Youth and the Bright Medusa

hing the pigeons. Reclining thus she could see none of the neighbouring roofs, only the sky itself and

city lay in the streets below her; and she was wondering why she found this queer painter chap, with his lean,

l be delivered immediately, but one by one they will arrive at her door. She already knew some of the many things that were to happen to her; for instance, that the Chicago millionaire who was going to take her abroad with his sister as chaperone, would eventually press his claim in quite another manner. He was the most circumspect of bachelors,

and reciting for church entertainments, she read in some illustrated magazine a long article about the late Czar of Russia, then just come to the throne or about to come to it. After that, lying in the hammock on the front porch on summer evenings, or sitting through a long sermon in the family pew, she amused herself by trying to make up her mind whether she would or would not be the Czar’s mistress when she played in his Capital. Now Edna had met this fascinating word only in the novels of Ouida, — her hard-worked little mother kept a long row of them in the upstairs storeroom, b

d she rather liked it. But if he pressed her further, she slipped away from him, laughing. After she began to sing in Chicago, she was consistently discreet. She stayed as a guest

he capitalist suggested that his sister might enjoy a summer on Long Island; he would rent the Griffith’s place for her, with all the servants, and Eden could stay there. But his sister met this proposal with a cold stare. So it fell out, that between selfishness and greed, Eden got a summer all her own, — which really did a great deal toward making her

se, that he was merely the first to fall under a fascination which was to be disastrous to a few men and pleasantly stimulating to many thousands. Each of these two young people sensed the future, but not completely. Don Hedger knew that nothing much would ever happen to him. Eden Bower un