The One Woman | Page 4

of such exquisite grace.
With a promise that he would call to see her within the week, she left.
He stood for a moment gazing at her name, "Miss Kate Ransom," on
the card she gave him, his mind aglow with the consciousness of her
remarkable beauty, the famous Kentucky type, and yet a distinct
variation.
Her figure was full and magnificent in the ripe glory of youth, a
delicate face, the blonde's colour, thick, waving auburn hair that
seemed brown till the light blazed through its deep red tints, violet-blue
eyes, cordial and smiling, at once mysterious, magic, friendly, gravely
candid. Her skin was smooth as a babe's, with the delicate creamy satin
of the blonde flashing the scarlet tints of every emotion. Her lips were
cherry-red, and as she listened they half parted with a lazy suggestion
of tenderness and love; while the face was one of refined mentality, as
unconscious as a child's of its splendid beauty.
Her gait was proud and careless, telling of perfect health and stores of
untouched vital powers, a movement of the body at once strong,
luxurious, insolently languid, rhythmic and full of dumb music. It was
when she moved that she expressed the consciousness of power, a
gleam of cruelty, a challenge that was to man an added charm.
"What a woman!" he exclaimed aloud, as he drew on his coat. "The
kind of a woman who enraptures the senses, drugs the brain and
conscience of the man who responds to her call--the woman about
whom men have never been able to compromise, but have always
killed one another!"
His wife opened the door for him in silence.
"Who was that woman, Frank?" she asked at length, her long, dark
lashes blinking rapidly.
"What woman, Ruth?"

"The beauty I saw glide softly into your study."
Gordon smiled as he sank into a chair in the library.
"Miss Kate Ransom, a stranger I never met before."
"You seem a magnet for strange women, and your church their Mecca."
"Yes, and strange men. God knows New York, with its dead and
deserted churches, needs such a Mecca."
"You promised to call, of course?"
"Certainly; it's my business. The Church needs every friend and every
dollar to be had on Manhattan Island."
"And the distinguished young pastor of the Pilgrim Church needs the
smiles of all beautiful women. His wife is a little faded with worry and
care for his children, while crowds hang on his eloquence and silly
women sigh into his handsome face. Ah, Frank, before we came to
New York you had eyes only for me. The city, the crowd and the
flattery of fools have turned your head. You are letting go of all things
you once held. Now the Bible is 'literature.' You are sighing for the
freedom of a 'larger life.' Where will it end? I wonder if you have
weighed marriage in the balances and found it wanting?"
Gordon rose with a sigh, walked slowly to the window and looked
down on the city lying below. Their little home was perched on the
cliffs of Washington Heights.
The smile had died from his handsome face and his tall figure was
stooped with exhaustion. He raised one hand and brushed back a stray
lock from his forehead, across which a frown had slowly settled.
"By all means keep your hair adjusted," his wife continued sarcastically.
"The women are all in love with that blond hair. And it is so effective
in the pulpit. If you were not six feet four it might be effeminate, but I
assure you it is the secret of your strength. I trust you will be wiser than

Samson."
Gordon smiled.
"You have quit the old faiths," she continued rapidly, "and gone to
preaching Christian Socialism. You have driven the best members of
the church away, and made the press your enemy. That mob which
hails you a god will turn and curse you. You will never build your
marble dream out of such stuff. Both your sermons to-day will make
your trustees more hostile. There was no Bible in them--only
personalities and rank Socialism. I saw that woman in front of me
drinking it all in as the inspired gospel."
Gordon winced and his brow clouded.
"I gave up everything for you--home, talents, friends," she went on.
"Now that I am thirty-one, it is the new face that charms."
"You did give up a very particular friend for me," Gordon remarked
teasingly. "I only learned recently that you were once engaged to Mr.
Morris King, your faithful attorney, and that you threw him over for an
athletic parson with blond hair and a smile, yet I have never chided you
about this little secret. Mr. King is still a romantic bachelor. He has not
been