In heaven, where the tall golden-haired angels sit and talk On marble benches. There are no gutters in that place, no streets of noise and stenches, But hedge on hedge and bed on bed of flowers, And dreamy and eternal sun-splashed noontide hours. Watching the splendid interplay of color That ne'er grows duller Pulsing along the furled and snowy pinions. Of your kind hosts in those remote dominions, There, if you sat And thought to leap your glance From countenance to glorious countenance, Skipping each stole and aureole, I 'll wager you 'Mid many golden sandals would glimpse a dingy shoe, And through that same Gold wealth of nimbus-flame Mark down a certain battered derby hat! IT. Romance By L. FRANK TOOKER Author of "Under Rocking Skies" Illustrations by Gerald Leake T was very hot in Camagüey that afternoon, and very still. High in the burnished-silver sky a vulture wheeled slowly on motionless wings, the only living creature that Caxton's wandering gaze encountered. A lingering touch of the nervous restlessness that had forced him to seek a long rest in the tropics had driven him forth from his hotel while all Camagüey was hushed in the siesta, and already regretting his abnormal activity, he had stopped for a moment in the shadowed recess of an orange-hued wall. Above the top of the opposite wall of the narrow street he caught the sound of the heaving surge of wind-blown boughs; but there was no coolness in the sound or in the actual pressure of the trade-wind on his flushed face. He gasped in the hot rush of the scented air; for a moment he felt the light-headed and incorporeal sensation of one suddenly awakened from fevered sleep. The feeling passed, and presently he became aware of a new sensation: he felt that he was not alone. Turning slowly, his gaze met the fixed look of a woman's eyes. A narrow, grated window set in the shadowed wall brought its sill slightly above the level of his head, and above the sill, a little back from the opening, her eyes gazed straight into his. The black mantilla that dropped to the edge of her clearly marked brows was held in such fashion that only the eyes, with a narrow setting of face, and the slender hand that held the mantilla in place were to be seen. The rimming face and the hand were ivory-hued, the fingers delicate, shapely, and untouched by marks of toil. They disclosed, Caxton was pleased to fancy, the presence of gentle breeding; but the eyes were beautiful and held the potentiality of supreme devotion. He told himself that they could be no other than the eyes of a young girl as yet untouched by love or great joy or sorrow, so starry pure was their gaze, so fearlessly childlike. A certain susceptibility of his nature to romantic influences that had something almost boyish in its disregard of convention. was deeply stirred. The familiar story of Cuvier's power to reconstruct a prehistoric animal from a single bone came to him now with none of his old awe of Cuvier's genius. From these eyes alone, he told himself fervidly, he might with reasonable certainty reconstruct their harmonious abode. All at once he awoke to the length of his scrutiny. "Pardon, Señorita," he said. "I was hardly aware of my rude staring." Something that he was pleased to translate as amused interest came to her eyes as she said: "I could have gone away, Señor." "But you did not," he replied. "Ah, you would know that it was not intentional rudeness. I might have known that you would understand." "Understand?" she repeated question ingly. "All that I saw in your eyes," he explained. Unmistakably her eyes laughed then. "The señor is perhaps a fortune-teller?" she queried mockingly. "No; only confident of your past," he answered. |