Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, September 17, 1921, Page 8

Soe: — L SH \\ S eS NS (FS << E>} a "ie. 0 , ie ete DO Le oe CS —— S3 i = en) SS SS orede. An. Unfinishe RS. TREVELYAN, as she took shot a quick glance down the length of her table and at the arrangement of her guests, and tried to learn if her lord and master approved. But he was listen- Lady Arbuthnot, right, was saying, and, being a man. failed to catch her meaning, and only smiled unconcern- But the Austrian Minister, who was her very dearest friend, saw and appreciated, and gave her a quick little smile over her fan, which said that the table was perfect, the people most interesting, and that she could So Mrs. Trevelyan pulled at the tips of her gloves and smiled upon her guests. Mrs. Trevelyan was not used to ques- tioning her powers,. but. this dinner had been almost impromptu, and she It was quite un- necessary, for her dinner carried with it the added virtue of being the last her sea! Ing to something who sat on his edly and cheerfully back at her. the wife of possess her soul in peace. had been in doubt. of the season, an encore to all that had gone before—a special by request on the social programme. It was not one of many other stretch- ing on for weeks, for the summer’s change and leisure beran on the mor- Tow, and there was nothing hanging over her guests that they must gojthe stage or in novels; in real life) on to later. luggage stood ready locked and strap- ped at home; they could look before them to the whole summer’s pleasure, and they were relaxed and ready to be pleased, and broke simultaneously into a low murmur of talk and laughter. The windows of the dining room stood open from the floor, and from the tiny garden that surrounded the house, even in the great mass of don, came the odor of flowers and of fresh turf. .A soft wind moved the candles under their red shades; and gently as though number way. It is Sir Henry who is making all the trouble. He is attacking one I know.” to speak, but the older man nodded is head for him to go on. “He has Just said that fiction is stranger th: truth,” continued the novelist. says that I—that people who wri could never interest people who read if they wrote of things as they really are. They select, he says—they take the critical moment in a man’s life and the crises, and want others to believe th: that is what happenes every day. Which it is not, so the Goneral says. He thinks that life is commonplace and uneventfal—that lis, uneventful in a picturesque or dramatic way. He admits — that women’s lives are saved from drown- ting, but that they are not saved by their lovers, but by a longshoreman | with a wife and six children, who ac- cepts five pounds for doing it. That's it, is it not?” he asked. The General. nodded and smiled. “What I said to Phillips was,” he explained, “‘that !f things were re- lated just as they happen, they would not be interesting. People do not say the dramatic things they say on |disappointing. I have seen men die on the battlefield, for instafice, and they never cried, ‘I die that my coun- try may live,’ or ‘I have got my pro- motion at last’; they just stared up at‘the surgeon and said, ‘Have I got to lose that arm?’ or ‘I am killed, I think.’ You see, when men are dying and the batteries are firing, one propriate remark for the occasion. words were, Europe.’ ‘Rollup A man who could change| ' answered the novelist, ‘it is the other | who ts of the oldest and dearest platitudes | really around you, and horses are plunging, |last witness, Sir Henry, |lips, smiling. stucco and brick of encircling Lon-|doesn’t have time to think up the ap-| good at it was,” 1} summer-night|don't believe, now, that Pitt's last/serjously, “that the story Phillips the map of| accused said In the reply, or what happened during those two ‘weeks before the sunset. The author has no right to choose only He paused for the general the critical moments, and to shut out | the commonplace, evetyday life by a sort of literary closure. That is, if he claims to tell the truth.” Phillips raised his eyebrows and looked carefully around the table. “Does any one else feel called upon to testify?” he asked. “It's ‘awful, isn’t it, Phillips,” laughed Trevelyan, comfortably, “to |find that the photographer is the only artist, after all? I feel very guilty.” “You ought to,” pronounced the |Getteral, gayly. He was very well satisfied with hi “And I am sure Mr. agree with me, too,” he went an, con- Gordon will fidently, with younger man. bow towards the “He has seen more will ‘tell you, I'am sure, that what happens only suggests the story; it {fs not complete in itself. i always needs the author's touc! the rough diamond—” “Oh, thanks, thanks, General,” laughed Phillips. “My feelings are |mot hurt as tadly as that.” Gordon had been turning the stem | thumb and his finger while the others were talking, and looking down at it smiling. Now he raised -his eves as though he meant to speak, and then dropped them agrin. “I am afraid, Sir Henry," he said, ‘that I don't agree with you at all.” be: “You shouldn't have called on that “Your case was ve “I am quite sure,” said Gordon, will never write is a true story, but he will not write {t because people they rose from afar, and not only |the face of a continent would not use| would say {t is impossible, just as from across the top of the high wall of the omnibuses passing farther into |his dying breath in making epigrams. of the doctors who said that. bre rae aie us and said, ‘Thenk $ uae we were Wie, I Suppose-—and -went off into uncon- sciousness again. When he came to the next time, he asked Royce, in a whisper, how 1 he had to live. He wasn't the soft of a man you had to Ne to about a thing Iike that, and Royce told him he did not think he could live for more than an hour or twos The mun moved his head to show that he understood, and raised his hand to his throat and began pull at his shirt, but the effort jsent him off into a fainting fit again. | Lopened his collar for him as gently ) 88 I could, and found that his fingers |had clinched around a silver necklace that he wore about his neck, and from which there hung a gold locket shaped like a heart.’ “When the man came to,” contin- ued Gordon, in the same conventional monotone, “he begged me to take the of the world than any of us, and he/|chain and locket to a girl whom he \said I would find either in London or in New York. He gave me the ad- dress of her banker. He said: ‘Tak: it off my neck before you bury me; tell her I wore it ever since she gav: it to me. That ft has been a charm and losdstone to me. locket rose and = fell breast, it against my was as if her heart were They knew that thelr/they are commonplace or sorrid—or|of a wine-class slowly between his | pressing against mine and answering the beating and throbbing of the blood in my ¥ e Gordon pa tips. said Phil-|in about a wee! I | ou have all seen sunsets sometimes before the house, came the rumble/It was one of his secretaries or one that you knew would be laughed at !f/bad not more than a coup! “The man did not die,” he said, raising his h him back into were able to take him along with us on a litter. But | Sto imationality even, | America whea he was sixteen; he bad |no family, had saved no money, and an j blackness Ia: jas t 7 ; had been an engineer, a newspape- correspondent, officer Chinese had built had seen ser- vice on the desert in the French army of Algiers. He had no home or for he had left was everything to the suc- cess of this expedition into Africa to, jmake himr known and to give him It was the story of Othello @ over again. His from her point of view of her friends, in the fact that he was as helplessly ineligible a young man & cowboy. And he had lived a life of which he had no great reason to be proud. He had existed entirely for excitement, as other men live to drink until they kill themselves it; nothing he had done had counted for much.except his bridges. They are stil. standing. But the things he had written are lost in the columns of the daily papers. position. a side as to fight on the other! He was a rolling stone, and had been a rolling stone from the time he was » and returned to} the thoughtful scrutiny of his finger-|how such a man would attract a to the day he had met this girl, when he was just thirty. Yet you can see young, impressionable girl, who had met only those’ men whose actions “Royce brought |are bountied by the courts of law or h form again that! Wall Street, or the younger set who drive,coaches and who live the life of the clubs. She had gone {hrough he was very weak, and would lie for life as some people go through pic- mumbling and raving in a fever. he had been trying to reach Lake Tehad, to do what we-had done, wittt- out any means of doing 1 the suburbs, and the occasional quick |the man who was capable of writing /such a story, something in ovr own |Senogalese soldiers. He was the only rush of a hansom over the smooth |home, ‘All is lost but honor,’ was just | lives, or in the lives of our friends.| white man in the party, and his men asphalt. Jt was a most delightful choice of people, gathered at short notice and to do honor to no one in particular, but to give each a chance to say good-by before he or she met the yacht at Southampton or took the club train to Homburg. They al! knew each other very well; and if there was a guest of the evening, it was one of the two Americans— either Miss Egerton, the girl who was to marry Lord Arbuthnot, whose mother sat on Trevel; "s right, or young Gordon, the explorer, who had just come*out of Africa. ton Was a most strikingly beauti fu face, and an when she spoke, which the Engl found most attractive. In app been variously likened who was painting her portrait, to a druidess, a vestal virgin, and a Greek goddess; and Lad) friends, who thought to please the girl, assured her that no one would ever suppose her to be an American —their ideas of the American young woman having been gathered from those who pick out tunes with one finger on the pianos in the public par-' lors of the Metropole. Miss Egerton was said to be Intensely interested in Arbuthnot’s | the sort of a man who would 1 more battles than he would win. No; you, Phillips,” said the General, rais- ing his voice as he became more con- fident and conscious that he held the centre of the stage, “and you, Tre- velyan, don’t write and paint every- day things as they are. You intro- duce something for a contrast or for an effect; a red coat in a landseape for the bit of color you want, when in real life the red coat would not be within miles; or you have a band of music playing a popular air in the street when a murder is going on inside the house. You do it because it is effective; but it isn't true. Now Mr. Caithness was telling us the other night at the club, on this very matter— 3 “Oh, that’s hardly fair,” laughed Trevelyan you've rehearsed all this before. You've come prepared.” 4 , not at all,”” frowned the gen- eral, sweeping on. ‘‘He said that be- fore he was raised to the bench, when he practiced criminal law, he had brought word to a man that he was to be reprieved, and to another that he was to die. Now, you know,” ex- claimed the General, with shrug, and appealing to ag table, “how that would be done on the stage or in a her lover’s career, and was as am- novel, with the prisoner bound ready bitious for his success in the House as he was himself. others as little as people of their class do. The others at the table were General Sir Henry Kent; Phil- lips, the novelist; the Austrian Min- ister and his young wife; and Trevel- yan, who painted portraits for large sums of money and figure pieces! for art; and some simply fashionable smart people who were good listen- ers, and who were rather. disap- pointed that the American explorer was no more sunburned than other young men who had stayed at home, and who had gone in for tennis or yachting. The worst of Gordon was that he made it next to fmpossible for one to lionize him. He had been back in civilization and London only two weeks, unless Cairo and Shepheard’s Hotel are civilization, and he had been asked everywhere, and for the first week had gone everywhere. But whenever his hostess looked for him. to present another and not so recent a Mon, he was generally found either humbly carrying an ice to some neglected dowager, or talking big game or international yachting or tailors to a circle of younger sons in the smoking-room, just as though several hundred attractive and dis- tinguished people were not waiting to fling the speeches they had prepared on Africa at him, in the drawing- room above, He had suddenly dis- appeared during the second week of his stay in London, which was also the last week of the London season, and managers of lecture tours and publishers and lion-hunters, and even friends who cared for him for him- self, had failed to find’ him at his lodgings. Thevelyan, who had known him when he was a travelling corre- spondent and artist for one of the great weeklies, had found him at the club the night before, and had asked him to his wife's impromptu dinner, from which he had at first begged off, but, on learning who was to be there, had changed his mind and accepted. The dinner was well on its way towards its end, and the women had begun to talk across the table, and to exchange bankers’ addresses, and to say “Be sure and look us up in Paris,” and “‘When do you expect to sail from Cowes?” The Austrian Minister was saying this to his hostess, when Sir Henry Kent, who had been talking, across to Phillips, the novelist. leaned back in his place and sald,.as though to chalienge the attention of every one, “I cart agree with you, Phillips. I am sure no one else will.”” “Dear me,” complained Mrs. velyan, plaintively, “what have y been saying now, Mr. Phillips? always has such debatable theories,” she explainsd. eo They were both | very much in Jove, and showed it to, Hes for execution, and a galloping horse, and a fluttering piece of white paper, and all that. Well, now, Caithnes: told us that he went into the man prieved, John,’ or William, or what- ever the feilow's name was. And the man looked at him and said: ‘Is that so? That’s good—that’s good’; and, that was all he said. And then, again, he told one man whose life he had tried very hard to ‘The Home Secretary has refused to inter- cede for you. I saw him at his house last night at nine o’clock.|’ And the murderer, instead of ying, ‘My God! what will my wife and children do?’ looked at him, and repeated, ‘At nine o'clock last night!’ just as though that were’ the important part of the message.” “Well, but, General,” said Phillips, smiling, “that’s dramatic enough’as it is, I think, Why—” “Yes,” interrupted the General, quickly and triumphantly. “But that is not what you would have made him say, is it? That’s my point.” “* “There was a man told me once, Lord Arbuthnot began, leisurely “he was a great chum of mine, and ‘it illustrates what Sir Henry has said, I think—he was engaged to a girl, and he had a misunderstanding or an understanding with her that opened both their eyes, at a dance, and the next afternoon he called, and they talked it over in the drawing-room, with the tea-tray between them, and agreed to end it. On the stage he would have risen and said, ‘Well, the comedy is over, the tragedy begins, or the curtain falls; and she would have gone to the piano and played Chopin sadly while he made his exit. Instead of. which he got up to go without saying anything, and as he rose he upset a cup and saucer on the tea-table, and said, ‘Oh, I beg your pardon’; and she said, ‘It isn’t broken’; and he went out. You see,” the young man added, smiling, “‘there wefe two young people whose hearts were breaking, and yet they talked of teacups, not because they did not fee], but because custom is too strong on us and too much fér us. We do not say dramatic things or do theatri- cal ones. It does not make interest- ing reading, but it is the truth. “Bxactly,” cut in the Austrian Minister, eagerly. “And then there is the prerogative of the author and of the playwright to drop a curtain whenever he wants to, or to put a stop to everything by ending thi chapter. That isn’t fair. That is an advantage over nature. When some one accuses some one else of doing something dreadful at the play, down comes the curtain quick and keeps things at fever point, or the chapter ends with a lot of stars, and the next page begins with a description of a cell and sald, ‘You have been. re-./ ¢| Not ghost stories, or stories of ad-|had turned on him, and left him as | | hours sleeping when we rested, or/ture-galleries, with their catalogues We|marked at the best pictures, learned™from him at odd times that | He had) of dozen and hoped to be famous, And |any tried to paint them. We all know|porters and a corporal’s (guard of She knew nothing of the little fellows whose work was skied, who were try- ing to Se known, who were not of her world, but who toiled and prayed This man came {nto her life suddenly with his stories ‘of adventure and strange people and strange places, of things done for the love of doing them and venture, but of ambitions that come |we found him, carrying off with them |not for the reward or reputation, and to nothifg, of people who were re-| warded or punished in this world in- stead of In the next, and love stories.” Phillips looked et the young man | | “Will You Take keenly and smiled. ‘‘Especially love stories,” he said. “Tell it, Gordon,” said Mr. Tre- velyan. “Yes,” said Gordon, nodding -his head in assent, “I was thinking of a Particular story. It is as complete, I think, and as dramatic as any of those we have read: It is about a man I met in Africa. It is not a long story,” he said, looking around ‘the table tentatively, ‘‘but it ends badly.” ‘There was a silence much more ap- Preciated than a polite.murmur of invitation would have been and the simply smart people settled them- selves rigidly to catch every word for future-use. They realized that this would be a story which had not as yet appeared in the newspapers, and which would not make a part of Gor- don’s book. Mrs, Trevelyan smiled encouragingly upon her former pro- tege; she was sure he was going to do himself credit; but the American girl chose this chance, when all the other eyes were turned expectantly towards the explorer, to look at her lov: sd ‘We were on our return m: from Lake Tchad to the Mobangi, said Gordon. ‘We had been travel- ling over a month, sometimes by water and sometimes through the for- est, and we did not expect to see any other white men besides those of our own party for %everal months to come. In the middle of a jungle late one afternoon I found this man lying at the foot of a tree. He had been cut and beaten and left for dead. -It ‘was as much of a surprise to me, you understand, as it would be to you if you were driving through Trafalgar Square in a hansom, and an African lion should spring up on your horses’ haunches., We believed we were the only white men that had ever suc- ceeded in getting that far south. Crampel had tried it, and no one knows yet whether he is dead or alive; Doctor Schlemen had _ been eaten by cannibals, and Major Bethume had turned back two hub- dred ‘miles farther north; and we could no more account for this man’s presence than if he had been dropped from the clouds. Lieutenant Royce, my surgeon. went to work at him. and we halted where we were for the sunset two weeks later. To be true. “On the contrary, Mrs. Trevelyan,” ———— —__ > i eNom a > Se 7 eee Ns FEE =) — : = FASE A we ought to be told what the man}! In about an hour the man night. his stock of provisions and arms. YAN It Now?" He Sail promise from the French government to make him governor of the terri- tory he opened up if he succeeded, but he had had no) official help. “If he failed, he got nothing; if he suc- ceeded, he did so at’ his own expense and by his own.endeavors. It was only a wonder he had been able to get as far ashe did. He.did not seem to feel the failure of his expedition. All that was lost in the happiness of getting back alive to this woman with whom he was/in.love. He had been three days alone before we found him, and in. those three days, while he waited for death, he had thought of nothing but that he would never see her again. He had resigned him- self to this, had given up all hope, and our coming seemed like a miracle to him. I have read about men in love, I have seen it on thé stage, I have seen it in reak life, but I never Saw a@ man £0 grateful to God and so happy and so insane over a woman as this man was. He rayed about her and talked to me about her when he was in his senses. The porters could not understand him, and he found me sympathetic, I suppose, or else he did not care, and only. wanted to speak of her. to some’one, and s0 he told me the story over and over again as I walxed beside the litter, or as we sat by the fire at night. She must have been a very remarkable girl. He had met her first the year before, on one of the I in steamers that ply from New York to Gibraltar. She was ‘traveling with her father, who was an invalid going to Tangier for his health; from Tangier they were to go up to Nice and Cannes, and in the |spring to Parts and on to London for this season just over. The man was going from Gibraltar f®Zanzibar, and then on into the Congo! They had met the first night out; they had se: arated thirteen days later at Gibra! tar, and in that time the girl had fallen in love with him, and had promiyed to marry him if he would let her, for he was very proud. He had te be. He had absolutely nothing to offer her. She is very well, known at home. I moan her family fs; they have lived in New York from its first days, and they are very rich. The girl had live a life’as different from his as the life of a girl in society He moved and opened his eyes. must be from that of a vagabond. He He} |had undortaken the expedition gn a‘and. then fascinated, and then won when he was feverish, and he talked | he bewildered her at first, I suppose, her. these two wafking the deck together during the day, or sitting side by side when the night came on, the You can imagine how it was, ocean stretched before them... The daring of his. present undertaking, the absurd glamor that is thrown over those who have gone into that strange country from which some travellers return, and the pictur- esqueness of his past life. It is_no wonder the girl made too much of him. I do not think he knew what was coming. He did not pose before her, Iam quite sure, from what I knew of him, that he did not. In- deed, I believed him when he said that he had fought against the more than interest she had begun to show for him. He was the’ sort of man women care for, but they had not been of this woman's class or calibre. It came to him like a sign from the heavens. It was as if a goddess had stooped to him. He told her when they separated that.if he succeeded— if he opened this unknown country, if he was rewarded as they had prom- ised to reward him—he might dare to come to her; and she called him her knight-errant,.and gave him her chain and locket to wear, and told him’ whethér he failed.or succeeded it méant nothing to her, and that her life was his while it lasted, and her soul as well. “I think,” Gordon said, stopping abruptly, with an air of careful con- sideration, “that those were her words as he-repeated them to me.” He raised his eyes thoughtfully towards the face of the girl opposite. and then gianced past her, as if he were trying to recall the words the man.had used. The fino, beautiful face of the woman was white and }drawn around the lips, and she gave |2 quick, appealing glance at her hostess, as if she would beg to be allowed to go. “You can imagine a man,” Gordon went on, more lightly, ‘“fitding a hansom cab slow when he is riding from the station to.see the woman he loves; but imagine this man urg- ing himself and the rest of us to .hurry when we were in the heart of Africa, with six months’ travel in front of us before we could reach the first limits’ of civilization. That {s what this man ‘did. When he was still on his litter he used to toss and in. the | porters and myself because we moved bridges: Copyright, 1921, by The and abuse the bearers and ly. When we stopped for the and when the morning came he was the first to wake, if he slept at ¢. and eager to push on. When | at last he was able to walk, hé worked himself into a fever again, and it was only when Royce warned him that he would kill himself if he kept on that he submittcy to be car- tied, and forced himself to be patient. And all the time the poor devil kept saying how unworthy he was of her, how miserably he had wasted years, how unfitted he was for tho te happiness which had come into} bis life, I suppose every man says that when he is in love; very prop- erly, too; but the worst of ft was, in this man’s case, that [t was so very) true. He was unworthy of hér in everything but his love for her. It) used to frighten me to see how much | cared. Well, we got out of {t at The soldiers he had |Raw white faces once more, and fought with knew him only as a man| women’s voices, and th }who cared more for the fighting than|fear-of failv. |for what the fighting was about, and|could bredthe again. That when the |he Nad been as ready \» write on one ‘ready enough to push o! |man made my life miserable. sixteen and had run away to sea, up|done so well, and would have done jto he and reached Alexandria, and| heard train and | f® were over, and we I was quite nm to London, | but we had to wait a week for the steamer, and during that time that He had g2 much more if he had had my equipment, that I tried to see that he recetyed all the credit due him, But he would have none of the public receptions, and the audience with the khedive, or any, of the fuss they made over us. He only wanted to get back He spent the days on the quay watching them load the steamer. | and counting the hours until she was to sail; and even at night he would leave the first bed he had slept in for six months, and would come into; my room and ask me if I would not! sit up and talk with him until day- light. You see, after he had given | up all thought of all, and believed | himself about to die without seeing her again\jt made her all the dearer, I suppose, and made him all the more fearful of losing her again. “He became very quiet as soon as we were really under way, and Royce} and I hardly knew him for the same man...He would sit in silence in his steamer-chair for hours, looking out at the sea and smiling to himself, and sometimes, for he was still yery weak and feverish, the tears. would come to his e; and run down his) cheeks. ‘This is the way he would! sit,’ he said to me one night, ‘with! the dark purple sky and the strange | Southern stars over our heads, and! the rail of the boat rising and sink-| ing below the line af the horizon. | And I can hear her voice, and I try to imagine she is still sitting there, as she did the last night out, when | I held her hands between mine,’ "| Gordon paused a moment, and then | went on more slowly: “I do not know} whether it was that the excitement of | the journey overland had kept him | up or not, but as we went on he be- came much weaker and slept more, until Royce became anxious “and alarmed about him. But he did not know it himself; he had grown so sure of his recovery then that he did! not understand what the weakness meant. He.fell off into l6ng spells! of sleep or unconsciousness, and woke, only to be fed, and would then fall} back to sleep again. And in one of these spells of unconsciousness he died. He died within two days of land. He had no home and no coun- ‘try and no family, as I told you, and we buried him at sea. He left noth- ing behind him, for the very clothes | he wore were those. we had given. him—nothing but the locket and the chain which he had told me to take from his neck when he died. { Gordon's voice had grown very cold | and hard. He stopped and ran his| fingers down into his pocket and pulled out a little leather bag. The people at the table watched him in silence as he opened it and took out{ a dull silver chain with a gold heart anging fronp it. ‘ ‘This is it,” he said, gently... He leaned across the table, with his eyes fixed on those of the American girl, and dropped the chain in front of her. “Would you like to see it?” he said. The rest moved curiously forward | to look at the fittle heap of gold’and silver_as it lay on the white cloth. But the girl, with her eyes half closed and her lips pressed together, pushed aS | By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS } f | Wheeler Newspaper Syndicate. . her only a few months, whom she was very much in love. So you see,” he went on, smiling, “that believii (live to return and find her but Nature is kinder than writers of fiction, and quite as dramatic.” Phillips did not reply to this, and the General only shook, his head doubtfully and said nothing. So Mrs. Trevelyan looked at Lady Arbuthnot, and the ladies rose and left the room. ‘When the men had left them, a young * girl went to the piano, andthe other women seated themselves’ to listen; but Miss Eger’on, saying that it. warm, stepped out through one of the high windows on to the little balcony that overhung the garden. It was dark» ont there and cool, and the rumbling of the, encircling city sounded as distant and as far off as the reflection seemed that His miilion lights threw up to the sky. ,abore. The girl leaned her ang bare shoulder against the rough stone wall of the house, and pressed her hands tdgether, with her fingers locking and unlocking and her rings cutting through her gloves. She was trem- bling slightly, and the blood In her yems ‘as hot aad tingling. Sho. heard the voices of the men as they entered the drawing-room, the mo- mentary cessation of the music at the piano and its renewal, and then a fis- ure blocked the Hight from the win- dow, and Gordon stepped out of it and stood in front of her with the chain and locket in his hand. He held it- toward her, and they faced each other for a moment in silence. “Will you take it now?” he said. The girl raised her head, and drew herself up until she stood’ straight and tall before him. “Have you not punished me enough?” she asked, in a whisper, “Are you not satisfied? Was it brave?’’ Was tt manly? Is that what you have learned among your savages—to torture 2 woman?” Gordon observed her, curiously, with cold consideration. “What of the suffeerings of the man to whom you'gave this?” he asked. “Why not consider him? What was your bad quarter of an hour at the table, with your friends around you, to the year he suffered danger and physical pain for you—for you, remember?” “They told me he was dead,” she said. “Then it was denied, and then the French papers told of it again, and with horrible detail, and how it \Y happened.”” = G Gordon took a step nearer her. “And does your love. come ani no with the editions of the dally papers?” he asked, fiercely. “If they vay tomorrow morning that Arbuth- not fs false to his principles or his iparty, that he is a bribe-taker, a man who sells his vote, will you belleve them and stop loving him?” I a sharp exclamation of disdain. “Or ." ho went on, bitterly, will you “until the eral organs had time to deny it? Js that the love, the lifo, and the soul you. promised the man who-—" % s mie of the drawing-room, and the tall figure of young Arbuthnot ap: in ‘the opening of the window as he looked doubtfully out into the dark- ness. Gordon took a step back into the light of the window, where he could “be seen, and leaned easily against tho railing of. the balcony. His eyes were turned towards the street, and he noticed over the wall the top of a passing omnibus and. the ; slow of the men’s pipes who sat-on It. “Miss Egerton?" asked Arbuthnot, his eyes still blinded by the lights of the room he had left. “Is she here? Oh, ts that you?” he-said,:2s he saw the movement of the white dress. “TI was sent to. look for you," he sald “They were afraid something was wrong.” He turned to Gordon, as if in explanation of his lover-like soli¢i- tude, It has been rather a hard week, and it has kept one pretty well on the govall the time, and I-thought Miss Egerton looked tired at dinner.” The moment he had spoken, the sirl came towards him quickly, and it on with her hand to the man who sat next her, and bowed her head slightly, as though it was an effort for her to move at all. sigh of relief. “J should:say your story did end |came.te tell you'that Lady Arbuthnot “It is is going. badly, Mr. Gordon,’ terribly sad,and “I don't know, not, thoughtfuily- seems to me it was better. As Mr. Gordon says, the man was hardly worthy of her. A man should hare something more to offer a woman than love; it is a woman's preroga- tive to be loved. Any ntimber of men may love her; it is nothing to their credit; they cannot help themselves.” “Well,” said General Kent, “if all true stories turn out as badly as that one ‘does, said against those the story-writers tell, I prefer the ones Anstey and Jerome make-up. I call it'a most unpleasant story.” “But it isn't finished yet,” said | Gordon, as he leaned over and picked ;up the chain and locket. ‘‘There is jstill_a little mowe.” “Oh, I beg your pardon!” said the wife of the Austrian ster, eag- lerly, “But then,” she added, “you can't make it any better. ‘You cannot bring the man back to life.” by “No,” said Gordon, “but I can make it a little worse.” “Ah, I-see,” said Phillips, with a story-teller’s intuition—“the girl.” “The first day I reached London I went to her hanker’s and got her address,” continued Gordon. “And I wrote, saying I wanted’ to see her, but before I could get an answer I met her the next afternoon at a gar- den-party. At least I did no! meat she said. unnecessarily $0." said Lady Arbut es SS Z >> SSN The wife of |ingly at this show of affectio! the Austrian Minister gave a little/then drew her nezrer, I don’t know; it'a pity to leave it. I will take back what I|-* wy put her arm insidé. of his, and took is hand. : He looked down at her wonder- ¢ . And said, gently, “You are tired, aren't you? I She‘is waiting for you.” “Tt is very pretfy and peaceful out here,” he said, ;‘Is.it not?. Jt seems Good-night, Gor- * don, and thank you for your story.” He stopped, with one foot on the threshold, and smiled. “And yet, do you know,” he said, “I cannot help thinking you were guilty of doing just what you aceused Phillips of doing. I -somehow ‘thought’ you helped the true ‘story ‘ont a little. Now didn’t you? Was it all just as you told it?) Or am I wi A bs “No,” Gordon answer right. I did change it 2 littl, particular.” “And what*was that,-may I ask?” said Arbuthnot. mat “The man did ‘not die,” Gordon answered. ‘ Arbuthnot gave a qnick little ‘sigh of sympathy. “Poor devil!” he safd, softly; “poor chap!” We moved ‘his left hand over and touched tht hand of the girl, as though to reassure him. self of his own good fortune. Then he raised his cyes. to Gordon's with a curious, puzzled look jn them. me ee oe Fonniy bregma de ‘it e Is no ow. uu come get the chain?” me cree uu are , {n.one “On.” said Gordon, {ndifferently, 7. “it did not, mean anything. to him, you see, when he found he had lost [her, and it could not.mean anything te her. Tu is ome value, It’ means nothing to any cne—excey:, parhaps, tas" WA SAN Ass \\ << =} (> b) = Sto S S y NWS ~ ) Wy SS 5 rn SAST hw LIS Ss 5, =—— There was q soft step on the fi 4 [ps x red q.