The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1902-07-15
A TWICE-TOLD TALE.

feelings OF the puppets she invented Tor the
plays that had brought her fame and good
ly income. Some way she had been SO busy
engineering imaginary love affairs that she
had never thought of her own.
She was not yet prepared, however, to
admit that this was the name for the con-
dition of mind in which she found herself.
She had known Spencer Coles just one win
ter, but had seen him very often since
that first night they had met at Miss
browns birthday supper on the stage of the
Forrest after the performance. 1t had not
seemed so many times, either, until tonight,
when he had told her he was going abroad
for three months, and she realized that she
would not see him until the end of that PEE
Rod.
And yet she was happy, because, if he
had not been going away, perhaps he would
not have looked at her just as he did when
telling her of it. Judith was skilled in read
ing countenances. She had labored hard to
have the right sort of emotions brought out
on them at the rehearsals of her plays.
Judith then and there resolved to give
a dance at which people could do as they
chose. She would call it the Declaration
Dance, and when charged with using this as
a synonym for proposal she would retort:
ooh, no; mean the Declaration of indie
pendence from the leading strings of con-
yentionality."
Meantime she was happy in dreaming
of the past, in forecasting the future. Three
months would soon pass, with that bow of
promise forming a rosy vista at their end.
Judith wondered if her friends sup
posing they suspected her state of heart,
would think her silly. She was very nearly
30. But the best of it was, not one of them
did suspect
Her intimacy with Coles was well known,
but everybody seemed to ascribe it to bust
ness sources. The dramatiZation of a Coles
novel by a Wayland pen would surely be
the play sensation of the season, they
prophesied. And yet, in all their talks, this
was matter that had never been preached
between them. Judith often smiled to her
self as she recollected this fact.
The three months were half gone when
one morning, while Judith was sitting in
box watching a rehearsal, Amy Drown, in
one of her breathing spells, came to her for
little chat.
Il had a letter from Clara Sands yester-
day." she said. 'You know she went over
to do Hyacinth at the Earl's last month.
Well, she has not let the grass grow under
her feet. She writes me that she is engaged
to Spencer Coles Think OF it, what a catch
hood. / know you would be interested, dear,
knowing them both so WE'LL Why, it was at
my birthday supper you met Mr.. Coles,
wasn't it? But listen, my cues coming.
must run"
Judith sat there, gazing at the doings on
the stage and seeing nothing. She was
thinking of another play of hers, that had
been acted season before last on these very
boards, and in which the heroine discovered
she made mistake in thinking an invitation
from the hero was meant for her. She had
treated the episode farcically, and the
house had echoed for almost hundred
nights with laughter the situation awakened
laughter that now seemed ringing with
soundless mockery in her ears.
OF course she came out OF her abstraction
presently, before anyone noticed it. In this
end of the century period nobody is privi-
legged to be a blghted being He-or She
would be called crank or queer or weak in
the upper story, and maybe capped into a
private asylum
The world is too busy to have patience
with the man who'is not of a piece with his
fellows, SO that it knows just how to take
him.
81 am not going to let it hurt me" Judith
told herself; which, being interpreted,
meant 81 am not going to let him see that
at does"
And forthwith she arranged to depart
with a tourist company bound for the Holy
Land They sighted Coles steamer coming
in just as they left Sandy Hook astern.
She was watching it with burning eyes
when man to whom she had been intro
duced not an hour before in the turmoil of
good-by, came up to the rail and joined her
That's the Mystic, they tell me, Miss
Wayland," he began. 81 see by this morn
ing's Herald that Spencer Coles is aboard of
her Odd that two men of such prominence
mould bear the same name, and both write
books, too"
ooh, yes Judith replied, still with her
eyes on the distant steamer. "The other
an Englishman, l believe; knight of some
sort But our Mr. Coles is far cleverer.' y
Judith always took special pains to speak
well of the man who had broken her heart !;
in novels she had noticed that women al
ways avoided mention of such personages,
and she had come to regard it as justifiable
cause for suspicion.
ooh, undoubtedly" was the response,
1'but this similarity of names must entail
annoying confusion. | know of a magazine
that very nearly used the portrait of one to
accompany description of the other, and of
course you have seen that canard about
our Mr.. Coles, as you call him, being en-
gagged to the actress Clara Sands But that,
j take it, is clever advertising device of
Miss Sands own. The correction of the mis-
apprehension gives the event twofold men,
tion in the press. All, there comes the boat
for the pilot
Everybody rushed to the other side of the
ship, but Judith still remained where she
was, her gaze fixed on the incoming Mystic
bearing the man who on his arrival would
receive her letter of congratuation on his
engagement to the woman another man was
going to marry Washington Times.
Rest in the House
.'Down on the other side of the Rio
Grande," says returned traveller, ''you
can buy any kind of beef for 90 cents a kilo
less than ten cents a pound and sirloin