"Well, when we step into that deepest, blackest shadow, right in front of our porch, I want you to reach up, and put your arm around me and kiss me on the mouth, just once. And when you get back to New York you can tell your girl I asked you to."
There broke from him a little involuntary exclamation. It might have been of pity, and it might have been of surprise. It had in it something of both, but nothing of mirth. And as they stepped into the depths of the soft black shadows he took off his smart straw sailor, which was so different from the sailors that the boys in our town wear. And there was in the gesture something of reverence.
Millie Whitcomb didn't like the story of the homely heroine, after all. She says that a steady diet of such literary fare would give her blue indigestion. Also she objects on the ground that no one got married—that is, the heroine didn't. And she says that a heroine who does not get married isn't a heroine at all. She thinks she prefers the pink-cheeked, goddess kind, in the end.
——
IN A MISSION GARDEN
(Santa Barbara)
By CLARENCE URMY
Stand here, and watch the wondrous birth of Dreams
From out the Gate of Silence. Time and Tide,
With fingers on their lips, forever bide
In large-eyed wonderment, where Thoughts and
Themes Of days long flown pass down the slumbrous streams
To ports of Poet-land and Song-land. Side
By side the many-colored Visions glide,
And leave a wake where Fancy glows and gleams.
And then the bells! One stands with low-bowed head
While list'ning to their silver tongues recite
The sweet tale of the Angelus—there slips
A white dove low across the tiling red—
And as we breathe a whispered, fond "Good night,"
A "Pax vobiscum" parts the Padre's lips.
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XXIII No. 5 NOVEMBER, 1910