“Are we really? I have ceased to be a body, I am now only a spirit, and spirits know no age.” She let her heavy lids drop over her eyes, a trick which Lady Currey had always disliked. “I have learned to project the soul into space and leave the body behind. Have you ever pierced through the intangible walls of the Unseen, Marian?”
“I attend regularly to my religious duties,” said her visitor shortly, rather nonplussed by Circe’s new attitude. Her flippancies she knew and could meet, but this was something that verged on her own preserves.
“Ah! that is not quite the same.” The hostess smiled sweetly upon her. “But now we will go in to lunch. Gilbert is not coming, I think?”
“He has his work,” said his mother. “You cannot expect such a man to dance attendance on a woman.”
“Oh! I quite understand,” interjected Claudia. “I did not expect he would come.”
“He has the aura of a successful man.” said Circe dreamily. “I saw it quite distinctly last night. But there was something mingled with it—I saw a vivid streak of purple——” She shook her head mysteriously and broke off the sentence.
“I shouldn’t say there were any purple patches about Gilbert,” smiled Claudia, across the rose-bowl.
“I do not understand the phrase,” said Lady Currey acidly. “Will you explain it to me?”
Patricia gave an audible chuckle, and Claudia looked imploringly at her mother.
“Purple patches,” said Circe vaguely, “stand for all the wonderful emotions and sensations that make this life a thing of magic and mystery. A purple patch—what is it? It may be a minute, a second even—the look from someone’s eyes caught in a crowd—a chord of music—a whiff of perfume—an hour of passion—a day of memories—the song of a bird—anything rare and evanescent. Purple patches are moments of crystallization, of ecstasy, of poetry, of life; patches that glow in your heart for years and I think, even when you are dead shroud it in royal mourning.”