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SCIENCE

Richard P. Feynman six easy pieces

t was Richard Feynman’s outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned “The most original mind of his generation.” —Freeman Dyson

6
him legendary status among students and professors of physics. From 1961 to 1963,

Feynman delivered a series of lectures at the California Institute of Technology that

revolutionized the teaching of physics around the world. Six Easy Pieces, taken from these

famous Lectures on Physics, represent the most accessible material from the series.

In these classic lessons, Feynman introduces the general reader to the following Richard P. Feynman
topics: atoms, basic physics, energy, gravitation, quantum mechanics, and the relationship

of physics to other topics. With his dazzling and inimitable wit, Feynman presents each

discussion with a minimum of jargon. Filled with wonderful examples and clever illustrations,

Six Easy Pieces is the ideal introduction to the fundamentals of physics by one of the most
six
admired and accessible physicists of modern times.
easy pieces
“The essence of physics and Feynman. No jargon, just ideas, excitement, and the

straight dope. And real answers, like ‘we don’t know.’ ” —Stephen Wolfram

The late Richard P. Feynman (1918–1988) was Richard Chace Tolman Professor of

Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He was awarded the 1965
5.5 x 8.25”
B: 7/16”
Nobel Prize for his work on the development of quantum field theory. He was also one of

the most famous and beloved figures of the twentieth century, both in physics and in the BASIC
public arena.
PB

BLACK
www.BasicFeynman.com
Essentials of Physics +PMS 108
+PMS 1655
$13.99 US / $16.50 CAN
+PMS 234
Cover photograph courtesy of
ISBN 978-0-465-02527-5 Explained by Its Most
California Institute of Technology 51399
FINISH:
B r i l l i a n t Te a c h e r Gritty Matte

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

9 780465 025275
www.basicbooks.com
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page i

SIX EASY PIECES

0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page ii

A l s o b y R i c h a r d P. F e y n m a n
The Character of Physical Law

Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics:

The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures (with Steven Weinberg)

Feynman Lectures on Computation

(edited by Anthony J. G. Hey and Robin Allen)

Feynman Lectures on Gravitation (with Fernando B. Morinigo and

William G. Wagner; edited by Brian Hatfield)

The Feynman Lectures on Physics

(with Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands)

The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

Photon-Hadron Interactions

Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track:

The Letters of Richard P. Feynman

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:

The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals (with A. R. Hibbs)

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces:

Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space Time

Statistical Mechanics: A Set of Lectures

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Adventures of a Curious Character (with Ralph Leighton)

The Theory of Fundamental Processes

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

Further Adventures of a Curious Character
(with Ralph Leighton)
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page iii

SIX EASY PIECES

Essentials of Physics Explained
by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

R I C H A R D P. F E Y N M A N

with

R o b er t B . L ei ght o n
and
M a t t hew S a nd s

Introduction by

Pa u l Da vi es

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

New York
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page iv

Copyright © 1963, 1989, 1995, 2011 by the California Institute of Technology

Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All text and cover photographs are courtesy of the Archives, California Institute
of Technology.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY
10016-8810.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk
purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other
organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets
Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200,
Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail
[email protected].

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010941330

ISBN: 978-0-465-02527-5
E-book ISBN: 978-0-465-02529-9

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page v

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note vii

Introduction by Paul Davies ix
Special Preface xix
Feynman’s Preface xxv

ONE: Atoms in Motion 1

Introduction 1
Matter is made of atoms 4
Atomic processes 10
Chemical reactions 15

TWO: Basic Physics 23

Introduction 23
Physics before 1920 27
Quantum physics 33
Nuclei and particles 38

THREE: The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences 47

Introduction 47
Chemistry 48
Biology 49
Astronomy 59
Geology 61
Psychology 63
How did it get that way? 64

v
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page vi

vi

Contents

FOUR: Conservation of Energy 69

What is energy? 69
Gravitational potential energy 72
Kinetic energy 80
Other forms of energy 81

FIVE: The Theory of Gravitation 89

Planetary motions 89
Kepler’s laws 90
Development of dynamics 92
Newton’s law of gravitation 94
Universal gravitation 98
Cavendish’s experiment 104
What is gravity? 107
Gravity and relativity 112

SIX: Quantum Behavior 115

Atomic mechanics 115
An experiment with bullets 117
An experiment with waves 120
An experiment with electrons 122
The interference of electron waves 124
Watching the electrons 127
First principles of quantum mechanics 133
The uncertainty principle 136

Index 139
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page vii

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Six Easy Pieces grew out of the need to bring to as wide an audience
as possible a substantial yet nontechnical physics primer based on
the science of Richard Feynman. We have chosen the six easiest
chapters from Feynman’s celebrated and landmark text, The Feyn-
man Lectures on Physics (originally published in 1963), which re-
mains his most famous publication. General readers are fortunate
that Feynman chose to present certain key topics in largely quali-
tative terms without formal mathematics, and these are brought to-
gether for Six Easy Pieces.
We would like to thank Paul Davies for his insightful introduc-
tion to this newly formed collection. Following his introduction
we have chosen to reproduce two prefaces from The Feynman Lec-
tures on Physics, one by Feynman himself and one by two of his col-
leagues, because they provide context for the pieces that follow and
insight into both Richard Feynman and his science.
Finally, we would like to thank the California Institute of Tech-
nology’s Physics Department and Institute Archives, in particular
Dr. Judith Goodstein, and Dr. Brian Hatfield, for his outstanding
advice and recommendations throughout the development of this
project.

vii
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page viii
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page ix

INTRODUCTION

There is a popular misconception that science is an impersonal,

dispassionate, and thoroughly objective enterprise. Whereas most
other human activities are dominated by fashions, fads, and per-
sonalities, science is supposed to be constrained by agreed rules of
procedure and rigorous tests. It is the results that count, not the
people who produce them.
This is, of course, manifest nonsense. Science is a people-driven
activity like all human endeavor, and just as subject to fashion and
whim. In this case fashion is set not so much by choice of subject
matter, but by the way scientists think about the world. Each age
adopts its particular approach to scientific problems, usually fol-
lowing the trail blazed by certain dominant figures who both set
the agenda and define the best methods to tackle it. Occasionally
scientists attain sufficient stature that they become noticed by the
general public, and when endowed with outstanding flair a scientist
may become an icon for the entire scientific community. In earlier
centuries Isaac Newton was an icon. Newton personified the gen-
tleman scientist—well connected, devoutly religious, unhurried,
and methodical in his work. His style of doing science set the stan-
dard for two hundred years. In the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury Albert Einstein replaced Newton as the popular scientist icon.
Eccentric, dishevelled, Germanic, absent-minded, utterly absorbed
in his work, and an archetypal abstract thinker, Einstein changed
the way that physics is done by questioning the very concepts that
define the subject.
Richard Feynman has become an icon for late twentieth-century
ix
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page x

Introduction

physics—the first American to achieve this status. Born in New

York in 1918 and educated on the East Coast, he was too late to
participate in the Golden Age of physics, which, in the first three
decades of this century, transformed our worldview with the twin
revolutions of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
These sweeping developments laid the foundations of the edifice we
now call the New Physics. Feynman started with those foundations
and helped build the ground floor of the New Physics. His contri-
butions touched almost every corner of the subject and have had a
deep and abiding influence over the way that physicists think about
the physical universe.
Feynman was a theoretical physicist par excellence. Newton had
been both experimentalist and theorist in equal measure. Einstein
was quite simply contemptuous of experiment, preferring to put
his faith in pure thought. Feynman was driven to develop a deep
theoretical understanding of nature, but he always remained close
to the real and often grubby world of experimental results. Nobody
who watched the elderly Feynman elucidate the cause of the Chal-
lenger space shuttle disaster by dipping an elastic band in ice water
could doubt that here was both a showman and a very practical
thinker.
Initially, Feynman made a name for himself from his work on the
theory of subatomic particles, specifically the topic known as quan-
tum electrodynamics or QED. In fact, the quantum theory began
with this topic. In 1900, the German physicist Max Planck pro-
posed that light and other electromagnetic radiation, which had
hitherto been regarded as waves, paradoxically behaved like tiny
packets of energy, or “quanta,” when interacting with matter. These
particular quanta became known as photons. By the early 1930s
the architects of the new quantum mechanics had worked out a
mathematical scheme to describe the emission and absorption of
photons by electrically charged particles such as electrons. Although
this early formulation of QED enjoyed some limited success, the
theory was clearly flawed. In many cases calculations gave incon-
sistent and even infinite answers to well-posed physical questions.
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xi

xi

Introduction

It was to the problem of constructing a consistent theory of QED

that the young Feynman turned his attention in the late 1940s.
To place QED on a sound basis it was necessary to make the
theory consistent not only with the principles of quantum mechan-
ics but with those of the special theory of relativity too. These two
theories come with their own distinctive mathematical machinery,
complicated systems of equations that can indeed be combined and
reconciled to yield a satisfactory description of QED. Doing this
was a tough undertaking, requiring a high degree of mathematical
skill, and was the approach followed by Feynman’s contemporaries.
Feynman himself, however, took a radically different route—so rad-
ical, in fact, that he was more or less able to write down the answers
straightaway without using any mathematics!
To aid this extraordinary feat of intuition, Feynman invented a
simple system of eponymous diagrams. Feynman diagrams are a
symbolic but powerfully heuristic way of picturing what is going
on when electrons, photons, and other particles interact with each
other. These days Feynman diagrams are a routine aid to calcula-
tion, but in the early 1950s they marked a startling departure from
the traditional way of doing theoretical physics.
The particular problem of constructing a consistent theory of
quantum electrodynamics, although it was a milestone in the de-
velopment of physics, was just the start. It was to define a distinctive
Feynman style, a style destined to produce a string of important
results from a broad range of topics in physical science. The Feyn-
man style can best be described as a mixture of reverence and dis-
respect for received wisdom.
Physics is an exact science, and the existing body of knowledge,
while incomplete, can’t simply be shrugged aside. Feynman ac-
quired a formidable grasp of the accepted principles of physics at a
very young age, and he chose to work almost entirely on conven-
tional problems. He was not the sort of genius to beaver away in
isolation in a backwater of the discipline and to stumble across the
profoundly new. His special talent was to approach essentially
mainstream topics in an idiosyncratic way. This meant eschewing
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xii

xii

Introduction

existing formalisms and developing his own highly intuitive ap-

proach. Whereas most theoretical physicists rely on careful mathe-
matical calculation to provide a guide and a crutch to take them
into unfamiliar territory, Feynman’s attitude was almost cavalier.
You get the impression that he could read nature like a book and
simply report on what he found, without the tedium of complex
analysis.
Indeed, in pursuing his interests in this manner Feynman dis-
played a healthy contempt for rigorous formalisms. It is hard to
convey the depth of genius that is necessary to work like this. The-
oretical physics is one of the toughest intellectual exercises, com-
bining abstract concepts that defy visualization with extreme
mathematical complexity. Only by adopting the highest standards
of mental discipline can most physicists make progress. Yet Feyn-
man appeared to ride roughshod over this strict code of practice
and pluck new results like ready-made fruit from the Tree of
Knowledge.
The Feynman style owed a great deal to the personality of the
man. In his professional and private life he seemed to treat the
world as a hugely entertaining game. The physical universe pre-
sented him with a fascinating series of puzzles and challenges, and
so did his social environment. A lifelong prankster, he treated au-
thority and the academic establishment with the same sort of dis-
respect he showed for stuffy mathematical formalism. Never one
to suffer fools gladly, he broke the rules whenever he found them
arbitrary or absurd. His autobiographical writings contain amusing
stories of Feynman outwitting the atom-bomb security services
during the war, Feynman cracking safes, Feynman disarming
women with outrageously bold behavior. He treated his Nobel
Prize, awarded for his work on QED, in a similar take-it-or-leave-
it manner.
Alongside this distaste for formality, Feynman had a fascination
with the quirky and obscure. Many will remember his obsession
with the long-lost country of Tuva in Central Asia, captured so de-
lightfully in a documentary film made near the time of his death.
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xiii

xiii

Introduction

His other passions included playing the bongo drums, painting,

frequenting strip clubs, and deciphering Mayan texts.
Feynman himself did much to cultivate his distinctive persona.
Although reluctant to put pen to paper, he was voluble in conver-
sation, and loved to tell stories about his ideas and escapades. These
anecdotes, accumulated over the years, helped add to his mystique
and made him a proverbial legend in his own lifetime. His engaging
manner endeared him greatly to students, especially the younger
ones, many of whom idolized him. When Feynman died of cancer
in 1988 the students at Caltech, where he had worked for most of
his career, unfurled a banner with the simple message: “We love
you Dick.”
It was Feynman’s happy-go-lucky approach to life in general and
physics in particular that made him such a superb communicator.
He had little time for formal lecturing or even for supervising
Ph.D. students. Nevertheless he could give brilliant lectures when
it suited him, deploying all the sparkling wit, penetrating insight,
and irreverence that he brought to bear on his research work.
In the early 1960s Feynman was persuaded to teach an introduc-
tory physics course to Caltech freshmen and sophomores. He did so
with characteristic panache and his inimitable blend of informality,
zest, and offbeat humor. Fortunately, these priceless lectures were
saved for posterity in book form. Though far removed in style and
presentation from more conventional teaching texts, The Feynman
Lectures on Physics were a huge success, and they excited and inspired
a generation of students across the world. Three decades on, these vol-
umes have lost nothing of their sparkle and lucidity. Six Easy Pieces
is culled directly from The Feynman Lectures on Physics. It is intended
to give general readers a substantive taste of Feynman the Educator
by drawing on the early, nontechnical chapters from that landmark
work. The result is a delightful volume—it serves both as a primer
on physics for nonscientists and as a primer on Feynman himself.
What is most impressive about Feynman’s carefully crafted ex-
position is the way that he can develop far-reaching physical no-
tions from the most slender investment in concepts, and a
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xiv

xiv

Introduction

minimum in the way of mathematics and technical jargon. He has

the knack of finding just the right analogy or everyday illustration
to bring out the essence of a deep principle, without obscuring it
in incidental or irrelevant details.
The selection of topics contained in this volume is not intended as
a comprehensive survey of modern physics, but as a tantalizing taste
of the Feynman approach. We soon discover how he can illuminate
even mundane topics like force and motion with new insights. Key
concepts are illustrated by examples drawn from daily life or antiq-
uity. Physics is continually linked to other sciences while leaving the
reader in no doubt about which is the fundamental discipline.
Right at the beginning of Six Easy Pieces we learn how all physics
is rooted in the notion of law—the existence of an ordered universe
that can be understood by the application of rational reasoning.
However, the laws of physics are not transparent to us in our direct
observations of nature. They are frustratingly hidden, subtly en-
coded in the phenomena we study. The arcane procedures of the
physicist—a mixture of carefully designed experimentation and
mathematical theorizing—are needed to unveil the underlying law-
like reality.
Possibly the best-known law of physics is Newton’s inverse
square law of gravitation, discussed here in Chapter Five. The topic
is introduced in the context of the solar system and Kepler’s laws
of planetary motion. But gravitation is universal, applying across
the cosmos, enabling Feynman to spice his account with examples
from astronomy and cosmology. Commenting on a picture of a
globular cluster somehow held together by unseen forces, he waxes
lyrical: “If one cannot see gravitation acting here, he has no soul.”
Other laws are known that refer to the various nongravitational
forces of nature that describe how particles of matter interact with
each other. There is but a handful of these forces, and Feynman
himself holds the considerable distinction of being one of the few
scientists in history to discover a new law of physics, pertaining to
the way that a weak nuclear force affects the behavior of certain
subatomic particles.
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xv

xv

Introduction

High-energy particle physics was the jewel in the crown of post-

war science, at once awesome and glamorous, with its huge accel-
erator machines and seemingly unending list of newly discovered
subatomic particles. Feynman’s research was directed mostly toward
making sense of the results of this enterprise. A great unifying
theme among particle physicists has been the role of symmetry and
conservation laws in bringing order to the subatomic zoo.
As it happens, many of the symmetries known to particle physi-
cists were familiar already in classical physics. Chief among these
are the symmetries that arise from the homogeneity of space and
time. Take time: apart from cosmology, where the big bang marked
the beginning of time, there is nothing in physics to distinguish
one moment of time from the next. Physicists say that the world is
“invariant under time translations,” meaning that whether you take
midnight or midday to be the zero of time in your measurements,
it makes no difference to the description of physical phenomena.
Physical processes do not depend on an absolute zero of time. It
turns out that this symmetry under time translation directly implies
one of the most basic, and also most useful, laws of physics: the
law of conservation of energy. This law says that you can move en-
ergy around and change its form but you can’t create or destroy it.
Feynman makes this law crystal clear with his amusing story of
Dennis the Menace who is always mischievously hiding his toy
building blocks from his mother (Chapter Four).
The most challenging lecture in this volume is the last, which is
an exposition on quantum physics. It is no exaggeration to say that
quantum mechanics had dominated twentieth-century physics and
is far and away the most successful scientific theory in existence. It
is indispensable for understanding subatomic particles, atoms and
nuclei, molecules and chemical bonding, the structure of solids, su-
perconductors and superfluids, the electrical and thermal conduc-
tivity of metals and semiconductors, the structure of stars, and
much else. It has practical applications ranging from the laser to
the microchip. All this from a theory that at first sight—and second
sight—looks absolutely crazy! Niels Bohr, one of the founders of
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xvi

xvi

Introduction

quantum mechanics, once remarked that anybody who is not

shocked by the theory hasn’t understood it.
The problem is that quantum ideas strike at the very heart of
what we might call commonsense reality. In particular, the idea that
physical objects such as electrons or atoms enjoy an independent
existence, with a complete set of physical properties at all times, is
called into question. For example, an electron cannot have a posi-
tion in space and a well-defined speed at the same moment. If you
look for where an electron is located, you will find it at a place, and
if you measure its speed you will obtain a definite answer, but you
cannot make both observations at once. Nor is it meaningful to at-
tribute definite yet unknown values for the position and speed to
an electron in the absence of a complete set of observations.
This indeterminism in the very nature of atomic particles is en-
capsulated by Heisenberg’s celebrated uncertainty principle. This
puts strict limits on the precision with which properties such as po-
sition and speed can be simultaneously known. A sharp value for
position smears the range of possible values of speed and vice versa.
Quantum fuzziness shows up in the way electrons, photons, and
other particles move. Certain experiments can reveal them taking
definite paths through space, after the fashion of bullets following
trajectories toward a target. But other experimental arrangements
reveal that these entities can also behave like waves, showing char-
acteristic patterns of diffraction and interference.
Feynman’s masterly analysis of the famous “two-slit” experiment,
which teases out the “shocking” wave-particle duality in its starkest
form, has become a classic in the history of scientific exposition.
With a few very simple ideas, Feynman manages to take the reader
to the very heart of the quantum mystery, and leaves us dazzled by
the paradoxical nature of reality that it exposes.
Although quantum mechanics had made the textbooks by the
early 1930s, it is typical of Feynman that, as a young man, he pre-
ferred to refashion the theory for himself in an entirely new guise.
The Feynman method has the virtue that it provides us with a vivid
picture of nature’s quantum trickery at work. The idea is that the
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xvii

xvii

Introduction

path of a particle through space is not generally well defined in

quantum mechanics. We can imagine a freely moving electron, say,
not merely traveling in a straight line between A and B as common
sense would suggest, but taking a variety of wiggly routes. Feynman
invites us to imagine that somehow the electron explores all possible
routes, and in the absence of an observation about which path is
taken we must suppose that all these alternative paths somehow
contribute to the reality. So when an electron arrives at a point in
space—say a target screen—many different histories must be inte-
grated together to create this one event.
Feynman’s so-called path-integral, or sum-over-histories approach
to quantum mechanics, set this remarkable concept out as a math-
ematical procedure. It remained more or less a curiosity for many
years, but as physicists pushed quantum mechanics to its limits—
applying it to gravitation and even cosmology—so the Feynman
approach turned out to offer the best calculational tool for describ-
ing a quantum universe. History may well judge that, among his
many outstanding contributions to physics, the path-integral for-
mulation of quantum mechanics is the most significant.
Many of the ideas discussed in this volume are deeply philosoph-
ical. Yet Feynman had an abiding suspicion of philosophers. I once
had occasion to tackle him about the nature of mathematics and
the laws of physics, and whether abstract mathematical laws could
be considered to enjoy an independent Platonic existence. He gave
a spirited and skillful description of why this indeed appears so but
soon backed off when I pressed him to take a specific philosophical
position. He was similarly wary when I attempted to draw him out
on the subject of reductionism. With hindsight, I believe that Feyn-
man was not, after all, contemptuous of philosophical problems.
But, just as he was able to do fine mathematical physics without
systematic mathematics, so he produced some fine philosophical
insights without systematic philosophy. It was formalism he dis-
liked, not content.
It is unlikely that the world will see another Richard Feynman.
He was very much a man of his time. The Feynman style worked
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xviii

xviii

Introduction

well for a subject that was in the process of consolidating a revolu-

tion and embarking on the far-reaching exploration of its conse-
quences. Postwar physics was secure in its foundations, mature in
its theoretical structures, yet wide open for kibitzing exploitation.
Feynman entered a wonderland of abstract concepts and imprinted
his personal brand of thinking upon many of them. This book pro-
vides a unique glimpse into the mind of a remarkable human being.

September 1994 Paul Davies

0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xix

S P E C I A L P R E FA C E
(from The Feynman Lectures on Physics)

Toward the end of his life, Richard Feynman’s fame had tran-
scended the confines of the scientific community. His exploits as a
member of the commission investigating the space shuttle Chal-
lenger disaster gave him widespread exposure; similarly, a best-selling
book about his picaresque adventures made him a folk hero almost
of the proportions of Albert Einstein. But back in 1961, even before
his Nobel Prize increased his visibility to the general public, Feyn-
man was more than merely famous among members of the scientific
community—he was legendary. Undoubtedly, the extraordinary
power of his teaching helped spread and enrich the legend of
Richard Feynman.
He was a truly great teacher, perhaps the greatest of his era and
ours. For Feynman, the lecture hall was a theater, and the lecturer
a performer, responsible for providing drama and fireworks as well
as facts and figures. He would prowl about the front of a classroom,
arms waving, “the impossible combination of theoretical physicist
and circus barker, all body motion and sound effects,” wrote The
New York Times. Whether he addressed an audience of students,
colleagues, or the general public, for those lucky enough to see
Feynman lecture in person, the experience was usually unconven-
tional and always unforgettable, like the man himself.
He was the master of high drama, adept at riveting the attention
of every lecture-hall audience. Many years ago, he taught a course
in Advanced Quantum Mechanics, a large class comprised of a few
xix
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registered graduate students and most of the Caltech physics fac-

ulty. During one lecture, Feynman started explaining how to rep-
resent certain complicated integrals diagrammatically: time on this
axis, space on that axis, wiggly line for this straight line, etc. Having
described what is known to the world of physics as a Feynman di-
agram, he turned around to face the class, grinning wickedly. “And
this is called THE diagram!” Feynman had reached the denoue-
ment, and the lecture hall erupted with spontaneous applause.
For many years after the lectures that make up this book were
given, Feynman was an occasional guest lecturer for Caltech’s fresh-
man physics course. Naturally, his appearances had to be kept secret
so there would be room left in the hall for the registered students.
At one such lecture the subject was curved-space time, and Feyn-
man was characteristically brilliant. But the unforgettable moment
came at the beginning of the lecture. The supernova of 1987 had
just been discovered, and Feynman was very excited about it. He
said, “Tycho Brahe had his supernova, and Kepler had his. Then
there weren’t any for 400 years. But now I have mine.” The class
fell silent, and Feynman continued on. “There are 1011 stars in the
galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred bil-
lion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astro-
nomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.”
The class dissolved in laughter, and Feynman, having captured his
audience, went on with his lecture.
Showmanship aside, Feynman’s pedagogical technique was
simple. A summation of his teaching philosophy was found among
his papers in the Caltech archives, in a note he had scribbled to
himself while in Brazil in 1952:

First figure out why you want the students to learn the subject
and what you want them to know, and the method will result
more or less by common sense.

What came to Feynman by “common sense” were often brilliant

twists that perfectly captured the essence of his point. Once, during
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a public lecture, he was trying to explain why one must not verify
an idea using the same data that suggested the idea in the first place.
Seeming to wander off the subject, Feynman began talking about
license plates. “You know, the most amazing thing happened to me
tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came
in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened.
I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of
all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance
that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!” A point
that even many scientists fail to grasp was made clear through Feyn-
man’s remarkable “common sense.”
In 35 years at Caltech (from 1952 to 1987), Feynman was listed
as teacher of record for 34 courses. Twenty-five of them were ad-
vanced graduate courses, strictly limited to graduate students, un-
less undergraduates asked permission to take them (they often did,
and permission was nearly always granted). The rest were mainly
introductory graduate courses. Only once did Feynman teach
courses purely for undergraduates, and that was the celebrated oc-
casion in the academic years 1961 to 1962 and 1962 to 1963, with
a brief reprise in 1964, when he gave the lectures that were to be-
come The Feynman Lectures on Physics.
At the time there was a consensus at Caltech that freshman and
sophomore students were getting turned off rather than spurred on
by their two years of compulsory physics. To remedy the situation,
Feynman was asked to design a series of lectures to be given to the
students over the course of two years, first to freshmen, and then
to the same class as sophomores. When he agreed, it was immedi-
ately decided that the lectures should be transcribed for publication.
That job turned out to be far more difficult than anyone had imag-
ined. Turning out publishable books required a tremendous
amount of work on the part of his colleagues, as well as Feynman
himself, who did the final editing of every chapter.
And the nuts and bolts of running a course had to be addressed.
This task was greatly complicated by the fact that Feynman had
only a vague outline of what he wanted to cover. This meant that
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Special Preface

no one knew what Feynman would say until he stood in front of a

lecture hall filled with students and said it. The Caltech professors
who assisted him would then scramble as best they could to handle
mundane details, such as making up homework problems.
Why did Feynman devote more than two years to revolutionize
the way beginning physics was taught? One can only speculate, but
there were probably three basic reasons. One is that he loved to
have an audience, and this gave him a bigger theater than he usually
had in graduate courses. The second was that he genuinely cared
about students, and he simply thought that teaching freshmen was
an important thing to do. The third and perhaps most important
reason was the sheer challenge of reformulating physics, as he un-
derstood it, so that it could be presented to young students. This
was his specialty, and was the standard by which he measured
whether something was really understood. Feynman was once asked
by a Caltech faculty member to explain why spin 1/2 particles obey
Fermi-Dirac statistics. He gauged his audience perfectly and said,
“I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it.” But a few days later he re-
turned and said, “You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to
the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.”
This specialty of reducing deep ideas to simple, understandable
terms is evident throughout The Feynman Lectures on Physics, but
nowhere more so than in his treatment of quantum mechanics. To
aficionados, what he has done is clear. He has presented, to begin-
ning students, the path integral method, the technique of his own
devising that allowed him to solve some of the most profound prob-
lems in physics. His own work using path integrals, among other
achievements, led to the 1965 Nobel Prize that he shared with Ju-
lian Schwinger and Sin-Itero Tomanaga.
Through the distant veil of memory, many of the students and
faculty attending the lectures have said that having two years of
physics with Feynman was the experience of a lifetime. But that’s
not how it seemed at the time. Many of the students dreaded the
class, and as the course wore on, attendance by the registered stu-
dents started dropping alarmingly. But at the same time, more and
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Special Preface

more faculty and graduate students started attending. The room

stayed full, and Feynman may never have known he was losing
some of his intended audience. But even in Feynman’s view, his
pedagogical endeavor did not succeed. He wrote in the 1963 pref-
ace to the Lectures: “I don’t think I did very well by the students.”
Rereading the books, one sometimes seems to catch Feynman look-
ing over his shoulder, not at his young audience, but directly at his
colleagues, saying, “Look at that! Look how I finessed that point!
Wasn’t that clever?” But even when he thought he was explaining
things lucidly to freshmen or sophomores, it was not really they
who were able to benefit most from what he was doing. It was his
peers—scientists, physicists, and professors—who would be the
main beneficiaries of his magnificent achievement, which was noth-
ing less than to see physics through the fresh and dynamic perspec-
tive of Richard Feynman.
Feynman was more than a great teacher. His gift was that he was
an extraordinary teacher of teachers. If the purpose in giving The
Feynman Lectures on Physics was to prepare a roomful of undergrad-
uate students to solve examination problems in physics, he cannot
be said to have succeeded particularly well. Moreover, if the intent
was for the books to serve as introductory college textbooks, he
cannot be said to have achieved his goal. Nevertheless, the books
have been translated into ten foreign languages and are available in
four bilingual editions. Feynman himself believed that his most im-
portant contribution to physics would not be QED, or the theory
of superfluid helium, or polarons, or partons. His foremost contri-
bution would be the three red books of The Feynman Lectures on
Physics. That belief fully justifies this commemorative issue of these
celebrated books.

David L. Goodstein
Gerry Neugebauer
April 1989 California Institute of Technology
0465025275-Feynman_Layout 1 1/18/11 2:00 PM Page xxiv
Other documents randomly have
different content
and Aunt Enid thought it only fair.”
“Fair to Major Fenno?”
“Yes.”
The silence prolonged itself. At length the mother brought out: “But
if you’ve announced your engagement he has a right to be with
you.”
Anne looked at her almost timidly. “I wanted first ... we both wanted
... to feel that when he came you would ... would be ready to
receive him.”
Kate Clephane turned away from her daughter’s eyes. The look in
them was too intolerably sweet to her. Anne was imploring her
approval—Anne could not bear to be happy without it. Yes; but she
wanted her other happiness also; she wanted that more than
anything else; she would not hesitate to sacrifice her mother to it if
there were no other way.
All this rushed over Kate in a final flash of illumination. “I want you
both!” Anne had said; but she wanted Chris Fenno infinitely the
more.
“Dear—.” At her mother’s first syllable Anne was at her side again,
beseechingly. Kate Clephane lifted her hands to the girl’s shoulders.
“You’ve made your choice, dearest. When Major Fenno comes of
course I will receive him.” Her lips felt dry and stiff as she uttered
her prevarication. But all her old arts of casuistry had come back;
what was the use of having practised them so long if they were not
to serve her now? She let herself yield to Anne’s embrace.

That afternoon, as Mrs. Clephane sat alone upstairs, Fred Landers

telephoned to ask if she would receive him. Anne was out, and her
mother sent word that when Mr. Landers came he was to be shown
up to her sitting-room. He entered it, presently, with outstretched
hands and a smile of satisfaction.
“Well, it’s all settled, then? Thank God! You’ve done just the right
thing; I knew you would.”
Her hand fell lifelessly into his; she could not answer.
He drew up an armchair to the little autumnal fire, and continued to
contemplate her approvingly.
“I know how hard it must have been. But there was only one thing
to be considered: Anne needs you!”
“She needs Major Fenno more.”
“Oh, well—that’s the law of life, isn’t it?” His tone seemed to say: “At
any rate, it’s the one you obeyed in your own youth.” And again she
found no answer.
She was conscious that the gaze he still fixed on her had passed
from benevolence to wistfulness. “Do you still mind it so awfully?”
His question made her tears rise; but she was determined not to
return upon the past. She had proved the uselessness of the
attempt.
“Anne has announced her engagement. What more is there to say?
You tell me she needs me; well, here I am with her.”
“And you don’t know how she appreciates it. She rang me up as
soon as you got back this morning. She’s overcome by your
generosity in going down to the Drovers’ after what had taken place
between you—after her putting herself so completely in the wrong.”
He paused again, as if weighing his next words. “You know I’m not
any keener than you are about this marriage; but, my dear, I believe
it had to be.”
“Had to be?”
His capacious forehead crimsoned with the effort to explain. “Well,
Anne’s a young woman of considerable violence of feeling ... of ...
of.... In short, there’s no knowing what she might have ended by
doing if we’d all backed you up in opposing her. And I confess I
didn’t feel sure enough of the young man to count on his not taking
advantage of her ... her impetuosity, as it were, if he thought there
was no other chance.... You understand?”
She understood. What he was trying to say was that, on the whole,
given the girl’s self-will, and taking into account her ... well, her
peculiar heredity ... taking into account, in fact, Kate Clephane
herself ... the family had probably adopted the safest course in
accepting the situation.
“Not that I mean to imply—of course not! Only the young people
nowadays settle most questions for themselves, don’t they? And in
this case ... Well, all’s well that ends well. We all know that some of
the most successful marriages have had ... er ... rather risky
preliminaries.”
Kate Clephane sat listening in a state of acquiescent lassitude. She
felt as if she had been given a drug which had left her intelligence
clear but paralyzed her will. What was the use of arguing,
discussing, opposing? Later, of course, if everything else failed, Fred
Landers was after all the person she would have to turn to, to whom
her avowal would have to be made; but for the moment he was of
no more use to her than any of the others. The game she had
resolved to play must be played between herself and Chris Fenno;
everything else was the vainest expenditure of breath.
“You do agree, don’t you?” she heard Landers rather nervously
insisting; and: “Oh, I daresay you’re right,” she assented.
“And the great thing, you know, is that Anne shouldn’t lose you, or
you lose Anne, because of this. All the rest will arrange itself
somehow. Life generally does arrange things. And if it shouldn’t—”
He stood up rather awkwardly, and she was aware of his advancing
toward her. His face had grown long and solemn, and his broad bulk
seemed to have narrowed to the proportions of the lank youth
suffused with blushes who had taken shelter behind his mother
when old Mrs. Landers had offered a bridal banquet to the John
Clephanes.
“If it doesn’t work out for you as we hope ... there’s my house ...
that’s been waiting for you for ever so long ... though I shouldn’t
ever have ventured to suggest it....”
“Oh—” she faltered out, the clutch of pain relaxing a little about her
heart.
“Well, well,” her visitor stammered, rubbing his hands together
deprecatingly, “I only suggest it as a sort of last expedient ... a
forlorn hope....” His nervous laugh tried to give the words a
humorous turn, but his eyes were still grave. Kate rose and put her
hand in his.
“You’re awfully good to me,” was all she found to say. Inwardly she
was thinking, with a fresh thrill of anguish: “And now I shall never
be able to tell him—never!”
He had caught the note of dismissal in her voice, and was trying to
gather up the scattered fragments of his self-possession. “Of course,
at our age ... my age, I mean ... all that kind of thing is rather.... But
there: I didn’t want you to feel there was no one you could turn to.
That’s all. You won’t bear me a grudge, though? Now then; that’s all
right. And you’ll see: this other business will shake down in time.
Bound to, you know. I daresay the young man has merits that you
and I don’t see. And you’ll let me go on dropping in as usual? After
all, I’m Anne’s guardian!” he ended with his clumsy laugh.
“I shall want you more than ever, Fred,” Mrs. Clephane said simply.

The next evening, as she looked down the long dinner-table from
her seat at its head, she was fantastically reminded of the first family
dinner over which she had presided after her marriage.
The background was the same; the faces were the same, or so like
that they seemed merely rejuvenated issues of the same coinage.
Hendrik Drover sat in his brother-in-law’s place; but even that
change was not marked enough to disturb the illusion. Hendrik
Drover’s heavy good-natured face belonged to the same type as
John Clephane’s; one saw that the two had gone to the same
schools and the same University, frequented the same clubs, fished
the same salmon rivers; Hendrik Drover might have been the ghost
of John Clephane revisiting the scene of his earthly trials in a mood
softened by celestial influences. And as for herself—Kate Clephane—
if she had conformed to the plan of life prepared for her, instead of
turning from it and denying it, might she not reasonably have hoped
to reappear on the scene in the form of Enid Drover?
These grotesque fancies had begun to weave their spirals through
her brain only after a first impact had emptied it of everything else,
swept it suddenly clear of all meaning and all reason. That moment
had come when Chris Fenno had entered in the wake of the other
guests; when she had heard his name announced like that of any
other member of the family; had seen him advance across the
interminable length of the room, all the lights in it converging upon
him as she felt that all the eyes in it converged on her; when she
had seen Anne at his side, felt her presence between them, heard
the girl’s voice, imperious, beseeching: “Mother—here’s Chris,” and
felt her hand drop into that other hand with the awful plunge that
the heart makes when a sudden shock flings it from its seat.
She had lived through all that; she and he had faced each other;
had exchanged greetings, she supposed; had even, perhaps, said
something to each other about Anne, and about their future relation.
She did not know what; she judged only, from the undisturbed faces
about them, that there had been nothing alarming, nothing to
scandalize or grieve; that it had all, to the tribal eye, passed off
decently and what they called “suitably”. Her past training had
served her—his boundless assurance had served him. It was what
the French called “a moment to pass”; they had passed it. And in
that mad world beyond the abyss, where she now found herself,
here they all were with the old faces, saying the same old things
with the same old complacency, eating their way through the same
Clephane courses, expressing the same approval of the Clephane
cellar (“It was Hendrik, you know, who advised John to lay down
that ninety-five Clicquot,” she caught Enid Drover breathing across
the bubbles to her son-in-law). It was all, in short, as natural and
unnatural, as horrible, intolerable and unescapable, as if she had
become young again, with all her desolate and unavoidable life
stretching away ahead of her to—this.
And, in the mad phantasmagoria, there was Chris himself,
symbolizing what she had flown to in her wild escape; representing,
in some horrible duality, at once her sin and its harvest, her flight
and her return. At the thought, her brain began to spin again, and
she saw her own youth embodied before her in Anne, with Anne’s
uncompromising scorns and scruples, Anne’s confident forward-
looking gaze.
“Ah, well,” she heard Hendrik Drover say as they rose from the table,
“these occasions will come round from time to time in the best-
regulated families, and I suppose we all feel—” while, at the other
side of the table, Enid Drover, pink and melting from a last libation,
sighed to Horace Maclew: “I only wish dear mother and John could
have been here with us!” and Lilla, overhearing her, bracketed the
observation in an ironic laugh.
It had all gone off wonderfully; thanks to Anne’s tact the meeting
between her mother and her betrothed had been thickly swaddled in
layer on layer of non-conducting, non-explosive “family”. A sense of
mutual congratulation was in the air as the groups formed
themselves again in the drawing-room. The girl herself moved from
one to another, pale, vigilant, radiant; Chris Fenno, in a distant
corner, was settled with coffee-cup and cigarette at Lilla Maclew’s
side; Mrs. Clephane found herself barricaded behind Hendrik Drover
and one of the older Tresseltons. They were the very two men, she
remembered, between whom she had spent her evening after that
first family dinner in which this one was so hallucinatingly merged.
Not until the party was breaking up, and farewells filled the hall, did
she suddenly find herself—she knew not how—isolated in the inner
drawing-room with Chris Fenno. He stood there before her, and she
seemed to hear his voice for the first time.
“I want to thank you....” He appeared to feel it was a bad beginning,
and tried again. “Shan’t I have the chance, some day soon, of
finding you—for a word or two, quietly?” he asked.
She faced him, erect and unflinching; she dragged her eyes up to
his.
“A chance? But as soon as you like—as many chances as you like!
You’ll always find me—I shall always be here. I’m never going to
leave Anne,” she announced.
It had been almost worth the agony she had bought it with to see
the look in his eyes when he heard that.
 XXIII.
EXTREME exhaustion—the sense of having reached the last limit of
endurable emotion—plunged Kate Clephane, that night, into a
dreamless sleep. It was months and months since she had reached
those nethermost levels below sound or image or any mental
movement; and she rose from them revived, renewed—and then
suddenly understood that they had been only a grief-drugged
mockery.
The return to reality was as painful as that of a traveller who has
fallen asleep in the snow. One by one she had to readjust all her
frozen faculties to the unchanged and intolerable situation; and she
felt weaker, less able to contend with it. The thought that that very
day she might have to face Chris Fenno paralyzed her. He had asked
to see her alone—and she lay there, in the desolate dawn,
rehearsing to herself all the cruel things he would find to say; for his
ways of being cruel were innumerable. The day before she had felt
almost light-heartedly confident of being able to outface, to outlast
him; of her power of making the situation even more intolerable to
him than he could make it to her. Now, in the merciless morning
light, she had a new view of their respective situations. Who had
suffered most the previous evening, he or she? Whose wakening
that morning was most oppressed by fears? He had proposed to
have a talk with her; he had had the courage to do that; and she felt
that by having that courage he had already gained another point in
their silent struggle.
Slowly the days dragged by; their hours were filled, for mother and
daughter, by the crowding obligations and preoccupations natural to
such times. Mrs. Clephane was helping her daughter with the
wedding preparations; a spectacle to charm and edify the rest of the
family.
Chris Fenno, two or three days after the announcement of the
engagement, had returned to Baltimore, where he had accepted a
temporary job on a newspaper, and where he had that, and other
matters, to wind up before his marriage. During his stay in New
York, Mrs. Clephane had had but two or three brief glimpses of him,
and always in the presence of others. It was natural that he should
wish to devote the greater part of his time to his betrothed. He and
Anne went off in the early afternoon, and when they returned were,
on each evening, engaged to dine with some member of the family.
It was easy for Mrs. Clephane to excuse herself from these
entertainments. The fact of her having presided at the dinner at
which the engagement was announced had sealed it with her
approval; and at the little dinners organized by Nollie Tresselton and
the other cousins her presence was hardly expected, and readily
dispensed with.
All this fitted in with the new times. The old days of introspections
and explanations were over; the era of taking things for granted was
the only one that Anne’s generation knew, and in that respect Anne
was of her day.
After the betrothal dinner she had said a tender goodnight to her
mother, and the next evening, as she rushed up to dress after her
long outing with Chris, had stopped at Kate’s door to wave a loving
hand and call out: “He says you’ve been so perfect to him—” That
was all. Kate Clephane’s own memories told her that to some
natures happiness comes like a huge landslide burying all the past
and spreading a fresh surface to life’s sowings: and it was from
herself, she reflected, that Anne had inherited her capacity for such
all-obliterating bliss.
The days passed, and Chris Fenno at length came back. He was
staying with the Joe Tresseltons, and there was a constant coming
and going of the young people between the two houses.
Opportunities were not lacking to see Mrs. Clephane in private, and
for the first days after his return she waited in numb terror for the
inevitable, the incalculable moment. But it did not come; and
gradually she understood that it never would. His little speech had
been a mere formula; he had nothing to say to her; no desire was
farther from him than the wish to speak with her alone. What she
had dreaded past expression, but supposed to be inevitable, he had
probably never even seriously considered. Explanations? What was
the use of explanations? He had gained his point; the thing now was
to live at peace with everybody.
She saw that all her calculations had been mistaken. She had
fancied that her tactics would render his situation intolerable; that if
only she could bear to spend a few weeks in his presence she would
demonstrate to him the impossibility of his spending the rest of his
life in hers. But his reasoning reached a good deal farther, and
embraced certain essential elements in human nature that hers had
left out. He had said to himself—she was sure of it now—: “The next
few weeks will be pretty bad, but after that I’ll have the upper
hand.” He had only to hold out till the wedding; after that she would
be a mere mother-in-law, and mothers-in-law are not a serious
problem in modern life. How could she ever have imagined that he
would not see through her game and out-manœuvre her, when he
had done it so often before, and when his whole future depended on
his doing it just once more? She felt herself beaten at every point.
Unless—unless she told the truth to Anne. Every day was making
that impossible thing more impossible; yet every day was bringing
them nearer to the day when not to do so—if all other measures
failed—would be most impossible of all. She seemed to have
reached that moment when, one morning, Anne came into her room
and caught her by the hand.
“Dearest—you’ve got to come with me this very minute.”
Kate, yielding to the girl’s hand, was drawn along the corridor to her
bedroom. There, on the bed, in a dazzle of whiteness, lay the
wedding-dress.
“Will you help me to try it on?” Anne asked.
Kate Clephane rang the Rectory bell and found herself in the Rectory
sitting-room. As she sat there, among photogravures of Botticelli
Virgins and etchings of English cathedrals, she could not immediately
remember why she had come, and looked with a kind of detached
curiosity at the volumes of memoirs and sermons on the table at her
elbow, at the perpendicular Gothic chairs against the wall, and the
Morris armchairs which had superseded them. She had not been in a
rectory sitting-room since the committee meeting at the Merrimans’,
on the day when she had received Anne’s cable.
Her lapse of memory lasted only for a few seconds, but during that
time she relived with intensity the sensations of that other day, she
felt her happy heart dancing against the message folded under her
dress, she saw the southern sun gilding the dull faces about the
table, and smelt the violets and mimosa in Mrs. Merriman’s vases.
She woke again to the present just as an austere parlour-maid was
requesting her to step this way.
Dr. Arklow’s study was full of books, of signed photographs of
Church dignitaries, of more English cathedrals, of worn leather
armchairs and scattered pipes and tobacco-pouches. The Rector
himself, on the hearth, loomed before her at once bland and
formidable. He had guessed, of course, that she had come to talk
about the date and hour of the wedding, and all the formulas
incidental to such visits fell from his large benevolent lips. The visit
really passed off more easily than she had expected, and she was on
her feet again and feeling him behind her like a gentle trade-wind
accustomed to waft a succession of visitors to the door, when she
stopped abruptly and faced him.
“Dr. Arklow—”
He waited benevolently.
“There’s something else—a case I’ve always wanted to put to you....”
“Dear Mrs. Clephane—do put it now.” He was waving her back into
her armchair; but she stood before him, unconscious of the gesture.
“It’s about a friend of mine—”
“Yes: a friend? Do sit down.”
She sat down, still unaware of her movements or his.
“A most unhappy woman.... I told her I would ask ... ask what could
be done.... She had an idea that you could tell her....”
He bowed expectantly.
Her parched lips brought out: “Of course it’s confidential,” and his
gesture replied that communications, in that room, were always held
to be so. “Whatever I can do—” he added.
“Yes. My friend thought—her position is really desperate.” She
stopped, her voice failing her; then the words came forth in panting
jerks. “She was most unhappily married ... things went against her—
everything did. She tried ... tried her best.... Then she met him ... it
was too difficult.... He was her lover; only for a short time. After that
her life was perfectly ... was all it should be. She never saw him—oh,
for years. Now her daughter wants to marry him....”
“Marry him? The same man?” The Rector’s voice swelled above her
like a wave; his presence towered, blurred and gigantic. She felt the
tears in her throat; but again she was seized by the besetting desire
that her secret should not be guessed, and a desperate effort at self-
control drove the tears back and cleared her voice.
Dr. Arklow still loomed and brooded. “And the man—”
A slow flush of agony rose to her forehead; but she remembered
that she was seated with her back to the light, and took courage.
“He—he is determined.” She paused, and then went on: “It’s too
horrible. But at first he didn’t know ... when he first met the girl.
Neither of them knew. And when he found out—”
“Yes?”
“Then—it was too late, he said. The girl doesn’t know even now; she
doesn’t dream; and she’s grown to care—care desperately.”
“That’s his defence?”
Her voice failed her again, and she signed her assent.
There was another long pause. She sat motionless, looking down at
her own interlocked hands. She felt that Dr. Arklow was uneasily
pacing the hearth-rug; at last she was aware that he was once more
standing before her.
“The lady you speak of—your friend—is she here?”
She started. “Here?”
“In New York, I mean?”
“No; no; she’s not here,” Kate cried precipitately. “That’s the reason
why I offered to come—”
“I see.” She thought she caught a faint note of relief in his voice.
“She wished you to consult me?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s done everything—everything, of course, to stop this
abomination?”
“Oh, everything ... everything.”
“Except to tell her daughter?”
She made another sign of assent.
Dr. Arklow cleared his throat, and declared with emphasis: “It is her
duty to tell her daughter.”
“Yes,” Kate Clephane faltered. She got to her feet and looked about
her blindly for the door.
“She must tell her daughter,” the Rector repeated with rising
vehemence. “Such a shocking situation must be avoided; avoided at
all costs.”
“Yes,” she repeated. She was on the threshold now; automatically
she held out her hand.
“Unless,” the Rector continued uncertainly, his eyes upon her, “she is
absolutely convinced that less harm will come to all concerned if she
has the courage to keep silence—always.” There was a pause. “As
far as I can see into the blackness of it,” he went on, gaining
firmness, “the whole problem turns on that. I may be mistaken;
perhaps I am. But when a man has looked for thirty or forty years
into pretty nearly every phase of human suffering and error, as men
of my cloth have to do, he comes to see that there must be
adjustments ... adjustments in the balance of evil. Compromises,
politicians would call them. Well, I’m not afraid of the word.” He
stood leaning against the jamb of the door; her hand was on the
doorknob, and she listened with lowered head.
“The thing in the world I’m most afraid of is sterile pain,” he said
after a moment. “I should never want any one to be the cause of
that.”
She lifted her eyes with an effort, and saw in his face the same look
of understanding she had caught there for a moment while she
talked with him at the Drovers’ after dinner.
“Sterile pain—” she murmured. She had crossed the threshold now;
she felt that he was holding out his hand. His face once more wore
the expression of worldly benevolence that was as much the badge
of his profession as his dress. After all, she perceived, he was glad
that she had said nothing more definite, glad that their talk was
safely over. Yet she had caught that other look.
“If your friend were here; if there were anything I could do for her,
or say to her—anything to help—”
“Oh, she’s not here; she won’t be here,” Kate repeated.
“In that case—” Again she caught the relief in his voice.
“But I will tell her—tell her what you’ve said.” She was aware that
they were shaking hands, and that he was averting his apprehensive
eyes from hers. “For God’s sake,” the eyes seemed to entreat her,
“let’s get through with this before you betray yourself—if there’s
anything further to betray.”
At the front door he bowed her out, repeating cordially: “And about
a date for Anne’s wedding as soon as you and she are absolutely
decided, remember I’m completely at your service.”
The door closed, and she found herself in the street.
 XXIV.
SHE turned away from the Rectory and walked aimlessly up Madison
Avenue. It was a warm summer-coloured October day. At Fifty-ninth
Street she turned into the Park and wandered on over the yellowing
leaf-drifts of the ramble. In just such a state of blind bewilderment
she had followed those paths on the day when she had first caught
sight of Chris Fenno and Lilla Gates in the twilight ahead of her. That
was less than a year ago, and she looked back with amazement at
the effect which that chance encounter had had on her. She seemed
hardly to be suffering more now than she had suffered then. It had
seemed unbearable, impossible, at the moment, that Chris Fenno
should enter, even so episodically, so remotely, into her new life; and
here he was, ensconced in its very centre, in complete possession of
it.
She tried to think the situation out; but, as always, her trembling
thoughts recoiled, just as she had seen Dr. Arklow’s recoil.
Every one to whom she had tried to communicate her secret without
betraying it had had the same instantaneous revulsion. “Not that—
don’t tell me that!” their averted eyes, their shrinking voices seemed
to say. It was too horrible for any ears.
How then was she to obey Dr. Arklow’s bidding and impart the secret
to Anne? He had said it as positively as if he were handing down a
commandment from Sinai: “The daughter must be told.”
How easy to lay down abstract rules for other people’s guidance:
“The daughter” was just an imaginary person—a convenient
conversational pawn. But Kate Clephane’s daughter—her own Anne!
She closed her eyes and tried to face the look in Anne’s as the truth
dawned on her.
“You—you, mother? The mother I’ve come to adore—the mother I
can’t live without, even with all my other happiness? You?”
Yes—perhaps that would be the worst of it, the way Anne would
look at her and say “You?” For, once the girl knew the truth, her
healthy youth might so revolt from Chris’s baseness, Chris’s duplicity,
that the shock of the discovery would be its own cure. But when the
blow had fallen, when Anne’s life had crashed about her, and the
ruins been cleared away—what then of her mother? Why, her
mother would be buried under those ruins; her life would be over;
but a hideous indestructible image of her would remain,
overshadowing, darkening the daughter’s future.
“This man you are going to marry has—”
No; Kate Clephane could go no farther than that. Such confessions
were not to be made; were not for a daughter’s ears. She began the
phrase to herself again and again, but could not end it....
And, after all, she suddenly thought, Dr. Arklow himself, having given
the injunction, had at once qualified, had virtually withdrawn it. In
declaring that such an abomination must at all costs be prevented
he had spoken with the firmness of a priest; but almost at once the
man had intervened, and had suggested to the hypothetical mother
the alternative of not speaking at all, if only she could be sure of
never betraying herself in the future, of sacrificing everything to the
supreme object of avoiding what he called sterile pain. Those
tentative, half-apologetic words now effaced the others in Kate’s
mind. Though spoken with the accent of authority—and almost
under his breath—she knew they represented what he really felt. But
where should she find the courage to conform to them?
She had left the Park, aimlessly, unseeingly, and was walking
eastward through a half-built street in the upper Nineties. The
thought of returning home—re-entering that house where the white
dress still lay on the bed—was unbearable. She walked on and on....
Suddenly she came upon an ugly sandstone church-front with a
cross above the doorway. The leathern swing-doors were flapping
back and forth, women passing in and out. Kate Clephane pushed
open one of the doors and looked in. The day was fading, and in the
dusky interior lights fluttered like butterflies about the paper flowers
of the altar. There was no service, but praying figures were scattered
here and there. Against the brown-washed walls of the aisles she
observed a row of confessionals of varnished wood, like cigar-boxes
set on end; before one or two, women were expectantly kneeling.
Mrs. Clephane wondered what they had to tell.
Leaning against one of the piers of the nave she evoked all those
imaginary confessions, and thought how trivial, how childish they
would seem, compared to what she carried in her breast.... What a
help it must be to turn to somebody who could tell one firmly,
positively what to do—to be able to lay down one’s moral torture like
a heavy load at the end of the day! Dr. Arklow had none of the
authority which the habit of the confessional must give. He could
only vaguely sympathize and deplore, and try to shuffle the horror
out of sight as soon as he caught an unwilling glimpse of it. But
these men whose office it was to bind and to unbind—who spoke as
the mere impersonal mouth-pieces of a mighty Arbitrator, letting
neither moral repugnance nor false delicacy interfere with the sacred
task of alleviation and purification—how different must they be! Her
eyes filled at the thought of laying her burden in such hands.
And why not? Why not entrust her anonymous secret to one of
those anonymous ears? In talking to Dr. Arklow she had felt that
both he and she were paralyzed by the personal relation, and all the
embarrassments and complications arising from it. When she spoke
of her friend in distress, and he replied with the same evasive
formula, both were conscious of the evasion, and hampered by it.
And so it had been from the first—there was not an ear into which
she dared pour her agony. What if, now, at once, she were to join
those unknown penitents? It was possible, she knew—she had but a
step to take....
She did not take it. Her unrest drove her forth again into the
darkening street, drove her homeward with uncertain steps, in the
mood of forlorn expectancy of those who, having failed to exert their
will, wait helplessly on the unforeseen. After all, how could one tell?
Chris must, in his own degree, be suffering as she was suffering.
Why not stick to her old plan of waiting, holding on, enduring
everything, in the hope of wearing him out? She reached the door of
her house, set her teeth, and went in. Overhead, she remembered
with a shudder, the white dress waited, with all that it implied....
The drawing-room was empty, and she went up to her own room.
There, as usual, the fire shone invitingly, fresh flowers opened in the
lamplight. All was warmth, peace, intimacy. As she sat down by the
fireside she seemed to see Fred Landers’s heavy figure in the
opposite armchair, his sturdy square-toed boots turned to the
hearth. She remembered how, one day, as he sat there, she had
said to herself that it might be pleasant to see him there always.
Now, in the extremity of her loneliness, the thought returned. Since
then he had confessed his own hope to her—shyly, obliquely,
apologetically; but under his stammering words she had recognized
the echo of a long desire. She knew he had always loved her; had
not Anne betrayed that it was her guardian who had persuaded her
to recall her unknown mother? Kate Clephane owed him everything,
then—all her happiness and all her sorrow! He knew everything of
her life—or nearly everything. To whom else could she turn with the
peculiar sense of security which that certitude gave? She felt sorry
that she had received his tentative advance so coldly, so
inarticulately. After all, he might yet be her refuge—her escape. She
closed her eyes, and tried to imagine what life would be—years and
years of it—at Fred Landers’s side. To feel the nearness of that
rugged patient kindness; would it not lighten her misery, make the
thoughts and images that were torturing her less palpable, less
acute, less real?
She sat there for a long time, brooding. Now and then a step
passing her door, or a burst of voices on the landing, told her that
Anne was probably receiving some of her friends in her own rooms
at the other end of the passage. The wedding presents were already
arriving; Anne, with a childish pleasure that was unlike her usual
aloofness from material things, had set them out on a long table in
her sitting-room. The mother pictured the eager group inspecting
and admiring, the talk of future plans, the discussion of all the
details of the wedding. The date for it would soon be fixed;
ostensibly, her own visit to Dr. Arklow had been made for the
purpose. But at the last moment her courage had failed her, and she
had said vaguely, in leaving, that she would let him know.
As she sat there, she saw her daughter’s pale illuminated face as
though it were before her. Anne’s happiness shone through her,
making her opaque and guarded features luminous and transparent;
and the mother could measure, from her own experience, the
amount of heat and force that fed that incandescence. She herself
had always had a terrible way of being happy—and that way was
Anne’s.
She simply could not bear to picture to herself the change, in Anne’s
face, from ecstasy to anguish. She had seen that change once, and
the sight had burned itself into her eye-balls. To destroy Anne’s
happiness seemed an act of murderous cruelty. What did it matter—
as the chances of life went—of what elements such happiness was
made? Had she, Kate Clephane, ever shrunk from her own bliss
because of the hidden risks it contained? She had played high,
staked everything—and lost. Could she blame her daughter for
choosing to take the same risks? No; there was, in all great
happiness, or the illusion momentarily passing for it, a quality so
beatific, so supernatural, that no pain with which it might have to be
paid could, at the time, seem too dear; could hardly, perhaps, ever
seem so, to headlong hearts like hers and Anne’s.
Her own heart had begun to tremble and dilate with her new
resolve; the resolve to accept the idea of Anne’s marriage, to cease
her inward struggle against it, and try to be in reality what she was
already pretending to be: the acquiescent, approving mother.... After
all, why not? Legally, technically, there was nothing wrong, nothing
socially punishable, in the case. And what was there on the higher,
the more private grounds where she pretended to take her stand
and deliver her judgment? Chris Fenno was a young man—she was
old enough to be, if not his mother, at least his mother-in-law. What
had she ever hoped or expected to be to him but a passing incident,
a pleasant memory? From the first, she had pitched their relation in
that key; had insisted on the difference in their ages, on her own
sense of the necessary transiency of the tie, on the fact that she
would not have it otherwise. Anything rather than to be the old
woman clutching at an impossible prolongation of bliss—anything
rather than be remembered as a burden instead of being regretted
as a delight! How often had she told him that she wanted to remain
with him like the memory of a flowering branch brushed by at night?
“You won’t quite know if it was lilac or laburnum, or both—you’ll only
know it was something vanishing and sweet.” Vanishing and sweet—
that was what she had meant to be! And she had kept to her
resolution till the blow fell—
Well, and was he so much to blame for its falling? She herself had
been the witness of his resistance, of his loyal efforts to escape. The
vehemence of Anne’s passion had thwarted him, had baffled them
both; if he loved her as passionately as she loved him, was he not
justified in accepting the happiness forced upon him? And how
refuse it without destroying the girl’s life?
“If any one is to be destroyed, oh God, don’t let it be Anne!” the
mother cried. She seemed at last to have reached a clearer height, a
more breathable air. Renunciation—renunciation. If she could attain
to that, what real obstacle was there to her daughter’s happiness?
“I would sell my soul for her—why not my memories?” she reflected.
The sound of steps and voices outside had ceased. From the landing
had come a “Goodbye, dearest!” in Nollie Tresselton’s voice; no
doubt she had been the last visitor to leave, and Anne was now
alone; perhaps alone with her betrothed. Well; to that thought also
Kate Clephane must accustom herself; by and bye they would be
always alone, those two, in the sense of being nearer to each other
than either of them was to any one else. The mother could bear that
too. Not to lose Anne—at all costs to keep her hold on the girl’s
confidence and tenderness: that was all that really mattered. She
would go to Anne now. She herself would ask the girl to fix the date
for the wedding.
She got up and walked along the deep-piled carpet of the corridor.
The door of Anne’s sitting-room was ajar, but no sound came from
within. Every one was gone, then; even Chris Fenno. With a breath
of relief the mother pushed the door open. The room was empty.
One of the tall vases was full of branching chrysanthemums and
autumn berries. In a corner stood a tea-table with scattered cups
and plates. The Airedale drowsed by the hearth. As she stood there,
Kate Clephane saw the little Anne who used to sit by that same fire
trying to coax the red birds through the fender. The vision melted
the last spot of resistance in her heart. The door of Anne’s bedroom
was also ajar, but no sound came from there either. Perhaps the girl
had gone out with her last visitors, escaping for a starlit rush up the
Riverside Drive before dinner. These sudden sallies at queer hours
were a way the young people had.
The mother listened a moment longer, then laid her hand on the
bedroom door. Before her, directly in the line of her vision, was
Anne’s narrow bed. On it the wedding-dress still lay, in a dazzle of
whiteness; and between Mrs. Clephane and the bed, looking also at
the dress, stood Anne and Chris Fenno. They had not heard her
cross the sitting-room or push open the bedroom door; they did not
hear her now. All their faculties were absorbed in each other. The
young man’s arms were around the girl, her cheek was against his.
One of his hands reached about her shoulder and, making a cup for
her chin, pressed her face closer. They were looking at the dress;
but the curves of their lips, hardly detached, were like those of a
fruit that has burst apart of its own ripeness.
Kate Clephane stood behind them like a ghost. It made her feel like
a ghost to be so invisible and inaudible. Then a furious flame of life
rushed through her; in every cell of her body she felt that same
embrace, felt the very texture of her lover’s cheek against her own,
burned with the heat of his palm as it clasped Anne’s chin to press
her closer.
“Oh, not that—not that—not that!” Mrs. Clephane imagined she had
shrieked it out at them, and pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle
the cry; then she became aware that it was only a dumb whisper
within her. For a time which seemed without end she continued to
stand there, invisible, inaudible, and they remained in each other’s
embrace, motionless, speechless. Then she turned and went. They
did not hear her.
A dark fermentation boiled up into her brain; every thought and
feeling was clogged with thick entangling memories.... Jealous? Was
she jealous of her daughter? Was she physically jealous? Was that
the real secret of her repugnance, her instinctive revulsion? Was that
why she had felt from the first as if some incestuous horror hung
between them?
She did not know—it was impossible to analyze her anguish. She
knew only that she must fly from it, fly as far as she could from the
setting of these last indelible impressions. How had she ever
imagined that she could keep her place at Anne’s side—that she
could either outstay Chris, or continue to live under the same roof
with them? Both projects seemed to her, now, equally nebulous and
impossible. She must put the world between them—the whole width
of the world was not enough. The very grave, she thought, would be
hardly black enough to blot out that scene.
She found herself, she hardly knew how, at the foot of the stairs, in
the front hall. Her precipitate descent recalled the early winter
morning when, as hastily, almost as unconsciously, she had
descended those same stairs, flying from her husband’s house.
Nothing was changed in the hall: her eyes, once again morbidly
receptive of details, noted on the door the same patent locks with
which her fingers had then struggled. Now, as then, a man’s hat and
stick lay on the hall table; on that other day they had been John
Clephane’s, now they were Chris Fenno’s. That was the only
difference.
She stood there, looking about her, wondering why she did not push
back the bolts and rush out into the night, hatless and cloakless as
she was. What else was there to do but to go straight to the river, or
to some tram line with its mortal headlights bearing straight down
on one? One didn’t have to have a hat and cloak to go out in search
of annihilation....
As she stood there the door-bell rang, and she heard the step of a
servant coming to open the door. She shrank back into the drawing-
room, and in another moment Enid Drover had rustled in, her pink
cheeks varnished with the cold, her furs full of the autumn
freshness. Her little eyes were sharp with excitement.
“My dear Kate! I’ve rushed in with such good news: I shall be late
for dinner, Hendrik will be furious. But never mind; I had to tell you.
The house next door really is for sale! Isn’t it too perfect? The agent
thinks it could be got for a fairly reasonable price. But Hendrik says
it may be snapped up at any minute, and Anne ought to decide at
once. Then you could stay on comfortably here, and you and she
and Chris would always be together, just as she wants you to be....
No; don’t send for her; I can’t wait. And besides, I want you to have
the pleasure of telling her.” On the doorstep Mrs. Drover turned to
call back: “Remember, Hendrik says she must decide.” Her limousine
engulfed her.
 XXV.
MRS. CLEPHANE excused herself from coming down to dinner; Aline
was to say that she was very tired, and begged that no one should
disturb her. The next morning, she knew, Chris was returning to
Baltimore. Perhaps in his absence she would be able to breathe
more freely, see more clearly.
Anne, as usual, respected her mother’s wishes; she neither came up
nor sent to enquire. But the next morning, in the old way, fresh and
shining, she appeared with Mrs. Clephane’s breakfast-tray. She
wanted to be reassured as to her mother’s health, and Kate, under
her solicitous eye, poured out a cup of tea and forced down a bit of
toast.
“You look tired, mother. It’s only that?”
“Only that, dear.”
“You didn’t tell me that Aunt Enid had been in last night about the
house next door—” Anne spoke the least little reproachfully.
“I’m sorry. I had such a headache that when she left I went straight
to my room. Did she telephone you?”
“Uncle Hendrik did. Isn’t it the greatest luck? It will be such fun
arranging it all.” The girl paused and looked at her mother. “And this
will make you decide, darling, won’t it?”
“Decide?”
“To stay on here. To keep this house for yourself. It will be almost
like our all being together.”
“Yes—almost.”
“You will stay, won’t you?”
“Stay here? I can’t—I can’t!” The words escaped before Mrs.
Clephane could repress them. Her heart began to rush about in her
like a caged animal.
Anne’s brows darkened and drew together. “But I don’t understand.
You told Chris you would—”
“Did I? Perhaps I did. But I must sometimes be allowed to change
my mind,” Mrs. Clephane murmured, forcing a thin smile.
“To change your mind about being with us? You don’t want to, then,
after all?”
Mrs. Clephane pushed the tray away and propped herself on her
elbow. “No, I don’t want to.”
“How you say it, mother! As if I were a stranger. I don’t
understand....” The girl’s lip was beginning to tremble. “I thought ...
Chris and I both thought....”
“I’m sorry. But I must really decide as I think best. When you are
married you won’t need me.”
“And shan’t you need me, mother? Not a little?” Anne hesitated, and
then ventured, timidly: “You’re so alone—so awfully alone.”
“I’ve always been that. It can’t be otherwise. You’ve chosen ...
you’ve chosen to be married....”
Anne stood up and looked down on her with searching imperious
eyes. “Is it my being married—or my being married to Chris?”
“Ah—don’t let us talk of that again!”
The girl continued to scrutinize her strangely. “Once for all—you
won’t tell me?”
Mrs. Clephane did not speak.
“Then I shall ask him—I shall ask him in your presence,” Anne
exclaimed in a shaking voice.
At the sound of that break in her voice the dread of seeing her suffer
once more superseded every other feeling in the mother’s breast.
She leaned against the pillows, speechless for a moment; then she
held out her hand, seeking Anne’s.
“There’s nothing to ask, dear; nothing to tell.”
“You don’t hate him, mother? You really don’t?”
Slowly Kate Clephane articulated: “I don’t—hate him.”
“But why won’t you see him with me, then? Why won’t you talk it all
out with us once for all? Mother, what is it? I must know.”
Mrs. Clephane, under her daughter’s relentless eyes, felt the blood
rising from her throat to her pale lips and drawn cheeks, and to the
forehead in which her pulses must be visibly beating. She lay there,
bathed in a self-accusing crimson, and it seemed to her that those
clear young eyes were like steel blades plunging into the deepest
folds of her conscience.
“You don’t hate him? But then you’re in love with him—you’re in love
with him, and I’ve known it all along!” The girl shrilled it out
suddenly, and hid her face in her hands.
Kate Clephane lay without speaking. In the first shock of the outcry
all her defences had crashed together about her head, and it had
been almost a relief to feel them going, to feel that pretences and
disguises were at an end. Then Anne’s hands dropped to her side,
and the mother, meeting her gaze, lost the sense of her own plight
in the sight of that other woe. All at once she felt herself strong and
resolute; all the old forces of dissimulation were pouring back
through her veins. The accusing red faded from her face, and she
lay there and quietly met the question in Anne’s eyes.
“Anne!” she simply said, with a little shrug.
“Oh, mother—mother! I think I must be going mad!” Anne was on
her knees at the bedside, her face buried in the coverlet. It was
easier to speak to her while her eyes were hidden, and Kate laid a
hand on her hair.
“Not mad, dear; but decidedly over-strung.” She heard the note of
magnanimity in her own voice.
“But can you forgive me—ever?”
“Nonsense, dear; can I do anything else?”
“But then—if you do forgive me, really—why must you go away?
Why won’t you promise to stay with us?”
Kate Clephane lay against her pillows and meditated. Her hand was
still in Anne’s hair; she held the girl’s head gently against the
coverlet, still not wishing her own face to be too closely scrutinized.
At length she spoke.
“I didn’t mean to tell you just yet; and you must tell no one.” She
paused, and rallied her failing courage. “I can’t promise to stay with
you, dear, because I may be going to get married too.” The first
words were the most difficult to say; after that she heard her voice
going on steadily. “Fred Landers has asked me to marry him; and I
think I shall accept.... No; don’t hug me too hard, child; my head
still aches—There; now you understand, don’t you? And you won’t
scold me any more? But remember, it’s a secret from every one. It’s
not to be spoken of till after you’re married.... Now go.”
After Anne had left her, subdued but jubilant, she lay there and
remembered, with a twinge of humiliation, that the night before she
had hurried downstairs in a mad rush to death. Anything—anything
to escape from the coil of horror closing in on her!... And it had
sufficed to her to meet Enid Drover in the hall, with that silly chatter
about the house next door, to check the impulse, drive her back into
the life she was flying from.... She reflected with self-derision that all
her suicidal impulses seemed to end in the same way; by landing her
in the arms of some man she didn’t care for. Then she remembered
Anne’s illuminated face, and lay listening to the renewed life of the
house, the bustle of happy preparations going on all about her.
“Poor Fred! Well—if it’s what he wants—” she thought. What she
herself wanted, all she now wanted, was never again to see that
dreadful question in Anne’s eyes. And she had found no other way of
evading it.
 XXVI.
NOW that a day for the wedding was fixed, the preparations went on
more rapidly. Soon there was only a fortnight left; then only ten
days; then a week.
Chris Fenno’s parents were to have come to New York to make the
acquaintance of their son’s betrothed; but though a date had several
times been appointed for their visit, Mrs. Fenno, whose health was
not good, had never been well enough to come, and finally it was
arranged that Anne should go to Baltimore to see them. She was to
stay with the Maclews, who immediately seized the opportunity to
organize a series of festivities in celebration of the event.
Lilla invited Mrs. Clephane to come with her daughter; but Kate
declined, on the plea that she herself was not well. People were
beginning to notice how tired and thin she looked. Her glass showed
streaks of gray in her redundant hair, and about her lips and eyes
the little lines she had so long kept at bay. Everybody in the family
agreed that it would be a good thing for her to have a few days’ rest
before the wedding.
With regard to her own future she had sworn Anne to unconditional
secrecy. She explained that she did not intend to give Fred Landers a
definite answer till after the wedding, and Anne, who had all the
Clephane reticence, understood her wish to keep the matter quiet,
and even in her guardian’s presence was careful not to betray that
she knew of his hopes. She only made him feel that he was more
than ever welcome, and touched him by showing an added cordiality
at a moment when most girls are deaf and blind to all human
concerns but their own.
“It’s so like Anne to find time to remember an old derelict just when
she might be excused for forgetting that any of us exist.” He said it
with a gentle complacency as he sat in Mrs. Clephane’s sitting-room
one evening during Anne’s absence. “She’s like you—very like you,”
he added, looking at Kate Clephane with shy beseeching eyes.
She smiled back at him, wondering if she would ever have the
courage to tell him that she meant to marry him. He was thinking of
that too, she knew. Why not tell him now, at once? She had only to
lean forward and lay her hand on his. No words would be necessary.
And surely she would feel less alone.... But she remained silent; it
was easier to think of speaking than to speak.
It was he who questioned: “And afterward—have you decided what
you’re going to do?”
She continued to smile. “There’ll be time to decide afterward.”
“Anne tells me you’ve definitely refused to remain in this house.”
“This house hasn’t many pleasant associations for me.”
He coloured as if she had caught him in a failure of tact. “I
understand that. But with the young people here ... or next door ...
she hoped you’d feel less lonely.”
Again she perceived that he was trying to remind her of a possible
alternative, and again she let the allusion drop, answering merely:
“I’m used to being lonely. It’s not as bad as people think.”
“You’ve known worse, you mean?” He seldom risked anything as
direct as that. “And it would be worse for you, being with Anne after
she’s married? You still hate the idea as much as ever?”
She rose impatiently and went to lean against the mantelpiece.
“Fred, what’s the use? I shall never hate it less. But that’s all over—
I’ve accepted it.”
“Yes, and made Anne so happy.”
“Oh, love is what is making Anne happy!” She hardly knew how she
brought the word from her lips.
“Well—loving Fenno hasn’t made her cease to love you.”
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