The Washington times., 1931-05-01

departments in those stores
which drew their business from
the wholesale districts.
A Pale Dante
The fact, however, that Jen-
ny'S nervous dissatisfactions
with the qualifications of to-
day, in order that she might
yearn for those of tomorrow,
seemed to increase in Just such
proportion as her creature-cares
decreased, was an unreasonable
hypothesis upon which to base
nothing.
How dissatisfiedly she slept,
two perpendicular lines flashing
in and out between her eyes.
Her strong hooked nose flashed
slightly, too, at the nostrils, and
in the pale light from a tran
som, the triangular planes of
her cheeks, far too thin, rippled
now and then. There was some
thing of a frail, pale Dante
about the sleeping face Of
Jenny. A face that walked in a
hell.
What was it she wanted?
Strange angular woman whom
he called wife, lying there shar-
ing his bed, what is there that
will ease your hunger, Slake
your thirst, crafty your in
domitable appetites. Appetites
for what? God knows! Love?
Bah! she was as empty as a
meal-sack of it for him, yet she
was not the woman to seek it
elsewhere. Up to now, hers had
been the easy morality Of the
frigid.
What did she want? She
had her children, as much as
one seemed to have ones chill
dren nowadays.
What did she want? She had
the security that goes with a
15-year-old marriage that has
borne the fruit Of offspring and
material success. Indeed, ma
terial success that taxed the
credulities. AS to the underly-
ing qualifications of the pas
SionS. romance, oneness Of pur-
pose. sympathy, companionShip,
love-well, wsAl, what proper
ton of human beings can hope
to sustain those?
Rarick had once hoped. But
the young clerk who had come
to st. Louis from Keokuk and
had married, rather consider
ably above his station, a Miss
Jenny Avery, had cast off many
a dead skin since then.
Romance FIees
Where was that somewhat
caustic, but intellectual-faced
girl Of those eager, wooing days,
who had sat opposite him in a
canoe that cut through the
Merrimack River with the same
lean Swiftness of their dreams?- -
Where was that eager, mar
row, intelligent-faced Jenny?
Why. he had almost lost sight
Of her the first year of their
marriage, when there had been
SC little time for the old talks
Of those days when the mind of
each to the other had seemed
an oyster shell crammed with
pearls!
Their marriage had routin-
lied so quickly. Perhaps be-
cause Of the circumstance that
it had been Jenny's total capital
of twenty-five hundred dollars
which had embarked him on
the enterprise of the Nick Mack
Store on Olive Street.
After that, her face had i'm
mediately taken on some Of the
pinch and strain from which
it was never to recover. Jenny's
money had started him. Had
that had something to do with
the immediate reversal of what
had been their pre-nuptial re.
lationship of idealization of life
and love? Undoubtedly.
AS a matter Of fact, it had
been a maneuver of despera.
tion rather than of logic. No
more than Jenny had he even
remotely anticipated the enor-
nifty Of that move.
Who Was to Blame?
And now perhaps he
had been the one to change.
The desire for passionate love
with the Jenny Avery who had
dreamed with him of walking
trips through the Pyrenees, was
by now nothing more than a
sense Of Illustration lying back
in the dim reaches Of his mind.
Presently the gilt stars,
among the foliated stars. the
festoons and the adumbrated
cherubs on the ceiling would
begin 10 fade: and dawn. a
pale horse. would ride through
the Corinthian archway that in.
closed the exclusive residential
Westmoreland Place. where the
RarlckS occupied the most ore.
tentious house of all the pre-.
tentious row.
1t was about this time that
John Rarick was due to drop
off into brief but reSuscitative
sleep.
1t was about this same time
that Jenny, an early Gaker
against her will, was due to
open her eyes almost with a
click, as it were, and start to
a sitting posture at once, as If
she had been called. Called
she had been by the pressure
of the procession of her