Adventure Magazine Cover — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

66 distrustful of his ever-interested inquiry, each time they met, about Gloria. Ben- nings did not know that Stockton, too, had daughters, loved them, endured exile for them—more than exile, a sort of martyrdom. Heddon, having got an insight into Mrs. Stockton, seeing that she was a kindly, motherly, gentlewoman, felt that she would be the best of any one whom he could now find for Gloria. And he had headed for the Kulicos to take the matter up with Stockton. PY} OXENHAM went out, having . _j} learned nothing to ease his mind. sus He sensed, without understanding, that Heddon had perversely tried to make him uneasy over what would happen to Gloria, who was a strange lonely girl and seemed very well to like him; and whom he liked, too. But the ghost of Shanghai Ann had a way of seeming to come to his elbow and call herself “wife.” The thought made him shudder. The very word “marriage” seemed mockery in the shadow of such a memory as gathered about her. Heddon, now alone, dipped his hands in and out of the hot water and shifted about in the irritation of a strong man made cripple. He swore with fury under his breath, stood up a time or two and peered into the little mirror that he used for shav- ing, looking with a sort of disgusted fas- cination at his unfamiliar features. “I could have fought him for a week,” he told himself, “and not been this badly jammed. But to finish him off! —— that woman!” The door opened quietly, half-way. ““May I come in?” Margaret asked in a subdued tone that nevertheless meant that she intended to come anyhow. Heddon looked toward her quickly and frowned steadily. She was changed, differ- ent. He was puzzled. Magic seemed indeed to have touched her—like Cin- derella’s godmother. She wore a dress, waist and skirt, of shimmering brocade, iridescent, with a peacock’s richness of color. Vaguely he remembered when old Bennings had bought it from a wrecker. She had found it, and with clever draping and the mysterious instinct for effectiveness that women have, had made herself a cos- tume in which to come to him. As she moved through the door, closing it gently behind her, he growled— Adventure “Now what do jou want?” e, She did not reply—ignored the words, th tone, the sullen glare. She came nearer, look- ing at him with an expression of pain and pity; and this expression made him angry. ‘You poor man,”’ she said softly. “Poor fool, you mean!” i Her beauty irritated him. It was beauty entrancingly soft—softened by the yellowish ray of the lantern that gently rocked from a beam. She knew she was beautiful. She had, somehow, twisted that precious cloth about her to show how’ beautiful she could be, as if she knew that in her beauty there was punishment for him and a woman’s revenge for her. That exasperated him. He wanted to deny her beauty, even to him- self. He stared in critical antagonism, trying to sneer, but his swollen lips were stiff. He could do nothing but glower. as In these rough quarters where there were no furnishings but board bunks, age- darkened sea-chest, stanchions like denuded saplings rooted in a desert, on which were hung odds and ends of clothing, and a table of sawed planks, her presence had the sharply angled contrast of a _ bright silhouette. : gts “TI want to talk with you about some things,” she said and sat’ down carefully on the bench by the table. . He wondered irritably if she knew that where she sat brought the light aslant her face so that when she glanced down at pieces of old Wateman’s shell-work on the table, her lighted profile was turned to him. He looked determinedly for flaws. He tried to make himself the more angry with the thought that such beauty was injustice, should be scorned, was nothing but the preposterous accident of skin stretched over a bony skull—that age would eat her up as acid does a pearl, and serve her right. The very absorption of criticism defeated its wilful intention; he knew it, and angrily— Well, talk then!” -- ° “You won’t let me thank you,” she said in the same subdued tone in which the trace of a question lingered as she glanced toward him, mildly. In half-confused obstinacy he reflected: Artful that tone; calculating that half- turned pose of the head, and the serious sympathetic look in her blue eyes. He knew her, knew her kind, knew their art, despised it—yet knew that he didn’t, for COMmMICOOCKS. (©