Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

1086 Katrine laughed. ‘“Haven’t we changed places?”’ she asked. ‘“‘It was I who sug- gested that men must be kept in submission and you who denied it. Now you are all for our proper feminine authority—to me who never challenged it.” ‘Because I have learned to command,” said Lucia defiantly, “and you have not. To bear authority one’s soul must be in the matter. Have you a soul? You never let it look out of youreyes. Your blood is cold —with the cold of the North.” Katrine leaned back upon her cushions with an air of cheerful self-satisfaction. ‘““We are both of the North—Signor Agnew and I,” she said slowly. The breath came from between Lucia’s lips in a little gasp. Her hand quivered upon the gunwale. “Let me direct your attention to one simple fact in nature,’”’ she said, and her voice was rasping in its intensity. “Did you note Uiko’s reliance on the set of the wind— north in the heat of the day, south with the coolness and the sunset? That was because he knew that warmth seeks the cold, and cold the warmth. But cold turn to cold? Never, signorina, never!” @) water. Her tone was still pleasantly indifferent—and condescending. “Perhaps you have more experience of men than J,” she allowed. ‘But not, I think, of Signor Agnew.” “The instincts of a érue woman are not concerned with time,’’ argued the other hotly. “They come to conclusions un- erringly—where their—their interest is aroused.” “Instincts—and interests—must not be permitted to get out of hand,” said Katrine. *““Both may be—mistaken.” Lucia rose. Her eyes were dilated; she stood, looking down at Katrine as if she held herself a conqueror, scorning the vanquished. She laughed harshly, exultingly. “My instincts? I do not control them, signorina. I let them have their will! Whye Because I control the instincts of others! Because I command them—be- cause they seek me—me! Because they can not escape me. Because I am what I am. Because those who look upon me desire me. Because they—are men. And Signor Ag- new? He, asI said, is no puppet. He—is a Man!” KATRINE trailed her hand in the Adventure She stepped forward, holding herself erect. She passed back to her former place in the bows, offering no other word. Katrine still smiled—and no_ longer enigmatically. The leaven of jealousy worked well. What is the first sign that an autocrat begins to doubt his autocracy? Boasting. He is not sure of himself. And so keeps declaring that he zs sure, and reiterates it again and again. She turned her mind, at last, from medi- tation to the interest of her surroundings. Lucia still sat in the bows, but her pose of indifference had left her. She was looking about her eagerly—almost, indeed, with an air of expectation. The boat was running under the shadow of the great bluff which commands the narrow entrance of the Jeka arm of the lake. : Uiko hauled down the sail. “We do not need to penetrate far up this channel, Gos- podinya,” he said. “From here you see all that is to be seen.”’ Lucia turned toward him. ‘‘You mean that you do not intend getting out of the reach of the evening breeze,” she sneered. ‘You have no intention of having to use the oars again if you can help it.” “TI thought that the Gospodinya would like to land,” said the fisherman, unabashed. “This is the village of Jeka—on our right. I have a sister there.”” He looked sugges- tively and ingratiatingly at Katrine. She smiled. ‘I have no desire to land,” she said. “But you may moor us for half an hour while you lay your offerings on the shrine of domestic affection. We will eat our lunch while we await you.” ‘“‘Not under the eye of these uncivilized barbarians,” objected Lucia. ‘‘We shall be mobbed. Let us get higher up below the fort or castle or whatever grandiloquent name Esuli has given to his heap of ruins.” Uiko looked questioningly at Katrine. ‘““How far is it?”? she temporized. The fisherman shrugged his shoulders. ‘A couple of kilometers, signorina, and there is no breeze—not a vestige of one in this ravine. It will take us plenty of time. I could not guarantee our return by sunset.” Katrine looked up the channel. The white walls of Esuli’s habitation shone here and there between the patches of stunted oak and beech. A flag drooped lazily from the flagstaff which topped the spinnies. A hundred feet below, on the edge of the lake, was another building—a boathouse, ap- CO MICLOOOKS ©