The Washington herald., 1922-06-26
FEATURES, FICTION
MONDAY, JUNE a6 Ioaa

The county clerk in Dirck Moy-
lan's home town had filled In a
form slip that bore a humiliatlng
likeness to a kennel clubs pedi-
gree blank. This at the time or
Dirck's birth. And. according to
the certificate, Dirck was now just
40 years old.
He looked it-neither more nor
less. He looked like a man who
had lived forty years. but who had
lived well and more or less sanely
and had accomplished something.
But birth certificates and human
outlines and facial masks do not
take into account the actual youth
or age Of a mantle youth or age
that is of the heart. That was
why. in spite of dry statistics,
Dirck MoyIan's birth certificate
was a lie.
For Dirck was young. Inordi-
nately young.
The county clerk could not have
been expected 20 know that Dirck.
at 40. would really be in the early
twenties. For Dirck himself did
not know it until nearly a month
after the fortieth milestone was
passed.
You see. for a matter of a score
Of years he had been working too
hard to notice whether he was old
OF young. Painters are supposed
.l aFfI liuae
and to wake some day to fame and
wealth. In real life such painters
-Dirck Moylan and the rest
share the lot of writers or coal
beavers or musicians or cobblers.
In other words. II they toll day
and night at the level best and
hardest that is IN them they may
or may not some day reach a sum-
init whose conquest usually means
that they must thereafter keep on
working harder than ever. Those
OF the craft who do not work like
that never arrive anywhere. and
find their sole consolation in
lucky stITs."
BY the time he was 40 Dirck
noticed. to his own mild surprise.
Also that he could have lost $4,000
much more comfortably than, a
few years earlier. he could have
spared a single so bill. This sort
of thing was the goal toward
which he had climbed with ardent
longing. in the early grinding
years Of struggle. Now that he
had attained IL the climb had been
g1 ora6naI ~ 1nftIA Z a
himself realize he was at the top.
He tried to say something of this
10 a puzzlinE and haltinE fashion.
"a MAZDA Layne. But. even to her.
Be felt he was not making himself
sfear. And the fact of her under
Standing what he was driving at
did not prove he had expressed
simself well. It proved only what
he had known for hve years-that
Mazda still had that queer gift of
EeadinE him and OF understanding
his most perplexed and tumbled
thoughts before he had half voiced
mem.
He and MAZDA saw a good bit of
each other. They had been pals
from the first. 1t was pleasant and
calming to Dirck to drop in at her
rooms on his way home from the
studio in the winter dusk or TO
run out for the weekend to her
shabbily sweet little summer bun
Ealow at Paignton in the North
Jersey hills.
There was something infinitely
restful about MAZDA - something
stimulating. too. though never
stimulating when tired man
wanted rest Dirck nicknamed
her The Woman who Under
stands" And he let II 20 at that
She was in the dawn OF the thir-
ties. She had been married, at 20
to a man of 50 whom she did not
love. An hour after the ceremony
she and her grizzled bridegroom
had started West on a weddine
trip. An hour later the train had
heea derailed. A stove-in car roo
made the bride widow before