The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-12-22

stand the world She noted
 that he spoke as if 'stho world'' were a kind of plant whose needs he had fathomed. But after that" concluded Berber, speaking as if quite to himself-"a after that I somehow came to see that I had been-Wel, educated backward"
 1HE moved impatiently; the S youth, seeing the question in H>~ her face, answered the de- mand of it's trembling eagerness, explaining:
 Do you not see-I have sometimes known, not guessed nor believed" but known that death was a wonderful. happy thing-a fuIflment, a satisfaction to him who dies-but I have been educated backward into a life where people cannot seem to help regarding it as sad thing. And
 "Yes?-Yes?" breathed the eager woman. Tell me-teIi me"
 But he had come suddenly to a full stop. As if appalled, to find only empty words, or no words at all, for some astounding knowl- edge he would communicate to her, he stammered painfully; then, as if he saw himself caught in guilt, colored furiously. Evelyn Strang could see the inevitable limitations of his word training creep slowly over him like cement hardening around the searching roots of his mind. She marveIed. She remembered Strang's pet phrase, "the plaster of Paris of so-called normal thinking.'" " Then the youths helpless appeal came to her:
 Do you not think that I am doing wrong to speak of these things?" Berber asked, with digni- ty.
 The mistress of Heartho1m was silent. RecklessIy she put by all Doctor Mach's prophecies. She could not stop here; her whole soul demanded that she go fur ther. There were old munitions the belief that she and Strang had shared together, that, under rationalized schemes of thought, knowledge of inestimable hope was being hidden from the world. Here was this boy of the infinite vision. of the backward edu- cated" mind, ready to tell miracu- lous things of a hidden universe. Could she strike him dumb? It would be as if Lazarus had come forth from the open grave and men were to bandage again his ecstatic lips!
 Suddenly, as if in answer to her struggle, Berber spoke. She was aware that he looked at her curi ously with a sort of patient dis dain.
 "The world is so sure, so con- tended, isn't it?" the youth de manded of her, whether in in nocence or irony she could not tell People are trained, or they train themselves, by the millions. to think of things in exactly one way" He who had once been "Gargoyle" looked piercingly into the eyes of this one being to l whom at least he was not afraid l to speak.
 Anything you or might guess l outside of what other people might | accept" the boy reminded her, l austerely, "could be called by just | one unpleasant name." He re- garded the face turned to his, | recognizing the hunger in it. with | a mature and pitying candor, con cluding: After to-day we must | never speak of these things. I | shall never dare, you must never 1 dare-and so-'' He who had | once been "Gargoyle" suddenly | dropped his head forward on his breast, muttering-" -"and so, that is all"
 vELYN Strang rose. She
 stood tall and imperious in 8-S the waning afternoon light. She was bereaved m h anguished wife; she was dreamer driven out of the temple of the dream, and what she had to do was desperate. Her voice came hard and resoIute.
 E'It is not a1I," the woman dog ged1y insisted. The voiceless woe of one who had lost 2, cOmrade by death was on her. In her eyes was fever let loose, a sob, like one of flock of imprisoned wild birds futtered out from the cage of years. "Oh no-no;" the woman pleaded, more as if to some hid den power of negatiOn than to the boy before her "Oh no-no, this cannot be all, not for mel The world must never be tOld-it could not understand; but I must know, [ must know" She took desperate steps back and forth
 John Berber, if there is any thing in your memory, your even if it is only that you have imagined things-if they are so beautiful or so terrible that you can never speak of, f,them-for ,ear-for fear no one would un- 1erstand, you might, you might, you might, even then. tell me Do you not hear? You might tell ne. I authorize it, commend it."
 The woman standing in the autumn gardens clenched her hands. She looked round her into he clear air at the dense green md bold sunshine Altering the colored trees, the softly spread patens of the cos E nos, the vivid orifammes of the hrysanthemums. Her voice was {; as if they two stood at l secret door of which Berber :