A Circle In The Sand

A Circle in the Sand

by Kate Jordan

Author of "The Kiss of Gold" The Other House" etc. etc.

CHAPTER X.

Olga appeared as Kate Hardcastle at Tuxedo, and the town, or that part of it circling in carefully barred orbit, talked of her. The papers seized on her as something new and printed pictures of her as a beauty, libelous things in which she looked dropsical or murderous or only harmlessly mad. Mrs. Ericsson kept the reporters well informed, fumed over the newspaper abortions of her darling, went with her everywhere, to noon breakfasts, to dances ending at dawn, and in asides took pills to stay her heart.

Everyone knew that Smedley Joyce, who had met Olga in London, had been her sponsor in the best society. In his sister's box at the opera she had made het first appearance in New York. He had got invitations for her, given a luncheon in her honor, and at his rooms on Fifth avenue, at a tea where a rajah in a marvelous turban winked his brilliant eyes, David Temple saw her again.

There are some men one cannot disassociate from the names upon their visiting cards. Smedley Joyce was one of these. Smedley, even to his intimates, seemed an impertinence and Mr. Joyce commonplace. He was his full name, from the glittering apex of his bald crown to the toe of his equally glittering boot. If he could, he would have been lighter, younger and with the lungs of a football half back, but just as he was people deferred to him. Hopelessly devoted to a single life, his cult, however, was feminine beauty, and the woman he admired became the fashion. The personality of Smedley Joyce pervaded New York. He was a permanent fad; his vogue was unquestioned, like the Thanksgiving turkey and the horse Show.

In the fragrance and dusk of his beautiful rooms he seized David's hand ir greeting and gave it the fashionable up ward jerk.

"Ah, you did get up to see us, you dreadfully busy man! You'd make us forget us if that were possible. " And David found himself passed on to make room for the next corner.

He declined tea from the matrons receiving and kept near the door. He had come in only for a few moments to see the rajah and talk with him. As he stood there, his big shoulders and keen face showing clearly above those surrounding him, he looked across the whispering, constantly changing crowd for the famous Hindoo.

Close by the big, yawning leaves of palms screening the zither players he saw him. The lean brown profile with the hinge crimson turban above was bonding over some one. It was Olga. When the crowd parted, David saw her plainly.

She was on a low seat beside a pink lamp, her mother, now chatting at a little distance, having early seen the advantage of the rosy light. She was in velvet and furs, her lips under a delicate veil lazily smiling. A hat with a brim, and a big one, shadowed her eyes and gave them deeper mystery. Her pose was regal, gentle. The upward glances given to the rajah were lazy, provoking. Her delicate lips were humid with a childish sensuousness.

No wonder David and a dozen other men who watched her came to the same decision - she was beautiful, loving, gentle, true. She seemed the sort of woman men so frequently choose as a wife and never as a comrade ; a helpless, fascinating, fastidious creature whose eyes express the words: "Tell me, dear, just what to do. You know to much better than I;" not a woman of original opinions on anything under the sun; as conventional in thought as in the way she wore her fair; not tailor made, independent or athletic; one whose gowns were always marvels to men's eyes, fragrant mysteries of lace and ribbons ; a woman to love ease and cushions and never remember an address, to coo to a baby, crave needlework and dabble in charity, altogether a seductive contrast to the restless spirit of a man's business life.

Her physical radiance came upon David for the second time with the power of a summons. He had frequently thought of her since the previous meeting. No one who once saw Olga ever quite forgot her. Side by side with the fancy of what Elaine might have been her lovely face, rare in type, took its place.

He made his way to her and she gave him her hand, sinking back in a lazy attitude. The rajah was forgotten by him, and they talked of many things, of trifles mostly, but Olga had a way of making light talk entrancing. Her speech was pretty and her laziness wrapped a listener with a sense of magnetic quiet.

Growing more serious, she questioned David about The Citizen, of Anne's position in the office and spoke in an attractively feminine way of the mystery attending the making of a newspaper.

"How can Anne do it?" she said, smoothing her muff, her trustful eyes lifted to his. "Oh, I suppose I'm stupid, helpless, but I shouldn't like such a life of tension and rush ; always among the wheels - that's how it seems  to me. I'm afraid I'd be like a silly butterfly caught in a machine."

"Anne's desires are different from yours, ' ' said David, and the perfume of the violets under her chin lightened his heart as if the shade of spring had passed him. He looked at her almost tenderly. ' ' Yours are better. "Think so"

"Better for a woman," he said softly. " think so, but perhaps I'm intolerant, perhaps I'm old fashioned. I admire Anne, and I like her more than I can say. I like many women who hold her ambitious views, but they seem to me to gain brilliancy and self reliance at the sacrifice of a quality that is beautiful and indefinable, like a mist or a perfume."

"And you don't despise a woman who likes needlework?' ' asked Olga, as if confessing to one of her pet diversions, "who doesn't belong to a woman's club, who cries over a novel and maybe not one of the best?''

"God forbid" said David vehemently. "Soon she'll be found only among obsolete classifications. I, for one, intend to extol her before she quite disappears."

"Dear me!" she said, with low laughter. "I almost feel the pin through me now, as I repose in a glass case labeled in black and white, 'Rare specimen of woman belonging to the remote era, when she did nothing but try to be happy and was glad of it. '

 She leaned toward David as she spoke, and some one brushing past her to greet a friend forced her closer, so for a second her shoulder pressed his, her lips were an inch away, her warm, startled breath swept his throat. It was but a second's nearness, yet his heart gave a throb of almost savage joy. In a flash her beauty became a temptation, a passionate happiness filled him, a breeze seemed to sweep along his nerves, and he knew why an unexplained joy had come to him with the first sight of this woman's face.

With her arrival his senses had struggled to awaken as at a call. Now there was not resisting the feeling. It was a quick, complete fascination. Conscious of it, he grew silent and looked at Olga with new vision.

He felt how apart from all others is the moment when a man first faces the question placed before him by his own consciousness, "Is this the woman I an to love?" It may be he awakens to the truth slowly after she has passed through the changes from stranger to nearest friend. Or one look into an unfamiliar face may blur all save the pursuing newness of that one truth. The moment is the same - oversweet, painful, intimately dear, never to be forgotten.

There was no chance for further talk between them. Smedley Joyce bore down on Olga with a monocled stranger in tow. A moment afterward a famous singer was announced. Every one knew it was Smedley Joyce's law that the music for which he paid so much should be respected, and silence save for an ocasional whisper and rustle settled upon the crowd as the singer appeared.

She was pale, with heavy lidded, sad eyes. A white gown draped her thin form. Roaes flamed in her girdle. Her contralto voice was strange, unearthly, as she sang in a whisper of the heart wrung damosel who watched from heaven. She Bang of love with death closely following. Her fingers moved slowly; she seemed talking to the keys:

"I wish that he were come to me-

For he will come," she said.

"Have I not prayed in heaven? On earth,

Lord, Lord, has he not prayed?

Are not two prayers a perfect strength,

And shall I be afraid?

"There will I ask of Christ the Lord

This much for him and me -

Only to live as once on earth,

With love ; only to be,

As then awhile, forever now

Together, I and he."

Music had never moved David Temple like that strange song. It saddened his heart, while his brain was ravished with a sense of its beauty. It gave to the new passion thrilling him an ideality which it did not possess.

He looked at Olga, hoping for one glance, but she was sitting with her head turned away, her eyes on the singer, waiting for the next song. David wanted to hear up more. He wished to keep the memory of that cry of human need, holding an echo as if caught in the far spaces of heaven, to knit it with the revelation of the hour.

Outside he found the dusk and the icy air. There was a medley of cold colors in the sky, the solemn night was near, the avenue veiled in gray. He hurried on, feeling a new happiness tempered by the pain of incertainty. Questions troubled him. Was this really love? Was his hand upon the string from which so many marvelous strains and pitiful discords had been struck?

He had always calmly and remotely contemplated the rounding of his life with a great love, but something in him and heretofore disdained sentiment. At its belt it had seemed a majestic weakness, commonly only a ridiculous thing. Be had known perfect friendship, but the love he had seen rake fools of the wise, turn the flow of a life completely out of its course, had seemed as removed from him as insanity until tonight.

He still felt the touch of Olga's body, the violet's perfume no sweater than her breath.

Only to live once on earth

With love 

"As once on earth!!" There was rapturous memory of a joy he had never known in those words. Their burden of passionate melody went with him like the voice of conscience. He saw only Olga's inviting eyes. (To be continued)

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The Nonchalant Canton Merchant

"Frequently on entering a Canton shop you will find its owner with a book in one hand and pipe or fan in the other, and wholly absorbed in his studies Yon will be doomed to disappointment ii you expect the smoker to start up at once, all smiles and blandness, rubbing his hands together as he makes a shrewd guess as to what he is likely to take out of you, and receiving you with obsequiousness or with rudeness accordingly. Quite the reverse. Your presence is apparently unnoticed unless you happen to lift anything; then you hear that the fan has been arrested, and feel that a keen eye is bent on your movements all the while. But it is not until you inquire for some article that the gentleman, now certain that you mean to trade, will rise without bustle from his seat, show you his goods, or state the price he means to sell at- with a polite yet careless air, which plainly says: 'If it suits you, we make an exchange.'

From "Through China with a camera."

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The readers of this paper will be pleased to learn that there is at least one dreaded disease that science has been able to cure in all its stages, and that is Catarrh. Hall's Catarrh Cure is the only positive cure known to the medical fraternity. Catarrh being a constitutional disease, requires a constitutional treatment. Hall's Catarrh Cure is taken internally , acting directly upon the blood and mucous surfaces of the system, thereby destroying the foundation of the disease, and giving the patient strength by building up the constitution and assisting nature in doing its work. The proprietors have so much faith in its curative powers, that they offer One Hundred Dollars for any case that it fails to cure. Send for list of testimonials.

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A Swim in the Dead Sea

Everyone has heard of the buoyancy of the water of the Dead Sea. It is virtually impossible to sink in the Dead Sea, and so great is the quantity of salt in the water that if you dip your hand in and draw it out again, you will immediately see the salt crystalizing in the sun. It is needless to remark that an involuntary mouthful of Dead Sea water is a horrible experience, never likely to be forgotten by the bather. However, if you don't stay in the water too long, a swim in the Dead Sea is a very extraordinary and pleasurable experience. The shores as is well known, are strangely desolate, and they are strewn with bits of wood and branches of trees all crusted with brine in the most curious manner, and woe unto anyone who goes into this water having open cuts or scratches on his body.

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The Heaviest Railroad Train

A locomotive of the Pennsylvania railway recently drew a train about three-quarters of a mile long, made up of 180 loaded coal cars, from Altona to Harrisburg, 132 miles in twelve hours. The weight of the train behind the tender was 5,212 tons, the locomotive weighing 104 tons. This is said to have been the heaviest train ever moved a long distance by a single locomotive.

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THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE

Lung Troubles and Consumption Can be Cured.

An Eminent New York Chemist and Scientist Makes a Free Offer to Our Readers.

The distinguished chemist, T. A. Slocum, of New York city, demonstrating his discovery of a reliable cure for consumption (Pulmonary Tuberculosis), bronchial, lung and chest troubles, stubborn coughs, catarrhal affections, general decline and weakness, loss of flesh, and all conditions of wasting away, will send THREE FREE BOTTLES (all different) of his New Discoveries to any afflicted reader of this paper writing for them.

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Science daily develops new wonders, and this great chemist, patiently experimenting for years, has produced results as beneficial to humanity as can be claimed by any modern genius, His assertion that lung troubles and consumption are curable in any climate is proven by "Heartfelt letters of gratitude," filed in his American and European laboratories in thousands from those cured in all parts of the world.

The dread Consumption, uninterrupted, means speedy and certain death.

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Sufferers should take instant advantage of his generous proposition.

Please tell the doctor that you saw this in The Argus-Democrat, Ann Arbor.