The auditors were relieved when the exercises were over and the club’s disruption postponed, and, betaking themselves to the supper-room, dismissed both lecture and reply from their minds.
Hermia was standing by one of the tables talking to three or four men, when Mr. Simms brought up Cryder and introduced him. Cryder looked absent and somewhat annoyed. He was evidently not in a mood to be impressed by feminine loveliness. At the end of a few moments Hermia wisely let him go, although with a renewed sense of the general flatness of life. At the same time she was somewhat amused, and sensible enough to know that it could not have been otherwise.
CHAPTER XIII.
OGDEN CRYDER.
Only the nineteenth century could have evolved Cryder. The infancy of a democratic civilization produces giants. The giants build hot-houses, and a flower, delicate, beautiful, exquisitely perfumed, but fragile, light as bubbles of blown glass, is the result. America is now doing the best she can with her hot-house flora. She has no great men, but the flora is wondrous fine. Outside the forcing-houses is a wilderness of weeds in which lies her future’s hope.
Cryder would have taken the medal at an orchid show. He was light as a summer breeze, yet as stimulating and fresh. He was daintily humorous, yet seldom witty enough to excite envy. His conversation was like the song of a lark, clear, brilliant, trilling, with never a bass note to disturb the harmony. In a quick, keen, flashing way, he had an exact knowledge of the salient world. He was artistic to his finger-tips, and preferred an aquarelle to an oil. He had loved many times and hoped to love as many more, and his love was always that of an æsthete. For coarse passions he had a cold contempt. He had broken many roses from their stems, but more because he thought an herbarium looked better when filled than because he enjoyed the plucking of the flower. Probably it is needless to observe that he never drank more than a pint bottle of champagne, and that he never over-ate.
The day after his address at the club he was walking down the avenue when he met Helen Simms. He turned back with her, and finished the afternoon in her drawing-room.
Helen did not give him so much of her time without an object. She cared little for Cryder, and few of her doings were unprompted by motive; life was too brief.
“You met Miss Suydam last night, did you not?” she asked, when Cryder was comfortably established in an easy-chair near the fire.