The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-09-08

| with something unusually immObile about
| his pOse-and say something indefinite and
| half laughing about keeping Brenda Up
/ and billiards" There was something in
/ his eyes as he spOke-something which
] Mr. Forsyth did not see-which curiOusly
/ contradicted the carelessness OF his voice
I Edmund SartOrys had been moving uneas-
ily for nearly an hour past with a rest
I lessness which showed oddly against
| Brenda's absolute Stiffness. She had hard
[ ~ moved since dinner. and. like Alan, she
/ had spoken less and less as the evening
wore on. She did not speak now. though
I she must have heard her lovers words,
/ and there was q moments silence. Alan
| lifted his head slowly and looked the other
man in the face with stern. dark eyes;
his lips parted as If he was going 70
speak; and then he turned and looked
at Brenda as she sat in profile against
dark curtain. her eyes on the ground. He
paused a moment more, and the words
with which he rose were evidently not
those he had intended to say.
I shall be delighted" But before
he could finish his sentence Mr.. Forsyth.
realizing that, as he expressed il, the
boys politeness was doing him out Of
his stroll in the garden" interpOsed.
NO! No. boysr' he exclaimed Alan,
you know you detest billiards, and Ed
mund has TO go and see that mysterious
statue. Come, Brenda, no coquetting,
miss. Run along and do the honors. It's
just elevenr
He had risen as he spoke. and was
standing with his hands behind him
taking a jovial delight in his own ad
mirable arrangements. There was mo-
ments dead silence, and then Brenda
moved suddenly toward the door.
Gomez! she said, in a low, unnatural
voice.
She passed down the long room without
a glance towards Alan Durant as he stood
watching her with hard eyes. into which
had leaped a CLEAN Of savage hope. And
Edmund Sartorys followed her without
a word.
CHAPTER ".
The full moon was high in the heavens,
and as Brenda Forsyth and Edmund Sar-
torys passed out of the bright hall with
its familiar yelowish gaslight, they SEEM
ed to pass into a strange and solemn
world where everything lay still and white
under the mysterious spell of the moon
light. No word passed between them. The
sound of their footsteps on the gravel
walk struck almost weirdly against the
quiet round them. They passed on to the
soft grass and the silence was more
weird still. No word passed between them
even when Brenda, who had led the way
without backward glance at the man
who followed her, stopped suddenly. They
stood there In the same unnatural silence
waiting.
Facing them, in the distance, in a silence
and a stiffness like their own, stood the
statue with the hand uplifted-waiting
too. The unfathomable night sky stretch
ed above it, behind it; its dark background
of trees seemed to whisper and shudder
together as the night wind passed through
them: IL stood out in. the white moonlight
in its solitary majesty, and it held the
gaze alike Of the woman and of the ashen-
faced man who looked at it and waited.
rs.-
Brenda, with every sense abnormally
alert caught a slight sound behind her.
With a quick indefinable instinct-wheth-
er of warning, or dread or of sympathy
il is impossible to say without turning her
head she stretched out her hand behind
her and cauEhts in it the hand of Alan
Durant, who had come up behind her I'M
noticed by the other man who stood gaz-
ing before him as If spell bound. AS their
hands met, from the distant church clock
came the first stroke of eleven. And on the
instant. held and petrihed by a horror not
to be expressed in words she saw again
what she had seen the night before, what
Alan Durant looked upon now for the
third time.
The Statue of Truth had disappeared
Before the place where II should have
stood the figure of a tall, fair man was
standing in an attitude of fierce struggle
and strain. At his feet, kneeling on the
sive grip IN her two little outstretched
hands was a slight gfrlish figure, tense
and terrible with the agony of
death. The white wrap had fallen from
the little fair head, thrown back as the
face was lifted in an agony of entreaty,
the fingers Of the man were on the slen-
der threat, and his struggle was the
struggle to kill. To the onlookers in the
moonlight there came no sound. only that
awful moment of passion and death. to
which no after moment succeeded, burnt
itself on to their eyeballs The face of
the man, terrible in rs fierce frenzy
of passion was towards them as they
stood every line distinctly visible in the
moonlight And it was the face of one
of the three who looked-the face of Ed
mund Sartorys.
How long the vision held them Brenda
never knew. She knew that she saw il
no longer; she heard a sound beside her,
such as she had never heard before from
any human being-a deadly articulate cry
for vengeance, low and terrible In its in
tensity land she wrenched herself from
the Darkness into which she was falling
to see her cousin with face she hardly
recognized turn to where Edmund Sar-
torys had stood beside them.
"Alanl Nor The words came from her
in a hoarse hardly audible whisper as
she almost threw herself upon him. Not
youi Not you Oh look at him.
Edmund Sartorys lay prone on the
grass at their feet. He had fallen on his
face, his hands were clasped above his
head as he grovelled and writhed as
though he hoped to hide himself in the
earth on which he had cast himself, and
he was uttering the inarticulate cries
wrung from a human being only by the
vrey eXtremities of terror. There was a
dreadful pause. as Alan, aWested by
Brendas movement stood with her en-
treating hands upon his breast looking
past her at the other as he lay.
In that moment. as he stood with every
faculty as it were suspended, the raeking
torment of the past four years touched
its eliminating point in Alan Durant-
touched il and passed into the majesty
of Remuneration; raising in him, in the
passing. a strength of self-control terrible
with the tremendous power il at once
revealed and hid. He spoke at last. and
his low voice in its absolute steadiness
and quiet had in ii the authority which
is not TO be resisted-the authority of a
man whose own fierce passions are relent-
lessly held down by his indomitable will.
go in, Brendar' he said Come, 1 will
take you"
without q Da,,Sa u-i+bort a gacl11-ar5