The Mena weekly star., 1920-04-01


 and still held until earth and moon ano stars seemed little things that paused to listen. obstructed in unimportant courses. Breath suspended until her lungs were near to bursting, Andrea waited for-that note to come down in- 10 the range of normal belief, but to her mind at least 1t was destined to hang eternaliy in the heavens. for the man had turned.
 Her eyes knew horror for the first time. The mans face was half oblit- erated. It had been plowed by conflu- ent smallpox and destroyed by worse disease. The nose was gone, leaving an ignoble ruin of stripped cartilage dried in the air till it was like weath- cred parchment. One ear had been ravaged in clean cut SO that 1t rose to needle-point. That the wounds were healed only added an inexorable finalty to their responsiveness.
 Only the mans thick red lips and his blazing eyes seemed to have es- capped the pestilence. As his startled gaze fell upon Andrea his mouth opened to a wide. soundiess laugh. With broad shoulders stopped. his ab- normally low-hanging hands curved up like monstrons talons and his shaggy beard wagging to that sleat laughter. he advanced upon her, encireled her waist with his fingers and shet her up lightly so that she fell doubled acrcAs his back and chest. He gHve a low whistle and sped from the crnal at an incredible pace. The boat-hoys arose stealthily and fitted after him.
 To Andrea's transfixing terror was added a memory-a fieeting glimpse of Trevor. standing, hands in pockets before his door On his face was am ger cold, white unforgiying anger She thought she cried out to MacClos- ter to stop. to give her but one moment to explain, to beg forgiveness. to grovel at the feet of the one man in all the world, hut no sound came from her lips.
 Not until she stood tottering on the eanted bottom of MacCloster's boat did fife come back to her heart and veins and lungs. She threw up her head and screamed as she had never known mortal could scream---a wild, terror winged wall of desperate appeal. Mac Closter snatched tiller from rudder, struck her across the shoulders. knocked her. face down, into fetid Dilge-water.
 The stench of the stale water pro- duced in her a reaction; it was SO nauseating that it momentarily drove thoughts of all other things from her mind She drew away from it and, crawling to the grated floor ee a small cockpit, erouched in the corner formed by the gunwale and the after thwart. Just to her left, so close that even with head bowed she could not avoid seeing his enormous feet, sat MacClos- ter.
 He talked to her steadily in a nut passed before she began to distinguish one word from another. The mutter- ing swelIed slowly to clear and liquid enunciation; the voice became like music undefiled. But no longer could it drug her senses; she shud- dered, eringed under It's terrible caress. Its beauty had become forever leprous.
 Dear, lovely, vile and sullen per son" 1t was saying, "who would have thought It? Who would have imagined that you, Helen among women, pos sessed of beauty, youth and really lovely evening froek, should have come so far for man? Cheer up l You've found two; one dunghin ban tam and-and me-
 He laughed, not silently and still not quite aloud It was an extraordinary sound. It awoke in Andrea a chord of memory. It was not the stereotyped laughter of the stage; it was more spe- cialized than that. Then she remem- bered. His was not the laugh of an individual; It was the clipped, sfacca- to, maddeningly deliberate, 'Ha Ha {! Ha i--Hal Ha Hal' of chorus and conspirators in the "Ballo in Mas chera."
 T ask you, who could have imagined it?" he continued; then, his voice thickenlng to a sinister intensity, he added, T could. d. your soft car cass Women Fair womenl Ha Ha Ha Dreams of fair women Garrr Spawn of hell PestiIence that sleep by day and turk in the shadows of night and wine Damnation of the filthy byways of the world, parading in the sweet likeness of Godl''
 Andrea suddenly looked up, straight into his blazing eyes. You yourself are speaking" she said in a clear voice "I am woman. weak. miser- able-never so miserable as in this awful night-but I'm not coward. 1 can forgive not you but what you say, for you cried out just now from hell infinitely deeper than mine.'
 The blaze of light in MacCloster's eyes died to a breeding glow. There was something in Andrea's face, some illumination of the clean soul within her, that spoke with sure voice. louder, more persuaslvely than words.
 ''The gifts that women may bring in their hands," he said with a whisper ing sigh. love. tenderness and honor, rest to the anchored souli I, Mac Closter, had the world at my feet for single night. Drunk with adulation, dr11nL with uyfna | want otf fo caal