Thus and thus only, he had decided, could light be shed upon the mysterious twilight veiling the inner woman! Thus only might carefully concealed motives be detected, cause and effect co-ordinated, the very source of all feminine logic, reason, and emotion be laid bare and dissected at leisure.
Never had anybody written such a novel as he would be equipped to write. The ultimate word concerning woman was about to be written.
Inwardly excited, outwardly calm, he had seated himself on the coquina wall which ran along the lagoon under the Royal Palms. He was about to study his subject as the great masters studied, coolly, impersonally, with clear and merciless intelligence, setting down with calm simplicity nothing except facts.
All that was worthy and unworthy should be recorded—the good with the evil—nothing should be too ephemeral, too minute, to escape his searching analysis.
And all the while, though Brown was not aware of it, the memory of a face he had seen in the[122] dining-room grew vaguely and faded, waxing and waning alternately, like a phantom illustration accompanying his thoughts.
As for the model he should choose to study, she ought to be thoroughly feminine, he thought; young, probably blonde, well formed, not very deeply experienced, and with every human capacity for good and bad alike.
He would approach her frankly, tell her what he required, offer her the pay of an artist's model, three dollars a day; and, if she accepted, she could have her head and do what she liked. All that concerned him was to make his observations and record them.
In the blue starlight people passed and re-passed like ghosts along the shell-road—the white summer gowns of young girls were constantly appearing in the dusk, taking vague shape, vanishing. On the lagoon, a guitar sounded very far away. The suave scent of oleander grew sweeter.
Spectral groups passed in clinging lingerie; here and there a ghost lingered to lean over the coquina wall, her lost gaze faintly accented by some level star. One of these, a slender young thing, paused near to Brown, resting gracefully against the wall.
All around her the whip-poor-wills were calling[123] breathlessly; the perfume of oleander grew sweeter.