HERE AND BEYOND Edith Wharton _Decorations by E. C. Caswell_ [Illustration: [Logo]] D. APPLETON & COMPANY New York ❧ London ❧ Mcmxxvi [Illustration: [Fleuron]] COPYRIGHT—1926—BY D. APPLETON & COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA COPYRIGHT, 1924, 1925, 1926, BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY THE CONSOLIDATED MAGAZINES CORPORATION COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS CONTENTS PAGE MISS MARY PASK 1 THE YOUNG GENTLEMEN 32 BEWITCHED 79 THE SEED OF THE FAITH 125 THE TEMPERATE ZONE 194 VELVET EAR-PADS 255 HERE AND BEYOND MISS MARY PASK I It was not till the following spring that I plucked up courage to tell Mrs. Bridgeworth what had happened to me that night at Morgat. In the first place, Mrs. Bridgeworth was in America; and after the night in question I lingered on abroad for several months—not for pleasure, God knows, but because of a nervous collapse supposed to be the result of having taken up my work again too soon after my touch of fever in Egypt. But, in any case, if I had been door to door with Grace Bridgeworth I could not have spoken of the affair before, to her or to any one else; not till I had been rest-cured and built up again at one of those wonderful Swiss sanatoria where they clean the cobwebs out of you. I could not even have written to her—not to save my life. The happenings of that night had to be overlaid with layer upon layer of time and forgetfulness before I could tolerate any return to them. The beginning was idiotically simple; just the sudden reflex of a New England conscience acting on an enfeebled constitution. I had been painting in Brittany, in lovely but uncertain autumn weather, one day all blue and silver, the next shrieking gales or driving fog. There is a rough little white-washed inn out on the Pointe du Raz, swarmed over by tourists in summer but a sea-washed solitude in autumn; and there I was staying and trying to do waves, when some one said: “You ought to go over to Cape something else, beyond Morgat.” I went, and had a silver-and-blue day there; and on the way back the name of Morgat set up an unexpected association of ideas: Morgat—Grace Bridgeworth—Grace’s sister, Mary Pask—“You know my darling Mary has a little place now near Morgat; if you ever go to Brittany do go to see her. She lives such a lonely life—it makes me so unhappy.”