Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

CLASSIC him, with Alice and him . . . “Love’s dim, cathedral ways . . This was discord, this love Zara offered him. This was profanity. Vicious, scarlet, destruction. It would be destruction, he knew it. It would burn his soul to ashes and his body to damnation. It would leave him nothing but a husk to drag hack to that sweeter, saner thing that awaited him in the New England town. Profanity ... of course . . . then why the ingulfing warmth that rose up to assail him like the hot, imoossible breaths of assaulting roses? Why the nostalgia that swept over him ? Why the desire, sinister, horrible, concjuerng? He flung off the closing arms . . . “Zara !’’ he heard himself saying. “This is not love ... I rave not come on such a mission as this ... I Zara laughed. She laughed horribly, he thought. She matched the little, nun-like picture from him and tramirled it .tnder her savage feet. She turned on his cabin and wrought lestruction upon it. She raised up his priestly garments and dung them forth. She was a fury. The fury of the South Seas. “I finish,” a voice said at the window, and Stark turned, to j;ee the teeth of Pulke gleaming at him even as the many pearls learned. He saw a javelin raised. He closed his eyes . . . e had come to preach the aiming word of God, and e was to die in this viseiike coil of human lusts md passions. Then he felt Zara beore him. Saw the poised lavelin dropped. Knew jhat her breast had been fis shield. When Pulke had gone e kist her hands, hanging ow supinely at her side, he raised her eyes and ey were jewels melted fito tears. I “You right. Sun Man,” he said, sadly ; “your pite girl love you as you |now of love. Your life far rom me. But after eath” — her husky voice lell — “after death . . . you tell me !pirits live . . , wherever they . . ... I live . . . with . . . you ...” ji Winthrop Stark sat a long while in jlence after Zara had gone. He felt iiat he had known very little before le typhoon of her amazing love had jludgeoned its way across his pathway, le felt that he had learnt a very great eal about love . . . about women . . . pout the way of things . . . Things move rapidly on the South Sea iilands. There are no fine nuances of ex■ession. Things happen vividly, brutally, withit prelude or prolog. b The day after Zara’s pronunciation of love S le dreaded black typhoon came upon the village. |,1I of Winthrop Stark’s missionary teaching I ;.ded. The ancient superstition of .sacrifice ■f ise tenfold. Zara offered herself. ■ “It shall be in the water,” she muttered, s she made ready for the .sea, while the sirrified, paralyzed, staring natives watched •It, powerless to avert this sacramental ^ ing she was doing for the saving of their •,'es. “It shall be on the shining sea . ilierefrom he sail . . . away ...” ! I When Winth rop Stark got to her <1 last, past the outraged natives, ■‘e was very far gone. As G carried her onto the beach he felt, in the unaccountable way he had felt many things since he had come to this land of nude feeling, that her great heart was crushed vi'ithin her breast, that she was, inwardly, bleeding to death. If he had succeeded in bearing a feeble torch to her poor, immured soul, he had, in the doing, mutilated her vivid heart . . . the heart she had offered to him . . . When the black typhoon was over and the uprisings consequent upon it were quelled and a sort of .sultry j)eace settled at last upon Kolpee, it was found that Majah was dead, that fifty natives were dead with him and that Zara was reigning princess. When they brought this news to her, Pulke and the high priest and the other, dearer, slender ])riest in his slim black, the old fires lit a moment in her eyes. She motioned Stark to her side, and he bent over to catch the words that rose with difficulty from her cnushed breast. “When I go, .Sun Man,” she whispered, “it no longer safe — for you. They think you do these things — the typhoon — my sacrifice — my father’s death — they not calm yet — I, as reigning princess, can “Pulke live on after I am gone. He remember that he love me, but that I love you and that so am I gone from him 'e\er and ’ever.” The reigning princess of Kolpee said little more. She exacted from the high priest the promise that the Sun Man sail from Kolpee in safety. She was reigning princess and she knew that her last word would be sacred. “You go back,” she whispered to Stark, as he made the sign of the cross over her fallen head ; “you go back . . . and I . . . and I . . . ” Winthrop Stark sailed at sunrise. The sea was wing-like, blue and very calm, the sun was pale and undemanding, but far off in the receding distances the island of Kolpee glowed like an opened flower beating like a heart . . . \V h e n Winthrop Stark got to her at last, past the outraged natives, she was very far gone (Forty-one)