Adventure Magazine Cover — page 153: what you’re looking at

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

The Road She rose to a sitting posture. Gently she disembarrassed herself of his arm. ‘‘It is nothing,’ she said firmly. ‘‘A little cut —a flesh-wound. There is no cause for anxiety.” He looked at her incredulously yet hope- fully. He muttered—his thoughts finding unconscious issue in words: ‘“‘If she had been killed! Merciful God! If she had been killed!” A curiously maternal feeling seized her. He was so unstrung—his need of comfort was so abject—his bewilderment of anxiety so childishly pathetic. She smiled again. ‘‘Row!’’ she suggested. “Take me back and then we'll see what a bandage and cold water will do. There is nothing to be alarmed at. Row! Row! Can’t have me with you? Doesn’t this prove that—I have my uses? I have helped to save your skin, perhaps. Are you going to deny me my chance to save your reputation—and the road?” He dashed the oars into the water and began to row with great wrenching strokes which sent them skimming across the lagoon. ‘““No I can’t bear it!” he repeated. ‘How can I work with you in danger—you!”’ The smile had left her eyes. She was grave now. “And I myself?” she asked. ““What of me, sent away to leave you in these same dangers—you?” ‘““Me?” he repeated wonderingly. ‘¢Just—you,” she said quietly, and then the dusk, to her fading senses, became night itself. Nature intervened with her merciful hand, and, with a faint sigh, Katrine fainted. CHAPTER XXI AGNEW PLAYS HIS PART: DD PELLIGRINO, medical inspector of the advanced section of the Bir Rail- way, bowed himself out of Mr. Gresham’s veranda with a certain reluctance. Sta- tioned as he was in the center of his section, away from intercourse with his intellectual compeers, his visit to civilization had proved a break of color in the drab background of his life. His sudden call to Vodra to attend a lady of such distinction as the daughter of the Signor Proprietor was a matter for elation. ‘True it was no more than a flesh- wound from which she suffered, but it had been necessary to put in a stitch or two. ' glad to say, signorina. 909 She had smiled, had scouted the idea of anesthetics and had made no trouble by wincing. And now, with promises of re- turn on the following morning, he was leaving her to the attentions of her father— and her lover? _He shook his head a little doubtfully over the last proposition. They were cold, these Americans. And then, as he walked down the piazza to where the gang and trolley awaited him, his theories received a check. Perhaps there was a reason for the Signor Agnew’s stolidity? Perhaps it was coming toward him? A lady strolled slowly across the open square in the direction of the Signor Pro- prietor’s veranda, and Pelligrino immedi- ately recognized a compatriot. Lucia Gessi’s coloring, the suave lines of her body, the careless perfection of her dress and adornment, told him this. Moved by the courtly instinct of his race he uncovered as she passed. Her eyes reviewed him with a certain in- difference and then woke with interest. She acknowledged his salutation by a bow. She came to a halt. “The Signor Doctor?” she suggested. ‘The same, signorina,” he answered. ‘fAt your service.” “You have been visiting the Signorina Gresham?” He bowed again. “Yes, signorina.”’ “‘And you find her—how?” ‘There was certainly anxiety in the tone, he told him- self. And yet it was discounted by a cer- tain hardness. “T find her doing excellently well, I am The wound is merely superficial and the loss of blood will, I have reason to hope, be quickly recovered. We have no cause for real anxiety.” “Ah!” Her eyes grew somber, the alert- ness left her face. She bowed slightly, mur- mured a word of thanks, and passed on. “Tt will not be out of place to make my own inquiries,” she suggested, more to herself, he thought, than to him. He watched her for a moment, with a signifi- cant smile, before he wheeled in his turn toward the waiting trolley. WH ‘THE three who sat in the veranda <3} looked up as Lucia approached. The two men rose to their feet. Katrine saluted her visitor with a smile and a wave of the hand and the Italian COmiclbook CO