The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-02-10

beauty. They gave grace to bare ne- cessity; they denied the panting, thirsty desert just beyond.
 He remembered his own ramada. Gerty had hated it, had complained of it so bitterly when she came home from New York that he had had 1t pulled down and replaced by V roof of pine boards, glaring and ugly. Gerty was satisfied, for it was clean; she no longer felt that she lived in a squaw house. Let the Indians have ramadas; there was no earthly reason she should. He had urged that the desert dwellers had valuable hints to give them. But what was a remada to him, or anything else? Hardin turned to leave.
 She did not want him to go so soon. She pointed out a new vine to him. She had brought it from Tucson; 'Kudzu," they called it; a Japanese vine. And there was another broken rose, quite beyond the help of stripped handkerchiefs and mesquit splints.
 He followed her around the tent, her prattle falling from his grim mood. He was not thinking Of her flowers except as a mockng parallel. The desert storm had made havoc of his garden "a sorry botch of his life. He and Innes had been trying to make a gar den out of a desert; the desert had flouted them. It was not his fault. Something had happened; something quite beyond his power. Luck was turning against him.
 Innss, why, she was playing as with a toy. It was the natural instinct of woman to make things pretty around her. But he had sacrificed his youth, his chances. His domestic life, too he should never have carried a dainty little woman like Gerty into the des- ert. He had never reproached her for leaving him, even last time when he thought it was for good. The word burned his wound. Whose good? Ills or Gerty's2 Somehow, though they wrangled, he always knew it would turn out all right; life would run smoothly when they left the desert. But things were getting worse; his mouth puckered over some recollec- tions. Yet he loved Gerty he couldn't picture life without her. He decided that it was because there had never been anyone else. Most fellows had 1 had sweethearts before they married i; he had not, nor mistress when she left him, though God knows, 1t would have been easy enough. His mouth fell into sardonic lines. Those half breed women! No one, even when a divorce had hung over him. Oh, he knew what their friends made of each of Gerty's heightened flights; he knew !! But that had been spared him, that vulgar grisly spectacle of modern life when two people who have been lovers drag the carcass of their love over the Srimy floor of curious gaping court. He shuddered. Gerty loved him. Else, why had she come back to him? Why 1 had she not kept her threat when he | refused to abandon his desert project and turn his abilities into a more l profitable dedication? He could see her face as she stared flushing up into his that nipping cold day when he had run into her on Broadway. He remem- ! bered her coQuetry when she suggest ed that there was plenty of room in her apartment! His wifei She spoke of seeing his pictures in the papers. ''He had grown to be a great mani"
 That piquant meeting, the week fol- lOWiDp had h6lpn fbo bri of h ic life. He was sure then that Gerty loved him. The wrangles were only their different ways of looking at things. Of course, they loved each other. But Gerty couldn't stand pio- neer life. She had loved him, or she would not so easily have been per suaded to try 1t over again. She yearned to make him comfortable, she said. So she had gone back, and pulled down his ramada, and put his clothes in the lowest bureau drawer!
 Tt wasn't either of our faults,' he ruminated. Tt was the fault of the in- stitution. Marriage itself is failure Look at the papers, the divorce courts A mans interests are no longer his wife's. Curious that it should be SO
 But it's a fact. It is the modern dis
 content. Women want different careers from their husbands"
 Yet, how could he help throwing his
 life into his work? He had committed
 himself; it was an obligation. If fl
 were not for that indefnable some
 thing, his allegiance to the cause whicI
 mocked at reasons and definitions; oh
 he knew he had tilted with Cert,
 and been worsted he would have re
 signed from his company, his compan,
 which had dlshonored him. Why should he stay to get more stabs, nor
 wounds? And the last blow, this De of MarshalPsi Hardin gave scant ling ID his path vicious kick.
 The girls prattle had died. Sh walked with him silently.
 At the door of her tent, she stopped looking at him wistfully. She wishe he could hide his hurt. If he had onl some of Innes' pride!
 1, ''How are things?" She Vsed thei
 fond little formula.
 i. "Oh, rotten!" growled Hardin, fling
 ing away. The gate slammed benin
 him.