Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1909 — HER REBEL HEART; [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HER REBEL HEART;

An Incident That Brought It Into Loving Submission. By ALEXANDRA DAGMAR. [Copyrighted, 1909, by Associated Literary Press.] Oh, I spoke once, and I grieved thee sore! I remember all that I said! —Jean Ingelow. “Oh, It’s you!” commented Reeda ungraciously. - She looked up from the basin of soapsuds on the dining room table. She was washing her great-grandmoth-er’s belleek—a task which she was averse to Intrusting to hands less careful than her own. Inwardly she was meditating the reprimand she would bestow upon Janet for permitting this particular visitor to enter unannounced. "You don’t appear overwhelmingly glad to see me!” returned Aubrey Bowden. ’ She sent him a swift glance—one of obvious annoyance. He was standing iq the doorway. Tall, athletic. In his leather coat, corduroy knickerbockers and high rubber boots, she was forced to admit that he made a gallant figure. But she dropped her eyes and went on with her task. Not so Aubrey Bowden. He kept his gaze fastened upon her—a gaze at once whimsical and adoring. Certainly she looked extremely pretty, her blue morning gown enveloped in a blue apron, her sleeves rolled up over the bewitching dimples in the elbows, a flicker of angry color showing through the fairness of her cheek. Bowden made a fresh conversational plunge. “I’m going down to the Kankakee marshes shooting," he said. “There are a lot of the fellows going—my cousin, Andrew, and some more. Reeda,” quizzically, as she still evinced no sign of Interest, “aren’t you going to wish me good sport? I came six blocks out of my way to tell you about it.” She found it hard to resist him when his voice had that husky note In it—

“GOODBY, DKA.K,” HE SAID BROKENLY. half teasing, half loving. But she hardened her heart and replied coldly: “Only this, Aubrey Bowden—that i don’t wish to know for the future where you go or what you do. After the outrageous way you acted Tuesday evening, going away and leaving mo glone for half an hour at the theater •while you flirted with that odious Bella Wier, I’ve decided that I do not wish you to call here any more!” The pale rose in her cheek had deepened to carnation. “Oh, I say, Reeda!” He laughed protestlngly and took a step forward. “You don’t mean that, you know! I was not gone more than ten minutes. I used to go to school with Bella Wier. And I hadn’t see her for more than a year.” “You may see her as often as you desire after this!” said Reeda significantly. There was no smile in the young fellow’s handsome eyes now. “Reeda,” he said quietly, ‘look at me!” He was beside her. She felt herself forced to obey that grave command. She lifted to his face her gray, black fringed eyes, filled with a sullenness foreign to them. “Say you don’t mean to break with me for such a trifle,” he pleaded. “Why, I love you, Reeda. You know that.” “I have nothing to reconsider." She never knew afterward how she managed to enunciate the cruel words. “I want you to go away and never come to see me again.” For one breathless moment they Btood looking into each other's eyes. And there was that in his face that dumbly reproached her. Before she could bring herself to make retraction he was striding to the door. “Goodby. dear,” he said brokenly. “I-I hope’’The sentence trailed off into Bllence, and he was gone. The girl stqod staring at the closed door. It looked like the door of fate Itself—shut fast in her face. She saw It through a gush of belated, futile tears. The day wore on—a dull, wretched, aimless day. She could settle to nothing. Every object brought some memory connected with the man she had sent out of her life. When she dressed for the evening she found herself selecting the gown

he beat liked and realized with a wretched pang that he would no more murmur praise of It—or of her. She hated the pretty rosy silk, with its ecru silken laces and coquettish little black velvet bows. So forlorn she felt, so lonely, so bereft, It was with slight surprise that, picking up the evening paper,-|ihe scanned a tragic headline. But as the full significance of what that ghastly line of type Indicated became plain to her she gave a cry—a faint, weak, desperate cry—and her mother, rushing to her, found her, face downward, on the floor, the paper clutched tightly in her hand. To bring her back to consciousness was the first thing to do—to find out what had shocked her, the second. And the paragraph in the paper, telling of the accidental discharge of a gun among a party of hunters bound for the Kankakee marshes revealed the latter. For the name of the man fatally wounded was given as that of Aubrey Bowden! The physician, bending over the girl as the fits of unconsciousness succeeded one another, shook his head gravely. “I am very much afraid”— he began. A queer, glad cry from Reeda startled them. She was sitting straight up, her arms extended. The man at the threshold sprang forward and caught her In his arms. “It was Andrew—poor Andrew!” he explained. “The reporter got the names mixed. I’ve a flesh wound from the explosion, nothing more. I hurried here. I feared you might learn of the accident. And, Reeda, darling, did you care, then, so much?” The terrible tension over, she gave way, sobbing convulsively. The doctor beckoned to her mother. They left the room. “There is nothing more for me to do, thank God," the old man said. Reeda put her arms around her lover's neck and clasped her hands tightly and held him as though she would never let him go. “Forgive me!” she entreated. “I was sorry while I was speaking—l was sorry when you went. All day long I knew that if you never came back I should want to die. Then when I saw the paper I thought that I was being punished and that Indeed you never would come back. Dearest, forgive me!” “When a man loves as I love you,” he said, “he has never anything to forgive. He can only keep on loving—always.”