Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1920)

MOTION PICTURE The shoulder of her dress wanted ; and being poor meant I'Zf^A ^'a^u^ 'Af^'i unpleasant things like scrubbing sound and she felt avid n t-.jjij j iT lips on her neck and arm """""s. Uaddy had said that they vv'cmld be very, very poor unless slie married tlie little fat Frenchman who had made millions out of the war with, his aeroplane factory. She did not want to be poor. But she did not want to marry Henri Caron. either, for she suspected that marriage would give him a right to kiss her hand and would take away her right to object. She didn't know exactly what being married was, of course — they didn't speak of such things in the convent. All the same, there had been stray hints — a newsjiaper blown across the wall, a book of poems one of the ■girls had smuggled in. There was one jioem Eve had read and reread, feeling the heart beneatli her young bosom pounding furiously, she did not know why — "To be a sweetness more desired than spring — A bodily beauty more acceptable than the wild rose tree's wreath that crowns the fell — " Xo. She was (|uite sure there was something^ about marriage that meant that that detestable little man witli the yellow eyes could kiss her — and she simply couldn't bear tliat ! Now. when she heard the sound of her father's stejis on the threshold, she turned and Hung herself upon him, trembling. "Daddy! I — I dont want to marry an old. fat. dreadful man. I would rather have a young, thin husband. Please, please find me one. There was a man like that I saw once beyond the convent gate " Jaccjues de Merincourt was horrified. The very notion that .she should have looked at a man without an introduction drew dow-n his lip-corners, brought his thin, conventional brows together. "My chi)d !" he exclaimed gravely, " a stranger — one does not marry slrain/ers! Henri is my friend. He has courted you properly and you have given your word. .\11 is as it should be. Trust your father to do what is best for you." He did not finish, "and for himself" ; he preferred not to admit that. /\ n d so V. V e went down reluctantly to the gaiety and the lights and music below, a childish figure in her fragile net frills and sashes, who smiled bashfully at the congratulations of her father's friends and trembled like a child when Henri Caron minced dapperly to her on his high, varnished heels and laid a jeweled vanity case in her hand, bowing Mi that she saw the shiny seal]) at the to]) of his head. "For the most beautiful I'eautiful in the world," he said, but his look said other things. She danced. The music was very different from that of the convent organ that made one think of solemn processions and dark, wide skies and mighty wings. This was hot and swift — it made her uneasy and rapturous and dizzy. To try to think, she slipped from the arms of her partner — his fingers burned hot thru the thin sleeve — and went to the window, drawing the long velvet folds behind her that she might lean her throbbing forehead against the cool glass. .\nd, leaning so. she looked into the face of the Stranger Man for the second time. . He was standing on the sidewalk, beneath tlie window, with a curious look of waiting, as tho he had ex|iected her. The dark was all around him. except fgr his face, lifted, faintly smiling. Her lips parted. Her father had called him a stranger. ' .\bsurd ! Why, she knew him better than she did Henri, even if she had not sjioken ; she knew him better than "Ah,here you are, cherie!" her betrothed was purring in her ear: "they've gone in to supper — Fve been looking for you e\ erywhere. Naughty to run away from its Henri I" The curtain folds fell across the black square of the window, like a relentless hand pushing her back from her glimpse of life. -She felt as if she must scream, must struggle in the soft, strangling net of fate closing about her, but the futility of it all kept her silent. What, after all, could she say — that she had .seen a ])asser-by in the street whose eyes had spoken to her tyes .^ That she would leave all her safe past, her conventional l)resent, her golden future gladly to go out into the unknown dark with him ? Her father was right — they were strangers. Strangers! "Your neck was made for a rnan to kiss!" Caron's voice had thickened. She looked at hitn wonderingly. with a stirring of fright as she saw his congested face and the glitter in liis lired/ watery eyes. .Suddenly her heart's thudding almost <ut¥ocated her. She began to creep away from him with jiite>.u jjrecaution. like .some little hunted animal, but with a short liark of laughter he was holding her in his stubby, muscular arms. "Dont play with me. Eve! I've got a right to you. Fm tired of having only the tips of your fingers " The shoulder of her dress ri]i])ed "with a jagged sound and she felt avid lips on her neck and arm. In the convent she had dreamed of hell, and the dream had been no more dreadful than this struggle against his animal strength and lu.st. (Fifty-fovr)