The Washington times., 1921-12-29
Well-known Author and Novelist OF
Countrywide Reputation.

Countrywide Reputation.
CTEP by step Storrow recalled his
- earlier hopes and aspirations.
his older and cleaner ways of
life. his more eager and light
ened outlook on the world. He
revived his first advent to the
city, his meeting with Torrie,
his surrender to the impulses of the
body, his quixotic marriage. his
aborted attempts at revolt against
an environment which he had only
half recognized as degrading. his
misteps and mistakes, and his en-
trance into that eliminating con-
seriousness OF betrayal which now
left him as piognantly alone as
though he stood the last man on
the last ice-floe of a planet lost in
space.
A sense of strangeness of earthly
things returned to him, as he lay
there as rigid as the blade OF a
sword, in remembering the CULTS
which now yawned between him
and the quietly breathing body re-
posing with such ironic intimacy
on the same bed with him. He was
no longer swayed by that earlier
unreasoning passion to inflict in
jury on 1t, to impose suffering on
what had brought suffering to him.
His feeling had merged into
something more passive, a vague
and perplexed indifferency, a de-
sire for silence and the celebrating
dust Of time. a hunger for even
the hope of quietness and remote
ness where the healing forces Of
life might in some devious way re-
assert themselves.
A Call to Hope.
He had sunk low, he remember
ed, and had surrendered much; but
he had mot altogether given up the
hope of hope. Somewhere, in the
unsleeping core of his being there
was the trampled spark which
could not and should not go out.
IL that went, all indeed was lost.
In some way and by some means, al
whatever cost, he must recover his
grip on life.
He must go back to the begin
ming Of things, grope through the
fog, struggle on until he once more
reached solid and decipherable
ground. Somewhere in the world
there was a great serenity which
was being denied him. He was
meant to be a part of that serenity,
above the marrying disorder and
distractions of life. And above that
blind welter, he felt, must dwell
some far-off purpose. some larger
order which he was as yet unable
to see in perspective, some wider
scheme of things in which even
earthly passion might find it's rea-
son and it's redemption.
Storrow felt 1t to be there, even
as he realized that ii lay beyond
his reach. And his secondary sense
of Illustration brought with 1t
new and deeper misery. 1t left
him apparently Knocked at by the
very God on whom he stood unable
to call for help. Yet as he lay
there, in his silent conflict of soul,
he prayed without knowing that he
was praying. He was unconscious OF
prayer, since no answer came to
those frantic and only half-inarticu-
late appeals to the unknown.
He was conscious only of his suf-
fering, of a sleepless tension that
seemed uncomfortable, of n feeling
of being prematurely old and ex-
hausted. The only latter of hope
that remained with him lay in the
memory of that unobliterated
spark lost somewhere in the trod-
den husks of his past. the spark in
which he still forlornly refused to
relinquish belief. 1t prompted him
TO remember as he lay there I'm his