The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

736 Her beauty was transcendant. It had acquired that final, illuminating touch which love gives to the coldly beautiful type of woman. Midge Stratton had waked the depths of her; but hers was the kind of loveliness which bred in men the de- sire for conquest. Radford naturally loved dominance. He liked to have the things that represented perfection in various lines. The agony he was enduring at the thought of losing her was as much a torture of his pride as of his love. If it had been his misfortune to see her in that marvelous hour of her full- blooming, he would have felt the ca- tastrophe that had overtaken him with a pain and rebellion beyond what he was experiencing. Bess leaned back in the dark-blue luxury of her car and glorified like the pagan that she was at heart, in the wrong thing she had done. She shiv- ered with the ecstasy of it. She seized the violets from the cut-glass holder and buried her trembling lips in them. “Tm glad—glad—eglad—I did it! This once! I’ve a right to one taste of happiness!”’ she whispered. . The one taste of happiness she al- lowed herself showed that she had no intention of giving up the position and wealth that Radford would supply for more of the divine food on which her heart was feeding. It never occurred to her that her marriage to ‘Ted was to. be affected by the fact that she loved with all the soul she possessed poor and work-mad Midge Stratton. Neither had she the remotest intention of allowing herself to encourage the emotions that pos- sessed her when she should have given ‘herself to Radford. In the gloriously satisfying sense of completeness she felt, she did not dream that hunger for other tastes of joy might come to her. She knew the strength of her ambition and trusted to it. She did not guess the power of her real nature and the struggle it would make against its own sacrifice. THE ARGOSY. Williams had ‘left the room where Bullen was established with such haste that it seemed he must have moved according to a definite intention. He made speed that scorned the elevator to the hbrary. 3 His eyes swept the _room with glances that saw everything. Ted’s handkerchief, red with the blood he had wiped from his right hand, hung over the side of the waste - basket where he had tossed it. Williams went toward it with the cautious cer- tainty of a cat sure of its mouse-prey. He folded it carefully and thrust it into the tail-pocket of his coat. A loose envelope, apparently fallen from among its fellows in the rack, caught his order-loving eye. He stopped and replaced it. As he went into the hall he saw his assistant engaged with a big man.in dark-blue clothes. ‘They were evident- ly arguing. Five minutes later Williams shut the door behind the burly caller and went to Radford’s room. As ‘Ted called to him to come he almost start- ed at the change in the handsome face of the young gentleman of the house. “You're not ill, sir?” he asked anxiously. “No, no—I’m all right!” Ted an- swered shortly. Williams accepted the situation in the way Radford evidently wished ‘him to; but he continued to think that he had never observed a_ quicker change from the unworried aspect of well - being to the pale, lined expres- sion of mental and physical suffering than had taken place in the young man whom he had seen enter the house scarcely two hours before. He explained that he had come up to report the visit of a detective who had been stationed to watch the house during the wedding. Ted listened to the information that a strange-appear- ing man had been seen by some of the policemen about, and that he had dis- appeared apparently into the Fifth Avenue house. EOPMICLOOOKS (E@)