Life — June 13, 1901 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Numbers. \ (With apologies to Henry James.) \ RENDEN was con- scious of too visibly wondering, the effect of their last interview hanging about him with a not-to-berescaped insistence, as he pulled Mrs. Fraydor's handsome bronze bell- handle ; not that he felt the responsibilit entirely his, but that he owned to not, in his frank egoism, cherishing any hope which would sway him too strongly in the matter. However, when the heavy door swung oack and revealed the face of a perfectly trained blankness, belonging to the only person who possibly, under the too trying circumstances, could, in passing with the tea-tray, have glimpsed into the red drawing-room on the particular day: he met it with direct cool- ness. Thorn replied in a heavy monotone to Crenden’s impulsive question; meanwhile searching him with eyes which had perhaps in their remotest depths the spark of a some- thing withheld; that Mrs. Fraydor was in the red drawing-room—he hung, possibly a trifle. to the red—and alone Crenden was glad to feel as the curtain fell behind him and he was face to face with THE MACH OF EXPIRE, ‘LAP E* the lovely creature, that the moment for repeating the perhaps too en- veloping sensation had passed. M Fraydor met him with “Then you didn't—" “No, surely ""—he took her up—‘ how could T when it seemed so wonderfully to turn our way?” “Our way!” She threw it out with some bitterness. “Then you think—" “T think it has been of a hidcousness!” he broke in with. “T know—and Mr. Fra “Well, Mr. Fra: out with impatience. “Well, 100, wonderfully bears it, but with a lack of intellect, a numbness of in- sight which is worse than the other. He's of a blindness!" “Mr. Fraydor?” “No, no—the other.” “ Then there és anothe: “OF course. He wouldn't have borne the stamp so freshly on his poor, dear mind if he hadn't had things to compare them to.” “He? Who?" “Why, Mr. Grandel. You're of a dulness'” ydor—" He brought it “AH, MISS CLARINDI! MAY 1 DREAM THAT YOU WILL RETURN MY Love?” “You May, BUT IT Won't come TRUE!" Si “Did Grandel ? “Know? Ofcourse, otherwise how could he—” she broke off helplessly. “The numbers, you mean?” he supplied the blank. Before she had time to answer, Thorn raised the curtain and discreetly articu- lated, THE LATEST IMPROVEMENT DD.Tansin « teat comicbooks.com