she stood one morning at her window, staring out at the rain. she had evaded the question for days, but she faced it now. what was she to do? she had always despised women with nerves, the strong fibre of her brain and the steel frame in her apparently frail body balancing her otherwise abundant femininity. when women had complained to her of nerves, cried out that they hated life, she had felt like an entomologist looking at specimens on a pin. when they had demanded sympathy she had asked them why, if they didn’t like their life, they didn’t go out and make another. bridgit and ishbel had done it, and she had heard of many others, although few of these were in her own class. had not her sense of fate been so strong, she should have gone herself years ago.

these superfluous women had not taken kindly to her advice, and when she had added that strength was the greatest achievement of the human character, they had merely stared at her. these confidences had not been many, but one woman had replied petulantly that politics and charities were not in her line, and one had reminded her gently that a woman did not always hold her fate in her hands. she had despised this woman more than any of the others. in her youthful arrogance and consciousness of powers of some sort, she had equal contempt for the woman who submitted to detested conditions, and for the man who was too poor to keep up his position and yet grumbled, without seeking the obvious remedy.

but her spirit was chastened. she had discovered one woman, at least, that was quite helpless, and it seemed to her highly ironic that this, of all women, should be herself. she had felt her independence so keenly during the eight months she had earned her bread, working as hard as any of her humble associates, after she had persuaded ishbel that she was broken in. she had often been tried to the point of fainting, for she had been accustomed always to the open-air life, and it would take more than eight months and a strong will to make a well-oiled machine of her; but she had persisted, never thought of looking for easier work, always rejoicing in her liberty and in the independent spirit that had bought it. moreover, she had formed the habit of work, and soon after her return to white lodge she had begun almost automatically to wish for a regular occupation of some sort. she had understood then why ishbel loved her business as she never had loved society and its pleasures. but after she had made over all the clothes she had left behind at her flight, and retrimmed all her hats, she realized that there is no joy to be got out of useless work; with the exception of the hunt breakfast she had not even crossed the path of one of her neighbors. her evening gowns alone had proved necessary, as france, the day after his return, had issued an edict that she was to dress for dinner.

she had by no means forgotten her old desire to write, but although she had essayed it more than once, particularly during the past month, she could rouse her mind to no vital interest in fiction, although she had come upon themes enough during her sojourn in the world. she wondered if such productive faculties as she may have been born with had withered under the blight of her married life; not knowing that the genius for fiction survives the death of every illusion, being, as it is, quite outside the range of personality and watered by the lost fountain of youth. she had not, however, dismissed the belief, cunningly nursed by bridgit and ishbel, that she had talents of some sort, and that the expression of them would manifest itself in due course.

but now? what was she to do meanwhile? where should she seek refuge against a possible disaster in her nervous system which might wreck her life? there was nothing here. if she fled to london and obtained employment of any sort, even in an obscure shop, france would carry out his threat and ruin ishbel, one way or another. if he dared not employ his original method again—and why not? he was cunning enough to know that one sensational episode might be explained away, but not two of the same kind. there is nothing people weary of so quickly as explanations.

if she could only take up a difficult language. she had studied french and german during four of her years in the world, and knew the power of a foreign tongue to dominate the brain. she had intended to take up italian, and it was the resource for which she most longed at the moment. but she could as easily furnish the library downstairs.

she was about to turn from the window and go for a ten-mile tramp in the rain, since nothing was left her but physical exercise, when she saw a fly crawling up the avenue. she was not particularly interested, as the occupant was more than likely to have a dun or a writ in his pocket, but she lingered, watching idly. the least event broke the monotony of her existence.

as the fly approached the end of the avenue, the door was flung open and a man jumped out impatiently, paid the driver, and walked rapidly toward the house. it was nigel herbert.

julia’s first impulse was to run downstairs and embrace him. her spirits went up with a wild rush. but she rang the bell and asked the servant if her husband was in the house. he was tearing across country with his pack on an independent hunt. she ordered a fire built in the drawing-room, rearranged her hair, and put on a becoming house frock of apple-green cloth. she observed with some pleasure that her skin was as white as ever, if her chin and throat were not as round as when nigel had seen her last. excitement brought the old brilliance to her eyes, and she smiled for the first time since the hunt breakfast. she ran downstairs and into the drawing-room. nigel, who was standing before the fire in the chill room, met her halfway and gave both her hands a close clasp.

“oh, this is so delightful—so delightful—how did you think of it—when did you come back—” julia delivered a volley of questions, not only because she was excited herself, but because she saw that nigel had come charged with so much that he could say nothing at the moment.

they sat down and continued to stare at each other. nigel was far more changed than julia. the smooth pink face she had first known was lined and rather sallow, his eyes had lost their careless laughter, his lips their boyish pout.

“oh, south africa! south africa!” said julia, softly. “how it has changed all of you.”

“rather!” said nigel, sadly. “those that are left of us. perhaps you don’t know that i am literally the last of my name now, except my poor old father—who has forgiven me once for all. i had four brothers and six cousins when this war began. now i have scarcely a friend of my sex. at all events i know the worst. there is no one left to mourn for but my father, and he’ll go soon. but i haven’t a pang left in me—not of that sort. god! what a cursed thing war is! a cursed, useless, souless thing! but i’ll treat that subject elsewhere. i’ve come here to see you, and i don’t fancy we’ll be uninterrupted any too long?—”

“oh, he rarely takes luncheon here—and you are to take yours with me. do you know that i haven’t had a soul to talk to since last november?”

“i know. and that is what i have come to see you about. i—” he got up and walked to the window, then back, his hands in his pockets. “the last time i made love to you—the only time, for that matter—you put me off, turned me down?—”

“alas! i only went out that night because the romantic situation appealed to me. what a baby i was! and since! oh! oh! oh!”

she sprang to her feet, and running over to the fire, knelt down, pretending to arrange the logs. tragedy rose on the stage of her mind, but at the same time she felt an impulse to laugh. the hard shell in which she had fancied her spirit incased, sealed, had melted the moment the man she liked best had appeared with love in his eyes. but tragedy swept out humor and took possession. she flung her head down into her lap and burst into tears. they were the first she had shed and they beat down the last of her defences.

“oh, nigel! nigel!” she sobbed. “if you knew! if you knew! i never have dared tell one-tenth. i dare not remember?—”

nigel, like most of his sex, was distracted and helpless at sight of tears. “yes! yes!” he exclaimed, bending over and trying to raise her. “i know. you need not tell me. please get up. i have so much to say—i can’t say a word while you are like this.”

she let him lift her and put her back in her chair. he made no attempt to take her in his arms.

he took the chair opposite hers and smiled wryly. “i don’t fancy i’m as impulsive as i was! ishbel told me when i returned last week. if i had heard—say, during the first year of our acquaintance—i should have got one of these new motor cars and flown to your rescue without a plan. but much water has flowed under our bridges since then!”

“don’t you love me any longer?” julia sat up alertly and dried her eyes.

“i’ve always loved you and i fancy i always shall. but—well, we are only young once—young in the sense of love being the one thing to live and breathe for. and, then, i have had a resource! there have been many months when i have been able to put you out of my head altogether. that is what work, productive work, does for a chap. and after—well, soon after that night at bosquith, i hated you for a time. you could never be the same delicious wonderful child again. that would have broken my heart if i had not both hated you and taken the first train into the kingdom of micomicon. even when i found you so charming, when i saw so much of you, that next season, i still congratulated myself that i was jolly well over it. but—well—you never really ceased to haunt me—you had a way of asserting yourself in the most disconcerting fashion. when i heard of the duke’s marriage, i began to worry—i knew that life would not go as smoothly with you—i had heard from the girls that you managed france very cleverly, saw comparatively little of him. out there in africa, i never was alone at night that i didn’t find myself thinking of you. but i never guessed—when the girls told me, i thought i’d go off my head. it’s too awful! too awful!”

“it’s not so bad now. i have five pistols in the house.”

“i know. but what a life! it is so hideous that it is almost farcical.”

“people’s troubles are generally rather absurd when you come to think of them. and i fancy i’m a good deal better off than a lot of women. many have husbands that are worse than lunatics, and as the divorce laws won’t help them, they suffer in silence, without a ray of hope. at least i may hope mine will betray himself in public sooner or later. i can manage him in a way, and of death i have not the least fear?—”

“oh! it is all too dreadful! how old are you? twenty-five? it’s awful! awful! but you must end it?—”

“if i could conceal two alienists in the house long enough?—”

“but you can’t. nor would their certificate give you real freedom. i’ve no doubt he’ll go raving mad in time—but when one reflects upon what he might do first! no! i have not come here without a plan, and here it is: you must go to the united states at once and get a divorce. there is a place called reno, where one can be got at the end of about ten months. bridgit will go with you. we held a conclave over it—we two and ishbel—not the first! great heaven! what an eternity ago that seems—” he laughed bitterly. “once—was it only seven years ago?—we three talked the subject over and came to much the same conclusions, but our plans were frustrated by france’s illness. well—we were all young then, but it was a good plan and we readopted it. you must get away from this without delay—there has been enough! when the divorce is granted, i’ll follow and marry you if you will have me. if not, we’ll provide for you in whatever part of america you choose to live in. but i hope you’ll marry me. i don’t think i ever really loved you before. when ishbel told me! when just now you crouched by that fire!”

“oh, how good you all are!”

“i’ve not taken to philanthropy. i want you more than i ever did when we were both careless and young and arrogant. i never thought it could be. but either time or what you have endured with that man has annihilated everything. can you go to-morrow?”

“oh! i must think. i don’t know. it is all very alluring. but i am not sure.”

“you mean that you don’t love me?”

“oh, if i could! if i could!”

julia sprang to her feet and threw out her arms. “away from all this!—from the memory of it! the horror! and there are other memories behind those three months! i don’t know! i have felt so sure i never could forget. and if i cannot forget, i cannot love you or any man. i have never felt so sure of anything as of that.”

“you are but twenty-five, remember. the mind is not crystallized at that age. even memory is fluid. i believe that anything can be forgotten, given change of scene—at your age, at least. a year in the united states, and all this will be a dream. at the end of ten months in a life which is like a french poster out of drawing, you will be a different being—no, you will have lived with your old sense of humor, and be the same enchanting creature—oh, we young people take life so tragically, my dear, and we succumb so generously to time and distance! blessed antidotes to life! time and change! and you are full of buoyancy, to say nothing of your brains. once i regretted that you had any. where would you be without them? a woman must find them a pretty good substitute when man fails her. oh, i have learned! the land of shadows in which we writers of fiction live is peopled with the luminous egos of women as well as with their conventional shells; we have only to take our choice! and you—i shall find julia edis again, with all her enchanting possibilities at least half developed. oh, you are wonderful! when one thinks of what you might have become—of the brainless women that brood and brood. will you go?”

“i must think! i must think!” the powerful suggestion in his words seemed to have delivered julia edis from the tomb to which she had crept in terror, but hidden and shivered intact. she ran up and down the room, she even thrust her hands into her hair as if to lift its weight from her struggling brain, that it might think faster. freedom! the new world! the annihilation of memory! a quick divorce which would deliver her forever from the terrifying creature she had married, over to the protection of the new world’s laws. it was an enchanting prospect. she drew in her breath as if inhaling the ozone, drinking the elixir of that land of youth and freedom. and happiness! happiness! why shouldn’t she love nigel?—

but she stopped short and dropped her hands. her whole body looked paralyzed. the youth seemed to run out of her face.

“it is impossible,” she whispered. “i cannot take with me his power to avenge himself, and he will do that by ruining ishbel?—”

“we have talked all that over. ishbel will manage to protect herself. what are bobbies for?—”

“it won’t do. a policeman at the door! people would soon hear of it—and stay away. besides he is a fiend for resource?—”

“yes—but mr. jones can’t last much longer. and then—well, i fancy ishbel will marry dark—he’s on his feet again, and will be home before long.”

“ishbel will never give up her work. remember she took it up because it seemed to her the most vital thing she could find in life, not because she was driven to earn her bread. and it has become a sort of religion with her.”

“ishbel never had been in love then! but if she kept the business on, she would have a husband to protect her. you would be out of it?—”

“but not yet!”

“we are none of us willing you should wait, ishbel least of all.”

“i know, but i can’t sacrifice her. i should be a beast. harold is capable of writing the most frightful anonymous letters to hundreds of people?—”

“why the devil isn’t he rotting in south africa? when i think of the hundreds of fine fellows—oh, well, i’ve given over trying to understand space and fate. but i wish i could have run across him down there. i’d have shot him like a dog if i’d got the chance, and never felt a pang.”

“so should i! that is the most dreadful result of it all—the hardness, the callousness, the cynicism?—”

“oh, it will all fall from you. we don’t change much under the armor life forces us into. dismiss ishbel from your mind. take care of yourself. what is ishbel’s business when weighed against a lifetime of horror and demoralization? nobody knows this better than ishbel. i fancy if you don’t go, she’ll chuck the business. it’s a deuced unpleasant position for her. and she has made enough to live on comfortably until she can marry dark?—”

“i don’t believe it. it might be years?—”

the butler entered and announced luncheon. julia smoothed her hair, feeling much herself again.

“i can see the force of all your arguments. and i am tempted. i don’t deny it. but you must give me time to think it over. perhaps i exaggerate about ishbel. but there is another point: i was not consulted in regard to my first marriage. i should be something more than a fool if i rushed blindly into another, no matter what the temptations. still—come, you must be starved.”