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 VALIDATING
PHARMACEUTICAL
SYSTEMS
Good Computer Practice in
Life Science Manufacturing
 VALIDATING
PHARMACEUTICAL
SYSTEMS
Good Computer Practice in
Life Science Manufacturing

EDITED BY
John Andrews

Boca Raton London New York Singapore

A CRC title, part of the Taylor & Francis imprint, a member of the
Taylor & Francis Group, the academic division of T&F Informa plc.

Sue Horwood Publishing

Storrington, West Sussex, England
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

© 2005 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

No claim to original U.S. Government works

Version Date: 20130726

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-203-50043-9 (eBook - PDF)

This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. While all reasonable efforts have
been made to publish reliable data and information, neither the author[s] nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibil-
ity or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publishers wish to make clear that any views or opinions
expressed in this book by individual editors, authors or contributors are personal to them and do not necessarily reflect
the views/opinions of the publishers. The information or guidance contained in this book is intended for use by medical,
scientific or health-care professionals and is provided strictly as a supplement to the medical or other professional’s own
judgement, their knowledge of the patient’s medical history, relevant manufacturer’s instructions and the appropriate best
practice guidelines. Because of the rapid advances in medical science, any information or advice on dosages, procedures or
diagnoses should be independently verified. The reader is strongly urged to consult the drug companies’ printed instruc-
tions, and their websites, before administering any of the drugs recommended in this book. This book does not indicate
whether a particular treatment is appropriate or suitable for a particular individual. Ultimately it is the sole responsibility
of the medical professional to make his or her own professional judgements, so as to advise and treat patients appropriately.
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 Contents
The Editor and His Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Guy Wingate
Editor’s Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
John Andrews

Chapter 1 Considerations for Computerized System Validation in the

21st Century Life Sciences Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Tony de Claire, Peter Coady, and Nicola Stevens

Chapter 2 An Inspector’s Viewpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Sam Clark

Chapter 3 State-of-the-Art Risk Assessment and Management . . . . . . . . . . 85

John Andrews

Chapter 4 Validation Planning and Reporting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Chris Clark

Chapter 5 Supplier Audits: Question and Answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Guy Wingate

Chapter 6 Developing Good Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Mark Cherry

Chapter 7 Traceability of Requirements Throughout the Life Cycle . . . . . . 209

Keith Collyer and Jeremy Dick

Chapter 8 Good Documentation in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Michael L. Wyrick

Chapter 9 Good Testing Practice: Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

David Stokes

v
vi Validation of Pharmaceutical Systems

Chapter 10 Enterprise Resource Planning Systems — Aligning Business

and Validation Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
A. Nobibux, Julien Peters, Steve Sharp, and James Stafford

Chapter 11 Calibration in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Mark Foss

Chapter 12 Validating Legacy Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Siegfried Schmitt

Chapter 13 Technology Transfer Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Stewart Green and Paul Warren

Chapter 14 Qualifying SCADA Systems in Practice Acquisition . . . . . . . . . 399

Orlando Lopez

Chapter 15 The Application of GAMP 4 Guidelines to Computer

Systems Found in GLP Regulated Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
Paul Coombes

Chapter 16 The Validation of a LIMS System — A Case Study . . . . . . . . . . 435

David Hogg and Fernando Pedeconi

Chapter 17 Compliance and Validation in Central and

Eastern Europe (CEE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Paul Irving, Carl Turner, Wayne Duncan, and David Forrest

Chapter 18 Distribution Management Validation in Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

Ben Gilkes

Chapter 19 Good Testing Practice: Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491

David Stokes

Chapter 20 Practical Applications of GAMP Version 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507

Siegfried Schmitt

Chapter 21 Glossary and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525

Orlando Lopez

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
 The Editor and His Contributors
John Andrews owns and operates Andrews Consulting Enterprises (ACE) Ltd from
Worthing, West Sussex, U.K. Between 2001 and 2003, he managed the Information
Technology (IT) Consulting Group of KMI, a division of PAREXEL International
LLC (KMI). He is co-chairman of the GAMP 4 Special Interest Group on Process
Control, which has produced a GAMP guide to Validation of Process Control
Systems (VPCS). He also sat on the Editorial Board for GAMP 4, where his
responsibilities included providing consultant services on computer systems
validation, compliance and quality assurance activities within the pharmaceutical,
biopharmaceutical, medical device, and other regulated healthcare industries.
Prior to KMI, Andrews held positions as a Computer System Validation Manager
and Supply Chain Systems Project Manager with GlaxoSmithKline, U.K.
Responsibilities there included all aspects of computer systems validation, from
process control through to business and laboratory systems validation. He also
managed teams with responsibilities for ensuring all computer system validation
activities undertaken on site and within projects were delivered to an appropriate
level to comply with the regulatory requirements.
Andrews worked for 15 years with SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, where
he held positions as a Senior Engineering Standards Engineer, Secondary
Manufacturing Electrical Engineer, Projects Engineer, and Electrical Supervisor.
He attended Worthing College of Technology in West Sussex.
Mark Cherry is Systems Quality and Projects Group Manager for AstraZeneca
with responsibility for the validation of computerized systems (laboratory, process
control and information systems) used within U.K. manufacturing. Cherry is a
member of the GAMP European Steering Group and has been an active member of
both the IT Infrastructure and Process Control Special Interest Groups (SIGs) within
GAMP. He is a Chartered Engineer and a member of the Institute of Measurement
and Control. His previous experience includes 12 years with Glaxo (GlaxoWellcome
and GlaxoSmithKline) where he held a number of roles ranging from engineering
plant management through managing the design and implementation of a number of
large distributed process control systems used within API manufacturing facilities.
Cherry became directly involved with quality management in 1999 when he was
appointed Computer Systems Validation Manager for GlaxoWellcome’s API
manufacturing sites.
Tony de Claire and Nichola Stevens are both with Mi-Services Group based in
the U.K. Stevens has been been the company’s Senior Validation and Compliance

vii
viii Validation of Pharmaceutical Systems

Consultant for the last 2 years, prior to which she worked for 10 years at SmithKline
Beecham (as it was then) and 2 years each at Oxford Asymmetry International and
Covance Laboratories.
de Claire joined Mi Services Group as Principal Consultant in 2001, after 6 years
validation and compliance consultancy with APDC Consulting and Kemper-
Masterson Inc. Prior to that he led the Manufacturing Automation and Information
Systems Group for SmithKline Beecham’s Corporate Engineering Department,
responsible for computerized system application and validation across a wide-range
of major capital projects, world-wide. de Claire has been active in number of
GAMP Special Interest Groups over many years, and he also set up the Process
Control and Automation Module for the MSc Pharmaceutical Engineering
Advanced Training (PEAT) course offered by the University of Manchester/UMIST.
Chris Clark is Head of Quality Systems with Napp Pharmaceuticals Limited,
located in the innovative Science Park in Cambridge, U.K. He holds a degree in
biochemistry from Lancaster University, is a member of the Institute of Quality
Assurance (IQA) in the U.K., and brings 26 years quality assurance experience with
the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries to this book. A member of the GAMP
Forum Council and European steering committee, Clark speaks regularly at
conferences and training seminars on topics related to the implementation,
qualification and validation of IT systems within those industries. He has contributed
to the GAMP 4 guide and provides ongoing input to GAMP Forum publications.
Clark has worked in many automated equipment and computer related projects,
ranging from manufacturing process equipment and tablet presses, to local
implementation of ORACLE® Applications 11i, an enterprise document
management (EDM) system, and an ORACLE® clinical data management system.
He has a range of auditing experience gained from these and other projects, and
assists international companies associated with Napp Pharmaceuticals on issues
surrounding electronic records and signatures.
Sam Clark, a former Senior Consultant with the Information Technology (IT)
Consulting Group of KMI, was an Investigator at the FDA for more than 21 years.
He served as a General Investigator, a Medical Device Specialist Investigator, and
an Investigator specializing in automated systems for the FDA’s Atlanta District.
Most recently, he was an FDA National Expert on Automated Systems.
Clark has conducted worldwide inspections in the entire range of the FDA-
regulated industry and has extensive experience dealing with automated drug
manufacturing and computer-controlled medical devices. He received his B.S. from
the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia and did graduate study in Computer
Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Clark is a member of the Association
for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers –
Computer Society, and the American Society for Quality. He has published in
Pharmaceutical Technology.
Peter Coady, BSc(Hons), CEng, FIMechE, FInstMC, is a consultant to the
regulated industries sector (including GSK and its merged companies, Pfizer and
Contributors ix

Wyeth), and runs his business (P J Coady & Associates) in Warsash, Southampton,
U.K. He specializes in computer systems validation, electronic records and
signatures, and system supplier auditing, having worked in these and related fields
for more than 16 years.
Coady’s career spans more than 25 years. Prior to becoming a consultant, he was
employed at senior level by major British companies in the pharmaceutical,
petrochemical, chemical and water sectors. He was appointed Manager of the
Electrical, Instrumentation and Systems Group at AMEC Design & Management
Limited, Southampton (formerly Matthew Hall Engineering Limited).
Coady is a GAMP Europe Forum and steering committee member. He represents
GAMP on the BSI Disc TickIT Technical Committee, is a qualified IRCA Lead
TickIT and QMS Auditor, and works internationally for LRQA as an independent
lead assessor in these areas. He can be contacted via the publishers.
Since contributing to this book, Coady has joined Pfizer Ltd., Sandwich, U.K., as
a Computer Validation QA Specialist.
Keith Collyer is a Principal Consultant in the Professional Services Group of
Telelogic U.K. Limited, and Jeremy Dick is a Principal Analyst in the company’s
Products Division. Both have extensive experience in implementing successful
requirements management and traceability solutions in organizations of all sizes
across a wide range of industries, commercial organizations and government
departments throughout the world. Dick is one of the authors of the book
Requirements Engineering.
Paul Coombes was Head of Validation Europe for Washington Group
International and is author of the successful book Laboratory Systems Validation
Testing and Practice (PDA, 2003) and well-known papers on the design of
compliant Excel spreadsheets, electronic signatures and other Part 11 issues. He
worked for 10 years with Eli Lilly (U.K.) in analytical chemistry followed by
positions with Hewlett-Packard, Tanvec and projects for major pharmaceutical
firms as an independent consultant, a total of 25 years dedication to the industry.
Equally experienced now in GMP, GLP, and GCP environments, Coombes works in
computing, automation and IT as well as the science and chemistry disciplines that
together create the special nature of the pharmaceutical and medical device
industry.
Coombes contributed an excellent chapter on the effects of 21 CFR Part 11 on
laboratories for 21 CFR Part 11 Electronic Records and Signatures in Practice (Sue
Horwood Publishing, 2003).
Wayne Duncan has been with PL Consultancy for 2 years. He focuses on
Network and IT Infrastructure Compliance and Validation
David Forrest, Chief Executive of PL Consultancy was involved in the very early
days of the GAMP Guide. His previous company, FJ Systems, was the initial editor
of the GAMP guide. His experience spans a wide range of computer systems, from
both an Implementation and Compliance and Validation perspective. Forrest has
performed more than 50 audits of IT and Equipment suppliers and today manages
x Validation of Pharmaceutical Systems

PL Consultancy a Specialist Computer Compliance and Validation Consultancy

Company.
Mark Foss has been Head of Engineering for Boehringer Ingelheim in the U.K.
for the last five years. He has worked since 1977 in both the nuclear and
pharmaceutical industries. He was previously Engineering Manager for SmithKline
Beecham for 11 years, and also worked for Roche Products and Glaxo. He is a
member of the Industry Board and European Steering Committee of the GAMP
Forum where he is the Chairman of the Process Control and the Calibration Special
Interest Groups. The latter has developed an Industry Good Practice Guide for the
management of calibration (issued by ISPE in February 2002). Foss has had articles
on calibration published by ISPE and The Institute of Measurement and Control. He
has also been a speaker on this topic at many ISPE and other industry conferences,
seminars, and symposia.
Ben Gilkes is Head of Systems Validation with Exel Logistics with responsibility
for their European Healthcare operations. Gilkes holds a Business degree from
Nottingham University and has worked for Exel in the Logistics industry for 5
years, undertaking a variety of IT roles including site and project management.
Stewart Green is Director of Quality, Wyeth U.K. He has occupied senior
positions in the pharmaceutical industry in a career spanning 30 years including
production, validation, and QC. A microbiologist by training, he has maintained an
abiding interest insterile area operations. He is author of two Executive Briefings
for Sue Horwood Publishing Limited, on rapid microbiological methods and
technology transfer.
David Hogg is a Systems Quality Group Manager with AstraZeneca. After
receiving his MEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Queen’s
University, Belfast, he joined ICI U.K. and has worked in project engineering,
process control systems and systems validation over a period of 16 years. He has
been an active member of the GAMP 4 Special Interest Group on Process Control.
His co-author, Fernando Pedeconi, recently departed KMI Parexel to join CsOls
plc, Runcorn, Cheshire, U.K., where he is deploying LIMS for Bristol-Myers
Squibb in two countries across three manufacturing sites.
Paul Irving is Principal Consultant, PL Consultancy. He has been an active
member of the U.S.-based GAMP Americas Manufacturing Executions Systems
Special Interest Group (SiG) for the last 2 years. As a European representative, he
has been a key contributor in the development of the GAMP MES Guidance
Document. Irving has been involved in Compliance and Validation for over 10 years
and has been involved in many European projects.
Orlando Lopez is Director of Information Management Compliance, with
Cordis, a U.S.-based Johnson & Johnson Company. Formerly Executive Consultant
to J&J Networking and Computer Services, and Senior Computer Systems
Validation Consultant for McNeil Consumer Products, he has many years experience
in validation, good manufacturing, and good automated manufacturing practice,
with special interests in raw data, electronic records and systems, and SCADA
Contributors xi

systems. He has written many papers in his field of expertise, more than eight
executive briefings for Sue Horwood Publishing, and 21 CFR Part 11 Complete
Guide to International Compliance (Interpharm/CRC/Sue Horwood Publishing,
2004).
Julian Peters is a Principal Consultant with the company’s Business Consulting
Division, responsible for the SAP practice, with chief responsibility for
implementing ERP systems in regulated environments. With more than 10 years’
ERP implementation experience, Peters has worked all over Europe and the U.S.
validating and implementing ERP systems for some of the world’s largest
pharmaceutical companies. He specializes in 21 CFR Part 11 compliance, including
implementing Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures.
Chris Randell is a Biological Group Leader at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in the U.K.
His career spans more than 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry, both as a bench
microbiologist and manager. He has developed a keen interest in the application of
rapid microbiological methods and has been active in promoting their use both in the
U.K. and in Europe.
Dr. Siegfried Schmitt is a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Chartered
Chemist and Chartered Scientist. He started his career with F. Hoffmann-La Roche
in Basel, Switzerland, where he worked as Senior Production Chemist in Active
Pharmaceutical Ingredients and Vitamin production. Following a move to the U.K.,
he worked for several years as consultant and validation manager for Raytheon E&C
on multiple projects for many blue-chip clients. This was followed by 2 years with
ABB Eutech as Senior Lead Consultant, working mainly in Europe and the U.S.
In 2002 Dr. Schmitt joined Amersham Health as global Quality Assurance
Director in Information Management, with responsibility for the IM Quality
Management System and all IM Security. Amersham Health is now part of General
Electric Healthcare, headquartered at Little Chalfont, U.K. Dr. Schmitt regularly
publishes articles on a variety of topics, has written two books, is a member of
several special interest groups and a member of the PDA publishing group advisory
board. He is the editor of 21 CFR Part 11 Compliance in Practice (Sue Horwood
Publishing, 2003), which is an overview of first hand experience from industry
professionals.
Steve Sharp is the Life Science Business Manager with Mi Services Group and
has worked as a consultant delivering business solutions to regulated sectors for
more than 10 years, working with Europe, North America and Malaysia. Sharp is
responsible for definition of life science consulting services, delivery governance
associated with all computer system validation programs and projects and
specializes in validation of ERP business solutions. His previous industry
employment includes SmithKline Beecham and Cyanamid, where he held positions
within manufacturing management and logistics disciplines.
Dr. James Stafford is senior consultant at Mi Services Group Ltd., specializing in
the specification, implementation and validation of LIMS, ERP, and Clinical Data
Management systems subject to GxP regulations. These specialties are supported with
xii Validation of Pharmaceutical Systems

expertise in auditing IT quality systems subject to GxP and ISO 9001 regulations and
standards as a trained TickIT auditor. Prior to joining Mi Services, Dr. Stafford spent
6 years as pharmaceutical consultant to a major LIMS vendor with responsibilities for
pharmaceutical domain and GxP knowledge transfer, specification and evaluation of
pharmaceutical applications. Dr. Stafford spent his formative years at the bench
applying new analytical chemistry techniques to investigate a range of problems in the
fields of veterinary, clinical, pharmaceutical and bio-pharmaceutical sciences.
Subsequently Dr. Stafford developed a specific interest in the use of computer
systems for the capture, analysis and reporting of scientific data. Prior to leaving
pharmaceutical R&D, Dr. Stafford was Head of Pharmacokinetics at Technologie
Servier (France). He has also published and spoken widely on subjects as diverse as
validation, Quality Systems, LIMS, veterinary biochemistry, analytical chemistry,
pharmacokinetics, and robotics. He was editor of a book on Advanced LIMS
Technology: Case Studies and Business Opportunities (1995).
David Stokes, who has contributed two chapters on the increasingly important
topic of systems testing, is a Principal Validation Consultant and Industry Manager
(Life Sciences) with Mi Services Group. He is an active member of the GAMP
Forum, leading the GAMP Shared Interest Group on “Testing GxP Critical
Systems.” Having worked in the IT sector of the life science industries for many
years, he is highly respected for his range of knowledge. He is the author of Testing
Computer Systems for FDA/MHRA Compliance (Interpharm/CRC/Sue Horwood
Publishing, 2004).
Carl Turner, Director and Principal Consultant, PL Consultancy, has been an
active member of U.S.-based group Global Information Systems SiG since the start
of GAMP Americas some 3 years ago. As a European representative, he has been a
key contributor in the development of a global regulatory matrix and has presented
on the subject matter many times. He has also been instrumental in developing a
database tool that addresses global regulations.
Dr. Guy Wingate is an internationally recognized expert in the world of
pharmaceutical systems validation. He speaks regularly at conferences and has
published several books in computer systems validation with Interpharm/CRC and
Sue Horwood Publishing Limited. Dr. Wingate is currently Director of Global
Computer Validation at GlaxoSmithKline, responsible for standards,
implementation, and inspection readiness of process control, laboratory, IT systems,
and IT infrastructure across the company’s worldwide pharmaceutical and consumer
healthcare manufacturing operations. He has a B.Sc. in computing, an M.Sc. in
advanced microelectronics, and a Ph.D. in engineering science (Durham University,
U.K.). He has been associated with GAMP (good automated manufacturing
practice) Forum for over 10 years, including key contributions to various GAMP
publications (GAMP4, Electronic Records and Signatures, Good Practice
Guidelines, etc.).
Dr. Wingate currently chairs the GAMP Forum governing council, which
oversees the regional steering committees of GAMP Americas, GAMP Europe, and
Contributors xiii

GAMP Japan. He helps train various international regulatory authorities in

computer systems validation, and lectures on the MSc Pharmaceutical Engineering
Advanced Training (PEAT) course at Manchester University, U.K
Michael L. Wyrick, Senior Director of GMP Consulting and System Integration
with Washington Group International, U.S. and has 30 years of pharmaceutical
industry experience at Eli Lilly and Company in a variety of information technology
and quality assurance leadership roles. He also has 3 years experience leading a
Consulting Services Business Unit in the Life Science industry for KMI and is a
globally recognized subject matter expert in the fields of computer validation, IT
Infrastructure qualification, 21 CFR Part 11 compliance, quality management
systems, internal auditing, and supplier management. He has been elected to three
terms as chair of the PhRMA Computer System Validation Committee and has
served as the founding chairman of the PDA Computer Validation Issues Task
Group. He is an active member of Good Automated Manufacturing Practices
(GAMP), International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers, Institute of Validation
Technology, and PDA. He is a PDA-certified Technical Report 32 Auditor. He
serves on the GAMP Americas Industry Board, Pharmaceutical Technology
Editorial Advisory Board, and the Sue Horwood Publications Editorial Advisory
Board. Wyrick has been involved as an author, speaker, and instructor for more than
14 years and has written many articles for industry journals.
Other documents randomly have
different content
a mystery as on the day when she had first surprised him, mute and
absorbed, over what the people she had always lived with would have
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She felt a rush of tears: no, there were times when fate was too cruel, the
future too horrible to contemplate, and the past—the past, oh, how much
worse! And there he sat, coughing, coughing—and thinking God knows
what, behind those quiet half-closed lids. At such times he grew so
mysteriously remote that she felt lonelier than when he was not in the room.
“Charlie!”
He roused himself. “Yes?”
“Here’s your tea.”
He took it from her in silence, and she began, nervously, to wonder why
he was not talking. Was it because he was afraid it might make him cough
again, afraid she would be worried, and scold him? Or was it because he
was thinking—thinking of things he had heard at old Mrs. Parrett’s, or on
the drive home with Sillerton Jackson ... hints they might have dropped ...
insinuations ... she didn’t know what ... or of something he had seen,
perhaps, from old Mrs. Parrett’s window? She looked across at his white
forehead, so smooth and impenetrable in the lamplight, and thought: “Oh,
God, it’s like a locked door. I shall dash my brains out against it some day!”
For, after all, it was not impossible that he had actually seen her, seen her
from Mrs. Parrett’s window, or even from the crowd around the door of the
hotel. For all she knew, he might have been near enough, in that crowd, to
put out his hand and touch her. And he might have held back, benumbed,
aghast, not believing his own eyes.... She couldn’t tell. She had never yet
made up her mind how he would look, how he would behave, what he
would say, if ever he did see or hear anything....
No! That was the worst of it. They had lived together for nearly nine
years—and how closely!—and nothing that she knew of him, or had
observed in him, enabled her to forecast exactly what, in that particular
case, his state of mind and his attitude would be. In his profession, she
knew, he was celebrated for his shrewdness and insight; in personal matters
he often seemed, to her alert mind, oddly absent-minded and indifferent. Yet
that might be merely his instinctive way of saving his strength for things he
considered more important. There were times when she was sure he was
quite deliberate and self-controlled enough to feel in one way and behave in
another: perhaps even to have thought out a course in advance—just as, at
the first bad symptoms of illness, he had calmly made his will, and planned
everything about her future, the house and the servants.... No, she couldn’t
tell; there always hung over her the thin glittering menace of a danger she
could neither define nor localize—like that avenging lightning which
groped for the lovers in the horrible poem he had once read aloud to her
(what a choice!) on a lazy afternoon of their wedding journey, as they lay
stretched under Italian stone-pines.
The maid came in to draw the curtains and light the lamps. The fire
glowed, the scent of the roses drifted on the warm air, and the clock ticked
out the minutes, and softly struck a half hour, while Mrs. Hazeldean
continued to ask herself, as she so often had before: “Now, what would be
the natural thing for me to say?”
 And suddenly the words escaped from her, she didn’t know how: “I
wonder you didn’t see me coming out of the hotel—for I actually squeezed
my way in.”
Her husband made no answer. Her heart jumped convulsively; then she
lifted her eyes and saw that he was asleep. How placid his face looked—
years younger than when he was awake! The immensity of her relief rushed
over her in a warm glow, the counterpart of the icy sweat which had sent
her chattering homeward from the fire. After all, if he could fall asleep, fall
into such a peaceful sleep as that—tired, no doubt, by his imprudent walk,
and the exposure to the cold—it meant, beyond all doubt, beyond all
conceivable dread, that he knew nothing, had seen nothing, suspected
nothing: that she was safe, safe, safe!
The violence of the reaction made her long to spring to her feet and
move about the room. She saw a crooked picture that she wanted to
straighten, she would have liked to give the roses another tilt in their glass.
But there he sat, quietly sleeping, and the long habit of vigilance made her
respect his rest, watching over it as patiently as if it had been a sick child’s.
She drew a contented breath. Now she could afford to think of his outing
only as it might affect his health; and she knew that this sudden drowsiness,
even if it were a sign of extreme fatigue, was also the natural restorative for
that fatigue. She continued to sit behind the tea-tray, her hands folded, her
eyes on his face, while the peace of the scene entered into her, and held her
under brooding wings.
 IV
A T Mrs. Struthers’s, at eleven o’clock that evening, the long over-lit
drawing-rooms were already thronged with people.
Lizzie Hazeldean paused on the threshold and looked about her. The
habit of pausing to get her bearings, of sending a circular glance around any
assemblage of people, any drawing-room, concert-hall or theatre that she
entered, had become so instinctive that she would have been surprised had
anyone pointed out to her the unobservant expression and careless
movements of the young women of her acquaintance, who also looked
about them, it is true, but with the vague unseeing stare of youth, and of
beauty conscious only of itself.
Lizzie Hazeldean had long since come to regard most women of her age
as children in the art of life. Some savage instinct of self-defence, fostered
by experience, had always made her more alert and perceiving than the
charming creatures who passed from the nursery to marriage as if lifted
from one rose-lined cradle into another. “Rocked to sleep—that’s what
they’ve always been,” she used to think sometimes, listening to their
innocuous talk during the long after-dinners in hot drawing-rooms, while
their husbands, in the smoking-rooms below, exchanged ideas which, if no
more striking, were at least based on more direct experiences.
But then, as all the old ladies said, Lizzie Hazeldean had always
preferred the society of men.
The man she now sought was not visible, and she gave a little sigh of
ease. “If only he has had the sense to stay away!” she thought.
She would have preferred to stay away herself; but it had been her
husband’s whim that she should come. “You know you always enjoy
yourself at Mrs. Struthers’s—everybody does. The old girl somehow
manages to have the most amusing house in New York. Who is it who’s
going to sing tonight?... If you don’t go, I shall know it’s because I’ve
coughed two or three times oftener than usual, and you’re worrying about
me. My dear girl, it will take more than the Fifth Avenue Hotel fire to kill
me.... My heart’s feeling unusually steady.... Put on your black velvet, will
you?—with these two roses....”
So she had gone. And here she was, in her black velvet, under the glitter
of Mrs. Struthers’s chandeliers, amid all the youth and good looks and
gaiety of New York; for, as Hazeldean said, Mrs. Struthers’s house was
more amusing than anybody else’s, and whenever she opened her doors the
world flocked through them.
As Mrs. Hazeldean reached the inner drawing-room the last notes of a
rich tenor were falling on the attentive silence. She saw Campanini’s low-
necked throat subside into silence above the piano, and the clapping of
many tightly-fitting gloves was succeeded by a general movement, and the
usual irrepressible outburst of talk.
In the breaking-up of groups she caught a glimpse of Sillerton Jackson’s
silvery crown. Their eyes met across bare shoulders, he bowed profoundly,
and she fancied that a dry smile lifted his moustache. “He doesn’t usually
bow to me as low as that,” she thought apprehensively.
But as she advanced into the room her self-possession returned. Among
all these stupid pretty women she had such a sense of power, of knowing
almost everything better than they did, from the way of doing her hair to the
art of keeping a secret! She felt a thrill of pride in the slope of her white
shoulders above the black velvet, in the one curl escaping from her thick
chignon, and the slant of the gold arrow tipped with diamonds which she
had thrust in to retain it. And she had done it all without a maid, with no one
cleverer than Susan to help her! Ah, as a woman she knew her business....

Mrs. Struthers, plumed and ponderous, with diamond stars studding her
black wig like a pin-cushion, had worked her resolute way back to the outer
room. More people were coming in; and with her customary rough skill she
was receiving, distributing, introducing them. Suddenly her smile deepened;
she was evidently greeting an old friend. The group about her scattered, and
Mrs. Hazeldean saw that, in her cordial absent-minded way, and while her
wandering hostess-eye swept the rooms, she was saying a confidential word
to a tall man whose hand she detained. They smiled at each other; then Mrs.
Struthers’s glance turned toward the inner room, and her smile seemed to
say: “You’ll find her there.”
 The tall man nodded. He looked about him composedly, and began to
move toward the centre of the throng, speaking to everyone, appearing to
have no object beyond that of greeting the next person in his path, yet
quietly, steadily pursuing that path, which led straight to the inner room.
Mrs. Hazeldean had found a seat near the piano. A good-looking youth,
seated beside her, was telling her at considerable length what he was going
to wear at the Beauforts’ fancy-ball. She listened, approved, suggested; but
her glance never left the advancing figure of the tall man.
Handsome? Yes, she said to herself; she had to admit that he was
handsome. A trifle too broad and florid, perhaps; though his air and his
attitude so plainly denied it that, on second thoughts, one agreed that a man
of his height had, after all, to carry some ballast. Yes; his assurance made
him, as a rule, appear to people exactly as he chose to appear; that is, as a
man over forty, but carrying his years carelessly, an active muscular man,
whose blue eyes were still clear, whose fair hair waved ever so little less
thickly than it used to on a low sunburnt forehead, over eyebrows almost
silvery in their blondness, and blue eyes the bluer for their thatch. Stupid-
looking? By no means. His smile denied that. Just self-sufficient enough to
escape fatuity, yet so cool that one felt the fundamental coldness, he steered
his way through life as easily and resolutely as he was now working his
way through Mrs. Struthers’s drawing-rooms.
Half-way, he was detained by a tap of Mrs. Wesson’s red fan. Mrs.
Wesson—surely, Mrs. Hazeldean reflected, Charles had spoken of Mrs.
Sabina Wesson’s being with her mother, old Mrs. Parrett, while they
watched the fire? Sabina Wesson was a redoubtable woman, one of the few
of her generation and her clan who had broken with tradition, and gone to
Mrs. Struthers’s almost as soon as the Shoe-Polish Queen had bought her
house in Fifth Avenue, and issued her first challenge to society. Lizzie
Hazeldean shut her eyes for an instant; then, rising from her seat, she joined
the group about the singer. From there she wandered on to another knot of
acquaintances.
“Look here: the fellow’s going to sing again. Let’s get into that corner
over there.”
She felt ever so slight a touch on her arm, and met Henry Prest’s
composed glance.
 A red-lit and palm-shaded recess divided the drawing-rooms from the
dining-room, which ran across the width of the house at the back. Mrs.
Hazeldean hesitated; then she caught Mrs. Wesson’s watchful glance, lifted
her head with a smile and followed her companion.
They sat down on a small sofa under the palms, and a couple, who had
been in search of the same retreat, paused on the threshold, and with an
interchange of glances passed on. Mrs. Hazeldean smiled more vividly.
“Where are my roses? Didn’t you get them?” Prest asked. He had a way
of looking her over from beneath lowered lids, while he affected to be
examining a glove-button or contemplating the tip of his shining boot.
“Yes, I got them,” she answered.
“You’re not wearing them. I didn’t order those.”
“No.”
“Whose are they, then?”
She unfolded her mother-of-pearl fan, and bent above its complicated
traceries.
“Mine,” she pronounced.
“Yours? Well, obviously. But I suppose someone sent them to you?”
“I did.” She hesitated a second. “I sent them to myself.”
He raised his eyebrows a little. “Well, they don’t suit you—that washy
pink! May I ask why you didn’t wear mine?”
“I’ve already told you.... I’ve often asked you never to send flowers ...
on the day....”
“Nonsense. That’s the very day.... What’s the matter? Are you still
nervous?”
She was silent for a moment; then she lowered her voice to say: “You
ought not to have come here tonight.”
“My dear girl, how unlike you! You are nervous.”
“Didn’t you see all those people in the Parretts’ window?”
“What, opposite? Lord, no; I just took to my heels! It was the deuce, the
back way being barred. But what of it? In all that crowd, do you suppose for
a moment—”
“My husband was in the window with them,” she said, still lower.
 His confident face fell for a moment, and then almost at once regained
its look of easy arrogance.
“Well—?”
“Oh, nothing—as yet. Only I ask you ... to go away now.”
“Just as you asked me not to come! Yet you came, because you had the
sense to see that if you didn’t ... and I came for the same reason. Look here,
my dear, for God’s sake don’t lose your head!”
The challenge seemed to rouse her. She lifted her chin, glanced about the
thronged room which they commanded from their corner, and nodded and
smiled invitingly at several acquaintances, with the hope that some one of
them might come up to her. But though they all returned her greetings with
a somewhat elaborate cordiality, not one advanced toward her secluded seat.
She turned her head slightly toward her companion. “I ask you again to
go,” she repeated.
“Well, I will then, after the fellow’s sung. But I’m bound to say you’re a
good deal pleasanter—”
The first bars of “Salve, Dimora” silenced him, and they sat side by side
in the meditative rigidity of fashionable persons listening to expensive
music. She had thrown herself into a corner of the sofa, and Henry Prest,
about whom everything was discreet but his eyes, sat apart from her, one
leg crossed over the other, one hand holding his folded opera-hat on his
knee, while the other hand rested beside him on the sofa. But an end of her
tulle scarf lay in the space between them; and without looking in his
direction, without turning her glance from the singer, she was conscious
that Prest’s hand had reached and drawn the scarf toward him. She shivered
a little, made an involuntary motion as though to gather it about her—and
then desisted. As the song ended, he bent toward her slightly, said:
“Darling” so low that it seemed no more than a breath on her cheek, and
then, rising, bowed, and strolled into the other room.
She sighed faintly, and, settling herself once more in her corner, lifted
her brilliant eyes to Sillerton Jackson, who was approaching. “It was good
of you to bring Charlie home from the Parretts’ this afternoon.” She held
out her hand, making way for him at her side.
“Good of me?” he laughed. “Why, I was glad of the chance of getting
him safely home; it was rather naughty of him to be where he was, I
suspect.” She fancied a slight pause, as if he waited to see the effect of this,
and her lashes beat her cheeks. But already he was going on: “Do you
encourage him, with that cough, to run about town after fire-engines?”
She gave back the laugh.
“I don’t discourage him—ever—if I can help it. But it was foolish of him
to go out today,” she agreed; and all the while she kept on asking herself, as
she had that afternoon, in her talk with her husband: “Now, what would be
the natural thing for me to say?”
Should she speak of having been at the fire herself—or should she not?
The question dinned in her brain so loudly that she could hardly hear what
her companion was saying; yet she had, at the same time, a queer feeling of
his never having been so close to her, or rather so closely intent on her, as
now. In her strange state of nervous lucidity, her eyes seemed to absorb with
a new precision every facial detail of whoever approached her; and old
Sillerton Jackson’s narrow mask, his withered pink cheeks, the veins in the
hollow of his temples, under the carefully-tended silvery hair, and the tiny
blood-specks in the white of his eyes as he turned their cautious blue gaze
on her, appeared as if presented under some powerful lens. With his
eyeglasses dangling over one white-gloved hand, the other supporting his
opera-hat on his knee, he suggested, behind that assumed carelessness of
pose, the patient fixity of a naturalist holding his breath near the crack from
which some tiny animal might suddenly issue—if one watched long
enough, or gave it, completely enough, the impression of not looking for it,
or dreaming it was anywhere near. The sense of that tireless attention made
Mrs. Hazeldean’s temples ache as if she sat under a glare of light even
brighter than that of the Struthers’ chandeliers—a glare in which each
quiver of a half-formed thought might be as visible behind her forehead as
the faint lines wrinkling its surface into an uncontrollable frown of anxiety.
Yes, Prest was right; she was losing her head—losing it for the first time in
the dangerous year during which she had had such continual need to keep it
steady.
“What is it? What has happened to me?” she wondered.
There had been alarms before—how could it be otherwise? But they had
only stimulated her, made her more alert and prompt; whereas tonight she
felt herself quivering away into she knew not what abyss of weakness.
What was different, then? Oh, she knew well enough! It was Charles ... that
haggard look in his eyes, and the lines of his throat as he had leaned back
sleeping. She had never before admitted to herself how ill she thought him;
and now, to have to admit it, and at the same time not to have the complete
certainty that the look in his eyes was caused by illness only, made the
strain unbearable.
She glanced about her with a sudden sense of despair. Of all the people
in those brilliant animated groups—of all the women who called her Lizzie,
and the men who were familiars at her house—she knew that not one, at
that moment, guessed, or could have understood, what she was feeling....
Her eyes fell on Henry Prest, who had come to the surface a little way off,
bending over the chair of the handsome Mrs. Lyman. “And you least of all!”
she thought. “Yet God knows,” she added with a shiver, “they all have their
theories about me!”
“My dear Mrs. Hazeldean, you look a little pale. Are you cold? Shall I
get you some champagne?” Sillerton Jackson was officiously suggesting.
“If you think the other women look blooming! My dear man, it’s this
hideous vulgar overhead lighting....” She rose impatiently. It had occurred
to her that the thing to do—the “natural” thing—would be to stroll up to
Jinny Lyman, over whom Prest was still attentively bending. Then people
would see if she was nervous, or ill—or afraid!
But half-way she stopped and thought: “Suppose the Parretts and
Wessons did see me? Then my joining Jinny while he’s talking to her will
look—how will it look?” She began to regret not having had it out on the
spot with Sillerton Jackson, who could be trusted to hold his tongue on
occasion, especially if a pretty woman threw herself on his mercy. She
glanced over her shoulder as if to call him back; but he had turned away,
been absorbed into another group, and she found herself, instead, abruptly
face to face with Sabina Wesson. Well, perhaps that was better still. After
all, it all depended on how much Mrs. Wesson had seen, and what line she
meant to take, supposing she had seen anything. She was not likely to be as
inscrutable as old Sillerton. Lizzie wished now that she had not forgotten to
go to Mrs. Wesson’s last party.
“Dear Mrs. Wesson, it was so kind of you—”
But Mrs. Wesson was not there. By the exercise of that mysterious
protective power which enables a woman desirous of not being waylaid to
make herself invisible, or to transport herself, by means imperceptible, to
another part of the earth’s surface, Mrs. Wesson, who, two seconds earlier,
appeared in all her hard handsomeness to be bearing straight down on Mrs.
Hazeldean, with a scant yard of clear parquet between them—Mrs. Wesson,
as her animated back and her active red fan now called on all the company
to notice, had never been there at all, had never seen Mrs. Hazeldean (“Was
she at Mrs. Struthers’s last Sunday? How odd! I must have left before she
got there—“), but was busily engaged, on the farther side of the piano, in
examining a picture to which her attention appeared to have been called by
the persons nearest her.
“Ah, how life-like! That’s what I always feel when I see a Meissonier,”
she was heard to exclaim, with her well-known instinct for the fitting
epithet.
Lizzie Hazeldean stood motionless. Her eyes dazzled as if she had
received a blow on the forehead. “So that’s what it feels like!” she thought.
She lifted her head very high, looked about her again, tried to signal to
Henry Prest, but saw him still engaged with the lovely Mrs. Lyman, and at
the same moment caught the glance of young Hubert Wesson, Sabina’s
eldest, who was standing in disengaged expectancy near the supper-room
door.
Hubert Wesson, as his eyes met Mrs. Hazeldean’s, crimsoned to the
forehead, hung back a moment, and then came forward, bowing low—again
that too low bow! “So he saw me too,” she thought. She put her hand on his
arm with a laugh. “Dear me, how ceremonious you are! Really, I’m not as
old as that bow of yours implies. My dear boy, I hope you want to take me
in to supper at once. I was out in the cold all the afternoon, gazing at the
Fifth Avenue Hotel fire, and I’m simply dying of hunger and fatigue.”
There, the die was cast—she had said it loud enough for all the people
nearest her to hear! And she was sure now that it was the right, the “natural”
thing to do.
Her spirits rose, and she sailed into the supper-room like a goddess,
steering Hubert to an unoccupied table in a flowery corner.
“No—I think we’re very well by ourselves, don’t you? Do you want that
fat old bore of a Lucy Vanderlow to join us? If you do, of course ... I can see
she’s dying to ... but then, I warn you, I shall ask a young man! Let me see
—shall I ask Henry Prest? You see he’s hovering! No, it is jollier with just
you and me, isn’t it?” She leaned forward a little, resting her chin on her
clasped hands, her elbows on the table, in an attitude which the older
women thought shockingly free, but the younger ones were beginning to
imitate.
“And now, some champagne, please—and hot terrapin!... But I suppose
you were at the fire yourself, weren’t you?” she leaned still a little nearer to
say.
The blush again swept over young Wesson’s face, rose to his forehead,
and turned the lobes of his large ears to balls of fire (“It looks,” she thought,
“as if he had on huge coral earrings.”). But she forced him to look at her,
laughed straight into his eyes, and went on: “Did you ever see a funnier
sight than all those dressed-up absurdities rushing out into the cold? It
looked like the end of an Inauguration Ball! I was so fascinated that I
actually pushed my way into the hall. The firemen were furious, but they
couldn’t stop me—nobody can stop me at a fire! You should have seen the
ladies scuttling downstairs—the fat ones! Oh, but I beg your pardon; I’d
forgotten that you admire ... avoirdupois. No? But ... Mrs. Van ... so stupid
of me! Why, you’re actually blushing! I assure you, you’re as red as your
mother’s fan—and visible from as great a distance! Yes, please; a little more
champagne....”
And then the inevitable began. She forgot the fire, forgot her anxieties,
forgot Mrs. Wesson’s affront, forgot everything but the amusement, the
passing childish amusement, of twirling around her little finger this shy
clumsy boy, as she had twirled so many others, old and young, not caring
afterward if she ever saw them again, but so absorbed in the sport, and in
her sense of knowing how to do it better than the other women—more
quietly, more insidiously, without ogling, bridling or grimacing—that
sometimes she used to ask herself with a shiver: “What was the gift given to
me for?” Yes; it always amused her at first: the gradual dawn of attraction in
eyes that had regarded her with indifference, the blood rising to the face, the
way she could turn and twist the talk as though she had her victim on a
leash, spinning him after her down winding paths of sentimentality, irony,
caprice ... and leaving him, with beating heart and dazzled eyes, to visions
of an all-promising morrow.... “My only accomplishment!” she murmured
to herself as she rose from the table followed by young Wesson’s fascinated
gaze, while already, on her own lips, she felt the taste of cinders.
“But at any rate,” she thought, “he’ll hold his tongue about having seen
me at the fire.”
 V
S HE let herself in with her latch-key, glanced at the notes and letters on
the hall-table (the old habit of allowing nothing to escape her), and stole
up through the darkness to her room.
A fire still glowed in the chimney, and its light fell on two vases of
crimson roses. The room was full of their scent.
Mrs. Hazeldean frowned, and then shrugged her shoulders. It had been a
mistake, after all, to let it appear that she was indifferent to the flowers; she
must remember to thank Susan for rescuing them. She began to undress,
hastily yet clumsily, as if her deft fingers were all thumbs; but first,
detaching the two faded pink roses from her bosom, she put them with a
reverent touch into a glass on the toilet-table. Then, slipping on her
dressing-gown, she stole to her husband’s door. It was shut, and she leaned
her ear to the keyhole. After a moment she caught his breathing, heavy, as it
always was when he had a cold, but regular, untroubled.... With a sigh of
relief she tiptoed back. Her uncovered bed, with its fresh pillows and satin
coverlet, sent her a rosy invitation; but she cowered down by the fire,
hugging her knees and staring into the coals.
“So that’s what it feels like!” she repeated.
It was the first time in her life that she had ever been deliberately “cut”;
and the cut was a deadly injury in old New York. For Sabina Wesson to
have used it, consciously, deliberately—for there was no doubt that she had
purposely advanced toward her victim—she must have done so with intent
to kill. And to risk that, she must have been sure of her facts, sure of
corroborating witnesses, sure of being backed up by all her clan.
Lizzie Hazeldean had her clan too—but it was a small and weak one,
and she hung on its outer fringe by a thread of little-regarded cousinship. As
for the Hazeldean tribe, which was larger and stronger (though nothing like
the great organized Wesson-Parrett gens, with half New York and all Albany
at its back)—well, the Hazeldeans were not much to be counted on, and
would even, perhaps, in a furtive negative way, be not too sorry (“if it were
not for poor Charlie”) that poor Charlie’s wife should at last be made to pay
for her good looks, her popularity, above all for being, in spite of her origin,
treated by poor Charlie as if she were one of them!
Her origin was, of course, respectable enough. Everybody knew all
about the Winters—she had been Lizzie Winter. But the Winters were very
small people, and her father, the Reverend Arcadius Winter, the sentimental
over-popular Rector of a fashionable New York church, after a few seasons
of too great success as preacher and director of female consciences, had
suddenly had to resign and go to Bermuda for his health—or was it France?
—to some obscure watering-place, it was rumoured. At any rate, Lizzie,
who went with him (with a crushed bed-ridden mother), was ultimately,
after the mother’s death, fished out of a girls’ school in Brussels—they
seemed to have been in so many countries at once!—and brought back to
New York by a former parishioner of poor Arcadius’s, who had always
“believed in him,” in spite of the Bishop, and who took pity on his lonely
daughter.
The parishioner, Mrs. Mant, was “one of the Hazeldeans.” She was a
rich widow, given to generous gestures which she was often at a loss how to
complete; and when she had brought Lizzie Winter home, and sufficiently
celebrated her own courage in doing so, she did not quite know what step to
take next. She had fancied it would be pleasant to have a clever handsome
girl about the house; but her housekeeper was not of the same mind. The
spare-room sheets had not been out of lavender for twenty years—and Miss
Winter always left the blinds up in her room, and the carpet and curtains,
unused to such exposure, suffered accordingly. Then young men began to
call—they called in numbers. Mrs. Mant had not supposed that the daughter
of a clergyman—and a clergyman “under a cloud”—would expect visitors.
She had imagined herself taking Lizzie Winter to Church Fairs, and having
the stitches of her knitting picked up by the young girl, whose “eyes were
better” than her benefactress’s. But Lizzie did not know how to knit—she
possessed no useful accomplishments—and she was visibly bored by
Church Fairs, where her presence was of little use, since she had no money
to spend. Mrs. Mant began to see her mistake; and the discovery made her
dislike her protégée, whom she secretly regarded as having intentionally
misled her.
In Mrs. Mant’s life, the transition from one enthusiasm to another was
always marked by an interval of disillusionment, during which, Providence
having failed to fulfill her requirements, its existence was openly called into
question. But in this flux of moods there was one fixed point: Mrs. Mant
was a woman whose life revolved about a bunch of keys. What treasures
they gave access to, what disasters would have ensued had they been
forever lost, was not quite clear; but whenever they were missed the
household was in an uproar, and as Mrs. Mant would trust them to no one
but herself, these occasions were frequent. One of them arose at the very
moment when Mrs. Mant was recovering from her enthusiasm for Miss
Winter. A minute before, the keys had been there, in a pocket of her work-
table; she had actually touched them in hunting for her buttonhole-scissors.
She had been called away to speak to the plumber about the bath-room leak,
and when she left the room there was no one in it but Miss Winter. When
she returned, the keys were gone. The house had been turned inside out;
everyone had been, if not accused, at least suspected; and in a rash moment
Mrs. Mant had spoken of the police. The housemaid had thereupon given
warning, and her own maid threatened to follow; when suddenly the
Bishop’s hints recurred to Mrs. Mant. The Bishop had always implied that
there had been something irregular in Dr. Winter’s accounts, besides the
other unfortunate business....
Very mildly, she had asked Miss Winter if she might not have seen the
keys, and “picked them up without thinking.” Miss Winter permitted herself
to smile in denying the suggestion; the smile irritated Mrs. Mant; and in a
moment the floodgates were opened. She saw nothing to smile at in her
question—unless it was of a kind that Miss Winter was already used to,
prepared for ... with that sort of background ... her unfortunate father....
“Stop!” Lizzie Winter cried. She remembered now, as if it had happened
yesterday, the abyss suddenly opening at her feet. It was her first direct
contact with human cruelty. Suffering, weakness, frailties other than Mrs.
Mant’s restricted fancy could have pictured, the girl had known, or at least
suspected; but she had found as much kindness as folly in her path, and no
one had ever before attempted to visit upon her the dimly-guessed
shortcomings of her poor old father. She shook with horror as much as with
indignation, and her “Stop!” blazed out so violently that Mrs. Mant, turning
white, feebly groped for the bell.
And it was then, at that very moment, that Charles Hazeldean came in—
Charles Hazeldean, the favourite nephew, the pride of the tribe. Lizzie had
seen him only once or twice, for he had been absent since her return to New
York. She had thought him distinguished-looking, but rather serious and
sarcastic; and he had apparently taken little notice of her—which perhaps
accounted for her opinion.
“Oh, Charles, dearest Charles—that you should be here to hear such
things said to me!” his aunt gasped, her hand on her outraged heart.
“What things? Said by whom? I see no one here to say them but Miss
Winter,” Charles had laughed, taking the girl’s icy hand.
“Don’t shake hands with her! She has insulted me! She has ordered me
to keep silence—in my own house. ‘Stop!’ she said, when I was trying, in
the kindness of my heart, to get her to admit privately.... Well, if she prefers
to have the police....”
“I do! I ask you to send for them!” Lizzie cried.
How vividly she remembered all that followed: the finding of the keys,
Mrs. Mant’s reluctant apologies, her own cold acceptance of them, and the
sense on both sides of the impossibility of continuing their life together!
She had been wounded to the soul, and her own plight first revealed to her
in all its destitution. Before that, despite the ups and downs of a wandering
life, her youth, her good looks, the sense of a certain bright power over
people and events, had hurried her along on a spring tide of confidence; she
had never thought of herself as the dependent, the beneficiary, of the
persons who were kind to her. Now she saw herself, at twenty, a penniless
girl, with a feeble discredited father carrying his snowy head, his unctuous
voice, his edifying manner from one cheap watering-place to another,
through an endless succession of sentimental and pecuniary entanglements.
To him she could be of no more help than he to her; and save for him she
was alone. The Winter cousins, as much humiliated by his disgrace as they
had been puffed-up by his triumphs, let it be understood, when the breach
with Mrs. Mant became known, that they were not in a position to interfere;
and among Dr. Winter’s former parishioners none was left to champion
him. Almost at the same time, Lizzie heard that he was about to marry a
Portuguese opera-singer and be received into the Church of Rome; and this
crowning scandal too promptly justified his family.
The situation was a grave one, and called for energetic measures. Lizzie
understood it—and a week later she was engaged to Charles Hazeldean.
She always said afterward that but for the keys he would never have
thought of marrying her; while he laughingly affirmed that, on the contrary,
but for the keys she would never have looked at him.
 But what did it all matter, in the complete and blessed understanding
which was to follow on their hasty union? If all the advantages on both
sides had been weighed and found equal by judicious advisers, harmony
more complete could hardly have been predicted. As a matter of fact, the
advisers, had they been judicious, would probably have found only
elements of discord in the characters concerned. Charles Hazeldean was by
nature an observer and a student, brooding and curious of mind: Lizzie
Winter (as she looked back at herself)—what was she, what would she ever
be, but a quick, ephemeral creature, in whom a perpetual and adaptable
activity simulated mind, as her grace, her swiftness, her expressiveness
simulated beauty? So others would have judged her; so, now, she judged
herself. And she knew that in fundamental things she was still the same.
And yet she had satisfied him: satisfied him, to all appearances, as
completely in the quiet later years as in the first flushed hours. As
completely, or perhaps even more so. In the early months, dazzled gratitude
made her the humbler, fonder worshipper; but as her powers expanded in
the warm air of comprehension, as she felt herself grow handsomer,
cleverer, more competent and more companionable than he had hoped, or
she had dreamed herself capable of becoming, the balance was
imperceptibly reversed, and the triumph in his eyes when they rested on her.
The Hazeldeans were conquered; they had to admit it. Such a brilliant
recruit to the clan was not to be disowned. Mrs. Mant was left to nurse her
grievance in solitude, till she too fell into line, carelessly but handsomely
forgiven.
Ah, those first years of triumph! They frightened Lizzie now as she
looked back. One day, the friendless defenceless daughter of a discredited
man; the next, almost, the wife of Charlie Hazeldean, the popular successful
young lawyer, with a good practice already assured, and the best of
professional and private prospects. His own parents were dead, and had
died poor; but two or three childless relatives were understood to be letting
their capital accumulate for his benefit, and meanwhile in Lizzie’s thrifty
hands his earnings were largely sufficient.
Ah, those first years! There had been barely six; but even now there were
moments when their sweetness drenched her to the soul.... Barely six; and
then the sharp re-awakening of an inherited weakness of the heart that
Hazeldean and his doctors had imagined to be completely cured. Once
before, for the same cause, he had been sent off, suddenly, for a year of
travel in mild climates and distant scenes; and his first return had coincided
with the close of Lizzie’s sojourn at Mrs. Mant’s. The young man felt sure
enough of the future to marry and take up his professional duties again, and
for the following six years he had led, without interruption, the busy life of
a successful lawyer; then had come a second breakdown, more
unexpectedly, and with more alarming symptoms. The “Hazeldean heart”
was a proverbial boast in the family; the Hazeldeans privately considered it
more distinguished than the Sillerton gout, and far more refined than the
Wesson liver; and it had permitted most of them to survive, in
valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old age, when they died of some quite other
disorder. But Charles Hazeldean had defied it, and it took its revenge, and
took it savagely.
One by one, hopes and plans faded. The Hazeldeans went south for a
winter; he lay on a deck-chair in a Florida garden, and read and dreamed,
and was happy with Lizzie beside him. So the months passed; and by the
following autumn he was better, returned to New York, and took up his
profession. Intermittently but obstinately, he had continued the struggle for
two more years; but before they were over husband and wife understood
that the good days were done.
He could be at his office only at lengthening intervals; he sank gradually
into invalidism without submitting to it. His income dwindled; and,
indifferent for himself, he fretted ceaselessly at the thought of depriving
Lizzie of the least of her luxuries.
At heart she was indifferent to them too; but she could not convince him
of it. He had been brought up in the old New York tradition, which decreed
that a man, at whatever cost, must provide his wife with what she had
always “been accustomed to”; and he had gloried too much in her
prettiness, her elegance, her easy way of wearing her expensive dresses, and
his friends’ enjoyment of the good dinners she knew how to order, not to
accustom her to everything which could enhance such graces. Mrs. Mant’s
secret satisfaction rankled in him. She sent him Baltimore terrapin, and her
famous clam broth, and a dozen of the old Hazeldean port, and said “I told
you so” to her confidants when Lizzie was mentioned; and Charles
Hazeldean knew it, and swore at it.
“I won’t be pauperized by her!” he declared; but Lizzie smiled away his
anger, and persuaded him to taste the terrapin and sip the port.
 She was smiling faintly at the memory of the last passage between him
and Mrs. Mant when the turning of the bedroom door-handle startled her.
She jumped up, and he stood there. The blood rushed to her forehead; his
expression frightened her; for an instant she stared at him as if he had been
an enemy. Then she saw that the look in his face was only the remote lost
look of excessive physical pain.
She was at his side at once, supporting him, guiding him to the nearest
armchair. He sank into it, and she flung a shawl over him, and knelt at his
side while his inscrutable eyes continued to repel her.
“Charles ... Charles,” she pleaded.
For a while he could not speak; and she said to herself that she would
perhaps never know whether he had sought her because he was ill, or
whether illness had seized him as he entered her room to question, accuse,
or reveal what he had seen or heard that afternoon.
Suddenly he lifted his hand and pressed back her forehead, so that her
face lay bare under his eyes.
“Love, love—you’ve been happy?”
“Happy?” The word choked her. She clung to him, burying her anguish
against his knees. His hand stirred weakly in her hair, and gathering her
whole strength into the gesture, she raised her head again, looked into his
eyes, and breathed back: “And you?”
He gave her one full look; all their life together was in it, from the first
day to the last. His hand brushed her once more, like a blessing, and then
dropped. The moment of their communion was over; the next she was
preparing remedies, ringing for the servants, ordering the doctor to be
called. Her husband was once more the harmless helpless captive that
sickness makes of the most dreaded and the most loved.
 VI
I T was in Mrs. Mant’s drawing-room that, some half-year later, Mrs.
Charles Hazeldean, after a moment’s hesitation, said to the servant that,
yes, he might show in Mr. Prest.
Mrs. Mant was away. She had been leaving for Washington to visit a
new protégée when Mrs. Hazeldean arrived from Europe, and after a rapid
consultation with the clan had decided that it would not be “decent” to let
poor Charles’s widow go to an hotel. Lizzie had therefore the strange
sensation of returning, after nearly nine years, to the house from which her
husband had triumphantly rescued her; of returning there, to be sure, in
comparative independence, and without danger of falling into her former
bondage, yet with every nerve shrinking from all that the scene revived.
Mrs. Mant, the next day, had left for Washington; but before starting she
had tossed a note across the breakfast-table to her visitor.
“Very proper—he was one of Charlie’s oldest friends, I believe?” she
said, with her mild frosty smile. Mrs. Hazeldean glanced at the note, turned
it over as if to examine the signature, and restored it to her hostess.
“Yes. But I don’t think I care to see anyone just yet.”
There was a pause, during which the butler brought in fresh griddle-
cakes, replenished the hot milk, and withdrew. As the door closed on him,
Mrs. Mant said, with a dangerous cordiality: “No one would misunderstand
your receiving an old friend of your husband’s ... like Mr. Prest.”
Lizzie Hazeldean cast a sharp glance at the large empty mysterious face
across the table. They wanted her to receive Henry Prest, then? Ah, well ...
perhaps she understood....
“Shall I answer this for you, my dear? Or will you?” Mrs. Mant pursued.
“Oh, as you like. But don’t fix a day, please. Later—”
Mrs. Mant’s face again became vacuous. She murmured: “You must not
shut yourself up too much. It will not do to be morbid. I’m sorry to have to
leave you here alone—”
Lizzie’s eyes filled: Mrs. Mant’s sympathy seemed more cruel than her
cruelty. Every word that she used had a veiled taunt for its counterpart.
 “Oh, you mustn’t think of giving up your visit—”
“My dear, how can I? It’s a duty. I’ll send a line to Henry Prest, then.... If
you would sip a little port at luncheon and dinner we should have you
looking less like a ghost....”

Mrs. Mant departed; and two days later—the interval was “decent”—Mr.
Henry Prest was announced. Mrs. Hazeldean had not seen him since the
previous New Year’s day. Their last words had been exchanged in Mrs.
Struthers’s crimson boudoir, and since then half a year had elapsed. Charles
Hazeldean had lingered for a fortnight; but though there had been ups and
downs, and intervals of hope when none could have criticised his wife for
seeing her friends, her door had been barred against everyone. She had not
excluded Henry Prest more rigorously than the others; he had simply been
one of the many who received, day by day, the same answer: “Mrs.
Hazeldean sees no one but the family.”
Almost immediately after her husband’s death she had sailed for Europe
on a long-deferred visit to her father, who was now settled at Nice; but from
this expedition she had presumably brought back little comfort, for when
she arrived in New York her relations were struck by her air of ill-health
and depression. It spoke in her favour, however; they were agreed that she
was behaving with propriety.
She looked at Henry Prest as if he were a stranger: so difficult was it, at
the first moment, to fit his robust and splendid person into the region of
twilight shades which, for the last months, she had inhabited. She was
beginning to find that everyone had an air of remoteness; she seemed to see
people and life through the confusing blur of the long crape veil in which it
was a widow’s duty to shroud her affliction. But she gave him her hand
without perceptible reluctance.
He lifted it toward his lips, in an obvious attempt to combine gallantry
with condolence, and then, half-way up, seemed to feel that the occasion
required him to release it.
“Well—you’ll admit that I’ve been patient!” he exclaimed.
“Patient? Yes. What else was there to be?” she rejoined with a faint
smile, as he seated himself beside her, a little too near.
“Oh, well ... of course! I understood all that, I hope you’ll believe. But
mightn’t you at least have answered my letters—one or two of them?”
 She shook her head. “I couldn’t write.”
“Not to anyone? Or not to me?” he queried, with ironic emphasis.
“I wrote only the letters I had to—no others.”
“Ah, I see.” He laughed slightly. “And you didn’t consider that letters to
me were among them?”
She was silent, and he stood up and took a turn across the room. His face
was redder than usual, and now and then a twitch passed over it. She saw
that he felt the barrier of her crape, and that it left him baffled and resentful.
A struggle was still perceptibly going on in him between his traditional
standard of behaviour at such a meeting, and primitive impulses renewed by
the memory of their last hours together. When he turned back and paused
before her his ruddy flush had paled, and he stood there, frowning,
uncertain, and visibly resenting the fact that she made him so.
“You sit there like a stone!” he said.
“I feel like a stone.”
“Oh, come—!”
She knew well enough what he was thinking: that the only way to bridge
over such a bad beginning was to get the woman into your arms—and talk
afterward. It was the classic move. He had done it dozens of times, no
doubt, and was evidently asking himself why the deuce he couldn’t do it
now.... But something in her look must have benumbed him. He sat down
again beside her.
“What you must have been through, dearest!” He waited and coughed. “I
can understand your being—all broken up. But I know nothing; remember,
I know nothing as to what actually happened....”
“Nothing happened.”
“As to—what we feared? No hint—?”
She shook her head.
He cleared his throat before the next question. “And you don’t think that
in your absence he may have spoken—to anyone?”
“Never!”
“Then, my dear, we seem to have had the most unbelievable good luck;
and I can’t see—”
 He had edged slowly nearer, and now laid a large ringed hand on her
sleeve. How well she knew those rings—the two dull gold snakes with
malevolent jewelled eyes! She sat as motionless as if their coils were about
her, till slowly his tentative grasp relaxed.
“Lizzie, you know”—his tone was discouraged—“this is morbid....”
“Morbid?”
“When you’re safe out of the worst scrape ... and free, my darling, free!
Don’t you realize it? I suppose the strain’s been too much for you; but I
want you to feel that now—”
She stood up suddenly, and put half the length of the room between
them.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” she almost screamed, as she had screamed long ago
at Mrs. Mant.
He stood up also, darkly red under his rich sunburn, and forced a smile.
“Really,” he protested, “all things considered—and after a separation of
six months!” She was silent. “My dear,” he continued mildly, “will you tell
me what you expect me to think?”
“Oh, don’t take that tone,” she murmured.
“What tone?”
“As if—as if—you still imagined we could go back—”
She saw his face fall. Had he ever before, she wondered, stumbled upon
an obstacle in that smooth walk of his? It flashed over her that this was the
danger besetting men who had a “way with women”—the day came when
they might follow it too blindly.
The reflection evidently occurred to him almost as soon as it did to her.
He summoned another propitiatory smile, and drawing near, took her hand
gently. “But I don’t want to go back.... I want to go forward, dearest.... Now
that at last you’re free.”
She seized on the word as if she had been waiting for her cue. “Free! Oh,
that’s it—free! Can’t you see, can’t you understand, that I mean to stay
free?”
Again a shadow of distrust crossed his face, and the smile he had begun
for her reassurance seemed to remain on his lips for his own.
 “But of course! Can you imagine that I want to put you in chains? I want
you to be as free as you please—free to love me as much as you choose!”
He was visibly pleased with the last phrase.
She drew away her hand, but not unkindly. “I’m sorry—I am sorry,
Henry. But you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“That what you ask is quite impossible—ever. I can’t go on ... in the old
way....”
She saw his face working nervously. “In the old way? You mean—?”
Before she could explain he hurried on with an increasing majesty of
manner: “Don’t answer! I see—I understand. When you spoke of freedom
just now I was misled for a moment—I frankly own I was—into thinking
that, after your wretched marriage, you might prefer discreeter ties ... an
apparent independence which would leave us both.... I say apparent, for on
my side there has never been the least wish to conceal.... But if I was
mistaken, if on the contrary what you wish is ... is to take advantage of your
freedom to regularize our ... our attachment....”
She said nothing, not because she had any desire to have him complete
the phrase, but because she found nothing to say. To all that concerned their
common past she was aware of offering a numbed soul. But her silence
evidently perplexed him, and in his perplexity he began to lose his footing,
and to flounder in a sea of words.
“Lizzie! Do you hear me? If I was mistaken, I say—and I hope I’m not
above owning that at times I may be mistaken; if I was—why, by God, my
dear, no woman ever heard me speak the words before; but here I am to
have and to hold, as the Book says! Why, hadn’t you realized it? Lizzie,
look up—! I’m asking you to marry me.”
Still, for a moment, she made no reply, but stood gazing about her as if
she had the sudden sense of unseen presences between them. At length she
gave a faint laugh. It visibly ruffled her visitor.
“I’m not conscious,” he began again, “of having said anything
particularly laughable—” He stopped and scrutinized her narrowly, as
though checked by the thought that there might be something not quite
normal.... Then, apparently reassured, he half-murmured his only French
phrase: “La joie fait peur ... eh?”
 She did not seem to hear. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said, “but only
at the coincidences of life. It was in this room that my husband asked me to
marry him.”
“Ah?” Her suitor appeared politely doubtful of the good taste, or the
opportunity, of producing this reminiscence. But he made another call on
his magnanimity. “Really? But, I say, my dear, I couldn’t be expected to
know it, could I? If I’d guessed that such a painful association—”
“Painful?” She turned upon him. “A painful association? Do you think
that was what I meant?” Her voice sank. “This room is sacred to me.”
She had her eyes on his face, which, perhaps because of its architectural
completeness, seemed to lack the mobility necessary to follow such a leap
of thought. It was so ostensibly a solid building, and not a nomad’s tent. He
struggled with a ruffled pride, rose again to playful magnanimity, and
murmured: “Compassionate angel!”
“Oh, compassionate? To whom? Do you imagine—did I ever say
anything to make you doubt the truth of what I’m telling you?”
His brows fretted: his temper was up. “Say anything? No,” he insinuated
ironically; then, in a hasty plunge after his lost forbearance, added with
exquisite mildness: “Your tact was perfect ... always. I’ve invariably done
you that justice. No one could have been more thoroughly the ... the lady. I
never failed to admire your good-breeding in avoiding any reference to your
... your other life.”
She faced him steadily. “Well, that other life was my life—my only life!
Now you know.”
There was a silence. Henry Prest drew out a monogrammed
handkerchief and passed it over his dry lips. As he did so, a whiff of his eau
de Cologne reached her, and she winced a little. It was evident that he was
seeking what to say next; wondering, rather helplessly, how to get back his
lost command of the situation. He finally induced his features to break
again into a persuasive smile.
“Not your only life, dearest,” he reproached her.
She met it instantly. “Yes; so you thought—because I chose you should.”
“You chose—?” The smile became incredulous.
“Oh, deliberately. But I suppose I’ve no excuse that you would not
dislike to hear.... Why shouldn’t we break off now?”
 “Break off ... this conversation?” His tone was aggrieved. “Of course
I’ve no wish to force myself—”
She interrupted him with a raised hand. “Break off for good, Henry.”
“For good?” He stared, and gave a quick swallow, as though the dose
were choking him. “For good? Are you really—? You and I? Is this serious,
Lizzie?”
“Perfectly. But if you prefer to hear ... what can only be painful....”
He straightened himself, threw back his shoulders, and said in an
uncertain voice: “I hope you don’t take me for a coward.”
She made no direct reply, but continued: “Well, then, you thought I
loved you, I suppose—”
He smiled again, revived his moustache with a slight twist, and gave a
hardly perceptible shrug. “You ... ah ... managed to produce the illusion....”
“Oh, well, yes: a woman can—so easily! That’s what men often forget.
You thought I was a lovelorn mistress; and I was only an expensive
prostitute.”
“Elizabeth!” he gasped, pale now to the ruddy eyelids. She saw that the
word had wounded more than his pride, and that, before realizing the insult
to his love, he was shuddering at the offence to his taste. Mistress!
Prostitute! Such words were banned. No one reproved coarseness of
language in women more than Henry Prest; one of Mrs. Hazeldean’s
greatest charms (as he had just told her) had been her way of remaining,
“through it all,” so ineffably “the lady.” He looked at her as if a fresh doubt
of her sanity had assailed him.
“Shall I go on?” she smiled.
He bent his head stiffly. “I am still at a loss to imagine for what purpose
you made a fool of me.”
“Well, then, it was as I say. I wanted money—money for my husband.”
He moistened his lips. “For your husband?”
“Yes; when he began to be so ill; when he needed comforts, luxury, the
opportunity to get away. He saved me, when I was a girl, from untold
humiliation and wretchedness. No one else lifted a finger to help me—not
one of my own family. I hadn’t a penny or a friend. Mrs. Mant had grown
sick of me, and was trying to find an excuse to throw me over. Oh, you
don’t know what a girl has to put up with—a girl alone in the world—who
depends for her clothes, and her food, and the roof over her head, on the
whims of a vain capricious old woman! It was because he knew, because he
understood, that he married me.... He took me out of misery into
blessedness. He put me up above them all ... he put me beside himself. I
didn’t care for anything but that; I didn’t care for the money or the freedom;
I cared only for him. I would have followed him into the desert—I would
have gone barefoot to be with him. I would have starved, begged, done
anything for him—anything.” She broke off, her voice lost in a sob. She
was no longer aware of Prest’s presence—all her consciousness was
absorbed in the vision she had evoked. “It was he who cared—who wanted
me to be rich and independent and admired! He wanted to heap everything
on me—during the first years I could hardly persuade him to keep enough
money for himself.... And then he was taken ill; and as he got worse, and
gradually dropped out of affairs, his income grew smaller, and then stopped
altogether; and all the while there were new expenses piling up—nurses,
doctors, travel; and he grew frightened; frightened not for himself but for
me.... And what was I to do? I had to pay for things somehow. For the first
year I managed to put off paying—then I borrowed small sums here and
there. But that couldn’t last. And all the while I had to keep on looking
pretty and prosperous, or else he began to worry, and think we were ruined,
and wonder what would become of me if he didn’t get well. By the time
you came I was desperate—I would have done anything, anything! He
thought the money came from my Portuguese stepmother. She really was
rich, as it happens. Unluckily my poor father tried to invest her money, and
lost it all; but when they were first married she sent a thousand dollars—and
all the rest, all you gave me, I built on that.”
She paused pantingly, as if her tale were at an end. Gradually her
consciousness of present things returned, and she saw Henry Prest, as if far
off, a small indistinct figure looming through the mist of her blurred eyes.
She thought to herself: “He doesn’t believe me,” and the thought
exasperated her.
“You wonder, I suppose,” she began again, “that a woman should dare
confess such things about herself—”
He cleared his throat. “About herself? No; perhaps not. But about her
husband.”
 The blood rushed to her forehead. “About her husband? But you don’t
dare to imagine—?”
“You leave me,” he rejoined icily, “no other inference that I can see.”
She stood dumbfounded, and he added: “At any rate, it certainly explains
your extraordinary coolness—pluck, I used to think it. I perceive that I
needn’t have taken such precautions.”
She considered this. “You think, then, that he knew? You think, perhaps,
that I knew he did?” She pondered again painfully, and then her face lit up.
“He never knew—never! That’s enough for me—and for you it doesn’t
matter. Think what you please. He was happy to the end—that’s all I care
for.”
“There can be no doubt about your frankness,” he said with pinched lips.
“There’s no longer any reason for not being frank.”
He picked up his hat, and studiously considered its lining; then he took
the gloves he had laid in it, and drew them thoughtfully through his hands.
She thought: “Thank God, he’s going!”
But he set the hat and gloves down on a table, and moved a little nearer
to her. His face looked as ravaged as a reveller’s at daybreak.
“You—leave positively nothing to the imagination!” he murmured.
“I told you it was useless—” she began; but he interrupted her:
“Nothing, that is—if I believed you.” He moistened his lips again, and
tapped them with his handkerchief. Again she had a whiff of the eau de
Cologne. “But I don’t!” he proclaimed. “Too many memories ... too many
... proofs, my dearest ...” He stopped, smiling somewhat convulsively. She
saw that he imagined the smile would soothe her.
She remained silent, and he began once more, as if appealing to her
against her own verdict: “I know better, Lizzie. In spite of everything, I
know you’re not that kind of woman.”
“I took your money—”
“As a favour. I knew the difficulties of your position.... I understood
completely. I beg of you never again to allude to—all that.” It dawned on
her that anything would be more endurable to him than to think he had been
a dupe—and one of two dupes! The part was not one that he could conceive
of having played. His pride was up in arms to defend her, not so much for
her sake as for his own. The discovery gave her a baffling sense of
helplessness; against that impenetrable self-sufficiency all her affirmations
might spend themselves in vain.
“No man who has had the privilege of being loved by you could ever for
a moment....”
She raised her head and looked at him. “You have never had that
privilege,” she interrupted.
His jaw fell. She saw his eyes pass from uneasy supplication to a cold
anger. He gave a little inarticulate grunt before his voice came back to him.
“You spare no pains in degrading yourself in my eyes.”
“I am not degrading myself. I am telling you the truth. I needed money. I
knew no way of earning it. You were willing to give it ... for what you call
the privilege....”
“Lizzie,” he interrupted solemnly, “don’t go on! I believe I enter into all
your feelings—I believe I always have. In so sensitive, so hypersensitive a
nature, there are moments when every other feeling is swept away by
scruples.... For those scruples I only honour you the more. But I won’t hear
another word now. If I allowed you to go on in your present state of ...
nervous exaltation ... you might be the first to deplore.... I wish to forget
everything you have said.... I wish to look forward, not back....” He squared
his shoulders, took a deep breath, and fixed her with a glance of recovered
confidence. “How little you know me if you believe that I could fail you
now!”
She returned his look with a weary steadiness. “You are kind—you mean
to be generous, I’m sure. But don’t you see that I can’t marry you?”
“I only see that, in the natural rush of your remorse—”
“Remorse? Remorse?” She broke in with a laugh. “Do you imagine I
feel any remorse? I’d do it all over again tomorrow—for the same object! I
got what I wanted—I gave him that last year, that last good year. It was the
relief from anxiety that kept him alive, that kept him happy. Oh, he was
happy—I know that!” She turned to Prest with a strange smile. “I do thank
you for that—I’m not ungrateful.”
“You ... you ... ungrateful? This ... is really ... indecent....” He took up
his hat again, and stood in the middle of the room as if waiting to be waked
from a bad dream.
“You are—rejecting an opportunity—” he began.
 She made a faint motion of assent.
“You do realize it? I’m still prepared to—to help you, if you should....”
She made no answer, and he continued: “How do you expect to live—since
you have chosen to drag in such considerations?”
“I don’t care how I live. I never wanted the money for myself.”
He raised a deprecating hand. “Oh, don’t—again! The woman I had
meant to....” Suddenly, to her surprise, she saw a glitter of moisture on his
lower lids. He applied his handkerchief to them, and the waft of scent
checked her momentary impulse of compunction. That Cologne water! It
called up picture after picture with a hideous precision. “Well, it was worth
it,” she murmured doggedly.
Henry Prest restored his handkerchief to his pocket. He waited, glanced
about the room, turned back to her.
“If your decision is final—”
“Oh, final!”
He bowed. “There is one thing more—which I should have mentioned if
you had ever given me the opportunity of seeing you after—after last New
Year’s day. Something I preferred not to commit to writing—”
“Yes?” she questioned indifferently.
“Your husband, you are positively convinced, had no idea ... that day
...?”
“None.”
“Well, others, it appears, had.” He paused. “Mrs. Wesson saw us.”
“So I supposed. I remember now that she went out of her way to cut me
that evening at Mrs. Struthers’s.”
“Exactly. And she was not the only person who saw us. If people had not
been disarmed by your husband’s falling ill that very day you would have
found yourself—ostracized.”
She made no comment, and he pursued, with a last effort: “In your grief,
your solitude, you haven’t yet realized what your future will be—how
difficult. It is what I wished to guard you against—it was my purpose in
asking you to marry me.” He drew himself up and smiled as if he were
looking at his own reflection in a mirror, and thought favourably of it. “A
man who has had the misfortune to compromise a woman is bound in
honour—Even if my own inclination were not what it is, I should
consider....”
She turned to him with a softened smile. Yes, he had really brought
himself to think that he was proposing to marry her to save her reputation.
At this glimpse of the old hackneyed axioms on which he actually believed
that his conduct was based, she felt anew her remoteness from the life he
would have drawn her back to.
“My poor Henry, don’t you see how far I’ve got beyond the Mrs.
Wessons? If all New York wants to ostracize me, let it! I’ve had my day ...
no woman has more than one. Why shouldn’t I have to pay for it? I’m
ready.”
“Good heavens!” he murmured.
She was aware that he had put forth his last effort. The wound she had
inflicted had gone to the most vital spot; she had prevented his being
magnanimous, and the injury was unforgivable. He was glad, yes, actually
glad now, to have her know that New York meant to cut her; but, strive as
she might, she could not bring herself to care either for the fact, or for his
secret pleasure in it. Her own secret pleasures were beyond New York’s
reach and his.
“I’m sorry,” she reiterated gently. He bowed, without trying to take her
hand, and left the room.
As the door closed she looked after him with a dazed stare. “He’s right, I
suppose; I don’t realize yet—” She heard the shutting of the outer door, and
dropped to the sofa, pressing her hands against her aching eyes. At that
moment, for the first time, she asked herself what the next day, and the
next, would be like....
“If only I cared more about reading,” she moaned, remembering how
vainly she had tried to acquire her husband’s tastes, and how gently and
humorously he had smiled at her efforts. “Well—there are always cards;
and when I get older, knitting and patience, I suppose. And if everybody
cuts me I shan’t need any evening dresses. That will be an economy, at any
rate,” she concluded with a little shiver.
 VII
“S HE was bad ... always. They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.”
I must go back now to this phrase of my mother’s—the phrase
from which, at the opening of my narrative, I broke away for a time
in order to project more vividly on the scene that anxious moving vision of
Lizzie Hazeldean: a vision in which memories of my one boyish glimpse of
her were pieced together with hints collected afterward.
When my mother uttered her condemnatory judgment I was a young
man of twenty-one, newly graduated from Harvard, and at home again
under the family roof in New York. It was long since I had heard Mrs.
Hazeldean spoken of. I had been away, at school and at Harvard, for the
greater part of the interval, and in the holidays she was probably not
considered a fitting subject of conversation, especially now that my sisters
came to the table.
At any rate, I had forgotten everything I might ever have picked up about
her when, on the evening after my return, my cousin Hubert Wesson—now
towering above me as a pillar of the Knickerbocker Club, and a final
authority on the ways of the world—suggested our joining her at the opera.
“Mrs. Hazeldean? But I don’t know her. What will she think?”
“That it’s all right. Come along. She’s the jolliest woman I know. We’ll
go back afterward and have supper with her—jolliest house I know.”
Hubert twirled a self-conscious moustache.
We were dining at the Knickerbocker, to which I had just been elected,
and the bottle of Pommery we were finishing disposed me to think that
nothing could be more fitting for two men of the world than to end their
evening in the box of the jolliest woman Hubert knew. I groped for my own
moustache, gave a twirl in the void, and followed him, after meticulously
sliding my overcoat sleeve around my silk hat as I had seen him do.
But once in Mrs. Hazeldean’s box I was only an overgrown boy again,
bathed in such blushes as used, at the same age, to visit Hubert, forgetting
that I had a moustache to twirl, and knocking my hat from the peg on which
I had just hung it, in my zeal to pick up a programme she had not dropped.
 For she was really too lovely—too formidably lovely. I was used by now
to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang like a
rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a pointless
merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, finished—and
just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse of the infinity of
beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! There were women who
need not fear crow’s-feet, were more beautiful for being pale, could let a
silver hair or two show among the dark, and their eyes brood inwardly
while they smiled and, chatted? But then no young man was safe for a
moment! But then the world I had hitherto known had been only a warm
pink nursery, while this new one was a place of darkness, perils and
enchantments....
It was the next day that one of my sisters asked me where I had been the
evening before, and that I puffed out my chest to answer: “With Mrs.
Hazeldean—at the opera.” My mother looked up, but did not speak till the
governess had swept the girls off; then she said with pinched lips: “Hubert
Wesson took you to Mrs. Hazeldean’s box?”
“Yes.”
“Well, a young man may go where he pleases. I hear Hubert is still
infatuated; it serves Sabina right for not letting him marry the youngest
Lyman girl. But don’t mention Mrs. Hazeldean again before your sisters....
They say her husband never knew—I suppose if he had she would never
have got old Miss Cecilia Winter’s money.” And it was then that my mother
pronounced the name of Henry Prest, and added that phrase about the Fifth
Avenue Hotel which suddenly woke my boyish memories....
In a flash I saw again, under its quickly-lowered veil, the face with the
exposed eyes and the frozen smile, and felt through my grown-up waistcoat
the stab to my boy’s heart and the loosened murmur of my soul; felt all this,
and at the same moment tried to relate that former face, so fresh and clear
despite its anguish, to the smiling guarded countenance of Hubert’s “jolliest
woman I know.”
I was familiar with Hubert’s indiscriminate use of his one adjective, and
had not expected to find Mrs. Hazeldean “jolly” in the literal sense: in the
case of the lady he happened to be in love with the epithet simply meant
that she justified his choice. Nevertheless, as I compared Mrs. Hazeldean’s
earlier face to this one, I had my first sense of what may befall in the long
years between youth and maturity, and of how short a distance I had
travelled on that mysterious journey. If only she would take me by the
hand!
I was not wholly unprepared for my mother’s comment. There was no
other lady in Mrs. Hazeldean’s box when we entered; none joined her
during the evening, and our hostess offered no apology for her isolation. In
the New York of my youth every one knew what to think of a woman who
was seen “alone at the opera”; if Mrs. Hazeldean was not openly classed
with Fanny Ring, our one conspicuous “professional,” it was because, out
of respect for her social origin, New York preferred to avoid such
juxtapositions. Young as I was, I knew this social law, and had guessed,
before the evening was over, that Mrs. Hazeldean was not a lady on whom
other ladies called, though she was not, on the other hand, a lady whom it
was forbidden to mention to other ladies. So I did mention her, with
bravado.
No ladies showed themselves at the opera with Mrs. Hazeldean; but one
or two dropped in to the jolly supper announced by Hubert, an
entertainment whose jollity consisted in a good deal of harmless banter over
broiled canvas-backs and celery, with the best of champagne. These same
ladies I sometimes met at her house afterward. They were mostly younger
than their hostess, and still, though precariously, within the social pale:
pretty trivial creatures, bored with a monotonous prosperity, and yearning
for such unlawful joys as cigarettes, plain speaking, and a drive home in the
small hours with the young man of the moment. But such daring spirits
were few in old New York, their appearances infrequent and somewhat
furtive. Mrs. Hazeldean’s society consisted mainly of men, men of all ages,
from her bald or grey-headed contemporaries to youths of Hubert’s
accomplished years and raw novices of mine.
A great dignity and decency prevailed in her little circle. It was not the
oppressive respectability which weighs on the reformed déclassée, but the
air of ease imparted by a woman of distinction who has wearied of society
and closed her doors to all save her intimates. One always felt, at Lizzie
Hazeldean’s, that the next moment one’s grandmother and aunts might be
announced; and yet so pleasantly certain that they wouldn’t be.
What is there in the atmosphere of such houses that makes them so
enchanting to a fastidious and imaginative youth? Why is it that “those
women” (as the others call them) alone know how to put the awkward at
ease, check the familiar, smile a little at the over-knowing, and yet
encourage naturalness in all? The difference of atmosphere is felt on the
very threshold. The flowers grow differently in their vases, the lamps and
easy-chairs have found a cleverer way of coming together, the books on the
table are the very ones that one is longing to get hold of. The most perilous
coquetry may not be in a woman’s way of arranging her dress but in her
way of arranging her drawing-room; and in this art Mrs. Hazeldean
excelled.
I have spoken of books; even then they were usually the first objects to
attract me in a room, whatever else of beauty it contained; and I remember,
on the evening of that first “jolly supper,” coming to an astonished pause
before the crowded shelves that took up one wall of the drawing-room.
What! The goddess read, then? She could accompany one on those flights
too? Lead one, no doubt? My heart beat high....
But I soon learned that Lizzie Hazeldean did not read. She turned but
languidly even the pages of the last Ouida novel; and I remember seeing
Mallock’s New Republic uncut on her table for weeks. It took me no long
time to make the discovery: at my very next visit she caught my glance of
surprise in the direction of the rich shelves, smiled, coloured a little, and
met it with the confession: “No, I can’t read them. I’ve tried—I have tried
—but print makes me sleepy. Even novels do....” “They” were the
accumulated treasures of English poetry, and a rich and varied selection of
history, criticism, letters, in English, French and Italian—she spoke these
languages, I knew—books evidently assembled by a sensitive and widely-
ranging reader. We were alone at the time, and Mrs. Hazeldean went on in a
lower tone: “I kept just the few he liked best—my husband, you know.” It
was the first time that Charles Hazeldean’s name had been spoken between
us, and my surprise was so great that my candid cheek must have reflected
the blush on hers. I had fancied that women in her situation avoided
alluding to their husbands. But she continued to look at me, wistfully,
humbly almost, as if there were something more that she wanted to say, and
was inwardly entreating me to understand.
“He was a great reader: a student. And he tried so hard to make me read
too—he wanted to share everything with me. And I did like poetry—some
poetry—when he read it aloud to me. After his death I thought: ‘There’ll be
his books. I can go back to them—I shall find him there.’ And I tried—oh,
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