The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-12-27

any conversational sugarplum so OBJ
obviously meant for consolation. He
was bewildered and hurt.
What has happened?" asked Mrs.
Fessenden, with an anxious glance.
You look like a wilted lily
Il, too, could have jOked about it
once. viii 1 ever joke again?"
You're not going already?"
Il must" There was real pain and
dismay in his eyes, and she let him go.
"Oh, dear, oh, dearl" murmured Lucy.
She was hanging over a box that had
just come from the florists. Charles
card was hidden under bunch of ex-
quisitely fragile orchids that looked
like butterflies playing a game of being
asleep. 1t was nothing unusual for
Charlie to send flowers, but these
flowers We're so extraordinarily eXpens-
i've that they evidently meant something
more than undying devotion. They
probably meant another crisis. Lucy
had acquired, from long practice, a
good deal of skill in Tending off crises,
but she had known for some time now
that she couldn't keep it up indefinite
ly. Sooner or later the great crisis would
have to be faced, and for weeks she had
spent all the spare time she could take
from other matters trying to decide
what she should say when that time
came.
For Lucy, in her own small way. was
face to face with the problem which lies
at the foundation of all the neral codes
and most of the ragedies of the world
namely, the conflict between society and
the individual. The Bohemian flats rep
resented the claims of society and
Charlie Ransom represented the indi-
vidual Lucy's social settlement work
was no mere fad, compounded of Curl
osity and vacuity. She had been brought
up in an atmosphere where, social SER
vice was familiar subject of thought
and moral responsibility was accepted
as the commonplace of decent living.
Her little world was made UP of people
who were doing something or other
philanthropic, and Professor Wayland
was its car. Then, merely as an indi-
vidual, she began to slip into love with
Charlie Ransom. The process had been
so gradual that she did not yet con-
slider her old position of free will as
hopelessly lost. Rather, she looked
upon her heart as a would-be traitor,
deserving of little mercy. Charlie was
delightful, of course-so sweet-tempered
and funny and generally mice" that it
would have been pure stupidity not to
value him. But he belonged to a differ
ent world.
Should she give UP all the things that
Lucy Elmer had expected to do, and,
what was perhaps more to the point, all
the things that Professor Wayland had
expected Lucy Elmer to do, and devote
herself to keeping house for one young
man (and a comparative stranger at
that), merely because he had an anus
ing habit of making droll speeches? OF
course, from the individual standpoint,
she would be horribly, inconceivably
lonesome if Charlie were eliminated.
But so every Darby and Joan had felt
from the beginning of time. 1t was a
part of the phenomenon of being in
love-Which was an exceedingly COM
mon experience, regarded socfologically
And then, from the tendency of all
lovers to consult oracleS and the fem
mime instinct for throwing the respon-
sibility for action upon someone else,
she hit upon the expedient of making
Professor Wayland himself solve her
uncertainty. Not that she could-or for
a moment would-ask his opinion d.
rectly. It wasn't advice she wanted
1t was an oracle
I'll take his word for sign" Lucy
said to herself. and felt that after that
the responsibility rested with Provi-
dence.
So she said two words and half to
Mrs. Fessenden, and as Mrs Fessenden
was a woman for whom that was an
ample allowance, Charlie had been in
vited. to meet her distinguished guest
the first time that Professor Wayland
arrived in Riverton for a flying visit.
And then had come this gorgeous box
of orchidsi
"Oh. dearr' laughed Lucy, bending
over them with misty eyes. She could
read their message without any Ian
guage of Flowers to help her. They
meant that Charlie was badly scared.
And the minute the professor ap-
peared she knew that Charles dismay
was justified. His look was so trans
parent to his thought that there was
little need for her to wait for his spoken
word. Yet to keep him from the fatal
word a little while she talked breath
iessly of the things they were both sup
posed to care about-her classes and the
approved methods and the relative