The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1920-04-09

ing about her in the least psychic or
spiritual.
She was matter with a capital M.
and sex with a capital S; 5, rather,
since hers was sex without the ex-
cuse of passion-sex dealing entirely
and shamelessly with bank accounts,
high power racing cars, diamonds, and
vintage champagnes. She was lovely,
and she drove the hearts and the
purses of men as breath drives
thin sheet of flame.
Only her finger nails gave the marx
Of the east side tenement (she was
a nee Maggie SMITH where she had
been born and bred; for they were
too well kept, too highly polished
too perfectly manicured. But men
did not notice it. They seldom looked
farther than her hair which was like
a sculptured reddish-bronze helmet
her low. smooth, ivory forehead, her
short. delicately curved nose, her lips
which were crimson like fresh
sword wound, her eyes which spoke
of wondrous promises-and died dam
nably.
Her life had been melodramatio-
from the mans angle, be it under
stood, and not from her own since,
sublimely evil, she was beyond the
moralizing sense of bad and, OF
course. good. There had been death
in the trail of her shimmering gowns,
suicide, ruin, the slime of divorce
courts, disgrace to more than one.
But she had never cared whit. She
was always petting her own hard
thoughts, puncturing the lives OF
strangers-who never remained
strangers for long-with the dagger
pointN of her personality, her greed,
her evil; and men kept on fiutterlng
around the red, burning candle which
was her life, like silly willow flies.
Then more deaths, requiems bought
and paid for, and all that sort OF
thing.
Quite melodramatic. Incredibly,
garishly SO.
But-what will you?
1t isn't always the woman who pays,
stage and pulpit to the contrary. And
if she does pay-it's usually the man
who endorses the note.
When she reached her home on the
upper west side that Saturday night,
she felt the Thing the moment she
stepped across the threshold. She felt
it shrouded, ambiguous, vague. But
ii was there. Very small at first. Hid
den somewhere in the huge, square
entrance hall and peering in upon
her mind.
She wondered what it was, and what
it might be doing there.
So she called to her maid:
She did not call to reassure herself.
For the woman was not afraid. That
was it exactly; she was not afraid
from first to last If she had been,
she would have switched on the light.
But she did not. She left the fiat in
darkness. Deliberately. And that,
again, was stronger since hitherto she
had always hated darkness and half
light and seeping, grazing shadow;
had always wanted and gloried in full,
orange bursts of color-big, clustering,
massive, cruel lights. She had just
that sort of pallid, you
know, smooth, with the color rising
evenly, dawn-hued and tender, and
never in patches and blurry streaks.
"Annette Annette!" she called
again, a mere matter of habit; for
she relied on her respectable, middle
aged Burgundian maid for everything
end everything that troubled her,
from wrestling with cynical, in
quisitive reporter to putting the cor
rect quantity of ammonia in her bromo
settlers.
Eyes, Madame, came the maids
sleepy voice.
HAS anybody called?"
mo, madame"
'But"-She looked into the corner
of the entrance hall The Thing
seemed to be crouching among the
peacock green cushions of the otto
man there.
"But, Annette"-she commenced
again.
She did not complete the sentence.
The Thing was there. And what did
il matter how it had got in?'
81 am coming, madame" said the
maid.
Never mind. Go to sleep. I'll I'M
cress myself. Good night, Annette!"
Good night, madame!"
Diana Manning shrugged her shout
ders, walked across the entrance hall,
and put her hand on the door-knob of
her boudoir. She said to herself that
she would open the door quickly For
she sensed, rather, she knew, that the
Thing intended to follow her. 1t radi-
ated energy and vigor and determine
ton. A certain kindly determination
that, just for feeting moment.
touched in her sense Of awe.
But the moment she opened the
door, the moment her 1.-THE body slid
from the darkness of the entrance
hall into the creamy, silky, perfumed
darkness of her boudoir she knew