Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1910-12-27

I
fantastic freak it had seemed. He had
had his purpose. He had taken her
out of her environment; he had EAR
ried her beyond succor or menace
just that he might carry them both
so much further and faster through
their differences. They had not
reached the point of agreement yet,
but might they not on some other
ground, where they could be unchal-
lenged? 1t seemed to her If she could
only meet him on her own ground for
once-instead of for ever on Clara's
or Harry's-only meet him alone,
where beyond their reach, it might be
accomplished, it might be brought to
the end she so wished.
The hack, which had been moving
along at rapid pace, slowed now to
walk among the thickening traffic,
and from a mere moving mass the
crowd appeared as Individuals
stream of dark figures and white
faces. Her eyes slipped from one to
another. Here one stood still on the
lamp-lit corner, looking down, with
lips moving quickly and silently. 1t
was strange to see those rapid, eager,
moving lips with no sound from them
audible. Then her eyes were startled
by something familiar in the figure,
though the direct down-glare of the
ball of light above him distorted the
features with shadows. She pressed
her face against the window-glass in
palpitating doubt. IT was Harry.
She covered in the corner of the
carriage In a moment the risks of
her situation were before her. Had
he seen her? Oh, no, at least not yet
He had been too intent on whomever
he was talking to. She peered to
make sure that he was still safely on
the street corner He was just OPP
posite, and now that the eddy of the
crowd had left a little clear space
around him, she saw with whom he
was talking. 1t was a small, very
small, shabby, nondescript man-pos-
sibly only boy, so short he seemed.
His back was toward her. His clothes
hung upon him with an odd un-Anglo-
Saxon air. He was foreign with a
foreignness no country could explain
Italian, Portuguese, Greek-whatever
he was, he was strange foil to Har
ry, so bright and Furnished
The hack was turning. She re-
allied with dismay that it was turning
sharp around that very corner where
they stood. Suppose Harry should
chance to glance through its window
and see Flora Gilsey sitting trembling
within. The hack wheezed and
cramped, and all at once she heard
it scrape the curb. Then she was lost!
She looked up brave in her despera-
ton, ready to meet Harry's eyes. She
saw the back of his head. For a
moment it doomed directly above her,
then it moved. He was separating
from his companion. With one stride
he vanished out of the square frame
of the window, and there remained
full fronting her. staring in upon her,
the face of his companion.
Back flashed to her memory the
goldsmith's shop-dull hues and odors
all at once-and that wide unwinking
stare that had liked her from the 9TH
er side of the counter. The blue-eyed
Chinaman! In the glare of white
light, in his terrible clearness and
nearness, she knew him instantly.
The hack plunged forward, the face
was gone. But she remained nerve
less, powerless to move, frozen IN her
stupefaction, while her vehicle pur-
sued it's crazy course. 1t was clatter
ing up Suffer street toward Kearney,
where at this hour the town was
widest awake, and the crowd was
crowd she knew At any instant peo-
pie she knew might be going in and
out of the florists shops and restau-
rants, or passing her in carriages.
And what of Flora Gilsey in her morn
ing dress and garden hat, in night
hawk of a Telegraph Hill hack, flying
through their midst like a mad wom-
an? They were the least of her fears.
She had forgotten them. The only
thing that remained to her was the
memory OF Harry and the blue-eyed
Chinaman together on the street cor
ner
She had been given a glimpse of
that large scheme that Harry was car
rying forward somewhere out of her
sight-such a glimpse as Clara had
given her in the rifiing of her room,
as Ella had shown in her historical
revelation. Again she felt the threat
of these ominous signs of danger, as
a lone general at last stand with
his troops clustered at his back sees
! in front, and behind, on either side OF
him. the glitter of bayonets in the
! bushes.
She was In the midst of the tan
gled traffic of Kearney street. Swim
ming lights and crowds were all
around her. She peered forth cauti-
| ously upon it. She saw ford face,
a woman she knew casually-and
there her eyes fastened, not for the
woman's brilliant presence. but for
| what she saw directly in front of it,
| thrown into relief upon its background
Ia short and shabby figure, foreign,
equivocal, reticent, the figure of a
/ blue-eyed Chinaman.
He was standing still while the
crowd flowed past him. This time he
was alone. He seemed to be waiting,
| vet not to watch. as If he had already
| seen what he was expecting and knew
/ that it must pass his way. 1t was I'M
canny, his temperance, at a second
/ interval of her route, standing as II
+, he had stood there from the first, pa
tieat, expectant, motionless. 1t was
worse than uncanny.
All at once an idea. wild and illQg
! ical enough. jumped up in her mind.
! Couldn't this miserable vehicle that
| was numbering like disabled bug
move faster and rattle her on out of
reach IF the glare. the publicity. the
/ threat of discovery. and, above all, of
her discomforting notion?
She thrust her head far out and adj
! dressed the driver.