Bennington semi-weekly banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 1894-1902, 1895-07-09
TIM AND BEAUTY.

She was at once the widest, most dar-
ing and most reckless little soubrette to
be found in any of the bohemian studios
of Paris. No gathering was complete with
out the music of her laughter, the light
of her black eyes. Scarce a picture was
deemed complete until she had passed upon
it her own mcrciless criticism. For Tim,
with all the boldncss of vulgaGity that was
yet her greatest charm, was still an apostle
of the beautiful, and the true, and the
dramatic in the highest and best sense of
the words.
No one knew from where size came, or
what her origin might be- or even what
her full baptismal name had been. They
knew her only us Tim and woR content to
accept her in all things as she was. She
was fierce in her hatreds, strong in her
friendships, strongest of all perchance in
her loves. She knew no abiding moral
law, in the conventional sense of the term,
and was in all things, normal and other
wise, as irresponsible as n bird. So only
that laughter and music and light and
friendly voices were with her, all else was
as naught.
Perchance there came time when her
moral and. social being underwent
change, and the change came with the
advent of the Beauty.
There, in a society where all received
nickname he had been dubbed the Beau
ty'' from the first moment of his appear
anCe among them, and the name, by rea-
son of its appropriateness, chung to him. 1t
could scarcely have been u misnomer, I'M
less given in satirical spirit from lips Of
an artistic circle
Certainly there was no satire in it. Tall
and well proportioned with long, straight
features and clustering brown curls about
his well shaped head, the man they dubbed
the Beauty was handsome indeed. Perhaps
the chief glory of the man lay in his eyes
great, soft, dark eyes-with a wonder
ing expression in their depths like that
seen in the pictured eyes of some of Mil
lais' children.
He had come to Paris to work-Paris,
the wonderful, the great-wherein life was
life indeed, and art was art. His name was
Cecil Brandt, and he came from some re.
mote town in the west of England. All
the world, all fame and greatness, lay be-
fore him, to be grasped by an effort, and
the effort was there and was put forth.
He worked as few men worked. All the
livelong day he was before his easel; only
when darkness fell he rose with u sigh and
laid aside his brushes and joined the men
who were his friends and who eagerly
welcomed him. And there among them
he often met Tim.
She was very silent when she first saw
him. She seemed to gaze at him wonder
ingly, as at some rare creature that was
different from anything else she knew.
They twitted her afterward about it, say
ing she was unnaturally quiet. One was
even audacious enough to suggest laugh
ingly that it was case of love at first
sight, and that the mighty Tins wings
were singed at last. But she broke away
from them, and shut herself in her room,
and flung herself on the floor there, and
cried the night away, weeping perchance
the first bitter tears that her reckless life
had known, tears born of an underlined
feeling in her breast that there was some
thing wanting in her, some womanly at
tribute that she had never caught and per.
haps might never reach now.
Thereafter came the change in her. She
was in all things the same reckless, merry