zons vaster than I had ever known them before, and the light falling from this greater height of cloudless sky struck the ground with doubly blinding clarity, and seemed to spray out in all directions like falling water. A few stagnant puddles in the depressions of the land were all that remained of the long-forgotten rains. Of vegetation the most striking, and at the same time the most numerous, were the carnauba palms, for which Ceará is famous. Unfortunately, the drought was beginning to choke even this paragon of usefulness. Sometimes the only representative of plant life which survives the seccas is the joazeiro, a densegreen, haystack-shaped tree, the leaves of which are cut and fed to the cattle as a last resort.

Everywhere the talk was of rain, to the Cearense the most important phenomenon of nature. Even the women knew cloud possibilities and studied the horizon constantly for signs of rain. They ended their more forceful sentences not with "if God wishes," but with "se chover"—"if it rains." We had halted again, and I had at last fallen asleep despite the incessant rumpus of my fellow-passengers, when I was awakened by a heavy downpour. With daylight the domes and sugarloafs and heaps of granite hills through which the train picked its way stood forth ghost-like in a blue rainy-season air, with an appearance vastly different from that under the blazing sun. Heavy showers continued through the day, and as the last rain had fallen ten months before, joy was freely manifesting itself. Everywhere people were congratulating one another, showing perfect contentment whether forced to keep under shelter or wade about in the down

pours, talking of nothing but the rain, the sound of which on his roof is to the Cearense the sweetest of music. It was remarkable how nature, too, responded to the change. The whole vast territory, dry, brown, and shriveled up three days before, was already a sea of lush green. Leaves opened up overnight as they do only in a month or six weeks in the temperate zone, giving the effect of seeing midwinter followed by late spring in a single day, a jungle magic reminding one of the Hindu tricksters who seem to make plants grow from seed to bloom in an hour before your eyes. Rivers bone-dry on Thursday were considerable streams on Saturday, with natives wading like happy children in water where they had shuffled the day before in dry sand. No wonder these poor, ignorant people of the jungle lose heart when their world dries up, or become suddenly like another race when the clouds again come to their

rescue.

Joyful cries of "Eil-a chuva!" ("There 's the rain!") sounded all day long whenever a new shower burst upon us. Life at best is rigorous in this climate under the life-giving, but sometimes death-dealing, sun, and only the hardy or the helpless would have remained here to endure it. No wonder the Cearense who can by hook or crook do so becomes a lawyer without idealism or a shopkeeper without human pity.

84

Our last duties in Ceará were to buy the tickets and get the outfit on board. The Brazil arrived about noon, and we were down at the wharf by two, only to have our leisurely boatmen nearly cause us to miss our steamer and squat

here in the sand another ten days. The Brazil is one of the three smaller and older boats of the government line. The cabin-passenger list was made up of the usual conglomeration of every human color, nationality, social and moral standing, from priests to several of the most repulsive old Jewish prostitutes, from clean-cut young Englishmen to licentious, shifty-eyed Brazilian mulattoes. But the real sight was the steerage passengers on the three decks in the nose of the ship. Here men, women, and children, bound for the rubber-fields, were so packed to

gether that individual movement was impossible. Such a network of hammocks, above, across, under, and over one another, the bottom of one sleeper resting on the belly of his neighbor below, scantily clad women crisscrossing men who had discarded all but a single short garment, as one could not have believed possible filled all the space, disputing it with the animals and fowls the ship carried as food. Sheep and pigs wandered among the no less frankly natural passengers; six zebu bulls on their way to improve the native stock at the mouth of the

"A bit of Parisian civilization"

Amazon occupied stalls in the midst of the turmoil. One venturesome fellow had as a last resort hung his hammock from the roof above these animals, so that whenever one of them moved he was lifted, hammock and all. A broad light streak on the ocean ahead announced our approach to the mouth of the Amazon, the "river-sea," as the Brazilians sometimes call it, discoloring the deep-blue Atlantic as far as the eye could reach. Soon the water had turned a muddy brown, and we were beginning to see the smoke from the Pará power-house across the flat, featureless landscape. Monotonous, dense greenery soon surrounded us, impenetrable, flat, green forests

spreading from the very edge of the river on each hand. Everywhere the vast stream was dotted with sail-boats, their lateen sails dyed some prime color, blue, saffron, red, or faded pink. Then flat wooded islands, scattered all about, appeared, and finally an opening in the flat landscape disclosed the low city of Pará, still so far away as to be almost indistinguishable, and before we could steam up to it swift tropical darkness fell.

Pará is an exotic growth, a bit of Parisian civilization isolated in an enormous wilderness, which encroaches so constantly upon it that the European air of the center of town quickly disappears in grass-grown alleyways of swamp and jungle. The heavy rains cause this grass to grow with tropical luxuriance and rapidity, so that there are many wide streets laid out between unbroken rows of buildings which are nothing but deep, green lawns with a cow-path or two straggling along them. Densest jungle may be found a short stroll from the central praça, and wild Indians, living as they did centuries ago, are only a few hours distant. It is an unfinished city of pompous, gotrich-quick fronts and ragged rears, with only the old town on its knoll, and the few principal streets of the new town, paved in stone blocks. The rest is almost as nature left it, and while one may find almost anything in the little culture-importing center of the city that is to be had in the centers of civilization, a short walk brings one to isolated houses on stilts and uninhabited clearings through the jungle in which men driving carts drawn by one bull wade to their thighs, cutting and loading grass. Scarcely a rifle-shot from shops offering the latest Parisian creations one must depend even for

life on the strength and agility of primitive man.

Rubber, the second national industry of Brazil, is of course the life of Pará, which is the reason it had lost most of its old-time energy. Not only was the world's rubber market in a chaotic state on account of the war, but the Amazon was just beginning to feel seriously the competition of the planted rubber-fields of Ceylon, where, in contrast to the high prices of Amazonia, the cost of living is perhaps the lowest in the world. Warehouses that two years before could not hold the rubber that poured in upon them now had a few dozens of the big balls scattered about their huge floors, where they were being cut up-giving them a striking resemblance to dried meat to make sure the rubber-gatherer had not included a few stones to improve the weight, and packed in heavy boxes of native wood for export. All Amazonia, from the laborers who tap the trees to the speculators and exploiters and their long train of hangers-on, were feeling the change acutely.

I soon discovered that the end of my engagement with the Kinetophone was very much nearer than I had expected. After several communications to the man who held the theatrical monopoly of Manaos, we at last received a cable in code, which we deciphered as "Nous refusons toute proposition." Very Parisian, of course, and definite in any language. The fact was, according to every test we could give it by absent treatment, that Manaos was deader than Pará. The afternoon of April 21 I put on a "great double program,' so that nearly all my old film-friends came out upon the stage to do their stunts and give me a chance to bid them farewell. The next afternoon "Tut" and I went out and pulled down the show, and the red trunks disappeared forever from my sight as they were rowed out to the Ceará, now on her return voyage. Then "Tut" stepped into a rowboat and slipped away into the humid night toward the blazing port-holes reflected on the placid bosom of the broad river.

I

M

ISS Mullory made an impulsive movement to catch hold of her, but Joy was gone before she could touch her.

It was nearly dark in Julia's room. She was still awake, and reading by the light of a small electric lamp; but she flung her book aside as Joy reached the little circle of light.

"My dear! my dear!" she said, "has anything happened?"

"I don't think it can have happened," said Joy, slowly, "but you must tell me if it has. Is it true, Julia? Is it true about Owen?"

"What about Owen?" Julia asked steadily. There was a peculiar tone in Julia's voice which made Joy feel as if it might be true. It was the tone of a person who knows defense is quite vain.

Joy came close to the bed, but she did not try to touch Julia; she only looked at her. Her heart was in her eyes. There was nothing in it but pity -pity as few human beings ever know pity, a passion as selfless and as terrible as fire.

Joy could not repeat Nina's story. She kneeled down beside the bed, with her eyes fixed very steadily on Julia's.

"I expect it must be everything, she said "about the accident, and why it was n't an accident, and other women. Poor little Nina told me— poor little Nina, too!"

"Oh, don't be sorry for her!" said Julia, impatiently. "What's the use of wasting your time being sorry for girls like that?"

"Ah, but girls are n't like that, are they," interrupted Joy, "at least not first?"

Julia was silent for a moment; she wanted all Joy's pity, but she realized that there was too much of it. There was so much of it that she could n't have it all; there was even some of it left for Owen.

"Don't," she said sharply-“don't pity him! I can't bear it. I've been a fool myself long enough. From the very first I ought to have known; Nick told me, 'Owen always had a bad, weak

It made Julia wince.

"You ought n't," she said, "to have come into this thing. Who has told you anything about Owen, and what have they told you?"

under my feet I believed in him, and I thought, when I had to believe it, that I could pull things straight again. He did n't like all the things I liked, so I gave them up-having a real home and taking care of my babies. You