Harold MacGrath

“ What an adventure! And who but Selma Nordstrom could have conceived it or would have had the audacity to dramatize it? Not a gesture, not a word, would she miss of this strange interview; she would memorize all; and some day she would utilize it. What a souvenir for her old age! Oh, it would take courage of no mean order. Yonder woman might be cold, but usually these cold minds were clear minds and armed with a thousand daggers of merciless wit.
"Mrs. Lane is always home."
The phrase recurred and robbed the bloom from the impulse, at once ironical noble, selfish and magnanimous. ”

“ She talked of crystal. She was crystal too—crystal in her love, her frankness: crystal and flame.
Neither of these two was troubled by codes, the codes of organized society. Upon a certain day they had flung the world aside, the one in love and the other in hurt. Only genius may do this with impunity. The world accepts these peculiarities of conduct tolerantly only when it knows that the actors are indifferent to its opinion. To-morrow both might return to the world without causing more than a ripple of domestic interest. Mediocrity alone pays the full measure. ”

“ Selma Nordstrom and Herbert Lane, were drawn together by their intellects, by a community of ideals, and later by love. For he did love her. Another eternal mystery of Nature, which she has never condescended to divulge, is this: that a man may love two women if he cannot find them both in one. He wants his wife and mistress under one roof, and if he cannot have them so, he builds a second home. Over against this, a woman wants but one man, however she may have him. Selma and Lane might have been supremely happy but for the fact that he still loved his wife. ”

“ IT was a brilliant October afternoon when Selma Nordstrom's car rolled up to the grilled gate. She could not control her delight at the exquisite beauty of the scene, the undulating reaches of grass, the brown and scarlet leaves, the ruby vines, the amethyst hills across the noble river, which was mottled with blue shadows and dull silver.
"Oh, this Is beautiful!" she exclaimed. No wonder—" She did not finish the thought. The lodge-keeper, having recognized a lady of quality, was opening the gates.
"Is Mrs. Lane at home?"
"Yes, Miss. Mrs. Lane is always home." ”

“ Lane dropped the card as though it were an unclean thing, and to the other woman, the act was equivalent to a blow in the face.
"Wait!" cried Selma, marshaling all her gifts. "Before you surrender to the natural impulse to show me to the door, hear me."
"But the supreme insolence of this visit!"
"No! Call it the supreme sacrifice. I love your husband with all my soul. He would never come back to you, and your pride would never permit him to send for him. Such is his loyalty."
"Loyalty? You speak of his loyalty?"
"True: I believe he owes none to you. ”

“ THE woman in the library picked up the pipes and crushed them passionately to her bosom, laughing and crying, and held them there until she heard the faint warning of the automobile siren as the car turned out into the highway.
"Home!" Selma drew the robes about her and huddled into a corner.
Then she lavished. Gambler! Torn as her heart was, dull as the future seemed to be, her sense of humor—ironic humor—was as keen as ever. The ulterior purpose! Children! Well, she would have thousands of them—her future audiences; and if she could not rumple their hair, she would rumple their souls. ”

“ He caught her by the arms and lightly swung her over toward the desk—with a strength rather astonishing in so slender a body—and tilted the lamp so that the glare of it might cover her. The ruby points of light expanded until her eyes glowed like Burgundy wine in glasses held against candlelight. Her skin was no longer pale but rosy: and her bosom rose up and out with the deep intake of ecstatic breath.
SELMA NORDSTROM was one of those anomalies which sometimes come down from the great north countries. ”

“ The world knows, but it doesn't care. It forgives and condones because, forsooth, we amuse it—I as an actress and you as a dramatist. We are liniments for its mental rheumatism, as it were."
"I am actually two men!"
"No. She should have been two women. That is always so. All things to one man. She is crystal, that woman. The sun shines through her, but leaves no warmth. She catches the light and reflects it; she has no light of her own. Have you ever held your hand near a window-pane in the winter sunshine? Soon your palm grows rosy and warm, but the glass remains cold. ”

“ You have described her so many times that I know just how she looks: beautiful and cold, serene and passionless. The world speaks of our liaison. It is a poor fool of a world. It is my intellect alone you love; the heart, which is I, is nothing. ”

“ It is the law of nature that woman should give and that man should take. Have I ever breathed the slightest regret for having thrown away the world? And do you think we fool the world, hiding up here? ”

“ The one thing I dread is to die in bed, alone, forgotten, crowded to suffocation by memories. When we are young and active, we can open and shut that door at will. But in old age the hinges are loose, the door flops and memory comes out at flood-tide, from every channel. ”

“ Why should I love him, when you, you are the breath of his life? Are you without desire? Is there not something you want? These pipes!" Selma reached down and took up one. "What a wonderful thing intuition is! It is a key to life. These pipes, this desk, ready! Well, take him back. I hear no children's voices in this house. It is very empty. His happiness—that is all I ask; for myself—nothing."
Selma laid down the pipe. The fire was gone out of her.
Suddenly Mrs. Lane covered her face with her hands and held them there for a space. ”

“ I could not understand why a rich man should work as he did. His plays did bore me. I was a fool. Life meant going to teas and dinners and dances, and he detested those things. Life meant to me keeping up with my friends instead of my husband. You have called me crystal. I was but glass. But there is fire in me now, burning, burning. Three years! I have lived a hundred. I have made a new hell for myself each day, and wandered in it."
SELMA nodded understandingly. ”

“ Until to-day I saw only the actress, armed with a hundred devices for snaring men, beautiful—and you are beautiful!—and intelligent. I have tried to think of you as low, but knowing him even as little as I do, I could not. He left me because I let him go. You are right. Men will seek women when they are lonely. First I was blind—then full of fierce pride—then hurt and more hurt: and finally came understanding. I was afraid to send for him, for fear he would not come."
"So you have opened the book of life?" asked Selma, a little more curious, a little less ironical. ”

“ She has no right to you; I have every right. If only she loved you and wanted you, it would be different. I could go away, knowing at least you would be happy. It is your happiness; my own is nothing. Why doesn't she divorce you? ”

“ Go back to her if you must: and when the day comes that you crave warmth, blood instead of ice—here!"
She caught his head in her hands and pressed it with savage tenderness against her heart, and her stormy eyes glittered with unshed tears.
"But I do love you, Selma! I shall never leave you. I'm not that kind. I am only a human being, I know, but I am not a cad. ”

“ She was as full of surprises as a spring morning in Madeira: sudden showers, radiant sunshine, mists, bursts of color, chill and warmth. When least expected she would smother him with kisses, loose her hair and flood him with it—and then for the rest of the day go about calmly, attend to the material affairs of the household and pleasantly rebuff him if he came near her. She studied how to be irresistible after three years of intimacy. And yet the invisible magnet drew him more powerfully day by day.
SHE understood clearly. These queer animals called men! ”

“ Selma knew humanity. She possessed an almost infernal intuition as to what this or that person would do under stress of emotion: and often she anticipated the effect, to her material or spiritual benefit. She was a pagan, but she was a tender pagan. She hated cruelty, and if she ever gave hurt it was due to the two first laws: to protect oneself, and then those one loves.
Principally, among all humans, she knew Lane. ”

“ When you put your arms around me, you poor innocent, don't I know that you are playing it is she? So often do you close your eyes when I kiss you! I know. You are visualizing her. Nature is inexorable, but not always just. ”

“ You let him go. I had pictured you as a woman with a heart of crystal, cold and clear, without warmth, without the least understanding of the man. Ah, how many times have I seen him in fancy—at this desk—that ought to be your shrine!—writing, writing, pouring his soul out on paper because God so willed it, and then running to you to read it, and you, careless, bored. indifferent, without understanding, without trying to understand!"
MRS. LANE stared. There was something in the voice that held her in thrall—a dignity which Mrs. Lane had not suspected such a woman could possess. ”

“ And ever and anon a wisp of smoke from a discarded cigarette in the ash-tray—an old pewter porringer would curl aslant his beautiful profile, giving an Olympian touch to it.
"Men tire, and women fade," she murmured in an undertone. "But I haven't faded, and he hasn't tired. It's that will-o'-the-wisp. I wonder what I shall have to do? Half-illusions are the most deadly. With a full illusion, one does not think; with no illusion at all one is free. ”

“ I am trying to understand what is not humanly understandable. God gave me the right to love one man, whoever he was, whatever he was, and wherever I found him. And Nature tosses this riddle at my feet! ”

“ Morality is subject to many analyses; it possesses as many sides as a diamond, each side reflecting one color; so one must accept the fact that morality is more or less a question of individuality. What may be eminently moral to me may not be so to my neighbor. ”

“ From Lane's description, Selma had constructed a handsome woman with a splendid lady, aloof in manner, narrow-minded, Puritanical, fixed unalterably in her outlook upon life, one of those creatures who take and take and never give. ”

“ A man cannot find real happiness anywhere on earth except in work. Go back, even if she agreed to take me, knowing that it would be the same thing over again? Three years were as much as I could stand. I never put my arms around her that I did not feel a subtle repellance. ”

“ Church and civil law write down that this shall be and that shall be; but Nature neither reads nor writes; she neither sees nor hears. She is instinct. Her business is to weld bodies, souls, intellects, to bring forth others ”

“ That he was making a fortune as a dramatist was of less interest to him than the fact that this money was a tangible proof of his success. Forever and always money is success. In his youth he had been studious ”

“ There was superb abandon in the wide-armed gesture, and it stirred Selma's sense of dramatic values.
"Thinking is good for human beings. I never knew, until after he was gone, what it was to think, think? ”