The Spectator., 1915-04-23
o0XlNCIT N ME 6O66C7
CHAPTER xvI-Continued.

sleep in that room again. So he tip toed out to the cafe veranda and dropped into a comfortable chair. He would hunt them up some time during the day. He would ask Mallow for fifty pounds, and he sincerely hoped that Mallow would refuse him. For he was grimly resolved that Mallow should pay for those half-truths, more damning than bald lies. It was due to Mallow that he was never more to see or speak to Elsa. He emptied the ash from his cutty which he slowed away.
 The great heartache and the great CT disillusion would not have fallen to his lot had Elsa been frank in Ran was to sail on the same steamer. He would have put over his sailing. He would have gone his way, still believ- ing himself to be Bayard. Galahad or any other of those simple dreamers who put honor and chivalry above and before all other things.
 Elsa! He covered his face with his hands and remained in that position for long while, so long indeed that the coolies, whose business 1t was to scrub the filings every morning at four. went about their work quietly for fear of disturbing him.
 Elsa had retired almost immediate ly after dinner. She endeavored to finish some initial work on old em- broideries, but the needle insisted upon pausing and losing stitch after -t.e .e.l, A~l t<, sleep, but that sweet healer came not to her wooing. Nothing she did could overcome the realization of the shock she had received It had left her dull and bewildered.
 The name echoed and re-echoed through her mind: Paul Ellison. It should have been an illumination; in- stead, she had been thrust into utter darkness. Neither Arthur nor his mother had ever spoken of a brother. and she had known them for nearly ten years. Two men, who might be twin brothers, with the same name: it was maddening. What could 1t mean? The beautiful white-haired mother the handsome charming son, who idolized each other; and this adventurer. this outcast, this patient. brave and kindly outcast. with his funny parrakeet. what was he to them and they to him? It must be. 1t must be. They were brothers. Nature, full of amazing freaks as she was. had not perpetrated this one without calling upon a single strain of blood.
 She lay back among her pillows. her eyes leveled at the few stars beyond her door. opened to admit any cooling breeze. Her head ached. It was like the computations of astronomers; to a certain extent the human mind could grasp the distances but could not com prehend them. It was more than chance Chance alone had not brought him to the crumbling ledge. There was a strain of fatalism in Elsa. She was positive that all these things had been written long before and that she was to be used as the key.
 Paul Ellison.
 She drew from the past those salient recollections of Arthur and his moth CT: First, the day the two had called regarding the purchase of house that her father had just put on the market "a rambling old colonial affair, her own mothers birthplace. Sixteen; she had not quite been that, just free from her school days in Italy. With the grand air of youth she had betrayed the fact almost instantly. while wait ing for her father to come into the living room.
 Ita1v V rth W Elsa mentally adopted at once. The stranger spoke single phrase. which Elsa answered in excellent if formal Italian. This led from one question to another. Mrs. Ellison turned out to be a schoolmate of her mothers. and she, Elsa, had inherited their very room. What more was needed?
 The Ellisons bought the house and lived quietly within it. Society. and there was good deal of it in that small Kentuckian city, society waited for them to approach and apply for ad- mittance. but waited in vain. Mrs. FL lison never went anywhere. Her son Arthur was student and preferred his books. So eventually society intro. duced itself. Persons who ignored it must be interesting. When it became known that Mrs. Ellison had been the schoolmate of the beautiful and aristo- cratic wife of General Chetwood: when the local banker quietly spread the information that the Ellisons were comfortably supplied with stocks and bonds of high order society con- cluded that it could do very we'll with out past history. That could come later.
 With her father dead. Elsa became as much at home in the Ellison house as in her own. But never. never any where in the house. was there indica. ton of the existence of a brother. so like Arthur that under normal condi. hau t,