The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1915-12-02

should I address her?
On the island I had called her Fran
ces, and now I could no more compel
my rebellious tongue to frame the
title MRS. Weighborne" than I could
have forced it to utter an epithet.
"You are q great traveller, aren't
you, Mr.. Deprayne?"" she suggested.
I had always been accounted a talk
alive man. One could read in her
face that she had the wit to sparkle in
conversation like champagne in cut
glass, yet, under the constraint that
had settled over us, we labored as
platitudinously as a knickerbockered
boy and a schoolgirl entertaining her
first caller.
ri have travelled a little" I answered.
"And encountered unusual adven-
tures?"
"No-just travelled"
'cBilly says" she went on Al gra-
ciously as though I had not rebufed
every conversational advance, that
you were s~hipwrecked in the South
Seas and wounded by savages."
"Billy!"
My bruised consciousness finched
under the familiarity of the title, and
I fell back upon shameless churlish'
ness.
"A niger stuck me with a SPEAR"
I admitted shortly.
She glanced quickly up with per.
plexity. Her eyes seemed to read that
I was not at heart a boor, and her gra-
c%iousness remained impervious to my
rufianism.
II WISH" she said slowly, you
would tell me about it; or are you
one of the men who tell women only
empty and pretty things?"
There was a vagrant hint of visit
fulness in the tone of the question. |
wondered If she had been fed, like the
girl of our diary, too much on weet
meats, and wanted a more nutritious
fare.
ut wouldn't interest you," I apollo
gized, melting at once to penitence.
Then for a moment came a mild
upsweep of emotion. It was n of
those impulses which master men and
when the trend is violent, make the
eyes swim with blood and the hand
to rise to murder. With me it swept
to sentiment, and carried me neon
trollably in it's undertow.
IT WISH" I said with an intensity
which must have carried a note OF
Witness, II wish to God I were back
on that island now!"
The perplexed questioning of her
eyes steadied me again into self-com-
mand.
II crave your pardon" l said, with
a ~disingenious laugh. cts the call
of the wild"
"Perhaps l understand something of
that CALL" was her ~enigmatical reply.
I wondered. Could she understand?
This woman with the perfect drawing
room poise; this creature of exqui-
site art? Even if l were absolutely
free to tell her the whole story, from
Suez to the Golden Gate, how much
and how little would it mea to her?
Could she comprehend a passion fired
with no touch of the physical, painted
horizon-wide against a n W of CO.
bait sky? Perhaps not, but wished
as I had never wished any other thing
that I might have been privileged to
learn.
Her personality, q in silence,
wove an aura Of subtle magic about
her. She wore at her breast several
dollhouse orchids. They were pale and
exotic, quick-wilting and artificial. Al
ready the edges of their petals were
curling and %darkening.
Was she like them? Could she have
carried her splendid shoulders with
the same grace through jungles and
over mountains? Could she bloom
with the wild splendor of those other
orchids in the sterner environment
Of Gods great out-of-doors?
She smiled as she questioned me.
"You are skeptical of my power to
understand things, aren't you?"
II was wondering" I answered, "just
what you meant by it."
II mean." she said slowly, as her
eyes clouded again with her wistful-
ness which had cost me my self-con-
troll, "that civilized women lead mar
rover lives than civilized men. May
be they feel ever more strongly than
men the longing for wider, freer
things"
"But in these times" I namely sug-
gested, woman has a full measure
of liberty"
She tossed her head with a delicious
contempt for my reasoning, and bent
her eyes for a moment on the tip of
her satin slipper. "About as much
as a canary in a cage" she announc-
ed; land we are expected to sing JOY
ously for our cuttle-bone and hemp
seed"
I loved this woman. Why, In al!
conscience, did my heart leap almost
triumphantly at the hint that she was
FESTIVE in captivity? Was it merely