Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/329



terested reader, after keeping him in suspense a while, according to the rules of my Art. Sister Irmingarde says I should not explain in my stories why I do things—but I really must. I am afraid the reader will not know if I don't. I will now tell the secret, and it will probably make your heart stop beating, just as it did mine. And then maybe you will get a queer kind of a sinking, sick feeling in your stomach. I did.

For Adeline Thurston was a poet! She wrote poems.

That was what she was doing when she sat up nights. And that was why she liked to be alone. She was getting inspiration, Maudie said. And then, while I was trying to take it all in, and not doing it very well, either, Maudie grabbed my arm and began to pull me toward the river. I tried to speak, but she put her finger on her lips, and after we had walked quite a long way she began to move stealthily, like an Indian, and of course I did, too. We were careful not to step on twigs that would crackle, and not to brush the branches of the willows as we passed under them. Finally we came to a kind of an open place and Maudie motioned to me to stop, and she put her fingers to her lips again and pointed at something, and then I understood why we had come. The sun was sinking into rest, and the river lay bathed in its dying rays. Please read that sentence twice, for I worked hard on it, and I would like to have it appreciated. Something else was bathed in its dying rays, too, and that was what Maudie Joyce was pointing at. It was Adeline Thurston, and she stood with her back to us, and her arms stretched out toward the expiring King of Day. That means the sun. Her head was away back and turned a little, and we could see that her eyes were raised and her mouth was open. Some careless, thoughtless observers might have imagined something was the matter with Adeline, but I knew better. I knew she was having an attack of the artistic temperament, like I do myself, only mine acts different on the outside of me.

For a moment I looked at the beautiful picture, and my heart beat so I thought Maudie would hear it, and my eyes filled with slow, hot tears. Then I glanced at