The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 18, 1906, Page 3

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUMDAY CALL. the man for whom her feeling was daily growing warmer, but it ‘would be known of all men that he had with- drawn his affections from her to place them on a girl far her inferior in looks, education and feminine charm. That he should have preferred Rosamund as particularly maddening—Rosa- mund, whom she had regarded as com- monplace and countrified. She looked in her glass, and furious tears gath- cred in her eyes. It was staggering, comprehensible, but it was true. She was discarded, and people were laugh- ing at her. Two instincts—strong in women of her type—rose within her. One de- manded revenge and the other protec- tion of her pride. She burned with the desire to strike back at those who had hurt her, and at the same time to hide the wounds of her self-love. She knew of but one way to do the latter. and it came upon her—not suddenly, but with a gradually uplifting illumination— that it could be successfully combined with the execution of the former. Mercedes, who liked gossip, had heard the story of Jerry Barclay's complication with Mrs. Newbury, and how it was pop- ularly supposed to have prevented his marriage to June Allen. The busy scandal-hunters of the city had some- how unearthed the story that Jerry and June would have married had the for- mer been free. Mercedes, with her wo- man's quickness, guessed that June was the sort of girl who would remain constant in such a situation. But Jerry was a being of another stripe, a man of an unusual attraction for women and of a light and errant fancy. She had not met him half a dozen times when she came to the conclusion that his love for June was on the wane, his roving eye ready to be caught, his ear held, by the first soft glance and flat- tering tongue he encountered. Thus the way of protecting herself and of hitting back at one at least of the Allens was put into her hand. She did not care for Jerry, save as he was useful to her, though he had the value of the thing which is highly prized by others. She used every weapon in her sory to attract and subjugate him. Jerry himself, versed in the wiles of women as he was, was deceived by her gt open pleasure in his tions, her fluttered embarras when he paid her compliments. His first feeling toward her was 2 1 d admiration for her physi- tions, to which was added a ent vanity at her obvious p: But the woman ed as a naive ingenue W nore complex brain. a jative, and a cooler he had ever possessed. Vain and f-indulgent, the slave of his pz ons, he was In reality a puppet in is of a girl fifteen vears his ju- who, under an exterior of flower- v, had been eaten into by i revenge thought himself a he outer court of timent ras already under her dominion. of himself as taking an admiring interest her of her, and hastened to spare hours beside her, his ulated the flat- [ ngly administered. he felt himself beloved by June’s image faded. Two ssed since his confession He had seen her only at then under a perpetual restrain He was not the man constant to a memory. June n the edges of his conscious- sad-eyed shadow, looking jim with a pleading protest that de him feel angry with her. She goddes: cars had 1 the wood. rals and the radiant youthfulness, the sophisti- cated coquetries of Black Dan’s daugh- ter. During the early part of the summer n ignorance of the moment- fling of the cards of her des- She lived quietly, rarely going , and spending most of her time in the gardens or on the balcony. Rosamund, who went about more, mar- keted In the village and shopped in town, began to hear rumors of Jerry's nterest in Miss Gracey. She met them riding together in the hot solitude of the country roads, saw them meet on the trains to the city. Finally the rumors passed to San Francisco and the colonel heard them. He came down to San Mateo that Saturday to talk things over with Rosamund. They were worried and uneasy, a sense of calamity weighing on them both. Though June was one of those women who obstinately adhere to the bright side, who cling to hope till it crumbles in their hands, she felt, during the summer, pre- monitions of 1l fortune. Those inex- plicable shadows of approaching evil that nature throws forward over the path of sensitive temperaments had darkened her outlook. She questioned herself as to her heaviness of heart, assuring her- self that there was no new cloud on her horizon. In the constancy of her own nature she did not realize, as a more ex- perienced woman would, that her hold on Jerry was a silken thread which would Wear very thin in the passage of years, and be ready to snap at the first strain. But the moods of apprehension and gloom began to be augmented by ripples from the pool of gossip without. She heard that Jerry was oftener in San Ma- teo than ever before, and she saw him less frequently. One afternoon she met im driving with Mercedes, and the girl's radiant smile of recognition had some- thing of maliclous triumph under its beaming sweetness. June drove home si- lent and pale. In her room she tried to argue herself out of her depression. But it stayed with her, made her preoccupied and quiet all the evening, lay down with her at night, and was heavy and cold at her heart In the morning. At the end of September they returned to town. They had been back a few weeks when one afternoon she met Jerry on the street and they stopped for a few moments’ conversation. It was nothing more than the ordinary interchange of commonplaces between old friends, but when he had passed on, the girl walked forward looking wan and feeling a deadly sense of blankness. He was the same man, gay. handsome, suave, and vet he seemed suddenly far removed from her, to be smiling with the perfunctory po- liteness of a stranger. The chill exhaled by a dying love penetrated her, pierced her to the core. She did not understand it, or herself. All that she knew was that the sense of despondency became suddenly overpowering, and closed like an fron clutch on her heart. It was an overcast autumn that year, with much gray weather and early fogs. The city had never looked to June so cheerless. She was a great deal alone, Ro! und’s time being more and more claimed by Lionel Harrower. He was her first lover, and it was a part of Rosa- mund’s fate that he should have come to her unexpected and unasked for. She was of the order of women who stand where they are placed, doing what comes under their hand, demanding little of e, and to whom life's gifts come as a surprise. That such a man as the young Briton should prefer her to her sister, whose superior charm she had always acknowl- edged and been proud of, was to her as- tonishing. She was sobered and softened in these days of awakening love. One could see the woman, the mother, ripe, soft, full of a quiet devotion, slowly dawning. Sométimes she was irritable, a thing previously unknown. She could not believe that Harrower loved her, and vet as the Gays passed, and she found the hours spent with him growing ever more disturbingly sweet, she wondered how she could ever support a life in which he did not figure, and the thought filled her with torturing fears. 3 One gray afternoon, Rosamund having left for a walk in the park with Har- rower, June, after wandering about the empty house for a dreary hour, resolved that she, too, would go out for a stroll. She had felt more cheerful lately. Jerry had come to call two days before, when she was out, and this fact had seemed to her a proof of his unwaned interest. She had written him a brief note, stating her regrets at missing him and her hopes that he would repeat the visit soon. This was only polite and proper, she assured herself. Her walk took her to Van Ness ave- nue and then up the side street toward the little Turk-street plaza. For the past two years it had been a favorite prome- nade of hers. The present was not suffl- ciently fraught with pain to render mem- ories of a happler past unbearable. She strolled through the small park and then returned and walked back toward the avenue. As she turned the corner into the great thoroughfare, she stopped, the color dying from her face, the softness of its outlines stiffening. Walking slowly toward her were Jerry and Mercedes Gracey. They were close together, Mercedes lightly touching with the tips of her fingers the top of the or- namental fence beside her. Her eyes were down-drooped, her 'whole air one of maid- enly modesty, which yet had in it some- thing coyly encouraging. Jerry, close at her shoulder, was looking down at her, with the eyes of a lover. For the first moment June was too stricken to move. She stood spellbound, poised in mid-fight, hungrily staring. Then the desire for concealment seized her, and she about to turn and steal back to the corner whence she haa come, when Mercedes raised her eyes and saw her. She threw a short, quick phrase at Jerry, and he started and drew himself up. June moved forward, and as she ap- proached them forced her lips into a smile and bowed. She was conscious that Jerry Liad flushed and looked angry as he raised his hat. But Mercedes enveloped her in a glance of fascinating cordiality, in- clining her head in a graceful salutation. A half hour later June gained her room and sank into an armchair. For some time she sat motionless, gazing at the gray oblongs of the two windows with their shadowy upper draperies. As the look in Jerry's face kept rising upon her mental vision, she experienced -a slight sensation of nausea and feebleness. But even in this hour of revelation she kept whispering to herself: “He couldn’t! He couldn’t! He couldn’t have the heart! He couldn’t hurt me so!” The few poor memories she had of moments of tenderness between them, the meager words of love that she had re- garded as binding vows, rose in her mind. It had seemed to her he could no more disregard them than she could. She thought of herself responding to the love of another man—of its impossibility—and sat bowed together in her chair, for the first time catching a revealing gleam of the difference in their attitudes. Then the memory of Mrs. Newbury came to her, and with ‘it a strengthening sense of his unbreakable obligation. Nearly three years ago, when June had first heard of this, it had seemed so degraded and repulsive that she had shrunk from the thought of it. Now, sitting lonely in the twilight, her eyes staring at the gray panes, she recalled it with relief, found it a thing to be glad of, to con- gratulate herself upon. The city had put its stain upon her. Her maidenly fastidiousness was smirched with its mud. Plunged in these dark thoughts she did not hear the door open, nor see Rosa- mund's head gently inserted. It was not till the rustling of her advancing skirts was distinct on the silence thag June started and turned. The last light of day fell through the long window on the younger girl's face, rosy with exer- cise, and shining with a new happiness. She paused by June's chair and stood there, looking down. For the first time in her life the preoccupation of her own af- fairs prevented her from noticing her sis- ter's sickly appearance. “It's all arranged, June,” a low voice. “Arranged!” repeated June, looking up quickly, her ear struck by something un- usual in her sister’s tone. *What's ar- ranged?” “Everything between Mr. Harrower and me. We've—we're—" “You're engaged?’ sald June, solemnly. Rosamund, looking into the upturned face, nodded. There was a sudden prick- ing of tears under her eyelids, an unex- pected quivering of her lips. She bent down and lald her cheek against her sis- ter's, and in the dim room they slung together for a silent moment, one in the first flush of her woman’s happiness, the other in the dawning realization of her desertion, she sald in almost CHAPTER X. The Quickening Current. The last quarter of 1873 was for Cali- fornia and Nevada a period of steadily augmenting excitement. The rumor of new strikes in the California and Con. Virginia grew with each week, seizing upon the minds of men, shaking them from the lethargy of their disbelief, ar- resting them in the plodding ways of work by the temptation of riches, in vast quantities, easily made, open to the hands of all who dared. Reports from Virginia by wire, by letter and by word of mouth poured into San Francisco. The news that a south- east drift had run into a rich ore-body in the California and Con. Virginia was two weeks later supplemented by a rumor that a chamber had been cut in the ledge, the ore-surface assaying from ninety-three to six hundred and thirty-two dollars per ton. The male population of the city surged back and forth across the moun- tains, seized with the fever for gold. The wild days of mining speculation were not yet fully inaugurated, but with the increasing discoveries shares in all the properties near the new bon- anzas began to rise, and the world once more began to buy. From across the mountains truth and rumor flowed in ever-accelerating. waves to San Fran- cisco, and stocks began to leap as they had done in the Crown Point and Belcher days. In the middie of this outer ring of excitement the little group of the colo- nel and his friends was shaken by tu- mults of its own creating. The great wheel outside spun round with fury while the little wheel inside flew with an equal speed. It seemed as if the fever of life around them. was com- municating itself to them, making their blood flow quicker, their pulses throb harder, lifting them up to planes where the air was charged with dynamic forces, and electréc vibrations hummed along the serene cufrents of life. Both Allen and the colonel were smitten by temptation., Like a man suddenly arrested in happy, undis- turbed wayfaring by some irresistible call to sin, the colonel stood irresolute, fighting with his desire once more to “try his luck.” His resources had grown smaller again within the last year, and he found it meant financier- ing to keep up the donations for “Car- ter’s girl” and “G. T.'s widow.” Karly in the year he had sold one of the South Park houses, almost the only good plece of property he still retained, paid his assessment for the new pumps they were putting up in the mine in Shasta and placed “Joe's boy” in business. “Carter’'s girl” would not be a care much longer. She was eighteen and engaged to be married. “G. T.'s widow” “was the only pensioner that would re- main on his hands till either he or she was called to a final account. Allen had not a thought to give to such matters as Indlvidual pecuniary obligations. He was continually at his mine or in Virginia, returning for brief visits at odd times, when he talked thickly and volubly of the wonderful developments of the Nevada camp. He was deterforating rapidly. He drank now in the daytime. There were sto- ries going about that ore in the Bar- ranca was very low grade, the ore- body narrowing. In October the colo- nel met a mining man from the locality who said it was common talk at Foleys that the Barranca was “pinching out.” Whether it was or not Allen was known to be investing in “wildcat” in Virginia. He went about with his pockets full of maps, which he was per- etually unrolling and pointing out this or that undeveloped claim which would some day yield a new bonanza and was now a prospect hole in the sage brush, The engagement of Rosamund filled him with delightt He was a man whose affection was largely founded on pride, and it satisfied him that one of his girls should “capture,” as he ex- pressed .it, a fiance so eminently eligible. “He thinks I'm rich,” Allen bad said one evening to the colonel as they sat alone over their cigars. “He thinks he's going to get a fortune with Rosamund.” “What put that into our head?” the colonel had asked in sudden annoyance. “The boy loves her as he ought to. He's a man, that fellow. He's ot after money.” “Maybe that's your opinion,” the other had returned, “but I happen to have a different one. He takes me for a mil- lionaire mining man and thinks Rosa- mund's going to get her slice of the millions for a dowry. He's going to get left, but that's not my concern or yours. Rosamund'll has as good a trousseau as any girl, but when you come to dowry—!" He broke off, laughing. The colonel found it difficult to respond without a show of temper. “You're all off,” he answered dryly. “When his grandfather dies—and the old fellow’s over eighty now—he'll have one of the finest estates in the part of England where he's located. What's he want with your money? Why, he could buy up and put in his pocket a whole bunch of plungers like you, with your wildeat shares. Can't yo%\z that the boy’s honestly in love h J girl like Rosamund?” v “Oh, Jim, you're an old maid!” the other returned with his irritating, lazy laughter. “He’s in love with Rosamund all right, but he’s also in love with the money he thinks he's going to get with her. But don't you fret. It'll be all right. He's a decent enough fellow, but it's a good thing for us he's not got more sense.” Thus the older men had their anxie- ties, as the young people had theirs. And all this agglomeration of divers emotions and interests concentrated, even as the pregsure in the city with- out, the year sweeping toward its close with ever increasing momentum, like a river rushing toward the sea. October was a month of movement, pressure and stir. While San Francisco waited expectant for its first cleansing rains, Harrower left for England, to re- turn in the spring and clgim his bride. In the long gray afternoons June sat much at home, brooding over the sit- ting-room fire, waiting for a visitor who never came. Mercedes moved up from Tres Pinos and took possession of the city house her father had rented for her. She was blooming and gay after her summer in the country. Her heart was swelled with triumph, for she knew the game was won, and, caught in the eddies of the wkirling current, she too was swept forward toward a futuresthat was full of tan- talizing secrets. CHAPTER XI. Lupe’s Chains Are Broken. One of the most harassed and uneasy men in these stormy days was Jerry Barclay. He had arrived at a point in his career where he stood arresied and uncertain between diverging paths. His infatuation for Mercedes drew him to her like a magnet and sent him from her in troubled distress, not knowing what to do, longing for his freedom and sometimes wondering whether he would marry her if he had his freedom. He thought she loved him as other women had done, and he often won- dered if he really loved her. In the sudden glimpses of clairvoyance which come to souls swayed by passion, he saw life with Mercedes as a coldly splendid waste in which he wandered, lonely and bereft of comfort. Shaken from his bondage by one of these mo- ments of clear sight, he felt a convic- tion that he did not love her, Geclared himself free of her enchantments, and at the first glance of invitation in her eyes, the first beckoning gesture of her hand, was back at her side, as much her slave as ever. He pushed June from his mind in these days, saw her seldom, and then showed that cold constraint of manner which the artless and unsubtile man assumes to the woman toward whom he knows his conduct to be mean and unworthy. June lay heavy on his con- science. The thought of her and what she was enduring made him feel ashamed and guilty. And he was angry that he should feel this way—angry with June, against whom he seemed to have a special grievance. - He argued with himself that he was under no obligation to her. He had never made any binding declaration to her, and he had honestly told her that he was not free to marry. How many men would have done that? If she was so unsophisticated as to take the few sentimental remarks he had made as a serious plighting of vows it was not his fault. He affected to have forgotten the remarks. Even in thinking to him- self he assumed the air of one who finds it too trivial a matter for remem- brance. But the truth was that every sentence was clear in his mind, and the recollection of the pure and honest feeling of that year stung him with an unfamiliar sense of shame. In his heart he knew that of the three women who had played so promi- nent a part in his life, June was the one he had really loved. There were moments now, when, deep in the bottom of his consciousness, he felt that he loved her still. The clairvoyant glimpses of a life with her were very different. But he was not free! Why, he said to himself with a magnanimous air, why waste her life by encouraging her in fruitless hopes? Mercedes was quite a different person. She could take care of herself. They were certainly troublous times for Jerry. He had a man's hatred of a scene and the interviews he had with Mrs. Newbury were now always scenes. He left her presence sore and enraged with the fury of her taunts, or humili- ated by the more intolerable outbursts of tears and pleadings into which she sometimes broke. He felt with a sort of aggrieved pro- test that after nearly ten years of de- votion Lupe ought to be more reason- able. Jerry was confidently suve that, as he expressed it, he had “shown him- self very much of a gentleman” where Lupe was concerned. He had been gen- tle and forbearing with her. Long after his affection had died he had been patient with her exactions and borne her upbraidings. He had kept a prom- ise that had been made in the first madness of their infatuation and that many men would have regarded as ridiculous. In his behavior to his mis- tress Jerry saw himself a knight of chivalry. He did not tell himself that the main ingredient of his chivalry was a secret but acute fear of the vio- lent woman whom his neglect had ren- dered desperate. She had threatened that she would kill herself. Once or twice of late, in what he called her “tantrums,” she had threatened to kill him. After these interviews Jerry went from her presence chilled and sobered. She was in despair and he knew it and knew her. Some day Lupe might keep her word. One afternoon in October he had stopped in at the Newbury house to pay one of those brief visits which had replaced the long stolen interviews of the past. He had met Newbury down fown in the morning and been told that Lupe was not feeling well. She had lately suffered from headaches, an un- known ailment for her. Newbury was worried; he wanted her to have the doe- tor, for she really looked bad and seemed very much out of spirits. Jerry found her looking exceedingly white and very qulet. She had evident- 1y been ill and showed the marks of suffering. He was relieved to see that she was in a fairly tranqull state of mind, with no intention of making a scene. In fact, to his secret joy he found that he could keep the conversa- tion on the impersonal, society plane upon which he had often before at- tempted to maintain it, invariably with- out success. But Lupe to-day had evi- dently no spirit to quarrel or to weep. She sat in a large armchair in an atti- tude of listless weariness, her skin looking whiter, her hair and e&yes blacker than usual. She had lost in weight and though in her thirty-sev- enth year was as handsome as she had ever been. Jerry kept one eye on the clock. If he could get away early enough he was ‘going to see a new horse Black Dan had just given Mercedes. A year of practice had made him very expert in bringing interviews with Lupe to an abrupt end, leaving her too quickly to give her time to change from the se- renity of general conversation to the hysterical note of rage and grievance. “Well, Lupe,” he said, rising and go- ing to her side, “I must be going. I'm glad you're so much better. You ought to take more exercise.” He took her hand and ‘smiling down at her pressed it. She looked at him wth her somber eyes, large and melan- choly in their darkened sockets. The look was tragic and ‘with alarm he at- tempted to draw his hand away. But she held it, drew it against her bosom, and bowed her face on his arm. “Oh, Jerry,” she almost groaned, “is this you and 1?” “Of course, dear,” he sald glibly, pat- ting her lightly on the shoulder with his free hand. “You'll be all right soon if you'll take more exercise. You're just a little bit inclined to the lazy— all you Spanish women are.” / She made no answer and he could feel her body trembrng. “Come, Lupe,’ he said with a touch of urgency in his voice, “I must go, my dear girl. T've got something to do at half-past four.” “Are you going to Miss Gracey's?” she said without moving or loosening her hold of his hand. “Oh, Lupe, dear,” he answered impa- tiently, “don’t let's get on those sub- jects to-day. I've had such a nice time here with you this afternoon, just be- cause you've been pleasant, and quiet and reasonable. Now don’t spoil it all by beginnig to fight and find fault.” She raised her head but still held his hand pressed against her heart. “I'm not going to fight,” she said in a low tone; “my fighting days are over.” “That's the most~Bensible thing that I've heard you say for a long time. You've just worn yourself out by the way you've stormed and raged. That's why you've felt so sick. It isn't worth while.” “No, I suppose not.” She looked up at him with eyes of gloomy tenderness, and opening her fingers one by one let him draw his hand away. “You're going to Miss Gracey's?’ she said again, He averted his head with a quick movement of impatience. “Please tell me,” she pleaded. “I'm not bad tempered to-day.” I am “Well, yes, since you say so, going there. But there's no necessity to get excited about it. You know, Lupe, we've known each other a long, long time.” He paused, furtively watching her, on the alert to fly if she showed the symptoms of storm he knew so well. But she remained passive, almost apa- thetle. The thought crossed his mind that she must have been much sicker than Newbury had imagined, and a gust of pity for her stirred in him. He bent down and Kkissed her heavy hair. o “You know,” he said gently, “when years roll by as they have with us changes come. But we'll always be friends, won't we, Lupe?” “I don’t know,” she said; “always is a long word. But I'll always love you. That's my punishment for my sins.” The clock chimed the half-hour and Jerry patted her again on the shoul- der. It was as bad to have Loup talk of her sins as it was to have her up- braid him with his. 3 “I'll see you again soon,” he said NS oA brightly, “but I must fly now. Take good care of yourself. Try and be more cheerful and go out more. Fresh air's the thing for you.” ‘When he had put on his coat in the hall he appeared at the open doorway and smiled a last good-by at her. She was sitting in the armchair in the same listless attitude. . She nodded to him without smiling, and he was again struck by her unusual pallor and the darkness of her eyes. “She’s really been sick,” he said to himself as he ran down the steps, for he was late. “Poor Lupe! How hard she takes everything!” The next afternoon he was sum- moned from his office by a message that a woman wanted to see him in the hall outside. He went out wonder- ing and found Pancha, the Mexican ser- vant maid who had been in Mrs. New- bury’s service since her marriage and was in the secret of their liaison. Af- ter the fashion of her race the woman wore a black shawl over her head in place of a hat, and her face between its folds was drawn and pale. In a few broken sentences she told him that her mistress was desperately ill; something terrible had happened to her in the night. It was hard to grasp her mean- ing, for she spoke very poor English and Jerry had no Spanish, but he had learned enough to know that Lupe was undoubtedly in a serious state. ‘With the assurance that he would come as soon as he could he sent the woman away and went back into the office. Half an hour later he started for the Newbury house. He was alarmed and chilled. He could not picture Lupe—a woman of superb physique—stricken down iIn twenty-four hours. She had been pale and listless but otherwise well yesterday. Pancha, who was not used to sickness, had probably been frightened and had exaggerated. Thus he tried to lift the welght which had suddenly fallen on his heart. He no longer loved Lupe, but he “did not want anything to happen to her,” he thought to himself as he approached the door. Here at the curb he saw two doctors’ ‘buggies, and, at the sight, his sense of alarm increased. There Was no ques- tlon about it; something serlous was evidently the matter. He asked for Newbury and after a moment’s wait in the hall saw the door into the sitting-room open and that” gentleman issue forth, closing the door on a murmur of male voices. New- bury looked an aged man, gray and haggard. Without any greeting, evi- dently too distraught by sudden calam- ity to wonder how Jerry had heard the bad news, he said in a low volce: “They're holding a consultation in there”—his sunken eyes dwelt on the young man's and he shook his head. “No hope, none. She can’t possibly get well. They don't think she’ll live more than a day or two.” “What—what—is 1t?” stammered Jer- ry, horror-stricken. “What's happened to her?” “A paralytic stroke. She had it early in the evening. Pancha found her ly- ing on the sofa like a person resting, but she was paralyzed and couldn’t speak. That was what the headaches meant and we were such fools we didn’t think anything of them.” “Is she consclous? Does she know?" Jerry asked, not knowing what to say, his whole being flooded with a sense of repulsion and dread. “I think so and so does Pancha. The doctors don’t. She can’t speak or move, but her eyes look full of lifa and in- telligence, and once or twice she's tried to smile.” . A soft footfall on the stairs abo caught their ears and they looked up. The Mexican woman was descending, her eyes on Jerry. Newbury cried.at her in Spanish, his volce suddenly hoarse with a muffled agony of fear. She shook her head and answered in the same language, speaking at some length. Newbury translated: “She’s told Lupe that you're here and thinks she wants to see you. She says she's tried to speak, and, as far as she can follow. she's under the im- pression that Lupe's asked for you.” It was a hateful suggestion to Jerry. He was shocked enough already with- out having to suffer seeing Lupe in this unfamiliar state. He detested sad things and kept them out of his life with the utmost care. But Newbury and the woman were watching him. He realized that they both expected him to go. Deep down in the inner places of his soul the thought that Lupe could not speak passed with a vibration of relief. They followed Pancha up the softly carpeted stairs and along the passage. The woman passed through a doorway, making a gesture for them to wait, then put her head out and beckoned them in. The darkness of evening had fallen and the large room was well lighted. By the bed two gas jets, burning under ground-glass globes, threw a brilliant light over the sick woman. She was lying straight and stark on her back, the bedclothes smooth over the undula- tions of her body and raised into points by her feet. Spreading over the pillow beside her, like the shadow of death waiting to cover her, was her halr, a black, dense mass, crossing the bed and falling over its edge. Her face was as white as the pillow, her eyes staring straight before her with a stern, frown- ing look. A stillness reigned in the room; death was without the door wait- ing to get in. Newbury went toward her. Jerry hung back, gazing fearfully at her. She was invested with a strange, allen ter- ror, a being half initiated Into awful mysteries. The inflexible sternness of her face did not soften as her husband bent over her and said gently: “Dearest, Jerry came to see how you were. He's here. Would you like to see him?” She gave a low sound, undoubtedly an affirmative. Pancha, who was at the foot of the bed, enunciated a quick phrase in Spanish. Newbury stepped aside and beckoned Jerry forward. As her lover came within her line of vision her eyes softened, the stiffened 1'ps ex- panded with difficulty into a slight smile. “Qf course she knows you,” Newbury said in a choked whisper, “Oh, my poor Lupe His voice broke and he turned away convulsed and walked tosthe window. With the Mexican woman watching him from the foot-board, Jerry bent down and kissed her very softly on the forehead and both eyes. She made an effort to lift her face to his caress like a child, and as he drew back her eyes dwelt on his, full of the somber and unquenchable passion that had killed her. He trled to speak to her but found it impossible. Memories of the days rushed.upon him—of her resist- ance to his flery wooing, of the first years of their intimacy and the tor- tures of her conscience that her love could never deaden, and now this end- ing amid the ruins of her anguish and his hard coldness. He turned and groped his way out of the room. On the stairs Newbury joined him, touched beyond measure at the sight of his grief. With assurances that he would be up in the morning to inquire, Jerry escaped from the house and fled into the night, now dark and full of the chill of fog. He could not sleep, and in the morn- ing walked. up to the house before breakfast for news. The servant at the door told him that Mrs. Newbury was dead, having passed away quietly without renewal of consciousness or speech as the day was dawning. Without a word he turned from the door and walked down the street to where a car line crossed it. Standing on the corner walting for the car, he was accosted by a boy selling the morning papers, and mechanically, without consciousness of his action, he bought one. In the same mazed state he opened it and looked at the front page. The first paragraph that met his eye was an announcement that. the rumored strike of a great ore-body of astound- ing richness in the Cresta Plata was confirmed. The excitement in Virginia was Intense, the mine being regarded s second only to the Con. Virginia. “This,” concluded the paragraph, “will ralse the fortunes of the Gracey boys far above the six naught mark, well up on the list of bonanza millionalres.” A Man and His Price. The ball given by Mrs. Davenport, to introduce to San Francisco soclety the flances of her son Stanley, was long re- membered as one of the most brilllant entertainments ever given in Califor- nia. The exhilaration of prosperity was in the alir. Stocks were mounting, every- body was making money. More new dresses were ordered for Mrs. Daven- port's ball than ever before for any one function. The jewelers were selling diamonds to men and women who five years before had lived ‘in two-room cabins and worn overalls and calicoes. Black Dan Gracey had come down from Virginia to see his daughter, and bought her a diamond tiara which it was sald eclipsed anything of the kind ever sold in San Francisco or even New * York. The bonanza times were begin- ning, and the flery wine of life they distilled mounting to the heads of men. To Rosamund's surprise June an- nounced her Intention of going to the ball. She had gone out little lately: since the death of Mrs. Newbury, now six weeks past, not at all. Every even- ing she had sat in' the parlor in Folsom street, walting. But the visitor she expected never came. It was typical of her ineradicable optimism that she should still have expected him. Rosa- mund had heard and seen enough to feel certain that he would never come, that every leisure hour he had was spent with the daughter of Black Dan Gracey. All Mercedes’ other charms were now enhanced by the luster of great wealth, and the colonel had told Rosamund that Jerry's business was practically nil, his private fortune gone. It was necessary to say nQ more. June dressed herself for the ball that night as for a crisis. She had ordered a new gown, and sheathed in its glim- mering whiteness, with filmy skirts falling from her hips to the floor in vaporous layers, was an ethereally fairy-like figure. Like many women who are not handsome but possess a delicate charm of appearance, she va- ried singularly In looks. To-night the evanescent beauty, that was now and then hers, revisited her. She was not the blushing, soft-eyed girl that Bar- clay had kissed in the woods at San Mateo, but a graceful woman In whose fragile elegance there was something spiritual and poetic. She noticed her pallor and accentuated It with powder, rubbing it along her shoulders till they looked like marble. In all this lumin- ous whiteness of skin and ralment her lips were unusually red, her eyes dark and brilllant. She scrutinized herself in the mirror, drew down tendrils of hair from the coil that now crowned her head, studied her profile and coif- fure in the hand glass and tried differ- ent jeweled pendants round her neck. She was like a general before battle who reviews his resources and tries to display them to the best advantage. Owing to a delay in the arrival of the carriage they were late. It was half-past ten—an unwonted hour for those days—when . they entered the house. At its wide-flung portals cur- rents of revelry and joy seemed to meet them. There was the suggestion of festival in the air; the rhythm ot dance music swelled and faded over the hum of voices. Room opened from room with glimpses of polished floors be- tween long trains, reflections of bare shoulders in mirrors, gleams of dia~ monds, sharp and sudden under the even flood of light from the chandelfers. Over all hung the perfume of flowers, great masses of which stood banked in corners or hung in thick festoons along the walls. The colonel escorted his charges to the end of the drawing-room, whers Stanley Davenport's flancee stood Dbe- side the hostess recelving guests and congratulations, Their few sentences of greeting accomplished, they moved aside toward the wide door of en- trance. From this vantage point their eyes were Instantly attracted by the figsure of Mercedes Gracey surrounded by a little group of admirers. In the full panoply of ball dress the young woman was truly magnificent. Black Dan's last gift was fitting crown for such a head. She was pro- fusely bejeweled, exceedingly bare as to neck and shoulders, and robed in a sparkling splendor of lace traced out and weighted with silver which looked like a symbolic incarnation of the riches she represented. She was bril- lantly animated, turning her head this way and that as the members of the little court pressed on her notice. Rosamund, who was very quick to no- tice significant detalls, was struck by the fact that there were nearly as many women as men about her. She was about to mention this to June, when the various young men, Who had detached themselves from other groups at the appearance of the Misses Allen, bore down upen them, fluttering A wall of black coats formed about the girls, and the colonel, seeing the Intricate rites of programme comparing fairly inaugu- rated, backed away from them and leaned against the door frame, idly sur- veying the scene. K‘ :and on his shoulder made him start and turn, and then break into the broad smile of fellowship he reserved for just a few people. “Rion, old son!” he exclaimed grasp- ing the hand of his friend. “what brings you here, floundering round among-all these trains and frills?” The other laughed. He had not been in San Francisco for nearly a year. He was a lttle leaner, harder and tougher than he -had been on his last visit, when the colonel had only seen him once or twice and he had refused an (Continued on Page 4)