The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1915-11-11
u Of granite into the rosy warmth

ness Of granite into the rosy warmth
Of life.
NY assailants always fell back be-
fore her coming, and ], despite my
terror, would attempt to meet her
CALAMITY. She would open a hidden
door in the side Of the rock, and lead
me through 1t.
And always, in this repeated and
u~nvarying dream, beyond the door
we stepped into a brilliantly lighted
room where men and women in even
ing dress chatted c~arelessly, or
danced to the tinkle Of stringed in
struments.
BY these degrees the illusion grew
until by pretense became a vagary
and obsession, and to me ceased to be
a pretense. I fell back on occultism
and told myself that I had succeeded,
by a mere concentration of mind, in
forcing her to project her astral self
across the world, until I had with me
both her picture and her essence of
soul.
Many of life's most sacred and per
manent institutions r only 1ctions,
long entertained. My fiction became
so real to me that for periods I for.
got to question it; then, sometimes,
at a moment when the illusion was
strongest, some impulse OF reason
would strike in upon ana chill me,
like a dash Of cold water.
It would come upon me to think II
myself as I should have appeared to
any unwarned stranger who had
found me talking, rel ~lovemaking,
with a sheet of lifeless paper. And
from that impersonal viewpoint l
would wonder If my brain had already
crumbled to madness and imbectlity.
The cold sweat would bead my fore
head. My finger would creep to the
trigger of my pistol and linger there,
twitching with the itch of self-destruc-
ton. But soon the smiling lips would
reassure me; the mood would pass,
and again I would surrender myself
to the pretense which was grateful
where the truth was austere and des-
olate.
I discovered in my tramps about the
islands edge that this spot seemed to
be the most favored home of the or
child. This monarch of flowers bloom.
ed at the jungle's margin, in an in
finite variety Of Haunting petals, soft
colors and deeply glowing fire.
No other flowers is so ethereal and
illusively beautiful. None could bc
more fitted for a tribute to as impal-
pable a love as that which I acknowl-
edged now. It became a part of nv
daily program to bring back with me
as I returned to the cave masses of
these splendid blossoms. which I
heaped before her shrine.
There was a zestful pleasure in Sc.
curing them inasmuch as they be-
longed to the jungle, and I had never
penetrated the jungle in a less i'm.
perative cause than this.
All this did not, of course, happen
at once. I had reached the age of
thirty-ive, and had heretofore been
immune to feminine destinations. ]
had e. been characterized as a wo-
though this was an injus-
tice. The obsession, the bewitching
whatever you may chose to term it,
,ryoc mt ronpoonfory
In defense of my consistency I de-
clare that the thing required two
weeks at least for it's accomplishment.
And in those two weeks other affairs
were developing.
I had been afraid to light fires lest
the advertising signal of smoke
should attract dangerous visitors, and
yet the slender possibility of rescue
from the sea depended on the setting
up of as many distress signals as pos.
sible. This island was evidently set
down On no map, and known to no
navigator. If any white man before
myself had ever set his foot upon it,
he left no trace Of his coming or 60
ing. There raj no rib of wreck at
any point to indicate that my fate had
been shared. No skull or bone blazed
a prior trail of death. Mine promised
to be the first.
OF course. I had been told, as has
every traveller in the South Seas, that
there is not an atoll or island left for
discovery. I had been informed that
on every coral speck in the reef
strewn ocean, there is, or has been,
a white nan
I knew now that this was a ,fallacy.
My island was marked by a volcano
tall enough to proclaim itself as far
as a glass could sweep the horizon,
and if no pearl-shell or beche-de-mer
trader, no blackbirder of the old days.
no wind-swept vessel of the present
had heretofore sighted that peak, it
must lie too far of the course of
rambling traffic to hope for q visit
now.
l knew that we had dropped down.
world for days before the wreck. and
I had heard grumbling, because of the
mysterious curse being steered.