Life — March 25, 1899 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

266 ization demanded its debt of sleop, and I would awake damp with dew as to my clothing, and frritated as to my cuticle with mosquito bites. Then the red-headed son of the confectioner, with bis never-failing supply of lemonalrops, became to mo tho hated Luvois,and I would fod myself grinding my heel in tho gravel with tho true Vargravian pride and bitterness. But carly loro 1s much like the diseases of child- hood, neithor lasting nor dan- gorous, and I ceased being ‘LEP E* ing that wonderfully slender and deli- cate band in his, with the sudden cau- tion which long experience in similar cases had taught him to practice in an emergency, he stopped short and waited for that response which, even now, bow- ever, his heart told him he could not ex- pect. Winifred Van Wunk’s steel-blue eyes, Psychologically, I recognize it as a cer- tain necessary form of mental evolution, but I flattered myself that you had passed through that cycle long ago, and while perhaps not-able to enter fully into my own mental atmosphere, your advance- ment had been such as to preclude the possibility of the vulgar relapse I have just witnessed.” Butthe man she addressed was no fool. ‘While she Lord Alfred simultancously with tho departure of my Lucile for boarding-sehool. Of course the literature of tho stage had its inning, and at times I was convinced that I was agi er Hamlet than Booth, and a moro jealous Othello than Salvini. These convictions were confined to my own breast, however, and could only have boon known to the unhappy occupants of apartments adjacent to mine, who might bavo heard me dolivering tho characters’ speeches while I was engaged in the process of dressing or undres Age experience aro the worst enemies of the imagina- tion,and itis long since I have really been any of tho charac- ters [havo read. This is piti- ful, indeed, wh siders what a joy it would be, when tho monthly bills come in, to closo one's eyes and imagine one’s self the Count of Monte Cristo, one con- M.S, James, Setting Her Right. ee INI. V FRED, Ba) | love you!” spoke he had risen to, the emergency, and now, stand- ing haughtily before her in the full pride of his man- hood, he surveyed with a look of half pity the object of his ill-concealed passion. “Miss Van Wunk,” he said, quietly, “if for the interval my scientific entha- siasm led me to use an ex- pression which you have so prematurely mistaken for an emotion so far beneath me, you bave only yourself to blame. When but amoment ago I stated—as I can now see, so rashly—that I loved you, I used the term entirely * in its protoplasmic sense, Love, in the common or primitive form, was so far from my thoughts that, to one of your mentality, I did not think it necessary to qualify the expression. It is, or should be, unnecessary for me to say that I am en- tirely incapable of the em- pirical emotion to which you referred. I hold to the atomic theory of the world of matter, and the observa- tion of the constant trans- Calloway ut- tered these words, and turned his face, all glowing with the great passion that burned within him, toward the stern, cold countenance of the beautiful creature who sat beside him like a marble statue, some subtle instinct told him that he had made a mistake. In the act of tak- = a As Bertram LIFE’S SAINTS OF THE FUTURE nm SAINT BILL. as they slowly turned upon him, indi- cated all the.surptise which his rash action had awakened in her advanced mind. “Mr. Calloway,” she said, with a slight accent of implied indifference, “you must pardon me if I say that your words do not interest me, Love, in the sense you use it, is a common emotion . indulged in by minds of low strata. formation of part yet undetermitied inertia of energy into other forms isa process full of intense intel- lectual stimulation. But more than this, more than mere disinte- gration and the falling apart of atoms hitherto enclosed in a similar cnviron- meat, it was the sudden discovery of this change, revealed in us, in both of us, that led me to—” But he had need to say no more Winifred Van Wunk threw herself into his arms witha glad cry of joy, as she exclaimed : ‘‘ Darling, I am yours!”