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like the play of children in that. I should have said that nothing could be more false than the motives and emotions of the drama as the author imagined them, but I had to own that their rendition by these sincere souls was yet more artificial. There was nothing traditional, nothing archaic, nothing autochthonic in their poor art. If the scene could at any moment have resolved itself into a walk-round, with an interspersion of «spir

ituals,» it would have had the charm of these; it would have consoled and edified: but as it was, I have seldom been so bored. I began to make some sad reflections, as that our American society, in its endeavor for the effect of European society, was of no truer ideal than these colored comedians, and I accused myself of a final absurdity in having come there with these young people, who, according to our good native usage, could have come perfectly well without me. At the end of the first act I broke into their talk with my conclusion that we must not count the histrionic talent among the gifts of the African race just yet. We could concede them music, I supposed, and there seemed to be hope for them, from what some of them had done, in the region of the plastic arts; but apparently the stage was not for them, and this was all the stranger because they were so imitative. Perhaps, I said, it was an excess of self-consciousness which prevented their giving themselves wholly to the art, and I began to speak of the subjective and the objective, of the real and the ideal; and whether it was that I became unintelligible as I became metaphysical, I found Kendricks obviously not following me in the incoherent replies he gave. Miss Gage had honestly made no attempt to follow me. He asked, Why, did n't I think it was pretty well done? They had been enjoying it very much, he said. I could only stare in answer, and wonder what had become of the man's tastes or his principles; he was either humbugging himself or he was hum

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ENGRAVED BY A. NEGRI.

VERY RAPIDLY.>>

Army meetings, and there was at least one theatrical performance-a performance of «East Lynne» entirely by people of color. The sentiments and incidents of the heartbreaking melodrama, as the colored mind interpreted them, were of very curious effect. It was as if the version were dyed with the same pigment that darkened the players' skins: it all came out negro. Yet they had tried to make it white; I could perceive how they aimed not at the imitation of our nature, but at the imitation of our convention; it was

bugging me. After that I left them alone, and suffered through the rest of the play with what relief I could get from laughing when the pathetic emotions of the drama became too poignant. I decided that Kendricks was absorbed in the study of his companion's mind, which must be open to his contemporaneous eye as it could never have been to my old-sighted glasses, and I envied him the knowledge he was gaining of that type of American girl. It suddenly came to me that he must be finding his account in this, and I felt a little less regret for the waste of civilities, of attentions, which sometimes seemed to me beyond her appreciation.

I, for my part, gave myself to the study of the types about me, and I dwelt long and luxuriously upon the vision of a florid and massive matron in diaphanous evening dress, whom I imagined to be revisiting the glimpses of her girlhood in the ancient watering-place, and to be getting all the gaiety she could out of it. These are the figures one mostly sees at Saratoga; there is very little youth of the present day there, but the youth of the past abounds, with the belated yellow hair or the purple mustaches, which give a notion of greater wickedness in a former generation.

I made my observation that the dress, even in extreme cases of elderly prime, was very good-in the case of the women, I mean; the men there, as everywhere with us, were mostly slovens; and I was glad to find that the good taste and the correct fashion were without a color-line; there were some mulatto ladies present as stylish as their white sisters, or step-sisters.

The most amiable of the human race is in great force at Saratoga, where the vast hotel service is wholly in its hands, and it had honored the effort of the comedians that night with a full house of their own complexion. We who were not of it showed strangely enough in the dark mass, who let us lead the applause, however, as if doubtful themselves where it ought to come in, and whom I found willing even to share some misplaced laughter of mine. They formed two thirds of the audience on the floor, and they were a cloud in the gallery, scarcely broken by a gleam of white.

I entertained myself with them a good deal, and I thought how much more delightful they were in their own kindly character than in their assumption of white character, and I tried to define my suffering from the performance as an effect from my tormented sympathies rather than from my offended tastes. When the long stress was over, and

we rose and stood to let the crowd get out, I asked Miss Gage if she did not think this must be the case. I do not suppose she was really much more experienced in the theater than the people on the stage, some of whom I doubted to have ever seen a play till they took part in « East Lynne.» But I thought I would ask her that in order to hear what she would say; and she said very simply that she had seen so few plays she did not know what to think of it, and I could see that she was abashed by the fact. Kendricks must have seen it too, for he began at once to save her from herself, with all his subtle generosity, and to turn her shame to praise. My heart, which remained sufficiently cold to her, warmed more than ever to him, and I should have liked to tell her that here was the finest and rarest human porcelain using itself like common clay in her behalf, and to demand whether she thought she was worth it.

I did not think she was, and I had a lurid moment when I was tempted to push on and make her show herself somehow at her worst. We had undertaken a preposterous thing in befriending her as we had done, and our course in bringing Kendricks in was wholly unjustifiable. How could I lead her on to some betrayal of her essential Philistinism, and make her so impossible in his eyes that even he, with all his sweetness and goodness, must take the first train from Saratoga in the morning?

We had of course joined the crowd in pushing forward; people always do, though they promise themselves to wait till the last one is out. I got caught in a dark eddy on the first stair-landing; but I could see them farther down, and I knew they would wait for me outside the door.

When I reached it at last they were nowhere to be seen; I looked up this street and down that, but they were not in sight.

XII.

I DID not afflict myself very much, or pretend to do so. They knew the way home, and after I had blundered about in search of them through the lamp-shot darkness, I settled. myself to walk back at my leisure, comfortably sure that I should find them on the veranda waiting for me when I reached the hotel. It was a thick night, and I almost ran into a couple at a corner of our quieter street when I had got to it out of Broadway. They seemed to be standing and looking about, and when the man said, "He must have thought we took the first turn,» and the woman, «Yes;

DRAWN BY IRVING R. WILES.

ENGRAVED BY F. H. WELLINGTON. "I KNEW THEY WOULD WAIT FOR ME OUTSIDE THE DOOR.»

that must have been the way,» I recognized my estrays.

I thought I would not discover myself to them, but follow on, and surprise them by arriving at our steps at the same moment they did, and I prepared myself to hurry after them. But they seemed in no hurry, and I had even some difficulty in accommodating my pace to the slowness of theirs.

"Won't you take my arm, Miss Gage?» he asked as they moved on.

"It's so very dark,» she answered (and I knew she had taken it), «I can hardly see a step; and poor Mr. March, with his glassesI don't know what he 'll do.>>

"Oh, he only uses them to read with; he can see as well as we can in the dark.»>

"He 's very young in his feelings,» said the girl; he puts me in mind of my own father.»

"He's very young in his thoughts,» said Kendricks; and that 's much more to the

purpose for a magazine editor. There are very few men of his age who keep in touch with the times as he does.»

«Still, Mrs. March seems a good deal younger, don't you think? I wonder how soon they begin to feel old?»

«Oh, not till along in the forties, I should say. It's a good deal in temperament. I don't suppose that either of them realizes yet that they 're old, and they must be nearly fifty.»

«How strange it must be,» said the girl, «to be fifty years old! Twenty seems old enough, goodness knows.»

«How should you like to be a dotard of twenty-seven?» Kendricks asked, and she laughed at his joke.

"I don't suppose I should mind it so much if I were a man.»

I had promised myself that if the talk became at all confidential I would drop behind out of ear-shot; but though it was curiously intimate for me to be put apart in the minds of these young people on account of my years as not of the same race or fate as themselves, there was nothing in what they said that I might not innocently overhear, as far as they were concerned, and I listened on.

But they had apparently given me quite enough attention. After some reciprocal laughter at what she said last, they were silent a moment, and then he said soberly: «There's something fine in the isolation the dark gives you, is n't there? You 're as remote in it from our own time and place as if you were wandering in interplanetary space.»

«I suppose we are doing that all the time on the earth,» she suggested.

«Yes; but how hard it is to realize that we are on the earth now. Sometimes I have a sense of it, though, when the moon breaks from one flying cloud to another. Then it seems as if I were a passenger on some vast, shapeless ship sailing through the air. What,» he asked, with no relevancy that I could perceive, «was the strangest feeling you ever had?» I remembered asking girls such questions when I was young, and their not apparently thinking it at all odd.

« I don't know,» she returned thoughtfully. «There was one time when I was little, and it had sleeted, and the sun came out just before it set, and seemed to set all the woods on fire. I thought the world was burning up.">

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"It must have been very weird,» said Kendricks; and I thought, «Oh, good heavens! Has he got to talking of weird things?»

«It's strange," he added, how we all have that belief when we are children, that the world is going to burn up! I don't suppose any child escapes it. Do you remember that poem of Thomson's, -the City of Dreadful Night man, where he describes the end of the world?»

«No; I never read it.»>

"Well, merely, he says when the conflagration began the little flames looked like crocuses breaking through the sod. If it ever happened, I fancy it would be quite as simple as that. But perhaps you don't like gloomy poetry?»

«Yes, yes, I do. It's the only kind that I care about.>>

«Then you hate funny poetry? »

«I think it's disgusting. Papa is always cutting it out of the papers and wanting to send it to me, and we have the greatest times!»

«I suppose," said Kendricks, «it expresses some moods, though.»

«Oh, yes; it expresses some moods; and sometimes it makes me laugh in spite of myself, and ashamed of anything serious.»>

<<That's always the effect of a farce with

me.»

<< But then I'm ashamed of being ashamed afterward,» said the girl. «I suppose you go to the theater a great deal in New York.» "It's a school of life,» said Kendricks. «I mean the audience.»>

« I would like to go to the opera once. I am going to make papa take me in the winter.» She laughed with a gay sense of power, and he said:

«You seem to be great friends with your father.»>

«Yes; we 're always together. I always went everywhere with him; this is the first time I've been away without him. But I thought I'd come with Mrs. Deering and see what Saratoga was like; I had never been

here.»

"And is it like what you thought?»

«No! The first week we did n't do anything. Then we got acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. March, and I began really to see something. But I supposed it was all balls and gaiety.»

"We must get up a few if you're so fond of them,» Kendricks playfully suggested.

«Oh, I don't know as I am. I never went much at home. Papa did n't care to have

me.»

« Ah, do you think it was right for him to keep you all to himself?»

The girl did not answer, and they had both halted so abruptly that I almost ran into them.

«I don't quite make out where we are,» Kendricks said, and he seemed to be peering about. I plunged across the street lest he should ask me. But I heard him add, «Oh, yes; I know now,» and then they pressed forward.

We were quite near our hotel, but I thought it best to walk round the square and let them arrive first. On the way I amused myself thinking how differently the girl had shown herself to him from what she had ever shown herself to my wife or me. She had really, this plain-minded goddess, a vein of poetic feeling, some inner beauty of soul answering to the outer beauty of body. She had a romantic attachment to her father, and this shed a sort of light on both of them, though I knew that it was not always a revelation of character.

XIII.

WHEN I reached the hotel I found Miss Gage at the door, and Kendricks coming out of the office toward her.

«Oh, here he is!» she called to him at sight of me.

« Where in the world have you been?» he demanded. «I had just found out from the clerk that you had n't come in yet, and I was going back for you with a search-light.»

«Oh, I was n't so badly lost as all that,» I returned. «I missed you in the crowd at the door, but I knew you'd get home somehow, and so I came on without you. But my aged steps are not so quick as yours.»

The words, mechanically uttered, suggested something, and I thought that if they were in for weirdness I would give them as much weirdness as they could ask for. «When you get along toward fifty you'll find that the foot you 've still got out of the grave does n't work so lively as it used. Besides, I was interested in the night effect. It 's so gloriously dark; and I had a fine sense of isolation as I came along, as if I were altogether out of my epoch and my environment. I felt as if the earth was a sort of Flying Dutchman, and I was the only passenger. It was about the weirdest sensation I ever had. It reminded me, I don't know how, exactly of the feeling I had when I was young, and I saw the sunset one evening through the woods after a sleet-storm.»>

They stared at each other as I went on, and

I could see Kendricks's fine eyes kindle with an imaginative appreciation of the literary quality of the coincidence. But when I added, «Did you ever read a poem about the end of the world by that City of Dreadful Night man?» Miss Gage impulsively caught me by the coat lapel and shook me.

« Ah, it was you all the time! I knew there was somebody following us, and I might have known who it was!»

We all gave way to a gale of laughter, and sat down on the veranda and had our joke out in a full recognition of the fact. When Kendricks rose to go at last I said, "We won't say anything about this little incident to Mrs. March, hey?» And then they laughed again as if it were the finest wit in the world, and Miss Gage bade me a joyful good night at the head of the stairs as she went off to her room and I to mine.

I found Mrs. March waiting up with a book, and as soon as I shut myself in with her she said awfully, «What were you laughing so about?»

«Laughing? Did you hear me laughing?» The whole house heard you, I'm afraid. You certainly ought to have known better, Basil. It was very inconsiderate of you.» And, as I saw she was going on with more of that sort of thing, to divert her thoughts from my crime I told her the whole story. It had quite the effect I intended up to a certain point. She even smiled a little, as much as a woman could be expected to smile who was not originally in the joke.

And they had got to comparing weird experiences?» she asked.

«Yes; the staleness of the thing almost made me sick. Do you remember when we first began to compare our weird experiences? But I suppose they will go on doing it to the end of time, and it will have as great a charm for the last man and woman as it had for Adam and Eve when they compared their weird experiences.>>

"And was that what you were laughing at?» « We were laughing at the wonderful case of telepathy I put on them.»>

Mrs. March faced her open book down on the table before her, and looked at me with profound solemnity. Well, then, I can tell you, my dear, it is no laughing matter. If they have got to the weird it is very serious; and her talking to him about her family, and his wanting to know about her father, that's serious too-far more serious than either of them can understand. I don't like it, Basil; we have got a terrible affair on our hands.»> «Terrible? >>

«Yes, terrible. As long as he was interested in her simply from a literary point of view, though I did n't like that either, I could put up with it; but now that he 's got to telling her about himself, and exchanging weird experiences with her, it's another thing altogether. Oh, I never wanted Kendricks brought into the affair at all.»

«Come now, Isabel! Stick to the facts, please.»

«No matter! It was you that discovered the girl, and then something had to be done. I was perfectly shocked when you told me that Mr. Kendricks was in town, because I saw at once that he would have to be got in for it; and now we have to think what we shall do.»>

«Couldn't we think better in the morning?» «No; we must think at once. I shall not sleep to-night, anyhow. My peace is gone. I shall have to watch them every instant.»>

<< Beginning at this instant? Why not wait till you can see them? »

«Oh, you can't joke it away, my dear. If I find they are really interested in each other I shall have to speak. I am responsible.»>

"The young lady,» I said, more to gain time than anything else, "seems quite capable of taking care of herself.>> <<That makes it all the worse. Do you think I care for her only? It's Kendricks too that I care for. I don't know that I care for her at all.»

«Oh, then I think we may fairly leave Kendricks to his own devices; and I'm not alarmed for Miss Gage either, though I do care for her a great deal.»

«I don't understand how you can be so heartless about it, Basil,» said Mrs. March, plaintively. «She is a young girl, and she has never seen anything of the world, and of course if he keeps on paying her attention in this way she can't help thinking that he is interested in her. Men never can see such things as women do. They think that, until a man has actually asked a girl to marry him, he has n't done anything to warrant her in supposing that he is in love with her, or that she has any right to be in love with him.»>

«That is true; we can't imagine that she would be so indelicate.»

"I see that you 're determined to tease, my dear,» said Mrs. March, and she took up her book with an air of offense and dismissal. "If you won't talk seriously, I hope you will think seriously, and try to realize what we've got in for. Such a girl could n't imagine that we had simply got Mr. Kendricks to go about with her from a romantic wish to make her

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