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@@ -513,6 +513,251 @@ enchanted kingdom to dwell happily there, in true fairy-tale
 fashion, forever after.
 
 
+Meanwhile, there were a few odd strings to gather up and untangle....
+
+One bright hot morning Candis said: “Ronnie--let’s run away--drive up to
+the country for the entire day.”
+
+His eyes fell upon a sheaf of papers. “Dear, I must go over these.”
+
+“Sooner than come with me?”
+
+“Not sooner--but I must.”
+
+She opened the door, looking back at him. “I’m sorry.” And she went out.
+
+That night she wrote a long letter to Trent in Montevideo. And six weeks
+later, she lunched with him at the Colony.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Until their coffee arrived in a globular crystal percolator, they ate
+almost in silence; then Stephen Trent looked deeply at Candis, and said
+abruptly:
+
+“Have you decided?”
+
+“Decided what?” She looked at him with cool, unstartled eyes.
+
+“Decided that without love you are as wan as a flower without sun.”
+
+She said quickly, resentfully, “Ron adores me!”--then flushed for her
+bad taste.
+
+Trent smiled. “No doubt. But he has a largesse of that adoration--for
+Gelda Blair among others.”
+
+She said, white to the lips: “You lie.”
+
+He went on, smiling. “No, I don’t--though I would if it were necessary,
+for I’m not the least of a gentleman when it comes to getting what I
+want. But fortunately--and caddishly--I have the proofs in this case.”
+
+She continued to stare at him whitely. “I said I don’t believe you.”
+
+Trent shrugged. “Arnold Nelson, my most intimate associate, was on the
+yachting trip with your husband and Gelda Blair.”
+
+“Well?” Her voice was cold, hostile.
+
+“Nelson was playing, at that time, the rôle of Gelda’s--protector. They
+split--rather nastily--over your husband.”
+
+Candis stood up. Her face was so white, Trent sprang instinctively to
+her side.
+
+She said in a clear, even voice: “Filthy gossip never interested me--nor
+the people who repeat it. Good-by, Mr. Trent.”
+
+But he would not let her go so easily.
+
+He said swiftly: “Candis, for God’s sake, don’t be a fool! Candis, you
+know I love you. And I swear by God I’m not lying--nor that Nelson lied
+to me. I saw Gelda’s letter to him--it broke him up, admitting her
+affair with Carlton.”
+
+Candis turned, and with unseeing eyes, walked out of the restaurant, got
+into a cab, gave the address, drove home.
+
+Ronald was out. She went to his room, opened his desk, searched it
+coldly, mechanically. It yielded nothing. But in his old leather
+dressing-case she found it--found the letter that had come their first
+week in America, addressed boldly on the thin, violet envelope--“Ronald
+Carlton, Esquire”--and postmarked Monte Carlo.
+
+The morning it had come, Ronnie had opened it impatiently, read it
+swiftly, put it carelessly into his coat pocket. She had pretended to
+ignore it, recognizing his embarrassment and sensing his distaste for
+the writer.
+
+But now--
+
+In her own room she read it, standing by the open window. “Of course,
+it’s all over, Ron darling, but it was so sweet while it lasted. I know
+now I should never have followed you--such an anticlimax was
+unforgivable, in rotten taste. But I thought you might still care a
+little--for you did care a little that sweet, short month, didn’t you,
+Ronnie? I did appease your loneliness, even though I always knew you
+loved your wife. But this time you ran away from me deliberately. Surely
+not because you were afraid of me, afraid I’d give you away to your
+pretty little Candis--”
+
+The letter fluttered to the floor. Candis was cold--deathly cold and
+deathly sick.
+
+She thought remotely that she had always known this, ever since Ronnie,
+away from her, neither came nor sent for her. But even as she admitted
+this thought, her heart cried out: “He couldn’t--Ronnie couldn’t do this
+ghastly thing to me. Even _she_ said he loved only me.”
+
+But Ronnie had. No use to ask him to deny it--no need of a scene and
+vulgar recriminations. Just to go away, quietly, leaving behind a little
+note--and he would know, would understand.
+
+She thought of Trent, hating him for giving her this bitter knowledge.
+Then thought of him suddenly, wonderingly, in regard to herself. Blaming
+Ronald, was she herself entirely inculpable? Unsuspicious of Ronald, she
+had indulged a rather dangerous interest in a rather dangerous man.
+Loving Ronald, she had permitted herself to become involved in, at best,
+a lukewarm flirtation. For at no time had her regard for Trent been
+other than in the nature of a mild salve applied to the smart of
+Ronnie’s neglect. For her, there was no excuse. At that time, not even
+the excuse of an injured wife. Merely a deliberate playing with fire, a
+conscious feeding of her wounded vanity. Where was the Candis of those
+dim Sola days? What had happened to that Candis? Perhaps Perella Santes
+could have answered her daughter’s question. A certain wild strain of
+pride, a certain reckless tendency, the definite need of not only being
+loved, but the constant demonstration of that love--
+
+Candis sat down by the window. She tried to think, but could only feel.
+The dreadful ache within her was so sharp at times, she wanted to cry
+out. But even the relief of tears was denied her. Once she thought: “Our
+enchanted kingdom! Oh, God, the travesty of it! Ronnie unfaithful, and I
+irretrievably cheapened.”
+
+It was after six o’clock when she finally rose, changed her frock,
+packed a dressingbag and left the apartment.
+
+Behind her, on the top of Ronnie’s desk and beside the thin violet note,
+she left a second note:
+
+“Our enchanted kingdom was a mirage, Ronnie. And in its horrible desert
+we have become lost to each other. Good-by, my dear. And forgive me--as
+I want some day to forgive you.--Candis.”
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ronnie stared at those two notes with a queer wonder. Then with a
+violent shudder he tore the tinted one into shreds without even a
+passing thought, save one of savage hatred, for the writer. He had kept
+that note as an instrument of flagellation, loathing himself whenever he
+thought of it, loathing its writer. For him, she did not exist--had
+never really existed save for a brief, bitterly regretted moment of
+loneliness, in a world that held only Candis and himself.
+
+Candis! What had she done? What might she do? That passionate pride of
+hers--where would it carry her? Away from him certainly--but where?
+Where to look for her? Not back in Kingscombe, certainly.
+
+It was after daybreak, that the thought came so swiftly, so terribly
+surely, that he could not tolerate it at first. Trent, of course. Trent
+was back. Trent was in love with Candis. He had seen _that_ in
+Cannes--and Candis had read him Trent’s letters, some of them--not all,
+perhaps.
+
+An hour later Ronnie had located Stephen Trent in his hotel overlooking
+Central Park. The lift shot violently to the fifteenth floor. “To your
+right,” said its operator.
+
+Before the number Ronnie paused a brief moment. Then he knocked swiftly.
+
+Trent opened the door almost immediately. He was in dressing-robe and
+slippers, and he said without surprise: “Hullo, Carlton.”
+
+Ronnie said briefly, but evenly: “I beg your pardon for the intrusion,
+Trent. But Candis has disappeared and I felt you might know of her
+whereabouts. Do you?”
+
+Trent smiled faintly. “I’m sorry--but I haven’t the slightest idea.”
+
+Ronald looked at him: the man was telling the truth.
+
+He said: “In that case, I’ll not keep you longer. I regret having
+disturbed you so early.”
+
+“Not at all,” said Trent courteously, and held open the door.
+
+But as Ronnie stepped into the hall, he called to him, as an
+afterthought: “Oh, I say, Carlton--”
+
+Ronnie turned abruptly. Trent had gone to the front of the room. He came
+back, bearing in his hand a small dressing-case. He held it out to
+Ronnie.
+
+He said: “By the way, here is something you may wish to take with you.”
+
+And staring down at it, Ronnie recognized the bag--read the small
+initials C. C.--then he looked up and met squarely the taunting eyes of
+the man opposite him....
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Trent dropped without a sound. And Ronnie, taking Candis’ bag from his
+relaxed grip, closed the door behind him, walked quietly down the long
+corridor, and rang for the lift.
+
+It was a scant month later that Ronald Carlton descended from a train at
+Sola, Texas.
+
+Sola and August. That had been the combination six years ago when he and
+Candis-- He closed his eyes swiftly, as if to shut out an entering pain.
+
+Everywhere that he could look for, he had searched--a battalion of
+clever men had searched; but from that moment wherein she had walked out
+of Trent’s apartment, leaving that mute evidence behind her, she had
+disappeared as though actually swallowed by that black gulf which lay
+between them.
+
+The shack beyond Devil’s Horn was more sun-scorched and desolate than
+ever. But there was life within it. Some one had rented it, for its
+kitchen door stood open and there were three pots of oleanders blooming
+palely on its blistered veranda.
+
+Ronnie stood just beyond the veranda steps, staring unseeingly at those
+waxy oleanders. He had come back--for here lay their real enchanted
+kingdom, their years of enchanted happiness. But strangers dwelt in it
+now--had found the wonder and beauty of it.
+
+She came suddenly out of the open kitchen door. She wore a pink-checked
+gingham dress, and her arms were bare and brown.
+
+She looked at Ronnie and said very slowly, almost dreamily: “I knew--I
+always knew--you’d come back--just as I came back--to our enchanted
+kingdom.”
+
+But he did not move toward her.
+
+He said, a little catch in his voice: “Candis, I’ve--I’ve been so
+wretched.”
+
+And only then, when he saw her eyes, did he go to her.
+
+She said swiftly, “Oh, I know, I know.... But it was all just a dream,
+dearest. I found that out the night I ran away--ran away from one
+horrible dream into another. I thought I’d go away with Trent--to make
+you suffer as you had made me. But when I saw him, when I realized the
+_cheapness_ of my motive--I woke suddenly, woke to the knowledge that
+our real enchanted kingdom was just ourselves, Ronnie--just you and I.”
+
+She broke off and for a long moment their eyes held. Then Ronnie dropped
+to his knees, buried his face against her side.
+
+“Oh, Candis--forgive me,” he whispered, “--and love me--love me!”
+
+Candis did not answer. But she pressed the dark head closer to her
+heart--for that dark head _was_ her heart--would always be her heart.
+
+
 [Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the April, 1929 issue
 of _The Red Book_ magazine.]