Connecticut western news., 1897-05-20
THE THRESHOLD.

"The very last time," he repeated as he sat waiting in the pretty, glowing drawing room.
 Then she came in, and the room be- came beautiful, because prettiness was not of her.
 They sat together and talked, and | during little interval the man heart jogged his elbow in an irritating way and murmured, "This is the very last | time''
 "Yesi" said the man aloud, and she, | smiling, asked to what his affirmative referred.
 Then they talked again on various l subjects which related to the man, for she knew all his past and something of his future
 "Why are you sad today?" she asked after awhile.
 The man hesitated Because ~H* don't know why am sad; at least can't tell you"
 May tell you little story?" asked she.
 Please" |"
 Listen, then, but remember my stories are not personal. There was once a man who never was boy because he had been unable to spare the time. Be ing boy or even a youth uses up lot of time at the beginning. when time seems short, and adds it on to the end, but circumstances and loneliness in strange places made it impossible for | the man in my story to invest time in this way. So he skipped boyhood and | youth and went straight into manhood in a strange country"
 And what effect on him did that have?' asked he in the drawing room, l who had become interested after the story's first sentence. She who told the story smiled and, continuing, said: ''It had on him the effect of tropical sun upon vegetable life It made him premature in all ways, but strong also and glorying in his strength. A great deal was shut out of his range of vision, and his life's linn it's were narrow, but in those limits very intense. To him the world was | himself-he and his work, his aims, his | strength. Nothing else, you understand. Having missed youth, enjoyment did | not come into his scheme. He did not look about him for ife's soft lights and it's music and so never saw or heard them. He had no time.''
 "Ahr
 "Yes, it was pity. We'll, then one day, by chance, he met Femininity- happened upon her, munching cake and slipping tea. Femininity smiled prettily at the man and offered him cake and tea, which he took with nerveless fin gers, gasping and staring the while in l pleased amazement. Then Femininity' s rosy, dimpled fingers went tripping daintily up and down the keyboard of a l piano and she sang to him, every note in her rippling little ballad twanging a response on one of the mans heart strings. And he asked himself ' We'll, let me see. He asked himself"-
 "Why," interrupted he who listened in the drawing room-'why he had never before known .that this was the world and how he had been led to think that his life was the real life of the I world"
 "Yes. that was what he asked himself And so dainty little Feminipity, smil- ing all the while. drew aside the lace curtains, which had hidden from his | wherein she lived, and he, looking down the alley with her, decided that it was the real world; that his world so far had been dreary fantasy of his own creation. The mans lights were not wide or deep, but very intense, and of course he laid his heart, new found, reverentially and unreservedly at Femi- ninity's feet. Femininity laughingly &C., cepted the heart, and them ...
 Meeting another man at the corner of her alley" said the listener, 'threw the heart down, still laughingly, and went back to the piano with her new friend. ''
 l Exactly. We'll, now the man was in a very sorry plight, because he had lost his own world-the self created fan tasy-and being forsaken in the new world by her to whom his heart had been given he could not find his way. Disillusion blinded his eyes with tears, and, groping about in the Byzantine alley, he'-
 He met Frou Frou. You must lei me tell this piece, !" said the man in the drawing room. "He met Frou Frou, who happened to have wandered care. lessly from out her Moorish alley into Femininity's domain. He looked like g man. sc Frou Frou welcomed him with fascinating, lower Bohemian good fel- lowship, and swung aside the rich dra- pery and heavy perfumed curtain which had hid from his view the world oi brighter, flashing lights and dancing music in which she lived. Looking into the world, the man drew a long breath of satisfaction, and, as Frou Frou chal lenged him with brimming champagne glass upraised, he said, This is un doubtedly reality-the abandon of req life in the actual world-unlike my previous fancies, which were absurd.
 And when the very first grayness came and the flashing lights paled in tht dawn hour, Frou Frou, being tired anC sleepy, carelessly laid open the pages O her frailty private diary-and the mar 1, read Having read, he knew, and wa
 numbed. So, in the ghostly morning
 twilight, he groped his way out into tn,
 No Mans Land which lies between tn,
 alleys of extreme and realized that h,
 had not fought the real world after all
 Still, he had lost his own, and whel
 &%# Well''-
 "No," said she who listened, "yol
 cannot tell this part. I must, for he di,
 not go into another alley, you know . He wandered into the cloisters of
 white marble temple, because, in tn
 brightness of the sunlight which cam
 after dawn, he saw pure presence
 girl-standing on the threshold. He az
 preached the presence, so he longed fo
 rest, though after his two phases he fel
 he had no right. She was so pure am
 white; the innocence of knowing moth
 ing gleaming on her forehead. She coul
 not, like the others, conduct him int
 her world, because she had not ye
 crossed the threshold of the temple hel
 self; and she knew nothing of tha