San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1891-04-10

knows perbecJly weir caLN ra..ye che
dinner. Well, if red cheeks are all he
looks for in woman it's lucky escape
for me-" And then, to testify her ioy
at her good luck, she began to cry again
And what was Stevens thinking of.
down at the Office, spelling government
stationery in government hours by draw
ing pen and ink lattice work? Were
they designs for the close barred win
dows of castle of despair? Here |
am" he unused, tiled TO Office, serf,
living tedious little life, nobody, and
she taken hithsr and thither by that
officer-just the one to fascinate young
girl. l can see she likes him; and why
not? And why should she ever care for
me?'
As for Lieut.. Quire, he WAS miserable
too; or az near melancholy as his jovial.
careless temperament permitted. The
lieutenant from boy had always been
in love with somebody, and for that rea-
son perhaps had never married anybody.
But he was anything but sentimental,
and had that very comfortable faculty,
for one by profession vagrant, of
short memory. 4 traveller should have
the knack of making acquaintance and
forgetting them.
Lieut.. Quire's ideals, including his
ideal of woman, were not high enough
TO make him unhappy. He was proud
of his profession, liked life, which he re-
garded as decidedly worth living, and
approved OF Lieut.. Quire, whom he
thought very good fellow. He was not
at all surprised that the ladies acted as
il they thought so also; and when they
told him rs much he agreed with them.
But now the lieutenant was troubled
and cast down. Why he could not say
Perhaps he did not try to find out, for he
was not much given TO introspection.
He knew, however, that he had never in
al his travels met SO fascinating wom-
an rs Florence Bassett. 1t was not her
physical beauty either, delicious though
it was. that Subdued him. No; her
beauty was more than skin deep. Ex-
actly what it WAS he could not tell, but
he found himself dreaming of fireplace
and crane, and q purring cat by the
bearth and the prattle of childish voices
il the air. He now recalled with hor-
Tor that ouly u fortnight ago he had APP
piled for duty on a foreign station. All!
what sort of life was this, wandering
like the tides 20 and fro upon the seas?
And Florence was also little anxious
and distressed: upon the whole they
made rather lugubrious group of
pleasure seekers. Florence was not
disturbed by admiration, having been
accustomed 10 praise from earliest child
hood, when she was passed from one lap
to another to be handled, and when she
was stopped in the street by strange la
dies and kissed for her beauty. Such
homage and tenderness she took as a
matter of course and as her natural due
and birthright. Moreover, she had had
lovers, and had heard VOWS and signs;
and such incidents she had come to re
gard as inevitable, and to be uncom-
plainingly borne. But the situation
Just now was rather novel and embar-
raising. she saw that Stevens loved
her; that for years he had, perhaps I'M
consciously to himself, hid her image in
his heart, nourishing one of those slow,
secret, smoldering, pernicious fevers of
hopeless love which at her coming
blazed into an active passion.
This would have been painful to q
woman of Florence's kind and sensitive
nature under any circumstances, but as
matters stood it was doubly 50, and awk-
ward as well. She liked Stevens well
enough, and would have enjoyed his so
ciety had there been no bar of reserve
between them. AS she told her mother,
FROM whom she kept only her very
choicest secrets, Stevens was very re-
spectacle, agreeable young gentleman,
sensible, moral, competent, and all that
Windward, and man of worth. But
he was not interesting, ne made no i'm
preston, did not appeal to the magma
ton. She liked him Us she liked twenty
other commonplace, respectable young
men, but he met no ideal, satisfied no
longing, filed no heroic role. To marry
him would simply DE to move into one
of block Of houses, and live dreary
life with man not much unlike the
husbands. who lived next door and
across the street and around the corner.
He is very good, of course" she ex-
planned to Mrs Bassett. He is not the
kind of man to make fuss, or say ugly
things, or annoy one. But now and then
trying little times like this come. al
luded yesterday to his college Grafton,
just to say something, and jokingly asked
him how the country was getting on.
You drew such dreadful picture that