Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-10-14

7 Err father had given up the figh
long before Helena could re
member. leaving behind hin
Il 4 only photograph of sensi
tive, nom combatant face anc
a battered tin box Of artists materials
the tubes of paint dried into dust by
the time his daughter was old enough
to know anything about him or herself
Her militant mother kept boarding
house in college town, Waging fierce
war against thieving, slovenly cooks, the
high price of beefsteakS and students
who could not pay their board.
Helena had a sensitive face, like her
fathers, but by no means a non-com-
Blatant one. AS soon as she could walk
alone she began to fight as flercely as
her mother, her warfare being waged
quite simply on everything about her.
She hated the world in which she
found herself. and she let that fact be
known. She was as far as possible from
being a comfort to her widowed
mother"-from being a comfort to any
one. herself least of all,
She loathed the raw. noisy student
boarders with whom she ate every meal
of her life She loathed the mud-colored
wooden house in which she had been
born and always lived.
But, perhaps more than anything else,
she detested what was called her "edu-
cation" To learn the principal events
of the administration of Martin Van
Buren,! Or how much money mer-
chant would make in a given tranSac-
ton! Or how to vote right and be
valuable citizen! She ground her teeth
over her hated school books.
She was a disagreeable-lo looking child,
sullen and scornful, as she sat, night
after night. in the kitchen, after the
dishes had been washed, doing her les
sons as badly as she could.
On the wall, smrking at her When
ever she raised her head, was a chrome
of blond lady, with candy-hard and
candy-pink shoulders and cheeks. IN
der her feet was rug with large
green dog woven into it. There was not
in the remoteSt cell of her somber brain
any notion that there existed a world
she would not hate, where she could be
at home.
How could news of such world reach
fne dull, unloved daughter of a board
mg-house keeper in a small town?
This is how it reached her. She sat
alone one evening, when she was 10
wears old, her feet on the green dog, the
nauseating falseness of the chromos
coloring loud in the room. And through
the door came the messenger from her
world.
He was a small, neat elderly man,
with well modelled face and pointed
white mustache. Helena knew who he
was: had, in fact, met him at the front
door an hour before, on his way to make
a farewell call upon young professor
living in the boarding house.
He was visiting professor" and had
come TO give course OF lectures in the
college. There had been stir about his
stay in town, because he had come all
the way from Paris-PariS, France-and
because he was the sort of dis
tinguished foreigner" very much in
style in bigger, richer universities, but
the first one who was ever seen at the
small and poor local college.
LIE stood now, hesitating, at ease, and
l. bowed a little to Helena, who sitting
heaviIyin her chair. looked up at him in
an unframed, surly silence. He ex-
planned in broken English that there had
been no heat in the room of the young
colleague on whom he had been calling
to say good-by, and that with depre-
eating Smile) his blood was thinner than
It had been and had become chilled.
Might he, without disturbing made
noiSelle at her studies, stand for mo-
rnert by the fire to warm his hands be-
fore going out? Helena nodded, the only
form of acquiescence familiar TO her,
and dropped her eyes again to the book
on civics before her.
The elderly professor, apparently ac-