IN early July the Mallesons rented an old farmhouse twelve miles from town, and taking only what was necessary to supplement the native furnishings, settled down to a two months' sojourn.

"The city is hot in the summer. Besides you need a rest, Emma," said Mr. Malleson.

The first statement was indubitable, the second plausible, but neither was the real reason for the move. Harry Malleson himself needed a rest. Exhaustion not wholly of the body had descended upon him, hanging invisible weights on his limbs, wrapping a tenuous veil of decay about his graying hair. Not purely physical decay. That is a comparatively simple thing. Except Malleson himself, only Emma suspected this sinister ennui of the spirit that sometimes descends upon those who cross the ridge of middle age, and, through some necessity of their nature, gaze through cynical eyes down a slope of inconsequence.

The ten-acre farm lay by the river, the dark stream that rolled by Malleson's birthplace, and which had somehow caught in its waters his earliest and lasting love. He never spoke of the St. Joseph; it was always the St. Joe. Forty-five years before, when old Jonathan Malleson missed the boy from the hayfield, he invariably hurled his broad straw hat to the ground, ejaculated "By God I'll---" and plodded down the river path. Later, when young Harry forsook the farm to study law, the tough old father growled through his beard:

"You'll come back. If I can't hold you, and Mother can't, the St. Joe can. Mebbe queer---but you'll come back to the river."

It might have been either a parting curse or a final blessing. The boy left against the will of both his parents, and without money. His path to the law lay one summer through the wheatfields of Minnesota, where he "hired out" as thresher; another summer, through the villages of the Iowa countryside, where he and a crony peddled mops and brushes. A third summer saw him laid up with a broken leg in a town of southern Indiana, and cared for by the family of the Methodist minister. The good man strove mightily to rescue young Malleson from hell, and was wounded to his simple heart when the convalescent refused to go to church, saying he had religious scruples against it. During the winters he read law at the State University, and later in the office of a hoary shyster who needed an assistant whenever the legitimacy of a suit rendered his own talents ineffective.

After he had been away a year Malleson wrote his father, asking one question. He got the reply:

"Not with my consent. Give up your law and come back and take over the farm. Your mother and I will soon be leaving."

The young man did not write again. When next he returned to the river it. was to help bury his mother. At the funeral neighbors whispered approval of the tenderness with which the son supported the broken old man. All supposed that now Harry would remain. He didn't. When Jonathan Malleson died two years later, he died alone. This time the neighbors had no good word for the son. Brutal, unnatural! No sign of grief. Hadn't he known that the old man was dying?

It was a bit strange. Yet somehow Harry's action took on a new meaning when one heard the only explanation he ever gave, and that not until years afterward:

"When I was small he tried to bend me to his will---his uninstructed will. Not just parental discipline, you understand. Bend me---bend a free soul. The unpardonable sin. I couldn't come back."

The legend of Harry Malleson's undutiful behavior persisted in the neighborhood, and for a time worked against him when he set up to practice law in the nearby city. It worked against him when he fell in love with Emma Winthrop who came one summer to visit a college friend. Malleson was twelve years her senior, and by this time comfortably established. Emma was no simple girl, beguiled by the attentions of an older man, but a young lady snugly fitted into her social armor. She did not accept him until she had seen far behind his arrogant love and perceived paradoxical little spots of gentleness. Occasionally, during their courtship, one of these serene patches would be revealed momentarily, like sunlit deep water behind breakers. Perhaps it was the ultimate conviction that she might refuse Harry Malleson and yet not escape his forgiveness that told Emma she could not do without him.

Extraordinarily successful, Malleson became at once the pride and irritation of his associates at the bar. To them their profession was a serious thing. They could not smother the conception that Malleson, for all his skill, held the law in reprehensible irreverence, as a brilliant dilettante belittles an art. They were unable to understand why the man didn't sink with more respectable completeness into his vocation. On another point some of his associates were sorely tried. Malleson revealed a scandalous indifference to politics, and in this Indiana city such behavior seemed little short of lunacy. When the ex-Hon. James E. Stoltz, Democratic poobah and multi-millionaire, called to vent certain pertinent whispers about the choice of a candidate for the legislature, something in Malleson's eye arrested his usually fluent speech.

"I--I hope you don't think I have insulted you, Mr. Malleson," he remarked in a grieved tone.

"Not at all," responded the lawyer cheerfully. "A skunk call make it unpleasant for me, but he can't insult me. And, Mr. Stoltz"---Malleson seemed to pause a moment in reverie ---"Mr. Stoltz, you took twenty-three steps coming up to this office, but if you wait two minutes here I feel that you'll take only one going down."

Stoltz escaped through a shrewd sense of time and an ear for sincere utterance, but others were not so fortunate. It soon became established among those who were in politics for revenue only that the lawyer could not be trusted, because of his perverted sense of public duty. It pained these gentlemen to watch the young man waste his gifts, and it pained them still more, some years later, to see one so unorthodox filling the office of City Attorney.

Emma too, in other ways, found him surprising. She soon passed by political ambition and joined her husband in his indifference to it. Next she discovered that the law held him not by its dignity or its fees, but by the avenues it opened into human relationships. She saw that Malleson passed down these avenues, and amid these cruel, stupid, or piteous muddles less as an advocate than as a curious observer. Her first shock came with the realization of his detached connoisseurship. The shock wore off, as gradually she came to formulate a rule, intuitively drawn from many examples: "He always takes the unlikely side, and the unlikely side is always the neediest." But the rule broke frequently, and when it did she saw her husband disturbing and incalculable. It was not until much time had elapsed that she could confidently modify the rule---"He takes the side of the one who is matching himself against anything, even the law, without looking for help." And that was perhaps a fair approximation.

Though a vacation in the country was not what John had looked forward to, he found things pleasant. There were no "chores," because whatever farming the family undertook was mere dabbling, for fun and exercise. Two or three times a week John and Dave drove to town in the Ford truck that was part of the rented equipment. Dave would go to a movie, while John rattled up Michigan Street, and stopped with a mock heroic flourish before Mattie's house.

She would join him in the marketing. He soon learned to let her do the buying. She examined each offering critically, wrinkling her brow, accepting, rejecting, arguing gravely with the dealers over the putative age of eggs or the most advantageous cuts of meats. At the huckster stands on Golf ax Bridge she chose melons, seeming to select by some occult communion with the fruit, transmitted through her hand against the cool rinds.

"You're a fine lot of farmers!" she scoffed, one day, as they returned with their load of sacks and boxes. "Haven't you even got a hen out there?"

"Nary one," grinned John. "You see this is a modern farm."

"What do you do?"

"Oh, read and pitch ball to Dave and shoot mark, and trail with Dad along the river. I'm going to take you out next week. Will you come?"

"Perhaps."

"I'll drive in alone, we'll do the marketing and drive out about five, in time for supper. You can stay over night, can't you? If your mother gets lonesome I'll bring you back next day."

"Mother does get lonesome, even while I'm here," the girl said, slowly. "She---she remembers---"

John patted her arm. "I know, dear. Well---it's settled then! Next Tuesday? Here comes Dave."

When the two boys reached the edge of town John gave the wheel to Dave, stretched his long legs to the dash, and slouched down in lazy contentment. The truck rattled and bumped over the sandy road, the boxes and loose vegetables in the back dancing about merrily.

"Easy on the chuck holes, Dave---remember the eggs."

The little fellow was grasping the wheel with a do-or-die expression, and gazing rigidly ahead.

Sunshine of the late afternoon lay over the fields, and shot the dust motes through with warm brown gold. Farmers, swaying on the seats of their heavy-hubbed wagons, nodded in friendly fashion to the "flivver" that passed them without crowding. An occasional chicken squawked across the road in exaggerated terror. Pumps squeaked beneath the vigorous hands of farm-boys drawing water for the before-supper scrubbing; sun-burned girls, in fresh white frocks, sat rocking on porches, or stepped about the front lawns with sprinklers. A sense of impeccable well-being pervaded John's musing; here was a spacious but familiar universe, in which this boy beside him, Mattie, his mother, his father, and himself formed a tight little group of dearness from which all things radiated in flawless peace.

About this time a green-gray miraculous tide was rolling westward from the Rhine, at word of whose coming men in the villages stared madly, and women clutched their breasts. Within a few hours the deluge reached America in spurts of ink that streamed across the faces of metropolitan dailies:

War! Germany invades Belgium!

A neighbor, driving past the Malleson gate, tossed a newspaper to Dave. "Take it in to the folks!" he shouted. Dave, in great excitement, spread the sheet on the table before Mr. Malleson, and ran to tell Emma.

John, entering the room, saw something he never quite forgot.

His father, leaning low over the glaring headlines, had become a stooping creature of prey. His temples glinted, gray steel in the sunlight; the cords of his wrists protruded; the tips of his teeth showed dully, past drawn lips. A tremendous and unholy energy seemed caught and held static in the taut curve of his back. The boy, breathless by the door, was conscious of an incredulous dread.

The crazy instant passed. When his father raised his head, a last flicker of demonic light was dying in his eyes. What took its place seemed to be pure joy.

"Look, son" he exclaimed, crashing his fist to the table; "movement in the world at last!"

Excitement laid hold of John. He read the headlines, and the first words of the story.

"War, son! See? A first class war. Men being butchered, women raped, babies--- Guns and marching and cities burning! . . . . . . . . Don't you want to go?"

John looked up in amazement. The question didn't sound like a joke.

"Not our war, Dad."

"Nonsense!"

"Who would I fight for?"

"What's that got to do with it! Join the French, join the Germans--it's irrelevant! What do you think?"

"Well," said his son deliberately, "if you want to know, I think you're going crazy."

Malleson eyed his son solemnly, and broke into a chuckle.

"Right," he replied. "Don't follow me."

The next Tuesday as John was starting for town his father climbed to the seat beside him.

"Errand," he announced laconically, "that you can't attend to."

"What'll I do with Mattie on the way back?"

"Set her as close beside you as you can manage. I'll lie in the back with the other vegetables."

"This is a punk notion of yours, Dad," grumbled John as they drove out of the yard. Malleson serenely lighted a cigar.

"Let me out at the corner of Michigan and Washington," he directed, when they reached the outskirts of town. "I'll be at the office when you come back."

The truck was held up by traffic just beyond the corner. John glanced back in time to see his father enter a doorway over which hung a sign, Dr. E. S. Walters. Malleson's own office was two doors farther down. John remembered that old Walters had been a lifelong friend and one of the few people with whom his father never missed an opportunity to chat.

"Gone in to talk war with the old boy," he concluded.

Young Malleson had gone about for the last day or so with a tantalizing image playing on the fringe of his consciousness. When he was alone the picture drew into focus. A gray man, crouching over ink-marred paper; a figure set in an immobility that yet expressed swift and deadly action. His father---but metamorphosed by some crepuscular irradiation of the spirit that for the instant of observance falsified the common light of day. His father---strange as a ghost; heartless, repellent, dangerous, and pathetically old, under black magic.

He attempted to describe the phenomenon to Mattie. It was sheer impossibility. His words fell meaningless to himself as well as to the girl. Yet perhaps some intuition formed her reply:

"I fairly love your father," she said thoughtfully, "but sometimes he frightens me, just when he's most pleasant. I can't explain it---sometimes when he's joking it makes me think of deep, deep ice that could never melt underneath.

"Will you be like him, I wonder?" Her eyes were troubled, behind her smile.

"And yet listen to that!" whispered John.

Through the rattling of the truck Malleson was singing. It was a monotonous, mumbled melody, with an interminably repeated refrain:

With that inveterate lack of dignity that had so often pained his colleagues, Malleson sprawled among the boxes in the body of the truck, his back braced against the rear of the driver's seat, one arm encircling a huge pumpkin which he had insisted upon buying.

"There is something god-like about a pumpkin," he declared. "Shining and fat and hollow."

The supper was served on the lawn, in the shelter of an ell which blocked the view from the road. Mary, the cook, whose temper had acquired a rustic sweetness, bustled to and fro, announcing each dish triumphantly as she emerged from the kitchen.

"What do you think of us as farmers, Mattie ?" asked Emma.

"You're a lot of nature fakers," smiled the girl. "I'll bet you can't tell oats from buckwheat."

"Dad can," declared Dave.

"That's only because he's got a good memory," laughed Emma. "How about it, Harry? Isn't all your agricultural knowledge a hold-over from that other farm you ran away from?"

'Yes," confessed Malleson, "at heart I'm a rube. If you'd been born amid a saturnalia of bawling cows and pigs slithering in the mud, you'd be rural-minded too. I was thrashed along with the wheat for a good many years. That's why we buy our provender in the city now."

"I'd really like to try my hand at farming for a while," declared his wife. "It'd be fine for us all. Look, we've been here only two weeks but see how brown and tough-looking Dave is."

"Why pick on Dave?" rejoined Malleson lazily. "You yourself look powerfully tough to me, Emma."

It was merely a surface remark, but as John glanced about the circle he was struck by a disturbing contrast. How thin and old his father was Emma, in short skirt, and with face and arms tanned, seemed a young Diana, virginal for all her motherhood. And Mattie, here beside him, nibbling at a "roasting ear," might have been her younger sister, if Diana had a sister. His eyes strayed over the delicate curve of the girl's neck, and down her slim body to the white-stockinged ankle, vivid against the grass.

Suddenly John turned to his father. "Dad, now that we've got witnesses, maybe you'll tell what you meant by urging me to join the war?" Startled, Emma raised her level gaze to her husband's face.

"Did you do that---honestly?" she asked.

"Yes---honestly. Oh, I just thought the young fellow might want excitement, to keep from going to seed, you know."

"Yes---and suppose he got killed?"

Emma and Mattie looked anxious. John felt the weight of posthumous decorations on his breast, and glimpsed the flags of glory flying at half-mast over his frame. But his life was spared, for his father made no answer.

About nine o'clock Mattie, Dave, and John were returning by a short cut through the fields from the Endress farm, whither they had gone for milk. Two hundred yards from the house the trail intersected a path that led to the river. This trail cut straight through the bushes and ended in a little clearing. Mattie and Dave were a few yards in advance when John reached the entrance to the path. Moonlight poured in white brilliance over the clearing.

In the center of the open space the boy perceived a figure which at first glance seemed to be motionless, but which, as he watched, rose to its toes, at the same time laying both hands high on its breast, like an actor indulging in a bit of melodramatic pantomime. But the gesture was not completed. The figure sank to the ground, in a curious, crumpling descent, as if folding over by sections. Had the action taken place on a stage, it would have been theatrically effective; observed through the vista of the shadowy alders it took on a portent mysteriously tragic.

John seized Dave's arm.

"Go on home with Mattie !" he commanded.

"But---"

"Go on, I tell you! I'll be back with him soon .

It's Dad."

He plunged down the path, over which the moonlight lay in streaks and patches. As he raced into the clearing, his father was dragging himself to his feet. The movement was slow and inept, and seemed to require special thought. His face was bluish, and glistening with moisture.

"What is it?" the boy asked, with forced calmness.

For a time Malleson did not reply, but appeared to be experimenting in the art of breathing. Finally he spoke, in a tight, careful voice.

"Nothing. . . . I turned my ankle---on---a root, and fell."

"Dad, that's a lie-and a mighty poor one! You don't even limp."

"Well . . . . no matter," muttered Malleson. He permitted the boy to support him until they were within sight of the house. Dave and Mattie had said nothing to Emma. But one glimpse of her husband's face was enough.

"Into bed with you," she ordered sternly, at the same time nodding to the girl, who had already started the fire under the water-kettle. John telephoned to Dr. Walters, who arrived an hour later, with one spring of his car broken. He emerged from Malleson's room, glaring and snorting.

"Nonsense! Nothing bad. Overwork ... too much tobacco, maybe. Always was a fool. . . Good night, Emmy." He stamped out.

Hours later, when the house was still, John woke from his restless sleep, with phrases like belated echoes ringing in his ears: "Overwork---too much tobacco"---what cursed nonsense! Was old Doc Walters in his dotage! . . . The boy leaped from bed, pulled on his slippers with trembling fingers and, wrapping his dressing-gown about him, stole down the hall-way to his parents' room. In unreasoning fear he listened with his ear against the panel. No sound. By a decided effort of will, he pushed the door open a few inches and looked in. His father was sleeping quietly, the thin bed-covering rising and falling with his regular breathing. In the second bed, within arm's reach of her husband, Emma lay like a tired child, her long lashes making a shadowy, motionless line.

John closed the door noiselessly and began to retrace his steps. He felt curiously light-hearted. In place of the foolish panic of a few minutes ago came a surge of well being. In this silent house, fragrant with the first winds of morning, flowing in from over woods and meadowland, the inhibitions of the day vanished in futility. Young Malleson felt himself released into a fresh and original world, where vision was abnormally clear, and actions possessed a primal simplicity.

As he approached his door his attention was caught by the swaying of a dark curtain which was the only barrier separating Mattie's room from the hall-way. The portière, swinging to and fro by the breeze, seemed a huge arm beckoning. Smiling to himself, he watched; then suddenly, with a delicious and mischievous feeling of outlawry, entered the room, stepped across the floor in his softly padding slippers, and knelt by Mattie's bed.

She lay with one arm circled above her tousled hair, the other stretched with its relaxed little hand almost against his breast. A slim leg, slipped from beneath the sheet, glimmered in the twilight gray of the room. Breathing gently the boy watched her, thrilled by this white loveliness, so near him, yet so remote and strange . Was this Mattie, his playmate of years?

"Mattie---Mattie," he whispered, his lips brushing her cheek.

Her eyelids fluttered, she stirred, burrowed her nose into the, pillow, and drowsily turned her face upward. From fathoms deep in sleep crept the ghost of a smile. John suddenly pressed his mouth to her breast.

"Mattie--sweetheart----sweetheart-" He stopped in alarm. But after a pause he felt her cool arms tighten about his neck, the lithe body throbbing as with his own heartbeats.

"I'm dreaming," he heard her murmur, "dreaming---dreaming."

Her arms relaxed, and John looked up with a joyous little chuckle.

"No, Mattie---not dreaming. I'm here---and I love you ---Her eyes were startled and questioning.

"Is it really you, John?" she whispered, propping herself on one elbow. The nightgown slipped from her shoulder, but she paid no heed. "Tell me, lover---is it really you?"

Unbelief still lingered in the dark eyes and about the tremulous parting of the lips. The boy sat on the edge of the bed, touching her face and hair lightly with his fingertips.

"See, dear---I'm really here, tight in your own room, and everybody else asleep. It doesn't seem a bit wrong, either---does it ?"

She shook her head and sighed. "No. I suppose it's awful, but it doesn't seem so. Just look how bare I am---there's my leg down there in plain sight, and I don't even care."

"Why should you, sweet! I don't love part of you---I love all of you." She sighed again and nestled against his shoulder.

Unschooled in the mysteries of passion, they drifted into silence, and onward toward the menace that dwells in silences. The minutes passed, and the first glimmers of morning blanched the square of the open window to a dim mother-of-pearl. Helplessly they felt their hour of beauty vanishing, and in the blight of self-consciousness that settled between them, Mattie began to cry softly. Her eyes were wide and frightened now. She shivered, and drew the sheet over her breast.

"You'll have to go, John . . . Oh, how can I face you in the morning." She covered her face for an instant, then smiled resolutely. "It was beautiful, wasn't it, lover? But you must go. . . "

He nodded, murmuring, "Yes, I know. But don't let's worry about the morning . . . . Good-bye, Mattie ..........."

Her lips, suddenly greedy, clung to his in a long kiss.

"Good-bye--good-bye . . " she gasped, and turned her face away.

JOHN swung into the work of sophomore year with the relief of a man who sets his foot on the prosaic highway, after a ramble through meadows where confusion dwells. The preceding year he had left home for college with the feeling that he was moving from the commonplace to the romantic, where all sorts of exciting things might happen. Now his convictions were reversed; college offered a tangible, four-square refuge from events of the summer at home. He wanted a perspective on several things---his father's illness, Mattie's new, transcendent dearness, his own unguessed perceptions and passions.

Twice he had been on the point of besieging the old doctor in his office, to demand the whole truth of his father's case. But each time something interfered. Furthermore, Mr. Malleson seemed completely himself again. Yet John could not escape the suspicion that somewhere behind that mask of sardonic ease, things were subtly wrong. It was not only that night by the river . . . . He remembered particularly the receiving of the first war news. Again and again John saw the spare gray figure, with the tension of repressed frenzy in the face; again and again heard the exuberant voice exclaiming:

"Movement in the world at last!"

And Mattie? He no longer knew her. In the lapse of a few summer days she had grown strange. At times he tried desperately to visualize the girl who had always been his playmate; the shy, frank eyes, the thin brown hands, the proud little body, seeming to hold itself erect against the world, a figure touched with an endearing shabbiness. But she escaped. In her place came no child but a woman, warm, mysterious, and possessive, who worried him with her sweetness and her unlovely power to wound.

Mattie's picture, which during his freshman year John had kept hidden from all but Kempton, now stood on his dresser. And he remembered Kempton's thoughtful, impersonal comment:

"She belongs among the Marthas of the world, I think. For just a second, when the camera snapped, she sat there tranquil, with that dainty gown about her. But---toil, toil---maybe suffering."

'Translate," demanded John, scowling. "She made that gown herself, if that's what you mean." He was half offended, without knowing why, but he wanted Kempton to say more. Yet the latter's cool question startled him.

"Are you going to marry her?" "Why---why---" Was he going to marry her? "I hope so, when I'm through college and settled. But, Kemp---what do you mean by toil and suffering? I don't see it." He held the picture close to his face, peering earnestly.

"No, you don't see it, because you've been kissing her, and she's in your blood," responded his friend serenely. John was embarrassed, but secretly delighted. That was what he wanted Kemp to say! "In your blood." True! Ever since that night when he had stolen into her room.

Kempton's diagnosis of Mattie was not so fanciful as John supposed. The girl was having her troubles. Time in the little house on Michigan Street seemed standing still; only by minute, domestic variations could the days be distinguished from one another. Perhaps it was Thursday that the man was coming to fix the furnace perhaps this morning's paper sententiously pointed out that just four months ago to-day the Archduke Ferdinand was murdered at Sarajevo; perhaps the book drawn from the Library was due back to-day, else the fine of two cents for every twenty-four hours would begin.

Evenings were the hardest. The opulent summer lingered into fall. The nights were warm and lustrous, the sunsets smoky gold that lay along the sky an hour past supper time, and left their fierce life burned out in some ethereal incense that perfumed the dusk. The old swing creaked on the porch in the twilight, as of old, but now Mattie hated the sound.

Often Harry Cameron came to see her. He would swing off the car at the corner, walk with quick stride to the porch and drop into his accustomed place on the step. He was harder and older; his cheeks had hollowed, and there was a stubborn set to his mouth. He never sat in the swing. His ostentatious avoidance of the place irritated Mattie; she did not want him closer, but his dogged etiquette invariably sent her longings on the wing. While she answered Cameron mechanically, John himself seemed sitting by her side, quiet and tender, waiting. And her arms ached for him.

She wrote him long letters and got long letters in reply. Occasionally she read parts to her mother; descriptions of fraternity rush, accounts of the big games, odds and ends of Campus pleasantry. More often she studied the letters silently, while her mother sewed and nodded, sometimes asking, "What's it about this time?" If the girl responded, she would pay scant attention, but if Mattie shook her head impatiently, Mrs. Joyce would watch her daughter frowningly, and bite her lips.

Of late the woman had become querulous. She suffered from rheumatism in her hands, so that her fingers swelled and ached till she could not hold a needle. This new restlessness of Mattie's worried her; an obscure sense of guilt in keeping the girl so shut in, mingled with the ever-present consciousness of poverty, made the mother uneasy. Back of it lay an old heart-ache that was stirring to life again as her child seemed drifting from her.

One night Mattie raised her head from John's latest letter and exclaimed:

"Listen, Mother! It's part of a paper that he wrote for a competition in his Philosophy class. He says it got second prize, but that it stirred up an awful row---" She caught herself, but too late.

"Why should it stir up a row?" demanded Mrs. Joyce. Mattie was silent.

"Why, daughter? Go on with the story," her mother ordered impatiently, and with suspicion in her tone.

"Oh, things he said about religion," answered the girl reluctantly. "Some of the class didn't agree and--- But it's no difference, Mother. I was excited because he got a prize and---"

"Let me see it." Mrs. Joyce reached for the letter, and met a shock. Mattie leaped to her feet, holding the paper tight against her blouse. A blaze of resistance was in her eyes, and something more-naked antagonism.

"No, you sha'n't !" she cried. The tension of her body went out in her voice, and instantly she relented.

Mrs. Joyce raised a trembling hand to her temple, poking helplessly at a strand of gray hair. She looked beaten, and old, and somehow at bay.

"I'll read some of it to you, Mother?" said her daughter quietly.

"Yes, some of it," the woman murmured bitterly, half to herself.

"John says, 'It is impossible for a man to discard religion unless he discards consciousness, and it is just as impossible for him to accept the shibboleths of churches unless he discards reason."

Mrs. Joyce gave an impatient jerk, but Mattie read on:

'So the true religion that no man can escape is to be sought within himself; it is private, personal, all his own; it lasts as tong as he lasts, and when he is gone, it too has vanished, because this true religion cannot be handed on to another any more than a soul can be handed on. Indeed, that is the test. Once religion is put into words you may be sure it is second-hand. It may work for me or it may not; there is no certainty about it, because it has now become codified, fitted for general consumption. It is now merely a set of precepts. They may be excellent, or they may be foolish, but whether the one or the other or a mingling of both, they are not to be thought my religion. That must belong to me, and me only; nothing can be truly personal to more than one soul. And---'"

Mattie hesitated.

"Go on," said her mother grimly.

"'And for that reason I choose to abide by the authority of my own being, and let all other pass.'"

The girl finished in a low tone that yet had a subtone of pride and defiance.

Mrs. Joyce had with difficulty restrained herself during this exposition. Behind her glasses her eyes snapped with anger.

"So that's it!" she sneered. "Why the young fool! 'The authority of my own being!' The whole screed is parrot-talk that he's caught from his father. That's Harry Malleson to the life, only he'd never waste his time saying it all."

"How could John have caught it then if Mr. Malleson never said it?" demanded Mattie swiftly.

"Oh-Heaven knows! By watching his father, maybe."

". . . Mattie, darling---" Mrs. Joyce's voice became tender; she clutched the girl's arm and peered at her anxiously. "I'm afraid of all this. Do you know that Harry Malleson is a terrible man? And now John . . . and you so fond of him . . . ."

"Why, Mother! Terrible? Mr. Malleson's the kindest man we know. Everybody likes him . . . And remember what . . ."

"That's just it, my dear," went on Mrs. Joyce, calmly now, "he's kind to everybody, just as most men are kind to children. And all the while he's shut up there in himself, laughing at them. Nobody ever gets really close to him---they just can't do it. Why, I could tell you some things about poor Emma Malleson that'd make you cry. I've known her---"

''But, Mother---"

Mrs. Joyce, however, was not to be stopped.

"---known her ever since she was married, and there've been times when she's nearly died, she was that lonesome. . . . And all the while her husband was there, going and coming, and joking as he always does---"

"How do you know all this?" asked Mattie. She sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. The letter crumpled in her fingers.

"I know it, I tell you!" Her mother tapped the table vehemently. "And now John's going to be another of the same. And you . . . She stopped and dabbed at the gray swirl of hair on her forehead, in that helpless way. Tears were glistening behind her spectacles. But the girl was not softened.

"Mother," she said slowly, "have you forgotten what Mr. Malleson did for us---and---and---Father?" The last word was a whisper. It was the first time in years that either of them had mentioned Mr. Joyce.

The woman seemed to draw together and settle, as if some physical support had been removed from about the flaccid figure. Her twisted, swollen hands became motionless on the faded blue checks of her apron. For a time she was silent. The clock ticked on the mantel; the pane of the front window vibrated with the passing of a trolley-car. Mattie sat erect and accusing.

When Mrs. Joyce looked up, her eyes, peering from the worn-out face, had dulled and darkened. She glanced aimlessly about the little room, moving her head slowly, as if the effort pained her.

"No," she muttered, in the hesitant, confused way of an old woman. "No---I've not forgotten. But ---Again her gaze wavered over the narrow walls. "Maybe it'd have been better it Harry Malleson hadn't helped. I'm---I'm thinking so these days." Her voice gained a spark of energy. "If Will---your father---had gone to prison he might have come back to us-afterward."

Mattie slipped to her knees and wound her arms about her mother's waist. John's letter fell to the floor, forgotten.

"We are lonely, aren't we, Mumsie dear," the girl murmured, pressing her face against the smooth, cool stuff of the apron.

A month later John had a letter from Mattie, beginning:

"John, I've got a job! It's on the Journal, attending to the want-ads, and so forth. I have to sit at part of a desk and take down the names, and number of words, and collect the money. Mr. Reynolds got me the place. Your father wanted me to take a position with him; sort of secretary, I guess. But mother thought this would he better. . .

"It was hard to 'step out,' and Mother didn't like it at all. I can't tell exactly how I came to do it, except that I've been discontented with just moping round the house. But I do know when I decided. I was running the carpet-sweeper over the rug in the living-room, and the handle of the old machine came out of its socket. It had done it millions of times before-in fact, it always did. But that day was somehow different . . . . I just couldn't bend down to fix the handle, and go on sweeping. I felt that if I ever looked at the thing again I'd go crazy! . . . Mother isn't sure that I haven't . ..........."

John was not entirety pleased, but thought he understood. He wrote a tender letter in reply, full of jocose references to the "little business woman." But he couldn't imagine how Mrs. Joyce could be so foolish as to think the Journal job a better one than a place in his father's office.

Sophomore year rolled on, comfortable in its attributes, but not exciting. Upon John grew that affection which no one can escape who walks long under campus trees; that naïve and sentimental fondness at once fatuous and deep, that clings to a man long afterward, and that has been known, at mention of Alma Mater, to show up soft in gnarled citizens otherwise hard-shelled as the devil himself. To a peculiar degree the Indiana milieu was created to inspire love. It has the unspoiled generosity, the frankness, the toil, the taciturn courage and the exasperating ineptness of natural man himself. One listens to the winds sighing through the beeches, or plods through autumnal drizzle with gaze divided between the cracks of the Board Walk and that miraculous personal vision that for no two people is produced alike, whether it be conjured from books, or from inner song, or from liquor, or from a co-ed's smile, or from all together. Because of this one berates Indiana and loves her doggedly.

The annual State Banquet of the fraternity took place at Indianapolis the night before Thanksgiving. At this function "brothers" from all the Indiana chapters gathered to eat, drink, hear reports, drink, meet brothers from other chapters, drink, listen to humorous speeches, acquire an insight into the mystic potency of brotherhood, and drink.

Kempton, John, and Madox left the banquet room about nine-thirty. As they were passing the entrance to the bar, the sound of hoarse, impassioned oratory reached their ears.

"That's Nesbit," remarked Kempton. "We'd better take him with us.''

"Oh, let the fool alone," exclaimed John impatiently. "He'll be too limp to handle, and the other tanks'll see him home."

"Unbrotherly," murmured Kempton. "Besides, I myself would relish a cool, chaste beer." John and Madox followed him to the bar-room.

Nesbit, a small chap, with a drooping, mournful nose and a tremendous voice, was exhorting a group of admirers on his favorite topic---the offensiveness of eastern college men. He had reached a stage of inebriety where a marked hiatus existed between his statements and any reasonable cause for them. But from experience with Nesbit the boys knew that he would progress into a gentle, lamb-like grieving, rather than into riotness or paralysis. The orator was roaring:

"An', boysh---when I discov'd that east'n memb' of noble f rat'nty was 'bout make speech up there"---he waved a stein wildly---"boysh,---I felt-p'luted-thash it---p'luted----an' I blush and came out, thinkin' that by no manner 'f means"---here he caught sight of Kempton, stopped, blew his nose, and called out:

"Hey, Kemp !---you're schol---scholar. Get this. Notice ----I don' say by no means---thash vulgar. I shay---by no manner means---thash el'gant."

Without difficulty they persuaded Nesbit to accompany them. The cool air steadied his legs, but he insisted upon lending an arm to Madox, protesting that the latter was not quite himself.

"Poor Madox's far from well," he confided to John, peering solicitously up at the big fellow. "Now me---"Im 'n perfeck health---except m' eyes. And mustn't take chance with eyes---I'll go to-morrow---c'nsult----an oct---c'nsult an octopus."

All went smoothly until they were passing the Gayety Burlesque Theater. Here Nesbit halted. He pointed to the display board, picturing groups of bulbous, middle-aged ladies in tights.

"Come on, Carl," urged John, jerking his arm. But Nesbit refused to budge.

"I desire wimmen," he announced. "Sh'natural. Strong, vir-virulent man like me d'sires wimmen. Going in."

"You're too tight, Carl," remonstrated Madox. "You'll be thrown out and maybe pinched."

"Strong d'sire f'r wimmen," muttered Nesbit, making for the box-office. Finding it impossible to talk him out of it, Kempton agreed to get tickets, provided Nesbit would restrain his desire while they walked him about for fifteen minutes. At the end of that period he was tractable enough, promising solemnly to keep quiet in the theater. He obeyed literally, almost instantly falling asleep.

"We'll have to sit it out," whispered Kempton. "He'll raise a row if we try to leave." John nodded and Madox muttered, "This is an unholy place for an athlete like me. Look at the fleet of battleships on the stage!"

The air was thick with tobacco smoke. The orchestra wheezed and banged out frantic jazz music, the tramp and the Yiddish comedians spat jovially and called each other royal Siberian bloodhounds; the weary chorus performed its vulgar and pitiful gyrations. The ingénue stood over the footlights and sang in a piercing voice some banality about the peace and happiness of "Yankeeland" compared with the death and misery in "Poilu-land"---which she pronounced "Poy-loo-land." Nesbit woke and wept bitterly, mumbling:

"S'terrible. Mus' enlist to-morrow 'thout fail"---then fell asleep again.

Suddenly the cymbals clanged, and the lights went out, except in a lurid patch at the center of the stage. The bored audience sat up with instantaneous alertness-the feature of the performance, the "Oriental dance."

Years afterward John could recall with what shocked incredulity he watched this "act." Women had always been to him beings dissociated from the spirit of obscenity. He could conceive of them as coarse, perhaps even profane, but he had never before seen a woman deliberately set her face and body to work to arouse mere animal lust. He was repelled, yet fascinated.

As the dancer shook her breasts, rattling the scanty shields of beads, Malleson could hear about him avid breathing, could see the voracious glint in the eyes of men and boys. Furtively he glanced at Kempton, and a quick wave of shame for his own emotion suffused him at sight of the other's serene face. Surely this business was ugly, and yet. . . -Maybe some of life was here. After all, what was simulated so crudely in the trumped-up passion of that writhing white creature was part of every man's inheritance.

He remained silent as they piloted Nesbit to bed, and until Madox also had turned in. The boy was shy about his feelings before all but Kempton. As the two were taking a midnight smoke, Malleson suddenly burst out:

"Kemp, I'm probably a prig, but I feel dirty all through! How can any woman debase herself as that girl did tonight? Weren't you disgusted?"

"A bit. But not entirely with the Princess Peruna, or whatever her name was. Take another slant at the question. Here's a lady doing the best she can in her own way to earn a living. You'll admit she did it pretty well. Now how much of that indecency was her own? Think; she does that stunt twice a day for maybe ten months of the year. And why? Because she feels it?"

"That's just it!" exclaimed the other vehemently. "She doesn't. But she does her damnedest to---"

"Hold on. After all, you know, we and a whole theaterful of other lechers paid our cash to encourage her," remarked Kempton drily.

"Bah! You're immoral," growled John. His companion nodded.

"Probably. And you, son, are irate, partly because your good training revolts, and partly because what the bluenoses would call the devil in you was secretly pleased. How about it?"

"Well," responded the other reluctantly, "there's no use trying to escape you. I suppose you're right."

"We seem to have witnessed one of those 'shows that make you think,'" grinned Kempton. "But here's what I've been thinking about. You remember that sob-song about the soldiers 'over there'? Cheapest stuff, of course. But the idea isn't cheap. Do you know, as the days go by, and I read the papers, I feel more and more that I'm standing like a blind fool in the shade, while the best of life is slipping past. Not our war, they say. Well, what's that got to do with it? With you or me? I don't have a national life to worry about, but I do have a personal life. And nothing's so worrisome to my personal life as the idea that I'm missing something big."

"What'd you get out of it except maybe a bullet in the ribs?" inquired John cynically. But Kempton's words had reached an obscure spring within him, once before touched ever so lightly.

"I'd get out of it a kind of freedom---and certainly the best thrill that this old world has to offer!"

"Now it's my turn to dissect," declared John, accusingly. "I know your real motive---'material, material'---for what? For a book! How about that?"

A slight flush tinged Kempton's pale face. He nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing.

"That, perhaps, first of all. But not just that. . ."

He sat up with a jerk, and slapped the chair-arm. For Kempton it was a violent gesture.

"At any rate if this row is still going on by the end of June, I'm going to offer myself, without pay, and expecting only moderately good rations, to the French government."

"In what line? You're too thin for a soldier."

"Ambulance driver." The answer was prompt.

"Thought it all out, haven't you? Or is this an inspiration from the song?" queried John mockingly. But his companion was serious now.

"Inspiration nothing! It's grown on me all year---and next June I act. Better come along!"

In June Kempton did act. Malleson stood with the other members of the Chapter on the station platform, and watched the tall figure, with its scholarly stoop, climb aboard the train; saw the fine face light with its flitting smile, and caught the casual wave of the hand. Kempton gone! Leaving as only Kempton could, with no emergence from his habitual calm, no slightest loss of his old detachment.

For weeks afterward John saw his friend, in fancy, curiously dual; the khaki-clad shell of a man, at the wheel of an ambulance that rolled over white roads through sunlight and death alike, and within the shell the real Kempton that so few knew; the true Kempton, who gazed forth, imperturbably, surprised at nothing, taking the whole vast war for "material." And within himself Malleson heard at intervals a careless, persuasive echo: "Better come along!"

AN evil man, watching the years 1915 and 1916, might have shouted insulting gibes at America, or a good man might have screamed warnings. With relentless, beautiful inevitability, apparently casual things were happening. A slow fever was rising and spreading; words as well as battle-fire acquired a new and fearful potency. This novel power of words reached its dizzy height on April 5, 1917.

Three months later, John and Mattie took the early interurban car for Hudson Lake. They were dressed for roughing it, in tweed and stout boots. The girl wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, for the sun would be hot on the water. John was already brown as an acorn from many days on the ball field. They chattered like children as the car rushed through the fresh morning. The breeze that poured in was as fragrant as if invisible flowers and leaves were whipping their faces.

"Did you have any trouble getting the holiday?" shouted John, above the rush of the wind. Mattie had taken the big hat off, and her hair swirled and danced about her face.

She shook her head. "I've been faithful---and then you know---if I hadn't got permission I'd have quit them like a shot." She turned hastily to the window. The boy patted her hand that had tightened over the hat-brim. For an instant he was utterly miserable, but he forced the gaiety back to his face.

It was his next-to-last day at home. He had enlisted in the regular army Ambulance Corps, and was to report at Allentown, Pennsylvania, for short training before sailing for service with the French. So much and no more he had learned five days before, when he took his physical examination.

His decision had been suddenly announced, though it had been incubating ever since Kempton's departure. Occasional letters from Kemp, during the first few months, had helped it along. But the letters had ceased.

John was full of gratitude to his parents for the sensible way in which they had behaved. His father glanced up from his paper, rose, made one silent tour of the room, stopped before his son, and shot out a lean hand. In that curious instant the son almost chuckled to see the cuffs turned back, as always.

"Good enough, John," Mr. Malleson said, quietly. Only the terrific pressure of his handshake revealed his feeling. The next instant he had picked up his paper again.

Emma Malleson had given one little gasp that her son failed to hear. She came over and sat on the arm of his chair.

"Tell us the details, John," she asked calmly. Her husband alone, hidden behind his paper, upon which he saw not a single line, noted the agony in the carefully matter-of-fact voice.

When John had gone out Malleson laid his paper on the floor.

"Well, old girl?" he smiled.

Emma looked at him long and thoughtfully. Suddenly she leaned forward. He was startled by the blaze in her eyes and by her flushed cheeks.

"It's just what I want, Harry," she declared in a strange voice. "Believe it or not, I'm glad . . . It’s my chance!"

Puzzled, her husband gazed at her steadily. Then he comprehended. Raising his hand in a half salute, he exclaimed:

"Jove! Emma, you are a fighter! And I think he'll come back, safe enough . . . . Meanwhile---can you carry on with this old hulk that loves you?"

Behind the words was an unuttered cry, unwonted, pleading and desolate, that drew Emma to him. Her touch was like a consecration. She fought back a fear and a specter with her own body's warmth. As the pain at her heart eased, she smiled and answered lightly:

"Indeed I can carry on with the old hulk---that I love. We're both good carriers-on, Harry!"

But of all this John knew nothing.

Hudson Lake lies a quarter of a mile from the interurban line, behind a grove, where on Sundays picnic tables are laid, and factory-girls from the city, with their "fellows," loll about all morning, eat canned beans and drink "pop" at noon, and in the afternoon spread newspapers on the ground and drowse spoonily through the warm hours. The genius of the place is the fumbling god of calf-love, who once in a while initiates ridiculous or tragic quarrels, but usually contents himself with the amorous buffoonery that is the concomitant of Sabbath picnics. On the morrow the grove will be deserted, but by the empty cans and the crumpled comic sheets the grumbling caretaker knows that the god has been there.

John could easily have chosen a more romantic spot for the holiday, but he shrank from solitude with Mattie. Though the uneasiness was unconfessed, and dimly realized, he dared not venture beyond the sight and hearing of banality.

At the little dock he hired a boat, a stubby, heavy craft, purposely so designed for the use of unskilled oarsmen. They paddled about, exploring the coves, drifted close along shore, peering into the shallows for turtles and crawfish.

"I've always liked to potter round the shady nooks by rocks or big trees," mused the girl. "Ever Since Water Babies. Remember how cool and peaceful it made you feel to hear about the deep pools where the little water-things slept? Years and years ago, when I had some kind of fever, and was burning up, Mother read it to me. I wanted to creep out of bed and somehow slip down, down and stay with them for ever."

"Doesn't it seem queer that we were once so small and helpless that our mothers had to read to us?" asked John, and then was sorry he had spoken.

They ate lunch in the grove, near a spring. When the sandwiches, meat-loaf, and pickles were finished, Mattie unwrapped a mysterious package she had been carrying with infinite care, and triumphantly displayed a box of strawberries.

"They're hard to carry, but nothing tastes better. See---here's the sugar in this little box. We both dip into the same plate, my lord. Are you content?"

The sun was blazing on the lake, but in the shade of the grove the air had a pleasant, languorous quality. Even the mosquitoes, whose drowsy hum was incessant, lacked energy to attack whole-heartedly. John placidly smoked his pipe, while Mattie, sitting with her back against a tree, prodded the soft earth with a stick.

After moments of silence, he lazily remarked:

"Miss Joyce, do you know you're a remarkable woman? We've been lolling here at least half an hour, and up to date you've not flipped a single bit of dirt at me with that stick, nor thrown grass in my hair."

"Must that be done?"

"Invariably, except in the case of husband and wife."

Mattie leaped to her feet. "I'm going to douse my face in that spring," she cried gaily. "Give me your big handkerchief instantly, for a towel."

"I'll go too," he replied, rising; "the towel also must do for us both, my lady."

They walked a few steps along the path toward the spring. Suddenly she was in his arms, trembling hands clutching at the buttons of his coat.

"Oh, lover!" she whispered, "you will come back, won't you! Say you will . . ."

Startled by the vehement fear in her eyes, he held her close, feeling the passionate rebellion of her heart, and the life of her breasts against him. After a little while she drew away. Her smile was tremulous.

"And I wanted this day to be perfect," she said, shaking her head slowly. "Now I've spoiled it."

"T shouldn't call it spoiled," he replied deliberately.

"I mean-somehow I felt that it would be better if you didn't---touch me . . . . Do you understand?"

He nodded. "I understand."

They spoke little during the slow voyage back to the boathouse. Yellow light, diffused through her thin hatbrim, glowed richly over Mattie's face, and her eyes were dark and still. Malleson, pulling at the clumsy oars, watched her steadily. They had abandoned all effort at gaiety, but not until they had docked the boat, exchanged pleasantries with the keeper, and seated themselves on the grassy bank by the car-track, did they fully acknowledge the somber intruder that had dogged their steps all day.

"There's no use playing the ostrich," declared John. "I can't dodge the fact that I might get killed. But I don't expect to. And barring that, I'll come back to you, sweetheart. But suppose---would you want a fellow minus a couple of legs or with his face burned off? That might happen too, you know."

She did not answer; and in refraining probably set a record, for this same question was used by nine recruits out of ten, with devastating results. Yet it was not intentionally melodramatic.

The car was slow in coming, though from time to time there sounded a faint singing along the wire, which mingled with the hum of insects and the restless whisper of the trees, through which the afternoon sunlight slanted in broadened rays. The two were silent. John felt himself adrift in some languorous half-world, just on the edge of reality, but from which he could slip by the slightest effort, a physical movement of any sort. He was acutely conscious of the girl beside him, yet in an impersonal way. Her quiet breathing seemed part of the broad white day that was drawing to a close, and he had a curious reluctance to break the spell that lay over his spirit. But gradually his thoughts crept back from their wandering and centered over a tiny spot that rankled and annoyed.

"Mattie, why does your mother dislike me now? I've noticed it for months. I don't understand."

The subject must have been close to the surface of her reverie, for she replied instantly and simply:

"You're taking me from her. She worries over what you'll do with me." He started, became angry, and instantly softened.

"Do you worry?"

She shook her head. Her low voice crept straight to his heart.

"You've been taking me for years, John. You know that."

Suddenly his anger returned, the flaring ruthless anger of youth that is quick to resent the shadow of an obstacle, or any question of its right of way.

"But what is it? Distrust? My morals? Doesn't she know that I'm pure as the driven snow?" His voice was bitter. Mattie took his hand in both of hers, not caressingly, but with a strange insistence that rebuked his petulance and bade him face the truth. Listening, he felt in her that new maturity that was to him at once a joy and an uneasiness. She told him of her mother's belief that he was going the way of his father, and that that way was cruel; that her mother saw loneliness and misery, but no happiness for the wife of a man who had no God; that in her mother's eyes Harry Malleson was lost and that he, John, had learned so well his father's doctrine that nothing remained for her to do but to pray that her daughter might somehow escape.

The girl spared him no part of her mother's enmity. Her voice was level, but full of a passion more moving than vehemence. Her hands pressed his, emphasizing every word, and her eyes never left his face. It was impossible for him to be sure how much of her mother's feeling the girl shared, but perversely he did not care. Or perhaps characteristically, he did not care. What mattered now was Mattie herself. With arrogant exultation he silently blessed that stupid, old-fashioned woman for her blindness, because in some obscure way it made her daughter finer and himself more significant. He had no time for introspection now. What he was, he was; and no words could cut deep enough to hurt him. These words were priceless and sweet! He almost chuckled under their flattery.

Mattie was pale when she finished speaking, and turned her face away.

"And you, Mattie ?" He could scarcely keep the flippancy from his tone.

She responded brokenly, "Don't ask me now."

Long after John had gone to bed that night he heard the door of his room open softly, and caught a glimpse of his mother, small and white and quiet, against the dim tight from the hall. She tiptoed to the bedside. He closed his eyes, and under the sheet his body grew rigid against temptation---the temptation to let slip all the years of his life, back to babyhood. He wanted to cry and to be comforted; to be told that now he must go to sleep. With his face to the pillow and his eyes tight closed, he prayed that she would not speak. It was not merely the grief of parting that he dreaded; here in this old familiar room, with his mother betiding over him, seeing him not as he was to-day, but small and helpless and needing her, the boy felt in the immeasurable force of her love a power to encompass and possess. He dared not open his eyes.

After what seemed many minutes her fingers flitted over his hair, lingered at his temple, and were gone. He heard the rustle of her gown and the door closed softly.