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Show I: llOVE and MARglH) LIFE II ; tx. the noted author I Idah HGlcne CSibgoia j I KARL SHEPARD'S LETTER. Womanlike, I was glad to have, the last word, for just as I had finished my .somewhat epigrammatic sontonce upon the world's complaisant ignoring of certain social sins as long as possible, possi-ble, my nurse came in and John made his farewells-During farewells-During our rather heated discussion JL ho had evidently forgotten all about 5 my letters, for they were strewn all i . over the bed. I picked up Shepurd'a ; later one, and read it. It said: "They tell me, dear Sick-a-bed Lady, ; that they have cut off your beautiful hair and I am waiting with great impatience im-patience to see how you will look in ; : the newest Greenwich village mode. I 5 , expect it is bobbed, isn't it? I think I'm going to like it, Katherine, for ; ' some way I always have pictured you ; in your least feminine attire, when I have Invoked your memory. I can see ! you in your riding costume, astride my - pet horse, who has never allowed an other woman on his back; I can see you as I looked into your face the day after you won the tennis singles; I can see that little upward curve of your lips as tbey break Into a smile aficr a long drive at golf; and I remember you vividly as you cut the water so : vigorously in swimming out and ;i around the raft. You wore never blown as you climbed up on the raft as were most women, but your breath came as easily as it did in your own drawing room. Dear Katherine, I can J , not ever think of you as a Sick-a bed Sg Lady. You are too full of the joy of f Jiving the great out-of-doors life. You don't mind my running on like this, do yon? Alice told me to write you oftn ,aid as soon as you were able you ou.d like to read my letters. As ; you them I want you to remem ber that my heart stood still and the atmosphere turned black the day I first heard of the accident! It came to me moBt poignantly that possibly I had lost my old friend, John Gordon, Gor-don, and my new friend, John Gordon's Gor-don's wife! I did not mean to write you this today, I just meant to tell you that I am so glad you are getting along so well. I have just met Alice and she has told me 1 think my joy has made me bubble a little. I see John almost every day, and sometimes I think he looks a little lonely. He must miss you more than ho tells me, for if your friends such as I find a little vacant place in the world when II you are gone, to him this earth must be an aching void In your absence. "As always, KARL." Reads the Letter Twice. I read the letter over twice. By happy circumstance John had missed this one. I knew that the letter would have made John desperately angry. (Yet I could not help but feel that John jhad brought this upon himself. When- ever he and I had been in company j he usually neglocted me lo such an ex-' ex-' tent that 1 am sure Karl Shepard's ! first feeling for mo was pity. John never pays any attention to mo at home or abroad except when that i attention is something that will redound re-dound to his own credit or is something some-thing he particularly wishes to do at that moment to satisfy his own mood. Not since the day that I was married mar-ried has John Gordon done one thing for me because 1 wanted him to do it unless it appealed to him personally. Yet I presume that most of our friends would say that he is a particularly indulgent in-dulgent husband. I have tho fmest motor, as handsome clothes, and as great an air of well-being as anyone in our set. I wonder if I am captious? I hardly think si) when 1 remember those wonderfully won-derfully rapturous hours we spent together to-gether before our marriage. "What an awful thing it will be for Helen it shel i finds, that Bobby is like this! She has, put tverythting on the cast of the die.. If Bobby's love falls her she will have, nothing upon which to lean. Which Is tho Happier? I wonder which is the happier of tho two women this ery minute, I said to myself, ltuih with her- three beautiful' children and money enough to take' care of them, educate them in any way she chooses, and freedom; or Helen,' whose little world must bo bound with-! in the confines of one man's lovo a man who pel force must be at times in places wlnre she can not go even in her thoiights. W'iii i-he be satisfied with the, love ho can give her? Voor Holon! I .am 1 afraid not! And then as I discussed j her in my own mind I suddenly leal-:zed leal-:zed that possibly she had written me1 something that would throw a light on the subject. "Whatever John may say," I said to myself, "until Helen proves herself something that I have never yet known her to be, I shall not only answer her letter, but I shall be her triend!" "You may pick up all the rest of the notes," I said to the nurse, "and I will answer them some other day. This one is from one of my oldest friends. You see it is very thick and I want to read it carefully." (To Be Continued) |