Courier Democrat. (Langdon, N.D.) 1891-1920, 1907-07-04
XII.

- NS
" power was undiminished. Back
to town from mountain and seashore
filtered the warm weather idlers, but
no more letters came from st. Peters,
burg to the hill by the Hudson. So
far as our girls were concerned, a ur-
tain Of silence had fallen between Eu-
rope and America.
The fat was now furnished, and the
beginning of autumn saw it occupied
BY the two friends. Realization in this
instance lacked the delight Of antici-
patton. At last katherine was the
bachelor girl she had longed to be,
but the pleasures Of freedom were as
Dead sea fruit to the lips. At last
Dorothy was efectually cut off from
all thoughts Of slavery, with unlimited
money to do what she pleased with,
yet after all, of what advantage was
It in solving the problem that haunted
her by day and filled her dreams by
night? She faced the world with
seeming unconcern, for she had not
the right to MOURN eve If she knew
he were dead. He had made no claim,
had asked for no affection, had writ
ten no word to her but what all the
world might read. Once a week she
made a little journey up the Hudson
to see how her church was coming on,
and at first Katherine accompanied
her, but now she went alone. Rather
Inc was too honest a girl to pretend
an interest where she felt none. She
could not talk of architecture when
she was thinking of a man and his
fate. At first she had been ENORMOUSLY
impatient when no second communica-
ton came. Her own letters, she said.
must have reached him; otherwise they
would have been returned. Later dumb
fear took possession of her, and she
grew silent, plunged with renewed en-
ergy into her books, joined a technical
school, took lessons and grew paler
and paler until her teachers warned
her she was OVERRIDING it.
Inwardly she resented the serene i'm
~passiveness of her friend, who consult
ed calmly with the architect upon &C.
casion about the decoration of the
church, when mems liberty was gone
and perhaps their lives. She built up
within her mind a romance of devo-
ton, by which her lover, warning in
vain the stolid Englishman, had at last
been involved in the ruin that Drum
mond's s~tubbornness had brought upon
them both and unjustly implicated the
ry,iof uyoinnn NV how cidn IN thu no
sponsibility of this sacrifice. Once or
twice she spoke with angry impatience
of Drummond and his stupidity, but
Dorothy neither defended nor excused,
and so nc open rupture occurred be-
tween the two friends, for a quarrel
cannot be n sided.
But with a woInan of Katherine's
temperament the final outburst had to
come, and it came on the day that the
first furry Of snow fell through the
Still air, capering in large fakes past
the windows Of the fiat down to the
muddy street far below. Katherine
was standing by the window, with her
forehead leaning against the plate
glass, in exactly the attitude that had
been her habit in the sewing room at
Bar Harbor, but now the staccato Of
her fingers on the sill seemed to drum
a dead march of despair. The falling
snow had darkened the room, and one
electric light was aglow over the dain-
ty C~hippendale desk at which Dorothy
sat writing Il letter. The smooth. regu-
lar flow Of the pen over the paper
reused Katherine to a frenzy of exas-
peration. Suddenly she brought her
clinched fist down on the sill where
her fingers had been drumming.
my God!' she cried. How can you
sit there like an automaton with the
snow falling?"
Dorothy put down her pen.
"The snow falling| she echoed. 81
don't understand"
"Of course you don't. You don't
think of the drifts in Siberia and the
two men you have known, whose hands
you have clasped, manacled, driven
through it with the lash Of a Cossack's
whip"
Dorothy rose quietly and put her
hands on the shoulders of the girl, feel
ing her frame tremble underneath her
touch. :
Katherine" she said quietly, but
Katherine, with a twitch of
her shoulders, flung off the friendly
grasp.
Don't touch mel" she cried. go
back to your letter writing. You and
the Englishman are exactly alike-un.
feeling, heartless. He with his selfish
st~ubbornness has involved an innocent
man in the calamity his own stupidity
has brought about"
katherine, sit down. 1 want to
talk calmly with you"
Calmly! Calmly! Yes, that is the
word. It is easy for you to be calm
when you don't care. But I care, and
I cannot be calm." .
What do you wish to do, Rather
ine2"
what can ] do? / am q paupcl
and a dependent, but one thing / am
determined to do, and that is to &c
and live in my fathers house."
III you were 10 my place. what
would you do, KatherineYs
al would 20 to Russia