Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/88

 So completely had marriage made them one, the old man could not go on after his wife had been laid to rest. All his life he had lived on the soil and in the end the soil held out its arms to draw him to its breast.

It was not like dying. It was like being born anew into some far more mystical sphere which mortals did not know nor understand. Those who lived their lives with their bare feet burrowing in new-turned sod somehow seemed to be closer to God. The soil gave life; life to flowers, to trees, to plants. It gave life to man through the abundance of its grains and its fruits. There was a kinship between the soil and the sun. They were lovers, and when they fused in love, the crops were plentiful. There could be no death when the body of man was buried in the soil. For the soil was life. It was the mother of living things and the sun was the father.

Louella Leota was forty years old when she opened, in the mid-western city, her establishment that brought her lasting fame. There was no house nearer than thirty feet. Had the houses had any pride of race, they would probably have tried to get farther away than that.

However, the huge brownstone house, four stories high, with many rooms, showed no concern at all at being snubbed. It held its red brick chimneys high in the air and refused to be troubled about anything. It could not be bothered with other houses that had so little traffic. There was not another establishment for miles around that had so many visitors as this, nor one that catered to a more distinguished clientele.

The girls were magnificent. The food and wines were beyond compare. Madame Leota was a perfect hostess. She knew perfectly how to look out for the welfare of her guests.

Time and time again her establishment was reported to the authorities but so many of the authorities of that mid-western city regularly reported to her, the results were never disastrous. Madame kept a furnished-room house. There was seldom any noise. As a rule she required her roomers to give references. Many of these references she kept on file. Such was the fabric of her story and the city magistrates chose to believe it. By most of them she was honored and respected. She was merely a poor