Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1910-12-20
CHAPTER I.-(continued.)

Beyond the looming roofs as they
descended the hill she saw white sails
sink out Of sight. All the panorama
upon which she had looked down
sprang up around her, large and liv-
ing. He whistled to the car as he
helped her down the last steep pitch
whistled and waved, and they ran
for 1t.
This was never the car one went
out the front door to take. This creak-
ed and crawled low, taking the cor
ners comfortably, past houses with
all their windows blinking recogni-
ton. Hadn't it passed them so for 20
years? Old houses in long gardens,
and little houses creeping back behind
their yards. not yet encroached upon
by fresher ties of living. Past all
these and gliding down under high,
ragged banks, green grass above with
wooden stairways struggling up their
naked faces; past these again; past
lower levels; past little gray and
cluttered houses; past loaded carts OF
vegetables; past children playing
shrilly, bearing down always on the
green square of the plaza wide, worn
and foreign, and the Greek church
"domed' with blue and yellow, bear
ing down as if it had fairly determined
to make it's course straight through
this stable center. Then in the very
shadow it swerved aside to clatter off
In quite another direction along a
wider street with whittier shops, and
more glittering windows with gilded
letters flashing foreign names, with
more marked and brilliant colors NOV
ing in the crowd, with a clearer
stamp on all of Latin living.
Then suddenly for them the slid
ing panorama ceased. The car had
stopped and they had left it, and were
standing upon the corner of a still
street that came down from the high
hills behind them and crossed the
car track and climbed again a little
way to curve over into the sky. Dingy
houses two blocks above them stood
silhouetted against the blue. They
were walking upward toward this ho-
rizon, leaving color and motion be-
hind them. With every step the street
grew more empty, lonely and color
less. Many of the windows that glim-
mered at them, passing, were the
blank windows of empty houses. Were
they taking this way, this curious
roundabout, out-of-the-world way, of
dropping over into the shipping which
lay under the hill? For all she knew
this might really be his notion, for
since they left the garden gate,
though they had looked together at
the light and color of the pictures
moving past their eyes, they had not
exchanged a word
But all at once he stopped at the
intersection of two dusty streets, and
his eyes veered down the four per-
spectives like a yoyageur taking his
soundings. Elegant as ever and odd
enough, yet he wasn't any odder here
at the jumping off place of nowhere
that he had appeared in the box at
the theater or in the picture gallery.
She had the clear impression all at
once that he wasn't too odd for any
thing.
Here we are!" he said, and indi-
Gated with his glittering stick straight
before them little house. 1t was low,
as If it crouched against the wind,
faded and beaten by the sun to the
drab of the rock itself. and made so
secret with tight-drawn curtains that
IL seemed to have shut itself I'D
against the world forever. She wa
vered. She wasn't afraid of herself
out here. out-of-doors under the sky,
but she was afraid that those four
walls might shut out her new I'M
reasoning Joy, might steal away his
new tenderness, and bring her back
face to face with the same ugly fact
that had confronted her in her draw.
ing room.
"0h, no. she said, and put her
hands behind her with a determina.
ton that she wasn't going TO move
"Oh, yes" he said. but be dida't
smile He looked at her quite grave
ly, reproachfully, and the touch of his
fingers on her arm was fine, was del
ioate, as if TO say. Il wouldn't harm
you for the world"
She blushed a slow, painful Grim
son. She hadn't meant that She
hadn't even thought of it; but, since
he had, there was nothing for it but
to so in. The door shut behind her
sharply, with click like little trap;
and she breathed such ar atmosphere,
fiat, faint ana stale, the mere ghost
OF some fuller, more fragrant favor.
In the little anteroom where they
stood. whose faded ceiling all but
brushed their heads, and in the larger
little room beyond the Nottingham
lace curtains, prevailed a mild shah