The Real Adventure

I must have looked, wrestling with that conductor, I've been telling myself tha

that a man capable of consigning a half-drowned girl to a ten-mile ride on the elevated, instead of walking her over to his sister's, having her dried out properly, a

f the prophylactic measures her mother had subm

ister Portia. They'd both like to thank you for-looking

y in pursuit of a selfish aim. And I didn't come out here to-day to be thanked, either. I mean, of course

sly to the door. "That is," he concluded

es while I went up and made myself a little more presentable.... I mean, whether you'd rather have me fit to look at, or have me like this and not be

en-minute wait would bore him horribly, and that

ent on with the conversation

"Mother's the interesting one-mother and Portia. Mother's

her quick appreciative smile over his can

s and suffrage, and all that. She's been-well, sort of a leader ever since she graduated from college, back in

orable seriousness and his grav

ry much. Feminism's a subjec

mother about it, if I were you. Mother's a suffragist, but"-there came another wave

is laughing out at that,

the family," he asked presently, "your siste

ia a feminist. Anyway, she smokes cigare

his pocket, he said, and got

. She's a house decorator. I don't mean painting and paper-hanging. She tells you what kind of

"That brings us down

sheep, I guess. I'm just in the u

Good lord!" so explosive

ld have taken him like that, except that the notion of her in cou

ing in it any more; and my two brothers-one's a professor of history and the other's a high-school principal-say, 'Let her do anything b

"It's the finest pro

re of her in a dismal court room, blazing up at a jury the way she had blazed up at tha

's awfully dull and tiresome, thoug

corporations and rich estates going through your office like grist through a mill. I can't imagine anything duller than that. That's supposed to be the big r

for their purposes if you do. The thing to bear in mind, if you're going to travel their road, is that a case is worth while in a precise and

wledge of my conversational habits, that now was the time for you to ask me,-firmly, you know,-if I'd been to see Maude Adams in this new thi

ion about Maude Adams. Then the smile transmuted itself into a look of thoughtful grav

urned straight to him and said, "I wis

a half, or thereabouts, he did-told it as he had never told it before-

problem-a problem that for its nice intricacies and intellectual suggestiveness, would have brought an appreciative gleam to the eye of Mr. Justice Holmes, or Lord Mansfield, or the great Coke himself. He told of the passionate enthusiasm with which he had attacked it, the thrilling weeks of labor he had put on it. And then he told her the outcome of it all; how the head of the firm, an old friend of his father, had calle

he concluded it. He didn't ask her to be sorry for him. He wasn't sorry for himself one bit,-nor bitter-nor cynical. He didn't even seem trying to make a mer

it. And from the way he told of his labors in drafting a new city building ordinance, she felt that it must have been one of the most fascinating occupations in the world, until he told her how it had

girl in the university, he would hardly, as he tramped about the room expounding the practise of criminal law in the state's attorney's office, have characterized the state's attorney himself as a

rt came from the fear that the spell might be broken

was there-because she was herself and nobody else. She knew, though how she couldn't have explained,-with that intuitive certainty tha

rney's office, he told her, he figured he h

ourse-the ones who came around because they liked me, or had liked my father, to offer me nice plummy little sinecures, and got told I didn't want them. Just for the sake of looking successful and accumulating a lot of junk I didn't want, I wasn't

hilosophy of life mixed up in it. And this the girl, consciously, and deliberately, provoked. I

ccepting the facts of life-of your own life, as they happen to be. It isn't being conquere

on there-suppose the things y

ouldn't

backs of your own passions. There's no good lamenting that they're not different, and it's silly to beat them to death and make a merit of not having ridden anywhere

e crook of her arm that lay along the back of the couch, her

e poignantly vivid with every five minutes that ticked away on the banjo clock, was a consciousness of the man himself, the driving power of him, the boisterous health and freshness and confiden

op her, but if he did, it wouldn't be through weakness. At what he said about riding on the backs o

e felt her eyes flushing up with tears. She tr

ed into her face. She couldn't see his clearly, but she saw his hands clench and heard him draw a long bre

minutes after he had come in. But, paradoxically, this superficial commonplaceness only heightened the tensity of the thing that underlay it. Something had happened

as he stood there with his hands clenched, between her and t

r time for the recovery of lost bearings. Had he not felt it as well as she-she smiled a little over this-he wouldn't

d more deeply still, a sort of cosmic contentment-the acquiescenc

out of the conversation altogether. As if it were a long way off, she heard him retailing last night's adventure and expressing

as to the basis of her curiosity. She knew that it was getting on toward their dinner-time, but didn't disturb herself as to the

in the room with her now, chatting so pleasantly with her mother, wouldn't ask

ot into his overcoat and hooked his stick over his arm, he held out his hand to her in formal leave-taking.

ch a wonde

It was the first time she ha

sitting-room, she found Po

to come again?" s

never thought

anything at all to say to him before we came home, or we

as asleep on the couch when he came in. That's why I wa

le, a happier person in

f he was, he didn't know it. He couldn't yield instantly, and easily, to his intuitions, as Rose had done. He fel

Mainly four: a girl, flaming with indignation, holding a street-car conductor pinned by the wrists; a girl in absurd bedroom slippers, her skirt twisted around her knees, her hair a chaos, stretching herself awake like a big cat; a girl wit

oubtedly been right in telling him that, though they had lived together off and on for thirty years, they didn't know each other. The pictures his memor

adventure, the essential adventurousness of which no amount of cautious thought taken in advance could modify. There was n

s question,-would the adventure look promising enough to her to induce her to embark on it?-was on

again, with the electri