And, as he thought of this exquisite, slender, clear-eyed young girl who had greeted him at the Paris terminal—this charming embodiment of all that is fresh and sweet and fearless—in her perfect hat and gown of mondaine youth and fashion, the memory of his temerity appalled him.
Imagine his taking an unencouraged liberty now!
Nor could he dare imagine encouragement from the Rue Carew so amazingly revealed to him.
Out of what, in heaven’s name, had this lovely girl developed? Out of a shy, ragged, bare-legged child, haunting the wild blackberry tangles in Brookhollow?
Out of the frail, charmingly awkward, pathetic, freckled mill-hand in her home-made party clothes, the rather sweet expression of whose mouth once led him to impudent indiscretion?
Out of what had she been evolved—this young girl whom he had left just now standing beside her boudoir door with the Princess Naïa’s arm around her waist? Out of the frightened, white-lipped, shabby girl who had come dragging her trembling limbs and her suitcase up the dark stairway outside his studio? Out of the young thing with sagging hair, crouched in an armchair beside his desk, where her cheap hat lay with 308 two cheap hatpins sticking in the crown? Out of the fragile figure buried in the bedclothes of a stateroom berth, holding out to him a thin, bare arm in voiceless adieu?
And Neeland lay there thinking, his head on his elbow, the other arm extended—from the fingers of which the burnt-out cigarette presently fell to the floor.
He thought to himself:
“She is absolutely beautiful; there’s no denying that. It’s not her clothes or the way she does her hair, or her voice, or the way she moves, or how she looks at a man; it’s the whole business. And the whole bally business is a miracle, that’s all. Good Lord! And to think I ever had the nerve—the nerve!”
He swung himself to a sitting posture, sat gazing into space for a few moments, then continued to undress by pulling off one shoe, lighting a cigarette, and regarding his other foot fixedly.