He had said quietly: “You are going to marry me!”

And she had replied, as if there could be no possible doubt about it:

“Yes, I am going to marry you.”

“Because you love me better than anything or anybody else in all the world, even as I love you.”

“Because I love you better than anything or anybody else in all the world,” she repeated.

“So far, so good. When, Beloved Lady?”

At that she hesitated for a space and fell silent. He pressed her head closer, and bending his tall head laid his cheek to hers.

“When?”

“Presently. But before that, dearest and best of men, there are so many, many things I wish to tell you, so many things I wish you to know! I wish you to know me. Everything about me! For once upon a time there was a sad, neglected child, a piteous child I must make you acquainted with. There was an ignorant and undisciplined young girl ”

“You?”

She nodded sorrowfully. His clasp tightened. He slipped a hand beneath her chin, tilted her face upward, and kissed her eyes that had suddenly filled with tears, her lips that quivered.

“Beloved Lady, I understand: for there was once upon a time a sad, neglected child, an ugly little lad, barefooted and poverty-stricken after his mother’s death. There was an ignorant and undisciplined boy ”

“You?” Her arms went around him protectingly, in a mothering and tender clasp.

“Who else? And being very ignorant indeed, he sold himself into bondage for a mess of pottage, and was thrall for weary years. He got exactly what he paid for. And life was ashes upon his head and wormwood in his mouth, and his heart was empty in his breast, because he snatched at shadows. And then one day the door of his prison was opened by the keeper, and he said, ‘Now I am free!’ But it was his fate to go down into hell for a season. There were times when he asked himself, ‘Why don’t I blow out my brains and escape?’ Nothing but the simple faith and heroism of common men about him saved him from despair. One day a blinded soldier said, ’See for us!’ So he began to see, but still without hope, still without happiness, until he came here and found you.” His voice was melted gold.

She had listened breathlessly. And after a pause she asked:

“Who was the keeper of his prison?”

“The woman to whom he had been married.”

Her arms fell from him. She tried to draw herself away, but he held her all the closer.

“Do not think unkindly of her. I don’t think she really knew she was an ogress! After all, she did unlock the door and say, ‘Go!’ And well, here I am, darling woman. And I’m going to marry you!”

“Did you never love her?”

“Never. I was so frightfully unhappy that the best I could do was not to hate her. I’m afraid she hated me poor ogress! Well! That’s all over and done with. Like an evil dream. I’m here, and you’re going to marry me.” Very gently he drew her arms around him again. “Ah, hold fast to me! Hold fast! I have waited for you so long, I need you so much!” he breathed.

“I don’t seem able to help myself!” she sighed. And she asked seriously: “What do the people who love you most call you when they speak to you?”

The brown and bearded faces of comrades rose before him, their voices sounded in his ears.

“Pierre.”

“Pierre,” said she, bravely, as if to call him by his name emboldened her, “I too have been freed from a hateful marriage. Sometime I will tell you all about it. But oh, do not let us talk about it now! I cannot bear to think of him! I cannot bear to have his shadow, even, fall upon me now, or come near you!” That gangling bridegroom in his ill-fitting suit, with his wincing mouth, his eyes full of disgust and aversion, his air of a man sentenced to death or marriage with herself came before her, and she shivered.

Despite her words a horrible jealousy of that unknown man assailed him. He asked fiercely:

“You loved him, once?”

“Oh, no! Oh, no! Never! I why, Pierre, until you came, I didn’t even know what love meant! Once that ignorant, undisciplined girl I spoke of, thought she loved a boy. She didn’t. She loved the idea of love. And once again, Pierre, because my life was so empty, and because I didn’t know any better, I thought I should be willing to marry somebody else. I thought that somebody else could fill my life. But now I know that could never be. You are here.”

He looked at her with infinite tenderness. There were things he, too, would have to tell her, by and by. And he was sure that the woman whose coming little Denise had seemed to foreknow, would understand. He said gravely:

“Yes, we have found each other. That is all that really matters. Nothing, nobody else, counts with you and me.” And then, of a sudden, he laughed happily: “And, Beloved Lady, I do not know your name! I can’t call you ‘Mrs. Riley,’ can I? By what name, then, shall the one who loves you most call you?”

“Anne.” And she asked eagerly: “Do you like it?”

He started. Anne! Strange that the name that had been his chiefest unhappiness should now become his chiefest joy! Strange that he hadn’t guessed Anne could be the most beautiful of all names for a woman! Like it? Of course he liked it! Wasn’t it hers?

“Anne, you haven’t yet said when you will marry me.”

“Oh, but you are sure of that!” she parried.

“I am so sure of it that I am quite capable of taking you by the hair and dragging you off to the parson’s, if you try to make me wait. Anne! Remember that ever since I was that barefooted, lonely child I have been waiting for you. My dear, I need you so greatly!”

She said passionately: “You cannot need me as I need you. You are yourself. You couldn’t be anything else. You were you before you ever saw me. But I I couldn’t be my real self until you came and looked at me and kissed me.”

He felt humble, and reverent, and at the same time exultant. When she said presently, “I must go now,” he released her reluctantly. They walked hand in hand, pausing at the small headland beyond which the village came in sight. She took both his hands and held them against her breast.

“You are my one man. I love you so much that I am going to give my whole life into your hands, as fully and as freely as I shall some day give my spirit into the hands of God. But, Pierre, there are those who have been very, very kind to me, those to whom I owe well, explanations. When I have made those explanations and and settled my accounts, then all the rest of my life is yours.”

“You are very, very sure, Anne?” His voice was wistful.

“My love for you,” she said proudly, “is the one great reality. I am surer of that than I have ever been of anything in this world.” And she stood there looking at him with her heart in her eyes. Of a sudden, with a little cry, she pulled his head down to her, kissed him upon the mouth, pushed him from her, and fled.

When she reached her room again, she couldn’t sleep, but knelt by her window and watched the skies pale and then flush like a young girl’s face, and the morning-star blaze and pale, and the sun come up over a bright and beautiful world in which she herself was, she felt, new-born. Far in the background of things, unreal as a dream, hovered the unlovely figure of Nancy Simms, and nearer, but still almost as unreal, the bright, cold figure of Anne Champneys, that Anne Champneys who had wished to marry Berkeley Hayden to gratify pride and ambition. The woman kneeling by the window, watching the glory of the morning, looked back upon those two as a winged butterfly might remember its caterpillar crawlings.

All that glittering life Anne Champneys had planned for herself? Swept away as if it had been a bit of tinsel! Money? Position? She laughed low to herself. She didn’t care whether her man had possessions or lacked them. All she asked was that he should be himself and hers. All that Milly had been to Chadwick Champneys the passionate lover, the perfect comrade, the friend nothing daunted, no wind of fortune could change Anne could be, would be to Pierre.

There was but one shadow upon her new happiness: she hated to disappoint Marcia. Marcia had set her heart upon the Hayden marriage. It was toward that consummation, so devoutly to be hoped, that Marcia had planned. And just when that plan was nearing perfection Anne was going to have to frustrate it. She hated to hurt Hayden himself, and the thought of his angry disappointment was painful to her. She liked Hayden. She would always like him. But she couldn’t marry him. To marry Hayden, loving Pierre, would have been to work them both an irremediable injury. A sort of horror of what she had been about to do came upon her. The bare thought of it made her recoil.

Her native shrewdness told her that Hayden’s immense pride would come to his aid. The fact that she had dared to desire somebody else, to prefer another to his lordly self would be enough to prove to Hayden that she wasn’t worthy of his affections. He would feel that he had been deceived in her. She couldn’t help hoping that he wouldn’t altogether despise her. She hoped that Marcia wouldn’t be too angry to forgive her. And then her thoughts merged into a prayer: Oh dear God, help her to make Pierre happy, to grow to his stature, to be worthy of him!

Back there on the beach he lay with his head in his arms, humble before the power and the glory that had come to him. This, this was the face he had always sought, the beauty that had so long eluded him! Beauty, mere physical beauty, appealed to him as it always appeals to an artist, but it had never had the power to hold him for any length of time. It had palled upon him. To satisfy his demand, beauty must have upon it the ineffable imprint of the soul. This woman’s face was as baffling, as inexplicable, in its way, as was Mona Lisa’s. One wasn’t sure that she was beautiful; one was only sure that she was unforgetable, and that after other faces had faded from the memory, hers remained to haunt the heart. And that red hair of hers, like the hair of a Norse sun-goddess!

He fell into pleasant dreams. He was going to take her down south with him; he wanted her to see that little brown house in South Carolina, to know the tide-water gurgling in the Riverton coves, and mocking-birds singing to the moonlit night, and the voice of the whippoorwill out of the thickets. She must know the marshes, and the live-oaks hung with moss. All the haunts of his childhood she should know, and old Emma Campbell would sit and talk to her about his mother. They would stay in the little house hallowed by his mother’s mild spirit. And he would show her that first sketch of the Red Admiral. And afterward they two would plan how to make the best use of the Champneys money. He was very, very sure of her sympathy and her understanding. Why, you couldn’t look into her eyes without knowing how exquisite her sympathy would be!

He was so stirred, so thrilled, that the creative power that had seemed to fail him, that had left him so emptily alone these many bitter months, came to him with a rush. He got to his feet and went tramping up and down the strip of shore, his eyes clouded with visions. Before his mind’s eye the picture he meant to paint took shape and form and color. And as he walked home he whistled like a happy boy.

He had brought his materials along with him as a matter of habit. With his powers at high tide, in the first glamour of a great passion, he set himself to work next morning to portray her as his heart knew her.

He worked steadily, stopping only when the light failed. He was so absorbed in his task that he forgot his body. But Grandma Baker was a wise old woman, and she came at intervals and forced food upon him. Then he slept, and awoke with the light to rush back to his work. His old rare gift of visualizing a face in its absence had grown with the years; and this was the face of all faces. There was not a shade or a line of that face he didn’t know. And after a while she appeared upon his canvas, breathing, immensely alive, with the inmost spirit of her informing her gray-green eyes, her virginal mouth, her candid and thoughtful brow. There she stood, Anne as Peter Champneys knew and loved her.

He had done great work in his time. But this was painted with the blood of his heart. This was his high-water mark. It would take its place with those immortal canvases that are the slow accretions of the ages, the perfectest flowerings of genius. He was swaying on his feet when he painted in the Red Admiral. Then he flung himself upon his bed and slept like a dead man.

When he awoke, she seemed to be a living presence in his room. He gasped, and sat with his hands between his knees, staring at her almost unbelievingly. He looked at the Red Admiral above his signature, and fetched a great, sighing breath.

“We’ve done it at last, by God!” said he, soberly. “Fairy, we’ve reached the heights!”

But when he appeared at the breakfast-table Grandma Baker regarded him with deep concern.

“My land o’ love!” she exclaimed. “Why, you look like you been buried and dug up!”

“Permit me,” said he, politely, “to congratulate you upon your perspicacity. That is exactly what happened to me.”

“Eh!” said Grandma, setting her spectacles straight on her old nose.

“And let me add: It’s worth the price!” said the resurrected one, genially. “Grandma Baker, were you very much in love?”

“Abner tried his dumdest to find that out,” said Grandma Baker. “He was the plaguedest man ever was for wantin’ to know things, but somehow I sort o’ didn’t want him changed any. You got ways put me mightily in mind o’ Abner.” The old eyes were very sweet, and a wintry rose crept into her withered cheek. She added: “I know what’s ailin’ you, young man! Lord knows I hope you’ll be happy as Abner and me was!”

He went back to his room and communed with his picture. It was the sort that, if you stayed with it a little while, liked to commune with you. It would divine your mood, and the eyes followed you with an uncanny understanding, the smile said more than any words could say. You almost saw her eyelids move, her breast rise and fall to her breathing. The man trembled before his masterpiece.

His heart swelled. He exulted in his genius, a high gift to be laid at the feet of the beloved. All he had, all he could ever be, belonged to her. She had called forth his best. He said to her painted semblance:

“You are my first love-gift. I am going to send you to her, and she’ll know she hasn’t given her love, her beauty, her youth, to an unworthy or an obscure lover. She’s given herself to me, Peter Champneys, and because she loves me I’ll give her a name she can wear like a crown: I’ll set her upon the purple heights!”

She was at the far end of the Thatcher garden, behind the house and hidden from it, when he arrived with the canvas, which he hadn’t dared entrust to any other carrier he was too jealously careful of it. No, he told Mrs. Thatcher, it wasn’t necessary to disturb her guest. Just allow him to place the canvas in Mrs. Riley’s sitting-room. She would find it there when she returned.

Mrs. Thatcher complied willingly enough. She liked the tall, black-bearded man whom shrewd old Grandma Baker couldn’t praise sufficiently.

“Excuse me for not goin’ up with you, on account of my hands bein’ in the mixin’-bowl. It’s a picture, ain’t it? You just step right upstairs and set it on the mantel or anywheres you like. I’ll tell her you been here.”

And so he placed it on the mantel, where the north light fell full upon it, waved his hand to it, and went away. It would tell her all that was in his heart for her. It would explain himself. The Red Admiral would assure that!

Anne had been having rather a troublesome time. She had written to Marcia and to Berkeley Hayden the night before, and the letters had been posted only that morning. She had had to be very explicit, to make her position perfectly plain to them both, and the letters had not been easy to write. But when she had finally written them, she had really succeeded in explaining her true self. There was no doubt as to her entire truthfulness, or the finality of this decision of hers. When she posted those letters, she knew that a page of her life had been turned down, the word “Finis” written at the bottom of it. She had tossed aside a brilliant social career, a high position, a great fortune, and counted it all well lost. Her one regret was to have to disappoint Marcia. She loved Marcia. And she hoped that Berkeley wouldn’t despise her.

She was agitated, perturbed, and yet rapturously happy. She wished to be alone to hug that happiness to her heart, and so she had gone out under the apple-trees at the far end of the Thatcher orchard, and lay there all her long length in the good green grass. The place was full of sweet and drowsy odors. Birds called and fluted. Butterflies and bees came and went. She had never felt so close to Mother Earth as she did to-day, never so keenly sensed the joy of being alive.

After a while she arose, reluctantly, and went back to the house and her rooms. She was remembering that she hadn’t yet written to Jason, and she wanted Jason to know. Inside her sitting-room door she stopped short, eyes widened, lips fallen apart. On the mantel, glowing, jewel-like in the clear, pure light, herself confronted her. Herself as a great artist saw and loved her.

She stood transfixed. The sheer power and beauty of the work, that spell which falls upon one in the presence of all great art, held her entranced. Her own eyes looked, at her as if they challenged her; her own smile baffled her; there was that in the pictured face which brought a cry to her lips. Oh, was she so fair in his eyes? Only great love, as well as great genius, could have so portrayed her!

This was herself as she might be, grown finer, and of a larger faith, a deeper and sweeter charity. A sort of awe touched her. This man who loved her, who had the power of showing her herself as she might pray to become, this wonderful lover of hers, was no mere amateur with a pretty gift. This was one of the few, one of the torch-bearers!

And then she noticed the Red Admiral in the corner. She stared at it unbelievingly. That butterfly! Why why She had read of one who signed with a butterfly above his name pictures that were called great. A thought that made her brain swim and her heart beat suffocatingly crashed upon her like a clap of thunder. She walked toward the mantel like one in a daze, until she stood directly before the painting.

And it was his butterfly. And under it was his name: Peter Devereaux Champneys.

The room bobbed up and down. But she didn’t faint, she didn’t scream. She caught hold of the mantel to steady herself. She wondered how she hadn’t known; she had the same sense of wild amazement that must fill one who has been brought face to face with a stupendous, a quite impossible miracle. Such a thing couldn’t happen: and yet it is so! And oddly enough, out of this welter of her thoughts, there came to her memory a screened bed in a hospital ward, and a dying gutter-girl looking at her with unearthly eyes and telling her in a thin whisper:

“I wanted to see if you was good enough for him. You ain’t. But remember what I’m tellin’ you you could be.”

Pierre Peter Champneys! She slipped to her knees and hid her face in her shaking hands. Peter Champneys! As in a lightning flash she saw him as that girl Gracie had seen him. Pierre Pierre, with his eyes of an archangel, his lips that were the chrism of life this was Peter Champneys! And she had hated him, let him go, all unknowing, she had wished to put in his place Berkeley Hayden. The handsome, worldly figure of Hayden seemed to dwindle and shrink. Pierre stood as on a height, looking at her steadfastly. Her head went lower. Tears trickled between her fingers.

You ain’t good enough for him, but you could be.

“I can be, I can be! Oh, God, I can be! Only let him love me when he knows!”

She heard Mrs. Thatcher’s voice downstairs, after a while. Then a deeper voice, a man’s voice, with a note of impatience and eagerness in it.

“No, don’t call her. I’ll go right on up,” said the voice, over the feminine apologies and protests. “I have to see her I must see her now. No, I can’t wait.”

Somebody came flying up the steps. She hadn’t closed her door, and his tall figure seemed to fill it. He stopped, with a gasp, at sight of the weeping woman kneeling before the picture on the mantel.

“Anne!” he cried. “Anne!” And he would have raised her, but she clung to his knees, lifting her tear-stained face, her eyes full of an adoration that would never leave them until life left them.

“Peter!” she cried. “Peter! That that butterfly! I know now, Peter!”

Again he tried to raise her, but she clasped his knees all the closer.

“You mean you know my name is really Peter Champneys, dearest?”

But she caught his hands. “Peter, Peter, don’t you understand?” she cried, laughing and weeping. “I I’m the ogress! I’m Nancy Simms! I’m Anne Champneys!”

He looked from her to her portrait and back again. He gave a great ringing cry of, “My wife!” and lifted her in a mighty grip that swept her up and into his arms. “My wife!” he cried. “My wife!”

Undoubtedly the Red Admiral was a fairy!

On a certain morning Mr. Jason Vandervelde was sitting at his desk, disconnectedly dictating a letter to his secretary. He was finding it very difficult to fix his mind upon his correspondence. What the mischief was happening up there in Maine, anyhow? She hadn’t written for some time; and he hadn’t had a word from Peter Champneys. And when Marcia came home and found out he’d been meddling well, the meddler would have to pay the fiddler, that’s all!

The office boy came in with a telegram. Mr. Vandervelde paused in his dictation, tore open the envelop, and read the message. And then the horrified secretary saw an amazing and an awesome sight. Mr. Jason Vandervelde bounced to his feet as lightly as though he had been a rubber ball, and performed a solemnly joyful dance around his office. His eyeglasses jigged on his nose, a lock of his sleekly brushed hair fell upon his forehead. Meeting the fixed stare of the secretary, he winked! And with a sort of elephantine religiosity he finished his amazing measure, caught once more the glassy eye of the secretary, and panted:

“King David danced before the ark of the Lord. For which reason your salary is raised from to-day.”

He stopped then, snatched the telegram off his desk, and read it again:

We have met and I have married my wife. Anne sends love.
Thank you and God bless you, Vandervelde!
PETER CHAMPNEYS.

“Put up that note-book. Take a day off. Go and enjoy yourself. Be happy!” said Vandervelde to the secretary. Then he snatched up the desk telephone.

“The florist’s? Yes? How soon can you get six dozen bride roses up here, to Mr. Vandervelde’s office? Yes, this is Mr. Vandervelde speaking. You can? Well, there’s a thumping tip for somebody who knows how to rush! Half an hour? Thank you. I’ll wait for ’em here.”

He hung up the receiver and turned his beaming countenance to the stunned secretary. His eyes twinkled like little blue stars, the corners of his mouth curled more than usual.

“Anne and Peter Champneys have been and gone and married each other!” he chuckled. “I’m going to take a carful of bride roses around to the Champneys house and put ’em under old Chadwick Champneys’s portrait!”