Persis was the first to realize the bitterness of their sudden loss. She wailed, “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Ariel, when will you finish? Will you come back? When will you show us the path? Will you dance for us in faërie when we get there? You do mean to take us with you, don’t you? I thought soon you would begin to dance. Oh, Ariel! Oh, dear!”
“Please come, Ariel. I’m famished for society. Besides, I’ve special things I want to talk about.”
Alice had hurried her charges down from the wall. But the children were walking away backwards, their longing eyes on Ariel. “We’ll look for the path next time,” she called after them, and it sounded to their ears like a promise of the sort that keeps itself. “And we’ll all dance in faërie. Good-by, Alice.”
“I don’t know about having tea,” Ariel looked down at Joan from the wall doubtfully. “I must be back by five—”
“Oh, that’s all right. We’ll have it now, early. Do come along.”
Joan pulled Ariel’s arm through her own, when she jumped down and stood beside her in Holly. Then she drew her, not entirely unresisting, up toward the house.
It had been mere impulse on Joan’s part, but now that for the first time in their acquaintance she was to have an hour alone with Ariel she would do what she so well had the power of doing, throw herself, the whole concentrated weight of her personality, into the contact,—put her own stamp upon the coin of the moment as Ariel had put hers, Joan rather rebelliously felt, on her contacts with Persis and Nicky. Now that the opportunity had practically imposed itself upon her, she was decided, once for all, to waste no more time about finding Ariel out. She would discover her charm. Or she would discover what passed for charm with Schwankovsky, ruthless where personalities were concerned: with Grandam, so ultra-fastidious: with Joan’s own children, whom until to-day she had thought rather typical neurotic American products. And even perhaps with Hugh, so undiscerning, except where she, Joan, was concerned.
She was not jealous of Ariel. How could she be? For Hugh, in particular, she knew that Ariel’s charm would never shadow her own,—knew it all the more surely since that recent drive to town when he had so unprecedentedly expressed his adoration for herself in articulate sentences. But all the same she felt it might be worth her while to explore this Ariel a little for herself. There must be something she had missed. Besides, she was bored. She had kept the afternoon free for a sun bath on her roof, and a new book on the latest developments in psychoanalysis which Doctor Steiner had urged on her. But the sun had been unbenignantly hot, and she had dressed and come out after less than ten minutes of it. As for the book, which she still carried in her hand, after all there was nothing very new in it.
Almost unconsciously she decided against having tea served on the terrace, the place she would naturally choose to-day if she were alone, but drew Ariel on toward one of the drawing-rooms. Out of doors Ariel might escape her divining. But against Joan’s own background, in the green and gold drawing-room which she had recently created with Brenda Loring’s assistance, with its sharp outlines and definite color combinations, Ariel must stand out, at least in bas-relief.
As they traversed the wide hall Joan told herself confidently, “It isn’t, anyway, mere youth that Ariel uses. At least, she can’t use it in competition with me.” For Joan had glanced at their contrasted reflections in several long mirrors as they passed through her hall, and in those clear reflections she found herself more vividly young than the girl by her side. She saw with something like relief the beautiful, clean line of her chin and throat, the lithe Diana-ish line of thigh and leg, the life radiating from her burnished hair, glowing brow, and lustrous brown eyes. Ariel’s youth, in comparison, was lusterless. Besides, Ariel had not that added, rather terrible attribute of the older and experienced woman, consciousness of her power and of how to use it.