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

38 THE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE with the brooding light of the eternal mother in her glance. Then she spoke, with a little, wistful eagerness. "Guess what I have made for supper, dear?" she coaxed. A slight frown of impatience sprang to his face, but he did not look up. "Oh! I dont know," he replied indifferently, and turned a page. "Well, if you cant guess, look, then," she insisted, and, reluctantly, he glanced away from his book. "A cake, I see," he commented, without interest, and turned again to his reading. With a slight drooping of the corners of her small mouth, Eose set aside the dainty result of her labor. With timid caressing, she placed a hand upon his shoulder; then, as he took no notice, she playfully took the all-absorbing book from his hand. "Dont you ever wish to just talk to me, Fred?" she asked wistfully. "You read and read, all the time you are not in the fields. As soon as supper is over, you get your book and scarcely speak until bedtime. Cant we, at least, have the noon-hour just to love each other?" Lester rose, only half-concealing his annoyance. "If you would read some, yourself, you would better appreciate the interest I take in books," he said coldly. "It's time for me to get back to the fields," he added quickly, and hurried abruptly away. Rose stood for a brief moment watching him, no thought of resenting his gruffness entering into her love-filled heart. She even smiled a little, half in tenderness, half in humor. "Read? When would I read?" she thought. "And, besides," she added aloud, "there isn't a book on earth that could give me the pleasure I find in doing something, even the smallest thing, for you, beloved." For a little while the girl fell a-dreaming; then she roused with a start of self-reproof. "My! but I am wasting time, and I might be actually doing something for him, instead of just thinking about it," she exclaimed, and hurried into the cottage. Lester, meanwhile, had made his way toward the field where the corn was waiting his labor, but, with each step, his mood of unrest and irritation seemed to increase; the stillness oppressed him; the golden sunshine seemed a mockery; he felt like a prisoner within the circle of the distant hills that shut out from this fruitful valley of peace the clamor of a bustling world. He hated it, he told himself. He was weary of soul, his feet clogged by the dreary routine of his eventless life. He yearned eagerly for the swrift movement, the gay companions, the keen intellects, the beautiful, poised and self-reliant women with whom his book-fed fancy peopled the cities beyond the hills. Lester was of that class from which the dreamers come, to have their, dreams rudely shattered on the rocks of reality — fairly prosperous, still young, educated and wTell-read, but with superficial knowledge and no actual experience of life beyond his native valley. Suddenly he raised his eyes and looked into the frankly smiling face of the Strange Woman. Whence she came, what devious paths her feet had trod, or why she came to rest, like a weary bird of passage, in this remote valley, only she could have said, and of these things her carmined and always smiling lips never spoke. Hers was a somewhat bold beauty, insistent as a scarlet poppy, and even as her lips smiled, her eyes were inscrutable, calculating. But Lester saw only the smile, the air of self-confident ease which he vaguely realized would persist under whatever circumstances might strangely befall, and the garments which, even to his inexperience, spoke the magic word, "Paris." Too much amazed for words, he remained dumb before her. "I suppose I am trespassing, of course," the stranger remarked lightly; "one always seems to be trespassing in the country, but my intentions are no more criminal than to