The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

"That floating palace ought to stir up some breeze." Tisdale crumpled the invitation again and dropped it deliberately in the waste basket. "And to-morrow I shall be shut up on my eastbound train." He looked at his watch; there was still half an hour to spare before the time of sailing. "After all, why not?"

A little later, when he had hurried into white flannels as expeditiously as possible with his disabled hand, the suggestion crept to his inner consciousness that he might find Mrs. Weatherbee aboard the Aquila. "Well, why not?" he asked himself again. "Why not?" and picked up his hat.

So he came to Pier Number Three and, looking down the gangway as he crossed, saw her standing in the little group awaiting him on the after deck. Morganstein spoke to him and introduced him to the ladies. He did not avoid her look and, under his appraising eyes, he saw the color begin to play in her face. Then her glance fell to his bandaged hand, and an inquiry rushed to her lips. But she checked the words in time and drew slowly aloof to a seat near the rail.

Tisdale took a place near the reclining chair of his host. When she ventured to give him a swift side-glance, his mouth set austerely. But the space between them became electrical. It was as though wireless messages passed continually between them.

"Look back. See how often I tried to tell you! My courage failed. Believe in me. I am not the monster you thought."

And always the one response: "The facts are all against you."

Duwamish Head had dropped from sight; Magnolia Bluff fell far astern, and the Aquila steamed out into the long, broad reach of Puget Sound; but though the tide had turned, there was still no wind. The late sun touched the glassy swells with the changing effect of a prism. The prow of the craft shattered this mirror, and her wake stretched in a ragged and widening crack. But under the awnings Frederic Morganstein's guests found it delightfully cool. Only Jimmie Daniels, huddled on a stool in the glare, outside the lowered curtain that cut him off from the breeze created by the motion of the yacht, felt uncomfortably warm.

The representative of the Press had arrived on board in time to see Tisdale come down the pier and had discreetly availed himself of the secluded place that the financier had previously put to his disposal. He had heard it told at the newspaper office that Tisdale, whose golden statements were to furnish his little scoop, Hollis Tisdale of Alaska and the Geographical Survey, who knew more about the coal situation than any other man, was also the most silent, baffling sphinx on record when it came to an interview.

At the moment the Aquila came into the open, the Japanese boy placed a bowl of punch, with, pleasant clinking of ice, on the wicker table before Mrs. Feversham, who began to serve it. Like Elizabeth's, the emblems on her nautical white costume were embroidered in scarlet, and a red silk handkerchief was knotted loosely on her full, boyish chest. She was not less striking, and indeed she believed this meeting on the deck of the yacht, where formalities were quickly abridged, would appeal to the out-of-doors man and pave the way to a closer acquaintance in Washington. But Tisdale's glance involuntarily moved beyond to the woman seated by the rail. Her head was turned so that he caught the finely chiseled profile, the outward sweep of black lashes, the adorable curve of the oval chin to meet the throat. She too wore the conventional sailor suit, but without color, and this effect of purity, the inscrutable delicacy of her, seemed to set her apart from these dark, materialistic sisters as though she had strayed like a lost vestal into the wrong atmosphere. His brows relaxed. For a moment the censor that had come to hold dominion in his heart was off guard. He felt the magnetism of her personality drawing him once more; he desired to cross the deck to her, drop a word into those deep places he had discovered, and see her emotions stir and overflow. Then suddenly the enthusiasm, for which during that drive through the mountains he had learned to watch, broke in her face. "Look!" she exclaimed softly. "See Rainier!"

Every one responded, but Tisdale started from his chair, and went over and stood beside her. There, southward, through golden haze, with the dark and wooded bluffs of Vashon Island flanking the deep foreground of opal sea, the dome lifted like a phantom peak. "It doesn't seem to belong to our world," she said, and her voice held its soft minor note, "but a vision of some higher, better country."