The Empty Sack

would have disturbed both these elderl

hair drawn into a loose Greek knot, was on her knees before a plaster cast

, the freedom with which two young men laid hands

raised, the other to be lowered. One sandaled foot was too visible beneath the edge of the peplum, the other not visible enough. Adjustments called for readjust

one hand beneath her elbow and the other at her finger-tip

ed, in half-vexed good humor. "We'l

t away, because Miss Follett would

thing at the far end of the studio, Miss

way; but if you stay I shall go frantic

her left arm ever so slightly, "because this is the sa

ray's picture.

ld if I liked it, and I sha'n't like

u don't mean

dy else buy it; you can la

laughed again. It was an easy, silvery laugh, pleasant to the ear, a

ly confided to his friend, Bob Collingham. "It's as if she extracted the b

ad added, "she can pin your eyes on her as other g

nie's motion was beyond what either of these young

f Bob Collingham's hand rubbed along her cheek. With a smile at once kindly and cold she put away his arm and rose. In the

t home from the war became a streak of red. It was one of the reasons why Jennie, who was sensitive to the physical, didn

Bernard-big, strong, devoted, slow to wrath, and with an almost comic humiliation at sound of a harsh word. Though there was no harsh word in Jennie's case, Bob was sure he detected a harsh thought. It hurt him the more for the reason that

t think I was try

self secured by dista

at all. I just-just don't

any p

eed speak ab

y m

I hardly

w me better if

lots of people bet

t want to-for

eason. Sometimes it'

h is it i

e creatures in different-what do they call it?-not spheres-elements, isn't it?-We're li

ee the points

ng him in the idiom she heard among young native-born Americans, and which accorded best with her position in the stu

guy. Can't you see

she was trying to make second

over him. But please let me go. There's a quarter of an

r. Picking her way between old English chairs with canvases stacked against their legs, past dusty brocade hangings, an

y when she ha

. I'm going to

flicking in a touch or two on the rough sketc

ere getting some su

he had thrown his hat and the

rough Groton and Harvard little better than an uncouth boy, his experience in France had shaped his outlook on life into something like a purpose. It was not very clear as yet, or sharply defined; but he knew that certain preliminary conditi

" "I'm not neutral in thought," Bob, who had only that summer left Harvard, had declared to his

ld, and who, a few weeks later, nervously shattered, had joined him in the hospital. Wray, who, on the outbreak of war, had been painting in Latoul's atelier, had now got what he called "a sickener of Europe,"

sionally on the back of his head,

in self-defense. "I'm that kind. I can't be

pt on p

girl in your own class? Lo

hey're nice, old thing. You take the

ou're the other hal

l, I

herself does

ht, when I show her that

Wray grunted

r the job the more you're on your

ouches to the shadows of the Aphrod

Follett, wouldn't you

t, and put a can on it aft

Follett feel-before t

neasily towa

wn for her, of course; but that's wh

make it u

knob, Collingham turn

ou think I'm made of? A

ered how you wer

p-set, small gray eyes as he added, "That's something

rely laid on his strokes with an emotional vigor which hardened the surface of the plaster cast into marble. Neither did he turn his head nor utter a greeting when he became aware that Jennie, in her sport s

ce was resting on him as he worked, and that a kind, soft, bantering smile was flickering about her lips. With a deft force, he found the

for him to see her, "that I'm sorry to have been so horr

Bob Collingham-

ake this announcement-without the change of a muscle, without a change of any kind beyond a flame in the amber depths of the irises. It would be a tawny flame, with an indescribable red in it, an

ou advise me

where she had spent her first twelve years, the English tradition of musical speech, which in that old f

hest pitch of tensity, W

you to do that-if I

ay anything

ught I ought t

of that, when I

don't like when they have

ct, of course; b

ad. I like him

his pawing them about. I like h

wouldn't m

the only way not

ll marry

nd, probably

lurried as if the words were

ed. Though beneath her feet the floor seemed to heave like the deck of a ship in a storm, she could stand in a j

d to give much to it, because the conclusions were so obvious. Jennie had hit the poor fellow in the eye, and, instead of viewing the case in a common-sense, Gallicized way, he was taking it wit

es that," he s

quented, cavemen struggled with vampires in duels of passion and strength. Jennie longed to be loved by one of this race; and a caveman who came to her with violet eyes and a sweeping brown mus

h his work. "Sha'n't be able to afford it. If I didn't have a few, a very

d wing gave the dash which was part of Jennie's personality, was perhaps poised a li

your career as yet. One of thes

marriage isn

and though Jennie knew she couldn't respond to

g; but for a girl like

ly for a gir

o woman can hold a man for more than-well, just so long; and when his heart

free as a man's; and

en; but most of us are made so that we don't want to. God! what a life!" she moaned, with a comic grimac

, as if

say, 'God! w

because it's the only thing t

wh

not

thing to d

t's everything-begin

kick against being born-with

ed to be-Well, I'm only pretty, and she

t have to go

aping and paring just on the hither side of starving to death; and yet, if it was only yourself, you could stand it.

e put in, sententiously. "This c

er of her comi

ience wadded, and legs to kick hard enough-you get a chance-yes-and one man in a hundred thousand is able to make use of it. But if

u rather p

d down with little tossings of the hand

ife, just to reach the magnificent top-notch of forty-fi

rhaps G

sort. He's on the side of the football tough with the biggest kick in the scrimmage-Ah, what's t

nt close to her. All the poetry in the worl

you're born is loving and let

ing of the desperate in her mirth

sank to

hy not

t if I had only mys

re only two to th

ttle laugh, in spite

o bring into the little affair, to say nothing of a nice old dad and a moth

't you love B

im a reproa

ou! But then, you are brutal, aren't you

ould have put it into words; and with this tribute to the caveman sh