Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine, Vol. 107 No. 3 — page 137: what you’re looking at

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

THE DEVIL’S RIDDLE. “ Good-by, friend,’ she repeated softly. “You'll never come back.” CHAPTER XXII. RAINBOW’S END. THE days that followed were as a dream to the starved soul of the girl who had left love in the valley and toiled and longed for life beautiful. At eight o’clock each morning, carefully manicured and coifed, she was ready for her vocal practise or other lessons. Then came the most wonderful part of the day—that hour and a half with Philip and the great masters of literature and art. After that came her hours with Paul. His splendid idealism, his intense love and ap- preciation of beauty in all its forms, seemed to resolve discord into harmony. She went about everywhere with the two friends, who, opposite as the carrot and the lily, were inseparable. | They, on their side, delighted in her quick perceptions, her hunger for knowl- edge, and withal her ‘lightness of manner that had always in the back of it, however, a note of sadness. All her dreamsgnd more had come true, and she was sick and weary, and had no longer the desire for it.. She made a great show of enjoyment. It was as if life had starved her; then, suddenly, when she had lost the taste for food, spread a great feast before her. “Tf anybody ever finds the end of the rainbow,” she mused with a grim smile, “ it will be the wrong end.” But if Esther Bowles had brooded in the days when shut in by the desert wastes, or later when bounded by “ one-nighters,” she allowed herself no such luxury now. We moil over our troubles; we strive to forget our suffering. By sheer force of will and constant, un- remitting excitement, she kept her thought in an upper stratum of her mind. Always at the bottom ef her consciousness lurked a vague gnawing of a hurt that was refused admittance—crowded out by the press of indefatigable work and strenuous pleasure. A great emptiness was always with her. 479 She, alone; of the three, saw the thing clearly, stripped of theories and false no- tions. She knew perfectly well what the world thought of her. She knew that her position—in artistic as well as in that ultra society that ran after Paul Evers, and took her up to please him—was absolutely de- pendent upon the artist’s favor, and would cease with his friendship unless she were fortunate enough to find another rich man to uphold her. She also knew that such another man she was not likely to find. One with money—yes; but she knew that on the day when Paul Evers remembered that she was a woman the house of cards in which they lived would come tumbling down. Several times Esther had tried to write Sam, but events crowded so upon each other, and more important was the fact that when she came to write him she would have to think—think with that deeper mind that we call the heart. And that was what she most wanted to avoid. Sam would want to know all she had been doing, and that would recall things she must forget. But at last she forced herself to it. She owed it to him at what- ever cost to herself. Sam, meantime, had haunted ‘the post- offise. Nor had he changed his mind as to what he would do when once he got Esther’s New York address. “’ Hey, Sam, they got a letter in there for you,” remarked a cow-man on the post- office porch as Sam rode into Lowery the third time in one week. “ Hit’s from old Edwards’s stepdaughter.” But the letter was not there. One Joe Hays had taken it out, saying he would be passing Sam’s ranch next week, and he would “ drap by ” with it. Sam rode out to the Hays ranch and got his letter. Considering that he had been so concerned about it, and for so long, he might naturally have been expected to open it at once; but he did no such thing. Put- ting it in his pocket, he turned his horse homeward. Once he took it out and studied the superscription; looked at the picture of the hotel on the envelope, and put it back in his pocket with grim eyes and set mouth. After supper he opened it. Again he COMICEDOO S CO in