EE EE Pemorrac dan Bellefonte, Pa., April 23, 1926. THE LAST LINES. I will wake a strain with a feeble hand To answer thy friendly tone, For months have pass’d since I told the last, How the world and I went on. Sweet May was roaming the glade and dell And I with a footstep free, But a change has pass’d o’er the earth since then, And change, would think, o’er me. You know how I sang of the waterfalls, And was glad of the summer near, To race and roam through the sounding Lalls Of the dark old forest here. I little dream’d that her joyous lute To others would wake its tone, While the fading eye and the faltering foot, Would be all—would be all my own. I ween that the Autumn light no more Will fall on my brow again— I have breathed of the mountain's balm- jest store, And the summer's light in vain. I heard her voice on the wind depart, I watched as her bloom went by, But her farewell died on a weary heart, And her light on a weary eye. I have done with visions—they’re faded all From a fever gleaming brain, I bade them go, and I would not call One dream from its shroud again. It should not lure me a single hour, If the world at my feet were laid, For wealth, and pleasure, and fame, and power, Are less than the dust we tread. My feet were led to the Rock of Peace When childhood was on my brow, It has yielded all I have known of bliss, And I rest in its shadow now. And my rest is sweet and my heart is calmed, As I watch my being wane; For I trust that the light of a better land ‘Will make it bloom again! —By Harriet J. Meek. re Aeneas PRISCILLA IN SPITE OF HER- SELF. “You see, Granny, things are hard for a girl with Puritan ancestors.” Jean Adams laughed as she spoke; but the laugh was a half-hearted af- fair, and the old lady, against whose knee she was leaning, reached out a thin hand and patted the sleek bobbed head. “I think Great-grandfather Ezra must be the Jinx.” The girl’s tone expressed deep distaste for this par- ticular ancestor. “He certainly was the cat’s whiskers for conviction of sin. He was always seeing the earth yawn before him and having a vision of Hell and flopping down on his knees wherever he happened to be and break- ing out into a cold sweat and wrest- ling in a prayer. And what sort of a forebear is that for a flapper, 1926 model? Now, I ask you, Granny! I'm scared half to death for fear that sometime, right in the midst of a riot, I'll plump down on my knees and be- gin to sweat and pray.” “You might do worse.” The tone was cheerfully tolerant; but the wise old face clouded slightly. Mrs. Worthington had a very young heart and a robust sense of humor, but she sometimes wished that the grand- daughter who brightened her old age did not so egregiously offend her taste. “Oh, I don’t know. That would be pretty bad. I can’t even get any kick out of defying old Ezra. I've got a conscience. That's what’s the matter with me. And it’s excess luggage nowadays, Granny. I wish I had come of a line of buccaneers.” The girl sprang to her feet, stooped to snatch a kiss from a soft, withered cheek and pulled her rakish hat down further over her eye. “If mum asks about me, tell her I've gone to Di’s for dinner.” She breezed out of the room and the old lady, in the chintz-covered chair by the window, sat, smiling a little, sighing a .ittle, thinking of her own youth and wondering about the youth yet unborn. It was good to be honest and gallant and fearless; but it was lamentable to be cheap and vulgar and it was dangerous to be recklessly self-confident. “If only the right man comes along in time,” she said to herself. Out-of-doors, in the glow of the setting October sun, Jean was, un- knowingly, going to meet the wrong man. He was waiting for her in Di Cas- tle’s studio. There was a hint of in- cense in the room, the light filtered through amber curtains, divans and cushions of violent hues were every- where; there were weird, ultra-mod- ern pictures on the walls, canvases stacked against the wainscoting, a welter of paint—presumably an un- finished picture—on an easel. Not a painter’s workroom; but Di Castle was not a painter. She was a rich girl, well past debutante years, bored, playing at art in the intervals of playing at other things, and finding a studio an amusing setting for all sorts of play. “There’s something about a studio,” she explained to her friends when she signed the lease. “People loosen up.” People did. Not that Di’s crowd was seriously restrained by inhibi- tions, even in the ordinary home set- ting; but as a point of departure and return and for occasional wild parties, a studio did, as Di put it, have the home fireside looking like a solitary confinement cell. She liked her studio, but she wasn’t stingy with it. Any of her friends might use it, if they didn’t get their dates tangled with hers; and if the little Japanese who kept the place tidy happened to be out, the key was always hanging behind the lantern, beside the door. Whether the friends met the wrong men or the right men, or merely kept dates with women friends there in the studio, was all one to Di. She had no Deacon Ezra perched on her ancestral tree. Being a hard-headed little person, of twen- _— ty-four summers, she could get along without him. What her friends did was their affair. That was the first law of the modern creed. And so, when an unexpected oppor- tunity for a thrilling evening present- ed itself, too late to permit telephon- ing and breaking her dinner engage- ment with Jean Adams, the owner of the studio turned to a man who hap- pened to be lounging on a divan be- side her and blithely made over her date with Jean to him. “Give her a good time, Larry,” she said. “She’s a darling—one of the latest inventions. You'll fall for her —hard. Of course you're a disreput- able character; but so are we all of of us, and you can be awfully nice; so Jean won't bear me a grudge for chucking her.” She went her way; and the dis- reputable character, after some hesi- tation, decided to wait and see the thing through. Looking at Jean Adams as she came through the door- way, he was glad that he had wait- ed. He had forgotten that there was anything so young in a jaded world. The sophistication of her clothes, of her manner, the rouge on her cheeks, the absurd red of her lips were mere masquerade, accentuating the quest- ing light in her eyes, the childish line of her chin, the sweetness of her mouth. For a moment she stood looking about the room, her eyes narrowing slightly in the effort to adjust them- selves to the soft half-light afer the glow of the outdoor world. Then she saw the long, lean figure, blotted against the black divan. “Hulloa!” she said lightly. “Now, who are you?” Larry Mowbray rose to his feet as she spoke, six feet two of bone and muscle, with a bit of flesh to boot. “I didn’t get up at first for fear of startling you,” he said. “My name’s Mowbray. Di had to go out some where. She told me to tell you she was sorry.” “Meaning she had a chance of something more amusing,” interpret- ed Jean, without resentment. “But why not a note pinned to the lamp- shade? That’s the usual thing.” “She had a kindly impulse.” Larry Mowbray’s voice was one of the nic- est things about him, low, slightly drawling, friendly, yet with a char- acterful ring in it. People remem- bered Larry’s voice. “You see, she was about to turn me out into a world that is cold to Prodigal Sons; and at the last moment it occurred to her that you might put up with me for the evening since she had failed you.” Jean liked his voice. She liked his looks. He must be all of forty, she thought, and she was horribly fed-up on callow youth. But she had thought that at forty men had jowls and tum- mies. The men in Di’s crowd had. This man seemed made of whalebone and rawhide; and above his alert, sinewy body was a thin brown face whose chin was stubborn in its lines, whose mouth was reckless, whose dark eyes were keen and a trifle weary. There were streaks of gray in the thick hair above the brown face. eid Spe Yes, she liked his looks; but why “prodigal”? “Am I taking on the role of dot- ing parent or fatted calf ?” she asked. A shadow flashed into the man’s eyes and was drowned there. His father hadn’t been doting; but the son wished the old man were back in his library chair, in the old house on Washington Square, instead of lying, as he had lain for two months, un- der the sod of the family burying plot. “Certainly nothing fatted,” he said, pulling himself away from bitter memories. Jean glanced down at her own straight slimness with complacement approval. “Yes. Nice, isn’t it? Just a hun- dred and ten. I thought I'd never get the last ten pounds off. Ihadn’t a decent thing to eat for months; but now my stomach’s proud spirit is broken. I can eat anything, any time, and the calories just reel back, dis- couraged. I order potatoes and white bread and ice-cream and cake and don’t take on an’ electron.” “Then,” suggested the man, “we might go out and order potatoes and white bread and ice-cream and cake together. Yes?” The girl hesitated. Di’s friends were of all sorts and then there was that prodigal.” Uncle Ezra stirred and groaned. She snuffed him out. There was nothing else on for her evening, and one couldn’t be bored; and this stranger looked more inter- esting than any of the boys for whom she might telephone. “Why, yes,” she said cheerfully. “Why not? Only, it’s too early for dinner.” “There used to be restaurants in the country—and roads to them. I suppose they haven’t all been closed while I’ve been in Africa?” Jean laughed. “Not permanently—but often. Let’s go out to the Laurels:” Of course, she told herself, dad and mum dis- approved of road-houses and country drives; but that was archaic, per- fectly prehistoric, and it was a hea- venly evening for a drive. The man stood looking at her. Things had changed much in the years he had been away. There had always been road-houses and cars and girls—but Di had said this girl was of a fine old family and straight— absolutely straight; and she was young, unbelievably young for such freedom. There was no Great-grand- father Ezra in any complex of Larry Mowbray’s; but he did have certain ideas about playing the game. “No,” he said, “not a road-house, I think, We'll dine in town.” “Women’s votes not counted?” He smiled at her. There was some- thing extraordirarily engaging about his smile. “Don’t be huffy, child. I'm a thou- sand years old; and sometimes I do aged things like denying myself pleasure, You see, I've been in t Africa for five years, and the children don’t roam the jungle at night out there. Ill have to get used to the thing gradually.” ; One couldn’t be angry with him : when he smiled like that; and any- how Jean didn’t particularly like road-house dining. She didn’t know exactly why but thought it had some- thing to do with the waiters. They always looked so frightfully discreet. “Any objection to the young per- son taking a walk in the jungle with an armed guard? I suppose, of course, you are armed?” she said. “To the teeth,” he answered. “Do you want to take a walk?” She looked around the studio and shrugged her shoulders. “One needs a crowd and drinks to help one stand his chamber of horrors, and it’s glor- ious outside. Let’s sprint up through: the Park.” i So they sprinted. The sun sank; | and the roofs and towers of the city silhouetted themselves against the | afterglow. Myriad windows changed , to jewels, flying against the bosom ! of the night. A cold breeze came up ! and set Jean’s face tingling, like her heart. The man, walking beside her, | was a good companion, talking a lit- tle, laughing a little, listening a lit- tle, matching silences with her, al- ways giving her the feeling of being companioned, understood, admired. A technique very different from that of the boys with whom she had been! jazzing about. She liked it, liked it | enormously. And when, later, they sat opposite each other at a table in a restaurant and the man had ordered, in an effort- less, efficient way, a dinner that seem- ed perfect, Jean made him talk of Africa and sat entranced. Othello again! The old motive wears well; and even the modern flapper will thrill to tales of adventure, well told. “It must have been gorgeous,” she said enviously. “Men do have all the luck. But why did you go to Africa? Just for adventure?” “N-no. Not exactly.” He spoke slowly. “I wanted to get away. Africa is a good grave but it wouldn't bury me; and after a while I didn’t want to be buried. By that time I'd been fascinated by things down there. You either love it or loathe it. There’s no half-way house. I loved it; so I stayed. And then I had word that my father had died.” He was silent for a moment. Jean could not decide whether his face hardened or softened. “I was needed here,” he went on. “Business matters. So I came back; but I'll go out again.” “Soon?” Her question was an odd, breathless note. There was no rea- son why he shouldnt go back to Africa; but, queerly, Jean felt that New York would seem bleak without im. “Yes—soon,” he answered He looked at her across the table. Deep in his eyes something stirred, leaped to the surface. A slow blush crept up through her rouge, her lips trembled, she looked young—absurdly young, and sweet— unspeakably sweet. Flapper-hood fell away from her like a husk and the kernel was eternal girl. “That is,” the man added, “I— should—go.” She did not ask why, just sat and ate food that had no taste and won- dered, vaguely, why the jazz had sud- denly gone out of things. “I made a horrible mess of things here before I went away,” Mowbray was saying. “That’s why I went— and stayed. I always thought my father would send for me. He didn't Now there’s no one to care whether I go or stay; and it’s a man’s life out there.” “It sounds terribly thrilling,” she heard herself saying. There was more talk after that, more food, a cocktail or two; but back of everything loomed Africa, huge, black, threatening; and when, at her own door, Jean said good night to the new man, she felt as though he jungle had swallowed him—or er “Well, what did you think of Lar- ry?” Di Castle asked, over the tele- phone, the next morning. “Some en- chanter, that lad; but don’t get your heart-strings tangled, honey. His past is hectic and I’ve an idea he’ll go right on making history.” For the rest of the day Jean roam- ed about the house, wondering about the historic past. Late in the after- noon a maid called her to the tele- phone. “Might I come up?” He didn’t mention his name. There was no need of it. She would have known the voice among a thousand. “Yes—do.” She tried to make it gaily indifferent, tried to think of something foolish and slangy, in her usual line, that she might add; but nothing came. So she let it go at that —just “Yes—do,” with a throb in it. After that day they spent their idle hours together, lunched, tea-ed, dined, walked, drove, danced togeth- er. Africa might be waiting; but ap- parently Larry Mowbray turned a deaf ear to the call and Jean refused to believe in a Dark Continent. All the world was a light and a glory. Once in a while she met some of her old crowd; but they belonged to a very remote past. Boys and girls called her up on the telephone, tried to make dates with her. She was kind to the silly young things but had no time for them. Her father and mother noticed no difference in her. They were busy with their own inter- ests and she had always been a hu- man pinwheel. They had stopped try- ing to regulate her spinning, long be- fore. Now ‘she was just whirling as usual. What could a mere parent do about it? Only Mrs. Worthington, crocheting in her wing-chair by the window, wondered and worried and realized that, somehow, things were different with the child she loved. Larry Mowbray’s mouth was a lit- tle more reckless than usual in those days, yet he kept himself well in hand. Fate had played him another scurvy trick. He was in love—in love with a starry-eyed child, mas- querading as a worldly wise young person—and it hurt, it hurt confound- edly. This was different from the other love-affairs. She was so sweet, so adorably sweet. Youth called to him, from her eyes, from her lips, from the whole springtime loveliness of her. At forty, one yearns toward youth. These other women—a shiv- er of disgust shook him. Disgust with them, with himself. What a rotter he had been! And what a price he had paid for it—was paying for it! But at least there was today. The devil might take yesterday and tomorrow. There came a time when he no long- er kept himself in hand, when he let himself go and told the girl how he loved her, swept her off her feet with the love-making of his lips, his eyes, his arms. Jean walked transfigured through those days, happiness cloak- ing her like a garment, her secret fairly’ shouting itself from her face. But there was a waiting look in her eyes. Love was enough, and yet—and yet she would be glad when everything was settled, when he had asked her to marry him and she had said “yes” . and the family had been told and she could fling her happiness to the air, like a banner for all the world to see. She was thinking of that one morn- ing, curled up on the sofa in her own room, when Di Castle was announced, and she hated to be interrupted in her dreaming; but she liked Di and she had not seen her in weeks—not since she had known Larry. They could talk about him. Not about that “hectic past”—he could tell her about that after they were married, if he cared to. She didn’t want to hear it from ‘anyone else. Most men had pasts. Yes; she’d see Di. And, after they had gurgled the usual greetings, the conversation did drift around to Larry Mowbray. “He’s a Pet Lamb Child,” said Di enthusiastically, and Jean winced. “Pet Lamb Child” had been an ex- pression of her own; but it didn’t fit Larry. “They tell me you've been leading that bold, bad man around by a blue ribbon and feeding him out of hsnd,” Di rambled on. “It will do him good; but watch your step honey. That wife of his in Paris won’t die or di- vorce him. Too ornery. And she won’t give him a chance to divorce her. She just spends his money and tells everyone how cruel he is. Cruel! My Bob! Why, she doesn’t care tup- pence for him—never did, if you ask me. She was just a vamp who had to be vamping, and he was her husband’s best friend, so he was about the house a lot and she made a dead set at him. , The husband got some sort of a hunch and went into the bathroom ard shot himself—tidy soul! There was a ter- rific row and scandal. “It all happened the year I came out and we girls were dreadfully ex- cited about it, because we all knew Larry and were crazy about him. He married the widow. I suppose there wasn’t anything else to do. He never talked to anyone about the affair, nev- er put up any defense; but the two didn’t live together. She went to Paris and he went to Africa. Old Mr. Mowbray had cut up awfully rough— regular old-style melodrama—cursed his only child and told him never to show his face at home again and all that sort of stuff; but in the end he left Larry the money. Now I sup- ‘pose that human leech in Paris is glad she keld on.” “She was talking without looking at the girl on the couch. Perhaps things weren't as bad as she had feared; but Larry had such a way with him and Jean was such a kid and then, after all, the two had met in her studio. | “I suppose he'll be going out to Africa again,” she went on. “He said , he’d go back and I guess it’s just as! well. You see, he’s queered here and he likes the life out there. I met an Englishman from Nairobi the other | night. He said Larry was a wizard at managing the natives and that the British officials had him running all over the place with them, wherever there was trouble. And he said Larry was developing a big plantation out there.” She turned suddenly to Jean. “Is he going soon?” she asked. “Yes,” said the white-faced, great- eyed girl on the couch, “I think he will go soon,” _He came that afternoon; but Jean did not see him. He telephoned bus she did not go to the telephone. He wrote. She did not read the letters. “Jean had better see a doctor,” Mr. Adams said to his wife. “She looks run down.” But Jean wouldn’t see a doctor. Nor would she take calomel, as her mother urged, nor eat the invalid food an anxious and affectionate old cook prepared for her. She did not go out of the house. Onceina while she wandered into her grandmother’s room, dropped down on the floor be- side the wing-chair and sat there si- lent, while the old lady crocheted, stopping now and then to stroke the brown head but asking no questions, Hough her heart yearned over the girl, And then one day the parlor-maid brought a note to Jean’s room. “I am waiting in the library,” it said. “I won’t go without a scene. You must see me. I have a right to that.” She went down to see him and stood, straight and stiff and wide- eyed, before him, with no welcome of voice or look. He made a step toward her and stopped. “Oh, little thing, little thing! What have you done to yourself?” he ask- ed, in a voice that broke like a sob. “You wanted to see me?” she said. “Wanted to see you? I had to see you! Don’t you understand? I can’t live without seeing you, child. You're my whole world, the very breath of life to me. And you turn me off with- out a word, without a chance to tell my side of whatever damnable story you’ve heard. Some one has dug up the old scandal, with all th vicious gossip it caused. I meant to tell you myself, before you could hear it from anyone else; but we were so happy and I knew it would hurt you, and so I waited. I'd give my right hand now if I hadn’t.” “It’s all true, isn’t it?” She spoke quietly, almost indifferently. “True? How do I know what you have heard? Come; sit down. You mustn’t stand. I won’t go near you.” She sat down on the davenport by the fire and he leaned against the mantelpiece. “It’s true that I got into a nasty ‘ed good? en scandal five years ago,” he'said. “It’s ture my best friend killed himself be- cause he believed that I was his wife's lover. But it isn’t true that I was her lover. She didn’t love her husband, she made a fool of herself about men, she made a fool of herself about me. But he was my friend, I tell you—my best friend. You don’t know what that means to a man. No woman liv- ing could have made me untrue to him. But one day he saw a scene I couldn’t prevent; and he misunder- stood. So he wrote a note to me and a note to her and blew his brains out. “I couldn’t tell all this to people, could I? Couldn’t pose as a Joseph to her Potiphar’s wife? Nobody would have believed me if I had. They’d have thought I was just a miserable rotter, trying to clear my- self at a woman’s expense; but, be- fore God, it’s true, child. I wasn’t responsible. I wasn’t in love with her. I was true to my friend. I only made the mistake of not staying away from the house; and, if I had done that, after living there, it would have hurt Dick. I couldn’t have ex- plained to him. And then, when he killed himself, thinking I had done him the worst wrong one man could do another—can you see how ghastly it was for me? “I’ve wished, many a time, that I had followed his lead and put a bul- let through my head. But there was the woman. Scandal was raging around her and there was no one to stand by her. In that last note of Dick’s he had asked me to be good to her. I thought she loved me. Fatuous asses men are! There was only one thing I could do for her and that was to marry her. So I did just that; and then I settled what money I had on | her. It wasn’t much. My father had broken with me, wouldn’t see me or hear what I had to say; but my moth- er had left me something, It was enough to take the woman to Paris and keep her there. I went to Africa. | “She won’t divorce me and she says she’s willing to live with me at any time, so I can’t divorce her. As a matter of fact, I think she has, al- ways, counted on my father’s relent- ing and leaving me his millions. lawyers came to me last week. I'm a rich man now and she means to have her share. “I didn’t care particularly about be- ing free. All I wanted was to get away from her, away from the whole . frightful business; but I always hoped ‘my father would want to see me and send for me. He didn’t. Then he died, and the lawyers sent for me, and I came back—and met you.” He was standing nearer her now, and across the ice of her face, little gleams of pain and pity and love were stealing. Suddenly the ice melted in- to tears. “Oh, Larry! Larry!” she sobbed, and he gathered her into his arms. “You shall never regret it, sweet- heart,” he said that night, before he went away. “I can make you so happy that you won’t miss anything, There will be no one to blame or sit in judgment. I'm the law and the gospel out there, and you will be my wife.’ You will be my wife, darling. it. You aren’t afraid? You won't let the old, hidebound, throttling traditions bully your intelligence when I'm not with you, will you?” “No, she said, “I’m going to Africa with you.” She said it to herself, after the door had closed behind him. “I'm going with him.” What did she care about the scandal? What did she care about that other woman who ‘had wrecked Larry’s life and taken ! refuge behind laws that society call- Larry’s life had been wrecked. She would mend it. Her father and mother would be hurt— more shocked than hurt. They had never kept very close to her, never tried very hard to understand her. Granny—she choked a bit over Gran- ny, wished that the old lady need not know. Granny would forgive her but she would grieve, grieve miserably. Still, Granny had had her life. Youth had its rights. Larry needed her more than the others did. She was going with him. She packed her dressing-case and a bag the next morning, packed them carefully, methodically with whag