“'La figlia della sua mente, l'amorosa idea.'”
His voice grew so faint that Linda could scarcely distinguish articulate sounds. All that he said, without meaning for her, stirred her heart. She was used to elder enigmas of speech; her normal response was instinctively emotional, and nothing detracted from the gravity of her attention.
“Not in pious men,” he continued, more uncertain; “nor in seminaries of virtue. They have their reward. But in men whose bitterness of longing grew out of hideous fault. The distinction of beauty—not a payment for prayers or chastity. The distinction of love ... above chests of linen and a banker's talent and patents of nobility.... Divine need. Idiotic. But what else, what better, offers?”
He was, she saw, terribly sick. His hands were clenched and his entire being strained and rigid, as though he were trying to do something tremendously difficult. At last, with infinite pain, he succeeded.
“I must get away,” he articulated.
Linda was surprised at the effort necessary for this slight accomplishment when he had said the most bewildering things with complete ease. Well, the elevators were right in front of him. He rose slowly, and, with Linda standing at his side, dug a sharp hand into her shoulder. It hurt, but instinctively she bore it and, moving forward, partly supported him. She pressed the bell that signaled for the elevator and it almost immediately sank into view. “Hurry,” he said harshly to the colored operator in a green uniform; and quite suddenly, leaving a sense of profound mystery, he disappeared.
III
Linda decided that he had told her a rather stupid fairy story. She was too old for such ridiculous things as ladies in their shining hair on a leopard. She remembered clearly seeing one of the latter at a zoological garden. It had yellow eyes, but no one would care to ride on it. Her mother, she was certain, knew more about love than any man. His words faded quickly from her memory, but a confused rich sense stirred her heart, a feeling such as she experienced after an unusually happy day: white gloves and music and Mr. Jasper displeased.