CHAPTER XXII—THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT
GASTON tried to wait in patience another week for a word from the woman he loved, and when the last mail came and brought no letter for him, he found himself face to face with the deepest soul crisis of his life.
After all, thoughts are things. The report of her social frivolities at first made little impression on him. But the thought had fallen in his heart, and it was growing a poisoned weed.
It is possible to kill the human body with an idea. The fairest day the spring ever sent can be blackened and turned from sunshine into storm by the flitting of a little cloud of thought no bigger than a man’s hand.
So Gaston found this report of dancing and flirting in a gay society by the woman whom he had enthroned in the holy of holies of his soul to be destroying his strength of character, and like a deadly cancer eating his heart out.
He sat down by his window that night, unable to work, and tried to reconcile such a life with his ideal.
“Why should I be so provincial!” he mused. “The thing only shocks me because I am unused to it. She has grown up in this atmosphere. To her it is a harmless pastime.”
Then he took out of his desk her picture, lit his lamp and looked long and tenderly at it, until his soul was drunk again with the memory of her beauty, the warm touch of her hand, and the thrill of her full soft lips in the only two kisses he had ever received from the heart of a woman.
Then, the vision of a ball-room came to torture him. He could see her dressed in that delicate creation of French genius he had seen her wear the memorable night at the Springs. The French know so deeply the subtle art of draping a woman’s body to tempt the souls of men. How he cursed them to-night! He could see her bare arms, white gleaming shoulders, neck, and back, and round full bosom softly rising and falling with her breathing, as she swept through a brilliant ball-room to the strains of entrancing music.
He knew the dance was a social convention, of course. But its deep Nature significance he knew also. He knew that it was as old as human society, and full of a thousand subtle suggestions,—that it was the actual touch of the human body, with rhythmic movement, set to the passionate music of love. This music spoke in quivering melody what the lips did not dare to say. This he knew was the deep secret of the fascination of the dance for the boy and the girl, the man and the woman. How he cursed it to-night!