Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb 1914 - Sep 1916 (assorted issues))

A TTT7EF OF HEARTS 31 reach. The room, with its crowds of eating, reveling people, with Ida Bianca, radiantly perfect, at his side, held only that gray-clad form, until it seemed to quiver, a cool, diaphanous mist, before his blinded eyes, ;md chill him with an unearthly remoteness. He wanted her; he wanted hef as a man dying of thirsl wants the blessed cool of the waters. He wanted to be true to her, to live for her — for her alone. Yet the red flames were devouring him, working his destruction, and the red flames met in the warm flesh of La Belle Bianca. As a man announces his own crime, the confession being unsolicited, so Pierre called on Marthe the following day, in order that he might learn the truth from her lips. He thought, as she greeted him, that she looked like some pale nun made saintly and spiritual by long years of fasting and all denials of the flesh. And he knew, with an anguished pang, that it was thru his sordid wrongdoing the purging had come. "I have come, Marthe,'7 he began humbly ; ' * I suppose it is to say goodby." He did not query; he knew his sin. "Yes, it is to say good-by, Pierre. ' ' The girl's voice was low, but it held the steady timbre of resolution, made firm by bitter waters. 1 1 There is nothing to say — I am not worth even an apology." Pierre spoke with the miserable despondency of one for whom Life has withdrawn her last effective charm. "Only" — Here he hesitated an instant and met the gray eyes of this lady of Heart's High Worship. They seemed to say: "Tell me!" and he rushed on heedlessly— "only I must say, Marthe, absurd and incongruous tho it may seem — it is to you I give my heart's best love; it is to you I — I — pray — " "I cant say I understand, Pierre," the girl made answer. "I wish that I could. I think, perhaps, we women never will quite understand that, We give, or perhaps I should speak personally and say I give, my love, and that means all of me, Pierre — heart and mind and soul — and all to the loved one, to keep thru all time. There could be no other, only the one ; there could be no further giving, because I have given to the uttermost — there is no more. You are not made that way. Perhaps you cannot help it. How should I know? Why should I judge?" "You are made of angel stuff, Marthe," the man said. "I am the commonest clay, and, oh ! I am not worthy your splendid gift." "No, you are not, Pierre," she returned sorrowfully. " It is that which hurts the most — the fact that you are not worthy ; that I have given my one love to you, and you have trampled on it. Poor, bruised thing!" She smiled whimsically, yet her eyes held fathomless deeps of tears. Then she extended her hand in the swift little gesture of one who dismisses, yet would hold. "This is good-by, mon ami," she said simply, "because you are you and I am I." Pierre touched the slim, white hand, and, as he pressed his lips to the white fingers, he left the tribute of a bitter tear. Because she wTas a woman, and a very clever one, Ida Bianca sensed the fact that it was she, not Pierre, who pursued the game of love most ardently. He acquiesced, because he was too w^eak to withstand the subtlety of her wiles, the potency of her sinuous allure ; but once she should cease the chase, Pierre would go back — go back to his own class and the white lady at whom he had looked with such fathoms of despair in the Pavilion du Bois. The look had not been lost on Ida Bianca, nor the ensuing indifference on the homeward trip. She had known, then, that it was the gray-clad girl with the Madonna face to whom Pierre had given his heart's best. And the Bianca loved Pierre. Loved, that is, in her own peculiar conception of the word. She was primitive, as all true materialists are. She resorted now to primitive methods. Novita, a famous matador, was