E. S. Dorrance

“ With the crock between them wrapped in Pape’s coat, they had sauntered out Pioneers Gate unmolested by the law so lately hot at their heels. Straight to the yellow brick on East Sixty-third they had whirred themselves and their find; had seen triumph complete in a pair of outward-blinded eyes which could reflect glad sights from within.
Only an hour off after breakfast did Pape ask for the rescue of his equine pal from the granite-spiked corral that flanks the mid-park stables. This was effected by a ransom payment insignificant as compared with the paint-pony’s joy. ”

“ Her mind opened to her master’s mind, her eyes to his eyes, her lips to his lips. A hideous impulse moved her, like the mania to leap from some incalculable height. Thought-pulse for thought-pulse, her sensation roused to his. A moan of torturing expectance escaped her.... She closed her eyes....
She wanted to want him.
In the blackness, Dolores saw the blacker truth. Her swooning sense of obligation to self was shocked into revival. Not him so much as something in herself must she resist—that desire put in woman to be mothers of men. Response meant utter degradation. ”

“ His stock and part of his striped silk shirt remained in the Pape paws, torn from his neck and back when Polkadot had capered. His dishevelment now matched that which Pape had acquired in his struggle against momentum upon the cliff.
The equine pair also seemed possessed of battling madness. For a time they fox-trotted about, keeping their riders beyond each other’s reach, while they fought an instinctive duel of their own. The black proved a fore-and-after—pawed out ladylike blows with slender forefeet, then lofted his heels in a way that jarred the human aboard him more than the wary target. ”

“ In a way we belong to you as well as to our dear Dolores.”
“Dolores?” John snatched at the name. “You can tell us where she is?”
“Let me prepare you”—in pity, Amor. “I owe my life to you, John Cabot. I was, in fact, born of your heart beats that day you first saw her in Seff’s shop. Not consciously—of course mortals realize only the half of what they do—you sent me to her side to guide her. I have done what I could. But earthlings have no care for love. They never think to spare it until after it is dead.” ”

“ The divine triumvirate was reduced to its original separateness—a blind father over in the East Side yellow brick, a daughter luxuriously ensconced on the avenue, a Western stray-about-town, lonely and alone.
And the worst of it was that he could not see just how to right himself; could not blame Jane any more than Irene or himself. Loyalty was a thing to live, not to talk about. ”

“ Since Madame is so good as to inquire, I do hate the man I loved. I hate him the more, perhaps, for controlling his hate of me—for his pretense of continued love.”
To Dolores, the strange creature’s will to hurt her by twisting her hair was kind compared with this unintentional squeezing of the hope-drops from her heart. Would every one about the court have power to make her suffer for her past? When he whose companionship the lost soul of her craved so unutterably should one day be sentenced to this realm for their common social crime, would he also hide hate in a pretense still to love? ”

“ In marrying a Lauderdale—practically a pauper despite the family obsession of their claim to vast estates in the Borough of the Bronx—she ruined her life. She, too, became obsessed through his power to control her thoughts. Her life, as well as his, was one long nightmare of crown-grants, wills, deeds, what-nots. She died of it, dear, just as your father afterwards went down under disgrace and gloom. Now you, child, stain your white hands with this black magic. Excited by the craze for adventure of this person, you let yourself be led into indiscretions that bid fair to ruin you. ”

“ Without daring to look up, he tugged at the hem of Dolores’ robe.
“You’re to go—to leave Gehenna,” he upflung in his immortal fright. “Don’t wait to prepare. Take this signet ring. It will pass you through the gates. Hurry, lest you ruin me with the rest of those that craved you. Go, Dolores. As you love me—as you hate—for Hell’s sake, go!”
For long after she had gone he lay. Only his lips moved, muttering.
“He could have finished me that time. He must have certain powers of His own, like—like her. Since He can come and go at will, I wonder why He waits. ”

“ No longer need she fear for the fate of the Universe. The All-Power which had restrained itself toward her that she might work out her own development, would strike when the souls of men cried out, even as she had cried, their dependence. Come The Day, His Majesty would fail of his own impotency. Faith, then, was not the fear of fools. Faith was the courage of gods and men, a heritage divine.
No voice of sad women or of sobbing winds was Dolores’ as, peering and hurrying, her joy lifted in fragments of lines learned from a singer on Earth. ”

“ The pedestrian paths were further away and, at this hour, preëmpted by the inevitable babies, mothers and nurse-maids. In the great, green mixing-bowl of all races within the world’s most democratic city, no man concerned himself with the by-play near the boundary except those directly involved.
Pape scowled over the operation, with never a glance toward the stone wall, from over the top of which a pair of black-irised blue eyes probably were watching him—a pair of rose-lobed ears were listening. To make “learning” easier he pulled another loud stop in his voice. ”

“ Dolores, too, shook with fear. She knew what John did not know—just who was opposing him. Indignation over the unequal struggle steadied her; cleared her thoughts. Why was all the power given to sin and none to rightness? By what method had the Foul Fiend projected his spirit to Earth to slay the courage of the man she would have suffered any death to save? Surely, what could be done for evil purposes could be done for good! Why was will given to woman if not to augment the will of man—why her mite of strength if not to incite greater strength? ”

“ Small wonder, he thought, that blind eyes ached again to behold that face, pure as marble alive, tender of line, yet strong—eyes the purple of a royal mystery, lips the color of life, hair a black, lustrous veil draped to reveal, rather than conceal.
“You look,” said he, “like the spirit of evening—the spirit that lures a fellow away from the rest of the world and contents him with one warm hearth-fire, one steady light, one complete companionship. Every man who battles through his day hopes for that spirit at his eventide. ”

“ You weaken your capacity for sin with every such thought. Good as you are, I’ll make you in time bad as I am. As the queen-consort you shall become the wickedest thought of my mind, the most vicious desire of my soul. Deadlier than death, you shall give and keep giving life to my love. Undying love—that would be a delicate morsel, would it not, little gourmet of the hearts of men?”
“All real love is undying,” she maintained.
Her eyes held on the distant curtain. Its alternating electric stripes were writhing like snakes, as if tormented by a wind stronger than its dynamo. ”

“ He felt as flattened-out as the cement of the pavement on which he stood. Into it, through the soles of his boots, his heart seemed to sink from its weight ... down ... down.
But as his heart sank, his mind rose in a malediction strong as his pulse was weak:
“To hell with the perquisites of our young ladies of to-day! Do I say so—or don’t I?”
His plans for the morning, which had included a start at that “round and round” stroll in search of four poplars within earshot of the park menagerie, were scrambled as had been his breakfast eggs. Not even the shell of a plan was left. ”

“ As if by chance, his boyish smile left Catherine’s pleased face and strayed Dolores’ way. With a kiss of the rim, he replaced the tall glass upon the cloth. His fingers loosed its slender stem; found a smaller glass; raised it.
“Once in a lifetime you meet a woman who is like this deep red Burgundy. Does it need to speak—the wine—to boast its color, its fragrance, its power? See, it is too rich for the eye to penetrate; there is not a bubble in it to suggest its life; it is topped by no froth. All too quietly, it offers us sensation. ”

“ At once, as if a growth sprung from asphalt and cobblestone fields, a veritable swarm of under-fifteens surrounded the outfit. Well it was for these embryonic rooters of the ward that Polkadot disdained to use his dancing feet for anything so gauche as kicks, for they banked about his rear-guard position, in order the more intimately to admire his color splotches and prancy step, and even took drag-holds upon his silken tail, as well as Pape’s stirrups, that they might not fall behind. ”

“ Never should he know, hence should not fear defeat. With a super-divine intolerance, he would accept and hold his sovereignty. Although of the spirit, he should inherit a talent for strong visibility, taking his form from his father and from his mother a subtlety of appeal such as god nor man yet had possessed. A beauty of countenance irresistible should be his—features of marble pale as the ghosts of Dolores’ victims—lips that quivered from the very delicacy of the lies they lied, eyes that veiled in mists of mercy the utmost truculence. ”

“ Crow-haired was she, bright-cheeked, brighter-lipped. The slight unevenness of her dazzling display of teeth but added piquancy to her smile. She was both strong-built and lithe of body. And as to her mind, never an incipient doubt of her super-desirability weakened that. Truly, she was a vital and vitalizing creature, Irene.
It was not unpleasant to have a beautiful girl greet him with frank cordiality. After recent roughnesses of his experience—Well, not since that floral-wreathed sign first had blazed its reassurance into his nostalgic gaze had he been made to feel so welcome. ”