"The Debatable Land": A Novel

by Arthur Colton

Helen lay on her back, with her hands under her head and knees in the air. Mrs. Mavering's book was thrown aside.

"Do you really want to go?"

"Yes."

"I don't know but I do. What will your mother say?"

"'Why, Helen!'"

"And Mr. Bourn?"

"Oh, he'll sputter some. I don't mind."

Windless lay in the sunlight, genial, wise, sincere, with the girth of high living and the forehead of high thought. One did not have to specify in the presence of Windless. Everything was understood. Yet Mrs. Mavering asked. "I suppose it isn't Morgan Map at all?"

Helen answered "No," promptly enough, and fell into sombre silence. The eastern slope of Windless darkened in the shadow of the lessening afternoon, while the western only seemed to glimmer the more genially; there was that advantage in being large. "You see," she went on, "it suits Morgan, fighting and ordering and doing things. Nothing ever hurts him. I don't see why I should bother about him when he's having a good time."