"STAR" TALES

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8030, 7 June 1904, Page 4

"STAR" TALES

I AN AMATEUR JUDGMENT f day..; k K (By ELEANOR A. HALLOWELL.) , X There is no friendship in the world so :<■ „ itartlingly intimate as the casual friendly ihip of professional women when they B choose to lay aside their masks and sun : ~ * themselves in the glow of mutual humour l p and cynicism. Torn from the leisurely cau- %? taon of the home circle, and weaned one* I for all from the conservatism of the ehelW\ tered life, the professional woman develops, 1^ M it ifere, a veritable instinct for friendly ♦ ship at first sight. Here to-day and there m~ to-morrow, eager, rushing, and doggedly lib good-natured, she realises all top eooa that, P ■ * if she wishes lier pleasures, she must snatch fir* them, and the pleasure best worth snatchWfr\ »ng us the friendship with, women of her ■§£-...••. .• #wn kind. i|;?;<; : The professional woman of thirty or p5 ? ; >? thereabout*, if she has lived at all, has prefeSfi ' Bumably outlived her keenest personal inp%s~; terest in men and things, but her general ififc i ; interest is increased a thousandfold, and, IffesJT m the absorbing study of other women's iii-'i^'-' problems, she sees the proof or disproof of j lilfeS"' her own experiences. Joke for joke, irony Ilpyi-V for irony, bitterness for bitterness, she J / ! trades life with her woman friends, hiding herself always behind a bulwark of generaJil||lN3 -^ inltion and snnriise f and ' banter. Her perillPv^ •oiial truth is .seldom all, truth, nor her fiction all fiction, but she understands : her Ipffe '■■> friends and her friends understood her, fllf?^ and tiiey talk together freely and daringly v Jm£*': of things that they would scarcely venture 4 fe^-f : to mention to the friende of their chilcV ip'r- hood. gp^fe" You cannot, for instance, , say to your llp^t lifelong chum, "I loved a man once," nor rapf-i^"- to your mother, "Men are fickle i|p@^ wretches," nor yet to your sister, "This Ifllfyi; / Jane night amells like the old June nights," E^||£C ; without starting ; your dear ones immediate fMt§^ \h oa. a dangeroriis trail of memory, imagination or suspicion. But to your new Hpf4^ i: friend you can, make any statement you l|p§)^t>lease, and tha]t statement has no probabk whenc* or where to it. You can tell » llliP : -ottranger0 ttranger what you wish, no more, no less |||^?S fairly confident in her case that no rally Ri^ ■. ing memory or tell-tale line of association P^CcA/ will, ever supply the missing evidence o: ||p^,'- name or date or place. There is something P^nv- -/ very joyously safe about the friendships pi - one's maturer years. |||^4 I- In such a bond of close, but compara-

tively new, comradeship, three women sat onenight in a dark, fantastic attic studio — an Actress, a Writer and an Artist. The sprightly little Aotress and the taciturn Writer were curled up sumptuously on a* deeply pillowed window-seat, drinking hot chooolate from big Canton-china cupsj but the Artist crouched alone on the floor by the fire, burrowing in a tin "strong-box," from whioh sne now and then took papers or letters and tbiew them reluctantly into the white-birch blaze. From time to time, the two visitors on the window-seat scoffed their hostess over her task, and egged her on gleefully with mock heroics, but the Artist ignored their comments with a aphinxlike smile. All three women were good looking in their way, with the rugged, definite ardour of the young professional woman ; but each face bore th« unmistakable stamjf of the woman who ie spending herself. The domestic woman, you see, invests her all in the "Holy Institution of Matrimony, a presumably reputable concern, and lives for ever afterward on her interest of husband and children. But the single woman, making no investment either- good or bad, must live, perforce, on her principal, ' and, bo living, she acquires in the expenditure of herself an inevitable tinge of recklessness, wMch -plays ascertain havoc with eyes and mouth. Of the three women in the studio, the Artist's iace showedi least sign of wear and tear, and contrasted rather peacefully with tihe Actress's vivacious extravagance, or the Writer's anxiously-hoarded strength: The three had been boon companions through the winter, in an unusual, threecornered sort of friendship, and were meeting this night \i or presumably the last time before they separated for the summer, or perhaps for years. After a longer silence than usual in the room, the Artist looked up from her firelight ta6k and laughed. "It's funny," she said, "how, six months ago, I didn't even know that you people were born, and here you are in my room at a wake, a regular orgy of dead love, watching me burn up .all my old letters." And her laugh faltered a little as she bent lower over some particular treasure. " Oh, burn them all up. Hurry ! hurry !" cried the Actress. "We didn't come to helß you read them. We came to help you burn them up. Burn them up, quick! You're' as good as lost if you read a single one: Don't go to pieces now in the very moment of victory. Hurry !" But the Artist only Tiesitated, a little longer lover her task. ] ' "If you could only be sure," she mused, "if you could only be perfectly sure that you'd never be seny you burned them. But suppose, after a while, you were lonesome without them — — - •" ; "Nonsense," persisted the Actress; "the sboneivyou get rid of such things the better. That's/ why ; we came over tonight to see von through. It isn't a- safe job to dp alone. I 'tell you, a lovehurt won't ever heal while there's a single old letter or faded flower left in (he wound. You've just got to probe right • hrough. And I guess I know," she added,