Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

CLASSIC "You did see hit!-, she pro; e sted, "in a tlieater— he eanie on*' — \ ou you I a ugh cd at him and I--I — went out — " money the Ballantines lavished upon her — the money, that like a fairy godmother’s wand, touched her, and lo ! cobwebs clung to her slender body, fur^ weighed down her lissome throat, jewels snrnng from her jmetty fingers and gleamed that they were there. Xo more dark circles under her tender eyes, no more wearv feet from long standing on the rose tiles of the B. & S., no more figuring, straining, planning, wrenching a dollar to buy the beauty she craved when it could not buy the grim necessity she needed. Affluence . . . ease . . . fiowers . . . music . . . beauty . . . the frame . . . the frame for which she knew herself to be the perfect picture. She could not help it that part of herself was lulled, was .satisfied. She could not help it that she had been hungry and now was being fed. Neither could she help it that every one w’as satisfied but Tom. Tom, it was dawning upon her, would be an omnivorously hard per.son to satisfy at best. Since cradle days life had poured forth her largesse upon him, and he was in a state of perpetual expectancy. He did not like it because she was happy and said so; he did not like it because the Lounsberrys had taken her up ; he did not like it because his mother made much of her after the Lounsberrys did. He didn’t, it appeared, care for her to have a coherent thought that did not have for its basis that pulsing night by the sea. Apparently, thought Sheila, she should ha\ e been born on that night and, coincidentally, ceased to exist. Her ])rotracted state of being after that night seemed to have caused Tom nothing save torture. Heretofore Sheila’s life had been bounded by the stripling youths who s|)ent their fathers’ careless gold in the B. & S. Sweetshops for the doubtful {Conf'.inicd on paijc tid) .■'[tend a finishing school to be ])ersonally selected by Mother Ballantine. Tom protested with fervor and at length. N^ot much! Not for him ! He was a married man. He would assume the responsibilities of .such an individual. He would have his honeymoon. He harped, at length and rather childishly, upon his being defrauded of his honeymoon. It seemed to awaken no answering echo in the parental hearts, from which, he gloomih' meditated, such a moon had long since waxed and waned. Further despair settled upon his ardent and now frustrated young spirit when he observed that Sheila was taking, and not unkindly, the mandates being laid down to them. Scorn kindled in his eye as he fixed it upon her. Could it — could it be that she had married him because of the “B.’’ in B. & S.? The mere surmise shot him with horror. Could it be even vaguely possible that she had forgotten that night by the sea — that immortal, immemorial night Had she crushed the potent fiowers of h under her earthy young feet so that not even the overpowering perfume drenched her nostrils? M^ere her light feet cla\? When father and mother had gone into conference d deux, he told her all this, gloweringly. He accused her of being mercenary, of being cold, of being fickle. He accused her at random — he. who only that other night had muttered his soul’s quintessence of pa.ssion against her lovely hair. She couldn’t answer him as she would have had she had the words. And she pitied his w'hite and blazing face unspeakably. Yet she felt, because she was a w'oman, and was to be a wise one, that the two old people knew best. That they were pointing for their two impetuous feet a course leading thru the stars. A love that had flared like a rocket into the night ... it needed testing, it needed trying. And then, when it had stood the testing, come, refined, from the trying, there would be distilled for them the attar of the rose of Paradise. The following week Tom, still sullen, went back for his senior year, and Sheila went to Miss Perrin’s fashionable school on the Hudson. From her slim, dead, inexplicable mother Sheila had inherited 'a passion for a nicety of learning, and also for the niceties of living. Perhaps Lew Pam. with his loose career but his straight philosophy, knew this. Because she had And at last he ’ a m e . . . not Tom . . . hut the man he had become been so long gainsaid the girl loved, all the more, the ( Thirt/i-fit:e j