haved most thoughtfully and kindly toward Peace through it all, and I can't blame him for not thrusting himself forward to offer help when nothing could really be done."

Kane had himself remained discreetly in the background, and had not cumbered his old acquaintance with offers of service. He kept away from the funeral, but he afterwards visited Hughes frequently, though he recognized nothing more than the obligation of the early kindness between them. This had been affected by many years of separation and wide divergence of opinion, and it was doubtful whether his visits were altogether a pleasure to the invalid. They disputed a good deal, and sometimes when Hughes lost his voice from excitement and exhaustion, Kane's deep pipe kept on in a cool smooth assumption of positions which Hughes was physically unable to assail.

Mr. Chapley went out of town to his country place in Massachusetts, to try and get back his strength after a touch of the grippe. The Sunday conventicles had to be given up because Hughes could no longer lead them, and could not suffer the leadership of others. He was left mainly for society and consolation to the young fellow who did not let him feel that he differed from him, and was always gently patient with him.

Ray had outlived the grudge he felt at Kane for delivering him over to bonds of duty which he shirked so lightly himself; but this was perhaps because they were no longer a burden. It was not possible for him to refuse his presence to the old man when he saw that it was his sole pleasure; he had come to share the pleasure of these meetings himself. As the days which must be fewer and fewer went by he tried to come every day, and Peace usually found him sitting with her father when she reached home at the end of the afternoon. Ray could get there first because his work on the newspaper was of a more flexible and desultory sort; and he often brought a bundle of books for review with him, and talked them over with Hughes, for whom he was a perspective of the literary world, with its affairs and events. Hughes took a vivid interest in the management of Ray's department of Every Evening, and gave him advice about it, charging him not to allow it to be merely æsthetic, but to imbue it with

an ethical quality; he maintained that literature should be the handmaid of reform; he regretted that he had not cast the material of The World Revisited in the form of fiction, which would have given it a charm impossible to a merely polemical treatise.

"I'm convinced that if I had it in that shape it would readily find a publisher, and I'm going to see what I can do to work it over as soon as I'm about again.”

"I hope you'll be luckier than I've been with fiction," said Ray. "I don't know but it might be a good plan to turn A Modern Romeo into a polemical treatise. We might change about, Mr. Hughes."

Hughes said, "Why don't you bring your story up here and read it to me?"

"Wouldn't that be taking an unfair advantage of your helpless condition?" Ray asked. "Just at present my chief's looking over it, to see if it won't do for the feuilleton we're going to try. He won't want it; but it affords a little respite for you, Mr. Hughes, as long as he thinks he may.'

He knew that Peace must share his constraint in speaking of his book. When they were alone for a little while before he went away that evening he said to her, "You have never told me yet that you forgave me for my bad behavior about my book the last time we talked about it."

"Did you wish me to tell you?" she asked, gently. "I thought I needn't.” "Yes; do," he urged. "You thought I was wrong?"

"Yes," she assented.

"Then you ought to say, in so many words, 'I forgive you.'"

He waited, but she would not speak. "Why can't you say that?"

She did not answer, but after a while said, "I think what I did was a good reason for-"

"My being in the wrong? Then why did you do it? Can't you tell me that?" "Not-now."

"Some time?"

"Perhaps," she murmured.

"Then I may ask you again?"

She was silent, sitting by the window in the little back room, where her head was dimly outlined against the late twilight. Between the rushing trains at the front they could hear Mrs. Denton talking to her father, joking and laughing. Our philosophy of tragedy is that it alters the

nature of those involved, as if it were some spiritual chemistry combining the elements of character anew. But it is really an incident of our being, and, for all we can perceive, is of no more vital effect than many storms in the material world. What it does not destroy, it leaves essentially unchanged. The light creature whom its forces had beaten to the earth, rose again with the elasticity of light things, when it had passed. She was meant to be what she was made, and even Ray, with the severity of his young morality, and the paucity of his experience, perceived that the frivolity which shocked him was comfort and cheer to the sick old man. She sat with him, and babbled and jested, with her cat in her lap; and Ray saw with a generous resentment that she must always have been his favorite. There was probably a responsive lightness in Hughes's own soul to which hers brought the balm of kinship and of perfect sympathy. There was no apparent consciousness of his preference in the sisters; each in her way accepted it as something just and fit. Peace looked af ter the small housekeeping, and her sister had more and more the care of their father.

Mrs. Denton's buoyant temperament served a better purpose in the economy of sorrow than a farther-sighted seriousness. In virtue of all that Ray had ever read or fancied of such experiences, the deaths that had bereaved her ought to have chastened and sobered her, and he could not forgive her because she could not wear the black of a hushed and spiritless behavior. It even shocked him that Peace did nothing to constrain her, but took her from moment to moment as she showed herself, and encouraged her cheerful talk, and smiled at her jokes. He could not yet understand how the girl's love was a solvent of all questions that harass the helpless reason, and embitter us with the faults of others; but from time to time he had a sense of quality in her that awed him from all other sense of her. There is something in the heart of man that puts a woman's charm before all else, and that enables evil and foolish women to find husbands, while good and wise women die unwed. But

in the soul of incontaminate youth there is often a passionate refusal to accept this instinct as the highest. The ideal of womanhood is then something too pure

and hallowed even for the dreams of love. It was something like this, a mystical reverence or a fantastic exaltation, which removed Ray further from Peace in what might have joined their lives than he was the first day they met, when he began to weave about her the reveries which she had no more part in than if they had been the dreams of his sleep. They were of the stuff of his literature, and like the innumerably trooping, insubstantial fancies that followed each other through his brain from nothing in his experience. When they ceased to play, as they must after the little romance of that first meeting had yielded to acquaintance, what had taken their place? At the end of the half-year which had united them in the intimacy of those strange events and experiences, he could not have made sure of anything but a sort of indignant compassion that drew him near her, and the fantastic sentiment that held him aloof. The resentment in his pity was toward himself as much as her father; when he saw her in the isolation where the old man's preference for her sister left her, he blamed himself as much as them.

Peace blamed no one by word or look. He doubted if she saw it, till he ventured one day to speak of her father's fondness for her sister, and then she answered that he would always rather have Jenny with him than any one else. Ray returned some commonplaces, not too sincere, about the compensation the care of her father must be to Mrs. Denton in her bereavement, and Peace answered as frankly as before that they had got each other back again. "Father didn't want her to marry Ansel, and he didn't care for the children. He couldn't help that; he was too old; and after we were all shut up here together they fretted him.”

She sighed gently, in the way she had, and Ray said, with the fatuity of comforters, I suppose they are better off out of this world."

"They were born into this world," she answered.

"Yes," he had to own.

He saw how truly and deeply she grieved for the little ones, and he realized without umbrage that she mourned their wretched father too, with an affection as simple and pure. There were times when he thought how tragical it would be for her to have cared for Den

ton, in the way his wife cared so little; and then his fancy created a situation in whose unreality it ran riot. But all the time he knew that he was feigning these things, and that there was no more truth in them than in the supposition which he indulged at other times that he was himself in love with Mrs. Denton, and always had been, and this was the reason why he could not care for Peace. It was the effect in both cases of the æsthetic temperament, which is as often the slave as the master of its reveries.

It was in Mrs. Denton's favor with him that she did not let the drift of their father's affections away from Peace carry her with them. The earthward bodily decline of the invalid implied a lapse from the higher sympathies to the lower, and she seemed to have some vague perception of this, which she formulated in her own way, once, when she wished to account for the sick man's refusal of some service from Peace which he accepted from herself.

"He has more use for me here, Peace, because I'm of the earth, earthy, but he'll want you somewhere else."

The old man clung to the world with a hope that admitted at least no open question of his living. He said that as soon as the spring fairly opened, and the weather would allow him to go out without taking more cold, he should carry his manuscript about to the different publishers, and offer it personally. He thought his plan carefully out, and talked it over with Ray, whom he showed that his own failure with his novel was from a want of address in these interviews. He pro posed to do something for Ray's novel as soon as he secured a publisher for himself, and again he bade him bring it and read it to him. Ray afterwards realized with shame that he would have consented to this if Hughes had persisted. But the invitation was probably a mere grace of civility with him, an effect of the exuberant faith he had in his own success.

As the season advanced, and the heat within-doors increased, they had to open the windows, and then the infernal uproar of the avenue filled the room, so that they could not hear one another speak till the windows were closed again. But the rush and clank of the elevated trains, the perpetual passage of the surface cars, with the clatter of their horses' hoofs, and the clash of the air-slitting bells, the grind

VOL. LXXXV.-No. 509.-74

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and jolt of the heavy trucks, the wild clatter of express carts across the rails or up and down the tracks, the sound of feet and voices, the cries of the fruit-venders, and the whiffs of laughter and blasphemy that floated up from the turmoil below like filthy odors, seemed not so keenly to afflict the sick man, or to rend his nerves with the anguish that forced the others to shut it all out, and rather stifle in the heat. Yet, in some sort, he felt it too, for once when Ray spoke of it, he said yes, it was atrocious. But," he added, "I am glad I came and placed myself where I could fully realize the hideousness of a competitive metropolis. All these abominations of sight and sound, these horrible discords, that offend every sense, physically express the spiritual principle underlying the whole social frame-work. It has been immensely instructive to me, and I have got some color of it into my book: not enough, of course, but infinitely more than I could possibly have imagined. No one can imagine the horror, the squalor, the cruel and senseless turpitude which these things typify, except in their presence. I have merely represented the facts in regard to them, and have left imagination free to deal with the ideal city as a contrast, with its peaceful streets, cleanly and quiet, its stately ranks of beautiful dwellings, its noble piles of civic and religious architecture, its shaded and colonnaded avenues, its parks and gardens, and all planned and built, not from the greed and the fraud of competition, but from the generous and unselfish spirit of emulation, wherein men join to achieve the best instead of separating to get the most. Think of a city operated by science, as every city might be now, without one of the wretched animals tamed by the savage man, and still perpetuated by the savage man for the awkward and imperfect uses of a barbarous society! A city without a horse, where electricity brought every man and everything silently to the door. Jenny! Get me that manuscript, will you? The part I was writing on to-day-in the desk-the middle drawer-I should like to read—”

manuscript toward Ray.

You

"He wants you to take it," said Peace. "You can take it home with you. can give it to me in the morning."

Ray took it, and stood by, looking on, not knowing how to come to their help for the sick man's relief, and anxious not to cumber them. When they had got him quiet again, and Ray had once more thrown up the window, and let in the mild night air which came laden with that delirium of the frenzied city, Peace followed him into the little back room, where they stood a moment.

"For Heaven's sake," he said, "why don't you get him away from here, where he could be a little more out of the noise? It's enough to drive a well man mad."

"He doesn't feel it as if he were well," she answered. "We have tried to get him to let us bring his bed out here. But he won't. I think," she added, that he believes it would be a bad omen to change."

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"Surely," said Ray, "a man like your father couldn't care for that ridiculous superstition. What possible connection could his changing to a quieter place have with his living or--"

"It isn't a matter of reason with him. I can see how he's gone back to his early life in a great many things in these few days. He hasn't been so much like himself for a long time as he has to-night."

"What does the doctor say?"

"He says to let him have his own way about it. He says that-the noise can't make any difference-now."

They were in the dark; but he knew from her voice that tears were in her eyes. He felt for her hand to say goodnight. When he had found it, he held it

a moment, and then he kissed it. But no thrill or glow of the heart justified him in what he had done. At the best he could excuse it as an impulse of pity.

XXXVII.

The editor of Every Evening gave Ray his manuscript back. He had evidently no expectation that Ray could have any personal feeling about it, or could view it apart from the interests of the paper. He himself betrayed no personal feeling where the paper was concerned, and he probably could have conceived of none in Ray.

"I don't think it will do for us," he

yourself?"

"I?" said Ray.

"How could I have

an unprejudiced opinion?"

You

"I don't see why you shouldn't. know what we want; we've talked it over enough; and you ought to know whether this is the kind of thing. Anyhow, it's within your province to decide. I don't think it will do, but if you think it will, I'm satisfied. You must take the responsibility. I leave it to you, and I mean business."

Ray thought how old Kane would be amused if he could know of the situation, how he would inspect and comment it from every side, and try to get novel phrases for it. He believed himself that no author had ever been quite in his place before; it was like something in Gilbert's operas; it was as if a prisoner were invited to try himself and pronounce his own penalty. His chief seemed to see no joke in the affair; he remained soberly and somewhat severely waiting for Ray's decision.

"I'm afraid you're right," said Ray. "I don't think it would do for Every Evening. Even if it would, I should doubt the taste of working in something of my own on the reader at the beginning."

"I shouldn't care for that," said the chief, "if it were the thing."

Ray winced, but the chief did not see

it. Now, as always, it was merely and simply a question of the paper. He added carelessly,

"I should think such a story as that would succeed as a book."

"I wish you could get some publisher to think so."

The chief had nothing to say to that. He opened his desk and began to write.

In spite of the rejected manuscript lying on the table before him, Ray made out a very fair day's work himself, and then he took it up town with him. He did not go at once to his hotel, but pushed on as far as Chapley's, where he hoped to see Peace before she went home, and ask how her father was getting on; he had not visited Hughes for several days; and he made himself this excuse. What he really wished was to confront the girl and divine her thoughts concerning himself. He must do that, now; but

if it were not for the cruelty of forsaking the old man, it might be the kindest and best thing never to go near any of them again.

He had the temporary relief of finding her gone home when he reached Chapley's. Mr. Brandreth was there, and he welcomed Ray with something more than his usual cordiality.

"Look here," he said, shutting the door of his little room. "Have you got that story of yours where you could put your hand on it at once?"

"I can put my hand on it instantly," said Ray, and he touched it.

"Oh!" Mr. Brandreth returned, a little daunted. "I didn't know you carried it around with you."

"I don't usually-or only when I've got it from some publisher who doesn't want it."

"I thought it had been the rounds," said Mr. Brandreth, still uneasily.

“Oh, it's an editor, this time. It's just been offered to me for serial use in Every Evening, and I've declined it."

"What do you mean?" Mr. Brandreth smiled in mystification.

"Exactly what I say." Ray explained. the affair as it had occurred. "It makes me feel like Brutus and the son of Brutus rolled into one. I'm going round to old Kane, to give the facts away to him. think he'll enjoy them."

I

"Well, sir, I've never lost sight of that idea, and I've been keeping one eye out for a good novel, to start with, ever since. I haven't found it, I don't mind telling you. You see, all the established reputations are in the hands of other publishers, and you can't get them away without paying ridiculous money, and violating the comity of the trade at the same time. If we are to start new, we must start with a new man."

"I don't know whether I'm a new man or not," said Ray, "if you're working up to me. Sometimes I feel like a pretty old one. I think I came to New York about the beginning of the Christian era. But A Modern Romeo is as fresh as ever. It has the dew of the morning on it still rubbed off in spots by the nose of the professional smeller."

“Well,” said Mr. Brandreth, "it's new enough for all practical purposes. I want you to let me take it home with me."

"Oh, thank you!"

"I'm not a fatalist-"

'But it would look a good deal like fatalism."

"Yes, it would. It would look as if it were really intended to be, if it came back to us now, after it had been round to everybody else."

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'Yes; but if it was fated from the beginning, I don't see why you didn't take it in the beginning. I should rather wonder what all the bother had been for."

"You might say that," Mr. Brandreth admitted.

Ray went off on the wave of potential prosperity, and got Kane to come out and dine with him. They decided upon Martin's, where the dinner cost twice as much as at Ray's hotel, and had more the air of being a fine dinner; and they got a table in the corner, and Ray ordered a bottle of champagne.

"Yes,' said Kane, that is the right drink for a man who wishes to spend his