Puslapio vaizdai
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off from moment to moment. They talked as they had done the night before of unimportant things that carried with them a deep and inner significance; they made. up stories, as though they were children, about the people who had lived in the house that one time must have been here. They identified themselves with their lives -the lives of these people-until the present was shut away as though by a long distance of years.

"Then we did n't talk any more. I tried to break the silence and I could n't. He was stronger than I. I-I suppose I was swept away. I never have been, really, you know, and I loved it."

I stared at Vivian. It seemed so unlikely that, granted this swift enchantment, she would so yield to it, and the curious part of it is that there was that in her manner that showed me she had yielded nothing; that whatever she had done, somehow or other she had made no compromise with her own soul, even though the voice in which she told me all this was the hushed, breathless voice of a little girl telling a wonderful fairy-tale too beautiful to be true.

"I began to be angry that I had to spoil everything," she went on. "It was more like killing some beautiful live thing than just spoiling an afternoon. I was struggling to begin when he said:

"I wish we need never go back at all. Why should we? Why should one have to go through the little treadmill Life marks out for one? Why should n't we go on from here together?' You know, people have often said foolish things like that to me; only he meant it. He was absolutely in earnest about it. He can see no absurdity in any of his dreams."

She paused. Instead of a boyish folly, she had giver me a picture of invincible youth.

"He meant it really," she explained, "just as the night before, when he said the thing they always say,-'I feel as if I 'd known you always,'-he meant it. You see, he 's so inexperienced that he did. n't even know that this feeling of sudden intimacy between men and women is a

commonplace; and the queer thing is that when he said he felt as if he 'd always known me, I, too, felt as if I'd always known him, only as if I had known him. as his mother might-as if I'd held him in my arms when he was a baby. Now when I saw that he did n't see a shadow of a difficulty in our chugging down the mountain to the nearest parson and so away, I saw the moment had come for the coup de grâce." She paused, then said. very softly, "So-I told him about my decision over McAndrew and Haldane." She paused, looking off across the dark spaces of the night as though dreaming the scene over again.

"And then?" I asked her at last. "Oh," Vivian went on, "when I looked up at him again, he was smiling. I don't know what I'd expected. The look of youth which has had a dear illusion killed, suppose, and I said:

I

"You don't believe what I 'm saying?' and he kept smiling while he answered: 'I don't, because it is n't true. It is n't true, because this is real-this afternoon and last night. It's the supreme reality of life to me, and it could n't have been that to me if it had n't been so real to you too.' That was the part I could n't explain. It had been real to me. I have never been wantonly unkind or played with people just for the sake of playing, you know. He had held out his hand to me and said, 'Come,' and I had gone to him. As he looked at it, either all the rest was unreality or this was, and as we two sitting under the lost apple-tree knew this was real, the other did n't exist. He could n't think anything else, you see.

"So then I told him everything,-what I told you so long ago,-and how I 'd worked single-mindedly to one end; how I'd sacrificed to it the wishes of my own heart; how I'd kept true to the thing in life that seemed to me worth having. Each word should have struck like sleet upon his spirit, but he listened to me as undisturbed as- as McAndrew might have listened. Then, when I'd got all through, he said:

"It seems as if I'd been listening to

my own heart speaking. Now I'll tell you about my life.'

"Then he spread before me his work and his dreams, and there came a passion into his voice as he talked that I 've never heard before in the voice of any one. He forgot even me as he was telling me about it. It was the inner soul of that selfless fanatical ambition that I listened to that pays and pays and pays in terms of itself, and makes it necessary for every one near him to pay-makes his own flesh and blood go hungry and perhaps die so that the work he is doing may go on. And in the white-hot fire of his passion my own little ambitions were burned up."

She stood up suddenly, and with a passionate gesture showed me how completely they had been burned.

"Beside him my ambitions seemed nothing, I tell you! I don't mean the worth of them, but just the force of them. Beside him, in spite of his quality of youth, McAndrew seemed soft and yielding. He had cared for one or two girls, and had brushed them aside as I had brushed people aside. Then he had seen me and knew that he had to have me; that was the substance of what he said as he talked. I knew that my confession was, in his eyes, a trivial, childish thing. Then he said something funny, and yet it was the heart of what I loved in him.

"Now you understand,' he said, 'why we must n't burn time on any altar of convention. I must be back at work before long!'"

As she paused again I plumbed the inner meaning of the remark that had apparently won him Vivian. The passion that was his consuming desire for his work had released him long enough to find his perfect mate, and even now, insatiable of his devotion, called to him to

return.

"I don't know if you understand; I'm not sure I do. It's a question between two realities; they can't both be true. He 's made the things that I thought valuable to me cease to exist. They don't exist for me any more than a chrysalis exists for a moth. There's no

value to the other any more, and yet and yet I'm afraid. I think I'm most afraid of McAndrew; he could perhaps call me back. If I go back, I feel as though he would be lying in wait for me. So I'm going to do what he, the other, wishes-just go with him without wasting time."

"You 're not going to do that," I protested-"just put your hand in Grayson's and go away? You-you can't!" I stuttered. It was all too absurd, the unescapable and awful publicity of it, the needless hurt to Haldane, the shock to Vivian's mother. I did n't count McAndrew's hurt, -somehow his discomfiture did n't move me deeply, but the rest seemed insane to me, especially as the rôle for which I was cast, Vivian explained to me, was to explain things as much as they could be explained to McAndrew and Mrs. Nevers. It still seems insane, but not inexplicable. The simple truth of it Iwas that she did n't dare trust herself to go back with McAndrew there. It was as though she felt that this old self of hers, instead of being a chrysalis, might prove to be a stifling garment which he might conjure her to put on again.

"I want to slam the door on myself," she explained.

At that moment, while it still seemed preposterous to me, I could n't help throwing at her:

"I suppose you 've looked it squarely in the face, the sort of life you 're going to?"

"Every detail of it," she flashed forth.

Then it was I began to see how ultimately faithful she had been to herself. For my explanation of it is that she had met the thing she had worshiped raised to its highest power. Something in Grayson's inner depth had told him that here was a woman who would spend herself in the service of his ambition as he spent himself; who was hard and ardent; who would warm him in the fire of her life, serve him, and guard him.·

He did n't know it; he never would know it. He imagined, no doubt, that he only wanted to serve her. But Vivian

went with him knowing that he was going to demand of her relentlessly a supreme devotion.

She had wanted power, he was seeking a greater power. She was unscrupulous, but to gain his ends he would have let his children die. She was hard as steel, but Grayson was as relentless as death itself, as relentless as any force of nature. She had loved the most difficult thing, and he challenged her to do the impossible, to let him walk over her heart to gain his purposes in life, and not only to do this, but to be unaware that he even demanded any sacrifice. So, having formed an ideal, she worked toward its fulfilment even though its fulfilment came in a form of which she had not dreamed. That is my explanation.

Mrs. Nevers's is that Vivian fell in love with Grayson's youth, like any schoolgirl, and McAndrew thinks something like the same thing.

"Women can't starve their primitive impulses without paying," is how he put it. "You can't count on them. But that young man will go far. He 'll have to," he added.

The world shared their opinions. It did n't forgive Vivian what it termed her anticlimax, and showed its lack of forgiveness in its deadliest form by losing all interest in her.

Here are the two explanations of the affair. You can take your choice, or Sydney Grayson's, who still naïvely believes that they were intended for each other from all time.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

He had not made the team. He was graduating:
The last grim chance was gone, and the last hope fled;

The final printed list tacked up in the quarters;

A girl in the bleachers turned away her head. He knew that she was trying to keep from crying; Under his tan there burned a painful red.

He had not made the team. The family waiting
His wire, up State; the little old loyal town
That had looked to him year by year to make it famous,
And laureled him each time home with fresh renown;
The men from the house there, tense, breathlessly watching,
And, after all, once more, he 'd thrown them down.

He had not made the team, after years of striving;
After all he had paid to try, and held it cheap,-
The sweat and blood and strain and iron endurance, —
And the harassed nights, too aching-tired to sleep;
The limp that perhaps he might be cured of some day;
The ugly scar that he would always keep.

He had not made the team. He watched from the side lines, Two days later, a part of a sad patrol,

Battered and bruised in his crouched, blanketed body,

Sick and sore to his depths, and aloof in dole, Until he saw the enemy's swift advancing

Sweeping his team-mates backward. Then from his soul Was cleansed the sense of self and the sting of failure,

And he was one of a pulsing, straining whole, Bracing to stem the tide of the on-flung bodies,

Helping to halt that steady, relentless roll;

Then he was part of a fighting, frenzied unit

Forcing them back and back and back from the goal. There on the side lines came the thought like a whip-crack As his team rallied and rose and took control:

He had not made the team, but for four long seasons,
Each of ten grinding weeks, he had given the flower,
The essence, and strength of body, brain, and spirit,
He and his kind-the second team-till the power

To cope with opposition and to surmount it
Into the team was driven against this hour!

What did it matter who held fast to the leather,

He or another? What was a four-years' dream?
Out of his heart the shame and rancor lifted;

There burst from his throat a hoarse, exultant scream.
Not in the fight, but part of it, he was winning!
This was his victory: he had made the team!

went with him knowing that he was going to demand of her relentlessly a supreme devotion.

She had wanted power, he was seeking a greater power. She was unscrupulous, but to gain his ends he would have let his children die. She was hard as steel, but Grayson was as relentless as death itself, as relentless as any force of nature. She had loved the most difficult thing, and he challenged her to do the impossible, to let him walk over her heart to gain his purposes in life, and not only to do this, but to be unaware that he even demanded any sacrifice. So, having formed an ideal, she worked toward its fulfilment even though its fulfilment came in a form of which she had not dreamed. That is my explanation.

Mrs. Nevers's is that Vivian fell in love with Grayson's youth, like any schoolgirl, and McAndrew thinks something like the same thing.

"Women can't starve their primitive impulses without paying," is how he put it. "You can't count on them. But that young man will go far. He 'll have to," he added.

The world shared their opinions. It did n't forgive Vivian what it termed her anticlimax, and showed its lack of forgiveness in its deadliest form by losing all interest in her.

Here are the two explanations of the affair. You can take your choice, or Sydney Grayson's, who still naïvely believes that they were intended for each other from all time.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

HE

Revelation
By

RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL

E had not made the team. The ultimate momentLast practice for the big game, his senior yearHad come and gone again with dizzying swiftness.

It was all over now, and the sudden cheer That rose and swelled to greet the elect eleven Sounded his bitter failure on his ear.

He had not made the team. He was graduating:
The last grim chance was gone, and the last hope fled;
The final printed list tacked up in the quarters;

A girl in the bleachers turned away her head.
He knew that she was trying to keep from crying;
Under his tan there burned a painful red.

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