Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-02-01
Continued from yesterdays Star.)
INSTALLMENT XVI.


TINE inescapable conclusion thai
Van Wrinkle had loved her, OF
had believed himself in love
Il with her at a time when to hel
he had been but one of many
dancing men, was a sufficiently startling
one 20 draw from that scene Phyllis
had witnessed with the afflicted man.
But it was a much stranger revelation
that this same backward glance into
time, which had made him again aware
of 1t. In one aspect 1t was ,ludicrous;
in another, pitiful. She could see moth
ing funny in IL after that broken, de-
realized it.
But two elements in the incident de-
manded attention. One was that 1t
had been some of the mans feeling. for
her that had alone persisted In his
darkened mind when other affairs and
conditions of his life had vanished from
memory; the other was that the dates
he thought he recalled were not neces-
sarily true or significant ones. He had
come upon the New Embassy ball by
accident, while recording local history
might now be within his grasp.
Van Wrinkle had realized this last
fact, Of course. He himself had sug-
gested that his notions of his recollec-
lions might easily be the results Of
suggestions given him before or after
he had lost his memory.
But when she had limited that he
might now use the means Brainard had
furnished for searching still further
into the past surrounding that estab-
lshed incident, he seemed to shrink
from It. And much as it might appeal
to or touch any woman to know that a
man loved her, she could hardly fail to
see why he might not choose to probe
into wound SO curiously healed over.
Bizarre situation, truly! But If his
case was abnormal, it simply illustrated
by exaGgeration the normal mans rela-
ton to his normal ability to forget! If
forgetting was happiness, it was folly to
remember!
But this was only one of the lesser
matters Of which she had now to think.
The effect of the Vicarion upon daily
life was arresting the attention Of every
intelligent observer. Social life was
tagging. At first people gathered
great theme compelling them to discus
sion. But the more they saw of what
some one had now called liquid reincar-
nation, the more irresistible the expe-
rience itself became. The curious, the
critical. the frivolous and the serious
alike were caught by phases of the vi
cariotik astounding revelations.
But nobody could fail to understand.
Phyllis herself sat one night in the EN-
press, m enormous theater, formerly Tor
motion pictures, and heard q chorus of
a thousand voices In support of soloists
among whom was Adelina Patti, in a
magnificent rendering OF THE Mes
siah," given in London years before even
the photograph was dreamed Of. It
was no mere scene; she was In London,
listening to Patti, on that eventful night
long years before she was bornl And
then she stood In the streets of Paris on
night in 1892 and heard mad French
mob sing the Marseillaise. The mob's
own spirit caught her reason momentar-
rily awayl She stood In No Mans Land
on the Marine, and looked first into Ger
man and then into French faces, In the
teeth of machine gun .fire-and saw.
how men do meet deathl For hours
afterward she went about, trying to find