Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

KING'S “ Not unless you want them to turn out the guard for you at the gate—and that would be about as far as you’d get. We'll have to figure some way to get you back in again as a private.” “Here,” Tremanner suggested. “ I’ve got an idea. Let Bob sit tight here the rest of the day while I run over to a friend of mine that’s supply officer in the Royal Kildares and borrow a cap and service great coat. I can furnish a cap badge for him. I'll start after breakfast.” Tuesday’s protests that he would take his medicine were overruled. “You stay here,” Tremanner urged Har- mon. ‘ No need for two of us to go, and you'll find this more amusing. There are books in the library for you when Aunt Maud goes to church this afternoon and the studio is unlocked. Make yourselves com- fortable. I'll try to be back before dark if - they'll let me get away—this chap is an old friend and he’ll want to celebrate. Otherwise I’ll be outside the barrack gate to-night.” “ Quite right,’”” Aunt Maud agreed, when the matter was explained. ‘‘ We must not let the guard room swallow our friend Tues- day. Meanwhile, I’ll take him off to chapel this afternoon for the good of his soul.” And Tuesday went meekly. Aunt Maud was that kind of a woman. Left to himself, Harmon wandered around the house, missing Denise, who had disappeared after lunch, and he missed her presence as keenly as if he had known her a year instead of a day. He told himself it was because he was unused to women, and because it happened she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen or met— and let it go at that in the way of men not being a keen self-analyst, nor aware of the swift magic of red-gold, gleaming hair and soft, fuil lips. Harmon’s experience had been with the Dorine kind—and that but lightly. He tossed aside the morocco-bound vol- ume of Bulwer-Lytton—Aunt Maud had not progressed beyond that literary mile- stone—and sauntered out into the garden. The studio door yawned invitingly. He stepped inside and looked around. It held a kind of cathedral dimness, at ( KHAKI. 543 that late hour in the afternoon, the faint light through the skylights just revealing the disorder of piled canvases, half finished, the sheen of colored fabrics thrown across chairbacks and couch, the draped easel in the center, and. the dais beyond. Harmon felt that sense of peace and quiet and aloofness from the world that one finds in the silent corridors of a museum at dusk. He looked around curiously, turned toward a long window and discovered Denise. She was seated in a tall, tapestried chair, as she had sat the night before in the drawing-room, chin resting in her cupped palm, gazing dreamily out the window. She turned to him and smiled. “I’m intruding—” he began, apologeti- cally. “No.” She shook her head vigorously. “Tt is right I should be interrupted. Some- times I sit too long alone to think.” “Perhaps,” he said tritely, “ they’re pleasant thoughts. In that case—” “‘ They are of no importance,” she inter- rupted, and stood up. .‘ The thoughts of a girl are foolish sometimes. Of no inter- est to a man—a soldier, monsieur, who thinks always of great things—of the brav- ery, of the glory to defend the right—” “Well, we’re not all as noble as that,” Harmon laughed. ‘“ Mostly we’re pretty ordinary clay. You don’t suppose the en- emy soldiers are like that?” “IT do not know. I was in a convent far away when they came.” “And you really think,” he pursued, “that men are a superior kind of knight errants or something? I didn’t think any- body retained—”’ “Tt is as I have read, monsieur,” she con- fessed humbly, “and thought. You must think me stupid.” = She brushed lightly by him and removed the covering from the easel. “Look. It is what Here-ward painted last week. It is of me.” She stepped back to view it better, naive- ly proud of this work of a friend, without a trace of self-consciousness in viewing this reflection of her loveliness on canvas. Harmon nodded silently. Whatever Tremanner’s ability might be, here, at least, he had worked divinely. He had caught Gomichbooks (eo)