Middletown transcript., 1917-01-13
CHAPTER xl,

The supper at the White Springs ho-
tel had not been the last supper Car
lOtta Harrison and Max Wilson had
taken together. Carlotta had selected
for her vacation q small town within
easy motoring distance of the city,
and two or three times during her two
weeks off duty Wilson had gone out to
see her. He liked being with her. She
stimulated him. For once that he could
see Sidney, he saw Carlotta twice.
She had kept the affair we'll in hand.
She was playing for high stakes. She
knew quite well the kind of man with
whom she was dealing-that he would
pay as little as possible. But she
knew, too, that, let him want a thing
enough, he would pay any price for it,
even marriage
She was very skillfuI. The very ar
dor in her face was in her favor. Be-
hind her eyes lurked cold calculation.
She would put the thing through, and
show those pulling nurses, with their
pious eyes and evening prayers, a
thing or two.
During that entire vacation he never
saw her in anything more elaborate
than the simplest Of white dresses
modestly open at the throat, sleeves
rolled up to show her satiny arms.
There were no other boarders at the
little farmhouse. She sat for hours
in the summer evenings in the square
yard filled with apple trees that bor-
dered the highway, carefully posed
over q book, but with her keen eyes
always on the road. She read Brown
ing, Emerson, Swinburne. Once he
found her with q book that she has
tily concealed. He insisted on seeing
it, and secured it. 1t was q book on
brain surgery. Confronted with it, she
blushed and dropped her eyes. His de-
lighted vanity found in it the most in
sidious Of compliments, as she had In
tended.
81 feel such an idiot when am with
you" she said. II wanted to know a
little more about the Ings you do
That put their relationship on a new
and advanced basis. Thereafter he
occasionally talked surgery instead of
sentiment. He found her responsive,
intelligent: His work, sealed book
to his women before, lay open to her.
Now and then their professional dis
cussions ended In something different.
The two lines of their interest con-
verged.
"Gad!" he said one day. 81 look
forward to these evenings. ! can talk
shop with you without either shocking
or nauseating you. You are the most
intelligent woman know-and one of
| the prettieSt."
The one clement Carlotta had left
out of her calculations was herself
She had known the man, had taken the
| situation at its proper value. But into
her calculating ambition had come 3
new and destroying element. She who
like X. in his little room on the Street
had put aside love and the things
thereof, found that it would not put
her aside. BY the end of her short va
cation Carlotta Harrison was wildly II
love with the younger Wilson.
They continued to meet, not al
often as before, but once week, per
haps. The meetings were full Of dan
! ger now; and if for the girl they los
by this quality, they gained attraction
| for the man. She was shrewd enough
to realize her own situation. The thing
had gone wrong. She cared, and hi
did not 1t was his game now, no
hers.
| All women are intuitive; women il
love are dangerously SO. AS well a:
she knew that his passion for her was
not the real thing, so also she realized
that there was growing up in his hear
something akin 20 the real thing fol
Sidney Page. Suspicion became Ger
tainty after talk they had over the
supper table at country roadhoust
the day after Christine's wedding,
"How was the wedding-tiresome? ?
Thrilling! There's always some
thing thrilling to me in man tying
himself up for life to one woman
| It's-it's so reckless"
Her eyes narrowed. "Thats not ex
actly the Law and the Prophets, is it?'
"It's the truth. To think of select
| ing out of all the world one woman
and electing to spend the rest Of ones
days with her! Although"