There they stood in the arbor, their lovers" arbor, gazing at each other like strangers. Peter recovered first, not to an understanding of the situation, but to the need of breaking its tension.
"I fancied," he said, "you would be eager to know her."
"Is she a grisette?"
His mind ached under the strain of taking her in. He felt dumbly her contrast to the facile, sympathetic natures he had been thrown with in his life abroad. When he had left her, Electra was, as she would have said, unformed; she had not crystallized into the clearness and the hardness of the integrity she worshiped. To him, when in thought he contrasted her with those other types who made for joy and not always for moral beauty, she was immeasurably exalted. In any given crisis where other women did well, he would not have questioned that Electra must have done better. Her austerity was a part of her virgin charm. But as he looked at her now, in her clear outlines, her incisive speech, the side of him that thrilled to beauty trembled with something like distaste or fear. She was like her own New England in its bleakness, without its summer warmth. He longed for atmosphere.
But she had asked her question again: "Is she a grisette?"
He found himself answering:--
"She is the daughter of Markham MacLeod."
"Not the author? Not the chief?"
"Yes," said Peter, with some quiet pride in the a.s.surance, "chief of the Brotherhood, the great Markham MacLeod."
Electra pondered.
"If that is true," she said, "I must call on her."
"True? I tell you it is true. Electra, what are you saying?"
But Electra was looking at him with those clear eyes where dwelt neither guile nor tolerance of the guile of others.
"Did she tell you so," she inquired, "or do you know it for a fact?"
He had himself well in hand now, because it had sprung into his wise artist brain that he must not break the beauty of their interview. It was fractured, but if they turned the hurt side away from the light, possibly no one would know, and the outer crystalline sheen of the thing would be deceptively the same.
"I know Markham MacLeod," he said. "I have seen them together. She calls him father."
A wave of interest swept over her face.
"Do you mean you really know him, Peter?"
"a.s.suredly."
"As the leader of the Brotherhood?"
"Yes, the founder."
"He is proscribed in Russia and watched in France. Is that true?"
"All true."
"He gave up writing for this--to go about organizing and speaking?
That"s true, isn"t it?"
"Quite true."
"How much do you know about the Brotherhood, Peter?"
"I belong to it."
He straightened as he spoke. An impulse of pride pa.s.sed over him, and she read the betrayal in his kindling eyes and their widened pupils.
"Is there work for you?" she asked, "for men who don"t speak and proselytize?"
"I do speak, Electra."
"You do?"
"I have spoken a little. I can"t do it yet in the way he wants. What he wants is money."
"We have sent him money," she agreed. "The Delta Club gave a series of plays last winter and voted him the proceeds. The first was for labor in America. The second for free Russia."
"Yes, it pours in on him. It"s his enormous magnetism."
"It"s his cause."
She seemed to have reached something now that warmed her into life, and he took advantage of that kindling.
"Rose is his daughter," he reminded her. "She is very beautiful, very sad. She is worthy of such a father."
"Rose? Is that her actual name?"
"Yes. They are Americans, though since her childhood she has lived in France."
"What did she do before Tom--got acquainted with her? Live there in Paris with her father?"
"She sang. She has a moving voice. She always hoped she was going to sing better, but there never was money enough to give her the right training. Then she began going about with her father. She spoke, too."
"In public? For the Brotherhood?"
"Yes. She has great magnetism. But she stopped doing that."
"Why?"
"I don"t know. I have heard her father ask her to do it, but she refused. She is beautiful, Electra."
Electra was looking at him thoughtfully.
"Did she persuade you to join the Brotherhood?" she asked.
"No," said Peter, unmoved, "the chief himself persuaded me. I went to a great meeting one Sunday night. I heard him. That was the end of me. I knew where I belonged."
Electra, her mind hidden from him as completely as if a veil had fallen between them, was, he could see, considering him. As for her, he hardly dared dwell upon her as she ruthlessly seemed. She was again like the bright American air, too determinate, too sharp. She almost hurt the eyes. He wondered vaguely over several things he was unwilling to ask her, since he could not bear to bring their difference to a finished issue: why she cherished a boundless belief in the father and only reprobation for the daughter, when she had seen neither the one nor the other; why she had this vivid enthusiasm for the charity that embraces the world and none for a friendless child at her door. Their interview seemed to have dropped flat in inconceivable collapse; what was to have been the beginning of their dual life was only the encounter of a hand-to-hand discussion. He tried to summon back the vividness to his f.a.gged emotions, and gave it up. Then he ventured to think of his imperial lady, and found a satirical note beating into his mind. He took refuge in the practical.