Then the direction of her mind veered—what did he still think of her? Probably he had altogether recovered from his love for her. It had been a warm day, and Arnaud had opened a window; but now she was aware of a cold air on her shoulder and she asked him abruptly to lower the sash. Linda remembered, with a lingering sense of triumph, the Susanna Noda whom Dodge had left at a party for her. There had been a great many Susannas in his life; the reason for this was the absence of any overwhelming single influence. It might be that now—he had written of the change in the subjects of his work—such a guide had come into his existence. She hoped she had. Yet, in view of the announced silliness of women, she didn't want him to be cheaply deluded.
He was an extremely human man.
But she, Linda, it seemed, was an inhuman woman. The days ran into weeks that added another month to spring; a June advanced sultry with heat; and, suddenly as usual, a maid at the door of her room announced Pleydon. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, she had to dress, and she sent him a message that he mustn't expect her in a hurry. She paused in her deliberate preparations for a long thoughtful gaze into a mirror; there was not yet a shadow on her face, the trace of a line at her eyes. The sharp smooth turning and absolute whiteness of her bare shoulders were flawless.
At first it appeared to Linda that he, too, had not changed. They were in the library opening into the dining-room, a space shut against the sun by the Venetian blinds, and faintly scented by a bowl of early tea roses. He appeared the same—large and informally clad in gray flannels, with aggressive features and sensitive strong hands. He was quiet but plainly happy to be with her again and sat leaning forward on his knees, watching her intently as she chose a seat.
Then it slowly dawned on her that he had changed, yes—tragically. Pleydon, in every way, was years older. His voice, less arbitrary, had new depths of questioning, his mouth was more repressed, his face notably sparer of flesh. He was immediately aware of the result of her scrutiny. “I have been working like a fool,” he explained. “A breath of sickness, too, four years ago in Soochow. One of the damnable Asiatic fevers that a European is supposed to be immune from. You are a miracle, Linda. How long has it been—nearly eight years; you have two children and Arnaud Hallet and yet you are the girl I met at Markue's. I wanted to see you different, just a little, a trace of something that should have happened to you. It hasn't. You're the most remarkable mother alive.”
“If I am,” she returned, “it is not as a success, or at least for me. Lowrie and Vigné are healthy, and happy enough; but I can't lose myself in them, Dodge; I can't lose myself at all.”
He was quiet at this, the smoke of his cigarette climbing bluely in a space with the aqueous stillness of a lake's depths. “The same,” he went on after a long pause; “nothing has touched you. I ought to be relieved but, do you know, it frightens me. You are relentless. You have no right, at the same time, to be beautiful. I have seen a great many celebrated women at their best moments, but you are lovelier than any. It isn't a simple affair of proportion and features—I wish I could hold it in a phrase, the turn of a chisel. I can't. It's deathless romance in a bang cut blackly across heavenly blue.” He was silent again, and Linda glad that he still found her attractive. She discovered that the misery his presence once caused her had entirely vanished, its place taken by an eager interest in his affairs, a lightness of spirit at the realization that, while his love for her might have grown calm, no other woman possessed it.
At the dinner-table she listened—cool and fresh, Arnaud complained, in spite of the heat—to the talk of the two men. By her side Elouise Lowrie occasionally repeated, in a voice like the faint jangle of an old thin piano, the facts of a family connection or a commendation of the Dodges. Arnaud really knew a surprising lot, and his conversation with Pleydon was strung with terms completely unintelligible to her. It developed, finally, into an argument over the treatment of the acanthus motive in rococo ornament. France was summoned against Spain; the architectural degrading of Italy deplored.... It amazed her that any one could remember so much.