Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-02-15
CHAPTER TX
The Threshold of Love

l. N Washington, during what leisure time
! he had, Steele reflected seriously on the
4 impulse that had caused him to do so
mad a thing. He went over in his mind every
| thing that had happened from the time he
| had first discovered the girls presence in the
taxi to the time when he had held her in his
arms, and, while listening to her stertorous
| breathing, had Willed her to live.
| He remembered the elfin charm of her
when in the taxi she had alternated between
| fear, terrible fear that he could not under
stand, and childish playfulness. He remem-
| bered that strange unwilllngness that hau
| leaped up in him when he had felt that she
was going out of his life as unceremon1OuSly
| as she had come into it. Why had he cared
one way or another? 1t certainly had never
made any difference to him before, and there
had been any number of women that ne
might have known and claimed as friends.
Strangely enough the thought of Katherine
Cleveland leaped into his mind. She was
beautiful and more than ordinarily lntell1-
gent, but in parting with her he had never
cared whether or not he ever saw her again.
And yet this stranger, this little wait about
whom he knew nothing, he had held in his
arms, warming her with his own swift-run-
ming blood, wanting her to live for some I'M
canny reason that he could not fathom.
Steele was in Washington week. During
that time he had heard several times frOuI
his mother, who wrote rather guardedly con-
corning the recovery of the stranger. In hec
first letter she had mentioned the girls name
and the fact that she had seemed terrlneu
when questioned about her past.
"She seems to have no one to turn to,
Mrs Steele wrote, "but have no doubt that
we will be able to find suitable work for her
as soon as she is able to be about again.
Steele held the letter in his hands for a
long time after he had finished it.
Anne Temple How well the name suited
her. And then suddenly he realized that
soemthing in his mothers letter had vaguely
irritated him. He turned back to the closely
written sheets and began reading them
through again. When he came to the part
about finding the girl suitable work he
stopped and frown gathered between his
brows. Why should he feel irritated because
his mother had suggested finding the girl
position? After all, what did he expect?
What was there to do but to find work for
her? And yet he hadn't liked the Idea, and
more than that he had been suddenly glau
that Anne Temple was alone in the world
Why should that make any difference to him,
either?
, With shrug of his shoulders at his in
ability to understand himself, he put the les-
ter aside, but each time Marcia wrote him he
opened the letter eagerly, and subconsciously
he was aware of his eagerness and it annoyed
him.
John Steele was proud, almost arrogantIy
so. He was proud of his birth and of his po-
sition, but most of all was he proud of the
fact that up to now nothing had been able to
shake the cynicism of his attitude toward lift
He had always gloried in his Indifference, in
the sense of freedom that it gave him. Love
had always been remote from him, thing
he had never expected to experience In any
deep sense. Even at this time If anyone nau
told him that he was in love with Anne Tenn
pie he would have scoffed at the idea of such
was never quite out of his thoughts, and that
a thing being possible. Ne vertheless she
in itself was strangely significant.