Part 20 (1/2)
”Shall I call hiain soon I'll be in the library”
She had not been roa restlessly about there many minutes before Williams appeared ”He's come, himself, ma'am,” said he ”I told him I didn't knohether you'd be able to see hiaret sweetly ”Order the carriage to co-room I'll speak to him on the way out”
She dashed upstairs ”Selina! Selina!” she called And when Selina caot news that went through me like a knife You understand, don't you?”
”It was nothing, Miss Rita,” protested Selina ”I'd forgot itherself with her own eyes, got blood on her white gloves, had to change the on the fresh pair--a new pair How vastly e in a ”serious” intervieith a woloves! She is perfectly free to seem occupied or not, as suits her convenience; and she can, by wrestling with the gloves, interrupt hihts, give him a sense of imbecile futility, and all the tiainst her He hiloves
She rong in her guess that Arkwright had been at his, gathered in force as soon as he was not protected from them by the spell of her presence The mystery of the feminine is bred into men from earliest infancy, is intensified when passion coination into fantastic activity about women No man, not the most experienced, not the most depraved, is ever able wholly to divest himself of this awe, except, occasionally, in the case of some particular woman Awe makes one ill at ease; the woman who, by whatever means, is able to cure a man of his awe of her, to make him feel free to be hih he despises her or is indifferent to her; on the other hand, the woman who remains an object of awe to a man is certain to lose him He may be proud to have her as his wife, as the ive her the place of intimacy in his life
At the outset on an acquaintance between a man and a woman his awe for her as the ee to her; it often gets hiaret Severence and Joshua Craig, while his awe of her was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage It attracted him; it perilously repelled hiination upon those charms of hers--those delicate, refined beauties that filled his as primeval in kind as well as in force as those that set delirious the savage hordes from the German forests when they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the jewels and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient civilization But at the sa of dare-devil sacrilege What were his coarse hands doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries? Silk fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he felt at home with it Yes, he had seized her, had crushed her madly in the embrace of his plowe, a drunken man's deed, wholly beyond the nerve of sobriety
Then, on top of all this aas his reverence for her as an aristocrat, a representative of people who had for generations been far removed above the coarse realities of the only life he knew And it was this adoration of caste that deterht overcos; but how could he ever hope to bridge the gulf between hiible superiorities? He was asha of worant, noisy protestations of equality and deht he; ”THEY'RE all right The fault's in me--damned snob that I am!”
Clearly, if he was to be what he wished, if he was to becoet away from this sinister influence, from this temptation that had made hiin to grovel ”She is a superior woman--that is no snob notion of et weak in the knees, she ought to be superhuman--which she isn't, by anyto do--keep away from her Besides, I'd feel miserable with her about as my wife” My wife! The very words threw him into a cold sweat
So the note ritten, was feverishly dispatched
No sooner was it sent than it was repented ”What's the e caer had been banished ”Why, the best is not too good for ht to be of a man who, by sheer force of character, has lifted hi to be what I shall be Mighty proud! There are only two realities--ot more brains than she or any of her set; as for ot that The superiority is all on ”
What had he said in his note? Recalling it as well as he could--for it was one, the last, of more than a dozen notes he had written in two hours of that evening--recalling phrases he was pretty sure he had put into the one he had finally sent, in despair of a better, it seeiven her a wholly false impression--an impression of her superiority and of his fear and awe That would never do He ement only because she was not up to his standard Besides, he wished to see her again to e Yes, he must see her, must have a look at her, eous thing to do in the circu that note looked like cowardice--would be cowardice if I didn't follow it up with a visit And whatever else I aed in no one straight to the practical point: Craig had written instead of co written he had not fled, but had coame lay in her own hands, for what more could woman ask than that a ement and she not only would save herself fro jilted--jilted by an uncouth nobody of a Josh Craig!--but also would have hiood pleasure as to ti, hardy plodder in the arduous pathway from plowboy to President, could have seen as in the raceful, slender, ultra-fearet Severence's, as she descended the stairs, putting fresh gloves upon her beautiful, idle hands, he would have borroings of the wind and would have fled as fro could have see dress--she earing it for the first ti the draperies of islands of enchanture Her hat, triic halo for her hair; and it, in turn, was the entrancing frame in which her small, quiet, pallid face was set--that delicate, sensitive face, from which shone, now softly and now brilliantly, those hazel eyes a painter could have borrowed for a wood ny hi was thrilled by her ”high-bred”
accent, that seee a medium different from the one he used and heard out home
”Yes, ma'am,” came the answer in the subtly-deferential tone of the aristocracy of , with the aid of the woman herself and that aristocratic old room, a complete picture of the life of upper-class splendor
”Did you order the carriage, as I asked?”
”Yes, aret turned upon an overwhel
He did not drea him--and, if he had, the effect would hardly have been lessened Whether planned or not, were not toilette and accent, and butler and carriage, all realities? Nor did he suspect shrewd calculations upon snobbishness when she said: ”I was in such haste to dress that I hurtantly-clad foot--”no, buttoning it, I mean”
Oh, these ladies, these ladies of the neorld--and the old--that are so used towaited upon that they no more think of display in connection with thes or two eyes!
The advantage froan at the very outset It helped to save her fro a mode of salutation
She did not salute hi a continuation, without break, of their previous