The Equinox (Volume I, Number VII)

THE EQUINOX “ That’s my little Muriel—«I call her the Spirit of Salt— ha! ha! ho!” ”A damn nice little bit of fluff—damn lucky boy! ” growled the Colonel, winking at a chorus girl (in two thousand pounds worth of furs) whose salary was thirty shillings a week. Suddenly the Professor paled. A last glance over his shoulder showed him that a bearded man had risen and was handing a flower to Muriel. And Muriel was blushing and trembling with some emotion too profound to estimate, but clear enough to the analyst. When a man has detected a thousandth of a grain of atropine in the carcass of a barmaid, he does not hesitate to read the heart of a girl. And as a Government expert he was clothed with official infallibility—a triple buckler. He went on casually talking to the Colonel for a few minutes before politeness allowed him to throw himself into a moving taxicab and roar his address at the astonished driver. It was the first time he had come home to an empty house since he had picked up Muriel on an omnibus and carried her off to a discreet Italian restaurant near Sloane Square where a flask of Chianti emptied to the bottom had left not a dreg of discretion. The arm—chair shocked him. This was the last time that she would sit in it, the false little harlot! The eternal emptiness 01 things, the unbreakable solitude of life, struck a chill to his marrow. How was he to know that only by uttermost surrender of the self to the Beloved can that curse be broken ? 94