ve. His duty as a perfect Christian was
to kill Golly! His logic was at once inscrutable, perfect, and--John
Galish!

With this sublime and lofty purpose, he called upon Golly. The heroic
girl saw his purpose in his eye--an eye at once black, murderous, and
Christian-like. For an instant she thought it was better to succumb at
once and thus end this remarkable attachment. Suddenly through this
chaos of Spiritual, Religious, Ecstatic, Super-Egotistic whirl of
confused thought, darted a gleam of Common, Ordinary Horse Sense! John
Gale saw it illumine her blue eyes, and trembled. God in Mercy! If it
came to THAT!

"Sit down, John," she said calmly. Then, in her sweet, clear voice,
she said: "Did it ever occur to you, dearest, that a more ridiculous,
unconvincing, purposeless, insane, God-forsaken idiot than you never
existed? That you eclipse the wildest dreams of insanity? That you
are a mental and moral 'What-is-it?'"

"It has occurred to me," he replied simply. "I began life with vast
asinine possibilities which fall to the lot of few men; yet I cannot
say that I have carried even THEM to a logical conclusion! But YOU,
love! YOU, darling! conceived in extravagance, born to impossibility, a
challenge to credulity, a problem to the intellect, a 'missing word'
for all ages,--are you aware of any one as utterly unsympathetic,
unreal, and untrue to nature as you are, existing on the face of the
earth, or in the waters under the earth?"

"You are right, dearest; there are none," she returned with the same
calm, level voice. "It is true that I have at times tried to do
something real and womanly, and not, you know, merely to complicate
a--a"--her voice faltered--"theatrical situation--but I couldn't!
Something impelled me otherwise. Now you know why I became an actress!
But even there I fail! THEY are allowed reasoning power off the
stage--I have none at any time! I laugh in the wrong place--I do the
unnecessary, extravagant thing. Endowed by some strange power with
extraordinary attributes, I am supposed to make everybody love me, but
I don't--I satisfy nobody; I convince none! I have no idea what will
happen to me next. I am doomed to--I know not what."

"And I," he groaned bitterly, "I, in some rare and lucid moments, have
had a glimpse of this too. We are in the hands of some inscrutable but
awful power. Tell me, Golly, tell me, darling, who is it?"

Again that gleam of Common or Ordinary Horse S