At Thirty

I

LINDA MAINWARING awoke to consciousness on the morning of her thirtieth birthday rather reluctantly. It was a day she had dreaded; for although her twenties had been somewhat turbulent, she had, on the whole, enjoyed them; and they had been, at least, intensely interesting. She was a person with great zest for life; but now, as she lay in her bed, it seemed to her that she had passed through every emotional crisis, in the last ten years, that a woman is capable of; and that there was very little left that life could hold besides stodgy and comfortable existence.

It was a long time that she lay there, thinking, before she rang the bell which would summon her maid, her mail, and her breakfast. She rather wondered that, at the end of thirty years, she felt so tremendously fit, so interested and eager for whatever the future might hold for her, so fearful that it might contain nothing that would not prove an anti-climax to all she had already experienced. She was rather given to selfanalysis, and it interested her to compare the woman she was to-day with the girl who, ten years before, had married Harry Mainwaring. She told herself with some humor that, in spite of many lost illusions and the added years, she greatly preferred herself at thirty.

‘What a horrible little thing I must have been,’ she thought, ‘half-doll and half-animal; and if I had any brains, they were sound asleep. Yet how important and how confident I felt; how convinced that no one else was capable of such ideals or of such love as Harry’s and mine.’

This trend of thought brought her to considering anot her situation which the day held for her. To-day her divorce became absolute; from to-day on, she would be as free to plan her own life, dream her own dreams, think her own thoughts, as she had been before she married. Only the voices of her three little girls, whom she could faintly hear chattering at their schoolroom breakfast, could make her married life vivid to her. Financially she had always been less dependent on Harry than he on her; the house she lived in she had been born in and been married from. Yet she felt entirely free from bitterness for the experiences of the past ten years. Nothing could be entirely regretted that had helped to transform the sensual little doll that had been Linda Emmett into the clear-eyed, clean-witted Linda Mainwaring. There was no room for bitterness in her, no room for resentment for the forces that had tempered her, the fire that had left her pliable.

She marveled that Harry cared to use this glorious new freedom that she was reveling in, to form other bonds. He was to be married at noon to a woman in whom Linda, from a slight acquaintance, could discover nothing to equal this thrill of youth, recaptured through freedom. Passion was so dead in her that she was apt to forget it as a factor in other people’s lives; and, as a matter of fact, so distasteful was the memory of her own experience, she made a point of ignoring it. What could Harry possibly find in marriage with a commonplace little woman, she wondered, to compensate for this magnificent liberty?

While she wondered at his desire to reënter the holy state of matrimony, she resented it not at all. She was, in fact, rather grateful to the woman who, in making herself responsible for Harry’s future, rendered Linda infinitely freer than the judge’s decree alone could have done. But she was sorry on the children’s account for the newspaper notoriety which the wedding would evoke. Philippa, aged eight, was too wise a child to be put off much longer with evasions; and in a house full of servants with careless tongues, an intelligent child could learn a good deal about her parents. The divorce itself had been very decently conducted, and the little arrangement which made Harry beneficiary for life of a trust fund created for the children, on condition that he gave up all claim to them, had never been made public. It had always been a quality of Harry’s that Linda had despised, — though it had worked times innumerable to her advantage, — that money was an argument he could never resist; and when she had signed the check for the sum for which her lawyer was to be trustee, she realized gratefully that she fully compensated Harry for any loss he might sustain.

She was free, then. Thirty years old and free; not only from marital ties — spinsters of thirty are free from those, but they are still prisoners in the house of life, peering with curious eyes into love’s garden, trying surreptitiously to inhale the fragrance and see the colors of the flowers. Linda had lived in the garden the whole season, and watched the flowers from fresh bud to withered stalk; now the gate at the end was ajar, and she stood gazing with eager eyes on a far horizon.

Thirty years old and free — when the power of youth and the wisdom which experience can give meet for a brief space. There was so much to do and so much to do with. Linda felt that, at this moment, the vitality of her body found its complement in the virility of her mind. The dark room suddenly seemed to stifle her; there was not time, with all she wanted to accomplish, for mornings in bed and breakfast on a tray; those had belonged to that half-numbed creature whom circumstance had so nearly wrecked. She would have to steer her boat clear from the sluggish current it had drifted into; she wanted to find the fast-flowing river where there were other boats to compete with; and of what use her certificate of pilot, if she could not avoid the rapids?

II

The maid came in response to her bell, and in a moment the room was flooded with sunlight. Hermence brought a handful of letters and papers before the breakfast-tray appeared; people were making a point of being nice to Linda — a fact she appreciated, though their attentions bored her. Her mail was full of notes from women, including invitations with their birthday congratulations. There was one letter which really interested her, and that was from a man. It read; —

MY DEAR LINDA, —
You must admit that I’ve respected your wish to be let alone for the past few months; but is n’t it time to let down the bars a little? Are n’t you making a mistake in thinking you can build up your life again irrespective of your friends? Even if you blame a few people (and, by the way, a remarkably silly set of people) who happened to be your intimates for a few years, you can’t eschew the whole race of your contemporaries and expect to make very much of the time left you. It’s rather ridiculous in you, Linda, to despise all motion because you could n’t keep up with a fast set. So, unless you absolutely forbid me, I’m coming out to see you to-morrow. For one reason, it’s your birthday; and for another, there are n’t any rules in the etiquette book on how to behave on your husband’s wedding-day; and at least you can talk to me, which you can’t to Philippa or Tiny.
Yours always,
LEIGH VANE.

Linda digested this with her breakfast. She had long ago ceased to wonder that Leigh Vane rushed in upon ground where the most tactful of ministering angels could not have trodden; yet she knew he was as wholesome for her as are sun and air for a fever patient. Many times in the past few years he had opened windows letting in light to the sick-room of her almost morbid brain. In a way, his letter took the edge off the mood in which she found herself prepared to face life; only a short time ago she had felt that she was ready for whatever the future held for her; but she realized now that she had wanted nothing so disturbing to her tranquillity as this meeting with Vane to happen at once. She was quite willing to enjoy her peace superficially, without stirring any of the depths of thought which he invariably discovered in her; nor did she want to be scolded for the philosophy of little resistance upon which she planned to erect her life. Vane, who appreciated only what he gained by his own labor, was not always sympathetic to Linda’s moods. She had once told him that he made accomplishment his God, and had lost all temperament in his mania for efficiency.

As she dressed for riding, she regarded herself very critically. In the past months she had been a bit slack about her personal appearance, but she realized that her physical attractiveness was no less an asset than her mentality. She certainly did not look thirty: she was still essentially young in the slimness of her figure and the contour of her face; the hair was bright and luxuriant; and if the light eyes were a little hard, the mouth was adorable. She was, moreover, lucky in that supreme gift of wearing her clothes well and in being blessed with a skin that every color became. She was considered a beauty, but in reality she was more dependent on a certain dramatic quality than on any perfection of line.

She had ordered her horse at ten, and there was much to be attended to now she was up and dressed. Her house, her servants, and the welfare of her children brought duties which she treated with serious consideration, though the result produced so smooth a mechanism that a casual critic might have failed to recognize the personality which lay behind it.

It was a delightful day. The sun beat down with the first radiance that everything alive must respond to; the fresh wind from the northwest seemed to be engaged in a gigantic housecleaning to remove any traces of the old tenant before spring took up her definite abode. Linda, mounted on a young chestnut thoroughbred, enjoyed her ride hugely. It made her feel even more enthusiastic about life in general and her own in particular, than she had in the confining walls of her house. In this riot of sun and air, face to face with this colossal transformation that the world undertook every year, her own immediate problems took on their relative proportions. Harry’s marriage, her own birthday, her meeting with Leigh Vane, all proved themselves in Nature’s scheme of things as trivial as the dandelions that were beginning to star the fields she rode through. It was enough for the moment just to live and enjoy, to let the sun reawaken all that the winter of her discontent had felt, die within her; enough to let this clean wind freshen the habitation of her mind and make it fit for the Linda Mainwaring who was preparing to abide there.

Her thoughts were distracted from herself by a chance meeting with a neighbor, a man too closely connected with the old order of her existence to render him entirely welcome. He was the husband of a woman who had once been a boon companion of the Mainwarings; and though Linda had often felt that he did not entirely endorse her, he apparently was making an effort to be cordial to-day, probably because he approved of Harry still less. As he was riding for exercise, he joined her, making civil remarks about the weather. It was obviously difficult for him to bring his conversation down to any local topic for fear of wounding her susceptibilities; but at last he ventured to mention a mutual friend who was not too closely connected with the somewhat unsavory memories they shared in common.

’I see that your friend Leigh Vane is slated for great things,’ he said. ‘ If they run him for governor and he does pull it off, at his age, there’s no telling where he’ll end up.’

She was interested at once.

’Are they considering running him, then? I haven’t seen Leigh for ages; and while I knew he was always dabbling in politics, I had no idea they really took him as seriously as that.’

’He is very well thought of in the state to-day,’ the neighbor told her. ’He did a big thing in keeping out of the congressional election last year, and the powers that be are n’t always ungrateful. He ought to have a chance, because, if a good man is put up for our party, he’ll poll a good many votes from the Democrats. Their man, you see, is a renegade from the Roman Church, and so Leigh has a hope of that vote.’

‘I do hope he’ll win out,’ Linda said. ‘He’s exactly the type of man who ought to go in for politics in this country at a time like this. I must leave you here,’ she added, ‘as I’m going home through the woods. It’s been awfully nice to see you.’

She nodded and turned her horse, starting off briskly through the sundappled path, glad to be alone again.

She had lunch with the little girls and their governess. When the clock struck twice, as they finished, it occurred to her that their father was already the husband of another woman. As the two younger girls left the dining-room with Mademoiselle, Philippa dawdled behind, apparently eager to converse with her mother. She waited, with the intuitive tact that children sometimes display, until they were alone in the room, before she put the question which had been troubling her ever since she had overhead a conversation between the servants that morning.

‘Mother,’ she said, ‘how can Daddy marry somebody else? Caroline told Hermence this morning it was a wonder you felt like riding horseback at the very hour of your husband’s wedding.’

Linda had been expecting some such question, but it found her with no ready answer. She was almost tempted to evade it, to chide Philippa for listening to the servants’ gossip; but she knew that would in no way check the ideas forming in the busy little head.

‘ I am sorry you heard Caroline,’ she said at last. ‘I had hoped you need know nothing about it until you were older, when of course I should have explained it to you myself. You knew that Daddy did n’t live here with us any more because Daddy and I are not married any longer.’

‘ Is n’t he our father any more? ’ asked Philippa.

’Yes, he’s your father still, and because he’s your father you must always love him and believe the best of him. You see, when he and I were married, we loved each other very much, so it was right for us to be married and have you and Tiny and Nancy for children; but after we found we did n’t care, it became wrong to live together the way people do who love each other.’

‘Did you get unmarried?’ queried Philippa.

‘So we got unmarried,’ answered her mother. ‘Only it’s called getting divorced, and that left Daddy free to marry again, someone whom he did love.’

‘How do you get di—divorced?’ the child asked. ‘Is it like a wedding? Do you go to church and have music and flowers and wear a white dress like Aunt Tina’s?’

‘It is n’t like a wedding at all, dear. When people are married, it is a very happy time; but there is nothing happy about a divorce. It is very sad when two people, who planned to live all their lives together, find they don’t love each other enough to make it possible.’

‘Are you very sad, mother?’

She wished she could answer truthfully that she was. It seemed so terrible to have to explain the sordid tragedy of divorce, and to admit that it had left her almost untouched. All the arguments which she had used a few months before in justifying the course she had determined to pursue appeared so futile in the face of Philippa’s bewildered gaze.

‘I’m not very sad any longer,’ she answered at last. ‘You see, I have you three girls to make me happy; and if I had never married Daddy, I should never have had you. And we will hope that Daddy will be very happy, too, won’t we?’

She tried to smile and started to rise from her chair, hoping that her rather lame explanation had satisfied the child; but Philippa had one more question.

‘Then will you marry somebody, too?’

This time Linda was able to laugh.

‘Oh, dear, no,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to marry anybody. We shall all be very contented here just as we always have been. Run along now, my darling, and remember that mother has been telling you things she does n’t want you to talk about with anyone, not even Mademoiselle or the little girls. If there’s anything you don’t understand, you’re to ask me.’

III

They left the dining-room together, Philippa to prepare for her afternoon drive in the pony-cart, and Linda to read up on any political news she could find before Vane should appear. She discovered, however, that it was almost impossible to keep her mind on the printed pages, so often did her thoughts revert to her conversation with Philippa. She had not meant to make light to the child of the sanctity of marriage; yet it seemed impossible to explain the enormity of the step she and Harry had taken, and she doubted whether Philippa’s psychology would not be more affected if she found her parents in a position which they themselves questioned.

But her pleasure in the day had gone, and Vane found her as he very possibly expected to find her when he had chosen this particular time to prove his friendship. It would have surprised and probably shocked him had he discovered Linda in her mood of the morning. As it was, he had the satisfaction of drawing her out of herself by talking to her openly of his own prospects. He had a delightful personality, and as he always took it for granted that women are no less interested in the broader topics of life than men, he took the same pains to talk well to them.

When he had broken down the barriers of her reserve, and they were again on their old footing, he began to question her about herself. He approved her attitude: she had been dignified and yet she had won the sympathy of everyone, simply by making no bid for it. He found her distinctly improved, and told her so.

’You ’ve grown up,’ he told her; ’not old, you understand, because, as a matter of fact, you look younger than ever, but you strike one now as an intelligent adult being.'

‘I’d like to strike you as an adult being,’ she answered, making a little face at him; but she was not displeased to be again talking personalities with a man who was interested in her. She told him how keen she was to make up for all the time she had lost on things which had proved so deplorably worthless, and how eager she felt to reconstruct her life on more rugged lines.

‘One part of life is so entirely over,’ she said, ‘and that’s the only part I know anything about. It’s rather hard to know where to begin afresh.’

‘ Meaning, I suppose,’ Vane answered, ‘that your career as a wife is closed? My dear Linda, you have only just learned how to be a wife for a man; not a boy, you understand, but a grown-up man who wants a grown-up woman. Not,’ he added, ‘that your present frame of mind is n’t a very healthy one until the right man comes along. You can’t afford a second mistake.'

This was going a little far, even for Leigh. Linda became intensely serious.

‘ I wish you would try to appreciate the situation,’she said. ‘You say I seem to have grown up, and I assure you that it is true, if it is only in the way I look at the things which I accepted so lightly a few months ago. While I find myself happier to-day than I have been since I outgrew my infatuation for Harry and have seen him with the eyes of all the people, yourself included, who begged me not to marry him, I realize more than ever before the tragedy that has occurred, and I would rather go back to the hell which made up my life until six months ago than have had to make the explanation which I made to Philippa to-day. So there is no need, Leigh, for your kindly little warning about second mistakes.’

‘My dear Linda,’ he said, quite as serious as she, ‘I don’t want you to think that I, of all people, have taken this step of yours as anything but the very best way out of an intolerable situation, and I trust with all my heart that it is one which will prove to be for the happiness of everyone concerned; although I understand you perfectly when you say that to-day you feel that happiness is hardly an essential compared to your children’s belief in the sanctity of marriage. Forgive me if I have offended by too great frankness in stating that I can’t believe that life is over for anyone who has developed under it as magnificently as you.’

Compliments from Leigh were few and far between, and Linda treasured them correspondingly. She took his proffered hand.

‘You will help me to go on, won’t you?’ she said. ‘I am depending on you to keep me in touch with lots of big things, which are all around you and quite out of reach of a lone woman.’

‘As a start, I’ll send you some books which may be of interest,’ he promised. ‘At least, I hope they’ll prove so involved you’ll have to let me come often to explain them.’

In a few moments he took his departure, conscious that he felt more intense sympathy for this old friend than he had in all the miserable years which had followed her rash disregard of his advice and the advice of all the people who had known both Linda and Mainwaring. To him, divorce was a very hideous thing; and the fact that it had become so to her made her more appealing than she had been before she had experienced it. Linda, on her side, felt that her friendship with Leigh had been put through the acid test and come out pure gold.

IV

She began to pick up the broken threads again, and in the next few months, although she became intimate with no one, she resumed a normal intercourse with the people who had been lifelong friends and neighbors. But behind her outer life she continued to expand and develop within herself. The books which Leigh sent her she not only read, but studied; and soon he was coming, not only to expound their meanings, but to discuss and argue them with her. That summer they went deep into a comprehension of Socialism, and, strangely enough, it made a strong appeal both to the woman who had spent her whole life among the frivolous by-produetsof capitalism and to the man who was running for governor, the choice of serious capitalists. As the work of his campaign grew more engrossing, he found tremendous inspiration in Linda’s freshly awakened mental responsiveness; and in meeting the demands of her eager mind for more and ever more facts and explanations, he developed a knowledge of the psychology of the people whom he wanted for his constituents.

It happened that year that there was no dearth of gubernatorial material for the Republicans to choose from, and the nomination of a candidate promised a more bitter fight than the election itself. The state had suffered through a considerable period from a Democratic governor, who had been sustained in office by the labor vote and the Roman Church, of which he was a member. He had pushed representatives of that institution on every state board which had hitherto kept clear of sectarian differences; and he had been very much to the fore in advocating parochial schools to be supported by the unredeemed but tax-paying public.

But, although many people despised the Governor, his policies did not awaken enough antagonism in the country districts, where the Republicans must look for their strength, to defeat him, unless some defalcation should split his own ranks. Suddenly, when his enemies were despairing, he not only threw ammunition into their hands, but caused an explosion among his own adherents. Whether it was a question of real conviction, or pressure brought to bear by some political magnate who was in matrimonial difficulties, could not be ascertained; but without warning to the leaders of his party or his Church, the Governor announced himself in favor of more uniform and lenient divorce laws. The present laws, he was quoted as saying, entailed suffering only on the poor, while the rich evaded them by taking up residence in some other state. It was preposterous, if a person could obtain divorce from a criminal, that one could not from a lunatic; and if religious conviction made divorce and remarriage possible for one cause, it should do as much for several causes. He added that the state laws could not affect people to whom the Church denied divorce; that personally, as a Catholic, he deplored divorce, but as governor of a people of varying creeds, he invoked justice.

This last, which was obviously intended as a sop to his Church, failed to abate the antagonism that his position aroused; and even the weight of such an influential politician as Mr. Henry McFarland was unable to crush the opposition which threatened to break the Democratic strength. The fact that McFarland’s wife had been confined in an institution for the hopelessly insane earned for that gentleman the opprobrium of Henry the Eighth; and it was hinted, not only that the Governor had broken faith with his Church, but that his political honor was not above suspicion.

It was felt by Republican leaders that a crisis had presented itself which gave their party a chance for reinstatement; for while McFarland and his colleagues were strong enough to keep a fresh candidate from acquiring control in their own party, they were unable to influence a number of individuals who loudly acclaimed their disapproval of the present Governor’s pretension to another term. It therefore seemed not only possible, but highly probable that, should the Republican nominee prove popular personally, he would stand an excellent chance.

To men like Leigh Vane, the present opportunity led to a hope, not only that his party would win the coming election, but that a man of ideals and vision could do much more than hold down the office — he could lead the state back to the Republican majority which a fairly recent invasion of foreign labor had temporarily overthrown. But it would need a man who firmly believed in his party to accomplish this, — not a mere opportunist,—and it would take a man of great personal integrity and sincerity, quite apart from his political persuasion, to induce the wavering element to come over to his side. Of the present aspirants to the nomination, three names stood out more and more prominently as the date for decision approached. These were Bernard Fabian, Edward Joyce, and Leigh Vane. Fabian was one of the largest employers of labor in the state; he was a self-made man, who had worked his way up in one of the woolen mills that he now controlled.

Joyce was the more usual type. He had been through the political mill, and had given up a profitable law practice to enter politics.

Though not a capitalist like Fabian, Vane came of people who had always belonged to the moneyed class. They were also people who had served their country in various branches. His grandfather had held the rank of colonel in the Civil War, where his name was still remembered in the homes of men who had composed his regiment. His son, Leigh’s father, was concluding his useful if not brilliant term as United States Senator at the time of his death. Leigh himself had been brought up in the traditions of Republicanism, and several of the big men of the party had been his personal friends from childhood. But his present strength lay far less in these affiliations than in the esteem in which the influential men of his own state held him. Orphaned and well-to-do, he had chosen a life of rigorous work on a newspaper, where he had never attempted to score personally, but had given freely of himself to the good of the cause. A year before, he had been requested to contest the Congressional seat of his district, and for a while he had been greatly tempted; but he had proved himself big enough not to risk splitting the slim Republican majority; and he had done such excellent work in upholding the man who might have been his rival, that he was henceforth considered a definite political factor.

Linda had made a point of meeting both Fabian and Joyce, and assured herself that, quite apart from her affection for him, Leigh was far better qualified for the office than either of the others. She was not the kind of woman who would ever be a direct factor in public life, but her influence could be none the less real. Men said things to her, when she expressed a wish to take politics seriously, which they might not have said to so casual a male acquaintance; and she was clever in using the information she received. She secured several bits of political gossip, which were of some value to Vane; and when he told her so, she was conscious of greater enthusiasm for life than she had felt for years. And it was not only in this way that she helped him. He had no one very near to him with whom to discuss the problems that his campaign presented; and not only did Linda’s eager interest prevent him from feeling that he was imposing them upon her, but in putting them before her, he put them more clearly to himself. If Linda was a help to him, he proved himself invaluable to her, not only in stimulating her intellect, but in many little crises of her domestic life.

There were, of course, comparatively long stretches of time when they did not see each other at all, but these made them realize how closely their interests were attuned. Perhaps the fact that the whole situation was abnormal made both Linda and Vane slow to realize its normal consequence. Summer burned itself out, and the early autumn brought new political activities, which made frequent meetings impossible.

V

It was in October, after an interval of some weeks, that Vane found an opportunity to dine and spend a quiet evening with Mrs. Mainwaring—the last before his immediate prospects would be determined.

He came down to the country rather early; he wanted to see the children, he said; and they, enchanted to see him, swarmed over him, showed him every new acquisition since his last visit, played a series of delightful games with him, and went reluctantly upstairs at their bedtime, bribed by the promise that he would come and help Mummy tuck them up. Linda had been more audience than participant in the games. She was conscious of a queer heartache when she saw Leigh with her children — a jealousy for them, and a knowledge that he filled a place in their lives she could never fill.

He stood up when they had gone, smoothing his hair with his hands, straightening his tie, which their last mad game had disarranged, and met Linda’s eyes. The expression in them hurt him unbearably — it made her look so detached, so apart from his own healthy, ambitious life.

‘I should like some air before dinner,’he said. ‘ Is it too cold for a last look at the garden, do you think, before we say good-night to the children?'

‘It’s not very cold. This moon brought a frost, and there’s nothing left in the garden, but it’s delicious there, I know.’

She got up from her chair; he opened one of the long glass doors and followed her out on the terrace; they crossed, and descended some steps. It was dark save for the cold light of the young autumn moon, which cast hard, curious shadows. The garden, surrounded by a great hemlock hedge, had been a riot of color only a few days before; but tonight the flowers in the moonlight appeared dry husks, ghosts of a vanished loveliness.

They were both very quiet; she was thinking that once she had stolen out of the house and danced in this moonlit garden with a vine twisted in her hair, and a man had pursued her and kissed her in the shadow of the hemlock hedge, and she had thought she loved him. Vane was thinking what a little thing a career was, compared to a woman with eyes like that; a woman who needed him more than state or party could ever need him; a woman he wanted far above the laurels of a statesman. They gazed into the blackness of the hemlocks as if they were visualizing there the things they were thinking of— until at last he broke the long silence.

‘Linda, my dear — my dear!’ And she was in his arms, their lips together in their first communion. And with that kiss she was sealed his; with it she entered her kingdom, the kingdom that had never been hers before. The dancing girl who had been kissed in the garden was no part of the woman in Vane’s arms. Harry Mainwaring had captured some excrescence, which her youth had thrown off, but he had never touched the seed of her soul that had matured under Leigh’s companionship and blossomed at his kiss.

He held her until the children’s insistent voices penetrated their fastness, when they retraced their steps to the house. Up in the nurseries, the little girls in their night-clothes were eager for another romp, but Leigh was in no mood for it. He was sweet with them, tender even; but it was he who stood apart, a spectator, while they crowded around Linda to say their prayers and be kissed good-night.

At dinner neither of them spoke much, their understanding was too deep, their content too complete, to need words. The dramatic touch, which no woman lacks, enabled Linda to start fitful topics of conversation when the servants were in the room, as their sense of convention led them to make a pretense of eating; but it was a relief to have the meal over and to find themselves again in the drawing-room, free from interruptions.

At half-past nine, when the motor came to take him to the train, they had not begun to say good-night, to discuss their next meeting, to plan any detail of their future — the present was gloriously sufficient.

‘I’ll write you in the morning, Linda; to-night, perhaps, when I get to town. Good-night, my darling—’ And he was in the hall, struggling with the overcoat which her old butler was holding for him.

She watched him through a crack in the door, eager to see him, to see his face when he was not aware of her. He pulled a paper from his pocket and wrote upon it hastily. She saw him turn to the servant, and heard him speak.

‘ Mitten, here’s a telegram — get it off for me to-night, will you? I meant to send it from the village, but I can’t make my train if I do. You can send it over the telephone, but it must go at once. Thanks awfully.’

And he was gone, after handing the paper to the man. The noise of the motor became louder for a moment, and then died away in the distance.

Linda went back to her big chair beside the fire, almost unconscious of any movement she made. She had ceased to be mere flesh and blood; rather she was a sunlit beach flooded by warm waves of happiness.

The entrance of Mitten aroused her.

‘Beg pardon, Miss Linda,’ he said — after Harry’s departure, he could never bear to call her Mrs. Mainwaring, and had gone back to her girlhood appellation. ‘ Mr. Vane left a message for me to send over the telephone, but I can’t ’ardly make hout ’is ’andwriting. I wondered would you mind, miss, being as ’ow ’e said hit was most himportant?’

‘I ’ll send it, of course. You can put the lights out here, and I’ll telephone the message from my room. Good night, Mitten.’

‘Good-night, miss.’

‘Lord,’he thought as she went out, ‘ ’ow ’appy she looks — the way she did before that skunk came foolin’ round ’ere.’

Up in her room, Linda found it difficult to concentrate on the mechanical act of forwarding Leigh’s message. She sat down by her telephone and smoothed out the paper; but it took several readings for his written words to connect with her mind, which happiness had temporarily drugged.

Then suddenly they and their purport became burned upon her brain. It was addressed to his campaign manager and left unsigned.

‘Stop all activities to further my candidacy. Events have arisen which would render it impossible for me to accept the nomination. Throw any influence we can control to Joyce. Will see you to-morrow morning.’

If Linda had lost time through being unable to concentrate her thoughts, she made up for it now. Thoughts, unwelcome and at times confused, rushed through her mind, bearing her down with the weight of their evidence. Leigh was giving up his career because he was pledged to marry her, — Linda Mainwaring, — a divorced woman. She was that in the eyes of the world, though in her own she was divorced, not only from Mainwaring, but from the girl who had married Mainwaring. Had she known Leigh less well, she might have hesitated, might have seen less clearly that, should she marry him, his thwarted career would always prove a barrier between them that even their love could not surmount. But she knew him too intimately to deceive herself; she was fully aware of his ambitions, his convictions as to what a man in his circumstances owed to his country and to his tradition.

It was midnight when her course presented itself to her; so clearly did she see it, and so quickly must she act , that she was only dimly aware of her emotions. Soon they would claim her, they would engulf her in utter misery and despair; but for the moment, the too swift reaction from her bliss had numbed them.

She opened the door that led from her fire and lamp-lit room to the dark spaciousness of the hall, felt her way along to the servant’s portion of the house, and knocked on Mitten’s door. The old man opened it cautiously, his gaunt figure and curious, lined face illumined in the dim light which burned on the service stairway.

‘Miss Linda, — you’re not hill?’

‘No, — no, Mitten, — nothing is the matter. I mean, nothing with me. Something has happened which makes it necessary I should get a letter to Mr. Vane early to-morrow morning, — his message was very important,—an answer has come to it. I want you to go to town on the milk train and take it to him yourself; it is very important. Wake Henry and tell him he must take you to the station at five; I’ll have the letter for you then, — the letter will be quite ready, — it’s very important.’

She was aware that she was repeating herself, that her voice sounded flat and without emphasis; but she gathered from Mitten’s concerned replies that he comprehended and would follow out her instructions.

Back in her own room she managed to control her voice sufficiently to send the telegram. Then she was confronted with the necessity for writing the letter — the terrible letter which would keep Leigh from her forever, the lying letter which was in itself a sin against love. She sat at her desk for hours, writing, destroying what she had written, rewriting, drawing aimless lines and little pictures of nothing. It was nearly five o’clock when she folded her completed missive into its envelope and reeled across the room in response to Mitten’s knock.

DEAR LEIGH, —

I think I must have been mad tonight — life has been so difficult that at times I have felt utterly defeated, and it was one of those moments, my dear, when you called to me in the garden. All at once it seemed to me possible, because of my deep affection for you, to lay the whole burden of my problems on you. But now I am alone again, I am sane. I care too much for you to be willing that the woman you marry should go to you defeated, wanting only rest and comfort; she shall go to you triumphant, wanting nothing but your love. That part of me is gone forever, burned out by the fire which destroyed my youth—what I gave once I shall never have to give again; and here in this house where so much of my drama has been enacted, I realize that the stage cannot be reset, or the players recast for its conclusion. You have been a loyal, helpful, wonderful friend always; you will not, I am sure, ask me to relinquish that friendship because for a few short hours we mistook it for something else. You have made me more reliant, given me new confidence to meet situations as they arise in my path. It would be a poor return to give you the husk of love; forgive me for offering it, and forget that I once thought it could be made to satisfy you. It would be as impossible to find within myself anything more worthy of you as it would be to recapture summer in my frost-touched garden; but there will still be warm, pleasant days of Indian summer, when our friendship will ripen and deepen.

With every wish always for your success and happiness,

LINDA MAINWARING.