"'Nothing, together. You are married.'

"'Well, I don't get any fun out of it, do I?'

"'No, maybe not. But I have a hunch I won't get much fun out of it, either.'

"'I forgot about the parsonage.' He considered a moment. 'All right, I'll hunt her up and have her get a divorce,' he volunteered cheerfully.

"He was very puzzled and perplexed when I vetoed that. He says I can't have the true artistic temperament, I am so ghastly religious. At any rate, I have not seen him since, and have not answered his notes. Now, don't weep over me, Carol, and think my young affections were trifled with. They weren't--because they didn't have time. But I am not taking any chances.

"Henceforth I get my sentiment second hand.

"The girl at our table, Emily Jarvis, who is a spherist, attributes all the good fortune that has come to you and David to the fact that at heart you are in harmony with the spheres. You don't know what a spherist is, and neither do I. But it includes a lot of musical terms, and metaphors, and is something like Christian Science and New Thought, only more so. Spherists believe in a life of harmony, and somehow or other they get the spheres back of it, and believe in immaterial matter, and that all physical manifestations are negative, and the only positive, or affirmative, is 'harmony.'

"Emily is very, very pretty, and that sort of excuses her for digging into the intricacies of spheral harmonies. Even such unmitigated nonsense as sphere control, spirit harmony, and mental submission, a.s.sumes a semblance of dignity when expounded by her cherry-red lips.

She speaks vacuously of being under world-dominance, and has absolutely no physical consciousness. She says so herself. If she ignores her tempting curves and matchless softness, she is the only one in the house who does. In fact, it is only the attraction of her very physical being, which she denies, that lends a species of sense to her harmonious converse. She and I are great friends. She says I am a harmonizer on the inside.

"She is engaged to a man across the hall, Rodney Carter. She has the room next to mine. His voice is deep and carrying, hers is clear and ringing, and the walls are thin. So I have benefited by most of their courtship. But the course of true love, you know. She has tried spiritually and harmoniously to convert him to immaterialism, but Rodney is very conscious of his physical, muscular, material being, and he hoots at her derisively, but tenderly.

"'Oh, cut it out, Emily,' he said, one evening. 'We can only afford one spirit in the family. One of us has got to earn a living.

Spirits, it seems, require plenty of steak and potatoes to keep them in harmony. I could not conscientiously lead you to the altar, even a spheral altar, if I were not prepared to pay house rent and coal bills.

One's enough, you can be our luxury.'

"'But, Rod, if you are in harmony you can earn our living so much more easily. You must get above this notion of material necessities. There are no such things.'

"'I don't believe it,' he interrupted coldly. 'There are material necessities. You are one of them. The most necessary in the world.

You may be harmonious, but you are material, too. That is why I love you. I couldn't be crazy about a melodious breath of air ghosting around the back yard. And I am not strong for disembodied minds, either. They make me nervous. They sound like skulls and cross-bones, and whitening skeletons to me. I love you, your arms, your face, all of you. It may not be proper to talk about it, but I love it. Can you imagine our minds embracing each other, thrilling at the contact,--oh, it's tommyrot. A fool--'

"'It may be tommyrot to you, Rod,' said Emily haughtily. 'But the inspiration of the matchless minds of the mystic men of the Orient--'

"'Inspiration of idiocy. What do mystic men of the Orient know about warm-blooded Americans, dead in love? I might kiss the air until I was blue in the face,--nothing to it,--but let me kiss you, and we are both aquiver, and--'

"'Rodney Carter, don't you dare say such things,' she cried furiously.

'It is insulting. Besides it has nothing to do with it. It isn't so anyhow. And what is more--'

"'There's nothing mysterious about us. Let the old Chinesers pad around in their bare feet and naked souls if they want to. We are children of light, we are, creatures of earth, earthly. We're--'

"'Oh, I can't argue with you, Rod,' she began confusedly.

"'I don't want you to. Kiss me. One kiss, Emily mine, will confound the whole united order of Maudlin Mystics. I am willing to risk all the anathemas contained in an inharmonious sphere for one touch of your lips. Go ahead with your sacred doctrine of universal and spiritual imbecility, but soften its harshness with worldly, physical, sin-suggesting kisses, and I am in tune with the infinite.'

"Then Emily broke the engagement, and Rodney, after relieving himself of more heretical opinions of spiritual simplicity and mystic madness, stalked unmelodiously away, slamming her door, and his own after it.

"What I didn't hear of it myself, Emily told me afterward, for we are very confidential.

"The whole house was intensely interested in the denouement. Rodney sat stolidly at his table, crunching his food, gazing reproachfully and adoringly at Emily's proudly lifted head. Emily, for all her unconsciousness of physical necessity, lost her appet.i.te, and grew pale. The mental and physical may have nothing in harmony, as she says, but certainly her mental upheaval resulting from the lack of Rodney's demonstrations of love, affected her physical appet.i.te as well as her complexion.

"When Rodney met Emily in the halls, he made her life miserable.

"'Good morning, Long Sin Coo.' 'h.e.l.lo, Ghostie.' 'Hey, Spirit, may I borrow a nip of brandy to make an ethereal c.o.c.ktail for my imaginary nightcap?'

"And he opened his transom and took to talking to himself out loud. So Emily decided to close her transom. It stuck. She asked my a.s.sistance, and we balanced a chair on a box and I held it steady while she got up to oil the transom. But first she would lose her balance, then she would drop the oil can, then the box would slip. She couldn't reach the joints, or whatever you call them, and when she stood on tiptoe she lost her balance. Then she got her finger in the joint and pinched it, emitting a most material squeal as she did so. Happening to glance through the transom, she saw Rodney standing below in the hall, grinning at her with inharmonious, unspiritual, unsentimental glee, and she tugged viciously at the transom, banging herself off the box, upsetting the chair, and squirting oil all over me as she fell.

"Rodney rushed to the rescue, but Emily was already scrambling into sitting posture, scared, bruised and furious. She had torn her dress, twisted her ankle, b.u.mped her head and scratched her face. And Rodney had seen it.

"Ignoring me, Rodney sat down on the box and looked her over with cold professional eyes.

"'My little seeker after truth,' he said, 'you are a mystic combination of spirit and mind. You are in tune with the infinite spheres. You are a breath in a universal breeze. Therefore you feel no inconvenience. Get up, my child, and waltz an Oriental hesitation down the hall and convince yourself everlastingly that you are in truth only a mysterious unit in a universe of harmonic chords.'

"Emily dropped her head on the oil can, lifted up her voice and wept.

And Rodney, with an exclamation that a minister's daughter can not repeat, took the unhappy mystic into his arms.

"'Sweetheart, forgive me. I am a brute, I know. Knock me on the head with the oil can, won't you? Don't cry, sweetheart,--Emily, don't.'

"Finally Emily spoke. 'You are as mean and hateful as you can be, Rodney Carter,' she said, burrowing more deeply into his shoulder.

'And I despise you. And I am going to marry you, too, just to get even with you. Give me back my engagement ring.' Rodney ecstatically did.

The touch of her lovely, material body must have thrilled him, for he kissed her all over the top of the head, her face being hidden.

"I stood my ground. I was looking for literary material since I never have a chance to make romance for myself. Emily spoke again.

"'I know now that the Vast Infinite intends us for each other. I have been dwelling in Perfect Harmony the last four days, trusting the All Perfection to bring us together again. So I know that our union was decreed from the foundation by the Universal sphere. I tell you, Rod, you can't get ahead of the Infinite.'

"Then I went to my own room, and they never knew when I left,--they didn't even remember I had been there. But as I came back from answering the phone at eleven o'clock, I met Rod in the hall. He had some books in his hand. He ducked them behind him when he saw me. I reached for them sternly, and he pulled them out rather sheepishly. I read the t.i.tles, 'Spheral Mentality,' 'Infinite Spheres,' 'Spheral Harmony.'

"'Made me promise to read 'em, too,' he confided in a whisper. 'And by George, she is worth it.'

"Oh, I tell you, Carol, these boarding-houses are chuck full of literary material. Really, I am developing. I know it. I feel it every day. I rub elbows with every one I meet, and I like it. I don't care if they aren't 'My Kind' at all. I am learning to reach down to the same old human nature back of all the different kinds. Isn't that growth?

"You asked about the millionaire's son. He still comes to see me every once in a while. He says he can't promise to let me spend all of his millions for missions if I marry him,--says he has too much fun spending them on himself,--but he insists that I may do whatever I like with him. Isn't it too bad I can't feel called upon to take him in hand?

"Anyhow, if I had a million dollars do you know what I would do? Buy an orphans' home, and dump 'em all in a big ship and go sailing, sailing over the bounding main. I'd kidnap Julia and take her along.

"He was here last week, and sent his love to you, and best wishes to David. He told me to ask particularly how your complexion gets along out in the sunny mesa land.

"I want to see you. I am saving up my pennies religiously, and when they have multiplied sufficiently I am coming. Thanks for the invitation.

"Lovingly as always,

"Connie."

CHAPTER XVIII

QUIESCENT

Long but not dreary weeks followed one after the other. In the little 'dobe cottage, situated far up the hill on the mesa, Carol and David lived a life of pa.s.sionless routine. Carol was busy, hence she had the easier part. David's breakfast on a tray at seven, nourishment at nine, luncheon at twelve, nourishment at three, dinner at six, nourishment at nine,--with medicines to be administered, temperatures to be taken, alcohol rubs to be given at frequent intervals,--this was Carol's day. And at odd hours the house must be kept clean and sanitary, dishes washed, letters written. And whenever the moment came, David was waiting for her to come and read aloud to him.