A Touch of Sun, and Other Stories. Mary Hallock Foote

clattering around. This heat every summer costs us thousands of dollars in delays, from wear and tear and extra strain—tempers and nerves giving out, men getting frantic and jerking things. I believe it breeds a form of acute mania when it keeps on like this."

      "Yes, the point of view changes the instant the sun goes down," said Mrs. Thorne. "I am glad I did not send my letter. Will you let me read it to you, Henry?"

      "Not now; let us enjoy the peace of God while it lasts." He stretched himself on his back on the rattan lounge, and folded his hands on that part of his person which illustrated, geographically speaking, the great Continental Divide. The locked hands rose softly up and down. His wife fanned him in silence.

      He turned his head and looked at her; her tired eyes, the dragged lines about her mouth, disturbed his sense of rest. He took the fan from her and returned her attention vigorously. "Please don't!" she said with a little teased laugh. She rearranged the lock he had blown across her forehead. His larger help she needed, but he had seldom known how to pet her in little ways.

      "I think you ought to let me read it to you," she said. "There is nothing so difficult as telling the truth, even about one's self, and when it's another person"—

      "That's what I claim; she is the only one who can tell it."

      "This is a case of first aid to the injured," she sighed. "I may not be a surgeon, but I must do what I can for my son."

      Then there was silence; the valley grew dimmer, the sky nearer and more intense.

      "Yes, the night forgives the day," after a while she said; "it even forgets. And we forget what we were, and what we did, when we were young. What is the use of growing old if we can't learn to forgive?" she vaguely pleaded; and suddenly she began to weep.

      The rattle of a miner's cart broke in upon them; it stopped at the gate. Mr. Thorne half rose and looked out; a man was hurrying up the walk. He waved with his cane for him to stop where he was. Messengers at this hour were usually bearers of bad news, and he did not choose that his wife should know all the troubles of the mines.

      The two men conversed together at the gate; then Mr. Thorne returned to explain.

      "I must go over to the office a moment, and I may have to go to the power-house."

      "Is anybody hurt?"

      "Only a pump. Don't think of things, dear. Just keep cool while you can."

      "For pity's sake, there is a carriage!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed. "We are going to have a visitor. Fancy making calls after such a day as this!"

      Mr. Thorne hurried away with manlike promptitude in the face of a social obligation. The mistress stepped inside and gave an order to Ito.

      As she returned, a lady was coming up the walk. She was young and tall, and had a distant effect of great elegance. She held herself very erect, and moved with the rapid, swimming step peculiar to women who are accustomed to the eyes of critical assemblages. Her thin black dress was too elaborate for a country drive; it was a concession to the heat which yet permitted the wearing of a hat, a filmy creation supporting a pair of wings that started up from her beautiful head like white flames. But Mrs. Thorne chiefly observed the look of tense preparation in the face that met hers. She retreated a little from what she felt to be a crisis of some sort, and her heart beat hard with acute agitation.

      "Mrs. Thorne?" said the visitor. "Do I need to tell you who I am? Has any one forewarned you of such a person as Helen Benedet?"

      The two women clasped hands hurriedly. The worn eyes of the elder, strained by night-watchings, drooped under the young, dark ones, reinforced by their splendor of brows and lashes.

      "It was very sweet of you to come," she said in a lifeless voice.

      "Without an invitation! You did not expect me to be quite so sweet as that?"

      Mrs. Thorne did not reply to this challenge. "You are not alone?" she asked gently.

      "I am alone, dear Mrs. Thorne. I am everything I ought not to be. But you will not mind for an hour or two? It's a great deal to ask of you, this hot night, I know."

      "You must not think of going back to-night." Mrs. Thorne glanced at the hired carriage from town. "Did you come on purpose, this dreadful weather, my dear? I am very stupid, but I've only just come myself."

      "Oh, you are angelic! I heard at Colfax, as we were coming up, that you were at the mine. I came—by main strength. But I should have come somehow. Have you people staying with you? You look so very gay with your lights—you look like a whole community."

      "We have no lights here, you see; we are anything but gay. We were talking of you only just now," Mrs. Thorne added infelicitously.

      The other did not seem to hear her. She let her eyes rove down the lengths of empty piazza. The close-reefed awnings revealed the stars above the trees, dark and breezeless on the lawn. The matted rose-vines clung to the pillars motionless.

      "What a strange, dear place!" she murmured. "And there is no one here?"

      "No one at all. We are quite alone. We really must have you."

      "I will stay, then. It's perfectly fearful, all I have to say to you. I shall tire you to death."

      Ito, appearing, was ordered to send away the lady's carriage.

      "May he bring me a glass of water? Just water, please." The tall girl, in her long black dress, moved to and fro, making a pretense of the view to escape observation.

      "What is that sloping house that roars so? It sounds like a house of beasts. Oh, the stamps, of course! There goes one on the bare metal. Did anything break then?"

      "Oh, no," said Mrs. Thorne; "things do not break so easily as that in a stamp-mill. Only the rock gets broken."

      Ito returned with a tray of iced soda, and was spoken to aside by his mistress.

      "It's quite a farce," she said, "preparing beds for our friends in this weather. No one sleeps until after two, and then it is morning; and though we shut out the heat, it beats on the walls and burns up the air inside, and we wake more tired than ever."

      "Let us not think of sleep! I need all the night to talk in. I have to tell you impossible things."

      "Is Willy's father to be included in this talk?" Mrs. Thorne inquired; "because he is coming—he is there, at the gate."

      She rose uneasily. Her visitor rose, too, and together they watched the man's unconscious figure approaching. An electric lamp above the gate threw long shadows, like spokes of a wheel, across the grass. Mr. Thorne's face was invisible till he had reached the steps.

      "Henry," said his wife, "you do not see we have a visitor."

      He took off his hat, and perceiving a young lady, waved her a gallant and playful greeting, assuming her to be a neighbor. Miss Benedet stepped back without speaking.

      "God bless me!" said Thorne simply, when his wife had named their guest, and so left the matter, for Miss Benedet to acknowledge or deny their earlier meeting.

      Mrs. Thorne gave her little coughing laugh.

      "Well, you two!" she said with ghastly gayety. "Must I repeat, Henry, that this is"—

      "He is trying to think where he has seen me before," said Helen Benedet. There was a ring in her voice like that of the stamp-heads on the bare steel.

      "I am wondering if you remember where you saw me before," Thorne retorted. He did not like the young lady's presence there. He thought it extraordinary and rather brazen. And he liked still less to be drawn into a woman's parlance.

      Mrs. Thorne sat still, trembling. "Henry, tell her! Speak to her!"

      Miss Benedet turned from husband to wife. Her face was very pale. "Ah," she said, "you knew about me all the time! He has told you everything—and you called me 'my dear'! Is it easy for you to say such things?"

      "Never mind, never mind! What did you wish to say to me? What was it?"

      "Give