Then Catherine spoke and Jean leaned across Philip to answer. Her back was to Jerome, and without moving he glanced up sidewise.
There was the same heavy knob of hair, low on her neck. The same threads of gray, which Jean might easily have concealed but never did, ran through the thick mass into the tight wad. The same bone hair-pins inserted in exactly the same way. It was an unbecoming way to do her hair, ugly even in office clothes, and preposterous with a low-cut gown. Jerome studied the tight wad with puzzled intensity. He had an idea that the solution lay here somehow. He had heard Alice say that a woman's character showed in the way she did her hair and the sweeping assertion had amused him as Alice's large generalizations always did. But perhaps Alice was right. Surely such a fashion of doing one's hair was more than an exterior detail. It shrieked aloud of lack of taste, of a sense of fitness, of indifference to accepted standards. It stood for a kind of density or conceit in a way. It was a glaring discord, just as if Jean had brought her black leather wallet or worn her white chamois gloves, or carried a fountain pen concealed in the chiffon. Jerome's eye ran along the row of seats in front. That was it, that impossible wad of hair screwed into a cumbersome knob. It was so incongruous that it might well strike one, a man especially, used to taking in a woman's appearance as a whole, as something quite wrong, wrong enough to make a distinct impression. Relieved, and amused at his own interest, Jerome's eyes returned to Jean.
And then, he was suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of Jean's neck and shoulders, of the soft, white velvet of the skin, the warm smoothness of the flesh, the firm muscles molded in curves that called to every tingling nerve of his fingertips. It seemed to Jerome an interminable time that he sat so, conscious to the depths, of that velvet whiteness. Until Jean moved and released him.
The green and gold curtain drew back and Tony, clutching his violin as if it were a weapon of defense against the staring enemy, advanced to the footlights. From her box, Mrs. Dalton made comforting signals, and J. William himself, a meager black and white figure just behind her, clapped his thin, cold hands in encouragement.
Jean leaned back. Jerome could feel her relaxed, lost completely from the first notes. Jerome moved, so that in no way did he touch even the wooden arm of Jean's seat, and tried to listen. But he heard only the opening measures, and, after that, did not know that Tony was playing at all.
This was not the Jean Herrick with whom he had worked so pleasantly. It was another woman. That Jean Herrick made no demand apart from intellectual sympathy. While this—something in the very fiber of the woman, akin to the soft velvet of her skin, those definite curves, called to him. He had never even thought of Jean's age or whether she were good looking. Although if any one had asked him he would have said she had a fine face. But her body had never entered his thought at all. He might have known, if he had considered it, that her flesh would be firm and white, her muscles well molded, but ... Jerome drew still farther away. He did not want to touch her now. Instead there was a distinct repulsion, as if Jean had offered him a caress uninvited.
He was not used to thinking of women in this way. Unrestrained emotion had never played any part in his life. Other men might have moments of physical surprise like this, but he had never had them. He felt unclean and at the same time, as if the fault were not his. Jean had done something, tricked him, taken him at a disadvantage.
When Alice's hand on his arm catapulted him back to reality, he found that Tony had played entirely through the first division of the program and disappeared.
"Aren't you glad you came? Isn't he wonderful?" Alice was pinching him in her enthusiasm.
"Yes ... of course ... yes, he's wonderful."