An Echo of Passion

I.

IN the midst of the stilly afternoon, Benjamin Fenn, lying on the grassy side of a hill at Tanford, looking over a low stone wall through the gap between a clump of light-leaved ash-trees and an oak which had gathered in its arms the shade of two centuries, gazed at a distant, mist-like sheet of water clasped in the wooded hollow far below. Its mild, humid sparkle was like a memory hidden away from the contact of every-day life, — a place in the past, where once he might have bathed his heart in a pleasant coolness, but which the dense growth of years had since concealed.

“ It is strange,” he said to his wife, “how that little Swallow Pond makes me think of the past; and yet I never saw it before.”

In fact, they had but just come to Tanford, to spend the first vacation which the young chemist, employed by a large manufacturing house, had allowed himself since his marriage, five years before.

“ I know what you mean,” said she, looking up from her novel. She was nestled prettily on a traveling rug nearer the wall, with one of the lowest oak boughs darting out above and stretching its sharp-outlined leaves like a little roof above her pale golden head, — a sort of votive image, placed there for her husband to Worship. “ I have those sensations myself, sometimes, and I don’t know what to make of them. How do you explain it, Ben? Is n’t there something chemical, or physi— physiological about it, or something of that kind ? ”

A little bird in the neighboring birchwood gave a loud, bright, astonished whistle at this question, and Mrs. Ethel’s husband laughed under his soft reddish beard.

“ There’s more or less chemistry in everything,” he answered, “ and there’s a little of nearly everything in chemistry. But I ’m afraid it does n’t account for this.”

In his secret mind, his mood was by no means a laughing one. Had his wife, he asked himself, ever really experienced the sensation he had just felt? Hardly possible. Had she the least idea what he was thinking about? Equally impossible. Finally, would he be willing to tell her ? To this question he conveniently deferred making any answer. He relapsed, instead, into the delicious dreaming quietude of a few minutes before, — gazing off again at the glimmer of Swallow Pond, with the rough blue mountains beyond; at the clouds which were lazily pulling themselves to pieces in the clear, airy blue above ; at the sweet, fresh quiet of the solitary region that surrounded him. Now and then the definite but muffled sound of a woodsman’s axe sent its regular “ chock! — chock! ” from some remote angle of the upland, ceasing again when the wielder rested his arm ; and several times the rude tinkle of a cowbell resounded along the shaven curve of the hill, from a pasture nearer the village. One of the cattle lowed.

“ Do you notice, Ethel,” Fenn suddenly asked, “ that a slight echo — or perhaps it is a resonance — of that cow’s lowing reaches us with the sound, and almost before the direct sound-waves ? ”

She did not respond at once ; and when she did so it was with a slightly injured tone. “ No, I have n’t,” she said.

“ I’m not trying to humbug you,” her husband assured her. “ It’s a very curious fact, which I never happened to observe before. In fact, I wouldn’t have believed it, if I had n’t just heard it.”

“ I suppose you mean I ought to have observed it,” said the little saint under the oak-tree, not very sweetly.

“ Not at all,” said Fenn, quickly. “ I thought it would interest you.”

“Well, then,” proceeded Ethel, with a light, saucy laugh, “ tell the cow to tinkle or make some kind of noise again, and I ’ll listen.”

“ Please be serious,” he begged, assuming a methodical expression. “ This is a thing I can partly explain, if I could n’t the other. We must be very near the spot where the rebound which makes the echo takes place ; so we hear some reflected wave of sound just before the original pulse can travel way around the curve of the hill. Am I clear ? It’s very singular, though, very queer,” he resumed, in surprise at his discovery. “ There ! Did n’t you hear it, just then ? ”

The cow had lowed a second time.

“ I think I did,” said his wife. Then she burst into a hearty laugh. “ What would that cow think, if she knew her own importance ! ” she exclaimed. “ Do go and thank her, Ben, for her services to science. But no, that will make her too proud ; she ’ll refuse to give any milk, and will abandon her domestic life, I’m afraid.”

Fenn could n’t help laughing, too, but his wife’s levity irritated him. “ How changeable you are ! ” he remarked, allowing a mild gloom to replace his smile.

“ So are you,” said Mrs. Ethel, who also bad her reasons for annoyance. “You are always wanting me to be serious, to observe and all that; and then when I try to — as I did just now about that memory of the past, whatever it wns — you won’t encourage me.”

“ If that’s the trouble, I’m very sorry, indeed,” the husband declared, with a small sigh, but in almost too business-like a way, as if he were accustomed to these disagreements.

Mrs. Fenn, however, was not to be pacified so easily. “ I don’t know that I mind that so much,” she continued, “ but I ’m all out of sorts from reading, or trying to read, this wretched book. I can’t imagine why you gave it to me. You ’ll never get over thinking I’m something to be experimented upon.”

Fenn glanced carelessly at the volume in her hand. It was a translation of Goethe’s Elective Affinities. “ Women nowadays,” he said, dryly, “ especially the wife of a practical student, a man of serious mind like myself, ought not to shrink from investigation in any direction. I’ve expressed the same thing to you a thousand times before.”

“ Yes, a thousand times too often,” retorted Ethel, looking prettier than ever in the flush of anger that lit her soft young features. “ I think the book is atrocious,—unfit to read. It is wicked, and you ought not to have put it into my hands.”

“ My dear girl, you will never know the world, — you will never be ready to enter general society when I get rich enough for that, — if you don’t take the trouble to read what I read, and what other people read, and to be versed in what the world talks of. This is only one of a thousand things, and not the most important, by any means. But you must cultivate a spirit of fearlessness, and make your knowledge wide.”

“ I don’t want to know the world, if this is part of it,” declared the young wife, with spirit. In a moment, she announced, with the air of heralding a fatal catastrophe, “ I’m going back to the Institute.”

The Institute was a large, nondescript wooden building with an immense colonnade, where they were boarding; so called because in winter it served the purpose of a country academy for young women. In summer it bloomed out as a prosperous hotel and seminary of social gossip, after a short season in the spring when it had no discoverable use of any kind.

“ Don’t let’s go back yet,” Fenn objected, patiently. “ It is so beautiful here.”

“You can stay,” said Ethel, still more solemnly, “ and I ’ll leave the book with you.”

She had risen as she spoke, and threw the novel down on the rug. Her face, which was fine and agreeable, had something rustic about it, though serene and luminous in its simplicity. Her eyes were round, rather than oval, above the long, smooth, charmingly modeled cheeks; and her eyebrows were of that half-uncertain kind, distinct enough, but altering in the degree of darkness at different points, — almost as if they were shadows thrown by a transient light, — and passing off into downiness at the ends, which give such a delicate softness to the brow. As she stood there, with the light hair straying loosely down her neck near her well-turned shoulders, the graceful bow-curve of her lips somewhat constrained by pique, any one examining her critically would have said she was a lovely young woman, more sentimental than accomplished, wanting the polish of a person often in society, but full of character.

Fenn, however, did not examine her critically. He was defending his dignity with an air of coldness ; and as the Institute was not far off he assented to her proposition with an austere “ Very well. I shall come before long,” he added.

Then his wife turned and moved silently up the hill, through the birches.

When two people have been married five years, and do not yet understand one another, they must usually either be very happy at the prospect of a continual novelty in their intercourse, or else very miserable. Fenn, though devoted, had decided to be miserable.

He went on looking down into the landscape before him, after being left alone; but it no longer gave him the pleasure he had just been drawing from it. The fatigue of his life in the city seemed to be returning and resuming its hold on him. He had married a penniless girl when himself almost without resources, and had toiled incessantly and ardently, not only for a support, but also to attain as soon as might be to a comparative independence, — for Fenn was ambitious ; he longed for a time when he might cut more of a figure in the world, keep a large house, bring brilliant crowds about his wife and himself, enter upon chemical researches which would give him a reputation or professional standing. Though he described himself as a practical man and a person of serious mind, these visions floated continually before him. He had abstracted hundreds of hours from nights, after his commercial analyses and compoundings were over, to carry on experiments of his own, partly for the sake of knowledge, partly for fame, and partly with the aim of devising useful preparations which would make him rich. But, all this time, Ethel and he had not been entirely happy. They theorized about each other, and ended by having very untheoretical and downright quarrels. His devotion to bis profession did not altogether please her. No child was born, who might have occupied and aided in developing her, and there was little in his life to soothe the overworked, restless man who had undertaken so much. Finally, he had broken away from his labors, and brought Ethel to Tanford, among the hills, thinking that they might recover strength and spirits there and make a fresh start. But as he lay here alone under the oak, he began to think the attempt would be a failure. Everything had gone delightfully for two or three days, but now there was a tiff again ; it was always so ; it seemed to him that he should not care any longer for the drowsy rustling of the leaves, the picturesque heights, the billowy farm lands stretching up and down over the broken country, the thick woods and deep, romantic hollows of the place. Even as he looked again at Swallow Pond, in the bottom of the valley, the waters of memory there seemed to be troubled, now, instead of hazily calm and soothing.

What was this that emerged from his past, and haunted him so ?

Three years before his marriage, when roaming over the country as an ardent young naturalist, — geologizing, botanizing, entomologizing, by way of diversion from his specialty, — he had taken it into his head to go and see a young lady, Miss Evans, whom he had once met in Cambridge, but who lived in the pretty region of Little Falls, in New York. She was a girl of great beauty, and sang (as people said) divinely. This voice of hers, which he had heard, returned to him at times, — a clear, vibrating strain, which startled him by singing in his ears as if it were actually present, even in the quietest, most deserted places, or amid the noise of streets. He seldom thought of her beauty, or incidentally, if at all. It was the sweetness of her tones that enthralled him. And when I say enthralled, I don't mean that there was any touch of love in the spell which she threw over him. He could have listened to her voice for hours, and followed it for unlimited distances ; but that was all he cared for in her. Yet the recollection of its melody had such power over him that he gradually came to rate it among the necessities of his future that he should hear her sing again. This made it easy to yield to the fancy of going to Little Falls. As he thought it over, now, the whole thing brought a smile to his lips; yet it was a half-uneasy smile. Well, she had married, since, and was widowed. It was a Virginian whom she had chosen, with one of those mellow Southern names. Eulow, — that was the name. Fenn tried to think of her wonderful voice uttering these syllables, and found that his imagination reproduced the tone vividly.

On arriving at her father’s house, a stately old country home, like many in that rich tract of the Mohawk Valley, the young man, who hadn’t much tact, and was led by habits of precise thought to be very explicit always, conceived an astounding plan of action.

“ I dare say you never expected to see me here,” he began, when Miss Evans was seated before him. “I have come to bear you sing.”

“ All the way from Boston ? ” she queried, with a laughing doubt in her dark eyes. And he fancied that her rich color grew more vivacious.

He rapidly explained the situation, with what might have been a misleading ardor. It was only his natural eager ness, a little heightened.

At this moment her father entered : an elderly, nervous gentleman, with an old-fashioned collar much crumpled under his loose curling hair, and a pair of Lille gloves only half drawn on. An invitation to Fenn to spend several days with them immediately followed.

“ You can sing more than once for him, in that way, Anice,” said her father.

“ Perhaps once will be enough,” she answered. “ I dare say Mr. Fenn has been adding qualities to my voice, in his fancy, that it never had.”

“ I can soon tell whether that’s so, or not,” said he, with unconscious bluntness.

Anice sang two or three songs, and the young man sat with his reddish beard pointing sidewise and upward, his strong hands pressed upon his chair, the nails all alive with the pink of his vigorous blood, and a light of keen rapture on his handsome, sturdy face.

“ It has not lost a bit; it has gained in power,” he affirmed, decisively, at the end.

Anice was, very naturally, pleased, which she endeavored to conceal by poking fun at the young enthusiast, in various ways ; while Mr. Evans, seeing nothing dangerous in the posture of affairs, thought Fenn an excellent youth. The scientific student, however, had considered everything beforehand, and, as I have said, determined to be explicit. The next morning Miss Evans took him out for a walk about the farm, and he seized this opportunity, while they were skirting the dewy fields, to explain himself.

“ It has occurred to me,” he said, rather gently, “ that you might not exactly understand my coming here, this way. You might think there was something underneath it. But my motive was just what I told you yesterday. I almost worship your voice, but I ’m not a fellow with much sentiment, and I have n’t any idea of making love to you. I know it is n’t usual to speak plainly about these things,” he continued rapidly, Seeing a mixed, semi-quizzical look in her face, “ but I want to enjoy your singing and your friendship in a fair, straightforward way, and it seemed to me a great deal better to avoid any embarrassments ” —

Just here he found that he had precipitated the embarrassment he wished to avoid, and it tied his tongue. But Anice came to his relief with a laugh.

“ Did you think that idea would ever have entered my head, about you?” she demanded, giving a fine edge to the last word that cut him a trifle, in spite of her gay good-feeling. “ No, Mr. Fenn, there won’t be any embarrassment at all. We shall be good friends, just as you propose; and as I bn very fond of singing I shall give you as much music as you like, while you stay.”

Fenn indulged the absurd belief that everything had now been nicely arranged ; but when he went to bed that night he discovered that he was in a mood of serious discomfort. The voice which had always hitherto been a pleasure of the ear and the intellect had that day stirred his blood, had thrilled his heart. All his senses were suddenly open to Miss Evans’s darkly moving beauty, and he could even fancy how he might be in love with her. The very act of definitely putting her out of the range of sentiment had excited this unexpected impulse to think of her in the nearer way, or at least had made him long for the liberty so to think of her.

“ What an ass I have been ! ” he muttered, as he lay awake in the darkness, gazing at the square of stars framed by his window, with this new Current of warm delight in her loveliness stirring in his veins. “ I have put myself under a sort of bond, now, not to make any approach to admiring her in this way, and my visit is spoiled.”

Possibly Anice suspected this revulsion on his part. At all events, she employed — whether voluntarily or not — all the power of her personal presence over him, during the succeeding days. In the open hospitality and free relation that brought them together there was opportunity enough for him to see her in various phases, and the charm of her dark hair, her glowing eyes, and vigorous grace of action grew upon him swiftly, as he watched her at the piano, in their walks, or on their drives with the retired lawyer, her father. One afternoon there was a picnic near the river, with some neighbors, at which Fenn was chagrined by observing the attention paid her by a young railroad officer from Albany. The last day that he remained with them was a Sunday; and as he sat with Mr. Evans and Anice in their pew in the ugly church, with the warm breathing of the breeze in the horse-chestnut trees heard through the open windows, he fancied that he must do something, say something, before going away, which should annul the effect of his horrible blunder. He was not sure that he might not even make a move to put himself in the light of a captive heart. At least he might open a correspondence with her.

But the young mistress of song gave him no chance, not the least opening, for a new explanation. She had taken him at his word, and treated him with a frankness and seeming directness that were more fatally in his way than the most ingenious reserve and coyness could have been; and she made it impossible for him to depart otherwise than as an eccentric friend, or a cousin from whom nothing in the way of tender regard could possibly be looked for.

“ I have got precisely what I bargained for,” he said to himself, as the train bore him away ; “ and yet I feel that I ’ve been cheated.”

For a time he wondered whether an approach by letter would be successful, and whether, after all, that was not what Miss Evans suspected him of intending. What kept him thinking about her was this inability to fathom her mode of taking him. He was almost ready to stake his future for the sake of finding out whether there was a laugh at the bottom of her heart, when she thought of him, or something more flattering. Even at this moment of recalling the affair, “There was always mystery in Anice,” he said to himself. “ Every woman is something of a mystery; but she had a special mystery within that of her sex. How odd it would have been, if I had followed out that romance! ” But he had not done so. A year later he met Ethel, and then he married her. Anice and her voice became a dream, a vagary which had lost its hold upon him. Yet did he not sometimes remember with a strange thrill how, two nights before he saw her last, she had sung Adelaïde, with the moonlight breaking through the vine along the veranda, and pouring in to mingle with those insidiously passionate and touching strains ?

As he was reminding himself of this, Fenn started up from the grass and listened, with a singular expression, almost of fright. He could have sworn that the ghostly voice of eight years ago was floating through the air. First, a faint, momentary hum, then tlie full voice, freighted with mystic pathos, came around the heavy mass of the hill, from some spot not a quarter of a mile away.

Yes ; it was true ! The peculiar echo he had noticed had come to him first, like a sound made faint by the years ; and then the voice rang out softly. It was Adelaïde. The same tones were embodying the song. Fenn was sure he could not be mistaken in their identity ; and that Anice Evans — Anice Eulow — had by some chance drifted to Tanford, and was at that instant so near him that he could hear her singing. The voice and the blended echo went on, like the past and present mingling in his thoughts. Trembling, he could not tell why, Fenn threw himself upon the ground once more, and waited in a kind of trance until the breaking melody ceased.

II.

For a moment or two he listened, to see if it would recommence. There was no further sound. He rose; he tried to persuade himself that the whole thing had been an hallucination. But this, again, made him shake his head ; and, gathering up mechanically the rug and the book which had been left by his wife, he climbed over the wall, and set off across the field, in the direction of the songstress’s voice, as if obeying it. The sun was getting low, and birds began to dart about above his head ; the cows went on tinkling their bells in a discontented, drowsy manner. Fenn scarcely knew which way his steps were taking him, except that he was moving around the hill. Presently he came to a farm-house, which appeared to be driven into the steep slope like the head or bill of some creature clinging there, with a huge barn spread out disdainfully, tail-wise, towards the landscape. The house had vines and bushes about it, giving it a fresh and pleasant air ; but there was nothing to indicate that this was the place from which the song had come. The chemist paused, nevertheless, and while he was observing the lifeless buildings a figure suddenly emerged from the barn, — a man carrying a hoe. Fenn saw that he grasped it in a hand only partly thrust into a silk glove ; then the crumpled stock and tumbled hair at the man’s neck began to look familiar. It was Mr. Evans.

The young man did not hasten up to intercept him. On the contrary, he allowed the lawyer to disappear around the corner of the barn, on some errand of amateur agriculture. Fenn then moved forward with an assured step towards the japonica clump that rose stiffly by the side door of the dwelling. Behind the hedge of branch and leaf that guarded the wide porch there, he felt sure he should find A nice Eulow ; and in another moment he stood face to face with her.

“ Did n’t I hear you singing ? ” he asked, taking off his hat, and bending forward to look at her, with an odd appearance of having just discovered a new creature whose attributes he did n’t wholly understand.

She rose in astonishment from the hammock where she sat languidly half reclining. “Is it possible ? Is it you, Mr. Fenn ? ” In an instant her manner had melted into easy friendliness, like that of the days at Little Falls, as she went on : “You are as abrupt as ever, I see. It was eight — oh, it was very long ago you heard me singing. You speak as if a few weeks had passed.”

She offered him her hand, at the same time, and he took it; noticing as he did so that her beauty had deepened and expanded wonderfully since he had seen her last, — a beauty which, being concentrated upon no one object, seemed to exhale itself in a wasted rich ness about her, like the perfume of violets, as she stirred, and spoke, and looked at him.

“ No, I’m sure it was a few moments ago,” he said, earnestly. “ I was half-way round the hill. I was sitting there — Yes, a few moments, and yet it is the same song of years ago.”

“ Adelaïde ? ” she asked, with a soft, melancholy questioning of the brows. And as she said it one would have thought her very eyes might sing.

Fenn made a silent affirmation.

“ Ah, yes,” she returned, “ I had just come from the piano a moment, when you appeared there. Really, you were almost too like a ghost, Mr. Fenn. And so you remembered ? How curious ! — you remembered that that was the song.”

He was surprised that she should suspect him of being able to forget it. Reflecting, in a moment, that she had herself named the melody, he asked, with the old bluntness, which seemed to have returned to plague him, “ Remembered ? Of course. And you did, did n’t you ? ”

She avoided bis glance, and, while apparently hearing him and preparing to answer, glided into reverie, from which she again started. “ How absurd this is, to be talking of old songs, when we meet here as friends that might almost have forgotten each other ! You have n’t allowed me a single question about yourself, yet; and then — why, one would think you would ask a few about me.” She said this with such a light, friendly, innocent coquettishness that the young man drew in a new breath of surprise and pleasure, and smiled. She had resumed her graceful pose in the hammock.

“ I never thought of that,” he said. “ I don’t seem to have any questions. I know you were married, and that your name is Mrs. Eulow, but I always think of you as Anice Evans. You know that’s natural enough; but you must n’t imagine I was dull and unsympathetic about what was happening to you. I had been hoping I should meet your husband, some time ; and then, when I heard he was dead ” —

He hesitated, as if fearing that he had touched a mournful chord too harshly.

“ Yes, it was very sudden and strange. How little we thought or knew of our lives, you and I, when you came up to the Mohawk to see me!” murmured Mrs. Eulow.

“ What has impressed me most,” he replied, “ was the degree of feeling one person could have for another, in such a sorrow, without being able to express it. I could n’t write to you. I hardly thought I knew you well enough, or that you remembered me enough, to make it acceptable.”

His sincerity of manner roused a fresh interest in Mrs. Eulow. For men and women who have been apart since the dawn of maturity to meet thus, after entering separate careers and suffering alteration, is like what we can fancy an encounter would be, in some other world, of two persons who had known each other in this. They are the same, yet obscurely different. The definiteness of their former relation is gone; an uncertainty takes its place, which may result in attraction, repulsion, or indifference. But in the first moments there is always a pleasant excitement. Fenn and Mrs. Eulow were both occupied with this, and little spaces of silence broke their conversation, during which a singular, vague communion of thoughts would establish itself.

“ And you had found we were here, — father and I?” she resumed, as if continuing this mute interchange.

“ Not until I heard you sing. I caught sight of your father as I came towards the house. I have n’t the least idea what brought you here ; yet, after the first instant of surprise, it seemed perfectly natural. The fact is,” — Fenn bent his head and brushed his fingers together, with a nervous laugh, but went on boldly, as if there could be nothing compromising in the anuouucement, — “I happened to be thinking about you, just before your voice reached me.”

Mrs. Eulow’s eyes flashed, softly, in the gathering dimness of the porch. Or was it a wandering spark of the sunset, which at this moment began to fill the liquid air ?

“ And now please to account for yourself,” the widow demanded gayly. “ ‘ What have been your adventures ? ’ as they used to say, in the old romances. Why should you have come to Tanford, any more than I ? Your wife is with you, of course.” She glanced at the rug and the book, silent witnesses of Ethel’s existence.

Fenn, too, looked at these objects, with a foolish fear that they might reveal the cause of his wife’s not being present. “ Oh, yes,” he said. “ We are staying in Tanford, — up at the Institute, if you’ve heard of that. We shall be here a number of weeks.”

“ I shall be so glad to see her,” Anice assured him. “ And your children. Oh — have you children ? ”

Fenn felt a burning sensation in his eyes. The suddenness of this had brought a bitter moisture to them, which he was wholly unused to. “ No,” he answered, in a strong, deep voice; “ Ethel and I have only each other.”

“ Ah, think how much more that is than I have ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Eulow, with a swift tenderness of sympathy, a genuineness of tact, which went to his heart. “ I hope Mrs. Fenn and I shall have some nice talks and drives together. Papa and I hired this whole house for the summer, from a good farmer who has mortgaged his very bones, I believe ; and he goes on with the farm, but lives in another house, so we are very comfortable. But you have more people to see at your Institute.”

“ Yes. We don’t know many of them, though, and summer boarders don't always show to advantage.”

“ Just the thing! I was hoping it would be so!” cried Mrs. Eulow. “Now you and Mrs. Fenn will come down often. And I have a good saddle horse.”

“ I don’t think Ethel rides,” said Fenn, awkwardly.

“ But she reads. You won’t think me too curious, will you, if I ask what that book is?” she went on, pointing to the gray muslin-covered volume, which he had laid on a chair. “ I’m always so interested in what people are reading.”

He took it up and handed it to her, rather reluctantly. “ I must say, Ethel does n’t like it.”

Mrs. Eulow read the title. “ Nor I. Do you?” Her tone was quite simple and direct.

“Oh, it’s worth while reading. It’s curious,” said Fenn.

“Yes ; but that’s all. I don’t detest Goethe, as so many people do,” she explained. “ But then this story is so cold and mechanical. It chills you, like a talking automaton. His mind must have been a strange one, I think, — a sort of stoniness in it. The idea of a poet making a cold theory of these things,—a chemical law of human passions ! You can’t put down mysteries in terms of arithmetic.”

“ I think you ’re right, no doubt,” said Fenn. “ Love and science don’t always go well together.” And he fell to thinking whether this remark had not a special bearing on bis life.

“ So you see, Mrs. Fenn and I shall agree, exactly.”

“You remind me that I must go,” he said, making haste to get up from his chair. “ The sunset is almost gone over Sheep’s Back.”

“But you must speak to papa. How queer that I did n’t think of calling him ! All this is such a surprise.” She rose, returning him the book as she moved towards the steps, with a lingering movement of the arm that produced an effect as if she were dropping her hand gently into his, although she was evidently unconscious of this. His own fingers closed upon the volume, but his eyes watched the hand, — white, firm, and beautiful, yet with a sadness, he chose to think, in all its motions and even its contour.

She called Mr. Evans, in her sweet voice, which retained all its vernal strength. “ I don’t believe he will hear me,” she said, after waiting; and Fenn wondered if any one else could be so deaf.

“Shall we go and find him ? ” he suggested.

“Oh, yes ; and then I will show you my horse, — just like old times,” said Mrs. Eulow, taking up her noiseless, cool black skirt in one of those sad hands, and descending the steps.

Finding the barn open and deserted, they went in. The farther end gave upon the rugged, woody valley, which fell away almost cavernously in the gathering twilight, showing the pond far below, gleaming faintly like a pearl from the depths. Over Sheep’s Back mountain the sunset was slowly dissolving into the mysterious green pallor of a lingering summer evening. Without a word, they traced their way to the wide doors, and looked out at the landscape. “ Ah, how peaceful and fresh it is here ! ” she sighed at last.

They had quite forgotten Mr. Evans.

A horse was whinnying and pawing in one of the stalls, and this sound recalled her. “Poor Star ! ” she said. “He knows I’m here. Shall we go back and look at him ? I can’t conceive where father is ; but you know how restless he was, — always half doing things, and trying to feel very busy. He’s just the same now, and greatly agitated just at present about the badness of your New E ngl and farm ing. ”

So they went in and saw Star, a fine bay stallion, who put his nose down to be stroked by his mistress. She fed him with hay, through the crib; and then Fenn also patted him on the nose.

As he did so, his usually firm hand trembled. He drew it away quickly.

“ Well, I must give up seeing Mr. Evans to-night,” he said abruptly, almost with irritation. “Please remember me very warmly to him, Mrs. Eulow.”

He was about to go by way of the house; but, remembering that the road wound around just below the barn, he turned in that direction again. “ Goodnight,” he said, but was afraid to offer his treacherous hand.

“ Good-night, Mr. Fenn. Father will be so glad to hear of your being here, I’m sure.” She accompanied him to the door; but he leaped down at once to the bank below. Then he turned.

“ You must come up to the Institute. Ethel will be greatly pleased.”

“ I shall come to-morrow,” said Mrs. Eulow, in her gentlest tone, “ if she will let me. Tell her how much I’m looking forward to it.”

He waved another farewell, with his hat, and walked briskly up the road.

When he had got as far as the bend towards the village, an irresistible desire to look around seized him. Anice was no longer in the wide door-way. He was relieved, yet disappointed. “ But why,” he asked himself, “ should I feel either way about it ? She could n’t possibly stand there gazing after me. What sense would there be in it ? ” Nevertheless, he sat down on the road-bank, a little farther on, and mused. He pretended to himself that he wanted to cut a walking-stick, and selected a straight wild cherry, which he attacked vigorously ; and then, having severed it, he held it idly in his hand. If he had been able to pronounce upon the feeling with which he had looked up at Anice Eulow, when he left her, he would have known that it was not — as he believed — a wave of compassion for her loneliness and possible suffering that had beaten against his heart, but a sudden pity for himself because he could not touch her, could not raise her hand to his lips or press them upon her forehead. To what end ? So far was he from any thought of profanation that he did not at the moment even suspect the real scope of that dim longing which her deep and friendly eyes had wakened in him. . . . He gave up the attempt to unravel his confused reverie ; lopped a few twigs from the cherry; threw it away, and took up the burden of the rug and the book. But before he reached the hotel he had come to this conclusion : “ It is not in Anice that the mystery is which I was thinking of, just now. It must be in me. She is a sweet, natural, true-hearted woman ; that’s all. It’s very simple.”

“ I was getting very anxious about you,” said his wife, as he stepped within the big colonnade, which was adorned by a number of listless figures, in chairs or promenading, among them being two or three young men in straw hats seated with piratical recklessness on the railings at each end. “ Have you been under the oak, all this time ? ”

“ No ; but it’s hard saying what I have n’t done. I’ve visited a house and a barn, taken a new walk, cut a cane, and met a friend whom I had n’t seen for years.”

“ Do I know his name ? ” asked Ethel, as they went through the hall to the tea-room. The angry ripple of their small dispute had passed away completely.

“ It’s not my luck that she should be a man,” said Fenn. “ But you will have a delightful companion, now, Ethel. It’s Mrs. Eulow. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned her to you, have I ? Did you ever hear me speak of her singing? ”

“No. At least I don’t remember it. But I hope she ’ll sing for us here, if she’s going to stay.”

The tea-room, which had about it the desolateness of a recent battle-field, still contained one tardy occupant, —a collegian with bent shoulders, frouzy hair, and eye-glasses, whose lean awkwardness made him look like a harmful bug with prominent vitreous eyes, suddenly stiffened in alcohol so that he could n’t unbend. His rigid presence restrained their conversation for a few moments, and gave Fenn time to reflect with satisfaction upon his wife’s lenient mode of accepting his absence and of treating his friend the widow as a matter of course. Whatever else they had passed through, these companions had never yet been vexed by even the most evanescent fear that they were not bound up in one another ; and the man, remembering this, was at once aware that a flaw in their trust at this particular moment would be inopportune and, in some indirect way not clear to him, exceedingly perilous. When the noxious student had at last carried himself stiffly out of the room, Fenn answered Ethel’s questions about Anice with great vivacity and a steady conscience.

“ It’s very simple,” Fenn had informed himself. But when, before retiring to rest, he went out alone upon the balustraded roof of the colonnade, and stood for a moment under the warm, thick stars, he suffered a renewed palpitation of those wayward ardors which had first thrilled him when looking at the starry field through his window in the old Evans home. What did this mean ? He told himself that it was wrong; more than that, it was unreal, impossible. He was sure that he loved his wife as devoutly as ever. The wedded affection of live years could not waver and yield in an afternoon to the mere resuscitation of a chimera. And yet here were these old emotions pushing themselves upward and blossoming again like flowers in an early spring. This same fancy of the flowers brought him some relief; for at least, he argued, he was no more responsible for any reviving sentiment than he was for the blossoms of spring. Every season must bring back its old associations, and at any moment there might float across his heart some wild fragrance of a forgotten passion, like that of the hidden arbutus. Acquitting himself thus with a simile, he went off to his room.

Sleep and the malicious frankness of dreams had something else in store for him. Far on towards dawn he found himself standing where the solid ground fell away into darkness and mist, in the lower spaces of which he discerned a pearl of fabulous size. It appeared to him that he plunged downward to secure it, and when he rose again to where he had been standing, Anice Eulow was beside him.

III.

There can be few positions more comfortless and provoking for a man than to be present at the first meeting of two women in whom he is deeply interested, feeling that he must observe what impression they are making on each other. Fenn began to see this before the expected call took place. Yet why should he pay any heed to their mutual impressions ? He was satisfied with his wife, was he not ? And the fact of his having chosen her ought alone to command the respect of any other woman who professed a friendship for him. Then, again, if Ethel should n’t happen to like Mrs. Eulow, why need that prevent his rejoicing as much as ever in his old friend ? This kind of reasoning was all very well; but it did not allay his discomfort. Lay our plan of action never so nicely, determine our relations to people with what independence we will, industrious fancy will break in and demolish in a single hour the whole structure. Fancy is perpetually playing with things as they are, and arranging them as they ought to be ; and by and by this play is found to be the most palpable and terribly effective earnest.

The first interview, however, passed off easily enough. Mr. Evans was greatly exhilarated at meeting again the stalwart enthusiast about his daughter’s singing; the two women glided together without any visible shock, Mrs. Eulow’s gloved hand clasping Ethel’s bare and unsophisticated little fingers with soft cordiality.

“ We came early,” said the widow at length, breaking through the busy web of miscellaneous talk, “ for two reasons: we thought we should be more likely to find you ; and then father wants you both to come and take an early dinner with us, at the farm-house.”

Ethel’s round eyes brightened, and she and her husband settled the thing by a glance.

“ You will come, then ? ” said Mrs. Eulow, with a smile that would have convinced the most hardened social skeptic.

“ We will all walk down together, if you say so,” put in her father.

“ Can you get ready, Ethel ? ” Fenn asked, with a singular desire to appear indifferent.

His wife rose. “ It’s only putting on a bonnet and something,” she said ; and then she turned to Anice. “ Would you like to see our beautiful apartment ? Will you come up ? ” she suggested.

Fenn was afraid this was too familiar ; but country boarding makes its own standard of manners, and besides Anice assented so promptly that the movement was spontaneous. As they went out, he saw that it was an excellent chance : it put him wholly at ease. It is generally a good sign for newly acquainted women to run off together, in this way. What can the mysterious initiation be, the informal freemasonry by which, with the aid of a looking-glass and a little millinery and a few aimless sentences, they establish an understanding, when closeted in a room by themselves ? I should hardly dare to ask, and I don’t believe they could explain; but if they come down looking highly pleased with them selves, you may be sure the rite has succeeded. It was so in this instance. Neither Anice nor Ethel would be likely to deploy the least “gush ; ” the widow made no claim upon the wife on the score of old acquaintance with her husband, and Ethel did not offer the smallest pretense of having frequently heard of Mrs. Eulow, because in fact she never had heard of her until the day before, and contented herself with suppression of that truth. But as they came out from the room, and were about to descend the bleak, uncarpeted stairs, Mrs. Eulow put her arm for an instant around her companion’s girlish figure, and Ethel gave her a quick affectionate glance before the pressure was withdrawn again; not a syllable being uttered on either side.

The little wife looked wonderfully pretty in her cream-tinted créplisse with bands of black lace coming down over the front. She carried a brilliant Japanese sunshade, and walked in advance with Mr. Evans.

“ You are very happy to have found such a wife,” said Mrs. Eulow, whom Fenn was attending. “You must allow me to say that much.”

“ I’m glad you agree with me,” he answered, hardly knowing what to say. Nothing is more welcome to a man than a compliment upon his wife, and yet when it comes from another woman he is embarrassed by not being able to utter all that he feels. At this moment, notwithstanding those freaks of sentiment which had troubled him the day before, Benjamin Fenn worshiped Ethel, and would have felt a fierce indignation at any doubt cast upon his loyalty to her.

But as he moved along side by side with Anice, he was thinking continually about the husband whom he had never seen. He had tried to sound her father on the subject, in the few moments they had had alone; but he fancied the old gentleman did not want to talk about Eulow. “ What a pity that I never saw your husband ! ” he now said, abruptly.

A slight cloud crossed her face. “ You may think it strange,” she said, “ but I’m not certain that you would have liked him. He was so different.”

“ From me, you mean ? Or from you ? ”

“ Both,” was the reply, after a slight hesitation. Anice began to see her mistake in saying too much.

“ I ’m afraid I have done wrong to talk of it,” said he. “ The thought crossed me, and I’m forever thinking aloud. But as to difference, you and I are a good deal unlike, and yet we have been good friends, when we knew each other.”

“ When we knew ? You speak as if it were all over.” She half smiled, yet as she turned her eyes towards his, under the shade of her parasol, there was an intensity in them, unexpected to both.

“ Oh, no,” he assured her. “ That was a careless phrase. I hope we are only beginning.”

The tone was that of compliment, and he, too, smiled. But neither of them could forget that swift exchange of glances which revealed something under the words.

“ Don’t let us talk of those times,” she said, with the first trace of confusion she had betrayed. “ At least, not of what we have just spoken about. I like to remember your coming to Little Falls; but you must take me now just as I am. When one has suffered, and everything has changed, it is pleasant to meet an old acquaintance, and have it go on as if nothing had happened.”

Again she seemed to have said too much, or to have said what might bear too much meaning. But it could n’t be helped.

“ Every one suffers,” said Fenn, unguardedly. Then, after an instant, “ And do I seem the same to you that I used to?”

“ Almost exactly,” returned the widow. The announcement seemed to give her nearly as much pleasure as it gave him. Her color was rising, from the exercise perhaps, and her eyes beamed.

Fenn glanced from her to his wife, and unconsciously compared them. Ethel was like some gay tropical bird, in her light dress and bright colors. With An ice, the black walking garb touched here and there with dark violet, though wrought with not a little elegance, was a mere accompaniment to her superb figure and the face so gentle but commanding. They were silent for some time, until Fenn, in his rapid, investigating way, declared, “ I smell English violets. Don’t I ? ”

“ Do you want me to deny it ? ” asked Anice, laughing, and quite at ease again.

He answered seriously and in surprise : “ No. Why ? ”

“ I thought you were determined to have an argument, you began so vigorously,” said she, still with humor. “ Besides, it’s a maxim, is n’t it, for men of science to deny until a thing is proved? — and I might supply the denial, at any rate.”

“ But really,” he resumed, “ I felt sure of it. Perhaps you use violet for a perfume.”

“ I don’t think I’m bound to tell you that,” she returned. “ But I will, since you ’re so puzzled.”

“ Then that’s the explanation. You do use it.”

“ No.”

He appeared greatly mystified, and she made no secret of enjoying his bewilderment. “ You have violet ribbon, at any rate,” he presently discovered, with amusing satisfaction, after carefully surveying her.

“Yes; but it’s not so life-like as to have a perfume.”

“ Well, I give it up, then,” said Fenn, in assumed despair. “ The color is an aniline dye ; I know that. But even that does n't explain my perfume. I must have imagined it.”

And they had now arrived at the farm-house, where Mr. Evans and Ethel, who had been chatting all the way with much animation, were waiting for them. The dinner, taken in a room which looked out on Sheep’s Back and the valley, was simple but remarkably good : it was evident from all the appointments that father and daughter had plenty of money, and they were so far lifted above the average American lot as to have good servants. Mr. Evans even opened a bottle of champagne, for which the circumstance of his having got it extraordinarily cheap served as an indirect apology.

“ When Anice and I went abroad with Eulow for his health—it didn’t avail after all, poor fellow ! — we stopped one day at a little village in the Champagne country, and ” —

His daughter here interrupted, by talking to Fenn, possibly not liking the odd conjunction of Eulow’s death and a special importation of champagne, a case of which had been brought with them for summer use; so her father continued his narrative to Ethel. There was no interruption of harmony, however, and the conversation progressed very entertainingly. As they were finishing dessert, and the young man, lifting his glass, was sipping from it slowly and gazing across the bowl at the hazy hill outside, Mrs. Eulow made some allusion to the garden at Little Falls, — “close by where the bed of English violets was, you remember.”

“That’s it! ” exclaimed Fenn, setting down the glass so sharply as to risk its stem. “ I had forgotten all about it. But when I met yon, last evening, a kind of reminiscence must have come to me: I know I thought there was a violet perfume, then. Ah, yes, that explains it. It was association.”

There was a light, mischievous sparkle in Mrs. Eulow’s eyes, as if she had half suspected the cause of his hallucination about the violets, and had purposely brought out the explanation ; but she smiled with him at the discovery. Ethel and Mr. Evans, noticing the excitement, were allowed a share in it; Anice giving the details with a charming grace.

“ It’s as remarkable in a mental way,” said the chemist, positively, “ as my echo is in acoustics ! ” And this gave rise to a fresh explanation, on his part.

During all this, Ethel had been looking at her husband a little pensively. He was always energetic, but it struck her that just then he was excited. It was strange to her, also, to find him gliding back into the past so easily,— a past of which she knew so little,—accompanied by this accomplished woman, of whom she likewise knew almost nothing. It was odd that Ben should have reminiscences, associations with her, so penetrating, of which she, his wife, was ignorant. But the surprise and slight dissatisfaction aroused by this were only momentary, and faded away iu the general good-feeling and interest of the occasion.

George Parsons Lathrop.