SOULMATES OF THE SCREEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 292, 10 December 1925, Page 22

SOULMATES OF THE SCREEN.

BY GAYNE DEXTER. t CHAPTER Xni — (Continued.) Rhoda's lips* parted to him. Worth * shook his head. "You may be too la\e. Doug. Jerhaps | 'Leoparda' will brand you Tressider has given Rhoda a year's contract for just that kind of role. He has engaged you for one more picture in the hope that you'll repeat what you did in the last. . Tressider panders to the mob you know." i "But when I've finished his contract ~ we can make our own productions with | — with the wages of sin." laughed I Rhoda. her mood and Vaughn's a liappy match. I. "Wail! Supposing Doug., when he | wanted to write, had accepted that offer for confessions of Hollywood, lie might i some day have made enough to write the sort of things he wished. Not likely though. But would he have been able? ' I Would he not have so steeped himself , that clean thought would have been impossible? I'm sorry, Rhoda." he hastened as she winced, and studied him cloudily. Her voice, thoughtfully low. had still ] a lower current. "I understand. I will > be so identified with Tressider's sensa- \ tions that no one will accept mc in any- | tiling else. And even if people will, I may not be able to cheat the camera. It may see the ingrained or the inherent." Worth nodded, but Vaughn laughed ; blindly. Never had Rhoda been so deliciously serious. ; "You're cheating the camera now, | cheating all Hollywood except us four j who have seen you to-night." "I—wonder," she murmured. Bearing a satin satchet from which ' ribbons and laces trailed, Kathleen Glyn , entered the room by preoccupied steps. She read as she dawdled. With naive impudence and Rhoda's sanction she had explored closets and drawers whose yield bewildered. Kath- i leen did not covet. Rather, her fingers, ' lingering on opulent fabrics, imparted luxurious gratification. Only the satyr, which upheld the cheval glass, checked by silent ridicule her splendidly sinful a in bi lion to don and sally forth in each creation and entice the universe. The gown's didn't fit. One venture in something of a maize and brown invested the mirror with a mistaken little person who sulked, "Oh, blah!" So Kathleen pried and prized, and at last disclosed a folded sheet tucked in the satehet. She smelt it, liked the eurreptitious bouquet stolen from intimate association with ribbons and laces. Of course, J she read. Rhoda had made no stipula- ' tions. Noted only by Worth, who faced the entrance, Kathleen came now to the centre of the room. "I didn't know that Browning wrote like this. Rhoda." "Wrote what, Kathleen?" Rhoda inquired without turning. "This. It's very ooji-la-la! Listen, Doug., and learn something." And she read: — "I seek you deep, deep, oeep, j Far fathoms down in ocean waves of dreams. Plund'riijg I come until tbere dimly pleains Aurora of your pearl-pncnißted throne Through folding twilights wMtner you have I flown. ' j I find you and you sleep. "I kiss you and yon wake, Your eyes a-leap, our u>b alllt to vent Exquisite terror of this ravishment——•". | " I always thought Browning was I namby-pamby-touch-me-not. but, obj boy!" Kathleen chattered through three distinct silences; Rhoda's a dismay; Worth's an astonishment; Vaughn's the gradual numbing of one who has listened incredulously, learned painfully. He spoke first. " Browning did not write that." "Oh, rea/lly, Mister Smariy!" scoffed Kathleen proudly erudite. "Well, look;" placing the sheet in his hands i and indicating initials printed beneath the last line. " R.B.—Robert Browning. J TCowl" j I Vaughn sought Rhoda's eyes. She ! stared at the floor, refused him. The sheet gave up her scent. " R.B. might be Russell Blame," he said : slowly. J "Gosh! That's a thrill!" Kathleen's i mouth rounded, then opened in alarm. " Rhoda, you're white—you're—Why, where are we going, Mr. Worth!" He had taken Kathleen's arm and marched her towards the door. " I want to stay. Rhoda's sick. She'll faint of something. I—" " There's an orchestra on the roof," Worth insisted gravely. " We'll dance. Just you and I." Vaughn dropped the paper into Rhoda's lap. He took undecided steps . to follow Worth and Kathleen, towards the dining-room where darkness might preserve a wraith of his illusion, eventually to the fire-place. He thrust his hands in his pockets; he teetered heel-and-toe, heel-and-toe. He wanted to whistle; savagely he wanted to whistle something gay. A screen of golden dragons hid the empty grate; the dragons lived as he moved. Their bodies locked and wrestled. He imagined many mites crushed in each constriction. " He gave it to mc when we went to dinner," Rhoda whispered. Strangely clear in this still room her whisper. " And you kept it," Vaughn tald the fireplace. " Yes." " You perfumed it—l don't wonder— and hid it and treasured it to read when tou were alone." ' Yes." " You know it off by heart." "By tongue." she corrected. "If I had written such a rotten thing, would you have done the same with it?" Rhoda answered: "No." "Why?" "Because you don't appeal to mc like that." "Thank you. And Blame. And God." he said fervently. "You let mc climb far to-night." "I climbed with you," she said, coming behind him. He turned at the nearness of her voice. "With Blame in your mind. Just as you played every eeene of Tieoparda' with mc. Even the first, when Blame looked on." he accused. "And as we will play others together." "Rhoda!" Vaughn locked his fingers around her arms so tightly that velvet nap revealed red -weals when, obeying her eyes, he freed her. He repeated the name; implored, disbelieved, condemned with her name. And she laughed in hard little outbursts as though between each was so childish a thing as a sob. He hated the quick-caught sounds; did not understand them; they made him vow: "We will never play another scene together." The sheet of paper lay across her palm. She extended it, asking: ''Why does that mean so much to you?" "It is iii your mind—Rhoda, what is your mind?" "Myself," Bhe cried. "Something allowed to starve too long. You don't know how or Why: Let Worth tell you that story- Some day I myself would have, in fairness to youj but now there is n«»,need. Doug, once you called met * but flesh. . You were right,

although then I had only partly discovered. I wanted to destroy this paper. I tried. It clung to mc. It does not mean Blame. It is a symbol. That I can take whatever I want." "Br physical attraction." Vaughn spoke to sting. Rhoda drew back a pace, another pace that he must behold the pattern of her. With arms half-raised in revelation, she circled completely and set chiffon murmuring. "Has a woman anything else?"' she demanded. "If you omit character-players., is there one woman on the screen by any other virtue?" "Yes. They have dramatic ability. They can act." "But is there only ugly women among them ?"' He reviewed rapidly. answered hesitantly. " Xo."' "They are there for men and women to admire... .To-night you saw mc in this dress. 1 wore it purposely. To defeat myself, to dominate myself. It altered my appearance: lmt still you didn't say <to the dress 'I love you,' but to the woman who Tvore it. \o\x •would wish mc always to look like this. But it is not myself. It denies mc: you "svould deny mc; all my life has been a denial." Words came to Rhoda and were ushered in timbre strangely foreign: ! she spoke and listened as to another ; voice. Vaughn stood tensely, all his faca j distorted and unreal. "You will live as—as you look," he ' said chokily. "Oh, I have to, Doug. Because I must because I want to. It earns mc "OOdol a week.. Do you know what that means to a woman. No; when a woman speaks lof herself as a woman 6he is seeking an j excuse. Do you know what they means [to mc ?" "License. I suppose." he answered J bitterly. "Things! Tilings! Rewards for that I phase of mc that has earned," she said. i She departed swiftly from the room, i once glanced back, and met eyes which followed and destroyed her. Vauehn slumped into a chair. Ho should have raved. Instead lie felt quiel i now, muffled. "Damn fool, Vaughn; damn fool." he muttered miserably over and over again. He listened. Fiddling idiot in crescent moon still scraped away — nrnaninc like one lone wind on a dismal hill. Or ten producers discussing a broiher'B success. Crazy. Only the roof-gardon orchestra playinE "Limefcmiee Bhies." while Worth and Kathleen and all the rabbits of tins gaudy hutch revolved. Why didn't Kathleen come down He, had promised to take her home. 1 From his forehead he wiped a chill. moist film: and shrugged his shoulders about. Cold to-night. Rhoda rustlod throuph the curtains. He rose Ftifflv and marked another Rhoda. Xo. Thpre wap only one: Ibis woman who had changed her dress, j changed nile-green satin for cloth of silver, naivete for bitter-lipped eophistication. ""Better ?" she asked, as to confirm a fact. "It expresses you." "Expresses mc. And Blain's verse expresses him. Actors. Actors. All I expressions ami little understandine." Xo mnre until the bell rang and Worth and Kathleen returned. The man loitered, loth to enter: the cirl pranced j in, waving arms and snapping fingers to the last fox trot rythm. She summoned him to a great discovery. "Come and see. Mr. Worth. Rhoda's I vamped herself up again. You look I Btunning, Rhoda ; but—but why ?"' j Rhoda, placidly: "I feel more comfortable in my working clothes." Doug, motored Kathleen home. Defiant and hurried, he slammed in the clutch; defiant and immobile was he behind the wheel. Rhoda streamed and crooned beneath. He breasted waves of light from street lamps. div«sd throxigh phadowy vales, and determined not to notice Kathleen, who rested at his shoulder. But breeze purled a whisp of her chestnut hair across bis face, and the hand that brushed this off also patted her cheek and pressed her closer. j "Tired?" he asked. ' Kathleen nodded and counted buttons on his sleeve. "Did you know that Russ , Blame was po crazy about Rhoda V ■ "1 had an idea." Douglas Vaughn evaded success by the first boat to Honolulu. He made brief farewell to Kathleen Glyn and a halftrue explanation to Mrs. Glyn, who really felt that her consent to something or other should have been asked before Doug, departed. She had her daughter's interest at heart; and she always said, gaid Mrs. Glyn. that even trustworthy young fellows ought not to gallivant around heathen islands without the safeguard of wife or fiancee at home. At the last moment he telephoned to Rhoda from Los Angeles station. Mammy Gastin replied that her mistress could not be disturbed. Vaughn looked at his watch. It was half-past two. "This is Vaughn, Mammy. I wanted to say good-bye." "I'll have to tell her for you when she wakes up, Mr. Vaughn," Mammy said with sly old wisdom in her voice. "Her hours have changed a lot lately. They aren't what they used to be. at all." "Good-bye, Mammy. Don't bother to tell," he said, and rang off abruptly. (Continued daily.)