“Shall you want a car, as usual, Mrs. Cutter?” he called after her as she was about to enter the elevator.
“Not until this afternoon. How are the roads?”
“Very good, at least your favorite one is,” he assured her.
She had come to this Inn immediately after Cutter left her the previous year. She had recovered her health of mind and strength of body in this quiet place; she had profited by the patterns of peace and imagination it afforded; and she had spent much time visiting fine old houses, studying the manners, ways and clothes of the people who came and went. She acquired for the first time in her life some feeling and sense of elegance, lines and colors. And it was here that she met the architect who drew the plans for remodeling her house at Shannon.
She resumed her old diversions now. She mingled little with the other guests, but spent her time driving about the country. She was still oppressed by the rude awakening she had, that last day in Shannon, to the fact that she loved and longed for her husband. She was disturbed and humiliated by this revelation, as one is by the awakening of some weakness we believe we have outgrown.
The issue constantly in her mind was whether, after all, it would not be wiser to give up her house in Shannon and live this idle, pleasant existence. There were no associations here to remind her of the past. And in spite of her huge expense in the effort to destroy these memories, it was after she came back to Shannon that the old pain and unhappiness had returned to overwhelm her. Then this issue was settled for her with a horrible, irrevocable decision, and she was flung violently back upon the one refuge, her house in Shannon, and the one plan she had for substituting love with affection, which she had been on the point of abandoning.
One evening she came down late for dinner, passed through the swinging doors and sat down at the table reserved for her, which was near these doors. The room was filled with week-end guests. She had an excellent view of this brilliant company. There were handsomely gowned women, rouged and sparkling with jewels; there were more men than were usually to be seen at leisure during this man-grasping war period; and quite a sprinkling of military officers, evidently on leave from Washington.
Helen had given her order and sat idly scanning the scene before her, listening to snatches of conversation from the nearer tables.
She was barely enough like these other women in her ivory-white, embroidered Canton crêpe not to attract attention. She was pale, as they were painted. Her hair lay in a soft golden coil on her head, where their hair ruffled in a thousand glistening convolutions. Her lips were parted, showing the lapped edge of the two white teeth. The dark lashes of her eyes were more apparent, because of the blueness of these eyes and of the whiteness of her skin.
Once she caught the steady, dark gaze of a woman seated directly opposite her, but at a distant table. She lifted her own glance and hurried by this overhead route back to the bunch of violets in the vase on her own table. She could not have told why she did this, probably for the same reason one flinches and draws back from the sudden flash of a brilliant flame. She sat staring at the violets, wondering about this woman, not intelligently, with a sort of amazement which was not pleasant. Never before had she seen such a fury of commanding beauty. She thought she must be tall. She was very dark—olive skin, flushed like a velvet rose; black hair, daringly coiffured and heightened by a Spanish comb; a straight, imperious nose; a fine-lipped mouth, red and cruelly turned to mirth. But the fury of her beauty lay in the smoking black eyes. And the maroon velvet gown she wore seemed somehow to enhance the heat of terrible, searing beauty, as if the body of this woman had been forged, slim and strong, in a furnace and still glowed dangerously and dully.