“ Jenny had planned this visit, had wanted him to see the cathedrals; he must go back to her with the assurance of their beauty—and what was it that the book had named as indivisible from true beauty? . . . Sincerity? . . . Truth? . . . Power? . . . Ah, yes: Sacrifice!
But at dawn on the morning after his return to Guayule he awakened to see the first pure light filter down through the pine branches, to smell the incense of the balsams, and to hear the lilting ecstasy of a choir of meadow-larks; looking and listening, Jem Brown breathed a deep sigh of ineffable content. ”

“ Next instant the cab was empty—empty, with the driver howling for the police and calling heaven to witness what had been done to him. Here on earth his plaints went unheeded, for the crowd was split wide apart as though a battering ram had struck it. With Hardtack in the lead, they burst through the press and arrived, pell-mell and panting, at the scene of strife.
In a cabaret below the level of the sidewalk a party of American gobs was debating who won the war with a party of English bluejackets. Hardtack gave tongue to a battle whoop and the five plunged into the fray. ”

“ It danced before us—all wound up in white, mist-like, with shining jewel eyes and mouth that smiled, beguiling, like a maid’s. And ’a beckoned! We chased it. Cal, Trink, and me, in the fairy light we chased it, over hill and brook, through briar and bush; but still we catched it not. ’Twas, fairy too—it floated with unfair aid from wind and breeze. But on we ran, and on and on. And as we ran a tempest came—tempest with roaring thunder as broke my ears and such lightning as split the sky in twain, twin sheets of fire. And rain—’twas like a monster fagot pack beating us on backs and faces. ”

“ There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the wash of the propeller.
Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favourite brier. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him. “It’s so dark,” he thought, “that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids——”
An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. ”

“ So was David Davenant—and a little king in the New York of his day, as well. As for Frances—no, the sumptuous beauty of Bathsheba, pale and burning, was hardly hers, though she was beautiful. She was kind, forgiving, and gentle, with cool hands and a delicate gaiety when she was pleased—the kind of woman life seems to delight in forcing into traps that would break the strong.
Everybody expected her to marry badly—for she had what people considered a terrible weakness for taking care of crippled things. So everybody was disappointed—most favourably, of course—when she married Dicky Jerome. ”

“ HORSE AND HORSE
By CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE
From Harper’s
HANK WHEELOCK’S first conclusion was that he had come upon a vagrant snow patch. But the idea had barely emerged before he realized its absurdity. Could it be that the scorching humour of the desert had at last seared him to a point of daftness? . . . He moved slowly toward the outer rim of whiteness, as if fearful lest the vision might dissolve, but the mirage did not recede; it became if anything more tangible, more crystalline, more emphatic. Surely this pool of frozen purity had not been there last week. ”

“ Time had been when Holmacres threw its doors wide open to the countryside, for its masters had lived in the traditions handed down by its founder. Even now Judge Holmsted, daydreaming at times, permitted his thoughts to stray back to the days when servants swarmed about the place, when there were stableboys who seemed actually to get underfoot, and house boys who fairly haunted the guests, eager to be of the slightest service. The big stable had contained riding and driving horses, which were not merely to be had for the asking but were almost forced on one. ”

“ Burbage informed Fletcher, dryly. “She’s as tall as Frank and I’ll not say as big, but bigger. She can hold two lads with her one hand while she murders them with the other—a fist as big as the hoof of a horse. A handsome wench besides—red-headed and yellow-eyed. Her hair comes to her heels and sometimes it pleases her to wear it in that fashion. ’Tis a blaze then, running from her head to the ground. She’s fought her way, every inch, to her bawdy throne. No woman loves her, nor would dare cross her, but would give her soul to be chosen as her friend. ”

“ To think of these two blond vikings of the republic who carried the Stars and Stripes around a wondering world, who came home to fetch good, honest Indies rum ashore under the dark of the Cove like the free men they were, and went up to the meeting-house in their Sabbath beavers to worship the God of Massachusetts as only free men may—to think of them having to sit, shackled to their rockers by the weight of their proud years, and watch the remnant of their line and population going, without visibly caring, to the dogs! ”

“ Rest brought him new confidence and almost a feeling of security. Even so zealous a hunter as General Zaroff could not trace him there, he told himself; only the devil himself could follow that complicated trail through the jungle after dark. But perhaps the general was a devil——
An apprehensive night crawled slowly by like a wounded snake and sleep did not visit Rainsford, although the silence of a dead world was on the jungle. Toward morning when a dingy gray was varnishing the sky, the cry of some startled bird focused Rainsford’s attention in that direction. ”

“ His hair whitened; he grew leaner—but his mind retained the relentless precision of a strong machine—and D. Davenant and Co. prospered till few competitors dared stand in its shadow.
After a while men began to say jokingly that he would never die—unless, they added, half-believing it, the Devil flew away with him. For even after Frances’ death, he displayed no slightest sign of repentance for what he had done—though, by now, his story, and Frances’, and Dicky Jerome’s, had well nigh taken on the proportions of a legend—and people called him “King David,” under their breath. ”

“ Rainsford’s eyes saw only blackness, and then, as the general pressed a button, far out to sea Rainsford saw the flash of lights.
The general chuckled. “They indicate a channel,” he said, “where there’s none; giant rocks with razor edges crouch like a sea monster with wide-open jaws. They can crush a ship as easily as I crush this nut.” He dropped a walnut on the hardwood floor and brought his heel grinding down on it. “Oh, yes,” he said, casually, as if in answer to a question, “I have electricity. We try to be civilized here.”
“Civilized? And you shoot down men?” ”

“ Toward evening the jutting ledge of rock which marked Hank Wheelock’s spot of promise swam in the haze of a slanting sun. For a moment he leaned upon his rifle, motionless. The pack animal halted, too, making an inanimate outline against the sky. A thin curl of smoke drew upward in a straight line and mysteriously lost itself. . . His first thought marked it as the camp fire of Indians. He felt annoyed. He had counted on solitude, and a brood of Indians was not to his liking. The alternative was even more distasteful: a white man would insist on chattering. . . . A white man! ”

“ Narrowing the mourners to one, the author follows the reminiscences of an old mother—presumably overcome with grief under the heavy swathes of her English crêpe—who does not weep, for entertaining reasons, but at length bursts into tears, for reasons even more entertaining. A whole life is rounded through the moments of reflection of old Mrs. Overton whose mind the author, once having entered it, never leaves. It is a hard story, hard as a precious stone and as luminant. ”

“ Raphael had never heard of inferiority complexes and the perils of yielding to them; therefore he watched the debonair Ramon with all his wistful, self-deprecatory soul in his eyes. To be like this—so elegant, so careless, so sure of one’s self!
“Here we try be the good American, Ticher,” began Ramon, easily. “To be the good American,” he explained, “one doss not fight weeth the knife or throw the stone or shoot the crap in the yard off the school.” ”

“ Stephen asserted, gravely. “I see him now—the little misty wight, with eyes a-mock like elves, lips smiling, beguiling like a maid’s, and wee hands beckoning. . . .”
Shakspere arose from his seat as from a dream. He moved so quietly that Stephen and Rafe took no note of his departure. He walked slowly at first, then swiftly across the bridge, up Cheapside to Silver and Muggle. As he neared the Montjoy house, he broke into a run. Once indoors, “What’s happened to thee, Will Shakspere?” Mistress Montjoy asked. “Thy eyes are coals; thy colour fever-high.” ”

“ The night has overreached itself. “Got any rags?” That’s a joke.
There a glimmer of moon through the cracks in the blinds. In the wraith of light Andy lifts on an elbow and studies supine Isaiah. The youngster lies with his head cracked back, as though by a blow, his mouth open, the shape of a black egg, and his whisker thrust straight up in the air. He’s not dead, though; he’s asleep. ”

“ The swish of the underbrush against his hunting boots grew fainter and fainter.
The pent-up air burst hotly from Rainsford’s lungs. His first thought made him feel sick and numb. The general could follow a trail through the woods at night; he could follow an extremely difficult trail; he must have uncanny powers; only by the merest chance had the Cossack failed to see his quarry. ”

“ Howard Blake was a hard-working man, as every pioneer had to be, but he knew how to work and he liked it. Maggie—in a rural community Margaret would inevitably become Maggie—was usually with him. She helped him build the house, the barns, sheds, fences, chairs; she even helped him skin a calf when it had been killed. Meat had no commercial value then, but hides could be sold. As they worked they talked. It was evident they were very much in love with each other. In all my life I have never known another woman who so easily and naturally entered into the thoughts as well as the work of a man. ”

“ In the silence which followed Betsey looked at the floor. The Shindledeckers never spoke in meeting; they never spoke to any one who did not first speak to them; they almost never went from home and they never willingly admitted strangers to their house. There was, their friends believed, no one in the world so shy. And here was Betsey on her feet. All sorts of wild notions flew through their astonished minds. Was Tilly dead and had Betsey lost her reason? ”

“ Hank Wheelock twisted his lips into a smile. “Well, if you’re satisfied . . .” he said.
Their hands came together instinctively.
“Good luck!”
“Good luck!”
The sound of old Jim Bledsoe shuffling into the darkness . . . wind drawing up the mesa . . . the piercing wail of a coyote. . . . After forty years! . . .
He lay all night beside the camp fire, gazing up at the stars. An extraordinary sense of freedom possessed him. He had no one to answer to now except God, and His outline had grown too vague to throw any shadow. Curious how irksome a human relationship could become! ”

“ She had been an old man’s darling, but she had also been an old man’s slave, a carefully treasured harem of one. Colonel Overton had been fond of saying, of declaiming, that he did not believe in the honour of any man, or the virtue of any woman. Sally had never thought of deceiving him even about the price of a new gown, but even if she had been the most abandoned creature she would have been saved in spite of herself. When she went to a dentist, Colonel Overton was beside her. ”

“ There was greenery enough and outlook enough and solitude enough; and, plus all that, an extraordinary sense of contact with life in just the fact of that ribbon of steel rails bearing thirsty engines to their slaking. A drowsy place, to be precise, as a camp site should be. . . . But it wouldn’t stay drowsy for ever, not with Hank Wheelock’s borax marshes twelve hours distant by foot trail. Hank Wheelock’s borax marshes, mark you—not the borax marshes of Bledsoe and Wheelock! . . . The railroad siding would have a name, too—Wheelock’s Junction. ”

“ Hank Wheelock might have known that, he might have guessed that its frugality had an element of concealment in it, like some crusty old philanthropist making gestures toward poverty to test the object of its favour. . . . He speculated with a derisive grunt what sort of geological philandering Jim Bledsoe was up to around Heron Falls. A soft country, truly—buried in a carpet of pine needles; full of the muffled whirr of quail coveys; spilling water in lacy cascades down its greenly wreathed sides. ”

“ High casements were partly open to the breeze and, burning through their bulleyes, the sun had flecked the floor with its own marquetry. At one side, a bunch of spring posies filled a pewter bowl; and the bowl lay beside a big volume that nearly covered the table. Mistress Harvard drew a chair—high-backed and carved—for Shakspere, seated herself in another, the hand of each arm clasping the dimpled elbow of its fellow. “Tell me of Stratford,” she begged, her big eyes, a trifle too full for real beauty, dancing; the warm colour flooding and receding. ”

“ Then the house on Riverside Drive—vast and gloomy, dark curtains, soft funereal carpets—and the first terrors of finding the gaunt figure unexpectedly there, at meals, following his mother about like a tall, overpowering shadow, asking penetrating questions for which there were no right answers, horrifically seated, smoking a gaunt cigar in rooms that had begun to seem a little familiar—everywhere!
The child can really have seen very little of David those first years—but the presence of him obsessed his days. ”

“ He looked about him, almost cheerfully.
“Where there are pistol shots, there are men. Where there are men, there is food,” he thought. But what kind of men, he wondered, in so forbidding a place? An unbroken front of snarled and ragged jungle fringed the shore.
He saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the shore, and Rainsford floundered along by the water. ”