Page 68 - 1918 Hartridge

such memoi'ies as they bring back,” she said a bit wistfully, have some.”
u
1 must
There was hut one thing to do. Payton, with reckless disregard for cost, bought the whole mass. On the way home the subject of joining studios was pressed by Payton and impatiently spurned by
Clarisse. The delicate blossoms seemed to hare woven a spell about her. She could think or talk of nothing else, and since she would give no definite reason for her delight, Payton laid it to her artistic sense.
Alone, later, Clarisse arranged the sprays in an old blue vase. She walked around them, gave a touch here and there, buried her face in the blossoms, and suddenly—began to cry.
Xext morning, when Payton entered after much vain knocking and calling, the room was eni\])ty, and though he searched long and hard, there was not the tiniest bit of a note. There followed four end­ less days for that des\])airing young man, days in which he neglected
his work, ate nothing at all or else the most indigestible messes, was given to sudden fits of irritation and many long walks.
He returned from one of these late rambles on the fourth evening, and walked lifelessly toward the stoop. He hated to go back—to what? And yet what satisfaction was there in walking when the only companions were unpleasant thoughts? He dragged up the steps and 2)iit his hand on the door-knob. And then, as if directly aimed at him, something, from above, struck him on the shoulder and, glancing off, fell with dry crackling on the stone floor.
^Vith unconscious accuracy, he looked up—to see a slim hand withdrawing into the window s\])ace directly above the door. That hand—could he mistake it anywhere ? And even then, that hand in that
window meant but one thing. Clarisse had come back! He looked down. The withered apple blossoms lay at his feet.
^Vith alarming haste he dashed into the halfwa^^ narrowly escaped running down the plum\]) lady who wrote sonnets, and on up the stairs. The lady thus saved stood still a moment, then turned back.
‘‘An inspiration,” she cried. “ ‘Pove’s Impetuosity. 5 '))’
Omitting even the ceremony of a knock, Payton flung himself boyishly into Clarisse’s room. She still held the empty blue vase in her
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