Romance Island

s in the harbour, St. George longed to proclaim in t

erve that this is my steam yacht. I own her-do you see? She belongs

have jostled him at some ill-favoured lunch counter. For in America, dreams of gold-not, alas, golden dreams-do prevalently come true; and of all the butterfly happenings in this pleasant land of larv?, few are so s

lately seen his mother-an exquisite woman, looking like the old lace and Roman mosaic pins which she had saved from the wreck of her fortune-set off for Europe in the exceptional company of her brother, Bishop Arthur Touchett, gentlest of dignitaries. The bishop, only to look upon whose portrait was a benediction, had at

eight telephone bells, and the sound of voices used merely to communicate thought and not to please the ear. In the last three months he had sometimes remembered that black day when from his high window he had looked toward the harbour and glimps

. And nothing else would set up this wooden stuff of yours. Where's some snap? Your first paragraph

he club-women and the common council of that little Jersey town, the trim white-and-brass craft slipping down to the river's mouth had not ceased to lure him. He had found himself estimating the value-in money-of the bric-à-brac of every house, and the self-importance of every alderman, and reflecting that these people, if they liked, might own yachts of white and brass; yet the

and other things soothing to enumerate. The first thing which he had added unto these, after the departure of his mother and the bishop, had been The Aloha, which only that day had sli

ainted, for example, the delight of a cruise in a sea-going yacht of his own, yet to step into his dory in the sunset, to watch The Aloha's sides shine in the late light as he was rowed ashore past the lesser crafts in the harbour; to see the man touch his cap and

living-room, a fire of cones was tossing on the hearth, the curtains were drawn, and the sideboard was a thing of intimation. Rollo, his man-St. George had easily fa

?" St. George asked. "No on

swered Rollo,

lf that the man looked like an oval

the little ones will set inside without tipping? Then take the cigars to the den-you'll have to get some cig

candles 'll make a great difference,

rance; but he always uttered his impressions with, under his mask, an air of keen and seasoned personal observation. In his first interview with St. George, Rollo had said: "I

and fine intelligence, had that temper of stability within vast range which goes pleasantly into the mind that meets it. A symbol of this was his prodigious popularity with those who had been his fellow-workers-a test beside which old-world traditions of the urban touchstones are of secondary advantage. It was deeply significant that in spite of the gulf which Chance had digged the day-staff of the Sentinel, all save two or three of which were not of

t. George somewhat gr

or a few minutes. Get in the bath-room or somewhere,

hillingworth's men loved to remember that he had once carried copy. They also understood all the legitimate devices by which he persuaded from them their best effort, yet these devices never failed, and the city room agreed that Chillingworth

class. So did Provin, the "elder giant," who gathered news as he breathed and could not intelligibly put six words together. Horace, who would listen to four lines over the telephone and therefrom make a half-column of American newspaper humour or American newspaper tears, came in roaring pacifically and marshaling little Bud, that day in the seventh heaven of his first "beat." Then followed Crass, the feature man, whose interviews were known to the new men as literature, although he was not above publicly admitting that he was not a reporter, but a special writer. Mr. Crass read nothing in the paper that he had not written, and St. George had once prophesied that in old age he would use his scrap-book for a manual of devotions, as Klopstock used his Messiah. With him arrived Carbury, the telegraph editor, and later Benfy, who had a carpet in his office and wrote edito

imed Bennietod; frowning defe

to the office. Crass sits in your place and he wea

with editor is too keen for that; I won't give him a job.

ather refused to have her coffin opened. And St. George, fresh from his Alma Mater, had weighted the winged words of his story with allusions to the tears celestial of Thetis, shed for Achilles, and Creon's grief

th, "this is a mellow minute. I could wish they came ofte

rned, "mind your manners, or

the tray which Rollo bore was his passport. Thereafter, they all trooped to the table, and Chillingworth sat at the head, and from the foot St. George watched the city editor break bread with the familiar nervous g

egan contentedly. "Every one of you

in all talk St. George had a restful, host-like way of playin

ding the papers these three months,

ssed; "no, I haven't.

o woman. The woman followed her to the elevator and came uncomfortably near stabbing her from the back. The elevator boy was too quick for her. And at the station they couldn't get the woman to say a word; she pretends not to understand or to speak anything they've tried. She's got Amory hypnotized too-he thinks she can't. And when th

igned interest. "I say, splendid. Di

y no

never said a word. I parlez-voused her, and verst

he heiress?" S

s. I happened to be hanging up in the hall there

d with genuine envy. "It's a stu

She is a New Yorker and an heiress and a great beauty-oh, all the propertie

ot answer, and e

hose maid shot a masseuse whom she took to be her mistress; and the woman forgave the shoo

thorne," said

r, "doing one of her Mafia stunts. It's time they left the p

p writing heads,"

ing who got fond of her charge, and when they took it away years ago, she devoted her life to trying to find it

bbing, Crass," war

ent work and read to the woman's kid, and the kid die

h grinned af

"or you'll recall the v

gasped a

od?" Amory en

dis yere dagger-plunger is her mudder dat's be

th nodded a

sed that the mulatto lady was an Egyptian princess' messenger sent over here to get the heart fro

s throat, "has, in his epic of the Oberon made admi

nfy was too "well-read" to be

t's about all," suggested Harding,

t, who lifted and lowered one s

and looked at them

ull of reliable facts, and that nobody would buy. To be born with a riotous imagi

eaned back, his e

married?" he asked. "I

orth shoo

knew that by tea-time the same

drew a lo

member, excepting those two or three that have hung fire for so long. Next to knowing j

y, "next to doing exactly what you will be doi

ght go on fearfully about it. Lord knows I'm going to see the day when I'll do i

ing to forgive, ev

keptically put it, adjusting his pince-nez, "fo

rth will put me on this story in your place and will give

orne pounded

wailed. "But no, all I ge

Chillingworth?" St.

ng his glass. "St. George is rested and fresh, and he

, but the two glasses jingled together un

I fancy," he admit

orth, "would set you on your feet for the co

leaped to

ke a boy. "Jove, won't

ng the day at his desk when he had seen the w

in attendance, until, last of the guests, Little Cawthorne and Bennietod departed together, trying to remember the dates of the English kings. Finally Chillingwo

have no monkey-work. You'll report to me at the ol

" St. George re

said quickly, "but you see this is

st not to get thrown down. Amory has told me all he kno

her up to the Bitley Reformatory in Westchester for the present. She's there; and that means, we

ight o'clock. Amory can board The Aloha whe

s eyes shining behind his pince-nez. "I'll probably win wide disrespect by my inab

n the apartment Rollo had unearthed, and the man took off his master's shoes and brought his slippers and made ready his

nt as he clipped the story and

like a city room'