Barclay heaved a long sigh of satisfaction as he took his tea and two thin slices of toast and settled himself in his chair.

"Do you think it possible," he asked, "for a man to be asleep for six weeks, dreaming that he is in another garden of Eden, with an Eve in a French frock, who has no partiality for apples"--

"I _adore_ apples!" said the girl.

"And then wake up," he continued, disregarding the interruption, "and find that the dream was only a dream, after all,--that he's only a poor dog of a politician, that the garden is only a dingy office, and the flower-beds full of briers and pitfalls?"

"You've been eating pie for lunch again," said Natalie severely, "and it always makes you morbid. No; I don't think it possible at all. If I did, I should hang on to your coattails like fury and keep you in dreamland, whether you wanted to wake up or not."

"It's all too good to be true! How _dare_ you be so beautiful?"

"John"--

"It's gospel truth!"

Barclay paused for a moment, and then went on more seriously.

"You're tired, littlest and most lovely in the world, and troubled about something."

Natalie laughed shortly, with evident effort.

"Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Why not? Don't you suppose I know? Do you think you could say a hundred words without my perceiving that? It almost seems to me that the knowledge that you were unhappy would make its way to me, no matter what distance separated us, and that I should come to you at top-speed to set things right. I've hardly seen your face, and yet I know your dear, deep eyes are troubled; I had barely heard your voice before I felt its weariness."

Natalie bent forward until her face came under the light.

"Yes, I'm tired," she said; "or, rather, I was tired when I first came in. I'm better now, since I've had my tea. But you're right, Johnny boy,--there's something more. I'm troubled, desperately troubled and heartsick. I've been trying to make myself believe that it's all imagination, that I have no reason for feeling as I do; but I'm afraid I can't manage it. John, I thought I saw Spencer Cavendish to-day."

"Spencer Cavendish? Are you sure? I had almost forgotten his existence!--Of course, it's not impossible; but I imagined he had taken root in some South Sea island long ago. That's what he was always expecting to do, you remember. How I have hated that man!"

"You were good friends once."

"Yes, and should be yet, if I had not been the most suspicious mortal that ever breathed, and he the most hot-blooded. There was a reason, you know,--a little reason, but the most important in the world! I was jealous, Natalie, insanely jealous. I could forgive him everything now."

"That hurts me, John. I'm so happy, boy dear, that I want everybody else to be happy as well. Oh, why is it that a girl must always have that one thought on her mind, which is so hard, so hard?--I mean the thought of the good men, the true, brave, loyal men, whom she has cared for, who have been her best friends perhaps, and yet whom she has been forced to hurt bitterly because they asked her for something she was not able to give. A man has so much easier a road! His happiness, when it comes to him, isn't clouded by the thought of those to whom it means the loss of their last remnant of hope. They are there, the disappointed ones, but he doesn't know, he doesn't know! He hasn't on his conscience the memory of hearts cruelly wounded,--wounded even to death. He doesn't in memory see the eagerness in a good friend's eyes die to disillusion, to hopelessness, to bitter, bitter sorrow. He doesn't have to remember how the life died suddenly out of a voice that had been tender and eloquent.

He doesn't sicken with the thought that his hand has given a blow so merciless, so unmerited, and yet so inevitable. Worst of all, for the girl, is the after-discovery that her decision has made a difference--a hideous, irreparable difference,--that the man can never be the same again,--that she has wrecked a life with a word! Oh, there ought to be some way! The man ought not to ask unless he is sure of the reply! It's too much responsibility to force upon the girl!

"So with Spencer Cavendish," she went on after a moment. "In spite of all--in spite of all, John!--I can't forget that he loved me. I think a woman never forgets that."

"Until the man marries another woman!"

"Ah," said Natalie, with a faint smile, "then least of all, John! And besides, Spencer never married. He knew I loved you, long before you did! I felt that it was due to him that he should know; he was my oldest and best friend then, and so I told him! And then he went out of my life--out of his own--into darkness. I can't forget it! I can't forget that I broke up your friendship"--

"Dearest!"

"I did, John! It wasn't my fault, perhaps, nor any one's, for that matter, but I did, just the same. Besides, it wasn't only the question of your friendship. What hurt me most was the wilful wreck of his life.

And yet, how could I have known what was going to happen? What could I do when it did happen? He was beyond my reach. He didn't even answer the letter I wrote, asking him to come and see me. I thought, if he cared for me, I could save him. But it was just as he had said,--he must have everything, or he would have nothing at all. And so he went wrong--oh, so terribly, terribly wrong!--he who might have been anything, if it hadn't been for me. I can never forget it--never! I can never forget the pity of it, the tragedy of its awful publicity, the newspapers, the scandal, people's sneers, his mother dying of a broken heart--_and I did it_! Think of it! Think of a man like Spencer Cavendish in the police courts, not once, but a dozen times. Think of what Justice Meyer called him at last, and what was printed in the papers,--'a common drunk!' Oh, John!"

"Natalie, Natalie!" broke in the Lieutenant-Governor. "Why should you think of such things, brood over them, above all, blame them on yourself? How could it possibly have been your fault? how could you possibly have helped it? He was a reckless, hot-headed chap--brilliant, of course, but a slave to his impulses and his nerves. If Lochinvars could act with impunity nowadays, he'd have ridden up to your door on a black horse, killed Thomas, and carried you off across his pommel. As it was, he let himself go, and disgraced himself. I tried to talk to him, just as you did, but he wouldn't have it--called me 'an insolent cub'

and--er--worse. I had to give it up. It was all very distressing, I admit, but then, dear, it was all so long ago. He hasn't been in Kenton City for two years and more, and I've no doubt he pulled himself together long since, and is leading a straight life somewhere. He had lots in him, with all his recklessness. A chap like that, with no family hanging about his neck, and with his brains, and only his own living to make, could forge ahead almost anywhere."

"But John, I'm _sure_ I saw him to-day, and suppose I should tell you that he was--begging?"

Barclay almost smiled at her earnest, troubled face, as he replaced his cup on the table.

"Begging?" he answered. "I'm afraid I couldn't bring myself to believe you, violet-eyes. Even granting that he has fallen as low as that, which I should think one of the most unlikely things in the world, it would hardly be in Kenton City, would it?--a place where his face is known to a thousand people. Tell me about it. What makes you think you saw him?"

"I was shopping this morning," said Natalie, "all alone; and as I came out of Kendrick's and was just about to get into the brougham, I saw that some one was holding the door open for me. I looked up carelessly, as one naturally would under the circ.u.mstances, and, John--I know it was he! At first I thought so, and then I didn't, because he was so changed, so thin and pale, and because he had a beard. So, before I thought what I was doing, I stepped into the brougham, and put my hand on the door to close it. Then I looked up again, and saw his face, peering in at me through the gla.s.s, and that time there couldn't be any mistake. It _was_! I was going to speak, but he was gone in a flash. I saw him disappearing in the crowd before the shop--_slinking_, John!--with that dreadfully pathetic air which all beggars have, his shoulders all hunched up, and his head bent, and his hands in his pockets. He was cold, John, I could see that, and, no doubt, hungry! And there I was, in that dreadful little brougham, with my hateful furs, as warm as toast, and I didn't even speak to him. I could have died of shame!"

She buried her face in her hands, bending low over the tea-table.

Barclay was leaning forward in his chair, his lips set.

"It's impossible," he murmured, "impossible!"

The girl looked up suddenly, a white spot in the centre of each cheek, where the pressure of her thumbs had left its mark in the tender, pink flesh.

"Improbable--yes!" she said, "but not impossible. Oh, I wish I could believe otherwise, but I'm sure, I'm sure! Oh, John! You are so big, so strong, so powerful now! Think of it--Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia!

You can do anything. And if he _is_ here in Kenton City, homeless, cold, starving, you must find and help him--for me, Johnny boy, for me!"

The Lieutenant-Governor had risen, and was pacing up and down the room, with his brows knit, and his strong, white hands chafing slowly against each other, palm to palm. It seemed impossible, indeed! Spencer Cavendish, the last of one of Alleghenia's proudest families; Spencer Cavendish, the brilliant young society pet and sportsman; Spencer Cavendish, the wit, the _viveur_--a beggar in the street? And yet--

The scandal of Cavendish's sudden and reckless plunge into sodden, open dissipation, two years before, freshly called to Barclay's mind by Natalie's words, had pointed to almost any finale, however debased, however sordid. Barclay mentally invoked the face of his former friend, as he had seen it on the occasion of their last meeting, flushed, swollen-eyed, insolent, the fine patrician mouth hideously contorted and maundering insults, filth, ba.n.a.lity.

"And I did it!" the girl was saying. "Don't forget that, John.

Unwittingly, ignorantly, helplessly, if you will, I did it, just the same. If I could have loved him, I could have saved him. As it was, I had to send him away, and he has come to--to this! Oh, don't you see?

Don't you understand that something more than chance has crossed my path with his, just at this moment of my supremest happiness, and of his utter degradation? My duty is plain. It is to help him, to uplift him, to make a man of him once more--to undo what I have done! I'm responsible--and I'm helpless! What can I do? What can any girl do in such a case? I can't go out into the streets and search for him. I can only turn to you, Johnny boy, and rely upon your aid."

"But, Natalie dearest," said the Lieutenant-Governor slowly, "don't you see that it is impossible, all this? I cannot allow such an affair to come into your pure, sweet life, bringing with it the knowledge of the depths to which men may fall, and the shadow of misery and degradation.

I cannot bear that, in even the remotest way, you should blame yourself for that which it was never in your power to prevent or remedy. A man--this man--has no business to cast on you the blight of his own weakness and folly, to establish a relation of cause and effect between your refusal of him and the subsequent transformation of a gentleman into a common drunkard."

"John!"

"Ah, don't think me bitter, dearest! If the man you saw was actually Cavendish, I pity him from the bottom of my heart. But it was his hands which built up the barrier between his life and ours, and it must be his that tear it down. It is intolerable that in his degradation he should come into your life again, and have, even in your imagination, the smallest claim upon you--intolerable! The paths of my love for you and my duty toward you are identical in this respect. There can be no alternative--no quibbling. At least until he has redeemed himself, if redemption is still possible, the thought of him, his presence, his misdoings, must not and shall not contaminate the atmosphere in which you live and move."

Natalie had risen suddenly, her eyes ablaze.

"Ah, John!" she said. "Am I then a toy, a sugar figure, that I must be packed in cotton, and shielded from all knowledge of the evil in the world? Is that what it means to be a woman? Ah, _no_! It is bad enough to be hemmed in by the wretched conventionalities which prevent my doing openly what I conceive to be my duty, without adding to the restrictions that actually exist the imaginary one that I must not even think of the misery, the wretchedness, the sordid vice which abound just across the borders of the comfortable little world in which I live. And see, boy dear!--with all the force of my conviction that things should be otherwise, yet I am reasonable. I don't ask to see Spencer, or to have an active hand in his redemption. I realize that the time for that has pa.s.sed, and that you are just in saying that he must come to me, not I to him--and come to me another than the man he is to-day. Anything else is impossible: that I see and accept. But the hideous fact remains. A man who loved me once, who offered me all that a man can offer a woman, is walking the streets of Kenton City, cold, hungry, homeless--a beggar! What business is it of yours or mine what his past follies and weaknesses were? His temptations may have been beyond our understanding, but his present plight is not. He is begging--begging at our very doors--a man whom we have called by the name of friend! I can't help him. All I can do, as I said before, is to turn to you, whom I love better than all the world, and ask you to save him, in my stead. Ah, boy, boy!--I've given you all I refused to him, taken at your hands all I put away at his. You can afford to be generous!"

The Lieutenant-Governor came slowly toward her, and, placing his hands upon her shoulders, looked her in the eyes.

"Dearest and Most Beautiful," he said tenderly, "you are right. I hope--I believe--that you were overwrought, fanciful, that it is not true. But if it is, if Cavendish is begging in our streets, then, so surely as I am Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia, I will pull him out of them, and make a man of him, if it takes a month and every police officer and detective in Kenton City to find him. And that not alone for your sake, tenderest-hearted, but for mine. I _can_ afford to be generous, G.o.d bless your sweet face, I can indeed!"

And he bent over reverently, and kissed her hand.

IV