New Mexico state record. (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1914-19??, 1917-01-26
CHAPTER XII,

Inc supper at the White Springs no
tel mad not been the last supper Car
lotta Harrison and Max Wilson ha(
taken together. Carlotta had selected
for her vacation a small town within
easy motoring distance of the city
and two or three times during her two
weeks off duty Wilson had gone out tc
see her. He liked being with her. She
stimulated him. For once that he coult
see Sidney, he saw Carlotta twice.
She had kept the affair well 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 q thing
enough, he would pay any price for it
even marriage.
She was very skillful. 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 Dor
dered the highway, carefully posed
over a book, but with her keen eyes
always on the road. She read Brown
ing, Emerson, Swinburne. Once he
found her with a book that she has
tily concealed. He insisted on seeing
it, and secured it. 1t was a 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.
II feel such IN idiot when 1 am with
you" she said. 81 wanted to know a
little more about the things 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, a 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 n day. II look
forward to these evenings. l can talk
shop with you without either shocking
or %nauseating you. You are the most
intelligent woman l knOw-and n of
the prettiest."
The one element 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 a
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 In
love with the younger Wilson.
They continued to meet, not as
often as before. but once a week, Der
haps. The meetings were full of dam
ger now; and if for the girl they lost
by this quality, they gained attraction
for the man. She was shrewd enough
to realize her OWL situation. The thing
had gone wrong. She cared, and he
did not. 1t was his game now, not
hers.
All women are intuitive; women in
love are dangerously SO. AS well as
she knew that his passion for her was
not the real thing, Sc also she realized
that there was growing up in his heart
something akin to the real thing for
Sidney Page. Suspicion became GER
tainty after a talk they had over the
table at a country roadhouse
the day after Christine's wedding,
"How was the wedding-tiresome? p
Thrilling! There's always some
thing thrilling to me in a man tying
himself up for life to one woman.
lists so reckless"
Her eyes narrowed. That's 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"