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UNENTERED PORTS

III.

BY ANNA C. MINOGUE

In

ORA GLEN was the orphan niece of Mrs. Geoffrey Allison, with whom she made her home, that worthy relative entertaining for her an affection only second to her maternal love for her daughters, Alice and Ray. Mrs. Allison was acknowledged to be a clever woman. heriting an encumbered estate from her father, she had exercised such shrewdness in its management that it was soon free from all debt. She married considerable wealth, but her husband's lack of commercial ability made it necessary for her to continue to hold the financial reins. Her two children inherited her beauty. While they were mere babes, she planned their futures, and, so far, there was not the slightest indication that they would fail of realization. They had left school with a creditable record for scholarship and good behavior, and on entering society they had, as by right divine, become its queens. Alice, at the end of her second year of social leadership, was engaged to the son and heir of one of the first families of the state; Ray, who was even a greater favorite than her sister, would, the mother felt confident, make a brilliant marriage. Soon she might have been able to retire from the arduous position of the fashionable mother, if it were not for Cora. Cora was the one flaw in her perfect machination-a very dear and beautiful flaw, however.

But why, of all girls, should she be the one to get the notion into her head that Art was the only thing worth while in this world? Bitterly Mrs. Allison regretted that she had permitted a young local sculptor to make a bust of her

niece. She had consented at the earnest solicitation of the girl, who was interested in the efforts of the young man. His parents had made innumerable sacrifices to give him an education in the schools of Cincinnati and New York; he possessed talent amounting almost to genius, but was handicapped by poverty. During a vacation at home he had met Miss Glen, and the faultless beauty of the girl had filled him with artistic madness. He knew that he must set those features in marble, or miss a part of the joy of life. Artists do not abound in this Kentucky Paris, and the Bohemianism that followed the young sculptor from New York, and pervaded, like a rich aroma, the studio which he had set up, was something both interesting and novel. The most exclusive of Bourbon society might be found among his frequent visitors, and many an indulgent father had parted with substantial checks to gratify his daughter's fancy for a piece of the artist's work. But while the young man found all this agreeable, the artist was dissatisfied until Cora received her aunt's consent and work on the head was begun. As he moulded, with artist's love, the plastic clay, he talked with boyish enthusiasm of his life. He spread over it the glory of Bohemia. Poverty-who could think of its pinches, under the rose-light of Art? Failure-how could it be called failure that brought its own reward? The glimpses he gave of the artistic life in the great commercial city, appealed to her. That was living! When she voiced that opinion, he sung the sweeter its praises, made the brighter its glory, and threw all the india ink of his thoughts on the existence of the ordinary mortal. His artistic fire communicated itself to her. She knew that

she had talent, for her drawings and paintings, at school, were pronounced better than those of other pupils. She carried some sketches to the sculptor, and he praised them eloquently. They were not bad, yet if they had been, his intense admiration for her beauty, and gratitude to her, would have defeated the cause of truth; but when she began to speak of her desire to study art, there was a noticeable diminution in his enthusiasm regarding things artistic. He knew too well that the light is gray and murky when we are climbing; it is only from the base or the summit that we behold the glory of the ideal. The fire kindled, however, was not to be extinguished, and the girl began to dream of a future career; not of fame-she knew her limitations-but ordinary success and, what she really coveted, the charm and freedom of Bohemia. To her, at that period of her heart's history, the life she led was unsupportable. To rise in the morning with no other object than to try to extract some social enjoyment from the day-she felt that she would rather be a gypsy, travelling from town to town. The object of all the girls of her acquaintance, so she thought, was to be charming, have a good time, and marry well. Once she, too, had looked on that as the "summa bonum" of existence; now her life demanded a wider horizon. So she decided to study art. Her fortune was her own to use as she chose. On that first Saturday of September, while her cousins were visiting the big stores in Cincinnati, she had gone to the Art Academy to make arrangements for entering the School of Design, in October.

Her family was dumbfounded when she announced her intention, but their prayers and entreaties could not move the girl. It was a star in Mrs. Allison's inky sky when she heard from Ray that Judge Howe would be one of her guests, on Thursday afternoon. She would

talk to him about Cora. Once he and her niece had been on terms of friendship, and it was then that Mrs. Allison had indulged in a dream of splendid triumph. Howe had been the despair of far-sighted mothers and the disappointment of many admiring daughters. He was, evidently, not a marrying man, so they had come to leave him out in their count of the eligibles. The Judge had no reasonable excuse for his unmarried state; there was no early love in her grave or another man's home; he had simply been too occupied with matters of the head to give attention to the demands of the heart. Then suddenly he awoke to the knowledge that he was growing old, and about that time he began to notice the beauty of Mrs. Allison's niece. In thinking of that possible future wife, he had ever decided that she should be young and possess beauty. It was a dictum of his race that a man owed it to posterity to give his children comeliness of reature as well as an honorable name. He knew that he would seek far before finding one fairer than Cora Glen. The attentions he paid to her were not marked, and long before they had reached the point where their withdrawal could not be honorably effected, he had discovered that her ideas were not such as would perfectly harmonize with his own. She was not his affinity, and a marriage of convenience was repulsive to his high man hood. He had discovered this from her reception of the story of his boyhood. He perceived that she would have preferred that he had had a different youth, or, having it, could conveniently forget it, and he knew that he could not have for wife a woman who would be ashamed of that little boy. Yet, while it set her apart from him, he never blamed her. Her education and social training had given her a view of life at a wrong focus. It was not her fault. But let her marry one whose view was

like her own. There must be a certain harmony, he knew, between the minds of the married to insure happiness. If he had loved her, he might have tried to mould her plastic mind after his own; but he was not in love. The surface of his affections had been rippled, its depths were unstirred. That it might be otherwise with her never entered his mind; if it had, he would have reasoned that as he had escaped, why should she be more impressionable? The Judge forgot the years that lay between them. His heart was in the mellowed summer, hers, in the budding springtime.

Howe escorted Mrs. Boyd that afternoon, for her husband, always shy of society, had abandoned her, at the last moment, on the plea of having to take Mrs. Delgare for a drive. As was customary, Mrs. Boyd had to fall back on the company of the Judge, and he, thinking how agreeable it would have been to himself if the arrangement were reversed, bowed to the whims of his wilful host, and, as if it were the highest pleasure of his life, set forth for the fashionable gathering at, Mrs. Allison's. As soon as she could, that lady drew the Judge apart from the brilliant throng to pour into his ears the intelligence of her affliction. His surprise and regret were : sincere. He felt convinced that the atmosphere of the world of art was not the best for Cora. The recklessness of which he had seen hints in her nature, needed the hand of the daily commonplace to hold in proper restraint. His familiarity with American cities and his European travels, led him to realize that Mrs. Allison had graver cause than she believed, to view the decision of her niece as a most dismal affair.

"I have no influence over her," she confided. "She is of age-but that is an indifferent matter, as her father's will left her in immediate possession of her for

tune, and our guardianship was merely nominal."

"But Mr. Allison-" began the Judge, when she interrupted him with a deprecatory gesture.

"Mr. Allison!" she exclaimed. "If he saw that his objecting words brought tears to her eyes, he would kiss them away and tell her to do as she pleased. Of course, he doesn't like it, but-you know his nature. It all falls on me."

Her voice dropped a little wearily, and, despite her still pretty face and rich costume, she looked aged; and as the Judge recalled how all through her life things had fallen on her to do, or go undone, he experienced sympathy for this woman, with the first note of defeat in her tones.

"Is there anything I can do, Mrs. Allison?" he inquired, kindly. "If so, I beg you to command my services."

"Will you speak to Cora? She may heed your words."

He recalled the mocking light he had met from that young lady's eyes, on Saturday, and said:

"I fear not. She treats me with a scorn but lightly veiled, of late." "Of late?" she asked, warily.

"Yes," he said, with a smile. "Once she was friendly."

"Whose fault is it that she is not friendly still?" asked she, tapping him playfully on the shoulder with her fan. But before surprise had time to overtake him, she added: "I think you have an influence over her. I think if you will only go to her, in the old friendly attitude, and tell her that the act she contemplates is wrong-ruinous, in fact! -that she will heed you and be guided by your advice."

Howe seldom permitted himself to be surprised out of his habitual quietude of mind, and, keen at piercing words to find their motive, he smiled at her finesse.

"You flatter me, in thinking that I possess any influence over the mind of your charming niece," he said, and as his inscrutable eyes met hers, they fell to her fan. As if the feathers gave her boldness, she again looked up.

"Are you certain of that, Judge?" she asked pointedly, but a certain expression on his face made her add, hastily: "A friend always has influence on the mind. of his friend."

"We shall see the extent of the influence of my friendship with Miss Cora," he said, easily, and as they moved from the alcove in which they had stood, Mrs. Allison was convinced that she had blundered.

Cora was standing at the rear of the long room, with a crowd of young friends surrounding her. Their voices and laughter made a silvery din. It was a sound that ever lighted Howe's face with its tenderest smile. He loved youth and made it an object to mix with it freely and fully. He was the comrade of the boy in his teens as well as of the young man, and half the schoolgirls of the town claimed him as their beau. Now, approaching the crowd, he saw only Cora, and he was newly inspired by her exquisite beauty. The warmth of the atmosphere and the excitement had deepened the peach-tint of her cheeks and made brighter the scarlet on her lips. As she stood there, and Mrs. Allison's suggestive words. recurred to him, he wondered if he were a fool to let pass the golden opportunity of winning that lovely woman. While he repudiated the insinuation of Mrs. Allison's remarks, could she not be brought to love him? In the wearing of his future high honors, would she not share them royally? In the gathering of the nation's beauty at Washington, would she not shine among them like a star? But between him and her, memory now slipped in the face of Mrs. Delgare. Instead of this room, with its

lights and music and gay company, he saw the long white turnpike, along which she was then being driven by Jasper Boyd.

At his approach, the group divided and, singly or together, drifted elsewhere, until he found himself alone with Cora. She sank into a chair, and he took a seat near her.

"You have come from Aunt?" she said. The mocking light was in her eyes, and it occurred to him that it was not thus Cora's eyes were wont to meet his. "You have come from Aunt," she repeated. "She has asked you to try to dissuade me from studying art, and you have promised to do so. It's friendship's labor lost, my dear sir!"

There was a gleam in her eyes that might have proved dangerous to another, because of the manlike desire to extinguish it, and set one different in its place; but Howe's soft smile brightened his noble face, and he said, simply:

"Yes, Cora, I have come from your aunt. Will you listen to me?"

Her eyes dropped from his. All her proud nature went down before the gentle-mannered man. She could have flung herself at his feet in this swift abandonment of feeling.

"I do not think what you contemplate is right-that is, right for you. I think you should stay here," he said.

She lifted her lids. He thought that he had never seen such glory in a woman's eyes. His soul bowed before it. "Why should I stay?" she asked, softly.

That which had prompted his soul's reverence now prompted him to say, "Because I need you!" It almost forced the words from his lips. Startled, shocked at this undreamed of power working against his known desire, the Judge replied to her in platitudes of her duty to her family and position. The glory faded under his eyes. He seemed to look upon a great sea of inky black

ness before the light of scorn had again been flashed from the blue windows of her soul.

"As I said before, your labors in my aunt's behalf are in vain. I intend studying art." Others were approaching, and she added, with a mocking little laugh, "Won't you some time let me paint your portrait? I should like to immortalize my name, in the picture of our Kentucky Bayard."

The tone left Howe doubtful if compliment or the contrary were meant.

Cora might have meant her concluding words as a dismissal; but, with the privilege of ancient friendship, he chose not so to regard it. Supposing that they had interrupted a tete-a-tete agreeable to both, the guests after a few minutes moved away, and she must, perforce, return to her place. While she had been attending to her duties as hostess, he had been regarding her in the new light which she had, that afternoon, thrown on her character. There was more depth to her nature than he had imagined. He asked himself if he really

knew her at all.

"Cora," he began, as she took her chair, "you are young-"

"I am twenty-one," she interrupted. "Twenty-one is now regarded as very young," he said. "In this age of intricate problems and extensive knowledge, it is wisely conceded that men and women require a longer period of time. than formerly to become master of the situation. And your mode of living has been conducive to immaturity. A sheltered childhood and girlhood, as yours happily have been, have left you younger at that age than one less fortunate. You do not know the world-"

He made a gesture, half-impatiently. "Why won't you meet an argument seriously?" he asked.

"Because I am so childish, I daresay," she retorted. "Exactly!"

He had drawn himself

up in his chair. The fire was lighting in his quiet eyes, and it threw its flashes over the dark beauty of his face. "Exactly!" he repeated, "and in nothing do you show your childishness so much as in this intention of yours to begin the study of art. You have not genius, nor talent of any high order, for if you had, it would have set you to drawing pictures on your slate when you should have been working sums, and instead of thinking of entering a School of Design at twenty-one, you would be eating your heart out over your failure to get your paintings accepted by the Academy. If you possessed the divine gift, you would not have waited for ennui or the Bohemianism of a silly boy to drive you into the world of art. Because you are going from no supreme motive, gives me, and all your friends, concern. You know nothing of the trials of an art student's life; you know nothing of the influence, which, aiming to overthrow the conventionalities, weakens the moralities, or, at least, tends to lessen their importance. Artists call this freedom of view, Bohemianism, and assert that it is not only essential to art, but produces a loftier ideal of manhood and womanhood; and hold that this liberty of the art world is less harmful to morals than the restraint of the social world. I am not claiming for society the purity which it ought to possess, but I do claim that the recognized standards of pro

"Then it is time I am learning," she priety that govern it, hedge it in, are said, quietly.

"What will you gain by the knowledge it can give you?"

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necessary in all intercourse, social, artistic or business, between men and women. 'Bonhomie' does not produce the best relationship of the sexes. The woman loses something of her respect

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