Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1921-Jan 1922)

cm OTION PiCTURP" MAGAZINE L. 3 senior, but he was rich, and her relatives figured, with the shortsightedness inherent among relatives, that she had done well. On the day Robert Waring arrived at Frieusberg to take over the active operation of Krillet's extensive acres, he heard vague rumors of the man's young and beautiful wife that he guarded so carefully. These rumors were reinforced by Krillet himself on the long trek out to his farm. Waring's interest was only slightly quickened. A Boer's idea of beauty was the full blown, generously proportioned Cape-Colonial girl, of blonde and florid nature. With fervor more biblical than conjugal, Krillet referred to her as the beautiful Shulamite of the Song of Solomon. Waring had smiled with secret amusement. A second look at Krillet, with his mean little pale-blue eyes, his longthick beard streaked with grey, and his ungainly hulk of a frame, had not helped visualize his South African wife as a thing of beauty. He was totally unprepared, therefore, for the glowing. insistent loveliness that was Deborah Krillet's. Deborah's hair was black, as black as moonless nights. Her eyes were a deep impenetrable grey, as grey as the days of a woman who lives without love. She was pale, with the even creamy pallor of ivory ; and her scarlet mouth, drooping sadly at the corners, bore out in mute testimony the divine discontent that her whole being proclaimed. Krillet was insensible to this, but Waring felt it immediately. The dull days of routine work on an isolated South African farm were made bear Gesticulating awkwardly with his ancient and inseparable meerschaum, he gave Waring his orders for the day in a voice more than usually stern. His wife, standing apart in wistful abstraction, he ignored, until he was thru with Waring able by her presence. Waring had left England to live alone and forget. It was easy to forget with Deborah near — everything but Deborah, that is. Many weeks went by, during which their intimacy ripened into more than friendship, before Krillet announced the arrival of Tant Anna Yanderberg and her son, Jan. Neither Deborah nor Waring were conscious of what they had come to mean to each other. They only knew that at night they loved to walk the road a bit, thru the long lane of rustling poplars, beyond the clump of fragrant mimosa trees, out to the open veld — so grey and brown and sere by daylight, but magically transformed at night by an all be-drenching moonlight, into "the field of the cloth of gold." Deborah had to go to bed by nine o'clock, but, even so, there was a little time to spend together, for the Boer farmer sups early. They only knew that existence had taken on an added zest, and for Deborah, the lonely colorless days of her life had suddenly grown bright and full of interest. England and London and the big town house in Grosvenor Square, in particular, and all the sorrow it had meant for Waring, slipped easily from his mind, in the gracious presence of this woman. They only knew that they found happiness in each other's company, Deborah in shy unspoken emotions, and Waring in a thousand turbulent thoughts craving utterance. The household was awakened early the next morning by the shrill terror-stricken cries of Memke, Deborah's own little Kaffir-boy. Krillet was wielding the lash. "Son of evil !" he snarled, curling the leather thong about the defenseless boy's shoulders. "This will teach you to neglect my fowl-hok." Waring started forward in anger, but Deborah's hand detained him, "He does it often," she said ; "the women,