had impelled me to write Tragic Conquest. But I doubt if she understood. The thing got lost in the clouds for her. In the end I asked her to read the book over again, and when she had read the last page to decide if Clewesbury's interpretation could possibly be the right one. "I suppose I was too proud to upbraid

and was going to California with her mother for the winter. That letter made me feel very strange, of course. But I was thinking only of losing Eveline. I didn't realize how Clewesbury and Congress Avenue would interpret her action. It didn't occur to me that it would confirm everything gossip had said about It was not until a month later, when some cousins of mine in town told me the talk about me, that I realized the position I was in.

me.

"I confess that for several days I had a distinct struggle with myself, then, trying to decide whether ethics demanded that I keep silent and make no explanations. It did seem a bit ironical that, because I had tried to write a fine book and been robbed of my wife by a friend, I should be universally considered a scoundrel. In the end, however, I decided that to add more talk to all the welter of meanness there already was would be not only unfair to Eveline, but would accomplish no practical result. People would distort anything I said into all sorts of contemptible images just as they had done with Tragic Conquest. The best thing for me to do was to take my medicine, keep myself from becoming bitter, and try to hang on to what philosophy of life I had left. So I wrote to Fred Comyn and to my mother, and asked them to keep silent and let the thing blow over for good.

her or try to influence her. I knew that a man had but two things in his lifehis wife and his work. But if she really thought me capable of such a thing after all our years of intimacy, no words of mine could have any effect upon her. I could only go to New York and let her decide for herself.

"It didn't occur to me then that people's gossip could follow me to New York. I didn't think of it even when I got Eveline's letter in Twelfth Street a week later, saying she felt sick at heart

"I couldn't begin to tell you, of course, of the letters I received, of the old friends I met on Fifth Avenue and in theaters only to have them cut me, of the hundred unpleasant moments that

fell to my lot during that year you used to come over to the Twelfth Street apartment. But I deliberately shut it out of my mind while I concentrated on my second book. In that, I felt, lay my salvation. I would disregard the hints I saw in the newspapers, the unpleasant encounters I had in Atlantic City and Boston, the awkward evenings I spent in the houses of acquaintances-and work. His Own Kind, as I had already named that second book, would be as free from bitterness, as undisturbed by any thought of cynical revenge as I could keep it. It would be a fitting companion for Tragic Conquest.

"I didn't realize the effect my experiences had had upon me until I came actually to draft the story. I wrote the first chapter of that one evening in September-from seven-thirty until about half past three. When it was done I read it all over-and was struck by the resemblance of the hero's remarks to the kind of things that Fred Comyn says.

"Next day I read it once more very carefully. There were many points of resemblance. After all, there was no use getting into another such mess if it could be avoided by merely changing some of the hero's remarks in the first chapter. Why shouldn't I rewrite it here and there?

"I spent two days doing that, and began on the second chapter, with a distinct resolve not to put any of my acquaintance's characteristics into this book. For about three months, in fact, I kept little else in mind but that resolve. I had terrific difficulties-particularly in the choice of incidents which might be attributed to this person or that. I found myself forced to modify many of my characters' main features, too, for the same reason. It was very hard work-much like working always with a crowd peering over one's shoulder -but I succeeded in doing it.

"You must remember, of course, that it wasn't as if the results of Tragic Conquest were a fading memory for me. They were present for me every time I

VOL. CXLIV.-No. 859.-7

went out, every night after I went to bed and wondered what Eveline was doing, every time a new review of the book came along. Like an ever-present ghost the thing was to me, peering over my shoulder while I wrote, leering at me from the fireplace while I thought, jumping up and down on the typewriter keys while I made my descriptions in the new book.

"But I did not even realize myself how omnipresent, how fatally influential it had been until I went away for a week to Atlantic City and came back to the Twelfth Street apartment to begin the second eight chapters. I sat before my fire reading the completed part on that late afternoon, rather curious to see how the whole section would seem read at once and after I had been away for a while.

"Well, they were no good. Absolutely no good. The whole story was invisible. I had put upon paper a lot of senseless drivel. The only fine thing in all the pages reminded me irresistibly of a scene from Amelia Bond's life in Clewesbury. I reached for my blue pencil to cut that out, and the inescapable implication of the whole story I had written so far flashed across my mind. Why, all this part of the story could be interpreted as Amelia Bond and her supposed infatuation for me in our youthful days! That was what Clewesbury would say!

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'Something snapped inside of me, of a sudden. Another Tragic Conquest! By God! No! I would avoid that.

"My impulse was something not to be resisted. I threw the entire eight chapters into the blazing fire and watched them burn up. I remember I told you that I would begin over, use a different plot and characters to put across my idea.

"I did exactly that. In fact, I had it well in hand when the Sun's editorial and my lecture in Hartford made me resolve to quit New York and society for good. I never went back to the apartment. I simply made my arrangements at my bank and sailed for South

America three days later. I would forget people and their talk entirely, I had decided, and write my second book some place where the imps of gossip wouldn't follow me. I got off in Rio de Janeiro and stayed there five months-and tore up twelve chapters one foggy afternoon in the summer.

"There isn't much use detailing the rest of the two years. I had a letter in Buenos Aires from Eveline saying she had finally decided to try life with Jim. That occupied me for some time. But I have a streak of Yankee doggedness, I suppose, that makes me hang on to a thing once I have begun it. I wandered over about half the globe. I suppose I altered the story nineteen or twenty times. I invented and cast aside a hundred characters. But my fear got me each time, in the end-until one day I got the final idea for that second book.

"I spent about six months in Texas on that. Some time in British Guiana. I went to Tunis and parts of Africa. I ended up down in Provence and finished the book during my service with the Foreign Legion. But I did it. In fact, I have done it again. I have written a great book."

He turned to Maclay with his deep eyes alight with a kind of fanatical fire,

as he pulled a waterproof-covered manuscript out of the cloak he carried.

“Read it to-night and tell me what you think of it," he said. "You're the only publisher in the world who could have it. I've put four years into it, and carried mankind a distinct step farther in its knowledge once it reads the pages. But, by God! I defy a human being on earth to make it a subject of gossip."

He stood up in Madame Bourgnon's empty café and put on his cloak.

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Come around to my apartment tomorrow night," he said in a more subdued tone as he prepared to depart, and gave us his address. "Unless I have bored you to extinction." He smiled that half smile once more-that smile I could begin to master now!-and bowed to Madame, and a moment later was striding out with a gesture of farewell.

I think Maclay and I both had the same idea instantly. But not until Bissell had vanished through the heavy doors did either of us lean forward for the manuscript. I got it first and took it up with curious fingers. The title page was clear before me. The Wonder Story of the Ants, I read, "With introduction by Henri Fabre."

"By God! they can't talk!" Floyd Bissell had written boldly across the page.

It was before Chagrow nervous

was shortly before Christmas that

and excited, and I could see that his emotion was real. His plan for Mrs. Marsh's escape was developing, occupying his whole mind and causing him no small concern. Every day I brought him some little present, such as cigarettes, sugar, or butter, procured from Maria. At last I became almost as wrought up as he was himself, while Maria, whom I kept informed, was in a constant state of tremor resulting from her fever of anxiety.

December 18th dawned bleak and raw. Toward noon Maria and I set out together for a neighboring market place. We were going to buy a woman's cloak, for that night I was to take Mrs. Marsh across the frontier.

The corner of the Kuznetchny Pereulok and the Vladimirovsky Prospect has been a busy place for "speculators" ever since private trading was prohibited. Even on this bitter winter day there were the usual lines of wretched people standing patiently, disposing of personal belongings or of food got by foraging in the country. Many of them were women of the educated class, selling off their last possessions in the effort to scrape together sufficient to buy

meager provisions for themselves or their families. Old clothing, odds and ends of every description, crockery, toys, knickknacks, clocks, books, pictures, paper, pots, pans, pails, pipes, post cards-the entire paraphernalia of antiquarian and second-hand dealers' shops-could be found here turned out on the pavements.

Maria soon found what she wanteda warm cloak which had evidently seen better days. The tired eyes of the tall, refined lady from whom we bought it opened wide as I immediately paid the first price she asked.

The dingy interior of the headquarters of the Extraordinary Commission, with its bare stairs and passages, is an eerie place at all times of the year, but never is its somber, sorrow-laden gloom so intense as on a December afternoon when dusk is sinking into darkness. While Maria and I made our preparations, there sat in one of the inner chambers at No. 2 Goróhovaya, on wooden planks which took the place of bedsteads, a group of women, from thirty to forty in number, their faces undistinguishable in the growing darkness. The room was overheated and nauseatingly stuffy, but the patient figures paid no heed, nor appeared to care whether it were hot or

cold, dark or light. A few chatted in undertones, but most of them sat motionless and silent, waiting, waiting, endlessly waiting.

The terror hour was not yet-it came only at seven each evening. Then each victim knew that if the heavy door was opened and her name called, she would pass out into eternity, for executions. were carried out in the evening and the bodies removed at night.

At seven o'clock, all talk, all action ceased. The white-faced women sat still, eyes fixed on the heavy folding door. When it creaked every figure became rigid. A moment of ghastly, intolerable suspense, a silence that could be felt, and in the silence—a name. And when the name was spoken, every figure-but one -would imperceptibly relapse. Here and there a lip would twitch, here and there a smile would flicker. But no one would break the dead silence. One of their number was doomed. The figure that bore the spoken name would rise, move slowly, with unnatural gait, tottering along the narrow aisle between the plank couches. Some would look up and some would look down, and some would pray, or mutter, "To-morrow, maybe I." Or there would be a frantic shriek, a brutal struggle, and worse than death would fill the chamber.

But on this December afternoon the terror hour was not yet. There were still three hours' respite, and the figures spoke low in groups or sat silently waiting, waiting, endlessly waiting.

"Lydia Marsh!"

The hinges creaked, the guard appeared in the doorway, and the name was spoken loud and clearly. "It is not the terror hour yet," thought every woman, glancing at the twilight through the high, dirt-stained windows.

A figure rose from a distant couch. "What can it be?" "Another interpellation?" "An unusual hour!" Low voices sounded from the group. "They've left me alone three days," said the rising figure, wearily. "I suppose now it begins all over again. Well, à bientôt."

The figure disappeared in the door

way.

"Follow me," said the guard. He passed along the corridor and turned down a side passage. They passed others in the corridor, but no one heeded. The guard stopped and pointed with his bayonet.

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In here?" queried the woman, in surprise. The guard was silent. The woman pushed the door open and entered.

Lying in the corner were a dark-green shawl and a shabby hat, with two slips of paper attached. One of them was a pass in an unknown name, stating the holder had entered the building at four o'clock and must leave before seven. The other had scrawled on it the words, "Walk straight into St. Isaac's Cathedral."

Mechanically she destroyed the second slip, adjusted the shabby hat, and, wrapping the shawl well round her neck and face, passed out into the passage. She elbowed others in the corridor, but no one heeded her. At the foot of the main staircase she was asked for her pass. She showed it and was motioned on. At the main entrance she was again asked for her pass. She showed it and was passed out into the street. She looked up and down. The street was empty, and, crossing the road hurriedly, she disappeared round the corner.

Like dancing constellations the candles flickered and flared in front of the ikons at the foot of the huge pillars of the vast cathedral. Halfway up, the columns vanished in gloom. I had already burned two candles, and, though I was concealed in the niche of a pillar, I knelt and stood alternately, partly from impatience, partly that my piety should be patent to any chance observer. But my eyes were fixed on the little wooden side entrance. How interminable the minutes seemed. Quarter to five!

Then the green shawl appeared. It looked almost black in the dim darkness. It slipped through the doorway quickly, stood still a moment, and