“Don’t bother any more!” said Cryder. “Leave them to me; I will take care of them.”
“You are good,” murmured Hermia. “When I am old I shall like a salon; I shall like the power of it. Now—it bores me a little.”
Cryder bent somewhat nearer to her. “Do not wait too long for anything,” he murmured. “A man’s power comes with age; a woman’s power goes with age.”
He turned from her suddenly and addressed a remark to Embury which immediately gave that clever young man a chance to entertain his companions for ten minutes. Hermia found herself drifting from her guests. She had undergone many evolutions of thought and feeling during the past few weeks. At times she had believed herself in love with Cryder; at others, she had been conscious of indifferent liking. She was puzzled to find that his abstract image thrilled her more than his actual presence. On the other hand, she liked him better when with him. He was so entertaining, so sympathetic; he had such delicate tact and charm. When absent, she sometimes thought of him with a certain distaste; he had qualities that she disliked, and he was diametrically different from all imagined lovers. Then she would make up her mind to close her eyes to his deficiencies and to love him spiritually. She would compel herself to think of him for hours together on an exalted mental and spiritual plane, where passion had no place. Not that she believed him incapable of passion, by any means—she believed that all men were constructed on the same plan—but he was so different from that man who now dwelt behind a barred door in her brain that she felt it her duty, to both, to love him in a different way. She was surprised to find that after such æsthetic communion she almost hated him. Reaction following excess of passion may be short-lived; but immoderate sentimentality leaves a mental ennui that requires a long convalescence. Sentimentality is a growth of later civilization, and trails its roots over the surface like a pine; while passion had its seeds planted in the garden of Eden, and is root, branch, twig, and leaf of human nature.
In summing up her sensations she had come to the conclusion that on the whole she was in love with him. No one had ever moved her one-tenth as much before. If she had not lost her head about him, it was because her nature had slept too long to awake in a moment. That would come by degrees. There were times when she felt the impulse to cast herself on her face and sob farewell to the dreams of her youth and to the lover who had been a being more real than Ogden Cryder; but she thrust aside the impulse with a frown and plunged into her daily life.
At opportune moments Hermia’s attention returned to her guests. Miss Starbruck rose at a signal from her niece and the women went into the library. The men joined them soon after, and Cryder, much to the gratitude of his tired and dreamy hostess, continued to entertain them until eleven o’clock, when they went home.
CHAPTER XVII.
AN ILLUSION DISPELLED.
The front door had closed after the last guest, the butler had turned down the lights in the hall, Miss Starbruck had gone up-stairs, and Hermia was standing by the library fire. She heard some one come down the hall, and turned her head, her expression of indifference and mental fatigue lifting a little. The portière was pushed aside and Cryder entered the room.