have got in before me, and have perhaps talked a great deal of nonsense, so that by the time my turn comes the thread of my thought is broken, I have forgotten what I wanted to say, and don't want to speak at all. Just imagine, too, sitting sometimes for three hours into the night, debating as to whether we shall have the new buffet in the members' dining-room made of mahogany, which costs so much, or of stained deal, which costs so much less." All these little things, which were, after all, mere petty annoyances, which every member of the House has to put up with, seemed to annoy him unduly and made him restless and impatient of the life. Stanley was a deeply religious man, but that is a subject which I cannot deal with in the short limits of a magazine article, though I shall probably have something to write about it hereafter. He was distinctly two men. One side of him, which was the side generally known to the public, was that of a hard, unsympathetic, self-contained, and apparently self-seeking man; the other side, that side which his intimate friends saw and loved, was absolutely simple, affectionate, and childlike. He was so easily pleased and amused, ready to do the simplest things and enjoying them like a boy. His life at his country house was passed in simple pleasures, attending to his farm, and beautifying his gardens. I am glad to think that the last years of his life were so peaceful and happy. Fifteen months ago he was struck down with paralysis, and was really since that time only kept alive by the careful and devoted nursing he received. Through all his long and helpless illness he was always patient and grateful to those who attended him, happy with his books, and sitting in the beautiful gardens that he had created. He was hopeful, too, of recovery, for when I asked him the last time I saw him how he was, he answered: "Ah, Jephson, I am still waiting for the message the message to rise up and walk." Alas, for those who loved him, that message never came. But maybe it is better so, for he was tired and weary with the long struggle, and the life of hard work he had spent for the regeneration of a continent and for the good of humanity. His body was worn out with fever and sickness, and he was weary from his lifelong toil. So, perhaps, after all, the message that he received was a happier one, the message to rise up and enter into his well-earned rest. PORTRAIT AND REALITY By Henry van Dyke IF on the closèd curtain of my sight Of shaded lamp some friendly poet's lay, But seeing thee in truth, I recognize In every dear familiar way some strange Perfection, and behold in April guise The magic of thy beauty, that doth range Through many moods with infinite surprise, Never the same, and sweeter with each change. THE PENALTY OF GREATNESS By Alice Duer Miller ILLUSTRATION BY HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY NTONIA was the despair of her critics a term that included most of her acquaintance. She was so low of voice, and so loud in dress, yet by some strange contradiction her words were always listened to, while her clothes were called vulgar only by those who, limited in imagination, could not admit that cloth of gold could ever be appropriate. Yet even those who laughed at her confessed to finding pleasure in her society and gratification at her notice. She had, in fact, to perfection the art of holding, wherever she found herself, the centre of the stage. To use the word art, however, is to suggest something deliberate, and with Antonia this faculty was as natural as to her hair to curl. It was inherent, a quality with which she was born. As some people are orators or poets from their cradles, so she was naturally conspicuous, born a public character, subject to the exaggerations and misrepresentations of royalty. To this effect her circumstances did not particularly contribute, for she was not beautiful, nor clever, nor even rich; although she was always spoken of as a beauty, was quoted as a wit, and was associated in everybody's mind with all the romance of wealth. Nor, to be just, did she herself contribute to it, except by being able to be at all times and seasons very frankly and completely herself. Of course, with Antonia this was the most potent of charms, for she herself was a delightful, cordial person, capable apparently of sustaining an indefinite number of friendships with men or women, so that someone had rather disagreeably called her "a collector of relationships." The collection showed a lamentable lack of variety in its masculine make-up. To say that many men had been in love with her but faintly describes the truth. Those who began by admiring her, and those who began by making fun of her, ended the same way. The shore was actually strewn with wrecks. Even those who merely observed her as a phenomenon were on the rocks before they had time to avert their eyes. Yet at thirty she was unmarried. Some people attributed this to the height of her ambition, which had never been able to find anything sufficiently brilliant to satisfy it; yet it would be hard to imagine anything more brilliant than marriages Antonia had declined. Others, more subtle, suggested that she experienced a greater glorification in refusing rather than accepting what others so obviously sought. Yet against this it must be remembered that glory never results from refusing certain men, inasmuch as an announced engagement is the only accredited proof that they have ever proposed. On the whole, it seems more likely that she had entirely ceased to regard a proposal as a momentous or compelling event, and that seeing no more reason for accepting a man who had asked her to marry him than one who had not, choice became almost impossible to her. She herself was in the habit of saying that only one man had ever loved her—an assertion that had all the combined charms of fantasy and humility. Indeed, it seemed especially whimsical to those who knew that the man thus distinguished had almost immediately after his final break with Antonia married another woman. Yet Lewis Ricalton had certainly loved her, and in a way to leave but little for him to give to another woman. There are some extravagances that a reserved man cannot commit twice in a lifetime. Just out of college, intelligent, ignorant of life, sophisticated in mind, limited in experience, at twenty-two he was years younger than Antonia at the same age. At this time, when his beliefs had just grown clear to him, just before they were subjected to the test of the world, he met and loved Antonia-a love which seemed to him the solution of all problems, the only possible link between his philosophy and life, the only practical form of idealism that he could ever hope to find. His love entirely absorbed him, but always in its immediate aspect. Every day held material enough for a crowded lifetime. Marriage was not in his mind: it was like a death, a subject on which he had thought but generally. He had no idea that he was now set on the path by which men arrive at it. Perhaps if she had loved him-for women are more practical in these matters the mist would have been lifted from his eyes, and he would have seen the goal. Business seemed to her the strange, dull habit of commonplace men, justified only by success, and she did not expect Lewis to succeed. She could not bear to think of his fine idealism ground in such a mill. What she could not be expected to understand was the interest with which his task had taken hold of Lewis. Wounded by her, young and active-minded, he found business inspiriting, stimulating as a puzzle, enlivening as a combat. He started with the idea of applying himself to business only during business hours, but soon discovering that the first-rate academic attitude with which he attacked his work was almost unserviceable, he was concerned with the unceasing obligation to evolve a new one. But Antonia did not love him. He had, nevertheless, an important place -perhaps, indeed, the most important place -among the men about her. To be loved was no new experience to her, but to be at Antonia, knowing nothing of all this, was once the study and the idol of a brilliant, surprised to hear, about a year later, of his subtle mind, was an advantage not lightly attentions to another woman. She simply to be dispensed with. She had never known did not believe the report. Then came an excitement to compare with it—an ex- authentic rumors of his engagement. These citement that was an enlightenment as well. she received with something of a pang. She She knew herself so much better through spent much of her solitude in debating the his knowledge of her, her conscious proc- terms in which he would announce his maresses were extended over wide areas. He riage to her. "Loving you better than did for her mentally what an inspired por- anything in the world, I have great pleasure trait painter might have done for her physi- in informing you" or, "Having long cally. Through him she saw herself, clear ceased to care for you, I write to tell you and commendable. She told him every- that- "She found it difficult to formuthing the best and the worst of her. late a letter to him, yet was quite unpreThings that it would have been the most pared for his solution. He did not write. fatuous vanity, things that it would have been the most offensive humility to hint at to another, were received by Ricalton in just the proper scientific spirit-science tempered by the fact that he adored her. But Antonia, not being of the vampire type, soon realized that their relation was not just to him. The sort of tempered loyalty (the fact that she never repudiated him behind his back, or allowed men with more vivid, if more ephemeral, claims on her attention to interfere with Lewis) was not for him a substitute for happiness. Realizing this, she sent him away, and after a tortured month he went. This was for a long time all she knew of him. He went to live in another city, and she heard nothing of him except that he had gone into business and was working hard-an expression she did not find suggestive. She heard it indeed with regret, although she was aware that Ricalton's means were small, and work a necessity. This was what hurt her. She did not, of course, believe that he had contracted a marriage with another woman merely for the opportunity afforded for a last letter to her, but there was something terribly final in his not taking advantage of the opportunity thus offered. She felt strangely outcast, ignored; everybody seemed to forget that she had any interest in this marriage. As a matter of fact, it was an important event to her. Women of her type, situated as she was, without responsibilities, or occupation, or ties, develop largely-one dares not say wholly-through their relations to men, and are not a little dependent in their estimate of themselves on the quantity and the quality of the feeling they evoke. Of all the men Antonia had known, Ricalton had understood her the best, and that such a man, thoroughly understanding her, should still love her was a fact of very great consequence in Antonia's self-consciousness. His physical absence or presence |