In one of the rooms stood a majestic woman. When Paul’s eyes fell upon the vision he dropped his burden, and as it crashed upon the floor he stood like one transfixed. To his starving, neglected, hungry soul it seemed as though some goddess had dropped to the earth from the stars, and the woman looked at him with uncommon interest.
In a voice that thrilled him with unknown, undefinable, undreamed-of longings, she said, “I want you.”
“Yes,” he said, as in a dream.
Thenceforth Paul Strogoff entered the household of Ouida Angelo, the sculptress, as a model. For the first time in his life, he felt that he was human.
CHAPTER IV. THE GREAT SENSATION.
Monday’s papers were full of Dr. Nugent’s sermon, and its sensational termination. Tongues wagged fierce concerning the artistic creation, its creator, and the fearless, the eloquent divine.
[New York Herald.]
“The sensation of the season has arisen out of ‘A Grecian Temptress,’ by Ouida Angelo. Only crude, narrow and dogmatic opinion condemns. The liberal and artistic world welcomes the work and its producer, and New York is to be congratulated upon the priceless possession of a genius who has obliterated sex in the grandness of her conceptions, in the boldness of her execution and in her wondrous grasp of poetic imagination. Dr. Nugent has made a fearful mistake, and his attack upon the work and the woman in his pulpit yesterday, was the pursuit of a course altogether at variance with his usual conservatism. He has, if possible, defeated his very object by the bitterness of his denunciation. For it is a known fact that New York breaks its neck to see anything which is even nastily described, and ‘A Grecian Temptress’ will now be viewed by thousands who, but for the preacher’s invective, would never have known of its existence. The learned doctor of divinity in future would do well to confine himself to biblical subjects, and leave artistic discussion to those who can appreciate.”
[New York Post.]