"Fine fiddlesticks!" she ejaculated. "Don't get sentimental, Mr. Goddard, or else I'll think you have a heart. You are trying to flirt with me. I know you are. Take me away from this place and let us walk, walk! Heavens! I'd like to walk to the Battery and smell the sea!"
Paul discreetly stopped, and the pair started up Fifth Avenue. The day was a brave one; the sky was stuffed with plumy clouds and the rich colors of a reverberating sunset. The two healthy beings sniffed the crisp air, talked of themselves as only selfish young people can, and at Fifty-ninth street, Ellenora becoming tired, waited for a cross-town car—she expected some people at her house in the evening, and must be home early. Paul was bidden, but declined; then without savor of affection they said good-by.
The man went slowly down the avenue thinking: "Of all the women I've met, this is the most perverse, heartless, daring." He recalled his Bayreuth experiences, and analyzed Ellenora. Her supple, robust figure attracted his senses; her face was interesting; she had brains, uncommon brains. What would she become? Not a poet, not a novelist. Perhaps a literary critic, like Sainte-Beuve with shining Monday morning reviews. Perhaps—yes, perhaps a critic, a writer of bizarre prose-poems; she has personal style, she is herself, and no one else.
"That's it," said Paul, half aloud; "she has style, and I admire style above everything." He resolved on meeting Ellenora as often as he could....
The following month he saw much of Arthur Vibert's wife, and found himself a fool in her strong grasp. The girl had such baffling contrasts of character, such slippery moods, such abundant fantasy that the young man—volatility itself—lost his footing, his fine sense of honor and made love to this sphinx of the ink-pot, was mocked and flouted but never entirely driven from her presence. More than any other woman, Ellenora enjoyed the conquest of man. She mastered Paul as she had mastered Arthur, easily; but there was more of the man of the world, more of the animal in the amateur, and the silkiness of her husband, at first an amusement, finally angered her.
Vibert knew that his wife saw Paul much too often for his own edification, but only protested once, and so feebly that she laughed at him.
"Arthur," she said, taking him by his slender shoulders, "why don't you come home some night in a jealous rage and beat me? Perhaps then I might love you. As it is, Mr. Goddard only amuses me; besides, I read him my new stories, otherwise I don't care an iota for him."
He lifted his eyebrows, went to the piano and played the last movement of his new concerto, played it with all the fire he could master, his face white, muscles angry, a timid man transformed.
"Why don't you beat me instead of the piano, dear?" she cried out mockingly; "some women, they say, can be subdued in that fashion." He rushed from the room....
April was closing when Vibert, summoned to Washington, gave a piano recital there, and Ellenora went down-town to dinner with Goddard. She was looking well, her spring hat and new gown were very becoming. As they sat at Martin's eating strawberries, Paul approved of her exceedingly. He had been drinking, and the burgundy and champagne at dinner made him reckless.