuthnot, with a rather reluctant accession of gravity. "It is really out of my line. You will make it touching—women see things so differently. I\'ll confess to you that I only see the miserable, sordid, forlorn side of it, and don\'t know what to do with the pathos. When that poor, little wretch cried at me and wrung her hands I had not the remotest idea what I ought to say to stop her—and Heaven knows I wanted her to stop. I could only make the mistaken remark that she must have confidence in me, and I would do my best for the childish, irresponsible pair of them, though why they should have confidence in me I can only say \'Heaven knows,\' again."

After she had seated herself Agnes had lightly rested her head upon her hand, as if to shade her eyes somewhat. When Arbuthnot began to speak she had stirred, dropping her hand a moment later and leaning forward; at this juncture she rose from her chair, and came forward with a swift, unconscious-looking movement. She stood up before Arbuthnot, and spoke to him.

"I wish to hear the story very much," she said, with a thrill of appeal in her sweet voice. "I wish you to tell it to me. You will tell it as—as we should hear it."

Nothing but a prolonged and severe course of training could have enabled Arbuthnot to preserve at this moment his outward composure. Indeed, he was by no means sure that it was preserved intact; he was afraid that his blond countenance flushed a little, and that his eyes were not entirely steady. He felt it necessary to assume a lightness of demeanor entirely out of keeping with his mental condition.

[Pg 398]

"I appreciate your confidence in me," he answered, "all the more because I feel my entire inadequacy to the situation. The person who could tell it as you ought to hear it is the young woman who waylaid me with tears near Lafayette Park about half an hour ago. She is a very young woman, in fact, an infant, who is legally united in marriage to another infant, who has been in the employ of the government, in the building I adorn with my presence. Why they felt it incumbent upon themselves to marry on an income of seventy-five dollars a month they do not explain in any manner at all satisfactory to the worldly mind. They did so, however, and lived together for several months in what is described as a state of bliss. They had two small rooms, and the female infant wore calico gowns, and did her own ridiculous, sordid, inferior housework, and rejoiced in the society of the male infant when a grateful nation released him from his daily labors."

Agnes quietly slipped into the chair he had first placed for her. She did it with a gentle, yielding movement, to which he was so little blind that he paused a second and looked at the fire, and made a point of resuming his story with a lighter air than before.

"They could not have been either happy or content under such absurd circumstances," he said; "but they thought they were. I used to see the male infant beaming over his labors in a manner to infuriate you. His wife used to come down to bear him from the office to the two rooms in a sort of triumphal procession. She had round eyes and dimples in her cheeks, and a little, round head with curls. Her husband, whose tastes were simple, regarded her as a beauty, and was given to confiding his opinion of her to his fellow-clerks. There was no objection to him but his youth and innocence. I am told he worked with undue enthusiasm in the hope of keeping his position, or even getting a better one, and had guileless, frenzied dreams of being able, in the course of the ensuing century, to purchase a small house[Pg 399] \'on time.\' I don\'t ask you to believe me when I tell you that the pair actually had such a house in their imbecile young minds, and had saved out of their starvation income a few dollars toward making their first payment on it. I didn\'t believe the man who told me, and I assure you he is a far more reliable fellow than I am."

He paused a second more. Was it possible that he found himself obliged to do so?

"They said," he added, "they said they \'wanted a home.\'"

He heard a soft, little sound at his side,—a soft, emotional little sound. It came from Mrs. Sylvestre. She sat with her slender hands clasped upon her knee, and, as the little sound broke from her lips, she clasped them more closely.

"Ah!" she said. "Ah! poor children!"

Arbuthnot went on.

"Ought I to blush to admit that I watched these two young candidates for Saint Elizabeth, and the poorhouse, with interest? They assisted me to beguile away some weary hours in speculation. I wondered when they would begin to be tired of each other; when they would find out their mistake, and loathe the paltriness of their surroundings; when the female infant would discover that her dimples might have been better invested, and that calico gowns were unworthy of her charms? I do blush to confess that I scraped an acquaintance with the male infant, with a view to drawing forth his views on matrimony and life as a whole. He had been wont to smoke inferior cigarettes in the days of his gay and untrammelled bachelorhood, but had given up the luxurious habit on engaging himself to the object of his affections. He remarked to me that \'a man ought to have principle enough to deny himself things when he had something to deny himself for, and when a man had a wife and a home he had something to deny himself for, and if he was a man[Pg 400] he\'d do it.\' He was very ingenuous, and very fond of enlarging confidingly upon domestic topics and virtues and joys, and being encouraged could be relied upon so to enlarge—always innocently and with inoffensive, youthful enthusiasm—until deftly headed off by the soulless worldling. I gave him cigars, and an order of attention, which seemed to please him. He remarked to his fellow-clerks that I was a man who had \'principles\' and \'feelings,\' consequently I felt grateful to him. He had great confidence in \'principles.\' The bold thought had presented itself to him that if we were more governed by \'principles,\' as a nation, we should thrive better, and there would be less difficulty in steering the ship of state; but he advanced the opinion hesitantly as fearing injustice to his country in the suggestion."

"You are making him very attractive," said Mrs. Merriam. "There is something touching about it all."

"He was attractive to me," returned Laurence, "and he was touching at times. He was crude, and by no means brilliant, but there wasn\'t an evil spot in him; and his beliefs were of a strength and magnitude to bring a blush to the cheek of the most hardened. He recalled the dreams of youth, and even in his most unintelligently ardent moments appealed to one. Taking all these things into consideration, you will probably see that it was likely to be something of a blow to him to find himself suddenly thrown out upon the world without any resource whatever."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs. Sylvestre, earnestly. "Surely you are not going to tell us"—

"That he has lost his office," said Laurence. "Yes. Thrown out. Reason—place wanted for some one else. I shouldn\'t call it a good reason myself. I find others who would not call it a good reason; but what are you going to do?"

"What did he do?" asked Agnes.

"He came into my room one day," answered Laurence, "just as I was leaving it. He was white and[Pg 401] his lips trembled in a boyish way that struck me at the moment as being rather awful. He looked as if he had been knocked down. He said to me, \'Mr. Arbuthnot, I\'ve lost my place,\' and then, after staring at me a few seconds, he added, \'Mr. Arbuthnot, what would you do?\'"

"It is very cruel," said Agnes. "It is very hard."

"It is as cruel as Death!" said Arbuthnot. "It is as hard as Life! That such a thing is possible—that the bread and home and hopes of any honest, human creature should be used as the small change of power above him, and trafficked with to sustain that power and fix it in its place to make the most of itself and its greed, is the burning shame and burden which is slung around our necks, and will keep us from standing with heads erect until we are lightened of it."

He discovered that he was in earnest, and recklessly allowed himself to continue in earnest until he had said his say. He knew the self-indulgence was indiscreet, and felt the indiscretion all the more when he ended and found himself confronted by Mrs. Sylvestre\'s eyes. They were fixed upon him, and wore an expression he had never had the pleasure of seeing in them before. It was an expression full of charming emotion, and the color was coming and going in her cheek.

"Go on," she said, rather tremulously, "if you please.&quo............