She Buildeth Her House. Will Levington Comfort

TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

       CHARTER AND STOCK ARE CALLED TO THE PRIEST'S HOUSE IN THE NIGHT, AND THE WYNDAM WOMAN STAYS AT THE PALMS

       TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

       HAVING TO DO ESPECIALLY WITH THE MORNING OF THE ASCENSION, WHEN THE MONSTER, PELÉE , GIVES BIRTH TO DEATH

       TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

       THE SARAGOSSA ENCOUNTERS THE RAGING FIRE-MISTS FROM PELÉE EIGHT MILES AT SEA, BUT LIVES TO SEND A BOAT ASHORE

       TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

       PAULA AND CHARTER IN SEVERAL SETTINGS FEEL THE ENERGY OF THE GREAT GOOD THAT DRIVES THE WORLD

       TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

       PAULA AND CHARTER JOURNEY INTO THE WEST; ONE HEARS VOICES, BUT NOT THE WORDS OFTEN, FROM RAPTURE'S ROADWAY

       THE END

       About Will Levington Comfort

       Author of "She Buildeth Her House" and "Routledge Rides Alone"

       (Eight Editions)

       By WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

       ROUTLEDGE RIDES ALONE

       COLORED FRONTISPIECE BY MARTIN JUSTICE

FIRST CHAPTER

       Table of Contents

PAULA ENCOUNTERS THE REMARKABLE EYES OF HER FIRST GIANT, AND HEARKENS TO THE SECOND, THUNDERING AFAR-OFF

       Table of Contents

      Paula Linster was twenty-seven when two invading giants entered the country of her heart. On the same day, these hosts, each unconscious of the other, crossed opposite borders and verged toward the prepared citadel between them.

      Reifferscheid, though not one of the giants, found Paula a distraction in brown, when she entered his office before nine in the morning, during the fall of 1901. He edited the rather distinguished weekly book-page of The States, and had come to rely upon her for a paper or two in each issue. There had been rain in the night. The mellow October sunlight was strange with that same charm of maturity which adds a glow of attraction to motherhood. The wonderful autumn haze, which broods over our zone as the spirit of ripening grains and tinting fruits, just perceptibly shaded the vivid sky. A sentence Paula had heard somewhere in a play, "My God, how the sun does shine!" appealed to her as particularly fitting for New York on such a morning. Then in the streets, so lately flooded, the brilliant new-washed air was sweet to breathe.

      Paula had felt the advisability the year before of adding somewhat to her income. Inventory brought out the truth that not one of her talents had been specialized to the point of selling its product. She had the rare sense to distinguish, however, between a certain joyous inclination to write and a marked ability for producing literature; and to recognize her own sound and sharp appreciation of what was good in the stirring tide of books. Presenting herself to Reifferscheid, principally on account of an especial liking for the book-page of The States, she never forgot how the big man looked at her that first time over his spectacles, as if turning her pages with a sort of psychometric faculty. He found her possible and several months won her not a little distinction in the work.

      Reifferscheid was a fat, pondrous, heavy-spectacled devourer of work. He compelled her real admiration—"the American St. Beuve," she called him, because he was so tireless, and because he sniffed genius from afar. There was something unreservedly charming to her, in his sense of personal victory, upon discovering greatness in an unexpected source. Then he was so big, so common to look at; kind as only a bear of a man can be; so wise, so deep, and with such a big smoky factory of a brain, full of fascinating crypts. Subcutaneous laughter that rested her internally for weeks lingered about certain of the large man's sayings. Even in the auditing of her account, she felt his kindness.

      "Now here are some essays by Quentin Charter—a big man, a young man and a slow worker," he said. "Charter's first volume was a thunderer. We greeted it with a whoop two years ago. Did you see it?"

      "No," Paula replied. "I was too strong for literary trifles then."

      "Anyway, look out for Charter. He didn't start to appear until he was an adult. He's been everywhere, read everything and has a punch like a projectile. An effective chap, this Charter. He dropped in to see me a few weeks after my review. He confessed the critics had made him very glad. … 'I am doing a second book,' he confided to me. 'Down on my knees to it. Work-shop stripped of encomiums; no more dinner-parties or any of that fatness. Say, it's a queer thing about making a book. You never can tell whether it's to be a boy or a girl. … '"

      Paula smiled reservedly.

      "I asked him what his second book was to be about," Reifferscheid went on. "'Women,' said he. 'How novel!' said I. He grinned genially. 'Reifferscheid,' he declared, in his snappy way, 'women are interesting. They're doing the thinking nowadays. They're getting there. One of these mornings, man will wake up to the fact that he's got to be born again to get in a class with his wife. Man is mixed up with altogether too much of this down-town madness. Women don't want votes, public office, or first-hand dollars. They want men!' … I always remembered that little bit of stuff from Charter. He says the time will come when classy girls will get their heads together and evolve this ultimatum, which will be handed intact to adorers: 'No, boys, we can't marry you. We haven't any illusions about celibacy. It isn't nice nor attractive, but it's better than being yoked with hucksters and peddlers who come up-town at night—mental cripples in empty wagons. Go away and learn what life means, what it means to be men—what it means to us for you to be men! Learn how to live—and oh, boys, hurry back!'"

      "Splendid!" Paula exclaimed.

      "Oh, yes, Charter is a full deck and a joker. He's lived. He makes you feel him. His years are veritable campaigns. He has dangled in the vortices of human action and human passion—and seemed to come out whole! … " Reifferscheid chuckled at a memory. "'Women are interesting,' Charter finished in his dry fashion. 'I just got to them lately. I wish I could know them all.'"

      "I love the book already," Paula said. Reifferscheid laughed inwardly at the feminine way she held the volume in both hands, pressing it close.

      "It's the only book on my table this morning that I'd like to read," he added. "Therefore I give it to you. There's no fun in giving something you don't want. … Are you going to hear Bellingham to-night?"

      She was conscious of