r's long and perfect world
training held him in a vise. His lips were closed upon his secret, and
she knew that they would be closed for evermore.

They remained, silently questioning each other, reading at last in each
other's speechlessness some comfort in this strange common knowledge,
for which, indeed, there were no human words, which must be forever
borne dumbly between them. Then slowly, with solemn tenderness, the
obligation of that unspoken knowledge came into Evelyn Strang's face.
She saw the youth standing there with grief older than the grief of the
world stabbing his heart, drowning his eyes. She laid a quiet hand on
his shoulder.

"I understand." With all the mother, all the woman in her, she tried to
say it clearly and calmly. "I understand; you need never fear me--and we
have the whole world of flowers to speak for us." She gazed pitifully
into the dark, storming eyes where for that one fleeting instant the
old look of "Gargoyle" had risen, regarding her, until forced back by
the trained intelligence Of "John Berber," which had always dominated,
and at last, she knew, had killed it. "We will make the flowers
speak--for us." Again she tried to speak lightly, comfortingly, but
something within the woman snapped shut like a door. Slowly she returned
to the garden seat. For a moment she faltered, holding convulsively to
it, then her eyes, blinded from within, closed.

Yet, later, when the mistress of Heartholm went back through the
autumnal garden to the room where were the books and treasures of John
Strang, she carried something in her hand. It was a lily bulb from which
she and Berber hoped to bring into being a new and lovely flower. She
took it into that room where for so many years the pictured eyes of her
husband had met hers in mute questioning, and stood there for a moment,
looking wistfully about her. Outside a light breeze sprang up, a single
dried leaf rustled against the window-pane. Smiling wistfully upon the
little flower-pot, Mrs. Strang set it carefully away in the dark.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Edwina
Stanton Babcock.

GHITZA[4]

#By# KONRAD BERCOVICI

From _The Dial_

That winter had been a very severe one in Roumania. The Danube froze
solid a week before Christmas and remained tight for five months. It was
as if the blue waters were suddenly turned into steel. From across the
river, from the Dobrudja, on sleds pulled by