Felicia

XIV.

THE monotony of those November rains, dripping, dripping down the window, was broken at last, and one night the darkness was pervaded by indefinable murmurs, a vague sense of continuous movement, a soft, semi-metallic clicking as of crystal faintly responsive to crystal ; and when morning broke, the ground was deeply covered with the first snow of the season.

Its advent was most welcome, to judge from the number of sleighs seen early on the streets. Toward noon these were even more frequent, and sleighing parties were rapidly organized, — on the principle, perhaps, of making hay while the sun shines. For so deep a “ dry snow ” was rare, and in this capricious climate the length of its continuance on the ground was a matter of the wildest conjecture.

On Kennett’s return from rehearsal he brought suggestions of festivity. A certain Mr. Foxley, well known in social circles, ambitious to be considered particularly au fait in matters pertaining to music and the drama, and well up in worldly affairs in general, had invited the more notable members of the troupe to join him in a sleigh-ride and a subsequent refection, pledging himself to get them back to the theatre in time for the evening performance. Kennett had accepted the invitation, and hurried off before lunch.

Felicia consoled herself bitterly with the reflection that a few lonely hours more or less were of little consequence, in a life made up of gradations of unhappiness.

After her solitary meal, as she stood at her window looking down at the street, she realized the tempting quality of the brilliant clear sunshine and the cheerful aspect of the thoroughfare. She glanced in indecision at the partycolored worsteds on the table, debating in her mind the value of fancywork as a resource, this afternoon, in comparison with a stroll. Finally she put on her hat and wraps, and set out. Depressed as she was, the exhilaration of the air and the vivacity of the passing groups and vehicles had their tonic effect. Her mood lightened; she looked about with interest; she walked more briskly. The air was balmy, almost warm, although a thaw had not yet set in. The sky was intensely blue. Long shafts of yellow sunshine struck adown the street. The light clouds about the west were slowly growing crimson, and were flecked here and there with brilliant golden flakes. Much of this afternoon radiance, falling in a broad sheet upon the plate-glass windows, was reflected back in dazzling sheen; and as Felicia passed the establishment of a well-known dealer in pictures, she was only indefinitely conscious of something familiar in the look and attitude of a man who lounged against the nickelplated railing and gazed at the engravings displayed within.

He turned suddenly, and as his eyes fell upon her he addressed her abruptly, making a somewhat negligent pretense of lifting his hat.

“ You going to give me the cut, too?” he asked.

It was her natural kindly impulse to remove any discomfort he might experience because she had not recognized him. It was her grace of breeding that unluckily caused her apology to do this so efficiently and so cordially that Abbott, entirely placated, was moved to stroll along the sidewalk with her.

She found a certain bitterness in thus accepting his escort. She had always been fastidious as to her choice of associates. Under no circumstances would she have patiently endured his companionship, — to-day least of all; yet she was sensible of an excessive humiliation that she should experience so intense a panic lest her brother or his wife, or any of her few acquaintances in Chilounatti, should chance to meet her walking with her husband’s most intimate friend. He was shabby, — shabbier than usual. His shoes were unblacked, his hat unbrushed. He had been drinking; his eyes were bloodshot. He was evidently in the state in which a man is both captious and plaintive.

“ I ’ll tell you what it is,” he declared, thrusting his hands into his overcoat pockets, — “I ’ll tell you what it is : if a man has got no money, he ’d better die. Prussic acid don’t cost much, and the outlay for a coffin is a permanent investment. He don’t have to he paying that every week, like the butcher’s bill. There is no place in this world for a poor man. It’s a pretty big world, but there’s no room in it for the fellow with the empty purse. Look at that chap Foxley, for instance. What in the name of sense would he be without his money ? And he knows it. He values himself for nothing but his money. He don’t respect anything but money. What does he care for Kennett or Preston, do you suppose ? But Preston is one by himself, and what he has he can afford to spend on himself, and wear good clothes, and cut a dash. And Kennett has married rich, and always looks about right. And Hallet is the manager, and makes money. That’s all Foxley cares for. He pretends to know something about music. He don’t. He’s got no use for anything but money. And if a man’s got no money he may go hang, for all Mr. Henry Foxley cares.”

Felicia understood his pitiful grievance. He had been neglected in the invitation to the afternoon festivity. It was hard for her to bear a part in a conversation like this. She attempted to evolve some commonplace to the effect that we have good authority for the belief that the love of money is the root of all evil. But he interrupted her, evidently valuing more the opportunity to air his woes than her consolation.

“ I guess you don’t know much about it,”he said, sourly. “You’ve had nothing but the soft side of life so far, — the roses, and the lilies, and all that sort of thing. It’s easy enough to be contented and smiling when you’ve got everything heart can wish. But how do you suppose a man feels when he knows he ’s looked down on and sat on by his inferiors? Oh, I tell you a man had better be dead than carry a flat pocket-book! ”

He laughed, and scowled, and took out his purse, which was indeed rather flat, tossing it up and down and catching it with deftness as he walked.

“ Bless you,” he added, “ sometimes I am actually minus a nickel for streetcar fare.”

She wondered if he were ever minus a nickel for a “ schooner ” of beer ; she thought not, judging from the puffy appearance of his eyelids and cheeks, indicative of devotion to that sort of liquid consolation for the woes of life. She scorned herself that her heart should flutter as it did a moment later. She felt her breath come fast; her limbs trembled ; her voice was unsteady.

“This is the library,” she said, suddenly. “ I am going in here.” She turned sharply, and began to ascend the stairs. She had not intended to make a visit to the library an incident of the afternoon’s excursion ; but advancing toward her was one of the solid and stolid old gentlemen she had met at her brother’s house. She felt almost sure that he would not remember her. She felt perfectly sure that she could not risk the possibility. To her chagrin, Abbott accompanied her into the building, and as they climbed the stairs together he remarked that he did n’t know that strangers could go to this swell library. Apparently he considered the privilege very valuable, and seemed to felicitate himself on the accidental opportunity.

Felicia reflected in increased annoyance that it was more probable she would be recognized by the librarian or some of his assistants, as she had once been an habitué of the institution, than by the absent-minded old gentleman she had so anxiously avoided. Had it not, come to a strange pass, she asked herself in extreme impatience, that she should skulk about; that she should seek to hide from the people she had once known, as if she had indeed something of which to be ashamed. — as if she merited the contempt that she feared ?

She did not go into the reading-room, realizing that it would most likely be difficult to induce Abbott to comply with the regulations requiring silence. She threw herself into a seat in an alcove, and Abbott took the place beside her.

“Won’t you catch cold here?” he asked. “ Shall I close the window ? ”

The room had been overheated, and several of the windows had been put up, among them the one by which they sat. She replied that she preferred the air, reflecting that perhaps, on account of his voice, he would be alarmed by the possibility of taking cold himself, and leave her. He appeared, however, to have no such fear, as he lounged in his place and resumed his talk. It was much in the same vein as before, and she settled herself to endure it with what fortitude she might. Her absent eyes rested now on the silent, motionless figures, seen through the vistas of open doors, in the reading-room ; now on the softly moving attendants coming and going; now on the pictures and groups of statuary near at hand; now on the wall of the building across the street. In this building there was a window on a level with the one by which she was sitting, and its sash also was thrown up. Felicia listened mechanically when a few keys were struck on a piano, very audible across the narrow street and through the open windows. There ensued some rapid and showy phrasing, a few resolving chords, the restful, determining effect of a tonic chord, and then a man’s voice arose, — a rich, sonorous, impressive voice, under masterly control. In another moment a mezzo-soprano, which she also recognized, full, sweet, and brilliant, took up the complement of the melody, and a duet that was new to her pulsated on the air.

Abbott stopped abruptly in what he was saying, and looked at Felicia in surprise.

“ How did Kennett happen to give up the sleigh-ride ? ” he asked.

In the sharp confusion which suddenly seized upon her she had but one distinct idea, — that she should preserve her self-command. She summoned all her faculties ; she controlled her voice ; she met his inquiring look with a casual, unflinching glance.

“ He said something about going,” she replied, “ but I suppose he changed his mind. I have n’t seen him since luncheon.”

Abbott accepted the answer. She had played her part so well that he merely turned his eyes speculatively upon the window opposite, and remarked reflectively that he supposed old Verney — who was the musical director — had decided to substitute that duet, after all, and they had to go to work to get it up at the last minute.

“ I suppose so,” she said.

“Just like him,” rejoined Abbott, sourly; “ changing his mind, and making singers take the risk of a new number without a rehearsal with the orchestra.”

In a certain way Felicia was scrupulous. Under ordinary circumstances she would have taken herself to task. She would have asked herself if she, who esteemed herself highly, had by implication told a falsehood to this man whom she esteemed so slightly. In her moral problems the difference in valuation would have been an element of consideration. Certainly she had created a false impression. Now she was only glad that the false impression was so complete.

It was well for her that Abbott, absorbed in his grievance, took no thought of her manner. He did not notice that she offered no observation, and responded rarely and at haphazard to his remarks. She rose to go presently, saying, with a shiver, that she was cold, after all, and that the open windows were making the room very chilly.

“ Don’t you want to get a book or something ? ” asked Abbott, in surprise.

No, she said; she did not care for anything to read. She only came up here sometimes to rest when she was out walking.

“Want to hear him practicing his pretty little songs with Mrs. Branner, hey ? ”

He broke into a disagreeable laugh, wrinkling the corners of his eyes satirically as he bent them upon her. Surely she was becoming well versed in the intricacies of a world of thought and feeling heretofore far enough from her ken. Once it would have seemed strange to contemplate the possibility of meeting and baffling such an adversary as this on his own ground.

“ Mrs. Branner is very handsome,” she said, easily. “Are those pleasant rooms she has? I have never been to see her here.”

He had noticed at the time the cessation of her intimacy with Mrs. Branner, and had explained it to his own satisfaction by the theory that Kennett’s wife Was too “ stuck up ” to associate even with the “ bon ton ” of the troupe. Such as himself and his wife, he would say, with his bitter parade of humility, did n’t expect any of her society, but Mrs. Branner ought to be “ tony ” enough for her. Men of his peculiar temperament, however, have no past and no future ; his life had no perspectives, and the whole matter had slipped from his recollection along with many episodes, great and small. Thus it was that Felicia’s management of a commonplace again effected the work of a prevarication. He only remembered that there had been an acquaintance, forgot that it had abruptly ceased, inferred that visits were often exchanged in other places besides “here,” and relinquished as “ no go ” his vague idea of exciting a jealous distrust on Mrs. Branner’s account.

“ Well, moderately nice rooms,” he said, diverted to another train of thought. “They wouldn’t seem anything to you, you know, stopping at all the fine hotels and all that, as you do, but they are pretty well for Mrs. Branner; and, my Lord ! they ’d be gorgeous to my wife and me.”

In his curious aptness in being disagreeable, which almost amounted to a genius, was a certain capacity to make the possession of advantages and superior opportunities a lash for the lucky, — a sort of lash of two thongs; for he could lay on alternately his own deprivations and his friends’ good fortune with such discrimination and acrimony that Kennett was often lost in doubt as to whether these friends would be more comfortable if less well off themselves, or if Abbott were more generously endowed with whatever he might esteem desirable.

He had drifted again into the wide current of worldly differences, — a felicitous subject enough, requiring little in the way of comment or reply. Thus Felicia was enabled to give her almost undivided mind to the consideration of the strange thing which had happened. In the very commencement of this episode of her life she had the strong support of a quality which, in her nature, took upon itself much of the high function of principle. To her intense pride of character she owed it that she was able to see and reason with a certain degree of fairness and composure. When she had collected her faculties sufficiently for consecutive thinking, she asked herself if it were possible that a man who possessed qualities which could secure and bold her heart was capable of trifling with her, deceiving her even in so slight a matter as this question of an afternoon engagement. Could her husband palm off an excuse upon her in order to conceal the fact that he desired to spend two or three leisure hours this afternoon in the society of another woman ? Had she mistaken him like that? Did he care for her so little as that ? She declared she owed it first to herself, then to him, to admit such a possibility only on the most irrefragable testimony; and the proof in this case was very flimsy. He had probably heard, after he left the hotel, that a new duet was to be substituted in the opera for a familiar one, or introduced, and felt compelled to relinquish the sleigh-ride in order to practice it. Nothing, she argued, could be more probable than this.

She had lost much, she said to herself, in worldly position, in opportunity, in peace of soul, but she was sure — and she dwelt on the stipulation with a sort of eager insistence — of her husband’s good faith in every emergency, great and small; and she was sure of herself, — she could not harbor jealousy and suspicion on inadequate grounds. A moment later she was torn with humiliation, with unspeakable bitterness, that she should thus seek to reassure herself.

The attention she accorded Abbott became more and more perfunctory, but she could not get rid of him until she reached the ladies’ entrance of the hotel. He seemed to wish to be asked in, and was disposed to linger at the door and make conversation about small matters. She found it necessary to infuse into her formal “ Good-afternoon” something of the spirit of a dismissal, which he accepted rather sulkily, and with another negligent pretense of lifting his hat he slowly dawdled down the sidewalk.

She found her room suffused with the red glow of the sunset, and along the golden shaft which slanted through the half-open blind the yellow motes were drifting and dancing. The sound of a canary bird’s shrilling in the next room rose and fell unintermittingly, and the jingle of sleigh-bells came up from the street. Still in her hat and wraps, she sank upon a chair, and attempted to qniet the tumult at her heart, — a tumult which was a question, a protest, and an intolerable pain. She could only go over the ground again by exactly the processes she had followed before. She could only say it was impossible that her husband could deceive her in any matter, great or small, and that no doubt he would of his own accord explain, when he should return, the circumstances that had caused the change in his plans.

He did nothing of the sort. The sunlight faded. Twilight came on, and filled the still room with vague violet shadows. Presently the electric light outside cast a lividly white similitude of the window on the dark wall. A star looked in.

Kennett came at last; not hurriedly, — he never hurried, — but absorbed and inclined to silence. And yet, more absorbed, more silent than usual ? — she demanded of herself, holding desperately to the theory she deemed endurable, and resolved to make every phase of circumstance conform to it. He was naturally serious and composed of manner ; of late his gravity had increased. As to his making no mention of his afternoon engagement, she reminded herself, fighting her growing dismay, that little was ever said nowadays touching his professional life, — as little as in the early time of their marriage, when she had persistently kept from herself all knowledge of its every detail. It was natural that he should not speak of the duet, of the sudden necessity to practice it, of the possibility of its pleasing at the evening performance (when had he spoken of duets, or rehearsals, or performances?); that he should talk instead, in their usual desultory dinnertime tête-à-tête, on any casual subject that might arise, — the great cattle convention, for instance, the value of some of the badges worn by the delegates, the large number of people coming in on every train, the gigantic growth of the cattle interest, the immense fortunes achieved if a man had luck and pluck. This subject exhausted, they drifted into a slight discussion of some changes that had been made in the lighting of the dining-room since they were here last, and compared the house with others at which they had sojourned. They even spoke of the weather, and he remarked that the thaw had not yet set in. Their talk was very languid, and was broken by long silences.

After their meal Kennett left her at the elevator, saying that he had more than usual on hand, and was pressed for time.

And so back into her own room, to review word by word all that had been said, to speculate on what had not been said and why he was silent, to reiterate her assurances, alternately to rebel and wince because she found those assurances of less and less avail, — thus she passed the next three hours. Sometimes she felt that it was an inexpressible cruelty that she could not have had speech with him, and saved herself this ordeal of pain ; she might at least have asked him about the sleigh-ride, and have judged if he had intentionally misled her. Then she pulled herself up sharply. Ask her husband in effect if he had told her a lie ? Ah, life was hard at best, but what an intolerable burden it would be when that should become a possibility!

Again she strung her will to its utmost tension. She forced herself to believe that she was glad she had not mentioned the matter. She might have lost her self-control. She might have made a scene, with tears and reproaches, and have earned with her own self-contempt his bitter contempt, even his aversion. He would not be to blame for aversion in such case, she said. She could never forgive herself if she had asked him a question which would imply even to herself a moment’s doubt of him.

Yet ten minutes after his return from the theatre she asked this question, — carefully, judicially, coolly. With a sort of impersonal amazement, she heard herself speak the words she had resolved not to speak. Her will seemed as totally out of her own control as if it appertained to another entity.

“ You did n’t tell me about the sleighride, Hugh,” she said.

“ I did not go with them,” he replied.

It seemed to her that he spoke simply, naturally, without hesitation or reserve. But— he could act. She knew how well he could act.

“ Old Verney flew into a rage this morning,” continued Kennett, “ because the trio in the finale did not go to suit him, and declared he intended to substitute a duo by Neukomm : it is rather rare and new here. Nobody believed him, but just as I was about to start with Foxley’s crowd a messenger came, on a dead run, with the score, and I had to go to Mrs. Branner and get it up.”

How simple, how reasonable, how perfectly credible ! Her heart was growing light again.

“ Was n’t it dangerous to attempt it without a rehearsal with the orchestra ? ” she asked.

“ Well, yes, rather risky ; it is a difficult, crabbed piece of instrumentation. The flutes came very near getting into the woods several times. The whole thing would have been a fiasco with any soprano I know except Mrs. Branner. She fairly controlled those fools in the orchestra with her eye and her voice. Old Verney himself was scared.”

There was a pause. Kennett had risen, and was standing looking down into the fire. He had a sort of retrospective contemplation on his face.

“Intelligence is a wonderful force,” he said suddenly, with something like enthusiasm, “and what a voice she has ! A lovely voice, — a very rare voice.”

He seldom criticised any of his associates ; it was still more seldom, actuated perhaps by professional jealousy, perhaps by the high standard of excellence of the artist, that he accorded praise.

Felicia said nothing. As he glanced down at her, he was struck by something in her face. Not an expression so much as an absence of expression, — a certain blankness ; from intense feeling, or lack of feeling ? from repression, or emotion, or indifference, or objection ? He did not interpret it.

“ I beg pardon for talking shop,” he said, in deference to its possible meaning. “ I know you don’t like shop.”

What was this new torture which beset her, this piercing, sudden pang that had resolved itself into a heavy pain, and would not relax its hold ?

It appeared to her now that her terror of this afternoon that he had willfully deceived her was a small grief in comparison with what she felt when she remembered how his face had lighted as he spoke of that woman and praised her intelligence and her voice.

This was jealousy. On its indefinite, malevolent power she had speculated vaguely and pitifully as on some faraway calamity, in the nature of things infinitely removed from her lot, — as a pestilence, a fatal tide-wave, an earthquake in a foreign land, wreaking woe. Vaguely and pitifully, but an infusion of contempt had been admixed in her contemplation of that convulsion of the human soul. And now it was upon her with its terrors, its sense of irremediability, of inevitability, its intolerable pain, its humiliation, its despair.

Being what she was, she could not offer herself explanations, reasons, questions, now. The fact, the one insuperable, undeniable fact, remained, how his face had lighted when he spoke of that woman and of her voice, — a fact seemingly vast enough, predominant enough, to fill a universe ; to exclude all other thought, all other care, all other considerations. Yet, vast as it was, presently there came to be room enough in her consciousness, being what she was, for an added realization to slip in, — the realization that they were all three of the operatic world, a shabby world from the standpoint of her previous existence ; excluded, set apart from ordinary rules and traditions. It was perhaps meet, she said bitterly to herself, that in this alien world his wife should see his face light up at the name of this woman, — of such a woman !

This was the position in which she was placed, — she who had once been Felicia Hamilton, a cherished daughter, a loved sister, an admired heiress ; so fortunately endowed as to be out of the reach of detraction or envy, out of the possibility of slight or supersedure. This was what it had all come to, — this absurd calamity, this most contemptible tragedy.

In the anguish of her wounded love and her writhing pride, in this first bitter experience of the torture of jealousy, she could still see the matter in its social aspect.

XV.

In the distribution of complex and delicate forces which combine to make up an intellectual entity, are the functions of certain faculties capable of only a fixed amount of work, or perhaps of work only in certain directions, precluding activity in other than accustomed channels ? For instance, when an appeal was made to Kennett’s carefully cultivated artistic sensibilities, they responded readily enough. Given a dramatic situation, elements of rage, despair, love, revenge, remorse, his consciousness was instantly imbued with an adequate realization of those emotions ; alert to assume them as a habit ; adroit to fix upon them the medium of word, look, and action appropriate for vivid portrayal. In this sense of a keen artistic susceptibility he did not lack imagination. From another point of view he did. In the simple and prosaic machinery of his life off the stage he was not quick to interpret complications of feeling; he was clumsy in the analysis of shades of manner. His experience had been of simple natures, — of soul developments that lay close to the surface, easily accessible.

In these days he misinterpreted Felicia in contradictory ways : sometimes he thought her cold ; sometimes he thought her sullen ; sometimes he was vaguely impressed with the idea that she was deeply and secretly unhappy, — a theory he rejected when her composed eyes met his, and her mechanically cheerful voice fell on the air. If it had been on the stage, he might have recognized it as bad acting ; as it was, he did not recognize it as feigning at all.

Thus it was that the next morning, as he was about to start for rehearsal, he hesitated at the door, and turned back into the room in uncertainty.

“ You don’t have fresh air enough, Felicia,” he said, abruptly. “ I know you dislike dictation, but I think I ought to insist that you should be more in the open air. Keeping so closely in these hot rooms is enough to kill you. You look anything but well to-day.”

“ I have a headache,” she said.

Her heart was thumping heavily; she was fighting with the emotion that strove to express itself in her voice, and so that voice seemed measured and cold.

“ You would n’t like to walk with me around to the theatre ? ” he asked, doubtfully, repulsed by her tone. “ You need n’t go in, you know, unless you choose.”

“ If you can wait a few moments,” she replied, unexpectedly.

He came back into the room, threw himself into an armchair, still wearing his hat and overcoat, and resumed the morning paper.

She said to herself in scorn that it had come to a strange pass that a wife should be shaken, affected, agitated almost beyond control, if her husband condescended to notice that she was pale and asked her to walk with him ; for as she adjusted her wraps her fingers were trembling with haste and eagerness.

An almost perfect physical organization, with its strong and subtle elasticity, its alert susceptibility to external conditions, has also intense endowments of hope and courage. It was strange to her that, under the influence of the sunshine, the air, and the motion, her heavy heart should grow lighter. She felt a sense of reassurance in the few words Kennett spoke ; his very silence was all at once restful, so unstudied and natural did it seem. Her thoughts were slipping the leash of the subject which held them in thrall. She was half unconsciously noticing the circumstances about her, —the passing people, the vociferous English sparrows, the crisp sound of the crunching snow under their feet, the filmy lines of cirrus clouds drawing an almost imperceptible veil over the sky.

After she was seated in the semi-obscurity of the proscenium box, her thoughts went back to the efforts she had made six months before to share her husband’s professional life. How hard she had tried ! How completely she had failed ! Was it her fault ? In this unexpected lightening of her mood, she could review the stretch of time since she first sat looking on at a rehearsal with the determination to endure, to withstand, to concede. Was she right then ? Was it a mistake to give up that resolve through fear of some ill to her precious ideals ? Was not her happiness— and his — of more value than her standards ? And if she could have done this, life would have been, perhaps, an easier thing ; she would have been a happier woman. She could have taken her environment less tragically. She would have kept her hope, her spirit, her influence. In that case she might have met whatever charm was arrayed against her with conscious effort; with an intention to regain, to retain; with the potent countercharm of her own undismayed individuality. She looked across the stage at Mrs. Branner. She asked herself. Was a wife proposing the possible feasibility of entering the lists against another woman for the prize of her husband’s heart, — of summoning the fascination of the coquette against another coquette? Under any circumstances, could she have so developed that that would be possible ? Would it be well for her if she could ? She said to herself, No. Love is a blessing or a curse, as fate wills ; not a bauble to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Never could she have come to such a pass as to truckle, to scheme, to bribe, to cajole.

Those members of the troupe whom she knew best came into the box, in the course of the rehearsal. Felicia noticed a certain change in their manner since the early days of her marriage, when she first visited the theatre. Then there had been a marked deference, even an evident awe, too sincere to be concealed. But she had become a familiar presence, and then had withdrawn herself. Perhaps something of resentment was expressed in the sort of cavalier assertion she detected in them. Perhaps in her earlier acquaintance she had been too gentle, too conciliatory. She knew much of human nature through intuition, but she had not yet learned that the grace of concession is subject to misinterpretation. She had felt that she condescended in meeting them as on equal ground; they may have received her complaisance as admission of equality. Possibly it elicited in them, not appreciation, but self-aggrandizement ; perhaps it had not lifted them, but had placed her on a lower plane in their estimation. Après vous is endurable only among social equals.

It may have been this feeling of resentment that influenced Mrs. Branner’s manner when she too entered the box, with greetings and welcome. She in especial had been taken up on trial, as it were, in an effort to find her endurable, and dropped,—not an experience to be received patiently by a woman of pronounced vanity. The spark in her eyes, the ring in her voice, were not, however, so definite as to be distinctly discernible to normal sensibilities, but the delicate antennæ of Felicia’s instincts, intensely on the alert, apprehended an antagonistic sentiment.

More vivacious than usual was Mrs. Branner ; she had a fine color, and after the first few sentences of salutation she talked with fluency and eagerness, with lifting of her eyebrows and gestures of her ungloved hands, — large, soft, white, well-shaped, and delicately tended hands, that expressed some sort of supremacy and strength in their possessor, making merely pretty hands seem weak and ineffective.

A few moments after her entrance the conversation drifted from Felicia, and she found herself excluded, as she had no knowledge of the circumstances of which they spoke. She gathered that Mrs. Branner, having some time before received a small legacy, had invested it injudiciously, and was now disposed to sell out precipitately at a considerable loss. The others expostulated with varying degrees of earnestness. Once Felicia heard her husband quoted in Mrs. Branner’s replies. She looked up quickly. Their eyes met. In that moment, replete with meaning, with the subtle forces of recognized and half-recognized emotions and antagonisms, whatever was the unexpressed thought that flashed from one to the other, it induced a sudden silence. The singer hesitated. Then, with a heightened flush and a quick change of expression, — a sort of indefinite lightening of look, — she went on: “ Mr. Kennett says,” and once, “Hugh thinks I had better take what I can get when I can get it.”

Her lips were smiling, but there was a taunt in her eyes. The wife felt herself growing white ; her eyes burned as they met that mocking glance. She rose slowly, saying nothing. To control her face; to make no sign which Abbott and Preston and Whitmore — all keen men, and alert by training to interpret minutiæ of manner as expressive of feeling — might detect; to remove herself from this plausible, mocking creature, with the smile upon her lips and cruelty in her eyes, — this was her one thought.

Rehearsal was over. The singers on the stage, invested with wraps and hats, lingered in groups, chatting or discussing the morning’s work. The members of the orchestra were dispersing. Kennett was entering the box.

“You are ready to go?” he said to Felicia.

“ Oh, Mr. Kennett, by the way ! ” cried Mrs. Branner, suddenly. “Did you stop at Cranlett’s yesterday afternoon and get my photographs, as you promised ? Of course you forgot. I am so sorry.”

He thrust his hand into the breast pocket of his coat as if in sudden recollection.

“ Of course I did not forget,” he said. “ Here they are.”

He handed her the package, with a smile and a bow of exaggerated ceremoniousness. In the pleasantry was suggested much of the ease which characterizes two widely different states of feeling,—the superficial friendliness induced by a habit of constant and not disagreeable association, as well as the cordiality resulting from the more serious elements of congeniality.

Mrs. Branner was tall; her eyes were on a level with his. She looked straight at him with her own artless, dulcet smile.

“ Oh, you dear boy ! ” she cried, vivaciously. “ You never forget anything that I ask you.”

He looked surprised. He moved away; he laughed constrainedly. As Mrs. Branner opened the package of photographs, he said again to Felicia, “ You are ready to go? I am at your command.”

“ Wait one moment, only one moment,” begged Mrs. Branner, “and see my pictures. Oh, how hideous ! ”

She distributed a number of cabinet photographs among the group, remarking that it was a shame to be so caricatured.

“What are you giving us ? ” said Abbott, scanning one of them. “ It’s perfectly dandy. You know you don’t think they are hideous. You think they are particularly swell.”

“ Why didn’t you get yourself taken in costume ? ” objected Preston. “You look like any other blonde woman in a black lace dress.”

Felicia made no comment. Kennett observed that the likeness was good.

“ I ‘ll forgive you, Mr. Kennett,” cried Mrs. Branner, coquettishly, as he was leaving the box, “ if you have kept one of them! I don’t intend to count them.”

She tossed them gayly from one hand to the other.

“That’s very good of you,” declared Kennett, lightly.

Felicia looked over her shoulder as she went out. She it was who stealthily attempted to count them as they were shuffled by those smooth, shapely hands of Mrs. Branner’s. How many did she hold? Preston had one; Whitmore held two, which he was comparing; Abbott had one ; and had a dozen been taken, or half a dozen ? Had Kennett one in his pocket ? And the wife had caught herself trying to count them that she might know ! The humiliation of it!

Added to those elements which had made her torture last night there had come to her now an ecstasy of anger that held her dumb. She might not speak lest she break all bounds of selfcontrol.

As she and her husband retraced the way traversed only two hours ago with such different feelings, — with the dawning of hope, the possibility of courage, of endurance, of dispassionate reflection, — Felicia was perceiving vaguely that the most terrible phase of the passion which possessed her was its sharp alternations.

Kennett broke the silence as they neared the hotel.

“ Did you notice,” he said, with a reminiscent laugh, “ how kittenish Mrs. Branner is to-day ? Quite flirtatious.”

He looked at her with smiling eyes, and she looked at him. Even her lips were white.

“ I do not choose to talk about that woman,” she said, icily.

He seemed at a loss. His smile faded, and his face wore an expression of surprise.

“ Ah, well,” he said, with a sudden depression of manner, “if you don’t want to talk of her, I am sorry I mentioned her.”

It was now Felicia’s chief care to preserve her self-command. She looked forward with dread to the afternoon alone with Kennett. With her inflexible sense of what she deemed due to herself, what she felt life and others owed her, she shrank with inexpressible repugnance from the thought that she might lose her hold upon herself and betray the torment of jealousy that she was enduring. Justifiable or unjustifiable, she felt that nothing could lighten the degradation that she should go through such an experience, and that he should know it.

Chance intervened to spare her the ordeal of an afternoon’s tête-à-tête. Kennett asked, just after luncheon, if she would not make a call on Abbott’s wife, who was ill and “ blue.”

“ He told me he wished you would come. His family live here, you know. You won’t mind it if it is a little distasteful to you ? They live rather shabbily, I believe. Their expenses are pretty heavy. He says they are as poor as Job’s turkey this year.”

His tone was apologetic and a trifle anxious. He looked at her in uncertainty.

“It will give me pleasure to go,” she replied, gravely. “ He did not mention it to me, either to-day or yesterday afternoon. I had a long talk with him yesterday. I am sorry I did not know before that his wife is ill.”

Then she said to herself in much bitterness of spirit: " Hugh thinks I am a most consummate snob, and perhaps I am ; but it seems to me that I don’t object to Mr. Abbott’s poverty as to pocket, but as to soul.”

She rose, and took from the wardrobe her cloak and bonnet.

“ If you will order a carriage,” she said, “ I will go at once.”

He looked at her, with strong impatience in his face. He spoke sharply. He so seldom let go his self-control that that which in another man might have Seemed only irritability seemed in him extreme anger.

“ Felicia, do you desire to be so extravagant ? he asked. “ Is it through perversity that you spend money so foolishly ? I have remonstrated again and again. You know how I am situated. We can’t afford carriages for casual afternoon outings and shopping. The livery bill is already unreasonably high. Why not go in the horse cars, like other people ? ”

She returned his look fixedly. There was something in her face, difficult of interpretation, which made him sorry he had spoken so abruptly. Yet she did not appear hurt, and in her expression came a sort of indulgence; a dawning softness contended with the underlying pain.

“ I will go in the horse cars,” she replied, quietly. “I did n’t remember the expense of a carriage.”

He walked about the room in perturbation. Apologies did not come very easily to him. He was used to being in the right. Still he made an effort.

“ I don’t intend to be cross,” he said, penitently, “ but you seem very thoughtless, and I am worried to death about money.”

She made no reply for a moment; then, as she tied her bonnet-strings under her chin, she gave a bitter little laugh.

“ How happy a human being must be,” she said, “to have for a bête noire only — money ! ”

He accompanied her downstairs, hailed a car, assisted her into it, and gave the conductor directions where she was to stop and change cars. The vehicle trundled on drearily through the murky streets; for the clouded and dense air, permeated with the thick smoke from the bituminous coal of many factories, was almost a tangible medium ; though still early in the afternoon, twilight seemed already close at hand.

A sort of lethargy had succeeded the vividness of Felicia’s emotions; her thoughts dwelt with the heaviness and inelasticity of a fatigued mind on the subject which absorbed her. She was only indefinitely conscious that her feet were cold; that she shivered in the biting draught, as the door was opened for the admission or exit of passengers; that the straw in the bottom of the dingy car was spotted with tobacco juice; that her companions were for the most part old women with market baskets, and middle-aged men who diffused the odor of garlic as they animatedly conversed in guttural tones, with many an “ach” and “ Gott,” and the wild gesticulation of unbridled argument.

When the car stopped, and the conductor opened the door and signified that she had reached her destination, she descended into a region unfamiliar to her.

“Your car’ll be along torec’ly, lady,” he said, as he gave the driver the signal to proceed. When he reached the next corner, he suddenly thumped the rail of the platform with his big glove in recollection. “ Bless the Lord, if I did n’t put her out on the wrong street! ” he exclaimed. “The cars go down that street and up the next.”

He laughed a little at the thought of her discomfiture, and stopped the car for a fat Irishwoman with a basket, — clothes, this time.

Felicia stood for some minutes on the corner, waiting for a car. Several passed going down, none going up. So little were sundry practical phases of life familiar to her that she did not notice that the track was a single one, and that no car could of necessity go in the direction she wished to take. The wind whistled around the corner on which she stood. She shivered as it struck her, and finally began to walk up the street; pausing now and then, and looking over her shoulder, in the hope of being overtaken by the big, lumbering vehicle. Her thoughts had been diverted into a new channel, and she became, as she walked, more and more alertly conscious of the unaccustomed phases of life suddenly presented to her view.

It was no doubt a serious misfortune to Felicia that whatever she deeemd objectionable angered as well as repelled her. She could not endure with indifference that people should be stupid or ill-natured, boorish, foolish, overdressed or inappropriately dressed; that they should not know what to say, and when and how to say it; that they should not move with ease and have good manners. Her respect for the proprieties, the decorous and seemly in life, had been cultivated until it was almost a religion. With all her mental scope and avidity of imagination, she had not enough of the poetic gift to see anything picturesque in poverty through its repulsiveness. She had known so little of lowly lives and their surroundings that she had slight sympathetic insight or appreciation of the woes, the heroism, the struggles; she saw only the grotesque exterior. To-day she was brought into closer contact with those sorry conditions than ever she had been before. Her own deep absorptions gave way to the contemplation of this unlovely status. Her way took her through one of the humbler retail arteries of the city, which, while respectable, were in their shabbiness far removed from the wellto-do, fashionable pathways. She saw frowzy, anxious, peevish women ; noisy, neglected children ; whistling, quarreling boys; coarse-faced men; shabby tenement houses, — all repeated ad infinitum along the vistas of the side streets. It was a positive offense to her that the shop windows should be filled with tawdry finery, — absurdly imitating the fashions, — placarded with figures far beyond their value, but indicative of marvelous cheapness; that forlorn feminine gulls should chaffer over the counters attaining these, or covetously gaze at them from without; that in front of the huckster shops crates of vegetables and coops containing restless live chickens and ducks should impede her way ; that she should pass saloons with rough men lounging about. The din was deafening; great wagons laden with iron bars clanged by in continuous succession ; the air was now and again pierced with the shrill tones of fruit-venders, the still more dissonant notes of the knife-grinder’s bell, and the doleful cry of “ Rags ! rags! rags! ”

By degrees she entered a quieter region. The shops were fewer and dwellings were more numerous. A series of vacant lots, with piles of ashes and tin cans, gave nevertheless a welcome sense of space and air, and in this vicinity she found the address that had been furnished her. It was a small brick dwelling, placed considerably back from the street, in a ragged front yard. The bell wire was broken, and it was only after a persistent knocking, which left her knuckles sore, that Felicia heard first a shrill voice calling peremptorily, then the sound of steps. They were strange, rattling, thumping, irregular steps, rising above a mingled chorus of loud exclamations, as of fright or anger, and convulsive laughter. After a few moments of fumbling at the bolt the door suddenly flew open, and revealed a tall, slim girl of twelve, wearing a dark calico dress and a white apron ; she had a shock of curly brown hair, and was uncertainly balanced on a pair of roller skates. Two or three younger children, following her, had apparently impeded her progress. All were panting and flushed as if from a recent struggle.

“ Mrs. Abbott ? ” she repeated, in answer to Felicia’s inquiry, looking at her with a hard stare, at once curious and indifferent, from under her tousled bangs, and vigorously working her jaws upon an exceedingly obdurate piece of chewing-gum. “ Come in,” she added, shortly. Then she thrust her head into a door close at hand, and calling out, “Sister Jenny — lady wants to see you ! ” skated off; eluding the suddenly outstretched hands of her companions, balancing herself with her swaying arms, — she was evidently a novice, — and laughing wildly.

The sordidness, the shabby disarray, deepened Felicia’s intense depression, as she stood hesitating in the dusty, unkempt hall, and she was not reassured when Mr. Abbott appeared at the open door. He was in his shirt sleeves ; his waistcoat and trowsers were profusely and freshly wrinkled; his hair was tumbled, and his eyes were bloodshot and swollen. He was plainly just awake, and when, still somewhat dazed, he invited her in, she was sorry she had come. There was so evidently no preparation for the reception of visitors that, as she took the offered chair near the fire, she felt painfully that her call was an intrusion.

The woman in a faded calico wrapper, sitting in an easy-chair, supported by pillows and half enveloped in a blanket, wore on her sharp, thin features so many expressions that it was hard to say which predominated, —melancholy, physical suffering, discontent. The room was sparsely furnished, but in great disorder ; the scattered articles giving it an overcrowded appearance.

Mr. Abbott did not have to be awake long to achieve his unreasoning perversity. With that sharp insight of hers, Felicia divined that he was pleased because she had come, and that, contradictory as usual, he resented it as patronage.

“ You must take us as you find us,” he said. “ It’s not a very elegant way to live; but every man can’t put up at the swell hotels, like Kennett. All of us were not so lucky as to marry heiresses.”

He smiled with an air of amiable inadvertence, and reflected that this stroke would cut both Felicia and his wife, who was gazing at the visitor with a face of blank amaze.

Felicia realized that he had spoken to Kennett of the illness in his family in such a way as to make her husband feel that she had been remiss in not coming before, but without the slightest desire that she should come at all. She usually had herself under good control, but now she was cruelly embarrassed. She had colored deeply ; her voice faltered as she spoke to the wife. “ I am sorry you are ill,” she said.

“ I never am well,” returned Mrs. Abbott. “ This is the meanest climate in the world.”

She had a certain peculiar twang, caused apparently, to some extent, by pronouncing the letter r with a singular twist of intonation and in the roof of the mouth.

“ The climate is very changeable,” said Felicia, sympathetically.

“ Say ! you ’re always putting it on something!” exclaimed Abbott to his wife, with sour jocoseness. “ Yesterday ’t was because the kids worried your life out.”

“ Well, they are a bother,” retorted Mrs. Abbott.

“And none of them are worth the powder and lead ’t would take to kill them, are you, Tom ? ” added Abbott, addressing a stout youngster of three years, who had come in from the back room and planted himself before Felicia, at whom he was gazing with sharp gray eyes. As his father spcke, he turned upon him for a moment his irregular, preternaturally intelligent features ; then shaking off the half-caressing, half-teasing paternal hand from his head, which he had crowned with the remnants of an old blonde wig, that gave him an inexpressibly elfish and comical appearance, he again gravely addressed himself to Staring at the visitor.

Felicia took the little boy’s pudgy hand in hers and asked him his name, to which he vouchsafed no reply; then, as his attention was attracted to her muff, he passed his other hand along the fur, and looked up at her with a dawning smile.

“Are you going to take the rôle of Ludovic,” said Felicia, “ with your long lovelocks, like your papa ? ”

“ No,” said the child, promptly, “ he sings ugly; he’s mean ; I hate him.”

Abbott burst out laughing. “ That plucky little rascal ain’t afraid of man or beast,” he declared, pridefully. “ Sometimes he is great friends with me. I don’t know what ails him to-day.”

He rose and went into the other room. “ He’s got to have his snack,” said his wife; “he always eats something when he wakes up. Nelly fixes it for him since I’ve been sick so much.”

Through the open door Felicia could see a young woman moving about; there was something vaguely familiar in her appearance, which presently was recognizable as the recollection of the chorus singer whom the manager had mimicked, on the occasion of that first attendance at rehearsal.

“ Nelly ’s my sister,” said Mrs. Abbott. who seemed pleased with a new acquaintance, and glad of an opportunity to talk. “ She stays with me when the troupe is here, and helps me a deal about my young ones. She’s in the chorus now, but she ’ll get her chance some day. She ’s quick an’ smart, an’ she ’s understudied ever so many parts. I tell her to keep clear of marryin’, if she knows what ’s good for her.”

The subdued roar of a gasoline stove was on the air, and presently the aroma of coffee arose, mingled with the odor of the burning gasoline and of broiling meat. The mantelpiece in the adjoining room, seen through the open door, was ornamented with a large assortment of tin tomato and fruit cans and some wooden butter-boats ; a section of a table covered with a red lunch-cloth, and holding several plates, cups, and saucers, was also in full view. Soon there was heard the clatter of a knife and fork, above which was the sound of voices in subdued altercation. Suddenly, Abbott, tilted back in his chair, became visible in the doorway.

“ Nelly wants me to ask you to have something. Come in, if you think you can stand such snide cooking as hers,” he said with a grin, “ but I don’t promise you much.”

Nelly also appeared in the doorway, all trace of her pertness gone, flushed and confused.

“ I can bring you something, — you need n’t move,” she said, diffidently.

There is some merit in Madame Sevier’s system, after all, — or perhaps it was only inborn instinct that prompted Felicia. “ I have just had dinner,” she said, — she realized that Abbott would consider it “ frills ” if she called the meal luncheon, — “ but I should be glad of a cup of coffee.”

They were all pleased that she should take it, and Mrs. Abbott was perhaps pleased as well that it should be taken here, and that the dishevelment of the other room was not also fully on exhibition. The coffee was very bad and very badly made, but Felicia drank it heroically ; and it is possible that her assertion that she enjoyed it will, on the day of final reckoning, meet with leniency, in view of extenuating circumstances.

Nelly had placed a plate on the floor beside two little girls, who addressed to her not one word, but mechanically and absently devoured their meal, while they did not cease to carry their respective dolls through the various episodes that presented themselves to apparently redundant imaginations. The half-grown sister, still on skates, walked noisily through the room, and seated herself at the table in the inner apartment. The boy climbed up to his chair beside her, and calmly disposed of whatever pleased him, feeding himself unceremoniously with his chubby fingers.

It was evident that this was the usual family life in the queer home. Was it necessarily, she wondered, so forlorn a home ? Did it require all their time, and thought, and effort merely to live, to the exclusion of neatness, of beauty, of comfort, of the becoming and appropriate ? At any rate, a little gentleness and tender consideration might inhabit it with them, instead of the husband’s jeering pleasantries, and the wife’s weak complainings, and Nelly’s pettish temper, aroused more than once by Abbott’s mocking sallies.

Felicia brought the visit to a close as soon as possible, without making merely a duty call. This was, however, the way Abbott chose to regard the incident.

“ I ‘m glad Kennett sent you,” he said, as he accompanied her to the front door. “ Jenny don’t have many pleasures. Why,” he broke off, in simulated surprise, looking down the street, “where’s your carriage? You came in the street cars ? I should n’t suppose you ’d condescend to ride in them, like any ordinary person. Is Kennett gettin’ stingy to you? Ah, well, love’s young dream is not what it’s cracked up to be, is it ? ” His face was deeply wrinkled with his mocking smile, particularly intense at this moment.

Bearing away this last sarcasm as a sort of flavor, giving a biting character to her other troublous emotions, Felicia left the house and walked up the street. What mistak’en impulse controlled her that, in this mood, she should, instead of signaling the car going down town, turn her face in the direction of her brother’s house !

Fanny N. D. Murfree.