Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

622 with smoke and her ears with detailed bits of philosophic comment on the day’s do- ings. The only living thing she had ever possessed had been the kitten she had res- cued and—lost. For ,her there had been no direct call to God or the devil, and be- yond a certain glib sharpness in seizing _ some conditions as they presented them- selves, Julie, although blossoming into phys- ical womanhood, was mentally a child. She had been one of the city’s crowding self- centered millions, and she had been totally unaware of. her isolated loneliness and ig- norance. Now she was still alone, but the need of initiative was more apparent. She sought some guiding light, some objective and wondered uncertainly which path to choose. Should she go back and take up her old life or should she go on and try to take advantage of unusual circumstances? Should she drift with. the tide or should - she row? All of us, at some time or another, tread a dark road, often alone. There may be . shadows; silent fantoms moving beside us, but they know us not, nor we they. They, too, are stumbling onward in loneliness of ‘inarticulate spirit. Presently the road curves and around the bend we see a dis- tant light; sometimes of love, sometimes of hope. We press onward, grow sure of foot, we draw near. We revel in effulgence and still progressing—halt. Beyond the light above, the road vanishes into darkness. Is it the end? Are there other lamps. Who knows? Only the brave, seeking truth. Onward they go from light to dark. And soon there is no more night. The way- farer steps into the enduring, all-pervading light of—faith. Julie had traveled many miles, yet she had not yet set out with deliberate purpose on life’s journey. She was, so to speak, all dressed up, ready, but she had nowhere to go. She had had a lesson, but it had only served to sharpen her wits. She was still willing to follow the will-o’-the-wisp of un- thought-out, unweighed desires. Artie Falwell, sneak-prowler of many cities, had stalked Julie for—what? Was it her attractiveness, her distinguishing, per- sonal and unique allure over terfti ten thousand of her sisters? Was it some men- ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. tal or spiritual difference, some quality rare in other girls that had attracted Artie to the scent of plunder. No, it was just Jule’s youth, her clearness of skin, her lack of ex- perience, and—her saleability. This had tempted Artie to development of oppor- tunity. On the checkered board of his game of low cunning in the chain of events, Falwell had played the part of knight sinister. His oblique moves had been oddly fraught with the power of surprising disturbance, and it was during one of his sudden, unpremedi- tated jumps that he landed plump isto Julie’s daily round of small toils and pleas- ures. For a few hours after the meeting at Fourteenth Street L, the girl had been a willing pawn. But in the game of life as well as the squared arena where kings and queens, rooks, bishops, and knights meet in mimic conflict, the often unconsi pawn is the deus ex machind of fateful destiny. The circumstance that Julie’s patient Ernest had stood staring on the day she had. met Artie, and dfterward followed her to the Mog had but added a tintillating flip to that part of the evening. After Leila had made her fruitless attempt to warn the girl, Julie never saw or spoke to the flouted young man who had watched and waited while a stranger had walked off with his girl, and when Julie became ‘Mrs. Falwell-she had not the vaguest sus- picion that Artie’s procurement of her mar- riage-license was but the growth of danger threatened by the combined efforts of Leila and Ernest. After he had done what was urged upon him by Leila that honest young man had decided consistently with his ways of look- ing at things, that a girl so prompt and easily moved to risque dalliance as Julie, Should never have been considered as a prospective wife for himself, and he was well Tid of her. So he washed his hands of Julie and her affairs, and set about reconstructing his conception of female constancy and loy- alty. He had gone out of his way.to save the girl, but the sting of having been so promptly discarded still remained. Un- substantiated, vague dreams of the cozy little apartment, in the Bronx ox en the ConniclooOoks.com