CHAPTER IV
USHERS IN THE MODERN SPIRIT
"So you have seen her," Adams had remarked the same afternoon, as he walked with Trent in the direction of Broadway. "Do you walk up, by the way? I always manage to get in a bit of exercise at this hour."
As Trent fell in with his companion's rapid step, he seemed to be moving in a fine golden glow of enthusiasm. A light icy drizzle had turned the snow upon the pavement into sloppy puddles of water, but to the young man, fresh from his inexperience, the hour and the scene alike were of exhilarating promise.
"I feel as if I had been breathing different air!" he exclaimed, without replying directly to the question. "And yet how simple she is—how utterly unlike the resplendent Mrs. Bridewell—"
He stopped breathlessly, overcome by his excitement, and Adams took up the unfinished sentence almost tenderly. "So far, of course, she is merely a beautiful promise, a flower in the bud," he said. "Her genius—if she has genius—has not found itself, and the notes she strikes are all mere groping attempts at a perfect self-expression. Yet, undoubtedly, she has done a few fine things," he admitted with professional caution.
"But if, as you say, her emotional self does not go into her poems, what becomes of it?" enquired Trent, with a curiosity too impersonal to be vulgar. "For she, finely tempered as she is, suggests nothing so much as a beautiful golden flame."
Adams started, and flashed upon the other a glance as incisive as a search-light.
"Then you, too, recognise her beauty?" he asked in a tone which had a kindly jealousy.
"Am I a fool?" protested Trent, laughing.