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Fated Crown
Book 6 in the Bound to the Fae series

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or
used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except
for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or

actual events is purely coincidental.

First Digital Edition, 2021

Copyright © 2021 Eva Chase

Cover design: Yocla Book Cover Design
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-990338-07-6
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-990338-12-0
 CONTENTS

Free Book!

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26

Next in the Bound to the Fae series

About the Author
 FREE BOOK!

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fantasy series Their Dark Valkyrie, FREE when you sign up for Eva’s
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 CHAPTER ONE

Talia

I stop at the edge of the park in the shade of an oak,

several feet from the busy city street. The sight of the
cars whizzing by and the roar of their engines sets my
nerves jangling. My chest tightens up, only loosening as I take a few
slow, deep breaths.
This place is technically my real home. I was born into it and
lived in it for the first twelve years of my life. But it’s been nearly a
decade since I last set foot in the human world. My memories and
Sylas’s collection of Hollywood comedies haven’t prepared me for the
vivid reality of returning.
Does every part of the human world smell this bad? I’ve gotten
used to the ever-fresh air of the fae world, warm and sweetly floral
on the summer side and crisply cool on the winter side. Here, each
breath brings a tang of burned gasoline and other chemical scents I
can’t identify prickling into my lungs.
Beside me, Corwin rests his hand on my shoulder and squeezes.
He can read my uneasiness through our soul-twined bond—and I
can pick up on his own distaste for certain elements of our current
surroundings. His nose wrinkles as he inhales the same odors, and
the rush of traffic makes his eyes skitter trying to follow it.
 “There are other parts of your world that are much more
pleasant than this,” he says. “Humans have left some wilderness
relatively untouched, and even the smaller villages can be
reasonably peaceful.”
The other member of our party, a broad-shouldered woman from
Arch-Lord Uzziah’s coterie, snorts and raises her pointed chin toward
the road. “You couldn’t give me enough treasure to convince me to
live this far from the Heart and among these creatures, that’s for
sure.”
Her gaze flicks to me, but she shows no obvious concern about
the insulting way she just referred to people like me. She motions
for us to follow her. “From my observations, he should be in that
building across the way. Around this time we may catch them
rambling around in the courtyard.”
“Okay.” I rub my arms, catching a tingle of the magic that’s
wrapped around us. Before we emerged from the Mists into the
human world, Corwin cast a spell around us to make us invisible to
human eyes. A Golden Retriever we passed in the park sniffed in our
direction and offered a few brisk barks, but the man holding his
leash looked straight through us, so the illusion appears to be
working on its intended targets.
Of course, I’m pretty sure one of those cars could still splatter
me all over the road, invisible or not.
We walk to the nearest corner, where the streetlights gleam red
and then green. The act of crossing on the walk signal feels so
mundane and yet so foreign at the same time that my chest starts to
clench up all over again. When one of the cars honks at the vehicle
in front of it, I jump half a foot in the air and wobble on my warped
foot.
Corwin grasps my elbow to steady me. He keeps his fingers
curled loosely around my arm the rest of the way across.
Apprehension is coiled in his stomach, much like the tension wound
through me beneath my more visible jitters.
We haven’t even gotten to the reason for our visit yet. I’m not
sure what I want to happen, only that no matter what does, it’s
going to be hard.
 Uzziah’s woman leads us across a grassy field lined with some
kind of sports markings toward a two-story brick building that
stretches the length of the block. Teenagers lounge on the front
steps outside the double doors of the main entrance. We slip past
them unseen and around to the other side of the building, where
two wings jut out around a large cobblestone courtyard that holds
several metal picnic-style tables. More teens are sitting around the
tables or in clusters on the cobblestones, eating their lunches and
chattering with each other.
“There he is,” Uzziah’s coterie woman says, pointing to the edge
of the courtyard by the end of the wing opposite us. My stance
tensing, I follow her gesture with my gaze.
The boy she pointed out is sitting at a table with his back to us,
nothing showing but burnished brown hair that curls around his ears
and a lean frame in a black long-sleeved tee and baggy jeans. I
can’t tell anything for sure from that. My heart thumps harder as we
circle the courtyard to consider him from a better angle.
With each detail of his face that comes into view—the angle of
his jaw, the slope of his nose, the glint in his wide-set eyes—an ache
swells around my heart. It is him, isn’t it? My little brother, Jamie,
who’ll be seventeen now if he survived the attack by the monstrous
wolf-shifting fae who attacked my family, which I’ve always believed
he didn’t.
Then he turns his head, revealing the other side of his face, and
my heart just about stops. Any remaining doubts flee.
He must have had reconstructive surgery to deal with the worst
of the scarring, but it didn’t remove the effects of the attack
completely. Pale pink marks across his left cheek and jaw, running
down to his neck and probably across his chest as well, show where
the wolf’s vicious fangs carved open his skin.
Oh, Jamie. My pulse lurches, propelling me toward him, but my
legs lock at the same time.
He has no idea I’m alive. He definitely can’t have imagined I’ve
spent the better part of the last decade among faerie beings he’d
never have believed existed. I can’t just march up to him and launch
a sudden family reunion. Even if a pang is ringing through me to
wrap my arms around him, to tell him how sorry I am for… for
everything.
For teasing him into chasing me into the woods so long ago. For
not knowing he’d survived until just now. For leaving him alone all
this time.
A burn of tears forms in my eyes. I blink hard, grasping for
Corwin’s hand.
It wasn’t your fault, he says gently through our bond. You
couldn’t have known what you were leading him toward, and you
had no opportunity to find out what had become of him while you
were caged all those years.
I know, I reply. But even after I got out, it never occurred to me
to confirm what happened to him and my parents. I just assumed
that I’d seen right, even though it was dark and I was terrified.
I rub my face, the ache inside me expanding even farther.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mom and Dad had survived too, if they’d
had each other to get through the trauma and my disappearance?
But this is the only direct blood relative the winter fae turned up with
their extensive search, at least among those that interest them.
The fae sage indicated that my connection to their kind came
from my mother. It seems my maternal grandparents passed on in
the last nine years—losing their only child in such a horrible way
can’t have helped. Jamie has been living with my aunt and uncle on
my father’s side and our two young cousins here in this city, a few
hundred miles distant from the town where we lived before.
It was far enough distant that we didn’t see them very often
back then. At eight years old, recovering from a savage mauling, my
brother had to move in with people who were only one step above
strangers, even if they were family on paper. I don’t wish the fae
that stole me away had taken him too, because what I went through
was more than I’d wish on anyone, but he hasn’t had it easy by any
means.
As if to illustrate that thought, a trio of guys saunters by the
table where Jamie is eating alone. One of them does an exaggerated
double-take at Jamie’s face and clutches at his chest in mock-horror.
“Oh my God! It’s the creature from the Black Lagoon.”
 The other two guys burst into laughter. Jamie’s shoulders tense,
but he keeps his gaze fixed on his sandwich. My hands ball into fists
at my sides.
The bullies aren’t done yet. The guy who made the first remark
sits down on the table next to Jamie’s tray and swats at his
container of fries, sending half of them skittering onto the
cobblestones. “I don’t think the Swamp Thing should be getting food
from our cafeteria. This isn’t a school for monsters.”
At the sneer in his voice and his cruel smile, I can’t hold myself
back. I march over, fury flaring up through my throat onto my
tongue. “The only monsters are the ones who did that to him—and
you, as far as I can tell.”
But none of them react, because of course they can’t see or hear
me.
Talia, Corwin says softly, coming up beside me. I turn to him,
debating asking him to take the magic off me right now so I can
give these jerks a piece of my mind for real, but Jamie is getting up.
He gives the guys a bored look, picking up the rest of his fries so
they’re out of reach. “If they serve you, I guess anything goes.”
The first guy’s expression goes from amused to pissed off in an
instant. He springs off the table. “What the hell did you say,
McCarty?”
He steps forward as if to grab my brother, but just then a teacher
ambles by. She gives the guys a questioning look. “Is everything all
right here, boys?”
The main guy puts on an ingratiating smile. “Completely fine,
Mrs. Green. Right, Jamie?”
Jamie shrugs and walks off before the teacher leaves.
With a heavy heart, I watch him head into the school. He not
only got torn from our family and horribly wounded, but the scars
the fae left on him are making him a target for the villains of the
human world.
If he could know he’s not really alone—if he could have me to
turn to again…
Corwin’s arms come around me in a careful embrace. A hint of
discomfort travels into me—he isn’t totally at ease showing even this
much affection in front of our unfriendly spectator from Uzziah’s
flock—but he offers that affection all the same, because it matters
more to him how I feel. I rest my arms over his and hug them to
me, abruptly aware of the deeper inner turmoil he’s trying to
suppress.
If I returned to the human world on even a semi-permanent
basis, it’d mean leaving my soul-twined mate behind—and my other
lovers too. Corwin doesn’t want to interfere with my decision, but
the thought of having me so far away for any length of time
wrenches at him.
I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what I want to do.
I owe so much to so many people… But how can I abandon my
brother all over again when he’s been on his own for so many years
already?
I managed to find a balance between my loyalties to the summer
and winter fae. Is there some way I can bridge this gap as well,
even though it’s so much wider?
Uzziah’s coterie woman must be thinking along similar lines,
although with very different motivations. She clears her throat and
turns away from the courtyard to face me. “That was him, wasn’t
it?”
“Yes.” The magic they used to trace my genetic line will have
already confirmed it, but I guess she wanted to hear it from my own
mouth too.
“Excellent.” She rolls back her shoulders. “If he’s as useful as you
are, this will solve all our problems and simplify the cure completely.”
I blink at her, dread trickling through my stomach. Corwin’s body
tenses against me at the same time. The other winter arch-lords
didn’t say anything about Jamie “solving problems” before we set off
on our journey here. It was supposed to be just a chance for me to
check that their story was true and see how Jamie is doing now. But
I’m familiar enough with the fae way of thinking to guess what she’s
getting at.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
A satisfied smile curves the woman’s lips. “Two cures for two
realms. You can stick with the winter realm alongside your mate,
and the Seelie can make use of your brother. We couldn’t have
asked for an easier solution.”
 CHAPTER TWO

Talia

T he new castle that my summer and winter lovers have

collaborated on, which straddles the border between
their realms, contains just a few rooms right in the center. On the
second floor, there are a string of chambers dedicated to my
personal use. Below them lies a large ballroom we might host parties
in if the two realms ever become that friendly, and a smaller meeting
room beside it. The outer areas of the castle aren’t finished yet, but
the middle portion is complete enough for us to make use of it.
Both the table there and the floor, walls, and ceiling show the
merging of the two materials that form the castle. Sylas’s polished
wood twines with Corwin’s glittering diamond right down the center
of the space. The mix of warmth and coolness usually appeals to
me, a sense of harmony amplified by the soft pulse of the Heart’s
energy that flows through the space, but the company we have in
this room today has left me uncomfortably chilled.
All eight of the arch-lords from both sides of the border are
sitting around the table, the three from summer on one side and
four of those from winter on the other. Assorted members of their
cadres and coteries stand along the walls behind them, including my
other two lovers: Sylas’s half-brothers, August and Whitt.
 Corwin had me sit at the head of the table while he took the
foot. I appreciate having him across from me whenever I need the
reassurance of catching his eyes, but my position feels like a lot of
pressure. But then, we are here to talk about a situation that
concerns me more than anyone else.
None of the arch-lords look particularly happy about that—or the
building they’re in. The six of them who didn’t have a hand in
designing this space are glancing around with expressions that range
from wariness to outright revulsion. Laoni, the winter arch-lord who’s
been most hostile toward me and Corwin, has even wrinkled her
nose.
But even though the outer rooms aren’t finished yet, this central
space seemed like the best setting for a joint meeting. To enter the
structure immersed in the border so close to the Heart, everyone
had to take the vow to do no harm.
I wish I could take a little more comfort from that fact. The real
problem is the harm they want to do to someone who isn’t even
here, who doesn’t even know they exist yet. And I’m increasingly
convinced I’d like it to stay that way.
“The situation with the curse is too urgent for personal feelings
to come into it,” Laoni is saying now. “We must bring the boy here
and determine whether he has a similar connection to the curse.”
The edge of distaste in her voice suggests that the personal
feelings of a human like me matter even less than if I were fae.
There’s a new glimmer of hostility in her gaze along with the usual
disdain. I’m not sure how much of it’s because I’m now officially
Corwin’s mate or because of the minor but unexpected magical
power I displayed during our confirmation ceremony.
If I thought wielding a little of the same powers the fae have
might bring me more respect, I was wrong. If anything, I’ve gotten
the impression the other winter arch-lords object to my presence
even more now that I’ve shown I’m less helpless than they’d
assumed.
Celia, the strictest of the summer arch-lords, gives her
counterpart a narrow glance. But she agrees, if grudgingly. “If the
powers Talia possesses come from their family line, it stands to
reason that her brother would have them as well.”
“You can’t just tear him away from his life like that,” I protest, my
hands clenched in my lap beneath the table where they can’t see
them. “The fae have already destroyed his family and left him
scarred. He’s had a chance to recover from that, and now you want
to rip him away from everything he knows—to use him against his
will?”
Terisse, a winter arch-lord who often sides with Laoni, frowns at
me. “I thought you were dedicated to healing us of this ailment.
Didn’t you give your loyalty to the fae when you swore to stand with
Arch-Lord Corwin as his mate?”
“Talia dedicated herself,” Corwin puts in. “That doesn’t mean
she’s required to approve of her brother being forced to make a
similar sacrifice unknowing.”
Sylas shifts in his seat where he’s poised close by at my right. “I
believe Talia’s generosity of herself should earn her some
consideration on this matter. She has sacrificed a lot for us. If we’re
going to ask more of her and hers, we should allow it to be on her
terms.”
“And what terms would those be?” Laoni sneers. “As far as I can
tell, she wants us to forget the idea and what we’ve discovered—
she’d rather we’d never found out her brother was living at all.
Perhaps she’s already imagining leaving us herself to join him in the
world she belongs to.”
Her words hit close enough to the truth that my stomach twists. I
will my voice to stay steady. “No matter what happens, I swear I’ll
continue helping you hold back the curse however I can. But you
can’t reasonably ask me not to care about anything else. You all
have more than one responsibility you have to balance in your lives.
Why can’t I look out for the fae and my family?”
“Corwin and his flock should be your family now,” Uzziah says
coldly.
Sylas makes a disbelieving sound. “Come on now. Do you expect
us to believe that all of you required your mates never concern
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “Perhaps you’re right,” she repeated, and then, “War is a rotten thing for
women.”
But Rebecca had, all the same, a feeling that it was not Lily whom she
was fighting but some one else—whom, she could not imagine. She could
not have known of course that Thérèse Callendar had already written her
son that she had seen Ellen Tolliver, that she was handsomer than ever and
more fascinating and sullen, and that in a sly postscript she had remarked,
“The strange thing is that I believe she is still in love with you. I watched
her, out of curiosity, and I am sure of it.”
And, of course, none of them knew that Callendar on reading the letter
somewhere in the mud near Loos, with the throbbing of the barrage in his
ears, had smiled at the trickery of women and thought, “Curiosity, indeed!”

It was in the end Rebecca who won, not a victory perhaps but at least a
delay. The little Jewess was much too shrewd ever to suppose that Ellen
might be conquered so easily; if she had won a temporary advantage she
understood it was because Ellen chose to let her win, because Ellen had
weighed the question and decided that all things considered, Rebecca was
right. To turn back at this point was a folly which she could not deny.
Belonging now in a sense to the whole world she was no longer absolute
mistress of her own fortune; such freedom was, after all, the privilege only
of the obscure. She was in truth, she thought bitterly, still a mountebank, an
entertainer, who waited behind a painted screen to entertain the public. The
stage was greater now and the audience had grown from the fashionable
little group in the Callendar drawing-room to all the world. That was the
only difference.
But stronger than any sense of duty or obligation was the old terror of a
terrible poverty which forced one to keep up appearances. She had tasted
the security that comes of riches and she could not turn back. There were
memories which would not die, memories of the days when as a girl she
had put on a bold face before all the Town, memories, even worse, of the
drab petty economies she had known in the days at the Babylon Arms. And
even stronger than all these things was her fear of failure, a passionate fear
which might easily have driven her in some circumstances to suicide. One
who had been so ruthless, so arrogant, so proud, dared not fail. That way
too had been blocked.
 So she found herself brought up sharply against the problem of the
Town. They wanted her there; they were, strangely enough, proud of her.
Eva Barr had written her, and Miss Ogilvie, and even May Biggs, whom
she had feared ever to see again. She had left them all believing that she
would never turn back, believing that by stepping aboard the express for the
East she had turned her back forever upon a place which, in honest truth,
she despised. But she had not escaped; there were ties, intangible and
tenuous, which bound her to the place. There were times when she was
even betrayed by a certain nostalgia for the sight of the roaring black
furnaces, the dark empty rooms of Shane’s Castle, closed now and barren of
all life; the decaying smoke-stained houses that stood far back from the
streets surrounded by green lawns and old trees.
She thought, “This again is a sign that something has gone from me,
something fierce and spirited. I am growing softer.”
They had, so May Biggs wrote, built a new concert hall, and what could
be so appropriate as to have it opened by a daughter of the Town? “A
daughter of the Town,” she reflected bitterly. “Yes, I am that. It, too, claims
me.”
And it was true. She was a daughter of the Town. There was in her the
same fierce energy, the same ruthlessness, the same pride. If she had been
born elsewhere, in some less harsh and vigorous community, she would
herself have been softer, less overwhelmingly successful. It was true. She
was a daughter of the hard, uncompromising Town.
“It happens like that ...” Miss Ogilvie had said, “in the most unexpected
places ... in villages, in towns.... Why, even in a dirty mill town like this.”
But in the end, it was her pride which led her back. Because, a dozen
years ago, she had talked wildly and desperately, because she had boasted
of what she would one day do, she must return now to let them see that she
had done it. It was a triumph which in her heart she counted as more than
the triumphs of London, of Paris, of New York, of all the world. For she had
not yet escaped the Town. She would not be free until they saw her fabulous
success.

But Hattie could not go with her. Hattie’s triumph was spoiled. On the
night of the concert when The Everlasting had appeared without warning, it
was necessary for some one to see that the old man was returned safely to
the apartment, so to Charles Tolliver the task had been assigned. Gramp,
Heaven knows, could easily have found his way back; he knew more of the
world than any of them, but he chose never to interfere with such plans lest
he seem too active, too spry to require any attention. To guard his security,
he encouraged their assumption that he was feeble and a bit childish. He
had not forgotten the security which comes of being a possession.
It is impossible to have known what thoughts passed through the crafty,
old mind as he walked by the side of his son through the dark streets. They
did not speak; they were as strange to each other as they had always been,
as remote as if there had been not the slightest bond between them. Perhaps
the old man scorned his son for his gentle goodness, so misplaced in a
world where there was so little use for that sort of thing. Perhaps he
understood that Ellen was after all much closer to himself than to her father.
Perhaps he knew that Charles Tolliver, in his heart, had been saddened by
the triumph, because it stood as a seal upon his daughter’s escape. Perhaps
he noticed the faint weariness in the step of his son, the dark circles beneath
his eyes, the listlessness of his manner, as if he had grown weary of the
confused, tormented life all about him.
It was the old man ... the father ... whose step was light, whose eye was
shining as they entered the flat. It was the old man too who sat up reading
until he heard Hattie and Miss Ogilvie, returning from the Ritz, come in at
three in the morning. For Charles Tolliver had gone quickly away to his bed
and to the dreams that were his reality.
In the morning Hattie had called Ellen to say that her father was ill. He
had been drowsy. It was almost impossible to keep him awake. The doctor
had been there.
“He says,” Hattie told her, “that he must have been ill for a long time
without speaking of it. He has never complained. I don’t understand it. And
now he’s too drowsy to tell me anything. The doctor says he is badly run
down. He is worried because Papa seems to have no resistance.”
He had grown no better with the passing of time. Indeed, the drowsiness
seemed to increase, and there were times when he talked irrationally, as if
he had never left the Town at all. He held long, fantastic conversations with
Judge Wilkins and talked too of the Grand Circuit races and Pop Geers.
And when Ellen left for the Midlands, Hattie remained behind to sit in
the rocking chair at her husband’s side caring for him and for Gramp who
had since the night when he ran away to the concert become troublesome
again as if there were something in the air.
 53

I N the Town the new concert hall of which Cousin Eva Barr and May
Biggs had written with such enthusiasm and detail raised its white Greek
façade a score of yards from the main street. Erected to the twin worship
of the muses of Music and the Theater it supplanted the dismal opera house
of an early, less sophisticated period, and so left the late U. S. Grant
architecture of that shabby, moth-eaten structure in an undivided dedication
to the bastard sister of Music and the Theater, a shabby, commonplace child
known as the Movies, whom Sabine had once said should be christened
Pomegranate. Though the new temple was barely finished and the names of
Shakespeare, Wagner (who would probably be left out now that there was a
war and the Germans, who were the very backbone of the Town, had
become blond beasts, professionally trained ravishers, and other things),
Beethoven (who would slip by the committee because he had been dead so
long), Verdi (whose Aïda many supposed to be the high water mark of all
opera), Molière (suggested by Eva Barr but unknown to most of the
committee), Racine (likewise), Weber (who was so dead as to be a natural
history specimen and therefore unlikely to ravish any one, even spiritually),
Goethe and Schiller (likewise, though still under suspicion)—were not yet
carven upon its limestone pediment, the building was already streaked by
the soot which drifted perpetually over the city from the remote flats where
the mills now worked all day and all night in making shells. Yet the
handsome temple could have had no existence save for the soot; the very
smudges upon its virgin face were each one a symbol of the wealth which
had made it possible. The Town had known four stages in its development.
In the beginning there had been but a block house set down in a wilderness.
Before many years had passed this was succeeded by a square filled with
farmers and lowing cattle and heavy wagons laden with grain. Then in turn
a community, raw and rankly prosperous which grew with a ruthless
savagery, crushing everything beneath a passion for bigness and prosperity.
And now, creeping in toward its heart, stealthily and, as many solid citizens
believed, suspiciously, there came a softness which some called
degeneration—a liking for beauty of sound, of sight, and of color. It stole
up from the rear at the most unexpected moments upon men like Judge
Weissmann. The wives of leading manufacturers and wholesale grocers had
traitorously admitted lecturers and musicians into a fortress dedicated
hitherto to the business of making money. And then with a sudden rush, the
new forces had swept out of their hiding places on every side and saddled
upon the noble citizenry a concert hall, a temple erected in the very heart of
the citadel to the enemy.
So it stood there, bright and new, a few hundred yards from the Elks
Club—a symbol of a change that was coming slowly to pass, a sign that the
women and the younger generation had grown a little weary of a world
composed entirely of noise and soot and clouds of figures. Men like Judge
Weissmann saw it as the beginning of the end. Judge Weissmann (himself
an immigrant from Vienna) called it “a sign that the old thrifty spirit of the
pioneer was passing. The old opera house was good enough for concerts
and shows.” And secretly he calculated how much all that white limestone
and carving had cost him in taxes.
It was into this divided world that Ellen, who had known only a
community that was solid in its admiration for smoke and bigness and
prosperity, returned. They were good to her, despite all the things they had
to say regarding her affectations. They considered her dog (Callendar’s dog)
ridiculous, and they disapproved of the uncompromising Miss Schönberg
who demanded her cash guaranty for the concert almost as soon as she
stepped from the train. In certain benighted circles (which is to say those
not associated with the flamboyant Country Club set) it was even whispered
that she drank and smoked. They wondered how gentle Miss Ogilvie
received such behavior, for Ellen stayed with Miss Ogilvie, who watched
her bird’s-nest parlor grow blue with the smoke of Ellen’s and Rebecca’s
cigarettes without ever turning a hair. Was she not entertaining a great
artist? If she herself had had the courage, might not she have been smoking
cigarettes and drinking champagne? Had she herself not failed because she
was afraid of what people would say? None of them knew the spirit of
rebellion, smoldering for so many years, that now leapt into flame beneath
the mauve taffeta dress which she wore every day during Ellen’s visit.
The bird’s-nest parlor, with all its pampas grass and coral and curios,
must have set fire to strange memories in the breast of Ellen. She sat again
in the same chair where she had sat, abashed but proud, awkward yet
possessed of her curious dignity, on the night of the elopement. The little
room was filled with memories of Clarence. She must have seen him again
as he had been on that first night (so lost now in the turmoil of all that had
gone between) ... sitting there, frightened of old Harvey Seton, ardent and
excited in his choked, inarticulate fashion, a man who even then had
seemed a little ridiculous and pitiful.
And once Miss Ogilvie had summoned him to life when she said to
Ellen, “Poor Mr. Murdock. If only he could be here to see your success.”
The little old woman had the best intentions in the world. The meager
speech was born of sympathy and kindness alone. She could not have
known that each word had hurt Ellen intolerably. Poor Clarence! He would
not have liked it. It would have made him even more insignificant and
wretched. The husband of Ellen Tolliver. That’s what I’ll be! The words
echoed ironically in her ears. And Clarence had never known Lilli Barr,
who was born years after he died.... Lilli Barr who had nothing to do with
poor Clarence. So far as the world was concerned he had never existed at
all.
She had her triumph. There were set floral pieces with the words
“Welcome Home” worked in carnations and pansies. And there was a
welcoming speech by Mrs. McGovern, president of the Sorosis Club (who
had downed Cousin Eva Barr only after a fierce struggle for the honor).
And they had cheered her. It was a triumph and in a poor, inadequate
fashion it satisfied her. But she was not sure that it was worth all the pain.
She did not go into the empty, echoing rooms of Shane’s Castle. She saw
it, distantly, veiled in the smoke and flame of the Flats, from Miss Ogilvie’s
back window on the hill, the one monument of her family in all the Town.
She could not have borne it to enter alone the door which on each
Christmas Day for so many years had admitted a whole procession.
And she came to understand that it was not alone the Town which she
was driven relentlessly to escape. It was the Babylon Arms, Thérèse
Callendar and all her world, even her own family, all save Fergus—she
must escape forever any tie that bound her, any bond which gave her into
possession.

On the day after the concert Miss Ogilvie gave a reception. Crowds of
women and a few intimidated men thronged the tiny parlor. They passed in
and out in an endless stream, until Rebecca, who could bear it no longer,
invaded the virgin privacy of Miss Ogilvie’s bedroom and fell into a perfect
orgy of smoking while she read Holy Living and Dying, the only book at
hand to divert her. Hansi, shut in an adjoining room, howled and howled in
his solitude.
Long after the winter twilight had descended, at a moment when Ellen
thought she could endure the procession no longer, it began to abate and as
the last guest departed she saw, coming up the neat brick walk between the
lilacs and syringas, the figure of a plump dowdy woman surrounded by a
phalanx of children. In truth there were but four in the phalanx but in the
fading light their numbers seemed doubled. As the woman came nearer
there rose about her an aura of familiarity ... something in the way she
walked, coquettish and ridiculous in a woman so plump and loose of figure.
And then, all at once in a sudden flash, Ellen recognized the walk. The
woman was May Biggs. Years ago May had moved thus, giggling and
flirting her skirts from side to side while she walked with her arm about
Ellen’s waist. Only now (Ellen reflected) there was twice as much of her to
wriggle and the effect was not the same.
As she approached Ellen did not wait. Some memory was stirred by the
sight, something which she could no more control than she could
understand.... May Biggs, whom she had scorned always, coming up Miss
Ogilvie’s brick walk carrying one child and leading three others by the
hand, a May Biggs who was stout now and already middle-aged in her
dowdy clothes covered with feathers and buttons and bits of passementerie.
It was extraordinary, the feeling that overwhelmed her; it was a sensation
compounded of joy and melancholy, of guilt and a curious desire to
recapture something which had escaped her forever, perhaps that first
reckless youth which had slipped away in the night without her knowing it.
She stood in the doorway, crying, “May ... May Seton!”
And then she was kissing May who blushed and held on awkwardly to
the youngest of the four little Biggses.
In the little parlor they were alone, for Miss Ogilvie under the stress of
the excitement and the failure of the local bakery to deliver the macaroons
had retired to her chamber with her smelling salts, where she now sat in a
cloud of blue smoke talking with Rebecca while the great black dog howled
in the adjoining room.
Once they were seated, May put forward her offspring, one by one, in
order on the descending scale. “This is Herman Junior ... and this
Marguerite ... and this Merton ... and the baby here is named after me.”
 (All in order, thought Ellen, two boys and two girls, properly alternated.)
The two boys shook hands awkwardly, Marguerite curtseyed and
smirked with all the coquetry descended from her now settled mother, and
the baby gurgled pleasantly and buried her head. They were all very neat
and clean. Their manners were excellent. They revealed glimpses of a little
world that was placid, orderly, comfortable and perhaps a little monotonous.
“I brought the children,” said May. “I wanted them to meet you. This,”
she said, addressing the three who were able to walk, “is my girl friend I
told you about. She’s famous now. You can remember when you’re grown
up that you’ve met her.” And then abruptly, “Marguerite, put down that
cake until the lady tells you to have one.”
She had not changed much. Hers was the good-natured, pleasant sort of
face on which time leaves few traces, and since nothing could ever happen
to May, very little could happen to her face. It had grown more plump, and
less arch, for she was content and satisfied now with a solid husband, and
she showed every sign of presenting a new hostage to fortune.
“Well,” she said, shyly. “A lot has happened, hasn’t it, Ellen.... I suppose
I can still call you Ellen.”
There was something in May’s shyness, in the awe which shone in her
eyes, that struck deep into Ellen’s humility. It made her feel preposterous
and absurd and a little nightmarish.
“Good Heavens!” she replied. “That’s my name. Of all the people in the
world, you have most right to use it.” And then. “But tell me the news. I’ve
been too busy to hear any of it. It’s been ten years since I went away.”
She found herself blushing, perhaps at the sudden slip of the tongue that
betrayed her into recognition of the one unpleasantness that stood between
them. It was almost as if she had said, “since I ran away with Clarence.”
May, it seemed, was no more eager to mention his name. She hastened
past it. “I tried to get Herman to come, but he wouldn’t go where there were
so many women. He wants to see you. He said to tell you that if you would
come to lunch, he’d come home from the works. You’d never know him.
He’s a father now,” she made a sweeping gesture to include the restless
troop that surrounded her, “and he has a mustache.”
Ellen declined, with a genuine regret. She wanted vaguely to enter the
mild, ordered world out of which these four children had come.
 “I can’t come because I am leaving at eight. You see, I can’t do what I
like any more. I have engagements ... concerts which I must keep. But
thank him. Maybe he could run over to-night.”
May thought not. They were making an inventory at the Junoform
factory and Herman would be there until midnight. Harvey Seton (Lily’s
arch enemy) was dead.
“He died last June. We found him cold in the morning in his bed in the
spare room. You see he hadn’t slept in the same room with Ma since Jimmy
was born. She says if he had, he might be alive to-day.”
So Herman was head of the factory now and he was worried. The new
fashions had cut down the sale of corsets, and corsets made of rubber were
putting into the discard those built upon the synthetic whalebone which old
Samuel Barr had invented. Business wasn’t so good. Perhaps the fashions
would change. Perhaps they would put in a rubber corset department. Ellen
was fresh from Paris. Did she think there was any chance of small waists
coming in again?
“Of course,” said May, with an echo of the old giggle, “women with my
figure will always have to wear whalebone. Rubber is no good for me. And
then just now, I have to wear my corsets loose....” She sighed. “If only I had
a figure like yours.” And she swept Ellen’s straight gray clad figure with an
appraising and envious glance.
“And your grandfather is still alive?” asked May in astonishment. “Why,
he was an old man when you left. He must be nearly ninety now.”
“He’s ninety-one and very spry,” said Ellen. “He goes out to walk alone
in the city. He hasn’t changed at all.”
“Well, well,” echoed May, and there rose an awkward pause which
neither of them seemed able to break. Now that they had gone quickly
through the past there seemed to be nothing of which to speak. The sound
of the black dog’s howling came distantly into the little parlor. It was
Merton, the third child, who saved the situation. May cried, “Merton, how
many times have I told you not to touch things. Take your hand right out of
that goldfish bowl.... Here, come here now and wipe it on Momma’s
handkerchief.”
While this was being done Ellen reflected, a bit grimly, that perhaps it
was just as well that she could not lunch with May. If the conversation had
grown sterile in half an hour, how could one hope that it could be spread
over an hour? Sabine, perhaps, had been right, when she had said once that
it was a bad sign when a person had a great many old friends. It meant that
such a person had not much capacity for growth.
Here was May unchanged, exactly as she had always been, save that she
had now the satisfaction of a husband and was no longer restless and
coquettish. Perhaps she had been right when she said so long ago that all
May wanted was a man; it did not matter what man.
“There now,” May was saying. “Sit on the chair and don’t swing your
feet. You’ll scratch Miss Ogilvie’s furniture.” She turned to Ellen.
“Marguerite,” she said, “is now taking lessons from Miss Ogilvie. Maybe
some day you’ll be famous too, Marguerite. Maybe you’ll play for the lady.
Come now ... that’s a nice girl ... play your new piece, the one called The
Jolly Farmer.”
But Marguerite would not stir. She grew arch and hung her head. She
threatened to sob. Her mother coaxed and argued and pleaded but nothing
happened. Marguerite would have none of The Jolly Farmer. It was
Rebecca who saved the situation by coming in.
“My God!” she said, on entering, but the rest of her sentence was lost
forever because the sight of May and her offspring silenced her.
“Miss Schönberg,” said Ellen, “this is Mrs. Biggs.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said May, staring at the exotic figure of Rebecca,
and then after a strained silence, “I must go now. Baby wants her supper.”
Ellen went with the party to the door and as she bade them farewell and
the little procession got under way, she saw that May hung behind with a
curious air of embarrassment until the three older children were half way
down the neat brick path. With only the baby left to hear her, she turned
abruptly to Ellen and with a blush, said, “There was one thing I wanted to
ask you and I never had a chance until now. It’s about Clarence.” She
hesitated and then with a supreme effort managed to say, “There was a story
that he shot himself.... That wasn’t true, was it?”
Ellen did not answer at once. She took the hand of the baby in hers, and
looking away, replied in a low voice, “No, it wasn’t true.... You remember
he had a weak heart. It was his heart that killed him.”
“I’m glad,” said May softly. “I always liked him. I wouldn’t want to
think he’d committed suicide.”
 She stood in the doorway, unconscious of the cold until the figure of
May, swaying from side to side and surrounded by the phalanx of offspring,
had disappeared among the shadows of the lilacs.
In the hallway, Rebecca was awaiting her.
“Thank God, that’s over,” she said with a laugh, but she must have
noticed that Ellen did not respond.
“She was a friend of mine,” Ellen observed gravely. “I grew up with
her.”
Again Rebecca laughed in that same hard, worldly fashion. “I must say
she has been more abundant than you.”
This time Ellen made no answer at all. She was hypnotized by the
memory of the look that had come into May’s eyes at the mention of
Clarence. It was an embarrassed, shy look, but it glowed all the same with a
fire that had never burned for Herman Biggs. And Ellen understood then for
the first time that she had been wrong after all, for Clarence—poor, meek,
inarticulate Clarence, who had been dead for years—was to May a romantic
figure, a fascinating creature. May had thought of him always ... perhaps in
the same fashion in which she herself thought of Callendar.
It had been all wrong since the beginning. There was no longer any
doubt. It was May whom he should have married. And she wondered again
for the thousandth time what it was that had turned him toward herself.
But the dog was still howling in loneliness. She walked along the tiny
hall and as she opened the door he leapt at her in a frenzy of devotion.
“Hansi, old fellow,” she murmured and pressed her face against his sleek
black head.
 54

I T was six years now, through the evil chance that led them to pass each
other unknowingly in mid-Atlantic, since Fergus had seen his sister. From
afar, even in the turmoil and excitement of the war he had watched her
progress, now in the letters from his mother (which he discounted because
he knew she was inclined to exaggerate when her children were concerned)
now in the letters from Ellen, and sometimes in the newspapers which
filtered through, weeks old, to his escadrille at the front. As Ellen had
guessed, he understood the ascent perfectly; he saw her working at it
doggedly with one eye always upon the lucky chance. From afar he had
admired the whole campaign and developed a passionate curiosity to know
this Rebecca Schönberg who stood so cleverly in the background of the
whole affair. She too had genius.
The great distance which separated them—even the years which had
passed since he saw her, aboard the greasy old City of Paris, slip away into
the winter mists of the North River—had not altered the transcendent
quality of their understanding. Their tie was not, like the love of Hattie, a
thing which emotionally demanded a close and breathless contact. It was
less a matter of the senses and more a matter of the mind. Each had known
always what to expect from the other, above all else a frank and unabashed
honesty. They were very like each other, save that Fergus (and he knew it
ruefully) lacked his sister’s stiff, inflexible wilfulness. It was these qualities,
he understood well enough, which had given her the advantage. It had made
of her a conqueror. The lack of it had left him a charming, happy-go-lucky
fellow. But it gave him too a savor in life, a wild enjoyment, which she
could never know.
The war suited him. As his mother had believed, it was to him a great
show, a sort of masquerade in which he was at once a participant and a
spectator; and it gave rein to impulses and inheritances which otherwise
might never have been awakened—such strains as a passion for adventure
that had its origin in wild cattle-thieving highland ancestors, and a love for
the excitement to be found in battle high in the air above a world that lay
spread out beneath him mapwise and miserably dwarfed. A little of this he
managed to pin down in the eager, hurried letters he wrote to Ellen, so that
she understood what it was that made him content and happy. It was a
satisfaction very like her own, the satisfaction of triumph over great odds,
of gambling for high stakes, of finding oneself absorbed utterly and
passionately in the thing at hand. It was that queer streak again—the same
queer streak which had made of Sam Barr a pauper and of Old Julia Shane a
woman fabulously rich, the streak to which the clumsy perpetual motion
machine rusting in a corn field of the middle-west stood as an eternal
monument. It was the old fever to gobble up all of life, not alone mere
stupid contentment, but danger and sorrow and even tragedy—a strange
unworldly greed to get the most of a life which each of them knew in his
very marrow was bitterly brief.
It was easy to see in the glowing letters of Fergus that he was wildly
happy in those days. It was easy to see that the old restlessness, so long
without a way to turn, at last had found its goal. The old adventurous blood
had come into its own.
From a great distance he had watched his sister’s triumphs but, unlike
the others, he had no awe of her imperious way of riding roughshod over
those who stood in her path. To him Ellen Tolliver would always exist,
concealed perhaps inside the shell of Lilli Barr, but alive none the less and
ready to be called forth. The core, the heart was eternal. It did not change.
He saw her still, in the rare moments when he had peace enough for
reflection, as he had always seen her—a wilful, smolderingly brilliant,
disagreeable sister with whom he could do as he chose, no matter what her
mood or temper. It did not occur to him that she had grown older, in some
ways more mellow and in some ways harder than she had ever been.
It was from Ellen that he heard first of his father’s death. She wrote him
that the gentle man had gone to sleep on the night after her first concert in
America and that afterward he had never really awakened. There had been
moments when for a time he had recognized his wife and talked to her,
though he did not seem quite clear and mixed the past and the present in a
strange and touching confusion. And at the end she had written, in her bold,
sprawling hand, “None of the doctors appeared to know what it was that
killed him. But I knew what it was. He died simply of homesickness. He
hated the city. He was born to hate it. But you must never say this to Ma,
for it was she who forced him to leave the Town. And it was our fault in the
end ... yours and mine, because it was us whom she was pursuing. She’ll
never stop. She’s an extraordinary woman. Time has no effect upon her, no
more than it has upon The Everlasting. He is ninety-four and though he
looks as old as Methuselah, he is as spry and as clear in the head as a boy.
He has learned how to protect himself. Oh! So admirably! Sometimes, I
fancy he will outlive us all ... sitting in his room, rocking and chuckling! He
has discovered a secret which none of us know! And he’ll never tell us.”
Thus Charles Tolliver had died, peacefully and without resentment,
indifferent to the triumphs of his children so long as they were lost to him;
for long ago he had recognized the loss, a thing his wife would never do.
And he had lost not only his children but the very life he had loved. He had
gone now from a sleep that had been fitful, from dreams which had been
awakened harshly each morning by the noises of a hostile city, into a long
unbroken sleep. Quietly and gently he had lived, a friend to all the world,
serving for his part as little more than the father of Hattie’s children,
passing on to them the qualities of old Gramp to unite with the qualities of
Hattie and produce such offspring as Ellen and Fergus. They had never
belonged to him, even for a moment. They had been Hattie’s always, and
old Gramp’s....
 55

N EARLY three years passed before Ellen, having meanwhile added

Australia and South America to the list of her triumphs, returned to the
Paris which she had not seen since the day she left with Rebecca for the
Vienna they had never reached and now never would reach; because, as
Rebecca said, the old Vienna was gone now, forever. Ellen would never
know it as it had been in the days when Rebecca had visited Uncle Otto
who owned a sapphire mine in Cambodia.
In the end she went back to Paris over the protests of her mother and
against the advice of Rebecca, who saw the return simply as a great bundle
of money thrown to the winds. But she could not have done otherwise. She
had to return. She was unable to explain the instinct, but she trusted it
shrewdly as wise persons trust instinct for its value as accumulated
experience over any mere process of logic. She had to see Lily again and
the beautiful house (so saddened and changed) in the Rue Raynouard. And
there were times too when she became obsessed by an inexplicable fear that
if she did not go at once, she might be too late.... Too late for what? This
she could not answer, save that vaguely it must have to do with Fergus and
Callendar. Lily was in no danger; she lived quietly in the Rue Raynouard or
in the white villa at Nice.
For two years she had allowed herself to be ruled by circumstance and
by Rebecca Schönberg, the high priestess of opportunity. She would wait no
longer now. And so, after a terrible scene with Rebecca in which they both
descended to the level of fishwives, she had embarked to return to a city
which could mean nothing now so far as her success was concerned, a
barren city that lay dark and blue with the coming of nightfall.
The old fear possessed her now for days at a time. Life was rushing past
her on and on.... She might be too late.
 56

I T was a wet night of the early spring when Fergus got down from the
Metro at Passy bound for the house in the Rue Raynouard. He had been
there before, many times, for Lily, pleased perhaps to have him in a house
which seemed now so empty and desolate, had given him one of the rooms
opening upon the long gallery to use as he saw fit. But the visits had not
been too cheerful. He had found Lily alone in the house, mourning for old
Madame Gigon and her nephew, the Baron. The old beauty of the place had
not faded; even Lily had not changed greatly. She was still young,
amazingly so, but she appeared saddened and more quiet than in the days
when, bedazzled, he had sat by her side at the family dinners in Shane’s
Castle. There was left of Madame Gigon’s pets only Criquette, the
Aberdeen, old and fat and quizzical, who followed at the heels of
Augustine, the maid, and sniffed continually at Madame Gigon’s chair
before the fire.
He had met there Lily’s son Jean, his own cousin, whom he had never
seen before—a tall, red haired boy, impatient and wild over the mutilation
that kept him in Paris shut up in the offices of the Ministry of War. It was
strange to see one’s own cousin (and Jean resembled Fergus amazingly in
many ways) a Frenchman, a foreigner who spoke English with an accent.
He had met there at tea a Monsieur de Cyon who seemed devoted to Lily
and who was connected in some way with the government—a
distinguished, white haired man recently become a widower. It was all very
queer and foreign, yet when one thought of it, not so different from Shane’s
Castle which in the midst of the Mills had always had its own strange air of
the old world. It was Lily, the sinner of the family, the one who had
surrounded herself with luxury and mystery, who explained it all. Knowing
her, you could understand how there could be a bond between that smoky
city of the Midlands and this quiet, beautiful house in the Rue Raynouard.
She belonged to both and yet in a way to neither ... a woman of the sort
which had existed since the beginning of time. Fergus knew women rather
better than most men, for they were attracted easily to him, but he knew of
none who approached Lily in the perfection of her rôle. He understood Lily
now.... He was no longer a little boy sitting fascinated by her side in the
gloomy dining room of Shane’s Castle. He knew the world now. Experience
had come his way.
He thought of all this for the hundredth time as he emerged from the
Metro into the drifting mist that obscured the tall white houses of the
Square Alboni. In one sense he had changed. He was a man now, though he
appeared little older than on the day he bade Ellen farewell. His features
were more firmly molded; he had grown more handsome. But he was young
still; it was the sense of youth which always impressed people, a reckless,
headlong youth, of the sort which has no value in a worldly sense but
glorifies all who are sensible to its glow. And he walked with a slight
swagger born not of any pomp but of an excess of animal spirits, of a great
vitality.
As he stepped out into the darkness the figure of the old flower woman
sitting beneath her umbrella in a mist of rain and mimosa blossoms took
form in the shadows. In the faint blue light from the darkened street lamp he
stooped and bought from her a great armful of golden, powdery blossoms.
(The mimosa was in full blossom now in Nice, showering Lily’s white villa
with its scented dust.)
Touched and warmed by his youth, the old woman chuckled. “Pour votre
marraine?” she asked. (She had sold him flowers before now.)
“No,” he told her. “Not this time. They are for my sister.”
It was Ellen whom he was to see in the Rue Raynouard, Ellen whom he
had not seen in years.... Ellen who was famous now, a great musician.
As he moved away, it struck him as luck that he had come by chance on
the flower woman. For a musician, an artist, flowers were the thing ... an
enormous bunch of flowers. Ellen would appreciate the gesture. She would
play up to it. She would, he fancied, even expect it.
In the blue darkness (it was an excellent night, he thought, for an air
raid) he turned the corner past the Café des Tourelles and the blind, steel-
shuttered magasin. The houses stood forbidding and black. The Rue
Raynouard between the magasin and the tobacconist’s shop gaped like the
mouth of Avernus. It would be difficult to find the house, turning its
deceptive, insignificant face to the street, so lost among its commonplace
neighbors. From far away, on the slope that led down toward the Seine, the
sound of footsteps, muffled by the damp, came to him across the
cobblestones. But the solitary walker turned away and the sound died
presently into silence.
A hundred paces from the square he halted before a house to search for
the number. In the darkness it remained invisible; it was impossible to find
it even by sense of touch. Puzzled, he stood for an instant looking up and
down the street, and then through the thick stillness there rose the faint
sound of music, distant and fragmentary. Listening, he found presently that
the melody took form: the fragments joined into a pattern of sound. It was
the Appassionata. Only the crescendos were swept toward him through the
damp night air, only the moments when the music rose into a wild abandon.
There could be no mistaking it ... the music was Ellen’s, more magnificent
than it had ever been.
As he stood there in the thin mist upon the doorstep the sound, coming
distantly from inside the house up the long paneled stairs, had upon him an
amazing effect. It was a sensation bordering upon clairvoyance; he no
longer stood on the dripping cobblestones before a solid door, his feet upon
solid earth. It was as if he existed in space alone at a great height; rather as
if he had died. There was in the feeling something of terror at the immensity
which surrounded him, an emotion which he had known once or twice
before when, flying at night, there had been for a time no earth below him,
nothing solid in all creation—a time when, if he existed at all, it was as an
atom lost in all time and space. It was, he felt dimly, like being dead ... a
reverent, humbled feeling.
And yet in a confused fashion all life had suddenly achieved an amazing
clarity. He knew himself suddenly, honestly, for what he was—a man who
had harmed none, who had achieved nothing, who had asked only to find
pleasure in living. And the others—He saw them too with the same
terrifying brilliance.... Ellen, who for all her faults was so much more
worthy, who had in her the elements of a great nobility; his mother,
passionate and bursting with vitality, a little somber and tragic save that she
would never recognize tragedy when it came her way; and Lily, who had
lived by some plan which she had never revealed, choosing instead to hide
it away among the other mysteries of her life; and Jean, whom he scarcely
knew until this moment, Jean who was neither French nor American nor
even an honest child. He saw Jean’s life too and its queer, inarticulate
tragedy. And Old Gramp, who stood outside them all, aloof and cold,
uncaught by the web that bound them all together.... Gramp hugging his
secret passionately to him. But it was Ellen whom he saw more clearly than
all the others, struggling, fighting with a strange unconquerable courage,
using the weapons which she found at hand, weapons which were not
always fair. Some day she would choose the honest ones and then....
Far away, somewhere in the blanket of darkness the music died away
and presently he stood again before the door on the cobblestones, rubbing
the sleeve of his blue greatcoat across his face with the gesture of one
awaking from a profound sleep. The great bunch of mimosa lay at his feet.
It was amazing. He had been for a moment dead, quite outside this world.
The street was still again with a blue, dripping silence. Under each lamp
there was a pool of blue light that was not light at all, but only another kind
of darkness.
He gathered up the damp flowers and knocked loudly. It was too dark to
find the bell and he stood there for a long time before the door was opened
by Augustine who it seemed had gone to bed in the belief that no one could
be out on such a night. She stood in a sort of wrapper ornamented with a
gay design of Cupids, holding up her black hair with one hand. He saw with
an amazing clarity each tiny detail, even the veins in her big red feet half-
muffled in gigantic purple slippers.
“Ah!” she said. “It’s you, M’sieu Tolliver.... Madame Shane is not here.
She is in Nice.”
And again the sense of having returned from the dead swept over him.
Augustine was as astonished as if she had opened the door upon a phantom.
Yet there was nothing extraordinary in calling at ten o’clock in the evening,
even on a night like this.
“It is my sister I’ve come to see ... Miss Tolliver.”
“She is here ... in the salon. She told me I might go to bed. There is a
gentleman with her.”
Clearly it was impossible for Augustine, in her state of attire, to
announce him. He took off his greatcoat while the Breton girl, her eyes
shining in admiration for a young aviateur, stood by holding the mimosa.
He was straight and tall in his blue uniform with the silver wings glittering
on his breast. He had his effect upon Augustine ... the blue eyes, the blond
curling hair, the spoiled mouth.
“I’ll go in myself,” he said, taking the flowers from her once more. “It’s
all right, I know.”
 And he started down the long stairs where the candles glowed dimly
against the satinwood paneling. Half way down, where the gallery led off
on both sides, the sound of music reached him once more. This time it was
different; there were no passionate crescendos of sound, no tides of melody
that swept high. The music was low and gentle and filled with pathos. And
presently he heard a voice—Ellen’s voice—begin to sing in a clear contralto
of unsuspected beauty. He went slowly, step by step, his shoulders brushing
the satinwood beneath the dull flare of the candles. Out of the depths of the
warm old room the sound came to him with the same amazing clarity which
seemed to affect all his senses....

Nous n’avons plus de maisons,

Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris
Jusqu’à notre petit lit.
Ils ont brulé l’école et notre maître aussi.
Ils ont brulé l’église et Monsieur Jésus Christ
Et le vieux pauvre qui n’a pas pu s’en aller!

She sang gently, with an infinite sadness.... Ellen who had damned the
war, Ellen who had striven to ignore it, Ellen who had turned her back and
taken no part in all the vast parade. What could she have known of it? What
of Christmas and “les petits enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons.”

Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris....

Noël! Écoutez-nous, nous n’avons plus de petits sabots.
Noël! Noël!... Surtout pas de joujoux.

And yet, listening, Fergus understood that she did know. This new Ellen,
the artist, knew it as she knew all things because she was, in spite of
Rebecca Schönberg, in spite of shrewd lighting and bouquets sent by the
management, in spite of all the clap-trap, an artist. Standing there in the
shadows of the stair, he knew without having seen her that she was
changed. Something had happened to her.

Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris ...
Jusqu’à notre petit lit....

The simple frail refrain echoed through the great rooms. It was a child
who sang it—a simple naïve child. He knew for an instant what a strange,
idiotic, pitiful affair this war had been. He had not known until now.

Mais donnez la victoire aux enfants de France!...

Fergus moved down from the last step of the long stairs. The green
music of Debussy died away, and as he entered the room he saw that Ellen
was not alone. She sat at the piano in the far end near the bright fire where
she had sat on that first day when she had entered from the same stairway to
discover Madame Gigon, little Jean and the dogs. There was only Criquette
left now, lying fat and lonely before the fire, and Hansi, the great black
wolf. Beside her, with his back towards the stairs, sat a man with dark hair
in a uniform blue like the one Fergus himself wore; and while he stood,
silent in his surprise, he saw the stranger lean forward and, taking Ellen in
his arms, kiss her. He saw too that her arms were about the stranger, but it
was not the embrace that astonished him; it was the sight of Ellen’s strong,
white hand, clenched as if in resistance, as if in pain. Yet she did not
struggle. It was only the hand ... clenched, white, as if all her will, all her
resistance were centered in it.
It gave Fergus the strangest shock. He found himself turning abruptly
away and hiding in the stairway with an air of having witnessed something
obscene. It was all spoiled now, all the entrance he had planned, the hope of
finding her alone, the mocking, teasing, grandiose speeches he had planned.
The stranger had taken possession of her, placed himself there between
them as a barrier. It was ridiculous....
Feeling like a small boy who had been caught eavesdropping, he
coughed and scuffled his feet and then made a second entrance. This time
they turned and Ellen, rising to her feet, stared at him for a moment and
then rushed toward him crying, “Fergus! Fergus! You should have told me
you had leave!”
He knew at once that she guessed he had seen them. Her face was
flushed with shame and hurt pride. He knew the fierce pudeur (there was no
other word for it) that enveloped her. It was a part of her savage
unwillingness to surrender, to reveal, anything of herself.
Her beauty astonished him. He had seen photographs of her, but in them
he had seen nothing of the proud domination that gave her that look of
swooping down on one. It occurred to him in a flash that old Julia Shane,
Lily’s mother, must have looked like this in her youth. Only she had worn
crinolines and Ellen was all in black in a tight gown that made her look like
(the old simile returned, the inevitable one) like a greyhound. She had
changed enormously; the awkwardness had vanished. This was no girl who
hurried toward him; it was a woman, superb, splendid, full of fire.
“Fergus!” she cried, and ignoring the mimosa she crushed the bright gold
blossoms against his blue tunic so that the yellow pollen clung to it and
dimmed the silver wings. She kissed him passionately and held him in her
arms for a long time. She was excited. He had never seen her like this. The
shyness, the restraint was gone, for the moment at least. He felt a quick
satisfaction of vanity, almost as if he had been her husband instead of her
brother. She was a creature to be proud of. No wonder this stranger....
The dark man had risen now and stood waiting quietly for them to join
him by the fire. He was a handsome fellow of perhaps thirty-five, though he
may have been older, thin perhaps from the hardships of war. And in the
olive skin were set the strangest pair of gray eyes, which looked on now
with an expression of mild amusement. They were eyes which fascinated
you, which you were certain had the power of seeing things which other
eyes had not.
“Richard,” said Ellen, “this is my brother Fergus ... Mr. Callendar.”
Her voice trembled a little with excitement. It may have been that this
was the moment for which she had returned. She had them together now,
with her, in the very same room, the two men—indeed, the two persons—
whom she cherished above all others in the world. She had not been, after
all, too late.

It must have been clear to Fergus, even in the disappointment of the

moment, that he had stumbled awkwardly into the midst of some queer
situation. He understood now why she had sent Augustine off to bed. It
explained too the excitement of her manner and the sudden falling away of
the reserve which she had always held before her as a warrior his shield.
She still blushed, and she lighted a cigarette with a comically obvious air of
covering her confusion. It was amazing to find in this woman who was by
nature so self-possessed, so cold, a sudden air of school girl coquetry. This
was an Ellen whom her brother had never seen, whom perhaps no one had
seen until now.
 And the stranger? He still stood with his feet well apart, finishing the last
of his Chartreuse, balancing himself lightly on his toes, quite calm and
smiling a little in a fashion that would have been warm and friendly save
for the expression in the gray eyes. In their obscure, blank depths, there lay
something sinister ... “catlike” was the word. They were eyes like those of a
cat, proud, sensual, indifferent, aloof, and incapable of smiling.
They sat down and for a moment Fergus was tempted to blurt out
sharply that he had spied upon them unwittingly, that he knew exactly the
mood into which he had blundered so clumsily. It would perhaps have
shattered the tension and cleared the air, reducing them to a common
ground of meeting upon which they might laugh and talk like old friends. It
did not occur to him that Callendar might be his sister’s lover because, in
spite even of her blushes and confusion, he knew that such a thing was
impossible. Besides, their manner toward each other was not that of lovers;
it lacked the hidden intimacies which come of only one experience. They
were a little formal, a little strange. The flame that leapt between them was
not quite clear and white and unhindered; there were obstructions,
misunderstandings. It was a complicated relationship, one could see at a
glance, and a little ridiculous. Even Callendar, so clearly a man of the
world, so clearly a man who was neither an innocent nor a yokel, was not at
his ease.
“Mr. Callendar,” said Ellen, “is an old friend of mine. Until the other day
I had not seen him for years.”
But for Fergus this could have been no explanation. It told nothing of all
that passed in those missing years, nothing of the intriguing of old Thérèse,
nothing of the slow passion, fed upon absence and memories that instead of
dying had, as Thérèse knew, gained strength. It revealed nothing of all the
forces, conscious or blundering and obscure, which had been at work
weaving the slow web that was now near to its end. Fergus alone guessed
how nearly it was finished. It came to him in a return of that sudden flight
of clairvoyance which had seized him in the dark street outside the door. He
understood with an unearthly certainty that this was the man whom fate
(that nonsensical force) had marked for his sister. This was the man
destined to know all the tempestuous sweep of her fierce energy, her vast
capacity for devotion, all the forces that until now had lain buried and
dormant. This perilous man ... (It was strange that strong women were
likely to be unhappy in love, to make so often a choice which all the world,
even the stupidest fellow, could have told her was wrong.)
It was this current of thought which ran beneath the surface of all their
polite conversation, made so scrupulously, with such labor in defiance of
that strain which none—not even Callendar, who perhaps chose to make no
such effort—could dissipate. For Ellen’s moment had passed swiftly as such
moments, awaited so long, are likely to pass. There had been a quick flare
of delight in the possession of them both and then this confused
disappointment and sense of ill-ease clouding everything.
The tension lessened a little when Fergus, seeking in his amiable way
one subject after another to pierce the indifference of the stranger, stumbled
upon Loos and Amiens which Callendar knew as thoroughly from the
ground as Fergus knew them from the air. But this led to nothing because it
was now Ellen who found herself thrust outside the pale and left to grow
sulky while they talked of this sector and of that one, each discovering with
a swift heightening of interest that they had taken part in the same drive.
“My battery,” said Callendar, “lay just back of Hill 408, in the curve of
the road beyond Jouy....”
“It was at Jouy,” interrupted Fergus, his good-natured face flushing with
interest, “that we broke up a German escadrille ... four of them shot down.”
“Did you ever see Reymont?” asked Callendar.... “The general of our
division?... A pompous ass!”
“He was at St. Pol while I was there. He reviewed the division when it
came in from the east.... I saw him on a balcony....”
And so on, talking of this spectacle which Ellen despised as much
because she could have no part in it as for any other reason. She would, at
that moment, have preferred the spectacle to all the success, all the triumph;
but it was no good. She was, for all her strength, all her power, simply a
woman, thrust outside the experience which had enkindled Callendar and
her brother. They had slipped away from her into a world of which she
knew nothing.

At last, turning in pique from their talk, she went out and herself fetched
them whiskey and soda, and when she had interrupted them long enough to
pour out a glass for each she turned to the piano and fell to playing softly, as
if to draw them quietly back to her. It was a plan which proved successful,
for presently their talk abated a little and finally ceased; the war was put to
rout and it was Ellen once more who held the center of the stage. The two
men leaned back in their chairs, scrupulously silent, listening while she
played for them in a fashion she had not done in years. And for a time she
recaptured a little of the joy that had escaped so quickly.
She played the things she knew would please Fergus, the music which he
had loved in the days of the house in Sycamore Street and the flat in the
Babylon Arms, music she had played for him alone at the moments when
Clarence was not there to disturb her with the silent, unrelieved pleading of
his dim eyes. She played the simple old March from The Ruins of Athens,
and one or two Chopin waltzes and the Marche Funèbre, which to Hattie
would always be McKinley’s Funeral March and which to Fergus invoked
memories of Shane’s Castle and Ellen in shirtwaist and skirt wearing at her
belt a jingling thing they called a chatelaine. And she wooed them with such
success that, hypnotized by the spell, they did not hear the first screams of
the sirens rushing through distant streets nor the faint popping of the guns
far away on the summit of Montmartre.

It was not until she paused, her hands resting thoughtfully on the ivory
keys, that Callendar stirred himself and murmured in French, “The Boches
are here.... Listen. The siren!”
And from the street nearby—perhaps from the Place Passy—the shriek
of a fire engine penetrated the room, even through the heavy brocade
curtains that muffled the windows. There was one more scream and then
another and another, and then the faint, distant popping of guns, like a
barrage of tiny fire-crackers. Fergus stood up and glanced at his wrist.
“I must go,” he said. “I’m late already.”
“Not now,” protested Ellen, turning abruptly. “Not now in the midst of a
raid. You can spend the night here.... There is plenty of room.” She trembled
a little, as if in terror of losing him so soon.
Fergus smiled. “I can’t,” he said. “You see, I have a rendezvous ... with a
man from my escadrille. He is waiting for me now.”
“He won’t be expecting you ... not now.”
“I can’t help it, Ellen. He’ll be waiting. Great Heavens! I’ve been
through a hundred raids. They’ve tried to blow us up every night....”
 She had taken his hand now and was pleading anxiously. “But this is
different.”
Fergus laughed. “It is different,” he said. “There’s not one chance in a
million here....”
Callendar merely smiled, as if to confirm the statement of Fergus that it
was ridiculous to suppose there were any danger. He had, of course, no
reason for wanting him to remain. It was Fergus who won in the end,
merely by persistence—a strange thing, for usually it was the strong-
minded Ellen who had her way. To-night he was firm and certain of his
purpose. She thought perhaps that it was the war, the years that had passed
since she last saw him, which had so hardened him and given strength to his
will.
She went with him to the door and on the stairs, when they had turned
out of the big room, she said, “You are not going back to the front to-
morrow?”
“No. I shall come back here. I shall be in Paris for a week. Perhaps I’ll
spend a night or two with you here.”
In their manner there was still an air of strangeness and formality, as if
Callendar had in some way followed them out of the room and walked
between them up the polished stairs. She helped him into his greatcoat and
kissed him affectionately.
“To-morrow,” she said, “it will be better. We can be alone.” And then in
a low voice she added, as if in explanation, “His permission is over to-
morrow.”
Extinguishing the candles, Fergus opened the door and looked out. The
rain had ceased and far above them beyond the roofs of the houses on the
opposite side of the street, the searchlights fingered a sky that, save for one
or two clouds, was blue and luminous like the street lamps.
“Look,” said Fergus, softly. “They’ve spotted one of them.” And they
both stood in the open door fascinated by the sight of a Gotha turned to a
silver dragon fly by a long finger of light. Far away in another part of the
city there sounded a faint crash and then another and another. The sirens
still screamed, now on one side of them, now on another.
“It is magnificent,” said Ellen, breathlessly.
 “You see, they’re not dropping them anywhere near us. They are trying
to hit the bridges and the government buildings. I’m only going around the
corner ... into the Avenue Kléber.”
They were speaking in hushed voices, caught again in that mood of
insignificance. One might have thought that in the blackness of the empty
street there were figures listening. In the eyes of Fergus there was the light
of fascination ... a bird held captive by a glittering snake.
“I must go,” murmured Fergus still watching the silver dragon fly. “I’m
late already.”
She stood in the doorway until the darkness had swallowed him up and
then, turning, slowly closed the door and went thoughtfully down the stairs.
The sound of guns, the scream of the sirens and the echo of the distant,
reverberating crashes grew fainter and fainter as she descended.

In the long drawing-room, standing before the fire with his glass in his
hand Callendar was awaiting her. As she came toward him, she said, “I am
proud of my brother,” with the air of making a challenge, as if she
reproached him for his indifference.
“I have heard of him,” he said, quietly. “He is well known in the
Division Reymont.”
To this she made no reply. She drew her chair nearer to the fire and sat
staring for a time silently into the bright blaze. There was no sound save for
the asthmatic breathing of Criquette, the grunts of comfort from Hansi, who
had flung down his great black body by her side, and the distant echoes
from somewhere in the direction of the Champ de Mars.
At length he murmured, “Perhaps we had better go into the cellar. The
last one was nearer.”
But she refused. “No. Why should I?” For she understood well enough
that to Callendar it was a matter of complete indifference. She knew his
whole philosophy could be expressed in a single sentence—“If one died,
one died.” The thing was to live while one was alive. “No,” she repeated.
“Why should I be afraid? You and Fergus aren’t frightened.”
“It’s not the same,” he said softly.
“There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be.”
 For a moment it may have seemed to her that she too was playing a part
in the spectacle. She too might for once undertake a little of the danger they
had known, the one with indifference, the other with a kind of fierce
excitement.
“It is much easier,” she murmured, “to be with you both than to be here
alone, not knowing what may happen to you.”
Under the heavy, sensuous lids Callendar’s gray eyes revealed a sudden
sparkle of admiration for the fierce and sullen defiance of her mood. He
must have known that she would have walked carelessly through the street,
as carelessly as Fergus had done, that she would in her present mood have
gone into an attack with a serene indifference; because she was angry now,
angry at the war for which she had such a contempt, at circumstance, at the
whole muddled business of living. She was angry and defiant with an
Olympian anger, careless of cost or consequence.
There was another crash, nearer this time in the direction of the
Trocadéro, and again Callendar’s eyelids flickered with slow admiration.
She did not move. She still sat with one hand on Hansi’s head looking into
the fire.
“I am not thinking about myself,” she observed suddenly with the air of
answering a question which he had not spoken. “It is my brother.”
“He must be safe by now at his rendezvous. The Avenue Kléber is not
far.”

She was thinking too, in a dazed fashion, of all that had happened in the
hour before Fergus blundered in upon them. Callendar had told her that at
last Sabine was divorcing him. He had not asked her to do it. She had told
him that she could endure the situation no longer. For the part which
Thérèse played in the affair, he could not answer. “I don’t know,” he had
said, smiling. “Sabine will say nothing and my mother denies having
spoken of the matter. But if she saw fit she would not hesitate to lie
deliberately. Sometimes I think she is not clever, and then afterward I find
she has been stupid only because it suited her, because her stupidity was
dictated by a devilish shrewdness.”
And then he had told her of all the tricks Thérèse had played to bring
about his remarriage, of how she had written him glowing letters about
Ellen. “All she wrote,” he added, “was true, of course. You can hardly doubt
that. Still, it was not the way to bring it about.”
And Ellen too had laughed and told of her interview with Thérèse in the
library of the house at Murray Hill on the night of her concert, and at last
she had asked abruptly, “Am I to interpret all this as a proposal?”
“My mother knew that there was no one else whom I would think of
marrying. There was no need to marry at all.”
After this speech she had been silent for a time and when at last she
looked up at him it was to ask, “And you want to marry me because it is the
only way you can have me?”
“No.”
Her mind wandered back to the hot afternoon in the Babylon Arms when
he had so nearly swept away all her self-possession. He had been different
then, more ardent, more overwhelming, and yet she knew that the danger
then had not been so great as it was in this very moment when he sat beside
her in the big room, quiet and thoughtful, watching her with a fierce
concentration.
“But there was a time,” she said slowly, “when you would have taken me
in any way possible without marrying me.”
He was sitting with his body bent forward, his elbows on his knees, his
hands clasped. The hands were tense so that the knuckles showed through
the tanned, dark skin.
“No,” he said softly. “That is not true. I would have married you then. I
wanted to marry you, and I was younger then and not so wise. I fancied
then that I could get anything I wanted in this world for the asking. And yet
it was marriage that I had in mind. I have always had ... everything. I will
be honest. I have always had women if I wanted them badly enough ... all
save you.... And you are the only one I ever wanted to marry. I swear to
God that what I am saying is true.”
Watching him, she could not believe that he was lying. She saw the
clenched hands. She saw that the mockery had gone out of him. She saw,
with a queer tragic catch of memory, the little vein in his throat throbbing as
she had seen the same vein throb in the throat of Clarence. It was all so
different now. There was no headlong recklessness, no wild, sudden torrent
of passion. He had not seized her now and tormented her with caresses that
assailed all her resistance. They talked calmly in a fashion that might have