Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 13, 1920 — page 144: what you’re looking at

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

422 humanity, and long reaches of chaotic splendor; the elite of fashion thronged the pavements; pictures, flowers, bon-bons, porcelains gleamed through the plate-glass of the display cases; but so far as Rosalie was concerned the taxi might have been speeding across the desert. Blind to the hurrying crowds, ob- livious of the shops, she stared straight ahead, repeating to the stolid back of the chauffeur the vow she had made to the locked door—the vow now elaborated by the restriction: ‘“‘ I won’t even think it, or dream it!” Aroused from her abstraction by a sud- den jolt and the stopping of the cab in a tangle of traffic she straightened up, and glanced listlessly out at the street. It was twilight, and as she looked down the gray, seething vista myriads upon myriads of lights flashed into beauty. Above the low- est stratum of street lights the restless thea- ter announcements and café signs flashed intermittently, or zigzagged across gay facades, or crept coyly into glory, then van- ished, only to reappear the next moment; while over the roofs, mingling with the dimmed stars, animated. creatures outlined in white fire performed feats of wonder against the sky. A girl of golden light with streaming bright hair swung out on diamond ropes higher than the Great Dip- per; a company of lineal gnomes drilled and presented arms to Orion; a kitten big- ger than the Little Bear teased a spool of endless thread. Distracted from her brooding for a mo- ment Rosalie leaned forward and watched one great electric display after another flame in the galaxy above Broadway. As she looked a sign high on a building down the street flashed and coruscated in uneasy brilliancy, catching her attention from the more uniform scintillations. Letter by huge letter it blazed its message down the street into her rounding eyes; a gigantic T smol- dered, reddened, flickered, then shone in steady radiance; an equally heroic I fol- lowed the T; there was a moment’s pause, then an M added itself to the beaming pair. 7 ‘ Tim!” gasped the girl in the taxi, bury- ing her face in her hands. “Tim!” He lustrous brocades,- ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. said I would see his name written across the dark in letters of fire—and there it is!” Cautiously she peeped between her fin- gers; but the flashes of blue lightning that had followed the appearance of the M had ceased, and the name Tim shone clear and fixed. “T’m going crazy!” shuddered Rosalie, cowering in the cab. “ Or Tim has hypno- tized me! Maybe his thought waves make that impression, and that name isn’t there at all! This is mental persecution! I’m glad I’m_ going on—New York isn’t far enough—TI suppose I’ll be safe in Washing- ton.” Frantically she tapped on the pane of the taxi. ‘Driver! Hurry to the Pennsylvania Station!” she implored. ‘“‘ I must catch that train for Washington! Hurry!” Now, if the cynical old misogynist pre- supposed in an earlier paragraph had been an unseen passenger in the taxi it is prob- able he would have chuckled disagreeably, and dashed into the tall building to whis- per a few disturbing words in the ear of a busy man at a desk. But if you and I had been with him we should have winked at his wisdom, and assured each other that with love there can be no such thing as chance. ‘You seem pale, Rosie. Are you ill?’’ Rosalie’s aunt looked anxiously at her pretty niece, who stood still on the corner, and stared across Pennsylvania Avenue. ‘Do you see what IT see, Aunt Ellen?” inquired Rosalie breathlessly. ‘Where? Oh, that building where all the bunting is waving! Yes, of course, I see it!” > ‘Do you—do you see any letters there, Aunt Ellen, right between those flags?” ‘“ My sight is not so good as it once was, Rosalie, and it is growing dark, but I can still distinguish an electric sign of that size,”’ replied the aunt with some asperity. ‘“ Yes, I see it quite well—T-I-M. Isn’t that odd? I wonder what it means! Neither of our Presidential candidates is named Tim—nor neither of the Vice-Presidents. Washington is so full of politics. Perhaps that’s the (EAM Loxexe) cS (E@)