Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 242, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1915 — FolK We Touck In Passing [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FolK We Touck In Passing

By Julia Chandler Mang

THE BUBBLE

When The Man found the apartment in which he had been told that The Girl lived he stood hesitating to ring the bell, his heart gripped by the iron hand of fear, his mind leaping at every possible and impossible explanation of the presence of this young woman who was so alone in the world and totally dependent upon her own earnings for a home in what he knew to be one of the most expensive apartment houses in the city. Finally he mustered his courage and his ring was answered by a polite maid who ushered him in, and took his card with the promise of presenting it to her mistress. As The Man sat waiting his eyes wandered over the many rooms with their exquisite appointments, and when The Girl came to him smilingly composed, somehow It seemed to him that all of his world was being tom from under his feet, and so intense was his suffering that he stood holding her outstretched hand and gazing into her averted face without a word until she shook herself free. “What does it mean?" he faltered. “Tour letter, breaking our engagement —and this." He swept the apartment with comprehensive gesture, and The Girl’s eyes followed its direction, while with complete frankness she told him. “Life has been very beautiful since you went away,” she told him. “At first my thought followed you continuously, and my sympathies were with you in your struggle to make your

way In your new position, and I was Interested In my own work, and satisfied with what I could earn —until — well, until I was taken ill.” “Ill!” exclaimed The Man interrupting, “why didn’t you tell me?” “During my illness,” The Girl went on, ignoring the interruption, "some one was like a dear guardian angel to me, and when I was better he made me see that I was never meant to struggle through years of poverty with a nu»i of no means; made me see that life without luxuries was a hideous sort of thing for a woman; made me understand the greatness of his love for me, and little by little my heart went out to him for all his kindness to me.” The Man was on his feet before The Girl had finished, stumbling blindly toward the door. When he had reached it he turned and asked her in a tone divested of all hope just when her marriage had taken place. “Marriage!” exclaimed The Girl, “why there has been no marriage. There are reasons why we must wait —” She finished her sentence to an empty room. When The Man had spent several weeks alone with his thoughts he knew that the great and tender love he bore The Girl still lived. Be thought of her youth, her beauty, her careful training in a refined home until the death of her parents; he knew that the siren voice of wealth and luxury was very sweet in the ears of a woman and he believed so firmly that The Girt had been swept off her feet, sad had no realisation that she

was giving up every single thing tn life worth having, that once more he went to her and told her that this life she had chosen at the price of her soul was at best but a bubble that would surely break, and offered her the protection of his name, and the best that he could accomplish through earnest work; promising that the past six months of her life should be as a closed book between them, whereupon The Girl laughed at his earnestness; assured him that some day the obstacles to her marriage with her lover would be removed, and declared that, in any event, she was quite content. The Lover was long attentive to The Girl, and lavished so many luxuries upon her that she became satiated with pleasure and so steeped in indolence that she forgot to trouble over the continued excuses for their delayed marriage; forgot the flitting of time until one day she learned from the daily press—as any casual reader might have done —that the man in whose keeping she had placed her life and its honor had married a brilliant woman whom society respected and had gone abroad for his honeymoon. At first The Girl thought there must be some horrible mistake —some confusion of names perhaps—but such a hope was shortlived. Dismissing her maid from the apartment The Girl spent an hour before her mirror—a crucial hour in which the beautiful long French glass told her a frank and hideous truth. It said that the years of her youth had slipped away unnoticed; that ind»

lence and luxury had added so much flesh that all semblance of the once slim and graceful figure was gone. Suddently she remembered The Man, and his stricken face as he had left her in that long ago yesteryear. The fine and beautiful thing he had done in offering her his name in the face of the life she had chosen struck her foa the first time with Its full significance, and all there was of holiness left m her heart rose in prayer to God that it might not be too late. The letter she wrote The Man was blotted with tears. When she mailed it a sense of peace stole into her aching heart until the days went by, one after another, and there came no answer. The days lengthened into weeks; the weeks into months, and the months into years, and as The Girl still waited respectable women drew aside their skirts and men gave her a cynical smile as she came down step by step to her small room in a third-class boarding house where she sits alone in her ostracism, watching with hungry eyes the happiness of protected wives, hearing the laughter of little children, and thinking of her own heritage given in exchange for a gay little bubble that was sure quickly to break.

“What Does It Mean?” He Asked.