Evening Star Newspaper, March 30, 1930, Page 102

A New Bit of Fiction From the Penof That High- est-Paid Writer of Short Fiction in the World—a Storyof aLove Tragedy That Ends Hap- pily—Another First-Run Story by Miss Hurst Will Appear in the Magazine of Next Sunday’s Star. EN Mpyron Gilmore went away to the World War, and two-thirds ot the town, wet-eyed, crammed the small station to see the boys off, he took a girl he had called Sweet Annie Laurie for the greater part of his life into his arms, -and there in the melee of unleashed emotions, kissed her roundly and soundly on her beautiful lips. “Let this last you, dear heart, until I return,” he said. “You know I will, without my saying it, Myron.” . And so' she would have, extept for what happened War boomed on; the weeks stretched into months and the months into years and in a small Middle Western town a girl named Laura Moore kept tryst and waited. It was a fearful kind of waiting; the kind that caused one to pick up every morning's paper with bated breath, and the sight of a messenger boy running up a flight of front steps was sufficient to strike terror into the heart. Sirained waiting months of anxiety, mingled with hope; of terror, mitigated by prayer. -/'\N'D then one day, near Verdun, under an expioding shell, that as it fell lighted the ccuntryside in a wide white grin, Myron Gilmore, crouching for attack, felt the lower hulf of his face seem to move; take wings; teke flight. Almost just that had happened. One of those devastating facial accidents that brought about the wonders of a new science called plastic surgery had befallen Myron, tear- ing away part of the lower jaw and mutilating, almost beyond recognition, the personable face the young man who had bidden Laura Moore good-by. Then the same old story. Month after month in one hospital after another, where from time to time the various experimental treat- m 'nts were tried out. The wound had healed frirly well, but the great problem lay in rcstoration. Parraffin and silver had been tried for purposes of filling out the shot away jaw and lower lip, but because of certain ligament difficulties, the substance would not hold and slowly but surely the impr wised structure of Myron’s lower jaw would befin to collapse, revealing the upper line of hi side teeth. It made him rather horrible. And &8 the months dragged on, there developed in Myron, over this recurring tragedy of the exposed side of his face, a sensitiveness that was torture and torment. Day after day, he lay on his cot, face to wall, concealing from even his wardmates what he regarded as the horror of his countenance. Months since he had ceased repiying to the e2ger imploring letters that came from Laura. Then one day he resorted to a ruse. Two weeks after the signing of the armistice, there went across seas a letter to Laura Moore bearing the tidings that Myron had died of & septic infection of the jaw. That somehow made things simpler; easier for Myron to bear. You could manage to go through life with a paraffin jaw, if need to be, just so long as you did not drag into the torment of your little hell the Jovely figure @) the girl whose lips your own had pressed in promise of bright days to come. lT was at a hospital in Paris they finally succeeded in perfecting a lower jaw of silver and paraffin that held firmly and except to the closely observing, the face of Myron, with the exception of a rigidity which sug-" g :sted partial paralysis, was not any too notice- ably scarred. Of course it was obvious that h2re was a face somehow not of normal cast, but it was not a countenance to cause one to recoil. in other words, but for the Inevitable pandicap of such a defect, Myron’s disability, B THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 30, 1930. KASS—1 Story by Fannie Hurst It was while she was standing alone one day before the perpetual flame on the grave of the Unknrown Soldier that she found her eyes riveted on him. He began to move away. except in his own consciousness, was not the calamity it had threatened to be. Pulling himself together and taking up the routine of life, there remained within him this one form of sensitiveness that was little short of mania. He believed himself a horror in the eyes of man. Which he was not. He molded his life Do You Change After Marriage? Continued jrom Fourth Page riage turn jnto veritable typhoons safter mar- riage, and life can be made horrible for the unfortunate man or woman who marries a jealous person. A jealoys wife will see her hus- band’s relatives, his busines associates, even his man f{riends, through a green cloud. She will nag him, torment him, and fall into fits of rage and weeping. “While the girl who is flattered by displays of jealousy on the part of a fiance will rue the day she ever married the man who, by jealous rages, revenges himself upon his mate because he suspects that she may be superior to him. “SOMETIMES babies, who are supposed to strengthen the bonds of marriage, and to bring man and woman closer, really tend to separate them. The jealous husband, seeing his wife lavish affection upon her offspring, feels that he is being relegated to second place. Even a fond mother will experience sharp pangs of jeaJousy—if she is of the jealous type—when her husband fondles and makes much of one of the children. “It is utterly wrong and needless for people to change, or to appear to change, radically after marridage. There <liculd be proper prep- aration for love and marriage, and this con- sists of learning to consider the interests of others, in correct and complete social adjust- ment and in co-operating with others. This training should begin in childhood and con- tinue to maturity, “As a result of these years of assiduous training, with ultimate marriage in view, a man or woman will be properly prepared for the different status. “Such properly prepared and equipped men and women will not appear to ‘change after marriage.” ‘Their characters will have the stability that will not be adversely affected by a new mode of life. “YOU ask: ‘Uatil that happy millennium arrives when all people are properly prepared for marriage, what can be done to keep people from changing so markedly after marriage, or of creating the iliusion of having changed?’ “I should say & marriage clinic would be a good idea. Or it might be advisable to estab- lish advisory councils which would untangle mistakes in matrimony by the methods of individual psychology. “Trained persons would make up these councils, and they would understand the unity in individual lives, and how all events cohere and hang together. They would have the ability to identify themseclves sympathetically with the persons seecking advice. “Divorce would not be advocated. For of what use is a divorce? Divorced persons, as a rule, marry again, and simply repeat their mistakes. “One could not establish a clinic for engaged couples to forestall marriage difficulties, for those in love are optimistic and believe that their unions will be successful. Besides, the problems do not arise until after marriage. They cannot be anticipated. “Circumstances, environment, individuals— everything-—direct the outcome. The real training in preparation for marriage should begin in childhood. “For marriage is no bed of roses, no paradise in which all dreams come true automatically as soon as the fatal ‘I do’ has been recited. “Parents are not being kind to children,” Dr. Adler continues, “when they spoil and humor them. “They are merely paving the way for their offspring’s unhappiness, and what is worse, they are also laying the foundation for un- happiness for the children of somebody else who happen to marry theirs, “FOR it is when the candidate for marriage (every one is a potential candidate for this natural state) is a child that the founda- tion must be laid. The knack of adjusting one's self to others—seeing with their eyes, hearing with their ears, feeling with their hearts—must be learned young or not at all. “Marriage requires exceptional sympathy— that is, the ability to identify one’s self with another person. “Marriage does not by alchemy accomplish miracles. “What a person really was before marriage he remains after marriage. Husband and wife need not feel ‘that they have been cheated’ or that their partner has somehow masked his real character, suddenly to reveal it when it is too late. “And those courageous, self-confident people, who have harnessed their efforts on the useful side of life and who are adaptable and thoughtful of others, are bound to make of marriage a success. “You will not hear the friends of such people say, ‘I can’t understand what Will saw in Dora to make him marry her,’ or ‘Jim certainly was a different person before he married, wasn't he?'” Dr. Adler cites a marriage test which is still in use in small villages of Germany. When two young people intend to wed, he says, they are taken by the villagers to a nearby forest and given a crosscut saw. Then, one on each end of the saw, they are made to saw through a huge log. If each holds up equally his share in this very co-operative undertaking they are regarded as well mated, but if one lags and makes the other carry more than a fair share of the burden their marriage is discouraged by the townspeople. (Copyright, 1930.) accordingly, finding himself a position in an English bank in the city of Paris and prac- tically living the life of a recluse, It was too bad all the way around, not only because the obsession that his silver lips would have been so terribly repellent to Laura, but because he further reduced his life to the narrow lusterless plane of an eccentric. There were no mirrors in Myron's rooms; he allowed himself no social life; women were omitted from his scheme. At 40, skilled in a colloquial knowledge of the French language, an honor student at the Sorbonne and a graduate in French law, he had managed to fill the wide empty niches 1n his life by qualifying himself for a professional career. It was remrakable in its way, and created no small amount of comment. The idea of this American who called himself Myron Stewart, qualifying so brilliantly for the French bar, caught popular fancy. Americans, flocking, brought him wide clientele and then his success began to succeed. Meanwhile Laura, whose heart was a grave for him, had done the not unusual thing. She had married the next best, a bosom friend of Mpyron's, 1n fact, who had loved her, prespered, provided her with worldly goods and died m a fashion that-had been a shock to the entire community. One of those untimely deaths by motor car accident, of one of the thriving and successful business men of the town. Out of a clear sky, a devastating bolt from the bilue, and Laura at 40, childless, a widow! Inevitably, props thus knocked from under, she found herself following the nomadic trail of the widow. Her first trip abroad, in the company of a personally conducted group of five, landed her in Paris in April, the perfect month of the Paris year. There were bitter memorfes in her heart for this city which she had never seen; bitter memories all crowded around with the pain of her new grief. T was while she was standing alone one day before the perpetual flame on the grave of the Unknown Soldier at the head of the Champs Elysees, that glancing up, she found her eyes riveted to the gaze of one who had evidently risen from the casket in her heart. He had not, though, because as she gazed, stealthily he began to move away and as one possessed, she began to push through the trafic of the Etoile after him. “Who are you?” “I am no one you know.” “You are mad.” “You are Myron.” “What if I am?” “How dare you talk like that! What it you are! If Jou are, you are my life come back. when I thought life dead.” “How did you know me?” “Why not?” “My face.” “Myron—Myron, it is dark here—just to prove to me I am not dreaming—and may wake up—kiss me, Myron——" S Coldly he laid against her, lips that were rigid with silver. f “Now are you sure?” “Surer than heaven, Kiss me again” (Copyright, 1930.)