The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1925-05-07
CHAPTER VIII


marriage.
Apparently an inexplicable fear had
seized him within a few minutes; in
explicable fear little by little took pos
session of his life and made him a
source of the contagion of unreason-
ing dread.
There was q six-month period after
the departure of the strange bride
from Dallas wherein, whatever emo
tons of apprehension he may have
felt, a struggle was made to conceal
them and to fulfill his bargain to give
Brena Selcoss the variety, content and
luxury that he had said should be hers.
He. who never had more than touched
her hand with his own cold, refined
fingers, sometimes burst forth with all
the Jealous energy he had put into his
speculations and with all the assurance
in his own mystic powers of foresight
which had made him a great gambler.
"You are my speculation now y he
would claim. Il have bought a future
in you!"
Brena would stare back at him, her
great lark eyes questioning and full
of doubt.
you think l have done badly? No.
1t was my one great inspiration. You
have the body and the health of one
among thousands. You are so beauti-
full with the beauty of eternal things
that even | who will not touch your
cheek can feel the same thrill of pleas
ure that one may feel gazing upon a
Praxiteles."
She had said, Not Phidias, then?'
Eyes. phidias-a work of Phidias.
Because there is not only your carved
limbs and neck and hands but some
thing sublime as well. Beneath your
warm and velvety surface like the tex
ture of flower petals there is a wonder
full mind, and a spirit which has come
down through eternities with immortal
life"
"You are an eloquent man" the
young girl. had said, with a quirk upon
her lips suggestive of her mother.
"Your tongue is as silyery as those of
my Irish ancestors"
do you think | shall regret that l
have played Il part in your growth?'
he had asked, with one of his short
laughs. Il shall not be more to you
than | am now. How can ] use you,
Ell? How could l use my money? |
deluded myself nee. / thought |
wanted it for myself. But you? | do
not want you for myself. l only want
your capacity as a woman to be filed
TO the brim!
He lived two lives not at the same
time. but alternately. The one was in
her. the other in himself. When he
could put his own life into hers he for
go his own. He became that being
whose warmth and light she had seen
beneath the cold steel shell of an I'M
renting fighter and plunger, whose
s~ingleness OF purpose and Will had
found dynamic concentration in his
spare body and had expressed them
selves in a mask of cruelty and craft
upon d face otherwise esthetic and
sensitive. At these times his counte-
n wore that abnormal youth OF
feature which was his most marked
personal characteristic. 1t was only
upon rare occasions that it was twist
ed up as if in a cramp of anxiety as
if some distant but menacing forecast
had pointed a finger at him from afar.
For a moment he forgot her; for a
moment he had been immersed in his
self.
For more than half a year, in Buda-
pest. in PetrOgrad, in London, this one
of the two lives of Compton Parmalee
was dominant. Something of the youth
and the calm of Brena's eyes, looking
ont upon a world which opened all its
doors TO her expectant inquiry, was re
Elected in his own.
By manipulation of acquaintance
and. when necessary, by lavish expen.
diture. he procured her entry into rare
social circumference. In that mrs.
vear Rrena, considered by all strangers
TO be several years older thar she, II
fact. was. and of whom no one woult
have believed it if it had been tolC
. them that she had been plucked out o.
that kitchen garden of Wilkes board
in~ house. the Porto Rican shop, thu
! movies, and a sordfd sickly-brown pro
{ vincialism, had dined with foreign am
S bassadors. hunted with Lady Tremayr
Nash. been courted over, through ant
under her disgust. by a cousin of the
; ex-king of the Portuguese, occupied
. villa in the italian lakes and voyaget
IN a luxurious yacht around the Baltic
E in midsummer with the family o
Stockholm's largest banker. With thu
credit of admiration that her natura
. poise, her beauty, her talent as a III
guist, her mothers wit ana her father
I love of learning had brought her every
y where. she was not dazzled In th'
slightest degree.
when Parmalee, in Berlin, said tt
. her f%orgivably exulting, n we Wori