hat I'll clear him, and I made him give himself up."

XVI

THE TWO CANAANS

When Joe left Ariel at Judge Pike's gate she lingered there, her elbows
upon the uppermost cross-bar, like a village girl at twilight, watching
his thin figure vanish into the heavy shadow of the maples, then emerge
momentarily, ghost-gray and rapid, at the lighted crossing down the
street, to disappear again under the trees beyond, followed a second
later by a brownish streak as the mongrel heeled after him. When they
had passed the second corner she could no longer be certain of them,
although the street was straight, with flat, draughtsmanlike Western
directness: both figures and Joe's quick footsteps merging with the
night. Still she did not turn to go; did not alter her position, nor
cease to gaze down the dim street. Few lights shone; almost all the
windows of the houses were darkened, and, save for the summer murmurs,
the faint creak of upper branches, and the infinitesimal voices of
insects in the grass, there was silence: the pleasant and somnolent
hush, swathed in which that part of Canaan crosses to the far side of
the eleventh hour.

But Ariel, not soothed by this balm, sought beyond it, to see that
unquiet Canaan whither her old friend bent his steps and found his
labor and his dwelling: that other Canaan where peace did not fall
comfortably with the coming of night; a place as alien in habit, in
thought, and almost in speech as if it had been upon another continent.
And yet--so strange is the duality of towns--it lay but a few blocks
distant.

Here, about Ariel, as she stood at the gate of the Pike Mansion, the
houses of the good (secure of salvation and daily bread) were closed
and quiet, as safely shut and sound asleep as the churches; but deeper
in the town there was light and life and merry, evil
industry,--screened, but strong to last until morning; there were
haunts of haggard merriment in plenty: surreptitious chambers where
roulette-wheels swam beneath dizzied eyes; ill-favored bars, reached by
devious ways, where quavering voices offered song and were harshly
checked; and through the burdened air of this Canaan wandered heavy
smells of musk like that upon Happy Fear's wife, who must now be so
pale beneath her rouge. And above all this, and for all this, and
because of all this, was that one resort to which Joe now made his way;
that haven whose lights burn all night long, whose doors are never
closed, but ar