The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

MESQUITE RANCH. mother’s dominance that it insured. And she had been so inured to the con- templation of herself as a command- ing social figure that her beauty and charm meant to her a means to that end. Ted was in love with her. He was indulgent naturally and generous to a fault. Even without the impelling force of a great love, Bess eagerly an- ticipated marrying him. Her lovely young face looked even more perfect in its calm as she rose and went toward the library. She had decided to stick by Radford, , even though he had told her what she be- lieved other than the truth. When she entered the room, Rad- ford and Watson were lifting the man from the couch. “ Bess, will you let Midge-in? I need Williams, and there’s no use of letting the whole house know about this,” Ted said to her. He must have taken her consent for granted, for he continued toward the door, directing all his attention to Bul- len, who was unable to assist himself. Bess watched them go across the hall and enter the elevator. Her breath came fast, and instinctively she pressed. her hands against her heart before she recovered herself and stood, silent and wide-eyed, in the room Ted had left. She reproved herself for the emotion that possessed her. Her pride and her ambition fought with it. But the thought that Midge Stratton was com- ing and that she had been instructed to admit him kept swinging about in her brain till she felt dizzy. Midge Stratton was coming. She would see him. He would look at her as if his eyes saw but scorned her beauty because his brain disapproved of her and her manner of living. With his intent:,professional ambi- tion, his extreme convictions on the uselessness of the lives lived by her and her set, he still held her interest, though they almost never met and their boy and girl friendship had not ripened in their maturity. . 731 In spite of her certainty that she could never join him in his devotion to work, in his aversion to society, she felt toward him as she had never felt toward Ted. She knew the way to the north base- ment door, and she followed it as if she crept toward a forbidden goal. It would be like him to appropriate any motor-car that happened to be handy if his own were not there, and come rushing at the call of friendship. She thought admiringly of his quality of fidelity and likened her decision to stand by Ted to it. In the half-gloom of the stairway she stood waiting. Suddenly her brain taunted her with the assumption she had made—that Stratton’s self-forget- ting enthusiasm in the service of his friend was like hers. She was loyal to Ted for ambition’s sake, for money. Midge Stratton was above anything mercenary or selfish. Against the ground glass in the door she saw the outline of the big shoul- ders that had won him his hurhorously inappropriate nickname. He shook the door slightly before she could gather courage to go to it. When she had withdrawn the bolt and turned the key she fled back up the stairs before he saw who had admitted him into the dark hall. A vague, slender shape in the twi- light of the stairway, he stopped and peered up at her. | “It’s Bess,” she whispered. “What’s the matter with Ted?’”’ he asked, covering the steps between them and showing by his voice that he as- sumed something serious by her pres- ence and the fact that he had been sent for so hurriedly. “ Nothing,” Bess replied, summon- ing her serenity, even while she ob served with-some bitterness that he was concerned so completely for his friend that the meeting with her had no power to divert him. “Who’s sick?” he asked. “Tt’s a-man—some crank or lunatic who rushed in and attacked Ted so COMMICLOOOKS (C@)