“You are impossible! No,” she veered suddenly, “you're not; if you cared for this you wouldn't be... you. That's the most important thing in the world. Besides, I wouldn't like you; everybody reads now, it's frightfully common; while you are truly indifferent. Have you noticed, my child, that books always increase where life runs thin? and you are alive, not a papier-mâché man painted in the latest shades.”
Anthony dwelt on this unexpected angle upon his mental delinquencies. The approval of Annot Hardinge, so critical, so outspoken, was not without an answering glow in his being; no one but she might discover his ignorance to be laudable.
She rose, and the book slipped neglected to the floor. “The mirror of my dressing table is collapsing,” she informed him; “I wonder if you would look at it.” He followed her above to her room; it was a large, four-square chamber, its windows brushed by the glossy leaves of an aged black-heart cherry tree. Her bed was small, with a counterpane of grotesque lace animals, a table held a scattered collection of costly trifles, and a closet door stood open upon a shimmering array from deepest orange to white and pale primrose. An enigmatic lacy garment, and a surprisingly long pair of black silk stockings, occupied a chair; while the table was covered with columns of print on long sheets of paper. “Galleys,” she told him. “I read all father's proof.”
He moved the dressing table from the wall, and discovered the bolt which had held the mirror in place upon the floor. As he screwed it into position, Annot said:
“Don't look around for a minute.” There was a swift whisper of skirts, a pause, then, “all right.” He straightened up, and found that she had changed to a white skirt and waist. Fumbling in the closet she produced a pair of low, brown shoes, and kicking off her slippers, donned the others, balancing each in turn on the bed.
“Let's go—anywhere,” she proposed; “but principally where books are not and birds are.” At a drugstore they purchased largely of licorice root, which they consumed sitting upon a fence without the town.
XLIV
I SAID that instinctively, back in my room,” Annot remarked with a puzzled frown. “It was beastly, really, to feel the necessity... as though we had something corrupt to hide. And I feel that you are especially nice—that way. You see, I am not trying to dispose of myself like the clever maidens at the balls and bazaars, my legs and shoulders are quite uncalculated. There is no price on... on my person; I'm not fishing for any nice little Christian ceremony. No man will have to pay the price of hats at Easter and furs in the fall, of eternal boredom, for me. All this stuff in the novels about the sacredness of love and constancy is just—stuff! Love isn't like that really; it's a natural force, and Nature is always practical: potato bugs and jimson-weed and men, it is the same law for all of them—more potato bugs, more men, that's all.”