And one of those I am
sure he filched from an English wit, and redressed it for his purposes.
That was the only time he cared for American tailoring.

But poor Shelby! Vicarious, indeed, were all the experiences, save two,
of his shallow days. But in the face of each, he was speechless. There
is a law of averages, a law of compensation, you know. The balance wheel
turns; the tides change; the sands of occasion shift. Fate gave this man
one overwhelmingly glorious chance to say something. He was mute. The
second time she sealed his lips forever.

THE WALLOW OF THE SEA[21]

By MARY HEATON VORSE

(From _Harper's Magazine_)

After twenty years I saw Deolda Costa again, Deolda who, when I was a
girl, had meant to me beauty and romance. There she sat before me,
large, mountainous, her lithe gypsy body clothed in fat. Her dark eyes,
beautiful as ever, still with a hint of wildness, met mine proudly. And
as she looked at me the old doubts rose again in my mind, a cold chill
crawled up my back as I thought what was locked in Deolda's heart. My
mind went back to that night twenty years ago, with the rain beating its
devil's tattoo against the window, when all night long I sat holding
Deolda's hand while she never spoke or stirred the hours through, but
stared with her crazy, smut-rimmed eyes out into the storm where Johnny
Deutra was. I heard again the shuttle of her feet weaving up and down
the room through the long hours.

It was a strange thing to see Deolda after having known her as I did.
There she was, with her delight of life all changed into youngsters and
fat. There she was, heavy as a monument, and the devil in her divided
among her children--though Deolda had plenty of devil to divide.

My first thought was: "Here's the end of romance. To think that you once
were love, passion, and maybe even carried death in your hand--and when
I look at you now!"

Then the thought came to me, "After all, it is a greater romance that
she should have triumphed completely, that the weakness of remorse has
never set its fangs in her heart." She had seized the one loophole that
life had given her and had infused her relentless courage into another's
veins.

I was at the bottom of Deolda Costa's coming to live with my aunt
Josephine Kingsbury, for I had been what my mother called "peaked," and
was sent down to the seashore to visit her. And suddenly I, an inland
child, found myself in a world of romance whose very colors