Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug 1911-Jan 1912)

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104 THE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE For so it came about. One golden day, when all nature called out-ofdoors, the devotees sat cheek by jowl, each intent upon his pleasure. It was then that Ethel, with a soft prelude of tempered semitones, sought to woo him from his easel. As the freed notes floated above them, it would seem to her that a vista of fair hopes and dreamlike fancies was thus opened for them both ; but John, alas ! worked methodically on. He, too, would create such a wreath of clouds over his shining landscape, as would lead low eyes upward in contemplation above the tree-tops. LOVE VERSUS ART As she stole back of him and looked at the streaky charcoal lines, she thought of that fixed sun and the unchanging cloud effect, which must hang in some one 's parlor, or lie grinning in an attic ; immutable as the color of the district schoolhouse. How different from the brightening or darkening tones of music, shifting hither and yon, and finally fading away like the sunset 's glow itself ! In this pother of jarring ideals, their eyes met, and Ethel told him just what she thought about things. "'I wish you would fold up that silly old easel. ' ' she said, ' ' and if you cant play at being an audience, let's just sit and talk comfortable-like. "When I look at you I feel as if the decorator, with his pots and papers, had descended upon us." This was good sensible talk, such as I like to hear in a spirited loved one, but John was not used to having his mane so rudely combed, especially the decorator remark. "It's a pity I cant work," he retorted, "when the humor is on me. I 've got to get accustomed to all sorts of places, and all sorts of noises, it seems. ' ' He, too, hit the right word to stir up trouble. "Noises!" she said, with a rising voice; "I take it that you are referring to my music ; tho how any one could play anything but painful sounds while looking at your nature cartoons, I can't imagine." Her diminutive nose tilted in air like a duellist's weapon. John's crossed foot came to the floor as if it had been shot from its rest. His expression was unutterably stern, and somewhat sad, too, like a just judge pronouncing a sentence in his family. "I thought you had a soul," he said slowly, "or at least a heart to feel things, but now I know that you are one of those Swiss music-boxes that my grandfather used to play on ; take out the shiny cylinder and you have an empty box. I wish you the most musical of days," he added, gathering up his things. "And good-day to you, too," she said, with snapping blue eyes. ' ' I was going to speak to papa about having our barn done over, but painters and putty make me sickish. ' ' A hand-slammed door between them cut off further intercourse in the temple of the muses ; showing that high art has its drawbacks, and that it is but a petty gamut from love to scorn. Weeds and pig-grass began to sprout in the little path across the common; for its only traveler had gone away. It had gone the rounds of Dosebury that John Whittler had been called to the city on matters of great pictorial importance; that his