Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1916)

JANUARY MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC, 1916 ‘ * r) ut I dont love you, ’’said the girl, trying, not very successfully, to put regret into the lilting triumph of her tone. “I dont love you at all, you see.” ‘ ‘ I dont believe it, ’ ’ Ralph Warner cried; ‘ ‘ you ’re just playing with me now, d e a r— aren ’t you ? W h y , you must love me. I wouldn’t have spoken unless I ’d been sure. But every look an every tone of yours the last week have told me I needn’t wait any longer. Dear, I ’m thirty, and I ’ve waited thirty years for this minute. Dont play the coquette with me now, sweetheart.” Under the gold veil of her lashes she looked up at him, noting the tenderness of the whole big frame — the little muscles quivering under the dark skin ; the wonder in the honest, gray eyes — and her heart quickened. It was a delicious moment — this one when the great man-creature floundered, caught at last in the silken meshes of her snare. She desired to prolong it. to savor the sensation of her power to the uttermost. “But are you sure?” she breathed, oh ! so softly, and swept a tiny glance upward. “What makes you think you love me?” She heard the catch of his breath, felt the shake of his arm along the coat-sleeve that brushed her shoulder. Connoisseur in the art of love, she knew that she had never made a more worthy capture than this. ‘ ‘ How do I know I love you ? ’ ’ he repeated almost roughly. “How do I know I’m alive? How do I know when I ’m hungry or thirsty ? I ’m not much of a talker, little golden girl; but there’s one thing I’d like you to know. I’ve seen a good many women in my life — and passed by them because I wasn’t looking for the Inn of Flirtation but for a place called Home. And when I saw you three weeks ago, I knew I’d found it. I had just that * xJonnall' same contented, joyful feeling you get when you turn in at the home gate after a long, lonesome journey. And that’s how I know I love you. you little bit of a thing !” The deep quiver in the man’s voice vibrated somewhere far within the girl’s shallow little soul. She did not like the feeling it gave her and resentfully laid her discomfort to his charge. So a butterfly, seeing the net closing about its golden wings, flutters away from capture with the instinct to be free. “How interesting!” she drawled, and deliberately showed her tiny, white teeth in a little yawn, “but I think I’d rather be an inn than a home. It’s so much gayer and brighter, you see. I ’m afraid it would bore me to be a home.” Shocked, he started back from her levity as one who hears ragtime strains when he enters what he believes to be a church. “Then you have been playing with me all along?” he said slowly. “Dont be cross,” she cooed. “Truly, I did want you to fall in love with me, and I wanted to fall in love with y o u, too. But marriage” — she shivered delicately — ‘ ‘ oh, marriage is like being shut up in a lonesome room all your life with only one person to see you -ugh! What’s the use of being beautiful for just one person? No, no, Ralph, marriage lasts too long.” “You flirt!” he snarled between clenched teeth; “vou contemptible little flirt!” She gave him a challenging glance out of very blue eyes, and suddenly he had control of himself. “Listen to me,” he said quietly. Hat in hand, he stood before her, and the bones of his face stood out starkly under the taut-drawn skin. “I’ve told you I loved you, and I meant it. I meant it so much that I cant live without you. If I dont hear from you by ten o’clock tonight that you’ll marry me, I shall shoot myself. It’s eight-thirty now, and I’m going to my rooms and wait for the telephone to ring.” “You are positively melodramatic,” shrugged the Flirt, and sent out a tiny peal of laughter like golden bells — the bells of the tea-house, not the temple. “Tf you’re planning to do it with a picture of me in your hand, do take the last one. The other is positively horrid, and people would say you hadn’t any sense dying for a girl who looked like that ” But she was speaking to an empty room, for Ralph had gone. The Flirt gave another chime of laughter and ran to the piano, where for some moments she banged out a medley of gay tunes ; then, with a catch of the breath, she whirled away from the keys. “Br-r-r ! but it’s cold in here!” she shivered. “Believe I’ll go to bed. There wont be any one else in tonight.” She strolled across the room, into (Thirteen)