The Penalty | Page 2

into her chair and cried.
The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room.
And in his soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara.
"'D afternoon, Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles.

"I want me thumb bandaged".
She said in a small; surprised voice, "Why, it's finished".
In that instant the legless man overreached himself and fell heavily.
Barbara ... dashed into her dressing-room and locked the door behind
her.
They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and
most formal of their many gardens.
"What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?" "He went away," said
Barbara, her eyes troubled.
He caught her by the wrist, drew her to her feet, and into the room.
"I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over a cliff".
"Climb out of that chair, and let me out of this house".
"I've seen that man. I was writing notes in the summer house when he
came".
"Read that, father".
The engineer made generous terms across the dinner-table.
"You will," said Barbara, "when the things dry".
They were much amused with Bubbles, who came out to them for
Christmas vacation.
"And when you think," said she, "that some women spend the best
years of their lives making statues!"

I

The number of love affairs which intervened between Barbara Ferris's
first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could
not have been counted on the fingers of her two hands. Many boys,
many men, had seemed wonderfully attractive to her. She did not know
why. She knew only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while
it lasted, and that it never lasted long. She was sixteen before she began
to consider herself a heartless, flirtatious, unstable, jilting sort of a girl.
When she made this discovery, she was terribly ashamed, and for one
long depressing year fell in love with nobody, became very shy, and
hated herself. It was during this year that she had her first, last, and
only touch of mania. It lasted only a little while and was not acute. She
got the idea that she was being watched, spied on, and followed. But
she was too strong in body and mind to give in for long to so silly an
hallucination. And when she had dismissed the second man and her
maid, who had particularly excited her suspicions, the mania left her, as
a dream leaves at waking.
In her seventeenth year she was presented to society, and became an
immense favorite. There were excellent reasons for this: she was lovely
to look at, she would inherit a great deal of money, she had charming
natural manners, and she was sweet-tempered.
During her second season she had an unpleasant experience. She had
almost reached an understanding with a certain young man with whom
she fancied herself in love. They were spending a Saturday to Monday
at a great place on Long Island. On Sunday night, her host, a man old
enough to be her father, invited her to see his rose garden by moonlight.
She accepted this invitation as a matter of course. Pacing down a path
between tall privet hedges, her host, who for some minutes seemed to
have lost the use of his tongue, made her a sudden impassioned
declaration of love, seized her in his arms, and kissed her wherever he
could with a kind of dreadful fury. For half a minute she stood still as a
statue. Then, crimson with shame and anger, she wrenched free, and
struck him heavy blows on the face and head with her strong young
fists. She beat him, not indeed to insensibility, but to his senses. They
returned to the house after a time, and entered the drawing-room
talking in lazy, natural voices and praising the beauty of the night and

of the garden. Not even Barbara's lover suspected that anything out of
the common had happened.
Barbara, having played half a dozen rubbers of bridge with the great
skill and sweet temper which were natural to her, excused herself, went
to her room, and cried half the night. It was not the shame of having
been forcibly kissed that sickened her of herself, but the unforgettable,
unforgivable fact that toward the last of that furious kissing she had
found a certain low feline pleasure in the kisses. She wished that she
might die, or, infinitely better, that she had never been born.
It seemed terrible to her that she could at once be in love with one man
and enjoy the kisses of another. She had heard of girls who were thus,
and had for them the contempt which they deserved. And yet it seemed
that she was one of them; neither better nor worse. What Barbara did
not realize