Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1914-Jan 1915)

36 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE spoken to her of his love. For a little, blessed moment she had cared. The sordid weeks that followed were only endurable to him because of this memory. Yet the days were as years in their heaviness. His broad shoulders drooped, as tho under a burden ; his brown hair grayed at the temples, and Life wiped forever from his eyes the child-trustfulness with her sponge that is moistened in tears. He spoke gently to the girl always ; he was patient and silent, but quietly insistent that she fulfil her duties as housewife. Her rage was a fierce sea-wave beating harmlessly against a rock. At length, her impotent anger found a vent. Trembling and exultant, she penned a letter to her father, telling him of the safe full of money in the office below her room. "It will be an easy job," she wrote, with vindictive jabs of the pen, "and you can take me back with you. I haven't seen a taxi or a jar of cold cream for months — my hands are a sight. Come quick, dad. I cant do anything with him. I hate him. I want to go home " Then she added a postscript which was strangely significant, albeit her father was not a character-reader. ' ' He doesn 't beat me, ' ' she wrote conscientiously ; "he's awfully polite to me. Maybe that's why he frightens me so. I'm not used to men being so polite to me." Slow struggling back thru all the ages of the world and all the vague, leaden spaces of Infinity. She did not wish to come back. Vaguely she knew that that way lay a great, redbreathed, savage thing called Pain. Desperately she clung to unconsciousness, wrapping it about her as a garment, but she could not stay herself. Thru the darkness came light — chaos narrowed to the sickish white plastered walls of a tiny room. And there was Pain, but beside it something else — a face wrung with pity and tenderness. Somewhere, a long way off, a voice was speaking. "You fell," it said, "over the cliff. The doctor will be here soon. Dont try to speak." The voice broke into a sob. "Oh, my God! you were running away — you hated me as much as that ? Poor little girl ! ' ' She saw the face of tenderness contort into deep, terrible lines. She would have reached up then to touch it, but her fingers could not move, and suddenly sight and sound slipped away as tho a blank white curtain were unrolled between her and her senses. Then nights — or years of fevered struggling, of sinking into an emptiness that had no bottom, of mad effort to keep from falling, of two hands always ready to her clutch, strong and firm. It was her hot, feeble hold on these that drew her, at last, out of the maelstrom of fever into sanity, a shadow of a girl, weak as a baby who has just been born. And there he sat beside her, and his face was radiant with joy as he saw the sense-look in her eyes. Yet there were other days, long, slow ones, to pass before she could speak to him. The fever had purged her, body and soul. One bright morning she put up her hand weakly and drew his face down to hers. "Part of me — died," she whispered; "the rest of me is — ashamed." "Hush," he said gently, "hush, dear; I understand. Just lie quietly and get well and strong — my wife." And so began for the two so strangely married a new life. The warm days brought healing. It was not long before she was rushing to meet him at the gate, flushed with dinner-getting, sleeves rolled up, breathless with triumph over some new feat of housewifery. "I dont suppose you could — ever — love me ? ' ' she asked him shyly one evening, as they sat together on the rude porch. He bent over her. His strong hands were on her shoulders. "I do love you," he said gravely. And it was true. Not the old, first, lyric boy-passion, but a love that was made up of forgiveness and pity and affection. It shone in his eyes, and the light of it blinded her. Her hands fluttered to her face.