Naturally however he felt a new curiosity about each element. Number 4, for instance, sprang into life as a definite thing. He made a journey to Haddam and searched for beryl. He found the little mine still producing, and learned that beryllium was slowly finding its way into spark-plugs and aeroplanes, and that the race spends a hundred thousand dollars a year for the pleasure of giving beryl to girls.

From Haddam he carried one very beautiful light-green crystal up to Eglantine, with the intention of giving it to Cynthia. But Cynthia never got it. It went to a new girl, one Gratia Ferry, daughter of Asher, the harvester man, whose great factory lay just to the west of Chicago on the road to a village called Warrenville.

She was seventeen and peculiarly difficult to flirt with. How can one flirt with a pearl? She was so sensible, so serious, so lacking in humor that she simply did not know how to play. Exquisitely beautiful, she aroused only the tenderest respect. When he danced with her, his auburn hair vivid above her pale gold, he held her as gingerly as if she were a bit of living Sevres.

It is just as well that he did so, because Cynthia—well, Cynthia’s dramatic passion suddenly turned into a real one. Wise young daughters of New England manufacturers looked on with amusement and rather expected tragedy before the end of the year. After Christmas, though Gratia went home for the holidays, it somehow leaked out that the beryl she now appeared with, its pale elegance shining on her white neck above her green crepe de chine, was the gift of Marvin Mahan. They were astonished that her mother would let her accept such a thing from a man to whom she was not engaged. As a matter of fact her mother knew nothing about it.

Spring came on, and nobody suspected how far the passion for slaughter had burned in the German navy. Nobody looked into a beryl, as Rossetti’s poor Rose Mary did, and saw murder ahead. When May was white with bloom the Lusitania sailed, crowded with women and children, was torpedoed, and sank while the assassin looked on with mingled emotions.

The world received the news with unmingled emotion but not much motion. Asher Ferry was interviewed and said that the sinking of the Lusitania was undoubtedly a criminal act, but that it was precipitated by her own criminal carelessness, a remark for which Chase Mahan never forgave him. Marvin was impotently enraged. Jimmy apologized for Asher Ferry, and Marvin gave Jimmy credit for judicial balance. There was however no art to read Jimmy’s construction in 

 Prev. P 11/206 next