W

HEN I, Katharine Olmstead, found that I had actually promised to to marry Frank Cowlson, my amazement was colossal, and almost simultaneously with my stupefying wonder, my conscience asked me calmly and incisively with the authority of a a prophet: "Where is your love for Warren Johnson?" And I trembled! First I evaded the question, then I pretended ignorance, and finally I said I supposed it was dead, and I gave my conscience to understand that I could attend to my own affairs. I insisted, furthermore, that I would marry Frank Cowlson, and terminate years of waiting for a tardy lover, and also forever settle the matrimonial question.

Notwithstanding, I was exceedingly uneasy, and suffered a process of selftorture that went far and away beyond the Inquisition, for I incessantly propounded the question: "Suppose, after I marry Frank, I find that I still love Warren?" and I shivered with apprehension. I grew hot with fear and cold with doubt, and my conscience, never fully appeased, yapped at me uninterruptedly, and asked me perpetually with amazing candor what I would do then.

Therefore, fear and curiosity drove me back to Herrnhut. I had to discover what my sensations would be when I was again confronted with the surroundings where I had known Warren. It was the same prompting that carries a person back to the scene of his crime that drew me there again after seven years' absence.

Herrnhut is a Moravian town in the foothills of the Hebron Mountains, and the Herrnhut Academy (where I was graduated, a century old and under the auspices of the Church, is a rigidly feminine institution.

As I had lived all my life in a South

ern college town, and had, therefore, been accustomed and often bored by the society and attentions of scores of men, I had been truly relieved when sent to Herrnhut to school to have them eliminated for a time, and wish to say at the outset that flirting had had no attractions for me at all. Nor had I become involved in any of those absurd female infatuations called "crushes," so you will be surprised to know that when I accepted the invitation of a newly married cousin to visit her in the old Academy town, I fairly tingled with a desire to return, and was drawn there by no sentiments of family affection, but by the memory of a Glance, a Handshake and a Girl.

The girl was Douschka d'Amboise, and she was my room mate, or rather, as they so quaintly say in the old Moravian Settlement, Day Keeper. At the time when we were Seniors together she was as radiantly and wondrously beautiful as a perfect rose diamond, a dew bathed flower, or a Southern autumn day. After the lapse of seven years I am still impressed with the fact that Douschka was flamboyant in every particular. She was the kind of girl who is at her best in. very decollete black lace, with a bit of pomegranate red about it. She often wore such a costume to the gym dances, and when she was thus attired she always carried an exquisite black feather fan with which she flirted enchantingly.

Douschka took the Academy by storm; teachers and pupils alike went daft over her. The unworldly folk of Herrnhut flocked to recitals and concerts to see her, and masculine worshippers of wandering tendencies rushed to church for the same purpose in such numbers that the very aisles had to be seated with chairs to accommodate them.

But in spite of the adulation of the girls, notwithstanding the universal homage paid her, I could not seem to lose my head over Douschka. In our work-a-day world, where one had to dig for Latin roots, and chase around after logarithms, I lost patience with her, for she seemed unrelated, and as though she should never be disassociated from azure, starlit nights. She was certainly intended for serenadings, and for luxurious hammock lounging, and I often thought as she yawned in the class room how much more fitting it would be for her to loll upon a pillowed divan upon a shady piazza, fanned with peacock feathers by a slave; or to doze lightly under branching magnolias to the soft strumstrum of a distant guitar. Actively, Actively, however, Douschka was a consummate actress. She made the girls feel it a privilege to put their brains at her disposal, for though clever as a Delphic oracle, she was not endowed with the mind of a student.

By flattery and cajolery, by judicious and rare caresses, by pensive, childlike thoughtfulness, by picturesque frivolity, she won her way, and a right royal one it was.

a woman-I don't pretend to say, but certainly if there were worse things to know about Douschka, I felt perfectly willing to remain ignorant.

As is the custom of Day-Keepers, we always walked together, and sat side by side, and when we marched through torturous passage ways of the old Academy, and up stair cases, and across dark hall ways to the gallery of the Moravian Church to service, I had abundant opportunity to watch Douschka's flirtations with the town men in the pews below, and I must admit that she could flirt more outrageously and dexterously than any one I ever observed.

More attractive than the beauty of Douschka's features, or the exquisite, perfection of her figure, was the soft music of her speech. I can see her now rushing into our alcove with her hair waving over her black brows, her eyes like a young gazelle's, her tiny hands clasped in excitement, and I can still hear her customary exclamation: "O Mother of Sorrows!" Ordinarily she said it in Latin, often in French, sometimes in Spanish, and once in Italian.

On a few occasions, a very few, she unconsciously unmasked in my presence, and then she was a shrewd woman of the world, with an inordinate desire for masculine attention and admiration and she was more than this

But after all, perhaps I would not have attached much importance to Douschka's scholastic intriguing, and her extravagant tragedies, if I had not discovered that she was dishonorable!

Oh, yes, indeed she was! Though in the most playful, mock-innocent way imaginable. But she read my letters and private papers, and knew my most personal affairs, which she discussed frankly with my friends and foes!

It may be that a man can know a woman better than a woman can know

was sure she had lived what she would not tell, and I was certain it had required more than nineteen summers to teach her the necessity for her peculiar role!

Perhaps I have succeeded in drawing Douschka for you as she seemed to me, and if I have, you will understand why she was so much in my thoughts when I planned to go back to Herrnhut, and yet it was not even Douschka that principally drew me.

It is with the greatest agitation that I even think of the real reason that swept me back. You remember that I hinted that I had had no temptation to flirt behind the painted wire screens of the front windows, or from the gal

lery of the church-not the slightest. In my world there had been nothing in such abundance as men, and I solemnly declare that it was purely chance or fate that led me one Sunday night to look down upon the disappearing congregation into his eyes!

It was the most casual thing I ever did, but it cost me-well

It was evident to me from his expression that this was not the first time he had sought recognition from me, and I had seen that same look on too many other men's faces to mistake the meaning-but marvelous as it may seem-it was the first time I had ever returned such a glance! And it did not seem questionable or strange to me that I should accept and reciprocate that look of perfect understanding -but no sign or signal passed between us. In that meeting of our eyes there was no sense of embarrassment; I even forgot the sentinel teachers, supersensitive to detect communication between the gallery and the pews. As the line of Seniors filed down the long, dim gallery, I turned in my place and joined the black-gowned procession, but at the doorway, when my flowing sleeve caught on a projection of the railing I stepped back to free myself, and I saw that he had lingered with the last of the worshippers, and he turned and our eyes met again. It was only for an instant, but it sent the blood throbbing to my temples, and Douschka saw it and taunted-hissing the words in my ear, "Oh, thou indifferent one!" And I marvel now that this was all that she ever said about it.

I do not recall how I discovered that he was Warren Jackson, but I was wild with excitement when I found that he was one of the Jacksons-the Allegheny County Jacksons-the proudest people that ever traced lineage through a series of celebrities to a certain Elah Olmstead, from whom, singularly enough, we reckon our ancestry.

The Sundays passed, and for one brief moment, morning and night, Warren Jackson and I looked into each other's eyes. I, from the dim gallery guarded from the world and man and

the devil as assiduously and zealously as a nun in a convent, and he amid a crowd of worshippers in the church a few feet below, and yet as far away as Uranus. I did not live a thought in to-morrow. I was too stunned to think of anything at that time but my own amazing and astounding defection from the ranks of calm indifference.

About the middle of May there was a Love Feast to celebrate some Moravian festival, and it was at night and some of the Seniors were allowed to go. For reasons too numerous to mention, I had missed all previous Love feasts, and I carried considerable curiosity to this especial occasion. The church was terribly crowded, and the Seniors filled all the seats reserved for them and left no room for the teacher chaperon. I was on the end, and defying all precedent, she asked me to sit in another pew with some townspeople and thus make a place for her.

We were early, and in the gallery overhead the musicians were tuning violins, cornets and flutes, and these preparatory sounds proceeding from the orchestra, combining with the sacred atmosphere of the church, seemed a commingling of convivial and holy things that fairly rent the atmosphere with a wild passion of love toward God and man.

A signal was given, and the organ poured forth a Hallelujah, and the orchestra crashed in with a triumphant Amen. My breath came pantingly. The pulpit decorations of wonderfully beautiful pond-lilies-blue, purple, yellow, red and white, gleaming in the soft light like jewels; the music, superb as only Moravian music can be; the evidences of good fellowship shining upon the faces of the devout worshippers, fairly suffocated me with a wild delight, with a transport of joy. But it was a brief service. While the congregation sang, waitresses with large straw trays full of buns served us benignly, and waiters followed them bearing tall white mugs of black coffee, which they distributed with becoming gravity. The Bishop broke bread before the people, and the con

gregation ate and drank, and the choir sang a hymn to a quaint melodious German tune, and after this there was more music by the marvelous orchestra, but my bun lay untouched in my lap, and my coffee cooled on the seat beside me.

Finally there came a pause in the service, and after a few words from the Bishop, I saw every one shaking hands with those beside them, and I also turned, as one in a dream, and gave my hand, my ungloved hand, to -Warren Jackson!

I suppose I have wondered a thousand times how he could have come and seated himself beside me without my knowledge, how I could have taken from him the Love Feast bun and coffee without so much as seeing who gave them to me.

My hand tingles yet with that handclasp, and when I think of it, I grow hot and cold, and my heart fairly churns within me. And he said-above the slogan song of the Love Feast I heard him quote "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread-and thou-"

"Oh, hush!" I cried, half-mad with fear and wholly wild with a rapturous ecstacy. "You must not!"

His face went ghastly, luminously white, and I would fain have hidden my eyes with the black folds of my hanging sleeves, but he held them masterfully as a magnet holds a

needle.

The Seniors filed out of church through a side door, but he made no move to let me pass from the pew, and I knew not how long he would keep me, and I said, no, I whispered, "I must go. Please let me go!"

He stepped into the aisle with tantalizing reluctance.

"For the present," he breathed, "only for the present. Do you understand?"

The teacher had paused at the door and stood looking at me fiercely. I stooped and gathered up my gloves from the seat. "Yes," I shivered; "yes!" and hurried out of church.

And I did not see him again! I was rushed off to Europe immediately af

ter I graduated. I thought he would write, but he did not; when I was settled at home again, I thought he would come, but he did not. I cannot go through the agony of recalling how Hope fell sick, nor how its lingering illness resulted in a torturing death. For years I believed that some horrid fate kept him away, and the spell he had woven around me made me proof against all men's wooing. Seven years and I came to the conclusion that I had been the victim of a mesmeric fascination, and partly from chagrin and partly because my life was plagued out of me because of Frank Cowlson's importunities, I consented to become engaged to him, and then I was wild to know if those old Herrhut associations had any longer any influence over me. I had to return. A force stronger than will or inclination swept me back even as gravitation compels the return of a ball. So you may be sure I seized the first opportunity that offered, and went down to the Academy. Vacation desolation filled the place with gloom, and I went to my old alcove to see if I could feel Douschka d'Amboise, and she seemed to be everywhere! I heard her shivering laugh, I heard the click of her French high heels, I heard her exclaim: "Oh, Mother of Sorrows!"

It positively frightened me. She seemed to dance before me down the gloomy corridors (did I mention that she could dance as untiringly as a Dervisch?) and she glided in shadowy gown and cap up the crooked stairs and into the church.

I went home wilted-drooping.

It was days before I had the courage to go into the old old church. I walked up and down the beautiful avenue, with its double row of trees, and roved restlessly as the Wandering Jew among the level graves, morning and afternoon, day after day, trying to make up my mind to go in the church, but I could not go! It seemed to me that tragedy beset me on all sides. The ancient houses, built with loopholes from which to shoot at Indian foes, looked grimly prophetic of evil. The

worn cobble stones seemed to writhe and wriggle in agony under my feet.

I had been in Herrnhut two weeks when I finally set my teeth together one sultry, hot day, and ran into the church. I crept to the pew where I had sat at the Love Feast, and as surely as though he had sat beside me, I felt Warren Jackson. Prickles of fear blistered my skin, my heart made a stout and gallant charge, and then fled in a wild retreat.

"Please let me go!" I cried in an agony, and "For the present, only for the present!" reverberated from the vaulted ceiling, fluttered through the ghostly gallery, and fell upon my cowering ears. I buried my face in my hands upon the pew in front of me, and then upon that intense stillness there came the fearsome, blood-congealing, terrorizing blast of the Death horns from the belfry far overhead. I had forgotten this Moravian custom of informing the congregation of the passing of one of their number, and when they began that mournful dirge, it sounded in my ears like a wail of protest; it cried, "You shall not go; you shall not go," and I crouched sobbing to the floor.

When my panic had somewhat subsided, I struggled dizzily to my feet, and made my blinding way toward the rear door. I fumble awkwardly with the knob in the dimness of the church, and when I finally opened the door, I shrieked with terror, for on the very threshold there stood an aged, whitehaired negro woman leaning with both hands on a stick.

"Did I scare yer, honey?" she asked deprecatingly. "I so ole, I s'pec' I look lak a ghost."

"Oh, Auntie," I cried, putting my hand on her two hard ones, "I-I was so frightened!"

"Bless yer soul, Chile, ain't nothin' gwine hurt yer," she said, reassuringly, taking my hand in hers.

"Oh," I said, "it's Life that hurts. You can't understand!"

"How come I can't understand?” she asked abruptly. "Bless yer soul, Honey, life sting eberybody; de only

dif'ence is, mos' folks bears it either wif a smile or a tear, an' dem what can't and won't 'ministers die pizen to deyselves an' gits ter de end ob things quicker 'n 'twas meant."

"What do you mean, Auntie ?" I asked, wondering what queer idea she had picked up.

"Suicide, Chile, dat what I mean. Dat what young Marster's wife done. She suicided."

Suicide! Horrors, what next? I must confess that for a moment I felt the strongest repugnance for this negro woman and for her of whom she spoke. Suicide! The trump card of sensationalism! It seemed to me positively indecent-thoroughly incompatible with breeding and culture.

I made a move to pass beyond the vestibule. I was in no condition to hear a ghastly tale after my recent harrowing experiences, but as I turned away, the old woman said piteously: "Chile, I knows my white folks when I sees 'em, an' they's gittin' mighty pow'ful few. I c'n walk clar ter de end ob Lee street an' not a single pusson stop an' say, 'Howdy, Auntie; bad weather fur de rhemtiz,' an' Chile my ole heart is most broke worryin' 'bout my white folks an' studyin' how come it all."

I could not resist that appeal. But I said a little coldly: "I can't see what good I can do you, Auntie. I probably never heard of your white people. But suicide is a shocking thing."

"Chile, hit caused my white folks ter break up de home where dey been libin' since dey owned my gran'father, an' go so far away that nobody ain't seen 'em fum dat day ter dis. Ole Miss say dey ruined, an' young Marster square he jaw an' ain't say nothin', but he tell me good-bye an' gimme a bankbook so I c'n go ter de bank an' git my wages ebery month. But, Honey, eberything been wrong sense de night I answer de do' bell an' young Marster han' in a young lady all muffled up from head ter feet, an' he say, 'Dis here yer young Mistis, Drinda,' an' he he'p her off wid her things in de drawin' room under de