Her personality, even in silence, wove an aura of subtle magic about her. She wore at her breast several hot-house orchids. They were pale and exotic, quick wilting and artificial. Already the edges of their petals were curling and darkening. Was she like them? Could she have carried her splendid shoulders with the same grace through jungles and over mountains? Could she bloom with the wild splendor of those other orchids in the sterner environment of God's great out-of-doors?
She smiled as she questioned me.
"You are sceptical of my power to understand things, aren't you?"
"I was wondering," I answered, "just what you meant by it."
"I meant," she said slowly, as her eyes clouded again with that wistfulness which had a few moments before cost me my self-control, "that civilized women lead even narrower lives than civilized men. Maybe they feel even more strongly than men the longing for wider, freer things."
"But in these times," I inanely suggested, struggling to maintain the pretense of conversation, "woman has a full measure of liberty."
She tossed her head with an airy contempt for my reasoning and bent her eyes for a moment on the tip of her satin slipper. "About as much as a canary in a cage," she announced, "and we are expected to sing joyously for our cuttle bone and hemp seed. I wonder that it never seems to occur to you men that we women may want something more than that; that we may not be satisfied after all to hear affectionate things chirped through the cage wires—that even human canaries may be able to conceive of some horizon broader than a window-sill with a pot or two of geraniums to give it color."
I loved this woman. Why in all conscience did my heart leap almost triumphantly at the hint that she was restive in captivity? Was it merely because it was not I who was her captor? Was it jealousy feeding on the crumbs of a misery shared? There was a long silence.
She had been toying as she talked with a slender gold chain, and under an involuntary emphasis of her fingers it had given way. She was now trying to close the broken link with her teeth. I stepped forward and, without realizing that I was doing it, caught her hand in my restraining fingers. She looked up quickly.
"I beg your pardon," I said hastily, "but don't bite that with your teeth."