"And in the paying were paid," Frona took up warmly. "The price was the reward. If love be fallible, yet you have loved; you have done, you have served. What more would you?"
"The whelpage love," Lucile sneered.
"Oh! You are unfair."
"I do you justice," Lucile insisted firmly. "You would tell me that you know; that you have gone unveiled and seen clear-eyed; that without placing more than lips to the brim you have divined the taste of the dregs, and that the taste is good. Bah! The whelpage love! And, oh, Frona, I know; you are full womanly and broad, and lend no ear to little things, but"—she tapped a slender finger to forehead—"it is all here. It is a heady brew, and you have smelled the fumes overmuch. But drain the dregs, turn down the glass, and say that it is good. No, God forbid!" she cried, passionately. "There are good loves. You should find no masquerade, but one fair and shining."
Frona was up to her old trick,—their common one,—and her hand slid down Lucile's arm till hand clasped in hand. "You say things which I feel are wrong, yet may not answer. I can, but how dare I? I dare not put mere thoughts against your facts. I, who have lived so little, cannot in theory give the lie to you who have lived so much—"
"'For he who lives more lives than one, more lives than one must die.'"
From out of her pain, Lucile spoke the words of her pain, and Frona, throwing arms about her, sobbed on her breast in understanding. As for Lucile, the slight nervous ingathering of the brows above her eyes smoothed out, and she pressed the kiss of motherhood, lightly and secretly, on the other's hair. For a space,—then the brows ingathered, the lips drew firm, and she put Frona from her.
"You are going to marry Gregory St. Vincent?"
Frona was startled. It was only a fortnight old, and not a word had been breathed. "How do you know?"
"You have answered." Lucile watched Frona's open face and the bold running advertisement, and felt as the skilled fencer who fronts a tyro, weak of wrist, each opening naked to his hand. "How do I know?" She laughed harshly. "When a man leaves one's arms suddenly, lips wet with last kisses and mouth areek with last lies!"
"And—?"
"Forgets the way back to those arms."
"So?" The blood of the Welse pounded up, and like a hot sun dried the mists from her eyes and left them flashing. "Then that is why you came. I could have guessed it had I given second thought to Dawson 's gossip."
"It is not too late." Lucile's lip curled. "And it is your way."
"And I am mindful. What is it? Do you intend telling me what he has done, what he has been to you. Let me say that it is useless. He is a man, as you and I are women."
"No," Lucile lied, swallowing her astonishment.
"I had not thought that any action of his would affect you. I knew you were too great for that. But—have you considered me?"
Frona caught her breath for a moment. Then she straightened out her arms to hold the man in challenge to the arms of Lucile.
"Your father over again," Lucile exclaimed. "Oh, you impossible
Welses!"
"But he is not worthy of you, Frona Welse," she continued; "of me, yes. He is not a nice man, a great man, nor a good. His love cannot match with yours. Bah! He does not possess love; passion, of one sort and another, is the best he may lay claim to. That you do not want. It is all, at the best, he can give you. And you, pray what may you give him? Yourself? A prodigious waste! But your father's yellow—"
"Don't go on, or I shall refuse to listen. It is wrong of you." So Frona made her cease, and then, with bold inconsistency, "And what may the woman Lucile give him?"
"Some few wild moments," was the prompt response; "a burning burst of happiness, and the regrets of hell—which latter he deserves, as do I. So the balance is maintained, and all is well."
"But—but—"
"For there is a devil in him," she held on, "a most alluring devil, which delights me, on my soul it does, and which, pray God, Frona, you may never know. For you have no devil; mine matches his and mates. I am free to confess that the whole thing is only an attraction. There is nothing permanent about him, nor about me. And there's the beauty, the balance is preserved."
Frona lay back in her chair and lazily regarded her visitor, Lucile waited for her to speak. It was very quiet.
"Well?" Lucile at last demanded, in a low, curious tone, at the same time rising to slip into her parka.
"Nothing. I was only waiting."
"I am done."
"Then let me say that I do not understand you," Frona summed up, coldly. "I cannot somehow just catch your motive. There is a flat ring to what you have said. However, of this I am sure: for some unaccountable reason you have been untrue to yourself to-day. Do not ask me, for, as I said before, I do not know where or how; yet I am none the less convinced. This I do know, you are not the Lucile I met by the wood trail across the river. That was the true Lucile, little though I saw of her. The woman who is here to-day is a strange woman. I do not know her. Sometimes it has seemed she was Lucile, but rarely. This woman has lied, lied to me, and lied to me about herself. As to what she said of the man, at the worst that is merely an opinion. It may be she has lied about him likewise. The chance is large that she has. What do you think about it?"
"That you are a very clever girl, Frona. That you speak sometimes more truly than you know, and that at others you are blinder than you dream."
"There is something I could love in you, but you have hidden it away so that I cannot find it."
Lucile's lips trembled on the verge of speech. But she settled her parka about her and turned to go.
Frona saw her to the door herself, and How-ha pondered over the white who made the law and was greater than the law.
When the door had closed, Lucile spat into the street. "Faugh! St. Vincent ! I have defiled my mouth with your name!" And she spat again.
"Come in."
At the summons Matt McCarthy pulled the latch-string, pushed the door open, and closed it carefully behind him.
"Oh, it is you!" St. Vincent regarded his visitor with dark abstraction, then, recollecting himself, held out his hand. "Why, hello, Matt, old man. My mind was a thousand miles away when you entered. Take a stool and make yourself comfortable. There's the tobacco by your hand. Take a try at it and give us your verdict."
"An' well may his mind be a thousand miles away," Matt assured himself; for in the dark he had passed a woman on the trail who looked suspiciously like Lucile. But aloud, "Sure, an' it's day-dramin' ye mane. An' small wondher."
"How's that?" the correspondent asked, cheerily.
"By the same token that I met Lucile down the trail a piece, an' the heels iv her moccasins pointing to yer shack. It's a bitter tongue the jade slings on occasion," Matt chuckled.
"That's the worst of it." St. Vincent met him frankly. "A man looks sidewise at them for a passing moment, and they demand that the moment be eternal."
Off with the old love's a stiff proposition, eh?"
"I should say so. And you understand. It's easy to see, Matt, you've had some experience in your time."
"In me time? I'll have ye know I'm not too old to still enjoy a bit iv a fling."
"Certainly, certainly. One can read it in your eyes. The warm heart and the roving eye, Matt!" He slapped his visitor on the shoulder with a hearty laugh.
"An' I've none the best iv ye, Vincent. 'Tis a wicked lad ye are,
with a takin' way with the ladies—as plain as the nose on yer face.
Manny's the idle kiss ye've given, an' manny's the heart ye've broke.
But, Vincent, bye, did ye iver know the rale thing?"
"How do you mean?"
"The rale thing, the rale thing—that is—well, have ye been iver a father?"
St. Vincent shook his head.
"And niver have I. But have ye felt the love iv a father, thin?"