Omaha daily bee., 1919-07-23
CHAPTER xxx.
ERUPTION,

49, Hc lOllOWllIS tWO lllulltlIo WClC q
period in Trent's life that he has
never since remembered without
shuddering. He met Mrs. Mander-
son half a dozen times, and each
TING her cool friendliness, nicely
calculated mean between mere ac-
quaintance and the first stage Of
intimacy, baffled and maddened him.
A. the opera he had found her, to
his further amazement, with a GER
tain Mrs. Wallace, frisky matron
whom he had known from child
hood. Mrs. Henderson, it appeared.
on her return from Italy, had some
how wandered into circles to which
he belonged by nurture and dispo-
sition. It came, she said, of her
having pitched her tend in their
hunting grounds; several of his
friends were near neighbors.
He had dim but horrid recollec-
ton of having been on that occasion
unlike himself, i'll at ease, burning
in the face, talking with lido,
loauacity of his adventures in the
Baltic provinces, and finding from
time to time that he was addressing
himself exclusively to Mr.. Wallace,
The other lady, when he joined
them, had completely lost the slight
appearance of agitation with which
she had stopped him in the vestl-
bule. She had spoken pleasantly to
him of her travels, of her settle
ment in London and of people whom
they both knew.
During the last half of the opera
which he had stayed in the box to
hear, he had been conscious of moth
ing, as he sat behind them, but the
angle of her cheek and the mass OF
her hair, the lines of her shoulder
and arm, her hand upon the cushion
The black hair had seemed at last
forest, immeasurable, painless and
enchanted, Turing him to a fatal ad-
venture. At the end he had been
pale and subdued, parting with them
rather formally.
The next time he saw her-it was
at a country house where both were
guests-and the subsequent times,
he had had himself in hand He had
matched her manner and had &C
quilted himself, he thought, decently.
considering considering
that he lived in an agony of be-
wilderment and remorse and long
ing. He could make nothing, abso-
lutely nothing, of her attitude. That
she had read his manuscript, and
understood the suspicion indicated in
his last question to her at White
Gables, was beyond the possibility
OF doubt. Then how could she treat
him thus amiably and frankly, as
she treated all the world of men who
had done her no injury?
For it had become clear to his in
tuitive sense, for all the absence of
any shade of differentiation in her
outward manner, that an injury had
been done, and that she had felt it.
Several times, on the rare and brief
occasions when they had talked
apart, he had warning from the same
sense that she was approaching this
subject; and each time he had turned
the conversation with the ingenuity
born of fear. Two resolutions he
made. The first was that when he
had completed a commissioned work
which tied him to London he would
go away, and stay away. The strain
was too great. He no longer burned
to know the truth; he wanted moth
ing to confirm his fixed internal con-
viction by faith, that he had blum
dered, that he had misread the situ-
alton, misinterpreted her tears, writ
ten himself down a slanderous fool
He speculated no more on Mar
loves motive in the killing of Man
derson. MIR. Cupples returned to
London, and Trent asked him moth
ing. He knew now that he had
been right in those words-Trent
remembered them for the emphasis
with which they were spoken-"So
long as she considered herself bound
to him no power on earth
could have persuaded her" He met
Mrs. Henderson at dinner at her
uncle's large aud tomb-like house i'll
Bloomsbury, and there he conversed
most of the evening with profess
sor of archaeology from Berlin.
His other resolution was that he
would not be with her alone.
But when, few days after, she
wrote asking him to come and see