"STAR" TALES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9675, 18 October 1909, Page 4

"STAR" TALES.

MOTHER. (By ALICE BROWN.) | "But, Lilian," said Mrs Hall, " stay here and have your tea with They were in the sombrely furnished arawing-room of the city house, _ a monument to good taste before the sixties— two middle-aged women who had been schoolmates together, and who had seen each other only at long intervals for forty years. The hostess, Mrs Hall, had .the advantage of a year or two over her friend, but sho had so ignored any amenity time might enow her, and had walked so steadfastly and patiently toward the acquiescence v bf age, at the same time adopting, almost lovingly, the insignia, m cut and fabric, once belonging to* it, that now j - she seemed much the elder. This was all in her general effect when one poted her black dress, thesoft liner of white at her neck ana wrist, and the little triangle of lace on her frosted waves of hair. She was a beautiful creature given almost- indulgently over to Age, as if he could not 'hurt her, and might as well throw his trappings pound her if that had been judged to be the custom; her blue eyes were alive with a light which is the love of everything created, the dark brows over them never frowning, but only strengthening a face that promised to be too gentle, and her mouth smiling most sweetly. Artists had loved and painted and praised her, until she privately declared to her son — her one confidant— that she couldn't see what possessed them. She had been accounted plain in her youth. This must foe a form of kindly modern homage to' old age. Mrs Kimball, her friend, was young ■with a difference. She had grown portly, and fought that infliction by ©very means known to modern , theory , save relinquishing the indulgences of the table. She was so massaged, and . creamed. and powdered, go alight with barbaric chains on a broad lace-bound bosom,' and so evidently 6worn not «to . be t cajoled out of youth into the next territory, that Mrs Hall sat looking at her with a, kind «f pain. She was wondering uneasily whether she herself had changed sc visibly as Lilian, and then, with an under-current of amusement and a tittle frown, remembered the artist? and their .praise., and gave the riddle np. * . ' "I want you to go with me," Mrs Kimball was insisting. "Just for a cup of tea at Hervier's. You know Hervier's, don't you?" Mrs Hall frowned again, in recolleciug. • . ' • "Why, yes," she said. "It's that very fashionable place, isn't it, where people drop in after the matinees r And there's music, and — ob, I don/t know whit all 1" "Yes, and you've heard of it and never wanted to go. Isn't that like jrou, Rebecca?" ."I have my tea at home/ said Re> becca, smiling at her, with a recognition of Human differences. "You know, really, Lil, I've lived in the country so long I don't care much for afternoon tea. And I turn my dinnei into a kind of supper, and have my tea with it. There V' "What does your son say?" " Ch l he just laughs and goes on with his dinner. I have some toast. extra, you know, and a little preserve and a mite of cake. I never did care moch about eating at night." " It's a part of your country habits." Mrs Kimball was twisting her soft wrist with difficulty to consult the watch strapped to it by, gilded chains. "Haven't you ever regretted living wit of the world so long?" " Never. I wish I were out of it »ow. J> "Why aren't you?" * "Weft, you see I came away when /■Oil v went to college, and now he has /•his studio here. Oh, no, I couldn't be happy away from him. He wouldn't Jike it, either." *• But you let him -go Abroad alone." ; Mrs Hall gave way to sudden mer- ' t iment. ' r ." I made him. I was afraid he'd pec to feeling he was mother's pet." ' Mrs Kimball always sat very straight to obviate the effect of her rotundities hat now she lifted herself higher with the access of a difficult resolution. " Well, you know, Rebecca," she taxi " 1 came home on the steamer with Gilbert." ■ Mrs Hall nodded, in approval of sc pleasant a conjunction. ' "Yes, I know,"- she said. "He waa ao glad to find you were sailing. ''Well, he took precious little paint. to fidadden himself further when we hadwfed." Mrs Hall flushed and her brows cam? together a little in concern. "'Oh, I*m sorry, Lii. He wasn t rude to you?" "He wasn't rude, but he "was cloistered. Nobody could get near mm Everybody wanted to. He's handsoaicu I god." The mother drew a little satisfied breath. " Isn't he a giant?" she said, though bar eyes committed her to. more. " Yes, -people do notice him, of course, .tie's #o big, for one thing. They can't help seeing him." "I was sorry .he was so much m entfence. He seems to be a curiously unworldly kind of boy. Not self-conscious at all. Not in the least prudent about being looked at. He doesn't know the first principles of caution." Mrs Hall drew her brows together •gain in their look of perplexity. Thu< an sounded like commendation, and -y«t she was perfectly conscious that it was not: that it was. in some sort, flaunted before her like a danger signal. ! "What ib it, Lilian?" she asked, jrith the quietude of one in an assu'* ad position toward life and what it can 4o or threaten. "What do you want io tell me about Gil? You haven't " tame here to praise him.' 9 i Mrs Kimball laughed with an acteDtad robustness. "I ha-vea't come to do the other tbfag/' she declared, in a lively lona that sought to carry reasprance with it. "I admired him, jf~ean assure you, quite particularly. Bat I was hardly ever so sui> 1 wised in my life that a boy of his obk of— weD, you know his kind of pok. You're perfectly well aware hat he looks as if he T d been born to > Ihihgs, and had them all his life, as to has. I w.as surprised. Beck, to find , £e.wa»eo«mple." . • v* * v - ; Rebecca was gazing straight at her •at of blue, unsmiling eyes, yet not •tornly: but as if the sincere eyes . meant to challenge the same clarity in the dance they mfet. "How is he simple, Lilian?"' she •deed. " Why, he's so unworldly. He takes rich frightful risks." *. I "I wish," said Mre Hall, patiently,

" you'd tell nic what you mean. You're complaining of Gil. I can see that." Her friend's high; colour began to intensify itself unnecessarily. It had exceeded the bounds devoted to good health or beauty, and seemed to be the signal of embarrassment. "I hope you know how interested I am in everything that concerns you .Rebecca," she began awkwardly. "I never forget old times." : " No," said Rebecca. She was leaning a little now on her chair back, as j if she needed it to support her, and had folded her hands with a gentle grace in her lap. " I'm sure you don't rorget old times, Lily. We don't either 'of us. You've been a faithful friend." "I mean to be a friend still. That's why I've come. Rebecca, do you hap pen to know anything about Vivian I Bruce?" Mrs Hall shook her head. She conic! not yet see how the inquiry could pertain, and yet Lilian's continued fluster made it evident that it did. . . "That's just like' yon, Beck. I'd have been wijlipg to bet you' didn't." ■ Mrs Hall smiled a little as at something she had heard before. "Well, you scold me if , I don't!" sLe deprecated prettily. "I'm willing to know about her now." "?m afraid, you'll have. to. ' Now think, Rebecca, think back a minute Haven't you read a word about herf Two divorce suits, one .husband that shot A himself, one that went to India and got killed, everybody says because he couldn't bear to live and lese her— haven't you read that?" Mm Hall shook her head definitely. Well, I've no patience with you*" I don t read very much in the daily papers. Gil keeps me posted about things I ought to know. All this winter Ive been reading about the time of Queen Elisabeth/ " Queen Elizabeth ! And here's your soli— well, all I can say is, Vivian Bruce's life is as absorbing as Queer Elizabeth's, and all the rest of them in any novel or any history — why.* it Is history. You'd' better leave your Queen Elizabeths and. see ifehat*s doing in New York under your no§o this very day^' . . ." I shan't need to, Lil. Yoii'Jl tell me.". „"'■•■ Mrs Kimball sniiled perfunctorily with her friend, and again, consulted her watch. , : " Well, the long and short of it is," sho_ continued, somewhat in haste, " Vivian is a charmer. She's beautiful and- die's got that particular way with her, and she's an adventuress, straight. If you turned her into the Garden of Eden, she wouldn't stay there. She'd get the Serpent to let her out, and he'd do it, and he wouldn't be satisfid with that. He'd go with her. She's a woman that likes the drama, something doing, and it's always emotional. Don't you see P She sticks at nothing. She's dangerous." "Dear me!" said Mrs Hall, pleasantly. A light had r^sen in her eyes. ! She looked, for the first time, slightly on guard. "She sounds like history herself. Seems to^e I've read something like that, 'way back in Egypt, or Troy." • ' Mrs Kimbajl made an impatient move ment of her hand in its constricting glove. •• . . ' " I don't know anything about that. I don't have time to read. But I. suppose they've always existed, and we've got to make the best of it. Wei), she crossed with us." ' • / "With you?" ' „-■ "With aU of us. : Particularly -with your Gilbert." : ' $lrs Hall did not move by an instant of trembling, and her eyes, with their j look of observant' interest, remained quiejbly upon her friend's. "You 'mean (Gilbert met her?" she asked. ' - • , j "Yes, for the first time.. I fully Relieve it was the first time. But she selected him — it's her custom to fix upon one man or another — and through the whole voyage he didn't leave her side." " She must be very attractive," murmured the mother. " Attractive? 'Don't I tell you she's a serpent? We don't know anything about such women/ you and I. We don't see how they Jdo it. We may wish we did "^— she stopped for an in stant, dashed by that cool attention in the other facef— " well, we don't, that's all. Only it's something they're born with. And when a man. finds himself up against it, particularly a young "inau, it spells ruin, Beck, just ruin." "Do you mean, asked her friend evenly, " that Gilbert wishes to marry her?'* i : ; ' Mrs Kimball gave a little shriek and threw up her hands). " Marry !• Good gracious, child,, men don't marry Vivian Bruce 1" " But you tell me she's been married twice already." ■' • • . "That's precisely why) she can't b 9 again, to anybody who /doesn't want to damn himself.' It isn't marria^u I'm afraid of, Beck. It's seeing your boy lying dead with a hole in his fort*head, like that young Simpson at Monte Carlo. He got tangled up witL precisely that kind of a creature— only not so fetching. /Heavens, no I But just as unscrupulous." " Did you see young Simpson.?", asked Rebecca, with an amiable interest that might have been exercised to draw the line of thought away from, this particular phase. Lilian Suspected .t at once, and sat looking at her with, a u arrested wonder, as if she had jegun to accuse her friend of more cleverness than had been apparent in forty years. • "Of course, I didn't see him,'' she said, impatiently. " But other people did. It was in the :papers. . And your Gilbert, if I read him at all, is exactly the same sort of fellow— quick; mettle some, ready to dare everything he has for a passion. Why, his brazen absorption in her on board ship shows whathe'd. do. And the boy has a good look, Beck. It went to my heart. it wasn't only because he's your boy, but I felt he ought to be saved." _V Mrs Hall bent suddenly forward and laid a hand on her friend's knee. " Yon're a dear, Lilian," she said, in a voice quite caressing in its affeo tionate gratitude. " Now I'm - real-j going to give you some tea;" : Mrs Kimball drew a breath, since the worst of the interview was ovor. Yet she did look worried | still, .having more to venture and si^e mvii brace herself/ to press it. - "No," she said; f< you're coming with me to Hervier's." Mrs Hall rose with her, and stood for a moment, her; delicate hand <>n 1 the chair-back, as if she needed it to stay her. : "Very weir," she said, "I wiH "■ There was a certitude of calm :n her voice; she seemed to be accepting a test of her own courage or endurance, and after that moment of halting by the chair, as if she might demand continued support, she turned and walkod v to the door with a dignified precision.

of step and the grace of her erect slender ness. "^Well," said Mrs KimbaH t«> her.self, with, a breath, "that's over ? ; * ar.d then she beoame aware that i»i hor haste she had said it while her. mead could hear. " ' < Mrs Hall was presently back again, gloved and ready, in- her little 'sonnet and its 'long veil, and Mrs Krnba" noted that the swift preparation sue had: made allowed no time for tue slightest breakdown. When they went put together she ; was wondering whether Rebecca had a ''marvellous endurance or whether she was really: ignorant of the colour of certain t>hin^3. ner own courage was wavering, and they drove jaway to Hervier's tmki ig of the day with its flavour of latter summer, and 'once, ''■ for quite nv-» minutes, of a - magical conserve Mrs Hall had been making of raspberries and ginger and lemon and a set of as unlikely potmates. When it came to the. conserve, Mrs KimbaH ]iste:iod to her with a frank astonishment. She had no time for affairs of the household, and it filled her with unstinted wonder to hear a woman who had bee a asked t6 approach a coming blur on Lor son's fame talking gently of quantities and skimmings ana periods of boiling. At Hervier's it was the chosen time of day 'for idleness and fashion. In the long room with its little white t.»bltis, shadowed and flickered upon by t!ie green of moving leaves, with the subdued liquid-dropping of harp inuai-*, there were men and women everywhere, childishly busy iii- the hunt for pleasure It seemed to be a show of the elect in costume and the waving and glossing or hair and the soft sweep of feathers. Mrs Kimball looked about her in an anxiously scrutinising way, and after rejecting the offer of two or three tables, finally selected one overlooking the entire room. There she placed her friend, and instead of taking the opposite seat, had her own chair moved to* the end of the* table so that she also could approximately command «the scene. Then, her order given, she leaned back and looked. Mrs Hall gazed also, with a childlike curiosity She could only compare it, drawing upon the simple images of a sober life like hers, to the opera, where she wag accustomed to see raimesnt of inoreclibie sp.endour. The comparison was not inapt, for this was the overflow frojn a brilliant matinee. " This is very pretty," she kept saying — " very pnetty. I'm so indebted to you." Mrs Kimball watched and did not answer ; but presently her pose relaxed, and she gavo a little exclamation and laid her hand on her friend' s wrist. Mrs Hall glanced at her, followed her look, and started slightly. Two persons were walking down the room, a man and woman, he equipped with the innocent bravery of youth and a comely strength, and she in the studied insolence which meets the world's contumely with a hard consciousness of its own endowment, the array of charms it has to fight with, and the certainty that in all time that soldiery will never be without power in the^eld. " There I" breathed Mrs Kimball. " Oh," said her friend, . with a cool and pretty interest, " there's Gilbert. Is that his friend P" > : "Yes. It's Vivian Bruce." Mrs Hall lifted her eye-glasses hanging by their thread of a chain, and set them on her nose. She followed the two superb figures down the room to their conspicuous seat by a fountain at the end. " What lovely hair !" she said, in quite an unaffected interest. "And what a gorgeous dress 1"

Lilian Kimball looked at .her now in a puzzled questioning. She had dismissod Gilbert ' and his drama to wonder again whether Rebecca was not more of a woman of the world than she had thought. Or was she too simple to read the import of these things? Or was she, under her saint's guise, too worldly to baulk at them? That, though it might prove venial in some women, would bo monstrous in her. But Rebecca was speaking, with a pretty, gracious uplift of the voice. "Lilian, it's very rude — I would'nt do it if the circumstances weren't exactly as they are— but I'm going to ask you to drink your tea alone and lot me go to them." " Go to them ! Have tea with them?" Mrs Hall nodded, smilingly shutting up her eye-glass ; as she spoke and tucking l it into its accustomed' nest of folds. " Rebecca, you can't have tea with her. She's notorious.'"' > Mrs" Hall laughed . a little in an amused, sweet way./ "Weir, I'm not notorious. Gil isn't either." Her friend laid an anxious hand on her arm. ' " Rebecca," she breathed, "you won't make a ■scene?' ".; Rebecca laughed outright. " You're are goose, Lil," she said. "You see." Mrs Kimball went on, in a. distracted whisper, " they'-re the •nost conspicuous people in the room. She is always, everywhere she goes, and she's been here with him two days running, to my knowledge. They were here yesterday and here the day before. She likes to bring him, to display him. I made up my mind to get you here. I knew Jbhey'd be here after Tristan." "There, you see! y.ou've brought mej and I've spied the lady and I want to know her." "Don't you see people looking at them?" ■• ' . - . •" Yes. No wonder. They're very handsome.'' "Well, they'll look at you, too, if you go down there." " I've got on my best bonnet and good gloves. Don't I look nice enough P" There was a pretty moment of intent query in her look, and then she went sailing away with her indeterminate grace, which was a girl's endowment, after all. down the long . room with couples and athwart them, and made' her way directly to the table. ■ •r Gil was talking when she ?ot there. He had a flushed face and ardent eyes, • and her heart leaped at the sight of him, his beauty and the strange look he always wore, in a sophisticated crowd, of being one set apart by healthier living, or, in some- form, a more sound inheritance; He glanced up at her as she halted, black-robed, beside him, and his lips stayed parted with the words they meant to utter.-. TKe woman, too, looked up at her, and Rebecca Hall felt another j>ang, an especial and choking one, over her, her airy supple grace, the distinction of her bright hair and beautiful hands, and the challenge in the great gray eyes and the mobile lips/ not full, but curved until the 1 heart fnisjht faint in following them. Then Gilbert was on his feet, and hie mother had said .with her unabashed simplicity : "I'm going to have my tea with you. Introduce us, won't youP" He did it, blunderingly, out of a rash certainty that in some way he should have as well to terminate the combinatipn; but his mother waived all possibilities but that of her coming to tea, and was seated between him and Vivian Bruce, telling how she had seen them by chance, and left her own table because theirs seemed cosier. Vivian Bruce was looking at Jier with distended '"eyes. At.' first she was elightly on her guard, a little sharp from furtive seeking for motives behind the apparent one, but as the older woman went on with her harmless flow of commonplaces she broke in and joined them. ' She was the first to gather up her gloves and , make * a move to go. , f "I shall have to leave .you," she said sweetly. "My car is at the.door. I'm going, to drive myself. No," she added, definitely, as Gilbert rose with her, "I don't want you, please." His mother, too. had. risen "I wish you w.anted me," she said to Vivian, "I wish you'd take me^ home." "Mother!" Gilbert was evidently warning her, but she did not look at him. Her eyes were on the other face, suddenly alive with pleasure. " Would you really, let me?" said Vivian Bruce. " I'd be so glad." So they went up the-r^oom together, past Lilian Kimball, whom Mrs Hall somehow failed to see until the last instant, for squeezing in a bow, and Gilbert had put them into the car and stood bareheaded on the sidewalk looking at them. His mother knew that look. It was his beseeohing yet confident gaze, as of a dog who hardly likes to bark* for what he wants, yet knows he is too popular to run much risK of losing it. But that one time he was going to lose it. "Run along; Gil," said his mother^ " Call at Aunt Josephine's on the way, will you, and tell her I want to know about her cold?" Then the two women were driving off together between .the lights coming out to meet the western flare, aud she went on, still cosily : " I made up that errand. Really, I didn't want him. Three can't get acquainted. Two can, I think, don't you?" '' Vivian Bruce stiffened a little under her furs. "It isn't accident, then?" she said. "You came to Hervier's to see me?" " No," said Mrs Hall. " But when I saw you I knew I'd got to know you. Somebody told me my boy was getting acquainted with you." Vivian sat looking straight ahead, watching absorbedly and driving fast. She smiled a little. " They are very precious, ..aren't they," she said, "these boys? 'Your boys, all boys?'' ' Oh, yes/ said the mother, 6imply. "It isnM; only because they're ours,., but they're men, you see. They belong to us a little, but they belong to. other things a hundred times more — their country, the wives they're going to marry." t - They did not speak again • until the* car drew up at Mrs Hall's door, and then Vivian sprang gallantly out, and gave her charge a firm hand to alight.. " Come in, said Mrs Hall, impulsively. " I don't know you any better than I did at the tea table. I never shall, if we go motoring together. I've got to see you by my own fire, please." Vivian, who was the taller, looked down at her a moment, and then acquiesced bluffly, ' like a charming boy. " Well," said she, " I will." So they went up the steps, and Mrs Hall, without ringing for service, made her put off her fur coat and sit down at the hearth. Then she mended the fire with her own hands and much skill, . and suddenly from her own chair looked across at her visitor.. \

"Well," she said "isn't this funny?" >.. Vivian Bruce, too, laughed. Then she sobered. "Mrs Hall," she said, "you'd heard of me. You've brought me hei*e to talk to me. Now, haven't you?" "I've brought you because ±'m simply so curious about you I couldn't let you go. That's the truth. Believe me." - "Why were you curious?" "Because you were with Gil. And because he "hadn't spoken about you." Vivian laughed a little, in a hard way. "Does he always speak about people?" she inquired. " When he thinks of it, I'm sure." " 'Most always," said his mother. "Then maybe he hasn't thought of it?" Vivian was questioning her now with the full power of the gray eyes intensified by a light in them. "Oh, yes," said Mrs Hall, still quietly. " He's' thought of you. Anybody would that saw you once." A flush crept into the woman's face and awakened it to a wistful life. She gave the interview an unexpected turn. " Do you think I'm so horrid?" she inquired. • "Horrid? My child !" "You think Pm conspicuous." Mrs Hall . looked at her -with a frank and challenging scrutiny; It was not sharp. It was at l once direct and firm. "I think you're very, handsome," she said. " You're the handsomest woman I over saw." ■ " But you find a lot of fault with me. I'm not even handsome your way.." . The Humble voice^was not, her listener felt sure, assumed to meet the peculiarities of the situation,, or to reoonci'e in any manner their standards of the beautiful. It came from something alive and glowing under "all this bravery and glitter. " No," she said, steadily, " I don't find any fault with you. But I want to know you." . " So you can find fault if you have to?" : " Yes. Or " — the kindly voice warmed into a thrill of whimsical protest against wholesale relegation to a world of feminine prejudice — " so I can admire you all I want to." The other woman frankly stared at j her. Then she put out one small, exquisite foot to the blaze,, drawing her skirt away from it and regarding it impersonally. "No," she said, gloomily, after a pause, '* you won't admire me. . You can't> " Oh." cried the mother^ quite unaffectedly, ".I'm sorry. For I'm pretty exacting, after all. If I can't, I don't want Gil to: 7 / . Then they were both silent, and presently Vivian looked up. She gave a little sigh. ■'• "He doesn't — yet. Not as you're afraid. He truly hasn't begun to." "Were you " the mother began gently and stopped. " Was I going to make 'him? Yes, I,,waa." "Are you going to now?" " I don't know. Yes, if I want fco." Again they sat withi their own separate musings, the younger running bitterly back over the unfriendliness of woman warring against woman for the possession of the other element that *id not seem to her so valuable, after alil.i Sometimes she wished she could live with women alone, breathing -their affectionate, coql companionship. Yet she knew it was not possible.' . They wouldn't have her with a perfect tru»t, and even if they would, the old call would come sounding to her out of the necessities of things, and she would go forth 'from any haven to find her mate that was also, each time, her prey, as she was his. '" No," she said heavily, as if she sulked under discipline, " I suppose I sha'n't. I suppose you think you've earned him. by being faithful and selfsacrificing — and wearing little black bonnets " Her voice broke, and she added, out of an impatience savage in its suddenness and her own inability to master it: "Oh, you're a darling j thing. Take your boy. Take him and j be done with it." | It was like an assault on the decorous shyness which had wrapped the other woman all. her life, to find her [ son, whom she could not help wanting to encaSe in a privacy like her own, tossed back to her, a chattel another woman did not keep. But it was only a little hurt on the outer skin rf her pride. She. had /long ago learned that . life is a process of bruises on vulnerable organs, ard tKit the had been tremendously fortunate in her seclusion and her protected state. She bad been schooling herself all these years to remember that Gilbert was in the stress of things, and * hat. if she meant to share bis life at all, she must meet crude miseries without wincing. So ifc was ont r>f these old resolres that she spoke with a jfentle brevity. " You're not to give up anything that's right for von both to have. If he likes jou— specially " Her voice

failed her, and Vivian could see that at last on© dtshcate hand was trembling. "I've told you he doesn't cafre for me — ' specially,' " she said, with a bluff kindliness. " And I don't care for lijm. But — suppose I did — suppose we • did — what would you have done then?" The mother's face looked wan in its sudden pallour. Her certainties, her quietness, seemed suddenly washed away from it. One could see it in the utmost pathos of. an undefended age. "Why," she said, "I should want you to let me be in it with you." ' "In it? He couldn't marry me. I'm not free to marry." i Mrs Hall was looking at lier with eyes that implored her to spare them both the cruder tests. ; 'il haven't thought any farther," ; ehe eaid- " Only I have always want- '. ed~-I always meant— if my son had attachments, to be as friendly — as understanding " Her voice failed her. She really had no idea how to put her pure purpose into words; i "You mean, whatever woman he^got I attached to, you intended to know her : — to like^her if you couldP" | "Yes." The mother spoke with* relief now- that her intent was being elaborated for her. "You'd know h~er socially. You'd have her here iii your, house." "I should want to." " Any woman, you mean, any kind of woman?" * "Yes." " Good God I" This was under her breath, an exclamation not of blasphemy^ but of wonder. She was looking at the pale face now, still under its veil of prophetic age, with a frank incredulity. Suddenly, while her eyes met that other wistful gaze which seemed to implore her out of her worldly cunning to tell another woman how to be as wise, tears come blindingly. They Hurt her, and she pressed them back again with closedvlids and an impatient hand. "Well," she said, "I hope you won't come to /grief, that's all. If you do, I hope I shan't know it. But you . won't. "" Your boy's a good boy. , He's got andiron kind of a will in him, too. See here." She laughed a little in that mocking^ self-communion , of hers. " I can drop him, but do you want him to drop meP Would that save your pride?' 5 The other shook her head. Bigger things than pride were involved, and she did not quite know the phrases for explaining how poor a trapping she considered pride to be. . ...-., " I can tell him," Vivian w^nt on — "I can tell him I .couldn't stand his I mother. I can jeer .at" you, a little, only a little. He'd take-off his hat arid leave me." ct Oh no,*' she breathed, "you mustn't do that. • ''Why mustn't I?" / , "He wouldn't like it. He wouldn't like you." . " Don't I tell you he wouldn't like it? Don't we both want him not to like me?". \ " Oh, I do want him to like you, said the other woman, impetuously. " I want him to respect you/ Vivian seemed for an instant to be staring her down, but her own lids fell first, and again she pressed them with angry fingers. a hard saying," she returned. "There's something about a camel and the eye of a needle." Sh c had risen now and stood with one foot on the head, of the fire-dog. "Well," she ' said, gravely, "perhaps he can.. He's as queer as you in aom.4 ways. Perhaps he/ can." ' » " Oh, he does!" the mother declared, tumultuousfly. " Does respect me? How do you know?" " Oh, I know Gil. He wouldn't like you if ne didn't." • There they , stood staring at N each j other; the mother with such- boundless belief in all possibilities openly writteßi in her face that Vivian for one bewildering moment felt as she sometimes did on a spring morning, at her first wakinpr, as if the world were new and she with it. " T,m going abroad," sfce said, abruptly, when the dream snapped. "He sha'n't mope about me. I'll leave him free as — free as you want me to. He sha'n't sulk. He'll be a little cockier, that's all. He'll think he's proved a model of chivaky and found I was a good fellow." She was on her war to the door, without an offered hand-shake, and Mrs Hall hastened after her, 4 "Oh," she said, "that's good— that's wonderful — but I want you to be free, too. You're not— you could tell me, you know-— you won't miefc him " • A child's mirth had run. over the woman's face and chased away certain lines that aged and hardened it. She laid her hands on her friend's ( shoulders, held them there a moment, arid. then, stooping, kissed both the 1 soft 'pale cheeks. " Am I in love with him, you mean? No. I'd got> done being wiiat you call>, in love wheft he was fifteen, i sha'n't ever see you again, madonna. Give me one more kiss. In love? You needn't worry. Why, bless you I I'm in love with you !" . #