CHAPTER XXVII
I tire of shams, I rush to be.—Emerson.
Gertrude Ingraham was still unmarried, still pretty, still charming in her dainty, high-bred way.
Perhaps the thought crossed Keith Burgess’s mind as he joined her in her father’s library that evening, after their return from Gregory’s lecture, that she would have been, as a wife, a shade less exigeante than Anna.
Anna, shrinking from the small coin of discussion of so great themes, had gone directly to their room,—the room which had been Keith’s on his first visit to Burlington. Keith remained in the library to accept the refreshment which Gertrude had prepared for their return, and found the situation altogether pleasing. It was a rest to a sensitive, nervous man like himself to sit down with a pretty woman who had no startling theories of life and conduct; one who had always moved, and who would always choose to move, on the comfortable lines of convention, instead of seeking some other path for herself, rough and lonely.
Perhaps Keith lingered all the more willingly to-night because he perceived a rough and lonely path opening visibly before him, into which he must in all probability turn full soon.
“What did you think of Mr. Gregory?” asked Gertrude Ingraham over her tea-cups.
“He is a tremendous speaker,” said Keith, soberly; “I never heard a man who could mould an audience to his will as he does. You were not there to-night.”
“No, but I heard him before you and Mrs. Burgess came, night before last. I think he has the finest physique of any orator I ever heard. Don’t you think that is one source of his power? There is something absolutely majestic about him when he is speaking. He seems to overpower you—you must agree with him, whether you do or not.”
“Then do you accept this new doctrine of his, Miss Ingraham?”