LITMIR.BIZ

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made.

      “You’ve paralyzed him sure,” he said, contempt for Alonzo and admiration for the Lady struggling for expression.

      “Don’t you think it,” she said gaily, giving her pompadour a twist—“but what are we going to do?”

      “Why, I’ll telephone for the auto and rush him around to the drug store. No, not a doctor—I know how to fix him. A good stiff Hi-lowball”—and Bill winked—“will start his vibrations again.”

      Then the lovers, momentarily distracted from themselves, resumed where they had left off, and so successfully did Mr. Vanderhook Jr. press his claims that before the auto came smelling around the corner—and while the unconscious Alonzo lay cold and mute—Imogene had received the huge solitaire she had admired so prettily the last time she and Bill passed the Jeweler’s together.

      Late that night, when Bill slipped noiselessly out of Mrs. Astor’s parlor, a golden hair was curiously entangled in the coils of his cameo shirt-stud.

      And the Recluse, what of him?

      What of him who had violated the First Degree?

      After regaining his equilibrium he withdrew to his father’s house and, locking himself in his apartments, he there remained for one month, during which time he tasted neither food nor drink.

CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      IN PRIMORDIAL BIOGEN.

      His penance done, the Mystic of Kankakee presented himself once more at the soda fountain. He was paler, slimmer and altogether more effective than before. He was faultlessly groomed in pearl gray. His head was held high—by an immaculate collar. He was shod in patent leathers, and white spats peeped chastely below his upturned trousers. His gloved hand grasped the middle of a large cane for support.

      “Do you, William K. Vanderhook, hope or expect to marry Imogene Silesia Sheets?”

      Young Mr. Vanderhook, who was replenishing the soda fountain, startled for the moment, dropped a large chunk of ice, thereby overturning several bottles of syrup.

      “If—So—You—Must—Re—lin—quish—Her.”

      “Now, what are you givin’ me?” growled Bill, as he turned upon his chum, and as he did so snapped the cover of the soda fountain with unnecessary violence.

      “Merely this,” said Alonzo Leffingwell, slightly raising his monotone—“You persuaded me to break my vow. You inveigled me into looking upon woman. I had warned you, pleaded with you to let me out of this. You heeded not. I hinted at penalties. You sneered. You did not believe me. You insisted. I yielded. But you have assumed the consequences. You have defied Destiny. But my unsophisticated friend, you have bound yourself to accept the results. You played with Fate. The law is relentless. Rash boy, you have invoked dire karmic consequences.”

      “Well, what in the name of—the higher foolology—are you driving at?” snapped Bill, quite out of patience.

      “This, my once friend, this”—and Lonnie now well started, talked straight on. “Through my higher comprehension of primordial principles, and by my occult manipulations of certain astral forces (quite unknown to such as you), I erstwhile learned the most profound fact in nature. I was, as we say in our cult, able to visionize my Soul Mate. The doors of the future, as it were, lifted from their hinges, and—Aha! you start. You tremble. You sense my secret. You perceive the mystical meaning of my metaphysical meanderings.”

      Alonzo Leffingwell paused, gazing fixedly at Bill, who was now nervously rinsing the glasses.

      “You have guessed,” and the Mystic’s voice fell to a sharp whisper. “Miss Sheets is SHE—she whom I cognized in the astral. She is not your affinity, but mine. Did you not perceive that we needed no introduction? Our higher selves responded to the law; hence my agitation, and your—your—KARMA.”

      Bill Vanderhook stopped short, straightened himself. He quit tinkering with the stock.

      Continued Lonnie remorselessly—

      “Knowing, as I do, that our union is inevitable in the course of evolutionary processes, I thought best so to inform you, and as it were, take her off your hands. You are, I trust, too wise to attempt any interference with the immutable.”

      Bill Vanderhook stared at his chum for a minute, and then broke into a big, loud laugh. “Well, at least you’re candid,” he said—“more so than most fellows who find their affinities,”—and he carelessly mopped off the marble slab. “At the same time,”—and his voice roughened—“you’ll excuse me for saying that you’re off your base, and that I hold the age over your astral informant, whatever his degree of asininity.”

      “And you mean to say that you will not relinquish her? That you will defy the decrees of nature? That you will violate the principles of primordial biogen? That you will ignore the ‘Harmonics of Evolution?’ ” And Alonzo’s eyes again rested on the labels of the soda fountain.

      “To the first—Nit. To the secondly, thirdly and fourthly—Yep. Now, you get it?”—and Bill looked very tired.

      “O, earthy and unillumined!” murmured the pale, young enthusiast—“would that I could but for a moment open up to your clouded understanding the mystical and unintelligible explications of one whom I, even I, acknowledge to be a deeper, more profound and more mysterious Mystic than MYSELF.

      “What you need, O, dense, chaotic soul, is—EX-PLI-CA-TION, Explication that will Explain. Hear me, poor groveler amid the rudimentary manifestations of matter. Harken to me ere it be too late. Hear me, O, my boyhood’s chum. Hear the words of misty meaning which have flowed in boundless streams from this modern Mystic, that Far-Off-One in Manhattan Isle. These are the words of one upon whose wisdom I feed, the words of one who KNOWS, and—and—I whisper to you in secret, one who admits that he is—a—Mystic.

      “Hear him, William—you who trifle with solemn things—you who deny these primordial, protoplasmic affinities. Hide your head in confusion. Hear him whose utterances no man can interpret. Hear him whose explications are as explicit, as limpid, as lucid, as crystalline, as clear, as the broad light of day at midnight’s holy hour.

      “Turn with me to our most luminous and incomprehensible text book. You will find at page numbered 288, commencing, I think, near the middle of the page, the following inspired words, viz.—

[1]“ ‘The spiritual espousal, wherein humanity is united with the Lord, is not only catholic, including all the elements in a human word, but, whatever may be its heavenly consummation, is, in its earthly expression and as a visible manifestation, a limited estate, involving conditions such as attend all other espousals: on the Bride’s part a destination separating her from the Bridegroom, and in many ways seeming a contradiction of her inmost desire for Him, so that she becomes a poor starveling, a distraught and desolate Psyche, bereft of Love; and on the part of the Bridegroom a running after her, as if in answer to some great need and hunger developed in her desolation, as if He had indulged her aversion that He might follow her into her darkest hiding, standing at her door and knocking while His locks are wet with the cold dews of her night—He also having veiled His essential might and brightness lest she should be dismayed at His coming, yet retaining enough of his original majesty that she may see Him as the one altogether lovely, the wonderful.’

[1] “A Study of Death,” by Henry Mills Alden; late editor Harper’s Magazine.

      “Here in this one simple sentence of only one hundred and eighty-four short, brief, curt, compact, concise, terse, pithy, diffuse, verbose, prolix,

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