"I believe that you will help your friend by that advice which startled
me last night, but which I now begin to see more in than I did. Only

between alternate injuries, he may find it harder to choose which is the
least he can inflict, than you, who look on, find it. For in following

your argument, he benefits himself so plainly that the benefit to the
other person is very likely obscured to him. But, if you wish to, tell

him a Southern gentleman would feel he ought to be shot either way.
That's the honorable price for changing your mind in such a case."

No interpretation of this came to me. I planned and carried out my day
according to his suggestion; a slow dressing with much cold water, a slow

breakfast with much good hot coffee, a slow wandering beneath the dreamy
branches of Udolpho,--this course cleared my head of the Bombo, and

brought back to me our whole evening, and every word I had said to John,
except that I had lost the solution which, last night, the triangle had

held for me. At that moment, the triangle, and my whole dealing with the
subject of monogamy, had seemed to contain the simplicity of genius; but

it had all gone now, and I couldn't get it back; only, what I had
contrived to say to John about his own predicament had been certainly

well said; I would say that over again to-day. It was the boy and the
meaning of his words which escaped me still, baffled me, and formed the

whole subject of my attention, even when I was inside the Tern Creek
church; so that I retain nothing of that, save a general quaintness, a

general loneliness, a little deserted, forgotten token of human doings
long since done, standing on its little acre of wilderness amid that

solitude which suggests the departed presence of man, and which is so
much more potent in the flavor of its desolation than the virgin

wilderness whose solitude is still waiting for man to come.
It made no matter whether John had believed in the friend to whom I

intended writing advice, or had seen through and accepted in good part my
manoeuvre; he had considered my words, that was the point; and he had not

slept in his bed, but on it, if sleep had come to him at all; this I
found out while dressing. Several times I read his note over. "Between

alternate injuries he may find it harder to choose." This was not an
answer to me, but an explanation of his own perplexity. At times it

sounded almost like an appeal, as if he were saying, "Do not blame me for
not being convinced;" and if it was such appeal, why, then, taken with

his resolve to do right at any cost, and his night of inward contention,
it was poignant. "I believe that you will help your friend." Those words

sounded better. But--"tell him a Southern gentleman ought to be shot
either way." What was the meaning of this? A chill import rose from it

into my thoughts, but that I dismissed. To die on account of Hortense!
Such a thing was not to be conceived. And yet, given a high-strung

nature, not only trapped by its own standards, but also wrought upon
during many days by increasing exasperation and unhappiness while

helpless in the trap, and with no other outlook but the trap: the chill
import returned to me more than once, and was reasoned away, as, with no

attention to my surroundings, I took a pair of oars, and got into a boat
belonging to the lodge, and rowed myself slowly among the sluggish

windings of Tern Creek.
Whence come those thoughts that we ourselves feel shame at? It shamed me

now, as I pulled my boat along, that I should have thoughts of John which
needed banishing. What tale would this be to remember of a boy's life,

that he gave it to buy freedom from a pledge which need never have been
binding? What pearl was this to cast before the sophisticated Hortense?

Such act would be robbed of its sadness by its absurdity. Yet, surely,
the bitterest tragedies are those of which the central anguish is lost

amid the dust of surrounding paltriness. If such a thing should happen
here, no one but myself would have seen the lonely figure of John

Mayrant, standing by the window and looking out into the dark quiet of
the wood; his name would be passed down for a little while as the name of

a fool, and then he would be forgotten. "I believe that you will help
your friend." Yes; he had certainly written that, and it now came to me

that I might have said to him one thing more: Had he given Hortense the
chance to know what his feelings to her had become? But he would merely

have answered that here it was the duty of a gentleman to lie. Or, had he
possibly, at Newport, ever become her lover too much for any escaping

now? Had his dead passion once put his honor in a pawn which only
marriage could redeem? This might fit all that had come, so far; and

still, with such a two as they, I should forever hold the boy the woman's
victim. But this did not fit what came after. Perhaps it was the late

sitting of the night before, and the hushed and strange solitude of my
surroundings now, that had laid my mind open to all these thoughts which

my reason, in dealing with, answered continually, one by one, yet which
returned, requiring to be answered again; for there are times when our

uncomfortable eyes see through the appearances we have arranged for daily
life, into the actualities which lie forever behind them.

Going about thus in my boat, I rowed sleepiness into myself, and pushed
into a nook where shade from some thick growth hid the boat and me from

the sun; and there, almost enmeshed in the deep lattice of green, I
placed my coat beneath my head, and prone in the boat's bottom I drifted

into slumber. Once or twice my oblivion was pierced by the roaming honk
of the automobile; but with no more than the half-melted consciousness

that the Replacers were somewhere in the wood, oblivion closed over me
again; and when it altogether left me, it was because of voices near me

on the water, or on the bank. Their calls and laughter pushed themselves
into my drowsiness, and soon after I grew aware that the Replacers were

come here to see what was to be seen at Udolpho--the club, the old
church, a country place with a fine avenue--and that it was the church

they now couldn't get into, because my visit had disturbed the usual
whereabouts of the key, of which Gazza was now going in search. I could

have told him where to find it, but it pleased me not to disturb myself
for this, as I listened to him assuring Kitty that it was probably in the

cabin beyond the bridge, but not to be alarmed if he did not immediately
return with it. Kitty, not without audible mirth, assured him that they

should not be alarmed at all, to which the voice of Hortense
supplemented, "Not at all." They were evidently in a boat, which Hortense

herself was rowing, and which she seemed to bring to the bank, where I
gathered that Kitty got out and sat while Hortense remained in the boat.

There was the little talk and movement which goes with borrowing of a
cigarette, a little exclamation about not falling out, accompanied by the

rattle of a displaced oar, and then stillness, and the smell of tobacco
smoke.

Presently Kitty spoke. "Charley will be back to-night."
To this I heard no reply.

"What did his telegram say?" Kitty inquired, after another silence.
"It's all right." This was Hortense. Her slow, rich murmur was as

deliberate as always.
"Mr. Bohm knew it would be," said Kitty. "He said it wouldn't take five

minutes' talk from Charley to get a contract worth double what they were
going to accept."

After this, nothing came to me for several minutes, save the odor of the
cigarettes.

Of course there was now but one proper course for me, namely, to utter a
discreet cough, and thus warn them that some one was within earshot. But

I didn't! I couldn't! Strength failed, curiosity won, my baser nature
triumphed here, and I deliberately remained lying quiet and hidden. It

was the act of no gentleman, you will say. Well, it was; and I must
simply confess to it, hoping that I am not the only gentleman in the

world who has, on occasion, fallen beneath himself.
"Hortense Rieppe," began Kitty, "what do you intend to say to my brother

after what he has done about those phosphates?"
"He is always so kind," murmured Hortense.

"Well, you know what it means."
"Means?"

"If you persist in this folly, you'll drop out."
Hortense chose another line of speculation. "I wonder why your brother is

so sure of me?"
"Charley is a set man. And I've never seen him so set on anything as on

you, Hortense Rieppe."
"He is always so kind," murmured Hortense again.