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"Yes, Dan," she answered simply, "why do you ask?"

"I just want to be sure, my Jean," he said tenderly, "that there's not a single dark corner of your heart in which the old shadows lurk. I want to drive them all out with my love just as we see the sun now lighting with glory every nook and corner of the world. You are sure?"

The thin lips quivered uncertainly and her blue eyes wavered as he searched their depths.

"There's one thing, Dan, that I'll never quite face, I think" – she paused and turned away.

"What, dear?"

"How any man who had ever bent over a baby's cradle with the tenderness and love I've seen in your face for Tom, could forget the mother who gave the life at his command!"

"I didn't forget, dearest," he said sadly. "I fought as a wounded man, alone and unarmed, fights a beast in the jungle. With her sweet spiritual ideal of love a sheltered, innocent woman can't remember that man is still an animal, with tooth and claw and unbridled passions, that when put to the test his religion and his civilization often are only a thin veneer, that if he becomes a civilized human being in his relations to women it is not by inheritance, for he is yet in the zoölogical period of development – but that it is by the divine achievement of character through struggle. Try, dearest, if you can, to imagine such a struggle. This primeval man, in the shadows with desires inflamed by hunger, meets this free primeval woman who is unafraid, who laughs at the laws of Society because she has nothing to lose. Both are for the moment animals pure and simple. The universal in him finds its counterpart in the universal in her. And whether she be fair or dark, her face, her form, her body, her desires are his – and, above all, she is near – and in that moment with a nearness that overwhelms by its enfolding animal magnetism all powers of the mind to think or reflect. Two such beings are atoms tossed by a storm of forces beyond their control. A man of refinement wakes from such a crash of elemental powers dazed and humiliated. Your lips can speak no word as vile, no curse as bitter as I have hurled against myself – "

The voice broke and he was silent. A little hand pressed his, and her words were the merest tender whisper as she leaned close:

"I've forgiven you, my love, and I'm going to let you teach me again to live. I'll be a very docile little scholar in your school. But you know I can't forget in a moment the greatest single hour that is given a woman to know – the hour she feels the breath of her first born on her breast. It's the memory of that hour that hurts. I won't try to deceive you. I'll get over it in the years to come if God sends them – "

"He will send them – he will send them!" the man broke in with desperate emotion.

Both were silent for several minutes and a smile began to play about the blue eyes when she spoke at last:

"You remember how angry you were that morning when you found a doctor and a nurse in charge of your home? And the great fear that gripped your heart at the first mad cry of pain I gave? I laughed at myself the next moment. And then how I found your hand and wouldn't let you go. The doctor stormed and ordered you out, and I just held on and shook my head, and you stayed. And when the doctor turned his back I whispered in your ear:

"''You won't leave me, Dan, darling, for a single moment – promise me – swear it!'

"And you answered:

"'Yes, I swear it, honey – but you must be very brave – braver than I am, you know' —

"And you begged me to take an anesthetic and I wouldn't, like a little fool. I wanted to know all and feel all if it killed me. And the anguish of your face became so terrible, dear – I was sorrier for you than for myself. And when I saw your lips murmuring in an agony of prayer, I somehow didn't mind it then – "

She paused, looked far out over the hills and continued:

"What a funny cry he gave – that first one – not a real baby cry – just a funny little grunt like a good-natured pig! And how awfully disappointed you were at the shapeless bundle of red flesh that hardly looked human! But I could see the lines of your dear face in his, I knew that he would be even handsomer than his big, brave father and pressed him close and laughed for joy – "

She stopped and sighed:

"You see, Dan, what I couldn't understand is how any man who has felt the pain and the glory of this, with his hand clasped in the hand of the woman he loves, their two souls mirrored in that first pair of mysterious little eyes God sent from eternity – how he could forget the tie that binds – "

He made no effort to interrupt her until the last bitter thought that had been rankling in her heart was out. He was looking thoughtfully over the valley. An eagle poised above the field in the foreground, darted to the stubble with lightning swiftness and rose with a fluttering brown quail in his talons. His shrill cry of triumph rang pitilessly in the stillness of the heights.

The little figure gave an unconscious shiver and she added in low tones:

"I'm never going to speak of this nameless thing again, Dan, but you asked me this morning and I've told you what was in my heart. I just couldn't understand how you could forget – "

"Only a beast could, dearest," he answered with a curl of the lip. "I'm something more than that now, taught by the bitterness of experience. You're just a sweet, innocent girl who has never looked the world as it is in the face. Reared as you were, you can't understand that there's a difference as deep as the gulf between heaven and hell, in the divine love that binds my soul and body and life to you and the sudden passing of a storm of passion. Won't you try to remember this?"

"Yes, dear, I will – "

She looked into his eyes with a smile of tenderness:

"A curious change is coming over you, Dan. I can begin to see it. There used to be a line of cruelty sometimes about your mouth and a flash of it in your eyes. They're gone. There's something strong and tender, wise and sweet, in their place. If I were an artist I could paint it but I can't just tell you what it is. I used to think the cruel thing I saw in you was the memory of the war. Your eyes saw so much of blood and death and pain and cruelty – "

"Perhaps it was," he said slowly. "War does make men cruel – unconsciously cruel. We lose all sense of the value of human life – "

"No, it wasn't that," she protested, "it was the other thing – the – the – Beast you've been talking about. It's not there any more, Dan – and I'm going to be happy now. I know it, dear – "

He bent and kissed the slender fingers.

"If this old throat of mine just won't bother me again," she added.

He looked at her and turned pale:

"It's bothering you this morning?"

She lifted the delicately shaped head and touched her neck:

"Not much pain, but a sense of fullness. I feel as if I'm going to choke sometimes."

He rose abruptly, a great fear in his heart:

"We'll go back to town at once. The doctor should arrive at three from New York."

"Let's not hurry," she cried smiling. "I'm happy now. You're my old sweetheart again and I'm on a new honeymoon – "

He gazed at the white slender throat. She was looking unusually well. He wondered if this were a trick of the enemy to throw him off his guard. He wondered what was happening in those tiny cells behind the smooth round lines of the beautiful neck. It made him sick and faint to think of the possibility of another attack – just when the fight was over – just when she had begun to smile and find life sweet again! His soul rose in fierce rebellion. It was too horrible for belief. He simply wouldn't believe it!

"All right!" he exclaimed with decision. "We'll stay here till two o'clock, anyhow. We can drive back in three hours. The train will be late – it always is."

Through the long hours of a wonderful spring morning they basked in the sun side by side on a bed of leaves he piled in a sheltered spot on the mountain side. They were boy and girl again. The shadows had lifted and the world was radiant with new glory. They talked of the future and the life of perfect mutual faith and love that should be theirs.

And each moment closer came the soft footfall of an unseen angel.

CHAPTER XVII
THE OPAL GATES

The doctor was waiting at the hotel, his keen eyes very serious. He had guessed the sinister meaning of the summons. He was an unusually brusque man – almost rude in his words. He greeted Norton with friendly sympathy and smiled at the radiant face of the wife.

"Well, little mother," he said with grave humor, "we have more trouble. But you're brave and patient. It's a joy to work for you."

"And now," she responded gayly, "you've got to finish this thing, doctor. I don't want any more half-way operations. I'm going to get well this time. I'm happy and I'm going to be strong again."

"Good, we'll get at it right away. I knew you'd feel that way and so I brought with me a great surgeon, the most skillful man I know in New York. I've told him of your case, a very unusual one, and he is going to help me."

The little mouth smiled bravely:

"I'll be ready for the examination in half an hour – "

When the doctors emerged from her room the sun had set behind the dark blue hills and Norton was waiting on the balcony for their report.

The specialist walked slowly to where he was standing. He couldn't move from his tracks. His throat was dry and he had somehow lost the power of speech. He looked into the face of the man of science, read the story of tragedy and a mist closed his eyes.

The doctor took his arm gently:

"I've bad news for you – "

"Yes, I know," was the low answer.

"The truth is best – "

"I want to know it."

"She can't live!"

The tall figure stiffened, there was a moment of silence and when he spoke his words fell slowly with measured intensity:

"There's not a single chance, doctor?"

"Not worth your cherishing. You'd as well know this now and be prepared. We opened and drained the old wound, and both agreed that it is too late for an operation. The flesh that guards the wall of the great vein is a mere shred. She would die under the operation. I can't undertake it."

"And it will not heal again?"

The doctor was silent for a long while and his eyes wandered to the darkening sky where the stars were coming out one by one:

"Who knows but God? And who am I to set bounds to his power?"

"Then there may be a slender chance?" he asked eagerly.

"To the eye of Science – no – yet while life lingers we always hope. But I wouldn't advise you to leave her side for the next ten days. The end, if it comes, will be very sudden, and it will be too late for speech."

A groan interrupted his words and Norton leaned heavily against the balcony rail. The doctor's voice was full of feeling as he continued:

"If you have anything to say to her you'd better say it quickly to be sure that it does not remain unsaid."

"Thank you – "

"I have told her nothing more can be done now until the wound from this draining heals – that when it does she can come to New York for a final decision on the operation."

"I understand."

"We leave to-night on the midnight express – "

"You can do nothing more?"

"Nothing."

A warm pressure of the hand in the gathering twilight and he was gone. The dazed man looked toward the fading sky-line of the southwest at Mt. Pisgah's towering black form pushing his way into the track of the stars and a feeling of loneliness crushed his soul.

He turned abruptly, braced himself for the ordeal and hurried to her room. She was unusually bright and cheerful.

"Why, it didn't hurt a bit, dear!" she exclaimed joyfully. "It was nothing. And when it heals you're to take me to New York for the operation – "

He took her hot hand and kissed it through blinding tears which he tried in vain to fight back.

"They didn't even have to pack that nasty old gauze in it again – were you very much scared waiting out there, Dan?"

"Very much."

She started at the queer note in his voice, caught her hand in his brown locks and pressed his head back in view:

"Why, you're crying – you big foolish boy! You mustn't do that. I'm all right now – I feel much better – there's not a trace of pain or uneasiness. Don't be silly – it's all right, remember."

He stroked the little hand:

"Yes, I'll remember, dearest."

"It should all be healed in three weeks and then we'll go to New York. It'll just be fun! I've always been crazy to go. I won't mind the operation – you'll be with me every minute now till I'm well again."

"Yes, dear, every moment now until – you – are – well."

The last words came slowly, but by a supreme effort of will the voice was held even.

He found mammy, told her the solemn truth, and sent her to hire a nurse for the baby.

"Either you or I must be by her side every minute now, mammy – day and night."

"Yessir, I understand," the dear old voice answered.

Every morning early the nurse brought the baby in for a romp as soon as he waked and mammy came to relieve the tired watcher.

Ten days passed before the end came. Many long, sweet hours he had with her hand in his as the great shadow deepened, while he talked to her of life and death, and immortality.

A strange peace had slowly stolen into his heart. He had always hated and feared death before. Now his fears had gone. And the face of the dim white messenger seemed to smile at him from the friendly shadows.

The change came quietly one night as they sat in the moonlight of her window.

"Oh, what a beautiful world, Dan!" she said softly, and then the little hand suddenly grasped her throat! She turned a blanched face on him and couldn't speak.

He lifted her tenderly and laid her on the bed, rang for the doctor and sent mammy for the baby.

She motioned for a piece of paper – and slowly wrote in a queer, trembling hand:

"I understand, dearest, I am going – it's all right. I am happy – remember that I love you and have forgiven – rear our boy free from the curse – you know what I mean. I had rather a thousand times that he should die than this – my brooding spirit will watch and guard."

The baby kissed her sweetly and lisped:

"Good night, mamma!"

From the doorway he waved his chubby little arm and cried again:

"Night, night, mamma!"

The sun was slowly climbing the eastern hills when the end came. Its first rays streamed through the window and fell on his haggard face as he bent and pressed a kiss on the silent lips of the dead.

CHAPTER XVIII
QUESTIONS

The thing that crushed the spirit of the man was not the shock of death with its thousand and one unanswerable questions torturing the soul, but the possibility that his acts had been the cause of the tragedy. Dr. Williams had said to him over and over again:

"Make her will to live and she'll recover!"

He had fought this grim battle and won. She had willed to live and was happy. The world had never seemed so beautiful as the day she died. If the cause of her death lay further back in the curious accident which happened at the birth of the child, his soul was clear of guilt.

He held none of the morbid fancies of the super-sensitive mind that would make a father responsible for a fatal outcome in the birth of a babe. God made women to bear children. The only woman to be pitied was the one who could not know the pain, the joy and the danger of this divine hour.

But the one persistent question to which his mind forever returned was whether the shock of his sin had weakened her vitality and caused the return of this old trouble.

The moment he left the grave on the day of her burial, he turned to the old doctor with this grim question. He told him the whole story. He told him every word she had spoken since they left home. He recounted every hour of reaction and depression, the good and the bad, just as the recording angel might have written it. He ended his recital with the burning question:

"Tell me now, doctor, honestly before God, did I kill her?"

"Certainly not!" was the quick response.

"Don't try to shield me. I can stand the truth. I don't belong to a race of cowards. After this no pain can ever come but that my soul shall laugh!"

"I'm honest with you, my boy. I've too much self-respect not to treat you as a man in such an hour. No, if she died as you say, you had nothing to do with it. The seed of death was hiding there behind that slender, graceful throat. I was always afraid of it. And I've always known that if the pain returned she'd die – "

"You knew that before we left home?"

"Yes. I only hinted the truth. I thought the change might prolong her life, that's all."

"You're not saying this to cheer me? This is not one of your lies you give for medicine sometimes?"

"No" – the old doctor smiled gravely. "No, shake off this nightmare and go back to your work. Your people are calling you."

He made a desperate effort to readjust himself to life, but somehow at the moment the task was hopeless. He had preached, with all the eloquence of the enthusiasm of youth, that life in itself is always beautiful and always good. He found it was easier to preach a thing than to live it.

The old house seemed to be empty, and, strange to say, the baby's voice didn't fill it. He had said to himself that the patter of his little feet and the sound of his laughter would fill its halls, make it possible to live, and get used to the change. But it wasn't so. Somehow the child's laughter made him faint. The sound of his voice made the memory of his mother an intolerable pain. His voice in the morning was the first thing he heard and it drove him from the house. At night when he knelt to lisp his prayers her name was a stab, and when he waved his little hands and said: "Good night, Papa!" he could remember nothing save the last picture that had burned itself into his soul.

He tried to feed and care for a canary she had kept in her room, but when he cocked his little yellow head and gave the loving plaintive cry with which he used to greet her, the room became a blur and he staggered out unable to return for a day.

The silent sympathy of his dog, as he thrust his nose between his hands and wagged his shaggy tail, was the only thing that seemed to count for anything.

"I understand, Don, old boy," he cried, lifting his paw into his lap and slipping his arm around the woolly neck, "you're telling me that you love me always, good or bad, right or wrong. I understand, and it's very sweet to know it. But I've somehow lost the way on life's field, old boy. The night is coming on and I can't find the road home. You remember that feeling when we were lost sometimes in strange countries hunting together, you and I?"

Don licked his hand and wagged his tail again.

He rose and walked through the lawn, radiant now with the glory of spring. But the flowers had become the emblems of Death not Life and their odor was oppressive.

A little black boy, in a ragged shirt and torn trousers, barefooted and bareheaded, stopped at the gate, climbed up and looked over with idle curiosity at his aimless wandering. He giggled and asked:

"Ye don't need no boy fer nothin, do ye?"

The man's sombre eyes suddenly lighted with a look of hate that faded in a moment and he made no reply. What had this poor little ragamuffin, his face smeared with dirt and his eyes rolling with childish mirth, to do with tragic problems which his black skin symbolized! He was there because a greedy race of empire builders had need of his labor. He had remained to torment and puzzle and set at naught the wisdom of statesmen for the same reason. For the first time in his life he asked himself a startling question:

"Do I really need him?"

Before the shock that threw his life into ruins he would have answered as every Southerner always answered at that time:

"Certainly I need him. His labor is indispensable to the South."

But to-day, back of the fire that flashed in his eyes, there had been born a new thought. He was destined to forget it in the stress of the life of the future, but it was there growing from day to day. The thought shaped itself into questions:

"Isn't the price we pay too great? Is his labor worth more than the purity of our racial stock? Shall we improve the breed of men or degrade it? Is any progress that degrades the breed of men progress at all? Is it not retrogression? Can we afford it?"

He threw off his train of thought with a gesture of weariness and a great desire suddenly possessed his heart to get rid of such a burden by a complete break with every tie of life save one.

"Why not take the boy and go?" he exclaimed.

The more he turned the idea over in his mind the more clearly it seemed to be the sensible thing to do.

But the fighting instinct within him was too strong for immediate surrender. He went to his office determined to work and lose himself in a return to its old habits.

He sat down at his desk, but his mind was a blank. There wasn't a question on earth that seemed worth writing an editorial about. Nothing mattered.

For two hours he sat hopelessly staring at his exchanges. The same world, which he had left a few weeks before when he had gone down into the valley of the shadows to fight for his life, still rolled on with its endless story of joy and sorrow, ambitions and struggle. It seemed now the record of the buzzing of a lot of insects. It was a waste of time to record such a struggle or to worry one way or another about it. And this effort of a daily newspaper to write the day's history of these insects! It might be worth the while of a philosopher to pause a moment to record the blow that would wipe them out of existence, but to get excited again over their little squabbles – it seemed funny now that he had ever been such a fool!

He rose at last in disgust and seized his hat to go home when the Chairman of the Executive Committee of his party suddenly walked into his office unannounced. His face was wreathed in smiles and his deep bass voice had a hearty, genuine ring:

"I've big news for you, major!"

The editor placed a chair beside his desk, motioned his visitor to be seated and quietly resumed his seat.

"It's been settled for some time," he went on enthusiastically, "but we thought best not to make the announcement so soon after your wife's death. I reckon you can guess my secret?"

"I give it up," was the listless answer.

"The Committee has voted unanimously to make you the next Governor. Your nomination with such backing is a mere formality. Your election is a certainty – "

The Chairman sprang to his feet and extended his big hand:

"I salute the Governor of the Commonwealth – the youngest man in the history of the state to hold such high office – "

"You mean it?" Norton asked in a stupor.

"Mean it? Of course I mean it! Why don't you give me your hand? What's the matter?"

"You see, I've sort of lost my bearings in politics lately."

The Chairman's voice was lowered:

"Of course, major, I understand. Well, this is the medicine you need now to brace you up. For the first time in my memory a name will go before our convention without a rival. There'll be just one ballot and that will be a single shout that'll raise the roof – "

Norton rose and walked to his window overlooking the Square, as he was in the habit of doing often, turning his back for a moment on the enthusiastic politician.

He was trying to think. The first big dream of his life had come true and it didn't interest him.

He turned abruptly and faced his visitor:

"Tell your Committee for me," he said with slow emphatic voice, "that I appreciate the high honor they would do me, but cannot accept – "

"What!"

"I cannot accept the responsibility."

"You don't mean it?"

"I was never more in earnest."

The Chairman slipped his arm around the editor with a movement of genuine sympathy:

"Come, my boy, this is nonsense. I'm a veteran politician. No man ever did such a thing as this in the history of the state! You can't decline such an honor. You're only twenty-five years old."

"Time is not measured by the tick of a clock," Norton interrupted, "but by what we've lived."

"Yes, yes, we know you've had a great shock in the death of your wife, but you must remember that the people – a million people – are calling you to lead them. It's a solemn duty. Don't say no now. Take a little time and you'll see that it's the work sent to you at the moment you need it most. I won't take no for an answer – "

He put on his hat and started to the door:

"I'll just report to the Committee that I notified you and that you have the matter under consideration."

Before Norton could enter a protest the politician had gone.

His decision was instantly made. This startling event revealed the hopelessness of life under its present conditions. He would leave the South. He would put a thousand miles between him and the scene of the events of the past year. He would leave his home with its torturing memories.

Above all, he would leave the negroid conditions that made his shame possible and rear his boy in clean air.