Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

Dollars and the Their social friends believed that Dan and Madge went South. Instead, they sold most of their possessions and went East — wayover east in a part of New York City unknown to their friends. I self, T was after that gay holiday party at the Hunts Club that Madge Hillyer found out for the first time how they really stood in a money way — Dan Hillyer, the boyish but brilliant young inventor whom she had married, and her It had never occurred to her to inquire into Dan's financial status. All the men she knew had money. After a few seasons of judicious flirtations, in which she had been sought by some of the most desirable bachelors of New York, she had met Dan Hillyer and discovered that she loved him. That was enough. It would have made no difference in her final choice of him if she had known that he was what would have been termed in her set a poor young man. But she would have started out on their little matrimonial venture in a verj' different way. She would have taken a modest apartment in Brooklyn or in one of the cheaper districts of New York City, for she was a sensible person. She would have worked out an economical household budget system that would have made the money Dan did have last them a long time. Madge was that kind of a girl. It had been Dan's fault that they had set up in a smart and expensive apartment house overlooking the Park, and had proceeded several months on a season of quite unnecessary extravagance before the subject of dollars arose between them. Dan had a youthful, stubborn pride, which was one of the things that made him lovable, but this pride, coupled with the usual delicacy of feeling that besets young people about to be married, had kept them from coming down to brass tacks on the matter of the wherewithal on which they were to live after they were wed. He had indicated that he had realized importantly on a mine windlass patent; but had never told her that the extent of his realizations had been only $15,000 — a large enough sum in some circles, but nothing in theirs. Madge had taken it for granted that they had plenty. Arthur Crewe was at the Hunts Club ball. He had been one of Madge's most persistent suitors — a handsome, serious, somewhat older man of cultivated tastes and the money to indulge 36 Every married man and -woman who prizes the happiness of the home should read this story. By NANON BELOIS them. He was a worshiper of beauty, and Madge's fragile loveliness had always appealed to him as a rare flower he would like to own and cherish. Immediately after Madge's marriage he had hied him off for a trip half way across the world — but the restless longing to talk with her again, to be where she was, to give himself the exquisite pain of seeing her, though married to another, brought him back for the annual club affair at which they had danced each year since she had been old enough to be out and about. He felt — he knew — that he would never love another. Dan Hillyer, watching his wife dancing with Arthur Crewe, read all the older man's thoughts in the dark brown eyes that bent on her. Dan could see the misery— yet pleasure — that Crewe felt in her nearness. He was seized with a vio'.ent jealousy, joined with a sort of vague fear of the money and the power that Crewe possessed — which served to make him a little bit irritable after they reached home. A most inopportune time to expose the fact that (he household had accumulated bills — a whole teapot full! "I just stick them in there," Madge laughed as she pulled them out of the silver pot so that she might put Dan in a more cheerful frame of mind with a cup of tea, "and when there isn't room for any more, I pay them. Simple, isn't it?" When Madge returned from the kitchen with fresh water for the kettle, she found her Dan seriously counting up the bills. She stopped in surprise. "What's the matter?" "Matter?"' answered Dan. "Heavens, Madge, how could we have spent so much money?" Madge stiffened perceptibly. Dan had always insisted on her buying all the things she wanted. She told him as much. Dan's eyes fell in embarrassment — then he raised them and looked shamefacedly at his wife. "When I won you from — from Crewe and the rest" — it was agony for him to confess it — "from all the men who had plenty of money — I — I couldn't bear to let you think you had suffered through your choice. I never told you the whole truth about my finances, Madge. It was not a fortune I got from my mine windlass patent. It was only fifteen thousand dollars. I was sure I could sell the new smelter process before that money was gone — but — but I'm not so sure now." "Oh, Dan, Dan, why didn't you tell me before, my dear?" Madge went over to her husband and put her arms about him. The thought that he had been working on and worrying without her sympathy and help, while she had been practically throwing money away, that he had been discouraged perhaps, and all because he had not known how willing she was, how anxious to be a real inspiration in his life — hurt her more than Dan's weakness in not telling her the truth before. "But you still have faith in the smelter process, haven't you?" Madge's practical mind, given a chance, reached out to tackle their problems. "It will be very valuable to the copper industry," Dan answered with certainty. "But it takes time to work out the details — more time than I thought." "Well, we still have a little money left," said Madge. "We'll sell most of our things, and we'll save all we can while you finish your work. Why — it will be fun to be poor, and to .ft