Waterbury evening Democrat., 1891-05-05
wholly unlike the pity ol
CHAPTER xxIII.


 toward the West, climbing the glim- mering craft-crowded Hudson by boat | and ever with its svelvet-motioned prog | ress feasting his eyes upon the palace acclivities. What regal placesi | What paradises up where the emerald | sweeps turned back against the violet | gulf of ether! He felt it glorious; yet | often his eyes closed heavily, and with | a sigh he saw again the innumerable | huts and holes of hunger that festered | in the by-ways and corners of the huge town he had left behind. At length he left the water for the l rail, and making for the West swerved 1 toward the South, and with a kind of | mixed delight and misgiving within, l got down from the train at Cincinna- ti, as he had months before. Then he had felt sense of contamination, a sorrow wet with polluted blood, which still burned often across him, dying away into an unsspeakable pity for Maun's unhallowed end. Something of the horror of those last days in Openstone had been loosened from him, or it were much as if the dried blood and tears upon his memory had been half worn of by the thousands of new scenes and faces that had glanced along his con- sciousness during these months of wan dering. But still by times his fingers would clinch as he threw it from him with a shudder, and now when he stood in Celeste's city even her hallowed presence in that nightmare period of his life brought it rushing over him, and for a moment the thousand nov ing figures about him were blurred as in mist, and only the dead girl lying in the water under the hill at Open stone seemed clear. Yet he shivered at thought of her; she that had been vile! Could he ever forgive that? Even had he loved her wholly it had only been the deadiier! Yet she was inno- cent, innocent through ignorance. he thought. An, what inexpressible treat ment had been portioned out to her! Into what an abyss had she been tripped, and what weak and sputtering lights were words wherewith to de- scend into the cavern of her wrong and illumine its hideousness!
 At length, drawing heedlessly away from the scity's heart, he came into quieter parts, but steeped in retrospec- ton he noticed it but little. He had wandered so much about strange streets in these late months that he had come, when his thoughts were turned backward or inward, to regard en vlroning objects little more than if he were in a room. So he walked on half thinking that he should presently go to some hotel, and straightway falling again into reyerie; the slumberous eyes of Maun, the black feverish lights under the book-keeper's brow and the sky-like luminous orbs of Celeste, seemed glancing about the mental plummets with which he was straining to measure how much or little he had cared in truth for the lost lamented girl, when suddenly Celeste came into the street farther up the residence-cov- | cred bluff and started down toward him. Her limping figure looked slen- sky, and when she saw John Earling Q sudden light whiGened across her face, her hands lifted little as from thrill | through the heart and she stopped.
 He did not see her, and she turned as 1 if to go back, then she went on, with her exquisite cheeks and chin flushing
 an almost invisible pink, and paused
 when she met him.
 When the young man glanced up,
 and from seeing the same eyes within
 him beheld the living ones dilating
 with light before him, he started with
 sort of frightened cry, but quickly
 put out his hand and grasped her ex-
 tended one.
 "You are a long way from Open
 stone, MT. Earling! I am glad to see
 you," she said, with her frank smile
 and silvery voice.
 An, there was the voice which had
 followed him for years! and his
 thoughts ran about after words for 6
 moment confusedly; then he recovered
 himself and said, with the suddenly
 stirred blood still mantling his face:
 'Thank you; yes, come to be sick
 ened with the place; some very terrible
 things having occurred-Oh, yes, you
 remember them, yes; the last time ! saw you you were standing by-by-
 Maun's grave singing" Even in hi
 lack of calmness he noticed the quick
 wave of feeling that swept across hel
 face.
 "Yes, remember it," she said, he
 eyes falling with faintly wIthered ex |, pression as if in memory of a grea pain or struggle. ''It was the saddest
 hardest thing ever knew. do no . touched me more." Then she liftet
 her eyes to his again with somethin,
 not unlike the tender, pitying, anxiou |. look of achild reading its sick parent face. "You are not so we'll since then . does it not go away from youP> sh asked, simply. Then when he stam mered something about feeling quit well, the oddness of her query scene, to escape from her solicitude into he i sight and her face flushed and sh , looked away along tho beautiful street
 But before he could speak she turne
 again: ''Wil you not go home wit
 me?" she asked. John Earling thanke . her hesitatingly, but added, in his ope 2 way: 'To be truthful. Celeste-Mis 2 Bright my errand in the city was to- Il see you. I suppose in that case |, would be ridiculous for me to declin your kindness. But would it not b . pleasanter for you at some other hourp f She gave her neither lip little pearl f bite, as if the tidings that he came onl