Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1920)

The World and His Wife By FAITH SERVICE Fictionized from the Cosmopolitan Photoplay TitK World and his Wife must talk. There is no help for it. What is more, when they have exhausted fact, they will dip into fiction, and he who listens may profit more or less, but just so long as there is talk, just so lone are there ears to receive the talk . . . ana so it goes . . . When Feodora became betrothed to Don Julian of Seville, the World told his Wife that it was a "money match.'' Don Julian is too old, the tongues tattled, too old for the beautiful Feodora. She should have a lover young as a sickle moon, and slender, with a guitar in his hand and songs upon his mouth. Feodora is making a mistake. She is not following the dictates of her maiden heart. No good will come of it. His Wife echoed back the World's gossip. No good will come of it, she predicted. She might have added, "So let us keep on talking. Don World, and see what ninv be seen." As usual, the World and his Wife were wrong. Long, long before Don Julian told the beautiful Feodora of his love for her she had entertained a high and holy passion for him. The dreams she had dreamed . . . the prayers she had offered up . . . the beads she had told . . . watching, many times, his tall figure riding past the courtyard of her home. She had never dared to think that he would turn the eye of his fancy upon her. It had been a rather beautiful love, tender, deep, or would have been if the World and his Wife had quieted their tongues and let the matter rest. It began with an act of humanity on the part of Don Julian. Don Sevillo had been his oldest and dearest friend. When he came to die, some few months after the marriage of Julian and Feodora, he begged Don Julian to keep an eye on his only son, ICrnesto. "He shall come to us." Julian promised; "you need have no fear for his future, I give you my oath." I'>nesto came to live at the Casa Cranda. At first he was deep in the dregs of his sorrow for the father who had been more than father to him. In his sorrow I'eodora ministered to him, for his sake, but more for Don Julian's, who implored her to give the boy her tenderness for his wound's sake. After that she continued her talks and walks with him. her rides and moonlight strolls, because he told her of a vast book world in vvliieh he had mo\eil and had his being since first he could remember anything, and Feodora. avid, but not overly informed, drank in the strange atmospheres, the enchanted places and peoples, and seemed to expand with the far-ofi' perfumes, the vibrations of other hearts. Don Julian, watching, was, at (Tivnity-seven) first, content. He loved Feo It had been a rather beau dora with the love that was '""'.l"":*' ^'"t"' ^".^-.u ... , , ,, would nave been, if the content to have her have the world and his Wife had desires of her heart. He per quieted their tongues and ceived that it was not Krnesto let the matter rest to whom she listened, but the things of which he told her. .\nd he knew, or thought he knew, that Feodora loved him. If. now and then, it came to him that Feodora and Frnesto were mutually young, that their hlood beat dizzily in their veins, while his. Don Julian's, was slowing down, hf remembered, too, the vows Feodora had made him on their wedding morn, the passion in her voice, the pulses in her lips. .Such things do not lie. I'acts might speak, but the instinct of a