Beverly banner. [volume] (Beverly, N.J.) 1877-1964, 1925-06-12
Richard Washburn Child
Copyright by e. p. Dutton & Coz
tW. N. u Service)

There was a six-month period after
the departure of the strange bride
from Dallas wherein, whatever emo
tons of apprehension he may have
felt, struggle was made to conceal
them and to fulfill his bargain to give
Brena Selcoss the variety, content and
luxury that he had said should be hers.
He, who never had more than touched
her hand with his own cold, refined
fingers sometimes burst forth with all
the jealous energy he had put into his
speculations and with all the assurance
in his own mystic powers of foresight
which had made him great gambler.
'SYou are my speculation now" he
would claim. Il have bought future
in your
Brena would stare back at him, her
great dark eyes questioning and full
of doubt.
"You think have done badly? No.
1t was my one great inspiration. You
have the body and the health of one
among thousands. You are so beauti-
full with the beauty of eternal things
that even / who will not touch your
cheek can feel the same thrill of pleas
ure that one may feel gazing upon
Praxiteles."
She had said, mot. Phidias, thenT
Eyes, Phidias-a work of Phidias
Because there is not only your carved
limbs and neck and hands but some
thing sublime as we'll. Beneath your
warm and velvety surface like the tex
ture of flower petals there is wonder
full mind, and spirit which has come
down through eternities with immortal
life"
"You are an eloquent man." the
young girl had said, with quirk upon
her lips suggestive of her mother.
Your tongue is as silvery as those of
my Irish ancestors"
do you think l shall regret that
have played part in your growth? ?"
he had asked, with one of his short
laughs. Il shall not be more to you
than l am now. How can use you,
Ell? How could use my money? /
deluded myself once. l thought /
wanted 1t for myself. But you? l do
not want you for myself / only want
your capacity as woman to be filed
to the brim p
He lived two lives; not at the same
time, but alternately. The one was in
her; the other in himself When he
could put his own life into hers he for
iC "a hok
whose warmth and light she had seen
beneath the cold steel shell of an I'M
renting fighter and plunger. whose
singleness of purpose and will had
found dynamic concentration in his
spare body and had expressed them
selves in a mask of cruelty and craft
upon face otherwise esthetic and
sensitive. At these times his counte-
nance wore that abnormal youth of
feature which was his most marked
personal characteristic. 1t was only
upon rare occasions that 1t was twist
ed up as If in a cramp Of anxiety; as
If some distant but menacing forecast
had pointed finger at him from afar.
For moment he forgot her; for a
moment he had been immersed in his
self.
For more than half year, in Buda-
pest in Petrograd, in London, this one
of the two lives of Compton Parmalee
was dominant. Something of the youth
and the calm of Brena's eyes, looking
out upon a world which opened all its
doors to her expectant inquiry, was re-
fiected in his own.
BY manipulation of acquaintance
and, when necessary, by lavish expen-
diture, he procured her entry into rare
social circumference. In that first
year Brena, considered by all strangers
to be several years older than she. in
fact, was, and of whom no one would
have believed 1t If it. had been told
them that she had been plucked out of
that kitchen garden of Wilkes board
ing house, the Porto Rican shop, the
movies, and a sordid slckly-brown pro-
vincialism, had dined with foreign am
bassadors, hunted with Lady Tremayn
Nash, been courted over, through and
under her disgust, by cousin of the
ex-king of the Portuguese, occupied a
villa in the italian lakes and yOyaged
In luxurious yacht around the Baltic
in midsummer with the family of
Stockholm's largest banker. With the
credit of admiration that her natural
poise her beauty, her talent as lin
guist, her mothers wit and her fathers
love of learning had brought her every
where, she was not dazzled in the
slightest degree.
When Parmalee, In Berlin, said to
her forgivably exulting, Thus we work
our miracle! In November you were
taking your laundry to the Chinaman's
in Harvey street; in March you wear
thirty thousand dollars worth of en-
eralds to contrast with that crown of
red-gold hair at ball in the Chateau
y. 49,