Sacrifice | Page 5

deadly richness of equatorial forests, peopled by human
beasts whose claws were hammered steel, whose fangs were poisoned
arrows, and who carried in their thick skulls the condensed miasma of
their hiding places.
She seemed to see him passing through those physical dangers and
corroding mental influences, a superior being of unalterable health and
sanity, perhaps protected because of a grand destiny still unrevealed to
him. She longed to participate in that destiny, or, at any rate, to be
responsible somehow for it.
"Where are you? What are your thoughts?" she would whisper, staring
at the likeness of this peculiarly congenial stranger.
Late at night, at that hour when bizarre fancies and actions may seem
natural, she would ask him:
"Don't you know that I exist? Then I must make you know it."
So she tried to cast forth into space a flood of feeling strong enough to
reach him--a projection of her identity, her appearance, and her
infatuation. All her secret ardors that had never been so strongly
focused upon a definite personality found their centering point in him,
whose imagined nature seemed to be so emphatically what she needed
to appease and complete her nature. She was like one of those antique
sorceresses who would cast over distant hearts the spells that must
inevitably recoil upon their makers.
But when she had remained for a long while motionless and tense, she
rose wearily, with a low laugh of disillusionment and ridicule.
Little by little her thoughts of him were obscured by other thoughts, by
weakly apposite conjectures that had different men as their objects.

And when different men made love to her, once or twice, maybe at a
conjunction of exquisite scenery, music, and impatience, of confused
longings and eloquent persuasion, she was tempted to consent. But just
in time she stilled that tremulous smile, and averted that dizzy look in
the depths of which lurked a fatal sweetness.
Then, when life seemed to her unbearably monotonous, she went to a
week-end party at the Brassfields' house in the country.
CHAPTER V
The Brassfields' country house was copied from an historic French
chateau. In the drawing-room, the high walls, from which well-known
portraits stood forth, were paneled with amber-hued wood overlaid
with elaborate gilt traceries; they ended in a wide golden frieze that
curved inward to inclose a ceiling painted with roguish goddesses after
the manner of Watteau. Here and there, between chairs and sofas the
arms of which seemed composed of half-melted ingots, appeared a
baroque cabinet filled with small, precious objects. Or from a creamy
pedestal the marble features of some ancient sybarite regarded without
surprise this modern richness based upon the past.
Emerging from the dining room, the ladies crossed the large amber rug,
like moving images made of multicolored light.
Below their negligible bodices hung draperies of brocade interwoven
with metallic threads, of lace dyed the colors of exotic flowers, of tulle
embroidered with iridescent beads. Parting into groups, they dotted the
drawing-room with the gorgeousness of peacock blue and jade green,
the joyousness of petunias and the melancholy of orchids, or the pale,
intermelting tints of rainbows seen through the spangle of a shower.
Some, unfurling fans before their bosoms, sank down upon the chairs
and sofas. Others stood beside the large chimney piece, talking to the
men, and smoking cigarettes that were thrust into jeweled holders.
A few emerged through the French windows upon the terrace to enjoy
the moonlit landscape, wherein Nature herself had been taught to show

a charming artificiality.
An esplanade overlooked an aquatic garden, with three pools full of
water flowers massed round statues. Below, in broad stages that fell
away toward a wooded valley, lay other gardens, deriving a vague
stateliness from their successive balustrades and sculptured fountains.
The moonlight, while blanching the geometrical pattern of the paths,
and frosting the rectangular flowerbeds, imparted to the whole
surrounding, billowing panorama an appearance of unreality.
"Where's Lilla?" Fanny Brassfield inquired of a young man in the
doorway of the drawing-room, in her clear, grating voice that seemed
made to express an involuntary disdain of everything not comprised in
her luxurious little world. She had just seen one of her most recent lions,
old Brantome, on his way toward the music room amid a group of
ladies; and this had recalled to her mind another celebrity, who, five
minutes before, had arrived from the city after she had given up
expecting him.
"Shall I find her?"
"Never mind, my surprise can wait."
Fanny Brassfield followed Brantome and his coterie into the music
room, her attractive, bony features revealing a quizzical expression. In
the glitter of the big chandelier her coiffure appeared extraordinarily
blonde, her green eyes, especially frosty; and the eighteenth century
ladies in the gilded frames seemed suddenly, despite their