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Understanding
Oracle APEX 20
Application
Development
Think Like an Application Express Developer
—
Third Edition
—
Edward Sciore
Understanding Oracle
APEX 20 Application
Development
Think Like an Application
Express Developer
Third Edition

Edward Sciore
Understanding Oracle APEX 20 Application Development: Think Like an Application
Express Developer
Edward Sciore
Newton Center, MA, USA

ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-6164-4 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-6165-1

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6165-1

Copyright © 2020 by Edward Sciore

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the
material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with
every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an
editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the
trademark.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not
identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to
proprietary rights.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication,
neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or
omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein.
Managing Director, Apress Media LLC: Welmoed Spahr
Acquisitions Editor: Jonathan Gennick
Development Editor: Laura Berendson
Coordinating Editor: Jill Balzano
Cover image designed by Freepik (www.freepik.com)
Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business Media New York, 233 Spring Street,
6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail orders-ny@springer-
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readers on GitHub via the book’s product page, located at www.apress.com/9781484261644. For more
detailed information, please visit http://www.apress.com/source-code.
Printed on acid-free paper
To my parents, for their many years of unwavering
love and support.
Table of Contents
About the Author�� xiii

About the Technical Reviewer��xv

Acknowledgments��xvii

Introduction��xix

Chapter 1: The SQL Workshop�� 1

Downloading Tables�� 3
Object Browser�� 5
SQL Command Tool�� 9
Summary�� 12

Chapter 2: Applications and Pages�� 13

Creating an Application�� 13
Editing Application Properties�� 17
Deleting an Application�� 19
Running an Application Page�� 19
Running a Page from Within APEX�� 19
Running a Page from Outside APEX�� 22
Creating a New Page�� 22
Page Designer�� 25
Property Editor�� 28
Accessing Built-in Help�� 32
Summary�� 32

v
Table of Contents

Chapter 3: Regions�� 33
Creating and Deleting Regions�� 34
Type-Independent Region Properties�� 35
Identification and Source Sections�� 36
Layout Section�� 39
Appearance Section�� 45
Drag and Drop�� 46
Static Content Regions�� 49
Formatted vs. Unformatted Text�� 50
Substitution Strings�� 53
Referring to APEX Pages�� 53
Referring to Local Images�� 54
Classic Report Regions�� 57
Column-Specific Properties�� 60
Report-Specific Properties�� 69
Using the Source Query for Formatting�� 70
Chart Regions�� 71
Creating a Chart Region�� 73
Configuring a Chart�� 75
Configuring a Chart Series�� 75
Multi-Series Charts�� 78
Customizing a Chart�� 79
Interactive Report Regions�� 84
Using the Search Bar�� 86
Configuring the Search Bar�� 93
Link Column�� 96
Summary�� 98

vi
Table of Contents

Chapter 4: Navigation�� 101

Lists�� 101
Viewing List Details�� 102
Editing List Entries�� 103
Creating New List Entries�� 105
Creating a New List�� 108
Modifying the Navigation Interface�� 109
Configuring the Navigation Menu�� 110
Configuring the Navigation Bar�� 112
List Regions�� 112
Hierarchical Lists�� 116
Mega Menus�� 122
Page Hierarchy�� 123
Breadcrumbs�� 125
Breadcrumb Regions�� 129
Global Page�� 130
Summary�� 130

Chapter 5: Items and Buttons�� 133

Items�� 133
Item Sampler Page�� 134
Creating and Deleting Items�� 137
Positioning an Item�� 141
Text-Based Items�� 142
Text Fields�� 143
Number Fields�� 143
Password Items�� 143
Text Fields with Autocomplete�� 143
Color Pickers�� 146
Date Pickers�� 146
Properties of All Text-Based Items�� 148

vii
Table of Contents

List-Based Items�� 150

Dynamic List–Based Items�� 152
Static List–Based Items�� 154
Multi-Value List Items�� 155
Yes/No Items�� 158
Display-Based Items�� 160
Initial Item Values�� 160
Buttons�� 162
Summary�� 166

Chapter 6: Session State�� 167

Session IDs�� 167
Submit vs. Redirect�� 168
Using an Item to Submit a Page�� 169
Redirect Can Set Session State�� 171
Referring to Session State Variables�� 172
Customized Reports�� 173
Filter by Job and Department Page�� 173
Filter by Possible Department Page�� 175
Filter by Salary Range Page�� 178
Master-Detail Reports�� 179
Chart Drill Down�� 182
Customized Titles and Labels�� 185
Cascading Lists�� 187
Conditional Rendering�� 190
Region Display Selectors�� 193
Summary�� 195

viii
Table of Contents

Chapter 7: Processes�� 197

Stages of a Submit Action�� 197
Creating a Process�� 198
PL/SQL to Access the Database�� 200
Delete Employee Region�� 202
Insert Employee Region�� 203
Update Employee Region�� 204
PL/SQL to Compute Values�� 206
Local Variables�� 210
Comments�� 210
Assignment Statements�� 210
Conditional Statements�� 210
Handling Multi-Row SQL Queries�� 211
Concurrent Database Updates�� 214
Lost Update Problem�� 214
Avoiding Lost Updates�� 216
Using a Hash Function�� 220
Success and Error Messages�� 222
Conditional Processes�� 224
Submitting via Items�� 224
Multiple-Use Processes�� 226
Page Rendering Processes�� 229
Executing a Process Without a Submit�� 231
Moving Between Regions�� 235
Finding Previous and Next Rows�� 235
Single Row Update�� 239
Implementing the Report Region�� 241
Implementing the Insert Region�� 241
Implementing the Update/Delete Region�� 242
Summary�� 245

ix
Table of Contents

Chapter 8: Data Validation�� 247

Constraint Preservation�� 247
Input Validation�� 252
Constraint Validations�� 259
Process Validation�� 260
Summary�� 261

Chapter 9: Branches�� 263

Separating Input from Output�� 263
Creating a Branch�� 266
Conditional Branching�� 268
Wizard-Like Interfaces�� 269
Implementing the Progress Bar�� 272
Basic Info Page�� 274
Manager Info Page�� 277
Hiredate Info Page�� 278
Confirm Employee Info Page�� 278
Summary�� 280

Chapter 10: Forms�� 281

Form Regions�� 281
Form Update�� 288
Updating Records�� 289
Clearing Session State�� 293
Inserting Records�� 295
Computations�� 298
Sending Email�� 300
Report with Form Pages�� 302
The Report Page�� 309
The Form Page�� 310
Customizing the Report and Form�� 312

x
Table of Contents

Form Pages�� 313

Implementing the Tree Page�� 315
Implementing the Form Page�� 316
Master-Detail Forms�� 318
Summary�� 326

Chapter 11: Interactive Grids�� 327

Read-Only Interactive Grids�� 327
Editing Interactive Grids�� 331
Ensuring Consistency�� 337
Grid Validations�� 338
Restricting Interactive Grid Input�� 340
Grid Processes�� 343
Summary�� 348

Chapter 12: Dynamic SQL�� 349

Dynamic Reports�� 349
Dynamic Processes�� 355
Combining Dynamic Reports and Processes�� 361
Summary�� 365

Chapter 13: Security�� 367

Authentication�� 367
Managing Authentication Schemes�� 368
Writing an Authentication Function�� 372
Public Pages�� 377
Authorization�� 378
Creating an Authorization Scheme�� 378
Component Authorization�� 383
Page Authorization�� 384
Not Public User Scheme�� 386

xi
Table of Contents

Avoiding Malicious Use�� 387

SQL Injection�� 387
Cross-Site Scripting�� 395
URL Modification�� 403
Summary�� 411

Index�� 413

xii
About the Author
Edward Sciore is a recently retired associate professor
in the computer science department at Boston College.
He taught college students for more than 35 years.
His research specialty is database systems, and he
thoroughly enjoys teaching the wonders of database
technology to captive students.

xiii
About the Technical Reviewer
Armando Plascencia has been a database engineer and
software architect in multiple software languages, building
systems and solutions for enterprises since the early
days of information technology. Specializing in all things
Oracle, Java, Linux, Open Source, and APEX, Armando
is a natural principal architect. He thrives in dynamic,
complex environments, where he leads teams of diversely
skilled individuals, one business challenge and deadline
at a time. Being an avid learner has made Mr. Plascencia
a master technologist. Attending conferences and reading
dozens of books each year keep his skills up to date, but
teaching others is what keeps him honed and sharp to new technological iterations and
innovations. A strong believer in the power of positive thinking and ongoing service
to others (Armando and his mother recently made enchiladas for a team filming a
documentary about death, grief, and surfing), Armando cares deeply about the larger
context of our world, as well as the people who are special in his life. Armando’s creed
is that writing code, drinking coffee, and developing strong relationships are the
foundations of everything. Outside of work, Armando enjoys running, cycling, designing,
and working on landscaping projects and the hunt for the perfect cup of Java.

“It was an absolute pleasure to be associated with Apress and I want to

acknowledge the amazing work of this author.”
—Armando Plascencia

xv
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank the APEX user community. Numerous people
routinely and generously share their APEX knowledge by writing blogs, creating
demonstration APEX sites, and answering all kinds of questions on the APEX web
forums. I learned much from them. This book is my attempt to give something back.
I also want to thank my Apress editors, Jonathan Gennick and Jill Balzano. Jonathan
convinced me to write the book, and then to revise it. He provided guidance and
encouragement every step of the way. Jill was always supportive and smoothed out the
inevitable bumps in the road.
Most importantly, I want to acknowledge my wife Amy. She has accompanied me
through all three editions, listening to my ideas, helping me resolve technical issues,
working through the APEX examples, and pointing out passages in the book that needed
clarification. She is a relentless proofreader. I could have written the book without her,
but it would not have been anywhere near as good. Thanks.

xvii
Introduction
Application Express (otherwise known as APEX) is a web application tightly coupled
to an Oracle database. It has several uses: you can use its SQL Workshop tool to query
and modify the database, you can use its App Builder tool to create your own web
applications that interact with the database, and you can run the web applications
created by you and others.
The app builder is especially interesting because it provides a simple, nontraditional
way to build web pages. You do not specify code for the page directly; instead, you
choose from a set of built-in templates. There is a template for the overall page and
templates for each kind of component that you want to put on the page (such as reports,
buttons, etc.). Each template has a set of properties, whose values determine where each
component is located on the page, what it looks like, and how it behaves. You create a
page simply by choosing templates for the components you want and assigning values to
their properties.
The APEX app builder saves the property values for each component in its own
database. When a browser requests one of your application’s pages, the APEX server
extracts the property values relevant to that page from its database, constructs the HTML
code corresponding to those values, and returns that code to the browser. This process is
called rendering the page, and APEX is called an HTML generator.
The advantage of using an HTML generator such as APEX is that you can build web
pages without any knowledge of HTML (or CSS, JavaScript, or PHP). Moreover, because
APEX is tightly coupled to an Oracle database, it automatically handles the intricacies
of database interaction. APEX makes it possible to easily create good-looking, highly
functional, and database-aware pages with only a rudimentary knowledge of SQL.

Why This Book?

Designing a page with APEX seems straightforward—all you have to do is choose the
components you want and then assign the appropriate values to their properties.
Choosing components is straightforward, but assigning property values is not. A page

xix
Introduction

and its components have many properties, and you have to know the purpose of those
properties to know what values to assign. These properties range from the essential
(such as the source query of a report) to the obscure (such as the static ID of a report).
Some properties (such as the HTML expression of a report column) are hooks that allow
you to insert customized HTML or JavaScript code into the generated web page.
The purpose of this book is to gently lead you through this cornucopia of properties.
To that end, the book develops a demo web application that illustrates various APEX
techniques for building typical web page functionality. The pages of this application
start out simply and gradually increase their level of sophistication. With each page, I
introduce a few new properties, discuss their purpose, and illustrate their usefulness.
By the end of the book, you will have been so immersed in the world of APEX properties
that you should feel confident enough to tackle any website project of your own. And
if your project requires even more sophistication than appears here, you should be
comfortable enough to use properties that are not covered, perhaps by looking at the
documentation, examining the numerous prepackaged applications provided by Oracle,
checking a web forum, or even figuring it out on your own.
Another way to build web pages in APEX is to rely on wizards. APEX provides wizards
to generate common components, such as report pages and data entry forms. Each
wizard asks you a series of questions (such as “What is the name of the page?” “What
table do you want to display?” “Should the page have an entry in the navigation menu?”)
and then uses your responses to generate appropriate components having appropriate
properties. The advantage, of course, is that you don’t need to know anything about
properties. The disadvantage is that wizards tend to produce “one size fits all” pages, in
terms of both their appearance and their functionality.
Wizards can take you only so far. If you want any kind of control over the look,
feel, and behavior of your page, you need to get involved with its properties. This book
provides the guidance you need.

Demo Application
As this book explains each part of the APEX app builder, it guides you through the
development of a small application, named Employee Demo. I encourage you to build
your own version of the application as you follow along. You can run my version of the
application by going to the URL apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=91392:1. You can also
download the source code for the application from the Apress website and import it into
your own workspace.
xx
Introduction

Unlike demo applications in many books, this application does not “do” anything
particularly interesting. Instead, each page is constructed to illustrate one or more
techniques. Some of the pages have similar functionality, to illustrate the trade-offs
between different implementation techniques.
The Employee Demo application uses the DEPT and EMP database tables available to
every APEX workspace. The DEPT table lists the departments of a company, and the EMP
table lists the employees in those departments. Their columns are as follows:

DEPT(DeptNo, DName, Loc)

EMP (EmpNo, EName, Job, Mgr, HireDate, Sal, Comm, DeptNo)

The key of DEPT is DeptNo, and the key of EMP is EmpNo. Each table has a built-in
sequence for generating unique values for these keys, as well as an associated insertion
trigger. If you insert a record into one of the tables and omit a value for the key, the
trigger will automatically generate a key value from the appropriate sequence.
The Employee Demo application assumes that the EMP table has been modified to
have an additional column OffSite of type char(1). An employee will have the value ‘N’
for this column if the employee works in the department office and ‘Y’ if the employee
works offsite. For your reference, here is the SQL code you will need to add this new
column to your EMP table.

alter table EMP

add OffSite char(1);

After altering the table, you will also need to assign an Offsite value for each
existing employee. In my Employee Demo application, the employees SCOTT, ALLEN,
WARD, and TURNER work offsite; the others work onsite. Chapter 1 describes how to
import the tables if they are not already in your workspace and discusses the APEX tools
needed to make these modifications to them.

R
equired Background
This book is for people who are comfortable using a database system and want to learn
how to write nontrivial web applications in APEX. Many of the techniques used to write
APEX pages involve various skills in the following database and web design languages
and technologies.

xxi
Introduction

S
QL
The most important skill you need is the ability to write SQL queries. All data access in
APEX is performed via SQL statements, and the value of many properties involves SQL
in some way. The more fluent you are in SQL, the more sophisticated your reports and
forms can be. This book assumes that you are comfortable with SQL. For the most part,
the Employee Demo application uses relatively simple SQL statements, but occasionally
I include something more complex (such as an outer join or nested query) to illustrate
what is possible.

H
TML
This book also assumes that you have a basic familiarity with HTML—in particular, how
tags such as <p>, <b>, <a>, and <img> can be used to format text and display images. I will
ignore advanced features such as JavaScript and CSS.

P
L/SQL
APEX uses PL/SQL to specify behavior. PL/SQL is Oracle’s programming language; its
main feature is an embedded SQL syntax that makes it easy to write procedures that
interact with the database You should have a rudimentary understanding of programming,
although prior knowledge of PL/SQL is not necessary. This book introduces PL/SQL in
Chapter 7 and uses only basic features of the language.

A
PEX
Finally, this book does not require you to have prior experience with APEX. Although it is
possible to follow the book without actually using APEX, doing so seems rather pointless.
So you should get an APEX account. The easiest and best way to get an account is by
going to the apex.oracle.com site. Because I created my Employee Demo application
from there, you should see the same screens that appear in this book.

Distinguishing Screens from Pages

APEX is a web application that is used to create other web applications. Thus, APEX has
a home page, and its various tools have their own sets of pages. Throughout this book,

xxii
Introduction

I describe how to use APEX to build a page of an application. This can lead to some
strange sentences, such as “Clicking the Run button from the application’s APEX home
page runs its home page.” To avoid such confusion, I denote all APEX pages as “screens.”
The previous sentence becomes “Clicking the Run button from the application’s home
screen runs its home page,” which is less awkward and hopefully less confusing.

New to This Edition

Although APEX is a polished and highly functional application, it is (and always has
been) a work in progress. The APEX developers have been relentless in their quest
to improve the system and have not been shy about making large changes to the
functionality of APEX and its user interface.
The previous edition of this book was written in 2015, just as APEX 5 was introduced.
Since then, the user interface has undergone a series of significant changes. In fact,
when I recently read through my APEX 5 book, I was dismayed to discover that its
screenshots and instructions were often inaccurate and occasionally meaningless. Many
APEX properties are now in different locations, sometimes with different names. New
component types (in particular forms and interactive grids) have replaced old ones and
have different functionality. Clearly it was time to revise the book.
The most significant additions to this book are the two new chapters on Forms
and Interactive Grids. In APEX 5, a “form” was a static content region containing an
intricately configured set of items and built-in processes. Now APEX has a dedicated
Form region, which automatically generates the preconfigured items and processes for
you and provides an easily understood set of properties for managing them.
Interactive grid regions have replaced the “tabular form” regions of APEX 5. They
provide the same basic functionality as tabular forms—namely, the ability to update a
report’s values in place—but interactive grids are easier to use, more powerful, and have
a cleaner semantics. In fact, the Interactive Grids chapter (Chapter 11) of this book is
much shorter than the older Tabular Forms chapter because interactive grids require
much less explanation.

xxiii
CHAPTER 1

The SQL Workshop

Congratulations! You are on the brink of learning how to build APEX web applications.
But before you can begin, you need an APEX account. There are several ways to obtain
an account: you can register for a free account through the apex.oracle.com website,
you might be given an account to an APEX server at your job, or you can even install an
APEX server yourself and create your own account to it.
No matter the circumstance, your APEX server will have an associated URL. Invoking
the URL from your browser takes you to a login screen. Figure 1-1 shows the login screen
used by the apex.oracle.com server.

Figure 1-1. APEX login screen

1
© Edward Sciore 2020
E. Sciore, Understanding Oracle APEX 20 Application Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6165-1_1
Chapter 1 The SQL Workshop

Entering your credentials then takes you to the APEX home screen, the top of which
is shown in Figure 1-2.

Figure 1-2. APEX home screen

The APEX development environment contains several tools. Of primary importance

is the App Builder tool, which will be covered in depth starting in Chapter 2. We begin
here by looking at two tools in the APEX SQL Workshop: the object browser and the
SQL command tool. These tools allow you to directly access the database—the object
browser lets you manipulate a graphical user interface, and the SQL command tool lets
you execute SQL statements and PL/SQL code blocks.
Although the SQL Workshop tools are not essential for application development,
using them can make your life much easier. Here are five ways that they can help:

• The object browser reminds you of the database objects and their
structures. For example, a typical application involves several tables,
each of which can have numerous columns. It is often impractical
to memorize the details of each one. When building a page that
references a table, you can use these tools to help refresh your memory.

• To modify the structure of the database. For example, these tools are
the easiest way to execute the alter table command given in the
introduction.

• To modify the contents of the database. For example, you might want
to insert or modify records to test the behavior of a page with new or
altered data, or to reset the database after testing the page.

2
Chapter 1 The SQL Workshop

• To examine the contents of the database tables. After running a page,

you can verify that the database updated correctly.

• To debug an SQL statement or PL/SQL block. By executing code in the

SQL commands tool first, you can verify that it produces the expected
result before you actually assign it as the value of some property on a
page.

To get to the SQL Workshop, click the SQL Workshop button on the APEX home
screen. Figure 1-3 shows the resulting screen. From this screen, you can click the Object
Browser or SQL Commands button to get to the desired tool.

Figure 1-3. SQL Workshop home screen

D
ownloading Tables
This book makes frequent use of the sample tables EMP and DEPT. If your workspace does
not contain these tables, here is how to load them. Click the arrow of the SQL Workshop
tab, select Utilities, and then Sample Datasets; see Figure 1-4. Figure 1-5 shows the
resulting screen, which lists the available tables. Click the Install button for the
EMP/DEPT dataset, and follow directions.

3
Chapter 1 The SQL Workshop

Figure 1-4. Getting to the sample datasets

Figure 1-5. The Sample Datasets screen

4
Chapter 1 The SQL Workshop

To verify that the tables have been installed, return to the SQL Workshop home
screen (as shown in Figure 1-3). Entries for EMP and DEPT should now appear in the
Recently Created Tables region.

O
bject Browser
The object browser lets you interact with your tables quickly and easily. From it, you can
examine the description of each table—that is, the types and properties of its columns
and its constraints, indexes, and triggers—as well as its contents. You can also use the
object browser to make simple changes to the description or contents of a table.
The home screen for the object browser displays a list of table names along its left
side. Clicking a table name displays information about that table. For example, the
screen for the EMP table appears in Figure 1-6.

Figure 1-6. Viewing the EMP table from the object browser
5
Chapter 1 The SQL Workshop

The main portion of the screen displays information about each column of the table.
Above this information is a series of buttons that let you modify it. As an example, recall
that the introduction discussed the need for an Offsite column; let’s add that column to
the table now. Clicking the Add Column button displays a form for you to fill in the details
of the new column. Figure 1-7 shows how I filled in this form.

Figure 1-7. Adding a new column to EMP

Clicking the Next button takes you to a confirmation screen; from there, click Finish
to complete the action. The EMP screen should now display the new column.
Returning to Figure 1-6, observe the tab bar above the row of modification buttons.
The Table tab is currently selected, which displays column information for the table. The
other tabs show you other kinds of information and provide appropriate ways to view

6
Chapter 1 The SQL Workshop

and modify that information. For example, clicking the Indexes tab displays the current
indexes for the table. Figure 1-8 shows the three indexes for EMP. Clicking the name of an
index displays additional detail about that index.

Figure 1-8. Browsing the indexes of EMP

Finally, consider the Data tab, which displays the contents of the table. The top of
this table appears in Figure 1-9. Note that there is a button to insert a new row and an
edit link at the beginning of each row.

Figure 1-9. Viewing the contents of EMP

7
Chapter 1 The SQL Workshop

Clicking a row’s edit link displays a form for modifying it. Figure 1-10 shows this form
for employee 7698. Clicking the Apply Changes button performs any modifications that
may have been made to the column values; clicking the Delete button deletes the record.

Figure 1-10. Editing the contents of employee 7698

8
Chapter 1 The SQL Workshop

If you wish, you can edit this record, setting the value for Offsite to N. You can then
proceed to edit the other records, setting their column value to Y or N as desired. Given
the tediousness of this approach, however, it is easier to use the SQL command tool,
which is discussed in the next section.

SQL Command Tool

Most of the actions that you can perform in the object browser correspond to one
or more SQL statements. In effect, the object browser is merely a convenient way to
formulate and execute simpler SQL statements. If you want to perform more complex
activities, use the SQL command tool.
The SQL command tool divides the screen into two sections. You type an SQL
statement or PL/SQL block into the top section, and the result appears at the bottom.
Figure 1-11 shows the screen after executing the SQL statement select * from EMP.

9
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
asked the Joe Tresseltons and her guardian to join them first at a
little dinner, and Kate Clephane had gone up to dress rather earlier
than usual. It was her first public appearance, also, and—as on each
occasion of her new life when she came on some unexpected
survival of her youth, a face, a voice, a point of view, a room in
which the furniture had not been changed—she was astonished, and
curiously agitated, at setting out from the very same house for the
very same Opera box. The only difference would be in the mode of
progression; she remembered the Parisian landau and sixteen-hand
chestnuts with glittering plated harness that had waited at the door
in her early married days. Then she had a vision of her own toilet, of
the elaborate business it used to be: Aline’s predecessor, with
cunning fingers, dividing and coiling the generous ripples of her hair,
and building nests of curls about the temples and in the nape; then
the dash up in her dressing-gown to Anne’s nursery for a last kiss,
and the hurrying back to get into her splendid brocade, to fasten the
diamond coronet, the ruby “sunburst”, the triple pearls. John
Clephane was fond of jewels, and particularly proud of his wife’s,
first because he had chosen them, and secondly because he had
given them to her. She sometimes thought he really admired her
only when she had them all on, and she often reflected ironically on
Esther’s wifely guile in donning her regal finery before she ventured
to importune Ahasuerus. It certainly increased Kate Clephane’s
importance in her husband’s eyes to know that, when she entered
her box, no pearls could hold their own against hers except Mrs.
Beaufort’s and old Mrs. Goldmere’s.
It was years since Kate Clephane had thought of those jewels. She
smiled at the memory, and at the contrast between the unobtrusive
dress Aline had just prepared for her, and all those earlier
splendours. The jewels, she supposed, were Anne’s now; since
modern young girls dressed as richly as their elders, Anne had no
doubt had them reset for her own use. Mrs. Clephane closed her
eyes with a smile of pleasure, picturing Anne (as she had not yet
seen her) with bare arms and shoulders, and the orient of the pearls
merging in that of her young skin. It was lucky that Anne was tall
enough to look her best in jewels. Thence the mother’s fancy
wandered to the effect Anne must produce on other imaginations;
on those, particularly, of young men. Was she already, as they used
to say, “interested”? Among the young men Mrs. Clephane had seen,
either calling at the house, or in the course of informal dinners at
the Tresseltons’, the Drovers’, and other cousins or “in-laws”, she had
remarked none who seemed to fix her daughter’s attention. But
there had been, as yet, few opportunities: the mitigated mourning
for old Mrs. Clephane did at least seclude them from general society,
and when a girl as aloof as Anne was attracted, the law of contrasts
might draw her to some one unfamiliar and undulled by propinquity.
“Or an older man, perhaps?” Kate considered. She thought of Anne’s
half-daughterly, half-feminine ways with her former guardian, and
then shrugged away the possibility that her old stolid Fred could
exercise a sentimental charm. Yet the young men of Anne’s
generation, those her mother had hitherto met, seemed curiously
undifferentiated and immature, as if they had been kept too long in
some pure and enlightened school, eternally preparing for a life into
which their parents and professors could never decide to let them
plunge.... It struck Mrs. Clephane that Chris, when she first met him,
must have been about the age of these beautiful inarticulate athletes
... and Heaven knew how many lives he had already run through! As
he said himself, he felt every morning when he woke as if he had
come into a new fortune, and had somehow got to “blow it all in”
before night.
Kate Clephane sat up and brushed her hand over her eyes. It was
the first time Chris had been present to her, in that insistent
immediate way, since her return to New York. She had thought of
him, of course—how could she cast even a glance over her own past
without seeing him there, woven into its very texture? But he
seemed to have receded to the plane of that past: from his torturing
actual presence her new life had delivered her.... She pressed both
hands against her eyes, as if to crush and disperse the image
stealthily forming; then she rose and went into her bedroom, where,
a moment before, she had heard Aline laying out her dress.
The maid had finished and gone; the bedroom was empty. The
change of scene, the mere passage from one room to another, the
sight of the evening dress and opera-cloak on the bed, and of
Beatrice Cenci looking down on them through her perpetual sniffle,
sufficed to recall Kate to the present. She turned to the dressing-
table, and noticed a box which had been placed before her mirror. It
was of ebony and citron-wood, embossed with agates and
cornelians, and heavily clasped with chiselled silver; and from the
summit of the lid a silver Cupid bent his shaft at her.
Kate broke into a faint laugh. How well she remembered that box!
She did not have to lift the lid to see its padded trays and tufted sky-
blue satin lining! It was old Mrs. Clephane’s jewel-box, and on Kate’s
marriage the dowager had solemnly handed it over to her daughter-
in-law with all that it contained.
“I wonder where Anne found it?” Kate conjectured, amused by the
sight of one more odd survival in that museum of the past which
John Clephane’s house had become. A little key hung on one of the
handles, and she put it in the lock, and saw all her jewels lying
before her. On a slip of paper Anne had written: “Darling, these
belong to you. Please wear some of them tonight....”

As she entered the opera box Kate Clephane felt as if the great
central chandelier were raying all its shafts upon her, as if she were
somehow caught up into and bound on the wheel of its devouring
blaze. But only for a moment—after that it seemed perfectly natural
to be sitting there with her daughter and Nollie Tresselton, backed
by the usual cluster of white waistcoats. After all, in this new
existence it was Anne who mattered, not Anne’s mother; instantly,
after the first plunge, Mrs. Clephane felt herself merged in the
blessed anonymity of motherhood. She had never before understood
how exposed and defenceless her poor unsupported personality had
been through all the lonely years. Her eyes rested on Anne with a
new tenderness; the glance crossed Nollie Tresselton’s, and the two
triumphed in their shared admiration. “Oh, there’s no one like Anne,”
their four eyes told each other.
Anne looked round and intercepted the exchange. Her eyes smiled
too, and turned with a childish pleasure to the pearls hanging down
over her mother’s black dress.
“Isn’t she beautiful, Nollie?”
Young Mrs. Tresselton laughed. “You two were made for each other,”
she said.
Mrs. Clephane closed her lids for an instant; she wanted to drop a
curtain between herself and the stir and brightness, and to keep in
her eyes the look of Anne’s as they fell on the pearls. The episode of
the jewels had moved the mother strangely. It had brought Anne
closer than a hundred confidences or endearments. As Kate sat
there in the dark, she saw, detached against the blackness of her
closed lids, a child stumbling with unsteady steps across a windy
beach, a funny flushed child with sand in her hair and in the creases
of her fat legs, who clutched to her breast something she was
bringing to her mother. “It’s for mummy,” she said solemnly, opening
her pink palms on a dead star-fish. Kate saw again the child’s
rapturous look, and felt the throb of catching her up, star-fish and
all, and devouring with kisses the rosy body and tousled head.
In themselves the jewels were nothing. If Anne had handed her a bit
of coal—or another dead star-fish—with that look and that intention,
the gift would have seemed as priceless. Probably it would have
been impossible to convey to Anne how indifferent her mother had
grown to the Clephane jewels. In her other life—that confused
intermediate life which now seemed so much more remote than the
day when the little girl had given her the star-fish—jewels, she
supposed, might have pleased her, as pretty clothes had, or flowers,
or anything that flattered the eye. Yet she could never remember
having regretted John Clephane’s jewels; and now they would have
filled her with disgust, with abhorrence almost, had they not, in the
interval, become Anne’s.... It was the girl who gave them their
beauty, made them exquisite to the mother’s sight and touch, as
though they had been a part of her daughter’s loveliness, the
expression of something she could not speak.
Mrs. Clephane suddenly exclaimed to herself: “I am rewarded!” It
was a queer, almost blasphemous, fancy—but it came to her so. She
was rewarded for having given up her daughter; if she had not,
could she ever have known such a moment as this? She had been
too careless and impetuous in her own youth to be worthy to form
and guide this rare creature; and while she seemed to be rushing
blindly to her destruction, Providence had saved the best part of her
in saving Anne. All these scrupulous self-controlled people—Enid and
Hendrik Drover, Fred Landers, even the arch enemy, old Mrs.
Clephane—had taken up the task she had flung aside, and carried it
out as she could never have done. And she had somehow run the
mad course allotted to her, and come out of it sane and sound, to
find them all waiting there to give her back her daughter. It was
incredible, but there it was. She bowed her head in self-abasement.
The box door was opening and shutting softly, on the stage voices
and instruments soared and fell. She did not know how long she sat
there in a kind of brooding rapture. But presently she was roused by
hearing a different voice at her elbow. She half opened her eyes,
and saw a newcomer sitting by Anne. It was one of the young men
who came to the house; his fresh blunt face was as inexpressive as
a football; he might have been made by a manufacturer of sporting-
goods.
“—in the box over there; but he’s gone now; bolted. Said he was too
shy to come over and speak to you. Give you my word, he’s got it
bad; we couldn’t get him off the subject.”
“Shy?” Anne murmured ironically.
“That’s what he said. Said he’s never had the microbe before.
Anyhow, he’s bolted off home. Says he don’t know when he’ll come
back to New York.”
Kate Clephane, watching her daughter through narrowed lids,
perceived a subtle change in her face. Anne did not blush—that
close-textured skin of hers seldom revealed the motions of her
blood. Her delicate profile remained shut, immovable; she merely
lowered her lids as if to keep in a vision. It was Kate’s own gesture,
and the mother recognized it with a start. She had been right, then;
there was some one—some one whom Anne had to close her eyes
to see! But who was he? Why had he been too shy to come to the
box? Where did he come from, and whither had he fled?
Kate glanced at Nollie Tresselton, wondering if she had overheard;
but Nollie, in the far corner of the box, leaned forward, deep in the
music. Joe Tresselton had vanished, Landers slumbered in the rear.
With a little tremor of satisfaction, Kate saw that she had her
daughter’s secret to herself: if there was no one to enlighten her
about it at least there was no one to share it with her, and she was
glad. For the first time she felt a little nearer to Anne than all the
others.
“It’s odd,” she thought, “I always knew it would be some one from a
distance.” But there are no real distances nowadays, and she
reflected with an inward smile that the fugitive would doubtless soon
reappear, and her curiosity be satisfied.
That evening, when Anne followed her into her bedroom, Mrs.
Clephane opened the wardrobe in which she had placed the jewel-
box. “Here, my dear; you shall choose one thing for me to wear. But
I want you to take back all the rest.”
The girl’s face clouded. “You won’t keep them, then? But they’re all
yours!”
“Even if they were, I shouldn’t want them any longer. But they’re
not, they’re only a trust—” she paused, half smiling—“a trust till your
wedding.”
She had tried to say the word lightly, but it echoed on through the
silence like a peal of silver bells.
“Oh, my wedding! But I shall never marry,” said Anne, laughing
joyously, and catching her mother in her arms. It was the first time
she had made so impulsive a movement; Kate Clephane, trembling a
little, held her close.
It brought the girl nearer, made her less aloof, to hear that familiar
old denial. “Some day before long,” the mother thought, “she’ll tell
me who he is.”
VI.
KATE CLEPHANE lay awake all night thinking of the man who had
been too shy to come into the box.
Her sense of security, of permanence, was gone. She understood
now that it had been based on the idea that her life would
henceforth go on just as it had for the two months since her return;
that she and Anne would always remain side by side. The idea was
absurd, of course; if she followed it up, her mind recoiled from it. To
keep Anne for the rest of her life unchanged, and undesirous of
change—the aspiration was inconceivable. She wanted for her
daughter the common human round, no more, but certainly no less.
Only she did not want her to marry yet—not till they two had grown
to know each other better, till Kate had had time to establish herself
in her new life.
So she put it to herself; but she knew that what she felt was just an
abject fear of change, more change—of being uprooted again, cast
once more upon her own resources.
No! She could not picture herself living alone in a little house in New
York, dependent on Drovers and Tresseltons, and on the good Fred
Landers, for her moral sustenance. To be with Anne, to play the part
of Anne’s mother—the one part, she now saw, that fate had meant
her for—that was what she wanted with all her starved and world-
worn soul. To be the background, the atmosphere, of her daughter’s
life; to depend on Anne, to feel that Anne depended on her; it was
the one perfect companionship she had ever known, the only close
tie unmarred by dissimulation and distrust. The mere restfulness of it
had made her contracted soul expand as if it were sinking into a
deep warm bath.
Now the sense of restfulness was gone. From the moment when she
had seen Anne’s lids drop on that secret vision, the mother had
known that her days of quietude were over. Anne’s choice might be
perfect; she, Kate Clephane, might live out the rest of her days in
peace between Anne and Anne’s husband. But the mere possibility
of a husband made everything incalculable again.
The morning brought better counsel. There was Anne herself, in her
riding-habit, aglow from an early canter, and bringing in her mother’s
breakfast, without a trace of mystery in her clear eyes. There was
the day’s pleasant routine, easy and insidious, the planning and
adjusting of engagements, notes to be answered, invitations to be
sent out; the habitual took Mrs. Clephane into its soothing hold.
“After all,” she reflected, “young men don’t run away nowadays from
falling in love.” Probably the whole thing had been some cryptic chaff
of the youth with the football face; Nollie, indirectly, might enlighten
her.
Indirectly; for it was clear to Kate that whatever she learned about
her daughter must be learned through observing her, and not
through questioning others. The mother could not picture herself as
having any rights over the girl, as being, under that roof, anything
more than a privileged guest. Anne’s very insistence on treating her
as the mistress of the house only emphasized her sense of not being
so by right: it was the verbal courtesy of the Spaniard who puts all
his possessions at the disposal of a casual visitor.
Not that there was anything in Anne’s manner to suggest this; but
that to Kate it seemed inherent in the situation. It was absurd to
assume that her mere return to John Clephane’s house could invest
her, in any one else’s eyes, and much less in her own, with the
authority she had lost in leaving it; she would never have dreamed
of behaving as if she thought so. Her task, she knew, was gradually,
patiently, to win back, of all she had forfeited, the one thing she
really valued: her daughter’s love and confidence. The love, in a
measure, was hers already; could the confidence fail to follow?
Meanwhile, at any rate, she could be no more than the fondest of
lookers-on, the discreetest of listeners; and for the moment she
neither saw nor heard anything to explain that secret tremor of
Anne’s eyelids.
At the Joe Tresseltons’, a few nights later, she had hoped for a
glimpse, a hint. Nollie had invited mother and daughter (with
affectionate insistence on the mother’s presence) to a little evening
party at which some one who was not Russian was to sing—for
Nollie was original in everything. The Joe Tresseltons had managed
to lend a freshly picturesque air to a dull old Tresselton house near
Washington Square, of which the stable had become a studio, and
other apartments suffered like transformations, without too much
loss of character. It was typical of Nollie that she could give an
appearance of stability to her modern furnishings, just as her
modern manner kept its repose.
The party was easy and amusing, but even Lilla Gates (whom Nollie
always included) took her tone from the mistress of the house, and,
dressed with a kind of savage soberness, sat there in her heavy
lustreless beauty, bored but triumphant. It was evident that, though
at Nollie’s she was not in her element, she would not for the world
have been left out.
Kate Clephane, while the music immobilized the groups scattered
about the great shadowy room, found herself scanning them with a
fresh intensity of attention. She no longer thought of herself as an
object of curiosity to any of these careless self-engrossed young
people; she had learned that a woman of her age, however
conspicuous her past, and whatever her present claims to notice, is
fated to pass unremarked in a society where youth so undisputedly
rules. The discovery had come with a slight shock; then she blessed
the anonymity which made observation so much easier.
Only—what was there to observe? Again the sameness of the
American Face encompassed her with its innocent uniformity. How
many of them it seemed to take to make up a single individuality!
Most of them were like the miles and miles between two railway
stations. She saw again, with gathering wonder, that one may be
young and handsome and healthy and eager, and yet unable, out of
such rich elements, to evolve a personality.
Her thoughts wandered back to the shabby faces peopling her
former life. She knew every seam of their shabbiness, but now for
the first time she seemed to see that they had been worn down by
emotions and passions, however selfish, however sordid, and not
merely by ice-water and dyspepsia.
“Since the Americans have ceased to have dyspepsia,” she reflected,
“they have lost the only thing that gave them any expression.”
Landers came up as the thought flashed through her mind, and
apparently caught its reflection in her smile.
“You look at me as if you’d never seen me before; is it because my
tie’s crooked?” he asked, sitting down beside her.
“No; your tie is absolutely straight. So is everything else about you.
That’s the reason I was looking at you in that way. I can’t get used
to it!”
He reddened a little, as if unaccustomed to such insistent scrutiny.
“Used to what?”
“The universal straightness. You’re all so young and—and so regular!
I feel as if I were in a gallery of marble masterpieces.”
“As that can hardly apply to our features, I suppose it’s intended to
describe our morals,” he said with a faint grimace.
“I don’t know—I wish I did! What I’m trying to do, of course,” she
added abruptly and unguardedly, “is to guess how I should feel
about all these young men—if I were Anne.”
She was vexed with herself that the words should have slipped out,
and yet not altogether sorry. After all, one could always trust
Landers to hold his tongue—and almost always to understand. His
smile showed that he understood now.
“Of course you’re trying; we all are. But, as far as I know, Sister
Anne hasn’t yet seen any one from her tower.”
A breath of relief expanded the mother’s heart.
“Ah, well, you’d be sure to know—especially as, when she does, it
ought to be some one visible a long way off!”
“It ought to be, yes. The more so as she seems to be in no hurry.”
He looked away. “But don’t build too much on that,” he added. “I
learned long ago, in such matters, to expect only the unexpected.”
Kate Clephane glanced at him quickly; his ingenuous countenance
wore an unaccustomed shadow. She remembered that, in old days,
John Clephane had always jokingly declared—in a tone proclaiming
the matter to be one mentionable only as a joke—that Fred Landers
was in love with her; and she said to herself that the lesson her old
friend referred to was perhaps the one she had unwittingly given
him when she went away with another man.
It was on the tip of her tongue to exclaim: “Oh, but I didn’t know
anything then—I wasn’t anybody! My real life, my only life, began
years later—” but she checked herself with a start. Why, in the very
act of thinking of her daughter, had she suddenly strayed away into
thinking of Chris? It was the first time it had happened to her to
confront the two images, and she felt as if she had committed a sort
of profanation.
She took refuge in another thought that Landers’s last words had
suggested—the thought that if she herself had matured late, why so
might Anne. The idea was faintly reassuring.
“No; I won’t build on any theory,” she said, answering him. “But one
can’t help hoping she’ll wait till some one turns up good enough for
what she’s going to be.”
“Oh, these mothers!” he laughed, his face smoothing out into its
usual guileless lines.
The music was over. The groups flowed past them toward the little
tables in another picturesque room, and Lilla Gates swept by in a
cluster of guffawing youths. She seemed to have attracted all the
kindred spirits in the room, and her sluggish stare was shot with
provocation. Ah, there was another mystery! No one explained Lilla
—every one seemed to take her for granted. Not that it really
mattered; Kate had seen enough of Anne to feel sure she would
never be in danger of falling under Lilla’s influence. The perils in wait
for her would wear a subtler form. But, as a matter of curiosity, and
a possible light on the new America, Kate would have liked to know
why her husband’s niece—surprising offshoot of the prudent
Clephanes and stolid Drovers—had been singled out, in this new
easy-going society, to be at once reproved and countenanced. Lilla
in herself was too uninteresting to stimulate curiosity; but as a
symptom she might prove enlightening. Only, here again, Kate had
the sense that she, of all the world, was least in a position to ask
questions. What if people should turn around and ask them about
her? Since she had been living under her old roof, and at her
daughter’s side, the mere suggestion made her tremble. It was
curious—and she herself was aware of it—how quickly,
unconsciously almost, she had slipped at last into the very attitude
the Clephanes had so long tried to force upon her: the attitude of
caution and conservatism.
Her glance, in following Lilla, caught Fred Landers’s, and he smiled
again, but with a slight constraint. Instantly she thought: “He’d like
to tell me her whole story, but he doesn’t dare, because very likely it
began like my own. And it will always go on being like that:
whatever I’m afraid to ask they’ll be equally afraid to tell.” Well, that
was what people called “starting with a clean slate”, she supposed;
would no one ever again scribble anything unguardedly on hers? She
felt indescribably alone.
On the way home the mere feeling of Anne’s arm against hers drew
her out of her solitariness. After all, she had only to wait. The new
life was but a few weeks old; and already Anne’s nearness seemed
to fill it. If only she could keep Anne near enough!
“Did you like it, mother? How do we all strike you, I wonder?” the
girl asked suddenly.
“As kinder than anything I ever dreamed.”
She thought she felt Anne’s surprised glance in the darkness. “Oh,
that! But why not? It’s you who must try to be kind to us. I feel as if
we must be so hard to tell apart. In Europe there are more
contrasts, I suppose. I saw Uncle Fred helping you to sort us out this
evening.”
“You mean you caught me staring? I daresay I do. I want so much
not to miss anything ... anything that’s a part of your life....” Her
voice shook with the avowal.
She was answered by a closer pressure. “You wonderful mother! I
don’t believe you ever will.” She was conscious in Anne,
mysteriously, of a tension answering her own. “Isn’t it splendid to be
two to talk things over?” the girl said joyously.
“What things?” Kate Clephane thought; but dared not speak. Her
hand on Anne’s, she sat silent, feeling her child’s heart tremble
nearer.
VII.
EVERY one noticed how beautifully it worked; the way, as Fred
Landers said, she and Anne had hit it off from their first look at each
other on the deck of the steamer.
Enid Drover was almost emotional about it, one evening when she
and Kate sat alone in the Clephane drawing-room. It was after one
of Anne’s “young” dinners, and the other guests, with Anne herself,
had been whirled off to some form of midnight entertainment.
“It’s wonderful, my dear, how you’ve done it. Poor mother didn’t
always find Anne easy, you know. But she’s taken a tremendous
fancy to you.”
Kate felt herself redden with pride. “I suppose it’s the novelty,
partly,” Mrs. Drover continued, with her heavy-stepping simplicity.
“Perhaps that’s an advantage, in a way.” But she pulled up,
apparently feeling that, in some obscure manner, she might be
offending where she sought to please. “Anne admires your looks so
much, you know; and your slightness.” A sigh came from her
adipose depths. “I do believe it gives one more hold over one’s girls
to have kept one’s figure. One can at least go on wearing the kind of
clothes they like.”
Kate felt an inward glow of satisfaction. The irony of the situation
hardly touched her: the fact that the youth and elasticity she had
clung to so desperately should prove one of the chief assets of her
new venture. It was beginning to seem natural that everything
should lead up to Anne.
“This business of setting up a studio, now; Anne’s so pleased that
you approve. She had a struggle with her grandmother about it; but
poor mother wouldn’t give in. She was too horrified. She thought
paint so messy—and then how could she have got up all those
stairs?”
“Ah, well”—it was so easy to be generous!—“that sort of thing did
seem horrifying to Mrs. Clephane’s generation. After all, it was not
so long before her day that Dr. Johnson said portrait-painting was
indelicate in a female.”
Mrs. Drover gave her sister-in-law a puzzled look. Her mind seldom
retained more than one word in any sentence, and her answer was
based on the reaction that particular word provoked. “Female—” she
murmured—“is that word being used again? I never thought it very
nice to apply it to women, did you? I suppose I’m old-fashioned.
Nothing shocks the young people nowadays—not even the Bible.”
Nothing could have given Kate Clephane greater confidence in her
own success than this little talk with Enid Drover. She had been
feeling her way so patiently, so stealthily almost, among the out-
works and defences of her daughter’s character; and here she was
actually instated in the citadel.
Anne’s “studio-warming” strengthened the conviction. Mrs. Clephane
had not been allowed to see the studio; Anne and Nollie and Joe
Tresselton, for a breathless week, had locked themselves in with
nails and hammers and pots of paint, sealing their ears against all
questioning. Then one afternoon the doors were opened, and Kate,
coming out of the winter twilight, found herself in a great half-lit
room with a single wide window overlooking the reaches of the
Sound all jewelled and netted with lights, the fairy span of the
Brooklyn Bridge, and the dark roof-forest of the intervening city. It
all seemed strangely significant and mysterious in that disguising
dusk—full of shadows, distances, invitations. Kate leaned in the
window, surprised at this brush of the wings of poetry.
In the room, Anne had had the good taste to let the sense of space
prolong itself. It looked more like a great library waiting for its books
than a modern studio; as though the girl had measured the distance
between that mighty nocturne and her own timid attempts, and
wanted the implements of her art to pass unnoticed.
They were sitting—Mrs. Clephane, the Joe Tresseltons and one or
two others—about the tea-cups set out at one end of a long oak
table, when the door opened and Lilla Gates appeared, tawny and
staring, in white furs and big pendulous earrings. She brought with
her a mingled smell of cigarettes and Houbigant, and as she stood
there, circling the room with her sulky contemptuous gaze, Kate felt
a movement of annoyance.
“Why must one forever go on being sorry for Lilla?” she wondered,
wincing a little as Anne’s lips touched her cousin’s mauve cheek.
“It was nice of you to come, Lilla.”
“Well—I chucked something bang-up for you,” said Lilla coolly. It was
evidently her pride to be perpetually invited, perpetually swamped in
a multiplicity of boring engagements. She looked about her again,
and then dropped into an armchair. “Mercy—you have cleared the
decks!” she remarked. “Ain’t there going to be any more furniture
than this?”
“Oh, the furniture’s all outside—and the pictures too,” Anne said,
pointing to the great window.
“What—Brooklyn Bridge? Lord!—Oh, but I see: you’ve kept the place
clear for dancing. Good girl, Anne! Can I bring in some of my little
boys sometimes? Is that a pianola?” she added, with a pounce
toward the grand piano in a shadowy corner. “I like this
kindergarten,” she pronounced.
Nollie Tresselton laughed. “If you come, Anne won’t let you dance.
You’ll all have to sit for her—for hours and hours.”
“Well, we’ll sit between the dances then. Ain’t I going to have a
latch-key, Anne?”
She stood leaning against the piano, sipping the cock-tail some one
had handed her, her head thrown back, and the light from a shaded
lamp striking up at her columnar throat and the green glitter of her
earrings, which suggested to Kate Clephane the poisonous antennæ
of some giant insect. Anne stood close to her, slender, erect, her
small head clasped in close braids, her hands hanging at her sides,
dead-white against the straight dark folds of her dress. There was
something distinctly unpleasant to Kate Clephane in the proximity of
the two, and she rose and moved toward the piano.
As she sat down before it, letting her hands drift into the opening
bars of a half-remembered melody, she saw Lilla, in her vague
lounging way, draw nearer to Anne, who held out a hand for the
empty cock-tail glass. The gesture brought them so close that Lilla,
slightly drooping her head, could let fall, hardly above her breath,
but audibly to Kate: “He’s back again. He bothered the life out of me
to bring him here today.”
Again Kate saw that quick drop of her daughter’s lids; this time it
was accompanied by a just-perceptible tremor of the hand that
received the glass.
“Nonsense, Lilla!”
“Well, what on earth am I to do about it? I can’t get the police to
run him in, can I?”
Anne laughed—the faintest half-pleased laugh of impatience and
dismissal. “You may have to,” she said.
Nollie Tresselton, in the interval, had glided up and slipped an arm
through Lilla’s.
“Come along, my dear. There’s to be no dancing here today.” Her
little brown face had the worn sharp look it often took on when she
was mothering Lilla. But Lilla’s feet were firmly planted. “I don’t
budge till I get another cock-tail.”
One of the young men hastened to supply her, and Anne turned to
her other guests. A few minutes later the Tresseltons and Lilla went
away, and one by one the remaining visitors followed, leaving
mother and daughter alone in the recovered serenity of the empty
room.
But there was no serenity in Kate. That half-whispered exchange
between Lilla Gates and Anne had stirred all her old apprehensions
and awakened new ones. The idea that her daughter was one of
Lilla’s confidants was inexpressibly disturbing. Yet the more she
considered, the less she knew how to convey her anxiety to her
daughter.
“If I only knew how intimate they really are—what she really thinks
of Lilla!”
For the first time she understood on what unknown foundations her
fellowship with Anne was built. Were they solid? Would they hold?
Was Anne’s feeling for her more than a sudden girlish enthusiasm for
an agreeable older woman, the kind of sympathy based on things
one can enumerate, and may change one’s mind about, rather than
the blind warmth of habit?
She stood musing while Anne moved about the studio, putting away
the music, straightening a picture here and there.
“And this is where you’re going to work—”
Anne nodded joyously.
“Lilla apparently expects you to turn it into a dance-hall for her
benefit.”
“Poor Lilla! She can’t see a new room without wanting to fox-trot in
it. Life, for her, wherever she is, consists in going somewhere else in
order to do exactly the same thing.”
Kate was relieved: there was no mistaking the half-disdainful pity of
the tone.
“Well—don’t give her that latch-key!” she laughed, gathering up her
furs.
Anne echoed the laugh. “There are to be only two latch-keys—yours
and mine,” she said; and mother and daughter went gaily down the
steep stairs.
The days, after that, moved on with the undefinable reassurance of
habit. Kate Clephane was beginning to feel herself part of an old-
established routine. She had tried to organize her life in such a way
that it should fit into Anne’s without awkward overlapping. Anne,
nowadays, after her early canter, went daily to the studio and
painted till lunch; sometimes, as the days lengthened, she went back
for another two hours’ work in the afternoon. When the going was
too bad for her morning ride she usually walked to the studio, and
Kate sometimes walked with her, or went through the Park to meet
her on her return. When she painted in the afternoon, Kate would
occasionally drop in for tea, and they would return home together
on foot in the dusk. But Mrs. Clephane was scrupulously careful not
to intrude on her daughter’s working-hours; she held back, not with
any tiresome display of discretion, but with the air of caring for her
own independence too much not to respect Anne’s.
Sometimes, now that she had settled down into this new way of life,
she was secretly aware of feeling a little lonely; there were hours
when the sense of being only a visitor in the house where her life
ought to have been lived gave her the same drifting uprooted feeling
which had been the curse of her other existence. It was not Anne’s
fault; nor that, in this new life, every moment was not interesting
and even purposeful, since each might give her the chance of
serving Anne, pleasing Anne, in some way or another getting closer
to Anne. But this very feeling took a morbid intensity from the fact of
having no common memories, no shared associations, to feed on.
Kate was frightened, sometimes, by its likeness to that other isolated
and devouring emotion which her love for Chris had been.
Everything might have been different, she thought, if she had had
more to do, or more friends of her own to occupy her. But Anne’s
establishment, which had been her grandmother’s, still travelled
smoothly enough on its own momentum, and though the girl
insisted that her mother was now the head of the house, the
headship involved little more than ordering dinner, and talking over
linen and carpets and curtains with old Mrs. Clephane’s house-
keeper.
Then, as to friends—was it because she was too much engrossed in
her daughter to make any? Or because her life had been too
incommunicably different from that of her bustling middle-aged
contemporaries, absorbed by local and domestic questions she had
no part in? Or had she been too suddenly changed from a self-
centred woman, insatiable for personal excitements, into that new
being, a mother, her centre of gravity in a life not hers?
She did not know; she felt only that she no longer had time for
anything but motherhood, and must be content to bridge over, as
best she could, the unoccupied intervals. And, after all, the intervals
were not many. Her daughter never appeared without instantly filling
up every crevice of the present, and overflowing into the past and
the future, so that, even in the mother’s rare lapses into
despondency, life without Anne, like life before Anne, had become
unthinkable.
She was revolving this for the thousandth time as she turned into
the Park one afternoon to meet Anne on the latter’s way homeward.
The days were already much longer; the difference in the light, and
that premature languor of the air which comes, in America, before
the sleeping earth seems to expect it, made Mrs. Clephane feel that
the year had turned, that a new season was opening in her new life.
She walked on with the vague sense of confidence in the future
which the first touch of spring gives. The worst of the way was past
—how easily, how smoothly to the feet! Where misunderstanding
and failure had been so probable, she was increasingly sure of
having understood and succeeded. And already she and Anne were
making delightful plans for the spring....
Ahead of her, in a transverse alley, she was disagreeably surprised
by the sight of Lilla Gates. There was no mistaking that tall lounging
figure, though it was moving slowly away from her. Lilla at that hour
in the Park? It seemed curious and improbable. Yet Lilla it was; and
Mrs. Clephane’s conclusion was drawn immediately. “Who is she
waiting for?”
Whoever it was had not come; the perspective beyond Lilla was
empty. After a moment she hastened her step, and vanished behind
a clump of evergreens at the crossing of the paths. Kate did not
linger to watch for her reappearance. The incident was too trifling to
fix the attention; after all, what had one ever expected of Lilla but
that she might be found loitering in unlikely places, in quest of
objectionable people? There was nothing new in that—nor did Kate
even regret not having a glimpse of the objectionable person. In her
growing reassurance about Anne, Lilla’s affairs had lost whatever
slight interest they once offered.
She walked on—but her mood was altered. The sight of Lilla
lingering in that deserted path had called up old associations. She
remembered meetings of the same kind—but was it her own young
figure she saw fading down those far-off perspectives? Well—if it
were, let it go! She owned no kinship with that unhappy ghost.
Serene, middle-aged, respected and respectable, she walked on
again out of that vanishing past into the warm tangible present. And
at any moment now she might meet Anne.
She had turned down a wide walk leading to one of the Fifth Avenue
entrances of the Park. One could see a long way ahead; there were
people coming and going. Two women passed, with some noisy
children racing before them, a milliner’s boy, whistling, his boxes
slung over his shoulder, a paralytic pushing himself along in a
wheeled chair; then, coming toward her from the direction of Fifth
Avenue, a man who half-stopped, recognized her, and raised his hat.
BOOK II.
VIII.
“CHRIS!” she said.
She felt herself trembling all over; then, abruptly, mysteriously, and
in the very act of uttering his name, she ceased to tremble, and it
came flooding in on her with a shock of wonder that the worst was
already over—that at last she was going to be free.
“Well, well,” she heard him saying, in that round full voice which
always became fuller and more melodious when it had any inner
uncertainty to mask; and “If only,” she thought, “it doesn’t all come
back when he laughs!”
He laughed. “I’m so glad ... glad,” he reiterated, as if explaining; and
with the laugh in her ears she still felt herself as lucidly, as incredibly
remote from him.
“Glad?” she echoed, a little less sure of her speech than of her
thoughts, and remembering how sometimes the smile in his eyes
used to break up her words into little meaningless splinters that she
could never put together again till he was gone.
“Of your good luck, I mean.... I’ve heard, of course.” And now she
had him, for the first time, actually reddening and stammering as
she herself used to do, and catching at the splinters of his own
words! Ah, the trick was done—she could even see, as they
continued to face each other in the searching spring light, that he
had reddened, thickened, hardened—as if the old Chris had been
walled into this new one, and were not even looking at her out of
the windows of his prison.
“My good luck?” she echoed again, while the truth still danced in her
ears: the truth that she was free, free, free—away from him at last,
far enough off to see him and judge him!
It must have been his bad taste—the bad taste that could lead him
into such an opening as that—which, from the very first, she had felt
in him, and tried not to feel, even when she was worshipping him
most blindly.
But, after all, if she felt so free, why be so cruel? Ah, because the
terror was still there—it had only shifted its ground. What frightened
her now was not the thought of their past but of their future. And
she must not let him see that it frightened her. What had his last
words been? Ah, yes—. She answered: “Of course I’m very happy to
be at home again.”
He lowered his voice to murmur: “And I’m happy for you.”
Yes; she remembered now; it was always in emotional moments that
his tact failed him, his subtlety vanished, and he seemed to be
reciting speeches learned by heart out of some sentimental novel—
the very kind he was so clever at ridiculing.
They continued to stand facing each other, their inspiration spent, as
if waiting for the accident that had swept them together to whirl
them apart again.
Suddenly she risked (since it was better to know): “So you’re living
now in New York?”
He shook his head with an air of melancholy. “No such luck. I’m back
in Baltimore again. Come full circle. For a time, after the war, I was
on a newspaper there; interviewing film-stars and base-ball fans and
female prohibitionists. Then I tried to run a Country Club—awful job!
All book-keeping, and rows between members. Now Horace Maclew
has taken pity on me; I’m what I suppose you’d call his private
secretary. No eight-hour day: he keeps me pretty close. It’s only
once in a blue moon I can get away.”
She felt her tightened heart dilating. Baltimore wasn’t very far away;
but it was far enough as long as he had anything to keep him there.
She knew about Horace Maclew, an elderly wealthy bibliophile and
philanthropist, with countless municipal and social interests in his
own town, and a big country-place just outside it. No; Mr. Maclew’s
private secretary was not likely to have many holidays. But how long
would Chris resign himself to such drudgery? She wanted to be kind
and say: “And your painting? Your writing?” but she didn’t dare.
Besides, he had probably left both phases far behind him, and there
was no need, really, for her to concern herself with his new hobbies,
whatever they might be. Of course she knew that he and she would
have to stand there staring at one another till she made a gesture of
dismissal; but on what note was she to make it? The natural thing
(since she felt so safe and easy with him) would have been to say:
“The next time you’re in town you must be sure to look me up—”.
But, with him, how could one be certain of not having such a
suggestion taken literally? Now that he had seen she was not afraid
of him he would probably not be afraid of her; if he wanted a good
dinner, or an evening at the Opera, he’d be as likely as not to call
her up and ask for it.
And suddenly, as they hung there, she caught, over his shoulder, a
glimpse of another figure just turning into the Park from the same
direction; Anne, with her quick step, her intent inward air, as she
always moved and looked when she had just left her easel. In
another moment Anne would be upon them.
Mrs. Clephane held out her hand: for a fraction of a second it lay in
his. “Well, goodbye; I’m glad to know you’ve got a job that must be
so interesting.”
“Oh—interesting!” He dismissed it with a gesture. “But I’m glad to
see you,” he added; “just to see you,” with a clever shifting of the
emphasis. He paused a moment, and then risked a smile. “You don’t
look a day older, you know.”
She threw her head back with an answering smile. “Why should I,
when I feel years younger?”
Thank heaven, an approaching group of people must have
obstructed her daughter’s view! Mrs. Clephane hurried on, wanting
to put as much distance as she could between herself and Chris’s
retreating figure before she came up with her daughter. When she
did, she plunged straight into the girl’s eyes, and saw that they were
still turned on her inward vision. “Dearest,” she cried gaily, “I can see
by your look that you’ve been doing a good day’s work.”
Anne’s soul rose slowly to the surface, shining out between deep
lashes. “How do you know, I wonder? I suppose you must have
been a great deal with somebody who painted. For a long time
afterward one carries the thing about with one wherever one goes.”
She slipped her arm in Kate’s, and turned unresistingly as the latter
guided her back toward Fifth Avenue.
“It’s dusty in the Park, and I feel as if I wanted a quick walk home. I
like Fifth Avenue when the lights are just coming out,” Mrs. Clephane
explained.

All night long she lay awake in the great bed of the Clephane spare-
room, and stared at Chris. While they still faced each other—and
after her first confused impression of his having thickened and
reddened—she had seen him only through the blur of her fears and
tremors. Even after they had parted, and she was walking home
with Anne, the shock of the encounter still tingling in her, he
remained far off, almost imponderable, less close and importunate
than her memories of him. It was as if his actual presence had
exorcised his ghost. But now—
He had not vanished; he had only been waiting. Waiting till she was
alone in her room in the sleeping house, in the unheeding city. How
alone, she had never more acutely felt. Who on earth was there to
intervene between them, when there was not a soul to whom she
could even breathe that she had met him? She lay in the darkness
with terrified staring eyes, and there he stood, his smile deriding her
—a strange composite figure, made equally of the old Chris and the
new....
It was of no use to shut her eyes; he was between lid and ball. It
was of no use to murmur disjointed phrases to herself, conjure him
away with the language of her new life, with allusions and
incantations unknown to him; he just stood there and waited. Well,
then—she would face it out now, would deal with him! But how?
What was he to her, and what did he want of her?
Yes: it all came to the question of what he wanted; it always had.
When had there ever been a question of what she wanted? He took
what he chose from life, gathered and let drop and went on: it was
the artist’s way, he told her. But what could he possibly want of her
now, and why did she imagine that he wanted anything, when by his
own showing he was so busy and so provided for?
She pulled herself together, suddenly ashamed of her own thoughts.
In pity for herself she would have liked to draw the old tattered
glamour over him; but there must always have been rents and
cracks in it, and now it couldn’t by any tugging be made to cover
him. No; she didn’t love him any longer; she was sure of that. Like a
traveller who has just skirted an abyss, she could lean over without
dizziness and measure the depth into which she had not fallen. But if
that were so, why was she so afraid of him? If it were a mere
question of her own social safety, a mean dread of having her past
suspected, why, she was more ashamed of that than of having loved
him. She would almost rather have endured the misery of still loving
him than of seeing what he and she looked like, now that the tide
had ebbed from them. She had been a coward; she had been stiff
and frightened and conventional, when, from the vantage-ground of
her new security, she could so easily have been friendly and
generous; she felt like rushing out into the streets to find him, to
speak to him as she ought to have spoken, to tell him that she was
not in the least afraid of him.
And yet she was! She supposed it was the old incalculable element
in him, that profound fundamental difference in their natures which
used to make their closest nearness seem more like a spell than a
reality. She understood now that if she had always been afraid of
him it was just because she could never tell what she was afraid
of....
If only there had been some one to whom she could confess herself,
some one who would laugh away her terrors! Fred Landers? But she
would frighten him more than he reassured her. And the others—the
kindly approving family? What would they do but avert their eyes
and beg her to be reasonable and remember her daughter? Well—
and her daughter, then? And Anne? Was there any one on earth but
Anne who would understand her?
The oppression of the night and the silence, and the rumour of her
own fears, were becoming intolerable. She could not endure them
any longer. She jumped up, flung on her dressing-gown, and stole
out of her room. The corridor was empty and obscure; only a faint
light from the lower hall cast its reflection upward on the ceiling of
the stairs. From below came the pompous tick of the hall clock, as
loud as a knocking in the silence.
She stole to her daughter’s door, and kneeling down laid her ear
against the crack. Presently, through the hush, she caught the soft
rhythmic breath of youthful sleep, and pictured Anne, slim and
motionless, her dark hair in orderly braids along the pillow. The
vision startled the mother back to sanity. She got up stiffly and stood
looking about her with dazed eyes.
Suddenly the light on the stairs, the nocturnal ticking, swept another
vision through her throbbing brain. In just such a silence, before the
first cold sounds of the winter daylight, she had crept down those
very stairs, unchained the front door, slipped back one after another
of John Clephane’s patent bolts, and let herself out of his house for
the last time. Ah, what business had she in it now, her hand on her
daughter’s door? She dragged herself back to her own room,
switched on the light, and sat hunched up in the great bed,
mechanically turning over the pages of a fashion-paper she had
picked up on her sitting-room table. Skirts were certainly going to be
narrower that spring....
IX.
“LILLA—but of course he comes for Lilla!” she exclaimed.
She raised herself on her elbow, saw the bed-lamp still burning, and
the fashion-paper on the floor beside the bed. The night was not
over; there was no grayness yet between the curtains. She must
have dropped into a short uneasy sleep, from which Lilla’s loitering
expectant figure, floating away from her down an alley of the Park,
had detached itself with such emphasis that the shock awoke her.
Lilla and Chris ... but of course they had gone to the Park to meet
each other! Why should he have happened to turn in at that
particular gate, at that particular hour, unless to find some one who,
a few yards off, careless and unconcerned, was so obviously
lingering there to be found?
The discovery gave Kate Clephane a sensation of actual physical
nausea. She sat up in bed, pushed her hair back from her damp
forehead, and repeated the two names slowly, as if trying from those
conjoined syllables to disentangle the clue to the mystery. For
mystery there was; she was sure of it now! People like Lilla Gates
and Chris did not wander aimlessly through Central Park at the
secret hour when the winter dusk begins to blur its paths. Every
moment of such purposeless lives was portioned out, packed with
futilities. Kate had seen enough of that in her enforced association
with the idlers of a dozen watering-places, her dreary participation in
their idling.
And how the clue, now she held it, explained everything! Explained,
first of all, why Chris, the ready, the resourceful, had been so
tongue-tied and halting when they met. Why had she not been
struck by that before? She saw now that, if she was afraid of him, he
was a thousand times more afraid of her! And how could she have
imagined that, to a man like Chris, the mere fact of running across a
discarded mistress would be disconcerting, or even wholly
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