Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1915 — HIS LOVE STORY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HIS LOVE STORY

By MARIE VAN VORST

VALTERS^ ca°r*/cwr fir the _ _

SYNOPSIS. " 18" 1 L« Comte de Sabron, captain of French cavalry takes to tils quarters to raise by hand a motherless Irish terrier pup, and names It Pitchouna He dines with the Marquise d’Escllrnac and meets Miss Julia Redmond; American heiress He Is ordered to Alerters but la not allowed to take servants or dogs. Mias Redmond takes care of Pltchoune, who, longing for his master, runs away from her. Tbs marquise plana to marry Julia to the Due de Tremont. Pltchoune follows Sabron to Alglera. dog and master meet, and Sabron ■eta permission to keep his dog with him. The Due de Tremont finds the American helrena capricious. Sabron, wounded In an engagement, falls into the dry bed of a river and Is watched over by Pltchoune. After a horrible night and day Pltchoune leaves him. Tremont takes Julia and the marquise to Algiers In his yacht but has doubts about Julia's Red Cross mission. After long search Julia rets trace of Babron’a whereabouts. Julia for the moment turns matchmaker In behalf of Tremont. Ham met Abou tells the Marquise where he thinks Sabron may be found. Tremont decides to go with Hammet Abou to find Sabron. Pltchoune finds a village, twelve hours Journey away, and somehow makes Fatou Ann! understand hla master's desperate plight. Sabron Is rescued by the village men but grows Weaker without proper care. CHAPTER XXIII. Two Love Stories. If It had not been for her absorbing thought of Sabron, Jujla would have raveled In the deaert and the new experiences. As it was, its charm and and the fact that he traveled over it helped her to endure the Interval. In the deep impenetrable silence she seemed to bear her future speak to her. She believed that it would either be a wonderfully happy one, or a hopelessly withered life. "Julia, I cannot ride any farther!” exclaimed the comtesse. She was an excellent horsewoman and had ridden all her life, but her riding of late had consisted of a carter in the Bols de Boulogne at noon, and it was sometimes hard to follow Julia’s tireless gallops toward an everdisappearing goal. "Forgiv" me,” said Miss Redmond, and brought her horse up to her friend’s side. It was the cool of the day, of the fourteenth day since Tremont had left Algiers and the seventh’ day of Julia’s excursion. A fresh wind blew from the west, lifting their veils from their helmets and bringing the fragrance of the mimosa Into whose scanty forest they had ridden. The sky paled toward sunset, and the evening star, second In glory only to the moon, hung over the west. Although both women knew perfectly well the reason for this excursion and Its importance, not one word had been spoken between them of Sabron and Tremont other than a natural interest and anxiety. They might have been two hospital nurses awaiting their patients. They halted their horses, looking over toward the western horixon and its mystery. “The star shines over their caravan,” mused Madame de la Maine (Julia had not thought Therese poetical), “as though to lead them home.”. ~ —- Madame de la Maine turned her face and Julia saw tears in her eyes. The Frenchwoman’s control was usually perfect, she treated most things with 1 mocking gayety. The bright softness of her eyes touched Julia. “Therese!” exclaimed the American girt. “It la only fourteen days!” Madame de la Maine laughed. There was a break In her voice. ‘‘Only fourteen days,” she repeated, “and any one of those days may mean death!” She threw back her head, touched her stallion, and flew away like light, and it was Julia whß first drew rein. "Therese! Therese! We cannot go any farther!" “Lady!” said Asrael. He drew his big black horse up beside them. "We must go back to the tents.” Madame de la Maine pointed with her whip toward the horizon. “It is cruel! It ever recedes!” • •••••• "Tell me, Julia, of Monsieur de Sabron,” asked Madame de la Maine abruptly. ‘There Is nothing to tell, Therese.” “You don’t trust me?” “Do you think that, really?” In the tent where Azrael served them their meal, under the ceiling of Turkish red with Its Arabic characters in clear white, Julia and Madame de la Maine sat while their coffee was served them by a Syrian servant. "A girl does not come into the Sahara and watch like a sentinel, does not suffer as you have suffered, ma chore, without there being something to tell ” “It Is true,” said Miss Redmond, “and would you be with me, Therese, if 1 did not trust you? And what do you want me to tell?” she added naively. » The comtesse laughed. ! “Voui etes charmante, Julia!” 1 T met Monsieur de Sabron," said Julia slowly, “not many months ago in Tarascon. I saw him several times, and then he went away” “And then?” urged Madame de la Maine eagerly. “He left hfs little dog. Pltchoune, with end Pltchoune ran after his master, ttfTffarseilles, flinging himself into the water, and was rescued by

the sailors. I wrote about it to Monsieur de Sabron, and he answered me from the desert, the night before he went Into battle.’’ “And that’s all?” urged Madame de la Maine. “That’s all,” said Mias Redmond. She drank her coffee. “You tell a love story very badly, ma chere.” “Is It a lote story?” “Have you come to Africa for charity? Voyons!” Julia was silent. A great reserve seemed to seize her heart,, to stifle her as the poverty of her love story struck her. She sat turning her cof-fee-spoon between her fingers, her eyes downcast. She had very little to tell. She might never have any more to tell. Yet this was her love story. But the presence of Sabron was so real, and she saw his eyes clearly looking upon her as she had seen them often; heard the sound' of his voice that meant but one thing—and the words of his letter came back to her. She remembered her letter to him, rescued from the field where he had fallen. She raised her eyes to the Comtesse de la Maine, and there was an appeal in them. The Frenchwoman leaned over and kissed Julia. She asked nothing more. She had not learned her lessons in discretion to no purpose. At night they sat out in the moonlight, white as day, and the radiance over the sands was like the snowflowers. Wrapped in their warm coverings, Julia and Therese de la Maine lay on the rugs before the door of their tent, and above their heads shone the stars so low that it seemed as though their hands could snatch them from the sky. At a little distance their servants sat around the dying fire, and there came to them the plaintive song of Azrael, as he led their singing: And who can give again the love of yesterday? . , Can a whirlwind replace the sand after it Is scattered? , . . What can heal the heart that Allah has smitten? Can the mirage form again when there are no eyes to see? “1 was married," said Madame de la Maine, “when I was sixteen.” Julia drew a little nearer and smiled to herself in the shadow. This would be a real love story. “I had just come out of the convent We lived in an old 'chateau, older than the history of your country, ma chere, and I had no dot Robert de Tremont and I used to play together in the allees of the park, on the terrace. When his mother brought him over when she called on my grandmother, he teased me horribly because the weeds grew between the

At Night They Sat Out in the Moonlight. stones of our terrace. He was very rude. “Throughout our childhood, until I was sixteen, we teased each other and fought and quarreled.” “This is not a love-affair, Therese," said Miss Redmond. “There are all kinds, ma chere, as there are all temperaments,” said Madame de la Maine. “At Assumption —that is our great feast, Julia — the Feast of Mary—it comes in August—at Assumption, Monsieur de la Maine came to talk with my grandmother. He was forty years old, and bald —Bob and I made fun of his few hairs, like the children in the Holy Bible.” Julia put out her hand and took the hand of Madame de la Maine gently. She was getting so far from a love affair. “I married Monsieur de la Maine in six weeks,” said Therese. “Oh,” breathed Miss Redmond, "horrible!” Madame de la Maine pressed Julia’s hand. "When it was decided between my grandmother and the comte, I escaped at night, after they thought I had gone

to be®, and 1 **nt flown to tho loww terrace wheie the weeds grow In plenty, and told Robert Somehow,’ I did not expect him to make fun, although we always joked about everything until this night. It waa after nine o’clock.” The comtesse swept one hand toward the desert ”A moon like this—only not like this —ma chere. There was never hut that moon to me for many years. “I thought at first that Boh would kill me —he grew so white and terrible. He seemed suddenly to have aged ten years. 1 will never forget his cry as it rang out In the night ‘You will marry that old man when we love each other?’ I had never known It until then. “We were only children, but he grew suddenly old. I knew It then,” said Madame de la Maine intensely, “I knew it then.” She waited for a long time. Over the face of the desert there seemed to be nothing but one veil of light The silence grew so intense, so deep; the Arabs had stopped singing, but the heart fairly echoed, and Julia grew meditative —before her eyes the caravan she waited for seemed to come out of the moonlit mist, rocking, rocking—the camels and the huddled figures of the riders, their shadows cast upon the Band. And now Tremont would be forever changed in her mind. A man who had suffered from his youth, a warm-heart-ed boy, defrauded of his early love. It seemed to her that he waa a charming figure to lead Sabron. “Therese,” she murmured, “won’t you tell me?” “They thought I had gone to bed,” said the Comtesse de la Maine, “and I went back to my room by a little staircase, seldom used, and I found myself alone, and I knew what life was and what it meant to be poor." “But,” interrupted Julia, horrified, “girls are not sold in the twentieth century.” “They are sometimes in France, my dear. Robert was only seventeen. His father laughed at him, threatened to send him to South America. We were victims.” “It was the harvest moon,” continued Madame de la Maine gently, “and it shone on us every night until my wedding day. Then the duke kept his threat and sent Robert out of France. He continued his studies in England and went into the army of Africa.” There was a silence again. “I did not see him until last year,” said Madame de la Maine, “after my husband died.” CHAPTER XXIV. The Meeting. Under the sun, under the starry nights Tremont, with his burden, journeyed toward the north. The halts were distasteful to him, and although he was forced to rest he would rather have been cursed with sleeplessness and have journeyed on and on. He rode his camel like a Bedouin; he grew brown like the Bedouins and under the hot breezes, swaying on his desert ship, he sank into dreamy, moody and melancholy reveries, like the wandering men of the Sahara, and felt himself part of the desolation, as they were. “What will be, will be!” Hammet Abou said to him a hundred times, and Tremont wondered: “Will Charles live to see Algiers?” Sabron journeyed in a litter carried between six mules, and they traveled slowly, slowly. Tremont rode by the sick man’s side day after day. Not once did the soldier for any length of time regain his reason. He would past from coma to delirium, and many times Tremont thought he had ceased to breathe. Slender, emaciated under hiß covers, Sabron lay like the image of a soldier in wax—a wounded man carried as a votive offering to the altars of desert warfare. (TO BE CONTINUED.)