Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1917-04-14
CHAPTER l.
Love of Woman.


IL meetings only lived up to their
anticipations, life would be a success
sion Of startling climaxes. 1t had been
some months since Meade had seen
Helen Illingworth. He had dreamed
of meeting her every day and had pic
tured the meeting differently and more
rapturously after every letter. As a
matter of fact the whole thing was
casual and ordinary to the last degree.
1t always is.
Doctor Severance, retired phySf-
clan, who was vice president and
financial man, and Curtiss. the chief
engineer of the bridge company, were
hard upon Miss Illingworth's heels as
she stepped down from the car to the
station platform. He saw her, as it
were, surrounded by prosafc men. The
womap he loved got the same welcome
and the same handshake as her father
and the other two men. 1t was not
until big Abbott, who had been belated
by some sudden demand of work, came
sweeping down the platform to engage
the attention of the men that the anx-
fous Meade had moment with the girl
herself
Now Helen Hlfngworth had also been
seeing visions, so that she had been as
disappointed as he. The only real sat
isfaction that either of them could take
in the situation lay in the fact that the
other was there. 1t was midsummer
and the girl was dressed in some light,
filmy fabric which we'll became her ra-
diant beauty. Meade could look at a
bit of structural steel work and tell
you all about it. All that he could
have told you about the dress she wore
was that it was exquisitely appropri-
ate, but it never occurred to him that
with great price to a great artist
Helen Illingworth had obtained that
look of delightful simplicity.
The gown was not wasted on Meade,
she decided, as she caught his raptur-
GUS glance. She had never looked love
Her. She was not a fragile, ethereal
woman; quite the reverse. That was
one of ten thousand things Meade liked
about her. She could do all those ath-
1etic and pr actfcal things that modern
young women can do and she could do
them well.
Meade was intensely practical and
efficient. He could do all of those
things himself and many more and he
liked ito do them, and that is one rea-
son why he had been attr acted to her;
yet not for that alone did he love her.
On that soft summer afternoon she
looked as subtly delicate as every man
would at one time or another have the
woman he loves appear, and as far re-
moved from things strenuous as If in
another world He was wearing the
rough clothes, flannel shirt khaki trou-
sers, heavy shoes and leggings which
were his habitual use at work. Con-
trasted with her f1lmy and delicately
cOlored fabric his well-worn olive
drab habiliments stood forth hideously.
That is, he thought so, and the con-
trast somehow seemed typical of the
difference between them as he consid-
cred her.
There was the careless insouciance
of conscious power in the be airing of
the engineer which differentiated him
from most of the men with whom she
had been thrown in contact during her
life. The International Bridge was the
biggest thing of the kind the Martlet
company or any other American struc-
tural plant had ever undertaken. 1t
had been constant topic of convers a
ton wherever her father was. She
had heard all about it, and although,
strictly speaking, the bridge. was the
work Of Meade, ST., yet she always
identified 1t with Meade, Jr. There w as
a feeling In her mind that it was her
bridge and that, through him. she COM
imanded 1t. She was q supremely as
6ured and entirely confident young
lady, yet with the man by her side she
experienced passing sense of uneasi-
ness, such as one might conceive the
butterfly would feel In the presence of
ia steam hammer.
They were as awkward and con-
Etrained when left to themselves as IL
lone had not been all over the world
ION mans jobs for q decade and the
lOther had not Queened &c among the