"All my life I've done right as nearly as I knew, Mr. Rawn. Perhaps I was wrong in coming to trust so much to you—to depend on you so much. It all seemed so natural, that I've just let matters go on, almost without any thought. I've only been anxious to do my work—that was all. But this cruel talk about us—well—it can have but one end. I must go."
"Go? Leave me? You'll do nothing of the sort! I'll take care of this thing myself, I say—I'll stand between you and all that sort of talk."
"Mr. Rawn, I don't understand you."
X
They sat close together on this brocaded couch among many other brocaded couches. Crystal and color and gilt and ivory were all about them; pictures, works of art in bronze and marble and costly porcelains. The air was heavy with fragrance, dripping with soft melody of distant music. She was beautiful, a beautiful young woman. He caught one glance into her wide, pathetic eyes ere she turned and bent her head. He caught the fragrance of her hair—that strange fragrance of a woman's hair. Dejected, drooping as she sat, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, he could see the bent column of her beautiful white neck, the curve of her beautiful shoulders, white, flawless.
The flower on her bosom rose and fell in her emotion. She was a woman. She was beautiful. She was young. Something subtle, powerful, mysterious, stole into the air.
She was a woman!
Suddenly this thought came to John Rawn like a sudden blow in the face. It came in a sense hitherto unknown to him in all his life. Now he understood what life might be, saw what delight might be! He saw now that all along he had admired this girl and only been unconscious of his admiration. God! what had he lost, all these years! He, John Rawn, had lived all these years, and had not loved!
He reached out timidly and touched her round white arm, to attract her attention. She flinched from him a trifle, and he also from her. Fire ran through his veins as from a cup of wine, heady and strong. He was a boy, a young man discovering life. The glory of life, the reason, had been here all this time, and he had not suspected it. What deed for pity had been wrought! He, John Rawn, never before had known what love might be! He was the last man on Manhattan to go mad over Virginia Delaware.
She drew back from, him, seeing the flush upon his face, color rising to her own. Indeed, the power of the man, his sudden vast passion, were not lost upon her, different as he was from the idol of a young girl's dreams. But Virginia Delaware saw more than the physical image of this man beside her. She knew what he had to share, what power, what wealth, what station. She knew well enough what John Rawn could do; and she gaged her own value to him by the flush on his face, the glitter in his eye.