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Show The Girl Who Came Beck , BY JACK WOODFORD Copyright W. N. U. Service THE STORY Influenced by loneliness, without with-out relatives, or real friends, tn Chicago, Lolita Forbes, young and pretty, yields to the importunities impor-tunities of Harvey Torrence, with whom she fancies herself in love She discovers his true character and leaves him, taking refuge with an acquaintance, Gertrude Watson. Lolita is accosted by the son of the wealthy owner of the apartments, Fred Watterson. ShP repulses his advances, but he insists in-sists on driving her to the store On the street Torrence is waiting. wait-ing. He puts the worst construc-'ion construc-'ion on Lolita's being with Watterson, Wat-terson, and the two men engage 'n a fistic battle in which Torrence Tor-rence is killed. Lolita spends night of misery in a police cell She informs her father, by wire, of her situation, but he answers that he "never wants to see hei face again." Next morning the Judge, at the instigation of a lawyer, a stranger to Lolita, dismisses dis-misses the case. The lawyer gives her $200 and an unsigned note informing her that college tuition has been paid for a year He refuses to give the name of her benefactor. She lakes up short elory writing. CHAPTER III Continued 6 "You're not fooling Die?' cut In Lo-I'uu. Lo-I'uu. so intrigued with the tliouslit o1 lieroniing a writer that she could sc;iri-e refrain from hugging the girl. "You really think that I have latent uhiiitj that 1 could ever " ".M.v dear girl, I know you could; mid then, too. so much depends upon one's determination to succeed. If you had that. In addition to what, uppar Hilly, si-mns to he u slight trace of the suhjci'tivc, teuiperamrnrr' attributes; of Hie writing type." "Nothing in nil the wide, wide world would please me so much," declared l.nlita enthusiastically. "Uh ! I'd tr awfully hard." "I know yon would," encouraged the other. "1 felt " Just then there was an Interruption "Pardon me,'' said a pleasant voice from the doorway, "for Intruding; hut 1 won't be a moment. 1 just want to get my list of new registrants, 1 left il upon the desk top." Be entered and reached for the list and turned to go, when the registrar's secretary stopped him. "Mr. Warrill, I want you to meet Miss Fiirrnr. Miss Farrar is thinking of taking up the short story. Miss Farrtir, this is Mr. Warrill, our Instructor In-structor of short story. He Is himself a writer of short stories, ns you probably prob-ably have noticed. If you read the in:tLraz:nes." I.olita stood up. A pair of deep brown eyes met hers. She felt her hand taken In a warm handclasp. She looked up al a grave, sympathetic, understanding face, looked, for a mo nient. above the face, at a neatly clipped head of dark hair decked with premature gray hairs. She heard the delightful voice saying reassuring things to her; hut she did not k low what the things were. Il was as though she had suddenly been struck by lightning and n numb. Uhe hardly knew what she had said, li-iw she had gotten downstairs and out into the rattle and hang o( the street She knew that she bad arranged to uporl for study In the sh rt-slory class; and. ns she walked meditative l.v toward the "I." station, she also knew one other thing, that she could handle undeislandltiRly. nl :east one siory theme; even if II were an old H eme. She co.ild wiiie n slory nivuii a gb'l who had necr bellned that such a thing existed, falling -imtllj In love al first sU'iil. CHAPTER IV 1 One al'icrnoon, hardly more than two n-onths lifter her enrollment, she a;ipioai hed the worn stone steps of Hih university building with Intrepid footsteps anil a bulky bundle of pa pei-s under her arm Her 'teart heat like mad as the elevator Jerked and sla:;gered toward the fourth Moor. In charge ol n dental student In a white coat who was helping to pay tils way Ihrouli school by running the elevator eleva-tor She walked toward the class room, through the school library smiling in at Miss Marlon. In the reg Isirar's office, as she passed il and gctiing a heartening smile In return wlih-li somewhat encouraged her; but hei courage left her Hi:ain as she en torn I the little room where the short siory ekiss. limited to thirty students, met. Most of the class was there, sit II itu around the long table waiting for Mr Warrill to come In II was glooinv and dull within the room, mul Lolita felt depressed as she took a seal al the long table. Somehow the hear' w. nt completely out ot her In all of the time that she Imd I n in the cless so far. Mr. Vm-rill h.- onlv sp"ken to tier eln-e after aekoouleds iou his introduction ro her. ami ,Jn the second invasion lie had merely n minded he. dial she had not turned in any kind ot written sse .,. i- em Tonight the ers were n,.i animatedly chattering as usual; every ! one S"oniod tired and di.il ' j 1 n:i:i gel to thinking ,,f ,,,r f ,,f j the on'y relative she had, that si.e j knew of, who still remained alive; remembered re-membered that she had practically no friends since the ghastly thing that had bappened to her. She longed to go home to Elgin for a night or so. hear her father's slow, grave, del tb erate voice, meet and talk to some ot the girls In the little town with the river running through IL But she eonld not go borne, ever; her father had said Just then Mr. Warrill walked In briskly. It was as though a breath of fresh, cool air had come into the room; as though the lights had suddenly started to dance. The entire class sat up. took on new life; there were smiles and cheery greetings greet-ings around the room. Mr. Warrill planked down a titneworn black brief case, brown at the edges where the leather was curling away from the seams. "Well, who's dead?" he remarked cheerily. A laugh went around the long table. "Nobody now," ventured one of the prettier girls, daringly. Mr. Warrill War-rill regarded her. with a smile which Lolita begrudged, since It had not been directed toward her. "That being the case," be continued gravely, "I suppose there's no real need for (he music from that ghastly shuttei there's enough Poe-like atmosphere at-mosphere in here, tonight, God knows, without it reminds me of the first sentence in 'The Fall of the House of Usher.'" Two boys rose and man aged to silence the shutter. Sudden ly Lolita felt Mr. Warrill's eyes upon her. "As I live," he began, "Miss Farrar Far-rar has at last favored us with a bit of narrative; quite n bit. Judging by the size of the parcel under her arm Since we've never read anything of hers, perhaps we'd better have a look Miss Farrar, please " Frightened almost to death. Lolita handed over the bundle of manuscript paper; she wished to heaven thai she had not brought it, hadn't written the thing at all. She would positively die in her chair if he should read it aloud. She watched In mute agony as he undid the string, shuffled the papers of manuscript, a look of amazement upon his face. "Thanks, tremendously. Miss Far rar," he said, with the slightest hu morous gleam in his deep brown eyes "for having broken one spell any how. At Inst a member of the class has succeeded in getting beyond twelve hundred words with a story This must he five thousand words at least; I was afraid It wasn't In any of you." As he talked, he glanced over rhe pages, reading snatches to himself here and there. Suddenly he leaned back In his chair and com menced reading from the ginning. Lolita squirmed and writhed, but as he rend she realized that it was after nil, not half bad She had poured her very heart's blood into It, trans lated the ngony of those hours In a cell, the brutal questioning of the po lice captain: the horror . of narvey dead nt her feet; the humorous tin morality of Ortrude, into a living piece of writing, so changed and so camouflaged (lint it would be impossible impos-sible for anyone reading It. or hearing it read, to Identify the thing with the story which appeared In the papers some time previous. She looked ar nind at the other members of the class to see how they were taking It. They sat for the most part, with blank, expressionless faces, with the exception ol the pert, rather pretty girl who had made the com plimenlary remark tn Mr Warrill when be had come in She was grin ning In a contemptuous sort of way Lolita hit bet tongue and twisted hei lingers undet the table The only ef feet, apparently, thai rhe story was having upon the class, was to bore all of them, except cue. tn the mint of annihilation, and to make thai one think tha' It was funny - funny of all things, those pages which M seemed to I.olita. must be almost red At Inst Mr. Warrill finished Hie story He laid the manuscript upon i he table. For a moment it was very quiet In the room. Lolita could feel her face burning. Mr. Warrill said, after a moment, a little Impatiently: "Well, what does the class think oi it?" The class began to express Itself. "It's a knockout I" contributed one youth. "It's a wow!" substantiated another. "The berries!" Insisted a thlrd. "Better than lots in the magazines," offered another; hut Loiita noticed that tlieoe were all hoys. Suddenly Mr. Warrill turned upoD Miss lJringle, the young lady wbo had complimented him. She was a dainty little thing, a post-graduate of Wellesley. She sometimes wrote dainty little Herges-heimerish Herges-heimerish short stories of about five hundred words, full of fragile tea cups and naive emotions. "Weil, if 1 may be pardoned for saying so," she prefaced, "I thjught that it was a little crude that is, I believe that perhaps it might have some commercial possibilities, but " "Oh! be yourself," reproved Mr. Warrill, cutting In. "It's far and away the best thing turned in yet; in fact it's the best thing ever turned In to me since I've been with Southwestern, South-western, in any class. It's alive; it's real. The characters In it are living, breathing human beings." "But the sentence structure and the style," objected another rather pretty feminine member of the class. j "Style be hanged 1" retorted Mr. Warrill; "style is secondary to the illusion of reality; and it has that in large chunks. I'll willingly trade style for convincingness anytime." Suddenly Sudden-ly Lolita, who dared not look up, felt his eyes upon her. "Miss Farrar, this Is the first thing turned In yet that I feel justified in advising submission to a magazine. Since it Is a confession story in the popular connotation of the word a first-person story, to put it more correctly, cor-rectly, I wish that you would send It to a magazine, and let me know the result." Several of the girls tittered ; even the boys looked Incredulous. "1 have an Idea," went on Mr. Warrill. War-rill. a little disconcerted by the titters, tit-ters, "that it will sell for a good price." Since he evidently was not joking the others stopped taking it ns a Joke. Throughout another hour of class Lolita Lo-lita was as oblivious to what was going go-ing on as if she were In another room. Was It really possible that she could write, and be paid for it . . . had she really won the approval of Mr. Warrill. or was he perhaps just 'kidding' 'kid-ding' her. She decided to remain after j the class was over nnd make sure, but then, she reflected, that would not do any particular good either, for the feminine members of the class always remained, and even some of the hoys; poor Mr. Warrill hnd a terrible time getting away from them. It suddenly occurred to her, however, that she had seen him late one afternoon going Into a little old fashioned Greek restaurant about a block from the school. Possibly Pos-sibly m always went there for supper after class, after he had gotten rid of the students, who adored 111 m. When class was over she went to the little restaurant nnd chose a table over In one corner. Sure enough, after what seemed like hours, Mr. Warrill came in. glanced about the room, saw her. ami came over nnd sat down. "Well yon certainly handed me a surprise tonight." he began "I didn't suspect flint I wns In you. that story. It was marvelous; it, stays. in one's mind. You'll sell It. beyond the shadow of a doubt ; nnd then your troubles will begin." "Troubles?" echoed Lolita. who had hoped that the end of troubles might I possibly he In sight. "Whatever on earth ?" "Young lady." he reproved, "don't try to fool an old band. I know bow yon came to write that story, you've lived most" of it ; Oh. I don't mean exactly ex-actly as it was written hut you've lived something mighty close to It. The fart that yon could do It shows that you have unquestioned talent and latent ability; but the question is. will you have the grit and patience to develop de-velop into a writer of purely imaginative imagina-tive tales; that is. will you he able to fabricate stories out of whole cloth now that you've gotten your own story off your chest." I "With your help I am positive that ' I can; and I'll try ever so hard. I'm ! studying every moment that I possibly can." ! He stopped to give hit order and ' then smiled across at her. ' ITO BE CONTINUED.) ' |