The Ely Miner

Lou and Harrison were engaged; and Lou's heart was heavy for Conchita, the dancer, was doing what Lou herself had longed to do: break up the ice floes in Harrison.

Even before Conchita had undulated into the picture Lou had been anxious. For instance, at seven on Valentine's evening Harrison, tall, lean, and with a frigid demeanor, had arrived to escort her to a friend's party. He had stooped, his kiss the quick, detached sort of caress that filled her with anxiety.

"You look woe-be-gone. Have I overlooked something fearfully important, little sentimentalist?" he had asked.

On the correct finger of Lou's left hand a gorgeous emerald twinkled. Harrison had asked her to marry him.

"I'm just being silly," Lou had smiled wanly.

He had pinched her cheek. This was not the attitude Lou wanted. She didn't want him to chuckle. She wanted him to feel stirred, intent. She wanted his clear eyes to glow. But they were two frozen pools.

"Harrison, why can't you be a little more—oh, I don't know." Her hands had fallen limply to her sides.

He had sought to seal her lips with another calm, undemonstrative kiss.

"I'm not a movie actor, you know, Lou."

"Who asked you to act?" Lou had demanded. "I want you to mean it."

The color had come tinging into her cheeks.

"I'm a frigid cuss, I know. Yet you and my law practice are my world."

Adoring every fair, crispy, curling hair in his head, she rebuked herself. He was marvelous and she loved him. She mustn't expect a typically legal mind to express poignant romance.

Midge, whose party they attended, wanted to charter a cab and see how the rest of the world lived. Never will Lou forget that night. At first she was an inwardly seething torrent of excitement. Then her heart was being eaten out for she had seen Conchita's burning Latin eyes were bringing out fascinated lights from impenetrable Harrison's.

The cafe was dingy. There had been a raucous clamor, but apparently the regular patrons felt chagrined for they surveyed the beautifully attired visitors, snorted, and lapsed into a sullen silence. The proprietor, however, rubbed his pudgy hands delightedly and whispered excitedly to his star performer.

"Conchita, we have ver' swell customers tonight. You will dance your best."

"Conchita always dances superbly, peeg!" That lady snapped her lacquered fingers. "Are not our regular customers more than these pork who come only to jeer?"

The Mexican orchestra throbbed in a low, pulsing rhythm. With a clack of her castanets Conchita, a living flame, stood poised in the middle of the floor. Professional that she was, her long sloe eyes wandered heavy-lidded over her audience, picking a worthy one to whom to dedicate her dance. The drowsiness of her eyes vanished as they lighted on the cool, flawless features of Harrison.

Lou's devoted little heart sank. The rhumba rhythms beat insultingly on her conservative ears. With a catch in her throat she had to admit she had never seen Harrison so stimulated.

The whirling, insinuating dance halted abruptly. The dancer pressed a long sweet kiss on her vivid finger-tips, blew it straight to Harrison, and tossed to him the rose which had nestled in her inky hair.

"Harrison feels shaken," observed Midge. "He's trembling like a leaf."

Lou was trembling, too. She dared not lift her hurt, bewildered eyes.

Nightly Harrison frequented the cafe. Lou, shaken almost beyond endurance, lay between cool sheets and prayed, not for her own forlorn heart, but that splendid man and brilliant attorney that he was, he might not be horribly uprooted.

Then she summoned her frail courage and went to the place herself. She left, pale, trembling, but contentedly wiping her red-rimmed eyes while Conchita's gay laugh bounded after her.

That night, steadfast love seeping from his eyes, Harrison took Lou gently in his arms, then kissed her quivering mouth almost roughly in his fervency.

"Lou darling, let's get married right away!"

In his sturdy embrace Lou felt exalted. Her happiness welled over. Why should she tell him Conchita had admitted she was only playing with him? It would make him feel tainted, cheapened.

"He one big ice-berg," Conchita had flaunted. "Conchita have no place for ice-bergs."

"But you've melted him!" Lou had insisted.

Conchita had stood, her fists dug into her shapely hips. "When ice-berg is melted, what is it? Big puddle. Conchita have no use for puddles either."

So Lou thanked her; for she assigned to Conchita what she felt she had not been able to do for herself, since ice cannot melt ice.

As the sweetness of her clinging to him, and the clean scent of her hair filled him, Harrison decided not to tell her of Conchita. How he had recognized the woman as a missing witness in one of his cases. This lovely, dainty Lou he adored. Why fill her innocent mind with a sordid case of a cabaret dancer?