Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 139: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Road He nodded his farewell and went. Gresh- am surveyed his daughter with wondering eyes. ‘‘T don’t understand all this, Katrine,” he said. “You are remarkably strange.” ‘‘No—merely womanlike,’”’ she laughed. “You dear old father, you never under- stood a woman in your life—never once!”’ CHAPTER XXV THE TRAP eee came sighing along the surface of the lake, and Uiko emphatically ad- dressed his thanks to High Heaven. He drew in his oar, yelled commandingly at Gugi, and began to haul at the sail. Katrine from her lounge among the cushions looked up. “If you run before it, you will have to row back against it,” she reminded the fisherman. ‘Remember that I wish to be home early—well before sunset.” “It is this way, Gospodinya,”’ said Uiko. “The midday breeze sets up the lake. An hour before sunset it sets down again. This is as invariable as the seasons, except in the very depths of Winter. We -may rely on it. She*nodded. ‘‘ Where do we go, then?” she inquired indifferently. Uiko turned toward the prow. “The Gospodinya Gessi suggested that we have never yet visited the Jeka arm,” he sug- gested. Lucia, who was dabbling her hand in the water, rose and stepped under the halyards which Gugi had already begun to eh in place, and came aft. “It looks interesting,’ she sid care- lessly. ‘These open expanses of water and reed-covered lagoons have a sameness. Now the Jeka? It isa regular fiord, they tell me, and picturesque.” Katrine smiled. ‘‘Where you will,” she said, ‘as long as I am back by five. Your father, too? He will be arriving then. You would wish to be home to meet him.”’ Lucia’s eyes were somberly inquiring. “You are better informed of my father’s movements than I myself, signorina,’”’ she said. ‘He arrives at five, does he? You are sure of it—how?”’ ‘“‘Signor Agnew arrives then. The con- struction train, therefore, arrives then. It follows that Signor Gessi arrives then. That is good reasoning, is it not?”’ 1085 “Yes,” said Lucia quickly. ‘I know that the Signor Intendente arrives again to-night. But he mentioned no hour.”’ 4 Nor” There was something in Katrine’s tone which seemed to whip her companion’s com- placence into irritation—something supe- rior, something condescending. The color showed duskily in Lucia’s cheek. “He is not a creature of hours and ap- pointments—Signor Agnew,”’ she said. ‘“‘ He drops in unexpectedly. He comes when he can—and is welcome.” “You must not spoil him, Signorina Gessi. You must not let him do with you as he likes.” The tone of pleasant patronage’ had not left her voice. She spoke as an elder might speak to a child—instructively, with a hint, indeed, of authority. And Lucia’s color deepened. She shot a keen glance at her companion—a look which was wrathful and incredulous and questioning. She leaned forward. “You speak of the Signor Intendente—as if you owned him!”’ she said. For a moment there was a silence. And then Katrine laughed—gaily, but still with a reserve of condescension. “In America we women own all the men,” she explained. ‘They have to do as they are told—if they want us tobe nice tothem.”’ ‘Then they are puppets—not men!”’ said her companion promptly. ‘The Signor Agnew is not a puppet.” Katrine nodded gmvely. ‘No, he is not a puppet, signorina. You are not the first to discover it.”’ ‘“‘And yet—he does as he is told? And you are nice to himp”’ ““Not always, my dear signorina. Not always.”’ Lucia looked at her reflectively. ‘‘ Does that answer the first part of my question or the second?” she asked. ‘‘Are you ever nice to him? And how nice? I do not understand what an American lady may or may not do—to win a man. We Italians draw our cavaliers to us. We do not plead. We command.” Katrine smiled enigmatically. ‘‘Signor Agnew is not casy to command,” she answered. ““All men can be commanded—but not when they know it is a command,”’ said Lucia. ‘Signor Agnew is no different from the rest.’’ CO CloOOLKS C©