The Blue Wall

that if the Judge had read my growing sentiment surely, she must have seen it even more clearly. I tried to interpret her friendly, playful, girlish acce

and complete-one to whom love would come in sweeping torrent of emotion-one with whom love would thereafter stay eternally. If this were true, she did not love m

her there, or on the way along the edge of the park, and I found myself suddenly haunted by the hitherto unconsidered possibility that,

ray banks of clouds hung threateningly above the city. Nevertheless, tormented with the notion t

d she seem at all sur

he said, smiling a welcome. "Le

about your father. As you know, I

been for the expression in her eyes with which she greeted me, listened when I talked to her and bade me good-bye when I left her, these would have been depressing meeti

en forced to plead a previous engagement, when she stood there before me smiling, rosy, the form itself of health, beauty, and vi

could not see her face, she said, "I have liked these walks and chats w

onship was not to continue, as if, for some cause unknown to me, there was to be

she meant only to show that she is willing t

had told me that the Judge walked each evening after his dinner, and I am ashamed to confess that the next evening dark found me waiting on their street corner, like a scullery

who had come to take a precious treasure of art from the drawing-room or the household goddess from the front hall. And as I sat in the study once more, on the comfortable easy-chair of the Judge, with the empty feeling

I could not help but notice the poise and grace which comes from inherited refinement

oment earlier," she said. "Father

her place on the old-f

mind?"

like a pleased child, yet so slightly t

me?" said I,

ay; it was only because I could see her hands pressed against the arm of the couch until they were white and little blue veins

that she was trying to restrain her true feelings toward me ran through my brain like an intoxicating liquor. I would have taken the breadth of her shoulders in the crook of my arm, and press

at that moment. I remember

very play of expression about her mouth, and I cannot go on without speaking

then, I

ou long. But I must disregard all facts of that kind. They may be important to some

n I leaned forward and took one of her hands in my own, she left it there as if it belonged to

pered desperately. "I want you. I want you

t revelation. What, then, was my astonishment to observe that, as I looked, the color seemed to fade from her skin, her parted lips slowly compressed themselves, her eyelids fell like those of one who suffered pain or shuts out some repul

significance of her actions t

affectionately, I can say-as she might have touched her father, and as if sh

p," she said softly.

trength in

om, her figure was framed with the soft purple of the flowers, which, lit by the light from within and pendant against the black background of night, might well have been blossoms e

repeating memorized sentences. "But I am young and no one else has ever done so. Perhaps I should have interrupted you and told you that my duty is toward my fat

herself. I stood before her and in a voice that shook with e

drew

under my breath. "

o keep me from her, and stil

my own voice was raising a madness w

quickly a

lov

id. "I do no

e. I can remember that I drew a long breath, made a low bow, which, though not so intended, must have been both insulting and absurd, and walked through the curtains into the hall. I looked back once and that fl

straining ears listened to the hourly booming of the clock on the Fidelity Tower, until it sounded like the cruel voice of Time itself. Long after the rosy dawn I got up, drank some water, lit a strong cigar, and prepared to dress myself for the day's work. I can well remember my determination never a

me intense, the sides of the battalions of towering buildings across the narrow street seemed to become radiators for the viciousness of the summer sun, the voices of newsboys, the murmur of the lunch-hour crowd twanged a man's nerves, and I noticed for the first time th

I stopped only to sweep the papers into the

u, Mr. Estabrook," said the switchboar

alled back to her and then went down and o

idea aside as a piece of sentimental madness. Accordingly I walked toward the river front with its uninteresting and sordid warehouses, saloons and boxes, bales and crates of the wholesale produce commissioners. On that long, cobblestoned thoroughfare, with its drays and c

ted that all were, like myself, with their individual comedies and tragedies, the representatives of the countless, forgotten, and ever reproducing millions of human gnats that through unthinkable periods of time come and go. I had seen none of them before. I would see none of them again. Instead of being a depressing notion, I found

two. "It was he who ushered me into this aff

ud as I walked, has many times caused me to wonder at the proph

ld be closed for business, and therefore it was with satisfaction that I noticed that the coin slot was open, and that, having dropped in my tribut

topped to notify me that another coin was due, I had a decided advantage in position. Before another fifte

at me this time. Is there any other game

maton wa

, but I drew a piece of paper and a pencil

e. Though I had put no coin into the machine, I saw the levers and gears start to move again,

o so," I remarked, as I extended the pen

id not make any attempt to see beforehand what he had chosen to inscribe, for I assumed that it would be some empty answer to my bantering remarks. At last the pencil d

of my wits. I could not credit my eyes. I could

ame of draughts, his glass eyes, with their whites in sharp contrast to his swarthy wax skin, were both wide open and set in a glare

ar the automaton to shreds, to discover what was within its exterior, I turned, crunched the paper in my closed fist, and almost ra

the Sheik had written, "You are in danger! Withdraw before it

h a tawdry machine, or the mountebank behind it, seemed to have of the affairs of persons against whom no charge of contact with the lo

elligence to overcome the hysteria which last night's experience and this odd affair of the Sheik have aroused. Be sensible. This

y cleared my reason. After al

rved the effect of her name on me. Furthermore, he, or, as the Judge said, the man or woman behind the Sheik, has even seen me with Julianna

the middle and, dropping it in t

te itself on the walls of buildings, upon the pavement or across the sky. And as it did, little by li

le of the sidewalk as if stricken and uttering a sharp exclamation. My hand sought the contents of my inside coat pocket; among the papers t

enough to cause me to kneel down on the grass in the gathering gloom that was filling the old

in my hand. I have already told you that Julianna wrote a hand distinguished from othe

a vulgar puppet in public, no matter how much it might interest or amuse her, was another shock to me. I am free to confess that, in spite of all my former assertion

f facts which tend to show that some unwholesome thing is sleeping on the threshold of the Colfax h

fair that for a moment I almost forgot that it was a creation of my fancy. It brought back to me my love for her. I remembered my promise to the Judge. I recalled her tenderness and purity, which I had felt so strongly that I had expected to see it about her like an effulgenc

handwriting; now I remembered that one of them, a clever fellow named Jarvis, lived in an apa

him as he appeared in his library, napkin in hand

sehood. "I had just finished. Ho

y for me to tell you where I got them, you understand. The question at issue is,

e professional manner those fellows use and

the manner in which the fine fibres of the paper are brushed forward like grass leaning in the wind. In the case of the ink,

reclude imita

pt had practiced for years, or has the skill of imitation developed b

with my fingers

looked at me with his eyebrows drawn and a l

ry odd,"

s very

re not written several years apart-at

no," s

then," he said, with firm conviction.

imitate the other?" I said,

and which the imitating. I would almost think you had stumbled on two specimens which, merely by coincidence, bore a

en a party to this vulgar and melodramatic flourish. I berated myself for having entertained any doubt and now felt anew, and with aggravation, my affection for her. This outcome of