Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1912)

THRU FLAMING GATES 99 Twenty minutes later she was the center of a merry group of laughing and chatting friends at the Emerys\ The house was like a fairy palace, lit with hundreds of lights and with the most delightful music stealing thru the place from a great bank of palms, where the orchestra was hidden. Some of the bitterness of the little domestic unpleasantness still tainted her enjoyment of it all. "It takes young physicians so long to rise to the point where their wives can be somebody,' ' she was thinking, when a mellifluous male voice broke into her revery. "What, Kathy! Well, this is a pleasant surprise!" The newcomer, a large man, with a heavy mustache and an air of familiarity, seized her hand and held it, as tho he had some right to it. He had had, years ago. Katherine and he were once engaged. ' ' Where 's John ? " he continued, looking around among the gay throng. "He — he couldn't come." "So that's why you stand here looking like a funeral, eh ? Well, dry those tears now — and I see it's up to me to do the honors. How about this waltz ? " He bowed gallantly and held out his arm. "It is yours!" she said, gaily, and laying her pretty, white-gloved hand on his shoulder, they were soon whirling about the dazzling room, all else forgotten but the dance. "Oh, that was glorious!" she cried, flushed and bright-eyed with excitement, when they had taken seats. "There's more where that came from," he said, still holding the dainty hand and gazing down at her with old-time admiration. "Come, let 's have the whole of the next one. ' ' They took the floor again. ' ' By the way, Frank, ' ' she said, as it suddenly occurred to her for the first time, " where 's your wife? I've been looking about for her." "Oh, you wont find her, because she isn't here." She thought he held her just a little tighter here, as if in assurance. It was indeed an exquisite waltz. "Not sick, I hope?" she inquired. "An attack of the sillies, that's all. She gets 'em often. Sometimes I'm thankful " — a little pressure of the hand this time. ''The cook's kid, or granddaughter, or something, was going to have something done to it up at the hospital. So, of course, Millie had to go with the cook to the hospital. Did you ever hear anything so silly? Kid was badly burned, or something of the kind. Why, what the deuce is the matter, Kathy ? ' ' The woman had stopped dead still, her face gone pale, her body trembling. "Escort me to a seat," she said, thickly. A sudden dread had come over her of she knew not what, a sudden lofty veneration, too, for this woman whose sympathy was so great that she could forego pleasures such as this. "What's it all about?" her escort was demanding. "Why, John is the surgeon performing this grafting operation tonight on the cook 's child ! ' '. "Ho, ho, ho!" roared the man, noisily. "If that isn't a rich coincidence! Millie and John spending the evening together at the hospital — Kathy and Frank doing the same here — at the dance ! ' ' "At the dance," murmured the woman over and over again. "We're enjoying ourselves, and they're trying to make others happy ! ' ' "But they're enjoying themselves just as much" — he glanced at the woman's unhappy countenance — "perhaps more than we are. That's their way — this is ours." ' ' I wish to God it were mine ! ' ' "Tut, tut! Sit down here, before this cheerful grate fire, and we '11 have a cozy chat." She seated herself, drawing away from him with a shudder he did not notice. "Come, come, Kathy, brace up. This isn't a bit like you." He shook the arm of the preoccupied woman. "Look!" she cried in a voice of almost tragedy, pointing toward a glowing coal that had tumbled from the grate and rolled to the very edge