Hermia looked at her reflection that evening with a smile. The shadowed emerald of her velvet gown made her hair glow like vibrant flame. The color wandered through her cheeks and emptied itself into her lips. Her eyes were as green as the limpid floor of ocean-hollowed caverns. Across her ivory-white shoulder swept a curving blue vein, thin as an infant’s lash, and on the rise of her right breast were three little moles, each marking the corner of a tiny triangle.
Mr. Simms called for her promptly, and when they arrived at the club-rooms they strolled about looking at the pictures and the people until the exercises began. There were many literary and artistic celebrities present, all of whom looked much like ordinary and well-bred people; but to Hermia there was a luminous halo about each. It was her first experience in the literary world, and she felt as if she had entered the atmosphere of a dream. It was one of her few satisfactory experiments. She was much stared at; everybody knew her by reputation if not by sight; and a number of men asked to be presented.
Among them was Mr. Overton, the editor who had published her poem in his magazine. She changed color as he came up, but his manner at once assured her that she was not recognized: he would have vindicated his fraternity, indeed, had he been keen-sighted enough to recognize in this triumphant, radiant creature the plain, ill-dressed, stooping girl with whom he had talked for half an hour at the close of a winter’s day two years before. Hermia, of course, no longer wrote; life offered her too many other distractions.
Mr. Overton suggested that they should go into the lecture-room and secure good seats. He found them chairs and took one beside Hermia.
“Ogden Cryder gives the address to-night,” he said, after he had satisfied Hermia’s curiosity in regard to the names of a half-dozen people. “Do you like his books?”
“Fairly. Do you?”
Mr. Overton laughed. “That is rather a direct question, considering that I print one of his stories about every six months.”
“Oh, you might not like them. You might publish them out of tender regard for the demands of your readers.”
Mr. Overton had a characteristic American face, thin, nervous, shrewd, pleasant. He gave Hermia a smile of unwonted frankness. “I will confide to you, Miss Suydam, that such is the case with about two-thirds I publish. I thank Heaven that I do not have to read a magazine as well as publish it. I have an associate editor who sits with his finger on the pulse of the public, and relieves me of much vexation of spirit.”
“But tell me what you think of Mr. Cryder.”