To see Esther Wandrell pass by--beautiful, heroic, composed--was to feel she was the most magnetic of women. To recite verses to her--to lay siege to her heart--was to learn that her personal magnetism was from a repellant pole. The air grew heavy. There was a lack of ozone. The presumptuous beleaguerer withdrew and was glad to come off without capture.
There had been one man, and toward the last, two men, who did not meet these mystic difficulties. Esther Wandrell was pleased to be in the society of either David Lockwin or George Harpwood.
David Lockwin she knew. He was socially her equal. He had lived in Chicago as long as she. He was essentially the man she might love, for there was an element of unrest in his nature that corresponded with the turmoil underneath her calm exterior.
She knew nothing of George Harpwood other than that he was an acquaintance with whom she liked to pass an hour. He did not degrade her pride. He walked erectly, he scorned the common people, he presented an appearance sufficiently striking to enable her to accompany him without making a bad picture on the street or in the parlor.
All other men bored her, and she could not conceal the fact.
To promenade with Harpwood and notice that Lockwin was interested--this was indeed a tonic. The world of tuberoses and portes cocheres--the world of soft carpets and waltzes heard in the distance--this aromatic, conventional and dreary world became a paradise.
When David Lockwin declared his love, life became dramatic.
When David Lockwin won the primaries and carried the election, life became useful.
When David Lockwin held the little feet of the dead foundling life became noble. She, too, would bring from out the recesses of that man's better nature the treasures of love which lay there. She had not before known that she hungered and thirsted for love.
It might be the affection of a lioness. She might lick her cubs with the tongue of a tiger, but her temperament, stirring beneath her, was pleased.