STRANGE TALES

•    •    •    •    •

BY

ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

ABOUT THIS EBOOK

STRANGE TALES

By

Albert Bigelow Paine

(1861–1937)

Albert Bigelow Paine was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. He wrote in several genres, including fiction, humor, and verse, for children and adults. His most notable work was a three-volume biography of Mark Twain.

*   *   *

In 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson wrote what is perhaps the definitive fictional story about split personalities, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 1894 saw publication of Paine’s treatment of the theme in the novella The Mystery of Evelin Delorme. A talented young artist is fascinated and beguiled by two beautiful young women, one spiritually pure and gentle, the other a seductive woman of the world.

“The Black Hands” concerns a white man who, through treatment of injury from a train wreck, becomes “as black a negro who walks the earth to-day!” A statement about race in the age of Jim Crow.

In “The Elixir of Youth”, an aging man’s wish to “live life over” raises intriguing questions.

In the oddly humorous but eerie “The Evening Spirit,” two friends are haunted by a ghostly newspaper.

The Mystery of Evelin Delorme was first published in 1894. “The Black Hands” first appeared in Pearson’s Magazine Aug. 1903; “The Elixir of Youth” in The Century Magazine May 1913; “The Evening Spirit” in The Black Cat magazine Feb. 1898.

This ebook was created by E.C.M. for MobileRead.com, July 2016, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

This book is in the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

Text for The Mystery of Evelin Delorme was obtained from gutenberg.org; text for the short stories from hathitrust.org magazine archives.

OCR and transcription errors were corrected; punctuation, italics and diacritics formatted; story titles cross-linked to Table of Contents.

Validation by Pagina Epub Checker.

CONTENTS

STRANGE TALES

TITLEPAGE

ABOUT THIS EBOOK

THE MYSTERY OF EVELIN DELORME

— INTRODUCTION

— PROLOGUE

— I.

— II.

— III.

— IV.

— V.

— VI.

— VII.

— VIII.

THE BLACK HANDS

THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

THE EVENING SPIRIT

THE MYSTERY

OF EVELIN DELORME

INTRODUCTION.

WHILE ENGAGED in writing the story of Evelin Delorme it was my good fortune to make the acquaintance of Dr. Herbert L. Flint, the well-known hypnotist briefly referred to in chapter three. The science of Hypnotism being a theme of absorbing interest to me, I eagerly availed myself of the opportunity thus offered for exhaustive investigation of the subject, and was accorded frequent and prolonged interviews with Dr. Flint. During one of these I reviewed to him briefly the outline of my story and the strange mystery of Evelin Delorme which had given rise to the plot. I saw at once that he was unusually moved and interested. At my conclusion he arose hastily and left the room, returning a moment later with a quantity of papers which proved to be an unpublished memoir which he was then preparing. From this he hurriedly separated several sheets and placed them in my hand, remarking with suppressed feeling, “Here is the missing link in your narrative.”

He has allowed me to publish it here in his own words.

EXTRACT FROM

THE UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS

OF DR. FLINT.

The following is a brief account of a very curious case of hypnotic suggestion, and one which, because of the mystery surrounding its final outcome, has caused me no little anxiety.

On the 9th of July, 1878, there came to my office in St. Louis a strikingly beautiful young woman of evident wealth and aristocratic breeding, who gave her name as Eva Delorme. Her dress indicated recent bereavement, and her face impressed me as being that of one whom death had deprived of all those near and beloved. She stated her errand at once, and briefly. She had been pursuing the study of Mesmeric Sciences, and, believing herself a good hypnotic subject, desired that I make a trial with that end in view. A simple test convinced me that she was susceptible to hypnotic suggestion, and further experiment revealed to me that she was one of the most perfect subjects I have ever known. She called again the day following and asked me if it were possible, through the aid of hypnotism, to give to her a double personality; adding that she desired to become for a few hours a heartless, haughty, gay woman of the world – precisely opposite, in fact, to what she really appeared. Believing that she wished to forget her sorrow for a time, I assured her that I thought this might be accomplished and that it would probably obliterate all knowledge of a previous existence for the time being. To this she eagerly consented, and after some further conversation concerning the details I asked her what name she desired to assume in her new character. She replied that her full name was Evelin March Delorme, of which, in her assumed personality, she would retain the first two. She likewise gave me a memorandum of a street and number to which she was to be directed; this being, doubtless, one of several of her dwelling properties, for she impressed me always as a person of abundant wealth. With a few passes I then placed her under the hypnotic influence, and while in this state I impressed upon her earnestly the fact that she would awaken a haughty and heartless woman of the world, dashing and gay, free from past regrets and future misgivings, as she had told me to do. That her name would be Evelin March; and I repeated to her the street and number, and some minor details which she had given to me. That she would retain this personality for twelve hours. This I repeated to her several times, then bade her awaken.

The change in her was complete and startling. Her whole expression – even her very features – appeared altered. Accustomed as I am to such things I could not avoid feeling somewhat nervous at this wonderful transformation. In her new character she was as beautiful and imperious as a queen, with a supercilious, almost coarse, expression of countenance. She seemed much mortified at the somber simpleness of her dress, and I judge went immediately to make changes.

I did not see her again until a week later, when she came to my office, apparently restored to her true character. She had a vague semi-recollection of what had been her experience in the other state and desired a second trial, to which I somewhat reluctantly consented, though I must confess I was by this time deeply interested in the case.

These transformations were frequently repeated, during the next few months; then her visits ceased and I did not see her until a year later, when I was astounded one day to meet her riding in Forest Park in her assumed character, evidently having taken on the condition unaided, either unconsciously or of her own volition.

I never saw her again, and as I had mislaid the memorandum of her address and the number had slipped my memory, I lost trace of her entirely. I have always felt a great and somewhat guilty curiosity as to the final result of this strange experiment.

PROLOGUE.

JULIAN PAUL GOETZE died December 21st, 1885. This event removed the final reason for concealment of that strange story whose dark reality flung a shadow about his later years.

At his death Goetze was in his thirty-fifth year, and for more than a decade previous had been considered one of the foremost portrait painters of the younger school. I knew him intimately – was a frequent visitor at his studio, and, I believe, the only confidant he was ever known to have.

As I recall those years there is an unreality about them that I am unable to dispel. The problems discussed – the theories maintained of life, death, art, poetry, and any number of other unfathomed subjects, appear to me now so preternatural – the conceptions of his wonderful brain so startling, that I can hardly realize having ever been a part, even though but a faint reflex, of that dazzling and unsated life.

In appearance he was no less remarkable. His figure was rather slight than otherwise, and of medium height. His features, though greatly modified, were distinctly those of the American Indian. High cheekbones, slightly aquiline nose, dark olive skin. His eyes and hair were a blue black. You would hardly have called him handsome, but there was something in that fiercely intense face, in the lithe grace of movement, in the small and exquisitely shaped hands and feet, that made him a fascinating, if not a dangerous, companion for the other sex. All of these had been bequeathed him by his mother, in whose veins ran the French and Indian blood in equal parts. From his father, a fair-haired German, he had inherited only his name.

His nature was a strange blending of opposing forces, forever at civil war and each swaying him in turn. He had few friends, but those few adored him for his splendid genius and prodigal generosity, pitying his darker side.

When, as not unfrequently happened, he locked his studio and plunged for days into abject depravity, they sought him out and led him back to his better self. After the culmination of that singular affair narrated in these papers, and for which he doubtless felt himself greatly to blame, these lapses became more and more frequent and protracted. The facts which I have collected relating to this period of his life were many of them gathered bit by bit as the events occurred, and later from brief interviews during temporary periods of consciousness just prior to his death.

It was in one of these that he apprised me of the existence of certain private papers, the contents of which would make the chain of circumstances complete. Then the fires that had blazed forever within him burned out his life.

H. L.

St. Louis,

Nov. 4th, 1890.

Note by the Author. – The above, accompanied by a manuscript roll of considerable size, a crumpled and yellow letter torn in halves, and a number of loose pages covered with peculiar writing (unsigned, though evidently the work of the unhappy artist) lie before me. It is with hesitating and unsteady hands that I separate these silent voices of the past, and gather them at last together into a living though unworthy echo of my own.

I.

“A LITTLE MORE to the light, please – so, that is better.” The artist worked rapidly; now and then letting his eyes rest for a moment on his sitter, then returning to the face on the canvas, that was rapidly growing under his hands.

The studio, a small Swiss cottage some distance from the business center of St. Louis, was rather richly, though plainly, furnished. The walls were tinted a neutral gray, an occasional piece of sober-hued drapery hung here and there, while a heavily curtained arch at the back connected with the artist’s private apartments beyond.

On the opposite side of the room a door opened to the little entrance hall, and near to this doorway was a carved oaken mantel, above which were grouped together a number of curious weapons, evidently gathered here and there as bric-a-brac, and used, perhaps, now and then, as properties, in the arrangement of some picture.

There was the long-barreled and elaborately ornamented gun of the Arab – the scimitar of the Turk – the blow-gun of the South American Indian – the bow and arrow of his northern brother. At the bottom of this array was a pair of French rapiers of the seventeenth century. The blades were crossed and rested upon a brass-headed nail, and upon this nail there hung, point downward, a jewel-hilted Italian stiletto or dagger, suspended by a silken cord.

The room was lighted by a sky-light and one window – only the light of the former falling upon the sitter – a large Japanese screen diverting all other direct rays. Through the half-open casement a light breath of summer crept in, from the little garden outside, freighted with the mingled odors of sweet-briar and white flowering locust. A yellow butterfly flitted in and out, now and then making a circuit of the room, resting here and there for a moment to fan noiselessly with its bloomy wings. A stray bee buzzed drowsily in, but, finding nothing so attractive as the sweets without, hastily retreated, striking heavily against the window-pane, where it sputtered and fumed for a time, and gladly escaped. Then all was silent in the room save for the light chafing sound made by the artist’s brush against the hitherto untouched canvas.

He at the easel was a man of about thirty years – Julian Paul Goetze, a name already ranked high among his profession. His sitter was a woman of perhaps twenty-three. Her figure was somewhat above medium height and perfectly developed. She was clad in a plain, trimly fitting dress of silver gray, with a neat white collar at the throat. Her face was a perfect oval in its contour, her complexion almost childish in its delicacy. Her hair, a silky brown in color, was fastened in a knot at the back of her shapely head, while in front it was a fluffy mass that partially concealed the forehead, and softly shadowed what seemed to the artist to be the sweetest face in all the world. The features were as delicately chiseled as one would expect to find them in a statue of Purity. The eyes were a deep gray, inclining to hazel, and the coloring of the cheek and lips so tender that the artist looked a little despairingly at the tints upon his palette; while through all there pervaded such an expression of absolute innocence and freedom from the world’s taint, as to find expression in but the one word, saintliness.

And yet there was something about the face of his sitter that brought a troubled expression to that of the artist. As with bold, rapid strokes he laid in the ground-work for the hair he looked puzzled. As he traced the exquisite outline of the ear his look was almost one of vexation. Once he left his easel, and, going to another canvas that rested on the floor, face to the wall, he turned it partly about and looked at it intently for a few moments. Then he resumed his work, evidently in deep thought. For awhile he painted on in silence. He was inclined by nature to be diffident at first with his sitters, and with this fair being the beginning of a conversation seemed to him a thing as difficult as it was desirable. There was a suggestion of weariness in her face, too, which he felt would disappear with awakened interest.

“I – I beg pardon,” he said, somewhat abruptly at length; “have you ever had a portrait before?”

His voice was rich and musical, and the face before him brightened.

“Oh, no! And it is only by accident that I am having one now. I was passing and saw your name; I knew it by reputation, and it occurred to me all at once that I would sit for my picture. Perhaps I should have waited and worn a different dress. It was only a passing impulse. It never occurred to me before; I cannot tell why it did now.”

The animation and the faint blush that had crept over her face while she spoke were enchanting. The artist was delighted.

“Your dress could not have been better chosen, and the impulse was surely an inspiration,” he said, smiling, “and perhaps,” he added, “you may have a friend or – a – a relative who has had, or is having a portrait, which suggested the idea.”

As he paused he looked at her inquiringly. The look of weariness had returned to her face.

“No; I have no relatives, and—” – she blushed deeply and was silent.

“Forgive me,” he said, earnestly; “I did not intend to be inquisitive.”

She did not reply in words, but as she lifted her eyes there was a tenderness there that awakened within him all the sympathy, the nobleness and the affection of his purer and better nature. Their eyes met, and in a single moment there was formed between them an invisible bond which both felt and neither sought to conceal. No word was spoken. The artist painted on in silence; but a new light had come into his sitter’s face, and a new source of inspiration into his own heart.

For a long time neither spoke. A dreamy hush seemed to creep in with the sweet odors from the garden, and, with them, a summer restfulness and peace. The yellow butterfly that had been hovering about them, flitting this way and that, came closer and closer, and at last settled fearlessly upon one of the gloved hands that lay folded in the sitter’s lap. She watched it for a moment, then looked up at the painter with a smile.

“The insect has a true instinct,” he said, gently; “it has no fear of capture.”

“No; I should only hurt it and destroy its beauty.”

“Butterflies,” said the artist, “are like beautiful thoughts. They hover mistily about us, flitting away whenever we attempt to capture them; and if at last we are successful we find only too often that their wings have lost the delicacy of their bloom.”

“Yes; I have felt that many times.”

While she spoke the insect rose hastily in the air as if frightened, and, circling about for a moment above them, darted out through the open window.

“I have heard they are emblems of inconstancy, too,” she said, thoughtfully, as it disappeared.

A faint glow of crimson suffused for an instant the olive face before her, but he forced a smile and did not reply.

The rest of the afternoon slipped away with but little interchange of words between artist and sitter. When either spoke the words were few and simple, but there was a tenderness in their voices that uttered more than the spoken syllables.

The face on the canvas was growing rapidly. He had already worked longer than he usually did at the first sitting, and yet he could not bear to let her go. He had seen her for the first time less than two hours before; he did not even know her name. The little white card which she had given him he had glanced at without reading. He had only seen her features, and heard only the gentle voice that had made known her errand. And now he wondered if it were possible that only a few hours before she had had no part in his life; a life wherein there had been many lights and shadows, and the shadows had been ever as broad and somber as the lights had been bold and brilliant.

II.

AN HOUR LATER Julian Goetze was standing alone in his studio. The sketch fresh from his brush was before him, and beneath it, resting upon the floor, was another somewhat farther advanced.

He had painted until the light had begun to grow yellow and dim, then he had reluctantly told his sitter that he could do no more for that day.

“And when shall I come again?” she had asked.

He would have said, “Come tomorrow,” had he dared; but remembering other engagements, and knowing that the work could not be continued so soon, he had hesitated before replying.

“I can go on with the picture in two or three days; come as soon after that as – as you wish,” he said, softly.

Their eyes met for a moment; the delicate color deepened in her cheeks, her lips murmured a half inaudible word of adieu, and she was gone.

Julian left alone had flung himself into a large chair that stood near the window, and looked out upon the little garden beyond. It was June. The days were long and the sun was still touching the tops of the locust trees. He was away from the bustle of the city, and an atmosphere of peace almost like that of the country was about him. All at once he covered his face with his hands, pressing his fingers hard into his eyes.

“I love her, I love her,” he groaned; “she is an angel from heaven, and I – oh, my God! if she knew she would hate me.”

He rose and stood before the face on the easel; then, as if suddenly recollecting, he approached the canvas that was turned face to the wall, and which once before that day had claimed his attention, and, facing it nervously about, placed it beneath the other.

It was the portrait of a woman. Like the one above her, she was fair and beautiful; but here all resemblance apparently ceased. Nothing could be more widely different than the characters that had stamped themselves upon the faces of these two.

The picture on the floor was that of a woman whose age might be anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five; a woman of the great world of fashion, of folly, of intrigue, perhaps of vice. Her dress was a rich ball costume, exposing the white flesh of her beautiful arms, her perfect shoulders, and her pearly tinted throat and bosom. Like the other, her face was oval in shape, but seemed less perfect in its contour. There was a certain lack of delicacy and softness about the outline that suggested the fierce chase after the sham pleasures of the great social world.

The rest of the features were in harmony with this idea. The beautiful mouth was hard and cruel. The lips and cheeks were bright as if artificially tinted, or flushed with wine. The eyes were bold and the pupils seemed expanded as with belladonna. The nostrils of the finely shaped nose were full and sensual. Her luxuriant brown hair, singularly like that of the portrait above her in color, she wore in the late French mode, combed back from her high, broad forehead and twisted into a massive device at the top. Her eyebrows were unnaturally dark. An artificial air pervaded the entire picture – one felt that she had an artificial soul. A perfect prototype of Folly’s feverish and heartless world.

As the artist stood gazing from one to the other, the curious vexed and puzzled expression that had come into his face once before that day returned. He approached closely to the work as if to examine it more minutely. As he bent low over the face on the easel he heard the street door open. He started guiltily, and hastily turned both pictures to the wall. A moment later a tall, fair-haired man of about his own age entered without knocking. It was Harry Lawton, the artist’s most intimate friend.

“Julian, old boy, how goes it?” he said, cheerily.

“Pretty well, Harry; come in.”

“Yes, I should do that any way. I don’t seem to be any too welcome, however.”

“Nonsense, Harry, of course you are welcome; I am very glad, in fact, to see you, just now.

“Well, that’s better; although I must say your face doesn’t indicate excessive joy.”

“Sit down; not there – here by the door; I want to show you something.”

“Oh, some new and wonderful work of your transcendent genius, I suppose. By the way, how is the picture for the Salon getting along?”

“Tediously, Harry; I seem to have lost the spirit of the thing.”

“Found too much spirit of another kind, perhaps.”

“No, not that. I have been a model of abstinence of late.”

“And the heavens do not fall?

“No – yes – that is – let your tongue rest for a moment, please, and use your eyes.”

While the artist had been speaking he had taken the large screen from before the window and moved his easel into a stronger light. Upon it he now placed the two portraits in their former position. The effect upon the other was vigorous and immediate.

“Heavens! Julian, where did you get that angel and that dev – I beg pardon, that extraordinary pair of beauties? Oh, I see! – why, of course! a new idea for the Salon. A modern Guinevere and Elaine; Siren and Saint; Sense and Innocence. I congratulate you, old boy; they are wonderful—”

“Please be quiet for a moment, Harry; they are not for the Salon. They are two sitters of mine. The one beneath has been here twice – the first time about a week ago; the second time day before yesterday. The other came for the first time today.”

“And they are real, live women, then?”

“Yes. I was in hopes you might recognize one or both of them.”

The other shook his head, and gazed from one to the other in silence.

“Do you see any – any resemblance between them?” asked the artist, after a pause.

“Resemblance! Good Lord, no! Why? Are they related in any way?”

“Not that I am aware of; in fact, I am quite sure they are not. She told me she had no relatives.”

“Um – and which do you refer to as she?”

“Oh, the upper one, of course.”

“Well, I don’t see any ‘of course’ about it. She was here today for the first time. I don’t see why she should begin by exchanging family confidences. All things considered, I should have thought it more than likely you referred to the other. However, I suppose you are familiar with her family history, too.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Harry. I know nothing of either of them; at least not in that way. The one who came first gave her name as Evelin March. She came in suddenly, one morning last week, and asked for a sitting. She had on a light wrap, which she laid off and stood before me as you see her. During the sitting she was inclined to be lively and talkative. Her voice is just a trifle harsh, but she is a remarkably brilliant talker and a very fascinating woman. I had not met the other, then, and foolishly allowed myself to say some rather silly things to her. When she came again I did more. You know what a rash fool I am, Harry. Well, I made love to her, off-hand. She stirred me up terribly for some reason. Of course, there was nothing of real love in what I felt for her; it was a brief madness of the head. You know about what I would say under the circumstances.”

“Oh, perfectly. You swore that her eyes were as are lights in a midnight desert; that her tints would rival the roseate pearl of a June sunset; that her smiles would be your only diet henceforth and forever; that her frown would be as terrible as the day of judgment. And now what has the other one to do with it?”

“Lawton, you will think I am crazy, and I am, perhaps – but I love her; and more than that, I believe she loves me. No word of it has passed between us, but – we understand.”

“Oh, we do, eh? We – we understand,” imitated Lawton. “Well, this is exceedingly interesting, I must say, although quite the thing to be expected from one of your temperament. How very fortunate you are in the choice of subjects, too.”

“What do you mean, Harry?”

“Well, I should judge you might divide up your affections on those two without any serious confliction of sentiments.”

“You are mistaken, though; I do not care for Evelin March at all, now. I am sorry I ever met her. I shall stop this foolish flirtation with her, at once.”

“Quite likely. And when does Evelin come again?”

“Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“So; well, I’ll just drop in tomorrow evening for the latest. Evelin seems to be a trifle outclassed just at present.”

“Harry, you are unkind. I tell you I love that innocent girl on the easel there and mean to marry her.”

“Oh, of course; I haven’t the least doubt of it. And now, what about the resemblance?”

“Why, look! do you see their hair? The shade of each is exactly the same – the same silkiness and glow through it; it is very peculiar. And notice the ear; the outline and formation of each is identical. You may not have noticed these things as I have, but it is very rare that the ear is anatomically the same in two people. There is a similarity, too, about the oval of the face, although less marked and not unusual; and there is a faint suggestion of something else, which I feel but cannot locate. I noticed these things, and they struck me at once as being a tie of kinship. I hinted, in a miserably awkward manner, as to relatives who might be having their portraits painted. It was then she told me that she had no relatives, and I believe started to tell me she had no friends, but she hesitated and was near bursting into tears. From that moment I loved her; I shall love her always.”

“Charming, Julian. And yet I fancy she is not wholly alone in the world. A beautiful and affluent maiden is not calculated to be friendless; and you will admit that one who is able to gratify a passing impulse for one of Julian Paul Goetze’s justly celebrated portraits is not likely to be destitute. Still, I will allow that there are cases, even among the wealthy, that are not entirely undeserving of sympathy; and, if I may judge from this incipient work of your magic brush, I think I should be willing to lavish any amount of that article on its original. However, you haven’t told me her name as yet; I trust it is not disappointing.”

“I do not even know it myself. She gave me her card; I laid it down and haven’t thought of it since.”

“Well, really, if your love is no greater than your curiosity, your case does not present any very alarming features, as yet.”

The artist had approached a small table in the center of the room, from which he now picked up a slip of white pasteboard and held it to the light, then he started a little and was silent.

“Well?” said his friend, inquiringly; “is it Mary Mullally or Nancy Muggins?”

The artist turned to the table again and selected another card, somewhat larger, from a little silver tray; then he returned to Lawton and held them before him, one above the other, like the pictures. On the lower one, written in a bold, dashing hand, were the words:

Evelin March.

And on the other, in a neat and beautiful penmanship:

Eva Delorme.

“Capital, old fellow!” exclaimed Lawton. “There is an air of harmony about the name, the handwriting, and the face of your charmer that is delightful. What a blessing she has no relatives.”

“But do you notice nothing strange about these names, Harry?”

“Nothing, except that both are strangely bewitching. What more is there?”

“Why, the similarity of the first names. Eva – Evelin; one is frequently a contraction of the other. I don’t like this, Harry; it troubles me.”

“Now, Julian, you are positively absurd. Here are two women of natures manifestly as different as light and darkness. By a coincidence, or a distant family tie, or both, their hair happens to be the same color (not a very unusual one, either, by the way); a similarity in their names; also, perhaps, one or two other trifling resemblances, more or less marked. I will admit, myself, that there is something in the face of that siren that had she kept herself unspotted from the world might have suggested the other – that rare being there on the easel who told you she had no relatives or friends, and for which reason you are deeply troubled. It is probable she told you the exact truth. I have seen people who were almost counterparts of each other between whom there existed no known tie of kinship. There was once a man in New York who resembled Jay Gould so strikingly as to deceive their best friends. And besides, the girl may have relatives of whom she knows nothing. Most of us have cousins whom we have never seen, or even heard of. Should Guinevere prove to be the unknown cousin of Elaine, I cannot see that the purity and charm of Elaine is in any manner affected thereby.”

“Yes, Harry; that is so. Besides—”

“Besides, the resemblance is positively trivial. No one but an artist would think of it. I should never have suspected it without your assistance. In the one face there is written all that is good, and pure, and holy; in the other, all that is reckless, unscrupulous, soulless, and if not vicious might easily become so. It does not take a physiognomist to see that. I beg pardon for saying so, Julian, but it seems to me that there is no more similarity between the two than there is between the opposing elements of your own strange nature. The one all that is good, and the other, well – not all that is bad, but very different, you know, old boy. And it is probably these forces within you that answer to the charms of these two beings who are so manifestly opposites. The one inspiring only the nobleness of a blameless love; the other suggesting the abandonment of a reckless passion.”

III.

THE LIGHT in the studio was growing dim. Goetze had risen to his feet and was walking back and forth in front of the portraits. When he spoke he seemed to have forgotten them, except as the representation of an abstract principle; or, perhaps, he was thinking of his own nature, and what his friend had said of it.

“Good and bad are relative terms only,” he said, as one pronouncing a text. Every man fulfills his purpose. I can put a stroke of paint on my canvas, and you will call it white. I put another beside it, and by contrast the first appears gray. Still another, and the second has become gray, and the first still darker. And so on, until I have reached the purest white we know. It is the same with humanity. Men are only dark or light as they are contrasted with others; nor can they avoid the place they occupy on God’s canvas any more than my colors can choose their places on mine. The world is a great picture. God is the greatest of all artists. His is the master hand – the unerring touch that lays on the lights, the half-tones and the shadows. Each fulfills its purpose. Without the shadows there would be no lights.

“What is true of masses is likewise true of individuals,” he continued, after a moment’s pause. “In a landscape, every blade of grass, every pebble, has its light and its dark side. If you see only the light side of an object, it is only because the shadow is turned from you. It is so with men; one side is sun, the other shadow. Sometimes the light, only, is presented to view, but the darker side is none the less there because unseen. Nature is never unbalanced. Whatever of brightness there is toward the sun there must be an equal amount of shadow opposing, with all the intergradations between. If the light is dim the shadow is soft; if the light is brilliant the shadow is black. Some of us are turned white side to the world, some the reverse; some show the white and the black alternately.”

The man in the chair settled himself comfortably to listen. He liked nothing better than to see the artist in his present mood, offering a word now and then that was likely to draw out his peculiar ideas.

“You believe in fate, then, and the absence of moral freedom,” he said reflectively.

“I believe nothing. Belief is not the word. What is, is right. To assert otherwise is an insult to the Supreme. He is all powerful, hence – wrong cannot exist.”

“I should be glad to hear your argument in support of that position.”

“Argument! It is a self-evident truth! Argument is not necessary! Argument is never necessary! If an assertion is not true no amount of discussion will make it so, while the truth requires no support.”

The other had lighted a pipe, and was smoking lazily.

“Well,” he said, as the artist paused; “at least those who have crossed over have solved the mystery.”

“Oh, they have! And how do you know that anyone has crossed over? You do not believe in the mortality nor the slumber of the soul; no more do I; but time exists only with life. A man dies and in the same instant opens his eyes upon eternity, and yet a million of years may have been swept away in that instant. As a tired child you have fallen asleep. A moment later you have been called by your mother to breakfast. And yet, in that moment of dreamless sleep, the long winter night had passed. Adam, the first man, closing his eyes in death; you and I, who will do the same ten, twenty, forty years hence, and the generations who will follow us for a million years, perhaps, will waken to eternity, if there be a waking, in one and the same instant of time, without a knowledge of the intervening years. There were no years. Eternity has no beginning, no end, no measurement.”

He paused a moment, then suddenly burst out again.

“Nothing in life is real – it is all a dream. You think your being is reality and that you hear my voice speaking. I tell you it is but fancy. We are the figures – the mimes in some vast hypnotic exhibition – the shadows in some gigantic spirit’s disordered dream. Hypnotism,” he continued, pursuing a line of thought which his impulsive words had suggested, “has, in fact, proven that no one can distinguish the real from the unreal. You remember, when we went to see Flint, the great hypnotist, how his subjects passed from one condition to another and took on any personality at the operator’s will; capering and grimacing about the stage with all the characteristics and even the facial expression of monkeys, one minute, and simpering as silly school-girls the next; and to them it was all real – as real as this room, these bodies, these pictures are to us. I read some lines once that seemed to express the idea:

“I sometimes think life but a dream

Of some great soul in some great sphere,

And what appear as truths but seem,

And what seem truths do but appear.”

He repeated these words with slow earnestness, adding solemnly, “Who knows? Who knows?”

The man who sat listening drew a long breath. He was a rich idler with a good deal of worldly wisdom, but he loved and admired his erratic friend. He felt that much of what he said was sophistry, wholly or in part; but there was a charm about the earnest manner, the musical voice, and the flashing brevity of statement, more pleasing to his ear than sounder logic from a surer reasoner.

It was nearly dark now in the studio. The artist halted in his march, and offered to light the gas.

“Not for the world, Julian; I am far too happy in the dark. I was just thinking what a glorious agitator you would make; you would carry all before you. I wonder you have never dabbled in politics or socialism. Now I think of it, I have never heard you mention these things. I suppose you belong to one or the other of the great parties, however.”

“Politics? Party? Good heavens, no! I never meddle with such things; it is one step lower than I have ever gone.”

“But a man must stand somewhere. He that stands nowhere stands upon nothing.”

The artist paused before the open window and stood looking out upon the dusk of the little scented garden. A faint reflected glimmer from some far-away lamp dimly illuminated one side of his face, silhouetting his striking profile sharply against a ground of blackness.

“If you mean,” he began, slowly, “that I should have some opinions, then I will tell you what they are.

“I believe neither in tariff nor trade. Currency nor coin. Traffic nor toil. I believe in nothing – but the absolute freedom of every living being. Freedom! – freedom from the curse of creeds, the blight of bigotry, and the leprosy of the law. Freedom to go and to come, to live and to die. Life without loathing, love without bondage. To live in some sunlit valley, where the bud is ever bursting into flower, the flower fading to fruit, and the fruit ripening to sustenance. The untouched bosom of Nature would yield enough for her children had not the curse of greed been implanted in their bosoms.”

Goetze had turned away from the window and was again striding up and down the floor in the dark.

“A beautiful poem, Julian,” said the other, dreamily; “but a sort of delightful barbarism, I’m afraid.”

“Barbarism? No! A higher, purer intellectuality than we have ever yet known – a civilization that knows not the curse of avarice nor the miseries of crime – the weariness of wealth nor the pangs of poverty. The garden of Eden is still about us, but we have torn up the flowers, and desecrated it with the lust of gain. Man was never driven out of that garden. Greed was planted in his heart and he destroyed it.”

“Come,” he continued, suddenly changing the subject, “I have made you tired and hungry; let us go out, somewhere, to supper.”

“Thanks,” said the other, laughing; “I supposed a man in your condition had no need of bodily sustenance. You are comfortably situated here, Julian,” he added, as they passed out into the street.

“Yes, it is quiet here – no bother with servants nor landladies. Once a week my washerwoman comes and stays to put my establishment in order; the rest of the time I am disturbed only by my sitters.”

“You forget me.”

“Yes, Harry,” said the artist, taking his arm affectionately; “and by you, of course.”

IV.

WHEN JULIAN GOETZE arose the next morning he felt strong within himself to withstand and conquer those fierce impulses of his savage heritage that had answered to the blandishments of Evelin March. And yet he was greatly troubled. He felt that in a large measure he had been to blame. He blushed hotly as he recalled some of the things he had said to this woman whom Harry had called a siren.

“Men are all scoundrels,” he said, savagely; “I wonder if there are really any who are not so at heart.”

He rapidly formulated his plan of action, and even the sentences with which he was to meet and conquer this modern Circe.

“I will keep Eva’s face before me,” he thought, “and I will treat her coldly. She is high-spirited and keen; she will notice the change at once and resent it. She is too proud to demand an explanation.”

He felt himself equal to the ordeal. He was anxious now for her to come that it might be safely passed. As the hours went by he grew impatient; he placed her portrait on the easel and fancied the original was before him. He went through an imaginary dialogue with it in which he was wholly victorious. He no longer felt any emotion for this woman.

“I will begin a new life,” he said, as he strode rapidly up and down the room; “a new life.” But there was a feverishness in his voice that did not bode well for his resolution.

“I wish she would come,” he muttered, fretfully.

His cheeks were hot and flushed, and his hands were like ice, and trembling. And the result was – that he failed – failed miserably and completely. When, an hour later, Evelin March entered the studio and, throwing off her wrap, stood before him, imperious, soulless and beautiful – a delicate odor, as of pansies, from her white flesh, stealing into his brain – his pledges of faith and his fair resolves melted away like walls of mist, and the face of Eva Delorme shrank back into the silent recesses of his heart, and only a small voice within him whispered, “Coward – traitor—”

She glanced at him sharply.

“Something troubles you, mon ami. You are not overjoyed at my coming. I have been fancying to myself how impatiently you were waiting.”

His hands were no longer trembling. He was calm enough, now, but it was the calmness of defeat – of having yielded to the inevitable.

“I have indeed been waiting impatiently,” he said, smiling. “You see that I have been even consoling myself with your picture,” and he pointed to the easel.

“From an artistic point of view, only, I fancy.”

“That is unkind. I have been holding a conversation with it that I fear I should hesitate to repeat – with the original.”

“How interesting! A rehearsal, perhaps.”

“Perhaps; and I was testing the powers of my work as compared to those of the original.”

“And with the result—”

“That my work is a failure.”

“How humiliating! May I ask in what way?”

“I could withstand the charms of the picture, but with the original—”

“Well, and with the original?”

“I failed.”

The face before him was radiant; but down in his heart the small voice, growing very faint, still whispered, “Coward – traitor – fool.”

That evening Harry Lawton found him sitting gloomily before the window looking out upon the shadows that were gathering in the little garden beneath. As the door opened he glanced up and nodded without speaking.

“Circe came?”

Again the artist nodded.

“And conquered?”

Another nod.

“Did you suppose for a moment that she wouldn’t?”

No answer.

Lawton assumed a dignified attitude, and began with mock earnestness:

“Oh, wise man – thou who knowest so well the heart and the face of Nature – how little thou knowest of thine own soul!”

A shade of anguish swept over the artist’s face, but he made no reply.

“Most gentle and gifted man! Last night I listened long and patiently to the scintillating wisdom of your wonderful brain. Let me now speak, while you, in turn, give ear.

“When, last night, you showed me the portraits and told me their history, I foresaw this moment. You are plunged into despair at the contemplation of your own weakness. You have been abusing your soul with hard names. Now, I would whisper to you with great gentleness that what you observed to me last night, about the sunlight and shadow of every life, is true; and that the brightness of the sun cannot illuminate, but only intensifies the blackness of the shade. Pursuing the same line of reasoning, I add that flowers bloom in the sunlight, while mushrooms thrive in the darkness. That because man is fond of mushrooms is no reason why he should be deprived of flowers. That because your purer and spiritual self reaches out for the stainless lily, is no reason why your material and grosser nature should be left starving. Because you are for a time intoxicated with Evelin March is no reason why, in your calmer and nobler existence, you should not love truly and sinlessly, Eva Delorme.

“I am aware that my logic is not wholly in accord with generally accepted theory. It accords much more nearly, perhaps, with universal practice – of course I refer only to men in the single walks of life. It is well known that all men after marriage are irreproachable. And when you have plucked your stainless lily, you, like the rest, will subsist only upon its fragrance. But really, for the present, I cannot see that your affair with Miss March in any way conflicts with your sentiments for Miss Delorme; and especially as you have known the latter but a few hours in all – hardly sufficient, I should think, to inspire a lifelong devotion. Truly, Julian, I would advise you not to take matters quite so seriously, and let the tide drift as it will for the present.”

Throughout this long harangue Julian Goetze had listened in silence.

“Oh, Harry,” he groaned, as the other paused, “you don’t know what a traitor I am!”

“Well, possibly my sensibilities are not over fine, but I think you will be more comfortable for taking my advice.”

Without replying, the artist rose and going into the adjoining room returned a moment later with a decanter and glasses.

“I am tired,” he said, apologetically, as he caught the look of disapproval in his friend’s eye; “it will do me good.”

“None for me, Julian, before supper, and – I don’t think, if – if I were you, I would take any, either.”

“I am exhausted, Harry; I am not going to supper and I need it,” he said, fretfully.

The other sighed and did not reply. Goetze filled one of the glasses and drank it off, then he resumed his seat by the window. A little later his friend took leave of him; reaching the street door he hesitated as if about to turn back, then he lifted the latch, and passed slowly out into the lighted street, closing the door gently behind him.

The next morning the studio of Julian Goetze was locked. It remained locked all day, and within, stretched upon the floor, unconscious, lay the gifted man, and by his side was an empty flask.

V.

PERHAPS JULIAN GOETZE did not willingly abide by the somewhat fallacious reasoning of his friend. It is more than probable that each time he succumbed to the savage elements of his nature, he did so with reluctance and shame, with subsequent remorse, and good resolutions formed a score of times, perhaps, to be as often broken.

As the weeks went by he became more and more involved in this singular affair. In a way he had found it possible, as his friend had once suggested, to be in love with two women at one time.

When he was with Eva Delorme his love for the pure, beautiful girl seemed to take entire possession of his life. Evelin March, for the time, was as hateful to him as his own weakness, or was wholly forgotten.

When in the presence of Evelin March his better self shrank away before the fierce heredity within him, and the face of Eva Delorme became only a dim, haunting ghost that taunted him with his treachery.

Of the lives of these two he knew absolutely nothing. The evident distress which his reference to relatives and friends had occasioned Eva during their first meeting, had caused him carefully to avoid the subject afterward; and the other, who had never referred to her family, he had not cared to know. He had never even considered whether she was wife, maid or widow, until he suddenly became aware that the sentiment he had awakened within her was not, as he had at first supposed, a passing fancy, but a fierce passion of jealous and tyrannical love. She no longer rallied him, and parried his compliments with her light, pointed sarcasm, as she had done at first, but assumed an unmistakable bearing of ownership and possession – questioning him closely regarding other sitters and female acquaintances – while he writhed helplessly in the exquisite misery of a spell which he felt himself powerless to break.

Thus far he had never surrendered himself entirely to this passion. More than once he had hesitated on the very brink of the precipice. Whether it was the haunting face of Eva Delorme that stayed him, or something in the manner of the other, he could not tell.

One day he suddenly caught her in his arms. She suffered his embrace for a moment, then drew away from him.

“When we are married, Paul,” she said, tenderly, “I will take you to Italy, where in some beautiful villa we will give ourselves up wholly to our love. I am rich, Paul, rich; and it is all yours, but we must wait.”

He turned white and was silent. The thought of marriage with this woman had never entered his head. He had already asked Eva Delorme to be his wife. She had long since confessed her love for him, but had deferred her answer from week to week, and with such evident distress of mind that the young artist felt that a secret sorrow lay heavily upon her life. He longed to fly with her to some far country, away from it all, and from the dark shadows that encompassed his own.

The similarity of features which he had at first noticed in his two sitters was at times almost forgotten; at others it had recurred to him and haunted him like a nightmare. More than once he had imagined he saw the fleeting something in one woman that reminded him of the other. He had dallied over the portraits, making them photographically minute for comparison. He had hesitated guiltily about showing either of these to the other woman. He had sometimes longed, and always dreaded, to see them side by side in person. They did not always come at their appointed time, and he was in constant terror lest they should meet in the studio; and yet the thought had in it a fascination for him that made him feverish for its realization. It was strange that they had never met in his rooms – he did not realize, perhaps, how strange.

As the months slipped away, and he had become more and more distracted by the contending forces that were eating deeply into his life, he had grown almost indifferent to his curiosity and only dreaded their meeting.

It was now October. The portraits had been practically finished long since. Day after day he had resolved to send that of Evelin March to the dealer for framing. He felt that he could then break away from her. But still he had hesitated and lingered, and now, when in a moment of recklessness he had taken a step nearer the brink of the precipice, she had spoken to him of their marriage. The idea stunned him; he could not reply. She believed his emotion had been caused by her rebuff, and laid her hand gently on his arm.

“Don’t be angry, Paul,” she whispered.

He had never seen her so subdued and beautiful as she was at that moment. He was nearer to loving her than he had ever been.

“Yes,” he said, with some agitation, “we must – wait.”

That night after supper he sought Harry Lawton, and unburdened himself.

“What shall I do, Harry?” he said, piteously; “what must I do?”

“Marry Eva Delorme and take a year’s trip to Europe.”

“But Eva hesitates – she has never yet given me a decided answer.”

“Insist upon it. Then take her to the preacher at once, and fly.”

“Oh, Harry, what a villain I am! Evelin is really in love with me, and I have given her just cause. I never saw her look as she did today.”

“Nonsense! She is a schemer and an actress. I did not suppose she wanted to marry you, but since that is her idea I can see right through her. This being the case, and your determination to marry the other fixed, the sooner you do it and get away, the better.”

“I am afraid you are right, Harry; there seems to be no other course. I haven’t the moral courage to tell her the truth.”

“No need of it, whatever. It wouldn’t help matters in the least. Just marry and go away quietly, and don’t return until you get ready. If you need money draw on me at sight.”

“Thank you, Harry. I expect Eva soon. I am going to put the final touches on her picture, and I will urge my suit. If she accepts me I will take her away at once. Evelin’s picture is ready for framing; I will send it to the dealer’s tomorrow. I wish to God I could get away before she comes again!”

“Why not? You have nothing to keep you. If the girl really loves you she will marry you out of hand, and be only too glad to cut loose from all unpleasant associations. And now let’s take a last look at the pictures,” he said.

They had been walking slowly in the direction of Goetze’s cottage. They entered now, and the artist lighted the gas. Then he arranged the portraits of the two women as he had done for his friend’s inspection nearly a half-year previous. Both were thinking of that evening now. How long ago it seemed. Harry sat silent before them for a long time.

“They are wonderful portraits, Goetze,” he said, at length; “but, do you know, it doesn’t seem to me that they have quite the artistic value of the first sketches.”

“You are right, Harry; they are too minute. I shall destroy some of that tomorrow.”

The other was silent. After a long pause he said, thoughtfully, “There is something – I can’t tell where it is, either; but it is certainly there.”

“You refer to the resemblance?”

“Yes; it is hardly that, however.”

“I have thought very little about it lately. It troubled me terribly for a while.”

“Well, good-night, Julian,” said Lawton, rising. “If there are to be any orange-blossoms, I suppose I am best man.”

“Yes, Harry. Good-night!”

Two days later, when Eva Delorme came to the studio, the artist thought he had never seen her so beautiful.

And now the whiteness of his own soul was turned to view. He resembled as little the man who had trembled before Evelin March, as Evelin March was like this beautiful being before him.

With all the ardor and fervid eloquence of his nature he urged his suit; and she, tearful and trembling before him, half consented. He caught her to his breast and covered her face with kisses.

“My darling – my darling,” he murmured, “we will leave this smoky, dingy city; I will take you to a beautiful land where the flowers never fade and the air is forever filled with their fragrance. Where the blue skies of an eternal summer are above us, and the blue waves of a whispering sea shall lull us to peace. There is a tiny island in the Mediterranean on the coast of France. I was there once; it is like heaven. I will take you there. Say that you will go, sweetheart; we will start today.”

The girl lifted her face to his, and kissed him on the forehead.

“It would be heaven, indeed, Julian; but – we must wait.”

The artist started and grew pale. Her final words had been the same as those used by Evelin March. She did not seem to notice his emotion, or mistook its cause.

“You know that I love you, Julian,” she continued, “and I will do anything for your happiness; but – oh, Julian—”

She burst into tears and hid her face on his shoulder. He felt that some mystery of grief weighed upon her, and he longed to urge her confidence, but refrained. He soothed her gently with tender words and caresses. By and by she grew calm.

“Julian,” she said, “I am in no condition today to give you a sitting. I will come tomorrow, and then – I will give you a final answer, and – oh, my love, do not urge me further today; I – I cannot endure it.”

Then suddenly throwing her arms about his neck she pressed one fierce kiss upon his lips and hurried from the room.

After she was gone the artist walked up and down the studio for a long time in deep thought. He was wildly happy in her love, and yet he was troubled. It was strange that her words should have been the same as those of Evelin March. Her manner, too, during the last moment had been unusual. Something about it had jarred him – almost reminded him of the other woman. What was it between these two?

By and by, he noticed something white lying on the floor. It was a woman’s handkerchief – a bit of cambric and lace exhaling the delicate odor of violets. He pressed it to his lips repeatedly, and whispered her name over and over, then hid it away in his bosom. He had not noticed, in the dim light, that in one corner, in small, delicate letters, were the initials, E. M. D.

VI.

THE NEXT MORNING was bright and crisp, and the artist felt better than he had for many weeks. He arose happy in the thought that he should again see Eva Delorme so soon, and in the confidence that she would accept his offer of marriage. He was happier still in the prospect of cutting free from all the feverish torture of the past few months; of leaving behind all the unpleasant associations that clouded both their lives, along with the soot, and fumes, and temptations of this grimy city; and of dreaming away the winter with Eva on the coast of France.

He rose early and set out for a morning walk. His favorite restaurant was near the heart of the city; he would go there for breakfast. The distance was considerable, but the brisk exercise was in harmony with his thoughts. The blood was circulating rhythmically through his veins; he threw back his shoulders and breathed in the fresh frosty air. He wanted to sing. In another week he would be away from all that was disagreeable and disgraceful – perhaps tomorrow. They would spend a whole year in Europe; maybe they would not come back at all.

After breakfast he met two or three acquaintances; they remarked his unusual spirits.

“You must have made a big strike, Goetze; can’t you tell us?”

“Yes, by and by; not now – later.”

“Congratulations are in order, of course.”

“Hardly yet; pretty soon.”

He returned to his studio. Eva had named no hour, but he hoped she would come early. As he opened the street door he saw a long, thin, delicately tinted envelope that had been pushed beneath it in his absence. He knew instinctively that it was from Eva, and hastened into the studio to read it. It was not sealed and there was no address. Trembling with agitation he tore off the covering and read:

Dearest Julian:

I am feeling badly this morning, so will not come for my sitting today, and since my portrait is so nearly finished I suppose there is really no need of my coming again for that purpose. I should have come, however, as I promised, had it been possible. And now, my dear friend, as regards the decision which so concerns us both, I will ask your kind patience until tomorrow eve.

On West L—— Street, between 18th and 19th, near the park, there is a large, old-fashioned, brick mansion. It is No. 74, east side – you cannot miss it. There is an arc electric light directly in front of it.

Go to this place tomorrow night, exactly at six o’clock. If the door is fastened, ring, and the servant will admit you. There wait in the hall-way until I come. If the door is unlocked, enter and wait likewise, unless I am already within to meet you. Then I will give you my answer; and oh, my friend, if it be possible I will unfold to you the history and sad mystery of my poor life, which you have so kindly never sought to know.

Eva

Julian read this note again and again now with pleasure, again with anxiety. Surely she meant to accept him or she would not have written thus; she would not have appointed a meeting with him at this old mansion. And why at this old mansion? Was it her home? No, that was not likely, or why was he to wait until she came? If her home, she would be waiting there for him. Probably the home of some friend of whom she had made a confidant, and who was in sympathy with her love affair. Yes, it must be this; and the mystery of her life, what could that be but some pre-natal pledge of marriage with one whom she despised, or tyrannical guardians, or both. She would probably be disinherited if she disobeyed. What did he care; money was not the end of God’s judgment. He would take her away from it all; his precious darling, and she was ill, too; she was in pain and he could not go to her. He longed to sit by her side, and hold her hand and pour out his love. He was bitterly disappointed at not seeing her today, but he almost forgot that, now, as he thought of her ill and suffering. He read and re-read the lines of her letter, and tried to comfort himself with the thought that it was no more than a headache brought on by her mental strain.

By and by, something else about this letter began to puzzle him. He had not thought of it at first, but gradually it dawned upon him that the handwriting was not exactly like that upon the card of Eva Delorme. It seemed to him that it was less delicate and more irregular. He took her card from the little tray on the table, and compared them. He decided that they were the same, after all. The letter was written hurriedly and she was ill; but the formation of the characters was much the same. As he replaced the card his eye fell upon that of Evelin March. There was no similarity between the writing on the two cards, but as he glanced now from that of Evelin March to the letter he fancied one suggested faintly the nervous, dashing style of the other. The haunting curiosity that had once possessed him returned for a moment. There was a strange fear in his heart which he could not name. He compared the two more closely, and as he did so the fancy disappeared. It was like certain faint odors that are only perceptible at a distance. He heaved a sigh of relief.

“I am a consummate ass, among other things,” he muttered.

His mind reverted to Eva. How would he get through the time until tomorrow? Tomorrow there would be a sitting with Evelin. As he thought of her his face flushed with shame, and a feeling of dread came upon him. He would send her portrait to the dealer today – it was finished – then there would be no excuse for her staying. No, he would go away and lock the studio all day. What a fool he had been to allow himself to be fascinated by her dashing beauty. What a traitor he had been to make even a semblance of love to this bold, flashy woman of the world – a woman who, until recently, had not even commanded his respect.

“I have been a villain,” he muttered, to himself; “a villain and a traitor, but I will be so no more. I will curb this savage nature within me. I will abstain from drink. I will be a new man.”

He sealed his resolution with a kiss pressed upon the little, tinted letter, then placing it in an inner pocket he arranged the canvas of Eva Delorme on the easel before him and walked backward and forward in front of it thinking, pausing now and then to gaze long upon the beautiful, saintly features.

“It does not do her justice,” he said, at last; “there is something about the lips and the expression that I have not caught. It is too minute; I must darken the ground; there is not enough relief – not enough depth.”

Hastily removing his coat and the wide felt hat which he always wore on the street, he hung them on a rack in the adjoining room, and donning his velvet studio jacket, returned to the easel. Seizing his palette and brushes he fell to work rapidly, and with the enthusiasm of one who is in love with his task.

As he dashed on the broad sweeps of color from his palette, the background gradually assumed the effect of having faded away, and the rare face before it to have become a thing of flesh and blood. It was a marvel of skill. He had never done anything like this before. He became so absorbed in his work that he forgot the passing hours. The background of the portrait complete, he began adding touches of light and shadow and color to the drapery, to the hair, to the perfect features. He felt that he had never painted half so well. It seemed to him that he was inspired. He remembered the story of the artist who had painted the portrait of his beloved, drawing the tints so truly from her life, that when he had finished and turned to look at her with an exclamation of triumph on his lips, she was dead. It seemed to him at this moment that he was drawing his tints from her very life. That the intense workings of his brain must in some manner affect her own. He paused and his hand trembled. She was ill; what if she were to die! Pshaw! it was but a fable. He would paint the picture as truly, but only that the world might bow before the beauty of his mistress. He would exhibit it in Paris, and the multitude would worship the beautiful face that should win him a world-wide fame. Then he would take it away from the gaping throng and lay it, with the fame it brought him, at her feet.

The little clock on the mantel had long since chimed noon, and the hour hand had crept around the circle nearly to five before he finally laid aside his brushes and palette, and stepped back to view his finished work.

“It is wonderful – wonderful,” he said, aloud. “Oh, my precious darling!”

There was a sound behind him as of someone choking. He turned and stood face to face with Evelin March. She was very pale, and her eyes burned like two stars.

“Who is that woman?” she said, fiercely.

He knew that she had overheard him, but he endeavored to address her calmly. He felt the cowardliness of his nature rising, and he cursed himself inwardly.

“I – I was not expecting you today, Evelin,” he stammered; “tomorrow, you know, is the day for your sitting.”

She did not take her eyes from the portrait; she had gone very close to it and as she turned upon him to reply there was a mingled look of terror and ferocity in her face.

“No, it is quite evident that you did not expect me, and that you were too much absorbed to remember or care when my sitting was due. And now you will please to answer my question. Who is that woman?”

What would he not have given, at that moment, to have had courage to say, “She is to be my wife;” but the magnificent fury of the woman before him, and the recollection of the shameful words of love he had spoken to her, overwhelmed him.

“She is a – a Miss Delorme, I believe; a sitter of mine,” he managed to say at last.

“You believe! You lie! You know who she is, and you love her! You love that nun-faced baby! I heard your words. You believe – you—”

“Evelin, stop!”

“Don’t speak to me, you traitor! ‘Your precious darling.’ Oh, I could kill her! I will kill her!”

He could not understand this wild fury, that seemed to be half inspired by a sort of terror. She had turned to the portrait again and was examining it, oblivious, for the moment, to all else. Then suddenly she turned upon him again with blazing eyes.

“I will kill her!” she hissed. “I could kill her with that,” and she pointed to the jeweled stiletto on the wall.

She was so magnificent in her rage that he could not help admiring her through it all. The love for him which had aroused this tempest was so fierce that he felt his savage blood beginning to throb with an answering glow. He felt that once more he was about to be a traitor to all that was good within him. The ground was slipping from under his feet. The glamor of her voluptuous beauty was ruling his brain like the fumes of liquor. His eyes, too, were beginning to shine fiercely, but not with anger.

“Evelin,” he said, “listen. You know I love you and have from the first. She is nothing to me. The words that you overheard were addressed only to the picture. It is my masterpiece. I was not thinking of the original.” And down in his heart the small voice was whispering, “Coward – traitor – fool!”

But the hot blood of passion was sweeping through his veins, and he heeded it not. He put out his hand and laid it upon her arm.

“Don’t touch me!” she said, angrily, but the expression in her eyes softened. He saw his advantage and followed it up.

“Evelin,” he said, huskily, “I love you – I love you!” Again he laid his hand upon her and this time she allowed it to remain. They were standing near the curtained arch of the adjoining room. He parted back the heavy draperies, and gently drew her within.

The savage blood was rioting fiercely within him. He caught both her hands in his and drew her to his embrace. She hid her face upon his shoulder, and would not let him touch her lips. Other than this she made no further resistance. Half dragging, and half carrying her he approached a large divan that stood in a little alcove on the opposite side of the room. Suddenly he took her bodily in his arms and they sank down upon it together. For a second, only; then, with a quick powerful effort she threw him backward and sprang to her feet, staring about her with a wild, startled look in her eyes.

Goetze, wholly at a loss to account for the suddenness and fierceness of the resistance, was for a moment stunned. As he recovered himself and made a movement toward her, she gave him one quick, piteous look – a look that recalled to him suddenly and strangely the beautiful, innocent girl whom he had wronged and forgotten – the face of Eva Delorme – then, as if seized with sudden panic she sped from the room, out through the dim studio and into the dusky hall-way beyond.

He heard the opening and closing of the outside door, and knew that she was gone. Then the tide of reaction swept over him. The glamor of conquest had passed, and there remained only the shame, the treachery and the remorse.

With a curse of anguish he flung himself down upon the floor, and lay groveling with his face in the dust. The moments flew by unheeded. An hour passed. The electric lamps were turned on, and a white ray of light shot in through the half-curtained window. The little clock on the mantel chimed the hour.

The sound roused him. Starting to his feet he gazed stupidly about him for a moment as if undecided what to do, then seizing his hat from the wall rack he hurried out through the studio and the dark hall-way without pausing to remove his working jacket, or to lock the door. Out into the street where people were hurrying home, chattering and laughing, and glancing only for a second at the figure in the velvet studio coat and broad hat, wondering a little at the dark, intense face that flashed so swiftly past them toward the glare and confusion of the business center.

He did not know where he was going. He did not care. He was trying to get away from himself. He walked faster and faster; twice he started to run.

He was drawing nearer to the bustle of the city. Small shops were scattered along between the rows of brick dwellings, and at one corner the light of a saloon flared out upon the pavement. Entering, he called for brandy. The bar-keeper stared at him and set out a bottle and a glass. Twice he filled it to the brim and drank it off with hardly a pause between. Then, throwing down a silver dollar, he hastened out without waiting for change.

The shops were getting thicker and larger. Dwelling-houses were fewer and more old fashioned. Here and there newsboys were crying the evening papers. Street-cars, filled with lights and faces, rolled swiftly by him and in front of him, jangling their bells. The buzz and whirl of the city was around him. He was drawing near to its great, throbbing heart.

Splendid shop windows threw a flood of light upon the pavement, making it like day. The shouts of the newsboys and street venders, the jangling of the car-bells, the rushing cabs and carriages, the hurrying crowds, the brilliant lights, the liquor in his brain, all whirled together and sent the blood racing through his arteries, tingling to the surface now and again in burning waves of misery and shame.

People paused for a moment to look at the strange figure, and hurried on. Everybody was hurrying – hurrying somewhere. He, too, was hurrying, as one pursued by furies; but where?

Suddenly, in front of an illuminated window, he paused; why, he did not know. There was nothing there to attract him. It was a place where they sold shoes. Numberless shoes were arranged for display, and in the midst of them a little white lamp-globe revolving by clock-work with two words painted on it in black letters:

GENTLEMEN’S SHOES.

He read the words over and over as the little globe came round, and round, and round. “Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes.” The thing fascinated him. It was such a funny little globe. It reminded him of a merry-go-round he had once ridden on as a child. He wondered how many times a day it spelled out the words, and if it kept on going, there in the dark, after the place was closed. Then he hurried on, but the little white globe and its black, flying letters were still before him. They had impressed their image upon his brain. More than once he repeated the words aloud. They seemed to have blended themselves into his whirling senses and become a monotonous undertone.

“Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes.”

Here and there he stopped at a saloon and drank. He drank deeply and the liquor was strong.

The lights were beginning to grow fewer. He had turned in his walk, and was leaving the whirl and glare behind him. He did not know what direction he had taken. He only knew that he was going, going, going, in a mad effort to get away from himself.

The people that passed him he did not see. He saw only the white face of Eva Delorme, and that piteous look in the eyes of the other, that had, in one instant, revived within him, and with ten-fold vigor, all the strange, torturing suspicions he had once felt regarding these two mysterious lives. The faces that turned to look at him, he did not notice; he saw only these two, and mingled with them, and whirling round, and round, and round, the little white globe with its black letters, “Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes.”

After a long time he noticed that he was passing a small suburban railway station. There was a bustle of preparation as though a train was expected to arrive. He crossed the shining steel tracks and entered. A number of people were inside, chattering, laughing and waiting. Waiting to go somewhere. Everybody was going somewhere – everybody but him. Suddenly a group in one corner attracted him as had the lighted window and the revolving globe.

A hatchet-faced woman, wearing a faded straw hat of antique pattern, a cloak to match, and a soiled and largely plaided dress, was vainly endeavoring to still the cries of a miserable babe swaddled in an assortment of dirty garments.

Two children, of ages evidently beginning at prompt and regular intervals from the one in her arms, extended from her at right-angles on the bench, their legs straddled about with a childish disregard of modesty. They were asleep – at least one of them was, and the other was equally silent.

By and by, the woman arose and walked the floor with the babe. At this, the child who was not asleep arose also and stared at its mother with wide, round eyes. Then, as she approached it and turned in her march, it began to follow her, keeping close behind and in step.

The other slept on unconsciously. The lamps flared and flickered; the babe, partially soothed, sobbed and moaned, and the squalid pair marched on.

Begotten in bliss – brought forth in suffering – retired in privation.

Suddenly there is a prolonged, shrill shriek in the night, a trampling of many feet, a shouting of discordant voices, and the midnight train is snorting at the platform.

Hastily the mother gathers up the sleeping child, and bidding the other cling close to her skirts, hurries out into the night, past the fiery-eyed Polyphemus, on toward the coaches behind.

The people that are going somewhere jostle against her in their haste to get into the coaches and secure seats. Mechanically the artist follows. Everybody is going somewhere; he will go, too.

The monster ahead begins to puff and grunt, and the bell that is fastened to its back, to ring wildly.

The men who are loading baggage shout and swear and hurl coarse jokes at each other, and the midnight train begins to move. The bell still clangs frantically, the demon puffs and grunts faster and faster, and the light from its one fearful eye penetrates farther and farther into the darkness ahead.

Faster, and faster, and faster – the sound of the wheels falling into a regular measure, until it has become a weird, rhythmical monotone.

“Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes.”

Then there is a momentary flare of light, a final, blood-curdling scream, and the one-eyed demon – the faded and soiled woman – the sobbing baby – the sleeping child – the marching child with the big, round eyes – the people who are going somewhere, and the artist who is going nowhere, are on their way.

He has taken a seat facing the faded woman, and is unconsciously studying her face. She is still hushing the babe to rest. On one side the sleeper is huddled up against her. On the other, next to the window and resting upon its knees, the child with the big, round eyes stares out into the darkness.

The coach is warm. The heat and the strong liquor are beginning to tell on him. The face before him begins to mingle with all sorts of impossible fancies. The roar of the flying train is in his ears, but it seems the roar of some mighty sea that is about to overwhelm him. The conductor, coming through, shakes his arm to rouse him.

“Tickets!”

“Oh, yes!” – he forgot. He thrusts a bill into the conductor’s hand. “Keep the change, I will ride it out.”

The drowsiness is again stealing upon him. He still sees the wretched face before him and is studying it; but always between them are those other faces – the face of Eva Delorme and of Evelin March – and the piteous, frightened look that rests now upon one, now upon the other, – and now the two are melting – melting into one, like the blending outlines of a dissolving view – and both fade out into the little white globe with its whirling black words, that the hum of the train flying through the night keeps repeating over, and over, and over, – “Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes – Gentlemen’s shoes.”

VII.

THE SKY WAS beginning to get gray with morning when the night express, more than a hundred and fifty miles from its starting point, rushed into a little station and halted a moment for water, panting and fretting to be on its way. A figure stepped from it to the platform, staggering a little as from the motion of the train. It was a young man. His eyes were bloodshot, his face stained with the grime of travel. His soft felt hat and his short, velvet coat were covered with cinders and dust. One would hardly have recognized the artist, Julian Goetze.

The station agent stood a few feet away with a lantern. He looked up somewhat astonished as this odd figure approached him. “Some drunken showman,” he thought.

The man came closer, as if to speak to him.

“How far back to Saint Louis?” he asked, anxiously.

“One hundred and fifty-three miles.”

“When can I get a train?”

“At eleven-thirty, if it’s on time.”

“Is it usually on time?”

“Hardly ever; four hours late yesterday.”

“Good God! Is there no other train?”

“There’s a cattle train lying up there on the switch now. Pulls out soon as this one leaves.”

“And what time will that reach Saint Louis?”

“No telling, depends upon what luck it has; possibly by four or five o’clock.”

The artist did not wait to hear more. Anything was better than remaining here on an uncertainty. He sped away up the track to where lay the long line of waiting cars.

He had been awakened by the stopping of the train, and a realization of affairs had flashed over him like lightning. He was far away from Saint Louis, and at six o’clock that night he had an appointment with Eva Delorme.

The effects of his self-abasement and the strong liquor had worn away. The fever and the delirium of last night were as a bad dream. He would hasten back to Eva. He had sinned – fallen almost to the lowest depth – but it was over now. He would see Evelin March no more. If Eva accepted him they would go away at once. Oh, if kind Providence would but help him to reach the appointment in time!

The conductor whom he asked, noting his anxiety, assured him that it was quite probable they would reach the city by five o’clock.

It was growing light rather slowly. The sky was overcast with clouds, and the air had the feeling of a storm. It seemed to Julian that the train crept along like a farm wagon. For a long time he looked out at the gray monotonous landscape, then he lay down on the cushioned benches of the caboose and tried to sleep. Now and then he would doze a little, but his mind was too full of anxiety and impatience to obtain rest. Terrifying dreams forced themselves upon him, and he awoke often, sick and frightened.

And so through that dreary autumn day the heavy train rumbled along across the wide stretch of country that divided him from that which fate was at that moment busily preparing – an experience as strange, as weird, as terribly fantastic as was ever accorded to human being before.

The little Swiss cottage of Julian Goetze was very silent that day. All through the forenoon no one entered, although the street door was unlocked and the studio door was open. As the afternoon wore away, the clouds and smoke that hung heavily over the city seemed to settle lower and lower, until within the narrow hall-way it was almost dark.

Just after the clock on the mantel of the inner room had chimed three, a cloaked figure passed through the hall and entered the studio. It was Evelin March. Her eye fell upon the portrait of Eva Delorme still resting upon the easel, and she glanced about hastily for the artist. He was not there. For some reason she did not remove her wrap, but stood still, listening. A wagon rattled by outside, but within all was silent.

“Paul!” she called, softly.

There was no reply.

“He has stepped out for a moment,” she thought; “he will be back presently.”

She approached the face on the easel, cautiously, as though it were alive.

“I wonder who she is,” she muttered; “I have seen her somewhere before – or I have dreamed it. He said it was his masterpiece. I hate her!”

She seated herself before the picture, studying it silently. Little by little a fear invaded her bosom – a strange fear, such as she had never known before. A fear of this portrait, of the lonely room, of the weapons upon the wall. It seemed to her that something horrible was about to happen.

She started up and began to pace up and down the room to drive away this feeling. Why did the artist not come? She parted back the draperies and looked into the room beyond. He could not have gone far; his coat was hanging upon the rack, and his velvet studio jacket was gone. Entering, she approached the coat and put her hand against it in a sort of caress.

How she loved him! She seemed to have forgotten or forgiven the offered insult of yesterday. Turning back the garment she touched her lips to the silk lining where it had covered his heart. As she did so she noticed the tinted edge of a narrow envelope in the inner pocket. In an instant she was seized with a passion of curiosity. All her jealousy and suspicions of the sweet-faced girl in gray came rushing back. She listened at the curtained arch for a moment, but there was no sound of approaching footsteps; then, her eyes flashing, and her cheeks flaming guiltily, she snatched the delicate missive from its concealment, and with trembling hands tore it from its covering. In another instant her suspicions were verified. The woman reading seemed suddenly to have become deranged.

“Coward! – liar! – cur!” she screamed.

She tore the letter in halves, crumpled it in her hands, and flung it upon the floor. Then suddenly becoming calm she gathered up the pieces hastily and concealed them in her bosom. A look of peculiar cunning had come into her eyes.

“So he is going to meet her,” she muttered, savagely; “but they will not meet alone. I, too, will go to No. 74 West L—— Street, east side.” Then she hesitated. “Perhaps I would not be admitted,” she thought.

Plans for overcoming this obstacle flashed through her brain like lightning. She seized upon what appeared to her the most feasible.

“If I will counterfeit her,” she said, feverishly; “I will disguise myself.”

She hurried back into the studio and stood for a moment before the easel. Yes, yes; she could do it. Her figure was much the same, dress gray and plain, hair low upon the forehead – a veil would make it complete.

“Oh,” she muttered, “how I hate your baby face! Look! I will kill you, you fool – you fool!”

Again that sickening, fascinating terror of this unknown woman came upon her. Hastily turning from the portrait she listened a second for the artist’s step. As she did so her eye caught the weapons on the wall. Without a moment’s hesitation she plucked the jewel-hilted stiletto from its place, and concealing it beneath her cloak hurried from the house.

•    •    •    •    •

An hour later the artist burst into the studio. His bloodshot eyes, and face blackened with travel, made him almost unrecognizable. Hurrying through to his room beyond he glanced eagerly at the clock. It was on the stroke of five.

“Just time to make myself presentable and reach the place by six,” he thought.

Then, turning, he surveyed himself in a mirror.

“Good heavens, what a spectacle I am! People must have thought I was a maniac – and they were not far from wrong – but I am all right now. I am going to Eva and confess my villainy, and ask her forgiveness. I will swear my faith to her. She will forgive me – she must forgive me. And as for Evelin, all is over with her after what passed last night. Last night! was it only last night? It seemed an age.”

He made a quick motion as if to drive away an unpleasant memory, then throwing off his outer garments he opened the door of a little dressing-room.

“I will bathe, and confess, and be born again,” he said, with a little laugh.

Twenty minutes afterward he emerged a new man in reality – as far as outward appearances were concerned. Cleanly shaven and scrupulously attired, no one would have recognized in him the dusty, wild-looking figure of an hour before. He glanced at the clock.

“Yes – I have plenty of time,” he thought. “No. 74 West L—— Street, east side; I will look at her letter again to make sure. Bless her sweet face! I can hardly wait until I see it again. If she only is not ill, but – good God, it is gone!”

He had looked in the breast pocket of his street coat, that still hung on the rack; it was empty. He stood holding the coat, with a puzzled expression on his face, trying to think.

“I know I put it in that pocket – I recollect it distinctly,” he said, aloud; “perhaps it fell out when I took off my coat.”

He looked hastily about the floor, then hurried out into the studio, searching rapidly and carefully. His face grew more and more troubled. Could anyone have come in during his absence and picked it up? Perhaps Harry had been here; if so, it was safe. As he stood there reflecting, trying to solve the mystery, he was looking directly at the weapons upon the wall. All at once he noticed that there was something different about their arrangement. Something was missing. It was the dagger! Then it all came to him. “Evelin!” he shouted. “Good God!”

He had wasted valuable time searching for the letter. He could hardly reach the place of appointment by six unless he could catch some kind of a vehicle.

“My God – my God! she will kill her – she will kill her! and all through my treachery.”

He had fled from the house and was now speeding wildly westward. No cab was in sight and he could not wait to find one.

“She will kill her – she will kill her!” he groaned, over and over. “Oh, my God – my God!”

VIII.

AT A QUARTER BEFORE SIX, a woman ascended the marble steps of the old mansion at No. 74 West L—— Street, east side. She wore a plain dress of silver-gray material, a rich Persian shawl, a neat walking hat, her face thickly veiled. Reaching the door, she laid her gloved hand on the knob, then hesitated, as if undecided whether to enter at once or ring.

The heavy clouds hung oppressively low, and it was already dusk. A few flakes of snow were falling, but it was not cold.

All at once the woman removed her hand from the door, slipped off her shawl and threw it across her arm. As she did so something glittered bright, which she hastily concealed beneath the shawl. As she stood now she was the exact counterpart of Eva Delorme. Then without further hesitation she laid hold of and turned the heavy knob of the massive black door. It yielded noiselessly, and she entered, closing it as noiselessly behind her.

Within all was dark. A faint ray of light crept in through the transom, penetrating a few feet into the blackness. She stood almost against the door, listening and hardly breathing. All was silent. She had expected the other to be there before her, waiting for his coming. She put out her hand and felt about her. She touched a chair at her left and softly laid her shawl upon it, keeping firm hold upon the keen weapon she had carried beneath it. She listened again; still no sound. She was growing impatient. She took a few steps forward, keeping one hand extended in front of her to avoid collision. Then she turned and retraced her steps.

She had been very cool, thus far, but she was losing control of herself. Why did she not come? She had said in her letter that she was ill – pshaw! it was but a trick to arouse his sympathy. She must come – she must come!

She paced back and forth in the small space which she had explored and found free from obstruction. Three steps forward and turn – three steps back and turn; pausing each time to hold her breath and listen, while the fingers of her left hand involuntarily crept down and pressed against the keen point of the dagger until it pierced through her glove and entered the tender flesh.

Suddenly a white ray of light shot through the transom above her, falling at an angle against a projection in the wall at her left, and dimly illuminating the entire place. It was six o’clock, and the large arc light just outside was turned on. Then, as she reached the door and whirled quickly in her march, she saw her for whom she waited standing at the extreme farther end of the long hall. Between them was what appeared to be a narrow and ornamented archway.

She could dimly distinguish the figure clad in gray. The face, like her own, was veiled. She noticed with quick satisfaction that her disguise was perfect – the counterpart was exact even to the smallest detail.

Without hesitation, and concealing the dagger in the folds of her dress, she advanced quickly and silently toward her rival, who, somewhat to her surprise, instead of fleeing or crying out, also advanced. She was going to try strength with her.

“I will kill her with a blow,” she muttered.

They were now within a few feet of each other – the ornamented arch exactly between them. Suddenly Evelin March snatched the dagger from its concealment and raised it aloft to strike. As she did so her rival made precisely the same movement, and something glittered in her hand also. Both took a quick, forward step, and each, at the same instant, struck fiercely with a swinging, downward blow.

A hissing metallic report, a low moan and the sound of a falling body – then silence.

A moment later the hall door burst open for a second time, and in the flood of electric light that poured in, Julian Paul Goetze saw a gray, veiled figure, stretched upon the floor, the gloved hand clasping a jeweled hilt, the blade of which was buried in her bosom. A stream of crimson was discoloring the fabric of her dress, and spreading in a dark pool on the rich carpet.

Rushing forward he caught up the prostrate form and tore away the veil.

Then, as if by magic, a revelation swept over him in one mighty wave of horror. The strange, piteous look he had once seen on the face of Evelin March was again before him, and while he gazed he saw it melting – melting, almost insensibly, like the blending outlines of a dissolving view – into the saintly loveliness of Eva Delorme.

The mists of doubt, the shadows of suspicion, and the fever of curiosity that had troubled him during those feverish months, were suddenly swept away. Eva Delorme – Evelin March – one and the same. One body, one soul, one heart; by some strange freak of nature – some wild mental vagary or devilish witchery of which he could not know – made two in life, but only one in death.

Above her was a heavy French-plate mirror, in an ornamented frame, cracked entirely across. From its polished surface the self-aimed, glancing dagger had found its way to the one troubled heart of those two strange lives, and brought to it silence and restfulness forever.

—

THE BLACK HANDS

I.

MY FIRST REMEMBRANCE is of a dim consciousness. I felt no disposition to move, or even to open my eyes. I had the light, helpless feeling that comes after fever.

Somebody by the bed was speaking.

“How will he face it?” The voice seemed to be a woman’s – soft, and dropping lower. “Do you think there can be any remedy – any hope that it will go away?”

A negative motion must have been the reply.

“Then it would be better if he—” the voice became a whisper, inaudible.

I assumed that they were speaking of me, and a glimmer of curiosity developed. What had happened? What place was this? Then, in a sudden flash I remembered. A train rushing cityward through winter fields. Passengers chatting or reading under the swaying lamps. A quick cry from the rear – a trainman pushing madly down the aisle – a concussion which had flung me straight into that mysterious land from which I had but just emerged.

Clearly, I had been injured. What was the nature of my hurt? I had lost a limb, perhaps; but this could not be, for the voice had spoken of a remedy – had asked if there was any hope that it would “go away.” What injury was there that could go away?

The speculation vaguely interested me. Perhaps it had to do with the spine, and had left me nerveless, inert. Perhaps there was some terrible disfigurement – something that it would be better – if – I – The threads tangled and frayed. I drifted back into mystery and obliteration.

It was at half-past four – of the same day, as I learned afterwards – that I roused again – this time to full consciousness and seeing. A woman sat by my bed – a neat, good-looking girl in a nurse’s cap. I recognized the bare walls of a hospital.

The woman seemed startled at my opened eyes, but did not speak. I regarded her steadily. My head was quite clear.

“What place is this?” I asked.

“St. Vincent’s Hospital – Eastfield.”

“The accident – I remember – it was near here?”

My voice seemed quite full. She nodded.

“My injuries – what are they?”

“Your – head. It struck the seat in front of you.”

“And I have been here—”

“Three weeks, tomorrow.”

“And unconscious all that time?”

“You have suffered a great deal. You were delirious. We had to give you—” she hesitated, and I thought her face whitened “—we injected – opiates.”

“But I feel strong – quite well, in fact.”

“Yes; your injury was not – like that. It was the shock, and then – oh, you must not ask any more! You must rest!”

I closed my eyes to reflect. I wondered if they thought I had been mentally upset. Then I remembered her expression when she had spoken of the opiates. Could I, unconsciously, have become a slave to drugs? All at once I remembered her saying that my head – my face, doubtless – had struck the seat in front of me. I opened my eyes. She had thought me sleeping.

“Give me a hand-glass,” I said.

Her face became like death. She began to tremble.

“I – I can’t!” she faltered. “We have none. Oh, please lie still! You will be so sorry!”

I had half risen on my elbow. I knew now that there was something she could not bear me to see. I attempted a smile.

“Please bring the glass,” I insisted. “If my features are damaged, it does not matter greatly. I was never a beauty, at best.”

But she pleaded and trembled.

“No; I can’t – I must not! Oh, don’t do that!”

I had brought myself up higher on the pillow. I drew one hand from beneath the counterpane, intending to pass it across my face. Then I noticed that for some reason it was covered with a white cotton glove. I was about to ask explanation, when I saw something more – something that made my heart stop and my soul grow sick. Between the glove and my wristband there showed a narrow band of flesh. I stared at it for a moment, stupefied; then with one swift movement I stripped the glove away.

The hand beneath should have been pale from confinement. Instead, it was the deepest brown – the hand of an African!

I looked at it, speechless. Then I turned to the shrinking woman at my bedside.

“Bring the glass,” I commanded.

She handed it to me from a little drawer.

“Raise me,” I said, “higher! Now!”

I lifted the mirror and looked at myself squarely. My face, my throat, a patch of my breast that showed, were like my hands. I was as black a negro as walks the earth today!

II.

Medical experts in the employ of the railroad declared that my change of color had been due to some unaccountable error in the preparation of the opiate which had been given to me hypodermically. I think my nurse must have believed this, and in some measure held herself to blame, though she had only administered, never prepared, the mixture. On the other hand, the hospital board agreed that my condition was the result of a sudden concussion and mental shock, which in some hitherto unknown manner had brought about a chemical change in the color fluid beneath the skin – darkening it, like that of a negro. Hair had whitened after such things. It was conceivable, they declared, that skin might darken. I believe they even claimed that the change had begun before any drug was administered. My face was already discolored, they said, when I had been brought to the hospital; but, as the coach had caught fire, and I had been dragged from amid smoke and cinders, the railroad accounted for this in another manner. It did not matter – I was a black man. So much was clear.

My hair, being naturally very black and curly, my lips those of a full-blooded man, and my nose somewhat broad rather than prominent, all lent themselves to complete my change of race. Nor was this all, for the blow received in my face had resulted in a fracture of the nasal bone, and no surgical skill had been able to prevent a slight depression of the point of the nose and a consequent flattening of the nostrils. I was a negro; in feature, in color – in everything but birth and tradition I belonged to the darkest race of men.

I lingered at St. Vincent’s while useless experiments were made for my relief. Then the railroad tendered me a sum of money, which I had the wisdom to accept. Perhaps unconsciously I already realized that my future was likely to be as dark as the hue of my body.

I need not dwell upon the sensational celebrity of my case. The newspapers were filled with it. My picture appeared in every sheet – distorted, wild of mien – “The Man of Changed Race.” Even my own paper, where I had filled an important position, could not resist a “Sunday story.”

Yet, for all this, I did not realize fully, not yet. There was something unreal and unbelievable about it all. To myself I had not changed. Often I forgot that I was changed to others. Then, suddenly seeing my black hands, I would remember. Even then I could not quite believe. I felt that I must wake up presently to find it all untrue.

At the end of six weeks I returned at last to the city, by night. I could not at once face the streets by day. I might have done so with impunity; for though my name was on every tongue, no one thought of me as the man. I was simply a well-dressed colored man to those who passed me.

I hurried to my apartment. My mother and sister – my only relatives – were abroad for the winter, in Rome. I had written them fully, and, of course, they would have seen the papers. Yet I was glad they were not there to meet me. I needed their love and comfort and support, but they must be accustomed gradually. I must send them photographs.

I was stopped by the colored hall-boy.

“Who do you want to see?” he asked, rather sharply.

“I wish to see no one. I am going to my apartment.”

“Whose apartment?” he demanded. “Who do you work for?”

He was not to blame, of course, but I felt my anger rising.

“For nobody!” I said, shortly. “I am Mr. Carter – Mr. George Carter, and I wish to go to my apartment.”

The boy’s jaw dropped as he stared at me. He recognized me, for he pushed open the elevator door. He uttered no syllable as we ascended, and seemed to shrink into his own corner as if I were something uncanny. I had gone away a superior being – his master. I had returned as one of his own race.

In the silence and seclusion of my apartment, I tried to plan. I must face the world – so much was certain. I had no inclination to live in isolation or without toil, even had my means warranted such a course. I must accept cheerfully such things as had just occurred – the misunderstandings and humiliations that could not be avoided. In time, as people learned all the circumstances, they would become less. I should meet with recognition, sympathy and respect – so I made myself believe. Ah, little indeed did I realize!

I was out early next morning. I wished to get accustomed to facing the daylight. No one on the street paid the least attention to me, and I felt a breath of new courage. I returned to the apartment for breakfast.

It was still early, and the public dining-room was scantily occupied when I entered. Only two or three men were eating. These stared at me without recognition. A waiter came forward, hastily.

“You cannot come in here,” he began, rather nervously.

“For what reason?”

“It is against the rules. Colored people are not allowed.”

I steadied my voice carefully.

“But I have an apartment here. I am Mr. Carter. I have been ill – you may have heard.”

Like the hall-boy, he became speechless – leaving me to seat myself. A little later I saw him go across to the other tables and knew he was whispering the facts to the breakfasters. They looked at me covertly. I dropped my eyes – to my black hands.

Presently a lady came to the door of the dining-room – saw me, gave a slight exclamation, and hesitated. A waiter went forward, and a moment later she entered. I did not look up again, but I knew that her glances were often in my direction. After that a waiter stood at the door, to explain. Michael, for whom I had done more than one good turn, came to serve me. He tried to act and to speak in the old way. It was no use. He could not refer to my absence – he could not mention my affliction. It was not a thing for words.

I hurried away, after a scanty meal. Things would be better at the office. My change of color would not alter my capability, and there it was capability that counted. There, all would understand, and rise to the situation. True, they had not urged my early return, but this I regarded as delicate consideration, rather than any indifference. I now know that it was neither.

But few had arrived when I reached the Sentinel rooms. No one opposed my entrance, and I went straight to my desk. I had been seated but a moment when one of the office boys came along. He stopped and stared. “Leaving a note for Mr. Carter?” he asked. His tone was polite. Potentates of many colors find their way to the great news offices. “Mr. Carter is away,” he added. “He has been hurt in a railroad accident. I don’t think he will come back.”

“I am Mr. Carter,” I said.

He knew me then, and fell away from my presence. Presently the news had reached through the office. Groups gathered at the doors, and whisperings came from the corners. A little before noon, Brickley, the managing editor, arrived. Somewhat later a boy summoned me. Brickley extended his hand as I entered.

“Carter, you have my fullest sympathy!” he said, and had he been granting his “fullest permission” his tone would have been the same.

Then he shut the door. It is Brickley’s nature to go straight to the heart of things. That is why he is managing editor. He faced me squarely.

“Carter,” he said, “do you think this is a good thing?”

“Good! I am accursed!” I said.

“No, no; I mean your coming back here. Do you think it is a good thing to do?”

I looked at him a moment before replying.

“What else can I do?” I said.

“That isn’t the point. I’m speaking now for the paper. Don’t you see that for you to be here would be most conspicuous? The Sentinel has never stood for color equality – wait, one moment, Carter, there is nothing personal in this – it’s policy has been always rather bitterly the other way. You, yourself, have written some of our strongest articles on the subject – showing how the black and the white could never affiliate. Now—”

“But not because of – that is, not altogether – because of color,” I broke in, my blood flaming. “There are other things – mentality, racial instincts, features – that is – I mean, not wholly color – I——”

I became incoherent and floundered helplessly. Brickley’s eyes were piercing me straight through. Then I saw that they were taking in my curly ebon hair, my full lips, my flattened nose, my black hands.

“Are you sure of that?” he said. “Are you sure that if there were a white race in South Africa, a race with the features and mentality and instincts of the negro, but not black, that you would have written of their descendants in the same strain, holding that mere education and culture could never put them on an equal footing? When has the paper ever condemned the lowest white immigrant because of his political ambition or desire for social progress? Rather, he has been commended, encouraged and helped. On the other hand, have we not repeatedly criticized the public appointment of some man of acknowledged education and attainments – some man – excuse me, Carter, this may sound a bit personal, but it isn’t, really – of lighter hair, thinner lips, and straighter nose than yours, simply because he was of the black race? You are not really a negro, of course – you’ve simply met with a great and terrible misfortune. You know that, and I know it, and personally we may or may not believe all the things we write about 1he color line. But this isn’t personal, as I say. It’s the paper we must consider, and you can see well enough where it would lead us to have you here. The other side would fling it at us, morning, noon, and night. They would quote columns of stuff you have written, and show by it that worthy men of learning and intelligence and straight features had been assailed because of their color, and because of that only. They would print your picture by the side of those articles. They would caricature you. They would ask us to point out the color line in our office. They would drag you into every cartoon.”

He picked up a paper on his desk – the first afternoon edition of the Outcry, published two doors below.

“Have you seen this?” he asked. “It has just come in.”

On an inside page, in one corner, was a small cartoon. It was simply the Sentinel, pictured as an armorial shield, across which was a broad black band. Upon the band was scratched the words, “Jet black writing fluid.” Below the cut was the legend, “The Sentinel‘s new color line.”

It was an unworthy thing, in an obscure corner of the paper. They had shown enough decency, or policy, to begin modestly, but it indicated what they were ready to do. I handed it back in silence.

“You see?” he said. “And they would never stop. They would do it in every conceivable way. They would howl at us until we should have to turn you out. Your life would become unspeakably wretched. You can’t afford it, Carter. The Sentinel can’t afford it. Don’t you see how it is? Don’t you understand?”

Dazed, overwhelmed, I could not answer, at first. Then, “The Sentinel will be condemned for turning me out,” I said.

“It may be. But that will blow over in a day. If you let it be understood that you have resigned for reasons of your own  – to go abroad – to take treatment, perhaps – there may be little made of it. Of course, the less the better, for you, as well as for the paper.”

I nodded, scarcely trusting my voice. Then I rose, rather unsteadily, to go. Brickley extended his hand, and I took it. Extended hands seemed likely to become fewer.

“You may be able to write something for us,” he said, “unsigned, of course.”

I walked the streets till dusk. At one place a newsboy thrust his wares into my face. A line attracted me, and I bought the paper. It was an afternoon Sentinel, announcing my resignation. The condition of my health would not permit me to resume my position. It was thought that I would go abroad for treatment. Brickley had lost no time.

When I reached my apartment, a letter and a telegram awaited me. The letter proved to be a polite note from the manager of the place, asking for my rooms. He was “about to make important alterations.” I would be “properly compensated for any inconvenience or expense that might occur.” The telegram was from the Sunday editor of the Outcry. It requested an article, to be entitled “How it Feels to Become a Negro.”

III.

I ate no dinner, and I did not go to bed. I sat staring down on the lighted street, or I walked the floor, trying to think. Certainly the world held some place for me, if only I could find out what it was, and where. Brickley had spoken of my going abroad. Perhaps this was the solution. In certain foreign cities, even those born black are not outcasts. My own people were already in Rome. Without the disgrace, I might, in time, forget.

But there seemed to be fallacy in this. To go abroad, among strangers, would be to identify myself at once with the black race. The thought was repulsive. To make myself known, would be to become a public curiosity – a thing to be followed on the streets, an abnormality, without race and without nation. Furthermore, I had not sufficient means to live abroad in idleness, and it was not likely, with my slight knowledge of foreign tongues, that I could obtain satisfactory employment. I could not be dependent on my mother’s modest income, nor could I ask my relatives to dwell with me in seclusion when my sister’s life and future might depend on her social privileges. They would be ready to sacrifice, of course, anything. I would accept nothing – nothing but their sympathy, their comfort, and their love. Morning found me at last asleep in my chair from sheer exhaustion. When I awoke, I had forgotten everything. I wondered why I was in the chair – why I was heavy with unhappiness. Then I remembered, for the sun was shining in on my black hands!

I rose, and stripping off my upper garments, stood before the mirror. Black! Black! A negro body – a negro face – what matter then the color of my soul!

I ordered breakfast served in my room. I had scarcely finished, when the hall-boy brought me a bunch of letters. I detained him a moment. I have mentioned that he was colored.

“Joe,” I said, “is there any place in the world for a man like me?”

He stared at me, and edged away. Something about his movement gave me again the feeling of unreality – that it was not, could not be true.

“Just a moment, Joe. You are black, too. Are you unhappy?”

He withdrew a little farther. Then he shook his head sagely. “N – no, sah; I – I isn’t unhappy. But den, you see, I’s always been dis way.”

“But what can I do, Joe? Where can I live, and how is a man like me to earn his bread?”

Joe’s head wagged more slowly this time. “I – I dunno, sah. We cullud folks has to do a heap o’ things, an’ we lives together, mostly.”

He backed away. I picked up the first letter on the pile, and opened it. It was from an amusement agency, and offered me a salary to exhibit myself in a dime museum. Here was an answer to the questions I had put to Joe. I could become a part of a museum – a paid freak for the public gaze. It was my advantage over those who had been black from birth. I laughed for the first time. Then I tossed the letter aside. Rather would I perform menial labor. Rather would I dwell with my own color, as one of them.

There were other letters. One, I remember, was from another Sunday paper; one from a traveling side-show. A letter bearing a Western postmark and the business address of a sanitarium had been forwarded from the hospital. It was from a scientific medical expert who wished to experiment with my case. The last letter  – it was face down when I came to it, and I did not suspect its import – the last letter was from the woman who had promised to be my wife.

I have not spoken of Miss Carriby before (once I called her Julia, but that was when I was her equal). I have not spoken before, because I wished to do so but once, and then in the proper time. She had been in the South at the time of the accident, and immediately upon my recovery I had written her fully, granting her complete freedom. No answer had come – nothing of any sort, and I had wondered why. She was a woman as clear-headed as she was beautiful, and of strong character. She would realize that I had made my letter brief, plain, and unemotional in order not to harrow her feelings, or to give myself unnecessary pain. That no reply had come, had grieved and surprised me. Now, when I saw the writing, and our city postmark, I fell a-trembling and could scarcely open the envelope. There was only a line.

Dearest:

Just reached the city. Come to me soon.

As always,

Julia.

I read and re-read until the words were forever fixed upon the tissue of my brain. I shall never lose sight of those last words from the woman who once gave me her love and promised to share my home. I beat back the billows of hope that surged up within me, and struggled for the firm ground of reason. I must count only on her sympathy and support. But, no – the line meant more than that. She had been silent, fighting out her battle. She had conquered everything but her love. I remembered now that once when I had said, “How can you care for one so unprepossessing as I?” she had answered, “Oh, it does not matter. It is for yourself, your soul, that I care. Nothing could make a difference so long as that remains.” Now, she had been put to the proof, and she had not faltered. I gave myself up to the tide that lifted and bore me heavenward. With Julia I would fly to some far island of the South, where the voices and manners of men did not reach. There to another and rarer Desdemona I would consecrate a life of such devotion, and loyalty as Othello never dreamed.

I dressed with elaborate care. What matter my dark face and my black hands now. I hurried to the hotel given as her address and presented my card. The clerk took it, stared at me without reading the name, then called a boy and sent up the card, but did not ask me to wait in the parlor, or to be seated in the office. The boy returned soon. I was to go up at once. I followed him, I need hardly say with what conflicting emotions.

The door opened at my knock. A moment later I was facing the woman dearest to me of all the world. She looked at me – the smile faded from her face, and she stepped back with a half-suppressed exclamation.

“Oh, you have mistaken the number,” she said. “This is Miss Carriby’s apartment.”

There was something in the manner of her surprise that made me cold.

“I know, Julia,” I said, “and this is George Carter.”

I shall never see any eyes such as hers were, then. Fear, recognition, anger, disgust, inquiry – all these were mingled there. “And what – does it mean?” she managed to say. “Why are you masquerading  – here?”

All my new strength passed from me. I sank into a chair.

“My letter – you did not get it?”

“Letter – what letter? No – oh, no! We left Palm Beach. We went on a long cruise. I wrote you. Our vessel just came in last night. I have seen no one; heard nothing; read nothing! What is it? What has happened? Oh, my God!”

She covered her face and rocked back and forth.

“You say that you wrote me?” I asked.

“Yes; oh, yes!”

“The letter never reached me. It may have been on the wrecked train – the mail car was burned.”

“Tell me – tell me!” she moaned.

So I told her. I began with the wreck. I told her of my awakening, of my return to the city, of my reception at the office, and at my apartment, of the receipt of her line with all that it had seemed to mean. I broke down then, for the only time during all my days of bitterness, and pleaded and begged that she, too, should not desert me – that we might go away, as I had dreamed, to some remote place where only our love would matter.

I have blamed, denounced, cursed myself since for this. I knew then, as I had always known and written – as I know now, and as I would write still – that the black may not mingle with the white. But, oh, my Julia! – for once more I must call you by that dear name – I loved you so, and I was weak – weak, and knew not where to turn!

She rocked and wept during my recital, but she did not speak.

“You said once that whatever happened could make no difference,” I pleaded – “that it was myself, my soul, that you loved. You said—”

“Oh,” she burst out, “but not this! Not this! Don’t! Oh, please don’t touch me!”

I realized then that I had risen – that my arms were extended – that my hands, my black hands, were within a few inches of her face. She covered her eyes that she might not see. I stepped backward softly – so softly that she did not know, perhaps, when I was gone.

I do not remember where I went that day. I suppose I wandered aimlessly about the streets. Toward evening I suddenly found myself in front of my club. I entered as by force of habit. Perhaps for the moment I forgot the nature of my visitation. Perhaps I was too disordered to think, or to care.

An attendant stopped me in the hallway. The electric light fell on my black hands. I turned to go, then I said:

“I am Mr. Carter – surely you remember me. I have had – an accident.”

He took my hat, then, staring and gaping, like the others.

“There are no letters?” I asked. I had thought my mother might address me here. She frequently did so.

The boy ran over the package and shook his head. I ascended to the reading-room. Men whom I had known for years were there. They stared at me for a moment, then some came forward and took my hand. Such words as could be said they spoke. They tried not to make me feel. They were gentlemen. One of them – happy-go-lucky Cedarbush – held my hand longest.

“Don’t you care!” he said. “We don’t!”

But they did care, and I knew it. I knew that they must care – that I should have cared. One by one they drifted away from me, until presently I was alone. I knew that I should not be asked to resign from the club. I knew – and they knew – that it would not be necessary – that I should never enter that room again. I crept over to a secluded corner – to a writing-table.

“Mother, oh, mother! Come to me – I have no other where to turn!”

As I rose to go, one of the hall-boys handed me a letter. It bore a foreign postmark, and was addressed in my mother’s handwriting. It had just arrived. I stood there under the lamp to rend it. It was long, sympathetic and brokenhearted. She prayed that she might be strengthened to bear this terrible affliction, visited upon her son. What had she done that she should be so punished? Her impulse had been to come to me – to spend her strength, her life, arid her means in my behalf. But there was another to be considered. My sister was in her early youth. Her happiness, her future, her life, depended on her surroundings and her associates. It was not God’s will that her young life should be darkened by this heavy shadow. There would always be those who would not understand. She would be subject to constant and unbearable humiliations. With the money I had received I must endeavor to procure some relief from my terrible affliction. Meantime, it was better that I should be among old friends in America, and that they should remain abroad, where my sister, who was growing more beautiful daily, was admired and courted, and would, in time, make a desirable marriage unless some blight came into her young life. She was sure that I would understand.

I did understand. I felt that my mother was right. I tore in pieces the heart-broken words I had written, and stumbled out into the gloom of evening.

IV.

My social decline was as swift as it was complete. Arriving at my apartment I found my furnishings on the pavement, guarded by a policeman. The “alterations” had already begun – it had been found necessary to remove my belongings.

It was growing late, but I secured a van and had my goods taken to storage. Then I wandered into the night, little knowing, or caring, where I went. By and by, I remembered a small hotel, kept by a man for whom I had done many favors. He gave me kind words of greeting and a room for the night, but I knew that I could not remain there. I was a target for the eyes of every lounger. My presence there would mean an eternal series of misunderstandings. It would not be fair to the man I had befriended to disturb his prosperity now.

Next morning the Outcry printed a sensational article, relating with vast gusto my dismissal from the Sentinel, my expulsion from my apartments, and detailing a wild attempt that it claimed I had made to see my former fiancée. It stated that there had been a disgraceful exhibition, and that I had gone away vowing vengeance. The whole was enlivened by a new portrait, as devilish as it was unmistakable, a portrait that once seen would identify me for all time. The paper seemed to be in every hand. When I went on the street, people turned to look at me. I bought coffee at a booth on the sidewalk, and some rolls at a baker’s. Then I walked down to the river, to plan.

The steadily flowing, silent water fascinated me. Here would be an end to it all. I had the strong man’s abhorrence for self-destruction, but the thoroughfares were closing. Eventually my feet would lead me here, and there would be no returning step.

I sat down on the dock and tried to think. Perhaps I could go to Egypt – to South America – to Mexico. Perhaps I could buy a small house in the country, and, living alone, try to support myself with my pen. I thought of many such things, but had no heart for any.

In the end, I wandered back to the city streets, seeking a shelter – a place where I might earn and eat my bread without disgrace – a spot where I might lay my head. That night and the following I slept at a lodging house where the line of exclusion was drawn only at the guest’s inability to pay. Food I bought at the grocery stores, and ate it in my room. I could not remain among such surroundings. My soul revolted more at the white men about me than at those of my own color. I realized that I must seek refuge with what had now become my own race.

I sought out a part of the city where a better class of negroes congregate, and secured clean lodgings. The place, the locality, my fellow sojourners, were all repugnant to me, but as a whole it was far better than the accommodations I had left. I resolved to lose myself in this darker corner – to occupy myself with my pen.

Scarcely was I settled, when I was recognized. The press, whose emissaries are to be found in every corner of a great city  – whose vigilance no man can long escape  – printed the fact of my having found shelter with my own color – with the race I had formerly condemned. The Outcry reprinted my picture, and in great double headlines gloated over my downfall. Then, on the same day, it sent one of its Sunday assistants to offer me a thousand dollars for the article previously ordered.

My fellow-lodgers shunned me – the man born of one race with the color of another, and with no claim on either. My landlord, kindly enough, did not turn me out, but it was evident that he wished I might go. Under such conditions, I could not work. I might, indeed, have filled pages for the Outcry, but, desperate though I was, and needy as I was likely to be, I was unwilling to court additional notoriety, or to accept what seemed to me that final degradation.

I took up residence, by night, in a still more obscure portion of the city – a lodging among negro tenements, where hallways were heavy with offensive odors, and alive with shouting children of every size and shade. Here I seemed to be unrecognized, but I felt that I could not long endure such environment.

I sought employment as a servant. I could drive, and I knew the city. I secured a position as coachman, but was identified within a week, and again the Outcry gave me double headlines and a new portrait, in my new dress. I lost my place, then. I attracted too much attention.

Down and still down. I must have shelter, and I must have occupation. Idleness would drive me mad. I should have left the city, perhaps, but I argued that I could hope to fare no better elsewhere. If I could lose myself at all, it would be in the depths of the great metropolis. I became a truckman, a digger in the streets, a delver in the sewers. I assumed the speech and manner of the negro. It was all of no avail. Wherever I went, whatever I might do, they found me out. My face was familiar to all who had eyes, my case was upon every tongue. Employers did not want a man who attracted a crowd of idlers. Employees refused to work with one thus mysteriously afflicted.

I was ready to surrender at last. The museum that had wanted me for an exhibit seemed to me the one place left to which I could turn – either that, or the river.

In my wretched lodgings I looked for the agent’s letter. On top of the package was a letter bearing a Western postmark and the card of a sanitarium. Something that was almost like a ray of hope flashed in, as I remembered that it had come from a man who had a theory concerning my case, and believed he could effect a cure. I had given it little thought at the time, for with it, that morning, had come the letter that had made me forget all else in the world.

I read and re-read, carefully and with beating heart. His was a desperate remedy, he said, but he believed I might be ready to take desperate chances. It was a process of exhaustion of the color fluid, requiring long-continued anaesthesia, with more than an equal chance of my not returning to life. It had been successful as a post-mortem experiment, but never had been attempted on a living person. Would I risk the slender chance? I telegraphed, and had a reply within the hour.

That was three days ago. Yesterday I arrived at this spot, this peaceful retreat overlooking blue water that reflects the placid summer sky. Before the open window I am writing these final lines. In a room adjoining there is arranged a table upon which I shall lie, and the doctors have gathered. They have announced that they are ready. But a little more and I shall drift back into a mystery of obliteration, oblivious to all the world, its bitterness and its heart-breaks. As I write these last words I am looking down at my black hands. Will those hands be white if I return to the world of men?

If not, then let me never awaken!

—

THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

THEN, IT BEING no use to try, Carringford let the hand holding the book drop into his lap and from his lap to his side. His eyes stared grimly into the fire, which was dropping to embers.

“I suppose I’m getting old,” he said; “that’s the reason. The books are as good as ever they were – the old ones, at any rate. Only they don’t interest me any more. It’s because I don’t believe in them as I did. I see through them all. I begin taking them to pieces as soon as I begin to read, and of course romance and glamor won’t stand dissection. Yes, it’s because I’m getting old; that’s it. Those things go with youth. Why, I remember when I would give up a dinner for a new book, when a fresh magazine gave me a positive thrill. I lost that somewhere, somehow; I wonder why. It is a ghastly loss. If I had to live my life over, I would at least try not to destroy my faith in books. It seems to me now just about the one thing worth keeping for old age.”

The book slipped from the hand hanging at his side. The embers broke, and, falling together, sent up a tongue of renewed flame. Carringford’s mind was slipping into by-paths.

“If one only might live his life over!” he muttered. “If one might be young again!”

He was not thinking of books now. A procession of ifs had come filing out of the past – a sequence of opportunities where, with the privilege of choice, he had chosen the wrong, the irrevocable thing.

“If one only might try again!” he whispered. “If one only might! Good God!” Something like a soft footfall on the rug caused him to turn suddenly. “I beg your pardon.” he said, rising. “I did not hear you. I was dreaming, I suppose.”

A man stood before him, apparently a stranger.

“I came quietly,” he said. “I did not wish to break in upon your thought. It interested me, and I felt that I – might be of help.”

Carringford was trying to recall the man’s face. – a studious, clean-shaven face, – to associate it and the black-garbed, slender figure with a name. So many frequented his apartment, congenial, idle fellows who came and went, and brought their friends if they liked, that Carringford was not surprised to be confronted by one he could not place. He was about to extend his hand, confessing a lack of memory, when his visitor spoke again.

“No.” he said in a gentle, composed voice, “you would not know it if you heard it. I have never been here before. I should not have come now only that, as I was passing below, I heard you thinking you would like to be young again – to live your life over, as they say.”

Carringford stared a moment or two at the smooth, clean-cut features and slender, black figure of his visitor before replying. He was used to many curious things, and not many things surprised him.

“I beg your pardon,” he repeated, “you mentioned, I believe, that you heard me thinking as you were passing on the street below?”

The slender man in black bowed.

“Wishing that you might be young again, that you might have another try at the game of life. I believe that was the exact thought.”

“And, may I ask, is it your habit to hear persons think?”

“When their thoughts interest me, yes, as one might overhear an interesting conversation.”

Carringford had slipped back into his chair and motioned his guest to another. Wizard or unbalanced, he was likely to prove a diversion. When the cigars were pushed in his direction, he took one, lighted it, and smoked silently. Carringford smoked, too, and looked into the fire.

“You were saying.” he began presently, “that you pick up interesting thought-currents as one might overhear bits of conversation. I suppose you find the process quite as simple as hearing in the ordinary way. Only it seems a little – well, unusual. Of course that is only my opinion.”

The slender man in black assented with a slight nod.

“The faculty is not unusual; it is universal. It is only undeveloped, uncontrolled, as yet. It was the same with electricity a generation ago. Now it has become our most useful servant.”

Carringford gave his visitor an intent look. This did not seem the inconsequential phrasing of an addled brain.

“You interest me,” he said. “Of course I have heard a good deal of such things, and all of us have had manifestations; but I think I have never before met anyone who was able to control – to demonstrate, if you will – this particular force. It is a sort of mental wireless, I suppose – wordless, if you will permit the term.”

“Yes, the true wireless, the thing we are approaching – speech of mind to mind. Our minds are easily attuned to waves of mutual interest. When one vibrates, another in the same wave will answer to it. We are just musical instruments: a chord struck on the piano answers on the attuned harp. Any strong mutual interest forms the key-note of mental harmonic vibration. We need only develop the mental ear to hear, the mental eye to see.”

The look of weariness returned to Carringford’s face. These were trite, familiar phrases.

“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said. Then, as his guest smoked silently, he added, “I am only wondering how it came that my thought of the past and its hopelessness should have struck a chord or key-note which would send you up my stair.”

The slender black figure rose and took a turn across the room, pausing in front of Carringford.

“You were saying as I passed your door that you would live your life over if you could. You were thinking: ‘If one might be young again! If one only might try again! If only one might!’ That was your thought, I believe.”

Carringford nodded.

“That was my thought,” he said, “through whatever magic you came by it.”

“And may I ask if there was a genuine desire behind that thought? Did you mean that you would indeed live your life over if you could? That, if the opportunity were given to tread the backward way to a new beginning, you would accept it?”

There was an intensity of interest in the man’s quiet voice, an eager gleam in his half-closed eyes, a hovering expectancy in the attitude of the slender, black figure. Carringford had the feeling of having been swept backward into a time of sorcery and incantation. He vaguely wondered if he had not fallen asleep. Well, he would follow the dream through.

“Yes, I would live my life over if I could,” he said. “I have made a poor mess of it this time. I could play the game better, I know, if the Fates would but deal me a new hand. If I could start young again, with all the opportunities of youth, I would not so often choose the poorer thing.”

The long, white fingers of Carringford’s guest had slipped into his waistcoat pocket. They now drew forth a small, bright object and held it to the light. Carringford saw that it was a vial, filled with a clear, golden liquid that shimmered and quivered in the light and was never still. Its possessor regarded it for a moment through half-closed lashes, then placed it on a table under the lamp, where it continued to glint and tremble.

Carringford watched it, fascinated, half hypnotized by the marvel of its gleam. Surely there was magic in this. The man was an alchemist, a sort of reincarnation from some forgotten day.

Carringford’s guest also watched the vial. The room seemed to have grown very still. Then after a time his thin lips parted.

“If you are really willing to admit failure,” he began slowly, carefully selecting each word, “if behind your wish there lies a sincere desire to go back to youth and begin life over, if that desire is strong enough to grow into a purpose, if you are ready to make the experiment, there you will find the means. That vial contains the very essence of vitality, the true elixir of youth. It is not a magic philter, as I see by your thought you believe. There is no magic. Whatever is, belongs to science. I am not a necromancer, but a scientist. From boyhood my study has been to solve the subtler secrets of life. I have solved many such. I have solved at last the secret of life itself. It is contained in that golden vial, an elixir to renew the tissues, to repair the cells, of the wasting body. Taken as I direct, you will no longer grow old, but young. The gray in your hair will vanish, the lines will smooth out of your face, your step will become buoyant, your pulses quick, your heart will sing with youth.” The speaker paused a moment, and his gray eyes rested on Carringford and seemed probing his very soul.

“It will take a little time,” he went on; “for as the natural processes of decay are not rapid, the natural restoration may not be hurried. You can go back to where you will, even to early youth, and so begin over, if it is your wish. Are you willing to make the experiment? If you are, I will place the means in your hands.”

While his visitor had been speaking, Carringford had been completely absorbed, filled with strange emotions, too amazed, too confused for utterance.

“I see a doubt in your mind as to the genuineness, the efficacy, of my discovery,” the even voice continued. “I will relieve that.” From an inner pocket he drew a card photograph and handed it to Carringford. “That was taken three years ago. I was then approaching eighty. I am now, I should say, about forty-five. I could be younger if I chose, but forty-five is the age of achievement – the ripe age. Mankind needs me at forty-five.”

Carringford stared at the photograph, then at the face before him, then again at the photograph. Yes, they were the same, certainly they were the same, but for the difference of years. The peculiar eyes, the clean, unusual outlines were unmistakable. Even a curious cast in the eye was there.

“An inheritance,” explained his visitor. “Is the identification enough?”

Carringford nodded in a dazed way and handed back the picture. Any lingering doubt of the genuineness of this strange being or his science had vanished. His one thought now was that growing old need be no more than a fiction, after all; that one might grow young instead, might lay aside the wrinkles and the gray hairs, and walk once more the way of purposes and dreams. His pulses leaped, his blood surged up and smothered him.

The acceptance of such a boon seemed too wonderful a thing to be put into words. His eyes grew wide and deep with the very bigness of it, but he could not for the moment find speech.

“You are willing to make the experiment?” the man asked. “I see many emotions in your mind. Think – think clearly, and make your decision.”

Words of acceptance rushed to Carringford’s lips. They were upon the verge of utterance when suddenly he was gripped by an old and dearly acquired habit – the habit of forethought.

“But I should want to keep my knowledge of the world,” he said, “to profit by my experience, my wisdom, such as it is. I should want to live my life over, knowing what I know now.”

The look of weariness which Carringford’s face had worn earlier had found its way to the face of the visitor.

“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said, with a faint smile.

“But shall I not remember the life I have lived, with its shortcomings, its blunders?”

“Yes, you will remember as well as you do now – better, perhaps, for your faculties will be renewed; but whether you will profit by it – that is another matter.”

“You mean that I shall make the same mistakes, commit the same sins?”

“Let us consider for a moment. You will go back to youth. You will be young again. Perhaps you have forgotten what it is to be young. Let me remind you.” The man’s lashes met; his voice seemed to come from a great distance. “It is to be filled with the very ecstasy of living,” he breathed – “its impulses, its fevers, the things that have always belonged to youth, that have always made youth beautiful. Your experience? Yes, you will have that, too; but it will not be the experience of that same youth, but of another – the youth that you were.” The gray eyes gleamed, the voice hardened a little. “Did you ever profit by the experience of another in that earlier time?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

His guest pointed to the book-shelves.

“Did you ever, in a later time, profit by the wisdom set down in those?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

“Yet the story is all there, and you knew the record to be true. Have you always profited even by your own experience? Have you always avoided the same blunder a second, even a third, time? Do you always profit by your own experience even now?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

“And yet you think that if you could only live your life over, you would avoid the pitfalls and the temptations, remembering what they had cost you before. No, oh, no: I am not here to promise you that. I am not a magician; I am only a scientist, and I have not yet discovered the elixir of wisdom or of morals. I am not super-human; I am only human, like yourself. I am not a god, and I cannot make you one. Going back to youth means that you will be young again – young! Don’t you see? It does not mean that you will drag back with you the strength and the wisdom and the sobered impulses of middle age. That would not be youth. Youth cares nothing for such things, and profits by no experience, not even its own.”

Carringford’s eyes had wandered to the yellow vial under the lamp – to the quivering, shimmering fascination of its dancing gold. His gaze rested there a moment, then again sought the face of his guest – that inscrutable face where seemed mingled the look of middle age with the wisdom of the centuries.

“You do not care to go back further?” Carringford said.

The man’s eyes closed for a moment, and something that was akin to fierce human emotion swept his features.

“Yes, oh, yes, I care,” he said quickly. “It is the temptation I fight always. Oh, you do not know what it means to feel that you are growing young! To feel your body renew, your heart beat stronger, to feel your blood take on a swifter flow, like the sap of a tree in spring! You have known the false stimulus of wine. Ah, it is a feeble thing compared with this! For this is not false, but true. This is the substance of renewal, not the fire of waste. To wake in the morning feeling that you are not older than yesterday, but younger, better able to cope and to enjoy; to travel back from fourscore to forty-five – I have done that. Do you realize what that means? It means treading the flowery way, lighted by eternal radiance, cheered by the songs of birds. And then to stop—— you cannot know what it means to stop! Oh, yes, it was hard to stop; but I must stop now, or not at all this side of youth. Only at forty-five would one have the strength to stop – the age of reason and will, the age of achievement. And I need to achieve, for I still have much to do. So I stopped when I had the strength and had reached the fullness of my power. While I have work to do I shall not go further back. I shall remain as I am, and as you are, at middle age – the age of work.”

He had been pacing up and down in front of Carringford as he spoke. He now halted, facing him, gazing down.

“I must not linger,” he said. “These are my hours for labor, and I have so much to do, so much, it will keep me busy for a thousand years. I have only begun. Perhaps someday I may discover the elixir of wisdom. Perhaps I may yet solve the secret of genius. Perhaps” – His voice lowered – “I shall one day unveil the secret of the soul. The vial I leave with you, for I see in your mind that you cannot reach a conclusion now. On the attached label you will find instructions for its use. Think, ponder, and be sure before you set out on that flowery backward way. Be sure that you want youth again, with all that youth means, before you start back to find it.” He laid his hand in Carringford’s for an instant, and was gone.

For a while Carringford did not move, but sat as one in a dream, staring at the dancing fluid gold in the bottle beneath the lamp.

Youth – youth, how he had longed for that vanished gold, which he had so prodigally wasted when it was in his grasp! How often he had said, as he had said to night, “Oh, to have one more chance, to be able to begin the game anew!” He reached out and grasped the vial, and held it up to the light. The glinting radiance in it began a wild, new dance at his touch.

Youth, life renewed, yes, that is what it was, its very essence; to taste of that elixir, and start back along the flowery, sunlit way of which his guest had spoken; to feel the blood start more quickly in his veins, a new spring in his muscles; to know that a new bloom had come into his cheek, a new light into his eye.

But, then, the other things, they would come, too. Along that fair backward way lurked all the temptations, the dangers, the heartbreaks – all the efforts and the failures he had once left behind. Did he want to face them again? Did he want to endure again all those years of the struggle of human wisdom with human weakness? He knew it would mean that, and that the same old fights and failures would be his share. He had never thought of it before, but he knew now that it must be so.

Yet, to tread that flowery way, to begin tonight!

He wheeled around to the dying fire, and sat staring into the deep coals and flickering blaze, balancing the golden vial in his hand, as one weighing a decision.

To tread that flowery way, with its blue skies and its singing birds, to feel one’s heart bursting with a new ecstasy, to reach again the land of hope and love, and to linger there with someone – someone with a heart full of love and life! He had always been so lonely!

The age of work, his own age, his guest had chosen to linger there; had resisted all other temptations for that. With the wisdom of fourscore years and all his subtle gift for detecting and avoiding dangers, he had chosen the middle age of life for his abiding-place. The age of work, yes, it was that, if one only made it his vantage-ground.

But, oh, the glory of the flowery way, with all its dangers and all its heartbreaks! His decision was swinging to and fro, like a pendulum: the age of work, the flowery way, the age of work?

And he had been so idle. Perhaps that had been the trouble all along.

“The age of work,” he whispered, “the age of achievement!”

He balanced the precious vial more quickly. It caught the flicker of a waning blaze and became a great, throbbing ruby in his hand.

“To live life over! begin the game anew! Good God!”

Then – he did not know how it happened – the little bottle toppled, fell, and struck the stone hearth, splashing its contents into the dying embers. There was a leap of yellow flame, which an instant later had become vivid scarlet, changing as quickly to crimson, deep purple, then to a flare of blinding white, and was gone. Carringford, startled for a moment, sat gazing dumbly at the ashes of his dying fire.

“The question has decided itself,” he said.

—

THE EVENING SPIRIT

IT WAS THE CLOSE of a dismal December day. I had not lighted the gas, and had been sitting for some time alone in the gathering dusk. It rested me after a hard day to sit thus thinking of various things. Now I fell to watching a mottled square of electric light that appeared in the same place regularly each evening, and that, absurdly enough, always suggested to my imagination a large, quarter-doubled and gorgeously printed newspaper.

I had remarked the effect a good many times before, and did so now, half unconsciously, for my mind had suddenly reverted to my old friend Philip Farrington, aged twenty-five and unmarried, a bright newspaper man, and one of the keenest business managers in the State. Furthermore, he was handsome, tender-hearted, and made friends.

We had known each other in the East, and had come West together during the boom. Philip, at present, was publishing a weekly paper in a neighboring town.

Rising at length and locking my desk, I was just turning to go when there came a knock at my office door, and a messenger boy stumbled in, feeling his way toward me in the dim light.

“I thought mebbe you was here yet,” he said, handing me a yellow envelope.

I tore it open, and holding the telegram in range of the electric rays, read:

BE IN ON 7:30 TRAIN.

FARRINGTON.

I glanced hastily at my watch. It was just seven. I signed the boy’s book, and we left the office together. As it was a slippery, disagreeable night, the street cars uncertain, I decided to walk to the station, and had barely reached it when the 7:30 express, with its one bloody eye, came grinding and grumbling to the platform. A moment later Farrington was beside me.

“Hello, old fellow, how are you? Carriage? No, thanks; rather walk up – want to see your town. What’s your population? How’s your newspaper?”

Farrington was evidently full of some scheme and inclined to proceed to it at once.

“Much business done here?” he continued without pausing.

“The country trade on the square is very large,” I said meekly.

“Um – um – how many merchants have you?”

“Why, really, Farrington, I couldn’t say. I—”

“Don’t attend much to statistics, eh?”

“No, that is—”

“How do you advertise – pretty freely?”

Farrington shot these questions at me as if he were firing them out of a popgun.

“Really, Phil,” I pleaded, “don’t load and fire quite so rapidly. I believe we have a very respectable lot of merchants both as to number and quality, at least—”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said, breaking in again, “I like the looks of your town. It is a good town – you claim fifteen thousand, but ten will cover it to the edges. You’ve only got one daily; you need two. I’ve come here to start the second. Sold out over yonder – just closed up the trade today; what do you think of it?” – turning suddenly under a street lamp and facing me.

“I am sure, Philip,” I ventured to say, “if there is a field, no one could fill it better than yourself.”

“Well, the field is here. I’ve had this town in mind a long time. Been planning the thing for months; going to call the paper Spirit – Evening Spirit; good name – don’t you think?”

“Capital, Phil.”

“Yes, I’ve got it all in my mind, just how it will look in type – title, headlines, and all. I can see it right before me now. Tomorrow I’ll stay here with you to look about a little and talk it over. Monday I’ll go to the city for my outfit. I want to be ready for the first issue New Year’s day, see?” and Farrington slapped me on the back with energy.

“Mosby will be terribly cut up over it; he has had his own way so long.”

“Mosby of The Radical, you mean. Take me to see him tomorrow. Good fellow, I understand, but can’t expect to have this to himself always. Somebody bound to come. Friend of yours, is he?”

“Yes, we have been very good friends, indeed, so far.”

I could see it all in Mosby’s face when we called. The poor fellow had worked hard, and with no great amount of talent had really served us faithfully. Farrington told him openly what he intended to do, and explained the situation in his business-like manner. The blow had fallen. Mosby felt himself prepared for a rival, but not for a man like Farrington. He gave him the right hand of fellowship, and welcomed him with a smile, but he was very pale. I would have given much at that moment not to have been Philip Farrington’s friend.

Philip was thoroughly saturated with his plans. The next morning when I accompanied him to the train his last words were of the new daily. Even when the train rolled away from the station, his head was out of the window, and I caught the words, “plate service, specials, seven-column folio, pony camel—” then his voice was lost in the rushing of iron wheels, and a cloud of smoke drifted down between us, blotting out his face, as I supposed, for at least a week.

But lo, three hours later he returned. Thirty miles away there was a broken rail and a wreck. A number of people had been scratched and bruised, and one killed; that one he who at morning had parted from me so full of life, and hope, and vigor; now he lay before me a crushed, inanimate nothing.

His injuries were mainly internal, and his handsome face showed only a slight cut on the forehead. As I looked at that face and that senseless body, I wondered dimly what had become of that fierce energy – that intense force of will which had made it, but a few hours since, a power that had commanded our love, our reverence, and our fear.

I telegraphed to his relatives in the East, and that night I looked upon him for the last time. He was going back to those who had shed tears at parting, and would shed tears more bitter now, at his return.

I do not think Mosby’s splendid eulogy that day was in anywise affected by the fact that Philip’s death had removed a dreaded rival. Mosby is a fair-minded man, and Philip had really won his regard during their one brief interview.

As for me, I seemed to have been asleep in my chair, and the past forty-eight hours were as a bad dream.

December, gloomy and dark, dragged along to the holidays. My friend’s death had cast a shadow about me, and the Christmas festivities had little in them to make me glad. The January term of court was coming on, and I had a number of cases on the docket. I remained housed up most of the time trying to forget everything else in preparing them for trial.

The new year came in bleak and cold. I stayed all day in my office reading over old letters, and trying to write to friends long neglected. It being a holiday, I had locked the office door, for I had worked hard of late, and did not wish to see anyone. About four in the afternoon, I closed my desk and, feeling somewhat worn, lay down on a couch that stood near the door and on the opposite side of the room. As I did so, my mind reverted to Philip Farrington; I recalled him as I had last seen him looking from the car window.

“Poor boy,” I thought, “today he was to have run his first issue. How intensely earnest he was in his purpose. What an immense will force he had. Poor boy.”

“E-e-evening Spirit!!”

A voice just at my elbow had shouted these words. I started to my feet, and turning quickly, was just in time to see the door close and a folded paper drop noiselessly to the floor!

I looked at both in amazement. I could have sworn that the door had been locked, in fact it had been tried that day by a number of people who had gone away grumbling at my supposed absence. I stared at the white square lying on the floor. There it lay, a neatly printed sheet apparently, folded so as to reveal the first few letters of the dashing autograph title, the design for which Philip had shown me the first evening of his arrival. What could it mean? I felt myself turning queer, then suddenly leaned forward to pick up the paper.

As I did so it seemed to me that its bright, black letters began to blur. I closed my eyes involuntarily to clear my vision. When I opened them a second later it was gone. I rushed to the door. It was locked.

I dropped into a chair, feeling decidedly weak. “This will never do,” I said dryly, “never in the world. I must see a doctor at once. I haven’t been feeling very well lately, and I need some medicine. I must be pretty bad off to have a turn like that.”

I put on my hat and went down into the street to look up a doctor. As I turned a corner I came face to face with Mosby. He was hurrying, and I thought he looked pale.

“Oh,” he said nervously, “I was just going to see you. A very strange thing has happened – unparalleled, in fact,” and he shivered until his teeth chattered audibly.

“What is it, Mosby?” I said, catching something of his unease.

“Come back to my office. We do not get out a paper today, and the building is empty. I was there alone. I want to talk to you.”

Arriving at the office of The Radical, we entered and passed on into Mosby’s little den at the left.

“It is very strange,” repeated Mr. Mosby, “very remarkable indeed,” then he paused as if in doubt how to proceed.

“Twenty minutes ago,” he continued, after some hesitation, “I was sitting at this desk getting some copy ready for tomorrow. The outside door was locked to keep out stragglers and ‘old subscribers’ with New Year’s advice. I had just begun writing when all at once my mind turned to your friend Farrington. I recollected that he had intended running his first issue today. As God is my witness, at that moment my office door was pushed open and a boy’s voice called ‘Evening Spirit!’ and a paper was dropped in on the floor! I was terribly startled, and sat looking at it a moment before stooping to pick it up. I saw part of the title, but that was all. When I reached down to get it, it vanished like mist. I was too frightened for a moment to move. Then I rushed out to find you. I suppose you think I’m drunk or sick, but I haven’t had a drop and I am perfectly well,” and Mosby glared at me with considerable defiance.

“No,” I said, with some agitation, “You are not sick or drunk – at least not in the ordinary way. I, also, am a subscriber to this Evening Spirit.” And I related my own experience while he stared at me with mouth and eyes wide open.

“Do you suppose,” he asked, in an awed voice, when I had finished, “that he has a very large circulation?”

“I think not, Mosby; I think it will hardly extend beyond us two.”

“’Twouldn’t be fair, you know,” said Mosby, with a grim smile, and regaining his courage enough to see the humor of the situation.” Material can’t cost much there – help all free – no expenses. I couldn’t compete, could I?”

“But if he treated other subscribers as he does us, the competition wouldn’t count for anything. Do you suppose he’ll come tomorrow?”

Mosby shivered and turned pale again.

“Don’t know, I’m sure; I hope not. What will you do if he does?”

“Endeavor to read it without trying to get hold of it,” I replied; “maybe we’ll get some celestial information.” Then, becoming grave again, “Mosby,” I said, “seriously speaking, this is a very remarkable manifestation of will force exerted after dissolution of life and mortality. A most unusual continuation of earthly purpose in the unseen. As a matter of science, it seems to me our duty to report the facts to The Society of Psychical Research.”

Mosby smiled in a sickly way and started to say something, but hesitated. Finally, seeing encouragement in my face, “I was about to say,” he resumed sheepishly, “don’t you think we’d better try and be together when he delivers the next issue?”

“Good suggestion. Come over at four tomorrow. I’ll make it a point to be there alone; we can lock the door, then, and await results.”

While we had been talking it had grown dusk. As I rose to go, Mosby rose also, in spite of my assurance that I could find my way out.

“Oh, I am going, too,” he said hastily; “I am quite through with my work, that is, it will keep – no importance whatever,” and Mosby pushed me .out of the dusky office and closed the door after us with what seemed to me unnecessary haste. Out on the pavement we shook hands and separated.

Next morning court opened, and during the forenoon I had little time to think about The Spirit.

Then the criminal docket had begun to grind, and the case in hand being one in which I had no interest, I left a little before four, and watching my chance until no one was about, I slipped into my office and locked the door. A few moments later there were three light knocks, and I opened it for Mosby. Then once more turning the key, I seated myself in a chair opposite him, one of us on each side of the door. We conversed but little and in whispers. By and by we heard a step coming up the stairs. My heart beat so loudly that I wondered if Mosby could hear it. But the caller, whoever it was, had too heavy a tread for a spirit. He came stumbling up the stairs, rattled at the door, and went away using bad language. I looked at my watch. It lacked twenty minutes of five. My hand shook so that I could hardly get it back into my pocket. The light in the office was beginning to grow dim.

“Better – light – the gas,” jerked out Mosby, “so if it comes late – we can see to read it.”

There was a jet not far from the door; I managed to strike a match and turned on a full blaze; then we both felt better, but for the next half hour neither spoke. The clock across the street struck live, then the quarter hour. The suspense was becoming oppressive.

“Must have gone to press late,” said Mosby, in a loud whisper.

I laughed out, but my voice sounded harsh and strange, and silenced us both.

“E-e-evening Spirit!!”

We bounded from our chairs like a couple of jacks-in-the-box, Mosby with such force that his chair fell backward. The locked door opened about a foot, and an unseen carrier had called out the words and pitched the paper into the room. It lay on the floor just as I had seen it before, the first letters of the title and three columns of telegraph turned up to view.

“Don’t try to touch it, Mosby,” I said hoarsely; “we must read it.”

By this time I had drawn my chair as close to it as I dared, and now sat down and stooped as low over the printed page as possible. It lay there as plainly visible in the gaslight as reality itself. Mosby, suddenly becoming brave, got down eagerly on his knees beside me, wholly intercepting my view, and bending over it so low that it seemed as if he meant to smell of it.

“Good impression,” he said, with enthusiasm, “but type a little worn; must have got a second-hand outfit. Headlines a trifle crowded. First two columns plate, third, column Associated Press dispatches. I didn’t know they had wires there” – with a husky laugh. “But they seem to have all the modern improvements. Composition good – spacing neat and regular. By the holy Moses, a typographical error! So they make mistakes over there, too.”

Evidently, Mosby was more interested in the make-up of the paper than in its contents. Suddenly, however, he became silent. A moment later he looked up at me, pointing to a paragraph in the Associated Press column. I bent over and read:

BLOOMINGDALE, KANS.,

January 2.

The proprietor of The Evening Radical of this place, after due consideration, has altered the name of his very worthy paper to The Evening Spirit, it having been decided that the old name was somewhat too pronounced for the advanced liberality of Western ideas. The first issue under the new name appears today with the New Year.

I was about to remark something, when suddenly I noticed that the atmosphere of the room had assumed a bluish cast. I started up and looked at the light; it was like cobalt. I looked at Mosby – his face was like indigo! Then something grasped me by the throat, and the room began to whirl around as it does when one turns rapidly on his heel. I struggled for breath and tried to cry out. Then all was black – the light had gone out – Mosby was gone – the paper was gone – I was alone in the choking, whirling darkness. I made one final fierce effort for breath, regained it, and with a cry of relief – awoke!

I was sitting half upright on the couch in my office. The room was dark except the white, mottled, electric square that blinked and trembled above my desk.

I sat up and stared about me half dazed. There was no doubt about it, I had been asleep; and the startling events of the past twenty-four hours had been a dream!

I began to collect myself. The big clock across the street was striking. I counted. It struck six. There was an uncanny feeling in my blood, and I made no unnecessary delay about getting downstairs to the cold, fresh air. Half way down the block I met Mosby.

“Ah,” he said, “Happy New Year; little late, but I haven’t seen you today, until now; I was just thinking about you. Do you know,” he continued briskly, “I have decided to change the name of my paper. Present title a little too old-style, you know – just a trifle too decided, and do you know, I am going to take Farrington’s title, The Spirit – Evening Spirit. Poor fellow, he don’t need it now, and wouldn’t care, I guess. Begin the year tomorrow under the new name. Good name, don’t you think?”

“Yes, Mosby,” I answered as soon as I could speak; “yes, it is a good name, a very excellent name, and I am quite sure Farrington will not care.”

—