The Smart Set/Volume 57/Issue 1/Sand

by Neith Boyce

 

SAND

By Neith Boyce

I

IF this year is like the last she'll go out in the November gales,” said Captain Kirby firmly.

We stood looking at the old life-saving station, a low frame building half-buried in the embrace of the sand-dune. Swept closer every year by the winter storms the dune now loomed above the roof and blocked the western windows. A few feet from where we were standing it shelved sharply to the beach.

“Do you see where it's cut in under there? Every gale drives the sea up. A big storm will cut off twenty feet and out she'll go. Do you think the government would've condemned her for nothing?”

But “she,” the condemned, looked so comfortable settled there in the broad arm of the dune—and the sea was twenty feet below, and now at high-tide the long white-crested rollers were breaking only half-way up the beach.

“Wait till you see a storm here,” remarked Captain Kirby. “But likely you'll go with the rest of the summer folks in September.”

“We may not. We love it here,” I said.

“Do, eh?”

He looked at me with amusement and chuckled grimly. Then he turned his grey weathered face toward the barren sands. Half a mile away down the beach the new station stood up fresh and bleak. Otherwise the stretch of coast was perfectly bare and lonely—yellow-grey dune, white beach, dark blue sea broken near the shore by two long sandbars.

“Love it,eh?... The graveyard of the Cape, we call it,” he muttered, and his little grey eyes under harsh brows stared at the sea as at an enemy.

“Come in and see what we have done to the house,” I urged.

He followed me through the narrow entry. The whole place glistened in new white paint. The mess-room was now the kitchen, with bright blue pots hanging round the white walls, and the blue sea framed in the two small windows. The big room, completely panelled in wood, formerly dusky-brown, where the lifeboat had stood ready to be run out into stormy seas—this was now the living room. It was white, too, lit up by bright flares of colour, orange, scarlet, blue, in cushions and covers. It had broad couches, deep chairs, a large new fireplace, books, flowers, gay china—all the modern litter of life, all Lorna's luxuries. On the walls were pinned up some of Rudolf's “primitive” charcoal drawings—and I noticed that Captain Kirby averted his eyes from these hastily.

He inspected pleasantly everything else, including the rooms on the upper floor, the new bathroom, the bedrooms in white muslin and chintz. Then we came down again. The stairs, narrow and steep, were exactly like a companion ladder. In fact, the whole place was built like a boat. Perhaps this was the reason Captain Kirby referred to it as “she.” With a last glance around as we went out he said quietly:

“She doesn't look like the same place I lived in for thirty years. You people have spent an awful lot of money on her. It does seem a pity she can't be moved back up there on the dune. It could be done—but it would cost money.”

“If the house has stood for thirty years, surely it may last our time,” I suggested. “A few years—”

“November!” said Captain Kirby, with an obstinate glance at me.

Just then Rudolf and Lorna came round the corner of the house and passed us, nodding at the Captain. They were both in bathing suits, and Lorna's was exactly like Rudolf's. I noticed that Captain Kirby modestly gave but one fleeting look at her long bare arms and legs.

“Hey!” he shouted suddenly.

They stopped and turned round, and keeping his eyes fixed on Rudolf, he inquired sharply:

“Going in?”

Rudolf nodded, smiling.

“Well, you keep close to shore then!” roared the Captain.

“Oh, yes—just a plunge.”

“Can the lady swim?”

“Yes!” Lorna called back in her high, clear voice.

“Well, you look out! Don't you get out by them bars—there's an undertow would drown an elephant out there!”

“All right!” laughed Rudolf, and they went on down to the beach.

“All right!” echoed Captain Kirby grimly, his mouth shutting tight under his grey moustache.

“Is there danger really?” I asked. “They're always going in.”

“Haven't I told you folks every day since you come?” demanded the Captain in an exasperated tone. “Some days it's all right—but you get a different kind of wind and sea and it'll pull you down, I don't care how strong a swimmer you be. And what do you folks know about currents and weather? But if you won't believe it, you won't!”

And, quite crimson all of a sudden, he climbed into his light buggy, laid the whip on the nervous horse and was off, the wheels sinking six inches deep in the sand.

Down below I saw Lorna run into the water and plunge head-foremost through a breaker, and Rudolf followed her.

I looked into the open door of the old stable, now a sculptor's studio, and called:

“Jeremy! Come out a minute!”

“I'm working!” was the curt response.

“Come out! I want to ask you something!”

He came, his clothes and bare arms daubed with clay, looking very cross. I repeated what the Captain had said.

“Do you think there's any danger?” I demanded.

“Danger, no!” he said with irritation. “Those old salts are always croaking!... Sitting around all day with nothing to do makes 'em nervous.”

“All the same there is an undertow. And Rudolf's fearfully reckless—”

“Rudolf! He isn't a patch on Lorna. If they get drowned it will be her own fault!” snapped Jeremy. “Rudolf's got nothing to do with it—”

He looked gloomily at the two below bobbing about gaily in the surf, and then cast a belligerent glance at me.

“He's the stronger—you'll see, she'll go under first!” I predicted.

“She floats like a cork! If anybody goes under it'll be Rudolf,” retorted Jeremy. “She'll take him out till the undertow gets hold of him, and then—”

This was our old dispute. We were not talking now about Captain Kirby's undertow. No, it was what was going on between those two, under our eyes. For months—ever since we four had been living together in the house on the sand—Jeremy and I had quarrelled about this.

“If you're worried, why don't you try to stop them?” he said, now maliciously.

Stop them? There was no answer to that. You might as well try to stop the wind blowing, or the sand moving before it.

“Well, I've got to work—don't come interrupting me again unless somebody gets drowned,” and Jeremy dived back into the stable.

I wandered off over the dune. Dipping down below its crest, the house disappeared, and the sea showed only a glimpse here and there with the white sails passing. There was a wide bowl-like space walled in the distance by the fantastic forms of the dunes. In it was a little copse of scrub-oaks and a small cranberry bog; stretches of bayberry; then a quicksand, and a buried wood. There was silence, the stir of the wind in the bay-bushes and the slim reedgrass, the sound of the sea—and the eternal whirr of the sand ... sliding, swishing, clicking softly ... whispering mysteriously...

Lorna had taken one of her intense fancies for this dune-country. In the winter she had bought the old station, by sealed bid, for a few hundred dollars, and had spent a good deal more making it over, filling it with her own colour, throwing herself into it, as she did into anything that she touched. The house was just Lorna, this ultra-civilized spot in the midst of barren sand! This intense personal expression, jealously shut in upon itself, isolated, solitary—this was Lorna.

I had come with her rather unwillingly. Never had I been able to refuse anything she wanted of me—nor had any one else, so far as I knew. How soft and insinuating she could be—like this sand—and how hard! How pliant and flowing she had seemed, how she had seemed to take every suggestion I made to her. And now? Oppose her and it was like facing a stinging blinding storm of sand in a northwest gale!... It hadn't quite come to that yet—it was only that when I tried to seize her and hold her to something, she slipped between my fingers....

II

I suppose I had come really on Ellery's account. He had been my friend long before he married Lorna. The break between them, a year before, had broken him. Even now he could hardly believe her desertion. He loved her and wanted her back, in spite of everything. And she always spoke so affectionately to me of Ellery that until lately I had believed that they might make it up. But now they were discussing divorce. Ellery's letters to me were full of misery. He was a conventional man, with deep family pride and feeling. He was cut to the quick. Why had she left him?

It was not because of Rudolf, for he came afterward. Lorna had left her husband because, as she said to me, she was “bored.” She was independent of him as to money, they had no children, so it was easy—for her. But I could not make out her feeling—or her complete lack of feeling. As I say, she spoke affectionately of Ellery always—but as though he were a chance acquaintance that she liked—or as though he were dead. Their marriage of six years was for her as though it had never been. Gone—swept away—blotted out—it had not left a trace upon her. I could hardly grasp this. Ellery—whom this marriage had crushed—could not grasp it at all. That she spoke pleasantly about him was the last straw—it infuriated him. Certainly he never spoke pleasantly about Lorna!

“You never loved Ellery at all,” I had said to her once.

“Oh, yes, I did—very much,” she had protested, in astonishment. “I wouldn't have lived with him for six years if I hadn't loved him!”

“And you just stopped loving him—like that? Why? Did he change in any way? All you've said to me is that you were bored!”

“Well, that was it,” Lorna said reflectively. “Of course you could put it in different words. But—it ceased to be life-enhancing. It didn't go on—nothing happened, in his life or mine. It was dull, stagnant. And I can't bear that!”

“You want to live in a whirl of excitement always?”

“No. I could live in a desert, with one person. But something must be happening. I must feel that I'm living. That one person must interest me.”

“And Ellery ceased to interest you?”

“Yes,” she said, looking tragic. “And I can't live unless I'm interested. I go out—like a lighted candle in a vacuum.”

I knew what she meant. I had seen her during the last months of her life with Ellery, looking oppressed, extinguished, annihilated. She had grown ten years younger since then. She had escaped from something that was stifling her. She was as full of life as ever, as eager to live—perhaps more so. And this was what Ellery couldn't understand, what so wounded. and angered him. He couldn't begin a new life. He had been hurt, injured—and she hadn't a scar. She had stabbed him, and escaped scatheless, so he had said to me, in bitter rage. Even now he was bound to her in feelings he hated her and couldn't forget her. But Lorna didn't hate Ellery in the least. She had simply slipped her bonds and was free of him—so free that she could see all his good qualities, admire him, and hope he would be happy.

Jeremy understood all this perfectly—or seemed to. He was less than thirty in years, but a century old in experience. How he got the experience I can't imagine, for he had as little as possible to do with human beings. He held himself aloof with an air of shocked timidity and observed them, as it were, through his fingers. But he observed; nothing escaped his shrewd glance. He had an uncanny sympathy with Lorna. He had known her a long time and had never been at all in love with her. So she was perfectly frank with him.

Jeremy understood women much better than he did men (and liked them less). He and I disputed hotly about Rudolf—I could not at all share his enthusiasm, his almost worship, of that talented and beautiful youth. I granted Rudolf beauty—of a certain kind—and talent; Jeremy insisted he was a genius, and frail—as he said all genius was. Rudolf frail! And he thought it perfectly natural that Lorna should have fallen madly in love with the wonderful boy, and seized upon him—trust Lorna for that! But he wailed for Adonais—how he did wail!

“A pure artist—if he's left alone! But women won't let him alone! They would rather have him all tangled up, making love to them, than following out his destiny, producing works of beauty! Merely because he happens to have a pleasing and romantic exterior—yes, and because they feel that intensity in him which they want to divert to their own purposes, instead. of leaving it where it belongs, in the service of Art—oh, it's a shame! It's too bad of Lorna!”

“He's an egotistic boy!” I contradicted sulkily. “Lorna loves him to distraction, and he takes it all as if it were his right!... There's Ellery, a man worth dozens of Rudolf—thrown aside—and Lorna determined to marry this stripling! He'll spend her money and break her heart—it will be the old story of an older woman loving a boy—”

“Ha!” cried Jeremy, divided between anger and mirth. “Rudolf doesn't care a hang for money. And as for her heart—break Lorna's heart! Oh, gods and little fishes!... Better find out, before you weep about that, whether she's got a heart!”

So we disagreed flatly as to what was happening—if it wasn't love I didn't know what it was—I thought I had never seen any one so much in love as Lorna. Within our solitude, cut off from the world as we were, she made an inner solitude for herself and Rudolf. She drew as it were a flaming ring about herself and him. They were always alone together—at least for the first four months. And Lorna had transformed herself for him, grown young, simple, active, joyous—reflecting as in a bright mirror, his careless, insolent youth....

They roamed endlessly about the dunes, swam recklessly in defiance of Captain Kirby, sometimes went off and had picnic meals by themselves in the open; or Lorna posed and Rudolf sketched; or they read together. They went about bare-footed, in scanty clothes, and were brown from sun and wind and sea; and Lorna grew more slim and lithe and looked like an Indian, with her black hair flowing. And Rudolf, blond and brilliant as a young sun-god (according to Jeremy), sang and laughed and whistled. They seemed very happy, and as though they were going on this way for ever—as though this brimming cup of love could never be emptied!

Rudolf took it as his right—gaily, lightly. But Lorna was more intense, more intent—it was, for the time, her whole life. To him love seemed a joyous banquet—to her, food and drink that she was starving, thirsting for.

III

I thought Rudolf a rude young barbarian. He was the “blond beast,” the superman, in his own imagination. He was to bestride the world like a colossus. He must be brilliant, dashing, successful in whatever he undertook, and must do it all carelessly, with perfect ease, lordly indifference—that was his idea. The usual self-confidence and vanity of youth—but Rudolf overdid it. He admired and praised himself, and patronized every one about him, with perfect simplicity. His work was good, Jeremy said, and full of promise. He drew very cleverly, with great facility and sureness. And he was certain of being a great painter.

“As great,” he said calmly, “as El Greco—and you can't say more than that.”

Then he would look at you with his light bright blue eyes, superbly. Youth, beauty, genius, love—he had them all, of course!

His head really was beautiful—round, with small well-set ears, close-clipped curling hair, brow and eyes like the Hermes. But there was a weakness in his face. His finely-curved mouth was too small, and his chin. He had a habit of throwing his head back and thrusting*his chin out, making it as firm and masculine as possible. It looked like a natural arrogant gesture. It was really a self-betrayal. But you had to know Rudolf well to see through his bluff, his perpetual challenge. All that I saw in him for the first few months was a spoiled, conceited petulant boy, with bad manners. He snubbed Jeremy, who flattered him outrageously. And he treated Lorna with a cool assumption of mastery, calmly taking her adoration for granted. Seeing that I disliked him he ignored me as far as possible.

Altogether, we were not a congenial party, but fortunately that didn't matter much. Jeremy was serenely independent of everything but his work, and he worked happily all day long in the old studio. And the beauty of the place was enough for me—the sea, the strangeness of the dunes, the magical silence and remoteness. Sometimes I went over to the new station and talked to the life-savers. In summer they led a slightly monotonous life. The main events seemed to be dinner, at ten o'clock in the morning, and supper, at four in the afternoon.

After that there was nothing to look forward to. Except the weekly leave to go to town—they took it in turn, and the man who was off for the day was called the “liberty-man.” They had some quaint turns of speech, and could tell grisly stories in a few matter-of-fact words. Captain Kirby showed me the “wreck-book”—his record of duty—and complained mildly of having the worst station on the coast. The next station, he informed me, hadn't had a wreck all last winter.

“But I,” he said gently, “had eight wrecks and seventeen God-damned corpses.”

Then I would go up to see the lookout in his glassed-in observatory at the top of the station. He was supposed to record every ship that passed—so many “barks,” so many “vessels.” Perched on a stool, with a small telescope or glass in his hand, he was supposed, as I say, to watch the sea. But pretty frequently his eye was turned on the dunes. He would chuckle, looking through the glass, and say:

“There's that same couple I see yesterday. When they git out of sight of town they imagine nobody can see 'em!”

Then he would say a few caustic things about “summer folks.”

*****

So we came to July. Golden days with the white clouds floating over, like the sails of the fishers on the sea—grey days when the fog shut down around the house and there was nothing of the outside world but hoarse bellows and shrieks from the passing boats.

Sometimes in the evening Captain Kirby would come over for an hour or so, and tell us stories of winter wrecks and dead men. I urged him to come oftener, for the evenings at our house were growing rather strange.

It had been all right at first, for Lorna and Rudolf were roaming the dunes, or if it were stormy they were so tired and lazy after their active day that Lorna would simply lie on a couch. and Rudolf on the floor before the fire, and there was peace. But now many a moonlight night, they stayed in—Lorna darkly shining, Rudolf with cloudy, stormy blue eyes. And there was Jeremy, psychic and watchful, like a young owl in his corner. And there was talk, endless talk, that played about the fringes of things; that hinted and darted and skimmed like a dragon-fly on a pool. There were endless arguments about people and books and art.

The part Rudolf took in these was to come crashing in with dogmatic assertion, with the impatience and cocksureness of his spoiled youth. Generally we three were against him, whereupon he would burst out in anger or sulk. It became more and more clear that when it came to ideas Lorna and he disagreed completely. It was quite evident that these evenings bored him; but Lorna kept us all there. She seemed rather to enjoy tormenting Rudolf. She became more and more fantastic and phantasmal.

Jeremy and she echoed one another and played psychic subtleties as other people would have played cards. They took to table-tapping and spirit-writing when tired of talking about dreams and ghosts. One witch-like evening of mist and silence they were sure they had evoked something. There were wandering, stumbling footsteps about the house, and deep mournful sighs. We all heard them, and went out and searched vainly—all except Rudolf, who had hurled himself off over the dunes in a rage.... But it turned out to be the old horse from the station, who had wandered back to his former quarters and found the stable door shut. And this making a ghost of the old horse was rather typical of the evenings in that white restless room.

Restless, restless, was its spirit now—meaning glances, veiled words, half-hints, cryptic obliqueness.... It was like a spell laid upon us; and Rudolf tried in vain to break through it; instead, it broke through his guard sometimes. There were times when we felt haunted; when the deep crashing of the sea under us threatened doom; when the hill of sand above us seemed suspended there, ready to fall and crush us; when Lorna's dark magnetic eyes glowed at us as though she were invoking destruction on our heads.

Jeremy, though he assuredly played up to Lorna, insisted to me that this was all her doing, that this atmosphere was her creation, that she would ruin Rudolf by it, kill his artistic nature.

“It is Lorna,” he said to me one day. “It's what she lives in—but it's no more a human atmosphere than the moon's is. And when she's infatuated, as she is with Rudolf, she never rests till she's transported the object of her infatuation bodily away, into her own world, and shut him up there. That's what she's doing to Rudolf. But is that the kind of a world for an artist to live in? It kills him!... What he needs is a perfectly simple human background, if any—something warm, comforting, not too obvious, not too absorbing. What can Lorna do for him, except blow down all over him and smother him?”

We were sitting on the sand in the hollow, and I suppose the tops of the desiccated trees before us suggested the simile.

“There's nothing to hold Lorna,” Jeremy went on. “She has to go on. And in my opinion she'll finish Rudolf next—yes, finish him,” he repeated gloomily. “She'll take all he can give, and then—”

He had been heaping up the sand before him, making a queer snaky figure. With a sweep of his hand he demolished it.

“Perhaps she has taken all—all he can give her,” he said meditatively. “I think, myself, she's getting tired....”

And he shot a malicious glance at me.

My heart sank. The imp had divined a thought I had not uttered, and he knew, too, how it affected me.

“What's she about?” I cried. “One can't take up people like that and drop them, one after another! One can't have a grand passion—and get over it in a few months!”

“Can't one?” said Jeremy calmly. “Lorna can—you'll see.”

“How do you know? You mean it's happened before?”

“No, she never was in love before—at least not just this way—but now she has been.”

“Has been!”

“Yes, has been ... You needn't think it would satisfy her for ever. After all, for her Rudolf's only a boy—a charming youth. She doesn't really care for the artist in him.”

Jeremy patted and moulded the sand before him into a fantastic female outline.

“I won't believe it!” I assured him angrily. “Lorna isn't as light-minded as that!”

“She's not light-minded at all,” he returned serenely. “Quite the contrary. If anything she's too intense, too piercing. She's geared at too high a speed for most people, you see, she wears them out—gets what she can from them—and goes on. When she can't get any more she has to go on.”

“Go on! Where? What is she after? What is it that she wants?”

“I don't know,” said Jeremy. “Perhaps she doesn't know herself. Sometimes I think she's very earthly, even for a woman—”

“You snip!”

“—but when she grows restless, nothing can satisfy her ... I don't know what she's after—unless it's the Absolute!”

He laughed, looked at his model, and effaced it with a touch. A gust of wind blew over us, and the sand came trickling, sliding. down the slope behind us.

“I wonder if she will ever go back to Ellery,” I said.

“No,” said Jeremy. “She never goes back.”

IV

Midsummer made no change about us; blue sea and white sand were the same. Day after day was cloudless, with turquoise sky and the sea ultramarine, with green and purple where the sand-bars lay. But there came a south wind, shifting to east, and a solid week of rain. We were driven to close quarters. The bedrooms were cold and there was only the one big living-room. At first Rudolf tried to work there. He made drawings of Lorna, one after another, and crumpled them up and tossed them into the fire. They talked little, and were both very restless. Sometimes they would go out for a walk in the rain. Rudolf smoked incessantly and began to look pale and out of sorts. Lorna watched him with her big dark moody eyes and would say sharp things to him when he couldn't work. She could be as cutting as the east wind and she was, pretty often.

When the sun shone out again we all, with deep sighs of relief, fled apart in different directions and didn't meet except at meals for some days. But the moral atmosphere didn't clear up; there was storm in the air. The nervous tension between those two continued and broke out occasionally in a word or a look. Rudolf looked gloomy and sulky and Lorna was positively malign. What had happened? Jeremy said airily:

“They're getting on each other's nerves, that's all. What can you expect—shut up together like this? No man can stand it.” He scowled and added, “Rudolf can't work any more. If he doesn't clear out he's lost.”

“You want him to go?”

“Certainly I do. But Lorna won't let him.”

“I thought you said she was getting tired of him!”

“Yes, but she isn't ready to let him go yet—especially if he wants to.”

“And does he want to?”

“He wants a change,” said Jeremy crisply.

It was soon after this that Rudolf broke away—hastily packed a valise and fled. They had quarrelled, it seems, and Lorna had gone off by herself on the dunes—and came back to the house to find that he had flown. She was stunned. Then she flew into a rage, followed by a thunderstorm of tears. I had never seen her weep before. She sobbed violently for hours.

“Where is he gone?” she demanded of Jeremy and me. “You know where he is! I want him back. You tell him he's got to come back! If he doesn't I'll go after him.”

Jeremy and I sat up all that night, trying to reason with her, to quiet her—but she only cried like a heart-broken child and repeated,

“I want him to come back!”

After a week's frenzied correspondence by letter and telegram, Rudolf did come back, much to Jeremy's disgust. Then they were happy again, Rudolf and Lorna. The clouds had disappeared, they both beamed joyously. Again they wandered together, on the dunes and the beach, and forgot Jeremy and me. It was like the first days over again—almost.

Almost—but with a subtle difference. It was as though they had both grown older. There was a shadow, after all. The first fine careless rapture was gone, try as they might they couldn't sing the same song twice over. There was a shade of melancholy. And sometimes they quarrelled quite openly. Something had happened while Rudolf was away; Lorna was jealous. She would fling out biting comments on the nature of men. Rudolf would retort, withering remarks on the nature of women. Then they would patch it up again.

Jeremy sulked, spending more time than ever in his studio, often working there in the evening. I would go in and sit with him sometimes, but he didn't talk much. He would rumple his hair fiercely or toss up his hands with a gesture of total rejection.

“I wash my hands of them,” he would say. “But mark my words, it will end in a smash—a big smash ... And it ought to, too,” he added. “That's the only excuse for it ... If people are going to be fools they ought to be real desperate fools—not just ordinary... And I guess our friends will qualify, all right. They're eating each other up as fast as they can—and pretty soon, instead of two of them there won't be any.”

“You've lost interest in Rudolf,” I remarked.

“Yes,” he admitted. “There's isn't enough left of him to be interested in. When a man doesn't exist apart from some woman—well, what can you do? Breathe a prayer for his departed soul—and pass on.”

One evening Jeremy favoured us with some general ideas, as follows:

“Things are all wrong nowadays. There's too much Woman in the Cosmos. It isn't a man's world any more. Women have got out of their orbit and they're careering all over the place, smashing everything. They're—only good in their place. As long as they were kept in it they were all right, and we had elbow-room. But now they're too much for us. Soon and late, getting and spending, they lay waste our powers. Nothing we see in nature that is ours. There's hardly a corner anywhere now where we can get away from you! You've knocked all the romance and adventure out of the world—out of us—and now we begin to bore you. You've tamed us—and you don't like us tame! You don't know what's the matter—you think it's our fault that we aren't interesting any more!”

“And you think it's our fault?” said Lorna languidly.

“Certainly it is! You've lost your faith in us. That's your own weakness. Faith is the measure of power. You can't love without faith. If you women don't worship you're worse than useless, you're evil. And you don't worship any more—neither us nor anything else.”

“Not blindly—that's true,” said Lorna in a low voice. “We see you as you are.”

“Do you?” mocked Jeremy. “You think you do—and much good it does you!”

“Yes, it doesn't do us much good,” Lorna admitted darkly. “Why couldn't you keep us ignorant?”

“We wanted you to know enough to appreciate us properly,” said Jeremy. “But you don't—not yet.”

“We must know you as you are—and yet worship?” said Lorna with irony.

Jeremy nodded fiercely.

“You must see us as we are—and as we may be. You must have faith in our possibilities and cherish us for them. You must take the wilt for the deed and believe in our widest reach as though we had already grasped! You must see us as we want to be. In that way you can help us—in every other way you hurt us, hurt the best in us, you destroy us and we—hate you for it.”

Jeremy's eyes flashed and he looked balefully at Lorna.

“You needn't hate me,” she said. “I haven't done anything to you.”

“I hate you impersonally,” said Jeremy. “Personally, as you know, I'm fond of you. But you do a lot of harm—more than most women, because you have more energy.”

“Do you think so?” asked Lorna thoughtfully.

Jeremy shot a keen glance at her.

“Yes—and I think you like it, too,” he said sharply.

V

Lorna fell into a fit of gloom, intense, abysmal. She shut herself up in her room, lay in bed and read books of religious philosophy. Late the second night she came into my room, wrapped in a white gown, her hair. loose, her great dark eyes jaded and burning. Her look—it was that of the “after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter dropping off of the veil, the lapse into everyday life.” Yes, the intoxication of love was past—I could see that now plainly. And now she was paying for it, in the re-action, in the terrible necessity to face life without it, to face the daylight after that feverish dream. That was what she had been going through in her seclusion, and now she was willing to talk about it; she had to talk about it, even in the midst of her suffering. There was always a part of her that stood aloof and could look on calmly, whatever happened.

“What I don't like about this,” she began abruptly, casting herself upon my bed, “is that it's ridiculous! It's absurd to go into something that seems for your whole life, and find it dwindle away and come to nothing! I don't understand how feelings can change like that! There must be something the matter with me—or with other people.”

As I was silent, merely looking at her, she inquired with irritation:

“Why don't you say something? Have you got any ideas about it?”

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “Plenty. But you won't like them.”

“No matter whether I do or not!”

“Then I think that the trouble is with you. I think you will never find what you seek. I think you will be unhappy yourself and make other people unhappy—those that care about you.”

“Why?” Lorna asked, sullenly.

“Because you've cut away from your base—you've broken your connection with life.”

“Do you mean Ellery?” she inquired.

“It might have been Ellery. You should have had children. Of course it isn't too late. But you're on the wrong track. As you're going on now you'll have the miseries of men and none of their consolations. You're seeking what they seek and you'll never find it. Neither do they ever find it. But the search is enough for them—but it won't be for you, nor for any woman. You're throwing away your birthright!”

“And what is that?” she asked ironically.

“The earth and the fulness thereof—that's what we're born to. We're a part of it, we're based on it, absolutely, securely, by instinct. We're at home there—and man is only a wandering visitor, for ever trying to make himself at home. He had no secure base. Shall we imitate him?”

“Men are absurd,” said Lorna darkly.

“Certainly they are,” I agreed, “and wonderful—like children. They are always children and we never are. So we ought to love them like children. We are their mothers and nothing else. It's enough. But you, Lorna, have never been a mother to anything.”

“Perhaps,” she said with a question. “But I have been devoted to Rudolf—I wanted him to work—”

“No, I think you just took possession of him,” I interrupted. “You shared his illusion.”

“Then you think there can be no illusion for us?” she said after a pause.

“No—we have reality, we don't need illusion. But they do, it's vital to them—and we should try not to spoil it for them. They must dream and try to realize their dreams. But it's at our peril if we dream! You've been dreaming, Lorna.”

“Then love is a dream?” she asked.

“Nothing else—the sort of love you mean—and with a bitter wakening. You will never find the lover you seek. You will never find a man to love you for yourself, only for what you give him. Therefore—give!”

“Always, only that?”

“Always. The love that has no bitterness. Think how one loves a child, to feed and cherish, comfort and care for it, watch its growth and feel the wonder of it, forgive its errors and failures!—isn't that the love that all men need?”

“So we must live perpetually in the nursery?” said Lorna sardonically.

“Yes, or be condemned to sterility ... Nurses of the body or the spirit—that's what we must be!”

Lorna sat up, her unwinking dark eyes fixed on me, expressing a profound rejection of those views.

“We can never meet them on an equality, then—frankly, face to face, each for what we are?” she said slowly.

“Never!”

“We can't be comrades, sharing their lives, their adventures—?”

“No, we are too different. We're the earth to their sky. And we should be the earth—fertile, warm, nourishing, solid!... The earth and the sky don't meet, except in illusion!... You've been seeking the pot of gold at the rainbow's end!”

Lorna brooded.

“So we should forgive them, whatever they do?”

“Of course. We understand and they don't, by instinct. They have to experiment and hurt themselves and us. Couldn't you forgive a child of yours—no matter what it did—would it make any difference to your love?”

“But they're not children!” said Lorna with an angry flash.

“In our world, they are—in relation to us. If you take them any other way you get the worst of them.”

“It seems to me,” said Lorna, after a pause, “that you take a very superior attitude toward them.”

“Superior in one way, inferior in another. Of course, we're best in our own line—what would be the use of us if we weren't? But we can't be what they are—you know it yourself, Lorna. They are the sky to our earth! The light, the fire, the glimpse into space, into infinity .. the imagination that makes of life something beyond life, the restless spirit, the perpetual reaching out—”

“You think we have none of that?” flashed Lorna.

“Only when we live in a desert—as you do, Lorna.... We can be content, satisfied, and they never can. We have a reason for existence—and they have to find one. Man has to justify his own existence to himself. We don't need to, provided we're useful to somebody. He has to establish a connection between himself and the universe. We don't need to—ours is ready made. Some of us cut it away and live in the sand where nothing grows.”

“As I do, you think?” said Lorna.

“Haven't you?” I asked.

She was silent for a time, then looked up at me piercingly.

“You owe me a grudge, on account of Ellery,” she said.

“Well—yes,” I admitted.

“You're very fond of him?”

“Very.”

“And you could have taken care of him—and all that?”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps you could still?” she suggested.

“Perhaps. But I think he is too much broken.”

Again a silence.

“I think men generally love women best who are not good for them,” she said.

“Yes. They must run into danger—like the moth into the candle. They must burn their wings.”

“Then they fly away from this maternal love that you describe—into the candle? Why is that?”

“They seek what strikes their imagination. But behind that brightness they look for the other thing—for cherishing love—and if they don't find it they are destroyed in that imaginative impulse. Their wings are burnt and they can fly no more.”

“And we—if what we seek fails us—if we can't get what we want—what about us?”

“It need never fail us. We shouldn't demand. We should pass on the torch. Do we demand love from our children? We get what we earn.”

“Your idea of woman,” said Lorna pensively, “seems to be a widowed mother.”

“And yours, a childless mistress,” I retorted.

She got up smiling and held out her hand.

“I like you better for that! I was sure you couldn't be as milky-mild as you seem!... We shall never understand one another—but anyhow we might be friends?”

She clasped my hand frankly, cordially, and looked at me in her most winning way. She had a great charm—and she knew well enough I felt it. So I kissed her good-night—yes, I was actually fond of her, in spite of Ellery—and that says a good deal.

VI

For some time after that life went on very quietly—whatever might be simmering in the depths, the surface was calm. Lorna reappeared, vivid and full of energy, and took to modelling with Jeremy in the studio. She worked with feverish intensity and produced some rough sketches in clay which Jeremy said were “darned good.” Her general manner was off-hand, but pleasant. She seemed to say, “Oh, well, let's not make a fuss about anything.” She treated Rudolf with genial carelessness—and he brightened up. He began to work again, and whistled as he went about....

The first time that Rudolf and Lorna tied themselves together with a rope when they went into the sea, Jeremy and I exchanged portentous glances. We both disliked it intensely. That was a very calm day, hot August weather, and nothing happened. But in the night a storm blew up from the north-west, cleared away the low clouds and sent the sea crashing in. A glorious racy blue and white day followed. About noon Rudolf and Lorna took the rope and went off down the beach. They started to walk along the sand-bar from where it joined the beach, half a mile below us. The surf was breaking on the bar in glittering foam and they would bury themselves in it and then emerge and walk on. Jeremy and I sat watching them; we could hear them shouting with glee. At the end of the bar, nearly opposite us, Lorna stood for a moment—then she evidently had the idea of swimming from there to the beach, and stepped off into deep water. In an instant we saw that. something was wrong. I leaped up and cried out. Lorna seemed to be whirled out and under....

Rudolf was still on the bar, with one end of the rope round him. Instead of pulling Lorna out he leaped in after her. We saw them both struggling in that yeasty whirl and they both began crying terribly for help.

Jeremy and I tumbled down the slope to the beach, shouting. We saw the life-savers running down from the station. Man after man came pelting. down, the last two half-dressed. A dory was hauled up on the beach. They ran it out, six of them piled in and they began to pull madly. We heard strangling cries from Lorna. She was floating on her back in the eddy; but Rudolf had disappeared. Jeremy and I toiled up the beach. It seemed to me that my legs were rooted in the sand. It took incredible effort to get a step forward.

For uncounted ages I watched the boat flying toward them, and struggled through the sand.... Then we saw Lorna pulled roughly into the boat, and then a limp drowned body came to the surface and they hauled that in, and came flying back to shore. I saw them land, saw Lorna standing up, saw the group of men round Rudolf. When we finally got up to them they were working violently over him, doubling him up, pumping his arms up and down, beating him. He was unconscious and blue in the face and making awful noises. Lorna looked white and sick.

“Is he dead?” I cried.

“I don't know,” she said, looking strangely at me.

“Can't tell yet,” growled Captain Kirby, down on his knees in the sand.

It is a terrible thing to see a dead person brought to life—What struggles, what grotesque cruelty to the inert body!... Captain Kirby told me afterward that it was twenty minutes before they could get him to breathe again. It was an hour before he recovered consciousness. They had filled him with whiskey and put him to bed. Lorna too, was pretty sick from the shock and the water she had followed. When Captain Kirby took his leave of us he said:

“Well, it was just a chance that we had that dory on the beach, going after our lobster-pots. If we'd had to get the other boat down we couldn't've saved 'em.... Perhaps you people will believe what I tell you after this.... I don't tell you no fairy-tales!...”

And he departed in triumph, and later brought over a lot of official papers which had to be filled out and signed, to be sent to Washington.

Rudolf, too, was triumphant when he was able to sit up and talk about it. His pale face quite shone with pleasure, His eyes were clear and child-like. He beamed ingenuously as he told us how he had died. He had had all the sensations of dying—no one could possibly have any more—and he had had wonderful visions, too, of form and colour, at the moment of death. Yes, Rudolf was pleased with himself, as we all scurried about and waited on him, Lorna too, and listened to him. He was simple, touchingly so. He said he was born anew, that he was going to have a wonderful new life, and his eyes sought Lorna eagerly....

Lorna did not respond. She was silent, white, languid. All the energy and life had gone out of her.

We left Rudolf to sleep, and Lorna went out by herself on the dunes, and stayed all the afternoon. Lunch had been forgotten. Jeremy and I snatched a cold bite and then collapsed, exhausted. There was a marvellous sunset that night—great scarlet and purple flares across the sky beyond the headland that jutted out to the west. We lay on the top of the dune and watched it in silence.

As it began to fade Lorna came up, her white clothes fluttering in the wind, and sat down with us. She looked gloomy and hard—I had never known before how hard her face could be. She began to talk. She said that it was perfectly ridiculous of Rudolf to jump off after her when she called for help, instead of pulling her in by the rope. The whole affair was utterly absurd, she said.... All this fuss for nothing ... tiresome ... it bored her ... stupid..... A man ought to have more sense—presence of mind. She was vicious about it.

That evening she was gloomily silent. Rudolf lay on a couch by the fire and talked radiantly, though he was still very weak. You might say he babbled—and he sent warm, anxious glances at Lorna, to which she did not respond in the least. She was cold as a stone. She looked oppressed, extinguished. I had seen her look exactly that way when Ellery came into the room during the time just before they separated, as though a wet blanket had been flung over her, as though she were suffering, panting for lack of air, as though she would die if she didn't get out of that!

VII

I was not at all surprised when, next morning, Lorna announced that she was going to town for a few days, on business—a conference with her lawyer about the divorce. She telephoned for a carriage, packed like lightning and disappeared in a whirl, waving smiling good-byes. She hoped we would all go on exactly as we were till she came back.

“She will never come back,” said Jeremy to me.:

“What do you mean?” I asked, startled.

“I told you,” he said. “Lorna is romantic—she likes lots of glamour! She doesn't like human, fallible, clumsy people..... Rudolf was stupid. She couldn't get over seeing him like that!”

“Oh—impossible!” I said. “You mean for a thing like that she'd break off—”

“You don't know Lorna. When she breaks, she breaks—and it's all off. I don't mean this incident caused it, exactly—it was the sign, that's all. She'd had enough. She's really drowned him, you see—finished him. If he chose to come to life afterward, it wasn't her fault—and none of her business!”

“Jeremy!”

“Well—you'll see!”

“And Rudolf—she's just left him here? Just left him—like that?”

“Yes—just like that.”

“First Ellery, and now this boy—it's outrageous!” I burst out. “You can't treat people like that—I don't believe it!”

“Well—you'll see,” said Jeremy again. “But of course,” he added slowly, “there's just a chance that she'll have trouble with Rudolf. He isn't so meek, you know.”

“I hope she does have trouble,” I remarked.

“Well—I don't know,” said Jeremy ominously.

But now Rudolf seemed very happy. He lay about in the house, on the sand, recovering from his weakness and bruises, relaxed and social. For the first time he talked to me—there was no one else, Jeremy rather avoiding him. And he evidently wanted to talk—he seemed rather pleased to have Lorna away, so that he might talk about her. He was totally changed in manner. All the bumptiousness seemed to have been shocked or drowned out of him, for the time being at least. He seemed to have grown up suddenly. That wrestle with death had an extraordinary effect upon him.

“Do you know,” he said naïvely, “it's the first time I ever came up against something that I couldn't get the better of. At first I thought I could do it all right. I thought I'd just pull Lorna out, I wasn't afraid of the old undertow. I tell you it was very strange to feel it get hold of me—in spite of all I could do, to feel it had actually got me. I was horribly scared for a while, I fought like the devil; I didn't want to die. It seemed awfully absurd to die like that, with all I had to do—and it hurt.... But then I forgot about that and didn't seem to struggle any more—and it was only strange and wonderful—I wasn't there any more, only something marvellous happening without me, not happening to me, but as if I was part of what was happening somehow. It was a strange light, free, feeling, as if I'd got rid of myself.”

He crossed his arms under his head and stared reflectively up at the sky.

“I don't think I'll ever be afraid of death again,” he said. “I have been afraid of it—and of other things, too. Lots of other things.”

Here he glanced at me, with an air of confessing a secret.

“I've often been afraid that I wasn't an artist after all—I mean, a great artist! Of course, I know I have some talent and I can do things easily—but that's not the real thing. If I can't be the real thing I don't want to be anything at all—"

He scowled, and after a moment went on:

“Then it seemed to me that things—people—were always trying to interfere with me, get hold of me. I've always been afraid that something would get me and prevent me from doing my work—so I've held everything off, as much as I could—”

So this was what was back of that superb bravado!

“—I wouldn't tell you this,” he said, “if I didn't feel differently about it now.... But I think I've been mistaken—in always being on my guard—or at any rate something has got past my guard now and I can't help that either—whether it's for good or evil. But I feel it's for good—I'm not afraid of life as much as I was, and it seems more wonderful—”

His face kindled, and he burst out warmly:

“After all, art isn't the only thing! I think it's the greatest, I still think that, but one must live, too!... Art is the essence of life, but it must be distilled out of life, and before it can come we must live!”

I assented to this, looking at his radiant abstracted face. Then he began to talk about Lorna.

“I was only a boy when I met her—I didn't know anything really about life! I'd made up my mind that women and all that sort of thing ought to be kept separate from one's real life, that they ought to be only an amusement and not taken seriously. I hated the idea of being tied up with anybody....”

He was silent for a moment and seemed to look back on this distant past with indulgent pity.

“But now I know,” he pursued, “that I can't get on without her. She's a wonderful woman. She's spoiled me for anybody else—there's nobody like her. Don't you think she's wonderful?”

“Yes—but dangerous, perhaps,” I said cautiously.

“Well, perhaps—but how do you mean?”

“Why, she's—changeable.”

“Well, but you know she's very fond of me,” said Rudolf simply. “I don't think she's ever been very fond of anyone else. And so I think, when she gets her divorce, we had better be married.”

“Does she think so, too?”

“Yes, that's been her idea. At first I didn't much like the idea of being married. But now I know I shall never want to leave her—in fact, I couldn't, I couldn't get on without her. I suppose we shall quarrel sometimes—and I hate quarrelling, it upsets me.... She's rather tyrannical, you know—wants everything her own way. But—well, you have to take the bitter with the sweet, you know. Anyhow, I can't help it. I love her, and that's all there is to it. When do you think she'll be back?”

I didn't know. A horrid pang smote me as I looked at him and thought of Jeremy's words, “She'll never come back.”

There was no mistaking Rudolf's sincerity. She had roused what depth of feeling he had. And he was so perfectly sure of her! Not with his former arrogance and carelessness—he seemed now almost humble, sobered—but yet there was a radiance about him, an emotion that transformed him, as though he were looking out into a new life and fully accepting its possibilities. I had an impulse to warn him. But I had nothing definite to say—only a feeling of danger ahead. And his course was set now—no one could keep him off the rocks....

Brief notes came from Lorna. She had started, at a moment's notice, on a week's motoring trip into the mountains. She gave no address for that week. Rudolf looked blank at this news. Then came one thick letter for him. He took it up to his room to read—came down and dashed off by himself on the dunes.

VIII

We were now in late September. A cool, sparkling breath had passed over the land. Red leaves showed in the underbrush over the dunes, the beach-grass waved long, plumy spears, goldenrod flamed in the woods. The air was crystal-clear, the sea and sky more deeply blue....

On this perfect beauty broke the first winter storm. It came roaring out of the north-west and filled the air with salt spray and sand. The sea turned black as ink, and came frothing up the side of the dune, higher and higher. Great waves rose and dashed upon it, scooping out the sand. The house just above this whirlpool of waters rocked and shivered as the wind beat solidly upon it. We shivered inside, for all the heat was furiously sucked up the chimney.

We were gathered that night close to the fire—Jeremy lying across the big couch; Rudolf on the hearthrug, smoking endless cigarettes, his fingers trembling, his face pallid and nervously twitching. We had all been silent.

“It's about time to go,” said Jeremy suddenly, sitting up on the couch and rumpling his hair.

Rudolf didn't move—I could see his light eyes blazing sombrely under their flickering lids.

“Listen to the wind,” said Jeremy.

It was like a battering-ram charging the house, easing up just enough to get afresh purchase. The sand rattled like hail on the windows and sifted into the room. The sea roared and thundered.

“The summer's gone,” said Jeremy. “We'd better be getting back to town—and all our comforts and luxuries—and leave all this. We don't belong here any longer.... Listen to the sea! Heavens! it seems as though the place might go any minute!”

Yes, we all seemed to be waiting for the crash.... In the wild turmoil of the night anything could happen. The dunes were “walking”—getting bodily up into the air and moving.... The patrols were alert all down this savage coast. On such nights ships come ashore, break to pieces on the boiling sand-bars, or, driven over them, crash on the beach....

“Lorna won't come back,” said Jeremy slowly.

Rudolf sat up, his eyes on Jeremy.

“How do you know she won't come back? Has she written to you—do you know anything about her—are you keeping anything from me?”

He sprang to his feet and glared at me and then at Jeremy again.

No, we both cried at once, she hadn't written, we didn't know where she was—

“Well, I'm going after her and I'll find her, wherever she is! Does she think she can leave me like this—planted down here in the sand—!”

He choked with rage at himself and at us, flaming at us as though we were accomplices.

“Rudolf! Didn't she write to you?” I cried.

“Oh, yes, she wrote! But I'm not going to take what she wrote! We've quarrelled before! Now she wants me to go away and not see her—well, I will see her—”

He flung away and stormed up and down the room, shouting against the noise of the gale.

“She'll have to come back! When she went she said she would—she'll have to! And she can go off motoring—leaving me here—”

He stopped suddenly, biting his lips, and came Sack to the fire, turning his back on us. Jeremy slid off the couch, looking shocked, and ebbed noiselessly out of the room. Rudolf already regretted his outburst. He muttered, in a shamed way:

“Well, it's just a mood of hers.... It will be all right. But Jeremy got on my nerves. What does he know about it?... You both looked as if you knew.... You needn't look at me that way.... I should think I know more about my own affairs than you do!”

He made an effort to master his nervous irritation; walking about the room, casting sullen glances at me.

“I imagine you do,” I agreed.

“Well, then, don't look so sympathetic, I don't want any sympathy!”

This was quite in his old rude manner, and he regarded me with the old hostility.

“I know you were always against me,” he said abruptly.

“Against you?”

“Yes—with Lorna.”

“Well, it wouldn't make any difference if I was.”

“But why were you?”

“Not against you particularly,” I said. “But I didn't think any good would come of her leaving Ellery.”

“Why not?”

“Well, she married him and she should have stayed married.”

“When they didn't get on together?”

“They should have got on together. Ellery was devoted to her.”

“She wasn't to him.”

“Exactly.”

“I don't know what you mean by that,” said Rudolf roughly.

“She can't be. She will never be to anyone, if you want my opinion.”

“I don't see that that follows,” growled Rudolf.

“'Youth, beauty, strength, are flowers but fading seen—
Love, duty, faith, are roots, and ever green,'”

I quoted to him, adding my sincere conviction:

“Either you have roots or you haven't. I don't believe Lorna has. Or they're so slight that a gust of wind breaks them. Like the things that grow here—lightly rooted in the sand.”

Rudolf shook his head.

“That doesn't follow. A woman may be pretty mean to one man and good to another. Besides,” he moved impatiently, “I don't care whether she's what you call good or not. I know she's fond of me, and she'll come back to me.... And I'll just wait for her,” he added slowly. “She flew off, as I did—she was angry about something. But she'll come back.... Lord, what a storm! Was that a gun?”

We listened. In the uproar of the wind and sea there were muffled sounds like gun-fire.

“We couldn't hear anything from the station—the wind's the other way,” I said.

“It may be a ship on the bars—I'm going out to see—can't sleep anyhow in this racket,” said Rudolf restlessly.

So he put on his oilskins and went out. I looked from the windows, but in the wild smother of the storm nothing was visible, no lights at sea or anywhere—only, rather felt than seen, the great black waves lifting themselves at the foot of the dune, with a vague blur for the foam on their crests....

Toward morning he came back, drenched and exhausted. A lumber-schooner had struck on the bar and was breaking up. The life-savers hadn't tried to launch their boat, but had shot a life-line over the ship, and the five men of the crew had been brought ashore in the breeches-buoy.

“Great sight—wouldn't have missed it,” he said hoarsely. “God, the sea is magnificent! And to see those fellows struggling against it—and winning out, too!. If one has to drown, though, it would be great to go out in a storm like this—not the way I tried to do it!”

I brewed him a hot drink and he went to bed, very cheerful and friendly.

IX

The next day when the gale had blown itself out, was inexpressibly beautiful. Earth and air were swept clean. The beach had been covered with a solid carpet of sea-weed, but that went out with the tide, and the sand was glistening white. Every foot-mark and wheel-track vanished from the dunes. They were pure and spotless, with only the little circles made by the beach-grass as it swept on the wind. Once more sea and sky were deep clear blue. But the sea still rolled great swells up to the foot of our dune, and a jagged rift had been cut in there below the house. And out on the bars we could see the wreck of the schooner, lying on its side, half-buried in the seas that foamed over it and were tearing it to pieces, carrying its splintered timbers towards the shore.

Rudolf came out just before noon, where Jeremy and I were sitting on the dune, looking at the wreck, and dropped down languidly beside us.

“I'm done up—caught cold last night,” he said hoarsely.

He looked ill—pale and hollow-eyed. I could quite agree with Jeremy now that he was fragile. A day or so of anxiety and his expedition of the night before had quite prostrated him. Nothing could be less like a blond beast. His appearance of rude physical strength, I perceived, was a bluff, like his assumption of hardness. All this pretence was nothing but defensive armour, and behind it was the sensitive and frail creature that Jeremy had divined. Jeremy beside him, with all his shrinking manner, was hard as marble. He looked now at Rudolf in his aloof way, and said:

“You'd better keep quiet for a while. It isn't so long since you were fished out yourself—you don't need to go round rescuing other people just yet.”

“Oh, I wasn't rescuing to any extent,” murmured Rudolf.

“Well, you'd better look out for yourself. It would be a lot better for the five lumber-lubbers to drown than for you to get pneumonia.”

“Not so sure,” muttered Rudolf.

“Not that I care personally whether you do or not,” Jeremy assured him airily. “It's only what you can do that I care about. I see you've got a chill. I think you'd better go back to bed and be dosed up with quinine and so forth.”

“All right,” said Rudolf indifferently. “Might as well be there as anywhere.

He lay for a few moments in the warm sun, shivering and blinking, then Jeremy got him up and led him indoors, and put him to bed wrapped in blankets, and gave him quinine and whisky. He was ill for several days, but nothing worse than bronchitis—yes, something worse, he was miserable about Lorna. He did not speak of her at first, in fact hardly spoke at all—but he inquired about letters or telegrams and none came for him, and we had no news to ive him. I told him I wanted to let Lorna know that he was ill, and asked if he had any address—  He said suddenly:

“No. Never mind. I don't want you to tell her.”

He wrapped himself in his forlornness and behaved like a forsaken child, now peevish and petulant, now with the strange patience and sweetness of a child. Fever and weakness made him content for a few days to keep still, but as he recovered he became more and more restless. And still Lorna did not write. She had simply vanished. Rudolf ceased to speak of her. He insisted one day on getting up and sat over the fire in the living-room, brooding in silence. He had changed a good deal. His face was thinner and marked by suffering. Doubt and suspense had cut deep into him. The look of careless youth was gone for ever.

That was a wonderful day outside—clear and warm, yet with a crisp hint of autumn in the air, deep and intense in colour. I coaxed Rudolf out into the sunlight, where he sat looking with a sick, unfriendly eye at the beauty of the sea. After long musing he said abruptly:

“I'm no good for work just now. I think I'd better go.”

“Back to town, you mean?” I asked.

He nodded sullenly. Then after a time, looking away from me:

“Do you think when she went away she didn't mean to come back?”

“No, she told me she was coming back in a few days—I think she meant to.”

“I don't,” he said bitterly. “I think she meant to throw me over. But she needn't have run away..... Well, I'm tired of waiting here. I'll go and find her. She needn't think she can drop me like that.”

There were ugly lines about his mouth, his eyes smouldered with anger.

“It was pretty cool, wasn't it?” he muttered,

“Well, you know you ran off and left her,” I interposed.

“But I came back when she asked me to, didn't I?” he retorted. “More fool I—I might have stayed away then.”

He brooded on this for a time, then burst out:

“She only wanted to show her power!... She didn't really want me back—but she couldn't stand my escaping! That's all she cares for—power. She's infernally cruel. As soon as she saw I really cared about her and needed her she didn't want me. I'd like to kill her.”

“You'd better not make up your mind too quickly,” I advised calmly. “This may be only a mood of hers—and if you let her alone she'll be apt to get over it sooner.”

“You mean act as if I didn't care?... No,I can't play a game with her,” he said dully.

Then we were called to lunch, and while we were at table the mail came, with, as luck would have it, a letter for me from Lorna. She wrote that she was busy in town, hiring and furnishing a place for the winter, that she hoped the rush would soon be over, and that she would see us soon and meantime hoped that we were all well—and she gave her address. Rudolf flushed up when this note was read, and then looked grey. After lunch he announced that he was leaving and went upstairs to pack. Jeremy went ostensibly to help him, but soon came down again, saying nervously:

“He's in a devil of a mood. Won't let me stay there. Do you think you could do anything—calm him down or anything?”

When I knocked at his door, however, Rudolf appeared quite calm and very polite, even smiling. He said he could manage all right, thanked me and conveyed with great courtesy his desire to be let alone. He maintained this demeanour until he left, and neither Jeremy nor I could break through it. At supper he was cool, talkative and gay. He asked if we had any messages for Lorna. He supposed we should soon be coming up ourselves. He thanked us both for our kindness to him.

The nights were very cold now, however warm the days. That night, when Rudolf left us to drive over to the railroad, there was a cutting wind and a moon ghastly brilliant and hard. The beach-grass streamed like water in the wind, and beyond, the dunes lay bluewhite under the moon; shrouded with a light veil-like mist—the restless sand that drove and- whirled, stinging like fire

X

That eerie night of moon and icy wind, Rudolf's face as he went away, Jeremy's words about “trouble”—they made me nervous, and I sent a telegram to Lorna. I said that Rudolf had gone, and that I was thinking of going, too—unless she meant to return. Jeremy selfishly implored me to stay.

“It will i wonderful here this next month—the Indian summer,” he urged. “Why go back to that dusty old town? And my work is going on rippingly—you wouldn't leave me here alone?”

“I would, unless Lorna comes back,” I assured him. “It's bad enough to be living here in a house with a big hole under it, without having to worry about what may happen up there.”

“Why, the house is safe enough, unless we have some more big storms—and then you could move into the studio, that's 'way out of danger,” he argued. “And if you're worrying about Lorna, you needn't. I'd back Lorna to look out for herself any time.”

“What did you mean then by saying she'd have trouble with Rudolf?” I demanded.

“I meant she'd have trouble getting rid of him, that's all. He isn't the violent sort, Rudolf isn't—not at all.”

“What did you mean by saying there'd be a great big smash?”

“I meant he'd get smashed—not Lorna, oh, dear no!”

I wasn't convinced. But next day came a telegram from Lorna, saying that she was coming in a few days and please to wait for her.

“I thought you said she'd never come back,” I reproached Jeremy.

“I meant, as long as Rudolf was here,” he retorted. “She's running away from him, you see.”

“Then he'll run after her?”

Jeremy shrugged his shoulders and looked melancholy.

“Poor old chap, poor old Rudolf,” he mourned. “I'm afraid he's quite crazy. If he'd only kept on running away from her! But to run after a woman—mad, quite mad!”

*****

Then I had a letter from Ellery—the first for a long time. He said he wanted to see me and was coming down to the little fishing-village two miles across the dunes from us. Evidently he knew that Lorna was away, but he didn't want to come to the house; I was to meet him at the inn in the village the next day, or to write there if I couldn't come.

I drove over to meet him, and we lunched together. He looked jaded and old. He was not much past forty, but in the last year he had aged ten. At lunch we talked impersonally about his work and people we knew and things in general. He complained that he couldn't get anything to drink in the town and said he was going back that night—he had only come to see how I was getting on. What he really had come for appeared after we set out to walk. I meant to walk back the two miles, and he said He would like to come part way with me.

The first mile was through the woods—deep woods of oak, pine, maple—glorious now in their autumn colours. The narrow trail wound through their shade—the leaves were still thick—with splashes of the cool afternoon sunlight. There was a dreaming silence over everything—and for some time we, too, were silent. At last he spoke of Lorna, saying that he intended soon to go abroad, that the divorce suit would be undefended, and that he would like to be sure that she was going to be all right.

“I don't think she's been very kind to me,” he said, switching at the underbrush with his stick. “But all the same I have a feeling for her—I'd rather she wouldn't come to harm.... I suppose she'll marry again,” he said abruptly.

It was the first time he had ever indicated that he knew about Rudolf.

“I'm sure I don't know,” was all I could say.

“You don't? Why, I thought—”

He was walking behind me in the narrow trail and I didn't like to turn and look at him.

“I thought you would know,” he said blankly, after a moment.

“No. I thought for a time she would—but now I don't believe she will,” I had to say.

He drew a deep breath—it was like a groan. Yes, I knew what he wanted—he wanted it all ended irrevocably, with absolute certainty. It would be best for him. If Lorna definitely replaced him with someone else, it would cut him free in his feeling. Certainly it would be best for him.

The path mounted upward and now ended suddenly against the sand. Up the face of the dune we climbed, sinking ankle-deep, the loose sand sliding down in a rush among the trees. On top of the dune we paused.

From that spot there was a broad outlook. Over the belt of woods we could see the blue harbour and the white houses of the village. Behind us stretched the dunes, marvellous in this sloping light that touched their sweeping surface so softly and cast their shadows so sharp and clear—and beyond them showed the dark-blue line of the open sea.

“It's beautiful here,” said Ellery absently, when we had sat still for some time. “Shall you stay on very long?”

“I think not. Jeremy and I are here alone now, you know. Lorna is coming back—”.

“Alone?” he interrupted.

“Yes, I imagine so—in fact, I'm sure. I don't know how long she'll want to stay.”

He sighed, I saw that he wanted to question me, but couldn't bring himself to it. So I said:

“I think she doesn't care much for anyone, and never will. It isn't her nature. She would like to, she tries to—but she can't.”

“She's lucky,” said Ellery drily. “She'd better not try. It's all nonsense caring about people—except in the way of friendship,” and he laid his and on mine with a gentle caress.

“This place,” I said quickly, “always reminds me of Lorna—it's like her.”

I pointed where below us the woods and the dunes met—the woods pushing up into the sand, the sand sweeping down in a smooth curve like the falls of a mighty river. A struggle was going on there for life and death. The trees flung year by year seedlings into the sand, and the sand flowed down, choking the trees and leaving gaunt skeletons among the green.

“How like her?” he asked.

“She has so much vitality, but yet—there's something about her that deadens and destroys.”

“Yes, she destroys—I suppose I'm pretty much of a wreck,” he said.

“No, my dear! You'll get over it and live again!” I cried.

“I don't know. It doesn't matter much,” he said carelessly, but he smiled at me and kissed my hand with a tender gesture.

Then we were silent, watching the sunset flooding over the dunes in rose-colour deepening to flaming gold. It was so still there, so beautiful—too beautiful...

When that light faded, we kissed one another good-bye, and he turned back into the woods, and I went on alone through the waste of sand in the twilight.

XI

Soon after this Lorna swooped down on us, very lively, full of amusing chatter about people she had seen and of plans for the winter. She blew into the quiet house like a fresh breeze—apparently perfectly cheerful and light-hearted. Captain Kirby came over to welcome her and sat by the fire smoking his pipe and laughing at her talk. He considered her a queer but highly entertaining lady.

“We'll certainly miss you folks when you go,” he assured us. “Never thought you'd stay so long, though—it's mighty lonely here, But there's no accountin' for tastes. We had a little excitement while you was gone—nothin' much.”

He described the wreck briefly, and added with a humorous glance at me:

“I guess you got a taste of what winter's like here. That was quite a gale, wa'n't it? You'll be goin' soon?”

“Oh, it's beautiful here now—I don't think we'll go yet,” said Lorna vaguely.

“Well—this place won't see many gales out, you know—I suppose you see what that one did?” inquired the Captain.

“Oh, yes—but I feel it will last a while longer,” Lorna assured him,

“Why don't you pull it up on the dune? Seems an awful pity, after all you've done to it—”

“No,” said Lorna positively, “I don't want to pull it up anywhere. I'm done with it. It can go any time it wants to.”

“That so?... Well,” said Captain Kirby, looking round the big room, “I suppose you'll take this stuff out when you go—”

“No, I shan't bother. I shall just shut it up,” said Lorna crisply.

“That so” He looked incredulously at her and she nodded, smiling.

“I don't want it any more, And I hate to have things hanging on after I'm done with them. I like a clean sweep!” and Lorna looked from under her eyelashes defiantly at Jeremy and me.

“You do? Clean sweep, hey?... Well, I suppose you can afford it,” said Captain Kirby slowly, with some irony in his tone.

Lorna shrugged her shoulders and frowned.

“I don't want to see the place again or anything in it,” she said with sudden harshness.

Unaccountably her mood had changed, She was silent now and overcast, and soon the Captain took his leave. She lay there on the big couch after he had gone, staring at the fire. Jeremy was making some drawings at the table by the lamp, and I took up a book. Suddenly Lorna turned upon us.

“You needn't act like this!” she cried. “I know what you think about me—but why don't you come out with it, instead of glooming at me like a couple of—undertakers?”

“If you know what we think, why come out with it?” said Jeremy blandly. “Least said, soonest mended.”

“All right, if you want to drive me away from here,” muttered Lorna. “I don't care to be treated like a criminal—”

“What have you done with Rudolf?” he inquired smoothly.

“I left him up in town,” she said. “What else could I do?”

“Ah—what else?” echoed Jeremy. “Poor old Rudolf.”

“Why aren't you sorry for me?” demanded Lorna gloomily. “Rudolf's young—he'll be all right. I think he's going to Spain.... But I'm not so young any more. And everything turns out wrong for me—everything I touch goes wrong somehow. I think you might have a little sympathy for me.”

Her voice trembled, suggesting tears,

“My dear Lorna!” cried Jeremy, laying down his drawing. “It never occurred to me! You're so—er, so on and—independent—and all that—”

“I'm a hard old thing, that's what you mean!” she interrupted. “You think I have no feeling—!”

“Well,” began Jeremy nervously.

“But I have!” she cried. “I hate to have people unhappy—and do you think it doesn't hurt me to think they're unhappy on account of me? But I can't help it.... Why do people disappoint me—why are they never what I want?... I was as nice as I could be to Rudolf—I want to be friends with him—but he won't be. So I had to leave him up there, that's all.”

“Yes, yes,” murmured Jeremy. “As you say, very unreasonable of him. But people are unreasonable, I've noticed, Even you, Lorna. You were a bit unreasonable yourself this summer, about Rudolf. When he ran away, for instance, and you had to have him back.... So you ought to understand it.”

“Oh, yes,” she admitted darkly.

“But, as: somebody or other says,” pursued Jeremy, “it may not be so hard to leave a person, but it's the deuce and all to be left!... It's too bad these things can't be arranged so that both parties leave off being unreasonable at the same time—”

“Yes,” said Lorna sombrely.

“But they never are,” ended Jeremy, taking up his drawing and eyeing it critically. “And hence these tears. Somebody always has to wear the willow.”

“It's too bad it couldn't be you, Lorna, for a change,” I suggested. “It would be a new sensation for you.”

She looked fixedly at me and after a time said in a regretful tone:

“Yes. But I never can seem to manage it that way.”

*****

Jeremy and Lorna together always managed a certain effect of unreality. Whatever they touched upon took a queer look of moonshine. Jeremy was so remote in himself, he lived so completely in abstractions, that this seemed natural enough in him. But Lorna would meddle with the real world of human feelings and action—and yet she would hold it at a distance and treat it as though it were a composition of line and colour...

The peace in which wé now spent a good many days seemed perfectly unreal, Storm had laid its rough hand upon us—and then apparently had vanished out of the world. One dreaming golden day followed another, with no cloud in the sky, except sometimes little feathery flights of cloudlets that only softened the deep blue. There was a crystal purity in the air, warmed by the sun to ineffable softness. The heat and languor of the summer past, the fierce rigor of the winter to come, seemed equally distant and forgotten. A charm, a magic spell of silence, rested unbroken there, only deepened by the long soft roll of the sea.... One marvellous day after another, unfolding from its faintly chill dawn into the caressing warmth of noon, sank by slow melting changes to a clear sunset—then lingering afterglow, twilight, a night glittering full of stars, dawn again.

*****

At last one day a haze gathered over the sea and lay in a dark bank along the horizon. The roll of the surf lengthened and deepened, sinking to a lower key. A moaning sound began far-off, a faint wailing. Captain Kirby stepped over, to warn us of a storm.

We held a council at the door of the studio, where Lorna and Jeremy were working. Lorna, clay from head to foot, was deep in the construction of her first large model, and declared flatly she wouldn't go. Fifty feet behind and above the house, the studio was safe.

“We'll all move over here,” Lorna decided quickly. “Put some mattresses upstairs in the loft and move our trunks over, and some food. The Captain can lend us a couple of men, I guess. I don't believe anything will happen—but if it does, it will be fun to watch.”

“Fun, hey? You'll freeze in here,” said the Captain.

“We've got plenty of wood for the stove. And of course if it gets too bad we can leave,” said Lorna calmly. “How long do you think it will last?”

“The wind's shifting—it's pretty near east now. I expect we'll have a north-easter and about three days of it,” said the Captain. “I guess maybe you won't care to stay it out.”

“Well, we'll see. Anybody that wants to go, can go.”

“I won't go yet,” said Jeremy cautiously, casting a glance out to sea, where the fog-bank loomed. “But you weren't here when we had the last storm, Lorna.”

“All the more reason why I want to stay now. I like storms,” she announced.

The Captain sent us over the men, and I packed the trunks for them to transport, and arranged the loft over the studio as a bedroom for Lorna and me. Jeremy had a hammock below. By afternoon, when this was done, the sky was overspread with dull haze, and the moaning of the wind in the distance had risen to a shrill whistle. The sea was heaving in long grey swells, with a hollow murmur, deep and ominous.

XII

In the grey dusk that closed down early, we saw the whole fishing-fleet drive by, making for harbour—a long line of dim shadows. We had not yet quite abandoned ship, we supped in the house and sat there afterwards by the fire listening to the piping of the wind. Lorna was at the window looking out into the blackness lit by flashes of foam as the waves rose and broke, nearer and nearer. A door slammed outside. We all jumped nervously—and in another moment Rudolf walked in, dripping wet and looking like a weary ghost. He had come over on foot from the village, he said in a bewildered way. He let us put him down by the fire, with a sweater in place of his wet coat and a drink of whisky. Lorna brought him the drink. She had turned quite white when he came in. She had nothing to say, and neither had Rudolf. It was obvious that we would have to leave them. With a reluctant glance at the fire Jeremy said:

“You can have my hammock, Rudolf, and I'll roll up in a blanket. Better come over before it gets too bad.”

Rudolf nodded, blinking his eyes, which looked as though he hadn't slept for a week. He sat bent over before the fire, haggard-and pallid. He seemed to have used the last ounce of his energy in getting to us, and to be near collapse. He did not look at us as we went out, but I saw his eyes on Lorna—leading, beseeching, desperately forlorn.

We went in silence, putting on our coats, and were fairly blown up the slope with the rain beating on us in a solid sheet. Once inside the studio, Jeremy lit all the lamps we had and made up a roaring fire in the stove. Then we went about stopping up the cracks around the north windows where the rain beat in, and drying the floors upstairs and down. There was a leak in the roof, too, which couldn't be stopped, but we put a pail under it.

“Not very luxurious,” said Jeremy with a shiver, when we had finally settled down by the stove. “I think we might as well have stayed over there to-night. We won't get the worst of it till to-morrow, when the sea gets up.”

“Well, if you could sleep over there, I couldn't,” I said. “This is bad enough.”

“Don't think there'll be much sleep anywhere to-night,” muttered Jeremy.

After a silence he broke out irritably:

“What possessed him to come down here like that? What—the devil—”

And after a moment:

“Yes, he's possessed, all right.... He looks as if he'd been ridden by the nightmare.... Oh, Lord!”

He got up and began tramping round the room. It looked desolate enough, with the big sheeted clay model and all the muss and litter, for he and Lorna both left everything where it dropped.

“Jeremy, sit down!” I said, when I had stood it as long as possible.

“Well, what shall we do?” he inquired desperately. “How about a game of chess?”

“Anything to keep you quiet,” I said.

So he set up the chessmen—a big set of carved ivory, belonging to Lorna—and we started. Jeremy played quickly, I took a long time to each move—we were about evenly matched. The wind roared, the rain beat down, and now we could hear the crashing of the waves as they rose higher and higher.

“Pretty crazy of us to be here,” muttered Jeremy once, as he waited for me to move.

“Speak for yourself and Lorna,” I replied. “It's your doing. Check.”

He bent his attention on the game, but it was too late now—I had him. We began another. He looked at his watch.

“An hour,” he said fretfully. “They'd better be coming over.”

We played that game out, and it took an hour and a half! I won again.

I can't keep my mind on it,” he “said. “I'm going over to fetch them.”

He stoked up the stove again, and went. In half an hour he came back, alone.

“Rudolf told me to get out, so I did,” he explained. “Well, I guess they can do as they please now. I'm going to bed.”

“You don't mind if I sit here by the fire?” I enquired.

“Not in the least,” he assured me.

He got into his hammock and lay there smoking.

“What were they doing?” I asked.

“Talking. And Lorna was crying,” he said curtly.

“Crying?”

“Yes. And she'd better cry—if that's all she can do.”

He groaned impatiently and fell into silence. The wind howled over us, it seemed as though the waves were beating on the thin wooden walls. It was like being afloat, there was no feeling of solid earth under us, here on this spit of sand in the midst of the tempestuous sea.

If Lorna liked storms, she must be having her fill now, I thought. If she liked the spectacle of human suffering and the feeling of her own power, she must be having her fill. And I thought she did like it. There was a cruel streak in her.... The longing of a cold nature to feel.... What was vital emotion to others was to her mere sensation.... She would burn down a house to warm her hands.... Yes, she liked destruction.... When we cannot create, we must destroy, that is power.... Oh, the luxury of tears for another's woe! The aesthetic thrill of a tragedy working itself out before our eyes in a human soul! We can feel that, at least....

Half asleep, in an uneasy dream that the walls were falling in upon us, I heard the crash, and sprang up. Lorna had just come in. She dropped her cloak and came to the fire, shivering, her hair blown in wet strings across her face. Jeremy sat up with a jerk.

“Hello!... Where's Rudolf?” he cried.

“I don't know—he wouldn't come,” said Lorna shaking.

I wrapped her up in blankets and she sat and shivered in a nervous chill. She looked up at Jeremy putting on his coat and said:

“He isn't there. He's gone.”

“Gone! Where's he gone—in this storm?”

“I don't know—he wouldn't come over here, he wouldn't stay there—he rushed off—”

“Rushed off—nice idea!” shouted Jeremy, plunging out of the door.

He didn't come back till dawn—and all that time Lorna simply sat and shivered, and wouldn't say a word. For once I think she had had enough. Jeremy had waited in the other house, thinking that Rudolf would return there, but he hadn't come.

We were storm-bound—and there we had to stay. Jeremy managed to struggle as far as the life-saving station, but he didn't find Rudolf there. That day the storm rose and rose till by night it had reached such a pitch of fury that it seemed we must be swept away.

Half-stupefied by the noise, we hardly felt the cold, though we crouched round the stove like three castaways, with barely a word for one another or a glance at the spectacle outside the blurred windows—the sea torn into great hills of black water and wild streaming foam. Nobody pretended to go to bed that night—it was like a bombardment, with the scream of shells and the roar of heavy guns. Salt spray was forced in through a dozen places and the whole place was wet, but we didn't heed it. We kept up the fire and made coffee, and that was all. We were beaten down into indifference, insensibility—nothing mattered.... A second day and night passed somehow. And when Jeremy said hollowly, “The house is gone,” we made no comment and did not even look.

XIII

When we could escape from our prison we hastily prepared to flee, separating by common consent, as people who had an experience together that they would like to forget.

Anxiety for Rudolf woke as soon as we could feel anything—that is, in Jeremy and me. Lorna did not seem anxious, she said impatiently, “He's all right!” She meant that he had not thrown himself into the sea nor been swept away in the wreck of the house. And, in fact, Rudolf had no such spectacular end. Certainly he survived bodily the events of that night. We found trace of him in the village—he had taken the early morning train, after perhaps wandering the whole night on the dunes.... Jeremy says, however, that he died in spirit and has never done anything since, It is true that his early promise has not been fulfilled, and that, even in his own estimation, he has no chance now of equalling El Greco. But had he ever the chance? If he had the divine fire could a woman's hand snuff it out? Jeremy and I disagree about that, and I see in him the tendency, no doubt inherited from Adam, to blame woman for man's weakness....

Did I not blame Lorna, then, in the end? I cannot tell—she left me bewildered. I could see, in the short time before we parted, how quickly she came back to her usual self, how little trace apparently was left upon her. I saw that she would forget Rudolf as she had forgotten Ellery.... I saw, too, that she would easily charm someone else, as even then she made herself charming to Jeremy and me.... She, planned to have a big studio in town, which Jeremy was to share, to go on with her modelling under his direction—she was eagerly interested in this, like a child....

She had less apparent feeling than I had for the place where she and Rudolf had lived their brief summer of love, where she had cast him out with his wounded passion into the storm, She looked curiously at the blank space where not a sign of the house remained, The storm had scooped out a great hollow, the dune had slid bodily down into the sea. It looked like any other spot on that bleak lonely coast—a little wreckage on the beach, the sand blowing and drifting. ... A house built upon sand.... The floods had prevailed against it, it had fallen, and no man could say now where that house stood.

 

But the great drifts and dunes of sand remained, as they have been and will be, eternal to our brief day of love and life.... The wind had sculptured a new outline, here cut the top off a dune, there swept one away and built it up on another spot. In these slight details it was different, but essentially, eternally the same. The great blank sweeps of sand, the towering, crumbling hills, the wonderful lights and silence, the incessant motion that yet changed nothing....

I shall never forget that country, and to me Lorna is part of it; I can never forget her either, though she pursues her way far from me.... Does she pursue or is she driven? Is she inert like the sand, but moved and moulded by something restless and resistless as the wind?

The sand and the wind together make that strange country of desolation and haunting colour—and to me they make Lorna. Creature of changing mood and impulse, of desire shifting as the wind, yet constant—constant desire for lite, expressed in changing forms—desire too keen perhaps, never to be satisfied, remorseless ... but living!

I think of her superb vitality, irresistibly attracting those weaker in living force than herself, inevitably disappointed, passing on ... to what I know not, nor whether there is compensation for the suffering of those sensitive souls that crossed her path. But I see that Lorna will remain, in any case, whoever else succumbs. Jeremy was right.

The sand is blown by the wind—but it is stone after all, and will outlast all softer substance.