San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1925-11-29

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seemed aloof, grave to severity;
cold as young hermit-saint, and
proud. The truth of it was that
Gervais was suffering abominably
from circumstances. He hated
crowds.
"God bless the Young Lordw
Back! Backr shouted the pike
men, but not one obeyed them.
The big horse. whose white and
silver housings almost swept the
ground, had been brought to a
standstill.
Sidonia was leaning even farther
forward. Her black hair, which
had come unplaited, hung down.
ward like a dishevelled veil. She
gazed with all her eyes at the
horse and rider. This was the
Young Lord-the heir of the Holy
Count, the deliverer of the town,
and the chiefest person within the
circuit of its walls.
Suddenly the face of the en-
steeled rider lifted. and his head
turned as if at a spoken word.
Looking sharply upward, his en-
barrassed violet-gray eyes encoun-
tered the eyes of Schumacher
dark, widened in an unconscious
consuming stare.
Outwardly no flash of illumina-
ton dazzled the onlookers-Ger-
vais simply looked upwar |, sitting
rigid upon the halted horse. .
He saw dark eyes that were poig-
nant, loose-tressed hair, pallid
young face, and a young bosom
breaking through shredded raj
ment. He saw the girl Of last
night-the girl whom he desired
and Frustrated himself before as
before a saint-the beggar-girl
who had given him the fire of
life.
Sidonia saw-the Young Lord.
As far as her knowledge
went, she had never set eyes on
him before. If anyone had told
her that she had known his mouth
and the embrace of his arms she
would have looked blankly at them.
To the best of her belief, only two
people had kissed her-Satan and
an angel. The lifted face
was of a startling uniqueness. 1t
was astute-yet ardent; with
straight, chaste brows, yet ex-
quisitely Tipped; arrogant, yet with
something also of the quick, ner-
vous shrinking of woman or a
child. The gaze of the violet-gray
eyes was like the quiverng grip
of a ha d. They muttered some
thing, but she could not under
stand it, though it went, like a
slight shock, through all her body
Like someone answering au-
tomatically when suddenly spoken
to, she put her hand on the rose
she had taken and that lay beside
her on the wide stone still, and
flung it quickly outward to the
young man upon the stallion hood
ed in white and silver, to whom
girls waved and men shouted and
mothers held up their infants as
to St Michael, the dragon-con-
queror himself.
Gervais caught the thrown rose.
In the instant of the catch his eyes
were averted from the face of the
out-leaning girl, and at the same
moment the big, hairy-fetlocked
horse moved forward again.
'Long live the Young Lord"
The halt had been a matter of
moments only-an eddy of accla-
nation, an upward look, thrown
red flower. Already the panoplied
stallion was a couple of spta r's
lengths past the window, and an
other mounted knight, his visor
raised, was in his wake. The bells
clamored, the people cried out, and
heavy horseshoes tripped against
cobblestones.
Gervais, the dark rose crushed
in his closed hand, was carried for
ward by the tall, slow-footed
shouldering horse. Before, he had
been self conscious, a pre-, to the
nervous anxieties of a shy man
who has not outgrown his boy
hood; now he was like a person
who had met vision face to face
in the middle of a market-place,
and who is divided between dismay
at his own ability to grasp the full
wonder of the momentary vision
and an intoxication of the spirit
that confuses thought.