“Why did you do that?” he asked quickly, with a frowning regard. Linda replied easily and directly. “It seemed as if it were carrying me with it,” she specified; “on and on and on, without ever stopping. I felt as if I were up among the stars.” She paused, leaning forward, and gazed at the statue. Even now she was certain that she saw a slight flutter of its draperies. “It is beautiful, isn't it? I think it's the first thing I ever noticed like that. You know what I mean—the first thing that hadn't a real use.”

“But it has,” he returned. “Do you think it is nothing to be swept into heaven? I suppose by 'real' you mean oatmeal and scented soap. Women usually do. But no one, it appears, has any conception of the practical side of great art. You might try to remember that it is simply permanence given to beauty. It's like an amber in which beautiful and fragile things are kept forever in a lovely glow. That is all, and it is enough.

“When I said that you were Art I didn't mean that you were skilfully painted and dressed, but that there was a quality in you which recalled all the charming women who had ever lived to draw men out of the mud—something, probably, of which you are entirely unconscious, and certainly beyond your control. You have it in a remarkable degree. It doesn't belong to husbands but to those who create 'Homer's children.'

“That's a dark saying of Plato's, and it means that the Alcestis is greater than any momentary offspring of the flesh.”

Linda admitted seriously, “Of course, I don't understand, yet it seems quite familiar—”

“Don't, for Heaven's sake, repeat the old cant about reincarnation;” he interrupted, “and sitting together, smeared with antimony, on a roof of Babylon.”

She hadn't intended to, she assured him. “Tell me about yourself,” he directed. It was as natural to talk with him as it was, with others, to keep still. Her frank speech flowed on and on, supported by the realization of his attention.

“There really isn't much, besides hotels, all different; but you'd be surprised how alike they were, too. I mean the things to eat, and the people. I never realized how tired I was of them until mother married Mr. Moses Feldt. The children were simply dreadful, the children and the women; the men weren't much better.” She said this in a tone of surprise, and he nodded. “I can see now—I am supposed to be too old for my age, and it was the hotels. You learn a great deal.”

“Do you like Mr. Moses Feldt?”

“Enormously; he is terribly sweet. I intend to marry a man just like him. Or, at least, he was the second kind I decided on: the first only had money, then I chose one with money who was kind, but now I don't know. It's very funny: kindness makes me impatient. I'm perfectly sure I'll never care for babies, they are so mussy. I don't read, and I can't stand being—well, loved.

“Mother went to a great many parties; every one liked her and she liked every one back; so it was easy for her. I used to long for the time when I'd wear a lovely cloak and go out in a little shut motor with a man with pearls; but now that's gone. They want to kiss you so much. I wish that satisfied me. Why doesn't it? Is there anything the matter with me, do you think? I've been told that I haven't any heart.”

As he laughed at her she noticed how absurdly small a cigarette seemed in his broad powerful hand. “What has happened to you is this,” he explained: “a combination of special circumstances has helped you in every way to be what, individually, you were. As a rule, children are brought up in a house of lies, like taking a fine naked body and binding it into hideous rigid clothes. You escaped the damnation of cheap ready-cut morals and education. Your mother ought to have a superb monument—the perfect parent. Of course you haven't a 'heart.' From the standpoint of nature and society you're as depraved as possible. You are worse than any one else here—than all of them rolled together.”

Curiously, she thought, this didn't disturb her, which proved at once that he was right. Linda regarded herself with interest as a supremely reprehensible person, perhaps a vampire. The latter, though, was a rather stout woman who, dressed in frightful lingerie, occupied couches with her arms caught about the neck of a man bending over her. Every detail of this was distasteful.

What was she?

Her attention wandered to the squat Chinese god in the glass case. It was clear that he hadn't stirred for ages. A difficult thought partly formed in her mind—the Chinese was the god of this room, of Markue's party, of the women seated in the dim light on the floor and the divans; the low gurgle of their laughter, the dusky whiteness of their shoulders in the upcoiling incense, the smothered gleams of their hair, with the whispering men, were the world of the grayish-green image.

She explained this haltingly to Pleydon, who listened with a flattering interest. “I expect you're laughing at me inside,” she ended impotently. “And the other, the Greek Victory,” he added, “is the goddess of the other world, of the spirit. It's quaint a heathen woman should be that.”

Linda discovered that she liked Pleydon enormously. She continued daringly that he might be the sort of man she wanted to marry. But he wouldn't be easy to manage; probably he could not be managed at all. Her mother had always insisted upon the presence of that possibility in any candidate for matrimony. And, until now, Linda's philosophy had been in accord with her. But suddenly she entertained the idea of losing herself completely in—in love.

A struggle was set up within her: on one hand was everything that she had been, all her experience, all advice, and her innate detachment; on the other an obscure delicious thrill. Perhaps this was what she now wanted. Linda wondered if she could try it—just a little, let herself go experimentally. She glanced swiftly at Pleydon, and his bulk, his heavy features, the sullen mouth, appalled her.

Men usually filled her with an unaccountable shrinking into her remotest self. Pleydon was different; her liking for him had destroyed a large part of her reserve; but a surety of instinct told her that she couldn't experiment there. It was characteristic that a lesser challenge left her cold. She had better marry as she had planned.

Susanna Noda came up petulantly and sank in a brilliant graceful swirl at his feet. Her golden eyes, half shut, studied Linda intently.

---