The weight of Pleydon's body depressed the entire divan. “An ordinary man,” he told her, “would ask how the devil you got here. Then he would take you to your home with some carefully chosen words for whatever parents you had. But I can see that all this is needless. You are an extremely immaculate person.
“That isn't necessarily admirable,” he added.
“I don't believe I am admirable at all,” Linda replied.
“How old are you?” he demanded abruptly.
She told him.
“Age doesn't exist for some women, they are eternal,” he continued. “You see, I call you a woman, but you are not, and neither are you a child. You are Art—Art the deathless,” his gaze strayed back to the Victory.
As she, too, looked at it, it seemed to Linda that the cast filled all the room with a swirl of great white wings and heroic robes. In an instant the incense and the dark colors, the uncertain pallid faces and bare shoulders, were swept away into a space through which she was dizzily borne. The illusion was so overpowering that involuntarily she caught at the heavy arm by her.