The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1919-02-16
CHAPTER Xxx.
Connie Recants.

R'E Is not given 10 mere uldu W u4NluS
from what hidden sources woman
gathers her def skill at rapid divina
Ition of motives of persons, both male and
female. And when two feminine instincts
thrust forth with their invisible blades, il
is time for him to take to the side lines
From sister Of mercy Constance Masterson
had seen fit to drop her heavenly preroga
tives and arm herself with her thin, i'm
palpable weapon of offense; while Amneh
aware of a false position, threw out the
feminine antennae and awaited the on
slaught.
The entrance of Miss Masterson into the
cabin of the Turkana at the precise mo-
ment when Amneh, still unconscious OF
her presence, touched Alan's hand in the
confding way she had, was immediate
signal for the beginning Of hostilities.
Alan, blissfuIly ignorant of the invisible
thrust and parry about his very ears, had
plunged blissfully into his conversation
and coffee, and only when. Constance
flashed her displeasure unmistakably was
he aware of happenings beyond his mas
culine ken.
he laQ u6Q IN Iull dD6gduC0 VI q Sllud-
ton he had not been able to understand.
Amneh had gone aft and smoked a cigar
cite, a tiny pucker at her brows, while she
watched Alan. Constance, her pretty lips
drawn into a thin line, sought her patients
in the sick-bay and covered her retreat by
carefully locking the door.
Indeed, there is much to be said in Con-
MES favor Imagine, if you can, being the
possessor Of a hopeless ideal, an ideal that
you love for itself alone merely because
it is an ideal and impossible; and then
suddenly seeing that impossibility slowly
emerge into the realms of doubt and then
quite suddenly into a somewhat magnifi-
cent reality. Some such emotions must
have passed through the mind of the gen.
tleman who built his Frankenstein out of
inorganic substances and saw it suddenly
imbued with mortal life.
In a few short weeks Alan had grown
from mere clay into something very nearly
verging upon the heroic. He had always
been her possession-her's only-and the
fact that this transformation had taken
place since the hour when she had re-
linuuished him seemed to have made no
difference in her conceptions Of possessive
interest.
Imagine also, if you please, the sudden
impression upon a mind thus adjusted,
when Constance beheld the pretty refugee,
whom she had supposed to be well upon
her way to England, sitting tete-a-tete
over the breakfast table and actually hold
ing her hero's hand, while she looked up
into his face with a gaze which reflected
nothing less than alteration. Amneh!
From a refugee, worthy Of all the efforts
that Constance and Alan had expended
upon her, she became at bound design
ing mink, renegade of harems and the
NJ nil
grimage.
The thing was obvious, and in the shock
of her discovery Constance wanted only
to bury herself and hide the evidences of
this blow to her self-esteem, which she
was sure must e.visible in her discom-
future. She did not stop to reason, did not
wish to reason, and the thought Of ques-
tioning Alan as to Amneh was impossible.
She had never known anything Of Alan's
life away from her, but she had been sure
that he was not this sort Of a man!
In her unreasoning repugnance at her
situation, as she imagined it, she forgot
that she had no claim upon Alan what
ever; that she had come aboard the Tur-
kama of her own vOlition, and that the
Armenian girl Tor any other woman, for
that natter had as much right upon the
yacht, If Alan chose to invite her, as she.
And as these ideas slowly emerged from
the tangled corners of her mind, they only
served to make her more bitter against
Alan and more bitter against herself, be-
cause she had chosen, like Amneh, to adore
him.
But this was the truth and it had come
to her in Egypt. Who could help adoring
a man one had always loved when he went
through fire 20 save her and didn't even
take a kiss in recompense? In the old
days he had frequently wanted some phys
ical evidences of her rather desultory at
tachment, and Connie had given them
srudgingly-a kiss at parting a soft hand
clasp in the moonlight when nature con-
spired to make all things-even Alan's de-
fciencies-less unlovely. But his indiffer-
ence since they had met in Egypt, his abb
sorption in his pursuit of the Black Stone,
had seemed, by some strange paradox
which she could not exactly understand. to
make her own devotion grow by the little
il fed on.
But now! What could she have but bit
terness and hatred of all things? If chiv-
airy had ever meant anything to Alan, if
8