Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/38

 dressed in white. She was twenty years old, beautifully formed, with a wasp-like waist and tiny white straw hat. She had a gracious smile and eyes of irresistible dark splendor.

With difficulty she located a room in a rather disreputable house not far from the fair grounds, about seven miles south of the main business section of the city. As usual she paid an exorbitant rate for it. But she did not argue. Louella always liked rooms in a house kept by a near-sighted landlady. In the event of certain emergencies arising she would not be molested. She was a student of human nature. She could read faces. She made no mistake in her boarding places.

The World's Fair grounds were frequently referred to as "The White City" and she had the idea that possibly she might be able to make it slightly red.

That afternoon she set out to explore the six hundred acre fair grounds which spread for more than a mile along the Lake. It was hard to credit the fact that that City of Beauty had only a short time before been a stretch of wild flat, almost treeless ground, much of it swampy. The transformation had been a Herculean task but landscape gardeners had attacked it nobly. Not even the famed Genii of Aladdin could have performed the task more magically. Wide Avenues were created and set with stately trees. The Court of Honor was two thousand feet in length and seven hundred feet wide. In its centre was a basin of water emptying into a canal that flowed between Machinery Hall and the Agricultural Building. Louella was entranced by everything.

She had never beheld a panorama so magnificent. Here was Fairyland. Every moment she expected a tiny figure to fly down and perch upon her shoulder.

At last she grew tired and stopped at a tea-room for some buttered toast and coffee. It was good to sit down and rest awhile. The kaleidoscope of beauty was fatiguing.

She could not help smiling, as she mused, "Six hundred acres? This place covers six hundred acres! My God, a girl would have to possess rare talent to parade this beat satisfactorily."

Abruptly her reveries were shattered in a startling manner.