Was this the evolution that her winter's idleness and gaiety and the fatigues of pleasure had been so subtly preparing for her? Was that strange moment, at the door, the moment that man's enemy had been awaiting, to find her unprepared?
Wretched, humiliated, she bowed her head above the flowers and silver on her dresser—the fairest among the Philistines who had so long unconsciously thanked God that she was not like other women in the homes of Gath and in the sinful streets of Ascalon.
CHAPTER VI
Strelsa was no longer at home to Quarren, even over the telephone. He called her up two or three times in as many days, ventured to present himself at her house twice without being received, and finally wrote her a note. But at the end of the month the note still remained unanswered.
However, there was news of her, sometimes involving her with Langly Sprowl, but more often with Sir Charles Mallison. Also, had Quarren not dropped out of everything so completely, he might easily have met her dozens of times in dozens of places. But for a month now he had returned every day from his office to his room in the Legation, and even the members of that important diplomatic body found his door locked, after dinner, though his light sometimes brightened the transom until morning.
Westguard, after the final rupture with his aunt, had become a soured hermit—sourer because of the low motives of the public which was buying his book by the thousands and reading it for the story, exclusively.
His aunt had cast him off; to him she was the overfed embodiment of society, so it pleased him to consider the rupture as one between society and himself. It tasted of martyrdom, and now his own public had vulgarly gone back on him according to his ideals: nobody cared for his economics, his social evils, his moral philosophy; only what he considered the unworthy part of his book was eagerly absorbed and discussed. The proletariat had grossly betrayed him; a hermit's exemplary but embittered career was apparently all that remained for his declining years.
So, after dinner, he, too, retired to seclusion behind bolted doors, pondering darkly on a philosophic novel which should be no novel at all but a dignified and crushing rebuke to mankind—a solid slice of moral cake thickly frosted with social economics, heavy with ethical plums, and without any story to it whatever.
Meanwhile his book had passed into the abhorred class of best sellers.