The Pleasure-Pilgrim

I

CAMPBELL was on his way to Schloss Altenau, for a second
quiet season with his work. He had spent three profitable
months there a year ago, and now he was devoutly hoping for a
repetition of that good fortune. His thoughts outran the train ;
and long before his arrival at the Hamelin railway station, he was
enjoying his welcome by the Ritterhausens, was revelling in the
ease and comfort of the old castle, and was contrasting the pleasures
of his home-coming—for he looked upon Schloss Altenau as a sort
of temporary home—with his recent cheerless experiences of
lodging-houses in London, hotels in Berlin, and strange indifferent
faces everywhere. He thought with especial satisfaction of the
Maynes, and of the good talks Mayne and he would have together,
late at night, before the great fire in the hall, after the rest of the
household had gone to bed. He blessed the adverse circumstances
which had turned Schloss Altenau into a boarding-house, and
had reduced the Freiherr Ritterhausen to eke out his shrunken
revenues by the reception, as paying guests, of English and
American pleasure-pilgrims.

He rubbed the blurred window-pane with the fringed end of the

                                                strap

strap hanging from it, and, in the snow-covered landscape reeling
towards him, began to recognise objects that were familiar.
Hamelin could not be far off….. In another ten minutes the
train came to a standstill.

He stepped down from the overheated atmosphere of his com-
partment into the cold bright February afternoon, and through
the open station doors saw one of the Ritterhausen carriages
awaiting him, with Gottlieb in his second-best livery on the
box. Gottlieb showed every reasonable consideration for the
Baron’s boarders, but he had various methods of marking his sense of
the immense abyss separating them from the family. The use of
his second-best livery was one of these methods. Nevertheless, he
turned a friendly German eye up to Campbell, and in response
to his cordial ” Guten Tag, Gottlieb. Wie geht’s ? Und die
Herrschaften ? ” expressed his pleasure at seeing the young man
back again.

While Campbell stood at the top of the steps that led down to
the carriage and the Platz, looking after the collection of his
luggage and its bestowal by Gottlieb’s side, he became aware of
two persons, ladies, advancing towards him from the direction of
the Wartsaal. It was surprising to see any one at any time in
Hamelin station. It was still more surprising when one of these
ladies addressed him by name.

“You are Mr. Campbell, are you not?” she said. “We
have been waiting for you to go back in the carriage together.
When we found this morning that there was only half-an-hour
between your train and ours, I told the Baroness it would be
perfectly absurd to send to the station twice. I hope you won’t
mind our company ? ”

The first impression Campbell received was of the magnificent
apparel of the lady before him ; it would have been noticeable in

                                                Paris

The Yellow Book—Vol. V. c

Paris or Vienna—it was extravagant here. Next, he perceived
that the face beneath the upstanding feathers and the curving hat-
brim was that of so very young a girl as to make the furs and
velvets seem more incongruous still. But the incongruity vanished
with the intonation of her first phrase, which told him she was an
American. He had no standards for American dress or manners.
It was clear that the speaker and her companion were inmates of
the Schloss.

Campbell bowed, and murmured the pleasure he did not feel.
A true Briton, he was intolerably shy; and his heart sank at the
prospect of a three-mile drive with two strangers who evidently
had the advantage of knowing all about him, while he was in
ignorance of their very names. As he took his place opposite to
them in the carriage, he unconsciously assumed a cold blank stare,
pulling nervously at his moustache, as was his habit in moments
of discomposure. Had his companions been British also, the
ordeal of the drive would certainly have been a terrible one ; but
these young American girls showed no sense of embarrassment
whatever.

“We’ve just come back from Hanover,” said the one who had
already spoken to him. “I go over once a week for a singing
lesson, and my little sister comes along to take care of me.”

She turned a narrow, smiling glance from Campbell to her
little sister, and then back to Campbell again. She had red hair,
freckles on her nose, and the most singular eyes he had ever seen ;
slit-like eyes, set obliquely in her head, Chinese fashion.

” Yes, Lulie requires a great deal of taking care of,” assented
the little sister, sedately, though the way in which she said it
seemed to imply something less simple than the words themselves.
The speaker bore no resemblance to Lulie. She was smaller,
thinner, paler. Her features were straight, a trifle peaked ; her

                                                skin

skin sallow ; her hair of a nondescript brown. She was much
less gorgeously dressed. There was even a suggestion of shabbi-
ness in her attire, though sundry isolated details of it were hand-
some too. She was also much less young ; or so, at any rate,
Campbell began by pronouncing her. Yet presently he wavered.
She had a face that defied you to fix her age. Campbell never
fixed it to his own satisfaction, but veered in the course of that drive
(as he was destined to do during the next few weeks) from point
to point up and down the scale between eighteen and thirty-five.
She wore a spotted veil, and beneath it a pince-nez, the lenses of
which did something to temper the immense amount of humorous
meaning which lurked in her gaze. When her pale prominent
eyes met Campbell’s, it seemed to the young man that they were
full of eagerness to add something at his expense to the stores of
information they had already garnered up. They chilled him
with misgivings ; there was more comfort to be found in her
sister’s shifting red-brown glances.

” Hanover is a long way to go for lessons,” he observed, forcing
himself to be conversational. ” I used to go myself about once a
week, when I first came to Schloss Altenau, for tobacco, or note-
paper, or to get my hair cut. But later on I did without, or
contented myself with what Hamelin, or even the village, could
offer me.”

” Nannie and I,” said the young girl, ” meant to stay only a
week at Altenau, on our way to Hanover, where we were going
to pass the winter ; but the Castle is just too lovely for any-
thing,” she added softly. She raised her eyelids the least little bit
as she looked at him, and such a warm and friendly gaze shot out
that Campbell was suddenly thrilled. Was she pretty, after all ?
He glanced at Nannie ; she, at least, was indubitably plain. ” It’s
the very first time we’ve ever stayed in a castle,” Lulie went on ;

                                                “and

” and we’re going to remain right along now, until we go home
in the spring. Just imagine living in a house with a real moat,
and a drawbridge, and a Rittersaal, and suits of armour that have
been actually worn in battle ! And oh, that delightful iron collar
and chain ! You remember it, Mr. Campbell ? It hangs right
close to the gateway on the court-yard side. And you know, in
old days, the Ritterhausens used it for the punishment of their
serfs. There are horrible stories connected with it. Mr. Mayne
can tell you them. But just think of being chained up there like
a dog ! So wonderfully picturesque.”

” For the spectator perhaps,” said Campbell, smiling. ” I
doubt if the victim appreciated the picturesque aspect of the
case.”

With this Lulie disagreed. ” Oh, I think he must have been
interested,” she said. ” It must have made him feel so absolutely
part and parcel of the Middle Ages. I persuaded Mr. Mayne to
fix the collar round my neck the other day ; and though it was
very uncomfortable, and I had to stand on tiptoe, it seemed to me
that all at once the court-yard was filled with knights in armour,
and crusaders, and palmers, and things ; and there were flags flying
and trumpets sounding ; and all the dead and gone Ritterhausens
had come down from their picture-frames, and were walking
about in brocaded gowns and lace ruffles.”

” It seemed to require a good deal of persuasion to get Mr.
Mayne to unfix the collar again,” said the little sister. ” How at
last did you manage it ? ”

But Lulie replied irrelevantly : ” And the Ritterhausens are
such perfectly lovely people, aren’t they, Mr. Campbell ? The
old Baron is a perfect dear. He has such a grand manner. When
he kisses my hand I feel nothing less than a princess. And the
Baroness is such a funny, busy, delicious little round ball of a

                                                thing.

thing. And she’s always playing bagatelle, isn’t she ? Or else
cutting up skeins of wool for carpet-making.” She meditated a
moment. “Some people always are cutting things up in order to
join them together again,” she announced, in her fresh drawling
little voice.

” And some people cut things up, and leave other people to do
all the reparation,” commented the little sister, enigmatically.

And all this time the carriage had been rattling over the
cobble-paved streets of the quaint mediæval town, where the
houses stand so near together that you may shake hands with
your opposite neighbour ; where allegorical figures, strange birds
and beasts, are carved and painted over the windows and doors ;
and where to every distant sound you lean your ear to catch the
fairy music of the Pied Piper, and at every street corner you look
to see his tatterdemalion form with the frolicking children at his
heels.

Then the Weser bridge was crossed, beneath which the ice-
floes jostled and ground themselves together, as they forced a way
down the river ; and the carriage was rolling smoothly along
country roads, between vacant snow-decked fields.

Campbell’s embarrassment was wearing off. Now that he was
getting accustomed to the girls, he found neither of them awe-
inspiring. The red-haired one had a simple child-like manner
that was charming. Her strange little face, with its piquant
irregularity of line, its warmth of colour, began to please him.
What though her hair was red, the uncurled wisp which strayed
across her white forehead was soft and alluring ; he could see soft
masses of it tucked up beneath her hat-brim as she turned her
head. When she suddenly lifted her red-brown lashes, those
queer eyes of hers had a velvety softness too. Decidedly, she
struck him as being pretty—in a peculiar way. He felt an

                                                immense

immense accession of interest in her. It seemed to him that he
was the discoverer of her possibilities. He did not doubt that the
rest of the world called her plain, or at least odd-looking. He, at
first, had only seen the freckles on her nose, her oblique-set eyes.
He wondered what she thought of herself, and how she appeared
to Nannie. Probably as a very commonplace little girl ; sisters
stand too close to see each other’s qualities. She was too young
to have had much opportunity of hearing flattering truths from
strangers ; and, besides, the ordinary stranger would see nothing
in her to call for flattering truths. Her charm was something
subtle, out-of-the-common, in defiance of all known rules of beauty.
Campbell saw superiority in himself for recognising it, for formu-
lating it ; and he was not displeased to be aware that it would,
always remain caviare to the multitude.

II

” I’m jolly glad to have you back,” Mayne said, that same
evening, when, the rest of the boarders having retired to their
rooms, he and Campbell were lingering over the hall-fire for a
talk and smoke. ” I’ve missed you awfully, old chap, and the
good times we used to have here. I’ve often meant to write to
you, but you know how one shoves off letter-writing day after
day, till at last one is too ashamed of one’s indolence to write at
all. But tell me—you had a pleasant drive from Hamelin ?
What do you think of our young ladies ? ”

“Those American girls? But they’re charming,” said Campbell,
with enthusiasm. ” The red-haired one is particularly charming.”

At this Mayne laughed so oddly that Campbell questioned him
in surprise. ” Isn’t she charming ? “

                                                “My

” My dear chap,” said Mayne, ” the red-haired one, as you call
her, is the most remarkably charming young person I’ve ever met
or read of. We’ve had a good many American girls here before
now—you remember the good old Clamp family, of course ?—
they were here in your time, I think ?—but we’ve never had any-
thing like this Miss Lulie Thayer. She is something altogether
unique.”

Campbell was struck with the name. ” Lulie— Lulie Thayer,”
he repeated. ” How pretty it is.” And, full of his great discovery,
he felt he must confide it to Mayne, at least. ” Do you know,”
he went on, ” she is really very pretty too ? I didn’t think so at
first, but after a bit I discovered that she is positively quite pretty
—in an odd sort of way.”

Mayne laughed again. ” Pretty, pretty ! ” he echoed in
derision. ” Why, lieber Gott im Himmel, where are your eyes ?
Pretty ! The girl is beautiful, gorgeously beautiful ; every trait,
every tint, is in complete, in absolute harmony with the whole.
But the truth is, of course, we’ve all grown accustomed to the
obvious, the commonplace ; to violent contrasts ; blue eyes, black
eyebrows, yellow hair ; the things that shout for recognition.
You speak of Miss Thayer’s hair as red. What other colour
would you have, with that warm creamy skin ? And then, what
a red it is ! It looks as though it had been steeped in red
wine.”

” Ah, what a good description,” said Campbell, appreciatively.
” That’s just it—steeped in red wine.”

“And yet it’s not so much her beauty,” Mayne continued.
” After all, one has met beautiful women before now. It’s her
wonderful generosity, her complaisance. She doesn’t keep her
good things to herself. She doesn’t condemn you to admire from
a distance.”

                                                “How

” How do you mean ? ” Campbell asked, surprised again.

“Why, she’s the most egregious little flirt I’ve ever met.
And yet, she’s not exactly a flirt, either. I mean she doesn’t flirt
in the ordinary way. She doesn’t talk much, or laugh, or appar-
ently make the least claims on masculine attention. And so all
the women like her. I don’t believe there’s one, except my wife,
who has an inkling as to her true character. The Baroness, as
you know, never observes anything. Seigneur Dieu ! if she knew
the things I could tell her about Miss Lulie ! For I’ve had
opportunities of studying her. You see, I’m a married man, and
not in my first youth ; out of the running altogether. The
looker-on gets the best view of the game. But you, who are
young and charming and already famous—we’ve had your book
here, by the bye, and there’s good stuff in it—you’re going to
have no end of pleasant experiences. I can see she means to add
you to her ninety-and-nine other spoils ; I saw it from the way
she looked at you at dinner. She always begins with those
velvety red-brown glances. She began that way with March and
Prendergast and Willie Anson, and all the men we’ve had here
since her arrival. The next thing she’ll do will be to press your
hand under the tablecloth.”

” Oh, come, Mayne ; you’re joking,” cried Campbell, a little
brusquely. He thought such jokes in bad taste. He had a high
ideal of Woman, an immense respect for her ; he could not endure
to hear her belittled even in jest. “Miss Thayer is refined and
charming. No girl of her class would do such things.”

” What is her class ? Who knows anything about her ? All
we know is that she and her uncanny little friend—her little
sister, as she calls her, though they’re no more sisters than you
and I are—they’re not even related—all we know is that she
and Miss Dodge (that’s the little sister’s name) arrived here

                                                one

one memorable day last October from the Kronprinz Hotel at
Waldeck-Pyrmont. By the bye, it was the Clamps, I believe,
who told her of the Castle—hotel acquaintances—you know how
travelling Americans always cotton to each other. And we’ve
picked up a few little biographical notes from her and Miss Dodge
since. Zum Beispiel, she’s got a rich father somewhere away back
in Michigan, who supplies her with all the money she wants.
And she’s been travelling about since last May : Paris, Vienna,
the Rhine, Düsseldorf, and so on here. She must have had some
rich experiences, by Jove. For she’s done everything. Cycled in
Paris : you should see her in her cycling costume ; she wears it
when the Baron takes her out shooting—she’s an admirable shot,
by the way, an accomplishment learned, I suppose, from some
American cow-boy. Then in Berlin she did a month’s hospital
nursing ; and now she’s studying the higher branches of the
Terpsichorean art. You know she was in Hanover to-day. Did
she tell you what she went for ? ”

” To take a singing lesson,” said Campbell, remembering the
reason she had given.

” A singing lesson ! Do you sing with your legs ? A dancing
lesson, mein lieber. A dancing lesson from the ballet-master of the
Hof Theater. She could deposit a kiss on your forehead with her
foot, I don’t doubt. I wonder if she can do the grand écart yet.”
And when Campbell, in astonishment, wondered why on earth she
should wish to do such things, ” Oh, to extend her opportunities,”
Mayne explained, “and to acquire fresh sensations. She’s an
adventuress. Yes, an adventuress, but an end-of-the-century one.
She doesn’t travel for profit, but for pleasure. She has no desire to
swindle her neighbour of dollars, but to amuse herself at his expense.
And she’s clever ; she’s read a good deal ; she knows how to apply
her reading to practical life. Thus, she’s learned from Herrick

                                                not

not to be coy ; and from Shakespeare that sweet-and-twenty is the
time for kissing and being kissed. She honours her masters in the
observance. She was not in the least abashed when, one day, I
suddenly came upon her teaching that damned idiot, young Anson,
two new ways of kissing.”

Campbell’s impressions of the girl were readjusting themselves
completely, but for the moment he was unconscious of the change.
He only knew that he was partly angry, partly incredulous, and
inclined to believe that Mayne was chaffing him.

” But Miss Dodge,” he objected, ” the little sister, she is older ;
old enough to look after her friend. Surely she could not allow
a young girl placed in her charge to behave in such a way—”

” Oh, that little Dodge girl,” said Mayne contemptuously ;
” Miss Thayer pays the whole shot, I understand, and Miss Dodge
plays gooseberry, sheep-dog, jackal, what you will. She finds her
reward in the other’s cast-off finery. The silk blouse she was wear-
ing to-night, I’ve good reason for remembering, belonged to Miss
Lulie. For, during a brief season, I must tell you, my young lady
had the caprice to show attentions to your humble servant. I suppose
my being a married man lent me a factitious fascination. But I didn’t
see it. That kind of girl doesn’t appeal to me. So she employed Miss
Dodge to do a little active canvassing. It was really too funny ;
I was coming in one day after a walk in the woods ; my wife was
trimming bonnets, or had neuralgia, or something. Anyhow, I
was alone, and Miss Dodge contrived to waylay me in the middle
of the court-yard. ‘Don’t you find it vurry dull walking all by
yourself ?’ she asked me ; and then blinking up in her strange
little short-sighted way—she’s really the weirdest little creature—
‘Why don’t you make love to Lulie ?’ she said ; ‘you’d find her
vurry charming.’ It took me a minute or two to recover presence
of mind enough to ask her whether Miss Thayer had commissioned

                                                her

her to tell me so. She looked at me with that cryptic smile of hers ;
‘She’d like you to do so, I’m sure,’ she finally remarked, and
pirouetted away. Though it didn’t come off, owing to my bash-
fulness, it was then that Miss Dodge appropriated the silk bodice ;
and Providence, taking pity on Miss Thayer’s forced inactivity,
sent along March, a young fellow reading for the army, with
whom she had great doings. She fooled him to the top of his bent;
sat on his knee ; gave him a lock of her hair, which, having no
scissors handy, she burned off with a cigarette taken from his
mouth ; and got him to offer her marriage. Then she turned
round and laughed in his face, and took up with a Dr. Weber, a
cousin of the Baron’s, under the other man’s very eyes. You
never saw anything like the unblushing coolness with which she
would permit March to catch her in Weber’s arms.”

” Come,” Campbell protested, “aren’t you drawing it rather
strong ? ”

“On the contrary, I’m drawing it mild, as you’ll discover pre-
sently for yourself; and then you’ll thank me for forewarning you.
For she makes love—desperate love, mind you—to every man she
meets. And goodness knows how many she hasn’t met, in the
course of her career, which began presumably at the age of ten,
in some ‘Amur’can’ hotel or watering-place. Look at this.”
Mayne fetched an alpenstock from a corner of the hall ; it was
decorated with a long succession of names, which, ribbon-like, were
twisted round and round it, carved in the wood. ” Read them,”
insisted Mayne, putting the stick in Campbell’s hands. “You’ll
see they’re not the names of the peaks she has climbed, or the
towns she has passed through ; they’re the names of the men she
has fooled. And there’s room for more ; there’s still a good deal
of space, as you see. There’s room for yours.”

Campbell glanced down the alpenstock—reading here a name,

                                                there

there an initial, or just a date—and jerked it impatiently from him
on to a couch. He wished with all his heart that Mayne would stop,
would talk of something else, would let him get away. The
young girl had interested him so much ; he had felt himself so
drawn towards her ; he had thought her so fresh, so innocent. But
Mayne, on the contrary, was warming to his subject, was enchanted
to have some one to listen to his stories, to discuss his theories, to
share his cynical amusement.

” I don’t think, mind you,” he said, ” that she is a bit interested
herself in the men she flirts with. I don’t think she gets any of
the usual sensations from it, you know. I think she just does it
for devilry, for a laugh. Sometimes I wonder whether she does it
with an idea of retribution. Perhaps some woman she was fond
of, perhaps her mother even—who knows ?—was badly treated at
the hands of a man. Perhaps this girl has constituted herself the
Nemesis for her sex, and goes about seeing how many masculine
hearts she can break by way of revenge. Or can it be that she is
simply the newest development of the New Woman—she who in
England preaches and bores you, and in America practises and
pleases ? Yes, I believe she’s the American edition, and so new
that she hasn’t yet found her way into fiction. She’s the pioneer
of the army coming out of the West, that’s going to destroy the
existing scheme of things and rebuild it nearer to the heart’s
desire.”

” Oh, damn it all, Mayne,” cried Campbell, rising abruptly,
“why not say at once that she’s a wanton, and have done with it ?
Who wants to hear your rotten theories ? ” And he lighted his
candle without another word, and went off to bed.

                                                It

III

It was four o’clock, and the Baron’s boarders were drinking
their afternoon coffee, drawn up in a circle round the hall fire.
All but Campbell, who had carried his cup away to a side-table,
and, with a book open before him, appeared to be reading assidu-
ously. In reality he could not follow a line of what he read ; he
could not keep his thoughts from Miss Thayer. What Mayne
had told him was germinating in his mind. Knowing his friend
as he did, he could not on reflection doubt his word. In spite of
much superficial cynicism, Mayne was incapable of speaking
lightly of any young girl without good cause. It now seemed
to Campbell that, instead of exaggerating the case, Mayne had
probably understated it. The girl repelled him to-day as much
as she had charmed him yesterday. He asked himself with horror,
what had she not already known, seen, permitted ? When now
and again his eyes travelled over, perforce, to where she sat, her red
head leaning against Miss Dodge’s knee, seeming to attract and
concentrate all the glow of the fire, his forehead set itself in
frowns, and he returned with an increased sense of irritation to his
book.

” I’m just sizzling up, Nannie,” Miss Thayer presently com-
plained, in her child-like, drawling little way ; ” this fire is too hot
for anything.” She rose and shook straight her loose tea-gown,
a marvellous garment created in Paris, which would have accused
a duchess of wilful extravagance. She stood smiling round a
moment, pulling on and off with her right hand the big diamond
ring which decorated the left. At the sound of her voice
Campbell had looked up ; now his cold unfriendly eyes en-

                                                countered

countered hers. He glanced rapidly past her, then back to his
book. But she, undeterred, with a charming sinuous movement
and a frou-frou of trailing silks, crossed over towards him. She
slipped into an empty chair next his.

” I’m going to do you the honour of sitting beside you, Mr.
Campbell,” she said sweetly.

” It’s an honour I’ve done nothing whatever to merit,” he
answered, without looking at her, and turned a page.

” The right retort,” she approved ; ” but you might have said
it a little more cordially.”

“I don’t feel cordial.”

” But why not ? What has happened ? Yesterday you were
so nice.”

” Ah, a good deal of water has run under the bridge since
yesterday.”

” But still the river remains as full,” she told him, smiling,
” and still the sky is as blue. The thermometer has even risen
six degrees. Out-of-doors, to-day, I could feel the spring-time
in the air. You, too, love the spring, don’t you ? I know that
from your books. And I wanted to tell you, I think your books
perfectly lovely. I know them, most all. I’ve read them away
home. They’re very much thought of in America. Only last
night I was saying to Nannie how glad I am to have met you,
for I think we’re going to be great friends ; aren’t we, Mr.
Campbell ? At least, I hope so, for you can do me so much
good, if you will. Your books always make me feel real good ;
but you yourself can help me much more.”

She looked up at him with one of her warm, narrow red-
brown glances, which yesterday would have thrilled his blood, and
to-day merely stirred it to anger.

“You over-estimate my abilities,” he said coldly ; “and on the

                                                whole,

whole, I fear you will find writers a very disappointing race.
You see, they put their best into their books. So, not to dis-
illusion you too rapidly “—he rose—” will you excuse me ? I
have some work to do.” And he left her sitting there alone.

But he did no work when he got to his room. Whether
Lulie Thayer was actually present or not, it seemed that her
influence was equally disturbing to him. His mind was full of
her : of her singular eyes, her quaint intonation, her sweet
seductive praise. Yesterday such praise would have been delight-
ful to him : what young author is proof against appreciation of
his books ? To-day, Campbell simply told himself that she laid
the butter on too thick ; that it was in some analogous manner
she had flattered up March, Anson, and all the rest of the men
that Mayne had spoken of. He supposed it was the first step in
the process by which he was to be fooled, twisted round her
finger, added to the list of victims who strewed her conquering
path. He had a special fear of being fooled. For beneath a
somewhat supercilious exterior, the dominant note of his character
was timidity, distrust of his own merits ; and he knew he was
single-minded—one-idea’d almost ; if he were to let himself go, to
get to care very much for a woman, for such a girl as this girl,
for instance, he would lose himself completely, be at her mercy
absolutely. Fortunately, Mayne had let him know her character :
he could feel nothing but dislike for her—disgust, even ; and yet
he was conscious how pleasant it would be to believe in her
innocence, in her candour. For she was so adorably pretty :
her flower-like beauty grew upon him ; her head, drooping a
little on one side when she looked up, was so like a flower bent
by its own weight. The texture of her cheeks, her lips, were
delicious as the petals of a flower. He found he could recall with
perfect accuracy every detail of her appearance : the manner in

                                                which

which the red hair grew round her temples ; how it was loosely
and gracefully fastened up behind with just a single tortoise-shell
pin. He recalled the suspicion of a dimple which shadowed
itself in her cheek when she spoke, and deepened into a delicious
reality every time she smiled. He remembered her throat ; her
hands, of a beautiful whiteness, with pink palms and pointed
fingers. It was impossible to write. He speculated long on the
ring she wore on her engaged finger. He mentioned this ring to
Mayne the next time he saw him.

” Engaged ? very much so I should say. Has got a fiancé in
every capital of Europe probably. But the ring-man is the fiancé
en titre. He writes to her by every mail, and is tremendously in
love with her. She shows me his letters. When she’s had her
fling, I suppose, she’ll go back and marry him. That’s what
these little American girls do, I’m told ; sow their wild oats here
with us, and settle down into bonnes ménagères over yonder.
Meanwhile, are you having any fun with her ? Aha, she presses
your hand ? The ‘gesegnete Mahlzeit’ business after dinner is an
excellent institution, isn’t it ? She’ll tell you how much she
loves you soon ; that’s the next move in the game.”

But so far she had done none of these things, for Campbell
gave her no opportunities. He was guarded in the extreme,
ungenial ; avoiding her even at the cost of civility. Sometimes
he was downright rude. That especially occurred when he felt
himself inclined to yield to her advances. For she made him all
sorts of silent advances, speaking with her eyes, her sad little
mouth, her beseeching attitude. And then one evening she went
further still. It occurred after dinner in the little green drawing-
room. The rest of the company were gathered together in the
big drawing-room beyond. The small room has deep embrasures
to the windows. Each embrasure holds two old faded green

                                                velvet

velvet sofas in black oaken frames, and an oaken oblong table
stands between them. Campbell had flung himself down on one
of these sofas in the corner nearest the window. Miss Thayer,
passing through the room, saw him, and sat down opposite.
She leaned her elbows on the table, the laces of her sleeves
falling away from her round white arms, and clasped her
hands.

“Mr. Campbell, tell me what have I done? How have I
vexed you ? You have hardly spoken two words to me all day.
You always try to avoid me.” And when he began to utter
evasive banalities, she stopped him with an imploring ” Don’t ! I
love you. You know I love you. I love you so much I can’t
bear you to put me off with mere phrases.”

Campbell admired the well-simulated passion in her voice,
remembered Mayne’s prediction, and laughed aloud.

” Oh, you may laugh,” she said, ” but I am serious. I love
you, I love you with my whole soul.” She slipped round the end
of the table, and came close beside him. His first impulse was to
rise ; then he resigned himself to stay. But it was not so much
resignation that was required, as self-mastery, cool-headedness.
Her close proximity, her fragrance, those wonderful eyes raised so
beseechingly to his, made his heart beat.

” Why are you so cold ? ” she said. ” I love you so ; can’t you
love me a little too ? ”

“My dear young lady,” said Campbell, gently repelling her,
” what do you take me for ? A foolish boy like your friends
Anson and March ? What you are saying is monstrous, pre-
posterous. Ten days ago you’d never even seen me.”

” What has length of time to do with it ? ” she said. ” I loved
you at first sight.”

” I wonder,” he observed judicially, and again gently removed

                                                her

The Yellow Book—Vol. V. D

her hand from his, ” to how many men you have not already said
the same thing.”

“I’ve never meant it before,” she said quite earnestly, and
nestled closer to him, and kissed the breast of his coat, and held
her mouth up towards his. But he kept his chin resolutely high,
and looked over her head.

” How many men have you not already kissed, even since you’ve
been here ? ”

“But there’ve not been many here to kiss!” she exclaimed
naïvely.

” Well, there was March ; you kissed him ? “

” No, I’m quite sure I didn’t.”

” And young Anson ; what about him ? Ah, you don’t
answer ! And then the other fellow—what’s his name—Pren-
dergast—you’ve kissed him ? ”

“But, after all, what is there in a kiss ? ” she cried ingenuously.
” It means nothing, absolutely nothing. Why, one has to kiss all
sorts of people one doesn’t care about.”

Campbell remembered how Mayne had said she had probably
known strange kisses since the age of ten ; and a wave of anger
with her, of righteous indignation, rose within him.

” To me,” said he, ” to all right-thinking people, a young girl’s
kisses are something pure, something sacred, not to be offered in-
discriminately to every fellow she meets. Ah, you don’t know
what you have lost ! You have seen a fruit that has been
handled, that has lost its bloom ? You have seen primroses,
spring flowers gathered and thrown away in the dust ? And who
enjoys the one, or picks up the others ? And this is what you
remind me of—only you have deliberately, of your own perverse
will, tarnished your beauty, and thrown away all the modesty,
the reticence, the delicacy, which make a young girl so infinitely

                                                dear.

dear. You revolt me, you disgust me. I want nothing from you,
but to be let alone. Kindly take your hands away, and let me go.”

He roughly shook her off and got up, then felt a moment’s
curiosity to see how she would take the repulse.

Miss Thayer never blushed : had never, he imagined, in her
life done so. No faintest trace of colour now stained the
warm pallor of her rose-leaf skin ; but her eyes filled up with
tears ; two drops gathered on the under-lashes, grew large,
trembled an instant, and then rolled unchecked down her cheeks.
Those tears somehow put him in the wrong, and he felt he had
behaved brutally to her for the rest of the night.

He began to find excuses for her : after all, she meant no
harm : it was her up-bringing, her genre : it was a genre he
loathed ; but perhaps he need not have spoken so harshly to her.
He thought he would find a more friendly word for her next
morning ; and he loitered about the Mahlsaal, where the boarders
come in to breakfast as in an hotel, just when it suits them, till
past eleven ; but the girl never turned up. Then, when he
was almost tired of waiting, Miss Dodge put in an appear-
ance, in a flannel wrapper, and her front hair twisted up in steel
pins.

Campbell judged Miss Dodge with even more severity than he
did Miss Thayer ; there was nothing in this weird little creature’s
appearance to temper justice with mercy. It was with difficulty
that he brought himself to inquire after her friend.

” Lulie is sick this morning,” she told him. ” I’ve come down
to order her some broth. She couldn’t sleep any last night,
because of your unkindness to her. She’s vurry, vurry unhappy
about it.”

” Yes, I’m sorry for what I said. I had no right to speak so
strongly, I suppose. But I spoke strongly because I feel strongly.

                                                However,

However, there’s no reason why my bad manners should make her
unhappy.”

“Oh, yes, there’s vurry good reason,” said Miss Dodge.
” She’s vurry much in love with you.”

Campbell looked at the speaker long and earnestly to try and
read her mind ; but the prominent blinking eyes, the cryptic
physiognomy, told him nothing.

” Look here,” he said brusquely, ” what’s your object in trying
to fool me like this ? I know all about your friend. Mayne has
told me. She has cried ‘Wolf’ too often before to expect to be
believed now.”

“But after all,” argued Miss Dodge, blinking more than ever
behind her glasses, ” the wolf did really come at last, you know ;
didn’t he ? Lulie is really in love this time. We’ve all made
mistakes in our lives, haven’t we ? But that’s no reason for not
being right at last. And Lulie has cried herself sick.”

Campbell was a little shaken. He went and repeated the
conversation to Mayne, who laughed derisively.

” Capital, capital ! ” he cried ; “excellently contrived. It quite
supports my latest theory about our young friend. She’s an
actress, a born comédienne. She acts always, and to every one :
to you, to me, to the Ritterhausens, to the Dodge girl—even to
herself when she is quite alone. And she has a great respect for
her art ; she’ll carry out her rôle, côute que côute, to the bitter end.
She chooses to pose as in love with you ; you don’t respond ; the
part now requires that she should sicken and pine. Consequently
she takes to her bed, and sends her confidante to tell you so. Oh,
it’s colossal, it’s famos.”

                                                “If

IV

“If you can’t really love me,” said Lulie Thayer—” and I know
I’ve been a bad girl and don’t deserve that you should—at least,
will you allow me to go on loving you ? ”

She walked by Campbell’s side, through the solitary uncared-
for park of Schloss Altenau. It was three weeks later in the
year, and the spring feeling in the air stirred the blood. All
round were signs and tokens of spring : in the busy gaiety of bird
and insect life ; in the purple flower-tufts which thickened the
boughs of the ash trees ; in the young green things pushing up
pointed heads from amidst last season’s dead leaves and grasses. The
snow-wreathes, that had for so long decorated the distant hills, were
shrinking perceptibly away beneath the strong March sunshine.

There was every invitation to spend one’s time out of doors,
and Campbell passed long mornings in the park, or wandering
through the woods or the surrounding villages. Miss Thayer
often accompanied him. He never invited her to do so, but when
she offered him her company, he could not, or at least did not,
refuse it.

” May I love you ? Say,” she entreated.

” ‘Wenn ich Dich liebe, was geht ‘s Dich an ?’ ” he quoted
lightly. ” Oh, no, it’s nothing to me, of course. Only don’t
expect me to believe you—that’s all.”

This disbelief of his was the recurring decimal of their con-
versation. No matter on what subject they began, they always
ended thus. And the more sceptical he showed himself, the
more eager she became. She exhausted herself in endeavours to
convince him.

                                                They

They had reached the corner in the park where the road to the
castle turns off at right angles from the road to Dürrendorf. The
ground rises gently on the park-side to within three feet of the
top of the wall, although on the other side there is a drop of at
least twenty feet. The broad wall-top makes a convenient seat.
Campbell and the girl sat down on it. At his last words she wrung
her hands together in her lap.

“But how can you disbelieve me ? ” she cried, “when I tell
you I love you, I adore you ? When I swear it to you ? And
can’t you see for yourself ? Why, every one at the Castle
sees it.”

” Yes, you afford the Castle a good deal of unnecessary amuse-
ment. And that shows you don’t understand what love really is.
Real love is full of delicacy, of reticences, and would feel itself
profaned if it became the jest of the servants hall.”

” I think it’s not so much my love for you,” said Lulie gently,
” as your rejection of it, which has made me talked about.”

” No ; isn’t it rather on account of the favours you’ve lavished
on all my predecessors ? ”

She sprang from the wall to her feet, and walked up and down
in agitation.

“But after all, surely, mistakes of that sort are not to be
counted against us ? I did really think I was in love with Mr.
March. Willie Anson doesn’t count. He’s an American too,
and he understands things. Besides, he is only a boy. And how
could I know I should love you before I had met you ? And
how can I help loving you now I have ? You’re so different from
other men. You’re good. You’re honourable, you treat women
with respect. Oh, I do love you so, I do love you ! Ask Nannie
if I don’t.”

The way in which Campbell shrugged his shoulders clearly

                                                expressed

expressed the amount of reliance he would place on any testimony
from Miss Dodge. He could not forget her ” Why don’t you
make love to Lulie ? ” addressed to a married man. Such a want
of principle argued an equal want of truth.

Lulie seemed on the brink of weeping.

” Oh, I wish I were dead,” she struggled to say ; ” life’s
impossible if you won’t believe me. I don’t ask you to love me
any longer. I know I’ve been a bad girl, and I don’t deserve
that you should ; but if you won’t believe that I love you, I don’t
want to live any longer.”

Campbell confessed to himself that she acted admirably, but that
the damnable iteration of the one idea became monotonous. He
sought a change of subject. ” Look there,” he said, ” close by
the wall, what’s that jolly little blue flower ? It’s the first I’ve
seen this year.”

He pointed to where a periwinkle grew at the base of the wall,
lifting its bright petals gaily from out its dark glossy leaves.

Lulie, all smiles again, picked it with child-like pleasure. ” Oh,
if that’s the first you’ve seen,” she cried, ” you can take a wish.
Only you mustn’t speak until some one asks you a question.”

She began to fasten it in his coat. ” It’s just as blue as your
eyes,” she said, ” You have such blue and boyish eyes, you know.
Stop, stop, that’s not a question,” and seeing that he was about to
speak, she laid her finger across his mouth. ” You’ll spoil the
charm.”

She stepped back, folded her arms, and seemed to dedicate
herself to eternal silence ; then relenting suddenly :

” Do you believe me ? ” she entreated.

” What’s become of your ring ? ” Campbell answered irrelevantly.
He had noticed its absence from her finger while she had been
fixing in the flower.

                                                “Oh,

” Oh, my engagement’s broken.”

Campbell asked how the fiancé would like that.

” Oh, he won’t mind. He knows I only got engaged because
he worried so. And it was always understood between us, that I
was to be free if I ever met any one I liked better.”

Campbell asked her what sort of fellow this accommodating
fiancé was.

“Oh, he’s all right. And he’s very good too. But he’s not a
bit clever, and don’t let us talk about him. He makes me
tired.”

” But you’re wrong,” Campbell told her, ” to throw away a
good, a sincere affection. If you really want to reform and turn
over a new leaf, as you are always telling me, I should advise you
to go home and marry him.”

” What, when I’m in love with you ! ” she cried reproachfully.
” Would that be right ? ”

” It’s going to rain,” said Campbell. ” Didn’t you feel a drop
just then ? And it’s getting near lunch-time. Shall we go
in ? ”

Their shortest way led through the little cemetery in which
the dead and gone Ritterhausens lay at peace, in the shadow of
their sometime home.

” When I die the Baron has promised I shall be buried here,” said
Lulie pensively ; “just here, next to his first wife. Don’t you
think it would be lovely to be buried in a beautiful, peaceful
baronial graveyard instead of in some horrid crowded city
cemetery ? ”

Mayne met them as they entered the hall. He noticed the
flower in his friend’s coat. ” Ah, my dear chap, been treading
the periwinkle path of dalliance, I see ? How many desirable
young men have I not witnessed, led down the same broad way

                                                by

by the same seductive lady ! Always the same thing, nothing
changed, but the flower, according to the season.”

When Campbell reached his room and changed his coat, he
threw the flower away into his stove.

Had it not been for Mayne, Miss Thayer might have triumphed
after all ; might have convinced Campbell of her passion, or have
added another victim to her long list. But Mayne had set him-
self as determinedly to spoil her game as she was bent on winning
it. He had always the cynical word, the apt reminiscence ready,
whenever he saw signs on Campbell’s part of yielding. He was
very fond of Campbell. He did not wish to see him fall a prey to
the wiles of this little American syren. He had watched her
conduct in the past with a dozen different men ; he genuinely
believed she was only acting now.

Campbell, for his part, began to feel a curious and growing
irritation in the girl’s presence. Yet he did not avoid it ; he could
not well avoid it, she followed him about so persistently ; but his
speech began to overflow with bitterness towards her. He said the
cruellest things ; then remembering them afterwards when alone,
he blushed at his brutalities. But nothing he said ever altered her
sweetness of temper or weakened the tenacity of her purpose. His
rebuffs made her beautiful eyes run over with tears, but the harshest
of them never elicited the least sign of resentment. There would
have been something touching as well as comic in this dog-like
forgiveness, which accepted everything as welcome at his hands,
had he not been imbued with Mayne’s conviction that it was all an
admirable piece of acting. When for a moment he forgot the
histrionic theory, then invariably there would come a chance word
in her conversation which would fill him with cold rage. They
would be talking of books, travels, sport, what not, and she would
drop a reference to this man or to that. So-and-so had taken her to

                                                Bullier’s,

Bullier’s, she had learned skating with this other. She was a capital
shot, Hiram P. Ladd had taught her ; and he got glimpses of long
vistas of amourettes played in every State in America, and in every
country of Europe, since the very beginning, when, as a mere
child, elderly men, friends of her father’s, had held her on their
knee and fed her with sweetmeats and kisses. It was sickening to
think of ; it was pitiable. So much youth and beauty tarnished :
the possibility for so much good thrown away. For if one could
only blot out her record, forget it, accept her for what she chose
to appear, a more endearing companion no man could desire.

V

It was a wet afternoon. Mayne had accompanied his wife and the
Baroness into Hamelin. ” To take up a servant’s character, and ex-
postulate with a recalcitrant dressmaker,” he explained to Campbell,
and wondered what women would do to fill up their days, were it
not for the perennial villanies of dressmakers and domestic servants.
He himself was going to look in at the English Club ; wouldn’t
Campbell come too ? There was a fourth seat in the carriage.
But Campbell was in no social mood ; he felt his temper going all
to pieces ; a quarter of an hour of Mrs. Mayne’s society would
have brought on an explosion. He felt he must be alone ; yet
when he had read for half an hour in his room he wondered
vaguely what Lulie was doing ; he had not seen her since luncheon.
She always gave him her society when he could very well dispense
with it, but on a wet day like this, when a little conversation would
be tolerable, of course she stayed away. Then there came down the
long Rittersaal the tapping of high heels and a well-known knock
at his door.

                                                “Am

“Am I disturbing you?” she asked ; and his mood was so
capricious that, now she was standing there on his threshold, he
thought he was annoyed at it. ” It’s so dull,” she said, persuasively :
” Nannie’s got a sick headache, and I daren’t go downstairs, or the
Baron will annex me to play Halma. He always wants to play
Halma on wet days.”

” And what do you want to do? ” said Campbell, leaning against
the doorpost, and letting his eyes rest on the strange piquant face
in its setting of red hair.

” To be with you, of course.”

” Well,” said he, coming out and closing the door, ” I’m at your
service. What next ? ”

” What would you like to do ? Shall I fetch over my pistols,
and we’ll practise with them ? You’ve no notion how well I can
shoot. We couldn’t hurt anything here, could we ? ”

The Rittersaal is an immense room occupying all the space on
the first floor that the hall and four drawing-rooms do on the floor
below. Wooden pillars support the ceiling, and divide the room
lengthwise into three parts. Down the centre are long tables,
used for ceremonial banquets. Six windows look into the court-
yard, and six out over the open country. The centre pane of
each window is emblazoned with a Ritterhausen shield. The sills
are broad and low, and cushioned in faded velvet. Between the
windows hang family portraits, and a fine stone-sculptured six-
teenth-century fireplace and overmantel at one end of the Saal
faces a magnificent black carved buffet at the other. Lulie,
bundling up her duchess tea-gown over one arm, danced off down
the long room in very unduchess-like fashion to fetch the case.
It was a charming little box of cedar-wood and mother-o’-pearl,
lined with violet velvet ; and two tiny revolvers lay inside, hardly
more than six inches long, with silver engraved handles.

                                                ” I won

” I won them in a bet,” she observed complacently, ” with the
Hon. Billie Thornton. He’s an Englishman, you know, the son
of Lord Thornton. I knew him in Washington two years ago
last fall. He bet I couldn’t hit a three-cent piece at twenty feet,
and I did. Aren’t they perfectly sweet ? Now, can’t you con-
trive a target ? ”

Campbell went back to his room, drew out a rough diagram,
and pasted it down on to a piece of stout cardboard. Then this
was fixed up by means of a penknife driven into the wood against
one of the pillars, and Campbell, with his walking-stick laid
down six successive times, measured off the distance required,
and set a chalk mark across the floor. Lulie took the first shot.
She held the little weapon out at arm’s length—pulled the trigger.
There was the sharp report, and when Campbell went up to
examine results, he found she had only missed the very centre by
half an inch.

Lulie was exultant. ” I don’t seem to have got out of practice
any,” she remarked. ” I’m so glad, for I used to be a very good
shot. It was Hiram P. Ladd who taught me. He’s the crack
shot of Montana. What ! you don’t know Hiram P. ? Why, I
should have supposed every one must have heard of him. He had
the next ranche to my Uncle Samuel’s, where I used to go
summers, and he made me do an hour’s pistol practice every
morning after bathing. It was he who taught me swimming too
—in the river.”

” Damnation,” said Campbell under his breath, then shot in his
turn, and shot wide. Lulie made another bull’s-eye, and after
that a white. She urged Campbell to continue, which he sullenly
did, and again missed.

” You see I don’t come up to your Hiram P. Ladd,” he
remarked savagely, and after a few more shots on either side he

                                                put

put the pistol down, and walked over to the window. He stood
with one foot on the cushioned seat, staring out at the rain, and
pulling at his moustache moodily.

Lulie followed him, nestled up to him, lifted the hand that
hung passive by his side, put it round her waist, and held it there.
Campbell, lost in thought, let it remain so for a second : then
remembered how she had doubtless done this very same thing
with other men in this very room. All her apparently spontaneous
movements, he told himself, were but the oft-used pieces in the
game she played so skilfully.

” Let go,” he said, and flung himself down on the window-
seat, looking up at her with darkening eyes.

She sat meekly in the other corner, and folded her offending
hands in her lap.

” Do you know, your eyes are not a bit nice when you’re
cross ; ” she said, ” they seem to become quite black.”

He maintained a discouraging silence.

She looked over at him meditatively.

” I never cared a bit for Hiram P., if that’s what you mean,”
she remarked presently.

” Do you suppose I care a button if you did ? “

” Then why did you leave off shooting, and why won’t you
talk to me ? ”

He vouchsafed no reply.

Lulie spent some moments wrapped in thought. Then she
sighed deeply, and recommenced on a note of pensive regret :

“Ah, if I’d only met you sooner in life, I should be a very
different girl.”

The freshness which her quaint, drawling enunciation lent to
this time-dishonoured formula, made Campbell smile. Then
remembering all its implications, his face set in frowns again.

                                                Lulie

Lulie continued her discourse. “You see,” said she, “I never
had any one to teach me what was right. My mother died when
I was quite a child, and my father has always let me do exactly as
I pleased, so long as I didn’t bother him. Then I’ve never had a
home, but have always lived around in hotels and places ; all
winter in New York or Washington, and summers out at Long-
branch or Saratoga. It’s true we own a house in Detroit on
Lafayette Avenue, that we reckon as home, but we don’t ever
go there. It’s a bad sort of life for a girl, isn’t it ? ” she questioned,
pleadingly.

His mind was at work. The loose threads of his angers, his
irritations, his desires were knitting themselves together, weaving
themselves into something overmastering and definite.

The young girl meanwhile was moving up towards him along
the seat, for the effect which his sharpest rebuke produced on her
never lasted more than four minutes. She now again possessed
herself of his hand, and holding it between her own, began to
caress it in child-like fashion, pulling the fingers apart and closing
them again ; spreading it, palm downwards on her lap, and
laying her own little hand over it, to exemplify the differences
between them. He let her be ; he seemed unconscious of her pro-
ceedings.

” And then,” she continued, ” I’ve always known a lot of
young fellows who’ve liked to take me round ; and no one ever
objected to my going with them, and so I went. And I liked it,
and there wasn’t any harm in it, just kissing and making believe,
and nonsense. And I never really cared for one of them—I can
see that now, when I compare them with you ; when I compare
what I felt for them, with what I feel for you. Oh, I do love
you so much,” she said ; “don’t you believe me ? ” She lifted his
hand to her lips and covered it with kisses.

                                                He

He pulled it roughly away, got up, walked to the table, came
back again, stood looking at her with sombre eyes and dilating
pupils.

” I do love you,” she repeated, rising and advancing towards
him.

” For God’s sake, drop that damned rot,” he cried with sudden
fury. ” It wearies me, do you hear ? it sickens me. Love, love,
my God, what do you know about it ? Why, if you really loved
me, really loved any man—if you had any conception of what the
passion of love is, how beautiful, how fine, how sacred—the mere
idea that you could not come to your lover fresh, pure, untouched,
as a young girl should—that you had been handled, fondled, and
God knows what besides, by this man and the other—would fill
you with such horror for yourself, with such supreme disgust—you
would feel yourself so unworthy, so polluted . . . that . . .
that . . . by God ! you would take up that pistol there, and
blow your brains out ! ”

Lulie seemed to find the idea quite entertaining. She picked
the pistol up from where it lay in the window, examined it with
her pretty head drooping on one side, looked at it critically, and
then sent one of her long, red-brown caressing glances up towards
him.

” And suppose I were to,” she asked lightly, ” would you
believe me then ? ”

” Oh, . . . well . . . then, perhaps ; if you showed suffi-
cient decency to kill yourself, perhaps I might,” said he, with
ironical laughter. His ebullition had relieved him ; his nerves
were calmed again. “But nothing short of that would ever
make me.”

With her little tragic air which seemed so like a smile dis-
guised, she raised the weapon to the bosom of her gown. There

                                                came

came a sudden, sharp crack, a tiny smoke film. She stood an
instant swaying slightly, smiling certainly, distinctly outlined
against the background of rain-washed window, of grey falling
rain, the top of her head cutting in two the Ritterhausen
escutcheon. Then all at once there was nothing at all between
him and the window ; he saw the coat-of-arms entire ; but a
motionless, inert heap of plush and lace, and fallen wine-red hair,
lay at his feet upon the floor.

” Child, child, what have you done ? ” he cried with anguish,
and kneeling beside her, lifted her up, and looked into her
face.

* * * * *

When from a distance of time and place Campbell was at last
able to look back with some degree of calmness on the catastrophe,
the element which stung him most keenly was this : he could
never convince himself that Lulie had really loved him after all.
And the only two persons who had known them both, and the
circumstances of the case, sufficiently well to have resolved
his doubts one way or the other, held diametrically opposite
views.

“Well, just listen, then, and I’ll tell you how it was,” Miss
Nannie Dodge had said to him impressively, the day before he
left Schloss-Altenau for ever, ” Lulie was tremendously, terribly
in love with you. And when she found that you wouldn’t care
about her, she didn’t want to live any more. As to the way in
which it happened, you don’t need to reproach yourself for that.
She’d have done it, anyhow : if not then, why, later. But it’s all
the rest of your conduct to her that was so cruel. Your cold,
complacent British unresponsiveness. I guess you’ll never find
another woman to love you as Lulie did. She was just the
darlingest, the sweetest, the most loving girl in the world.”

                                                Mayne,

Mayne, on the other hand, summed it up in this way :
” Of course, old chap, it’s horrible to think of: horrible, horrible,
horrible ! I can’t tell you how badly I feel about it. For she
was a gorgeously beautiful creature. That red hair of hers !
Good Lord ! You won’t come across such hair as that twice in a
lifetime. But, believe me, she was only fooling with you. Once
she had you in her hunting-noose, once her buccaneering instincts
satisfied, and she’d have chucked you as she did all the rest.
As to her death, I’ve got three theories—no, two—for the first
is that she compassed it in a moment of genuine emotion, and
that, I think, we may dismiss as quite untenable. The second
is, that it arose from pure misadventure. You’d both been
shooting, hadn’t you ? Well, she took up the pistol and pulled
the trigger from mere mischief, and quite forgetting one barrel
was still loaded. And the third is, it was just her histrionic sense
of the fitness of things. The rôle she had played so long and so
well now demanded a sensational finale in the centre of the stage.
And it’s the third theory I give the preference to. She was the
most consummate little actress I ever saw.”