Zona Gale

“ There had never been a woman like her in any company that had come to Sun Prairie since he had played first violin. The others had been creatures of loud voices, high in favor with the incredible men of the troupe. But she! And her name was Cressida. Arnold's hands were trembling again as he tried the strings of his instrument. They trembled as he drew his bow over them in the thin, sweet notes of the overture. Jefferson B. Marlybone, donning the cotton velvet of the Montagues, stopped and listened.
"Gad!" he said. "Some poor devil with an ear got himself buried alive in Sun Prairie." ”

“ Here was peace, and here was the house with the lilacs where she had longed to stay, and here was this eager, beautiful boy, and his love—and here was the spell of that other unknown thing, the spell of the land that is a great way off. Why not? She crushed his hands together fiercely, and something hard lay beneath them. It was his mother's picture—the picture of Alice West, whose boy was placing himself in her keeping.
"You!" she cried to him suddenly, "what of you? I've never thought of anybody but myself in my life. What of you?"
Arnold smiled—the confident, pitiful smile of young hope. ”

“ You came out here because you love the moon and the night and the—the differentness!"
Cressida looked about her.
"Well," she admitted, with a laugh, "maybe. I like it, I guess, because it lets me pretend. As if I didn't have pretending enough to do on the stage!"
"No," cried Arnold earnestly, "nobody can do pretending enough. It's the nicest thing in the world."
"When you're hungry?" asked the actress sharply.
"When you're lonely," said the boy simply. "I do it all the time. I'm doing it now."
"You are. Well, what are you pretending I am?" asked Cressida dubiously. ”

“ As she remembered these things, looking down on the white green and the dim lilacs and the shining ribbon of water, she was seized by a whimsical desire. She had acted for other people a very long time now; why should she not, this once, act for herself? There was the fair little lawn, there were the blossoming trees and falling water, refined by the night and their unfamiliarity into positive grandeur. And here—across her trunk—lay the white-and-tinsel Juliet gown, why should she not pretend, for an hour, that the world had gone her way? ”

“ Why, this woman loved the beautiful things in the world as he did, and she was infinitely wiser and cleverer, and yet she was losing everything. In that instant the boy felt the man's longing to protect her, and, too, the boy's reverence for her. ”

“ Even though he was known to go to the upland and play on his violin alone at night, no one thought him really mad, for his mother's sake. Yet a young stranger schoolmaster who had been caught red-handed declaiming poetry in Dates's Grove was looked at askance until he was supplanted, to the relief of the Sun Prairie mothers. Even Mrs. Meadows, without Arnold suspecting it, lost a dollar a month on the room which he occupied, and lost it cheerfully.
"Alice West never stented me in her time," she would say. "Often she's set and sewed over-hours for me to get somethin' done. ”

“ The window was not high, and the wistaria framed its picture charmingly. Arnold watched, spellbound. Who was she—here in Sun Prairie, and at Mrs. Meadows's? He demanded this of Mrs. Meadows breathlessly, when he met her on the stairs. Cressida Tower, the Juliet of that night's performance—the performance at which, as usual, he was to play first violin in the orchestra! He went to his room, and his hands were trembling.
"Oh," he warned himself, "but she will have the same dreadful voice that they all have! What are you hoping for?" ”

“ I have a little money—only a little, but it will help us till my music begins to bring in more. Stay here—stay—and let us live here, and learn together the things that we want to know about—and let me teach you what it is you dream of when I play. ”

“ Meadows consented to serve her with supper that night, so that the little actress did not leave the house until time to go to the theatre. Then great Lallie Marshall, the character man—Laurien Marchiel on the play-bills—lounged around to help her carry her costumes and make-up box.
"Mighty mean of Marley to play you that trick," said Mr. ”