Part 23 (2/2)

The means was a smile and a French sentence, but his reception would have frightened a man in armour.

His face blanched with horror at the storm, he had invoked, and he dropped limply back as if some one had shot him. ”You tell this little snipe to let me alone! ” cried Nora, to the dragoman. ” If he dares to come around me with any more of those Parisian dude speeches, I-I don't know what I'll do! I won't have it, I say.” The impression upon the dragoman was hardly less in effect. He looked with bulging eyes at Nora, and then began to stammer at the officer. The latter's voice could sometimes be heard in awed whispers for the more elaborate explanation of some detail of the tragedy. Afterward, he remained meek and silent in his corner, barely more than a shadow, like the proverbial husband of imperious beauty.

”Well,” said the old lady, after a long and thoughtful pause, ” I don't know, I'm sure, but it seems to me that if Rufus Coleman really cares for that girl, there isn't much use in trying to stop him from getting her.

He isn't that kind of a man.”

” For heaven's sake, will you stop a.s.suming that he does care for her ? ” demanded Nora, breathlessly.

”And I don't see,” continued the old lady, ”what you want to prevent him for, anyhow.”

CHAPTER XXV.

” I FEEL in this radiant atmosphere that there could be no such thing as war-men striving together in black and pa.s.sionate hatred.” The professor's words were for the benefit of his wife and daughter. ,He was viewing the sky-blue waters of the Gulf of Corinth with its background of mountains that in the suns.h.i.+ne were touched here and there with a copperish glare.

The train was slowly sweeping along the southern sh.o.r.e. ” It is strange to think of those men fighting up there in the north. And it is strange to think that we ourselves are but just returning from it.”

” I cannot begin to realise it yet,” said Mrs. Wain- wright, in a high voice.

” Quite so,” responded the professor, reflectively.

”I do not suppose any of us will realise it fully for some time. It is altogether too odd, too very odd.”

”To think of it!” cried Mrs. WainWright. ”To think of it! Supposing those dreadful Albanians or those awful men from the Greek mountains had caught us! Why, years from now I'll wake up in the night and think of it! ”

The professor mused. ” Strange that we cannot feel it strongly now. My logic tells me to be aghast that we ever got into such a place, but my nerves at present refuse to thrill. I am very much afraid that this singular apathy of ours has led us to be unjust to poor Coleman.”

Here Mrs. Wainwright objected. ” Poor Coleman!

I don't see why you call him poor Coleman.

” Well,” answered the professor, slowly, ” I am in doubt about our behaviour. It-”

” Oh,” cried the wife, gleefully,” in doubt about our behaviour! I'm in doubt about his behaviour.”

” So, then, you do have a doubt. of his behaviour?”

” Oh, no,” responded Mrs. Wainwright, hastily, ” not about its badness. What I meant to say was that in the face of his outrageous conduct with that- that woman, it is curious that you should worry about our behaviour. It surprises me, Harrison.”

The professor was wagging his head sadly. ” I don't know I don't know It seems hard to judge * * I hesitate to-”

Mrs. Wainwright treated this att.i.tude with disdain.

” It is not hard to judge,” she scoffed, ” and I fail to see why you have any reason for hesitation at all.

Here he brings this woman-- ”

The professor got angry. ”Nonsense! Nonsense!

I do not believe that he brought her. If I ever saw a spectacle of a woman bringing herself, it was then.

You keep chanting that thing like an outright parrot.”

”Well,” retorted Mrs. Wainwright, bridling, ”I suppose you imagine that you understand such things, Men usually think that, but I want to tell you that you seem to me utterly blind.”

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