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


Beside an open window she kept her place, staring toward Eagle Pass, her eyes widening whenever a figure appeared on the highway. But the individual she feared Fectnor, her father, a furtive messenger did not appear. Harboro came at last: Harboro, bringing power and placidity. She ran out to the gate to meet him. Inside the house she flung herself into his arms. He marvelled at her intensity.

His was the stronger determination of the two. Fectnor had not flinched, but he knew that his heart was not in this fight. He could see that Harboro was a good deal of a man. A fool, perhaps, but still a decent fellow. These were conclusions which had come in flashes, while Fectnor took less than half a dozen steps.

He seemed to have waited for me." "Very well. You must find him again. It doesn't matter how long you search. I want you to find him." She hurriedly framed a response to that note of her father's: "I will not come. Tell Fectnor I never will see him again. He will not dare to harm me."

It occurred to her that it must be a sad thing to be an old woman, and a Mexican, and to have to serve as the wire over which the electric current flowed and to feel only the violence of the current without comprehending the words it carried. And now to find Fectnor for this was what she meant to do.

She did not know why that name should have occurred to her just now to plague her. Fectnor was an evil bird of passage who had come and gone. Such creatures had no fixed course. He had once told her that only a fool ever came back the way he had gone.

I'll not draw until you turn unless you try to play a trick on me. Your best chance lies in your doing just as I tell you to." Fectnor regarded him shrewdly with his peering, merry eyes. He rather liked Harboro, so far as first impressions went. Yet his lips were set in a straight line. "All right," he drawled amiably. His voice was pitched high almost to a falsetto.

Harboro held him with eyes which were keen as knives, yet still a little dubious. He was puzzled by the man's good humor; he was watchful for sudden stratagems. His own hands were at his sides, the right within a few inches of his hip. Yet, after all, he was unprepared for what happened. Fectnor leaned forward as if to deposit his coat on the sidewalk.

You always stop in plenty of time to get caught." She looked at him curiously. "I suppose," she said after a pause, "that roughly describes certain love-making processes. But it really wasn't love-making between you and me, Fectnor. It was a kind of barter." His eyes seemed to snare hers relentlessly. "You're not doing yourself justice, Sylvia," he said. "You're not one of the bartering kind.

And then she seemed to have known all the time that it was Fectnor who stood there. He slipped past her into the room, and when she uttered a forlorn cry of defeat and shrank back he gripped her by the wrist. Holding her so, he turned where he stood and locked the door again. Then he crossed the room, and closed and bolted that other door which opened into the room where Sylvia's father sat.

It would have been bad enough if Fectnor had sent the summons himself; but for her father to unite with him against her in such an affair! She tried to calm herself, succeeding but illy. "Antonia!" she called. "Antonia!" For once her voice was unlovely, her expression was harsh. The startled old woman came with quite unprecedented alacrity. "Antonia, where did you see my father?" "On the street.