A COMMONPLACE MEETING.
Quintard, after an absence of five years, had returned to New York to find Hermia Suydam the sensation of the year. He saw her first at the Metropolitan Opera-House, and, overhearing some people discussing her, followed the direction of their glances. She had never looked more radiant. Her hair shone across the house like burnished brass; her eyes had the limpid brilliancy of emeralds, and the black lashes lay heavy above and below them; her skin was like ivory against which pomegranate pulp had been crushed, and her mouth was as red as a cactus-flower. Her neck and arms and a portion of her bust were uncovered. Although it was a first night and most of her sister belles were present, her peculiar, somewhat barbaric beauty glittered like a planet in a firmament of stars.
Quintard left his seat at the end of the second act and walked back and forth in the lobby until he met Ralph Embury.
“Do you know Miss Suydam?” he asked the lively little journalist.
Embury hastened to assure him that he had the honor of Miss Suydam’s acquaintance.
“Then introduce me,” said Quintard.
Embury went at once to ask Miss Suydam’s permission for the desired presentation, and, returning in a few moments, told Quintard to follow him. Cryder gave his chair to Quintard, and Hermia was very gracious. She talked in a low, full voice as individual as her beauty—a voice that suggested the possibility of increasing to infinite volume of sound—a voice that might shake a hearer with its passion, or grow hoarse as a sea in a storm. Quintard had never heard just such a voice before, but he decided—why, he did not define—that the voice suited its owner.
She said nothing beyond the small-talk born of the conditions of the moment, but she gave him food for speculation, nevertheless. Had it not been absurd, he would have said that twice a look of unmistakable terror flashed through her eyes. She was looking steadily at him upon both occasions—once he was remarking that he was delighted to get back to America, and again that he had last seen Tannhäuser at Bayreuth.
He was also perplexed by a vague sense of unreality about her. What it meant he could not define; she was not an adventuress, nor was her beauty artificial. While he was working at his problems the curtain went down on the third act, and she rose to go. She held out her hand to him with a frank smile and said good-night. When she had put on her wraps she bent her head to him again and went out of the door. Then she turned abruptly and walked quickly back to him. The color had spread over her face, but the expression of terror had not returned to her eyes. They were almost defiant.
“Come and see me,” she said quickly.