ought in his close-pressing cocoon, thrusting one hard fist to
grasp the broad leaves. He clung to them dumbly, his face so close to
the surface that the tall spiked flowers smiled down--but they drifted
inexorably with a faint, creaking music, leaf on leaf.

Tedge opened his eyes to a flicker of myriad lights. The sound was a
roaring now--like the surf on the reefs in the hurricane month; or the
thunder of maddened steers above him across this flowery sea meadow.
Perhaps the man he had killed rode with this stampede? Tedge shrank
under the lilies--perhaps they could protect him now? Even the last
stroke of his hands made luminous beauty of the under-running tide.

An outward-bound shrimp lugger saw the figures on Au Fer reef and came
to anchor beyond the shoals. The Cajan crew rowed up to where Milt
Rogers and Crump and the black deckhand were watching by a pool. The
shrimpers listened to the cowman, who had tied the sleeve of his shirt
about his bloody head.

"You can get a barge down from Morgan City and take the cows off
before the sea comes high," said Rogers quietly. "They're eating the
lilies--and they find sweet water in 'em. Worlds o' lilies driftin' to
sea with sweet water in the bulbs!" And he added, watching Crump and
the black man who seemed in terror of him: "I want to get off, too. I
want to see the swamp country where worlds o' flowers come from!"

He said no more. He did not even look in the pool where Crump pointed.
He was thinking of that girl of the swamps who had bid him come to
her. But all along the white surf line he could see the
green-and-purple plumes of the hyacinth warriors tossing in the
breeze--legion upon legion, coming to die gloriously on Au Fer's
sands.

But first they sent a herald; for in Tedge's hand, as he lay in the
pool, one waxen-leafed banner with a purple spear-point glittered in
the sun.

THE URGE

By MARYLAND ALLEN

From _Everybody's_

She is now a woman ageless because she is famous. She is surrounded by
a swarm of lovers and possesses a great many beautiful things. She has
more than one Ming jar in the library at her country place; yards upon
yards of point de Venise in her top bureau-drawer. She is able to
employ a very pleasant, wholesome woman, whose sole duty it is to keep
her clothes in order.

She wears superb clothes--the last word in richness and the elegance
of perfection--clothes that no man can declaim over, stimulating
himself the while with