Evening star., 1897-05-01
Continued from Last Saturday.

CONTINUED from Last SdIuru.iyD
And when it does come you'll see me
and Eddy Just waltzin' in and takin' the
chief seats in the synagogue. And you'll
have free pass to the show
Either nc was too intoxicated with his
vengeful vision or the shadows of the
room had deepened, but he did not see the
quick flush that had risen to his wife's face
with this allusion to Barker. nor the after
settling of her handsome features into a
dogged determination equal to his own
His blind fury against the three partners
did not touch her curiosity; she was only
struck with the evident depth of his emo
ton. He had never been a braggart; his
hostility had always been lazy and cynical
Remembering this, she had faint stirring
of respect for the undoubted courage and
consciousness of strength shown In this
wild but single-handed crusade against
wealth and power; rather, perhaps 1t SEEM
ed to her to condone her own weakness in
her youthful and inexplicable passion for
him. No wonder she had submitted.
Then you have nothing more to tell me?'
she said. after pause, rising and going
toward the mante1.
You needn't light up for me-" he re-
turned, rising also. Il am going. Unless"
he added. with his coarse laugh, you
think II wouldn't look well for Mrs. Horn
castle to have been sitting In the dark
with-a stranger" He paused as she con-
temptuously put down the candlestick and
threw the unit match into the crate. No.
I've nothing more to tell He's a fancy
looking pup. You'd take him for twenty
oEe. though he's only sixteen-clean-limbed
stopped. He met her quick look of inter-
rogation, however, with a lowering silence
that nevertheless, changed again as he
surveyed her erect figure by the faint light
nft 10 r-,r1fTs yrir orffn n mi
favors you. 1 think, and in all but one
thing. too
And that?' she queried coldly, he
seemed to hesitate.
He amt ashamed of me-" he returned,
with a laugh.
The door closed behind him: she heard his
heavy step descend the creaking stairs;
he was gone. She went to the window and
threw it open, as If to get rid Of the at
mosphere charged with his presence-a
presence still so potent that she now knew
that for the last five minutes she had
been, TO her horror struggling against its
magnetism. She even recoiled now at the
thought of her child. If, in these new
confidences over it, 1T had revived the old
intimacy In this link of their common flesh.
She looked down from her window on the
square shoulders, thick throat, and crisp
matted hair of her husband as he vanish
ed in the darkness. and drew a breath OF
freedOm-a freedom not SO much from
him from her own weakness that he was
bearing away with him into the exonerat-,
ing night.
She shut the window and sank down in
her chair again, but in the encompassing
and compassionate obScurity of the room.
And this was the man she had loved and
for whom she had wrecked her young life!
Or was it love? and If not. how was she
better than he? Worse, for he was more
loyal to that passion that had brought
them together and Its responsibilities than
size was. She had suffered the perils and
paDgs of maternity, and yet had only the
mere animal yearning for her offspring.
while he had taken over the toll and duty
and even the devotion of parentase him
SELF But then she remembered also how
he had fascinated her-a simple school
girl-by his sheer dornineering strength,
and low the objections of her parents to
this coarse and common man had forced
her into clandestine intimacy that ended
in her complete subsection to him. She re-
membered the birth of an infant whose
concealment from her parents and friends
was compassed by his low cunning: she re-
membered the late atonement of marriage
preferred by the man she had already be-
gun to loathe and fear and whom she nov
believed was eager only for her inher-
itance. She remembered her abject COM
pliance through the greater fear Of the
world. of the stormy scenes that followed
their ill-omened union. of her final aban-
donment of her husband. and the efforts Of
her friends and family who had rescued
the last of her property from him.
She vas glad she remembered 1t; she
dwet upon it, upon his cruelty. his coarse
ness and vulgarity. until she saw, as she
honestly believed, the hidden springs of
his affection for their child. 1t was his
child in nature however it might have
favored her in looks: II was his own brutal
self he was worshiping in his brutal prog
.eny- How else could it have ignored her
its own mother? She never doubted the
truth of what he had told her-she had seen
It in his own triumphant eyes. And yet
she would have made kind mother: she
remembered with smile and a slight ris-
ing of color the affection of Barker's baby
for her, she remembered with a deepening
of that color the thrill of satisfaction she
had felt in her husbands fUiminations
asairst Mrs Barker, and, more than all,
she felt in his blind and foolish hatred