Union County courier. [volume] (Elk Point, Union County, D.T. [S.D.]) 187?-1913, 1895-07-11

NSs
and its fora.
In the drawing-r o they sat on OPP
posite sides Of the fire, and were silent
for a bit. Profiting by the permission
she had given him, he produced n
of his Cuban cigarettes, opened 1t at Its
ends. unrolled it, rolled 1t up again and
lit it.
Now, the time has come for you to
tell me what I most want to KNOW"
she said.
What Is that"
Why you went away"
OH he murmured.
She waited a minute. Then. Tell
me-" she urged.
do you remember Mary Isona?" he
asked.
She glanced up at him suddenly as ii
startled.
Mary Isona? Yes, of course"
Well. I was In love with her"
"You were in love with Mary Isona?"
II was very much in love with her.
l have neve got over 1t, I'm afraid"
She gazed fixedly at the fire. Her
lips We're compressed. She saw a
slender girl in a plain black frock, with
a sensitive, pale face, luminous, sad,
dark eyes and a mass of dark, waving
hair-Mary Isona, of Italian parentage,
a little music teacher, whose only rela-
ton to the world Theodore Vellan lived
in was professional. She came into it
for on hn1pR ~ fVvn a. a f3nn nnu, md
then, to play or to give a music lesson.
YES" he repeated, II vas in love
with her. l have never been In love
with any other woman. 1t seems ridicu-
ious for an old man to say 1t, but l am
In love with her still. An old man?
Are we really old? Our body grows
old. our skin wrinkles, our hair turns
white, but the mind, the spirit, the
heart? The thing we call Il? Anyhow,
o a day, not an hour passes, but l
think of her, I long for her, I mourn for
her. You knew her-you knew what
she was. Do you remember her play
ing? Her wonderful eyes? Her beau
tiful pale face? And how the hair
grew around the forehead? And her
talk, her voice, her intelligence! Her
taste, her instinct, in literature, in art
1T was the finest l have ever met"
Eyes, yes, yes" Mrs. Kempton said,
slowly. "She was a rare woman. I
knew all the unhappy circumstances
Of her life; her horrid, vulgar mother;
her poor, dreamy, inefficient father;
their poverty; how hard she had tc
work. You were in love with her. Why
didn't you marry her?"
"She wouldn't have had me-"
did you ask her"
mo. 1t was needless. 1t went with
out saying"
You We're wrong not to ask her. One
never can be sure. Oh, why didn't you
ask her?' His old friend spoke with
great feeling.
He looked at her surprised and eager.
"Do you really think she might have
cared for meY"
"Oh, you ought to have told her! You
ought to have told herr she repeated.
"Well-now' you know why l went
away"
EYES,"
when I heard of her-her-death"-
he could not bring himself to say her
suicide-"there was nothing else for me
to do. 1t "a SO hideOus, sc unutter-
able. To go on with my old life, in the
old place, among the old people. al
quite impossible. l wanted to follow
her, to do what she had done. The only
alternative was to fly as far from Eng
land, as far from myself, as l could"
sometimes" Mrs. Kempton confess
ed by-and-by, sometimes l wondered
whether, possibly, your disappearance
could have had any such connection
with Mary's death--it followed it so i'm
mediately. 1 wondered sometimes
whether, perhaps, you had cared for
her. But I couldn't believe tit was
only because the two things happened
n upon the other. Oh, why didn't you
tell her? 1t is dreadful, DREADFUL"
When he had left her she still sat
for a little while before the fire.
Life is a chance to make mistakes
"a chance to make mistakes. Life Is q
chance to make Mistakes"
1t vas a phrase she had met In a
book she was reading the other day.
Then she had smiled at 1t; now 1t
rang in her ears like the voice Of q
mocking. demon.
"Yes, 3 chance to make Mistakes"
she said, half aloud.
She rose and went to her desk, un-
locked a drawer, turned over its con-
tents, and took out a letter-an old let
ter, for the paper was yellow and the
ink was faded. She came back to the
Preside and unfo!ded the letter and read
1t. 1t covered six pages Of note paper,
in a small feminine hand. 1t was q let
ter Mary Isona had written to her, Mar
garet Kempton, the night before she
died, more than thirty years ago. The
writer r%ecounted the many harsh cir
cumstances Of her life, but they would
all have been bearable, she said, saw
for n great and terrible secret. She
had fallen in love with a man who was
scarcely conscious of her existence;