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Title: The Bacillus of Beauty
       A Romance of To-day

Author: Harriet Stark

Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9081]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 4, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BACILLUS OF BEAUTY ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Richard Prairie and Distributed Proofreaders




                                  BACILLUS

                                     OF

                                   BEAUTY

                          _A Romance of To-day_

                                  _BY_

                               HARRIET STARK

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

            Book I: _The Broken Chrysalis:_

      I. THE METAMORPHOSIS
     II. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD
    III. THE HORNETS' NEST
     IV. THE GODDESS AND THE MOB
      V. A HIGH-CLASS CONCERT

           Book II: _The Birth of the Butterfly:_

      I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT
     II. A SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON
    III. THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE
     IV. GIRL BACHELOR AND BIOLOGIST
      V. THE FINDING OF THE BACILLUS
     VI. THE GREAT CHANGE
    VII. THE COMING OF THE LOVER

           Book III: _The Joy of the Sunshine:_

      I. CHRISTMAS
     II. A LOOKING OVER BY THE PACK
    III. SNARLING AT THE COUNCIL ROCK
     IV. IN THE INTERESTS OF MUSIC
      V. A PLAGUE OF REPORTERS
     VI. LOVE IS NOTHING
    VII. LOVE IS ALL
   VIII. A LITTLE BELATED EARL

           BOOK IV: _The Bruising of the Wings:_

      I. THE KISS THAT LIED
     II. THE IRONY OF LIFE
    III. THE SUDDENNESS OF DEATH
     IV. SOME REMARKS ABOUT CATS
      V. THE LOVE OF LORD STRATHAY
     VI. LITTLE BROWN PARTRIDGES
    VII. LETTERS AND SCIENCE
   VIII. A CHAPERON ON A CATTLE TRAIN
     IX. A BURST OF SUNLIGHT
      X. PLIGHTED TROTH

           BOOK V: _The End of the Beginning:_

      I. THE DEEDS OF THE FARM
     II. CADGE'S ASSIGNMENT
    III. "P.P.C."




BOOK I.


THE BROKEN CHRYSALIS.

_(From the Shorthand Notes of John Burke.)_


THE BACILLUS OF BEAUTY



CHAPTER I.


THE METAMORPHOSIS.

NEW YORK, Sunday, Dec. 16.

I am going to set down as calmly and fully as I can a plain statement of
all that has happened since I came to New York.

I shall not trim details, nor soften the facts to humour my own amazement,
nor try to explain the marvel that I do not pretend to understand.

I begin at the beginning--at the plunge into fairy tale and miracle that I
made, after living twenty-five years of baldest prose, when I met Helen
Winship here.

Why, I had dragged her to school on a sled when she was a child. I watched
her grow up. For years I saw her nearly every day at the State University
in the West that already seems so unreal, so far away, I loved her.

Man, I knew her face better than I knew my own! Yet when I met her here--
when I saw my promised wife, who had kissed me good-by only last June--I
did not recognise her. I looked full into her great eyes and thought she
was a stranger; hesitated even when she called my name. It's a miracle! Or
a lie, or a wild dream; or I am going crazy. The thing will not be
believed. And yet it's true.

This is my calmness! If I could but think it might be a tremendous blunder
out of which I would sometime wake into verity! But there has been no
mistake; I have not been dreaming unless I am dreaming now.

As distinctly as I see the ugly street below, I remember everything that
has befallen me since my train pulled into Jersey City last Thursday
morning. I remember as one does who is served by sharpened senses. Only
once in a fellow's lifetime can he look upon New York for the first time--
and to me New York meant Helen. Everything was vividly impressed upon my
mind.

I crossed the Cortlandt Street ferry and walked up Broadway, wondering
what Helen would say if I called before breakfast. I could scarcely wait.
I stopped in front of St. Paul's Church, gaping up at a twenty-six story
building opposite; a monstrous shaft with a gouge out of its south side as
if lightning had rived off a sliver. I went over to it and saw that I had
come to Ann Street, where Barnum's museum used to stand. The Post Office,
the City Hall, the restaurant where I ate breakfast, studying upon the
wall the bible texts and signs bidding me watch my hat and overcoat; the
_Tribune_ building, just as it looks on the almanac cover--all these
made an instant, deep impression. Not in the least like a dream.

By the statue of Horace Greeley I stood a moment irresolute. I knew that,
before I could reach her, Helen would have left her rooms for Barnard
College; breakfast had been a mistake. Then I noticed that Nassau Street
was just opposite; and, in spite of my impatience to be at her door, I
constrained myself to look up Judge Baker.

Between its Babel towers narrow Nassau Street was like a canyon. The
pavements were wet, for folks had just finished washing windows, though it
was eight o'clock in the forenoon. Bicycles zipped past and from somewhere
north a freshet of people flooded the sidewalk and roadway.

Down a steep little hill and up another--both thronged past belief--and in
a great marble maze of lawyers' offices I found the sign of Baker &
Magoun.

The boy who alone represented the firm said that I might have to wait some
minutes, and turned me loose to browse in the big, high-ceiled outer room
or library of the place where I am to work. After the dim corridors it was
a blaze of light. On all sides were massive bookshelves; the doorways gave
glimpses of other rooms, fine with rugs and pictures and heavy desks,
different enough from the plain fittings of the country lawyers' workshops
I had known. The carpet sank under my feet as I went to the window.

I stood looking at the Jersey hills, blue and fair in the distance, and
dreaming of Helen, who was to bless and crown my good fortune, when I
heard a step at the door and a young man came in--a tall, blonde, supple
fellow not much older than I. Then the Judge appeared, ponderous, slow of
tread, immaculate of dress; the same, unless his iron-gray locks have
retreated yet farther from his wall of a brow, that I have remembered him
from boyhood.

"Burke!" he said, "I am glad to see you. Welcome to New York and to this
office, my boy!"

The grasp of his big warm hand was as good as the words and the eyes
beneath his heavy gray brows were full of kindness as, holding both my
hands in his, he drew me toward the young man who had preceded him. With a
winning smile the latter turned.

"Hynes," said the Judge, with a heartiness that made one forget his formal
manner, "you have heard me speak of Burke's father, the boyhood companion
with whom, when the finny tribes were eager, I sometimes strayed from the
strait and narrow path that led to school. Burke, Hynes is the sportsman
here--our tiger-slayer. He beards in their lairs those Tammany ornaments
of the bench whom the flippant term 'necessity Judges,' because of their
slender acquaintance with the law."

"Glad to see you, Burke," said Hynes, as dutifully we laughed together at
the time-honoured jest.

I knew from the look of him that he was a good fellow, and he had an
honest grip; though out where I come from we might call him a dude. All
New Yorkers seem to dress pretty well.

Presently Managing Clerk Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusque and
mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few words with
them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a great lump rose
in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank him for all his
great kindness.

"Consider, if it pleases you," he said, to put me quite at my ease, "that
I have proposed our arrangement, not so much on your own account as
because I loved your father and must rely upon his son. It brings back my
youth to speak his name--your name, Johnny Burke!"

Yes, I remember the words, I remember the tremour in the kind voice and
the mist of unshed tears through which he looked at me. I'm not dreaming;
sometimes I wish I were, almost.

When I left the Judge, of course I pasted right up to Union Square, though
I felt sure that Helen would be at college. No. 2 proved to be a dingy
brick building with wigs and armour and old uniforms and grimy pictures in
the windows, and above them the signs of a "dental parlour" and a school
for theatrical dancing.

It seemed an odd place in which to look for Nelly, but I pounded up the
worn stairs--dressmakers' advertisements on every riser--until I reached
the top floor, where a meal-bag of a woman whose head was tied up in a
coloured handkerchief confronted me with dustpan and broom.

"I'm the new leddy scrubwoman, and not afther knowin' th' names av th'
tinants," she said, "but av ut's a gir-rul ye're seekin', sure they's two
av thim in there, an' both out, I'm thinkin'."

I pushed a note for Nelly under the door she indicated--it bore the cards
of "Miss Helen Winship" and "Miss Kathryn Reid"--and hurried away to look
up this gem of a hall bedroom where I am writing; you could wear it on a
watch chain, but I pay $3 a week for it. The landlady would board me for
$8, but regular dinners at restaurants are only twenty-five cents; good,
too. And anybody can breakfast for fifteen.

Then I went back to Union Square, where I hung about, looking at the
statues. Once I walked as far as Tammany Hall and rushed back again to
watch Helen's door. Finally I sat down on a bench from which I could see
her windows; and there in the brief December sunlight, with the little
oasis around me green even in winter, and the roar of Dead Man's Curve
just far enough away, I suppose I spent almost the happiest moments of my
life.

I was looking at Nelly's picture, taken in cap and gown just before she
graduated last June. My Nelly! Nelly as she used to be before this strange
thing happened; eager-eyed, thin with over-study and rapid growth. Nelly,
whose bright face, swept by so many lights and shadows of expression,
sensitive to so many shifting moods, I loved and yearned for. Nearly six
months we'd been apart, but at last I had followed to New York to claim
her. As I sat smiling at the dream pictures the dear face evoked, my brain
was busy with thoughts of the new home we would together build. I'd hoard
every penny, I planned; I'd walk to save car-fare, practice all
economies--

Wasn't that a face at her window?

I reached the top landing again, three steps at a time; but the voice that
said "Come!" was not Helen's and the figure that turned from pulling at
the shades was short and rolypoly and crowned by flaming red hair.

"Miss Winship?" said the voice, as its owner seated herself at a big
table. "Can't imagine what's, keeping her. Are you the John Burke I've
heard so much about? And--perhaps Helen has written to you of Kitty Reid?"

Without waiting for a reply, she bent over the table, scratching with a
knife at a sheet of bold drawings of bears.

"You won't mind my keeping right on?" she queried briskly, lifting a rosy,
freckled face. "This is the animal page of the Sunday _Star_ and
Cadge is in a hurry for it, to do the obbligato."

I suppose I must have looked the puzzlement I felt, for she added
hastily:--

"The text, you know; a little cool rill of it to trickle down through the
page like a fine, thin strain of music that--that helps out the song--tee-
e-e-um; tee-e-e-um--" She lifted her arm, sawing with a long ruler at a
violin of air,--"but you don't have to listen unless you wish--to the
obbligato, you know."

"Doesn't the writer think the pictures the unobtrusive embroidery of the
violin, and the writing the magic melody one cannot choose but hear?"

I thought that rather neat for my first day in New York, but the shrewd
blue eyes opened wide at the heresy.

"Why, no; of course Cadge knows it's the pictures that count; everybody
knows that."

A writing-table jutted into the room from a second window, backing against
Miss Reid's. On its flap lay German volumes on biology and a little
treatise in English about "Advanced Methods of Imbedding, Sectioning and
Staining." The window ledge held a vase of willow and alder twigs, whose
buds appeared to be swelling. Beside it was a glass of water in which
seeds were sprouting on a floating island of cotton wool.

"Admiring Helen's forest?" came the voice from the desk. "I'm afraid
there's only second growth timber left; she carried away the great
redwoods and all the giants of the wilderness this morning. Are you
interested in zoology? Sometimes, since I have been living with Helen, I
have wished more than anything else to find out, What is protoplasm? Do
you happen to know?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Neither does Helen--nor any one else."

Miss Reid's merry ways are infectious. I'm glad Helen is rooming with a
nice girl.

The place was shabby enough, with cracked and broken ceiling, marred
woodwork and stained wall paper; but etchings, foreign photographs,
sketches put up with thumb tacks and bright hangings made it odd and
attractive. On a low couch piled with cushions lay Helen's mandolin and a
banjo. A plaster cast of some queer animal roosted on the mantel, craning
its neck down towards the fireplace.

"That's the Notre Dame devil," Miss Reid said, following my glance; "the
other is the Lincoln Cathedral devil." She nodded at a wide-mouthed imp,
clawing at a door-top. "Don't you just adore gargoyles?"

"Yes; that is--very much," I stammered, wandering back to Helen's desk.
And then!

And then I heard quick steps outside. They reached the door and paused. I
looked up eagerly. "There's Helen now," said Miss Reid; "or else Cadge."

A tall girl burst into the room, dropping an armful of books, and sprang
to Miss Reid.

"Kitty! Kitty!" she cried, in a voice of wonderful music. "Two camera
fiends! One in front of the college, the other by the elevated station;
waiting for me to pass, I do believe! And such crowds! They followed me!
Look! Look! Down in the Square!"



CHAPTER II.


THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD.

Both girls ran to the window. Miss Reid laughed teasingly. "I see nobody--
or all the world; it's much the same," she said; "but you have a caller."

I rose from behind the desk with some confused, trivial thought that I
ought to have spent part of the afternoon getting my hair cut.

I had had but a glimpse of the new comer in her flight across the floor; I
knew she had scarlet lips and shining eyes; that youth and joy and
unimagined beauty had entered with her like a burst of sunlight and
flooded the room. I felt, rather than saw, that she had turned from the
window and was looking at me, curiously at first, then smiling. Her smile
had bewildered me when she opened the door; it was a soft, flashing light
that shone from her face and blessed the air. She seemed surrounded by an
aureole.

But she--how could this wonderful girl know me?--she surely was smiling!
She was coming towards me. She was putting out her hands. That glorious
voice was speaking.

"John! Is it you? I'm so glad!" it said.

Had I read about her? Had I seen her picture? Had Helen described her in a
letter? Was she Cadge? No; not altogether a stranger; somewhere before I
had seen--or dreamed--

"John," she persisted. "Why didn't you write? I thought you were coming
next week. Did you plan to surprise me?"

Miss Reid must have made a mistake, I felt; I must explain that I was
waiting for Helen. But I could not speak; I could only gape, choking and
giddy. I did not speak when the bright vision seemed to take the hands I
had not offered. I could feel the blood beat in my neck. I could not
think; and yet I knew that a real woman stood before me, albeit unlike all
the other women that ever lived in the world; and that something surprised
and perplexed her. The smile still curved her lips; I felt myself grin in
idiotic imitation.

"What is the matter?" the radiant stranger persisted. "You act as if--"

The smile grew sunnier; it rippled to a laugh that was merriment set to
music.

"John! John Burke!" she said, giving my hands a little, impatient shake,
just as Nelly used to do. "It isn't possible! Don't you--why, you goose!
Don't you know me?"

"Helen!"

Of course! I had known her from the beginning! A man couldn't be in the
same room with Nelly Winship and feel just as if she were any other girl.
But she was not Helen at all--that radiant impossibility! And yet she was.
Or she said so, and my heart agreed. But when I would have drawn her to
me, she stepped back in lovely confusion, with a fluttered question:--

"How long have you been here, John?"

That voice! Sweet, fresh; full of exquisite cadences such as one might
hear in dreams and ever after yearn for--from the first it had baffled me
more than the beautiful face. It was not Helen's. What a blunder!

I gazed at her, still giddy. Who was she? I could not trust the astounding
recognition. She returned the look, bending towards me, seeking as
eagerly, I saw with confused wonderment, to read my thought as I to fathom
hers. Then, as some half knowledge grew to certainty, the light of her
beauty became a glory; she seemed transfigured by a mighty joy such as no
other woman could ever have felt.

An instant she stood motionless, the sunshine of her eyes still on me.
Then, drawing a long breath, she turned away, pulling the pins out of her
feathered hat with hands that trembled.

I watched the process with the strained attention one gives at crucial
moments to nothings. I laughed out of sheer inanity; every pulse in my
body was throbbing. She lifted the hat from her shining head. She put it
down. She unfastened her coat. In a minute she would turn again, and I
should once more see that face imbued with light and fire. I waited for
her voice.

"I'm sure of it!" she cried, wheeling about of a sudden, with a laugh like
caressing music, and confronting me again. "You didn't know me, John; did
you?"

"Why didn't I know you?" I gasped. "Why are you glad I don't know you?
What does it all mean, Helen?"

Instead of answering she laughed again. It was the happiest joy-song in
the world. A mirthful goddess might have trilled it--a laugh like sunshine
and flowers and chasing cloud shadows on waving grass.

"Helen Winship, stop it! Stop this masquerade!" I shouted, not knowing
what I did.

"But I--I'm afraid I can't, John."

The glorious face brimmed with mischief. In vain the Woman Perfect
struggled to subdue her mirth to penitence.

"I--I'm so glad to see you, John. Won't you--won't you sit down and let
Kitty give you some tea?"

Tea! At that moment!

Clattering little blue and white cups and saucers, Miss Reid recalled
herself to my remembrance. I had forgotten that she was in the room. I
suspect that she dared not lift her head for fear I might see the laughter
in her eyes.

"I've made it extra strong, Mr. Burke," she managed to say, "because I'm
starting for the _Star_ office to find the photo-engravers routing
the noses and toeses off all my best beastesses."

"Kitty thinks all photo-engravers the embodiment of original sin," said
the Shining One. "They clip her bears' claws."

"Well," returned Miss Reid, making a flat parcel of her drawings, "this is
the den of Beauty and the beasts, and the beasts must be worthy of Beauty.
Mr. Burke, don't you know from what county of fairyland Helen hails? Is
she the Maiden Snow-white--but no; see her blush--or the Princess Marvel?
And if she's Cinderella, can't we have a peep at the fairy godmother?
Cadge will call her nothing but 'H. the M.'--short for 'Helen the
Magnificent.' And--and--oh, isn't she!"

"Kathryn!"

Before that grieved organ-tone of reproach, Kitty's eyes filled. I could
have wept at the greatness and the beauty of it, but the little artist
laughed through her tears.

"Helen Eliza, I repent," she said. "Time to be good, Mr. Burke, when she
says 'Kathryn.'"

Adjusting her hat before a glass, Kitty hummed with a voice that tried not
quaver:--

"Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Am I most beautiful of all?

"Queen, thou art not the fairest now;
Snow-white over the mountain's brow
A thousand times fairer is than thou.

"Poor Queen; poor all of us. I'm good, Helen," she repeated, whisking out
of the room.

"Such a chatterbox!" the goddess said. "But, John, am I really so much
altered? Is it true that--just at first, you know, of course--you didn't
know me?"

She bent on me the breathless look I had seen before. In her eagerness, it
was as if the halo of joy that surrounded her were quivering.

"I know you now; you are my Helen!"

Again I would have caught her in my arms; but she moved uneasily.

"Wait--I--you haven't told me," she stammered; "I--I want to talk to you,
John."

She put out a hand as if to fend me off, then let it fall. A sudden heart
sickness came upon me. It was not her words, not the movement that chilled
me, but the paling of the wonderful light of her face, the look that crept
over it, as if I had startled a nymph to flight. I was angry with my
clumsy self that I should have caused that look, and yet--from my own
Helen, not this lovely, poising creature that hardly seemed to touch the
earth--I should have had a different greeting!

I gazed at her from where I stood, then I turned to the window. The rattle
of street cars came up from below. A child was sitting on the bench where
I had sat and feasted my eyes upon the flutter of Helen's curtains. My
numb brain vaguely speculated whether that child could see me. The sun had
gone, the square was wintry.

After a long minute Helen followed me.

"John," she said, "I am so glad to see you; but I--I want to tell you.
Everything here is so new, I--I don't--"

It must all be true; I remember her exact words. They came slowly,
hesitated, stopped.

"Are you--what do you mean, Helen?"

"Let me tell you; let me think. Don't--please don't be angry."

Through the fog that enveloped me I felt her distress and smarted from the
wrong I did so beautiful a creature.

"I--I didn't expect you so soon," the music sighed pleadingly. "I--we
mustn't hurry about--what we used to talk of. New York is so different!--
Oh, but it isn't that! How shall I make you understand?"

"I understand enough," I said dully; "or rather--Great Heavens!--I
understand nothing; nothing but that--you are taking back your promise,
aren't you? Or Helen's promise; whose was it?"

I could not feel as if I were speaking to my sweetheart. The figure before
me wore her pearl-set Kappa key--the badge of her college fraternity; it
wore, too, a trim, dark blue dress--Helen's favourite colour and mine--but
there resemblance seemed to stop.

Confused as I still was by the glory I gazed on, I began painfully
comparing the Nelly I remembered and the Helen I had found. My Helen was
not quite so tall, but at twenty girls grow. She did not sway with the
yielding grace of a young white birch; but she was slim and straight, and
girlish angles round easily to curves. Though I felt a subtle and wondrous
change, I could not trace or track the miracle.

My Helen had blue-gray eyes; this Helen's eyes might, in some lights, be
blue-gray; they seemed of as many tints as the sea. They were dark,
luminous and velvet soft as they watched my struggle. A few minutes
earlier they had been of extraordinary brilliancy.

My Helen had soft brown hair, like and how unlike these fragrant locks
that lay in glinting waves with life and sparkle in every thread!

My Helen's face was expressive, piquantly irregular. The face into which I
looked lured me at moments with a haunting resemblance; but the brow was
lower and wider, the nose straighter, the mouth more subtly modelled. It
was a face Greek in its perfection, brightened by western force and
softened by some flitting touch of sensuousness and mysticism.

My Helen blushed easily, but otherwise had little colour. This Helen had a
baby's delicate skin, with rose-flushed cheeks and red, red lips. When she
spoke or smiled, she seemed to glow with an inner radiance that had
nothing to do with colour. And, oh, how beautiful! How beautiful!

I don't know how long I gazed.

I was trying to study the girl before me as if she had been merely a
fact--a statue, a picture. But here was none of the calm certainty of art;
I was in the grip of a power, a living charm as mighty as elusive, no more
to be fixed in words than are the splendours of sunset. Yet I saw the
vital harmonies of her figure, the grace of every exquisite curve--the
firm, strong line of her white throat, the gracious poise of her head, her
sweeping lashes.

I looked down at her hands; they were of marvellous shape and tint, but I
missed a little sickle-shaped scar from the joint of the left thumb. I
knew the story of that scar. I had seen the child Nelly run to her mother
when the knife slipped while she was paring a piece of cocoanut for the
Saturday pie-baking. That scar was part of Helen; I loved it. I felt a
sudden revolt against this goddess who usurped little Nelly's place, and
said that she had changed. Why was she looking at me? What did she want?

"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said a choked voice that
I hardly recognised as my own.

Instantly the joy light shone again from her face, bathing me in its
sunshine, and the world was fair. She started forward impulsively, holding
out her hands.

"Then it's true! Oh, it's true!" she cried. "How can I believe it? I--
Nelly Winship--am I really--"

"Ah--you are Nelly! My Nelly!"

What happened is past telling!

With that jubilant outburst, as naive as a child's, she was my own love
again, but dearer a thousand times. Would I have given her up if her hair
were blanched by pain or sorrow, her cheeks furrowed, her face grown pale
in illness? Need I look upon her coldly because she had become radiant,
compellingly lovely? Why, she was enchanting!

And she was Helen. A miracle had been worked, but Helen's self was looking
at me out of that goddess-like face as unmistakably as from an unfamiliar
dress. It was seeing her in a marvellous new garb of flesh.

"Oh, I'm so happy! I'm the happiest girl on earth; I'm--am I really
beautiful?"

The rich, low, brooding, wondering voice was not Helen's, but in every
sentence some note or inflection was as familiar as were her tricks of
manner, her impulsive gestures. Yes, she was Helen; warm-breathing,
flushed with joy of her own loveliness, her perfect womanhood--the girl I
adored, the loveliest thing alive!

I seized the hands she gave me; I drew her nearer.

"Helen," I cried, "you are indeed the most beautiful being God ever
created, and--last June you kissed me--"

"I didn't!"

"--Or I kissed you, which is the same thing--after the Commencement
reception, by the maple trees, in front of the chapter house; and----"

"And thence in an east-southeasterly direction; with all the hereditaments
and appurtenances--Oh, you funny Old Preciseness!"

"And now I'm going to----" The words were brave, but there was something
in the pose and poise of her--the wonder of her beauty, the majesty--
perhaps the slightest withdrawal, the start of surprise--that awed me.
Lamely enough the sentence ended:

"Helen, kiss me!" I begged, hoarsely.

For just a fraction of a second she hesitated. Then the merriment of
coquetry again sparkled in her smile.

"Ah, but I'm afraid--" she mocked.

Her eyes danced with mischief as she drew away from me.

"I'm afraid of a man who's going to be a great city lawyer. And then--oh,
listen!"

Hurried, ostentatiously heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. They stopped
at the door, and some one fumbled noisily at the knob. There was a stage
cough, and Kitty plunged into the room, carefully unnoticing.

"Such an idea for--a hippopotamus comic," she panted; "a darling! Sent
drawings down--messenger--rushed back to sketch--"

Here she paused to take breath.

"--lest I forget."

Snatching off her gloves she resumed her place at the big table, and began
making wild strokes with a crayon on a great sheet of cardboard.

"I just _had_ to do it," said she apologetically over her shoulder;
"but--don't mind me."



CHAPTER III.


THE HORNETS' NEST.

It was dusk when I left Helen. My head was buzzing.

Out of her presence what I had seen was unthinkable, unbelievable. I could
do nothing but walk, walk--a man in a dream.

I rushed ahead, jostling people in silly haste; I dawdled. I carefully set
my feet across the joinings of paving blocks; I zigzagged; I turned
corners aimlessly. Once a policeman touched me as I blinked into the
roaring torches of a street-repairing gang. Once I found myself on
Brooklyn Bridge, looking down at big boats shaped like pumpkin seeds, with
lights streaking from every window. Once I woke behind a noisy group under
the coloured lights of a Bowery museum.

It rained, for horses were rubber-blanketed, and umbrellas dripped on me
as I passed. I was hungry, for I smelled the coffee a sodden woman drank
at the side of a night lunch wagon. But how could I believe myself awake
or sane?

Again and again I found my way back to the bench on Union Square, from
which I could gaze at Helen's window, now dark and forbidding. Across an
open space was a garish saloon. When the door swung open, I saw the towels
hanging from the bar. Two men reeled across the street and sat down by me.

"Oo-oo!" one gurgled.

"Dan's goin' t' kill 'imself 'cause 'is wife's gone," blubbered the other.
"Tell 'm not ter, can't ye, matey? Tell 'im' t's 'nough fer one t' die!"

"Oo-oo!" bellowed Dan.

I walked away in the darkness, but I felt better. Drunkenness was no
miracle: I was awake and sane, sane and awake in a homely world of sorrow
and folly and love and mystery.

I went to bed thinking of Cleopatra, "brow-bound with burning gold"; of
Fair Rosamond; Vivien, who won Merlin's secret; of Lilith and strange,
shining women--not one of them like the goddess the glory of whose smile
had dazzled me. At last I slept, late and heavily.

Next morning I was again first at the office; and by daylight in the
bustling city, things took a different complexion. I had gone to my
sweetheart tired by a long journey, and I felt sure, or tried to feel
sure, that my impressions of change in her were fantastic and exaggerated.

Judge Baker, on his arrival, installed me in Hynes's room, behind the
library, between the corridor and one of the courts that light the inner
offices. In his own room, to the left, he detained me for some business
talk, after which he said, carefully rubbing his glasses:

"I trust that you will not find yourself altogether a stranger in the
city. My wife will wish to see you, and my sister, Miss Baker, cherishes
pleasant recollections of your mother. I believe you are already
acquainted with Mrs. Baker's young cousin, Miss Winship. You know that,
since graduation, she has come to New York for the purpose of pursuing
post-graduate studies in Barnard?"

"Yes."

I drew a breath of relief. There was nothing in the Judge's manner to give
significance to his mention of Helen. I must have deceived myself.

"A most charming young lady."

He glanced at the letters on his desk and methodically cut open an
envelope. Then he dropped the paper knife, raising his bushy brows, a
gesture that indicates his most genial humour, as he continued with more
than usual deliberateness:--

"You knew her, no doubt, as an intelligent student; you may be surprised
to learn that she has developed extraordinary--the word is not too
strong--extraordinary beauty."

"Always a lovely girl," I muttered.

"From her childhood Nelly has been a favourite with me;" the Judge leaned
back in his big chair, seeming to commit himself to an utterance; "but her
attractions were rather those of mind and heart, I should have said, than
of personal appearance. The change to which I have alluded is more than
the not uncommon budding of a plain girl into the evanescent beauty of
early womanhood; it is the most remarkable thing that has ever come under
my observation. I am getting to be an elderly man, Burke, and I have been
a respectful admirer of many, many fair women, but I have never seen a
girl like Miss Winship; she is phenomenal."

"You--you think so?"

It was true, then!

"I have ceased to think; I am nonplussed. Witchcraft, though not in the
older sense of the word, is still no doubt exercised by young ladies, and
there are certain improvement commissions that undertake, for a suitable
consideration, the--ah--redecoration of feminine architecture, or even the
partial restoration of human antiques. But this is a different matter."

"I saw Miss Winship yesterday."

"You will not then accuse me of overstatement?"

"She is indeed beautiful."

The restraint with which I spoke evidently puzzled him. He continued to
look at me curiously, as he said slowly:--

"From a young man I should have expected more enthusiasm. At times I
suspect that the youth of today are less susceptible than were those of
twenty-five years ago. But this affair has perhaps occupied my thoughts
more than otherwise it might, because Helen is in a measure my ward during
her stay in the East, and because of my daughters' affection--"

"Judge, I had supposed you aware of an engagement between Helen and
myself."

"Ah, that accounts for much. To you, no doubt, she is little altered. Your
eyes have seen the budding of that beauty which but now becomes visible to
those less partial. I believe Mrs. Baker did hint at something between
you, but it had escaped my mind."

The Judge's bright eyes that contradict so pleasantly the heavy cast of
his features began to twinkle. Little lines of geniality formed at their
corners and rayed out over his cheeks. He beamed kindliness, as he
continued:--

"Accept my congratulations. A most excellent family. Mrs. Winship is Mrs.
Baker's cousin. Ah, time flies; time flies! It seems but yesterday that my
little girls were running about with Nelly, pigtailed, during their visits
in the West."

"Does Mrs. Baker also think Nelly--changed?"

"Only on Tuesday my wife returned from nursing an ailing relative. She has
not seen Helen in some time. I believe we are to have her with us at
Christmas. We must have you also. But I cannot altogether admit that the
change is a matter of my opinion. It has been commented upon by my
daughters in terms of utmost emphasis."

"She is the most beautiful woman in the world!"

"There we shall not disagree. To Nelly herself the riddle of nature that
we seek to read is doubtless also a mystery, but one for whose unraveling
she is happy to wait. My daughters have a picture of her, taken at the
age, possibly, of six, which gives inartistic prominence to 'Grandpa
Winship's ears'--the left larger than the right. You know the family
peculiarity owned by the eldest child in each generation? The loss of this
inheritance may not be, to a young lady, matter for regret; but as a mark
of identification and descent, the Winship ears might have entitled her to
rank among the Revolutionary Daughters. However, she is a poor woman who
has not a club to spare."

"Judge, how long is it since this--transformation took place? You speak of
it as recent."

"Nelly comes to me," said the Judge, "with--ah--natural punctuality for
monthly remittances from her father. In November I was struck with the
fact that New York agreed with her; yet even then I did not miss the
family nose--a compromise of pug and Roman. But ten days ago, when I saw
her last, I recognised her with difficulty. For more precise information
you must ask my daughters."

"Then it was only ten days ago that you saw anything wrong--?"

"Wrong! My dear young friend, if Nelly's case obtained publicity, would
not the world, which loves beauty, be divided between a howling New York
and a wilderness?"

The Judge glanced up at me, slipping his paper knife end over end through
his fingers.

"I have spoken of myself as nonplussed," he said more seriously, "and I
am. I was never more so; but I see no occasion for anxiety. Since when has
it been thought necessary to call priest or physician because of a young
lady's growing charm? Confronted by an ugly duckling, we must congratulate
the swan."

"Judge, how much money does one need to marry on in New York?"

"All that a man has; all that he can get; often more. But--ah--is the
question imminent? Nelly is in school; you have come out of the West, as I
understand it, to attack New York. Conquer it, Sir; conquer New York
before you speak of marriage to a New York woman."

"Helen is not a New York woman."

"We naturalize them at the docks and stations."

"But you--" I repressed a movement of impatience. "Didn't you marry
young?"

"Mrs. Baker and I began our married life in one room; cooked over the gas
jet, in tin pails. And if little Nelly is the equal of other women of her
family--but that is practice versus principle, my young friend; practice
versus principle."

He turned again to his letters, and I understood that the interview was
closed.

Right after lunch I started for Barnard. Helen has written so much about
the college that as soon as I struck the Boulevard I knew the solid brick
building with its trimmings of stone fasces. I turned into the cloistered
court on One Hundred and Nineteenth Street and paused a minute, looking up
at its Ionic porticoes and high window lettered "Millbank Hall."

Then I entered, and a page, small, meek and blue-uniformed, trotted ahead
of me through a beautiful hall, white with marble columns and mosaics,
sumptuous with golden ceiling, dazzling with light and green with palms,
to the curtained entrance of a dainty reception room.

"Stop a minute, Mercury," I said as he turned to leave; "where is Miss
Winship?"

He reappeared from an office beyond, replying:--

"Biol'gy lab'r'tory. What name?"

Instead of waiting until Nelly could be summoned, I followed the mildly
disapproving boy up a great, white stairway, past groups of girls, some in
bright silk waists and some in college gowns. Even in the farthest corner
remote from the hubbub, a musical echo blent of gay talk and laughter
filled the air; a light body of sound that the walls held and gave out as
a continuous murmur.

A second time piping, "What name, Sir?" Mercury opened the door of a large
room with many windows. At the far corner my eyes sought out Helen in
conversation with a keen-eyed, weazened little man, at sight of whom the
boy took to his heels.

Three women besides Helen were in the room, bunched at a table that ran
along two sides under the windows. They wore big checked aprons, and one
of them squinted into her microscope under a fur cap. Wide-mouthed jars,
empty or holding dirty water, stood on other tables ranged up and down the
middle of the room, and there was a litter of porcelain-lined trays, test
tubes, pipettes, glass stirring-rods and racks for microscope slides.

Against the wall to the left were cabinets with sliding doors, showing
retorts, apparatus, bottles of drugs, jars of specimens and large,
coloured models of flowers and of the lower marine forms. Against the
right hand wall were sinks, an incubator and, beyond, a door leading into
a drug closet. There was the usual laboratory smell, in which the
penetrating fume of alcohol, the smokiness of creosote and carbolic acid,
the pungency of oil of clove and the aroma of Canada balsam struggled for
the mastery.

In her college gown Helen looked more like herself than the day before and
less so, the familiar dress accentuating every difference. Against the
flowing black her loveliness shone fair and delicate as a cameo, I thought
of the Princess Ida,

  Liker to the inhabitant
Of some far planet close upon the sun
Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head,
And so much grace and power--
Lived through her to the tips of her long hands
And to her feet.

She had not noticed my entrance, but as I stepped forward, she turned, and
I was again lost in wonder at her marvellous grace. Her beauty seemed a
harmony so vitally perfect that the sight of it was a joy approaching
pain.

I had not been mistaken! She was the rarest thing in human form on this
earth. I was awed and frightened anew at her perfection.

"Why, how did you find your way out here?" she asked with girlish
directness. "I'm not quite ready to go; I must finish my sections for
Prof. Darmstetter."

The Professor--I had guessed his identity--joined us, glancing at me
inquisitively. His spare figure seemed restless as a squirrel's, but
around the pupils of his eyes appeared the faint, white rim of age.

"You are friendt of Mees Veensheep?" he asked. "Looks she not vell? New
York has agreed vit' her; not so?"

At my awkward, guarded assent, I thought that something of the same
surprise Judge Baker had voiced at my moderation flitted over the old
man's face.

"I find you kvite right; kvite right," he said, "New York has done Mees
Veensheep goot; she looks fery vell."

He whisked into the drug closet, and Helen seated herself before a
microscope next that of the fur-capped woman.

"Do you care for slides?" she said. "I'll get another microscope and while
I draw you may look at any on my rack. But be careful; most of the things
are only temporarily mounted--just in glycerine. Here is the sweetest
longitudinal section of the tentacle of an _Actinia_, and here--look
at these lovely transverse sections of the plumule of a pea; you can see
the primary groups of spiral vessels. They've taken the carmine stain
wonderfully! But my work is not advanced; I wish you could see that of the
other girls."

"I mustn't interfere with your task; I'll look about until you are ready."

Her shining head was already bent over the microscope; her pencil was
moving, glad to respond to the touch of that lovely hand.

I picked up a book, the same little volume I had noticed the day before,
on "Imbedding, Sectioning and Staining." Near it lay a treatise on
histology. I opened to the first chapter, on "Protoplasm and the Cell,"
but I couldn't fix my thoughts on _Bathybius_ or the _Protomoeba_.
I walked toward an aquarium, flanking which stood a jar half-filled
with water in which floated what seemed a big cup-shaped flower
of bright brown jelly with waving petals of white and rose colour.

While I looked, thinking only of the curve of Helen's lips and the dancing
light in her eyes, and the glowing colour of her soft flesh, Prof.
Darmstetter's thin, high-pitched voice grated almost at my ear.

"T'at is _Actinia_--sea anemone."

"I come from the West; I have never seen the sea forms living," I answered
with an effort, fearing that he meant to show me about the laboratory.

"It is fery goot sea anemone; fery strong, fery perfect; a goot organism."

He bent over the jar, rubbing his hands. His parchment face crackled with
an almost tender complacency. For a full minute he seemed to gloat over
the flower-like animal.

"Very pretty," I said, carelessly.

"Fery pretty, you call it? T'e prettiness is t'e sign of t'e gootness, t'e
strengt', t'e perfection. You know t'at?"

To his challenging question, in which I saw the manner of a teacher with
his pupils, I replied:

"In your estimation goodness and beauty go together?"

"T'ey are t'e same; how not? See t'is way."

He shook his lean, reproving forefinger at a shapeless, melting mass that
lay at the bottom of a second jar, exuding an ooze of viscid strings.

"T'at,"--he spat the word out--"is also sea anemone. It is diseased; it is
an ugly animal."

"The poor thing's dying," said Helen, coming to his side. "There ought to
have been some of the green seaweed, Ulva, in the water. Wouldn't that
have saved it?"

"Ugliness,"--Darmstetter disregarded the question--"is disease; it is bat
organism; t'e von makes t'e ot'er. T'e ugly plant or animal is diseased,
or else it is botched, inferior plant or animal. It is t'e same vit' man
and voman; t'ey are animals. T'e ugly man or voman is veak, diseased or
inferior. On t'e ot'er hand,"--I felt what was coming by the sudden oiling
of his squeak--"t'e goot man or voman, t'e goot human organism, mus' haf
beauty. Not so?" Again he rubbed his hands.

Helen glanced mischievously at me, as a half-repressed snort interrupted
his dissertation.

The woman in the fur cap, who might have been a teacher improving odd
hours, had knocked up the barrel of her microscope; she gazed through the
window at the dazzling Hudson. Next her a thin, sallow girl, whose dark
complexion contrasted almost weirdly with her yellow hair, slashed at a
cake of paraffine, her deep-set eyes emitting a spark at every fall of the
razor. The other student, a young woman with the heavy figure of middle
age, went steadily on, dropping paraffine shavings into some fluid in a
watch crystal. With a long-handled pin she fished out minute somethings
left by the dissolving substance, dropping these upon other crystals--some
holding coloured fluids--and finally upon glass slides. She worked as if
for dear life, but every quiver of her back told that she was listening.

"You agree vit' me?"

"It seems reasonable; the subject is one that you have deeply studied."

"Ach so! T'e perfect organism must haf t'e perfect beauty. T'e vorld has
nefer seen a perfectly beautiful man or voman. Vat vould it say to von,
t'ink you? But perfection, you vill tell me, is far to seek," he went on,
without waiting for a reply. "Yet people haf learned t'at many diseases
are crimes. By-and-by, we may teach t'em t'at bat organism is t'e vorst of
crimes; beautiful organism t'e first duty. V'at do you say?"

The fur-capped girl pushed back her chair.

"Prof. Darmstetter," she said, "will you be good enough to look at my
sections?"

"He's stirred up the hornets' nest," whispered Helen. "But come; perhaps
they will show us. Those girls are so clever; they're sure to have
something interesting."



CHAPTER IV.


THE GODDESS AND THE MOB.

As we descended the stairway and passed groups of students in front of the
bulletin boards in the hall, Helen said:--

"I am afraid you shouldn't have called for me. It isn't usual here."

"We'll introduce the custom. How could I help coming--after yesterday?
Helen--"

"Have you seen Grant's tomb?" she inquired hastily. "It's just beyond the
college buildings, hidden by them. You mustn't miss it, after coming so
far."

We had issued on the Boulevard, and a few steps brought us in view of the
stately white shrine on Claremont Heights. But I looked instead at her
brilliant face against the velvety background of black hat and feather
boa.

The sun's rays, striking across the river, played hide-and-seek in her
shimmering hair, warming it to gold and touching the rose of her cheeks to
a clear radiance. Her eyes were scintillant with changing, flashing
lights.

"Well?" she challenged at last, half daring, half afraid. "You know me
to-day?"

"You are a sun goddess. Helen, what does it mean?"

"New York agrees vit' me," Her laugh was irresistible--low and sweet, a
laugh that made the glad day brighter. "How not? It is vun fine large
city."

We laughed together to the memory of _Actinia_.

"I am a goot organism. T'e bat organisms vish to scratch me; but t'ey are
not so fery bat. In time ve may teach t'em gootness."

"If Darmstetter doesn't think you a perfect organism, he must be hard to
satisfy. He's a peculiar organism himself. Has he true loves among sand
stars or jelly fish, or does he confine his affections to sea anemones?"

"Prof. Darmstetter is a great biologist. It's a shame he has to teach.
Don't you think such a man should be free to devote himself to original
work? He might in England, you know, if he were a fellow of a University.
But we're proud of him at Barnard; and the laboratory--oh, it's the most
fascinating place!"

We came slowly down the Boulevard, looking out at the sweep of the Hudson,
while she talked of her studies and her college mates, trying, I thought,
to keep me from other topics.

I scarcely noticed her words; her voice was in my ears, fresh and musical.
The new grace of her shining head and wondrous, swaying figure, the beauty
and spirit of her carriage, filled my consciousness. A schooner with a
deck load of wood drifted with the tide, her sails flapping; I saw her in
a blur. When I turned from the sheen of the river, the bicyclists whizzing
past left streaks of light. A man cutting brush in a vacant lot leaned on
his axe to look after us. The sudden stopping of his "chop, chop"--he too
was staring at the vision of beauty before his eyes--brought me out of my
revery.

"Nelly," I said, "your father will expect a letter from me. What shall I
say?"

"Tell him I am studying hard and like the city."

"But about us--about you and me?"

"Must we talk of that here--on the street?"

She spoke almost pleadingly, with the same soft clouding of her loveliness
that I had seen the day before?

"But I must speak," I said. "You were right yesterday, I won't ask
anything of you until I have made a start; but I must know that you still
love me; that will be enough. I can wait. I won't hurry you. That is all,
Helen. Everything shall be as you wish; but--you do love me?"

"Oh, you great tease! Why, I suppose I do; but--so much has happened, I
don't know myself now; you didn't know me when you first saw me here. Why
can't you wait and--don't you hope New York vill agree vit' you?"

She laughed with tantalizing roguery. "You _do_ love me!" I cried.
"And we shall be so happy with all our dreams come true--happy to be
together and here! If you knew how I have looked forward to coming, and
now--yesterday I thought myself insane, but I wasn't! You are the most
marvellous--"

"Am I? Oh, I'm glad! So glad!"

I was confused, overjoyed at her sudden sparkle; the soft, flashing light
of her was fire and dew. She made visible nature sympathize with her
moods. The sky smiled and was pensive with her.

"But see," she cried with another of her bewildering changes; "we're at
Columbia."

We had left the Boulevard, and were approaching the white-domed library.

"Look at the inscription," Helen said, as students carrying notebooks
began to pass us. "'KING'S COLLEGE FOUNDED UNDER GEORGE II.' Doesn't that
seem old after the State University? Ours, I mean."

Our inspection was brief. Before the open admiration of the students Helen
seemed, like a poising creature of air and sunshine, fairly to take wing
for flight.

"Tell me about yourself," she commanded, when we were beyond the flights
of terraced steps. "You are really in Judge Baker's office? You--you
_won't_ say anything more?"

"You--darling! You have almost said you love me; do you know that? Well,
I'll be considerate. I will work and I will wait and I will believe--no,
I'll be certain that some day a woman more beautiful than the Greeks
imagined when they dreamed of goddesses who loved mortal men will come to
me and, because it is true, will quite say 'I love you.' But I may not
always be patient; for you do. After all, you are Nelly!"

I was almost faint with love of her and wonder; I adored her the more for
the earnestness with which she lifted her flushed, smiling, innocent face
to say:

"But tell me about the office, _please_. You wouldn't want me to
say--would you, if I wasn't sure? Isn't the Judge the most delightful man?
So--not pompous, you know; but so good. Don't you like Judge Baker?"

"I love you! Oh, yes, the Judge says, 'if we are confronted with an ugly
duckling we must congratulate the swan.' Were you ever an ugly duckling?
I'm sure you love me, Helen."

"Did he say that? Well, even when I last saw him why that was nearly two
weeks ago--I--oh, I was an ugly duckling!"

We laughed like children. In the sunshine of her joy-lit eyes I forgot the
miracle of it, forgot everything except that I had reached New York and
Nelly, and that the world was beautiful when she looked upon it.

We came down from Cathedral Heights; and as we boarded a train on the
elevated, eyes peered around newspapers. An old gentleman wiped his
glasses and readjusted them, his lips forming the words, "most
extraordinary," and again, "most extraordinary!" A thin, transparent-
looking woman followed the direction of his glance and querulously touched
his elbow. Two slender girls looked and whispered.

I thought at first that city folks had no manners, but presently began to
wonder that Helen escaped so easily. She had drawn down a scrap of a veil
that scarcely obscured her glow and colour and, as the train gathered
headway, our neighbours settled in their places almost as unconcernedly as
if no marvel of beauty and youth were present. Indeed, most of them had
never looked up. The two young girls continued to eye Helen with envy; and
I was conscious of an absurd feeling of resentment that they were the only
ones. I wanted to get up and cry out: "Don't you people know that this car
contains a miracle?"

Why, when Helen lifted to her knee a child that tugged at the skirts of
the stout German hausfrau in the next seat, the mother vouchsafed hardly a
glance.

"How old are you?" asked Helen.

"Sechs yahre," was the shy answer.

"Such a big girl for six!"

"So grosse! So grosse!"

The little thing measured her height by touching her forehead.

"Shump down," admonished the mother stolidly, while Helen bent over the
child, wasting upon her the most wonderful smile of the everlasting years.

"It was long ago, wasn't it," Nelly asked, when the child had slid from
her lap, "that Uncle promised to take you into his office?"

"Yes," I said. "When Father died, the Judge told me that when I had
practised three years--long enough to admit me to the New York bar--he'd
have a place for me. It was because the three years were nearly up, you
know, that I dared last June to ask you--"

"You'd dare anything," she interrupted hastily. "Remember how, when I was
a Freshman, you raced a theologue down the church aisle one Sunday night
after service, and slammed the door from the outside? 'Miss Winship,' you
said--I had sat near the door and was already in the entry--'may I see you
home?'--"

"The theologue and the congregation didn't get out till you said yes, I
remember! They howled and hammered at the door in most unchristian rage?"

"I _had_ to say yes; why, I had to walk with you even when we
quarrelled; it would have made talk for either of us to be seen alone."

She breathed a sigh that ended in rippling laughter.

"You'll have to say yes again."

But at that she changed the subject, and we talked about her work at
Barnard until we left the train at Fourteenth Street, where we met the
flood tide of Christmas surging into the shops and piling up against gaily
decked show windows.

Street hawkers jingled toy harnesses, shouted the prices of bright truck
for tree ornaments, and pushed through the crowd, offering holly and
mistletoe. Circles formed around men exhibiting mechanical turtles or
boxing monkeys. From a furry sledge above a shop door, Santa Claus bowed
and gesticulated, shaking the lines above his prancing reindeer. I had
never seen such a spectacle.

"What a jam!" cried Helen, her cheeks flooded with colour. "Come, let's
hurry!"

Indeed, as we threaded our way in and out among the throng, her beauty
made an instant impression.

"There she goes!"

"Where? Where? I don't see her."

"There! The tall one, with the veil--walking with that jay!"

Not only did I hear such comments; I felt them. Yet even here there were
many who did not notice; and again I sensed that odd displeasure that
people could pass without seeing my darling.

It was a relief to leave the neighbourhood of Sixth Avenue and cross to
the open space of Union Square.

The east side of the little park was quiet.

"All right?" I asked.

"All right."

Her breath came quickly as if she had been frightened.

"But see," she said a moment later, "there comes Kitty trundling her
bicycle down Madison Avenue. You'd better come in, and be on your best
behaviour; yesterday Kitty thought we were quarrelling."

"Sorry I'm wanted only to vindicate--is it your character or mine that
would stand clearing? And will you tell me----"

A little old Frenchman, with a wooden leg, who was singing the
"Marseillaise" from door to door, approached, holding out his hat.

"Merci, M'sieu', Madame," he said, carelessly pocketing a nickel; then, as
he fairly caught sight of the face that Helen of old might have envied, he
started back in amazement, slowly whispering:--

"Pardon! Mon dieu! Une Ange!"

We left him muttering and staring after us.

"I'll really have to get a thicker veil," said Helen hastily; "stuffy
thing! I like to breathe and see. At first it was--oh, delightful to be
looked at like that--or almost delightful; for if no had one noticed, how
was I to be sure that--that New York was agreeing vit' me? But now they
begin to----"

"Then New York hasn't always agreed vit' you? Aren't you going to tell
me----"

"Oh, I've been well," she interrupted, "ever since I came. But here's
Kitty. Any adventures, Goldilocks?"

"A minute ago a tandem cuffed my back wheel," said Miss Reid, coming up.
"My heart jumped into my mouth and--and I'm nibbling little scallops out
of it right now."

And then we trooped upstairs together.



CHAPTER V.


A HIGH-CLASS CONCERT.

I stayed for supper, over which Kitty's big Angora cat presided; Kitty
herself, her red curls in disorder, whimsical, shrewd, dipping from jest
to earnest, teased Helen and waited on her, wholly affectionate and, I
guessed, half afraid.

The little den was cosy by the light of an open fire--for it seemed to be
one function of the tall, pink-petticoated lamp to make much darkness
visible; and Nelly was almost like the Nelly I had known, with her eager
talk of home folks and familiar scenes.

She asked about my mother's illness and death that had held me so long in
the West, and her great eyes grew dim and soft with tears, and she looked
at me like a Goddess grieving; until, sweet as was her sympathy, I forced
myself to speak of other topics. And then we grew merry again, talking of
college mates and the days when I first knew her, when I was a Sophomore
teaching in Hannibal and she was my best scholar--only twelve years old,
but she spelled down all the big, husky boys.

"I didn't know what I was doing, did I," I said, "when your father used to
say: 'Bright gal, ain't she? I never see the beat of Helen Lizy;' and I
would tell him you ought to go to the State University?"

"Think of it!" cried Helen. "If I hadn't gone to college, I shouldn't have
come to New York, and, oh, if--but how you must have worked, teaching and
doubling college and law school! Why, you were already through two years
of law when I entered, only three years later."

"Well, it's been easy enough since, even with tutoring and shorthanding;
six lawyers to every case--"

"Wasn't tutoring Helen your main occupation?" asked Kitty Reid
audaciously. "I have somehow inferred that--"

But there was a sound of hurrying feet on the stairs, and she sprang to
the door, crying:--

"Cadge and Pros.! They said they were coming."

On the threshold appeared a lank girl with shining black hair and quick,
keen, good-humoured eyes.

"Howdy?" she asked with brisk cordiality; "angel children, hope I see you
well."

In her wake was a tall, quiet-looking young man with a reddish-brown
beard.

"Salute; salaam," he said; "all serene, Kitty? And you, Miss Winship?"

Then as the two became accustomed to the light, I saw what I had nervously
expected. There was a little start, an odd moment of embarrassment. They
gazed at Helen with quick wonder at her loveliness, then turned away to
hide their surprise.

It was as if in the few days since they had seen her--for the new comers
were Kitty's brother and the Miss Bryant of whom everyone speaks as
"Cadge"--Helen's beauty had so blossomed that at fresh sight of her they
struggled with incredulous amazement almost as a stranger might have done.

Talking rapidly to mask embarrassment, they joined us round the fire, Reid
dropped a slouch hat and an overcoat that seemed all pockets bulging with
papers, while Miss Bryant and Kitty began a rapid fire of talk about
"copy," "cuts," "the black," "the colour" and other mysteries.

"Wish you could have got me a proof of the animal page," said Kitty
finally; "if they hurry the etching again, before my poor dear little
bears have been half an hour on the presses, they'll fill with ink and
print gray. I'll--I'll leave money in my will to prosecute photo-
engravers."

"Oh, don't fret," said Miss Bryant. "Magazine'll look well this week. Big
Tom's the greatest Sunday editor that ever happened; and I've got in some
good stuff, too."

"Of course your obbligato'll be all right," Kitty sighed; "but--oh, those
etchers and----Yes, Big Tom'll do; I never see him fretting the Art
Department, like the editor before last, to sketch a one-column earthquake
curdling a cup of cream."

"How _could_ anybody do that?" cried Helen.

"Just what the artist said."

Miss Bryant looked slightly older than Helen; in spite of her brusque,
careless sentences, I suspected that she was a girl of some knowledge,
vast energy and strength of will. And suspicion grew to certainty that she
and Reid were lovers.

I might have read it in his tone when in the course of the evening he
asked her to sing.

"Then give me a baton," she responded, springing to her feet.

Rolling up a newspaper and seizing a bit of charcoal from the drawing
table, she beat time with both hands, launching suddenly into an air which
she rendered with dramatic expression as rare as her abandon.

"Applaud! Applaud!" she cried, clapping her own hands at the end of a
brilliant passage, her colourless, irregular face alive with enthusiasm,
her black eyes snapping. "If you don't applaud, how do you expect me to
sing? _Vos plaudite!_"

"I'll applaud when you've surely stopped," said Kitty Reid demurely; "but
before we begin an evening of grand opera, I want you to hear the
Princess. Helen, you know you promised."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Helen, colouring at the title, "I can't sing before
Cadge; but if you like, I'll play for you. See if I'm not improving in my
tremolo."

Helen did not sing in the old days, so that I was not surprised at her
refusal. Taking her mandolin, she tinkled an air that I have often heard
her play, but neither I nor any one else had ears for it, so absorbed was
the sense of sight.

Her long lashes swept her cheeks as she bent forward in the firelight, her
vivid colouring subdued by the soft, playing glow to an elusive charm. At
one moment, as the flames flickered into stronger life, her beauty seemed
to grow fuller and to have an oriental softness and warmth; the next, the
light would die away, and in the cooler, grayer, fainter radiance, her
perfect grace of classic outline made her seem a statue--Galatea just
coming to life, more beautiful than the daughters of men, her great
loveliness delicately spiritualized.

If I were a beautiful woman, I'd learn to play a mandolin.

"Sing, Helen," begged Kitty in a whisper.

In a voice that began tremulously, low and faltering, and slowly gained
courage, she sang the ballad she had been playing. It was easy to see that
she was not a musician; but, as she forgot her listeners, we forgot
everything but her.

Miss Bryant put down the compasses and scale rule she had been restlessly
fingering, and her keen eyes softened and dilated. Kitty dropped on the
floor at Helen's feet; the hush in the room was breathless. Reid sat in
the dark, still as a statue; I clenched my hands and held silence.

The words were as simple as the air. But the voice, so clear, so sweet, so
joyous, like Helen's own loveliness--to hear it was an ecstasy. We were
listening to the rarest notes that ever had fallen on human ears--unless
the tale of the sirens be history.

As the last note died, the fire leaped, dropped and left us in dusk and
silence. Kitty buried her face against Helen's dress. My heart was
pounding until in my own ears it sounded like an anvil chorus. I don't
know whether I was very happy or very miserable. I would have died to hear
that voice again. It is the truth!

With a sudden sob and a sniffing that told of tears unashamed, Miss Bryant
found frivolous words to veil our emotion.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she quavered, "this is a high-class concert; three
dollars each for tickets, please. Helen, you don't know how to sing, but--
don't learn! Come Pros."--the big drops ran down her cheeks; "I've got to
look up a story in the morning."

"Wait a minute," said Reid, his long, delicately shaped fingers trembling.
"Let me recover on something."

Picking up Kitty's banjo, he smote the strings uncertainly and half sang,
half declaimed:--

"'With my Hya! Heeya! Heeya! Hullah! Haul!
Oh, the green that thunders aft along the deck!
Are you sick of towns and men? You must sign and sail again,
For it's Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek!'

"By Jove! Kipling's right; nothing like a banjo, is there? Now then, Young
Person, I'm with you. Good night; good night!"

While his voice was still echoing down the stairway, Miss Bryant came
running up again.

"Say, got a photograph of yourself, Helen?" she asked.

She had apparently quite recovered from her emotion, and her tone
expressed an odd mixture of business and affection.

"I believe if I showed Big Tom a picture of you," she explained, "he'd run
a story--there's your science, you know, and your music--on the Society
page, maybe."

"But I haven't any picture; at least, any that you'd want--only a few
taken months ago, for my father."

"Show me those; why won't they do?"

"Oh, they aren't good; they--they don't look like me. Besides, I really
couldn't let you print my picture, Cadge."

"All right. Good night, then; good night, Kitty."

"Perhaps I was just the least bit homesick; I'm glad you've come," Helen
said to me at good-by.

She did not withdraw the hand I pressed. She was still under the
excitement of the music; the song had left on her face a dreamy
tenderness.

"Don't you like Cadge?" she asked, checking with shy evasiveness the words
I would have spoken. "She can do anything--sing, talk modern Greek and
Chinese--Cadge is wonderful."

"I know some one more wonderful. Helen, when did you begin to sing?"

"I don't sing; to-night was the first time I ever tried before any one but
Kitty. Did I sing well?"

"I can't believe you're real! I can't--"

"Don't! Don't!" she laughed. "Remember your promise."

And with that she ran away from the door where I stood, and I came
directly home. Home, to set down these notes; to wonder; to doubt; to
pinch myself and try to believe that I am alive.

I am alive. This that I have written is the truth! This is what I have
seen and heard since a common, puffing railroad train brought me from the
West and set me down in the land of miracles.

It is the truth; but out of that magic presence I cannot--I am as
powerless to believe as I am powerless to doubt.

God help me--it is the truth!




BOOK II.


THE BIRTH OF THE BUTTERFLY.

(_From the Autobiography of Helen Winship_.)



CHAPTER I


THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT

No. 2 Union Square, December 14.

I am the most beautiful woman in the world!

I feel like a daughter of the gods. Bewildered, amazed, at times
incredulous of my good fortune--but happy, happy, happy!

There is no joy in heaven or earth like the joy of being beautiful--
incomparably beautiful! It's such a never-ending surprise and delight that
I come out of my musings with a start, a dozen times a day, and shudder to
think: "What if it were only a dream!"

Happy? I have no faith in the old wives' fables that we are most miserable
when we get what we want. It isn't true that the weak and poor are to be
envied beyond the powerful. Ask the fortunate if they would change! I
wouldn't; not for the Klondike?

I'm so happy! I want to take into my confidence the whole world of women.
I want them to know how the gift was gained that they are some day to
share. I want them to know that there are still good fairies in the world;
and how I was fated to meet one, how he waved his wand over me and how my
imperfections fled. Every woman will read the story of my life with rapt
attention because of the Secret. I shall tell that last of all. Now it's
my own.

Is it true that I have longed for beauty more passionately than most
women; or is it only that I know myself, not the others? I can remember
the time, away back, when the longing began--when I was----

Incredible! Was I ever an ugly little girl, careless of my appearance,
happiest in a torn and dirty dress; and homely, homely, homely? Oh,
miracle! The miracle!

They say all girls begin life thus heedless of beauty; but none get far
along the road before they meet the need of it. So it was with me; and now
I love to recall every pitiful detail of the beginning of the Quest of
Beauty, the funny little tragedy of childhood that changed the current of
my life--and of your lives, all you women who read.

It was one day after school, in the old life that has closed forever--
after the prairie school, dull, sordid, uninspiring, away in the West--
that a playmate, Billy Reynolds, was testing upon me his powers of
teasing. I remember the grin of pleasure in his cruelty that wrinkled his
round, red face when at last he found the dart that stung. His words--ah,
they are no dream! They were the awakening, the prelude of to-day.

"Janey's prettier'n what you be," he said; and of a sudden I knew that it
was true, and felt that the knowledge nearly broke my heart.

But could there be any doubt of the proper reply?

"Huh!" I said, shrugging my lean shoulders. "I don't care!"

The day before it would have been true, but that day it was a lie. I did
care; the brave words blistered my throat, sudden tears burned my
eyeballs, and to hide them I turned my back upon my tormentor.

It was not that I was jealous. I cared no more for Billy than for a dozen
other playmates. It was just the fact that hurt. I was homely! Not that
the idea was new to me, either. Dear me, no! Why, from my earliest years I
had been accustomed to think of myself as plain, and had not cared. My
earliest recollection, almost, is of two women who one day talked about me
in my presence, not thinking that I would understand.

"Ain't she humbly?" said one.

"Dretful! It's a pity. Looks means so much more to a gal."

"But she's smart."

By these words--you can see that I was young--I was exalted, not cast
down. And for five years, remembering them, I had been proud of being
"smart." But now, in the moment of revelation, the law of sex was laid
upon me, and the thought failed to bring its accustomed comfort. Smart?
Perhaps. But--homely!

With feet as light as my heart was heavy because of Billy's taunt, I flew
home and ran up to my room. I had there a tiny mirror, about two-thirds of
which had fallen from its frame. I may before that day have taken in it
brief, uncritical glimpses at my face, but they had not led to self-
analysis. Now, with beating heart and solemn earnestness, I balanced a
chair against the door--there was no lock--and looked long and unlovingly
at my reflected image.

I saw many freckles, a nose too small, ears too big, honest eyes, hair
which was an undecided brown; in short, an ordinary wind-blown little
prairie girl. Perhaps I was not so ill-looking, nor Janey so pretty, as
Billy affected to think, but no such comforting conclusion then came to
me. Sorrow fronted me in the glass.

The broken mirror gave no hint of my figure, but I know that I was lean
and angular, with long legs forever thrusting themselves below the hem of
my dress; the kind of girl for whose growth careful mothers provide skirts
with tucks that can be let out to keep pace with their increasing stature.

Yes, I was homely! I could not dispute the evidence of the bit of shivered
glass.

My heart was swelling with grief as I slowly went down stairs, where my
mother was getting supper for the hired men. I think it must have been
early spring, for prairie schools need not expect boy pupils in seeding
time; I know that the door was open and the weather warm.

"Ma," I said as I entered the dining room, "will I ever be pretty?"

"Sakes alive! What _will_ the child think of next?"

"But will I, Ma?"

"'Han'some is as han'some does,' you know, Nelly," my mother responded, as
she set on the table two big plates piled high with slices of bread. Then
she went into the buttery and brought out a loaf of temperance cake, a
plate of doughnuts and a great dish of butter.

"Oh, come now, Ma; please tell me," I wheedled, not content with a
proverb.

"Why, Nelly, I don't know; the' ain't nobody does know. I was well-
favoured at your age, but your pa wan't much on looks. But Pa had a sister
who was reel good-lookin', an' some says you've got her eyes. Maybe you'll
take after her. But land! You can't never tell. I've seen some of the
prettiest babies grow up peaked and pindlin' an' plain as a potato;
whilst, on the other hand, reel homely children sometimes come up an' fill
out rosy-cheeked an' bright-eyed as you please. There was my half-sister
Rachel, now, eight years younger'n me. I remember well how folks said she
was the homeliest baby they ever see; an' she grew up homely, too, just a
lean critter with big eyes an' tousled hair; but she got to be reel pretty
'fore she died. Then there's my own Cousin Francie, she that married
Tim'thy Baker an' went to New York to live. She's a bright, nice-lookin'
woman, almost han'some; an' her little girls are, too; about your age they
be. An'--"

I suppose the lonely prairie life had made Ma fond of talking, without
much regard for her audience. Often have I heard her for an hour at a time
steadily whispering away to herself. Now she had forgotten her only
auditor, a wide-eyed little girl, and was fairly launched upon monologue,
the subject answering as well as another her imperious need.

"Which of Pa's sisters, Ma?" I asked, interrupting.

"W'ich of his sisters--w'at? Wat you talkin' 'bout now?"

"Which is the good-looking one?"

"Oh, your Aunt Em'ly, o' course. Nobody ain't ever accused S'renie or
Keren-Happuch o' bein' sinfully beautiful, fur's I know."

My Aunt Em'ly was invested for me with a new interest. Perhaps some day I
might take after her and grow equally well-favoured. I did not remember
having noticed that she was beautiful, and resolved to study her at the
first opportunity.



CHAPTER II.


A SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON.

Going to church was a good old New England custom that in our family had
borne transplanting to the West. Sunday was almost the pleasantest day in
the week to me--not elbowing school-less Saturday from its throne; not of
course even comparing with the bliss of Friday just after school, but
easily surpassing the procession of four dull, dreaded, droning days the
ogre Monday led.

The beauty and fragrance of the summer Sabbath began in the early morning,
when I went out into the garden, before putting on my Sunday frock, and
picked a quantity of the old-fashioned flowers that grew there. I arranged
them in two flat bouquets, with tall gladiolus stalks behind and smaller
growths ranging down in front so that they might see and be seen, peeping
over each other's heads, when placed against the wall in church.

Then after the great toilet-making of the week we were off. The drive over
the prairie in the democrat wagon behind our smartest pair of plough
horses was a pleasure that never grew tame from repetition. Arriving at
the church, I would give my bouquets to the old stoop-shouldered sexton
and watch him anxiously as he ambled down the aisle with them. Perhaps my
flowers--yes, the very flowers that I had dashed the dew from that
morning--would be placed on the pulpit itself, not on the table below, nor
yet about the gallery where sat the choir. Then indeed I felt honoured.
But wherever they might be, I could watch them all through the services,
perhaps catch their fragrance from some favouring breeze, and feel that
they were own folks from home.

Even sermon time did not seem long. After I had noted the text to prepare
for catechism at home, I was free to dream as I chose until the rustle of
relief at the close of the speaking. And the droning of bees and buzzing
of flies, or the sudden clamour of a hen somewhere near would come
floating in through the open window, and the odour of the flowers and the
twigs of the "ellum" tree tapping at the pane helped to make the little
church a haven of restfulness.

But on the Sunday following my awakening I had no care for sounds outside,
no eyes for my bouquets, though they stood at either hand of the pulpit; I
got permission to sit in Aunt Keren's pew, where I could see Aunt Em'ly's
face; and all through the sermon I studied it with big, round eyes.

Yes, and with sorrow growing leaden in my heart.

For I was not old enough to see in her face what it had been, nor to
appreciate the fine profile that remained. Hers was not the pink-and-white
of rosy girlhood, the only beauty I could understand; and wherein her
toil-set features differed from those of the other drudging farmers' wives
or the shut-in women of the little village, I could not see.

A lump rose in my throat; this wrinkled and aging person was the beautiful
woman I might take after!

I'm afraid I returned from church that day without the consolations of
religion.

There followed an anxious time of experimenting. Some one had told me that
lemon juice would exorcise freckles, and surreptitiously I tried it. How
my face smarted after the heroic treatment, and how red and inflamed it
looked! But then in a little while back came the freckles again and they
stayed, too, until--but how they went, I am to tell you.

I wheedled from mother the privilege of daily wearing my coral beads--the
ones my cousins Milly and Ethel Baker had sent me from New York--and had
an angry fit of crying when one day, while we children were racing for the
schoolhouse door at the end of recess, the string broke and they were
nearly all trampled upon before I could pick them up.

Youth is buoyant. Next I begged the sheet lead linings of tea chests from
the man who kept the general store, and cut them into little strips that I
folded into hair-curlers, covering them with paper so that the edges
should not cut. I would go to sleep at night with my short, dampened hair
twisted around these contrivances, and in the morning comb it out and
admire it as it stood about my head in a bushy mass, like the Circassian
girl's at the circus.

Thus beautified, I happened one day to meet our white-headed old pastor!
How he stared!

"Stand still a minute, Nelly, child, and let's look at you," he commanded.
"Why, what have you been doing to yourself?"

The good man's accent wasn't admiring; sadly I realised the failure of my
attempt to compel beauty. When I reached home I sternly soaked the curl
out of my hair, brushed it flat and braided it into two exceedingly tight
pig-tails. Ah, me! It's easy--afterwards--to laugh at the silent sorrows
of childhood, bravely endured alone. At least, it's easy for me, now!

I began to worry Ma about my clothes. I grew ashamed of red-and-black,
pin-checked woollen frocks, and sighed for prettier things. One of the
girls wore at a Sunday school concert a gray and blue dress with many
small ruffles, that seemed to me as elegant as a duchess could want. The
children whispered that it had cost $20, and I wondered if I should ever
again see raiment so wonderful. I knew that it was useless to ask for such
a dress for myself; I should be told that I was not old enough for fine
feathers.

It was our Sabbath day custom to pass directly from the church services to
those of Sunday school, and drive home after these. One stormy day I was
the only scholar in my class, and when we had finished the Bible Lesson
Leaflets and I was watching the long rows of bobbing heads, flaxen and
dark, in the pews full of restless, wriggling children, I turned to the
teacher with a question that I had long been meditating.

"Miss Coleman," I began desperately, "ain't there any way to get pretty?"

"I wish there were a way and I knew it," she responded with a smile. "But
you should say 'isn't,' you know."

"Oh, but you are pretty," I cried, not with the intent of compliment, but
as merely stating a fact.

I do not now think that it was a fact. Miss Coleman's features were
irregular, her nose prominent, her forehead too high; but she had a fair,
pure complexion and fine eyes, and somehow reminded me of the calla lilly
that Ma was always fussing about in our sitting room.

And she was good and wise. I have often thought how different my life
might have been if her orbit had not briefly threaded mine. If I had asked
that question of some simpering girl a few years older than I--the average
Sunday school teacher--she would have replied, from under the flower-
burdened hat that had cost her so much thought, that all flesh was grass
and beauty vain; and I should have known that she didn't believe it.

"For that matter," said Miss Coleman, after a little pause in which she
seemed considering her words with more than usual care, "there are ways of
growing beautiful; and, so far as she can, it is a woman's duty to seek
them; would you like to know how?"

A duty to be beautiful! Here was novel doctrine.

I gazed with eyes and mouth wide open as she continued: "For one with good
lungs and a sound body, the first law of beauty is to be healthy; and
health is not just luck. To get it and keep it seek constant exercise in
the open air. Middle-aged women lose their looks because they stay in too
constantly; when they were girls and played out-of-doors they had roses in
their cheeks. Most handsome women of sixty are those who go among people
and keep their interest in what is going on.

"And the second law is intelligence. For thinking gives the eyes
expression. A foolish girl may be fair and rosy, yet far from beautiful.
Many of the world's famous beauties have suffered serious blemishes; but
they have all had wit or spirit to give their faces charm. You have
planted flowers?"

"I guess so; yes'm." I didn't see the connection.

"You know then that if you kept digging them to see if they had sprouted,
they never would sprout. So it is not well to think too much about growth
in beauty. Don't be impatient. It is a work of years. But the method is
certain, within limits. I should think that by exercise for the body and
study for the mind you might easily become a beautiful woman. Another
thing; don't slouch."

I sat up straight as a grenadier, my shoulders absurdly stiff.

"No, nevermind your shoulders," said Miss Coleman, smiling; "they'll take
care of themselves if you keep your head right. Practise sitting and
standing erect. And never wear a corset. If the Almighty had meant woman
to be corset-shaped, He'd have made her so."

The superintendent's bell, tinkling for the closing hymn, and the rustle
of the leaves of singing books broke in upon our talk; for the first time
I failed to welcome the interruption.

"Why, I've delivered quite a lecture upon beauty," Miss Coleman said. "Now
just a word more. Try to remember that by making yourself a good and wise
woman you will also make yourself more beautiful."

"Oh, I'll remember; I will!" I cried.

And I have done so! Every word! And if Miss Coleman could only see me now!
How could I forget?

I was silent all the way home. At the dinner table, as my father was
tucking his napkin under his chin, he said: "Well, Nelly, w'at was Mr.
Stoddard's text?"

"I--I guess it was something about the children of Israel."

"Yes, prob'ly it was something about 'em," Pa assented with a chuckle.

But Ma spoke more sharply: "I guess you won't get let to set in Aunt
Keren-Happuch's pew again right away, Helen 'Lizy." For before my lesson I
had once more been studying Aunt Em'ly's face.

I didn't mind the prohibition the least bit. I had a new idea and a new
hope. The idea was exaggerated, the hope vain.--Was vain? Ah, it has been
more than realised, as you shall hear; realised in a way that amazes me
the more, the more I think upon it. Realised as yours shall be, some day,
through me!

Realised! Great Heavens! It is a miracle!



CHAPTER III.


THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE.

Our district schoolhouse was a shadeless, unpainted box. Within, whittled
desks, staring windows and broken plastering made it a fit prison for the
boys, whose rough ways were proof of the refining influence of their daily
intercourse with the hired men. I wonder such places are tolerated. What a
contrast to Barnard's white and gold!

John Burke was our teacher the following winter. He was only seventeen
then, but already tall and well grown, in appearance quite a man. He was a
student working his way to an education, and his example was a help to me.
For I no longer hated lessons. Miss Coleman's talk had filled me with such
zeal for knowledge that I became, before the term was over, the phenomenon
of the school. Mr. Burke boarded at our house and he would bring home
shining tales of my prowess, and often I would listen open-mouthed as we
sat about the table at night and he told stories of the State University
and the students and the merry life they led.

Every one was amazed at my industry. I played as heartily as I worked, but
I studied with a will, too, and passed a score of mates. That was easy
enough, for home study was never dreamed of by most of them, and leisure
hours in school were passed in marking "tit-tat-to" upon slates or eating
apples under the friendly shelter of the desks.

At the end of the term I received a prize--a highly coloured print of
"Washington Crossing the Delaware," which Pa and Ma used long after to
bring out and exhibit with pride. It is still somewhere in the old house--
hung up in Ma's bedroom, I think, along with the blue-and-tinseled crown,
marked "Charity" in gilt letters across the front, which I wore in the
exciting dialogue of "Faith, Hope and Charity" at a Sunday school
exhibition.

But more than any prize I valued the help and friendship of John Burke and
the consciousness that he considered me his most promising pupil. Upborne
by new ideals, I resolved to study through the vacation that followed, and
to my surprise this was not an infliction but a pleasure, now that I was
my own task-mistress.

Next term the "girl teacher"--for economy's sake we had them in summer
when there were no big boys to thrash--was astonished at my industry and
wisdom, and as I could see, a little afraid of them. At the end of the
first week I went home bursting with an idea that in secret I had long
cherished. Aunt Keren was at tea, I remember, and the talk fell upon my
work in school, giving me my opportunity.

"Who'd a thought a mischeevious little tyke like her would ha' turned out
a first-rate learner, after all?" queried Auntie, beaming upon me good-
naturedly from behind her gold-bowed spectacles. "I al'ays tol' ye, Ezry,
ye'd be proud o' her some day."

"I guess Sue Arkwright's a famous good teacher; that's one thing," said
Ma, amiably. "Sis never done near so well before; at least, not till last
term."

"I never thought Sue was anythin' remarkable," Pa broke in. "How is that,
Sis? Is she a good teacher?"

"No, she ain't," I responded, with quickened beating of the heart.
Criticism of teachers was admissible in my code of ethics, but
justification must follow; there must be proof--or reproof.

"What's that?" said Pa, looking at me curiously. "Ever ketch her in a
mistake?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Bring the book."

I ran and fetched a well-thumbed book from the sewing machine and turned
to the definitions of familiar foreign words.

"There," said I, spreading the speller flat on the table and pointing with
my finger. "French word for 'Mister.' Teacher called it 'Monshure,' just
as they all do. But that's wrong. To-day I showed her how it is. See, the
book says it's pronounced 'm-o-s-s-e-r' and that little mark means an
accent on the last syllable and it's 'long e.' 'Mosseer' is right. But
when I showed it to teacher, she looked at it awhile, and then she
wrinkled up her eye-brows, and whispered it once or twice and said: 'Oh,
yes; "mosser."' And she made us call it 'mosser' all the rest of the day,
too," I ended triumphantly.

"Why, o' course that ain't right; 'mosser' ain't it!" volunteered one of
the hired men, who had lingered to hear the discussion. "I've heerd that
word a thousan' times; right way seems like 'M'shoo.' Shucks! Can't get my
tongue 'round it, nohow."

"Yes, I know", said Pa "you go call Frenchy."

Joe Lavigne, summoned from the barn, came, followed by all the rest,
curious to see what was wanted--a rough, kindly gang of men in blue
overalls and big, clumping boots.

"Joe," said Pa; "you say 'Mister' in French."

"Ya-a-as, M'sieu' Weensheep, so I call heem: M'sieu'; M'sieu'; M'sieu'."

Very carefully Frenchy pronounced the clipped word.

"That's all, Joe; I s'pose book French is a good deal diff'rent from
ord'nary Kanuck. 'Mosseer' is right anyhow, for the book says so. Teacher
had ought to know enough to go by the book, I sh' think."

"Tain't her fault, Pa," I said, relenting. "She never went to any good
school. I want to go somewhere where the teachers know a real lot; not
just a little bit more than me. I want to go"--I paused to gain courage--
"I want to go to the University, like--like Mr. Burke."

"The State University!" Pa repeated, in a tone of awe; "Thunder! Don't
believe we could manage that, Sis."

"W'y, yes, y'can, too, Ezry," Aunt Keren argued, "seems to me you're
forehanded enough, to do for an only child. 'Tain't 's if you was like me
'n' Ab., with our four chunies."

"She'd have to go to an academy first to get fitten for it," said Ma. "She
couldn't go to the Univers'ty for three or four years yet."

"Of course not," I answered; "but you might write to Mr. Burke to send me
a catalogue to find out how much I'd have to know to get taken in. Then I
could study at home till I got pretty near ready, and then take a year at
the Academy."

The words flowed easily, eagerly; I had so often gone over the plan.

"Good idee," said Pa, nodding his head, relieved to find that I wasn't
seeking to leave home at once; and so it was arranged.

Isn't it wonderful? Plain and bald and homely the house, unpretending the
surroundings, simple and primitive the life, that sent forth the world's
first beautiful woman, the Woman of the Secret! I have tried to set it all
down exactly as it happened--the quaint, old-fashioned dialect, the homely
ways, the bearded, booted men. For this place, just as it was, was the
birthplace of the new glory; out of this homely simplicity dawned the new
era of beauty that is to make the whole world glad.

A catalogue was sent for, books were bought and I set to work unaided,
though Mr. Stoddard took an interest in my studies and often helped me out
of difficulties. I chose the classical course, undeterred by parental
demonstrations of the "plum uselessness" of Latin and Greek; I had for the
choice no better reason than that it was more difficult. I no longer went
to the little red schoolhouse.

All this time I had almost forgotten Billy, to whom I owed such a debt of
gratitude for sending me upon the Quest. Once I met him on the road.

"Ain't ye never comin' to school no more?" he queried.

"No, I am never going again; I am preparing for the State University; I
shall take a classical course," I answered with hauteur, looking down upon
him as I spoke. Only that morning Ma had let out another tuck in my gown.

"I'm aw'fly sorry," Billy murmured with a foolish, embarrassed grin.
"Guess I'll walk along of ye, if ye don't care."

My triumph found me cold. The sting of Billy's words yet rankled, and
perhaps I was not so grateful to the little wretch as he deserved. It was
about a quarter of a mile to our house; we walked the distance in unbroken
silence. Once there, Billy rallied.

"Good-by, Miss Winship," he said, holding open the gate for me. It was the
first time that any one had addressed me by that grown-up title.

"Good-by, Billy."

And that was the end of the beginning of the Quest.

In blizzard time and through the fierce heat of summer I toiled at self-
set tasks in our ugly, comfortable home. During the blessed intervals when
we could induce "girl help" to stay with us I had scarcely any housework
to do. Fairly regular exercise came to be a habit and I worried admiring
relatives into thinking me a candidate for an early grave by taking a cold
bath every morning. In the end I managed, with a single year in a
cheerless boarding house near a village academy, where I studied greedily,
devouring my books, to enter the State University with a scholarship to my
credit.

I took half the examination in Spring and read extra Virgil and Ovid all
summer. Then in August, when the long vacation was nearly over, came the
village dressmaker. Ma had promised me two new dresses, and I would sit
hemming towels or poring over Greek and Roman history while they turned
the leaves of fashion magazines and discussed materials and trimmings.

I secretly hoped for a silk, but Mother, to whom I suppose I am even now--
now!--a little girl, vetoed that as too showy, and the dressmaker added
her plea for good, durable things. The choice fell upon a golf suiting for
school and a black cashmere for church.

I begged hard to have the cashmere touch the ground, but both women smiled
at the folly of the child who forgot the many re-bindings a long skirt
would call for. There was a comic side to my disappointment, for I guessed
that the widow Trask could not make the designs I coveted, nor anything of
which she could not buy a paper pattern.

But when I went up to the University and became entitled to join in the
cry:--

S!----U!
We're----a----few!
S!----T!----A--T--E!
U!----ni----ver--si--tee!
Wow!----Wow!----Wow!

--I found that I compared favourably enough with my mates. Dress played
little part in every day college life, and for such occasions as socials
or Friday night debating society I soon learned from upper class girls to
mitigate ugly gowns with pretty ribbons. And I congratulated myself upon
the fact that I was not by any means the plainest girl in my class. My
face was hopeless, but my hard-won fight for an erect posture had given me
a bearing that seemed almost distinguished. And--well, even my face wasn't
so bad, I thought then!

We were a jolly set; most of us poor as church mice, and caring little.
Making rather a boast of it, indeed. John Burke's roommate, Jim Reeder,
cooked his own meals--mostly oatmeal--in his room and lived on less than a
dollar a week until fairly starved. I suppose they'll call him "old Hoss"
to his dying day. Until his mother moved to town, John was almost as ill-
fed. He was just completing his law course when I was a Freshman, and used
to make brave jests at poverty, even after his admission to the bar.

Of course I was glad to meet him again, and, though I was puzzled just at
first, to see how little older than I my former teacher was, yet
afterwards--why, I haven't answered his last--I don't know how many
letters; I simply must remember to write to him!

I think the best part of the teaching wasn't in the books. Some of the
students were queer and uncouth when they came, the boys eating with their
knives in the fashion of the farm; some of the brightest girls in ill-
fitting clothes--perfect guys they'd be thought in the city. But there
were others of quite different manner, and from them and from professors
who had seen the world, we learned a little--a very little--of its ways.
And perhaps we were not unfavourable specimens of young republicanism,
with our merry, hopeful outlook upon life, and our future governors and
senators all in the raw--yes, and our countesses and vice-reines!



CHAPTER IV


GIRL BACHELOR AND BIOLOGIST

Merrily flew the years and almost before I realised it came graduation. In
the leafy dark of the village street, in the calm of a perfect June night,
John Burke told me that he loved me, and I plighted my troth to him.

We laid plans as we bade each other good-by, to meet again--perhaps--in
New York in the fall; and even that little separation seemed so long. We
did not guess that the weeks would grow to months, and--oh, dear, what
will he think of me when he gets here? And what--now--shall I say to him?

Father for the first time visited college to see me graduate. Between his
pride in my standing at the head of my class and his discomfort in a
starched collar, he was a prey to conflicting emotions all Commencement
week, and heaved a great sigh of relief when at last the train that bore
us home pulled out of the station. But as we approached our own he again
grew uneasy, and kept peering out at the car window as if on the watch for
something.

At length we descended in front of the long yellow box we called the
"deepo." And there was Joe Lavigne to meet us, not with the democrat
wagon, but with a very new and shiny top buggy.

When we reached the farmhouse, I saw proofs of a loving conspiracy. The
addition of a broad veranda and a big bay window, with the softening
effect of the young trees that had grown up all around the place, made it
look much more homelike than the bare box that had sheltered my childhood.
A new hammock swung between two of the trees.

Mother met me at the door with more emotion than I had ever before
detected upon her thin face. Then I saw that the dear people had been at
work within the house as well. Cosey corners and modern wall paper and
fittings such as I had seen at the professors' houses and had described at
home to auditors apparently slightly interested, had been remembered and
treasured up and here attempted, to make my homecoming a festivity. The
house had been transformed, and if not always in the best of taste, love
shone through the blunders.

"Oh, Father," I cried, "now I am surprised! How much wheat it must have
cost!"

"Well, I guess we can stand it," he said, grimly pleased and proud and
anxious all at once. "We wanted to make it kind o' pleasant for ye, Sis;
an'--an' homelike."

There was something so soft and tremulous in his voice that it struck me
with a great pang of contrition that I had left him for so many years,
that already I was eager to go away again--to the great city where John
was soon to be.

I turned quickly away and went from room to room admiring the changes, but
after supper, when we were all gathered about the sitting room table,
Father returned to the subject most upon his mind. He had seen me with
John during Commencement week, and must have understood matters.

"Ready t' stay hum now, I s'pose, ain't ye?" he asked with a note in his
voice of cheery assurance that perhaps he did not feel, tilting back and
forth in his old-fashioned rocking chair, as I had so often seen him do,
with closed eyes and open mouth, his face steeled against expression. And
the slow jog, jog, jog of the chair reminded me how his silent evening
vigils had worn away the rockers until they stood flat upon the floor,
making every movement a clacking complaint.

To-night--to-night, he is rocking just the same, in silence, in
loneliness. Poor, dear Pa!

"I'm glad to get home, of course," I said; "but--I wanted to speak with
you. But not to-night."

"Why, ye're through school."

"Yes, but I--I wish I could go on studying; if I may."

The words tripped over each other in my embarrassment.

The jog, jog of the chair paused suddenly, leaving for a moment only the
ticking of the clock to break the silence.

"Not goin' to put up 'ith us an' stay right alon', eh?" he asked; and
rocked twice, then stopped again, in suspense for the answer.

"Why, Father," I stammered, "of course I don't want to do anything unless
you're willing, but I had thought I'd like--I did want to go and study in
the city--I think--or somewhere."

"Dear me! Dear me!" he mused, his voice very low and even; "an' you just
through the University; 'way up to the top, too. Can't ye--seems as if ye
better stop alon' of us an' study home, same's you used to? Mebbe--mebbe
'twon't be good for ye, studyin' so much."

"Of course I can, you dear old Dad," I cried; and horribly guilty I felt
as I looked at the kindly, weather-beaten face. "I shall do just whatever
you say. But oh, I wish I _could go to the city_! Don't you suppose
I could?"

"Chicago, mebbe?"

"I had thought of a post-graduate course in Barnard College--that's in New
York, you know."

Father knew John's plans. I blushed hotly. In the pause that followed I
knew that he was thinking of a well-thumbed map in my old school
geography; of the long, long journey to Chicago, and the thousand weary
miles that stretched beyond. Hastily I went on:--

"But I know how you have saved for me and worked for me and pinched; and
I'd be ashamed to be a burden upon you any longer; I can teach to get
money to go on with."

"No;" said Pa, sitting up straight and striking the arm of the chair with
his clenched fist a blow that gave some hint of the excitement that moved
him. "Guess a child o' mine don't need to teach an' get all dragged out,
alon' of a passel o' wild children! No, no, Helen 'Lizy;" he added more
softly, sinking back into the old attitude and once more closing his eyes;
"if the's so much more to learn, an' you want to go ahead an' learn it,
just you go an' get it done with. I'm right sorry to have ye go so fur
away; I did think--but it's nat'ral, child; it's nat'ral. I s'pose John
Burke's goin' to the city, too, and you kinder--I s'pose young folks likes
to be together."

"I--I--we have talked of it."

Talked about it! John and I had talked of nothing else for a week. I sat
very still, my eyes on the carpet.

"Guess John Burke'll have all he cares to do for one while, gittin'
started in the law office, 'thout runnin' round with Nelly," said Ma. "Ye
seem bent on spoilin' the child, Ezry. Al'ays the same way, ever sin'
she's a little girl."

Her lips were compressed, the outward symbol of a life of silent hours and
self restraint.

"There, there, Ma," said Father, jogging his chair again. "Don't ye worry
no more 'bout that. What's ourn is hern in the long run, an' she may as
well have some of it now when she wants it, an' it'll do her some good. I
s'pose Frank Baker--she that's your mother's cousin an' married Tim'thy
Baker an's gone to New York to live--I s'pose she might look after you;
but it's a long way off, New York--seems like a dretful long way off. What
ye goin' to learn, Sis, if ye should go t' the city?"

"Well, I was good in chemistry; Prof. Meade advised me--I might study
medicine; I don't know. And I want to know more about books and pictures
and the things that people talk about, out in the world, though I can
hardly call that a study, I suppose."

The words somehow disappointed me when uttered. They didn't sound
convincing. Such pursuits seemed less serious, there in the old farm-house
that spoke of so much painful toil, than when John and I had discussed
them on the sunny campus.

"I--I don't know yet, just what to do; there's all summer to plan; but I
want--somehow--to make the very most and the best of myself," I added
earnestly.

It was true, and the nearest I could come to the exact truth; that love
urged me yet more eagerly upon the Quest, and that with all my heart I
longed to become a wise and brilliant woman, for John's sake, and as a
step towards beauty, according to Miss Coleman's words.

"I don't hold with women bein' doctors," said Ma, as she energetically
knitted into the middle of her needle before looking up. "I don't know
what we're comin' to, these days."

"There, there, Ma, I don't know why women shouldn't be doctors, if they
want to. They make better nusses'n men. Mebbe--mebbe Sis'll be gettin'
married some day, an' I tell ye a little doctorin' know-how is mighty
handy in a house. A doctor an' a lawyer, now, would be a gret team, right
in the fambly, like. Well, Sis, we'll see; we'll see."

I knew that the matter was practically settled; and there was little sleep
for me, or for any one, that night in the old farm-house.

I stayed at home until September, and then one morning Father drove me
again to the little yellow station whose door opens wide upon all the
world.

"Well, good-by, Helen 'Lizy," he said.

"Good-by, Father."

For weeks I had been eager to be off, but as the train began to move and I
looked back at his patient figure--he made no more show of his deep
emotion than if the parting were for a day--a big lump rose in my throat
at leaving him and Ma--old before their time with toil and privation and
planning and striving for me.

I knew how lonely it would be in the sitting room that night without me.
Father with closed eyes jogging away in his chair, Mother bolt upright and
thin and prim, forever at her knitting or sewing; no sound but the chair
and the ticking clock upon the shelf--that night and every night. And the
early bedtime and the early morning and the long, long day--what a
contrast to this!

I pressed my face against the window, but a rush of tears blurred all the
dear, familiar landmarks--Barzillai Foote's red barn, the grain elevator
at the siding, the Hartsville road trailing off over the prairie; I would
have given worlds to be in the top buggy again, moving homeward, instead
of going swiftly out, out, alone, into the world. Three months ago! I did
not dream what miracles were in store!

And so one day I reached the New York I had dreamed about. It wasn't as a
shrine of learning that it appealed to me, altogether; but as a wonderful
place, beautiful, glittering, feverish with motion, abounding with gayety,
thronged with people, bubbling with life.

How it fascinated me!

Just at first of course I was lonely because John had not yet come, and
Mrs. Baker, mother's cousin, was away from home. But I soon made friends
with my cousins, Ethel and Milly; shy, nice girls, twins and precisely
alike, except, that Ethel is slightly lame. And at my boarding place I
made the acquaintance of an art student from Cincinnati three or four
years older than I, who proposed that we should become girl bachelors and
live in a studio.

"But I didn't know people ever lived in studios," I objected.

"Oh, you dear goose!" said Kathryn Reid--it's really her name, though of
course I call her Kitty--"Live in studios? Bless you, child, everybody
does it. And I know a beyewtiful studio that we can have cheap, because
we're such superior young persons; also because it's ever so many stories
up and no elevator. Can you cook a little? Can you wash dishes, or not
mind if they're not washed? You got the blessed bump of disorder? You good
at don't care? Then live with me and be my love. You've no idea the money
you'll save."

That's just the way Kitty talks. You can't induce her to be serious for
three minutes at a time--I suppose it's the artistic temperament. But
she's shrewd; studio life _is_ better than the kind of boarding house
we escaped from. And so jolly! Kitty has more chums than I, of course. Her
brother, Prosper K., and Caroline Bryant--"Cadge," for short--a queer girl
who does newspaper work and sings like an angel, are the ones I see most.
Though for that matter the city's full of girls from the country, earning
or partly earning their living. One will be studying music, another art;
one "boning" at medicine, another selling stories to the newspapers and
living in hope of one day writing a great American play or novel. Such
nice girls--so brave and jolly.

My new home is in a building on Union Square. And I like it--the place,
the people, the glimpse of the wintry Square, the roaring city life under
my window. I'm sure I don't want a quiet room. It's such fun, just like
playing house, to be by ourselves and independent of all the world. I
think it's an intoxicating thing, just at first, for a girl to be really
independent. Boys think nothing of it; it's what they've been brought up
to expect.

Well, I tore myself away from the dear place to get at my work. I really
mean to work hard and justify Father's sacrifices. I tried to take singing
lessons, because John is so fond of music, but there I made a dismal
failure; I had, three months ago, neither ear nor voice. The day before
the fall semester opened, I climbed the long hill to Barnard College, fell
in love with its gleaming white and gold, so different from the State
University, and arranged for a course in biology. Then I began physical
culture in a gymnasium.

I couldn't have made a queerer or a better combination. For it was in the
Barnard laboratory that I met Prof. Darmstetter; and it was my bearing, my
unending practice of the West Point setting-up drill, my Delsarte, my
"harmonic poise" and evident health that drew his attention to me.

How well I remember the day I made his acquaintance! I had entered the
laboratory without knowing what manner of man he was, for all my
arrangements about my course had been made with clerks. So it was with
genuine surprise that I turned from an inspection of the apparatus to
answer when a squeaking voice at my elbow suddenly saluted me:--

"Mees Veenship, not so?"

The owner of the voice was a little old fellow, whose dry, weazened face
gave no hint of his years. I guessed that he was probably seventy, though
he might as easily be much younger. His skin was parchment-coloured and
cross-hatched by a thousand wrinkles and the hair under his skull-cap was
as white as snow, but he was as bright of eye and brisk of manner as a
youth of twenty.

"Yes, sir," I replied rather awkwardly; "I am Miss Winship."

"V'at for you study biology?" was his surprising query, uttered in a tone
between a squeak, a snarl, and a grunt.

"Because I wish to learn," I replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"No, mine vriendt," he snapped, "you do not vish to learn. You care
not'ing for science. You are romantic, you grope, you change, you are
unformed. In a vord, you are a voman. You haf industry--mine Gott, yes!--
and you vill learn of me because I am a man and because you haf not'ing
better to do. And by-and-by behold Prince Charming--and you vill meet and
marry and forget science. V'at for I vaste my time vit' you? Eh? I do not
know any voman who becomes a great scientist. Not so? T'ose young vomen,
t'ey vaste t'eir time and t'ey vaste mine."

I followed his gesture and saw two or three nice-looking girls in big
checked aprons amiably grinning at me. One of them by a solemn wink
conveyed the hint that such hazing of new arrivals was not unusual.

"You're paid to waste your time on me," I answered hotly. "I'm here to
work and to listen to you; my plans are my own affair, and if I never
become a great scientist, I don't see what difference that makes to you."

The meekest looking girl gasped, wide eyed at my temerity. But Prof.
Darmstetter's shrewd little eyes twinkled with reassuring good-nature.

"Vell, vell, ve shall see," said he, wagging his head; "maybe I find some
use for you. I vatch you. Maybe I find for you some use t'at you don't
expect, eh? Ve shall see."

So he walked away, shrugging his shoulders and snapping his fingers and
muttering to himself: "Ve shall see; we shall see." And at times
throughout the session he chuckled as if he had heard of an excellent
joke.

"Good gracious!" I whispered to one of the aproned girls that had watched
the encounter--students like myself--"that's an encouraging reception,
isn't it?"

"It is," she gravely replied. "We're all jealous of you. You are evidently
destined to become Prof. Darmstetter's favourite pupil. I know I cried
half the night at the way he greeted me. We were all watching you and you
got off easy. Brought an apron? I can lend you one, if you didn't. It's
pretty mussy here."

"Thank you," I said, "but really I can't get my mind off Prof.
Darmstetter, all in a minute so. What sort of a man is he?"

"Oh, irritating sometimes, but a genius; I suppose his treatment of the
girls is a sample of his Early Teutonic ideas of civility. He likes better
to teach the Columbia boys--says their work in future years'll do him more
credit. But we get used to him and don't mind it, we who were here last
year. And he's a great scientist; has a world-wide reputation. He almost
lives in the laboratory, here and at Columbia; has no home life or friends
or relatives. And oh, it's such a privilege," she said with a sudden
change of tone, a schoolmistressly manner, looking upon me more austerely,
"to study under such a man. He is a Master."

The Master! She little knew how true was the word! To-morrow, if his
secret and mine were known, the world would hail him as its lord. He would
be a greater man than has yet lived on the earth. Armies would fight for
his favour at the bidding of queens--to get what I have! And to think that
chance led me from two thousand miles away, straight to him.

From the first he seemed to take an interest in my doings. He never
troubled himself to be polite, but he watched me; always he watched me. I
often saw him chuckling and rubbing his hands as if in approbation. But of
what? Not of my work, for of that he never took the slightest notice,
except when I compelled him to do so by some question.

Then, in quick-flung sentences, he would condense the results of a
lifetime of study into phrases filled with meaning, that seemed to cast
light upon principles, not facts, and make wonderfully clear the very
purpose of Nature. Then indeed he almost forgot that we were women, and
talked with kindling enthusiasm of his pet subject. I ceased to wonder
that he held such high rank in college.

Under such conditions I made rapid progress. I thoroughly enjoyed the
work, though I was not absorbed in it, like most of my companions; but I
was quick enough to keep pace with them and to make occasional shrewd
suggestions that pleased Prof. Darmstetter not half so much as some sudden
display of spirit. He did not seem to care whether I became a student. And
always he watched me, for what purpose I could not determine.

My home life--if existence in a studio can be so called--was merry. I was
learning the ways of the world. I liked the life. I wrote to John almost
every day. The freedom of the den, the change from rote lessons to post-
graduate work was pleasant. I was happy.

Happy? I must have dreamed it.

What I thought happiness was nothing to what I now know happiness can be.



CHAPTER V.


THE FINDING OF THE BACILLUS.

If I have dwelt so long upon the laboratory and its master, it is because
there the great blessing came that has glorified my whole existence. This
was the way of it.

One day I asked Prof. Darmstetter some question about the preparation of a
microscopic slide from a bit of a frog's lung.

"Vait!" he snapped, "I vill speak vit' you aftervards."

The girls prophesied the terrible things that were to happen, as they
lingered in the cloak room, waiting their turn on the threadbare spot in
the rug which a rich girl had bought to cover the threadbare spot in the
carpet in front of the mirror. "Now you'll catch it!" the last one said,
as she carefully put her hat straight with both hands and ran out of the
room.

When I returned to the laboratory Prof. Darmstetter motioned me to a chair
and took one opposite, from which he fixed his keen eyes upon my face.
Again he seemed weighing, judging, considering me with uncanny, impersonal
scrutiny.

"How I despise t'ose vomen!" he said at last, throwing up his hands with
an impatient gesture.

Used to his ways, I waited in silence.

"I teach t'ose vomen, yes; but I despise t'em," he added.

"If you do, you ought to be ashamed of it," I retorted hotly. "But I don't
believe you really despise them. Such a bright lot of girls--why, some of
them are bound to be heard from in science some day!"

"In science? Bah!"

"Why not? There was Mary Somerville and--and--and Caroline Herschel and--
well, I can't think of their names all in a minute, but I'm proud to be
one of the girls here anyway."

"You are not one of t'em," he cried angrily. "T'ey are life failures. You
fancy t'ey are selected examples, but t'ey are not; t'ey are t'e rejected.
T'ey stood in t'e market place and no man vanted t'em; or else t'ey are
fools as vell as failures and sent t'e men avay. You know me. I am
biologist, not true? I hate t'e vord. I am physiologist, student of t'e
nature of life--all kinds of life, t'e ocean of life of v'ich man is but a
petty incident."

"You were speaking about--"

"Ach, so! Almost t'ou has t'e scientific mind t'at reasons and remembers.
I said, I am physiologist. I study v'at Nature is, v'at she means to do.
V'en Nature--Gott, if you vant a shorter name--makes a mistake, Gott says:
'Poor material; spoiled in shaping, wrong in t'e vorks; all failures;
t'row t'em avay. Ve haf plenty more to go on vit'. You know. You study
Nature, also, a little. You know she is law, she is power. To t'e
indifidual pitiless, she mofes vit' blind, discompassionate majesty ofer
millions of mangled organisms to t'e greater glory of Pan, of Kosmos, of
t'e Universe. She vastes life. And how not? Her best vork lives a little
v'ile and produces its kind, and t'e vorst does not, and t'ey go down t'e
dark vay toget'er and Nature neit'er veeps nor relents Kosmos is greater
t'an t'e indifidual and a million years are short.

"T'ose young vomen--Nature meant t'em to desire beauty and dream of lofe.
Vat is lofe? It is Nature's machinery. T'ose vomen are old enough for
lofe, but t'ey haf it not. So t'ey die. T'ey do not reproduce t'eir kind,
not'ing lifing comes from t'em, to go on lifing, on and on, better and
better--or vorse, as Nature planned--vit' efery generation. If a voman haf
t'e desire of lofe and of beauty, and lofe and beauty come not to her,
t'en I pity her, because I am less vise and resolute to vit'hold pity t'an
Nature is. Efen if she haf not lofe, but only t'e ambition of power or
learning or vealt', I might pity her vit' equal injustice, but I cannot.
She vill not let me. She does not know t'at she is a failure. She prides
herself upon being so mis-made. She cannot help t'at; neit'er can I help
despising her. Such vomen are abnormal, monstrous, in a vord, failures.
Let t'em die! You, I t'ink, are not so. You study to bide t'e time. You
haf a fine carriage. You comb t'e hair, you haf pretty ribbons, you make
t'e body strong and supple, you look in t'e glass and vish for more
beauty. Not so?"

"Of course I do," I cried angrily, wondering for the moment if he had lost
his senses. It seemed as if he knew little about women for a man who
professed to make all life his study. If there were one of his despised
girls who lacked the desire of beauty and the dream of love, I am much
mistaken. But I came to see afterward that he understood them as well as
myself.

"I t'ought so," he mused, his eyes still upon my face. "And you are not
too beautiful now; t'ey could not doubt. Yes; I vatch you, I study you.
Seldom I make t'e mistake; but it is fery important. So I vatch you a
little v'ile longer yet. T'en I say to myelf: 'Here is t'e voman; yes, she
is found.'"

And he chuckled and rubbed his lean hands together as I had so often seen
him do.

The thought flashed across my mind that this extraordinary man meditated a
proposal of marriage, but I dismissed the notion as ridiculous.

The Professor leaned forward and, fixing me with his eye, spoke in a
hoarse whisper, tense with excitement:--

"Mees Veenship, I am a biologist; you are a voman, creature of Nature,
yearning for perfection after your kind. I--I can gife it you. You can
trust me; I am ready. I can gif you your vish, t'e vish of efery normal
voman. Science--t'at is I--can make you t'e most beautiful being in t'e
vorld!"

Another Sunday school lesson! Miss Coleman and her unforgotten lecture
upon beauty flashed upon my mind. But this man was promising me more than
she had done, and his every word was measured. What was the mystery? What
had he to say to me?

"T'e most beautiful--voman--in t'e vorld," he went on in a slow, cadenced
whisper. "Do you vish it?"

His glittering eyes held mine again. No, he was not jesting at my expense;
rather he seemed waiting with anxiety for me to make some decision upon
which much depended. He was in very serious earnest.

But was ever a question more absurd? Who of women would not wish it? But
to get the wish--ah, there's a different matter! I thought he must be
crazed by over-study, and I could only sit and stare at him, open-mouthed.

"Listen!" he went on more rapidly, as if to forestall objection. "You are
scholar, too, a little. You know how Nature vorks, how men aid her in her
business. Man puts t'e mot'er of vinegar into sweet cider and it is
vinegar. T'e fermenting germs of t'e brewery chemist go in vit' vater and
hops and malt, and t'ere is beer. T'e bacilli of bread, t'e yeast,
svarming vit millions of millions of little spores, go into t'e
housevife's dough, and it is bad bread; but t'at is not t'e fault of t'e
bacilli--mein Gott, no!--for vit' t'e bacilli t'e baker makes goot bread.
T'e bacilli of butter, of cheese--you haf studied t'em. T'e experimenter
puts t'e germs of good butter into bad cream and it becomes goot. It
ripens. It is educated, led in t'e right vay. Tradition vaits for years to
ripen vine and make it perfect. Science finds t'e bacillus of t'e perfect
vine and puts it in t'e cask of fresh grape juice, and soon t'e vine
drinkers of t'e vorld svear it is t'e rare old vintage. T'e bacillus,
inconceivably tiny, svarming vit' life, reproducing itself a billion from
one, t'at is Nature's tool. And t'e physiologist helps Nature.

"See now," continued Prof. Darmstetter. "I haf a vonderful discofery made.
I must experiment vit' it--_experimentum in corpore vili!_
Impossible, for the subject is mankind. I must haf a voman--a voman like
you, healt'y, strong, young--all t'e conditions most favourable. She must
haf intelligence--t'at is you. She should know somet'ing of biology, and
be fery brave, so t'at she may not be frightened, but may understand how
t'e vonderful gift is to come to her; and t'at is you. She should not be
already beautiful, lest t'e change be less convincing. Yes, you are t'e
voman for t'e test. You may become more famous in history fan Cleopatra or
Ninon, and outshine t'em and all t'e ot'er beauties t'at efer lifed. Do
you vant triumphs? Here t'ey are. Riches? You shall command t'em. Fame?
Power? I haf t'em for you. You shall be t'e first. Aftervard, v'en beauty
is common as ugliness is now--ah, I do not know. Efen t'en it vill be a
blessing. But to be t'e first is fame and all t'e ot'er t'ings I promise
you. Now do you trust me? Now do you beliefe me? Vill you make t'e
experiment? I haf--let me tell you!--I haf discofered--"

Cautiously Prof. Darmstetter looked about the room. Then he leaned toward
me again and added in a hoarse whisper:--

"I haf discofered t'e Bacillus of Beauty."



CHAPTER VI.


THE GREAT CHANGE.

The Bacillus of Beauty! Was the poor man insane? Had much study made of
him a monomaniac babbling in a dream of absurdities? Do you wonder that I
doubted?

And yet--the thought flashed through my mind that things almost as strange
have become the commonplace. I had seen the bones of my own hand through
the veiling flesh. I had listened to a voice a thousand miles away. I had
seen insects cut in two, grafted together, head of one and tail of
another, and living. I had seen many, many marvels which science has
wrought along the lines of evolution. And yet--

My dream; my desire always! If it could be!

As I stared open-mouthed at the Professor, he began once more:--

"T'e danger, t'e risk--t'ere is none. You shall see. It is as harmless
as--"

"Never mind about that!" I interrupted. "How would I look? Would it change
me totally? Would I really be the most beautiful?--"

I stopped, blushing at my own eagerness.

"Absolutely; I svear it. T'e most perfectly beautiful voman in t'e vorld.
Mein Gott, yes. How not? Never vas t'ere yet a perfectly beautiful voman.
Not von. All have defects; none fulfills t'e ideal. You? You vill look
like yourself. I do not miracles. T'e same soul vill look out of your
eyes. You vill be perfect, but of your type. T'e same eyes, more bright;
t'e same hair, more lustrous and abundant; t'e same complexion clear and
pure; t'e same voman as she might have been if t'e race had gone on
defeloping a hundred t'ousand years. Look you. Some admire blondes; some
brunettes. You are not a Svede to be white, an Italian to be black. You
are a brown American. You shall be t'e most beautiful brown American t'at
efer lifed. And you shall be first. Vit' you as an example we shall
convince t'e vorld. Ve shall accomplish in t'ree generations t'e vork of a
hundred t'ousand years of defelopment. How vill humanity bless us if we
can raise, out of t'e slums and squalor, out of t'e crooked and blind and
degraded, out of t'e hospitals and prisons, t'e spawning dregs of humanity
and make t'em perfect! T'ey shall valk t'e eart' like gods, rejoicing in
t'eir strengt'. No more failures, no more abnormalities. Nature's vork
hastened by science, aeons of veary vaiting and slow efolution forestalled
by--by me!"

The little Professor stood erect, his eye fixed on mine, his mien
commanding. I had never looked on man so transfigured.

The thought was intoxicating me, driving me wild. I tried to think, to
struggle against the tide that was sweeping me away. He seemed to be
hypnotizing me with his grave, uncanny eye. I could not move, I could not
speak.

"You may ask," Darmstetter went on--though I had not thought of asking--
"if t'e beauty vould be hereditable; if as an acquired characteristic, it
vould pass to descendants, or, if each child vill not haf to be treated
anew. I believe no. It is true t'at acquired traits are not hereditable.
T'ere Weissmann is right, v'atefer doubters may say. You know t'e t'eory.
T'e blacksmit's muscles are not transmitted to his son t'e clerk; but t'e
black hair t'at he got from his fat'er. Only after fery many generations
of blacksmit's could a boy be born who vould grow up as a clerk vit'
blacksmit' muscles. Efolution shapes t'e vorld, yes; but t'e process is so
slow, so slow! So education, modification, must begin afresh vit' each
generation and continue forefer. But t'is bacillus does not add ornament
to t'e outside. It is not like t'e masseuse, vit' her unguents and
kneading. It changes all t'e nature. It is like compressing a million
years of education by natural selection into von lifetime. T'at is my
t'eory. I do not know--it is not yet tried--but how ot'ervise? Ve but
hasten t'e process, as t'e chemist hastens fermentation; Nature
constructs, she does not adapt or alter or modify. Ve produce beauty by
Nature's own met'od. V'y not hereditary?"

I had made up my mind.

"I'll do it," I cried, no longer able to resist, for the fever of it was
in my blood. "You shall make your attempt on me! It can do no harm. I do
not see how it can accomplish all you claim, but if you think--it's an
experiment full of possibilities--in the interests of science--"

"Interest of humbug!" snapped