THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT
 
 SHE STOOD IN A TRANCE OF THOUGHT uage 187J
 
 THE 
 
 WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 BY 
 
 NORAH DAVIS 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE NORTHERNER " 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY F. C. YOHN 
 
 TOUT! /BIEN 
 OU \ /RIEN 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 (be fiifccrjsi&e press, 
 1907
 
 COPYRIGHT 1907 BY NORAH DAVIS 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published April 1907 
 
 THIRD IMPRESSION
 
 PS 
 
 3 $ 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. TO PLAY WITH SOULS 1 
 
 II. THE NATURAL WAY OF LIVING ... 22 
 
 III. THE ODOR OF THE SKIES 46 
 
 IV. No FRIENDLY STAR 59 
 
 V. DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 73 
 
 VI. LIKE A FATE 99 
 
 VII. HE KNEW NOT WHY, NOR WE . . . .119 
 
 VIII. LIFE S DAILY THIRST 140 
 
 IX. AN IRKSOME LIE 159 
 
 X. WHY BLAME THE BRASS ? . . . .177 
 
 XI. LOVE S So DIFFERENT WITH MEN . . . 194 
 
 XII. LOOK TO THE SOUL 216 
 
 XIII. THE SECRET LAY ON LIP .... 228 
 
 XIV. "FINITE HEARTS" 245 
 
 XV. LOVE IT OVER AGAIN . .272 
 
 v^
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 " T is ait awkward thing to play with souls." 
 
 UPON an afternoon late in September, near the hour 
 which upon Morganton s social dial indicates the 
 dinner hour, a gentleman and two ladies sat upon 
 an upper gallery at the Midland in earnest, if not 
 altogether grave, conversation. 
 
 The gallery was a part of Carlysle s apartment, 
 and Carlysle himself sat upon the stone coping of 
 the balustrade facing his wife and their guest, Miss 
 Caruth, in an arrested attitude that wavered between 
 incredulity and amusement and was faintly tinged 
 by indignation. The earnestness of a high purpose 
 a purpose of more than average stature, at any 
 rate steadied his eye and infused the tender mirth- 
 fulness of the glance he bent upon his two com 
 panions with a trace of real exaltation. But Carlysle 
 made these swift dashes into the far ether heading, 
 one would dare swear, straight for the stars, only 
 to come an airy cropper over some metaphysical 
 hurdle or other, and flutter lightly back to earth 
 with a shrug and a smile which deprecated the blun 
 dering earnestness of gravity in having compelled 
 his descent. 
 
 His tone of incredulous question was explicative 
 
 -+ 1 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 of his attitude, and his glance put both his listeners 
 instantly on guard, though he addressed only his 
 wife. 
 
 " Tell him ! " he echoed, in amazed interrogation. 
 " Tell Goodloe ? Not much ! " 
 
 The faces of the two women continued to express 
 tense negation, though Miss Caruth s glance, which 
 returned to the letter in her hand, tacitly relin 
 quished active opposition. Neither spoke, and after 
 a moment Carlysle went on : 
 
 " Men marry, Kate, as boys swap knives, sight 
 unseen, and what law is there, legal or divine, to 
 compel the woman to toe the line that the man 
 fudges ? Will he tell her? Not on your life will he ! 
 Will Goodloe give her a single shred of his past? 
 Not he ! No more than that blasted puppy, the 
 father of her child, will tell the woman he will 
 one day make his wife. Then why in the name of 
 justice and common sense should this poor girl 
 be handicapped when Goodloe enters the race 
 free?" 
 
 " It is always that way," said Miss Caruth evenly, 
 "women waste themselves terribly in explaining 
 their lives ; men simply live theirs." 
 
 "And, after all," murmured Mrs. Carlysle, "they 
 only explain themselves to themselves ; hardly any 
 body listens, and nobody believes their explana 
 tions." 
 
 "But, Jim," a plaintive note in Miss Caruth s 
 
 -t- 2 4-
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 voice matched the furrow that appeared between her 
 level brows, " suppose after we have taken all this 
 trouble to get this thing on, James H. Goodloe," 
 she glanced at the letter in her hand to be sure 
 she had the name correctly, " should find out 
 some way " 
 
 " ( And leave her ! " grinned Carlysle. " Women 
 always think that ! Their view of men has abso 
 lutely no perspective men take jolly good care it 
 shall not have. But suppose, as you say, he should 
 find out ? He d only be where women are every 
 day." 
 
 Carlysle stole a moment s musing, bending forward 
 with locked hands about his knees. 
 
 " The incredible inconsistencies of this thing we 
 call morals ! Now here are you two girls dragging 
 this poor child several notches higher on the scale 
 than you demand of Goodloe and justifying him 
 well, extenuating him, call it what you like in 
 looking askance at her past with never a word as to 
 his own. What right would he have to throw her 
 over on her record unless he could show a cleaner 
 one? Not that he would. If he was some white- 
 livered, play-acting cad in a novel he might, but 
 no live man with red blood in his veins and the 
 knowledge of good and evil in his soul would. And 
 a decent chap as this fellow seems to be would be 
 safe to stand by her. Once he has married her it 
 is odds if he d leave her even if he knew all that 
 
 - 3 -)-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 she will, undoubtedly, hide from him like grim 
 death." 
 
 Miss Caruth looked quickly up from the letter 
 she was reading 1 . 
 
 "After he has married her ! After, Jim ? " 
 
 " Gallic promised Jane if it were left to her, en 
 tirely to her, you know, she would tell him herself, 
 before she married him," supplemented Mrs. Carlysle 
 equably. Carlysle erased a smile with a meditative 
 finger. 
 
 " Well, leave it to her," he said easily ; " the chil 
 dren of this world are wiser in their p eneration than 
 
 o 
 
 the children of light. Miss Caruth met his rally 
 ing eyes with a troubled perception of the obliterated 
 smile. 
 
 "If you were a woman, Jim," she interpolated 
 wistfully, " say a girl like Callie, with her sort of 
 judgment " 
 
 " Oh - judgment ! " grimaced Mrs. Carlysle, 
 " Callie and judgment ! " 
 
 " If I were this young woman," said Carlysle de 
 liberately, with a level gaze of introspection uncon 
 sciously upon Jane s earnest face ; "if I were she I 
 would give my child to the Sisters at Orrville and 
 let them turn him into a sleek little priest all shaven 
 and shorn, and I d marry James H. Goodloe like 
 a shot and live happily forever and a day in that 
 * comfortable, two-storied house at Redfalls, Nevada, 
 that he s so eloquent about, and let the past go 
 
 1- 4 H
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 hang ! What has the past ever done for her, I d 
 like to know, that she should hang it like a clog 
 about her neck?" 
 
 The eyes of the two women met in silent protest, 
 and Carlysle, watching them with smiling compre 
 hension, accepted the challenge of their silence and 
 took up his defense retrogressively. 
 
 "When Jane first suggested this plan," he began 
 suavely. 
 
 "Jane ! " echoed his wife. 
 
 11 1? I suggest?" murmured Miss Caruth, with 
 eyes of sweet reproach ; " I hardly call that fair, 
 Jim." 
 
 . " Can you look me in the eye, Janet," demanded 
 he severely, "and deny that you wanted to supple 
 ment this young woman by some honest fellow 
 who d love and cherish her and give her a hiding 
 when she needed it ? " 
 
 " The hiding was a little thing of your own ; 
 but yes, I confess the idea did cross my mind that 
 marriage was the solution of poor Callie s problem. 
 She is such a rudimentary creature, spite of her ex 
 ternal finishing quite the lap-dog type of woman, 
 and failing the lap," with a dainty shrug, "why, 
 as I said, it did cross my mind " 
 
 " And not only crossed it, my lady fair, but skipped 
 out between those pretty lips of yours in a good, 
 stinging bit of analysis of the gentle sex, if I remem 
 ber rightly. And now," - this in a deeply injured
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 tone, "now when I, with my unfailing perspicacity, 
 perceiving the utility of your suggestion, went to 
 work to put this rather mucky bit of * life upon a 
 solid basis so that you two giddy philanthropists 
 could handle it, what do I find," -he paused in 
 dramatic summary, " but the two of you opposing 
 me tooth and nail ! Taking some high moral stand 
 or other about this James Goodloe, by Jove, who 
 may be Don Juan himself, for all you know ! " 
 
 " No, no, Jim dear ! It was only " 
 
 " It was untenable, I tell you," Carlysle cut in, 
 now fairly astride the high horse of masculine logic 
 to override feminine arguments ; " here were you 
 and Jane supporting this young woman out of your 
 purses ; something had to be done her own con 
 tribution to the situation being the information 
 that i folkses had always took ker er her, " he 
 paused to laugh, "and it was plain to my feeble 
 understanding, at any rate, that folkses must con 
 tinue to do so! If not we, then" he waved his 
 hand in explanation to the letter in Jane s hand 
 "James H. Goodloe. And when I suggested that 
 instead of chasing around after her, wasting your 
 pocket money buying lace caps and pink boots " 
 he paused to grin at his wife, who ignored him 
 " for her rashly importunate infant, you take up 
 some rational plan to help the girl find herself " 
 
 " Rational ? Did you say rational, dear ? " 
 inquired Mrs. Carlysle suavely. 
 
 -+ 6 H-
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 .. 
 
 I really meant it," concluded Carlysle, with a 
 glance in his wife s direction that acknowledged pay 
 ment on the score of the pink boots ; but a note of 
 real human kindliness, very good to hear, had come 
 into his rallying voice, and the faces of the young 
 women turned upon him were full of tender gravity. 
 
 " It may be that Callie Larkin has struggled out 
 of the pit for a moment ; but it is only for a moment. 
 She is not the sort to stand alone, as Janet says. 
 But if she does want to be decent, why, in the name 
 of common humanity, let us give her a hand up and 
 be sensible about it. The fundamental claim of good 
 blood is something," he broke out in a new note, 
 "and this girl comes of gentle people somewhere 
 away back. It may be that hereditary instinct will 
 swing her into line again. But of course this is 
 bound to be a rather mucky job, with plenty of plain 
 talk ; and if you and Jane are going to squeal and 
 blush every time I assume that this poor girl is 
 what she is, we might as well stop now. In short, if 
 you are not willing to face the music, speak now or 
 forever after hold your peace." 
 
 " Mixed metaphors make me ill, please, Jim," 
 murmured his wife; " tell us what you learned about 
 the man." 
 
 " Well," Carlysle s tone was distinctly congratu 
 latory, "I smoked Goodloe out pretty thoroughly. 
 He s a clerk or foreman foreman most likely 
 with the Redfalls Rolling Stock people, and his bank 
 
 -+ 7 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 spoke well of him. I ll tell you what it is, girls, if 
 this deal goes through, Callie may thank her stars, 
 and we shall have something very well worth while 
 coming to us in the way of golden harps and crowns 
 later." 
 
 "I wish her name were not Callie, " moaned 
 Jane ; "it is so impossible to adjust it to any sort of 
 tragic expression." 
 
 " Hester Prynne would be more in character," 
 smiled Carlysle. " But tragic ? This is plain, hum 
 drum business, my dear Jane, not tragedy at all." 
 
 " Why on earth do you suppose he ever did such 
 an absurd thing as to advertise for a wife ? " inquired 
 Mrs. Carlysle, with exasperated patience. " And why 
 not advertise for blackberries or mullein leaves at 
 once?" 
 
 " Some woman turned him down as like as not, 
 and he had n t the stamina to react," Carlvsle 
 elucidated. "There are fellows like that. But this 
 sort of thing is not so utterly unheard of among 
 a certain class of men, dear. Lots of men this 
 fellow s sort regard marriage as a by-product of 
 the real business of life. If there s anything in it 
 for them, well and good, but they re not going to 
 let it interfere with the regular output. i Brutes ? 
 Not at all, I assure you. Very good fellows ; self- 
 made men, you know ; been too busy all their lives 
 to bother with women never heard of the leading- 
 up process, I dare say, and when they do want to
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 marry they go about it the only way they know. 
 Goodloe knows he is taking a risk ; he takes it as 
 he would any other sort of business risk ; she s 
 taking a bigger one, and she takes it as all w r omen 
 do because she has to. Read us the letter, Jane. 
 I like his grit, tackling a love letter of that sort ! " 
 
 REDFALLS, NEVADA, Sept. 17, 18 . 
 
 " MY DEAR Miss MEADOWS : read Jane 
 
 " Meadows ? queried Carlysle, with an irre 
 pressible smile the thing was beginning to take a 
 piquant hold upon his fancy; the psychological pos 
 sibilities in the play of character between the three 
 women in their deal with destiny appealed irresistibly 
 to a certain metaphysical twist in Carlysle s otherwise 
 straight-grained mental timber. " Why these Mach 
 iavellian tactics, my honored confreres, in a straight 
 business deal ? A three-ply alias ! Ye gods ! " 
 
 " On Jane s account, naturally," Mrs. Carlysle 
 hastened to explain. " Do you suppose, either of 
 you," with pathetic lucidity, " that James Goodloe 
 is going to sit quietly by and let you and Jane marry 
 him off to all sorts of people without looking into it 
 himself? Jane had to write the letters, you know, 
 as Callie cannot write." 
 
 " Machiavelli, did I say ? This lays away over 
 Machiavelli! It s foxy as Lucifer," laughed Carlysle; 
 and, with a sudden collapse into new mirth as a fresh 
 aspect of the thing shook upward in the kaleidoscope 
 
 -+ 9 --
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 of his laughter-loving mind, " would n t it be a de 
 licious combination? Jane to bag the game, I 
 mean, after courting him for Gallic. I think," he 
 mused delightedly "I think it will be best to put 
 Jane under bond. Thomas Aquinas himself couldn t 
 stand out against a love letter from Jane, and unless 
 Goodloe is immune " 
 
 " Please go on, Jane," sighed Mrs. Cariysle. 
 " When Jim begins to play mental checkers ! " 
 
 But Jane was ready with an explanation of her 
 own. 
 
 "Kate always snubs the artistic element, you know, 
 Jim. That name was a ray of genius ; a scintillation 
 from my sense of the eternal fitness, in fact. James 
 Goodloe wanted a country girl, you remember? So 
 I got Callie up in character. l Mary Meadows smells 
 of clover and the er, the green fields and that. 
 Fancy Callie in a white, ruffled sunbonnet and a blue- 
 sprigged lawn the sort they sell in country stores, 
 you know, Kate? leaning on James Goodloe s 
 manly arm " 
 
 "I do not deny that Callie looks the part," put in 
 Mrs. Cariysle, with distinctly disparaging emphasis, 
 
 " Don t be insidious, Kate," smiled Jane. " It s 
 unchristian." 
 
 " And to look the part you re cast for in this 
 world is nine points in the game, my dear," added 
 Cariysle, with marital repressiveness. "Go on, 
 Jane." 
 
 -H- 10 -K-
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 MY DEAR Miss MEADOWS [obediently read Jane 
 for the second time], I am just in receipt of your 
 letter in reply to my own of June 28. 
 
 How good of you to take me up, and so frankly 
 and kindly as you have done ! I assure you I was 
 beginning to feel quite cut up. 
 
 In view of the contents of my letter, to which you 
 have replied, I shall assume without further explana 
 tion that we understand each other as to the object 
 of this correspondence; and further, that you were 
 sensible enough to accept my motives for conducting 
 my courtship in this unusual way, on trust. I appre 
 ciate your confidence, and I hope you feel that it 
 is justified by my faith in the purity of your own 
 motives in having accepted my offer. 
 
 This position upon both our parts is based upon 
 good sense and good business principles, and, more 
 over, puts us in line at once with the mutual trust 
 that is at the root of all that is strong and tender 
 between men and women, and is peculiarly essential 
 to the relationship which we propose to establish 
 I mean a clean, honest partnership. 
 
 I am a clumsy chap with women, as of course 
 you 11 soon find out, and an incredible dolt in my 
 lack of experience. Shall you mind that very much ? 
 
 Write to me quite frankly, will you not ? Ask me 
 anything you care to know, with perfect assurance 
 that I recognize your right to do so. 
 
 One thing I wish to say as to your part in this. 
 -.- 11 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 I realize that in taking up an affair of this kind 
 you, as a woman, are liable to misconception from a 
 conventional standpoint, that I do not share. I wish 
 you to feel from the very beginning that I stand 
 between you and any form of misconception, just as 
 though you were already my wife. I assume here and 
 now all responsibility for any consequences arising 
 from this. 
 
 Of course, everything is in your hands to ar 
 range ; your wishes are my law in this affair. 
 
 Be fair to me and true to yourself, my dear, and 
 trust me for the rest. Faithfully, 
 
 JAMES H. GOODLOE. 
 
 Jane met Carlysle s interested eyes with a waiting 
 smile in her own. 
 
 " Top notch," he replied briefly to the smile. "So 
 far as a bungling letter can show a man up, you 
 have put in your little thumb, Jane, and pulled 
 outa" 
 
 " Chump," supplied Mrs. Carlysle calmly. " He 
 talked all over the place and ended by saying 
 nothing." 
 
 " plum," finished Carlysle firmly. He was 
 reading the letter with frowning approbation, and 
 now raised his eyes, striking the letter angrily with 
 his finger as he met Jane s eyes. 
 
 " What in thunder," he demanded, " made a fel 
 low like this do a thing like that ? " 
 
 -h 12 4-
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 Jane shook her charming head in denial of re 
 sponsibility for the inscrutability of Goodloe s mo 
 tives. But Carlysle was not heeding her ; his mind 
 was far afield along the path he had marked out for 
 the two whose destinies he had elected to assist. 
 
 " This girl, Callie," he began abruptly, presenting 
 another phase of the subject, "this girl is rather 
 pretty, is she not? I mean if she were decently 
 dressed and knew a few things." 
 
 " Pretty ! Why," Mrs. Carlysle sought distract 
 edly for an adjective at once descriptive and suffi 
 ciently disapproving to express Callie. " Pretty ? 
 She s she s outrageously pretty! A regular man s 
 beauty, if ever there was one. The sort of woman 
 that carries a perpetual danger signal to other wo 
 men. You know her sort, Jane?" 
 
 Miss Caruth nodded. 
 
 " But she s not in the least vulgar, Kate. I do 
 not know why she is not, but she is not. She s triv 
 ial, inconsequent which is the word?" she turned 
 puzzled brows of inquiry upon her friends, "and 
 of course unthinkable in a social sense, but not" 
 judicially " not impossible, you know." 
 
 "They both express her at times," mused Carlysle. 
 " But do you know it is the very thing that you 
 have remarked in her the absence of vulgarity 
 upon which I am founding my faith in her reincar 
 nation ? The only prophecy that fulfills itself is 
 heredity. Now little Callie is the daughter of a 
 -* 13 H-
 
 hundred earls ; the hieroglyphics of race are written 
 all over her." 
 
 "I d like to know where?" demanded Mrs. 
 Carlysle ; " her grammar is something perfectly " 
 
 " In more immutable things than grammar, my 
 Kate ! The language of the blood concerns not it 
 self with syntax. The poise of this girl s head, the 
 turn of her brow, the arch of her instep in her little 
 brogans, the shape of her finger-nails, are Nature s 
 stamp and superscription, and the instincts to match 
 are there. We have but to waken them." 
 
 " Wise men let sleeping dogs lie, Jim ! " ad 
 monished his wife ; " and I must say I do pity this 
 wretched man ! " 
 
 " You need not ; blue blood may run to seed, but 
 it does n t altogether fizzle out in a few generations. 
 She has made an awful mess of her life, poor girl, 
 and I dare say she 11 lead Goodloe an awful life." 
 He paused to smile with cheerful brutality over the 
 prospect : " But she 11 never make a social blunder, 
 and a man can stand a good bit of bull-ragging in 
 private " he left a kiss of teasing identification 
 upon his wife s cheek " if he can take his walks 
 abroad with a woman by his side with a throat like 
 a swan and eyes like purple corn-flowers." 
 
 " Well, upon my word, Jim ! " 
 
 " Callie s eyes are blue, my dear ! and why am I 
 to be debarred the use of hyperbole when it is my 
 wife s favorite figure of speech? But to narrow this 
 
 -+ 14 H-
 
 thing down to common sense and exclude poetic 
 license if you say so, it means the salvation of this 
 girl or her damnation. She 11 follow at this man s 
 heel in a matrimonial chain and collar and get 
 through life decently enough, no doubt ; but put 
 her life in her own hands! " He annotated his sug 
 gestion with a shrug that combined sadness and 
 cynicism in about equal parts. "And here, of all 
 places ! You 11 do me the credit I hope, girls, to 
 remember that I have opposed this plan from the 
 first." 
 
 " It is only for a couple of months," put in Mrs. 
 Carlysle soothingly ; " the linen woman s place is 
 vacant only while she is at home. And apart from 
 Jane s influence and we hope a good deal from 
 that it will be more convenient to have her here 
 this winter, if you and Jane really mean to carry 
 through this preposterous plan." 
 
 " Consider that settled, dear. It s going to be 
 no end of fun, a regular mental theatre for us all 
 winter." 
 
 " But I never dr-e-a-med that it would be a man 
 like this ! " murmured Miss Caruth distressfully. 
 
 " Oh, brace up," Carlysle admonished her cheer 
 fully ; " I dare say Goodloe is a vulgar sort enough, 
 come to know him. Most men are. And if he should 
 happen to have a streak of honor in him, it will be 
 none the worse for the girl. Write him a corking 
 love letter, Janet, and clinch it." 
 -H- 15 -K-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 He rose as he spoke, with a grimace directed to 
 the dainty dinner gowns worn by his two com 
 panions. "I 11 tell you what it is, I m going to ask 
 an injunction from the court enjoining you two girls 
 from dressing for dinner. It is sheer brutality to 
 force such an example upon a tired man in a God- 
 forgotten hole like this." 
 
 " Dressing for dinner is one s duty to one s neigh 
 bor, dear. Jane and I dress to advance the interests 
 of the Company. It is a beautiful example of self- 
 abnegation. Try to see it that way." 
 
 " I prefer to abnegate self the other way," 
 murmured Carlysle lazily. " I m never unselfish 
 unless I m comfortable." 
 
 " But the Development Company ! " cried Miss 
 Caruth in gay protest, falling unexpectedly upon his 
 flank and demurely routing him with slaughter. 
 " Contemplate, if you please, the moral tone of a 
 Company whose officials do not pander to the Mam 
 mon of Unrighteousness ? " 
 
 The Company being Carlysle s pet fetish, before 
 whom he offered oblations night and day without 
 ceasing, he succumbed, and with a gesture of gay 
 capitulation vanished in the direction of his dressing- 
 room, leaving the two young women to resume their 
 interrupted stroll upon the gallery, awaiting his 
 return. 
 
 They were charming women, both ; of widely dif 
 fering types, yet welded into closest friendship by 
 -+ 16 +-
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 affinity of tastes and opinions. They had been col 
 lege chums, and were meeting in this somewhat out- 
 of-the-way niche of the world for the first time since 
 their college days, an interval of three years, which 
 had been spent by Miss Caruth abroad, and by her 
 friend in the regeneration and expansion of marriage 
 with a man whom she at once idealized and supple 
 mented. In this latter capacity she had followed 
 him South, where with the enthusiasm of their 
 convictions he, with a handful of financial pioneers, 
 was engaged in what she defined as " making over 
 Alabama." 
 
 The elegance of their dinner gowns would have 
 declared them exotic to their present environment 
 had the analysis extended no further ; and the know- 
 ledgef ul eye would have recognized in them at once 
 highly specialized products of a civilization analo 
 gous in its effect to the emery wheel of the lapidary 
 upon the jewel in the end of his stick. The result of 
 this finishing process was easily discernible in an 
 impersonal polish that belonged equally to both ; a 
 delicate, fine glaze of manner, as it were, through 
 which their individualities displayed themselves as 
 from beneath a transparent, impenetrable lacquer, 
 brilliantly enhancing to the eye of the social adept, 
 but apt to be a trifle confusing and discomfiting to 
 those impetuous souls who must needs touch a thing 
 to believe it real. 
 
 There was about both women an attenuated sug- 
 -+ 17 -)-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 gestioli of having consciously carried out this effect 
 of personality in the exquisite finish of their exter 
 nals ; in the level clearness of their voices, whose 
 pure, hard tones had the unvibrating sweetness of 
 porcelain sharply smitten ; in the reserved vivacity 
 of glance and feature, trained to a repressed expres 
 siveness that suggested concentration rather than 
 repose. The acuteness of intellectual vision, un 
 doubtedly possessed by both in a high degree, was 
 accented by this effect of concentration to a point 
 where it became a sensitized intelligence, pervading 
 the entire personality of each and not dependent in 
 any degree upon mobility of feature or modulation 
 of voice. 
 
 This defmiteness of personality escaped rigidity in 
 Mrs. Carlysle by the depth of a shade only; pretty 
 much as her gray eyes were softened to kindliness by 
 the happy chance of deepening to blue at the edges 
 of their irises. 
 
 But a deep core of warmth lent fluidity to Miss 
 Caruth s nature; the currents of her being pulsed 
 visibly at times beneath her glaze of reserve, until 
 she seemed actually to glow through it like an ice 
 bound flower. 
 
 She was a girlish woman of twenty-five ; slender 
 and pliant and strong ; with long, fine lines, exqui 
 sitely drawn and finished, and a soft indefinite blend 
 of coloring that melted into shadowy eyes, and hair 
 of a deeper tint of duskiness, until she seemed a 
 t- 18 -)
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 drawing done mellowly in one tone. For the rest, 
 any of those similes that express power sheathed in 
 softness, or intensity combined with impalpability, 
 would have admirably expressed her ; and by way of 
 comparison she most resembled, perhaps, a faintly 
 colored flame, say of a burning chemical, registering 
 an incredible temperature, yet of so spirit-like an 
 aspect as to be scarcely discernible. 
 
 It was obvious at a glance that the gowns that 
 Mrs. Carlysle and her friend wore very logically ex 
 pressed the women wearing them ; and only a degree 
 less obvious, that a not inconsiderable amount of time 
 and money had been expended upon them, to pro 
 duce the effect of simplicity, that accorded with the 
 crudity of their surroundings, mingled with an ele 
 gant costliness, that, it is just possible to conceive, 
 may have constituted the elevating moral tone of 
 which Mrs. Carlysle had made mention. 
 
 Each was in perfect harmony with herself and the 
 other, and in as frank, not to say glaring, discord 
 as can be imagined with the disorganized landscape 
 about them, with the sole exception perhaps of the 
 building which at the moment afforded them a back 
 ground for their charming figures. 
 
 The Midland, an imposing pile of limestone 
 from the local quarries, whose long fagade, pic 
 turesquely broken by a huge j)orte cochere glitter 
 ing sullenly under the rays of the low sun, was the 
 one fully equipped enterprise in the whole of the 
 
 -H- 19 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 embryonic town, and was considered the debutante 
 investment s " drawing card." 
 
 In the Company s prospectus it was gravely cited 
 as being "located in the business portion of the 
 progressive town of Morganton," the adjective 
 being used so nearly in its literal sense as to be dis 
 tinctly ironical, the progressive town of Morganton 
 being in fact in a state of progression from the 
 inchoateness of a financial scheme to such definite- 
 ness of perception as resides in a blue print. 
 
 The Land and Mineral Development Company was 
 made up of young men not yet arrived as capitalists, 
 but with some money, and rather more brains, and a 
 very cogent determination to use the one to increase 
 the other. Though at this precise interval of time 
 Morganton had in the way of assets a charter from 
 the State of Alabama, a situs upon the " gently roll 
 ing levels of the richest mineral and agricultural lands 
 upon the Western continent," two trunk lines of rail 
 road, a railway station, and the hotel. The town 
 itself, for the moment, lay about in scattered heaps 
 upon the lean, denuded fields, in piles of brick and 
 stone and blocks of lumber brought in by fussy, 
 ejaculatory freight engines and dumped beside exca 
 vations, gaping in the red-clay soil like new wounds 
 red and bleeding. 
 
 To the right the river ran between endless cot 
 ton fields covered with a ragged carpet of stunted 
 cotton ready for picking, and farther yet the fields 
 -H 20 H-
 
 TO PLAY WITH SOULS 
 
 were girdled by a ring of dull purple hills. The 
 Midland, which as yet housed the entire colony, 
 formed with the railway station a core of intense 
 life and energy, about which the life of the old 
 farms lapsed drowsily.
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 " Tis as easy now for the heart to be true 
 As for grass to be green or for skies to be blue ; 
 Tis the natural way of living." 
 
 IN the beginning the Development Company s raison 
 d etre had been the opening of the Etowah coal and 
 iron fields, that lay supine beneath a ragged miser s 
 coat of knee-high cotton that covered all the string 
 of counties adjacent to the river. 
 
 Peter Clark and Carlysle had come to Alabama 
 with a small party of Eastern capitalists of the sort 
 who look into things, and to the shrewd eyes of 
 these young financiers the conditions they had met 
 there had seemed a veritable magnet of commerce. 
 Nature had, as a matter of fact, done some rather 
 clever combining of productions and resources in 
 this particular corner of the earth, of which these 
 gods in knee pants had a pretty shrewd appreciation. 
 They pronounced it good, plenty good ; some of the 
 more optimistic spirits among them even going to 
 
 the length of declaring it a " d good put, by 
 
 Jove! " And they set themselves cheerfully to work 
 to supplement her efforts by the addition of men and 
 capital. 
 
 The Land and Mineral Development Company was 
 -i- 22 -K-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 organized forthwith, with Carlysle as its president, 
 and Morganton emerged from nebulosity by due 
 process of evolution, as a charter, a situs, and a blue 
 print. 
 
 And the evening and the morning were the first 
 day. 
 
 Fortune comes to men in all sorts of guises and 
 disguises ; some are shrewd enough to penetrate the 
 masque, and bold enough to seize her, and uncompro 
 mising enough to wring from her what they call, pro 
 saically, opportunity ; others delve for it with sweat- 
 blinded eyes turned downward their whole life long, 
 while, as like as not, she stands at their elbow grin 
 ning in a harlequin s coat. 
 
 It came to Peter Clark and Carlysle in this way : 
 The day before the departure of the party the two 
 young men were taking a farewell drive about the 
 red-clay roads that, like a tangled terra-cotton ribbon, 
 loops the river counties together, when they made 
 the great find, and came plump upon the pot of 
 rainbow gold, the Prometheus brand that was to 
 vitalize the whole scheme and breathe into it the 
 breath of life and success. 
 
 Just beyond Brantley s plantation, where the party 
 had been making headquarters, Hickory Ridge 
 thrusts down an impetuous elbow as though bent 
 upon barring the river s farther progress south ; but 
 the gentle giant had only made a supple bend and 
 flowed on unfretted beneath the beard of pines that 
 -H 23 +-
 
 clung tooth and nail to the mountain s steep ascent. 
 And here, where the shadow of the pines was black 
 est upon the rugged escarpment, Chinquepin Falls, 
 slipping through the clenched teeth of the boulders, 
 flung herself downward in a mad leap of two hun 
 dred feet, like a hunted thing, to the river below, 
 landing amid a smother of foam and a clash of silver 
 cymbals, half within the river s bed and half within 
 the gored side of the mountain. 
 
 The two men had been following half idly and 
 half curiously the muffled thunder of the waters, 
 and, emerging from the dense screen of the woods 
 with its jubilate in their ears, had come face to face 
 with the splendid sheet of foam-flecked water, curved 
 like a silver bow across the mountain s side. For 
 a second they stood, in dumfounded admiration, its 
 deep roar cutting them off from the world, look 
 ing upward to where the dark pines trembled to 
 the rush of the water, shooting downward like an 
 avalanche. 
 
 " Let there be light ! " shouted Carlysle, in a 
 burst of admiration that carried him sheer over the 
 verge of poetic license into unconscious profanity, 
 lifting his hat as he spoke in involuntary homage. 
 " You beauty ! You goddess ! You dream of 
 power ! " 
 
 " Dream ? " echoed Clark, his eyes hot with ex 
 citement ; " it s power incarnate ! Power to set every 
 wheel in Alabama spinning and keep em spinning 
 -. 24 -*-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 world without end ! Jove, Carlysle, she d run every 
 plant in the State of Alabama for time and eternity ! " 
 
 "Ay," said Carlysle absently, not moving his 
 eyes from the falls ; and for a space neither man 
 spoke again. A simultaneous realization of the 
 meaning of the falls as a factor in the development 
 of the State s resources had flashed into the minds 
 of each, carrying with it the instantaneous convic 
 tion of success upon a scale undreamed of by either. 
 The Development Company, a good conservative 
 scheme enough, but requiring time and money in its 
 development, had in the space of ten seconds leaped 
 into a stupendous certainty in the possession of this 
 Prometheus gift of gods power to transmute flying 
 foam and mist into solid stock and dividends. This 
 forest Danae had reversed the legend and flashed 
 downward to them amid a shower of gold. 
 
 "Now why," Carlysle broke out at last with angry 
 vehemence, " why did that incredible ass, Brantley, 
 hide this from us ? What under the canopy of heaven 
 could he expect to do with it alone ? " 
 
 " Pooh," said Clark contemptuously, " Brantley 
 has never seen this, not in the sense that you and I 
 see it. If he d supposed you d want to get up a 
 picnic, now ! Talk about Arcadian simplicity with 
 this gold mine running to waste here ! " 
 
 " Whose land is this ? " suddenly demanded 
 Carlysle, meeting his companion s eyes, that had 
 hardened at his question to a cold determination, 
 -+ 25 4-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 with his own full of half-quizzical, half-exasperated 
 laughter. 
 
 " Darn their patriotism, and the altars of their 
 sires !" remarked Clark briefly, apropos of nothing, 
 but with the emphasis of reminiscent vindictiveness. 
 Carlysle answered his tone by an easy tolerant laugh. 
 
 " It s natural enough, Peter, they d want to 
 swing on to their land ; it s all the beggars brought 
 out of the war, you know." 
 
 " But what can the duffers do with naked land?" 
 demanded Clark, with acrid good sense. "And if we 
 set up the capital" 
 
 "You ought to carry off the swag?" laughed 
 Carlysle. 
 
 " Yes ; by George, we ought ! " 
 
 Clark and Carlysle knew each other well; each 
 man had a good working estimate of the other s 
 ability and his limitations, given such and such con 
 ditions to wrest from them the essentials of success. 
 They had a quiet, serious talk as they drove back to 
 Brantley s place through the blooming woods; a talk 
 of titles, of options, of riparian rights, and possible 
 bills to be "got through," interlarded by allusions as 
 
 trenchant as brief to " d Southern unprogres- 
 
 siveness," with a result that a tentative programme 
 had been sketched out before they parted. Clark 
 decided to remain behind as Brantley s guest for a 
 couple of weeks longer to " go into the thing," and 
 after a day or two spent among the dusty records of 
 
 -+ 26 4-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 the Pike County court-house at Brandon, and a couple 
 more given to careful probing of old Brantley as to 
 the owner of the adjacent lands along 1 the river, de 
 cided to put it to the touch, spite of Brantley s coun 
 sel which had made Clark s keen, rather shallow gray 
 eye grow harder, and his square chin squarer still ; 
 for Brantley had admitted with saturnine frankness 
 that " Jourd " had declared his fixed determination 
 to have no " Yankee locuses er settlin " on his land ; 
 " he d had all uv their sort en-durin er the wah " 
 that he could put up with. But Brantley had added 
 as a poultice to this bitter wound, to what he supposed 
 would be Clark s sensibilities, the information that 
 " Jourd had ben ergin ever thing in th wide created 
 world sence th creation er man on down to th organ- 
 i-zation er this here Developmm Company." 
 
 But Clark, though slightly dashed by old Jourdan s 
 classification, allowed no grass to sprout beneath his 
 brisk Eastern footsteps, and the next day found him 
 driving along one of the deep, red-clay roads that 
 gash the face of the glebe, in the direction of Isom 
 Jourdan s plantation, to open negotiations for the 
 transfer of certain rights in the water. " Honestly, 
 if he 11 let you," had run Carlysle s last desperate 
 injunction from the steps as the train pulled out; 
 " by fraud if we must ! " 
 
 Clark was turning this advice over in his mind as 
 he drove ; the hour was early, and upon the dew-wet 
 clay of the road the horses feet gave back a muffled 
 - -*- 27 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 thudding; an opal, cloud-dappled summer sky was 
 overhead, and between the tall hedges curtained with 
 wild roses, Clark caught glimpses of the cotton fields 
 on either side, covered with the corrugated velvet 
 of young cotton as far as eye could see. Clark s eye 
 rested upon it with contemptuous antagonism. He 
 knew the job he had before him. 
 
 Cotton is the fetish of the agricultural South. To 
 divorce the Southern planter from his cotton field 
 is not only to snatch the morsel from his plate and 
 the drink from his cup, but, as he sees it, to rob him 
 of his gods and his fathers gods; to take from 
 him the traditions of his race and the wisdom of his 
 ancestors; and Clark s experience with the planters 
 throughout Pike and Morgan in the last ten days 
 had supplied him with a fair presage of what lay in 
 store for him. 
 
 But men and money, so he told himself, were the 
 tools that best fitted his hand. He knew to an atom 
 the ratio of attraction between man and money, and 
 knew it to be greater than any known affinity be 
 tween man and land known to Peter Clark, at any 
 rate. So, with his faith founded upon the universal 
 solvency of cash, Clark drove blithely onward through 
 the crystal freshness of the early summer day. 
 
 There had been no indication of a dwelling to 
 
 break the green-and-gold monotony of the endless 
 
 cotton fields, but presently Clark s horses slackened 
 
 speed before a wide-barred gate that gave upon the 
 
 -+ 28 H-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 road with so much finality that Clark accepted the 
 hint and turned in the entrance. A grassy roadway 
 stretched before him, interminably, it seemed to the 
 young man as he drove onward between continuous 
 lines of locust trees, that stretched away in a per 
 spective of snowy bloom ahead of him; the air was 
 heavy with the cloying perfume and drowsy with 
 the drone of bees swarming in the roof of bloom; 
 no faintest sound of human life impinged upon the 
 wide silence. Clark seemed to have strayed into a 
 world whose elements were perfume and golden 
 silence. The wheels ran noiselessly over a carpet 
 of unkept grass, starred thick with flowers, and far 
 down between the blooming trees a flutter of blue, 
 that had been intermittently visible, by degrees re 
 solved itself into a woman s form. The clear white 
 light beneath the trees revealed her as a slender, 
 wand-like creature, and the buoyancy of her move 
 ments suggested that she was young. She was clad 
 in a faded cotton-checks gown, so short that it dis 
 played her coarse brogan shoes stained by the dewy 
 grass ; a shapeless sunbonnet hid her face, and as 
 Clark drew in the horse beside her she raised a 
 slender sun-burned arm and pulled nervously at it, 
 drawing it farther over her face so that it was com 
 pletely hidden from him. Her gown was roughly 
 turned in at the throat, and as Clark waited beside 
 her for her to answer his question if Mr. Isom Jour- 
 dan lived anywhere near there, he noted idly that her 
 -H 29 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 throat and the under surface of her chin had the deli 
 cate whiteness of porcelain. She still kept her arm 
 between them as she answered, tartly Clark thought, 
 that he lived right there. 
 
 " Bight on ahead, do you mean ? " persisted 
 Clark. 
 
 " Right on erhead," she retorted. Clark was 
 sure about the tartness this time, though the voice 
 that came from the depths of the limp sunbonnet 
 was as liquid as a thrush s note. He stooped from 
 his seat in an effort to see down the collapsed fun 
 nel of the bonnet. 
 
 " Is he at home ? " he ventured further. 
 
 " Pa? TJv course not," with curt decision. " What 
 would pa be doin home this time er day ? " she 
 added combatively. 
 
 " Waiting for me, I hope," smiled Clark, amused at 
 her brusqueness. "I rather expected it, you know, as 
 I sent a note last night asking for an appointment." 
 
 " Air you th Yankee fum Mr. Brantley s ? " she 
 demanded, with gathering asperity, as, moved by 
 irrepressible curiosity, she raised her face to his. 
 The ruffled edges of the bonnet fell backward, and 
 her face looked out at Clark as from the curved cup 
 of a convolvulus ; she had repeated her question be 
 fore Clark remembered to reply. 
 
 " B cause f you air - n I know you air ! pa 
 said fur th whole kit n bilin uv you to git right 
 offen his Ian and stay off." 
 -H 30 (-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 The delicate shadows from the swaying boughs 
 fell across her face, and as Clark looked down into 
 her eyes he silently corrected his first impression 
 of them as black ; seen in the full light they were 
 dark ink-blue, more accurately the blue of a dam 
 son s bloom or the early morning shadows under 
 deep cedars, and they surveyed Clark with the 
 grave steadiness of a child s, as she awaited the effect 
 of her astounding message upon him. 
 
 " Where were you going ? " he asked, pausing 
 with his foot upon the step. He had ignored her 
 message entirely, to her obvious surprise. It occurred 
 to Clark that she had expected a violent outburst, - 
 that she was accustomed to violence. 
 
 " Me ? I was goin to meet you ! " with unmis 
 takably belligerent emphasis. 
 
 " To meet me ! " cried Clark. " Oh, I see ! To 
 warn me off the premises, eh ? " 
 
 She made him no reply, but her unsmiling eyes 
 continued to peruse his face with an Eve-like frank 
 ness. Clark stepped down and held out his hand. 
 
 " When a girl comes to meet me I always drive 
 her home," he replied gravely to her indignant start 
 backward. " Even a Yankee knows enough for that ! " 
 he rallied her, stooping to look under the bonnet as 
 he spoke. She snatched it jealously closer, but her 
 eyes through the crevice met his, lustrous, laughing, 
 bewitchingly provocative. 
 
 " Come," Clark urged her with extended hand. 
 ^. 31 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Do you s pose I d ride with er Yankee ? " she 
 inquired tauntingly. 
 
 " I think you might," Clark retorted coolly, " if 
 the Yankee is willing to ride with a red-headed 
 girl ! " 
 
 The girl whirled swiftly upon him, red lips apart, 
 hands clutching the bonnet determinedly, full of 
 amazed, chagrined question. Clark laughed teas- 
 ingly. 
 
 " I saw it the first thing," he informed her non 
 chalantly. " But, of course," with exaggerated 
 politeness, "of course I should never have dreamed 
 of mentioning it except that you threw it in my teeth 
 about being a Yankee, and refused to ride with me." 
 
 "You air er Yankee," she retorted breathlessly, 
 " n they ain t no use in you tryin to deny it ! 
 Even ," she regarded him meditatively, " f 
 you don t look like what pa calls em." 
 
 " What does he call them ? " asked Clark, smiling 
 into her eyes. 
 
 " D blood-suckers, " said she easily ; " but 
 
 you ain t, air you? " 
 
 " I m afraid I am," said the young man, laugh 
 ing as he drew out a card and handed it to her; 
 " but I m not the dangerous variety not the sort 
 your father used to know. It s not blood I m after, 
 it s dividends ! " 
 
 She turned the card over and over in her hand, 
 her lips curving into a smile of Puck-like derision. 
 -> 32 +-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 " Then you d jest as well traipse back down th 
 ruver, fur we ain t got none ! Pa," a slightly 
 scornful toss of her head accented her contempt, 
 " pa don t raise nothin but cotton. Gentlemen never 
 does ! Nobody but po white trash ever raises 
 truck ! " 
 
 Clark roared with laughter. " Do you suppose I 
 run a stall?" he asked her. 
 
 " They ain t no tellin what er Yankee d do," she 
 retorted coolly. Her eyes were upon the card in 
 her hand, and for a moment she had forgotten her 
 determined defense of her hair. Clark bent forward, 
 and with a gentle, unexpected movement lifted the 
 shapeless bonnet and bared her head to the blazing 
 light. It was covered with absolutely flame-colored 
 hair hair whose deepest shadow was burnished 
 gold in curling masses that waved low upon her 
 brow and almost hid her rosy ears, clubbed school 
 girl fashion in her neck. Her face as she turned it 
 upon Clark was one flame of temper ; her cheeks 
 blazed poppy-red, and he noticed that her delicate 
 nose turned sharply upward at the point, and her 
 red mouth had sharp curves that suggested that it 
 might sting as well as kiss, spite of its deep, dimpled 
 corners. 
 
 " F that s all th perliteness you ve got!" she 
 flung at him through a mist of tears, "I I don t 
 blame pa none fur runnin you offen his Ian ! But 
 nobody could n t speck no better uv er Yankee ! " 
 t- 33 *-
 
 With his hand behind him holding the bonnet, 
 Clark leaned upon the trap, regarding her with 
 laughing eyes as she stormed at him, with wet eyes 
 and blazing cheeks, making an occasional dart at 
 the bonnet, which he held beyond her reach, as swift 
 and glancing as a humming-bird s, enjoying her in 
 tantalizing silence. Presently he said, quietly : 
 
 " Fie, what a spit-fire it is ! Pouting and scolding 
 and calling names ! I ve heard often and often of 
 the beautiful dignified manners of Southern girls ; 
 but if this is a sample of Southern aristocracy " 
 
 She doubled her slender fist and struck fiercely 
 at him. 
 
 " I hate you ! hate you ! Git offen pa s Ian ! 
 Git off ! " 
 
 Clark broke into a delighted laugh as he caught 
 her hands and held her fast. 
 
 " I thought you d do that ! " He bent his face 
 to hers, " North or South, East or West, it s the 
 law of the land, and every girl knows it ! A kiss for 
 a blow." 
 
 But she fended him off so earnestly that he 
 paused. "If you say not, of course. Come," his 
 eyes coaxed her, "be friends with me! See how 
 sweet everything is." Clark looked about him 
 vaguely, suddenly conscious of the sweetness of the 
 June day about him, that struck inward to his senses 
 with the sharpness of an essence. " You be sweet, 
 
 too, won t you ? " 
 
 -+ 34 -.-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 He could see her draggled lashes hiding her 
 downcast eyes ; suddenly she lifted them, and, as 
 lightly as a wind-blown flower might dash off the 
 rain, dashed off her tears. 
 
 " How do you know I ken ? " she asked him de 
 murely. 
 
 " How do I know that these flowers are sweet or 
 the sky is blue ? " retorted he, with brief conclusive- 
 ness, as he drew his reins through his arm. "If you 
 won t drive with me, I ll walk with you." 
 
 " I did n t mean I would n t fur keeps," she in 
 formed him gravely. " I was jest sposin ." 
 
 "Oh 
 
 i " 
 
 He gave her his hand, and this time she accepted 
 it and sprang lightly to the high seat. 
 
 " I think," said she then, with a gracious dignity, 
 perfectly composed and conscious of itself, and en 
 tirely unexpected to Clark, "I think you ought 
 to ax my pardon fur th way you acted. Er gentle 
 man always pologizes f he makes er lady cry." 
 
 Something in her face silenced the laugh upon 
 Clark s lips ; he bent his knee gayly to the floor of 
 the trap as he cried : " Most humbly, lady fair ! " 
 
 To his surprise she took him seriously, and sur 
 rendered her hand to his lips with a quaint savor of 
 the great lady. 
 
 " Forgive me," he murmured, for the moment 
 genuinely contrite. 
 
 " You re very scusable," she murmured softly 
 -+ 35 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 in return, and, the conventionalities being thus 
 happily disposed of, Clark took his seat at her 
 side. 
 
 "You have n t told me your name," he suggested, 
 as they drove on with the low wind wooingly in 
 their faces. 
 
 " You first," she admonished him serenely. 
 
 " But you know mine ! I gave you my card ages 
 ago." 
 
 "Card?" blankly. 
 
 " Can t you read ? " he asked her bluntly, after a 
 moment of shocked silence. 
 
 " I ken read printin f it s big n no hard words. 
 You tell me." 
 
 " Peter Clark." 
 
 She broke into a low gurgle of laughter, as clear 
 as running water. 
 
 " Peter, Peter, punkin-eater, 
 
 Had er wife n could n t keep her ! 
 
 She gibed him. " N I thought shore you d be 
 named Claude or or somethin like that ! " 
 
 " Jove," protested Clark. " Do I look like that 
 sort of muff ! " 
 
 " You can have three guesses at mine," she 
 raised one rosy finger to keep tally. " One " 
 
 " Apple-blossom," announced Clark firmly. 
 
 "Pooh!" 
 
 " Was that wrong ? Now I have it ! " he 
 looked deep into her eyes. " Heart s-ease ! " 
 -+ 36 H-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 "That s two," she warned him. " N you miss 
 this time you won t never, never " 
 
 " I m not going to miss ! I ve known it all the 
 time ; I was only jesting before. It s Goldy-Locks, 
 of course ! " 
 
 The trap had been rolling smoothly over the 
 grass-grown avenue, but as Clark spoke the wheels 
 grated upon a harsher soil and they passed between 
 two tall stone pillars whose inner surfaces were 
 stained with iron rust, as though a gate had once 
 hung there, and upon the top of each the shattered 
 figure of a lion still ramped in splintered dignity ; 
 a tufted tail or a hind claw gripping the stone alone 
 remaining to show how bravely once its owner might 
 have upborne the heavy stone arch whose scattered 
 blocks still lay about the entrance. 
 
 On either hand dense thickets of blooming shrubs 
 shut them in ; crepe-myrtle flushed the green thick 
 ets, and calycanthus and purple lilac and white were 
 lashed together into an almost impenetrable jungle 
 by the tangled cordage of honeysuckle and yellow 
 jasmine ; here and there the huge tent of a magno 
 lia rose, glittering among the dull greens like* mail 
 in the sunlight, and Clark s wondering eye detected 
 the stone casque of a warrior or his shattered shield 
 protruded through the flaunting banners of passion 
 flower and trumpet vine. 
 
 They rounded a curve in the high green wall, and 
 without warning the avenue terminated in a wide 
 ^- 37 H-
 
 circle in front of a huge pile of debris, heaped in 
 tumultuous confusion in the centre of the clearing 1 . 
 Clark pulled in the horses sharply, and sat gazing in 
 silence upon the strange scene. The mass of ruins 
 was covered with drifted earth and green with fresh 
 grass, and from it tall forest trees sprang vigorously, 
 their roots entwined among piles of brick and stone 
 and rotting joists and beams ; marble columns, shat 
 tered and defaced, showed in the mass like the white 
 bones of a skeleton, and portions of an ornate cor 
 nice, carved and lettered, low down in the heap, bore 
 mute testimony to how complete had been the fall 
 of that once proud rooftree. Immense oaken beams 
 that had resisted the terrific impact of the cannon 
 were sullenly yielding, cell by cell, to time s more 
 insidious attacks. Midway the mass, which was not 
 entirely unlike a great green grave, a flight of wide 
 marble steps, firm and untouched, below the range 
 of the cannon doubtless, led upward to the devas 
 tated threshold, and paused with a blankness inde 
 scribably desolate. 
 
 The silence of the place was broken only by the 
 calling of birds, and, just distinguishable in relief 
 against the sunny quiet of the lost garden, the roar 
 of Chinquepin came dully to Clark s ears. Unending, 
 unchanging, pervasive ; the genius of that desolate 
 solitude. 
 
 " What is this place ? " asked Clark, in a hushed 
 voice, leaning forward with his reins hanging loosely 
 
 -H 38 4-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 between his dropped hands, his eyes immovably upon 
 the ravaged scene before him. 
 
 " This is McGuion House, where I live," said the 
 girl stiffly. " Th door is on the other side f you 
 wanter go in." 
 
 A flush had risen to her cheek, and a trace o 
 wistful uneasiness betrayed itself in her voice; but 
 Clark was not heeding her. 
 
 "That," he cried, pointing insistently, "that 
 buried house ! You cannot live there, you know." 
 
 " But I do ! " sharply, though with quivering lips. 
 " I was born there, and I have never lived anywhere 
 else." 
 
 Her glance had hardened as it rested upon the 
 mass of ruins she claimed as her home, but some 
 thing in the young man s half-awed, half-indignant 
 surprise softened her in spite of herself; her voice, 
 as she went on, trembled with indignation, but Clark 
 easily detected it as an impersonal resentment that 
 did not, in reality, include either her own feelings 
 or what she possibly credited him with. 
 
 " That s my grandfather s, Lacy McGuion s, 
 house, that th Yankees knocked down with cannon 
 balls endurin th wah; out there," she pointed to 
 a circular opening in a maze of box, "is where 
 they piled all the beautiful pictures and books and 
 marble things outen th house and burned them " 
 
 O 
 
 " In the name of heaven, why ! " cried Clark, his 
 eager eyes traversing the country round them. " Ah, 
 
 -H 39 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 I think I see ; the house must have been in the way 
 of some important manreuvre" 
 
 " It was meanness ! " cried the girl furiously, her 
 eyes black with anger, her short red upper lip trem 
 bling as she faced him. " Meanness, I tell you ! 
 What they done ever thin else they done fur ! Yan 
 kees air the meanest things on earth ! They stole 
 V butchered n - - n they d do it ergin f they had 
 er chanst " 
 
 Clark leaned over her, smiling in spite of the 
 moment, and laid his finger on her angry lips. 
 " Hush ! " he said gently ; " it s too horrible for 
 a little tender thing like you to be so harsh and 
 bitter." 
 
 " They air n I hate them ! " she reiterated, as she 
 thrust his hand away. Clark caught her hands and 
 holding them firmly made her meet his eyes. 
 
 " Take it back," he cried imperatively. " Say you 
 did not mean it ! " 
 
 A sudden quiet fell upon her ; she stretched out 
 her hand with an unconscious gesture of dramatic 
 dignity to the buried home, the devastated gardens. 
 " When they take that back ! When ever thin is 
 just like it was in Grandfather McGuion s time, 
 then I 11 say I did n t mean it ! " 
 
 "Good!" cried Clark. "I ll take you up! 
 
 That s exactly what I m here for. The Yankees 
 
 wrought this ruin, you say ? Well, the Yankees will 
 
 undo it. All this will be a thousand times better 
 
 -t- 40 -i-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 than it was How? I m going to tell you; come." 
 He leaped down and held his hands to her. She 
 gave him hers and set one little brogan upon the 
 step, studying him with perplexed eyes. As he set 
 her down a whisper, soft as velvet, brushed his ear. 
 
 " I did n t mean you, nohow." 
 
 "Sure?" 
 
 Shore." 
 
 A lilac tree overhung the steps, thrusting great 
 heart-shaped clusters of pearly blooms through its 
 green roof and making a tiny shelter from the sun, 
 growing more ardent toward noon, and here they 
 sat them down. Clark flung himself upon the stone 
 at her feet, and with the sunlight dappling his bare 
 head with motes of gold, the delicate odor of the 
 lilac in the air about him, and the girl s face set in 
 a frame of spring green above him, Clark began his 
 recital of the possibilities to her father, to herself, 
 to the Development Company, and incidentally to 
 him, which lay hidden in the falls whose muffled 
 roar was like a velvet cushion upon which the golden 
 silence seemed to lean and drowse. 
 
 The girl was too much engrossed with Clark him 
 self to make more than a pretense of attention. 
 Clark s wholesome vigor, the alert poses into which 
 he fell unconsciously while he talked of what so 
 profoundly interested him, the perfection of his 
 dress, his strong \vhite hands full of expression, his 
 penetrating glance at once dominant and reserved, 
 - 41 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 his unaccustomed accent, the caressing, superior note 
 in his carefully modulated voice, were each a separate 
 revelation of manhood to the girl. 
 
 Clark was, in fact, the ordinary well-set-up young 
 Eastern man, turned out by the lathe of civilization 
 by thousands upon thousands every year ; a type as 
 familiar in the business world from Canada to the 
 Gulf as the face of a greenback note ; but the girl 
 was silently setting him against the only men she had 
 ever known, lads from the adjoining plantations, or 
 clerks in country stores, with a result as natural as 
 it was favorable to Clark. 
 
 When the wonder of his presence and the greater 
 wonder, that grew upon her as unconsciously as the 
 air of the June day renewed her blood, that her 
 nearness was as delightful to him as was his to her, 
 would let her listen, Clark was saying : 
 
 " I can understand perfectly that your father 
 might not care to part with land that had been in 
 his family for generations ; hereditary associations 
 count with some men," with an imperceptible 
 shrug, "but it is merely the use of this water, and, 
 er only such land adjacent as we should need for 
 a station and a plant and that, you know, and on, 
 practically, his own terms. I m afraid you do not 
 understand, Miss Jourdan, what this really means to 
 you. Let me tell you, will you not? I will not bore 
 you with business details, but briefly this deal means 
 any amount of money that you like to name. You 
 -H- 42 1-
 
 NATURAL WAY OF LIVING 
 
 could rebuild your grandfather s house in much 
 better shape, if you cared to do so. You don t know 
 what there is in the world to enjoy ! " His long 
 glance into her eyes carried its message of what 
 there might be. 
 
 " But I must see your father," he resumed impa 
 tiently, after a minute. " Come, take me to him, will 
 you not ? Let us find him ; every moment is pre 
 cious ! " 
 
 He sprang up, waiting impatiently ; but the girl 
 leaned her head back idly against the stem of the 
 tree behind her, regarding Clark with great dream 
 ing eyes, the tricksy corners of her mouth curling 
 upward in a slow derisive smile. 
 
 " Pa s at Brandon as you might er known by 
 me setting here with you." Clark gave an impatient 
 shruo;. " But I 11 reason with him " 
 
 o 
 
 " Reason ! " cried Clark, with amused exaspera 
 tion. " The deuce ! I never dreamed of such folly. 
 Any man on earth would jump at this " 
 
 She slowly shook her head. " Not pa. He won t 
 let er thing be touched." She waved her hand 
 toward the pile of debris "Not er finger has been 
 laid on that since th Yankees went erway ; when 
 th front of th house tumbled down it piled up 
 and kept the cannon balls from knocking down the 
 rooms at the back ; they are all buried except just 
 th front but we ve lived there ever since." 
 
 A trace of sadness had crept into her voice, and 
 -+ 43 ^
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 Clark s eyes rested pityingly upon her. This lovely 
 creature forced to pass her young life in that 
 ghastly pile of ruins a sacrifice upon the altar of 
 hate ! It was too hideous for belief. 
 
 " What insane folly makes your father keep this 
 pile of ruins here ! Why does he not build another 
 home " 
 
 The girl s face turned to his expressed grave sur 
 prise ; a shocked consciousness of some sacred thing 
 made light of. 
 
 " Pie keeps it to remember by," she said simply. 
 " We remember by it to hate th Yankees." 
 
 "Heavens, child! A grim lest ye forget, by 
 Jove ! " 
 
 He rose and held out his hand to bid her good-by. 
 " We re partners, you know, and I m trusting to 
 you to win out for us and the Company. Am I 
 to come back to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Not here," said she hurriedly. "I 11 I 11 see 
 pa n do you know th way to Chinquepin?" 
 
 "Do I ? " laughed Clark. " I have thought of 
 nothing by day and dreamed of nothing by night but 
 Chinquepin until to-day ! " 
 
 He drew her crumpled bonnet from his pocket, 
 and standing in front of her put it on. Still hold 
 ing it by its ruffled edges, he drew her imperceptibly 
 nearer to him. In the shadow her soft eyes laughed 
 into his, her sweet lips dared his own as she pulled 
 
 lightly back against his hand that drew her closer. 
 
 i- 44 )
 
 " You forgot to guess my name," she reminded 
 him. 
 
 " I do not want to know it," Clark answered, with 
 a shrug of distaste. " I know I d hate it. I 11 name 
 you for myself." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 He whispered a word, his face within the pent 
 house of the bonnet as his lips touched hers. 
 
 " To-morrow, sure ? " 
 
 Shore."
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 "... The taint of earth the odor of the skies is in it." 
 
 A FORTNIGHT passed : fourteen long, perfumed, 
 summer days, with the heart of June beating visibly 
 through them, which Clark spent, bored and restive 
 enough, lounging about the countryside in his boat 
 or his trap, sometimes alone, oftener with lola Jour- 
 dan, awaiting with what patience he might the result 
 of her mediation with her father, which was to decide 
 the fate of the Chinquepin deal. 
 
 In the narrow valley, walled in by mountains on 
 either side, the wide slow current of the Tennessee, 
 like a pavement of mother-of-pearl for its floor, bor 
 dered on either hand by endless acres of lush green 
 young cotton, life seethed, and the planters along 
 the river smiled with the old saw upon their lips, 
 " When cotton s in bloom, courtin s in season," as 
 they caught a glimpse, far afield, of the two figures, 
 the man s and the girl s, disappearing among the 
 brown shades of the pine woods, or the dim shadow 
 of the boat creeping among the other shadows of 
 the canes, for coolness ; Clark would have said 
 for coolness, but the river men following it with tol 
 erant eyes and a slow sapient smile assigned another 
 reason, as they shook their heads in sage prophecies 
 -+ 46 -i
 
 THE ODOR OF THE SKIES 
 
 of other cotton bloomings, mingled with fond mem 
 ories of, 
 
 "... lightsom days an lang, 
 When hinnied hopes about our hearts like simmer 
 blossoms sprang." 
 
 The girl had entered into Clark s plans with a 
 comprehension that amazed him, and plotted against 
 her father with a shrewdness that would have amused 
 him, had not the interest of the affair absorbed every 
 energy of the young man s mind, or nearly every 
 energy. 
 
 They met every day at a new trysting place, 
 arranged by lola with a strategic observance of her 
 father s movements that she did not attempt to con 
 ceal from Clark. That she frankly hated and feared 
 her father had been apparent to Clark almost from 
 the first, and there were moments when he was un 
 easily conscious of the precariousness of the whole 
 affair, touched as he undoubtedly was by her fealty 
 to his interests, or, as they had come to call it in 
 their talks together, " our interests." Her talks 
 with her father, faithfully reported to Clark each 
 day, showed the old man interested, at any rate ; 
 and from day to day this interest grew more keenly 
 practical ; the questions, in fact, that the girl pro 
 pounded from her father were exceptionally shrewd, 
 and Clark silently wondered at the old man s acu 
 men, knowing old Jourdan to have been a planter 
 rather than a business man ; but he answered them 
 -t- 47 -1
 
 in detail, even elucidating 1 some of the more impor 
 tant propositions in writing, and to all of these lola 
 brought back a verbal and invariably encouraging 
 reply. 
 
 Of course these erratic negotiations were unspeak 
 ably absurd to Clark ; that he, a business man from 
 the East, where men knew the value of time, should 
 waste two weeks philandering about country lanes, 
 holding secret conferences with a girl as interme 
 diary in a business deal that thirty minutes talk face 
 to face would have sufficed to settle, was nothing 
 short of madness ; but the earnestness with which 
 she discouraged any attempt upon his part to meet 
 her father, her reiterated assertions that she could 
 and would manage him if she only had time, in 
 duced him to persevere, shutting his eyes to every 
 thing save the main issue, the rights to the water 
 power. Besides, to Clark s mind, a sane and equable 
 one, narrow perhaps, but clear and serviceable, it 
 seemed as incredible but that old Jourdan must in 
 the end perceive his own interests to be identical 
 with his Company s, as that Chinquepin s flow should 
 be reversed and tower up.ward to the dark pines 
 above. The young man was sure of a few things ; 
 he was sure he knew himself, for one thing, and he 
 thought he knew the elements that go to make up 
 success ; it was, so he told himself, in the combina 
 tion of those elements that men bungled. 
 
 Clark was thinking of this as he rowed up the 
 -i. 48 4-
 
 THE ODOR OF THE SKIES 
 
 river to the trysting place she had appointed for 
 that night, his arms aching with the strain he put 
 upon them in his eagerness to be with her. 
 
 In the pocket of his coat, lying upon the seat, was 
 a packet of stiff, clean, legal documents that caught 
 the moonlight bravely. It was the longed-for con 
 cession to the rights in Chinquepin. Clark eyed it 
 complacently. It needed but the old man s signa 
 ture, and to-night lola would take it to him and 
 have him affix it, and the transfer would be com 
 plete. How well the thing had gone, after all ! How 
 cleverly she had managed her father the old duffer 
 must love her, spite of Brantley s animadversions. 
 Of course he had yielded for the girl s sake 
 Clark mused a space, his face growing tender with 
 thought of her. "Why not?" he asked himself for 
 the thousandth time in the past fortnight. In the 
 East she would be called " Southern " with a toler 
 ant smile, and much can be forgiven a beautiful 
 woman and the heir to all that money ! Besides, 
 he would be always at her side to teach her, guide 
 her, do her lessons for her, if need be. He knew 
 all that she need know, even how to dress her, 
 and there was nothing to undo luckily; she was 
 simply ignorant, not coarse or unrefined; her in 
 stinct in many matters was truer than his own, 
 and Clark s keen perceptions had not failed to take 
 note of this. A year of contact with the world 
 would rub the little rusticities from her she was 
 -t- 49 -
 
 the stuff to take on a flawless polish and - - Why 
 not? 
 
 As he drew nearer, straining blithely at the oars, 
 he saw that she had taken off her shoes and stock 
 ings and was wading in a shallow runlet that es 
 caped from the falls, holding her white dress high 
 in both hands. Her hair, worn as he had taught 
 her to wear it for him, hung in two half -loosened 
 braids like burnished metal in the moonlight, and 
 as she poised herself upon a stone and looked up at 
 him, her eyes were like fringed flowers, expressing 
 nothing but their own beauty. The girl s whole 
 range of expression lay in her mouth, in the corners 
 of the lips, that curled upward in precisely the line 
 that an artist s pencil would have followed had he 
 made tangible a subtle derision in his sitter s mind 
 that is subjective rather than objective. She did not 
 speak as Clark stood above her on the bank, but 
 appeared to concentrate herself upon him in a silent 
 effort to penetrate his mind, which gave her the 
 effect of mentally holding her breath. 
 
 " Have n t I got pretty feet ? " was what she said 
 when she finally spoke. 
 
 " Like a naiad s, exactly." 
 
 "Er what?" she spoke quickly, with a frown of dis 
 approbation; and Clark amended hastily, with a smile: 
 
 " A goddess. You remember the one you remind 
 me of when you sit on the stone there behind the 
 waterfall with the foam around you? " 
 
 -. 50 -^
 
 THE ODOR OF THE SKIES 
 
 " Aw yes ; that one made of foam. I wonder how 
 she stuck together, Peter ? " 
 
 Clark did not venture upon an explanation, but 
 silently lifted her in his arms and set her upon the 
 bank. 
 
 " What s th matter? " she asked, with a slight 
 catch in her breath. 
 
 " Nothing. I am in great shape to-night. Think 
 of having it all settled at last ! " 
 
 " Don t begin erbout that," she interposed hastily. 
 "Let s talk erbout something that s got some sense 
 in it." 
 
 " You ? " suggested he, with a grin. " Come to 
 the boat, I want to go over these with you and show 
 you what to do." 
 
 He drew her with him to the boat and went over 
 the papers with her, explaining, instructing for the 
 last time. 
 
 " Your father is a precious old humbug, dearest 
 - with his deathless vendetta. All rot, just as I 
 told you ! Once we have a cinch on these concessions, 
 it is going to give me great pleasure to tell him so ; 
 but in the meantime you are to see that he signs 
 these before a notary Oh, that s all right!" a 
 sudden blankness had overspread her face, "I 11 
 row Weston up the river to-morrow and land him 
 somewhere about so that he can appear to drop in 
 accidentally. Of all the frantic folly ! Shall I ? " 
 
 She had been printing the impression of her half- 
 -H- 51 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 opened lips against Clark s cheek as they talked, and 
 he now substituted his lips, but the mutely asked 
 kiss was not given ; she stared past him into vacancy ; 
 her face, rigid with thought, was perfectly white in 
 the moonlight. 
 
 "Did Mr. Ike Weston fix them up?" she asked 
 dully. 
 
 " The attorney at Brandon ? Yes. What is it, 
 Blossom?" 
 
 "Not nothin ." 
 
 Clark broke into a tender laugh. " That s emphatic 
 enough, at any rate ! If I asked you how much you 
 loved me, sweetheart, would you say, Not none ?" 
 
 She was fitting her finger into the cleft in Clark s 
 chin, adjusting it with absent care. " Peter, sup- 
 posin We air just supposing you know ? " 
 
 " All right; supposin ," 
 
 "Pa air awful cross-grained sometimes; sup- 
 posin ," her breath caught in her throat, but she 
 steadied her voice and went on, " supposin he 
 would n t never, never sign th concessions, would 
 you You d cast me off, would n t you? " 
 
 " Don t talk rot," said Clark, a little coldly. " No 
 sane man would have gone as far as he has and then 
 pull out." 
 
 But a shadow had fallen across his sanguine mood 
 
 at her words, and for a moment the thought crossed 
 
 his mind to explain to her something at least of the 
 
 demands that the sort of life he lived made upon a 
 
 ^- 52 -^
 
 THE ODOR OF THE SKIES 
 
 man ; how in a measure it reacted upon, controlled, 
 his relation to her. The thought passed unspoken, 
 but in its passage through his mind it had done its 
 work ; she had felt it pass between them, obscuring 
 her sunshine as a passing cloud may dull the sun s 
 radiant warmth for a moment. His set face looking 
 past her, his eyes hard with thought from which 
 she was shut out, his troubled breathing as she lay 
 upon his breast, all told a story replete with cruel 
 meaning. And with the passionate capacity of such 
 a nature for suffering strung as she was to her 
 utmost tension of emotional experience her heart 
 rushed to meet the desolation of the years without 
 him with an exquisite poignancy of pain that trans 
 cends the pain of later years by as far as young 
 love s exultant throb outstrips the staid decorum 
 of well-seasoned experience ; mistaking, with all of 
 youth s impetuous loyalty to the present, the divine 
 aroma of the moment for her imagined need of 
 him. 
 
 She choked back her sobs, some instinct warning 
 her that tears would not avail her here. 
 
 "But supposin ," she faltered, "he he won t? 
 Would you would " 
 
 The tears would come. Clark was silent ; his arms 
 that strained her closer interpreting that silence. 
 
 An hour later Clark tied his boat at Brantley s 
 landing. His host came down to meet him, combing 
 
 -H 53 4-
 
 his thin beard with nervous fingers an unfailing 
 storm signal with Brantley. He walked beside Clark 
 for a dozen paces in silence, then cleared his throat 
 with raucous warning. 
 
 " Jourd s ben here er looking fur you," he said 
 gently. Clark raised his head alertly. " I tol him," 
 Brantley went on, in his soft drawl, "thet you d 
 tuk th las boat up th ruver." 
 
 " Why, what the deuce, Brantley ! - He came 
 about those papers, I suppose. I 11 ride over there 
 the first thing in the morning." 
 
 Prompt, alert, business-like, Clark was himself 
 again. The sudden cessation from uncertainty was 
 as grateful as the relaxation of a physical strain. 
 Kindly, remonstrant humor was in the glance old 
 Brantley bent upon him ; he gave a rusty chuckle at 
 Clark s mention of the papers. 
 
 " Well, I 11 be durned ! F that air gal ain t 
 got th nerve er Julius CaBsar ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " cried Clark, a cold breeze 
 of apprehension contracting his nerves a moment 
 since basking in realization. Brantley s gently sat 
 urnine face was one gleam of laughter. 
 
 " lola ! F she ain t er twisted you n her pa round 
 her finger like er string ! Jourd ain t never hearn 
 tell uv this here Chinquepin deal ontel Ike Weston 
 tol him to-day erbout th papers bein made out fur 
 his signature." 
 
 Brantley s rasping chuckle broke through again. 
 -- 54 ^
 
 THE ODOR OF THE SKIES 
 
 Clark s face was hidden as he leaned upon the rail 
 ing looking with eyes hot with anger back along 
 the current like molten silver that had just brought 
 him from her. 
 
 " So," went on Brantley, approaching his situa 
 tion with dramatic cunning, " so Jourd he come 
 on here s soon he d got his gun, he s ez keen ez 
 er bloodhound when he gets his dander up, n 
 it tuk me cornsiderable time to turn him fum th 
 scent " 
 
 " Pooh," said Clark contemptuously. A sudden 
 thought struck him and he made a stride toward the 
 boat. Old Brantley held him with a shaking, sinewy 
 hand, gently and firmly as he might have held a 
 fever patient. 
 
 " Naw, naw, son," he argued placably. " Yo way 
 lays up th ruver " 
 
 Clark strove to shake off the other s hand impa 
 tiently. 
 
 " She 11 be home by this ; I cannot leave her alone 
 with that old brute " 
 
 " Shucks," said Brantley pacifically. " Tola air a 
 match fur her pa any day uv the week. Always 
 give er woman er chanst to tell her tale her 
 own way. You ain t got no reason to be oneasy 
 erbout Tola, seein she fooled you at your own 
 game. Shorely, shorely she was true to you," he 
 answered Clark s restive movement. " N she d er 
 made Jourd sign them papers by hook or by crook 
 -i- 55 H-
 
 f Weston had n t er sprung her trap too soon. 
 But you lay low and let her hedge her pa her own 
 way." 
 
 Clark dropped the rope over the post ; Brantley s 
 homely logic had cooled the fever in his pulses. It 
 was over - the fool s game of blindman s-buff he 
 had been playing for three weeks. Of course Brant- 
 ley was right. The dignified, the inevitable thing 
 was to leave quietly on the midnight boat. A week 
 hence the old life would have overlaid this fortnight 
 
 O 
 
 with a stratum of new incidents ; a month hence he 
 could not resurrect it if he would and it would 
 tell well at the club, pointed with a bit of humor - 
 Clark winced. 
 
 When he caught the trend of old Brantley s 
 rambling monologue he was saying : " N her ma, 
 Martha McGuion as was, turned th head uv ever 
 man in Pike n Morgan and ended up with er shot 
 gun wedding ! " 
 
 The moon rode low in the sky ahead of Clark 
 as he drove rapidly toward the steamboat landing. 
 The air was dank with the cold dew of dawn and 
 heavy with perfume. Somewhere in the tangle of 
 mimosa at his side a mocking-bird sung low in its 
 throat and a whippoorwill wailed insistently. 
 
 In a deep cut where the hedges rose black against 
 the sky, the horse shied violently, almost dragging 
 Clark from his seat, as a white shape sprang into 
 -H 56 --
 
 THE ODOR OF "THE SKIES 
 
 the road. Before the frightened horse had come 
 fairly to a stand Clark had flung himself down to 
 meet her. Her thin clothing was saturated with 
 damp, and she shivered convulsively, her bosom 
 rising and falling with a storm of sobs that shook 
 Clark as he clasped her. They clung to each other 
 in silence, Clark s head bent down upon the girl s 
 wet face. 
 
 "You little liar! " he said caressingly, his voice 
 shaking under its attempted playfulness. 
 
 " F - - f they had er let me be," she broke out 
 hoarsely, tears coming again, " I could er " 
 
 " I know, dear," he soothed her, " I know what 
 your plan must have been. Never mind it now. 
 How came you here ? " 
 
 " I was waiting fur you," wearily. 
 
 She shivered again and winced as he laid his 
 hand upon her shoulder, and with startled eyes and 
 a sick premonition of what he would see, Clark drew 
 her where the light from the waning* moon fell 
 upon her. She had been cruelly beaten ; the strokes 
 of the lash had stiffened in streaks of blood across 
 her thin gown. As Clark s eyes fell upon her, for 
 the first time in all his smug, well-ordered life an 
 oath burst from his lips. 
 
 He looked back along the dark road that led to 
 
 what, in cruel mockery of its real meaning, she 
 
 called her home, then downward to the girl upon 
 
 his breast; hung a second longer in troubled thought: 
 
 -H 57 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 then tearing off his coat he wrapped her in it and 
 lifted her to the seat, sprang up himself, and brought 
 the whip down across the horse. 
 
 " We 11 have to drive like the deuce to make the 
 boat," he said quietly.
 
 NO FRIENDLY STAR 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 "... Wherever light ivinds blow 
 Fixed by no friendly star." 
 
 Ix the second winter of the Development Company s 
 being, the boom so long heralded with dauntless 
 mendacity by Morganton s financial chaperones 
 began to assume a tangible aspect. 
 
 The stars in their courses fought for the Devel 
 opment Company in those days, and, to quote Car- 
 
 lysle, the Company did " some pretty d shrewd 
 
 hustling" on its own account. 
 
 " They have seen our star in the East, Kate," he 
 confided to his wife, with cheerful profanity, " and 
 have come to dicker with us ! " 
 
 And, in fact, wise men began to arrive from the 
 East; not upon camels to be sure, nor noticeably 
 laden with gold, frankincense, and myrrh ; but they 
 had brought their own jovial personalities, their 
 evening clothes, and a particularly long-headed, if 
 somewhat jocular, insight to bear upon the concerns 
 of the debutante investment, and for the moment 
 that sufficed. The main thing with the Company 
 had been to get them there, its methods being equal 
 in sapiency to the old-time recipe for chicken salad 
 which starts off, "First catch your chicken." 
 - 59 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 So the officers of the Company smoked the calu 
 met, and the Eastern potentates fared sumptuously 
 every day upon soft-shelled crab and canvas-backed 
 duck, which the management of the hotel, with a 
 frank forecast of the part a man s palate plays in 
 matters presumably settled by his judgment, ordered 
 up in an endless chain from the coast, and were 
 visibly impressed by the outlook. This outlook, by 
 the way, was duly enlarged by excursions about the 
 country in Carlysle s motor car j and, with Jane s 
 charming figure by his side and her sweet nonsense 
 in his delighted ears, it is small wonder that the gods 
 of finance from Wall Street s " high Parnassus " 
 looked upon the daughters of men and found them 
 fair ; or that, interpreted by her, they carried back 
 East an impression of a land where falls of incalcu 
 lable potential did lofty tumbling acts from peaks 
 stuffed with ore, and endless coal-fields which echoed 
 only to the plovers call and to the whistle of Bob- 
 Bob-White ; of forests of hardwood trees glowing 
 like camp-fires through the haze of Indian summer; 
 and all this, to cap the munificence of the gods, 
 set in a climate where men wear shirt-sleeves nine 
 months in the year. 
 
 But during all this time of fatness in the land 
 the star of the Chinquepin Power Company lingered 
 obstinately below the horizon, invisible except to 
 the eyes of Carlysle s indomitable hope. 
 
 Chinquepin still sang her siren song and swirled 
 -+ 60 -.-
 
 NO FRIENDLY STAR 
 
 her lacy skirts all day in the sunshine, unwitting of 
 scoops or paddles. Lovers still sat on " th courtin 
 rock " behind her fall, and Carlysle still taxed the 
 vituperative powers of the English language for 
 terms in which to anathematize old Jourdan s thick 
 headed adherence to the altars of his sires, as he 
 chose to interpret that worthy s inflexible refusal to 
 even hold a conference with the Company s agents. 
 
 There was a bit of the sleuth in Carlysle, for all his 
 delightful mental suppleness and the easy Catholi 
 cism which made for him usually so comfortable a 
 place among the creeds and customs of other men, 
 and it held him to the trail of the Chinquepin deal 
 in the face of old Jourdan s implacable obduracy, 
 with a vigilance that neither slumbered nor slept, 
 and an unflagging keenness of resource that went 
 nearly the whole way with Brantley in persuading 
 him to undertake one last attempt to open nego 
 tiations. 
 
 " Does this darned old moss-back suppose he will 
 be let to block the progress of a whole state ? " de 
 manded Carlysle, in bitter chagrin, as the two sat 
 together in his office upon the morning when Brant- 
 ley had rowed down the river to communicate his 
 last failure. " This is a public measure, I tell you, 
 Brantley ! It will benefit the whole State of Ala 
 bama. And he can t hold out, you know ; as soon 
 as we get this bill through we will force the con 
 cession." 
 
 -I- 61 4-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Colonel DeResett s th member f um this dees- 
 trict ? " hazarded Brantley mildly. 
 
 " Yes ; John Calhoun DeResett." 
 
 Carlysle glanced searchingly at the other, but 
 Brantley wore his usual expression of gentle satire, 
 too universal to be personal or to convey any in 
 formation, as in the present instance. 
 
 " Jourd was in th colonel s regimint endurin 
 th wah," he dropped meditatively, " n Jourd 
 votes all his hands solid fur th colonel ever two 
 years." 
 
 " I know DeResett," said Carlysle, with brief con- 
 clusiveness ; " he works that racket about the wah 
 in his campaigns, but when it comes to the really 
 serious things of life say Chinquepin stock his 
 head s level! What is Jourdan s real reason, Brant 
 ley ? Drop all this rot about the war, man, that s 
 past, and put me on." 
 
 Brantley s eyes steadied as they met Carlysle s, 
 and for a moment it seemed as if he was about to 
 retaliate, but the impulse of courage faded into 
 caution ; he took refuge in a generality. 
 
 " Jourd s ben erginst ever thing in Gawd 
 A mighty s world sence th creation er man down to 
 th organization uv this here Development Com 
 pany," he said evasively. 
 
 " What soured him on the scheme of creation ? " 
 inquired Carlysle, hoping to find a loop-hole in 
 " Jourd s " universal pessimism. 
 -+ 62 -t-
 
 NO FRIENDLY STAR 
 
 "Befo th wah," began Brantley, and Carlysle 
 settled himself with amused resignation to the fate 
 he had rashly invited, "befo th wah Jourd was 
 er nigger overseer on Lacey McGuion s plantations ; 
 n " he proceeded equably "in them days 
 nigger overseer wasn t no better n dawgs hardly. 
 But Jourd, for all that, upped and run off with 
 Marthy McGuion yes, as you say, th lady uv th 
 manor ! Some say t was er military wedding ; others 
 say not; ennyhow," -with easy tolerance, "he 
 ended by marry in her. N - this in slow sum 
 mary " Marthy McGuion would er twisted th 
 grain er Julius Caesar ! " 
 
 " Is that how he got the land ? " asked Carlysle, 
 making a rapid forecast of the story, " all the Mc- 
 Guions killed in the war " 
 
 " Exactly." 
 
 " Well." Carlysle resumed the genealogy of the 
 McGuion family with smiling exasperation. What, 
 he asked himself, had he to gain? But he baited 
 Brantley with another question. 
 
 "Marthy McGuion died?" 
 
 " In time she did," acquiesced Brantley, with an 
 air of generously refraining from calling attention 
 to an oversight of Providence. 
 
 " And left the land to her husband ? " 
 
 " Onconditionally." 
 
 " Now," mused Carlysle alertly, " whom do you 
 suppose " 
 
 -+ 63 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 Brantley rose with a stiff creak, his cheeks creased 
 like a leather pouch in a smile of gentle derision. 
 "I m nigh on to seventy, son," he said, with his 
 rusty chuckle that always suggested the need of 
 oil, " n I ain t got th time to be supposin 
 erbout Jourd ! But h sover, I m sorry I did n t 
 marry Marthy m self when I had th chanst, 
 seein as your heart s so sot on that bit er fallin 
 water." 
 
 As the door closed behind Brantley Carlysle flung 
 himself back in his chair, thinking out the details of 
 the letter he must perforce write quashing the last 
 hopes of the Chinquepin Company. He was still 
 lost in angry meditation when the click of the door 
 opening without warning made him wheel abruptly 
 toward it. 
 
 " I m very busy," he began mechanically, when 
 something in the woman s air arrested him. He 
 decided swiftly that this was a countrywoman who 
 probably wanted to sell him land, but before he 
 could speak she took him up gravely. 
 
 " You was n t doing er single thing but laying 
 back in that chair." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Carlysle, a good deal 
 taken aback ; " I assure you I was arranging a most 
 important matter in my mind. Do you wish to speak 
 to me, Madam?" He added the last word a little 
 uncertainly. 
 
 " Air you Mr. James Stanwell Carlysle ? " No 
 -H 64 +-
 
 NO FRIENDLY STAR 
 
 faintest tinge of embarrassment showed in the color 
 less apathy of her tone. 
 
 " Yes," said Carlysle. 
 
 " N does ever thing from th ground below to 
 th sky erbove belong to you?" she pursued, in the 
 skeptical tone of one repeating information in which 
 she had herself no sort of confidence. 
 
 " Yes," said Carlysle again, this time with a smile. 
 " Do you want to buy something of mine or sell me 
 something of yours ? " 
 
 His visitor did not respond to his smile, but she 
 came nearer to his desk and leaned her arms with the 
 child in them rather wearily upon it. The eyes with 
 which she met his own were perfectly steady and, 
 except for a slight tension in their gaze, normal ; but 
 as Carlysle s eyes traveled from them to her mouth, 
 one of the mobile, tremulous, betraying mouths, it 
 suddenly came to him that the woman was at her 
 last fence. The face itself belonged to the stubborn, 
 fighting type of faces, spite of its flexuous lines and 
 rounded contours, now worn and blanched so that 
 he seemed to see down to the primitive rock of her 
 character, laid bare by suffering, so frank as to be 
 almost nakedly elemental. Carlysle winced with pity. 
 
 " Not neither," she said at last, in answer to his 
 smiling question and in the same tone of colorless 
 apathy. " I ain t got nothin to buy nothin with ; 
 and I ain t got nothin to sell, lessen you d take the 
 baby?" 
 
 -t- 65 H
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 Carlysle glanced quickly at her as he recovered 
 his poise, somewhat shaken under the many-piled 
 negations of her speech, but she was perfectly 
 grave ; there was even a thread of dignity, patheti 
 cally attenuated, in her confession, as if in some sort 
 of way her poverty clothed her with a pathetic state. 
 To Carlysle s amazement she made him an offer of 
 the child, timid and half withdrawn, but unmistak- 
 edly serious in intention. 
 
 " Sit down," said he gently, taking the child from 
 her. " Why do you wish to give me your child ? " 
 
 She did not answer in words, but her eyes met his 
 in reproachful protest so startling in its frank dis 
 closure that a pang of vicarious guilt stung Carlysle ; 
 he felt in some inexplicable way that his sex made 
 him an accomplice in her fall. It was but the instan 
 taneous throb with which the molecule recognizes 
 its kinship to the mass of human misery and crime 
 and guilt, and Carlysle in that instant of poignant 
 comprehension saw himself a boy again with the 
 ruthless barbarism of boyhood turning a burning 
 glass upon a butterfly, pretty much as Nature had 
 focused her inexorable purpose upon this young 
 creature. 
 
 " You have n t told me what I can do for you ? " 
 he suggested, smiling at the child upon his knee. 
 
 " I want you to loan me er box car," she replied, 
 without hesitation. Carlysle considered her in sur 
 prised silence for a moment. 
 
 -.- 66 +-
 
 NO FRIENDLY STAR 
 
 "What to do with?" 
 
 " To live iu, uv course." The explanation was dis 
 tinctly tart. 
 
 " You mean those empty cars on that bit of con 
 struction track " 
 
 Yes." 
 
 Carlysle hesitated, running over in his mind any 
 possible refuge for her in the place ; there was none 
 he knew. And yet this child she seemed hardly 
 more alone, in a box car in such a place. The 
 thought was preposterous ! 
 
 " Where have you come from here ? " he tem 
 porized. 
 
 " She-car-go," she drawled sweetly and so unex 
 pectedly that Carlysle s glance took on a tinge of 
 keenness as he made a guarded inventory of her. 
 She wore a dark gown that, though worn and travel- 
 stained, had been distinctly smart in its day, and still 
 bore the unmistakable evidences of its high estate 
 in its well-cut lines and good texture. But the 
 girl herself was worn and weary and slender to the 
 point of emaciation, though her face retained its 
 childish contours ; there was a dimple in her chin 
 and shadows, that would be dimples when she 
 smiled, in either cheek, though the cheeks were 
 themselves pallid from want. She answered indif 
 ferently to his question that her name was Callie 
 Larkin. 
 
 " Of course you can have the car ; I will send out 
 -* 67 H-
 
 and have it shunted closer to these shanties near 
 the tracks; that will be safer for you." 
 
 Carlysle had been scribbling a line as he talked, 
 and now held it toward her with a note from his 
 purse. 
 
 " Take this to the Company s supply store and 
 they will let you have what you want." 
 
 She took the paper, but flushed and shrank from 
 the money that he pressed upon her. 
 
 " It is all right for me to help you a bit," he ex 
 plained. " This is my town, you remember ? And 
 while you are here you are my guest." 
 
 " Air you th mayor ? " she inquired, with a touch 
 of awe ; and when Carlysle told her with a smile that 
 he was, she took the money contentedly, and with a 
 word of thanks went her way. 
 
 It was thus that Callie Larkin had come into 
 the lives of Carlysle and his little circle. He had 
 sketched her in a dozen capable sentences to his 
 wife and Miss Caruth, and they had later sought her 
 out in her tiny home upon the unused track. She 
 had settled into it, never leaving it, and shrinking 
 from her neighbors with a persistence that soon rid 
 her of them, and as the weeks passed she showed 
 no desire to leave it. Carlysle s order upon the 
 Company s store supplied her simple needs. She 
 made no friends nor even acquaintances; to all 
 save Carlysle and his wife she was frankly repellent, 
 and she clung to them as unobtrusively as a bit of 
 
 -H- 68 H-
 
 thistledown might cling to a traveler s garment ; 
 she made no appeal, asserted no claim, but simply 
 and quite frankly attached herself to them, though 
 she did not confide in them nor did they question 
 her. 
 
 To Carlysle life displayed itself episodically ; he 
 snatched its meaning from it with a glance as he 
 did the morning papers, giving himself no concern 
 with yesterday s stale news or to-morrow s unripe 
 happenings. And as the summer wore on it was grad 
 ually borne in upon him and his wife that the lethargy 
 that had locked the girl s nature like a frost-bound 
 stream had broken ; she had shed her past as a flower 
 might shed its leaves, and trembled upon the verge 
 of a new phase. That she had accepted them as an 
 equivalent for all that life had doubtless held for her 
 before the wrench came that had jarred her from 
 her little niche was also apparent to them, and the 
 knowledge had touched them, disconcerted them, 
 and amused them in about equal parts, though they 
 had not hesitated to assume the responsibility that 
 she gently, almost timidly, thrust upon them. Her 
 theory of life had been contained in the reply that 
 she made to Carlysle s inquiry as to what she could 
 do, or would prefer to do, to earn a support for her 
 self and her child. She had turned great, startled 
 eyes upon him as she murmured, 
 
 " Folkses has always tuk ker uv me, n n I 
 ken take ker uv th baby." 
 
 -+ 69 -f-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 After that Carlysle and his wife had tacitly as 
 sumed the part of "th folkses." She accepted what 
 they did for her with a detached graciousness, that 
 just escaped being inconsequence, but did escape 
 it by a certain grace of manner which assumed her 
 obligation to the Carlysles to be an accident that 
 might quite as well have been the other way, which 
 graciousness was unconsciously the acme of good 
 taste, since the stress of circumstances really left her 
 no choice for the moment but to be their debtor. 
 Carlysle frankly admired what he called her " grit," 
 and his wife and Miss Caruth were interested though 
 more conservatively. They had found early in their 
 acquaintance with her that it was impossible to accept 
 Callie at any valuation other than her own ; light as 
 she seemed by nature, she maintained a rigid reti 
 cence in regard to her past that never relaxed. 
 Experience had laid a rough hand upon her, but 
 she had wrested herself free, courageously or cal 
 lously Carlysle and his wife in their many discus 
 sions had never yet been able to decide which ; life 
 had striven to brand its most tragic superscription 
 upon her, but the die had seemingly left no stamp. 
 
 The question was and it grew more insistent 
 with every week that passed what to do with her ? 
 She had neither a past nor a future, and her hold 
 upon the present was so casual a one that she might 
 almost be said to. have no present either. It was in 
 these somewhat perplexing premises that Carlysle 
 
 -h 70 H-
 
 NO FRIENDLY STAR 
 
 and the two women had set themselves to play the 
 part of destiny and assist fate to solve the problem, 
 by providing her with a future while holding 1 fast 
 to the tentative claim they had upon her, not dar 
 ing to risk her life in her own hands until some 
 sort of life line attached her to the shore of the 
 problematical future they had mapped out for her. 
 
 To Carlysle s dismay he perceived that his two 
 companions, and in a measure Callie herself, saw 
 her past as a nagging repetend in the solution of 
 her future, repeating itself to infinity ; never to be 
 completely solved and never to be cut off or approxi 
 mated or in any way got rid of, but re-lived in the 
 background of every minute of her future. 
 
 Then all in a moment, as it were, had come the 
 inspiration. A man a perfect stranger to Carlysle 
 - in the clutch of that instinct of confidence that 
 goes so far along the way to make us believe in the 
 universal brotherhood of man, had unfolded to him 
 the story of his life from the first blind cast of the 
 dice down to his wife s good-by kiss when he had 
 left her to come upon the journey that ended in his 
 meeting with Carlysle and his confidence to him. 
 How, flung back upon himself by a woman, dis 
 trusting himself, the whole world, yet determined 
 to have his share of plain human happiness at 
 least, he had staked his all upon blind chance and 
 won ! 
 
 The idea grew upon Carlysle ; here was a solution, 
 -+ 71 -
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 a logical, reasonable solution of the girl s problem 
 of life. She had bungled the first part of the prob 
 lem. What was there to do but wipe the slate clean 
 and begin anew ? And this time he would state the 
 terms ; and what is a man s judgment worth if, know 
 ing the world as he knew it, he could not do as simple 
 a piece of business as this promised to be ? To select 
 a husband for this girl was but a simple exercise of 
 the same faculties by which he selected his own busi 
 ness partners and associates not requiring half so 
 much keenness and acumen as to be president of 
 the Development Company !
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 " She should never have looked at me if she meant I should 
 
 not love her ! 
 There are, plenty men you call such I suppose she may 
 
 discover 
 All her soul to if she pleases, and yet leave much as she found 
 
 them : 
 But I m not so ; and she knew it when she fixed me glancing 
 
 round them." 
 
 COOLER weather brought back the scattered mem 
 bers of the little colony of Eastern folk from their 
 old-time haunts, and Mrs. Carlysle was in a state of 
 ecstatic, sighing contentment over the social pros 
 pects for the winter. She and Miss Caruth stopped 
 at Carlysle s offices to fetch him home to lunch upon 
 a glorious day in October when the golden air was 
 like iced Tokay, and found him in a mood which 
 they privately dubbed " gentle dalliance." They were 
 themselves in radiant spirits, and in visiting dress, 
 and were, as they hastened to inform him, returning 
 from rounding up the inhabitants. 
 
 " We ve taken the census, Jim, and everybody 
 has come back, and nearly everybody has brought 
 somebody else with them. The Marches and the Van 
 Coots both have visiting girls, and oh, that unspeak 
 able widow from the farm across the river " 
 
 -H 73 4-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Say plantation, dear ; they like it better." 
 
 " Plantation, is coming back, gowns and all ! 
 She told Jim that she put six bales of cotton into 
 every gown ! " 
 
 " She told me that in the middle of a transaction 
 in real estate in which she did me outrageously ! " 
 observed Carlysle. 
 
 " She s a gibbering idiot, you know, Jane," sup 
 plemented his wife, with a smile at Carlysle. 
 
 " Until it comes to real estate, I grant you ; but 
 the shrewdest broker I ever did business with is not 
 a patch upon her when it comes to land ! " 
 
 " The only thing I can tolerate about her is her 
 sex," summed up Mrs. Carlysle serenely, " and that 
 only because we are so short of women in the dances. 
 But we will have enough this winter without putting 
 in any men so poky ! " 
 
 " Things are looking well for the Company too," 
 said Carlysle cheerily. "Graeham has given things 
 a stir " - 
 
 " Not another man, Jim ! " moaned his wife, in 
 tragic despair, " just when I had succeeded in get 
 ting enough women for a decent dance. If new 
 men are coming in all the time, Jim, I don t see how 
 I am to do ! " 
 
 " Graeham s been here some time ; you need n t 
 
 count him in he s not a society man ; at least he 
 
 said," went on Carlysle, flattered rather than warned 
 
 by the quickened interest of his two companions, 
 
 H. 74 4-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 " that women were n t in it for him ; he s here for 
 business, and he doesn t care to be hampered " 
 
 " Had not some one better tell Mr. Graeham that 
 there are just exactly twenty-five men in Morganton 
 to every woman ? " interposed Miss Caruth suavely. 
 
 " Graeham knows the ratio of population, you 
 may depend," grinned Carlysle ; " he s an uncom 
 monly shrewd fellow. He probably does n t care for 
 society where men are ninety-six points off. He s 
 not in the least your sort, girls," he added carelessly, 
 " though very much my sort. He has just what the 
 Company needs, cash and the grit to let it go. I 11 
 show him to you in the dining-room." 
 
 And as they took their seats he indicated the 
 table next but one to their own, and Jane glanced 
 carelessly across. The man sat with his face toward 
 their table in a pose at once alert and absent, lean 
 ing slightly forward in his seat, and he met Jane s 
 careless glance with an uncompromising directness 
 that had the impact almost of a blow. Graeham s 
 eyes were deeply set and wide apart, under a brow 
 whose frowning earnestness was well in character 
 with his glance, that was as straight and level as 
 though sighting along a rifle barrel, and, at the 
 moment it met Miss Caruth s, full of an enigmatical 
 challenge not inconceivable as a component of a 
 glance reinforced by the coercive argument of a rifle 
 barrel behind it, but distinctly disconcerting when 
 directed point-blank into a pair of lovely shrinking 
 i- 75 -
 
 eyes, across a dining table, and that from a perfect 
 stranger. It was an inexplicable glance, and though 
 it lasted but while a man might draw his breath one 
 time, Jane was conscious in that instant that she 
 had been weighed by some implacable standard of 
 the man s own, and found wanting, notwithstand 
 ing that its keen summary was tempered by a trace 
 of ironical admiration. It was frankly antagonistic 
 also, with the antagonism of a man who knows his 
 quarrel just, and Miss Caruth had a nettled con 
 sciousness that the shock of it had sent the blood to 
 her cheek. Her eyes, changing their focus without 
 turning from him, passed easily over him, beyond 
 him, and dropped back to her plate in masterly 
 retreat. She turned to Peter Clark, who sat at her 
 side, with a careless question. 
 
 " What is Mr. Graeham doing here ? " 
 
 A laughing retort sprang to the lips of both 
 men simultaneously; Clark nodded precedence to 
 Carlysle. 
 
 " Doing Peter ! " exclaimed he, in a guarded tone 
 of amusement, mitigated by a pleasant glance at 
 Clark. " Did you up in several deals, did n t he, 
 Peter?" 
 
 " Something like it," Clark acquiesced. 
 
 " Machiavelli worsted ! " Jane s eyes laughed, but 
 Clark at her side caught a gleam of sympathy. " He 
 does not look in the least diplomatic," she added 
 carelessly. 
 
 -i- 76 *-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 " Oh diplomatic ! " Clark s imperceptible shrug 
 italicized his tone. " Diplomacy was n t in this; it was 
 brutal cash and unscrupulous aggressiveness. Not," 
 he went on pleasantly, " not but what Graeham has 
 a sort of rough-and-tumble cleverness. I believe " 
 with well-bred acrimony "it is called hustling 
 among his sort of financiers." 
 
 "What sort is his sort, Peter?" inquired Mrs. 
 Carlysle anxiously, adding explicatively, " If Jim 
 were not president I should not bother, but I really 
 feel that I should know the different brands of 
 aggressiveness, at least." 
 
 " What I meant," began Clark, laughing and 
 floundering under Carlysle s delighted grin, " is 
 that er Really, you know, Mrs. Carlysle, I 
 meant to be ironical. The point is that Western 
 men as a rule do not finesse in business ; they go 
 right at a thing with a knock-down directness that 
 is somewhat er disconcerting." 
 
 Carlysle gave him a noiseless round of applause. 
 " Disconcerting is good, Peter ! What Graeham 
 really did, girls, was to put Clark in his pocket and 
 walk off with him." 
 
 Both women made a soft, inarticulate sound of 
 commiseration. 
 
 "Poor, poor Peter!" sighed Mrs. Carlysle, look 
 ing at the young man as a mother might look at 
 her boy s bruised knee. " How nobly he bears it ! 
 How can you keep from flinging something at him, 
 
 i- 77 -*
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 Peter? Ogre! sitting there with poor Peter in his 
 pocket ! " 
 
 " But it is remarkable, Carlysle," Clark resumed, 
 after a grateful glance at his champion, " the differ 
 ence in Eastern financiering and the method of men 
 from er, from these new places." 
 
 "What new place is Mr. Graeham from?" in 
 quired Miss Caruth. " Or do we regard him as con- 
 tinentally new ? " There was a delicate tang of 
 malice in her tone that was as balm to Clark s hid 
 den rancor. 
 
 " Mexico," he said in a soft aside; soft simply for 
 the pleasure of the pretended confidence between 
 them. 
 
 " Mexico new ! " cried Mrs. Carlysle. " Why, 
 when I went to school " 
 
 " They don t have time to be subtle in the West," 
 Carlysle cut across his wife s geographical reminis 
 cences, with a smile. " There s such a deuced lot to 
 do out there. With us conditions already exist. 
 How did you say Graeham made his pile ? " 
 
 " Hydro-electrical engineering. He is president 
 of the Necaxa Company out there, or was at one 
 time." 
 
 " l Hydro ! " gasped Mrs. Carlysle, in shocked 
 amazement. " Come, Jane ! If Peter and Jim are 
 going to use language of this sort in your pre 
 sence it does n t matter about me; I m married ! 
 but " a delicious laugh drew Graeharn s eyes, in 
 -i- 78 -^
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 spite of himself, for a moment to the table "I 
 think you might respect Jane s innocence and my 
 curiosity!" 
 
 " I will tell you anything on earth that I know or 
 am capable of inventing, Mrs. Carlysle," promised 
 Clark recklessly. " Just let me know ! " 
 
 "How -- did you -- say Mr. Graeham - 
 made his pile ? " spacing the words with per 
 emptory little nods. 
 
 " Oh, that ? Very simply. He whistled a river 
 across a mountain and made it jump over, plunk ! 
 into a power plant," concluded Clark, and gave his 
 attention to his neglected luncheon. 
 
 " Well, Peter ? Plunk into a power plant. 
 What then?" 
 
 " He lighted up a bunch of towns with it." 
 
 " With a river ! " Mrs. Carlysle s voice ran the 
 scale of incredulity and ended with a gasp of re 
 proach. " Peter ! " 
 
 Graeham, lingering over his coffee, suppressed a 
 smile as he stole a glance across to the other table 
 whose occupants, in the interest of the moment, had 
 let their voices rise above the note of the dining- 
 room. 
 
 "It s no harm listening," thought Graeham; 
 " they seem not to care if I am included in their 
 confidences ! How deuced knowing Clark is, by 
 the way, and how pretty the women are ! The one 
 in brown velvet, she s furious with me ; and I was 
 
 -H 79 4-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 a bit of a brute. Pretty? No ; pretty is not her 
 \vord. What is it ? She s more like a delicate 
 steel coil with a current through it than anything 
 else." 
 
 " Self-made man, I suppose ? " said Carlysle, at 
 the other table, his eyes, full of interest, upon Clark s 
 face, unconscious of Graeham as he rose, his face 
 stiffening, to pass out of the room ; but he could 
 not escape Clark s reply nor what followed. 
 
 "That!" Clark s uplifted brows annotated his 
 brief reply. " It s all over him." 
 
 "The regular picture-paper Westerner," laughed 
 Miss Caruth lightly, daintily peeling a peach with 
 down-drooped eyelashes, " with an unthinkable tie ; 
 labeled, i Begun life as office boy at thirty cents a 
 week! " 
 
 The little dart, barbed by girlish malice, flew 
 straight to its mark. Graeham s head lifted in an 
 involuntary impulse of anger, though his lips quiv 
 ered with amusement. How well she had scored, and 
 how promptly. He let his eyes rest a moment on 
 the laughing lips that uttered the gibe, and though 
 Miss Caruth had not raised her eyes from her fingers, 
 busied with the peach, she knew that her shaft had 
 found its mark, and the smile that she felt, rather 
 than saw, told her that it rankled. 
 
 Miss Caruth was very thoroughly enjoying her 
 winter "in the country," as she termed the enlight- 
 
 -t-80 +-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 ened and progressive municipality of Morganton, for 
 though society in any sense to which she had been 
 accustomed was impossible, Morganton had a charm 
 very distinctly its own. The atmosphere of the little 
 colony was thoroughly virile and stimulating, as 
 social atmosphere always is where the realities of life 
 very closely underlie social intercourse between men 
 and women. Women shared the business interests 
 of their men friends, for the reason that little else 
 was going forward in the embryonic town, and unde 
 niably it imparts a decided fillip to a woman s society 
 if her usual charm is supplemented by a knowledge 
 of the subject most vitally interesting to the man. A 
 woman s point of view in business is nearly always 
 piquantly unexpected to a man, and very refreshing 
 after the sordid grind of the real thing; nor does 
 the wise business man disdain the side lights cast by 
 her instantaneous perceptions of men and motives 
 and her partisanship is so delightfully illogical 
 and illogically winning ! The Carlysles were the 
 pivot about which revolved a gay little circle of 
 vigorous-minded, breezy-natured people, alive to 
 their fingers ends with the joy of living in this 
 comfortable, commonplace old world, and with brains 
 teeming with plans to secure the wherewithal for 
 further and keener enjoyment of the good things 
 to be found in it. Their creed was a delightfully 
 simple one : Live and work and get as much fun as 
 possible out of both. 
 
 H. 81 -t-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 The getting of money was, frankly, Morganton s 
 raison d etre, but there was none of the vicious, 
 brutal lust for mere raw accumulation that distin 
 guishes the Western mining towns from the "boom" 
 towns of the South that have arisen upon the ashes 
 of as suave a civilization as the world has ever known. 
 Morgauton was, in fact, the materialization of a 
 well-considered financial scheme, and the men hand 
 ling it were financiers, not red-shirted miners grub 
 bing for pay-gravel. The men at Morganton had 
 come to stay ; they had brought their altars and 
 their gods and their wives, their creeds and their 
 cynicisms and their business methods ; they did not 
 waste time with sowing the seeds of Eastern civiliza 
 tion; they had brought the full-grown plant along, 
 wrapped in wet moss, to be transplanted in a soil rank 
 with traditions of hate for them and all they stood 
 for. 
 
 The little town was precisely like a slice of an 
 Eastern city set down bodily amid the cotton-fields 
 of Alabama, a core of resistless energy amid the 
 enervation and decay of rural life of the South. 
 
 It is very certain that the unrestrained freedom 
 of the out-of-doors life contributed largely to Miss 
 Caruth s enjoyment of her winter in Alabama, for 
 nature was very neighborly with man at Morganton 
 in those days, and Jane was emphatically an open- 
 air young woman and full of the reposeful charm 
 of the life that flows around our incompleteness, 
 -i- 82 H-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 There were times when the deep core of feeling hid 
 den beneath the girl s reserve actually ached for the 
 bland touch of nature s comforting abstractions. 
 
 Miss Caruth s serene poise had been strangely 
 shaken by her inexplicable encounter with Graeham, 
 for his insistent personality had had the force almost 
 of an encounter, and dislike, antagonism in the eyes 
 of a perfect stranger, makes quite as strong an appeal 
 to interest and curiosity as an involuntary attrac 
 tion ; and Miss Caruth was restlessly conscious, in the 
 days that followed her odd subjective interview with 
 Graeham across the dinner table, that she had swung 
 ever so little, it might be, from her emotional equi 
 librium pretty much as a compass might veer in the 
 neighborhood of a magnet. 
 
 She resented the impingement of Graeham s per 
 sonality upon her own indignantly ; shrank from 
 it as an intrusion, haughtily insulated herself in an 
 armor of freezing indifference. But to no purpose ; 
 her armor proved itself pervious, sprang leaks, acted 
 provokingly like a conductor in fact, so that the 
 antagonism and dumb resistance that hung like an 
 electrified atmosphere about Graeham charged her 
 mind, spite of her coolly unattached attitude, with 
 a hostile interest in him which kept her restlessly 
 sensitive to his presence in the hotel. Her ear took 
 cognizance of his step in the corridor, strive as she 
 would to snub her palpitating consciousness into 
 oblivion ; she caught herself listening for his voice, 
 -H- 83 +-
 
 his laugh, amid the blur of men s voices in the hotel 
 lobby, and recognizing it with an irrational throb of 
 what she called " dislike." 
 
 Graeham s rooms were opposite Carlysle s suite, 
 and naturally enough there were encounters between 
 the inmates in the corridors, marked always upon 
 Jane s part by an imperceptibly tilted chin and lashes 
 poised at an angle nicely calculated to exclude a 
 man s figure and impress upon him the withering 
 conviction that higher than six inches or so of 
 trousers he had no corporeal existence. But Grae- 
 ham, upon his part, never failed to vigorously assert 
 his right to an entity by a quick steady glance that 
 grasped the girl like a hand and left her breathless 
 and indignant as from an actual contact. 
 
 Graeham s voice and glance possessed the quality 
 of projecting his personality thus to quite a remark 
 able degree, and after a fortnight of this silent in 
 terchange of hostility Miss Caruth discovered to her 
 dismay that Graeham had established not only his 
 right to an entity but to a place in her emotional 
 consciousness as well. 
 
 Then Miss Caruth had rebelled in earnest, and 
 with flushed cheeks and straightened lip had said 
 things to herself that were really not altogether kind 
 or just. She had asked herself, among other scathing 
 inquiries, if it could be possible that this was Miss 
 Caruth who had studied man and his functions for five 
 seasons ! And how could it be that she had allowed 
 -H- 84 +-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 herself to forget that men in hotels, strange men, 
 all men in fact not introduced by her chaperone, 
 were impossible in any sense, and unthinkable in all 
 senses, and to girls of her sort practically invisible 
 as well. 
 
 It was only when the perception, that strength 
 ened with every hurried, gloomy, perturbed glance 
 that Graeharn cast in the direction of their table, 
 that she was herself a centre of emotional disturb 
 ance to him had become certainty that Miss Caruth 
 recovered her poise and with it control of the situa 
 tion. The knowledge brought with it a tranquilizing 
 sense of the proper relativity of things, and she pro 
 ceeded to outline a series of experiments to ascer 
 tain just how far out of plumb Graeham might have 
 swung in her direction. 
 
 These experiments were conducted during dinner 
 for the most part, and with the unswerving instinct 
 with which women gauge a man s susceptibility pro 
 ceeded along the line of Graeham s least resistance, 
 and were carried on by means of various gowns 
 that the young woman had thriftily decided not 
 to waste upon the desert air of Morganton, but to 
 carry back East in all their pristine Paris freshness ; 
 but which, in the interest of her experiment, she 
 dedicated to her researches with reckless disregard. 
 One in particular was a delicately gorgeous affair 
 of pale primrose yellow, like a summer sunrise, and 
 against its soft luxuriance of color Jane s delicate 
 -h 85 -i-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 duskiness a duskiness that had no tinge of brown, 
 but was more the exquisite half tones of twilight, 
 deepening to the coming night in eyes and hair, 
 with the faint rose in the West repeated in her lips 
 was accented into an effect of subdued radiance. 
 She wore yellow primroses in her corsage, and the 
 delicate odor stole across to Graeham, seated in lonely 
 state at his table, followed from time to time by a 
 fleeting glance that, light as it was and serenely de 
 tached, took note of the progress of her experiment; 
 for Jane was a woman first of all, however much she 
 might suggest in her saffron robes a star trembling 
 upon the verge of dawn ; and, though the casual 
 eye would have detected naught beyond the fact 
 that Graeham was neglecting his dinner, she seemed 
 satisfied. 
 
 Graeham s strong, pugnacious face was a trifle 
 paler, the frowning earnestness of his brow a shade 
 sterner perhaps, and his glance, that continually 
 sought the next table, had the brooding firmness of 
 a man who weighs himself against a force he fears 
 may be too strong for him. 
 
 "I m going to give in," the glance said, "but I ll 
 be hanged if I knock under without a struggle. 
 There s fight in me yet ! " 
 
 But the next day Graeham s place at table was 
 
 empty. He had gone East for a fortnight, Carlysle 
 
 volunteered. Miss Caruth made no reply and no 
 
 audible comment, though she may have allowed her- 
 
 -H- 86 -)-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 self a mental reflection upon the conservative pug 
 nacity that fights and runs away. 
 
 For the first few days of his absence an empty 
 peace that was not ungrateful had replaced the pal 
 pitating inner life she had been leading, but as the 
 days went on, by imperceptible degrees the peace 
 departed, the emptiness deepened ; the Paris gowns 
 remained upon their pegs, and Miss Caruth and Billy 
 Boy went far afield in the bright short winter days ; 
 the girl with brooding eyes and bitten lip, half in 
 a dream, half in troubled introspection, striving to 
 unwind the gossamer threads of her being that had 
 been, all against her will, caught up by the floating 
 filaments of Graeham s and twisted into a psycho 
 logical cable impalpable as thought and tenacious 
 as steel. Her thoughts were still dreamily following 
 this new train that led always to Graeham s face, 
 with its level glance full of controlled impetuosity, 
 his wide, sensitive lips showing passion and ideal 
 ism, as she drew in her rein at the end of a glorious 
 gallop some ten days after Graeham s evanishment 
 and sat looking down from the crest of the last 
 long swell beyond the river to where the little town 
 like a pile of toy blocks lay strewn upon the dun 
 carpet of the fields. It Avas time for home already, 
 but Jane was loath to exchange the soft bloom 
 of night beginning to grow upon the fields, the 
 blurred sepia of the woods against the flaming 
 west, with the evening star pricking the green ether 
 -i- 87 -)-
 
 above it, for the bright bustle of the hotel dinner 
 hour. 
 
 Her cheeks showed a splendid scarlet, for the 
 wind, her boon companion while the sun shone, had 
 turned sullen as his playfellow slipped away and 
 nipped shrewdly as she at last gave Billy Boy 
 his head across the fields toward the pike, which 
 like an index finger pointed reprovingly toward 
 home. 
 
 Billy Boy, albeit slightly surprised at the direction, 
 knowing well enough that they were several fields 
 farther out than the panel of rail fence where they 
 usually made their leap back into the pike, having 
 been less engrossed with the tender charm of the 
 coming night than his rider, nevertheless took his 
 head right willingly, feeling the good red blood 
 pricking in him and his resilient muscles spurning 
 the fields, and rose, nothing loath, gallantly to the 
 stiff leap, landing clear of the gully concealed from 
 Jane by the creepers on the fence, but with a shock 
 and scramble that all but lost Miss Caruth her seat. 
 She picked him up cleverly, and for a moment all 
 seemed well, until with a qualm of wretched fore 
 boding she felt the horse give way beneath her. 
 Jane was off and at his side in a moment, but spite 
 of soothing pats from tender hands, and even a soft 
 cheek laid against his hairy one, with words of cheer 
 mingled with reckless promises of future dainties, 
 Billy only staggered a couple of stiff steps and with
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 drooping head stood still with the unutterably for 
 lorn aspect of a horse who knows himself done. 
 
 Miss Caruth endeavored to look the uncompro 
 mising situation bravely in the eye, but a quiver of 
 dismay caught her breath as she thought of the 
 seven miles of empty pike that lay between her and 
 the hotel, with the edge of day fast slipping away 
 behind the belt of dark woods. Still, grim and cal 
 lous as the pike looked, it was her only hope for 
 help, and creeping upon the bank Jane seated her 
 self as closely as possible to her horse for company, 
 to wait, with the best cheer possible, the turn of 
 fortune s obstinate and creaky wheel. 
 
 A streak of cold orange in the west still lighted 
 the upper world, but the rime of dark lay heavy on 
 the fields, and in the intense silence ths swing of the 
 planet into the shadow of the coming night could 
 almost be felt. The wind rose, marching sturdily 
 down the pike, driving an army of fugitives before 
 it; dead leaves, breathless and harried, and a half- 
 empty cotton bole like the ghost of a Molly-Cotton 
 tail fled before it. Overhead the diamond drills of a 
 few early stars were beginning to pierce the floor of 
 the sky. The quavering call of a screech-owl, like 
 a wee brown banshee abroad upon the night, came 
 from the woods. And somewhere along the road in 
 the direction of the river came a smooth swish and 
 rush, invisible and scarce audible, but sufficient to 
 bring Jane with a joyous bound to her feet. Car- 
 -i- 89 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 lysle s was the only motor car in Morganton, as she 
 well knew, and she gayly made ready to hail him. 
 But what niggardly light yet lingered was enough 
 to show her, as the car drew out of the shadows, 
 that it was not Carlysle s car, nor was the man s 
 figure wrapped in a heavy coat Carlysle s. Miss 
 Caruth subsided into as small a bundle under Billy s 
 neck as possible, and left the issue with fate, as the 
 car slowed up a bit uncertainly. 
 
 "Hallo ! " said a man s pleasant voice, that sent 
 a startled quiet through Jane s bounding nerves as 
 though a hand had been laid upon their quivering 
 centre. "Is anything wrong?" went on the pleasant 
 voice, with a note of blunt comradeship very good 
 to hear. 
 
 " Nothing very wrong." Jane was conscious that 
 her voice was absurdly small and sounded slightly 
 ashamed, and she tried to make it braver as she 
 went on. "My horse has hurt his leg and I m 
 stopping here with him that s all." 
 
 " Quite enough, I should say ! " Graeham lifted 
 his cap as he stopped beside Jane. 
 
 "Miss Caruth, is it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " My name is Graeham." He proffered the infor 
 mation stiffly, restive under the necessity for intro 
 ducing himself. 
 
 " I have seen you before, Mr. Graeham," com 
 mented Miss Caruth suavely, yet with a trace of the 
 -h 90 -*-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 obviousness of one who says that he has seen the 
 Brooklyn bridge. Her faint smile was reflected 
 more broadly by Graeham s. 
 
 " Something like one hundred and eighty times, 
 not counting chance encounters in the corridor," he 
 said, with blunt good nature. "But I m in great 
 luck to have happened along just now. Gently, 
 boy, gently ! Hurts, eh ? " 
 
 He was examining the horse as he spoke, with the 
 assured touch that horses love. "He s not much 
 hurt," he said carelessly, as he tied the reluctant 
 and depressed Billy Boy to the fence. " I 11 send 
 back for him from the next farm, and take you 
 along now. Come" he held out his hand to Miss 
 Caruth with something of the blunt patronage of 
 a big boy to a smaller, as he spoke. His voice and 
 manner were absolutely lacking in the deference 
 which men unconsciously show to women of Miss 
 Caruth s class, and if it had been apparent to her, 
 with his first reluctant motion toward his cap, that 
 Graeham was not accustomed to the care of women, 
 his next act made her abundantly aware of it. 
 
 " I have no rug," he said, as Jane seated herself, 
 " but my coat will do capitally." 
 
 He did not ask her to allow his coat the pleasure 
 nor himself the honor of serving her ; he assumed 
 her assent to his proposition, upon the basis of com 
 mon sense, seemingly, and answered her polite demur 
 by dropping the coat bunglingly about her so that 
 -* 91 +-
 
 she was literally swamped under its weight and sank, 
 laughing helplessly, into the seat. Graeham sprang 
 to extricate her with a repentant earnestness and 
 vigor that only added to her mirth. 
 
 " I m a dolt when it comes to women," he said 
 after a moment, and with a coolness that saved the 
 situation for him, though Jane had divined his 
 chagrin, "as I ve just proved ! But I hadn t any 
 idea, really, what a clumsy brute I could be. I see 
 now. It should be held off, so. May I try again ? 
 Thank you." 
 
 He eased the coat down gently so that it settled in 
 folds about her, and glanced naively at Miss Caruth 
 for her approval. She gave it graciously. 
 
 " Very clever," she assured him, with a smile. 
 "But, of course, you would not be quite so deliberate 
 ordinarily. In public, you know," this with soft 
 didacticism, "it should be done without the small 
 est fuss. There is nothing that so bores a woman 
 as to be fussed over " - an imperceptible break 
 which Graeham passed over in the earnestness of his 
 attention " in public." 
 
 " I see. Thank you. I d catch on quite easily if 
 I had you to give me a tip now and then. May I 
 try to button it? " 
 
 " Yes," said Jane, and deftly assisted him so that 
 this time the lesson went off to Graeham s immense 
 satisfaction, though Miss Caruth heard the tense 
 breath he drew as the last button went home. 
 -+ 92 H-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 " Did n t you ever before ? " she asked, as she met 
 his smile, at once deprecating and congratulatory, 
 and was instantly sorry that she had asked. 
 
 " Lend my coat to a girl ? No." He paused 
 curtly, and gave his attention to the car, and for 
 a moment a frost of silence chilled the previous 
 moment of understanding. Jane watched the rail 
 fences, that like lean, spined serpents kept pace be 
 side the car, and Graeham looked straight ahead. 
 
 " I avoid women as a rule," said he abruptly, 
 taking up the word where he had dropped it, " and 
 in circumstances such as these I naturally pay the 
 penalty." 
 
 He still stared straight ahead, and behind the 
 collar of the coat Jane watched him with smiling, 
 speculative eyes. There was something distinctly 
 racy in Graeham s frankly unattached virility, the 
 blunt candor of which robbed it of the slightest 
 suspicion of posing. 
 
 " The game " he resumed presently, his explica 
 tive tone just dashed with anxiety lest Jane might 
 not fully understand that his policy was one of delib 
 erate choice and not lack of perception " the game 
 has never seemed to me to be worth the candle." 
 
 The frank abstraction of his tone ; perhaps, too, 
 something in the crisp, mellow tones themselves, 
 made a personal application impossible. Miss Caruth 
 held aside the collar of the coat and showed him her 
 face full of saucy pleading. 
 
 -i- 93 -f-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Don t ! " she murmured demurely. " Please 
 don t say any more ! If you do I shall be bound to 
 assert the dignity of my sex and get out upon the 
 road and it s so awfully dark and cold! " 
 
 " I m not rabid," said he, with a smile and a quick 
 glance that stabbed to the heart of the situation. 
 " And please understand that when I say avoid 
 I m speaking of the social phase. In this particular 
 instance I assure you I am heartily glad you decided 
 to come with me" 
 
 " Decided ? " echoed Jane, with slightly raised 
 brows. " There was not much margin for choice, 
 was there?" 
 
 " There was a moment when I feared Of course 
 I should not have left you, but However, I m 
 thoroughly glad your good sense came out ahead 
 of convention this time. Not just for the pleasure of 
 having you with me; though" Graeham paused 
 reflectively "I like that, too, no end. But really 
 I ve wanted very much to say something to you, 
 and as things were I did not quite see how I could." 
 
 " Why did not you get some one to introduce 
 you in the usual way?" asked Miss Caruth sensi- 
 bly. 
 
 Graeham laughed ; a quiet laugh, reminiscently 
 amused, a trifle shamefaced. " A man hates to 
 knock under like that ! I wanted to ask you to for 
 give my rudeness that time, you remember ? " 
 
 " Oh, don t ! " cried Miss Caruth impetuously, " at 
 
 -H- 94 (-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 least, do ; but let me apologize too. I was dreadfully 
 rude and and unkind to you" 
 
 " You gave me a pretty hard knock," agreed 
 Graeham frankly. " We 11 take turn about to apolo 
 gize if you like ; but it s my first go, because " he 
 gave a quick laugh "I knocked the chip off your 
 shoulder first ! " 
 
 " Off my shoulder ! I assure you, Mr. Graeham, 
 I hadn t any chip on my shoulder ! " 
 
 " Indeed you had, the worst sort." 
 
 "I did n t know it ; I did n t mean to. And do 
 you know," she went on a little shyly, " since I ve 
 thought that I, that perhaps I " 
 
 " No ; I can t funk like that. You did n t imagine 
 it. I really was brute enough to scowl at you. Not 
 at you either, you understand, but at something, a 
 great many things you stand for." 
 
 Miss Caruth laughed lightly. " That /stand for? 
 If you knew me better you d know that I am one 
 of the zeros of life, Mr. Graeham. My only signifi 
 cance is one of place." 
 
 " Ay," said he bluntly, " I know that sort of sig 
 nificance ! I m a bad hand at splitting hairs, Miss 
 Caruth," he broke out, with a gesture of hard earnest 
 ness, " but you have a perception, at least, uncon 
 scious perhaps, but true, of what I mean. You must 
 have, you know; for you saw in me the antithesis 
 of the thing I scowled at in you, and you flung it 
 in my face when you hit back. No," as Jane made 
 
 -+ 95 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 a faint motion of pleading, " no ; there was no 
 thing unfair in it, and you were exactly right, as it 
 happened, all except my tie " he drew her atten 
 tion smilingly to it with a touch. " I rather think 
 my tie is all right ! " 
 
 The wind caught the coat about Jane and tore it 
 from her grasp, flinging it abroad, and Graeham 
 leaned across her to secure it with a strong assured 
 touch. 
 
 " I m improving?" he smiled interrogatively at 
 her, and she nodded a bright assent. " It was not an 
 office boy, though," he resumed presently. " I was 
 always a good strong chap worth a dollar a day. It 
 was a pick and shovel, Miss Caruth," he wound up 
 quietly. " Not quite up to the office-boy mark, eh ?" 
 
 Jane could not see his face, but her ear inter 
 preted accurately enough the sore pride that spoke 
 in his rasping tone, hastening with fierce independ 
 ence to forestall the social patronage he resented. 
 They were running into the one long street of the 
 town before he spoke again. 
 
 "We re getting in," he remarked; then, "Hadn t 
 we better see how we stand first?" 
 
 "If you do not know," returned Miss Caruth 
 evenly. Graeham looked quickly down, but the 
 darkness was as baffling as the level sweetness of 
 her tone. 
 
 " Your score wiped out mine, so we are even ; ex 
 cept," meditatively, " that I am this hour to the good, 
 -i- 96 H-
 
 DISCOVER ALL HER SOUL 
 
 What I mean is, how is it to be after this?" he 
 concluded bluntly. 
 
 " Ever the best of friends, Pip ! " cried Jane gayly, 
 and extricating a hand from her wraps held it out 
 to him. Graeham did not take it, though he laid 
 his own detainingly upon it. 
 
 " Just a moment, please. What, in your code, 
 does friendship mean between a man of my sort and 
 a girl of yours? You d expect to dangle me 
 women call it that, don t they? as you do Clark 
 and Prentiss and that young ass of an Englishman 
 who is always in your pocket and, frankly, I 
 don t believe I d dangle successfully ! " He laughed 
 brusquely. A scorching flush had risen to Miss 
 Caruth s cheek, and she sought gently to regain her 
 hand, but Graeham s light hold tightened. 
 
 " Don t miss my point," he said quietly, the win 
 ning note of comradeship in his tone again ; " I m 
 trying so hard to be fair with you. Listen. I m not 
 the sort of man you know, Miss Caruth. I m a 
 common sort of chap, and I don t know the rules of 
 the game as you play it a man don t learn your 
 game shoveling dirt with a section gang. And you 
 see," he leaned insistently toward her as he spoke, 
 " you see / knew it all the time all these weeks 
 * Mean ? He took her up with rough earnestness, 
 " Do you suppose I am a stick or a stone ! I may 
 not be your sort, but I m a man," he finished 
 with grave simplicity. 
 
 -+ 97 -i-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Oh, don t don t," murmured Miss Caruth, 
 with her face turned from him, her hand gripping 
 the door beside her, "I what have I " 
 
 "Just a moment," pleaded he again; "I wanted 
 you to know why I " - his voice broke harshly, and 
 he made no effort to finish the sentence, but took it 
 up further along. " It was because I knew you could 
 not know how could you? my sort of man." 
 Graeham bared his broad, white hand and held it 
 defiantly before Jane as he went on. " The scars of 
 the pick are on it still, you see? And what they 
 stand for has soaked into me to the bone." He 
 laughed raspingly. " Ten years of that marks a man 
 for life, Miss Caruth. It is the brand of the humble 
 people, and I belong to them still in many ways, 
 though I "- 
 
 Miss Caruth did not speak ; she had a sense of 
 consternation, of shock, of breathlessness, of hav 
 ing mentally run against something in the dark. 
 Graeham stepped down and offered her his hand to 
 assist her. 
 
 " Well," he said, a little harshly, still retaining it, 
 " is it to be friends, or " 
 
 "Friends," said Jane, amazed that her voice 
 served her so well. 
 
 Graeham clasped her hand closer. " Partners, eh ? 
 Pickaxe and all ? " 
 
 " Pickaxe and all," said she gently.
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 {t It seemed too much like a fate, indeed ! " 
 
 GRAEHAM left Miss Caruth at Mrs. Carlysle s door 
 and passed on to his own rooms. A pile of mail lay 
 upon the desk, and he seated himself before it with 
 determined aspect, only, however, to sink back in 
 his chair a moment after in a fit of musing, whis 
 tling an absent-minded stave as he rumpled the short 
 locks on his forehead, with eyes that were amused, 
 chagrined, stern, and self-accusing by turns. 
 
 Graeham s proper background was one of inci 
 dent ; it required movement, emotion, to show him at 
 his best; things should be happening he making 
 them happen, preferably to develop the full stature 
 of the man. Here, dreaming over his letters, there 
 was not a pin to choose between him and hundreds 
 of men of his type a type, by the way, that nature 
 is rather fond of reproducing in this virile age. Not 
 by any means a complex piece of mechanism, Grae- 
 ham was built upon simple lines, calculated to combine 
 the greatest potential with the least expenditure on 
 detail; a workmanlike enough article, with a final 
 capacity equal to a dozen such men as, say Carlysle, 
 for instance, who required all sorts of delicate run 
 ning gear to guy his natural impulses, to say nothing 
 -+ 99 *-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 of society, which acted as a fly-wheel to steady his 
 jerks. 
 
 Women define such men as Graeham with a line 
 between their brows such as comes there when they 
 speak of "a glare" as "Impossible, you know!" 
 But they rarely fail to marry a man of this kind 
 if he gives them the chance, after which event 
 they change the adjective describing him to " com 
 fortable." 
 
 Graeham roused himself after a bit from his mus 
 ing, and pushing aside his unopened mail took up 
 a pen, his lips as he wrote falling into lines of 
 humor oddly opposed to the concentrated gravity 
 of his eyes. He began informally : 
 
 DEAR JEM, I have yours of the 18th with one 
 inclosure. Keep a sharp lookout for others of the 
 same sort, and forward to me here without delay. 
 Trust no hand but yours in this, old man, and use 
 registered mail. 
 
 The affair hangs fire unaccountably. No clue as 
 yet. I 11 stick to it for a bit, however ; I m not 
 used to being beaten. 
 
 The devil is in it, you know ! I could carry this 
 whole town in the crown of my hat, and yet to be 
 baffled in this way. The thing is being uncommonly 
 skillfully worked, and I m about ready to agree 
 with your theory of a man s hand being in it. 
 
 Morganton is a miniature boom town ; sound 
 
 -H- 100 -H-
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 enough little job too, as far as it goes. It is backed 
 by Eastern capital, in the hands of a ring of gentle 
 manly grafters with the N. Y. brand. You know 
 their sort, shiver on the brink six weeks before they 
 wade in. They call it "finessing." I ve dabbled a 
 bit to give color to being here. 
 
 I don t hold with your suggestion as to the Pin- 
 kerton man. It s caddish, to my way of thinking 
 putting a detective on a woman. I will work it 
 myself. 
 
 She may be in any of these half-dozen counties 
 along the river ; Morganton is the distributing point 
 for all the river villages. 
 
 No go here. The women at this place are irre 
 concilable, quite. Eastern, correct, painfully sophis 
 ticated, and all plainly tagged and labeled all but 
 one girl who is visiting here. She looks like a gar 
 denia, or those little flowers you brought liome across 
 the continent that you said you dug out of the snow 
 " back East," you blooming old liar ! 
 Yours truly, 
 
 CAMPBELL K. GRAEHAM. 
 
 Graeham was writing the address upon the enve 
 lope when the faint rattle of a key withdrawn from 
 the lock met his ear. 
 
 " Come in," he said, without turning. " Go on 
 with your tidying, if you like ; I m going out in a 
 moment." And suddenly recalling a grievance, - 
 
 -H- 101 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Cora, don t touch my desk, like a good girl. I 
 want to find things where I put them " 
 
 " My name s Miss Larkin," said a voice so full 
 of ruffled dignity and so unexpected that Graeham 
 dropped a plash of ink upon his letter in the start 
 he gave as he stared at the debonair figure before 
 him. The girl held a broom and dustpan awkwardly 
 away from the elaborate frills and open-work of a 
 coquettish apron that adorned the trim dark gown 
 she wore, whose well-cut lines defined the sinuous 
 grace of her figure. Upon her hair, as heavy and 
 lustreless as raw silk, a dainty cap rested, embel 
 lished with a big lilac bow that betrayed in every 
 crisp turn the hand of an artist ; and Mrs. Carlysle 
 and Miss Caruth had, in fact, spent their combined 
 efforts for several days to produce the effect at 
 which Graeham was staring in unaffected astonish 
 ment, which changed to amusement as the girl s 
 round chin drew upward in a pout of naively offended 
 dignity immensely diverting. He noted mechani 
 cally the lines of temper in the close of her straight 
 red mouth and the breadth of her low white fore 
 head, which denoted, he thought, no lack of brains 
 upon " Miss Larkin s " part. 
 
 " Oh Miss Larkin, is it?" he said banteringly. 
 " Well, Miss Larkin, if you are to so far honor 
 me"- 
 
 " I don t see nothin to laugh at," she took him 
 up shortly. 
 
 -H- 102 *-
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 " Well, I 11 be hanged ! " murmured Graeham. 
 He grave a short laugh as he leaned back in his 
 
 o o 
 
 chair contemplating her at his leisure. 
 
 " Who fixed you up like that ? " he asked, with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Like what, I d like to know ! " 
 
 " Like a soubrette in a play." 
 
 " Er what ? Miss Caruth made my cap and apron 
 and give me th bow." 
 
 The effect of this was intended to be crushing, 
 but Graeham only sat up with fresh interest. 
 
 " Are you Miss Caruth s maid ? " 
 
 " Maid ! " she echoed, with the flash of temper 
 that he had expected and a scandalized indignation 
 that actually disconcerted Graeham. " Do you 
 spose I d be er woman s maid ? " 
 
 "In all the story-books the princess in disguise is 
 a lady s maid," explained he gravely. Not a touch 
 of humor responded to his smile, however. 
 
 " I m th linen-closet woman," she vouchsafed 
 him at last, with absolutely freezing dignity, " n I m 
 takin Cora s place this one time " she paused to 
 note the effect of this upon Graeham " to blige 
 Mr. Willard." 
 
 "What s Miss Caruth making you caps for?" 
 
 " She said it was l unthinkable to have er apron 
 hemmed with er machine," she held out the hem 
 to Graeham, who inspected it gravely, " n she 
 done it with her hands." 
 
 -i- 103 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 A slight resentment showed in her manner, and 
 Graeham smiled. 
 
 " Unthinkable is a great word of Miss Camth s ; 
 you must n t mind. She called my tie unthinkable/ 
 too." 
 
 " Was you mad at her ? " coming a step nearer. 
 
 "A little. Were you?" 
 
 " Awful mad. But I hate her all th time," 
 frankly. 
 
 " Why, you little cat ! " cried Graeham, with an 
 irrepressible laugh. " And she slaving to make you 
 caps ! Fie ! Why do you hate her ? " he asked more 
 gravely. Gallic dropped her broom and duster and 
 leaned her elbows upon the desk beside Graeham. 
 
 " I dunno," she said slowly ; " it jest rises up in 
 my bosom uv itself. You know that pink dress 
 gown, I mean that she wears to dances? It s 
 short,"- eagerly prompting him as he hesitated, 
 " n shows her pink slippers with high heels." 
 
 "I think I know," said Graeham. 
 
 " Well," she finished simply, " that s why." 
 
 As she leaned beside him Graeham noted the 
 porcelain-like quality of her skin, the deep slate blue 
 of her eyes, and his keen glance softened as she 
 spoke. 
 
 " Feelings like those are bad for people," he said 
 kindly, " and they 11 spoil your complexion." 
 
 He drew a couple of notes from his pocket and 
 slipped them to her along the table. 
 
 -H. 104 H-
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 " Buy you a little pink gown and some high- 
 heeled slippers, and go to the next dance that comes 
 along and forget about hating people," he coun 
 seled her cheerily. He was bored with her, but 
 oddly sympathetic, too. Deep within some cob- 
 webbed corner of his own mind he felt the stir 
 of a withered leaf of memory, as dull of hue as her 
 own confession, that had once shamed his man 
 hood. She flicked the money carelessly back to 
 him. 
 
 " I don t ker nothin erbouten money ; not 
 money dry so lessen you could have all th other 
 things, clothes, n - - n beaux, n things. Air you 
 Miss Caruth s beau? " 
 
 " I ? " Graeham turned hastily to his forgotten 
 letter and busied himself stripping off the spoiled 
 envelope, which he cast aside. 
 
 " What would my own girl think of that ? " he 
 asked her teasingly. 
 
 " Air you ngaged ? " 
 
 " Yes," laughed Graeham. 
 
 "What s her name?" 
 
 " I don t know." 
 
 " Pooh ! I won t never tell. Cross my heart ! " and 
 she did it then and there, to Graeham s huge amuse 
 ment ; but even that solemn ritual could not win his 
 confidence. 
 
 " I don t know, honestly ! She goes under an 
 alias with me." 
 
 -i- 105 <-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " You say awful funny words," murmured the 
 girl; " wher erbouts does she live?" 
 
 " I wish to God I knew ! " exclaimed Graeham, 
 with so involuntary a sincerity that the girl started 
 with surprise. 
 
 " Shucks ! Uv course you know." 
 
 " I 11 swear I don t." 
 
 " But f you re ngaged to her you d be bliged 
 to know her name ! " 
 
 " Not at all ! Suppose you were to write to some 
 fellow out West, say on the other side of nowhere 
 from here, and say there was a pretty blue-eyed 
 little girl here, with a temper like a handful of 
 nettles, who d love him if he liked, and of course 
 he would like, would n t you be ngaged to him?" 
 
 "But but," she stammered, " he d be bliged to 
 write his name to th letter ! " 
 
 Her breath died in her throat, her heart was beat 
 ing in stifling jerks, but she achieved the sentence. 
 Graeham was rewriting the address upon the letter 
 and did not answer for a moment. 
 
 "Not much he would! " he laughed down on her 
 as he rose. " He might think his own name was not 
 fine enough to go l courtin with, and borrow one for 
 the occasion. Here, take your money take it, I 
 say ! " He opened her hand and closed it upon the 
 notes, and was gone. 
 
 As the door closed behind him the girl sank into 
 his chair in a trance of amazement ; a slight, inward 
 
 -H. 106 1-
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 trembling seized her at intervals, her brain swam 
 with the daze of ideas that crowded upon her. 
 What did he mean ? Did he know ? Was it, could 
 it be possible ? Breath failed her. 
 
 Stories of Graeham s wealth, the success of his busi 
 ness ventures at Morganton, his careless munificence 
 in the little town, had filtered through successive 
 strata of hotel society until they had reached the 
 little linen woman in her secluded niche; and un 
 able to resist the desire to see the man of whom she 
 had heard so much, she had effected a trade with 
 Cora, whereby certain personal belongings had been 
 transferred to that astute damsel, in return for the 
 use and privileges of her pass-key, with a result 
 almost as startling as though Cora s key had un 
 locked Bluebeard s chamber of horrors. 
 
 Callie s nature, by one of heredity s grim jests, 
 was a psychological amalgam of hard shrewdness 
 combined with a temperament as light as froth, shot 
 through by the instinctive refinements, the luxu 
 rious tastes, and the headlong passions of a long line 
 of spoiled and imperious women ; and, brought into 
 contact with her natural environment, the girl had 
 sloughed off her outer integument of crudeness and 
 coarseness, and had absorbed greedily from the 
 atmosphere about her the natural aliment for her 
 hitherto unknown self. 
 
 The mental stimulus of her new life had quickened 
 every faculty, and she had seized with instant com- 
 -H- 107 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 prehension upon the core of possibility underlying 
 Graeham s jesting words, arriving at a partial solu 
 tion of the situation by a feat of mental gymnastics 
 that scorned deduction. Her tense attitude relaxed, 
 and her eyes, roving idly about the desk, fell upon 
 the discarded envelope ; she gathered it up mechani 
 cally to tidy it away, and paused again, arrested 
 by the name upon it. Once and again tracing the 
 letters with her finger, she spelled out the name, 
 unconsciously helped by her familiarity with Good- 
 loe s writing in the letters which she had so often 
 spelled out in the same way : " Mr. James H. 
 Goodloe, U. & G. Rolling Stock Mills, Redfalls, 
 Nevada." 
 
 She gazed with parted lips upon the scrap of 
 paper as her thoughts, like a revolving whirl of water, 
 spun dizzily about the central fact of Graeham s 
 indubitable connection with Goodloe. But how? 
 which was Goodloe ? which Graeham ? One man 
 with two names, her whirling brain could scarce 
 hold the fact a second, or two men with inter 
 changeable names ? She strove to untangle the coil 
 of personality, constantly confused and swerved 
 aside from even such reasoning as she was capable 
 of by the captivating hope, the new delicious dream, 
 that the man who had just left her might be the 
 unknown, half-feared fate toward which she was 
 drifting. She wrung her hands together in an ec- 
 stacy of hope. Then, suddenly as if a shutter had 
 -+ 108 +-
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 snapped open in her brain, the hard practical side 
 of her nature slipped uppermost. She sprang up, and 
 passing into Graeham s bedroom beyond, as softly as 
 a breeze might move among a bed of flowers went 
 through his belongings. His keys ! Where did he 
 keep them? The lock of dressing-case and letter- 
 case were both fast. She did not waste herself in 
 useless effort; there would be other times. And 
 gathering up the torn scrap of paper, she hid it in 
 her dress, and softly went her way. 
 
 Meanwhile, in Mrs. Carlysle s sitting-room some 
 dozen yards away, a perturbed and somewhat puz 
 zled trio of self-elected fates sat in council about 
 the hearth. Carlysle from his place upon the rug 
 contemplated his two confederates with amusement 
 that was dashed broadly with gravity ; the amuse 
 ment directed to the faces of his companions, the 
 gravity to the letter in his hand. From Mrs. Car 
 lysle s hand dangled a string of beautiful pearls, 
 and Miss Caruth, still in her habit, held an open 
 ring-box in her hand and balanced meditatively 
 upon her palm two rings, a lady s and a gentleman s 
 engagement ring, heavy bands of plain gold set 
 round with diamonds. 
 
 " Let Goodloe alone," Carlysle urged energeti 
 cally. "Why cannot the man do what he likes with 
 his money ? I 11 lay anything you like he has not 
 got the fun out of anything since he left off 
 -i- 109 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 red-topped boots that he s getting out of sending 
 Jane " - 
 
 "Jane!" 
 
 Miss Caruth turned eyes of grave reproof upon 
 him, and his wife rose, and, with the aspect of one 
 forced against her will to assume responsibility for 
 what she has all along disapproved of, crossed the 
 floor with a protesting murmur of silk and rang the 
 bell, and sent a message for Miss Larkin. Neither 
 took any further notice of Carlysle. He laughed 
 sardonically. 
 
 " If ever I am fool enough again to go partners 
 with two girls ! - Why, of course it s Jane this 
 fellow is in love with. What does he know about 
 this little simpleton here, forty fathoms deep in a 
 flirtation with Willard ? " 
 
 " I told you, Jane," remarked Mrs. Carlysle, with 
 the serenity born of absolute conviction, " that Cal- 
 lie Larkin was a double little piece." 
 
 " Well, I don t know that," deliberated Carlysle, 
 with the air of mentally turning Callie this way and 
 that to get a better light upon her. " She s playing 
 her own little game in her own way, but so long as 
 she steers clear of trouble " 
 
 " But suppose she throws this man over ? " 
 
 " Well, suppose she does ? Not that she has the 
 slightest idea of it ; throwing people over is not 
 Callie s metier." 
 
 " It would be dishonorable, cruel ! And it would 
 ^- 110 -.-
 
 reflect more upon us than upon her. Gallic is an 
 ignorant, undisciplined girl ; we " Miss Caruth sat 
 erect, her eyes full of tender sternness, a spot of 
 rose beginning to glow upon her delicate cheek. 
 "I," she resumed, "/ drew this man into this thing, 
 this entanglement, and in honor " 
 
 " He 11 be glad to be free of it, I dare say." 
 
 " He is very much in love with her," said Miss 
 Caruth quietly. " Read his letter for yourself ! " 
 
 " With whom?" retorted Carlysle bluntly, " the 
 writer of these letters ! " 
 
 A soft knock was followed by Callie s entrance. 
 Her cheeks were a vivid carnation, and her lips 
 curled upward at the corners in the Puck-like smile 
 she wore in moments that in any other than Callie 
 would be called moments of mental tension. The ten 
 sion was evident enough upon the little group within ; 
 the air smelt of fate, and each was uncomfortably 
 aware of having for the time being slipped out of 
 his ordinary groove and as uncomfortably aware 
 of making an effort to appear that he had not. 
 
 " Sit here by me, Callie," said Miss Caruth kindly. 
 " There is a letter from Mr. Goodloe, and he has 
 sent you something to make you think of him. You 
 will like that, will you not ? " 
 
 She took the pearls from Mrs. Carlysle and clasped 
 them about Callie s throat, the girl submitting her 
 self with passive indifference to her hand. 
 
 Callie had an odd gift of flatting situations to 
 
 -H 111 -t-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 whose heights she could not or would not rise. It 
 was not the tactful carrying of them off that comes 
 with social training, and not always then, nor the 
 high-handed abridgment of them that is the attri 
 bute of certain drawing-room Napoleons ; Callie 
 simply ignored the tragic wherever she encountered 
 it, repudiated the inexplicable, and there was that in 
 her calm oblivion to all not entirely obvious that 
 carried others with her spite of their superior training. 
 
 "I ve got er string uv beads," she said easily, and 
 twirled the pearls upon her finger, " prettier n these ; 
 mine air pink." 
 
 Carlysle broke into a peal of laughter ; her cool 
 insouciance delighted him always. 
 
 " Beads ! " gasped Mrs. Carlysle. " Those exquisite 
 pearls ! " 
 
 " The letter has no regular beginning," said Car 
 lysle, preparing to read. 
 
 " Not no beginnin ? " gasped Callie, turning 
 startled eyes on Jane ; " I jes know he s mad at me ! " 
 
 " i No letter this week, Mary ? read Carlysle. 
 Don t you know that your letter day is my Sunday? 
 I keep it holy, and read the letter bit by bit to make 
 it last the longer " 
 
 ("Ain t he er goose?" interpolated Callie, in 
 Jane s ear. 
 
 " He s lovely ! indignantly responded Miss 
 Caruth. " Be still !") " and then I wear it in my 
 pocket until the next one comes to relieve guard. 
 
 -t- 112 4-
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 (" Did you ever hear such nonsense, Kate ? " asked 
 Carlysle, with a long look into his wife s eyes. 
 
 " Yes ; once before ! ") 
 
 " * But seriously I have been anxious. Of course, 
 under any other circumstances I should have wired 
 at once, but I have had my lady s orders. 
 
 (" Why in thunder did n t you write, Jane ? " 
 growled Carlysle. 
 
 "I forgot to," pleaded Jane. "But who would 
 have dreamed that he would care so much ?") 
 
 " Of course you would have some one write me if 
 you were ill, would you not? By the way, am I 
 always to be " Mr. Goodloe " ? and you always 
 " sincerely " mine ? No more than sincerely ? That 
 s good enough, of course ; but you know, dear, a 
 man s a man, and sincerely does leave a good deal 
 to the imagination. 
 
 Carlysle stole a glance over the letter at Jane s 
 face, it was soft with dreams, her eyes listening to 
 a voice in her heart, which said the words there, 
 and passed on in troubled question to the other girl s 
 face. She, too, was brooding upon Miss Caruth s 
 dreaming face with eyes as hard as agates, the light 
 of dreams upon Jane s face seeming to spread a 
 shadow upon her own. 
 
 " I don t quite fancy the idea that you forgot me 
 last week or were larking with some other fellow, so 
 I ve settled down on the theory that you are ill, 
 and I m sending you something to cheer you up. 
 
 -H- 113 -t-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 The middle bead I guess they are beads has a 
 kiss upon it. 
 
 " Kiss it, Callie ! " commanded Carlysle. " If I m 
 to superintend this affair, I mean to see that it is well 
 done. The party of the second part shall not be de 
 frauded of his just rights." 
 
 " I m s prised at you, Mr. Carlysle," said Callie 
 demurely. "I ain t got no use fur foolishness." 
 
 " Foolishness ! Hear her, Cupid ! Into the 
 breach, Janet ! " And, echoing his laugh, Jane threw 
 herself with gay ardor upon the other girl s breast 
 and kissed the big pearl with enthusiasm. 
 
 " It s a shame," she cried, between laughter and 
 blushes, " for his kiss to be wasted ! Callie, you re 
 a cold little puss ! You don t deserve a good fellow 
 like Jem Goodloe ! " 
 
 " I never could do play-actin befo folkses," re 
 marked Callie, looking a little bored. " Ain t they 
 no more to the letter ? " 
 
 " Rather the most important part, I should say. 
 By the way, he signs himself, Yours for time and 
 eternity. Willard will enjoy that." 
 
 " Shucks," said Callie imperturbably. 
 
 Carlysle resumed the letter. " ( Upon thinking it 
 over, I have put two rings into the box, one for each 
 of us. Think it over upon your side, Mary, and if 
 you are sure of yourself and sure of me, wear one and 
 send me back the other. Take all the time you need 
 to decide ; think well of it, and do not act unless you 
 
 H- 114 H-
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 mean it, as I do, to bind us both for time and eter 
 nity. Faithfully yours, JAMES H. GOODLOE." : 
 
 Carlysle took the rings, and with a certain cere 
 mony as of one resigning a delegated authority 
 into the hands responsible for it, handed them to 
 Callie and stepped back to his place upon the rug, 
 leaving her alone with her decision. She took the 
 smaller ring and slipped it carelessly on, looked at 
 it thoughtfully, and removed it. 
 
 " I can t wear it thout ever body knowing," she 
 said carelessly. " You keep it for me, Miss Jane, n 
 th beads too, in your gold box," - she glanced 
 stealthily at the clock and rose to go. 
 
 " Am I to send this other ring to Goodloe ? " 
 asked Carlysle, detaining her. " Do you under 
 stand?" 
 
 " A w, yes," easily, " I m ngaged to him." 
 " And Willard ? That must stop now, you know." 
 " I m s prised at you, Mr. Carlysle," said she, with 
 calm reproof. " I don t never see Mr. Willard cept 
 on business." 
 
 " Where in the world do you suppose this girl 
 really came from, Jim ? " asked Mrs. Carlysle, as 
 they strolled back to their room to dress for dinner, 
 " and where is she going now in such a hurry ? " 
 
 " She-car-go, drawled Carlysle, " as to the 
 first ; somewhere to meet Willard as fast as her feet 
 can carry her, as to the second." 
 
 -H 115 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " I d hate to have anything happen here," hesi 
 tated she. 
 
 "Nothing will; she could not have a better 
 sheep-dog than Willard. Don t worry." 
 
 " Oh worry ! You have n t any idea that she 
 came from Chicago, surely ! " 
 
 " She might have, of course, though I think she 
 is a Southern girl. The way I explain her " - they 
 both laughed " well, my theory fits as well as any 
 other. She belongs to some old family here in the 
 South, broken-down aristocracy, you know, run to 
 seed. The grace, the charm, the seductiveness, are 
 immutable; can t peter out and she has them all. 
 And for the rest, my Kate, she s what heredity plus 
 environment has made her. Fancy, if you please, 
 what two hundred years of Southern plantation 
 life would work out. Don t tease her about her 
 little secret, dear. After all, what does it matter 
 to us ? If one finds a broken-winged bird on the 
 ground, one puts it back in the nest and does not 
 bother about its nomenclature. Kate,"- he resumed 
 the talk from his dressing-room, " does she ever 
 speak of that little beggar we shunted off to the 
 Sisters at Orrville ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " Does she ever think of him ?" 
 
 " How should I know, dear ? " 
 
 " I can t think we treated the little devil fairly." 
 
 " You advised it, Jim." 
 
 -4- 116 H-
 
 LIKE A FATE 
 
 " Oh advised ! It was a case of the survival 
 of the fittest. But if the baby were the wise child 
 we really have no right to expect him to be, I d 
 advise him fast enough to get himself tucked up 
 in a snug little green grave, and inaugurate the 
 Company s new graveyard out there on the hill. 
 Do my tie for me, Kate ! Is n t Janet in love with 
 Graeham? Come now, is n t she? " 
 
 " Mr. Graeham ! Why," with loyal vagueness, 
 " she scarcely knows " 
 
 " Don t try that on with me, Kate ! Is n t she ? " 
 
 " Mr. Graeham," temporized Kate, " is a very 
 delightful man, / think ; though he is a little - 
 that is, one can see that he has not been accustomed 
 to" 
 
 " I could n t," stoutly ; " Graeham is a very 
 good sort, with a head a mile long." A busy silence 
 for five minutes ; then, " Kate ! I m going to give 
 you a tip, and I want you to put Jane on. Men 
 have a confounded way, you know, dear, of translat 
 ing women s relations to other men by the key of 
 some other woman s relation to them. Catch on ? " 
 
 * You re a little Ibsenish; but yes, I think I know 
 what you mean. I ve told you before why they do 
 it, but you can t understand. It s because men never 
 can completely disentangle the individual from the 
 sex." 
 
 " Graeham has come some rather nasty croppers 
 in the past with women ; he would, you know, he s 
 -* 117 *-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 that sort. He gave me a skit of those early experi 
 ences of his, that was rather awful. When he d just 
 made his money, you know, he saw life for a 
 couple of years God knows where ! Wherever it 
 is served up in great, raw chunks " 
 
 " Heavens, Jim ! " 
 
 " Well, it was rank. And you see the light of 
 that appalling past of his will be worse for a woman 
 than that some sort of light that beats upon some 
 thing or other and blackens every blot. Of course 
 Jane has n t any blots, but that s what it would do 
 right along, blacken em if she had. What ? 
 Why, Kate, you re the blindest little dormouse ! 
 Graeham s the hardest hit man I ve seen since you 
 bowled me over ! "
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 " That step he did not take, he knew not why, nor we ; but 
 only God." 
 
 LIFE at Morganton was put up in a rather highly 
 concentrated form ; the very atmosphere seeming to 
 be charged with a quality of unexpectedness that, 
 taken as a regular diet, was apt to react upon the 
 nerves. Thus, when Peter Clark opened his door at 
 seven o clock in the morning after his arrival, in 
 answer to an imperative rap, and confronted Car- 
 lysle, with his hand impatiently upon the knob and 
 his face tense with repressed excitement, that usually 
 equable and always well-mannered young gentle 
 man s brows came together with a slam. 
 
 " What the deuce has happened noiv ? " he de 
 manded, in a tone that matched Carlysle s expres 
 sion. Carlysle wasted no amenities upon the 
 occasion. 
 
 " Isom Jourdan is dead," he returned, with ner 
 vous brevity. 
 
 " And out of our way," supplemented Clark, 
 in a tone of profound congratulation. " We 11 put it 
 through at once." 
 
 " Not he ! " grimly ; "he s simply changed 
 his base of operations to h . Read that ! " 
 
 -H- 119 4-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 He flung a paper upon the table, but went on 
 restlessly before Clark could read it : 
 
 " It s an abstract of his will. Did you know he 
 had a daughter, Peter ? " 
 
 " Yes." Clark had returned to his toilet. " Is 
 she the legatee?" The razor jigged in his hand, 
 and he laid it aside, and wiping the lather from his 
 cheek, flung himself into a chair. 
 
 " In a way she is the most infernal way ! It 
 appears that this girl, old Jourdan s daughter, is 
 not just what she " 
 
 " I know ; get on." 
 
 " The land, barring ten acres reserved with the 
 falls, goes to Carter Cartright, old Jourdan s nephew; 
 the ten acres, with the water and all rights, goes to 
 the girl, with a string to it. Deathbed reparation 
 act, it seems," 
 
 " Get on with it," demanded Clark. 
 
 " On the condition," went on Carlysle impres 
 sively, while Clark rose, and with his hand in his 
 trousers pocket walked to the window, " on the 
 condition that she marries the father of her child 
 within twelve months." 
 
 " Child? " cried Clark, with a slight catch in his 
 breath, "child!" 
 
 " Yes ; I told you that she was not what she 
 should be." 
 
 " This is the first time I have ever heard that 
 being a mother is what a woman should not be," 
 -+ 120 -K-
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 retorted the young man, in a voice of smothered 
 bitterness, still with his face to the open window. 
 
 Carlysle flung the retort from him with a ges 
 ture of restless indifference. 
 
 " What it comes to, Peter, is that Isom Jourdan 
 has offered to bribe some cur to marry his daugh 
 ter, by putting the right to this water in his hands. 
 Making an honest woman of her, I suppose he 
 called it. Jove! But let that go. The first thing 
 is to lay our hands on the man and get this conces 
 sion from him." 
 
 " Upon her, I suppose you mean ? This girl dis 
 appeared from Pike County months ago, and has 
 never been heard from since." 
 
 " A h," said Carlysle slowly ; and sank into a 
 momentary reverie, from which he roused himself 
 presently to ask carelessly, "I forget, Peter, if you 
 said you saw this girl when you were in Alabama 
 that time." 
 
 " Yes, I think I saw her. A little country cracker, 
 with scarlet hair and freckles." 
 
 Carlysle s alert attitude relaxed into disgusted re 
 pose, as he remarked inappositely, " Graeham is 
 looking into this deal, too. Wants to swing it alone, 
 I understand." 
 
 " Is that brute still here ? " 
 
 " Ah, you ve been away. Six months, is n t it? " 
 
 " Barring that week last fall. Miss Caruth s the 
 magnet, I suppose ? " 
 
 -t- 121 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " What color did you say her eyes were, Clark? 
 lola Jourdan s, I mean ? " 
 
 " Exactly the color of the midnight sky/ re 
 turned Clark, after a reluctant pause. Carlysle stared 
 meditatively at him. 
 
 "Dark night or fair?" 
 
 "Fair," he spoke as though the words were 
 being wrung from him under pressure, " but no 
 moon ; the way it looks when you re alone with the 
 night and one other." 
 
 " Holy smoke ! " Carlysle reached the other s side 
 with a stride. 
 
 " Look out, Carlysle ! I m shaving, man." 
 
 " You re a poet, Peter ! By Jove, I d no idea it 
 was in you. You ve got that about her eyes down 
 pretty fine, eh ? " 
 
 " Get out," mumbled Clark, behind his poised 
 razor, and Carlysle obeyed without further parley. 
 
 Certain natures seem fitted with special organs to 
 attract and assimilate the infinitesimal filaments 
 cast off from personality : the impalpable dust of 
 character that floats, invisible to the normal vision, 
 in the atmosphere of social life ; a fleeting glance 
 from unconscious eyes ; a half tone too much or too 
 little ; a musing smile behind a friend s back momen 
 tarily turned ; the passage of a troubled thought 
 across a brow ; a neglected meal ; a step that lags, or 
 one that goes more blithely than its wont to meet 
 -H- 122 ^
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 another this is the aliment from which such na 
 tures as Gallic Larkin s secrete suspicion, which in 
 time will generate energy and direct action. Gallic 
 had shaped no course of action. Action in women 
 of her type nearly always results from some such 
 untraceahle process of unconscious cerebration as 
 had been set in motion by the torn envelope upon 
 Graeham s floor. 
 
 But she knew what she wanted, and she went to 
 ward it guided by an instinct as unerring as that of 
 the sea-anemone, when it separates its food by un 
 conscious selection from the ocean currents about it. 
 
 In the stress of her uncertainty she had bethought 
 her of Willard, mainly because she was secure of her 
 power over him, that would enable her to withhold 
 her confidence, even while she coaxed an explanation 
 of certain practical difficulties that confronted her, 
 as she followed the impalpable thread of her intui 
 tion through the no-thoroughfares of feminine rea 
 son to her conclusion. 
 
 She ignored the formality of a knock and entered 
 Willard s office, which was divided from the foyer 
 only by a lattice and curtain, with soft assurance, 
 amply justified by the magic with which the young 
 manager s impatient frown smoothed itself at sight 
 of his visitor. Mindful of the quick ears upon the 
 other side of the lattice, Willard did not speak ; but, 
 curving his arm, held it out in silent invitation to 
 
 O * 
 
 her. Callie ignored the invitation and intrenched 
 
 -H. 123 -K-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 herself behind the desk, meeting Willard s eyes from 
 under her lowered lashes with a teasing smile. 
 
 O 
 
 " You re a mean girl," said Willard ; " see if I 
 don t pay you out." 
 
 " I ain t skeer uv you," she informed him serenely. 
 
 "You d better be," retorted Willard, with a grin 
 of adoration. " I m your boss, I 11 give you to 
 understand." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said she ; and, leaning forward, powdered 
 his face daintily with a carnation for a powder 
 puff. 
 
 " What do you want? " inquired he, distinctly 
 softened by this attention. " I know you too well, 
 you little fraud, to think I m getting all this for 
 nothing." 
 
 " I wanter ax you somethin . " 
 
 " This is not my day for giving away valuable 
 information for nothing." 
 
 " Supposin you wait ontel you air axed to give 
 it away fur nothin ," she retorted, with drawling 
 impertinence, calmly watching, as a surgeon might 
 watch the effect of an anaesthetic, its effect upon 
 Willard, whose shrewd, rather hard face brooded 
 upon her as a mother s might almost, with tender 
 toleration. 
 
 He held up two fingers with mischievous signifi 
 cance and determined aspect ; Gallic shook her head, 
 and in turn held up one of her own with a thumb 
 laid against it, reducing it to a fraction. Willard 
 -H- 124 i-
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 returned to his papers with an air of having closed 
 negotiations. 
 
 " Hello, Clark," said Graeham s voice, in the lobby 
 at their backs; " how is it East? " 
 
 Two steps approached each other, there was a 
 sound vaguely indicative of hands shaken, then 
 Clark s voice. 
 
 " Rotten. No better here. Snow in this climate 
 is an absurdity." 
 
 " Mud, you mean," amended Graeham. The sput 
 ter of a match filled in the pause. 
 
 " I hear you are in for the Chinquepin option ? " 
 said Clark. 
 
 " It looks that way. Of course, no one can do 
 anything until the heir shows up. Where the deuce 
 can this lola Jourdan have got herself? " 
 
 "Who air they talkin erbout?" whispered Gallic, 
 in Willard s ear. 
 
 "Oh, just a country girl down the river. Her 
 father s died and left her a chunk of stuff, and she 
 has n t showed up to get it ; that s all." 
 
 She gazed at him with slowly dilating eyes and 
 lips apart. 
 
 " Tell me th rest," her lips formed dumbly. 
 Willard looked a trifle uncomfortable. 
 
 " It is n t exactly money, you know ; he left her 
 some land with a waterfall on it, and those fellows," 
 he motioned backward to the lobby, " a whole bunch 
 of fellows here, want to get it from her ; that s all." 
 
 -H- 125 -^
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Of course, it s touch and go, with a condition 
 like that," a blunt laugh which Clark joined 
 languidly. " Women are kittle-cattle ! But old 
 Jourdan plainly knew his man. He has offered him 
 a thumping bribe to marry the girl. Oh, no doubt ; 
 a gentleman, or a skunk, or he would n t have fixed 
 it that way." 
 
 "What does he mean by that?" whispered the 
 girl inside. Willard flushed. 
 
 " It s too long to explain. Well, she, this lola 
 Jourdan why, the fact is, she is not the sort of 
 woman for you to know about." 
 
 "Go on!" she shook him impatiently. Willard 
 smiled teasingly and held up his two fingers again ; 
 this time she nodded impatiently, and he whispered 
 the story as it was known about the hotel, the girl s 
 face growing sharp in the intensity of her interest. 
 
 " Oh, of course, voluntary," went on Graeham, 
 in the lobby; "but it is hardly conceivable that she 
 w r ill refuse under the circumstances, unless she 
 wanted to even up with him. What a revenge it 
 would be ! To keep a man out of a good thing like 
 this to pay him out, you know. True ; but she 
 might not care for the money. I can imagine a 
 woman doing a thing like that, can t you?" 
 
 " You should write a play, Graeham," said Clark 
 coldly. " Such a situation should not be wasted." 
 
 On the other side of the curtain, Willard was de 
 manding payment for his story. Callie offered him 
 
 H. 126 +-
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 the finger she had held up to kiss. Willard declined 
 to compromise, with scorn ; showed a determination 
 to enforce his contract. 
 
 " I m s prised at you, Mr. Willard," she reproved 
 him demurely. " You do act so strange sometimes." 
 
 But she came within easy reach of his arm, and 
 took down a key from the long line that hung above 
 his desk. Willard s face clouded with denial. 
 
 " No ; I ve told you a dozen times you cannot 
 have a pass-key." 
 
 Gallic put the key into her pocket. " I m in ear 
 nest," said Willard. " Give it here ! " 
 
 She held up one rosy finger. " No," said he firmly. 
 " It s against the rules." 
 
 Callie added another finger, and Willard wavered ; 
 she leaned coaxingly upon his chair. 
 
 " I m doing it for your sake, to keep you out of 
 trouble," he told her gently. She leaned nearer to 
 him, turned his face toward her with a finger under 
 his chin, and Willard succumbed. She carried off 
 the key. 
 
 " You might as well sign the pay-roll while you 
 are here," he called after her, with unsuccessful stern 
 ness, intended to cover his recent yielding. Callie 
 came back with alacrity. Signing the pay-roll was a 
 great occasion, which Willard seemed also to enjoy. 
 Various preliminaries, not usually considered neces 
 sary to that simple piece of business, were gone 
 through. First, Callie took off her cuff and turned 
 -i- 127 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 up her sleeve, and, having accepted a portion of 
 Willard s chair, grasped the pen firmly, bunching all 
 her fingers about its tip, while Willard looked on 
 with a smile. But his part of the programme being 
 reached here, he proceeded to enclose both hand and 
 pen in his own fist, and the signature at last got under 
 way; the girl s cap against Willard s wholesome 
 cheek, her lip bitten in the excitement of the strokes. 
 " That s not the way to start off," he admonished 
 her, as she faintly resisted his effort to begin. "Are 
 n t you ever going to learn to make a capital C ? It 
 slews round like this so. You always try to beat 
 me into making an I." 
 
 The snowstorm was still raging with picturesque 
 fury when Miss Caruth emerged into the empty 
 streets for her walk. Great sheets of snow were 
 whirled upon a wind as soft and buoyant as April s, 
 with an effect distinctly spectacular, the snow seem 
 ing to be painted upon the dun sky, and somewhat 
 overdone in point of vehemence. 
 
 The cold, fragrant air was intensely exhilarating; 
 and as Miss Caruth made her way along the drip 
 ping streets to the post office, she had a joyous sense 
 of companionship with the blustering freshness of 
 the day, of being arm in arm with the roistering 
 young wind, making an afternoon of it. She sent a 
 glance back from shelter of the post-office door, 
 full of gay promise of a later meeting in the fields
 
 beyond, almost liidden beneath the swarms of white 
 bees whirling there. As her hand touched the door 
 the spring slackened, as some one grasped it from 
 within, and Graeham s tall figure filled the opening. 
 He glanced quickly past Miss Caruth to the empty 
 street. 
 
 " Who was that glance for ? " he asked bluntly, as 
 he lifted his hat. Out of the semi-gloom within the 
 building, the girl s face shone upon him, delicately 
 fair and vital, between the richness of her furs and 
 the indefinite softness of her dark hat, like the 
 purely tinted, hardy blossoms that dare the buffet 
 ing of the early spring gales. She was so intensely 
 alive, so slenderly, buoyantly strong, that Graeham 
 recalled his first impression of her, as a delicate steel 
 coil with a current through it. 
 
 "A friend," she explained suavely, in reply to 
 Graeham s question ; " such a dear, jolly fellow ! " 
 
 Graeham s stolid face altered by a shade, and his 
 glance along the empty street steadied into keen 
 ness, just tinged with jealous gloom. He half 
 raised his hat as though to leave her, hesitated, 
 glanced without again, as if debating the other man s 
 possible defection, and finally turned back at her 
 side. 
 
 " Hold these, please," commanded Miss Caruth, 
 
 handing him one by one the contents of her muff, 
 
 which she was dislodging in her search for the letter 
 
 she had come to post. A long, limp purse, made 
 
 -* 129 ^
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 of silver scales, that slipped through Graeham s 
 hands like a water-serpent, was followed by a small, 
 much inflated package, that he wonderingly decided 
 must contain compressed air ; a pair of long crum 
 pled kid gloves, that felt like rose-leaves and were 
 delicately redolent of violets, came next, and at last 
 the letter. 
 
 Graeham had followed the progress of the search 
 with amused eyes, and he glanced carelessly at the 
 letter she held aloft in triumph. It was too dark to 
 decipher the writing, but the mere externals of the 
 letter gave it a personality so distinct as to cause 
 him an odd shock. The size and shape of the pale 
 gray envelope, crossed by three lines of level writ 
 ing, the double stamp, the faint odor of violets 
 that exhaled from it, were thrillingly familiar. Each 
 detail had been studied over and over, and each had 
 contributed its intangible item toward the image of 
 the woman who had written the ones at that moment 
 locked in his letter-case a block away. 
 
 In the stress of his amazement, Graeham walked 
 mechanically at Miss Caruth s side from the building. 
 A turmoil of thoughts was rushing through his 
 mind, from which he gained but two clear impres 
 sions, an incredulous, excited joy, breathless and 
 tumultuous, and a doubt that his will kept resolutely 
 at bay. 
 
 They were well out into the snowy fields before 
 he had succeeded in wrenching his mind from its 
 
 -H. 130 H-
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 preoccupation. He stopped in the middle of the 
 snowy road, and stood looking down into Jane s eyes 
 with whimsical directness. 
 
 " Where s that fellow you told to wait ? " 
 
 Miss Caruth gave a soft, rallying laugh. " I was 
 rather wondering, myself. Do you know, Mr. Grae- 
 ham, your subliminal self is a very rude person ? 
 He deserted me at the post-office door, without so 
 much as a tip of the hat. Does your astral wear a 
 hat?" 
 
 " Brute ! " commented Graeham, still a bit lost 
 and shaken ; " I 11 kick him when he gets back." 
 
 " Oh, he s back ! He got back a bit ago. Where 
 had he wandered off to?" 
 
 " Perhaps in search of your subliminal self," said 
 he, with a long grave look into her eyes, that gave 
 Miss Caruth pause, mentally, but she covered it with 
 a laughing glance of approval. 
 
 " That does fairly well ! I shall have to forgive 
 him, after all. But I was a little vexed with him, 
 because the other poor fellow the every-day self 
 he left behind was so troubled about something. 
 I wanted dreadfully to straighten things out for 
 him." 
 
 Jane was a little breathless and shy at the end of 
 her sentence, much to her own surprise, and a tinge 
 of color showed in Graeham s cheek as he looked 
 down into the eyes she disdained to lower. 
 
 " That s awfully good of you. He was a bit lost 
 
 -f 131 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 he s rather a dull chap, you know. Would you 
 really help him to find himself if he should lose 
 out?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Even if you knew it was his own cock-sure folly 
 that had lost him the way to happiness?" 
 
 " All the more." 
 
 They walked on without speaking, pausing some 
 times while Graeham brought her a seed-pod from 
 the roadside, whose fairy whorl was delicately pow 
 dered with diamond dust, or a plume of grasses 
 bearded with snow. Once, as he rejoined Jane, Grae 
 ham s eyes were caught by their two footprints side 
 by side in the snowy road, Jane s slim tracks beside 
 his own deeply trodden ones; and the sight had 
 waked a rebellious throb in the man a hungry 
 yearning, that shook to its foundation the bulwark 
 he had been spending himself for weeks to erect 
 between them. 
 
 " Are we heading for the river ? " he asked, as 
 they breasted a slight rise in the road. 
 
 " Yes ; I want to see how it looks to-day. When 
 the fields are green, it is blue ; and when they are 
 brown, it is gray; and now, all veiled in white" 
 
 " It is green," announced Graeham, his height 
 enabling him to see beyond the rise that hid the 
 river from Miss Caruth. She turned her eyes with 
 veiled reproach upon him, and an absurd tremor of 
 remorseful pain shot through Graeham, even while he 
 -.- 132 +-
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 struggled perplexedly to divine its cause, half sus 
 pecting a trap, that the delicious suggestion in her 
 glance might melt into a delicately mocking smile 
 and a speculative glance, which said, " How could 
 you think I meant it ! " 
 
 " 1 should n t have looked if you could n t see," 
 she vouchsafed him at last in a murmur, her eyes 
 turned away from him, skimming the white fields, 
 and her chin a trifle elevated. A reflection of in 
 ward humor was in the smile that bent Graeham s 
 lips. 
 
 "By George!" he confided to himself; "if I have 
 n t come to a pretty pass, to he yanked about by a 
 girl like this." 
 
 Miss Caruth appealed, as no other woman had ever 
 appealed, to both sides of Graeham at once; and he 
 was conscious, as he looked down upon her, of an 
 almost poignant delight in her. She appealed to the 
 original man, with a few vital elements of charac 
 ter, strong and simple ; whose ideal was the fiercely 
 fastidious, "pure as snow, chaste as ice" conception, 
 before which men of his intensely virile type inva 
 riably prostrate themselves mentally, no matter how 
 frankly they may hunger with the rest of them 
 for the satisfying warmth of the woman who is 
 flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone. But she 
 made a yet more powerful appeal to the "made" 
 side of him, with its more complex needs, developed 
 by his contact with the world in his later years. Her 
 -+ 133 H-
 
 manner to him, frank, and coolly unattached, flat 
 tered and chafed him by turns ; her exquisite re 
 serves, that he could not interpret, baffled him and 
 drew him on ; he found her reticences, whose mean 
 ings he could only guess, more piquantly provoca 
 tive than any imagined witchery of another Avoman ; 
 her mind, reflecting in every turn a life perfectly 
 foreign to his own, stimulated his more slowly mov 
 ing mental machinery ; and her brilliant impersonal 
 polish, which held him off, even in the moments 
 when he could discern a bewildering response to 
 him beneath it, piqued him, and made him feel 
 like a lad again, hot and raw and restive. The 
 consciousness, too, that Miss Caruth regarded him 
 as an episode in her life, rather than a force that 
 might dominate it, roused his combativeness, and sup 
 plied the last element of fascination in Graeham s 
 conquest. 
 
 With the keenness of perception that had made so 
 largely for his success in business, he realized that 
 the exquisite quality of her charm for him lay in its 
 evanescence. Here, in lovely concrete form, was the 
 thing he had followed all his man s life, as a man 
 might track an unknown flower by its perfume; and 
 the lack of which in women bad, time and time 
 again, thrown him back upon himself in flat dis 
 illusionment and fastidious distaste. Oddly enough, 
 the elusiveness of the charm was the rivet that fas 
 tened his chains upon Graeham the same half-seen, 
 -+ 134 +-
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 half-dreamed, and wholly fleeting thing that had so 
 charmed him in Mary Meadows s letters, and had 
 sent him upon his headlong quest in search of her. 
 
 " I only caught a glimpse," he replied finally, to 
 Miss Caruth s challenge; "but I see now it was a 
 bit selfish. Forgive me, won t you ? You see " 
 his tone made a whimsical appeal for sympathy 
 " when a fellow has to stumble along, with no one 
 to give him a tip " 
 
 " And all in the dark, too," supplemented Jane 
 gravely ; " for you remember the game is not 
 worth the candle ! " 
 
 Graeham pondered this retort in silence. He had 
 a man-like sense of the validity of the last contract, 
 and he had supposed that the agreement he and Miss 
 Caruth had reached upon that first ride together 
 had invalidated his previous confidences; and this 
 doubling back upon her part to a position from 
 which he had voluntarily receded, rather lost Grae 
 ham his feet. 
 
 " But I thought we were friends, world without 
 end, for time and eternity ? " 
 
 Miss Caruth met his earnest frown serenely. " So 
 we are ! " 
 
 Graeham gave it up. " You can see the river from 
 the fence," said he, humbly retracing his steps to the 
 tangible offense for which he could make amends; 
 " and it is very wet nearer the bank." 
 
 He shifted the rails into a rude seat as he spoke, 
 -H- 135 -t-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 and, brushing them clear of snow, turned back to 
 assist her. Miss Caruth extended her hand ab 
 sently, her eyes busied meanwhile in selecting a 
 comfortably jutting rail to ascend by. Graeham 
 ignored her hand, and before she could divine his 
 intention had lifted her, quite as a matter of course, 
 in his arms, and seated her easily in the crotch of the 
 fence. Silence followed Miss Caruth s involuntary 
 gasp of dismay, a silence that grew more strained 
 with every heart-beat that lengthened it. 
 
 From her elevated seat Jane could see the river, a 
 streak of dull jade between the white fields; and 
 with her muff interposed between her face and Grae 
 ham, who leaned in miserable silence beside her, she 
 gazed steadily at it. Graeham broke the silence 
 resolutely, and a trifle stiffly, at last. 
 
 " I told you, Miss Caruth, what a wretched dolt I 
 am about women. It comes so naturally to a man," 
 he went on in troubled argument, " to do these little 
 things for a woman." 
 
 Miss Caruth turned further from him, with a 
 gesture of restrained coldness. She had a confused 
 sense of having heard the words somewhere before, 
 a bewildering consciousness of being on Graeham s 
 side, in spite of her anger. 
 
 " I am sure you meant only to be kind, Mr. 
 
 Graeham," she said evenly. Graeham brushed aside 
 
 her concession with an impatient earnestness, that 
 
 gave it a slightly tinny sound, even to her own ears. 
 
 -i- 136 +-
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 " Tell me, will you not, why you were so vexed 
 by a perfectly natural act upon my part ? " 
 
 " Oh," cried Miss Caruth, " why are you so 
 difficult? Surely you know you must know, that 
 what you did was grossest rudeness ! " Graeham 
 stared moodily at the river, a flush mounting to his 
 forehead. 
 
 " I did not know," he said at last simply, and 
 after a moment of struggle ; " I warned you that I 
 did not know the rules of the game as you play it. 
 I suppose," he added, more to himself than to her, 
 " I suppose I d best chuck it up." 
 
 " I thought we were friends, world without 
 end? " suggested she smoothly, her face still turned 
 from him; but the barrier of the big muff lowered, 
 so that had Graeham looked he could have seen the 
 curve of her cheek and a slight tremor of Jane s 
 delicate, wide lips. But Graeham did not look; he 
 said stiffly instead, 
 
 " That is with you, Miss Caruth." 
 
 " Then will you listen to me a moment, Mr. 
 Graeham, as if I were a man friend, you know, 
 giving you a tip about oh, about something that 
 he knew all about, and you knew very little ? " 
 Graeham turned back, and, leaning his arm upon 
 the rails, faced her in attentive silence. " In society, 
 you know, Mr. Graeham, we 11 call it my game, 
 if you like, in society, people do not do things 
 because they are natural ; no one dreams of being 
 
 -H- 137 -K-
 
 natural, ever ! They could n t be ; it would not be 
 tolerated ; naturalness is social outlawry. No ! you 
 would not ! Society is one game whose rules no 
 one questions, or questions successfully ; one obeys 
 them, you know, whether they like it or no ; obedi 
 ence is one s raison cV etre, socially. You do not 
 even exist you are not born until you know its 
 ritual, and are prepared to do it reverence. So you 
 see ? " Jane wound up, with lucid eloquence. 
 
 " I see ! " said he, with a quick smile of pleasure 
 in the girl who lectured him with sweet didacticism, 
 but whose eyes under wavering lashes could not meet 
 his own, though his eyes shone with satirical humor. 
 " What rot," he went on bluntly, " to corral men 
 and women behind a lot of nasty little rules like 
 broken bottles on top of a wall when there s all 
 of life outside to live ! Should n t you like it better 
 outside?" 
 
 " I don t know ; I ve always been inside." 
 
 " But if a fellow were lucky enough to be already 
 on the outside, he d better stop there, should n t you 
 think?" 
 
 " Unless there was something on the inside that 
 that he wanted very much," replied Miss Caruth, 
 from the shelter of the muff. 
 
 Silence again ; the snow had settled in drifts upon 
 Graeham s shoulders and powdered Miss Caruth s 
 furs. 
 
 " How does one get inside ? " asked Graeham, the 
 -i- 138 )-
 
 HE KNEW NOT WHY 
 
 words coming in a rush, as if crowded in between 
 two heart-beats. 
 
 " The tame ones, already inside, show them the 
 way." They were both smiling. 
 
 " Will you show me ? " 
 
 " Yes. The first thing is to dress for dinner ! 
 A dinner coat creates the correct atmosphere ; it 
 modifies the individual aura; it is the outward and 
 visible sign of the grace of artificiality, that one 
 must acquire." 
 
 " I ve been made game of before, thank you," in 
 terrupted Graeham coolly. "I m pretty well up, so 
 you need not bother." 
 
 " That s not bad," returned Jane critically; " the 
 tone was particularly good. Oh, there s one thing, 
 before I forget it. With women, you know ignore 
 them more ; the best manner for a man, at least 
 a very effective manner, is to hardly ever look at a 
 woman, or listen to anything she says." 
 
 " Jove ! " pondered Graeham, in profound amaze 
 ment. " That s a new tip ! No wonder I ve always 
 lost out. What is next ? " 
 
 " Home ! " cried Jane gayly, and not waiting for 
 his aid, sprang down and turned homeward.
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 " But who could have expected this when we two drew together 
 
 first, 
 Just for the obvious human bliss, to satisfy life s daily thirst 
 
 with a thing men seldom miss ? " 
 
 " WHAT nonsense poets and socialists and people 
 of that sort talk, about uplifting the race and er 
 things of that sort," murmured Mrs. Carlysle reflec 
 tively, at dinner a few nights later, " when every one 
 knows perfectly that the only thing that ever really 
 elevates a man is dress clothes ! " She looked pen 
 sively at Graeham s stalwart figure, immaculately 
 transfigured. " See how softened, chastened, elevated, 
 Mr. Graeham is in a dinner coat." 
 
 " Graeham always looks chastened when he s 
 getting ready to smash up somebody s deal," ad 
 vanced Carlysle, a little moodily, though he nodded 
 cheerfully to Graeham, who nodded back. He 
 seemed preoccupied and, as Miss Caruth thought, 
 stealing a glance at him, stern. He did not look 
 their way again, and in the middle of dinner rose 
 and, still wearing his air of stern abstraction, left the 
 room. 
 
 " That reminds me, girls," said Carlysle, touching 
 earth after a mental parabola ; " Graeham will drop 
 -i- 140 -i-
 
 in to-night, and Clark is bringing Colonel De Resett 
 up. We are all the best of friends, you know? 
 This Chinquepin matter is entirely outside of per 
 sonal relations, eh ? " 
 
 " Of course, dear ; but I do think " 
 
 Carlysle found his wife s hand, under the table, 
 and folded it in his own. 
 
 " Naturally ! But I must confess, it is not so plain 
 to me how Jane is going to divide up. You 11 have 
 to do some clever hedging between our company and 
 Graeham s." 
 
 Miss Caruth declined to commit herself beyond 
 a smile, that flouted daintily his suggestion of hedg 
 ing. 
 
 But, spite of his politic hint, it was plain to Car 
 lysle, Avhen he entered his wife s reception room later 
 in the evening, that a division had been called, and 
 two hostile camps, Clark s and Graeham s, already 
 established. A half-dozen women were present, and 
 the usual relays of men dropping in through the 
 evening. 
 
 The rival companies, Chinquepin and old Jourdan s 
 missing heir, held the stage, to the exclusion of 
 every other subject. Surmise, conjecture, and pro 
 phesies, friendly tips and hostile warnings, jostled 
 each other as they flew from lip to lip ; the women 
 discussing the organization of the companies, with a 
 mastery of technique and an amazing fluency of 
 detail, that amused the men present, no less 
 -+ 141 -t-
 
 their sudden elisions and hasty improvisations when 
 the talk veered round to the unvarnished conditions 
 of the old man s will. 
 
 Graeham had entered the field as a free lance 
 against the Development Company, and what that 
 Company chose to call its " prior claim." And as 
 each day narrowed the circle of possibilities, for 
 sooner or later the girl must be located, the com 
 petition between Graeham and the Development 
 Company grew keener, and the efforts of each more 
 strenuous to solve the silence of the girl at whose 
 door fortune was pounding so imperatively. 
 
 Graeham was not present ; he sat in his sitting- 
 room, a dozen doors away, Avrapped in a surly reverie. 
 His mood was as bleak as an east wind ; and his 
 eyes, resting upon an open ring-box upon the table, 
 wherein lay a gentleman s engagement ring set 
 round with diamonds, were hard with thought and 
 dogged with resolution. A pile of letters, worn as 
 from many readings, lay at his elbow. He opened 
 one, handling it with a gentle coldness, whose un 
 conscious revelation brought a touch of irony to 
 his lips, and read it through. It was a mere note, 
 beginning with grave formality, that lapsed naively 
 into girlishness as it went on. Graeham s hard 
 glance softened as he read. How fascinating he 
 had thought them but a short time before ! How 
 bewitching the frank comradeship of the later ones ! 
 how pure and unaccustomed the note that breathed 
 -+ 142 i-
 
 LIFE S DAILY THIRST 
 
 from them all ! Their delicate charm had been proof 
 against that most implacable test, the lack-lustre 
 eyes of a man s dead fancy. Yet, even while he 
 noted the permanence of their charm, Graeham was 
 flatly conscious of his own detachment when opposed 
 to the palpitating reality of a woman s presence ; 
 Jane s glance that his own absorbed, the color in 
 her cheek that sprang to meet him, before her eyes 
 had fairly claimed him. 
 
 What reckless insanity the whole thing had been, 
 as he saw it now ! He had chased a shadow, and it 
 had turned and grappled him, fastened upon him 
 with a grip he could not shake off ; the delicate 
 charm of the romance had turned into steel coils 
 about him. He had bound this unknown woman 
 to him by his own voluntary act ; nay, he had 
 pursued her, wooed her, spent months in a delib 
 erate, well-considered attempt to find her and, him 
 self unknown, test the permanence of her charm for 
 him. He had even gone the full length of madness 
 in believing in her, and, drawn on by the intrinsic 
 purity that breathed from her letters, had engaged 
 himself to marry her ; then, all in a moment, at the 
 touch of life, the chimera had vanished, the dream 
 sped, the link he had forged snapped. He saw the 
 whole adventure he could name it that to-night, 
 with a shudder of disgust as a bit of bizarre reck 
 lessness, upon his part ; upon hers ? Graeham 
 thrust the letters from him, only, however, to 
 -i- 143 +-
 
 bend once more above them, reading a bit here and 
 there, unable to wholly tear his mind from them ; 
 until, as he read, their very iteration seemed to strike 
 a new note from them, as a familiar word said over 
 and over will dissemble its old significance. His 
 breath came short as he hung above them, his mind 
 clinched fast upon the intangible something in them, 
 that had from the very first won him, tantalized him, 
 eluded him. To-night, for the first time, he grasped it. 
 A voice, whose lightest tone had grown hauntingly 
 familiar, seemed to speak the words in his ear ; the 
 sentences fitted themselves to the curves of lips he 
 knew by heart ; a face, that he had tried a thousand 
 times to evoke and failed, to-night rose unbidden 
 from the pages, with eyes that smiled into his own. 
 He raised the sheets to his face, and a perfume, as 
 elusively familiar as the memory of a dream, stole 
 from them ; and, with the subtle association that lives 
 so strongly in an odor, linked sense to sense in a 
 mesh so imperviable that the impalpable essence of 
 the writer s personality seemed caught in it and made 
 tangible. It enveloped him, confused him. Which 
 was memory? which prevision? Jane Caruth was 
 beside him ; her breath on his cheek ; the perfume 
 from her dress mingled with nay, it tvas the 
 perfume from this letter ! 
 
 Suddenly Graeham sprang up, and with a curse 
 thrust the letters from him, with the hard, deter 
 mined gesture of a man who strips self-deception 
 
 -+ 144 H-
 
 LIFE S DAILY THIRST 
 
 from him and faces the inevitable with grim honesty. 
 He took a turn across the room and back, paused at 
 the table and lifted the ring, glanced at the date 
 within, and put it on ; finally seated himself, and 
 with the set face of a man who closes with circum 
 stances in a hand-to-hand fight, wrote slowly and 
 with several pauses for reflection a letter. It was 
 short and baldly simple, yet a film of sweat stood 
 upon Graeham s forehead when it was done. 
 
 He enclosed it in its envelope, and that within an 
 other, which he addressed to James Goodloe; and 
 flinging it upon the table, sat frowning and thinking. 
 
 " That ought to force her hand," he broke out, 
 after an interval of thought. " And I m sick of 
 this skulking and sneaking ! I 11 put it to the touch. 
 If it were only myself But her? God! It isn t 
 fair to her." 
 
 He rose again, paced the floor restlessly, fighting 
 another round of the losing fight. 
 
 " Pooh ! " he flung out, after a bit more of troubled 
 musing; " I m nothing to Miss Caruth one among 
 a ruck of men." 
 
 With a stubborn flush he drew off the ring, and 
 turning deliberately to the door, crossed the hall and 
 entered Mrs. Carlysle s reception room. 
 
 At the foundation of Graeham s character was a 
 fund of honesty, clear-visioned and rational, under 
 lying a strong will and impetuous desires; and he 
 suffered as such men suffer when the fundamentals 
 -+ 145 -^
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 of their natures are wrenched by the struggle be 
 tween them, but he did not palter with the sneak- 
 thief methods of self-deception. Just as he would 
 have taken another man by the throat and kicked 
 into him a recognition of his standards, so he took 
 himself in hand and brought himself up to his own. 
 He saw the situation between himself and Mary 
 Meadows a little crudely, perhaps, as a business con 
 tract. Men made contracts every day, and sweated 
 under them and kept them. No more was to be said 
 along that line. 
 
 But Goodloe s argument, backed up by an obsti 
 nate cogency characteristically his own, that Mary 
 Meadows was a name behind which some man was 
 " studying the thing from the woman s side," stuck 
 persistently in Graeham s mind. It was a solution, 
 at least, of the farcical tangle ; and, with character 
 istic decision, he had put it to the touch to-night in 
 the letter he had written. He would free himself 
 at a blow, or rivet his chains and reinforce himself 
 with the irrevocable, by insisting upon an immediate 
 marriage, assigning a business trip abroad as his 
 reason. 
 
 When the little stir caused by Graeham s entrance 
 had been absorbed in the steady hum of talk that 
 filled the room, he made his way to Miss Caruth s 
 corner, and dropped into a seat at her side. 
 
 "Not going, Clark? I rather wanted to consult 
 you about a trip up to the falls." 
 -+ 146 H-
 
 " For God s sake, Graeham," protested Clark 
 earnestly, " don t call Chinquepin s name in my 
 hearing ! " 
 
 Graeham grinned comprehendingly. 
 
 " My plan is anti-toxin. Mrs. Epperson put it into 
 my head. She has been telling me she is an ad 
 herent of yours, Clark how perfectly divine it 
 would be to have Chinquepin water right in the 
 house. So good for the complexion, you know ! 
 She thinks you are going to pipe it to her." Clark 
 groaned. " I explained your method, and now her 
 idea is an electric cotton-picker. Why not take the 
 whole lay-out up the river and let em see for them 
 selves, and squelch their theories about i electric 
 kilt-pleaters ? What the deuce is a kilt-pleater, 
 Clark?" 
 
 " Blamed if I know ! Get on with your plan to 
 enlarge Mrs. Epperson s mind." 
 
 " Trip up the river, mid-winter picnic, you 
 know, with duck shooting in the afternoon and my 
 men s dinner at night, and wind it all up with a 
 ball. What do you say, Miss Caruth ? " 
 
 Jane was sparkling with delicious laughter as she 
 turned to Clark, holding Graeham with a waiting 
 glance. 
 
 " Do you happen to remember any word more 
 strenuous than strenuous, Mr. Clark ? My little 
 vocabulary cannot do justice to such a programme ! " 
 
 " I like to give a thing a good swing-off," ex- 
 -H 147 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 plained Graeham earnestly, amid the laughter of the 
 other two. 
 
 " Sort of Graeham s Day, " murmured Clark. 
 "Go sounding down the corridors of time, that 
 sort?" 
 
 " Do we count you in, then, with your crowd ? " 
 
 " I 11 stand for strawberries and champagne on 
 board, yes. But if you re thinking of making that 
 technical speech of yours, Graeham You should 
 hear Graeham speak, Miss Caruth ! He takes the 
 glasses and things on the table to build wheels and 
 high-potential stations, to explain - Does he ? Cer 
 tainly not ! " 
 
 " You d better be on hand, to put a spoke into 
 some of my wheels," Graeham suggested, with cool 
 amusement. " Clark and I, Miss Caruth, are exactly 
 like two fellows in love with the same woman Chin- 
 quepin is the woman in this case ; neither dares to 
 let the other out of his sight." 
 
 Clark left them a moment after to join General 
 DeResett, who was making his adieus. 
 
 " Do you like it in l the corral ? " inquired Miss 
 Caruth, with a smile rousing Graeham from the mo 
 mentary abstraction into which he had frankly sub 
 sided when Clark had left them. His eyes absorbed 
 every delicate detail of Miss Caruth s dress, with a 
 scarcely restrained pleasure that was half artistic, 
 half sensuous, and wholly without intention. 
 
 " Like it ? Like sitting here by you? Like see- 
 -i- 148 t-
 
 LIFE S DAILY THIRST 
 
 ing those pearls tremble on your throat, and this fold 
 of your gown like mist across my knee? Yes; I 
 like it." 
 
 His voice was but a tone above a whisper, and 
 Jane was conscious of little dropping pauses in the 
 talk about them, of the silken whisper of garments 
 as their wearers turned toward their corner. 
 
 " You must n t talk about people s clothes, you 
 know," she hurriedly admonished him, striving to 
 keep the flutter out of her voice and the flush from 
 her cheek. " And whatever you do, don t, don t 
 whisper ! " she concluded, with unconsciously dra 
 matic intensity. 
 
 " All right," said Graeham aloud; "is that wrong, 
 too?" 
 
 " It is unusual," said Miss Caruth judicially, a tiny 
 fold in her straight brows ; "and that is what really 
 counts, you know, the unusualness of anything." 
 
 "Jove," mused Graeham aloud, "what a pace I 
 
 must be going ! I ve always been tough, but un 
 usual!" 
 
 Their gaze, resting each upon the other s, was 
 fused into a long questioning glance. Graeham was 
 perfectly grave, and Miss Caruth s glance was by 
 turns speculative, reproachful, and finally affronted. 
 
 There had not appeared upon Graeham s face the 
 instant contrition that Miss Caruth was accustomed 
 to see upon men s faces at her faintest sign of dis 
 approval. On the contrary, a trace of amusement, 
 -i- 149 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 that just escaped by a shade being tender, touched 
 the corners of his mouth and waited in his eyes. It 
 became clear to Jane, after an instant, that Graeham 
 was enjoying her from some rugged height of mas 
 culinity within himself, from which her girlish tricks 
 of manner appeared to him blended into the one pure 
 ray of her womanhood. Alone with her thus, he 
 would not dash the exquisite moments into froth with 
 trivialities ; he would not make pretense. Frankly, 
 a little disconcertingly, he assumed the real juxta 
 position of his manhood to her womanhood, with a 
 manly sincerity that pierced to the deep core of feel 
 ing hidden under the girl s glaze of conventionality. 
 She sought refuge from the intensity of the moment 
 in a bit of play, and, under guise of arranging her 
 floating draperies, turned from Graeham, obliter 
 ating him with a turn of her shoulder from the 
 scheme of created things. Graeham did not attempt 
 to break the silence that followed. Why should he? 
 It was happiness enough to sit beside her and see the 
 nape of her slender neck, about which was clasped 
 the string of pearls that Callie s western lover had 
 sent her, the puff of dark hair, from which a curl 
 had escaped and lay just under one velvety little 
 ear. Graeham, with man-like tidiness, longed to tuck 
 it in. His eyes passed from the curl to the pure 
 curve of Miss Caruth s throat, with a passing won 
 der that he ever should have been so crude as to 
 admire women with white skins; but then he had 
 -I- 150 -)-
 
 LIFE S DAILY THIRST 
 
 not known that a woman with Jane s exquisite mezzo 
 tinting was in the world. How lovely the pearls 
 were on the velvet richness of her skin ! His eyes lin 
 gered with vague delight upon them, and stopped 
 suddenly with a leap at the clasp that held them, and 
 remained riveted there intently. 
 
 The clasp was a unique one; and Goodloe, with an 
 inspiration of good taste, had had the jeweler engrave 
 among the arabesques that ornamented the tiny flat 
 band the initials M M, though so minutely and so 
 interwoven with the carving as to be indistinguish 
 able except upon close scrutiny. As Graeham leaned 
 forward, to interpose his shoulder between the room 
 and Miss Caruth s dainty pretense at displeasure, his 
 eyes were brought wdthin a foot of the clasp, and 
 with the acuteness of automatic vision he traced the 
 letters amid the design. 
 
 A second passed, and another, in amused suspense 
 upon Miss Caruth s part ; upon Graeham s, in a pa 
 ralysis of emotion, comparable more nearly, perhaps, 
 to the dead calm at the storm s centre than anything 
 else. 
 
 Meantime there had been a general exodus of the 
 
 O 
 
 party in the reception room to the adjoining room, 
 whence came a medley of convivial sounds: com 
 mands, issued in a tone of brief authority ; a call for 
 lemons, a smell of spices, the thump of an ice pail, 
 the impetuous announcement of a champagne cork, 
 followed by the cheerful clucking of the wine upon 
 -f- 151 -<-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 its heels; the remonstrant click of silver and china 
 handled by amateurs; Mrs. Carlysle s voice finally, 
 announcing in a tone of absorbed responsibility, 
 
 " We re nearly ready over here ; somebody get 
 the glasses." 
 
 A. frou-frou of women s skirts, mingled with the 
 sound of footsteps stringing out along a table; then 
 a voice, a dozen voices, calling for a song, a drinking 
 song. 
 
 " Mr. Graeham has a per-fectly di-vine singing 
 mouth " the voice was Mrs. Epperson s " and a 
 forehead all over bumps, the ideal musician s brow." 
 
 " Graeham, can you sing? "asked Carlysle, with 
 his head around the doorpost. 
 
 " Sing? " echoed Graeham, starting up still dazed 
 and shaken. " I can sing when I m drunk." 
 
 There was a shout of laughter from the other 
 room, mingled with cries of 
 
 " Chug him up on this, Carlysle ! No, stop, hold 
 on ! Graeham s a four-bottle man ; he comes too 
 high ! Inspiration s all very well, but champagne 
 is a lot better ! " 
 
 There was a hubbub of laughter, of advice and 
 encouragement, during all of which Graeham was 
 conscious only of Miss Caruth s distressed silence, her 
 reproachful eyes. He steadied himself to explain. 
 
 "I mean," he said, making himself heard amid the 
 laughter, "what I mean is, that the one or two 
 times in my life when I have been drunk I sang ; I 
 -H- 152 +-
 
 LIFE S DAILY THIRST 
 
 don t know why, or how well. But I think yes, I 
 know I can sing to-night. But no ! No champagne ! 
 It takes a drink divine forme; and" slowly 
 " I m half over now." 
 
 " Music is the only drink divine/ " said Miss 
 Caruth, from the piano stool, as she raised her eyes 
 wonderingly to Graeham s face. She struck a chord 
 of " Drink to me only with thine eyes " as she spoke. 
 
 "There s one other," said Graeham hurriedly, 
 under cover of the accompaniment. 
 
 " Come, " she said softly, and gave him the note. 
 Without moving from where he leaned upon the 
 piano, Graeham sang the old song through, in a voice 
 half muted to suit the room, hut with an abandon and 
 a dramatic intensity that swept his audience off their 
 feet. Pie sang again, a vagrant bit of melody 
 caught up from the street or the stage, with a thrill 
 of passion through it, like an organ note lost amid 
 the clangor of the streets at noon; and then left 
 them, still clamoring for more, to seek the solitude 
 of his rooms. 
 
 Graeham needed to be alone, to tighten his grip 
 upon himself ; to find his feet amid the tide of fast- 
 mounting, heady bliss, that was drowning reason s 
 level accents and swamping the sane counsel of ex 
 perience. Again he ranged the letters before him, 
 marveling that he had not earlier read their secret. 
 Each word and phrase, each deft turn of fancy, the 
 delicate restraint, the frank reticence, held the very 
 -+ 153 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 essence of Jane s charm ; the strong, buoyant, tender 
 spirit of the woman infused them. It was herself - 
 Jane, Jane ! 
 
 Graeham bent his face upon the pages where her 
 hand had lain, and saw it before his eyes, its slender 
 strength, the rosy nails with clean-cut facets, and 
 felt again the thrill of the nerve through it as it 
 touched his own. He drew out the ring and slipped 
 it on Ah, the ring ! Suddenly he was conscious 
 that he had been fighting off the thought of the 
 ring all along; he wondered half dreamily why, when 
 it was the link that bound her to to him ! 
 
 The man started upright, his brow bending with 
 pain as a jagged flash of comprehension tore through 
 his mind, laying the whole thing bare to the bone be 
 fore his shrinking consciousness. No dodging it ; no 
 palliating it. Naked, incontrovertible, it stared him in 
 the face. Reason and reason was Graeham s bul 
 wark presented its case with cynical dry ness, and 
 rested upon the facts. 
 
 The simple womanly words accompanying the ring, 
 now lying upon the table before him, had not been 
 written to him. They had pledged her, so far as her 
 own voluntary act could pledge her, to another man, 
 a man whom for some incredible, inexplicable reason 
 - Graeham s reluctant mind could scarce tolerate 
 the thought so long as it took to fit it into the chain 
 of remorseless facts she had agreed to marry, never 
 having seen. 
 
 H. 154 H-
 
 LIFE S DAILY THIRST 
 
 It seemed to Graeham that hours had passed be 
 fore he could rouse himself to feel in a dull, reflex 
 way, as a man waking from sleep might fumble for 
 his identity, for his usual sane balance, to weigh 
 the conditions confronting him and get at their real 
 values, wring from them an extenuation - for 
 her ! The rational view ! He calmed himself by a 
 fierce effort of self-control, hanging on to his men 
 tal poise, as a man hangs on to reason amid the mists 
 of fever. And so welded to the innermost fibre of 
 man s consciousness is his thought-habit the last 
 
 O 
 
 redoubt of character that at Graeham s demand 
 the inexplicable situation took on a saner aspect; 
 a tenable hypothesis took shape before his mental 
 eyes. His rigid muscles relaxed, and for the first 
 time he was conscious of the sweat that poured from 
 his face ; his chest rose in an inspiration of quick re 
 lief, as he reached for his pipe. What a madman he 
 had been to think But he had not ! Thank God 
 for that. It had been anguish - Great God, what 
 anguish ! but not doubt. Never doubt of her of 
 Jane ! He saw it now. D Carlysle ! A joke, 
 of course ; with Carlysle at the bottom of it, equally of 
 course ! How thoroughly in character the whole 
 thing was with Carlysle s intricate, metaphysical 
 prying into the springs of human action. He was 
 a veritable human ferret to trace character hunt 
 down some bit of psychology to educe triumphantly 
 as a proof of soul-meddling with the common game 
 -i- 155 *-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 of life. Of course he had drawn Miss Caruth into 
 it, Graeham s brow grew stern again, she had 
 innocently written the letters to further the elabo 
 rate, conscienceless jest. And how well it had been 
 carried out ! Carlysle s hand in that, of course, visi 
 ble all the way through. Only a man in a position of 
 authority could have insured success to every prac 
 tical detail. Every clue that he had picked up in the 
 early days when he had first come to Morganton had 
 led him to the offices of the Development Company, 
 and had there been lost amid the volume of business 
 pouring through the offices, which did the business 
 for the whole infant town. The package containing 
 the pearls he had seen to-night upon her throat had 
 been receipted for by Carlysle s secretary; but Car 
 lysle s clerks handled mail for men whom Carlysle 
 had never seen or expected to see, and it was this 
 very fact, the impersonal character of his business, 
 that had enabled him to carry through his game 
 without risk of detection. Was it possible that he 
 had deceived Jane? Graeham paused a moment, to 
 think this out. 
 
 What had most charmed him in Jane, had been 
 her serene detachment from the problematical side 
 of life. She had a pure, if somewhat rigid, rectitude, 
 that saw life as concretely right or wrong; and the 
 clean, sweet-smelling, narrow path of right had been 
 wide enough for her slender experiences to tread, 
 with skirts undraggled by contact with the dubious 
 -i- 156 -1-
 
 LIFE S DAILY THIRST 
 
 shades of conscience, where right overlaps wrong by 
 a hair s-breadth, and wrong merges muddily into 
 right by a shade. It was this immaculateness of 
 nature that Graeham had so worshiped in her : 
 hers was the purity that is not alone of word or 
 deed, but is a structural part of the women who 
 have it; every molecule in the substance of them, 
 soul and body and spirit, alike being composed of 
 an atom of purity combined with one of truth and 
 womanliness. 
 
 Graeham suddenly struck the table a blow of 
 futile wrath. How should she know or dream of 
 the part she had been made to play ? The concom 
 itants of such a game as she had been innocently 
 drawn into Avere dead letter to her, of course ; the 
 trickery, the blackmail, the hideous insinuation, 
 the inevitable construction that the world should 
 the world ever know would put upon her innocent 
 escape. Thank God she did not know ! Some day, 
 perhaps, when she had been his wife for long happy 
 years, sitting together with quiet hand locked in 
 quiet hand, he might tell her of his rash meddling 
 with fate, and of the blessed, four-leafed shamrock 
 of fate that had saved him. 
 
 He raised the letter he had written earlier in the 
 evening in his hand, weighing it meditatively. Let 
 it go ? Yes ! T was better so, for her. It would 
 bring the thing to a head; clear the way for her 
 escape from the irksome absurdity of her position. 
 -H 157 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 Graeham rose at last to retire, and laid himself 
 down to sleep, still holding himself steadily in hand, 
 as a man might driving along a precipice, with the 
 reins wrapped round his fist and his eyes set hard 
 ahead.
 
 AN IRKSOME LIE 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ..." Eager to end an irksome lie, 
 And taste our tingling, true relation." 
 
 GRAEHAM had thrown himself into the preparations 
 for his threefold social function, with an earnestness 
 of purpose that, backed by his trained activity, made 
 things fall into shape with magical alacrity. Like all 
 men who are really effective in any line, Graeham 
 had an absolute genius for detail; and he brought it 
 into play with precisely the same patient thorough 
 ness, and breadth of design, in the arrangements for 
 his winter picnic, that distinguished him as a business 
 man. 
 
 He had taken one of the rather disreputable river 
 boats, and had had it painted and decorated "within 
 and without," so that upon the morning of the ex 
 cursion it lay at its landing resplendent with rugs 
 and cushions and flags, bobbing like a white duck 
 at its rope. 
 
 And if, as Carlysle had averred earlier in the 
 season, the stars in their courses fought for the De 
 velopment Company, the very elements had united 
 to smile upon the sponsors of the yet unborn Chin- 
 quepin Company. January, usually so chary with 
 sunshine, came down handsomely with a day com- 
 
 -H- 159 H-
 
 posite of the charms of April and October, so crisp 
 and calm it was; with floods of sunshine under a low 
 blue sky, and a care-free breeze that skidded along 
 the water, curling up ripples that purred along the 
 boat s side and rocked the canes along the banks. 
 
 Clark s crowd, Eastern men newly arrived most of 
 them, all with money tied up in all sorts of enter 
 prises depending upon the power to be developed 
 from the falls, were impatiently diverted by the 
 social interlude introduced into a business deal, and 
 just a trifle bored at having women along. But as 
 the little boat took the stream, nosing the silver 
 current like a hound, and the wind caught them a 
 school-boy cuff upon the cheek, the half-petrified 
 cockles of their hearts warmed with memories of 
 stolen days along some far-away river-bank; and they 
 leaned upon the rail, eagerly pointing out to each 
 other the current creaming in the reeds, or a wild 
 duck s nest among the canes, feeling, with reminis 
 cent eyes upon the canes, their hands curl to fit the 
 handle of a phantom jack-knife, and hearing its clean 
 swish through the hollow stems. 
 
 And as the sky grew bluer toward noon, and the 
 sunshine warmer on their shoulders, the Chinquepin 
 Power Company s billion-dollar deal receded into 
 the background ; and by noon it was abundantly 
 apparent that the afternoon s duck shooting was the 
 real feature of the occasion, the organization of the 
 power company but an incident. The talk took on a 
 -* 160 H-
 
 sporting tone, and was a bit louder than usual ; men 
 walked about the deck with the swagger that seems 
 immortally resident in shooting boots, squinting 
 knowingly at infinity along the barrels o their guns. 
 
 The women of the party were ostentatiously ar 
 rayed for a rough outing, in short skirts and thick 
 boots ; but at the sight of the muddy river-bank and 
 the wet fields to be traversed before the falls were 
 reached, their interest in the financial development 
 of Pike County, so fluently patriotic upon deck, 
 waned. All, with the exception of Jane and Miss 
 Cotesworth, contented themselves with waving grace 
 ful adieus to the party bound for the falls, after 
 which they settled down to a good, poky " women 
 talk," wherein they might be as frankly dull as ever 
 they liked. 
 
 Miss Caruth was particularly effective, in an ag 
 gressively rough outfit, with determined boots and a 
 short seal coat and cap, and cheeks that glowed with 
 soft rose. Graeham, busied with his duties as host, 
 meeting her eyes in long radiant glances across the 
 talk, drew her care-free happiness into his sore heart, 
 as the numb soil was drinking up the sunshine, and 
 felt the dull ache there fade into his usual quiet hap 
 piness at her nearness. 
 
 The two girls drifted away from the group at the 
 
 falls, where the men of the party stood, with feet 
 
 planted wide apart in the correct newspaper attitude 
 
 for the American man of affairs, when engaged in some 
 
 -t- 161 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 particularly strenuous enterprise, squinting through 
 their fists at the falls, while they made ready-to-use 
 estimates, and delivered them with a foxy air of its 
 potential. The talk was all of " three-phase alter 
 nating currents," and the " head " necessary to set 
 such and such electric dynamos spinning and keep 
 up the high potential line current to such and such 
 distances, all interspersed with much keen discussion 
 as to the maximum capacity of the lovely water sprite ; 
 who was singing her syren song to their callous ears, 
 while they argued the relative merits of Swiss or 
 American wheels, of buckets or scoops in which she, 
 Cinderella-like, was to be made to do the chores of 
 commerce, instead of swirling her skirts of diamond 
 spray and lacy mist all day in the sunshine. 
 
 " Are they done about ( impulse wheels and 
 total drops ? " inquired Mrs. Carlysle, cautiously 
 opening her eyes. She had made herself comfortable 
 in a nest of cushions and, frankly conserving her 
 energies for the men of the party, left the other 
 women to do the part of chorus when a man hap 
 pened to look their way and shout an explanation 
 they did not understand. 
 
 " It s worse than that now," sighed Mrs. Daniels, 
 the widow with the gowns. She was really giving 
 no attention to the men, being engaged in a calcu 
 lation of her own regarding w r eights and measures ; 
 a computation, in fact, as to how far she dared 
 " risk " her figure in proximity to the girlish slender- 
 -H 162 I-
 
 ness of Jane and Miss Cotesworth, who were lightly 
 scrambling among the rocks, supporting each other 
 in perilously graceful attitudes, while they made 
 futile grabs at the low-hanging holly boughs, with 
 little shrieks of protest when the holly defended 
 itself with prickly asperity against their depreda 
 tions. 
 
 " Mr. Graeham is making a speech, I think ; at 
 least, he s doing all the talking, and - is n t it too 
 funny ? The other men are not interrupting him, 
 or talking at the same time ; they are actually 
 listening ! He s talking about a waterfall, with a 
 perfectly indecent name ; it s in Mexico, thank 
 heaven ! and oh, they are laughing. Surely it can 
 not be at anything he said, for if ever there was a 
 tiresome man ! " 
 
 " Had you any idea Graeham could talk like that? " 
 asked old Lossing, who, had he been geared to a 
 water-wheel himself, would have managed somehow 
 to get loose and join the youngest girl in the party; 
 as he joined Jane and her companion, now engaged 
 in flinging clods at bunches of mistletoe tantalizingly 
 displayed upon the bare boughs, with such startling 
 irrelevancy of aim as to draw shouts of laughter from 
 the men about the falls, and almost break up Grae- 
 ham s audience. 
 
 "Four words at a time," went on Lossing, "is all 
 he ever trusted me with. But then I never saw 
 him under inspiration before." Jane answered with 
 -+ 163 ^
 
 a panting smile as she desisted, sending Graeham a 
 long distant smile across the field, that made him 
 stumble in his speech as he raised his cap in reply. 
 
 " You are not the only one of Mr. Graeham s 
 friends that he has treated shabbily," she was tell 
 ing Lossing, as Graeham joined them. " He has made 
 quite a point of using only one-syllabled words when 
 he talked to me, and I am a little wounded at the 
 language he has been keeping back all this time for 
 other people. Perhaps it is too much to expect him 
 to say Juanacatalan for just me ; but if I am 
 a person s friend " a plaintive glance and shrug 
 finished Graeham s rout. 
 
 " Dangerous admission, that ! " chuckled Bridges, 
 a salmon-colored veteran of finance, in Graeham s 
 ear. "A fellow has it under the ribs when he takes 
 to one syllable, eh, Graeham ? " 
 
 " Dangerous ? " queried Graeham gravely ; " volts 
 is a one-syllabled word, but it only measures force." 
 
 " The one I had reference to is force! " retorted 
 Bridges over his shoulder, humorously aware of 
 Graeham s moody discontent as he monopolized Miss 
 Caruth, and waddled oif with the gait of a joyous 
 hippopotamus at her side. Jane was piteously be 
 moaning her cruel fate at missing all the real fun of 
 the day. 
 
 " Chivalry ! " she cried, with energetic disdain ; 
 " that is just why I so perfectly hate it ! When /" 
 with withering emphasis " value anything as 
 -H 164 ^
 
 AN IRKSOME LIE 
 
 you pretend to value certain things, I keep it by 
 me. I don t set it up on some old musty shrine, 
 where there is no fun ever, and wallow in the mire 
 myself and have a perfectly lovely time." 
 
 The landing, when they reached it, was a cheerful 
 medley of men and dogs and game-bags ; the dogs, 
 frantic with excitement, filling the air with whines of 
 rapture and joyously retrieving everything in sight, 
 and getting warmly slapped for their enthusiasm, 
 while a little flotilla of canoes bumped at their 
 posts. 
 
 "Should you really care to see the shooting?" 
 asked Graeham, bending over Miss Caruth under 
 cover of the bustle. 
 
 " Oh, should I ! " sighed she ecstatically. " May 
 I? Can I? How can I?" 
 
 ( If you don t mind the canoe being a little wet, 
 I can t see why not, can you ? " 
 
 "Not any in the world! But Kate might," 
 she admitted with a laugh. "You ve simply no idea 
 how vain Kate is of her pin-feathers of matrimony. 
 She might think this a good opportunity to air 
 them, you know." 
 
 " If we slip over the bank, they won t see us until 
 we are out of gun-shot range. Take care! It s 
 beastly muddy just here. May I take you down 
 this time? " with a smile of memory. 
 
 "Do you think they ll open fire before we get 
 round the bend? " 
 
 -t- 165 -i-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Bridges might. It s best to be on the safe side, 
 and keep under the canes." 
 
 "Is n t this too delicious?" murmured Jane, as she 
 followed Graeham along a mud path under the bend 
 ing canes, with the river water licking their boots. 
 " I feel exactly like the Marooners/ don t you? " 
 
 " Yes. Give me your hand along here ; this bank 
 is infernally slippery." 
 
 " I wish something thrilly would happen," whis 
 pered Jane, with exaggerated caution and the air of 
 a midnight assassin, setting her slim boots in Grae- 
 ham s tracks and holding to his hand with a nervous 
 clutch, " some of those delicious things that hap 
 pened to Rider Haggard s people. Have you ever 
 noticed, Mr. Graeham, how tame real life is ? Now 
 why should not a bottomless chasm yawn at our feet, 
 or a scaly monster dart from the river and pursue 
 ns? They might just as well as not." 
 
 " This is good enough for me," said Graeham. 
 
 " Oh, that ! But not thrilly ! Not even creepy, I 
 should say. At least / don t feel creepy " her 
 tone was slightly disparaging. " But I have heard 
 or read somewhere that er that nature is grad 
 ually suppressing the heroic element in men, because 
 they don t need it any more " this conclusion in a 
 distinctly snubbing tone. 
 
 " Give me your other hand," said Graeham. 
 
 "Have you shivers up your backbone, Mr. Grae* 
 ham ? " insisted Jane sternly. 
 -h 166 -K-
 
 AN IRKSOME LIE 
 
 " Not my backbone ; I have mine in my heart. 
 Here s the canoe. If you 11 be so kind as to supply 
 the formula for putting a lady into a wet, not to say 
 sloppy, canoe, we 11 get under way." 
 
 Jane ignored him, and seated herself with as 
 much dignity as an alternately wobbling and buck 
 ing canoe would admit. 
 
 " My basket is a good bit down the river," Grae- 
 ham explained, as he turned the canoe into the stream, 
 where the sun on its first downward slant was paving 
 the current with patines of pure gold. 
 
 " Basket ? But I forgot that this is your day for 
 saying extraordinary things," said Jane, with soft 
 impertinence ; and with laughing eyes upon Grae- 
 ham, she softly hummed " The Owl and the Pussy 
 Cat went to Sea." 
 
 Jane had been conscious once or twice during the 
 day of an under-note in Graeham, that had puzzled 
 her, a concentrated gravity it seemed to be, that 
 wore through his ordinary mood like steel through 
 a scabbard. She had seen him steal a moment from 
 the talk about him, to spend in silent colloquy, several 
 times that day ; and as he sat before her, sending the 
 little boat along with strong strokes, she saw the 
 shadow of the same abstraction fall once more upon 
 him, as she watched him with shy solicitude that 
 would not acknowledge a right to be wounded by 
 his reticence. 
 
 Graeham s basket proved to be a wigwam upon a 
 
 -H- 167 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 hummock close to the river, improvised from two 
 cotton baskets overturned a little space apart, and 
 roofed with sheaves of cane and underbrush. Miss 
 Caruth gave a shriek of rapture as Graeham, hold 
 ing the trailing canes aside, invited her to enter; and 
 creeping in, curled herself, school-girl fashion, upon 
 the carpet of raw cotton that lined it. 
 
 " It is exactly like the playhouses I used to build 
 long so long ago ! And oh, that darling, cunning 
 little window, with a perfectly dis-tracting view of 
 the river ! " 
 
 " That s for the gun-barrel," explained Graeham, 
 disposing of himself by lying flat upon the cotton at 
 Jane s side. "You should have seen the nigger s 
 face when I told him to put the cotton in ! It s a 
 lark to have a girl along, is n t it ? Now I 11 give 
 you a point or two about the sport ; and then we 
 must n t talk, you know." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " The ducks will hear us." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 Silence ensued, except for the voices of the woods 
 and the river and the fields, that filled the inter 
 lude with a soft symphony of their own : the 
 thud of chestnuts falling on dead leaves; the shrill 
 soprano of a squirrel s bark in the wood behind 
 them ; the wash of the current round the point; the 
 reeds softly grounding arms as the wind touched 
 them. 
 
 -+ 168 *-
 
 AN IRKSOME LIE 
 
 "Am I too close? " whispered Graeham. 
 
 No answer. Miss Caruth s eyes were upon the 
 shining 1 reaches of the river where, just in sight round 
 the point, a white breast was splitting the current 
 into long slivers of silver, followed by a string of 
 wobbling, gliding forms, whose snake-like necks 
 dipped from side to side in the water. 
 
 " I meant, are you afraid of the gun ? " sup 
 plemented Graeham. 
 
 " I thought we were not to talk ? " 
 
 " You are sure it won t jar you when the gun goes 
 off?" 
 
 "Do you suppose I never heard a gun shoot?" 
 asked Miss Caruth, with superb disdain. 
 
 " It is n t considered good sport to look out of 
 the hole all the time," suggested Graeham, his gaze 
 unalterably upon the curve of Jane s cheek, the wave 
 of her hazel hair springing crisply from her brow, 
 the lift of her long straight lashes over her forward 
 gaze. A tide of scarcely to be restrained joy beat in 
 him, making the blood pound in his temples and his 
 heart labor in his breast. She was his own ; and for 
 the moment, in the swift tide of passion sweeping 1 
 him away, it seemed to Graeham that it mattered not 
 how. Yet even in that moment, he weighed swiftly 
 the chance of telling her all. Why not risk it? But 
 like all men with strong wills and impetuous impulses, 
 Graeham had the fixed habit of restraint, distrusting 
 his own impetuosity ; and reason laid her coercive 
 -+ 169 --
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 hand upon him now. No; silence was best, safest, 
 for her for them both in the future. She must 
 never know that he knew. 
 
 " Why not? " asked Miss Caruth, in reply to his 
 hint on sporting form. 
 
 " The ducks will see you," smiled Graeham. 
 
 " They are not looking," coolly ; " they are 
 busy dipping." 
 
 " By George ! " Graeham sprang to his knee. 
 " Sit tight," he commanded absently, sighting along 
 the barrel, with his finger on the trigger. Miss 
 Caruth gazed at him in fascinated terror for a sec 
 ond, and the next had flung herself upon his arm, 
 shaking Graeham to and fro in her panic. 
 
 " Oh, don t, don t!" she shrieked; "what a shame! 
 They are so pretty, so happy." 
 
 A report from the gun plunged through the golden 
 quiet of the afternoon, followed instantly by the 
 other barrel exploding harmlessly in the air. With 
 a whistling of swift wings the ducks, seen in a 
 huddle for a second against the sky, strung out 
 and sailed off; a puff of gray feathers afloat upon 
 the air, and a limp form in the dog s mouth, all 
 that remained to tell the tale of the afternoon s 
 sport. 
 
 Graeham stared at his companion in fast gather 
 ing indignation, lost upon Miss Caruth, whose face 
 was buried upon her knees, with hands pressed tight 
 upon her ears. 
 
 -+ 170 H-
 
 AN IRKSOME LIE 
 
 " Well, I 11 be dog-goned! " said he, when he had 
 got his breath ; " if you are n t a nice chum to go 
 duck shooting with ! " 
 
 " Are you done ? " murmured Jane, raising her 
 face, sparkling with laughter, from her knees. " Will 
 it shoot any more?" 
 
 " Done ! Rather. One beggarly bird out of that 
 lot ! Hec, old boy, you d as well go chase a rabbit ; 
 ducks are not for us." 
 
 " If you would like to beat me with the gun, if 
 you d feel more resigned, you may," suggested 
 Jane meekly. 
 
 Graeham was laying his gun aside, with elaborate 
 finality, and did not reply. 
 
 "It is quite a good bit of fun to watch them, 
 from the hole," Miss Caruth advanced, with a faint 
 suspicion of coaxing in her tone. 
 
 " Oh, quite ! " said he, with blunt sarcasm, and 
 after that no more was said. Jane found a chestnut 
 presently, and with an air of magnanimously forgiv 
 ing Graeham for his bad temper, proffered him a 
 half. He suffered himself to be forgiven, and they 
 ate it together like boy and girl. 
 
 " You look like a country girl to-day, with your 
 cheeks all rosy and your little muddy boots," said 
 Graeham, lying at his ease at Jane s feet, with a light 
 of deep contentment in his eyes. 
 
 " Do you care for country girls?" asked Miss 
 Caruth, in an impersonal tone. Graeham stared at 
 
 -I- 171 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 the green roof a foot above his head, as he consid 
 ered. 
 
 "I had no clear idea of what I liked in a woman," 
 he said at last; adding, "until I met you," as though 
 he expected the firm deliberation of the words to 
 palliate their significance. He went on in a tone 
 of musing comradeship, as if the words could mean 
 nothing to either of them. 
 
 " When I was a lad I was a common fellow, you 
 know, not a whit better than the lot I ran with ; 
 but even a rough lad has his ideas about women, 
 and " He arrested himself, frankly leaving the 
 hiatus unfilled, and took up his subject farther along. 
 " And after, when I could pick aijd choose " 
 He broke off again, with a smile this time. " I m 
 afraid I m not altogether in character for the 
 picture-paper Westerner, after all. I did n t strike 
 pay gravel in the approved style ; I made my money, 
 and I had had time to grow with it. But I never 
 could shake the old ideas I had when I was a lad ; 
 they clung to me even. In books and plays, they 
 call it a man s ideal?" 
 
 "Yes," said she softly, " their vision splen 
 did, you know ; but in books and plays most of 
 them they say men lose it." 
 
 "I had never lost mine, and I had never realized 
 it until I stumbled in here at Morganton and 
 met you." 
 
 The duck lay upon the ground beside them; and 
 -H 172 -*-
 
 AN IRKSOME LIE 
 
 as they talked, Miss Caruth touched it tenderly, 
 smoothing its iridescent plumage, ruffled by the 
 shot, with a hand that was not quite steady. A 
 pang, compounded of irrational joy and equally irra 
 tional jealousy, pierced Graeham, as he noted among 
 the rings she wore a narrow band of diamonds. 
 When he could think again, he roused himself to 
 catch the end of Miss Caruth s sentence, the begin 
 ning of which he had not heard. 
 
 "... And of late I have thought more of it. It 
 has been brought rather pointedly to my mind, by a 
 by something that has happened. I mean, just 
 how far one should allow a past experience to affect 
 a decision that is of the present and the future. Do 
 you think, Mr. Graeham, that one could or that 
 one should, if one could elide a portion of one s 
 life, as one would score out an ambiguous phrase in 
 a letter?" 
 
 Graeham paused upon his answer, yearning toward 
 the girl with an exquisite pang, as he met her earnest 
 eyes under tense brows. 
 
 " Men and women do lop off dead years," he be 
 gan gravely, choosing his words carefully, "barren 
 experiences, futile hopes, outlived fears ; but they 
 do not, I think, rid themselves altogether of them : 
 they go on feeling them, like the ghost of a severed 
 limb, to the end of their lives, and beyond, if life 
 has a logical sequence not the spectacular ones 
 perhaps, but the vital ones, yes." 
 -i- 173 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 Jane s eyes were upon the band of diamonds on 
 her finger. 
 
 " I put this ring on to-day, to remind me to ask 
 you a question." 
 
 "To ask me? Me!" 
 
 " If it will not bore you Jim says you have the 
 sanest judgment" 
 
 Graeham laughed a bit unsteadily as he moved 
 away, that Jane might not hear the pounding of his 
 heart. 
 
 "If any such luck as serving you came my way, 
 I should trust my judgment, I suppose ; but my 
 judgment where you are concerned is worth about 
 as much as a compass in an iron mine," he 
 wound up bluntly. " What is this I am to advise 
 about?" 
 
 Miss Caruth turned the ring about her finger 
 meditatively, the wicked little eyes of the diamonds 
 seeming to spy out their mates in Graeham s trou 
 sers pocket, and wink with satiric intelligence. 
 
 " It is about love," said Jane at last. 
 
 " The love of a man for a woman ? " 
 
 " I only know one side of the story, but the friend 
 -I told you it was a friend s case, did I not? the 
 friend is a woman, and I think she she must love 
 him." 
 
 Her eyes were full of troubled frankness as they 
 rested upon Graeham s. 
 
 " It seems a little disingenuous to ask your ad- 
 -t- 174 -
 
 AN IRKSOME LIE 
 
 vice and give you only half confidences, but there 
 is a promise, and for her sake." 
 
 " I think I see how it is," said Graeham. " It is 
 the other way round, perhaps, the love of a woman 
 for a man ? " 
 
 " I think so," said Miss Caruth, very low. She 
 did not meet his eyes, but sat with downcast eyes 
 upon the ring, slowly turning it about her finger. 
 
 " Ah ? Suppose I help you out a bit ? Is there 
 another man in the case? " 
 
 " Yes ; oh, yes ! And she is engaged to one of 
 them." 
 
 " And loves the other fellow?" 
 
 " How well you understand ! Yes." 
 
 Graeham paused to steady his voice before he went 
 on. 
 
 " I in not so sure I do. What s the hitch ? " 
 
 " That is what I could not think out what you 
 are to advise about, please. Is she do you think 
 she is bound in honor to tell him the man to whom 
 she is engaged, I mean about about the other, 
 or could she " 
 
 "Funk it?" smiled Graeham, with tender eyes 
 upon the girl s downcast face. His voice was a little 
 hoarse and unmanageable, as he went on gravely : 
 " Women call all sorts of things love, Miss Ca 
 ruth ; but if your friend loves this fellow, loves 
 him, you know, for all time and eternity " His 
 voice broke rebelliously, but his ardent eyes car- 
 i- 175 -t
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 ried on his meaning. " Does she love him like 
 that ? " 
 
 Jane fought a moment with the wave of color 
 that threatened to submerge her, struggled to keep 
 her lashes at a level poise over gravely attentive 
 eyes, and succumbed. 
 
 " Yes," she whispered, " yes ! " 
 
 And Graeham, as he lay at her feet, turned his head 
 and pressed his lips to the hem of her walking-skirt. 
 
 " Then she must tell the other man," he said 
 thickly; "and the sooner the better." 
 
 They said no more for a space, and the silence 
 between them was like a living presence, with a hand 
 in each of theirs drawing them nearer to each other. 
 Jane, with her face turned from Graeham, pulled 
 nervously at a feather in the duck s wing. 
 
 " Let me," said he absently ; and thrusting a fin 
 ger beneath it, drew it forth. A drop of blood 
 clung to its end, and Graeham searched his pockets 
 vainly for a scrap of paper. 
 
 "Wait," said Jane; and thrusting her hand within 
 her coat, drew out a couple of unopened letters. 
 Without glancing at the addresses, she stripped the 
 envelope from one and handed it to Graeham. 
 
 Across it was written, in his own handwriting, the 
 name : " Miss Mary Meadows, Morganton, Alabama." 
 He slipped the feather within it, and dropping back 
 to his place lay staring at the green canes above 
 his head, with eyes that saw them not.
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 " Why should I blame the brass that burnished up will 
 blaze to all but me as good as gold ? " 
 
 THERE was a steadily rising gale of merriment in 
 Mrs. Carlysle s reception room, where the water 
 party, muddy but hilarious, was partaking of after 
 noon tea with the guests arrived by the later after 
 noon train, for the ball that night. The talk was of 
 the sort that gayly flouts the term conversation, dis 
 daining the staid vehicle of question and reply, and 
 relying frankly upon pitch as a medium of commu 
 nication. The men present, in a ratio of a dozen to 
 every woman, were busily booking engagements for 
 the ball that night, with laughing shrewdness, and 
 a very business-like appreciation of the value of the 
 bird in the hand over its problematical mate in the 
 bush, with girls who, with a no less provident eye 
 upon the main chance, " reserved spaces " for the 
 fish in the sea who might be as good, and, for all 
 one knew, a lot better than the one wriggling on the 
 hook. 
 
 Graeham s strenuous programme had taxed the lit 
 tle colony severely in the way of femininity, and the 
 two tiny wrinkles that had adorned Mrs. Carlysle s 
 brow intermittently for days past, threatened to be- 
 t- 177 -t
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 come permanent. They were augmented this after 
 noon by an air of tragic calm, as she tucked a 
 note into her girdle and glanced about the room for 
 Graeham. 
 
 She discovered him, the centre of a bunch of girls, 
 to whom he had just been introduced, and stood 
 watching him a minute smilingly before calling him. 
 Graeham was concentrating himself with frowning 
 gravity upon the pith ball of talk they were lightly 
 keeping in the air, naively losing his footing every 
 other minute in the slippery sands of their gay in 
 nuendo, and the many piled meanings that flickered 
 from eye to eye among them. He was floundering 
 heavily, as she easily made out, in spite of the oil the 
 girls were spreading upon the waters for him. Mrs. 
 Carlysle faced him, as he reached her side, with the 
 air of being at her last ditch and her last round of 
 ammunition. 
 
 " What is it?" inquired Graeham, visibly bracing 
 himself to bear the blow. 
 
 " The most tiresome thing possible ! I particu 
 larly dislike unexpectedness in people, do not you, 
 Mr. Graeham? The gravest fault a crudity even 
 would be bearable, if it were only consistent. A 
 note from Miss Cotes worth so inconsiderate of 
 her ! Why, she has sprained her ankle at the very 
 last moment. Now, yesterday, or the day before, it 
 would not have mattered in the least." 
 
 " A sprained ankle is no joke," said Graeham, 
 -i. 178 4-
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 with earnest sympathy; "and I hardly think she did 
 it on purpose, do you?" 
 
 " Perhaps not," conceded Mrs. Carlysle, with a 
 tender, quizzical glance at Graeham, that greatly 
 surprised him; " though it really does not matter in 
 the least if she did, as long as she has thrown us 
 out this way. The question is, Mr. Graeham, whom 
 can we put in her place ? " 
 
 Graeham carried his glance alertly about the 
 room, sparkling with women s faces, and returned 
 to his companion s face of dramatic intensity with a 
 smile. 
 
 "Haven t we enough women? I never saw such 
 a lot before, except in a ballet. And keen ! George ! 
 that black-eyed one, with dimples, has the nerve of 
 a life assurance association." 
 
 "Never mind that now," returned Mrs. Carlysle 
 absorbedly ; " keep out of Grace De Resett s way 
 until I have time to tell you what to do. Jane can 
 lead, in Miss Cotesworth s place, but but Peter 
 Clark? It leaves Peter without a partner." 
 
 "Is that all? Cut Clark out." 
 
 Mrs. Carlysle passed this with judicial calm. 
 
 "Who? Who?" she mused desperately. " We 
 just simply must have a woman, if we have 
 to put a man into a gown ! My things could be made 
 to fit Teddy Chapman," she went on meditatively, 
 eyeing young Chapman with a glance that took his 
 latitude and longitude. " Men are very compressible, 
 -+ 179 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 you know ; and after he had been taken in a little 
 in the waist " 
 
 " But Chapman would be such a brute in a gown, 
 none of the other fellows would take him out, and 
 we d be just where we were," urged Graeham, with 
 a remonstrant frown. " Let s think of something 
 else." 
 
 "What else? What possible equivalent is there 
 for a woman ! " with despairing logic. 
 
 " What the deuce are you two talking about? " 
 asked Carlysle curiously, over his wife s shoulder, as 
 he joined them. " There s no use wasting talk like 
 that on Graeham, Kate. / might make a stagger at 
 solving feminine X Y Z s, but Graeham ! " 
 
 The situation was made plain to him, with dramatic 
 pauses and much tense play of his wife s fine brows, 
 and he promptly soared to the occasion with an in 
 spirational suggestion. 
 
 " What s the matter with our little guest from 
 1 She-car-go ? She 11 fill the bill." 
 
 Graeham s face reflected Carlysle s own satisfac 
 tion at his suggestion, but Mrs. Carlysle s displayed 
 a vacuum, faintly tinged with reproof. 
 
 " Think of some one else, dear," she murmured 
 gently. 
 
 " Don t trample on me, Kate," laughed Carlysle, 
 
 " with that i stony British stare. If you want to 
 
 swear at me, well and good ; but I refuse to be 
 
 1 gorgonized. Impropriety ? I 11 lay either of you 
 
 -+ 180 --
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 any odds you like, that little Callie s blood is as blue 
 if that s the hitch as Miss Cotesworth s, and 
 she simply is n t in it with Gallic, for looks. Run 
 her in, Kate; and give the girl a bit of fun, do. The 
 house is full of strangers, and who is to know? 
 Besides, she s the daughter of a dear old chum of 
 mine or the sister, sister of a college chum, old 
 John Larkin, bless him; haven t thought of him 
 for ages until he wrote that his sister was passing 
 through. You d take the inspiration out of Bee 
 thoven, Kate! What if Alabama isn t on the way 
 to anywhere ? Besides, it is ; it s on the way to 
 Florida. Slue round a bit ; it s not necessary to 
 be categorical detail is horribly vulgar. She s 
 going on further, and stopped over a night en 
 route, eh, Graeham ? " 
 
 "Good!" said Graeham, with a laugh. "Miss 
 Larkin is quite a chum of mine." 
 
 Mrs. Carlysle consulted their faces, with more tense 
 play of brows. 
 
 " Is this one of your little variations from the 
 normal, Jim ? " 
 
 " Not at all ! I never was saner in my life." 
 
 " But her grammar ! Think of her grammar, both 
 of you ! Fancy, just fancy her, if you please, saying 
 shucks ! in the middle of the cotillon. I beg par 
 don, she is quite capable of it." 
 
 " Do you suppose," began Carlysle, in the bored 
 tone of a man forced to argue a perfectly obvious 
 - 181 i-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 proposition, "do either of you suppose Graeham, 
 I put it to you as a man that any man in his senses, 
 and with his eyesight, would bother about what sort 
 of grammar issued from a mouth like Callie s?" 
 
 " I have so often pointed out to you, dear, that 
 mouths are the stronghold of character; and Callie s 
 mouth is her worst feature. Really nice women 
 never have those deep dimpled corners to their 
 mouths. Do you suppose she can dance, either of 
 you?" 
 
 " Why, she dances all the time," put in Graeham 
 indiscreetly, " even when she sweeps." 
 
 " Sweeps ? : Mrs. Carlysle s glance was slightly 
 speculative. " Callie is not a maid. If she were, it 
 would be quite impossible. And as it is, if anything 
 dreadful happens " 
 
 " Graeham and I are to blame," smiled her hus 
 band. " Come, I 11 make you a business proposition ; 
 if you and Jane will rig her out, Graeham and I will 
 assume her social liabilities. Come now, that s fair 
 enough." 
 
 Mrs. Carlysle weighed them contemplatively as 
 Callie s social sureties. 
 
 "After a men s dinner, Jim," she vouchsafed him 
 suavely, "you d assume anything." 
 
 As ten o clock drew on, a hushed expectancy in 
 vaded the big hotel, that lay in the midst of the black 
 fields about it, like the beast in the Apocalypse glow- 
 
 -t- 182 +-
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 ing with eyes before and behind ; while the winter 
 stars, wheeling their silent courses above it, marked 
 the flight of the fevered hours within. 
 
 The empty ballroom, with its myriad lights splin 
 tering long lances on the polished floor, held its 
 breath in glittering silence; but from the distant 
 dining-room, where Graeham, a somewhat absent- 
 minded host, presided, gusts of men s laughter rose, 
 accompanied by the quick patter of applause, follow 
 ing some speaker s rolling periods or the stuttering 
 brilliancy of old Lossing s toasts. 
 
 Meantime, above stairs, the real business of the day 
 went forward, amid an impressive hush. Behind the 
 long rows of closed doors, the women were dressing 
 for the ball. 
 
 In her slip of a room at the top of the house, 
 Callie stood before her eight-inch mirror, looking 
 through it to the " vision of the world and all the 
 wonders that would be." The hour was the girl s 
 apotheosis. She was being born anew, into an even 
 ing gown. Her soul had been born in the moment 
 when, for the first time in her life, she saw the tinted 
 ivory of her bust rising from the rose-colored folds 
 of her low corsage; and, for good or evil, Callie knew 
 herself to be a winged spirit, with dominion over the 
 hearts of men. 
 
 She wore a ball gown of Miss Caruth s, of deep rose- 
 colored gauze garnished with trailing sprays of wild 
 roses, and from beneath its folds her slender feet 
 -*- 18o *-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 with high-arched insteps peeped forth, clad in the 
 envied rose-colored slippers that she had described to 
 Graeham ; the polished whiteness of her long arms 
 was half obscured by the folds of her gloves, and a 
 fan of curling, rose-hued tips drooped languidly from 
 one hand; heavy strands of rose-hued coral were 
 about her neck and waist. She stood before the 
 mirror entranced, and with half-shut eyes slowly 
 raised and let fall the folds of gauze over the silk 
 petticoat beneath, the rustle of the silk thrilling her 
 with the rush of emotions that moment born. The 
 girl s nature trembled to its crisis. Heredity, folded 
 like a bud within her, stirred and burst its shallow 
 calyx. Marthy McGuion, reckless, seductive, smiled 
 back from the dim little mirror, reincarnate in the 
 rose-colored folds. She bent backward, supplely, 
 and, with eyes still upon her image, caught up the 
 train of her gown and flung it with dainty elegance 
 over her arm ; and as she did so, the curve of her 
 long throat, the droop of her lashes over beryl- 
 tinted eyes, pierced her with a pang of sensuous joy 
 and triumph. She longed, with a longing as im 
 perative as thirst, to see the full sweep of the folds 
 about her form, the lustre on the satin richness of 
 her skin ; but the sullen bit of mirror gloomed back 
 at her, tantalizing her with fleeting glimpses only. 
 At any other time her pass-key would have admitted 
 her to a dozen empty rooms, where she might have 
 gloated at her pleasure ; but to-night the house was 
 -+ 184 -K-
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 running over with guests. Gallic ran the rooms over 
 in her mind, as she pouted disdainfully at the de 
 spised mirror. Then temptation jogged her elbow. 
 Graeham s rooms would be empty at this hour. 
 Graeham himself was safe at the dinner party. She 
 hesitated, with the inevitable result. A moment 
 later, with her rose-hued robes of mirth tucked up, 
 she was speeding down the servants stairway to 
 Graeham s rooms. Come what might, she must have 
 one look, one distracting swirl of those rose-colored 
 skirts in the mirror lights. 
 
 Her heart beat quickly as she turned on the lights 
 at the mirror, but one glance within swept prudence 
 from her mind. She preened daintily, like a white 
 pigeon on the roof in the sunlight; each touch of 
 her unconsciously adept fingers, like a sculptor s 
 chisel, refining into elegance some commonplace line, 
 or bringing into prominence some hitherto unsus 
 pected grace. 
 
 Yet to her newly awakened consciousness, for all 
 her loveliness, there was some vague want, some 
 thing lacking that should be there. She stepped 
 back from the mirror and, poised in one of Miss 
 Caruth s attitudes, looked critically at her own reflec 
 tion. It was an admirable rendition of the spirited 
 and finished grace of Miss Caruth s manner, and 
 extending her hand to some shadowy courtier, who 
 appeared to be advancing to meet her from mir 
 ror land, she walked forward airily to meet him; 
 
 -H- 185 H-
 
 but in the act she paused, fascinated by her own 
 beauty. 
 
 " I m prettier n her," she mused slowly, aloud, as 
 though the triumphant knowledge could not longer 
 be contained in her own bosom. " Gran ma was er 
 ristocrat befo th wah, n I look like th befo -th - 
 wah folkses in the pictures in pa s old house in Pike. 
 It s my old house, n Chinquepin is mine, n 
 n Peter. But I don t want none er them; not 
 none uv them. I want him." 
 
 The thought was imperative enough to drag her 
 eyes from the mirror, and she wandered about the 
 room sunk in thought, beating her gloved hands to 
 gether softly, in a gesture full of futile, passionate 
 regret. 
 
 " F I d on y told him at first ! F I on y had ! 
 He d er overlooked it - - n I could make him love 
 me. F I d on y met him like I am to-night! But I 
 ken make him love me I ken, I ken ! Th money 
 may go pooh! money; n Peter all, all except "- 
 She did not finish the sentence, but for a moment 
 a mist dimmed the radiance of her eyes; she raised 
 her hand absently to her bosom, as though a baby s 
 head lay there and she hushed it to sleep. 
 
 She was too restless amid the conflict of her 
 thoughts, of the vague new possibilities that she felt 
 about her like wings brushing her in the darkness, 
 to be still ; and she resumed her aimless walk, paus 
 ing at last beside the writing-table to mechanically 
 -+ 186 H-
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 straighten the articles upon it. A half-smoked cigar 
 lay beside the blotter, closed upon some written 
 sheets upon which the ink seemed scarce dry, as 
 Callie pored over them with knitted brows and 
 flushed cheeks. It was difficult work for her; but 
 she stumbled on, following the sense with difficulty, 
 - now losing it altogether, now helped by her par 
 tial knowledge of the text of the letter itself to 
 unravel the skein, and at last, with panting bosom 
 and angry eyes, dragging its meaning from it as it 
 were by main force. 
 
 She did not move when she had finished it, but 
 stood in a trance of thought, her form seeming to 
 stiffen as she stood. She was not consciously plan 
 ning ; but her brain, with its odd, left-handed func 
 tioning, reached forward to a decision which seemed 
 independent of any intermediate process of reason. 
 
 As she replaced the sheets, a smile as inconse 
 quent and malicious as a water-pixie s trembled at 
 the corners of her mouth, and she struck her hands 
 together with a gesture of uncertain triumph. 
 
 " It s not honorable to deceive him, she said 
 to-night ! He must be told told erbout Mary 
 Meadows s past. God ! won t they never let me 
 furgit it! I cannot be good when I remember 
 cannot ! She may tell him now," she ended 
 slowly, with hands clinched at her sides, " jest as 
 soon as ever she likes now." 
 
 A line of sweat broke out upon her delicate lip, 
 -+ 187 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 as she stood like a creature braced in mortal combat 
 against herself. A bitter, nauseating consciousness 
 of herself rose in her mind like gall, as she saw her 
 self through the eyes of Carlysle and Miss Caruth. 
 In the sharp glare of humiliation she saw herself a 
 pariah, half scorned, half pitied by them ; an out 
 cast whom they had touched with their finger ends 
 in gingerly charity. The grisly memory of the night 
 when she had returned to her father s house with 
 her child, rose like a visible presence of desolation, 
 dimming her beauty with its black shadow of shame ; 
 the horror of the words he had used to her froze her 
 eyes, as she recalled them in their primitive Biblical 
 frankness ; her mother s shame that he had flung in 
 her shrinking face all rushed upon her and struck 
 her down. Graeham would think the same if he 
 knew. He would use just such words as her father 
 had used ; would call her A smothered cry rose 
 in her throat. 
 
 "I m not," she sobbed, with dry sobs; " I m not 
 that ! Not what they think. I m not I m not ! 
 F I had er chanst they d see. We was ristocrats 
 befo th wah." 
 
 The sound of the opening door roused her, and 
 wheeling swiftly, she met Graeham s amused eyes as 
 he came forward from the sitting-room beyond. 
 
 " Primping by my mirror, eh ? " he said good- 
 naturedly. " So you are going to the ball ? " 
 
 He glanced her over with careless admiration, 
 
 -H 188 H-
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 that melted into something warmer as the full 
 measure of her beauty had time to sink into his 
 senses. 
 
 " You re a corker in evening dress ! And you 
 got the little pink gown and the boots ? " 
 
 Too shaken with the agitation of the moment 
 before to speak, Gallic silently advanced one pretty 
 foot for Graeham s inspection. Anger had given 
 her a tremulous agitation, flushing her cheeks and 
 deepening her eyes, until in sober prose they were 
 what Clark had called them, the color of the mid 
 night sky. The long folds of her gown about her 
 on the floor added a new and bewitching dignity to 
 her form ; in her rose-colored draperies she looked 
 a great lady to her fingers ends, and Graeham s eyes 
 told her so with reckless frankness. 
 
 " Do you like my dress gown ? " 
 
 "Do I?" Graeham came a step nearer her, his 
 eyes alight with admiration. " You re as pretty as 
 a red, red rose ! " 
 
 " You said I was n t once." 
 
 "I lied. You need something to shine, in that 
 lace." He stepped to the table and overturned his 
 case of pins, and selecting several, bent to pin 
 them in, his hand against the warm whiteness of 
 her shoulder. " And your hair is n t right. Girls 
 wear things in that built-up part when they go to 
 dances Wait." 
 
 Standing behind her, Graeham detached a rose 
 -H 189 -*-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 from her corsage and placed it awkwardly in her 
 hair. Callie stood motionless, scarce breathing, an 
 intoxicating sense of power filling her like a draught 
 of strong wine, as her eyes met Graeham s in the 
 mirror, reading in them a sequel to the hour that he 
 little dreamed of. They contemplated the effect of 
 the rose together, in silence. Callie s slight, brilliant 
 figure thrown out against the black and white of 
 Graeham s dress ; his strong, dark head contrasted 
 with the vivid delicacy of hers, floated upon the 
 clear surface of the mirror like a softly tinted 
 water-color. It caught Graeham s eye ; and with an 
 amused consciousness of attitudinizing, he dropped 
 his arms about the girl in the conventional stage 
 embrace, and stood looking down upon her with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Don t we make a dandy water-color ? What a 
 magnificent pose so, a little this way. Jove, how 
 lovely you are in this pink gown ! Some chap s 
 going to go mad over you some day, do you know 
 it, Callie ? He 11 pour out his money like sand at 
 your feet." 
 
 With a supple turn she faced him, slipping her 
 arms about his neck, holding him off to look into 
 his eyes, with her black brows gathered stormily, 
 her breath fluttering in her bosom. 
 
 "His money ! " she echoed, with tremulous scorn ; 
 " I don t want none uv his money. F he could n t 
 pour out his love his self his heart, at my feet, 
 -i- 190 -i-
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 I would n t would n t " Her voice broke, and 
 Graeham s eyes, hot with admiration, steadied into 
 what was very nearly tenderness. 
 
 "Not?" he said gently, noting with wonder the 
 stormy heaving of her bosom, the passionate inten 
 sity of her face, where the color had slipped away. 
 " Foolish little child ! Suppose he had nothing else 
 to give ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " she demanded passionately. " Why 
 should I not have his love ? Why must she have all 
 all, n me nothin ? I m prettier n her." 
 
 " Prettier than whom, child ?" inquired Graeham, 
 roused by her passion. " What are you talking 
 about?" 
 
 " Than Miss Caruth." 
 
 Graeham recoiled sharply ; he unlocked her hands 
 from his neck, and put her from him in silence. 
 
 " Don t ever mention Miss Caruth s name to me 
 again," he said quietly. 
 
 Callie stood motionless where he had left her, her 
 hands clinched at her sides, her eyes like brilliant 
 agates, touched with the bravado of the gambler 
 who has doubled his stake and lost it. 
 
 " Air she too good fur me to call her name ? " 
 she demanded passionately. 
 
 " Yes," said Graeham coldly. 
 
 The word struck the girl like a blow, and for a 
 second the very flesh upon her bones recoiled under 
 it ; then she answered to it as a racer might answer 
 
 -H 191 -I-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 to the lash across his flank, with a tremor as her stif 
 fening muscles drew her rigidly erect. Facing- Grae- 
 ham with superb assertion, she measured him with a 
 glance of cold, controlled scorn, the scorn whose 
 cutting edge is not the resentment of an equal so 
 much as the reproof of a superior. 
 
 " You air mistaken, Mr. Graeham," she told him 
 with level incisiveness, that sent her meaning home 
 with the simple assertion of the fact, disdaining 
 asseveration ; " my folkses were ristocrats befo th* 
 wah." 
 
 Graeham moved restlessly. " It is n t that," he 
 interrupted her, regarding her with thoughtful eyes 
 as she stood before him, every line in her beauti 
 ful form breathing an arrogant pride of birth ; the 
 haughty curve of her throat, the imperious bend 
 of her brow, the insolent droop of her lashes over 
 a glance of icy restraint, speaking the inalien 
 able consciousness of caste. " It is n t that ; I ve 
 always known you had good blood. That don t 
 count." 
 
 " Bein er ristocrat don t count ? " she echoed 
 blankly. " Then what does count ? " 
 
 Graeham s glance, half speculative, half pitiful, 
 rested upon her in silence. He shuddered slightly as 
 the perfectness of her beauty, vivified, almost enno 
 bled, by the feeling that swayed her, penetrated 
 his senses, like an essence that deadens the nerves 
 through excess of sweetness. 
 -h 192 H-
 
 WHY BLAME THE BRASS? 
 
 "The only thing that counts with me if you 
 mean me is the one thing you lack." 
 
 " What do I lack ? " she demanded, confronting 
 him with a courage that was as far from hardihood 
 as it was pitifully far from innocence. " What do I 
 lack that that Miss Caruth has ? " 
 
 "I cannot tell you," he said gently, " unless 
 Stay ; I called you a red rose a bit ago. Well," 
 he looked gravely down into the eyes she raised to 
 his own, full of insistent question, " well, there 
 are roses, you know, child, and there are stars." 
 
 " Why why" she stammered breathlessly. 
 
 "... Men want the stars because they can t get 
 them; and they do not care for the roses because " 
 With a storm of color she took his meaning at last, 
 and with a long light step reached his side, and 
 raising her gloved hand struck him fiercely across 
 the lips. 
 
 She stood an instant longer facing him, with head 
 erect, her eyes dark with inexplicable meanings, 
 a swooning pride, an agony of shame, of anger, of 
 despair ; turned upon him ; then gathering up her 
 rose-colored skirts she left him, walking proudly with 
 unlowered head from his sight.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 " Love s so different with us men ! " 
 
 THE paneled room, which had been converted into 
 a ballroom for Graeham s use, was considered the 
 Midland s crack exhibit. 
 
 Its conception had been a spark struck from 
 Carlysle s versatile genius, as a tribute to the land 
 the gods of Morganton had made their own; and 
 it was, indeed, a dignified and splendid embodiment 
 of the enthusiastic loyalty of the young financiers 
 for their adopted State, as well as a naively shrewd 
 advertisement of her resources. It was a nobly pro 
 portioned room, paneled in quartered oak hewn 
 from the Development Company s own lands, half 
 way to the groined and vaulted ceiling ; the inter 
 vening space, divided into medallions by scones of 
 dull silver, was decorated by a series of exquisite 
 views from the surrounding landscape. Crawdorn, 
 an erratic young genius, who in a fit of divine sulks 
 with his muse had thrown in his lot with the Devel 
 opment Companv, in the first "fine careless rapture" 
 of his passion for Alabama, had spent himself unstint 
 edly upon his paintings, grasping with fine artistic 
 sense the buoyant spirit of the land beneath its lan 
 guorous serenity. He had fixed forever upon his 
 -h 194 +-
 
 SO DIFFERENT WITH MEN 
 
 canvas the subtle fascination of the South to these 
 hard-headed young business men, who had come to 
 Alabama to make money and found themselves con 
 strained to make love, enamoured against their wills 
 by the soft seductive witchery of a land " where 
 it is always afternoon." He had caught and prisoned 
 on his canvas the soul of the landscape, in glimpses 
 of dim blue mountain ranges veiled in mist ; the 
 brown, mysterious aisles of endless pine woods ; 
 the zigzag flight of a covey of partridges across a 
 cornfield ; a spit of silver-green cane hiding a wild 
 duck s nest ; Chinquepin in her lovely Undine mood 
 singing among the pines, or a rugged bit of the open 
 country strewn with ore-veined rocks ; a stretch of 
 the river like a nether sky, " winding clearly to the 
 sea." 
 
 Over the chimney-piece the panel was built solidly 
 into the wall, and showed in the background a dim 
 
 7 O 
 
 land in ruins, a dead land, stark and cold, one felt 
 it to be, half hidden by bands of mist, like a 
 winding-sheet across its face. The only touch of 
 light amid the browns and grays and dusky purples 
 of the landscape, was a band of clear orange behind 
 the mountains. It was the orange that precedes 
 sunrise, and its light fell full upon a lovely female 
 form in the foreground, standing with strong, white 
 arms extended toward the east, her noble, beautiful 
 face turned back across her shoulder to the dead 
 land at her feet ; and, so perfectly had the artist 
 -i- 195 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 interpreted the spirit of the country that he painted, 
 the smile of hope upon the frank young mouth of 
 the New South, and the deep glance that she cast 
 backward full of love and renunciation, were touched 
 with a trace of the martyrdom that has been the 
 portion of those who have lived, no less than those 
 who have died, for Dixie. 
 
 The room was without upholstery, depending for 
 its expression upon its wall decorations ; and the 
 lights that struck upward from the polished oaken 
 floor were lost in the mellow shade above or absorbed 
 by masses of palms that were grouped about the 
 archways, softening the vistas in every direction 
 with an effect austerely simple. The great room was 
 empty, save for the musicians behind their screen 
 of palms, waiting like a great undaubed canvas for 
 its figures. 
 
 The ball hung upon the host, and Graeham upon 
 Mrs. Carlysle, who awaited in her reception-room, 
 with visible nervousness, the appearance of her hus 
 band, who had been despatched to fetch their guest, 
 Miss Larkin from Chicago, who, en route to Florida, 
 had stopped a night with the Carlysles. Peter Clark, 
 Miss Larkin s partner in the cotillion, waited beside 
 Mrs. Carlysle with his usual graceful impassivity, 
 that covered to-night a profound indifference, only 
 half hearing the lady s gracious explanations. 
 
 " A special providence, Peter, nothing short of 
 it ! Yes, the daughter of an old friend of Jim s, 
 -+ 196 4-
 
 or a sister, it is. Chicago ! No good cometh out 
 of Nazareth ? Fie, for shame ! Wait until you see 
 Gallic, and be properly ashamed of your heresy. 
 Yes, her name is Callie oh, Calthea, I believe, 
 is n t it, Jane ? Quite a quaint old name um - um ! 
 Family name? yes. You do not know yet how 
 lucky you are ! She is a beautiful girl, but er 
 a little unsophisticated. Her first ball! think of 
 that ! You must be lovely to her, Peter, and put her 
 on to things, you know." 
 
 " You are awfully good to give me the chance, 
 and you are to understand that my loveliness to 
 her will be limited only by what I think she will 
 stand for, coming from er the West." 
 
 " Here ! " broke in Graeham menacingly ; and 
 Clark amended, with a smile, 
 
 "The Middle West. But about putting her on. 
 My dear lady, suppose you put me on ! I m awfully 
 unsophisticated, myself. Is Miss Larkin s lack of 
 sophistication, for instance, a matter of degree or the 
 simon-pure article ? It s just as well to know, you 
 know, in case " 
 
 "Tut, tut!" smiled Mrs. Carlysle reprovingly. 
 " Is this the way you appreciate my confidence in 
 you ? It is the real thing, I assure you. 
 
 " Oh, milk and water ; oh, mirth and innocence ! 
 
 " Better not put anything on futures, Clark," ad 
 monished Graeham, with a sage shake of the head. 
 
 -+ 197 -H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Be sure of the quality of the milk and water before 
 you plunge." 
 
 " What, have you seen her ? " 
 
 " Sure. She s a corker." 
 
 " Do you remember Rose-Red-and-Snow-White in 
 the fairy book, Mr. Clark ? " inquired Jane, by way 
 of supplementing Graeham s terse description. 
 
 " Young ladies with four hyphens in their names 
 are a cut above me," Clark deprecated ; " but I 
 say, Mrs. Carlysle, is there anything here to ah, 
 to drink, you know ? My nerves are not what they 
 once were, and really I m very much agitated by all 
 this." 
 
 "Pinaud s double extract of White Carnation ?" 
 
 " Thanks, no ; I never take anything stronger 
 than " - the words died on his lips, exhaled slowly 
 in a gasp of surprise. 
 
 Carlysle was advancing through the long suite of 
 rooms, with a woman on his arm whose slender shape 
 shrunk shyly against him, as though she sought to 
 conceal herself from the eyes turned upon her. No 
 one noticed Clark s unfinished sentence ; an odd 
 tension had fallen upon the little group, a tension 
 that suggested in some inexplicable way a personal 
 interest, keen and suppressed, by each spectator in 
 the scene that went forward, as though upon the 
 stage where each actor waited in silence for his cue. 
 
 Carlysle reached his wife s side, and resigned his 
 charge to her with graceful ceremony. Callie stood 
 -+ 198 +-
 
 SO DIFFERENT WITH MEN 
 
 erect, with head well up upon her long straight throat, 
 and her eyes, under the heavy shadow of their lashes, 
 immovably upon Clark s face, in a gaze too serene for 
 defiance yet full of a hard challenge. She returned 
 the greetings of the other two with a quiet word, 
 and dropped easily into an attitude of repose at Mrs. 
 Carlysle s side. Mrs. Carlysle presented Clark in a 
 couple of words, and the two saluted each other, still 
 with the odd air of listening for the prompter s voice 
 in the wings. The girl was no whit behind the man 
 in graceful ease ; if anything, Clark was the more 
 shaken of the two. A slight flush had replaced his 
 momentary pallor and an imperceptible smile curled 
 the corners of Callie s mouth, as they gazed steadily 
 at each other. 
 
 " Mrs. Carlysle has been awfully good to me, Miss 
 Larkin," said Clark, crossing the space to her side. 
 " She has put your happiness for the evening into 
 my hands. May I assume my guardianship at once ? " 
 He offered his arm as he spoke, and Gallic laid her 
 hand within it, with the same upward lift of her 
 lashes that she had practiced on her friend in the 
 mirror an hour before. 
 
 " I ought to be willin to trust you, ought n t I ? " 
 she murmured, so low that only he caught it, if in 
 deed he did. 
 
 " If you only knew how happy you make me ! " 
 he replied mechanically, too absorbed by the situa 
 tion to know what he said or what she had said 
 
 -h 199 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 to him, engrossed by the thought of getting her 
 from under the eyes of the group within the room. 
 With a last murmured word of farewell or promise 
 to meet them later, he drew her with him to the cor 
 ridor beyond. 
 
 Graeham broke the tension with a quick laugh as 
 they disappeared. 
 
 " I think she went Clark one better, eh, Carlysle? " 
 
 " They have met before," said Miss Caruth mus 
 ingly ; " I wonder where ? " 
 
 " How well Peter did his part ! " sighed Mrs. Car 
 lysle. " He is so satisfactory ! " 
 
 " How well she did hers ! " corrected Carlysle, with 
 a light of genuine admiration in his eyes. " If there 
 is one thing in man or woman, dear my lord/ that 
 I do revere, it is grit ! " 
 
 Clark and his companion meanwhile walked the 
 full length of the corridor in silence : Clark, conscious 
 of the eyes that followed the beautiful woman on 
 his arm, was voiceless in the effort he made to control 
 the tumult that shook his nerves ; and she, too, was 
 silent, although, as Clark became aware in a sub-con 
 scious way, she did not share his emotion. Her long, 
 elastic step fell evenly with his own, and the hand 
 upon his arm was light and steady. Clark strained 
 it to his heart as he bent over her. 
 
 " Blossom, Blossom ! " he whispered unsteadily. 
 " At last ! At last ! " The girl turned her face to him 
 with slow, elaborate grace, letting her eyes just skim 
 ^ 200 H-
 
 his face with a slight, gracious smile, the smile 
 of a woman Avho ignores a boldness, preferring to 
 construe it a blunder. Then - 
 
 " My name s Miss Larkin," she murmured suavely. 
 " Maybe you did n t hear what Mrs. Carlysle said." 
 Then before Clark could catch his breath she went 
 on in Jane s best manner, perfectly rendered : " This 
 promises to be quite a brilliant affair, does it 
 not?" 
 
 " Quite," dropped mechanically from Clark s lips. 
 As he looked down upon her, walking calmly at his 
 side, her cheek turned from him in an attitude of 
 graceful ease, profound amazement succeeded by 
 amusement, that was not unmixed with chagrin, sped 
 across Clark s deeper mood, like rack across a storm 
 cloud. His eyes continued to rest upon her averted 
 face, greedily reclaiming each unforgotten charm. 
 The tender outline of her throat that had fitted 
 the curve of his palm ; the curl of her self-willed 
 mouth; the arch upward tilt of her nose, all, all 
 were the same. His eyes softened with a smile, 
 as they rested upon the dusky hair curled low 
 upon her brow and throat. He remembered well 
 hoAv she had hated her beautiful red hair, and how 
 often she had entreated him to let the color be 
 changed. 
 
 Just before they reached the stairs they passed 
 the curtained doorway of a deserted reception room, 
 and Clark turned toward it. His companion met his 
 -+ 201 -f-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 glance of passionate entreaty with raised brows of 
 perfectly controlled and courteous inquiry, which 
 Clark in his turn endeavored to beat down by a 
 remonstrant frown. 
 
 " We can t talk down there, among all those 
 people ! " he urged with tender roughness. " Come, 
 darling." 
 
 The girl s smile was as graciously unattached as 
 before, as she drawled sweetly : " Aw, yes we ken ! 
 Lessen," archly, " lessen you air goin to tell 
 me er secret; n you d better not, fur" here 
 she suddenly made a transition to Jane s manner, 
 that would have amused Clark hugely at any other 
 time "I could n t keep a secret to save my life, 
 really ! " 
 
 "You foolish child," said he gravely, after an in 
 stant of hard scrutiny ; " do you suppose I will be 
 put off with mummery of this sort ? lola ! " 
 
 She drew her hand coldly from his arm, and 
 glanced him over with conscious dignity. 
 
 "I see Mrs. Carlysle just below us there; I will 
 join her," and she sped lightly down the stairs, leav 
 ing Clark to join her if he would upon the landing, 
 exasperated and a trifle out of breath as he drew her 
 hand into his arm again. 
 
 " We 11 have it out before the evening is over," 
 he said quietly. " You belong to me for the 
 evening," he ended, with a shadow of his old caress 
 ing masterfulness as he looked down into her eyes, 
 -+ 202 -i-
 
 SO DIFFERENT WIT II MEN 
 
 that beat down his own with a cool consciousness of 
 power that startled him. 
 
 " I wonder," she observed calmly, as they walked 
 through the anteroom leading to the ballroom, "I 
 wonder what right you have to speak to me in this 
 way?" 
 
 " Right ! " he echoed hoarsely, letting go his hold 
 upon himself for a second. Suddenly he laughed, 
 an easy laugh of ownership, caressing, tolerant. 
 " The gods themselves cannot take back their gifts, 
 Blossom, and no more can a woman ! . . . This is 
 a magnificent floor ! May I have the pleasure ? Have 
 you forgotten how to waltz?" he asked, as she stood 
 a moment in silent struggle. " Ah, I see you have 
 not ! I taught you well, did I not ? ... Right ? " 
 he went on after a space, gravely, yet with the note 
 that comes to the voice in speaking to a child. 
 " Right, you say ? I have the same right I ever had, 
 - the right you gave me, lola ! And and " he 
 hesitated, " the other." 
 
 " What other ? " she asked coldly, though he felt 
 the start that ran through her as he answered, simply, 
 
 "The child." 
 
 The ball was at its height when Carlysle came to 
 anchor at his wife s side, with a smile of triumph. 
 
 " Our little guest from She-car-go is having the 
 time of her life. The men are mad about her, eh ? " 
 
 "The men !" said she, in a tone of reserved nega- 
 -*- 203 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 tion, as she drew Carlysle to a position that com 
 manded the whole ballroom. Within, the long lines 
 of the cotillion were weaving in spirals, melting, form 
 ing, dissolving, and reforming into undulating lines, 
 joined by a rainbow arch of gauze; the delicately 
 tinted dresses of the women giving to the whole 
 the aspect of a garden border, with tulips gayly 
 a-blow. 
 
 " Peter has been perfectly lovely to her ; he has 
 scarcely left her side all the evening, and it takes 
 courage to face that." 
 
 She indicated by a play of feature Callie s figure, 
 italicized by the brilliant rose-colored gown, and by 
 a very perceptible space left upon each side of her 
 by the women who stood next her in the line. The 
 girl s head was still held high, and her eyes, be 
 neath their drooping lashes, did not waver from 
 Clark s face as with a low word, a smile, a glance, 
 he guided her among the unfamiliar figures of the 
 dance. Carlysle s laugh had a note of pity as he 
 watched the cruel little comedy, that had its tragic 
 underlining. 
 
 " I always thought Peter had a sort of grit, but I 
 never suspected him of that sort of courage. He s 
 in the deuce of a funk too," he added, watching Clark 
 keenly. Clark s face was set in his society expression 
 of detached nonchalance, that in women s eyes added 
 piquancy to his delicate and unfailing attention to 
 a woman s slightest want : the combination had won 
 H- 204 +-
 
 SO DIFFERENT WITH MEN 
 
 for him the verdict among the women he knew of 
 being the possessor of "a perfectly lovely man 
 ner ; " but something in the clinch of his jaw, that 
 squared his chin and straightened his lip, betrayed 
 to the watchers without his consciousness of the 
 little play that went on about him, of skirts 
 swirled deftly aside to avoid contact with the rose- 
 colored gauze, of cheeks turned and glances that 
 passed her blankly, hands extended unavoidably 
 in the convolution of the dance, but timed exactly 
 to miss Callie s own. 
 
 " She s a beauty, for a that an a that ! " ob 
 served Carlysle, with a faintly vindictive complai 
 sance, that drew a smile from his wife as she gave a 
 shrug of disgusted acquiescence. 
 
 " Of course, that is it. If it were not for her 
 -her"- 
 
 " Seductiveness," supplied Carlysle, with the air of 
 having said all there was to say in a word. 
 
 " Yes ! No woman on earth could be expected to 
 stand Callie s glance, and that smile!" Mrs. Carlysle 
 shivered daintily. 
 
 " Do be fair, Kate ! The girl can t help her type, 
 you know. That s nothing but atavism ; under that 
 ancestral glaze of hers she s a perfectly common 
 place little earthenware pippin. What offends you 
 is merely a sort of natural fascination, like the play 
 of color in certain birds and fishes." 
 
 " We have rather passed the play of color stage, 
 -*- 205 -i
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 Jim. And no nice woman would put up with natural 
 fascination in another Avoman for a moment, as you 
 perfectly know." 
 
 "I suppose you know who she is, Kate? " said he 
 quietly, after a moment of silence. Mrs. Carlysle 
 whirled swiftly upon him. 
 
 "lola Jourdan ! " - tensely; " I have felt it for 
 days ! " Her eyes passed on, and rested reflectively 
 upon Clark s face. " Can it be possible that he 
 knows ? " 
 
 " Clark ? Oh, yes ; he knows now. Peter met 
 her here two years ago, when he was working the 
 old Chinquepin deal with her father. He stopped a 
 month in the country, near her father s plantation." 
 Carlysle spoke without special significance, but his 
 wife s hand closed with instant comprehension upon 
 his arm, in a nervous grasp of sympathy. 
 
 " Oh, Jim, my poor boy, are you to lose Chinque 
 pin at last? After all you have done ? " 
 
 " Never mind," he said cheerfully, after an instant 
 of silent sympathy with her trouble ; " don t worry, 
 Kate ; who knows but it may work out right in the 
 end?" 
 
 " How can he marry her as things are ? " 
 
 " I wish to God I knew ! " said Carlysle, with his 
 eyes narrowed in thought. " It is a terrific situation 
 for Clark Peter, of all men ! Graeham, now - 
 Graeham has the tough fibre of manliness in him, that 
 would face the world down and force its respect ; but 
 -H 206 H-
 
 SO DIFFERENT WITH MEN 
 
 Peter would go to pieces under it. That infernal 
 will of old Jourdan s has blazoned the thing from 
 one end of the country to the other, and it would 
 simply mean to walk into the blaze of the footlights 
 and announce himself a monumental cad ; and when 
 a man happens not to be a cad, as Peter is not ! 
 Oufjlit to pay ? I wish to heavens there was a 
 chance of his escaping payment in this particular 
 coin, at least ! That idea, Kate, that in a case like this 
 the woman is the only one who pays, is the deadest 
 fallacy of an enlightened age threadbare, rotten ! 
 When you hit the level of the fundamentals, that 
 thing ceases to be a question for society ; at that level 
 we are human beings merely, and we settle upon the 
 basis that no human being escapes the consequences of 
 his own acts. This has nothing to do with morality, 
 as you see morality ; this is the thing men call honor, 
 and it keeps society s head to the wind ! It s a stan 
 dard set for men, by men who know themselves and 
 each other and women ; and men settle it in their 
 own way, with the man who dares ignore it. What 
 it foots up to in this case is that Clark will brand 
 himself a puppy if, having refused to right this 
 girl, he now marries her under the terms of her fa 
 ther s will, and takes the money old Jourdan offered 
 him as a bribe." 
 
 "Who knows that he refused ? " 
 
 " The presumption is that he did ; he did not 
 marry her." 
 
 -+ 207 ^
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " But she Callie may not be willing ? " 
 
 " Women have no choice in a thing like this ; 
 they must ( get the world s warrant or go under." 
 
 " No choice, indeed ! Have you seen James Good- 
 loe s letter, that came to-night? How on earth, Jim, 
 is this thing to end?" 
 
 Carlysle flung responsibility from him, with a shrug 
 of his graceful inconsequent shoulders. His wife 
 went on : 
 
 " He is going abroad on business, and wants to 
 take her with him. He wants her to meet him in 
 New York in two weeks, and marry him before they 
 sail." 
 
 "The deuce he does! has Callie seen the letter?" 
 quickly. 
 
 " Yes, naturally. She was delighted ; agreed to 
 go at once." 
 
 " Agreed ! " 
 
 Carlysle stood in thought, with his eyes upon the 
 brilliant scene within, where the lines were forming 
 for the last time. A long-drawn golden note from 
 the orchestra, and the garden borders seemed flat- 
 
 7 O 
 
 tened by a passing breeze ; broke, scattered, and 
 resolved themselves into a great wheel of promenad- 
 ers, gayly chattering. Callie with Clark passed the 
 open doorway, where Mrs. Carlysle stood. His head 
 was bent low over her ; he seemed to plead with her. 
 She nodded carelessly, with eyes that glanced away 
 from him, and the two passed out of sight. 
 -H- 208 +-
 
 SO DIFFERENT WITH MEN 
 
 " Clark is what women call a fetching fellow/ 
 isn t he, Kate?" 
 
 " Peter has a most ex-qui-site manner," said Mrs. 
 Caiiysle judicially; "but I 11 leave you to say how 
 far manner counts, when it comes to what you call 
 the fundamentals. 
 
 In the meantime, in a glazed balcony, separated 
 from the ballroom by a screen of palms that con 
 verted it into a tiny jungle, lit dimly by the winter 
 moon low in the sky without, Clark and the girl 
 were facing those same " fundamentals." 
 
 Clark stared at the bar of moonlight upon the 
 tiles at his feet with moody eyes ; the girl leaned 
 easily back in the corner of the low seat they shared. 
 They were silent ; but the silence quivered, strained 
 across the raw edge of feeling. 
 
 " I know," resumed Clark, with his voice full of 
 rough, unused notes, " Great God, I ve had cause 
 enough to know ! that it is worse than madness to 
 reason with you." 
 
 " Yes, I hate it," said she calmly ; " let s talk 
 erbout th party." 
 
 " But it is worse even than madness, to let you 
 wreck your life and mine by this piece of folly. Our 
 relation to each other concerns no one on earth but 
 our two selves and the executor of your father s will ; 
 and Mr. Cartright is your uncle, he will be as anx 
 ious as I to keep this quiet. Not three people in the 
 
 -H- 209 --
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 world need know that we have been married pri 
 vately. We would be together just as we used to 
 be ; think of that, lola ! Together again, and free 
 to live our lives as we please. With this money 
 for the falls, we could live in the East somewhere ; 
 and who would ever know what your past had 
 been?" 
 
 lola laughed a low, stinging laugh, that flushed 
 Clark s forehead with a sudden heat. 
 
 "My past!" she echoed. "You air awful good 
 to overlook my past ! " Her bosom was rising and 
 falling in quick pants, torn by the same unendurable 
 shame that had maddened her at Graeham s words : 
 a raging sense of injustice, somewhere, flung her 
 in fierce revolt against her own nature that had 
 betrayed her ; and in that one scathing instant of 
 self-knowledge and self -scorn, that implacable " unto 
 the third and fourth generation " fulfilled itself, 
 and in heredity s grip Marthy McGuion s daughter 
 rehearsed, concentrated into one moment of agony, 
 her mother s shame that had rankled for forty 
 years. " He called me er red rose," she said, hur 
 rying her words with gasps of mocking laughter 
 between ; " but even he, did n t low I could be 
 bought." 
 
 " < Bought ? " echoed Clark coldly. "You would 
 be my wife." 
 
 " But er bought wife ! Bought with th name of 
 wife, the same as I d buy you with Chinquepin ! " 
 -+ 210 -H-
 
 SO DIFFERENT WITH MEN 
 
 Clark made a gesture of restrained anger. " You 
 do not understand, lola. You never could under 
 stand that a man has a duty to the world, to him 
 self as part of the world. We could have been happy 
 in the old days in the old way, if you d only have 
 been reasonable." He dropped upon his knee at her 
 side, and tried to draw her to him in his old-time 
 caressing way. " Come back to me, Blossom, and 
 have done with all this talk about the past, like a 
 little tragedy queen ! You have n t changed an atom, 
 take my word for it ; you are the same adorable, ex 
 asperating, natural creature that loved me because 
 she could n t help it, being made for loving ! Come ; 
 we 11 bring the old days back, and we 11 have the 
 little chap with us if you say so. What difference 
 does a scrap of printed paper or a dozen careless 
 words from a minister make to us now, except 
 to secure the property to you and to the boy ? Say 
 you will, dear ! Let me arrange with Mr. Cart- 
 right." 
 
 But she thrust him from her and faced him 
 steadily, as unlike the palpitating creature that he 
 had known, as her gaze that studied him coldly 
 told him that he was unlike the lover of those 
 days. 
 
 "You used to tell me do you remember? over 
 
 V over, that I did n t understand. I did n t then ; 
 
 but Peter, I do now. Maybe it is n t the bit uv 
 
 writin or th preacher s word that makes th differ- 
 
 -+ 211 H-
 
 ence ; but it s it s something inside uv me, that 
 tells me it is not right to go back to you, no matter 
 how, with th bit uv writin or without it, as you 
 say. That girl that lived with you," she went on 
 slowly, as though the thought were beating itself 
 out in her brain stroke by stroke, "has grown up 
 into me, like my little-girl self with a doll grew up 
 into her. She did not know all that she wanted, and 
 she took what she could get, like any child ; but / 
 know what I want now ; I want to be er star like 
 like her." 
 
 Peter Clark was an ordinary young fellow, with a 
 rather cheap earthenware soul; but even cheap earth 
 enware needs to be filled, having been moulded in the 
 shape to receive and hold and give, and having 
 been filled ever so shallowly once, aches emptily when 
 dispossessed; and as he met the girl s face intent 
 upon the thought constraining her, the realization was 
 driven home to him, like a dull nail into his brain, 
 that he had lost her, and with her the hopes and 
 ambitions, paltry enough no doubt, yet making the 
 sum of life to him. He had loved lola Jourdan 
 cleanly and honestly, and had been truer to his 
 illicit union with her than many men are to their 
 marriage vows ; he loved her now ; he had given her 
 in those days all that was in him to give ; but cour 
 age, the sort of courage that it took to face the 
 frown of his plaster gods and their tinny thunders, 
 was not in him. But the same God that made the 
 -i- 212 -^
 
 SO DIFFERENT WITH MEN 
 
 soul of the coward made compromise, and Clark 
 turned to it gratefully. Hoodwink his gods, since he 
 dared not defy them ! 
 
 " Do you fully understand that you must give up 
 this money forever, unless you comply with the terms 
 of your father s will ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And what then, Tola ? What future for you and 
 for the child ? I find you here, in this preposterous 
 masquerade, the guest of the Carlysles ; but for how 
 long?" 
 
 He turned away restlessly, measuring the little 
 space with a stride, and back. " I know you too well," 
 he said, looking keenly down on her, " to dream 
 that you will be frank with me ; but no woman, not 
 even you, would be so mad Is there another 
 man ? " 
 
 " Yes," she breathed. 
 
 " You love him enough to sacrifice your fortune 
 for his sake ? " 
 
 " A thousand times over for one hour as his 
 wife ! " 
 
 " Does he know ? " asked Clark hoarsely. 
 
 "Know? What?" 
 
 " Of the sacrifice you are making, for one thing, 
 and why you make it." 
 
 " Sacrifice, pooh ! F I had th whole round world 
 in this hand and heaven in this," she held out her 
 lovely arms to him with outstretched hands, in an 
 -t- 213 *-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 unconsciously dramatic gesture, " I d give them 
 a million times over fur fur him." 
 
 "But you have not told him," said Clark cruelly; 
 " and when you do " He paused, his own jeal 
 ous misery silenced by the agony that looked at 
 him from her eyes. He bent over her in quick re 
 pentance. " My poor girl, you were afraid to tell 
 him ? Would the brute dare to think would 
 any man living dare to think an evil thought of 
 you ! Was that what you meant about stars and 
 < roses ? " 
 
 She thrust him off, turned from him with hidden 
 face; and Clark stood staring out at the lank, gray 
 fields, crossed by stalking shadows from the sinking 
 moon. 
 
 " lola, give me a chance to right the wrong I did 
 you, dear, in the only way I can ! If I could I would 
 undo the past, make it possible But no ; why do 
 I lie ? I would not ! I know how it will be with you. 
 Destiny has always constrained you, like a curse ! 
 You will tell this man, and when you do he will 
 have no more of you ; then you must come back to 
 me, and why not now ? " 
 
 lola shivered, and shrunk from his tone as though 
 he had laid his eager, importunate hands upon her; 
 but she made no other answer. 
 
 "You will not?" 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 " I love you, I tell you ! " 
 
 -H 214 -
 
 SO DIFFERENT WITH MEN 
 
 "You love Chinquepin," she answered, with a smile 
 too weary to be bitter, and too transient to display 
 the tinge of pique he listened eagerly for. 
 
 " I 11 prove it, lola ! Let the cursed water go ! 
 Come back to me in the old way ! " 
 
 She walked past him without reply, and he fol 
 lowed her, in silence, to the room beyond.
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 " Look to the soul 
 Pity it, stoop to it before you begin 
 (The true man s way) on justice" 
 
 CARLYSLE met them at the foot of the great stair 
 way, and took firm possession of his guest. 
 
 " No bloated monopolists about here, Peter," he 
 said lightly, but with a keen glance at the young 
 man s face; "I like to waltz with the belle of the 
 evening myself, occasionally. Mrs. Carlysle has just 
 gone up," he went on, addressing lola, "and in 
 stalled me as chaperone. Shall I take you up to her? 
 Or will you give me a turn, to remember the evening 
 by? Or let me get you something? Not an ice? 
 a glass of wine ? " 
 
 " Thank you, no," she returned wearily and a 
 little flatly ; and after a pair of words of coldest for 
 mality had passed between her and Clark, she turned 
 with Carlysle toward the stairs. 
 
 " You re sure you won t think better of the glass 
 of wine? Your triumph has be.en a bit too much 
 for you, eh ? " 
 
 He flushed a little under the sidelong, mocking 
 glance she turned upon him. 
 
 " You need n t do any more play-actin , Mr. Car- 
 -+ 216 +-
 
 LOOK TO THE SOUL 
 
 lysle ! I have never tasted a drop of wine in my life, 
 nor worn a decent dress, nor walked with a gentle 
 man as I am walking with you, and you know it per 
 fectly." 
 
 " Except what my eyes tell me of your beauty and 
 grace, child," hesitated Carlysle, "I know so little 
 of you. But I wish very much that it were more 
 that I was better able to help you, advise you ; for 
 something tells me that you need it sorely." 
 
 He laid his hand upon an open door that they 
 were passing at the moment. 
 
 "Will you not come in, it is not late, and my 
 study is just here? I wish to talk over Goodloe s 
 letter with you ; and I think you have something to 
 tell me, have you not?" he paused on the last word 
 and stood looking keenly down into her face 
 "Tola?" he added deliberately. 
 
 He felt the start that ran through her, and his 
 admiration rose as he perceived that she would not 
 waste herself in useless artifice. In the veins that fed 
 her delicate flesh ran a tiny runlet from the great 
 stream of stubborn courage, that for four years, 
 against overwhelming odds, amazed the world; and 
 it steadied her now, and stiffened her to meet the 
 ordeal before her. She was a shade paler than 
 before, but her liquid drawl was perfectly steady, as 
 she replied, 
 
 " You know already all I have to tell." 
 
 It took Carlysle a moment to raise the light upon 
 - 217 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 his desk and find her a chair; he began to speak in 
 a slightly peremptory tone, while still busied with 
 the light. 
 
 " You told me when I first met you here, at my 
 office, that you were from Chicago. That is not true, 
 is it?" 
 
 " It was partly true," she said carelessly. 
 
 " Were you not born and raised on your father s 
 plantation in Pike County, down the river here?" 
 
 She had been leaning back in her chair, with her 
 eyes upon one slippered foot protruding from her 
 flounces, and she did not rouse herself to answer ex 
 cept to lift her lovely impenetrable eyes to his. 
 
 " You told me when I first met you," she began, 
 unconsciously using Carlysle s own phrase, "that you 
 would n t never ax me no questions. N when er 
 gentleman gives er lady his honor-word, he is bound 
 to keep it." 
 
 " It was an implied promise, certainly. But, if you 
 remember, I added that my only concern with you 
 was to help you, and that is still true. If, to help 
 you more effectively, I should be forced to disregard 
 one part of my promise to more fully keep the other, 
 I think I should be justified, eh?" 
 
 No answer; and after a pause Carlysle went on. 
 
 " We 11 let that pass. Your father has left you 
 some very valuable property, lola, under certain con 
 ditions. Shall I explain it to you? That is really 
 what I wanted to speak to you about." 
 -+ 218 4-
 
 LOOK TO THE SOUL 
 
 "I know erbout Chinquepin n th other," she said 
 quietly. 
 
 " Is it possible that you knew already ? And you 
 gave no sign made no move to claim it?" 
 
 " I shall never claim it that way." 
 
 " Not claim it ! " cried Carlysle, shaken out of his 
 composure by the finality of her tone. " Preposterous ! 
 Why, this is the chance of your life, child. You are 
 too brave to let it slip from your grasp. With this 
 money and your beauty - But you will learn rap 
 idly enough what the world has for a woman like 
 you. Let me give you your first lesson to-night ; and 
 remember what I say, it will be of value to you. The 
 past is a dead thing, Tola ; dead life cells that we 
 slough off, as a snake does his outworn skin, that 
 we may clothe ourselves anew in strength and beauty. 
 In a measure you know this, for you have proved 
 it ! That past experience, that little " - he wavered 
 kindly "shadow on your life, will pass from the 
 minds of others ; let it pass from your own as well. 
 Take another grip on life, and let the past go 
 hang ! Take this money your father left you, and 
 set yourself right with the world, as he intended." 
 
 " Set m self right with th world, " she echoed 
 slowly; "ever body keeps on saying that to me. Pa 
 said it that night when I went back; n he said it 
 over n over ; and now you ! What does it mean, 
 Mr. Carlysle, to be right with th world ? " 
 
 " I don t know that I know," Carlysle said mus- 
 -H 219 -K-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 ingly; "but you know you have been at odds with 
 the world, and what put you there ? " 
 
 The half-dozen people Avho constituted the girl s 
 little world had, with the exception perhaps of Car 
 lysle, tacitly accepted her at her own valuation ; never 
 suspecting that the callous lightness so obstinately 
 interposed between herself and the world might be 
 a shield, snatched up at random in some moment 
 of stress and clung to afterward, behind which she 
 cowered bruised and shrinking in fierce isolation : 
 but the revelation that shone from her eyes, black 
 beneath her locked brows, and spoke in her trem 
 bling lips, that could not frame the words that strove 
 for utterance, drove home to Carlysle a stinging sense 
 of his injustice to her- She had sprung up and paced 
 the floor with her long, light step, that had the free 
 dom of the country-bred girl, the shiver of the silk 
 keeping pace with her as she walked ; a coil of her 
 hair had slipped down and lay along her bosom, and 
 she threaded it with shaking fingers as she paused 
 before Carlysle. 
 
 " You know th plantation folkses erlong th 
 ruver here, Mr. Carlysle ? Well, I was like that ; er 
 little cracker in blue-cotton checks n brogan shoes, 
 n what did I know erbout being right with th 
 world, or wrong with it? He was all th world I knew 
 or kered erbout. But you see, lie kered erbout his 
 i world, as he called it, more n he did erbout me, 
 and bime by he let me find it out, n then " 
 -+ 220 H-
 
 LOOK TO THE SOUL 
 
 "You left him?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And ?" 
 
 " You know th rest," she said wearily. " I come 
 back home to pa, n he told me to set myself right 
 with th world before I ever come nigh to him, n 
 I did n t know where to go ; n I had n t any more 
 money if I had known ; so I stopped here, n you 
 were good to me I don t know why ; n that s 
 all," she ended, " except Mr. Goodloe." 
 
 " Goodloe ! " cried Carlysle, with a start. " Do you 
 mean that man in Nevada? He will not hold you 
 to that insane agreement, in the face of this other 
 thing; I will not let him. That s what I wanted to 
 talk over with you. We 11 put a stop to that at 
 once." 
 
 She had turned a proudly questioning glance 
 upon him, in silent challenge of his right to do what 
 he had said. 
 
 "Think what this means to you!" Carlysle an 
 swered the quiet resistance of her glance, too much 
 in earnest to choose his words ; " fortune, respecta 
 bility, your child s good name." 
 
 "Respectability?" she echoed, not so much in 
 scorn as in restless questioning, as of a thing brooded 
 over in the seclusion of her own mind now brought 
 suddenly into the light of another s explanation; " f 
 it was not right to stay with him when we loved 
 each other, thought we loved each other, anyhow, 
 -+ 221 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 is it right to go back to him when we no longer 
 love each other, for a bit uv money ? " 
 
 Carlysle moved restlessly. " You do not consider 
 the moral question involved," he said hurriedly, 
 " your duty to your child, to society." 
 
 "77 Duty to society? What has society done for 
 me?" 
 
 " Marriage, I mean the legal tie," went on 
 Carlysle, not heeding her question, " is right, even 
 under those circumstances, because it is order, law ! 
 You asked what it meant to be right with the world? 
 That is what it means, to get in line with the 
 orderly course of things; to get one s self parallel 
 with the great silent body of right; and legal mar 
 riage is a part of that. I may seem inconsistent 
 about this matter with Goodloe, but I cannot stand 
 by and see you cut your throat in this way. I blame 
 myself bitterly enough for my stupid meddling with 
 your affairs, but it is not too late. A tie like that 
 between you and this man," he went on, feeling 
 his way as a surgeon might with his hand along a 
 broken limb, dreading the pain he must inflict, "is 
 not easily broken. Forgive him for the child s sake; 
 obey your father s command from his grave, for it 
 is nothing short of that! Let his repentance that 
 is what he intended be effective in righting your 
 life." 
 
 " I did n t low it was easy to break," she said 
 slowly; "but when they air broke, they stay broke, 
 H. 222 *-
 
 LOOK TO THE SOUL 
 
 they ain t no mendin them. I could n t go back 
 to him. Not now, knowing 1 what I know." 
 
 " lola, a woman would look as you look and act as 
 you are acting if there was another man. Is there ? " 
 
 An indescribable change passed over her face, 
 deepening it to tenderness so magically that Carlysle 
 fairly caught his breath. It was the first quickening 
 of the spirit he had ever detected in their unchan 
 ging depths, and he perceived it now with consterna 
 tion; the sudden springing into being of a force 
 he could not control. All that he had predicated 
 of her capacity for passion, in the early days of his 
 acquaintance with her, rushed now upon his mind in 
 a qualm of divination. 
 
 "NotGoodloe!" 
 
 She did not answer, except to press her hands upon 
 her heart, as though to shield its throbbing from his 
 eyes ; and he added slowly, - 
 
 "God help you, child!" 
 
 " Why ? " she demanded proudly, though a 
 frightened shadow had fallen across the radiance 
 of her eyes. " He has asked me to marry him at 
 once; urged it !" 
 
 " Because he does not love you," said Carlysle 
 tersely. 
 
 "How can you know? What right have you to 
 say?" 
 
 He brushed her protest aside with kindly peremp- 
 toriness. 
 
 -+ 223 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " I do know ; no matter how. I know that he 
 loves another woman." 
 
 " What other ? " breathlessly. 
 
 " One whose name shall not be brought into this 
 discussion ; but you know whom I mean." 
 
 She did not shiver or shrink under his words ; but 
 with the instinct that wild animals have she seemed 
 slowly to be turning to stone, hiding herself from 
 him by a sort of self-effacement that feigned emo 
 tional death. Carlysle went on in troubled argument, 
 which she seemed scarce to hear. 
 
 " When I proposed this plan to you, it was a 
 desperate remedy for what seemed to me would 
 have seemed to any man a desperate case. Good- 
 loe might have been the vilest brute unhung, and as 
 it is you are taking a frightful risk." 
 
 " I can make him love me ! When we are mar 
 ried " - 
 
 " It may never come to marriage." Carlysle inter 
 rupted her gently, conscious meantime of an under 
 current of thought, that wondered what stuff James 
 Goodloe could be made of, that could resist the 
 woman who stood before him proudly asserting her 
 ability to win him. "Have you considered what 
 Goodloe s attitude may be to a certain fact I 
 mean, after a certain disclosure has been made to 
 him, that in honor cannot now be delayed? He must 
 know the circumstances of your past life before he 
 marries you ; and in that case he may, and justifi- 
 -+ 224 +-
 
 LOOK TO THE SOUL 
 
 ably, refuse to fulfill his agreement Heavens, 
 child, do not look at me like that! " He turned from 
 her, and stood looking into the fire, with bent head, 
 for a space. 
 
 " If I had ever dreamed of this thing turning into 
 what it has upon my hands ! It seemed a perfectly 
 simple thing, done every day. In many of its phases 
 marriage is a civil contract ; no more, no less ; plain 
 business ! How the deuce could I know I was tan 
 gling myself up with a bunch of naked souls ? Held 
 up, by Jove, to solve a problem the devil himself 
 could n t straighten out. I will have no more to do 
 with it" Carlysle flung the situation from him 
 with a gesture of intolerable annoyance, only to break 
 out a moment later, as, with his hands behind him, 
 he paced his study floor. 
 
 "/am exactly where I was, squarely upon my ori 
 ginal position. Is it my fault that conditions have 
 slued round? When I advised concealing er, 
 ignoring, I should say facts in your past, and 
 arranged things that you might be er unin- 
 cumbered, I neither contemplated the possibility of 
 your becoming romantically attached to this man 
 a mere convenience, as I saw it ! nor any of this 
 intricate complication about the inheritance of this 
 money. Do you mean seriously to chuck up all 
 this property, for the sake of a man you ve never 
 seen ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " she breathed. 
 
 -H 225 -
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " But have you thought this thing out ? How, for 
 instance, do you propose to conceal your identity with 
 lola Jourdan ? If it were put to Goodloe," - he 
 suddenly swung round upon her, intently alert, 
 " I believe he would refuse to let you sacrifice your 
 property ! He would if he has a spark of manliness 
 in him." 
 
 " Never ! " cried lola, with an imperiousness that 
 startled Carlysle. " I have your positive promise, Mr. 
 Carlysle, made in Miss Caruth s presence, that my 
 identity should never be disclosed to this man, unless 
 he demanded it of you or of me. He has not done 
 so ; and until he does, I hold you to your promise 
 that he shall know me only as Mary Meadows." 
 
 Their eyes met in a brief trial of strength, each 
 striving to beat down the other s guard, to penetrate 
 the other s motive, to shake the other s resolve. 
 
 " I shall not allow you to deceive this man," said 
 Carlysle firmly. " Rather than you should do so, I 
 will take matters into my own hands and tell him " 
 
 "Tell him what?" 
 
 " What he must know of Mary Meadows s past 
 before he marries her." 
 
 "Of Mary Meadows s past? You swear that 
 you will mention no other name? Neither Gallic 
 Larkin, nor lola Jourdan, nor Miss Jane Caruth ? " 
 
 Carlysle shuddered with unconcealed repugnance. 
 
 " Certainly not Miss Caruth s ! Her name is not 
 to be connected with this er this matter, in any 
 -+ 226 +-
 
 LOOK TO THE SOUL 
 
 degree. Her part in it is done, and I shall at once 
 break off her connection with the letters. I shall 
 write this last one myself. And it you insist," with 
 a shrug, " the other names shall be withheld as 
 well." 
 
 " I forgot," said Tola, with deadly bitterness, "that 
 stars must not be mixed up with roses ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 "Not nothin ." 
 
 She stood, still threading the heavy lock through 
 her fingers as she thought. 
 
 " Will you swear, Mr. Carlysle, that when you 
 tell Mr. Goodloe of of my past, you will speak of 
 me as Mary Meadows and name no other name ? " 
 
 "Yes," said he reluctantly; "I will keep the 
 word I gave you." He offered her his hand as he 
 spoke, adding impetuously : " Upon my soul, Tola, I 
 believe it is better for you in the end to have this 
 thing told ! In the sort of marriage I proposed for 
 you first, reservations are fair enough; but love 
 and you love this fellow enough to sacrifice your 
 fortune for him, it seems ! love* is different. In a 
 marriage of love, your soul and spirit, as well as 
 your past that has gone into the making of that 
 soul and spirit, belong equally to this man and his 
 to you. If you give him love, take it from him ; life 
 with him would be hell with this thing between you. 
 Good-night."
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 " The secret lay on Up at brink 
 Of speech, in one fierce tremble to escape." 
 
 IOLA walked along the corridor in the direction of 
 her own room, each step seeming to plunge her deeper 
 into a fog of wretchedness, that had the vague tor 
 ture of a nightmare and something, too, of a night 
 mare s poignant inevitableness. 
 
 This was in part nervous reaction from the ex 
 citement of the earlier part of the evening, when 
 the intoxicating consciousness of her beauty had 
 strung her to a buoyant defiance of the difficulties 
 closing in upon her. 
 
 In the presence of that brilliant vision of herself 
 in Graeham s mirror, she had cast care from her. 
 That woman had only to demand of life to find its 
 gifts at her feet ! 
 
 The scene with Graeham had found her upon 
 the crest of this wave of triumph, and whirled her 
 through "both the infinitudes of love and hate" in a 
 
 O 
 
 moment, and left her staring blankly at the curtain 
 rung down between her and the stage, upon which 
 she had been in the act of stepping. This moment 
 had been the psychological crux of the girl s nature, 
 when the spiritual forces within her had gathered the 
 -.- 228 +-
 
 THE SECRET LAY ON LIP 
 
 tides of her being to themselves, leaving passion s 
 old demesne bare; and it had been followed in turn 
 by the struggle with Clark, when she had fallen from 
 the full height to which the new-born forces within 
 her had raised her, in the moment when she had 
 seen herself with the eyes of the women who had 
 refused to recognize her in the dance. In the mo- 
 
 O 
 
 ments when she could shake herself free of feeling 
 and think, she knew that they did not could not 
 - know aught of her story ; yet they had marked 
 her out by a thousand unmistakable evidences of 
 avoidance. Her woman s instinct had divined that 
 jealousy of her beauty might account for this, and 
 natural resentment at having one of the hotel domes 
 tics present among them as a guest might also play 
 a part. But there had been something deeper yet, 
 something she had seen before ; seen over and over, 
 spite of their care, in both Mrs. Carlysle and Miss 
 Caruth : a shrinking from her, a distrust of some 
 thing in her which they perceived and of which 
 she was herself ignorant, reflected back upon her 
 from their unconscious attitudes. Had it left some 
 stain upon her, then, that past? Does sin mark a 
 woman ? - Sin ? Her mind went back to her life 
 with Peter Clark, its narrow simplicity, its little 
 daily tale of simple cares and pleasures ; for even 
 Clark s wild oats had been neatly fenced in by his 
 smug conservatism with wonder. Had that been 
 sin? Her mind sped on to the time when know- 
 -+ 229 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 ledge had begun to grow upon her, dimming her 
 happiness with him like breath upon a pane, until 
 life became one aching bruise of suspicion that he 
 saw her, had seen her all along, as she was begin 
 ning to see herself in the light of her awakening 
 consciousness. Or, was the sin that she no longer 
 cared, as Carlysle said ; that she could sleep now at 
 night, and not lie awake and weep for the man from 
 whom she had fled ? 
 
 Tola raised her hands, and pushed back her heavy 
 hair restlessly as she walked. Do what she would, she 
 could not shake off the impression of that struggle 
 with Clark. His very presence seemed to have plunged 
 her steeped her! in the past, from which she 
 thought she had purged herself. She longed again 
 for the numbness of the months when she had first 
 known Carlysle and his wife ; her heart had been deaf 
 and dumb and blind in those days, and she herself 
 like an empty shell, swept dry and clean of passion. 
 Those were the days when they had begun to weave 
 her a future. She had not cared, because she could 
 not feel ; she had only longed, like a homesick child 
 shut out into the night, for the life she saw about 
 her, for the sheltered, bright, reposeful life, made 
 silken soft by love and deference, that Mrs. Carlysle 
 and Miss Caruth accepted as a matter of course. It 
 was though the girl had no understanding of it 
 the instinctive craving of a nature brought for the 
 first time within its hereditary environment. Iii the 
 -+ 230 !-
 
 THE SECRET LAY ON LIP 
 
 glimpses that she caught of Miss Caruth s life, she 
 had marked with eager envy the attitude of the men 
 about her, contrasting: it with what life had shown 
 
 O 
 
 her of men ; and as the months wore on, and the mean- 
 in^ of it worked into her mind, it became a source of 
 
 o 
 
 burning unrest to her, that was one of jealousy s most 
 subtle forms of torture. The expression of Graeham s 
 eyes when he looked at Miss Caruth, the bend of his 
 head over her as they walked together, the wooing 
 notes that would come into his voice (that he tried to 
 subdue in speaking to Jane), had been a galling re 
 velation to lola, who knew so well the blatant signs 
 of passion, that had not been thus sedulously hidden 
 from her eyes. She asked herself in jealous misery 
 why, and had found the answer in her past, from 
 which these people, while they had held out their 
 hands to her in help, had none the less turned away 
 their eyes. 
 
 She had agreed to the plan suggested to her by 
 Carlysle in sheer indifference, the atrophy of the 
 emotional part of her seeming to have withered will 
 and hope alike; and later, with the instinct of a crea 
 ture that had always clung, she had clung to it as a 
 plank in the waste of waters. 
 
 Then had come to her the startling secret revela 
 tion of Graeham as Goodloe, bringing with it the 
 realization of all that she had grown so ardently to 
 desire. At the besinnino;, love for Graeham as a 
 
 O O 7 
 
 man had not consciously constrained her so much as 
 
 -+ 231 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 cupidity ; he was the bread with which to satisfy this 
 new, strange hunger, that had awakened in her like a 
 fierce little beast with claws. In those early days he 
 had been but a means to an end ; he opened the way 
 to the dainty luxury, the refinements, the pleasures of 
 the life she saw about her. As she had told Graeham 
 long before, it was not money that she wanted; it 
 was merely that her nature demanded inarticulately 
 enough, but none the less insistently its proper 
 environment. But with the expanding of the deeper 
 side of her, under the influences about her, had come, 
 inevitably, deeper needs. Across the instincts of a 
 sensuous and passionate nature, inherited from a long 
 line of spoiled and imperious women, were cast the 
 wavering shadows of her newly awakened spiritual 
 life. Graeham became a spiritual need. He meant 
 moral cleanness and spiritual peace; her need for 
 him was doubly imperative; to be his wife absolved 
 her in her own thoughts from taint of her past, and 
 lifted her at once to warm security, in a world lined 
 and padded soft with luxury, a world that every 
 hidden force of heredity at work within her told 
 her was her own, of which she had someway been 
 despoiled. 
 
 The scar where her life had been torn from Clark s 
 had healed ; and the currents of her being, quick 
 ened by the impetus of the life about her, set to 
 Graeham in a freshet of passionate love, that the un 
 tarnished freshness of the man s own vigorous nature 
 -+ 232 H-
 
 THE SECRET LAY ON LIP 
 
 did nothing to check as she grew to know him bet 
 ter. A tactful use of her semi-domestic position in 
 the house easily created for her endless opportunities 
 of meeting him; and secure in her knowledge of the 
 secret bond between them, as well as in his admira 
 tion (which he did not attempt to conceal from her), 
 and absolutely confident in her own power to deepen 
 it into love when fate should elect a meeting between 
 them, the girl had let herself go to the full length of 
 her nature. 
 
 She had divined Miss Caruth s attraction for him 
 almost before Graeham was himself conscious of it ; 
 but, involved in the coil of her miserable secret, 
 and distrusting frankness, as all super-subtle natures 
 do, she had depended upon deepening her hold upon 
 him surreptitiously against the day of their final dis 
 closure each to the other, writhing meantime under 
 Graeham s half-caressing, half-rallying, never serious 
 attitude, which accepted her, as she knew with in 
 ward trepidation, at the value she had set upon her 
 self. And though she dreaded the day of reckoning 
 that must inevitably come, unable to loose even this 
 frail hold upon him. 
 
 But through all the miserable uncertainties of her 
 position her hope had been in Carlysle, that he would 
 in the end steer her safely through the chances of 
 disaster to the card-house of her hopes, and with his 
 high-handed assumption of moral responsibility for 
 other people, for in a certain way the girl under- 
 -H 233 H-
 
 stood Carlysle, insist upon the consummation of 
 the marriage ; and his incomprehensible change of 
 front at the last minute had dazed her. His meretri 
 cious concern for her good name and his own honor, 
 with which he had covered his determination to dis 
 close her past to Goodloe, and, for some reason which 
 she could not yet grasp, break her engagement with 
 him, had been the parting of the last strand in her 
 last cable of hope. 
 
 As she neared the end of Carlysle s suite, a door 
 at her side opened, and Miss Caruth, like a slim 
 crescent moon, dimly seen in white with hanging 
 hair, called her softly. lola hesitated, partly from 
 weariness, but more because the note of joyousness, 
 always an undertone of Jane s voice, to-night jarred 
 unbearably upon her mood of tense misery. But 
 after a moment spent in vain struggle to invent an 
 excuse, she yielded, and let Miss Caruth draw her 
 within. 
 
 " I was listening for you," said Jane. " Sit here 
 on the bed. I couldn t sleep until I knew." 
 
 " Knew what ? " Tola s voice was flatly unrespon 
 sive, and Miss Caruth was conscious of a slight 
 recoil. 
 
 " Of course I knew you were with Mr. Carlysle, and 
 what you were discussing. Are you Oh, Callie, 
 what are we to tell Mr. Goodloe ? " 
 
 " Mr. Carlysle will tell him ever thing," said she 
 quietly, with a long look into the other girl s eyes. 
 -- 234 +-
 
 THE SECRET LAY ON LIP 
 
 Miss Caruth was silent ; her lip was caught under 
 her teeth in a quick gasp of fear, and her eyes, full 
 of gentle concern, were fixed upon Tola s face with 
 half-shy sympathy. The two girls had been closely 
 drawn together, and had had deep insight into each 
 other s natures, since the correspondence with James 
 Goodloe had begun. But the contact had not made 
 them friends. There had been upon Jane s part an 
 inexplicable shrinking, and upon Tola s a proud con 
 sciousness of the other s recoil, and a more deter 
 mined withdrawal; though upon the surface they 
 had met without friction, with a gentle forbear 
 ance, indeed, from Miss Caruth, that was torture 
 thrice refined to Tola. Miss Caruth put her arm 
 gently about her unresponsive figure now and drew 
 her closer, so that the two stood enveloped in the 
 veil of her hair. 
 
 " I am sure it is best, Callie," she said softly ; 
 "James Goodloe is the sort of man to compel hon 
 esty, he gives so freely of himself. And some 
 thing tells me that it will all come right in the end. 
 Don t worry, you poor child." 
 
 lola did not reply ; her supple form in the lace 
 and gauze yielded to the other s arm, with the soft 
 coldness of snow. 
 
 " There is something in the man himself that 
 
 makes me know you have taken the right course," 
 
 went on Jane. "Jem Goodloe," she broke off with 
 
 a note of laughter, to cover the other s strained 
 
 -i- 235 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 quiet. " You don t mind my calling him i Jem/ do 
 you, Callie ? He s nearly as much my lover as he is 
 yours, you know ! He is so true and frank and 
 manly that he will be sure to understand ; he is 
 just the sort of man to forgive a woman any 
 thing ! And I know," Jane faltered a bit as she 
 strove to impart a sweet naturalness to the talk, spite 
 of the scarce veiled bitterness of the other girl s 
 silence, "I know he never will be able to resist 
 Claude ! Nobody on earth could stand out against 
 that darling baby ! " 
 
 No answer still, unless the unquiet heaving of 
 the bosom under the rose-colored gauze was answer. 
 Jane tried gently to draw Tola to a seat beside her. 
 
 o / 
 
 "Sit here, Callie, and let us talk it over. No? 
 Poor child, it will help it will ease the strain, 
 if no more, to tell it to some one. I know Mr. Car- 
 lysle is kind ; but he is a man, and I am a girl like 
 yourself. I can try to understand." 
 
 lola freed herself restlessly and walked slowly 
 about the room, drawing off her gloves. She stopped 
 at the foot of the bed and stood leaning with clinched 
 hands upon the rail ; her form in the brilliant dra 
 peries suggesting a quick tongue of flame, as she 
 swayed forward to look down into Jane s face, who 
 sat withdrawn into the shadows about the bed, the 
 hanging laces of her nightdress and her unbound 
 hair giving her a spirit-like indefiniteness of outline, 
 opposed to the other s vivid figure. 
 -+ 236 H-
 
 " F I ax you something will you tell me ? " 
 
 " I ? hesitated Miss Caruth, appalled by the 
 quivering intensity of the appeal, that was like an 
 importunate hand laid upon her ; " I am only a girl 
 like you, yourself ; I may not know, but if I know 
 I will tell you." 
 
 " I never could do play-actin ," began lola, in a 
 voice that had it been less purely musical must have 
 been harsh, it was so dry and level, " n talk erbout 
 myself like I was two f olkses. But but I wanter 
 know. I m bound to know ! " She paused abruptly ; 
 and when she spoke again, it w r as in a hard, shamed 
 voice. " Did you ever hear tell erbout two kinds er 
 women ; one sort that men call roses, and the other 
 sort stars? " 
 
 A flush rose in Jane s cheek, and for a moment 
 she covered her face with her hands. 
 
 " Yes," she said gravely, her eyes shrinking from 
 the lovely form before her. " I of course I know 
 what you mean, but no man has ever spoken of such 
 things in my presence." 
 
 After an instant, in which lola remembered that 
 Graeham had not hesitated to point his cruel speech to 
 her, with the words that clung like a festering thorn 
 in her mind ; and another, to beat down the shame of 
 the discovery that he should not have so spoken, 
 would not have so spoken to Miss Caruth, she went 
 on, making clumsy use of the figure that Graeham s 
 words seemed to have branded upon her mind. 
 -t- 237 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " F there was er woman that ever body took to 
 be er rose, but th woman knew in her soul that 
 she was er star that it was on y somethin that 
 she couldn t help, n hated, oh, hated worse then 
 anythin , that made folkses think so, could she," 
 she paused to wet her dry lips to force her trembling 
 voice on, "could she ever get to be er star like 
 you?" 
 
 Miss Caruth s hands were clasped about her knees, 
 and she held her solemn eyes unfalteringly upon the 
 white face of the woman bending over her. 
 
 " Why did she want to be a star?" she whispered. 
 " Was it for for some one else s sake? Was it 
 oh, Gallic, was it for James Goodloe s sake?" 
 
 " Yes, for his sake." 
 
 " Then, yes ! Yes ! She could be a star for him, 
 if if she loved him enough." 
 
 Jane was trembling nervously and her eyes were 
 wet with tears, as she slipped down the bed and 
 kneeled beside lola. 
 
 " Oh, Gallic, you poor, poor girl ! Why have you 
 never let us know ? Let us help you to be your star- 
 self ? I understand now. That was why you gave 
 up the money and and the other man ? You could 
 not be your better self, your star-self, as his wife ! 
 You were right, oh, so right ! and we have been 
 wrong. But we did not know, you see, and you did 
 not tell us. I see ; with James Goodloe you can be 
 your purer, better self. Yes ! There is something 
 -^ 238 -K-
 
 THE SECRET LAY ON LIP 
 
 in him that demands it. I have felt it myself in 
 his letters. I " - She paused shyly, but went on 
 more firmly after a moment : " I know a man of that 
 sort, one of those blundering fellows ; yet all the 
 time one knows that that he will have the divine 
 in love or nothing. It is the odor of the skies for 
 him always." She dreamed a moment, with tender 
 eyes looking into the dusk of the room, unconscious 
 of the burning gaze that the other girl fixed upon 
 her rapt face. " Listen, lola," she suddenly resumed 
 with tense earnestness. " Whatever comes to you, 
 cling to James Goodloe ! Hold to him, as you would 
 to a hand reached downward to you from the 
 skies ! " 
 
 " Air you in earnest ? " demanded lola, the words 
 stammering on her tongue. " You you won t never 
 stand in my way ? You swear it ? " 
 
 "I ? I stand in your way, poor girl ! What frantic 
 nonsense you are talking ! This thing you call the 
 ( star part of you is the thing we all are striving 
 for, I as well as you; it is what is purest and 
 strongest in us : strive for it, Callie ; fight for it if 
 you have to ; but never, never let it go." 
 
 " Will you swear not to come between us ? " 
 
 lola s face was perfectly colorless ; and her eyes, 
 unwaveringly upon Miss Caruth s, burned with a 
 deep flame, like the blue of molten metal. 
 
 " You are nervous and overwrought, Callie, or you 
 would not have such fancies. But yes; if it will 
 -+ 239 -*-
 
 make you happier, I will swear, as solemnly as ever 
 you like, that I will never take James Goodloe from 
 
 you." 
 
 The hands in Carlysle s study had made the circuit 
 twice and were edging round to three before he laid 
 aside his pen, and, with the frown of absorption still 
 upon his brow, blotted his signature to the last sheet, 
 with a mechanical accuracy that betrayed hard con 
 centration. He threw himself back in his chair at 
 last, plainly with the determination to apply the test 
 of the conservative second thought to the letter he 
 had just finished. 
 
 It was addressed to James H. Goodloe, and began 
 without preamble : - 
 
 " Six months ago I ran into a set of circumstances, 
 or they collided with me I can t say which, 
 though I am willing to shoulder the initiative, that 
 I presumed to think I could adjust to the advantage 
 of one, possibly of both parties, with whom those 
 circumstances were most vitally concerned." 
 
 Carlysle ran his eye hurriedly over the couple of 
 sheets following, which contained a succinct account 
 of the beginning of the correspondence with Good 
 loe, set forth with unvarnished frankness, that left 
 nothing concealed, except the single fact of Miss 
 Caruth s agency in writing the letters. No faintest 
 reference had been made to her in the letter; and 
 having assured himself with jealous care that the 
 -i- 240 H-
 
 THE SECRET LAY ON LIP 
 
 elision was complete and consistent throughout, Car- 
 lysle drew a sigh of relief, and passed on to the next 
 sheet, which began : 
 
 " The affair has now reached a point where, in 
 common honor between men, it is my duty to put you 
 in possession of certain facts in Mary Meadows s 
 past life; and having done so, I leave the outcome 
 to you." 
 
 Two lines further down he read : 
 
 " The young lady is a member of my own house 
 hold ; I regard her as a man would a loved and 
 deeply regretted young sister, and I acknowledge 
 the gravest responsibility for her future. I do this 
 duty demanded of me by my conscience, believing 
 that I am acting for her ultimate happiness and 
 good." 
 
 A dozen terse lines followed, in which the fact 
 that dominated Mary Meadows s brief past was told 
 with unshaded meaning. The naked fact, without 
 blame as without extenuation, was left with Goodloe, 
 and the writer took up his subject further along: 
 
 " Whatever your personal attitude to a situation 
 of this sort may be, there is in most men a reserve 
 of judgment, based upon their knowledge of the 
 demands that life makes alike upon men and women, 
 that in its working more nearly approximates jus 
 tice to the woman in such cases than any other 
 judgment known to me ; and it is to this quality in 
 you, Goodloe, that I appeal for this girl against 
 - 241 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 her past. I dare say we should not, as men, vary 
 appreciably in the essentials that make for purity in 
 a woman ; and I swear to you from the bottom of 
 my soul that I believe Mary Meadows to be a pure 
 woman, despite the fact that her child was born out 
 side the pale of statutory law." 
 
 "My inner imperative," he resumed toward the 
 last page of the letter, "thus far, has been justice 
 to you ; I have placed the facts with you ; the re 
 sult must be a transaction between your conscience 
 and you. What further I shall say here is said in 
 the woman s interest, and is dictated by my earnest 
 desire to secure her happiness, regardless of the 
 seeming inconsistencies of my own position in say 
 ing it." 
 
 The following page or two had given Carlysle a 
 bad half -hour; it had been hard writing, each word 
 weighed to express the nethermost shade of mean 
 ing, and yet leave the infinitesimal chink for retreat. 
 It had been clever juggling ; self-interest and pol 
 icy, inclination and duty, kept deftly spinning, until 
 the eye of conscience failed to distinguish between 
 them. To keep the letter of a promise and violate 
 the spirit is not plain sailing, when it comes to black 
 and white, and the primary meaning of English 
 words. 
 
 The furrow in Carlysle s forehead deepened as he 
 read ; he lifted his handkerchief delicately to his 
 brow, where drops of sweat were beaded. 
 -H- 242 -i-
 
 THE SECRET LAY ON LIP 
 
 "Mary Meadows takes a woman s view of the mat 
 ter, the view of a woman with a naturally innocent 
 and unworldly mind ; she conceives herself bound 
 in honor to fill her engagement with you, in spite 
 of the fact that she loves another man. She is will 
 ing to marry you, should you demand it; though to 
 do so will be to sacrifice her heart, which this man 
 holds, and, to be frank, a prospect that in a worldly 
 way is exceedingly advantageous. 
 
 " Except for this contingency, it is possible that 
 her happiest destiny might have been as your wife ; 
 but we are dealing with brutal facts, my dear Good- 
 loe, and the plain truth is that there is another man, 
 and that Mary Meadows loves him, and he loves 
 her and is anxious to make her his wife. He is, as I 
 have hinted above, a man of great wealth; and he 
 would lift her at once into a sphere where her beauty 
 and social talents would easily secure her prestige, 
 the position to which she was undoubtedly born, 
 for Mary Meadows is a woman of good blood and 
 family. 
 
 " I deplore this state of things very earnestly, but 
 I appeal to your manhood to prevent the sacrifice of 
 this woman s life to a vicarious pledge. 
 
 " You and I both know that when the last word 
 shall have been said for expediency, love is the 
 only life for a woman. Enough has passed between 
 the young lady and the man I mention, to assure me 
 that I make no mistake in thinking that a close and 
 -H- 243 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 tender bond exists between them; and I put it to 
 you, for the sake of the girl s happiness, to quietly 
 let this thing drop, without exposure for her. 
 
 " I must appear to you an unmitigated ass none 
 the less egregious because crassly well-meaning ! 
 My hope is that the future may justify me in your 
 eyes." 
 
 " That ought to fetch him, if he s the fellow I 
 take him for, and leave Peter a clear track," mur 
 mured Carlysle. " Jove, it was hard work steering 
 round those snags of conscience ! It takes a more 
 robust moral constitution than mine to set a lie down 
 in black and white. That cursed water power ! " 
 
 He rose with a moody sigh, that melted character 
 istically into a laugh. 
 
 " What between Jane s little flounces, that must 
 be kept out of the puddle at all costs, and Mary 
 Meadows the blamed little simpleton ! and Callie 
 Jove, how she looked me through to-night ! and 
 now, lola ! I am as pestered with women as if I 
 was a gay philanderer, instead of a perfectly respect 
 able married man doing a bit of financiering ! "
 
 INFINITE PASSION" 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ". . . The pain 
 Of finite hearts that yearn." 
 
 THE gray end of a spring evening was soaking the 
 brave new green from the fields and sponging the 
 sunset colors from the river, with folds of twilight 
 trailing from a dun sky. 
 
 A bleak wind was abroad on the flat stretches 
 of the river lands, hustling the rash young foliage 
 like a shrewish housewife ; cuffing the fluffy willow 
 catkins, and bending the lush canes along the river- 
 bank ; browbeating the sturdy thickets of young 
 cottonwoods, until they wrung their hands in panic 
 and turned the pale undersides of their leaves to 
 heaven, in fluttering protest that it was close on 
 April, and time for cottonwoods to be on hand. 
 
 The window in Miss Caruth s sitting-room looked 
 across the fields, and from the settle in the embra 
 sure she surveyed the wan landscape, with eyes that 
 seemed to have ravished the afterglow from fields 
 and river and turned it inward to her own heart, to 
 shine in still radiance from her dreaming eyes. 
 
 The room at her back was lighted only by a wood 
 fire and the borrowed sunlight of masses of daffodils 
 loading the tables. Miss Caruth was gowned in pale 
 -+ 245 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 yellow, to accent the color scheme of the room, or 
 it may have been to recall a memory : this latter 
 possibly, for she touched the yellow primroses that 
 she wore with an absent caress, and a smile as elu 
 sive and sweet as their delicate perfume ; pressing 
 them closer to her, as though they were in the secret 
 of the quick throbbing of her heart that made them 
 tremble, and her hurried breath that quivered in a 
 long sigh through closed lips, as the door opened 
 and Graeham crossed the room toward her. 
 
 They met with the air of having been but briefly 
 parted : neither spoke ; Miss Caruth gave him her 
 hands, and he raised them to his lips, kissed them 
 gravely, and stood holding them against his breast, 
 looking down upon her in unsmiling silence. 
 
 " Does it seem any more real, Jane?" 
 
 " A little more, perhaps. But I am not yet sure 
 that I shall not wake presently, and hear Jim won 
 dering where Graeham can have got himself. 
 Those first days before we had your cable, he said 
 it over and over." Jane paused, with a soft intake 
 of her breath that was a history of the days she men 
 tioned, before she went on, with rather tremulous 
 lightness: " You can t think what it s like when 
 you are not here ! " 
 
 " I know what it is like everywhere where you are 
 
 not," replied Graeham, with a controlled gentleness 
 
 that was almost hard. " Forget those weeks, won t 
 
 you? What do they count against a lifetime spent 
 
 -+ 246 -^
 
 -INFINITE PASSION 
 
 together ? Let us date life from this hour, and blot 
 out all that went before. Shall we, Jane ? " 
 
 " Oh," breathed Jane, and again her lightness was 
 a trifle forced, "blot out our first ride together?" 
 
 " No, not that ; I did not mean that." 
 
 " And our talk in the hut by the river that day, 
 when you called me your ideal ? I could not ! " 
 
 Graeham moved restlessly. " We do not need 
 ideals now," he said unsteadily ; " we have the real 
 thing, you know." 
 
 " And our footprints in the snow, side by side," 
 dreamily, " do you remember ? " 
 
 " Yes, I remember. Not that, either." 
 
 " Tell me just what you want to blot out, dear." 
 
 " Nothing," - hurriedly. " This hour here to 
 gether is so perfect if we could key our life to come 
 to its note ! It was some such thought that I was 
 reaching for, I dare say. Let it go. What else could 
 I have meant? " 
 
 " There is nothing lacking in the perfectness of 
 this hour, is there? " Jane pursued dreamily, yet with 
 an underlying purpose that Graeham divined. They 
 were still standing together, and as she spoke Jane 
 leaned lightly against Graeham, looking upward for 
 his answer ; and after an instant of hesitation that 
 betrayed a trace of effort, he bent his head and laid 
 his cheek against her hair. 
 
 " Nothing," he said, in reply to her question, 
 striving to keep down the harsh note that once 
 -+ 247 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 or twice had broken through the restraint of his 
 voice. 
 
 " Why should it not always be so perfect, our 
 whole life together ? " 
 
 " Ah, why indeed, when we have each other ! " 
 His voice rang strong and steady this time, warmed 
 by a touch of lightness as he went on : " You have 
 on the yellow gown, and primroses in your hair. 
 That s a part of the l perfectness, is it? " 
 
 " You remember ! Yes ; I put the gown on pur 
 posely." 
 
 " So like a woman to hit a man when he s 
 down ! " 
 
 "It s odd," said the girl, after a pause, breaking 
 the silence that had fallen between them. These 
 silences that Graeham made no effort to break made 
 Jane restless ; she seemed each time to have to work 
 her way through them, stone by stone, back to him. 
 " It s odd we don t want to talk, is n t it ? In 
 books newly engaged people seem to spend their 
 entire time sitting upon the sofa, hand in hand, un 
 folding their past to each other." 
 
 " That s to make the fellow s plot go the 
 fellow writing the book, you know. In real life it s 
 the other way round." 
 
 "Who makes the plot go in life?" asked she 
 idly, to beat back the silence that threatened to win 
 him from her again. 
 
 " The devil," said Graeham, so calmly as to 
 -i- 248 +-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION 
 
 deprive the word of profanity ; as he said it, it was 
 a simple, stern affirmation. "What men called fate, 
 you know, when men believed in fate. Come," he 
 met Jane s remonstrant eyes with a smile, as he 
 drew her to the piano ; "I ve thought of something 
 that may make our hour a bit more perfect. Music, 
 you know. Play for me, and let me sit beside you 
 here, not thinking or feeling ; just dreaming yes, 
 dreaming of the ideal ! " 
 
 Jane played an absent prelude, with her eyes, 
 under sidelong lashes, on Graeham s face, in 
 shadow except where the light from the piano lamp 
 touched his mouth and chin. 
 
 Graeham had the mobile, emotional lips of a poet ; 
 the passionate, impetuous, naively earnest mouth of 
 the man to whom ideals have the significance of 
 actualities. Men of this sort follow their ideals, with 
 every whit the same keenness and energy that they 
 put into the pursuit of the material : they bend 
 every force in them to their attainment, with precisely 
 the same directness that they go about their business 
 in life; and strangely enough, never perceive the 
 unreality of them, until their outstretched hands 
 close on nothingness. They suffer such men a 
 thousand-fold more in losing 1 them than the man of 
 
 O 
 
 subtler mind, who from an intellectual viewpoint per 
 ceives the ideal to be a beautiful and necessary corol 
 lary to the scheme of life, a safety valve for man s 
 spiritual nature, an equivalent for the nth power of 
 
 -+ 249 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 divine law. These men, laying life back fold on fold 
 to its core, say calmly, 
 
 " Here s law ; where s God ? " 
 
 But to Graeham s sort, the ideal is as real as the 
 material, it is bone of their bone; and the shock 
 of parting with it jars the very centre of the man s 
 being. 
 
 Miss Caruth s eyes brooded upon his unconscious 
 face, lingering upon the lines of suffering about his 
 mouth, newly come there. What was it something 
 added or something lost since she had seen him 
 that made the difference ? Was the unveiled face of 
 his love less tender than she had dreamed it, veiled? 
 Less strong? No, no. Had its exquisite reverence 
 lost by a shade, in possession ? His glance, his 
 touch, had scarce claimed her ; or was it 
 
 Graeham looked up and met her musing eyes with 
 a smile, and she swayed toward him unconsciously, 
 as a flame might be sucked outward by a draft. 
 
 " That frantic rush to the other side and back 
 has tired you more than you will confess, Camp. 
 You ve actually grown a little gray, did you know, 
 dear?" 
 
 She laid her lips upon the short locks on Graeham s 
 brow, as he leaned toward her. 
 
 " Don t tempt my mendacity," he told her, with 
 a smile; " I d swear I was a cripple, halt and blind, 
 to keep your lips there a moment longer ! It was 
 -H 250 -.-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION" 
 
 not much of a trip, though. I changed from one 
 boat to another, and came right back." 
 
 " And to think you need not have gone, if you d 
 only known." 
 
 "About old Jourdan s heir showing up, you mean? 
 Odd, its being the little Delilah of the linen closet, 
 after all, is n t it ? And to think of her nerve ! 
 Right here in the midst of it all the time, and never 
 turn a hair. And so she s chucked the money, all 
 for love, and the world well lost, eh ? It s like her 
 not to count the cost." 
 
 " Ah," Miss Caruth sighed softly, " poor Gallic ! 
 She gave it all for love, but it was not * well lost ! " 
 
 " What, the fellow not worth the broken bits of 
 her alabaster box?" 
 
 " It seems not ; and yet It has been a most cruel 
 thing ! She sacrificed her fortune for his sake, you 
 know, and he has thrown her over." 
 
 " The cursed cad ! " 
 
 Jane had been striking soft minor chords, that 
 fell in with their voices as they talked and filled the 
 pauses ; and she kept her face turned from Graeham 
 to the keyboard as she went on speaking. 
 
 " I told you a bit of her story once ; do you re 
 member ? " 
 
 "No. Where was it?" 
 
 " In the hut by the river that day. I asked your 
 advice for a friend, you remember ? Gallic was the 
 friend." 
 
 -+ 251 i-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 Graeham s eyes, that had been blank with the 
 effort to remember, flashed suddenly into startled 
 life; a grayish shadow settled about his lips; he 
 sat erect in his chair, with the slightly dazed expres 
 sion that a man wears when he s struck by a bullet 
 before he has time to feel the pain. 
 
 "Friend?" he echoed blankly; "what friend?" 
 
 "Callie Tola Jourdan now was the friend. I 
 gave you a slightly altered version of her story. 
 I told you that she was engaged to one man and 
 loved the other, and I asked you" 
 
 Graeham s breath had stopped on his lips ; his 
 heavy, immobile face grew slowly into a masque cut 
 from gray stone. 
 
 "You asked me? I forget what it was," he 
 said dully. 
 
 " There had been two men in her life, and I 
 thought she loved the first man ; but I was wrong, 
 oh, so wrong. She had never loved any man but 
 James Goodloe, the man to whom she was engaged. 
 It was he for w r hom she sacrificed her fortune, and 
 who has thrown her off because of of the other 
 man." 
 
 A slight sweat came upon Graeham s lip as he 
 leaned forward to catch Jane s words, as she sat a 
 little turned from him, stretching her hands along 
 the keys. 
 
 " Where had she met James Goodloe ? " 
 
 " Ah, that is the story I could not tell you that 
 H. 252 +-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION 
 
 day, you remember? But now all my thoughts 
 are yours, are they not ? " 
 
 " Yes ; all mine. Tell it me now." 
 
 " Poor Callie had been very unhappy, you know, 
 dear; some one in her life this other man had 
 had " 
 
 " I understand. You tried to help her? " 
 
 " Not I so much as Mr. Carlysle. We were all 
 interested in her, but Jim was very much touched 
 by her desolation and her bravery he called it 
 that. But she was very hard to help; so impossible, 
 you know ! This man, James Goodloe, had advertised 
 for a wife in some preposterous paper, and Jim took 
 up the plan to marry Callie to him, merely as 
 an experiment ; he was hardly serious at all at first. 
 But Mr. Goodloe seemed such a fine fellow, so dif 
 ferent from what one would expect from his doing 
 such an unthinkable thing, and poor Callie was too 
 dead to care, and so it went on. Jim did not dare 
 to put her life back in her own hands, anything 
 seemed better than that, and he hoped to see her 
 safely married to this good fellow; I still think 
 something will turn up some day to exonerate him! 
 Yes, the story ! I wrote the letters for Callie, as she 
 cannot write, and it all went beautifully. lola was 
 so lonely and forsaken, poor girl, that she began to 
 love him ; at first I suppose to fill her empty life, and 
 then, why she let herself go and loved him with all 
 her heart. Then came this other thing about Chin- 
 H. 253 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 quepin Falls; and almost the same day that Mr. 
 Goodloe had written to her to meet him in New 
 York, Jim found out that she was Tola Jourdan, and 
 he wanted her to throw over Mr. Goodloe for the 
 sake of the money but you know how that turned 
 out. But there was the story of her wretched past, 
 that had to be told, for Jim would not let her 
 marry him without telling him. There was a fearful 
 struggle before she would give in, but at last she 
 consented, and Jim wrote " 
 
 " My God ! " said Graeham slowly, the words seem 
 ing to be shaken from his lips upon a deep note of 
 anger. He rose and walked forward blindly into the 
 room, with his hands clinched at his sides. " My God, 
 how I have been tricked, baited, by that madman ! " 
 He reached the mantel-shelf across the room, and, 
 dropping his arms upon it, bowed his head upon 
 them. All consciousness of Jane was swept from his 
 mind by a passion of remorse and anger, that made 
 him blind and deaf for the moment to all but the tur 
 moil within his own soul, where he raged dumbly 
 as men raged in futile rebellion against their gods in 
 olden times, when men thought the gods meddled 
 and made in men s affairs against himself, Car- 
 lysle, and the non-responsible, malignant circum 
 stance that had strangled his reason in its toils. 
 
 Brute, fool, madman that he had been ! As he 
 lay there with buried eyes, his mind, like a hunted 
 hare, fled backward through the labyrinth of events 
 -t- 254 -.-
 
 that had ensnared him. The letter, the ring, the 
 necklace, each fitted now with maddening smooth 
 ness into the chain of clear, uncompromising rea 
 son, all but Carlysle s letter ; that had yet to be 
 reckoned with, its clever casuistry clothed in 
 damnable ambiguity. And on such evidence as that 
 he had condemned her! let Carlysle s supple mere- 
 triciousness weigh against his faith in her ! 
 
 The sting of remorseful tenderness woke Grae- 
 ham to consciousness of the present. He turned 
 back to her, and she met him in silence, and in 
 silence still locked her arms about him with tender 
 strength. She did not question him as well ques 
 tion a storm-cloud with a thunderbolt in it as a man 
 with a face like Graeham s ; but she clung to him, 
 telling him by the close pressure of her arms that, 
 whatever his fight might be, she was fighting it with 
 him heart to heart. 
 
 Graeham dropped upon the floor at her feet, hid 
 ing his head against her, crumpling her gown in his 
 hands, pressing remorseful kisses upon its folds, 
 with hoarse words of pleading, of passion, of rapture, 
 mingled with curses that rang strangely in the girl s 
 ears. 
 
 She left him so a moment, quivering herself 
 
 under the stress of his emotion, still not speaking, 
 
 - only bending over him, soothing him with mute 
 
 caresses, pressing his head against her almost as a 
 
 mother might have done. 
 
 i- 255 -i
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Don t, Jane, don t," he murmured brokenly, as 
 she found his clinched hands, and opening them 
 drew his arms about her. 
 
 "Don t what, dearest?" 
 
 " Be good to me, love me." 
 
 " Not love you ! When you have told me what is 
 troubling you, we will talk about my not loving you ; 
 but I cannot, cannot, stand this." 
 
 " I know ; but t is better borne than knowledge, 
 Janet." 
 
 " Yet I must know. Oh, Camp, tell me, tell 
 me!" 
 
 " Ay. Will you sit beside me while I tell 
 you?" 
 
 " Why not?" in wonder. 
 
 " You will know why not in a minute. Oh, Jane, 
 Jane, I have been in hell since I had Carlysle s 
 letter ! " 
 
 "Carlysle s letter?" she breathed wonderingly. 
 "To you?" 
 
 Graeham drew the letter from his pocket and, 
 leaning forward with his arms upon his knees, stared 
 moodily at it, his brow black with anger. 
 
 " Let me think a bit first, Jane think how to 
 unwind this damnable snarl. But there s no un 
 winding it ; best cut it through at a stroke." 
 
 He took her hands, and drew her eyes firmly to 
 meet his own. 
 
 "Jane, I am the man to whom you have been writ- 
 -i- 256 H-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION 
 
 in<r for months as Goodloe. It was I who courted 
 
 O 
 
 Mary Meadows in those letters ; offered her marriage ; 
 pursued her ; urged her ; and, cur that I am, flung 
 her over at the last minute. Ah, don t take away 
 your hands, Jane ! " 
 
 "What can this mean?" The girl s voice died 
 on her lips. " You, my my " 
 
 " Yes, your lover ! It will be plain in a moment. 
 But come back to me, Jane ; come back, dear." 
 
 His open arms dropped to his sides, as he saw that 
 she did not hear him ; her eyes were fastened on 
 him, with a tense question in them that cut to his 
 consciousness like a shrill-edged cry in the night. A 
 bunch of the primroses she had worn on her dress 
 lay at Graeham s feet, crushed in his embrace. He 
 picked them up, and with his eyes upon them began 
 to speak in an even tone, almost without expression, 
 only the veins that swelled upon his forehead and 
 neck betraying that it was enforced. 
 
 "James Goodloe is my business manager at the 
 mills in Redfalls, and the best friend I have on 
 earth. He s the cleanest man I ve ever known, and 
 the truest and the sanest, and the most completely 
 disillusioned. I was a lad when I met him first, way 
 back in those days that I gave you a glimpse of that 
 day by the river. I was a lump of raw nature in 
 those early days, I was about to say, no more: but 
 the divine molecule must have been hidden some 
 where in the mass ; and as I grew to manhood, still 
 -h 257 -K-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 a crude, lumpish chap, I got to believing in that 
 atom in myself ; to find it more real than anything 
 else. I knew that what it stood for was in the 
 world somewhere, and that some day I d meet it ; 
 and then " 
 
 "The ideal?" Jane whispered, so softly that her 
 lips only formed the words. 
 
 " Yes ! And living women, the sort I met and 
 knew in those days, palled beside its charm. Well, 
 let me get through with this. By this time, you 
 know, I was a man, and had found myself, and in 
 the next dozen years my work filled my life from 
 bank to bank ; I needed nothing else. But I was 
 growing like a young oak tree, that sucks in life 
 at every pore, from its topmost leaflet to its last 
 deep sucker under ground; and with my manhood 
 came the deeper needs the hunger for the things 
 that manhood craves. I cut loose from my busi 
 ness, and went into the world." Graeham rose and 
 walked about the room for a few minutes, deep in 
 thought. 
 
 " I 11 skip the record of those two years, Jane," 
 he said at last quietly, as he took his seat again 
 beside her, " and get on to how I got into this thing 
 with this woman, Mary Meadows. 
 
 " It was after that time that I have passed over : 
 
 I had gone back to work again ; and as it had got to 
 
 mean a great deal to me to have Goodloe near me, I 
 
 put in a good bit of time at the mills at Redfalls. 
 
 -+ 258 -f-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION 
 
 I was sick of life, and hungry for it, too ; savage 
 with want, yet too bitter and nauseated with what 
 I d had to care to seek anything different; couldn t 
 believe there was anything different! Then Good- 
 loe conceived this thing. And unless you knew the 
 man, you could never fully understand the spirit in 
 which he went into it. Goodloe has a soul like a 
 clean, new deal board, plumbed by a spirit-level. 
 He recognizes love as force, like any other ; it s a 
 form of energy to him, like steam or electric cur 
 rent; and he handled my case that way. Let him? 
 Oh, yes, I let him ! I did not care. I did n t take 
 much notice when he inserted the first letter, and 
 not much more oh, Janet, think of that ! not 
 over much when the letter came in reply, though 
 I answered it. But the next letter took hold of 
 me. The essence that breathed from it was the thing 
 I had been seeking all my life. I was beside myself 
 with excitement, anticipation. The salt had found 
 its savor again, with a vengeance. But Goodloe had 
 a dozen theories, that I had to throttle one by one ! 
 His mind acts precisely like that atmosphere out 
 there ; things stand out clearly to him, with no 
 1 effects of sentiment or imagination. He saw, we 
 both saw, for the matter of that, a man s hand in 
 the thing ; and he would have it that some writer 
 or psychological crank was studying the thing from 
 the woman s side, and that the very thing that had 
 caught me was a clever ruse upon the fellow s part 
 -h 259 +-
 
 to make it go. It ended in my coming to Alabama 
 to sift matters and find the woman, if it was a 
 woman, carrying on the correspondence through 
 Goodloe meanwhile. 
 
 " You know the rest, Jane. I met you, and from 
 the very first the same charm gripped me, but with a 
 thousand times the potency. I recognized it, puzzled 
 over it ; but how connect the two ? I met the other 
 woman, also, you know ; but again, how could I 
 associate the delicate refinement that breathed from 
 Mary Meadovvs s letters with " Graeham laughed 
 harshly " with Delilah of the linen closet ? It was 
 the composite personality that puzzled me, had puz 
 zled even Goodloe s shrewdness. What we neither 
 could understand was, that a woman who could have 
 written those letters should have done so. So plain 
 now, as it is ! 
 
 " Then I found I was getting to love you. I am 
 thirty-seven years old, you know, dear, and that 
 was first love ! Think, if you can, what it meant to 
 me? I fought an honest fight, though, to be true 
 to the other woman, until I began to dream, to hope 
 that you had got to care a bit, too, perhaps; then I 
 went to pieces ! 
 
 " Why did n t I tell you ? A h, why ! " Grae 
 ham laughed again, a bitter note of mockery, as he 
 passed his own motives in review. " Why did n t 
 Ajax cast off that lariat the gods were throttling 
 him with ? Why did n t the poor devil with cotton 
 -+ 260 H-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION 
 
 margins devouring- him like a pack of wolves pull 
 out in time ? 
 
 "Jane, I saw the pearls I had bought, and ad 
 dressed to Mary Meadows with my own hands, upon 
 your throat, and I knew besides that Carlysle s sec 
 retary had receipted for them. The ring, the mate to 
 this one," - he drew the other ring from his pocket, 
 and displayed it upon his palm, "upon your hand. 
 I had seen you mail a letter to James Goodloe, and 
 confirmation sure as Holy Writ ! you opened 
 the letter I had written Mary Meadows asking her 
 to be my wife, before my eyes. I saw Carlysle hand 
 it you, saw you take it as a matter of course 
 Dearest ! your hand in mine again ? What, both ? 
 How cold they are ! You see, Jane, how I was the 
 devil s own fool from that minute, roped and thrown ! 
 You see, dear? " 
 
 " I am beginning to see. Oh, my dear, my 
 dear ! " 
 
 She clung a moment longer to him and then took 
 her hands away, to press them upon her eyes, as 
 though to shut in something that she needs must 
 face alone. 
 
 " Little things are coming back to me. I remem 
 ber now you kissed the ring that day, poor Callie s 
 ring," a quiver passed over her, constricting her 
 throat. "Why did you?" she whispered unsteadily. 
 " Was it because you thought fancied " 
 
 " I thought you were Mary Meadows, the 
 -i- 261 *-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 woman I loved, and the woman to whom I was en 
 gaged to be married," said he gravel) 7 . 
 
 Miss Caruth had always a clear pallor, that did not 
 readily betray her by swift alternations ; deep feel 
 ing stilled her, as intense motion takes on the form 
 of rest ; but as Graeham spoke, she grew slowly 
 white and the lines of her face sharpened, until 
 she seemed a head carved from some fine-grained 
 stone. Her eyes were hard, as they turned shrink- 
 ingly to the letter in Graeham s hand ; its contents 
 seemed actually visible to her in some form of pol 
 lution. 
 
 " And you still thought I was that woman after 
 that?" 
 
 Graeham did not speak, but his eyes met Jane s 
 firmly, in dumb, dogged remorse. He raised his hand 
 to his collar as though he needed breath, and his 
 face, set in lines of stern endurance, showed the veins 
 in knotted cords upon his brow. He wore the look 
 that men wear who are on trial for their lives, as 
 they sit, deprived by the abstract power of the law 
 of their human right to draw the fist back to the 
 shoulder and strike, feeling the coil of damning 
 evidence spun smoothly by lying lips close upon 
 them. 
 
 He did not attempt to explain, to palliate ; not 
 
 yet. When souls meet in the trenches to fight it out, 
 
 men do not talk. Nor did Graeham ; he fought the 
 
 next ten seconds of mortal strife in silence, with 
 
 -t- 262 H-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION" 
 
 Jane s hands in his, her soul face to face with his, 
 across the barriers of his confession. The fight was 
 Graeham s, in so far, at least, as to vanquish silence. 
 Miss Caruth spoke gently, after a second longer of 
 struggle. 
 
 " Let us go back together, dear, and see," she 
 paused to steady her voice, "and see what can be 
 done," she finished simply. " I must know, know 
 before I- That last letter? After you thought 
 you knew that I was Mary Meadows, why did you 
 write it?" 
 
 " To give you an opening to retire from the affair 
 with all dignity and grace. I knew - God, I thought 
 I knew! that you would graciously refuse Good- 
 loe s proposal ; I could have drafted the letter, I 
 was so sure. I meant that that should end it. I never 
 intended that you should know of my part in it, or 
 that I knew of your own. Then came this thunder 
 bolt from Carlysle ! The most damnable lie a man 
 ever penned ! ( a dearly loved young sister ! 
 ( a member of my own household ! He calls this 
 woman that ! I was in hell tortured, when I read 
 that. Those nights at sea Ah, if you could know, 
 June, what a thing my soul was in those first days, 
 you would forgive me ! " 
 
 He was upon his knees again at her feet, and she 
 pressed her two hands upon his head, hiding his face 
 from her, as she hung over him in an agony of re 
 nunciation too deep for words or tears. 
 -H 263 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " You went abroad to escape this marriage, that 
 you fancied had been arranged for you." 
 
 Graeham lifted his head sharply, but she would 
 not let him speak. 
 
 " No, Camp; listen, dear ! I must know ! You see 
 that I must?" 
 
 " Then, yes ! " 
 
 " And what brought you back?" 
 
 " Need you ask that, Jane ? " 
 
 " I need to know all that was in your mind and 
 heart." 
 
 " Do not ask me to turn over the rank turmoil of 
 my mind before your eyes, Janet. Do not ask me ! 
 Ask me, if you will, to empty my heart ; that at 
 least is clean, for it has never left your keeping. I 
 left it here," he raised the palms of her hands 
 and kissed them, " and I found it here again. 
 But my mind, poisoned by the filterings of- Do 
 not ask it." 
 
 " Then answer me from your honor, Camp; that 
 is clean, too." 
 
 " Ask me " - 
 
 " What brought you back to Morganton ? Was 
 it love for for me, for Jane Caruth, or your pledge 
 to Mary Meadows ? " 
 
 " You forget that I thought you were the same? " 
 
 " Don t ! Don t equivocate ! " 
 
 For a moment Graeham wavered ; then, " My 
 pledge to Mary Meadows," he said hoarsely. 
 
 -H. 264 ^-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION" 
 
 He took her clasped hands and softened their rigid 
 hold in his own, and for a space they sat thus, with 
 out speaking. Graeham went on after a bit : - 
 
 "The shock of this thing loosened my grip on 
 everything ; but nothing short of death can beat 
 the plain manhood out of a man, you know, dear. 
 I loathed my life; but sheer, brute instinct made me 
 reach for the only solid thing in sight, that some 
 thing in a man that makes him stand by his pledged 
 word, through thick and thin. We were five days 
 out when I got myself together, and knew what I 
 had to do." 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Caruth steadily; " it is the only 
 thing to do." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " cried he quickly. 
 
 Miss Caruth met his eyes, hardened with premoni 
 tory anger, with gentle steadiness. 
 
 < Only Avhat you have just said, that you knew 
 you must redeem your pledge to this girl, to Mary 
 Meadows, or lola Jourdan, as we know her now." 
 
 The vigorous browns and tans of Graeham s col 
 oring were hard to displace ordinarily, but he showed 
 a trace of pallor as he braced himself to meet the 
 courage in Jane s eyes. 
 
 " I knew this was coming. I caught the trend of 
 your thought some time ago, and I knew you d take 
 this stand. Souls travel in orbits the same as plan 
 ets, I suppose, and you must follow yours. There s 
 no need to thrash this out again. Logically, if you 
 t- 265 -i
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 like, I came back here to marry lola Jourdan ; and 
 honorably I am bound to do so. But logic and 
 honor or life and death, heaven and hell, for the 
 matter of that weigh like a pinch of thistledown 
 against your happiness, Jane." 
 
 " Yet honor had weight to bring you back across 
 the world, to redeem your pledge to a woman you 
 did not love." 
 
 " Jane, is this generous ? Is it just ? " 
 
 " Was it just to me to have married me with that 
 horror in your mind ? No, no ! You must hear me, 
 Camp. Almost," - with sudden yearning she drew 
 Graeham s hand to her breast, and held it there while 
 she went on, " almost it is worth this to knoio you 
 love me. Those weeks when you were away, and 
 and even yesterday, to-day ah! To have this hour 
 of perfect love as a memory, in the empty years to 
 come ! " 
 
 " Curse memory ! We will have each other ! I 
 will not give you up, Janet. Don t speak to me of 
 honor ! Honor is a conception of sane minds ; this 
 is hysteria. Be brave, and put these fancies from 
 you. We are a man and woman living life ; not a 
 couple of puppets on the stage, hounded by a fate 
 set on them by some playwright s imagination. This 
 is a man s work; leave it to me, will you not? I will 
 settle with this woman." 
 
 " I cannot take lola Jourdan s lover knowing 
 what I know." 
 
 -H. 266 H-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION" 
 
 " I was never her lover for an instant in my life, 
 nor any one s but yours, body and soul, heart and 
 conscience." 
 
 " No ; your conscience is your own, as mine is my 
 own, and it will not let me rob this girl of all that 
 is left to her. She has given all for love, fortune, 
 name, all! And then shall I from my safe place 
 calmly reach forth my hand, and snatch the fruits 
 of her sacrifice from her? I could not, and you 
 could not let me." 
 
 " Jane, darling, this is not stuff for your con 
 science to concern itself with. Don t erect the gran 
 ite wall of an inner imperative between us ! Try 
 to see this from my point of view, the point of 
 view that the world would take. If you drew a hun 
 dred men from every position or profession, let 
 them be what they may, and put this situation to 
 them, I dare swear ninety-nine out of the hundred 
 would do as I intend doing. This is a perfectly com 
 monplace thing, except where it involves you. It 
 is a bit of ugly, every-day life rankly dramatic, 
 I grant you, but having to do with a phase of life 
 that cannot, shall not, enter your life. You cannot 
 judge it so sanely as I ; therefore let me settle it. I 
 will make good lola Jourdan s fortune to her, dollar 
 for dollar." 
 
 " You do not know her in the least, if you think 
 she is the sort of woman to be bought off, if you 
 mean that. Sometimes I think none of us have ever 
 -+ 267 *-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 known her, or done her justice. We assumed that 
 she lacked a soul, as we might have assumed that 
 she lacked musical ability because she had not been 
 taught to perform upon some instrument, and we 
 arranged her future as lightly callously, as we 
 might have bought her a gown ; we fitted it to 
 her, influenced her to accept it, thrust it on her. I, 
 / was the chief one in this ; I made myself respon 
 sible for her future and now to rob her of the 
 future I gave her? " 
 
 Graeham stared at the floor, full of troubled 
 thought. 
 
 " Jane," he said at last firmly, as one who speaks 
 from knowledge deliberately withheld, " this is senti 
 ment on your part. I do know this girl better than 
 you do. Can you not trust me to do the right thing 
 by her?" 
 
 "Trust you? Why should I not? You have 
 already fought the fight that brought you back to 
 her. All that is left is my part. I have only to leave 
 you free to go the way your honor bade you go 
 those nights at sea, and keep the oath that I gave 
 her." 
 
 "What oath? Let me know all there is to 
 know." 
 
 " You remember the night of the ball ? James 
 
 Goodloe s letter had come that day, and Jim was 
 
 determined that he should not be deceived. He and 
 
 lola had a fearful hour together, but she finally con- 
 
 -i- 268 H-
 
 "INFINITE PASSION" 
 
 sented that he should write. Then she came on to my 
 room, frantic with unhappiness, poor child, poor 
 wretched girl ! She told me then, confessed, that she 
 loved this man that we had arranged for her to 
 marry, that her only wish was to be his wife. And 
 then she made me swear" Miss Caruth broke off 
 and mused a moment in deep thought. " How strange 
 it seems now ! but she made me swear never to come 
 between James Goodloe and herself." 
 
 " Strange," muttered Graeham. 
 
 " Like a fate indeed, is n t it ? And I I told her 
 never to let anything come between them ; to hold 
 to James Goodloe, as she would to a hand reached 
 downward to her from the skies ; and then I swore, 
 swore never to come between them." 
 
 " The trap has closed upon us both ! " said Grae 
 ham hoarsely. He took her in his arms and held 
 her, without speaking, close to him for a space. 
 "And for the rest of our lives, Jane?" he said at 
 last fiercely. " Do you mean for me to try to live 
 mine without you? " 
 
 "No," said she quietly, "no." 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked Graeham, in a deep 
 inward voice. 
 
 " Did you not tell me that you had always loved 
 me, in your soul ? " 
 
 " Ah ! But, Jane, Jane, I had not known the 
 woman then ; had not held you in my arms. Mem 
 ory will be hell after this." 
 
 -H 269 -K.
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " No, no ; for we shall belong to each other 
 still. I shall never give up the part of you that is 
 mine." 
 
 " I m a man, Jane ; and love s so different with 
 men." 
 
 She clung closer to him in a momentary struggle, 
 hidden from him, with her face pressed into his 
 breast. Graeham went on presently, in a hard, un 
 steady voice : - 
 
 " You say you will never give me up : but as the 
 years go on, a beautiful woman like you, and of 
 the world, the world will claim you ; others get in 
 between, thrust me back some other man, per 
 haps." 
 
 "No," said Jane simply; and for a moment added 
 nothing to the word s quiet assurance. " Never let 
 such thoughts come to you. Promise to keep the 
 memory of me just as I am now, here upon your 
 breast ; never forget that I am yours, in all the years 
 that will come to us, as I am at this moment. Never 
 forget it, and never let yourself dream that a day 
 will ever come when it could be otherwise." 
 
 " And you 11 see me sometimes ? " 
 
 He spoke thickly, his cheek on hers wet with her 
 tears. 
 
 "Why not? Not just yet, perhaps, but after. 
 
 We are not children. No one knows not even 
 
 Kate or Mr. Carlysle what we are to each other. 
 
 Let us keep it close in our two hearts, until No- 
 
 -+ 270 H-
 
 thing can really part us, while we know that we 
 belong to each other. This is but a little parting, 
 dear. Tell me good-by, my own." 
 
 " It is the parting of soul and body, Jane. I can 
 not, cannot let you go ! "
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 " Come back with me to the first of all ; 
 Let us lean and love it over again 
 And gather what we let fall " 
 
 SPRING the exquisite, impetuous spring, that comes 
 " before the swallow dares " to Alabama, had set the 
 " jeweled prints of her feet " in acres of lush vegeta 
 tion along the warm, fecund valley of the Tennessee. 
 The warm wind was buoyant with moisture and pun 
 gent with sap, springing in endless acres of young 
 corn and cotton, and pricked the nostrils sharply 
 with the balsamic odor of dog-fennel, that lovely 
 hated pariah of the Southern fields, that had laid 
 a mantle of ermine and gold upon the denuded fields 
 about Morganton, covering their gaping wounds and 
 scars with a cloak of despised charity. 
 
 The river, full to its banks, ran whisperingly 
 through a deep, green velvet sheath of new cane ; 
 and in the hot, still air of mid-noon, the muffled roar 
 of Chinquepin, like a base organ note drawn out to 
 infinity, was audible for miles. The planters along 
 the river had been used to say that as long as you 
 could hear Chinquepin, you were on Isom Jourdan s 
 land ; and on the overgrown lawns at McGuion 
 House, its voice dominated the sunny stillness, ab- 
 -+ 272 H-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 sorbing the minor sounds of the summer day in a 
 great soft blanket of sound. 
 
 Where the lawn overhung the river amid a jungle 
 of blooming shrubs, a magnolia grew close to the 
 water ; and tied in its shade, a clumsy punt rocked 
 upon the lazy current, like a great unwieldy cradle. 
 It had rocked one of its passengers to sleep as it 
 happened, and the other sat as still as though she 
 too slept, with hands clasped about her knees, and 
 dreaming eyes upon the shining stretches of the river, 
 lola was clad in the old blue cotton-checks, turned in 
 at the throat ; and her hair, parted on her brow, fell 
 in long rippling braids, as red as ruddy sunshine, 
 across her shoulders. She held a piece of sewing 
 in her idle hands ; and upon a man s rough brown 
 jeans coat in the bottom of the boat a tiny tot, with 
 a mop of gold hair, lay fast asleep, its sturdy, rosy 
 limbs bare to the wind, that was tanning the little 
 cheeks a deeper rose. The girl s eyes turned to him 
 from time to time in brooding glances, and once 
 she stooped and kissed one dimpled foot kicked out 
 toward her, with a long kiss, yearning and posses 
 sive, as only a mother s kiss can be. 
 
 From where she sat she had a long view of the 
 river toward Morganton, across a point of the lawn 
 where the ruins of an old summer-house stood ; 
 and as she raised her eyes from her sewing, a speck 
 upon the full, shining tide of the river riveted her 
 gaze. That sharp black dot was a boat ; and the 
 -- 273 -K-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 two thin dashes of black, oars ; and the speck of 
 dazzling white must be the rower, she knew. She 
 watched it idly as it drew nearer, cutting a broad 
 furrow like a silver spearhead in the water, and 
 something in the way the man handled the oars 
 fastened her mind upon it : the planters and the 
 river-men about the cotton landings had not that 
 long reach forward, that easy swing to the oars ; 
 and as the boat stood out clearly in the light, she 
 saw that the man at the oars wore flannels. She 
 had a quick thought of Clark. But no; Clark was 
 slenderer than this man, and swayed to his stroke : 
 this man sat like a rock ; and something in the bend 
 of his broad back, as he leaned against the current, 
 held her eyes in a fascinated gaze. 
 
 The color had fled from her cheeks and her deli 
 cate nostrils expanded, straining for breath as she 
 leaned forward, intent upon the man in the boat. 
 Only for a moment longer she hung in doubt ; and 
 as the rower raised his face, with a low cry of unbe 
 lieving joy she sank upon her knees in the bottom 
 of the punt, holding the shrubberies aside to watch 
 him, herself unseen, hanging upon his unconscious 
 face in an agony of doubt and hope. Where could 
 he be going ? The landing at McGuion House lay 
 past her up the river, and Graeham s glance ahead 
 suggested that as his destination. The thought of 
 Chinquepin sprang to her mind. Could it be business 
 with her uncle, Carter Cartright, that had brought 
 -t- 274 H-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 him? But twin with the thought was born the cer 
 tainty that it was not business that had brought 
 him not with Carter Cartright, at any rate. She 
 knelt motionless in the boat, her eyes upon the skiff 
 that was drawing nearer with each powerfid swing 
 of the oars, struggling with an impulse of flight, of 
 concealment, of escape, that fought with an unrea 
 soning hope, and kept her quivering in the balance, 
 without power to move or even think coherently. 
 
 The point of the lawn was yet between the two 
 boats, when a movement of the child at her feet 
 drew her eyes downward to it in a sudden panic. 
 The child ! She had forgotten it ! Unreasoning 
 hope the mad pilot that has wrecked so many 
 women s hearts urged her to action. She snatched 
 the child in her arms, and made one long light step 
 from the boat to the shore. It was but a step to 
 the rained summer-house, where she could hide him 
 until - Panting under the weight of the boy, she 
 hurried forward, bending low in the shrubberies. The 
 baby still slept, but in his sleep, feeling her arms 
 about him, he nestled closer; a smile parted his lips, 
 a sleepy murmur came from them, his chubby arms 
 tightened about Tola s neck, and he pressed his tousled 
 head into her bosom with helpless, nuzzling motions. 
 A tremor ran through her limbs ; all at once she 
 was too w r eak to run, and stood straining the baby s 
 form to her breast, raining kisses upon the little 
 upturned face, even as her frightened eyes peered 
 -H 275 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 through the branches to watch the progress of Grae- 
 ham s boat upon the stream without. Only the shrub 
 beries were between them now, and she saw Grae- 
 ham s face plainly. He was darker, sterner, older than 
 when she had seen him last; and there was something 
 in the controlled quiet of his face that steadied her, 
 as though a strong cold hand had been laid upon 
 her shoulder. She stood where she had paused, 
 thinking more clearly ; her eyes on Graeham, her 
 trembling arms gathering the child closer and closer 
 yet to her bosom. 
 
 She had remained at the hotel a couple of mis 
 erable, restless weeks after Graeham s unexplained 
 departure, to which she alone of all who conjectured 
 as to his mysterious business abroad, held the key ; 
 and had then returned quietly in the night to her 
 old home, where old Carter Cartright and his son, 
 who was heir to the land, had taken up a temporary 
 abode, bringing the child with her. Carter Cartright 
 had asked her no questions ; he had made her wel 
 come ; and beyond the bare fact quietly made known 
 to the few it concerned, that his niece had returned 
 and refused to accept the conditions of her father s 
 will, offered no explanation, and none had dared ask 
 it at his hands. lola had, seemingly, pieced the 
 broken thread of her old life to the new, keeping 
 her uncle s house as she had kept her father s, ex 
 cept that it was infinitely more a home than it had 
 been in those days. She had spent her time, for the 
 - 276 4-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 most part, in the old garden with her boy, whom the 
 two men had taken at once into the very cores of their 
 rather sunless hearts. So the weeks had slipped past, 
 bringing her in all but one scrap of news from the 
 town and the people among whom she had so lately 
 made her home, that the Carlysles with Miss Caruth 
 had gone abroad for the summer, thus snapping the 
 last thread that had connected her with Gallic Larkin 
 or the past. Whether the identity of lola Jourdan 
 with Gallic Larkin was known to others, or whether 
 Carlysle had kept faith with her, she had no means of 
 knowing : if her uncle knew he made no sign, and 
 equally she was in ignorance of how much or how 
 little Graeham might know ; though with instant 
 intuition she had divined the success of her reck 
 less plan to separate him and Miss Caruth, first by 
 Miss Caruth s trip abroad, and now by Graeham s 
 presence. 
 
 A wave of triumphant joy surged through her ; 
 all the eager desires and longings, that the weeks of 
 dull monotony on the farm had lethargized, waked 
 in a pang of ecstasy, as the flashlight of hope flared 
 across her mind. Life at Graeham s side ah, what 
 did it not promise of rapture ! Her heart swelled to 
 bursting, with the joy of the unattainable attained ; 
 hope deferred sickened with longing, wasting with 
 despair sprang to new life, resurrected by the mir 
 acle of his presence. 
 
 She measured with a lightning glance the distance 
 -i- 277 *-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 to the summer-house and back. There was time, 
 just time and no more, before he would round the 
 point and her boat be in view ; she took one step in 
 the direction of the ruined arbor, where she meant 
 to hide the boy and return to intercept Graeham, 
 with every furtive instinct in her nature urging her 
 on. But the sturdy, two-year-old boy was heavy : she 
 paused to shift his weight, and as she did so he 
 waked, wearing the grieved lip he always wore at 
 waking; but his eyes, still dim and clouded with sleep, 
 fell on his mother s face ; they cleared, smiled ; he 
 dug his hands into her neck in a throttling hug, as 
 he clung to her with cooing almost articulate words 
 of baby-love. The girl wavered ; she cast a hurried 
 glance to the river. Graeham had thrust his hat back 
 as he rested a moment on his oars, and his face was 
 in full view. The manliness that had so charmed her, 
 in his level glance, his frowning brow, the candid 
 sweetness of his mouth, were there the same ; she 
 admired him, coveted his strength, his warmth of 
 kindliness, with the same eager longing ; the charm 
 that had fixed her held her still. But the face 
 upon her bosom bound her with a spell that Grae- 
 ham s could not break! Life beckoned from the 
 river ; but life was here, in its fulfillment, upon her 
 breast. 
 
 She turned deliberately and walked back to the 
 boat, laid the child down upon its bed, and had seated 
 herself quietly at her sewing as Graeham s boat 
 -+ 278 -
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 rounded the point. He saw her instantly, and in a 
 couple of strokes brought his boat alongside, and 
 secured it to an overhanging bough. 
 
 " Well," he said calmly, busied with the rope, 
 " I m here at last, Mary. Have you nothing to say 
 to me, after I ve come across half the continent to 
 fetch you?" 
 
 There was a hard composure in his manner not 
 good to hear, and the girl had an instant sensation 
 of having been roughly thrust off. She was trem 
 bling so that she could scarcely achieve the sentence 
 as she replied, and her face was as white as the alder 
 blooms above her head. 
 
 " F you ll tell me what to say," she faltered, with 
 radiant eyes of troubled joy. 
 
 " Ah, I cannot quite do that, my dear," said he, in 
 a tone kindly over an undertone of coldness. "But 
 I have come two thousand miles to hear what you 
 have to say to me, and I have much to say to you, 
 much on my own account and much on yours ; and 
 it may be that when I have done, you will know what 
 to say to me. I hope so." 
 
 An indescribable change had come to Graeham. 
 
 O 
 
 He had always a peculiarly deep, persistent vitality, 
 that had pervaded his personality with the glow of a 
 mellow kindliness. The force within him did not show 
 itself in vivacity of glance or radiance of smile; it 
 radiated from him in obscure waves of impersonal 
 kindliness, that warmed the hearts of those with 
 - 279 ^-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 whom lie came in contact ; and though lola could 
 not have defined the lack in him, she felt it. Grae- 
 ham had withdrawn into himself, carrying the cor 
 dial that had been wont to vivify life for those about 
 him with him, leaving the exterior chill. He sat 
 looking down the river for a minute, with his eyes 
 blank with thought. 
 
 " I don t know," he resumed, with a touch of his 
 old-time blimtness, " that so much needs to be said 
 between us, after all. I have the idea that a good 
 deal of it is plain already, eh ? No need to go back 
 of Carlysle s letter, is there? I got it, as you know ; 
 and, as you also know, I acted like a cur. I m here, 
 Mary, to ask if you can forgive me, and to say I m 
 ready to carry out my contract that I funked then, 
 as nearly as we can on the original basis. When 
 we began this thing, you needed a husband to stand 
 between you and the world that had used you ill, 
 and threatened to use you worse, and I wanted 
 no matter what. I m here," he went on, after a 
 second of struggle that had hardened his eyes and 
 the lines about his mouth, " to say I 11 be that hus 
 band, put my shoulder between the world and 
 you ; and I 11 take this mite here " he reached 
 a long arm for the child, who was kneeling in the 
 punt, making little elastic, enticing motions toward 
 Graeham, with radiant, friendly eyes. Graeham set 
 him on his knee, looking with grave gentleness into 
 his friendly little face, that smiled back at him with 
 -H- 280 -)-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 a brave gleam of milk teeth as he took his dimpled 
 fist into his palm. 
 
 " Friends from this hour, eh ? So that s settled." 
 Still holding the child s hand, he went on speaking 
 to lola : - 
 
 " I 11 make this little lad my own, if you are will 
 ing, and he shall never know the difference. I will 
 settle upon him the money for the falls, that you 
 sacrificed to keep this contract with me." 
 
 Tola did not speak ; it is doubtful if she heard 
 Graeham s words, or gathered from them any but a 
 blurred impression of their sense ; her mind was filled 
 with a passion of regret and longing. She had a 
 sense upon her of desperate mistake, confusion, un 
 reality. Had they all been wrong, then? He had not 
 cared ! He had forgiven her sin ; taken the child to 
 his heart, proposed to give him his name, to raise 
 him as his own. If she had but trusted him ! Sitting 
 silent in her place, watching Graeham with the child 
 upon his knee, she went back over her course step 
 by step, to the torn envelope upon his floor, that 
 had given her opportunity into her hands. Ah, 
 if she had but told him then ! Nothing back of 
 Carlvsle s letter, he had said ; and nothing since it 
 
 ^ O 
 
 either, it seemed ; for his manner afforded her no 
 faintest clue to what had passed in the interval since 
 its receipt. 
 
 He had deliberately wiped out the months of their 
 joint residence at the Midland, leaving the slate 
 -t- 281 +~
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 blank, save for the terse conditions of their contract; 
 and his controlled quiet when he had called her 
 Mary had warned her not to revert to it, but to ac 
 cept the cue of his silent refusal to recognize her as 
 Callie Larkin or lola Jourdan, although his allusion 
 to the falls told her he knew. It was like Graeham 
 to cut straight through the tangled situation with a 
 stroke ; accepting what was tenable, rejecting and 
 ignoring all that could not be adjusted upon a basis 
 of solid good sense. 
 
 Something in the restrained coldness of his glance 
 had pierced her with a consciousness of her treachery 
 to Miss Caruth. But how could it be possible that 
 he knew ? Yet the thought gave her pause. Dared 
 she hold him to his word, knowing ? accept his sacri 
 fice, he knowing that she knew it to be such ? But 
 why should she call it sacrifice ? He had come to her 
 freely, had sought her, by his own account, half 
 across the earth to make her his wife. The future 
 smiled ; a memory of her triumph at the ball touched 
 her mind ; who could tell but, after all, he might 
 learn to love her ? 
 
 Under the impetus of swift revulsion from despair 
 to hope, her heart leaped toward Graeham with an im 
 pulse of passionate love ; the radiant energy of youth 
 and spring and love was in the flushed, trembling 
 smile she turned upon him, and in the naive confes 
 sion of her glance. 
 
 " It was n t no sacrifice," she murmured, harking 
 -+ 282 4-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 back to his allusion to the money ; " I d give it er 
 million times n welcome fur fur you ! " 
 
 A line showed quickly in Graeham s brow; he did 
 not glance at her as he began to speak, with a visible 
 effort and hard determination. 
 
 " There is something else " But he did not 
 add it; he paused as though seeking, and not find 
 ing, words to soften his meaning. "I m a blunt 
 man," he broke in at last, "and what I m going 
 to say may seem a bit rough I ? d be gentle if 
 I could ; but it s got to be said. Don t make any 
 mistake, my girl, as to what this is I m offering 
 you, or what I have to offer. 
 
 " I do not forget that I led you into this, or that 
 I voluntarily assumed responsibility for all the con 
 sequences. Well, I m willing to shoulder them. I 
 lost you your fortune, and this child," he laid his 
 open palm upon the child s tumbled curls, with a 
 gesture full of grave responsibility, " his father ; 
 ami the child s mother the protection of a husband s 
 name. I will make all that good, for I can. I will 
 give you my name, make you mistress of my house, 
 shield you with a husband s care, protect you, cher 
 ish you, raise this little lad as my own son but 
 that is all, Mary. Anything more is not mine to 
 give. Do not think me any more brutal than I have 
 to be ; t is better to thrash this out to-day, and 
 let it rest afterward. You are a beautiful woman, 
 nore beautiful even than I had thought ; and women 
 -H- 283 -
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 count on that sort of thing to get them what they 
 want. I would have to be duller than I feel I 
 am, not to know suspect " a deep flush rose to 
 Graehaui s brow, he stammered diffidently, but he 
 got himself in hand and went firmly on, with a 
 frown of repugnance but unfaltering determina 
 tion "that something beside your promised word 
 to me has held you to your contract to marry me ; 
 and it may be that you count upon your beauty, 
 what many men would call your fascination, in the 
 daily contact of a life spent under the same roof, to 
 turn me - change me, wipe out " A hard tremor 
 shook his voice to silence, and under his heavy tan 
 his pallor was evident. After a minute he resumed : 
 " It seems to me that in fairness to you, to us 
 both, it is best to tell you that that cannot be. I 
 could not love you, child, if I would. Love has gone 
 from me. My heart, my soul, every impulse in me 
 that would turn me to the love of a woman, be 
 long to another woman. Every atom in me that is 
 not grossest clay is hers ; and the clay would wake to 
 life and fight to reach her, if it were buried under ten 
 tons of earth as dull as it ! I will always be hers ; 
 she " Graeham lifted his face, forgetful of the 
 woman who sat before him in stony quiet, touched 
 with rapture, his eyes veiled and dull with the vision 
 that he saw within him "will always be mine! 
 The rest is yours, cleanly and honestly, if you care 
 to take it up." 
 
 -+ 284 )-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 The boom of Chinquepin filled the silence that 
 fell heavily at the end of Graeham s speech. The 
 girl toyed with the sewing upon her lap, with shak 
 ing fingers ; her brows over her downcast eyes were 
 gathered in the frown of tragic pain that Graeham 
 had seen before, the night when he had called her 
 a red rose. He saw it with the same throb of pity 
 now, and bent quickly toward her ; but she raised 
 her hand with an outward gesture of repellent 
 scorn. 
 
 " Forgive me, child," he said huskily. " We may 
 have forty years of life together. I could not live a 
 lie for forty years ! " 
 
 " You will not need to," she said quietly. " Do 
 you remember that night of the ball, the night you 
 called me er red rose? You told me then that the 
 thing I lacked, was the on y thing that counted with 
 you. Well, I say that back to you, Mr. Graeham. 
 Th on y thing I d take from you is the thing 
 you ve given her." Her voice had gathered firm 
 ness as she went on, and a smile steadied the trem 
 ulous corners of her mouth, that had lost their 
 Puck-like curve and were straight with earnestness. 
 " What do I want with th husks uv love you offer 
 me, when I have th sweet kernel uv th corn ! " 
 She held her open arms to Graeham, and he placed 
 the child silently within them ; and they remained 
 looking at each other across his bright head, in 
 silence. 
 
 -+ 285 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Th sacrifice f you call it that was fur love, 
 Mr. Graeham. I wanted to be your wife," she 
 looked him cleanly in the eyes as she spoke, with 
 upraised head, " because I wanted th love I thought 
 you d give your wife. I was starving fur a taste uv 
 love, that sort uv love. What is th difference," a 
 deep flush rose in her cheeks, and her eyes steadied to 
 the cold fire of steel as she went on, " between this 
 that you offer me n n " She buried her head 
 with a shudder of repugnance upon the child s 
 shoulder. 
 
 " I have nothing else to offer," said Graeham 
 dully. 
 
 " Then go," said she, in a smothered voice. 
 
 " Leave you now, you mean, and give you a bit 
 longer to think this over ? " 
 
 "No; no! Go." 
 
 " This must end it all, Mary. Is all said that you 
 would have said between us?" 
 
 " No ; there is one thing more. That night - 
 that same night uv th ball, when I I" Shame 
 weighed her eyelids down, but she went on deter 
 minedly, "When I put my arms around your neck, 
 I I knew, n I thought I had er right to." 
 
 " That was my fault," put in Graeham hastily. 
 "Do not let it distress you. What did you know?" 
 
 " I knew that you were James Goodloe." 
 
 " You did ! How could you have known, pos 
 sibly?" 
 
 -+ 286 H-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 " I read the letter that you wrote him ; it was on 
 th table open." 
 
 " You read that letter ? Then you knew that I 
 thought " - 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And you let Carlysle write that letter, know- 
 ing?" 
 
 "You had called me er red rose n her er star ! " 
 she said simply. 
 
 Graeham sat leaning upon his oars, studying her 
 curiously. 
 
 " Why does God make such women as you ? So 
 good, so wholesome to look at, and so rotten within ! 
 He may know why He made you, and may forgive 
 you, because you round out some purpose known only 
 to Him but I shall not." 
 
 Another June since Graeham had made his trip 
 down the river had plumed the lilacs in the old 
 McGuion garden with heart-shaped clusters of bloom, 
 and set the oleander thickets blazing with rosy fire, 
 that rivaled the fringed edge of day slipping away 
 behind the western sky. The calm of the coming 
 night soothed the desolation of the forsaken place, 
 and Chinquepin s voice had begun to take on the 
 hush of the summer nights, when it seemed to sing 
 under breath, and a thrush in the alder by the 
 river sang a brief clear song, and sang it over 
 
 again. 
 
 -t- 287 +-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 There were signs of life about the old place, and 
 even signs of care. The great lawns had been partly 
 cleared; and though the pile of debris still desolately 
 held its own, the grim incubus of hate that once 
 had brooded there was gone ; driven hence, it may 
 be, by the ceaseless babble of Claude s little tongue, 
 and the scamper of his feet like a nimble rabbit s 
 amongr the ruins of his ancestral rooftree. 
 
 o 
 
 A little party was gathered on the lawn in the 
 shadow of the lilac hedge, where a slab of marble, 
 laid across the pedestal of a fallen statue, made a 
 capital table. The guests were gathered about a 
 festal board, where a banquet seemed to be in pro 
 gress. A man s handkerchief spread upon the stone 
 served as tablecloth, and was graced at decorous 
 intervals by acorn-cups. A cigar-case heaped with 
 rose leaves made a noble trencher at one end, and 
 at the other a matchbox supported a bit of sticky 
 bread and jam, with the prints of nibbling teeth very 
 discernible upon it. 
 
 A rag doll, somewhat indiscreetly candid in the 
 matter of cotton stuffing, occupied the seat of honor 
 opposite the host, who hugged a dead mole, with a 
 string tied to one disconsolate flipper, to his breast 
 with determined fondness; Peter Clark, at the host s 
 right hand, faced a yellow kitten, bored of aspect and 
 with the saturnine expression of a cat who recognizes 
 that conditions and not theories confront him. A 
 discussion touching the propriety of the mole s pre- 
 -H 288 -H-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 sence he being dead had just been concluded, 
 and relations were, for the moment, a trifle strained 
 between Clark and his host. 
 
 "I can t think," said Clark to Tola, who sat at the 
 other end of the bench with her sewing, " I can t 
 think how he keeps the confounded thing so fresh ! 
 Every time I ve been here fora month, he s had that 
 dead beast hugged up in his arms." 
 
 " Uncle Cart gets him a new one every morning, 
 before he is awake. Don t tell him it s not the same 
 one, please. It would break his heart." 
 
 " Catch me robbing anybody of an illusion ! Mr. 
 Cartright is very fond of him, is n t he ? I don t 
 know how he ll stand being parted from him," con 
 cluded Clark, with a covert glance at lola s face. She 
 had dropped her sewing, and, with startled eyes of 
 premonitory dread fixed on his face, leaned forward 
 with clasped hands. 
 
 " Parted from him ? " she echoed, with a catch 
 in her voice, that strove to be unconcerned; "what 
 air you talking erbout ? Nothin couldn t part Uncle 
 Cart V Claude." 
 
 "I m going to take him East with me, when I go 
 next week. My sister wants him." 
 
 " Mil child ! Wants my child ! Air air you crazy, 
 Peter?" 
 
 "The law of Alabama says he s mine, lola." 
 
 "Th law!" she flung it from her with a face of 
 tremulous white scorn ; but Clark, watching her 
 
 289 +-
 
 closely, saw, as he had expected to see, the shadow 
 of a fear that was more than half awe fall across her 
 face. To the rural Southerner " th law " is a weird, 
 resistless force, abstract and terrible, capable, like 
 God, of giving and taking away, and a thing against 
 which it is madness and desecration to struggle. 
 
 "What has the law to do with my child?" she 
 demanded tensely. "He s not er law child, n so 
 how ken th law take him erway ! " with quivering 
 reason, that only half believed its argument. 
 
 " The law assumes that a woman who will not 
 give her son a legal father, who cares nothing for 
 his good name or her own, is not a fit person to have 
 charge of him. That is the plea my lawyer will put 
 in, and the courts here will make no trouble about 
 it, I suppose." 
 
 lola was gazing wildly at him, her brows locked 
 in the tragic frown of despair, that made a straight 
 line of them. 
 
 "Plea?" she murmured distractedly; " er er 
 plea to take my baby, n - - n giv him to er woman 
 in New York! Oh, God!" 
 
 Clark was as white as the girl herself as he rose 
 and came to her side, his face set with desperate 
 purpose. 
 
 " Listen, lola ; this thing has been going on be 
 tween us for a year. I have offered over and over 
 to make you my wife begged and prayed you to 
 come back to me ! " 
 
 -+ 290 +-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 " I ve axed you er million times not to come, n 
 tol you it was no use." 
 
 " The year mentioned in your father s will expired 
 three months ago. Of course, as long as there was a 
 question of that infernal water I would not ask you, 
 but you knew why I came. But you cannot think 
 that now! I have a home for you in Morganton, 
 standing empty, and I m sick of this cursed lone 
 liness ! I want my home, my boy, my wife ! But 
 this is my last appeal. Come to me now, or I take 
 the boy East with me and never set foot again in 
 Alabama." 
 
 "I cannot, Peter, cannot! I I do not love 
 you." 
 
 " Come without love ! I 11 make you love me. It 
 will be different now, with the child," he whispered 
 brokenly. 
 
 " F you take him, Peter, I will kill myself," she 
 returned, with stony quiet ; " he is th oii y thing on 
 earth that loves me." 
 
 Clark took her hands, making her meet his eyes, 
 that forgot for once to be impassive and were full of 
 plain, manly pain and purpose. 
 
 " What about me, and the last four years of my 
 life?" 
 
 " F - - f you had ever loved me, you would n t 
 take my baby n give it to er woman in New York. 
 Oh, Peter," with a burst of anguish, " say you won t 
 oh, say it, say it ! " 
 
 -+ 291 H-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 "I must unless you come with him. I must have 
 my boy." 
 
 " You ken have him here. I 11 let you come. 
 I 11 never say again you must n t come." 
 
 " I would not leave him with you as things are. 
 I do not think you are fit to raise him, if you will 
 persist in depriving him of his name. I will put 
 him where he will not know of his disgrace, at any 
 rate." 
 
 " Not fit ? Oh, God ! not fit to raise my own child. 
 / not fit ! N n you ? " she tremulously de 
 manded ; "air you fit?" 
 
 " My sister will bring him up." 
 
 With a cry she sprang toward the child, and 
 before Clark could divine her purpose was running 
 staggeringly across the lawn in the direction of the 
 river, with him in her arms. He reached her side as 
 she was leaping from timber to timber, among the 
 rotting logs of the landing. 
 
 " Are you mad, lola ! Give me the boy 
 quick ! Not on that broken timber, for God s 
 sake ! " 
 
 She stood upon the extreme end of a jutting tim 
 ber, that sagged with her weight, her hand grasping 
 a broken beam above her ; and below the strong, 
 inshore current. Clark dared not trust his weight 
 upon the log, though her slight form swayed beneath 
 the child s weight. 
 
 " Come back, lola ! Blossom, come back ! " 
 ^t- 292 H-
 
 LOVE IT OVER AGAIN 
 
 u No, no! I 11 put him where your sister can t get 
 him, and he won t know of his disgrace." 
 
 Clark ventured down the log, until he could grasp 
 the child s hanging hand. 
 
 " lola, listen to me. I was only trying you, 
 dear. I would not take the boy from you. I only 
 wanted to make you know what it is to suffer, as 
 you have made me suffer with wanting you and my 
 child." 
 
 The girl paused, came back a step toward him, 
 still holding to the beam as she gazed with wonder 
 at the young man s face, haggard with anxiety. The 
 wild turmoil of her fear gave way to something 
 softer as she gazed. 
 
 " Suffer like this, Peter? " She pressed the child 
 to her bosom, with anguished tenderness as she 
 spoke. 
 
 " Ay ; as much as that." 
 
 She swayed toward him, and Clark caught the 
 child quickly from her ; and after a moment of hesi 
 tation included her in his embrace, and stood holding 
 them both firmly in his arms. 
 
 " Down there nobody could n t part us," she mur 
 mured restlessly. " I d ruther be down there with 
 him then to let that woman in New York " 
 
 "No one can take him from you now, Blossom. 
 This is the only place where you will be able to keep 
 him. Stay here with him, won t you?" 
 
 " You won t never, never set th law on me ? " 
 -H- 293 -t-
 
 THE WORLD S WARRANT 
 
 " Only to bind you to rue, and him to you, so that 
 nothing can ever part us three again." 
 
 Her arms were closing jealously around the child 
 as his drew her closer, and they stood thus together, 
 locked in a silent embrace, with Chinquepin s sleepy 
 night-voice singing a lullaby over the darkening land.
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S A
 
 MRS. WIGGIN S REBECCA 
 
 " A character that is irresistible in her quaint, 
 humorous originality." Cleveland Leader. 
 
 Mrs. Wiggin has written a new book under 
 the title "New Chronicles Of Rebecca" recount 
 ing certain episodes in the life of Rebecca, "just 
 the nicest child in American literature," to quote 
 from Mr. T. B. Aldrich. "Rebecca s normal 
 spirit and good cheer are adorable," writes Mrs. 
 Burnett. Indeed, Rebecca is a favorite in the 
 hearts of thousands. She has become almost a 
 national character. Her native wit and the 
 wholesome charm of untrammeled American 
 girlhood brighten every page of this new book. 
 
 Illustrated by F. C. YOHN. I2mo, $1.25. 
 
 HOUGHTON r*ZL? BOSTON 
 
 /VvaJSgi 
 
 MIFFLIN l^Cl AND 
 
 & COMPANY (ralra NEW YORK
 
 NOVELS BY MRS. M. E. M. DAVIS 
 
 THE LITTLE CHEVALIER 
 
 A stirring and dramatic tale, full of color and movement, of the gay 
 and adventurous life in New Orleans in the early part of the i8th 
 century. ... A most delightful and entertaining book. New Orleans 
 Picayune. Illustrated by II. J. PECK. i2mo, $1.50. 
 
 THE QUEEN S GARDEN 
 
 It is a charming and most artistic piece of fiction ... a delightful 
 little romance, altogether as interesting as anything Mr. Cable has ever 
 written. Nashville Banner. i6mo, $1.25. 
 
 UNDER THE MAN-FIG 
 
 Mrs. Davis writes of Texas, of plantation life and character, of the 
 ever-fascinating negroes and the gentle, lazy white children of Sun 
 shine land, their pretty romance, and their patient suffering. Her 
 story covers a number of years in time, and includes a wide and varied 
 range of characters. It is full of romance and mystery, with an inter 
 est steadily cumulating to the close. Chicago Interior. i6mo, $1.25. 
 
 THE WIRE CUTTERS 
 
 The principal scenes of the novel are laid in Louisiana and Texas, 
 and it takes its name from the desperate and prolonged struggle waged 
 with indomitable energy and pluck by the rural classes of the latter 
 state against what they deemed the outrageous and unwarranted fenc 
 ing in of their broad acres, once as free as the very air. There is a 
 love story in which the interest never flags. New Orleans States. 
 Crown Svo, $1.50. 
 
 THE PRICE OF SILENCE 
 
 A romance of modern New Orleans, with a lively movement and a 
 charming setting. Illustrated by GRISWOLD TYNG. i2mo, $1.50. 
 
 HOUGHTON /V2gg- BOSTON 
 
 MIFFLIN Jk^fW AND 
 
 & COMPANY (rara NEW YORK
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 I 
 
 Form L,y-50H-ll, 5U (2554)444
 
 PS Davis - 
 
 -3507 The^w 
 D2B?3w warrant. 
 
 A 000919273 3 
 
 PS. 
 
 3507 
 D2878w 
 
 A SNELUNO 
 
 UOKS -NEW 
 Mt. t OARUNO.