The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1916-06-16

amy bWoSISSt anu uObL
SER phic Of diminutiyes."
If you don't like my nnme-" she
began, and then she went of at al
other tangent. please tell me why |
am collection of contradictions
Brouillard's gaze went past the
shapely little figure in the string ham,
mock to lose Itself in the far Timan.
yoni distances.
You are bundle of surprises" he
said, letting the musing thought slip
into speech. What can you possibly
know about my thoughts?"
She made funny little grimace at
him. 1T was contradictions a mo.
ment ago and now it is surprises.
Which reminds me, you haven't told
me why am collection"
"Oh, / can catalogue them If you
push me to 1t. One minute you are
the Madonna lady that can't recall,
calm, reposeful, truthful, and all that,
you know-so truthful that those child.
like eyes of yours would make a slut.
tering imbecile of the man who should
come to you with lie in his mouth"
And the next minute?"
The next minute you are o witch,
laughing at the mans little weak
nesses, putting your finger on them as
accurately as If you could read his
soul, holding them up to your ridicule
and-what's much worse-to his own
At such times your insight, or what
ever you choose to call it, is enough
to give a man fit of seeing things"
Her laugh was like a schoolgirls,
light'hearted, ringing, deliclously unre-
strained.
What a pictured" she commented.
And then: Il can draw better one
Of you, Monsieur Victor de Brouil.
lard"
DO It," he dared.
Very we'll, then: Once upon a time
1T was good while ago, I'm afraid
you were very upright young man.
You would cheerfully have died for a
principle in those days, and you would
have allowed the enemy to cut you up
into cunning little inch cubes before
you would have admitted that any pig.
con was ever made to be plucked."
He was smiling mirthlessly, with the
black mustaches taking the sardonic
upcurve.
Then what happened"
"One Of two things. or maybe both
Of them. You were pushed out into
the life race with some sort of a
handicap. l don't know what it was
or is. Is that true?"
He nodded gravely. ''It is all true
enough. You haven't added anything
more than a graceful little touch here
and there. Who has been telling you
all these things about me? Not
Grizzy2"
mo, not Murray Grislow; It was the
man you think you know best in all
the worldwide Is also probably the
one you know the least-yourself."
Good heavens! Am l really such a
transparent egoist as all that?"
"All men are egoists," she answered
calmly. an some the ego is sound
and clear-eyed and strong; in others
it Is weak-in the same way that pas
sion is weak; it will sacrifice ali it has
or hopes to have in some sudden fury
Of self.assertion."
She sat up and put her hands to her
hair, and he was free to look away,
down upon the great ditch where the
endless chain Of concrete buckets
added to the deep and widespread
foundations Of the dam. Across the
river group Of hidden sawmills sang
their raucous song. In the middle dis
lance the camp-town city spread
Its roughly indicated streets over the
valley level, the tall chimney stacks
Of the new cement plant were rising,
and from the quarries beyond the
plant the duh thunder Of the blasts
drifted up.
This was not Brouillard's first visit
to the cabin on the Massingale claim
by many. In tho earliest stages of the
valley activities Smith, the Buckskin
cattleman, had been Amy Massingale's
escort to the reclamation camp-"just
couple o. lockers" In Smiths phrase
and the unconventional attitudes
had done the rest. From that day for
ward the young woman had Hospitality
opened her door to BrouiIlard and his
assistants, and any member of the
corps, from Leshington the morose,
who commonly came to sit in solemn
silence on the porch step, to Griffith,
who had lost his youthful heart to
Miss Massingale on his first visit, was
welcome.
wa CHAPTER VII N