Chambers Robert William
The Streets of Ascalon
"Look at these strange, pansy-shaped Brazilian flowers," she said. "Kindly observe that they are actually growing out of that ball of moss and fibre."
She had retained his hand for a fraction of a second longer than conventional acquaintance required, giving it a frank and friendly pressure. Now, loosing it, she found her own fingers retained, and drew them away with a little laugh of self-consciousness.
"Sentiment before dinner implies that you'll have no room for it after dinner. Here is your cocktail."
"Do you remember our first toast?" he asked, smiling.
"No."
"The toast to friendship?"
"Yes; I remember it."
She touched her lips to her glass, not looking at him. He watched her. After a moment she raised her eyes, met his gaze, returned it with one quite as audacious:
"I am drinking that same toast again – after many days," she said.
"With all that it entails?"
She nodded.
"Its chances, hazards, consequences?"
She laughed, then, looking at him, deliberately sipped from her glass, the defiant smile in her eyes still daring him and Chance and Destiny together.
When he took her out she was saying: "I really can't account for my mood to-night. I believe that seeing you again is reviving me. I was beastly stupid."
"My soporific society ought to calm, not exhilarate you."
"It never did, particularly. What a long time it is since we have seen each other. I am glad you came."
Seated, she asked the butler to remove the flowers which interrupted her view of Quarren.
"You haven't said anything about my personal appearance," she observed. "Am I very much battered by my merry bouts with pleasure?"
"Not much."
"You wretch! Do you mean to say that I am marked at all?"
"You look rather tired, Mrs. Leeds."
"I know I do. By daylight it's particularly visible… But – do you mind?"
Her charming head was bent over her grapefruit: she lifted her gray eyes under level brows, looking across the table at him.
"I mind anything that concerns you," he said.
"I mean – are you disappointed because I'm growing old and haggard?"
"I think you are even more beautiful than you were."
She laughed gaily and continued her dinner. "I had to drag that out of you, poor boy. But you see I'm uneasy; because imprudence is stamping the horrid imprint of maturity on me very rapidly; and I'm beginning to keep a more jealous eye on my suitors. You were one. Do you deny your guilt?"
"I do not."
"Then I shall never release you. I intend to let no guilty man escape. Am I very much changed, Mr. Quarren?" she said a trifle wistfully.
He did not answer immediately. After a few moments she glanced at him again and met his gaze.
"Well?" she prompted him, laughing; "are you not neglecting your manners as a declared suitor?"
"You have changed."
"What a perfect pill you are!" she exclaimed, vexed – "you're casting yourself for the rôle of the honest friend – and I simply hate it! Young sir, do you not understand that I've breakfasted, lunched and dined too long on flattery to endure anything more wholesome? If you can't lie to me like a gentleman and a suitor your usefulness in my entourage is ended."
He said: "Do you want me to talk shop with you? I get rather tired of my trade, sometimes. It's my trade to lie, you know."
She looked up, quickly, but he was smiling.
They remained rather silent after that. Coffee was served at table; she lighted a cigarette for him and, later, one for herself, strolling off into the drawing-room with it between her fingers, one hand resting lightly on her hip.
She seemed to have an inclination to wander about or linger before the marble fireplace and blow delicate rings of smoke at her own reflection in the mirror.
He stood a little distance behind her, watching her, and she nodded affably to him in the glass:
"I'm quite changed; you are right. I'm not as nice as I was when I first knew you… I'm not as contented; I'm restless – I wasn't then… Amusement is becoming a necessity to me; and I'm not particular about the kind – as long as it does amuse me. Tell me something exciting."
"A cradle song is what you require."
"How impudent of you. I've a mind to punish you by retiring to that same cradle. I'm dreadfully cross, too. Do you realise that?"
"I realise how tired you are."
"And – I'll never again be rested," she said thoughtfully, looking at her mirrored self. "I seem to understand that, now, for the first time… Something in me will always remain a little tired. I wonder what. Do you know?"
"Conscience?" he suggested, laughing.
"Do you think so? I thought it was my heart."
"Have you acquired one?"
She laughed, too, then glanced at him askance in the glass, and turned around toward him, still smiling.
"I believe I didn't have any heart when I first knew you. Did I?"
"I believe not," he said lightly. "Has one germinated?"
"I really don't know. What do you think?"
He took her cigarette from her and tossed it, with his own, into the fire. She seated herself on a sofa and bent toward the blaze, her dimpled elbows denting her silken knees, her chin balanced between forefinger and thumb.
Presently she said, not looking at him: "Somehow, I've changed. I'm not the woman you knew. I'm beginning to realise it. It seems absurd: it was only a few weeks ago. But the world has whirled very swiftly. Each day was a little lifetime in itself; a week a century condensed; Time became only a concentrated essence, one drop of which contained eons of experience… I wonder whether my silly head was turned a little… People said too much to me: there were too many of them – and they came too near… And do you know – looking back at it now as I sit here talking to you – I – it seems absurd – but I believe that I was really a trifle lonely at times."
She interlaced her fingers and rested her chin on the back of them.
"I thought of you on various occasions," she added.
He was leaning against the mantel, one foot on the fender.
Her eyes rested on that foot, then lifted slowly until they remained fixed on his face which was shadowed by his hand as though to shield his eyes from the bracket light.
For a time she sat motionless, considering him, interested in his silence and abstraction – in the set of his shoulders, and the unconscious grace of him. Light, touching his short blond hair, made it glossy like a boy's where his hand had disarranged it above the forehead. Certainly it was very pleasant to see him again – agreeable to be with him – not exactly restful, perhaps, but distinctly agreeable – for even in the frequent silences that had crept in between them there was no invitation to repose of mind. On the contrary, she was perfectly conscious of a reserve force now awaking – of a growing sense of freshness within her; of physical renewal, of unsuspected latent vigour.
"Are you attempting to go to sleep, Mr. Quarren?" she inquired at last.
He dropped his hand, smiling: she made an instinctive move – scarcely an invitation, scarcely even perceptible. But he came over and seated himself on the arm of the lounge beside her.
"Your letters," he said, "did a lot for me."
"I wrote very few… Did they really interest you?"
"A lot."
"How?"
"They helped that lame old gaffer, Time, to limp along toward the back door of Eternity."
"How do you mean?"
"Otherwise he would never have stirred a step – until to-night."
"That is very gallant of you, Mr. Quarren – but a little sentimental – isn't it?"
"Do you think so?"
"I don't know. I'm a poor judge of real sentiment – being unaccustomed to it."
"How many men made you declarations?"
"Oh; is that real sentiment? I thought it was merely love."
He looked at her. "Don't," he said. "You mustn't harden. Don't become like the rest."
She said, amused, or pretending to be: "You are clever; I have grown hard. To-day I can survey, unmoved, many, many things which I could not even look at yesterday. But it makes life more interesting. Don't you think so?"
"Do you, Mrs. Leeds?"
"I think so… A woman might as well know the worst truths about life – and about men."
"Not about men."
"Do you prefer her to remain a dupe?"
"Is anybody happy unless life dupes them?"
"By 'life' you mean 'men.' You have the seraglio point of view. You probably prefer your women screened and veiled."
"We are all born veiled. God knows why we ever tear the film."
"Mr. Quarren – are you becoming misanthropic?" she exclaimed, laughing. But under his marred eyes of a boy she saw shadows, and the pale induration already stamped on the flesh over the cheek-bones.
"What have you been doing with yourself all these weeks?" she asked, curiously.
"Working at my trade."
"You seem thinner."
"Fewer crumbs have fallen from the banquet, perhaps. I keep Lent when I must."
"You are beginning to speak in a way that you know I dislike – aren't you?" she asked, turning around in her seat to face him.
He laughed.
"You make me very angry," she said; "I like you – I'm quite happy with you – and suddenly you try to tell me that my friendship is lavished on an unworthy man; that my taste is low, and that you're a kind of a social jackal – an upper servant —
"I feed on what the pack leaves – and I wash their fragile plates for them," he said lightly.
"What else?" she asked, furious.
"I take out the unfledged for a social airing; I exercise the mature; I smooth the plumage of the aged; I apply first aid to the socially injured; lick the hands that feed me, as in duty bound; tell my brother jackals which hands to lick and which to snap at; curl up and go to sleep in sunny boudoirs without being put out into the backyard; and give first-class vaudeville performances at a moment's notice, acting as manager, principals, chorus, prompter, and carpenter."
He laughed so gaily into her unsmiling eyes that suddenly she lost control of herself and her fingers closed tight.
"What are you saying!" she said, fiercely. "Are you telling me that this is the kind of a man I care enough for to write to – to think about – think about a great deal – care enough about to dine with in my own house when I denied myself to everybody else! Is that all you are after all? And am I finding my level by liking you?"
He said, slowly: "I could have been anything – I could be yet – if you – "
"If you are not anything for your own sake you will never be for anybody's!" she retorted… "I refuse to believe that you are what you say, anyway. It hurts – it hurts – "
"It only hurts me, Mrs. Leeds – "
"It hurts me! I do like you. I was glad to see you – you don't know how glad. Your letters to me were – were interesting. You have always been interesting, from the very first – more so than many men – more than most men. And now you admit to me what kind of a man you really are. If I believe it, what am I to think of myself? Can you tell me?"
Flushed, exasperated by she knew not what, and more and more in earnest every moment, she leaned forward looking at him, her right hand tightening on the arm of the sofa, the other clenched over her twisted handkerchief.
"I could stand anything! – my friendship for you could stand almost anything except what you pretend you are – and what other malicious tongues will say if you continue to repeat it! – And it has been said already about you! Do you know that? People do say that of you. People even say so to me – tell me you are worthless – warn me against – against – "
"What?"
"Caring – taking you seriously! And it's because you deliberately exhibit disrespect for yourself! A man —any man is what he chooses to be, and people always believe him what he pretends to be. Is there any harm in pretending to dignity and worth when – when you can be the peer of any man? What's the use of inviting contempt? This very day a woman spoke of you with contempt. I denied what she said… I'd rather they'd say anything else about you – that you had vices – a vigorous, wilful, unmanageable man's vices! – than to say that of you!"
"What?"
"That you amount to nothing."
"Do you care what they say, Mrs. Leeds?"
"Of course! It strikes at my own self-respect!"
"Do you care – otherwise?"
"I care – as a friend, naturally – "
"Otherwise still?"
"No!"
"Could you ever care?"
"No," she said, nervously.
She sat breathing faster and more irregularly, watching him. He looked up and smiled at her, rested so, a moment, then rose to take his leave.
She stretched out one arm toward the electric bell, but her fingers seemed to miss it, and remained resting against the silk-hung wall.
"Are you going?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Must you?"
"I think I'd better."
"Very well."
He waited, but she did not touch the bell button. She seemed to be waiting for him to go; so he offered his hand, pleasantly, and turned away toward the hall. And, rising leisurely, she descended the stairs with him in silence.
"Good-night," he said again.
"Good-night. I am sorry you are going."
"Did you wish me to remain a little longer?"
"I – don't know what I wish…"
Her cheeks were deeply flushed; the hand he took into his again seemed burning.
"It's fearfully hot in here," she said. "Please muffle up warmly because it's bitter weather out doors" – and she lifted the other hand as though unconsciously and passed her finger tips over his fur collar.
"Do you feel feverish?"
"A little. Do you notice how warm my hand is?"
"You haven't caught malaria in the tropics, have you?"
"No, you funny man. I'm never ill. But it's odd how burning hot I seem to be – "
She looked down at her fingers which still lay loosely across his.
They were silent for a while. And, little by little it seemed to her as though within her a curious stillness was growing, responsive to the quiet around her – a serenity stealing over her, invading her mind like a delicate mist – a dreamy mental lethargy, soothing, obscuring sense and thought.
Vaguely she was aware of their contact. He neither spoke nor stirred; and her palm burned softly, meltingly against his.
At last he lifted her hand and laid his lips to it in silence. Small head lowered, she dreamily endured his touch – a slight caress over her forehead – the very ghost of contact; suffered his cheek against hers, closer, never stirring.
Thought drifted, almost dormant, lulled by infinite and rhythmical currents which seemed to set her body swaying, gently; and, listless, non-resistant, conscious of the charm of it, she gradually yielded to the sorcery.
Then, like a shaft of sunlight slanting through a dream and tearing its fabric into tatters, his kiss on her lips awoke her.
She strove to turn her mouth from his – twisted away from him, straining, tearing her body from his arms; and leaned back against the stair-rail, gray eyes expressionless as though dazed. He would have spoken, but she shook her head and closed both ears with her hands; nor would she even look at him, now.
Sight and hearing sealed against him; pale, expressionless, she stood there awaiting his departure. And presently he opened the iron and glass door; a flurry of icy air swept her; she heard the metallic snap of the spring lock, and opened her heavy eyes.
Deadly tired she turned and ascended the stairs to her bedroom and locked the door against her maid.
Thought dragged, then halted with her steps as she dropped onto the seat before the dresser and took her throbbing head in her hands. Cheeks and lips grew hotter; she was aware of strange senses dawning; of strange nerves signalling; stranger responses – of a subtle fragrance in her breath so strange that she became conscious of it.
She straightened up staring at her flushed reflection in the glass while through and through her shot new pulses, and every breath grew tremulously sweet to the verge of pain as she recoiled dismayed from the unknown.
Unknown still! – for she crouched there shrinking from the revelation – from the restless wonder of the awakening, wilfully deaf, blind, ignorant, defying her other self with pallid flashes of self-contempt.
Then fear came – fear of him, fear of herself, defiance of him, and defiance of this other self, glimpsed only as yet, and yet already dreaded with every instinct. But it was a losing battle. Truth is very patient. And at last she looked Truth in the eyes.
So, after all, she was what she had understood others were or must one day become. Unawakened, pure in her inherent contempt for the lesser passion; incredulous that it could ever touch her; out of nothing had sprung the lower menace, full armed, threatening her – out of a moment's lassitude, a touch of a man's hand, and his lips on hers! And now all her life was already behind her – childhood, girlhood, wifehood – all, all behind her now; and she, a stranger even to herself, alone on an unknown road; an unknown world before her.
With every instinct inherent and self-inculcated, instincts of modesty, of reticence, of self-control, of pride, she quivered under this fierce humiliation born of self-knowledge – knowledge scornfully admitted and defied with every breath – but no longer denied.
She was as others were – fashioned of that same and common clay, capable of the lesser emotions, shamefully and incredibly conscious of them – so keenly, so incomprehensibly, that, at one unthinkable instant, they had obscured and were actually threatening to obliterate the things of the mind.
Was this the evolution that her winter's idleness and gaiety and the fatigues of pleasure had been so subtly preparing for her? Was that strange moment, at the door, the moment that man's enemy had been awaiting, to find her unprepared?
Wretched, humiliated, she bowed her head above the flowers and silver on her dresser – the fairest among the Philistines who had so long unconsciously thanked God that she was not like other women in the homes of Gath and in the sinful streets of Ascalon.
CHAPTER VI
Strelsa was no longer at home to Quarren, even over the telephone. He called her up two or three times in as many days, ventured to present himself at her house twice without being received, and finally wrote her a note. But at the end of the month the note still remained unanswered.
However, there was news of her, sometimes involving her with Langly Sprowl, but more often with Sir Charles Mallison. Also, had Quarren not dropped out of everything so completely, he might easily have met her dozens of times in dozens of places. But for a month now he had returned every day from his office to his room in the Legation, and even the members of that important diplomatic body found his door locked, after dinner, though his light sometimes brightened the transom until morning.
Westguard, after the final rupture with his aunt, had become a soured hermit – sourer because of the low motives of the public which was buying his book by the thousands and reading it for the story, exclusively.
His aunt had cast him off; to him she was the overfed embodiment of society, so it pleased him to consider the rupture as one between society and himself. It tasted of martyrdom, and now his own public had vulgarly gone back on him according to his ideals: nobody cared for his economics, his social evils, his moral philosophy; only what he considered the unworthy part of his book was eagerly absorbed and discussed. The proletariat had grossly betrayed him; a hermit's exemplary but embittered career was apparently all that remained for his declining years.
So, after dinner, he, too, retired to seclusion behind bolted doors, pondering darkly on a philosophic novel which should be no novel at all but a dignified and crushing rebuke to mankind – a solid slice of moral cake thickly frosted with social economics, heavy with ethical plums, and without any story to it whatever.
Meanwhile his book had passed into the abhorred class of best sellers.
As for Lacy and O'Hara, both had remarked Quarren's abrupt retirement and his absence from that section of the social puddle which he was accustomed to embellish and splash in. O'Hara, inclining more toward sporting circles, noticed Quarren's absence less; but Lacy, after the first week, demanded an explanation at the dinner-table.
"You spoiled a party for Mrs. Lannis," he said – "and Winnifred Miller was almost in tears over the charity tableaux – "
"I wrote them both in plenty of time, Jack."
"Yes. But who is there to take your place? Whatever you touch is successful. Barent Van Dyne made a dub of himself."
"They must break in another pup," said Quarren, amused.
"You mean that you're chucking the whole bally thing for keeps?"
"Practically."
"Why?" asked O'Hara, looking up blankly.
"Oh," said Quarren laughing, "I'm curious to find out what business I really am in. Until this week I've never had time to discover that I was trying to be a broker in real estate. And I've just found out that I've been one for almost three years, and never knew it."
"One's own company is the best," growled Westguard. "The monkey people sicken you and the public make you ill. Solitude is the only remedy."
"Not for me," said Quarren; "I could breakfast, lunch, and dine with and on the public; and I'm laying plans to do it."
"They'll turn your stomach – "
"Oh, dry up, Karl!" said O'Hara; "there's a medium between extremes where you can get a good sportin' chance at anythin' – horse, dog, girl – anythin' you fancy. You'd like some of my friends, now, Ricky! – they're a good sort, all game, all jolly, all interestin' as hell – "
"I don't want to meet any cock-fighters," growled Westguard.
"They're all right, too – but there are all kinds of interestin' people in my circles – writers like Karl, huntin' people, a professional here and there – and then there's that fascinatin' Mrs. Wyland-Baily, the best trap-shot – "
"Trap-shot," repeated Westguard in disgust, and took his cigar and himself into seclusion.
Quarren also pushed back his chair, preparing to rise.
"Doin' anythin'?" inquired O'Hara, desiring to be kind. "Young Calahan and the Harlem Mutt have it out at the Cataract Club to-night," he added persuasively.
"Another time, thanks," said Quarren: "I've letters to write."
He wrote them – all the business letters he could think of, concentrating his thoughts as much as possible. Afterward he lay down on the lounge with a book, and remained there for an hour, although he changed books every few minutes. This was becoming a bad habit. But it was difficult reading although it ranged from Kipling to the Book of Common Prayer; and at last he gave it up and, turning over buried his head in the cushions.
This wouldn't do either: he racked his brain for further employment, found excuses for other business letters, wrote them, then attacked a pile of social matters – notes and letters heretofore deliberately neglected to the ragged edge of decency.
He replied to them all, and invariably in the negative.
It gave him something to do to go out to the nearest lamp post and mail his letters. But when again he came back into his room the silence there left him hesitating on his threshold.
But he went in and locked his door, and kept his back turned to the desk where pen and ink were tempting him as usual, and almost beyond endurance now. And at last he weakened, and wrote to her once more:
"My dear Mrs. Leeds —
"I feel sure that your failure to answer my note of last week was unintentional.
"Some day, when you have a moment, would you write me a line saying that you will be at home to me?
"Very sincerely yours,"Richard Stanley Quarren."
He took this note to the nearest District Messenger Office; then returned to his room.
After an interminable time the messenger reported for the signature. Mrs. Leeds was not at home and he had left the note as directed.
The night was a white one. He did not feel very well when he sat scanning the morning paper over his coffee. Recently he had formed the custom of reading two columns only in the paper – Real Estate News and Society. In the latter column Strelsa usually figured.
She figured as usual this morning; and he read the fulsome stuff attentively. Also there was a flourish concerning an annual event at the Santa Regina.
And Quarren read this very carefully; and made up his mind as he finished the paragraph.
The conclusion he came to over his coffee and newspaper materialised that afternoon at a Charity Bazaar, where, as he intended, he met Strelsa Leeds face to face. She said, coolly amiable:
"Have you been away? One never sees you these days."
"I have been nowhere," he said, pleasantly.
She shook her pretty head in reproof:
"Is it good policy for a young man to drop out of sight? Our world forgets over-night."
He laughed: "Something similar has been intimated to me by others – but less gently. I'm afraid I've offended some people."
"Oh, so you have already been disciplined?"
"Verbally trounced, admonished, and still smarting under the displeasure of the powers that reign. They seem to resent my Sunday out – yet even their other domestics have that. And it's the first I've taken in three years. I think I'll have to give notice to my Missus."
"The spectre of servitude still seems to obsess your humour," she observed indifferently.
"I am that spectre, Mrs. Leeds."
"You certainly look pallid enough for any disembodied rôle. You have not been ill, by any chance?" – carelessly.
"Not at all, thank you. Rude health and I continue to link arms."
"Then it is not by chance that you absent yourself from the various festivities where your part is usually supposed to be a leading one?"
"All cooks eventually develop a distaste for their own concoctions," he explained gravely.
She lifted her eyebrows: "Yet you are here this afternoon."
"Oh, yes. Charity has not yet palled on my palate – perhaps because I need so much myself."
"I have never considered you an object of charity."
"Then I must draw your kind attention to my pitiable case by doing a little begging… Could I ask your forgiveness, for example? And perhaps obtain it?"
Her face flushed. "I have nothing to forgive you, Mr. Quarren," she said with decision.
"Do you mean that?"
"Certainly."
"I scarcely know how to take your – generosity."
"I offer none. There is no occasion for generosity or for the exercise of any virtue, cardinal or otherwise. You have not offended me, nor I you – I trust… Have I?"
"No," he said.
Men came up to speak to her; one or two women nodded to her from nearby groups which presently mingled, definitely separating her from Quarren unless either he or she chose to evade the natural trend of things. Neither made the effort. Then Sir Charles Mallison joined her, and Quarren, smilingly accepting that gentleman's advent as his own congé, took his leave of Strelsa and went his way – which chanced, also, to be the way of Mrs. Lester Caldera, very fetching in lilac gown and hat.
Susanne Lannis, lips slightly curling, looked after them, touching Strelsa's elbow:
"Cyrille simply cannot let Ricky alone," she said. "The bill-posters will find a fence for her if she doesn't come to her senses."
"Who?" asked Strelsa, as one or two people laughed guardedly.
"Why, Cyrille Caldera. Elle s'affiche, ma chère!"
"Mrs. Caldera!" repeated the girl, surprised.
"And Ricky! Are you blind, Strelsa? It's been on for two weeks or more. And she'd better not play too confidently with Ricky. You can usually forecast what a wild animal will do, never how a trained one is going to behave."
"Such scandal!" laughed Chrysos Lacy. "How many of us can afford to turn our backs to the rest of the cage even for an instant? Sir Charles, I simply don't dare to go away. Otherwise I'd purchase several of those glittering articles yonder – whatever they are. Do you happen to know?"
"Automatic revolvers. The cartridges are charged with Japanese perfumes. Did you never see one?" he asked, turning to Strelsa. But she was not listening; and he transferred his attention to Chrysos.
Several people moved forward to examine the pretty and apparently deadly little weapons; Sir Charles was called upon to explain the Japanese game of perfumes, and everybody began to purchase the paraphernalia, pistols, cartridges, targets, and counters.
Sir Charles came back, presently, to where Strelsa still stood, listlessly examining laces.
"All kinds of poor people have blinded themselves making these pretty things," she said, as Sir Charles came up beside her. "My only apparent usefulness is to buy them, I suppose."
He offered her one of the automatic pistols.
"It's loaded," he cautioned her, solemnly.
"What an odd gift!" she said, surprised, taking it gingerly into her gloved hand. "Is it really for me? And why?"
"Are you timid about firearms?" he asked, jestingly.
"No… I don't know anything about them – except to keep my finger away from the trigger. I know enough to do that."
He supposed that she also was jesting, and her fastidious handling of the weapon amused him. And when she asked him if it was safe to carry in her muff, he assured her very gravely that she might venture to do so. "Turn it loose on the first burglar," he added, "and his regeneration will begin in all the forty-nine odours of sanctity."
Strelsa smiled without comprehending. Cyrille Caldera was standing just beyond them, apparently interested in antique jewellery, trying the effect of various linked gems against her lilac gown, and inviting Quarren's opinion of the results. Their backs were turned; Ricky's blond head seemed to come unreasonably close to Cyrille's at moments. Once Mrs. Caldera thoughtlessly laid a pretty hand on his arm as though in emphasis. Their unheard conversation was evidently amusing them.
Strelsa's smile remained unaltered; people were coming constantly to pay their respects to her; and they lingered, attracted and amused by her unusual gaiety, charm, and wit.
Her mind seemed suddenly to have become crystal clear; her gay retorts to lively badinage, and her laughing epigrams were deliciously spontaneous. A slight exhilaration, without apparent reason, was transforming her, swiftly, into an incarnation entirely unknown even to herself.
Conscious of a wonderful mood never before experienced, perfectly aware of her unusual brilliancy and beauty, surprised and interested in the sudden revelation of powers within her still unexercised, she felt herself, for the first time in her life, in contact with things heretofore impalpable – and, in spirit, with delicate fingers, she gathered up instinctively those intangible threads with which man is guided as surely as though driven in chains of steel.
