The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1912-08-15
The HEART OF A WOMAN
BY BARONESS ORGY.
Author of @The Scarlet Pimpernel," "Petticoat Rule" Etc

her father On her right. and beyond him
Mr.. Dobson and his clerk; she saw
them all in profile as they looked
straight before them. at the coroner
and at each succeeding witness.
Luke sat farther on, and, as he was
watch his face all the while thai she
listened to the hall porter's evidence.
1t was perfectly still, the features as
1t moulded in wax; the eyes,, which
actually were a clear hazel, appeared
quite dark and almost as II they had
body moved. No stone carved image
could have been more calm, n could
have been sc mysterious.
Louisa tried to understand and could
not. She watched him, not caring
whether the empty headed fools who
sat all around saw her watching him
or not.
When the coroner asked the hall por-
ter about the stick and the man gave
his reply, Luke turned and met
LouiSa's fixed gaze. The marble like
stiffness Of his face remained UNI
changed, only the eyes seemed as If
they darkened yisibly. At least to her
oyer them, an inscrutable, ar un-un-
~Serctandable shadow, and the rims as
suo1eG a purple hue.
1t was her fancy, of course. But
Luke's eyes were naturally bright, OF
varying tones of gray, blue or green,
Now they appeared cavernous and
dark and again as he met her gaze,
that swift flash of intense misery.
No longer had she the feeling that
she was living in a dream, no longer
that this was a theater wherein she
pets dancing and Squirming for the
benefit CT shallow hearted dolts. That
sense of unreality left her together with
the hysterical desire to laugh which
had plagued her SO in the earlier part
of the proceedings. On the contrary,
now an overwhelming feeling of in
tense reality oppressed her, SO that she
soul agony which the sight of Luke'S
misery had caused her.
All her nerves were on the rack, her
every faculty concentrated on the one
supreme desire to understand and 10
know.
Love, the omnipotent, had encoun-
tered an ~enemy-grim, unexplained
mystery-and he sat bordering, almost
cowed by this first check to his SUI
preme might. Louisa had sought and
compelled Lukes gaze and love had
cleaned in n great flash out Of her
eyes. Yesterday, at her glance, he had
knelt at her feet and buried his sorrow
with his aching head in the scented
palm of the dearly loved hand.
Today the look of love brought but q
surfeit OF misery and additional load OF
sorrow. h eyes in response remained
fearless and hard and circled with the
dark rings of utter hopelessness.
I'll grant you that If Louisa Harris
a been an extraordinary woman q
woman endowed with a wonderful,
complex, wonderfully passionate OF
wonderfully emotional nature-if in fact
she had been the true product of this
century's morbid modernity-she would
whilst admitting Luke's guilt, have
burned with a passion of self sacrifice
pining to stand beside hin piloried in
the dock, and looking forward to a YER
table world of idealistic realism in the
form of a picturesque suicide, after
seeing the black flag hoisted over New
gate prison.
But Louisa, though a modern pro-
duct of an ultra-modern world, was
an absolutely ordinary woman-just q
commonplace, sensible creature mn,
thousht and felt in a straight and es-
sentially wholesome manner Though
she had read Tolstof and D~ostoyefsky
and every scandinavian and Russian
crack-brain who has ever tried to make
wrong seem right, black appear white
ana masquerade as love, We,
she had never been led away from hel
clean outlook on life.
h loved Luke and would have Civ
en-did in a give-her whole life to
him; but she loved him without an.
alysis or thought of self. 1t never en-
tered her mind at this moment to won
der if he were guilty or not guilty. il
he was capable or not of committins
a crime to gain his own ends. All thai
troubled her was his misery, which she
would have given her very soul to al.
levlate, and the hopelessness in hin
which She had given the world to con
sole.
The mystery troubled her, not thu
sin: the marble-like rigidity of his face
not the possibility of the crime.
For the moment, however, she was
brought back quickly enough to pre-,
sent realities. The coroner-satisfet
with Frederick Powers answers-wa
giving him a moments breathing space
The grating of fountain pens against
paper was heard from that corner O.
the room where sat the Journalists: the
crowd waited silent and expectant. TO,
universe though most people there
present We're in proceedings of this
kind-yet instinctively every one fel,
That one great crucial moment was Jus
about to come, one-great, leading ques.
ton was just about to be put.
The coroner had fingered the papers
before him for the space of a few
seconds, then he looked up once more
at the witness, his elbow resting or
the table, his heShy chin buried in his
hand, in an attitude which obviously
was habitual to him.
This visitor" he said, speakin
loudly and clearly. who called TIM
night before asst at the Veterans clut
and had an interview with the deceased
you saw him well, of course?"
Yes. sir was the prompt reply.
You would know him again?"
Certainly, sir"
Looking around this room now
should you say that he was present? p
The man looked across the roon
straight at Luke and said pointing t.
him.:
Yes, sir; the gentleman sitting
there, sir"
AS every one had expected the reply
no one seemed astontshed. The man,
pairs of eyes that turned on Luke nov
expressed a certain measure of horri.
fed compassion, such as might be be.
slowed on some dangerous ANNA
brought to earth by a well-aimed CUR
shot.
h coroner made no comment. He
turned to the jury, glancing along either
row OF solemn faces, on both sides OF
the long table. Then he said:
Would any of you gentlemen like
to ask this witness a question 2"