The Red Cross Girl

. But it was entirely the wind that was responsible. So, whichever way he turned, he smiled broadly, happily. His outlook upon the world was that of one who loved his fellowman. He had ma

een a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he would have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer bought for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried on his shoulde

he was so popular because she possessed charm, and because she played no favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines her manner was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded youths who came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with the "ki

were twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man, who never

not with Helen?" asked the new

claimed the young matron

golf together, that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way to look. But they gloried in their shame. If you tactfu

es, they did not know him: he did not come from Boston and Harvard, but from a Western city. They were told that at home, at both the law and the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully; but it was rather held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that he played at there games, not so much for the sake of the game as for exercise. He put aside many th

matrons, "that he wants to be the next lieutenant-gov

en, "who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he should wish to be a lie

hild could not remember when she had not been happy, but these days she wore her joyousness with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings to old friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses. She was very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She told him she liked better to be with him than with any one else,-

lt to keep her own. She as though she had been caught in an undertow and was being whirled out to sea. When, at

plained, "there are so ma

think?" dema

y want to

scouraged, Latimer

s this important difference: no matter how much a

thing they think

so unoriginal,"

t to heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see how miserable a girl must be if she is loved by one man and can't make up h

credible that I have undervalued yo

miserably. "There seems to

ou don't have to tell me about it. I know that the H

t effort to break it. At least, not one t

ocks with which the waves played hide and seek. On many afternoons and mornings they returned to this place, and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back to a tree and toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose works he re

r any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: "Please excuse

er patiently lowered the "Oxford Book

y; he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize,

said Latimer, "or in what you told his mother, or w

d reprovingly. "Men get over T

r. "And don't tell me," he cried indignantl

e right man would keep on caring after you marry him the way he says he cares before y

d Latimer; "that is to marry him. I mean, of

e. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind caught the sailorman fair

mile," said Helen; "

this beautiful lady. So long as I love her you must guard this place. It is a life sentence. You are always on watch. You never sleep. You are her slave. She says you have a friendly smile. She wrongs you. It is a beseeching,

ne needles Helen looked up a

jected. "For one thing, a sailorma

see," sa

e is anything on earth that changes its mind as often

him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you will find him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently, proudly, joyou

of joy. His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs, his oars flashed in the sun

best Helen could do to keep hope alive in him was to say that she was glad he cared. She added it was very helpful to think that a man such as he believed yo

: "Oh, indeed no!" and then, as though he were giving her a cue, he said: "Good-by!" Bu

me sign, she will give me a word, a look that will write 'total' under the hou

say: "Don't miss your train," which kind consideration for his comfort did not delight h

had known her since they wore knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and friends in common; they talked the same language. Latimer could talk to her only in letters, for with her he shared no friends or interests, and he was forced to choose between telling her of his lawsuits and his efforts in politics or of his love. To write to her of his affairs seemed wasteful and impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had received what he told of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he wrote but seldom, and then only to say: "You know what I send you." Had he known it, his best letters were those he did not send. When in the morning mail Helen found his familiar handwriting

econd. At least Helen hoped, when she was ready to marry, she would love Latimer enough to want to marry him. But as yet she assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she was, life was very satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody invited her to be of his party, or invited himself to join hers, and the o

articular some one loved her. Her being "free" was only her mistaken way of putting it. Had she thought she had lost Lat

w that, and Latimer

stole into the secret hiding-place, but the sailorman flapped his oars and frightened him away. He was always triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing rabbits he was a thing of terror. Once, when the air was still, an impertinent crow perched on the very limb on which he stood, and with scornful, disapproving eyes surveyed his white trousers, his blue reefer, his red cheeks. But when the wind suddenly drove past them the sailorman sprang into

o sit down and lament over the fact that she did not love him did not, to use his favorite expression, "tend toward effici

before your eyes like an advertisement of a motor-car. It is too wonderful a thing to be cheapened, to be subjected to slights and silence. If ever you should want it, it is yours. It is here waiting. But you must tell me so. I have done everything

found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there had not arisen a fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest? He said that he would always love her, but how could she now know that? Why might not this letter be only his way of withdrawing from a position which he wished to abandon, from which, perhaps, he was even glad to escape? Were this true, and she wrote and said all those things that were in her heart, that now she knew were true, might she not hold him to her against his will? The love that once he had for her might no longer exist, and if, in he

ght follow throughout the entire West. When he won his fight much more was written about him, and he became a national figure. In his own State the people hailed him as

Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and over her head, as though she were not present, as a power, an influence, as the leader

: "I hear you know Latimer

a man who sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book

expense she agreed in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent her, for she knew wherever she went she must s

k. She assured herself it was weak-minded to rebel. The summer was coming and Fair Harbor with all its old delights was before her. She compelled herself to take heart, to accept the fact that, after all, the

d she imagine they were again seated among the pines, riding across the downs, or racing at fifty miles an hour through country roads, with the stone fences flying past, with the wind and

, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the city. He had spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New York, and for a week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting cheering mobs, from snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the time he was actually in Boston she

, the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though they were her vassals and she their queen. But it was the one man she had exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused her throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively to his open windows. Wherever sh

so she was going out of her way. They no longer distressed her, but gave her a strange co

f the third day when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own accord, from force of habit, turned smartly into the wood road. And again from force of habit, before he reach

. No haunted house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more poignantly, more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no sign of his or of her former presence. Across the open space something had passed its hand, and it had changed. What had been a trysting-place, a bower, a nest, had become a tomb. A tomb, she felt, fo

hes tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a vio

and raised her eyes-an

e same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In Helen's ears Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though Latimer stood before her and h

had been his foolish words, "you will g

e other she snatched him from his post of duty. With a joyous laugh that was a sob, sh

a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray between his chattering te

head-lights Helen Page raced against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to beat the mi

great-coat, the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his lo