The Indian on the Trail | Page 4

around the eastern beach,
Maurice turned once on impulse, parted a screen of birches, and
stepped into an amphitheatre of the cliff, moss-clothed and
cedar-walled. It sloped downward in three terraces. A balcony or high
parapet of stone hung on one side, a rock low and broad stood in the
centre, and an unmistakable chair of rock, cushioned with vividly
green-branched moss, waited an occupant. Maurice sat down,
wondering if any other human being, perplexed and tortured, had ever
domiciled there for a brief time. Slim alder-trees and maples were
clasped in moss to their waists. The spacious open was darkened by
dense shade overhead. Bois Blanc was plainly in view from the beach.
But the eastern islands stretched a line of foliage in growing dusk.
Maurice felt the cooling benediction of the place. This world is such a
good world to be happy in, if you have the happiness.
When the light faded he went on, climbing low headlands which jutted
into the water, and sliding down on the other side; so that he reached
the hotel physically exhausted, and had his dinner sent to his room. But
a vitality constantly renewing itself swept away every trace of his hard
day when he entered the gayly lighted casino.
He no longer danced, not because dancing ceased to delight him, but
because the serious business of life had left no room for it. He walked
along the waxed floor, avoiding the circling procession of waltzers, and
bowing to a bank of pretty faces, but thinking his own thought, in
growing bitterness: "They who live blameless lives are the fools of fate.
If I had it to do over again, I would take what I wanted in spite of
everything, and let the consequences fall where they would!" Looking
up, he met in the eyes the woman of his early love.
She was holding court, for a person of such consequence became the
centre of the caravansary from the instant of her arrival; and she gave
him her hand with the conventional frankness and self-command that
set her apart from the weak. Once more he knew she was a woman to
be worshipped, whose presence rebuked the baseness he had just
thought.
"Perhaps it was she who kept me from being worse," Maurice

recognized in a flash; "not I myself!"
"Why, Mrs. Carstang, I didn't know you were here!" he spoke, with
warmth around the heart.
"We came at noon."
"And I was in the woods all day." Maurice greeted the red-cheeked,
elderly Mr. Carstang, whom, according to half the world, his wife
doted upon, and according to the other half, she simply endured. At any
rate, he looked pleased with his lot.
While Maurice stood talking with Mrs. Carstang, the new grief and the
old strangely neutralized each other. It was as if they met and grappled,
and he had numb peace. The woman of his first love made him proud
of that early bond. She was more than she had been then. But Lily
moved past him with a smile. Her dancing was visible music. It had a
penetrating grace--hers, and no other person's in the world. The floating
of a slim nymph down a forest avenue, now separating from her partner,
and now joining him at caprice, it rushed through Maurice like some
recollection of the Golden Age, when he had stood imprisoned in a tree.
There was little opportunity to do anything but watch her, for she was
more in demand than any other girl in the casino. Hop nights were her
unconscious ovations. He took a kind of aching delight in her dancing.
For while it gratified an artist to the core, it separated her from her
lover and gave her to other men.
Next morning he waited for her in the study with a restlessness which
would not let him sit still. More than once he went as far as the oak-tree
to watch for a glimmer. But when Lily finally appeared at the door he
pretended to be very busy with papers on his desk, and looked up,
saying, "Oh!"
The morning was chill, and she seemed a fair Russian in fur-edged
cloth as she put her cold fingers teasingly against his neck.
"Are you working hard?"

"Trying to. I am behind."
"But if there is a good wind this afternoon you are not to forget the
Carstangs' sail. They will be here only a day or two, and you mustn't
neglect them. Mrs. Carstang told me if I saw you first to invite you."
Maurice met the girl's smiling eyes, and the ice of her hand went
through him.
"Isn't Mrs. Carstang lovely! As soon as I saw you come in last night, I
knew she was--the other woman."
"You didn't look at me."
"I