Evening Star Newspaper, January 14, 1923, Page 72

) Adamantine Alice and the Famed Debutante’s Despair Engage in a Little: Drama All Their Own. RE you. engaged?” The man put his question with that chaming lack of cere- mony only possible when ‘one has just met, and is flirting with, the gir! for the evening. The girl shrugged her shoulders with that candor which is only pos- sible when onme is morally certain one will never see the man again af- ter the close of the dance, and mur- mured, “Oh, no! faint satisfac- tion clouding her utterance. “That’s a nice way to talk,” grum- ‘bled the man. She looked at him, and demanded: “Well—are you engaged?” “No, sir!" he responded, and lighted & clgarette with emphasis. She laughted in merriment that Tose instead of abating., “That's & nice way to talk!” He put down his cigarette and looked at her with new appreciation. “You pack a mean wallop,” he decid- ed. From the country club piazsa their location was unquestionably roman- tic. ' The younger set who came out on the plazza to breathe between dances would say that they had pos- sibilities. The older set would mere- 1y sigh and repeat their familiar blatancies about how-wonderful-was Youth-under-the-moon-and - oh - to-be ~there-again! The critical youth of the day, how- ever, was too keen to enjoy a situa- tlon until that situation should be tried and tested. sat beneath a moon that poured hint- ing light and sbade over the golf Mnks in front of them and the little woody lane at one side, they looked at each other in cool stock-taking, and were hardly aware that Jine ap- pealed all about them. Ttwas an interesting step in the even- ing's formula. ¥e had been present- ed early In the evening, and had kept 1n touch with her since then, making lordly invasions from the stag line, and rushing just enough other girls to keep interest uncertain. There was nothing large and crude about his method of attack; and a girl al- ways appreciates finesse, although at times she might not like it too well. * ¥ % % HEY had finally condecended to waste some of the delirious mu- sic and sit out and talk. This was arrived at by the simple and di- rect method of hitting one full in the face. He had said: Look here, you're interesting: come on—we'll sit this out” And she, following him, had mur- mured: ‘Thank you too much! If vyou get boring, we return. If not, we do anyway.” They had been tilting with words for ten minutes. She was more beautiful and less striking than the popular ballroom type. Her gown accented her face instead of her fuce accenting her gown. She wore her 119 Jooks. her: clothes, her line, with an | ndifference * that killed in different ways and directions. That same in- difference had netted her the nick- name of “Adamantine Alice” by which she had heen known at most eastern peints of collagiate interests 2 lttle eariier in her carcer. But she was now twenty-three—unofficially. She had passed the dead-line. Seven years of fame and fortune was all any girl had & right to expect from the colieges nowadays. And she had been adamantine a little too long. He was very tall and resentfully #ood-looking; and he, too, had @ re- | vealing nickname. He was known quite generally as the “debutante’s despair.” ‘Their paths had been parallel and never had met in the course of their activities. They knew nothing of each other save what they were dis- covering by thrust and parry. But she was beginning to realize that he must have a title that somewhat ap- proached her own He was smoking steadily now, re- garding her as steadily from behind his cigarette glow. She became im- patient. Men always could pass off &n awkward or delicate or interesting| situation by twirling with a cigarette. | Gone were the days when girls twirl- ed 2 kerchief or fan, and cast down their eyes, in “situations.” “Give me a light, abruptly. The two smoked and looked at each other. He spoke softly. “You have very ‘beautiful arms,” he said. She rose and crushed her cigarette beneath her silver heel. “I'm going she said. “I ought to have known, Iif I sat out &5 much as ten minutes with & man, that he'd have to Tepcat himself.” There was a fraction of & pause while he wildly tried to remember what he had said in the course of thelr tourney. She watched him with something that almost approached & leer of triumph. Girls oftenr remem- ber conversation in detail, while few are the men who can retrace their rhetorical steps with any degree of accuracy. He had not happened to re- Deat this particular remark, but she must disconcert somehow. His recovery was magnificent. Tak- ing her arm with wide assurance, he branoched off into new territory. “We're not going. back until we look at the moon—that is, unless you're 2frgid to compare yourself with her radiance.” She sllowed her steps to be guided over the links, where the moon blazed down upon them. “How like & man, tp call the moon & woman,” mused; and stil) neither of them look. od, at the subject of their conversa- tion. “You know perfectly well the moon’s a man. “Perhaps yoy're right” he agreed. and she Jooked at him suspiciously, it camé. “No woman would stay up there alene all the time, without & She stopped and lighted another cigarette to conceal her irritation. “I suppose women have given you cause o think that way.” She turned on the links, and started back; he followsd, ' unmistakabiy peevish. Suddenly her glaze of calm was broken. She looked at him in flerce resentment, and cried out: “Ob —]—wish—men—weren't—all—alike ! Seven years of going up against it— and T'm sick of jt! Don’t you ever get sick—of taking different girts on?" He regarded her in mild surprise. She was certainly breaking. “There is something,” “he said, judictally, “something, 4§ the touch of a stranfe Jsad—" N r.__-. 8o, akhough they | Her walk became swifter, more, purposeful. She reached the steps of the country club plasza, and mounted them hastily, upsetting various cou- ples seated in the shadows. He was out of breath when he joined her at the door; she was again calm, indif- ferent, maddeningly glacee. With the resiliency of youth they leaped to| the subject of modern marriage, as they moved off into the surging bil- lows of the dance. * % ok % 'OME one cut in, and she breathed a sigh of relief calculated to reach his ears. He stalked away with per- functory thanks thrown behind him. She smiled delightedly upon the young man who had relieved him, and over- whelmed him with a dizzying broad- side of chatter that would have de- ceived no girl. The truth of the matter was that the evening had slumped sickeningly. She was bored with the week end house party of which she was a mem- ber. There has to be at least one piquant man to rush one, &t a party, however small the party; otherwi ‘wherefore born? Alice could remem- ber parties where she could not count the number of “rushers” who brought sest and tang into the evening; but as one grew older, fewer and fewer | men could arouse the fresh, youthful | enthusiasm of one's girlhood. | “You were gone a long time with | Bob Norton,” the youth in whose arms {she was bitterly reflecting declared, | not witheut suggestion. “People make such bright re- | marks!” she rejoined. “You have on a white tie tonight, haven't you?’ He subsided, and she glared at the orchestra, in silent prayer that they would come through with the “Home Again Blues.” * % % % HE real business of a dance does not begin until it is over. In Mary Lee Cobb's mahogany and pink boudoir the two girls sat and cold- creamed their faces and storaged their hair in curlers and talked over | everything worth mentioning. Espe- | cially interesting it is, always, to find | out which men have given the same identical lines to house party room- | mates, which rouge best stands the | test of an evening’s wear, which line | | has proven most effective in whipping | | up the jaded interest of the stags. | Alice and Mary Lee went over| almost everything. The same youth | |had asked each of them to go out and |#1t 1 his car; Mary Lee had had a| |fight with the young man to whom |she was reported to be “almost en- gaged” because she was weary of the stigma those two words cast upon | her and anxious to seek pastures | new: Alice had become bored with the | stripling who had been allotted to her Itor the week end. | | Mary Lee had her glittering hair| | wrapped into little knobs all over {her head before she sighed and volced |a poignant truth: ! “Alice, I wonder why it is that all | {the attractive men are the ones you| |don’t see much of.” | Alice stopped smearing magic |grower over already well devel- |oped eyelashes and raised a sticky forefinger for emphasis. “Mary Lee, ! !you're wandering into the point! 1; | get 5o sick of meeting men—on week |ends like this or at—at dances—men | who live at the ends of the earth— | men that you'll never see again—and | |liking them—and dragging a good | time along—and then saying good-bye! | My 1ife,” Adamantine Alice proclaim- ed, and surveyed her classic profile {in Mary Lee's hand mirror, “is one | long succession of good-byes:" “You're knocking the nail in* Mary |Lee agreed. “It’s only the little weirs and poor goophers that tag you along | with specials and candy and tele- |grams. The other kind—well, it's just. ‘It's been awfully nice to know |vou! hope I see you again some time And there you are—or aren't!" | The two battle-scarred veterans were gloomily silent, thinking of the might-have-beens that haunt every girl's maiden meditation. Alice was the first to speak. “If & man meets a girl and falls for her, he's got all the right and chance {to follow it up, even if she doesn't| |live in the same place. He can make |her know him better. Seven years’ study of this thing has convinced me {that proximity turns the trick. But if @ girl meets a man and falls for! him, what can she do but simper and say good-bye when the time comes?” Mary Lee turned slowly and focused an inquiring gaze on her mate-af arms. She found there a halt of words and & rush of color. “Alice—Beverly!” she cried, then became quiet, the more convincingly to level her accusation. “I knew that something was gummed somewhere when you didn’t drop & word about moonlighting with Bob Norton! You don’'t mean to say that you—you, after all this time! If you've fallen for him, dear old Adamantine, it's seven years wasted—that's all I can write s your epitaph! * % ox ¥ LICB became even more self-be- traying. “Why—what do you mean? What's the matter with him?” “Matter? Nothing. The matter’ with you. He's the most attractive man within reach, but he isn’t within reach. He killed every one off in col- lege—h!s quotation in the yearbook was: ‘I've 'ad my pickin' of sweet- hearts, and twelve of the lot was prime” Well, and now he's at Har- vard Medical. You konw how much chence any one has of gétting a medical student down to brass tacks. And he—well, he's just like quicksil- ver when it comes to naillng him down." Mary Lee took breath, and studied Alice’s face, beautiful despite layers of cold-cream and a frame of electric wavers. Strange, she had mever no- ticed before how stubborn that face could be. “¥ou know,” Alice mused, “tramps leave their marks and sighals on the houses they have tried, showing ‘whether the people there are charita- dly inclined, or flerce dog. or poor pickin’s. It's too bad that girls can’t leave marks on men that same way.” “Well, no girl can leave a mark on Bob Norton,” said Mary Lee, and yawned, thus Qeliberately showing lack of sympathy. Alice’s slightly shadowed black eyes glinted, as if, far off, a trumpet, blew—as If in the distance she heard a battle-cry. “I am going to leave my mark on him,” she said quietly. “The first man in seven ycars has made me » | | said tragically. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C. want to. 1f I can't, Mary Li dumped into the ash barrel. It was nearly 5 o'clock, and Mary Lee was beginning to lose the pep that had been born through a coffec jug around midnight. It seemed to her that her battle-companion was losing what was most mecessary 1o girls of their age and appearance and experience—point of view. “Don’t go to pleces, old dear,” she The tragedy was a hang-over from the coffee jag, but neither girl stopped to think of that. “I wouldn't lose my form and blow, for any beau Ideal lving.” Alice did not answer, and the two girls slumped into the twin beds, each expecting the other to turn out the lights. Once in, they lay there peevishly, their dance-weary limbs refusing to stir, the lights beating upon their exhausted eyeballs. “Besides,” Mary Lee argued, as if ‘ §\ e I i T'll three or four or more, when one had & climbed over one another's ankles. agree with you:; it's seven years)mine-o'clock each morning. And worst of all, they thought they could run themselves, as well as the man. That was the crowning absurdity. Ever since | |the world began, men had run it-and looked after the women. In his pro- foundest of thoughts, Bob called the girl of today a menace. | Statistics proved that women wzrei overrunning the world. There were a sixth more women than men in the | world. Bob felt that that superfiuous | sixth was all after him. * %k ¥ ¥ S dinner sagged along, determina- tion to duck the dance became more fervent. If only Betty didn't live in Deadham-near Boston. Deadham was right., Home of all of Boston so- clety who were too comatose to live in town for the winter! A suburb that wa: not a suburb, but a resting place! By | the time you got from one eatate to the next you thought you had reacHed an- | other town. prondl Lk L LIRTRA A He snapped, “My fault!” in a murder- ous tane. The debutante was follow- ing his glance. “Oh, there's the girl that's visiting Sally Parsons!” she twittered. “She was quite famous when she was young, they say. They used to call her Adamantine Alice, because she has a perfect record of never falling for any man. * ¥ k¥ NOTHER member of the wedding party, who had been relleved, mercifully intervened here, leaving Bob stiil faint from the suspense of the darkest hour before dawn. He walked weakly to the stag line. He going to duck; but first he'd just how things were going. A moment later found him cutting in on the tall girl with the disdainful tace. “Do you remember me?" be klckofll himself for saying, as no spark of “How do you know so much?’ she flashed and pulled on her little necessity with redoubled vigor. He straightened In quiet, but, he was sure, unobtrusive importance. ‘I hap- pen to be studying medicine,” he sai “I'm Interested, in that sort of thing. “Oh,” she eaid, clearly surprised; she even took the cigarette out of her mouth ly. “You're a medical student? 1 didn't know you did anything so seri- ous. This last had quite a kick, but he passed it over as she began smoking again nervously—very nervously. “I say, I wish you wouldn’t do that? Not now, anyhow!" “Why not?’ she demanded, sending up perfect clouds into his face, ** kw E felt foolish. One of the reasons of his past success had been that he alweys stopped when he began to feel foolish. Of cour the really “THERE'S NO OTHER WAY.” SHE TOSSED AT HIM. “WE'LL HAVE TO GO AND SIT IN SALLY'S CAR” el | | in answer to a remark of Alice’s, He was tired of the ranks of debu- | recognition lit up her rather tired | great art was to stop before that. “he York. I do to work it.” “I'm sick of what New York offers a girl,” said Alice drowsily, “Hang- ing ground the telephone all day, waiting for it to ring—" Mary Lee turned her head on the pillow and looked at Alice, to see it a personal hit was intended here. But Alice bad closed her eyes and was either asleep or determined to appear so. Her tight evelids were hopelessly adamantine. Mary Lee swore, and got up and turned off the lights. * ¥ % ¥ 't see how you're going OTHING was more boring than staging the wedding act over and over again. Bob Norton | could remember when being asked | to usher was & thrill, but that had been in the exuberant days of his youth. Now, surfelted with smiles and tears and hints and lines, he had determined to duck the dance the evening befors Betty Berry's wedding. In the first place, Betty was an old almost-flame of his who had come as near gettiLg him, he thought gloom- ily, as any one ever had. She really had almost pulled it off. Well, she had grown tired of it and moved on, bauled in his roommate out of the wet and had the poor fish gasping for air in mo time. Rather clever little person, Betty. He permitted himself a faint smile, as he remem- bered. Of course, one could hardly refuse to stand up with one’s old roommate, when he got in a tight corner like that. All the same, it was a bit stiff when you think of all the fes- tivities that were involved. Much could be saved one by hard-luck tales of the study-racked medical aspirant; but there was no avenue or even alley that led away from the dinner for the wedding party, the evening before. Being in the wed- ding party, one naturally showed up at the dinner., He fiattered himself that his man- of-the-world aplomb covered his abysmal disgust as he sat and lis- tened to a this-season’s debutante cheep about bow tired she was from her first day in at Miss Garland's school, where they learned to cook and everything. ‘The minute & girl learned to cook, she told every man she kpew. It was just another of the-traps that girls hung out. He knew them all, by this time. A man in bis position had been in & way to find out much. ‘What was the matter with all the girls nowadays, anyway? They didn't even give man time enough to decide what he was trying to think about. They called you up all the time; they talked the rest of the time. They asked you to take them to dances; they were forever inviting you to dinner st thelr homes, where the old gave you cigars you were afraid to smoke, and the mother (almost always a depressing spectacle of what the daughter would be in & few years) talked about a thou- sand little things daughter was doing that didn’t interest you in the least. He bad gone to the root of the matter —being in & position to. In & word, the girls were overrunning everything. In the first place, they ran a man off his feet, rushing him. Second place, they ran him ragged staying out until e/ in Boston and you're in New |tantes that paraded themselves for in- | eves. | spection every season. And the Dead- | ham variety was terrible—a combina- | | tion of Bostonian get-up and a sweet- | | young-girl line that they worked down | |to the dregs. Betty's wedding party | was typical. It seemed as if Betty ledi arranged it 8o that no one would bother | to look at any one but the bride. Well, | girls would be girls. ! | False hope—he couldn’t escape! The dance was being thrown at tic Country Club—thrown in a large way. | By the time they got there the or- | chestra was singing and reeling and | clogging up and down the stage that | should always be saved for a really | | good outfit of saxophone artists. 1 " Downstairs Bob seized upon the ex- | {tra man. Thank the Lord, Betty| | Berry always had an extra man trail- ing somewhere, this being one of the | first principles of the successful girl. “Look here, I'm not going to last over. Will you take on the plece of | spun sugar they handed me—or won't you?” Pete Price, a neat, plastered-look- ing youth, who could not be conceiv- led of in any way save drifting around in a staglike manner, looked appalled, his eyebrows shooting up on his blank forehead. “Oh, now listen, Bob! 1 can’t look after a girl a whole even- ing; I wanta smoke! Besides, there's a perfect knockout staying with Sally Parsons, and I told her I'd show her some time tonight.” Bob abandoned the plan of direct! appeal. “Well, anyway, you'll cut in} on me, won't you?' he assumed. “Then I can break away and intro- duce some people to her. This girl doesn’t know anybody—she goes to cooking school.” His plan was still the same. Once the plastered Pete cut in on Miss Cooking School, Bob was going to stea] silently away like the Arabs. It would serve Pete right for not obliging a fellow. The floor was crowded by the time the bridal party assorted themselves and the ushers danced the right bridesmalds off. Bob_ took his little prize package up and down in front of the stag line, that being about the most pointed thing a man could do. He droned along at intervals on the | I-am-so-young. You-are-so-beautiful line, to keep the poor girl from hys- terics at being stuck with him for #0 long. He really was kind-hearted and he knew that girls suffered at such moments. But he kept the off corner of one eye on Pete, who stood restfully leaning up against the wall and surveyed the dance, mouth open, eyes critically vacant. Pete finally started, moved swiftly away. Bob's heart gave a sickening thud. The little snide was going i the wrong direction! Madly he steer- ed his old man of the sea around to one side, the better to view Pete's perfldy. Pote was cutting in on a tall, dark ®irl who was more beautiful and Jess striking than the popular ballroom type. She was all in glittering white sequins, from which her face chal- lenged—a face that was reminiscently disdainful—a face that called to mind a singular and unusual rebuff. Some- thing that had piqued him at the time, but which he had felt beneath his dignity to follow up because of that same rebuff. He missed a step, which threw Miss Cooking School out of gear, and for a few minutes they breathlessly i e | But this time the sight of smoke Of couree I remember you,” she | pouring from mouth, nose and eyes responded without animation. “I|of such beauty In distress was too never forget men. We met, hated and | parted, in Rye, last June, at & coun- | try club dance.” | This sudden resume =o startled him that he could not fling out his usual swift attack. He had to hedge. “You —uh—you're visiting Sally Parsons? For how long?’ She did not look at him. know yet,” she sald evenly A young man from the stag line had been chasing them around the | room. She paused at one of the exits, | and suddenly became intense. “Will you—will you come out on the plazza with me—for a moment?" she implored. Dumbfounded, he nodded, and steered her through the | door before the pursuing youth could | reach them. Had she, or had she not, en that invasion threatened? 1f she had, her act was certainly quick and clever, but he could not recon- cile it with her phlegmatic attitude. There were several couples twosing on the porch. There always are. She looked around swiftly and went down the steps. Perforce he followed. “There's no other way,” she tossed at him over her well-turned shoulder; “I don't “we’ll have to go and sit in Sally's car.” He almost staggered under that sug- gestions, recalling certain little ad- vances and retrogressions under & June moon. It was now late September, but the moon was full again. Could she— She was not settied In the car before «he pulled a package of cigarettes from the bosom of her dress, lighted one and inhaled flercely. “There!” she sighed. “If I'd had to go any longer without one, I'd have danced a Highland fling JUD on the stage with the orchestra!" “What the—" he complained. She looked at him, as if she had just remember that he was along. “Oh—I | suppose you don’t understand! Fact is,. I—well,- I might as well tell you, be- cause I'll probably never see you again after tonight.” He felt an odd surge of resentment on this. She was still inhaling, rather better than most girls, A shade too wall, perhaps.. In common with most men, he did not like to see a girl get what a man got out of a smoke. “I might as well tell you,” she went on in her Impersonal voice, “that it's gotten to the point where the cigarettes run me rather than me running the cigarettes. I didn’t realize w far along I was until I came down here to Boston, where the girls den‘t smoke in the open so much, and some people are actually shocked by it.. Why, for s sake 1 don’t dare let myself be geen on the porch with a cigarette In my mouth, or I'll be pointed out as Sally’s. wild friend from New York.” She laughed and the cigarette in her mouth bobbed up and down. The laugh turned into & cough; she threw the cigarette over the side of the automo- bile and continued coughing. It was psthetic to see so much in- different beauty intense over cigarettes, and bent double by the tearing of their incense at her lungs. It ‘was more pathetic when the girl righted herself and Uit another. Hp felt gravely concerned, all of a sudden, and es if he had known her for a long time. “Why don’t you stop?” he suggested, trying {0 speak as impersonally as she. “It's poor stuff to ‘let anything get ai hold on you. That cough—a cough's al- ways bad. And it's a fact that smoking hits & woman harder than' it does s much for him. He hurled himself on. “Why? Because I can't bear to see you in such a fix—that's why! Listen. Don’t you want to stop?” “I suppose I ought to—if I've got- ten this way about it,” she sighed. and threw away her cigarette to light another. He watched her sadly, She had all the little dope-fiend gestures. Her hand shook now until Her match went out. He took the matches away from her and threw them out of the car, which brought an angry exclama- tion that he ignored. “Look here, Alice Beverly,” he snapped, “I'm not going to see a per- fectly good girl make & fool of her- self in this particulsr way. TYou're going to hang off. See?” She sighed wearily and tilted the unlit cigarette between her lips. “Oh, piffie! Here I thought you were one man at this dead-head party who'd be decent about the fix I'm In!" Decent!” Bob had leaped over the dam and was sliding down the falls. Once at least to every man the rapids foam below. “Decent! Listen here, admit you want to stop?” “Oh, Tl sdmit anything! back those matches.” “You want to stop? All right. Now, if you'll be good enough to give me some of your (ll‘., I'll give you some of mine and show you how to work this thing out.” She flounced pettishly on the seat beside him, bit her cigarette in halves and spat it away. “Oid line! Beatrice Fairfax would say: ‘No, Algernon, do not marry the girl. What she would not do for a lover she never will do for & husband.'"” “You won't get anywhere with yourself by being flip,” he said coldly. “Who wants to get anywhere with themselve Give ms those matches and go away and leave me alone!” He selzed her restless band. It grew quiet in his, but seemed to pass along its “nerves” to him. “Listen to me.” He spoke in what he believed to be brutal to “You are going to stop. Tomorrow morn- ing I'm coming around to Sally’s and take you out for a game of golf. We'll leave the matches behind.” “I don’t know how to play golf, and I promised myself I'd never learn.” He was momentarily shaken, but came back grandly. “I will teach you.” It was slmost as momentous & step as the signing of the armistice. But he, watching her, was annoyed to see that she was mot properly im- “that, like bridge, golf has to be depressed. “I suppose,” she said reluctantly, “that like bridge, golf has to be Alice—you Bring yed.’ “I will be around at te ‘This threw a spasm of pain over Yer delicate features. “Ten! That's the middle of the night for me! I don't begis to get sleepy until eight.” “All wrong.” By now the lordly dictating, inevitably intimate tone was fully established.™-“Bad habits from your house-party days that you've got to break yourself of. I'll be around at ten. Of course, he was cutting classes to do it. And an interesting autopsy, too, ’ BY DOROTHY SPEARE AS any girl worth a man's busi- ness hours? That was the ques- tion that faced him when he started for Sally Parsons' the next morning in his mother's sedan. (Living at home had its advantages.) He looked forward to seeing her again—Ilooked forward with {nterest and with dread. This dread always [ for @ moment, and looked at it absent- ! must come where there is sufficient interest—dread that it will not con- tinue to be interesting. Early In the morning, after a dance where one has made an impression, is a wary time. And Bob had a great curiosity to see the beautiful, if aged, cigarette flend under morning sun. He wanted to see if she wore sport clothes sensibly or ruined them by slapping on too much rouge, which always showed up a girl as having no sense of proportion—same thing &s having no sense of humor. The shock of seeing each other by day for the first time was forgotten in his quick rush of emotion when he reached the Parsons estate.” Sally aand Alice were sitting on the front steps smoking like two little chim- neys. His greeting was stiff. Sally left them.alone together at once, with no tact at all, which embarrassed him excessively, but Alice did not even blush. No, ehe was not rouged. On the contrary, she was very pi only her 1ips were vivldly edged with crimson. (He did not know that the latest New York style was for alabaster com- plexion and & “mouth like a crimson pomegranate—red enemy of men that never sleeps.”) “Sally lent me some clubs, or what- ever you call them,” she said; “‘come on.” Thus easily did she bridge the situa- tion that had left him so helpless. In the car decision returned, and he threw her box and matches out of the window. This caused a slight up- plshness between them which lasted until they got out on the links. He had never taught any one to play g0 before. He had slways sworn he never would. With the restraint of a gentleman he had refrained from telling Alice that, the evening before, when she brought forth the fact that she had promised herseif never to learn. As a rhatter of fact, she learned with amasing speed. He was de- lighted by her quickness in recelving his intelligent, lucid instructions. After the first few holes her drive swung clear, and although she smeared brassy shots and chafed at the midiron, her putts were falrly accurate. It did seem as if she must have watched the game a great deal; she said she thought her tennis prob- ably helped her. Halfway around the course she lost | her absorption in the game and be- came nervous—fidgeting, twiddling with her stick, finally demanding it {he hadn’t brought along any clgar- etts for himself. On his proud nega- tive, she horrified him by turning to the little caddies and asking them if they had anything to smoke on their persons. They were startled, being Boston little boys, and informed her that neither of them had even a chew. “Oh Hades!" she sighed. “I don't think I can go on with it; honestly, Bob, I don't.” Violent exercise was the thing. He | told the caddies to take the clubs in, and seized her arm. “We are going to walk over the rest of the course,” he said, “fast.” *x ok % MAN was always stronger than a woman. With his arm pro- pelling her along, what could she do but yield, which she did rather grace- fally; links, leaving the caddies to gape and level profanity upon the defenseless goif bags. Almost without realizing it, how- ever, their speed abated when they came to the next tee and a rustic bench invited. The two veterans were in the midst of a discussion of whether they thought all their ex- perience should be regretted or not. “If T were to do it over again,” said Bob darkly, “I would be different, in some ways, of course; but on the whole, I think experience is in- They sat on the rustic bench. “It is, for the girl as well as the man.” said Adamantine Alice. “Un! a girl goes about and flits around &8 much as possible, she's helpless—es- pecially helpless,”” she added thought- fully, “in choosing the man she wants to marry.” ‘That, of course, brought them down —or up—to the subject of love, which they treated intensively until the sun stood above them and exclalmed. They had not finished their discussion;inter- esting words were still fiying around, (8nd Bob asked Alice, as they strui 1gled back over the links, to have luncheon with him at the club. She shook her head. “I've an engagement in town, and then I'm going over to the stadium for the game.” He sald nothing for a few minutes. Somehow he had never pictured her ‘with other men, from the firet mo- ment he had known her. Now, her nickname, which last night's debutante had lsped in his oar, returned to haunt him with meaning. Adamantine Alice! A girl who for years had sus- tained reputation and power—who was still beautiful. “How old are you? he demanded, suddenly. 8he laughed. “T am at the age that the novelists always put their hero- ines—they start ‘em now, when I'm finishing.” *“What d'you mean, finishing?” he demanded. He was suddenly sus- picious of the man to whom she was going that afternoon. That man was even probably the reason why All was visiting Sally. Girls of Alice's age and composition. did not visit other girls for sheer love of seeing them and going.to hen parties. He knew. He became silent and gloomy. “What's the matter?™ she sald idly as they neared the clubhouse. He quickly thought & good thought. “1 was thinking that you'd probably undo everything we've accomplished this morning by smoking all the aft- ernoon with that other man.” She turned to him with a swift, soft smile that brought greater shock of joy because i sat so strangely on her disdainful features. “Let mq tell you something; I'm not going to smoke agein until this even- [ i ind alone they paced over the! jing. TU -wait until I see you after the weliding, and give you & chance to talk me out of it. I want to show you that I appreciate what you've done for me; I've—T've really not no- ticed the lack of it much, this morn- ing” First victory flushed Bob in painful delight that left him without power to speak. He contemplated this fact in alarm that grew more melancholy with the realization thst he was really enjoying these sensations. * o ¢ He was in the foaming rapide. and so swiftly pulled along that he hardly knew he struggled! There {s little more cheerless than an afternoon where all is bright and beautiful outside, and you have noth- ing to do but think about the object of your interest who is out with an- other man. Bob moped, and tried to study. He had fergotten all about the fact that he should be decorating the church, helping the simpering bridesmaids. * ¥ k¥ HE byplays and cross-currents of a wedding are so much more in- teresting than the two over whom all the fuss is presumably made. There are generally those in the wedding party who are having their own little affairs, by the time of the wedding and who regard the two who have made these affairs possible with kindly pity, if they regard them at all. Poor, stuffy pair! All their fun over. Rushing into their fools’ para- dise, while angels hesitate outside. | So Alice and Bob smiled upon the bride and groom in superior manner that evening, and withdrew themselves 1o & corner of the plasza that was far "from the laughter and glittering banai- ities of the wedding reception. She was mystically delightful in green—so pale and haunting it resem- bled the moon filtered on tender June lawns. Her eyes were no longer tired, impersonal; they held a spark in them that deepened when she turned to him. “ can smoke now, can't I?" she said with ‘sweet, childlike directness. Jlo looked unhappy. “I wish you wouldn't. I want you to pay some at- tention to me tonight. BSo far IUs been too one-sided.” “Double standard is my motto,” she murmured, and looked away from him. “You're right, I suppose,” he con- ceded. “There are certain things that men have to take the Initlative in May I come and see you tomorrow?” She did not tremble an eyelash. “I'm going back to New York tomorrow. Chaos crashed about him. *I thought —1 thought you said last night—that you didn't know how long you were go0- ing to sta “I didn't,”” she said sweetly, “but I do now. 1 found out today. The other man! There was no time —no time for finesse. No time for any method but the simple and direct! “I'm coming to New York to sec you. You've got to keep on, you know, with this cigarette fight.” “I know,"” she sald gently, and pu. out a nervous hand—which he took. “We were talking about love," he said, In tomes that he would not have believed could issue from his lips, “and I've discovered something—that a per- son—can f&1} for another person—right away. That it's not—a question of | time! Can you imagine that?" Mirth that he could not understand came shaking from her lips. *I can— imagine it.” He held her hand more firmly. “I mean—I mean te court you from now on," he specified, and committed him- self with: *“Do you hear?” She heard. ‘The courting was really all over, but | he did not know it-and never would. (Copyright. Al Rights Reserved.) Saharan Nitrates. | HE nitrates of Chile are the larg- est known to exist, and are one of the greatest sources of that cour- try's prosperity. Their exhaustion would mean disaster to Chile and a great, loss to the world. But it has been suggested that Africa might compete with Chile, if not take the place of that country, in this in- dustry. Experts are said to be con- | vinced that nitrate deposits even more extensive than those of South Amer- ica exist all over the western part of the Sahara. It would cost more to get the product to the coast than it costs In Chile, but it is averred that this extra expense of transportation would only counterbalance the high export duty imposed on Chilean nitrates. Flax Cultivation. TH!: hope has always been held out by the Department of Agri- culture that the raising of flax of a fine quality may become &n important industry in our country. Experiments in this direction have, it is said, prov- ed most successful around Puget Sound, in the state of Washington. The soil and the climate there are held to be equal for flax ralsing to those of the best flax-producing regions of Europe. Puget Sound flax has been experimented with at one of the great linen factories in Ireland and found to be of excellent quality. Saving Lives With Cannon. SAVING people’s lives by shooting at them with a cannon sounds para- doxical, but that is the first step in the method of rescue followed by life sas- ing stations throughout the world. When & ship runs on a shoal near shore, life savers shoot an iron projec- tile attached to & coil of rope or fine stegl cable over & cross arm of the ves- sel by means of & emall brass caonon. Thoge aboard the ship haul in the rope to which is sttached a heayler one. The heavy rope s stoutly secured at both ends and, by a breeches buoy, the passengers are permitted to coast to the shore and to safety, one at a time. ———— A Curious Apparatus. THE Zeiss optical works at Jens have put out a rather curious form of spparatus. ‘A so-called iron arc—that is, an electric aro with its carbons impregnated with salts of iron, giving out a light rich in ultra- | violet rays—Is used with screen: yas to cut off all the heating and } luminous rays, leaving none but ultra- violet fnvisibl jations. In these pure ultra-violet radistions mearly all substances fluoresce, and the light they give out fs greatly affected by the degree of their purity, thus pro- viding means of examining the chemi- «cal purity of substances.