Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1920-12-31
vi. THE STORM.

Body and soul seemed welded into
one taut string vibrating in agonized
response to the fury of the tempest:
she found herself standing far from
the chair in front of the easel, in
quivering alright gazing over-shoul.
der at the featureless long rectangle
of the portrait in the shadows.
Rain sluiced the skylight in wind
whipped waves, with q crisp, tearing
noise. Thunder rocked the skies,
ripped and raved, rumbled away in
lessening reverberations. Then with
out warning the gloom was abolished
by CHASTITY lilac glare-and the face
on the canvas started out of it's dark
background with an uncanny look of
life, the gay mockery of its smile dis
torted into grinning malice. She was
fain to switch on the lights to lay that
ghostly leer.
Even then she dared not look again.
With head averted, she swung the
easel round so that the painting faced
| the wall.
Still she was i'll at ease in the COM
pany of the thing. She could not for
| get how that cold electric blaze had
seemed to wake the painting into COB
lin life, transient but terrible. The
memory of its jeering smile persisted.
Like specter unseen but importunate
at her shoulder, round a corner of
her consciousness, denied but insis-
tent, the notion lurked of the work
of her own hands turned monster, pre-
ternaturally inspired with a spirit of
! fatal animus
She had crawling shiver of super
stitious dread. Commonsense was
! powerless to comfort her with its as
surance that she had merely had one
more hypnotic hallucination induced
by auto-suggestion. Instinct insisted
commonsense for once was wrong
that there was more in this than the
human mind, fettered to the claims OF
natural laws, could comprehend OF
cope with. Surely supernatural forces
we're here at work
She strove without success to cast
out that thought.
Comparing her wrist watch will
memory of the hour marked by the
clock in Leonora's refuge, she reck
ored her lapse from full waking con
sciousness had not lasted longer thar
i've minutes: in that scant spell hel
soul had journeyed far, tarried while
In communion with another, and re
turned with a freight of fears, O.
doubts and cares that threatened tn,
| stability Of how &I,ooo e.,
moments the work of week had beer
undone. She stood now where sh,
had been Immediately after the las
preceding dream, poised perilousl,
; near the verge of arrangement, haunt
ed by shape of fear no whit less aw
full if it were after all only the crea
ture of her imagination.
Within five hours her other sci
must go to keep an assignation with
murderer. Fancy pictured Leonor
stealing through streets of siniste
shadow to that rendezvous with a fat
irscrutable .
But not for Leonora was all this tol
ture of solicitude. Through unhapp
mischance Mario had been marked fo
Reds enmity. And where Red hateC
tenure of life was treacherous
Now it was revealed to her tha
however inexplicable the affinity {
their souls, however dissimilar the
circumstances and irreconcilable the
!, ways of thought and standards, in tn
!. respect Leonora and Priscilla Main
!, were one: in love with Mario.
: Acknowledging this incredible ia,
. without protest, Priscilla told herse
,s she had loved Mario always, ever sinC
= that time, long past, when he had fir
. figured in her life Of dreams.
70 And contemplating the prospect
living through the night to come, u
!. der whose impenetrable cover Mar
and Leonora must work out their dal
entangled destinies, while she waite
N powerless to help or hinder, in an /
=, norance irremediable and maddenin
No Priscilla felt a shadow fall athwa
m her understanding, as black and co
as Death.