gift of curiosity. As I was curious, so shalt thou be curious about everything, and especially about those things which are forbidden thee to know. And with this gift I must perforce thee another— the gift of suffering." "And I," said Melusina, "give thee my own gift. As I am a creature of the sea, so shalt thou be, my child. And as I strove to be human and to know mortal love, so shalt thou strive without ever quite succeeding. And I give thee my secret, which no mortal should know, and which, if any rash mortal lover learn it from thee, will bring a swift end to the mortal happiness you have shared." And she whispered-into her own two hands cupped as if to a baby's ear. "Fine gifts, those are, if you will permit me to say so!" exclaimed Miss Wilkinson, ironically. "Where would that poor child be with your gifts, and without mine, if I might ask? Fortunately, I can make those gifts comparatively harmless, and even useful in their way, by giving him a proper sense of his social responsibilities, a respect for custom, and a fear of making himself ridiculous. With your gifts and mine, he may go far; he may become a senator. But without my gifts, what would he become? A starveling mountebank, I dare say!" "Well, hurry up and give him your gifts, then," said Titania. But Miss Wilkinson had seen, on a little table at the head of the bed where Mrs. Flower lay sleeping, a letter which Mrs. Flower had been writing. Miss Wilkinson had acquired the habit of reading the private letters of her pupils whenever opportunity offered, not in vulgar curiosity, of course, but from a deep sense of her custodianship over their behavior. And so, from old habit, she had read the exposed lines of writing. They were upside down, but she had learned to read handwriting upside down, and at a glance. And what she read made her start, and taking up the letter, she read aloud to the others with cold emphasis this passage: "I hoped he would be a boy, but she's a girl, and I'm going to call her Pat just the same." "It seems that we have been mistaken, and I think I may say deliberately deceived, as to the sex of our godchild," she said sternly. "What of it?" asked Titania. "What of it? Well, really! If you don't know, I must point out that your gifts-all of them-are, considering the sex of the child, most inappropriate. You should realize that mine are the only gifts proper for a girl child." "It 's too late now," said Titania. "We can't take back our gifts," said Psyche, "and you know it. What's given, is given.” "Moreover," said Melusina, maliciously, "you must give her your gifts, too. You accepted the invitation to the christening, so you can't get out of it! I'm not so old but that I can remember the rules and regulations for fairy-godmothers." But Miss Wilkinson had been treated much too inconsiderately. Always a stickler for form, her sense of the proprieties had been deeply outraged by these irregular proceedings. And now they were attempting to force her to connive at, and to participate in, their mistake! She drew herself up very haughtily. "Very well," she said. "I give this child my gifts also, but as a bequest, to come into effect at my death. As it happens, I also know the rules and regulations concerning fairy gifts." And drawing her robe about her with a magnificent gesture, she swept out through the window. It is well known that fairies and such-like supernatural pagan beings do not die natural deaths, though they can be destroyed by violent means, such as fire or gunpowder. But who would shoot a dignified old lady, especially since she looked like a marble statue of Justice as she stood at the court-house steps? Miss Wilkinson's expectations of life were several hundred thousand times greater than this baby's. Except by some very unlikely accident, Pat Flower would never inherit her gifts at all. "Well, that 's that!" said Psyche. "I wonder what she will be like," said Melusina, a little awed at what they had done. For, after all, it was unusual to give a girl child all these gifts. They had n't been given to very many, ever: just to Cleopatra and Mary Queen of Scots and Nell Gwynne and some others a few actresses and queens. sense of her social responsibilities, without any respect for custom, and without any fear of making herself ridiculous. And she had the power to change the shapes of all things, so that what had been vulgar became beautiful when she celebrated it in a poem; and what had been holy became, when she mocked at it, absurd. And she herself seemed whatever she chose to seem; and she chose to seem many different things to many different people. And, as not the least of Titania's gifts, she could turn her lovers into asses with long ears; she could do that by a look. Moreover, she had Psyche's gift of curiosity. She was curious about everything— especially about those things which it was forbidden to know. And with this gift there came perforce another— the gift of suffering. And being Melusina's godchild, she was not quite human, being a creature of the salt and changing sea; and yet, like Melusina, she must strive to be human, and to know mortal love and not quite succeed. And she had Melusina's whispered secret, which no mortal "Wait and see," said Titania, who should know, and which, if any rash did n't care what happened. And so they all flew back to the court-house steps. And there, in the only place of dignity left them in the civilization of Philistia, they remained, motionless, silent, thinking of old times. III. The Bomb. Pat Flower grew up. Limitations of space, good manners, and, failing everything else, the libel laws, forbid a detailed account of her career. Suffice it to say that she became the girl poet whom you all admire and love and wonder about. She grew up lacking in any proper mortal lover wrested from her, brought a swift end to the mortal happiness they had shared. And, because she was a poet, she was sometimes behind in her rent for her little room in Greenwich Village. But, being under compulsion by reason of those fairy gifts, she could n't stop being a poet. And then one night a private detective, who had been hired to watch the Reds and circumvent their plots, having discovered that there were no plots to circumvent, and being in great fear of losing his job, and wishing to convince his employers that the republic was in danger, accordingly planted a picric-acid bomb under the steps of the court-house in a provincial town in which an editor of an obscure radical paper had been sentenced to ninety-nine years' imprisonment for criticizing the Government. The statues of Justice, Wisdom, Truth, and Mercy were blown to bits. High explosives can destroy anything-custom, learning, beauty, love, civilization itself. And so the goddesses ceased to exist. That is to say, they existed now only in so far as they existed in Pat, in whom their gifts were incarnate. She was at the same time freed from the compulsion of these gifts, being now herself a demi-goddess. As such, she was free, and could use her gifts or not, as she chose. Moreover, to the other gifts at her command were now added those of the fourth goddess-a sense of social responsibility, respect for custom, and the fear of making herself ridiculous. Pat, of course, did not know all this. But the fairy spell which had been cast over her was dissolved. She could do just as she pleased now. She could keep on being a poet if she really wanted to, or she could become a perfectly respectable young lady. IV. The Engagement. The next morning Pat Flower remembered that she had become engaged last night. To be sure, she had been engaged many times before; but this was different. This time she was in love. (To be sure, she had been in love many times before; but this was different.) She was really going to marry him. His name was John. She adored him. (To be sure-but this was different.) He worshiped her. Naturally! And he did n't mind her keeping on writing love-poems after they were married. "Because," he said, "people will know they 're written to your husband. And it will make people realize that married lovers can be just as happy as the other kind." The idea rather pleased her-writing the poetry of married lovers. He had discovered the real truth about her that underneath her airs of gay cynicism and bravado she was a shy, helpless, hurt child, an idealist who believed in the things at which she mocked, vastly weary of the pretenses which she had made so beautiful and so convincing in her poems. He really understood her. (To be sure but this was different.) She had wanted to believe in love before, and now she did believe in it. Yes, she really meant it this time. She loved John with all her heart. And she knew-she knew profoundly that she was going to be a good wife to him. Oh, terribly good! She would darn his socks, and everything. It almost scared her, this prospect of voluntary, contented goodness. "John," she said to him, "give me a month to have my fling in. Then I'll marry you." "All right, darling. Go ahead and have your fling," he said indulgently. "I know you won't do anything I would n't want you to do." "I'm afraid I won't," she said, and sighed. "But-you 're to stay away all the month. You 're not to come to see me at all." That was a hard bargain, he thought, but he had to accept it. And all that month, up to the last day, she sat at home and darned socks. She bought the socks at a sock-store, and cut holes in the toes with her manicure scissors, and darned the holes neatly. She was pretending her engagement-ring, John's solitaire. they were John's socks. "You are going to be married," he said. She had bought thirty pairs of socks, but the month had thirty-one days in it; on the last day she had no socks to darn. She moped all morning. She wrote a little poem in the afternoon-a love-poem, entitled "Married Love." It began: "Why, that 's true!" she said in great surprise. Evidently there was something to fortune-telling, after all. She settled herself trustfully in her chair. "Tell me some more," she said. "You are going to be very happy," he told her. "Ah!" she said. "This is the first time you have ever been in love," he told her, with a glance at her ingenuous countenance, so like a child's. "You have never known what love meant before." (True, perfectly true!) "You have wondered if you were in love before; but you soon found out that it was n't so." (Why, this was uncanny!) "And this is to be the great love of your life,” he told her. "Will it last forever?" she asked wistfully. He peered closely into her palm. "Yes, forever," he said. "I must tell you the truth. I see here the signs of an absolutely happy and absolutely perfect marriage." "That 's just what I 'm afraid of,” she said a little sadly. "Afraid? Why?" he asked in surprise. "I don't know why; but that's just how I feel." "Your fear," he said, "draws my attention to this curious little cross at the base of the index-finger. That cross indicates that you are," he glanced at the calendar on the wall, "Let me see your hand," said the and spoke with some excitement,old man, gravely. She gave him her hand, the left one. The old man looked thoughtfully at "yes, this very day, in some grave danger!" "Really!" she said. "What danger?" He shook his head gravely at this. "In order to know that, I shall have to cast your horoscope, and that costs twenty-five cents more." "That was all the money I had with me," she said. "Could n't you trust me till to-morrow? I live right down the street here. My name 's Pat Flower." She hoped he might know who she was. He did, it seemed. "Are you " he stared at her"Pat Flower!" "Yes," she admitted. "I've always wanted to meet you," he said, and took off his white beard. He was n't a day over twentyfive. "But-you really are n't going to get married, are you?" he demanded. "Are n't I? You said I was!" "Well, I take it back. You-you must n't!" "Why not?" young people. They read your poetry. It means something to them. It's beauty, it 's joy, it 's freedom. And here you want to go and spoil it-by getting married! Why, you can't get married! You 're our pagan goddess, if you only knew it. All the beautiful things we want to do, and can't, because we live in Philistia, you do them for us, and write about them for us, and we worship you for them." "How do you know I do the things I write about?" she asked. "That makes no difference, so long as we believe it. But if you get married-why, everybody will think those love-poems are written to your husband!" She was struck by that. It was exactly what John had said. People would think just that. "Don't you see?" he exclaimed. "A goddess can't sit at home and darn her husband's socks!" Well, there might be something to that. "You can't belong to just one person. You belong to us all-the boys and girls of the younger generation." "I'll tell you why not," he said earnestly. "But first let me tell you who I am. I'm a newspaper man, and I'm doing this as an assignmentGreenwich Village Has Its Fortune Told. I've only been in New York a few weeks. I 've worked on newspapers all over the country, and everywhere I 've gone, people are reading you and talking about you. Young people, I mean." "What do they say about me?" she sponsibility." asked. "That 's just it. They say awful things about you or things that you or things that would be awful if they were said about anybody else. But-they love you for it." "That 's curious," she said. "In Philistia," he said, "the pagan spirit has been pretty well stamped out. But still it's there in the "I see," said Pat. "I've a certainyou might call it social responsibility in this matter." "Exactly!" said the young man. "You have a tremendous social re "And if I'm a pagan goddess, I suppose I must behave as one," she went on reflectively. "Of course. You can't defy the custom of the centuries just to please some man." "True; one must respect old and established custom. But-still-” She did love poor John. It would be a pity |