It was the very thing I had predicted to her face that she would say.
“But wait,” I cried. “Let me read on.” And I read:
“‘We, we alone among all beautiful things,
We only are real: for the rest are dreams.
Why will you follow after wandering dreams
When we await you? And you can but dream
Of us, and in our image fashion them.’”
“True, most true,” she murmured, while all unconsciously pride and power mounted in her eyes.
“A wonderful poem,” she conceded—nay, proclaimed—when I had done.
“But do you not see . . .” I began impulsively, then abandoned the attempt. For how could she see, being woman, the “far-off, disastrous, unattainable things,” when she, as she so stoutly averred, had gazed often on the stars?
She? What could she see, save what all women see—that they only are real, and that all the rest are dreams.
“I am proud to be a daughter of Herodias,” said Miss West.
“Well,” I admitted lamely, “we agree. You remember it is what I told you you were.”
“I am grateful for the compliment,” she said; and in those long gray eyes of hers were limned and coloured all the satisfaction, and self-certitude and answering complacency of power that constitute so large a part of the seductive mystery and mastery that is possessed by woman.