The Washington times., 1925-12-14

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a blue house with open windows;
and pouring through the windoWs
a stream of notes from n soft
voice, ever so sweet, singing Iieder
and ballads as an accompaniment
to the hard, sonorous paragraphs
from the Premier's teeth. Then
3applau use and disorder The mo
ment for voting had arrived, and
the fading outlines OF the Blue
House still lowering before his
dreamy eyes, the member for Al
cira would ask his neighbOr:
How do we vote? Yes or nor
The same it was at night at
the opera, where music served
only TO remind him of familiar
voice winding like q thread Of gold
out across the orchards through
the orange-trees; and the same
again, after dinner with his col
leagues on committees, when the
deputies, their cigars tilted cockily
upward between their lips, ana
with all the vOluptuous gayety in
spired by good digestions, would
troop off to see the night out in
some trustworthy rendezvous
where their dignity as represent
tatives of the country would not
be compromised!
Now that blue house was ac-
tually before his eyes! And he
was hurrying toward it, not with
out some hesitation; a vague UNI
easiness he could not explain. His
heart was in his mouth, 1t Sc smed,
and he found it hard to breathe.
Orchard workers came along the
road, occasionally, stepping aside
to make room for the famous
man, though he answered their
greeting absent-mindedly. What
a nuisance! They would all be
sure to tell where they had seen
him! His mother would know all
about it within half an houri
And, that evening, a scene in the
dining-room! AS Rafael walked
on toward the Blue House he
thought bitterly of his situation.
Why was he going there anyhow
Why insist on living in q stew
all the time? He had had two
or three short but violent scenes
with his mother a few months
before. What a fury that stern,
pious, and puritanic woman be-
came when she found out that
her son had been calling at the
Blue House and was on friendly
terms with a strange LADY, an
outsider, whom the respectable
folk of the city would have moth
ing to do with, and of whom not
a good word was ever heard.
Made Promise
Rafael had been no match for
= that energetic mother, the soul
of "the Party" Meekly he had
promised never to return to the
Blue House, never to call again
on that loose woman"-Dona
Bernardo actually Kissed as she
said the word.
However, the upshot of it all
had been that Rafael simply dis
covered how weak he was. Despite
his promise, he returned to the
Blue House often, but by round.
about ways and over long de-
tours, skulking from cover to
cover, as he had done in child
hood days when stealing oranges
from the orchards
In that Blue House he had
found only frank, disinterested
friendship "a somewhat ironic
comradeship, the condescending
tolerance of a person compelled
by solitude to choose as her COM
rade the least repulsive among Il
host of interiors. Alas! How
clearly he remembered and could
again foresee the skeptical, cold
smile with which his words were
always received, though he was
sure he had crammed them with
burning passion! What a laugh
she had given--as insolent and
as cutting as a lash-the day he
had dared to declare his love!
And yet hea had persisted, in.
sensible to the irony and the
scorn of this terrible amiga In
skirts, and Indifferent as we'll to
the conflicts that his blind pas