Demand.
‘The little cares that fretted me
1 lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play;
Among the lowing of the herds.
The rustling of the trees,
Among the singing of the birds,
The humming of the bees.
The foolish fears of what might hap—
I cast them all away
Among the clover-scented grass,
Among the new-mown hay:
Among the husking of the corn,
Where drowsy poppies nod,
Where ill thoughts die and good are born
Out in the fields with God.
—FElizabeth Barrel! Browning.
THE WOMAN IN THE ROOM.
Baring went up the first flight of stairs
runner—
and past Mrs. Wheeler's door with its
—the flight with the
streaming transom light; and up the sec-
ond flight—the one with the matting;
and the third flight, of bare, brutal boards.
And there was his own door waiting for
palpitating a bit from the stair climbing, “I believe I did,” she admitted.
was the bearer of a note, from that Mrs. “In a taxi?” he wanted to know—just
Wheeler of the lower story of Brussels for the little joke-with-himself of asking
it.
“They don't let taxis in the shops,” she
told him merrily, “and for that reason I
Wihy—sif you don't mind?”
“I rather thought you shopped,” Baring
explained himself luminously.
else did you do?’
Ever so briefly her look questioned him,
her face glowing a little in the warm
light of the dome. And while she an-
swered her look still questioned him.
“I did what ten thousand or so other
fourth-floor lodgers did toaay.” she said.
“I sat curled up in a cold dining room
full of furniture while the woman swept
the sitting room. Then I dusted it and
tried to change things round, though
there is nothing to change and no room
to change it in if there were. At noon
Mrs. Wheeler let me help her a little.
Then I washed some lace, and took back
pick him up at Mrs. Wheeler's, and ran
downstairs "nearly right away.” Even if
he had not heard Miss Beacon's door
shut and if the letters under her door
had not been missing now, Baring would
have known that she had passed through
the hall, because of that sweet, uncertain
fragrance.
“It smells like orris or iris or Osiris,”
he said to himself, “and violets on a
thousand hills. And some day [ shall
miss it.”
He entered Mrs. Wheeler's sitting room
with the pleasure which he always felt
in meeting the little, unconventional,
mothering creature. But though, be-
tween-curtains, stood the waiting table
with its yellow dome, and fire of real |
hearth-wood quickened the air, Mrs.
Wheeler was not there at all. And the
White Muslin Apron which had admitted
time at some orchids, and made a call,
and came home tired to death. And now
is now.”
Baring nodded.
of call?” he inquired briefly. This was
it—this was the way She would be telling
him of her day.
“The call.” Anne went on, "was on a
| woman in Pearl Street. Yes, Pearl.
the fifth floor.
There are six children.
a library book that was overdue, and |
shopped for something [ decided not to |
buy, and looked in a window for a long |
On !
Her husband is a helpless | in something like
from the window of his lonely room.
There were the yellow-lighted panes
which he fancied looked from some man’s
dining room, the ground glass of a hall
door behind which lay some man's wel-
come, the cheery, common-place of lights
in the upper windows, and all just as he
saw them from his little window in the
midst of his dreary game. And sudden-
ly he sank back into the present with a
good sense of warmth, of realization, of
not being alone. And at that, Baring
stared over at Anna Beacon. Why, he
said incoherently to himself, she was
making a kind of thereness——
On this high moment Gilliland arrived,
ana so did coffee. Gilliland was short,
with a little head, so that his appearance
was irresistibly triangular. To-night he
was, in addition, radiant.
land commented when he had heard,
“how deliciously, extravagantly like her.
Wasn't it?”
When Miss Beacon had poured the
coffee she rose.
“Now,” she said, “I'm going to leave
you two. 1 shall sit up for my mother,
and I shall write five hundred letters.
And when Mrs. Wheeler comes, perhaps
“Was it the right kind | you will all come up for a sandwich.”
Baring took her to the door. As she
went beside him through the shadow-
haunted, fire-lit room, he caught again
“that fragrance of “violeta on 2 thousand
hills,” and he turned to look down at her
astonishment. To
, little game.
bad as Gilliland, with bis talk about fate.
“How nicely like Mrs. Wheeler,” Gilli- |
her lover—ves, and Gilliland, who was
blindly obeying the call and trying to
make more money to buy things for
Emily Earl and to lay a little by for the
time when—Oh, they ail knew, they all
knew the big, vital things. All save him-
self, playing his little game by his lonely
window and—Anne acon, doing the
dreary things which a fourth-floor woman
lodger does when that floor is not a home
in earnest. Suddenly Baring saw his own
loneliness as speech within him, trying
to say all this. The roofs and the lights
there were calling, bidding him to be of
them. And here he was, waiting for the
woman who now hung bodiless in space,
an outline of pale blue with abundant
hair, and held him bound, pretending his
Why, he was every bit as
What if any one of many women cou'd fill
in that indeterminate outline which he had
made?
When at last he heard Mrs. Wheeler's
ring, he met her at the door and hardly
heard her pretty apologies.
“Was the roast spoiled?” she wanted
to know. “And I could have wept in the
cab when I thought of the dessert. Wasn't
it too bad about Mrs. Beacon? She came
in with me just now and I've asked her
and Anne tocome down [or some scraps.
And we're all going to get supper.”
Baring, who had settled before the fire
Susie Mrs. Wheeler, sprang to his
eet.
“I'll go and fetch them.” said he.
an in the universe for Emily Earl.”” And
ring's heart gave a great, surprising,
sickening throb of understanding, of
homesickness {or Her—for the woman in
the room to whom he would have been
the only one —the only one, as he had al-
ways been to Her the only one in his
dreary little game.
Then, amazingly, Anne Beacon laughed.
And it was a good little laugh, a glad
laugh, a laugh that had init a kind of
pride and triumph, and a tenderness that
went to Baring's head as nothing in the
game had ever done. Before he could
speak she came to him, had his face in
her hands.
“Oh, you mind!” she cried. “You dear,
you would!”
Baring looked down at her, and looked.
And she met his eyes in the pride and
the humility of the thing that she knew.
“But you ought to mind,” she said. “I
wouldn't love you if you didn't mind.
And it isn't true. From the days when
vou were sick and I came to read to you,
I've loved you. I loved the boy in you—
and the big, dear man in you. And you've
got to know it as I know it, and believe
it, because there isn't anything truer—
that it could never, never have been any-
body else in this world, only you—you—
you?"—By Zona Dale, in Tie American
Magazire.
FOR AND ABOUT WOMEN
DAILY THOUGHT.
cripple. The | that sweetness of odor which he had long
| woman scrubs offices from six o'clock at | caught on stair and hall, had known that
| night until three or so in the morning. ' some day he shouid miss, he preceived
| By daylight she washes clothes—and car- | now that he bore a certain time, he
| ries the water by the pailful up the five i identified Anne herself. He locked down
| flights of stairs. She has lived down. at her—slight, white thing moving beside
| town since she was seven years old and | him, talking. silent, smiling, pretiv—and
“Tell them to hurry!” Mrs. Wheeler
admonished. “There are cold roast beef
and some of Anne's dessert and all the
properties of a debauch—"
Baring turned in the doorway.
“Whose dessert?” he demanded.
“Yes, Anne. Mercy, how abrupt you
him with its eternal, mocking air of:
Really, am I the best you can do for
yourself?
He unlocked the door with a jab of the
key as if he would make that door say
something else, if it was only a lonely
welcoming to a place where he did not
him was handing him another note as if
: It is better that our griefs should not spread
it had not left off handing him the first
far, ~—George Elliot.
The exceeding thinness and flimsiness
of the upper portion of the blouses or
one.
“To Whoever Arrives First,” the note
was addressed. And,
“My poor friends,” it said, “had been
somehow stalled on the marshes and
wish to be. The key was not even a
latch key—it was a door key, big and
long and bent, a dreary implement to an
amateur domesticity, an implement which
it somehow inexpressibly mortified Bar-
ing to chance on among his pocket stuff.
As, night alter night, it mortified him to
go in that lonely room of his.
Therefore, as he entered, he instantly
wrapped himself in his groping, indeter-
minate sense of the Woman. There was
no woman; there never had been a wom-
an who really counted; but life pricked
and hurt Baring all over and he slipped
away from it into a kind of game which
was half pretense, half plan; and he
ayed the game every time he came
e. It went somewhat like this:
She did not hear his key. Sometimes
he actually inserted it softly so that he
. might surprise her. She was at work in
the next room—though, save in the game,
there was no next room but that of
another lodger; and she came to the
doorway, by some chance of her task,
and saw that he had come home. And
then she cried some glad, surprised word
and ran to him—and ran to him—Baring
always prolonged that moment. There
was something so—prolongable about her
hurrying toward him.
Then they sat by the fire, which in re-
ality meant that Baring turned on the
heat and absently patted his hands on
the top of the radiator. And they talk-
ed. Oh, about things which had happen-
ed that day in his absence. He never
bothered her with business—anyway, he
liked to keep his affairs to himself; but
she told hers: A man had been there
washing windows; she had been shopping
mm a taxi and he was to like
hat when it came home
it suited his general taste and her
special face and did not suit the hideous
style; and there was in the new maga-
zine a wonderful article about the stars
—or the elements—or immortality; and
her |
because | good
! she has never been above Twenty-third
: Street. Do you see what that means? |
| mean the little, commonplace things she
they've wired me from Jersey City to
meet them at the Metropolitan lobby.
What else to do? 1 dare say they are
there even now. I must go, and you
three must lay a cover for my sigh and
forgive me and dine without me. That
roast is—or was—host enough. Dinner
is served!”
It was disappointing, partly as Mrs. | her.”
Wheeler was always in the most unique | Baring looked down at Anne.
difficulties, and told about them delight-| “Good Lord,” he said, “those things—"
fully. But she had left as host not only! “Don’t they?” she answered.
the roast but the open fire, and Baring! “I had a little girl with me,” Anne
sat before the hearth and, as one who | went on after their silence. “She had on
understands open fires, he sank miles and | a white cioth cloak, and the woman knew
miles in its light and warmth and friend- | she was lovely and tried to say so. But
ly advancings. He said to himselt that | all she could say was: ‘Ain't the little
it would be pleasant, this dining with | thing clean? Ain'tshe clean? To be clean
Miss Beacon and her mother. For two! was the chief ideal and absolutely the
years he had passed Miss Beacon on the | only beauty she knew. Doesn’/that make
stair, mechanically noted her presences | one—"
and absences, vaguely become used to “I know, I know,” said Baring.
her being there. He was always indefi-| Anne looked at him meditatively.
nitely glad when he heard her come in, “] was afraid,” she told him, “that you
half aggrieved if she was several days | might tell me that I ought not to go
away, in that inevitable and pathetic and | round to these places!”
half-unrecognized r lation of all fellow-| “Heaven forbid,” said Baring. "I'm
lodgers. Then there were those weeks | not much good, but I am alive. There
of an illness of his, when she and her | was a little girl in our office today,” he
mother had brought in jelly and bouillon | added, “the door ‘boy’s little girl, He is
and had read to him. But he had been | forty and he has tuberculosis. He took
too sick then even to pretend. And | her round to all of us, and he apologized
though he would have missed Miss Bea- | anc ade her shake hanks with us and
con if she had moved away, missed her | do su ..e nice little things she does. When
involuntary co-operation in the game, | she had gone he came to each one of us
missed that odor of orris, yet when he and told us why he had had her down.
had thought about her at all, his thought | He hoped that one of us might adopt her
had usually slipped along to something so that he could know she had a home
else and had not caught. As it slipped | before—"
along now to the satisfied consciousness “Oh—" said Anne, “isn’t that—"
that the evening would somehow be very “Isn't it?” said Baring.
. . They looked at each other across th
He rose at the touch of the bell and | blur of white and of dainty dishes, an
stood before the fire as Anna Beacon | for a moment their eyes clung, merely
came in. Something in her hair was as if one person alive had met another
sparkling, and this indeterminately pleas- | person alive in a vast, otherwise manless
ed Baring. So did this meeting with her | waste; merely as if, to each, the fact of
in a domain of evening and leisure and a : the other being there was a fine, incom-
. been in a carriage.
' hothouse flower—or smelled fragrance—
' or seen a jewel—or a woman's beautiful
| gown—or a wild animal—or the park.
| he felt a sudden, overruling satisfaction
in the mere fact that she was there.
Because he wished that she were not
has never done, and seen: she has never | going, and because he cast indefinitely
She has never had a |!
about for some way to keep her for a
moment, he said the first thing which
occurred to him and the last thing
‘ which he had expected to say:
| I's quite true. I saw her and talked with |
“You didn’t happen,” he put it almost
wistfully, “to buy a hat today, did you?” |
She disclaimed it merrily enough, but
with the restful absence of bewilderment
at any irrelevance which is the soul of
the most intimate talk.
“This isn’t my new hat year,” she told
him.
“I almost wish you had bought a hat,”
said Baring—but now the little joke-with-
himself was less a joke than before. “A
woman,” he explained impromptu, “is
never so much a woman as when she is |
describing the pursuit of her latest hat.”
“All my hats—I mean, both my hats
are early. Early Renaissance,” she in-
formed him gaily from the stair.
Baring turned back to the firelit, haunt-
ed room. And about the emptiness of
the room there overswept him a certain, |
dreary sense of familiarity—as il it were
his own empty room in the moment of
his losing Her—the Her of the game—Ilos-
ing her absolutely. And presently, when
he did not come back to the dining room,
Gilliland came in and found him by the
open fire, staring down miles into it past
the red log.
“You didn’t drink your coffee,” said
Gilliland,
“I don't want it,” said Baring.
yours in here.”
“1 don't want it,” said Gilliland.
“Bring
“Bar-
. Baring looked at him with new inter
est.
“Splendid,” he said with enthusiasm.
“It's Miss Earl, of course?”
“It is,"said Gilliland reverently, “and the
{ ing, old man, I'm engaged.”
are,” said Mrs. Wheeler. “She came
down and made it for me this noon. You
had it for dinner, 1 know it was good,"
Baring looked down at the figures of
the rug and smiled—and smiled.
“A dessert she made—made! he said
inanely. {
“Wasn't it good?” Mrs. Wheeler per-'
sisted.
“It was,” said Baring, and closed the
door. “It was!" he repeated as he raced
up the length of matting and the bare,
brutal boards. |
The Beacons’ door stood open, and at |
his knock Anne, who was in the room
, alone, turned from the window. And it
was a window like Baring’s and like those
of Mrs. Wheeler's looking to that same
big vista of city lights and roofs.
ring strode across the floor.
“Anne Beacon,” he said, “I want to tell
you something I know.” |
She glanced up at him—a slight, white |
thing, with the star shining in her hair, |
and behind her the great tapestry of |
night and the world.
“You—Ilook as you looked when you
were cross—when I read to you,” she
said uncertainly. |
“A kind of boy and a kind of brute,” |
bodices belonging to smart three piece
costumes doubtless has much to do with
the raising of the coat protection across
the chest, says a New York Sun writer.
There are many frocks built up almost
entirely of thick, soft, fleecy woolen ma-
terial, frocks that seem altogether too
warm for any indoor wear, but the frock
of the three-piece costume—which in such
case is really a two-piece costume—is
usually of exceeding thinness in the up-
per part of the bodice.
Sometimes the whole bodice is thinand
the sheer stuff even runs down into the
skirt; but more often the skirt material
runs up into the bodice in some fashion.
Separate blouses are not endorsed by
most of the French designers, though
several of the great houses show a few
delightful blouses, but that does not af-
fect the fact that the practical costume
blouse will be worn by a majority of wom-
ankind.
There are some pretttier blouses in crepe
and soft silk than there have been in re-
cent years, but the chiffon blouse match-
ing the costume is still very popular. In
its best form this fall it is likely to have
long sleeves and some sort of full length
trimming or a little waistcoat arrange-
: *¢, | ment instead of the i
Baring put in. “That's it. You'll think | ang pois ein fran] Sumpe
. 80 more than ever when I've done. But! plenty of models in the latter t
you've got to hear. Because I've had it One house that always De.
‘all wrong. I've always thought there | jarjy chic and exclusive blouses for semi-
was somewhere a woman—the one wom- | tailored wear has an uncommonly pret-
an you understand, living and waiting | ty model in chiffon. It is rather severe
around for me. Weil, I don't believe it. ip jie, pin tucked vertically by hand in
I believe she—the woman—might be one ' groups of eight tucks. The long sleeve
of a good many women—and that any | ig just a littie full with a pin tucked wrist
| one ot them I might have wanted to be | and and has one wide :
| with always if I had happened to meet | down its i je SHOupof pintncks
| her first, see her oiten, and all that. But| The blouse o i
it happens that of them all I've met only | narrow full eT B Jone gud hag 2
you. I know now there must be others | gatin buttoning with little white satin
=I know it. Why, a man's got to know | buttons and practically covered, save in
{it if he thinks at all. But I've met you | glimpses, by little frills of narrow lace—
curious thing about it is, Baring, that it ever—if you want to be. Docs that mean
always was Miss Earl.” | anything to you? Do you want to be
EEO EE IN ET IS
Yio nevey sould guess what she had made | pretty gown, yuthier than fo one or bare
i stairs and thic ts and haste. i
On that Je shipped io She ete resi her ToMentary shyness please him. And
but-far, far-woman sitting at table ro | TE as one ” he said, "do I impress
gather a tulle round and small dng blur- | you as any kind of host?” P
white, wit ainty es. e was " » gai .
chief in consciousness, talking, silent, You. . . . " siid Anne. Beacon only;
smiling, pretty—Baring was even banal
enough to entertain the usual anticipato-
n ent of some one in hiue, with
ndant hair. And always, as he dream-
ed it, there was that encompassing sense
of her being there, 2 distinct quality of
thereness, which was like the emotion of
being alive. And the whole game was to
get for himself this sense of companion:
ship, to feel himself somehow fellowed
that meant very-much-Yes or only-a-
little-No.
He gave her Mrs. Wheeler's note and
watched her while she read it. He was
glad that she did not look up, startled,
with an exclamation and parted lips and
tilted brows.
prettily go off like that merely because a
situation s ts it. The soft glowing
and Baring wondered vaguely whether |
He disliked women who
| prehensible thing to be hugged, with all
the intricate waste as a dim background.
! But to Anne, as she looked at him, the
i background was one of the cheery, leap
| ing, homey hearth; and to him, as he
| looked, the background was a window,
i and the black-windowed vista of other
men’s homes.
Presently the White Mushn Apron
brought in the desert. It was a delicious
dessert, all feathery yellow dressing, on a
| creamy, fruity surprise within. And as
. Anne Beacon served it, a welcome sense
| of well-being came flower-like from soil
of a long and lonely preparedness and
filled Baring's consciousness, and he sat
watching the little ornament shine in her
He sat by the fire and looked solemnly
at Baring.
“Baring,” he said, “Emily Earl is the
one woman in this whole world for me. I
know it now. If I hadn't met her—just
think, Baring, of the chances I ran of not
meeting her! —if [hadn't met her I should
never have looked at any woman. It was
planned for us somewhere—back and
back and back. It had to be, 1 believe,”
said Gilliland modestly, “that I'm the one
man in this universe for her.”
Baring listened.
told—like that? Will you be the one?”
i She put up her hand; and she said quite
the last thing that Baring had sxpecied.
i “Don't!” shesaid. “IU's—it’s telling.”
| “Telling?” Baring repeated stupidly.
{ “Other men don't tell,” Anne said.
“Some of them must know. Lots
must know. But they all make the wom:
an think it never could have been any-
| body else. Maybe sometimes—it couldn't.
But your saying it out is like—like being
| disloyal to the way the world has agreed
“Baring,” said Gilliland, “now that we |
He stared down at her in the grip of
have found each other, it makes me his bewilderment. She knew! Do women
shudder to think how easily we might
have missed each other. I met her at my
| know then—he wondered gropingly. Do
they know, all the time, and just try not
first. And you will be the only one— |; frill ser under each side of the chiffon
front and falling forward over the waist-
coat. Edging each side of the chiffon
front and heading the narrow lace frills
is a very narrow band of fur. The blouse
is collarless, but the narrow fur finishes
the neck at the base of the throat and a
transparent guimpe collar can of course
be worn with it.
Blouses with the upper part in broche
crepe and the lower part of the suit ma-
terial and with a little line of fur defin-
ing the union of the two are good look-
ing, and there are numerous pretty sim
ple blouses entirely of broche crepe or
satin.
Though fullness is being introduced by
Parisians, even to the paneling of tailor
of her face Baring laid to the firelight as | hair and watching her hands that looked | aunt's in Rio. And my uncle nearly mov. to believe? Fowus. it is yiever gt an time (0 the de
by her presence, the pre of the | ghe gave him back the note and looked | firm and warm and—busy; and he was | ed to Montclair instead of to Rio. Isn't| “You know it is so—" he tried to say. struction of the slim outline, from wich
woman in the room. 2, you see, | down at the red log.
was horribly lonely, and by other means
as well, life hurt him and pursued him
instead of letting him be the exultant
“I accepted for my mother,” she said,
had been called over to New Jersey.”
“and when I got upstairs I found that she
thinking about nothing at all. Itis well
known that a man has to be very well
content to achieve thinking about noth-
it wonderful that out of the whole, wide
world we two should have got to Rio,and
have met?”
“Yes,” she answered, “I do know. I
don't think a woman ought to know—
unless it can make her do her part, make
for the psesent, at least, we have no in-
clination to depart. To achieve the ef-
fects which are dernier cri the dressmak-
: at all. Baring listened. her the man loving her, make her | er or the tailor must be an artist, but the
Due of lite And the gadflies were| "Baring murmuring something, still| “Mrs. Wheeler's maid,” said Anne, “is| “Baring,” said Gilliland, “we’re going to flor Koop herself the one cay inher | result is wholly charming ot is well
a A } species, They highs watched her. He had sometimes said to | going back to Sweden to be married. She | have a little home. We've got the house place there might so easily have been an- | done.
Gilliland that the way in which a woman
receives an inescapable, unconventional
moment is that woman. Anne, through
a barely perceptible interval, was still
looking at the red log when the White
however, was steadily growing as he
elongated his hours of work, let soul
flow down his arms to his fingers, and
pounded away with his hands; and of
the ideals which mocked every reality
that he had got for himself; and of liv-
ing alone with a bent key in his pocket
while other men were masters in the
house of life.
The shutting of a door brought him
back. He knew the door——it had helped
him before in his dreary play. It was
Miss Beacon's door. And somctimes
when he heard the scratch of her match
or the creak of her window pulleys, he
pretended that he had got home first and
that now Ske had come in and was mov-
ing about that room; and sometimes
when he had found the stairway air faint-
Jy sweet with orris, he said to himself
at She had come home before him.
well-trained tone of a short, straight line.
“Shall we go in?” Baving asked quietly.
“I think we may as well,” said
She was quite perfect, Baring thought;
and yet as they sat at table, round and
small and a thing of white and of dainty
feeling of hom ess,
Baring had
be sitting there in earnest, the one whose
Muslin Apron announced dinner—in the
Anne
dishes—Baring was conscious of a definite
esickness. Homesickn
so to say, that she was not some one else.
no idea whom he wanted her
to be. He only knew that he wanted the
woman, the one with whom he ought to
presence was an outline in his conscious-
told me all about it while I was in the
kitchen this morning. She said she did't
believe she would be any happier on her
death bed, when heaven sets in.”
Baring smiled and nodded. “Go on,”
he commanded.
Anne laughed out. “You said that,”
she told him, "just the way you used to
say it when I was reading to you when
you were #
Baring looked startled. “I didn’t order
you around, did 1?” he asked horrified.
She nodded, so that the little star in
her hair glowed and twinkled, and what-
ever was the recollection of having been
ordered about by Baring, one
have said that she had greatly minded.
"Hasn't anybody ever
went on, "what a bad invalid you make?”
“Nobody ever came so near taking care
you,” she | plici
—it's on Wood Walk Street—don’t that
sound like a home? Yes, sir.
Street, there in Riv. Oh,
me wild to earn money. To up t
little place. To get her the things she
wants. Tobring to lay a little by. To
think ahead to the time——"
While he listened, Baring looked in the
fire, miles down, and for a flash, and re-
motely, he understood Gilliland, and
19 Wood
something about other men and, last of he
He could see the star in her hair shin- |
all, about himself. ;
“Gilliland,” he said to him in the first
pause, "suppose your uncle had’t moved
to Rio. Suppose he had moved to Mont-
not | clair?
r
“It was fate,” said Gilliland with sim-
oY emer you told me at the time,”
said Baring brutally, “that it was so your
| other—or another—or another. Oh, I
mean it doesn't matter whether a man
it rakes i makes his whole ideal his wife. But it
matters everything whether his wife can
make herself his ideal. What does it
matter what woman it is who—is the one
—s0 long as she can make him happy
and help him to do their share?”
Baring stretched out his hands.
“It would be you—that way —with me,”
ing as if it were one with the stars in the
huge, dark beyond.
“I would like to be the one—to you,”
she answi
But when he would not have let her
talk, she drew away from him with a
great, new glow in her face. As if, in the
surprise of it all to them both, door lay
Take, for instance, the pleated skirt,
which is being made by tailors both in
fine and heavy materials. The pleats are
so small, so flat, so closely stitched
around the hips, and such flare as they
have around the foot is so tightly pressed
and lies so flatly that the figure remains
straight, while it is svelte and
and cunningly expressive of the influ
ences.
In a house of dignified colonial or
Georgian gle, but modern build, the en-
trance hall is nearly square with north-
ern lighting, and continues in a |
pans through the lower foor, aford
ng a glimpse of the garden through
French window at the other end.
Throughout, the walls are covered with
of me,” he said, “as you did when you |aunt could be near a special hay-fever | beyond door, and there were yet one grass cloth in a deep warm yellow. The
: Lome ness and never, never had been properly | read to me those days. You tell me.” or.” ore to be unlocked. ceiling is white plaster, stippled, the nar-
Jen was ds it R Wick vad been tor filled in. And for him the moment had | “Never!” she assured him, “I shail not | Gilliland, who had risen to take leave, | here is something else,” she said, | Tow moulding and other woodwork white
Pleasant, like light, had escaped. All this,
ring thought, helped on the game, be-
cause Miss Beacon was somebody alive.
And that she was on the same floor,
Jive, was somehow — pale ¢ comfort to
m whenever, abru n game, he
would lose Her—that Her of the y
She was s ly
shares them is simply—not the one.
He did not deliberately plan to pre-
in earnest, was his as it was theirs;
that this was not a dinner, but dinner;
g
consciousness of An
suddenly the tragic significance of all
moments which seem right and fair and
potential, save only that the one who
tend. Somehow, the ing began
itself. He found ening easily
into a make-believe that this moment, | Wi
which men without number were having
that this was home. Momentarily, his
Tell you. Except that one day you were so
cross to me that mother I had to look
out the window at a parade to laugh.”
“Good heavens!” said Baring contrite-
ly.
“And when I stopped i
ways said ‘Go on,” without |
looking at me."
“What a brute a man is when heis
sick,” said Baring solemnly. But he was
thinking: “What an everlasting pity that
I was too sick to
you al-
at me.
looked at him doubtfully, and past him
to the t window toward the city with
its lights of homes—and
homes.
“I'm blessed if I understand life,” said
, “I wish I did. But
I know, " cried
‘When I'm with Emily
Earl 1 feel as if something that had
meant to be all along, is. feel as if
something big that was planned some-
where away off, had come true. And I
‘ mind
“More—more than we've said. More
ha? tak expecti ew },
e wa ting any new marvel
“I mean,” said Anne Beacon,” “would you
, much—if it Wio that way with
me, too way we sa oul
mind very much if I Hato
met you, it might—some time—have been
y else—who wasn’t you?”
| If daylight had streamed from the
heavens it could not so essentially have
| altered the of things for Baring.
enamel and the doors mahogany. :
The floor is stained mahogany also
with one exquisite Persian rug in blue
and yellow i the front hall and a nar-
row ue carpet in the
There is the usual fan J ne
door, and the narrow wi at either
side have straight curtains of white net.
The stairs face the door, low and broad,
with mahogany treads and hand rail and
white rises and banisters. On the land-
ing is a tall old mahogany clock and a
small oriental A
Brute a little and boy a good e A mahogany gate legged § ble Jaina:
y ta
En oneaty which was like the, wings. of | re wall below he a pourt) Jor of
Sheffield plate
a t wind to carry life, here was some-
thing chill and sinister, abruptly. alienat. | Srunese ware, 6 ol med silho
an!
ing him from all that he thought he had. | Bicide them is a rush-seated
And yet, why not? Why should be not chair. To the right of
face this as truth, too, and know himself | fie" 000 OX rest of
ht men who might have g..ioht portiers of sapphire bl
the entrance
won her?
quaint i
bet it has—I bet it has!”
i S }
And dinner waited down in the “God bless you, Gilliland,” said Bar-
corner restaurant where were artificial
palms, and a plush rope for a balustrade,
and a menu card on which decently
cooked dishes were listed at fifteen and
Down
reaches the world, roofs, |
lights, and homes where men care
and women for men, where
plan things for
Es
is HE
ne Beacon’s presence
merged in that vague, cherished outline,
and for one fleet instant the boy knew
what hat hour ight be.
lence Anne spoke gravely,
with a lightness which did not ava: I
quite attractive embarrassment.
“What kind of day was today to you?”
she asked: “has it been behaving?
t not,” Baring replied simply. "It
sort 3 brute day.
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