The San Francisco call., 1909-08-29

discouraging light she saw her inten-
tion dwindle to the vanishing point
but the great move was just as
good as 1T had been before-just
as solid, Just as advisable. Being
so very solid wouldn't it wait un-
she really meant what she said. sup
posing she ever had chance to see
him again? The possibility that at this
moment he might actually have gone
had almost escaped her. She recalled
1t with a disagreeable shock, but after
all. that was the best she could hope,
never to see him again! She ought to
be grateful to be sure of that, and
yet If she were, OH never could she
deprive him OF so much beauty and
light by her keeping of the sapphire
he would then have taken away
from herl
She would come down then, indeed,
level with the plainest.> palest, nal u
est things-people and facts. Her ro-
mance-She had seen 1T; she chad had
it in her hands and It had somehow
eluded her. 1t had vanished. evapor-
ated. It had come to her In rather a
terrific guise, presented to her on
that night at the club by the first
debonair wave of the mans hand; and
now he might have gone out through
that white way into the east. taking
back her romance as the fairy takes
back his unappreciated gift.
She leaned and looked through the
thin veil of her curtains at the spien-
freaks. It was hot. The white ghost
of noon lay over shore and sea. Be
meath her the city seemed to sleep
gray and glistening. The tops of hills
that rose above the up-creeping houses
were misted green. Across the bay.
along the northern shore, there was
a pale green coast of hills dividing
blue and blue Ships in the bay hung
out white canvas drying, and the sky
showed whittier clouds. slow moving.
like sails upon lanquid sea. Beneath
her, directly down, through hanging
darts of eucalyptus leaves, hemmed
with high hedges, the oval of her gar
den showed her a pattern like Per
sian carpet. Roofs sloped beyond it,
and beyond these the diagram of
streets and houses, and empty unbui1t
grassy lots.
She looked down upon all, as lone
and lonely as deserted lady in a
tower; lifted above these happy. peace
full things by her strange RESPONSE
bility. Her thoughts could not stay
with them; her eyes travelled sea-
ward She parted the curtains and.
leaning a little out. looked westward
at the white sea gate.
whistle, as of some child calling
his mate. came sweetly. in the silence
1t was near, and the questing, ex-
pectant note caught her ear. Again
it came. sharper. imperative, directly
beneath her. She looked down; she
was speechless. There was a sudden
wild current of blood in her veins.
There he stood. the whistler, neither
child nor bird, but the man himself
Kerr, looking up at her from the gay
oval of her garden. She hung over
the window sill. She looked directly
down upon him, foreshortened to a
face, and even with the distance and
the broad glare of noon between them
she recognized his aspect--his gayest,
of diabolic glee- There 1urked about
him the impish quality of the whistle
that had summoned her.
."Come down." he called.
= All sorts of wonders and terrors
were beating around her. He had
transcendcd her widest wish: he had
come to her more openly, more dar-
ingly, more romantically than she could
have dreamed. All the amazement Of
why and how he had braved the bat
terry of the windows of her house
was swallowed up by the greater joy Of
seeing him there. standing in his
"grays," with stiff o1ack hat pushed
off his hot forehead. hands behind him,
looking up at her from the middle
of anemones and daffodils.
Come down. he called again. and