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I do not know when it was that I realized that I loved him. I know now that I loved him from the first moment I saw him, that I have never felt that terrible sweet breathlessness at the sight of any other man since then. The least touch of him made all my heart sing with joy and a kind of exquisite fear. What I felt was not a woman's passion, for even the knowledge of passion was still years away, awaiting me. But I know that at his friendly hand-clasp the joy of heaven descended on me sweet and enfolding, and again I know that the nearness of no other human being has so swept me out of myself, so filled my life to overflowing. My memory of the next few weeks was of sheer happiness. He was so kind! He was so full of friendliness! He was so good! He was so good that my mother never put the slightest bar to our intimacy; and, indeed, why should she? He was all good for me. He opened so many doors to me. He was a home-loving lad, and when his work was over at five, he would come rushing in to take me to walk or to play tennis, and in the evenings we read aloud. We read "Alice," I remember, and the "Bab Ballads," my mother and Paul and I chuckling together like children. We read Matthew Arnold and Keats and Shelley; all sorts of poetry we read in the unselective, omnivorous fashion of the young.

We had long serious talks, Paul thrown full length on the moss under the appletrees, and he would explain to me his theories of life and his philosophy-his sweet boy's philosophy, full of a touching desire for all the gallant loyalties. He had the need of hearing his thoughts in words, and he found in me the perfect creative listener. Then in the middle of his talk he would break off to romp with Mattie or to play stick-knife, in which game I was an adept. Paul was one of those who could never be far from boyhood, and I think of him now playing with his own boys and girls as delightfully and in the same warmly intimate fashion as he played with me.

He played the heart out of my trembling little body, and it was never mine all the days of my life to give again.

I said that my memory of those weeks was of happiness; they seem now, as I look back on them, swimming in light. I re

member, too, that I was very good. I embraced the world in my new joy. I tried to please exacting and difficult teachers. By instinct I felt that I must give to life that which love had suddenly given to me with such radiant fullness.

There was no room in me for any small emotion; everything but happiness and goodness was crowded out. The smallest act of life, tiresome lessons, the routine of housework, had now a meaning, since I was trying to be worthy of life.

I HAD discovered the meaning of life, and that was to give myself utterly. It must have been when I put that into words that I also put into words my love for Paul. The conscious thought of him was not always in my mind, but he was always and forever there, the way the sun is there on a bright day, whether you think about it or not. Then from one moment to another it flashed into my mind: "I love Paul!"

That was the answer to this high happiness that had come to me. I thought, "I am in love!" and at once I blushed and trembled at the thought of it. This thing that had been in my heart and that had no name, this desire to love and serve all the world and especially to serve him, was love.

I lay awake far into the night, wondering at the marvel of it, as a young mother may wonder over the marvel of the birth of a child. I did not then, or at any other time, want anything of Paul. I only wanted to do what I was then doing, pour out my whole nature toward him—pour it about him like sunshine. I prayed passionately to God to make him happy and to make me good. It never once occurred to me that he could love me in any other than in the way he did, and yet, when I went down to breakfast the next morning, it was with a shrinking modesty, as though I had gone down naked, as though they might guess the secret within my heart. I felt they must guess, and it was with a sort of astonishment and a dumb wonder that I realized they had guessed nothing at all, and that my heart was a garden inclosed and my secret safe within it. I would have died sooner than have said the word aloud to any human being, least of all to him.

I do not know at what moment it came

to me that Paul had singled out Rose Gibson among the other girls. I think that my self-knowledge gave me a clairvoyance. I became aware there had been born in Paul's soul the same miracle that had been born in mine. He used to lie on his back under the trees and talk to me about her in an indirect sort of fashion.

But while I felt no jealousy, this knowledge of mine had for me a keen anguish, as though Paul had been translated to another planet. There was poignant suffering for me and yet a poignant sweetness that his soul came out shyly to mine in confidences that he scarcely knew were confidences. I think he talked to me almost as though he were talking to himself, so near was I to him. In some blind and wordless way I realized how near I was, so near that I felt that had I been three years older he would have loved me. I knew this so deeply that I never put it into words. Now I was as far from him as though a whole life's span separated us, and yet I was near enough to him so that he could talk to me as to himself.

At first all went well between them. Indeed, it never occurred to me that it could go any other way, at that moment they both seemed to me so perfect. As I watched the progress of their love the thought of self so died in me that there flowered in my soul one of those white blossoms of self-abnegation, of delight in another's joy even at one's own expense, that usually find place only in the soul of a mother who loses her dear son with joy if only his joy is complete enough.

I knew the affection Paul gave Rose was brother to my love for him; I think it had the same youth in it, for I do not believe that his heart had been touched before, and he gave it to her filled with the wine of his love to drink from as she chose.

Then one day I saw that he was troubled, puzzled rather. He seemed to frown as a little boy does at something which has hurt him, but which he does not understand. Trouble grew in his soul, and I saw the bitter waters of doubt rising about his heart. It was not anger at anything that had happened; he was just grieved. It was my fate that I must know all the things that happened in his heart without knowing anything of the cause. He never told me anything or let a criticism of her

pass his lips, but I walked along with him. on his journey of disillusion, and I began to hate Rose fiercely. She seemed to me the embodiment of evil, a terrible and menacing thing. When I saw her passing the house with a group of girls, laughing and talking, I marveled at her. My mind did not compass how she could laugh when she had hurt anything as sweet as Paul.

One night I heard the gate click and Paul walk up the path. He did not pause on the piazza, but turned and went into the orchard; I heard his footstep on the damp grass. I waited for him to come in, my heart beating. I waited, it seemed to me, throughout eternity. I knew down there in the darkness of the garden he was suffering by himself alone.

My heart aged as I waited. I waited as those do outside a sick-room where suffering is within, and at last I went down and out into the soft velvet of the night among the twinkling fire-flies..

I found him lying underneath an appletree: a tiny muffled sound as of a child weeping led me to him. I put my hand on him, and felt his shoulder heave up and down. It shocked me inexpressibly. His grief tore my heart to shreds. took my hand in his and clung to it, and I felt the warm rain of tears upon it.

He

"She won't read my letter," he finally whispered to me. "She won't listen. If I could only make her read my letter! Then it would be all right. Oh, there 's just some dreadful mistake!"

I did not know then that this has been through the ages the torture-cry of those whom love has suddenly and deeply wounded. Then in that moment flamingly I became a woman, flamingly I desired to comfort him of his hurt. I think, there in the darkness, had I spoken somehow, I could have wiped away the years that so separated us.

I was a woman and yet I was a child, and there came to me a flaming certainty of what I must do to help him. I knew before me was only one course, and that my feet must tread the most thorny path a woman can know, and that is when she must deliver up her beloved into the unworthy hands of another. Quietly I said to him:

"Give me the letter. and make her read it."

I'll take it to her I knew I could do

it. I knew for his sake I could do anything.

His soul was drowning, and I had to save it even though I saved it for some one who seemed to me so evil. During the few moments that had elapsed my soul had gone through a mortal conflict. My own desire, my new knowledge, my new feeling of age, had struggled with the absolute necessity of helping him and giving him the thing he wished for most. I knew I could have comforted him, and that my comforting would have been sweet and perhaps in the days that followed he might have seen the woman in the child.

Still, I took the letter, and with an exaltation that can be born only of mortal pain I went to her.

She was sitting under an electric light on the piazza looking wonderfully pretty, with a fantastic background of black and green vines behind her. I've forgotten what I said to her, but the faint mockery of her first greeting changed to gravity, and gravity to something almost like tenderness as I talked. She took the letter and read. She read it gravely, and there was both triumph and sweetness in her expression triumph, I suppose, in the depth of affection she had aroused, sweetness because its depth had suddenly touched some depth in her that had never before been stirred.

"Tell him to come to me," she said, and I fled back through the night.

When I brought him the tidings, he looked at me with new eyes, and for a moment our souls stood out naked before each other.

"Wonderful little girl!" he said, and kissed me, and sped away as though he had seen a vision of everlasting joy, and I was left alone in my fiery and terrible exaltation.

I lived through more emotion those weeks and that night than I did in many years that followed. For many years all other emotions seemed pale to me and without meaning. I had seen Love, that terrible and devastating god, face to face. I had gone through the dolorous stations of the cross to a supreme sacrifice. I had seen the possibility of possession, and had thrown it from me so that my beloved might have his heart's desire.

From that moment Rose and he were always together. Soon the summer was

at an end, and Rose went away back to the city. Paul was called home suddenly.

With his departure came to me the terrible knowledge that I did not know where he lived. I knew his city, how he turned up his street, how his sisters looked; the room in which he lived would have seemed to me a familiar place. I could have called to his dog in a voice that the dog would have known, but in the hurry of his departure he had forgotten to give me his address. The worst of it was that he sent me several postals and one sweet little letter, but all without addresses. I had seen him off, and stood on the platform waving to him as long as the train was in sight.

The world was full of Paul to me. Years afterward, whenever I found myself in a crowd, my eyes searched for him.

I waited through that winter and through the spring for the return of Rose. At last in early summer I saw her walking down the street. I joined her. We talked of this and that, but Paul's name never came up. At last, with my heart beating so painfully that I could hardly speak the words, I said: "Is Paul coming back?"

"Paul? Oh, to be sure," she answered. "I'd forgotten all about him! How should I know if Paul 's coming back?"

"Are n't you going to marry him?" I gasped.

She gave an affected little laugh.

"When you are older, my dear," she said patronizingly, "you 'll know you don't marry every nice boy you have a little flirtation with in summer. He came to see me two or three times, and then because I would n't do every little thing he wanted me, he got angry, and I sent him away for good."

I looked at her. As she talked I had grown, not old, but mature. I judged her as a woman half a dozen years her senior might have judged her, and saw her as she was, pretty, artificial, cheap, a shallow child. I saw her as Paul might have seen her at the end of his disillusion. I had lost my Paul and gone through my fiery ordeal for this, just because I was a little girl, just because I was not old enough, just because I had been so young a girl that all older girls seemed wonderful to me. Poor Rose! Now I knew she had not depth enough to be evil.

That sense of comedy that is worse than

any tragedy assailed me. A desire for laughter arose in me and choked me.

I managed to ask her where Paul lived. I faltered forth some pale excuse of his having left some of his things in our house, but she no longer knew where he lived. He had moved. She left me with all the flowers of my spirit withered.

There seemed to me only blackness ahead. Through the loneliness and despair which followed my dear mother walked beside me; my hand lay in hers. She was at peace, she was glad I was "developing normally." She rejoiced that I was n't one of those girls who are "boycrazy." No, I was n't boy-crazy, for I had walked too young through those grave and somber portals of supreme sacrifice. I had felt too soon the loss and loneliness of all that is best in life to be "boy-crazy."

I who had loved, how could I care for lesser loves? Love came to me then, and never again did I feel the great and overwhelming delight of life.

Not even when I married did love in its great and overwhelming fullness return to me. I know now that I was not alone in my loneliness. I know that there walked beside me other children carrying hidden burdens, some who even carried the terrible burden of shame.

When I see them walking from school I must always wonder, "Which are you, a child at play or a child with a woman's heart, and has love already laid its heavy burden on your fragile shoulders?"

us.

We cannot know. They will not tell

They have no words in which to do it if they would, for the desires of their hearts are shyer than shy birds.

THE MERCHANT

BY DOUGLAS DUER

QEAUTY for beauty would I give and take

BEAU

So rich a silk for such a worth in gold;

Fine ivories of the south, and gems that break
The dimmest ray to glories manifold.
Crystals have I, and Persian jars that hold

A thousand thousand roses thrice distilled-
Beauty for beauty, fairly weighed and told,
Rich gems-fine jars with precious attar filled.
I have bought amber in the northward seas,

Rare woods in Lebanon, gold-dust in the sands;
From Tyre to Carthage has my prosperous prow
Rolled up the foam: and yet it was but now

That Lydia passed me, singing! Many lands
Hold not the wealth to barter love for ease.

Like a faint cameo is her face, as when

The rose-red lava blushes through the white.
These Greeks have skill to carve it. Other men
Have only power to buy. The tunic slight
Blew with the movement of her foot-pace light,
And clung and fluttered on the slender thigh;
Over the busy quay, and so from sight,

With one half-wondering glance she passed me by.

That was but yesterday, yet in my sleep.

It seemed two thousand years ago she passed
With curious look and amphora held high;

I saw the crowded purple of the deep,

Smelled the warm spice-bales, felt the spell she cast;
And yonder dark Phenician-that was I!

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IT

THE DANCE

AN EXPRESSION OF MENTAL ACTIVITY

BY TROY KINNEY

Co-author of The Dance: Its Place in Art and Life"

T would be possible to multiply indefinitely evidences that the practice of dancing has already received too much and too serious attention to be put by as a mere fashion. The increasing number and success of performances by great dancing troupes speak for themselves. Any one who habitually attended the great performances in the last two years was impressed by the growing taste and discernment on the part of audiences. We are yet far from being a nation of connoisseurs, but in two short years we have learned to see many a subtle beauty that used to pass over our heads; also, we now regard with indifference a multitude of tricks that pertain less to the artist than to the showman, and not long ago used to be sure means of applause. In response to this discrimination, note the effect on the fashion in cabaret dancing: within less than a year it has changed radically in the direction of genuine beauty.

The great dancing seen by the general public by no means measures the extent of its performance. The entertainments of the rich are hardly complete without a dancing program, and that of a high grade of merit. Newport, seeking beautiful and sumptuous entertainment, has revived the ballet masque, a chorographic form that delighted Europe through more than three centuries. And, as nobility long danced

side by side with the professional artist. employed to "key up" these affairs, so a strengthening mode encourages the woman of fashion to bring in the professional dancer to keep up the standard of her entertainments.

The dance, as a matter of history, has been a conspicuous and invariable factor in the social life of every period of creative thought. So intimate has been the association between it and thought activity, indeed, that the genuineness of the present intellectual awakening might be doubted if a powerful and active interest in dancing was not a part of it. To characterize the present renaissance as a "fad" or a "craze" is to ignore chapters of social history.

If we may infer anything from literary, sculptural, and ceramic records, dancing was no less popular in the Athens of the golden age than it is now in America and western Europe. If Plato should come to America to-day, he could find nothing to surprise him in the wide-spread popularity of the dance. It is probable, however, that he would be puzzled by our contentment with the meager variety of our steps and chorographic sentiments, and shocked by our poverty of stable institutions for the cultivation and protection of the dance as an art. Greek municipalities of any consequence had their endowed

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