Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1916)

The Glory Road "Oh, but you don't know what it is," she insisted wearily. "How should you, when you've reached success and can do or have an) thing you warn .-" Her \\oi\U seemed to strike some hidden rd of thought in him, and he sobered. "If 1 only had reached the success you think 1 have," he said wistfully "You don't know ! The curse that's on me is that what people call my success hasn'l made mo happy, and what use is a success that doesn't do that? I'm like a desert rat whose pockets are stuffed with nuggets, but who can't find the water hole that will save his ld'e. 1 seem to be always looking for something that 1 never find, the one thing that will make life ring true. ma'..e it worth while. What is any cither sueeess beside that failure?" lie stopped, still smiling faintly, but lime could not reply at once. His confession of laek, of defeat, was as uncharacteristic as it was unexpected. It was as il Tune's mood had communicated itself to him. with startlingly powerful effect. "Oh, but think of all you've accomplished!" she protested, ranging herself once more as she normally did. upon the side of hope. "Think how splendidly you've done against big odds. You ought to be the happiest man in the world !" "Yes. But I'm not." He seemed to subject her challenge to a long "close-up." . . . "Maybe it's because 1 don't think much of the world. It's always been ready to knife me if I didn't knife first. I've been swindled by my partners and sold out by my best friends. Even my parents made life hell for me. I'm suspicious of everybody on earth except you." There was no self-pity and very little bitterness in his tone. It was that of one merely stating facts, and June felt that this at last was the true expression of his inner self. She was conscious of a faint tinge of disappointment at first, then pity touched her heart, for none seems so pitiful as those in whom no illusion remains, or those who live for today in the certainty that there is no tomorrow. "Oh, Stephen," she cred, "you mustn't feel like that. You mustn't ! Life is good, whatever it seems to do to us. A world as full of wonderful things as this is must be good !" The words were an echo of Paul Temple's philosophy, but she did not realize this, nor stop to trace them to their soun e. ! lu man ibsorl ied her I le smiled a little, ami she thought that never had his rugged, unhandsome face appealed to her more. "You see how much richer you are than 1 am ? \ on have faith." "YOU admit then that there is SUCh a thing and that it's worth something !" "\ es, if it's saved in time. Mine wasn't. Bui sometimes you've made me think 1 mighl get it back." He spoke as to a third person. "No one can give that to you — really; it's something from within, not from outside." "But once it's dead it has to be born again, and born of inspiration ; and the inspiration must come from outside. For me it would be in watching your splendid faith." She made a deprecating gesture. "My faith I" she said scornfully. "It's hardly an example. It gives way regularly. as it did today, and then I have to climb all the way up again." "But I'm down to stay; can't even climb. And people call me successful ami happy !" T'HE desire to lift the man out of his *■ mire of hopeless cynicism became an imperative need with June, and in her anxiety and eagerness she forgot herself and her own discouragement. The transferred interest and effort brought her a sense of wholesome warmth and returning happiness. She had learned the first lesson in peace. Thev talked on. and Holt, as if his longpent thoughts had been like dammed waters, let them sweep him along. There was little they did not discuss, and through it all he sat, as it were, at her feet, eager to learn. Meanwhile, outside, day was fading. The "high fog," an almost daily visitor at this hour, had floated in, darkening the sky as if for rain. It came far above the earth, thick and gray, and was fitted to the bowl of the sky like a wDolen lining to a hat. It truncated the mountains, and boiled and smoked down the canyons with the eddying breezes. And it brought cold. "Will you turn on the lights, please?" Tune asked presently. "Tust behind vou in "the wall." "Look here," he said, standing up briskly, (Continued on page 144)