Eileen Moretta

“ From the doorway Maida had stood and watched them. It was the doorway of a summer bungalow, lovely in its season, and of much beauty, albeit of a bleak and lonely sort, in this midwinter of snows. The great pine sentinels stood impassively erect, and their uniforms were whiter than any pipe-clayed trappings of militant man. The silver birches shivered and shook in the late wintry sun; and the poplars—those ridiculous “popples,” with their bare, gaunt long legs, to her the Clan-na-Gaels of the forest—stood stiff and stoical, like Scotsmen on parade. ”

“ The sun was sanity, was health, was the Law and Order of things. With doors and windows of heart and soul opened wide to it, self pities perished like sickly weeds.
She sat before the great open fireplace, a book on her knee, Sir Bedivere stretched in lazy abandon at her feet, the long, slim nose of the Lady Babbie against her gown. ”

“ She had seen the beautiful fabric of her married life,—or what she had dreamed, when she had married Phillip Lassard, that life would be,—which she had perseveringly, with the pathetic persistence of the woman clinging to her ideals, sought ever that it should be, torn asunder daily, trampled in the mire, spat upon. ”

“ She let her eyes rest on the scarlet line: she had always loved color, and light, and warmth, and kaleidoscopic movement. Her inner vision pictured the city at this hour: The carriages would all be rolling homeward from the park, the ring of the horses—the grub toilers of the day, hastening to the metamorphosis that would transform them into butterflies of night. The electric bulbs would be sowing their blossoms by millions across the dusk, till the whole city was one riotous hotbed of color. ”

“ The dogs, and the great ruddy heart of the fire, and, moving to and fro in the outer room, her broad back casting grotesque shadows on the firelit wall, the old serving woman, who would lay down her life, if need be, any day, for her,—these things counted. Ah! how well worth living was life, if one but sought and held fast to the “worth whiles” of it! ”

“ The city had claimed and held the pleasure loving, lotus dreaming side of her; but there was sterner fiber, bequeathed by grim old Puritan forebears ere they had met and crossed—never utterly merged—with the soft seductions of the South. Stephen Strong, M. D.,—the man, not the physician.—had detected these elements in her long before. “Adversity will fashion you,” he had said to her once in his usual direct, way, “if she ever takes you in hand, into a wondrous being that will surprise the being you are now.” ”

“ And yet this weak, vicious, unspeakable creature, who had alternately mouthed obscenity and raved curses through the night for his pitiful drug, had assailed her ears, bespattered her sensibilities, fouled the whole intangible gossamer fabric of that wondrous inner spirit of woman that man, even clean of hands and gentle of thought, can hope to handle without. ”

“ He gripped them hard for one font moment, the eyes of the physician keen, the eyes of the man—what clamored in the eyes of the man? As she began vaguely to question with an unaccountable hurry of heartbeats, the dominant forces of a sternly self commanded nature again assumed supremacy. He stooped to pat the head of Sir Bedivere, who was insistently demanding recognition. ”

“ Sir Bedivere growled and bared his teeth.
Involuntarily Maida’s clasped hands covered her eyes. They fell at the weird, uncanny sound, neither brute nor human, that was not from the dog. With that half snarl, half scream, Philip Lassard crumpled up weakly and fell at Strong’s feet.
Instantly he was bending over him, the primitive man sunk in the scientist. He looked up at her almost humbly. “Forgive me!” he begged. “I lost myself. But—” he shot a glance up at that sinister hole in the wall, and then back to the beautiful head of this exquisite woman. “God!” ”

“ Maida had fallen on her knees; but her attitude was not of abasement. Her whole face was as one glorified. “Thank God!” she cried. “Oh, thank God!” The tears were running down her fact; but her eyes were shining. “Forgive me!” she cried. “Oh, Stephen, it was an awful thing to do; but I had to know! He,” with a shudder toward the bed, “I had believed in him, once. I could not trust even the greatest of men—you—without a test. Oh, you will forgive me! I dared not trust again without!”
Only partly comprehending, he looked down at her. Her eyes were pleading as a child's ”