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The ITINERANT LOVER By may edginton
THE BEE: OMAHA, SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 1921.
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What May Happen to Any Man
Who, Like the Sailor, Has a
Sweetheart in Every Port
ALTHOUGH not blessed, or hampered ac
cording to the point of view with any
particular business or vocation In life,
Charles Faraday was always distinctly a man
of affairs.
That they were affairs of the heart rather
than of the head had ever been a source of an
noyance and uneasiness to the Dowager Lady
Faraday! it was the business Instinct in her that
prompted her annoyance at time and oppor
tunities lost in useless dalliance. When her
eldest son reassured her on his brother's score
she only shook her becapped, evangelical head
and prophesied that some day Charles would
find himself seriously Involved. After the young
man, however, had been involved In a whole
series of more than usually undesirable es
capades she began to lose patience and spoke
seriously to him about his shortcomings.
"I consider It lamentable," she told him,
"that a young man of your age can seriously de
vote himself to an endless series of flirtations,
often entirely out of your own class of life. Some
day, Charles, you will burn your Angers, and"
righteously "you will have to bear the brunt
of the burning. Only yesterday I waa ashamed"
she wiped her eyes "when my very old friend,
Cecilia C'aversham, came to me about her own
girl. That you should trifle with the affections
of Cecilia's child "
She looked pained.
I consider myself the victim of tempera-
ent," he murmured deprecatlngly.
"'Victim!'" Lady Faraday snapped. '"Vic
tim' Indeed! Victim of a fiddlestick! It was Ce
cilia's own girl who was 'victimized.' Every one
is talking about it And it would have been a
I very satisfactory arrangement for you, now that
f I come to speak of it. But, instead, the poor
dear child " she applied the handkerchief
again.
Charles lifted his fine eyebrows In his usual
charming distress.
"I had really no idea " he began.
"Nonsense!" said Lady Fafaday. "With
your experience you ought to know how sus
ceptible girls of that age are. And then it's
not only nice girls like Cecilia's but but I
really am ashamed. When I only remember
the dreadful husband of that terrible little mu
slo hall person who came the other day to
wear, at you "
Charles was adjusting a new tie critically at
the pier glass. Its slate color almost exactly
matched his fine eyes. His mother's anger rose.
"It must end!" his mother declared firmly.
"I Insist upon it, Charles. It is absurd that a
young man of your ability should have the al
lowance you have settled upon him and pass
his life in utter idleness. I shall speak to
Derek about it."
"Derek will not Interfere," said Charles
complacently. He knew his brother.
"What are your plans for next week?"
asked Lady Faraday, changing her tactics.
"I'm going to St. Medbury," he answered,
"to stay with Mrs. Simmonds-Smith."
"With whom?" said his mother almost In a
shriek. "I never even heard the name before!
Some Impossible person, I suppose, whom you
have picked up somewhere?"
"She picked me up." he explained.
"Don't split hairs," said Lady Faraday hu
patiently. "Is she young? Is she pretty?"
"Neither one nor the other," he answered
truthfully.
don't believe you!" said Lady Faraday
jyfT- "I suppose she is a dreadful, made
vpVwiitte young person " In a meretricious
age, Lady Faraday proclaimed her own 50 years
by uncompromising caps and gray hair "and
you will . get into . some fresh entanglements. -And
why, for goodness sake, St. Medbury?"
"It has a cathedral," he remarked..'
"Don't talk nonsense to mo about cathe
drals!" said Lady Faraday angrily. "I shall
write to your Uncle Rupert, I think, and ask
him to get you Into the diplomatic service, or
or find a seat for you to contest, or or "
"But I should go in for neither, mother."
said Charles, escaping.
Mrs. Simmonds-Smith was & very merry
widow, indeed, of almost middle age, verging
on portliness, and with only a pardonable
soupcon of the make-up and would-be-young
element with which Lady Faraday had ac
credited her. Before she settled in St. Med
bury she had possessed somewhat of an itiner
ant temperament, and when she discerned its
!lke in Charles Faraday she took to the scape
grace at once.
She had met him in Switzerland one sum
mer before the era of portliness and makeup,
which had only Just dawned and he had
formed a very agreeable part of her holiday.
They traveled, walked, talked, and climbed to
gether, and, both being experts at the same
game, and pleasurably recognizing the fact, they
played together, quite assiduously and charm
ingly. Neither kindled a fire, only the pleasant
ly temporary semblance of one, so neither was
really burned.
"You must come down and stay with me In
St Medbury," she said to him.
He was a well born boy, and looked It, and
he was also quite amazingly handsome. She
would not mind dangling him before her pro
vincial neighbors. ,
'There is a cathedral," she added, "and
quite a lot of pretty girls."
It was a year or two before he remembered
the invitation again and the giver of It; then
having an empty week or two before him, and
mother's temper being unusually touchy, he
wrote an insinuatingly reproacniui reminder
to Mrs. Simtnonds-Smith and betook himself to
St. Medbury. ,
"My little niece," said Mrs. Simmonds-Smith
playfully, as she gave him tea in her rather
overbedecked drawing room, "Is staying with
me. Now" she shook at him an arch fore
finger "she is a little girl a dear title girl
just from school, and you must behave very,
very nicely. My dear Mr. Faraday, I remember
you, I assure you."
He thought he also remembered her, before
this portliness that really distressed him, when
the admonitory forefinger had been a taper
thing of beauty, but he only smiled with charm
ing deprecation.
"Ah!" he said. "I adore Ingenues only we
never have the bona fide thing nowadays, do
"But that is Just." said Mrs. Simmonds
Smith, "what you must not do. I know your
adoration" (he made a mental note that fat
women should not be arch,), "and you are not
to adore my little Berta. She really is Ingenue,
you know an interesting mixture of Ingenu
ousness and unusual maturity for her age.
Schoolgirl lnnoncence," said Mrs. Simmonds
Smith with the air of an analyst, "and southern
impetuosity. My poor brother married a Si
cilian." ,
She said It compassionately as if with a
figurative headshake at the idea of the impetu
osity of Sicilian women in general. Faraday
thought there might be possibilities In 'Mrs.
Simmonds-Smith niece. The susceptible organ
that he fondly called his heart was at that mo
ment unoccupied.
"I shall be delighted to make her Acquaint
ance," he said, very candidly.
At that moment the door opened and Ro
berta came into the room.
"Came" la a wholly inadequate description.
There was a sinuous litheness, an overpowering
grace of movement about Roberta that invested
the ordinary action of entering a room with
something Indescribably subtle, made It an en
trancing sight. a joy, a delight, that conveyed
the very poetry of motion.
She was slim, not with the lank, boyish slim
ss of the IS -year-old English miss, but with
a slender fullness and roundness that gave, just
as Mrs. Slmmons-Smlth had said, an Impression
of early maturity. Though only a little above
middle height, her splendid carriage gave her
girlish dignity, and the fire smoldering beneath
the dark softness of her southern eyes formed a
piquant contrast with the virginal curves of her
full, red mouth. In the curves of bust and
throat and cheek, and In the glorious sweeping
line from shoulder to foot, there was the un
mistakable promise of splendid womanhood.
Her black hair was parted and coiled simply
In a schoolgirlish knot on the nape of her neck,
and ahe wore a white frock that clung to her
and fell and rippled away lovingly about her.
Pale and with a sort of tentative Innocent shy
ness, she came forward more like a graceful
child than.,a young woman.
"You are Mr. Faraday," she said without
awaiting for an introduction, putting out a soft,
brown tinted hand w'ith Ingenuous friendliness.
Her voice was the voice of the south low,
liquid, 'musical; dormant in it there lay the trou
blesome suggestion of passion.
As Faraday listened and looked at her he
fell headlong and Irretrievably into one of his
easy loves.
The young man, Inured to conquest, pur
sued the tenor of his conscienceless way, but
the conquest of Roberta was accomplished al
most before the lazy desire for It had well been
. formulated in his mind. He put out a finger
and the citadel fell.
He spoke the word he knew so well how to
speak, he looked the look he knew so well how
to look from his eloquent, long-lashed eyes;
both word and look had become something of
a parrot repetition with him. The passionate
child of the south reciprocated this semblance
of a love with a love that was only too real,
hot from the depths of a hitherto unstirred but
impetuous heart Faraday basked in it and
told himself for a whole week that he adored
her.
He told himself that the little girl was very
lovely; that she undoubtedly loved him, as he
undoubtedly loved her for the moment; that
southern women were so much more sympa
thetic than their English sisters, and that this
summer idyll was very beautiful and held fresh
er elements of interest to his jaded senses than
any heretofore.
For the time being he walked and talked
and thought wholly with and of Roberta; spent
moonlight hours with the romantic child In the
garden after dinner; accompanied her to all
the cathedral services, because sacred music
and dim stained glass and mystic hush, and
kneeling by Roberta in a vast empty twilight
space all appealed to his aesthetic sense. To
gether, too, inadequately chaperoned sometimes
by Mrs. Simmonds-Smith, whose increasing
portliness made her very sleepy out of doors in
hot weather, they floated up the narrow river
that wound round about St. Medbury,' Roberta,
in a happy dream, at the tiller, he lazily on his
oars, the two pair of eyes speaking eloquently
what in their hostess' presence they might not
voice. Faraday, who had done such things
many times before, delved for the same sensa
tions, but to Roberta it was the great, the
glorious, the sacred, the Ineffable first time.
She had come to St Medbury straight from
a convent school and awesomely unsophisti
cated; except by the intuitions of her passionate
nature. Till now the intuitions had lain dor
mant, but they were there, true, potent, ready
to awake at the touch of the first hand that
might unlock her heart-gates. Fate willed that
Faraday's should be that hand and they
awoke.
God help her! Charles Faraday's waa the
hand. He waa at this time a slim young man of
26 or thereabouts, very tall, with the long, loose,
graceful panther litheness that usually betoken .
the athlete. His appearance, however, belied
Faraday. His eyes, too, long-lashed, beautiful
eyes, expressive of the very soul of candor and
honor, .his fine mouth, his poet tongue, all be
lied him. Honor with Faraday was an elastic
quantity; hia poesy if analyzed would have been
found usually to reflect only his own ego. But
the analysis waa one which few women ever
made and those few only In the bitterness that
followed the learning of the lesson he had
taught them. Women of the world were among
them.
Who, then, shall wonder at little Roberta
bowing down, blind with faith, to worship the
idol? Afterwards, when he had, with his own
hand, shown her the clay feet, she knew, but
even then the knowledge brought no balm to
a wound but rather an added pang that the
pedestal was still there In her heart for him,
with the unworthiness of the idol upon It mouth
ing and gibing at her for her own helplessness
to cast it out
It waa when Faraday's week's visit had
lengthened into a fortnight that Mrs. Simmonds-Smith,
whose perturbation was growing,
spoke to her niece:
"Roberta, I've a duty before me "
"Yes, aunt," said Roberta, dreaming.
"Duties are unpleasant necessities." said
Mrs. Simmonds-Smith, fanning herself, "but I'm
such an aggressively moral sort of person that
I never shirk them with any sense of satisfac
tion to myself. Are you listening, child?"
"Yes, aunt," said Roberta, her aunt's last
words floating irreverently into the dream.
She sighed.
"I don't believe," said Mrs. Simmonds-Smith
more vigorously, sitting up iO shoot a sharp
glance at the girl, "I don't believe you are. Aa
I said, Roberta, I have a duty before me and I
Intend tp perform it. You are staying here
under my protection, dear, and it is Incumbent
upon me to see that you don't make a little
. fool of yourself with Charlie Faraday "
Roberta started; her olive cheeks flew a
danger signal.
"You're so terribly earnest and unsophisti
cated," Mrs. Simmonds-Smith pursued.
"Aunt," said Roberta, " so is"
"Pooh!" said Mrs. Simmonds-Smith briskly.
"He Is neither, my dear child. He falls In and
out of what he calls 'love' on an average about
once a month, if not oftener. He is, I grant,
amusing, but it is not the sort of amusement
for you. He's that really abominable thing, a
thorough male flirt and absolutely conscience
less, nature having blessed him with a face that
is a delight to look at and ,a pretty gift of
tongues why, it's all the easier for him to fool
poor little "
'How dare you?" Roberta almost screamed.
She jumped up, two scarlet spots flaming in
her cheeks, her hands clenced at her sides.
"How dare you? Do you think I I I don't
know"
"My poor, dear child!" said Mrs. Slmmonds
Smlth, thoroughly shocked and startled for once
In her easy life, "you must not fall in love with
Charlie Faraday. You must not, indeed. If I
had thought it was more than a. flirtation on
either side"
"It is," said Roberta, swaying a little, and
white now, "a flirtation on neither side on
neither side no1 on neither side "
She went to the door, walking a little un
certainly. When she reached it, she turned
round and stood erect
"Roberta!" said Mrs. Simmonds-Smith, strug
gling up from her deep chair to intercept her.
' "l love him!" said Roberta.
The poor child flew out of the room, sobs
strangling in her throat, down through the sun
lit garden, at the bottom of which on the lazy
river the moored punt rocked gently. She
sprang in with the swift agility of a wildcat
and, crouching at the bottom of the craft, laid
her arms upon the red cushions and her black
head upon them madly awake now.
There Faraday found her, an hour later, a
white heap upon the red cushions, but with a
beautiful plcturesqueness of abandonment in the
chaos that struck his esthetic eye with a certain
sense of pleasure, even while he was hurrying
across the intervening garden to reach her.
He leaped Into the punt
She started, shuddered and looked up.
"My own dear little girl!" he said, putting
out his hands with a caress and lifting her.
She allowed him to lift her to' the seat be
side him, and leaned her head against his
shoulder. The overhanging bank effectively
screened them from the vantage point of win
dows, and, knowing this, he slipped an arm
around her waist. (He always made discretion
play a large part In his affairs, hence hiaun
scathed escapes.'
"My dear little girl what?"
"N n nothing! Really nothing."
But as she spoke she opened her big southern
eyes wide on his face, and in them he read the
woman's soul he had evoked the woman's'
soul which had finally supplanted the careless
child soul. How charming! he reflected. Then
he reflected that matters had reached the stage
when it behooved him to be careful.
His carefulness, however, was always man
aged with a considerable amount of finesse. It
was not in him to be what is termed brutal.
His whole fastidious being would have revolted
at the bare suggestion. There was nothing
crude about his retreats. They were always
graceful, and came about so naturally that they
really seemed indefinable as such. He. was al
ready wearying a little of the situation, and ol
St Medbury, and his hostess, and the cathedral
services. The Itinerancy was a fever, a disease,
in his blood. He felt himself ready to absorb
something new, in need of fresh sensations. The
two weeks had been very pleasant and the little
girl beside him had been a wholly delightful
companion, but but .
But the thing was decidedly beginning to
palL . That was the sober truth, which there was
no blinking. Also, Mrs. Simmonds-Smith this
very morning had said something about Roberta
which had seemed most alarmingly like an. at
tempt at probing. His sensible discretion had
taken fright; valour was a negative quantity
with him. Love-making, however, with charm
ing little Roberta was easy; moreover, It had be
pome a second nature with him, and he felt it
would meet the occasion now, and smooth the
path of the announcement that he had Intended
to make of hia near departure. As usual, he
expressed the love-making more in the subtle
Inflection of his well modulated voice, in the
tender pressure of the encircling arm, than In
actual words, which bear repetition.
"N n nothing." He mocked her very gen
tle. "O. my dear little Berta, but I think there
Is. You are going to tell me?"
Her pale face lay against his shoulder, tear
stained, the red lips tremulously vibrating. He
bent and kissed them, and she returned his
caress with an abandonment of passion that
she showed now, poor child, for the first time,
never doubting.
With the same absolute faith she told him,
too, the wherefore of her tears, and waited, con
fident "Your aunt?" he repeated lightly. "What an
absurd Idea of hers, wasn't it? As if there was
any possible harm in what has been to me, at
X
Z-1"J? " Yottr not natty going-"
least, a wholly pleasant and delightful friend
ship. And I hope it has been so to you, too,
dearest, sweetest little girl."
"H h has been?" she stammered, starting.
"Why of course," he said kindly, "all de-.
lfghtful things come to an end, don't they?
That's part of the jest of that abominable old
cynic, Fate. My delightful time must come to
an end now, very shortly, I fear, for I I er
shall have to leave St. Medbury tomorrow.
Family business, and all sorts of perfectly rotten
affairs to see to, the matter is worrying me"
Lady Faraday had more than once been a use
ful scapegoat "to come home to talk matters
over with her."
Roberta was looking at him, astounded,
white faced.
"B b but," she stammered, "you'll
c c come back?"
He sighed deeply.
"Ah, when, I wonder?" he said pensively.
"One never knows. Of one thing I'm certain,
though. I shall never forget my visit to charm
ing, quaint old S Medbury, and the happy fort
night I've spent here or Is it Yes, I declare,
it will be nearly three weeks tomorrow! Time
flies so, under perfect conditions, when one Is
absolutely and ideally happy, as I own I have
been. One loses all count of it Your aunt has
been most kind, really. In letting me extend a
sort of week-end visit into a regular visitation.
No, I shall never forget it this delightful fort
night, and my dear little friend. Even if we
were destined never to meet again one never
knows"
"What? What? What?" she almost wailea.
She had pulled herself away from his arm, and
was staring at him, her eyes wide open in blank,
anguish. Incredulous amaze, which she made no
attempt to conceal. In a moment there flashed
back upon her consciousness disconnected
phrases of her aunt's: phrases culled from a
shrewd worldly wisdom denied to babes such as
she, phrases that, in her blindness, she raved at,
spurning them "that abominable thing a
thorough male flirt a flirtation on either side
all the easier to fool poor little "
What do you mean? she breathed rather
than, spoke.
"My dear little girl," he said, biting his Hp
in vexed anticipation of "a scene" that would
be really abhorrent to so sensitive a nature as
his, "what should I mean? What is there In
what I have said to call for this er melo
dramatic attitude? You surely er have not
misinterpreted misunderstood 0! pray get
up! I really cannot "
She had slipped with one of her character
istic, sinuous movement down from the seat,
and now half knelt, half crouched In the bottom
of the punt, facing him, still staring with blank
eyes, still striving against Incredulity, still all
but speechless. Heart and brain were hammer
ing like drums, with great bursting throbs that
choked her, driving the breath In panting gusts
between her parted Hps.
Faraday raised his fine eyebrows now In very
real distress.
"O pray get up," he said futilely. He
stretched out the long white hands that a mo
ment or two ago had been a caress she loved.
She struck at them In fury.
"What are you saying?" she panted, In a
voice he hardly recognized. "What are you
saying? Do you mean that all this time that
all this time that all this time " 8he trailed
off into a senseless repetition. "You're not real
ly going for ever and ever? She stretched
out two gripping hands. "But but I love you!"
She fixed her eyes on his face, reading it, and
read It like an open book read what the child
of a fortnight ago could not have done, but what
to the anguished woman of this moment stood
out in letters of fire; read all the contemptible
ness of him, all the heartlessness, all the deli
cate cruelty, measured the height and depth of
his utter egoism and blatant vanity, and, though
unable in her experience to define It yet felt the
full horror deep down In her writhing soul.
Treading close upon the despair of this first
great love came an uglier passion of rage
rage incarnate, rage of the south, rage that
swept over her irresistibly, and shrieked out a
terrible vendetta. He had humiliated her,
mocked her, stolen her blind adoration blindly
given, and put her aside. ;
"Oh! you!" she cried. "You you! and you
kissed me and I kissed you "
"My dear little Berta," he murmured, really
at a loss In face of such unexpected Intensity In
thla pretty child, "you will forget all this
nonsense "
"Forget!" 'she said, leaning forward and
speaking very quickly. "Forget! Never! You
don't know me! And I will never forget! Never
forget that I hate you now!" A sob broke in
her throat at the lie. "Never forget that I'll
be revenged! I am no cold English girl to for
get You didn't know whom you were dealing
with when you brought this on me. How dare
you! How dare you! How dare you! . And I
told you I loved you and and I kissed you!
O, my God! I can't forgetl O. If I only had
strength to kill you I'd do It, I think. No, I
don't think I know I would. I hate you!"
She gathered vehemence, staring at him with
black eyes distended In her white face.
"O," she said, in a voice like a moan, "if
I I I had a man to thrash you for it you
you heartless devil!"
She was beautiful In her fury, but with the
beauty 6f a tiger-cat gathered for a spring as she
croflclfjd there swaying a little from sheer force
of. convening emotion.
"Go away!" she said, "Go away! Leave me!
I've got some pride left It will come back to
me when "
"Suddenly exhausted, she flung her arms
forward on the cushions, laid her black head on
them, and knelt thus, very still.
Quite silently Faraday got up and left her.
There seemed nothing else to be done in the
face of this most uncomfortable development,
he told himself.
To a very shrewd, but eminently tactful,
hostess ho explained that a wire had summoned
him back to town today. In any case he had
made up his mind to tear himself away tomor
row. But she would understand.
He felt uncomfortably that she did.
So It fell that the pride that brought Rob
erta in, dry-eyed and smiling at tea time and
sustained her through the eternity of a half
hour, was not called upon to stand the additional
test Of Faraday's presence.
In the hall afterward as she went through she
picked up a glove he had dropped and carried It
away to her room. The Pride swore an oath
of vendetta over It, and the Love kissed it, and
cried as it fondled It, before putting it away in a
shrine of its own. The Love cleft deep into the
Sicilian heart that could not forget
Six years after, when the black-eyed little
Sicilian girl and dull old St Medbury were hard
ly memories with him, Faraday met the Cam
bray Stuarts at Brighton.
He was still the dallying dilettante loafer
whom many women loved and more men de
spised. During the six years he had wandered
itinerant and culled much sweetness from many
flowers. He had on leaving Roberta six years
ago followed a pretty peeress half over Europe,
and the blue eyes had displaced the black In his
fickle affections, and between them they nearly
managed a cause-celebre. It was discreetly
hushed up, however, on one of Faraday's skill
ful retreats, and he returned home to fall In and
out of love with his mother's latest companion.
This, too, was now hardly a memory with him.
She first attracted his momentary unoccu
pied attentions at lunch. She sat at a small
table with her husband, a huge, healthy, reddish
haired young Scotsman, discussing an attractive
menu with a vivid Interest that somehow seemed
to suit her. 1
' Faraday's table was to her right, where he
had a full and uninterrupted view of a glorious
sweep of profile and throat and bust. After
she had swept in and sat down, and begun her
lunch, all In a careless, regal, unconcerned way,
he ate no more.
At last she turned her head and met his
eyes, and her own, full and black, distended
widely for a moment before the dropping lids
veiled them again discreetly. His vanity
gauged the effect of the glance as It listed, and
about his shaven upper lip curled a slight, fine
smile. An adorable woman!
As she left her table she dropped her ador
able handkerchief, and he was quick to return
it to an adorable hand before her red-haired
husband could perform the office. She mur
( mured hanks and trailed out leaving with a
faint suggestion, that yet hardly was a memory,
in the resonant sweet timbre of her voice.
He looked them up in the visitor's book, and
went off to the smokeroom to smoke casual
acquaintance with the red-headed young Scots
man through the proffer of his own unparalleled
cigars, a brand he especially Imported. .The
acquaintance soqn extended, for Cambray Stuart
was a genial, unsusplclouly good fellow. That
evening the lover sat next to Mrs. Chambray
Stuart at dinner.
He neglected his soup, feeding on enchant
ment Her voice was beautiful, so was her pro
file under the shadowing black hair and the
glorious slender fullness of her perfectly ma
tured figure. With the advent of the fish the
slight memory his neighbor had evoked came
back and puzzled Faraday a little. Through
two ensuing courses he pooh-poohed It to him
self, and then when the sweets appeared, he
voiced it in an apologetic question:
"Something like a memory is troubling me;
yet I could never have forgotten you had we
ever met before."
"I do not think we ever have," she said
meditatively, resting her eyes on his face.
With the lie, she was taking him in with a
deliberate scrutiny that tried to be cold, but
could be so only ostensibly. She saw him
stouter than six years ago at St. Medbury
pang drove through the Sicilian heart that could
not forget his hair already a little thinner on
the top, the fine lines of his mouth and chin
thickening. Idealism was absent from his face
now. Laziness and self-indulgence and an In-.
tolerable egoism were making of him something
grosser. Yet the old pang drove Into her,,
scorching and searing her, heart and soul, brain
and body. But the six years that had developed
the pale girl Into a glorious woman had taught
her also how to dissemble. And so she had lied
boldly.
"I do not think we ever have."
"Not at at at " he said, racking his
brains.
She held her breath. Would he remember?
No, dear God! not that not that
A sudden enlightenment, not wholly pleas
ant and a little- confused, broke over his face.
"Were you ever at at St Medbury?" he
asked, turning to her. "I think it must have
been"
She had herself admirably In hand.
"No, I don't think so," she said slowly.
Then, lightly, "But one really forgets trlflles,
doesn't one? I have such a shocking memory."
"Still I thought " he began dubiously, re
lieved. "Perhaps," she said, after a pause, "you met
my my little sister there." '
'Ah!" he exclaimed. This solved a rather
awkward problem really quite satisfactorily;
and he hated to probe. "Ah! that must have
been what was puzzling me. You you er
must have beenvery much alike though I see
the difference very plainly now."
She smiled a little wry smile, but her teeth
were dazzling, and the bitterness was lost on
him.
"Is she er with you?" he ventured further.
"She is dead," said Mrs. Stuart, an Inde
scribable hardness sweeping over the beautiful
face.
He looked his pained concern, and voiced it
very gently In his own perfect manner. With
the putting aside of a painful subject he was
happily aware that he might, too, put aside that
little momentary uneasiness that was assailing
him, for what, he really hardly recollected on
the Instant no doubt some episode. So the
little sister died? Well, well, he remembered -her,
he thought, as rather a rather a pretty
little girl.
But this woman was adorable.
' As he talked to her his low voice raised all
the ghosts of the pain and passion she had
frantically striven all these six years to lay. She
. answered very little. That, however, he rather
enjoyed. Ego was satisfied, and, aa often, blind.
Roberta, reawakened, felt In her the old love,
and the dormant fury clashing again. She
looked across at her husband's good, ruddy face
and prayed that the sight of It might exorcise
the quivering demons of the past, but felt fear
fully that her prayers would be of no avail. She
had married, partly in the mental exhaustion
following Faraday's departure, partly because
her own warm nature waa very responsive to
any love that assailed it passionately enough.
The first man who had wooed her had happened
to be young, wealthy, and kind, and he had
made her nearly happy k thought wholly son.
So had she thought God help her! so had she
thought till now.
She drove her teeth into her Up till the
blood came. She sat and heard the egoist dis
course. She loved him! She realised again all
the contemptlbility, the cruelty, the selfishness,
the littleness of the man. Yet she loved him.
Then something unprecedented In his smug
career, something almost unrealltable, fell upon'
the itinerant lover. His Itinerancy checked, his
wanderings fixed, he fell blindly at Roberta
Stuart's feet and adored them and her with a
whole, true first passionate single-heartedness
that he had never before given, nor to any de
gree experienced.
She knew it was scheming for It.
So shs smiled, a cruel beautiful smile that
curled up the corners of her full red mouth and
reflected the vendetta that lay always alongside
the love, sometimes superseding it in her heart.
So he was bringing it back to her humbly,
was he the gift she had given him, which he
had taken and tossed aside? Bringing It back,
full value, heaped up measure. She had no fear
for herself. She was strong strong In the ar
mor forged from the pride that had "come back
to her" aa she had told him it would long ago
and in the trust her husband gave her most
completely. She did not forget that, with Its
other occupancy, her Sicilian heart held also
her husband's honor.
Good Cam! When his wife paraded Fara
day's devotion almost flauntlngly before the
whole hotel he only shut his eyes the closer.
He said he knew her. His psychological In
stinct though he might have asked the mean
ing of the term had it been spoken to him
was unerring. Roberta almost wept at what
seemed to her the pathos of It If she could
she would have loved him.
The climax. Inevitable with such a woman
and such a man, came in the second week of
their new acquaintance. She waa sitting In the
big palm-shaded vestibule of the hotel after din
ner waiting for her husband to take her out.
It waa a glorious, hot, still night and they had
planned to spend an hour on the pier; many
lights and music upon the water satisfied a cer
tain undefined craving in Roberta,
To her came Faraday, very slowly, giving
himself time to feast his eyes on the vision of
her, in long black dress with the scarlet silk
wrap thrown over it, her pale cheeks and red
Hps entrancing under the shadow of black hair.
"You are going out?" he said, coming up to
her.
"To hear the band," she answered carelessly,
smiling at him.
"Why do you never let me take you?" he
said a little recklessly, looking into ber eyes,
feeling the balance of things Slipping. "Al
ways "
"My husband," she said.
He looked around. They were alone in the
vestibule. He slipped his arm under her loosely
opened wrap and put It on her waist
"Roberta!"
She looked at him, very still.
"Your husband, Roberta! What a farce,
this! A farce! You do not love him you love
me me."
She did not answer, but he felt her quiver
ing, and her erect head drooped a little,
acquiescent.
."You love 'me me!" he said wildly, "and
I love you. Love. God! what a poor word for
what I feel! I adore you, worship you with
every drop of blood in my veins, with every fiber
of my being. I was mad from the moment I
saw you. We were meant for one another. I
could have killed that cold Scotsman when 1
knew you were his. Roberta, Roberta, my
darling, you will leave him you will come away
with me. We will go together to the beautiful
south htat you and I both love. Together we
will wander hither and thither and forget every
thing but each other. Tomorrow tonight
now. Roberta!"
She lifted a ghastly face. He stopped.
"What? What? What?" she said almost
frenziedly, and swayed rather than voluntarily
drew herself away from him.
What? Wh a repetition of of he could
not remember, and it did not matter.
Roberta, my darling."
'I have I had," she said, changing her
tense confusedly, "no man no man to thrash
you for this."
He stared, started, suddenly white as she,
She stood in the middle of the vestibule, a
wan ghost under the glare of electric light, bul
with a very devil of fury Incarnate loosed in
her blazing black eyes. Her bosom dilated, she
threw her head back, gazing at him gazing
gazing and looking all white and black with
her black gown and hair and eyes, and white
neck and whiter face, and the scarlet wrap
striking a weird note of startling color. Back
came a mad recollection fraught now to him
with a terrible significance. The floodgates of
memory loosed showed him the black. and white
little Sicinlian wildcat raving at him in the bot
tom of a red-cashioned punt.
His pale face grewghastly. He threw out
his hands toward her, stammering brokenly.
She smiled.
"No one then "
Cambray came into the vestibule at that
moment, humming a snatch of an opera, and
stopped dead.
Roberta went up to him and laid her face
down against his arm. He dropped the coat
he was carrying to hold her and looked over
the black head terribly at Faraday, standing
here stammering.
"My darling!" said Cam.
"Cam," she said scornfully drawing herself
erect "Mr. Faraday is urging me to visit the
south with him. The invitation is for you to
decide."
She drew his head down and kissed him be
fore Faraday's eyes, then flew from the vesti
bule, gasping, her hands pressed over her ears
to shut out the sounds. She knew her cold
Scotsman. '
Twenty minutes later, having pacified a
raving hotel proprietor and an aghast staff,
Cambray went to her room to look for her. He
found her flung upon the bed, her black and
scarlet huddled around her, her distended eyes
looking somewhat vacantly into space. He bore
signs of stress in a blood streaked face, torn
tie, and crumpled collar, but he smiled the smile
of a man who has done good work and on whom
a great calm has fallen after the storm.
He went over to the washbasin and rinsed
his hands and face before touching her.
"Wh wh what have you done, Cam?" she
faltered, behind him.
But she knew. 44
He turned round, toweling himself vigor
ously. "Never mind, dearest I'm going to- take
you out, and you're not to worry over anything.
Because It's all over."
She got up from the bed and clung to him
mutely.
. "Don't worry, dearest," said honest, blind
Cambray. "I won't have you worry. I shan't
say another word to you about it tonight, ex
cept to say that I I I'm proud to think"
his voice was a little husky "that that
Caesar's wife, you know. And to thank you,
darling, for giving it to me to do for you."
Roberta lay back a moment on his arm, her
eyes half closed, her full red lips trembling very
near his own. He bent and kissed them pas
sionately They went out together Into the warm, still
night and sat on the pier amid a crowd of plea
sure seekers and the myriad twinkling lights
that she always liked dotting and dimpling the
dark water below. She felt Cambray's faithful,
passionate eyes searching her white face and
set it stiffly like a mask, and sat mutely, blind
and dead. He kept a protective arm along the
back of her chair.
In the pavilion the band was playing Elgars
"Pomp and Circumstance," with a glorious fan
faronade and blare of marching music.
"Isn't that good, dearest?" Cam was saying.
She opened her ears to listen mechanically
and heard the storm of violins,, the blare of
cornets, the throb of drums, walling a dirge in
a minor key.
Copyright. 1(11, Chleito Tribute,
NEXT WEEK.
STUCK A FEATHER.
IN HIS HAT
By WillianPAlmon Wolff.
)
