Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-06-08
SUNDAY MAGAZINE FOR JUNE s. 1913


he smoked it, And how sweet and friendly
of her to talk to him like and brother, instead
of being naughty of the other things that
the heroines of the light fiction he had read sup
posed to be!
She was good patriot too And that, in this foreign
land welcome. "If I'd known you were an Arneri,
can, I'd have said good morning when you in
He could hear her voice again at that. He'd never
heard a voice like it before,-low well schooed with
something delicious in its modulations and yet not
bit English
When his side of the little conversation back
to him he grnned Certainly the horrible secret of his
shyness had been well kept for in addition to blowing
a ring of smoke straight into her face, hadn't he paid
her two compiments,-told her he glad she
American, and then that the must have come out
because she asked it to? He didn't know how he could
have said thing like that and yet he wouldn't take
rack for worlds For she hadn't been offended:
she couldn't have been Could anything have been
frender than that smile she gave him when she went
cut with her father? How he wished he might have gone
with them!
Certainly the had granted her wish. 1t was shin
ing down out of cloudess sky. He took his hat
end his heavy walking stick crossed the courtyard of
TIE little inn and hestated moment in the crooked
little cobble-paved street Why shouldn't he go to the
bridge himself to the tide come in9 He wanted to
enormously not to the tide but to see her again.
with the bright, frank sunshine glowing on her.
For anything he knew, it might be his only chance
Already they had been here three days which two
days longer than most people could be expected to stay
in little town like this. Very likely their bags all
lacked and ready to send to the railway station. And
they'd go away and lose themselves somewhere the
he might wait at the inn for them to back
They'd probably do that, even if they were taking the
afternoon train; for their going away had been too
casual to suggest final departure
Suddenly the steeshod ferrule of his stick struck
spark of the roadway. He had taken resolution
He wouldn't follow her to the bridge like spy, nor
would he wait in ambush here in the inn If Fate had
decreed that he should her again. well and good
Fate had had charge of that smoke ring certainly.
Well, Fate should take charge now!
LIE turned away from the inn and strobe up the little
- street. away from the bridge away from the vii
lage, up the valley. He wouldn't back to lunch
He'd stay away all day and give Fate chance But
Ierhaps-perhaps- and then another perhaps-when
Re back to the inn tonight and turned once more
into the coy little commercial room he'd find her there
reading by the fire.
AS it happened, he gave Fate better chance than
he had intended He fully meant, when he set OUT to
be back at the inn before dark in good time for the
"meat tea" that he lad found replaced dinner the
evening meal in that part of the world But thanks to
wrong turning, and to his inability to understand the
language that the Cornishman believes to be English
he was several miles from the inn when the and
purple and gray of the twilight turned to silver
under moon that was the better part full
Under the spell of it, in land where wlzardry and
magic were not yet dead, he forgot his comnonsense
impotence over his mistakes and the stupidity OF
his guides and gave himself up to the haunting, half
fearful beauty of the night.
1t still that he stopped than to listen
the silence. And when the ring of his heels
thus quieed and the clash of his steeshod stick there
was literally sound to be heard at all except distant
Deep musical note which he took to be the clamor of
great against the base of the cliffs Penre, miles
away.
In crossing over from Plymouth he had spent one
night alone the moor night that had been wilder,
lonelier in way terrifying, than this But here,
he strobe along, there quality OF intimacy
about it. something half recolected the of
stories old nurse must have told him during the
time he lived there years ago. There hardly one of
the silent farms he passed. EMPOWERED in the fragrance
Of their apple orchards bat had its local ghosts believed
in as devoutly they little talked about. His
matter-ofact years in Oklahoma enabled him still to
smile these quaint old superstitions but away
down deep in the of him the spell very real for
all of that.