A Circle In The Sand

                                   by Kate Jordan
 

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

                       copyright 1898, By the Author

She pursed up her lips and considered a moment. When she spoke quietly, there was concentrated meaning in her tones.

"I shouldn't like to be poor again. I don 't think I'd take that condition of affairs calmly. It seems to me I'd do something reckless; I don't know what.
  "She went to him and clasped her arms, bare to the elbow, around his neck.

"Do you love me at all still?" she asked earnestly. "You don't love me as you used to do, but do you love me at all?"

He bent his lips to her wrist, and a terrible sadness came into his eyes.

"I love you, dear. I want to save you from pain." 

"Then don't become a poor man, David. Don't, in God's name! Do anything to get the money back," she said, moved out of herself for the first time. "I've had poverty all my life, all my life. Oh, how I loathe it! Yes, I loathe it! You think me selfish. I know you do, and I am. But I wouldn't really harm you or hurt you if I can have an easy life and not the gall of poverty again. I'm not a great woman, nor a particularly good woman, but I think if I were robbed of this life" - and she looked into the rich, dim rooms - "I might be a hard, bad woman. Save me from that in saving yourself !" And she clung to him. "Save me, David! Promise you will!"

"I promise," he said in a tone which set her apart from him.

As he crossed the terrace to the open window he trod on the flower lying between them.

                                  ---------------

                               CHAPTER XVIII.

It was the evening of election day. Broadway was a jumble of American types moving under a light fog, which made every street lamp a star in a veil.
From the Windows of the street car in which Anne sat she saw straggling processions giving enthusiastic party cries, politicians on the corners and ragged boys racing past with barrels and shutters which were to blaze later in splendid impartiality, ho matter which side won.

It was after 6 o'clock, and she was on her way to The Citizen with a "special" on a timely topic David had asked her to write. She could have sent it down, but the idea of going to the old place on this wild night when Newspaper row was a seat of war had been persistently with her all day.
The building in the upper part of the town where she now spent her days was quiet and had a rarefied editorial flavor. It was not as dear as these slimy, crowded streets with offices as confused as anthills in nearer neighborhood to the sky.
Limelight and the smell of grease paint will awaken numbed longings in the mind of an actor who has forsworn the buskin, and the same fascination drew Anne to The Citizen tonight for a taste of the old life which bad the savor of salt.

It was a critical day. When she left the car and made her way among the crowds around the city hall, she became aware of conflicting excitements in the air. There were packed masses gathered early to wait for the first election signal lights on the big buildings.
There were others pressed against the great newspaper barracks where bulletins in black capitals told of unexpected and appalling failures and fortunes lost.
It seemed to Anne that the confused noises of the warring earth must at last besiege heaven as a sob.

At the entrance of The Citizen building an electric light as fierce as the politics of the paper blazed upon the moving crowds. It fell upon many faces, all earnest, strained, or preoccupied, and on one as familiar to Anne as her hand.
David was among the number coming down the muddy, stone hall, and she made her way toward him.

But a second glance brought her to a standstill. She read consternation and despair in his changed face. As he pushed his way toward the door without a glance either side she waited in anxiety till he should reach her and she would know what grief had altered him.
But his eyes met hers blankly as he passed on without a word.
Anne hesitated, gazing at the angle where he had disappeared ; then an irresistible desire to hear him speak forced her back to the street. She followed him, the "special" forgotten in her hand.

He was suffering from some shock, and fear made riot in her thoughts. Confused ideas of unhappiness in his home, disaster, the death of some one dear, the loss of faith, crowded one another in her mind as she hurried on through the mist, her eyes upon him.

She noticed that nothing attracted his attention, not the raucous cries of newsboys, the arrest of a thief or the bulletins heralding disaster.
Inhabited by a storm which drew his thoughts inward, he walked with. unseeing eyes. And Anne followed him, conscious only of the ache in herself and the desire to be near him.
So they swept on, two atoms in the human stream, now in shadow, now in light, until Newspaper row was left well behind and the big bridge was reached.

Anne understood the feelings which had urged David here. It was the solitude which a lighthouse lends above a  - snarling sea. The city lay beneath a pall of Vapor.
Light came hazily from the peaked shadows of houses, seeming from this height the pitiful abode of earth grubbers. Searchlights from towers, crimson lamps on street cars far below, wavered on the fog, and the adagio of human lite sweeping upward was an unsyllabled moaning as if from the heart of a giant Tantalus.

When the street scenes were left behind and the river raced beneath the bridge, the voice was the same as the city's in another key.
Wave slipped into wave with sighing, and the water torn by churning boats gushed in a rippling minor.

In the shade between the towers David paused.
He stood with folded arms and looked back to where the lights on The Citizen building flamed like great stars. The pallor of his face, the contracted brow, the long look full of dejection, told of absolute surrender to despair.

Anne watched him, while passersby eddied between them. She longed to slip her hand into his, to know she was desired and necessary in his life. Her throat ached, her heart went wildly out to him.
But all desire to make him conscious of her presence left her.
He had come there to face his grief alone. He had no need of her.
She turned away and left him to his implacable thoughts, the solitude and night.

                                -------------------------

                                  CHAPTER XIX.

When David reached home, it was after 8 o'clock.
He went at ones to the library and touched the bell.

"Has Mrs. Temple gone out yet?" he asked the servant.

"No, sir. Mrs. Temple's dressing. She's almost ready, sir."

"Ask her to stop here on her way out."

He sat down before the fire. The grip of his fingers upon his knees showed nervous intensity, his eyes were strained.

Overhead he heard Olga's light steps. She was busy with puff and powder box, preparing for the part she was to play at the Amateur club that night.
The role was comedy.
It would be altered after hearing one word from his lips.

He looked restlessly toward the door. After his self communing on the bridge above the never quiet river the stillness of the house was tormenting; it seemed waiting for the crisis; the clock in the shadow beyond the door seemed a soft tongued watcher spying upon him.

Olga would soon come, and he would tell her all.
She would suffer bitterly. But he could feel no pity for her, none for himself.
He had been eaten by an guish in the foggy night with the river lights around him.
Now he felt like a stone. 

As he heard Olga's step he rose and faced the door.
She came with some light word of greeting on her lips, but it was not spoken, and she remained in an advancing pose, her eyes upon him. They presented a violent contrast, creatures of different worlds, it seemed - Frivolity looking on the face of Pain.

As Lady Teazle Olga wore the gown required for the quarrel scene. Laces and jewels were mysteriously arranged on the stiff pink brocade, her throat was like snow, and so was her high coifed hair; her dreaming eyes were made insinuating by a touch of cosmetic, a touch of carmine was on her cheeks. She was radiant, dainty, alluringly false.

The night dews clung to David.
His hair was wet and roughened by his restless fingers.
Each feature was sharpened from the rigors of fierce emotion.
His sunken eyes, which had scarcely known sleep for a week, were as dull as if blindness had come upon them.

"What has happened?" Olga asked after that long, stupefied look, and there was fear in her eyes. She did not move toward him. Her band upon the back of a chair seemed a carved part of it.

"I've bad news, Olga."

"Bad news? You speak coolly enough, yet look - oh, how you look!
Have you seen a ghost?"

She roused herself and went nearer the fire, but her curious eyes kept watch upon him.

"I have seen a ghost," David said in the same slow tone; "one I've long feared. "

"What do you mean? You are ridiculous. "