“So I understand,” he replied. “It seems very easy to make money there if you get in right. Do you know of anything sure?”
I said I didn’t.
“You are with Mr. Galt?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“He is a great money maker, isn’t he? What is he like?”
“He’s an elemental force,” I said, leaving him.
ii
But Vera was shrewd and purposeful, having always her ends in view. Manifestations such as the sculptor person were kept in their place. They were not permitted to dominate the scene. They played against a background that was at once exquisite and reassuring. In a mysterious way she created an atmosphere of pagan, metaphysical tranquillity, which rejects nothing and refines whatever it accepts. No thought, no representation of fact or experience, however extreme, was forbidden. But you must perceive all things æsthetically. Vulgarity was the only sin. Emotions were objects. You might enjoy them in any way you liked save one. You must not touch them. For this was the higher sensuality, ethereal and philosophical,—a sensuality of the mind alone.
All of this was the unconscious expression of herself. Eros intellectualized! It can be done.
Her achievement became known in a cultish way. She made admission to her circle more and more difficult and the harder it was the more anxious people were to get in. On Mrs. Valentine’s world she turned the tables. She flouted society and it began to knock at her door. She had something it wanted and sold it dear.