Evening Star Newspaper, December 16, 1934, Page 97

D. C., DECEMBER 16, 1934. le, moving on into the dressing room. e girls crowded about her Juliette!” When did you get back?” Jerry said Jim had the measles! Isn’t it too ridic? Who'd you come with?” You’re looking grandi” Margaret was afraid you wouldn’t ne, after Jim was quarantined.” I almost didn’t,” she laughed, an- >ring them all at once. But a fellow ne!” Fiercely Bill flung him. “Another time! u to say about when I r?” . « &7 John Derry an- v")’. t rushed me up at Aunt Agatha’s owed me home and appeared at ctly the right minute.” ler head was up, her lips parted in a le. Her eyes glowed, as she moved out the dressing room toward the ball m. John was waiting to dance with Beautiful,” he said, loud enough for se listening to hear, “I thought you ‘e never coming.” LIETTE paused an instant, smiling up into his eyes, then together they ved into step. Gay nods greeted her, sculine voices leaned a little nearer 1 asked for dances. All at once she sed a step. There—just ahead, were and Helen Robinson. iill with his tall, straight figure, Bill h his blond curling hair and big blue- y eyes. Bill who had loved her, had ;ed her, had made life a heaven. nd now his eyes were looking into en Robinson’s. She hated her sleek k beauty, her luring brown eyes, her ’liness—everything that had at- >ted Bill. There they are,” her voice was a whis- to John Derry. They were passing m. John Derry!” Helen Robinson had yped dancing, her voice was high and ill. “Where did you drop from?” hey had stopped. The dancers moved ut them and circled on. Well, helto Helen Robinson. I flew Do you know Miss Jackson?” John ry spoke swiftly. Dh, yes.” Helen Robinson was gay, 1ing to Bill possessively, introducing i boldly. “And you know Miss Jack- ,4of course, Bill darling.” Of course.” Bill’s face was a dull red beneath his tan. He was fumbling for words. Everybody was watching, eyes staring, ears listening. “I met Juliette up at her aunt’s,” John Derry was explaining, his voice lifted a little. “And she stole my heart away. She came back home rather unexpectedly, and I came, dashing down after her. Fortunately there were complications concerning her date tonight, so she let me bring her—though I'd have come anyway, if she were going to be here.” “Somehow, they moved on. “You were grand,” Juliette said, “I thought I was going to die with Bill there so close—and that girl.” “Did you care so much?” he asked. “Terribly!” she said, her eyes meeting his, the smile gone from them. “You don’t know how much love can hurt you, until you have loved a lot. I stayed awake for nights. I cried until there were no tears left. I wished I could die. I thought I simply couldn’t bear to live without him. But I guess you get over things like that. You just suffer so much you can’'t suffer any more, and then, you get sort of numb.” “Is he worth all that?” He questioned slowly. “I’'m not sure that he is.” A little smile twisted her lips. “But then women never take that into consideration.” Some one was cutting in, and then some one else. The music drifted on. In a daze Juliette danced, from one person to another, and still another. IN THE dressing room again, she added more powder to her face, another streak of lipstick to her lips. “Oh, Juliette, that’s the handsomest man I've ever seen!” “I'm perfectly mad about him.” “Helen Robinson says he has gobs of money, and his family just has every- thing. She’s crazy about him, says all the girls always are, but he never loses his head over them.” Back in the ball room, John Derry was beside her, smiling down into her eyes. “Beautiful, you're tired,” he said. “Do you want to go home?” “Yes,” she sighed. “After this one. Bill asked me for a dance awhile ago. I'd have diéd if I'd had to dance with him. You'd have had to rescue me. “Oh,” she gasped. “He’s coming now! He’s going to cut in. I'll—Come after me!” She whispered hurriedly. “Get my wrap from the maid in the dressing room. Say we're going home. I—I can't talk to him.” “May I?” Bill was beside them; John Derry faded from sight. Bill's arms were about her, and they were dancing as they used to dance. Everybody was watch- ing. She couldn’'t endure it. “Let’s go outside,” he was saying. “I want to talk to you. I've got to.” “I—I can’t,” she answered. “I'm sorry, Bill, I—I was just getting ready to go.” “You can wait a little longer.” His voice was savage as he guided her to the door. “You aren’t in the habit of dashing home early.” “Habits change.” She said it a little bitterly. . Outside on the veranda, the cool air swept about them. Dazedly she let him guide her down the length of it. “Juliette.” He caught her shoulders almost roughly. “Juliette are you ever going to forgive me?” “Forgive you?” She stared at him curiously, moving backward a little as if to escape his hands. “Yes—for—for——" He was stumbling for words. “Oh, Juliette, I've been all sorts of a fool, I know now. I—I just lost my head! I got afraid of marriage, but I know what I want now! I know I love you, darling. Won’t you forgive me? Let’s begin again, get married as we planned.” BEGIN again! Get married as they had planned! How strange the world scemed; her mind suddenly questioned, could one ever recapture the gossamer glory of a dream? “I'm sorry, Bill.” She heard her own voice saying, “I—I thought we could put the broken pieces together, but I know now that we can’t. It’s all over. I didn’t know that love could die like this; but it’s dead. It’s—it’s a good thing we found out in time.” “It’s that Derry fellow!” He exclaimed furiously. “You've lost you head over him. But he doesn’t care anything about you, not like I do. Helen says that he just gives a girl.a hot line, and she falls for it. He doesn’t mean a thing he says.” “Is that so?” John Derry striding down the veranda, paused beside them. Juliette sighed with sudden relief. “Yes, it is.” Bill Miiler faced him. “Helen says it is, and she’s known you a lot longer than Juliette. What have you to say for yourself?” “Nothing,” John Derry laughed, “noth- ing at all, Mr. Miller. I came for Juliette. “Here is your wrap, darling.” Pos- sessively he moved toward her. “She can talk to you another time. She is very - tired.” £ “Another time!” Fiercely Bill flung the words at him. “Another time! What have you got to say about when I shall talk to her?” “Everything, I think.” John Derry answered him coolly, drawing Juliette a little nearer. “Everything! Well, T guess not. I've got something to say. And you can turn her lose, too.” “If I wish to put my arm about Jul- iette, that is my business and Juliette’s; 9 ) not yours. You see, I intend to marry Juliette.” With that final sentence, he smiled down at her. “Come, darling.” Throughout their conversation she had stood silent, but now she moved obediently along beside him. Her silly decrepit heart was on its legs at last, dancing a new jazzy rhythm that left her breathless. Bill and the Robinson girl seemed very far away, and somehow they no longer mattered. Bill couldn’t hurt her any more, she realized. He could no longer lift her to the heights nor put her in the depths, and what he said or did no longer was of any importance. John Derry was beside her, a mountain of strength, of courage. There was re- assurance in the pressure of his hand against her arm. He was looking down at her, a little smile in his eyes. She wondered if that look meant any- thing, if his words meant anything. It didn’t matter now. There was plenty of time to find out. Tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. (Copyright. 19:34.) Wheat and Emeralds Continued From Fifth Page. was not a single camera (except a few Russian imitations) to be bought in all Leningrad. On an island in the Neva River stands the Fortress of Peter and Paul. built by Peter the Great to protect his newly founded capital. This place is held in particular disfavor by the Soviets, for to its prison were sentenced the political enemies (now heroes) of the former government. All they did was to throw a bomb under the Czar's carriage and blow a few of the royal family to bits, which, as we know now, was a pious and glorious act of rebellion against the capitalistic system. As a prison, however, the place is unspeakable and the agonies endured there’in the name of political faith helped drive the liberal-minded people of the country into blood-thirsty revolt. Another reason the Soviets dislike the fortress is that its church shelters the tombs of all the Czars from the time of Peter the Great to Alexander, the father of the last Romanoff. Large groups of workers are led through this church—now ugly and unkept, and stripped of all the splendor it once new—and shown the . tombs of their mortal enemies, the Czars. The accompanying lecture, in brief, is this: “Here lie the devilish tyrants who fought against the demands of the workers. Let us be thankful that the Romanoffs are dead and all the corrupt Russian capitalists with them.” There is not one note of pride in what Russia accomplished under the Czars and ne attempt to instill in the young people who come to stare at the tombs a respect for their country’s distinguished past—only scorn for everything not part of the Soviet revolution. SAVED St. Isaac’s Cathedral until I could spend half a day there. The cathedral, reminiscent of St. Peter’s in Rome, and once the Imperial Church, is now an anti-religious museum filled with childish posters revealing the iniquities of the old orthdox religion, its ignorance and greed, its indifference to the workers’ struggle against the capitalists. There are pictures of priests hidden in belfries, turn- ing machine guns on workers’ demonstrations; and pictures of drunken orgies in the monas- teries. The priceless marbles and mosaics @ére hidden beneath strident boasts about the five- year plan, showing how many more tractors and nails and suits of underwear were made under Stalin than under the tyrant Nicholas. I remarked to the English-speaking lecturer who escorted me about, that it was shocking to see the mosaics covered over by these hideous posters. _“Religious art is only a tool of the capitalists to lull the workers into submission,” he replied, from his reply-book. “It’s tractors and shoes we worship now.” “But are you not proud of those glorious granite columns across the facade outside?” I asked him. “I understand they weigh 60 tons apiece. They must be the largest and handsomest monolythic columns in the world.” “We are not proud of them,” he said. “Think of the suffering the workers had to endure to bring them from Finland. We have drawings made at the time showing how badly housed and fed they were. The workers were not al- lowed to have a union; they were nothing but slaves.” “But do you know why this sacrifice was made, why this marvelous church was built?” I asked him, seeing that he had no real en- lightment about the place. “To enslave the workers with the opium of religion,” was again the mechanical answer. “It was built to commemorate your Czar Alexander’s expulsion of Napoleon and his destroying arm from Moscow, from Russian so0il,” I retorted hotly. “We workers do not believe in war.” I gave up. On another day I visited two of the most celebrated Summer palaces—Peterhoff and Detskoye Selo. The former is famous for its fountains which when they play create a scene of extravagant loveliness and luxury. Here the Czars and their courts danced and wore their emerald crowns. In Detskoye Selo Catherine lived in imperial splendor, amid her 50 draw- ing rooms, her rooms walled with amber, with silver, with priceless murals. Here she received in her gold and crystal ball room, dined with a: . hundred dukes in her banquet hall of jade and lapis-lazuli. These two monuments to Czarist glory are now museums used to teach the modern prole- tariat how criminal and shocking were the days and ways of the Romanoffs. The day on which I visited these two places was a “rest day” (Sunday is abolished—every date of the month divisible by six is rest day). The sun shone brightly and attracted thousands of workers to the grounds. They came in their undershirts, carrying food in paper par- cels, eating everywhere, owning the marble state ues and the fountains, and Catherine’s amber drawing rooms, and making themselves thor- oughly at home. In Versailles the great palace is still haughty, still royal, and greatly respected by all Frenchmen as a symbol of one period of the glorious past. But Detskoye Selo is dilapidated, muddy and ill-kept. S I write this, I am sitting at my hotel window and looking out over Leningrad— and seeing the ancient domes and golden spires of St. Petersburg, still rising high and proud. And I am sad that so much that was fine and distinguished in that beautiful city had to perish to give birth to the new society. It is not St. Petersburg alone that is gone, but all the style, refinement, grace and charm that went with it, Leningrad is now only a drab, hard- working factory in which everybody has enough food and a place to sleep, but nothing more. Everybody is poor. No one has time to make love, no one is allowed to write a song about a lark, travel to Venice for a holiday or read a book of adventure and romance. There is no glamour, no poetry left to life, no freedom for one’s soul. Instead the workers have com- mittee meetings and the joy of seeing new shoe factories arise. This all seems to me to be as lopsided a system as was the previous one. Formerly a few people had too much cake and too many emeralds, while the masses starved for wheat. Now the masses all have wheat and no emer- alds. But man cannot live by bread alone. The supply of emeralds is just as vital as the supply of wheat, if life is to be worth living— the purely decorative and esthetic is as neces= sary as the useful and practical. In Lenin- grad, alas, the emeralds have all been trampled under foot. Only the wheat remains. (Copyright, 1934.) Duck Bag Limited N AN effort to protect several species of ducks which are fast being depleted, the Biological Survey has placed a bag limit of five on any of the 11 species being particularly re- stricted. These 11 are found in the smallest quantity of all wild ducks and for that reason are given the greater protection. In outlining the bag regulations the Survey reports: “The Federal bag limit on wild ducks is 12, but eider ducks, canvasbacks, redheads, greater scaups, lesser scaups, ringnecks, blue-winged teal, green-winged teal, cinnamon teal, shovel- ers and gadwalls included in the 12 may not total more than 5. These 5 may all be of one species or they may represent different species of the restricted class—but in no case may the total number of ducks belonging to these 11 species exceed 5. The number of ducks representing other species that may be hunted is limited only by the provision that the total bag of all ducks taken may not exceed 12. “Thus, the duck hunter may take a dozen mallards or he may take a dozen pintails—or 6 mallards and 6 pintails, or any combination of these birds that does not total more than 12. But if he takes the maximum and includes in his dozen the species for which the limit is further restricted, he will have bags like the following: Seven mallards, plus 5 canvasbacks, or 4 mallards and 3 pintails, plus 1 eider duck, 1 canvasbgck, 1 redhead, 1 scaup and 1 ring=- neck; or 5 pintails and 2 mallards, plus 2 can- vasbacks, 2 redheads and 1 ringneck. In Do case may he take more than 12 ducks in ene day.” :