Part 3 (1/2)

”One must either wors.h.i.+p or detest you, my dear,” she remarked as a parting shaft. ”And to wors.h.i.+p you means to wait upon you, which is wearing. Your personality is as absorbent as cotton. It absorbs the individual comfort of those around you. It is very pleasant to be absorbed, and you do it charmingly; but there is so much to see in the world, and I'm getting old fast enough.”

So she went, leaving Mariana alone in a fourth-story front room of The Gotham apartment-house.

CHAPTER III

Mr. Nevins once said to Mariana: ”You are as elusive as thistle-down whipped up with snow.”

Mariana smiled that radiating, indescribable smile which dawned gradually from within, deepening until it burst into pervasive wealth of charm.

”Why snow?” was her query.

Mr. Paul, who apparently had been engrossed in his dinner, glanced up grimly. ”The only possible reason for a metaphor,” he observed, ”is lack of reason.”

Mr. Nevins dismissed him with a shrug and looked in sentimental perplexity at Mariana.

”Merely because it is impossible to whip up ice with anything,” he replied.

”I should have supposed,” interrupted Mr. Paul, in unabashed disapproval, ”that the same objection would apply to thistle-down. It would certainly apply to a woman.”

Miss Ramsey, who sat opposite, turned her tired eyes upon him.

”Life is not of your opinion, Mr. Paul,” she said. ”It whips us up with all kinds of ingredients, and it never seems to realize when we have been reduced to the proper consistency.”

She looked worn and hara.s.sed, and had come in to dinner later than usual. It was the first remark she had made, and, after making it, she relapsed into silence. Her small red hands trembled as she lifted her fork, the rebellious lines between her brows grew deeper, and she ate her dinner with that complete exhaustion which so often pa.s.ses for resignation in the eyes of our neighbors. Nervous prostration has produced more saints than all the sermons since Moses.

Mariana watched her sympathetically. She wondered why the gravy upon Miss Ramsey's plate congealed sooner than it did upon any one else's, while the sobbiest potatoes invariably fell to her share.

”A false metaphor!” commented Mr. Paul. ”Most metaphors are false. I don't trust Shakespeare himself when he gets to metaphor. I always skip them.”

”Oh, they have their uses,” broke in the cheery tones of the optimist.

”I'm not much on Shakespeare, but I've no doubt he has his uses also. As for metaphor, it is a convenient way of saying more than you mean.”

”So is lying,” retorted Mr. Paul, crossly, and the conversation languished. Mariana ate her dinner and looked at the table-cloth. Mr.

Nevins ate his dinner and looked at Mariana. He regarded her as an artistic possibility. Her appearance was a source of constant interest to him, and he felt, were he in the position of nature, with the palette and brush of an omnipotent colorist, he might blend the harmonious lines of Mariana's person to better advantage. He resented the fact that her nose was irregular and her chin too long. He wondered how such a subject could have been wilfully neglected.

As for himself, he honestly felt that he had wasted no opportunities.

Upon their first acquaintance he had made a poster of Mariana which undeniably surpa.s.sed the original. It represented her in a limp and scantily made gown of green, with strange reptiles sprawling over it, relieved against the ardor of a purple sunset. The hair was a marvel of the imagination.

Mariana had liked it, with the single exception of the reptilian figures.

”They have such an unpleasant suggestion,” was her critical comment. ”I feel quite like Medusa. Couldn't you change them into nice little b.u.t.terflies and things?”

Mr. Nevins was afraid he could not. The poster satisfied him as it was.

Miss Musin could not deny, he protested, that he had remodelled her nose and chin in an eminently successful job, and if the hair and eyes and complexion in the poster bore close resemblance in color, so did the hair and eyes and complexion in the original. He had done his best.

Mariana accepted his explanation and went complacently on her way, as enigmatical as a Chinese puzzle. She was full of swift surprises and tremulous changes, varying color with her environment; gay one moment, and sad before the gayety had left her lips--cruel and calm, pa.s.sionate and tender--always and ever herself.

Twice a week she went to Signor Morani's for a vocal lesson. Signor Morani was small and romantic and severe. In his youth he had travelled as Jenny Lind's barytone, and he had fallen a slave to her voice. He had wors.h.i.+pped a voice as other men wors.h.i.+p a woman. Unlike other men, he had been faithful for a lifetime--to a voice.