Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1920)

CLASSIC Five moments later a man. standi g drearily by the water-front, staring down into its muddy lethal stream. saw a wild little figure in torn lace and crushed net flounces running along the quay. His thoughts were l^aralyzed, but instinct acted. She screamed insanely once, twice, when he reached her, and tried to spring, but he dragged her back. He had ' never felt anyone tremble as she trembled now against him. and then she lifted her white, hunted face and for the third time their eyes met. "I — thought you were — thai iium!" she panted, clinging convulsively. '"I didn't know — you see — what he wanted, and when — I found out. 1 knew I would rather die. Oh, much rather!" He drew a slow breath. Two derelicts of life, brought together almost at the point of shipwreck by the tides, the dark, strong, silent tides of fate that move resistlessly. In the last two months these tides had tossed him hither and yon in sport, from the depths of despair and poverty, to sudden, undreamed-of riches, thence down into the depths again — of selfloathing and broken nerves and the sick desire to escape himself. There must be .some meaning to it all, when the one girl he had ever really looked at had broken thru the bars of the convent and come across the months into his arms ! "Eve!" They had neither of them noticed that a limousine had drawn up behind them and two men lea])ed out. until the older of them laid authoritative hands on the girl, and the other, glaring, pushed her rescuer away. ".'\11 this excitement has been too much for you ! Come home, my darling, and you shall rest. It's nerves. Caron — a totally inexperienced girl suddenly brought face to face with the facts of life. But she'll come around — be i)atient with her!" "I shall be patience itself, \non cher Jacques!" the shorter man assured him. as they led the shuddering, speechless girl away between them, "she is worth waiting for " The .Strange Man looked after them, seeing, instead of two gentlemen in conventional evening clothes helping a girl into a costly car, two satyrs dragging their victim in triumph between them. Then the great machine sprang forward into the night and was gone. But the .Strange Man did not return to his fixed. He groaned. "God!" said Richard to the sea, "how am I going to stand this seven months longer? It's asking too much of a man!" ( h'ifiy-five) TRUMPET ISI-.'^ND Fictionized from the story adapted l>y Mr. and Mrs. George Kandolph Chester from the book of the ^amc name by Gouverneur Morris. Directed by Tom Tcrriss. A Vitagraph Masterfeature presented by Albert E. Smith. The cast : Eve de Merincourt Marguerite De I.a Motte Richard Bedell Wallace MacDouald Allan Marsh Hallam Cooley Jacques de Merincourt Joseph Swickard Henri Caron Arthur Hoyt Hilda .• Marcelle Daly Valinsky. Percy Challenger morbid questioning of the water. He had no idea of dying now. As long as that girl was on earth, he could not leave it. Preposterous, of cour.se ! A stranger — but he knew that he had not seen the last of her; that, once again, under some sky, beside some far waters, they would stand together as now, and then "And then," he said aloud to the night, opening his arms violently, "then I shall be what I was when I first saw her. I shall go away, to some empty place, and win back what I have lost these last accursed weeks. When I see her again I shall be a man, and that time I shall not let her go !" If Jacques de Merincourt had expected hysterics, stubbornness, defiance from his daughter, he was surprised by her attitude, after she had recovered from the first shock of the night's e.xperiences. Something seemed to have gone from her