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“Ts it very foolish?” he asked indulgently. “Imbecile to the verge of asininity. . . . Do you believe

in spiritualism?” “No.??

“What a flat and flattening negative. But I’m not to be flattened. If you don’t believe in it, there couldn’t be any harm in carrying out my silly little scheme.” ‘Which is?” “I’m going to want to know about Pat. If I don’t, P’'ll worry.” “About Pat?” he queried, not comprehending. “But, as she’s away at school I’ll be no more in touch with her than you.” - “T’m talking about afterwards.” “Afterwards?” “Yes, After I’m dead. What makes you so slow, Bob? I want you to write me.”

“What? Spirit letters? of a medium?”

Through some cheap fraud

“Qh, no! Direct.” “Do you believe they’d reach you, my letters?” he asked sadly. _ “Not the letters themselves, certainly. I don’t know that I actually believe anything about it. But what is in the letters might sift through to me in some way we don’t understand. It might, Bob,” she pleaded. “I’ve heard of strange cases, And, anyway, I should think you’d like to write, in case you miss me.” “Miss you!” he repeated hoarsely. “Yes; Vil miss you.” “Then wouldn’t you give up just a little, tiny time to writing me?” she cajoled. “Just a promise to please silly me. After I’m dead you needn’t keep it, you know,

if you don’t believe that I’ll know.”

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Rh to the meanness of such an act, and resolutely determined to bear his punishment. I was of a different temper. Grown bold and confident by the frequent indulgencies which had so often sanctioned my own aberrations, I had already assumed the burdens of my comrades, escaping myself, while effecting their escape. Should I now hesitate, when a sense of justice, and a feeling of friendly sympathy coalesced towards the same end, both calling upon me for action. I did not. I seized upon the accursed tablet. I tore it from this bosom, and hacking it to pieces of the smallest dimensions, I hurled them to the winds, declaring, at the same time, his freedom, with a shout. He would have resisted, and honestly and earnestly endeavored to prevent the commission of the act. But in vain, and with a feeling of

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“Any promise I made you I’d keep, living or dead. What would I do with the letters if I did write?” “You know the built-in desk-safe in my room? You could put them there. You'll have the combination, for you’re to be executor of my will. There’s a large drawer at the bottom. . . . Of course it’s all foolishness. But— won’t you?” “You know [ll do anything you ask.” “Yes;

I know.

Poor

old Bob!

Write

me

about

all

the girls; but principally Pat, just as if she were yours, too; all that you’d hope for her and fear for her; her problems and growth and dangers. She'll have ’em. Perhaps I'll come back, a haunt, and read your letters— you must make ’em very wise, Bob—and whisper your wisdom in the ear of Pat’s queer little soul, and warn her

if need be. . . . Bob, do you know what I really want for the girls?” “T might guess.” “Not goodness; that’s for plain girls. Nor virtue, particularly; that’s more or less of a scarecrow.

I want

happiness for them.” “Only a little, easy thing like that?’ he taunted gently. “Well, Pve had it; a lot of it.

‘I’ve taken my fun where

I found it.? Bob, ’m a pagan thing! And perhaps after !?ve gone where the good pagans go, I'll send word back to you and invite you to follow—if it’s a proper place for a dear old fogy like you. It may not be an orthodox heaven, old boy. But there'll be something doing if Mona goes there!” But it was not until six months later and from her own house that lovely, pagan Mona Fentriss went to her own place. Went with an expectant soul and a smile on her lips, unafraid in the face of the great, dim Guess as she had been in every threat that life had held over her,

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 PART CHAPTER

II VIII

Tne front door-button was out of commission.

Since

Constance had come to live at Holiday Knoll, bringing her husband with her and taking over the management of the place, the bell had developed a habit of being out of order.

So had many

other

fixtures, schedules,

and

household appurtenances. Constance always meant to put them aright, and sometimes did. But they never seemed to stay put. As a housekeeper, Ralph Fentriss used to remark with humorous resignation, Connie was a grand little society beauty. Of the beauty there could be no question. As she sat now, on this winter’s night, the glow of the reading lamp showing warm and soft upon her loose, rose-coloured lounging robe and her dreamy face, she was a picture which, unfortunately, lacked any observer. Fred Browning was out. Fred was often out in the evenings now, though they had been married less than two years. Not that it mattered greatly to the young wife. Fred had ceased to stimulate her senses; he had never stimulated her imagi-

nation. She got along well enough with him, and equally well without him. Substitutes were not wanting. But just at the moment she rather wished he were there, because she thought she heard someone at the front door,

though it might be only the beating of the blizzard, and it was so much trouble to rouse herself from the easy chair and the flimsy novel. That so many things wer« sc much

trouble was

the bane of Constance’s Sl

life.

Her

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soul had begun to take on fat. Presently her lissome body would follow suit.

Yes; there certainly was someone at the door. She could discern now an impatient stamping. Probably Bobs, although he had said that he could not come before nine te see the baby, who was constantly fretting. Another superfluous trouble in a world of annoyances! We-ell; on the whole it was less bother to go to the door than to look up a maid. Tossing her book aside she walked into the hall. As she passed, she pressed an electric light button. Only one globe out of the cluster responded, and that weakly. “Damn!” said Constance. “I forgot to phone the company.” She threw open the front door. In the storm centre stood a man. He wore a long coat lined with seal, a coat which the luxurious Constance at once appraised and approved, and an astrakhan cap which he lifted, showing fair, close waves of hair. He peered into the dim entry. “Is this
 * he began, and then, in an eager exclamation, “Mona !?

Constance drew a quick breath of shock and amazement. “What!”

““A thousand pardons,” said the stranger. error.”

“A stupid

He spoke with the accent of a cultivated Ameri-

ean, but there was

about him the vague, indefinable

atmosphere of an older, riper, calmer civilisation. “Am I mistaken in supposing this to be Mrs. Fentriss’s home?” he asked courteously. “No. Yes. It is,” answered Constance, still shaken. “T would have telephoned before presenting myself, but the wires are down. What a furious storm! My taxi,”

he added cheerily, “is stalled in your very largest and finest local snowdrift.

Is Mrs. Fentriss in?”

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“My mother?” faltered Constance. He gazed on her keenly, incredulously. “Your mother? That’s hardly possible. Yet—yes. You are wonderfully like her.” There was a caressing intonation in his voice as he said the words.

“Permit me; I am Cary Scott.”

“Oh!? gasped Constance in dismay. Cary Scott, the old romance about which she had heard her father joke her mother more than once, concerning which all the children had felt a lively curiosity because it was supposed to be “different”

from

Mona’s

other little adventures;

Cary Scott here in the flesh and in tragic ignorance of her mother’s death! Commanding herself, she drew aside with a slight, gracious gesture which bade him enter. Bowing, he passed into the hallway and shook the snow from his coat. Not until he had reached the door of the library did she gather her forces to tell him. “Hadn’t

you

heard

about

Mother,

Mr.

Scott?”

she

asked very gently. Her tone stopped him. His eyes were steady as he raised them to the lovely, pitying face before him. But hollows seemed suddenly to have fallen in beneath them.

“Not—?” he whispered. She inclined her head. “Nearly a year ago.” “Why haven’t I heard? Why was I not told?” he demanded. “Father wrote you, I think. You must sit down.” She pushed a chair around for him and, laying light hands upon his shoulders, slipped his coat back. “Take it off,” she said. He obeyed. He was like a man tranced. Seated under the lamplight he stared fixedly into a dark corner of the room, as if to evoke a vision for his appeasement. Sharply intrigued, Constance took the opportunity of observing him

at her leisure.

He was,

she decided,

a delightful

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personality, all the more engaging for that touch of the exotic, that hint of potential romance which the men of her acquaintance did not have. No woman would have called him handsome. His features were too irregular, and the finely modclled forehead was scarred vertically with a savagely deep V which mercifully lost itself in the clustering hair, a testimony to active war service. There was confident distinction in his bearing, and an atmosphere of quiet and somewhat ironic worldliness in voice and manner. He looked to be a man who had experimented much with life in its larger meanings and found it amusing but perhaps not fulfilling. Reckoning him contemporaneously with the implication of that betraying “Mona!” of his first utterance, Constance thought: “He must be nearly forty to have been one of Mother’s suitors. But he looks hardly over thirty.” She heard him sigh as he drew his spirit back from far

distances, and was sensitive to the power of control implied in the composed countenance which he turned to her. “You should be Constance Fentriss.”

“Constance Browning,” she corrected. “I’m an old married woman of two years’ standing.” “Grand Dieu!” he muttered. “I think of you always as hardly more than a child, As I used to hear about you. One loses touch.” “You had not seen my mother for a long time, had you?” “Very long. Many years. But one does not forget her kind.” Constance, who had not seated herself during this passage of speech, crossed to the mantel, and lifted from

it a heavily framed photograph which she placed in the visitor’s hands.
 * “That was taken a few months before she died.”

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“Unchanged !”? he breathed. Something imperative in Constance’s burgeoning interest in the man drove her to ask: “Did you—were you very much in love with her?” There was daring in her tone; but there was compassion also. Because of his sense of the latter he answered her frankly: “No. Not, perhaps, as most people understand it. Love asks much. I asked—nothing. It was not,” he smiled faintly, “as one falls in love and falls out.”

“Ah?” she returned, questioningly, tauntingly. held to the graver tone.

But he

“She was all that dreams could be, and as unattainable

as dreams. If she was like an angel to me, I suppose I was like a boy to her. She used to tell me about you and your sisters.” Again he smiled. ‘Once she said, ‘Wait and come back and marry one of them.’ ” “But you did not wait,” accused Constance. “Nor did you,” he retorted with that swift, ironic eye-flash which she was to know so well later. She welcomed the change to a lighter and more familiar

vein. “How should I know?” she mocked. “You sent no word of your claim. Is Mrs. Scott with you?” “No,” he answered shortly.

Then, in suaver tone:

“It

is more than a year now that I have been out of the world. The East; wild parts of Hindustan and Northern China;

and then the South Seas. I have a boy’s passion for travel,” “But not for your native land. You are an American, aren’t you?” “T have been. And I want to be again. But I shall need help.”

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“We Fentrisses are terribly American. want us to reclaim you?” “Would you? Then I may come back?”

“You must.

Don’t

you

Father will want to see you.”

“And I him. He is well?” “Very. Where can he find you?” “At the St. Regis for a few days.”

‘Do you think a few days enough to re-Americanize you?” “Say a few years, then.” He rose and turned to give a long look at the portrait of Mona Fentriss which he

had set on the table. “You have been more than kind to me,” he said gravely. “I cannot thank you enough.” “I’m afraid I was clumsy and abrupt.” He shook his head. “It must have been a shock to you.” “Yes. But—dreams do not die. And [I still keep the dream. And perhaps’—he lifted an appealing gaze to her—‘perhaps, as a legacy, some littie part of the friendship. I may hold that as a hope?” “Yes,” said Constance.

Her fingers stirred in his as he bent and touched light lips to her hand. Out into the tumultuous night Cary Scott carried two pictures, mother and daughter, strangely alike, strangely different, which interchanged and blended and separated

again, like the evanescence of sunset-hued clouds. But it was the visual memory of the living woman which eventually held his inner eye, the pure, smooth contour of her face, the sumptuous curves of the figure beneath the suave folds of the clinging robe, the chaste line of the lips contradicted by the half-veiled sensuality of the wide, humid, deer-soft eyes. A delicate, but unsatisfied sensuality which might yet, as he read it, break down under provocation into reckless self-indulgence. Sensitive by nature

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87

to beauty in all its implications, inner and outer, he felt the enveloping atmosphere of her youth and sweetness, and sought, to match it, the swift intelligence, the eager responsiveness which had been Mona’s. Had the daughter inherited these qualities of the mother? If she had, she would be irresistible. Mona Fentriss, whatever relations she had maintained,

in her wayward, laughing course of life, with other men (wholly unknown and unsuspected by Cary Scott) had been to him all that was demanded by the ideal which he himself had formed of her; had given him a friendship infinitely wise and sweet and clear in spirit. Of Constance he had asked the chance to win a like friendship. Yet in his heart, at once hopeful by instinct, and cynical by experience, he knew from the evidence of those hungering eyes, that if she gave at all it would be more than friendship. And, if she chose to give, would he choose to take? From Mona’s daughter, at once so subtly like and unlike Mona? Was he already a little in love with her? ‘The question was still unsolved when he went to sleep. After he left, Constance returned to her book.

Pres-

ently it dropped from her hand. Dreams seeped into the craving eyes. Her husband found her so when he came in at midnight. “What are you mooning over, Con?” he said testily. He was prone to the impatient mood when he had had too much to drink. “J?” answered his wife. “Oh! Ghosts.” “Rats !? said Fred Browning. “Come to bed.”

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 CHAPTER IX

“Wxo's the princely party holding Con's hand in the library?”

Patricia, home from school for the Easter vacation, — slouched against Mary Delia’s door as she put her question. The child had begun to take on the florescence of the woman.

Her meagre face had filled out; the lines

of her slim figure had become firmer, more gracious; the knowing eyes deeper of hue, more veiled of intent. She was still sallow, but the reproach of “pimply ttle gnome”

was no longer applicable. Her trusted Dr. Bobs had promised her the complexion of a peach if she would hold to his stern regimen of diet for a year, and as she had been fairly faithful, though with an occasional lapse into her besetting sin of gluttony, the clarification of her blood already showed in a soft lustre underlying the duller

tint of the skin.

Her teeth had whitened im perceptible

degree, and her tongue reddened from its former farry grey of replete mornings. She glowed with a conscious and eager vitality. Startled by the form of the question put to her so

abruptly, Mary Delia looked up from the golf glove which she was mending. “Is he holding her hand?” she said unguardedly.

“Figure of speech,” returned the airy Pat, perceiving, however, that there was something in this. “They look pretty chummy, though. Who is he, Dee? “Cary Scott.”

“Meaning httle or nothing to muh. Where's he from?" “All over. He was a friend of Mona‘s.”

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“Old like that! He doesn’t flourishing village?”

look it.

89

Visiting our

“Here? And Connie’s annexed him, has she?
 * He’s come back to live, I believe.”

Mar.

ried?” “No; not here.

He comes down week-ends.

Yes; he’s

married, I believe, but not very much.” “Business?” “He’s invented some new mechanical

thing that the mills have to have, and he makes a lot of money out of it.” “Crazy about Con?” “How does Freddie take it?” “Between cocktails,” returned Dee laconically. Pat thought for a moment. “Is Con getting tired of hinn?”? “Wouldn’t you be?” “I? Oh, I’d be sick to death of any man in a month! But I thought Con would turn into the domestic breeder kind.” “I don’t blame Con so much. Freddie’s quit his business for drink. They’re miles in debt. Con’s more extravagant than ever. That’s the reason they’re living here on Father. Pretty boring for him. He’s getting sore, too.”
 * ‘He’s here a good deal.”

‘No wonder. The house is like a pig pen.” “Con doesn’t pay any attention to it. She hasn’t any interest in anything except clothes, and men—principally Scott.” “Then she is nuts about him.” “JT don’t know. You never can tell with Con. But I know this; Bobs is worried.”

“Poor old Bobs! He has his troubles with us. But I don’t see that this Scott party is any Francis X. Bush-

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 20 FLAMING YOUTH a man, the male beauty-spot of the movie sere, How does he work his ttle game?”

Deetoseadtherepaired gloveintotheteckela

7

tory os banksy, edie *unheseh 7 what “sweetie” in that tone meant. “Dmawshing yea.” “Not thinking of organising a rescue party, are “Me “I might at that” “A fat chance you'd have against Coa

Why, bed ©

chuck you under the chin and tell you te ren away to | him to say nighty-nighty nicey-nicey.”

“Yes; you're pretty good at that innocent, childish Eps steff* remarked Dee placdly.

“About time you |

were outgrowing it, Pd say” Pat glowered. “Oh, you go to hell.” she suapped. “No man would ever want to Kiss you. You—you dead fish” Dee laughed. “Woulda’t they? I wish they dide't

2 © ©

Ts a rotten nuisance.” Pat*s i? humour vanished im interest,

7 —

“You are a queer

ene,” she said. “How does Jimmieson James Bke your Views?" < Dee shrogged her sim, cleam-museled shoulders. “He dangles aleng.* “Better haul him in before he wriggies off the hook advised the worldly Pat. Come ondows andshowme the new suitor.”

“Do your own buttingin” yawned Dee “Oh, verra-well!

Finesse did not mark Pat's irruptiea @ deur in the hbrary.

“I ae:

Here's trving.”

+:

the solitude

et

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 FLAMING YOUTH
 * Lo, Con,” was her opening.

here?”

91

“Seen T. T. around

Constance’s companion arose and viewed the new arrival with surprise, amusement and expectation. The latter was not immediately fulfilled. “No,” said Constance with significant brevity. “It’s in the conservatory.” Which was a guess. “T’ve looked,” said Pat.

Which

was

a lie.

She di-

rected a guileless gaze at Cary Scott. “I think you must have been sitting on it,” she said; “my copy of Town Topics.”

“No; I assure you,” he returned. There was a moment’s pause which he relieved by turning to Constance. “This is Miss Patricia?” he asked. “Yes; that’s the infant,” returned

Constance

so dis-

paragingly that Pat at once decided to sce it through.

“Only. half an introduction,” she said, greatly fancying herself for her aplomb. “What’s the other half?” “Cary Scott, at your service, mademoiselle.” her an elaborate bow, twinkling.

He made

She held out a hand, large, firm, and nervously mod-

elled. “Oh, yes. Dee’s been telling me about you. Such a lot.” “A charming historian. I hope the history borrowed

some of the quality.” “It wasn’t so dull.

Con, are you driving down for

Dad to-day?” “No. You are.”

“Oh, very well. I can take the car, then. Good-bye, Mr. Scott. Tt was really an awfully interesting history. Y¥’d like to hear more of it some day.”

‘’'That’s a precocious child, Stancia,” said Cary Scott,

giving to theyspecial name which he had devised for Constance a caressing quality.

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“‘She’s a terrible brat,” replied the other. “She is your sister and therefore has for me a shadow of your delight about her.” “How foreign you sound when you say those things! I love it in you.” “Do you? But you use the word ‘love’ so lightly.” “TI don’t think of it lightly. No,” she whispered, reading the swift fire in his eyes and holding him back with a light hand upon his shoulder. “Not again. Not now. That other time—it frightened me.” “Don’t be afraid of me,” he murmured. “I can wait.” “Ah, but I’m more afraid of you when you wait than when you seek,” she smiled, and he reflected, with warm

recognisance, that for once she had shown a gleam of subtlety, that subtlety which had so enthralled him in the mother, for which he was ever eagerly looking in the daughter. ‘“You’ll be at the club dance Saturday?” she added. “Since you are to be there. Cela va sans dire.” Scott, delayed from reaching the club house early, found the dance in full swing when he got there. It was one of the largest and gayest of the season. ‘The eleyenth commandment as promulgated by Mr. Volstead, “Thou shalt not drink except by stealth,” had made every man a walking bar-room. Having neglected to provide himself with a flask, Scott was quite discomfited when Constance, sitting out one of the three dances which were all that she had allowed him, railed at him with a charm-

ing air of proprietorship for his negligence. “I might pass out on your hands and you’d have nothing to revive me with.”

“Possibly I could borrow some from this youth,” said he as a young fellow with his shirt gaping open where a stud had deserted its post, wavered toward them.

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“That’s Billy Grant, Pat’s latest flame,” said Constance.

The youngster steadied himself to approach them. “Miss-zz Brow-owning,” he said politely, “could you tell me whe-ere Patiz?” “No, Billy. I haven’t seen her,” replied Constance promptly. “T’ve los’ her. And thissiz my dance wither. Secconextra.” Onward he lurched on his quest. ‘Do be a dear, Cary, and get Pat out of Billy’s way,” begged Constance. “Of course. Where can I find her?” ‘‘She’s coming through the further door now. Go and stop her. Tell her this is your dance and why.” Pat greeted the applicant with her quick, wide smile, “Yes, I know,” she said. “Billy is rather sunk. Come on. I’m all for this music.” She slipped into his arms, her body already swaying to the impulses of a halfbarbaric, half-languorous waltz... . “I would never have thought you’d dance so beautifully,” she presently hummed, setting the words to the consonance of the music. “Why?” he asked, amused. ‘Men of your age don’t care much about it. Bridge for them.” “Do I seem so stricken in years?” “Grandfather stuff!” She laughed up at him impudently. ‘You do and you don’t.” Ever alive to physical impressions she added: “You’re terribly strong, aren’t you?” “Rather. It was the fad to be in my set in Paris.” “Your
 * “He’s got a wonder, hasn’t he!”

muscles are like steel; I like the feel of them.

No; they’re not like steel at all. That’s just one of the things people say because other people say them. They’re like rubber, hard, live rubber.”

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“T see that you’re of an independent turn of expression,” he commented mockingly. “You seek the just word.” “But they are, aren’t they? How do you keep that way?” “A little riding. A little fencirg. A little boxing. A little swimming. At my advanced age, you see, one must preserve oneself.” “Now you’re laughing at me. I like it... . Why don’t you applaud?” she demanded indignantly as the music fell silent. “Don’t you want any more of this dance with me?” “Certainly I do!” He clapped violently, she joining him. “Will that serve?” Contentedly as a purry kitten she nestled to him as the drums signalised the resumption of the tune. “Let’s not talk this time,” said she.

They merged silently into the current of physical rhythm about them. Responsive to the music by instinct, guiding with the intuition of the perfect dancer, Scott looked about him on the crowded scene. The measure had swollen to a fuller harmony, taken on a throbbing, suggestive quality, and he sensed the reaction in the close-joined couples around him. The girls danced by him with their eyes drooping, their cheeks inflamed, a little line of passion across their foreheads. They seemed to cling to their partners with tightening grasp, each couple a separate entity, alone with the surge of the music and what it covertly implied, the allegro furioso

of tumultuous,

untamable

blood.

He

glanced

down at the young girl in his arms. Her lashes, long and fringed, all but touched the swell of her cheek; her lips were lightly parted for the rapid breathing; a little pulse beat in her neck

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 The train of reasoning which connected voluptuous thoughts with Derryaghy was difficult to follow, yet I was not surprised that my father had come out there. With him all roads led to Derryaghy, and I could never understand what he really felt about my position in relation to Mrs. Carroll. When he spoke face to face with her his manner always expressed something like a carefully repressed disapproval, and at the same time he allowed me to remain under countless obligations to her. For example, she looked after, that is to say, she paid for, my clothing. Also it had been settled recently that she was to pay my school, and later my university, expenses. I believe a struggle was perpetually going on within him between his consciousness of my interests and a desire to tell her to mind her own business and to leave him to look after his son himself. This peculiar combination of natural apathy, a fear to give offence, and a sense that it was his duty to be thankful, was singularly ill adapted to produce a graceful attitude in his personal dealings with her, and I do not think she cared for him.

"Now that Mrs. Carroll has her nephew and niece, there is no need for you to go there so often," he went on. "I was glad to see that you did not stay late to-night." He added the last words in a conciliatory tone, even with approval.

"Why don't you like her?" I asked simply.

He fixed his eyes sternly upon me. "Why don't I like whom?"

"Mrs. Carroll."

"Mrs. Carroll! I don't think I understand you!"

As I gave no further explanation he returned to his exercises, but I could see an irrepressible desire to justify himself working in his mind. It broke out in another minute. "You don't appear to realise that your question accuses me of both ingratitude and hypocrisy! Or, possibly, that is what you intended to do?"


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~ “Good God!” he thought. “This child! Does she know what it is that she is feeling?” He felt an access of sheer pity; thought that he must speak to Stancia of this. The music panted itself to silence. Pat lifted smiling, unfathomable eyes to his and let them drop. “Oh!” she breathed ecstatically. “What shall I do with you now, Miss Pat?” he asked. “Oh, stick me anywhere. This is the supper number. Billy’s my provider. I think he’s on the veranda.” Misgivings beset Scott that the errant Billy would prove a doubtful source of supply, but he took the girl out into the dimness. Propped against a corner pillar, young Mr. Grant gazed upon the moon with an expression of foreboding, which was almost immediately justified by the event. HH. leaned upon the railing, and it became evident that he would not be supping that evening. Quite the contrary. “Down and out,” commented Pat, equally without sur-

prise or resentment. ‘“Let’s go. Take me back to Con. Someone will come and get me; I’ve turned down a couple of the boys for supper.” “Perhaps,” said Scott formally, “you would honour me by accepting mesas substitute for the recreant Billy.” Pat gave a little, hoarse crow of delight. “How divine of you!” She was at that stage of articulate development where only the highest-pressure adjective would “Come on. I know the best serve her facile emotions. corner in the place if somebody hasn’t snitched it already.” Established The corner proved to be unsnitched. order, varied and large a cavalier her gave there, Pat Bobs’s forgot almost “I it. of half only to countermand ‘You know Bobs?” darn diet,” she grumbled.

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 principles do not apply. These are the phenomena upon which Mendel touches in his brief paper on Hieracium. As he there states, the hybrids, if they are fertile at all, produce offspring like themselves, not like their parents. In further illustration of this phenomenon he cites Salix hybrids. Perhaps some dozen other such illustrations could be given which rest on good evidence. To these cases the Mendelian principle will in nowise apply, nor is it easy to conceive any modification of the law of ancestral heredity which can express them. There the matter at present rests. Among these cases, however, we perceive several more or less common features. They are often, though not always, hybrids between forms differing in many characters. The first cross frequently is not the exact intermediate between the two parental types, but may as in the few Hieracium cases be irregular in this respect. There is often some degree of sterility. In the absence of fuller and statistical knowledge of such cases further discussion is impossible.

Another class of cases, untouched by any hypothesis of heredity yet propounded, is that of the false hybrids of Millardet, where we have fertilisation without transmission of one or several parental characters. In these not only does the first cross show, in some respect, the character or characters of one parent only, but in its posterity no reappearance of the lost character or characters is observed. The nature of such cases is still quite obscure, but we have to suppose that the allelomorph of one gamete only developes after fertilisation to the exclusion of the corresponding allelomorph of the other gamete, much—if the crudity of the comparison may be pardoned—as occurs on the female side in parthenogenesis without fertilisation at all.


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“Dr. Osterhout? Yes. We have become quite friends.” “I’m glad of that,” she said gravely. “Are you? Why? You like him?” “J adore him. I would have thought that you two would be friends,” she added thoughtfully.

“Now I wonder why you should think that?” he smiled, but instead of awaiting her reply he set out for the food. Pat wondered, too. By the time he had returned, however, her restless mind had taken another turn.

‘How long have you known us?” she asked. “Us P??

“The Fentriss girls. We're us.” “Ah? Some two months or more.” ‘And you’re almost one of the family.” “How do you arrive at that flattering conclusion?” “From Dee, and Dad. And ycu say Bobs has taken you in. And Con. Especially Con. Why aren’t you having supper with her?” “Because I happen to be here.” Quietly though the words were spoken a palpable hardening of his manner warned her against further impertinences along this line. For the moment she shied off, and, removing a macaroon which she had filched from his plate after once denying it to herself, from between her teeth, inquired casually: “Got anything on your hip?” Not yet fully initiate in the argot of his native land, Scott looked his inquiry. “A drink. A flask.” “Do you want a drink?” “Why the amazement, Grandfather dear?” “Ts that a recognised part of your dear Dr. Bobs’s diet ?* “Bobs would have a fit.

He doesn’t know

little Pat

is out. But wouldn’t a touch of hooch put a bit of a dash into the proceedings about now?”

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97

“I assure you, I am finding no lack of interest in the proceedings,” he returned drily. “Meaning,

‘Don’t

get fresh, little child.

Well,

I’m

no rum-hound. By the way, do you take that patronising tone with Connie?” “Suppose you satisfy your curiosity on that subject

by asking her.” “Now you’re trying to flatten me out like a worm.” She contemplated him with mischievous daring in her eyes. “I don’t see it,” she stated deliberately. “I don’t see it at all.” “What don’t you see? I should have thought that very little escaped your singularly sharp faculties of observation.” “You and Connie. I don’t get it.” His stare met her glance and turned it aside. But she persisted, half laughing: “If you weren’t old enough to be her father——— Yet you’re not clever enough to be onto her. She’s got you going. Do you know what’s the matter with Con?” “While your views are doubtless valuable, I am not aware that I have invited them.” “Blighted! But I’m going to tell you just the same. Nothing above the ears.” “Above the ears?” Scott stared in puzzlement at the two blobs of sub-lustrous, dark hair which effectually concealed his youthful partner’s organs of hearing. “Oh, no brains!” she cried impatiently. “Must I talk baby talk to you?” “You might talk comprehensible English,” he said sternly. “And you might also find a more suitable topic than criticism of your sister.” She was daring enough to try to meet the cold fire of his gaze, but not steadfast enough to endure it. “Now

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 To these as yet altogether unconformable cases we can scarcely doubt that further experiment will add many more. Indeed we already have tolerably clear evidence that many phenomena of inheritance are of a much higher order of complexity. When the paper on Pisum was written Mendel apparently inclined to the view that with modifications his law might be found to include all the phenomena of hybridisation, but in the brief subsequent paper on Hieracium he clearly recognized the existence of cases of a different nature. Those who read that contribution will be interested to see that he lays down a principle which may be extended from hybridisation to heredity in general, that the laws of each new case must be determined by separate experiment.

As regards the Mendelian principles, which it is the chief aim of this introduction to present clearly before the reader, a professed student of variation will easily be able to fill in the outline now indicated, and to illustrate the various conceptions from phenomena already familiar. To do this is beyond the scope of this short sketch. But enough perhaps has now been said to show that by the application of those principles we are enabled to reach and deal in a comprehensive manner with phenomena of a fundamental nature, lying at the very root of all conceptions not merely of the physiology of reproduction and heredity, but even of the essential nature of living organisms; and I think that I used no extravagant words when, in introducing Mendel's work to the notice of readers of the Royal Horticultural Society's Journal, I ventured to declare that his experiments are worthy to rank with those which laid the foundation of the Atomic laws of Chemistry.


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you're angry with me,” she accused, her breath catching» a little.

Truly Cary Scott was angry with her. was secondary

—

But anger

to a sudden, startling realisation.

_He_

felt as if a clear, blinding, chilling light had pierced to a cherished place of illusions, betraying its voidness. No | brains! It was sickeningly true. All through these weeks of his yielding to Stancia’s physical charm he had/ uncorfessedly harboured the knowledge, met and denied its —

disappointments, its deadening negations in a score of phases, by refusing to think them out. Now this bratling of the devil had thrown the ray of her withering and brutal candour upon his false spirituslisation of a gross attachment. Stancis was gentle, she was sweet, she was

provocative, she was adorably lovely to look upon; but —no brains! For a man of Cary Scott's fastidious type of mind, it was a disenchantment beyond all hope ef restoration.

Nulla redintegratio amoris; the ancient

philosopher was right; there was no such thing as a re turn upon the road of love. And now he knew that it never had been love. However potently the attraction of Stancia’s beauty might draw him, he would always Know it for what it was; not the true fire, but a baser

flame. Enlightenment! And in time, thank God! But he was in a still rage with the little prophetess who had

revealed the omen.

Out of the long silence came her half

whisper: “I am a little rotter, arent I!

But I just couldn't

help # Inadequate though the plea was, he felt inexplicably appeased of his wrath. When he was still meditating

what he should say to this amazing child, footsteps, heavy

diately outside the window at which they were seated.
 * and not all of them steady, sounded on the veranda imme

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Voices, unmuffled by any considerations of caution, came clearly to them. “Quelque chick, what!” “Pll telephone Mars that she is! And coming every minute.” “Too easy, say I. You can hug her to a peak.” “Something to hug, too, that little Treechie. She’s got a teasin’ little way with her.” “Guess she teases herself as much as she teases the other feller.” “That teasing game is likely to be double-barrelled,” put in a deeper voice. “What was it the old woman in that play said about the flapper? ‘Precarious virginity.

Pretty wise, that.” “It might also be wise,” cut in Cary Scott’s chiselling voice, “for you gentlemen to air your opinions in some less public spot.” “Oh, Gawd!” said one of the voices.

that?” another.

“Le’s beat it,” a third.

‘Who the devil’s

The footsteps

shudded away. “Chivalrous young America!” commented Scott to Pat. “A companion piece to sisterly loyalty.” He had meant to sting her, but he was amazed at the spasmodic constriction of the face which she turned to him. He had not expected that she would be so much affected by anything he could say; in fact, he had reckoned her rather a thick-skinned and insensitive little person. But now her eyes were set, and her cheeks sallow with ebbing blood. “The girl they were discussing,” he pursued, with a view to giving her time for recovery from his too successful stab, “is presumably some man’s sister; perhaps

the sister of one of their friends. here——”

If he had been sitting

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 Oh, how well I knew this mood, and how we would go round and round the same little circle, and how he would outwardly be so calm and reasonable and not in the least annoyed, yet inwardly be perfectly furious. "I think I'll go to bed," I murmured, getting up, and pretending to yawn.

My yawn was only meant to convey sleepiness, but my father saw in it impertinence. "Why do you try to vex me?" he asked.

"I don't try to vex you. Why should I?"

"Mrs. Carroll is different from us. Her position in life is different; it alters her view of everything; it is only natural that she should be more worldly."

"Is she very worldly?" I asked, without enthusiasm. Anybody less so, I could hardly imagine, but there was no use arguing.

My father branched off in another direction. "To-night, at dinner, were you offered wine?"

"I had some claret."

"You remember I had told you I would rather you didn't take anything?"

"No."

"Are you speaking the truth, Peter?"

"I don't know whether I remembered or not," I answered petulantly. "I didn't think it important enough to make a fuss about. You always want me to do everything differently from other people. If I can't do as other people do, I 'd rather not go at all."

"I'm not aware that I told you anything except what would please me," he answered coldly. "I left you perfectly free."

"How can you call it 'leaving me free' when you're for ever asking me whether I've done it? You say you don't forbid me to do things, but you always talk about them afterwards."


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“She isn’t any man’s sister,” said Pat chokingly. Then he understood. “But they called her ‘Treechie,’ ” he said stupidly. “That’s one of my nicknames.” “My dear!” said Scott pityingly, at a loss for the moment in the face of her shamed and helpless fury. He laid his hand on hers. “Do you believe it? What they said?” she whispered. “No; no. “You do.

Of course not,” he answered soothingly. Anyway, it’s true.”

“Can you tell me who those fellows are?” he asked grimly. “T’ll find a way to stop their foul chatter.” “You can’t mix in it. What good would it do if you did half kill them?”? For she had read the formidable wrath in his face. “Besides,” she concluded sullenly, “I tell you it’s true.” “Why is it true, Pat?” he asked gently. “Because I’m a cheap little idiot. I never realised— I never knew men talked—that way—about girls.” “Men don't. Those were callow boys.” “Not all of them. The one that—that spoke about the play For a moment he studied her working face. “It’s hardly worth while, is it?” he said gravely. ‘You've come to the end of that phase, haven’t you? How old are you, Pat?”
 * ? She stopped with her hand to her throat.

“Eighteen.

Almost.

And I’ve been a terrible necker

ever since—since I began to be grown up. Most girls are.” “Are they? Why?” “T don’t know. ‘The boys sort of expect it,” she answered childishly.

“And it’s—it’s fun, in a way.”

She

wriggled like a very schoolgirl. “I got Billy away from Celia Bly that way. And now look at the damn thing!"

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10]

She laughed and the tension was temporarily relieved. “Anyway,” she declared resolutely, “here and now is where I quit. There’s nothing in it. Unless,” she added with an astounding naiveté, “it’s somebody that I’m

quite crazy about.” Anger and pain had left a faint fire still in the eyes which she turned to his. “I’m glad it was you that were with me when it happened, Mr. Scott.” “TI was afraid that it only made it the harder for you.” “No. Because you understand.” He was by no means sure that he understood at all, but he made no denial. “Have you got any daughters?” “No.”

“T wish I’d had someone like you that I could talk to,” she said wistfully. ‘Dad’s all right. Iadore Dad. But I couldn’t talk to him like this. I can to you. Isn’t it funny! Do you like me a little, Mr. Scott?” Her face, upturned to his, was one anxious, honest, hopeful plea. “Yes. I like you very much,” he returned soberly. “You might adopt me,” she pursued. ‘On account of mother. You were fond of her, weren’t you?” He re garded her with a slight frown which vanished as he realised that this was no adventurous impertinence such as her references to Constance. “I don’t see how you could help but be; she was so beautiful. . . . But no; I couldn’t be anyone’s daughter but Dad’s, even adopted.” “Granddaughter,” suggested Scott mockingly. “I take it all back!” she cried, her spirits quite re stored. “You aren’t nearly as old as I thought you were; and twice as nice. We'll just be friends, won’t we? And T’ll be awfully good and never say anything catty about Con again. Come on; there’s the music. Let’s dance, This is somebody else’s but I don’t care.” At the door she stretched her arms above her head in a long sweep, a hovering, expectant gesture as if she were

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going to give herself into a profound and enduring em-

brace, then leaned to him as the swirl of the rhythms

caught them. He felt her fresh young cheek pressed toe his, close and warm, and drew away a little. “What's the matter?” she asked naively. “Don’t you like it?” Perplexed for the moment and a little startled by the sweetness of the contact, he did not answer

at once.

“J thought we were to be friends,” she murmured mournfully. With a sudden understanding he realised that she had nestled to him as unconsciously as a kitten; that her natural expression of the merest comradeship was physical. In a manner, innocently so. After that dance he did not see her again until, just before her departure, she dashed up to him to say, “T’ve been terribly good all evening. It isn’t so hard.” ‘Then, peering at him anxiously: “You don’t despise me, do you, Mr. Scott?”

The innate pathos of it made it hard for him to control his voice, though he answered easily but sincerely: ‘How could Ir We're friends, you know.” “Yes,” she assented with deep content. “We're friends.” At home Dee asked her: “Did you try your rescue party, kid?” “What rescue party?” returned Pat dreamily. ‘Oh, that! Itrow some not! He won’t be the one that needs help when the water gets deep.” “TI suppose

not,”

Pat meant Constance,

acquiesced

Dee,

She

thought

that

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 CHAPTER

X

Wawnpeerne into the drawing-room on one of her infrequent and languid tours of inspection, Constance was astonished to find Mary Delia contemplating herself in the full-length mirror. She was clad in a new and modish bathing suit. “What do you think of it?” she asked her elder sister, turning slowly about. “There’s certainly plenty of it,” was the disparaging reply. “Where are you going in it; to church?” “To the Dangerfields’ round-robin tennis,” “Going to play that way?” “Yeppy. We're going to fool the hot spell. After the tennis we christen the new swimming pool. It’s the biggest private tank in captivity.” “I thought Wally Dangerfield was that. I don’t see why you want to mix up with that set, Dee.”

“What set? They’re the same set as the rest of us. What’s the matter with Wally and Sally?” “Nothing much except their pace and the way they get talked about. You know there have been half a dozen near-scandals at their place already.” “Not near me,” returned Dee cheerfully. “I can take care of myself.” “T grant you that. But won’t Jimmy be awfully sore? He doesn’t like the Dangerfields.” “Jimmy ts sore,” was the indifferent response. Indeed, Mr. Jameson

James, an insistent formalist in

his ideas for women though not at all in his ideas of ry ymen, had most unwisely essayed a veto upon Dee’s at103

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tendance, only to be reminded by that untamed virgin that they were not yet engaged, and that, even if they were, it was by no means certain that she would meekly

take orders from him.

She spoke with unrufiied good

humour. Mr. James had departed in great ill humour. “TI like Jimmy when he’s furious,” remarked Dee. “He’s so much more human.” “You'll lose him yet,” warned Constance. “Who’s your partner for the tennis?” “Paul de Severin was to have been but he’s held up in Washington. I thought I’d borrow Cary Scott if you don’t mind.” “Why should I mind?” returned the other moodily. “Fle isn’t my property.” “Had a scrap?” “No.”

Constance brooded

for a moment,

then made

one of those disclosures characteristic of the peculiarly frank relations existing between all three of the sisters. “Dee, Freddie’s been borrowing money from Cary.” Dee whirled and stared. “The devil!” she ejaculated. ““Fe’ll never pay it back.” “I don’t suppose Cary expects it back.” “I don’t know,” answered Constance slowly. “Humph! Ido. Are you going to pay, Connie?” “If I did pay—that way—would I be half as rotten as Freddie?” demanded the wife savagely. “That depends. Are you in love with Cary?” “I don’t know,” muttered the beauty. “I thought I was. ‘Then I found out about Freddie and it sickened me so that I don’t know where I stand.” Dee ruminated.
 * “What does he expect, then?”

“Perhaps

He’s no fool.” “He's a drunkard.

that’s why Freddie did it,

That’s worse.”

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 As some biographical particulars of this remarkable investigator will be welcome, I give the following brief notice, first published by Dr Correns on the authority of Dr von Schanz: Gregor Johann Mendel was born on July 22, 1822, at Heinzendorf bei Odrau, in Austrian Silesia. He was the son of well-to-do peasants. In 1843 he entered as a novice the "Königinkloster," an Augustinian foundation in Altbrünn. In 1847 he was ordained priest. From 1851 to 1853 he studied physics and natural science at Vienna. Thence he returned to his cloister and became a teacher in the Realschule at Brünn. Subsequently he was made Abbot, and died January 6, 1884. The experiments described in his papers were carried out in the garden of his Cloister. Besides the two papers on hybridisation, dealing respectively with Pisum and Hieracium, Mendel contributed two brief notes to the ''Verh. Zool. bot. Verein, Wien, on Scopolia margaritalis (1853, ., p. 116) and on Bruchus pisi'' (ibid. 1854, ., p. 27). In these papers he speaks of himself as a pupil of Kollar.

Mendel published in the Brünn journal statistical observations of a meteorological character, but, so far as I am aware, no others relating to natural history. Dr Correns tells me that in the latter part of his life he engaged in the Ultramontane Controversy. He was for a time President of the Brünn Society.

For the photograph of Mendel which forms the frontispiece to this work, I am indebted to the Very Rev. Dr Janeischek, the present Abbot of Brünn, who most kindly supplied it for this purpose.

So far as I have discovered there was, up to 1900, only one reference to Mendel's observations in scientific literature, namely that of Focke, Pflanzenmischlinge, 1881, p. 109,


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 There was a pause. It was broken by my father who seemed now deeply offended. "Did you make any arrangements about going back?"

"I promised to go to-morrow, after breakfast."

"What for?"

"I was asked to take the Dales somewhere."

"Can't they find their own way? It isn't very difficult."

"Does that mean I'm not to go?"

"You can't be always going there. You seem to me to live there."

"It's easier than living at home," I muttered.

"It is pleasanter, I daresay; but I don't want you to make yourself a nuisance to strangers."

"Aren't they the best judges of whether I'm a nuisance or not?"

"Well, I don't wish you to go to-morrow."

"You might have said so sooner," I burst out. "What reason have you?"

"I hope you don't intend to be as disrespectful as you are," my father said slowly. "If I had no other reason for not wanting you to go, I should have a very good one in the way it seems to make you behave when you come back. I have another reason, however: I don't desire you to grow up with an idea that you have nothing to think of in life but your own pleasures. You are quire sufficiently inclined that way as it is."

He spoke quietly, but there was a concentrated feeling behind his words. "What have I been doing?" I asked, trying to be equally calm, though I knew my eyes were bright, my cheeks flushed, and my lips pouting.

"I wasn't alluding to anything particular so much as to your whole way of looking at things. You appear to wish to be absolutely independent, to go out and in just as you please. You appear to think you have no duty to me or to anybody else. You are becoming utterly selfish."


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 where it is simply stated that Mendel's numerous experiments on Pisum gave results similar to those obtained by Knight, but that he believed he had found constant numerical ratios among the types produced by hybridisation. In the same work a similar brief reference is made to the paper on Hieracium.

It may seem surprising that a work of such importance should so long have failed to find recognition and to become current in the world of science. It is true that the journal in which it appeared is scarce, but this circumstance has seldom long delayed general recognition. The cause is unquestionably to be found in that neglect of the experimental study of the problem of Species which supervened on the general acceptance of the Darwinian doctrines. The problem of Species, as Kölreuter, Gärtner,, Wichura, and the other hybridists of the middle of the nineteenth century conceived it, attracted thenceforth no workers. The question, it was imagined, had been answered and the debate ended. No one felt much interest in the matter. A host of other lines of work were suddenly opened up, and in 1865 the more original investigators naturally found those new methods of research more attractive than the tedious observations of the hybridisers, whose inquiries were supposed, moreover, to have led to no definite result.

Nevertheless the total neglect of such a discovery is not easy to account for. Those who are acquainted with the literature of this branch of inquiry will know that the French Academy offered a prize in 1861 to be awarded in 1862 on the subject "Etudier les Hybrides végétaux au point de vue de leur fécondité et de la perpétuité de leurs caractères." This subject was doubtless chosen with reference to the experiments of Godron of Nancy and Naudin, then of Paris. Both these naturalists competed,


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“Poor old Con! I wonder what Cary thinks of it all.” “That’s what I’m afraid to think about.” “Then you are in love with him.

See here, Con; have

you been borrowing from him, too?” Constance’s exquisite, self-indulgent face was set and hard as she stared past her sister. “He’s paid a bill or two. I didn’t dare take them to father.” A soft whistle on a single, low note issued from Dee’s lips. ‘“That’s not in the book of rules.” “I know it. But he was so wonderful about it. You’d think that I was the one conferring the favour by taking his”—Constance gulped—“his money.” “Yes. Cary’s a thoroughbred. Whatever happens I can’t see that Freddie has any kick coming. Maquereau!” “What's that?” “Tasty French slang. The English is shorter and uglier. Con, how much are you in for?” “Too much.

. . . You marry money, Dee,” counselled

Constance fiercely. “It lasts. The other thing doesn’t.” “With me it doesn’t even begin. Then I can take Cary?” “Of course. I almost wish you’d never bring him back.” “It might be safer,” agreed the other. “I'll go and

wire him.” Dorrisdale knew the elaborate establishment of the Dangerfields, built out of war profits at the back of the golf course, as “The Private Athletic Club.” Everything about it was based upon sports, and the clique which frequented it was linked in a common bond of physical fitness, a willingness to bet any amount on anything, and capacity for hard drinking, It boasted expensive stables, an indoor and two outdoor tennis courts, a squash and racquets building, and, in the middle, the sixty-foot

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swimming tank just completed. Sally Dangerfield, a bigeyed, softly rounded brunette whose air of rather amorous languor concealed a feline vitality and strength, had a penchant for small parties, many in a season. This opening tennis party of the season included but eight couples. Walter Dangerfield, robust, hairy, loud-voiced and generous of hospitality, announced to the arriving guests that there would be first and second prizes worth striving for, also that, while it was a long time beween sets, it would be a shorter period between drinks, in

proof of which he indicated tubs of ice housing bottles of the famous Dangerfield punch. The

intense,

unseasonable

heat

bred

an

immediate

thirst, appeasement of which enhanced the joyousness of the occasion if not the quality of the tennis. Thanks to a quality of comparative abstemiousness on the part of both, Dee and her partner won against a pair who were normally their betters. The prize was a magnum of champagne apiece, and that they should celebrate by opening it immediately was, of course, de rigueur in the Private Athletic Club. The swim which followed was signalised by the appearance, upon a specially constructed raft, of a “submarine cocktail” invented by the host for the occasion. By dinner time the party had accumulated what was universally regarded as a highly satisfactory start. Over the luxurious repast the heat settled like a steamy blanket.

It was too hot to talk, it was too hot to sing

(though several ambitious souls tried to pretend that it wasn’t), it was too hot to dance between courses, it was too hot to do anything but drink. There was a gasp of relief when the hostess announced that coffee would be served outside, and a groan of disappointment when a splash of lukewarm rain heralded a thunderstorm which

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107

came booming and belching up from the west. Pent within the stagnant house the guests established themselves in the big living-room and offered various suggestions for amusement, each of which was promptly re jected as calling for too much effort. Wally Dangerfield was just saying, “The time has now arrived, children, for a new and spine-tickling drink which—” when the crash came. It seemed

to precede rather than follow the blinding

stab of radiance which ripped through the outer darkness, dimming the electric lights to futile sparks for the thousandth of a second before they went out. The great, stone

°

structure

rocked with the concussion.

One thin,

high shriek sounded. Then silence. Wally Dangerfield’s voice boomed through the blackness: “Anyone hurt?” “T’m alive.” “Present.” “Battered but in the ring.” “Missed me.” ‘Whose hair is that singeing?” ‘“Kamerad! Call off the Big Bertha.” The replies came, shaky, flippant, with forced laughter, with bravado. It beseemed good sports to show a front under fire, and they

did it. Matches were struck. Servants came with two feeble candles. The entire electrical establishment of the house was out of commission. The host promptly dispatched a car to the local plant with instructions to bring back an expert if it was necessary to kidnap him. With that one terrific discharge the storm had spent its greatest fury. It retired, leaving the steaming world immersed

in humid heat, and the air full of rotted elec-

tricity. The guests tingled to it; it thrilled in their senses as well as their nerves. After the sobering sense of peril escaped, there followed a relaxing reaction of solvent ties and conventions,

of sudden and reckless au-

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dacities,

A warm puff of wind doused one of the feeble

candles; the other was only sufficient to produce a provocative twilight. A silence significant and languorous, broken only by murmurs and snatches of soft, protesting laughter settled upon the dim room. Even Dee’s nerves of iron responded. Leaning back on her divan to catch a wandering breath of air she felt a man’s hand pressing upon her shoulder, a man’s breath soft upon her neck. With her ready young strength, she pushed back the wooer.

“Not for me,” she said quietly. “Qh, don’t be a prude,” implored a straining whisper. “Everything goes to-night.” She thought it was Harry Mercer’s voice. Evading him she got to her feet, made her way toward the door, and stumbled upon a chaise longue occupied by two close-clasped figures.

“Beg your pardon,” she said nonchalantly; but she was vaguely stirred by all this suggestion, not to disgust, which would have been her normal retroaction, but to a

wistful wonderment. What did they see in it? What was it that she was missing out of life? Was she abnormal? Or just fastidious? Across the room she could discern the sumptuous outlines of Sally Dangerfield’s figure, dark against the background of a flannelled figure. “Why not start something, Sally?” she suggested. The hostess laughed. “It’s starting itself, isn’t it? Haven’t you got your self-starter working? But I guess you're right. Help me find some more lights.” “Why

lights?”

murmured

a sleepy-toned

protestant.

“Tt’s more comfortable as it is.” “Who said ‘comfortable’??? growled another. hotter than ever.” “Wish I were back in the pool,” said a woman.

“It’s

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 and the accounts of the work of Godron on Datura and of Naudin on a number of species were published in the years 1864 and 1865 respectively. Both, especially the latter, are works of high consequence in the history of the science of heredity. In the latter paper Naudin clearly enuntiated what we shall henceforth know as the Mendelian conception of the dissociation of characters of cross-breds in the formation of the germ-cells, though apparently he never developed this conception.

In the year 1864, George Bentham, then President of the Linnean Society, took these treatises as the subject of his address to the Anniversary meeting on the 24 May, Naudin's work being known to him from an abstract, the full paper having not yet appeared. Referring to the hypothesis of dissociation which he fully described, he said that it appeared to be new and well supported, but required much more confirmation before it could be held as proven. (J. Linn. Soc., Bot., ., Proc., p. .)

In 1865, the year of Mendel's communication to the Brünn Society, appeared Wichura's famous treatise on his experiments with Salix to which Mendel refers. There are passages in this memoir which come very near Mendel's principles, but it is evident from the plan of his experiments that Mendel had conceived the whole of his ideas before that date.

In 1868 appeared the first edition of Darwin's Animals and Plants, marking the very zenith of these studies, and thenceforth the decline in the experimental investigation of Evolution and the problem of Species has been steady. With the rediscovery and confirmation of Mendel's work by de Vries, Correns and Tschermak in 1900 a new era begins.

That Mendel's work, appearing as it did, at a moment


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“Grand little idea!” boomed Dangerfield. “Let’s all go in!” “What! In our wet things?” objected young Mrs. Redfern. “I wouldn’t put my clammy stockings on again for a million swims.” “Why wear stockings?” “Why wear anything?” cried someone in a tone of inspiration. “That’s an idea!” shouted Dangerfield. “A swimming party, &@ la Adam-and-Kve in the warranted respectable darkness. Who’s on?” “Come off it, Wally!” said a woman’s voice. ‘“You’ve got only one pool.” “We'll splice two tennis nets together and run them down the middle for a barrier.” “Why not?” cried the high-pitched, excited voice of Mrs. Carson. “We’re all married here.” “Not that I know of,” remarked Dee.

“Not that anybody knows of for me,” added Emslie Selfridge in a voice of mincing propriety. “Wanted, a chaperon.” ‘You two can stand on the bank and be policemen,” suggested the hostess. “One on each side.” “Not on your life,” objected one of the men. “One go, all go!” The popping of a champagne cork expressed the ex-

plosive quality of the neurotic atmosphere. Dee,” whispered Sally Dangerfield. it will gum a good game.”

“Come on,

“If you quit now

“Oh, well, you can’t bluff me,” returned Dee aloud.

“I

hate bathing suits anyway.” There was a shout of acclaim. The party organised and moved forward across the dripping courtyard under the guidance of a pair of lights. The men rigged the

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nets while the women retired to the squash court, designated as their dressing room. There they disrobed with feverish laughter and jerky bits of talk.

This adventure

had given a fillip to even their sated appetite for sensation. “Who'll go first?” asked one in the gloom. “Match for it,” came the answering suggestion. “Oh, piffle and likewise pish!” cut in Vicey Carson’s shrill giggle. “I'll be the goat. Put a dimmer on that

light, someone.” A moment later Dee heard her call at the end of the passage: “Anybody present in case I fall in?” Several male voices answered: “Stout sport!” ‘Who's the pioneer?” “Sally.” “No; it’s little Viccy.” “‘Shinny-on-your-own-side!’ called Mrs. Carson. “Listen for the splash. Come on, you girls!” “We're coming.” Two splashes almost simultaneous

echoed sharply against the bare walls, followed by others mingled with shrieks, laughter, chokings and gurglings. Dee, reluctant, found herself alone in the passage way. Like many women of unaroused temperament she preserved a sort of remote and proud consciousness of her body, a physical reticence. The gross implications of contact, the prurient stimulus to the imagination in what was going on in the pool, held her back. Yet she was conscious of some participation in the excitement, too; the lewd mob-psychology of that mixed group spurred her while it revolted her finer instincts. But it was her sportsmanship that finally urged her forward. After all, she had agreed to join. Backing out now would be pretty yellow. Her hand was fumbling along the open door when another burst of merriment

checked her.

“T’ve caught me a mermaid over the net.” ‘Reel her in, Bill.”

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“So’ve I. Mine’s got a bathing cap on.” “No fair, bathing caps. This is the Garden of Eden.” “No; it’s the fountain of Eternal Youth. Steady on the net, there!”

“Students! Students! cried Sally Dangerfield in a voice of chiding laughter. “Care beful!”’ “Who’s who in this part of America? Call the roll.” The roll! Dee’s hesitations were resolved. She must go forward now. She stretched out a groping hand and held it, stiffened in mid-air. Footsteps were close behind her; heavy, shod footsteps. “Who’s there?” she challenged sharply. No answer. She turned, angry and uncertain. The footsteps had stopped. She had gathered her forces to call when the appalling thing happened. Over her burst a great flood of light. Every globe in the passageway and the court back of it was sending out its pitiless rays upon her nakedness. <A bisected bar of radiance shot forth into the tank-room, illuminating it from end to end. Pandemonium broke out; shrieks, flounderings, catcalls, and above it all the thun-

dering profanity of Wally Dangerfield calling down ven-

geance upon the fool who had played the trick.

With

the trained athlete’s readiness of action in a crisis, Dee

turned, leapt backward, tore the heavy door loose from the clamp which held it open, and slammed it. “Saved !” yelled a gleeful voice outside. Dee heard a short, deep, dismayed exclamation behind her. She bent forward against the closed door, her proud little head bowed against her wrists. With a click

the darkness

shut down

again.

‘The footsteps

came,:’

toward her, but she was no longer afraid, for she had seen;

she was

only bitterly ashamed.

Folds,

cool and

light, enveloped her shoulders; she smelt the odor of wet

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rubber and gratefully drew the long raincoat about her. “Turn on the light, please,” she directed quietly. It flashed, intolerable to her eyes. When her vision could bear the strain she looked up and saw the man standing a few paces away with his kitbag of implements beside him, dressed in working garb. His face was pallid, amazed, and beautiful.

“T never thought to see you again,” he said breathlessly. “You've seen all there is of me to see,” giggled Dee with the inanity of sheer nerve-shock, and could have killed herself for hatred and fury at her untoward re

sponse. He made no comment upon this; only looked st her with incredulous pain. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Repairing the electric plant. I’m a workman. As J told you.” “T thought it was a joke.” “No.” He listened to the confused sounds from be yond the door. “I seem to have been inopportune,” he remarked with quiet grimness. “A swimming party, isn’t it?”
 * Yes.”

“More or less informal, I judge.” Dee felt a hot wave submerging her. “You could see for yourself.” “Quite so. You were on your way to join it?” “Yes, I was,” she retorted defiantly but with an incredible inclination to weep. “Pray don’t let me detain you.” “Please,” whispered Dee.

His face changed. stopped.

He took a step toward her, and

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_A shrick. too authentic in its terror to be misinter-

gta, penetrated the heavy door, followed by a babel. “Turn on that light!” “Open the door.” “No! No!? Bhe’s drowned,

I tell you.”

“Damn

it, where’s

that

pitch?” The electrician threw the door open, made a quick Movement along the wall, and every detail of the scene leapt forth into bold significance. The women were huddled along the side of the pool, all except plump Mrs. Grant who was absurdly striving to draw an end of the net about her, and Sally Dangerfield who was bending above the slim, motionless nudity of Viccy Carson,

stretched along the stairs. “TI stepped on her,” wailed Sally. “She was lying on the bottom.” Half of the men had scattered for their clothes. The others stood, shamed and uncertain, except Cary Scott. In the face of reality in this calamitous form he had remembered an early emergency regimen, thrown himself down beside the woman, and with lips pressed to her inanimate mouth was striving to stimulate her flaccid lungs

to induce breathing.

Desisting for a moment he called:

“She’s alive, I think. Get a doctor.” “Phone for Osterhout, somebody,”

shouted

gerfield. ‘““Wire’s down,” groaned Grant. “Then get a car and go like hell!” “My car is outside,” said the electrician. I to go?” “T’ll show you,” said Dee.

Dan-

“Where am

“Quick!”

Together they darted into the night. Crossing the pebbled courtyard, Dee involuntarily cried out. “What is it?” he demanded.

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“My foot. I forgot I had no shoes. It doesn’t rutter. Go on.” He swung her strongly into his arms and did not set her down until he had reached the car, when he lifted

her to the seat.

It was as well that he had.

Such was

the yielding of her body in every nerve and muscle as he took her that she could not have stood upright. A light in Dr. Osterhout’s laboratory showed him at work over some test tubes. “Bobs!” called Dee. “Come out. There’s been an accident. We’ve got a car.” In less than a minute they were retracing their course at wild speed, the electrician driving with consummate control while Dee acquainted Osterhout with the main facts. As they came to a stop in the yard Dee turned to the volunteer chauffeur. “Will you wait for me?” she asked in a tone that made Osterhout turn to look at her. Ves,??

Within they found the victim violently ill in the midst of a half-dressed and vastly relieved group. “None the worse for it,” Osterhout reported to Dee after attending the victim. “A little too much water for comfort. And something besides water, wasn’t there?” OY

ag, ??

“A good deal of it?” “Plenty for all hands.” “A rough party?” “About the usual, at this house.’

“Don’t you think you’re out of place in that gallery, Dee?” “Oh, don’t lecture me, Bobs,” said the girl wearily.

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“Y’m through.” But it was another, not Bobs, who was the inspiration of that resolve. To the other, patient in the sighing darkness, she returned. “She’s all right,” she informed him. “But it was a close call.” “Scott saved her, I expect,” he replied absently. “He knew the method.” “Do you know Cary Scott?” she asked, startled. He hesitated. “I did once. I should hardly have expected to find him at this kind of an orgy.” “Tt isn’t as bad as it looks,” she defended weakly. “You told me, didn’t you, that you were going into the pool with the others?” “Yes. But you don’t understand. Will you wait until I go in and get my clothes on?” “J__don’t—think—-so,”” he said with palpable effort. She gathered all her resolution. “Aren’t you going to take me home?” Through the darkness came the sound of a deep-drawn breath. “No,” said his voice, both hard and sad. Only the sadness remained as he continued.

“You see, I had ideal-

ised you.” “You needn’t have,” she retorted bitterly. “I’m just like other girls.” “So I see. I wish to God I’d never seen you!” “’There’s no reason why you should ever see me again,” she answered with rising spirit. “Good. “Not the slightest,” he agreed dolorously. bye.”

"She turned and went into the building. As Dr. Osterhout had no car, Scott and Dee drove hin,

back to his place.

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 when several naturalists of the first rank were still occupied with these problems, should have passed wholly unnoticed, will always remain inexplicable, the more so as the Brünn Society exchanged its publications with most of the Academies of Europe, including both the Royal and Linnean Societies.

Naudin's views were well known to Darwin and are discussed in Animals and Plants (ed. 1885, ., p. 23); but, put forward as they were without full proof, they could not command universal credence. Gärtner, too, had adopted opposite views; and Wichura, working with cases of another order, had proved the fact that some hybrids breed true. Consequently it is not to be wondered at that Darwin was sceptical. Moreover, the Mendelian idea of the "hybrid-character," or heterozygous form, was unknown to him, a conception without which the hypothesis of dis- sociation of characters is quite imperfect.

Had Mendel's work come into the hands of Darwin, it is not too much to say that the history of the development of evolutionary philosophy would have been very different from that which we have witnessed.


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“Who was your friend in the service car, Dee?” asked the physician. “His name is Wollaston.” Cary Scott gave a start. “Wollaston! You know, I thought I caught a glimpse—— Then I supposed that my eyes had gone wrong in the sudden light. He was in working clothes, wasn’t he?” “Yes. He was the electrician from the plant.” “Stanley Wollaston? Electrician? It can’t be the same.”

“It is.

He recognised you and said that he used to

know you.” “Know me! Good God! I should say so! We were in hospital together for weeks in the war. Afterwards I visited him at their place in Hertfordshire. He was a poet and a dreamer then. I remember now. I heard that his branch of the family went broke.” “Where did you know him, Dee?” asked Osterhout. “Oh, it’s a long story, Bobs,” said the girl lightly. Herein she said what was not true. It was a short story; short and vivid and bewildering. In the darkness she ran over the whole scope of it, every detail as clear as if it had not occurred nearly a year before: the breakdown of her motor car in the open country near Rahway; the stranger on the bank of a stream who had put down his rod and come to her aid, a roughly dressed stranger with questing eyes and a quaint turn of speech; the long and patient tinkering, with the mechanism, ending in a second

collapse; the luncheon offered and shared, the talk that followed, a long, long talk such as Dee had never before known, running through luminous hours, touching all the realms of fancy until the incredulous sun turned his face

from them,and went down; the drive back to the village where she left him;

his final words, “I am resisting an

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intolerable temptation when I say no more than good-bye and thank you,” and then nothing until now. Scott’s voice broke in upon her meditations. “I must find out where he is.” “¥ don’t believe I would, Cary,” she advised after Oster: hout had bidden them good-night. “What? Not look up old Stanley? Why not?” “T think he’s cut himself off from all the old life. He— he’s a queer person.” Until the car drew in at Holiday Knoll Scott thought that over in silence. Then he laid a friendly hand over Dee’s. “Old girl,” he said gently, “you seem to know a

lot about him.” “So Ido. You can learn a lot in an afternoon.” “There’s a lot to learn. He’s a wonderful person. Pretty tough to find him like this. ... Are you really interested in him, Dee?”

“Who? Me? I should say not!” returned Dee hardily “Pm going to marry Jimmie James.”

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 CHAPTER

XI

Rieptes from the swimming party spread to wash far shores. Although the participants had been sworn to secrecy, the details had of course been whispered confidentially, adorning themselves with rich imaginings as they travelled. For this, the inopportune electrician was blamed, the indictment against him being strengthened by the astounding fact that Wally Dangerfield, seeking to bribe him into a promise of silence, had been effectually snubbed. ‘To the indirect procurement of the outsider was attributed a specially lively brace of paragraphs in Town Topics, even less veiled than was typical of that journal’s transparent allusions. Penetrating within the virginal confines of the Sisterhood School where it was naturally upon the Index Expurgatorius, thespublication entranced Pat and also contributed in no small degree to her prestige. Having a sister who was involved in a T.T. scandal was feather for any girl’s cap! Pat cherished the glittering ambition of one day appearing in those glorifying pages herself. She wrote to Dee begging to be told all about it. In return came a letter informing her of her sister’s engagement to Jameson James. Connie also wrote saying that it had come

off at last, it was

a very good thing, and

everybody was satisfied. But the senuine opinion of the betrothal went forth from the pen of obert Osterhout to, or perhaps only toward, the dead Mona. “I do not pretend to understand it, my dearest,” he wrote, “and what I do not understand I do not like.

scientific spirit of resentment. 118

The

Dee is still unawakened.

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James has no appeal for her; of that I am satisfied. It will not be he who interprets for her her womanhood. Perhaps it will not be anyone. Nevertheless, our proud Dee has grown inexplicably docile, almost meek. And Jimmy inspires me with a daily desire to kick him, by adopting a condescending attitude toward her, as if he were doing quite a noble thing in marrying her. Such is the position in which she has been put by that infernal ‘Dangerfield Dip’ episode, as it is generally called. In some way, though I don’t know how, the engagement was the result of that party. From what I can learn, the swim au naturel was playful rather than vicious; but the

scandal has been lively.

There was a strange passage

between Dee and a workman who seems to be a gentleman under cover, which puzzled me.

Disturbs me, too, a bit.

. . . How you may be laughing at all this, my darling, with your wider, deeper vision! “Holiday Knoll will be duller when Dee leaves. To me it has been an empty shell since your bright spirit went out of it. Yet I derive my sad satisfactions in looking after the girls as best I may and in trying to make myself hold to the belief of some intangible contact with you through these letters. Ralph is at home very little. When Pat comes back the place will liven up again. Perhaps my tired old ears will recapture from her some of the music of life with which you filled the place. . . . I wish that Dee were less still and self-contained.

She doesn’t

talk to me

any

more;

not as she

used to.” To all the Fentriss household Dee was a puzzle in the days following her engagement, not less to herself, Oster~

hout suspected, than to the others. schoo], because

of an

outbreak

Home early from

of scarlet fever there,

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Pat complained to him, sitting perched on an arm of his ehair with a hand on his shoulder. “Bobs, Dee is moony.” “Ts she? And what is ‘moony’ ?” “You

know

she is,” returned

Pat, scorning to waste

time on obvious definitions. “Isn’t her engagement going all right?” “So far as I can judge. She hasn’t confided in me.” “Bad sign. In some girls it would be a good sign. Not in Dee,” pronounced the oracular Pat with her head on one side like a considering and sagacious bird. “Has she talked to you?” “No; she hasn’t. Bet you she will, though. Dee’s a lot more chummish with me than she used to be.” ‘Because Connie is married. That throws Dee back on you.” “It ought to throw her back on Jimmiejams. I’m not wild

about

T. Jameson

James,

Bobs.

He’s

rather

a

sob.” “What have you got against your future brother-inlaw?” “Oh, he’s so stiff and bumpy. So darn impressed with his own correctness. And it’s mostly bluff. He tried to kiss me last night.” Osterhout’s face darkened for the moment, but he said:

“Why not? You’re only a child to him, and one of the family.” “Brotherly stuff; I know. Only it wasn’t too brotherly. Well,” she laughed knowingly, “I don’t suppose he gets much of that sort of thing from Dee.” “Dee’s a strange little person,” said the doctor absently. ‘“‘She’d be my idea of nothing to be engaged to if I were @ man.”

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Which opinion she later expressed, in slightly modified terms, to the subject of it. “Oh, well, Jimmy

understands,”

responded

Dee neg-

ligently. “T don’t believe any man understands. I don’t believe you understand anything about it yourself.” “Don’t I!” muttered Dee. Pat stared with all her big eyes. “Well, do you?” “Pat,” said the other, fidgetting with an unlighted cigarette—she had taken to smoking, although it was bad for her golf, since her engagement—“you’ve kissed men.” “What if I have?” retorted Pat, instantly on the sullen defensive. ‘Everyone does. You have.” “Men have kissed me. It’s different.” “Tl cable the Emperor of Japan it’s different,” chuckled the slangy Pat. “What do you get out of it?” “You’ve got a nerve to ask me that; you, an engaged girl!” “I’m asking because I don’t know.” “Tell you one thing, then,” said Pat earnestly. “I wouldn’t marry any man that couldn’t make me know.” Dee murmured something that sounded like “Might just as well.”

Thus interpreting it the younger sister returned: “Yes; you might. You’re different.” Ds “I’m not different. I always thought I was, unt 7 “Until!” cried Pat in great excitement.

“Until what?

Who’s the man? And when did it happen?” “It never happened.” “Then you’re a dam’ fool,” replied the other with conviction. “If I was crazy about a man I bet I’d kiss him if it was only for—for experiment.”

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“T've always thought that sort of thing was imbecile.

ke

v

Sort of sickening.”

“Do I know him?" demanded the practical Pat, Nak “Evens and odds Ido. Tell Pattie,” she wheedled. With face gloomily averted, Dee pursued her main preoccupation. “Do you feel when you Kiss a man as if all your nerves were strung wires and an electric shock went flaming along them and then died out and left you es

“OhF? jeered Pat softly.

“And you claim that you've

never been really Kissed.” And I felt his heart beating. . . . And then afterwards,
 * “T haven*t. But he—he lifted me in his arms once.

do you hate and despise yourself for letting it affect you that way?” queried the neophyte of passion, interpreting

dimly the sharp revulsion of her undefeated maidenhood against its own first weakening toward surrender. “No. flected.

Of course I don’t. Why should I?” Pat re “I have been ashamed, though—a little. But

that was because of what someone said to me about it. A friend. He made it seem cheap.” “Cheap? Oh, no; it wasn’t cheap. But that’s what I felt; that ashamedness afterward. As strongly as I felt the other. Stronger.” Instinctive psychologist enough to know that the re

bound is never as powerful as the impact Pat dishelieved this. “Just the same I think you're taking a big chance marrying Jimmy. Why don’t you marry the—the thriller?” “Don't!” snapped Dee. “You're making it cheap now.” “But why don’t you?™ persisted the junior. “TI couldn’t.”

a

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I don’t

know,”

YOUTH

123

That would be binding!” Dee

amended

with

a startled

realisation of how little she did know in comparison with what she felt. “He might just as well be. Tl never sea him again.” “I would,” asserted Pat. “If it was that way with me. If he was the only one.” “Of course he’s the only one. Could you feel that with any man? I can’t understand that,” marvelled Dee. “Oh, no! Not with just anyone. I’d have to like him. Quite a good deal. It isn’t so hard to like ’em when they make love to you. But I’m off’n that stuff,” sighed Pat, turning demure. ‘““There’s nothing in it.” Again she thought of Mr. Scott and that evening of disastrous revelation at the club. His influence had persisted. She quite prided herself that it had. She had thought much about him as one might think of a benign guardian and had written once to bespeak the continuance of their friendship.

‘“‘How’s Con’s affair coming on?” she asked,

as a logical mental sequitur. “With Cary Scott? He’s away. a couple of months’ stay.” “Do you like him, Dee?” "Yess A lot.”

Back in Paris for

‘He isn’t the man, is he?” demanded Pat sharply. Dee’s laughter was refutation enough. “Catch me poaching Connie’s game. It couldn’t be done.” “Oh, I don’t know,” replied the other airily. “Mr. Scott’s got too much brains for old Con. Do you think she’s crazy over him?” “TJ think she misses him.” ‘“When’s he coming back?” “In time for the wedding, anyway.” “The wedding! When is it, Dee?”

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“Second week in July,” said Dee without enthusiasm. “So soon!

Am I going to be a bridesmaid?”

“No.”?

“Qh-h-h-h-h!” wailed Pat. “Pig!? “You’re to be maid of honour.” Pat gave her little, hoarse crow of ecstasy. “How darling of you! That’s too divine! Are you going to give me my frock?”

Dee nodded.

They talked clothes, absorbediy.

When

she got up to go Pat leaned over and kissed her sister, the first time since they were children that she had done this except as a formality of family life. “T almost wish you weren’t going to do it, though, Ree,” she murmured.

“J don’t,” said Dee resolutely.

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 CHAPTER XII

“Ir I could find it in my heart, dearest one, to blame you for anything, it would be for sending little Pat to the Sisterhood School.” (So wrote Robert Oster-

hout to Mona Fentriss.)

‘With the best of intentions

they wreck a mind as thoroughly as house-wreckers gut a building. It was your choice and I dare not change it. Even if I could persuade Ralph to take her out of that environment and send her to Bryn Mawr or Vassar or Smith, which is where she ought to be, she would rebel. She has a contempt for ‘those rah-rah girls,’ a prejudice bred of the shallow and self-sufficient snobbery which is the basic lesson of her scholastic experience. To be sure, they have finished her in the outward attributes of good form, but most of that is a natural heritage which any daughter of yours would have. She can be, when on exhibition, the most impeccable little creature, sparkling, and easy and natural and charmingly deferential toward the older people with whom she comes in contact—when she chooses. For the most part she elects to be calmly careless, slovenly of speech and manner, or lightly impudent. To have good breeding at call but not to waste it on most people—that is the cachet of her set. “But these are surface matters. It is the inner woman —yes, beloved—our little Pat is coming to conscious and dynamic womanhood—which concerns me now and would concern you could you be here. Appalls me, too. But perhaps that is because my standards are the clumsy man-standards. What is she going to get out of life for herself? What does all this meaningless preparation, 125

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aside from the polishing process, look to?

If hers were

just a stupid, satisfied mind, a pattern intellect like Constance’s, it would not so much matter. Or if she had the self-disc:pline and control which Dee’s athletics have given her, I should be less troubled. But Pat’s is a strange little brain; hungry, keen and uncontrolled. It -really craves food, and it is having its appetite blunted by sweets and drugs. Is there nothing that I can do? I hear you ask it. Yes; now that she is at home I can train her a little, but not rigorously, for her mind is toa soft and pampered to set itself seriously to any real task. In the days of her childish gluttony I used to drive her into a fury by mocking her for her pimples, and finally, by excoriating her vanity, got her to adopt a reasonable dict. The outer pimples are gone. But if one could see her mind, it would be found pustulous with acne. And. there can I do little against the damnable influence of the school which has taught her that a hard-trained, clean-blooded mind is not necessary. The other girls do not go in for it. Why be a highbrow? She is so easily a leader in the school, and, as she boasts, puts it over the teachers in any way she pleases. In the days before she became aware of herself it used to be hard to get her to brush her teeth. ‘To-day I presume that her worthy preceptresses would expel her if she did not use the latest dentifrice twice a day. But they are quite willing to let her mind become overlaid with foul scum for want of systematic brushing up. “Dynamite for that institution and all like it! Nothing else would serve. With all your luxuriousness, Mona, your love of excitement, your carpe diem philosophy of life (Pat, who has ‘taken? Latin, does not know what carpe diem signifies), your eagerness for the immediate satisfactions of the moment, you never Ict your brain

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become softened and untrained and fat. The higher interests were just as much @ part of the embellishment of life to you as were flowers or games, music or friends.

What inner friends will little Pat have?

Not literature.

Shakespeare she knows because she must; the school course requires it. But he is a task, not .a delight. Thackeray is slow and Dickens a bore. Poetry is a mechanical exercise; I doubt whether a single really beautiful line of Shelley or Keats or Coleridge remains in her memory, though she can chant R. W. Service and Walt Mason. Swinburne she has read on the sly, absorbing none of the luminousness of his flame; only the heat. Similarly, Balzac means to her the ‘Contes Drolatiques,’ also furtively perused. Conrad and Wells are vague names; something to save until she is older. But O. Henry she dutifully deems a classic and is quite familiar with his tight-rope performances; proud of it, too, as evincing an up-to-date erudition. As for ‘the latest books of the day,’ she is keen on them, particularly if they happen to be some such lewd and false achievement as the intolerable ‘Arab.? Any book spoken of under the breath has for her the stimulus of a race;

she must

absorb it first and look knowing and demure when it is mentioned. The age of sex, Mona... . Her standards of casual reading are of like degree; she considers Town Topics an important chronicle and Vanity Fair a symposium of pure intellect. “Yet she has been taking a course in Literature at the school! “Science has no thrill for Pat; therefore she ignores it. Futile little courses in ‘How to Know’ things hke flowers and birds and mushrooms have gone ne deeper than the skin. No love of nature has been inculcated by them. She hardly knows the names of the great scien-

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tists. Einstein she recognises through having seen his travels chronicled and heard vaudeville jokes about him. But mention Pasteur or Metchnikoff and you would leave her groping; and she doubtless would identify Lister as one who achieved fame by inventing a mouth wash. However, she could at once tell you the name of the fashionable physician to go to for nervous breakdown. “Her economics are as vague as her science. Politics areablank. But to be found ignorant of the most recent trend of the movies or the names of their heroes, or not to know the latest gag of some unspeakable vulgarian of the revues—that would overwhelm her with shame. Her speech and thought are largely a reflection of the contemporary stage. Not the stage of Shaw and O’Neill, but of bedroom farce and trite musical comedy. Thus far she compares unfavourably in education with the average shop girl. “In music and art the reckoning is better. But this again is largely inherited. If the sap-headed sisterhood have not fostered, they at least have not tainted her sound instincts in these directions. She has followed her own bent. “As it is a professedly denominational school she has, of course, specialised or been specialised upon as a churchwoman. A very sound and correct churchwoman, but not much of a Godwoman. No philosophy and vary little ethics are to be found in her religion. Worship is for her a bargain of which the other consideration is prayer. She gives to God certain praises and observamees and asks in return special favours. ‘I'll do this

for you, God, and you do as much for me some day.’ Her expectancy of assured returns she regards as a praiseworthy and pious quality known as faith, Blasphemy, of course. Not the poor child’s. The sin, which

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is a sin of ignorance and loose thinking, is upon the sanctified sisterhood. They have classified the Deity for Pat: God as a social arbiter. “The sisterhood are purists. Naturally. But purists _ only by negation. All the essential facts they dodge. True, there is a course in hygiene. It is conducted by a desiccated virgin who minces about the simple and noble facts of sex life as if she were afraid of getting her feet wet, and whose soul would shrivel within her could

she overhear the casual conversation of the girls whom she purports to instruct. All that side of knowledge and conjecture they absorb from outside contacts. A worse medium would be hard to conceive. From what Pat indicates of the tittle-tattle of ingénues’ luncheons, it would enlighten Rabelais and shock Pepys! And the current jokes between the girls and their boy associates of college age are chiefly innuendo and double entente based on sex. Pat cannot say ‘bed’ or ‘leg’ or ‘skin’ without an expectant self-consciousness. Some reechy sort of bedroom story has been lately going the rounds, the point

of which is involved in the words ‘nudge’ and ‘phone.’ Every time either word is used in Pat’s set, there are knowing looks and sniggers, and some nimble wit makes a quick turn of the context and gets his reward in more or less furtive laughter. It is not so much the moral side, it is the nauseous bad taste that sickens one. The mind decays in that atmosphere. Once Pat said to me: ‘Bobs, you and Mr. Scott are the only clean-minded men Iknow.?

Think of what that means, Mona!

The vicious-

ness of such an environment. Yet the youngsters themselves are not essentially vicious; not many of them. They are curious with the itchy curiosity of their explorative time of life, and they have no proper guidance,

The girls are worse off than the boys who do gain some

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