From the Car Behind

by Eleanor M. Ingram

It opened well, if the happiness of Elvira Paredes was a good augury.

"All the rest is from my father," Flavia said, in parting from her. "But take this from me, to wear or for a marriage portion, as you choose."

The gift was a sapphire ring slipped from Flavia's slim finger.

"It resembles the eyes of the señorita; may they always be as bright and clear," fervently returned Elvira, who was an Andalusian and therefore a poet.

"That cost some money, when I bought it," Mr. Rose practically observed, from his seat in the motor-car. "Tell her not to flash it in New York, alone, if she wants to keep it. You can put that into classic Spanish for me, my girl."

That was the beginning of an interlude whose placid monotony was tempered by much equally placid incident. The Americans liked the village, and the village rejoiced in the Americans, so that they came to know each other very well. More than once Flavia thought of the legend of Al-Mansor, and that if one of these days could be deemed happy enough to record by a pearl, the vase could be filled with the gem-chronicles, so much alike were the weeks.

For the white castle on the hill kept its visitors, and so it happened that the summer most crowded and busy of any Corrie ever had known, slipped drowsily by in drowsy Val de Rosas for the two most interested in him.

He never told Flavia what he was doing. The new Corrie Rose was more considerate than the self-centred thoughtlessness of youth had permitted the boy Corrie to be. He would have remembered her anxiety for his safety and dread of danger for him, of himself, but his silence was further impelled by Gerard, who had pointed out—in a few brief sentences that avoided Flavia's name—the responsibility she must feel in keeping such a secret from her father. But, because it was so difficult to write to his "Other Fellow" without telling her all, Corrie's letters came with greater intervals and were less in length.

"I am still touring with Gerard," he wrote to Flavia, in the last note of his that came to Val de Rosas. "Don't mind if my letters come slower, please; I am pretty busy. I guess you will understand what it means to me when I can say that I am doing some work for Gerard and that he calls it good. I wish it cost me more to do. I hope father is well; you didn't say, last time. Keep on writing often, you know, it's the next thing to seeing you."

He wrote that note the night after he broke a track record in California, wrote it on the chiffonier of the hotel bedroom while making ready to attend a motor club dinner at which he was to be chief guest in honor of the day's event. Four weeks later Flavia read it, under the flowering almond trees that surrounded the house so closely as to overhang the balcony on which she sat. Read it, then kissed the careless, boyish Corwin B. Rose that slanted crookedly across the foot of the page. Holding the letter, she sat quite still.