at a heart like his that could be at once ardent and subtle, that could desire so profoundly (the deep vibrations of that voice of yearning were in her ears still) and yet pause, and stand back, and wait, rather than force a hair’s breadth of pretense.  How he had liberated her!  And once she found herself thinking, “I shall have sables myself, and diamonds, and a house as great as Molly’s, and I shall learn how to entertain ambassadors, as she will never know.”  She was ashamed of this, she knew it to be shockingly out of key with the grand passage behind them.  But she had thought it.

And, as these thoughts, and many more, passed through her mind, as she spoke with a quiet peace, or was silent, she was transfigured into a beauty almost startling, by the accident of the level golden beams of light back of her.  Her aureole of bright hair glowed like a saint’s halo.  The curiously placed lights and unexpected shadows brought out new subtleties in the modeling of her face.  Her lightened heart gleamed through her eyes, like a lighted lamp.  After a time, the man fell into a complete silence, glancing at her frequently as though storing away a priceless memory....

CHAPTER XXXV

“A MILESTONE PASSED, THE ROAD SEEMS CLEAR”

As the “season” heightened, the beautiful paneled walls of Mrs. Marshall-Smith’s salon were frequently the background for chance gatherings of extremely appropriate callers.  They seemed a visible emanation of the room, so entirely did they represent what that sort of a room was meant to contain.  They were not only beautifully but severely dressed, with few ornaments, and those few a result of the same concentrated search for the rare which had brought together the few bibelots in the room, which had laid the single great dull Persian rug on the unobtrusively polished oaken floor, which had set in the high, south windows the boxes of feathery green plants with delicate star-like flowers.

And it was not only in externals that these carefully brushed and combed people harmonized with the mellow beauty of their background.  They sat, or stood, moved about, took their tea, and talked with an extraordinary perfection of manner.  There was not a voice there, save perhaps Austin Page’s unstudied tones, which was not carefully modulated in a variety of rhythm and pitch which made each sentence a work of art.  They used, for the most part, low tones and few gestures, but those well chosen.  There was an earnest effort apparent to achieve true conversational give-and-take, and if one of the older men found himself yielding to the national passion for lengthy monologues on a favorite theme, or to the mediocre habit of anecdote, there was an instant closing in on him of carefully casual team-work on the part of the others which soon reduced him to the tasteful short comment and answer which formed the framework of the afternoon’s social activities.