United States or Syria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Norvil Thayre's chest was always thrust out as cheerily and confidently as a cock-robin's, and his step was as elastic as though he had just come, freshly galvanized, from some electric source of exuberant energy.

She looked sadly at him and shook her dark head until he hated himself for not assuring her that she would not have to "go to work," yet he could say nothing. Then as they sat there in an embarrassed silence, the tall figure of Len Haswell appeared in the door and the many mirrors of the wall panels multiplied him into a seeming army of giants. With him was Norvil Thayre.

And Paul I named for the great apostle." She laughed very low and her son knelt beside her chair and drew her into his embrace. Paul, who was named for the apostle, and Loraine Haswell had drifted further into midstream than either realized. Less keen observers than Norvil Thayre now spoke of their frequent meetings.

I well, I don't expect her back, and it hurts like hell to say so." Norvil met the other's eyes and read in them a fulness of dumb suffering, such as might come into those of a great, faithful dog. His own question followed with a softness of assured sympathy. "And, of course, you want her back?"

He's getting a bit squiffy, if you ask me," suggested Norvil Thayre to the group centered where the punch-bowl was being administered. Norvil Thayre was not having a grouch. If he had ever had a grouch he had kept his secret well. An American by adoption, he was still aggressively British in speech, dress and eccentricity.

The needle makes for such languidness at times between its moments of dreaming and its moments of jumping nerves. Several men in evening-dress and fur coats surrounded him, and he knew them all. The face of Norvil Thayre was laughing into his, and he recognized that an evening well started had painted its flush on the cheeks of each of them. "My word, Burton!" laughed the Englishman.

After a long pause Haswell said in a heavy voice: "I come here because I don't meet many men who insist on talking to me." "Oh, I beg pardon, old chap," Thayre hastily rose. "I'm sure I didn't mean " But before he could finish the big fellow put out a hand and gripped his arm until a pain shot to the elbow. "You are the one man I do want to see, Norvil.