“ If he only openly could have snapped his fingers in the face of public opinion, in the teeth of his own mutinous soul—openly—and told them he cared more for Helen's untroubled laugh than for them all, and be damned to 'em! If he only could have died! But no: he must stand and be still to the most thankless task that ever called for a hidden loyalty. Helen must not know of the travail of his love, lest that defeat love's purpose. It was too late, too late, for knowledge to do other than tear her heart-strings out, blight her young soul, and write Remorse eternally upon her life. ”

“ Rutledge waited till her tears were spent, and then tenderly he protested.
"But Elise, you will not make any such decree as that. There's no need that we should wait on Helen's account."
"Not while she lives, not while she lives," Elise repeated, looking into his eyes. "I cannot permit your love to bring you to—"
"My love is all-sufficient, Elise; and all else is nothing since you love me. Do not let your pride defeat us of our happiness, sweetheart. Already it—"
"Pride? I have no pride any more for you, my dear. I do not conceal my heart's love nor its woes from you. ”

“ You champion Harvard's name enthusiastically against Jimmie Radwine's gibes, but you affect to be careless of Harvard's diploma. You carry the Harvard culture, and yet—you choose to be a footman."
Hayward winced. Helen tempered the thrust by adding:
"You do a soldier's work, but decline a soldier's honours. You are too modest. You overdo the part."
"I hope yet to do something worthy of Harvard, Miss Helen. I am not without ambition, however much you may think it. Indeed I fear I have too much ambition."
A Harvard man need set no limit to his ambition. ”

“ Then he was bent down above the little lady in that manner full of all gentleness and deference Elise knew so well, and was saying something to her,—as if nothing else in all the world was worth while,—which sent a rich, red blush to over-colour the blossom's white and pink.
"So you keep in practice of your arts at all hazards," thought Miss Phillips, "even at the expense of young things like that! ... I hope that some woman will teach you your lesson yet!"—and she turned to Captain Howard with a bewildering smile, and did not look at Mr. Rutledge again that evening. ”

“ He looked and looked and looked at her while every variant tremor of love and pride and impatience swept over his heart-strings. He saw the most notable men in America, men whose business was world-politics, bow in evident admiration before her beauty, and linger to barter persiflage for her smiles and airy speeches: and she was his wife.
He saw her receive the magnificent Chief of Staff of the Army, resplendent in the uniform of his exalted rank: her, the wife of Sergeant Graham of "the 10th." And that towering figure with the stamp of "Briton" in every massive line? ”

“ But this recession below the father's type!—this resurgence of the negro blood, with its "vile unknown ancestral impulses!"—there came to him an almost overpowering desire, such as had come of late with increasing frequency but never with such physical weakness as now: the desire to lie down at full length and to rest.
As he talked volubly and scatteringly to Helen, his shaking soul cried against fate. Why should Nature have chosen his Helen, the very flower of his heart, as a subject upon which to demonstrate her eccentric laws! ”

“ Her physical resistance seemed a match for his strength.
"It is useless, Elise," he said to her as with tense muscles he strove to subdue her will and her wilful pride. "I have always loved you, and now that I know you love me nothing shall divide us. Why should you hold out against love?"
But Elise's resistance was fixed and set. Rutledge pleaded and begged and made love to her with all the tenderness of his heart and the energy of his passion for her, and exerted his physical strength to break down her defence. ”

“ Elise had met Evans with something of her old-time friendliness and he was in an uncertain state of happiness.
"Now don't make an ass of yourself because the Lady Beautiful is in a mood to be gracious," he solemnly admonished his heart. "Sir Monocle may just have proposed and been accepted."
The thought was as bracing as a cold shower and gave him a vigorous grip on his rebellious affections. Then he danced with her—on the wide, dimly lighted veranda—a slow, lotus-land waltz, just coming back in vogue after more than a decade of galloping two-steps. ”

“ And the tenderness of his love for her made him to tremble. In a moment a war was on within him, and the struggle between his pride and his love shook him as with an ague.
But he knew the end from the beginning. As the cheering died away Helen dominated his thoughts as she dominated his heart,—and he did make a speech to the convention. It was not a forcible speech nor a very long speech, for a man cannot think about one thing and discourse very effectively about another. It was on the order of a prayer-meeting talk, consisting mainly of platitudes and good advice. ”

“ Please sing. Mrs. Hazard, if you have any influence with this administration will you not use it here?"
"Authority is better than influence," said Lola. "Elise, march to that piano."
Elise complied with an exaggerated air of obedience.
"Since I am singing under orders, I will sing only according to orders. What shall it be?"
"Sing My Rosary," said Lola. "That's an old one—and the dearest."
"I commend to you Mrs. Hazard for sentiment, Mr. Rutledge. Her honeymoon is not yet on the wane." Having thus made Lola responsible for the song, Elise sang it without further delay or hesitation. ”

“ Who wrote it, Elise?"
"I forget—if I ever knew," said Elise.
"Woman, of course," Lola continued; and Rutledge interpolated "Why?"
"Because a woman always mixes her religion with her love—if she has any religion. A man may have one or the other, or both, but he never confuses them."
"Pardon me for taking issue with you, Mrs. Hazard; but with many a man his love for a woman is his only religion."
"Which means, Mr. Rutledge, that he has love—not religion."
As Rutledge turned to Mrs. Hazard Elise had the first opportunity to look at him unobserved. ”

“ Naturally you ask me when the time of equality in racial excellence will come. I answer that I commit myself unreservedly to the support of every means used for the negro's uplifting; I admit—nay more, I contend—that we white men cannot be dogs in the manger with civilization; we cannot as a Christian people even hope that the negro race may not come up to our level, nor can there be any reason why we should refuse to acknowledge that race as our equal if it shall indeed become our equal. ”

“ Rutledge turned away dazed by the reply to his heart's question. "There is no answer!"—as if he were a "Buttons" who had carried to her ladyship an inconsequential message which deserved no reply. He could not get his mind to comprehend the import of it; and he was walking back down the hallway with a vexed frown upon his face trying to untangle his thoughts, when Helen Phillips passed him and, seeing him in such a mood after his parting ride with Elise, prodded him with—
"None but heroes need apply, Mr. Rutledge. I warned you." ”

“ Hayward stood helpless and terror-stricken before the door, and his staying only drove Helen into more horrible paroxysms.
"Come away, man, come away," the doctor commanded; and he obeyed weakly.
"Great God," he said when he was back in the physician's office, "that is awful, awful! How can she live, doctor, if she is shaken and torn by such dementia as that?"
"I cannot say whether she will live, Mr. Graham," the doctor replied; "but her periods of dementia give her the only relief that she enjoys. As a remedy for exhaustion they are our only hope for her life so far appearing." ”

“ She looked up at him from under drooping lashes. Her mental decision came before her actual complaisance. She revelled for a time in the ecstasy of her mental abandon to love, and trembled in the very joy of it.
"Yes, yes, I love you,"—and with closing eyes she lifted her face in surrender. A long, long caress intoxicates them, and then, as if in expiation for the blessed delirium of it—
"But not while Helen—not until Helen—oh, it is too horrible to wait for your own sister to die!"—and she is crying her heart out against his shoulder. ”

“ My Harvard training fortunately supplies me with all but the purely technical knowledge required, and makes it possible for me to acquire that without assistance. I will win yet, Miss Helen."
"A Harvard man must win." Helen spoke with dogmatic faith.
"And I must win,—not only a commission, but the 'well-done' which is a soldier's real recompense for a life-time's service. Not only my 'Harvard lineage,' as you once called it, but my grandfather's death, my father's life, my mother's toil and sacrifice, lay the compulsion of endeavour and success upon me. ”

“ All things human must have an end,—and Mr. Phillips' subterfuge was very human. His expedients finally failed, he had not a word more to say: and yet he was no nearer being prepared for the inevitable than before. The supreme test was come, and his spirit cowered before it. For the first time in his life he greeted flight as a deliverer, and decided to run away from danger.
"Well, little woman, I must go and rid myself of the dust of travel;" and he was half way to the door when Helen's weak voice arrested him.
"Are you not going to notice the baby, daddy?" ”

“ In the inventory of loss were comradeship and loyalty and faith and affection and friendliness and inspirations and memories—burned to ashes, or charred and blackened and wrecked. Tragedy? The elemental tragedy of all the eternities is in the death of a friendship.... Despite the praises he had sung, Hayward might have told Helen about it—if the iron had not gone so deep into his soul. Men will parade their lighter hurts and gabble of them for pastime or to entertain their neighbours, but death-wounds bring the silence with them. ”

“ He simply told me—quite abruptly—that he loved me, and, after some time, asked me for my answer. What was I to answer? When there is no question there can be no answer. So I told him there was no answer. If a man will insist upon an answer he must not be so stupid as to forget to put a question."
Elise chuckled inwardly as she constructed this specious defence. She was in very good humour with herself,—and with Lola.
"But promise me," she hurried on to say, "that you will not intimate to Mr. Rutledge that it is his stupidity that has swelled his bump of self-respect for these last four years." ”

“ Helen had given her husband a last laughing admonition, "since we must be clandestine against our wills, let's be romantic to the last most fiercely orthodox degree. No love-lit glances or conscious looks. You be a perfect footman with that indifferent and superior and high-and-mighty air while you can, for when your bondage actually begins you will never swagger again; and I will be so haughty as almost to spurn your very presence. We must make no foolish attempts at conversation, and when we write must deliver our letters personally into the hand, not trusting even the mails with our secret. ”

“ Would his self-respect permit him to kiss her whom his self-respect would not permit him to marry because her father received negroes at his table? "Self-respect" would be making some peculiar distinctions in that case,—even if everything be conceded to a Southerner's ideas of "social equality." A girl to be kissed, but not to be courted!—Elise's face burned at the thought. No, she would not insult herself by believing Mr. Rutledge's love had lost its chivalry—that he could deal with her on any such Tim-and-Bridget basis—there must be some other explanation.... ”

“ As Elise sat down in the shadow of the porch and unfolded The Post she experienced the most acute sensations of interest that had stirred her for months. Over and again she read that Mr. Rutledge had neither "the honour nor the hope to be engaged to" her.
After the first surprise, came anger. The publicity was very offensive; and, beyond that, the denial itself was to be resented. As she understood it, no gentleman has the right to deny an engagement to any lady—that was the woman's privilege: and for the man's denial to savour of meeting an accusation—unpardonable! ”

“ An occasional isolated negro may have broken the shackles of ignorance, measurably and admirably brought under control the half-savage passions of his nature, acquired palpable elegances of person and manner, and taken on largely the indefinable graces of culture: yet beneath all this creditable but thin veneer of civilization there slumber in his blood the primitive passions and propensities of his immediate ancestors, which are transmitted through him as latent forces of evil to burst out in his children and grandchildren in answer to the call of the wild. ”

“ Hayward answered carelessly, as if personal friendships with Presidents were very ordinary affairs for him. Lily Porter was a mite skeptical, but she hoped he spoke the truth, for it would more than confirm her estimate of him and would be such an effective counter to her father's nagging opposition.
"Oh, isn't that interesting! Tell me all about it!"
"Really I cannot. I have never told that, even to my mother. There is only one other person who knows of it. It is my one secret, and my life—that is, my future—depends largely upon it. There's too much at stake." ”