amburg.

Randall Clayton had been startled by Madame Raffoni's eager
disclosure as he approached the place of rendezvous. He had studied
the still handsome face of the disguised Leah Einstein when she told
him that the Fraeulein was really ill and most unhappy. He managed
to pick out from her dialect that the diva had been plunged in some
secret sorrow.

Quietly restraining himself, he watched the voluptuous form of
the Jewess mingle with the crowd of guests on the hotel terrace.
"That poor woman, a worn-out theater beauty, is without guile. What
can this mean?"

He had rightly judged the good-hearted Leah's concern, and he never
knew of the long hours of the discarded mistress' ministrations
to the "reigning beauty."

Timorous at heart, Leah Einstein's evil career had been only one
of petty wheedling craft, and an easy self-surrender.

Violence she both feared and abhorred, and now, in the wane of her
beauty, she was easily content with such crumbs of money profit as
could be picked up by an easy code of a plastic surface morality
which covered only her petty intrigues.

Loyal to Irma Gulyas, Randall Clayton dared not question the poor
mock duenna; in fact, her jargon vocabulary would have failed her,
but there had been no deceit in the sympathetic tears which clung
to Madame Raffoni's eyelids.

Seated on a half-burned spar, there where the roar of the restless
waves reached their ears, with her face veiled, the Magyar witch
awaited her all unsuspicious lover. The golden sunset faded now
far in the west, the piled up purple clouds were turning blacker,
and around them

"The mists arose, the waters swelled,"
"Gulls screamed, their flight recalling."

The woman's heart was racked with the deceit which had entrapped
a man she now madly loved.

The freshening wind was driving the black smoke of the steamers,
far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake,
and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in anticipation of
the coming storm.

An infinite tenderness seized upon Randall Clayton as he motioned
to Madame Raffoni to leave them, and then took that beloved head
to its shelter upon his breast.

His heart panted for the day when they could be all in all to
each other. He felt the clouding spell of some mysterious enmity
descending upon them, and clouding their love as he kissed the
white and trembling hands which had so nervously clasped his own.
For Irma Gluyas fear