The Vehement Flame

een hidden by her tiresome timidity ... a thunderstorm sent her, blanched and panting, to sit huddled on her bed, shutters closed, shades drawn; she

him. Mrs. Houghton was impatient with it. Edith, who could not understand fear in any form, tried, in her friendly little way, to reason Eleanor out of one panic or another. The serva

the defects of the beloved, and later repelled by them. Maurice loved Eleanor for her defects. Once, when he and Edith were helping Mrs. Houghton weed her garden, he stopped grubbing, and sat down in the gold and bronze glitter of coreopsis, to expatiate upon the exquisiteness of the defects. Her wonderful mind: "She doesn

r did," his old f

out me, don't you know? She-well, this is in confidence-she said

aid Edith. Her

have a 'man Friday'-to say noth

en, "full of-of-what are those sweet-smelling things, that bloom only at night?" (Mary Houghton

Edith broke i

most human beings, affect her terribly. The dark, or thunde

of the weeding to her assistants ... In the studio, dropping her dust

s such a goose, and he is so si

eanor that the greatest compliment any husband can pay his wife is contained in four wor

to Fern Hill," Edith said, "I'm going to tell all the girls I

We are all crude,

infinite superiority.... So the three Houghtons accepted-one with amused pity, and the other with concern, and the third with admiration of such super-refinement,-the fact that Ele

een carried off for a day of eating smoky food, cooked on a camp fire, and watching cloud shadows drift across the valley and up and over the hills; she had wondered, silently, why Maurice liked this very tiring sort of thing?-and especially why he liked to have Edith go along! "A child of her a

in the cabin for our las

Bride's. Edith said, "By yourselves? Not Johnny and

up there and look down into the valley, and see the treetops lift up out of

ice, talking his plans over with her, made it quite clear that her room was better than her company. It was Edith's fi

e 'an me, so, 'course, it's n

nd even Eleanor, though she quaked at the idea of spiders or thunderstorms, thou

ts to make sure nothing was being forgotten-all meant much tearing about and bossing; then came the loading the stuff into the light wagon, which, with old Lion, Mr. Houghton had offered

nly for an hour, because Eleanor must not hurt her hands by washi

to stay all night, Buster," he told her, candidly; then he paused in his work, flung up his arm

ing the week of camping; though just before they started her feelings really were a little hurt: it happened that in trying to help Eleanor pack, she was close eno

white thread," Edith

o Edith except that the Bride-who instantly ran up to her room-"was mad." Whe

I mussed your h

iring, they reached the camp, Eleanor got out of the wagon and said she wanted to "help"; but Edith, still contrite about the "thread," said: "Not I'm not going to have you hurt your lovely hands!" In the late aftern

at long road home with only the lumbering old do

resting," she told Maurice; "and

spread out like a garden! Do you see that glimmer over ther

she cringed when, from an overhanging bough, a spider let himself down upon her skirt, and hurrying to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, because an unhappy ant had scalded himself to death in her first cup. Afterward he would not let her "hurt her hands" by was

im securely, and the old fellow

Oh, what s

down when I want t

ll

mind, when I get hold of her. But it doesn't really matter. I think I like it better to have not even Lion. Just you-and the stars. They are beginning to prick out," he said.

imes do I

w many bea

silve

ening

from the t

the eye of a

any

"a little black in the we

o him, and his mouth crushed hers. Her eyes closed, and her passion answered his, and all that he whispered.

hrilled at his touch or low word, and sometimes she held his hand against her lips and kissed it-whic

en winking along the line of the hills, suddenly sharpened into a flash. "Oh!" she said, and held her breath until, from

sh of the branches; and we'll see the lightning through the chinks-and I'll have you!

nding of "being part of the storm"; instead, she watched the horizon. "Oh!" she sa

lter. She ran ahead of him, her very feet reluctant, lest the possible "snake" should curl in the darkness against her ankles; but once in the cabin, with a candle lighted, she could not see the lig

ly be a

dy felt the spatter of the coming storm and was dying down; then, even as she looked, he seemed to plunge forward, and fal

apier of lightning, and there was a sudden violent illumination; she saw the tree and th

in the doorway for a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catching the candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; instantly the wind bore the little flame away!-then seem

ng toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair-and clutched at the match box! Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike a match, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter of flame,-the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was out in the sheeting blackness of the rain!-running!-running!-toward that still figure by the d

at she could not unfasten his coat, somewhere on his left side; she did not know whether there was any pulse; she knew nothing, except that he was "dead." She said this in a whisper, over and over. "He is dead. He is dead." The rain came down in torrents; th

ot believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope. With hope, a single thought possessed her. She must take him down the mountain.... But how? She could not carry him;-she had managed to prop him up

he wagon was in the lean-to! Could she get him into it? Th

and saw the moon peering out between two ragged, swiftly moving clouds; then all was black again-but the rain was lessening, and there had been no lightning for several minutes. "He will die; I must save him," she said, her lip

ie; I must

afterward, "It was impo

push, which got his sagging body up on to the floor of the wagon! It had strained every part of her;-her shoulder against his hips, her head in the small of his back, her

s; she forgot even her certainty that he would die. She entirely forgot herself. She only knew-straining, gasping, sweating-that she must get the body-the dea

as a

g on behind as a brake." "Of course!" she thought; and managed,-the splinters tearing her hands-to fasten a fairly heavy piece of wood under the rear axle, so that it might bump along behind the

wet black branch, snapped by the gale and lying in the path, and Eleanor, seeing it, wedging her heels into the mud and sliding stones of the road, and straining backward between the shafts, would say, "A snake.... I must save

the mountain. The, thin, cool air of morning flowed about her in crystalline stillness; suddenly the sun tipped the green bowl of the world, and all at once shadows fell across the road like bars. They seemed to her, in her daze of terror and exhaustion, insurmountable: the road was level now, but she pulled and pu

lp-Mauri

er bed, "I was able to do it, because I kept saying, 'I must sa

aid, huskily. Then she told her husband: "Henry

s aunt' again!" he promi

ed her, and everybody said she was 'magnificent'-exce

had to say, choking. "She's given he

er this. As for saving your life, my boy, she didn't. She made things a lot more dangerous for you.

"She'll never know that! And anyway, sir, I d

I tell you one thing: whether she saved your life or not, s

emperament makes any difference. It w

Edith had done it, say, for Johnny, who weighs nearly as muc

imself he added: "Edith is like an ox, compared to Star. Just flesh and blood. No nerve